The Days Before the World Ends
Saturday…
The lower half of his body is just a bulk beneath my sheets, and a few moles on his back disrupt the smooth whiteness of his naked skin. His face is away from me as he sleeps on his stomach. His long brown curly hair is streaked red. Some of it covers his right shoulder; some of it falls on my bed-nearly touching my foot. Complete filth! I watch his breath. Watch his back rise then deflate in a slow rhythmic pattern. Watch his fingers twitch from a dream. Watch my cigarette move to my lips and then away. Then watch the grey exhaled smoke swirl against his flesh and caress the sides of his very pale body.
I wish he would leave.
I change positions from sitting cross-legged on my pillow and lay on my back, my feet at his head, my head at his feet. He should sense my impatience. He should know that when you screw someone in a drunken horny blur that it’s common courtesy to be up and out of bed by seven. At least by eight. He should not leave me shackled to my sheets waiting for him to wake up; he should not leave me wasting away in my bed. Just pure inconsiderate.
I try to look past the cottage cheese ceiling hopping some hidden three-dimensional image will appear, while I suck down more of my cigarette.
And what are these chest pains? Maybe a heart attack?
He said my heart was strong. Said he found no irregularities.
Should I trust him?
Maybe a second opinion?
I guess I’ll just wait ‘till Monday for the blood results-play it from there.
Monday… Monday-that’s two days… two days; forty-eight hours; and yes, two-thousand-eight-hundred-and-eighty minutes.
What if I die before then? I’m wasting those minutes. What if he never wakes up and the last moments of my life are spent watching some guy breathe; spent counting the moles down his spine, and watching the back of his stupid head? This rash panic moves me.
I sit straight up and jab out the remaining unsmoked half of my cigarette, then grab my alarm clock and set it to go off in one minute. When it sounds he turns on his back showing me his flat chest and small nipples. He groans as he pulls the covers up over his head. I allow the alarm to continue to go off.
Time to get up… time to leave. He does nothing.
I have a shortened life to live here.
Time to get up… time to leave.
He seems unmoved by my attempt so I stuff the alarm right under the covers, right up next to his head-his big pudgy melon head. He mumbles something about turning it off in a tired voice.
“Would you get up, it’s nine thirty,” I say hopping he hears the annoyance in my voice.
“We didn’t get to bed ‘till after four, you asshole,” he says as he pulls the covers down revealing his face. I turn the alarm off. He’s been getting too comfortable here and I feel the urge to explain to him that he will not be setting up shop here; he will not be making himself, in any way, at home; there’ll be no Martha-god-damn-Stewart shit taking place-just a friendly fuck! No toothbrush in the medicine cabinet!
Holly smokes!
He takes his hand and brushes his hair off his face. He gives a smile that is all lips as he stretches his arms above his head.
“What was your name?” I ask knowing damn well that his name is Charles… Charles-what kind of name is that for a young man? My parents have friends name Charles.
“Don’t give me that shit,” he says.
“What? I don’t know your name. You mean nothing to me,” I say as I reach for another cigarette and light it. Best to let him know where he stands. He sits up in bed and spins his feet to the floor. “I don’t know why you keep showing up in my bed,” I say almost to myself.
“One of these days you’re gonna realize what a prick you are, you know that,” he says as he clasps his watch on his arm. I say nothing. Just smoke my cigarette and exhale as loud as possible. I watch him put on the shirt from the night before, and as he struggles his arms through the holes of his shirt he asks, “you goin’ out tonight?”
“I doubt it,” I say knowing that I probably will. What else would I possibly do? And besides I have the last moments of life to celebrate.
“Alright, well maybe I’ll see you there,” he says as he walks around the bed and kisses me on the lips. I don’t kiss him back, but I don’t pull away-I don’t know why. “Oh, yeah,” he says as he opens the door to my room, “you’re a fucking asshole.”
“Right, I’ll see you later,” I say, and wish I hadn’t.
I finish my cigarette in the solace of my room, then pull on some jeans and exit into the living room. My roommate is up and watching college football. He’s already gotta beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Real big kid-dumpy like that Osborne boy. His name is Robert E. Lee-his grandfather was the president, or ringleader, or something of the Ku Klux Klan. He hates his name and is afraid he’ll be accused of being racist-even though he is. He grew up buried in that shit and now he says it didn’t affect him? Donkey shit. You can’t just erase five generations of slave owning, lynching, and cross burning from your ideology just because it’s no longer politically correct to be racists. Anyway, we get along. We call him The General. He seems to like that.
“Charles again huh,” he says his mouth at the opening of his bottle. His hair has gotten curly since he’s been growing it out-an attempt to distance himself form the skinhead looking bastard that he had been.
“Yeah well…” I trail off and make my way to the fridge to join The General in a beer.
“Last one,” he says from the couch. I open the fridge in disbelief, but it is empty except for a few random condiments, a half-gallon of milk, and three hard-boiled eggs. I take one of the eggs and throw it at him, aiming for his head. It misses high and thuds against the wall and falls into his lap. This startles him and I laugh as he turns and throws the egg back at me. I duck beneath the hurled egg and hear it crack into the freezer door. Holly smokes! The General is laughing now too.
“Jackass,” he says watching me from the corner of his eye to make sure I don’t strike again. My laughter makes my chest cramp up and I straighten myself in an attempt to relieve the pain. I realize that I have always taken the functioning of my body for granted but now I feel like it is a fragile system that may just shut down at any moment-my heart could just decide to stop and collapse me to the floor. I take a deep breath and stretch my back from side to side. God I’m only twenty-seven.
“Let’s do something today?” I say, still stretching.
“What?”
“I don’t know. Something that’ll leave a mark.”
…
By three o’clock we’re both five beers deep and laying on the roof with The Generals paintball gun-he’s tracking a cat that is currently held up in the bushes. I hide from the sun beneath my wide brimmed hat-a beautiful day for a final stand. From this vantage point, two stories up, we have a wide array of target areas, as we duck behind the three foot wall that perimeters the flat graveled roof. There is the park with its afternoon visitors; the Shell station, which has a sign that at night reads “S_ell”; the busy street that connects this location to downtown; and just bellow us, where we are focused now, a small gardened area and the parking lot of our apartments.
“Here kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty,” The General says trying to coax the cat out for another shot at it. The first balls of paint that were shot splattered into the felines right front paw, blasting its black fur a florescent orange. It jumped three feet into the air then bailed into these bushes where it’s probably been shitin’ itself for the last five minutes.
The General fires a few shots into the bush hopping to scare the pussy out. “Come on you stupid cat,” he almost whispers and fires a couple more. The paint balls whistle into the bush, tearing leaves on their way to eventual explosion. One must have come close because the cat is on the run again, and The General has a steady stream of paint chasing right behind him. Then splat, right in the torso of the beast. The cat rolls from the impact and is up again, and runs beneath a car.
“Take that you black little rat,” The General says and hands me the gun.
I take hold of it and for the first time I feel the stream of alcohol pouring through my veins-that initial onset of drunkenness when it feels like I can drink for a month straight; when it feels like time will never end-that I will last forever.
Just keep drinking.
I load the gun with more balls and choose a target. A man at the gas station is putting air into the lone tire of his unicycle. He wears a tee shirt and a plaid sports jacket. Seems like a likely chump. I take aim, focusing on the left breast pocket. What kind of fashion statement is this guy trying to make? I steady the gun and hold my breath then pull the trigger-a direct hit. He clutches his chest in terror, unsure of what is happening and drops to the ground; his unicycle falls beside him. He squirms and whimpers for a little bit before he comes to the realization of the situation-he’s not dieing… at least not right now.
“For a vegetarian Rents you’re an evil shot,” The General says in a Scottish accent quoting a line from the film Trainspotting. We go to all fours behind the wall and laugh at our immaturity. What kind of grown men get pleasure from taking pot shots at defenseless creatures-especially creatures with unicycles? The poor man. I laugh so hard at the image of him falling to the ground that I start to drool and lose my breath-
and then those chest pains again,
what the hell.
Holly smokes.
I go down to my elbows and take some deep breaths ‘till I’m back inside my head, and not inside the pain of my body. The General goes up for a peek then drops back down.
“Oh shit he’s got a cop.”
“How does he have a cop already?”
“Just driving by or in the gas station? I don’t’ know.”
“Donkey shit,” I say and take my chances looking over the wall. Sure enough though we’re mucked! The unicyclist has his jacket off and is explaining something to the cop. He then points toward our apartment building and policeman looks to the roof-right at me…I think.
“Damn it, damn it, damn it.”
“What?” The General asks, his eyes wide with panic.
“We gotta get off the roof. Off the roof I think he saw us.”
“Us! Shit he saw you, you clumsy shit.” We crawl to where we had climbed up toward the back of the building. We’re out of view from the gas station and I hitch one leg over the wall, then the other. I ease my body down so that I hang on the outside of the building, then let go and drop the five or six feet to the balcony attached to The General’s room. The General is not so athletically inclined and tries to maneuver himself down onto the four by four we had leaned from the balcony railing against the outside wall of the apartments to get ourselves up. His shirt gets caught on the top of the wall as he searches for a foothold with his right foot. His left leg is left awkwardly straddling the top of the wall and his soft curdled belly is exposed.
“Hurry up,” I say, impatient from adrenaline. He finally gets one foot on the four by four then seems to lose his grip. His shirt rips and he falls hard onto the balcony deck. This knocks the wind out of him, and he lies there moaning on his back. “Get up, get inside.” He pulls himself inside of his room and then starts to breathe again. I close the sliding glass door. “Put this shirt on we gotta get out of here before that cop goes knocking on all these doors.” I throw him a white shirt that was probably slept in last night-it’s dingy and has yellow pit stains. It’s the only thing that’s out. He usually has a whole slew of dirty clothes that are cleaner than this thing, lying about his room, but not now...
Not when we need a quick escape.
He’ll have to make due.
The General stands up and tears the shirt he’s wearing the rest of the way off and finds his way into the new filthy one. He still seems a little dazed from his fall so I do all the thinking. I take his keys from the bedside table and we’re out and in his Geo and driving out of the parking lot. I head in the opposite direction of the gas station and aim for downtown. Might as well have a couple of pints and a little dinner.
We end up meeting up with Seth The Stick, Johnnie Walker, and Just Craig at the dive bar The Jade. We have beer, then more beer…
Before long the sun is down…we switch to cocktails…
…more drinks, a gin and tonic, another… more, more…
long island, again, again…
…strong island… islands, Charles, land is… strong land, more, again, Charles…
…
Sunday…
Yes, he is in my bed again and it is nearly ten. I don’t mind as much this time though