“There’s a blizzard out there.”
“I know you can drive well, don’t fuck around.”
“You are already hurting my feelings.”
“Shut up. Just come over.”
“Where? To your mother’s house?”
“Yeah, to my mother’s house.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
“I’m not going to kill you.”
“I think you might.”
“No, no death.”
“Okay, I’ll drive over.”
I hang up the phone. This is a bad idea. I know it is a bad idea. But fuck, it isn’t like I have anything else to do. It isn’t like Youngstown is offering a great night of fun besides getting drunk downtown, slipping on the ice on the way home, breaking my leg and freezing to death.
I go into the living room to talk to Chang about it. This is drama; I must soak up every minute of it.
Since I brought Chang home, he hasn’t left. He has been sleeping on my couch not really doing anything for three days. The not doing anything doesn’t seem to affect him; I have a computer with the internet so he is staying in tune with MySpace.
I walk in and sit on the floor. Chang is reading some used copy of the
Philokalia
, which is some deranged book written by solitary Eastern Orthodox monks who lived in the forest writing crazy shit five-hundred years ago.
“Chang.”
He looks up from the book and says, “Yeah.”
“I’m leaving to talk to Jessica.”
“Your ex-girlfriend.”
“Yeah.”
“That sounds dramatic.”
“I hope so, nothing dramatic has happened to me in a while.”
“Didn’t you say you impregnated Isabella.”
“I’m not sure if I did. If she is actually pregnant that will be dramatic. But we won’t know until and if she misses her period and then takes a pregnancy test. So currently I’m without drama.”
“Bring back some bananas and some pop.”
“Can I ask, why the hell are you reading that? You don’t even believe in God.”
“They’re alone.”
“Okay.”
“Be careful, there is a winter storm warning.”
I drive down roads covered in snow to get to Jessica’s house. It takes forever. It is cold and the snow won’t stop falling. Why would I drive through this snowy hell to see someone I haven’t seen in three years, and for sure nothing will happen, and words will be said. There will be staring and memories brought up. But nothing will happen. It will result in nothing but me eventually leaving and picking up bananas and pop for Chang.
Oh yes, dumb drama will happen. Drama, the life force of Americans, like it is our religion now. When it became our religion I don’t know. But it is now. God died and was replaced with drama. We all go to the altar of drama and pay tithes, we bow and pray at the altar of drama, of pseudo-emotions and play-acting. We love it. We love watching it on television, reading it, talking about it, starting it, ending it, being a side actor watching it, we love to hear about it, and the grosser and more despicable it is, the more we love it. The other day, a friend of some girl I know dropped his cellphone at a local sporting event and when whoever picked up the phone was looking for who owned it, they found pictures of naked eight-year-olds. My friend told everyone, we all listened intently, we all asked questions. She loved to tell us and we loved to listen. It was drama. It didn’t have anything to do with us, but it was drama and we as good Americans considered it beautiful.
I get to her house and knock on her door.
This is a bad idea.
Jessica opens the door.
I look at her and she looks at me.
We are looking at each other, both thinking about the other one. I’m thinking about how she looks good. That I would like to touch her face and some other stupid shit. She probably is thinking about how she hates me and only brought me here to torture me for the sake of her self-esteem.
I go into her house. I know where everything is. It hasn’t changed. Nothing changes at her house; it is like an inert rock on Mars.
I sit down at the kitchen table; she is still standing and says, “Do you want some coffee?”
“Yes please.”
“You were always polite.”
I sit there waiting for her to take out a gun and shoot me in the face. I close my eyes for a second, waiting for the end, but it doesn’t come. So as to not seem so weird, I open my eyes and try to stay composed and functional. She is doing a much better job at staying composed and functional than me. She was always better at these things. She watches soap operas and Julia Roberts movies; she is a master of drama orchestration. She is a maestro and I’m a lame bassoon player when it comes to the art of drama.
Jessica sits down and hands me coffee. She is also drinking coffee. We are both drinking coffee, sitting across from each other, staring at each other, being dramatic.
“Vasily,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“How are you?”
“I’m doing fine.”
“Our lives have gone on without each other.”
“Yes, they have.”
“Remember, how we said all those things. How we said we loved each other and would always be together, and we would get old and kiss each other’s wrinkles.”
I do remember it, but I don’t want to admit it, but I say, “Yes, we said shit like that several times.”
“It wasn’t true.”
“I suppose it wasn’t.”
“People go on without each other. No matter how much feeling you have at one single moment, it fades. You scream and holler for this person, you tell everyone you meet about this single person you’ve met and are with, and how much you love them. But then it still fades.”
“Are you talking about us or your current marriage?”
“No, he is like me. He watches the same shows, he likes bowling like me, he likes kids like me, we have common interests. It is true, our relationship has lost the passion of sex, but we have become like friends or partners in life. I’m not addicted to him, I’m just, well, friends with him.”
“Would he say the same thing?”
“Who knows, I’m not going to ask. It doesn’t matter. That is how it works.” She drinks some coffee and lights a cigarette and goes on, “It is strange, there are loves in life, when you are crazy addicted to that person, you are crazy about them, you have crazy wild sex, you get into huge insane fights, like you can either do one of two things with that person: fuck their brains out or scream at them. That is what we had.”
“That’s probably because you resembled my mother and I resembled your father. We were living as children wanting our parents to love us. Not as who we actually are, and basing our relationship on logic.”
“See, there it is. That’s why I left you. You started talking about love like it is some goddamn science experiment. You refused to let yourself go anymore. And I guess from that comment you still won’t. You used to fuck my brains out, and you used to fight with me all night. I loved fighting with you. As you say, I was getting to vent my anger at my father. And I guess you would even say when you fucked me, I was getting the attention from my father I always wanted. But one day you stopped fighting. And you even stopped fucking. I went into the living room yelling my brains out at you and you just sat there. You sat there and stared at your shoes and waited till I stopped yelling. You used to fight and scream like a motherfucker. It was horrible to me. The game was over, the drama and passion had ceased to exist.”
“I had grown out of my mother.”
“And that made me a joke.”
“No, it made you a remnant of a world I no longer wanted.”
“So trash then, I was leftover trash.”