Hold My Life

 

How do you see your life’s story?  How would you distill your life into a relatively brief synopsis that can accurately encompass all of your experiences, and all of the billions of thoughts that run through your mind throughout a lifetime?  It’s impossible isn’t it?  And yet, all of us repeat stories from our lives over and over, especially as we get older.  I find myself dragging out anecdotes from my six years of volunteering for the LPGA Portland Classic golf tournament all of the time.  I will find a way to shoehorn it into any topic.  Clearly those experiences are important to me, though they are boring fodder to any audience. 

Last night, I was reading through a printed version of the After Visit Summary from my most recent doctor’s appointment.  Generally, these are 2-4 pages, but this one is 32.  There is an entire page devoted to all of my diagnosed ailments.  It is, in a way, my biography, and yet it isn’t.  Sure, my mind flashed back while reading “kidney transplant” on the list.  Wow, was that a time?  That gift of someone’s kidney saved my life.  I still have a lot of guilt and sadness mixed in with my elation about receiving a second chance at life at the age of 33.  And that’s just it.  This list is not my story and I found myself getting upset.  On that list of ailments is “Migraine.”  How did it get on my list?  I have had maybe three migraines in my life!  I have suffered from a variety of headaches for most of my life, but migraines are not what I suffer from.  The list includes “Morbid (severe) obesity due to excess calories.”  Though true, it feels disingenuous.  I gained about eighty pounds after my kidney transplant over the course of about twelve months while on high doses of steroids that were designed to keep my new kidney safe from rejection.  When I received the transplant I was about 140 lbs.  A year later I was about 220 lbs.  I essentially maintained that weight for sixteen years, until I needed steroids again in 2021 when I had severe swelling in my head from a failed attempt at radiation therapy to destroy tumors.  The steroids reduced swelling to make my life tolerable, and they helped me gain another 80 lbs. over a period of five to six weeks.  Yes, I am obese, but it feels unfair to be labeled that way.  There’s no nuance to the story.  I reached300 lbs. and over the last year, with a lot of work, I have lost some of that weight.  At that recent appointment I weighed in at 268.  Way too heavy to the medical assistant who weighed me, but to those following along: “not bad.” 

I hate to criticize my healthcare.  I am overwhelmingly grateful to anyone who wants to take care of people.  I admire everyone from the mighty brain surgeon to the cleaning staff at a hospital.  I am thankful for their hard work, care, and effort.  I also am aware that records like in the after visit summary need to be cold and clinical.  When passing information from caretaker to caretaker, they don’t need to know my life’s story, and I guess it’s helpful to know that I am indeed morbidly obese.  I understand and have witnessed people trying to explain nuances of their conditions to a medical professional, as that professional tries to distill that information from five minutes of detail to one or two sentences or a code.  I also realize that our lives cannot be coded or simplified in this way.  Our lives are made up of those things that make us who we are.  Those things that are not so straightforward.  We are not keywords or codes for huge insurance companies to decide how your care should be covered or not. 

I was admitted to the hospital over a weekend a couple of weeks ago.  I was experiencing an Atrial Fibrillation (AFib) event while wearing a heart monitor during a Cardiac Rehab session.  I was asymptomatic.  I felt fine, and yet found myself in a hospital for about 48 hours before getting discharged untreated.  No new medications were introduced.  No treatments were provided or planned.  The first morning I was there, the weekend doctor on call at that time came into my room, introduced himself and asked if I was ready to go home.  I giggled and said yes.  He explained that they could perform cardioversion (without explaining what it is), but that I would need to stay over for a few days, and then he told me that millions of people live with AFib and that mine was stable and that I should buy a Kardia Mobile device to monitor my heart rhythm.  Then he left.  My post hospital after visit summary explains this interaction is now on record that I refused treatment in favor of going home.  That’s now a part of my history.  It’s no wonder that my insurance has not approved coverage for the entire hospital stay!!

Do I blame this doctor?  Yes, I do.  It’s careless and thoughtless.  I also don’t.  The system is messed up.  He was likely supposed to be well informed enough to be in charge of a lot of patients and all of their histories and to be everything to everyone as fast as possible.  I am often astounded and saddened when I find out that, for example, Abby, my Physical Therapist, sees about twelve different patients a day, or that the Cardiac Rehab team I work with see over 200 active patients a week.  It’s alarming to conceive of this workload, and it’s the entire system!  These wonderful people are overworked and go above and beyond and need help.  So, when I see minor mistakes like the ‘migraine’ mischaracterization, I am quick to forgive. Yet, I feel powerless and frustrated when I notice that my list of medical issues does not include mention of, as an example, my damaged tongue.  During a brain surgery in 2021, I nearly bit my tongue off, because no one put a mouthpiece in place.  My tongue continues to be a health problem.  I now have a lisp and struggle to speak, but more importantly, it’ can be seriously painful when I eat.  It’s been over five years, but apparently it does not merit notice.  It’s frustrating when I go over my medications with my caretakers, because inevitably there are inaccuracies.  Sometimes medications I’ve never heard of land on my list of record and are kept there despite my confusion and protestations, I may later see a note in an after visit summary that “pt. CLAIMS that they don’t take this medication.”  An interpretation such as this paints me as hysterical. 

This leads me to a personal problem I have and it’s been more severe for me over the past three years.  Late in 2022, I made the decision to stop working to focus on improving my health.  After that fateful brain surgery in 2021, I was declining and declining fast.  I had numerous physical ailments as well as some cognitive issues.  Because I had to give up my work sponsored insurance, I had to rebuild a new healthcare team from scratch.  Unfortunately, having Von Hippel-Lindau Syndrome (VHL) merits a care team.  My goal has been to work to improve my health and treat it like a full-time job.  I have had various therapies, medical tests, and checkups nearly every weekday multiple times a day for over two years.  I have always (even as a kid) tried to personally connect with my caretakers.  I want to know them.  I want to know why they are there.  I want to know what makes them who they are.  If I am going to be divulging my ugly secrets, it seems fair that I learn that they may be an avid reader, or musician, or whatever.  I need to know them as people – not as someone getting paid to take care of my broken body.  This has led me to a critical juncture.  It’s at least two fold.  I’ve had to change my insurance again due to unforeseen events and now I may lose a lot of this close and personal care and I have been freaking out.  I have been absolutely panicking, because I feel like all of the hard work I’ve put in building a great care team and toward getting healthier (and finally seeing the benefits – walking without a cane, finally losing some weight, feeling stronger) seems to be slipping away before I am ready.  There’s also the personal side.  I do not want to say goodbye to these people.  They have cared for me and helped me in ways that I cannot begin to describe.  When I was still working and had an active social life, I did not lean on my healthcare team for socialization, but now, they are the ones I chat with about music, movies, shows, books, weird shit that happens, life, and of course, the weather.  These people are now my family, friends, and confidantes.  I do not want to say goodbye.  The practical side, I know that they’ve provided me tools to continue to work on my own, but I will miss them all dearly and it absolutely breaks my heart.  Yet, as stated above, I am still “the patient (pt.).”  I read those after visit notes, where an hour’s worth of random chat is distilled to one or two sentences, like “the pt. CLAIMS his back hurts.”  Because I so want to connect with these people, I forget that they are working and that they have to document the time they spent with me.  It still hurts.  I am only one of those hundreds of patients.  Nothing more. 

This leads me to another conversation I struggle to have.  As I’ve devoted so much of my life to the medical world, I’ve found myself incredibly lonely.  It’s been a lifetime thing.  When VHL was diagnosed in my family, I was thirteen and had no symptoms.  In fact, my first major kidney surgery landed during the middle of my 8^th grade basketball season.  I was amidst puberty and mostly healthy.  After that, I steeled myself against the idea of a future of constant medical attention via periodic scans, checkups, and surgeries.  I made decisions like “I will never have children” that slowly made me believe that I was a burden unworthy of love or any kind of attention.  I felt and still feel like a physical freak and a pain in the ass.  I have taught myself to not allow anyone in to my nightmare, because, well, it’s a nightmare.  I have always wanted to present myself as Teflon.  I have always defined my story as someone who can handle anything that comes my way.  I pride myself on being independent.  I wrote a paper in High School about humility and independence.  I still believe deeply in those things, yet I am finally realizing that I’ve not allowed nurturing and love in my life.  Ever.  It’s been a slow process of self-discovery.  I’ve written previously here as I’ve slowly hit upon some of these revelations like how and why I’ve always struggled to plan for even the near future.  How I have shuttered the notion of dreaming about my future.  I’ve always felt unengaged, and a little jealous, when I hear people’s stories about how they've set a goal and work hard to manifest and achieve that goal.  I do not set goals and do not know how to manifest anything.  Without that planning and dreaming, I have learned to close myself off and it’s lonely.  It’s difficult to write about, because it’s deeply personal stuff I’d rather not admit is real, but it also can offend those who are in my life.  Those who do love me and see me for who I am.  I do not want to short shrift anyone and am often overwhelmed by the love and support I do receive.  It means so much and has kept me motivated to try to stay healthy all of this time.  When I say I feel alone, it’s in that I’m missing out on that personal intimacy.  I do not have a partner – a significant other. It’s different than having a friend check in on me via text message.  Part of shutting down after my VHL diagnosis has had the major side effect of not being able to allow love to blossom in my life.  During my physical therapy sessions over the years, I witness other patients working through their obstacles and challenges alongside their therapist and often with a loved one who is there to champion and cheerlead them on.  The first time I took a step without assistance after that 2021 brain surgery, my therapist clapped her hands and yelled “Yay!” and that was great, but that was it.  When I told a few people afterward about my big triumph, it felt as if I was telling them about those times I volunteered for the LPGA.  YAWN.  I do not have that intimate support.  I have not allowed anyone in to be my champion and it’s been making me feel incredibly sad.

It’s funny because my current bout of intense loneliness is less about being alone and wanting someone to love me, than it is wanting to love someone who also loves me.  I don’t think it’s a change.  I think it’s more of a realization.  I believe that I really do have a lot to offer at least emotionally.  I have a massive well of desire to be there for someone all of the time.  I’m tired of trying to support those friends that I love dearly from afar.  I’m very happy for them.  Most of them are well-adjusted enough that they have significant others in their lives and do not need me to care for them when they are ailing or struggling.  They don’t need me to hold them when they need to be held.  They don’t need me to be a confidante about their deepest insecurities and fears.  I am, at best, option two.  It’s the other side of the same coin.  Yes, I greatly desire to have someone close in my life who is here with me through all of my medical battles and deficiencies no matter what, but I very much want to be there for that mythical person.  I very much want to uplift and be strong for someone other than myself, because you know what?  I am over myself.  My tired story only plays out negatively, and I don’t have any more energy for it.

Of course, a big issue, aside from intense self-loathing, is that I only have eyes for an occasional particular woman.  It’s been this way since I was a kid.  I find myself drawn in by one individual, and in my mind, there is no compromise.  I only desire that person’s companionship.  Life circumstances either end it as I inevitably fail to try to win them over by actually professing my adoration, they (or I) move away, my health declines and I have to manage another personal crisis, or I do actually ‘make the move,’ and they are not interested.  So, I’ve drifted along.  I’ve dated a little, but have never felt that intense desire.  I have tried to make it work, but I cannot fake it, or allowed it to happen.  I’ve had a few chances over the years, but could never make it work.  This is where I wonder.  I wonder if I’ve cheated myself in a way that has left me now alone and inconsolable at this late stage in life.  Why can I not accept anything less than these few attractions?  Why can’t I let a relationship begin and simmer into something that can be pretty damn good?  Why do I need these ‘dream girls’ that I become so obsessed with?  Most of the time and most of my life, I’m okay being alone, and sometimes I’ve been thankful.  When I do find myself lonely though, the emptiness and depression that set in are completely overwhelming.  I cannot feel good or even just okay.  I am in constant misery and I do not know if I can recover.  It does not help my already low self-esteem either.  The fact that I am never interesting to those whom I find so damn alluring is a very detrimental blow.  In a lifetime full of also-rans and being forgotten and misjudged, or coded incorrectly like in those after visit summaries, I find myself believing that perhaps I really am worth nothing - that my life's story can fit onto a one page list of medical problems.

My emotions are raw these days because my health is once again uncertain and declining, my insurance uncertainties have put not only my already flimsy financial stability in serious doubt, as much as the quality of my healthcare, and I am facing it all feeling extremely lonely.  The past few weekends have been endless nightmares as I dwell on these things and find no positives to grab onto as a lifeline.  This weekend I’ve been wearing a heart monitor, and have been having trouble keeping the bib that holds the monitor in place tied.  My ataxic left hand makes it difficult to tie even the simplest of knots.  I can’t help but think that if I had a significant other, this would not be a problem.  How would this all be added to an After Visit Summary: “Pt. REFUSED treatment?”

Lullaby

My friend Jeff and I used to escape the campus of Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon by walking to the bus stop for Tri-Met line 57.  It was the final stop about 25 miles west of Portland.  We’d grab as much change as we could and try to get to Portland to visit cool record stores and such, despite the hour and a half trip each way.  If we had less time, or patience, we’d ride the 16 or so miles into Beaverton and go to Tower Records.  We needed to feel civilization.  Being on a small college campus in an isolated town that didn’t want to have anything to do with the college students back in 1989/90 was a little claustrophobic.  There was little to do, so we invented our own fun, and minor escapes.  During our treks to the bus stop near the mini mart and the Vac & Sew storefront, we generally sang exaggerated versions of songs that would pop into our heads. 

 

One of those songs was The Cure’s “Lullaby.”  It was never a huge favorite of mine from their catalogue, but our overly breathy version was, well, it was a thing.  The combination of the exaggerated gasping whispers and the attempts to stifle our laughter while performing this song for our own entertainment would lead to near hyperventilation.  If it wasn’t “Lullaby,” it might’ve been “Fire in Cairo,” or “Party of the First Part,” or “Debaser,” or “Cuts You Up,” for which I was convinced I had perfected the Peter Murphy croon, but I’m sure in reality I sounded more like a dying harbor seal barking out my misery.  Then there was the Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Sidewalking,” which included our repeating howls of “chilled to the bone” and an impossible contorted stroll that can only be described as a silly walk – Monty Python-style.  I would say, “You had to be there,” but it still likely would not have made any sense.  None of it ever made sense, but I will never forget those mini adventures and the laughs.

I woke up from a short fit of sleep recently having dreamt of spider webs.  They were everywhere.  Thick and sticky.  In my eyes and mouth.  Surrounding me enough to make me believe that a giant spider or a gang of ambitious regular sized spiders were hunting me.  I could feel the webs in my mouth and sticking to every part of my body as I tried to force my way through them.  There were layers and layers.

 

Legend has it that one of Robert Smith’s uncles would tell him nightmarish bed time stories about a spiderman that would eat sleeping children.  Was the “Spiderman” from “Lullaby” coming for me after all these years for making fun of the song? 

“On candy stripe legs the spiderman comes

Softly through the shadow of the evening sun

Stealing past the windows of the blissfully dead

Looking for the victim shivering in bed

Searching out fear in the gathering gloom and

Suddenly a movement in the corner of the room

And there is nothing I can do

When I realize with fright

That the spiderman is having me for dinner tonight”

I look back at those days with bewilderment.  I was fairly healthy and one of my biggest fears at that time was sleeping through my 8:30 am classes at college.  Sure, life wasn’t always fun and games, but a lot of my needs were met, I had new friends, my small insular world was expanding, and there wasn’t a lot of outside pressure.

Generally, I’m not one to read a lot into dreams.  If I’m dreaming about looking for a bathroom then, yes, I likely need to pee in real life and should wake up.  In this case though, the imagery is not lost on me.  I’m pretty sure that those webs represent my own inhibitions and shields that I’ve continued to build and maintain throughout my life. 

I’ve always been slow to trust and very wary of trying new things, especially if there’s potential danger.  And by danger, I mean everything from falling from a tree fort, or flying off jumps on my first dirt bike, to opening myself up for emotional damage from failed relationships.  For the most part, I’ve kept to myself, which has always felt safer and frankly, comfortable.  It can get lonely sometimes, but I’m not so bad at keeping myself company most of the time.  As a kid, I never fully embraced being away from home.  Never felt comfortable sleeping over anywhere.  I preferred spending time with friends and then going home.  I’m still that way.

After years of medical issues that have caused a lot of damage, I am feeling like I’ve isolated myself into a deep, dark hole full of those sticky webs that will not allow me to escape.  It’s frustrating, because I’ve been this way for so long, that I am not sure how to remedy this self-entrapment.  The older and unhealthier I get, the more I realize that I cannot do this alone anymore.  I need help, but I don’t know specifically what help I need or how to ask.  I feel like I’ve alienated a lot of friends who have offered help, by declining, but I do not know how to relinquish control of every aspect of my being, or what to ask for, and I don’t know how accept the idea that I’m anything but a nuisance or burden, if I reach out for help.  Pride is a bitch.

 

Self-hatred would likely have happened anyway, but it took a dark turn after having a few serious abdominal surgeries before I turned 20.  I do not feel proud of my scars like well-adjusted people do for having toughed things out.  I feel mutilated like some sort of Frankenstein’s Monster.  Back then though, I suppose I had enough belief that eventually I’d pull myself free of my self-imposed shackles and not be ashamed of my physical being.  It has never happened.  Shame and embarrassment has only expanded with age and numerous hardcore medications.  Steroids, chemo drugs, immune suppressants, and numerous cholesterol and blood pressure medications have helped me morph into some kind of pale doughy crippled Sasquatch.  I feel humiliated.  Ashamed.  I could go on and on.

 

Shit.  This got dark real quick. 

What I’m trying to say is that I think this dream led me to some self-reflection and a full honest realization of how I’ve sabotaged myself over the years as part of my unfortunate lifelong unhealthy journey.  Emotionally, I do not know how to handle it anymore.  My poor social skills have caught up with me leading to isolation and difficulty navigating some of the few friendships I have remaining.  I spend so much time with medical professionals that they have essentially become my social circle, which is incredibly unhealthy.  When I move on from a physical therapist or a specialist having completed some kind of arbitrarily sanctioned insurance coverage.  I get incredibly sad, because these people are no longer part of my life.  

As I mentioned above, I seem to reject offers of help.  I do not know what to ask for, and by the time I do have a specific need, I struggle to send out a request, nor do I want to give up control and my privacy.  The nature of my health issues stems from a genetic disorder that never seems to end, as long as I keep surviving.  So, the same things that were making my life hell in 1991, are still affecting me – only it’s expanded and become more all-encompassing.  I feel embarrassed and reluctant to keep complaining to those I love about the same old shit.  Nothing has changed.  The disorder is unrelenting.  I often get “what now?” reactions when I attempt to communicate my problems to others.  How do I make it clear that I live with this stuff every day and have most of my life?  It doesn’t go away.  It is a part of who I am. 

What’s funny is that intellectually I recognize that I self-shame myself into oblivion.  I am proud of my survival on a certain level.  Not a level that’s high enough for me to prevent me from feeling like a waste and a failure.  I can recognize this kind of defeatist attitude in others when they manifest it and I can come up with compelling arguments as to why they shouldn’t punish themselves that way.  Apparently, these arguments do not apply to me.  Is it possible to turn things around?  Is it possible to undo a lifetime of mental sabotage?  Is it possible to fend off the spiderman?  Do I want to fend off the spiderman, or do I want to give up?

 

That Smiling Face

“I’m not sure I’m ready for this,” Sophia said and laughed nervously.

“You shouldn’t doubt yourself! You’ll do just fine!” Chuck responded immediately, trying to fight the urge to reach over and touch her arm and verge into creepy territory.

“This is my first visit…”

“We’ll be there together and we’ll work through it together,” he tried to be reassuring. He was always a little nervous about these visits as it is and this was still his responsibility, so having someone there to help always comforted him. He always appreciated the back up. He was also nervous because he had developed a crush on her from afar. She was so pretty and so keen on jumping in and helping anyone and everyone out.

The week prior, Sophia approached him at the office out of the blue. He had seen her around, but didn’t know who she was. He had noticed her wandering through the office with her resonant smile and that long dark hair. Now here she was asking him if she could join him on his next run of home visits. Turns out she’s interning two days a week and wants to expand her experiences at their busy little office. Chuck straightened his back and stammered an approval. She brightened and said enthusiastically: “See you next week Charles!”

There she was sitting in the passenger seat of his car and he had been trying to prepare himself for this all week. He knew she would be with him, and he hoped that he would like her as much as he found her physically attractive. He wanted to make a good impression. So far during the drive across town everything had gone great in Chuck’s mind. Sophia was easy to talk with. She was interesting and engaging. She told him about what she wanted to do with her life and why she was interning. She wanted to help senior citizens. She wanted to be an advocate for them. She was going to school to study all angles of the social, political, and health concerns of all of our grandparents. She told Chuck about how her dream had been sidetracked as she initially dropped out of college to begin raising her two young children, but how after her divorce, she found the courage and wits to get her affairs in order and return to school. He marveled at the idea of her raising two young kids on her own, working a job, going to school full time and still taking time to volunteer (or intern) where he works in order to achieve her goals. It made him feel a great admiration for her and very sheepish about how much time he wastes away every day.

Still, despite, his own personal misgivings about the state of his life, that half hour with Sophia instilled Chuck with energy and inspiration. She helped him realize that his job is important and increased his focus on the few visits he had scheduled for them that morning.

“What will they think of me?” she asked him, concerned that his clients wouldn’t take her seriously.

“Just be the kind, courteous, and caring person you seem to be and they will all love you. They will prefer you over me, I’m certain. The most important advice I can offer is to genuinely listen to what these fine people say and ask,” Chuck offered.

Sophia let that last sentence hang in the air and they sat in the car wordless as Chuck turned left and pulled the car into an apartment complex parking lot. He kept hearing his own annoying voice echo around his thoughts. He always hated being aware of his voice and the stupid sounding things he would find himself saying. He didn’t allow this to deter him though. Being with Sophia made him feel positive and he had had a great week leading up to this day. He had been social and hung out with friends. He had found himself noticing an occasional smile from women he would pass at the grocery store and the bank and over the weekend he was pretty certain that the bartender at Bottles was flirting with him. He felt foolish thinking such a silly thing, but it made him smile anyway.

They grabbed some notebooks out of the back of his car after Chuck finally found an open parking spot and Sophia shadowed him as they made their way to the front entrance of the building to see Howard. Howard was in his 80s and mostly bed ridden and needed help filling out some insurance forms.

“You have a pretty girl following you! Heh Heh!” someone shouted towards them from the smoking area near the front door.

“I sure do. It must be my lucky day!” Chuck shouted back, as he grabbed a security card from his notebook and used it to open the door.

**********

“Do you think Victor will be okay?” Sophia asked Chuck after they climbed out of his car at the office parking lot. He noticed that she had turned her face skyward to absorb the warmth of the sunshine after she asked about Victor. He cursed himself for keeping the car too chilly. Too much air!

“I sure hope so. His health hasn’t been very good lately. I’ll be joining him for his doctor’s appointment tomorrow, so we’ll see,” he told her with enthusiasm, but he knew that Victor was not doing well. “I sure hope so,” he mumbled.

“He’s so sweet,” she added before thanking Chuck for letting her go along.

Chuck did not want to say goodbye, but it was clear that their arrangement for the day had come to an end. He did need to file his reports and make some phone calls and so on.

“Thank you, Sophia!” he chirped back overenthusiastically. She headed off to see Theresa, her advisor, and he headed to his downstairs office to check his email. He couldn’t stop thinking about what had just happened. His face was flushed and his heart was racing. He was smitten, whether he wanted to be or not. He sent Sara a quick email about how his “hot date” had gone. Sara was the only one he had told about his new crush and how she had arranged their afternoon together. Sara was the wife of one of oldest and dearest friends. She had become his closest confidant, unwittingly, with his imaginary matters of the heart.

“Do you think you’ll pursue her?” was Sara’s immediate response, always the one to get straight to the point.

He pondered with his hands hovering over the keyboard, “Do I?” he thought. All of his crushes had gone nowhere except for one, which became a suffocating nightmare after only a couple of months before coughing, choking, and wheezing to a collapsing, yet merciful end.
“Not sure. She has two kids and is always busy. Not sure I’m ready for that,” he carefully pecked out. “I do really really like her though.”

“Hmmm…when will you see her next?” Sara replied immediately.

“Next Thursday,” he answered, realizing that the week ahead without seeing her made him feel sad. Again, he paused and wasn’t sure what to type. He knew he had all kinds of emotions boiling under the surface, but none of them made any sense. “I guess I’ll just talk to her then.”

**********

Luckily for Chuck his week was incredibly busy. He had a weekend scheduled with friends and family. Nearly every night was booked with some sort of social engagement and work was always three weeks behind schedule and there to keep him occupied. Sometimes he had to over schedule his time because he struggled to be alone. Alone, his thoughts always turned to what he was missing. It was when he was alone that he realized that he had been alone for far too long. He thought of Victor. He thought about how he was close to the end and had no family and no friends around to care for him or to simply keep him company. All he had were occasional visits from people who were paid to check in on him. A big part of his job was employing a heavy dose of empathy and none of his clients could possibly know how deeply he understood their plight.

**********

Chuck splashed on some cologne for the first time in about a year. He laughed as he glanced at the small bottle in his hand. He didn’t know what this was, where it came from, or if it still existed. He wasn’t even sure if he liked the smell, or if the smell was the same as it had been when it appeared in his medicine cabinet countless years ago. He tried to wash it off moments later. He smiled and bounced around that morning and hummed along with the Allo Darlin’ CD playing quietly from the oversized speakers in his adjoining bedroom:

“If I told you

I was never cool
And all I wanted

Was just to have you

And when I see you

I will put my arm around you

It will be hard to let you go”

One of Chuck’s other crushes was with lead singer Elizabeth Morris’s voice, and the uplifting message of “The Letter” was a perfect song to start his hopeful day ahead. Even with his busy week behind him, the idea of seeing Sophia had always been at the forefront of his mind. He was hoping that she would join him on some more visits. He pulled the disc out of the player and took it with him for the commute to work.

**********

That magical smiling face of Sophia’s caught Chuck’s eye as he finally spied her on her way into the office. He had kept looking at the window all morning and there she was. She waved a greeting to Cindy as they passed in the parking lot. He was stuck on a conference call, which he had long ago stopped paying attention to. All he wanted to do was drop the line and rush to the entrance to greet her. He didn’t know what he would say anyway, so he put his head down on his desk and continued to tune out the chatter coming from his phone. He didn’t see her again the rest of that day.

**********

“Good morning,” Chuck said to Sophia as she wandered into the break room. She had her back to him and looked out the window. He was squirting old coffee from a broken urn. She had surprised him. He hadn’t seen her all morning and wasn’t sure if she was scheduled to work on Fridays.

“Oh, hey,” she glanced back over her shoulder.

“How are you doing?” he asked, ready to ask more rapid fire generic small talk questions to keep her around.

“Okay,” she said as she turned around. She turned her attention to the doorway. Chuck could hear voices. She trotted out of the room after them.

“Hey, Mark,” he heard her voice again. “Would you mind if I joined you for that meeting today?”

“Sure! I’m headed out now. Come on,” Mark encouraged.

Chuck poured his cold cup of coffee down the sink and sat down at the table. He thought about their drive the week before. It was then that he realized that through their entire conversation, the only questions she asked of him had to do with work, while he had touched on not only work, but also her life and her interests and her kids and childhood. When Sara asked him if he was going to pursue her, he only thought about the idea of him not being able to handle being a part of her busy life with kids, school, and work. He could only think about the amorphous directionless mess of a life he had always led – a life without a plan. All he could count on each day is that he would wind up at work the next day until he could no longer work anymore. He never considered what she might think of him. She smartly was on a fast track to achieve her goals, which had nothing to do with him. Chuck needed to get to Victor’s to take him to his doctor’s appointment. The last prognosis was not positive. He started his car and rolled down the window. Allo Darlin’s “The Letter” spurted on midway through the song. This time Elizabeth’s words made him feel overwhelmed with emptiness. He wanted a beautiful voice to be singing those words to him – not for him.

The Dead Part of You

I paced around the back of the tee box slapping my shitty driver over and over against the dew slathered ground. Back at the Shan, where the golf nightmares never cease; the first ones out of the gate after a late night and a restless fit of sleep. This is it. The inaugural Grudge Match. Ryan and I challenged Eric and Wirtz to a straight battle over 18 holes naming it a Grudge Match. Ryan and I had worked ourselves into a frenzy, during a conversation one evening, where we went from thinking it’d be a good idea to get us all together for a round, to deciding that we’ve always hated them and that we must defeat them. The only problem was they are both much better at this wretched game than either of us – especially me.

“What are we playing for? What are the stakes?” Wirtz asked as he stretched out his back by bending over and burst the button off his pants. “Anybody got a safety pin?”

This course is terrible. And by terrible, I mean difficult. We’ve all played here so many times and I’ve hit a bad shot from every square yard that encompasses the property. So many bad memories, and yet I keep returning. This morning, I had been startled from a dream where Tiger Woods was being interviewed after a round here and all he could do was shake his head and say that he shot a 102. You’d think that would make me feel better, but I know it’s all a lie.

“I don’t know Wirtz, I’m not playing for money,” Ryan chimed in as he and Eric laughed at Wirtz’s struggles with his pants. “You guys are going to win, so I’m staying out of that game.”

“How about we play to the death?” I suggested sternly from my post at the far end of the teeing ground, before returning to my circling and pacing.

“Woah! Uh, no.”

“You afraid?”

“Let’s play for blah” Wirtz suggested as he put his bleeding index finger into his mouth to stop the drop of blood that he had exposed from the tip of the safety pin that he had used to fasten to his pants. I use “blah” because no one remembers what he actually suggested; a word I misheard as “souls.”

“It’s settled then, we’re playing for souls,” I decided as I adjusted the long sleeve mock that I was uncomfortable in, but found necessary in the heavy misty coastal morning. “Whoever wins gets to keep the souls of the losing team.”

“What?” Eric looked around, irritated. “That doesn’t make any sense!”

“I don’t have a soul,” Ryan proclaimed and therefore agreed to the terms.

Wirtz was simply distracted by his pants. This would not prevent him from hitting the ball further off the first tee with his 5 iron than I could hit my best drive. And it went on from there.

This is how I lost my soul.

I spent hours in the little examination room that doctors have, yet again. This time I was there to get the results of my CT scan from the prior week. Still I was asked to sit on the familiar little wax paper covered butcher block in my underwear shivering. As usual, the wait was long enough for me to “read” three entertainment magazines cover to cover. And as usual, the doctor spent all of two minutes with me. At least half of that time was spent tugging on my tender gonads. All in all, fairly routine. The only anomaly is that the scan discovered several breaks in my ribs. To look at this closer, he ordered detailed x-rays to be done and sent me to his scheduler guy to set that up.

The scheduler guy seemed awfully curious about my injury. Way more curious than my doctor. He asked if I had been in an accident. I told him I couldn't think of anything that would cause my ribs to break. He suggested that maybe I’d angered "someone" enough to lead "them" to beat me in my sleep causing us to laugh conspiratorially.

After my sinister forced laugh in response, I felt disturbed. Why would this be funny? Why would I want to treat someone so badly that they would want to break my ribs while I sleep? Of course, none of this matters, since I do not have anyone around to break my ribs during my sleep. Maybe I should've taken his jab as a compliment. It is rare that someone assumes that I’m in a relationship and not as someone who is falling apart both physically and mentally.

I stood in the kitchen leaning against the counter’s edge opposite of the oven. The light that illuminated the parking lot outside beamed some residual glare through the white blinds. With the black and white bands of shadow striping my T-shirt, I tried conjuring up an ugly version of the “American Gigolo” movie poster image. I failed to reach ugly, so I took a deep breath and grabbed my keys and headed out.

It had been one of those evenings. It was a Friday, and I was filled with restless energy, but there was nothing to do that felt right. There were no appealing shows. All of my area friends had plans with their significant others or were working. Generally, I’m okay with a night off, but staying in and watching a movie or listening to tunes with the headphones wasn’t in the cards. Every attempt to relax had already been thwarted by twitching legs and an inability to focus.

I screeched out of the parking lot in the floating old maroon Ford and turned the stereo up as loud as I could get it. My destination was to hit downtown, but I knew that it would prove a pointless journey. The late summer had been a warm one, and this night was no different. I pushed down the windows and opened the vents to get some airflow moving inside the stuffy car that had been absorbing heat all afternoon. I could feel drops of sweat drawing a line down my spine and my head start to pulse with irritation.

At each light on the way to downtown I sped off the line like a teenager so I could cut off the cars in the other lane. I was acting like a dick and feeling like one too. My mind had reverted back to High School and maybe beyond. I was back on Highway 101 cruising Wayside and looking for unsuspecting tourists to mess with. I didn’t care about anything. Everything was stifling oppressive and overwhelming.

The slow drift through the downtown streets unveiled exactly what I knew I would find: couples my age wandering the streets half-crocked in groups of four or six instilled with a boozy fearlessness and obnoxious demeanor. This could’ve been what I was doing if I ever had the guts to try and make time with potential mates and I looked on with a small bit of jealousy at the laughter and closeness they were all sharing. The rest of me filled with rage. This was the last thing I wanted. It reminded me of those early days at college; wandering around the campus on a Friday night being intruded upon by drunken idiots, while I tried to figure out how I ended up having to step over a passed out body and side step a puke filled urinal just to take a leak.

Outside the Lotus, everyone in the velvet roped off line looked toward my car as I stared them all down. My stereo blasted the high end chiming guitars and breathy harmonies of my favorite Swedish band Popsicle. In reality, the music was so loud that it had become a wash of white noise that was drowning out the laughter, chatter and thumping of the nightclub they were all waiting to access.

At the next green light, I abruptly turned the car left and made my way back out of the downtown grid. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing down there other than fueling my frustration and wasting time. I was tired of this night alone and wanted it to end. I hated myself because I knew that I would do nothing to try and avoid nights like this in the future. I sped back out toward my box and felt the emptiness of the rows of streetlights that were illuminating other apartments along the way. I especially noticed the ones with a single visible light on inside. It made me realize that I was experiencing the fate of many and it made me feel emptier.

A Boy Named Charlie Brown

Last night, I was hanging around at home trying to catch up on things. “Things” – you know - the stack of bills and papers that need to be filled out and/or filed and what not. I’ve been avoiding it forever. I didn’t make much progress either, because after I ate some food, I got sucked into a showing of “A Boy Named Charlie Brown” on ABC Family. For some reason, they were showing it as part of their Christmas lineup. This is odd, because it has zero to do with Christmas. At any rate, this was the first time I’ve seen this movie since I was like 4-5 years old. Yet, I still remembered it vividly. It was the first movie I ever remember seeing in an actual movie theater. It was at the Hollywood Theater here in Portland in like 1975-76. The same theater where I would later see movies such as “ET,” “The Crow,” some French movie that would be considered porn, if it weren’t French and filmed in black and white (making it an art movie), and a professional bowling documentary. A group of kids from the neighborhood went and were guided by some of our older siblings. Going in, I believe I was well aware of the Peanuts story – having watched the specials on TV, but I don’t think I could’ve ever been prepared for this movie. It is so damn dark! The entire movie is a series of humiliating experiences for the downtrodden Charlie Brown. Somehow, he finds success in his school’s Spelling Bee, and moves on to bigger national competitions, until he ultimately loses over a word he should know better than almost any other. Now that I’ve spoiled the plot, I will continue. As a young child, I was affected by this movie in a very dramatic way. I don’t know if it’s because even as a little child I identified with Charlie Brown, or if his character influenced me. I was profoundly saddened through the entire movie. I wanted so badly for him to succeed. I ached for him in his bus travels to the competitions, which were long and tiresome and extremely lonely (immaculately portrayed by the solid and muted colors of the animation). The lack of adult characters in the Peanuts series also somehow added to the emptiness to this kid who hadn’t ventured away from his parents very often up to that point, but was now out without his. I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but I wrote a short fragment story for this blog yesterday entirely based on a piece of paper I found that had “Nineteen days after” written on it – so I guess it doesn’t matter.

Watching “A Boy Named Charlie Brown” last night got me to thinking. Why did/do I identify with “Chuck” so much? Maybe it’s because during my life, people have associated me with him. Maybe it’s my giant head. Maybe it’s my attitude and disposition. When I was in High School, the drama teacher asked me to play the part of Charlie Brown when they were planning on doing the musical “You’re A Good Boy Charlie Brown.” I was confused and did not accept, which turned out good for everyone, because that small community was spared hearing my singing voice (which as the game “Rock Band” has proven, I get booed off the stage), but Ken did a much greater job than I could’ve ever hoped for. My dad even painted a Peanuts related painting around the time I was born! It has stuck with me throughout my entire life. And watching it again, after thirty some odd years, it affected me exactly as it did when I was 4-5 years old, except now, I am much more jaded and used to all of those “lost” feelings. I found it interesting that at the end of the movie, Charlie Brown is so distraught over his failure that he shuts himself into his room and refuses to face the world again. Linus comes to visit and convinces him to go out again. When Charlie Brown finally goes back out in to the world, he sees his friends out and about. He sees some of the girls jumping rope and a couple of the boys playing marbles. They are all oblivious to him. This element of adding the stab that he is inconsequential to his already strong ache of failure is downright devastating. There are many important lessons in the Peanuts movies and specials, but I think the main one is a lesson in absolute humility.

Wildflower

He was standing on the second floor of the old apartment building. The hallway was in shadows, as the flickering lights that normally cast a dingy white hue across the middle of the hallway had clicked off. There were no windows in these sloping old passages, so the only illumination came from the buzzing bank of lights from the hallway behind him and from her room.

Her door was open and he stood nearby. Her door was usually open at least part way when she was home. Her room was a beacon of hope for him in this old building. Her brilliance inside felt like a cozy and safe place deep in the bowels of this soot stained dark brick beast that eats the desolate lives inside generation after generation. The early autumn rain that had begun to fall that day could not begin to wash away the shroud of filth that blackened the four story building over its 100 years of existence. It was a building allowed to survive inside bleak shadows, while providing affordable rent downtown.

Colored lights were bouncing around the expanse of the nicotine stained wall that was exposed. He decided that her TV must have been on. Her room was at the end of this stretch of the hallway. Straight ahead, past her door, was a painted over old fire escape. The rusty ladders outside the escape had long been taken down and dumped in a pile behind the building. They were so worn that they were more dangerous than dueling with a fire inside with no where to run. The door had been sealed shut by crackling off-white paint, in an attempt to blend it in with the wall color. Unfortunately, the wall paint had worn off decades ago, leaving the door conspicuous and the building frightfully escape proof. Between him and her room, she had left a garbage can just outside her door. He could hear the sounds of movement inside. He marveled at the different colors that looked like reflections of twinkling Christmas or carnival lights. He was trying to slow his breath, while picturing her inside. He had never seen the inside of her place, except for the two feet of temptation that she often provided for him as he passed by on his way to or from the front stairwell.

***

The last time he saw her, she had spoken to him. Somehow she knew his name. She commanded him to smile, as she was walking purposefully down the hallway in the opposite direction, while beaming at him. He almost cowered on the other side of the hall they had shared. Her strong personality was too much for him and he had not been ready. He did not yet know her name, though he had been attracted to her since the day he had moved in. She knew his name and he could not stop thinking about her.
The first time he remembered seeing her, she was at the café across the busy boulevard outside the building. She was sitting at a table on the sidewalk outside the café in the warm evening sunlight and he was on the steps up to the front door of the apartments. He was trying to enjoy the fresh evening air after working up a sweat all afternoon moving junk into his place. At first she seemed familiar to him. She was very pretty with her short dark brown hair curving just around her ears. Something made her different to him than all of the other pretty girls he normally saw from day to day. Her draw was hypnotic, yet elusive for him to comprehend. While he stared at her, she caught him. She was chatting with a younger girl – maybe a niece or a younger sister, because she didn’t look old enough to be the mother of a girl nearing her teens. When their eyes met, she smiled and raised her eyebrows in acknowledgement, before turning her attention back to her companion.

This was his first apartment and he felt energized. It had been a long time, since he had felt a spark. He chuckled to himself as he stood up to stretch out his tired muscles, hoping she would look his way again.

***

He shook this memory from his mind and moved a step closer to her door. He stopped and felt a chill trundle down his back. He thought of her smile. She was able to not just smile with her eyes and mouth, but with her entire body. Her smile was so genuine and so overwhelming to him that his stomach knotted up every time she used it. She expressed a carefree and positive energy that electrified every thing in range. Her presence made him excited and yet he didn’t know her. He was trying to gather up the nerve to knock. He wanted to express how attracted he had become to her since he moved in a month earlier. Then he heard voices from inside her room. He thought that someone was in the apartment with her. Maybe it was the TV, but it was too hard to tell. The noise began to crumble his resolve.

He looked down at the flower in his hand. It looked weary. When he picked the flower, only a short while before, it was brimming with life and color against the graying skies and the grim backdrop of the building. The flower had been a solitary bright color amongst the dusty weeds that had spit out from the broken backside of the apartments. The rich red petals of the flower reminded him of her lips and the silky dress he had seen her in almost a week earlier. They had met at the front door the previous Friday when he was returning from a late movie alone. She was wearing a rich red strapless dress that drew his attention to her smooth ivory skin. She also wore a black choker around her neck and black stockings that highlighted her nice legs. Her short, dark brown hair was shining in the streetlights and had a little added wave to it. He had never seen a more stunning beauty. He tripped as he approached the front steps, barely keeping upright. She smiled down at him and asked if he was okay. She was wearing more make-up than he had seen her with prior, especially that lipstick and striking eye-liner. He assumed that she was returning from a date, because her spirits were clearly high. He wanted desperately to ask her out then, but how could he? He was disheveled and greasy from the popcorn he spent his last five dollars on. He didn’t compliment her. He didn’t say a word.

He had never seen her with anyone who looked like a boyfriend. She was with different people most of the time he saw her around. With her ability to be friendly to anyone, his inability to engage her in casual conversation had frustrated him. Despite the sense of familiarity she had for him and his belief in her as a kind and tender person, his nerves always won out. All he wanted to do was ask her out, or find the courage to talk with her. He was hoping that just knowing her would instill him with some comfort. If he did manage the courage to open his heart to her, he would’ve expected her to say no. This is the response he expected from any girl who ever peaked his interest with any intensity. This girl was the first one who had broken through his self-imposed purgatory and had him considering that she might give him a chance. If only he would ask. He felt a slight glimmer of hope from her, an indulgence he didn’t understand, but grabbed hold of. With that indulgence, came pressure for him to do something about it.

That pressure really intensified the evening that she knocked on his door. She and another girl he had seen in the building unexpectedly visited his room. He had been engrossed in a book, sitting beneath his desk lamp. He had been reading for so long that when he looked up, startled by the commotion at his door, his eyes had trouble focusing. The rest of his room was dark and all he could see was the slit of light peeking in from the hall. He opened the door hurriedly, without even considering that this was his first visitor and was immediately embarrassed by his state when he saw the two girls. The shock of seeing her launched his heart rate into the stratosphere and he began to choke on his own saliva.

He stood there listening to what they had to say, though he was distracted by his worries of having her see him so ragged, standing over a pile of dirty clothes in his dark room. He was worried about his unshaven face and his sloppy hair and the huge red blotch that had formed on his left cheek from propping his head up for the previous few hours. They had shown up to invite him to a potluck gathering they had planned for the tenants of the building. It was all over before he could respond or acknowledge what they were doing. The girls had moved on cheerfully to the next room over extending their generous invitation to the prying, despicable old man next door. He was always at his door listening to what went on outside. He would often open his door and stand there and watch if people were having an exchange. If there was no action in the hall, he was probably listening through the walls of his neighbors or staring out the window at whatever motivated this emotionless gray man’s habit.

“Only this girl would have the guts to try and get the outcasts around this dump to all become neighborly,” he thought to himself, as he reluctantly closed his door. Seeing her in his doorway so unexpectedly nearly made him pass out with surprise. He felt like one of those swooning teenage girls from the clips he’d seen so many times of the Beatles or Elvis on the Ed Sullivan show. It was a daydream he had repeatedly, finally coming true, or at least, partially true. The girls had been dressed up in second hand prom dresses as they delivered their home-made invitations. Though they were going for some humor with their outfits, he couldn’t help but realize how fetching she was. She wore a frilly pale pink dress and gaudy, bulbous costume jewelry that was dangling off her ears, wrapped around her neck and slipping around her slender wrists.

He lay back onto his bed and stared up at the sagging and stained ceiling. He usually slept on his stomach or sides, mostly out of paranoia about what was up above his helpless body at night. He guessed that the ceiling was comprised of a mixture of asbestos, mold and pests. At any time he expected the concoction to give way in a shower of debris, his upstairs neighbor, rodents and piles of sticky mulch that would splash down on him. If he didn’t look at it, he wouldn’t worry about it. At that moment, however, his mind was focused on her and the opportunity that this potluck presented to him. Maybe then he would get a chance to know her a little and to finally talk with her.

As he lay there alone, his thoughts turned to fantasy and he imagined a second knock on his door. This time she would be alone. This time, she would ask him out or she would confess her love to him. This would fill him with so much confidence that he would wrap his arms around her and she would bury her face into his neck as he pulled her closer to him. He would enjoy her velvety hair against his chin and savor her sweet scent. He would close his eyes and try to absorb her essence. Lying there in his room, he could still smell her.

***

The colors on the wall changed. He could hear voices and could not place their source. Then he thought he heard crying. This was not his time. He looked at the trashcan outside her door and moved quickly towards it. He held the flower in front of his face between his fingers and examined it, then took a shaky deep breath. As he exhaled, he parted his fingers and dropped the flower into the can. His body slouched with disappointment and he felt nauseous. He turned around, nudging the garbage can accidentally with his right toe, and headed back to his apartment frustrated.

When he reached the stairwell door, halfway down the hall and into the light, he slapped the heavy door with both hands and shoved it in. His apartment was up one story above hers. When he found the third floor, the fluorescent hall lights were piercingly bright, burning his squinting eyes. He stopped at his door, turned the knob to the unlocked room, looked both directions and stepped inside.

His heart was pounding and he was breathing quickly. There was a pressure at his temples, so he decided to lie down. He couldn’t relax, because he had failed. The mounting urgency in his mind was so massive that he was exhausted. He was sickened at his inadequacy. He had no insurmountable trouble functioning in any other part of his life, but he could not break through and ask this girl out, or even attempt a conversation. Maybe the potluck was his time.

***

She was sitting on the futon in her room, surrounded by several crumpled wads of yellow paper from the pad she held in her lap. She set the pad and her pen down and stood to stretch and rub her tired eyes. She wanted to turn off her blaring TV, which had begun to irritate her. If she was going to get anything done, she would need some music.

Her apartment was warmly lit by a table lamp next to the folded futon and a light hanging on the wall next to the kitchen doorway. Her studio had a couple of bookshelves loaded with books, CD’s, a stereo, a few plants and lots of framed pictures. As she reached over to the stereo to put something on, she heard a bang outside her open door. She froze in place and stared intently at the partial opening. All that she saw were the boxes that she had packed earlier stacked neatly behind where the door swings inward. She was startled by the sound and a bit shaken, because she lived at the end of the hall, so no one had any reason to be out there, unless they were visiting. She called out a quiet hello and waited for a moment and then, despite her nerves, cautiously went to the door and pulled it open. She peaked out into the darkened hallway and didn’t see anyone, so she put her left hand on the knob, toed the line between her room and the threadbare carpet in the hall and leaned out. To her right was the sealed Fire Escape as always and to her left, she spotted the quiet guy from the third floor walking into the stairwell, letting the door slam behind him. She rummaged through her thoughts, to determine the source of the sound and relaxed as she decided it must’ve been the guy tripping on what was left of the carpet. It was worn completely through in places, and folding upwards in others. She laughed, because the carpet had made her stumble on a few occasions. She always assumed that the patterned carpet once had an array of colors, but now it was a mossy dark gray and a serious hazard. She relaxed and leaned back into her room, spotting a red flower in amongst her garbage. She picked it up with curiosity and pondered this new mystery as she turned it around between her right thumb and forefinger enjoying its simple beauty. She pinched her lips together in thought and shot another glimpse back down the vacant hallway.

She went back into her room, wondering about the appearance of the flower, still damp from the rain outside. She heard a muffled door crash echo through the stairwell. With sudden determination, she shot from her room padding towards the stairs in her bright white socks. She was ready to gamble and track the flower to its source.

With a bit of trepidation, but mostly exhilaration, she hopped up the stairs, two at a time, reaching the heavy door for the third floor before the door behind her had closed. She looked through the wired glass to see if anyone was visible. Then she slid into the hallway, holding the door, so it wouldn’t slam shut and crept down the hall looking at each door that she passed, searching for the source of the flower.

***

He had sat on the edge of his bed feeling a bit woozy. The only light source was coming from the kitchen in the back left corner of his place. The window directly across the floor from his door was open as it had been since he moved in at the end of August. His bed sat to the left of the door as you entered with the headboard against the hallway wall. Other than the kitchen and bathroom, his apartment was a perfect square. No decorations hung on the walls, there was no television and the only light source was the lamp on his desk at the foot of his bed, along with a little stereo. He had taken the bulbs out of the overhead light, so it could never be turned on. A pile of CD’s and records sat on the window sill getting damp from the rain blowing in. A cool wind swept through the room, as a blinking crosswalk sign flashed endlessly from above the intersection outside. He listened to the traffic splash through the wet crossing below, thinking of how to redeem himself.

He was in disbelief that he hadn’t knocked on her door. He mocked himself in frustration. In reality, deep down, he knew that he wouldn’t go through with it. His loneliness was sometimes unbearable, but it was all he knew and he was too timid to change what little of a life he had managed to pile together – no matter how fragile. He was terrified of being rejected, but the pain this girl was causing him from her peripheral presence alone, had him feeling hollow, lost and achingly empty. If he would’ve just left a note or something with the flower, it would have been cowardly, but it might’ve at least started a dialog.

***

A light knock tapped on his door, startling him. He looked at the blond wood of the door, unsure whether the knock was at his or his neighbor’s door. Another, firmer, knock hit three times. He stood up and attempted to compose himself. His hands were trembling. He didn’t want to answer the door, because he was too shattered by his failure. He opened it anyway.

She was standing in front of him holding the flower he had found for her. It no longer looked wilted and tired in her hands. She looked up at him expectantly and didn’t say a word. She didn’t budge or avert her eyes from his. She presented the flower to him with a quizzical expression.

After several seconds, he slid his feet backwards, moved his shoulder back and opened the room up for her to enter. She took a couple of short steps into his room, leaving the door wide open. She noticed a smell like burnt toast as she scanned the sparse arrangement of his place and wrapped her arms around each other with a sudden chill. He stood back watching her eyes as they looked over his life. The room didn’t reveal much, but her presence made him fidget with anxiety. He felt naked and vulnerable.

“What is this?” she finally asked, breaking the hypnotic sizzle of the cars driving on the wet pavement outside.

He looked at the flower that she was again holding out for him and stammered, “It’s a flower,” knowing full well that his sarcasm was unwanted by both of them.

“How did it end up in my garbage?” she queried expectantly, undaunted by his annoying reply.

“I feel like I’m in trouble,” he laughed back nervously.

“Maybe you should be,” she replied sternly, grimacing slightly.

“Maybe wild flowers grow from the trash,” he explained and turned his head toward the window.

Her hand holding the flower dropped to her side as she exhaled. She looked down at the cracked tile beneath her feet and let more air out from her lungs. She was upset. This was too awkward. She was unsure of what to do. His flippant responses made her feel that coming to him was a mistake. Maybe she had been mistaken about his interest in her.

“Listen, I’m sorry I’ve bothered you like this. I thought that you had brought this flower to me, but maybe that was an absurd thought, since I found it in the trash. Just because you put a flower in my garbage…” she trailed off, “I don’t know what I’m doing. Maybe I’m losing my mind. I thought that…” she stopped again, looking back down and reset herself, “I’ve been packing all afternoon…”

“Packing?” he asked quickly.

“Yes, looks like I’m moving out,” she managed in reply.

“Why?” he asked with increased panic.

“There are too many expenses. I have been unable to keep a job and continue full time with school. I don’t know how to handle it all,” she paused and crossed her arms again as another chill hit her. She looked out the open window into the blackness, seeing only a faint reflection of him and her and the blinking light outside. She mumbled, “I guess we’re meant to be only one color in life…” she stopped before finishing with a shrug. “I’m moving home to try and sort things out.”

She looked back at him, directly into his blue eyes. He noticed that her eyes were filling up with tears. His were already, but he had been trying to keep them hidden. His mind had been frantically racing the entire time, unable to put together a coherent thought. He wanted to help her, but even more urgently, he wanted to stop her. He needed to keep her there, so he could figure things out, and to calm down. His head was spinning from what was happening. He had been alone so long that he wasn’t even certain if this was real. He said nothing to her. Instead he looked at her with concern and felt her slipping away.

“Yes,” he finally blurted, “I was going to give you the flower. I thought I overheard someone with you, so I left. I didn’t want to bother you,” he confessed, as she moved towards his door, “that’s all.”

“That’s all? Well, thanks for the sentiment, I guess,” she said to him and turned away.

He didn’t say anything as she stepped back into the hall. He followed her to his door, as she spun around again to face him. He could see her lips quivering as she raised the flower up to her chest. Her eyes were wide open and glistening with emotion. He still didn’t know what to say to her. She’d just told him that she was moving away, right after allowing him the notion that she might be interested in him. She had come and completely shattered his world and he was agitated.

She continued to stand in front of his door, waiting for him to say something. In his eyes, she could see that he was searching for something, but nothing came.

“I’d better get back to packing,” she whispered into the void.

“When will you be moving?” he asked, grabbing the chance to inquire about the concept his mind couldn’t comprehend.

“Tomorrow afternoon. My father will be helping me.”

He didn’t want her to leave. He didn’t know how to get her to stay. He didn’t have a clue what to do. He never did. He didn’t know why he was so afraid. He had never pictured himself with a girlfriend and has always stuck by that by shooting himself down before anyone else could. This entire moment was foreign and frightening for him.

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” he stated, trying to stop from throwing a tantrum. “What about the potluck next weekend?”

The old man next door opened his door to her right and she jerked her face in his direction. The man looked at her, as if she wasn’t aware of him. After a moment, she managed a half smile for him as she sniffed and he pulled his head back inside and closed his door. Feeling overwhelmed, she turned to leave.

“The potluck doesn’t need me. Go and have a good time,” she tried to sound enthusiastic. “Enjoy the party without me,” she added as she disappeared around the corner back to the stairwell.

He continued to stand in his doorway. He wanted to go after her, but it was futile. She was gone.

***

He closed his door lightly and dropped, once again, onto his bed. He was in shock. Hundreds of undeveloped thoughts tore through his mind, confusing him more. He wondered if she was interested in him and how she knew that he left the flower. She had been in his room, but now she was moving out. He still didn’t know what to do. He never had known.

As he sat there, he thought of what he always thought of when he wanted a girl in his life. He continued to keep that Christmas vacation when he was 16 years old in his mind. It was a trap he didn’t feel he could escape. A girl he had known as a young kid was visiting his family with her mom. Before then, he had only known her as the snotty little brat who lived next door, who his parents forced him to play with. It was probably because she was the only kid his age on the block, but he figured it was because she had no friends. When she was there, that Christmas, he realized that she had become a very pretty girl. She had these iridescent blue eyes, sweet full lips and soft, shoulder-length light brown hair. She was stunning – a totally different girl. During her stay, they became friends. They shared many interests and joked about the old neighborhood and really enjoyed each others company. One night, after watching a movie on cable, and all the parents had gone to bed, they discovered each other. It was clumsy and scary, because neither one knew what they were doing. It didn’t matter to him though, because he was falling in love and it was a rush he had never experienced. The next day, their last together, he wanted to stay with her every possible second and profess his feelings to her, but she wouldn’t talk to him. She stayed by her mother’s side and if she even looked at him, she would do so with a cold emotionless gaze. He never saw her again, except when her mom sent school photos of her in cards and letters. Her eyes in those pictures were always the same ones that shunned him at his most desperate moment. She raised him to his highest high and smashed him with one look. She had stolen his ability to trust. Perhaps the girl who had just been in his room was right. Maybe people are one color in life. Maybe people are unable to truly change. Maybe his path had been chosen. Maybe his hopes of a girlfriend weren’t meant to be.

He stood up and stepped out into the hallway. He shut his door, locked the deadbolt, flipped off the creepy old man’s door, imagining him crouched on the other side listening. He went down to the second floor, slowing near the darkened corner of the hall where her room sat, noticing her door was now closed and the garbage can was gone, before speeding off to the front entrance of the building.

The steps up to the front door extended up from the sidewalk to the second floor for some reason. He didn’t know how the first floor inhabitants got in and out of their apartments, because there seemed to be no doorway or stairs for them, and the building had no functioning elevator. They were most likely trapped there like everyone else. Except for her, she was leaving.

He stepped outside and remained at the top of the steep stairs, where he first saw her. He sat down on the wet concrete handrail. He could not see anything but his breath and streaks of rain dropping down on him. He looked back at the building in the direction of her place, but her window was around the corner. The building was almost invisible in the dark, except for a few lit windows scattered around its carcass. This building had no charm and most assuredly never did. It was just a piece of trash. He didn’t want to go back inside, so he crossed his arms over his knees and leaned forward to rest his head onto them.

***

In her room, she sat on the futon and held her head in her hands. Her room was silent. She felt humiliated. Her life was falling apart. The phone rang and she lifted her head to stare at it with her bleary eyes, cursing the unwanted alarm until it stopped. She had gone through so many emotions during the day that she felt numb. After several moments, she looked out her window to the shiny blacktop below. Traffic passed as it always did. She thought of his blank expression when she went to him, and then climbed off the futon. She kicked the wads of paper into a pile and threw them into her garbage. She took a long deep breath and puffed out her cheeks when she exhaled. She grabbed some books from her shelf, ignoring the wild flower sitting in a glass of water, and began stacking them into an open box by her door.




Story last finished in 2005
With inspiration provided by the long missed band, The Abecedarians