Leah Benson - No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti

 

 

So, his name was Carlos. [audience chuckles] We'd worked together in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, where I'd been living for a couple of years. And by this point, we'd been living together for about six months. But I'd been secretly in love with him for about nine. He'd recently started working at this bar called Bohemios, which we'd been hanging out at for months. It was this really crappy, awful dive bar that catered to American tourists. The kind of place that pours, like, really light beer, awful stuff, but blares the best and worst music from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, all from the United States, so that people want to come in there, but no one really did.

 

But we hung out there every night, singing along to songs like Unbreak My Heart and Living on a Prayer and doing our best to translate every single word for the locals hanging out in there into Spanish so that they could ironically appreciate everything as well. [audience chuckles] But anyway, it was really exciting when he started working there.

 

So, Carlos came home one night to our apartment, and it was fairly late, like 1:00 or 2:00 AM. But I was, of course, waiting up for him like I always did, because I just wanted to see him. And he came in, he told me a little bit about the night, the funny stories about what the drunks did, and then he went to go take a shower. But before doing that, he laid down this pile of books that he had brought with him to the bar, something to look at during the slow hours. And as he walked away, I, of course, looked at it because I always wanted to know what he was reading so that I knew what I should be reading, too. [audience chuckles] So, the next time he asked me who my favorite poet was, I knew that I should say something like Ezra Pound instead of William Blake.

 

So, on this particular night, he was reading a collection of T.S. Eliot poems. And when I bent down to pick up the book, this piece of paper fell out onto the floor. And I could immediately recognize his somewhat childish handwriting. And I couldn't see much, but I could see that it was written in Spanish. And I saw the phrase, no puedo vivir sin ti. [whistle from the audience] I know I was like, “Oh, my God.” And in that moment, I knew that this letter was written for me. It was a love letter that Carlos had written out for me and me alone to see. And so, I ran, I went to get my dictionary. Because there are two things you should know about Carlos. First off, he is the son of US diplomats and had grown up in Spanish speaking countries his entire life. And so, he was fluent. And I'd lived in Guatemala for a couple of years. And so, I was fluent in the way that I might write, like fluent on my job resume, but not actually fluent. [audience laughter] And so, I knew I'd need some help. And number two was that Carlos had a degree in poetry from Yale.

 

And so, I knew whatever he was going to be writing to me was going to be in that, like, absolutely beautiful and totally incomprehensible way that poets express themselves. [audience chuckles] So, I got my dictionary and I started translating. And it was amazing. The first line was, "When I first met you, I was afraid, but now I can't live without you." And I just stopped. This was exactly what I'd been wanting to say to him for months. This is exactly what I'd wanted to be hearing. And I couldn't believe it had been happening. I had given up my life essentially to be with this man. I'd stayed living in this foreign country when I could have been returning to the United States to start a career and stuff.

 

And instead I just stayed with him. And we spent every moment together. We knew everything about one another and we shared our hopes and dreams and all these things. And I knew that were in love, but I'd never heard it from him before. So, I was just so excited. And it got even better from there. It turned from him being afraid to him not being able to live without me and all of these really amazing things. And I was allowing myself. Like, my mind was running wild and I was imagining how he would walk out of the bathroom and I walk towards him and I would, like, embrace him and passionately kiss him and run my hands through his amazing hair. [audience chuckles] And I would just let him know that I felt the same.

 

And at this moment, I remember something running through my head, that golden rule, just like Misty, that “If something's too good to be true, that it might be too good.” So, but then I was like, “You know what? Fuck it. This is actually true. This is happening. This guy wrote a letter to me.” And so, I continued reading. I opened back up my dictionary, and that's when shit got a little bit weird because all of a sudden, the next line that I was reading was talking about how I had done him wrong. And it didn't say Leah exactly, but I knew it was about me. [audience laughter] 

 

And I never ever done this man wrong. I have committed myself to this relationship, to being the perfect, perfect person for him. I don't know what he's talking about. And then all of a sudden it just like hit me. And this translation that I was doing became so clear, all the words just like formed in front of me. And I, at that point, just crossed my fingers, took a deep breath and just like pleaded with the universe, hoping that the next words that I would read on this page of this love letter would not be what I thought that they were. But then I opened my eyes and I looked down and I saw voy a sobrevivir. And at that moment I just started to cry because I realized Carlos didn't love me. He never did, never was going to. And I wasn't reading a love letter. I was reading a translation of the Gloria Gaynor hit song I Will Survive. [audience laughter] And at that point, I wasn't entirely sure that I would.