A Quiet Piece of Longing – Eight

I was in the midst of a dream. I was on a cruise, far below on the bottom deck. Through the porthole, I could see the water rising and the sun reflecting off it. The sunset was beautiful. Cages were lined across the walls. Inside, were dogs all growling and barking. I reached into the bag of treats and handed a bacon slice to one of the dogs.

As he chewed on it, he suddenly transformed into a human being with black hair, overalls, and even shoes. He waved to me. I gave more treats to more dogs and they transformed into more humans. They left their cages and began following me.

Suddenly, Rose appeared as I walked into the hallway. The humans were still following me. “I wonder how your dad will react to all these people following you. You’re famous, you know.” My dad stood at a desk in a white suit, tophat, and monocle. I walked over to him and shook his hand.

I woke up in jail to my name being yelled out. I had been here for thirty-three days. I made no friends and stuck to myself. I guess the closest I got to a friend was a guy talking to me about his track marks.

But I slipped on the jail sandals and went out into the pod. A guard handed me papers and said, “You’re getting released. Come with me.” I followed him through the doror and down the long hallway.

Then I was left in a holding cell. I laid down and closed my eyes. It was unusally cold and no one was in there but me. I was in there for two hours. Eventually, they let me out and I was free to get changed into my clothes. They asked for my social security number and then dropped me right outside.

I had to walk all the way across town, cold and alone. Fucking pigs caught me for no reason. I was beginning to realize that cops were the adversaries. They patrolled looking for trouble, and often put the innocent ones into trouble. I was growing a distaste.

I was almost broke. A few months and I’d be destitute. The thought of going back home crossed my mind, but I ignored it. Home didn’t exist, I said. What was there for me, I thought. The truth was, there was nothing. What had lived there, had died there. I needed to call Rosaline.

“Hey, so…”

“Michael! Your out of jail?”

“Yeah, I am too and I see you are. How about I come by?”

“That’d be amazing! You know, I had to fucking walk home from jail. It was bullshit.”

“Yeah, same here. My car was in the impound again. I’ll be there in a bit, okay?”

“Alright!”

It was here I noticed a smile crossed my face. The thought of meeting Rose again gave me butterflies. Although it was a short surge of feeling.

The plan was that I’d take her on the road with me. Who would want to stay in Billings, especially after jail? I wanted her and she wanted me. She wouldn’t refuse. And I could see it now. We’d be driving through New Mexico and checking out the jewelery shops.

Then we’d fuck in motels and gamble our life savings away. Time passes too fast for a man to worry about the future. The only thing that matters is blowing up the present. The only thing that matters is making sure you enjoy that single second.

I walked through the door and greeted her. She was sitting on the couch in shorts and a tanktop. She ran up to me. “Holy shit—I can’t believe it’s you!” We kissed and interlocked.

“How’s life?”

“Shitty. Real shitty.”

“And why’s that?”

“My landlord’s kicking me out because I missed payments. And I tried telling him—HEY FUCKER, I WAS IN JAIL!”

I laughed. “Yeah, I just can’t believe any of this happened. One night we were drunk at a party, and then—“

“I was waking up in jail surrounded by crazy people? Yeah, I know.”

“Hey, if you’re getting kicked out why not go on the road with me? It’ll be an adventure.”

She pressed her hands against my chest. Biting her lip. “Umm…”

“We can go anywhere. We can go to Alaska. We can go to Florida.”

“When would we leave?”

“Anytime. A day, a couple weeks, a month.”

“Sounds good, but I wanna stay here for a bit. We can leave when I get kicked out.”

We spent the day in bed watching television. Rosaline’s friends had drifted and everything was falling apart at the seams for her. For me, too. Broke, lonely, isolated, and drifting. The road was strange and full of equally strange memories and people. I was just a lonely drifter. So much time had been spent mindlessly dumping drugs into my body. I needed a cleanse.

But this cleanse would never come. I would continue with it. But it wouldn’t lead to total annihilation. I was too much of a fighter for that. I’d carry on even if there was no point in doing so. It was more like semi-annihilation.

At night Rose climbed on top of me and started kissing my neck and face. She undid my pants and put it inside her, going up and down. “I’m so glad you’re out of jail.” She said.

I wrapped my arms around her and brought her close. I kissed her. I groaned and she sucked on my neck. “I’m just glad I’m here with you.”

She came but she still kept going. Twenty minutes later, she got off of me and laid on my chest. I kissed her on the forehead and hugged her. We fell asleep in each other’s arms.

* * *

For the next week, we stayed inside the house binging television and smoking copious amounts of weed. Rose had some left over vodka so we also drank that as well. It was quiet. In the morning, we left town. There was nothing left for us there anyway. So we decided to leave our bootprints in the sand, and journey onward.

What was important, was that we finally had income. Rose had leftover money from her job, and a deal finally went my way for once. I was able to pick up a quarter-pound of marijuana. Then I sold it for three-thousand. I was back in the game.

We went down to Wyoming and entered Cheyenne. We explored the downtown area and even the old, rusted train stop. Then we explored the multitude of shops and restaurants. But we never settled. We ended up at a seedy motel for the night. No wifi or television. Just a bed and bathroom.

She was fresh out of the shower. As I was loading wax into the rig, I said, “You ever gonna ditch the dreadlocks?”

“No way! I love em’! You know, there’s something I noticed about you…”

“Oh?”

“You’re kind of weird…”

“And?”

“Do you feel, like, anything?”

That was a good question. I dropped the rig onto the table and thought. I knew that I hadn’t felt something for a long time. I stayed in the same level of benign numbness all day, every day. Was I a psychopath? But I liked people. I liked things. Sure, I had committed crimes, but I didn’t hurt anyone too bad. Was I still one of those?

“Uh, hellllooo?”

“Yes, I feel things.”

She sighed. “It’s just that, you’re so quiet and yadda yadda ya. It makes me think something’s wrong with you.” She crawled over to me and put a kiss on my lips.

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Come on, Michael, just talk to me, please!”

I sighed and sat down, covering my face with my hands. “Okay, there’s seriously something wrong with me.”

“Like what?”

“I can’t feel things. I know that I like you. I know that I care about you. But there’s no feeling. It’s all—what’s the word? Cognitive. It’s just in my head. It’s like my life is just some surreal fever dream. Sometimes I feel like I’m floating. Sometimes I feel like the world’s fake. Sometimes I feel dead—and I can’t break out of this.”

She looked at me with sad eyes and took a seat. “You know what that is?”
“What?”

“THAT’S CALLED DISSOCIATION, DUMBASS! You need help!”

“Well, where can I get it?”

“Therapy! You need it!”

I shrugged. “I tried that. Didn’t work. My therapist was just an out of touch old man.”

She sighed and laid across the bed. “How long have you been like this?”

“Since before I can remember. It’s just my natural state. There’s no difference between life and a dream.”

“When are you gonna go back home and get help?”

“I don’t have a home. Not anymore. That all went down the shitter.”

“Because of the miscarriage?”

“That, and how I just couldn’t take… everything anymore.”

“What do you mean by ‘everything?’”

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

She sat up and stared directly into my eyes. I felt her breath on my face. “Talk about it.”

I set the joint down and face palmed. “You really want me to talk about it?”

“Yes, I do. I care about you.”

“Thanks. My family sucks, dude. Maybe this dissociation is just a coping skill for my shitty childhood. You can’t blame me for wanting to run away.”

She hugged me. Her arms were wrapped around my neck, and her head rested on my chest. She kissed me on the cheek and drew back. “I want you to feel better. I care about you.”

“Thanks. I care about you.” My eyes had taken on a sullen gaze.

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

She smiled. “Are you kidding?”

“No.”

“Perfect.” She kissed me and cuddled up to me. We fell asleep.

I had a dream, too. I was walking through the woods when I heard a shrill scream. I turned into a five-year-old version of myself and started running through the woods. I found my house, and it was a giant mushroom.

I ran inside and got up the stairs where I hid under the blankets with my dog. It was silent. I was calm. And then, the shrill scream again. A monster came and ripped the roof off. It was white, skin and bone, and had black eyes. It grabbed my dog and started eating it. Then, it reached for me.

Waking up, I was covered in sweat. I grabbed the rig and took it outside where it was pouring down. Water was flooding the street. I loaded wax into the nail and took a dab. Silently, I hoped it would calm me down enough to sleep.

If Rose was right, then what I was dealing with was some prolonged form of dissociation. I didn’t think I had multiple personalities, but there was once a point in time I was having blackouts. It happened once at an interview.

“So, what do you do for fun?” The interviewer asked me.

I was eighteen and applying for a position at a restaurant. Back of house. But before me, my vision turned yellow and I entered a haze. I said traveling and then followed it up with a curse word. Then more.

Needless to say, I bombed the interview and didn’t get the job. Oh well, didn’t need it anyway. Jobs were just something that had people running around, depleting our resources. Like us on planet Earth. Like a cancer.

I went back inside and cuddled up to Rose. She had a tight little ass. We hadn’t screwed the night before, but I didn’t mind. Wasn’t in the mood really. I wasn’t the kind of person with a high libido. Often enough, meaningless sex just leaves you more meaningless. It’s empty.

My lungs must’ve looked like tissue paper by now. All the drugs, weed, cigarettes. It was taking a toll on my body. I felt spaced out, sickly. Perhaps I wasn’t going to live forever the way I always joked about. I wasn’t going to die anytime soon, though. But there was once a point in time where I was suicidal. And what kept me going was the desire to “win” against life. It was hard. Life was just a challenge.

I like to believe that after death, we join back with the source. I’ve thought a lot about how we’re all just one conscious being, experiencing individuality. And trips on DMT just reinforced that. We were all God. What you do to another person, you end up doing to yourself. Because, there’ll come a point in billions of years where you live that life. I have lived your life, and you will live mine. So, here’s some advice: Stay away from the heroin.

I cuddled Rose until dawn. Her hair was on my face and I clutched her tight. She suddenly rolled over and hugged me. Her arms were around my back. She opened her eyes and we stared at each other for a minute. “Your awake?” She said.

“I had a nightmare. Couldn’t fall asleep, so I just held you all night.”

She smiled and rubbed my face. “Well I’m sorry about the nightmare.”

“It’s fine, didn’t bother me all too much.”

She sat up and stretched her arms out, yawning. “Where are we off too now?”

“New Mexico?”

Rose laughed. “Fuck that place. I wanna go North-East.”

“Like Pennsylvania?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve been there. It’s not too bad. Maybe we can check out Scranton.”

“Then that’s our goal.”

We piled into the car and got on our way. We drove through Wyoming, through Nebraska, and ended up in the cornfields of Iowa. The sunset was beautiful. All around us, flat land. The sky, a mixture of pink and cherry-apple red. There was nothing in the distance but us.

Our car suddenly hit a rock and it punctured the tire. We decelerated rapidly, and I pulled over to the side of the road. I tried fixing it, but the spare was expired. It had no air in it. “What the hell do we do?” Rose said.

“I called roadside assistance. Now we just wait.”

So we waited. And waited. Then waited some more. Rose kicked the dashboard and said, “God, I’m so tired of this.”
“Yeah, I’m in that club too.”

“How’s your head?”

“It’s alright.”

“Dreamy feeling?”

“Seven out of ten.”

“That’s not good.”

“At least I’m not feeling the anxiety. It’s like a malaise. How are you?”

She suddenly began to cry. “I just wish something would work out for once! My life is just like this!”

I wrapped her around with my arms and kissed her. “It’ll be okay. We’re not here forever.”

“You’re right! It’s just—life just has to be so hard!”

And then, a knock on the window. Roadside assistance was here. He fixed the tire and it cost three-fifty. A god damn scam. But at least we were out of being fucked. I drove into town and we spent the money on another motel room.

We sat in bed, watching television. I was in her arms and resting on her chest. I felt warmth for once. But a thought struck me. I had been vulnerable with her, but it made my skin crawl. She had been vulnerable with me and seemed fine. Perhaps I could be vulnerable again. Even if it was painful.

“I lied about my name. I don’t really know myself.”

She got up and stared at me. “You lied about your name?”

I nodded. “It’s Isaiah.”

Her face turned red and her hands crawled into fists. “WELL, FUCK YOU ISAIAH!”

“I love you and I want this to work.”

“Fuck you.”

“I love you. And I want this to work.”

She slapped me across the face. I drew back and then went for a kiss. She didn’t refuse. Before I knew it, our clothes were off. I was inside her, bobbing up and down while her nails scratched at my back. Our faces were red.

“I hate that I love you.” She said.

“I love you too.”

I held her pale hips and thrusted in and out. Her tits bounced. I kissed her and our tongues met. I fell onto my back and she climbed on top of me, going up. I moved and she moaned. She gasped and got off.

I held her in my arms and our eyes closed. Our breath slowed. I fell asleep and so did she. But in the morning, I found that she was gone. She had left by herself, and that made me upset. I worried about how she was going to go home. I called her.

“Hello?”

“Oh, you called.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m getting a bus ticket home. But… there’s a bunch of stops and layovers.”

I sighed. “Listen, let me buy you a plane ticket if you’re gonna go home. I can even drive you to the airport.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Isn’t it better than a fifteen hour bus ride?”

“I guess.”

“Then come back to the hotel.”

She arrived and hopped in the passenger seat of my car. I drove her to the airport of Des Moines and dropped her off. “Goodbye, Isaiah.” She said.

I waved but she had already turned around. She walked into the airport and that was that. It was over.