“Like so close if they hurt you, you wouldn’t find out…”

The following is the first 20 or so pages of my creative writing sample. Yes, it is FICTION. Any feedback is appreciated as it only helps me as a writer. Thanks to those who read.

I will never be able to forget the first day I met him. The first moment. The first glance in his direction. He kind of blew me away, I told myself instantly that I would subtly maneuver my way into his good graces and that he would become my boyfriend. At the same time he also reminded me of one of my brothers. It made no sense, because he was nothing like my brother. I think he was the way that I had been yearning for my brother to be: happy, encouraging, loving. In fact it probably had nothing to do with my brother. I just wanted to be loved by someone. He fit that bill. He played that part without ever rehearsing a single scene. I towed him into my life like only a self interested tow truck driver could and he became instantly absorbed in my grip. Little did he know of my internal damage; little did he know of my rarely quenched thirst for more, more and more, more and more and more. I wonder if he knew the day he met me that he’d spend the next decade of his life trying to figure out how he might be able to satiate me. Yeah, he definitely had no way of anticipating that torture. The aforementioned is exactly why I sit here today ridden with guilt, shame and animosity toward myself. I taint most of what my fingers graze.
When I was five years old I was exposed to pornography for the first time and it kind of changed my life. I was forever tainted and undeniably intrigued. I was five years old and my parents were given a hot box from my uncle. The hot box allowed them to watch all of the paperview and HBO channels on television without having to actually pay for them. Yes, it was illegal. Yes, they hid the hot box any time the cable guy would have to come out and fix the television. No, they did not know that while they were sleeping and no one else was home, their little 5 year old daughter was flicking through the channels intently trying to find the pornography channels out of sheer fascination and intrigue. No, they did not know that I would plop myself down in a chair that I would carry out into the middle of the room so that if my parents began to walk down the stairs in my direction I could detect them with enough time to change the channel and appear inconspicuous and dishonestly childlike and pure. I remember the experience just like it was yesterday; I remember one scene in particular. A woman, beautiful and exotic, large breasted, with a small waist, a set of full and perfectly symmetrical lips and long flowing and perfectly parted blonde hair, and a man, pretty flawless himself; they were making love in a hot tub, well, at least their pretty terrific acting skills made it appear as though they were making love. You couldn’t see their genitalia except for the woman’s breasts. I knew that watching this scene was so wrong, that at 5 years old I was not supposed to be viewing this, and yet, I continued to watch, because it felt good, in a myriad of ways. It felt good physically; I remember the tingling feeling in my nether regions and being somewhat puzzled by this somatic response, yet enjoying it. I surely did not want the physical sensation to cease. I also remember the guilt that I felt, perhaps even further…the shame. I recall the internal dialogue in my head saying “you’re bad…you’re a bad little girl…this is not right…you can’t tell anyone you are doing this and even more so that you’re enjoying this…what is wrong with you?…you’re a freak…a weirdo…” that same internal dialogue rummages its way through my cranium still, to this day, at age 26, which is for all intents and purposes a perfectly decent age to be engaging in sexual activity, intimacy, and even pornography screening if I so choose. And I do choose to, often, possibly to my own detriment, or possibly to the detriment of the one and only man who ever truly loved me, at least in the romantic sense. The question really has to be, how does a man satiate a woman who has been getting her rocks off through pornography since the age of 5 years old? Does a woman like that ever really have a realistic sense of what constitutes a viable love life with another human being, who is not a porn star with a director, producer and camera man following his every move? I really wish I could answer that question, but I’m not so sure that I can right now. I don’t ponder on and on about my pornography watching that rides a fine line between appropriate enjoyment and obsession just for the sake of talking about pornography. I talk about it because I believe that it has added a complex layer to my already stifled ability to coexist in a healthy partnership.

Never in my life, not even at 7 or 8 years old, have I ever wanted to be that girl or that woman who gives herself over to the men in her life. Perhaps it’s because I spent my childhood watching my mother toggle and fumble with male figures, such as my father, my step father, her step father, and the list could go on. Again, to reference the pornography, there was a stinging in my gut every time I saw the women in the porn films seemingly bow to a man. At times I am so beyond turned on by the visual stimulation of what I am watching and then as soon as the excitement has commenced I sit there, lacking pants, my hands in places that they can only be when in a private setting, and I sit there dumfounded by my own behavior; “that woman basically just got totally manhandled and did the majority of the dirty work, and I’m kind of disgusted by the entire idea of this right now, and yet, I just got off to this. I’m so fucking confused right now.” The cognitive dissonance is alarming and uncomfortable as watching Donald Trump attempt to sound like a politician. Gut wrenching. But, ya know, maybe it’s not about the porn at all; perhaps my resistance to succumbing to a man is really just because I’ve always been silently obsessed and distracted by the male species, even in kindergarten. Distraction is one of the things that most human beings love, yet hate so fiercely. It’s kind of like that piece of decadent and rich chocolate cake that you know is going to send your stomach into a sugary daze of misery and yet you eat it anyway. I could list the various examples, but I’ll never be entirely sure about the source of my inner conflict. I mean can you imagine the internal discord that I’ve been living in since the time I was 5 years old? There I am, 5 years old with strawberry blonde hair, bushy unkempt eyebrows, three palpable freckles stamped across the bridge of my little nose, my teeth as wretched and mangled as could possibly be and I am desperate. I was desperate for attention, from anyone, or anything, any male figure, boy, man, or somewhere in between. I really didn’t even care to know his age, or level of personal hygiene, as long as he had a cute face and paid attention to me, negative or positive attention, I usually didn’t care about much else. Would I ever say this truth out loud to someone else? Of course not. I’m not sure where I learned, even at 5 years old, that you never let others see you sweat, appear imperfect, or foolish, but I definitely held that ideal close my chest, even as I stood there in the playground vying for looks, glances, brutality, a push, a shove, a name calling, anything, from a boy or man. Instead of talking to others about my crushes, my insecurities, my fears, my observations of the humans that were walking in and out of my life consistently…I would just delve into my personal Lisa Frank diary on a nightly basis. If I couldn’t find the words to describe my yearnings or bewilderments, I would just draw pictures of whatever came to my head or heart at any given moment. I sure wish I still had those diaries; the material would undeniably induce spastic laughter all around. Even now, at 26, when I have enough time to get lost in the solar system of my thoughts, I ponder whether or not I’ve been somewhat heartbroken since my toddler years. I’d love to dive into the quandary of my existence over a glass of wine and a menthol cigarette, becoming inventively adrift in the bellows of smoke that surround my seemingly omnipotent mouth as I attempt to appear careless in my description of my youth, but I might lose my current standing in life to the quicksand that is self pity if I choose to stay in that thinking for more than a minute or two. It’s dangerous. My brain, that is. So dangerous, and yet it has always seemed to be my greatest asset. What a death grip of a situation; having your most supreme asset also serve the most dangerous aspect of your being. There are those who believe that alcohol, cigarettes, hours spent in a tanning bed, promiscuous sex, binging on copious amounts of food only to self induce vomiting in a hazardous manner; these are the very actions that will lead to my ever so timely and fairly predictable demise, but is that true? I mean, yes of course the aforementioned behaviors are unhealthy, risky, careless, dangerous, and demise ridden, but you wanna know what will undeniably send me to the bottom of a casket? My brain. My thinking. My disaster den. Psychosis central. The very noggin that garnered me praise as a child as I excelled in scholastics quite effortlessly. Yes, the physical entity which scientists regard as perhaps the most powerful unit of one’s body. Note, however, that nobody has ever said that power didn’t mean destruction. Nobody ever said that something or someone couldn’t be useful, successful and wildly devastating all at the same time. I’m glad no one said that, because quite frankly, I would then be the exception, and my brain can only tolerate so much exclusivity and self centered alienation before I will spontaneously combust into a million tittered tattered pieces of charcoaled veins, magmatic blood with a deep red sappiness to it, and broken spirit. This is me describing myself as unattractively as possible, whilst hoping that despite the desecration of myself, you might still want to take a ride with me. I can’t promise that this ride will lead us anywhere but to the inner workings of far from seamless continuation on this earth. There will likely be an outpouring of self egocentricity and self regard, because after all, I will be sharing my personal experience with you. With the aforesaid sentence intact you now have no business claiming that I didn’t warn you. I can promise you only a few things; honesty, entertainment, primitive descriptions of an often times dirty and disastrous life, but also the chance at a smidgen of hope, just enough to keep one’s heart from imploding and becoming despondent. All of life is not bitter, callous and frightening, but I’m here to tell you that depending on the decisions we make every split second, minute, hour of each day, it certainly be, during certain parts, frightening, bitter and callous. The bad news is life is terrifying; the good news is that it doesn’t have to be. 
Listen, I just want to tell you a story, my story. I’m not holding you hostage here. You can decide to stop being on the receiving end of my tomfoolery whenever you so choose; this is not a lock down facility, you can leave at any time. I really hope that you stay, however, because abandonment issues are not a concern I’d like to add to my laundry list. I can’t tell you how many tidbits of advice I’ve been given on how it is I will find healing. Read this book, go to this self help group, see this specific counselor for she will change your life, this antidepressant will surely get your neurotransmitters firing again in no time, meditate, pray, kneel while praying, build relationships with like minded individuals, get a dog, take up physical exercise even more than you already do, stop exercising because you’re using it as a distraction from your feelings, sit with your feelings, don’t sit with your feelings because eventually you’ll just act out on them, make sure you’re not alone for long periods of time, learn how to be alone and sit with yourself. You’re clinging to paradoxical nature of all of this advice, right? If you haven’t experienced this yourself, the sometimes unsolicited or completely overwhelming and often unfounded advice from others in your life, then trust me when I say that it is bewildering and deeply maddening at times. Like I appreciate your support, your concern, your help, but can you back up for a second and get up off me? I now completely understand and endorse the trendy saying from year 2005 “get off my nuts!” I’ve had to stop myself more than one time from getting my Rihanna on and getting straight up ratchet with peeps! All I’m saying is that I am in a lot of pain right now, emotional pain that is, and I’m trying to navigate all of this without using SOMETHING, not a drink or a drug or food or a man or over exercising. What is there left to use? Surely there has to be something I can use safely and responsibly to dull the sharpness that is the current state of my life. Right? I would love to tell you in just a few sentences what has brought about this disturbia that is taking precedence over most areas of my life, but it requires much more explanation than just a few sentences would allow.

I want to start by telling you about Kent. He’s typically my favorite topic of conversation anyhow. Kent. Exquisite. Kent. Charming. Kent. I loved him. I love him. Yeah, I do, I love him. Yes, oh yes, I forgot to mention, Kent is definitely whom I was referring to during the first part of my long and winding rant. Kent. There’s so much to say about Kent.

Well he wasn’t just your average earthling; he was particularly redolent of peril and cigarettes. It was equal parts mesmerizing and disheartening to watch him attempt to navigate through his own existence, but we all fell for it, just like any impressionable heart would do. We all fell. We were all convinced. He had us wrapped up in his seemingly blameless magnetism and beguilement. I surely excused the smoke that he blew into my face even though my lungs would whisper at me begrudgingly with every toxic inhale; I think he was carelessly hopeless and satisfied, and that was the part of his essence that I just couldn’t comprehend. How would one be so content with oblivion? It was that paradoxical yearning of wanting to know the formula for his relaxed nature and yet pitying his ability to settle for less. What an interesting little creature he was, and yet many lost interest in him ever so quickly.

Let me start by saying he was brilliant. Brilliantly cerebral and rational he was. We were complete opposites and I was quite alright with that. I would make decisions on a whim based on the feelings within my gut and he would stop me, pause, ask rhetorical questions designed to inspire me to think before acting, and I would brazenly laugh at his attempts to morph me into a rational human being. He would often grow tired of my impulsive features but just one tear drop falling from my eyes to the upper crevice of my cheekbone and he would be putty in my hand again, concluding his questions and investigation into my motives and malarkey. What Kent failed to recognize was that he too made most of his decisions based on chasing a feeling, but the feeling he chased disguised itself as a physical feeling, a physical sensation, much like the physical feeling I chased as a young girl watching pornography unbeknownst to the adults in my life. So while he would lecture me for being an emotional organism rather than a rational Lion, he was somewhat unknowingly giving his life over to the lights and buzz, becoming a martyr to his own personal cause.

Never the less, I was still mollified by his sweet nature, his perpetually disheveled sandy blonde hair that fell just above his thickened eye brows. His eyes were the kind of blue one can only locate in pacific waters and they sort of gaped into you without his ever even trying. It was startling and effective, which is just the way I tend to like it. He always had a glimmer of hope in the corner of his left eye but his right eye often appeared glazed over like a befogged cloud on a rainy afternoon; He knew exactly what he was looking for and yet he seemed so apathetic, so tortured, so done. It was like you could tell he had a history of trauma without him ever uttering a single word about it. He didn’t want to tell you any of his personal stories; his whole mystique was remaining emotionless and ambiguous. I think he knew how frustrating it was and he liked that for this was his greatest talent: frustrating you to the point of deep, convoluted, meandering love. He walked in at a staggering 6 foot 4 and his body was burdensome and unwieldy, his arms were strong but his core was soft, his legs could hold but his chest crumbled easily. It was kind of humorous really, but his laugh was always substantial. It makes you wonder doesn’t it? Are we speaking of his appearance or his persona? One might never be able to fully separate the two.

One day we were spending a few rounds of the clock together when he began hitting me with question after question. He first asked me “What do you want out of life?” “Well, that’s a loaded question, isn’t it?” I responded, because it WAS a loaded question. I mean, Goodness gracious, really? How does one really answer that? “I just want to be happy, content, comfortable, secure, you know, I just want to make some meaning out of my time here, that’s about it” I answered. “That’s a fucking terrible answer” he countered. I really had no idea what he was getting at so I just let him continue arguing his point. “We’re all just gonna die anyway Aralyn, who cares about making meaning out of life? The goal should be feeling as good as possible at all times no matter what that requires…” I knew he was talking about getting high, which made perfect sense at the time, because he was as high as his brain would allow and he coddled plenty more substances in his reservoir of potions to last him through the rest of the week. The thing with Kent is that he would always share. He would always share, but only with me. He liked me high; he did not like me sharp. My intellect annoyed him and he never hesitated to let me know. If he scored us the downers he would have me where he wanted me, if he scored us the uppers he would have to sit through my mania and wait for me to shut my fucking mouth every once in a while when I finally paused to take a breath. Worst of all was when he had to interact with me when I was sober; he couldn’t stand it. I would notice how he would strategically plan ahead in order to keep me high and tolerable. It was somewhat offensive, but I could understand it. Why would he want to deal with me sober? Why would I want to deal with him sober? It was a twisted little relationship and we knew exactly what the set up was.
The one thing I will say about Kent is that he never strayed a single mile, as far as I know at least. We were in many situations in which his eyes could have, and probably should have, easily wandered, and yet they did not. He would always keep his gaze on me; it made me feel important and beautiful. He never told me that he thought that I was beautiful but his behavior indicated such. Whenever the opiates would settle into his system and we were alone together he would lay his back unto our couch and close his stately blue eyes into a somber half conscious stupor. He would begin to blather somewhat lifelessly about a wedding, us spending our lives together, children in the future, fun times, always “feeling good,” showing our fucked up parents just what we were capable of, and defying the odds. Every once in a while he would mention us getting clean together, we would tell the drugs to “fuck off” when we were ready and take over our planet. We just weren’t ready yet, the world just wasn’t ready for our energy yet. He would convince me that we still just wanted to use, not that we needed to. I would sometimes believe him as the needle slid underneath my nearly necrotic unnerving skin, but I always had that inkling deep down in my gut that we were slaves to this. We had become enslaved; we weren’t always this defenseless, but once we reached this level of fragility and dependence it seemed that there was really no questioning it.

I remember when Kent and I first met; we were both 14 years old and the life in our veins was pretty radical and electrifying. We were honor students, student athletes, and honestly somewhat gawky and clumsy. He wore thick framed glasses and I always thought they hid his most precious feature, his eyes of course. I wore these gaudy sneakers, even with dress pants; I really had no fashion sense until upper classmen started pointing out my mismatching clothing attire and I amended the situation as best I knew how. Kent was nice to me, which was different. I didn’t have to be theatrical in order to garner his attention and he didn’t have to clean up after me the way he did his mother. We both came to appreciate each other quite rapidly. The first time we hung out it was to study for an Honors Geometry test that we were both relatively nervous about taking. Not much studying actually happened; we spent 4 hours talking about our childhoods, our siblings, our parents, astrological signs, and our favorite sports teams. It was almost as if we were meant to be together for those four hours. It was almost as if some greater spirit out there wanted us to collide. I’ve tried looking back many times over the years to decipher if there were any authoritative decisions that either of us had made in order to arrange this meeting of two busted souls. Did either of us play God? Did either of us act on free will which would have then caused a collision with the will of the great creator or spirit of the universe? Looking back, I really don’t think so. I really truly believe that it was happenstance which brought us together, to the bond that we rapidly formed. The decisions we made after our bond formed are an entirely different story, but still, I do believe that we were meant to crash into each other’s lives. I’m not sure when we transitioned into being boyfriend and girlfriend, but we became inseparable in no time flat and both of our lives changed for the better…at first.

What I will say today, at 26 years of age, is that it’s not the drug that stole the love of my life and cremated the hardened layer that rests upon my organs; it was the dependence. The dependence killed Kent and the dependence nearly murdered me as well. I surely miss the euphoria but I do not miss the hunt. I undeniably miss the first sweet spot that was once attained, but once it passed, so did our lives…right before our eyes, just like the prey of a night stalking carnivore…our systems were wrecked, our families were torn, our dignity was deflated, we sung for the stinging and we died by our own hands. We existed for the numbing, but we could never quite get numb enough. We sought contentment in plastic bags and bottles and a plastic bottled life is what we got.

So now you’re all “wait, tell me about Kent dying.” But wait a second here, I said that Kent was killed by his dependence. Let me finish, just let me finish please.

Here I am sitting on the edge of one of the most critical decisions that I will ever have to make in my lifetime. I’m not really sure what came over me, but as I was trotting about my typical ambulatory walk to work this morning a gut hauling little twist surfaced in the midpoint of my abdomen and I just knew. I just knew. Something is not right. Something is very off, but I’m not sure what it is. It’d been 76 days since I’d heard even so much as a peep from Kent. Yes, I’d been counting. Duh. It’s hard enough going through a break up, never mind a break up with the one and only person you’ve ever given even a smidgen of your heart over to. On top of that already concentrated and pungent layer is the fact that I am 99.9% sure that Kent is continuing to use. I mean duh, of course he is, how and why would he have stopped? Of course there is this naively romantic piece of me that wants to believe that in my sudden and crushing absence he has decided to clean up his act, but I’m most certainly not going to hold my already belabored breath. A girl can wish though, right? Actually, in all honesty, sometimes it hurts even more to wish something into an imaginary existence only to consistently be reminded that it is not reality at all, and to stop, and to get real, and to move on with your fucking life. However, in this moment, there was a tiny shuddering in the midpoint of my abdomen and, that, I just refused to snub.

My already hastened trot began to accelerate as I used my right forearm to hold my moderately sized Steve Madden purse carefully close to the side of my body. When my purse has the freedom to jingle and float about I go absolutely insane; the noise produced by the clashing of my endless accessories and the contents of my purse radiates into my ears and the self consciousness that has stolen only the best moments of my life begins to rattle into my cranium. People will hear me. People will be distracted by my presence. I am acting as a nuisance. I must quiet myself as much as humanly possible. These are the thoughts that torpedo through my brain as I merely attempt to exist among my fellow human beings. Holy fuck, is it exhausting sometimes. None the less, I am hustling, my walk is beginning to crescendo into a full on run and I have an exact focal point in mind. Kent’s apartment. I just know. I just know that this guttural feeling is directly attributed to some sort of trouble that he must be in. I slightly recognize this physical response and the only recall I can summon is last fall when Kent overdosed right before my eyes. What if he is currently in the midst of an overdose? What if he has already overdosed? What if I finally get to his apartment and I find him there dead and decaying? What if I get to his apartment and I can’t even open his door because it is locked and he is incapable of responding or answering? I’ll keep the rest of my frantic questioning to myself, but goodness gracious, I am dying over here.

You see, that was it. Last fall. That was it. It was November 29th, 2012 and we had just dressed ourselves up into our most convincing facade of winter coats, scarves, powdered facial bones and rouge blush; just enough color to appear alive. Just enough makeup to sway our family members into non-worry or concern. We were both 21 at the time, but Kent’s birthday was coming up within days and he would officially be 22. This was a big deal because when we turned 21 we promised each other that this was the last year we would keep using with impunity and then after that it would be time to “grow up” and change our tune, our behavior, our objectives, our goals. After 21 it was no longer going to be acceptable to spend our days waking up at 11am, skipping any semblance of a breakfast or brunch and heading straight to wherever the first available dope dealer was located, only to snort just enough powder relief to hold us over until we could get back to use in the privacy of our own dirtied and disastrous apartment. We would cut it up, just for the OCD act of doing so as the drugs were already as delicate as possible. On this particular day, the day after Thanksgiving where we spent 2 hours putting on a show for our family members, I remember gulping down moments of clarity as Kent and I both moved with stealth and intention. We were very deliberate in the preparing of our impending high. Having Kent around to inject me was honestly more fiscally affordable than if I had to offer a ten-bag to someone else every time I wanted to get hit with more. You see, I can’t inject myself, I just can’t. Kent has always done it for me, from the very first time I began injecting. Without him I would have to snort or smoke, which proved dismal after stepping up to the injection realm. Our veins were becoming more and more difficult to find and we began considering other places which we had never injected before, such as our groin or neck. I began to feel fear, which I hadn’t acknowledged in quite a few years, and I was becoming more and more disturbed by our dependence, by my dependence. That was what I always referred to it as: the dependence. I would sometimes joke about it, but I was mostly serious under my breath and under my distressed and unsettled skin. Kent just seemed less fearful than I and I could honestly spot the death wish in the pupil of his eyes. He really didn’t care anymore, but I think that I still did. Flashes of intelligibility were passing into the solar system that was housed in my spirit at the time and I knew I wanted more out of life than this. Kent was content. I was not. I had to get out, but I wasn’t sure how, and in this very instance, while the long hand on the clock continued to do its’ job, the only solution I could offer myself was “one last high.” It was always that self induced promise that this would be ‘the very last time” that kept me coming back for more, and then more, and then some more. That fucking lie that the dependence feeds me, that fucking lie that was wrecking my body, both physically and celestially.

Even after I had made the easy decision to get high “one more time” a fire began to boil inside of me and I spoke words I hadn’t voiced before: “Maybe this could be our last big shebang, maybe we could like, I don’t know, try and not use tomorrow and see what could happen….” I supposed to Kent with little heat or bravado.

“What the hell are you even saying right now?” he responded without a split second’s thought. “I don’t know, I just think it could actually be fun, I mean, once we’re not dope sick anymore, we could maybe get a dog or quit our lame fucking jobs and do something we actually wanna do…” I quipped, partially dreading judgment, partially beginning to become indignant and pissed the fuck off. How dare he question me considering sobering myself up? What the fuck? Like, seriously, what in the living fuck? When did he become this brutal? When did he become completely disinterested in my self interest in being happy? Actually, when did we both become disinterested in happiness and fulfillment? It had been a long time since my sense of having rights had been exposed. It had been a few years since I questioned what we were doing, where we were headed, and why we were making, or perhaps, not making, these decisions that were responsible for our current situation. “You’re talking crazy as fuck right now Ari, you need to calm the fuck down and just relax, like, we just got this good skag and you’re totally killing the moment.” Fuck this. I didn’t even know what began to happen to me, I can only describe it as divine intervention. Anger surfaced to the very tip of my nostrils and the rush of heat that scoured me in my warm bodied flesh took over the dependence. There was a light still left over in a small gap in one fracture of my body, somewhere, unknown, unable to be pointed out or named, that wanted to get out of this hell hole of an apartment, of a relationship, of a life, and Do. Something. Different.

I stood up. “Honestly, Kent, I love you, I fucking love you more than I possibly even love myself, which is part of the problem, but I just can’t do this anymore. I don’t even wanna get high right now, like I don’t even want you to put that nasty, dull, overused needle into my neck, I just wanna get out of here!….” Kent opened his mouth as if he were about to interrupt me and I violently stepped right over his attempt at interruption and continued on my seemingly effortless tirade. “I AM FUCKING DONE WITH THIS SHIT! I DON’T WANNA DO THIS SHIT ANYMORE, IM FUCKING TIRED, I’M SO FUCKING TIRED KENT, I’M SO TIRED OF THIS…” tears began to pour out of my eyes onto my sunken and diluted face that had once housed a fattened set of cheek bones and a crimson smile. A fight had awoken in me and I couldn’t set it down. I had imagined that Kent would begin to fight my fight, his dependence would attempt to battle with my forging for an escape. I soon realized that his dependence didn’t give a fuck about the threats of my departure. Kent turned to me, looked me in my eyes, his own eyes weathered, his eye sockets a dull and dusky blue from the malnourishment, weight loss and lack of sleep, barely resembling the generous and ample boy I had once fell so dastardly for. He carelessly uttered three words I might never forget: “more for me.” That’s what he said; after years of sharing our lives with each other, after years of this dependence on each other and on this compulsion…after years of me waking up a few hours before him on cold winter mornings and going out into a blizzard, with a pathetic excuse for a winter coat, to find us a sufficient amount of dope to get him through the day without feeling like absolute hell, because I thought that doing so was a sure sign of affection, or care, or love, or devotion to him…after years of wrecking our lives together and then leaning on each other solely because all other bridges had been violently and voraciously burned to the ground in the form of whimsical ashes. “More for me” he said. Minutes later, as I scurried around the apartment collecting my very few belongings in trepidation of the dope sickness I would soon unavoidably feel, skirmishing through the deafening blow of those three words which served to rip out the bottom layer of my already trampled heart, Kent overdosed. Yes, he overdosed, and I did not hesitate for a single second to call for help.

I dialed the numbers. The numbers I really didn’t imagine I would ever really have to actually dial myself. Only the actors on the television show Law & Order: SVU dial 911, right? Wrong. I dialed. “I need some kind of medical help here immediately, there’s someone overdosing on heroin, I’m pretty sure heroin…” The 911 operator asked me how I knew for sure that the drug in this case was heroin. “I just know! Send someone now!!! Is there anything I can do in the mean time? I’ll do anything you say!” I screamed frantically into the phone as if my own life were on the line. I mean, it kind of was. If Kent dies, a part of me dies as well; that’s just the truth. The operator assured me that she was sending someone to Kent’s apartment, which still felt like OUR apartment, right away. She said help would arrive in minutes. She told me there was little I could really do in the mean time but continue checking his pulse and possibly try to help him breathe If was I skilled enough at mouth to mouth resuscitation. I couldn’t move a single muscle in this moment. All dominance or mastery that I once had over my appendages have been zapped and subdued by my parasympathetic nervous system. My sympathetic nervous system had exited the building when I felt that I needed it the most. My flight response, however, was in full force, and apparently I had very little fight left in me. I took my hands off of Kent. I just couldn’t keep holding his lifeless body any longer. It just felt, well, lifeless, it felt too real. I couldn’t come face to face with that idea just yet. If he was gone, I really did not want to know, not yet. No. I just. I…I… I couldn’t do deal with that just yet. I stood still for probably 90 seconds staring at the front door. I am unsure if I blinked at all. I remember saying to myself “why the fuck can’t I get out of this nightmare? Wake up you psycho! Do something!”

They finally arrived. The police and the EMTs. One of police officers tried to console me by touching my arm and I quickly moved him away. “Please don’t touch me sir…thank you.” He looked at me with sad pitying eyes. I think he gave me grace. He knew what had happened to me just now. He knew the visual that was seared into the back of my eyes so how could he be mad at my icy cold introduction? Of course he understood. What a professional. They urged me away from the scene and told me to direct them towards any important personal possessions that I would need to have. I told that this is actually not my apartment so I am not in need of any possessions right now nor do I care about anything material at the moment. They spoke to me and took down my tale on paper. I spoke fluently with little dynamic or crescendo in my voice as I gazed off looking at an EMT stick some type of small tube up Kent’s nostrils and push. It must have been naloxone, which has made quite the splash lately in reviving people who have overdosed on heroin within just a minute or so. The longest 90 seconds of my life then came and went. The entire room grew quiet and as still as the water left in a clear glass in a motionless dusky home. Not a single stir occurred. We watched; our eyes transfixed. I can only speak for myself, but I did not take many breaths, not the amount that I normally would in a 90 second period of time.

So many memories sped through my mind. The first day we met. Our first kiss out on the docks behind Kent’s mothers house when we were only 14 years old. I remember how he kind of nudged himself in my direction and entered my personal space just enough for me to know that a kiss was about to transpire. It was almost as if he paused just long enough to give me an opportunity to distance myself as a way of delicately letting him know that I didn’t want him to kiss me so that he could reposition himself accordingly without having to embarrass himself by offering me an unwanted kiss. I didn’t move an inch, of course, I had been longing for him to finally make that move. I loved every millisecond of his lips on mine in that moment. He and I, both 14 years old; we were so unwise and naïve to the way of the world then. We were just little babies. We were just beginning to crawl; we hadn’t even really found our footing yet. The purity in that memory is really pretty picturesque. I will never let it go. Even as Kent was laying there, seemingly deceased, on the floor, with little plastic baggies next to his arms and crumbs littering the carpet, likely from a half hearted snacking from the evening before…even in that devastatingly sad moment, I wanted another kiss from him. Years later, after all we had been through together, even after everything he said and unsaid to me. The flavor of his lips and the quivering of my heart’s pulse for him never went away. 
78 seconds had passed…80 seconds…81, 82, 83…90 seconds had passed since the EMT administered the naloxone in an attempt to resuscitate this delicate human being lying in front of all of us…as surrendered as one can be whilst hopefully still attempting to steal another breath back into this world and into my heart. 
I still have the page in my diary that fully captures this exact day and moment. Most of my written words hold very little elucidation of what occurred, however I did manage to mangle out a short poem that most clearly highlighted the pacing of my heart.

“And so I say 
Goodbye, just one last time 
This is not like a “good night” 
This is a forever, parting sigh
So farewell I hope you’re happy where you are 
I hope you crawl into every star 
And shine your light way down far 
So I can feel you with my instincts 
And begin facing my deepened scars”

And next thing you know an eye lid moved, a nostril snorted, and a chest rose. What could this mean?

Well, it meant a lot of things; A lot of things which require much more than just a few minutes to explain, a lot of things which changed the course of my life forever. Do you notice my smug self absorption though? Of course my first thought is always how MY life has been changed, affected, impacted, and slighted, but what about others? It’s always such a stretch for me to place others before myself. It takes conscious thought and effort for me to not think of myself first. I am very selfish, I will admit it. Am I proud of my selfishness? By no means am I proud, but it appears to be woven into the guts of my very nature and I struggle on a daily basis to not a victim of my own egocentric desire and gluttony. Even as Kent was lying there on the floor, not knowing whether or not he was going to live, die, transform or become a living, yet immovable, vegetable for the rest of his days, one of my initial thoughts was this: “Fuck, I have dinner plans tonight that I’m gonna have to cancel to see how this thing with Kent rides out…” I mean, really? What the hell is wrong with me? My best friend and former lover could literally be losing his life, his mother could be losing a son, the world could be losing a really genuinely good soul, and yet my first thought is my most likely to be humdrum dinner plans later that evening.

I really feel like I need to pump the breaks right now though. I really need to take a step back. It’s time to go back in time a little bit. I have this itching sensation in my stomach signaling to me that I have some more explaining to do before I just dive into Kent’s state of being and all of the isms and theatrics which have accompanied him on his journey. I don’t know, maybe it’s not my intuition, perhaps I just want to talk more about myself, but I really do think you’ll benefit from what I have to share. They say that we learn from the experience of others and the experiences that we have ourselves; that no time is ever a waste, even periods of time that appear to be filled with nothing but mistakes and calamity, that when we grow and learn and reflect upon our mistakes and experiences we grow even further than we would have had everything just rolled along perfectly. They say we grow the most when we experience discomfort and are able to trek through it and drive further down the sometimes treacherous road of life. That’s what they say at least. Is it true? I mean, sure. I suppose I am an example of one learning from their mistakes and garnering immeasurable knowledge from many of my life situations, unfortunate or wonderful. All I know is I’m still here for some reason. Some days I truly question why I am still here. Why has the greater spirit of this universe just decided to keep me here? Am I supposed to keep fighting? Am I supposed to keep getting back up even when my head keeps getting pounded against a cement wall? Am I supposed to keep trying to run barefooted with blood on my heels? Yes. Yeah. Yes. Mmm hmm. Exactly. That’s exactly what I am expected to do…keep fighting. In this life we either die by our own hand, the hand of some other mother fucker’s actions taken in their free will separate from God’s will, or by God’s hands. Yeah, I said. I believe sometimes God takes us from this world. Not to be malicious, but in order to bring about a grander plan, whether for the person who passes or the family, loved ones, complete strangers, or whomever else they leave behind in their passing, God sometimes takes us outta here. Outta this world. God says “It’s your time bubba! I’m taking ya outta here…It’s time to get moving to the next place, the next home, the next existence.” So what I’m saying is I’m here. I refuse to die by my own hands, fuck that. I’m gonna go when I either die because God is ready for me to move elsewhere or some crazy fucker collides with me and wipes me out. That’s my plan. So, my point here is this: I decided at some point in my life that if I was going to be kept around this here world for a while, I was gonna have to find a legit way to not be miserable whilst living in it. My story is basically my journey toward non-misery. My searching for some semblance of happiness or contentment. It was a wild ride, that’s all I will say.

Chapter 2: The beginning

First memory. I’m sitting in on the dusty unkempt garage floor. My grubby little three year old fingers are picking up pebbles of dry cat food and lodging them into my mouth with the intent of having myself a delicious kitty feast all on my own. No parental supervision. I have no recollection of how I was able to Houdini myself into the garage unbeknownst to my mother or father, but I did. I distinctly remember my mother opening the door to the garage from the kitchen and staring at me with a look of sheer surprise on her face. She swooped me up, cleaned me off and brought me back into the house. That’s honestly all I remember of my first ever memory on this earth. I find it funny that my first memory is me, by myself, in a place I wasn’t really supposed to be, shoving unacceptable things into my mouth, being mildly neglected by my parents. Not much has really changed.

I really think that some people doubt me when I tell them some of my earliest memories, as if I shouldn’t be able to recall memories at that early of an age, but trust me, I do. I’m not making this shit up. I’m a weirdo and I’ve told a few lies in my life (we’ll get to that), but I’m not quite weird enough to lie about my earliest childhood memories, alright? The reality is that I could sit here and tell you some wild made up story but it wouldn’t even be half as interesting and strange as the actual truth of my story so there’s really no need for me to fib even in the slightest. I actually don’t even blame people who might question some of the stories that I tell them about my life. There are a few reasons I don’t blame people for possibly questioning the validity of some of the stories I might tell about my childhood. One reason is because there is a part of my history that I will discuss with you at some point, during which I told an atrocious lie that sent shockwaves through my town, circle of friends and place of employment at the time. Don’t worry, we will get to that. The second reason I wouldn’t blame someone for wondering if I might be embellishing is because my life honestly has just been that strange. I’ve had an attention-grabbing life filled with noteworthy events, fascinating sadness, curious tragedy and an absolutely what-the-fuck provoking cast of family members and characters. So believe what you will, but we don’t tell lies here, not here, not now. Not this time. Not this go round. Nope. We’re gonna get down to the nitty gritty, even though the thought of doing so is somewhat fear inducing and paralyzing. Whatevs. Time to put my toughened skin to proper use. I could go check my mail box tomorrow and get hit by a drunk mailman for all I know. I could be in line at the grocery store buying bananas and peanut butter and get shot up by random ass criminal. My inner organs could explode like a robust tomato being slammed against an a perfectly painted off white wall. There is really no telling or guestimating when my current life ends and some new life begins so why hesitate? Gotsta keeps it real.

So where do I go from here? Well, let’s go back to some more of my earlier memories. My family lived in a one story house in Seminole, Florida which is a pretty small city with a pretty cohesive community surrounding Seminole elementary school, Seminole middle school and Seminole Senior High School all within a mile or so of each other. There were definitely a lot of rich privileged children and families growing up in the Seminole area, but there was definitely a mix of poverty and/or white trash as well. I mean, I feel like I have the right to say the term “white trash” because there was a time when my family and I weren’t that far off from that, and, in all honestly, there are some white trash ass people out there. No shaming or shunning, just saying. In our three bedroom, two-bathroom house, lived my mother, father, brother Ethan, myself, and sometimes my oldest brother, Gerald. What a name, right? Like who gets named “Gerald” these days? No one. No one cool at least. Gerald sometimes stayed at his father and step-mother’s house and sometimes stayed with us. Gerald is technically my half-brother because we share the same mother but have different fathers, however I never thought of him as anything other than MY brother. To refer to him as as my half-brother feels very foreign and inappropriate to me so I have never done that and I likely never will. That being said, we were never close. Gerald is 10 years older than me and thus our life paths were quite divergent. Most of my earliest memories of him consist of me wondering why he was in trouble again and trying to figure out exactly what hapless stunt he pulled off this time. I rarely ever learned the truth of why Gerald was in trouble; I usually only learned about what his punishment was going to be. Finding out the details of his punishments made me all the more curious because sometimes the punishments seemed pretty serious. Gerald had to been to juvenile jail, he had been on probation for months at one point, he was expelled from high school, kicked off of the varsity football team during his senior year when he was the star quarterback, and at one point in his early 20’s he lost permission to use his driver’s license. I really had no idea what all of this meant. All I knew was that he either was a very reckless guy or he was very very unlucky. Even from a young age I’ve rarely bought into the victim stance so I always just assumed he was a rebel who gave no fucks and paid the consequences of such. It’s probably quite odd to hear me talk about my own brother as if I barely know him or the intimate details of his life or upbringing, but I really don’t. There should be a massive picture of my nuclear family when one looks in the dictionary for the definition of the word “detached.” Any behavior or event that was less than becoming for the image of my family was usually quieted, lied about, covered up, ignored, or altogether denied. When I asked my mother years later if she remembered what exactly Gerald had done in order to garner some of the aforementioned consequences during his teen-age and early adulthood, she told me she did not remember and had no recollection.

The conversation between my mother and I went something like this: “So what did Gerald actually do? You hid it from me when I was a kid, but I’ve always wondered what exactly happened….” I started off by saying. “I really don’t even remember, I can’t even recall, I know he did something, I just don’t even remember what” my mom quickly retorted. I didn’t believe her for a second. This was classic for her; deny, deny, deny, pretend that anything even remotely corrupt never took place and keep moving forward. “You’re such a liar, just tell me, It’s been years, it doesn’t even matter now!” I said without hesitation. “Honey, I really do not remember, I really don’t. I’m forgetful!” How the hell does a mother forget the fuckery that her own son was involved in? How could she forget, when I never even knew the details of anything that happened at the time and yet I still remember the thick tension and distressing chaos that consumed our household for months after each undisclosed behavioral event? I really didn’t believe her. Here she goes again, playing dumb, avoiding talking about anything rough or prickly. It’s so annoying. It gets so old. No one is gonna die if we talk a little bit about the bumpy past mother! Just a few weeks later after my mother and I had this conversation, I was visiting my brother Gerald for the first time in years and he told me all about the trouble he had once been in. He told me that our mom really didn’t remember the details of it at all. He told me that he actually wasn’t very surprised by her forgetfulness because she wasn’t the most present mother during his teen-age years. In fact, he stated that she really wanted to be anywhere but where she was during that time in all of our lives. I didn’t even pick up on this, not then, and not now. I really didn’t need to hear that. More than anything it just made me feel a tinge of sadness, but that feeling passed quickly and I was excited to hear the dirty details of Gerald’s debauchery once and for all.

So apparently when Gerald was in high school, around age 16, him and his friend, Allen Voyer, one day decided to check car doors in the high school parking lot after football practice. Obviously from the get-go, their intentions were calculated and deceitful but what ended up transpiring couldn’t even have been predicted by them at that time. Gerald and Allen quickly learned how easy it was to break into cars and trucks that the owners had left unlocked. Gerald described stealing wallets, trinkets, cell phones and the likes from various people’s cars and trucks. As he was describing his crimes to me, he almost appeared to have a sense of pride and boastfulness about him, even now, as he described this all to me, almost 20 years later. I can’t really blame him, I mean, it’s a pretty crazy story. They were definitely little deviants, that’s for sure. “People are seriously idiots. I remember one time I stole $600 from this guy’s work truck that he had laying right in the passenger’s seat with the truck unlocked, and you would have thought the guy would’ve learned, right?” Gerald exclaimed, “No, the very next week there was another wad of cash laying out in his unlocked work truck. Of course I stole it again, it was so easy the first time!” Gerald went on to explain that eventually his and Allen’s crimes became more and more intricate, to the point where one night they decided to dress from head to toe in black, wearing black ski masks and gloves to cover their hands. They had walky talkies to communicate with each other as they ran with intention around the neighborhood breaking into people’s cars parked out in front of their homes. “We had wads of cash, people’s guns, jewelry, I mean it was like a gold-mine, you’d never believe the things people leave in their cars, and we were teenagers, this was like Heaven to us!” Gerald went on to explain how cool and badass him and Allen felt getting away with all of their thievery, until one day they didn’t. One of their mutual friends who was not involved in the crimes, yet had knowledge of the crimes, was questioned by the police and ratted on Gerald and Allen. Gerald and Allen both tried to cover for each other, but to no avail. They were caught. They were guilty. It was obvious. Gerald recalled “this is the best part, so I’m the starting quarterback for Seminole High School and Allen’s the quarterback for Osceola, and so the headline on the nightly news reads “rivals on the field, but partners in crime!” Gerald said giggling with his accentuating hand gestures as he described this actually quite hilarious headline. I just kind of sat there in awe as he described the actual transgressions he was involved in. I thought about all the different scenarios I had made up in my head as a young child trying to explain to myself what was happening in my family at the time. I remember convincing myself that Gerald had gotten a DUI or gotten caught smoking weed on the beach or something, like, yeah, that must have been it! All the while the actual true story was way better, much more interesting, much more devilish and criminal. Gerald and Allen ended up being expelled from high school, spending time in juvenile hall, and were on probation for many months. This was just one of Gerald’s many “unfortunate situations” he would find himself in, or rather, get himself into, over the course of his teenage years and well into his 20’s. The analytical part of me wondered sometimes if he might have anti-social tendencies, and that could be partially true, but the logical part of me, the educated part of me, knows, that he was merely a pretty traumatized and lost child and teenager who happened to take quite a while to adjust to the boundaries and rules that one is expected to follow in this life if they want to keep their nose clean and their freedom intact. Gerald just tested the waters far too often and it’s almost as if Ethan and myself learned from Gerald’s mistakes. When I say that we learned from Gerald’s mistakes, I don’t mean that we were little angels, I just mean we learned how to do fucked up shit and not get caught, for the most part at least.