The Black Chronicle (11 page)

              Jeremy woke up one day and realized he didn't have any friends, but then he realized he didn't really want any. People were too messy. More to the point, relationships, especially the non-platonic variety, were messy, and more trouble than they were worth. What he did have however, was a deep stable of acquaintances: Professional acquaintances, romantic acquaintances, even family was reduced in his mind to acquaintances, people you saw once or twice a year during holidays, if he couldn't come up with a valid excuse not to. The exception of course was Charlie and Katie though things had become so convoluted between the three of them over the years that he felt he could relate to strangers better than he could them.

              Some strangers you know all your life. And that's how he felt about Mark, who was someone             he supposed he could think of as a business acquaintance. Mark had been who Jeremy bought his weed off since high school. Not that he smoked very often. His job took so much out him however, that if he didn't find a way to indulge himself once in a while he would be the one on the business end of some overpaid shrink's couch. And at the present he was definitely in danger of that happening and ganja was not going to cut it this time.  

              It had been nearly ten years since he had tried coke but was feeling a certain who-gives-a-fuckness which allowed him to call mark and enquire if he had any. As luck would have it Mark was a businessman of diverse inventories. They met in a parking lot not far from his condo where he over paid for a half ball of cocaine, chit chatted pointlessly for a moment or two so as not to appear rude and returned home to his elegant, dimly lit cocoon with drugs in hand. If it was good enough for Freud it was good enough for him.

              He poured himself some Glenfiddich on ice and sat down on the tile floor in front of the coffee table, which was a little cold and uncomfortable but easier than bending down from couch to table top for each line.

Care for some cocaine Doctor Foster?
Don’t mind if I do Doctor Freud.

                He plucked up the straw he had cut into a two inch snorting tool and attacked an ambitious line which almost proved too large for one run but he managed to hoover it up right before his lungs reached maximum capacity. It took only a few moments for his face to go numb, which he knew from movies meant that it was really good. But his face didn't have to go numb for him to know that because he instantly felt just a little better. He tried not to think about the biological process that was actually taking place in his brain. The neurotransmitter dopamine being redirected from its normal pathways and locked into each cell it was introduced to without allowing the chemical to deactivate which in turn caused a feeling of euphoria. This would normally be accomplished by achieving a goal or overcoming some obstacle. Nature’s little way of saying,
hey good job fella
. Cocaine circumvents all that. It's man's way of saying,
fuck you mother nature
.
We don't need your approval.

              But it diminished the experience for him to think of all that so he tried to focus on something else. He thought of Christopher, gone. Impossible but true. Where was he now?

              He did another line.

              He thought of Katie. Who was she dating? Did she secretly hate him? Was she secretly still in love with him? Either would be preferable to the current policy which seemed to be to pretend to be a robot in his presence. No emotion, no curiosity, no superficial smiling. Questions were answered efficiently and succinctly like she was tweeting.

              He did another line.

              He took another drink.

              He did another line and he took another drink.

              He thought of Charlie. Always so serious and full of angst. Always so eager to grow up. That heaviness that he carried around with him was something he had inherited from Jeremy and he hated himself for passing on such loathsome characteristics to him. 

              He did yet another line. He couldn't tell if it was the coke or the anxiety which was making him jumpy, but he had to move.  He couldn't just sit there thinking and getting wasted for a second longer or he would lose his fucking mind right then and there.

              A half an hour later her was in fifth gear speeding down the five enjoying the smooth handling of the car, listening to the engine hum and sing mechanical notes as he took the wide windy curves of the highway tight and accelerated into the apex . Before he even knew where he was going he was heading to a range of bluffs over looking the ocean. It was a place where he and his friends would go to drink and make out with their girlfriends as teenagers. In fact, it's where he had lost his virginity.

              Why he felt the need to go there he wasn’t sure. It felt like spontaneity but he was all too familiar with the subconscious drives of the ever unknowable psyche to truly believe that. All he knew for certain was that he longed for the nostalgia he knew he would feel, standing there in the cool summer air with the smell of sea salt in his nostrils and the sound of the waves far below.

              He found the old dirt road off of the freeway and not so carefully manoeuvred the beamer down towards the small flat of land overlooking the sky and the sea and the waves.

              Thankfully it was empty. There were no teenagers making out or smoking pot in cars ‘borrowed’ from their parents while they slept.

              The ground was smooth and free from tire tracks, seemingly unvisited for a very long time. This made Jeremy sad. So many great nights he had here as a kid, when the world and his entire life still lay out before him, vast and unknowable like the ocean itself. Where were the children now? Had life become so fast, so digital and sterile that a hidden corner of land with a secret view of the ocean was of no interest or worth to anyone anymore?

He flicked on the high beams and climbed out of his car. The coke and booze still causing his body to hum and feel cold and hot all at once. He looked over at the corner of the clearing where all those years ago he had fumbled embarrassingly, almost panicked, through his first sexual encounter.

Lauren Brown. She was a red head and heavily freckled fire cracker of a girl, with a mouth full of braces and equal parts adorable and mean. It was a frustrating experience, neither of them had climaxed and there was no elation for shedding the embarrassing virgin status. In fact he had just felt all the more embarrassed and unskilled with girls for it. Finally now though he was able to smile about it. That was forever ago – a lifetime ago- but he could remember it just like it was yesterday. He could even recall her smell: hand cream and spearmint gum.

              Lauren added him on Facebook not long ago. She wrote a message saying what a trip it was to see him, or at least pictures of him, after all these years. She asked him what he was up to and how he was in life. If he was happy. He never wrote back because he didn’t want to lie. He could tell by her pictures that she was married with three children. She had let herself go, for sure. Life does have a way of making trades with you. But looking at the photographs of her family get togethers and vacations to the beach and Disneyland it was clear she had found her own little portion of happiness. Good for her.

              He reached through the car window, grabbed the bottle of Glenfiddich and proceeded to the edge of the bluffs.  It was a calm night but still the sea thrashed up against the jagged rocks below in loud rhythmic crashes. Every once and a while the wind would carry up a mist which, against his skin was refreshing and strangely familiar like a lost memory he hadn’t known was lost until that moment.

              He took a long swig, holding the liquor in his mouth, trying to discern every little note of woody flavour.         

              He thought, for the billionth time that week of his brother. Dead. Gone. Buried in the earth. The pointlessness of it. The cosmic cruelty of it. So what was the point for Chris - for anyone? Happiness? Love? And what did love change? He loved Christopher but was that of any help to him?

              He pictured Chris stripping of his clothes and taking that first uncomfortable step into the bath he knew he was about to die in. He would have eased himself in until he sat. His face wet with tears as he reached for the razor and timidly slashed at his wrists until he was sure the wound was sufficient. What were his thoughts in those last few minutes? Hate for the world? Hate for himself? Did he feel as alone and utterly inconsolable as Jeremy felt now? Why did he leave him all alone like this?

              And the waves continued to crash below.

              What was the fucking point? Jeremy had spent almost his entire life caring for others who did not know how to care for themselves.
The custodian of the skewed.
And where was the fulfilment one would assume they would feel  from a career like that? Where was he recompense? Who cares for him?
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

              He thought again of Lauren’s pictures on Facebook. Not just hers but of the pictures on all his ‘friends’ profiles. These people had all, in some way or another crossed paths with him in life. And virtually every single one of them were parents, or soon to be. It was a constant reminder of his failure. The family photos and friendly updates on each other’s walls mocked him with their inclusiveness. Even people he had no respect for, people like Mark, the coke dealer, high school drop out and all around burden to society, had pictures to post of blissful moments holding his little son, smiling, posing for the camera, saying cheese, loving one another so instinctively.

              All his life he had prided himself on his intellect. But he had confused education with intelligence. Knowledge for wisdom. If he was so fucking smart how did he manage so expertly to avoid joy and fulfilment so perfectly? So perfectly miss it and take the long way around it? He realized in that moment that it must have taken him more effort to avoid it than it would have to embrace it. Much more. It was quite brilliant really. He could see in one nauseating moment, the mournful orchestra of his life. He the grieving, cursed maestro of it all. And now it was time for the final awful crescendo as he literally looked over the precipice.

              The waves below him danced and pummelled around the rocks like elemental furies licking their lips, hungrily waiting to swallow him up whole.

              And then he thought of himself as a baby. It was almost impossible to believe that, that is how he started this journey. As a soft pink little baby boy. It was utterly impossibly to his mind that he was once like that. That such potential was ever available to him. He could have been anything. Done
anything
with his life. He could have been sociable and happy, and outgoing. He could have been a doctor or a baseball player or a musician. But above all he could have been happy.

              He could have been a good husband and father... but he didn't, and he wasn't.

              He began to cry. More than cry he wept. He wept like his body, was trying to expel all the misery and pain and sadness from his mind it one cathartic outpouring. His whole body shook, and he could hear that agonizing, pitiful wailing of his voice but could do nothing to stop it. 

              He looked down at the ocean and knew how easy it would be to just let go. The earth wouldn’t even notice. He would be like a leaf in autumn, dying and falling. Returning to the soil again.