All the lights are off in my apartment including the TV and I’m three-belts into a bottle of Jameson and zoning out to the scene of the city lights below and the view – twenty-three-stories above the concrete – somehow has struck me in a way emotionally that I’m nowhere near close enough to being able to understand and for reasons completely unknown to me, I find myself dangerously close to crying.
I attempt to wash away this frightening razor-sharp-choke lodged in my throat by way of a two-gulper of Jameson to no avail – the booze clears into my stomach and the sting of impending tears remains – surprisingly growing in strength – and although I hardly believe any of this is happening I notice that my lips are actually trembling! After hatching another belt of Irish Whiskey it becomes clear to me, if I could actually remember how to, I’d fall to the floor crying…
These sudden thoughts that manage to come and go as they please (as of late), these God-awful surges of unexpected emotion, all this uninvited self-reflection – a complete mystery to me –Their exact origins a total fucking enigma.
As the days bleed on to the next, I find the grip on my identity loosening more and more… and as another tear forms that I fail to chase away, I can’t help but to wonder if I’ve ever known myself to begin with…
Simply refusing to think and feel these things, I place my drink down and make way for the bathroom. Once inside, I pop the med-cab and take stock of my inventory: Valium 10mg, Oxycontin 80mg, Norco 10mg, Adderall XR 30mg and 25mg, Amphetamine Salts 20mg and 10mg, a variety of Xanax from 2mg bars to .5 mg tablets, and a cache of nameless SSRI’s, MAOI’s, anti-psychotics and anti-depressants I vaguely remember stashing and never plan on taking… With endless possibilities before me, given my current mental and emotional state, the rational choice would be taking any one of the many Benzodiazepines I have at my disposal on account of their uncanny ability to efficiently leave ones emotional faculties completely and utterly useless.
Without thinking twice I acquisition a 2mg bar of Xanax, drop it underneath my tongue, and within seconds the pill begins to dissolve over my salivary gland – the taste – bitter yet comfortable in an oh so familiar way. Within moments, with the chalky-chemical sting building up in the back of my throat I feel instant comfort and a genuine sense of well being.
The area where tears once threatened to show themselves has become dry. The stingy lump lodged near my Adams Apple weakens on its way toward non-existence. I’m myself again… at least the part I’m most comfortable with… the part I’ve tricked myself into believing is real. With all of those awful unexplainable emotional surges kicked to the curb I’ve finally regained control over my shell.
Again I am cold.
Again I am distant.
Again, I am completely indifferent… free of all of those simple feelings that make life so hard for the average bear.
The pill has done its duty. And although I’m aware the healthy response after feeling an unexplained surge of depression is to address the issue in hopes of finding a remedy, I can’t help but to fall back on a passage from Huxley’s Brave New World that has over time become a mantra for me –
Ending is better than mending…
The story of my life.
Making my way through the living room, now not only half-in-the-bag but also feeling the initial onsets of the Xanax, I’m tempted to change what’s currently playing out of my iTunes Library, Mercury Rev’s Holes album to something a little more rugged – something from a time in my life where I was completely clueless – jaded into thinking I had it all figured out. I’m thinking perhaps Paul Westerberg’s Stereo.
Next to the bottle of Jameson is the remote to my Mac. In a matter of seconds I switch to Only Lie Worth Telling by Mr. Westerberg and make my way back toward my previously abandoned tumbler of Jameson. The ice in the tumbler has melted – leaving the glass frosted over with condensation beads. Although I’m tempted to gather more ice, I decide to stay put as Paul Westerberg’s lyrics fill the living room: The only lie worth telling is I’m in love with you…
I fall into my recliner and polish off my now watered-down tumbler while enjoying sounds representing a better time. A more naive, unaware, and optimistic time…
I relax, finish off the business parts of the tumbler, and for the first time in awhile, I smile. Music on the box. Booze in the belly. Not a soul in sight. It’s moments like this that make the endless grind worth it.
Then out of nowhere it happens—
KNOCK.
KNOCK.
KNOCK.
What the Christ!? I expect no one tonight– any night for that fact! The few people actually aware of where I hang my hat are nowhere near daft enough to show themselves sans notice. So who could this be? Possibly a disgruntled neighbor, I think to myself, or maybe even the building security guard I score grams off of from time to time? Perhaps the music is too loud? It’s possible a complaint has been filed? Or better yet, maybe this is just a case of someone knocking on the wrong door?
Then it happens again—
KNOCK.
KNOCK.
With the last knock, louder and frustrated, a sudden rush of panic overcomes my nervous system and clogs my thoughts: what if today’s the day? The day that’s always been a pink-elephant-type possibility so horrifying I’ve simply refused to ever prepare for– the day the men in blue march in to judge me for all the misdeeds of my past and present.
Could it really be the police?
Uncontrollable fear takes over my nervous system as I erratically search for the remote to my computer. I find it. Shaking like an epileptic, I finally manage to mute the system. The air in the apartment becomes still. I refuse to breathe.
For a moment there’s nothing – not a sound. Definitely a mistaken apartment, I think to myself. Then to my horror it happens again. This time more urgent. More furious. Whoever they are, they mean business.
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.
Whoever my guest is, I realize, they’re not leaving. With the music blasting earlier and now muffed, it would be ridiculous to assume my visitor, whoever the hell they are, actually believes I’m not home. I shudder to realize, if it is the police, I’ve only a minute before they kick the door down. I contemplate rushing to the bathroom so I can flush the pills and, if I’m really lucky, get into the bedroom quickly enough to burn the countless credit reports and other incriminating documentation that is scattered all about the—
“Open the door Donnie. I know you’re inside stupid” a drowsy female voice calls from behind the door. A voice I vaguely recognize but simply can’t be…
“I’m not leaving until you open the fucking door. Don’t make me start screaming… we both know you won’t like that” the voice behind the door says – at which point I immediately identify my mysterious caller and curse myself for staying in tonight…
Sasha.
Fucking Sasha.
The biggest mistake of my life.
Flustered and recovering from a fear so strong my Xanax and Jameson failed tame, I pathetically without thinking yelp, “Sasha?”
“Yeah it’s fuggin’ Sasha. Who else? Open the fuggin’ door” she says, obviously drugged to the follicles.
At the sound of her voice a multitude of bad times roll through my memory banks at a rapid rate. My heart rate increases. Breathing becomes shallow. Palms sweaty.
“What uh” what the hell am I supposed to say, why the hell did she come here? I have to think of something. My mind’s all twisted. Completely off of my game, in hopes to turn her away, I pathetically say through the door, “Who are you looking for? I think you may have the wrong apartment.”
“Cut the shit Donnie. I know it’s you.”
“There’s no Donnie here ma’am. I’m afraid you have the wrong apartment” I say, realizing in real-time just how pathetic I sound.
“How did you know my name was Sasha a minute ago?” She asks, making a stellar point.
“I… I don’t know what you’re… your name is Sasha too? I thought you were someone else. Not someone else, but you know, a different Sasha” I say while realizing I’m way too fucked up on downs and booze to effectively navigate my way around this SNAFU. Desperately, as if with my last dying breath, I pathetically offer, “There’s no Donnie here.” Fingers crossed.
Silence for a beat.
Then, very calmly, Sasha says “Donnie. If you don’t open the door in five seconds I’m going to start punching myself in the nose and run to your nearest neighbor in tears telling them stories of how you beat me after I refused to fuck you.”
Same old Sasha.
Knowing full well how evil of a cunt Sasha can be and (I imagine) still is, I refuse to take what she’s just posed as an empty threat and make my way to the door in defeat. I’m just going to open the door and talk to her; I vow to myself, there’s no fucking way she’s coming in here.
“You have until the count of two, Donnie. My fists are already balled” she warns.
“I’m coming” I say, hoping to God I unlock the door in time before she starts flipping.
Why, I wonder on my way to the door, of all nights, did this blonde-hair/ blue-eyed succubus have to show up on my step? I try to remember the last time our paths have crossed and come up empty. At least a year, I think to myself, and what a shitty time in my life that was.
I reach the door. Unlock it. Swing it open.
And there she is in all her fucking glory – blonde hair frazzled all over the place, blue eyes dragging on account of her not-so-quiet heroin dependency, a knock-out body that never quits but isn’t worth the trouble…
My first girlfriend in LA…
And as stated previously – the biggest mistake of my fucking life.
“Just what in the hell are you doing here?” I say, unable to snuff my body from shaking out of both frustration and fear.
“I was in the neighborhood” she says as her head drops and eyes roll back – stoned on heroin – big surprise.
“You’re always in the neighborhood Sasha. Your mom lives in Brentwood.” I say while standing firm at the threshold of the apartment – there’s no way this chick is coming inside.
“She kicked me out” She says in her semi-retarded heroin drool.
“That’s a shocker.”
“Don’t be an asshole.” She says, raising her voice and my blood-pressure at the same time. “Let me in, I have nowhere else to go tonight”.
“Not my problem” I say coldly as possible – in my usual way.
If Sasha had fangs she’d show them. Her eyes bulge out. Snaps immediately out of her heroin spell and shrieks, “I fucking hate it when you say that!”
Terrified she may wake up the entire floor; I pull her into my apartment and shut the door behind her. Somewhere in the journey, she loses her footing and falls to the ground laughing. “It’s not possible for you to act like a human-being for even three minutes, is it?” I ask her – attempting to lift her from the floor to little avail.
To my surprise, Sasha manages to bring herself to her feet with little to no trouble. She draws a breath, laboriously balances her body, and finally becomes a friend of gravity again. Slowly she widens her eyes and focuses around the apartment. She giggles and then says, “Why is it so dark in here? What, were you like, sleeping or something?” she laughs to the point of tears.
“I had hoped to have a quiet night alone” I say lamely.
“On a Friday night?” She asks as if I told her the world was four-minutes away from imploding.
“Not all of us are like you Sasha” I say on my high horse.
“Yeah, you’re a real fucking choirboy. Give me a break”, she says while attempting a ‘jerk-off-motion’ with what appears to be a very heavy fist.
She pushes past me as if in her own home and stumbles her way around the apartment, grabbing onto anything in sight to maintain balance, while fruitlessly searching for my couch which is actually on the other side of where she has directed herself in her drug-fueled-blindness. If I actually cared, I’d steer her in the correct direction – but I don’t. I’d actually enjoy nothing more than to see her trip and tumble out of my floor-to-ceiling-window leading to a twenty-three-story-drop but realize the odds of her crashing the glass are close to zero if not less – she only weighs about 95 pounds.
“Where is everything?!” She screams, “Turn on the lights or something. We’re not all vampires like you Donnie.”
“And when was the last time you went out while the sun is still up? As I recall the morning hours are part of your regularly scheduled bedtime… oh wait! I forgot, Skid row serves at ten in the morning these days.” I can’t help myself to say with a slight smirk.
“Keep being a smartass and I’ll have cops here in twelve minutes ready to wrap a warm blanket around me a cuffs around you.” She says like the cunt she is while continuing to stumble around a usually easy-to-navigate living room. “Where is the fucking couch?”
“It’s exactly where it should be, in the living room” I say patronizingly, “You my dear, are in the kitchen.”
Sasha stops in her tracks. Swaying to and fro, she laboriously attempts to focus in on her surroundings. After quite a bit of time she notices she is in fact located inside the kitchen and an expression overcomes her over-drugged face as if to say, “By George I am in the kitchen! However did I stumble my way into here?”
“Well if you left some fucking lights on I wouldn’t have this problem” She says annoyed.
“I wasn’t expecting guests.”
“That’s because you don’t have any friends” she says on her way to the couch (How she managed not to see it from moment one, I’ll never know). Finally at her destination, she plops down as if every muscle in her body collectively decided to punch out for the day, giving two shits if another shift is on the way. Once comfortably sprawled out on the couch in all sorts of different directions, she carelessly tosses her purse somewhere near the kitchen (probably under the impression she tossed it on the coffee table).
She lets out a large gasp and makes herself right at home.
I’m furious – silently thanking the Gods for putting me in a position to eat a Xanax moments before she got here. Had that not happened, city workers may already be scraping her nipples off of a sewer cap while Detectives take me aside to inquire just how she had “lost her footing” off my balcony.
“You need more furniture” Sasha says casually – completely ignoring how uncomfortable our two being together is.
“What?” I ask, still getting over the fact she’s even here. This woman, in more ways than one, ruined every aspect of whatever innocence I once possessed. She is pure evil disguised by a drop-dead face and unbelievable body.
“Furniture… you need more furniture, Donnie. Maybe a table or something. I don’t know.”
“I hardly entertain…” I say, trying to be playful but careful to lace my tone with enough anger for her to pick up on.
“I bet… Mr. Lonely-hearts over here. Are you still spooning your pillows at night?” She asks with a giggle.
“What are you doing here?” I manage to ask with a trembling voice as I rush toward the Jameson – wondering if I should prepare a belt or just drink straight from the bottle.
“I told you, my mom kicked me out and I need a place to crash for the night.”
Not fucking happening, I think to myself. Not for one second! The fact Sasha had the audacity to even consider me as an option for a sleep over has my blood boiling at such a high rate it’s a wonder I haven’t passed out. Somehow, and don’t ask how, I manage to calm myself and ask as civilly as possible, “And you couldn’t find a more… I don’t know…. Appropriate place to hang your hat?”
“You were the closest.”
“But you have credit cards? Why not go to Shutters or something? Daddy keeps your credit healthy. I know that for a fact.”
“Things have changed since we’ve last been together Donnie, love of my life” she says with a yawn, “I was cut-off months ago. At least by my Dad anyway. My mom’s on the verge. She called the fucking cops on me last week when I took her car… had to spend a night in the Beverly Hills lock-up. I thought I caught Staph. It really sucked.”
“I bet” I say not caring at all, “Why would your mom call the cops for taking a car out?”
“She didn’t want me driving without a license. It was revoked a few months back.”
“So uh…” I almost choke up my Whiskey – terrified she may have in fact led cops to my pad, “how did you get here?”
“Not with my Mom’s car don’t worry. No cops are coming here. I took a cab.”
“Let me guess” my blood’s boiling, I know what ‘took a cab’ means in Sasha’s language, “You ditched the fucking thing?”
“Of course” she says nonchalantly.
“Christ nothing changes with you!” I stand up and make my way toward her – prepping to drag the bitch out by her hair.
“Relax Donnie. I ditched the thing way down Wilshire. Believe it or not, I actually walked a ways to get here. I actually forgot how to get here to be honest.”
“That I can believe” I say, slightly calmer, I take a seat beside her.
She rolls her head back on the armrest and plops her legs above my lap. Although I truly do hate this girl with all of my life, I can’t help but to get hard. She notices it. Giggles. Too high to do much else, she rubs her legs back and forth over my cock. It gets harder and harder. God I hate this chick.
“At least some things stay the same” she manages to say, still rubbing my cock with her legs.
“Don’t read too much into it” I say. “The thing will get hard in an elevator if the feeling’s right. It doesn’t know any better... doesn’t have some of the memories I do.”
Her legs stop moving but stay rested on my lap. She lets out another sigh. I speculate if she could manage to move, she would. “Don’t pull that victim shit with me Donnie. We may not have seen each other in over a year but I’ve heard plenty about what you’ve been up to.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?” I ask, genuinely interested.
“Come on. Your friends are my friends. I hear things.”
“I don’t have any friends, remember? Neither do you.”
“You know what I mean” she somehow manages to swing her legs from my lap and plants them on the floor – now sitting upright on the couch – she scans the scene for her purse – coming up empty she says, “Where the fuck is my purse?”
“You tossed it in the kitchen.”
“Get it for me” she snaps.
Again I’m thinking about the window and a city worker scraping her perfectly tanned torso off the sidewalk but realize I need another drink and don’t want to ruin how uncharacteristically mellow she is so I stand up and start for the kitchen without protest.
In the kitchen I find her purse – the contents spilled out about the floor – wallet (empty I’m sure), pack of cigarettes, lighter, and the real business part – four hypos and a bag of heroin that probably cost more than a plane ticket to Manhattan.
Tempted to take the bag and sell it off to Mel I resist – knowing full well Sasha will set my entire building on fire for such an act of larceny. I gather all of her goods in the purse, sling it over my shoulder, and pick up the close-to-empty bottle of Jameson I left atop my counter. Fuck a tumbler and ice, I think to myself, the situation calls for straight-from-the-bottle.
“What exactly did you mean by ‘you’ve heard plenty’?” I ask as I make my way for the couch – purse still slung over my shoulder.
Sasha breaks down in laughter. “Shouldn’t you be in West Hollywood with that purse Nancy?”
Hating every inch of this girl and wishing she was Sonya (which is something I can’t understand) I toss the purse straight at Sasha’s midsection. Due to her being skagged to the brain, she fails to prevent it from banging against her chest. After the purse thumps, her eyes get bloody and her fangs start to show. “You fucking asshole! I’ll break everything in this fucking apartment if you don’t say sorry now!”
“Sorry” I say, taking a seat beside her – bottle in hand.
Sasha ignores my apology and rummages through her purse. It’s obvious she’s getting ready to rig up. My fatigue coupled with the fear of awakening the beast I know to reside in Sasha, I refrain from making a fuss. I take a pull straight from the bottle. My nerves calm almost immediately. Sasha notices nothing outside of the world of her purse. To break the silence, again I inquire, “What did you mean by, ‘you heard stories’ or whatever it was you said?”
“You have to ask?” she says as she’s already put a rig on my coffee table and is in process of spreading out a hit of skag. “We may not have friends Donnie, sure. But word gets around.”
“What kind of word?”
“Please. I’ve heard so many stories I refuse to even try and rap all of them to you.”
“Give me one or two examples” I say as I furiously watch on as Sasha prepares to cook a batch of narco-soup on my goddamn coffee table.
“Let’s see” she says as she pulls a bottle of water from her purse to add to the various other paraphernalia she’s already removed, “apart from the half-dozen Westwood girls still trying to fix their credit, there’s got to be twice as many girls still wondering why you haven’t called them back. And don’t even get me started on the Beverly Boys still waiting for computers.”
None of this should be news to Sasha, I think to myself while sporting a devilish grin.
Sasha carefully arranges the tools of her trade on my coffee table: spoon, bottle of blood-laced water, rig, lighter, cotton, etc. She dumps some dope into her spoon, paying no attention to me, and says “Let’s just say I’ve heard how busy you’ve been.”
“And this shit is really, I don’t know, like a big surprise? It’s nothing really too new.” I say – dangerously close to finishing off the entire Jameson bottle – a bottle I purchased only hours ago mind you.
“Some of it isn’t anything new, sure” she says – now actually cooking her shit, “but when we were together the things you did were on a smaller scale. People never got… I don’t know… hurt. It just seems like a year later, you’ve become… worse.”
“And why do you suppose that is?” I ask.
“Don’t put that shit on me” she says, the dope now simmering in the spoon. She blows on it.
“Why shouldn’t I?” I ask, “I’m a different person since you… since moving out here. I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
The dope on her spoon cools. She drops a cotton and lets it soak. Puts the spoon on the table. Preps her rig.
“Please Donnie” she says, “You’ve always been that guy. You wouldn’t have been with me in the first place. I haven’t changed… I’ve just gotten worse. Same thing goes with you… People like us, we attract each other. After that…”
Her train of thought stops. All attention on her dope. She ties her arm off and preps the rig. Finds a vein…
I’m on the edge of my seat. For some reason I have to hear what she was going to say… I have to understand her fucking point. “After that what?” I ask.
Blood finds the chamber and she shoots the dope home. Pulls on the slack of the Versace bandana she used to tie off her arm. Her head falls back into my lap. A smile graces her face. She’s on the H-Train again. Out of commission.
“After that what?” I ask again, this time with more urgency in my tone, “You were trying to make a point and then you just… well you disappeared on me. After that what?”
“What” she asks – eyes in the back of her head – smile across her face.
“You were saying something like… fuck I can’t remember” I search my banks, she was getting somewhere and then lost herself. I swig my bottle, then it hits me “You said something like people like us attract one another and then after that…. After that what?”
“Oh” she says with a smile – I hope born of realization rather than narcotic haze – and says, “After that we either grow together for the better or fall apart for the worse.” She pauses for a moment, shuts her eyes while managing a sigh of pleasure, and then sluggishly says, “I don’t know… I really don’t remember what I was talking about…” and with that her head leans back and she’s out for the count. And although Sasha’s attention span doesn’t last longer than the time it takes to cook a batch of dope, I find myself following exactly what it was she was trying to say…
At least I think I do.
With my Jameson now tapped, I head to the fridge for a Stella and make my way back to the window – looking down at the city below – right where I was before madness made its way into my home. This time however, reflecting on something completely different – something more clear…
People like us.
Grow together for the better. Fall apart for the worse.
Labels simple in a Sasha sort of way, yes, but for me, these words have opened an entire flood of realizations. When she had first appeared at my door I could strangle her. For the past year I’ve blamed her for the way I am now – so distant and cold. I’ve blamed her for all the awful things I’ve experienced in this town that have indivertibly caused me to forget and leave behind whatever dreams I once had that drove me to this place. Thanks to some heroin-laced wisdom from my ex-girlfriend, I realize now whatever shit I’ve sifted through, whatever hardships, whatever morals I’ve had to sacrifice – all of it – especially in a city like this – for a person like me is inevitable.
People like us she said…
With over a year in the books, having come close to losing my soul after marching through countless alleyways of emotional and spiritual darkness, I’m still standing. Colder maybe, but at the same time stronger and better equipped to handle whatever hardship I may have to face down the road – that is if I don’t avoid them altogether.
And where is Sasha now? Hunched over and drooling all over my leather couch on a deep heroin-ride just waiting for her last. At the core she’s the same – she’s only grown new layers – sicker, more out of control, lost, confused – destined to be swallowed up by the bowels of this city.
Grow together for the better, she said. Fall apart for the worse, she said.
This dance called life is one big struggle laid out to better prepare us for the next struggle to follow. Sometimes along the road we meet people, sure, and Sasha would say the people we encounter down the freeway of life will either help us grow or bury us. But as I sip my beer now – while Sasha turns over on her side mumbling some sort of incomprehensible junky-gibberish in her skag-nap I find a deeper way of looking at all of this.
To build or to crumble, one of the two for any person is inevitable, no matter whom one may encounter in his/her life.
Grow together for the better, she said. Fall apart for the worse, she said…
And for our tale, the Donnie and Sasha show, she had it all wrong. In our situation it wasn’t required for us to grow together, on account now I see I was the one that grew while she fell apart. Sure we meet people for better or worse, but I see clearly now some people are just destined to be that stone the other steps on and crushes in order to lay a path for the future ahead.
People like us, she said.
For Sasha and I, there is no “people like us” – as she isn’t part of my mold. Whatever it is inside me, wherever that coldness came from to help protect me after my relationship with her, wherever that soulless desire to survive came from after the fiasco with my Father so many years ago – that ability to adapt no matter what – that’s just not in Sasha’s makeup. She’s a stone – not the destructive window shattering stone I once thought her to be – but merely a barely solid entity used temporarily to keep my footing and balance as I crossed the furious waters of the river of life.
Swigging the dying buds of my Stella I turn away from the city lights to take a final look at Sasha – still zonked out on my sofa. I can’t help but to smile. This one person who once had so much power over me, over my mind, over my heart – now seeing her with wiser eyes – is nothing short of pathetic to me. Sasha and all the other blame-everyone-else-but-themselves self-help-junkies like her are simply guests in this town. Stepping stones. I on the other hand belong here…
People like us, she said.
People like me, I said.
Lighting a Lucky Strike I turn the words people like me over in my mind and for some reason I don’t quite understand I think about Sonya. Out of the two character types I’ve outlined through recent observation, I silently wonder (although I really don’t think I care) which of the two groups Sonya would fit under. It doesn’t take long. Hard as it may be to admit, Sonya is for better or worse, my female counterpart. Between the two of us, the number of people that have fallen to serve our own selfish needs could break a scale in two…
And then those words come back to me…
People like us. Grow together. Fall apart.
Maybe my problem all along has been not ever finding someone in whom I could truly grow with. I’ve always been an ‘A’ to another’s ‘B’. Never have I meshed with my own kind. Out of nowhere, an image of Sonya and Myself becoming a single unit flows from my heart and appears before my mind’s eye – and for some shocking reason, our union seems like a good prospect. In fact, together having experienced and gotten through most of the same things, we could help one another move on to a better life. But at the same time trends could be followed and one of us may end up being the stone stepped on by the other. Crushed for life.
And if we were to get together, Sonya and I, and we failed, who would be the one to crumble?
Or could we actually be capable of moving forward together? I know I’m tired of where my life has led. Is Sonya? Could our joining together fix the mess we’ve created in each of our lives? Apart we’ve been losers, despite any growth. Together, maybe we could flourish….
And then it hits me – that unexplained panic and urge to cry hysterically.
I’m reminded of the other night with Sonya. Stoned on the couch while she tried to make small talk and then I had made a realization, a comment, something that affected us the same way in which our only reaction was to blow lines and fuck…
What if we, I, have had it all wrong?
What if we’re the ones actually falling apart? What if we’re the ones losing in the end?
I turn back to face Sasha as she’s still passed out on the skag. I just now notice the needle is still in her arm, and rather than giggle in triumph and rejoice in how pathetic she looks… so vulnerable and weak – I want to cry in defeat, because somewhere in the red regions of my heart I know I’m responsible for the scene. I did this. If my philosophy is right, if Sasha was merely a stepping stone for my growth, then I shudder to wonder if it was really worth it. And not just for Sasha, but for all of those people. All the people I’ve hurt, all the people I’ve made cry, all the people who’ve stayed up late at night with worry I had brought into their lives just so I could temporarily better mine in the hopes one day I’d do great things and make it all up to the world.
These people who I’ve considered stepping stones to my future are now presented to me in a different light that for the life of me I can’t seem to chase away. Victims.
I haven’t grown. I’ve merely survived at the behest of others, leaving behind a mess for them to clean up. I’m not a human. I’m a virus. And all the past hosts, now broken and delayed in living their own lives on account of my bullshit, I wonder, maybe would they have done more than I have now if roles were reversed? Who am I kidding? With my life, for all those fallen bodies, I have done absolutely nothing to justify them.
The lump in my throat returns.
The tremble in my lips is back in action.
And by God, I can feel the salty sting of tears begin to form.
I think of all the time I’ve wasted – all the people who have fallen in vain – all in the hopes of a fruitless dream. Sure at one point I had a dream, something worth sifting through a little bit of shit for. But that dream now is not only gone but long forgotten. I’m so far removed from the boy I once was I wouldn’t know where to begin even if I managed to make things right and pick the pieces back up again. And even if I were able to somehow feign a regular human lifestyle and interactions, it would all be synthetic and extremely short-lived – sniffed out as bullshit in no time. For since coming into this place, I’ve completely lost my soul. And rather than growing, which I’ve tricked myself into thinking all this darkness has been in pursuit of, I realize I’ve only aided in others losing their own souls as well. I’m not the only one at fault here; I think to myself, it’s this fucking city as well.
My knees buckle so hard I fall to the floor. My emotions coupled with the obscene amount of Alcohol I’ve consumed in such short a time period has my stomach seconds away from spewing stinging vomit all over the floor. Not wanting to stain my pearl-white carpet I quickly manage to get to my feet and open the floor-to-ceiling windows that lead to a balcony overlooking the city and just barely manage to hang my head over the railing and spew half a gallon of undigested alcohol and drug-laced bile onto the streets of Wilshire.
Right where it belongs.
Once done vomiting I fall to my knees. The winds press against my face coming from the ocean a few blocks west. Despite vomiting, the lump in my throat remains. I think of all the people I’ve hurt. I reflect on the mistakes of my life, but more than anything, I look out in sadness to a cityscape below that once made me smile.
I think of all the young people out there fresh off the bus. I think of all the people I once was like. I think of the wide-eyes, the tall dreams, and the illusion of a city that can deliver anyone’s dreams on a silver platter. I think of the allure of the city’s underbelly and the pain of being weak enough to fall for it.
Then I think of the lies. I think of the betrayal. I think of the drugs. That first line. The first infidelity. The first shady deal. The moment the dreams stop and reality kicks in…
The moment one trades all that is real and tangible in the pursuit of something synthetic, artificial, and void of substance.
Despite the weather, this city is one cold fucking place…
Shaking in the Los Angeles night out on my balcony, I hug my knees against my chest and feel for the people below…
… I think of all those pour young souls that have come into this city of lost angels in pursuit of dream, only to find a nightmare…
And although I once thought it to be impossible…
… I can’t help but to break down and cry.
