Caroline, My Girl

I had a white Jeep then. She was nearly 20 when I owned her and her skeleton creaked and her hips ground into themselves and she spoke loud and angry to anyone within earshot. I named her Caroline and she was my girl.

It was fall and I had taken to driving and burning half a pay check to kill time and set my mind in place and think out stories and songs and just enjoy the road. Heavy coat on and blue and green air fresheners clipped to the vents. I had no idea what the scents were but that didn't matter. Me and my girl.

The sky was the slow and oppressive November grey and under we moved quick along the back state routes of Washington County. Land of farms and county fairs and not the vague civilization of home and not the familial embrace of Vermont, just a land in the middle. Purgatory. It made sense that this was where I'd drive to clear my head or fill my head. 

Scientific Maps were a band from Albany that had put out a lo-fi record that I had stumbled upon and listened to constantly, and was then. It filled the jeep, end to end and wiped the inside of my brain of the film of work and the mud of all that had happened in the spring, and clay of how to fix everything. Get it back to where it needed to be. I had to forgive. I had to move forward. "Hold on, whoever you are," they sang.

I was never a man for forgiveness. I knew it was a quality I should have had, but I didn't and most of that ride I stared absently at the long yellow and dashed yellow lines stretching and bending in front of me and weighing the past, the face, the stories, the future. 

What matters? I thought. What matters?

Sex? Does sex matter? One part of me asked.

No, another answered.

Love? Does love matter?

Sometimes.

Trust?

Do I need it to?

I think so.

Caroline took me further from home and closer to the border.

I could afford the apartment. The car. The bills. I could stand the room on the mattress and the silence in the air. I could even fantasize the adventures opened without walls or restrictions or loyalties and that brought with it a temptation to burn it all down. To pick up the phone. Declare. Buy a thirty rack, head home and kick my feet up. Justified and fresh. Free and alone.

Do you want to?

I don't know. Maybe.

In the vibrations through my bones I could feel parts of Caroline grinding, only a little then, but soon I knew they'd be harder and thicker and more expensive. I could afford the apartment and the bills and I thought the loneliness, but I doubted the repairs. 

Money has no place in love.

I know. 

I let the thought disappear.

I needed a drink and a few minutes later I pulled into a gas station and parked and let the song finish and turned off Caroline.

Sex doesn't matter.

Love matters to me.

Trust matters.

I knew then that it was on me. I knew then that I would buy a drink, maybe a bag of chips, and I'd get back in Caroline, and I'd drive home and I'd walk through the door and I'd declare. 

It's work, I'd say.

Work I always intended to do. Let's go to work!

And I did.

I did.

Perfume Taste

The tap water tasted sweet and after I noticed a perfume taste and my lips went numb for a second. Only a second. I thought it was strange but I was vaguely hungover and had just drank a pot of coffee in the last twenty minutes and maybe I had no idea what was actually happening. I drank another glass of water and my lips and throat tingled again and I thought that maybe I should call the town or talk to a neighbor and see if their water was poison also. I took the glass in the bathroom and tried the tap water there. It tasted like water, not perfume. It wasn't the town's issue, it was the house. 

Of course it was. Goddamn ruined ceiling. Goddamned electrical. Goddamned perfume water. The house was trying to kill me. 

I could call the landlord. I owed him money. Even if I didn't he would take two weeks to get here if he came at all. The ceiling had been ruined for years and I was holding rent until it was fixed, but even that didn't seem to motivate him. In February the water main froze and burst and instead of coming to look at it he spent four days arguing with the town that it was their problem and not his and I bought gallons of water and boiled them for bathwater and dishes and eventually the town caved and tore open my driveway and fixed the main. 

I had called the building inspector, even though the "no snitching" side of me screamed at me the entire time. He came. Looked at the exploded ceiling. Looked at the cracked foundation. Looked at the mold I had found and tried desperately to eradicate. He said he'd get a hold of the landlord and it would get taken care of. Months ago. The house was trying to kill me.

I would use the bathroom sink for drinking. Or the wine on the counter. That worked also. 

I briefly wondered if the landlord had done something to the pipes, the sink. If he was trying to poison me. If he was letting the house fall apart so I would move, but I wasn't, so now maybe he thought of a new way to get rid of me. Maybe, I thought.

I poured a glass of wine and put a record on. My lips had stopped tingling and the wine settled my stomach and the music settled my brain. Chopin. I could see his fingers dance, flit, live lives and never die and I sat on the couch and closed my eyes.

The house wasn't trying to kill me.

The landlord wasn't trying to kill me.

Chopin wasn't trying to heal me.

It was all in my head. I was the house. The ruined ceiling. The failing electrical. The cracked foundation. The perfume taste. I was the house.

No, asshole, I thought. You're just an idiot.

A Drive Home

I drove the interstate like I had a thousand times before. Shitfaced and introspective and hearing the music on the radio but not listening. Only peeling my eyelids open and sometimes literally and biting the insides of my cheeks to stay awake and punching the dashboard periodically because maybe that would help. Flashes of white bounced to the sides of my car and I knew all the landmarks. The billboards, the mile markers, the crooked trees, the rest stop. 

I remember being against drunk driving. I remember being against drinking. I remember understanding. 

I remember.

I had, over the summer, had another moment. Another screaming and unbearable urge to fly the fucking Corolla right off the bridge. Right into the water. Right into the black. 

I know everyone does. I know I am not alone. I know I am not unique, but the idea scared me and beyond that, I had only had one other of those moments. When we came back from that concert a few years back and I had smashed the car to shit and this time I hadn't. I hadn't because I knew I wouldn't walk away this time. I hadn't because this time I didn't see the point. I hadn't because this time I didn't have the balls. I kept thinking "don't let them think you were just high and fucked up". "Don't let them think you didn't mean it." "Don't let them reason."

Shitfaced and I knew I was listening to Mazzy Star. I pretended I didn't know why I kept listening to it. I didn't sing along but I let each note, each word, each reverbed snare bounce in my bones and my soft tissue and my hard soul and I thought "this is okay. This is okay."

I was nearing home. 

I should have kissed you.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. That's what they say. 

Nothing ventured, nothing lost. 

I pulled off the interstate. My phone lit up and I ignored it.

Just trying to keep straight on the road.

I thought I saw you in traffic earlier in the day. I am sure I did. I hadn't heard from you, really heard from you, in weeks and thought that was strange and I thought maybe it was actually, finally, suffocatingly, the end.

I had given up sobriety. I had given up trying. I had given up writing and loving and understanding and hoping.

I pulled into the old driveway and turned the car off and wondered how many more times I would be able to. 

I went inside and answered the text and realized I was no one.

Pointed Sticks

I had been told to use both sides of my brain to relieve it. Clench fists and release. Walk. Tap drum beats with my fingers. Something about resetting the brain. I had no idea what truth there was to it but I was balled up on my couch breathless and with stinging eyes, moving my index fingers back and forth quickly and begging myself to breathe.

Breathe.

Everything is fine. You are fine. This is nothing. Just a trick played on yourself. Breathe. Breathe.

My chest rose and fell irrhythmically and quick and with my face smothered in the beaten and old cushion I focused on the black. The warmth. Safety.

Everything is fine. You are fine. This is nothing. This is nothing. This is nothing.

My teeth smashed tight against themselves and I groaned through them between the bursts of breaths. It was morning still and I hadn't had a panic attack in a couple of weeks but this was making up for it.

I had lost my health insurance and with it my meds and with it my calm and I tapped my goddamn fingers and before that I had tried to quell the whole beast by breathing slow and staring into a glass of water. It used to work, years ago. It didn't now and there I was, fetal in variety.

It's going to pass. It's nothing. Breathe, you asshole. Breathe. 

I had received a phone call. Nothing horrible. Nothing abnormal. Just a phone call with a person on the other end and they asked me questions and it was only a conversation. That had been it. The slip. The punch. I had never enjoyed phone calls. I had never enjoyed surprises. With texts you can think. You can plan. Phone calls put me in the spotlight. They surround me and point their sharp sticks into my ribs and they demand and I speak as the spears pierce into me and I hide as the bones split apart and I act as the lungs fail and when it ends, when i hang up, when I can finally exhale, I can't. The play is over. The stage gone. The audience never knows the actor and the actor is crumpled.

A television plays behind me. Actors.

I tapped my fingers and pulled my face from the cushion and I could finally pull in a large breathe and my eyes burned. I rolled onto my back. Another breath. Another.

This is nothing.

Another breath.

"Nothing," I say.

I sat up and my cheeks stung and my chest hurt and the sticks were gone and my bones slid back into place and my lungs expanded and contracted and repeated and I thought; Fuck. I'm going to have to rewatch the last twenty minutes and I shook my head.

Night in the Park Outside of the Library

Summer left and it was night. I was standing outside of the library in town and looking up at a tree. The shadows played hard and thick through it and I watched the wind bend and morph the shapes and words and faces and life within it. Beautiful, I thought.

I was wandering the town. I did from time to time and I always packed a water bottle of wine. I had it in my hand and I pulled from it as my phone went off. A girl wanted to know what I was up to tomorrow. I ignored the text, put my phone in my pocket and pulled again from the wine.

I was in what I assumed was the last month or so of my current life. The home I had known for six years. The car I had driven for eight. The world I wanted to shed, but couldn't and didn't have to. It was shedding itself. This shell, crust, skin, film, was slipping from me and I was sad to see it but only relief swept over me as I had less. When you have nothing you can lose nothing.

I paced the dark sidewalk. Orange street lamp light shone in circles every thirty feet or so and the air was cold and my hands felt as though they'd be numb before long. I walked and thought maybe the next day I'd hike a mountain and maybe I'd finish that fucking story I'd been putting off and maybe I'd hang out with the people I keep blowing off and maybe I would finish off that fucking bottle of sleep meds and the two bottles of Jim Beam in my kitchen, but I thought Why? Why do any of it?

Three people were sitting on a bench outside of the library and as I passed they were quiet and all three stared at me. I know what a deal looks like, I thought. You fucking amateurs. I kept walking. Another bench wasn't far and I sat at it and pulled my small black notebook from my bag and began writing about a moment at the beach when Mallory had asked me to take a picture and I kept fucking it up because maybe I was nervous, or maybe I was hollow, or maybe I wasn't there at all. I didn't expect it to be one of my better stories.

My phone buzzed again and the same girl asked if I was busy now. I ignored it also and laid lengthwise across the bench and turned into it as though I'd sleep. I wished I had brought a sweater. 

I nursed the wine and thought I had no bacon or eggs or coffee at the house and I thought I hadn't fucked anyone in a few days and thought I was trash for thinking like that and thought I was trash anyway. This last month of my life. This moment, night, drunk in the park outside the library. Trash. 

I used to be something, I thought. Someone.

Trevor and the Chinese Restaurant, and Me.

It was late afternoon and I was sitting in a booth of a long-closed chinese restaurant. Not a take-out place with torn linoleum and crates of soda and napkins everywhere. A decent one. Red walls. Gold trim. Recessed lights. A large empty fish tank and bamboo prints the size of murals on each wall. Throughout the empty dining room I could see the ghosts of a hundred thousand customers and staff and nights and I could hear the chatter, laughs, children, greetings, celebrations. I sipped at the beer Trevor had brought us and watched it all and when Trevor came out from the old kitchen it all disappeared and he sat down across from me.

"So what do you think?" he asked.

"It's a nice place."

"Yeah. I'm kind of in love with it. Price is good. Location's good. Fuck man." He drank from his beer and shook his head a little. "Fuck. This could be it."

"I'm happy for you, man."

"Yeah." He smiled and nodded. "Thank you. Me too. Christ, I'm trying not to be too excited, you know?"

"You should be. The dream."

"Yeah, yeah, I know, but if it fails, fuck, I'll be crushed."

"Unless you're diving headfirst, don't do it. Get excited. You'll need it."

"I know, I know. You're right. Headfirst or nothing at all."

I sipped at the beer and looked at the empty fish tank and wondered if it was for fish or lobster. "You tell Sam yet?"

"No, not yet. She's at her moms and I don't know, I wanted to surprise her, I think. Do the whole hands over her eyes thing."

"You think she'll be into it?"

Trevor looked around and smiled. "God, I fucking hope so. That money is gone. I bought it this morning."

I laughed. "I didn't know that. Bold."

"Yeah. I had the chance and I thought 'go for it.' Same thing I did with Sam."

"I hate you."

"I know buddy." He smiled.

The light of the evening began to burn out and we finished our beers and left the booth and dining room and as I walked out the door Trevor stopped and looked over another of his pieces of the dream and I wondered if I should overdraw for groceries or if I didn't mind freezer burnt green beans again.