"You really shouldn't stand so close."
I heard the words escape my mouth but they seemed less a shout and more a whisper compared to the gravel slipping loose underneath your boots. The grinding of pebbles indistinguishable from one another filled my ears and then my head until gravel spilled from my eyes. Flesh toned roots grew from my heels and toes as I saw the soles of your boots. Your arms stretched towards anything passing by like a child trying to catch the wind from a car window on the freeway.
"Not another step."
I didn't want to have to do it. It was the last thing I wanted to do. It's what they train you for but it's never what you're prepared for. Before you know it, it's too late, your trigger finger reacts instinctively. The warm metal in your hand feels like it's a part of you, like you were born with it. The smell of that wretched powder sticks to your uniform even after you've washed it countless times. The sound of bone pierced and cracked and shattered rings in your ears till you're deaf. The eyes glazed over but still staring at you, that look of desperation, you can't get it out of your head.
"Severe weather. Take shelter."
Can't be that bad. Just keep driving. Clear skies for a moment and then gusts. The road in front of you does not exist. There is only the wind and the sound. Soon you aren't on the ground anymore and there are only shards where the windows used to be. Your head feels warm and wet. Part of you is escaping. Duck and cover. You realize you've been set down when you weren't aware you had been picked up. Facing oncoming headlights and it still won't sink in. You've lost yourself. You walk out as someone else crying into shoulders of friends and strangers amazed you can walk you can breathe you can think you can eat you can hug you can kiss you can live.
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Alone in the Street
It always worries me, driving me almost to a panic, when I see a dog alone in the street. I wonder if it's a stray or if it belongs to someone. If it does belong to someone, are they worried like I'm worried or are they secretly relieved.
It was the summer after we all dropped out. Well, not all of us, but enough of us that it felt like all of us. I had left school after spring break. I couldn't take it, even when I was stoned. The classes, the people, the teachers, I didn't see the point anymore. None of us did. We all had our reasons or excuses for leaving, but I think mostly we weren't happy anymore.
The house where we spent most of our nights was falling apart. There was a gaping hole in the hallway where Eric fell on his way to the bathroom to expel the demons in his stomach (beer, cheap whiskey, whatever he had in his flask). That was years ago now, but no effort had been made to repair the hole. The faded, floral wallpaper that hung in the dining room (if you could call it that since it was rare for anyone to actually eat a meal in there) was coming down in strips. It would only make it somewhere halfway down the wall before it would curl up and settle. Most of us were happy to see it go, we never really cared for it, but none of us ever did anything about it.
Most everyone in our circle of friends had lived there at some point. It was in worse condition than when Eric and I shared a room there. I had tried to keep things in some sort of order, but there were at least four or five guys filtering in and out and it was hard to keep track of anything there. I had left a year or two ago; it had become too crowded. I couldn't hold on to any of my thoughts; they had been pushed out and replaced with everyone else's.
I had disappeared for a few weeks after leaving school. I mostly stayed in my apartment getting high and watching whatever was on the television when I turned it on. Sometimes, when the cable was out, I just watched the static and listened to records. Eventually, I got sick of being with myself and had listened to most of my records two or three times. The first night back was so familiar: the worn down couch occupied by piles of laundry someone had forgotten to take to their room. Empty beer cans had been strewn across the counter top like trophies reminiscent of past accomplishments. Nothing had changed really, except they all kept calling me Richie which they knew I hated. No one had called me Richie since middle school and maybe this was their way of punishing me for not being around.
After a few joints, all that really comes back to me from that first night back was repeating "It's Richard. You know it's Richard. Stop fucking calling me Richie."
I saw Eric the next day. I had spent the morning trying to piece together the night before, but everything still felt foggy and I needed something to eat. We were both at the hole-in-the-wall sandwich place we all used to go to.
"Feeling nostalgic?" he asked.
"Yeah. Something like that. Habit, I guess."
He asked if I wanted to get stoned in his car before we ordered and I didn't want to leave the place and then come back, but we did anyway.
While we were eating he asked if I was going to Ginny's place that night.
"Ginny who?"
"Ginny. C'mon, Richie, you know Ginny."
"You know that's not my god damn name, man. Is it a party? You know how much I hate her parties, Eric."
"It's going to be small Richie, it'll be fine."
I sighed.
"It's Richard."
I went home and watched some static. I didn't want to go to Ginny's. I didn't really care for her, but more than that she lived with Heather who I had dated off and on and hadn't seen since I left school. I knew I would end up there though. I never had anything else to do aside from static, cable, or cigarettes.
Ginny lived on an enormous plot of land in a comparatively minuscule house her grandparents had built before any of us were even ideas in our parents heads. The house itself could hold maybe ten to fifteen people without feeling cramped so mostly we stayed outside, drinking or getting high. There weren't many people hanging around when I arrived, which was a relief. I saw Eric and Jamie in the backyard. Jamie handed me a beer and I lit a cigarette.
The rest of the night we spent around a fire we managed to get started, though I'm not really sure how. None of us were that resourceful. I felt fine for a few hours that night, warm around a fire with people I hadn't seen since I left school, slipping inch by inch into inebriated haziness. Stories were traded for a while until someone turned on the radio. Whoever the guy singing was, he didn't have much to say. The song was about a girl and it turned my stomach.
I ended up seeing Heather, though I'm not sure she noticed me. I had gone inside to grab my keys and throw away my empty pack of cigarettes before I left. She was enveloped by Ginny's enormous burgundy leather armchair. She was alone and crying. Typical, I thought, and then wondered if it was maybe about me. I almost sat down with her, almost said something, but opened the door and walked out instead.
A week later I decided I should probably see my parents. They didn't know I had left school. We went for lunch at a Thai place they had been wanting to try. I didn't bring up school. I ate my noodles, nodded, and smiled while my mom told me about her new favorite magazine. She kept raving about an article they did on a senator who got crushed by an underpass that collapsed. After he died they found two kids in his basement who had been missing for something like two months. I just kept eating my noodles.
After I left I got stoned at my place and sat in front of the television and kept thinking about that senator and what it would feel like to get crushed by that much concrete and iron.
Jamie called a couple of days later wanting to see an art film that had started playing recently. I tried telling him I didn't feel like getting out of bed but it was already almost three in the afternoon.
"Richard, man, we can get high before and really take it all in."
"I'll be there, alright. Just give me a minute."
I put on the shirt I'd worn the past three days and met him at the theater. We got stoned in my car and after buying tickets, went inside. I was surprised that I couldn't see my breath; I always forgot how consistently frigid it was in there. I sank into my seat knowing my back would be hurting soon. Everything was deteriorating, and the theater was no exception. The red curtains were fraying as if something had been gnawing at them and half the seats had springs poking out of the cushions. I tried to pay attention to the film, but there was a kid sitting by himself in the third row. He couldn't have been more than eight or nine. I kept thinking about that kid, even after we left to go get drinks for the night.
Our friend Peter had a lake house where he would throw parties once or twice a month. Almost always he wanted people to dress up, try and look nice, but I didn't have it in me that night, none of us really ever did. We got there in Eric's sedan and walked up the path to the house. There was already a huge crowd, bodies milling about, most of them wondering if they were getting laid that night. Normally that many people would have kept me from even going inside, but for the moment everything didn't feel so bad because the weather was fine and we had been drinking on the way.
Peter was one of the only people we knew who had parents that had real money. Not that any of us were poor or anything, but none of our parents were doing nearly as well as his. Inside the lake house everything was always oddly clean, almost immaculate. Even with all those people, everything still seemed to be exactly in its place.
I found the bar and tossed back a few whiskeys, wanting to make sure I was drunk before I really had to interact with anyone. There was always a different crowd at Peter's parties. There were kids we didn't really know, but who would always, without fail, talk to us like we were all best friends. I didn't want to be inside anymore because those kids just kept trying to talk to me and it was giving me a headache. I went out onto the balcony on the second floor hoping to find some respite from everything. There was a small, but well stocked bar out there so that's where I ended up spending most of the night, chain smoking and having gin and tonics.
While I was outside I saw this guy who we all ever only knew as Fits. He had a real name but we all just called him Fits. He was off somehow. None of us really knew exactly what it was. He wasn't violent or even crazy necessarily. He was actually pretty normal most of the time, but occasionally it was like someone threw a switch in his head. He would start getting really weird. Mostly he would ramble about space, but not in a mystical way, very factual. He would just start spouting off these very obscure facts about space, and sometimes it didn't matter if anyone was listening. One minute you're talking to him about music or a party the past weekend and the next he's talking about the mineral composition of Mars. I guess that's why we called him Fits.
"Richard, hey man."
"Hey Fits, what's going on?"
"Not much, just enjoying being outside."
"Yeah, I know. There's so many people here, and no matter how drunk I am, I'm having trouble dealing with it."
"Have you seen the moon tonight?"
And I guess I hadn't. I hadn't taken the time to look up all night. I had been keeping my head down, closer to my drink, I guess.
"Nah, Fits. I don't think I have. Anything special about it tonight?"
"Well, it's a crescent right now, everyone knows that, but what's really amazing is....."
And I just let him go on for a while about the moon. I'm still not sure why I did. Maybe it was the gin and tonics, or maybe I thought he just needed somebody to listen to him for a while.
I stayed home for a few days after that. I needed a break. One day I pulled out some old books and flipped through a few of them, looking for parts I had underlined. I almost didn't recognize about half of my novels. They were all tucked away in a beat up cardboard box in the recesses of my closet. I couldn't remember why they were there. Maybe when I moved in I forgot to unpack them. Looking through them again, it was as if I were seeing an old friend after years apart and getting to catch up - remembering the person you were when the two of you were close.
I blew the dust off one book, with every intention of starting it over when Heather called me wanting to get lunch. I tossed them all into their cardboard home and pushed it back into my closet. Maybe another time.
We met at the sushi place she had shown me back when we first started dating. It had a tank towards the back of the restaurant with what seemed like a constantly changing assortment of fish. I used to worry that the fish in the tank were used for the sushi, but the food was good so I just forgot about it.
I thought maybe since she had wanted to go there that she would want to talk about us or something. I tried to feel something about it; I tried to be worried or hopeful, but neither would come. I was hungry though. She said she just wanted to catch up and see how I how was doing. She told me she was worried about me.
"Worried about me?"
"Yeah, you'll be around for a while, and well, you seem happy enough. Then you're gone for days or weeks and you don't talk to anyone. Is everything ok?"
"Yeah sure, I don't know. Nothing feels bad."
I didn't say much after that, I spent most of my time shifting my sushi around on my plate, occasionally moving it to my mouth. I thought about asking her why she was crying that night at Ginny's, but then thought that if she wanted me to know, she'd tell me. Instead she told me about this school she was contemplating transferring to because they were supposedly going to give her a pretty hefty scholarship for an essay she wrote. She droned on about it and whether or not she was going to keep studying anthropology or switch to something else. She hadn't changed much. I paid the ticket and we said goodbye, she had a study group that night, and I had a six-pack in the fridge.
After lunch I just drove home. I flipped the TV on and the cable was actually working. I closed the blinds and turned the lights down. I walked to the fridge and grabbed the beer and sank into my couch. I opened the first one, took a sip, felt the cold suds wash down my throat, and then lit a cigarette.
I woke up the next morning to Eric calling. He was telling me about this camping trip he wanted us to go on. There was a site not too far from town. My parents had taken me there once when I was younger. There was maybe a square mile or two of forest and some open land for you to pitch camp. Eric said he and Jamie were going that weekend. I told him sure, I would go.
We packed up late Friday afternoon and made the drive out there, windows rolled down all the way, letting the warm breeze shift our hair from where it was supposed to be. We rolled into the gravel parking lot just as the sun began its descent past the tree-line. We started to set up camp, which I only barely remembered how to do, but after a few failed attempts, we had a pretty decent looking camp site.
After we settled in, I had a brief moment of panic. I thought I had left my cigarettes back in town. I finally found them, after a few minutes of anxious searching, in the bottom of my backpack. I lit one to calm myself down and leaned against the side of Eric's sedan. What a pathetic excuse for a car. The grey-blue paint was chipping and someone had spray painted "ass-hole" on the passenger side door. It coughed when you started it up or hit the gas too hard and almost broke down on us twice on the way out here. I finished my cigarette, tried to find a trash can to toss the butt into, but just let it fall into the gravel. I stepped on it, making sure it was out as I walked over to the styrofoam cooler to get out a beer. I saw Jamie talking to Carol, this girl hardly any of us really knew. Jamie had insisted on bringing her with us, and I could tell why. I could see the way he was looking at her, all dreamy eyed. Good for him, I guess. Eric called over to me, said he was going to smoke a joint in the woods, and asked if I wanted to join him. Cracking open my beer, I said sure and walked towards him.
It really was pretty peaceful out there, no distractions. Normally I really wasn't one for nature. I liked my TV. I liked my couch. I liked fast food and going to the movies. I liked air conditioning. But some fresh air was alright. We passed a joint back and forth while sitting on an old, moss-covered log and looked around, trying to see some wildlife. It was just us mostly. Eric said he thought he heard a deer once, but we never saw it. I don't think he even knows what a deer sounds like; I don't.
We walked back to the camp site. My legs felt like noodles. All of me felt a little wobbly but I was using my legs the most so that's what I was focusing on. When we got back, Eric and Jamie started a fire and opened some beers. I slumped into a lawn chair and just watched for a while. Once the fire began to let its flames lick towards the sky, I sunk deeper into the lawn chair and chain-smoked. I couldn't focus. I tried watching the smoke from my cigarettes, but it was windy and the smoke dissipated too quickly. I tried listening to Jamie and Eric talk, but they sounded muffled and Carol's screech of a laugh kept cutting through and slamming into my ears.
"I'm going to bed."
We were there for a few days. I still don't really know what happened that first night. The rest of the time we were there was fine. We grilled some food and explored the woods. There really wasn't much to see. Jamie and Carol ended up sleeping together which was neither here nor there.
A few days after we got back, I got stoned and went to this diner at the edge of town. It was pretty run-down, but not much in town wasn't. It was one of the last public places where you could still smoke inside. It was way too hot that day and I didn't feel like being in my apartment.
I ordered a soda and an ash tray.
"You sure you don't want anything to eat, dear?"
"Not right now, thanks."
I sat there for a few hours, watching the flow of the people that worked there, watching customers filter in and out. Some people ordered food or just a soda, others were reading the paper and smoking. I noticed one family in particular, two parents and their kid. They were at a booth towards the back. Mom and dad on one side and the kid on the other. The dad was smoking and the mom was reading a magazine. The kid was staring into his cup of orange juice. Occasionally he'd move it around with his straw a little, but mostly he just looked at it.
I ordered another soda and noticed the kid get up to use the bathroom. The parents didn't seem to pay him any attention. I looked around for my cigarettes, lit one, took a drag, and when I looked up the parents were walking out the door. I exhaled and looked around for the kid, but he was still in the bathroom. I thought about saying something to his parents but I was still pretty stoned and figured one of the waitresses would say something, but no one did. The parents drove off as the kid was coming out of the bathroom. I inhaled and he started looking around and then stopped in the middle of the restaurant and started crying. I exhaled and sat there. Most everyone did the same thing, until one of the waitresses finally noticed. She got him quiet and sat down with him, called over to another waitress and got the kid a piece of pie and some milk. It took his parents around twenty minutes to come back for him. I put out my cigarette, left a couple of dollars on the table for the sodas and walked to my car.
A song I hadn't heard was playing on the radio when I started up my car. It wasn't bad so I turned it up some and rolled down the windows on the way home. It had cooled off a little and the breeze felt good, but my mind kept wandering back to that kid alone in the middle of the diner crying, forgotten and scared.
For something close to a week, I couldn't seem to get out of bed, at least not for very long. Long enough to get something to eat, use the restroom, or get stoned. I kept the phone off the hook most days and unplugged my answering machine. I'd wake up around noon, light a cigarette, and watch the fan blades spin above me. A fan had one singular purpose: spinning endlessly, fighting off the heat of summer that bore down without ceasing against the walls of my apartment. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.
I was getting low on weed so I called Jamie, but he was busy with Carol. I was surprised; he never held on to girls for long. I tried Eric to see if he had any. He didn't answer, probably still asleep. I had dialed most of Heather's number when I changed my mind. I put the phone down and plugged the machine back in, in case either of them bothered to call me back. I grabbed my cigarettes and walked out to my car. It was starting to cool off some so I kept my windows rolled down.
There was a lake not too far my place. I had all but lost any memory of it. It had been so long since I had been there, but the drive still felt familiar. I felt myself instinctively speeding around the curves of the two-lane road that my old car could barely handle. The trees hugging the road seemed taller, older than I remember.
It wasn't long before I had parked and walked to the edge where I had sat so many times before. It felt like it used to. The breeze, cooled by the water, rushed across my face. I lit a cigarette and watched ripples expand outward towards the lake's edges created by some unknowable creature. I stayed a couple hours, lighting cigarette after cigarette and escaping for a little while.
When I got home there was a message on my machine from Eric. I called him back and he told me he could meet up in an hour or so. We met at the diner at the edge of town. I ordered a soda and some waffles and asked for an ash tray.
"You're coming tonight, right?"
"Coming to what?"
"Oh yeah, you've been M.I.A, I forgot. Ginny's having this end of summer blow out, before everyone, well, before some people go back to school. You gotta come, man. It's gonna be something special."
"I don't know. I don't really think I'm up for it."
"You don't understand Richie, it's the party of the summer, it's the last one. Just come man, a few drinks, you'll have fun."
Despite Eric's conjectures about how magnificent the party was going to be, it wasn't much different than any other party Ginny threw. I tried to enjoy myself, mingle, drink, and all that, but I wasn't in the mood. I was about to say my goodbyes and head home, but I saw Fits standing alone in the middle of the street under one of the many flickering street lights. I couldn't figure out what he could possibly be doing out there. He wasn't drunk. From where I was I could see his head tilted backwards, probably looking at the moon.
I shrugged to myself and turned around to find Eric and Jamie, to tell them I was heading out, maybe thank Ginny for having us all over when I heard brakes squeal, and then a dull thud. I was in the street before I knew it, leaning over Fits, his body bloodied and crumpled and silent.
From there it's all just snippets: sirens, lights too bright, people yelling, someone crying, a policeman on the phone with someone saying, "I'm sorry, he's..."
The funeral was a week later. Only a few of us showed up. Everyone had their excuses. Work, school, whatever bullshit they could come up with to avoid feeling anything. Carol came with Jamie; they sat with me and Eric during the ceremony. It could have been anyone's funeral. The somber faces, some in tears, most of the men attempting to remain stoic, the appearance of strength so important at these things. The casket was closed with a minister slouching in front of it who was running through a speech he'd given countless times, each pause meticulously placed for effect, shedding a single tear at the very end, a skill it had taken him years to perfect.
While we were at the wake I saw Fits' parents. His mother was hunched over in a dark blue, velvet chair crying, a woman's hand on her shoulder. His father was off in the corner of the room, drink in hand. His other arm was around some other woman who was just a little too close to him under the pretense of offering comfort, but Fits' dad didn't look too broken up about it. I started to feel sick when Fits' mom looked up, her mascara trying its best to crawl down her flushed cheeks. I think that's when it really hit her. She started shrieking and wouldn't stop. Only a few people paid any attention to her. Fits' father kept sipping at his drink and talking to the woman on his arm.
We walked out together, Eric, Jamie, Carol, and me. Carol and Jamie said something about going to dinner with her parents or maybe his. Eric dug in his pockets for his cigarettes. He pulled two out, and offered me one. I took it, lit it, and got in my car to head home. The radio was playing a song I'd already heard. I cracked the windows and started the drive back to my apartment.
Right before I got home, I saw a dog splayed out on the pavement, towards the edge of the street. I wondered who hit it, and if they were drunk or stoned. I wondered who was going to have to come remove it and how long it would have to lay there before someone did. I wondered if it belonged to anyone and if so I wondered if they cared that it was gone.
It was the summer after we all dropped out. Well, not all of us, but enough of us that it felt like all of us. I had left school after spring break. I couldn't take it, even when I was stoned. The classes, the people, the teachers, I didn't see the point anymore. None of us did. We all had our reasons or excuses for leaving, but I think mostly we weren't happy anymore.
The house where we spent most of our nights was falling apart. There was a gaping hole in the hallway where Eric fell on his way to the bathroom to expel the demons in his stomach (beer, cheap whiskey, whatever he had in his flask). That was years ago now, but no effort had been made to repair the hole. The faded, floral wallpaper that hung in the dining room (if you could call it that since it was rare for anyone to actually eat a meal in there) was coming down in strips. It would only make it somewhere halfway down the wall before it would curl up and settle. Most of us were happy to see it go, we never really cared for it, but none of us ever did anything about it.
Most everyone in our circle of friends had lived there at some point. It was in worse condition than when Eric and I shared a room there. I had tried to keep things in some sort of order, but there were at least four or five guys filtering in and out and it was hard to keep track of anything there. I had left a year or two ago; it had become too crowded. I couldn't hold on to any of my thoughts; they had been pushed out and replaced with everyone else's.
I had disappeared for a few weeks after leaving school. I mostly stayed in my apartment getting high and watching whatever was on the television when I turned it on. Sometimes, when the cable was out, I just watched the static and listened to records. Eventually, I got sick of being with myself and had listened to most of my records two or three times. The first night back was so familiar: the worn down couch occupied by piles of laundry someone had forgotten to take to their room. Empty beer cans had been strewn across the counter top like trophies reminiscent of past accomplishments. Nothing had changed really, except they all kept calling me Richie which they knew I hated. No one had called me Richie since middle school and maybe this was their way of punishing me for not being around.
After a few joints, all that really comes back to me from that first night back was repeating "It's Richard. You know it's Richard. Stop fucking calling me Richie."
I saw Eric the next day. I had spent the morning trying to piece together the night before, but everything still felt foggy and I needed something to eat. We were both at the hole-in-the-wall sandwich place we all used to go to.
"Feeling nostalgic?" he asked.
"Yeah. Something like that. Habit, I guess."
He asked if I wanted to get stoned in his car before we ordered and I didn't want to leave the place and then come back, but we did anyway.
While we were eating he asked if I was going to Ginny's place that night.
"Ginny who?"
"Ginny. C'mon, Richie, you know Ginny."
"You know that's not my god damn name, man. Is it a party? You know how much I hate her parties, Eric."
"It's going to be small Richie, it'll be fine."
I sighed.
"It's Richard."
I went home and watched some static. I didn't want to go to Ginny's. I didn't really care for her, but more than that she lived with Heather who I had dated off and on and hadn't seen since I left school. I knew I would end up there though. I never had anything else to do aside from static, cable, or cigarettes.
Ginny lived on an enormous plot of land in a comparatively minuscule house her grandparents had built before any of us were even ideas in our parents heads. The house itself could hold maybe ten to fifteen people without feeling cramped so mostly we stayed outside, drinking or getting high. There weren't many people hanging around when I arrived, which was a relief. I saw Eric and Jamie in the backyard. Jamie handed me a beer and I lit a cigarette.
The rest of the night we spent around a fire we managed to get started, though I'm not really sure how. None of us were that resourceful. I felt fine for a few hours that night, warm around a fire with people I hadn't seen since I left school, slipping inch by inch into inebriated haziness. Stories were traded for a while until someone turned on the radio. Whoever the guy singing was, he didn't have much to say. The song was about a girl and it turned my stomach.
I ended up seeing Heather, though I'm not sure she noticed me. I had gone inside to grab my keys and throw away my empty pack of cigarettes before I left. She was enveloped by Ginny's enormous burgundy leather armchair. She was alone and crying. Typical, I thought, and then wondered if it was maybe about me. I almost sat down with her, almost said something, but opened the door and walked out instead.
A week later I decided I should probably see my parents. They didn't know I had left school. We went for lunch at a Thai place they had been wanting to try. I didn't bring up school. I ate my noodles, nodded, and smiled while my mom told me about her new favorite magazine. She kept raving about an article they did on a senator who got crushed by an underpass that collapsed. After he died they found two kids in his basement who had been missing for something like two months. I just kept eating my noodles.
After I left I got stoned at my place and sat in front of the television and kept thinking about that senator and what it would feel like to get crushed by that much concrete and iron.
Jamie called a couple of days later wanting to see an art film that had started playing recently. I tried telling him I didn't feel like getting out of bed but it was already almost three in the afternoon.
"Richard, man, we can get high before and really take it all in."
"I'll be there, alright. Just give me a minute."
I put on the shirt I'd worn the past three days and met him at the theater. We got stoned in my car and after buying tickets, went inside. I was surprised that I couldn't see my breath; I always forgot how consistently frigid it was in there. I sank into my seat knowing my back would be hurting soon. Everything was deteriorating, and the theater was no exception. The red curtains were fraying as if something had been gnawing at them and half the seats had springs poking out of the cushions. I tried to pay attention to the film, but there was a kid sitting by himself in the third row. He couldn't have been more than eight or nine. I kept thinking about that kid, even after we left to go get drinks for the night.
Our friend Peter had a lake house where he would throw parties once or twice a month. Almost always he wanted people to dress up, try and look nice, but I didn't have it in me that night, none of us really ever did. We got there in Eric's sedan and walked up the path to the house. There was already a huge crowd, bodies milling about, most of them wondering if they were getting laid that night. Normally that many people would have kept me from even going inside, but for the moment everything didn't feel so bad because the weather was fine and we had been drinking on the way.
Peter was one of the only people we knew who had parents that had real money. Not that any of us were poor or anything, but none of our parents were doing nearly as well as his. Inside the lake house everything was always oddly clean, almost immaculate. Even with all those people, everything still seemed to be exactly in its place.
I found the bar and tossed back a few whiskeys, wanting to make sure I was drunk before I really had to interact with anyone. There was always a different crowd at Peter's parties. There were kids we didn't really know, but who would always, without fail, talk to us like we were all best friends. I didn't want to be inside anymore because those kids just kept trying to talk to me and it was giving me a headache. I went out onto the balcony on the second floor hoping to find some respite from everything. There was a small, but well stocked bar out there so that's where I ended up spending most of the night, chain smoking and having gin and tonics.
While I was outside I saw this guy who we all ever only knew as Fits. He had a real name but we all just called him Fits. He was off somehow. None of us really knew exactly what it was. He wasn't violent or even crazy necessarily. He was actually pretty normal most of the time, but occasionally it was like someone threw a switch in his head. He would start getting really weird. Mostly he would ramble about space, but not in a mystical way, very factual. He would just start spouting off these very obscure facts about space, and sometimes it didn't matter if anyone was listening. One minute you're talking to him about music or a party the past weekend and the next he's talking about the mineral composition of Mars. I guess that's why we called him Fits.
"Richard, hey man."
"Hey Fits, what's going on?"
"Not much, just enjoying being outside."
"Yeah, I know. There's so many people here, and no matter how drunk I am, I'm having trouble dealing with it."
"Have you seen the moon tonight?"
And I guess I hadn't. I hadn't taken the time to look up all night. I had been keeping my head down, closer to my drink, I guess.
"Nah, Fits. I don't think I have. Anything special about it tonight?"
"Well, it's a crescent right now, everyone knows that, but what's really amazing is....."
And I just let him go on for a while about the moon. I'm still not sure why I did. Maybe it was the gin and tonics, or maybe I thought he just needed somebody to listen to him for a while.
I stayed home for a few days after that. I needed a break. One day I pulled out some old books and flipped through a few of them, looking for parts I had underlined. I almost didn't recognize about half of my novels. They were all tucked away in a beat up cardboard box in the recesses of my closet. I couldn't remember why they were there. Maybe when I moved in I forgot to unpack them. Looking through them again, it was as if I were seeing an old friend after years apart and getting to catch up - remembering the person you were when the two of you were close.
I blew the dust off one book, with every intention of starting it over when Heather called me wanting to get lunch. I tossed them all into their cardboard home and pushed it back into my closet. Maybe another time.
We met at the sushi place she had shown me back when we first started dating. It had a tank towards the back of the restaurant with what seemed like a constantly changing assortment of fish. I used to worry that the fish in the tank were used for the sushi, but the food was good so I just forgot about it.
I thought maybe since she had wanted to go there that she would want to talk about us or something. I tried to feel something about it; I tried to be worried or hopeful, but neither would come. I was hungry though. She said she just wanted to catch up and see how I how was doing. She told me she was worried about me.
"Worried about me?"
"Yeah, you'll be around for a while, and well, you seem happy enough. Then you're gone for days or weeks and you don't talk to anyone. Is everything ok?"
"Yeah sure, I don't know. Nothing feels bad."
I didn't say much after that, I spent most of my time shifting my sushi around on my plate, occasionally moving it to my mouth. I thought about asking her why she was crying that night at Ginny's, but then thought that if she wanted me to know, she'd tell me. Instead she told me about this school she was contemplating transferring to because they were supposedly going to give her a pretty hefty scholarship for an essay she wrote. She droned on about it and whether or not she was going to keep studying anthropology or switch to something else. She hadn't changed much. I paid the ticket and we said goodbye, she had a study group that night, and I had a six-pack in the fridge.
After lunch I just drove home. I flipped the TV on and the cable was actually working. I closed the blinds and turned the lights down. I walked to the fridge and grabbed the beer and sank into my couch. I opened the first one, took a sip, felt the cold suds wash down my throat, and then lit a cigarette.
I woke up the next morning to Eric calling. He was telling me about this camping trip he wanted us to go on. There was a site not too far from town. My parents had taken me there once when I was younger. There was maybe a square mile or two of forest and some open land for you to pitch camp. Eric said he and Jamie were going that weekend. I told him sure, I would go.
We packed up late Friday afternoon and made the drive out there, windows rolled down all the way, letting the warm breeze shift our hair from where it was supposed to be. We rolled into the gravel parking lot just as the sun began its descent past the tree-line. We started to set up camp, which I only barely remembered how to do, but after a few failed attempts, we had a pretty decent looking camp site.
After we settled in, I had a brief moment of panic. I thought I had left my cigarettes back in town. I finally found them, after a few minutes of anxious searching, in the bottom of my backpack. I lit one to calm myself down and leaned against the side of Eric's sedan. What a pathetic excuse for a car. The grey-blue paint was chipping and someone had spray painted "ass-hole" on the passenger side door. It coughed when you started it up or hit the gas too hard and almost broke down on us twice on the way out here. I finished my cigarette, tried to find a trash can to toss the butt into, but just let it fall into the gravel. I stepped on it, making sure it was out as I walked over to the styrofoam cooler to get out a beer. I saw Jamie talking to Carol, this girl hardly any of us really knew. Jamie had insisted on bringing her with us, and I could tell why. I could see the way he was looking at her, all dreamy eyed. Good for him, I guess. Eric called over to me, said he was going to smoke a joint in the woods, and asked if I wanted to join him. Cracking open my beer, I said sure and walked towards him.
It really was pretty peaceful out there, no distractions. Normally I really wasn't one for nature. I liked my TV. I liked my couch. I liked fast food and going to the movies. I liked air conditioning. But some fresh air was alright. We passed a joint back and forth while sitting on an old, moss-covered log and looked around, trying to see some wildlife. It was just us mostly. Eric said he thought he heard a deer once, but we never saw it. I don't think he even knows what a deer sounds like; I don't.
We walked back to the camp site. My legs felt like noodles. All of me felt a little wobbly but I was using my legs the most so that's what I was focusing on. When we got back, Eric and Jamie started a fire and opened some beers. I slumped into a lawn chair and just watched for a while. Once the fire began to let its flames lick towards the sky, I sunk deeper into the lawn chair and chain-smoked. I couldn't focus. I tried watching the smoke from my cigarettes, but it was windy and the smoke dissipated too quickly. I tried listening to Jamie and Eric talk, but they sounded muffled and Carol's screech of a laugh kept cutting through and slamming into my ears.
"I'm going to bed."
We were there for a few days. I still don't really know what happened that first night. The rest of the time we were there was fine. We grilled some food and explored the woods. There really wasn't much to see. Jamie and Carol ended up sleeping together which was neither here nor there.
A few days after we got back, I got stoned and went to this diner at the edge of town. It was pretty run-down, but not much in town wasn't. It was one of the last public places where you could still smoke inside. It was way too hot that day and I didn't feel like being in my apartment.
I ordered a soda and an ash tray.
"You sure you don't want anything to eat, dear?"
"Not right now, thanks."
I sat there for a few hours, watching the flow of the people that worked there, watching customers filter in and out. Some people ordered food or just a soda, others were reading the paper and smoking. I noticed one family in particular, two parents and their kid. They were at a booth towards the back. Mom and dad on one side and the kid on the other. The dad was smoking and the mom was reading a magazine. The kid was staring into his cup of orange juice. Occasionally he'd move it around with his straw a little, but mostly he just looked at it.
I ordered another soda and noticed the kid get up to use the bathroom. The parents didn't seem to pay him any attention. I looked around for my cigarettes, lit one, took a drag, and when I looked up the parents were walking out the door. I exhaled and looked around for the kid, but he was still in the bathroom. I thought about saying something to his parents but I was still pretty stoned and figured one of the waitresses would say something, but no one did. The parents drove off as the kid was coming out of the bathroom. I inhaled and he started looking around and then stopped in the middle of the restaurant and started crying. I exhaled and sat there. Most everyone did the same thing, until one of the waitresses finally noticed. She got him quiet and sat down with him, called over to another waitress and got the kid a piece of pie and some milk. It took his parents around twenty minutes to come back for him. I put out my cigarette, left a couple of dollars on the table for the sodas and walked to my car.
A song I hadn't heard was playing on the radio when I started up my car. It wasn't bad so I turned it up some and rolled down the windows on the way home. It had cooled off a little and the breeze felt good, but my mind kept wandering back to that kid alone in the middle of the diner crying, forgotten and scared.
For something close to a week, I couldn't seem to get out of bed, at least not for very long. Long enough to get something to eat, use the restroom, or get stoned. I kept the phone off the hook most days and unplugged my answering machine. I'd wake up around noon, light a cigarette, and watch the fan blades spin above me. A fan had one singular purpose: spinning endlessly, fighting off the heat of summer that bore down without ceasing against the walls of my apartment. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.
I was getting low on weed so I called Jamie, but he was busy with Carol. I was surprised; he never held on to girls for long. I tried Eric to see if he had any. He didn't answer, probably still asleep. I had dialed most of Heather's number when I changed my mind. I put the phone down and plugged the machine back in, in case either of them bothered to call me back. I grabbed my cigarettes and walked out to my car. It was starting to cool off some so I kept my windows rolled down.
There was a lake not too far my place. I had all but lost any memory of it. It had been so long since I had been there, but the drive still felt familiar. I felt myself instinctively speeding around the curves of the two-lane road that my old car could barely handle. The trees hugging the road seemed taller, older than I remember.
It wasn't long before I had parked and walked to the edge where I had sat so many times before. It felt like it used to. The breeze, cooled by the water, rushed across my face. I lit a cigarette and watched ripples expand outward towards the lake's edges created by some unknowable creature. I stayed a couple hours, lighting cigarette after cigarette and escaping for a little while.
When I got home there was a message on my machine from Eric. I called him back and he told me he could meet up in an hour or so. We met at the diner at the edge of town. I ordered a soda and some waffles and asked for an ash tray.
"You're coming tonight, right?"
"Coming to what?"
"Oh yeah, you've been M.I.A, I forgot. Ginny's having this end of summer blow out, before everyone, well, before some people go back to school. You gotta come, man. It's gonna be something special."
"I don't know. I don't really think I'm up for it."
"You don't understand Richie, it's the party of the summer, it's the last one. Just come man, a few drinks, you'll have fun."
Despite Eric's conjectures about how magnificent the party was going to be, it wasn't much different than any other party Ginny threw. I tried to enjoy myself, mingle, drink, and all that, but I wasn't in the mood. I was about to say my goodbyes and head home, but I saw Fits standing alone in the middle of the street under one of the many flickering street lights. I couldn't figure out what he could possibly be doing out there. He wasn't drunk. From where I was I could see his head tilted backwards, probably looking at the moon.
I shrugged to myself and turned around to find Eric and Jamie, to tell them I was heading out, maybe thank Ginny for having us all over when I heard brakes squeal, and then a dull thud. I was in the street before I knew it, leaning over Fits, his body bloodied and crumpled and silent.
From there it's all just snippets: sirens, lights too bright, people yelling, someone crying, a policeman on the phone with someone saying, "I'm sorry, he's..."
The funeral was a week later. Only a few of us showed up. Everyone had their excuses. Work, school, whatever bullshit they could come up with to avoid feeling anything. Carol came with Jamie; they sat with me and Eric during the ceremony. It could have been anyone's funeral. The somber faces, some in tears, most of the men attempting to remain stoic, the appearance of strength so important at these things. The casket was closed with a minister slouching in front of it who was running through a speech he'd given countless times, each pause meticulously placed for effect, shedding a single tear at the very end, a skill it had taken him years to perfect.
While we were at the wake I saw Fits' parents. His mother was hunched over in a dark blue, velvet chair crying, a woman's hand on her shoulder. His father was off in the corner of the room, drink in hand. His other arm was around some other woman who was just a little too close to him under the pretense of offering comfort, but Fits' dad didn't look too broken up about it. I started to feel sick when Fits' mom looked up, her mascara trying its best to crawl down her flushed cheeks. I think that's when it really hit her. She started shrieking and wouldn't stop. Only a few people paid any attention to her. Fits' father kept sipping at his drink and talking to the woman on his arm.
We walked out together, Eric, Jamie, Carol, and me. Carol and Jamie said something about going to dinner with her parents or maybe his. Eric dug in his pockets for his cigarettes. He pulled two out, and offered me one. I took it, lit it, and got in my car to head home. The radio was playing a song I'd already heard. I cracked the windows and started the drive back to my apartment.
Right before I got home, I saw a dog splayed out on the pavement, towards the edge of the street. I wondered who hit it, and if they were drunk or stoned. I wondered who was going to have to come remove it and how long it would have to lay there before someone did. I wondered if it belonged to anyone and if so I wondered if they cared that it was gone.
Monday, June 24, 2013
Stray Dog
Here recently, I have come into a bit of a horrible conundrum. It's one of those, boy meets girl but girl is only in town for about a week and doesn't know boy has fallen for her quite quickly, sort of things. It's one of those, I am pretty sure the universe loves to play terrible, mean-spirited, not-funny-at-all jokes on me, kind of things.
I had all but forgotten about women, really. Enough of them had proved how horrible they could be that I was just done. I had come to terms with being alone until I died and I was happy about that. But then there she was. Sitting across from me at that dive bar while we were both accosted by an older gentleman who tried to teach us math while discussing his fifty-four confirmed kills in the Vietnam War.
Seeing her there amidst clouds of cigarette smoke, which admittedly we contributed quite a bit of, I was reminded of what it meant to be entranced by someone. The pointed frames of her glasses stretching just slightly past the edges of her face. Tattoos for old friends, favorite bands, parents, for everyone. A ring of polished metal strung through the septum of her nose. Short brown hair meticulously tussled. I spent a large part of the evening wondering why she was there with me.
We left the bar for the porch of my house. Conversation flowed easily until the sun began to creep its way inch by inch above the tree line. A short car ride back to her parents house.
This is me giving up. This is me keeping my mouth shut.
Another night and another bar. I hated bars. People constantly milling about yelling and cursing, all social skills abandoned by the presence of alcohol in bloodstreams, but there she was dressed all in black because her closet contained no other colors, and if she was there so was I.
After a few more drinks and more than a few cigarettes, the bar began to close and we wondered how it had become three in the morning. It was her porch this time, well her parent's porch. This was preceded by a tour of their home filled with knick knacks and a baby grand piano that took up just enough of the living room to not be obtrusive.
This is me kicking myself for not being able to speak up. This is me bottling my emotions and putting them away somewhere because she'll be gone soon.
Days filled with coffee shops and nights of walks around her neighborhood with talk of which neighbors were rich or poor or happy with their marriage or disappointed in their children.
Her last night we spent with a bottle of wine in a basement house because there was music there. She ended up spending more time with that wine then I did. We went in search of food to help sober her up some. On the way, she ended up lighting the filter of more than one of her cigarettes.
After we had eaten I started the drive to her parent's house.
"Are you taking me home?"
"I thought that's what you wanted to do."
"I just want to hang out with you. I don't care about what we're doing, but I want to be with you."
This is me dreading goodbyes. This is me hating myself for not being able to talk.
The next morning I drove her to the bus stop. We said goodbye and that was that. She was gone and I was as alone as I had started.
I had all but forgotten about women, really. Enough of them had proved how horrible they could be that I was just done. I had come to terms with being alone until I died and I was happy about that. But then there she was. Sitting across from me at that dive bar while we were both accosted by an older gentleman who tried to teach us math while discussing his fifty-four confirmed kills in the Vietnam War.
Seeing her there amidst clouds of cigarette smoke, which admittedly we contributed quite a bit of, I was reminded of what it meant to be entranced by someone. The pointed frames of her glasses stretching just slightly past the edges of her face. Tattoos for old friends, favorite bands, parents, for everyone. A ring of polished metal strung through the septum of her nose. Short brown hair meticulously tussled. I spent a large part of the evening wondering why she was there with me.
We left the bar for the porch of my house. Conversation flowed easily until the sun began to creep its way inch by inch above the tree line. A short car ride back to her parents house.
This is me giving up. This is me keeping my mouth shut.
Another night and another bar. I hated bars. People constantly milling about yelling and cursing, all social skills abandoned by the presence of alcohol in bloodstreams, but there she was dressed all in black because her closet contained no other colors, and if she was there so was I.
After a few more drinks and more than a few cigarettes, the bar began to close and we wondered how it had become three in the morning. It was her porch this time, well her parent's porch. This was preceded by a tour of their home filled with knick knacks and a baby grand piano that took up just enough of the living room to not be obtrusive.
This is me kicking myself for not being able to speak up. This is me bottling my emotions and putting them away somewhere because she'll be gone soon.
Days filled with coffee shops and nights of walks around her neighborhood with talk of which neighbors were rich or poor or happy with their marriage or disappointed in their children.
Her last night we spent with a bottle of wine in a basement house because there was music there. She ended up spending more time with that wine then I did. We went in search of food to help sober her up some. On the way, she ended up lighting the filter of more than one of her cigarettes.
After we had eaten I started the drive to her parent's house.
"Are you taking me home?"
"I thought that's what you wanted to do."
"I just want to hang out with you. I don't care about what we're doing, but I want to be with you."
This is me dreading goodbyes. This is me hating myself for not being able to talk.
The next morning I drove her to the bus stop. We said goodbye and that was that. She was gone and I was as alone as I had started.
Stress Relief
Everyone had fallen asleep, and I was sitting on the porch alone with my cigarettes finishing off the last of whatever it was we had been drinking. It was a night I was meant to forget. That was the point, at least, but when people are in my house I get so anxious, worrying if someone's going to vomit on our new couch or if the girl in my room is asleep yet. She's the reason I won't forget tonight, no matter how much I want to. Because I slept with her and because it didn't mean anything and because she needed to get drunk for it to happen.
Same girl, different year, different house, different us. We are just waking up and I'm fumbling for my glasses to see how late for work I'll be today. She wants to make love again and I know I don't have it in me. I'm going to be late. I still need to shower. I still need to find my cigarettes. If I lose this job I can't afford to pay rent anymore, it's steep, but there's air conditioning and I can't sleep unless it's freezing. I shrug off her final plea and skip a shower to make it in time.
She hasn't left when I get home. I ask her what she did all day. She shrugs and mentions something about working on some poetry or reading some poetry. I'm half-listening and wholly not interested. I get my pants off and drift out of the room for the kitchen because there's supposed to be beer in the fridge. I open it and stand there for a minute. I need this. To be still with the cold wind rushing over my legs attempting to shock some life back into me, but it doesn't work. I haven't found the beer yet. Bottom drawer and there's two left. I grab both and inch back to our room. I guess it's ours. I had thought it was mine, but she's here more and more. I know she's said something about her parent's house not fostering creativity or having bad lighting or - when I get back in to my or our room she's still talking about the poetry she wrote or read and hasn't even noticed that I left the room. I hand her a beer which she semi-acknowledges and just keeps talking. She has managed to change subjects and God bless her for it.
She's droning on about a party she wants us to go to. It's never just "she" anymore, it's always "us" and it makes me feel alone.
Her again, but no us. We're on the porch of the apartment I used to live in and she's chain-smoking-crying about some guy. I want to console her or be there for her or whatever it is I am supposed to do in this situation, but I'm thinking about how I need to wash my sheets or replace them, there's so many cigarette burns.
That first night and how it started with her bringing me a six pack of the beer we used to drink. I should have known. I should have seen it coming when she dragged me away from the living room filled with people who would know every mistake we were about to make. But I wasn't thinking about that and hadn't since the last boy in a string of boys had broken her heart and I had let spill the thoughts that still wracked my head. I didn't think about her after she told me she didn't love me anymore.
It was years ago that I met her. On the downward swing of some other girl. One who had left me feeling empty and tired. I didn't want another. It had been far enough into my life that I had grown so weary of chasing after girl after girl, hoping that one would make me feel something. They all, every one of them, eventually left me feeling alone. She seemed different, but no one is different. If I have learned anything about women, it's that they bleed you dry in one way or another.
The first time we made love seems so long ago now. It caught me by surprise. The week before, she had told me how she didn't know if she'd ever be ready, but there we were in my old house, candles lit, very romantic. Afterward she asked me for her first cigarette and we laid in bed watching the smoke from our cigarettes drift together and separate over and over and over.
Nothing was ever perfect. It probably would have scared me much more if it had been. It scared me enough as it was. I don't know if she ever understood that. How scared I was. When we said "I love you", it made me distant. She was always wanting more and more closeness, but I was too afraid to give it to her until it was too late. The last time I had meant it the way I did with her, I had been broken so completely. I had been too young and it taken too long to reassemble myself so I kept her far away and built walls to protect myself. Feeling joy always means feeling pain eventually.
The morning after that night, a night we spent like we had spent so many others. Discussing literature before our lips met and records spinning till their end while we made love. Cigarettes and closeness after and sleeping next to each other. Her falling asleep and me trying to be quiet while getting up to have a cigarette on the porch. It was all so familiar, but the morning after I didn't wake up to her face close to mine. I woke up to an empty bed. I saw her a few hours later and asked what the night before had been.
She shrugged and told me she just needed to relieve some stress.
Same girl, different year, different house, different us. We are just waking up and I'm fumbling for my glasses to see how late for work I'll be today. She wants to make love again and I know I don't have it in me. I'm going to be late. I still need to shower. I still need to find my cigarettes. If I lose this job I can't afford to pay rent anymore, it's steep, but there's air conditioning and I can't sleep unless it's freezing. I shrug off her final plea and skip a shower to make it in time.
She hasn't left when I get home. I ask her what she did all day. She shrugs and mentions something about working on some poetry or reading some poetry. I'm half-listening and wholly not interested. I get my pants off and drift out of the room for the kitchen because there's supposed to be beer in the fridge. I open it and stand there for a minute. I need this. To be still with the cold wind rushing over my legs attempting to shock some life back into me, but it doesn't work. I haven't found the beer yet. Bottom drawer and there's two left. I grab both and inch back to our room. I guess it's ours. I had thought it was mine, but she's here more and more. I know she's said something about her parent's house not fostering creativity or having bad lighting or - when I get back in to my or our room she's still talking about the poetry she wrote or read and hasn't even noticed that I left the room. I hand her a beer which she semi-acknowledges and just keeps talking. She has managed to change subjects and God bless her for it.
She's droning on about a party she wants us to go to. It's never just "she" anymore, it's always "us" and it makes me feel alone.
Her again, but no us. We're on the porch of the apartment I used to live in and she's chain-smoking-crying about some guy. I want to console her or be there for her or whatever it is I am supposed to do in this situation, but I'm thinking about how I need to wash my sheets or replace them, there's so many cigarette burns.
That first night and how it started with her bringing me a six pack of the beer we used to drink. I should have known. I should have seen it coming when she dragged me away from the living room filled with people who would know every mistake we were about to make. But I wasn't thinking about that and hadn't since the last boy in a string of boys had broken her heart and I had let spill the thoughts that still wracked my head. I didn't think about her after she told me she didn't love me anymore.
It was years ago that I met her. On the downward swing of some other girl. One who had left me feeling empty and tired. I didn't want another. It had been far enough into my life that I had grown so weary of chasing after girl after girl, hoping that one would make me feel something. They all, every one of them, eventually left me feeling alone. She seemed different, but no one is different. If I have learned anything about women, it's that they bleed you dry in one way or another.
The first time we made love seems so long ago now. It caught me by surprise. The week before, she had told me how she didn't know if she'd ever be ready, but there we were in my old house, candles lit, very romantic. Afterward she asked me for her first cigarette and we laid in bed watching the smoke from our cigarettes drift together and separate over and over and over.
Nothing was ever perfect. It probably would have scared me much more if it had been. It scared me enough as it was. I don't know if she ever understood that. How scared I was. When we said "I love you", it made me distant. She was always wanting more and more closeness, but I was too afraid to give it to her until it was too late. The last time I had meant it the way I did with her, I had been broken so completely. I had been too young and it taken too long to reassemble myself so I kept her far away and built walls to protect myself. Feeling joy always means feeling pain eventually.
The morning after that night, a night we spent like we had spent so many others. Discussing literature before our lips met and records spinning till their end while we made love. Cigarettes and closeness after and sleeping next to each other. Her falling asleep and me trying to be quiet while getting up to have a cigarette on the porch. It was all so familiar, but the morning after I didn't wake up to her face close to mine. I woke up to an empty bed. I saw her a few hours later and asked what the night before had been.
She shrugged and told me she just needed to relieve some stress.
Saturday, May 11, 2013
So Much Closer
I am still attempting to sort out this mess I have unwittingly gotten myself into. I am, as I have been for months, trying to find a way out. There is apparently none and I am trapped. I have done my best to meet other women and find in them the light I clung to in her because she is gone now, well not gone, but not here. She is not here physically and that is what is so debilitating. She has completely and wholly decimated me. The worst of it, is that I am almost sure she has no idea what she has done.
A few years ago I met her. She was with a friend of mine. I can't say that I knew then what I know now. That she could be the one to pull me out of the mess that inhabits my brain, and somehow at the same time, the one who could cause me to sink even deeper into it.
I saw her walking through the backyard of that old house we used as a venue. The grass growing far too high as none of us who lived there remotely cared about trimming it. The neighbors hated us. Fallen fence boards and beer cans littering the overgrown back lawn. Cigarette in hand she walked towards our group with him, her hair still reaching so proudly towards the small of her back. She was introduced, but I didn't think much of it, of her, not then. She was with him, and I had someone of my own who was calling me back inside because some nameless band was about to play.
Months, maybe years passed before I thought of her again, but by then she had moved clear across the state. Swept up by the mountains the east offered her in that small college town. She reveled in the glow of the sun beating down upon the rocks.
"I want to lay down in the grass and let the rain melt me down into the mud. I want to be washed down rocks and boulders, feel myself brush against their crevices, and eventually the sun will come out. The sun will come out and I will stop. I will be fixated to the spot where flowers will burst from me."
She had some strange connection with the outdoors that I could never and still don't quite understand. I myself have never been one for the outdoors. I do not even remotely enjoy camping or hiking or kayaking or rock climbing or really anything of the sort. I prefer the comforts of home. A warm bed or records spinning so perfectly on their axes or the steady drip of coffee brewing. My idea of spending time outdoors only involves my porch or the walk to my car.
One of the last times I saw her or maybe it would be more appropriate to say it was the first time I saw her. The first time I really saw her was at, of all places, a party. One thrown in honor of her surviving another year on this planet. Myself and two of my friends were the only guests out of place. We knew each other and no one else. Other than her. Her hair still almost sweeping the ground if only for that last evening. It was her first time back in town in months and I did not think too much of attending that party that night, but I had no other plans so there we were in some sort of half-garage, half-home, basement party. I am still quite unsure of what that place actually was.
But she greeted us with beer and none of us could really complain. The alcohol allowed for some sort of courage and we all mingled, getting to know her circle of friends, but all the while I was entranced by her. Her and those far-too-large-for-her-face glasses perched so precariously on the edge of her nose. Her blue dress sweeping just above her knees.
Announcements of "get out of my house" and the sort began and we all made our way to our cars amidst hugs goodbye and the ever important mantra of "drive safe". It would mark one of the last times I saw her for quite a while. After that night though, it was difficult to keep thoughts of her from entering my brain.
It was not for lack of trying. I had found someone else who, for a moment, I thought made me feel again. It appeared in the beginning to be sincere and honest, but fizzled or rather, imploded in on itself. Senseless fighting tore us apart faster than I thought possible.
She was who I ran to when I was at my lowest. I suppose that is really how all of this began. She picked me up from the depths of the heartache that had broken me and ripped me apart. She pieced me back together whether she knew it or not. She was responsible for saving me.
I cannot at any point say when I knew, more so it crept up on and overtook me. A wave of knowledge of her importance to my life. It became more and more difficult to ignore this, to keep it to myself.
It burst from me one night, having no choice but to tell her, I spilled every last thought from my head into hers. She had known for a while she said. She felt it too, but what possible course of action could we take from there? She was still so far and would be for the foreseeable future.
So I once again tried desperately to rend her from my thoughts. I failed in this endeavor miserably. Every thought was accompanied by thoughts of her. She had set up shop in my brain and refused to leave. It was impossibly hopeless to desire anything different.
She told me she would be back soon. For a weekend. That we would see each other then. Nothing else mattered to me for the weeks preceding those three days that she would be here.
We had an entire day to ourselves. We wandered the aisles of her favorite bookstore she had missed almost as deeply as anyone here. She was exactly as I had remembered all except for her hair now dangling high above her collarbones. It all seemed a blur. My greatest regret of our time spent together is that I cannot remember it as vividly as I would like. We left the bookstore for a sunnier spot. A park where we spent the majority of the afternoon laying in the grass picking out which clouds were masquerading as something else and which ones were just simply clouds.
The sun set and we ended up in my bed tangled together. We had no agenda; we were only concerned with being there, being with each other. Hours passed unnoticed by either of us. Everything culminated in that evening. Everything I had thought and every conjecture of could this really be something of importance was solidified in her embrace. There was something so pure about it. It was a natural closeness that we shared, something I had not experienced in years and have since not encountered. As beautiful as that night was, it ended.
It had to. She was called back to those mountains she loved so much. Ripped away leaving me in complete and utter shambles. I have not seen her since and do not know for certain what will happen from here. I do not know what will become of us. Who we will be to each other when and if she ever returns.
It is this complete lack of knowledge of the future that tortures me. It keeps me awake and allows me no peace. The hope I have for any future between us is terrifying. Everything could go wrong but I still cling to this hope, as foolish as it is.
I just can't help it.
A few years ago I met her. She was with a friend of mine. I can't say that I knew then what I know now. That she could be the one to pull me out of the mess that inhabits my brain, and somehow at the same time, the one who could cause me to sink even deeper into it.
I saw her walking through the backyard of that old house we used as a venue. The grass growing far too high as none of us who lived there remotely cared about trimming it. The neighbors hated us. Fallen fence boards and beer cans littering the overgrown back lawn. Cigarette in hand she walked towards our group with him, her hair still reaching so proudly towards the small of her back. She was introduced, but I didn't think much of it, of her, not then. She was with him, and I had someone of my own who was calling me back inside because some nameless band was about to play.
Months, maybe years passed before I thought of her again, but by then she had moved clear across the state. Swept up by the mountains the east offered her in that small college town. She reveled in the glow of the sun beating down upon the rocks.
"I want to lay down in the grass and let the rain melt me down into the mud. I want to be washed down rocks and boulders, feel myself brush against their crevices, and eventually the sun will come out. The sun will come out and I will stop. I will be fixated to the spot where flowers will burst from me."
She had some strange connection with the outdoors that I could never and still don't quite understand. I myself have never been one for the outdoors. I do not even remotely enjoy camping or hiking or kayaking or rock climbing or really anything of the sort. I prefer the comforts of home. A warm bed or records spinning so perfectly on their axes or the steady drip of coffee brewing. My idea of spending time outdoors only involves my porch or the walk to my car.
One of the last times I saw her or maybe it would be more appropriate to say it was the first time I saw her. The first time I really saw her was at, of all places, a party. One thrown in honor of her surviving another year on this planet. Myself and two of my friends were the only guests out of place. We knew each other and no one else. Other than her. Her hair still almost sweeping the ground if only for that last evening. It was her first time back in town in months and I did not think too much of attending that party that night, but I had no other plans so there we were in some sort of half-garage, half-home, basement party. I am still quite unsure of what that place actually was.
But she greeted us with beer and none of us could really complain. The alcohol allowed for some sort of courage and we all mingled, getting to know her circle of friends, but all the while I was entranced by her. Her and those far-too-large-for-her-face glasses perched so precariously on the edge of her nose. Her blue dress sweeping just above her knees.
Announcements of "get out of my house" and the sort began and we all made our way to our cars amidst hugs goodbye and the ever important mantra of "drive safe". It would mark one of the last times I saw her for quite a while. After that night though, it was difficult to keep thoughts of her from entering my brain.
It was not for lack of trying. I had found someone else who, for a moment, I thought made me feel again. It appeared in the beginning to be sincere and honest, but fizzled or rather, imploded in on itself. Senseless fighting tore us apart faster than I thought possible.
She was who I ran to when I was at my lowest. I suppose that is really how all of this began. She picked me up from the depths of the heartache that had broken me and ripped me apart. She pieced me back together whether she knew it or not. She was responsible for saving me.
I cannot at any point say when I knew, more so it crept up on and overtook me. A wave of knowledge of her importance to my life. It became more and more difficult to ignore this, to keep it to myself.
It burst from me one night, having no choice but to tell her, I spilled every last thought from my head into hers. She had known for a while she said. She felt it too, but what possible course of action could we take from there? She was still so far and would be for the foreseeable future.
So I once again tried desperately to rend her from my thoughts. I failed in this endeavor miserably. Every thought was accompanied by thoughts of her. She had set up shop in my brain and refused to leave. It was impossibly hopeless to desire anything different.
She told me she would be back soon. For a weekend. That we would see each other then. Nothing else mattered to me for the weeks preceding those three days that she would be here.
We had an entire day to ourselves. We wandered the aisles of her favorite bookstore she had missed almost as deeply as anyone here. She was exactly as I had remembered all except for her hair now dangling high above her collarbones. It all seemed a blur. My greatest regret of our time spent together is that I cannot remember it as vividly as I would like. We left the bookstore for a sunnier spot. A park where we spent the majority of the afternoon laying in the grass picking out which clouds were masquerading as something else and which ones were just simply clouds.
The sun set and we ended up in my bed tangled together. We had no agenda; we were only concerned with being there, being with each other. Hours passed unnoticed by either of us. Everything culminated in that evening. Everything I had thought and every conjecture of could this really be something of importance was solidified in her embrace. There was something so pure about it. It was a natural closeness that we shared, something I had not experienced in years and have since not encountered. As beautiful as that night was, it ended.
It had to. She was called back to those mountains she loved so much. Ripped away leaving me in complete and utter shambles. I have not seen her since and do not know for certain what will happen from here. I do not know what will become of us. Who we will be to each other when and if she ever returns.
It is this complete lack of knowledge of the future that tortures me. It keeps me awake and allows me no peace. The hope I have for any future between us is terrifying. Everything could go wrong but I still cling to this hope, as foolish as it is.
I just can't help it.
Monday, March 25, 2013
The Two Of You
I do not see in her eyes what I saw in either of yours. When I stare longingly into them, as is the custom with these types of things, I am not greeted with the same sense of depth. She holds in her only a mere fraction of the beauty that you kept coiled so precariously inside of you. She carries no interests, no dreams, no desires for the future like you did, but she is a body to keep warm with at night and this winter has gone on for too long.
I find a couch and sequester myself in the leather so as to drift away from nonsensical conversation about who's marrying who and promotions and-
Those nights spent exploring the city. Finding parts of our home town we had never laid eyes upon. The old, hollowed-out brewery standing for so many years vacant and untouched. Making our way up its rusty stairwells to emerge into the cold, night air. Drinking in the view, perched on that ledge overlooking the entire city. You plopped down next to me, afterwards saying,
"You looked like you wanted someone next to you."
Back home and she is already asleep. The king size bed we share allows for separation.
How different compared to the forced but not unwelcome closeness in my old twin bed we shared for so long. Nights spent reveling in the others stare. Records playing in the background serving as a soundtrack to our nights. My brain shifts uncomfortably to the last time I saw you.
She was out of town for the weekend allowing me freedom I had not experienced in months. I bought a pack and took a book to that coffee shop you and I wasted so many days in. It almost seemed out of habit that I ended up there, an involuntary reflex. I weaved through the maze of legs belonging to chairs, tables, and humans, somehow managing to find an empty table.
We came here so often because it was one of the few places left in the city where you could still smoke indoors. I grab what is my first cigarette in what feels like months and feel the familiarity of it between my fingers. Clinging so desperately to it with my lips I raise my lighter to it and glance up to see you standing over me.
"I thought you quit"
I laughed and looked back to respond, but you were gone. Another of your disappearances. I still wonder where you went.
It is morning already and she is saying something to me that I didn't catch a word of.
I recount to her the same worn out stories I once told you, but they do not capture her the way they did you. You listened so fervently, hanging on every word as if my tongue were a cliff and the words that flowed from it might save you from the fall. With her I only see the words bounce carelessly off her shoulders, not even making their way to her ears only inches away. I suppose this is partly due to my lack of desire to project those syllables the way I did with you. As it is, even getting them past my teeth is an accomplishment.
She's saying something and I can't quite hear it.
"Later would you....coffee.....maybe at....parents...?"
I'm lost somewhere else. I catch myself like this more often than I am comfortable admitting. Drifting through memories or even just to what I might be having for lunch later that day. So it is with most of our days. The sunrise comes, absent of our attention since it is rare that either of us wakes before noon. Days that I emerge from the tangled sheets and blankets before her allow me a gladly welcomed respite.
During these reprieves I allow myself a cigarette while I catch up on my reading. She wants me to quit, and despite her lack of interest in the ins-and-outs of romantics, she is bent on our attendance at every social function she can get her hands on. Consequently, I am hardly ever able to find the time necessary to properly ingest literature.
It is amidst these fleeting, private moments I am so very reminded of you. Memories flood my brain and I allow them to do so because living vicariously through my own mind might be the only sustenance to my life at this point. Everything always seems so recent, the night we spent in my dorm room fumbling around in the dark, for the first time learning the shape and subtleties of each others bodies. Even though that night was years ago I can recount every detail with ease. How your skin felt against mine, the way you somehow stretched out comfortably on that twin bed enveloped in the sweatshirt that belonged to my grandfather, a sweatshirt I saw you in so many times afterward.
Today is not one of those days. Apparently we are getting dressed in order to go have coffee with her parents. While walking towards the coffee shop I notice a patch of hydrangeas and am reminded of how I brought you flowers when your uncle passed away. I intended it as an apologetic and somewhat romantic gesture, but you took one look at me holding those almost-wilted roses and erupted in tears, turning away and retreating inside your parents home. It was only after weeks of not speaking to me that you explained your hatred for flowers, saying that they were beautiful if only for a moment and so shortly after, crumbled and died, a waste of money you said and a poor representation of feelings.
Your disappearances were infrequent but certainly not uncommon. Each time leaving me broken and confused, as rarely an explanation was given at the forefront of these hiatuses. It was only upon your sudden return that you decided to impart to me what had been troubling your brain,
"You looked at our waitress like you look at me."
"I was on a search for God. I didn't find him."
"Your parents don't like the way I dress and I'm not in the right place to take that sort of criticism."
Suddenly I'm peering over my cup of coffee, which was an unbelievable hassle to order. Her parents, as always, have chosen some ritzy bistro where only ordering the simplest cup of black coffee is frowned upon. Her dad, after minutes of contemplating his order, decided on a frozen, low-cal beverage. I can't remember what it was called. I wasn't paying attention.
Now her parents are playing their favorite game,
"When are you going back to school?"
"Next Spring, I'm focusing on my art right now."
"When are the two of you going to tie the knot?"
"Probably never. I hate both of you and can't imagine having you as in-laws."
No, that isn't right.
"Maybe next year. I'd like to finish school first."
"And when are you planning on doing that?"
"I'm not sure. I'm going back in the Spring."
Not that you were the only one who ever left. I can remember each time I ran away so vividly. Always for the same reason. I was terrified of you. Of us.
I would find someone else for a week, a month and project upon them every last insecurity of mine hoping they would be able to accept them the way that you so gracefully did. I was always wrong.
We were just so volatile. I thought the fighting meant we were broken, but what is just so terrible about being broken? There was always a glint in your eye when you were yelling, pulling strands of hair out, breaking my possessions, slamming doors, a shine I have never seen in hers.
She and I have returned to her car and are headed to-
A car. I told myself after you, there would never be another without a car. The countless hours I spent weaving my way down the darkest of back roads to make it to your home. How difficult the week was when one of my headlights ceased its existence. I do recall one particularly foggy evening. We had spent the earlier part of the night at my parents house, but I remember the drive more than anything. Taking you home, curving around each bend carefully, quick glances so as to retain the shape of your smile in the recesses of my memory. The way you begged to open the sun-roof so as to properly see the clouded night skies.
I am for the first time today actually noticing her. Her choice of clothing so carefully organized in order to be simultaneously flattering, professional, and eclectic. She has had this look perfected since the day we met.
The antithesis to you. Every stitch you wore was meticulously chosen at random from the contents of piles stacked from floor to almost-ceiling. I could hardly bear it. Mismatched patterns fighting one another to be focused on as none could work together to form a basic structure.
She has us lined up for a dinner party her sister is hosting tonight. I think that's what she said. Maybe a sorority sister. I'm not sure if she even has a sister.
I can only remember when I was still in school and all the classes I wouldn't attend because I felt my time better spent with you. Days spent in bed mostly, listening to records or watching some television show, limbs intertwined not knowing whose leg was whose, which arm was falling asleep, and wondering how it had gotten to be four o'clock already, whose turn it was to buy cigarettes.
I hadn't smoked in a week. She catches me biting at my cuticles, a nervous habit I've picked up since "quitting".
Every time I am able to sneak one in the comfort of those mornings spent alone, my mind wanders to days spent on the porch of my old house in our respective chairs or you in my lap, arms draped so lazily around my neck.
When did we arrive at this party? Who are all these people? One of her friends is trying to talk to me, but I am never able to give these people my full attention. I always feel smothered at these events. I can never remember which party is which. Who is who. All of them nameless faces in a sea of insignificance.
Every time I am able to sneak one in the comfort of those mornings spent alone, my mind wanders to days spent on the porch of my old house in our respective chairs or you in my lap, arms draped so lazily around my neck.
When did we arrive at this party? Who are all these people? One of her friends is trying to talk to me, but I am never able to give these people my full attention. I always feel smothered at these events. I can never remember which party is which. Who is who. All of them nameless faces in a sea of insignificance.
I find a couch and sequester myself in the leather so as to drift away from nonsensical conversation about who's marrying who and promotions and-
Those nights spent exploring the city. Finding parts of our home town we had never laid eyes upon. The old, hollowed-out brewery standing for so many years vacant and untouched. Making our way up its rusty stairwells to emerge into the cold, night air. Drinking in the view, perched on that ledge overlooking the entire city. You plopped down next to me, afterwards saying,
"You looked like you wanted someone next to you."
Back home and she is already asleep. The king size bed we share allows for separation.
How different compared to the forced but not unwelcome closeness in my old twin bed we shared for so long. Nights spent reveling in the others stare. Records playing in the background serving as a soundtrack to our nights. My brain shifts uncomfortably to the last time I saw you.
She was out of town for the weekend allowing me freedom I had not experienced in months. I bought a pack and took a book to that coffee shop you and I wasted so many days in. It almost seemed out of habit that I ended up there, an involuntary reflex. I weaved through the maze of legs belonging to chairs, tables, and humans, somehow managing to find an empty table.
We came here so often because it was one of the few places left in the city where you could still smoke indoors. I grab what is my first cigarette in what feels like months and feel the familiarity of it between my fingers. Clinging so desperately to it with my lips I raise my lighter to it and glance up to see you standing over me.
"I thought you quit"
I laughed and looked back to respond, but you were gone. Another of your disappearances. I still wonder where you went.
It is morning already and she is saying something to me that I didn't catch a word of.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Overcoat
I find it somehow ironic that we met in the winding-down of fall. Days getting shorter and leaves gasping their last photosynthetic breaths, the precursor to winter and to us. Slowly the cold overtook us.
Everything was so beautiful in the beginning. Every day was coffee, conversation, and cigarettes. Lying face to face listening to your favorite record in its entirety just to build up the courage to spill our guts to each other.
But it just kept getting colder.
My black, woolen pea-coat was a staple of those days. I found it on sale last year. A tremendous deal. Perfect construction. A veritable blanket against the harsh winter.
But you never seemed to get as cold as I did. You never seemed to feel it. I found that hard to believe. At times I found you hard to believe, as I should have.
Thirty degrees outside, you need your jacket. You'll freeze to death. When you first put it on after feeling the frost-bitten fingers of winter inching up your neck, caressing not-so-softly your ears and nose, how wonderful is that coat?
But it is not temporary. It is not something affixed to your skin or even to your first layer of clothing. No matter the material, the cost, the time, the care, or the labor put forth in the construction, that coat will not last. It may make it through two, maybe even three winters, but eventually holes will form (which I mean, you can cover with patches but then other holes will show up and you'll need more patches and then one of the patches might fall off and you'll need another patch or a hole might even show up in one of those oh-so-sturdy patches that you spent an entire five dollars on and then you've got a patch covering up a patch and eventually the jacket isn't a jacket anymore) or you'll lose it in some tragic, larger than life accident and you will need another coat because winter is a sure thing.
But October was still warm and so were we. An unnaturally warm October if I remember correctly. Late nights spent on my porch plotting out our course for the future. Summer in a far away country, unrestricted by the troubles of home. Weekends spent lazily laying out our lives to each other. Recounting memories explained in detail for the sake of understanding each other just a little better.
November and December were different. As the cold came, I seemed to need my coat more than you needed me. I felt less in your embrace than I did in the covering of my arms from its sleeves. Sure there were those fleeting moments. But how did they compare to the countless nights I spent driving to whatever party you were frequenting to resolve an argument only to find you drunk and passed out?
Or New Years.
It was frigid. And I had left my coat at home. We hadn't been speaking. You were God-knows-where and I was alone at a party. The question on every lip was where is she? Is everything OK? I didn't know. I couldn't. Where had I left my jacket? Where were you? It all culminated with frantic phone calls placed from the inside of my car in the driveway of my home. Words shoved in between panicked breaths begging for two minutes with you only to be ignored.
The difficulty with outerwear is that if you take it off, and sometimes you have to, is that winter is still there. It twists up your spine and leaves you shaking.
You were an overcoat. Stitched together to hold off the cold, but you didn't make it through the winter.
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