Dodger

by Dan Gallagher

5

  THE NEXT MORNING IT FEELS like someone took a ball peen hammer to my head. I stir groggily. The room spins. Beside me, Paige is out like a light bulb. I sit up.

  Her apartment is that of your typical twenty something, pictures of family and friends on the fridge, posters of Death Cab For Cutie and MGMT on the walls. It's a studio, small but not bad for the area, and it reminds me of the microwave I used to live in when I was twenty. Something.

  Six Eleven West Surf. Apartment Two Ten. Four ninety for a studio the size of a waiting room. Closet and bathroom connected. My clothes often smelled like shit and shrank from the shower steam. I would play Beatles songs on my guitar into the night until my next door neighbor, a whole seven feet away, would give me the shut the fuck up knock. Then I'd listen to her have sex and jerk off bitterly. She was hot.

  I was actually nineteen. I worked at a coffee shop down the street and my whole life revolved around that place. The staff there quickly became my best friends and worst enemies. I fell hardcore for one of the girls, Patty, who was seven years my elder. I chased her anyway. It was my first taste of life out of school, out of the house, living on my own as a self sustained entity. Of course I wanted to get into trouble. On my days off I would come in and write short stories and poetry and plays and screenplays that I'd never finish just so I could watch and hang out with her. I was a tad obsessed. She was hot.

  I had my chance to hook up with her at a party but didn't even realize it was an opportunity. A friend of hers told me weeks later, after I'd blown it of course, that she totally would've slept with me that night. Even though I was a child. This ate at me so much that I felt I needed to do something, something big, something drastic.

  So I wrote her a letter.

  Of course.

  It outlined all the reasons I liked her, all the reasons we should be together, et cetera, et cetera. It was more of a proposal than a letter, a bargaining chip, an argument. I wanted to be with her and date her because at nineteen, the concept of modern day casual sex, the way the world actually is, was beyond me. I wanted to believe that women were pure and the concept of true love was true and if that I put myself out there, if I tried, I'd get what I was after. I'd get Patty.

  Then she started fucking Stan, the assistant manager.

  I learned. Quickly.

  Never put yourself out there.

  Never reveal your true intentions.

  Never tell a girl you like her.

  Never tell anybody anything.

  Holden Caulfield had it right.

  So when I find out she's fucking him I go into a deep depression and start ordering Leona's take out almost every night because they deliver beer and don't card. I'd get wildly drunk and stoned and write sob stories and songs in my microwave, throwing myself around, punching myself and crying.

  Oh yeah. I was a bruiser.

  Thoughts of self harming had always been in my head, ever since I was a fat fifteen year old getting picked on. One time after we had a huge fight, my mother caught me tying a rope around my neck in the closet. It was more a cry for help than a real suicide attempt, but it was enough to scare the shit out of her. Hello, therapy.

  It didn't help. Those people had no idea what it was like to be a teenager in the nineties. They didn't read Stephen King. They didn't watch Dawson's Creek. They didn't listen to Nirvana. It was pointless. After three sessions I was done so in order to keep my parents off my back I learned a new trick, one that I've employed ever since.

  Repression.

  But it only gets me so far.

  I blocked things out for most of junior and senior year. Somehow I managed to get thin and hone my writing skills and even learn to play guitar. Freshman year of college I took Acting, Fiction Writing and Playwriting first semester. After that, I knew what I wanted to do.

  Act and write. And play guitar.

  So I quit school and moved out, to Six Eleven West Surf.

  Downfall, begin.

  Bruising.

  It's safer than cutting and doesn't leave scars.

  Amidst the whole Patty thing, there was another emotional roller coaster flying around inside me. I felt like I didn't belong in normal society, this boring envelope we're sealed in addressed to hell, this matrix of routine, boredom, and sadness. I needed a way to deal. I hated school. I hated working. I was still a goddamn virgin. I was a loser, and it hurt being one. A lot.

  The best way to deal with this was to get violent.

  At first it started with punching walls, knocking over garbage cans, and bashing vending machines. I enjoyed the pain in my hand, treated it like a badge, a purple heart of sorts. Even though it hurt, it felt good.

  Then one night I took it to the next level.

  Through a doctor friend of a friend I had arranged to go on a ride along with real Chicago Fire Department paramedics, because I still didn't know what I was doing with my life and had a slight interest in being a medic. It was a huge letdown. The guys I rode with were bitter, middle aged men who really didn't have any interest in helping people anymore and just did the job cause it was their job. Emergencies ceased to exist and the battered and bleeding were now customers and paperwork instead of human beings. They both smoked like chimneys, bitched about their lives like old women, and sprayed their shorts whenever they saw a hot girl walking down the street. They were bummers and pervs.

  It made me sick.

  After I left the firehouse I took a walk along the lake with a pint of Early Times and a pack of Reds. I stared at the water. I listened to it. I sat on the rocks, listened to them. And I cried.

  About what, I don't remember.

  That's when the first punch landed.

  It was nothing – a love tap. But it felt good. It hurt.

  So I swung again, harder.

  Ooh.

  Again. And again. And again. I pounded away, first the left side then the right, then my mouth, then my eyes. Till my face was numb. Till the sun came up.

  I stumbled home, my honorary paramedic shirt half tucked half not, ripe with fresh blood stains and tear streaks. I felt immaculate. Swirling piss around the toilet, whistling Vasoline by Stone Temple Pilots, I caught my poor excuse for a reflection in the mirror.

  Battered. Bleeding. My eyes were swelling. My upper lip was a flotation device.

  I smiled, saw blood on my teeth, tasted it.

  Yum.

  I'd heal nicely.

  The thing about bruising is explaining it. A bar fight here, a doorknob there, and I'm out of excuses for having a new black eye every week. I said I joined a real competitive roller hockey league and that fighting was not only condoned, but encouraged. I said I was in a fight club. I said my girlfriend liked to kick my ass during sex.

  No one really cared, so it worked. I'd space out the bruising between confrontations with my parents, so they never saw a thing. It was the perfect way to maintain sanity while being perfectly inserted into the machine. I was free.

  So for two years, I bruised.

  Those were my dark years.

  So to speak.

  I stare out the window, smoking silently. Sky blue sky, sunny and gorgeous. There's groaning behind me, and I turn to see Paige, hand over her eyes.

  “Oh my God. Jim. Close the blinds.”

  I extinguish my cigarette and do so. “Sorry.”

  “No, it's fine. Ugh.” She inhales deeply. “How do you feel?”

  “I was hungover, but I had a beer and now I'm fine.”

  “Can you get me one?”

  “Yeah.”

  I go to the fridge, grab two beers, crack them. She downs half of hers in one swill.

  “Ah. Thanks.”

  “Sure.”

  She sips, eyeing me. “Did we have sex?”

  “No. You did try to make out with me, though.”

  “I did?”

  “Yeah. But you bit my nose instead.”

  “I... bit your nose?”

  “Yeah.”

  She stares at me in complet
e bewilderment for a second, then bursts out laughing.

  “Oh my God, I'm sorry.”

  “It's cool. I'm actually glad I ran into you. This time of year is... well, hard for me. But I had fun.”

  “Yeah, I had fun, too. What I remember.”

  “To kill ya.”

  “It did.”

  “Yeah.” I stand. “Well, I should get going.”

  “Jim, wait.”

  She tosses the blanket and gets up, revealing her well shaven, well shaped legs. “Don't leave yet. I want to run something by you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah.”

  She goes to her purse, pulls out a little black notepad, starts leafing through it. I frown.

  “Paige...”

  “Now don't be mad, but I just took a few notes.”

  “On what?”

  “On you. On your story.”

  “My story.”

  “Yes.”

  “How were you able to take notes in such a massive state of drunkenness?”

  “I'm a reporter.”

  “Oh.”

  She sighs. “We're sitting on a gold mine here. Don't you remember the attention you got when you first dodged the bullet? You were set to explode. I always thought it was a shame that never came to fruition. And after learning everything that happened with Kara and all the shit you went through... well, now more than ever, I think you deserved it. You still do.”

  I sit, frozen. In awe. Enamored.

  “Jim, I think we should resurrect your story and make it the national human interest piece of the year. When you tell the world who Kara is and how even after all this time she still affects you, still drives you out of your mind... oh, people will eat this up! There's nothing the public loves more than a good old fashioned love story, and under all the darkness and drinking and self loathing, that's exactly what this is. God! What do you think?”

  I stare at her, thinking but not, inclined, leaning. She's so goddamn excited it's hard not to believe her.

  I stand again.

  “I think I'll think about it.”

  I kiss her on the head, grab my cigarettes off the dresser, and bounce. Halfway down the street and halfway down my smoke I remember.

  Today is Ray's birthday.

  Shit.

  I should call him.