Just Another Man

Just Another Man

            I can remember the first time it happened.

            It was the summer between my seventh and eighth grade years in junior high. Since it was the summer, I was cutting the grass for my parents. My dad has always been big on me being productive at all times of the year. His constant fear of me falling away, becoming lazy and pathetic has always been prevalent on his face. So, starting in the sixth grade, he decided it was time for me to obtain my first summer job-- cutting the grass.

            With sweat dripping down my face in pools, I pushed the mower ahead of me. My hands were beginning to become red and raw from pushing the unwieldy mower for the past hour as they always did each week. My mind was moving from thought to thought, wandering aimlessly as I continued my meaningless manual labor. It was a year before I fell in love for the first time but that didn’t mean that girls were not fresh from my mind. No, I thought about Alex Barrazza and how I wanted to lose all my weight just so I could ask her out. In two years, I would ask her to the ninth grade graduation dance over the phone. She asked if I could call her back and spent the entire day crying over the thought of actually having to go to a dance with me. Finally, she called me back and rejected me in the softest way that she could. It hurt at the time but, in the end, it didn’t really matter much. I thought I was in love with her but I knew I wasn’t once I felt what that felt like for real.

            When my mind wasn’t on Alex and others like her, it rambled and switched from subject to subject. It was here that it first happened. I had just bought Nirvana’s watershed album Nevermind earlier that week. Back in the seventh and eighth grade, my musical taste was still being honed. I had to go through a lot of really bad music like Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit before discovering where I really stood on the musical spectrum of things. Nevermind was one of my first solid musical purchases. As I picked up the album in Bebop’s Record Store, little did I know how much it would change my life. Now, cutting the grass on a sweltering, summer day, the change started to take hold.

            In the haze of my mind, the beat and lyrics of the song “Lithium” began to form and take hold.

            “I’m so happy because today I found my friends-- they’re in my head.

            I’m so ugly but that’s okay because so are you-- we’ve broke our mirrors

            Sunday morning is everyday for all I care-- and I’m not scared

            Light my candles in a daze because I’ve found God.”

            Never before had I heard lyrics so strange and yet so powerful. As I strained to push the mower through my front yard, I found them repeating over and over in my head. I found myself singing them. By the time I finished mowing, I had gone through a couple of songs on the album that I had only listened to twice by this point.

            I didn’t know it yet but this was only the beginning of something much deeper. I didn’t know about the greenhouse. I didn’t know yet that I wanted to be in the room. I had thought I had just purchased a rock n’ roll CD. Little did I know that this was the beginning of my relationship with Kurt Cobain-- a man who had killed himself seven years before I had even heard his music.

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            It was years after my obsession with Nirvana and Cobain that I finally picked up Charles R. Cross’s incredibly detailed and personal biography Heavier than Heaven. The book had come out in the pinnacle of my obsession but, for some reason or another, I had chosen to not buy it. After reading it years later, I wish I had. It would have put me at peace at a time when I needed it more than ever.

            Cross starts his book out with a metaphorical and striking sequence. It gives a detailed description of Cobain overdosing on White China heroine in a trashed, repugnant hotel room while his wife Courtney Love tried to bring him back to life by pounding on his chest and splashing him with cold water. The irony of the situation is that Cobain did this on the very night that he truly achieved fame: he had just finished performing on Saturday Night Live, his album was at the top of the Billboard Record Charts and he had just been asked by Weird Al Yankovic if he would allow him to do a parody of  “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Despite all of this, Cobain lay facedown in a dirty pile of clothing with his skin an aqua green color and his lungs no longer expanding or contracting.

            When Love finally revived him, he coughed and began to smile. It was almost like he had been born again. In a room full of squalor, decay and drugs, he had been born ironically into the world of fame. By opening with this incident, Cross not only shows one of the many near death experiences that Cobain had before his eventual suicide but also shows how he was stuck on a path of self-destruction before fame even hit him.

            As irony would have it, I was on my own path of self-destruction until I heard Cobain’s music for the first time.

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            It was because of Kurt Cobain that I picked up my first guitar.

            It was a week before eighth grade had started and I was sitting in Lakeland Music, thumbing the sun-burnt colored acoustic in my hands. I didn’t know any chords or notes but still I was persistent on making it make some kind of noise. I sat in the small, shabby room in the back corner of the store for about five minutes doing this before Elliot walked in.

            Elliot was a big burly man with hair down past his shoulders. He had a wild black beard, wore a tie-dye t-shirt and torn jeans. He wore glasses that John Lennon himself would have fashioned back in the day. He looked like he was right out of the 1960’s and even had a beat down stoner van in parking lot to further that point.

            “Hey man, what’s happening? I’m Elliot,” he said, reaching down to shake my hand.

            He even talked and sounded like a hippie. Instantly, I was intrigued. However, I don’t think in the back of my head that I ever thought that this guy was going to become one of my closest friends over the next two years.

            It was during that thirty-minute lesson that I learned my first song. It was really simple and made up of the chords E, G, D and A. My fingers were still soft back then and the strings were incredibly painful to press down on. However, once I got through the initial aches, I managed to form the chords and, to my surprise, heard my music for the first time.

            It was unbelievably freeing.

            Over time, I got pretty good at the guitar and Elliot and I became pretty close. He would teach me any song that I wanted to learn. I would make mixed tapes, bring them to the lesson and we would listen to them. Afterwards, he would teach himself how to play all the songs by ear and then would teach them to me. The first Nirvana song I learned was “Come As You Are.” I was always bothered by the fact that, even though I knew the song note by note, I could never make my guitar make the exact sound that Cobain managed to make his produce. All I was doing was nothing but an imitation. As Elliot caught on to my fascination with Cobain and his music, he always attempted to give me words of wisdom. First, he always told me to never do drugs. He himself had a past with drugs and he told me that, looking back on it all, it just wasn’t worth it. He always ended with, “Never end up like Cobain.”

            I always told him to never worry about that but, to be honest, I guess there was some justification behind that worry.

            A lot of people tend to say that high school was terrible for them but, for me, it was junior high. I don’t think I’m very special in my experience there but, from what I can remember, it was pretty awful. I was painfully shy and, because of that, I was a target to any and all bullying. Because I was rather large back in those days in both weight and stature, most people seemed to be fixated on angering me to the point that I would become engaged in a fight. However, I wanted nothing to do with that and therefore the torment was unending. I was beat with sticks, pelted with ice, had chalk dust-filled easers chunked at me, was verbally abused in every way possible, had my pants yanked down and was humiliated in a variety of another manners.

            The experience was quite a culture shock. I had spent most of my elementary days happy and without much conflict. Now, suddenly, everyone was going through changes and they wanted to take all their frustrations out me because I was quiet and awkward. It was all so sudden and without warning. I was caught in a storm and there didn’t seem to be any way out of it.

            I was absolutely miserable and didn’t really have any outlet for release. I can remember going home everyday and my mother asking me if I had a good day. With a fake smile, I lied and told her I did. I never did though. I wasn’t happy. I was dying. And, for some reason or another, I couldn’t tell anyone why. I had no venue for release. I had no catharsis. I had nothing.

            That’s when Cobain and my guitar came in.

            Once I started listening to Nirvana, a lot of the pressure began to fall away. I’m not sure why this was. Perhaps it was the urgency of the music, the anger involved in making it and behind it, the understanding that Cobain seemed to have with human nature or maybe even something else. Honestly, I’m still not sure what it was. I just know that, for some reason or another, I connected to it. I felt something when I listened to it. I felt alive.

            When I began playing the guitar, the same thing would happen. Only this time it went even further. Now, not only was I playing the music that freed me, I was creating it. I would come into lessons with a smile on my chubby face and my right foot twitching with excitement. As Elliot came in and sat down, I would play him my latest song. He would sit, listen and then teach me how to make it better. He never put me down though. He understood what this meant to me and how important it was. It was my only outlet and release. I’d come home from a terrible day of school, do my homework and then play the guitar late into the night. I played the thing religiously, causing my finger tips to become as hard as rock. In between jam sessions, I’d sit down and listen to Nirvana, further completing my recovery after an arduous and painful day.

            Little did I know that my escape would soon turn into a strange and seemingly unquenchable obsession.

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            As Heavier than Heaven unfolds, Cross presents Cobain as painfully human. There were times where I could identify with him and there were others times when I was disgusted with his actions and unending amount of mistakes that he made. The man was simply a massive contradiction and flawed in every way possible. And he was doomed from the start.

            Although Cross presents Cobain’s childhood in Aberdeen, Washington, as mostly warm and typical, he shows how the future rock star’s world was completely shattered when his parents got a divorce when he was just nine years old. The divorce was a massive culture shock to the hyperactive and optimistic Cobain, turning his world upside down. He came to resent his strict and often cold father mostly for this and their relationship would be mostly nonexistent and strained from here on out. It was not until shortly before his suicide that Cobain phoned his father to make amends. The relationship with his mother was also fairly rocky as he got kicked out of her house more than once.

            Cross shows Cobain to be obsessed with the concept of suicide from an early age. In 1982, a few years after his parents’ divorce, he made a short film entitled Kurt Commits Bloody Suicide. In the film, a fifteen year old Cobain pretends to cut his wrists with a torn in half coke can complete with fake blood. He once joked to friends at school that he would become a superstar musician, kill himself and go out in a flame of glory. His great uncle, Burle Cobain, committed suicide when Kurt was just twelve. When he was in the eighth grade, Kurt discovered the body of a classmate who had killed himself hanging from a tree. He stared at the hanging body for thirty minutes before he was ushered away by adults. As Kurt said himself, suicide was basically in his genes.

            During his eighth grade year, along with finding the dead body of one of his classmates, Kurt began to use drugs in social situations. He also began to use them as an escape from the pain that was still hanging over from his parents’ sudden, bitter divorce. As time went on, Kurt continued to use drugs as an alternative to treat his very serious stomach problems. Cobain suffered from unending stomach pain and nausea throughout his life and could barely keep food down. Although he went to many doctors, the exact problem never was officially diagnosed. Cobain turned to heroine and very quickly became an addict as his pain got worse and worse.

            Although Cobain struggles with drug use and a fixation with suicide, he is also presented as very identifiable young man. Cobain was just someone trying to get through a troubled adolescence with the pain of a divorce hanging over his head constantly. Much like others and myself, he initially had a lot of trouble with women and had many misadventures in the process. His first sexual experience was a misfire as it was with the friend of a girl that he was actually in love with. After the awkward experience of losing his virginity, Kurt met the girl the next day with a flower in hand, thinking that they were a couple. She just laughed him off, right in front of the girl who he was in love with the entire time. Much like myself, Kurt escaped into music during his adolescent years. His aunt had introduced him to the world of music at a very young age and it had always stayed with him. In his teens, he began to take music more seriously, writing his own and playing his guitar for hours on end.

            Despite all of this, Cobain still remains a strange, contradictory figure that is nearly impossible to decode at times. In high school, he was a both jock and a cigarette-smoking and drug-using burnout. He rescued injured birds that he found on the sidewalk and then later killed a cat for no apparent reason. Although he was shy around women and seemed to have a lot of respect for them, he almost ended up forcing a mentally handicapped, female classmate to have sex with him (an incident that haunted him for the rest of his short life). He constantly struggled to balance his aspirations to be a punk rocker and a writer of pop songs. He dreamed about performing on Saturday Night Live for years, bragging to friends and family about how it would happen someday. When it finally did, he refused to take a limo to the event and did not attend the after party. He yearned for fame all his life, calling in to radio stations constantly to try to get them to play Nirvana’s early demos. When it finally hit, he acted like he never planned for it to come and made it out to be the worst thing that could have ever happened.

 He began to separate himself further from existence, creating his own version of things. He talked about how he had lived under a bridge after being kicked out of his mother’s house, dedicating the song “Something in the Way” to this myth. However, it was never true as the section under this bridge was often flooded and uninhabitable. At times, it feels as if Cobain were aware of his coming fate to the point that he almost planned it out himself. Other times, it feels as if he is just as blind as the rest of us to our own coming ends.

            Despite how deep Cross delves into the man, Cobain still manages to keep a wall up between himself and the rest of us. By reading the novel, I felt that I got a sense of who Kurt Cobain really was but not the entire picture. No, Kurt was just too secretive, manipulative and clever for that. Thinking about it now, I don’t believe he really let anyone completely in. But that’s the kicker-- no one really truly knows who this man was. Kurt Cobain, unwilling leader of the grunge movement and a whole generation of youth, was a complete mystery.

            And that was the thing. That’s why so many become obsessed. That’s why I wanted to be in the room.

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            My brain was sweltering and throbbing underneath my eyeballs. The New Orleans’ sun was beating down on me, causing the pressure that was forming in my skull only to get heavier than it already was. Everything felt as if it were moving faster than it should have been moving. The air didn’t feel the same. Everything was off. I was losing my mind.

            I was in New Orleans with my family for a vacation. It was the summer between my ninth and tenth grade years. By this time, Elliot was gone. He had been fired by Lakeland Music for missing too many of his guitar lessons. Apparently, he was so laid back in his lifestyle that it sometimes even affected his work. There were a few times when even I showed up, waiting around for thirty minutes only to find out that he wasn’t going to show up.

            Perhaps his life style wasn’t the only thing getting in the way. A few times after he missed lessons, Elliot told me in confidence that he was sorry but that he had family problems to deal with. Eventually, he told me that his long-time girlfriend was bi-polar and that she had been having breakdowns so bad that he had to take her to the hospital. This image was so surreal to me at the time that I don’t think it even registered. It was so strange to me to imagine laid-back Elliot dealing with someone with such a difficult disorder to live with. Imagining him gently loading her into his stoner van while whispering that it would all be okay as she spiraled out of control was all together bizarre, touching and devastating. Still, the matter was that, family problems or not, Elliot could not be relied upon as a businessman and therefore was given the boot.

He started giving lessons out of his dirty, cigarette smoke stained home but, considering it was forty minutes out of the way from my house, I only went to three lessons. I hate to admit it but the cigarette smoke was another factor in my departure. While Elliot wasn’t allowed to smoke while giving lessons at Lakeland Music, he could light up anytime he wanted in his home. My obsessive-compulsive nature was starting to kick in at this time in my life and the prospect of coming home after a lesson smelling like a chimney was not very appealing. I can even remember wiping down my guitar and Febreezing the strap for days after each lesson. It was ridiculous on my part but I have to admit that it was very much a deciding factor. I have to admit-- I really hate myself for it.

The last lesson was particularly painful because I knew it was the last one but I didn’t know how to tell him. I ended up playing him one of my new songs that I had actually written in honor of him. I never told him this. Then, it was over. I left his house, congratulating him on his recent engagement to his girlfriend who may or may not have been a factor in his firing. In passing, I told him I was thinking of taking the rest of the summer off. I never saw him again. I felt like shit for leaving him like that but it just had to be done. I started up taking lessons at Lakeland Music again from a new guy named David but it wasn’t the same anymore. I only stayed around for another month. Last I heard, Elliot had quit giving lessons and was working at Home Depot.

            I had never really liked New Orleans. I’ve always found the city incredibly filthy, hot and full of people that I honestly could do without meeting. Still, my family loved to go there whenever possible so I accompanied them on this trip to humor them. That and I really had no choice in the matter. Earlier that day, we had stopped by an antique record shop and I had seen something that I never thought I would see on my trip down: a guitar used and signed by Kurt Cobain. It could be mine for only $5,000.

            Obviously, I couldn’t buy the guitar but just seeing it set something off in my mind. I was close to something he had used and even signed. By being next to something so physical as his guitar, I began to realize that I really knew nothing about Cobain. I didn’t know exactly who he was or exactly how he died. Upon getting into Cobain and his music, I had stumbled upon the vast amount of conspiracy theories that pointed to his death as being a murder and not a suicide. After all, how could he pick up a shotgun if he had a fifth of heroine coursing through his veins (a deadly dosage)? These conspiracy theories pointed to many different culprits but most centered on Courtney Love, Cobain’s much-hated wife among fans due to her media whoring and overall greediness when it came to Kurt’s legacy.

            With a lack of understanding over Cobain’s life and even his death, I always felt like I was missing something myself. This was a man who had helped me get through some pretty hard times with his music and I knew absolutely nothing about what really made him tick. Not knowing him was maddening.

            After seeing the guitar, I roamed around New Orleans with my family, desperate to find anything related to Cobain. When we stopped at the Tower Records Store, I searched the CD aisles, hoping to find a rare bootleg Nirvana CD somewhere. I already owned all of their major release albums but I had learned that there were many bootlegs floating around record stores filled with unreleased demos and rare tracks. I figured that New Orleans would be the place to find such an item. However, that turned out to not be the case. I searched the Tower Records upside down but found nothing but Nirvana’s major releases. Frustrated, I left the store with my family.

            Following this fruitless visit to Tower Records, I walked with my family around New Orleans, my head throbbing. I must have looked ridiculous. My head was hung over and my hair was matted to my oily forehead. It was too long back then, forming a mushroom shape around my head. I held the skin of my forehead in a constant strain, never allowing it to relax. Perhaps this is the reason why I already have a giant crease over my forehead at the ripe age of twenty-one. I only answered my parents in little short sentences, never using the full force of my voice. I only grunted at them. In a way, I wanted them to know how miserable I was despite the fact that I didn’t exactly know why I felt that way. I told myself it was the way I was treated in junior high but that had mostly leveled-off by now. The truth was that I didn’t know what it was. Nothing really made sense anymore except for figuring out Kurt.

In a way, I had managed to gain Kurt’s physical stature and image. I was no longer overweight by this point. In fact, I was almost sickeningly skinny. It had just all fallen off of me without much effort. Still, Alex Barrazza wouldn’t go out with me. But that didn’t matter anymore. No, all that mattered was Kurt. I just wanted to know. I had to know. I wanted to know exactly who this man was. I wanted to know what made him up and everything he did. I wanted to know what lead to his downfall and why I was no longer able to buy new CDs from him. Most of all, I wanted to know how he died. I wanted to be in that greenhouse with him on that overcast Seattle morning. I wanted to sit in the corner of the room and watch it all unfold in front of me. Not knowing for sure was driving me insane. I just had to know what happened.

            I just wanted to know what happened to Kurt Cobain on April 5, 1994.

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            Reading the second to last chapter in Charles R. Cross’s biography many years later, I was finally put at peace.

            In this chapter, Cross does something that angered many Nirvana fans-- he fictionalizes Cobain’s suicide. Obviously, no one knows exactly what happened on that overcast morning in Seattle. Still, after studying police reports, Cross does his best to present his interpretation of what could have been Kurt Cobain’s final moments in this world. To many, it was offensive. To me, it was freeing and quite beautiful. He put me in the room.

            Cross presents the process as fairly peaceful and almost normal. He describes Cobain waking up early that morning in his bed, already fully dressed in jeans and a corduroy jacket since his house was rather cold. Cobain got out of bed, turning the TV on to MTV and putting R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People album in his CD player. He set the player’s volume to low so that the music only hummed in the background. It was this one detail that Cross added that killed me inside. It just felt so everyday and relaxing that it made what was going to occur in just a few minutes time much more painful. This becomes even more tragic when one learns that Cobain was set to do a musical project with R.E.M. lead singer Michael Stipe in the near future, as the two had become good friends over the years.

            After turning this music on, Cobain got back in his bed and began to write his suicide note by the light of MTV. Cross adds that it takes three cigarettes to draft this suicide note. It’s this little detail that makes the whole scenario seem more intimate and personal. He also states that Cobain has had the words to the note in his head for days, months and possibly years. Obviously, this is just his opinion but it is a notion that makes the whole scene much more fatalistic.

            Cobain began to collect the necessary tools for the act after finishing the suicide note. He grabbed a box of Mexican black tar heroine, a Remington shotgun, shells, two towels, the suicide note and a can of Barq’s root beer. After collecting these things, Cobain carefully and quietly opened his back door and went out across the patio. Cross manages to create a strange, comical image with this section. He tries to let the reader imagine Kurt waddling out across the patio while trying to balance all these items in his hands. It may seem out of place but it just makes the whole act and process of carrying it out so much more human.

            As Cobain arrives to the greenhouse in his backyard (which is above his garage), he begins to organize all the items. The two towels were not for Kurt but for who ever found him. Yes, they were there to help clean up the mess. That’s a point Cross keeps making in this chapter-- although Cobain was killing himself and possibly destroying the lives of all those who loved him in the process, he still wanted to make sure that the death wasn’t too bothersome. He killed himself in the greenhouse that was separate from the rest of the main house. He brought towels for cleanup. His blood and brains would be spread out over a linoleum floor, which would make it easier to clean up. He grouped all the items he brought to the room in a very specific and organized manner, making it easier to find everything. It was just a larger part of Cobain’s contradictory nature-- he wanted to make everything easier for everyone yet he was still destroying everything in the process.

            After organizing all the items, Cobain sat on the floor and took a sip of the Barq’s root beer. Again, just this everyday notion makes the event even more human. Cobain seems to try to attempt to make the whole thing seem ceremonial with his placement of all the items but just the image of him sitting on the floor sipping from the soda can seems to dissolve all of that. He’s just like all of us. He’s just a human being.

            Cobain put the can away and shot a heavy dosage of heroine into his veins. Instantly, he began to feel lightheaded and started to float. It was a lethal dosage. Cross portrays Cobain as fighting the wave of euphoria, fumbling with the shotgun and trying to get the barrel into his mouth as quickly as possible. As he does this, Cross talks about how, in one of his journal entries, Cobain described his first alleged memory. In this memory, Cobain describes being born, seeing the aqua-green floor of the hospital and instantly feeling unsafe outside of the comfortable womb of his mother. Cross has already used the imagery of the color aqua-green in the first section of biography as Cobain overdosed on heroine in a hotel room, his skin turning this shade. In a way, that near-death experience was a new birth for Cobain. Now, as he steadies the shotgun, Cobain begins to see aqua-green shades on all the objects around him in a heroine haze. Everything comes full circle. Birth, near-death, re-birth and, finally, suicide. Then, it was all over.

            But Cross doesn’t stop there. No, he describes the bloody mess that was left behind in the greenhouse by Cobain’s actions. He describes how Courtney Love came into the police scene, hysterical, managing to collect a piece of Kurt’s skull that still had hair matted to it. He describes the scene in the funeral home in which a broken-down Krist Novoselic, the bassist of Nirvana, and Love pay their last respects to Cobain. In a quick description, Cross says that Cobain’s eyes have been sewn shut by this point. This one detail is utterly devastating, turning Cobain from a talented musician that lead a musical revolution into a piece of meat on a slab. But that’s the point-- Cross shows how awful the act that Kurt committed was. It was terrible. It ended and destroyed everything. Cobain left this world, leaving a two-year-old daughter without a father, a wife without a husband, a band at the height of their success without a leader and thousands of fans without a voice. But he did leave us some towels to clean up the mess he made.

            Reading these last two chapters, I couldn’t help but feel somewhat empty inside and yet at peace at the same time. Cross managed to put what Cobain had done into perspective to me finally. Even though the scenario he imagined was not exactly how it went down, it was real enough to give me an impression of what it could have been like. Cobain wasn’t on the floor, crying his eyes out and acting out in an unbalanced manner. There was no gunman who came in while he was getting high to whack him. No, it was just him moving slowly and methodically. He had been planning this his entire life. I was angry with him and yet, in a way, I understood him. After all, what right did I have to be angry with the man? All he had done was create some music. I was the one who connected to it and found something that helped me get by. That wasn’t his fault. He was just creating. He never intended to a symbol for anything. He never meant to be spokesperson for a generation. He was just a human being. He wasn’t God or Jesus like so many Nirvana fans make him out to be. No, that wasn’t the case at all. He was just an incredibly flawed young man like many others and myself. He was not perfect. No one is.

            Still, I got to be in that room with him. I got to see who the man that had been helping me get along all this time really was. I got to see him. I got to see.

            He was just another man.

Helma Hooker

Helma Hooker

            Waves crashed around me causing a thin, white spray to jet into the air. My father and my brother had already moved out in front of the entire group, leaving us all struggling to keep up. Fraught and out of breath, I labored to move an inch forward with the massive scuba tank strapped to my back and weights bound about my waist. The fact that we were walking with these awkward fins on our feet was insane enough. Not tripping while walking with those things was just about impossible. If the water hadn’t been freezing or if I had not been shaking with fear already, I would have been sweating at this point.

            As we made our way from the beach, violent surges of water had attacked us from all angles. Stumbling from the impact of the waves, we found ourselves desperately trying to keep steady in order to avoid the many jagged rocks that made up the shoreline. After all, Bonaire didn’t have any sand. No, this island was made up of solid, toothed rock.

            I saw one of our group members fall to his side, clipping a rock on the way down. His yelp of pain was muffled under the regulator that was already in his mouth. Cautiously, his dive buddy moved over to help him up while also making sure that violent current and constant clashing of waves did not bring him down as well.

            This was the worst idea we had so far in the trip. We could have taken the boat to the site of the wreck and just flipped over the side of it like all the other dives. But no, we had to drive out to this jagged, dangerous beach, put on heavy, bulky equipment and walk through hell just so we could swim for another ten minutes to the wreck. After all, it just had to be a journey. It just had to be a big, grand adventure.

            My legs began to fell wobbly and unbalanced. I felt pain in my lungs as I struggled to keep up my breathing in the constant strain of lugging around the dive equipment and keeping my balance. The distorting sound of waves crashing and exploding against the rocks surrounded me, making everything feel even more off-kilter. The smell of the salt water was already beginning to make its way into my nostrils, giving my stomach a slight, queasy feeling.

            I’ve always hated the smell of the ocean. It’s always just smelled like death to me. And it should- after all, that’s what’s waiting for us down there.

            I look over to my left to see Lottie, hunched over due to the massive, faded yellow tank on her back. She was just as wobbly and awkward as I was, making her best effort to wind around the rocks surrounding us. For a moment, she looked over at me and made eye contact. All she could do was hold up her index finger and thumb in the form of a circle- the universal sign for “okay” in scuba diving. I lied and flashed her the same.

            As I looked ahead, my father and brother were beginning to sink into the ocean slowly, the beach dropping off. Suddenly, I felt my stomach drop as the reality of the situation hit me- I was really going to have to do this. The horror of the getting past the beach entry had managed to stall my mind temporarily, putting away the real problem waiting me. No, my problem was not getting past the jagged, rocky beach. My problem was much larger and sitting at the bottom of the ocean.

            It was sitting at the bottom of the ocean and it was waiting for me.

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            When I was six years old, my mother bought me a small, children’s picture book based on the sinking of the Titanic. Why in God’s name they made a children’s picture book based on a horrible disaster that resulted in the deaths of one thousand, five hundred and seventeen people is beyond me. All I know is that it exists and my mother bought it just for me.

Immediately, I was fascinated. I cannot tell you why but, for some reason or another, I became captivated with the story of the Titanic. I remember reading the tiny picture book over and over again on the way to and from school. At first, I referred to it as “The Sinking Ship” book. Slowly, the word Titanic became embedded in my mind as time slipped by.

The more I read the book, the sharper the image of the disemboweled Titanic embedded in the bottom of the ocean became etched in my mind. It was the last image of the book: a pale blue, rust covered ship ripped in two and under thousands of feet of thick, heavy water. The rust that caked and preserved the ship made it appear as if it had skin that was slowly rotting and drooping off of its aged body. As I began to see footage of the ship under water in the documentaries about Robert Ballard and his re-discovery of the ship, the image became much more morose and haunting. Now, instead of the pale blue color of my picture book, the ship was surrounded by thick, black emptiness. It was so far under that no light from the sun could ever reach it. Tiny, little creatures the size of my thumb nail crawled over the encrusted surface of the ship. I thought of the bodies still inside, mummified and covered in the same rust and sea preservatives as the rest of the ship. I thought about how the bodies, once guests of the prestigious ship, were now apart of its skin, connected to it in one thick layer. I thought of the grand stairwell in ruins, a sick nightmare version of its former self. I thought of the Titanic as what it was: a ghost ship full of lost lives, dreams and fortunes.

As I began go underwater in my backyard swimming pool, I began to see these images when I would close my eyes. Deep down inside of me, I began to develop this horrible fear: what if I open my eyes again and I’m trapped inside the crumbling walls of the Titanic at the bottom of the thick, black ocean? The thought was ridiculous but, for some reason or another, it haunted me. Slowly, I found myself afraid to open my eyes. It was like the same fear someone has after watching a horror movie and then trying to go to sleep with the lights off. Only this time, instead of being afraid of seeing Michael Myers when I opened my eyes, I was afraid of seeing the cold, lonely ghost ship of the Titanic. I was afraid of joining its guests and crew. I was afraid of becoming part of its crusty, overwhelming, cake-like skin.

Every time I would close my eyes underwater, I felt the fear in the back of my head that maybe, just maybe, this could be the time when I opened them back up to see that colossal monstrosity in front of me.

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I sat on the bottom of the Jackson Courthouse pool, the sound of my breathing echoing in my eardrums. Above me, Austin, my brother, and Lottie, our diving instructor, were beginning their descent. The water was absolutely freezing, goose bumps covering my arm.

It was nine o’clock in the evening. We were missing the MTV Movie Awards. This was around the time when that would have actually mattered to me.

With the Jackson Courthouse Pool closed to the public, we were allowed to bring our scuba diving equipment inside to go for a test dive. For the past week and a half, we had just been using the pool in my backyard. Now, as we got closer and closer to the date of our departure to Bonaire, we were moving to a larger and much deeper pool. After all, once we got to Bonaire, we would be diving in an ocean that was hundreds of feet deep. Sometimes, it was so deep that you couldn’t even see the bottom.

That thought terrified me.

Above me, Lottie and Austin were equalizing their ears. They pinched down on the thin, rubbery layer of mask covering their nose and blew out, shooting excess air from their ears. That’s one of the most important things in diving. My dad’s friend Jay made the mistake of not properly equalizing while scuba diving in a freezing lake one time. For his ignorance and careless nature, he received a busted eardrum and some slight hearing loss. The thought of my eardrum imploding under the stress of the vast ocean around me always filled my brain. There’s just so much that could go wrong.

As I sat on the bottom of the immense Jackson Courthouse Pool, I thought about the upcoming diving trip ahead of me and slightly shivered with dread. I’d known about the trip for two years now. Every year, my dad had expressed more and more interest in Austin and I becoming certified scuba divers. For my dad, it was his only true vice. He worked hard running the Cleaners all year long and then, one week a year, he flew off with his diving buddies to some exotic location in the Earth and hit the ocean running. For him, the more dangerous and extreme, the better. He has been in the thick, black ocean during night dives off of oilrigs near the coast of Japan. He has been surrounded by a thick maze of sharks with nothing but excitement shooting through his veins. He’s done it all without even breaking a sweat.

He’s done all of this and all I could think of is how terrified I was to close my eyes for fear of seeing my ghost ship right in front of me.

Now, the time had come for my brother and I to join my father in his one and only true love in the world. I was absolutely terrified at the thought and I could not even begin to explain why. Still, I had to go through with it. After all, I didn’t want to be a disappointment. No, I could never be that. So there I was, sitting on the bottom of a freezing swimming pool in the beginning of June instead of sitting comfortably in front of a television set, watching the MTV Movie Awards. Instead of enjoying my summer break for those first few weeks, I had been arduously studying a workbook on how to properly scuba dive and other things I didn’t even remotely care about. After all, if I didn’t pass the test that Lottie gave us at the end of training, I couldn’t get my license. Without my license, I couldn’t scuba dive. If I couldn’t scuba dive, my father would be disappointed. And we didn’t want that.

So there I sat. The silence of the water around me in the pool was deafening. For a second I thought about closing my eyes.

Quickly, I decided against it.

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The first time I heard about the Helma Hooker was on the very long plane ride over to Bonaire. My dad was sitting next to my brother and me with a brochure in his hands. In one of the pictures was the image of sunken ship, surrounded by thick, blue water. It was on lying on its side, its insides exposed to the rest of the ocean. It felt so naked and empty. But still, the similarity was overwhelming. This was it. This was my ghost ship.

“So, you boys are gonna dive the Hooker with me, right?” he asked.

My stomach dropped. Quickly, I found myself saying the word “no” over and over again. After all, there was no way in hell I was getting near that thing.

“Oh come on, it’s a sunken ship, man! How many opportunities in life do you get like that?” he exclaimed.

My brother was game. This didn’t really bother him. However, I was horrified. My face was turning white with the thought of that massive, overwhelming ship lying there in front of me, its skin spreading out onto the ocean floor. No, I couldn’t do that. I could never face that first hand.

Lottie was sitting on the other aisle across from us. Already she sensed my nervousness. She was good at this. Through our training, she was always able to sense that I was the most nervous and unsure about all of this diving stuff.

“Don’t worry, Wes. It’ll be fine if you decide to do it. I’ll be right there with you. Plus, it’ll be fun,” she said.

Lottie had blonde, curly hair. It was crazy, scrambled and all over the place. It was about as crazy as her personality. No matter what, she was always upbeat and optimistic about things, perkiness evident in her voice. Now, she looked at me with her face glowing and her eyes bright with enthusiasm.

In a few years time, she would be divorced, maniac depressive and on some serious drugs. Every now and then, I can see her shacking up with one of my shady neighbors as I go on my nightly walk around the block. She always is going to and from the house, walking shakily from her car to get inside as quickly as possible. She’s as thin as a rail and doesn’t even seem real. She’s just another part of the skin of my ship, surrounded by the dense, black ocean and thousands of feet from the surface.

As the plane ride continued, I looked forward as I sat in my seat, music blaring in my ears. I thought about the Helma Hooker waiting for me just off the shore of Bonaire. I thought about it’s massive scope and overwhelming nature.

It was there. Just waiting.

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Slowly, I began to feel the beach drop off below me. The water rose up above my protruding stomach and over my chest. I felt myself take a deep, fearful breath and then release it all.

Then, I was underwater. Quickly, the sound of the clicking and clacking of salt filled my eardrums. That was the thing they never told you about the ocean. Unlike the bottom of a swimming pool, it was never quiet. The constant sound of all the salt clashing together sounded off all around you. It was an eerie, almost grating sound. It just made everything seem slightly off.

Ahead of me, the beach completely dropped off. Suddenly, I found myself looking down what appeared to be a giant hill. It sunk down to the ocean floor some one hundred feet below at a twenty-degree angle. The slope to the ocean floor was covered in the same beautiful coral reef that the rest of the dives in Bonaire had showed us graciously. However, instead of moving along the coral reef and going over the side of the slope, we were going straight ahead into nothingness.

Never, in my entire life, have I been so terrified by an image.

In front of us was absolutely nothing. We were moving down the slope, equalizing our ears as we did so, moving further and further into it. It didn’t feel real. Never have I been so deep into the ocean were, when looking straight ahead, I couldn’t tell where the top of the water began and where the bottom of the ocean floor was located. It was just nothing but a vast, fuzzy blue. And that was the thing- the water wasn’t clear. Although you could see everything about ten feet in front of you, everything else was pretty much a blur.

This must be what being in space feels like. Everywhere around me, I was surrounded by water. No matter where I turned, I could see it and feel it on my body. It was everywhere. I began to feel claustrophobic and overwhelmed. I found myself pressing down on the top of mask and blowing out from my nose. This was what someone would do to clear out the invading water in his or her mask. Although barely any water ever made its way into my mask, I was obsessive about getting any and every bit of it out. The water was already surrounding me on every side- the last thing I ever wanted was it to completely invade my mask and engulf me completely. I couldn’t imagine doing the dive blind, the salt water covering and burning my eyes. No, that would be the end.

The sound of the clicking salt continued to sound in my eardrums. We continued to move into the vast open of nothingness. I was in an alien world, a regulator in my mouth, a giant, heavy tank on my back, mask over my eyes, black fins on my feet and weights lining my ever-expanding waist. To the fish, I must have looked like an idiot. This was not a place for me or anyone else for that matter. We did not belong here. In order to just exist down here, we had to train ourselves, breath with the help of a large tank of air and weight ourselves down. No, this just wasn’t for us. We already had the land and the air. Now, we were just being greedy. We shouldn’t exist down here.

Lottie had been holding my left hand the entire descent and journey into the fuzzy emptiness ahead of us. Like my dad, she had been through this dive before. In fact, they had both even dove it at night with a dense, black ocean around them. I am eternally grateful that I did not have to undergo that kind of experience. If that had been the case, I would have truly been meeting my Titanic first hand.

            She constantly looks over to me, making sure that I’m okay. On the beach before our arduous journey to the water, I had tried to explain to her how terrified I was of this dive. She said that it would be fine and that she would be right there for me. Now, underwater, her hand grasped onto mine. And, despite the claustrophobia I was experiencing with the vastness of the thick ocean around us, I was feeling a little better. After all, with her right there, what could happen?

            My brother and dad were still way out in front of the group. Austin had slowly taken the lead and was jetting out in front of everyone. Everything was going just fine when, all of a sudden, I saw him fling his body back and straighten up, as if he had just been given a sudden surprise. It was as if something had just appeared right in front of him with no warning at all.

            Lottie and I were in the back of the group and moving at a slow pace. As far as I could tell, nothing was in front of Austin and my father. I didn’t understand what was happening. Then, very slowly, something happened in front of me. A tiny, white outline appeared, moving over a giant, invisible space that took up all of the area in my immediate vision. At first, I thought my eyes were playing a trick on me. Then, slowly, I realized what was happening.

            My breathing quickened at any enormous pace as I tightened my grip around Lottie’s tiny hand.

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            I must have been on my third packet of Starburst by this point.

            It was around two in the afternoon and I was still stuffing my face.

            There’s a really sick trick to scuba diving. Although it doesn’t really take much energy to do it, it makes you feel absolutely exhausted and incredibly hungry afterwards. I was only required to go on the morning dives at 8 a.m. After these were over, I would come up to the surface, spit up and expel massive amounts of snot out of my head, take an aspirin and then sit around and eat for the rest of the day. No matter what, I always ended up with a massive sinus headache after the dives. They told me that they would eventually go away and that it was just that I wasn’t used to all the pressure changes yet but they never did. And as for the eating, well, that was just me.

            On this particular afternoon, a television channel was having a Stephen King movie marathon. I had already watched the terrible The Langoliers and now I was into hour two of the six-hour miniseries based on The Stand. On the table in front of me, a big pile of wrappers and empty chip bags were forming. God, how long had I been eating? This wasn’t even counting the large lunch my mother had fixed for me a few hours back. Still, I just kept on eating. After all, there wasn’t anything else to do in Bonaire- it was just a little, arid desert covered island off the coast of the top of South America in the Atlantic Ocean.

            In a few hours, it would be night and I would go to sleep with my stomach full. When I awoke in the morning, my dad would burst into the room, pull my brother and I up to dive the Helma Hooker wreck. Perhaps my fear of this event happening so soon fueled my binge eating. I’m not sure. But one thing is for certain- weight had always been a problem for me. Now, in a foreign country on a trip that was filled with mostly apprehension and dread, it was exploding.

            When I returned home from the trip, I was surprised to step on a scale and find myself at two hundred and fifteen pounds. I was only fourteen years old and going into the ninth grade.

            Slowly, I began to unwrap a Little Debbie snack cake and forced it into my mouth. The Stand was starting up again. As I stuffed myself, the impending Helma Hooker dive was not the only thing occupying my mind. No, there was something else. Actually, there was someone else.

            Diane.

            It had been a week since I had last talked to Diane. Ever since leaving home, I found myself missing this aspect of my life. Slowly, I began to come to terms with something completely new in my life- I was in love and for the very first time. As I glided over some of the world’s most beautiful coral reef, I could only find myself thinking only of how nice it would be to just talk to her again and just for one second at that. It felt strange, new and exciting. Here I was, in the middle of the ocean, an alien world, and I was feeling things that were definitely alien to me. It was so overwhelming- almost as overwhelming as the vast, impending water that surrounded me on a daily basis.

            Quickly, the light, floating feeling that invaded my stomach upon this realization turned into pain. My need to talk to Diane and be around her was becoming more and more urgent. In fact, it was becoming necessary. I found myself becoming obsessed with the notion of talking to her again, just to experience an everyday, mundane conversation. It was taking up my thought process for the entire day, never letting me relax. In between this and my ongoing, building apprehension of diving the Helma Hooker wreck, I found myself in an extreme state of agitation and depression. The solution? I was going to stuff myself to the point of no return.

            I opened up another packet of Starburst as I watched the Captain Trips virus spread through the world on the television in front of me. Only I wasn’t really watching that. No, I was looking farther ahead, at the Helma Hooker, waiting for me in a day’s time. I just had to get through that. I just had to survive that dive and get back home. I just had to get back home to Diane. She was the light at the end of my dark, deep flooded tunnel.

            Little did I know what news she had in store for me when I returned home. Little did I know how many things had changed since I had left for Bonaire.

            Then, it was all right in front of me.

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            The empty space in between the spreading white outline had turned into a dark, ominous black shadow. I felt my hand squeeze Lottie’s almost to the breaking point. I started to shake and hyperventilate.

Oh my god. It was right in front of me. It was right in front of me.

            My head spun and my breathing sped up to a ridiculous pace. In the back of my mind, I imagined all of the air in my tank running out and the suffocation that followed. I imagined all the pressure from all the water in the ocean crashing down on me, crushing my body. I imagined all the water rushing into my mask, blinding me. I imagined the creatures of the ocean picking me apart piece-by-piece.

            I imagined myself trapped inside the crumbling walls of the Titanic, surrounded by mummified corpses and the cold, black ocean.

            Lottie tightened her own grip on my hand to get me to look over to her. She was flashing me the universal okay sign over and over again, almost as if to try and calm me down. But I couldn’t calm down. I felt like everything was just going to fall to pieces at any second and I was going to be swallowed by the ocean. In the back of my mind, the thought of just shooting to the surface entered. The overriding fear of getting the bends quickly shuts that notion out.

            We slowed down even more. The rest of the diving group had already reached the ship by this point. At first, I couldn’t even look at it. As we moved closer and closer, it began to morph out of the form of a shadow into what I always feared it was- a rust and sea-life covered sunken ship. It was my ghost ship. It was my Titanic.

            The Helma Hooker lay on its side and its bottom half was right in front of us. I couldn’t believe how enormous it was. The size of it was so immense and engulfing. The rest of the group was beginning to go up and over it. As Lottie and I approached the wreck, my fear and apprehension grew greater and greater. I feared the prospect of my eyes blinking and opening again to find the real Titanic right there in front of me. I know the thought was illogical but, under one hundred feet of water with a giant shipwreck hovering over me, anything seemed possible. My stomach was in shambles. I was still breathing too heavy and was shaking uncontrollably. I was constantly in fear of passing out or panicking to the point where I just ripped my mask off and shot to the surface, bubbles forming in my blood stream. Anything felt like it could happen. It felt like it was the end.

            Then, something happened.

            As we climbed over the ship and joined the rest of our group, it all just went away. It felt like all the pressure and anxiety fuming in my body just exhumed from my pours and floated out into the ocean. My sinus headache lifted. Slowly, I felt my breathing steady and my grip on Lottie’s hand lighten. As time went on, I let her hand go completely, moving over to find my brother and father. Here I was, on top of an enormous sunken ship off the coast of an obscure island near South America. For some irrational reason, it was the worst thing that I could have imagined at the time. However, touching the ship with my bare hands, something just happened. I knew that nothing was going to happen to me. I knew I wasn’t going to be transported into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, inside the walls of the Titanic. No, now it was all real. I could touch it. I could swim around it. If I wanted to, I could even go inside of it. It was all real and I was just fine.

            I moved over to my father and brother, flashing Lottie the universal okay sign as I moved away from her. She must have been delighted to see me moving on and no longer crushing her hand. As I reached them, Austin was holding onto the ship’s anchor, which was bigger than his own body. I moved over next to him and my father took a picture of us next to it. Slowly, we moved away from the topside of the ship to the front side. We moved down, we could see the massive mast of the ship that now lay in shambles on the ocean floor. You could see all the insides and guts of the ship and, if you wanted, you could even go inside of it. My anxiety had temporarily lifted but there was no way I was going inside that thing. Sea life and coral grew all over the ship, perverting its image and making it seem like more of a living thing. Still, despite these living aspects, it still felt like a ghost ship. However, I was no longer filled with fear.

As I looked at the whole ship spread out before me in its entire enormity, I felt more alive than I had felt in years. Slowly, my fear had been transformed into a feeling of power and awe. I was alive and nothing could hurt me. Despite being a hundred feet under water, I felt like I was on top of the world. My fear was right in front of me and it couldn’t do a thing to me. It just sat, stuck forever in the skin of the ocean floor with no movement possible. I was there too, floating in the middle of it all, small in comparison but feeling a thousand feet tall. This fear was mine and now it was gone.

I floated there for several minutes, just taking in the incredible sight of the massive ship in front of me. The rest of the group moved all around it, exploring various aspects. I just wanted to take the whole thing in with one look. That’s all I wanted. As I floated there, looking at the ship, I wonder now if I knew all the changes that were to take place in my life. I wonder if I knew that I was going to lose Diane to Alex or that I already had. I would come home dying to talk to her only to find that they had started to date in my absence. I wonder if I knew that I would finally conquer my ongoing weight problem, losing over fifty pounds just that summer. I wonder if I knew of Lottie’s upcoming downfall full of divorce, heartbreak and drugs.

            No, I don’t think I knew any of it. I wasn’t supposed to. But I do know this. I know that knew that things were going to change. They had to- I had conquered my fear. Now, anything was possible. It all was possible.

            As the group and I moved away from the Helma Hooker, I remember looking back at the ship for a brief moment. For a second, it felt like I left a small part of me back there. In a way, I did. I left the fear and apprehension. I left the inability to change and grow. I left my undying love. I left my addiction. I had survived and now life was waiting for me.

            I left it there and it’s still there a hundred feet under the water. It’s there and it’s waiting for someone else to leave some part of themselves and maybe take something from it as well. I know I took something.

            I took growth. 

Late Fees

This is a chapter / abridged version of a much longer story. Enjoy.

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" Late Fees "

            This is not a story for anyone wanting resolution, significance, or a happy ending. It has nothing to do with love, redemption, or any deep revelations or understandings.

            This is a not a story about life long lessons, sentimental moments, or spiritual experiences.

            No, this is a story simply about just getting through the night with your health and dignity still in tact by its end.

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Everything is broken today.

            I’ve been working at Movie Gallery for only two hours and already I’ve gotten three DVDs returned that do not work right.

While this is a common problem for the Gallery, it’s really not our fault. Customers don’t tend to take very good care of our DVDs and, as a result, they tend to come back worse for the wear. I’m talking about all scratched up and smudged with oily fingerprints. Sometimes, you can see hair stuck to them.

The few DVDs that I get returned tonight don’t have anything unusual about their appearance. One of them even appears spotless. However, that trend changes pretty quickly. Only a few minutes after I get my second return, a male customer enters the store and says that he has a DVD that freezes up and skips around to various places in the film. I take the DVD out of its case and give the backside of it a good look. As my eyes travel over the side of the disc that is scanned by the laser in the DVD player, I find my stomach dropping and my hand holding the DVD tremble and nearly drop it. I can see why it is having trouble playing: it has what appear to be globs of dried, flaky semen on it. Sadly, this is not the first time I’ve seen this sight on the back of a DVD.

I put the thing back in its case and begin the process to send it back to the manufacturer for replacement. There’s no way I’m putting this thing back on the wall. I don’t have the heart to tell the guy what exactly was on the back of the DVD that was causing it not to play. I can’t believe he could not figure it out himself. In the back of my head, I’m mourning for this poor guy’s DVD player. Nothing’s going to be wrong with it of course but just the fact that this was inside of it makes me nauseous. My OCD begins to kick in and I feel the urge to start cleaning. I feel the ants on my legs…

The ants… we haven’t covered that yet. Well, let me fill you in.

Earlier this evening, I went outside to return a phone I had received when the store was busy. I stayed outside for as long as I could. However, it was so hot and humid that I had to go back inside the store pretty quickly. It actually burned to breath in the air. As I began to re-enter the store, I noticed that the sidewalk that I had been standing on was covered in ants. For the next half hour, I keep imagining ants crawling all over my legs. Of course, there weren’t any on me but by obsessive brain kept telling me otherwise.

During this time, I start restocking the wall again. I restock the wall every time a DVD is returned. It’s part of my OCD. I just have to do it. After all, the new movies are supposed to be stocked and ready for rental for the customers anyways. Some co-workers just let the movies pile up behind the counter their entire shift. I can’t do that. My mind just won’t let me.

Every time I walk back to the counter to get more movies, I check my shoes and legs for ants.

Moving back from the wall, I am surprised to find myself hungry. This is a shock considering the disgusting sight on the back of that DVD I handled not too long ago. I pull my little, brown bag dinner out from its shabby, little hiding place in the counter and put it before me. I look around. There are one or two other people in the store. I look out into the parking lot. It appears to be empty. I begin to open the bag, pulling out my tin foil wrapped Coke and my plastic bag containing a ham and cheese sandwich. I ask my co-worker if she wouldn’t mind covering for me for five minutes so I can quickly stuff my food down my throat. She’s working on her training modules that we have to complete in order to keep our jobs. She has been working on them ever since she started her shift and has not stopped talking about every question and complaining about it. She’s in mid complaint with one of them when she says, “Oh yes, that’s fine.”

If there’s one thing that I actually hate about working at Movie Gallery, it’s that we don’t officially get a lunch or dinner break. Usually, we just eat behind the counter in front of all the customers. I hate eating in front of the customers. They always watch you intently as you do so. As they do, I always have the feeling like they’re secretly judging me, like I’m lazy for stuffing a sandwich in my mouth.

I’m hungry, damn it. I have to have food so I can have the energy and focus to serve you. Stop looking at me!

Every time I bite down, I’m paranoid about a piece of food making its way out of my mouth and staying on my lip for the entire store to see. I imagine the mayonnaise of my ham and cheese sandwich running out over my lips and becoming hardened and encrusted in the corners of my mouth. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a meal behind that counter. I usually just stuff it down as quickly as I can.

What’s worse is when you don’t have a co-worker with you. Then, in the middle of your meal, you have to put your food down and serve a customer with your mouth still full and your throat dry. Then, when the store is clear, you have to quickly run to the back and wash your hands so you can pick your food up again. At least, that’s what I have to do.

My co-worker’s covering for me but, to my dismay, the store’s starting to crowd up. I get as far away from the counter as possible, even turning my back to it as I cram the food into my mouth.

Don’t turn around, my mind tells me.

Don’t you dare turn around, Wesley. Don’t you dare.

 I’ve got one bite left of my sandwich when I glance back at the counter to see my co-worker dealing with a line of customers. One of these customers makes eye contact with me and begins to walk towards the register on my side of the counter.

Son of a…

With my mouth still full, I rub my hands briskly together and walk up to the register. Through the sludge of sandwich in my mouth, I ask him how it is going. It must sound and look disgusting. I then serve three more customers.

After the little rush has ended in the store, I ask my co-worker if it would be all right if I could just go into the back office to finish my dinner. I promise that it won’t be more than five minutes. She says that it would be just fine. Carefully using the plastic bag to pick it up, I put the last of my sandwich in my mouth as I head to the back office.

After a trip to the bathroom to wash my hands and experiencing the dismay of being out of hand towels, I make my way into the back office. I don’t really like the back office. It’s filled with empty display cases and just feels lonely. I make sure to eat over the tiny trashcan and not the desk where we make our deposit at the end of the night. I want to keep this place as clean as possible. Despite the fact that I’m away from the prying eyes of customers, I still feel the pressure to rush through my food. In my mind’s eye, I see my poor co-worker being swamped in an unexpected rush of customers. I inhale a bag of Doritos, a Little Debbie snack cake that I don’t need, and even a bag of Fruit Snacks. I then down my Coke and bring all my trash to the front of the store to throw away. There’s no evidence that I was even back there.

I throw my trash away at the front of the store. My co-worker says there hasn’t been a customer since I left.

 Of course there hasn’t been…

My stomach feels awful as all the food and beverage I have shot down my throat all hits it at the same time. I feel nasty indigestion and acid bubbling in my throat. I don’t feel all that great… but at least I got my dinner out of the way. At least I’ll be able to serve my customers without thinking about food.

God, I hate eating at work.

I’m still trying to get my food to stay down when she walks in.

Her name was Christa.

But first thing’s first-- women and I have never really mixed well. And by that, I mean not at all. After years of countless errors and follies in attempts for love, I’ve finally signed them off. Yes, that’s it-- I’m off women. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not going the opposite way or anything like that. I’m just focusing on other things. I want to achieve a complete sense of focus on my work. I want to devote myself completely to my filmmaking, screenwriting, and creative writing in general. I want to learn as much as possible. When I got out of school a month ago, I immediately began training and testing my mind. I spent all of the day either reading a book, writing an article for my website, or doing creative writing. I didn’t and still don’t want any distractions. All women have done for me is cause pain and waste my time. Besides, I always fall in love with the wrong one anyways. It’s just a waste of time, energy, and the thought process. No, I want complete focus-- no women, no alcohol and no drugs. I need to focus. I want to focus.

Of course this all goes right out the door once one of them just shows me a little bit of attention. After all, I can’t just eliminate all my feelings. I don’t want to deal with it but it’s still there. I just do my best to ignore it. To be honest, I’m pretty much in love with a girl right now. You know what? It’s a mistake. It always is. Every now and then, I’ll find myself wishing that she’d somehow be the next customer to walk through the door. Then, I curse myself. I tell myself to focus. I tell myself to put up the movies. In the end, she just ends up making me feel like crap exactly the others. Every time I think of her, it’s like a having coal burning inside my stomach. I tell myself that I hate her and that I’m off again. Then I find myself thinking about her again. Then, I go and put some more movies up, get off work, and write for my website late into the night.

Despite my need for an asexual lifestyle and my off-and-on again feelings for a certain someone, all it takes is just a little attention from a relatively attractive woman to get my mind to immediately imagine a future with her. Christa was one of those women. Honestly, I can’t even remember what she even looked like. I remember her being somewhat attractive but, for the life of me, I can’t get a perfect picture of her in my head. This is something that always happens to me when I meet girls that I’m attracted to. They literally cause a memory block in my mind. It just makes me think about them more often, struggling to put a mental image of them together in my usually focused head. This just causes more of a waste of my thought process.

Apparently Christa was a regular. She knew my co-worker pretty well and they chatted it up for a little bit. However, when she was ready to check out, she came to me. She didn’t have anything in her hands and she told me that she needed to pay off a late fee. As I rang up her account on my computer, I saw that she owed twenty-three dollars to the store. I began to go into my whole spiel on how I’m going to sell her a Discount Rental Card to save her a few bucks. I start to go into how it works when I notice a strange look on her face. Suddenly, I feel like an idiot. Obviously, she has established herself as a regular and, due to that, she probably has heard this a million times.

“I’m guessing you know all this already?” I ask.

Yep. I give a little fake laugh and reply, “Well good, that makes my job easier.” She laughs too. Then, she starts to ask me about myself. She asks where I go to college. She asks if I’m off the next day. She’s witty and sarcastic in her replies and the way she delivers her questions. She’s not really flirty… just energetic and interested. She shows interest and emotion. God, what’s wrong with me? Is that really all it takes anymore? Just a little bit of attention? Eye contact. I make eye contact. She smiles. I smile.

She’s got warmth going through my stomach. For a brief moment, I remember why I love women so much and just the idea of a woman; just the idea of love and being loved. The idea of someone being interested in you and what you have to say. I’m thinking about this, the warmth inside of me, and all is going so wonderful when she looks up at the TV monitor above my head. It’s showing a promo for Larry the Cable Guy’s latest uninspired comedy entitled Witless Protection. I have the promo memorized by now. It plays every ten minutes. She gasps and asks if we have a copy of that in. My stomach drops. The warm feeling I had in my gut is long gone, replaced with that burning indigestion from inhaling my dinner earlier that evening. Slowly and gravely, I point to the wall to my right.

“It’s in the W’s…” I reply.

She gets her copy. In my head, I’m trying to weigh things out. Am I going to sell out my movie taste for this woman? What am I even thinking that for, she’s just a customer! We just met! She’s just been sarcastic to me… that’s all. She’s just been friendly and already I’m trying to imagine a future and babies and all that crap. Babies? I hate kids. What am I thinking?

I finish her transaction. I tell her I’ll give her the receipt and her movie on the other side of the counter. I say this to every customer that graces me with his or her presence. I move to the other side, tearing the receipt out of the printer as she makes her way over. I have my pen ready. I give it to her.

“You going to tell me what to do?” she asks sarcastically, a glimmer in her eye. I just manage a smile.

I slide that unforgivable choice of film on the counter next to the receipt. She starts to sign her name.

“You know, I tend to be too sarcastic sometimes. I’m not trying to give you a hard time or anything. I know it can get annoying…” she says as she signs.

“No… I like it… it’s nice… for a change…” I say quietly.

She looks up and smiles, taking that black hole of cinema from the counter top.

“I look forward to seeing you around, Wesley. What’s my name?”

“Christa.”

“That’s right. Better remember it.”

I just smile and say goodbye. Then, she’s out the door.

She hasn’t been back in the store when I’ve worked, but every day since then I’ve waited for her to walk back through that door. I know it’s nothing. I know nothing is going to come of it. But, I can’t help but want to see her walk through that door. I want her attention again. I want the sarcasm. I want the smile. Then, I remember that I need to focus. I remember my new asexual stance on things. I remember the girl that I’m already in love with. Plus, I remember Christa’s unforgivably terrible taste in movies. After all, that’s the most important factor here.

Then I start to hate myself again. The fact is this-- there’s nothing about Christa that would ever make me want to have a future with her. It’s not just her movie taste. There’s just something about the way she holds herself that screams incompatible to me. The fact that I’m even remotely interested in her, even for a second, is disappointing.

When it all comes down to it, the fact is that I’m striving for any kind of human connection. I feel nothing while standing behind this counter and serving these people. There is no connection, sense of empathy or even understanding. At times, I’m shocked that I even share the same ground that they walk upon. Then I feel like an asshole for even remotely thinking that way. But, at times, I cannot help it. It just feels hopeless sometimes.

All I’m trying to do is just get through my shift and go home. That’s all. Still, they constantly berate and disgust me at every turn. They return Pan’s Labyrinth because it’s in Spanish and they are too lazy to read the subtitles. “If I wanted to read, I’d buy a book,” they always tell me. They return DVDs covered in semen. They refuse to let me eat in peace. They take their frustrations over late fees out on me when I had nothing to do with it. I’m just here for them to unleash their worst impulses on. I’m just a target at a gun range and I’m surrounded by rednecks.

There isn’t anyone else to really turn to here. My co-worker is just as annoying as most of the customers. Most employees only last a few weeks at Movie Gallery before quitting or getting fired for not doing their job or even for doing something illegal. Last summer, one co-worker of mine got the boot for committing coupon fraud. She stole over two hundred dollars in one week. Even those that you manage to strike up a friendship with tend to fall away. My manager from the first summer became diagnosed for depression after I left. Slowly, she spiraled into a drug addiction, got pregnant and then tried to abort the baby herself. This is the same girl that wore a popcorn box on her head with me one Friday night just for fun.

So I think of Christa. I have to. She was nice to me. She at least acted interested. And that’s all I need tonight-- interest, empathy… someone to talk to. My head turns to the right, spotting out Witless Protection on the wall. I can’t help but hang my head in despair.

I go to put up some more movies on the wall.

I scratch at my legs when I think I feel something crawling up them.

Another customer brings back a DVD that won’t play right.

Everything is broken today.