by Trisky
I don’t know how to be... who to be. I’m pretty sure this isn’t it. Ineffective and isolated has never really worked for me in the long run. But I just don’t know. I can’t navigate this, I don’t have the resources. I’m just some dumb kid who doesn’t know shit.
The moisture trembles just above my lip, swaying and threatening to drop into my mouth. It’s so dry and barren there I almost wish it would. I could stick my tongue out, lick my dry lips and feel the sting of just one drop. I can almost taste the saline and it only makes my thirst that much stronger. It drips into the corner of my mouth unexpectedly. I close my eyes, lean my head back and wait for it to end. It happens briefly now and then, usually at the worst times, like now. I just have to ride it out.
My mind is blank behind my eyes. I don’t see anything. I don’t imagine anything, I don’t remember any moment. I just stare into nothing. That usually dries it up pretty quickly. It’s like staring at a vast, pristine dessert, grains of sand soak it all up and all you see is one long stretch of blankness. I don’t know if that’s a reflexive thing or a studied thing I do on purpose. It just makes it all a little easier to take.
It wasn’t even anything particularly bad this time. Some random guys I see here and there asking me if they’d see “us” later at Babylon. I don’t know who this us is, but I’m pretty sure it’s not me and it’s definitely not him, so if it’s not me or him, it’s impossible that it’s the two of... us?
This is what happens. Why it goes to shit all the time. You become an us without being a you first. Then you wind up not knowing you and him not wanting to know you either. I’m a no one to him. I don’t exist. That’s the way he wants it, that’s the way it’ll be. I can convince myself of that for a good ten minutes at a time which is an improvement from the four minutes I was averaging two days ago.
I squeeze the bridge of my nose pushing away the thoughts that are starting to crowd my mind. All I want to see is blankness. I don’t want to think about this, not here, not now. I don’t want to picture the suit I’d wear, sliding my feet into my shoes and taking steps as if I have a right to keep walking, or the things I would say when asked to speak. I can’t think of things I’ll regret not having said or done. I’ve never seriously imagined my life without him. Not being with him, well, that was one thing, but not having the chance to be with him again is something I can’t comprehend.
“Do you hear that?” Debbie’s quiet voice startles me, I turn to face her, and my foot accidentally kicks a sack of flour on the floor. A little cloud of white particles rise slightly but settle, and disperse into the air quickly. “If I listen closely enough I think I can actually hear the sound of your heart breaking from out there. Trust me, I know what it sounds like.” She purses her lips, squaring away the emotion that’s always just under the surface. Ever since Vic... I can’t think about that.
“It can’t be breaking you hear, because it’s already smashed to smithereens.” I use my sleeve to wipe my nose. So what if I revert to being five every now and then? I think I knew myself more then, than I do now. We just complicate our basic, simple lives with all of this adult bullshit.
“I know you’re scared, but it can’t be half as scary for you as it is for him.” It makes sense. Despite the delivery, most of the time Debbie usually makes the most sense. It’s probably because she thinks with her gut, not with her head. She doesn’t rationalize everything, or complicate it, she just reacts. She’s like a kid that way. We could probably learn a thing or two from her.
Maybe that’s the best way to be and no matter how much rational sense she makes I can’t seem to focus on that. I just want to stomp my foot and make it all about me. “Is it scarier to be the one that might leave or to be the one left behind?”
I see a crack in the hard earned veneer of a woman trying desperately to hold it together. “Who would know that better than you?”
“You.”
A hurt, grateful smile passes over her face quickly. She shakes her head, lifting my chin to a noble position. “That’s where you’re wrong, Sunshine. No one’s ever had the opportunity to almost miss me. I wouldn’t give them the chance.” She winks. “You might have scared us, but you didn’t give them a chance either. So don’t let him.”
I never thought of it that way. I never thought of him that way. “He won’t even speak to me.” Even when things were bad, they were never this bad.
“So the fuck what? When has that ever stopped you?” She challenges me.
“It’s different this time. You wouldn’t understand.” I think we say that sometimes just so that we can get reassurance that someone really does, understand, that is. We want them to tell us how crazy we’re acting, how not alone we are, how they’ve been there too.
“I won’t pretend I understand the two of you, but I know one thing. I love you both like you’re my own, and I’m gonna tell you what I would tell him. Grow the fuck up, and get over it. It doesn’t matter.” Her eyes fill to capacity without spilling and I’m no longer sure she’s really addressing me anymore.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I rub her shoulder in small circles.
She points at me, like she always does when she wants to be emphatic. “You don’t do what I did, let him go and regret not making it right every day. If it’s not my fault then it’s not yours. You hear me?”
I nod my head. I can almost hear it over the sound of the empty hollow where my broken heart used to be. “What do I do?”
She opens her palms flat to me, holding up the weight of the world. “Take that broken heart of yours, patch it up and give it to him because that’s what he needs. Something so full of love for him, he can’t run from it and something so full of life he grabs onto it to save his own.” I hug her, holding onto the life in her, the strength in her. “Now get the fuck out of here, you’re depressing the shit out of me.” She pulls a Kleenex out of her apron, blowing her nose loudly.
If I listen closely enough, I can almost hear the sound of Vic’s laugh. Just another lost sigh carried away by the wind.
**********
My key dangles precariously in the lock. I’ve made it this far, but I can’t seem to turn it. I have no right to do this, to sneak up on him and use something he trusted me with to gain entrance. I never had a right to do that. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t think about it or calculate a plan to do it. It just happened. The words just left my mouth before I could chase them back in. I can’t say I even regret telling Michael because that would be a lie, that would be an admission that I knew beforehand it was wrong and I did it anyway. I didn’t know, I didn’t think it was. I’m just some dumb kid who doesn’t know shit.
I pull the key from the lock and knock gently, losing some of my nerve. It’s a morbid kind of silence and I know that’s a fucking morbid thought to have. I catch my breath waiting to hear signs of life behind the closed door. My rational brain knows I’m jumping to ridiculous conclusions, but my gut doesn’t care. I’m not even sure what I think I’m going to hear. He walks barefoot on wood, it makes very little sound when you’re actually in the room, I can’t imagine it making any sound at all through a metal door.
I’m about to go because this I know is wrong before I do it. This I’ll regret. I take one step back. Someday I might wish this never happened. Just maybe not today. If I don’t do it today, how will I ever regret it then? I bang loudly, my knuckles rapping against the metal until they’re sore. Sometimes the only way to get him going is to light a fire under his ass, push him into submitting against his will. I’ve badgered him into worse.
The door glides open, with less force than I expected. It’s like seeing a ghost and not because he looks sickly or anything, in fact if I didn’t know differently, he wouldn’t look sick at all. It’s the look on his face, the look of a man that time has finally caught up with. It’s not death that’s drained the life out of him, it’s life, his life.
I clear my throat. “Can I come in?”
“No.”
I should have expected that. I did expect that. It doesn’t make it hurt any less. “Then, can I just give you something without you slamming the door in my face?” I don’t want to be too Debbie about all of this, overbearing and pushy, but I do want to make my point.
“There’s nothing you have that I need.” He snakes his hand onto his ribcage, like maybe his whole abdomen hurts. I do that sometimes. When I cut something I squeeze the skin around it to take the pressure of the pain off the wound.
“That’s where you’re wrong.” The truth about me, is that I’m no better than he is. I might not be as bad, but I’m not nearly as evolved as everyone else seems to think. It’s not any easier for me, I’m just not as scared of making a fool of myself as he is.
“Make it quick.” He leans on the wall, still not letting me in. I half wonder if he’s going to fall over if I don’t make it fast. He was probably asleep. Me interrupting him, what else is new?
“These are yours and I figured since we’re clearing the air and breaking all ties because you never want to see me again..."
“And look at how well you’ve listened,” he interrupts with a sarcastic smirk.
I carry on with studied obliviousness. “I thought that you should have them back.” I reach in my pocket and hand them to him.
“Is this a fucking joke?” He pushes his weight onto the door handle, dropping his hand from his ribs to grab my offering. “What, did I leave them at your apartment?”
“No, we would have had to fuck there for you to do that,” I remind him.
“Did you take them by accident when you left the first time, or maybe when I threw you out the second time?” He fingers the material, dangling it in front of him like the dirty, used underwear they are.
“You were wearing them that first night.” I know it seems kind of sick and perverted. I didn’t think it was at the time, I just grabbed for them without thinking. God only knows why I kept them this whole time or why I knew where to find them.
Okay, the truth is I’m a guy and I don’t throw underwear out even when it’s barely hanging on by a thread of material. It was sort of easy to keep them this whole time, especially when I could automatically tell they weren’t mine because I don’t own any that come close to resembling them. It’s not like I kept them in a shrine or anything. I just safely tucked them away in the back of my drawer.
“You stole my underwear?” His face travels through mortified, mystified, perplexed, disgusted and accepting before it lands on slightly bemused. “How many times did you use them to jerk off?”
“Roughly 131.” Probably more like 431, but I don’t want to seem like some kind of freak. “Basically whenever you had something better to do and I was bored .”
“How thoughtful of you to return them.” He gives them one last glance before balling them up and throwing them in the direction of the wastebasket by his desk. “I probably won’t be needing to wear those for a while.”
I ignore his pity party and as scared as he is, I’m just as terrified to do this. “Like that matters to me? Do you know why I took them? It wasn’t so that I could use them to jerk off.” I take a step forward, but don’t push my way in. I just wait at the entrance. “I wanted a piece of you, something you wouldn’t give me willingly. I guess something in me must have known even then that I couldn’t have you. That if I wanted something from you, I’d have to take it. And guess what?” I feel the blankness starting to shadow my eyes, hear Debbie’s voice in my mind. Just another lost sigh carried away by the wind.
“What?” He barely speaks.
“You didn’t miss it. You never even noticed that it was gone or that I had it. Look how simple it has to be. Stop making it so complicated.”
“You’re right,” he intones, bitterly “I should just let you have whatever you want, do whatever you want with it. You want my wallet, or maybe the keys to my car?” He dashes around the kitchen as quickly as the soreness will allow him. “Wait, I know the perfect thing for you to take.” He holds up a steak knife. “Since you’re so good at using it.”
I feel a pinprick of a sensation rumbling around my stomach. I can’t identify it, it doesn’t hurt, but it’s not pleasant. Compassion maybe. I step into the room from the door, closing it quietly behind me. He stares dumbfounded at my gall. I walk forward, on automatic pilot and grab the first thing I see, sending it crashing down on the floor, the rubber bounces up and down and the sugar comes flying out sending millions of crystals scattering across the floor. People think the containers are glass, they’re plastic. He did it for Gus, so that he wouldn’t hurt himself, not that he’d ever tell anyone that. Of course not, why would he do such a thing?
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” He gets mad, grabbing my arm with both of his hands.
I pull out of his grasp angrily, his strength isn’t up to par enough to stop me. I start crushing the crystals under my foot angrily, mercilessly. I stomp and stomp, leaving a maze of my footprints until I can’t hear myself think anymore and I don’t see anything but a sea of white smashed to smithereens. My breath is ragged and my leg is tired.
“You think this is a mess? Because I can keep going and make a real mess. And you’ll be left here cleaning it up forever without my help. Every time you think you’re finished, you’ll find another grain and you’ll know I left it there.” He looks shell shocked, but he’s not holding onto anything, even though I know he wants to. Even though I know it hurts not to. There are tears for things, but not this. “You can get mad at me for something you know I didn’t do on purpose. You can push and keep pushing, but you can’t have back what’s mine. I earned that.” My voice is steel, my stomach is liquid fear. “You can’t make me leave. I won’t let you.”
I stop long enough to get my bearings, containing my inner five year old having a temper tantrum. I don’t know who said it but they were right, all I ever needed to know I learned in kindergarten. I learned how to read, how to write, how to do simple math. I discovered I liked boys more than I liked girls. I figured out how to get my way and I was always pretty creative about it. What else do I need to know? The only thing I couldn’t know then, that no adult can explain to me now or try to talk me out of is how to be in love with someone and let that be enough. They tell me I’ll wish it never happened, but I can’t imagine wishing away all the good to be rid of the bad. I can’t say why you have to go through the bad to get to the other side, but maybe it’s because you can’t fully appreciate what you have until you do.
I hear him sigh, he traps it in the mask of his hands covering his face.
I reach forward, laying both of my palms flat on either side of his ribcage, my heavy breath tickles his shoulder as I drop my forehead closer and closer to it, afraid to touch it. I feel his hands release, one arms circles my shoulder the other circles my waist. I let go and drop my head, reach to join both of my hands around his waist. I feel his stomach muscles contracting with hard, clutched breaths against mine and slight sobbing sounds escape his mouth. It’s not crying, it’s more like a dry sob. I’ve felt this before, I know what it is. I was the angry one then.
But I’m still here. And there’s where he’ll be.
We stand like this for what seems like a long time, but probably isn’t.
“Help me with this mess.” His voice brushes my ear.
“All you had to do was ask.” I kiss his shoulder lightly.
Someday he’ll wish this never happened, maybe that day is today. I don’t care. I don’t need to know shit, other than it’s mine, and he can’t have it back.
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