I’m still lightly buzzed when I get home. The house is empty, but still feels full with the oppressive weight of the world. I fall into the couch and don’t have the strength to check my messages or mail. I just want to close my eyes and sleep for good. Not die, just sleep, to spend the next 50 or 60 years sleep walking, living the life of eternal somnambulance that most people choose to live. I want to concern myself with my job, my bills, my farcical social standing, and what is happening on my favorite TV shows. Living life day to day is killing me. I want to spend the rest of my days in brain death like everyone else. I don’t want to think about Zoe or Alicia or any of those trivial things that stupid fucking artists and poets think about, because hell, there are other fish in the sea, right? Only fucking stupid artists get caught up on things such as this. Normal people don’t. I just want to say, “Fuck it all.” I want to be definitive. I want no more questions. That way, I can at least find some kind of ending, even if it’s not a happy one. Each story won’t keep spilling over into its sequel any more. It will come together in a way that the cast and crew won’t have to be gathered together one more time for the next installment of the saga. I can pen the ending, “They lived happily ever after,” and guiltlessly go to sleep. Unfortunately, real life just isn’t like that, is it? It just keeps spilling over to that next story, doesn’t it? Kilgore Trout, no matter how many times he dies, doesn’t get that happy ending, does he? Neither does Rubin Valentine.
I doze briefly, and am waked by a knock on the door. “Who is it?” I demand.
“Rubin? It’s Alicia,” she calls out.
I’m silent for a few seconds. I can’t pretend I’m not here at this point. Maybe I was talking in my sleep. Maybe she’s hearing things. My brain is too clogged to come up with an appropriate reason why I can’t see her right now. I’m just about to come up with an unbelievable excuse as she walks in.
“Hey,” she says apprehensively. “Are you okay?”
That seems to be the question of the day. I realize that I haven’t said a word directly to her since the night she told me she was moving away. I probably could have kept myself from saying anything to her until she was gone. “At the moment...,” I manage to sputter. “No. No, I’m very far from okay,” I tell her. As she comes over to sit down next to me and take my hand I say. “I’ve had a very hard week and I’m trying to think of an effective suicide.”
“What?!” she cries.
“Not the kind where your body dies,” I explain. “On the contrary, I want my body to go on and live a very long, successful, and rewarding life.” I close my eyes and don’t look at her. “I’m talking about the kind where your intellect dies and your body just becomes a robot that goes through the motions of a living, breathing person in day-to-day life. I’m talking about the kind of suicide that the vast majority of the population commits when they graduate from high school. I refused to do it, and now I want to go back and have another go.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” She is genuinely concerned. I think she is completely missing the gist of what I mean.
“Don’t worry about it,” I say, still with my eyes closed, patting her hand that is tightly gripping mine. “You’d have to be in my head to understand.”
“Rubin,” she says, squeezing my hand until I think my fingers are going to pop like balloons. “You’re scaring me.”
“Don’t be,” I say, finally opening my eyes. “You want a beer? Cocktail? Spike full of heroin? I think I could go for any of the above.”
“What the fuck is your problem?” she asks, sounding offended. I’m half-drunk, and haven’t slept more than two hours in two days. With all the stress I’ve been under, this is probably the worst time for me to be talking to her. I should just tell her to go home, let me get some good, uninterrupted sleep, and we’ll talk tomorrow. But I don’t.
“What does it matter?” I ask lazily. “In less than a month, I’ll just be a name on a page to you. You won’t have to worry about what the fuck is wrong with Rubin Valentine.” I’m such an asshole.
“You’re such an asshole!” she snaps, letting go of my hand. “You think it’s easy to just walk away from you? You think I want to? I’ve loved all the time we’ve spent together. I don’t want to leave you.”
“I don’t see you stopping.” Shut up! Shut up! Rubin, you dickhead!
“Certain things are bigger than you!” she yells, her eyes filled with fire. “I’ve done too much planning to throw it all away from some crush!” This is a painful attack enough, even before she tacks on, “Especially when it is with a guy who may not be what I thought he was anyway.”
That hurt.
That hurt a lot.
This is when I should be shutting up. Don’t speak when you are hurting, Rubin. Shut up. Let it go. You can still apologize and salvage the situation. “Alicia, I think I’m falling in love with you and I can’t stand to see you go,” I tell her. Except, that’s not what I tell her. I tell her, “If you think I’m so fucking great, then I’ve really got you fooled.” Yeah, that’s what I say. I really wish life had a backspace key. By the time this is out though, there is no taking it back.
Alicia doesn’t say a word. She just stands up, backs out the door, and possibly leaves my life forever.
No sense missing a good Friday night. Maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll sleep through Zoe’s wedding and not have to worry about it. Then I can go on with the unending bliss of never seeing an ex get married.
Tommy shows up at about eleven-thirty with a twelve-pack of Ice Beasts. Chloe and Kurt are both absent, and, I haven’t heard from Doc Filth yet tonight, so it appears that Tommy and I are left to drink the whole thing. We get to about three each when Chloe Isis calls and says she’s at a party downtown, and that we should come. Tommy and I have another beer each, call the good Doctor, who has just eaten an eighth of mushrooms, and we go to get him.
When we get to the party, the drugs have just started to take effect. The Doc’s eyes bug three inches out of his head and he sits on the couch on the front porch next to Chloe, who is wasted, hitting on some junky-looking guy who is rail thin, wearing a tight, white “The Strokes” T-shirt and dirty blue jeans, and appears not to have combed his shaggy blonde hair in over a week. He looks stoned and is completely unresponsive to her advances. Tommy and I lean against the railing of the front porch next to the keg of Sam Adams. There had been a guy selling plastic cups, but we tricked two drunk girls into giving up theirs. We offered them ten bucks each if they would make out. When they started kissing, a crowd gathered around them, and while people cheered them on, Tommy and I snagged their cups and went outside. They haven’t appeared to claim their money or cups yet.
Kurt shows up around 12:30, having just been at the bar looking for us. There is a cock-rock cover band playing at some club downtown. We rustle up Filth, and off go the four of us to see them, leaving Chloe to enthrall her hipster boy.
The band is fairly talentless, but we are very drunk, so overlooking the fact that the guitar player is largely unable to master Slash’s opening solo in “Sweet Child o’ Mine” is easy. We all do shots of JD, and then I get a 151 Rum & Coke between sets. I take one sip, and when it hits the beer, I immediately have to run and vomit in the urinal while two bodybuilder douchebags in tight black shirts laugh at me. As soon as I finish throwing up, I throw back the rest of my drink in one gulp and give them a hateful, vomit-smeared toothy smile, and return to my motley crew.
We spend more money than we should on booze and by the time the band is done, we are so wasted we can hardly walk. That doesn’t stop us from going back to the party, where a last-minute beer run has resulted in two cases of Rolling Rock being largely untouched in the refrigerator. Most people have passed out or gone home, but Chloe is still there, so we get beers and go back to the front porch. Tommy is in the living room, standing over some girl who was just about to go home, lecturing her that she should be staying, because if you’re from Parlor City, you don’t leave the party until the sun is up and the last beer is empty. Some guy comes out and asks to throw in for the Rolling Rock, so Tommy gives him ten dollars. When the guy leaves, Tommy admits that the money had come out of the beer fund, which he had found next to the refrigerator.
When we finally get home, the sun is peeking over the hills, and I have only a few hours to sleep before the wedding.
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