Short Story, Not Particularly Uplifting

His mother was in the next room, snoring away on the sofa. Every other moment a particularly potent gurgle would escape, wafting into his bedroom. He thought it sounded like a baboon lost in the throes of a powerful dream. He focused on the large bottle of beer at his feet. He had only just opened it, his third of the evening, and he was trying to decide if he should have left it in the fridge.

Another loud snarl from beyond the door to his room caused him to jump. He swore aloud with the usual, unimaginative words as he scrambled to pick up the bottle, trying to salvage as much of the remaining 20 or so ounces. He licked his fingers before grabbing an old towel. The beer wasn't tasty so much as it was chemically reactive. These days he needed every drop to make a proper escape.

He sopped up the mess as best he could, wiped his hands, and took another swig before sitting back on the edge of his bed. An unbelievably growl-like snore erupted next door, and he scowled at his door and its inability to block the sound, muffle the irritations of his mother's sleep, or protect the sanctity of his brooding. He turned his tv on in an effort to create his own soundtrack. Settling quickly on the mundane dregs of cable television, he dropped the remote and assumed the most comfortable position fo the contemplation of self-pity.

Knees wide apart, elbows propped firmly atop them, forehead cupped in both palms. . . he occasionally ran a single hand through his hair for good measure. He was absolutely serious about the bleakness of his situation. His phone sat a few feet away, near his pillow. He did not look at it.

He really had no choice in the matter. No choice other than which beer to swallow whole. What else was there? Perfectly on cue his phone lit up and buzzed. He lowered his head a bit more, as if attempting to smell his own neck. He swatted halfheartedly at a mystery fly buzzing between his head and his phone. The buzzing ended.

What choice did he have? Yes, it was true that he had agreed to call earlier. But, well, clearly that was impossible. He took a long draught off his bottle and paused. When he closed his eyes the feeling in his head was muted, a barely floating feeling. No, he would need more than beer tonight.

Come to think of it, he thought as he reached clumsily under his bed, he couldn't recall the last time beer had been enough. He pulled out a few empty bottles which he quickly discarded directly into a pile of old clothes. As his fingers grasped on of the bottles he sought, a couple of words whispered their way through his mind.

No, he unscrewed the cap of his rum, I don't have a drinking problem. He chuckled a bit. The only drinking problem I have is too many empty bottles and not enough full ones. He threw his head back and tossed down another dose of burning. It tasted slightly like old medicine.

Exactly what he needed: a little medicine for the soul. It must surely have been located near his pancreas, judging by his choice in cures. He chased with a sip of beer, which left a rather nasty taste in his mouth, almost like old vomit. The rum was quick, though, and he wouldn't be bothered by the taste in his mouth for long.

Why on earth did she want him to call? He knew they would talk about nothing. Some fanciful nothing that would degenerate into nerdy allusions, later into sexual overtones and lust in her voice. Why wouldn't he call her?

He simply couldn't. He was so tired of lying- of pretending to be good. Sooner or later she would see. He would falter, she would wake-up, but either way if he kept on, she would realize that he was. . .

Well, he knew that she was better. That she deserved better. And that she didn't want him, at least not the real him. He'd been careful to tuck that bit away. He felt full of agency, full of portent and power. He felt proud of his choice in the matter. It didn't occur to him that his powerful choice had been to do nothing, so he wasn't bothered by any silly notions of irony.

It did occur to him, however, that he hadn't heard a snore in a very long time. A dope-ish grin crept over his face, looking quite out of place amidst the general aura of brooding. He picked up his jacket and cigarettes and with the mistaken grace of a drunk he opened his door and attempted to creep outside. His mother didn't stir.

Thank God she's finally out, he thought as he filtered the air through his cigarette. He held his first drag in his lungs for a moment, felt the pressure as the smoke pushed against his chest and the nicotine smuggled itself into his blood stream. When he finally let go of the breath it was with a sense of relief- a cool release. Outside the cold air numbed his thoughts to a slow state- speed he could readily ignore. He looked at a tree instead, its branches, its few remaining leaves- lost, forlorn, but oddly right where they should be.

He smudged his cigarette out in the dirt, dropped the butt into an old coffee canister, and went back inside. His head was putting up a good fight against the swim of intoxication, and he smiled as he caught himself on the railing after missing the last step or two.

He looked at his mother, lying on the couch, mouth open. Still no more snores. He paused- no sounds at all. He picked up a blanket and went over to her, quietly as a drunken dog in a nursery. He piled the blanket atop his mother, pleased that she didn't stir after his gentle endeavor. He leaned in and kissed her forehead. She felt cold and he was glad to have been thoughtful enough to grab a blanket. With the further concern of a man on the verge of passing out, he stumbled back to his room and wedged his door shut.

The tv was still on. He lay down and rested his head. He reached behind his head to pull out his phone, which had been interrupting the smoothness of his pillow. His brow furrowed as he examined the phone with more directness than he had dared earlier. He briefly considered calling her, coming up with some excuse to explain the hour. . . ?

But he didn't want her to think him a drunk. His thoughts were becoming extremely muddled, and he opened the contacts directory on his phone. Seeking further intoxication, he scrolled to the N section, past 'Nadia', straight to an entry simply labeled 'No'. He pressed the glowing green button and listened as the phone rang in his ear.

The old voice answered, annoyance painted thickly. Even in his state, though, he could hear the underlying eagerness. She was terrible at hiding. He mumbled something indistinct, which she took for an invitation.

"I haven't heard from you in two months, and now you want me to come over?"

He mumbled something even less distinct.

"Well, give me 20 minutes."

And before he could reply she had hung up, which was just as well, as the only reply he was capable of anymore was a gentle snore.

Outlook

The other day I was talking with my boss while driving around Staten Island. As is our usual habit, we were deeply entrenched in the business of solving the problems of the world and the human heart (with lots of philosophizing thrown in for good measure) when a new-to-me way of thinking about the differences between people came up.

It seems to me that people fall into one of three groups. The first group is comprised of ungrounded dreamers. You know the sort- they go through life with the belief that everything is perfectly fine the way it is. It's not that they see the best in things so much as that they don't really see the things in front of them. They live in a dreamworld. This is really a rather small group, as it's pretty impractical to live everyday lost in thought, pondering what it would be like to fly south with the geese for winter.

The second group is full of people who live in today. Sure, today is a little miserable, it's kind of cold actually, but it's today. Tomorrow's not here, and hey- it's just going to be another version of this miserable day (which thus far is indistinguishable from yesterday), so why think about it too much? And when life throws rotten fruit at you, well, that's life. You keep doing what you've been doing. It's not as though things could be different. No one's ever truly happy, and besides, you didn't want to be happy anyways.

The third group is filled by those who dream of possibility. These people live in the world today, but they do not accept that this is the way life has to be. They imagine that their hopes could become realities, and then they make them happen. They interact pragmatically, but they are always considering that the life they think about while waiting for sleep could become their reality.

It's true that no one lives their entire life solely in one of these groups- we all dabble in all of these outlooks from time to time, but I think it's fair to say that most people spend the majority of their day-to-day lives in one of these modes of reality. I'm sure I've neglected some other group(s) in the process of creating three boxes for every individual to fit into, but my point is not to create a highly tuned system for filing people away. Rather, I think it's helpful to realize this particular difference in the ways that people approach their reality.

For example, I think I spend a lot of my time in the third group. I'm happy with my life for the most part (despite the volumes of complaints this blog is collecting) but I'm not content to sit back and passively live in the world. I want to affect change, both in my personal experience and in my community. I have dreams. I have hopes for what my life will be. And I find it incredibly frustrating to spend a lot of time with those content to live their life in the second group. To interact with people filled with potential, filled with dreams of far off happiness, but lacking the agency to begin any sort of journey towards those dreams. Content to be miserable. Wallowing in mediocrity.

Ok, perhaps that last bit was a bit harsh. I may have been thinking about individuals instead of pontificating about an entire group of people. . . (because one is so much better than the other. . . hmmm) but what I'm trying to get at is that it can be difficult to explain thoughts and actions to people who don't live in the same sort of reality. People who don't see the possibility of change, let alone believing in its possibility, have difficulty understanding why someone would spend hir energy trying to change things.

I'm not sure if I think this is fascinating or horrifying. It's pretty helpful when building new relationships to determine if the people involved share the same concept of reality. In my experience it's exhausting trying to convince someone else that ze not only has the right to dream or that hir dreams are possible, but that dreaming of the future is essential. Now that I think on it, I'm inclined to be more conscious of this when making new friends.

Just Desserts

Today I was going through a notebook from two months ago. I found the following:

I deserve to be more than a rebound. I deserve to be with someone who takes care of hirself. I deserve someone who wants to be sober for a good portion of hir life. I deserve someone who loves hirself. I deserve someone intelligent and optimistic. I deserve someone who generally thinks well of people. I deserve someone who wants me for me, not for my being hir not-ex. I deserve to be with someone who takes joy in the world. I deserve to be with someone who is a great dancer.

This sentiment seems particularly poignant lately. I have always settled on lovers who do not fit this description, and not just because of the dancing bit (which, by the way, refers to taking great joy in dancing and not actual skill). I have long felt as though I were starving for acceptance, such that I have attempted to sustain myself with partners who were neither compatible nor appropriate.

Trying to squeeze blood from a beet and all that.

The thing is, though, I haven't been starving for acceptance for a long time. I've had an amazing community for several years now- women and men who are there for me both when I need them and even when I don't. Almost a year ago I realized for the first time that not only do I like myself, but I think I'm pretty fantastic. Life is great, and I am terribly excited about the future.

So when I look back over this summer and fall, at choices I made and situations I encouraged, I find it difficult to understand my overtly self-destructive actions. If I like myself, if I'm not anemic from lack of love, then why would I allow such an unhealthy liaison to flourish? Why did I put myself in the midst of what I knew, even then, to be an ill-suited situation?

The reason is that I have never stopped to acknowledge that I'm not starving anymore. To continue with the food analogy: I remember once reading a dieting tip in a magazine suggesting that one eat more slowly, as it takes 20 minutes for your stomach to send the message to your brain indicating that you're full. There's a time delay and if you don't realize that you're full you'll continue to nom down on whatever's on your plate. . . maybe you'll even add more.

Which is not to say that I promote diets, but rather that there has been a serious time differential between walking about in the world with new-found self-esteem and self-respect and realizing this new state of being. I've been wandering about thinking I'm still empty when, in fact, I have all I need.

Which means I don't have to settle for shit.

. . .

I don't have to settle. I have the ability to think about what I deserve, not just what I need. I don't need a partner to make me feel special or loved or accepted. I deserve a partner who fits, and if a potential partner doesn't really fit, then I'm better off on my lonesome.

This is not marvelously easy to write, less easy to publish into the ether of the net, and far less easy to put into practice. However, I feel that it is true in the pit of my stomach, in that bit of viscera behind my belly button. I don't need a someone. I would like someone, but not just anyone will do. I deserve someone wonderful.

And I am willing to wait.