Going Nowhere at a Moderate Pace
Going Nowhere at a Moderate Pace
“Bro, just because I drank poison does not mean I should have to go to the hospital”.
Roberto’s mutterings echoed through the corridors of the apartment complex. His best friend hassled him towards the stairwell in a half dragging, half carrying motion. Roberto’s protest went completely disregarded by all 250 pounds of Damien, who was deafened by the combination of adrenaline and Pimms pumping through his veins. Something about being a motherfucking drama queen escaped from Damien’s lips unconsciously. Tunnel-visioned, he flung his brother in arms down flight after flight of stairs, assured that this was the fastest way to get him medical attention.
Now, to be fair, Roberto was not suicidal. Rather, he was bored. Incredibly, unbearably bored. He had been bored for about six months, and he needed it to end. Please understand that this was not your run of the mill boredom. It was not the ennui of grandmothers who take Tae Kwon Do at the JCC. Nor was it the monotony that pushes girlfriends to utter the phrase “Babe, let’s use the beads tonight”. No, this was the kind of soul crushing boredom that comes only from months upon months of stasis.
It also should be noted that Roberto’s boredom was not for lack of trying. He had, in fact, been engaging in a series of diverting activities. Since graduating with an Associates in “Video Game Design”, he had spent a full four months creating the perfect game only to realize he had programmed it for an Atari. Upon finding himself unemployed with an unusable opus, he sought out various jobs. His brief and tragic stint as the manager of a Toys ‘R Us ended when he stood by watching two teenagers bludgeon each other with light sabers for a half hour, thrashing unsuspecting spectators in the process.
He’d also tried to carry on his relationship of convenience with a programmer from the BA program. Without the burden of schoolwork and antagonizing professors, however, their conversation eventually fell to daily text messages regarding sleep patterns. Though “got a full six hours” or “pulled an all-nighter” can be stimulating for a while, the two eventually neatly parted ways.
This created no tangible angst that could prompt excitement. Nothing did. He had normally good friends. His socioeconomic status was comfortable; he occupied the stereotypical fully furnished basement flat. He ate, drank, exercised, and partied temperately. The only thing excessive in his life was moderation.
And so it was that he found himself earlier that evening with a shot glass full of whatever was under the kitchen sink of Sergei’s frat duplex. It hadn’t been a particularly bad party; it just bored him. The beer bored him. The daft punk music bored him. The games bored him. The perky blonde he danced with bored him. The perky blonde’s suggestion to carry on elsewhere bored him. The freckle shaped like Utah on the skin of her left ribcage bored him. Her coercion of a promise to call her later in the week bored him. The high-fives that followed the act bored him.
A vodka-infused roundtable discussion in the kitchen had particularly bored him later in the evening. Damien was musing about Krishnas and communism, his favorite drunken subjects. The blonde from earlier waltzed in and seated herself on one of the antiqued diner stools. “Penny for your thoughts” she offered up to Roberto, finding this quip particularly witty. (Was her name Penny? In the grand scheme of things, would that make it a less pathetic attempt at banter?)
In as grand a manner as he could muster, Roberto replied “As when I’m lying in my bed, I think about life and I think about death. And neither one particularly appeals to me.” He wondered if she thought him deep or if she realized he was openly plagiarizing Morrissey. She stared at him and growled “That is so sexy”. Whether she was vapid or just a despair fetishist no longer concerned Roberto; he wanted this conversation to end.
Thankfully, Penny’s train of thought derailed (as lightweights’ usually do) and she found herself fascinated by the seemingly limitless possibilities contained in the host’s toaster oven. “I bet”, she posited, “if you put one of those marshmallow chicken things that you get in Easter baskets and, like, stuck it in there, it would be so pretty when it blew up. Or you, you know, you could, you could put a very small animal in there. Not a nice animal, like a bunny. No, but, like, I mean, if you had a really bitchy, I dunno, gerbil? Yeah, gerbil. And then you, if you just didn’t want to stick him up your ass, you could nuke him. I bet it would get everywhere and smell like popcorn.”
As she carried on, Damien waxed philosophic in counterpoint on the merits of wearing orange robes and chanting in the public sphere. He had, at some point, switched from speaking into his beer to singing and keeping time on the tabletop. Combined with Penny’s considerations, an oddly symphonic pandemonium formed. Others wandered in and out in search of trash cans, extra lager, and, once, a roll of duct tape. Watching the scene around him with disinterest, Roberto’s one obsession began to resurface. He had the overpowering desire to feel not bored. He needed something dramatic and dazzling and disturbing to shake him from his manila reverie.
As the young man in search of tape finally gave up his quest and exited the room, he left the cabinet under the kitchen sink ajar. Roberto stared at the opaque liquids sitting stagnant and tragic under the drainpipe. They were experiencing his stasis. They understood his constant, unbearable monotony. His decision to confer with the pink Windex, the yellow ammonia, the milky bleach was only natural. Recall, dear reader, that Roberto still was not intending to kill himself. There was, however, a spectrum of feeling, of being present the emitted from under the kitchen sink. As Damien’s eighth chorus of “Hare, Hare Krishna, Krishna Rama” began, Roberto slipped off his stool and made his way to the cabinet. Taking a shot glass from the counter above him, he sat on the linoleum and began to mix the cocktail. Dish soap, cleaning solvents, and rum mixed together to create a lovely lavender spritzer. Four ounces of fluid now sat in the cup, contrasting nicely with the logo of “Intercourse, PA” printed on its outside.
He turned to observe the kitchen crowd; seeing Damien softly sleeping in a puddle of beer condensation and Penny gone, he decided. Not allowing his nose time to pick up the scent, he downed the mixer. It stung his tonsils and uvula; it corroded his esophagus on the way down. He felt the shot burning. He felt it. He was aware of the burning sensation alive in his organs.
And then he felt something else. The mixture of chemicals and whatever he ate earlier in the evening (pizza?) met in his intestines. He rose from the floor just in time to vomit neatly into the sink. The fluids had metamorphosed inside of him, creating the mass in the sink, a brown compote speckled crimson. He checked the clock, now caring for some reason what time it was. 2 AM. People must have left the frat apartment at the same point; he hadn’t noticed. It was quiet now. Two men (Jack and Reginald, perhaps?) were playing a video game in the next room. This was no longer a space for Roberto to exist in. He tapped Damien on the shoulder, waited, shook the hulking mass until he awoke.
“Hey man. Hey. Hey, everyone’s gone. Hey, I’ll walk you home.” Roberto whispered gently, almost affectionately.
“Bitch, what are you talking about, walking? I’ve got mah car.” Damien answered, rubbing nap from his eyes.
“Dude, you can’t drive. You’re fucking hammered. The walk’ll do you good.” Roberto had, at this point, reverted from his bromantic interlude back to normal speech.
Begrudgingly, Damien got up. The two waved at Jack and Reginald as they walked through the door, stabilizing each other as they moved through the corridor.
“What’d you have anyway, bro? You smell like Lysol.”
“Lysol was in there. And some other shit. I mean, it was an intense drink.” Roberto was giddy confiding his newfound daring with his best friend.
“Stop being an asshole. What’d you have?”
“I told you. I drank some of that, like, drain cleaner and stuff. It gives a nice buzz.”
“ ‘Berto. Tell me you’re lying.”
“ Why would I lie?”
“Is this, like, a cry for help or some shit? Are you threatening to off yourself?”
“Naw. I just drank some stuff under the sink.”
“Dude, we gotta get you an ambulance, like, NOW! You stupid motherfucker!”
“Bro, just because I drank poison does not mean I should have to go to the hospital”.
<>
Three minutes later, the pair was down the stairs and approaching Archer Avenue.
“We gotta fucking call an ambulance or a cab or something. What the hell are you trying to pull, man? Are you sad about Carly or some stupid shit like that? What?” Damien continued on his previously established theme.
“Let’s walk.” Roberto said, Damien’s commentary unabsorbed.
“What the hell are you smoking? You drank, like, liquid death. We’re getting an ambulance.”
“ We don’t have any money, dude. It’s not that far and it’s a nice night. Let’s just walk.”
Damien fumed, but followed Roberto’s lead towards Parsons Boulevard.
“I’m gonna get in so much fucking trouble if you die on me. Couldn’t you have waited until there was a party in, like, Massapequa? We’re walking around Jamaica at 2:30 in the morning half-shitfaced, bait for any punkasses trying to get in a gang, moseying to the fucking hospital because you decided to play poison control at the SJU party. You worthless piece of shit. I should leave you right here. Man, I could be having a burger or getting laid or something, but noooo. I’m chaperoning wittle Woberto to the doctor’s because he wanted to find out what Clorox tasted like. If you survive, bro, I’m gonna break your fucking face.”
Roberto, too fascinated by his new state of awake to listen to his buddy, was at the present pondering the weather. It was one of those cool, damp mornings in May when the world didn’t quite seem to know what it wanted. Roberto’s Converses were moist, but not enough to ruin the walk. The air was comfortably chilly against his sweatshirted torso. “Hace frio” he thought, pondering the weirdness of the phrase.
He didn’t speak Spanish beyond scholastic childhood phrases. His friends assumed he understood menu items at Pacquitos because his parents’ parents lived somewhere warmer than Forest Hills. What they didn’t understand was that his parents had no interest in retaining heritage. He ate Kraft Mac ‘N Cheese through his childhood and celebrated Purim and St. Patrick’s Day like everyone else at school.
“I should learn Spanish.” he thought, convinced of the need for resolution on this glorious night. “I should go live with my 3rd cousins in Guatemala or wherever and just immerse myself until I speak like Dora the fucking Explorer. Or French. I could be so classy speaking French like a goddamn Canadian.” The possibilities seemed endless; this new world was filled with potential and grandeur. He could learn, could achieve anything.
The relative silence only furthered Damien’s fury. Looking beyond his friend’s stupidity, he externalized his rage towards the entire cosmos. A flock of pigeons soon prompted a tirade.
“Would you look at them, ‘Berto? Pigeons. All they do their whole life is shit. Always shitting! Shitting on statues, shitting on people, shitting on me. They’ve had it too good for too long. Once I get you to the hospital, know what I’m gonna do? I am going to shit on one of them. See how they like it. Hold down one of those sons of bitches and just crap. I mean, yeah, they are kinda fast, but this is a worthwhile endeavor. I’m gonna need someone to hold it down, though. ‘Berto, after you get out of the hospital, can you hold down the pigeon while I shit?”
Roberto burst into laughter at Damien’s sense of vigilante justice. His diaphragm bounced. The unfamiliar feeling of sincere laughter coupled with the noxious fluids in his system prompted another surge of vomit up his throat. He turned from Damien, spraying a Dunkin Donuts with bile.
“Sorry, bro.” he coughed, spitting the last of the puke onto the curb. The frenzy and randomness of the act somehow soothed Damien and reminded him of his purpose. He lent an arm to his friend and slowed his pace. He spoke low, saying the first thing that came into his head.
“You know what I miss about Aubrey, man? I mean, besides the food and the sex? Her playlists.”
“You should steal them,” Robby offered.
“No, I’m not messing around. There are, like, certain songs you can only listen to when you’re dating a girl. Like Jason Mraz. I can’t put a Jason Mraz tape in my car by myself. I will get shot. But the second Aubrey’s shotgun, I’m the sensitive, permissive boyfriend who lets the lady pick the music.”
“How would you even get a Jason Mraz tape, Dame? No one uses cassettes. At all. Welcome to, like, 1997.”
“You’re going to bite your tongue when the 8-track makes its comeback, my friend. Just you wait.”
This familiar conversation allowed for a bit of good-natured laughter among the pair, followed by a comfortable silence. They needn’t talk further about the tonalities of various musical devices in comparison to cost and potential; it had all been said before at varying volumes. Damien has never done well with silences, comfortable or otherwise.
“So, like, when they cut the poisons and shit out of you, do you think you’re gonna be awake? Like, are you gonna see the doctor all stabbing in your gut and shit or are they gonna knock you out? Or, like, are they gonna put one of those curtains up around your stomach like they do for pregnant chicks who don’t feel like tearing up their business?”
“Bro, there are so many things wrong with that question.”
“What?”
“Working backwards? Pregnant chicks don’t, like, decide to get the kid chopped out of them, it just happens. And I’m definitely not gonna be awake, dude, I don’t care if I have to count sheep. And you can’t cut poison out of a person. It’s not Indiana Jones, dude. They’re gonna pump my stomach and all and then they’re probably gonna detox me for, like, forever.”
“What do you mean ‘It’s not like Indiana Jones’? When did Harrison Ford ever do a shot of ammonia while fighting Nazis?”
“You know what I mean. Like, when a snake bites that kid or whatever and he sucks the venom out.”
“That’s a good idea”
“What?”
“I can, like, suck that shit out of your bloodstream and then we’ll be good and we can go home. No problemo.
“That, Damien, is the single dumbest thing anyone has ever said.”
Damien fingered the Swiss Army knife in his pocket, considering his options very seriously. It was not dumb to want to save his best friend. It also was not dumb to want to stop walking up Parsons and go home. It could be so simple. He would make a little cut in ‘Berto’s tummy, suck out the bad stuff, spit it out, and be done with it. He probably still had those band-aids in his glove compartment to get ‘Berto to stop bleeding afterwards. It made a lot of sense. They kept walking.
They had not passed much on their way up the road. A few bars and coffee shops that operated at all hours were lit with crappy fluorescents. Two teenagers (who were apparently very much in love) monopolized the Hillside bus shelter, slamming each other against the various walls of Plexiglas in an attempt to prove their ardor. Roberto’s catcalls and Damien’s conservative throat-clearing did nothing to deter the couple. A few other wearied travelers waited at the next Q25 stop, apparently expatriates from Hillside that could no longer bear the amorous duo.
Damien and Roberto were walking slowly. Each was left to his own musings, with occasional commentary as to the weather or an eatery they had passed. After a brief encounter with an Asian man walking a Scottish terrier and a Chihuahua, Damien was forced to comment on the allegory.
“ God bless America, man. I mean, seriously. Did you see that? Three different continents on one street corner. The Mexican and Celtic pissing together on a curb. It’s beautiful. It’s like you and me, bro. It’s like you and me.”
Roberto found this bit of sentimentality strange. He may have been numb for the past year or so, but he wasn’t inobservant. Damien had never been one to pontificate grandly, drunk or otherwise. This was not his normal Krishna rant.
“Dame, are you okay?”
“What?”
“Are you okay? Are you feeling alright?”
“Well, I’m coming off a buzz and am walking your sorry ass to the ER because you couldn’t be bothered to pay for a cab. SO, yeah, I’m okay.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“I think you’re a shitty wingman.”
“ No, really, are you mad?”
“Stop being a bitch. It doesn’t matter.”
“But it does matter! How do you feel?”
Damien ignored the question and quickened his strides. Roberto, meanwhile, stared at his feet, aware that he should feel ashamed for creating such a high anxiety scenario for his friend. He sped up to walk abreast to Damien. He threw his arm around Damien’s left shoulder out of both good will and a need to stabilize himself physically.
“Hey. Hey, Damien. Thanks for taking me. You’re a good best friend.”
Damien turned to look at his friend’s face, contorted with pain and effort. He considered his hands inside his jeans. He could reach around Roberto’s back and hold him up. He could remove Roberto’s arm and move on. Damien felt the hard, flat object against his left thigh.
“Rob, you tired, man? There’s a bench on the next block. We’ll sit there for a sec. It’s only a few more blocks after that.”
“Okay.”
They crossed the street and made their way towards the bench. Damien genuflected slightly to place Roberto down on the seat.
“Thanks. It’s nice to sit. It’s nice to feel. I mean, really feel. I dunno, I was, like, dead inside and now I’m awake again. It’s awesome, but it also sucks.”
“That’s some existentialist bullshit, dude.”
“You’re probably right. All the same, it’s something.”
Roberto sighed. Damien took the knife out of his pocket and started flipping through the different tools. He carried the pocketknife everywhere out of some form of misplaced nostalgia. He was not allowed to be a boy scout because his mother did not believe in any form of militarism. The knife, his eleventh birthday present, was a peace offering from his father for years without s’mores and homoerotic camping trips.
The knife had served him well for the past decade. The screwdrivers had popped the back off of many a remote control. The scissors had cut fishing line, loose threads, clothes tags, and, once, a lock of Sharon from math class’s hair. The nail file was useless, but remained there on the off chance that Damien should become involved in hygiene. The magnifying glass had, in olden days, caused the holocaust of entire ant colonies; more recently it allowed Damien to justify his refusal to wear glasses. The tweezers took out splinters and the pliers plied staples and nails. The ballpoint pen, long out of ink, had no real allegorical value of which to speak; it was just a pen.
The blade of the knife proper made a satisfying creak as it was extracted. Despite attempts to clean the residue, it reflected the years and years of incisions. It smelled faintly of citrus from the hundreds of oranges it had cut at lunchtimes. Any sheen it may have once had dissolved into the faint green hue of overuse. Only the tip of the blade was in mint condition. Damien had religiously sharpened the knife once a week for ten years. The tip had been through kitchen counters, watermelons, animal carcass, and jacket lining. The maintenance it received rendered it virtually indestructible.
Damien tried to catch his own eye in the knife’s surface, refusing to believe its surface was no longer reflective. He flicked his wrist in a horizontal motion, then vertically. Roberto laughed at his friend’s childish antics, assuming it to be the result of his drunkenness. Damien remained austere. In one fluid motion, Damien thrust the tip into the paunch of Roberto’s belly. The blade landed just below his left ribcage.
Roberto breathed deeply. Sucking in his stomach, he felt the blade as an extension of his body rather than a source of pain. A moment later, he realized that he had been stabbed. He took the knife out of his side and stared at the blood on its edge. The same blood flowed through the gash in his stomach, through three layers of clothing, onto Damien and the pavement. He coughed, spitting blood onto the bench next to him. There was, everywhere, blood. There was, everywhere, fear. Roberto panicked as the full impact of what happened landed on him. He dropped the knife and stared in amazement at the fountain of blood pouring out of him. He felt scared and confused.
Damien watched, satisfied with his solution. For sure, the bad stuff was now out of Roberto. He took a folded band-aid out of his pocket, opened it, and placed it atop Roberto’s hoodie. A black cab turned the corner onto Parsons and honked. Damien waved at him and stuck up his right index finger.
“ You should be okay now, bro. Just let the bad stuff ooze out. The hospital is two blocks that way. You can walk that far, right, buddy?”
Roberto stared, dumbfounded by the sheer oblivion his friend existed in. He clutched the Dora the Explorer band-aid over his ribcage and tried to utter some, any words.
“No.”
“’Berto, man, you’re a big boy. You’ll be fine. You wanted to be alive and awake tonight, bro. I just want to go to sleep. See you soon, buddy.” Damien entered the cab and shut the door. He waggled his fingers at Roberto and laid his head against the window’s glass as the cab sped off.
Roberto watched the waggle and the sun rising behind the bodegas. He felt a sharp pang and then everything went numb.
