If there’s anything I’ve learned at those alcoholic meetings is that details don’t really matter. Circumstances and experiences are infinite, yet the feelings are universal. We’ve all felt the anxious tension and soothing release of wanting something really bad and then getting it over and over again. We’ve all had our little butts spanked and been thrown down the stairs. Everyone knows what it feels like to be alone, like really alone. When there’s no friends and only enemies. Whenever you get a bloody nose you have to go to the hospital because it just won’t stop.
Karly used to tie a string around a dinosaur toy and drag it through the halls at school. One time I went to her house. She lived in the basement. It was nice and cool down there and felt separate from the rest of the house as there was no way to get to it besides the side door. I remember it was small, maybe the smallest room I’d ever been in. I could feel her breath on me. She wanted to fool around I think she tried to seduce me but I just wanted to play Soul Caliber. She called it Soul Cali. I liked looking at all her books and imagined how she looked under her little amp, in her dank little room, reading them all. When I was in college I got a text from her out of the blue. She said she loved me. I wasn’t used to those words yet. She also said I wouldn’t like what she’s become. Another couple of years later I heard that my best friend ran into her on the beach in California. They ended up getting drunk together and making out. Another friend, who I caught up with recently, said that she blew heroin smoke into his mouth at a party. She has a kid now, and bought a house, and routinely posts professional headshots with the caption “new linkedin pfp.” I wonder what my life would’ve been like had I not left that little town.
College wasn’t easy though, as I wrestled problems of my own. Not knowing how to handle anything I went for the bottle for all the uncomfortable feelings and anger I had inside. Getting wasted was a near daily occurrence, when it wasn’t I was fighting hang overs that only a young man could handle. There were some nights that stand out more than others. One time I was so upset I couldn’t get to sleep. Someone was outside my room yapping away. I went out to tell them to shut up and before I knew it someone was pulling me off the kid and yelling in my face. He left with a broken nose and I was so fired up I went outside and took the street. I had been breaking windows in the downtown area to let off steam that winter and my roommate chased me to make sure I didn’t do it again. It blends with another night he had to chase me, when I had been so distraught that I wanted to take my own life. I left the house without a shirt and no shoes and was set on throwing myself off a bridge. He didn’t leave my side even when I was trying to trick him that I’d be okay and just wanted to be by myself. I don’t think I ever thanked him for that.
Another friend of mine, the same one that kissed Karly in California, dropped out of school to start working in the industry. He had his own show on Cartoon Network. For a while he was the most successful person I knew. Now, last I heard, he was living in the woods. Homeless, typing a manic, Hollywood script on a typewriter. He got in trouble for groping a coworker at a party. They cancelled him pretty hard. I remember the way he used to laugh sometimes, like it wasn’t really him. It came from a ruthless, animal place, where evil makes it’s home. I know, because I heard it again recently. A friend was telling me about how some lady was begging outside the 24 hour laundromat. He gave her five dollars, but told her to show him her boobs. He started laughing weird when he told me she did it, but then got upset and said “I’m not a piece of meat!” as the threw a bottle at him. People are always throwing stuff at him. One time he was walking around Hollywood and a hobo threw a needle in his direction. My friend picked it up and threw and it stuck in the guys head like a dart.
One horrible night, I socked my girlfriend in the mouth. It was her birthday. She was on mushrooms and I had blacked out from drinking and partying all day. I think I was tired and just wanted her to shut up. Doesn’t matter. I came to as she slammed a door in my face. I tried to walk home without any shoes, fading in and out of consciousness. I found a clearing and laid down next to a dumpster. I called a friend to come get me and he picked me up. I remember that image as if it’s in the third person. Sitting in the car full of oozing feelings and dirty, sticks in my hair, mud on my socks. It’s strange to know I’m part of someone’s trauma. I thought about it for a couple seconds the other day and all the negativity and festering, ill feelings bubbled up underneath the surface of my skull. I could only bear it for a moment in my sober mind, but I know if I get high I can linger on that stuff forever, as I often do in that state. That’s why weed is so uncomfortable for me. It didn’t provide escape or freedom, but put me in a cell of my own making. Too much karmic debt. I wonder if it’ll ever be paid. Subconsciously, I distance myself from everyone, as punishment (or reward) to them and myself. It’s a dual sentence. Last time I saw Karly she had to cut me off and I fell off my bike on the way home.