So I’m sitting there. It's my old apartment and it's my old writing group. When we got together, we would watch movies and talk about them and then write short stories together. At least I did. Maybe I just did that. Anyway, “R” is there..
I should let you know that these are real people. These are real events that happened in my life. I'm not going to use real names. If you are stumbling upon this, just know that these events shaped who I am today.While people change and evolve over time, these events occurred in my early twenties, in a fog of drug abuse and confusion. I often wasn't sure what to make of what was going on, my surroundings, environment, family life, everything like that. The years passed over me like thick Pacific fog. The kind that ships might get lost in, believe me this is the shit of legends. Folklore, made up of countless retellings and every time it gets a little weirder. Further from the truth and closer to whatever fantastic dreamscape you choose to believe. These events kill people, or they get left behind or they kill themselves. Death comes into the picture, holding its pale hand over your face in one final sweeping motion and like that it is over. You are folklore, some art school dropout in his 40’s will sit by the fireside and tell his nonexistent children or 23 year old girlfriend this story and they will sit wide eyed and captivated. This fog got a hold of me and I landed in a rehab facility for a year. It gave me wrinkles in my face and popped a blood vessel in my right eye. I had to have corrective laser surgery otherwise I was going to go blind, you see. Blind.
-R-
Back to this shit. “R”was at the time one of my closest friends. We don't talk too much these days. R and I; well, we don’t really talk at all. We follow each other on social media. Keep tabs on our lives, peer inside the scope of what the other is doing. Oftentimes it ends up being some gut wrenching phone call that I keep seem to get away from. I keep looking at my phone to see how long we have been talking. What is the safe zone and how long do I allow this torture to continue. Two hours, three hours, I never know how to end anything with “R”; other than to simply tell him that I don’t want to hear any more about his failing marriage or the kid back here somewhere that he never talks to. The secret he knows is that at some point he will reference either something from our childhood or from the apartment. We grew up together, two houses away from one another. At night I would sit up in my room and every light-left-on I would convince myself was his. I don't know for certain how interested he is in my life, probably not very much at all. I can say this because most of the conversation is about “R” and the struggles that he has endured. The life of “R” and honestly I could care less but still I endure. I endure because I know, he knows that he has me captured, held in place. Living with my parents I walked past his old house and noticed the family that has since moved in. Probably having dinner, probably having some domestic dispute upstairs with some estranged teenage son, or daughter. I am my Mothers child and I will love you until the lights go out. Until the breath leaves my lungs. Until you call the cops on me.
So we are just sitting there. In the living room. Watching FARGO I think or Bloodsport, which in itself I understand is chaotic and random but I'm pretty sure that's what was going on. The three of us are sitting in the front room and it’s gotta be like high fucking noon o’ clock because the light(and ill never forget it) the light is something fierce coming through that back kitchen window.
The very same window I witnessed the expansive hair of my first real girlfriend smoking a cigarette on our fire escape. My admiration was that of a child watching a city pass before a train window before the child is hauled off and all he has left is the sticky polaroid his mother took of him. Remember the Sears Tower, how it spiked up into the sky and how you were afraid of the elevated trains as a small boy. You will remember all of this someday and you won't know what to do other than to put it down to some kind of memory. Orange and yellow and my god there is just the most terrible glare coming in and casting a violent square on the TV. I literally can't stand it. To the point I feel like I might fall over if I have to withstand another second of the glare. Or I have to get up and do something about it.
The next thing I know I'm standing on top of the couch and nailing a blanket to the wall.
“My god this is gonna be so much better.”
Nobody says anything. Nobody takes their eyes off the screen.
“You guys. I’m gonna fix this fucking sunset glare so we can all watch Bloodsport in all its glory”
Guy now has turned his attention from FARGO to me teetering on the top of the couch. He’s a big kid, over 6ft but is sweet and gentle and always laughing. I was introduced to him through a roommate and he and Gus(today we will call him Gus tomorrow he might be someone else)and the roommate all went to school together.
I should also mention they are 5 to 6 years younger than me respectively so there are moments when I completely unravel in my would-be-assumed-mentor-drug-dealer role and crumble into a blithering sad, lonely pathetic twenty-something with no hope and no future silly uncle figure. A comic of some sort, some kind of village elder with rotting teeth and bad eyesight but still they endure me.
Guy(I assume it is Guy even though I can't see him because my back is turned facing the wall and the sheet I am trying to hang) is staring at me in some profound state of confusion. Some semblance of leadership with the crown half cocked laughing and falling three feet to his death.
“A hearse,
My kingdom for a hearse”
-N-
But god dammit the sheet is up there and we are gonna watch fucking Bloodsport later, if it kills me and it just might. Not this exact day precisely but the lifestyle that was attached to this day.
A thunderous clamor that could only be recognized as the fearful sound of a knock on the door. As mentioned earlier this was in my previous life as a low scale inner ring pot dealer. I never kept more than an ounce in the house since the kids were always coming and going and none of them knew what the fuck they were doing with any of that shit. So anyway, there's a knock on the door and we all kind of stare at each other, looking around and silently asking who is going to answer that shit. Since I am the only real resident and these other two are just here every day, it has to be me. I have to answer the door. But the fucking sheet doesn't want to go up and now I’ve got myself in this fucking spot with the shirt and the box on the TV which I absolutely cant handle. I’ll admit I am a little high and this is honestly one of my favorite movies and this fucking shit outside is just killing it. Nonetheless, Steve Buscemi just broke into the house so there's a good ninety minutes left of this movie before Bloodsport comes on. I can walk away for a minute to answer the door. I mean who the fuck could it be anyway? Okay, I’m gonna tell you something I think I should have told you before in one of these discombobulated stories that just kind of fades away into some dusty relic pulled off a shelf. Her name is Natalie, she is beautiful; she will leave me in six months for a guy that she met on one of her fantastic trips. At this point Natalies career she is taking frequent trips. I kiss her and tell her good luck and that I miss her every time. I wait for her to come back.
I wait for her to answer my calls and my texts.
Some crowded bar in Wicker or some guy's apartment, filled with some cool shit I’m sure and not filled with pot-head-coked out rangers out of work and out of their minds. No glare on his nice TV. Lots of books to readily pluck off built in shelves. The smell of sandalwood and clean white walls. I never hear any of this. It is entirely fabricated in my mind and gets crazier every time. Sometimes there’s men, women, multiple men and women. A cat and a dog she occasionally walks. A whole other life outside of the one with me, perhaps the one of her dreams. Or mine. I am occasionally jealous of her trips back to my hometown. Years later, our paths will cross at a liquor store in New Orleans. I will feel a woman's hand grab mine and through some wormhole I am not standing anymore with my fiance on our trip. I am here with her now.
Again.
Days or a week later, comes home complaining about flights and all the stupid fucking photographers that she has to deal with and the wind in Chicago this time of year and how the set literally blew away in some Ingrid Bergman end of days scenario and her pale skin is stretched over the beach. Her arms are extended in some strange manicured way and the man is yelling “yes honey yes! that's it!” And there are crashing waves. Why don't I ever go with her? Am I just a shit boyfriend? Does she understand how she will never really let me go? How the touch of her hand might punch through the fog like a toy boat on a string. Pulling me back to cocaine nights.
“I’m better now. It was hard but I’m better now. After you left, I fell down some stairs and almost died. I did three lines of Oxy after these girls told me it was coke. I Hit my head and my band had to call my parents.”
“Let’s go get drunk and stumble around the night city like an Elliot Smith song.”
“What part of ‘I’m better now’ did you not understand?”
There was a moment of silence, I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. My fiance is calling me, or texting me. I don’t know how long I have been gone, maybe an hour or so. People go about their business buying things, talking and the man at the register ticks away. I focus on the ping of his scanner and faint laughter of couples getting drunk. New Orleans this time of year is magical. Nothing matters and anything can happen. I nervously shuffle my feet and wait for her to suggest going to the cemetery and pissing on Nick Cage’s grave.
“The part where you said ‘you’re better’.”
Didn’t you know?
They will never let you go.
-K-
I get to the door and I am waiting for this tall bun of hair to appear in the top window portion of the door and just to see her wild crazy face peeking in. Always laughing about something, I don't even know what half the time. Pale skin, black hair and green eyes. Wynona Ryder out of 1995 and she picked me. Jesus christ please let this be my girlfriend because I am so fucking high right now and this would just be so rad.
So I’m getting closer now and I can clearly see. It’s not her. It’s not my girlfriend. Fuck, its fucking Kenny. I can tell already because he has this thing he does when he whistles nervously when he's waiting for something. Like something out of an old movie, like he's hiding something. Only he never is. Kenny has got to be one of the easiest people to read. You know how they say
“you could tell by his shoes he was born to sing the blues.”
Kenny wore his brain on his sleeve, fuck his whole life was there. Within five of minutes talking to this guy he has already told you the story of the last girl who dumped him,how it broke his heart,how his dad hit him with a bat when he was a kid and that's why he has a lazy eye, and how he never finished high school, how he taught himself to play guitar upside down. I don't mean like hanging upside down or behind his back like Hendrix or anything cool like that. I mean actually he picks up a guitar and doesn't know how to play it so he starts playing it upside down. He’s not even left-handed. He is just an absolute genius.I am Kenny, in every way. Kenny’s perpetual faded half open smile, eyes half closed. Kenny and his innocent mind elsewhere, Kenny and the dark side of the moon, the sea of tranquility, the flag and the tiny man stuck next to it. I am Kenny and the dark childish admiration of the far-away satellite. I am the constant thing and the tie that binds, the sense of normalcy in an uncertain world.
It helps to think that we are sleeping underneath the same night sky.
So now I can tell it’s Kenny and I'm dreading this interaction. Why is he here? What does he want? One time I was passed out and forgot I had to work that night. I wake up to somebody tapping my arm and it's fucking Kenny. I don't know how he got in. I guess I left the door unlocked but he got in and he's waking me up and telling me I was supposed to be at work an hour ago. He walked 6 miles just to wake me up and tell me that. So in the back of my head, I’m thinking
“Oh Fuck. Am I supposed to be at work right now?”
I mean, why else would Kenny be here? I really hope I don't have to be at work right now because I am really fucking high and I don't think I can handle that. Not right now. I poke my head back in the room and Gus and Guy are still there. If Kenny is fucked up and tries to kill me I have Jon and Evan to protect me.
“Hey guys, um so Kenny is here….”
They both kind of look over at me and give me a real solid “who cares” and we decide as a group that Kenny should be let in. So I go back to the door, I open it and he’s just standing there.
“Hey man. What's going on.”
“Oh, not much, what are you guys up to?”
Wait. Hang on, first of all why are you here? Second of all, how does he know that Gus and Guy are here with me? I peek around the wall outside and notice the window is open. Fuck, I could have fallen out there while I was fucking with that sheet. I could have fallen out of that window and died. I look down and notice something blue on the lawn. It’s a blue size twelve sandal. Gus has a habit of taking off his shoes when he comes over and I guess he thought it was appropriate at whatever time to throw the shoe out of the open window. So that's it, Gus gave us away. Kenny was probably walking by and saw the shoe and decided that we were partying.
“You um, want to hang out or something?”
“Yeah man, I got some mushrooms and I can't do them because I have to go to work.”
“Oh shit. How many?”
“I have three one-eighth bags.”
He has three bags of psychedelic mushrooms and there are three of us. There are ninety minutes left before Bloodsport comes on. I decide it is probably best if I let him in. So he only really comes in for a minute. Says what's up to everyone and drops off the drugs. Shit, I even asked him if he wanted to watch Bloodsport with us. But he’s like
“Nah man I gotta work in an hour. I just thought you guys might want to do this.”
Let me just process this for a minute here. So this guy who nobody really likes and who plays an upside-down guitar like a goofball just shows up as we are watching FARGO and drops off three bags of mushrooms and doesn't even want to hang out? I know I mentioned earlier I was high but this is beyond that. I just can't believe it and am standing in my dimly lit kitchen basking in afternoon light, the possibility of Bloodsport and knowing that I am about to be so far gone the square on the TV won’t even matter.
Kenny drops the three plastic baggies on the kitchen table. Now, about this table. This was “R”’s table. He had it growing up and we spent a lot of time as kids sitting around it. Now it’s ours. We break up weed on it, fight over it, have meals on it and live around it. Kind of fucked up that now these three little baggies of shriveled gray fungus are sitting on a childhood artifact. We used to talk about moving to Chicago when we were kids. We’d get our first place there and I would be happy, it would be like a homecoming for me. I would sit up in our shitty Logan Square apartment and write. You shouldn't talk about things like that when you are a kid. If you ask a kid what they want to be when they grow up. Always say “Cop” or “Astronaut ”. Never say,
“struggling writer who moves in with his childhood best friend whom he is secretly in love with and will break his heart every day that he can…”
Don't wish for that, I am saying this now to ten-year-old me. Don't wish for that shit, keep it distant. That's what dreams are made of. That other shit is too real and will probably actually happen. Then you'll just be disappointed wanting to change your dream back to “Cop” so you can not give a fuck about any of this shit and not have every day for the next year be an existential fucking exercise. Fuck, there’s a choice to be made here. Three bags of substance sit on the kitchen table. It must be like three or four o’clock now because the light has changed.
I always notice when the light changes here because I notice things like that. The square is gone off the tv and FARGO is over. Somehow Bloodsport has not started, or maybe it's about to. There is a commercial stuck in time, maybe, I think for Taco Bell. Instead of all of us at once getting up and piling into my car to get Taco Bell we are frozen in some writer’s block moment. There is little or no interaction until suddenly “R” asks if anyone remembers the carpet outlet store commercial from my childhood that featured two sisters floating over the arch on a magic carpet. The other three do not. They are light years behind us and for a second instead of collapsing on the kitchen floor I am ten years old. It pulls me in the way it always does. It is his secret weapon against me, because he knows that I submit every time and I have no defense. I do not realize that we aren’t even watching tv anymore, the mushrooms have taken effect; Gus is puking his guts out in the bathroom, Kenny has left and Guy is hanging half out the window screaming at the size twelve sandal. It's time for the three of us, the sole inhabitants of this space to cast each other into yet another void of oblivion. I feel the weight of the empty plastic bag in my hand and for a split second start to wonder about the cascade of choices that I have made over the past 2 years. Choices that have driven me away from the family that kicked me out just shy of my 22nd birthday for doing coke off my windowsill. This is when it gets dark. When I meet these people again years later at a wedding or at a funeral and we start to tell stories none of it makes sense.
How is it like that?
Was it like that?
Did I really do that and did he really say that?
We notice when our warm-lit faces turn to confusion and suddenly nobody is laughing. Maybe someone is crying, and it all comes back up. The hurt, the pain, the mad fury and the love.
“Cascade” for lack of a better word would describe it best. Or maybe “waterfall” but what does a waterfall do? That's right, it cascades. My estranged relationship with my family, my crumbling friendship with my best friend. My old roommate and our childhood best friend passed-out in Seattle somewhere.
Needles in his arms.
Statistics, cascades of statistics.