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Dry Spell
All stories on this web site are purely FICTIONAL. The people depicted within these stories only exist in someone's IMAGINATION. Any resemblence between anyone depicted in these stories and any real person, living or dead, is an incredible COINCIDENCE too bizarre to be believed. If you think that you or someone you know is depicted in one of these stories it's only because you're a twisted perverted little fucker who sees conspiracies and plots where none exist. You probably suspect that your own MOTHER had sex with ALIENS and COWS and stuff. Well, she didn't. It's all in your head. Now take your tranquilizers and RELAX.
Dry Spell
by Michael P. Simone (Muttley)
(C)opyright 1994, Multinex Enterprises Ltd.
(God how I hate all that legal shit, but it looks good, doesn't it?)
Hello again. Yeah, it's been a while, I know. I've been a little
busy...I got me a job. Selling insurance. (Don't laugh...I know. I rank
just a little higher than drug pusher and a little lower than used car
dealer...) But, I'm back, and I've got another tale for you. A tale of
woe and suffering that would make the "Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner" look
pleasant. But unlike that old sea bastard, who no one could relate to,
I know that we've all been in this boat. Have you ever had a time, that,
no matter how badly you wanted to get laid, there just wasn't anyone there
who was willing who you'd do...even with someone else's body? This is a tale
of such a fate. And so it begins.
Christine and I had been growing more and more distant. She was
up at John Carroll Univ, and I was down here at KSU, and we only rarely,
if ever, got to see each other during the week. And when we did get a chance
to be together, we were both too tired to really do anything. At best,
we'd manage to almost get through a whole movie before we passed out from
sheer exhaustion. (Well, working full time and carrying 18-20 credit hours
a semester was getting to us.) Finally, she decided that it might just be
better for us to break up, and after college, if we still felt the same
about each other, we'd get back together, when we could spend more time
together. (Read : I'd like to go out and meet some new people, and as it
stands, I get stuck wasting my weekends with you. Fuck that, goodbye.
Oh, by the way, here's your heart, the dog accidentally got a hold of it.
It's a bit chewed and it'll never work again, but here's what he didn't eat.
Sorry.) So that ended that.
And here I sit pondering this sad tale. Staring at the ceiling,
wondering what it was that I did wrong. (I don't know why, I always blame
myself when my world turns to shit.) So, Wendy and Jason come over, if
for no other reason than to make me even more miserable.
I don't know why, I don't know how, but people who are in a
happy relationship always know when a friend becomes single. Inevetably,
they show up as a couple, and proceed to paw each other in front of you,
and go on and on about how you'll find someone else, in between times that
they don't have their tongues in each other's mouths. They think they're
helping. I've decided that, from this point on, if I'm single, I'm not
speaking to any of my non-single friends until I'm cured of the condition.
Otherwise, I might just lose my calm control over myself, and practice
my pitching wedge skills into their skulls. (Never smack someone with your
driver. Those graphite shafts do not last long when smacked against a head,
and you never can hit them with the head of the club. There's a couple
hundred down the drain. Wedges, however, are quasi-indestructible,
and therefore fine.)
So, this was doing nothing for my mood. After asking them politely
to stop pawing each other, at least for the duration of my company, they
decided to leave...I think asking them if they actually are siamese twins
connected at the mouth was what did it....
I decide to visit the lab and let out some of my frustration.
(And as many of you know, the lab is even more frustrating than most
things in my life, but I tend not to go into that anymore.) Sitting here
in the lab, reading all these wonderful stories about people screwing like
crazed rabbits, meeting each other over alt.personals.ads and getting
married, and all that other stuff, getting sicker and sicker and sicker,
more and more hostile with each passing message. I realize quickly that
being in the lab is just making my condition worse, and begin to seek
out other places to be. (Anywhere comes to mind, but since that's kind of
a broad spectrum, I ignore that thought.)
It strikes me that, well, I don't have to work for a couple of
days), (the joy of being able to set your own hours.) my car just
got out of the shop and therefore runs, I'll go back to Louisville for
a couple of days, you know, a shits and giggles type of thing. (The
thought behind it was, "Last time I was truly happy was there..." Why
is it that the moment you get dumped, your mind comes up with this type
of silly shit to do? Never, in a million years, would I have just packed
up, and flitted my ass down to Louisville, without so much as a thought.
I may be spontaneous, but for God's sake, I like to think a *bit* ahead.)
I get to about Columbus (Ohio) when it suddenly strikes me what
a bad idea this whole trip is....not that I can be stopped by that. I-71
south never seemed so long in all of time....if only I were in a decent car
instead of my piece of shit 85 Honda Civic Wagovan. Would have
been a nice car, 'cept that the person that I bought it from played chicken
with a bus and lost. Needless to say, it's not in top condition. The
engine is sound, though, so I made it to my destination.
I passed through Cinci, and made my way down that stretch of
71 between Covington and Louisville. Those of you who've made the trip
at night know what it's like, the rest of you will never in your lives
feel such an eerie, desolate, lonely feeling as being on that road. The
absolute knowledge that if your car dies, so will you, tends to be
unnerving. (It gets hella cold in January, just ask anyone in that area.)
For the two hours that it took, I saw not one other soul on that freeway.
No gas stations, no exits, nowhere to even pull over if I had a problem.
I damn near went off the road when I was changing discs and dropped one,
(naturally, the bastard rolled right under my pedal...scratched it, too.
That's one thing I cannot stand, even a minor scratch on a disc. For the
most part, I'm pretty relaxed, but when it comes to my discs, I'm so
anal retentive that you'd think I could shit diamonds.), and that made it
all the more scary.
Faced with my own mortality at that moment, I reflected on the
real reason that I had come down to Louisville in the first place. When
my nearest and dearest friend in the world had died, I was in no mental
condition to go down for the funeral. He had gotten me off the drugs, gotten
me off the sauce, and straightened out my life, but I still wasn't ready
to stand on my own two feet yet. I ran up immense bills calling him up,
asking him how to cope with each problem. When I found out about him being
HIV+, I realized that I was in no way capable of helping him through it
emotionally - all the help he had given me I'd never be able to pay back.
I listened to his problems, I was there for him, but there was nothing that
I could do to give him the strength to carry on. He, however, in his
more than infinite wisdom, handled the whole situation very well. But he did
have one request of me - not to come down and see him in the condition he was
in (he didn't even let me know he had AIDS until he was hospitalized from
ARC - as well as spinal meningitis.), because he knew good and well that there
was no way in hell that I'd be emotionally capable of handling the situation,
and all the work he put into getting me functional again would be wasted.
At this time, he had been gone for about 9 months, and I felt that I would
be able to handle visiting his grave and wishing him goodbye. I was pretty
amazed at my defense mechanism's ability to hide my reasoning behind going
there from me almost the whole way there. Most people go to their mother
when they are completely lost and don't know what to do. I never got close
to my mom, I went to go see my friend.
I rolled into Louisville around 4am, and I found myself on the
doorstep of Demian's widow. (She, somehow, had not managed to get the
disease herself, and I'm still wondering about that one. No-one seems to
think that I'd be able to understand if they told me.) She was surprised,
but not unhappy to see me. For the first time, I saw her without Demian
being there, and it all struck me. I had been able to cope right up until
then, right up until my brain realized that he was gone and wouldn't be
coming back, and I had been able to keep everything that I was feeling
hidden - no small feat. But when the realization came, there was no holding
in back, the sobs came in torrents, and I collapsed into her arms,
devastated at the loss of the only person in my life that had ever been able
to even remotely help me. For the first time, it struck me how truly alone
I was. I know it was selfish as hell to think that, and I feel guilty as
hell for it, but it's true. She sat me down on the couch and held me, as
I openly wept for the loss of my friend.
When I finally managed to regain a little composure, I eeked out
a hoarse, "Hello" to her.
"It's good to see you, again, Mike", Dawn said, knowing that I
probably wouldn't have understood a word she was saying. We sat there,
in the dark, silent for a long while.
I don't remember falling asleep, but I must have. (There is some
sort of unwritten rule that says if you fall asleep in a house with a
woman in it, you will wake up with a blanket over you.) I moved the
blanket off of me, and stumbled into the kitchen. Dawn had been gone a good
long while, I had slept until 2pm. I made my breakfast (Here's a switch. Until
I had moved to Ohio, Demian had lived in my house. Now I was at his, and
moving in the way he had.), and stared numbly at the TV. I'm sure it would
have been more interesting if I had turned it on, but I wasn't in the mood.
I went out to my car, grabbed a different shirt, and put it on.
Then I walked down to the end of the street, hopped a TARC, (Louisvillian
for caught a bus. TARC = Transit Authority of River City, the best public
transportation system in the world. You can get anywhere in the city for
a quarter with a student ID. 35 cents without one. And you'd usually get
there faster than you could driving.), and headed out to the graveyard.
There's some serious procrastinator in me. I know it, and have learned to
live with it. Somehow, I managed to end up in my old neighborhood (the
opposite way of where I should have headed), and I went to see my old house.
The for sale sign was still in the yard, and it was still unoccupied.
What the hell, I thought, and proceeded to break in. (Took all of 10
seconds. We have this *huge* security door, that can be opened with any thin
metal object. What a fucking waste.)
I sauntered down to my basement (Hell, the house was still mine,
I could be in it if I wanted to.), and looked around. I nearly fainted at
the sight. I had never seen the basement empty - after I boxed up all the
stuff, I went ahead and drove on up to Ohio...I couldn't bear to see it
empty. I started to think about my last night there. I had been sitting
alone, in the dark, surrounded by boxes, thinking about all of the wonderful
things that basement had witnessed in my life. All of the greatest things
that ever happened to me happened right there. As far as I was concerned,
(and still am, for that matter), that basement was home, and there would
never, could never be another place that I felt as "homey" in. And
as I sat there, gently sobbing into a teddybear (It was the only thing
there that had some meaning to me. Eileen was upstairs chatting away
with some of my friends, who I'm not sure ever quite got the hint that I
was leaving, and Demian was doing something for my parents.), I felt
a hand on my shoulder. Demian sat down beside me, and just sat.
"You'll find a new home.", he said. God, he knew me better than
I did. It was scary as hell. "We've had some great times down here. The
parties. The day that you and Eileen were busily trying to lose your
virginity to one another and we all kept walking in on you. The
Sunny-D incident." He chuckled. "And we've had some not so great times
down here. Your dad catching us drunk as skunks with Melissa down here.
The day the VCR caught fire. The break in." (Ohhh the break in. Never have
I been so scared in my life...but I'm glad it happened..if it hadn't,
I wouldn't have a dog, and I love my dog.) He continued, "There'll
never be a place where you'll have the same memories, but wherever you
go, you'll get new ones. (Little did he know then that from the moment
that I got to Ohio, the memories that I'd collect would be bad ones. The
only time in his life that he was ever wrong about something was when he
told me that Stow would one day become my home. He couldn't forsee that the
only thing that keeps me from killing myself is the knowledge that one day
I'll be able to get the hell out of this God-forsaken hell hole called
Ohio, and if there is a God, and he is benevolent, I'll never have to see
it again.) But most importantly, this will be the first time that you're
going to have to stand up on your own. I'm not going to be there to catch
you every time you fall down, you're going to be alone. I'll only be a
phone call away, but I'm not going to be there to look after you."
I glanced around. The memories had seemed so vivid, so real, that
I thought that all the boxes were around me again, and he was sitting there
beside me. I saw the empty basement, I saw that I was alone. I bit my lip-
there was no way I'd allow myself to cry. I've spent too many years training
myself not to show what I'm feeling at any cost, I wasn't going to let
that slip again. I sat in the quiet and still room, with my eyes closed,
picturing the furniture, where it was, when life still had been good. While
I was there, I heard the all too familiar lyrics of "When the Crowds Are Gone"
by Savatage over and over in my head. ("When the crowds are gone/ and I'm
all alone/ playing a sadder song/ now that the lights are gone./ Turn
them on again/ one more time for me my friend/ turn them on again./ I never
wanted to know/ never wanted to see/ I wasted my time/ till time wasted me./
I never wanted to go/ always wanted to stay/ 'cause the person I am are the
parts that I play./ So I plot and I plan/ I hope and I scheme/ to the lure
of a night/ filled with unfinished dreams./ I'm holding on tight/ to a world
gone astray/ as they charge me for years I can no longer pay.") There
was nothing that could stop the tears from flowing. I gathered myself up
and headed out of the house.
I wandered the streets of my old neighborhood sort of aimlessly,
and without even thinking about it, I landed on the steps of Katie Spero,
the first person that I met when I moved to Louisville. For some reason,
her Dad is convinced I'm a godsend, but I just don't see it. I guess he
just wanted a conservative influence on his leftist daughter. Anyway, Katie
and I were more than good friends, we were more like very close siblings.
Having not seen me in almost two years, she was ecstatic to find me on her
porch.
I talked to her for an hour or so, going over who still lived around
here, who didn't, what had been going on, what had changed. If you're ever
lonely, don't go back to the city you call home. The hole left in people's
lives from your departure isn't gone, but it's spackled over. It's much
easier to get on with your life when your friend leaves; you've got your
little network still in place. When it's you that does the leaving, it's
losing the whole network. You still think that you hold the same importance
you did before you left, and you don't. The knife was already in your ribs,
it just gets twisted.
Finally, with a good swift kick in the ass from Kate, I headed toward
the cemetary. (She knew good and well that I wouldn't get there unless someone
actually told me to go. I have no will of my own.) I walked, albeit slowly,
to the cemetary, freezing my ass off the whole way. I didn't much care.
By the time I got there, it was already dark out, and there was a light
snow falling. (Not that there's any accumulation, it just fell.) I took
the directions that I had known to follow (Kate told me where.) and
found the grave site.
When I saw the patch of marble, Demian's name etched into it,
with the legend August 11, 1974 - March 11, 1993 the realization of the
finality of his life hit me again. I collapsed in the snow and wept. I
have never been so emotionally drained in my life. Not when my fiancee
left me, not when relatives had died, not when I had to abandon everything
that was stable in my life and head once again into the great unknown.
This time, I knew, once and for all, that I was absolutely alone on this
earth, and that I could never go home again.
I stopped breifly by Dawn's house on my way out of town, thanked
her for letting me stay over, and headed back north. I was shattered - I
thought that nine months would be enough to get me through the devestation,
but I had no realization just how attatched I was to my friend.
As each degree of latitude fell behind me, as each degree of
temperature was lost on my trip north, I began to realize that Louisville
was no longer my home. No one can possibly realize how much it means to
belong to a city until they no longer do. I'm not talking leaving one
city to belong to another, I mean not belonging to any city, not being
needed by any particular group of people for any daily function. There
is no feeling of insignificance that can compare to that. I don't have
any of what I consider to be close friends in this hellhole, there are
some people who, on rare occasion, make it less unbearable, but for the
most part, there is no one who I can say that I actually love. So, there
I was - owned by nothing, needed by no one, and totally alone out in
the void of I-71 north.
There really is only one place to go when you're feeling that
wretched. The only place in the world that can cheer you up when you
feel like you're that much of a loser. Pittsburgh. (Now, Kathy, I *know*
that you're going to go off about that one, but let me finish.) I'm
not saying that I gain any satisfaction from the thought that people
in Pittsburgh are worse off than me...not by a long shot. (Even if they
are.) I'm just saying that there's one thing in the world that can
renew my spirits, and that's a glance at Three Rivers Stadium. It's a reminder
that I have faith. In God. In humanity. And in the mother loving Pittsburgh
Steelers. Every year, I sit faithfully by my beloved Steelers (try being
a Steelers fan within 100 miles of Cleveland. Sorry, it just doesn't sit
well. You take beatings for that kind of alignment.) and honestly believe
that they're going to win the superbowl. When they're knocked out
of the playoffs, as far as I'm concerned, the football season is over. I stop
watching it then and there. The only reason I have any clue who's in the
superbowl is that I usually hear about the winner. (I think that Dallas
won last year, although I have no idea who they played. It wasn't Pittsburgh,
so technically, the superbowl fell in the off season, and didn't count for
anything.) There has never been a more steadfast monument to faith as my
loyalty to the Pittsburgh Steelers. So I was less depressed. (Hey, the
Steelers whupped the shit out of the Clowns last year, so what else
could I ask? I can't see how anyone can grow up as a sports fan in Cleveland
and not be ashamed to admit it. Who do we have? The Clowns, the most
miserably disappointing team in the history of time. They've made it into
the last round of the playoffs more times than any other team in the history
of football, and never, ever, in their entire existance, won that game
and gotten into the superbowl. We have the Indians, who were dead in the
water long before their three best players were. (It's a bad pun, but it's
true.) We have no hockey. We have the Cavs, who have never and will never
amount to anything. The only thing that I can say about them is that
Gerald Madkins, one of their guards, has taste in homes. (I know because
he lives about a block from me. There's only one digit different between
our phone numbers, too, and I've gotten more than one call for him.) I
sold him a Macintoy while I was working at Sears...I felt bad for doing it,
because Sears is such a rip-off, but hey, it was a chance to get an
autograph from one of the few people Cleveland has to be proud of. The
only decent team Cleveland has is the Crunch, and no one, up until this
year with all the world cup fever, ever pays attention to soccer. So of
course I'm loyal to the city that pounds the shit out of them each and
every year. The only teams that count are the Steelers and the Penguins.
(And the pirates, for those of you who actually think that baseball is
a sport.)) Naturally, after seeing that, I cheered up quite well.
A few hours later (like I said, my car is a piece of shit. It should
only take an hour and a half to get from here to Pittsburgh), I was
sitting in my living room, staring at my dog, who was staring right back
at me as if to say, "WHATTHEFUCKAREYOUSTARINGATASSHOLE?" (He's paranoid.
He can't help it. If you stare at him, he gets all nervous. It's so fun
to fuck with his brain. Of course, soon as you break the glance, he
attacks you, and he likes to draw blood. Only stare at him if you *know*
that you have a high tolerance of pain.), and being grilled by my parents.
"Where the hell were you?", the she-bitch railed.
"Uh, Canton, for a bit, then Columbus. I stopped for gas in
Cinci, then on to Louisville. Much the same on the way back up, 'cept
when I hit 76 I shot over to Pittsburgh, and then back through Akron,
up route 8, to here. I guess you could say that I was all over. 'cept
I didn't go to Cleveland. I guess after seeing real cities like Columbus
and Pittsburgh, Cleveland doesn't have much appeal.", I said, sharply, in
my usual, sarcastic, "I don't have to take this shit" tone.
"Your mother was worried sick", my father managed to interject. He's
never gotten much chance to contribute to the conversation in the house,
and I'm not sure if he even would have known (or cared, for that matter)
that I had even left had it not been for her. He's aware that there's some
person in his house, who's slightly taller than him, eats all of his food,
and leaves golf clubs in the living room. (Boy, that pisses him off.)
"Does that mean that you *weren't* worried?", I asked, grinning. My
father and I established our relationship as soon as I turned 18. He doesn't
ask me where I'm going, I don't tell him where I'm going, all we ask of each
other is that I don't wake him up when I come home, and he doesn't move
my golf clubs or touch my computer. Other than that, we coexist semi-ignorant
of the other one's presence. I guess you could say that there's not a whole
lotta love in my family. At least I don't have abusive parents, there's just
never been any emotional bonding between us. I know that I owe my parents
for raising me, and when I make enough money to do so, I'm buying them
a house wherever they want. That should about even us up. They know that in
order to keep their genetics going, they can't let me die of exposure, so
they let me live there. If that qualifies as family love, then it's there,
otherwise, well, we notice each other. It's as if I live with two noisy
roomates who resemble me.
"You know what I mean, asshole.", he said. I was impressed. I was
finally on his level. The rest of the occupants of the house refer to him
as asshole, (of course, Mom calls him "Phillip-asshole" (she emphasizes both
syllables of asshole and says Phillip in one syllable. I can't reproduce
the sound to save my life.)), and finally I moved up from stupid shit.
(I'm not kidding, we don't call each other by our names. I'm stupid shit,
dad is asshole, and Mom is, whenever she's out of earshot of both me and
my father, that-crazy-bitch. It's pretty safe to assume that we all
hate each other.)
The conversation degenerated from that point, if that's possible.
So, I decided that, since my house wasn't anywhere near where I would
like to be, I took the dog out for a walk. Didn't quite have the presence
of mind to grab a leash, so I spent the better part of an hour chasing the
dog. (He's either bone stupid, or flatly refuses to respond to his name.
Either way, calling him is an absolute waste of breath.) Not that I mind.
Bear is the only member of the family who receives any love from any other
member of our little clan. It's funny - he gets the most attention and
wants the least. He just wants to take his naps, and not be disturbed. Of
course, we feel that it's necessary to disturb him, due to his coloring and
the thickness of his fur we have to wake him up to make sure he's breathing.
You can't tell by looking. We taught him how to sit so he wouldn't spend his
whole life lying down. When he gets hyper, he almost qualifies for comatose.
Bear is the embodiment of "laid back". He and I went downstairs, I laid
on my matress, he nuzzled up next to me, and we took a nap. Like all dogs,
though, he felt that it was necessary to wake up every 20 minutes, stand up,
turn around, and lie back down, so it wasn't too sound of a sleep.
I woke up the next morning to the scent of dog breathing in my
face. I've learned from experience to wake up and let him out from that -
his bite is not only worse than his bark (which is pretty scary by itself,
much less when you see the rows of razor sharp teeth the little bastard has),
but it also preceeds his bark. He stands on your stomach (80 lbs of dog
on your guts in the morning has a way of making you uncomfy.), and bites
you on the neck, just to make sure he has your undivided attention. At that
point, if you still don't get up, he barks into your head (it vibrates your
sinuses. It rattles your brain. It doesn't even need to go into your skull
through your ears, it shakes you from the inside out. Needless to say, it
is not a pleasant thing to hear at point blank.
I let him out, and went out the front door to get the paper.
(The rest of the family has learned. No matter how late I get up, the
paper is mine first. I pay for the subscription, I get the joy of unadulterated
newspaper. Dad likes to circle articles, cut them out, and write comments
on the paper, and I don't take kindly to people vandalizing my paper
like that.) I see a ryder truck in the front yard (Yes, in the yard. The
bastards are leaving tire treads in the snow of my home.) Apparently,
the new people in the other side of our duplex are moving in. I go back
inside, make myself presentable, and whip up a batch of cookies. I carry
them over to the new neighbors house, and knock. The sight that greets my
eyes couldn't have been more welcome. She couldn't have been more than
19, a vision, an absolute angel, and she's living next door to me. I introduce
myself, and offer the cookies - something to take their mind off of how
hungry moving can make someone. We get to talking about the neighborhood,
and I offer to teach her the way around Stow. And maybe, just maybe, we'll
discover together that Stow can be home.
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