New roommate

Somehow, there is a very low, but consistent, level of activity on my blog recently. I know because I am vain enough to look at my stats and see how often it has been visited and what has been looked over. Funny. I haven’t visited this site in forever, but tonight I felt like writing something to post here and grabbed my laptop while watching a movie to start. This is not what that has become, but I logged in and checked my stats and…voila! For some reason, either someone I know or a random visitor from the internet has been paying me a visit.

Welcome.

I watched Leaving Las Vegas tonight. Shitty sound quality. Might as well watch the whole thing with subtitles on. A friend of mine from the Army said it was his favorite movie and he wanted to die the way Nick Cage’s character does in the movie someday. That’s always been on my mind. I knew before that he drank himself to death, but I’d never seen the whole film. Funny that I should do so now, when sometimes I think of doing the same thing. If it’s anything like what happens in the film, I haven’t got the guts and am nowhere near close.

I may have a roommate issue. A little while ago, something happened that, added up with lots of little things I’ve noticed, made me wonder if I might. It resolved itself and I wondered if I might be losing it a little bit, seriously, for the first time. Now, I’m pretty sure that I am not losing it and something is askew, though I still might have been wrong about before. Before, I bought a bottle of Scotch and suddenly it wasn’t in the place I normally put it. I searched, to no avail. Due to lots of little things that made me question my new roommate’s character in general, I suspected him. The opportunity arose, and I casually mentioned it to him. He said he hadn’t seen it, and I asked him to keep his eyes open. Not much later, he produced the bottle, supposedly from behind the door of his room where I must have left it when I was visiting earlier. Except that’s completely unlike me. I don’t lose track of things like that.

One of the first nights after he moved in, I smelled cigarette smoke in my room. I mentioned it to him later, but he assured me he had not been smoking in his room. It was awkward for me to even bring it up, so of course I assumed that it had drifted in from elsewhere, even though it only came in when the furnace kicked on and there is an intake in his room (as well as mine). I haven’t smelled it again, until tonight. I was already a bit annoyed because he ate all of the sausages I left out. I offered him one, but I guess I wasn’t clear enough about the ONE part. I saw him prepare two buns, but I decided not to say anything. Later, I found that he had taken all of them. Who does that? Why would you take the last of anything without it being very clear that it was okay? I would never take the last of someone’s food. I realise we’re only talking about sausage here. But then, later, the furnace kicked on and my room filled with the smell of cigarette smoke. Undeniable and there is no way I made a mistake and the smell was in my head. I stewed for a bit, but eventually said something.

Approaching the door to his room, I quietly said, “Drew? Are you awake?” He replied right away, saying yes, but he sounded half-asleep. I asked if I could come in. He said yes. He was in bed, fully-dressed, and obviously very disoriented. His eyes were sunken, and I know he has been trying to get some pot. I decided to be very upfront about it, so I asked him if he had been smoking in his room. I told him I smelled the smoke in my room when the furnace came on, and I couldn’t imagine where it had come from. He said he hadn’t and, attempting to avoid any further confrontation, I asked him where he smoked outside. He said on the porch.

I told him he was a liar. He looked at me with glassy eyes, not quite comprehending what I was saying, but starting to feel a little indignant and ready to protest. I could tell by the color rising in his cheeks, and the way his eyes sharpened for a moment, as though there was sudden clarity through the haze in front of him. I could tell I had hit a sore point with him, something contentious, because he’d never liked being called a liar since he was young and his father hit him and accused him of lying for his sister about her boyfriend, Ricky, but I didn’t give him time to try and put the words together to reply or think about how all of the pieces came together. I pulled a revolver out of my pants where I’d stuck it between my back and the waistband of a pair of Levi’s 501s and shot him, one round in the gut as I raised my arms and another in his face once I’d drawn a bead, right between his eyebrows as best I could with my hands shaking like they were.

My issue is what to do next. I’m not even that worried about the body. If someone wants to find out what happened to him, it won’t matter if I dump it in the Willamette or anywhere else. They’ll talk to enough people and figure something out, and then it will only be a matter of time. I don’t think I can stand up to scrutiny. My weak response to my current feeling of helplessness, right now, is to write a bloody blog post. I guess I figure this is anonymous enough, and whoever has been reading probably doesn’t know who I am, anyway. I’m not religious, so going to confession doesn’t really do it for me. But I need absolution.

Alone

Alone. It is probably best, he thinks. It’s not how he feels, but considering his past experience maybe it is the best thing. He’s been alone for most of his life, never really went on dates, never worried about it too much. He’d always wanted a relationship, a girlfriend, but it always seemed too hard. I was scared, that’s it. Always scared of girls, not able to talk to them or be comfortable unless they were unobtainable. Not because they were too gorgeous or too rich for him to talk to, but because they were already with someone; married, dating, a friend, a sister. These were the types of women he felt comfortable around and could talk to.

Past experience, he considers, has taught me that I always feels worse, more alone, after being involved with someone. If he’d never been ensnared in the first place, he wouldn’t really know what he’d missed. He believes it is probably true that you can’t gain the same satisfaction by living your life alone, never trying or putting yourself out there, as if you do take a chance and learn what it means to love and be loved. But it’s a real pain in the ass in the end and it’s hard to go back to the way you were.

His past experience is all bad. Does everyone look back on their love life and think that until they’ve found “the one?”, he wonders. There were the prostitutes. At least there, he thinks, you know what you’re going in for and it shouldn’t leave you feeling jilted. Despite that knowledge, the first one left him feeling unsatisfied and alone. There was a beautiful woman in Korea who lived in the States, there visiting family. He went out on a limb to meet her and it worked. They went out, met up, several times over the next few days. Then suddenly, she was gone. Presumably she went back home, but she wasn’t supposed to leave yet and there was no warning. Poof, she was gone. Alone.

Then there was a girlfriend in Seoul. They were always drunk at night and got a hotel room. His Army buddy dated her friend. They went to an amusement park together, did other fun things aside from the club scene. Then one night they weren’t supposed to meet he ran into her with another man. I don’t think I fell in love with her, but it was still a betrayal. That was the last connection of that kind he shared with a woman for a long time.

He had a one-night stand in Texas, a completely random occurrence and not one he had hoped for or imagined. It meant nothing. He had a crush on one of his friends, maybe even loved her. I think she was my first love, he sometimes tells people. They tried dating formally once for about a week, but it felt forced and awkward. Evidently they were better as friends who occasionally saw each other naked but never had sex for lack of a condom, and he could be her sexy man when they went to a ball together: he singing karaoke on stage, she running her hands all over him, slithering up and down as he tried to concentrate on the song and wondered about her superiors watching them from their dinner tables. Later, she decided she liked women better than men. We’re still friends, though.

And then nothing for a long time. Alone. He had friends, roommates, hobbies, but no love interest. I was okay, he thinks. Depressed and bored with my life at times, probably drinking too much alone at times, but okay. Then something happened. Through various events and gossip, he realized he was attractive to the opposite sex. He’d never felt it so acutely. Married friends told him he was a catch, that they might pursue him if they were single. It gave him new power. He wanted more. There were suddenly options for him. A married friend was going through separation and a divorce, and she was clearly interested. Strangely, at the same time, he’d become fixated with another married friend whose marriage was struggling, and who he’d become closer to. He was someone for her to talk to about her problems, but at the same time there was something else developing.

It ended up becoming more than friendship. They never dated much, maybe a couple of times that could be considered a date. She got divorced and they moved out of town together. They lived together a couple of years. He reminisces, We were so crazy. Happy, fun, passionate, dramatic–so into it. They went through a lot together, put each other through a lot, and eventually got engaged. Not long after, they broke up. But they were still sort of together. Then they broke up again. I was so alone then, he remembers. Nothing could make me feel better, and I was so desparate and crazy. I cried; I begged and pleaded. I was a fool. Eventually he started to move on, to get over it, and learned to relish being alone again. Then they got back together. They even got engaged again, but somehow it was never the same as before. They tried to make it work, but one or the other couldn’t keep it up all of the time, or maybe one or the other didn’t really want to, deep down.

It didn’t work. They broke up again. He is alone again. It is probably best, he thinks. Alone.