Haze

Another collection of lonely thoughts
2002-11-14 19:55:53 (UTC)

Summer of Love?

Rachael returned to San Rafael after our four weeks of nonstop fucking. At this time, I was forced to move out of my appartment early
by my psychotic roommate Shawna. Fond of labeling Edouardo and I as lazy assed slackers who never did the dishes and left shaving scum
in the sink, she was eager to push the move-out date as early as possible, and frankly so were we. Having no home is an odd thing. I walk by
the local homeless folk and exchange small talk, denying them the change I didn't have. "Hey man, the only thing separating you and I is a
fucking check from the government that I have to pay back somehow in 15 years. I wish I had change to give, but in all reality, you probably
got more that I do." This was true. I have this strange urge to empty my pockets to these people. I can't bear the sight of the contempt in their
eyes when denying them the change that is fully audible from my left pocket. It's frightening to realize that the only thing separating me from
a life of a beggar was a measly government check that barely managed to keep a shitty appartment and bits of food in my stomach. Now the
only separation was the fact that I had somewhat clean clothes and good friends who didn't really mind that I'd commandeared their couch for a
month or so.

Rachael's roommate offered her couch, which I accepted gratefully. In the following two weeks I took a liking to marijuana again.
Weed for me was a strange bedfellow. The first time I ever got stoned was in the seventh grade. Watching old-school kung-fu movies with
my neighbor and his hip older brothers in the garage while parents were dining in the house, I didn't have the fear of drugs that afflicts me
today and smoked like I smoke now. From what I can recall, the rest of the night for me was spent giggling hysterically in the corner,
weightless and dreaming with open eyes. For a year, I wondered why the high wasn't quite the same as that one time. Apparently I had
unknowingly smoked opium, mostly, with a side of hash in the bowl. Throughout highschool, I slowly gained enough bad experiences with
weed to make me a bit reluctant in college. My first real party consisted of roughly twelve highschool freshmen and possibly an ounce. It was
the first time I ever felt the signature paranoia, having to talk to my mother to arrange to spend the night. I came accross friends with photos
from that night to see myself cowered behind the couch wearing thick prescription glasses and frightened to death of a camera that might
record my night of rebelion. Everyone has these moments where they intoxicate themselves to the point of swearing off all drugs forever.
This didn't last, it never does. The next year I had smoked with the bad crowd by the train tracks at lunch, returning to sophomore English
class and my robotic instructor. "So, to exemplify what it might have been like to be discrimintated against as in Eli Weisel's book, I want
all of you with brown eyes on this side of the room, and all of you with blue eyes over here. For the next 15 minutes, brown eyes will be Jews,
and the blue eyes will be Nazi guards. As a Jew you must obey every command of your Nazi leader who will punish you if you refuse."
This was not the sort of situation I had expected. Paranoia set in and every word out of her mouth assumed a dictatorial tone, as though SHE
were the Nazi sending me to my inevitable doom. "What color are my eyes? Shit! Are they brown or green? Hazel? What the hell is
happening?! Why are people walking around? What the fuck did she just say? Oh, Jesus, I'm going to jail today!" I told my 'partner' to
order me to squat facing the wall for the rest of class. I was petrified and he understood. These thoughts do not denote a 'good time' as
promoted by the regular lunch time tokers. Needless to say, I obtained a much deeper understanding of the anguish suffered by brown eyed
people in a blue-eyed-dominant world. Of course, this never deterred me from smoking really, only temporarily. Pot brownies were things to
be regarded with great respect though, a lesson learned over the period of four horrible encounters with the stuff.

College had reduced my desire for marijuana, until these two weeks of Summer in 2001. Randal and Fabio found themselves in my situation
and took the liberty of moving in while Rachael was out of town. Fabio, of all names, fits the man's character tightly. "Hey", tapping me in the
forehead with a loaded bong, "Wake up and smoke this shit." How could I refuse? Being stoned all day, every day, for two weeks was a bit
trying on my soul. My paranoia was a daily affliction. Rachael was only up north for the first few days, and now was in Hawaii with her
sisters. How many Hawaiian surfers has she fucked so far? We weren't very serious yet, but she assured me that I should trust her. I had no
choice but to believe her, even though I saw in her a restless person who desired drama, dysfunction, and instant sexual gratification. She
actually seemed offended when I joked one day about leaving me for "some hot, oily Hawaiian guy." I apollogized. Eight months later she
admitted that, not only did she cheat on me in Hawaii, she just happened to get drunk with a family friend at a beach somewhere and fuck
under a gazeebo. The boy was sixteen years old. It's a terrible thing when your worst fears are confirmed, then elaborated on and made worse
in reality. Not two days after this had happened, she flew back to San Rafael. Now I really fell for this girl and I found a way to be super
romantic and drive up to surprise her at home when she returned. I drove with my neighbor and two eighths of weed. I thought there was an
air of tension when I arrived at her door with flowers, like my actions were appreciated, but with horrible timing. We drove back to Santa
Barbara the next day with no altercations. Rachael had an innate ability to bury deep any negative feelings, rarely revealing her true nature until
it was absolutely necessary (although sometimes when it was completely unnecessary, usually when she was drunk). Our first hurdle in the
relationship came not too long after I had moved into my new appartment. She had moved in temporarily and put her things in storage until
she could find an appartment of her own. "Temporarily" turned into four months, and would have been longer had an opportunity to move in
with some of my friends down the street fell in her lap. Our living situation put a terrible strain on the relationship, and my own relations with
my friends and roommates. After a week of this, suddenly, "I'm a bad person. I don't think I can do this with you any more." She was always
insisting that her life was flawed, that deep down she was an evil person who didn't deserve someone like me. These feelings stemmed from a
long history of physical abuse by her father, and a multitude of events in her life that slowly became apparent as she gained the ability to talk to
me about them. I knew we were wrong for each other from the beginning, but chose to ignore her baggage, attempting to help her out of her
depression and fix things, hell bent on creating a successful relationship and molding her into a better human being. I really did love this girl,
but I soon learned Life Lesson Number One: don't try to change people in order to make them love you.

Somehow I had managed to resolve her issues momentarily, but I could tell that her change in attitude was only superficial. She never
wanted only me, and it showed. My roommate Hash constantly offered his opinion on our relationship without the use of words. I knew he
was right, but admitting this was beyond my abilities at the time, too arrogant to accept the truth of my illusionary relationship with the first girl
to fuck me. On one particularly awkward occasion, Rachael and I spent the night on the couch to give privacy to another girl using my room
until she could find a place (we had seven people living in a two bedroom appartment). The seventh person, Brendan, had claimed the couch
before Rachael had even arrived. Being inches away from him as he slept, Rachael rolled over and insisted that I "put it in her ass." Now,
whether I was drunk or not I don't know, but I complied, assuming that he wouldn't wake up and trying to justify the situation as kinky and
wild, like a porno or something. Brendan kept shifting in odd ways, ways in which one does not shift while dreaming. She became quite
turned on by the prospect of being covertly watched and listened to. As soon as I saw her stretch out closer to him in the dark to breathe
heavily on his neck, I pulled out. We retired to the shower to finish up. Incidents such as this continued for some time, varying in intensity
and strageness. Rachael's constant attempts to objectify herself reeked of a tumultuous 17 years of abuse that I will never come to understand.
Her father has quit drinking and abusing after the birth of his third daughter by a wife he no longer respects or listens to amidst her obsessive-
compulsive rampages. His first few thoughts upon meeting him? "We should just nuke those fuckers in Afghanistan... yeah, turn their land to
glass." This man left Rachael with a permanent phobic reaction to having anyone's hands placed on or near her throat. Nothing I could ever
do would erase her desire for self destruction. It was this man who pressed the button years ago, while I was 300 miles away in the sixth
grade, fending for myself in the brutal reality of public school bullies, learning for the first time that the world can be a cruel place, that justice
is a rare commodity, and that my suffering would leave a permanent imprint on my soul.




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