Chapter 6g
I had my first girlfriend when I was thirteen. We stayed together for more than a year. She broke up with me because...well, I don't know. I guess I must have cared at the time, I remember being upset, but I'm sure it was something stupid. At the time, a year of casually talking to the same girl, sometimes holding hands and kissing when nobody was around to see, pretty much meant you were in love so yeah, I was upset. Now, though, I realize that I was just a teenager and the concept of any real tragedy or even meaning in that is foreign.
It's different now, twenty-five years later, as most things are. Sandra leaving is hard. I understand why, of course, but I don't want to dwell on the reasons now. Maybe I'm just avoiding the larger issue but, honestly, I'm alright with that. The larger issue is not fun. I only deal with as much of it as I do because I have no option.
When that happened at thirteen I was probably weepy and whiny for a while. Once I got over that fit I went and explored the city alone. Just a long walk through a few familiar places, a few unfamiliar places and a few places I was familiar with but had never been, usually because I wasn't allowed., just to clear my head.
That's exactly the same thing I did at age thirty-eight, too. It was a little bit different, sure, but I'm a little bit different. On that day with Sandra I skipped the weepy part and exchanged it for mopey. I'd have plenty of time for weeping if I needed it but I think I was still too stunned to bother with tears yet.
The city has changed a lot, too. More than I have, by a long shot. There are many reasons for this but the foremost of them was simply that it was a different city in a different part of the country. Still, life isn't much different no matter where you live. Eat, drink, shit, piss, maybe you'll take a shower or two in the process, you'll probably have to deal with money and other people and housing of some sort, then you die.
Or maybe wake up, as the case may be. If dying is just waking up, what is living? I could call it a dream but I've had dreams and they're not the same as life. On the other hand, I've been tricked by them before. But how could I dream if I were already dreaming?
My stroll in the city went better when I was a little older and wiser. As a child I took the same walk, or at least same style of walk in a different place, and did it with a few less inhibitions. At thirty-eight, I stuck to the sidewalks. At thirteen, I must have thought I was Spider-Man or something.
I used car and fire escapes to climb onto buildings that day. I jumped between them, ran along their edges, and stared death in the face. I wouldn't have died if I had fallen. I would have been hurt, I could have died, but I probably would not have. Most of the buildings I was brave enough to climb on top of, even when assuring myself that I was either not afraid to die or unable to, were still only one or two stories high. I climbed to the top of a building with four floors from a fire escape but didn't make it to the roof, only the highest floor. I ran through people's yards and gardens and through traffic without a care in the world. I broke glass in an alley. I swung through another alley on somebody's clothes line.
That was my downfall. The rope held for a moment, it saved me from falling directly down, which I should be appreciative for, but it didn't go that way. In stead, it carried me to the lowest point of the swoop and didn't have enough strength to carry me back up. I just fell and slid there, putting my hand down to catch myself as I dropped those few feet. The impact hurt, my tailbone ached for days and my right hand had the skin scraped off by the pavement. My left hand came down on a broken bottle which slid away beneath me, taking a long stream of blood with it.
I clenched my hand tightly and stumbled out of the alley crying and screaming. Somebody called an ambulance for me and somebody else called my parents. I kept thinking at the time that I was going to pass out but I didn't, I held on the whole time. Later I did pass out, once everything was done and I was home in my bed, exhausted and ready to shrug off the day's disaster and pain. That, however, was sixteen stitches and a solid ass-beating later. The idea seems strange, perhaps, to punish your children when they're already suffering so much, I'm sure not everybody would agree with it, but it made sense. In my home, we had rules that were not to be broken. I was not sure that swinging on clotheslines had been specifically forbidden but it hadn't been specifically allowed, either, which typically meant don't fucking do it. Although I was hurt, and I'm sure my parents felt bad for me, the agreement was broken rules warrant punishment. After that, my whole day of heartache and muscle fatigue and failed Tarzan reenactments and severe lacerations and ass beatings, I was ready for bed.
When I got home that day twenty-five years later it was with clean clothes, fully healthy extremities, only minor muscle ache and no angry parents. I still felt the same. I was still exhausted. I still went to my bed and passed out as if I'd lost a gallon of blood.