Disillusion: The Apartment |
Posted by
Squire-of-Gothos on Monday, May 23, 2005 - 12:24 AM PST
Prologue
I sit at the computer, and write. I don’t write for any specific reason, I just type. Letters to words, words to sentences, sentences to phrases, and voila, I’ve got myself a paragraph or two. I pause, I kill some time, I check my emails, hoping Gwen has wrote something back to me, I pause again, and a wave of empty hopelessness washes over me. It’s not that my situation, whatever that may be, is bad; it’s average at best.
But between the simple, clean cut lines of an uneventful teen-hood, a few strands of tragedy have weaved themselves in. Bright red, and glowing, they aren’t too visible within the rainbow myriad that is the rest of my life. But I can’t help but let my mind’s eye focus in on them, from time to time.
I can’t form words anymore, the cocaine and the last silky bits of alcohol haven’t clouded me though; they’ve prolonged me, invigorated me even, in a cold alien manner. I just sit now, thinking about smoking a cigarette, but I don’t. I can’t. The thought is nauseating, and suddenly the desire to just pick up and run washes over me. I get tense, ready to leap from my chair, and for an instant, it seems real. It all appears to be so…significant.
But I don’t go anywhere.
Chapter one
8 miles from home. God help me, I-95 is misery. It’s at least 5 O’clock, and rush hour traffic has filled everything from Biscayne Boulevard to Tamarack. I creep along, praying for some reason that I’m not going to just explode in this stagnant heat, and I consider the Turnpike. “Bullshit,” I say aloud, “I’ll save my dollar for a god damned taco.” And then I laugh because I’m horribly serious. I light up another Camel, filterless these days, and close my eyes in reverence at that sweet smoke…and there it is: a gap. I pop into second and slice into the HOV lane, and suddenly, I’m really moving again.
I don’t really remember why I’m even on 95 until I hear motion in the back, and realize I’m carting Stephanie and her British boyfriend David from Miami International Airport. I’ve completely tuned their existence out, and I’m troubled and pleased about this all at once. Cruising at 65 miles an hour, I turn around, ignoring the road and say, “How do you like this heat, man? Welcomed change?”
“Eh, it’s not exactly snowin’ there.” I think he says this but I can’t understand his accent. I will spend the next two months leaning into his face like a senile old man each time he speaks to me.
I’m at the apartment now, and it’s dim even in the middle of the afternoon. David is putting his things into Stephanie’s room, and I sit like a corpse on the couch, chain smoking and staring into space. Bryant walks in and smiles, “Yea, I like that, walk right in and start,” I think he says, and he sits down, bobbing his black Stetson clad head to the waning beats of a Bob Marley track. His talk unsettles me, and I look over at Christy, who smiles coyly at me, like a shy little girl asked to her first school dance, as she sips her sweating can of Miller Genuine Draft.
Slowly all the regulars drift in, Steph with her boyfriend David, now settled in and wearing a NIN shirt over his broad frame, Christy and Michael, Bryant and Nathan with his girlfriend Carla…suddenly a great glowing mass of togetherness floats across me, a savage but relaxing wave of friendship and predictable uncertainty. The night could end in bloody teeth or mournful laughter, on top of an abandoned southern mansion, or maybe in its basement.
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