DAMAGED - A Bad Boy Romance (94 page)

I woke up gasping for breath, and feeling my dirty sheets to make sure they were still there. My hands involuntarily went for my sides, then my dick, and then the rest of my body. I laughed at myself after I made sure that I hadn’t disappeared completely. Turns out I was still here, in all of my glory, and I had morning wood to top it all off.

“Fuck you,” I told my penis, feeling as though its betrayal had been the primary cause of the incident I had just experienced.

Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and feeling no rest whatsoever, I decided to roll out of bed. Usually, if I’m feeling sluggish like that in the morning, the last thing I want to do is get out of bed. I don’t like to hit the day unless I’m feeling 100 percent, or I’m fucked and need to take care of some shit. In the moment, I felt a sense of hopelessness associated with my usual lethargic form of indulgence.

“Who knows,” I muttered to myself. “I might fall asleep again. Wouldn’t want that to happen. Maybe today is a good day to start an uppers binge…”

I wasn’t serious. I knew some people who went down that road. The journey looks nice at the beginning, but eventually, it wears you out. When the psychosis hits, you don’t have to be asleep to fall into shit like that dream.

“Nope. Just coffee for me, thanks,” I replied, trying to set myself straight.

I walked into the kitchen, feeling oddly composed.

Usually when I party hard the night before, I tend to feel a bit unsettled the next day. I guessed that either the dream had scared me straight, or my body was simply acclimated to the drugs I had been experimenting with over the years. Either way, I didn’t get much in the way of a post-trip experience aside from some light tracers in my vision as I was getting the beans out from the cupboard.

I lived in a shitty apartment in a part of town where heroin addicts and homeless people were frequent. I made money selling pot, and had a couple of clients that I could count on for regular income. Apart from that, I had a few little side hustles -- nothing major. I had a bit of extra cash, but I stayed here because it was low key. I liked to be in control of when I was high profile, and when I kept hype at a lower register. I found that my public persona was something that I could manage a bit more easily when lived the majority of my life in seclusion. A person doesn’t tend to attract that much attention when they are living in Alphabet Town -- primarily because everyone else in the neighborhood has got enough of their own problems to manage.

The coffee was at least something worthwhile, even if the rest of the apartment was shit. I actually made sure that that everything I put inside of my body was primo. No sense in living a life of luxury in appearance, and having the sensual experience of a man in poverty. I’d rather have the other way around.

The coffee bubbled brown in my percolator with a tan, frothy cream on the top. I poured the liquid into a ceramic mug I stole from a thrift store, and then grabbed my sandals and tobacco. My standard morning ritual was to go outside next door to the apartment building where I lived, and sit down in a vacant lot to enjoy coffee and a cigarette. There’s a pepper tree out there, and a little piece of shit rocking chair I dragged out of the dumpster last year. The wood is worn from weather, but the chair has continued to hold together in spite of the elements. With a dream like I had last night, I desperately needed the time to reflect on how I wanted to move forward.

The air outside was clear, and when my sandals crunched the dry grass on the way out to the pepper tree, I felt like everything was in its right place. Some things didn’t change, and the sense of calm that I got from the vacant lot was a good thing. A smoke and a cup of coffee was an awesome way to start the morning. Things got a little less awesome when I made my way out to the tree.

“A fucking dead cat…?” I rubbed my face with my free hand.

Spilling a bit of coffee on my toe, I let my head hang toward the ground. Usually a sight like this wouldn’t really phase me. Everything dies, so I didn’t feel like there was much use in getting bummed out over it.

The major problem was that the cat had died on
my fucking chair.

I didn’t feel like kicking a corpse off of my chair so early in the morning, so I let the poor bastard be. I lit my cigarette, and sat down a few feet away from the chair. I wasn’t able to direct my attention to much else, so I conceded to simply stare at the cat. The tobacco was sharp, but I enjoyed the way it woke me up and detached me from that present experience. I felt like I was able to think clearly about difficult shit, without bothering to wade through the emotional garbage that seemed to pile up around these issues.

Death.
Violence.

Nightmares.

Drugs.

Frankly, I was impressed that tobacco and coffee were my only consistent vices.

“Fucking cat,” I said out loud, cursing it for my own failures as a human.

As I sat there, I began to feel poorly for the cat. I actually regretted cursing it, and offered a silent apology. I thought about all of the different ways that the cat had hunted during its life. It might have been a house cat, but it looked mangy sitting there in the morning sun. No real way to tell.

Likely it hunted mice in this very field
, I thought, letting out a long exhale.

Sipping on my coffee, I remembered a time when I had watched a cat involuntarily salivate and twitch its jaws when it saw a bird in a tree. There was no way that the cat would have actually reached the bird. It was an older bird, and it knew how to stay clear of predators like that. However, the bird’s distance from the ground made no difference to the cat. A base level feline instinct to kill and puncture was operating in practice regardless if there would be any contact with the bird at all. I was astonished, just thinking about the fact that killing was bred into their genes.

What really got me thinking was that my reflections of the cat as an innate killing machine were not entirely accurate. As I continued to sit and stare at the corpse, my rational grew increasingly more clear. People liked to look at a thing, and then classify it as that thing to the exclusion of all other identities. What’s more is that since humans have so much ego, they play that game with themselves. Projecting an image is powerful; that’s what “Stoker” is all about. The only problem is that when you wear the same mask all of the time, or when you discriminate and simplify, you tend to miss out on the larger picture.

For instance, cats also use their killer instinct to play. I had seen both housecats and semi-domesticated jungle cats at the zoo. Both of them hunted for food, and both of them used their prowess in a playful manner when a non-threatening situation arose. Cats were incredibly playful. They would fuck around with a piece of string and be completely satisfied, if only you left them alone. Not to mention the fact that the way they pick fights with one another, even from youth.

After all of that stalking and play fighting, cats also tend to sleep. When sleeping, cat’s look as though they are so lethargic they couldn’t hurt a thing. If you knew what a cat was, and you looked at one that was asleep, you’d simply think they were lazy -- not that they were incapable. The whole point is that they actually look like soft cuddly, purring pillows, more than ruthless killing machines.

Sometimes, cats just want to share affection. I can’t even tell you how many times a stray has come up to me on the street with the expressed interest in reaching out to me and rubbing on my leg. They start to purr, and then if you’re not too busy pretending to be a badass, you can’t help but bend down and give them at least a scratch or two. I haven’t had any cats personally. If I was to be honest with myself, I’ve been far too self-involved to care for anyone besides myself for most of my adult life. Regardless of my own personal habits, one can’t help but appreciate the fact that
other people
have chosen to take care of cats, and that I receive whatever incidental affections these animals happen to offer.

Though I project myself as kind of a hardass, I actually do a bit of reading in my spare time. Mythologically speaking, cats can even be protectors. I mean, just take a look at Egyptian mythology. You have Bast, who is basically a Goddess of Families and Protection. Don’t even get me started on the fact that cats have long been the
choice du jour
of as witches familiars. Even if you don’t buy into all of that stuff, the fact that people still think in that way is astounding evidence that something is happening on a psychological level. Frankly, after last night, I’m a lot more inclined to believe in the metaphysical than I have been. Personal experiences tend to push a person from indulgent materialism to agnosticism pretty fast.

What a strange beast, to be both viscous and tender in the same life
, I thought to myself, while stubbing out my cigarette.

The cat didn’t bother with conscious transitions. Life is complex enough without have to be self conscious over when you are vicious and when you aren’t. I know that as humans we can’t just go on and be assholes whenever we feel like it. If someone cuts us off on the street, it probably isn’t a good idea to throw a rock at them -- that sort of thing. However, I don’t see cat’s throwing rocks; their aggression is in balance with nature. Maybe we as humans could use a bit more wrestling in the streets -- as long as we knew when to start and when to stop. You don’t see too many feline to feline murders either.

In spite of the lack of consciousness, each extreme is not under-utilized. The cats don’t have any problem sharing themselves as cuddly one minute, and biting into the neck of a bird an hour later. After it’s eaten, it likely will fall asleep, and then rub up against your leg an hour after that. Self moderation is probably a natural consequence when you’re living without an excess of ego and cruelty.

Really too bad that humans believe they have to pay so much attention to how they behave. Just walk down the street and pay attention to how people interact with one another. It’s so fuckin’ sad sometimes -- I don’t even like to think about it. People are afraid of one another, and they police their own behaviors just to continue forward in some tenuous, anxiety-ridden existence.

I wondered if it was possible that humans could be just as compassionate and just as feral as a cat. Likely it has to do with a decision making process. The decision not to be an asshole just for the sake of it. The problem usually isn’t that sometimes people are assholes to one another without thinking. Casual interpersonal fuck-ups are just a part of human nature, and are a byproduct of our society.

Wouldn’t it be great if humans allowed themselves to be just as well rounded. Seems like a social issue which contributes only toward arrested development. There are so many different ways that we can invest ourselves in this society. We can become extremely involved in social processes, or we can simply be artists and characters of our own right. I have personally opted to present myself as a character in the larger social context. I was beginning to wonder if perhaps I should allow my character to be a bit more mutable.

For those who don’t care to be more than one-dimensional. Surely, in a larger context humans are representative of both extremes; compassion and cruelty. If one were to take a larger perspective on the whole issue, one might say that all aspects of the human emotional spectrum are accounted for at any one given moment. The problem is that when we do that we are letting serial killers and nuns own all of the different possibilities of our expression.

Fuck them
, I thought, standing up and kicking dried plant stalk down to the ground.

The plant merely bent at a midpoint and rested on the surface of the field. I couldn’t even see the ground. The field had been abandoned for so long that a thick mat of grasses and weeds had grown over the soil. I noticed there were a few sizable rocks in the area, and an impulse struck me. I don’t know why -- I’m not really the type of person to give into those types of impulses, but maybe that’s what all of this was about…

I walked around the field for about a half hour, leaving my empty coffee mug next to both the chair and the cat. I was looking for rocks. I wanted to find about ten or twelve of them, and it took me a while. I didn’t want to find any small rocks either. I wanted some big fuckers. Something that I could use to make a cairn. The cat deserved to to have a final resting place, and what’s more is that I wanted to be able to use that chair tomorrow morning.

That climax experience was really something,
I reflected, thinking passively about the evening before while stacking the rocks on top of one another.