Consolations of the Worst-Case Scenario
I remember talking you down from there once or twice. That might be the difference between you and me. You came down.
I’m not quite sure if I enjoy the sweaty-palm excitement of maybe almost falling. More likely, the culprit is complacency. A person can get used to almost anything. And after this much time, one might wonder if I didn’t prefer the heights.
It sure does seem a long way down, though.
So it happened on one of those days when we weren’t really together. Nowadays, that was almost every day. And the calculus of our expected fidelity was never quite calculated anyway. But there was a new glint of something in the reflection of the sun on one of those days. That’s the point, I mean. It only happened because it was one of those days.
I had drinks with a Bumble or Hinge named Jolene, and the first thing I thought to myself was that she was nothing like the song. Nonetheless, when she spoke, I found myself enjoying listening to her. Maybe the Ray LaMontagne version. That might actually be the perfect allusion, though I always hate when writers I like make allusions to songs I’ve never heard. It is, in fact, how I learned about Nina Simone when I was 15, so there’s that. Always exceptions.
Things rarely happen in the ether. Normally, things require situations. And though some of us might lead lives that beg them to occur, sometimes what happens is the product of a situation, and not begging. Situations. Not necessarily ones that one would choose, but that were still compelling enough to choose to live by. Especially if life was the predominate choice. It all depends upon your situation. And there are lots of situations.
Hard, heavy cathartic. Like everything it isn’t perfect. When you plane a board to make it smooth. Heavy music planes my jagged soul. My girlfriend can only hear noise. I hear angels trumpeting. Deflecting. Whispering. Ssshhh. They’re not shouting, “Do it.” They are under the breath saying, “Enough!”
I never knew anyone like her. She seemed a different person than she was. She said, “I’m sorry people think I’m pretty.” And she was pretty. But the beauty came with pain. She was abused. And even though she was massively intelligent, the majority only saw her face and her body. Which were incredible. But some of us looked deeper. I loved her, like I might never love again.
What a waste. What a tragedy this love was. Empty. Lost forever. Never to be recovered. She had stars in her eyes. But terror in her heart and weight in her feet. We were lost before we were found. We were at some party, and she didn’t say anything. And I knew it was the beginning of the ends of things.
When she looks up at me, she has this light in her eyes, both giddy and conspiratorial, like the look a friend would give you 30 minutes after you’ve both taken mescaline and the patterns on the carpet start turning into Aztec fractals.
I’ve never been stabbed. I assume it’s not fun. I accidentally cut my wrist once and exsanguiated and hallucinated and thought my ex-wife, the first person I had sex with, my mom, and her twin sister were ten feet from the foot of my bed and waiting to see me.
That night (that morning?) before the ambulance, the police were banging at my door and i answered and I kept repeating, “I didnʻt do anything.” “Your neighbor saw blood on the sidewalk.” He wrapped my arm in the welcome mat and spoke to the walkie talkie thing on his shoulder, said some numbers, and I fainted.
For the record, those plastic wrap non-handcuff handcuffs are remarkably effective. They don’t let you stand up for an entire 72-hour psych hold. Even when, especially when, you think you didn’t do anything. Say that out loud and see what happens.
I thought I wouldn’t make it without stealing. When I was walking down the hill. And I was thinking to myself that Dr. Dre was a genius. He rapped over a tuba. That doesn’t seem important. It’s literally seven notes over and over. Then he gets Eminem when he was still manic and high to say fuck god and scream and scream and lose his mind. And those seven notes make sense. Bah. Bah bah. Bah bah. Bah bah. (Whatʻs the difference between me and you? Go listen to it). But, I digress.
So, I’m walking down the hill. I feel fibrillation. The subtle vibrations of pre-seizure. My fingers cramp, my hamstrings buzz. They shake, but only I know they’re shaking. I think about Shakespeare and soliloquies, and I repeat in my mind just walk, just walk, just walk. My veins get pronounced. And walking takes a kind of tactile acuity with my toes. Fall and quickly stand. I turn my head behind the bus stop wall and vomit in the trash can quickly so no one notices. I clench, so I don’t shit my pants.
I walk across the parking lot to the gas station with a Baskin-Robbins, and I buy ice cream (pralines and cream) to try to look and smell normal. I buy a razor and shave in the porta-potty to look younger.
The auditory hallucinations become scary. They go from noises to songs to voices. I try to sleep when I finally close my eyes. Just try. The voices say worse things. They are equally unhelpful. Her voice plays on repeat.
This is fiction, but everything actually happened. I may have a few details wrong. I can tell you the color of the vomit. It was oily and almost yellow, and some of it came out of my nose. Its viscosity made me consider my condition. Opaque mucous means slow down, but stop at your discretion. Green-yellow is the rot on a scab. Be aware of it. Take action if it turns black.
You don’t know me like I was. The me when I was corporate. It’s why I was always welcome and always rehired through my myriad proclivities. You never understood my value, and it’s why you wrongfully think that I do not have any, that I have no ambition. I am loyal. I am political. I know how to get what I want. In that world, I only knew resilience and survival. I ate people I didn’t like or who I thought were unhelpful. I would sabotage your metaphorical bungee cord and return your smile when you jumped. I’m much, much softer now, but there are still teeth in my mouth and bile in my gut.
I’m loathe to admit when I’m wrong. Especially when I’m wrong. I only used to ever see four in the morning from the wrong side. The sunrise is just as beautiful with heavy eyelids and a racing mind. Benign reflections and genuflection come easier. Sleep is easier.
For thirty years my mantra has been furtive pleas complaining of the difficulties of sleep. Endless nights of late-night television and Netflix. And when I say nights I mean years, mean life. I don’t make it to the first commercial now.
One of my favorite lines by one of my favorite writers, Gerard Manley Hopkins speaks eloquently of my recent epiphany. I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree bitter would have me taste, my taste was me.
I’ll encapsulate for those uninterested in poetic vivisection, i.e., most. Those sleepless night you blame on the Universe? You only need look in the mirror.