My neighbor's yard is abloom with jasmine. The smell of jasmine brings to mind an odd sort of nostalgia, not of something from my own past, but rather further than that. I feel the sultry sweaty jazz club, ebony skinned flappers swaying hips to the tunes of Satchmo. Of course, this is fairly historically inaccurate, but this is my story, and I can do whatever I want with it.
But even this thought doesn't lift my spirits as it should. I trudge up the stairs to my apartment. It's cool inside almost to the point of unearthly with a severe lack of coziness. I settle down into a chair and pull my laptop upon me. I putz around on the Internet. That's where all my friends live. I don't have any real life friends that I hang out with and see all the time. Real life doesn't work that way. There's Isaiah, but I mean, come on. Most of my friends are from college. I don't see them anymore because I don't live there anymore. They don't know the horrors of my life, only the sad little mask I expose to the world wide web. We've all just dwindled down to words on a screen. It's hard to remember that there are people behind it all.
I quickly get bored and decide to lie in bed. I jerk off to women in my imagination. Some of them are real. The girl I saw at the busstop. The girl who came into the shop today and bought lavendar soap. The girl in line at Walgreens. There's that movie, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." It has a line, "Why do I fall in love with every woman I see who shows me the least bit of attention?" Well, why do I? Am I that desperately alone? I am alone. Always alone. I hate being alone. That's when the wicked things come out.
I ponder my thoughts. Hush. Be quiet! Won't you just shut up! You are worthless. You don't even have control of your own mind. You know what would do it. Do you dare? Do you really dare? It's just for attention. How's it just for attention? Who will pay attention? Who is there? Is anyone there? No one is there.
I take my meds. The ramblings turn to murmurs. The murmurs turn to whispers. The whispers turn to sleep. Peaceful, lovely sleep. Sleep is where the hours go.
.......
Dreams are just random firings in the brain. Immediately upon waking, your brain tries to stitch those bits and pieces into a story, because that's what brains do. But ultimately, dreams are meaningless.
I had a dream last night that being a drag queen was illegal, and I was part of some sort of underground railroad to get them to Canada. What does it mean? Nothing. And thinking back on the dream, and being honest about it, you begin to realize that it is perhaps a tad less coherent than my summary would have you believe. Something about rubber-band powered go-carts. Something about a float school burning down in a swamp. The feeling of falling. Red gardenias. They're all just bits and pieces or random things, and my mind just did its job.
Unfortunately in my lucid life, my mind is not the best at doing its job. Every day is the same mundane reminder that I'm not able to make something of myself. My alarm goes off a good four or five times every morning. I slide out of bed like a Slinky that climbs down only one stair and stops. It aches to stand. It aches to walk. It even aches to see. I clamber into some rumbled clothes off the floor. I hobble to the bathroom to take a piss and swallow a pill--the giant orange on in the morning. I slide like sludge into my morning... or my afternoon... or sometimes my evening depending on the day of the week. If I don't have to work, I may not leave the bed. I'll plan to. I just... don't. And I hate myself for it. My mind has created an barbwire blanket with weights in the corners that it used to tuck me in at night. Every day it is like I'm swimming through quicksand while every else is walking with such ease. And the worst part is, no one else can see the quicksand. To them you are standing on concrete.
I'm lucky to make it to work on time. Sometimes I don't eat because that is too much effort. Checking the mail is a major triumph. But it's difficult to tell my story. No one believes me. They all think I'm crazy. Every day I fight off monsters and demons that though they only live in my mind, they are 100% totally and completely real.
But you are here to hear my story, aren't you. You've trudged through these words to find out who I am. I must warn you, you may not like what you find. And lastly, when you ask someone from New Orleans to tell a story, we start all the way from the beginning.
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