Of No Particular Importance
I don’t think of you when you’re not around. Let’s make that clear. I do well to put you out of my mind. I don’t think of you when I wake up in the morning, twisting about, fighting the daylight. I don’t think of you when I’m making breakfast – an egg and English muffin – while it cooks and I pour a cup of coffee, feed the dog, water the plant. When I’m on my computer, or getting ready for work, or just sitting around reading a magazine or a book, I am not thinking of you. There is a top story on the news. “Massive earthquake hits Eastern-Pacific coast”. As I read it I’m thinking about the thousands of people this will instantly affect, or about the buildings and just how many will crumble from the intensity of the quake. Maybe they will get an evacuation signal quick enough and lives will be saved, maybe they won’t and, as the horror unfolds across the wide expanse of the information superhighway, we will question whether more could have been done, or look to point the blame at someone – the government, the Earthquake Disaster warning systems (if such a thing exists), mother nature – someone will bear this burden. But I am not thinking of you. My eyes are dry and my throat is coarse from the night before, singing, dancing, talking, smoking. “Where have you been,” they ask. “Around,” I say, brushing off the question, knowing it leads to a topic I’d rather not discuss. “He’s been locked up,” someone says. “I know how that goes,” says another, “welcome back to society. Now get fucked up.” And so that’s how it goes, the rest of a night blurred, remembering that I checked my phone once, then twice, and then not again after that, going home somewhere, with someone, someone not you. Not comparing her smell to yours, her hair, her eyes, her smile, her voice. Going to work the next day, sitting at a computer, piecing together a puzzle of decadence and guilt, but not wondering how your night was spent or who you were and weren’t with, what it was you were doing, what were you thinking while I was away in another land, flexing a new found ability, testing long-held theories of what I could and couldn’t get away with. Nights don’t last long enough for proper testing, and so we go out again, and again, and again. When I get a call the next day and Jacob is saying things into the phone like, “What the Hell happened?” and “You were out of control,” and “She was pretty hot. You’re a son-of-a-bitch.” Painting that picture, that beautifully shit-faced picture. Sitting there, at that computer, but not being reminded of the time last Christmas at the party at your friends house, drinking and taking pictures, red and green, social games and fancy food, getting too sauced, throwing up in the back of your car, falling asleep on the bed you made me, curled up together, waking up, not remembering the prior night, just the way you made sure I didn’t make a complete ass of myself, taking care and looking out for me. I get home from work, making dinner – spaghetti and meat sauce, garlic bread, salad – but I’m not thinking about you. I wash the dishes and I fold my clothes but I leave my room the way it is because I’ve no one to impress. I sit around for some time, watching television on my computer, or maybe writing a bit or two, something scandalous or something fantastic, something about a father and his son and his sons’ friend, going camping in the mountains. Maybe they’re fishing in the lake; the father is teaching the two boys how to make a fire, how to set-up a tent, how to roast the perfect marshmallow. He’s telling the boys a ghost story, one about a camping trip just like theirs, with a lake and a fire just like theirs, but then he’s stopping because the two boys are scared, visibly frightened, and so he starts making them s’mores and talking about taking the boat out on the water, going swimming and looking at the stars. He says he’s going to teach them constellations the next night. But that night will never come. One of the boys will drown in the lake that morning and they will have to end their trip early. But I will not think of you, not while the fire crackles and the owls coo, not while stones are skipped, not even while the young boy breathes his last, watery breath. And when I finish the story I will sit there at the computer with a beer or a drink, reading random articles, waiting for a phone call, scribbling in a pad – wondering how to finish this story- but I will not be thinking of you.
