CHAPTER 13
I’m afraid to show my face around campus, because all of my friends keep on calling to see where I’m at, and if I’m doing okay. They all assume that I’m in the hospital or in a mental institution, where I’m surrounded by padded walls and covered in a nice, cozy, straightjacket. But I don’t want to talk to them, so I ignore their calls and just keep getting long boring voicemails, all sad and fake. I decide to call Rebecca and see if she wants to get lunch, seeing as she’s the only one of my friends who doesn’t know about what happened, and won’t launch at me with a thousand questions, and worry when I go to the bathroom with a knife missing off the table. I tell her to meet me at a place about twenty minutes away, to avoid seeing anyone I might know, or who knew Patrick, or Sarah, or what’s his name…Thomas? She says okay, and I meet her there at one.
“You look good. Healthy.” She says. Rebecca is absolutely gorgeous. She’s got strawberry blonde hair and a great body, and she dresses extremely well. However, I’ve never had sex with her, never thought about having sex with her, and never will have sex with her. I am like a snake when I’m around her. Asexual as can be. I should be all over her, but our personalities just don’t click in that way.
“Would you rather I look sick? Dying? Coughing up blood all over the table? Oh, Rebecca! Please, tell my friends that I love them. Tell them where the gold is!” I slam my head on the table and she’s laughing out loud but no one seems to notice, or mind if they do.
“No, I thought you’d look worse. After what happened.”
“You knew about it?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t want to ask questions, or be one of those people who read from Hallmark cards to show how much they care.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
“Welcome, shit head. Sarah’s in a mental institution, if that makes you feel any better.” It does.
“What’s she doing there?”
“Tried to kill herself afterwards. Didn’t work out. She was never the type to follow through anyway.”
“How’d she try?” I ask.
“Took a bunch of sleeping pills and pain killers. She started throwing up so they pumped her stomach. Her parents thought it was best for her to be there. So I guess that’s for the best. Now you won’t have to run into her on campus and body slam her.”
“That is a shame. If only she could’ve really put some effort into it.” I pick up my Coke and drink it.
“I know. It’s a damn shame. And I’m right there with you on the hating Sarah thing. I never really liked her to begin with. I always thought Patrick could do a lot better.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.” She starts to swirl her straw in her cup. ‘She was pretty, but she wasn’t anything special. Nothing to write home about. And her personality wasn’t all that great. She wasn’t really all that funny. At least, not the times I hung out with her. She just seemed so…bland.”
“I never really thought of her that way. I guess she just played off of Patrick’s personality so well.” I look down at my drink and push it to the side.
“Are you seeing anyone?”
“Yeah. Ashley Mitchell. Do you know her?” Her eyes light up.
“Ashley! She’s so sweet. Great body too. Where’d you meet her at?”
“One of John’s parties. Couple weeks ago.”
“She’s really nice. I can see you two now, holding hands, walking down the beach. Her, pushing you into the ocean. Ah, great, loving memories.” I laugh and flick the straw out of her cup.
“Who are you seeing?”
“No one, at the moment at least. I’ve got a couple of prospects. I’ve just got to wait it out and see if they’re worth it.”
“Haven’t you been doing that for the last four years?”
“Well, yeah. I guess I have. Ha, I didn’t even realize it. I’ve never had a boyfriend.” “You’ve fucked enough people to run the million man march.” She almost chokes on her drink.
“You’re probably right. There’s no good in me having a boyfriend. I’d just fuck him up completely. I’ve got too much baggage. Family shit. You know? All the stuff I’ve told you about my dad and whatever. He’d probably break up with me in a week.”
“Nah, I’d give him at least a week and a half. Maybe two if you don’t let the crazy out that soon.”
“So how are you holding up? Seriously?” I shrug my shoulders and start picking at the free bread.
“I’m doing okay. I miss the shit out of him. But I’ve got Ashley there to keep me balanced. So, I’m sailing by. Dropped out of my classes for the semester.”
“That’s for the best. You’d fail all of them anyway. I’m surprised you don’t fail them already.”
“The trick is to sit next to the smartest person in class and develop a lazy eye.”
“I tried that and got caught. Took me in front of the board and put me on probation. Told me if I got caught cheating again, they’d kick me out. Never did it again. Thought about doing it again. Many times. But, couldn’t muster it up. My mom is paying for this, so I can’t fuck it up and waste all of her money.”
Our food comes and we eat, and talk about some guy she fucked last week who had a tattoo of his ex-girlfriend’s name on his chest, and about how he kept screaming her name. She says she pushed him off right before he was about to come, and left him blue balled. I tell her he probably deserved it. She says it turned out, his ex-girlfriend had died, but she said even still, he needs to know the name of the girl he’s fucking. Rebecca is probably one of the only female friends I have that understands me, and who I understand. She always tells me how much she hates having to fake being nice to people she really hates to just, keep up appearances. I keep on telling her nothing is more liberating then telling that person that you hate them, and letting them know that you would rather see them get hit by a car than ever give them a ride. She can’t do it. She says she doesn’t have the confidence for it, and that it’s best to just sail along, pretending to like people, because in the end, she won’t have to put up with these people for too much fucking longer, and that they’re all just stones she can eventually throw across the ocean, until they sink and never resurface.
Her and I did LSD our sophomore year here, and it was just me and her. She was having a good trip, things were just moving around, and the lamp in her bedroom was floating and she kept trying to catch it. She said I had a bad trip, because I kept on seeing people who weren’t there, and they wouldn’t say anything. They would just sit there and stare at me. She told me I just sat on the couch asking her when they were going to leave. I don’t remember any of this happening, but if she says it happened, then I might as well believe her.
I’m thinking about planning a trip soon. Maybe to Europe. Maybe to South America. Maybe to somewhere that isn’t here, and has no connection with the things here. Being away this last weekend was liberating, because I had no connection with the people there, the things there were new, and exciting, and I could be happy. When I’m here, everything is the same and boring. I start to think that when I graduate, I’m just going to become a travelling salesman. I’ll just walk around, selling my bullshit degree to people who need someone to talk to.
I call the hospital and ask if the psychiatrist has any appointments available today. They tell me they already have me down for later that week, but that she did have one opening at four. I tell them I’ll take it and to leave my other appointment down. The receptionist sounds like a bitch, so I just hang up on her when I’m done talking. No goodbyes. They never say goodbyes on the phone in movies. Or on TV shows. They just hang up the phone when the conversation is over. Makes it very unreal. You have to say goodbye. If you don’t, then the conversation never ends. It just keeps going on forever and ever, off into space.
I get there early, so I can sit in the waiting room chairs longer, so I can remember how it feels to sit in comfortable chairs before I go and sit down in the shit chairs that she has. But she has them for a reason.
“What are you doing back so soon?” She sits down, and she folds her legs back underneath her. Very casually, like we’re just two close friends talking.
“I don’t know. I think I just needed someone to talk to. Keep me busy.”
“As you know, we psychiatrists are great at having someone to talk to. Keeping you busy though might be a little harder.”
“I just got back from a trip this weekend.”
“How was it?”
“It was good. I had a lot of fun. But I don’t know…I feel like it’s when you get drunk, or when you get high. You always come down off of it, and then you’re back in your depressing fucking life again, and you just want to get high or drunk again.”
“It’s an escape. That’s why most people drink and do drugs. Because they can’t deal with their lives. It’s why so many homeless people are generally high all of the time because they know if they come down, it’s into a shit life.” She writes something down, but it’s just a note. Just a quick something she jots down.
“What do you usually write down after I’m done talking?”
“Just notes. Just things to remember. The point of seeing a psychiatrist is to get to the root of your problem. But all roots don’t run by themselves. There are many, many roots. And I think you have an oak tree’s worth of roots to uncover. Was anyone there with you this weekend?
“Ashley. A girl I’ve been seeing. She’s been there for me throughout this whole thing. She’s been really sweet. I really like her a lot.”
“What about her do you like?”
“Her sense of humor. There are a lot of things. I can’t name them all off the top of my head. That’s too much pressure.”
“You named one, and one was good enough. What do you like about her sense of humor?”
“She gets mine, and I get hers. She’s pretty sick sometimes, and I like it. She doesn’t get offended by things easily. At least, not yet. Maybe it’s all a mask though. You know, I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. About Sarah and Patrick, and how she wore the mask for three years, and hid her true face from both Patrick and me the whole time.”
“People wear masks because they don’t like the true versions of themselves. The face under the mask is their true version. Sociopaths, psychopaths, they both wear masks to hide the fact that they don’t care about other people. Because that’s something society can’t accept.”
“Give me an example.” I say, seeing if she’s up to date on her knowledge of psychopaths.
“John Wayne Gacy Jr. He wore the mask of a man who always smiles and was always happy, and would throw block parties at his house. He would dress up like a clown for all of the kids. In the end, it turned out he had twenty eight people buried under the house that he threw the parties at. That’s a mask. That’s how they survive. You can’t go around murdering people and think you’ll be okay. You can’t talk to someone about murdering people in a public forum and expect to not have police cars there in a second.”
“Do you think Patrick wore a mask?”
“I think Patrick was pushed to his breaking point.” She says, calmly and I accept her answer.
“Do you think I wear a mask?” She doesn’t saying anything for a little while.
“I think you might wear a mask that you don’t know you’re wearing, because you’ve convinced yourself that you’re comfortable with who you are.”
“What do we do about that then?”
“We start trying to take off that mask.”
“What if I don’t like what I see underneath?”
I sit outside of the hospital after my appointment and call Ashley, but it goes to voicemail, so I just wait for her to call me back. I hate leaving voicemails. I hate that you never sound like what you think you sound like. That will always annoy the shit out of me. How the voice you hear every day is completely different from the voice other people hear come out of your mouth.
There’s a couple sitting on the bench to my left, and they look like they just walked out of a trailer park. The guy is wearing a wife beater, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he did beat his wife. They’re both ugly as fuck, and they have a kid who’s probably four or five, who they have on a leash, and the leash is attached to the bench, and the leash is around his neck. The little kid has no fucking idea what’s going on right now. He has no idea that his parents would probably sell him for an ounce of pot if they were offered it. Together, they make up a whole mouthful of teeth. Of yellow, rotten teeth, that are stained and disgusting. I think about getting up and cutting that leash and letting that kid run free, because I’m guessing he has a better chance in the wild than he does with his parents. They’re both smoking, and they’re both letting the smoke blow right into the kid’s face, and the kid keeps on coughing and with every second that passes by, I get sicker and sicker, and closer to getting up and punching them both in the face.
“Fucking dipshit boy isn’t never gonna amount to nothing. Isn’t that right you little dipshit?” Like father like son.
“Don’t talk to him like that.” The mother says, slapping the husband on the wrist.
“It’s not like he can understand me, you dumb fuck. Jesus fucking Christ, how much longer do we have to sit here and wait for your mother to get here?” He flicks the cigarette into the middle of the street and goes into his pocket and picks out another one and lights it.
“She said she was going to be here at five thirty.”
“I can’t wait to read your dad’s will. See how much he left us. Man, that’s going to be some nice change. We can just spend it on whatever the fuck we want.”
“It’s gotta be in the thousands. Maybe even five digits. He saved all that money for us when I was growing up. Didn’t know that I would sneak in and take it when he wasn’t there. I’ll be glad when he’s dead. Always wanted me to go off and make something of myself. Fuck that. I’ll make something of myself when I damn well please. He don’t control how long I take to make something of myself.”
“If it’s in the five digits, I say we buy ourselves a boat, or maybe even a nice car. Like a Mercedes or a Lexus.” I look at the kid and he’s wearing two right footed shoes and a pair of shirt and pants that are three sizes too small.
The wife flicks her cigarette, almost hitting the top of the kid’s head, and she laughs when it misses. Then she pulls a pack out of her purse, and sets the purse on the ground to her right.
At this point, I can’t take it anymore.
“Could you please take your kid off of that goddamn leash before I tie it around one of your necks?” I’m in front of them, screaming, about to blow. Maybe this is my breaking point.
“I don’t see where it’s any of your fucking business.” The man says, still sitting down.
“It becomes my business when your child can’t fucking breathe anymore, you dumb white trash pieces of shit.” The man stands up.
“I think it would be best for you to shut your fucking mouth before you lose all your teeth.”
“I think it would be best for you to take care of your fucking kid before you lose the teeth you have left.” The woman is sitting there, just smoking away, like nothing is happening in front of her.
“What the fuck are you going to do about it?”
I take a short breath, and then punch the guy straight in his nose, and I can feel my knuckles break it, and blood shoots out and onto the bench. He gets kind of dizzy, almost falling over, and then I push him down, and just start kicking him as hard as I can, until my foot starts hurting. The woman is screaming behind me for someone to help, but nobody is there to give a shit. I stop kicking him in the stomach, and kick him once in his mouth, and watch teeth fall out all over the concrete, like little popcorn kernels. Then I turn around and look at the woman, and for a brief moment, I almost feel like smacking her in the face, but decide against it, and walk back to the parking lot and drive as fast as I can to my apartment.
I pour hydrogen peroxide all over my hand, and it stings, and then I wrap it up in gauze to stop the bleeding. Ashley calls and I pick up and she asks what I’m doing, and I tell her I’ve just been hanging around the apartment.