Chapter - 2

A Chapter by Allerton

I went for a run today. Not because I needed the exercise, but because I stepped outside and felt like running. I ran down the cracked concrete, feet pounding against the solid pavement. I just wanted to run, to sprint, to get away from everything, to sweat away my worries until my lungs coughed for air. I just wanted to go.

I stopped by a bus stop and sat down. The outside world was quieted by the sound of my beating heart. For a moment, that implacable feeling of disconnect was gone and I felt raw; simply myself.

Then my cell phone buzzed and brought me back to the world. I read somewhere that the average person spends five hours staring at a screen. Five hours every day, hiding their eyes behind an LED light, unaware of the outside world. This made me sad when I thought about it. How much time do we spend looking into other people's eyes? Maybe five minutes?

I got an email from an old high school friend, Kevin.

"OK. So here is what is happening. I recently saw the Yale Whiffenpoofs do Grace Kelly on TV. So I can't get it out of my head. Snip. I am on the plane coming back from a gig in DC and the girl sitting next to me is listening to Jimmy Eat World so I told her that I knew the drummer (which is total bullshit) and liked their après-punk music. Snip. Since the airplane had wifi I looked up Grace Kelly and found Mika. I realized I knew this dude because I liked the throw-away song Lollipop. Anyway I thought this was getting scary so I iPhoned over to random and what did I get? "Screaming Infidelities". I mean really. So then I reflect on my week in DC and the Med Student convention that I was attending and the remark by a very famous doctor (they named a movie after him) "well you are in a suit but you still have the cute bangs". And oh f**k! Am I a nearly 24 year old EMO? I screwed a skinny young girl with a BFA. I watched Sense and Sensibility on the plane coming home from trekking in Nepal some years ago but screw bullshit macho trips. They don't mean anything. So I guess I'm kind of wondering what this all means.

Wouldn't you be frightened? At least I can legally self-medicate. Sort of. I think I may......this is pathetic. Anyway we need to meet up soon. I'm in town next month. Drinks?"

My phone rang again.

It was Cheryl, another high school friend, asking if I could meet her at the coffee place by her apartment. Of course. When you're only semi-employed you crave human contact. One thing people don't realize is how free time breeds loneliness. You don't want to spend too much time unemployed or out of school. You get lonely. I've noticed that all of our institutions, our schools, our offices, our jobs are designed to promote relationships. We work together; learn together, sometimes we even live together. Through this work we are able to learn some basic truths about people, who we love, who we care about, who makes us happy. Our society is designed specifically to prevent loneliness. We're terrified of it. Nothing is more frightening to a human then the thought of being completely alone.

But loneliness still happens anyway. It happens to all of us.

Our institutions, most of our lives, are really just relationship factories, pumping out the same safe surface mentality, never letting us catch a glimpse of anything more than a cartoon character. So we see people but we don't really connect. We exist with them together, but really we're all just as far away from each other as the day we were born.

I thought about this while walking towards the cafe. Through the narrow winding streets, underneath the skyscrapers and the hot sun. My heart still raced and my legs burned like crazy but it felt real and good. I kept thinking.

Every now and then someone breaks past the barrier, smashes through the surface. We take risks, we share dark secrets, we lift our eyes and look at each another. It's in these few rare moments that we are able to see inside each other; directly through the eyes and into the soul.

And then suddenly it started raining, one of those weird kind of rainstorms where a little black cloud flies in front of the sun and just let's it all out.

I kept walking through the rain. People were using their briefcases and newspapers and magazines as makeshift umbrellas. The headlights screaming down the streets started to bleed together into this long stream of red and white. It was really quite beautiful, in this odd sort of messy way. My hair was soaking wet and my feet were drenched but I kept walking slowly. People were scurrying around every which way like ants being sprayed with a garden hose.

I'm in this weird head state right now. Everything’s kind of fuzzy, a little bit blurry, like I'm detached from the rest of the world. It's all going on in front of me and I'm sitting inside my head. I jerk my strings, make my legs walk, my lips talk. But it's all just robotics; no one's really home. I'm not depressed or anything, I'm just, detached. I'm wondering, how did I get here?

I mean I used to be happy, like actually legitimately really happy. Life was good, life was great. I had friends, a family everything you could ask for I guess. I remember one night, a few weeks before graduation; we had all climbed onto the roof of this parking complex downtown. All of us were there, the old crowd, Kevin, Cheryl, Tara, Quinton and Michelle. It was probably the last time all of us were together in one place. They play music through the speakers down there but it echoes through the concrete and the quality is terrible; feels like a movie waiting to happen.

From the top of this building you could see the whole city, all the lights lit up like candles twinkling in the darkness. We sat there together, on blankets and empty beer bottles talking through the night, asking questions. Questions with honest answers.

So it started out with really simple questions, stuff like "what are you going to do after high school?" "Who have you always had a crush on?" It was mundane, but fun. But then things started to change. The minutes passed by, the lights in the city started to turn off one by one. We talked in quiet voices, careful that no one could overhear us. The questions started to stop and we became quiet and confessional.

"I stole all of my mom's prescription drugs and popped them during my classes," said Kevin.

"I woke up at a party in bed with a complete stranger," said Michelle.

"I tried to kill myself."

And we all stopped and looked at each other. Our eyes were exploding with the secret of the truth; that our friends, the people we'd known for years had dark and terrible secrets. I cradled Michelle's head in my arms and looked up at the fluorescent lights. I took a deep breath. Michelle tilted her head upwards and looked right into my eyes. I swam in those warm, blue waters until, like a child I emerged back into this world. I felt her heart beat blood through her body, the air entering her lungs, the pulsing, the whirring, and the crazy effort our organs make just to keep us alive. We were suddenly aware of ourselves as living, breathing souls with just a little bit of skin and flesh wrapped around us.

So now the universe seems cold. It seems such a dark and terrifying place. I walk down the street alone, lost in a sea of faces, pushing through all the empty spaces. But as we grew up, as we shared ourselves with one another, as we stared into each other’s eyes, the empty spaces began to fill. Suddenly we didn’t feel quite so lost anymore. Amidst the vast, unyielding, uncompromising universe, we found solace and comfort within the hearts of others.

Cheryl was waiting at the cafe when I walked in. Red, flowing hair, pale skin and bright red lips; she reminded me of a vintage pinup model. Her eyes burst open when she saw me, giving me one of those big movie style hugs.

"Malcolm, how have you been?" she asked, smiling.

"Um, pretty good I guess." She sipped her coffee. "How about you?"

"Oh I've been doing great, really. Like, really great."

"That's good." It became really silent all at once. I was suddenly aware that the cafe was almost empty except for us. Then I remembered that it was a Tuesday morning and almost everyone was at work.

"So, what are you doing now anyways?" I asked. Someone dropped a ceramic plate on the ground and it shattered into a million perfect pieces. Everyone except for Cheryl jumped in their seats. I read somewhere that you're not supposed to be a slave to your reflexes, but instead develop a relationship with them so we can control them.

That seems kind of weird to me though, to just sit there like Cheryl, cool as a f*****g cucumber, when you're not supposed to.

"Are you still working at that-"

"No," she said quickly. There was another pause. I love pauses. I don't think they're awkward at all. I like to look at people and smile expectantly, letting them feel like they have to talk. I really like putting people on the spot sometimes. Cheryl started to look around uncomfortably.

"I was fired." She blushed a little bit and gave me a sarcastic smile.

"Why, what did you do?" She sighed and said,

"Oh it was all just so stupid ok? I mean, I was sitting down at my desk working on some sort of stupid spreadsheet, and I mean f**k it’s always spreadsheets. And we're in one of those stupid, post-modern 'open offices' where there are no walls or anything." She paused and took a sip of her coffee. Cheryl swirls her hands around when she talks, like everything is a performance. Which I guess it sort of is.

"Anyway. So I'm sitting in this stupid post-modern offices and Todd is sitting across from me. And he's like, staring at his computer watching some sort of video making all these stupid faces and laughing and whatever. So like, f**k spreadsheets right? So I pulled up this word document and started typing in every single thing he was doing.

'Todd picks his nose. Todd yawns and rubs his snot underneath the desk. Todd clicks through his windows. I wonder what he's watching. Probably something really stupid. Todd yawns and you can see little bits of food stuck in his teeth. Todd is a complete and utter waste of space.'

"So anyways, later on Todd comes by and starts talking to me and then I guess I left the window open and he totally read it and flipped the f**k out."

She laughed a little bit and smiled. It was the smile of someone who knows that the bodies in the car are indeed dead.

"They fired you over that?"

"Yep."

"Harsh."

The conversation carried on in a typically mundane fashion after that. You could tell that Cheryl wasn't ok; you can always tell when someone's not ok. It's weird, seeing the people you know broken and wondering if they'll ever get better. Or if you'll break one day, if you already have, if you can ever make yourself better.

“You’re different Malcolm,” she said softly.

“I know. So are you.” She smiled sadly.

“I know,” she said. “Do you ever wake up in the morning and forget what you look like?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, do you ever look in the mirror and are surprised at the person you see?”

“Sometimes, I guess so.”

“I look so much older than I feel but I’m so young at the same time. Like, I’ve learned so much but it’s only because I’ve learned that I know how much there is I don’t know.” She sighed. “And I’m tired Malcolm, I’m so damn tired of having to learn new things, of having to be hurt in order to learn. “

“Me too,” I said. She reached forward and grabbed my hand. Rain shattered against the window. And for the first time in years, I was feeling something real. Like the window was open and I was getting sprayed by the storm while I held her hand and felt the electricity within it. And then she smiled and laughed and I laughed back and we hugged and said our goodbyes.

I got home to Quinton’s house. I had another email from Kevin. It was sent to all of us: me, Cheryl, Quinton.

"Someone at work today asked me what habits I have that annoy people. Here's what I came up with.

If people tailgate me I slow down. When they get closer I slow down more. I count items in the express lane and b***h when people have too many. I speak Spanish with cashiers while they are ringing someone else up. I stare at beautiful women. I stare at average women. I do not stare at overweight women. I lecture people on their eating habits. I jog past people twice my age and give them an encouraging word as I pass. I am a republican. I have a "Miss me yet?" GWB tee shirt. I have an "Ayn Rand was an Idiot" license plate frame. I live in a gated community and forget to tell the guard to let my friends in. I am pretty much an a*****e except at medical conventions where I like to walk up to people, glance at their name tag and talk with them like we have known each other forever. Everyone likes to be recognized. Right? Then I leave and let them try to remember who I am and where we have met.

So what are yours?

Anyway, we should all get back together for old times’ sake ok?

-Kevin"

I think he really might be going insane, just like the rest of us.

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