Chapter 10

02/28/07

When Harry Fucked Sally

And there I am, hunching over a typewriter, snorting handfuls of Ambien, drowning in a bottle of Southern Comfort. I haven’t slept in weeks, and I’m exhausted—you know—the feeling you get when you’re too tired to masturbate kind of exhausted.
I enjoy alcohol that you can drink straight because anything else seems counterproductive.

They say that if you don’t sleep for more than twelve days (288 hours, 1036800 seconds)—then you commit a crime—you can plead insanity. It’s been thirteen days, seven hours, and forty-one seconds, but I feel as if I’m getting saner.
Michael Jackson and Brittany Spears, Whitney Houston and Gary Busy seem as if they are logical human beings

And I haven’t felt comfortable in a long time. I don’t even feel complacent in my own skin, only in someone else’s. This lie that is my life is my reason for living, for going on, for not jumping off a fucking cliff and allowing the sharp rocks to pillow my face.

And I’m sitting there staring at a blank page that is peeking over at an empty liquor bottle that’s gazing at an ashtray full of cigarette butts.
And I tipple as if it were my job, but if you are a writer it basically is.

I’m drowning in my sorrows, just flooding my organs with alcohol. Give me a lighter; I’ll set myself on fire, spark some sort of drive in me, kindle some sort of desire to be, to exist.

I wash my hands after every cigarette—twenty times in three hours.
I hit the bottle of SoCo against the desk after every swig—thirty-four times.
I snort each line of Ambien with a new straw—the box of fifteen is almost empty.
And there I am, drunk as fuck, feeling nothing.

And now it’s time to understand—
You feel so much throughout your life. You feel pain and happiness, love and heartache, bliss and despair. You feel so much that sometimes you just don’t want to feel anymore. You don’t want to feel anything. Anesthetized.

And Pink Floyd comes on.
Comfortably Numb
And you’re thinking—
Yes! That is what I want to feel!

And you drink, and you smoke, and you snort, and you inject, and then…well then it happens; for a brief moment, a snapshot of your life, you realize that you aren’t even a part of the world. The moment you feel nothing is the moment you disconnect yourself from reality, from emotions, from life itself. You transcend that which has bound you to this earth. That connection to life, to anything else, is gone. And you are content.

If you pour a drop of alcohol on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.
Glad I’m not a scorpion.

My keyboard smells of Smirnoff so that every time I go to type something I need to drink. And I’m looking at my collection of scribbles, my clusterfuck of words, and I realize I’m out of things to write. I’ve written about sex so much that it all seems like one big orgy of words, chaotic and frenzied. And the only things that stand out are the ones that truly had an effect on my life, the things that gave me perspective.
Margaret the adulteress.
Diana the virgin.
Rosa the housekeeper.
Just footnotes in my book of loneliness.

And I’m thinking about love and deceit and death and murder. How can I top that? I need to exceed it, if not for the sake of my book, then for the sake of living.

The bankruptcy of my very creativity is what fuels me to instigate. I know I don't have much time left to roam this earth. And I am constantly bedeviled with this despondent disposition because I know that I am destined to write a definitive chapter in your history; I am holding the quill pen tightly between my anxious fingers, but I have yet to make a single mark on the page. If I can't make a mark with the pen, I will just have to settle for the sword.

And I realize what I have to do in order to make me feel content.
First,
Get another fifth of Soco,
Then,
Go out and find perspective.

And there I am, in my dorm room drunk as fuck, in the shade of the night, the darkness embracing my body, wrapping around my thoughts…faking it.
And there she is, riding me like a rollercoaster—up and down and up and down— allowing the night to mask her insecurities, shade her uncertainty…faking it.
And we both realize we’re just fucking to pass the time, but never losing sight of the fact that it is so much better than the truth, pain.

My roommate never says a word about the girls that I bring into the apartment, but at times I can see his shadow lurking in the hallway like an apparition, waiting, hovering, as if he is attempting to live vicariously through me. And despite his apparent innocence, I feel as though he is not as naive as he lets on to be.
Dalí was a voyeur, but fetishism is so 2004.

Now understand—
Then one day you’re walking through some shitty frat party. And when you're at a party such as this, you know that every single guy there is thinking the exact same thing: "Who is going to be sucking on my dick tonight?" But they all play the same game, they play it so fucking hard, trying oh-so-desperately to convince the girls they actually give a sinking fuck about how amazing the new Twilight movie is or when blank and blank are getting married, or which new combined-named celebrity couple has adopted another African baby in an attempt to save it from a curable disease called Malaria or AIDS—which only continues to thrive because we have failed to convince such indigenous tribes to stop fucking orangutans and shit. No, these guys won't waste the tissue paper. All they want to know is whether the girls are drunk enough to let their DSLs caress their whiskey-dicked shafts long enough for the dudes to bust whatever load didn't make it into their Ralph Lauren boxers during the lovers' scandalous yet obviously uncoordinated dance twenty minutes prior. And when these guys do not succeed they either get so fucking drunk that they don't recall their unavailing attempts or try to play it off as if they really just wanted to meet a "cool" girl they could chill with. And the two will be friends for months—even years—but then one fateful night, the girl"friend" will get so fucking hammered that she will invite the dude to the nearest twin size mattress—whosever it may be (God forbid it is an Aerobed)—and they will have the most unsatisfying sex of that girls' life; but the guy will consider it the best thirty seconds of his. And he will brag to all his frat brothers about how he "tore her shit up," because his frathole friends have told the same exact stories before. But while they are giving him hi-fives and cheersing to his "success" the girl will be crying to her friends about how much of a mistake it was and how she is swearing off alcohol forever, even though that night, horny as fuck, she will find some prince charming at the same type of party who will wash out any of the guilt that may have rested between her bed-tanned legs. And this is friendship. I am calling my gender out because they are in desperate need of a new game; shit gets old. And you're walking through such a party looking for someone to pass the time with, and you see her; those beautiful blue eyes haunt you from across the room.

Then, Apprehension swoops in like a vulture to pick at your insides. And you’re tripping over furniture, and you’re fumbling over your words. And she’s not even drunk.
And you’re thinking to yourself—
Am I ready for this?

And there you are, laughing and talking bullshit about nothing, not a goddamn thing. And you’re content. You realize that she is just like you in every way, afraid to feel vulnerable, afraid to be afraid. She’s full of apprehension. She wants perspective. She fucks her way through life because that’s all she knows. It’s the only thing that numbs the pain, along with Alcohol and Drugs and Lies and Deception. Beautiful, stunning Deception. And you love the fact that she’s guarded—a tormented soul, yearning to find truth in anything other than pain.

And there you are, lying in her bed embracing the darkness, inhaling the night, climaxing for the first time in years, feeling genuine.
And there she is, lying on top of you, squeezing tight her insecurities, her uncertainty, climaxing for the first time in years, feeling genuine.

And your lips collide for the first time, your tongues intertwine, and your mouths explode. And she’s biting your lip because she knows you like it. And you’re kissing her neck because you know she likes it. And you feel as if you haven’t met anyone real until now. As if everyone you have ever encountered was nothing more than figment of your mind's eye. But now you can see, truly see, in the dark, dark night. And nothing seems fake, contrived.
Sex can have integrity, just like a human, and just as seldom.

When she drinks she laughs just like Meryl Streep, as if it is a rarity. She laughs as if her eyes are clutching between their lids years of pain. Then everything shifts back and creates a fervent tension at the top of her forehead. And I'm just waiting for her to cry. But, in a way, it's comforting.

And you love her imperfections. You love her languid eyes, her cleft chin, her boyish smile. She has a deep, unsightly scar on her left leg, but that doesn’t stop you from kissing her with a fervency that dissonantly weeps of beauty and despair.

Yet, you both pull back, because you know exactly what is happening here—you’re letting go. You’re putting your guard down. You’re feeling vulnerable.

The thing is, when you kiss someone it's almost as if you can see into their soul. The way they kiss, their choice of movements, their mannerisms; you can read them. You know exactly what she is feeling at that exact moment. You can taste the pain; you can smell the insecurity. And you love it. And for that moment, you are God. You are looking straight into their soul and judging them for the things that are beyond their control. Their sins, their lies, their deceptions, you know it all. And that scares you, because you’re thinking—what if she is looking into your soul right now, as your lips embrace, and she can see all the hideous things you have done?
The Murder, the Lies, the Deception.

She knows you’re a fraud. And yet, she still continues. And this continues, for days and weeks and months, until you’re both staring at an empty bottle of SoCo and an ashtray full of cigarette butts and a blank piece of paper, and you’re feeling nothing, together. And Pink Floyd comes on again.

Comfortably Numb
“Oh my God. I love this song.”
“Me too.”
And you’re both appreciating that feeling of nothing, sharing it together.
And you’re thinking—
Am I in love?
And you’re kissing her and you know she’s thinking—
Am I in love?
And for the first time in your life, you are sure of something.

But the friction between us causes friction between us.
And there you are, remaining faithful, turning down any other girl that comes your way.
And there she is, fucking anyone she can get her pussy into, feeling something with someone. Finally you feel that Deception, that Despair, that Truth.
Pain.
And you realize—
This is what I’ve been protecting myself from all these years. I can’t wear my heart on my sleeve; I can’t give it away, because if I lose it, I’ll be that pathetic bitch of a sewer, searching this haystack of a world in order to find the only thing that can truly stitch me back together.

But she’s scared, and you’re naïve; and she’s insecure, and you’re afraid—to love, to live. And she’s covering up her insecurities with security.
My, how the roles have reversed.

And at this point in my book of life, I don’t feel as if I am the protagonist, the independent, the one thing that controls and drives everything else. I feel as if I am Lincoln, as if the events in my life are now controlling me. I feel the same way I did when I found Rosa stealing my mom’s jewelry.
Revenge is a bitch.

And I’m trying to figure out how to regain control over my life. Regain perspective.

Now understand—
Then one day you get a call; it’s you’re lover and she’s crying. And you feel as sympathetic as you did for those people who cried when John Lennon or Bonham or Marilyn Monroe died. But you’re trying to calm her down because she’s incoherent and annoying and you don’t have time for this emotional bullshit. She tells you she’s pregnant and that she wants to keep the baby; she doesn’t care if you decide to be in the child’s life or not. And you get offended, because you feel as though she’s calling you out, questioning your manhood, your commitment to responsibility.

I’m responsible; I pull out.

And that comment just doesn’t make sense anymore. And your life comes crashing down like a comet from space, burning a hole in your sky, ripping through the very fabric of your life, and exploding into a million little pieces that scatter across the surface of your existence.
Extinction.

And you’re feeding her lies, telling her that everything will be all right, that you’ll be there to support the child...that you’ll give up your life so that he or she can have one. Everything your parents did for you. And she says goodbye, and hangs up.
‘Goodnight’ is so much better than ‘goodbye.’

But she doesn’t feel better because she knows you, you are the same person, and she knows you. She knows she’ll be lucky if the child even gets a gift from you on Christmas.
Blue eyes.

Switch perspectives.
And nine months pass. Nine months of me fucking random girls, constantly trying to fill voids, seal gaps, in my life and theirs. Nine months of me crying late at night, pouring my eyes out in shower stalls, in elevators, in cars and empty classrooms. Nine months of me drunk as hell at a typewriter with one sentence on a page—

I just want to feel again.

Because when it rains, it pours.
Now, I find solace in Southern Comfort, Nietzsche, and this theory of perspectivism. I find myself reading the same line from The Will to Power over and over again.

“It is our needs that interpret the world; our drives and their For and Against. Every drive is a kind of lust to rule; each one has its perspective that it would like to compel all the other drives to accept as a norm.”

And I find truth in the perspectives. And I’m dying for a new one. I’m dying to live, not in the sense of self-preservation, existing to exist, but rather I want control as an artist and as a human being. I don’t want to be hindered by this fear that I will get a hold of the truth too soon. I want to be strong enough, hard enough, artist enough. I want to invent rather than find.

I have frequently thought about whether I will get married. Technically, marriage was just a contractual obligation mandated by the state back in the times when women were property. And marriage still exists because the terms haven't changed.

So the bottles pile up next to my desk and I develop a cough. And I haven’t slept or eaten in nine months; I’m down to an unhealthy 140. Skeletal and emaciated, I begin to lose my appeal, my charm—everything that had originally made me irresistible. And I feel, depressed. Sleepless nights are the worst when you’re sleeping alone.

Meanwhile, there is a distant memory that continues to prod at my brain. When I was eleven, my friends and I went to visit a palm reader; her apartment was located above the candy shop in downtown Englewood. I recall having sucked on a lollipop previously so my hands were a little sticky, but the irrefutably ugly woman read my palm anyway. And she told me I have kind eyes and a charming smile. She told me I would be loved. She told me that people would remember my name forever. But then she paused for a moment, constantly rubbing one of the creases on my palm. She told me in a somber, melodramatic tone that I would bear a child who would do great things, but that I will die before my twentieth birthday. And now, while on the brink of insanity and the precipice of depression, I tell my roommate everything about me, every single detail. I tell him about Rosa and her daughter, my family, my friends, my deepest darkest secrets. I tell him everything so that in case I die soon my experiences will survive. And people will remember my name forever.
And I'm starting to miss everybody.

Then I get a call. It’s four thirty in the morning and my lover is crying. And she tells me it’s a boy; he’s six pounds, seven ounces. And his name is Dante.
Dante Ian Santiago.
The son of a sinner.
And he has brown eyes.
And that’s when I start to cry. My dirt brown, peasant brown eyes start to pour. And she hears me and hangs up because she thinks that it’s the best thing to do.

And I begin to write, lines and lines, sentences and paragraphs, just throwing phrases together and letting the words pile up until it becomes one gloating, pretentious mountain of literary bullshit. And I end it with—

I feel it now, that Truth, Pain.