LimpLikeHopelessness

[jonnycorrigan]

LimpLikeHopelessness

I love acid.

Or at least I used to. It was several years ago when my hair was long and fuzzy and strung over my eyebrows like strands of carpet. I would go to school every day looking like this, dressing the same way I do now except I was much skinnier at about 130 pounds and my clothes sort of hung off me the way that curtains hang off a rod. I wore girls jeans, usually from girlfriends and ex-girlfriends. I stole them because I really didn’t have the money to buy my own pants from those stores at the mall like all the other preppy kids, and for some reason they all hated me for that. Whenever I saw other kids walk past me in the hallway wearing Nike sneakers or Polo shirts I knew that I just made an enemy. Kinda sucked… but that’s the way high school was. It was a hierarchy (for you kids in history class who actually pay attention), and I was at the very bottom, drowning against the rocks.

And when I went to school I didn’t really have any friends. I would always look around for kids like me but they didn’t really exist. I was the only one. I mean, if I could have met someone, just one kid who was into shoegaze I might’ve been alright. I was just kind of a lone wolf and I’ve kind of grown used to it being that way, you know?

The only glimpse of popularity I ever really had in high school was when I skipped out on class and walked alone in the hallways. I would walk by random people that I didn’t know and I could tell by the way that they stared at some blank spot on the ground that they didn’t want to say hello or even look at me. But I think a lot of the time they felt my eyes looking at them, observing them, why? Because I was interested in them, and I wanted to know if they’d be interested in me, but all I got was one of those uncomfortable, impartial smiles. Do you know what I mean? When you pass a stranger and they sneak a glance at you but then they look away, and they give you that look… that look that kind of says “Hello” and “Leave me alone” all at the same time. Like this:

I got those a lot. But whenever I got them it always made me laugh or it made me feel a little warm inside because at least it wasn’t a frown or a diabolical scowl. It was just me and for once it didn’t anger them and they didn’t care and that was nice.

And then there was that one time I went to this party. And there were a lot of kids that I didn’t know there, and a lot of them were smoking pot or were drinking beer, I remember. And I had a girlfriend at the time. Her name was Abbigail (yes, with two b’s). She was there, and when I got there she was sitting on the couch with her legs crossed, and she was just about to take a bong hit when she turned her head and saw me. She forgot about the bong, she just forced it and the lighter into the hands of the next person and she ran over to me and gave me a big hug. You know, the kind of hug that makes you grunt because it gets forced out of you like a burp or a piece of steak stuck in your throat. She was very warm and she had a very distinct smell that permeated her clothing and her skin and I liked that smell. It smelled a lot like her house so it wasn’t that obvious, angels-singing-from-a-mountain aroma, but just one that told me she was there. And that made me feel good.

“Hi Jonny.” She said as she embraced me, and then she kissed me on the lips, but not passionately… it was more like a peck. She had my hand wrapped tightly in hers, and she pulled me over to the couch and cleared space with her eyes and then we sat down and she entangled herself with my arm, and then her face lit up and it made me feel good because normally people don’t feel very happy when they’re around me.

The music that filled the playlist wasn’t one to my liking although I have very fucking picky music tastes. There was a lot of Beastie Boys and Metallica and things of that nature and none of the music was good but I learned to tolerate it. I didn’t really say anything significant at this moment because I didn’t have anything to say, really. Whenever I feel good I don’t really like to talk, I just like to keep it inside me and let it sit there because I feel like if I speak it will leave me and then I won’t feel good anymore. Contrarily, I like to talk when I feel like shit, because it needs to come out and I don’t like to sit there feeling bad because it’s torturous and I would rather have someone dig a knife under my fingernail then be depressed for any extended period of time.

And as the party carried on people continued to get more drunk and people continued to get more high, and I felt nice because I had around six hits of the bong and when I looked at Abbigail I just wanted to fuck her. And every few minutes some dude would come up to us and look at her and ask some ridiculous question like if she wanted to dance and she would always say no and I liked this because it reminded me that she wasn’t a complete whore and for once in my life I had someone who really liked me and… you know… was loyal to me, and stuff. And after they walked away she would look up at me with her beautiful green eyes shaded by her bleach-blond hair and her soft pale skin and she would laugh, and then I would laugh. It was so fucking disgusting how lustful we were but I really didn’t care because I wasn’t any of those bystanders who had to watch us be disgusting. She was mine, all mine.

And amidst all of this, the large crowd of humanity, the poisoning of bodies with alcohol, the endorphins flowing, the terrible music, the cheap cotton couches, the voices, the laughter, the smiles, the slurred words, I heard someone shout in our direction, and then Abbigail leaned over and talked to someone two seats over and I couldn’t hear what the other girl said but I knew it was a question because there was an upward-inflecting tone at the end of her voice. And then Abbigail paused.

Her eyes slowly ballroom danced across the room and then they landed on me… and she stared at me with her eyes wide and in them I could see her heart pounding at a million miles a minute. Her lips were bent upward, though, so the way her mouth and eyes looked were entirely contradictory from one another. And then she leaned into me and put her soft lips to my ear so that I could feel her lips against my skin and she whispered.

“Want to do meth?” She said this with a quiver in her voice and it went into my ear but unlike other things it didn’t come out the other side and drift way into disintegration. Instead, it nested in my ear and sat there, lodged into my brain and ate away at it like an insect. I looked away from her and stared across the room because in an instant this amazing dream-like moment had turned into a nightmare.

My eyes darted everywhere, looked at every person scattered about the room and they all looked so ugly now because of the feeling I had sinking in my stomach. I just wanted to turn to her and tell her that I didn’t want to do that because it’s disgusting, and she knows how I feel about it. But that would only be if it was anybody else, but I fucking loved this girl. She was what I got my lazy ass up for every morning, because despite the demons I had and the intolerable life that I somehow existed through every day, seeing her just for a few seconds in any given day would tape a smile across my face, and everything that I am so pessimistic about would momentarily be given a new optimistic perspective, and that was something I never felt before, so I assumed that I was in love.

So to hear her ask me that question… it made me want to throw up. I didn’t care where. I didn’t care who saw. Because I couldn’t help it. And so I leaned forward and I blew chunks all over the carpet below. Immediately the stench rose off the floor and circulated around the room and all the attention of the room locked itself on me like crosshairs, and I felt vulnerable, like a wounded animal amidst a thousand lions. And then I heard them all uproar in laughter and ewwing sounds, and all the blood in my body rose to my head because I was the center of attention in a moment where I would have preferred to be dead. I just thought fuck, fuck, fuck, over and over again and that single word wouldn’t stop repeating itself in my head. And I got up off the couch, but I was really light-headed now so I stumbled down to the ground and my hand scraped a smear of puke off the carpet. But then I looked at Abbigail, completely out of it, distraught, flustered, humiliated, and I fucking hated her for this, because it felt as though it was all her fault, and it was! It fucking was! And there was no way she could deny it! And in all my utter diabolical rage, my eyes staring her down like a bull with its tail cut off, my fists clenched and my lips being chewed into a bloody mess, I screamed at her like I never thought I would.

“WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU ASK ME THAT?!” I bellowed. I could feel the tears building at the bottom of my eyes. I could hear my voice beginning to crumble like when you’re about to weep. And Abbigail… I could see her body retract from me, and I had a feeling that it wouldn’t be coming back for me again. Everyone in the room was laughing hysterically except for me and her because her eyes were wide with fear and she was practically curled into a ball as if I had a revving chainsaw, and I was so angry because of how ignorant she was. Everything that she had ever said to me to make me fall in love with her had been sucked away by those four fucking words. The anger blew up inside me and it became unbearable and it just had to come out. It had to. “YOU KNOW I DON’T DO THAT, ABBY,” I got closer to her and I jabbed my finger in her face, and I heard her voice tremble under her breath, “YOU FUCKING KNOW THAT, YOU…” And I stood there for a second, my clumsy eyes stumbling across the floor. And then I found a suitable word, and I threw it at her as hard as I could, “CUNT!”

And then I didn’t yell or look at her anymore. I just left. I walked as fast as I could, and I ripped the door open and it creaked against the molded wood, and I ran out of there. I couldn’t stand to hear them jeer and titter at me, and I thought that leaving would make it all go away. I thought that I wouldn’t have to hear them after they were out of ear’s reach, but I could still hear them. They all crowded together in my head and taunted me and kicked my eardrum and called me names, and when I got a couple of blocks away I couldn’t take it anymore so I got onto the ground and rolled up in a ball and then I groaned like when I have a stomach ache and I wish with every bit of me that it would go away.

There was no one around anymore. I was cold because I didn’t bring a jacket on this winter night, and I could still hear all the voices, and the outside of my ears burned because I knew they were still talking to me at that party. I could feel bundles of tears rolling out of my eyes and making my face wet, and the pain sat in my stomach so hard that it made me cry harder because it wouldn’t come up. I hit my head against the sidewalk, over and over again and I didn’t have any motive for this because I was just very angry and sad all at the same time and I had this feeling like I could’ve somehow avoided this but I was too useless to have done that.

And then I thought about Abbigail, how happy she used to make me. How great it felt to be with someone like her, who didn’t have any imperfections. She was everything I wanted, and she was the first person I had ever really met who didn’t ignore me or laugh at me or mock me. And then I had an epiphytic moment. It wasn’t that I was mad at her, it was that I didn’t know I could be. I had this unconscious perception that she was everything angelic and perfect and beautiful and when I heard her say something I didn’t like, all of those hopes I had built up imploded down upon me.

And now here I was under the rubble and debris. But I couldn’t stay there. I had to get up. I had to go back. I couldn’t leave her the way I did, and so I pushed myself up and I ran back to the house where I once was. I got there and tore the door open like a ribcage, and I ran inside trying to shield myself from all the glares but to my surprise, no one was looking at me. The room was crowded as it was before but the crowd was bundled around one spot in the room. And there was panic electrifying the air. People were pulling their hair up so hard that their eyebrows looked as though they might have ripped off their faces. And I needed to know what was going on, so I pushed myself through the crowd, brushing by the bodies limp like hopelessness and when I got to the center I saw something that hit me like a baseball bat.

Abbigail… lying there on the ground… and she wasn’t moving. Saliva and some dark-colored liquid poured out of her mouth in chunks… and the people around her… they were trying to get her to come out of it. Snapping their fingers at her. Slapping her in the face. As if she was just sleeping or something, but I knew what had happened because I’ve seen it. And I ran up to her and I shoved people out of the way with more tears streaming down my face.

“FUCKING MOVE!” I shouted, and for once they listened to me. They backed away, crawled away in a panic. And I looked down at her, held her head in my hands, and I could feel blood leaking out of her mouth and dripping down the skin on my arm. Her eyes were very cloudy and blank like how a blind person looks. And I began to shake, and I didn’t know what to do, so I just hugged her. I collapsed down and hugged her, and I could smell the wretched odor of meth-amphetamines flowing off her body like how gas comes out of an exhaust pipe. I could hear her pulse thump against her skin, but it became slow… it thumped… it whimpered… and then it stopped. And the whole room centered around us, but no one said anything. They just stared at us. And I cried endlessly, long after I was pried off of her.