"The Forest"

“You can’t even kill yourself right.”

     The things I say sometimes, I think to myself as I stumble into a lamppost outside our apartment block.  There is no ‘our,’ though.  I basically live alone, adrift in a sea of tenants.  “For good reason,” I blether out with noxious breath while fishing my pockets for the key.  I feel like Dan Aykroyd two-thirds into that movie – what is it – ‘Trading Places.’  Or was it Chevy Chase?

     “Chivvy chess…” I mutter to myself.  It’s like a bad dream, doing without any control, caught in the backseat of my own psyche.  There was a time when I enjoyed it, getting blitzed and seeing where the legs might take me.  Yonks ago, now.

     I fumble about with the lock on the building door, unable to put the key in.  When I was younger we visited a German monastery, and I recall every door had metal leads that would funnel one’s key toward the lock.  Be bloody useful, now.  “Loody <gaseous burp>seful.”

     At last I match the grooves and am able to unlock the entryway.  The stairwell is ungodly muggy, stagnant from a winter of tight enclosure.  I loosen the scarf knotted about my neck and feel compelled to vomit.  I don’t, but I need to get upstairs quickly.  I stumble once on the stair, but am to the third floor fairly fast.  I make to unlock my door (3C) but it doesn’t turn.  I recheck the number (3C) and try again.  Idiot that I am, I never locked it from the first.  I lurch inside, flipping on the light as I close the door behind me.  

     The apartment is spartan, but I think comfortably furnished and for some reason ungodly drafty.  Sure enough, the window is open wide, which I remember I’d done to let out the stifling heat.  I cinch the scarf back up and shut the window, but the tightness around the throat trifles my gag reflex.  With swollen cheeks I run for the broom cupboard of a bathroom, barely making it to the toilet.  There’s not but a foot of space between the bowl and the shower.  I have to recline on my side, feet in the hall, as I release a night’s raucous torrent. 

     In the midst of several terrible minutes, I think back to that dark yawn of a bar, almost a sort of discotheque.  The music was positively blasting so a group of us were hiding back in a far corner, shouting conversationally.  There was a hipster.

Janie points at his arm, “What happened there?”

“What, that?  Just an old scar,” the hipster says casually.

“What from?” Mark asks snidely.  He apparently can’t stand the guy either.  “You cut yourself or something?”

“Yeah,” he answers simply.

I laugh, bark-like and unfriendly.  “You can’t even kill yourself right.”

“Wow.”  He is visibly speechless, thunderstruck by my terrible faux pas.  “I guess I failed at failure, then,” he at last says, rather stiffly.

“Sounds like a success to me.”  

     The things I say sometimes.  At last, I’m done and on my feet with my head in the sink.  The cold water feels wonderfully soothing, and an occasional mouthful from the tap helps get my bearings straightened.  I stagger into the den and flop out on the couch, a mite refreshed.  The head is clearing up enough to feel fairly miserable with myself.  I think back to the hipster and his arm, and wonder what it must be like to be so driven.  And I think back to myself and wonder at what little it takes to miss the forest of human misery about us for the dislike of being outdoors.

But I dunno, maybe he was just Emo.