The Gravity of Nothing

by Chase Connor

  Dally and I did sexual things all of the time. That’s not a lie either. And it’s not a lie that we didn’t have romantic feelings for each other. The sex was supposed to be a way to forget our problems, to find comfort. To forget John and see sex as something fun instead of horrifying. It was one thing that one friend did for another. No more, no less.

  So, yeah, Dally gave me head and I gave him head. We fucked each other from time to time. The sexual encounters became as frequent as Dally bringing up John. And that was another reason that I began to hate Dally. The frequent use of sex for comfort.

  It’s posited that survivors of molestation or sexual assault can start to see sex in an unhealthy way. That they can become overly sexualized, especially if they were a young victim. They don’t connect the emotions to sexual acts that they should. Dally was angry and horrified and vulnerable and…everything…after our summer of John. It changed him bit by bit over the years. It wasn’t obvious immediately, but by the time we were in the summer before senior year of high school, he was wanting sex from me every day. Sometimes more than once. He had developed an unhealthy view of sex and sexuality. And he expected me to just understand.

  In his defense, I never even attempted to address my concerns with him. I never once said “no” or “we shouldn’t be doing this” or “let’s talk about this.” I always agreed without hesitation and some sexual act would be done.

  But I felt used.

  I felt like these acts were an extension of what happened over that summer. It didn’t feel like two friends just experimenting. It was two friends doing things, hoping that it would make that summer seem less horrifying. See, sex isn’t a bad thing. It doesn’t have to be forced upon us or used as a way to abuse someone. It can be wonderful, too!

  It wasn’t wonderful, though.

  It was horrifying as well.

  Because the longer it went on, those sexual encounters between Dally and me, the more aggressive Dally got. The more he felt the right to demand that of me.

  But…I never said no.

  Dally wasn’t a horrible person. He was fucked up.

  Just like me.

  We were just fucked up in completely different ways. Trauma, when experienced by two people, can affect the people in different ways. I didn’t like how it affected me and I didn’t like the way it affected Dally. But…Dally refused to tell anyone everything he was feeling, why he was feeling it. The only hope and help he had was from me and my body. So, I just let it happen. And it made me feel a lot more of that nothingness.

  The worst part about the hospital was what was happening outside of the hospital while I was inside of it. Dally was alone. And he didn’t cope well. I called him three times a week, on the days and times it was allowed and he sounded more affected and desperate with each call. By the end of my ninety days in the hospital, I was intentionally a great, happy, adjusted patient in the hospital. But it was just another lie. Dally needed me. I couldn’t stay longer.

  The Biggest Truth

  When Isaac walked into the convenience store, my first thought was to go right up to him and punch him. But, I waited, and he didn’t even look up at me. He walked straight to the back where the coolers full of drinks were without even looking at the cash register where I was standing. He hadn’t come to the convenience store because he knew that I worked there. Isaac just happened to choose this particular convenience store to venture into for a drink on his way to wherever it was he was going. I waited, one eye on the game I was playing on my phone and the other on Isaac as he perused the coolers for the particular drink he wanted to buy.

  Finally, after several tense moments, I heard him open one of the cooler doors and pull out a drink. I was hoping that he wasn’t going to select something alcoholic because then I would have to decline selling it to him. He couldn’t even argue since I knew that he wasn’t twenty-one-years-old yet. I’d once had a kid use his worst imitation of an English accent and tell me that “back home” he was allowed to drink at eighteen so I should just sell him the beer he was trying to buy. I asked for his passport. He couldn’t produce one. Shocking. Not that it would have mattered since U.S. law would have made me refuse, but I didn’t have a lot going on the night that he had come in, so I decided to have a little fun.

  Isaac walked from the coolers up to the front of the store again, his eyes on the ground in front of him. When he got up to the register where I stood, he lifted his head and for a few breaths, it didn’t seem to register on his face that he was looking at “Tom from group.” However, his eyes finally got that light behind them that let me know he suddenly realized he had stumbled into the place where I worked. I gave him a nod and held my hand out for his purchase.

  “Hey.” He said simply.

  “Hello.” I opened and closed my hands, indicating that I needed the soda in his hand to scan.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Isaac handed me the soda. Diet Mountain Dew. One of an anorexic’s best friends. Yummy, caffeinated, no calories.

  “Is this all?” I asked as I scanned the bottle and set it on the counter.

  “Yeah.” Isaac nodded and reached into his pocket.

  I looked at Isaac’s face as his hand fumbled in his pocket. He looked weak and tired and I had never noticed before how angular his jaw looked. Did it always look like that or was he still not eating? I had seen him just a few days prior, but he looked a lot less full of life than he did in group. Of course, most of the kids in group were recovering meth-heads, so they were all pretty rambunctious and “full of life.” It kind of distracted from Isaac and his quiet nature. I never really got to spend much time examining him unless he had followed me outside to bum a smoke and ask stupid questions. And then I was too pissed off to really take him in, to look him over.

  “You look hungry, Isaac.” I said simply as he pulled his wallet out of his back pocket.

  “I’m okay.” He said as he pulled a twenty out of his wallet.

  “You look weak.” I said as I accepted the bill but didn’t move to finish the transaction. “Have you been eating?”

  “Can you just sell me the fucking drink, Tom?” He grumbled.

  “I could.” I nodded. “But not if you’re rude to me.”

  He sighed and finally looked into my eyes.

  “I’m sorry.” He said. “I’m just thirsty and I’ve had a long day.”

  I nodded and grabbed the stool behind me. I walked around the counter and set the stool on the floor next to Isaac. He frowned at me but I pointed at the stool again. He slid his wallet back into his pocket and sat down on the stool. I went over to the endcap of an aisle and grabbed two packages of cashews and took them over to Isaac.

  “Eat these.” I held them out.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Eat them.” I said. “And I’ll get you a water.”

  “I said I’m not hungry, Tom.” He frowned at me.

  “You’re going to eat them.” I nodded. “And you’re going to drink some water. And it will make you feel better.”

  He just looked at me.

  “I’m not doing this because we’re friends or I even like you.” I held the cashews out. “Or because I want something from you. You need to eat. You need kindness like everyone else. I’m doing this because someone needs to do it and you obviously have no one else who will. So, eat the goddamn cashews—even if you have to choke them down one by one. I will be here with you while you do it.”

  Isaac tentatively reached out and put his fingers around the two bags of cashews.

  “Do you want me to eat with you?” I asked.

  “Yes, please.”

  He didn’t explain why and I didn’t ask why. We both knew why. Eating was hard enough for him, but it was even harder when he felt like he was in a spotlight while he did it.

  “Okay.” I went and retrieved a bag of Cheetos for myself and went to the cooler and got us each a water.

  Isaac’s eyes were down when I came back with the water.

 
; “Here.” I held the water out.

  Isaac took the water without looking up and then I went back around the counter and stood there, placing my Cheetos and water in front of me. I scanned the water twice and the Cheetos and used Isaac’s twenty to buy everything. I didn’t scan the cashews. They never sold anyway, so I would mark them up as damaged on the inventory report. Isaac turned slowly on the stool until he was facing the counter and I made change. I closed the till and held out Isaac’s change to him.

  “In case you think I’m doing this out of pity, you bought my water and Cheetos for me.” I said evenly.

  Isaac nodded.

  “You look like shit, Isaac.” I said as I ripped open my bag of Cheetos. “Have you eaten since group?”

  “A little.” He set his two drinks and the cashews on the counter in front of himself.

  “Well,” I reached out and tore one of the bags open for him and uncapped the water as I talked, “what is a little? Because you look really weak and tired today and it’s not that late.”

  It was a little after ten o’clock at night, but I had a feeling that, like myself, ten o’clock wasn’t that late for Isaac. He was probably a creature of the night like me.

  “Um…”

  He stared at the counter.

  “Have you really eaten something since then?”

  “No.”

  “Eat the goddamn cashews.” I pointed at them.

  Isaac tentatively reached out and took one of the nuts and, with a little effort, stuffed it into his mouth.

  “Don’t swallow that shit.” I jabbed a finger at him firmly. “Chew it up first.”

  He just nodded and his jaw started to move. Two things I knew—if Isaac just swallowed the food to get it down, he’d get sick. From one orifice or another. And I knew that if he’d ever tried purging, he would know that puking up food swallowed whole got rid of more calories than trying to puke up chewed food. It took longer for whole pieces of food to begin being digested than it did chewed up food.

  “Why haven’t you been eating?” I asked as I popped a Cheeto into my mouth.

  Isaac looked at me like I was the dumbest person on the planet. He was chewing the cashew so I didn’t mind so much.

  “I mean…you said you were trying to work on that so what’s changed since group?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.” He reached for another cashew.

  “How’s your home life?”

  “Fuck you.” Isaac rolled his eyes as he struggled to shove the cashew into his mouth and actually start chewing.

  “That good, huh?” I nodded as I popped another Cheeto into my mouth and chewed automatically, ya’ know, like someone without an eating disorder would do. “How’s your gut feel?”

  “Like it’s eating itself.”

  “That was honest of you.”

  “Why lie?” He shrugged.

  “Losing the energy to lie?” I cocked an eyebrow at him. “What does that mean to you?”

  He just stared at me and chewed.

  “When I feel like I just don’t have the energy to lie anymore, I feel like maybe that means something.” I said, popping another Cheeto into my mouth. See, eating is easy. It’s just a behavior. “Like maybe I’m about to go down the rabbit hole. Maybe I’m going to lose the control I hold onto by the fingernails every single day. Maybe the face I give to the world is going to crack and I’ll be exposed for the liar that I am.”

  “What do you lie about most?”

  “Eat another cashew.”

  Isaac shoved another cashew in his mouth and began to chew. It looked painful, like his own body was locked in a battle of good and evil.

  “Drink some water.”

  Isaac lifted the bottle and took a slug, swallowing it down with the chewed-up cashew.

  “I lie about feeling nothing the most.” I said, then took a drink of my water. “I say that I feel hollow and empty but I feel a lot of things. I tell everyone that lie, but I tell it to myself the most. Because, the truth is…I feel so many things I don’t actually know what I’m feeling. That makes me feel nothing. Because if I start to feel those things, I don’t know how big the wave will be. I know that all of that will come crashing down on me and I don’t know if I’ll be able to kick to the surface. So, I guess the real truth is that I make myself feel nothing so that I don’t have to feel everything.”

  Isaac put another cashew in his mouth without prompting from me. He chewed and took another big drink of the water. I watched him, eating my own Cheetos and drinking my own water.

  “Do you want to know my biggest truth?” He asked shyly.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I can barely handle my own.”

  “Can I tell you anyway?”

  “Yes.”

  “My biggest truth is that I don’t want to keep doing this.” Isaac said. “I say I do because if I tell my counselors and doctors that I do it out of a sense of needing to control things, then I’m not that crazy. If I admit that I don’t know why I do it and I don’t want to do it then I will be crazy. It means that I am out of control and just giving in to the impulses of my brain and that I am a danger to myself. I might end up in the loony bin, too. No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “I don’t know why I’m like this.” Isaac’s eyes began to tear but he shoved another cashew in his mouth. “I just know that one day I decided that food was my enemy. I don’t actually believe that, but that’s what my brain tells me. That eating is going to cause some huge catastrophic event in my life so I have to avoid it no matter the cost. And I don’t know why my brain tells me that. I don’t have the first fucking clue, man. That’s my absolute truth. I don’t know why I woke up one day and thought that.”

  Isaac was openly crying, tears streaming down his cheeks silently as he shoved cashew after cashew in his mouth, chewing and swallowing. His basic needs crying out to be met. His body telling him to please give it sustenance, to help it thrive. To help it stop feeling like it was going to die if there wasn’t a quick and impressive intervention. I reached out and put my hand over his as he reached for another cashew.

  “Slow down.” I said gently.

  Isaac looked down at my hand covering his and the tears poured forth, dripping from his cheeks to the floor.

  “Why am I like this?” He shook his head. “I don’t like feeling like this and I don’t like looking like this. I mean, I’ve never been anything more than average size and I was never really built or anything—but I used to be okay to look at. Now I look like…I know I look horrible. But something in my brain tells me that I don’t look good enough unless I lose more weight. How can that even be a fucking thing? How can I know that my body is shockingly thin and unattractive but my brain argues with me and tells me that I’m wrong—that I won’t be good looking unless I’m a skeleton wrapped in skin? Why, Tom?”

  “You know why.”

  “I swear I don’t.” His eyes were pleading with me as they dripped tears down his face. “I’m not lying to you.”

  “I know you’re not.” I patted his hand and pulled mine away. “But you’re lying to yourself. We all do it.”

  Isaac sniffled.

  “I know my truth.” I said. “And a day hasn’t gone by in years that I haven’t lied about my truth. I lie every single day, Isaac. And, even as I stand here, watching you try to force feed yourself to the point of vomiting, yet not wanting to do it, battling with your innermost self, I still haven’t told you my biggest truth. That was a lie, too. Feeling nothing so I don’t feel everything isn’t my biggest truth. Not by a long shot. Lie upon lie upon lie, man. That’s how some of us survive. Do you want to hear a real honest to goodness truth?”

  “Please.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and popped a cashew into his mouth a little more easily. “I need some truth.”

  Before I could stop him, Isaac grabbed the little bag of cashews, dumped the rest in his hand and stuffed them into his mouth. He
was chewing greedily before I could stop him. He would punish himself tomorrow…and maybe even the next day…for that behavior. He probably wouldn’t eat for a very long time. So, I opened the other bag of cashews. I wanted to get as many calories into him as possible while he was responsive.

  “A real honest to goodness truth.” I nodded as he swallowed the mouthful and grabbed another cashew from the fresh bag. “My biggest lie is about a truth that isn’t mine to tell.”

  Isaac stared at me as he chewed.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I started lying because a friend begged me to.” I said softly. “I lied because my friend couldn’t face the truth. So, I lied with him…for him…to make things easier on him. Then it all fell apart and I kept lying. For him. Now he’s dead. And if I tell the truth now, I will feel like I’m betraying him. That’s a real honest to goodness truth, Isaac.”

  “How big of a lie have you told?”

  “Pretty big.” I nodded slowly. “Hundreds of small ones, a few kind of big ones, and one really big one. But…they’re all connected to that first really big one. Sometimes…sometimes if I sit still and don’t talk much, I can forget what the truth really is and the lies feel like they are the truth. It doesn’t last long, though. That one really big one is my biggest truth.”

  “Do you ever think that if I could figure out and admit my biggest truth to myself—to my doctors—that it would set me free?” Isaac asked, eating more cashews and drinking more water.

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I don’t know your truth and how you’ve covered it by lying to yourself.”

  “Will yours set you free?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “My biggest truth is a landmine waiting for someone to step on it. And it’s going to shred people with shrapnel when it’s told. So…I’ll never tell it.”

  “Even if you’re in therapy for the rest of your life?” He frowned, chewing more. “Even if it gets you put back in the nuthouse?”