Midnight Ride
I wonder what purpose it serves to drive over the speed limit when you have no destination in mind. Yet I'm doing exactly that on a winding little back road somewhere in...oh hell, I don't know where the fuck I am. Somewhere in the United States, most likely the eastern half, approximately Pennsylvania or Maryland or something like that. I did this for all of the years I spent as a Penguin, taking little trips and exploring the surrounding mountains and valleys, discovering places that I'd never expected to see as a kid growing up in Alberta.
Now here I am on a Harley, taking treacherous turns at high speeds for no real reason other than the fact that it keeps my mind occupied. It keeps me on the edge of danger, keeps me from thinking about all of the things I'm missing out on.
I should have never married Krista. I know that now, and I hate myself for it, because not only did I get stuck in a relationship I didn't want, I also made her miserable because it was only obvious that I didn't have the feelings for her that she'd have liked me to have. And Kirk. I hurt Kirk, and that is what's pushing me to risk my safety, my career, my life the way I am tonight. The guilt of breaking his heart, remembering the look on his face when I walked away from him, it haunts me constantly. When I'm on the ice, when I'm working out, when I'm sleeping or eating or trying to talk to my wife.
He's always there. He's always hovering right at the edge of my consciousness, just enough to make it impossible for the memory of him to fade. I still feel his kiss, still hear the way his voice rasped over my full name in the mornings when I woke curled up with him, still taste the salt of his skin when he was sweaty and spent from sex. The memories are almost enough to make me smile, make me warm inside, until the other images come into focus. Kirk crying. Kirk asking me why I was leaving. Kirk trying his best to stay strong because he didn't want to make it harder on me to walk away.
Even as I was driving from his house that night late last April, I was struck with how incredibly selfless that was. He loved me, I know that much, and I know that it tore him apart for me to go, to pretend like a 'normal' life, a life with Krista, was what I wanted. But he didn't want to make things hard on me. He didn't want to pressure me into staying. When I told him that I planned on marrying Krista over the summer, he was silent for a long while. He stared at me, his eyes slowly welling up with tears, and finally, he asked one question, so quietly that I almost asked him to repeat it.
He asked why he wasn't enough for me.
I didn't answer. I couldn't. Because there was nothing to say. He was enough for me. He was more than I'd ever dreamed of having; he made me happier than I'd ever been. Yet there were complications. People already questioned him, whispered their suspicions about his love life, and I didn't want the same fate. I didn't want people to be murmuring and speculating about me. I just wanted to be invisible. I wanted a wife and a baby or two and to just blend in.
I'd spent a year with him, flying back and forth to catch each other in Detroit or Pittsburgh or Cambridge or Edmonton, for only a few short days at a time before a game or charity event or some other responsibility took one of us away. The time we did spend together was in hiding. In his house or mine, or in a room of some hotel as part of a meticulously arranged plan that was sure to keep us from being seen together. At first it was fun, mysterious, secretive. It was nice that there was something in my life that no one else knew about, something that no one else could touch or manipulate or disturb.
The novelty wore off soon, and I was sick of hiding. I was tired of sneaking quietly into a room where Kirk had been waiting for hours so that it didn't look suspicious. I was tired of spending all of our time together in hushed concern that someone might find out. I was tired of not being out with him, and yet unable to kiss him or hold his hand or even do something as simple as just stare at him without feeling awkward. The secrecy of it, the hidden, mystic quality of the relationship went from protected and safe to hindered and suffocating, and I started to resent it. I hated hiding my feelings for him, I hated knowing that he had to hide his, and yet I didn't dare let anyone know how I felt. It would have been occupational suicide, so I stayed quiet. But it just got worse. I hated this dark secret, and it started to blacken my moods when I was with him.
Eventually, I could no longer take it. Why on earth should I be with someone if I can't tell my parents, my sister, my friends, how I feel about him or even who he is. I'd been 'seeing' Krista--more for the sake of image than any real affection for her--for months, and I just decided that it was time to move on. It was time to grow up and enter into a real relationship. Because really, what kind of commitment was there when you couldn't even tell anyone you were together?
The night I decided to propose to Krista, I drove to Detroit. My season had just ended, and Kirk was getting ready to start what he hoped would be a long run in the playoffs. I forced myself to be calm, even though the words that were coming out of my mouth felt foreign and strange and innately wrong. Less than a half hour later, it was over. He hadn't been mad when I didn't answer his question. He simply told me it was okay. He said that he understood, and he wished me luck. He hugged me, and kissed me softly on the cheek, and then he disappeared to his back porch. Before I could stop myself, I turned and walked out, and before long I was back in my car and driving around aimlessly somewhere in Michigan.
I didn’t drive fast that night. I couldn’t, because it was too hard to see through the tears. And yet I drove. All the way back to Pittsburgh. And eventually I got back to Edmonton, and I married Krista, and I made myself believe that I was making the right decision. My parents were happy, my sister was ecstatic, and the smile on Krista’s face was contagious. The smile faded a little with every day after the wedding. Every time she would try to kiss me and I was distracted, every time I was inside her and she knew my mind was elsewhere. Eventually the smile was gone, and I couldn’t even remember what it looked like when she was happy.
I ruined Krista. I ruined Kirk.
Maybe I'm looking to make up for the destruction of two. Three lives, really, though I'm convinced that I deserve all of the misery I've created for myself. So I'm pushing the edge. I'm driving too fast on a dark, winding road that I've never been on before. When I'm thinking that on the next turn I could crash, the next curve in the pavement could catch me off guard and I could end up paralyzed or dead, it keeps me from thinking about the mistakes I've made.
Then again, I can still hear the quiet whimper of Kirk's tears in the roar of my Harley's motor. I can still see the tears brightening his bloodshot eyes. I can still feel the sickness I've felt every single day since I left him. The danger of the reckless speed isn't enough to push him from my mind; it isn't enough to make me forget how much I hurt him.
Maybe I should try this again on a night when the roads are wet and the air is foggy and I'm that much closer to the punishment I deserve for fucking up so badly.
Back to Simple Words
