| The sky was something else. It wasn't blue or gray or even black. It was null. The roads were slick with recent thunder clouds and rain. I was on my way to Massachusetts. I didn't know what was ahead of me. I couldn't understand why I had taken on this adventure, but it had happened and here I was, three hours into Saturday night, driving through the dusk to Fitchburg State.
He said that I had some guests waiting for me. They had heard my music--the music that we had created only a few months back. I was playing the drums. He played the guitar. They wanted to meet me. And he wanted to see me. There was snow on the ground and my eyes opened for a new day. There were clumps of snow weighing down the branches outside of my window and I felt alive. There was nothing wrong with the cold, but it was nine o'clock and the phone was already ringing.
Something in me tensed. I was alone in the room and the sun, brass and golden, filtered its heat through the glass. I knew the sky was distant and the ground dissonant, but the colors were too vivid. A chill broke my spine.
She said that "she didn't want to do this on the phone," but "it was the only way." I was not ready for the tearing sound of my soul. She said that "Things weren't the same anymore," and that "she couldn't be with me anymore." And then it came. It tore through me like a wave and currents fighting gravity. It found my tender spot--my achilles heal--and struck. I cried through pillows and sheets. I cried through mattresses and blankets. She said, "This is the way it has to be." But I didn't believe her. I drove through Raymond looking for the interstate...and found it. I had nothing but the stereo surrounding me, a backpack with underpants, toiletries, a clean shirt, and my wallet. Angels and Airwaves sounded right to me. They haunted and completed me. They used me.
It was that time where I felt the hot, bubbling streams spurt from the corners of my eyes. Salty, but diluted, I felt no reason to stop them. They were there for a reason. I let that be.
The headlights of the passing cars were nothing but streaks of golden paint plastered to a dark-colored canvas littered with city lights. This was my drive. This is what I had gotten myself into. I tried making things right again, but the outcome was obvious. "Can we talk?" I said on the phone. The conversation was forced and tensed behind the curtains. "I don't want to talk to you," she said. I sighed and spit out another offer. "I know you don't, but give me a chance to understand why you did this and I promise that after, I will leave you alone for good." There was a consecutive pause of ten seconds or just enough time to make the conversation awkward. "Fine," she said, "but a promise is a promise." The Interstate was cool and collected. I had the heat blasting through the vents and the windows down. The rush of November wind caught me and stole the breath from my lungs. I wanted to know that I was okay, that there was nothing wrong with me. But I couldn't find any evidence for defense. I was left alone in the battlefields of my own awakening--a glistening pool of memories and distant photographs plastered to my unwilling mind.
And the lyrics were more than just lyrics. The music screamed and fell to my ears in a light of disarray. Are you curious? The lyrics loved me, but threw me away. They brought me up to Heaven only to drop me down again. Three hours of emotional roller-coastering through the realms of my mind were enough to bring a person to tears. Me? I just sat there staring at the blank slates of asphalt until my eyes were numb with satisfaction. I met her at her door. The tension fluttered through the fluorescent lights above me. I was holding a sweatshirt--the only thing I had accumulated from her over the past three years. The memories remained absorbed in the fabric of its own creation. Nothing could take that away. The torso was a hunter's orange. The sleeves were a dark gray. Adidas was carefully printed in stitch marks across the front. It was a perfectly good sweatshirt, just not mine.
I knocked slowly and stood there waiting. The door cracked open with the twist of the doorknob. I saw her face--ignorant, selfish, and merciless, but unyielding, sleek, and as beautiful as ever. She hadn't changed. She was fiddling with the top of a yogurt smoothie. I was holding the sweatshirt. She looked at me directly in the eyes. Blue versus green. Wide versus narrow. The minute details changed, but nevertheless, I missed her more than ever.
It had only be two weeks. I passed Leominster and other small towns across the land. I felt alone, but accepted. I felt detached, but forgiven. And who knows what Leominster will bring? To me, it's just another town in the search for a new life, a new beginning, a new train wreck. But for someone else, Leominster is the location of true love. It's where someone will get married and have children and build a white picket fence to keep the dogs from running away. They will have wonderful jobs and lots of money and love their children like they love themselves. The family would be a family.
Soon Fitchburg would be something I could see, something tangible. All I wanted was to be somewhere where the lights are lit and the ice cold streets of Massachusetts were at least calling my name. Fitchburg was the closest thing to Heaven at the moment, so I took it and it took me and made me fly. "Hey," I said.
"Hey."
"How are you?"
She shrugged her shoulders. Her fingers flicked the seal of the yogurt in her palms. "Great," she said.
"Great?"
"Yeah." "......"
"So," she said, "what are you here for?"
"Can I come in?" I asked. She gripped the door.
"No. We can talk here."
"Ok," I said. I didn't know what else to say. "I just need to settle this."
"Settle what?" she asked, confused.
"I need to settle this between me and you. I know there's someone else."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah." There was no emotion or anger in her voice. Just normalcy.
"Here's your sweatshirt," I said, moving away. The topic killed the atmosphere. If there was an atmosphere at all.
"Keep it," she said. "It fits you better anyway."
She kicked a box labeled 'Junk' out through the cracked door. "This is for you."
Inside there were many things: movies, cd's, a pair of shorts, stray pieces of loose leaf paper, a toothbrush, mouthwash, and deodorant, a pair of glasses, a glasses case, composition books, pens and pencils, three shirts, and several love letters I had written her three years prior. "A promise is a promise," she said. "Leave me alone."
She closed the door and I stood there watching my life wash away from my eyes. The blue arching in broken shards of iris glass--stained glass windows void of color. Images come and go. Memories stay forever. Or so they say. Fitchburg was a cluster of brick buildings and dimly lit sidewalks, deserted alleyways and broken dreams. He was waiting by the door. There were no lights behind him or in front of him--only left and right. He was casting shadows across the street. The yellow shade felt more like crimson to me as I pulled through the town's lonely streets into the small parking lot. His shadows were near me. I pretended to smile, but I couldn't express the melodramatics of myself.
He knew I felt alone.
He led me to a wiry, sustained structure a few hundred feet from my car. The building towered over the skyline. The stars glittered softly in the approaching-winter sky. There was nothing left but snow and thunder clouds.
Inside the elevator the walls lurched with fear. They stabbed at my heart and I felt the warm rush of blood fill my ears. I wanted to cry, but had exhausted my supply of tension relievers--my medicine for a problem that will never go away. Don't go. He was comfortable in his skin. I was not. Passed the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh floors, we reached the eighth. It had a musty smell of old food and attempted friendships. I followed him through hallways of couches and doors. The lights were all the same.
His door was open and laughter filled the air. There they sat with their arms folded, looking cute and captivating, to draw me in. It worked. I was weekend hooked—if there is such a name. I left her alone, but thought of her often. I thought of her hair flowing freely in the December air. The leaves circled around her. She wouldn't change. She couldn't change. I thought of her thinking of me. I pretended we weren't apart. But fantasy became fantasy and reality never faltered. I knew things would never be the same, but the look in her eyes. The subtle glimpses of light breaking through the clouds became a vision of hope for me. Into the early hours of the morning we hid under cotton blankets and throw pillows talking about life and love. I was clinging to the edge of the air mattress. The brunette was closest to me. "Angels and Airwaves? Yeah! I can't get enough of them." The room was filled air-tight with pleasantries. "It's like they're inside my head and I can't get them out. They know how to strike the right cords," I said. "Fucking right," she said. "I'd fuck Tom Delonge."
"Me, too," he said.
"Me, three." They told me it would be fun, but my legs had already started to jolt back and forth like the hum of a car engine. They told me I was safe. Nothing could possibly go wrong with tonight. And the funny thing is, I believed them. Nothing went wrong.
It was a cold, late-November night where the air was chilled enough to freeze the words forming at your lips. Inside were rooms insulated with rows of empty beer cans--Coors Light, Budweiser, Keystone--and Solo cups drained of their insides. All that were left were insignificant stains from sodas or unfinished juice. The consistent stench of stale beer circulated the house and absorbed itself into the furniture and walls. Tomorrow would be just another hang-over for most of these people, but my intentions were to fly under the radar. I wanted nothing of the sort.
But that's not what actually happened. Someone handed me a beer. The aluminum sent shades of silver in streaks down my shirt. "Crack it open," they said. I hesitated, but eventually felt the foam run down my fingers. It smelled bitter and harsh and tasted just the same, but I finished it and found another and another and another.
The room was decaying before my eyes and I was glowing. Words were forgotten and actions were misinterpreted, but no one cared. I tried to feel my way around the living room and found the faded couch. I met the middle cushion with a thud and observed the area. Noises and words were coming from the kitchen. A black girl and three white men were talking outside. Each had a cup in their right hand and a cigarette in their left. A blonde-haired girl sat beside me on the couch and closed her eyes in a dreamy encounter with the armrest. A small, unnoticeable boy scratched his head just above the ear across the room out onto the stairs. Then I fell into darkness. My eyes had had enough. "So you were in love?" she asked. The other two had fallen asleep minutes ago. We were still up. The sun was beginning to fight through the darkness, which had seeped through the window frame and into our eyes. "Yeah," I said. I shifted my weight so that I was facing her. She looked beautiful when she was tired. "It must've been hard."
"Yeah, it is."
"I was the same way. Three years without even saying goodbye," she said. Her fingers were curling behind the wall of hair she had hid them in. "He left me. I haven't talked to him since."
"Rough," I replied. "I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault," she said. "Just don't think you're alone in this." She smiled and her white, shimmering teeth lit up in the early dawn glow. I felt like kissing her, but the timing was off. I wanted to hold her hand, but instead I closed my eyes. There was no response so I tried to fall asleep. But instead I watched the lights paint themselves in tones of gold across the ceiling. Nothing had ever seemed so beautiful. I was in an apartment late one night. There were backpacks filled with cans beside me. Captain Morgan rested, waiting on the kitchen table a few feet away. There was music, but shit that no one wanted to hear or that country sound that inevitably brings tears to your eyes. I threw three jacks on the board and the circle rumbled with excitement. Jen played three threes and I was proud of her. She had never played asshole before. I threw down my last card as I slid my fingers over another cold beer. At two o'clock AM, the night was still young. Forever young. In the shower I felt right again. Isolated and forgotten for a few, solemn minutes, forcing me back into focus. The water fell in minute streams of warm water down my chest and out my ankles. It was the only way I knew how to breathe.
They were waiting for me to walk through the broken sidewalks of Fitchburg, pushing our way through cracked alleyways and leafless hills for food when all I really wanted was the peace of knowing that I can be alone, naked and relentless somewhere. I ran the shampoo in and out of my hair and listened as it hit the floor below me in significant splashes and collisions.
I missed home. I missed summer. But most of all, I missed her. I fell asleep sitting up and awoke to a brunette, about 5' 9'', and disconcerned, laying across my lap. The others had fallen asleep in different rooms.
Her hair was tangled across my legs. Her waist pressed against my thigh. Her arms fell to my knees in lines of carelessness. I knew she was asleep, drunk, sleeping away her pains and memories. Just like the rest of us. But there was something coloring the inside of my lungs. Her waist felt warm--the type of warm I hadn't felt in months. My life changed in moments from that point. I knew I was alone in my serenity. But she could never know. We said our goodbyes, farewells, au revoir's, whatever you want to call them and, without another word, I shut the door, leaving them behind in the Sunday mid-morning temperament, forcing me to drive miles and miles back into the heart of New Hampshire. It would be a gray drive filled with tears and broken hearts, but it was the first step to finding a way out of myself and shedding the skin I had worked so hard to tighten.
The brick buildings were soon at my back, running with light under the horizon. I fell through the streets of the Coast, back home, where things hadn't changed...and never would. I watched the same trees crumble at the sight of snow only a day earlier. Now they stood erect, upright and prepared to grow like the many others they lead. I was running back to reality-in-remission where nothing was what it seemed.
Everything seemed together and concise. Nothing was left alone. The asphalt became a sense of echoes against the sky. The white lines became warnings of things to come. Everything was dull and uninspired. Even the trees. But the three hours I spent accelerating through Interstates went by with relative ease. I knew this wasn't the end, but that I had to work for what I wanted. She would always be a part of my life. Just not presently. And for the first time, in the car with my cheap radio, I understood what it meant to overcome. Lee was deserted--a small town close enough to the university, but far enough away to be safe. I was there with fifteen others in an apartment, months into summer. I held a beer in my hands, but only because I had to. The light-headedness was not enough for me. And I couldn't trust anyone. With each drink, they would find the worst in me while I filled the void in my heart.
Lee was nothing but two vacant roads. The smaller of the two ran east to west filling houses and buildings along its sides. The other extended north to south through durham and barrington. Chain restaurants littered the traffic circle at its southern side.
A fight broke out and fists hit skin and the sound of broken jaws echoed through my ears. "Fuck you!" someone screamed from the backyard. I knew I shouldn't have been there. Then there was the sound of beer cans hitting the ground. "I'll fucking kill you!" I wanted to run as far as I could, as far as my feet would take me, but I stood there frozen in the moment, listening for the tranquility of the midnight chill. There was blood running like rivers through teeth. Fists like lead colliding with metal and bones. I was caught, trapped, alone.
I knew then that that wasn't my place to be. I didn't belong there. They were blue and I was red--complimenting each other like colors. Just the absurdity of drunken faces and warped imaginations threw me into a downward spiral. I found an empty room and prayed for as long as I could that no one would come knocking down the door. I just wanted the surreal presence of silence beside me.
But I wanted to fight. I wanted to break jaws. I wanted to show everyone that I was real--as real as anyone there that night. But I knew it was useless. I was me and they were them. And fighting wasn't who I was. Home seemed like a reoccuring dream. The doors were gateways into Heaven--a place where I could say and feel what I wanted without criticism. Mom was in the kitchen tossing a salad. Dad was watching Horsepower TV in the living room straight across my line of vision. And Sara was watching The Karate Kid in the computer room to my left. We were a family--a silent family that couldn't communicate their problems, yet a family that didn't need to. We had our own way of knowing what needed to be said. We just knew.
I walked through the gates and drew in a long breath, smelling the scent of lime-seasoned chicken baking in the oven. "You're early," Mom said. Her eyes never averted from the oven. "I felt like I just needed to be alone." She nodded and grinned slightly through her lips. Her blond hair was wrapped slightly around her shoulders. Her shirt complimented the blue in her eyes. "Are you going back to school tonight?"
"I have to."
"Well," she said. "You don't have to."
"I have class early."
"Ok, ok. We'll take you back after dinner."
This was their way of comforting me. I was eighteen and confused. I needed the breath of life pressed back into me--something I haven't felt in months. I needed a certain kind of smothering--a type where you can still breathe, but are limited to short, brief spurts of oxygen. I needed more than just being a son. I wanted to be a boyfriend, a lover, a friend, a giver, anything. I needed warmth and meaning. I needed a purpose. I knew the tension felt closer and closer to consuming me whole and washing away any bit of hope I had ever known. Time was running out.
But I was wrong. Time wasn't running out. I had all the time in the world. There was a wedding. A beautiful wedding. I couldn't help but thinking of their happiness--the rush, the exhilleration, the adrenaline pouring through their veins. I imagined the ferocity in their approach to the world, like they could handle anything thrown at them. They were in love and immaculate. I was just an observer, watching happiness grow.
There were drinks and dancing and conversation until the early hours of the morning where we all went our separate ways. I fell back into the swing of things, knowing that weddings...weddings were like losing your train of thought--you never know where they will take you. I fell asleep at midnight and woke up three hours later to the sound of the wind running through the trees. It whispered to me messages of self-defiance and problems, but I did not listen. I waited for something bigger--a new beginning and a stronger life. "I'm here," the wind said. "You know where I'll be."
"There are things you'll never know, Wind," I said.
"Like what?"
"Like what it means to fall for someone who has fallen for someone else. Like being filled with memories and ideas and conflicts that can never be settled. Like shattering into a millions pieces and never having the patience to put yourself back together again."
"But I know how to move on. Isn't that better than knowing all those things?"
"Maybe you're right. But who will save you when you can't save yourself?"
"I don't know."
"Who will stop you when you've got nowhere else to go?"
"I don't know."
"Who will protect you from the rain."
"I don't know." When I fell back into reality, I knew what was ahead of me. "Just follow the road," somebody said, "and eventually it will take you somewhere. It might not be the place you expected, but who cares? You found the end." |
