ENOUGH
by Charles Laufer
Rasmus Karl Jensen went to the bar when it first opened. He didn’t drink. He wasn’t there to drink. He was there to watch. A bloated corpse of a man shambled in and sat a ways beside him. His breath streamed out of him like some kind of pollution. He blinked a crazed eye and looked over his shoulder, not once but twice. He ordered a vodka shot. Of course it was three o’clock in the afternoon. For him the night had already started. Rasmus figured that if he was going to get sleep, he needed to start drinking straight away. Maybe his thoughts were too loud. Maybe he was guilty of something. Maybe he just needed rest and couldn’t stand to give it to himself. Maybe he needed some help resting, some liquid courage to face the silence. Understandable, really.
The clock ticking was the loneliest sound. It was up there with the chatter of a crowd. That was loneliness, being around dishonesty. Knowing something other people didn’t. Knowledge made people lonely, for so many knew absolutely nothing about anything and woke up every morning refusing to. It was tragic. A life unexamined. That wasn’t worth living but people didn’t agree. For all these stupid reasons they couldn’t afford to. It was stubborn stupidity. Without fail stupid people did stupid things and what was considered to be smart was just a sanctioned form of stupid. If people were actually smart they would not be saying much of anything to anyone, at least not with the intention to change a person. Everyone was on their own paths. Sometimes that looked like a stiff drink at three in the afternoon. Sometimes it looked like walking through the street after midnight. That’s what it took for Rasmus. There were many times when he would sit outside on the sidewalk. His mind would wander up and connect the stars out of some ancestral urge, but though it was probably just boredom. He didn’t quite understand it. He didn’t really care. He had come to the place in his life where life was not about him.
No one saw him accurately. No one knew the depths of his psyche. His life was unexamined to others. His life didn’t exist to others. He knew that defining himself by the thoughts of others was foolish and he had learned that the hard way. For years he chased approval. For years he tried to belong. He had friends but when he truly needed them they couldn’t be bothered. He had some girlfriends in his day but they all wanted something he couldn’t be. He had a social time in his life and now he had settled down in isolation, but there was no sadness to it. There was no regret. He knew there was hardly any choice in the matter. He knew it was a matter of seasons. Sometimes he would have people there. Other times he wouldn’t. Then some people would show up. Then they were gone. It was a revolving door of relationships. The lack of permanence was just his luck. He had reasoned with that for many years, trying to come to terms with it. It nearly cost him his life in his youth. He had attempted suicide several times over. Each time he failed.
The most recent attempt left a scar on his neck. He woke up every morning knowing that he failed. He told himself he was not strong enough to die. And of course people looked at him and judged him. When people passed Rasmus, they saw his failure but knew nothing of what it meant. They didn’t care to see such meaning, not even when it was viscerally obvious. He was crazy to people. Yet in this level of insanity he felt he was more sane. You didn’t have to be so married to life. Suicide was always an option. If you didn’t like this planet, you made some sense. If you wanted off this damn rock, if you wanted out of your skin, you were looking at things realistically. Sanity looked like a gun in your mouth.
Rasmus also knew he was only trying to kill himself because he was disappointed, because he knew life could be all of these beautiful things, because he believed that people could do better. But people usually didn’t. People were simultaneously unremarkable and remarkable. They would endure a lifetime of casual adversity and intimate torture and they would still get out of bed. They would be brutalized and then decide to have coffee. Perhaps what made the human spirit strong was the simple act of waking up in the morning. Perhaps there was an honor in such ignorance, a complete conviction that life would find a way. The body keeping one alive, nothing else. No faith. No hope. No god. Just the instinctual fear of death. And people would always say that was no way to live. The irony being, that they embodied the same spirit of stubbornness, they just told themselves a story. Staying alive for nothing but fear. Mortality was a hostage situation. And to be a hostage was a stressful thing. Rasmus watched the man take the shot. The man was now a hostage to the drink, a habit becoming an addiction, self destruction was after thought. The man looked at Rasmus. Blinked slowly full of crust. He had just woken up hours ago.
“What’s your deal?”
Rasmus said nothing. He was staring.
“Nothing.”
“What’s that on your neck? You get choked up?”
“I did. I tried to hang myself.”
“F for effort, pal. Christ.”
“You’re doing the same thing.”
“I’m what?”
“You’re killing yourself too.”
“Of course I’m killing myself, Einstein.”
Rasmus nodded. Blinked.
“What’s your name?”
“My name doesn’t mean shit to anyone.”
Rasmus sighed. “Mine doesn’t either.”
“Then I guess you get it, don’t you?”
“I get it.”
A long silence.
“What I don’t get, what I don’t fucking get is this, why, in gods infinite wisdom, are we born like this, born into this?”
“Born like what?”
“We’re born by drunks and we turn into drunks, I was born to drink like this. I was born into the bottle. Everything I do I say that it deserves a drink. And if everything deserves a drink, then I’m drinking just cause I’m alive and it’s killing me. I’m killing myself because I know I’m alive. I can’t stand to face life, I can’t stand it.”
Rasmus nodded. He went on.
“It’s my daughter’s birthday today. I’m celebrating her. I’m just doing it privately. I’m just doing it in a way that I can understand.”
“Where is she?”
“College. It cost me all my money to get her there. She’s probably passed around by all these boys. She’s probably drinking at some party, just turning into me, like she’s ever had a choice.”
“Do you guys talk?”
“I tell her to work hard. I tell her that because I’m scared shitless. I’m telling her to run. I’m telling her to look me in the eye and I’m telling her to say fuck you dad. I gotta make sure she’s nothing like me. I gotta make sure she’s a good girl but she’s just getting bad. And I’m getting myself a drink. Christ, If she was happy I’d be drinking.”
“I know.”
“What do you know? What the fuck do you know?”
“I just know.”
Rasmus tried to put a hand on the man.
The man was tense. He didn’t relax.
“Don’t be a faggot. Get out of here.”
Rasmus left. He had seen enough.
…
The afternoon was hot. Bleak. Trash stunk from the corners of the street, boiling in wet black bags. Rasmus walked past empty storefronts. Closed stores that no business was renting. Spaces no one could afford. There was no one on the street. The windows were caked with dust, shapes and words traced into the filth. The metro rattled somewhere. The cars full of government workers on break. Walls of bad graffiti flashing signs in their dead eyes. A lobbyist talked loudly on the phone, sweating through his pale blue button up. Rasmus could imagine it clearly. He knew the city. A black man was swallowed by his huge stinking winter coat, eyes sleepless and pink from weed smoke. Words passing from his lips, with the taste of a crooked spliff. Rasmus knew the city alright. He could see all these people in his mind. He knew they were somewhere, around some corner, down some alley, aching on the platform full of modern pain.
A toothpick woman’s face was worn by her work, her teeth stained with breakroom coffee, regretfully passing into menopause, mediocrity, and silent desperation. Rasmus knew all of these people. They were the city. They couldn’t exist anywhere else. They were city people with city problems trying to work city solutions. All of their lifestyles were completely dependent on systems of faulty order, the atrophy of money starved institutions, the paling corpse of a state doomed to its own indifference. People were not people. Humanity was not human to itself. There were only citizens in civilization and everyone had competing definitions of what a good citizen was, and that morale was precisely what made everyone so terrible to each other. It was a matrix of judgment and hatred silently defining every generation born in the concrete, doomed to die in the concrete. The city was a tomb. A mass grave in motion.
Of course, Rasmsus knew that the youth would protest it through carelessness or entitlement. Their rebellion is aesthetic more than anything substantial. Give it a year, they would be drafted into some war started by their own government and die for everything they were against. And they would do it because they would be paid to do it, because it was only option they were given. They had no power, despite being the future. As if the machinations of the elite didn’t account for controlling the future they would grow into. It was stupid. But Stupidity was the choice mask for deeply predatory and deeply manipulative forces. And when such a force was desperate to maintain control what happened next was violence against the people. Not rubber bullets and tear gas, but systemic slaughter, concentrated assassinations. Rasmus knew that this was the nature of efficient leadership, if one was to lead in this world one had to be willing to kill. It was conquest, plain, old, and simple. The weapons of the enemy were no longer forged in fire, but in policy, copyrights, and invisible chains. The pen was mightier than the sword. The signing of a contract killed more than all of the bullets in the world. The wars were made to fight themselves.
Law and order was a weapon against the people. The safety and security of a society was always turned against itself. A citizen was not free, they were simply afforded the illusion of freedom. When one decided to deviate from the system, the punishment was starvation, abandonment, or simply death. It was a death sentence to not follow in line. You didn’t need firing squads, you simply needed poverty. All the killing would fulfill itself. Automated population control. Society was the weapon.
Rasmus thought of the man he had spoken to, drinking himself to death. It made sense. It did. Imagine giving birth to a beautiful child and knowing they were being born in slavery. Imagine creating life simply for it to suffer at the hands of a world defined by malignant control. And so parenthood was a burden, a burden of knowledge, a cross to bear. When one was raising another, one had to know what world was waiting for their children. No one protected the children. They had no movement. They were entrusted to the corrupted, they were entrusted to inhumanity. And if a father or mother was worth their salt they would protect their young. But how do you protect what is created to be controlled? How do you redefine the purpose of a life? And how do you empower someone to take charge of their destiny? Rasmus did not know. He was not a father. He was too old for that. The chance had passed him by. He then thought of putting his hand on the man, a gesture of silent support. And he was shamed for it. Sobering. Still, he understood. It was brave to feel for another person, and it was brave to be there. But the man was a stranger. Rasmus showed up for strangers because of all the love he wished he received. He couldn’t make up for it. It wasn’t in his hands. Hell, nothing really was. Rasmus took the train back to his apartment. He saw the lobbyist. He saw the black man in the coat. He saw the toothpick of the woman.
He knew the city. He had seen enough.
…
Rasmus' apartment was nearly empty. Just a mattress and a crucifix hanging on the wall. It was his fathers. Dad was dead. He died of cancer. Natural causes, baked into him from the start. It was time for him to go. He did what he wanted to do. He found a sense of freedom and he decided to keep it. He was lucky like that. The life he led was normal. He believed in the institutions of his country. They served him. He didn’t ever think outside of his perspective. He never needed to. He had it easy.
Rasmus closed the door behind him. He always looked at the crucifix first. It held his attention for a few seconds. A few conscious seconds. An acknowledgement. An understanding. It was a sense of responsibility. A silent knowing. He felt his age. He felt the weight he carried. It reminded him that he was in pain. It reminded him that he felt things, that he was alive. He sat down on the mattress. Felt the exhaustion and forgave it silently.
He did not sleep. He was awake through the night. He studied the shadows as if they were material, as if the reflections of matter told him more about existence than the matter itself. For everything was thought of in passing abstraction, the only world that mattered was the world of ideas. The worth of the life he was allowed to live was defined by imagination, a consensual illusion. Money was agreed upon as being important, as paramount, and so every way of life to exist that money created was equally fraudulent. Without money there was no poverty. Without money there was no elite. Without money the caste system toppled and collapsed into equilibrium. Nature took hold. As long as there was money there was control. As long as wealth was worthy of pursuit, slavery was the status quo. There was no mobility. The poor were doomed to go mad, to give up, to get addicted, to lose themselves. If they ever had a chance to rise up they would be executed. Either way, it was death that was waiting for everyone. Death was the only way out, and birth was the only way in. Life was a game, a game of loss and everyone was hardwired to bet against the house. Civilization was a giant casino. How well could you take a punch to the soul? How well could you stomach pain, pain without reason? There was no better teacher. Rasmus remembered when he was young. When he was going to school. When he believed in society and wished more than anything to have a place in it. He wouldn’t. He lied to himself constantly, and whenever something threatened the lie he would snap. He was fragile. He was not just fragile. He was broken. His youth was defined by trying to be an adult, but he was a failed adult. He was a failed student. He was a failed friend. He was a failed boyfriend. He was a failed lover. He was a failed artist. He was almost a failed husband. He lived with the failures like bad roommates. They all ruined his mind. Drove him crazy. His parents were failures. They couldn’t protect him for what they truly believed in was the complacency with abuse. He was raised by failures and so he became one. So was everyone. Everyone was a failure in their own way. That was okay. That was more human than anything. Everyone was broke when they died. You took nothing with you. Not even who you thought you were. Not even your name.
He had attempted suicide a few times by that point. His first attempt was at six years old. He tried to drown himself in a public swimming pool. He did not succeed. He was a child. In a perfect world, a child was incapable of self-destruction. Self-destruction was the matter of maturity, for when he was young there was no self to destroy, just a naked urge to relinquish himself of life.
Where did that come from? Where did the instinct to end one’s life originate? There was no evolutionary benefit. There was no logical argument for that adaptation. Yet it was so human, it was only human. Humanity was using the very intelligence they used to seize power, against themselves. They had looked at the stone tools, the ingredients for technology and fire, and decided to dash their brains, self immolate. Perhaps it was the dissonance of being, the vanishing of a struggle their genes recognized. Or the need to kill oneself was now as basic as eating or drinking. Did the deliberation for suicide constitute awareness? Was awareness all that good if it simply resulted in the end of one’s bloodline, in the choice to forgo procreation? Besides, nobody asked to be born, not in any conceivable way. And so what did one do when they were so honest with themselves? Decide to live or decide to die. Those were really the only choices a person was ever afforded. Every other choice was secondary. And if the body’s revulsion towards death was built into life, then what choice was there at all?
He sighed.
He was once going to school for graphic design, he fancied himself an artist, although society had always tried to rid itself of artists. For artists believed in something, and to the sense of the stagnant, there was nothing so pathetic and so repulsive as to believe. Maybe there was envy there. Maybe the living dead were so dead that their awareness was that of an insect, puny and writhing and made alive by the very filth that birthed them. A cesspit of cancerous growths, pulsing, puking puss and effluvia in the name of nothing but itself. Horrendous but strictly human. It was human to be so hideous, for only humans knew the shame of their own being. Only human life was so mortally insecure as to cower at their own reflection. Yet shame had its place. Shame was indicative of a conscience, shame was what allowed a man to know there was good. Shame was merely the stench radiating from the rot of the self. And when one paid attention to the world, the reek was unbearable and impossible to get out. It seeped into everything and everyone. Although it was merely projection, Rasmus considered that a baby cried at birth for a reason. Perhaps no one wanted to leave the womb. Perhaps birth exhibited the same injustice and indignity as death. Nothing to celebrate. Nothing to smile upon, not when discontent would settle into one’s bones. Not when the world that awaited the child was one of rape and murder. If the child showed no promise in the buisness of rape and murder, or simply, if they were not born with the money to get away with it, then they would be slaves. Working and breeding like the very slaves who created them. This indifference to one’s own worth was what defined polite society. It was polite to suffer in silence. It was encouraged, programmed, Both men and women wished it on each other, but humanity couldn’t be bothered with their reflection. Besides people had kids because there was no greater feeling than coming inside someone you were biologically attracted to. It was not a victory to do so. It was not beautiful. In creation you were setting in motion destruction, and if the life that you made was too aware of this and had too many feelings about it, self destruction would surely follow. And of course it would be a liability to the only method of continuing to stay alive, work. Many did not have the awareness to understand they were not defined by their functions, but that was likely wishful dissociation like every story ever told. Yes, a story was a tool to secure the survival of the gene. The greater the grandeur, the greater the desperation, the greater the desperation the greater the insecurity.
That was shameful to Rasmus.
Indulgence in shame was what defined addiction, and everything was made to be addictive. Addiction was the status quo and that was by design. Humanity’s needs were outsourced to faceless entities. To meet one’s needs was up to the individual, and thus one's failures were made to be intimately their fault. Also by design. Diffuse responsibility and ignore the inherent value of life. Surely it wasn’t the fault of a few kings that decided to play revolutionary and secure their own nobility with the slavery of everyone else? Surely it wasn’t all about inheritance. Surely it wasn’t as dynastic and rigged as that?
Human base needs were replaced by addictions. It was never about what people needed, it was about what people wanted. At the end of the day the human race was comprised of children, afraid to eat their vegetables, afraid to do what needed to be done, afraid of responsibility to himself, and those they were supposed to protect. Humanity did not want to do the hard thing, they were hardwired to avoid it. Most of humanity was on autopilot, ignorant to the fact that they were alive at all.
Rasmus did not know what was worse, the fact that he saw this evil in himself or the fact that he saw evil in the world ceaselessly perpetuating itself. Perhaps what it meant to perceive the world at all was a matter of projection. Everyone’s definition of the world was defined by how they felt about themselves, and truly those that hurt people were hurt themselves. And what then did suicide mean? What then was the pursuit of death as a means to peace? Was that not simply nostalgia for a time where time was not? Was that not simply vengeance on one’s own bloodline, a final act of control seized from the jaws of the machine? Was suicide simply a triumph of will? And why fear death, when it was what made everyone equal. And why in life did everyone moan and cry and sob for the sake of equality, when it was self-fulfilling? Why hasten what was always coming? Why kill yourself when life would kill you anyway? It was not if you were going to die. It was when. He laid on the mattress and stared at the crucifix until it no longer looked like the crucifix but a shape devoid of meaning, a form removed from its purpose, a thing evoking nothing.
He had seen enough.
…
Rasmus went back to the bar that night. There were more people. He overheard a woman hitting on a man. She was obese. Shapeless. Sloppy make up. She was breathing heavily and smoking a cigarette. Rasmus could smell her fishy pussy. The man was into her. He was a throbbing horde of veiny muscle. He wanted to fuck her because he told himself he was superior. He was insulting her. It was right next to him.
“Dragging all that meat in here, you’d think you were a butcher.”
“You want this protein for those gains?”
“I want it all you filthy whore.”
She laughed and rubbed herself on him.
He smelled like cologne and draft beer.
“I can lift you.” he said
“Can you bench me?”
“Fuck yes I can.”
She rubbed her flat ass on his groin.
He made a noise like a dying animal. Took her cigarette and streamed the smoke through his hairy nostrils. “You fucking bitch, I’m going to fuck you so hard.”
“Are you all talk?” she wheezed
“No bitch. No I’m not.”
He shoveled her into the bathroom stalls and buried his half grown stubble between her loose thighs. Rasmus went to piss at the same time. Heard them groaning. Heard her say daddy through clenched corn yellow teeth. Her scuffed school girl shoes clacked against the tile. His old sneakers squeaked. His scabbed chicken legs shook in his gymshorts. Her belly draped against the stall door. Banging.
Rasmus flushed. Zipped up his pants. And heard him gasp. The smell in the air changed from stagnant toilet water to something more fresh, more warm, a subtle intimate stink. She was breathing heavy. He just kept droning “fuck.” and “mommy”. They laughed a fake laughter. She walked out of the stall. Eyeliner like a racoon. She had teared up. Her chest heaving. He was sitting on the toilet, collapsed, resigned, but not satisfied. He buried his face in his hands and shouted after her and forced more laughter. Strained. Spent.
Rasmus watched.
Went back to the bar.
He replayed the fuck in his head and felt dirty.
The man walked out and held himself like he was incredibly cool. His posture was only sort of straight. His chest puffed. His head sort of tilted. He ground his teeth together. Fumed. Somehow more frustrated than before. He groomed himself and turned towards Rasmus with a hardly restrained rage.
“What the fuck are you looking at?”
“A whole lot of nothing.” he said.
“What? What was that you little bitch?”
“I call it as I see it.”
Blind hot pain.
The man had punched him in the face.
Rasmus spat blood. Smiled.
“You’re proving me right.” he coughed
Another.
He didn’t bother ducking.
Rasmus stumbled back and slouched against the barstool. He pulled out a piece of tooth.
“I’m going to go medicate myself. I suggest you do the same.”
The man kicked him. The obese woman watched and bit her thin cracked lip.
Rasmus looked at her. He shook his head. “Dinner and a show? Good date?”
She pulled a cigarette out of her fupa and put it in her mouth.
“Do it again, my big strong man.” she said to her fuck.
The man cracked his bruised knuckles.
Rasmus got up and sighed. He ordered a beer and icepacked his face.
He opened the beer on the counter and drank it. Belched.
“I’m not better than you.” he said
“Well I’m better than you, bitch.”
The man wound up. Missed. Fell.
Rasmus shrugged and went outside.
The bartender was watching, chuckling to himself.
The night was cool outside. The wounds throbbed. Rasmus was right. He wasn’t better than that guy. He knew he was a failure. He just didn’t fail so violently, so loudly. He didn’t make it anyone else's problem. Rasmus looked over his shoulder once. The woman was walking after him, shouting. Saying something but nothing of any importance. The man busted out the door and she shoved him off her.
“You can’t even land a punch. You’re not a man.”
“I did. I did. Did you see me? Do these fists lie bitch?”
“Well you didn’t knock him out. Loser. You’re a loser.”
He grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her against the wall and forced his body on her.
Kissing and grabbing.
Rasmus saw it out of the corner of his eye. He kept walking.
He looked back and saw her bent over.
She was screaming now.
The screaming faded into whimpers.
The whimpers faded into silence.
The train went by. Car doors closed. Plastic bags got caught in fences.
Rasmus went straight home.
He had seen enough.
…
Morning. The day would be hotter than the last. The trash still stank. There were rats shitting and dying in the walls. And outside pit bulls pissed on electrical boxes and ran around in their filthy dog parks. Rasmus heard them barking whenever an hispanic person passed. He guessed dogs could be racist too.
Rasmus watched the clouds drift apart like stray cigarette smoke. He kicked that habit. He didn’t need to pollute himself anymore than he already did. The thought pollution was bad enough. He looked back at the crucifix. It looked back at him. It looked through him. Rasmus made eye contact with Christ. He didn’t blink. He didn’t dare blink.
The image of a wasted god burned in him.
He thought of the man from last night. He thought of the woman. He thought of the man who was drinking by himself. He thought of the lobbyist. He thought of the toothpick woman. He thought of the black man in the big coat. He thought of himself sitting there, thinking in circles. Spiraling alone. Going deep. Going numb. He wanted the phone to ring to snap him out of it. He wanted someone to talk to. He wanted more than anything to hear someone's voice. He wanted to be touched. He wanted to touch. He wanted to be loved. He still had love to give. After everything he had love to give. After the abandonment. After the exhaustion. After the daily torture of simply trying to survive. He had love to give. All of the forbidden knowledge meant nothing. The only truth that mattered was that there was love to give. Even if it killed him there was love to give. Even if it meant getting beaten down and spat at there was love to give. Even if it meant being crucified in broad daylight there was love to give. Even if there was no god there was love to give. For the choice to give love was the choice of something infinite. And to be grateful for the mountains you were challenged to climb made the heart strong and open. And no matter how people lied to each other, and lied to themselves, the truth sat there in everyone, impossible to deny but almost always ignored, life was worth living and people were not alone. Rasmus licked his chipped tooth. Cut his tongue and sucked the small bloom of blood. Nodding. Never looking away from the crucifix. Never looking away from his father. He took a breath and held it in his chest, enjoying it while it stayed in him and letting it leave quietly. As it pleased. As it was.
He thought of the woman from last night. He thought of the man. He thought of his parents and everything they never said to him. He thought of all the friends that were bad company and he thought about how they were not friends to begin with. All of the lovers that didn’t love him that much. And all of the love that he had to give, just sitting collecting dust inside of him. For every tear he cried, there was a tiny death. For every death he died, there was the sense of being born. There was no real difference between dying and being born. Energy was being transferred. Being was shifting like water. Changing shape. Moving. Experiencing itself in everyone at the hands of everyone. The human race was alone together. What was done about it made a person who they were.
He thought about nervous systems being inflamed. He thought of brains set on fire by thoughts alone, like overheated computers. Hardware fried from faulty software, catching viruses by surfing into the strange territories of awareness, the ones every mind found itself in eventually. He thought of all the drugs that were taken to dull the mortal ache, the longing to be known and loved as one was. He thought of all the distortions the mind could assume, all of the private deaths a person experienced before they were truly dead. All of the violations of their existence, everything pure stripped from their helpless hands. Left alone to grasp for something or someone to hold onto. Left alone to be alone. And that was just it, everyone died alone. Death was an independent thing and truly, it was simply a door. Once someone walked through, there was no turning around. And what was on the other side was the most forbidden knowledge of all, it was a truth so forbidden that the mind could not conceive it. Yet it would be conceived by all life, no matter the experience that preceded it. Everyone was born. Everyone would die. There were no survivors in life. And despite what everyone did and obsessed over, there never would be. He had seen enough,
…
The phone rang for the first time in three years. He heard it like the voice of God. Picked it up. He didn’t think to speak.
There were no words in him.
The silence dragged on.
It was probably a telemarketer, a bot, whatever they did now.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
“No one’s there. No one’s fucking there.” He said to himself. Eyes shut. Hard. Pounding. “No one’s there. The phone shouldn’t be ringing. No one is there.”
Grainy silence.
“Ras.”
“Mac?”
“You still talk to yourself.”
“No one else talks to me.”
“I’m talking to you.”
“For the first time in ten years.”
Silence.
“I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“Yeah. You were running from your family.”
“I’m still your family.”
“I didn’t feel like that was true.”
“Can’t you except me for once?”
“It’s dangerous to accept you. You’re not safe.”
“It’s been ten. Fucking. Years.”
“In these ten fucking years, I’ve seen that people don’t change.”
“Yeah? Well that sucks for you. I’ve seen people do it.”
“You are always lying to yourself.”
“You’re always giving up on everyone.”
More silence.
Rasmus was breathing heavy. Mac was breathing heavy. They felt close when they were fighting with each other. They felt like they were kids. They felt like they were young. They felt like they had time. They felt like they didn’t know the truth. Now that was different, but it was always that way in truth.
“I’m calling you because there’s no one left who understands.”
“You have your tranny wife.”
“No. I don’t. I don’t have mom. I don’t have dad. I have nobody.”
“Why did you run from me?”
“You scared me, you made me scare myself.”
“I am not that way any more.”
“I just want to believe you.”
They killed the tears in their eyes.
“Come home to me.”
“You are not home to me.”
“We’re both different people. I wouldn’t want it any other way. I never wanted to make you who you were.”
“But you did.”
“And I’m doing something different and you’re my brother.”
“I don’t think we ever agreed on what family was.”
“Can we have that talk?”
“Aren’t we now?”
“You need to listen to me. I’m ready for you to listen to me.”
“I’m reluctant and I feel scared.”
“If you can change, I can change.”
“I’ve changed.”
“I have too.”
Silence.
“I’m trying so hard.”
“I know you are. I never thought you would.”
“Well we both think wrong don’t we?”
“Everyone does that.”
“And it’s exhausting.”
A longer silence. Warmer.
“I get it. You’re tired. I see you. You’ve won so many battles. I’m still fighting them. I see what I have to do and I’m not afraid to do it, but I remember being afraid to do it. And that memory is so heavy.”
“If you’re going to give up the weight, you have to surrender to it.”
“All I’ve done is fight for myself.”
“When you stop throwing punches, you can see in front of you.”
“Then I haven’t seen anything in a long time.”
“I always thought I would lose you. So I thought I’d just cut you out. So it didn’t have to hurt.”
“Sometimes people make themselves believe something, just so they don’t have to do anything.”
“Then I was a coward.”
“No. I was. I had shit to do. I had to figure out who I was.”
“I don’t think anyone ever stops doing that.”
“So is this it?”
“Not now. It takes time to grow back together.”
“Especially when you’re being torn apart.”
“I blame myself.”
“I blame myself.”
“Where do you live these days?”
“I’m around.”
“Around where?”
“I’ll tell you, when it’s time.”
“You were the first person I lost.”
“You were the first person I lost.”
“I just wish I could have been the last.”
“I wish that for too.”
They spoke about love. They spoke about art. They spoke about performance. They spoke about work. They didn’t cry. But they did laugh. Just once. For less than a moment.
Now he had seen enough. He had seen enough.
…