Don't Let It Go Away (A Story)

Chapter One: It's Good To Be Alive

Euro-pop. You know, that music backed by completely fake and un-cool sounding synthesizer beats while some guy with an unidentifiable accent shrieks like a soldier on the battlefield who got his trousers stolen and his balls caught on some trip wire. I'm convinced this stuff causes brain hemorages. And I'm convinced I have one right now.

That's the one bad thing about subways. You figure the train is loud enough to drown out anything annoying the people near you might be doing, but there's always that one asshole who somehow got his hands on a set of headphones whose volume level exceeds that of normal headphones. And he's always listening to the worst kind of music imaginable. I'll bet it was his little sister I was sitting next to yesterday. She probably borrowed his headphones and popped in her Take That cassette on her way to her 'girlfriends' house. My mother still calls my friends that. "You and your little girlfriends can come over any time you want..." If only my mom knew how people truly in-tune to the nineties think of when they hear that. They think "lifetime partners" or "significant others", as in, relationships, as in, lesbian. It's funny how feelings about things can change over the course of twenty years.

My thoughts are interupted by a new distraction. A bald, apron-wearing middle aged man sits down next to me as a friend of his (apparently) sits down in the opposite seat. "So I says to the guy, I says..."

Great. Now I'm sitting between a Euro-pop fan and a bagel merchant from downtown Brooklyn. I sigh and look at my watch. Blank. Completely blank. The miracles of the digital age. "Shit..." I mumble, pressing various buttons to make sure the watch's battery is indeed dead. A mother with the palm of a small child in one hand and the metal bar in the middle of the aisle in the other glares at me. I let my hair hang in my face & look down. Normally I'd tell her where to go, but I have to make an exception. After all, if I told her off, I'd have to tell off Euro-pop Boy and Brooklyn Baker too, and that would just take too much out of me. I've been at work all day. 14 hours. 2 shifts. There's no way I'm bothering.

You're probably wondering if this is all going somewhere. It is. Trust me.

Something vibrates in my coat pocket. "Fuck..." I mutter, turning in my seat in an effort to retrieve my pager in the cramped space I've been allowed by Brooklyn Baker and Euro-Pop Boy. I finally pull it out and in the process lose a receipt from the Megastore. I stare at it as it ends its floating trip down to the floor. "Blur-Tender....$18.99." I can't believe I paid $18.99 for a fucking single. Imported, yes, but $19? Bullshit. Oh well. It figures that the number on my pager matches none of those belonging to my friends. Great. I hate that. You want to call them up and give them hell just for inconvieniencing you - but then, calling them up and giving them hell is an inconvienience in itself. Sure, it makes you feel better for a little while, but you have to wonder: was that really worth it?

Finally, I can get away from these people. The train screeches to a halt and I push past the crowd to the doors. I can hear the mother calling after me, saying "young lady, I want to give you a piece of my mind!". Acting like that is worse for the kid than me swearing. Euro-Pop Boy is lost in the crowd. Shame he had such bad taste in music, he looked like a nice guy. Brooklyn Baker has moved on to telling someone else his story. "So I says to the guy, you don't even eat mayonnaise! Am I right? Am I right?" He must be Italian. He throws his hands up in the air in a different fashion with every word.

I run the short stretch of sidewalk that leads to my apartment building. A walk-up. I share it with a friend of mine, Adam. He's a nice guy. He's going to Manhattan Art College for graphic design or something like that. All I know is that he can get me into awesome parties and makes our apartment look somewhat decent with some of the art he brings back from the college to hang up. His parents are divorced and practically disowned him at age 18 when he ran away to go to Manhattan. He'd already earned himself the scholarship against his parents wishes. One of those "why can't you be a lawyer or a docter" teen angst things. So he doesn't have much of a job even though he's going to school in Manhattan. No one ever believes this story, but it's true. We both work together at the supermarket across the neighborhood, sometimes we have the same shifts, sometimes we don't. He's working tonight. Which explains his incredibly lame sign posted on the door with a thumbtack - "daysleeper". It's not that I think it's stupid or anything. Adam just has a penchant for over-doing things. I'm surprised he didn't write "R.E.M. rules" in the lower right corner or something. You know, "I see the day with the newsprint fray, my night is colored headache grey, day sleeperrr..."

Anyway, Adam, or Dammy as I call him sometimes, is also gay. Right upfront. People usually don't think so, though. We go out to parties or bars and he always has girls coming on to him. I guess he's not what society calls a "limp-wrist" or whatever. Stereotypes. Piss me off. Dammy is just cool. If he weren't gay, I'd probably be kicked out of the apartment for acting like a nympho around him.

That's what I look for in a guy. Just like Dammy, but, not gay. Great taste in music, artistically inclined, not afraid to be different, and good looking. And not Brad Pitt good-looking, more like...Alex James good-looking. Which isn't a popular good-looking in America - it's an advantage for me.

I slide my key into the lock and before I can even turn it, the door flings open and Dammy greets me with a big hug and a smile from ear to ear - here's another one of his tendencies. He never does what he's supposed to be doing. No sense of responsibility.

"Go to sleeepp" I whine, laughing.

"No, no no no no, you have to see what I did first" Dammy circles me and stops behind me, placing his hands over my eyes. I shake my head and his antics and laugh as he leads me into our small bathroom.

Adam lifts his hands slowly off my eyes and over my head and rests them on my shoulders.

"Like?" he asks, his voice searching for approval. I look around with my mouth hanging open. He's turned our boring old tiny bathroom into a masterpiece. He's a genius. He told me he was taking an additional anime class but I had no idea he was this serious about it. Japanese star fighters, warriors, and space age scenery cover the walls by the sink and toilet, leading into some kind of vortex, maybe a black hole concept, behind the shower curtain.

"Like." I nod and smile, he hugs me and smiles back. "What the hell are we gonna do when we sell this place??" I ask, smirking. "And I hope you used waterproof paint."

Dammy nods and shows me the container of sealer he used over everything. "I'm never selling this place, I don't know about you!" he says with another smile, looking around at his work.

"Did you sleep at all today?" I look at him, dishevelled, red eyes, dark circles. He shakes his head and looks down like a sad puppy. "When are you workin'?" I ask, throwing my bag and coat onto the old couch and making my way to the kitchen.

"Seven." He answers, following me. "I better get going if I'm gonna catch the 6 o'clock train." Dammy grabs a container out of the fridge and pets the top of my head. "See ya later!"

Before I can answer, Danny is out the door. I've got to get him off the vivarin. It's one thing to have a cup of coffee for a boost every now and then, but he's taking caffienne pills every day just to keep himself awake. Talk about devotion to your art. I throw together a meal of mircowave macaroni and cheese, a granola bar, and a half gone bottle of Sprite (Dammy's), just in time for the news. I drop my plate on the coffee table and settle into the couch. I love old furniture. It's so much more comfortable than the new stuff.

"New suspect aprehended today in the Central Park rape/murder case..." the newscaster says in a very condescending way. Why can't they just talk like normal human beings...and why do all the news channels have the same news on at the same time? I groan and flip through the channels. 2, 4, 7...all the same. Network news.

I choke on a piece of macaroni and my fork drops to the floor, inevitably covered in fuzz from the shabby 1970's carpet. I didn't even notice all this until after the fact, by the way. I lean forward towards the TV set with my eyes wide and my thumb frantically searching for the volume button on the remote. I swear this guy looks familiar. Bald, fat, short...bagels..why am I thinking about fucking bagels at a time like this? I recognise a fucking rapist murderer and I'm thinking about ba-holy shit. It's him. I told you you end up sitting next to the most screwed up people on the train. I settle back into the couch after wiping my fork off on one of Dammy's sweaters haphazardly strewn over the armrest. I'm attempting to calculate the odds of sitting next to a guy who'd later appear on the seven o'clock news for raping and murdering people in Central Park. Unbelievable. A smile spreads across my face in amusement. No one will ever believe me - thats one of the things in life you just have to laugh about.

I finish my dinner and throw my dishes into the sink, not even bothering to rinse. On my way through the living room I pick up my bag and coat, step over Dammy's assortment of old Vans and Adidas shoes, and elbow my bedroom door open. Dammy and I are in competition as far as our bedroom decor goes. While he may be an art major, I'm slightly better at being creative in the bedroom department. The walls are completely covered with band posters, as are his - the competition lies in who has the rarer posters. He has a huge 1970-something Sex Pistols poster that encompasses half his ceiling, while I, on the other hand, have an Beatle's tour poster from 1964, hand-signed by all four members - none of that reproduction shit, either. Passed down in my family for generations, and since my brother decided to play football instead of focus on things that are more important to the human body and mind (in my hippie opinion, anyway), I was the sole inheritor of the poster. Right now, Dammy and I have reached a plateau - our collections are equal in value and we've run out of wall space. I tried to move ahead by stringing christmas lights along the walls and replacing my curtains with glittery star garland, but Dammy countered by painting a stained glass portrait of Sid Viscious on his mirror and attaining some kind of trippy lighting contraption.

My stereo automatically turns itself on at 8 PM on the dot, and something unrecognizable is playing. Dammy must have put it on - I have a couple CDs that I put on as 'background music', you know, compilations of no-name people that still sound good but don't really have any parts that stand out or that are worth listening to. Usually techno stuff. Thats what this one is, I think. I can't find the case so he must have stolen that to check out the art design or something. I throw my bag and coat onto my chair in front of the window and collapse on my bed. Something is making me extremely uncomfortable. I reach my hand underneath the layers of sheets and pull out my stereo remote. I can't see a thing until the street lights come on right on schedule at 8:05 PM. Blue light floods through the rain streaked glass of my window and makes the room glow. I turn down the techno and focus on relieving my daily stress - by staring at the ceiling and contending with all the frustrations I've had to face all day that are still milling around in my head.

Chapter 2
take me home