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July
The woman is still asleep when the man gently brushes off the hair from her face, tells the restful form of a warm person next to him: I’m not even sorry
Whatever he means, only he knows.
Ash on the sheets and she sleeps naked, on her stomach, hugs the pillow and her eyeliner is smudged all over her nightclub glitter cheeks. She has a dancer’s strong legs and her muscular back is soft and hard at the same time. A perfection in the same bed - and the man gets up as quietly as he can.
This doesn’t feel right anymore.
He’s starry-eyed and young; the kind of guy you’d expect asking for fire in the backyard of a shitty rock pub. He has a long-ish black hair and his shoes are cheap. His sunglasses are second-hand and if you ask him, he will tell you that he looks pretty good when he smokes.
He stands on the balcony, watches over the city, sleeping and glossy. All the fairy lights of the overpriced places, distant, muffled music.
He dumps his cigarette and looks over his shoulder, looks at the sleeping woman and shakes his head. Sighs like it’s nothing. Shakes his head again.
Can’t get rid of the feeling.
He knows the woman will be okay, and that’s all there is to it. She will understand without explaining, eventually.
Clocks tick.
Tick
tick
tick
Like dripping faucets, ocean of hair-dye on the bathroom floor. He doesn’t touch those memories, some things are better left forgotten.
He will keep making the things he doesn’t want to think about. Abort mission. Abort mission.
He regrets everything, already.
She sleeps, unaware.
Sleep debt. He pays everything with smiles and small, avoiding words; I just needed some time to think
I needed to leave
And some might say he’s been looking for himself, but he knows better. He knows he’s only been looking for something that lets him forget who he is for a second.
She keeps reminding him.
And it’s not like he wouldn’t kind of love her. He kind of does, when the breeze catches her skirt and her hair and her laughter is warmer than any of the summer evenings this year. This year of fall, when apple trees haven’t quite blossomed. And he loves her, but she’s gotten too close now. The girl of coffee shops and heroin.
She’s has seen too much of him.
He’s almost at the door when he gets hesitant and looks behind him again, and thinks she won’t wake up, surely she won’t, if Gerard has another hit before he goes. Just a reasonable one, pretty little one, just one. That’s all. The final one, he swears to himself. It’s better than she could ever do to him. And it’s the best that he can do to himself, it’s the only thing that helps him feel real and solid and undead (the word is “alive” he supposes). He’s given up being scared of needles, the familiarity of sleeves up, belt there, little tap, looking for it, metal through skin and yes yes yes
yes
Centuries later he gets up. Chemical euphoria. Buzz.
For the last time, he swears. There’s a lot of different kind of last times. The streets are empty for him tonight.
“Can I come over?” His phone is slipping from his palm, he’s walking aimlessly, another hand in pocket. His brother on the other side understands, he knows. He’s been waiting for it for a while now.
Still he makes sure; “you mean –“
“Yeah, I dumped Nicole.”
He thinks about hospital beds like valleys, the sound of steps along the hallways and the little drops of holy water on the palm of the dying while the life escapes his loved ones. The one. It seems like as if the stars would spell her name on the canvas above Gerard’s head; Elena.
August
Everyone wears velvet black for the funeral and Gerard can’t choose between two ties in the morning, not until Mikey sighs does it actually fucking matter and Gerard has to agree. So he goes with the older one, stolen from his father’s closet.
The tie rubs his neck and leaves a mark, like a leash. Like a rope. He feels like hanging above a pit himself, a hole on the solid ground, nothing more. She’s gotten cold and bloodless and Gerard knows what it means. It means end credits. It means game over.
The priest talks about God. Gerard doesn’t. And when they pray, Gerard won’t cross his blue veined hands. Whatever, he thinks. Whatever. Stubborn with the loneliness and he definitely doesn’t expect anyone to guide him anymore. Fallen from grace? More like he’s fucked off of it.
He carries the coffin like the weight of the world on his shoulders and he’s afraid of missing steps with his glossy, glassy, teary, tired eyes. Wishing she’d just wake up.
Wake up grandma
The sun will rise
“She would’ve wanted this” everyone says, but they’re wrong. Elena never wanted to leave. Elena wanted her name to stand for reliable, trustworthy, and forever there. But now she’s gone and there’s a gaping hole that cannot be refilled in the bottom of Gerard’s stomach. Now her name only stays on the stone.
Elena
And it rains like tears down cheeks which, Gerard guesses, is appropriate. Food tastes like nothing. Biblical blah-blah doesn’t give comfort. God has given up and climbed down heaven saying “you’re on your own now, kid.”
“…gathered today to remember our beloved friend, mother, sister and a grandmother…”
Mikey sways like thin trees in a howling wind and Gerard stays like a shadow behind him, just in case. Little brother. Gerard puts his hand on Mikey’s shoulder and squeezes, don’t worry Mikeyway don’t worry I’m here and relatives ask questions. So many questions that Gerard feels like choking and the lies slip from his lips like the only thing he can do is lie.
Li(f)e he’s living, pills he’s taking. And Gerard breathes his ache, because he needs another hit, he needs it right now.
Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Gerard sits on the stairs of the mausoleum, drinks and misses her. Mourns, he supposes. He has the right to… right?
A figure of a please-go-away-and-leave-me-alone-person approaches after quite a while. Gerard doesn’t bother to recognize until she’s right in front of him and Gerard’s bluntly staring at her knees. A shaking hand holding his flask and the other bringing a cigarette in between his lips. He inhales. Blows white smoke.
He lifts his head and gives her a little nod of a head instead of “hi” or whatever he’s expected to say. He finds being silent much more comfortable now.
“Been a while.” Lindsey sits next to him on the stairs and casually kicks off her high heels, begins to go through her purse. There’s runs in her nylon stockings. She doesn’t seem to care.
“True.”
Frosty puddles on the ground. Gerard looks at his own reflection, a wavy silhouette of his drifting and drained face. He can feel the migraine building up in the back of his head.
“My condolences, by the way.”
“Yea. Whatever.” Gerard closes his eyes, takes a gulp from his flask. Sour taste, his drying mouth. Lindsey isn’t that bad, actually she’s not bad at all. She has just chosen the wrong time. Why would he want to talk right now? Why would he want to open his mouth at all? Lindsey doesn’t seem to notice she’s unwanted.
Just like the old times, really.
“Did you miss me?” She asks and takes out a small mirror and a lipstick and begins to fix her blood-red mouth. The shadows on her features have grown heavier but her eyes are still clear like fucking winter skies. She has laughed a few wrinkles in the corners.
It has been seven years.
“Not really, no.” Gerard stares at the ground. His nerves are static and Lindsey giggles, giggles like anything could be funny anymore. Especially today.
“I didn’t miss you, either” She states, “I really didn’t, I didn’t just say that because you said so. I actually mean it. I have barely thought about you since you left.”
“Good for you.” Gerard keeps smoking, face frozen into an emotionless glare.
“Honestly, I thought I would’ve cared a lot more but apparently you were kinda easy to get over” Lindsey shrugs and blinks twice at the mirror, picks a one, escaped eyelash from under her eye.
“Great.”
“So, you’ve gotten yourself into the big city life, huh? Crazy parties, queers, freaks, junkies and poets? A lot of half-naked girls and a shitload of alcohol?” She blows a kiss at her mirror and puts it back into her leather purse. Gerard offers her a cigarette from his pack and she takes one, lights it with Gerard’s lighter and crosses her legs, sighing. “I bet you’ve had so much fun.”
Gerard feels like bursting into laughter.
“Kind of.”
“Shitty weather” She says and tries to straighten her skirt. Gerard accidentally looks right at her cleavage while she leans forward. He looks away as quickly as he can. Her arm brushes Gerard’s when she gets back up and looks at the storm cloud – spotted sky.
“Yea.”
“Aren’t you gonna ask me how I’ve been?” Lindsey keeps the cigarette in the corner of her mouth and begins to open her black hair which she’s had tied up to two ponytails. She’s gotten a new tattoo on her arm. Or few of them, maybe.
“No.” Gerard says and drops the cigarette in a small puddle of rainwater under his shoe, crushes it against the ground while he lights another one. There’s a hint of smile playing in the corner of his mouth now and Lindsey takes note.
“Then I’m just gonna pretend that you asked” She says and giggles again, that Lindsey’s giggle, warm-hearted sunshine giggle, “I’ve been doing pretty fucking well, actually. I have a job now, y’know. A real job, and I’ve got a cat, and a nice apartment with big windows. I have house plants, Gerard! Cactuses! Can you imagine!” And she seems kind of amused by that.
“Okay.”
“Okay? Aren’t you happy for me?” She still doesn’t seem to get upset even though she’s practically talking to a door knob “I’ve gotten my shit together, Gee. Just like you told me to, actually. Well, not for you anyway, but I thought that you’d be…. I dunno…. curious, maybe?”
“I knew you would.”
“What?”
“I knew you would get your shit together.” Gerard thinks of his brown roots in his black hair and his suit which doesn’t quite fit.
“You did?” She sounds genuinely surprised.
“I did.”
“Oh.”
The church bell rings and rings and rings and rings and the sound is inside Gerard’s empty veins and it echoes all around his head, and he feels overlooked and abandoned. And forced to return into this joke of a town.
“Oh well, I won’t bother you any longer then.” Lindsey drops the final line of the conversation and gets on her feet, still smiling a bit. “It was good seeing you.”
Other time, Gerard would feel like questioning that. Now he doesn’t even want to.
“Bye Linds”, he says instead and it comes a lot softer than it was supposed to. “And…”
“What, Gerard?”
“I’m sorry.” Gerard says, mostly against his collar, turning his head away. It feels like time you’re running to catch a bus that’s already gone, but for some reason you still want to run, just so you know you’ve tried.
Lindsey snickers.
“A tiny bit too late for that” she exclaims unnecessarily and Gerard nods because he knows. Of course he knows he was shit, that’s all he ever was. But years have rolled past and one thing remains; Lindsey gave him the strength to leave, Gerard took that power out of her and wore it like a coat.
And for that, feeling sorry and being grateful blends into a big, steaming mess that is Gerard’s mind right now.
“I understand if you hate me.” Gerard says but Lindsey shakes her head, black hair framing her pale symmetrical face. Gerard thinks she’s beautiful but he’s always thought that, it’s not a big surprise.
“I don’t.” Lindsey says, warm and assuring, and she leans to touch the back of Gerard’s hand with the tips of her fingers, just lightly, “And I’m sorry too. For everything that’s happened.”
She walks away like she’s not in a hurry, she lets Gerard count her steps and light another smoke.
“Fuck it” Gerard tells himself, “fuck it. Fuck.”
He buries his head in his hands and cries for the first time in months.
September 2002
Gerard doesn’t go out, he sleeps in his old bedroom and goes through the untouched things in his old drawer, his lighters, pens, brushes and razors. He looks through everything and throws everything away – once he’s here, he might as well get rid of it, right?
The last hit he took doesn’t feel like his last one when he creeps up and down the halls of the house, puking and shaking from the ache of chemicals. But he’s clean now, he’s promised to be – most nights he’d rather die than be clean for sure, but it’s still something he has to do now.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Mikey asks five times a day and Gerard doesn’t answer, he gives answers in the form of dark glances and shut ups. Hell, that’s exactly what’s wrong with him. But something’s always been wrong with him anyway, so it’s fine.
His mother checks his sweaty forehead for fever and pulls her palm away, Gerard bites his tongue, tastes blood.
“You’ve probably caught the flu. You always do in the fall.”
It’s the fall, Gerard waits for the charming silence of October, pays attention to look like a corpse. Maybe he might stay here for a while, he wants to see how it goes. Maybe he can stay and ruin the sidewalks with his heavy steps, collect dirty looks from the men who were old in his childhood and even older now.
Gerard’s not a kid but he continues to feel like one, thrown into whateverthefuck without a warning. He eagerly waits for the moment until someone’ll ask how’s it going – then he’ll say; “It isn’t really going at all. It isn’t going away. None of it is.”
Maybe they’ve all studied his medical history like kids study history in high school, maybe he was the talk of the town when he left. Of course he was.
Of course.
It’s the second week when Gerard lets himself remember. He looks at the invisible marks on himself and sighs, opens the carefully taped up envelope, the letters, everything of it. From Hi Gerard, I though I’d write since they don’t let you visits to Hi Gee, listen, I think they won’t let me out of here at all.
He remembers every single word, he’s burned them onto his flesh and bone, but he still reads, eyes half-blind from the unasked tears. But he doesn’t really cry, it’s just the genuine reaction to missing something so much it feels unnatural to feel. Unhuman.
Hey Gee, I don’t wanna make you worried or anything like that but to be honest I’m so fucking scared right now
That night, Gerard leaves the house. He takes the shortcut to the playground, the air smells like crunchy, orange leaves, a thin layer of ice above the small puddles. Clouds hang heavy from the sky that’s like a black roof on top of his head.
Gerard puts his hands in his pockets, again. He’s run out of patience, hope and cigarettes. None of it really moves him at all.
The gravel rasps under his shoes when he walks, stands below the biggest oaks and allows himself to breathe in the absolute nothing that’s feels like a cure for his ears. Fuck yeah, okay, this is okay, he’s all alright now.
He walks to the rusty, abandoned swings and sits down to the right one, closes his eyes. He rests his cheek against the frozen metal chain, bites down the need to say it, ask him to come. Gerard know that he will, eventually. He always does, when Gerard wants him to.
The leaves whisper he’s coming, making a soft noise under steady steps. Gerard feels it, how he closes his hand around the side pole of the swings, how he looks Gerard for a half a minute, then sits down to the other swing and his not-so-significant weight makes it screech.
“Hi.” Frank speaks first. His voice is the same, oddly low, just how Gerard remembers it, like Frank’s swallowed a huge secret and tries to keep it down by lowering his words until they’re barely hearable. It’s a voice like a blanket, and Gerard opens his eyes.
“Hi.”
Frank doesn’t look at Gerard, he looks at his hands and a passing thoughts rip through Gerard’s mind; when he was a kid, he wrote a poem in which there was a line that went shy, even in death. He doesn’t know why he suddenly remembers the poem now; everyone laughed at him for writing it and he hid in the school bathroom, hands clenched into fists.
“How have you been?” Frank asks, lame as ever. He’s such a lame boy, he’s always been lame. Lame and gross and introverted, closed and locked like a door, and yet Gerard got to see. He wanted to, he really did.
“I thought that you’re supposed to know.” Gerard insists. He looks at Frank’s red nose; it’s fall, of course he looks ill. Frank’s wearing a hoodie and jeans and he seems to shake a bit. Maybe he’s cold.
It seems like an absurd idea.
“I do” Frank goes on, unbothered, “but I kind of wanted to hear it from you.”
“So you know that it’s all shit right now?” Gerard sniffs. Inhaling, letting it run through him, the solid solitary. But now he doesn’t feel too lonely.
“I know.” Frank admits calmly, “It’s really shit. Elena’s passed away and stuff. And that” Frank waves at somewhere under Gerard’s sleeves and Gerard’s skin lights on guilty fire, “that’s shit too.”
“It helps.” Gerard explains, not believing himself. “For a second but still.”
“How about the other seconds?” Frank asks, sounding genuinely interested. Gerard throws a suspicious glare at him but Frank doesn’t seem to be angry. He’s mostly just curious, looking at Gerard now. His eyes are rounder than Gerard recalled.
“They’re the worst.”
“Still you do it.” Frank almost smile, “You’re an idiot.”
“I haven’t in weeks” Gerard sighs, not sure if he’s regretting or longing or realizing he’s no good without it. Maybe he needs to prove Frank that he’s not an entirely lost one. The lost kid. They used to laugh at the lost kids.
“Are you going to, again?”
“Probably.”
“I thought so.” Frank scorns.
“Hey” Gerard rolls his eyes, feeling a little bit humiliated, “don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. You have no idea what this is like.”
The bitterness pours from Gerard’s lips, the same one he tries so hard to suffocate. But it’s true, as well; Frank doesn’t know. Frank doesn’t have a clue what it’s like.
“I wasn’t telling you anything.” Frank denies very silently, “It’s true. I have no idea what it’s like.”
“Thank you.” Gerard says, “For saying that.”
“You know me.” Frank shrugs, “I’m not full of shit. That’s why you like me so much. You said so.”
Gerard nods. Frank takes a cigarette from his hoodie jacket; “mind if I smoke?”
Gerard laughs, starting from the bottom of his stomach. It’s so absurd, being asked that question like he could actually tell Frank not to. What the fuck.
“You think?”
“Right.” Frank lights the smoke and offers the pack for Gerard too, “want one?”
“God, yess.” Gerard takes one and lights it like he’s lighten the life back in his eyes. Of course he doesn’t see that himself, not now. He just feels it somehow, how different it can feel just in a matter of moments.
“Have you missed me?” Gerard murmurs after a minute of blowing smoke at their converses. Maybe it’s a stupid question, maybe he doesn’t care.
“Huh.” Frank states.
“Huh what?”
“I really thought that that was kind of given.”
“So you have?”
“All the time.” Frank stares at his crossed hands, “And I’m not sure what time it is anymore. It’s just what I try to spend while I’m missing you.”
“Isn’t that kind of shit?”
“Oh well” Frank sighs, “I guess it’s shit for the both of us.”
It doesn’t make Gerard feel any better but he doesn’t expect to feel better anyway. He just expected to feel, and that’s what he’s gotten. He’s gotten everything he’s asked in his life expect for people to stay; he’s gotten used to of them leaving without a warning, sometimes closing the door behind them.
Sometimes, not so much.
“I’m sorry.” Gerard drops his smoke and rubs it against the ground with the heel of his shoe, “I’m sorry it’s shit for you too.”
“It’s not your fault.” Frank mutters and wraps his arms around his small body. He looks fragile like the wind could grab him any time, blow him away and leave Gerard sitting alone, staring at the place he used to have someone. That’s happened couple of times.
His road is full of potholes, he hates it, hates it that he can’t move on, that he can’t walk forward without losing his steps and turning back, sometimes without even knowing he’s doing so. Frank doesn’t let him go.
No, it’s not that – Gerard could leave if he really, really wanted to. Greatest of the issues is that he really, really, really doesn’t want to.
“I’ve missed you too.” Gerard tells, “I know you don’t wanna hear it, but it’s true. I miss you on my every breath, and some days it feels like it’s passing, like you’re finally leaving, but you never do. I never want to forget you.”
“You’re wrong” Frank blushes, “I do want to hear that.”
“Really?”
“Yeah” Frank coughs, “It’s selfish, I know. But I wanna know. I wanna know that you still think of me.”
“Frank.”
Gerard lets his hand from the metal chain, brings it closer to the other’s, and they lock fingers. Gerard feels like dying but he doesn’t, he squeezes Frank’s small, still sixteen-year-old hand, thinks about the years that have passed. Frank hasn’t changed; he’s still sixteen, eagerly waiting for his first tattoo that his dad promised to pay for him if he fights the chemo like a man.
Frank really did. Fight.
Gerard could read it from the letters. He couldn’t visit; at first, his mom wouldn’t let him. Then the hospital didn’t. Not until they all run out of time to give. Frank needed to rest, he always needed to rest, to spend time with his real family. Isolated, left for the nightmares. Gerard knows he was the only one who could talk the nightmares away in the daytime.
They didn’t let him.
Not until Frank rested, rested so much that he was never going to anything else.
“You died.” Gerard wonders like the most casual thing in the whole, wide world.
“I did.”
“But you’re still here.”
“I am.”
“I don’t understand.” Gerard’s hand shakes in Frank’s, he rubs his temples with another. It’s all just broken railroads of broken thoughts for him; a collection of his worst memories. The phone call at 8AM; “Gerard, come downstairs.” his mom had called, serious, “we have something to tell you.”
Everything froze. Gerard as well.
“You don’t really need to.” Frank admits, “And I don’t really wanna explain. Not sure if I could.”
“Okay.” Gerard closes his eyes, disappointed. He’s not sure how many times he’s asked why, how many times Frank has told him he can’t really tell him. Maybe Frank doesn’t know, either. Maybe they’re just floating, bending the borders of reality just for the sake of missing each other. That’s the kind of shit Gerard doesn’t believe in, but most days he’d want to.
“Remember the last letter I wrote you?” Frank asks, kicking the ground nervously with his foot. He looks like he’s shrinking, fading into the night. Gerard holds on harder.
“Of course.”
“Tell me.” Frank almost begs, “Tell me how you remember it.”
“Frank?”
“Just tell me, Gerard.”
“Okay” Gerard swallows everything, the burning memory of reading, praying it’s not real, it’s imagination, Frank’s final fever dream. “You wrote that you didn’t want me to forget you, because everyone else would. You wrote that you wanted me to keep your memory and keep it safe, and make sure that I’d think of you and smile every now and then, so you wouldn’t be just as dead as you were going to be. You told me to make sure that you’d mean something to someone. You didn’t want to die unloved, meaningless.”
The night listens to Gerard’s words, he wants Frank to understand. Gerard hasn’t forgotten, he’s kept everything and made sure it’s safe, always untouched and kept from others. It’s only Gerard’s, it’s everything he does. Almost, that is.
He smiles for Frank.
“I was only sixteen.” Frank sobs, hair hanging like a greasy curtain in front of his face, “Fuck, I’m only sixteen now. And I was afraid, you gotta understand that. My life never got a proper ending – I just went.”
“I won’t” Gerard bites his lip, keeps his screams inside because he’d really want to scream how wrong it is, “…never forgive myself that I wasn’t there. I should’ve come. You shouldn’t have gone through all that alone. And when they buried you, I knew – I knew you weren’t gone.”
“We met that day, didn’t we?” Frank grins a bit, “The day of my funeral. You ran from the service and went to the cemetery. You talked to my soon-to-be-grave. I remember that. You were so angry, you said that I didn’t deserve it.”
Gerard remembers. Vivid.
“I talked to you, I said it’s okay. You weren’t scared. You said you would never forget.” Frank continues, his smile getting wider.
“And I never did.”
“Yeah. You never did.”
They sit in the swings for such a long time, so long that Gerard feels like years have ran through his hair. He holds Frank’s hand until he lets go, and then it’s all dark and cold again. Maybe right now he misses coffee and heroin, mostly heroin. Maybe now he only wants to take the first train to the city and rub this town’s dusts from his shoes. He hates it, hates it that here he still is. After everything.
“I have to go now.” Frank says, the sun is rising behind his figure. Gerard is half-asleep, eyelids hanging heavy, and he nods in approval.
“Okay.”
“Take care of yourself.” Frank says. “I'll be there, Gerard. trust me. The darkest of your days, I swear. Just smile for me sometimes and I'm home.” Gerard does just that, closes his eyes. And when he opens them again, he’s alone.
In the paleness of the morning skies there’s still few stars visible and Gerard thinks about them falling on him, on them. Painting them in colors. He’s felt like this for so long that he’s beginning to think he’s fine.
He goes home.