Spilt Milk (Part 1) (925 hits)
Category: Quotes & StoriesRating: 2 on 15 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Yes (View user info) at 2004-06-06 14:05:59 EDT
This is part one of a story that was inspired by real events, It's pretty long so I am breaking it up into a few parts (four or five probably). Here you go...
Split Milk
It wasn't until my senior year in high school that I learned a secret that will stay with me for the rest of my life; that secret was, in short, that sometimes one has to fall apart to pull oneself together. It's easy to write down, but it's far more difficult to live. I've never really known how to go about life, and I think it shows in the ideas I hold, the things that happen to me, and the things that I wholeheartedly believe. My closest friends sometimes say that I'm too much of a Romantic—I don't care, though. All Romantics know the value of pain. We drink it down and savor it as it warms our guts like a rich, fiery wine. Or maybe I'm just dumb.
There are many characters living inside my head, but most of them are amalgamations, permutations and combinations of the same few people. People I love and could never do without. That year—and many of the years before it—was hard. Make no mistake about that. I was a creature who had stuck its furred paw into the steel jaws of a hunting trap, and my pain was dumb and unreasoning. In the end, though, I was able to step back from the hurt, from the burning, searing round of misunderstandings, denial and simple, needless suffering, and understand something about myself and the world; and that, I think, is what makes me cherish the pain that I hold inside, hot and acidic in the bottom of my gut. Oh well...
All my friends were gone. They filed through me as an absence of space and warmth and comfort that I felt every time I moved, as if something inside was badly broken and cutting me every time I shifted it. It was like a bellyful of hot, broken glass, and it made me erratic and angry. My friends had vanished into the haze of good times past, and now I felt as if I were one. Alone. Sometimes I wondered idly if I was just being another melodramatic teenager, and then I would remind myself that if that were true, then I had been a melodramatic preteen, and a melodramatic child before that. It was possible, but what mattered to me was what I felt. Feeling was all.
Of course, I wasn't without friends—sometimes I thought it would be better if I were. Talking to the people with whom I shared the weekend nights or the days after school was like sitting in a prison visiting room, using a telephone to talk through glass. Sometimes it only served to heighten the realization that I was on the inside of myself looking out, and that there was no one else in there with me. Solitary confinement was what it was, and even if I built it, I hated it. I just didn't know anything else.
There was a party the night that spring break started. The French school had some days off, too, for some reason, and Gaston was throwing a party and inviting the American kids as well as anyone else that wanted to come. I didn't like Gaston—I didn't like many of the French kids—but my friends wanted to go, and they were hinting strongly that they wouldn't go if I wouldn't.
I had had a very bad week, and I would have liked to sit inside myself, or finally get some writing done, now that I wasn't sick anymore, but Dr. Feelgood—our closest thing to a school dealer—had told me that there was a special prize in it for me, if I should agree to go to the party for at least a little while.
And of course, Karen didn't want to go by herself.
Gaston's house was in Gammarth, a suburb of Tunis that sat over the sea and dipped its feet into the Mediterranean's beautiful, polluted waters. It was bourgeois, and Gaston was bourgeois and pompous on top of it, but there would be girls there, and maybe drugs, too.
I wasn't heavy into drugs, I just didn't have that eighties American phobia of any and all controlled substances that Nancy Reagan had tried to engender in us all with her stories of Charlie, the strung-out marijuana addict. I was of the opinion that a little weed never hurt anybody, but it was one of only three or four drugs that I would ever touch. Up until that night, though, it was also the only drug I'd ever done.
Karen was waiting for me at my locker when school ended. She seemed to have a knack for seeking me out at the absolutely worst times. I didn't want to see her or talk to her until later on that night, but I could sense her presence as I walked down the hall that led to the staircase to the science room.
Karen was an impressionistic sketch. All graceful, flowing lines that could thicken and converge into a harsh shrewishness with little or no warning. She made me tired a lot of the time, and even though our relationship dated back four months (a very long time by expatriate standards) I didn't feel that I knew her very well. I had hated her when I first met her, but as I'd gotten to know her a little better, I'd recognized the fact that she had some qualities that I would be hard-pressed to pretend not to like. Also, there was the added plus that she had been my best friend's lover for a short time—if Stacey had seen something in her, then that meant that there was definitely something there. When our relationship had shuddered off to its start, easing out onto those roller coaster tracks, I failed to realize that Stacey was much more tolerant of people in general than I was.
"Hey, honey," Karen smiled radiantly as I came around the corner, and stretched out her long arms for a hug. She still didn't seem to understand that sometimes I just didn't want to touch or be touched.
I gave her a hug and got it over as quickly as I could without her noticing my distaste, and bent down to get into my locker. I stayed there for a moment, leaning my head against the cold metal, and Karen dropped a hand on my back, massaging the bunched muscles of my right shoulder. "How's it going, hon?" she asked. That was one thing she had going for her—that voice. It was low and slightly scratchy—a whiskey and cigarettes voice, and it was extremely sexy. I closed my eyes as I crouched there, immobile, and then gently slipped her hand off my back.
As I began pulling my books out, Jim Hartman crouched down next to me. He punched me lightly in the side. "How's my little girl?" he drawled avidly, sounding like a child-molester.
"As well as can be expected under the circumstances," I answered with a shrug.
"What's that s'posed to mean?" he asked.
I shrugged again. "It's been a bad week."
"Why?" Karen asked.
Why? Well, for one thing, last Friday I had received not one but four rejection slips in the mail from four separate publications. One of the editors had even had the bright idea of penning a handwritten note at bottom of the sheet. "Great style, but it's just not what we're looking for right now. Maybe you should publish a novel!" Yeah, well fuck you, too. Everyone wanted me to publish a novel—my parents, my English teacher, Mrs. Trenton... no one seemed to understand the fact that a novel was not an undertaking upon which one should embark lightly—even if that someone was thought by his peers to be some sort of prosaic wunderkind, gifted with sublime expression... and I just didn't think it was too likely that I had any more to offer than anyone else.
"Rejection slips, fight with Stace," I answered finally.
Karen sighed explosively. "You two are the only people I know who will call each other from across the world and then get in a fight over the phone."
"We've got talent—why waste it? Besides, if we forgot how to fight with each other, what would we do when we saw each other again?" I asked with heavy sarcasm.
Jim shook his head and whistled. "Luce said you two used to fight like boxers, and I didn't believe him. I stand corrected." He paused and cocked a heavy, thick eyebrow as he looked into his locker. "I hope that Corsican chick's there tonight."
"What Corsican chick?" Karen asked.
"The one I met last night," he answered with a wide grin. "Cute as a button, 'n she don't speak a word of English."
Karen gave a disgusted sigh.
"People who don't speak English are lazy," I declared abstractedly as I looked for my journal. It would be the perfect end to a perfect day if I were to find that I had lost it or left it at home.
"Not this one," he told me. "She, uh, shall we say 'spoke volumes for her industriousness' on Bertrand's couch last night? I gotta get me some of that regular-like."
"So what's this girl's name?"
He shook his head with affected disdain. "Karen, don't you know that such petty concerns have no place in an emotionally fulfilling relationship? All I need to know is that she's got a set of, uh, personalities as big as coconuts."
"You're sick, you know that?" she told him disapprovingly.
He shrugged carelessly. "That may be—but if it is, then this is one invalid that gets his share of puddy." And he pulled a large, zip-locked bag of suspicious-looking plant matter nonchalantly from his locker. I only looked round when I heard Karen's gasp. The Doctor was holding the bag and admiring it with a soft smile. "Afghan hash," he said in a low voice. "The finest in chemical refreshment."
"Is this, uh, my 'reward' for going with you losers to Gaston's shitty party?"
"No, my friend, that's something else entirely—and I guarantee it'll light your fire."
It looked like there was a strong possibility that my day had gotten a lot better.
User Reviews
Submitted by Yes (user info) at 2008-10-31 11:55:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
I'm a fraud. I did not write this or many other things on this site I submitted. They are the work of a close friend of mine that I have betrayed and I hope that I can rebuild a relationship with. I tried to have Bart take them down but, of course, he won't.
I'm sorry Alex.
Submitted by podium (user info) at 2005-03-22 18:49:10 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Yes (user info) at 2004-06-10 12:47:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Part 1: http://www.ubersite.com/m/35154
Part 2: http://www.ubersite.com/m/35211
Part 3: http://www.ubersite.com/m/35302
Part 4: http://www.ubersite.com/m/35363
Part 5: http://www.ubersite.com/m/35460
Submitted by iamhewhoisnot (user info) at 2004-06-07 17:14:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
your work is tremendously good
Submitted by Papajoe (user info) at 2004-06-07 07:58:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This was perhaps one of the best things I've read, on uber and off, in a long time.
Can't wait for more.
Submitted by I_Have_a_Kristen_Fetish (user info) at 2004-06-06 20:26:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This is better than the Mystia love post I was working on.
Submitted by Yes (user info) at 2004-06-06 16:41:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
and on a different note, i just passed 10,000 hits, w00t.
Submitted by Yes (user info) at 2004-06-06 16:41:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
glad ya'll like it, part 2 should be up monday morning (its all done, just breaking it up so it will get read)
Submitted by Tom (user info) at 2004-06-06 15:41:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Goodo.
Submitted by Heimdall (user info) at 2004-06-06 15:14:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Great. Although the dialogue was a little unreaslistic...
Submitted by FilthyAssistant (user info) at 2004-06-06 14:40:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
"...like sitting in a prison visiting room, using a telephone to talk through glass. Sometimes it only served to heighten the realization that I was on the inside of myself looking out, and that there was no one else in there with me."
Hooked.
Submitted by mikethescottish (user info) at 2004-06-06 14:37:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
What Dufflady said.
Submitted by Dufflady (user info) at 2004-06-06 14:31:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Looking forward to more.
Submitted by mystiamoon (user info) at 2004-06-06 14:26:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by sublime (user info) at 2004-06-06 14:07:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
i love Yes, thats it.