by Chase Connor
“Especially then.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not crazy.” I said. “I tell myself I am. But I’m not. I’m just a guy who kept a really big secret for a friend and wasn’t strong enough to tell the truth when he should have.”
Isaac had finished the cashews and drank the water. He stared at me for several moments.
“If I figure out my truth…can I tell it to you first? Just to see how it feels? Before I tell my doctors or parents or anyone else?”
“Yes.” I nodded. “Are you still hungry?”
“I’m starving.” He was crying again.
“How badly will you punish yourself if you eat more tonight?”
“I probably won’t eat for a day or two.”
“You aren’t a cutter or basher or burner or any of that?”
Isaac rolled his sleeves up and presented his arms. They were bruise and cut free. Then he raised his shirt and his torso was clear as well. I didn’t ask him to show me his legs. That was good enough for me. Though, the sight of his ribs, collar bones, shoulder blades, and his spine made me want to cringe. I didn’t. For his sake.
“Do you want to stay here for a while and eat more?” I asked. “It’s on me if you don’t have any money.”
“Is this a date?” Isaac gave a laughing sob as he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand again.
“Absolutely not.” I said.
“I was kidding.”
“Lying to yourself again?”
“Yes.”
“It’s hard to keep track of the lies and truths anymore isn’t it?”
“Sometimes.” He nodded. “Would you want to go out with me?”
“No.” I said. “You’re very good looking, Isaac. And I’m not turned off by your body. But I don’t want to go out with anyone.”
“Where did you learn to talk to anorexics?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know how to talk to anorexics. Or schizophrenics. Or BPD’s or Aspy’s…or anyone. I just know what people want to hear.”
“So…is it true or not that you think I’m good looking and you aren’t turned off by my body?”
“If I was interested in going out with someone, I would accept your offer.” I said. “Good enough?”
He nodded.
“What kind of chips do you like? Candy bars? There’re sandwiches in the cooler but I can’t guarantee that they’re great.” I said. “We’ve got ice cream, too.”
“I really want some Taki’s and some ice cream.” He practically whispered it, as though afraid his anorexia would hear him.
“You look like a mint chocolate chip kind of guy.” I said.
He smiled.
I went and got Isaac some ice cream and Taki’s and he sat on the stool by the register and ate and talked to me for an hour. Then I made him sit there for another hour to make sure he didn’t walk outside and purge immediately or do something equally stupid. When I was sure that Isaac was going to be okay, it was after one o’clock in the morning. So, he left. And I went back to work. But I had added to my list of lies. When Isaac had asked me if I would go out with him if he asked, I wanted to say “yes.” But I couldn’t even consider going out with someone who had as many problems as me. Especially one who didn’t even know his biggest truth.
It’s one thing to know your biggest truth and not tell it for fear of who all will be damaged by it. It’s quite another to be so damaged that you can’t even guess what your biggest truth is—what has made you who you are. If you don’t know who you are, or why you are the way you are, how are you going to be useful to anyone else? How can you love someone for who they are if you yourself are unsure of who you are? Lies are one thing. Lying simply because you don’t know the truth is even more dangerous.
Blurred Lines
Dally and I used to play a game. We’d sit around together, usually right before and/or right after we had one of our many sexual encounters that became more and more frequent due to his need to forget that summer. If only for a few minutes. As we sat there together, we’d propose ideas about other things that we had done during that one horrific summer instead of what actually happened. Dally didn’t want to think about what had happened to us during that summer, so he wanted to live out a fantasy through conversation. So that maybe we could actually start to believe that our summer at camp hadn’t been a thing right out of nightmares.
Maybe we had caught a really big fish from the lake and when we scaled it and fileted it, we had found some old diamond ring worth thousands inside of it. Still attached to a finger, of course. Maybe we had gone exploring in the woods and run across ancient buried treasure. We had become blood brothers in some intricate ceremony in the woods around the edge of a fire we built simply by rubbing two sticks together. We were cavemen, the first men whom Prometheus had given a secret of the Gods to out of love for humankind. Two humans a God himself had adored so much that he had betrayed his own kind. That’s how beloved we were by Prometheus, this God who had saved us.
We were saved by a God instead of having been ravaged by a demon.
That was Dally’s fantasy. Things had been different. It didn’t even have to be an epic fantasy or daydream in order to counteract what John had done to us. It just had to be something romantic and fun and…not John. Dally’s fantasies ranged from the far-reaching Prometheus idea to something as simple as having won a tug-of-war competition where the two of us had been paired off against five much bigger guys.
When we had those conversations, sitting together naked, or about to get naked, I’d wonder what it felt like for Dally. That fall. Had he been Dally, the innocent, enthusiastic, energetic, and kind kid who had become my best friend in the matter of seconds and then suddenly not? Or had it been a slow transition over the course of a summer of John? Had he actually fallen, or had he shuffled downward slowly? Did he know?
After I got out of the hospital, Dally got more and more erratic. The best friend, kind and loving and attentive persona and the demanding and angry and sexually-crazed persona blurred together. Dally was less and less the guy I loved and more the guy who made me want to go back into the hospital. It’s a sad thing, wanting to commit yourself to a mental hospital just for peace and quiet from your own friend and your own mind.
A Timeline of Trauma
First, there was Before Dally. Then there was Meeting Dally. Then there was The Summer of John. Everything after, I refer to as Surviving Dally.
Kind of odd, isn’t it? You’d think that everything after would be Surviving John, right?
The things John did late at night in our cabin. In the woods. Wherever he could separate the two of us from everyone else.
Once The Summer of John was over, Dally and I had our freshman year of high school, and then, when summer was coming around again, and neither of our sets of parents told us we had to go back to camp, it was all over. So, summer before freshman year, freshman year, then the month before summer had John looming over it. Then John was gone. John wasn’t a thing anymore.
Maybe that’s why Dally turned into the guy he became. It became safe to talk about John, to worry about him, to talk about the emotions he elicited from us. Well, from Dally. I was feeling nothing, remember? I was too busy processing Dally’s new, developing persona and his range of emotions to worry about my own. Maybe that’s why Dally became so aggressive with me in every way. Maybe if we had gone back to camp and he had faced John after a year of getting perspective, things would have been different. Maybe he would have found the courage to say something. To fight John. To do whatever it was he felt he had to do to get over that first summer.
I’ll never know. After The Summer of John and then four years of high school, Dally gave into the weight of everything. He fell.
So, here’s the timeline. I lived for fourteen years. Then I went to camp. I met Dally on the bus to camp. We had a good couple of weeks. Then John happened. And two boys’ lives were irrevocably altered. Freshman year happened where Dally and I were thi
ck as thieves, leaning on each other for emotional, mental, and physical support. Then I began surviving Dally.
Sometimes I’m glad he’s dead.
Am I talking about John or Dally? Maybe both.
I’m glad that John is dead because of what he did to Dally. What he did to the best friend I never really got to have, if I’m being totally honest.
And sometimes I’m glad that Dally is dead. Because I was never sure how much longer I could continue to try and survive him.
But, out of the two, the only one I sometimes wish was still alive is Dally. Because, in spite of everything, he was my friend. A good friend? That depends on what you know about our friendship and your perspective. I think he was a friend. Fucked up friend, sure. But still a friend. He was my first best friend and the only one so far.
That’s something else trauma does to two people when its shared. It shapes and informs every friendship thereafter. That friend one shares trauma with is the only person who will ever understand you like no one else ever will. Dally knew who I was. And, for better or worse, I knew who he was. Regardless, and for what it’s worth, we accepted each other fully.
It was just really hard for me sometimes.
Like everything else I say, not all of this is true.
Betrayal
“What’s the worst thing you can do to a friend?” I asked.
“Do you feel like you betrayed Dally when you told his parents about what happened at summer camp?” Steve asked, doing his best to affect a relaxed and comfortable posture in his chair. “Do you feel responsible for Dally because you told his parents without his permission?”
I stared at him. He stared back.
“Why does everyone put words in my mouth?”
Steven frowned at me.
“Seriously?” I sat forward. “Everywhere I go—it’s all based around talk therapy of some sort. I’m supposed to talk, to work through my problems—with guidance, of course—but it seems like everyone assumes I’m going to say something else, or they want to tell me what to say. If it will end these sessions, tell me what it is I need to say to appear to be perfectly normal once again, and I’ll say it, Steve. Do you want me to say I feel responsible for Dally’s death so you can feel like you did your job? I’ll say it if you want. I’ve done a lot worse for people. I’ll say it if you want.”
Steve was jotting something down.
“Tom…”
“Yes?”
He sighed. “I feel we’ve hit a wall.”
“Just now?” I asked. “Because I think we’ve been trying to scale that thing since the first session.”
He was frowning again.
I shrugged.
“It’s okay if you feel responsible for Dally’s death.”
“Okay.”
He cocked his head to the side.
“Do you? Feel responsible?”
“No.”
He blew out heavily.
I grinned.
He sat back in his chair and his hand went to his pad, the tip of his pent resting against it heavily.
“Tom, you say that you lie a lot.”
“Yes.”
“So, how do I know you’re not lying about whether or not you feel responsible for Dally’s death?”
“Because that’s the only question you’ve asked me where my answer hasn’t deviated from the original.”
He thought about that.
“Are you thinking about all the questions you’ve asked over all of our sessions and how I’ve answered each time?” I chuckled.
“This isn’t a game, Tom.”
“Everything’s a game, Steve.” I said. “It’s how humans get by psychologically from one day to the next. We play games all the time. Yay, I’m happy today because the coffee shop had my favorite scone. Yay, I’m happy because I got a raise at work. Yay, I love my job. Yay, I love that my wife got pregnant and now we’re going to raise a family. Yay, I’m not a horrible person because I’m pretending to want all of the things that society says I should want. Yay, I’m not thinking about how I would rather just be single, go to my job each day, come home to an empty quiet house, eat take-out Chinese food each night and not feel bad if I fart in bed and jerk myself off quickly instead of devoting time and energy to pleasing someone else in bed.”
Steve blinked.
“We all play games, Steve.” I nodded. “They make us feel a little less like the pieces of shit we all are. To make life a little more bearable from one moment to the next. I’m not saying that’s good, bad, or anything in between, but I am saying that you’re being a dick for not admitting it’s the truth.”
Moments of quiet passed as Steve and I stared at each other and his hand hovered over that notepad. I thought about how there were probably stacks of those things filled with the minutiae of our sessions. Notes about how fucked up I was—or maybe even how much Steve really agreed with the things I said. Maybe they were all full of drawings of kitty cats. Who knew? That was part of the lies Steve told himself to get through our sessions. I wasn’t going to be so rude as to ask to see them. But he always had a fresh notepad every time I showed up.
“Fine.” Steve said. “Let’s say that we all play games and we all tell lies to help us get through each day and make life easier, Tom. Do you ever tell yourself that you are responsible for Dally’s death?”
“Now there’s a question.” I smiled and jabbed a finger at him.
“Do you?”
“All the damn time.” I nodded. “It’s the first thought I have when I wake up and it’s the last thought I have as I drift off to sleep.”
“But you don’t feel responsible?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because John is responsible for Dally’s death. Mental illness is responsible for Dally’s death. Dally is responsible for Dally’s death.” I said. “I didn’t do anything to stop what happened…but I didn’t do anything to make it happen, either. I was passive, sure. But I wasn’t permissive or an active participant in any of it. People do fucked up things. People make fucked up decisions. No one held a gun to anyone’s head. None of what John or Dally decided to do was my fault.”
“Most people who have depression and anxiety feel guilty about something, Tom.”
“I feel guilty for not fighting against John.” I nodded. “I feel guilty for letting Dally manipulate me for so long. But I don’t feel responsible for their actions.”
Steve calmly jotted down something that was brief. Probably a reminder to buy coffee creamer on the way home.
“Do you think John killed himself before the trial because he stabbed Dally?” Steve asked, hand hovering over the notepad again as he looked up at me. “Do you think that he thought that after that, there was only one verdict that would be delivered if he went to trial?”
I chewed at my cheek.
“I mean, he stabbed Dally seven times, Tom.” Steve said gently. “Maybe he only saw one way out that didn’t include jail. Do you think John killed himself because he felt remorse for what he had done to Dally…or to avoid responsibility for all of it?”
“Is this session almost over?”
Steve glanced at his watch.
“Ten more minutes.”
I nodded.
“So?”
“I don’t know why John killed himself.” I shrugged. “If I had done the things John did, I probably wouldn’t be able to live with myself either. But, then again, people who do…that…generally probably don’t feel remorse for most of their actions, right? So…I can’t even begin to understand why he would kill himself unless it was to avoid jail. I mean, you hear stories about what happens to guys like that in prison. Butt rape is like the best-case scenario if you are a guy who goes to jail because he repeatedly raped a fourteen-year-old boy, right? Maybe he thought that he would avoid a more horrible, more gruesome death in jail and just do himself in before that happened? I mean…we all know he was going to be found guilty. The bail the judge set was…well,
it was clear that the judge thought he was guilty from day one. If that judge thought he was guilty, it’s pretty obvious that the judge at his trial, and more importantly, the jury, would have thought he was guilty, too.”
Steve nodded. “Those other boys coming forward probably helped the case, I’d imagine.”
I gave an upward nod.
“What was it like…with the anxiety and depression and finding out that Dally was schizophrenic?” Steve was writing again. “You two were very close. How do you look back on your friendship after learning that after Dally’s death?”
“Dally was diagnosed as schizophrenic but he wasn’t.” I shook my head.
Steve frowned as he looked down at his pad and wrote.
“You’re doubting the expertise of a psychiatrist?” Steve frowned. “Dally put his fist through a plate glass window and was acting highly erratic in front of dozens of witnesses, Tom.”
“The doctor diagnosed Dally in an emergency room after one encounter while Dally was high as a goddamn kite.” I snorted, amused. “And it’s not like he got an opportunity to reassess Dally after the stabbing, right?”
“I suppose not.” Steve frowned. “So, you asked what’s the worst thing you can do to a friend, Tom. Do you feel like you betrayed Dally in some way, even if you don’t feel responsible for his death?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” He urged me on. “How do you feel you betrayed Dally?”
“I didn’t tell him that I knew that John had moved to our town.” I said. “Not until it was too late and he was so high-strung that it set him off.”
“Do you think that would have changed things?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
I chewed at my lip.