To Be Open

And then I became aware that everyone knew. That I'd been trying all these months to keep it a secret. Trying to be cordial, trying to understand. Turns out they were the ones talking behind my back, turns out I had nothing to worry about. And one by one they all came up to me at the party to ask what had happened. When did it happen, what exactly, what was the latest instance, he heard from her that I told her last year or something, et cetera, et cetera, we've all known about it for quite some time.

It wasn't freeing. It wasn't nice to talk to them about it. To be open. I thought it would be. But all I could think of was I'd rather have my secrets and go on hiding them badly.

The Blow

I woke up and she was crying. My mother-in-law. I asked her what was wrong and she left. Kerri came out of the bathroom, sad, but determined. She had a purse in her hand, overstuffed. I asked her what was happening. I never knew what hit me.

Nosh

I am excited to sit down and have summer sausage with a good cheddar. I've bought some water crackers to go along with them. I remember building a fort, redistributing my bunk bed so the beds were perpendicular. I hung sheets over the sides, kept them in place with books. I had a lamp and the small television we used to keep in the kitchen, along with our old VCR. I was going to watch British comedies. I was a clever kid.

I went to the kitchen for a snack. My mother suggested summer sausage, cheese, and crackers. We even had a good root beer, glass bottle and all. "Ah, having yourself a little nosh?" my father asked. "What's a nosh?" "A nosh," he said, "is just another word for snack. But I think it's better."

He was right. It is better. It elevates it. Still, I wouldn't call just any snack a nosh. I wouldn't call potato chips a nosh, or a banana a nosh, or a handful of nuts. But the time it takes to put the sausage and cheese and cracker together, the time some of the items aged. You're not grabbing something out of a bag. You're making something.

So I'll sit here now and have my nosh, remembering a simpler time. A time behind blankets and sheets, wrapped in pillows, inches from the screen, hungry for more.

Young Love Live

12:34 AM: These two kids are arguing outside the building next to mine.

12:38 AM: He just said, "You're overreacting."

12:39 AM: She just said, "No! Because I'm defending people!"

12:42 AM: How do I tell them that none of this matters and would they even listen?

12:50 AM: She says "fuck you" a lot, like it means something.

12:55 AM: Would I get in trouble if I slapped them both in the face? Like, for the greater good though.

1:01 AM: This chick just said "Don't act like you don't understand" uuugggghhhhhhhhh myyy grrrraaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhd.

1:06 AM: "If you're too fucking goddamn drunk" — if you're still living at home with your parents then that boy is young enough to be living with his and neither of you should be drinking anyway.

1:07 AM: AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING OUT PAST ONE ON A SCHOOL NIGHT???

1:12 AM: Where are the parents?? Asleep?? How can one sleep with such pain in the world??

1:18 AM: The more someone says "fuck" the righter they are.

1:22 AM: Do they not care that I've been staring directly at them for twenty, oh wow, forty-five minutes. I'm not even hiding it anymore.

1:25 AM: I wish I had more lights to turn on in my house.

1:28 AM: When do I become a cranky old man and tell them to shut up and go to bed and that it doesn't matter and they don't matter and I don't matter and this is super gross and funny and also I hate them.

1:30 AM: "Your fuckin' girlfriend! The fuckin' person that you say that you love!" Hahahahaha you have absolutely no idea whaaaaaaaaaat you're talking about.

1:32 AM: "Are you thinking about other women when you're not with me?" No, he's thinking about them when he's with you, too.

1:40 AM: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand now they're making out dsjdhfjdfhuwrsuidfnsjdknf.

1:41 AM: "Oh, the pain! Pain as I had never known it!" — Salieri

Truman

Truman got in.

"How was the bachelor party?" I asked. "Good weekend?" He went to his room, shut the door, nothing unusual. "How many hookers did you have to bury?"

When I went to work the next morning he was still in bed, door shut, still in bed when I got home. Under the weather, I thought.

Tuesday morning I woke up and pulled the covers over my head. The smell was back, some funky thing from the damp and dingy basement. It had been there before. But it was different this time.

I pulled back the shower curtain to see him there, fully-clothed in a tub of bloody water, fingers frozen dead around a razor. I called the police. I called Hector.

"What happened this weekend?!" Nothing unusual, Hector said. Except that Truman never showed.

I'm mad at him for a lot of reasons. Mad because we stopped talking. Mad because I never knew what was wrong. Mad because I have to move. Mad because he knew I'd find him.

They want me to say something at his funeral because I'm his oldest friend. Don't know that I could tell them anything they don't already know.
 

The Last Constellation

Risa wakes me up dead middle of the night. Right in the middle of one of my cycles it feels like, because she's pulling me out of something deep. Come on, she says. I ask her what's going on, and she's so excited. There's coffee brewing and she's laid out some clothes and a raincoat for me. It hasn't rained in days.

We get in the car and she drives. I think it's a perfect time to go back to sleep, but Risa won't have it. She wants me to look out at the stars. So I look out at them. There are a lot but none I haven't seen before. I wonder when the last constellation was named, she wonders. I say that I don't know but it was probably a long time ago. Some of these stars are dead, she says, but we can still see their light because of how far away they are. It seems like they're shining even though there's nothing there.

She pulls over, gets out, puts her raincoat on. We're at Juniper Falls, this waterfall just outside of town. She takes my hand and leads me over the gate and across the wet rock. And there's the sound, the water, the rushing, the waterfall in the dark. I follow her cautiously along the path of stones, I'm still not completely awake, one bad step and it's into the pond I go.

We pass under some side-spray to the carved-out bench behind the fall. At the top, through the water, you can just make out a full moon. Risa rests her head on my shoulder and she must know what I'm thinking because she tells me not to fall asleep. You'll sleep when you're dead, she says. Yeah, I want to tell her, but I'll go through life exhausted.

Everclear

What he didn't know is that the other shots had water. There was only his with vodka. They hadn't told him that. He also didn't know about the Everclear they had poured into his rum and Cokes, his whiskey gingers. And when his nose started bleeding, unannounced and uncontrollably, it was a laughing matter. He didn't want to go to the strip club. He didn't want to convince the bouncer that, it's OK, he was fine, he was fine. Nice girl that she was, he didn't want her breasts so close to his stubble. And he didn't want to vomit on the side of the cab. He only wanted to be mad at his friends. But he couldn't even do that.