* * *

Grey skies and coffee.

Pull the front door behind you, slamming it tight. Listen to the loose glass rattle, wonder when it will fall out and slice someone’s foot open. Down the stairs, brown paint wearing thin. Cut across the lawn, finding the key in your pocket. Take a look at the neighbors’ houses. Nothing going on.

Look for traffic, insert key, feel the lock pop open. Watch your coat, maybe sigh a little as you lower yourself down into the seat. Slam the door, fasten lap belt, start the car, shoulder belt slides into place. Hair out of face, check mirror, carefully shift transmission into gear and pull out.

Pass the church, new sign. New when? A year ago? Two? Three?

Pass the yellow house with the barking dogs.

Pass the yard with the huge boat in the driveway, oversized garage that had to be set back, building plans modified late in construction, a sign mounted one day cursing the mayor and the governor.

Wait for the jogger, hands limp in front of her, headphones on, doesn’t look into your eyes. Turn onto Peak Street, an easy four blocks. Drive past the junior high with loitering juniors, past the college with dozens of bikes chained up but not a student in sight.

Benjamin Street, always busy. Any time of the day. Wait for the light, turn right and it’s one block down to Dexter Avenue. Wait, wait, turn again, and turn into the parking lot. One tiny space, it’s yours.

Ignition off, key out, door open, slide out, coat collecting grime from the wagon’s side panel. Next comes the Busy Walk, a busy person’s walk across the parking lot, chin high and purse shouldered.

Turn onto the sidewalk, walk past the empty dingy white plastic patio furniture, the smell of roasting coffee beans fogging into the air.

Door #1. Yes, we’re OPEN.

Door #2, and there’s the counter. Earthy folk music playing, earthy folk woman behind the counter, always in her twenties, always a bandana, always something pierced. Wobbly round black tables intermittently full. An old man doing a crossword puzzle from the paper. A young man in tight black turtleneck with legs crossed presidentially, reading Ayn Rand. Two librarian girlfriends look up at you through large thick glasses, their tote bags on the floor leaning against their chairs.

Shaggy-haired student with his Macintosh laptop, nodding to music on his headphones.

Always the moment’s pause, as though you’re thinking about it. Twenty-ounce cappuccino, very dry. $3.57. Hand over a five-dollar bill and a punch card. Smile, thanks, keep the buck, forty-three cent tip. The milk steamer roars. Wait. Take a small glass of water, toss the waxed paper cup in the trash. Watch the beans cooling in the roaster. Read about the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea, which produce a bean that is mild and sweet yet lively.

Plastic spoon from the dingy bin. Just stand there, spooning the foam off and eating it straight. The first few scoops are pure foamy milk. Further down, brown espresso begins swirling its way into the foam. Finally, you hit liquid.

Toss the spoon, cap the cup, smile at the earthy folk woman and you’re back on the street in the cold air, holding your cup, the inside of your hand burning and the outside freezing.

* * *

She tried to will herself into a sort of semiconscious state, tried to close off any notice of time passing outside and blood leaking inside. They would come soon, and she just had to be ready to call to them. Calling, calling, she called and called.

Go back to Fallen: Chapter 1.

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Photo by Paula Bailey (Creative Commons).

“Whoa. Whoa there, bro. Hang on.”

Leah and I both just looked at him, saying nothing. He kept his hand there on Leah’s tit, and looked back and forth between us, like he assumed we knew what he was thinking. I did, but pretended I didn’t.

“It’s okay, sugar.” Leah put her hand to his cheek. “Just…feel the moment. Feel the energy.”

Lindsey sat up. “Yeah,” he stammered, “yeah, yeah, it’s cool, but…come on, man.”

“Right, it’s cool,” I said, and moved back in on Leah. Lindsey blocked me with a hand on my chest.

“WHOA!” he shouted. “Just don’t…do that, okay?”

“Hey, baby,” said Leah, sitting up. “Don’t worry, all right? We all wanted this.”

“Yeah, well…” Lindsey shook his head. “I didn’t want…that. I didn’t want…”

“You didn’t want me to fuck her?” I yanked the condom off, since it was clear the party was over.

“Well, yeah. I mean…I wanted to see you two together, I just didn’t want…that.”

“You just wanted to see us get to third base,” I said.

“Aw, shit.” Leah reached for her cigarettes. “I don’t believe this is happening again.”

“Again?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Leah, lighting her Camel. “This is just like last time, except that was with a girl.”

“And he didn’t want you to fuck her?”

“No, he didn’t want him to fuck her. I gave her a shitty blow job, then she wanted him, but when she climbed on top of him, he started to cry.”

“Oh, for chrissakes.” Lindsey stood up and put his hands to his head, his dick flopping around between his skinny legs. “I’m sorry, okay? I just don’t want us to be unfaithful to each other.”

“We’re all on the same plane here, honey,” Leah said in a voice containing little affection, dangling the cigarette from her lips like a Blues Brother. “We were all getting aroused together. We were all in the moment. We were all loving ourselves and each other. What does it matter whose parts are where?”

“It matters!” exclaimed Lindsey. “It’s the difference between making out and…and making love.” He put his hands on his hips. “Making love is for lovers.”

I reached for my clothes. “Listen, I’m…”

“No, hang on.” Lindsey dropped her smoke in a half-empty can of High Life. “Come here.” She grabbed my shoulders and pushed me down. “I want to finish this.”

“Should I get another rubber?” I asked.

“No!” cried Lindsey.

“Hey,” said Leah, “let’s just finish this on a nice note.” She reached for my dick, but before I could decide where to put my hand, I heard Lindsey choking back a sob.

I sat up. “I can’t do this,” I said. “You two figure your shit out.”

Leah sighed and shook her head. Crawling under the covers, she turned towards the wall. “Whatever,” she said.

“I’m sorry, bro,” said Lindsey as I pulled on my jeans.

“No,” I said, “it’s fine. Now I just have to go jerk off to a relatively recent memory of having my dick pressed up against your girlfriend’s naked ass. But don’t worry—we didn’t make love or anything spiritually intimate like that.”

Lindsey hung his head. “I don’t believe I suggested this.”

“I do,” I said as I buttoned my shirt. “You wanted to get laid tonight, and you knew nothing would happen unless you spiced it up. Now, excuse me.”

As I went down the cottage steps, I heard Lindsey try to say something to Leah, but she interrupted him. “No, just be quiet, lover. Come over here and work this knot out of my back. But put on your pajamas first…I hate it when your junk dangles on me.”

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That’s fine. Please, though, stop writing to me.

There’s nothing inappropriate about your letters. They’re chatty and professional, and everyone thinks it’s just so moving and inspiring that the English teacher who nominated me for this fellowship is continuing to follow my work and support me. Fine, yes, you’re a good person—but our time together is over.

I’m sure teachers like you just wait for students like me. Students who don’t just write because they have to, but because they want to. Students who have something to say. Students who aren’t afraid to break the rules. Students who have “a voice.” We make your job worthwhile, and what’s more, we’re your path to immortality. Bob Dylan’s English teacher has never written a book, but his desk has been exhibited in museums across the country. This man recognized genius, we’re told. This man gave young Bobby Zimmerman encouragement, and might just have been instrumental in ensuring that albums like Blonde on Blonde were brought into the world. Thanks, Mr. Rolfzen.

Am I your Bob Dylan? That’s a pretty fucking long shot, but I’m your something. Your only student to go on to any kind of success or recognition as a writer. And I’m only 17—a high school dropout (unless you count Internet school, which I don’t). I have a lot of decades left to win a Pulitzer, or a Nobel, or at least a Minnesota Book Award or something. Someday, it just might happen that I’ll be standing behind a podium and give you a shout-out. You might even be in the room, an invited guest.

Not that you’re only looking for recognition. You’re looking for affirmation that you’re making a difference, that all those papers you’ve graded and detentions you’ve monitored is actually adding up to something—and in terms you can appreciate, not just in terms of students who say thanks and give you a Starbucks gift card at the end of the year. You’re looking for a piece of writing you can point to and say, “Every once in a while…”

You’re doing that already. I see you sharing my shit on Facebook—and in public updates, so all your former students can see, if they for some reason decide to look up your profile when they’re drunkenly reminiscing. You go ahead and do what you do, but you can save your paper and stamps, because I’m not going to read your letters any more—and I never responded in the first place.

Why? Because I hated high school. Because I don’t want to be a stereotype. Because I would have done fine without you. Because a teacher-student relationship is all about the context. I appreciated your encouragement, and obviously I came on this writers’ program, so I think that something good (or at least less-shitty than the alternative) came about as a result of your sticking your neck out for me. Thanks. I’ve said thanks before and there, I’m saying it again. But I’m not looking for a Mr. Chips, or Mr. Holland, or Mr. Robin-Williams-on-a-Desk. I’m looking for someone you’re not, something you don’t have. I don’t have it either, but now it’s time for me to find it on my own.

See you on Facebook, man.

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They’re now calling this place a “writers’ retreat,” and I’m now a “writing fellow.” My presence is advertised in the brochure as a perk: paying guests get to rub elbows with the esteemed fellows, “promising young writers who have already achieved substantial recognition and are honing their craft.” Fuck that. If I didn’t shit out the next Great American Novel when it was just us staying here—and I didn’t—these goddamned rubberneckers aren’t going to make that outcome any more likely.

I made it through the first 28 years of my life without being labeled “a writer.” I just wrote sometimes. Most of what I wrote got thrown away or lost or rolled up and smoked, and if it’s ungrammatical to write “got thrown away,” I can’t tell you, because the only people who ever read anything I wrote were teachers who were incompetent (grade school), lazy (high school), or stoned (college).

I was the “outsider” picked for this program, the “vernacular stylist,” as Arts & Letters Daily put it. Now I’m officially a “writer”—and, worse, a “fellow.” I’ve been certified by someone with money (because that’s all that really matters, even in the world of Arts & Letters) as a Writer Who Matters, and therefore I’m assumed to have things like a Process, an Aesthetic, and a Trajectory.

Being able to assemble coherent sentences does not make me special, it makes me your mom. Writing about sex and drugs does not make me Jack Kerouac, it makes me someone who was a 28-year-old college dropout working at the kind of service-sector job where if you don’t steal from the register or bone the manager (and then bone someone else), you don’t get fired. Writing online does not make me “alt lit,” it makes me someone who doesn’t have a book contract.

Here’s what made me a “writer”: I said I was. Only once, but that was all it took. I wrote one cover letter for one program and said, “I’m a writer from Columbus, Ohio.” They believed me, and gave me some money, and now everyone suddenly wants to know what angle to the sun I prefer when I compose prose. All because I said I was a writer, which I did because I didn’t give a fuck what a “writer” was. I still don’t give a fuck, and you do, and that’s why I’m a writer and you’re not.

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“The neighbors,” I said.

“Fuck the neighbors,” she replied, lighting a Marlboro. “We’re moving soon anyway, I presume. This is going to get messy.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

“Do you know who’s going to go?” she asked forthrightly.

“Maybe we can all stay,” I said.

She shook her head and sat up, pulling her knees to her chest. “You’ve never been that strong,” she said.

“I’m stronger now.”

The look on Lily’s face was incredulous. “I don’t think so,” she said. She rolled the olive into her mouth and chewed it slowly.

“Where’s Anna?” I asked.

Lily pointed up to an upstairs window. “Watching me.”

I looked up, and there was the outline of Anna’s head, black against the brightly lit bedroom. She must have seen me looking at her, but she didn’t look away. “She’s probably wondering what you’re going to do,” I said.

“Maybe,” said Lily. “Want to swim?”

I did. It was wrong to have the scent of Johanna on me when she wasn’t there in the house. I pulled my shirt up and dropped my pants.

“Let’s live somewhere remote next time,” said Lily as she stood up. “Somewhere people won’t see us.”

“We tried that,” I said.

Lily stopped to remember, looking up at the moon. “Yeah,” she acknowledged. “Maybe somewhere semi-rural,” she suggested. “A college town.”

“You’re so sure you’ll be there,” I said coldly.

Lily turned towards me, a quick look of anger flitting across her face before she smiled broadly and reached for my shorts.

Just at that moment, the back door opened and Anna came running across the lawn, completely nude. She grabbed Lily’s hand and yanked her into the pool. They surfaced together, laughing, and Anna reached around to unhook Lily’s top. I jumped in after them, and Lily yanked my shorts off.

They both knew it was one of our last nights together, and that one of them would soon be going away forever. They didn’t know which, and each was filled with a mixture of hope and dread that it might be her. That’s how it is with us. The staying is miserable, but we never want to go.

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8:01 AM: That whiny little shit is thumping around already. He’ll be on his iPad in the living room. He doesn’t even bother to use headphones. Didn’t anyone tell him this is a motherfucking writers’ retreat?!

9:32 AM: Finished watching Tiny Furniture, went down for breakfast. Danny makes the best over-easy eggs—one clean swipe of the spatula, and BOOM. He says he learned it at a ranch in Nevada where he stayed with his lover Molly Ann and her crystals. “Those crystals gave her some energy, man, you hear what I’m sayin’?”

10:05 AM: It occurred to me that someone would probably give me a book contract if I came up with something while I’m here. Brainstormed book ideas: premature memoir, book club book, fantasy adventure for tweens. Thought of Jenni’s kid, filled with hatred of tweens. Gave up on book ideas.

11:38 AM: Asked Tanner if he could get me a fake so I could drink in town. He replied (a) no, (b) why would I want to go into town and drink when I can drink here for way cheaper, and (c) everybody in town knows about the teenage prodigy staying at the house on the lake, so I wouldn’t be apt to pass for 21. Shit.

12:30 PM: Went to Tate’s room, told her I’m bored. She said (again) that it was my decision to come out here, and pointed out how much I’d hated school. She asked if I’d done my Internet school stuff yet. I said no, asked what she was doing. She said she’s thinking about getting back to her novella. I said that sounded great. I said it in a sarcastic way.

1:00 PM: Started my Internet school stuff.

1:17 PM: Finished my Internet school stuff. Took a nap.

2:47 PM: Looked out the window and saw Jenni come back from her run, sweaty in spandex. Masturbated.

3:33 PM: Went downstairs for lunch. Ate a bag of Goldfish that I knew were meant for the kid.

4:07 PM: Let Lou teach me how to play cribbage. Spiked my Mountain Dew. He had no clue.

5:45 PM: Barb asked me to help make dinner, so I chopped shit for soup. Continued drinking Mountain Dew and gin.

6:13 PM: Drunk. Picked up Catcher in the Rye, felt like a stereotype, put it down. Started watching something on Netflix, felt like a stereotype, turned it off. Kept drinking, felt like a stereotype, kept drinking.

7:34 PM: Family dinner. Jenni asked if I’d been drinking, Bets said “obviously not” and went back to her soup.

8:16 PM: Pretended to pass out on the couch, listened to Tanner and Tate talking about ye olde times. Lucy showed up and sat on me. I threw up a little in my mouth, and Tate said she was going to go work on her novella. Tanner and Lucy decided to go to the bar and let locals try to pick them up.

9:53 PM: Decided to do some Internet school stuff before I got too sober.

10:40 PM: Tate came to check on me, saw me doing Internet school stuff, was impressed. “Whatever it takes,” she said.

11:58 PM: Went outside for a walk. Thought I heard something in the trees, came back. Fucking nature.

12:23 PM: Lucy and Tanner came back, and I followed them out to the place where Leah and Lindsay were staying. Leah and Lindsay had pot. We smoked it. “When you gonna start chipping in for the stash, little bro?” asked Lindsay. “When you stop calling me little bro,” I said. Everyone laughed.

1:44 AM: Lucy put on Justin Timberlake and we had a three-minute dance party, until Lindsay turned it off. “Sorry, I just can’t do that corporate shit,” he said. “Fuck you,” I said. Everyone laughed.

2:09 AM: Thought of Leah’s cornrows. Masturbated. Fell asleep.

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Jenni and her kid. She’s Thirty and Flirty, and she’s recently divorced from the kid’s dad. The dad’s not a bad guy, I guess, he’s just boring as fuck. She brought her kid out to the country to get him some fresh air and to have some hot rebound sex with a moody, drug-addled creative writer. One out of two ain’t bad.

Lou and Barb the old folks. She reads, he fishes. Classic.

Leah and Lindsey the hippies. Lindsey’s a guy, named after Lindsey Buckingham. His parents were cokeheads, he’s a stoner. Leah’s his life partner who teaches yoga and makes tea from things she finds in the woods, a habit that’s already led to one hospital run when she picked the wrong mushrooms. They stay in one of the guest cottages, and they love all of humanity except the people who steal their stash. (That would be Danny.)

Bets the lone wolf. She has long flowing grey hair and looks pretty hot in her mom jeans. She makes a living as the author of a self-published series of erotic horror novels about lesbian mummies. Since we moved in two months ago, I’ve said four words to her and she’s published exactly that many e-books.

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* * *

When you’re growing up, other kids seem so whole, so worldly, so confident. Everyone else understands how it works, knows how to play, knows where to go, what to do.

Every once in a while someone veers off the track, cries or throws up or allows herself to be ostracized. Then there are those kids who are broken, who don’t understand why everyone shrinks from them, who can’t or won’t change the way they smell or dress or laugh. It’s ugly to see that, scary to see what can happen. You hate them and you pity them, and you run away when they come near you. You run somewhere safe, near kids who won’t say anything, who will let you get through another day.

* * *

The sun had definitely moved in the sky. She had been under the tree for hours. The inside of her mouth felt like a strange landscape. It hurt to swallow. Her tongue moved around independently.

She concentrated on the ground under her back, and felt a series of distinct ridges. Rocks, or roots. Something immobile, holding her in place. She threw her hands behind her head and arched her back, trying to relieve the pressure, but there was nowhere to go and she only produced more pain.

* * *

When I get to my locker after Spanish, I find a note from him. Get out of study break and meet me on the mats in the lobby. I grin and bite my lip to keep from squealing. I reach to the back of my locker shelf and grab a weeks-old excuse note from McGill, thoughtlessly written in pencil, and hastily change the date. Flash it to Trainor in the library and I’m off down the wide hallway as people disappear into classrooms. I can feel the turn of every stair through the thin soles of my school shoes, and my legs goose-bump as I run between buildings. Down more stairs, across the dark stage to avoid anyone who might be in the gym, and into the lobby. There he is, sitting on the tall stack of gymnastics mats at the far end of the lobby.

His hair is long, but doesn’t cover his blue eyes. Smooth complexion, maybe with a little five o’clock shadow. Black sneakers, uniform pants, arms warm and strong in his sweatshirt as he takes hold of me and puts his lips to mine. We sit there on the mats, arms around one another.

He’s glad I was able to make it. Of course I made it, and I tell him how. I’m brilliant, he tells me. And beautiful. I ask how he got out. Practice cancelled or something. I put my hand to his cheek and he grins.

We kiss tenderly and forcefully. Our hands wander a bit, but he is a gentleman. When we’re finished, slumped back against the wall, he holds me close and I lay my head on his chest. We may not last past graduation, but in the meantime he’ll protect me from the ravaging insecurities, all the sad cold Saturday nights. For that, I love him intensely. We lie there quietly, safe and warm together as the school hums and bustles around us.

Read Fallen: Chapter 14.

Go back to Fallen: Chapter 1.

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I heard they used to let photographers bring their own cameras but not anymore—they want all of the photographs of the student collections to look the same. No variation in megapixels, or in the capability of a zoom. And then you copy the files from the memory cards and take them back to the blogs where you work and you find they’re encrypted in a way that makes them impossible to Photoshop. Some magic in their technology. Fashion U. does not make themselves subject to sabotage of any kind.

So by the time the show started (exactly at 3:00pm EST), the scrumpiece was basically full. If  you were to look on from the front, the way the models do, you could see all of us, our heads almost poking out, bodies horizontal, cameras resting where our faces were. And that’s how all the pictures of the show look pretty much the same. They let the important people in the rows have little standard-issue pocket cameras for their own personal use. Security empties the pockets of the peanut gallery in the stadium seating.

The show started at 3:01pm EST, which should have been taken as a bad sign, but everyone was so jazzed on coffee and those little blue amphetamine pills you can get at gas stations that no one noticed (no one but me, anyway). You have to get jazzed, otherwise you’ll fall asleep. There are 180 collections, three minutes a pop, nine hours total, and if you fall asleep, you’re screwed. I’m allergic to amphetamines and I hate the taste of coffee, so.

The first fifty shows were the most normal. Twenty outfits apiece. Puppy-print stretch pants look like they’ll be in this season. One student did a print with Labradors and a different student did a print with Corgis. They’ll probably get in a fistfight at the afterparty. I snapped and snapped. Lizard suits, hoop skirts, silver bobsled uniforms. The models are all six feet tall and super thin and walk right down the center of the runway. Snap, snap.

Then around collection 80 or 90, things started to get weird, as they always do, and I felt my comrades in their little cubes get excited and start to wiggle around, trying to get the feeling back in their legs. I stayed still. If I stay still for the full nine hours, I go into this sweet state of hypnosis that I can’t get enough of.

A student sent his models out in brown lipstick and those silver bondage harnesses that were so popular back in 2014, only he told them to crawl on their hands and knees down the runway. The parade. Models wearing computers playing vintage porn, models wearing endangered species of tree branches, models wearing clear plastic thigh-high boots and capes with Sanskrit words painted in iridescent ink. But you could tell the audience was getting disappointed. There was no clear favorite, no one student that was going to propel themselves into notoriety and financing and big magazine spreads. Last year it was Frances Frances, who already has a brand worth 30 mil. These kids looked like they’d all get scooped up by the established brands and contracted for five years of indentured servitude. Sewing buttons on couture suits. I felt horrible for them (but I also felt great, because I was starting to float above my numbness in the scrumpiece).

Then there was a full minute of nothing. No models, no music. People started to whisper to each other. Finally, that incredible new Hokey Pokey dance remix started pumping through the speakers and this skinny bald girl in a pair of blue velvet overalls and nothing else came out to the middle of the runway. “I’m selling myself! Who wants to buy me?” she said, and twirled around a little. Her head was shiny and sort of pale blue. It was silent for 23 seconds, I counted. Her time was almost up when some guy in the peanut gallery came barrelling down past the security guards, waving his titanium credit card, sweating and looking so happy. Snap snap. And the designer in the blue velvet overalls was happy too. She squealed and jumped in his arms and they hightailed it out of there.

I floated over them. I touched her head and it felt like silk. I smelled his good intentions and her irrepressible joy at winning the game of life.

And then I was back in the scrumpiece. Earlobes tingling. I could hear whispers and mumbles, and then one loud person saying, “Someone sold themselves back in 2007. Hello? Does nobody remember this?” But nobody remembered this, I guess. They could probably only remember blue overalls and the semi-restricted breasts underneath them, a rich dude who bought an alien girl, who was probably taking her home and making her linguini, or making himself happy.

The rest of the show went on and I snapped snapped but everyone was distracted after that designer left. The show ended and we got out of our scrumpiece. I sat on the ground with an ice pack, gently rotating my ankles until I could get some feeling in my feet again. I overheard the photographer from Alamode.com talking with the ones from Time Out and Refinery29 and Chic and Runway. I guess they were so surprised by the girl who sold herself that they forgot to get pictures of it. They were all so fucked at their respective publications. Not me—I got the whole thing on film. I’m going to send it to my magazine and they’re going to put it on the cover with a headline that will make people want to buy the blue alien girl. Only they can’t buy her—like that’s ever made a difference before.

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When there are two cats living in a house, the people living there usually like one of the cats a lot and the other much less.

* * *

I mostly remember the drugs. Painkillers stolen from Cory’s dad who was on hospice, dying of brain cancer. Weed from Jason, or Terry’s cousin’s friend in California—ounces weighed on digital scales, sacked and sold to kids on campus, smoked out of bongs, bowls, and blunts. Lean from doctors when our throats got sore, throwing up while driving past a cop car after drinking eight ounces in an hour. Adderall from that obese girl on campus, or my friends from back home who practically gave the stuff to me. Vyvanse from Sammy, whose doctor prescribed him 90 a month, or that kid in the dorms who sold beer to underage kids. Xanax from Tiffany, until she moved to China, or Blake who sold the yellow four milligram bars in bulk, shipped from India. LSD, staying up for three days straight and losing my shit until Kara showed up with some Klonopin, marching around campus at 4 AM thinking this is my town and I fucking own this campus, peeing my initials (JC) onto the side of a church.

I remember the junkies. The way their words seemed to slide from their slanted mouths, slimy and slurred or coughed up and short. The way their legs bounced anxiously as they waited—always waited—for Jason to come through with Opana or oxy or heroin or whatever they could find that day. The way their zombie-like eyes shone through eyelids like slits, pupils small as pins. The way they scratched their skin obsessively, like there was something underneath it.

The way I too eventually spoke from the side of my mouth, tapped my foot to that haunting, inaudible rhythm, hung pictures of past with the pins of my eyeballs, scratched unendingly at that incessant, incurable itch.

I remember sleeping on the couch, on the rare occasion that I slept, and the way I felt when people said “This is a sweet place, man” or “Oh, I thought you lived here.” I remember searching “effects of un-cleaned cat pee and feces” on Google, wondering if that was why I coughed so much, was so sick all the time.

I remember the first trip to the hospital, the second trip, and so on.

I remember listening to Gucci Mane, Three Six Mafia, and that band we liked to listen to while tripping—the one with the singer related to Sammy’s friend’s friend or whatever.

I remember the cops parking directly across the street from the apartment, pulling over every car that left the complex for “running the stop sign.”

I remember the tapestry in the living room. How someone looked it up online and said it stood “for home, love, and family.”

I remember how empty I became. How nothing meant anything and there were drugs to be done and there was money to be made. Thousands of dollars counted on the cigarette-burned carpet; guns next to the bed in the living room; friends disappearing, disappointed, gone.

* * *

Some things I can’t remember include the address of the apartment, what happened when, and everything I talked about doing but never did.

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