jamin_law (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} jamin_law) wrote in ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} alien_suicide,@ 2004-06-09 12:08:00 |
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CHAPTER 14: SOMETHING YOU BOYS WILL NEVER FIGURE OUT
Another dream…
It dawns like a winter sunrise with soft pinks and baby blues bleeding into the midnight stars. It remains in the twilight just before the sun peaks over the horizon, allowing the soft colors but drowning everything in shadows. I’m sitting on a dark plane underneath a floating river. The river is narrow and clean as if it was treated with chlorine, and seems to be the source for the pink and blue light source in this place. It doesn’t feel very strange to me.
My little guide is missing. I wanted to talk to her to. I wanted to know a little bit more of her secret… but instead I’m alone… well, not completely alone. A shadow walks slowly toward me.
By his gait, I can tell who he is.
“Luke,” I call out, “don’t you know that you’re dead?”
“Do you know that you’re in a mental hospital?” he asks back. He finally reaches me and sits down on the bare ground. I sit with him.
“What do you mean?” I ask. I look around to emphasize my point. “This isn’t a mental hospital.”
“Yes, but you’re not here. I’m not here. So it doesn’t matter that I’m dead. It also doesn’t matter that you’re drugged up right now. The point is that we both believe that we are here.”
“Wait a minute,” I say. It sort of makes sense, because nothing makes sense- I’ve forgotten that I’m dreaming and I’ve forgotten logic. “So are we really here or not?”
He closes his eyes to choose his words, then says, “It depends on whose perspective you use.” I look at him. He continues, “Well to us, we’re here. To everyone else, we’re somewhere else. Reality is subjective.”
“You know, it’s strange. I should be having some sort of strong emotional reaction to seeing you alive again. But I feel relaxed. Don’t get me wrong- I’m happy to see you. It’s just that… well… I guess I should be overwhelmed… freaking out or something.”
“Maybe deep down you know that you’re not really seeing me alive again.”
“Yeah, but I know that there’s something strange going on here. You’re not saying things that I think you would say. You’re saying things that wouldn’t come out of my brain.”
“Well I haven’t really said a lot,” he says.
“Stop arguing with me, Luke. It’s just a feeling. I know that this isn’t real, but in a way I’m accepting this anyway. This whole thing is strange. It’s surreal.”
“Well…” he says.
“Well what?” I ask, getting annoyed.
“Well you’re here for a reason, and I’m pretty sure it’s not to sit there and look pretty. And who knows how much time you have?”
“Yeah, good point,” I say. I chew on my thumbnail so I can think. We both look up at the stars. “It’s pretty,” I say quietly. We look at each other and I give him a quick kiss. “I think I know what we we’re supposed to do,” I say.
“What’s that?” he asks.
“There were some things that I always wanted to talk to you about, and I think we were always afraid to talk about it. Maybe we were afraid of getting too close. I guess that doesn’t matter much now,” I say.
“What is it you want to talk about?”
“You,” I say, and I poke him in the shoulder. “I was always so damn afraid of hurting your feelings, but I was always very curious. I guess now I’ve got the chance to ask.”
“Are you sure that I am really me and that I’ll give you the answers you are looking for?” he asks.
I cross my eyes at him. “Well it’s worth a try,” I say in a rising tone as if to say that I barely understood what he said. “You’re not going to be difficult even in this…” I look around to search for the right word, “sur-reality, are you?”
He laughs. “No, it’s okay. You want to talk about our big problem, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Abandonment,” he sighs. “I just couldn’t escape it.”
“When was the last time you saw your parents?” I ask.
“I was ten for dad, twelve for mom. Dad’s still in jail and mom- wow, I just realized that we died the same way.”
“That’s so sad- have you seen her yet?” I ask.
“First person I saw,” he nods. “But time really doesn’t have the same cohesion here as it does out there.” He points upward and to our right, to the floating river. “So I haven’t really had the experience yet.”
“That’s weird,” I say.
“Yeah, well… if it wasn’t weird then I wouldn’t be dead.”
“Even in death you’re sarcastic.”
“Ivy,” he grins, “why would death stop me from annoying you?”
“Can we get back to our conversation? I don’t know how much time we have,” I ask.
“Don’t worry about time… but anyway, where were we?” he asks.
“The last time you saw your parents…”
“Yeah,” he says. He exhales deeply. “Then the foster families.”
“That was tough, wasn’t it?”
“Definitely,” he answers, “When you’re a teenage foster child, nobody brings you into their home unless they have ulterior motives. Sometimes it was the religious brainwashing, and other times it was about the government stipend. They didn’t care about me. They didn’t care about what was going on in my head. I think every foster family was too interested in controlling my thoughts and actions than worrying about my well-being. No skateboarding, no punk music, church, milk, 9 PM curfew, Algebra, family sitcoms, Disney movies… I was so damn bored. But always the mind control… No wonder I looked for trouble.”
“Did you get along with anybody at all?” I ask.
“No,” he answers, “The real kids of the family never liked me because I was treading on their territory, and the parents always treated me like a biological weapons experiment.” I look at him funny, so he clarifies- “Very… very… carefully.”
I’m still not satisfied with his embellishment so I ask, “What do you mean?”
He takes a second to think, and then says, “Sometimes I was a wild animal they were tempting out of the woods with picnic food so they could pet me, sometimes I was a monkey they were trying to teach sign language to, sometimes I was a savage and they were the pious missionaries attempting to save my soul… whatever the situation, I was less than they were.”
“How many families did you go through?” I ask. I have to keep him going. He has never talked about himself with this much openness before.
”Too many- continuity was non-existent. Some families were intentionally temporary. They’d keep me for three, six, or as many as twenty-four months.
“That had to be the toughest part,” I say. I look back to the stars and rhetorically ask, “How were you supposed to develop?”
“I know,” he says, “I barely developed a personality that was independent of abandonment issues.”
The shock of his honesty- and the fact that I know all too well that it is true- causes me to snort as I hold back a laugh. I don’t want him to think I’m being rude.
He pays no attention and continues, “I certainly couldn’t develop spirituality or religion, which really could have helped. I’d go from a Catholic family to Pentecostal family. The Pentecostal family would feel bad for me for having to live with a Catholic family. Then I’d go to a Lutheran family and they’d feel bad for me for coming from a Pentecostal family. Baptist, Methodists, Presbyterians, Mormons, Brethren… each began their brainwashing as soon as I moved in. There was constant conflict. Some families were better than others, but there was always a change.”
“I guess it was hard to learn how to trust if no one ever trusted you.”
“Maybe,” he says. His gaze is distant.
“Did anybody treat you good?”
“Yeah, Brian’s family,” he answers gingerly.
I suck on my teeth. “Yeah and that didn’t turn out too well.”
“Brian’s family finally gave me a little stability at the end of high school, but then when I saw how he was treating you, I couldn’t stand idly by. I took a step back from him… I distanced myself… then I tried to reason with him… and eventually you two split. But it didn’t stop. He wouldn’t leave you alone. Then I watched him do the exact same thing to other girls.”
“And then you and I hooked up,” I say.
“Yeah, that pretty much ended everything with me and Brian… and his family.”
“Brian certainly is good at manipulating people into being as crazy as he is,” I say. I pull some grass from the soil and throw it.
“Well put.”
“Did it hurt you when Brian’s family disowned you?” I ask.
“Of course it did. I was with them the last two years of high school. I enjoyed living with them… and I felt an attachment with them.” He pauses for a moment, and I feel really uncomfortable. Then he adds, “I can tell you something about love. It’s convenient. It’s a great weapon when you want someone to feel worse than you do. All you have to do is take it away.”
“And Luke, I’ve got to say this, and I understand that this is not your fault, but it’s that kind of thinking that kept us from working out.”
“I know.”
“Luke… I need to ask you something.”
“Go ahead.”
“Do you blame me for losing that…” I pause to find the words, “…surrogate family?”
“No I don’t, but unfortunately, when all of this is over, you’re not going to believe me. And there’s not anything I can do to change that.”
I feel the tears coming.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “Guilt is not an emotion that you can defeat with rationalization.”
“It’s okay,” I say. One tear falls down my cheek, and then another. I feel a sucking force at my chest.
“Luke I need to tell you one more thing. I need to tell you about the first time that I ever felt anything for you.” I look at him… and he is fading away. I don’t have much time, but I don’t want to hurry what I have to say.
I recite it like a poem, because that is how the memory lives in my mind:
“It was a fragrant summer night that I’ll never forget. The air was heavy and charged with electricity and pollen and humidity. It tasted like the earth’s life-blood. Everything was so vibrant and stimulating… I bet a lot of people fell in love that night.”
I look over at him and he has completely faded away, but I still continue to speak. Somehow, I know that he can hear me.
“I went to see you when you were spinning down in Baltimore. I went alone, and I think that made it more special. That summer evening gave me a high that I never thought was possible. It made me so excited to come down and see you in action. I listened to that aggressive yet graceful mix tape you made me. It fueled me as I watched that beautiful landscape along Routes 94 and 30 become draped in shadows as the sun set. It was the perfect setting, and Luke, girls need perfection for feelings like these- that’s something some of you boys will never figure out.
When I got to the Beltway, I turned off my music, and I let the repetitive rhythms of the car on the concrete hypnotize me. The highway into Baltimore descends from the beltway, and the lights of the city and concrete monoliths seemed to rise from the depths of the earth.
After I served my time waiting in line and chatting and up and making new friends, I got inside the venue. I didn’t find you right away, but when I did, you seemed happier than I ever remember.”
I feel the tears forcing their way.
“I watched you spin that night, and I danced until I pushed my pain and stress from my mind. Afterwards you and I went to the courtyard….”
I wipe one tear.
“I don’t know if you remember, but that night you said it was me who made you feel so happy.”
The tears came pouring like a sour rain. Where did we go wrong? I thought to myself.
“I don’t know if you remember, but you said you hoped the feeling would never end.”
I wipe the tears from my eyes. I look around for him- just in case- but I’m alone. “Anyway,” I continue, “All I need is to take in the smells from any summer night and the memories of what happened on that night flood my mind. A summer night has become like a… well… now you are a summer night.”
It is very quiet, and I am all alone. All I can do is look up into the reflecting light of the river, the pinks and blues bouncing from my face, and feeling the warm breath of an imaginary summer night.
Another dream…
It dawns like a winter sunrise with soft pinks and baby blues bleeding into the midnight stars. It remains in the twilight just before the sun peaks over the horizon, allowing the soft colors but drowning everything in shadows. I’m sitting on a dark plane underneath a floating river. The river is narrow and clean as if it was treated with chlorine, and seems to be the source for the pink and blue light source in this place. It doesn’t feel very strange to me.
My little guide is missing. I wanted to talk to her to. I wanted to know a little bit more of her secret… but instead I’m alone… well, not completely alone. A shadow walks slowly toward me.
By his gait, I can tell who he is.
“Luke,” I call out, “don’t you know that you’re dead?”
“Do you know that you’re in a mental hospital?” he asks back. He finally reaches me and sits down on the bare ground. I sit with him.
“What do you mean?” I ask. I look around to emphasize my point. “This isn’t a mental hospital.”
“Yes, but you’re not here. I’m not here. So it doesn’t matter that I’m dead. It also doesn’t matter that you’re drugged up right now. The point is that we both believe that we are here.”
“Wait a minute,” I say. It sort of makes sense, because nothing makes sense- I’ve forgotten that I’m dreaming and I’ve forgotten logic. “So are we really here or not?”
He closes his eyes to choose his words, then says, “It depends on whose perspective you use.” I look at him. He continues, “Well to us, we’re here. To everyone else, we’re somewhere else. Reality is subjective.”
“You know, it’s strange. I should be having some sort of strong emotional reaction to seeing you alive again. But I feel relaxed. Don’t get me wrong- I’m happy to see you. It’s just that… well… I guess I should be overwhelmed… freaking out or something.”
“Maybe deep down you know that you’re not really seeing me alive again.”
“Yeah, but I know that there’s something strange going on here. You’re not saying things that I think you would say. You’re saying things that wouldn’t come out of my brain.”
“Well I haven’t really said a lot,” he says.
“Stop arguing with me, Luke. It’s just a feeling. I know that this isn’t real, but in a way I’m accepting this anyway. This whole thing is strange. It’s surreal.”
“Well…” he says.
“Well what?” I ask, getting annoyed.
“Well you’re here for a reason, and I’m pretty sure it’s not to sit there and look pretty. And who knows how much time you have?”
“Yeah, good point,” I say. I chew on my thumbnail so I can think. We both look up at the stars. “It’s pretty,” I say quietly. We look at each other and I give him a quick kiss. “I think I know what we we’re supposed to do,” I say.
“What’s that?” he asks.
“There were some things that I always wanted to talk to you about, and I think we were always afraid to talk about it. Maybe we were afraid of getting too close. I guess that doesn’t matter much now,” I say.
“What is it you want to talk about?”
“You,” I say, and I poke him in the shoulder. “I was always so damn afraid of hurting your feelings, but I was always very curious. I guess now I’ve got the chance to ask.”
“Are you sure that I am really me and that I’ll give you the answers you are looking for?” he asks.
I cross my eyes at him. “Well it’s worth a try,” I say in a rising tone as if to say that I barely understood what he said. “You’re not going to be difficult even in this…” I look around to search for the right word, “sur-reality, are you?”
He laughs. “No, it’s okay. You want to talk about our big problem, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Abandonment,” he sighs. “I just couldn’t escape it.”
“When was the last time you saw your parents?” I ask.
“I was ten for dad, twelve for mom. Dad’s still in jail and mom- wow, I just realized that we died the same way.”
“That’s so sad- have you seen her yet?” I ask.
“First person I saw,” he nods. “But time really doesn’t have the same cohesion here as it does out there.” He points upward and to our right, to the floating river. “So I haven’t really had the experience yet.”
“That’s weird,” I say.
“Yeah, well… if it wasn’t weird then I wouldn’t be dead.”
“Even in death you’re sarcastic.”
“Ivy,” he grins, “why would death stop me from annoying you?”
“Can we get back to our conversation? I don’t know how much time we have,” I ask.
“Don’t worry about time… but anyway, where were we?” he asks.
“The last time you saw your parents…”
“Yeah,” he says. He exhales deeply. “Then the foster families.”
“That was tough, wasn’t it?”
“Definitely,” he answers, “When you’re a teenage foster child, nobody brings you into their home unless they have ulterior motives. Sometimes it was the religious brainwashing, and other times it was about the government stipend. They didn’t care about me. They didn’t care about what was going on in my head. I think every foster family was too interested in controlling my thoughts and actions than worrying about my well-being. No skateboarding, no punk music, church, milk, 9 PM curfew, Algebra, family sitcoms, Disney movies… I was so damn bored. But always the mind control… No wonder I looked for trouble.”
“Did you get along with anybody at all?” I ask.
“No,” he answers, “The real kids of the family never liked me because I was treading on their territory, and the parents always treated me like a biological weapons experiment.” I look at him funny, so he clarifies- “Very… very… carefully.”
I’m still not satisfied with his embellishment so I ask, “What do you mean?”
He takes a second to think, and then says, “Sometimes I was a wild animal they were tempting out of the woods with picnic food so they could pet me, sometimes I was a monkey they were trying to teach sign language to, sometimes I was a savage and they were the pious missionaries attempting to save my soul… whatever the situation, I was less than they were.”
“How many families did you go through?” I ask. I have to keep him going. He has never talked about himself with this much openness before.
”Too many- continuity was non-existent. Some families were intentionally temporary. They’d keep me for three, six, or as many as twenty-four months.
“That had to be the toughest part,” I say. I look back to the stars and rhetorically ask, “How were you supposed to develop?”
“I know,” he says, “I barely developed a personality that was independent of abandonment issues.”
The shock of his honesty- and the fact that I know all too well that it is true- causes me to snort as I hold back a laugh. I don’t want him to think I’m being rude.
He pays no attention and continues, “I certainly couldn’t develop spirituality or religion, which really could have helped. I’d go from a Catholic family to Pentecostal family. The Pentecostal family would feel bad for me for having to live with a Catholic family. Then I’d go to a Lutheran family and they’d feel bad for me for coming from a Pentecostal family. Baptist, Methodists, Presbyterians, Mormons, Brethren… each began their brainwashing as soon as I moved in. There was constant conflict. Some families were better than others, but there was always a change.”
“I guess it was hard to learn how to trust if no one ever trusted you.”
“Maybe,” he says. His gaze is distant.
“Did anybody treat you good?”
“Yeah, Brian’s family,” he answers gingerly.
I suck on my teeth. “Yeah and that didn’t turn out too well.”
“Brian’s family finally gave me a little stability at the end of high school, but then when I saw how he was treating you, I couldn’t stand idly by. I took a step back from him… I distanced myself… then I tried to reason with him… and eventually you two split. But it didn’t stop. He wouldn’t leave you alone. Then I watched him do the exact same thing to other girls.”
“And then you and I hooked up,” I say.
“Yeah, that pretty much ended everything with me and Brian… and his family.”
“Brian certainly is good at manipulating people into being as crazy as he is,” I say. I pull some grass from the soil and throw it.
“Well put.”
“Did it hurt you when Brian’s family disowned you?” I ask.
“Of course it did. I was with them the last two years of high school. I enjoyed living with them… and I felt an attachment with them.” He pauses for a moment, and I feel really uncomfortable. Then he adds, “I can tell you something about love. It’s convenient. It’s a great weapon when you want someone to feel worse than you do. All you have to do is take it away.”
“And Luke, I’ve got to say this, and I understand that this is not your fault, but it’s that kind of thinking that kept us from working out.”
“I know.”
“Luke… I need to ask you something.”
“Go ahead.”
“Do you blame me for losing that…” I pause to find the words, “…surrogate family?”
“No I don’t, but unfortunately, when all of this is over, you’re not going to believe me. And there’s not anything I can do to change that.”
I feel the tears coming.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “Guilt is not an emotion that you can defeat with rationalization.”
“It’s okay,” I say. One tear falls down my cheek, and then another. I feel a sucking force at my chest.
“Luke I need to tell you one more thing. I need to tell you about the first time that I ever felt anything for you.” I look at him… and he is fading away. I don’t have much time, but I don’t want to hurry what I have to say.
I recite it like a poem, because that is how the memory lives in my mind:
“It was a fragrant summer night that I’ll never forget. The air was heavy and charged with electricity and pollen and humidity. It tasted like the earth’s life-blood. Everything was so vibrant and stimulating… I bet a lot of people fell in love that night.”
I look over at him and he has completely faded away, but I still continue to speak. Somehow, I know that he can hear me.
“I went to see you when you were spinning down in Baltimore. I went alone, and I think that made it more special. That summer evening gave me a high that I never thought was possible. It made me so excited to come down and see you in action. I listened to that aggressive yet graceful mix tape you made me. It fueled me as I watched that beautiful landscape along Routes 94 and 30 become draped in shadows as the sun set. It was the perfect setting, and Luke, girls need perfection for feelings like these- that’s something some of you boys will never figure out.
When I got to the Beltway, I turned off my music, and I let the repetitive rhythms of the car on the concrete hypnotize me. The highway into Baltimore descends from the beltway, and the lights of the city and concrete monoliths seemed to rise from the depths of the earth.
After I served my time waiting in line and chatting and up and making new friends, I got inside the venue. I didn’t find you right away, but when I did, you seemed happier than I ever remember.”
I feel the tears forcing their way.
“I watched you spin that night, and I danced until I pushed my pain and stress from my mind. Afterwards you and I went to the courtyard….”
I wipe one tear.
“I don’t know if you remember, but that night you said it was me who made you feel so happy.”
The tears came pouring like a sour rain. Where did we go wrong? I thought to myself.
“I don’t know if you remember, but you said you hoped the feeling would never end.”
I wipe the tears from my eyes. I look around for him- just in case- but I’m alone. “Anyway,” I continue, “All I need is to take in the smells from any summer night and the memories of what happened on that night flood my mind. A summer night has become like a… well… now you are a summer night.”
It is very quiet, and I am all alone. All I can do is look up into the reflecting light of the river, the pinks and blues bouncing from my face, and feeling the warm breath of an imaginary summer night.
