Upon arriving home I found my friend Hank sitting on my couch and Jordy attempting to entertain him to no avail. “What're you doing here?” I asked. “Ah, bored, figured you might be up so I came over, Helen let me in then mumbled something about being tired then went to bed.” he told. I flashed an accusatory glance at him, which made him instantly defensive. “Hey! You know she's only into you, and I'd never encroach like that. Besides that woman sleeps way too much for me. I like to get out and do stuff, she's always in bed.” he defended. I only rolled my eyes at this, and sat in my recliner. “So how was the club?” he asked.
“Nothing special, two new girls, really new, they just kind of wiggled their asses, walked slowly around the pole and took off their clothes, nothing special.” I informed.
“Sad” he replied.
“Yeah.” I intoned.
“So how you been? It's been in a few weeks.” he asked.
“Good, just been thinking a lot.” I replied.
“About?” he queried.
Now I should say a few things about Hank. He's been my friend longer than I can remember. Always around when I needed an ear to beat. Unlike Jordy, he listens. He has an uncanny ability to know when I need to talk. He also has this unique ability to let me to talk through whatever it may be that's on my mind or what might be bothering me until I somehow resolve it myself. I'm always grateful for this. Oddly enough, I have no idea what he does for a living, nor where he spends most of his free time. Anytime I ask he remains vague. It seems he knows far more about me than I know of him and several years ago I just stopped trying to figure him out and accepted him as he is. Since then our conversations and my monologues seem to be much richer than they were before, when I was always inquiring about him.
"Nothing, just something that Helen had said a couple of days ago.” I told him.
“So what's the Lethargy Queen got you puzzling now?” he inquired as he leaned towards me intently listening.
“She said that everything's disposable, and it got me thinking.” I said.
“Yeah, disposable, that's deep, especially for her.” he quipped.
“But I was thinking about this and for once she's right, but that's not all of it.”
“Ok, so what then?”
“Everything's subject to change, and that's what makes it disposable.” I explained.
“Huh, meaning?”
“Ok, it's like this, when I was younger, I wanted to be the TV ads, I wanted to be like all those people on TV shows, they always knew the right things to say, they always had the right facial expression and everyone liked them, not necessarily on the show, but the people watching the show.” I spoke.
“Are we talking 90210?” he asked, with a sincerity which surprised me.
“That or any TV show from my youth.” I said before continuing “I wanted to be like that, I wanted people to like me, I wanted to be popular, I wanted to be known. Not famous, but maybe someone that people liked to be around, wanted, no needed, to be around.” I explained.
“Doesn't everyone feel that way?” he asked.
“I did, past tense, the problem was that I wasn't any of that, but I tried so hard to be. I was odd, spent a lot of time alone. Just different from other people. Things others caught easily, I struggled with. I was socially awkward too.”
“Abused children and teens do tend to be loners.” he stated.
“That's part of it, what I didn't see, didn't know was that I was disposable to others, I fed their needs, trying to be whatever they needed me to be, not knowing who I was.” I told him.
“Kids never know who they are, it's something we form throughout our lives, our collective experiences make us who we are.” he informed.
“But what if we find that we don't like who we've become?” my question.
“Change.” he said.
“See? There it is, everything is subject to change! Even us!” I became a bit excited at this thought.
“But did you change, or did how you relate to others change, do you think?” he asked.
“Both, definitely.”
“How so?” his face had a knowing look on it, as though he had been leading me to this all along, perhaps he had and I was all too eager to indulge him on the subject. “I began to hate myself, I blamed myself somehow for the abuse, the physical, the emotional. I even blamed myself for how others treated me. Then something happened, I realized that the people who I'd felt hurt me, had done so, because I was being who, or what they needed me to be, and that lent itself to being hurt. I was asking them to hurt me without knowing I'd done so.” I informed. He took a long moment to consider this as I lit a cigarette. Jordy, meanwhile, had been sitting on the floor listening intently to the conversation. His head moving back and forth between Hank and I as if he were watching a tennis match. Now stood and stomped out of the room with the lighting of the offensive tobacco product. “The fuck's wrong with him?” Hank asked. I told him how Jordy had been riding my ass for months about quitting and that in a drunken stupor I had promised to quit. I just kept using the old “I never said when.” excuse and it pissed Jordy off to no end. “Funny” Hank chuckled. Jordy came back into the room long enough to tell Hank that it wasn't funny and to send a string of obscenities long enough to make Andrew Dice Clay blush, at Hank. Hank waved Jordy off and told him to go play with himself, the adults were talking. “So was it something that happened that made you realize that everyone else wasn't necessarily the problem?” he asked returning to the conversation.
“Yeah, one thing in particular.” my response.
“Explain” he said.
“I felt empty, you know like there was no, no, me. Like I didn't have a clue who was in here.” I said pointing to my chest. To which he replied by nodding.
“I was staying at a friends house, and one night I got low, real low. Not sure if I hit bottom or not, but I was close. I remember sitting there, in the dark on this dirty wooden floor, with a chef's knife in my hand, in one corner of the room, crying my eyes out. I was going to do it. I held the knife to my wrist and thought 'This is it, it's over, I'm done'.” I said, now fighting back tears. I don't think I'd ever told anyone about this before. Hank being wiser than his years said nothing, he sat there looking at me. Doing the one thing I desperately needed someone to do at that moment. He listened, like he always did. “I remember thinking 'I can't take it anymore and no one will notice if I'm gone anyways.'.” I continued.
“What stopped you?” he interrupted.
“So funny.” I chuckled then continued. “This little voice in my head asked me what I was tired of, I, I didn't have an answer. I sat there and thought about that. I didn't know what I was tired of. Then somehow I realized that all the pain, all the sadness. Was somehow my fault. I let people treat me like shit. I let myself care, too much, about everyone else. I didn't care about myself.”
“Then?”
“Then I put the knife down, I swore to myself on that day that I'd never go there again, to never let myself got to the point where I was on that dark dirty wooden floor.”
“We both know how that turned out.” he said sarcastically.
“Let's not bring that up.” I said.
“Okay.” he replied.
“Thinking about it now, I realize that I changed that night. I was subject to change, still am.”
“What's changing now?” he asked, eyebrow raised.
“Something, deep down, I don't know,... just that,..... something. I'm not sure.” I said, not quite able to grasp what I meant. Like trying to catch smoke, I could see it, I knew what it was, but I couldn't grasp it. He smiled, a knowing smile, as if he knew what I was saying, but wouldn't say it for me. I had to say it. I had to find it on my own and he knew it. He always knew. “So what about this disposability thing?” he asked, seeming genuinely interested.
“It's all disposable, things, people, feelings, thoughts even me.” I said.
“Why do I feel Helen's planted this idea?” he quipped at me.
“She had something to do with it, introduced me to the thought.” I told.
“Knew it.” he said shaking his head.
“Why do you have such a problem with her?” I asked.
“She just puts ideas in your head, some of them unhealthy. Why do you keep her around? I think Jenny was much better for you than she is.” he told.
“You hated Jenny.” I reminded.
“I hated how obsessed with her you were.”
“She was new, once the newness wore off.”
“Hello Helen.” he said in disgust.
“Jenny was...” I trailed.
“Disposable?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“And Helen isn't?”
“She says she is.”
“Has it ever occurred to you that these women, specifically these types of women, the ones that you.” as he said this my head started to spin, and things became blurry. I didn't hear the rest of what he was saying, only pairs of words here and there “Come and go” I heard. “Stay around.” he said. “Grow bored” he was saying. I felt that I might pass out, which I considered strange as I hadn't been drinking. “Disposable” he said as I got up and ran to the bathroom and vomited violently. Jordy was sitting in the bathtub looking innocently at me. “Problem?” he asked. “I...uh.” was all I managed. I noticed that there was no water in the tub and Jordy was fully clothed. The dizziness was starting to subside as Hank appeared in the doorway. “You ok?” he asked.
“I'm fine.”
“You just threw up, you never throw up, not even when you're drunk.” Jordy chimed in.
“You got pale and started to sway in your seat, than ran in here, just wanted to make sure you were ok.” Hank told me.
“I dunno,” I slurred and noted to myself that my speech was slurred before continuing. “You were saying?”
Once again Hank started to speak, my head became fuzzy once more, black and white spots alternatingly filled my field of view, colors began to swirl around me. My vision began to fade and I heard Jordy yell “Oh no, catch him!”. I felt myself go limp, then a moment later I felt a throbbing at the back of my head. I reached my hand to my head and felt something warm and slick. Opening my eyes I examined my fingers and saw blood, a lot of it. I told myself that I had to get up, I couldn't see Hank or Jordy in the room. They must have gone for help. I tried to pull myself up into a sitting position, with no luck. The world swirled again, colors blending, like a kaleidoscope twisting and turning. Reality faded away to blackness.
Click Here for Part 5
No comments:
Post a Comment