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you say times they've changed, i say yes i know but some beautiful things remain
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| | Current Music: | "One Marathon" by Reverie Sound Revue | | Subject: | A Letter to Medeina | | Time: | 02:41 pm | | Current Mood: | sedated |
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| Dear Medeina,
You have been in my thoughts constantly since we last saw each other, while I was at graduation and thereafter. Leaving Group 8 was bittersweet. I feel confident that I had absorbed all of the wisdom that I could from Aspen and that I was ready to go, and there was no one who I would have preferred to do my goodbye group. Still, it saddened me greatly that I didn’t get to spend more time with you, and witness the evolution of the group following the revelations of the preceding week. I mulled things over – or, rather, ruminated obsessively – and cycled through my coexisting frustration and joy with no initial resolution. But as I’ve looked back on my stay at Aspen, I find seemingly indelible power and meaning in moments and challenges that I considered arbitrary or insignificant at the time. I’m trying focus less on my ambivalence and more on those lessons that I can carry with me anywhere. Also, I have faith that you and I can keep in touch and hopefully reunite at some point in the future, next time we’re both in the Northeast, or maybe when I find myself casually vacationing in the bustling metropolis of Loa. Whether that’s weeks from now or years away, I’m so grateful for all that you helped me to discover, and how you shaped my experience at Aspen. It changed me in ways both subtle and dramatic that I continue to unearth.
Graduation was painful but also rewarding, just like the rest of the program. My final two weeks at Aspen were easily the most agonizing of my life. I think the greatest overarching challenge for me at Aspen was developing honesty with myself and those around me, and once I did so and began to look at the events that have caused so much damage in my life, I was inundated with all of the grief and shame that I had subjugated for years. Without any defenses or distractions for the first time, all I could do was wallow in that pain. That was a totally necessary step, and the wilderness was the only place where I could do it fully. Despite my vast, useless knowledge of esoteric diction, it’s impossible to explain to anyone how significant that stage was for me, that I actually miss hiking with hippie pseudo-shrinks in the high desert of Utah because it was the realest I have ever allowed myself to be. I’ve made an effort to continue that trend of sincerity and integrity, but I think despite my best attempts, an element of it disappeared as soon as my parents arrived, simply because neither of them respond to assertive, direct communication. My mother’s denial and delusion surrounding both her narcissism and prescription drug addiction runs so deep that her presence immediately elicits anger and sadness in me. My anger was exacerbated by the fact that my parents had failed to find any aftercare program for me. It was awkward to spend time with my parents, who were together for the first time in two years; the atmosphere was of the same stilted civility as their marriage, and it was clear neither of them were comfortable being emotionally accessible in front of one another. I would have preferred to just stay in G-8 for another week and then returned home. I hope my parents benefited from the experience, but I’m not holding my breath.
I was livid when I discovered that there was no aftercare plan for me, as that was the sole expectation that I had expected my parents to fulfill. I returned to Portland with my mother after graduation with no idea how long I would be there, where I would spend the rest of the summer, or if I would be attending Vassar in the fall. My return to the real world proved anticlimactic. My friends, while supportive, just couldn’t fully comprehend the emotional space I was in; after I had taken a long bath, the idea of spending a day at the spa as I had planned just didn’t appeal to me anymore; even cigarettes didn’t scratch the same itch they once had, although I continued smoking out of habit. The first time I went to my neighborhood Starbucks, I was so overwhelmed by the traffic and chaos of the world that I vomited up my iced venti sugarfree vanilla nonfat latte in the bathroom. For the first few days, I just walked around in the woods surrounding my house, smoking and listening to music. Before too long, though, I ventured to REI and bought myself a gorgeous black Arc’Teryx extended trip pack. After that milestone, I hit Saks Fifth Avenue, bought several hundred dollars in designer denim and a Burberry blazer, and began my gradual assimilation back into society. My mother continued to look for another treatment program, which was challenging because, as it was explained to me, they had somewhat exhausted the rehab fund on Aspen and also because none of the adolescent programs were a good fit for me, and none of the adult programs would take a seventeen-year-old. After several fruitless leads, she found a program in Bowling Green, Kentucky, called the Bridge to Recovery, which specialized in recovery from codependency. It was affordable, had resources for chemical dependency and sexual addiction treatment, and would take me despite my age. A few days later, I was on the redeye to Nashville with a drawling stewardess who welcomed me onto the plane that she had christened “Carol’s Cozy Cabin.” I was unprepared for this degree of alliterative quaintness and immediately developed a deep loathing for the American South.
To my surprise, what my mother described as “the lowbrow Betty Ford of the Appalachian Mountains” seemed like an ideal fit upon my arrival four days ago. Rather than a traditional cut-and-dry twelve-step approach, the Bridge focuses on healing the underlying shame that causes compulsive behaviors through group therapy and education. I quickly warmed to the modality, and the group experience. Of course, it didn’t take long for my Higher Power to bitchslap me with a not-so-gentle reminder of my vulnerability, which arrived disguised as a gay Abercrombie & Fitch model-cum-raging alcoholic named Michael Martini – his given name – who was assigned to be my roommate. On my first night, clearly sympathetic to my admission that I was a sex addict, he made an elegant pass at me (“So, do you suck dick?”) and I, predictably, took the bait. It required five minutes of thinking about how my past sexual relationships had tended to be dysfunctional, to say the least, before I decided that doing so was probably a mistake. It took another two days of floundering in ineffable shame before I realized that I was undermining any chance I might have had at recovery by allowing an unhealthy, codependent relationship to take place. It was evident that Michael was hardly consumed by guilt; I quickly discovered that he was sleeping with the only other homosexual in Kentucky in the church bathroom during our evening Narcotics Anonymous meeting. I had believed with precious naïveté that the level of depravity to which I had grown accustomed was merely a symptom of my madcap Manhattan lifestyle and was thus caught off guard by the charming epiphany that debauchery follows me everywhere and that fact had, yet again, proven to be spectacularly stranger than fiction.
And so my integrity got the better of me. I confessed to the program director that I was developing a relationship that was perhaps a wee bit codependent. She agreed with my assessment. I left her office feeling liberated and proud for maintaining my integrity in this situation. For me, it was the first real test of my newly developed sense of authenticity, and watching how it prevailed whereas the old Sam would have continued along the fucking-the-Abercrombie-model-at-rehab trail was empowering. Wow, I thought, this honesty and integrity stuff really pays off! Several hours later, I was – with impeccable attention to Southern hospitality and etiquette – encouraged to leave the Bridge to Recovery, which, it seemed, did not possess the resources for an individual with an active addiction like mine. Initially, I was pissed, but I got over it. As I write you now I’m en route to a program in New Orleans called River Oaks to which I was referred by the staff at the Bridge, who said it is the country’s top treatment program for sexual addictions. At this point, I feel weary and apathetic; it’s been a damn long summer already, and it’s still July. Whatever life throws at me, I’m willing to take it as best I can, but I’d somewhat prefer if “it” were a lengthy vacation on a sprawling estate in the Hamptons, or maybe a tour of the Mediterranean by yacht. Seclusion in Gstaad, perhaps?
But, of course, my vacation fantasies are neither here nor there. Ultimately, I’m still committed to doing the work, but I think some of the most valuable work will just be in living my life, going to 12-step meetings, spending time with people I love, and generally getting into the swing of things. I’ve always found catharsis in that, even when I haven’t been in recovery. And I think more than anything, when I stop to feel it, every molecule in my body aches in loneliness and yearning for a connection with someone, anything that feels real. All my life, I’ve been so blessed as to encounter people who consistently dazzle me with their kindness and strength and knowledge and beauty – and then I leave them in the lurch as I’m shuffled to a new school, city, program, without ever feeling like I’ve shared enough of myself to justify the gifts that they’ve given me. So few of my relationships, it seems, are characterized by reciprocity, and I’m saddened greatly by that observation, by my inability to intuit when I should contribute, rather than just collecting the pearls that my loved ones leave as they travel through my life. Maybe I just can’t accept that all good things must ultimately come to an end; serenity has never been my forte. I miss you terribly, Medeina. I’m eager to hear about the work that you have been doing at Aspen, how you’ve been spending your off-shifts, which books (besides, obviously, my life story) have resonated with you lately. Whatever your latest challenge may be, I have unwavering faith that you’re approaching it with the same potency and grace that I witnessed at Aspen. First, it surprised me, but then it imbued itself into me as a reminder of what I should strive for in my communication with those in my life. It continues to remind me, every day.
And so I remain
your glib future dance-party enthusiast
thinking of you when the stars begin
to constellate across the night sky,
with love,
Sam | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment   |
| | Current Music: | "Just A Thought" by Gnarls Barkley | | Subject: | Lately | | Time: | 04:37 am | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/sad.gif) numb |
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| I woke up in the hospital with a feeding tube in my mouth and my arms strapped down. I was so thirsty. I could taste the flaking crust of blood and skin around my mouth.
They finally released me from Mt. Sinai after about four hours. That was at about five o'clock yesterday, Tuesday afternoon. NOw it's Wednesday morning at four o'clock. My father had to cancel his trip to be the keynote speaker at some event. I don't know what.
I still don't have a lot of information from that night, Monday night. I know that I drnak a litle, two Smirnoff Ices, but that's like breakfast. I almost remember taking one or two tokes off of a spindly little joint on a friends' balcony. I know that I lost my new $2700 MacBook Pro and took somewhere in the neighborhood of 11.0 mg of Xanax (alprazolam). The maximum dosage is 2.0 mg. Fatalities usually start at 4.0mg.
I know that I left at friend's house at 9 PM and went to Central Park. I don't remember much after that. Who I saw, what happened. Anything. What I've pieced together from various narratives is that at some point, around three o'clock in the morning, I called Jamie completely incoherent. Ultimately, my phone ended up in the hands of a homeless guy, named Lou, who told Jamie to come to 90th and Madison to get my phone. Jamie went and found this guy, who told him that I was passed out under a bench somewhere along Fifth Avenue, along the park. They finally found me curled around a tree on 67th and Fifth, drooling and caked in blood. Jamie got me home, and my dad took me to Mt. Sinai, where I woke up about eight hours later. Apparently my father and I went to dinner and watched some TV, but I don't remember. I think maybe I was in shock.
So then I woke up at 3 AM this morning, thinking that I'd just had the worst dream ever, and then I saw that the base of my bed was soaked with blood, so I got up and looked in the morning. Part of the flesh is missing from my toe, and it's still covered in dried blood and dirt, so it's really hard to walk. TCuts on my right arm, and the whole thing aches. It's not really worth mentioning that I ripped my $255 Paper Denim & Cloth jeans, but I'll say it anyway. There are bruises on my face. A bloody one on my cheek and a scrape that runs from my nose to my chin, and my knee is caked in blood. I can't take a shower yet because I know how bad it's going to hurt to wash everything out of the injuries. God knows I can't go outside.
I still don't know very much about what happened. I can't get ahold of the last person I was with. I"m trying to take personal responsibility for the entire thing, because it's my fault, but it's a pretty major onus to bear. Something has to change, fundamentally, in my life. My psychopharmacology is a mess. My bedroom looks like a pharmacy; it's littered with prescription bottles. I genuinely don't know what to do. And my discharge from Mt. Sinai is conditional, because I have a history of suicide, so this looks like another attempt. Honestly, at this point, I don't even know if it was.
I'm so ashamed. I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry.
Please, call me or text me or write me an email. Leave me a message. I'm so scared of myself right now. | | comments: 9 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | "Crash and Burn Girl" by Robyn | | Subject: | Dirty Pop | | Time: | 02:13 am |
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| I love pop music. I really, really do. And I am currently listening to some of the best pop music... ever. Period.
I want to encourage everyone currently reading this to buy, steal, download, or otherwise access Robyn's self-titled album from 2005. Standout tracks include "Handle Me," "Konichiwa Bitches," "Bum Like You," "Eclipse," and of course, "Be Mine."
Said the gramophone declared "Be Mine" their favorite song of 2005:
So what is this song? Besides a rainshower, a sunshower? What is it, besides a chance to get rainsoaked on the street and then to walk into the park? In the park everything will be too green, with flowercolour diluted by the rain and by tears. But it'll be wide and open, with lawns and strips of asphalt for you to run along, with soil and sky and space for your whipping feelings. What is it besides that? It's astonishing and complicated emotions - it's the triumph of acknowledging your own sorrow, an affirmation of sure feeling. In that way it's Dylanesque, Joyce-like: it's subtle and messily real, and Robyn makes it feel so easy to realise. And what else? What else is this song? It's a pop song - yes, for dancing and cheering, with zips and pows, with cellos that stab and whirl til the park's right here in the club, in your room, and there's space for feeling everywhere.
Robyn beat out the Strokes, Broken Social Scene, Sufjan Stevens, Wolf Parade, MIA, Andrew Bird, Stars, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Sigur Ros, Okkervil River, Fiery Furnaces, Damian Marley, and Jose Gonzalez, if any musc snobs are counting. Also, Pitchfork uber-pretentiously called her "one of the best things that happened to music this year" and compared her to Kate Bush.
Why does everyone hate pop music so much? It's the most spectacularly accessible vehicle for emotion imaginable; its power is in its populism. Emotions that are entirely abstract to the listener remain abstract in music, rather than being reified in the visceral punch of rock or the whirling clauses of rap.
Or maybe I like pop music, especially the sort that Robyn makes, because I aspire to follow in its illustrious footsteps. Like me, pop is glib, injured, exuberant, and stoically self-isolating in an attempt to take a fundamental pain and turn it into something beautiful. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | "Captain" by Kasey Chambers | | Subject: | Anew | | Time: | 01:36 pm | | Current Mood: | artistic |
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| Accepted at NYU (Gallatin), Sarah Lawrence, and Vassar. Wait-listed at Swarthmore. Rejected at Yale and Princeton.
Words of wisdom?
I think I'm going to be starting a new journal, that I may actually update with some regularity. Stay tuned for the link. | | comments: 9 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | " Just Like A Pill" by Pink | | Subject: | Yesteryear | | Time: | 08:40 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/blah.gif) listless |
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| I found a very maudlin poem that I wrote when I was thirteen and I felt like sharing it with the group.
Digging Up the Metaphor
9/3/2002
I read somewhere that it takes three years
to stop missing someone, but
there is no way that can be true.
The people who matter
leave a void that has to be filled with
drugs money things booze sex
and this ache, this loneliness
is like a hole in a window
justifying itself in a dusty baseball
strumming across a creaky floor
and Saran wrap stuck messily, wavering
in a wind that saps and churns warmth
until it becomes cold.
I want to be lost and found,
to lose and find salvation, in cigarettes
because I want to want something
besides him. I want to drown myself in little
pills that impersonate desire. I want
to go back to loneliness, to
lying in bed watching sad movies
burning incense to make my eyes water and
then surprising myself with tears
that I can't blame on smoke and chemicals.
I want to run upstairs and take a chill pill
and another and another and another and another
until I fade into a world where I
don't choke on I don't-wanna-say and
I don't feel blue all the time.
My psychiatrists tell me, among other
pearls, that I am discovering my
sexuality and I don't need to know, that
I can know that I don't know and it's okay.
I want to believe her but I know she's wrong.
Sometimes they call me brilliant but I am still
I am a thirteen year old boy with a
thirteen year old heart, and thirteen year old
hands. I want to know everything so
I never have to fear the sheen of zippers
or the sweaty palms of handshakes alluding
to memories I never wanted to keep.
I want to feel the pure joy of an orgasm
with someone I love. I want to know
something else might make me happy someday.
Somewhere in the rubble, a metaphor
buried itself in the sand. I will
sail away to the Galapagos Islands.
I will be a pirate with a parrot who
squawks on my shoulder, and I will dig
for treasure, stripping away the years.
But see I don't know what this is
a metaphor for, which is why I keep digging
see these are islands and I'm here
on the mainland and I do not want
I do not want to be a captain.
If you're snooping here, you can expect to see me in the general vicinity of Lincoln High School at least once sometime next week. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | "Samson" by Regina Spektor | | Time: | 12:13 am | | Current Mood: | sad |
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| | I am so scared to be alone. | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | "Still Light" by the Knife | | Subject: | Spark | | Time: | 02:24 am | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/thinking.gif) nostalgic |
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| Jericho holds his head beneath the faucet, shaking out the tepid water that percolates through his mop of maroon hair. The formerly white sink is rimmed with red like an underslept eye and his henley, the worn ivory of porcelain veneers, is pocked with smudges of fuchsia dye. He turns the spigot and pestles his hair with a towel, looking at me earnestly.
What do you think, he asks, spitting pink.
At eleven, Jericho had been ingenuous, with ash brown hair overdue for a haircut framing his round head. Two years had added several inches of height to his rangy frame and indented the oviform circumference of his face with haughty cheekbones and a sharp jawline, I want to tell him that he’ll always be striking, that the color of his hair is just an insignificant cog in the machine of his beauty.
You look like shit, I say with a wry smile.
A wounded expression dances into his eyes, then quickly away.
You’re such a dick, he says, whipping me lightly with the dye-stained towel. He smiles, too.
Jericho and I share a locker and five out of six classes. He is a celebrity within the context of our middle school, pulling at his polo to expose the impasse of gooseflesh between his pelvis and navel and batting his eyes coquettishly to the click-click-click of imaginary paparazzi. In the dance recitals twice a year, he always finds a way to usurp center stage, his temples smeared with violent eyeliner fingerprints, waving to a multitude of adoring fans. I am at the forefront of the throng.
He rarely shares the spotlight. So when he pushes me up hard against the brick wall behind school and clasps my wrists in his spindly hands, the air reeks of significance. The security camera swivels in a mechanic waltz above us, and I am as much the star as he is. All I can see is the tooth that he chipped on a bottle of wine when he was twelve, its jagged edge displaced in his sheepish smile.
And he kisses me, and it is nothing like the tentative pecks in clandestine games of spin-the-bottle, nor the touch of that lithe blond boy from Texas the past summer. It is strange and soft and wet, and I keep my eyes open and stare at his ear, like I do at the optometrist when I set my chin on the cold metal plate and the man says Look at my ear and a machine blows startling puffs of air at my frantic iris.
My hands grope at the air in senseless cartwheels until Jericho grabs them and intertwines his fingers in mine. Initially, the gesture feels alien. I only hold his hand sometimes, when I think nobody can see us: on the bus, digits locked underneath my backpack, or in the dim security of a movie theater, his palm clammy from clutching the cup of soda.
I think privately that he looks like Jesus, radiating light from the epic expanse of lucent skin that keeps his insides from spilling out and leading me to salvation with his almond eyes, the darling-how-could-you-do-this-to-me eyes that spill with tragedy at the end of sad films. But I look at him and stick my tongue out, say, Sink or swim faggot, even though I’m afraid he’s sickened by my pretensions of impassivity. I want to tell him that after he falls asleep, I try to memorize his freckles and hairs so I can map the constellations across his forearms and calves like glow-in-the-dark stars on childhood wallpaper.
Apathy tempts me, enticing in its safety.
On the corner of Fourth and Main, a man with dirt on his face asks if we can spare a little change. I sneer, True change comes from within, with the same casual derision as always, but Jericho fingers his faded denim thigh hesitantly, then fishes out a handful of pennies and nickels. His pockets always jingle and snap with coins, occasionally the weary face of George Washington. Silent capitulations of poverty quiver at exposure: the strips of cardboard glued to the sole of his sneaker to keep his socks from colliding with the dirty ground; the faded reduced-fare bus pass courtesy of the school office; and vague allusions to the long-delayed check from the car accident that left his mother’s coupe defeated and bruised, gazing with demure shame from two shattered headlights.
Interstate 405 corkscrews toward his house, intersecting dilapidated houses and husks of industrial headquarters. Drunks amble away into the night. I step heavily on the crumbling slabs of sidewalk but Jericho walks on water, floating toward the peeling paint in strides that match the cadence of the power plant’s electric hum. Christmas lights blink perennially, and the interior doorways lack doors like missing teeth in a grotesque maw. His little brother whoops and shakes the furniture, a smudge of grease smeared across his forehead: war paint.
I reach for his hand. I want to see where you rest your head at night, I whisper.
The ceiling is low, with a round hole above his bed through which I can see his mother’s bedroom and the rafters above, cotton-candy insulation the color of exposed gums at the dentist. Cracks extend in haphazard veins from the circumference of the gap. A clump of cigarette ash sails through it like a firefighter sliding down an invisible pole and sizzles on the sagging mattress.
Squinting, he squeezes a thread of goo from a tube of hemorrhoid treatment and rubs it into the purple bags that droop beneath his eyes.
It makes them fade, he says.
I study my reflection in the mirror, still tan from summer and unmarred by pubescent maculae. And Jericho lies atop me, rests his head in the hollow of my chest, and I inhale that familiar organic smell of Dial antibacterial soap and the rain. Traffic drowns the heartbeat in my ears. His kisses are sloppy and I learn how to breathe through my nose, suffocated by the weight of his tongue.
With arachnoidal curiosity his long fingers explore my skin, waiting to pounce. Venturing outdoors on summer afternoons as a child, I had to souse myself in insect repellant lest I return swollen with mosquito bites. My mother would smile and squat down to my level, dusting the wounds with aloe vera.
They love you, Sam, she said, her touch soothing the protruding red lumps. Your blood tastes sweet to them. When Jericho and I are middle-aged, will we apply our own remedies to the abrasions of our children? To one another?
Our idle pencils doodle poetry on algebra worksheets and in the margins of young-adult paperbacks. My parents are going to Washington next week, I scribble. I want to adhere to your skin like dust to the sunlight. Love is like bumper cars, he responds. An incongruous rose in a field of clover, I counter. No, he writes, it’s like swimming. It’s better if you aren’t afraid to get wet.
The sickly heat of the September sun stiffens the grass in the fields around my house. After school, we dash there anyway, ignoring the prickling blades through our clothes. Lying belly-up in the dirt, muscles clenched, he grabs my hands and pulls me close. One. Two. Three. And we twist and turn over one another, gaining momentum as we churn down the face of the hill, and I am yelping and the sky and the earth are rotating in a merry-go-round above me, and we finally land near the bottom, face to face, too exhilarated to wipe the dirt from our jeans or regain balance.
What do you fantasize about? he asks softly, tucking an errant lock of hair behind my ear.
I close my eyes and think about fey boys twirling in endless ethereal ballet. Their allure has passed; Jericho has crippled them with his intoxicating, listless life.
You, I say, uprooting the filemot strands of grass. Caesura. We lock eyes.
The silence deafens in my empty house and we stand motionless for a moment in the foyer, sneakered feet rooted by indecision. He follows me down the stairs to my bedroom and, at the doorway, cautiously rests one warm hand in the small of my back, the other in my hair.
In a shoebox buried under a pyramid of laundry, I stashed cabernet sauvignon and two glasses. I wrestle with the cork before Jericho, snickering, pulls it easily from the mouth of the bottle. Sitting crosslegged on the bed, I pour sloppily and slosh a few drops of wine over the rim of the glass and leave a stain on the duvet in the sweet ferment of a nosebleed.
Tell me about your father, I say.
Jericho tenses, hunching slightly and avoiding eye contact.
He’s a racecar driver. I don’t see him much. Just on holidays, sometimes, if he’s in town.
Together, we spangle the surfaces of my bedroom with unlit tea candles. On my bedside table sits an enormous cylindrical candle the smalt of a fresh bruise. Jericho’s fingers tremble as he caresses the wick with a lit match, but his hands are calloused like those of an adult fisherman. The aroma of rosemary and bergamot whiffles through me as I scroll with increasing hysteria through the music on my laptop, trying to find the perfect song.
I don’t know what to play, I whimper.
Jericho stretches his arms open.
Then don’t play anything at all, he says.
His touch is tender and tentative, then forceful and knowing. And my heart, that oft-personified thing that when stripped of context and symbolism is nothing more than an organ surging fluid to my capillaries, doesn’t race or slow or do anything it’s supposed to. It flutters. Like the lashes encircling a blinking eye.
And then we are Vishnu, deified in the endless splay of our limbs. And it hurts.
Afterward, lolling in the carnage of assaulted pillows and knotted sheets, I envision the farrago of juvenile vestiges stashed under the bed: creased childhood photographs, the shredded remains of my baby blue security blanket, protuberant-bellied teddy bear upon whose ear I once gnawed, and a Mead composition book dripping with proclamations of love and mawkish poetry. And just as the tendrils of ruefulness snake around me, he endears me with his own inexperience; says something stupid like, You have no idea how lucky we are to have found each other.
Through the window, the night smears the verdant canopy of trees with azure. We missed the sunset.
His toes poke mournfully from the foot of the bed, warmed by the hiss of the space heater. The open window toys with the flicker of the blue candle. My nerve endings buzz, honored that his hands grace my cheek in their steady tipetoe across my eyelids. Transfixed in the warmth of the moment, I can feel the juvenility of my body electrified in kinetic wisdom: knees skinned, nails bitten, toes stubbed. And I can sense myself voluntarily whirling away from construction paper and the familiar glow of nightlights, loosening my grip on the peppermint-candy promise of an impending Christmas, one that will never come again. I do not want it anymore.
Then me, nursing at the chalky sterility of a glass of tepid milk; the sparkle of clean silverware; the hum of C-SPAN left pontificating in the living room. My mother relays her conversation with Tipper Gore and describes in muted detail the dress she wore at the banquet. Someone in me screams, While you were away, I submerged my body in the sweat and spit of a waitress’ bastard son who I love with earnest desperation.
The weekdays hurtle forward, leaving Jericho and I in a furious game of catch-up. Time never knocks on the bathroom door. Instead, it passes us in a haze, second hands and minute hands exhausted in their indiscrimination.
We stand for hours, glued to the wall of a toilet stall in the boys’ bathroom. I trace the ellipse of his mouth with one hand and shape it with the other. Love leaves lust as its sultry spoor and Jericho, hot on the trail of the elusive prey, surrenders to the baseness of lightly slammed fists and the tremulous, stroking hyperventilation of almost-subordinated sexuality. On the rare afternoons when someone interrupts us by entering to urinate or wash their hands, his eyes flash and dart around in firecracker glances shooting into the dazzling skies on the fourth of July.
And I think, where will I fall – that place, when the sparks are all gone?
Tradition emerges in the delay to exhale until gushes of water erupt from a tap or the door softly swings shut. I release a sigh of relief, say for the nth time, We almost got busted. He kisses me on the mouth, maybe the nose, and says, We’re lucky.
Are you cool enough? he taunts me, clinging to the apex of a latticed fence. In one limber breath, he flips over the top, crunches in the grass with a satisfying thump. I grope for the top, flip, catch myself on a tangle of rusty wire, fall, feel air jolting from my windpipe. His face appears over me, contorted in fear. I am impaled on the vitelline scrub of grass.
I’m hemorrhaging, I laugh. He breaks into a grin, and grabs my arm. Shakes it.
In the hollowed field under the cold autumn sun, Jericho takes his clothes off. Streaked with light, he huddles, vulnerable in nudity that cannot be compromised. I study the flow of epidermis and the jutting of bones. His neck is prickled with burrs and his back judders in a celebration of scoliosis. I want to walk forever down the winding road of his spine, turned over to his jessant abdomen that gravitates toward the sky. And slowly, some insatiable need claws its way into the world. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | "These Are the Fables" by the New Pornographers | | Subject: | Hollywood, I'm the Glory | | Time: | 04:37 am | | Current Mood: | nostalgic |
|
| Brakes crunch, gravel flies
one slip of your high heel
precedes the zipped-lip ellipsis
then your lipsticked blond head
then the shattering of windshield.
Yesterday we were Herculean
twenty minutes later, we’re just okay.
Memories grow sticky in
kaleidoscopic summer heat:
the barren roads abraded by
drunken teenagers who sped,
then parked, the night before,
left used condoms and beer caps.
But we were the superstars,
passing all our classes and
selling triple platinum as we lay
stunned between blankets;
limp hands sprung to life, eager
to deify with tinfoil and straw.
Branded heretics and ignited,
head skewed at the pyre:
overcut white dust levitating like
finely ground dynamite.
Every hair prickling with feeble
anticipation. My tongue was useless,
discarded in my chapped mouth.
Pocketed twenties flickered
in the rank cacophony of glossy
mirrors and blackened spoons
and my mouth went numb and
all the stars went blue. And we were
the superstars, raped and insipid:
addicted to the allure of temptation,
but still wincing at the familiar burn
of bare feet on a white sand beach. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | "Unwind" by the Rosebuds | | Subject: | Survey Says | | Time: | 04:56 pm | | Current Mood: | contemplative |
|
| 1. name:
2. birthday:
3. place of residence:
4. what makes you happy:
5. what are you listening to now/have listened to last:
6. do you read my lj:
7. if you do, what is particularly good/bad about it:
8. an interesting fact about you:
9. are you in love/have a crush at the moment:
10. favorite place to be:
11. favorite lyric:
12. best time of the year:
RECOMMEND
1. a film:
2. a book:
3. a band, a song and an album:
PLUS
1. one thing you like about me:
2. two things you like about yourself:
3. put this in your lj so i can tell you what i think of you | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | "Scarecrow's Hat" by the Warmth | | Subject: | Drugs | | Time: | 04:13 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/smile.gif) satisfied |
|
| Psychedelics
5-MeO-DMT
2C-B
2C-I
Mescaline
LSD
Amanita muscaria
Psilocybe cubensis
Entactogens
MDA
MDMA [Ecstasy]
Dissociative hallucinogens
DXM
Ketamine [Special K]
Nitrous oxide
PCP
Salvia divinorum [Salvia]
Stimulants
Caffeine
Nicotine
Modafinil [ProVigil]
Sympathomimetic amines
Cocaine hydrochloride [coke]
Cocaine sulfate [crack]
Ephedrine
Methylphenidate [Ritalin]
Pseudoephedrine
Amphetamine [Adderall]
Dextroamphetamine [Dexedrine]
Methamphetamine [crystal]
Barbiturate/Benzodiazepines
Phenobarbitol [Luminal]
Diazepam [Valium]
Alprazolam [Xanax]
Clonazepam [Klonopin]
Lorazepam [Ativan]
Zolpidem [Ambien]
Methaqualone [Quaalude]
Opioids
Codeine
Dextropropoxyphene [Darvocet]
Heroin
Hydrocodone [Vicodin]
Oxycodone [OxyContin]
Tramadol [Ultracet]
Miscellaneous
Alcohol
THC [weed/hashish]
Alkyl nitrates [poppers]
I'm finished. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | "Hand On Your Heart" by Jose Gonzalez | | Subject: | Samuel (Again) | | Time: | 04:41 pm | | Current Mood: | accomplished |
|
| The horizon lassos your tender hips,
encircles the rueful V of protuberant
bone that juts from the calyx of your
underwear.
And we constellate, scattering
freckles that sprawl haphazard
across your sketchpad limbs
then the moon pinions your wan
wrists and, with one protracted digit,
tattoos its opalescing fingerprint
between your nose and lips.
Indents.
Stays.
Fabric clings in lazy beams shimmering
along the virile pottery of your torso
the shirt’s hasty decoupage succumbs
to the encroaching water.
It creeps; festers and gurgles
a weary tarantella, lurching to marinate
my sinewing legs, my discarded tongue.
And your pallor is luminous
stripped of the winded-breath mauve
that once bloomed in that same cheek.
The thirst, the thirst,
the thirst, you slur through
the maracas of gritted fillings, the thirst
is for the heft of body
the languid flow of moisture through cells;
transient as the dilated moment
when you inhaled the nape of my neck.
Can the impermanence of the physical
ever be transcended
like the imprint
of your shifting body when it promises
my gullible sheets it will fossilize in time;
like every other vestige of bygone days
the carbon copies of wayward lovers
whose skin we once traversed. | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | "Be Mine" by Robyn | | Subject: | Samuel | | Time: | 07:41 am | | Current Mood: | hopeful |
|
| Calyx, the Grecians christened
those twin teeth that jut from tender hips
stretching to taste the moon's umami;
halved halves of a rueful V
whose muted gymnastics charge
and remember. But nestled within
which moribund etymology did they
constellate the coruscating freckles
haphazard across your sprawled
sketchpad limbs – when did they
first pinion your wan wrists,
name the philtrum and, with
one protracted digit, tattoo
its opalescing spirals of a fingerprint
between your nose and lips?
It stuck, anyway. The name didn’t.
I know this virile pottery preceded
the decoupage of damp fabric,
fashioned in limber beams that shimmer
along your torso and sing in
the ethereal vibrato of radiator heat;
preceded the water that festers and
gurgles a weary tarantella
lurching in your wake before
marinating my sinewing legs and
discarded tongue. Paralyzed in
hemlock haze, the Hellenic scholars
neglected to lift their bristled
brushes and color you in vibrant hues;
they left your pallor identical to that
of every other twisting fey breath
who, radiant with incendiary life,
ebbs to languid breezes of pollinated air
then disintegrates in the alpenglow.
The thirst, you slur through the maracas
of gritted fillings, the thirst is
for the heft of body, for the
circulation of liquid to appendages;
transient as the moment in which
you inhaled the nape of my neck and
I was wondering if the impermanence
of the physical is ever transcended
as in the imprint of your shifting
body promising my gullible sheets
that it will fossilize in time,
like every other vestige of bygone eras,
carbon copies of bygone lovers
whose skin we once traversed. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | "Oregon, My Only True Friend" by the Physics of Meaning | | Subject: | Change | | Time: | 04:50 am | | Current Mood: | peaceful |
|
| How very glad I am that it's been over three months since I've written anything here.
Three months. It's been much longer. The density of change that's occured over the past three months startles even me. I think it would be callow to merely tick them off on a list - but appropriate, maybe. I've taken to making lists. I had underestimated the merit of structure.
When I had my first depressive episode in my early adolescence, I used to whine that I was held down by my surroundings, that it was impossible to move on until I had liberated myself from the bondage of familiarity. My mother told me that this urge was called "pulling a geo," as in "geographic." She said it was ultimately ineffective because the impetus for change had to emerge inside out, that it was a common error to believe that by altering one's circumstances one would be able to move on. I always privately disagreed with her. The allure of anywhere else outweighed any genuine recognition of my own fallacy.
I loved feeling as though I had changed after I moved to New York. My sensory experiences were incomparably different and I believed that those differences were reflected in my own personality. But it was affected, a disingenuous manifestation of my own yearning to believe that I could become someone other than who I inherently was with thousands of miles of distance from the places that connoted my previous identity. But something changed this year. Over these past three months. Something actually changed. I spent my first year here carrying all of the baggage that was left unresolved when I violently ripped myself from my life in Portland, spilling over with unwavering faith in the ability of New York and its miraculous grit to close my wounds. I wasn't courageous enough to mend them on my own.
And I mended myself, and I didn't even know it. I left with so much angst, addicted to narcotics, resenting my mother, still as isolated as I'd ever been. I never let go. But I did. It wasn't a conscious decision. It just happened.
Mom, I forgive you. Cocaine, I don't love you anymore. Loneliness, you are a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Last night at a party in a loft in Greenpoint where I drank Prosecco from a red plastic cup and held my lover's hand as he led me into the room, a beautiful girl named Cecilia patronized me shamelessly when I told her I was a writer. She had matriculated at Wellesley with the aspiration of becoming a journalist, she said, but in the real world, it's much harder than you'd think, but good luck, stick with it and I'm sure you'll find your calling. She stretched her vowels, motioned me close so she could speak directly in my ear. I felt the familiar light of anger flicker in my gut, and then die. Her boyfriend fed me the same condescending shit. Lover watched me interact, fascinated by the dynamic. I pulled my pack of cigarettes from my back pocket and lit one.
I was the youngest person there by more than a decade. I wanted to feel extraordinarily vulnerable. I think I did, for an instant.
And then Cecilia and her boyfriend and my don't-want-to-call-him-my-boyfriend-because-I-don't-know-what-he-is all leaned in closer to me and asked me for a cigarette, all of them at once. And I gave them all cigarettes, and I lit them all up with one flick of my lighter, and I didn't have any left - so I put my lighter inside the empty pack and set it on the table, and left it there.
I think maybe we all have to leave something behind, sometimes. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | "Love Love Love" by the Mountain Goats | | Subject: | This Year | | Time: | 11:59 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/shock.gif) distressed |
|
| It is my one-year anniversary with cocaine today. It has been 365 days since I last used. I wanted it to be perfect.
I spent all morning at a spa in Chelsea, Nickel. Manicure, pedicure, facial, cut and style. I went to Starbucks, had a vanilla latte. Didn't get it skim. Went to dinner and ate a lot of good food. And it didn't taste good, at all. I smoked two joints, and I didn't get high. Went to a pub with about twenty other people; I had two redheaded sluts and a beer. Alcohol didn't go down easy. I smoked more than a pack, and they tasted bitter and acrid, like the first cigarette I ever smoked. Nothing went as I planned. I went home early. I didn't want to see any of my friends.
This has been the most difficult and painful year of my life. I try and I try to get over it, feeling stupid because I shouldn't care as much as I do. I pretend that I don't think about it every single day. But cocaine was the best friend I ever had, a lover and a confidante, a life-affirming source of joy and passion and change. I cannot change the fact that I cared about it more than I have ever cared about anything else in my life, and staying clean this year has been almost impossible. I would do anything for a gram right now, even a line, half a line, a bump. The taste of it on my teeth and gums would be sufficient. But I won't, and I know I won't, and I know that I could and I won't, and that is what is so devastating: the knowledge that it is within my grasp and that I won't let it happen.
I have made it through this year, but I don't know if I can make it through another. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | "In Spite of All the Damage" by the Be Good Tanyas | | Subject: | ... | | Time: | 12:33 am | | Current Mood: | depressed |
|
| I know that as soon as it's over, I'll regret having sex, and that it won't make me feel fulfilled or happy, and I'll go home to my empty apartment and sleep, alone, before I wake up four hours later to go to environmental systems, theory of knowledge, french, history, calculus, english, theater, nonstop, no lunch, no cigarette break.
But I'm going to do it anyway. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | "Heartbeats" by Jose Gonzalez | | Subject: | Mount Saint Helens | | Time: | 12:30 am | | Current Mood: | indifferent |
|
| And so you implode; expelling lava
that drips down your chin to the
trail of hair that weaves its path
from your naval to your groin
and if your knobby hands speak
the poetry of lust in sign language
I will grope for them, wondering
if you are still breathing
if you are still breathing
if you are still breathing
so that I might be the luthier
to your songless viola
so that you might sing again
I know you don’t care for music
which affirms the euphony even more
for the core of the mountain
is crusted under gravel and
the footprints that we make
as we soil what was once perfect
in the search for something
more perfect than we are
and your pink lips form the alphabet
each syllable proving its purpose
and on the freeway our hair
is powerless to the wind and we’re
smiling and bronzed and
chasing the baseball to the smashed window
in the shattered greenhouse that
reveals the story of
the mountain that laid its shadow
in the dirt and the grass
that coughed its life in all its
hot, heavy glory
that created a trembling vibrato
and throbbed its way into
our bedroom, where we
exposed our vulnerabilities
and breathed, if only because we could. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | "These Trees Are For Resting" by Alan Singley | | Subject: | Music | | Time: | 01:13 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/wink.gif) weird |
|
| Step 1: Open your iTunes or other lesser MP3
player.
Step 2: Put all of your music on random.
Step 3: Write down the first ten songs it plays,
no matter how embarrassing.
1. "No One Will Ever Love You" by the Magnetic Fields
2. "Burn to Shine" by Ben Harper
3. "Neverevereverdid" by Architecture in Helsinki
4. "The Denial Twist" by the White Stripes
5. "What Happened" by Sublime
6. "Bankrupt on Selling" by Modest Mouse
7. "Love At First Sight" by Kylie Minogue
8. "Be" by Jessica Simpson
9. "On Your Wings" by Iron & Wine
10. "L.A." by Elliott Smith
I've outlined a novel. I want to finish it by the end of this year. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| The three worst things I’ve ever done occurred consecutively over the summer preceding my sophomore year of high school, when I was fourteen years old. They were associated with a man named Jon, a graduate student who I had met several months earlier.
I had emerged from the closet at the tender age of eleven, leaving my mother, a West Hills hausfrau who had left me with the nanny for the majority of my childhood, utterly baffled. Helpful as she tried to be, it was evident to her that mere acceptance would be an insufficient network of support, leading her to send me to therapy. The equally bewildered psychologist hemmed and hawed with me for a year or two, as I grew more comfortable with my identity. After insisting to my mother I was fine, really, and didn’t need psychiatric help at all, the doctor referred me to a group that was open from three to six on certain afternoons, a sort of makeshift rec center for “sexually ambiguous youth,” as my mother was apt to phrase it. I hesitantly agreed to go.
I was nervous as my mother pulled up in front of the building.
“You’re sure this isn’t going to be like an AA meeting, right?” I asked. “I don’t think my condition necessitates a twelve-step program.”
“Sweetheart, Mark said that it was a great resource for kids your age.“ My mother, in an effort to prove how quintessentially New Age and hip she was, insisted on referring to my therapist by his first name.
“There aren’t other gay people my age, Mom. I’m anomalous. If there was another confidently out-of-the-closet gay person in a fifty-mile radius, I can assure you that I would be otherwise occupied right now.”
She groaned and opened the passenger door and I hopped out.
“Have fun!” she yelled out the window as she drove away.
I felt the June air begin to slowly chafe my dignity as I walked through the open doorway into the main room, which consisted of a number of overstuffed chairs and battered couches, brightly colored paint splattered all over the walls in a travesty of art deco. I grimaced in spite of myself.
A man sat in an office chair at a makeshift podium near the door with a lined notebook in front of him, reading Sartre. Without looking at me, he said brightly, “Sign in, please.”
I filled out my first name and age, then painted a flamboyant signature. He looked up from his book and smiled at me for the first time. He had big Cheshire Cat eyes, an oval face with strong cheekbones, five o’clock shadow, and a firm grip as he shook my hand and said “Hi. I’m Jon.”
“I’m Sam,” I said softly.
“It’s nice to meet you, Sam. I take it this is your first time here?”
I nodded.
“Well, make yourself comfortable. There’s coffee in the kitchen. Do you drink coffee?”
“Not really,” I lied. Coffee, along with cigarettes, was one of my secret vices, which I dared not reveal for fear of being told that it would stunt my growth. I wanted to be at least six feet tall by the time I was through with adolescence.
“Too bad. I think I’ll have some, anyway,” Jon said.
He stood up and sauntered out of the room, leaving Nausea splayed on the floor. I picked it up and flipped through it until he returned with a paper cup.
“I love Sartre,” I said. He looked at me with surprise.
“No shit?”
“Yeah, I took a course on existentialism last year… he’s so brilliant.” I heard the words and felt stupid and pretentious.
“I’m with you,” Jon nodded. He paused. “What’s your name again?”
“Sam,” I repeated.
“Sam,” he said earnestly, as though he was sounding out the syllable. “Sam. It’s great to have someone else who reads around here.”
I grinned. “Thanks.”
Jon was twenty-six and studying psychology. He had grown up in rural Oregon and had never met his mother, but described his father as “my pillar of support… the one person who I could always rely on.” Jon wore cashmere sweaters and jewelry, and had the idle gait of someone who was inhaling the world, not just passing through it. He was cosmopolitan, effortlessly communicating the sort of savvy and class that I longed for, the charisma and strong sense of self. He was magnetic. I dropped by the club as often as I could, but my fascination with Jon spread, like tendrils of ivy creeping their way across every facet of my life.
Despite my best efforts, I was unable to eschew the weekly therapy sessions, which soon became Jon-centric as I struggled to articulate in my adolescent tongue the ways in which I admired him. The therapist, unable to pepper me with the usual teen-angst psychobabble, struggled to formulate new and challenging questions for me: “Do you believe that your immediate attraction to Jon is connected to a weak father figure when you were a child?” “Yes, but how did that make you feel?” One week, she pushed the right button.
“If Jon were interested,” she asked, “Would you have sex with him?”
I took a long moment to think about it.
“I’m not sure if I feel comfortable answering that,” I said softly. But I knew the answer. Although I had never gone all the way with a guy before – the idea tended to make all of the muscles in my lower body clench – I was no ingénue. And moreover, I knew that I could use my age as a gimmick to make myself even more appealing to Jon, exploiting the sort of doe-eyed candor that he told me he loved about me. Yet once I began thinking about it, I couldn’t stop. The idea of having sex with Jon overtook me, made it impossible for me to think about anything else. I knew that I had to get to know this man on a more personal level, beyond the dissection of Nabokov or comparing notes on indie film.
After several weeks of dropping not-so-subtle hints, Jon finally asked me if I wanted to go get a cup of coffee outside of the confines of the club. I breathlessly said yes.
We met at a Starbucks downtown in the early evening, just as the sun was beginning to set. He treated me to a caramel macchiato and bought himself a venti black coffee. It was a cold winter, and the red-and-white striped rugby shirt that I thought made me look like a candy cane offered little protection against the chill. But my drink was warm, and Jon’s arm slung casually around my shoulder made me feel even warmer. I lit a cigarette and we sat down on a bench, observing the bustle of Christmas shoppers and the whir of cars as they whizzed by us.
“I reread Lolita,” I said, wondering if he would get the hint.
“Yeah?” Jon said. “What did you think?”
“Well, I couldn’t stop wondering about Nabokov’s ability to inhabit the mind of a pedophile so accurately. It’s so uncanny. I mean, don’t you think that he must have also had some of Humbert Humbert’s character traits to be able to write so effectively about it?”
Jon thought about it for a moment.
“I don’t think it’s relevant, really,” he said slowly. “I mean, everyone has thoughts and feels urges, but they don’t necessarily act on them, which is what separates fiction from non-fiction. Manifesting your thoughts doesn’t validate the integrity of your writing, I don’t think. Agatha Christie never killed anyone, as far as we know, but that didn’t stop her from writing brilliant mysteries.”
“Yeah, but she must have been more focused with it than most people are,” I pushed. “I mean, that kind of focus.”
“But Sam, it doesn’t matter what you think about,” he said, gazing off into the city and sipping his coffee. “As soon as it becomes your story, it’s fiction. Truth or not.”
Jon craned his neck, looking across the street.
“What are you looking at?” I asked.
“I think I know that guy,” he said.
“Who is he?”
But before Jon could respond, the man in question jogged across the street, waving cheerily at Jon.
“Jon, hi!” he said.
“Hey, Peter,” Jon said, getting up to hug him. “How have you been?”
“Not bad, not bad,” the man said, looking directly at me. He was tall and slim, with a sallow complexion and dark eyes. I held his gaze. “Who’s this?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I should have introduced you. Peter, this is my friend Sam.”
“Hey,” I said, trying to be casual.
He shook my hand. There was a long pause in which I felt like I should have said something. Finally, Jon cut in.
“Well, we were just on our way to go do some shopping.”
“Right, right,” Peter said. “It was good seeing you, Jon. Give me a call sometime.”
Jon got up and began walking in the opposite direction, and I followed suit. As soon as we were out of earshot, I asked, “Who was that guy?”
“An ex.”
“Oh.” I felt rude for asking. After a moment, Jon laughed.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Jon said. “Just, I think he thought that we were together. Man, he’s going to give me some shit when I see him next.” He laughed again.
“Really? Heh,” I laughed weakly.
We continued further downtown, window-shopping. I fell in love with a pair of Dolce & Gabbana loafers that had piqued my new aesthetic interest. Jon clicked around on his PDA while I placed them on hold.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
His stylus danced across the screen.
“I have a phone meeting in an hour,” he replied.
“With who?”
“Some people from P-FLAG.”
I immediately felt guilty for wanting to manipulate Jon. All signs indicated that he was a paragon of virtue, an advocate for the gay community, and I was trying to figure out how to get him to commit statutory rape. I had to back off.
After delicately putting on a show of checking the time and realizing that I was late for a fictional appointment, I dashed out of Saks Fifth Avenue, leaving Jon looking nonplussed, his stubbly face blurring into the stacks of taupe cashmere sweaters.
In the following days, I was unable to rid Jon from my consciousness. I decided that the safest option would be to stay away from him, and hopefully the temptation would subside. It was silly, I told myself, to even imagine that I had a chance with Jon; at fourteen, I was gawky and half-formed, preternaturally mature but still a child in so many ways. I steered clear of the club. I kept expecting Jon to call me, but although I checked my messages fervently, he didn’t. At first I felt stupid for expecting to ever hear from him again, and then I began to feel irate, blaming his insensitivity and callousness. I genuinely hoped to never hear from him again, and eventually managed to put him out of my mind for good.
A few months later, I was stumbling to the bus stop late one evening after sharing a bottle of stolen red wine with some friends. A cigarette dangling limply from my mouth, I searched my pockets for matches and then scanned the empty street for a fellow smoker, to no avail. Luckily, there was a man leaving Starbucks, clutching a latte and fumbling with his wallet.
“Excuse me, do you have a light?” I asked in my sweetest please-help-me voice.
He turned toward me.
“Sam?” he said. It was Jon.
In my head, I said “What a strange coincidence, Jon. Fate has a funny way of bringing people together under the most unlikely circumstances. You know, my favorite bar is just down the block. Would you like to go have a drink with me?”
In actuality, I said “Shit.”
“What are you doing here?” he asked, pulling me into an enormous warm hug.
“I’m on my way to the bus stop,” I mumbled into his shoulder, inhaling his scent. It was warm, masculine.
“Well, I’ve got my car,” he said, motioning vaguely to a generic blue sedan. “Let me give you a ride home.”
Had I been soberer or politer, I would have insisted. But in my state, I was in no position to refuse a free ride. I followed him to his car and plopped down in the front seat.
As we pulled up to the gate, I realized that the house was empty. My brother was at a friend’s house, my father was away on business, and my mother was at one of her pagan retreats (“DreamQuest,” she had called it, explaining that it was a female thing that I wouldn’t understand). I felt an intense avoidance to entering the empty house and going to sleep.
“Do you want to come inside?” I asked.
Jon hesitated, his hand on the gearshift.
“Just for a minute,” I said quickly. “There’s no one at home.”
“Sure,” he said, parking the car.
I led him through the garden and into the house, where I promptly collapsed onto the sofa in the living room. He sat down next to me and exhaled loudly. Our knees brushed together.
“This is a gorgeous house,” he said, appraising his surroundings.
“Thanks,” I said.
He closed his eyes for a moment and I imagined that he must have been picturing something impossibly beautiful. The entire world, it seemed, was silent for a moment, and then I put my hand on his thigh. In the instant my fingers touched down, I knew that it was a mistake.
He looked directly at me, then down at my hand, then back at me. I pulled my hand away.
“I’m sorry,” I slurred, suddenly feeling much heavier and drunker than I did before.
“So am I,” he said quietly. He stood up.
“Where are you going?” I cried weakly. I had never felt so helpless and stupid.
“Sam-“ He paused. “I really shouldn’t be here, alone with you.”
“Why not?” I played dumb.
“You’re too young for me. You know that.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything at all. I looked out the window and watched the trees wavering in the wind, like dancers glued to a leafy stage. I heard Jon leave through the front door, and I sat there until I fell asleep. In the morning, I could barely remember how I had made it home.
The likelihood that I would see Jon should have decreased with each passing meeting, but instead, I couldn’t eschew his presence. I It was mere happenstance that I met Jon in the first place and it was a greater coincidence that I should have run into him when I was trashed stumbling home, yet I knew that I would see him again, whether I wanted to or not. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized how misguided and callow my feelings were. To have attempted anything with Jon would have meant putting everything that he had worked for in jeopardy, and I couldn’t do that to him.
It was more than two months later when I received a call from a blocked number on my cell phone. I hadn’t thought of Jon in a long time, but as soon as I heard the ring, I knew intuitively that it was him. I picked up.
“Hello?” I said, trying to sound masculine and grown-up.
“Sam?” It was Jon.
“Jon,” I said, exhaling sharply. “How have you been?”
“I really need to talk to someone. Can I come by?”
“Sure, yeah, okay,” I responded, taken aback. “When?”
“Now.”
I said a silent prayer that my parents wouldn’t be back home for several hours.
“Yeah, whatever you need, Jon,” I said.
About ten minutes later, I heard the screech of tires on the gravel road and saw the blur of a red sedan as it pulled into the driveway. I ran out to the gate and met him at the car. As soon as he slammed the door, I knew something was wrong. He was unshaven and his eyes were bloodshot and puffy.
“Let’s go inside,” he said quietly.
Inside, he crumpled onto the couch, staring straight at the wall with eerie fixation.
“What’s wrong, Jon?” I asked. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“Do you have anything to drink?” he muttered through his fingers.
“Yeah, hold on,” I said, thinking fast. It was clear that lemonade wasn’t going to cut it in this situation. The only thing I knew how to make was a screwdriver, after watching the stewardess mix them when my mother ordered them on planes. I grabbed a glass and haphazardly poured orange juice and vodka into it, then rushed back over to Jon. He gulped half of it down. I watched his throat work, his eyelids flutter, his lips the color of asbestos.
“My father killed himself yesterday,” he said blankly. The statement was devoid of emotion, as though it was a perfectly common thing to say.
“Oh my God,” I said. “Do they know why?”
“No,” Jon said, with the same peculiar emptiness in his voice. “He didn’t leave a note.”
I touched his shoulder hesitantly.
“I’m so sorry, Jon.”
He looked in my direction, but it was as though he was looking right through me: there was no connection in his eyes, nothing that indicated any sort of feeling. It was horrifically callous of me, but unbidden, the thought appeared in my mind that Jon looked really sexy with this tortured, bleak stare in his eyes. And it was naïve, but I felt the overwhelming urge to fix him, make it better, only I didn’t know how. So I did the only thing I knew how to do. I leaned in close to him and touched his lips with my index finger, and his eyes suddenly registered my presence, and I suddenly saw how sad and hungry they were. And in an instant, his tongue was in my mouth, and then his lips and teeth and gums were assaulting my neck and his hands were fumbling at my waist. I pulled him up off of the couch and he grabbed for his drink and carried it down to my bedroom, finishing it off and tossing it onto my bedside table before continuing to kiss me.
In that instant, I looked into the full-length mirror at my reflection, and I could see the blood dripping down my chin, my small, round face that revealed its age with every upturned half-smile, and I felt the most intense shame I’d ever felt mixed with an indelible sense of satisfaction, each emotion as disparate as vodka and orange but blurring together as though they’d been shaken over ice and strained into a glass. I was the person that books would be written about; I was the satirists’ invention, powerful and immortal in my debauchery. I intertwined my fingers with his and held them up and I saw how his hand engulfed mine, and nauseated, I felt myself begin to pull away from him, but he placed his hand firmly in the small of my back and whispered “Let it happen.” And so I did.
After it was over, I quickly excused myself to go clean up. My entire body ached I knew that I reeked of sweat. I still tasted him in my mouth.
In the shower, I stood there for a moment, drinking in the heat as my face was blasted with hot spray. I heard the door open and stood motionless and Jon, naked, stepped inside.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked playfully. I did, really, but I didn’t want to be rude.
“Not at all,” I said, smiling at him.
He put his hands on my back. I faced the wall and let the steam and water engulf me. When I turned back around, he had coated his face with shaving cream. I wondered where it came from; I didn’t have to shave yet.
In the days that followed, I felt a shame I found entirely inexplicable. When recounting this story to a therapist several years later, he suggested that it might have been due to Jon’s insistence that we continue despite my reservations, which would have effectively qualified the experience as rape even if I had been of age. But it wasn’t that, nor was it the twelve-year age gap. It was the fact that I had allowed the situation to continue even though I knew Jon wasn’t levelheaded enough to make a decision like that. In his state, he would have done anything, and although I knew that, I had still wanted to be with him. Jon was in a state of shock, and I had abused that in a deplorable, Lolita-esque way. Seducing Jon when he was mentally unstable was the first mistake.
But I had bigger things to worry about than my compunction, like treating the rash along my thighs from where Jon’s stubble had scraped my skin, and figuring out a way to deal with Jon, who was calling me every day. While I struggled to separate the actual event from the aftermath of it, I found myself in a predicament that was at once both thrilling and humiliating, empowering and degrading. I could easily, I imagined, spend the rest of my adolescence in such a fantasy world: seducing older men and watching them crumble under the iniquity of their actions, cackling cruelly as I lolled in the ensuing chaos. This was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. At first, I ignored Jon, but after listening to a few of his hysterical messages, I realized that it would be in my best interest to talk to him and see if I could extenuate the situation.
I picked up his call one afternoon as I was lazily smoking a cigarette on my deck.
“Hello?”
“Sam!” he yelped breathlessly.
“Hi, Jon,” I said casually, taking a languorous puff and blowing Os.
“Where have you been?” he asked.
“You know, around. I’ve had things to take care of.”
“I want to see you,” he said. “I really want to see you.”
As much as I wanted to play it cool, I had been craving the masochistic pleasure that sex, I had discovered, gave you. I initially hated the feeling, because it was foreign, confusing, and painful, but after it was over, I felt so empty, like I had been at the zenith of human intimacy and was forced to return to the real world.
“Then come over,” I said.
Against the wall, in my bed, on the deck, on the floor, in the shower. We painted the walls of my parents’ house scarlet with our lust. Jon’s bobbing face was imbued permanently into my mind, the contortions of his mouth and the shapes that those Cheshire Cat eyes made. Jon was an absolute wreck, of course – I suspected that he was abusing drugs, as he grew gaunter and acted more manic and tweaked by the day – but every time we had sex I felt a resurgence of that paralyzing ignominy and gratification, and that was as addictive as whatever Jon was using to get his fix. My chest was rubbed raw from his five o’clock shadow, and the stash of condoms that I had accumulated and hidden in my closet was quickly depleted.
I had grown weary of going through two or three condoms a day, anyway, and was ready to give up on the idea of contraception.
“Why do you have to use a condom every time, Jon?” I whined one day. “You always pull out, anyway.”
“Because I haven’t gotten tested in awhile, and I’m assuming you never have, and I don’t want either of us to get any diseases,” he said, kissing me on the mouth. “If you don’t want to bother with it, we should go get tested.”
“Fine,” I said, getting up and wandering into the other room to grab the telephone. I picked it up and tossed it to him. He caught it, surprised. “Make an appointment.”
I was forced to invest in another box of condoms as we waited for our results. We had gotten tested at the free clinic on a Thursday, and the doctor called me back on Wednesday afternoon.
“You’re clean,” he assured me. “Negative for HIV, hepatitis-B, hepatitis-C, and gonorrhea.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. Although I had been in no real danger, I had been worried nonetheless.
“Thank you, Doctor,” I said.
“Now, we want you to continue having safe sex, and steer clear of those intravenous drugs, okay?”
“Of course. Thanks again.”
I hung up the phone and dialed Jon’s number.
“Hey baby,” he answered.
“Hi. Did you get your results from the clinic?” I asked, suddenly feeling anxious in spite of myself.
“No. Did you?”
“Yeah,” I said cautiously. “I’m clean. You’re sure the doctor didn’t call you?”
“Yeah, I’m sure… I’ll probably get them tomorrow,” Jon said confidently, but I heard a trembling in his voice that set my heart racing. I had trouble falling asleep that night, and I woke up while it was still dark out. I took a long walk into the park around my house and sat in the grass for a long time, chain-smoking and watching the rays of sun begin to streak the hills with color. I felt that I was on the precipice of something extremely dangerous, and what had once been thrilling had become terrifying.
When Jon called me late that morning, I already knew that there was something wrong.
“I spoke with the doctor,” he said faintly.
“And?” I asked.
“I tested positive for HIV.”
And all of a sudden, I realized that I was in way over my head.
At one o’clock in the morning that night, the ringing of my cell phone awakened me. I checked the screen and saw that it was Jon. I picked it up.
“Hello?” I said blearily.
“I’m outside.”
“What?”
“I need you to come outside right now.” A firm, steely baritone had replaced the wishy-washy vacillating that had become familiar in Jon’s voice. He didn’t even sound like the same person.
“I’ll be out in five minutes,” I said, hanging up the phone and throwing on some clothes. I crept upstairs and out the front door, entreating whatever higher power existed to not let my parents wake up and realize I was gone on tonight, of all nights. Jon’s car was parked down the road. I got in the front seat.
“What’s this about, Jon?” I asked.
Jon stared into the nothingness visible through the windshield.
“You’re going to have to come with me,” he said resolutely, locking the doors.
“Okay. Okay, Jon,” I said, rubbing his leg with my hand. “Whatever you say.”
He hit the gas pedal and we sped violently down the road.
At Jon’s apartment, Jon took off his coat and kissed me hard.
“You know you’re the only person who cares about me?” he said. “You’re the only one. That’s why I need you right now. I need you to be strong.”
“Strong for what, Jon?”
He took a deep breath.
“I’ve made a decision. I’ve decided that I don’t want to live with HIV.”
I laughed in spite of myself. “Well, it’s not like you have a choice.”
“Yes,” he said seriously. “I do.”
Jon took an orange prescription bottle from his bedside table. I felt my stomach turn and my throat closed up.
“What are those?” I heard my voice jump an octave. “What are those, Jon?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.
“Why did you bring me here? I don’t want to be here, Jon. I can’t help you do this. Whatever you’re planning, I don’t support it. I won’t, I can’t. I’m sorry.”
Jon groped for my hand and found it. His big, adult hand seemed to swallow mine up.
“I don’t want to die alone,” he said plainly.
I felt like every cell in my body had frozen, out of shock or panic, like the stagnant air had chosen to suffocate me and had a chokehold on my neck.
“I’m no good to anyone, Sam,” he said. “I can’t do anything right. I don’t want to be here anymore. I’m not asking you to help. I just want you to stay with me until it’s over. Okay? That’s it. Can you do that for me?”
I nodded dumbly.
“Thank you.”
He kissed me again, then poured the contents of the bottle of pills out into the palm of his beefy hand. His hands shook as he shoved them into his mouth, then swallowed them with a gulp of water.
“I hope that does it,” he said.
I nodded.
“I’m going to go lie down,” he said. “Do you want to come with me?”
I nodded again.
Jon stumbled into his bedroom, and I followed right behind him. He threw himself into bed and I laid next to him, my head on his chest, the cotton of his t-shirt fuzzy against my cheek. I didn’t feel anything, anything at all. I thought about the homework assignment that was due the next morning, which I had been planning to wake up early in the morning and do, and then I thought about the fact that I needed to buy cigarettes, and that I wasn’t going to have a twenty-six year old lover to buy them for me, and it made me sad.
“You’re going to stay, right?” Jon said abruptly, interrupting my contemplations.
“Yeah. Sure, Jon,” I said.
“Good. I don’t want to die alone,” he repeated. “I don’t want to die alone.”
Jon closed his eyes. I felt closer to him than I had ever felt to anyone. I could feel his heart beat.
It was wrong of me to have sex with Jon the day after his father killed himself. I know that now, and I would apologize to anyone who would listen. That would definitely make the top three list. As for the top two, that’s where it gets a little bit trickier. It was very bad of me to assist Jon in his suicide, and I would admit that in an instant. I will regret it for the rest of my life. I should have dialed 911, or called someone, but in the darkness of the night, I trusted Jon’s judgment.
As soon as Jon was unconscious, I ran. I ran down the stairs of his apartment, leaving the doors unlocked, and there were no lights on in the city, and I ran as fast as I could, until I thought my heart would rupture and erupt from my chest, like a cartoon character in love – boing, boing, boing, my atriums and ventricles attached to a spring. I cried for weeks, not because Jon was gone, but because I would never know. I didn’t even know his last name. Sleeping with him was bad, and helping him die was worse. But worst of all was breaking my promise, an action that filled me with shame that rose in my throat like bile and seeped from my pores like sweat. Even in death, I couldn’t be faithful to Jon.
I’d like to imagine that he survived his suicide attempt and went on to live a long and prosperous life, that he found a medication that kept his disease at bay and fell in love with someone his age. It’s a much more realistic expectation that he fell victim to circumstance, became yet another statistic. But I wouldn’t know: I never heard from Jon again. The strange thing is how rarely I think of him, and when I do, it is only in passing, less like a memory of my own and more like something I’d read in a book somewhere, or seen in a movie. It is in that way, I suppose, that I’ve allowed Jon’s legacy to survive. Writing is cathartic for the escapist. For if there was a time when I would have done anything for Jon, there was also a time when I refused to help him. In life, that made me a hypocrite – but in fiction, it’s all just part of the story. | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | "Blue Light" by Bloc Party | | Subject: | The Brogue | | Time: | 05:03 pm | | Current Mood: | content |
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| Back in the Internet cafe. I just bought a gram of 20x salvia extract from a head shop a few blocks away from my flat, as well as a little bubbler made out of a tiny Smirnoff Vodka bottle. Tonight should be interesting. Effectively a $60 investment, but I don't mind at all.
Something's fucked up with my email. Either that, or no one's written me for the past week besides Saks Fifth Avenue reminding me that James Preserved Denim has introduced a men's line. I'm titillated, obviously, but I'd prefer a message from an ex-lover detailing how they can't go on living without me. What are the odds of that happening?
We got reviewed in the Scotsman today, which is (I've been told) a relatively highbrow Scottish newspaper. Akin to the Times. They gave us two stars out of five and said that our acting and writing couldn't match the intensity of the subject matter. No shit. The show's the kind of thing that if anyone besides a family member of the cast saw, they would say something along the lines of "Cute" or "Great effort." The director is stoically rebuffing any attempts to improve the show, which weakens it even more as everyone feels the weight of its infantilism and caprice.
Can't stop clubbing. I've been to this drum and didgeridoo show at this crazy three-level club called Smirnoff Underbelly tice in the past three days. Took absinthe shots and chased them with Red Bull-vodkas. Or vodkars, as they say here. Two drinks deep and I develop a thick brogue, suffixing every other sentence with "mate" or "yeah?" or, my favorite, "Cheers!" an all-purpose expression which communicates everything from gratitude to salutation.
Tomorrow night, I might take the train in to London with a couple of friends, but it's £40 (about $75) each way, and as spectacular as London is, I can't justify spending $150 to spend four hours in a strange city. I dashed away from the bar where my friends are at to buy a pack of stoges, which somehow engendered a trip to the ATM, the aforementioned salvia/bubbler purchase, and a quick trip to the Internet cafe for an espresso. I know I should get back to the bar and have another drink, but really, I'm happy right where I am. | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | "Give It Away" by Red Hot Chili Peppers | | Subject: | Scotland | | Time: | 04:22 pm | | Current Mood: | happy |
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| Writing from an Internet cafe in Edinburgh, where I'm drinking a cappuccino and listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers...
Scotland is wonderful. I was stressing like mad before I got here, because I had all of these things to do and no time to do it, but as soon as I got on the plane it became okay. I had an Ambien and five vodka tonics on the plane and got blissfully drunk, then suffered through a five-hour rehearsal in Edinburgh, but everything is better now. I'm in an apartment completely unsupervised, with a lot of money, and with the exception of the rehearsals and performances, I can do nothing but drink and smoke. And I can smoke in the dorm room, which is amazing. And I'm with some of my favorite people, which is perhaps even more amazing.
The weather reminds me so much of Portland. Yesterday it rained, and today it's really clear and cool and bright. From anywhere in Edinburgh, you can see the castles perched on the hills overlooking the town, and there are grassy hills and meadows everywhere. It's really peaceful, and very Scottish. There's a cafe a block away from the apartment called The Big Breakfast, and I went in hung-over this morning to get a cup of coffee, and it was the best coffee I'd ever tasted. 40 pence, which is, like, 75 cents. The Royal Mile is really intense, so many theatres and shops packed into such a dense area. Everyone here is motivated and friendly and speaks incomprehensibly through a thick brogue. I feel really warm and happy and contented, and that's not just because I just smoked a joint with a bunch of the kids in the group. There's something very pleasant here, away from the frenetic pace of the city. I always forget how glorious Europe is, and how much better it is than America in, like, every way.Everyone smokes a lot of cigarettes here, but they don't do it the way New Yorkers do, like they're just trying to choke down the carcinogens. They're relaxed. And so am I. | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
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you say times they've changed, i say yes i know but some beautiful things remain
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