“To say it bluntly, yes, trash. I truly did not hate you. You just seemed
in the way
.”
“I don’t understand. Did I do this to you? What the fuck happened? You just stopped one day, you stopped caring. Look at you now. You still haven’t picked yourself up. You dropped out of school, and it has been three years and you still haven’t returned.”
“The meaning of my whole life was that I hated my mother but even though I hated her, I still wanted her to love me. That was my reason for being, that was the reason I was going to school was because I wanted her to be impressed by it. But two years passed and she never even looked at one of my report cards. I thought maybe if I dropped out she would take notice if I was doing badly, but she didn’t notice that either. So I gave up trying to impress her, trying to get love, and by doing that, by saying goodbye to that part of my life, I said goodbye to you and to college, and perhaps to doing anything that would cause the slightest chance of impressing her.”
“So you chose to never impress her again, and that means you can never do anything impressive ever again.”
“No, I think it is like, since I cannot impress her, then what is the point of doing anything.”
“Then your behaviors are still connected to her. You are still basing your daily activities off of her behavior,” she says.
“Did you bring me here because you wanted to destroy me?”
“No, I brought you here because I wanted to tell you this. I want you to know and realize what you’re doing. I keep tabs on you, I always ask about you when I’m talking to people who know you. It is just, I’m out west, I’m married, I have a kid, I’m doing okay. It isn’t a great life, I’m nobody’s hero, I’m not on television, I don’t have a million dollars in the bank. But I’m sure as fuck doing better than you. You haven’t moved forward since I’ve known you.”
“No, I haven’t. But why do you care?”
“I loved you for seven years. I woke every day for seven years and thought, ‘I love Vasily.’ That means a lot to me. If I didn’t see you for twenty years and you died, I would still go to the funeral. We only have one life, as you always said, and before we die we look back on it, and I can’t look back on mine without seeing you. I don’t know if that makes sense, or is logical, but that is how I feel. And one day when my daughter gets older she will ask about my boyfriends before I met her father and I will have to mention you. I will speak the name Vasily to her. She will ask about Vasily and I will explain your strange ass to her.”
Jessica pours us some more coffee and sits back down. We stop looking at each other. We stare at the table, at our shoes. But while we speak we don’t notice them. Our minds are busy, our eyes are open, but in our minds we are trying to find what to say next.
Jessica says, “Vasily, why haven’t you attacked me. I’ve been sitting here attacking you. But you say nothing. You used to be so good at arguing, you could tear holes right in me. You always broke through my wall of shit and blasted me with something I did not want to admit to myself. You were so good at analyzing other people, so apt at judging people’s characters, of seeing past their lies. But now, you just sit there. Still sitting. It makes me think you don’t care about me. Do you not think anymore? What is it?”
I don’t like this conversation. Why doesn’t she talk about when we went swimming at Willow Lake or something?
“Are you going to respond?” Jessica says.
“I realized that you wanted me to attack you. It fed your sense of masochism. The purpose of combat is to crush your opponent. To make them bend to your will. To make them fall to the floor, to give up, to show that they are weaker than you. I wanted to win the arguments, by attacking you; I was playing your game. The harder the blows I threw, the harder yours were. It allowed for too much chance. And also you wanted the fight, you wanted to yell. And if you wanted it, and you weren’t getting paid for it, that means you somewhat enjoy it. So therefore even if you lost, there was a part of you that enjoyed losing. So my only chance was to reject the fight. To sit and stare, which made you frustrated and self-loathing. Which means I won the fight, I made you bend to my will. I could control my emotions, and by controlling my emotions I made you feel false, which killed you.”
“I could no longer hurt your feelings.”
“No. I suppose that meant I did not love you anymore.”
“Can anyone hurt your feelings anymore?”
“Yeah, but after they do once, I’m done with them. They can go to hell for all I care.”
“That sounds like a terrible way to live, not having any feelings.”
“You mistake drama for feelings. Most of the feelings we have in this country are fabricated and mass-produced. Ninety-nine percent of them are false.”
“You probably think the feeling I have for my daughter is false. You would probably assume revenge.”
“You called it revenge, not me.”
Jessica looks at me and says, “People need feelings. We need to tell ourselves things. What are we supposed to do? I’ve never had power, I’ve never done anything great, I don’t even know how a person would go about doing something great. I’m an ordinary person and I have feelings, I like feelings, I like drama, it gives color to life. It makes it not so dense.”
“Did I say anything against people having feelings? Did I sit here and crucify you for wanting drama. I came here, didn’t I? That must mean I want drama. I want color in my life; I want life to have some meaning.”
“But you reject so much of it. You fight yourself from having feeling. From letting yourself go. When we went to bars you just sat there and drank your beer quietly. You never went to parties, you never got drunk and started punching people like normal men do, you never went up on the stage at a karaoke and sang, you’ve never danced at a bar. When we went to punk concerts you wouldn’t mosh. It is like you refuse to fully enjoy life, to just relax and flow with humanity.”
“I can’t.”
“You know why? Don’t be an asshole!”
I get the urge to grab her face and squeeze it but I don’t and say, “I’m afraid.”
“Well, why are you afraid?”
“People hurt each other. If I dance somebody will go, ‘you dance badly.’ If I sing someone will say, ‘you sing badly.’ If I get drunk and fight I’m sure I will lose, even if the person is smaller than me. I don’t want to risk it. What it comes down to is that I only want to be in situations where I am convinced the outcome will be in my favor. I want to know the outcome; I want to have the situation firmly placed in my hand. Life must be under control. I must know that the situation will not get out of control, because when things get out of control people get hurt.”
“You might get hurt?”
“Yes, I might get hurt.”
“So you have no excuse. There is no philosophy determining your actions. All the books you’ve ever read have not led you to this state of despair and fear. It is just that you’re a control freak?”
“I suppose so.”
“Do you have this situation under control?”
“Yes.”
“You are really and truly a fucked-up person. That someone so observant, so analytical, so calculating could end up such a dismal creature…but perhaps that is the fate of those creatures. They end up alone, consumed by their own analysis.”
“Now you sound like me.”
“Well, even though you’ve driven yourself into madness, you do still have a cute face, if that makes up for anything.”
I laugh and say, “Thanks.”
We talk more but it goes nowhere. It is not dramatic. It is like a person that knew me who has left and gotten a third person perspective on my life, then returned like a ghost to show me how I am at fault for what I’ve done.