It’s a little before one on a Monday afternoon, and Luke Perry is dealing with the aftermath of cheating on his girlfriend with her best friend while she was away in Paris. Mulder and Scully are investigating abductions in Pennsylvania, Mike is helping the Mayor out of a jam while trying to nail Heather Locklear, and Brian Westbrook is questionable with a knee injury. Countless distractions from the fact that I exist in the world. My eyes are sluggish and my head is light, almost weightless, the perfect balance that occurs briefly during the second or third drink, when you can breathe out your nose and faintly smell the rum and just smile for no other reason than the fact that you’re no longer keenly cognizant.
The Marathon is about a half-cigarette’s stumble from the house, owned by a trio of Eastern European (?) men who always have my cigarettes on the counter and rung up before I emerge from the back with the soda needed to dull the twelve-dollar rum. The houses along the way are cramped and packed onto bumpy and patchy lawns, nearly all of them adorned with black and orange ‘Beware of Dog’ signs rendered irrelevant by the mangy pit bull barking dust at passers-by. The neighborhood crack dealer relentlessly plods up and down the street in a white t-shirt and basketball shorts while homeless men drink twenty-two ounce beers on the shaded ledge next to the gas station. There are often remnants of Rally’s bags and Tupperware, leading me to believe that occasionally the women from the medical office next door bring them some lunch. Sometimes there are two or three of them, always slumped in the shade, cans in hand. Today there is only Jeff.
“How are ya, my friend?” he asks as I approach him with two large cans of Natural Ice covered in paper sleeves. He cracks it open with a hiss, little flecks of foam spraying across his unkempt salt-and-pepper beard. Smiling a display of brown and jagged decay, he raises the can and takes a long pull that seems to comfort him.
“Alive.” I flick mine open and take a few deep gulps, far more than is comfortable. Closing my eyes, the midday sun tinting the back of my throbbing eyelids a bright shade of peach, I think to myself that – for entirely different reasons – we would both be doing ourselves a favor if we cracked our skulls open on the hot pavement of I-75. I’d read in the paper that a 56-year old man had done so a few days ago; it’s all I can see when I close my eyes anymore. I just see that fear in his eyes disappear. Fear, horror, nothing. Nothing.
“U.K. won this weekend,” he offers, tugging on the brim of his tattered blue and white ballcap.
“Saw that.”
“Yeah, the real test’ll be this weekend, though…them boys goin’ down to Tuscaloosa. Al-a-bama.” He sips from his beer and looks off in the distance, as if he’s searching for something to say. “You talk to that crazy girlfriend of yours?”
“She just got back, actually.” The first smile of the day crosses my face, and I stifle it. Jeff thinks my name is Dylan McKay. He thinks I drink with him in the middle of a weekday because I’m a trust fund kid whose girlfriend Brenda has spent the last three months in Paris while I’ve cheated on her with her best friend Kelly.
“You gonna tell her about the other broad?”
“Not sure yet.” I give my best Luke Perry squint, but the joke has already worn thin. I realize that buying Jeff a beer and convincing him I’m a fictional character from Beverly Hills, 90210 is no more distracting and no less heartbreaking than buying a martini for a pretty face and convincing her I’m something worth taking home. Pouring the first drink when you’re still groggy from sleep is no more mind-numbing and pointless than running in a hamster wheel for a paycheck. Sitting underneath a tree and making small talk with a homeless man most likely suffering from schizophrenia doesn’t feel much different than sitting at a bar with a table of friends.
“Shit, man,” he laughs, slapping my shoulder, “to be young, dumb and full’a cum.”
“I’ll drink to that.” We clang our cans together and I tip back one last mouthful before swilling the can around and placing it on the ledge. “You can finish that if you want, I’ve got to run.”
“Off to see your chicky?”
“Yeah,” I say, wiping the dirt of my jeans. “Think I might take her to this new place…The Peach Pit.”
The wisecracks used to help. The distractions used to distract. I used to be able to fuck my way out of thinking about the lack, read my way out of it, write my way out of it. I used to have things to say – deep, passionate things – and people I wanted to say them to. There used to be a shade of romanticism detectable underneath all the layers of nihilism; now it just seems unmitigating.
Now everyday deteriorates into the next, where I find myself sadder, older, my brain more alcohol-soaked. Each day I wake up with less faith, less drive, less hope, and the things that excited me seem less and less exciting. The things that comfort me are no longer comforting. The things I love no longer bring me joy. And everyday I feel less inclined to attempt to rectify any of it. All romances become stale over time. All television shows one day jump the shark. All leases run out. Impermanence is the only truth in the world. Everything dies.
On the walk home I flag down the dealer and pick up a tab of Percocet.
