Smoke Break

Rain through my hair and over my face and in my clothes and the streets. The weather is the weather and I can only move through it. The grass is greener. The world hums in dull blues and grays and browns and I sit on my porch and try to keep my cigarette dry. The lawn chair I am sitting on is soaked and my jeans are now. I watch the rain spatter off of the road. A lovely static and hushed chaos in my ears. A gloss over everything. A drowning earth, an indifferent earth. An indifferent man. As much as I can.

I pull off of the cigarette. Inside the house I'm expected to be someone else. It's expected and I comply. I fulfill the role and I fulfill it well. I need this soaked moment. This poisoned breath. Out here, on the porch, in the rain, my mind wanders. I dream of what if's and what might have been's and what will never be's.

I pull off of the cigarette. I thought this would be different. I thought I was supposed to be something else. The white noise settles in my chest and I close my eyes. I'm a poet. I don't write poetry. I don't rhyme, or balance, or starve, but I am a poet. I long. My heart sings softly. Unheard, but singing none the less. I pull off of the cigarette and watch as a drop of water hits the paper and the white turns gray and I can see the tobacco through it and I hide the cigarette again cupped in my hand. It's almost gone now anyway and I imagine what life would be like if I could speak. If I could say these things. If I knew what these things were or what they meant or what they really meant and maybe I'm a fool.

A heart won't sink if it won't rise, I think and regret thinking it. I stand and flick the cigarette out into the road. I feel my wet shirt press against my back and I take in the streams down the road and the sound, the beautiful endless patter, and the color of the world and the fact that, truly, none of it matters at all and I go inside.

Climbing Up the Walls (22-23)

22.

Friday came. Payday, I suppose. Indian Tommy and his girl were over. She didn't say much. That was fine with me. We sat around the fire and the fall, despite being in full orange and red force, was warm and it was a nice night for beer and pot and people you call friends when you don't have any.

“I was thinking of starting a band,” Indian Tommy said.

“Yeah? You play anything?” I asked.

“He doesn't play shit,” his girlfriend said. “Idiot.”

“Whatever, babe,” he said. “I can sing though I think. Maybe play drums.”

“You have a kit?” I asked.

“No, but, you know, I'll buy one if I have a band. If the commitment is there.”

“Right on,” I said.

“How are you going to write songs with a band if you wait around to feel out their commitment before you get drums?” she asked.

“I don't know babe. Shit. I guess I'll sing then. I have a guitar amp and microphones can't be that expensive.”

“You know any musicians?” I asked. I stared at the fire and watched it dance and sway and burn away each moment and word in the air.

“Not really. My cousin Ted plays bass, but that's about it. Maybe I'd put an ad online or something. I don't man, I haven't thought about it.”

“I've been thinking of writing a book,” I said.

“Yeah? Confessions of a Hermetic Drug Dealer?”

I faked a quiet laugh. His girlfriend laughed.

“Can you write?” she asked.

“Yeah, can you even write?”

“I don't know. I can read, so I guess I can write. I've been thinking about it a lot. I know how I like things to sound. I think I understand rhythm and I don't know. I don't have a great vocabulary, but maybe I don't need one.”

“I think you do, dude,” Indian Tommy said. “All writers, aren't they all fancy words and bullshit?”

“A lot of them probably, but maybe it's because they think they have to be. Maybe it's because that's what they think make them writers. Taking group writing classes and trying to out-vocab each other. I don't know, maybe none of that shit's necessary. Maybe I just need to write whatever comes out.”

“Maybe,” he said. “What are you going to write about?”

“Who knows. My life, maybe? Shit that happens? I have no idea. I've just been thinking about it.”

“I'd read your book, David,” his girlfriend said.

“Thanks.”

“So, where'd this come from? The writing thing?”

“I don't know. I get a lot of time out here, you know, to myself and I was thinking about prisoners and how they have all of this time to themselves and some of them write these books and some of those are really surprisingly great, so, maybe I could, right?”

“You aren't a prisoner.”

“Look around, Tommy.”

He looked at the black outside of the glow of the fire and a few moments passed.

“We should get going soon,” he said.

23.

My crop was nearly exhausted. And I was sitting at the table in the camper smoking my second joint of the morning and drinking from a jug of port wine that I paid Indian Tommy to bring to me a few days earlier. I was going to write.

I sat at the table and stared at the notebook and I wrote a few lines.

Maybe I'm not here at all.

I crossed it out.

For the best, I guess.

I crossed it out.

I could feel the words in my chest. The need to say them. The need for them to be understood, but my brain, my hand, wouldn't let them out. They got muddled and I realized the difference between people who create stories and people who read stories and I worried I was a reader.

I tried again.

I've spent six months living alone in a derelict camper in the middle of fucking nowhere.

It was better. I took a swig from the wine and went on.

I sell weed and am alone in every sense. I have considered killing myself. I miss my mother. I met a beautiful girl. I still consider killing myself. I can't stop thinking about it. Any of it. It has become maddening and my crop is nearly gone. I am writing this smoking the last of it and drinking fucking port wine and wishing the beautiful girl was here.

I looked it over. There was something there, but it was awful. I drew a large “X” through it all and closed my notebook.

I pulled from the bottle and thought about jerking off but I just wasn't in the mood then.

Fifty Million Viewers.

My hair was long still then. In my bathroom I ran my fingers through it and parted it to the side and tried to remind myself to buy a comb. I never recognized myself in the mirror. I understood that people didn't think I was an ugly man. I understood that some of them even thought I was handsome. But when I looked in the mirror I didn't recognize me. I didn't see the me that through each day and hour and thought lingered and whispered and breathed. I didn't know what monster or shipwreck I expected to see, but it was never what appeared. 

I often spoke in the mirror after a shower or a bottle of wine. As if I were applying for a job or trying to fuck someone. I'd cock a half smile and lift one eyebrow and speak my side of the conversation and think theirs. I'd charm them. I'd make them flutter. I'd say all the right things and I'd be quick and witty and lovely and the perfect employee and the perfect man. In the mirror alone, clean or drunk, I could be.

I brushed the hair from my face and behind my ear.

"I just thought I could," I said. 

Well, you certainly did, and perfectly, they said.

"Thank you."

So, if you don't mind my asking, what brought you to this? What made you think, 'I should'?

I fake a smile in the mirror. To the interviewer. In this world I have been asked this a thousand times and I pretend here, for this interviewer, this woman, brunette with a low cut baby blue blouse and a black pencil skirt and patterned stockings and black heels, that she is the first.

"I don't know," I say. "I just thought, fuck it, you know?"

She laughs and smiles at me. I like her smile. She knows I like her smile and she keeps it up.

"I've always thought, what if suicide were a sport? You know? Who could just do it the best? And then I thought, fuck, I could."

Well, I think that everyone at home will agree with me, you are, without a doubt, the best suicide this year. The only suicide that matters, certainly.

"Thanks, Lee... Can I call you Lee?"

Of course.

"Well, thanks Lee."

So, tell me, where did your inspiration come from for this suicide? What brought you to the decision that you just had to?

I smile and laugh a fake laugh. The mirror knows it's fake. I know it's fake. Lee doesn't. Maybe she does but she shows more leg. 

"Lee, sometimes people are born and they're just natural athletes, you know? They just pop out and bat a thousand or figure skate the shit out of things. Me? I guess I was just born to die. All my life, just waiting, just feeling this innate need to disappear and, well fuck me! What better way to go than in front of fifty million of your viewers? Am I right, Lee?"

The fog has cleared now from the mirror and I can see the extra weight around my waist and the hair on my stomach and grimace. I feel my mood shift but Lee breaks the descent. She opens her legs further and smiles and bites her lip. She never breaks eye contact. Her stockings only come halfway up her thighs. Her panties are white cotton and clean as new. 

In my head blood pours from my arms and throat and stomach and Lee stands. Her hips fill in all of the right places. Her chest pushes riotously against her blouse. Her hair falls over her shoulders in waves and locks and she never breaks her gaze. She walks to me, nude and bleeding and victorious. She wraps her arms gently around my neck and even though I am THE suicide, I can't think. I feel her body against mine. I feel her breath, light and warm, against my neck as she pulls in tight.

Kill yourself again for me. Kill yourself again for me. Please.

Her leg bends and her thigh slowly slides up mine and her grip tightens and she begs me to die. Her lips press against my neck and her hands roam and suddenly I feel nothing and I see myself in the mirror, nude and not bleeding and overweight and heartbroken and she is gone and death is gone and my hair was long still then. My hair was long still then and I fucking needed you.

I Was Young Once.

Air is sharp on my lungs and cool on my skin and just cold enough to warrant a coat and not cold enough to need it. I leave it on and let leaves crunch under my feet as I say goodbye to the fall and begrudgingly hello to winter. There is no snow yet here, only trees and forest space and sunlight and air. And me, walking. I think to myself that I haven't walked in the open forest like this since high school. I wonder if it's because over a decade has passed and at some point I became an adult and adults have no time for this sort of thing. I wonder if I did become an adult at one point, or over many points. Over a series of trials and I decide that that is more likely. It seems obvious. It feels like it happened yesterday. Or, at the least, recently.

I was twenty once. I was twenty one and I drank and suffered poor and I was twenty three once and was married and loved. I was twenty five once and I was twenty six once and understood my love and the world finally and cruelty and I was twenty nine once and looking back and writing and walking through the woods at the end of a season.

The snap of branches under my feet. The vague heat of the sun. The scent of freedom unbound and a beckoning world behind me. I had forgotten what relief a long walk in the woods on a nice day could bring. Time to clear your head or sink into it. Time to see yourself. Time to be yourself. Hands in my pockets, I looked at the ground often but reminded myself to look up. To look forward. Forward to the future, up to dreams? I asked. Don't let go, I answered.

Few people would consider me young anymore but I felt young. I felt inexperienced and I felt dumb. I felt immature and silly and I wanted to be mature and experienced and respected and I wanted to be all of the things that a man was but I wasn't them. Maybe I could fool a few people in conversation, but I wasn't those things. I preferred my music loud and weird. I drank in the daytime. I avoided hassle and conflict and duty. I thought constantly about fucking and bands and art and it all may as well have been lying down in daisies and staring at clouds.

Something skittered off deeper into the woods as I came close to the treeline, close to the car.

I wanted desperately to be a respected man. I wanted desperately to hold onto youthful hope. Both of which seemed to be failing completely. I stepped through the treeline and toward the car. I glanced at my phone for the time and I had twenty minutes still until I had to get the exhaust fixed again. The car was embarrassingly loud and it was costing a fortune and it needed to be done and only a few years ago I would have just been happy to have a car.

Messiah

We are in our new red car  in the parking lot of a drug store but we both know the car is broken.

The storm is ominous. Darker than I have ever known. Low and chaotic. Rain falls like hammers and Bridget and I watch the water crashing and exploding on the windshield.

I see a man walking toward us on the road.

"He could help," I say to Bridget. I get out of the car and the rain hurts and I know I have broken shoulders and I yell to the man, "Please help!"

He walks through the rain and the sound of the storm, thought it terrifies me, does not register with him.

He touches my shoulders and they won't hurt. I don't feel the rain anymore.

"Thank you," I say as I get back into the car. He lays his hand on it and the car hums and then roars and is alive again, full and well.

"Can I have a ride to the Barrens?" he asks before I shut the door and roll the window down a bit.

"Where is that?"

He points down the road.

"Fuck that," Bridget says.

I look at the man. "Sorry guy, fuck that." I roll up the window and worry it was Christ.

I Need Blood

"We'll need to compare your blood against someone else's before you can leave," a doctor tells me.

I am outside and it is autumn. This is a hospital and it is also the courtyard in the center of the hospital. Orange, red, and yellow leaves dance and fall and decay around me and the branches of trees are baring and skeletal. People bustle.

"Okay," I say.

"Do you have anyone you can call to compare it to?"

"Yes."

I sit on a bench near the registration desk and the breeze is cool and I relax a little. I use my cell phone and call Cliff.

It rings and he answers immediately.

"Hello?"

"Hey," I say. "I need blood."

"Okay."

He hangs up and I put my phone away.

The doctor looks at me impatiently.

I wait for hours and Cliff does not show.

Someone calls my name from near the large stone archway entrance. It is Gene. Cliff's brother.

I stand up and walk over to him.

"I have been waiting forever," I say.

"I have blood," Gene says.

He walks to the registration desk and I sit on the bench again. I can almost hear the conversation.

Gene says: "You'll see some scarring..." You know, how when bone... Under it, it has... like that."

"Like this?" the doctor asks as he lifts his shirt.

"Yes, a forklift got right under it. In my ribs."

Climbing Up the Walls (18-21)

18.

I woke up twice choking on blood and Megan fell asleep at my feet, crouched in a ball, and would wake up with me.

“Are you okay?” she would ask.

I would spit up some blood and wipe some of the dried blood from my face and say: “yeah,” and fall asleep again. I couldn't afford to go to a hospital and I was sure I'd be fine.

19.

I had the notion to build a tree fort. The sun was up and I was alone. The air was cooling and even though it had been for a few weeks, I wasn't getting used to it and it made me nervous and I wished I lived somewhere warmer. Like California.

My face felt like it was stuffed with wet towels pressing from the inside and soaking in blood and thoughts. I was having trouble focusing and every now and then my nose would drip blood and I would wipe it off and try to remember to scrape off the dried streak later. I went into the woods to collect wood. Even as a child I had never built a tree fort. I thought maybe it was the restrictive suburban environments of my foster homes, but there were at least two with property near forests. I assumed that I just didn't want to and thought that maybe I didn't want a childhood. Maybe I just wanted it over. Maybe I just wanted my mother and if I couldn't have her then maybe I just wanted my childhood over. I collected wood in the forest in the spots of light breaking through the tree cover and thought about trying to write more of the fake novel later and wondered exactly what kind of sticks and branches a tree fort required. I collected whatever was around and brought them to a small clearing near the tree line but not too near. A few minutes walk from it.

As I walked I noticed blood on my shoes. I thought about Dean. I wondered if he smoked pot. I thought that maybe I should have spent the evening making connections with people instead of being some quiet feral child stray. I realized I was a terrible business man. I couldn't think about money or how to make it and because of this I would probably never have any fair amount of it and may live in the woods for the rest of my life, however short or long that may be. If I believed it though, I thought, then I should just accept it and be okay with it, but I suppose I didn't believe it and with an armful of thick branches I tried to think about something else and in the splotches of sun in the forest the sun was warm but in the shade I thought I could almost see my breath and I thought about Megan. Where she might live. What her house might be like. What she did in her free time. What she looked like naked and if I might ever know.

The pile of sticks grew and I built a frame. I had no rope and no nails so I began by driving some of the thicker branches into the ground and setting some up where branches from trees split and crossed them to the branches in the ground. I worked through most of the morning and ran out of wood as the sun left its zenith and looked at my pitiful progress and went to the camper where it was warmer.

I decided I would write a bit more.

20.

I don't remember the first home. Or the second. In my earliest memory I am five. I am sitting at a table and I am blowing out candles for my birthday party. It isn't my birthday and no one believes me. Other kids that live there that I am supposed to think of as my brothers and sisters smile and clap when I blow the candles out. There are presents too. I remember wanting to be happy about it all. I remember wanting to be happy about it.

21.

The evening rolled on and I thought about making a fire again and sitting by it but instead I smoked a joint and stared out the window at the driveway and tried to imagine the sound of Megan's tires crushing rocks and dirt and sticks as it rolled up the road. I drew a face on the back of the notebook and finished the joint and rolled and smoked another and the face grew into a person and the person grew into a landscape and the landscape grew into some gargantuan abstract fucking mess and I was determined to get every detail exactly as I saw it.

The camper was swallowed in darkness and I strained to see the picture but eventually I couldn't and I stopped and looked back out the window. Megan wasn't coming. I went to bed.

Climbing Up the Walls (15-17)

15.

“Did you get some good writing out?” she asked as we careened down the dirt road.

           

“Yeah, I think so, maybe.”

            

“You look exhausted. I didn’t wake you up, did I?”

            

“Yeah. It’s cool though. I probably shouldn’t sleep at the table like that.”

            

“That where you were? Asleep sitting up? Sounds a little cramped.”

            

“I live in a camper.”

           

“Fair enough.”

            

“So, this party…?”

            

“Oh, yeah, it’s my friend Janet’s twenty first, so she’s having this like, thing, while her parents are out of town.”

            

“Don’t most people go to the bar on their twenty first?”

            

“Janet hates people.”    

            

“But she’s throwing a party?”

            

“Well, she likes her friends, she hates strangers, I meant.”          

            

“So you’re bringing me?”          

            

“Geez Louise. Relax, okay?”

            

“Okay.”

            

She smiled at me as we pulled up to the state route intersection. “It’s going to be a good time.”

   

        

16.

I sat in a circle of nine people, Megan to my left. We had been there nearly an hour and were sitting in Janet’s living room and passing around a darkened glass bowl and a bottle of Captain Morgan. I never liked rum, but like most things, I never passed it up. Monotonous hip hop pounded away mindlessly from the stereo in Janet’s bedroom down the hall and maybe it was the pot, but the incredibly irritating beat and nearly inaudible vocals were driving pins through my nervous system and stressing me the fuck out.

            

“Can we change the music?” I asked.

            

“Fuck off, bro,” one of the guys in the circle said. He was the sports type, right down to the eighties clichéd letter jacket. His was blue with white sleeves and a large blue and white “H” was sewn to the front. His hair was gelled and his brow shelved low onto his face. He smiled crooked at Megan. “Jay-Z fuckin’ rules.”

            

No one else seemed to pay attention. Janet was lying on her back staring at the ceiling with her legs crossed in front of her.

            

Two others to my left were mumbling who knows what to each other.

            

Others watched the bowl and bottle make its rounds.

            

Occasionally some of the circle spoke to itself and I sat and watched. Megan sometimes glanced at me and sometimes she glanced at letter jacket Cro-Magnon and I pretended I didn’t notice.  

            

“So why’d you even bring this faggot?” Letter Jacket asked Megan.

            

“Shut up Dane. You’re a faggot. David’s rad.” She nudged me and I didn’t look at Dane. I didn’t have a good feeling.

            

“Yeah, he looks real rad. You rad David? You rad, or’re you a faggot? I bet you’re a real cock licker, aren’t ya?”

            

“That’s it, you got me. Lickin’ cocks all day. Fuck off,” I said.

            

He stopped chuckling. “What the fuck’d you say to me?” He got up on his knees and began climbing to his feet.

            

“Dane, sit down,” Megan said. The others looked up but didn’t say anything.

            

“No, Megan. I think this little fucking queer had something to say to me. Isn’t that right you fucking queer? Fucking rad faggot queer?”

            

I knew as soon as I looked at him I was going to get the shit kicked out of me. I knew I’d embarrass Megan. Possibly destroy some of Janet’s house. I knew I should try to let it pass. But I was drunk.

            

I looked at him. “Sit down you fucking idiot. You’re being a dick.”

            

Before I knew what was happening I was in the air. He had charged me and for the moment I had been lifted into the air and then I was tossed against the wall and my back slammed into it and crushed the sheetrock and Janet was up.

            

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Janet yelled. “You broke the fucking wall! There’s a hole! Megan!”

            

Megan was already up though and shoving Dane. “Get the fuck out! What the fuck is wrong with you?!” She was screaming at him and everyone else was still sitting down. I looked at them and they mumbled and they smiled and I stood up and looked at the wall. I had put a hole into it. Or Dane did.

            

“You want more faggot?!” Dane said.

            

“Dane! Shut the fuck up!” Megan was trying to pull him toward the front door.

            

“You broke my fucking wall! Both of you! Get the fuck out of my house!” Janet said.

            

My back hurt. I had missed a coffee table and an end table and a vase. I picked up the vase and threw it at Dane.

            

It landed and exploded around his face.

            

Janet screamed. Megan screamed. Some of the remaining circle members laughed. Some clapped. Dane stumbled backward. Megan glared at me. “Let’s go.”

            

She came toward me. “I’ll bring you home.”      

            

I didn’t have time to answer. Megan was tossed to the side and Dane’s terrible face was streaked in blood and dirty water and his skin was red beneath it and his eyes were wide and his brow hung low and he charged me. The night ended.

17.

A streetlamp here. A neon sign. The rumble of dirt under tires. Black. The car was stopped. No light. Door opened. My face hurt. The air was cold.

            

“Let’s go,” Megan said. “Stand up.”

            

I could feel her lift my arm over her shoulder. I stood. All of my body said no.

            

“I’m sorry,” I tried to say.

            

“Is it unlocked?” she asked.

            

“What?”

           

“The camper, David. Is it unlocked?”

           

“It doesn’t lock.”

            

She pulled me along and I shuffled through the dirt and she leaned in and I heard the door open and I could smell the piss mold and then I was climbing the stairs and inside.

            

“Fuck,” Megan said.

            

“What?”

           

“It’s small in here. I hit something. Where do you sleep.”

            

“Bed.”

           

“Yeah, I know, I meant, never mind. Found it. Lay down.”

            

She swung me and I bumped into the counter and fell onto the old mattress.

            

“Did I win?”

           

“Win what, David?”

           

“The fight.”

            

“Wasn’t much of a fight.”

           

“Okay. I’m not tired.”   

           

“You need to sleep.”

           

“I’m not tired.”

            

I felt her sit on the mattress near my legs and heard her sigh. “I tried to tell Janet it wasn’t your fault.”

            

“Thank you.”

            

“Yeah.”

            

“Megan?”

           

“What?”

           

“I just met you.”

           

“That’s true.”

            

“So…”

            

“So what?”

            

“You stuck up for me.”

            

“What are you getting at?”

            

“And you got me home.”

           

“I took you out.”

            

“And you took me out.”

            

“Christ almighty. I know all of this. What are you getting at David?”

           

“Well, why?”

            

“What is it with you David? Are you always asking why? Didn’t you ask me this earlier? Who gives a shit why. I hung out with you because I wanted to and it was fun. I brought you out because I had fun hanging out. I stuck up for you because I’m not a shitty person and Dane is. I took you home because I brought you there. What do you want me to say?”

           

“You’re a good person I think and I’m glad I met you,” I said.

            

“Me too.” She put her hand on my leg.

            

“Megan?” I asked.

           

“Yeah?”

           

“Is my fucking nose broken?”

           

“I think so.”

            

“Fuck.”

            

“Yeah.”

A Loud Hum in My Ears

Let's all sit around and stare at the walls and realize we're alive. Each time our vision blurs and color melts into color and depth fades and some ringing static slips into our consciousness, let's blink back into it, the real world. Let's forget that for a second our eyes were open and we saw shapes and tones that weren't there. We could see sound and know emptiness and beauty simultaneously. Let's all forget that ever happened because we have bills to pay.

I don't belong here.

Climbing up the Walls (10-14)

10.

I ate the chips as I walked by the pine trees and along the road. I wanted to save them for later but it wasn’t happening.

I had a song in my head but I couldn’t remember what it was or who sang or when I had last heard it and the sun was burning high above me. I had food and forty dollars and a swimming head still. I could hear birds chirp high in the trees and leaves dancing and my flat footsteps echoing only a little around me. My shoes were old and I felt every crack in the pavement.

I stared at the ground as I walked and after a few minutes I could hear an engine approaching. I turned to look and the car was silver or white or gold, the sun bent color around it. The car slowed and I stepped further toward the pine trees. It came to a crawl along next to me and a window rolled down. Inside the car was darker and I had to squint to see.

“You need a ride?”

It was the girl from the store. Long brown hair. Deep eyes. Full lips.

“Sure,” I said.

The car stopped and she reached over and popped the door open. “Get in then.”

11.

I wasn’t clean and I had a back pack full of water bottles and beer and bread tied to it and we were driving to my ruined camper in the middle of the woods. I didn’t think this was the best first impression. I couldn’t think of anything to say, beside:

“Thanks for the ride.”

“No problem,” she said not looking over. She was in cutoff shorts and a black tank top and I wanted to see her naked but was fairly certain the camper wasn’t going to let that happen. “Guy at the store said you had a ways to walk, so I figured I’d help you out. You don’t look like a rapist or anything.”

“What do you rapists look like?”

“Oh. I don’t know. Good point. Are you a rapist?”

“No.”

“All right.”

“Turn here,” I said.

We turned down my road and the radio was on in the car. I didn’t recognize the song but it sounded like Zeppelin. I couldn’t tell. The car bounced along the dirt road and she slowed down a little.

“My name’s Megan, by the way,” she said.

“Oh, David.”

“Nice to meet you David.”

“You too.”

“So, what do you do David?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, like, with your life.”

“I’m a writer.”

“Yeah? Written anything I might have read?”

“Probably not. I haven’t been published. I working on a novel.”

“Oh. Well shit, this area’s a great place for peace and quiet to write, huh?”

“Yeah, it sure is.” I had no idea what the fuck I was talking about. “Turn here.”

We pulled onto my driveway and I had never realized how narrow it was until her car was barely squeezing through it. The sunlight fell between the trees and the dirt almost glowed and soon, the camper shone at the end of the driveway.

“You live here?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, like, for the summer?”

“Not really. Well, kind of. I did. I just haven’t gotten around to finding something for the winter I guess.”

“Oh. Want to give me a tour?”

I couldn’t tell if I was still stoned. She looked at me and smiled.

“Sure,” I said.

She put the car in park and shut it off.

12.

The afternoon was warmer than it had been and I realized I should have bought deodorant. I opened the camper door and remembered the smell of it. Megan stood behind me.

“It’s small in here. I don’t think I can really show you around.”

“That’s cool.” She turned and began to walk along the edge of the concrete slab to ward the back of the camper. “It’s so quiet here.”

I put my bag in the camper. “Yeah. You want a beer or, do you smoke?”

“Sure.”

“Sure…?”

“I’ll take a beer, and assume you mean pot. So, yes, sure.”

She disappeared toward the fire pit and I took the beer out of my bag. I didn’t know why I had bought them. They’d be warm and disgusting in an hour if they weren’t already. It’s why I stuck to wine. I rolled a joint and took it and the beer to the fireplace. She was sitting in one of the plastic chairs with her feet up on a rock. I handed her a beer.

“You know,” she said, “it isn’t much, but I could totally live like this.”

“It’s not great.”

“Why? You’re away from assholes and noise. You can do whatever you want. No one looking over your shoulder. Just sit around and write and get fucked up all day. Seems perfect.”

“It was nice for a while and sometimes it still can be, but I don’t have a car, so I’ feel trapped more often than not, to be honest. I think maybe if I had transportation, I’d feel a little better but, without the option, I’m just isolated.”

“Why don’t you read me some of your book?”

“My what?”

“The novel you said you were working on. Read me some.” She took a drink and set the can on the ground next to her as I handed her the joint.

“No, it isn’t ready. I’d be too embarrassed.”

“I’m going to get you to.”

“I doubt it.”

The sky over the forest was cloudless. Blue and unending and like everything else here, unreachable.

Megan took another drink and I looked at the shape of her legs. The tone of her skin. The perfect form of them. She was slouched in the chair and her hair blocked her face from mine and I thought I had never known someone as beautiful and it occurred to me that she was beautiful and new and here and suddenly I couldn’t understand.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” she said.

“Don’t take it the wrong way.”

“Not the best way to start, David, but okay.”

“Yeah. Well, why,” I swallowed, “why are you here?”

“I’m relaxing. Having a drink and smoking a joint. Looking at trees.”

“No, I mean why did you come here? Pick me up, and not just drop me off? I mean, I get the whole ‘good Samaritan’ thing, but…”

“Should I have just dropped you off?”

“Well, no, I guess.”

“I can leave if you want. I mean, if you’ve got writing to do or something.”

“No, no, I just, I was curious.”

She sat up and looked at me, handed me the joint, and smiled. “Who knows, David? I’m here and it seems good. Are you good?”

After a second I nodded. “I’m good, yeah.”

“Good,” she said. “Now smoke it or pass it.”

I took a drag and passed it to her.

13.

She left after an hour or so and I boiled some of the water and took my first shower in a few days. She had insisted she’d see me soon and I didn’t doubt her. She unnerved me and I found it both frightening and alluring and I felt like I was in a terrible movie. I got dressed and went to the camper. I opened another beer and sat at the small table with my notebook and pencil.

I flipped through the pages of drafted suicide notes and shopping lists and found a blank page. I decided to write a novel.

I didn’t know where to start so I just began to write about nothing. About me. About shit that had happened to me.

I never understood my mother, I wrote. I stared at the sentence, and true as it was, hated it. I didn’t read enough. I didn’t know how to start something like this. I decided that the next time I was in town I should see about getting a library card. I drank another beer and lit another joint and when my mind let go of worrying, I wrote:

It was easier for me to forgive my mother than to forgive myself. She didn’t have a choice, really and I think I would have made the same. For years, through foster home after foster home, I cursed her and blamed her and prayed that none of it was real. That she hadn’t died and that none of this was real. She didn’t have a choice. I was born, and that was all that was important to her and now at night, while I stare at the crumbling ceiling, it isn’t her name I accuse anymore. It isn’t her. It’s me.

I read the paragraph over and didn’t know if it was good or if it wasn’t, but I kept going. Soon the beer was gone and my joint was long gone and I couldn’t read, so I just wrote and hoped it turned out all right.

14.

I woke up at the table and it was black in the camper and a light was pouring in through the windows and I could hear an engine in the driveway. I looked around and couldn’t see anything. I stumbled over to the door and opened it and the headlights hurt my eyes and I couldn’t see past them. The car turned off but the lights stayed on. I heard a door open and I couldn’t see.

“Hey. Let’s go to a party,” Megan said.