cubicle confessions

All it takes.

The green 2.45 Am blinked on the dashboard as I drove along the last road out of the city, the world empty except for the lonely passing of headlights in the dark and the low buzz of the radio turned too low to make out the static voices of late night DJs. There was a bubbling of guilt and cheap wine in my stomach; hazy flashbacks of drunken shouts, slaps and tears burned behind drooped eyelids and crusted crying still clung to my lashes, my hands and mind too engaged to bother wiping it away. Besides, it served as a lasting reminder of the evening and I was too lost in murky self-deprivation to erase the physical memories just yet.

“GET OUT, JUST GET OUT!”

My eyes flicked to a sign, half obscured by dark leaves, which read Kevils’s Station �" One Mile, scrawled in cack-handed black marker pen. My skull burned and my bladder screamed: I decided to stop as I realised I needed sleep and a piss before I ended up wrapped around a tree, brains on the dashboard and a damp patch between my legs.

“I CAN’T EVEN LOOK AT YOU…”

I rolled into the car park of the service station at around 3 AM; fluorescent lights flickered in the dark, surrounded by moths and other insects �" the E was missing from the sign, and the S was lopsided. There was one other car in the station and I as I opened the door, I could hear the tick, tick, tickof its engine in the distance. The air was fresh and the ground spongy under the fall of my feet as I stumbled to the toilets. The bright light was too much and I could feel my head spinning: vomit rose in my throat so I rushed to the nearest cubicle and collapsed over the toilet, my knees splashing in the urine and water on the floor. Images flashed in my skull.

The shouts and the sudden slap: a stunned silence and anger that rose beyond anything I’d experienced; the smash of the fishbowl and the crack of the television and the thrown cushions; the slam of the door and the muffled sobs.

Mid gagging, I heard sobs rising from the other cubicle; the sickness froze in my throat and with an uneasy rise, I positioned myself on the seat and sat in silence as I listened to the crying.

“You alright in there?” I called, gently.

The crying stopped abruptly. There was silence for a long time, followed by sniffing and the roll of the tissue being pulled down tight.

“Yes” came the feeble reply, spoken in a tone often used by guilty children or the embarrassed attempting to cover up a crime or mistake.

“I don’t believe you” I replied, with a half-laugh which trailed off into the stale air like cigarette smoke. Laughing at the distressed is never a good idea; it’s better to laugh with them, so I tried that next.

“Odd place to be crying, don’t you think?” I joked, looking up and down the scrawled notes on the back of the door and along the walls, political activists and budding comedians behind every poorly spelled sentence. One caught my eye, just above the handle, written in a small, delicate font:“cubicle confessions”. I smiled.

“So what’s wrong?” I tried, speaking into the silence: I wasn’t a psychologist and could muster nothing better to say.

Again, silence.

“Come on, imagine we’re in church, I’m the priest” I laughed harder this time.

There was a snort from the cubicle next door and then a short laugh, half stifled by a snotty nose and damp eyes.

I laughed too and before we knew it, our laughter was echoing through the toilet and out into the car park.

“Thanks for that” came a gruff voice from the cubicle; gruffer than I expected.

“Don’t mention it. I’d be crying too but I think all my tears are gone”

There was something brutally charming about the sudden honesty a thin piece of plywood and a roll of toilet roll encouraged within me. Before I knew it, I was speaking like I’d known the man for years and he was nothing more, or nothing less, than a close friend.

“I have a horrible feeling my wife of seven years is just about to leave me and what do I do about it? I drive around for four hours, half drunk, half asleep, crying myself into some kind of tear induced coma” I laugh again, but there was a hint of sadness this time.

“I am sorry to hear that,” came the disembodied voice, “my story isn’t too different”

“We’re both in a public toilet cubicle at 3 AM, our stories are one and the same, my friend”

“You’re right. I’ve been an idiot, that’s all”

“We’re all idiots now and then” which was the sort of interjection I can remember from the days of consoling sad friends: the kind of interjection they make no acknowledgement of, but you still make because there is nothing else to say.

“Yeah.”

Silence.

“She’s lovely, you know?” he said.

“Who?”

“My girl”

“So she’s still your girl?”

There is a delicate pause and the question hovers in the air, floating past urinals and down plug holes before being gulped up by my new friend.

“Yeah, I hope so”

“So why are you sitting in here?”

There is silence again.

“I-uh…” he stammers. I hear the soft bang of his head on the cubicle wall in frustration, “I don’t…I don’t know”

I laugh.

“I’m going to have a piss, I hope you don’t mind” I stand, and halfway between unzipping my flies and finishing, I hear the slam of a cubicle door and the roar of a car engine in the distance.

“B*****d didn’t even say thanks” I muttered, to no one, a faint smile on my lips.

The air outside was refreshing after the stale scent of dead roses and urinals: the stars were clear in the sky and I took a moment to look up and observe the big, black universe. It’s not so black, after all, I thought. Scenarios and mad ideas raced through my head and with a dead set determination I walked back to the car, taking one last glimpse back at the toilets and the empty, compressed ground where the other car had sat minutes before. I unlocked it from a distance and collapsed into the front seat with a contented sigh; looking up into the rear view mirror, which I had tilted downwards, I rubbed the tears from my eyes and gave myself one or two slaps before turning the key in the ignition. The car started roughly with a few splutters and I rolled it to the entrance of the station: off to my right, the tarmac stretched into a dark and endless abyss, the trees hugging the sky and the creepers clawing against the ground; off to my left, the road winded back down the hill and in the distance I could see the twinkling lights of the city, calling to me like crackling embers on a cold night.

With another sigh, I turned left and shook my head. Here I went, off to fix my future.

Reviews

[quinfinn]

this is an excellent expression of those vague and emotional encounters which somtimes occur in our travels. i like the raw feel and the lightness of this piece. a fine example of concern mixed with detachment and no posturing on the part of the writer.

[Harry Alston]

Thank you Quin, as always.

[Randy Scott II]

I like this a lot! Your voice is good for this kind of story. I appreciate the lack of a twist. I like that it's just a scene, an awful scene, with inferred and unanswered statements. Great job. I'll be checking on more of your work for sure.

[Harry Alston]

Thanks Randy, I hope you enjoy the rest as much as you did this one! :)

[Marie]

I thought, as did the reviewer below, that the narrator might, indeeed, learn that he wife was involvedwith the man in the other cubicle. But your way is better. That sort of twist ending would have been too obvious.
I like twst endings but they aren't necessary to a good story.

[Harry Alston]

Thanks Marie, the twist didn't even come into mind...I had a pretty set in stone idea :)

[KAOlmsted]

I've missed you ;-) Okay, this was really well told, obviously, as it came from you...I love your voice. But I was a little disappointed with the ending, in truth. I would have loved for him to have driven home and found the same car as in the car park in his driveway...like, I don't know, maybe it was the wife who was unfaithful and her poor b*****d husband just sort of talked her lover, a stranger to him, into making things right for him, thus screwing up his own future...ah, but yours is a good story, too, because it leaves room for the reader to make his/her own conclusions as to what the future holds...love it, of course, Harry...great stuff.

-kimmer

[Harry Alston]

Aha, sorry kimmer, I've been away in the blogging world. And yes, I love your idea of a twist, and if I had thought of it, I probably would have used it, but I think I had a very set idea in my mind as I started this story :) Thank you, as always, for the kind comment :)

[KAOlmsted]

Always my pleasure, Harry...nice to see you.