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Ash and me talked for a while
=============================

I wasn't sure she was going to show up.

I saw her at the YMCA two days ago, and I asked if there's any way she
could give me a ride home, because the buses run way less frequently
after 6 pm.  That day she drove me home.  We talked on the way, and when
she saw where I lived, she said she could pick me up for class Thursday
(today), but only if she decides she will actually go.

I was surprised that she offered.  Ash has a kind of edgy, almost
heartless demeanor.  I'm 23 now, and really, she and I have known each
other since we were kids, but we've never been close.  Ash and I went to
the same junior high and we were kind of both in that gloomy clique.

I remember standing with her and a few others a few times when we were
kids, smoking cigarettes behind the parking lot, talking about the stuff
that unhappy kids talk about.  There was a big difference in my mind
between me and her though -- Ash was really rich.  I kept my distance
from her.  I really was terrified back then that if the other kids at
school knew where I lived, they'd shun me, or mock me.

It was bad enough that I was skinny and that my parents were super
religious.  I didn't want people to know we were poor too.

I don't understand why she is at U of H, instead of at some fancy school
out of town.  If I had to guess, I'd say that Ash is in college because
this way, her parents support her.  Or maybe it's more complex than
that.  Maybe they want her to go to college because they can't abide
having a daughter that isn't following the rules.

My phone rang this morning and it was Ash and she asked in almost a
sneering manner if I still wanted a ride.

It was when I heard her banging on the door that I realized she has a
protective shell, where she acts nearly disgusted by everything.  But
here she is, taking me to school.  And I don't have anything to offer
her for it other than some companionship.

I realized while I was unlocking the door that she likes me (not
romantically, just as a friend, she's into chicks).  But she must kinda
think I'm cool.  Why is it so difficult to imagine people like me?

She needs friends too.  This town is not easy to be alone in.

I imagine I'm gonna tease her about this at some point.  Just point out
how she is a totally sweet person but she wears this harsh exterior.  I
think I'll compare her to a porcupine with a soft belly.

I'm not saying that I look down on her now.  But it makes me realize I
totally had her wrong all these years.  It also made me feel a little
more relaxed, more confident.  She was into me.  This wasn't a pity
thing.

She rummaged through my music while I finished getting ready.

I made a few peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the kitchen.  Every
dollar I can save helps.  Sometimes for a moment when I talk to other
students, or just watch people at the restaurant, I realize how
different our lives are.  I'm at work or at school or studying almost
every waking minute.

Am I just keeping my mind too busy to think about my situation?  That's
part of it for sure.  But also, I have to make rent, and pay the monthly
court fees, and I have to make enough to eat.  And school has gotten
really challenging.  Especially since Dr. P called me out and said I
should apply myself.

Now I'm running scared.

It started while I waited for my court date.  My lawyer said because of
how much they caught me with, I faced four years in prison.

So yeah, when I listen to other people talking just enjoying their
lives, it's fucking disorienting.  Like, go to a party and have fun?
Well before I quit drinking and getting high, I could barely handle that
stuff, being so fucking shy, so I had to get buzzing before I could.

Yeah, there were nice nights in those years.  But now, here I am.
Trying to prove to a sadistic criminal justice system that I've been
scared straight, that it would be better to let me stay outside.

All this played through my mind while Ash kneeled in front of my milk
crates of old CDs and tapes.

It was relatively well organized. But Ash made a mess while going
through them.

She said something like how all the music I had was stuff to listen to
while slitting your wrist.

But she found one tape she liked and held it up for me and said, "I'm
taking this."

I hadn’t ever really gotten into it.  One of those instances where I
knew other people admired the band, so I bought the cassette tape,
played it once or twice, and didn’t love it.  The band makes songs with
high energy, raging, almost spastic distorted vocals and beats, and
lyrics that make almost no sense, just describing violence and
destruction.

That stuff doesn't appeal to me right now.  Just like two years ago,
man, I was all about flamboyant nihilism.

And now I try to avoid that.  Because at this point, suicide is not just
a thing to daydream about.  If I point my mind in that direction, I'll
likely do it.

It would be great if I could not want to die all the time.  I'm gonna
give it a try.  Try to be somehow a positive person.  But right now, I'm
not there.

I've cut contact with everyone that I used to talk to from that chapter
of my life.  Moved away too.  They said when I went through that
mandatory treatment program how I needed to disconnect.

God damn I was so scared then.  Looking at potentially years in prison.
Then I went to that treatment program and I grabbed on to it all so
tight.

And Sure, from some perspective, I'm a fucking success story.  I've been
clean and sober for almost two years now.  I pay my fees.  I'm working.
I'm going to school.  I'm going to be a productive member of society.
But all that will disappear if one of these small-minded bitter
corrections officers decides to fuck with me.

So I don't associate with anyone.  Except maybe now for Ash.

I think that’s part of why I’m so lonely.  The misery is back now.  Gawd
my life is really just a choice between grim stoicism where I just keep
putting one foot in front of the other in the hope that one day I won’t
be miserable, vs just flying into the sun.

I don’t have an answer of whether shit will get better.

The old guys in the AA meetings are all over the place.  Some seem happy
enough.  But… were they always pretty happy?  And some are clearly
haunted by demons.

Back to my point.  I listen to other young people my age talk at school,
and I feel like they live on another planet.  They go to parties.  They
have fun.  They don't worry about how they'll have enough money for rent
and their court fees.

Life is fun for them.

But not for me.  For me, now, it's a struggle.  It's purgatory, at best,
I suppose.  I used to be such an atheist.  Now I'm supposed to embrace a
higher power.  So I do.  I pray too.  But it hasn't given me any of the
peace that I hear other people say it gives them.

It's just really fucking sad, when I picture myself at the same time
other students are laughing and dancing around at some house party while
music blasts.  At the same time, I'm home alone, in this dark apartment,
sitting on this green carpet floor, praying not to be so fucking lonely
and unhappy.

Ok, back to what happened with Ash though.

While we walked out to her car, I said something like "you can have that
tape if you want." and she replied something like "yeah, that's what I
meant when I said I was taking it."

Ash is a terrifying driver.

That's what I found out today.

There's two ways to get from my apartment to the university.

One way is that you point in the direction of the campus and zig zag for
about six miles across the sloppy grid of side streets until you get
there.  That's roughly how the bus goes.  It's a ton of stop and go
traffic and there's potentially two places where you can get stuck
waiting for a train.

The other way to get to school is the highway.  You gotta go in the
opposite direction to get on the freeway, then you zip above the city.

I love the meandering zig zag approach.  But Ash took the highway.  So
yeah on the highway we must have been goin close to eighty miles per
hour.

She popped in the tape, pushed in her cigarette lighter, and then
started talking and searching in her bag, and while swerving across the
six lanes.

I thought about how ridiculous it would be to die at 9:30 AM in a
freeway car crash.

She talked about after she got out of the hospital while she drove us to
school, swerving across lanes in the massive highways.

I don't know why, but she opened up a vein this morning.  Maybe she
could pick up on my mood and it inspired her.

I remember how she steered her car while she talked.  She said, "When I
got out of the hospital, I didn't feel anything.  I was on so many pills
that I would just stare at the TV and after whatever show just finished,
I couldn't even tell you what had happened.

“I was a zombie.  It was like they couldn’t get me to embrace their
religion, so they destroyed my personality instead.”

Just today I realized that maybe Ash being gay was as much a part of why
her parents shipped her off to some treatment center as her substance
abuse.

* Consider describing how Ash is a masochist and envied the
  crucifiction.  Or at least she said she did just to anger her
  counselors.

Ash asked what happened since the last time we hung out.

See, the last time I saw Ash was when I still lived in MacArthur.  She
saw just a few weeks before I got arrested.

That night, I was having the time of my life.  High and drunk and seeing
my fave band and I think I had just sent off a poemI was really proud of
to a magazine and they said they really liked it.  Everything looked
good at that moment.

I remember I was really manic that night.  After the show, we spent like
two hours talking.  Gleeful.  Seeing my fave band, with all sorts of
great drugs.

I used to love Rotten Brides.  Three women, and the singer also plays
guitar, and she just screams.  That night, they were the second band in
the lineup, but I remember talking before to this guy that worked
security, and we both agreed RB was gonna steal the show.

And they totally did.  RB is amazing on several levels.  Kat, the singer
and guitarist, she can really play.  But she dresses like some kind of
crazy runaway kid, wearing weird ill fitting jumpers from some private
school, and her hair has been dyed and bleached and dyed and bleached
until it is just this huge mess of straw.

Crazy theater makeup.  Bright red lips, overly done eyeliner, white
pasty face.  Like an absolute crazy person.

Yeah, just a little while ago, Kat was like the absolute perfect example
of a woman to me.  And I realize now this is another band I can't listen
to.

Today, this morning, zooming in Ash's car, was such a contrast to that
night.  I could remember that night so well, and I didn't like how I
felt now.  That was such an amazing night actually.  And here I was, a
year and a half later, feeling utter trash.  Terrified about an upcoming
court date.  Waiting tables, going back to college, trying to become a
decent member of society.

And totally sober, with nothing to protect me from the onslaught of self
hatred that I've felt since I was a kid.  Just me and the deafening roar
of a million voices all telling me I’m trash.

I worry deep down that I'll never have fun like that again.  I'll never
get high out of my mind like that.  I'll never feel friendship like that
again.

So I try to stop myself from thinking sentimentally about moments in the
past.  I don’t really have an answer yet for why I should keep living.
Right now, it isn’t great.  Maybe though it might get great.

Before I ran into Ash at the show, Rollie was there, along with Aubrey,
and we had gotten some more of that amazing ecstasy and it was great.

I was telling them how really, if the world made sense, the three of us,
smart guys, would have jobs that let us apply our brains to something
useful and really meaningful, and then drugs like X would be plentiful,
and wouldn't require interacting with all these random lowlife
criminals.

I didn't mean it in an arrogant way either.  Just that it was ridiculous
that all three of us, really bright based on the school tests, were
clearly not doing so well.  What good is a society that drives its
brightest mad?

How can a society like that survive over the long run?  If all the
weirdos and creative people kill themselves or die from drug overdoses
or go to prison, won't the mainstream eventually wither and die?

This is the way I used to think about everything back then.  We live in
this ridiculous world and I'm going to destroy myself to protest it.
Then they'll be sorry.

Writing this out tonight, I'm torn.  I mean I still feel like nothing
makes sense, and it is a fucking tragedy how unfair life is.  But the
idea that I was just a victim in everything, and meant for greater
things, and the whole world was against me, all that, it all seems
delusional now.

I'm not unsympathetic.  But now I see it a little differently.  There's
no conspiracy by the ruling class to drive the intellectuals mad,
because the intellectuals are the ones that threaten them.

I was seeking out drugs because I was a kid that went through some rough
stuff that overwhelmed me.  I was hurting and I was looking for some
comfort.  It's really just that simple.

That night was just a few weeks or months really before everything fell
apart.

I had been making enough money to pay my rent by buying a little extra
and then selling it.  And then one morning it all came crashing down.
The police showed up with a warrant, asking me "where it is".  After
tearing apart my place while I sat on the couch, handcuffed, they found
in the pages of that communist revolution book I was reading, "Rise of
the New Left", folded blotter paper with 500 hits.

I told Ash all this when we were walking into class.

I told her how I moved in with my parents for a while, after they bailed
me out.  I had my first court appearance, and then I went to a 30
outpatient drug recovery program, and now, I'm doing everything I can to
show the judge at my next court appearance how it would be a waste of
money to send me to prison for a decade.

I stayed with my parents, and tried to patch up my relationship with
them, but then slowly I realized that half the reason why I was so
self-destructive was because of how miserable they make me.  I think I
realized I would probably kill myself if I stayed at home.

So I found a cheap apartment.  I wait tables, I go to college, I go to
AA meetings numerous times a week, I meet my probation officer every two
weeks.  I take drug tests.  I send in notes from my manager at work.  I
send in my grades from school.

Ash said something like "yeah, you wanna look like you got scared
straight."

I told her how it was hard for me to think about stuff before I got
arrested.  The whole thing was such a nightmare.  That kid. Man, he
really stepped in some shit.

Here is the timeline of Ash and my life:

1.  We went to the same junior high.

2.  In high school, I just got really withdrawn.

3.  In high school, Ash’s parents sent her to a treatment center.

4.  She got out.  Stayed with them.  Weaned off the drugs.

5.  Rebuilt herself.  Thrift store shopping.

6.  When I was in college, I saw her at the Grief show.

7.  I got busted by the MacArthur police.

8.  As of now, I’m waiting for my court date.

9.  Ash now seethes with rage.  Her parents support her as long as she
    stays in school and makes good enough grades.