I'll Race You There

I laugh aloud. I feel great. Giddy even. My stress evaporates and I experience an overwhelming sense of comfort for the first time in a long time, courtesy of the reassuring weight in my right hand.

I I sit in my easy chair next to the bookshelf laid out with all my favorite novels. I had aspired to be an author once, but I never did write a damn thing that was true.

It had to do with office work and the whitewashing corporate lingo that became my life. Those stuffed proboscises sucked the yolk straight out my words, and using those lifeless things that remained to try to describe anything about the world was like trying to see with an eyeball made entirely of the sclera.

Or maybe that’s just another meager excuse for my own failure. And now I’m old. Too old. I can’t change myself and I can’t go backwards and undo the choices that led me to this point. But I can do one thing. I can leave a piece of myself, permanently and inextricably in each and every one of those wonderful books that I have loved so well.

Well, that had seemed like a beautifully poetic concept when I bought this thing. Freedom with the added bonus of tying myself to the legacy of all these things that I had loved. But, to be honest, as I sit here and I actually think through the reality of executing this plan, I just feel bored and a bit embarrassed.

The whole melodrama of the story I’m telling about my life feels so trite as to be meaningless. The overly dramatic flair of the finale in particular is exceptionally idiotic. It's just a terrible story, just like every other story I have ever written. So maybe it is appropriate after all!

My first and only published work will be a single line in the Sterling Gazette:

Miserable, repulsive, recluse dies in solitude. Wound self inflicted.

The fact of the matter is that I have functionally spent the last decade of my life accomplishing absolutely nothing of note beyond eating and defecating, so at least from a utilitarian perspective it makes sense to cut things off sooner rather than later. Melodrama or no. Given the way that my life has played out, I recognize that I really should have tapped out a long time ago.

Of course, the book blood angle is idiotic. I would just be creating a biohazard that would prevent anyone else from reading any of these books again. They would all just end up in the trash. Some legacy.

I turn this over a few times in my mind before landing on a compromise. I shift the revolver to my left hand instead of my right, directing the blood splatter towards the record player rather than the bookshelf. They can easily rinse the blood and brains off the dust cover.

As I stare down at the gray metal, I find myself thinking about Travis for some reason. We did have a lot in common. He was a pretty alright football player and I was a pretty alright in track and field. He was popular, good grades, went to parties, had plenty of girlfriends. He was cool and everyone knew he was going to do something great with his life. At the very least he seemed destined to live life to the fullest in whatever it was he chose to do.

But Travis didn’t get that chance. Travis died in a car accident after senior prom. He was drunk, he got in his car and wrapped it into a pole not one mile down the road from school. Dead on impact. Hannah had just broken up with him for the sixth or seventh time and Travis always was the type to drown his feelings. It was a huge tragedy for the entire town. I really felt terrible for Travis. I guess I still do. I bawled my eyes out at his funeral. It just seemed so unfair. The guy made one mistake and his life was snuffed out forever.

But now, for the first time, I wish I could take his place. I was popular enough with my friend group at least, I had girlfriends and friends who cared about me, and I believed that my life would keep going up. But, maybe unlike Travis, high school was my peak. Some guy stole the only girl I would ever love and it’s all been downhill from there.

Yeah, it’s a shitty cliché, but what can I say? I am a living cliché (at least for now).

After high school, autism hit me like a freight train full of bricks and my life really fell off the rails. I can’t stand social interactions, I just fall apart in public. Instead of making any meaningful connections in college I locked myself in my room, watched the same five shows on repeat and played the same three videogames over and over again until I passed out every day while subsisting on a balanced diet of fast food and junk food. I barely squeaked by grades-wise thanks to the power of nepotism and fell into a career that I couldn’t care less about just because every option sounds equally bad when you’re miserable, mentally ill, and completely directionless.

I imagine that other people with similar disabilities get used to them and learn to cope. I guess I’m just weaker than everyone else. I also have the distinct disadvantage of remembering what it was like to feel alive, fulfilled, and socially accepted without having to try at all.

I remember when it didn’t take a major concentration of willpower to open a single low risk text message.

I remember when I could interact with strangers in public without feeling like I was having a heart attack from the intensity of my social anxiety.

I remember when my mind let me live my life instead of trapping me in an endless cycle of repeatedly re-thinking every micro-interaction I have ever had with anyone.

I remember when brushing my teeth and other basic maintenance tasks were automatic and not a horrific sensory hell that I have to force myself to struggle through each day.

My heart beats like a jackhammer, faster and faster with each confession until my chest physically hurts.

I simply can’t stand the unperson that I have become. I feel hollow. I feel like I don’t want to live for another second.

I sigh in relief and my heartrate falls into the normal range as the cool barrel of the revolver presses against my temple. I breathe in deeply, shut my eyes, and cock the hammer.

I smell the sweet mild scent of dogwood slipping uninvited into my cockroach den from an open window along with a sudden warmth. I open my eyes and find myself sitting in the back of Harmony’s truck in the parking lot of the old Lutheran church. It’s a pleasant spring evening. A warm breeze blows in from the west. Ours are the only cars around.

My thoughts drift towards Naomi who had just broken things off with me for the second time for Mr. Number One on her roster. She does that. I mostly shrug it off. I know by now that we aren’t going to get married or anything, but I would probably still be around after he dumped her again as per tradition.

In the meantime, I plan to be anything but idle. There are loads of other girls looking to hang out. I built up quite the backlog while Naomi and I were exclusive over the past year and it would be some time before I ran out of phone numbers to hit up. My roster is nothing intentional mind you, girls just have a subtle way of letting me know when they are interested and available and I just happen to remember that. Of course, I would never go beyond flirting with anyone else when I was with Naomi, but since she broke up with me… well, all bets are off now.

I scroll through my phone, but no one seems to be texting at the moment and I’m starting to get antsy just sitting around with a bunch couples.

“Hey, you know what we haven’t done in a while?” I ask no one in particular.

“What’s that?” Devin asks.

“Pops!”

“Hell yeah. I’ll race you,” Travis clicks his engine on remotely.

“What, right now?” Devin extracts himself from Carly who begins pouting cutely.

“Last one’s buying!”

I jump out of the truck bed and into the window of my BMW in a single, slightly awkward motion. I ram the key into the ignition and slam the accelerator. I hit a donut before screaming out of the parking lot. I taunt Devin as I pass, who was still busy trying to get Carly in the car while Travis and Harmony are already peeling out after me with their partners in tow.

I shoot down Rankin like a missile, catch the tail of a yellow and most of a red as I swerve onto Broadway to a chorus of celebratory honks from the commuters lucky enough to observe my daring prowess. I wave as I pass and grin at my rearview where my friends are cursing and lining up at the red I left in my wake.

“Suckers!”

I stick my hand out the window and make waves in the wind while I tap my steering wheel to the beat of Travis’ mix CD. He’s something adjacent to a musician with a scholar’s care for his craft of selecting exactly the right songs in the exact right order to capture one specific emotion.

The latest mix feels something like the sensation of driving through the rain in downtown OKC around midnight with the neon lights reflecting in the puddles of the empty streets.

Travis drops a new mix with a new vibe a couple times a year and everyone in the friend group gets a copy. I usually don’t care much for them at first, too experimental, but I almost always come around after listening through the whole CD two or three times.

I pull my arm in and swing the steering wheel hard, exploding onto Gabriel, past the line of cottonwoods, and then hitting the highway on a straight shot to Pops. I check the rearview and don’t see any cars anywhere behind me. I know none of them have a shot in hell of catching up now.

“NO CONTEST” I shout to the wind in my best Super Smash Bros impression.

The miles stretch out before me and I find myself yawning. I pull out my phone and start scrolling through Snapchat as I drive. I even, briefly, switch to driving with my knees to boost my WPM.

“Hey, how fast do you think I’m going right now?” I ask Baylee, Kayla, Jen, and Elizabeth simultaneously.

I receive a series of “Goddamnit, watch the road,” and “Stop Snapping and driving!” from the ones who feel like responding accompanied by their beautiful, reproachful faces to ram the message home. I take a video of myself laughing and send it back to them. I’m having the time of my life.

Then, my phone beeps and flashes a new message across the screen.

It’s Naomi.

I hesitate for a moment and the notification disappears.

I curse and manually open the messenger app. The car starts rumbling as I drift off the edge of the road so I swing the steering wheel right to bring her back towards the middle of the road without taking my attention off of the phone.

I click on Naomi’s name, or rather on the embarrassing nickname I saved for her, and her message pops up. It’s a long one. Several paragraphs worth of text. I sigh and take a left on Provost.

I pull up to her giant house five minutes later and call her. She picks up on the third ring.

“I’m outside. You wanna talk, let’s talk. I’m not doing this over text.”

“What? Right now? I’m busy.”

“Well, I’m not reading your essay so you can either come down here and tell me about it or just forget the whole thing and block me.”

Naomi just breathes into the phone for a time. Even her breathing is cute somehow. Finally, she acquiesces and hangs up.

I check my hair in the mirror and run my hands through it a few times before I see her walking deliberately down from the front door. She is gorgeous. I tell her so and she flashes her teeth at me. I lean over and pull the passenger door for her.

I grin and shift into gear. I drive idly around the block a few times as she talks to me about her feelings, how mixed up she’s been, how much she had been thinking about me, how she’d made a huge mistake, how she had known she loved me when I rode my bike around her neighborhood to look for Lula.

I hadn’t thought about the dog, Lula in a long time. That was two years ago, before we first started dating and before I even had a car. I actually did find a big white dog that matched Lula’s description, but when I brought him to Naomi, it wasn’t her or even a her. We gave the dog back to his owners and Naomi’s dog showed up back at home on her own a few days later without any help from me. So, as far as I could tell, I hadn’t actually done anything, but I guess it’s the thought that counts.

Anyway, I’ve heard enough to get a general sense of where this is going and I don’t need convincing. After all, I’m not the one who decided to break things off in the first place. She’s the one who keeps slipping away.

I ignore the incessant buzzing of my phone and swing the car down Dayton and then hang a left and drive on to a parking spot in the back of Jones’ park.

It’s approaching sundown as I shut the car down and walk around to open the door for Naomi. She interlaces her fingers with mine as we walk back towards our bench. Her skin feels electric. I reluctantly tear my gaze away from the freckles on her face and follow her finger to a chipmunk that looks up at us from our picnic table and then makes a beeline for the bushes.

“What a gentleman,” I say as we sit next to one another, “making way for the lady.”

Naomi laughs sweetly. “If only they made boys half so chivalric these days.”

“Truly, a generation of scoundrels.”

“Knaves.”

“Ne’er-do-wells.”

“Ruffi—”

I interrupt her by pressing my lips against hers. She kisses me back. Hard. She runs a finger along my chest and I snake my fingers into her hair. We stay like this for a long time.

I break things off with her for good a few weeks later, after she cheated on me with that same guy for the third time. It was the right call and it didn’t even bother me much to make it at the time. I still had plenty of other girls to spend my time with and I had Travis to commiserate since he was always on and off again with Hannah. At least, I had him for a while...

It was only later, during those years of isolation, trapped in a prison of my own mind that the idea of Naomi transformed into this twisted boil that spews acid and grows horns and bursts and shatters and drowns and dies and lives again. A boil that I worry at in the dark again and again incessantly.

But that narrative isn't real. Reality is more trivial and more human than the melodrama that only exists in my own head. I just told myself a story about Naomi so many times that I made myself forget that it wasn’t true.

My nose is suddenly desensitized to the familiar smell of mold and rotting food as I slip back into the darkness of the present. I feel like I’ve been doused with cold water and my finger relaxes on the trigger.

I accept that Travis is never coming back. He’s gone. He’s just gone. There’s nothing I can do that will ever change that. I can’t bring him back, so that whole fantasy is moot. But that other kid… That’s me. That kid is still alive. I’m still alive.

The only question, in reality, is whether or not I should kill that kid. Should I murder myself? And for what? For failing to live up to some arbitrary standard that I never even asked for. I was just a person. I am still just a person. Sure, I’ve missed out on a lot of my own life, but I’m still alive. I am still alive

My hands are shaking. I let them fall.

Maybe there are things that I could have done to pull myself out of all this sooner and maybe there just weren’t. Maybe I have always been doing the best that I can. Maybe I have been trying this whole time, and if I haven’t been then maybe I can still start. Maybe trying just looks different for different people and maybe trying even looks different for the same person at different times in their life.

The revolver bounces on the ground a few times and then stops moving. I realize that I am crying and I give into it.

I collapse onto the ground and sob into my hands. I let myself feel all of the emotions, all the love and hate and sorrow for myself that I had wrapped up into a knot for years. I cry for a long time.