Hollywood Nights
Part Eleven
Howie wasn’t even spoiling in the ground yet and I was already short selling my humanity, ready to throw away every value and grain of moral fiber for the sake of being a willing accomplice to mass murder. Twelve hours earlier I was busy bemoaning the thing you had so clearly become and there I was, plotting and planning out likely scenarios for acquiring victims to feed to it. The wrong person died that night.
I didn’t understand what happened to you but I hadn’t changed yet; I didn’t know the unending cycle of thirst, followed by regret, followed by self-loathing, and then thirst all over again. I had yet to experience the ultimate high only to experience the mother of all crashes. Would I have been able to talk you off the ledge if I understood what you were feeling then? Could I have found a way to make this pseudo life appeal to you back then? I wanted to believe for a long time that I could have, but now, sitting on this bench in the old neighborhood, I don’t think it would have mattered. You were too good a person to do what’s required to live this way.
We spent that last night cuddled up on the couch watching sitcoms and late-night bullshit, I spent a good portion of that time getting drunk and continuing to hash out plots and plans in my head and you spent most of it looking pensive and distraught, barely in the room at all form the neck up. I kept asking you if you were okay, as if the word okay belonged in our collective vocabulary anymore. You kept screwing on that sweet smile you always had for me while you lied, telling me you were fine, or just thinking about what to do from then on.
After the television turned to white noise, we stepped out into the living room and fired up a favorite record. We both did a few lines and shared a joint but the never-ending party was truly over. You kept looking over at the depression in the couch that signaled Howie’s usual place and I kept following your eyes over to the spot until I couldn’t take it anymore. I started in with how well you explained the events of the previous night, how I understood and how I didn’t hate or blame you. How I knew what you needed then and how I was already considering our next move.
You covered it quickly, I barely had time to notice the look but it was clearly your turn to be disgusted and disturbed at your other half. Suddenly I was the inhuman thing in the room. I tried to change topics and eventually came back around to voicing my ideas of how best to keep you fed and that was really the end of the party. You told me you weren’t feeling well and you needed to go lay down. I was worried, I remember that but I wasn’t so worried that I turned off the tunes and tried to follow you. What would you have done then I wonder? What ruse would you have used? You were so strong, even stronger then after a fresh feed, you simply could have said no and it’s not like I would have pushed that aside. You could have broken my neck as though I were a chicken, and I knew it.
As it was, I was finally starting to feel a bit high and a bit drunk and I decided to enjoy the rest of the pre-dawn hours staring at a road map of Los Angeles county with a phone book and a few pens at the ready. By the time dawn came up I had a fleshed-out map of bars, cheap motels, night clubs, adult bookstores, all the likely places to meet people and places to take them to. There was also another idea that had taken root in my delinquent brain, we needed blow, handfuls of the stuff, who the fuck would miss dealers besides their regular customers? Yeah, I was quite proud of my accomplishments as I got up and stumbled toward our bedroom.
The bathroom light was on and that stopped me for a moment. The last time I saw our bedroom lit by that faint light our bed was a scene from a slaughter house. That time it was just empty, unmade and cold. I found the note on the counter next to the sink.
I’m sorry but I can’t live this way. I know how hard this will be for you but that’s the truth and I have no energy to discuss it or listen to alternatives. I have no energy or patience to listen to how much you need me. I needed you. I had you. I loved you and that was enough before this. I know it’s impossible for you not to make this about us, but it really isn’t about us. This is about me and what I’ve become, this is about me and what happened to me and what I’ve done. This is about what Dan did to me and how I’ve changed and how I simply cannot fathom a life lived this way.
You need to pack your clothes and important papers and you need to leave this place. Let the lawyers sell it and dump the cash in your account. Pack and walk away from this place and our life and go start fresh somewhere far away from here. If you loved me as much as I hope you did, that’s what you have to do. Save yourself and forget about all of this.
I always loved you, first and most. Please forgive me and forgive yourself too.
I read and re-read that note three times before I folded it up and stuck it in my pocket. The medicine cabinet had been left open ever so slightly and all I had to do to confirm what that awful note was telling me was to stand there and stare at all of the empty bottles.
The night before, you drank Howie like someone dying of thirst will drink a tall glass of water and that night you downed an entire pharmacy just to make sure you wouldn’t wake on the dark side of a sunset ever again. I had to confirm it though, just like we all do. No one is ever going to look at an empty bed and read a note like that and get busy packing.
You were curled up in the bathtub behind the sliding glass shower divider. You must have figured that the pills wouldn’t be enough so you slit the inside of your left arm open from the wrist up to the elbow. I found you bathing in it all, surrounded by Howie in essence.
God, you never half assed anything.
I didn’t pack, I panicked. I got busy contaminating your corpse and myself by trying to grab and pull at you before it sunk in that you were well and truly gone. Then I called that dreaded 911. No time or interest in cleaning up the house beforehand. I watched from the back of an L.A. sheriffs squad car as they loaded you into the back of an ambulance with all the care and concern someone shows while taking out the trash.
“A couple of coke addicts. Looks like they were holed up for a while in there, guess princess decided to take the quick way out and lover boy over there phoned it in to us.”
You ever really want to sober up? Listen to an EMT and a cop talk about you, and your dead lover, right in front of you, as though you weren’t even there. I didn’t want to sober up though. I wanted to get on the other side of that night and get higher than ever, so high I never had to wake up and spend another night without you.
Joke was on me. The cell they tossed me into so I could dry out turned into the place where I got sick as shit and made my own last, lonely, watery, death rattle. I didn’t empty out on a luxurious king size. I soaked clean through a thin jail mattress and I never woke in time to feel them pull and push at my supposed remains as they loaded me into a van bound for a local mortuary.
What about the coroner? Right? What about an autopsy, for my beloved or I? No, at least not back in 85’ no one was going to waste money and resources on drug addicts or suicides related to them. You got dumped in the county morgue until your folks collected you, and I woke back up, terrified and blood thirsty on a metal transfer table awaiting an open spot in the freezer at the shitty mortuary my folks unceremoniously dumped me at.
I never got bit. You didn’t leave anything in that note about being terrified you might get hungry and resort to doing something desperate with me around. Did you know I wonder? Did you suspect the origins of how we get made? Did you know more than you let on?
Not to get all red shoe diaries but I have to ponder the inevitable questions. Thirty-five years later and I know some things for certain, Dan may have turned and tried to feed on you. He certainly had a go at you from the wound he left on your neck but, he didn’t make you what you became by trying to drink your blood. We are an STD. There is only one way to transfer what we are. I’ve had thirty-five years and a lot of ups and downs to accept the fact that you were fucking your dealer to supply our habit. I also know that immortality, strength, speed, and aggressive regeneration do not spell out impervious nature. You take away our unnatural gifts and you add in death by direct sunlight and we don’t have much of a leg up on our mortal cousins. No, the only question, after all this time I have left to ask is the one I ask myself now as the sun threatens to crest over the buildings and the trees, why didn’t I follow you long ago? I’ve known all this for decades now, it wasn’t the hunt for Dan or the distraction of all those years chasing the bigger, better high. Why didn’t I guzzle the contents of a medicine cabinet and open a main artery and call it a day?
I’m out here sitting on a park bench, waiting to become a real-life meme about almost seeing a vampire and I’m ready for it. So ready, until I hear a familiar voice, ready to do my sun dance and howl my last until I hear him speak up behind me.
“I knew you’d come back here one day.”
You were fucking Howie too. Why not.