Taboo

Keywords: Valentine's, (Non-), Renewal, Day,

She was no expert but a quick calculation told her the divorce could have been final anytime after 2 January of the current year.
I wanted so badly to charge over to the kitchen table and pick the gun up with my free hand, hold it hard against my head and pull the trigger. Only instead of that perfect peaceful blackness I keep thinking about, all I could see was Ginny's beautiful face on the other end when she heard the shot. At first she wouldn't know what it was. Then it would register and she would be completely shocked. She would be holding the phone so tightly that her knuckles turn white. She would be calling my name into the phone even though the dread and finality of that shot would have already set in as a fact. He's dead.

She would be thrown into a maelstrom of emotion more painful and confusing than everything she's ever known before. She's a happy girl and goddamnit she deserves to stay that way. If I did that to her it would be like "raping" her.

All I could actually say in response was the same. It's true, too. I do love the girl.

"I love you too baby." I struggled with the last few words. "Talk to you later."

She said goodbye and hung up. I stood there for a few seconds with the phone still to my ear, listening to the dead monotone of a dial tone. I was holding the phone to my head like it was the gun, squeezing it tight. I heard the plastic creaking and realized I was about to break the damn thing. I tossed the phone onto my couch and went back to the kitchen table. I sat there and had a staring contest with the gun for about a half hour. It won.

My apartment is pretty shitty. In ways it's ok, but for the most part I don't like it. I like peace and quiet. Most nights there is music and loud noise all around me til two or so in the morning. I have always wondered why people who like shitty music insist on sharing it with the world. It's like some pathetic and weak form of rebellion. "I can't really do or say anything that matters to you, so I'm going to irritate you with Slim Shady all night long."

There are rare moments when this place is graveyard quiet, like tonight. I went out on my balcony for a while and just sat there. Ginny bought me a little wind chime for my birthday. It has a small glass pane with Chinese ideogram for love on it. It's a small simple thing but I couldn't have been prouder of it even if it were a new car. It has five slender gongs on it. When the wind blows across my balcony the gongs sound off in a series of high, sweet ringing tones. Like tiny bells. When you live in a place like this you learn to appreciate anything that makes life seem more peaceful.

I was thinking about work the next day. Working in a busy kitchen is always one of two degrees. Either it's great or it sucks. No in between. The floor in our kitchen is really hard to work on. The owner got the cheapest people he could find to build the place, and the floor is just as poorly built as the rest of the restaurant. The tiles on the floor weren't made for food service use. They look like they were meant for a sidewalk or maybe some kind of decoration. No doubt the construction guys had them stashed back somewhere for no telling how long, and saw this place as an opportunity to get them out of the way and make a buck at the same time. The end result is a kitchen floor that kicks your ass on a regular basis. The tiles are hard to clean. They have a coarse texture so dirt and oil set in and don't want to move. You can sweep and mop til your arms fall off and the tiles are still dirty.

My first night there I was walking through the kitchen with a bucket of hot bleach water. I slipped on one of those fucking tiles and fell backward. I was saturated in hot water diluted with bleach.. My clothes were ruined and a few stray drops got in my eyes. It burned like hell and I had to buy new contact lenses. I was sore for three days after that. Busting your ass on a hard surface is a unique kind of pain. It makes you feel like your bones are all stuffed together in a tight knot.

Every morning when I get to work I have to pull the floor mats into the kitchen. They help some, but it is still easy to slip and fall. The mats are fucking disgusting. A kitchen floor can go from clean to landfill nasty in a heartbeat when the place is busy. I spray the mats down with hot water every morning to get the worst of the scum off, but some of that shit just won't come off no matter what. I know it sounds downright whiney, but dammit I hate to get dirty first thing in the morning then have to work all day feeling nasty. I'm picky about cooking food. If my hands feel dirty then I don't like to cook. When I go to a restaurant to eat, I like to go to places that have an open kitchen. That way I can see the cook's hands. If a cook has dirty hands, I'm not eating there. I guess that's one of the things you would have to be in the business to understand.

I had to stop thinking about work. I think I was beyond the point of looking for something positive to think about. I just wanted something to think about in general to distract me. My mind kept creeping back to the gun and the wake I would leave behind me when I died. I tried convincing myself there would be no wake, but I knew damned well there would be. Losing a loved one suddenly is like dropping a stone in a big puddle. The ripples are big at the center then gradually fan out and slowly disappear. Finally the stone is sitting at the bottom of the puddle forgotten and the surface of the water is smooth.

At first the shock and hurt is bigger than you are. The tears take over and the emotions come boiling to the surface. You say things you never wanted to hear yourself say. You say things you never before had the nerve to say. Then gradually the shock wears off and the tears don't come so often. The harsh words and the why's and when's don't bother you so much. Finally years later the sting is gone and all you have left is the memory of someone lying under the cold ground like a stone.

I could hear the wind picking up a bit. The sky was full of big gray clouds. Ivan was crawling closer to me. This indecision is tearing at me. I've tried as hard as I can, and dammit I keep going from one extreme to another. One moment my mind is made and the next something happens and I think I can't do it. In the end all I have is doubt and I hate myself for it. That's worse than wanting to die itself. I want to be one or the other. I can't take too much more of this indecision. I've never had troubles making decisions before. So while I was sitting on my balcony listening to the wind chimes Ginny bought me, I decided I would tough things out til hurricane Ivan was behind me. The hurricane is two days away from me.

The feeling of dread in my heart was almost overwhelming. I didn't want to try, didn't want to fight. I just wanted everything in the world to stop. So for the next two days I had to rationalize and make the hardest decision of my life. The decision would "be "my life.

Ch. 04

"This isn't the ending you were expecting, it's the ending some of us actually experience"

I had another cup of coffee then went to bed. I didn't even get undressed. I flopped down into bed and pulled the covers up over my head. I looked like a little kid who was afraid of the boogeyman in the closet or the monster under the bed. I like to keep the place clean, but lately the sink full of dirty dishes and the laundry piled up in one corner of my bedroom hasn't even registered on my mental radar. For some reason certain things don't matter as much as they used to. Things that usually catch my attention have been ignored lately.

I mustered what little ambition I had left and decided to get up for work early the next morning. I set my alarm clock for an hour earlier than usual. I couldn't sleep worth a damn. I would almost doze off then something new to worry about would pop up. My mind races at night when I try to sleep. It's like I'm thinking of a hundred different things at the same time, all in broken strings of thought and scattered images. I will try to concentrate on one thing but something else will push its way through before I can resolve anything about the first thought. I'm sure it's just the caffeine. Or maybe it's not.

I played the staring game with the alarm clock on and off all night. I never really went to sleep. You know that falling feeling you get as you fall asleep? I don't get that feeling anymore. Sometimes I'll wake up in a snap, not even realizing I was asleep. And the worst part of it is, when you toss and turn in bed all night long then finally do fall asleep, you wake up feeling like you haven't had any rest at all. Maybe that doesn't make any sense to anyone but me. When I was a kid I used to sleep like a rock. I remember I never had dreams. When I turned thirteen I started having trouble sleeping. At first it was just when I was excited or restless. I was a much different person back then. Often when I can't sleep I have these memories of how I used to be.

I remember one day in school, when I had my first real fistfight. I was a seventh grader. This senior named Nick decided that picking on me was his favorite past time. It started with shoves and pokes in the hallway then quickly degenerated to daily humiliations during break and getting shoved forward onto the urinals when I was trying to take a piss. After fall break his interest in me seemed to fade a bit. I went almost two weeks without his big redneck shadow looming over me. The day before we got out of school for the summer he made a sudden reappearance.

I was walking down the hallway with all the junk from my locker in a big stack. Books, annuals, etc. I also had my lunch box. That was back when it was nothing uncommon for a kid to bring his lunch to school. My lunch box was one of those thin metal ones with hinges that always squeaked. It was white and green. I can't remember what was on the front of it.

Keywords: Valentine's, (Non-), Renewal, Day,