Underwater

The bench in front of the wal-mart at 2am has a great view of nothing.

ad hoc collections of car dealerships, home audio storefronts, and nothing.

You can sit and see the miles of pavement roll into the bridge, and then the ocean. It's close enough to the river(s) that you can smell them instead of the exhaust you would smell if you sat there during the day.

Nothing out of the ordinary for a substantially intoxicated person to purchase 2 bottles of Aspirin and a bottle of water. The whole thing was very natural. The few cars that did pass me added a nice touch of "not being alone" or "maybe it's not that bad."

The shameless text messages that would have been my legacy, serve as a sign post of brilliant idiocy. Lizzy was right to slap the stupid out of my mouth when I finally walked back to the party.

"I was just being drunk and stupid, sorry guys. Mind if i sleep in your van tonight?"

hours later, I was underwater in the back of a volkswagon bus. like bobbing for apples and vomiting curdled milk at the same time. By the time I managed to walk up the stairs to tap on the window and ask for a ride to the hospital, my eyes were only so much useless water in my skull. By the time the cop pulled us over for speeding to get to the hospital, all I could hear was an embarrassing roar in the back of my mind.

Like every drop in the ocean was calling me a loser in unison.

"you've metabolized too much of it for charcoal, we're going to have to go with a laxative."

"sorry we already gave you the charcoal."

You don't know humble until you're shitting black into a free standing commode in an emergency room. wiping what feels like molasses and tastes like blood onto your poorly tied gown. You can't appreciate "oh man, I'm such a dumb-ass," until two of your best friends are holding your stupid fucking hands while an orderly wipes blood out of your eyes.

Stupid doesn't even begin to describe how I felt.

Dull is being catheterized because you can't wake up fast enough to pee in a cup. Boring is pissing all over yourself because the nurse couldn't get it in the right way because you were busy cussing her and fidgeting.

"I'm stupid and selfish." is all you can say when anyone wants to talk to you about anything. Unless you're begging for solid food or a cigarette.

"please don't baker act me." somehow translates into "baker act me," when you're mumbling with a tube up your nose and into your guts. Trying your best to look and sound like someone who didn't just get all Golden Corral on some Bayer.

I'd like to say that it was because I didn't feel appreciated by my girlfriend, or maybe because my dad bailed when I was a child. I don't know for sure, but I think it had more to do with the fact that I was bored.

Everything since then has been a lot more satisfying.

When I was at circles of Care I met a guy who ate a handful of razor blades because he'd watched as his girlfriend died from an Oxy OD.

He was positively buzzing with life. I left him my pack of cigarettes when I got out as a show of thanks for giving me some wisdom that I live by to this day.

"Don't eat razor blades."

I get HIV, part III.

"I'm so sorry to hear it.."

"you've broken our hearts D."

"We've been looking into it, you're going to be ok."

"..."

"Jesus, I guess I should get tested."


and they did. All of them, it was still a little blurry to me just how inbred my social circles were. From tip to tip, Brevard county was grasping desperately to ensure their safety. All under the pretense that my dick was far reaching enough to contaminate their drinking water.

Or the shared crotch of central Florida.

Nights grew longer. Daytime became the time that I either slept or crawled to the mall to piss my time away hawking costumes in a seasonal halloween store. Days were when Mary went to work at her clinic to afford us the ability to pack our faces with veritable cornucopia of narcotics and cheep beer. Nights were spent stealing coldpills from wal-mart. The Disbelievers were numerous in the beginning. As the months wore on and my health deteriorated from drug abuse and malnutrition, they became fewer and less vocal. Once confident, "he's a fucking liar," became, "Oh, that whole thing just sucks man." But the party raged on. Nightly raids of whatever party we could find turned up a treasure chest of stolen underwear, tales of our friend chris hitting another roommate's equally hideous girlfriend in the face with a full beer and the like. More and more people granted me a quiet, if subtly spiteful, veneration.

Sure I was never going to get laid again. But I'll be damned if I hadn't crafted a surreal new world for myself.

The last of the true detractors, a close friend while drunk, punched me in the face and gave me a big open mouth kiss while I was bleeding. A show of solidarity I suppose. Or maybe he thought I would cave and tell him I was bluffing.

I Didn't, but it was certainly romantic to feel an overwhelming affection for a person who I typically wanted to kill for washing our dishes in the bathtub and leaving them there. While wandering around the high school campus whacked out of my mind on goofballs and penny-whistles, I saw one of my old teachers.

"Hey, I heard somethi.."

"Yup!"

"Thats awful, what are you going to d."

"Nothing!"

and I ran as far and as fast I could away from campus. I was ready to die from complications from my illness. I wanted pneumonia, kidney failure, something, anything to take elevate me from what was rapidly becoming my Leper village of an apartment. The smell of rotten food and an honest to god landslide of garbage falling from the kitchen had set an atmosphere. Someone had kicked the front door off its hinges and paint-balled our living room. There were more strangers sleeping on the wrap-around couch than friends. One night I ate a handful of Dramamine with one of the last representatives of the apartment. 30 or so pumpkins filled our living room. I stood up to make my way to my room after saying good night. Then I fell face first over a pumpkin, the sound of my teeth clicking like an ice cube bouncing off the tile. I stood up, my friend trying to comfort me but unable to make the walk himself.

I fell many more times before I gave up.

Mary came to steal my roommates possessions the next day. Not thinking, I helped.

Then I got into another car, and fled laughing with my mercurial douche baggery.

I slept on a floor with Rhino and 4 other people in a 20 x 20 studio apartment on the beach. Cool beach air and a mason-jar filled with a C+C+C/Dramamine cocktail.

I hid from Mary. I hid from HIV. Not many came to visit. We wandered around. An old friend stabbed me with a blow-dart in the thigh. I got into an argument with one of the roommates.

so I left. I stood over my pumpkin friend and his girlfriend in what had been my room, from just before dawn til just after first light. I watched them sleep. I breathed to match their breathing. I sat and looked out the window over the somehow beautiful lawns of our crack village. I smelled rotten pumpkin all around, the pungent smell of a halloween aborted before the first doorbell was rung. I looked through my desk for my switchblade which someone stole from me in my week or so absence. I packed my backpack. I washed. My friends all woke up. They asked where I was going.

"North."

I rode north through truck-stops with people named Bernie, Clyde or Peacemaker.

regardless of that story.

when I came back, I had finally seen New York.

I wasn't dating Mary.

I didn't live in a hole with rotten pumpkins on the floor.

and

I didn't have HIV.

now all i had to do was convince everyone else.