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Smoking inside is not one of my usual habits, but I decide to make an exception. I don’t want to get up and walk to the balcony because I don’t want to risk waking up the snoring man sleeping next to me. His bare chest is covered with hair so blond, it’s nearly impossible to see the curls in the dimly lit bedroom. REM sleep makes his eyes move so quickly, I wonder if he’s chasing rabbits or watching an exciting game of ping pong in his sleep.
For a second, it feels like he belongs there, like we’re a normal, randomly dating couple at the peak of their puppy love, just before everything slowly dulls down and turns to shit. One can tell the honeymoon is over when the two of you are standing in the middle of a grocery store, bickering if it’s a healthy choice to buy whole milk or one percent.
“You should think about your health!” the wife screams for the eleventh time that week. The husband holds onto his carton of milk like it’s the last piece of freedom he has in his healthy and organized life.
We don’t bicker, the snoring man and I. We never enter a grocery store together, not intentionally. If we do bump into one another by the milk and butter section, we keep on walking, pretending not to know each other. The stolen moments we spend together behind closed doors are the only time I don’t feel completely numb. The anti-numbness is like cocaine to me. Not just the man sleeping next to me, but our moments together. Although I have always hated the saying “fuck your brains out,” it really makes all the sense in the world. It’s like horseback riding but better. It’s the only way to empty my mind and actually feel... something. Anything.
Research says that a teenager’s brain, pumped up with hormones and endorphins, is able to feel everything ten times stronger than an adult’s brain. Food tastes better. Freedom tastes better. Cigarettes. Alcohol. Sex. All of the things so appealing to anyone who has a taste for all the wonderful sins out there. And who doesn’t? I’m not a teenager anymore, but I sure as hell am constantly accused of acting like one. And my brain enjoys the nasty habits just as much as it did when I was fifteen years old. If not more. Maybe I should ask Sigmund if my brain stopped developing when I became a young adult? Or maybe I’m mentally challenged and simply have no idea about it?
“Fuck Sigmund,” I whisper, but not quietly enough. The sleeping nest of blond chest hair awakes.
“Shit! Is that really the time?” he yells, and the calmly sleeping blond man I was enjoying just a few seconds ago has vanished. I try not to roll my eyes. Turning my back to my guest, who is now going through a full-on panic attack, I put out the cigarette and nestle myself deeper into my cotton sheets that now smell like Axe deodorant.
There’s no need to witness the “holy shit, is it really that late” shit show and the face, full of regret and guilt. I know the drill by heart. The snoring man gets up, jumps and stumbles around, and searches for his clothes like a starving wild animal searches food at the dump yard. Then he runs out the door without saying a word.
I get up to take a shower, knowing the old rusty pipes will wake up at least one of my wall neighbors.
“Fuck them too....”
As good as another human’s touch felt, I’m the loneliest right after my secret guest has stormed out the door. Sometimes my body craves his touch so bad, I get the shakes. For the longest time I thought it was a relationship I was after. A fucking Prince Charming on a white horse, coming to rescue me from the concrete jungle and the nights full of screams and terror. Maybe having a boyfriend would bring some meaning back to my life. Someone to make me whole again, feel like a normal human being.
I have tried going to movies and dating normal, fairly decent guys. They are interested to hear about my therapy sessions with Sigmund, my thoughts about death and life after it. The more they heard me speak, the more they want to be my “better half” and save me from myself.
One of the random date night guys once decided to surprise me after our fifth date. We had gone out for drinks and planned to have a TV-tray dinner after, at his house. I never brought these boy toys home. Doing so would feel like buying a shirt two sizes too small, and wearing it every day, even if it made you feel ugly and uncomfortable.
“Close your eyes and take my hand!” His face had looked like a puppy’s after he realizes his human is actually going to throw the ball. I had hesitated, but was too embarrassed (for him) to refuse. He took my hand and led me into a bedroom with plain white wallpaper and cheap IKEA furniture stuffed together in a too-small space.
“Now you can open!” His voice creaked slightly, like a teenager still practicing to speak with his new low and manly voice. I had blinked a couple of times, hoping for a chocolate cake or a six-pack of beer. In front of me, I saw an open closet door, exposing stacks of black clothes and an endless mountain of white tennis socks. The middle shelf was so empty and white, it nearly burned my eyes.
“That’s for you to bring your stuff over!” he said, trying not to jump up and down and clap out of excitement.
“Excuse me for a minute,” I had said and made a U-turn. I speed walked to the bathroom, slammed the door and locked it. I almost had enough time to reach the white marble toilet, placed inconveniently at the end of the long room. The shower curtain had looked like modern art as my vomit slowly slid down its pearl-white surface. For a second, it looked like the prettiest piece of art I had seen for at least a year.
My mind doesn’t want to be alone. But while trying to date someone, just for the sake of it, I feel even lonelier than I do when I’m alone. I’m not insanely independent, or a freakishly strong woman who’d make it on her own. Deep inside I know I’m the neediest person that ever existed, and I sure as hell am not sure if I will make it.
Today, after I had entered Sigmund’s pretentiously cozy office room, he had told me for most patients the hardest thing is to talk about what has happened to them, and how it made them feel. That they may even have a blockage, an emotional trauma, which stops them from talking, sometimes from remembering.
“How does this sound to you? How does it make you feel?”
“Um... what? That people can’t talk about it? Or that you are telling me that I have a trauma?”
I make bunny ears and roll my eyes when I pronounce the word trauma.
“Which do you think I was talking about?”
“My guess is the trauma. Harri says there’s a wheel in my head. And a hamster running on it.”
“Is that what you think as well?”
“I think Harri is full of shit. His head is so messed up. He’s the one who should be sitting here on your couch. I mean, I could tell you a hundred things he’s done that are way more fucked up than my stories.”
Sigmund smiles a little but the smile never reaches his sharp and intelligent eyes. He leans forward and takes his glasses off, setting them on the table next to the tissue box that I have not yet needed. His face looks sincere, like he actually cares. Sigmund’s worried gaze suddenly reminds me of Dad, and a big nasty lump appears in my throat. The lump is not tears; I’m not about to cry. That lump is my dad’s spirit. That’s where it has moved after he suddenly died and abandoned me, leaving me scared, alone and angry. His ghost lives in my throat.
Fearing Sigmund would prescribe me with shock therapy, I leave this little detail unsaid. Just like I never talk about my nightmares; they are too insane to talk about out loud, even to a shrink.
“Sometimes we prefer to talk about other people and their problems to avoid talking of our own. Is that what is going on right now? Is this why you want to tell me about your friend’s troubles instead of your own?”
Sigmund’s kind eyes wait for a reply, but I can’t talk because the throat ghost makes me mute. I stare at the abstract and way too colorful painting behind his bald head, avoiding his soft, caring eyes. I remain quiet.
“When you first came to see me, you told me you suffer from depression, panic attacks and blackouts. You also told me you weren’t sure if you wanted to ‘be here’ anymore.”
Sigmund makes bunny ears to quote my recent words. It is true, I did say that. And the bunny ears are his subtle way of saying, “Oh yeah? Well, fuck you too, you arrogant little shit.”
Sigmund has scored his first points in my eyes.
I remember the first time I met Sigmund. I sat down opposite of a bald, tall, serious man. It felt like someone had opened my torso and shoved in a herd of mice. Those little bastards ran around my chest with their crazy little feet, making my heart beat rapidly. Every now and then one of the rodents would stop and mockingly laugh at me.
“Anxiety attacks can cause nausea, stuttering and excessive sweating,” Sigmund had said, reading my nervous face and body like an open book. It instantly made me hate him. Sigmund had placed his bottle bottom glasses on his nose, and every other minute the glasses would slowly slide down his face, making him lift his chin, so he could still see something. After telling him about the blackouts I suffer from, it was like a can of (overly eager and brain healing) worms had opened. Whenever Sigmund gets excited, he perks up and twerks his two-meter tall body forward on his uncomfortable-looking leather chair. Next, he leans forward like he’s about to tell me a secret.
“Please... go on.” He’d stop writing on his black notebook, and close it with the golden pen still stashed in the middle, like a placeholder for judgments made of my mental well-being. Same thing happens whenever he thinks I’m about to cry. Close cover, pen stashed, twerk, lean forward. It’s like watching a five-year-old kid waiting for the Dairy Queen employee to prepare them a sugary treat. The first time we met, Sigmund wanted me to cry so bad, and he loved every actual symptom I described, no matter how small or insignificant. He’d ponder and analyze them after I had left the office, walking toward my temperamental car, hoping for a parking ticket.
The only thing more annoying than the weekly twerking sessions, are other people around me, who suddenly become a psychologist or a life coach if I admit I feel too anxious to go out tonight.
“You should eat better, exercise more,” my upbeat friends would say, making me feel smaller than an ant. They have never experienced depression or anxiety.
“There’s no such thing as depression or anxiety!” they continue.
“You just need to decide to be happy. Snap out of it!”
Their comments make me wonder how bad prison food actually is.
Anxiety can’t be put down on paper. One can’t describe its symptoms or define it. That would make it understandable, something that is human. Anxiety is such a private feeling; it’s not meant to be described. Why would you want to describe it? “Symptoms may vary.” No shit, Sigmund. If we were all the same, they would have cured us a hundred years ago. They would have made one scientific research of “a human” or “the mind” and make us take a pill every morning with our protein shakes and collagen.
Sigmund was wrong. I might sometimes become temporarily mute, because of the throat lump, but that was rarely the case. As a matter a fact, I could not stop talking about it. The way my father suddenly died, the panic attacks and the lingering numbness that I feel every waking moment. I tell anyone who will listen about my nightmares, and how I’m sure there’s some kind of a leak in my brain, or that maybe I’m schizophrenic. Most people feel awkward listening to me. Their faces turn cherry red, and their eyes have the hardest time deciding what to look at. Their eyeballs roll wildly around in their eye sockets, making their whole face seem like a slot machine. At its best, my audience looks mesmerized, like I’m telling them a fairy tale, and they cannot hold their excitement to hear the happy ending. Guess what? No such luck, assholes. This Snow White hasn’t been woken up from a spell. The evil witch visits her bedside every night in her nightmares, and you sure as hell are not the prince to save her.
After staring at a small serpentine-shaped crack on the kitchen wall for a good half an hour, I put down the glass of water and a pink plastic weekday pill organizer, containing my daily numbness pills.
“Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday... Thursday, Friday, Saturday too. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven days...every day different and every day new....”
It’s a song we were taught in elementary school, once the teachers decided we were old enough to start learning English. Every time I see that plastic pill organizer, the song, annoying beyond belief, gets stuck in my unstable mind.
I hate the pills. I hate my spinning, crazy mind even more. One time I felt so desperate, I took the whole package of antidepressants at once and called my ex to come help me.
“You fucking numb-nut,” my tired ex had said when he walked in and found me sobbing under the blankets. “You can’t kill yourself with antidepressants, you moron.” He had forced me to follow him to his car and we drove to the nearby burger joint in the city. I hugged my legs the whole way there and back. At home, I tried to gnaw on my cheeseburger while my ex-fiancé nervously kept checking his phone for the time. He had an online game starting, and I could hear his brain calculating and wondering when it wouldn’t be too rude to leave me alone and take a hike.
“You can go. I feel a lot better now. I must have forgotten to eat again.”
He took a half-hearted look at my burger on the table. The burger looked like a squirrel had snuck in to steal a mouthful off its side while the two of us stared at the walls in awkward silence. He got up and slowly walked out the door. I sincerely appreciated him for not running away in relief, or slamming the door.
The pill organizer falls into the sink, and the tiny pills swirl around when the water reaches them. I leave the faucet running on full force. Opening the fridge door, I contemplate for so long between a half-eaten frozen pizza and a bottle of beer, it seems the temperature in the kitchen has cooled down. It would be a bit easier to breathe after a beer or two. If I take more, I wouldn’t remember much the next day. I blame the memory loss on the pills, which are now drowning in the sink, finding their way down the ancient, rusty pipeline. The beer wins. I walk over to the mudroom closet where my barn coat is hanging. After fetching the Marlboros, I go and sit on the balcony floor. I rarely sit on the old lawn chairs out here. There are way too many chatty old neighbors who hate my guts, but still never miss a chance to talk at me. And here I thought I was the loneliest person in this goddamn ugly apartment building.
“It’s not like you two were ever going to be a thing again. I mean, I love you to death, sister, but you’ve acted like a real-life Ding Dong ever since you... well... you know. The big wheel started turning.”
Harri’s words barely ever make complete sense to me, but this time it’s obvious what he’s trying to say. It isn’t surprising, Harri taking Anna’s side. That is one of the things that make me love Harri so much. He wants to be a badass gangsta with a filthy mouth, but in reality he is the nicest, most righteous person in this god-forsaken city. Harri is not one to go with the flow, and finding something good in every person he meets comes easy to him.
“I bet in a year or so we can all laugh about this.” He talks at the burning end of his lit cigarette, leaning back on the armchair, stuffed between the end of the bed and the white built-in closets. He has insisted we smoke inside.
“If the oh-shit-is-that-the-time guy gets to smoke here, I sure as hell will smoke here too!”
Harri isn’t a big fan of my choice of poison—the secret snoring man. But there is no lying or not telling Harri something. He knows every little detail about me, more than I let on. Sometimes it’s annoying, being like an open book. I’m not able to read Harri’s mind the same way he reads mine. It has been like that ever since we first became friends.
We were inseparable when we were teenagers, like those pictures you see of two siblings stuffed inside one big T-shirt. After months of crashing the same house parties as Harri did, I had simply fallen in love with his dark, witty mind. It wasn’t romantic love, not even the slightest. This pop music loving, always dressed in black and constantly chatting boy was more than that—he was my soul mate. Even as a teenager, Harri had been like a walking Wikipedia. His head was full of random information, and there wasn’t a topic in this world he wouldn’t be able to carry a conversation in. The intelligence and wit aside, Harri was always ready to party, and do “stupid shit” no one else found funny but the two of us. I loved him more than I had loved my first love, or the on again, off again boyfriends, all together. That’s why it had been crucifying when the teenage Harri had started to show signs of interest in me. Even though I had never really bought the concept of God, Heaven or the afterlife, I started to pray for the first time in my short teen life.
“Dear God, if you exist, first of all, apologies for not believing in you. I guess it’s kind of a hypocrite thing to go on and ask for a favor, because we’ve never talked, and to be honest, if you ever respond to me, I promise, I will shit my pants and never sleep again. But please, please, don’t let Harri be in love with me. Anyone else—really. He is too important, too much fun to hang around with.... It would be so fucked up to lose him just because of something so idiotic as romance or “love.” We’re way better than that. God, can we please, please, please keep him? Okay, amen.”
God never replied, but I kept on hoping that the universe would hear my prayers instead. That Saturday night had been warm and sunny, making all the drunken people come out of their holes to find other shit-faced individuals to party with, fall in love with, or fight with. Teenagers were not different. Instead of the local pub, we sought out home parties to crash. The drunken laughter and random screams had helped me find the party without checking Harri’s text message, including the address and instructions on how to get there. Entering the front yard, I saw a teenage girl from my school, down on all fours, vomiting into a flower ornament built inside an old bicycle basket. The metal bicycle, half buried in the ground, had someone’s pink tank top hanging from its right horn. The basket full of flowers was covered with too much vodka, Sprite and once-eaten salami pizza.
“This must be it,” I mumbled, and gazed through the yard, trying to see a head covered with thick, few-centimeters-too-long black hair. No sign of Harri. The front door flies open, and a couple of drunken boys holler at me.
“Come on in, you random ho we’ve never met before.” They find their joke hilarious, and both of them burst into laughter that sounds like a herd of coyotes in heat, desperately trying to get laid.
The house was huge and the walls covered in paintings with golden wood frames. The living room drapes were made of heavy red velvet, and someone had wrapped one of them around their body pretending it was a toga, or a cloak. He spun around and started singing into a fake microphone made out of an old Lifestyle magazine. The song was one of Harri’s favorites, Maroon 5’s latest. He dramatically tossed the drape aside and jumped onto the antique couch, singing with a voice better than Adam Levine’s.
He should be a singer... or an actor, I had thought, while watching the dark, handsome boy perform with his eyes shut. There were three girls standing in the corner, staring at Harri, and it seemed like they couldn’t decide if he was cool enough to approach, or simply ridiculous. Knowing the answer was equally both, I walked over and bumped Harri on the shoulder.
“Are you done? I couldn’t find anyone to buy me cigarettes. Do you have any?” I shouted as Harri finished his show with the last lines of his beloved song. He took a bow and threw his arm around my shoulder, leading me to the back porch, which was surprisingly empty.
“Hey, I really need to tell you something, and this is super important,” Harri had said with a dead serious face.
Thanks a lot, God. You are officially on my shit list, I thought but sat down and lit up a menthol cigarette.
”So, I’m not sure if I’m stating the obvious here, but I’m gay,” Harri said, looking straight into my eyes.
“What?” I stared at my friend, feeling like I suddenly forgot my native language and meaning of all words.
“You are... what?”
“Yup. As the day is long.”
I could feel my face turn red, but I wasn’t sure if it was because of rage or embarrassment. How could I have not seen it? Or at least question it?
“Listen, Harri, if you are telling me the truth, I’m really fucking sorry about this. But fuck you and your fucking pranks! This is not funny! I’ve had it with your shitty jokes and you making me feel like a moron!”
I threw down the cigarette butt and stepped on it while quickly leaning over Harri, to steal another cigarette from the pack he had left open on the patio table. He dodged quickly when I grabbed the cigarette, obviously thinking I was about to punch him in the face. He didn’t try to stop me when I stormed off the patio and fast walked the few kilometers home.
The next morning I had woken up late, hearing my dad reading the newspaper and drinking his standard two cups of strong black coffee. It was Sunday morning and he would stay home the whole day. Feeling grumpy and upset, I got up and shuffled into our kitchen that smelled like toasted rye bread, burned coffee and freshly printed newspaper.
“Morning, Dad.”
“Good morning, you. Rough night out with Harri?”
Dad hadn’t taken his eyes off the morning news, and he sipped from his coffee mug, holding it with a steady hand. It would have been the most absurd thing for me, if I ever saw my dad nervous or clumsy. Something about him always made the room feel like anything was possible. Maybe what I learned last night was also possible.
“Dad, Harri’s gay.”
Dad kept reading the newspaper, moving his head slightly upward to get a better view through his reading glasses. He still wouldn’t look at me, but I could see a quick smile appear on his face and I wondered if he also thought it was one of Harri’s never-ending jokes. The two got along great and Harri was Dad’s favorite friend I had ever brought home.
“You are always welcome here, even if your bratty little girlfriend says otherwise,” he had once told Harri when he was leaving the house after a cookout.
“Dad, I’m serious. He told me last night and I’m not sure if he was joking.”
Finally, he put down the newspaper and took off his reading glasses to look at me.
“You are honestly telling me you didn’t know?” His calm, deep voice was full of amusement, and I started to suspect the two were pulling my leg.
“Sweetheart, your mother and I have a few gay friends, but I don’t really need to compare Harri to them. I’ve known since the day he walked through our front door. Why do you think your mother trusts you out with him?”
Shit. Maybe there was a God after all. The chair made a squeaky sound as I got up like my pants had suddenly caught on fire. My cell phone had run out of battery overnight, and I desperately turned the room upside down trying to find a charger. When the Nokia had finally started blinking and agreed to turn on, I typed out a text message.
Hey, I spoke with my dad and he told me....
Nope, that might be hurtful, at least incredibly rude. Maybe Harri didn’t know he was so obviously gay? Well, to everyone else other than me, at least. I quickly deleted the message and started over.
Fuck, man, I overreacted last night. I thought you were going to tell me you’re in love with me....
Oh, holy hell, no. What a dumbass I had been. No reason for Harri to find that out. I deleted the message and tapped my bare foot on the wooden floor. The charging cell phone started to burn my hand.
I’m sorry.
The phone made a little beeping sound as I sent the message and carefully placed the phone next to me on the bed. How would I manage life without my best friend? We had at least three or four years of teenage hell to suffer through, and there was no way I would join one of the girly gossip groups at school. I barely knew how to wear make-up, and it was impossible to convince my parents to buy any overpriced brand clothing, so I wouldn’t even be considered as one of them. They all thought crashing parties and having one-night stands was “Oh my god, so gross” and they had already, most likely, doomed me to be on their “white trash” list of people, the ones they would never want to be seen with. But I was afraid to be alone. Going to places all by myself, be it the grocery store, or the biology class, was terrifying. I needed someone there, someone who would have my back, and make life a bit easier for a fifteen-year-old girl, nervous to talk publicly.
The phone beeped and I grabbed it so fast the charger violently pulled off from its socket.
Your reaction is Top 1 worst of all the people I have told. That includes my mother.
I sighed deeply and threw myself onto the bed.
The phone beeped again.
Fucking drama queen.
“Hello?” Anna’s voice is carefree and it immediately makes me annoyed and furious.
Don’t you fucking “hello” me. You’re probably living in my house, sleeping in my bed and fucking my fiancé—ex-fiancé, I think to myself but not a sound comes out of my mouth. This mute thing is really starting to be a drag.
It’s not like Anna didn’t have everything I ever needed in life. Perfect, kind parents who probably still gave her adult ass allowance, nice little sports car that simply refuses to lose that new car smell, great job after graduating from the school where I was never accepted. And now Anna had the perfect guy.
They would grow old together, Anna and my ex, popping out perfect little babies. They would live happily ever after in their beautifully and tastefully decorated palace. The babies would all have Anna’s perfect wavy hair, and his sharp, perfectly shaped cheekbones, and eyes that would leave everyone gasping for air. Anna would bake cookies and shit, wearing an apron that says “Home Is Where Your Heart Is,” or other stupid-ass clichés that are meant for happy and healthy people only, the ones with no trouble in their lives.
Friday nights, after their scheduled hour of “sexy time,” they would sit on the patio and share a cigarette. Just one cigarette. Perfect people don’t smoke; it’s bad for their excellent health and fit bodies. They would take small puffs and try to remember what their exes’ names were.
“You know who I’m talking about. The one who lost her mind and got shock therapy in that gray old hospital building nearby the harbor.”
Anna would slightly furrow her beauty-salon-fresh eyebrows, trying to remember what the heck that stupid little person was named again. His face would lighten up, like he had reinvented the wheel.
“Yes, yes, I remember her. I think we dated for a week or two. She had that oversized potato nose, and sometimes she would fart in her sleep. Jeez she would cut cheese so bad, it used to wake me up!” He would burst into laughter. The laughter mixing with the smoke, making him cough.
“Honey, be careful, you don’t want to inhale too much of that. It’s bad for your seasonal asthma. Let’s go inside and cuddle a bit more.”
They would walk back in, hand in hand, dive back into their white satin sheets and call it a night.
“Hello? I’m hanging up now!” Anna’s voice has a sharp edge to it and I know how much she hates getting calls from unlisted numbers. The line goes mute and the phone blinks to tell me the call has ended. The phone leaps into the air, and it hits the blue back wall of my imperfect bedroom. The old Nokia cracks open and the battery falls into a soft armchair, next to Harri’s menthol cigarettes and an old Zippo lighter he once stole from a house party we crashed together. He always leaves his stuff behind. I don’t need to see the phone to know the screen has cracked. Just like my head is about to do.
The barn is full of people, and I make yet another world record in getting the gelding saddled up. The outdoor arena is full of horses, trotting and cantering around in circles. I head the opposite direction and hope no one wants to tag along on my trail ride. Most people seem to come to the barn to socialize and hang out with other equestrians. Getting to know their schedule wasn’t too difficult, and I’m usually able to go around everyone, and come to the barn when it’s nearly empty. Just the slender guy Harri and Anna drool over is always there. He might even live at the house next to the barn yard. Hard to say. To be sure, I would need to actually talk to him. Today he’s nowhere to be seen. Maybe he likes to avoid the other riders as well.
The woods are windy but my hoodie and black-and-white knitted scarf keep me warm. The winter is starting to lose its crushing touch. The gelding seems sticky and tired today, so I decide to cheer him up by leaving our usual trail in the woods, and we head out to the road.
Cars pass by every now and then, but because the barn is located in a small town far away from the highway, the drivers tend to know how to drive around horses. We should be safe. The gelding’s hooves make a comforting sound on the pavement, and there’s no people anywhere to be seen. The fields are empty, and the tree line is dancing in the wind, which has picked up, making the end of my long scarf dance wildly in the air. The gelding doesn’t care about the flapping scarf, or the wildly blowing wind. Nothing ever seems to bother him. An eighteen-wheeler could blow its horn right next to us, and he would simply lift his bay head a bit and keep walking along.
We come across the fields and turn onto a small dirt road leading back in the barn’s direction. I decide to take the shortcut and pass a small playground where children are screaming and running around. The older kids are yelling, “You’re it!” and wildly jumping and running away, they peek over their shoulders to see if someone is actually trying to catch them. I have always been terrible with children. It’s nearly impossible to know what is “okay” to say to them and what isn’t. Not that my inappropriate jokes ever make the kids upset, quite the opposite. It’s their parents I need to worry about.
“You can’t say humping in front of the kids!” one mom once yelled at me, after I told her kid what the bunnies on Animal Planet were doing.
“Oh sorry, do you prefer I say intercourse next time?”
My humor isn’t really popular around the adults either.
The playground is full of little people and their parents, who also run around, trying to stop their precious little sweethearts from eating dog shit or random objects on the ground.
One of the knee-high creatures stops and drops his plastic shovel when we pass by.
“Mommy, mommy! It’s a horsey!” the little boy’s voice is full of wonder and awe, which makes me feel even more dead inside. Oh, how much I’d be willing to pay for that feeling.
“Yes, sweetie, it is. Maybe if you ask nicely, the pretty lady riding him would let you pet his beautiful horsey face?”
The woman talks slowly in a pleasant, steady voice, unlike the usual sharp parenting voice most moms tend to use. This softly speaking woman is not short with her child, and she is the only one not running around the playground like a chicken without its head. Her knee-low winter coat is fitted, and it’s not hard to see she doesn’t have a kilo too many on her. Her short and stylish blonde hair looks like she drove to the playground straight from the hair and make-up studio. The woman takes her son’s hand and turns around to walk toward me and the old gelding. Suddenly my heart misses a beat, and then starts racing so fast it’s impossible to breathe. The blood rushes up my face making my cheeks and forehead bright red.
The woman doesn’t notice my sudden panic attack, and now stands right next to us, picking up the young smiling boy to sit on her arms. The boy is beautiful, with hair so blond it’s nearly silver. Little silver curls frame his round face, and he can’t take his blue eyes off the horse so close to him. He doesn’t reach out his hand, even though it would be easy for him to touch the gelding.
“Do you mind if he pets your horse, miss? He’s never seen one before, just on TV,” the woman says with a voice full of love. It’s a different voice than what she uses at the local supermarket, telling her stubborn husband not to buy the whole milk, but to go with the one percent milk instead.
“Always go with the one percent!”
This time her words are not sharp and there’s no anger in her surprisingly soft voice. She’s not telling anyone how they are worthless pieces of shit, or how their marriage is just a big waste of time for both of them. She sounds nice. Polite. Maybe that’s why I didn’t recognize her right away.
“Uh, yeah. Sure. Go ahead.” I hear my own voice, but it feels like an outsider is using my mouth and body. I’m floating nearby, watching myself sit on the bay gelding, who is gently nudging a little boy so beautiful, he looks like an angel or a small albino god. The woman speaks softly to her son and forgets about the red-faced rider, who holds her breath, sitting quietly, hoping the moment would pass as quickly as it has started. The playground starts to spin and I know I’m about to faint. The only way to stop the spinning is to lie down and lift my legs up, but how does one do that on a sixteen-hand horse? So I sit and wait. Quiet and red. My vision narrows and I see the woman and the wonder child take a step back and wave happily. Then all goes dark.
The white plastic around the round bale has a thirty-centimeter-long rip on its side. The hay is falling on the muddy ground when the gelding goes after another mouthful of yellow Timothy hay. The bit in his mouth makes it hard for him to chew, and most of the hay is dropping down his mouth after turning into green saliva.
“Hey, there’s an open bale out front, you know. Maybe you could bring him in, and I go fetch you some?”
Slender guy’s voice is surprisingly soft, without a drop of annoyance or anger. I snap awake, and for a second I reach for my phone on the bedside table. What time is it? Is it morning? Why am I covered in sweat?
“Are you okay? Do you want me to untack him for you?” slender guy says and touches my half chap, shaking my leg gently.
“I was at the playground,” I say, not being able to stop staring at the round bale’s white plastic and the growing rip on its side.
“You what? Seriously, is there someone I could call? Your friend, maybe? The one with black hair and heavy metal shirts?” Slender guy’s voice is now full of worry and I wonder if my face is bleeding or maybe I have fallen and am now covered in mud. I look down and see that my feet are still on the stirrups and there’s no blood to be seen. My hands hold the reins and my hoodie doesn’t seem muddy or torn. I must have blacked out and the gelding walked me to the barn where he decided the round bale was a fair award for his trouble.
“Um, yeah. Can you call Harri? He’s on my speed dial, number three. My phone is on my tack box next to our stall.”
I don’t know what else to do. The blackouts have never been this long. It’s at least a twenty-minute ride from the playground to the barn, maybe longer. My head starts to bounce and I feel like puking.
“Hey, it’s Jan from the barn... yeah... that’s right. Hey, are you busy? I have a feeling your friend might need your help.” The slender guy, Jan, talks on the phone inside the barn building. Harri must be intrigued, not because I have had yet another blackout, but because the man worth drooling over has called Harri out of the blue. The image of Harri’s stunned face is enough to make me chuckle a bit, and I swing my right leg over, slowly sliding down the saddle. The gelding looks at me, wanting to stay and finish his award, but I grab him by the rein and start walking toward the barn aisle. Jan walks toward us.
“Harri is on his way. Do you need some help putting your horse away? I don’t mind. I’m all finished with my chores.”
Jan is genuinely pleasant, and all his usual arrogant attitude is gone. Another reason why I must be dreaming. Why is he so nice to me all of a sudden? Maybe he hopes I have finally lost it and they’d send me away to a place full of rooms with soft walls and no windows.
“No, thank you, I can do it. I’m okay, I just... it got so dark and I-I....” I stutter and don’t know how to finish that sentence. Saw a ghost? It all went dark when I saw her—the ghost. This is priceless. Pulitzer winning stuff, really. I should write my memoirs and let the world enjoy my impressive vocabulary.
“Okay, if you’re sure you feel okay. Let me go fix him his grain. Warm water added, yes?”
Jan looks at me but it’s clear he already knows the answer. After politely waiting for me to nod, he turns around, tosses his hood on his head, and tightens the strings on his winter hoodie. It’s the most expensive brand around the tack stores in town. I would never be willing to pay that sort of money for a piece of clothing. Jan’s expensive clothes and horse tack have always made me despise him. Could it be that I have misjudged the man? Maybe my own cold demeanor and judgmental looks have kept him far away?
The gelding munches a pile of hay placed in the corner of his stall. His blue cooler blanket is steaming as the sweaty horse makes it soaking wet in just a few minutes. I wonder where Jan is with the grain porridge.
The laughter is low and genuine. For a reason I can’t understand, I stop behind the grain room door to eavesdrop on the two men, chatting and laughing together.
“... and I simply went to shake his hand meaning to introduce myself. Suddenly all the words fail me, and I end up telling him ‘Good luck!’ Is this what star-struck means? Is that what happened to me?” Harri’s voice sounds serious, but I know he’s telling one of his all-time funniest stories about him meeting one of his biggest idols. And his audience is loving every second of it.
“I would love to hear more, but I should probably take this grain over before the gelding paws a dent on his stall floor,” Jan says, but I can’t hear him move a muscle.
“Yeah, man, well if you ever want to learn how to make memorable impressions on celebrities, I’m your guy.”
Harri’s voice is so calm and filled with self-confidence, it suddenly makes me a bit jealous. How can he be so comfortable in his own skin? He is good-looking, well-mannered, and he has created sort of a rock star look for himself. But is anyone really that self-assured?
“Hey, yeah, can you type in your numbers? I didn’t call you from my cell, so I don’t have them,” Jan says, probably handing over his phone to Harri. His voice is calm and excited, both at the same time.
Now I feel even more jealous than I did before. Harri has set up a date with a guy I couldn’t have cared less about just a couple hours ago. But he had been so sweet and nice, taking care of me after the playground incident. Or was it Harri I was envious of? Would my best friend now have less time to come over and prepare frozen pizzas? Would they go out on double dates with Anna and my orc-killing ex?
“Cool. Hey, gotta run. Have to feed the beast.”
Jan comes out of the grain room and passes me in the aisleway. He smiles and nods toward the grain bucket he carries in his right hand. I nod and smile back at him and walk into the grain room. Harri types something on his cell phone, a calm and satisfied smile on his face. He looks up and meets my eyes that are filled with confusion.
“What? If they don’t care that I’m gay, I don’t care if they’re straight. And, actually, no fucks are given, in case my radar has made its first misjudgment.”
The bathroom tiles bounce like wild rabbits in front of my rapidly blinking eyes. Up and down... up... and down.
“Sunday... Monday... Tuesday... Wednesday....” I mumble, staring at a plastic stick that has pee drops on its sides. This fuck up is not to be blamed on the numbness pills. It’s the pill organizer itself that was at fault. Fine. It’s my rotting brain’s fault. Maybe I really should have taken the advice my mother once told me. “Think before you start throwing shit around.” I have been so dead set on quitting the Sigmund pills cold turkey, I forgot I had two different kinds of drugs placed in that god-forsaken pink pill organizer.
This moment always seems very different on the TV commercials or the American movies. First, the beautiful model-looking woman looks anxious, like she has fire ants stuffed in her white, freshly ironed dress pants. The V-neck blouse fits perfectly on her ten-percent-body-fat figure. She sits down (never on a toilet seat, but a cozy-looking, white couch with oversized arm rests) and closes her eyes, taking a deep breath. When she turns the plastic stick around and sees the two blue lines appear, she makes a high-pitch squealing sound only dogs can hear. Then the jumping starts. The fitness cereal munching, advanced in her career, freshly pregnant woman with a perfect ponytail runs across her (guess what color) home, and dives into her Ken-doll-looking husband’s arms. A man’s calm, low voiceover says something like “Pregnant— When you need to be sure” or “BluePositive—It’s all good news.”
The scene in my bathroom is quite different. The bathroom tiles used to be white, but over the years they have turned slightly yellow, and the seams are covered with dark gray mold. Some time ago, I sprayed a few tiles with vinegar and bleach, just to see if the mold would come off on its own, but apparently I’m doomed to get down on my hands and knees and scrub the fuckers clean. I have no white tiles, no extra comfy armchair or a gorgeous Ken doll waiting to catch me by the waist on the west side of our white decorated luxury apartment. I have yellow moldy tiles, a shitty toilet seat to sit on and a plastic stick covered with drops of piss. The only thing me and the upbeat commercial have in common are the two blue lines.
