Thirty-Seven Read online

  “You don’t get to pretend like you give a shit about me. Not after lying straight to my face for a month.”

  “You knew he was cheating.”

  “My question is why? That’s what I can’t figure out. Why the hell did you lie to me about being gay? About your parents? Who the fuck does that?”

  I make my way halfway across my studio. I lean against the white wall. Talley is losing steam. Her anger is on the verge of turning inward.

  “This isn’t about me,” I say.

  “Yes. Yes, it is.”

  “I wanted you to like me.”

  “Then compliment me and buy me a drink like a regular human being.”

  “I’m not regular.” “Understatement of the century.”

  “I care about you.”

  “Don’t.”

  “I do.”

  “If you did, you wouldn’t have lied,” Talley says.

  Nothing could be further from the truth, but I don’t say this. I watch the skin connecting her ears loosen now.

  “Did you see him at his practice space with another girl?”

  Talley reaches into her oversized purse. She takes out a fifth of whiskey and takes a long pull. It seems like she’s playing a part from a movie more than actually blotting out reality.

  “You’re all the same,” she finally says.

  “Everyone is the same.”

  “Men. Men are all the fucking same.”

  “We’re dishonest creatures.”

  “But I don’t cheat. I don’t lie. So what the fuck? Why do I get shit on?”

  “We seek relationships that reinforce our views of ourselves.”

  “So this is my fault?”

  “Everything is our fault when we live in search of false comforts.”

  Talley tilts her head. It’s pity on her face. I would rather have anger. I lower myself to the wooden floor.

  She says, “Do you have any idea of the shit that comes out of your mouth? Or is it so deeply ingrained that it’s all automatic?”

  “Both.”

  “Are you really Thirty-Seven?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you kill…”

  “No.”

  “How can I believe a single thing you say?”

  “Through sickness.”

  “The hell does that even mean?”

  “Sickness bears Honesty.”

  “Right. And Honesty bears change. I read the book.”

  “I lived the book.”

  Talley suddenly looks exhausted or maybe just drunk. She sits on my bed. She takes another drink from her bottle. Her red panties show between her oblivious legs.

  “How do I know?” Talley says.

  “That I’m telling the Truth?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The whites of a person’s eyes never lie.” “Psycho.”

  “That’s how you know.”

  “How?”

  I get up. I kneel in front of Talley. I raise my hand and she flinches and this makes me sad. I hold the back of her head. I press my forehead to hers. I tell her to ask me anything, and look at the whites of my eyes. She asks what she’s looking for and I tell her Truth.

  “Were you part of The Survivors?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you had sex with men?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you following me these past few weeks?”

  “No.”

  “Were you following Derek?”

  “No.”

  “Did you really spend three years in jail?”

  “Thirty months, most of it in Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo.”

  “How did you know exactly how Derek cheated?”

  “Because I know how people work.”

  “Do you believe everything Dr. Sick taught you?”

  “No.”

  “Were you happier then?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened that was so bad that made you run away from home?”

  “My mother walked in on my father pleasuring himself at the foot of my bed.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Talley says. She leans back. I want to hold her hands. She blinks a few times in rapid succession. We don’t say anything for a while and eye contact feels weird and then she drinks and hands the bottle to me. It burns in a false way. I lean back and sit cross-legged. Talley tilts her head. I tell her she’s beautiful. She almost smiles. Then she does, laughing a little. “I walked in to see Derek getting blown by some groupie slut. He was kissing another one.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “But it doesn’t matter, right? Like I’m sitting here feeling so sorry for myself when you just told me your father was some sick pedo. That you joined the most infamous cult in recent history. That you spent your youth locked up. Yet I’m the bitch who’s crying.”

  “You don’t know any other way. Nobody does. We’re taught victimhood is sainthood in its infancy. Our cultural icon is a man nailed to a cross. We are the stars to our own tragedies.”

  “But you’re different.”

  “I am steeped in wants and fears and selfish bouts of pity.”

  “Was it like the book?”

  “Some of it.”

  “Do you ever miss it?”

  “Every day.”

  “You could be famous. Rich and shit.”

  “It’s an option.”

  “I’m so fucking sad,” Talley says.

  “It will pass.”

  “It won’t. Not the kind I’m talking about.”

  “You’re searching.”

  “For what?”

  “Truth.”

  “Fuck that. I want to be happy. I want to find a guy who can keep his dick inside of his pants.”

  I smile. So does Talley. I move onto the bed. We lean against the wall. Our anklebones touch. We pass the bottle between ourselves.

  “Sorry I cussed you out,” Talley says.

  “I deserved it.”

  “Thought you said self-pity was bad,” Talley says.

  I smile. “See? I fall victim to the same things.”

  “I missed you.”

  “I missed you too.”

  “And I hate steaming clothes at the store.”

  “I’d be happy to come back.”

  “Who offered you the job?”

  I laugh.

  Talley says, “But I guess if you’re desperate…”

  “Down to my final two-liter of Mr. Pibb.”

  “Shit’s foul.”

  “Nectar of the Gods.”

  Talley puts her arm through mine. She leans her head against my shoulder. She says, “Can you do me a solid?”

  “Anything.”

  “Can you at least pretend to be gay for a little bit longer?”

  “Sure.”

  “No, just don’t try to…”

  “I won’t.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  I wrap my arm around Talley and bring her to my chest and her wig smells different than her hair and I breathe both of them in.

  “Mason?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you teach me?”

  “Teach you what?”

  “How to be like you?”

  “You don’t want to be like me.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “How not to hurt?”

  “I hurt.”

  “How not to care?”

  “I care.”

  “How to be happy?”

  “I’m not happy.”

  Talley’s quiet. I feel wetness against my chest and know it’s her drool.

  “When we did that thing speaking into the ear, that was…you said it was a fraction of what it felt like living in Honesty.”

  “Smaller than a fraction.”

  “That was the best I have ever felt,” Talley says.

  “I know.”

  “So teach me.”

  “I’m not One.”

  “Yes, you are. Y
ou’re One and I’m Two.”

  I laugh because I’m uncomfortable. Talley finally joins in. She tells me she drooled all over my shirt. I tell her I already knew that. Her wig is a touch askew and I slip my fingers underneath and her own hair is matted and wet and I place the wig on the floor.

  “Would you totally hate me if I passed the fuck out in your bed?” Talley says.

  “No, I’ll sleep on the floor.”

  “Don’t be that gay.”

  I lay against the wall. I wrap my arm around Talley’s stomach. She pushes back against me. She tells me to ignore anything that sounds like a snore. I close my eyes. I match my breath to hers. She says, “Goodnight, One.”

  I know it’s wrong to even joke about it.

  I know some jokes cease being funny the moment they are acknowledged.

  I know there was only one Dr. James Shepard and I know things got out of hand and I know accidents happened and people searched for anything that would give their death meaning and I know that my objections to Henry O’Connor’s book are because it’s more true than not and I wonder if Talley had seen a difference in the whites of my eyes during any of my responses and I wonder if Thirty-Eight’s tooth I had filed to nothing is now part of something living and then I think about change taking time and Honesty being a journey and then about there being no accidents ever, at least not among those searching for something to keep them from running a blade across their wrists.

  “Goodnight, Two.”

  19. SHAVEN

  I get back into a routine and it feels good and the holidays approach. I’m at Talley’s Tatters four days a week and sometimes even more because I like hanging out. Talley sleeps over most nights. We watch TV on my computer. Sometimes we listen to music. We joke about our hanging out being some sort of training. Sometimes she calls me sensei. Sometimes she calls me teacher. Sometimes she calls me One.

  It’s all in good fun, our reading passages out loud from Dr. Sick. Talley pokes fun at my platitudes. She makes up her own—everything is Mr. Pibb; those who seek are impervious to traffic laws; the only Truth is the smear of mascara on your pillow—and we laugh, hold hands and feel better than the rest of the world. We cannibalize my experience for giggles.

  We start to do this more and more.

  Jokes cease being jokes when they are acknowledged.

  Most desires are initially portrayed as jokes; we gauge reactions by the tautness of one’s skin connecting his ears.

  Talley still talks about Derek. She talks about wanting to find a guy who’s down-to-earth but sexy as hell, and, of course, loyal. This is her way of gauging my reaction. Sometimes I think about sleeping with her. Sometimes I wonder if it’d make things weird like it had with Jerome. Sometimes I don’t care.

  She’s a nonstop series of questions, always in triplets: What did chemo feel like? Where did you get the drugs? Did you ever think you were going to die? I try to be Honest. Sometimes she doesn’t believe me and presses her forehead to mine and she’ll ask the same question and sometimes I change my answer.

  One afternoon, she tells me she has a treat for me. She tells me to pack an overnight bag. We get in her Jetta. We drive west. We pass Red Rocks and then we pass Vail and I know where we are going but I play dumb because it’s easier. This is the tactic we both employ, denial. We’re just friends having fun. Our attitudes are we’re just bored and sick of the bullshit of young adulthood and we’re in search of something with meaning but not really it’s all for fun we’re just so whimsical.

  We get off at the exit for Glenwood Springs. We drive through a touristy town full of old hippies and young kids who want to be hippies. We drive another thirty minutes up the canyon and then we are in Marble with its single street. My breathing is shorter. There’s no oxygen in the car. I open the window. I feel sick. I wonder if it’s nerves or proximity.

  Talley takes a dirt road. We stop in front of the charred remnants of One’s home.

  I don’t say anything as I step out of the car. Talley calls out to me but I’m not listening. I walk to the rubble. Most of it has been cleared, but the foundation is still there, same with some of the larger cedar logs. I remember pressing my face to the glass and seeing Five hold a dying man. I remember knocking and One answering and him welcoming me to the rest of my life.

  Talley puts her arm on my back. I turn. I’m crying. I feel something close to regret or maybe it’s hatred.

  “Oh my God, what’s wrong?” she says.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I thought…”

  “What. What did you think?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Mason, here, let’s go. This was a mistake.”

  Talley takes hold of my hand. I shake loose of her grasp. She’s a stupid girl who doesn’t know what she was trying to unearth. Her game of pretend had been real for my family; it was still real for me.

  “Why?” I say.

  “Mason, honey, this was supposed to be fun. But I—”

  “Thought only of yourself.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You thought I’d want to come back here? Why would I want to come back here?”

  “You said it was the happiest time of your life.”

  “And it’s gone.”

  Talley doesn’t know what to say to that. My reaction has freaked her out and maybe it’s freaked me out too. My whole body trembles.

  Talley whispers, “This was a stupid mistake.”

  “A mistake is a lazy way of shirking blame for selfish actions.”

  “You’re right.”

  I think about One and Five and Thirty-Eight. I try to feel their presence, but can’t. My eyes water. The air smells like sickness and Truth. I remember my first conversation with One standing in this very spot. He’d told me there were no such things as accidents. Talley believes this trip to have been an accident. But it’s not an accident. We were supposed to have come here, because at the root of everything, we seek a life of Honesty. We clamor for Truth. We found one another. We became as vulnerable as any two who aren’t sick possibly can. It’s no accident she brought me here. It’s no accident she keeps begging me to teach her. It’d been no accident that I’d been fifteen and a minor. It’s no accident I am free in the world while the rest of my family are locked up or dead.

  I reach out and take Talley’s hand.

  She’s cautious with her smile.

  I walk back to her car. I tell her to get her overnight bag. She does. We walk hand in hand around the burned house. We start on a footpath. We don’t talk. Talley’s hand sweats. We climb in elevation. The sun is being bludgeoned by the peak across the valley. I help her up the boulder. We stand and stare across my home. Talley holds my hand tighter as she peers over the edge.

  I tell her to sit down.

  She gives a hesitant grin, then does as instructed. I open her leather duffle bag. I find her pink dopp kit. I take out her purple razor.

  “What? You just really need a shave right now?”

  I hold the razor in my hand. I imagine One holding a rock. I imagine Talley as Thirty-Eight.

  “I will ask you a series of questions, and you need to be as Honest as you possibly can, understood?”

  “Dude, you’re kind of freaking me out,” Talley says. Her smile fades when she sees I’m serious.

  I say, “Do you want to die?”

  Talley stares up at me. She tells me no.

  “Do you want to leave?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want to live an Honest life amongst a loving family of your own choosing?”

  “Yes.”

  I remove her shoulder-length, dirty-blond wig. Her short hair is wet enough to shave. I tell her to look across the valley and find beauty. She understands what I am about to do. I tell her I will teach her everything I know. I tell her One’s beliefs were once transcendent but became misguided. I tell her I’d come up with thoughts of my own. I tell her I’d learned from the
greatest mind of this century. I say that there are no accidents; I’d been spared to meet her. I press the purple Bic to the front of her hairline. She gasps. I run the razor back. I tell her certain things will have to change. She nods. I keep shaving her head. I tell her she is free to leave at any point. She tells me she doesn’t want to. I tell her this journey will be harder than anything she could ever imagine. She says she’s ready. Her scalp is bonewhite. She cries. She asks if she’ll find happiness. I tell her happiness is the wrong word, one with a selfish connotation in our current society. I tell her she’ll find fulfillment. She reaches around and clasps my left leg. She squeezes. I tell her we all showed up without an invitation, but that didn’t mean we weren’t invited. Half of her head is bald. A trickle of blood runs toward her left ear from where I’d cut open a mole. I tell her she will soon possess the knowledge of how humans work. This understanding will become ingrained in her. It will sometimes feel like a curse to see motivations so clearly. She says she’s ready. I tell her this knowledge will one day cause her to turn against me. She says she’ll never betray me. I shave the rest of her head. I tell her it’s not about betrayal; the student eventually outlearns the teacher. I tell her everyone succumbs to Self, no matter how hard they try to live in Honesty. She tells me I am different than the previous One. I tell her nobody is different.

  I finish.

  Talley runs her hand over her bald head. She stands. She’s ecstatic. She presses her head to mine. I love the feeling of baldness underneath my fingertips. I sit on the boulder. I hand her the razor. She says she doesn’t want to cut me and I tell her cuts don’t matter. She shaves my head. The mountain air greets my bare skin, a welcome feeling, Thanksgiving dinners and returned phone calls and a father’s drunken steps climbing up the stairs while he believed you to be asleep.

  Soon, I am bald.

  Talley is bald.

  We sit on a boulder.

  The initial gifts of shedding oneself are evident in our mutual feelings of tranquility.

  “Now what?” Talley asks.

  “We become sick.”

  20. SICK (I)

  I pecac is cheap and leaves your teeth feeling acid-burnt and forces you to hover over paint buckets purchased at Home Depot for ninety-nine cents. It’s as close as we can get to Cytoxan. I haven’t vomited in close to three years and it’s more violent than I remember, or maybe it’s just the difference of catalyzing agents. We sit in my bathroom. Two looks beautiful with her head shaved. She rests her cheek on the toilet seat. I have my elbows propped against the orange bucket. We’ve expelled everything inside of us. She asks if we are done. I say, “Again.”