by Chase Connor
“Do you think Dally would have told his parents what had happened at summer camp sooner? You wouldn’t have had to tell them?”
“No.”
“Then…what would that have changed?”
“Is session up now?”
Steve gave an irritated glance at his watch. “Few more minutes.”
“I think that Dally would have stayed in line more. Not been so brazen and self-destructive.”
“For fear that John might show up at any time to harm him in some way?”
“Sure.”
Steve sighed.
“If I had told Dally that John could pop up around any corner at any time, maybe he wouldn’t have been so…flippant about everything.” I shrugged. “He wouldn’t have spent so much time high and drunk and…and…bold, I guess. Being bold was his biggest fault, I think.”
“He might have been more on guard?” Steve suggested. “Been on his toes and not have gotten stabbed by John?”
“Sessions up, right?”
Steve sighed heavily. “Fine. We’ll pick up next time.”
Then the timer went off.
Tell Me a Truth
Isaac’s feet dangled over the water and even his feet looked emaciated, which I found odd since most feet look bony anyway. However, even his feet looked like they had been on an extreme diet where only celery and cucumber-lemon water was allowed. His lower legs looked like they would splinter if I pushed against them with my finger. When I looked at his shins, all I could think was that it must have been painful to use those legs to walk. Every step would be like bones grinding against bones. A pain that would radiate up through the hips and pelvis and settle in one’s spine.
I shivered.
“It’s nice out here.” Isaac smiled. His face had a glow to it. The bones in his face didn’t look as angular as they had the first time I had laid eyes upon him. His cheeks and eyes not so hollow. He was struggling, but he was going to eventually work his way out of his hole. “I’ve never been out here before. That’s odd, right?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged, my own feet dangling over the water, too. “I guess a lot of people don’t come out here much.”
We were sitting on the dock that stretched from the shore of the lake. It was the other side of the lake from where camp had been. Unlike Dally, I didn’t have an aversion to seeing the lake. What John had done to us hadn’t made me hate the water, hate how beautiful it was around the lake. I hated that it was still too cold to inch forward and dip my feet into the water, to swing them back and forth, making the water ripple. Sending out telegraphs of happiness and lightheartedness with my feet. It was rare that I felt unbothered by anything, so the water still being too cold was a pain.
“Is…is this a date?” Isaac whispered.
I turned my head to frown at him.
“I’m not trying to upset you.”
“No.” I shook my head. “This isn’t a date.”
“Okay.”
We sat on the dock and gently swung our legs as the late afternoon sun sparkled on the water. Birds were returning from the south and were dive bombing the water in the distance, hunting for worms and bugs at the distant shore. I felt, I think, excited for late summer, when the locusts would sing and everything felt like it was being roasted by the sun. A season being burnt away so that the world could drift off to sleep and begin preparations to try again in the following year. Something about that always made me hopeful. Briefly.
But there’s always a new spring, isn’t there?
New growth that reminded one that a culmination of beauty was going to eventually be burnt away by the inevitable changing of seasons.
“Did you invite me out here because you feel sorry for me?” Isaac asked lowly, his eyes staying on the water.
“No.”
“Do you want to be my friend?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know why you invited me?”
“Until this moment I would say it was because you don’t bother me, but…”
Isaac laughed.
“I invited you because I just felt the need to be around you.” I said, not looking at him. “Good enough?”
“Yes.”
“And I need you to do something for me.” I said lowly.
Isaac turned his head to look at me. I saw him perform the action out of the corner of my eye because I couldn’t bring myself to turn my head and make eye contact.
“Tell me something that’s true.” I actually blushed when I said it, felt the heat rise in my cheeks. “Tell me a truth that hurts really bad and is painfully beautiful.”
Isaac’s eyes stayed on me in my peripheral vision, pondering my words and motives. I didn’t meet his eyes.
“Telling my parents that I’m gay hurt them more than me nearly dying in the hospital.” Isaac said robotically. “Anorexia might be cured, ya’ know?”
I turned my head to look at him. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Do you want to be cured?”
“Of which affliction?” He grinned wickedly.
“Either.” I grinned back. “Anorexia, I guess.”
“Yes.”
“Being gay?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I’m supposed to be gay. I’m not supposed to be anorexic.”
I nodded.
“Do you want to be cured?” Isaac asked.
“Yes and no, too.”
“Yes to which one?”
“Depression and anxiety.” I smiled.
“Do you think you ever will?”
I shrugged.
“Tell me the truth.”
“Yes. Well, and no.” I said. “I think that one day I’ll learn to manage it and I’ll have days or weeks or even months where I have great mental health days. But…anxiety and depression are like seasons. It’s cyclic. One moment things are fine, then the next they’re really fucking not. There’s no rhyme or reason with them. I think I’ll get better at managing them, though.”
He nodded.
“Will you tell me a truth? One I choose?” He asked, swinging his leg to tap his foot against mine.
“I’ll try.”
“When you say that you’ve never felt suicidal…is that true?”
“Have you felt suicidal?”
“Yes.”
“Do you now?”
“No.”
“How long since you felt suicidal?”
He thought for a moment. “Seventeen days. No, eighteen.”
“Right after…once Dally’s parents knew what had happened at summer camp, things got really bad for a while. Like, really, really bad. That was when I felt nothing the most. When I made myself feel nothing so that I wouldn’t feel everything. It’s when I started to become a pro at that, ya’ know? Well, I wasn’t doing so great coping with my anxiety and depression. Everything was trying to break through the nothing and I felt that wave rising. I felt like everything was going to come crashing down and I’d be buried under all of it, and then that would be the end of Tom altogether. Like there would be no hope that I could ever be okay again. And I found myself standing at the top of the parking garage at the Pine Park Mall—ya’ know—the six-story one? Well, I stood there for a long time, thinking about the jump, the fall, the sudden stop. How that sudden stop meant the wave would be pushed back. I’d never feel the suffocating crash of that wave of everything.”
“So…you have been suicidal?”
I shook my head. “Even when I drove out there and parked the car and got out to go stand at the ledge, I had made sure to lock the car and put my keys in my pocket. I knew before I drove out there that I was going to go back to the car and drive away. I wasn’t suicidal. I didn’t want to die. But I needed to think about the difference between life and death. The difference between the crash of all that everything and the gravity of all that nothing. Everything might have tipped the scales, pulling me over the ledge and sent me crashing down.
But nothing keeps my feet on the ground. Feeling nothing keeps me alive. I needed to confirm that to myself. So, that’s why I went there and stood at the ledge. Not because I was suicidal, but because I wanted to feel alive for a moment.”
“That’s…that’s fucked up.”
“Right?” I chuckled.
“Is that the truth?”
“One-hundred percent.” I said. “Well, I might have forgotten to lock the car, but otherwise, yes.”
He laughed gently.
“Do you really think group helps you?” Isaac asked. “Any of your therapy?”
I shrugged. “I really wish I knew.”
We sat there for a few more moments, our feet swinging gently over the water, looking out into the distance.
“Would you kiss me if I needed that to feel alive?” He asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s just a behavior.” I shrugged. “This is just my body. It’s a tool. It’s not…me.”
“Isn’t that, like displacement, or some other fancy thing our doctors would want to label it?”
“Maybe.”
“So, you’d kiss me if it made me feel better, even if it might be detrimental to your own well-being?”
“That just happened to my body.” I said. “It didn’t happen to me. Isn’t that a lie a lot of us in therapy tell ourselves as a way to cope with the things we just can’t quite wrap our minds around? Don’t we all from time to time just tell ourselves these little lies to feel better? Do you want a kiss?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
“But I won’t take one.” Isaac said. “If you ever want to give me one, I’ll accept it. Just so you know. That is the truth.”
“Okay.”
“Do you even like me, Tom?” Isaac asked.
“Honestly?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t know.” I said. “I don’t even know if I like myself anymore.”
“Is that a lie?”
“No.”
Isaac’s legs swung back and forth, though they were so slight I wasn’t sure if they were swinging under his own will or the soft breeze blowing across the lake. He was like a marionette, imaginary strings moving and twisting his body as he hung there, an unwilling participant to life. He had no control. But…then again…is giving up control to some unseen force a type of control? Giving things over to something bigger than yourself takes an extraordinary measure of courage most people don’t have. Was Isaac stronger than me for having allowed himself to relinquish some measure of control over his own life?
Let go and let God.
A lot of the therapy groups I had gone to before settling on the current one liked that phrase. Borrowed directly from alcoholics—and they know all about control, regardless of popular belief. Alcoholics are very dedicated, even if their dedication is misplaced.
But it’s not always God you’re giving yourself over to is it?
Maybe letting go is the belief that your body and mind, allowed to do what is natural, to be shifted into “survival mode”, is okay. “Let go and let God” is just a fancy pseudo-spiritual way of saying to trust that you know how to survive. That your body and mind know what is best. When we fight against it, therein lies madness.
“Do you think you’re crazy?”
“Sometimes.” Isaac chuckled. “I mean, who does this to their own body, right? Who let’s their own brain wage war against the thing that keeps it alive?”
“But doesn’t your mind also tell you that what is happening is crazy? That what you’re allowing to happen needs to be stopped?” I asked. “If you were truly crazy, wouldn’t you be perfectly happy with being anorexic?”
Isaac pondered this.
“Sometimes I think that I’m crazy because I made myself crazy. Sometimes I feel like if I’d never started lying, I wouldn’t be like this, Isaac.” I sighed. “But, now, I’m not sure if I can stop. Or if I even want to. And I’m scared that that is Madness whispering to me from the bottom of the rabbit hole, beckoning me, wanting me to plunge head first.”
“That’s fucked up, too.” Isaac said evenly. “You’re one of the most fucked up people I’ve ever encountered in group.”
“Thank you.”
We both laughed.
“But I’d still accept a kiss if you ever wanted to give me one.” He whispered.
I turned to look at him.
“Why?”
Isaac looked into my eyes.
“Because I know your biggest truth.” He said. “I’ve seen through all the lies and half-truths. I know what you’re hiding from everyone else.”
I swallowed hard.
“What’s my biggest truth?” I whispered.
“I’m anorexic because I needed to make myself small. So that I could feel like everything else in my life wouldn’t fit. To push out the issue of being gay and coming out to my parents. To push out my own shame at being gay. My own shame of not being who my parents wanted me to be. To punish myself for not being strong enough to accept those things with my head held high, ready to face the consequences of being who I was meant to be. You make yourself feel nothing because it’s a way of making yourself feel small. To squeeze out all of your feelings so you don’t have to feel guilty for what happened to Dally.”
I looked into Isaac’s eyes.
“You got me.” I smiled.
And that was a lie.
A Culmination of Everything
Dally stumbled away, laughing, holding his gut as I tripped down the steps. The carnival that came to town each year was one of our favorite things to do with each other. Every year, we’d go to the carnival, almost always set up in the parking lot at the northeast corner of the mall that hadn’t had a single shop in it for a decade, abandoned and lonely. The shops in the mall had all ditched the building to move out to the new town center that was built on the northwest side of town. Now the mall was ghostly and eerie, a reminder of childhoods long gone and a town whose ideas had changed. But, when the carnival was in town, the old mall didn’t look so uninviting.
“I’m going to puke.” Dally laughed loudly, doubled over, barely staying on his feet as I came to stand beside him, wobbly on my feet.
The Gravitron was one of those spaceship looking rides you entered, leaned back against the wall, and it began spinning until you were pinned against the wall. You weren’t really awesome and fearless unless you fought against the gravity of the ride and turned upside down against the wall. Of course, both Dally and I did that each time we rode The Gravitron each year. Why ride it if you aren’t prepared to be fearless? Why live if you’re not willing to both accept and fight against gravity?
“Well, tell me to move if you do.” I laughed shakily, holding my own gut. “I don’t want to get splattered.”
Dally laughed, then slapped a hand to his mouth, trying to convince his gut to not expel its contents. This happened every year, Dally’s fight against his gut after our ride on The Gravitron. But, the following year, he was ready to go again. It was our little ritual, our little way of saying, “look at me, I’m stronger than the force of gravity itself! Come at me, God!”
“I think I’m okay.” Dally stood, but his hand didn’t leave his gut. “Why do we do this to ourselves, man?”
“Not a clue.”
We both laughed.
“I think we really need a funnel cake.” He nodded. “Or a corn dog. Or both. Definitely both.”
“Corn dog first.” I nodded.
I hadn’t disagreed with Dally or told him that he had just almost puked, so maybe food wasn’t the best idea. Because I liked this Dally. I liked the carefree, fun, effusive, silly Dally. The Dally who would almost puke from being crushed by the force of gravity on a ride and then want to stuff his face with junk food which had no real nutritional value. A whole corn dog followed by a whole funnel cake was easy for Dally to stuff down his gullet, and even though that was too much food for me, I always made an attempt. Ev
en though I knew he would razz me for being a “poon” who couldn’t eat as much as him. Because it was fun. These were activities that teenage guys in high school would be doing. They made me feel normal and alive.
“After we eat, we’re doing the Zipper.” Dally walked beside me towards the concessions, a spring in his step, grinning wickedly as he spoke to me.
“I mean, if you want to puke up expensive food, I guess that’s your choice.” I teased.
“Do I ever puke?” He cackled.
“Well, not yet, but it’s bound to happen eventually.”
“I can’t believe this is going to be the last time we do this, man.” Dally said. “It’s going to suck that you’ll be in California and I’ll be here still.”
Dally was going to state university, I was not. That was intentional on my part. Just another way to escape the gravity of Dally. Get as far away as possible. That was my plan. Though, in moments like those we had at the carnival, I could almost believe that I had made the wrong choice. I always found myself, reminding myself, that this Dally never lasted. That this Dally was Carnival Dally and the next day, well maybe even that night after the carnival, exhaustingly demanding Dally would be back.
“Well, maybe we’ll be home for summer at the same time and when the carnival is here.” I shrugged, walking ahead.
Dally dashed to catch up.
“Maybe?” He chuckled. “We could always plan it that way!”
“Yeah.”
Dally walked alongside me towards the concessions, an irritated and confused expression on his face. I kept my eyes ahead, looking for the concession stands over the heads of revelers walking through the main thoroughfare of the carnival. And, just like that, after the first ride of our yearly visit to the summer carnival, I was in a bad mood. I stopped walking and took up a pace that was more of a march as we walked down the main thoroughfare, looking for food. And Dally walked beside me, confused and irritated with my tone and change of mood.
“You always do this.” He grumbled.
“Do what?”
“Get moody over nothing.” He rolled his eyes. “I mean, what the hell crawled up your ass, Tom?”
“Just drop it.”