Akron Hibernates
I muttered, “I like it. I’m not the best at it, but I’m okay. Anyway, I like doing it. I think it’s fun,” while at work, stocking Campbell’s soup cans in the West Market Street Acme. I liked stocking Campbell’s. Campbell’s was easy. The display was a row of zig-zagging chutes. The older product sat in a slot at the bottom and the newer cans slid down from the top, so by design the stock rotated itself.
My eyes were bloodshot and it was hard to focus in the store’s cavernous bright fluorescence. Earlier that morning I chauffeured my friend and roommate Kristen, and given the purpose of the chauffeuring, had trouble sleeping the night before.
I was on Cream of Mushroom. With the cylinders held sideways, I placed them in the top slot. The cans rolled and clinked ‘whir-chink-whir-chink-whir-chink-whir-chink-whir-chink.’
Kristen had purposefully scheduled an early appointment at the free clinic (my words, not hers. Kristen’s terminologies were always selected to incite as much controversy as possible) in hopes any Pro-lifers hadn’t yet gathered to demonstrate. They had. We’d seriously underestimated the conviction of Fundamentalist Christians.
I parked my car on the curb with 20 minutes left to go before the clinic opened. It was the bitter and dark time of winter. Sitting, waiting for 8 a.m., the neighborhood was still black as midnight. Kristen, a lumpy silhouette backlit by a street lamp, slouched in the passenger seat. Despite her silence on the drive up, she was pretty stoic given the circumstances. Yet she emitted a sadness that was visceral. If I were to reach out and touch her, I feared, she’d feel like a cold, wet sponge.
With a head tip towards the Pro-lifers, I said, “That guy looks like Rick Santorum. Maybe even he showed up for your little appointment. God only knows those elephants don’t want insurance paying for this king of thing.” She punched me in the ribs. Hard. It had been a stupid thing to say, and I admitted as much. “Look, Kristen. I’m sorry. I was just trying to cheer you up, but that was a stupid thing to say.” Sure, she was a dark humored cynic, but even Kristen had her boundaries. I had the car running, but the idle engine began to blow tepid air through the vents. “Do you want me to go in with you?” I suddenly thought it odd we hadn’t discussed that before.
“No,” she sniffled. “I don’t want them to think, that . . . that . . . you know, that it was you.”
Now I wanted to punch her in the ribs. What was wrong with me? How did I fall short of the standards for accidentally knocking her up? When did she get so picky?
I was disappointed in the Pro-life demonstrators. The signs they should have been waving were on the ground, propped resting against their shins. Even if they weren’t the hostile kind, the kind that pumped fists and screamed “BABY KILLER!” they could’ve at least been marching in a solemn circle. At the very least, they could’ve held a burning candle in vigil for the unborn victims of our new Holocaust.
“Thanks for the ride. I hope this doesn’t make you late for work.”
“I don’t go in ‘til noon, Kristen, and even if I was late, this is more important.”
Silence. The dead air would’ve been a perfect time for Kristen to follow up with ‘you’re a good friend,’ or ‘thanks for the support,’ or ‘I know I can always count on you,’ or maybe, and I know this is stretching it, but maybe even, ‘how can I ever repay you,’ or ‘I don’t know how I’d get by without you.’ No, there was none of that. Just a ‘Thanks for the ride. I hope this doesn’t throw off your whole day.’ That was the extent of Kristen’s vulnerable and tender gratitude.
A woman from inside the clinic, pried the door, poked her head out, then flipped the CLOSED sign to read OPEN. The Pro-lifers began to stir, standing straighter and lifting their signs. The slogans and visuals were the same old bullshit. ‘IT’S A CHILD, NOT A CHOICE!’ and images of bug-eyed, alien-looking fetuses floating inside their mother.
Kristen checked her reflection in the visor mirror, attempting to appear controlled, decisive, at peace. “Alright,” she said opening the car door. “Wish me luck.”
It turned out the Pro-lifers were of the angry mob variety, because as Kristen passed they exploded with yelling, and fist pumping and sign waving. Kristen, chin up, brisked by, paying them no mind. It also turned out the demonstrators were lazy opportunists. Once Kristen entered the clinic and was out of sight, they lowered their signs and resumed shivering and idle chit-chat. I had expected more conviction and zeal. Maybe I just caught them on an off day.
I rolled down the window, stuck my head out, and yelled, “Hey, Alex P. Keatons. I disagree with what you have to say, but will defend to the death you’re right to say it.” Then added, “Keep on rocking in the free world,” before I pulled my head in and rolled up the window.
The elephant in the room, of course, the million dollar question: who was the man to unwittingly hit the bull’s eye? I respected Kristen’s privacy. If she didn’t volunteer the information, I wasn’t going to ask. Still, I wondered if I knew him or had met him in passing. Sure, Kristen and I were roommates, but we were also friends, frequently seen about town in the same social circles. On some things, though, she was vague and evasive until her mind was made up. In the eight months I lived with her, I’d yet to hear through the walls of her room late night moaning and squeaking mattress springs. I’d yet to awaken to a strange man wearing boxer shorts, standing in the kitchen, drinking orange juice from the carton. There were, however, nights when Kristen didn’t come home.
Who was the guy? Why hadn’t he driven her? Did he even know? If not, why hadn’t Kristen told him? I had no chivalrous notions to track down the culprit and beat his ass to protect my friend’s honor. It takes two to tango, and I wasn’t absolving Kristen of all guilt either. It was more a healthy curiosity of my friend’s secret lovers. Maybe also I was a little pissed I had to do someone else’s dirty work. One of the more brazen Pro-lifers walked up to my car and slid a pamphlet under the windshield wiper. I flashed him the peace sign.
I told my girlfriend Lupe I’d keep her updated on the whole sad affair, so I pulled out my cell phone and dialed.
Without getting into all the nuances of my “complicated” life right here, there are a few things I’ll quickly address. Yes, I have a girlfriend, and yes Lupe really is her name. No, she doesn’t live with me, and yes she knows I share a small apartment with a beautiful young woman who is also my close friend. By all outward appearances at least, this doesn’t make Lupe the slightest bit suspicious or jealous. No, Lupe is not Mexican, she’s Colombian, or her dad’s side of the family is Colombian anyway. Her mom is a regular, boring, cracker-ass, white woman who lives in Manchester.
“Hey,” Lupe answered.
“Hi. How was work?”
“Boring. These overnight shifts make my education seem like a waste of time and money. I did change out a catheder bag, though.”
“Did you take a peek at the patient’s junk?”
“Don’t be juvenile. You know I hate dick jokes.”
“Okay. Sorry.”
“How’s your roommate?”
“How do you think? This is depressing.”
“Are there protestors?”
“Yeah, but I think it’s the skeleton crew or the B-team today.”
“Tell Kristen to lighten up. Anymore it’s a rite of passage.”
“You know, Lupe, I don’t think she’d appreciate hearing that now.”
“Just be nice to her.”
“I will. So, I get off work at 8 tonight. Do you want to meet up?”
“Depends if I can get any sleep this afternoon,” she answered.
“How about tomorrow?”
“I’m not sure what I have going on. I’ll call you.”
Lupe and I had been seeing each other a few weeks, but I had a feeling my relationship with her was on borrowed time. “Yeah, sure. Call me.”
“Look, I’m about to get in my car, so I gotta let you go.”
“Alright. Talk at’cha later.”
“Bye.”
I killed some time listening to the radio. The cold stale sadness of the current scene made me yearn for something accessible and sugary in place of my old standby, objective and intelligent National Public Radio. I searched out, found, and listened to some pop country, hoping somewhere in the rotation a blindly patriotic and equally ignorant anthem would play.
Was my hope fulfilled? I don’t know. Once I found a station, I spaced out. How long was this thing going to take? I hadn’t asked Kristen for time estimates for fear of sounding crass. I wondered if she sensed and resented my glibness, in fact, my interest and entertainment of being involved in her life’s high drama.
I saw Kristen exit the clinic and head towards my car with the same indignant gait. The Pro-lifers again snapped to their fury, but I was already bored with them. Kristen sat, slammed the door, sunk hunched into the seat, and propped her foot on the dash. For the life of me, I’ll never understand women. The stoic and tormented Kristen that walked in the clinic, walked out huffy and pouting, surly and curt.
I ventured, “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I have HPV,” she shot back. “They offered an STD screening. I thought, ‘well hell, I’m already here. Why not?’”
This information seemed a bait and switch, a deflection of some kind. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you kidding? With all the notches in my bedpost, all the scalps hanging from my belt, all the names in my little black boo---”
“Okay, I get it.”
“I lucked out with HPV. HPV is a parking ticket.” She buckled her seatbelt. “I’m not pregnant.”
I was confused. For the sake of her emotional state, I wanted to tread cautiously and conscientiously. I kept my inquiry at one word. “Anymore?”
“It turns out I never was. Ha-ha.”
Silence. I let the reveal sit heavy as I tried to process it. Screw caution and conscience. I was indignant. I could have been at home sleeping. I settled into my seat, calculated a plan of attack, then launched it. “Kristen, there’s these things, they’re called home pregnancy tests.”
“Shut up. Those are expensive.”
“So? Steal it off the shelf. Go to the public bathroom and take the test there. Haven’t you ever seen a melodrama, or an after school special, or a gritty independent movie?”
“Just drive.”
I pulled away from the curb. Kristen tuned the radio to The Fish, oddly enough, an uplifting soft-rock station with a Christian agenda.
On the freeway, now safely fleeing the scene, I felt more diplomatic. “What made you think you were . . . you know?”
“Pregnant, just say it, say the word.”
“Pregnant?”
“I was late for starters. Do you understand what that means, big boy, when a woman says she’s late used in this context?”
“Don’t insult me.” Silence again. I turned off the radio. “And?”
“And what?”
“You said for starters. What was the other reason you thought you were, you know . . . pregnant?”
She stared out the window and remained mute.
“I’m just saying, I know this wasn’t easy. Next time you wanna play pretend, aborting a baby you never carried to begin with, just fall down a flight of stairs, or grab a broomstick or wire hanger or ice pick or spatula. It’ll save me the gas money.”
“Shut up. Fuck you. Fuck you and shut up. I’m so sick of you and your cute wit.”
“You just went through an inferno of guilt and depression needlessly. It’s like you’re inventing reasons to be miserable.”
“Gee whiz Doc, thanks. Now I’ll tell you about my mother.” She turned on the radio again and switched it to some rock station. “I’m fucking. One guy. On a regular basis. ‘Going steady,’ if you want to put it in Disney terms. I thought I was pregnant. Let’s just leave it at that.”
I was ashamed of myself.
A Guns and Roses song played on the radio.
Back in the West Market Street Acme later that day, hard at work stocking Campbell’s soup cans, my recollecting of the morning’s event was interrupted when a voice said, “Excuse me, young man?”
I looked up from my task. A woman, around thirtyish, stood holding her toddler son’s hand. Everything about her haircut and attire screamed ‘I’m the cool mom. I’m hip. I’m open minded and involved.’ She wasn’t too hard on the eyes either. Her son was dressed in a fireman’s costume. “Yes, ma’m?” In her shopping cart, amongst more conventional groceries, was a box of Franzia wine, a bottle of Old Crow whisky, and a case of Little Kings Cream Ale, which made me love her more. I think she may have even been wearing a pair of TOMS shoes.
“Where’s your coffee?” She asked.
“What’s your brand?”
“I guess it doesn’t matter. I just wanted to see your selection.”
“Okay, it’s in aisle 12, across from the granola bars and toaster pastries. If you want the good stuff, I’d recommend getting it whole bean. It’ll cost ya a bit more, but the flavor’s better. We have a grinder that you can use for the beans here in the store, free of charge, but I wouldn’t recommend it, because once ground, the beans slowly loose some of their flavor, which defeats the purpose of getting the good stuff. Right? Being Acme, and supporting those hometown Smucker boys, we regularly run deals on Folgers, both whole bean and ground. Now the cheap stuff, Chase and Sanborn, Chock Full o’ Nuts and the like, is on the lower shelves. It’s less expensive, but I wouldn’t recommend it because they cup up the coffee with ground corn. Kind of like how a drug dealer cuts up a block of pure heroin with, I dunno, baby powder. But if you’re on a budget, that coffee is the way to go. Sometimes we run it on special with our Circle K fuel perks, but I’d be wary of those. The gas reward points are usually offered on products we need to unload before their rapidly approaching sell by date, so buyer beware. Oh, and if you want to buy your coffee whole bean, but want to grind it at home and don’t have a grinder, we carry a brand or two of mid-level utility models at the far end of the store, across from our fledgling selection of hand tools and automotive accessories.”
“My, my,” she said, “aren’t you a bright boy.”
The Hemmingway reference wasn’t lost on me. I felt myself blushing.
Sure, I’m a drunk. Maybe I’m not the best advisor for my friend’s hoax abortions, but at least I’m a good Acme stock boy, and the West Market Street store is the crown jewel of the fleet, so that’s something to be proud of.
I finished the Campbell’s and moved onto Progresso, which I was not excited about. Unlike the Campbell’s slick display, Progresso was old fashioned shelves. I had to reach back, slide the older product forward, then reach back again to stock the new cans. I set about my work, again muttering, “I like it. I’m not the best at it, but I’m okay. Anyway, I like doing it. I think it’s fun.”
The remainder of my shift went without incident. There was even a two hour lull I spent talking to a friend in the produce department. For the most part our Acme crew works harmoniously. Although friendly with all the staff, I keep them at an arm’s length distance. I like to think I’m leading a double life. The dutiful stock boy by day is a cliché misunderstood artist by night.
Like any self-respecting “eccentric creative type” born and raised in Northeast Ohio and willing to be labeled as a hipsterish-beatnik, I live in the Highland Square neighborhood. From my place of employment back to my apartment is a straight shot down West Market Street. It’s a sizable walk, but given the high price of gas, and irritating amount of traffic lights, I normally take the bus or make the commute on foot.
The automatic doors rushed open. Stepping outside, my body was assaulted with the metallic cold of winter night. A light snow was falling. I pulled up my hood and stuffed my hands in my pockets. The trek wasn’t a pretty one, the scenery mostly Laundromats, gas stations, fast food restaurants, and strip malls. I used such walks as a Spartan test of endurance against the cold. It also made the reward of returning to my warm apartment, a hot shower, clean t-shirt and pajama pants, a fridge full of beer, and vast selection of home entertainment (Kristen and I are both cinephiles to almost anti-social extremes. Who needs the Sad Stork’s Infinite Jest when you’ve got a Roku and a Netflix subscription?) all the more orgasmic.
Beer. I’d have to pick some up at the Circle K. I don’t buy it at work, lest my co-workers catch on how habitual and heavy alcohol is in my life. Kristen is my enabler consort. Wanting to postpone any tentative and awkward interactions after our Planned Parenthood bumble, I hoped she wouldn’t be in the apartment. She and I sailed some rough seas together in the past, and lived to tell the tale afterwards, but dismantling and moving on from whatever tragedy was never any fun.
I stopped in the Circle K and decided two 30 racks of PBR would be sufficient to keep me happily drunk and meditative in front of a flickering TV screen for the next several days. I pulled my product from the beer cave, paid at the register, and was on my way.
The two cases hung heavy as cinder blocks as I stalked the home stretch to my apartment. Highland Square, a neighborhood gentrified enough to have a record store, a movie theatre, some coffee shops and bars/venues. Yet still an edgy enough area with cheap rent, easily accessible illegal drugs, and thugs that senselessly murdered each other in the streets, sometimes even in broad daylight. Since moving in, the only, and I mean the only, times I left the United States of Highland Square, was to visit the Parental Units in Copley.
Kristen was already in the apartment, seated on the couch, applying lotion to her elbows, knees, and ankles when I walked in. She propped a barefoot on the coffee table. Her long dark hair was turbaned up in a towel around her head. Another towel, wrapped beneath her exquisite clavicle, tucked into and clipped by her ample cleavage, draped down her body. An episode of Two Broke Girls played on TV. “Hey, guy,” she said with a nose wrinkle. “How was work?”
“Fine. Boring.” I crossed into the kitchen, which was scented misty fresh from Kristen’s recent shower in the adjoining bathroom. Her poison was wine. Red or white or zinfandel or blush or whatever, she wasn’t picky as long as it was cheap and came in big bottles. At the moment, the fridge was stocked with Carlo Rossi Sangria, and left no room for my own beer cache. I opened the window above the small kitchen table, and set my beers outside on the fire escape. The kitchen tabletop was cluttered with my notebooks, laptop, and nine back issues of Northeast Ohio’s free arts and culture magazine. Six of those issues contained reviews, interviews, or other write-ups by yours truly.
I stood in the threshold between the kitchen and living room, hypnotized against my will by the sensuality of Kristen rubbing lotion on her calve. “Are you going out?” I asked.
“Just to work.” At anytime she juggled two or three jobs and all of them always in the food service industry. I think that night Kristen was tending the basement auxiliary bar at Annabelle’s. “Someone’s coming to visit me. That guy . . .” she trailed off, then finished her thought with a meek, “Nevermind.” She stood, pulled the towel from her head, and began to scrub her hair dry. Again, I was hypnotized against my will by the motion her rigorous arm movements produced in her tits.
Kristen is an exceedingly beautiful woman, but in a distinct (and I mean this next adjective as flattering) meaty way. She’s a few inches shy of my height, and I’m six feet three inches tall. Kristen’s big-hipped and busty, with shoulders of lumberjack length and strength from regularly lifting heavy trays at work. Overall she has the solid build of a hard working, yet precocious, farmer’s daughter. For the most part, she dressed down in a simple black hoodie and jeans. On occasions she got “gussied up” in cadaverous vampire-girl make-up and John Waters inspired formalwear, no healthy heterosexual male could resist. She walked into her room. I sat on the couch, kicked off my shoes, then lit a cigarette.
“You should stop by the bar tonight,” she called over her shoulder.
“Maybe I will.” I knew I wouldn’t. In my initial enthusiasm of living in Highland Square, I picked out a lot of old haunts to regularly be seen in. I kept my nose pretty clean and hi-jinks to a bare minimum, but the neighborhood got real small real fast. Through no fault of my own, I became a third party liability in the Peyton Place shenanigans of others. I reformed. Instead of getting drunk with people in bars, I got drunk alone in my apartment under the guise of ‘being so over the whole scene, man.’
Kristen stepped from her room looking fabulous. For the reader annoyed by the moony accounts of my roommate’s beauty and style, I’ll keep this brief and highlight her outfit with two words: fishnet stockings.
“Alright, I’m off. Feel free to come by.”
“Yeah. Sure. Good luck.”
“Bye,” and she was out the door.
Par for the course in the grocery industry, after the splurge of holiday spending, the following winter months are almost barren of any real money for non-salaried employees. Since the New Year, I averaged about 12 to 15 hours a week. What was I doing with my ample free time? I sat around getting drunk and watching movies. Sometimes I switched it up by getting drunk and listening to music. Of course, I’m not completely ambitionless. I’ve always liked to write, but have long since given up hope of being the next David Eggers (his recent stuff is a little self-righteous anyways, and I’ve always resented him for going Hollywood with Away We Go and Where the Wild Things Are). To keep me writing, or to prove that not all writers, talented and hacks alike, are doomed to bitter neglect and misery and day jobs, I devolved into the one thing I never wanted to be: a rock critic. For the last six months, I had contributed some writing or another to the aforementioned magazine whose back issues were sitting on my kitchen table.
I watched the tail end of Two Broke Girls. I hadn’t been paying attention, and didn’t understand the conflict resolution scene. I’d seen a couple episodes before, and the show had its moments. I had a crush on the brunette after seeing her in some roles on the big screen, and grew a deep hatred towards the show’s writers (and this is how pathetic my life was) for inserting some joke about her tits in every episode. It was bad enough she wasted her talents in the swamplands of sitcom syndication. Imagine if Jena Malone lowered herself to a reoccurring role on The Big Bang Theory.
I turned off the TV, then took a shower. After slipping into a fresh t-shirt and pair of pajama pants, I cracked open a beer and settled into the couch, content to the point of near orgasm that this was all I’d being doing for the next few days. The first movie I decided to watch was Wonderland, a gritty tale of drugs, pornography, and murder set in 80s era Hollywood. The movie was Kristen’s suggestion, and I’d highly recommend it.
So began the few days of a winter’s binge. There’s not much that happened worth recounting. I was popping tops, gurgling beer, watching movies until I was too drunk to stay interested in the plot. Then I’d listen to the radio until I’d nod off with a beer in my hand. Intermittently, I’d collapse into my bed and toss and turn into a fitful inebriated slumber, until I’d wake up giddy and still drunk to repeat the process all over again. Sometimes it was daytime, sometimes it was night time. In moments of lovelorn insecurity, I’d check my phone for missed calls or texts from Lupe. There never were any, of course. When the booze hit my stomach with fiery pangs, I’d heat up canned soup and try to hold that down to restore some equilibrium. Kristen floated in and out of the scene with some scathing yet friendly peanut gallery comments. All the while, empties piled up on the coffee table, on the window ledges, on the counter surrounding the kitchen sink, a few even deposited on the bathtub ledge and toilet tank.
Our apartment was one bedroom. Originally, I’d signed the lease and lived there alone. Then times got lean for me. Selling my plasma had started to take its physical toll. The price of scrap metal dropped, so cashing in my beer cans wasn’t as lucrative as it had been. Bottom line, I needed more money, but I didn’t want to work for it. So as an experiment, I put out an ad on Craigslist for a roommate. As mentioned, it’s a one bedroom apartment and a small one at that. Taking on a roommate meant that someone had to sleep in the living room, the “common area.” Even with cheap rent, I knew it would be a hard sell. Kristen replied and we met at Angel Falls coffee. The rest is history.
Displaying a moxy that makes her so charming, Kristen made clear she’d move in only if the bedroom went to her. I conceded since my possessions were few, limited mostly to clothes and books. The first weeks were permeated with reservations of two people who don’t know each other very well trying to be polite and accommodating. Then Kristen and I got drunk together a few times. Then we spent some afternoons conversing over coffee and cigarettes and became pretty good friends.
Our building is of some historical significance, and is sort of a landmark in the neighborhood. It had once been a hospital, then a nursing home for a while. Some tenants told stoned ghost stories that it’d also been a mental institution run by a demented psychologist who tortured the patients. There was an old guard of Akron crackheads or recovered addicts living in the building. Arabs, Indians, Pakistanis or other young Mid-East immigrants studying engineering or pre-med, or polymer science at Akron U were sprinkled in to. Mostly though, the building was inhabited by punk rockers, homosexuals, and art school dropouts.
Our apartment is a pretty basic layout. The door from the hallway opens to the living room. The living room adjoins the bedroom on one side, the kitchen on the other, and our single bathroom adjoins the kitchen. My bed, a twin mattress, is in the corner of the living room under the window. I keep my clothes in Sterilitie boxes under the bed. In classic fashion, our couch is against one wall, facing the TV against the opposite wall, with a coffee table in between. On rare occasions when the muse decides to sing through me, I clear some space to sit and write at the kitchen table.
As for any personal touches of interior decorating? Kristen hung three posters. One is a map of California. She’s from California originally. She had lived in Ohio a short time, less than a year, with a majority of that time spent as my roommate. Above her bed hung a pop art depiction of Charles Manson’s infamous mug shot. On her closet door hung a poster of Julian Assange, seated at a table, holding an index card scrawled with instructions to ‘KEEP FIGHTING!’ From my time spent with her, Kristen expressed no strong opinions on hacking, intellectual property piracy, or complete transparency via the internet. Although like all armchair anarchists, she had a casual interest in anyone who fucked shit up, hence the whole Charles Manson thing. I’ll take this opportunity to add Kristen had literary ambitions of her own. A huge admirer of trashy, low-budget, cult flicks and B-movies, she was working on, she’d confided to me, a horror script set in suburban California. The story involved zombies, high school kids, an atomic bomb, and gratuitous sex and violence.
Above the head of my bed, I’d hung an original penciled and inked daily Calvin and Hobbes Comic strip. First appearing in papers a few years after my birth, the spiky-haired scamp Calvin wasn’t my namesake. Like most kids of the era, though, I’d practically learned to read by pouring over the collected anthologies, and carried the name with a sense of pride. As a child, I’d written the comic’s creator, Bill Waterson (also an Ohio resident). Perhaps because he’s a genuinely gracious auteur thankful for his fans, or perhaps because he found the poor spelling, grammar, and overall incoherent content of my 1st grade letter somehow cute, he’d sent me an original daily. He personally dated it too, but didn’t autograph it. That wasn’t Mr. Waterson’s style. My mom had it framed, and it’s been one of my most prized possessions ever since.
I awoke Thursday morning and decided to take it easy on the bingeing for a while. My first order of business was to take the vaccine. Along the empties on the window ledge was one unopened can, premeditatedly left for the occasion. It was warm, but I cracked it open and swallowed the contents with two gulps spaced a few seconds apart, then lit a cigarette. While puffing the rich nicotine, a lightness in my head, throbbing in my kidneys, and sour absorption in my stomach became all the more acute. It was around five in the morning. Kristen’s door was closed, which meant she’d come home, and was asleep in her room. Outside my window, the neighborhood was dark and still. Streetlamps illuminated a powdered sugar dusting of snow on the parked cars. My sweat moistened sheets and sleeping clothes smelled both sulfurous and fungal.
I got out of bed and staggered swaying over to the sink, which was no easy task. Arriving in the kitchen, I had to brace myself against the counter until the washout in my vision and thrumming in my ears subsided. Faculties regained, I filled a cup from the tap, gulped the water down, then repeated the process.
With the same tentative steps, I wobbled back to bed, but fell short, and collapsed in a curled heap by the coffee table. The vision washout and ear thrumming once again crashed and receded before the living room fell back into place around me.
Go ahead and judge, tisk-tisk-tisking, as you read on and think ‘This young man needs to get his life together.’ I wouldn’t blame you, and you’re holier-than-thou attitude may be warranted in this s