Way Down Deep, page 2
There was no grace to begin with.
Only falling.
I started out above the off-license, you know? Only in my case it’s above an abandoned movie theatre, after dropping out of university and dropping out of every job I’ve ever had and dropping out of humanity. The last time I went outside was a Tuesday, but I couldn’t tell you which Tuesday it was. It could have been the last one in June.
It might have been the first one of five years ago.
Really, I’m the last person you should come to for advice on how to be a person. But if it’s any consolation at all, you seem to be doing pretty good to me. You didn’t have to tell me that story, but you did. And you don’t have to be so honest about everything, but you are. They seem like solid places to start, if you’re trying to rebuild yourself into the kind of person you want to be.
I have faith in you, Smith. Even though I’ve only known you for five minutes, I have faith.
Doesn’t that tell you something?
12.20pm
So we’re both trapped, huh?
Me by circumstances and obligation. You by … what, exactly? Something in your head? Or your past? Help me understand. What on earth could have made someone with so much to share decide to keep it all locked up?
Was it even a choice at all?
Go ahead, stranger. Break my heart. Show me I’m still capable of feeling something so tender.
12.32pm
I guess so, but I don’t know if I ever thought of myself as trapped until right now. It’s safe here. It’s comfortable. I don’t have to make any choices or decide anything in particular. The hardest part of my day is picking what to watch, what to eat, whether to get up off the couch.
I’ve rubbed myself a smooth, soft rut in the fabric of my life.
Though I honestly don’t know why. If I did, I swear I would tell you. Nothing sounds so sweet to me as provoking tender feelings from someone who thinks he isn’t capable of feeling them. But if I tried, I know I’d probably slip into lies.
Make up something juicy for you, like, “it was on the day my family died.” Paint you a picture of a happy girl who lived a sunshine life, until storm cloud clichés came and stole it all away. I could describe the smell of blood with words like raw and heavy; tell you that a corpse turns the colour of spoiled food within moments.
And you would believe me.
It’s just that I don’t want you to.
Instead, tell me something sweet. Tell me something you like.
Tell me all your favourite things.
1.02pm
That’s all I’m getting out of you, huh? You’re a girl. Well, I’ll settle for that if you’ll tell me just one other thing about yourself…
What did you study before you dropped out of university?
As for my favorite things… Man, I’ve felt so little desire for anything other than sleep and whiskey these past few months, it’s like I almost don’t know. But for you, stranger, I’ll try.
I like being barefoot. On smooth hardwood planks or warm sand or dry grass or against cool sheets. I wear socks a lot here. It’s chilly and damp, and it makes my feet ache even though I’m thirty-four not seventy.
But maybe tonight after my obligations are met I’ll move my chair over by the window and take off my socks and prop my feet up on the sill, just above the radiator. That might feel good.
Maybe I need to be making more of an effort to feel nice things. Instead of just trying not to feel anything at all.
What else? I like pumpkin pie. My mom made really amazing pumpkin pie from scratch, on Thanksgiving and Christmas. I’d give anything to taste that again.
I like when a bar of soap is brand new and the logo pressed into it’s still crisp and you can see the seams along the sides.
I like dogs.
I like buying flowers for women.
I like music. A lot. Maybe more than anything.
I like the way my son’s hair smells.
There, I said it. You’re giving me crumbs, but here’s the whole fucking mouse-ridden bakery for you.
I have a kid, a little boy, two and a half. I found out about him a year back, met him five months ago when I moved here because his mom’s out of the picture now.
When he’s not afraid of me, he’s just … blank. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t look me or anyone except his grandmother in the eyes. He went through shit I might never know the details of, saw shit that’s turned him into this frightened, silent little ghost-boy. When he’s in blank-mode, I’ll sit next to him while we watch TV and put my arm around him, just wait for the points where our bodies touch to grow warm, so I know he’s real.
When he wakes up moaning in the middle of the night, I go to his bed and prop him up and hold him. The whiskey lets me do that. Hug him. I tell him he’s safe and I’m here, and I hope my voice comforts him, the way his moans nearly comfort me, because apart from those, he never makes a sound.
I play my guitar for him, sometimes. I play Blackbird and Country Roads and Pink Moon, and I don’t know if he hears.
I never wanted kids. Kids aren’t cool, especially ones as damaged as this little boy, and cool used to matter so much.
The counselor I met with when I came over said to give him time, he’s been through a lot. Let him know you’re here, that you care, that you’re not going anywhere. That you love him.
I don’t know if I do, though. Love him. I want to, but how do you love someone you don’t know? I have no idea what his thoughts are, because he won’t talk. I have no idea if he likes my cooking, or my singing, or a toy I buy him, or if he even knows I’m his father or what that means, or trusts that I won’t hurt him. He’s like a wounded animal—no language, only reaction and fear.
But he’s beautiful, and, yes, I like the smell of his hair at the end of the day. Even I can’t find two similes to mash together to describe it. I can’t say what it smells like, but it feels like coming home, somehow. Like familiarity or recognition. I knew he must be mine before the blood test results even came back, because of that smell and how exactly right it is.
He’s watching TV now. I let him do that a lot, and play on my iPad, even though it can’t be good for him. But it hurts too much, taking him to the park, seeing him stare fearfully at the slide and swings and pigeons like they’re snarling dogs. Screens calm him, and I’m so helpless at this shit. And so fucking tired.
Okay, stranger, that was a lot. That was half of everything, so do right by me, here.
Don’t tell me I’m doing great or to hang in there or that these things take time. Just tell me about you. Something real. Something solid I can dig my fingers into.
2.50pm
I can do that: I studied English Literature. Went into it expecting to meet all the friends they say you will and go to all the parties I had always missed in high school. But the friends never materialised, and I kept missing all the parties. Some because I wasn’t invited. Others because I just didn’t really want to go. I finally left when I realised I was only doing what I would have done anyway: devouring books and movies by the boatload.
So I understand about the nice things. I wanted them too, and I failed at getting them.
Or at least, it feels like I failed.
Sometimes I get so much joy and pleasure out of a meal or watching a movie or reading a book in the bath that I don’t really know if I won or lost. I don’t know if it’s okay to live your life like this—through other people and places that don’t actually exist. It makes me think I’ll look back and wonder why I wasted all this time.
Why I didn’t go barefoot while I still could.
But maybe that’s silly to think, if my attempts always come to nothing?
It’s hard to keep trying when it always turns out wrong. I mean, I’m utterly addicted to talking to you. Yet part of me hesitates before I pick up the phone or press send on a certain message. More and more I find myself deleting particular lines, in case those are the ones that will finally make you fall silent. Cutting myself off before you can do it for me.
I think it’s why I’m not sharing as much as you might like.
Because it’s easier.
It’s easier to hear about you than tell you about me.
I could read about your little boy all day—it gave me a jolt of surprise and something else, something tender, just to see those words. To see you being so honest about your feelings towards him. Everyone always makes it seem terrible, to doubt whether you love a child. But love isn’t something that can simply bend around all barriers. It isn’t a coat you can wear for all occasions.
It’s messy and elusive and strange. It runs when you think it should be there and comes when you least expect it to call. Sometimes it hits you in a rush; other times it creeps up like a thief in the night. Lies waiting for that moment when you need it most.
Or at least, I hope so.
Don’t you?
6.46pm
Are you there, stranger?
The sun’s setting, and I still have my socks on. The boy should be going to bed soon, though, and after that I promise my bare feet will be propped above the radiator.
Maybe I’ll read a book tonight instead of watching TV. It’s been a long time since I heard that sound—the dry hush of pages turning in a quiet room. I’ve been avoiding the quiet. The boy gives me too much of it. Probably half of why hearing your pings coming through feels so damn nourishing.
You said, “More and more I find myself deleting particular lines, in case those are the ones that will finally make you fall silent.”
It’s funny, because after I sent my last messages, I told myself, if she pussies out and turns this back on me, I’m gonna be a dick. I was frustrated by some shit this afternoon, nothing to do with you. You’re the one good thing right now. But I thought, if she holds back, I’m gonna say to her, tell me something goddamn real about yourself or I’m out.
That’s unfair.
It’s true, but it’s not fair.
Because you didn’t sign up for this. I was thinking before, this is so random. This is like accidental Chat Roulette. Was Chat Roulette a thing in the UK?
Basically the idea behind it was that you went on this video-chat app and you got linked up with some other user, totally random. In theory it was a beautiful thing, like some great-grandma from Corsica gets connected with a disaffected skateboarder from New Jersey, and everyone discovers they’re not so different after all. Kumbaya.
But like all great things, dudes ruined it by waving their dicks around. I heard that like 99% of the time you’d wind up with a screen full of some rando jacking it.
Anyhow, I was thinking you and me, we’re like Chat Roulette in the wild. But when I think harder about it, we’re not. Because you didn’t ask for this. You didn’t sign up and hit Connect or Chat or whatever the fuck the button’s labeled. I barged in like a drunk stumbling into your living room, and you were nice enough to rub my back while I puked in your flowerpots.
So yeah, that wasn’t fair, my thinking you owe me a goddamn thing. You’ve offered up more than anybody could be expected to.
But that doesn’t change how it felt, getting to hear about you. You didn’t give me much, but I sucked it down like the whiskey I’m telling myself I won’t drink tonight after the boy goes to bed.
Tell me a little more. Please. Tell me what you’d eat, if you could eat anything, and what you’d watch while you savored every bite. What you’d read in the tub afterward. What you’ll think about while you lie in bed or on the couch or the roof or wherever it is you don’t sleep at three in the morning.
(And so you know, it’s never too late to go barefoot. Even if you die tomorrow, there’s always tonight.)
As for me, I’m eating rice, all cheesy with broccoli. The boy seems to like it.
Normally he eats exactly three bites of whatever I put in front of him and that’s it, he just quietly sets his fork down and stares at the rest while it congeals until I take it away. He’s real skinny, with a big head full of the same blond curls I had when I was his age, before my hair turned brown.
His grandma—his mom’s mom—told me he’ll only eat these salty-as-fuck microwave noodle packets, and she gave me like twenty of them, but fuck that. I can’t do much for this kid, but I can at least try to get some real food into him.
Anyhow, I made us brown rice with cheddar cheese and butter and broccoli, and he’s still eating it, a fork in one hand and the other swiping at the iPad. It sounds like nothing, but I feel like Rocky standing at the top of those steps.
Fuck, I’m so tired. Tell me more if you’re ready, stranger. Don’t delete a thing. Don’t censor yourself.
Show me all your soft, bruised, homely parts, because that’s all I’m made of anymore. That’s all I’ve got, and frankly that’s all I want to see. I spent thirty-four years only caring about facades, and shock of shocks, it left me hollow.
So fill me up.
5
Tuesday
6.33am
I thought about your last words way too much. In fact, I spent so long thinking how to reply that I fell asleep at an odd time, and woke up at an even odder time, and now six in the morning feels like one in the afternoon.
Though at least I now know how I feel about your words. Truth is, I kind of want you to be a dick about it. It’s a novelty to have someone be a dick about me not giving enough, rather than a dick because I’m giving too much. The conversations I do remember from college were all me boring people to death, then falling silent over a hint of disinterest. I would listen to stories about other people’s lives for hours, just to avoid seeming selfish or like I was monopolising things.
So you’ll see a lot of me trying not to be a monopoly.
Trying not to take up too much space, or semi-apologising for spilling my guts.
But when you get specific about what you want, I can do it. I can tell you what I’m eating right now, as I peck this message out to you in bits and bats: a probably-terrible-for-me ready meal of lamb discs and carrot batons, swimming in a watery gravy.
It tastes about half as good as brown rice and broccoli sounds, but somewhere along the way to where I am now I forgot how to cook. Or maybe I never really learned? As a teenager I subsisted on floury cheese sauce made in the microwave, over pasta that I always managed to boil to death. University was a mess of those death noodles you mentioned, with the occasional slice of toast in between.
Though sometimes I do entertain ideas of more. Of fancy restaurants or hearty home-cooked meals; salads with dressings and sauces made from scratch. Pies with real crusts, gleaming and crisp. Cakes with sweet icing swirls and meat so tender it dissolves in the mouth…
Yeah, I dream about amazing food more than I actually eat it.
As for the book, and the bath:
Little Children, by Tom Perrotta.
And it was so good, I read until the water was flat cold. It had the glossy, enthralling sheen to it that American sadness often seems to have—as opposed to British sadness, which is always so droopy by comparison. We set a cow on fire in a field and go in lifts that stink of piss. Everything is damp and dark and just misses okay by a pathetic margin.
Affairs are conducted in gloomy silence at the seaside.
Thunder never rolls in the distance. There are never any haunting train sounds or bright blue pools or laundry rooms. Nobody finds any poetry.
Not even in our books.
The one I’m starting tonight is already grim and waterlogged. There’s masturbation in it, but the masturbation is a terse, depressing, single-sentence affair. Like any further reflection on it would bring the tone of the book down, or give proceedings a slightly exciting air.
Nothing can be slightly exciting here.
Not even my messages to you, apparently, because now I’m fighting with myself again about whether I should have sent those last few lines. I’ve said a sexual word in front of you, in the middle of our texts about broccoli and being drunk and suffering through depression.
Though I suppose you did say that thing about Chat Roulette, first.
Can I be forgiven for masturbation, when you featured flapping dicks before I did?
8.28am
I wouldn’t worry about scandalizing me with casual mentions of dreary literary masturbation. Sex has always been easy for me to talk about. It’s probably the one genuine thing about me. In my old life I was all about artifice and airs, except when it came to sex.
But you seem shy about it, so I won’t say much more than that. We’ve got kind of a pure thing going on here, and I promise I’m not secretly getting off on all this. Typing with one hand, as it were. It’s not like that. I’m a gentleman pervert.
Plus, to be honest, sex is pretty far from my mind these days. Eroticism’s in short supply around here, what with the catatonic toddler and my impending alcoholism.
Anyhow, I was thinking. Let’s play a game, stranger. Truth or Dare, minus the dare part. We get to ask each other questions, and the other person has to answer them completely truthfully. We each get one pass. Deal?
Here’s one for you: How long has it been since you left your apartment, really? I know you know. How could you not?
9.52am
Is it okay to admit that I liked you calling yourself a gentleman pervert?
Or tell you that I’m not that shy?
I just need to know where the line is, in case I’m the one being ungentlemanly.
And I like the idea of truth or dare. It’s good and specific. It makes me feel like I’m not really answering at all, while answering pretty dreaded questions. I mean, I don’t even think I’ve told myself when I really last left, never mind you.
It took me an hour to work out when it actually was. An hour of pretending I had to clean the bathroom instead of coming up with the number right now. I polished the mirror over the medicine cabinet and scrubbed the bath to a high gloss before I finally gave in and counted.
