Sunday, November 8, 2015

Self Help - An installment from a draft of the first five thousand words of an attempt at a novel


The telephone rings. It’s a police department looking for help for their first responders exposed to the death of a child in a car accident. One of them can’t stop cleaning his house since he left the scene. The sights, sounds, smells play in a loop. Andrew gathers the relevant information, makes a call, establishes the proper connections and is finished with his work.

She doesn’t want you, he tells himself, swallow it. And then he starts into the hating - all the ways she took him for granted, stepped in his face, thought he wasn’t good enough for her. But he loves her, and he can’t stay here long. Soon he’ll start making excuses for her. Rationalizing. 

The dead kid incident, and the burden now carried by those involved in trying to save him, should provide some perspective, but they don’t. It’s a private room.

Finally, the work day ends. Andrew goes to the gym, changes clothes in his car. It’s time for his last individual session with Coach Maria. Her dark eyes, patience and encouragement have helped a little. She tries to teach him overhead squats, and several clean variations that are just not in his neuromuscular arsenal. She smiles patiently and tells him he’s not a total train wreck. He is further humbled. 

The work makes him sweat and focus and fight for breath and balance. For the first time all day he is not thinking about her, and he can breathe.

The Workout of the Day is called Fight Gone Bad . It's  three five minute rounds of five exercises done for a minute each - wall balls, push press, box jumps, sumo-deadlift high-pulls and rowing for calories. The name, Coach Maria tells him, came from a boxer who undertook the workout and got his ass kicked. He paces himself and manages not to collapse through the first two rounds. On the rower, during the final minute, he closes his eyes and finds himself getting into the loud metal song playing overhead, he pulls with everything he has until Coach Maria calls time

She says good job, and he starts to cry uncontrollably. His chest is heaving, his eyes are closed, and he’s pouring sweat so he just turns his face away from the coach and gets a grip thinking she probably didn't notice. She thinks maybe the workout was too much for him and asks if he’s okay. He tells her he needed it, will be back tomorrow, and leaves the gym quickly. 

Driving home, his sweat dries. Motion helps a little. He thinks of the firefighter cleaning and cleaning trying not to see again what he has already seen. He thinks of her being gone from him. He is empty. At home, he eats, showers, lays in his bed. Sleep won’t come.


Sunny,

I can’t sleep again. Your silence, now, seems cruel. Is it necessary? Maybe it is, because if you weren’t silent, what would you say? Probably something I wouldn’t want to hear. 

Everything hurts. I think something in me is dying. I cry lately - daily. That’s new. I’m starting to spill my guts to people about you - my boss, my chiropractor, a grandmother on Halloween. They seem to think you’re doing me a favor by leaving me alone. My chiropractor says it’s trauma that you’re putting me through. A therapist I know says, where there’s passion, there’s almost always pathology. I am most certainly sick with this.

Sunny, I remember the sweetness of the moment when I watched you see a hummingbird for the first time, It was at the feeder on my kitchen window. I see it now like it’s happening again. I see you and the hummingbird staring, riveted, at each other not more than two feet apart. The undisguised, spontaneous delight and wonder in your face just broke me, I felt as though I’d seen an angel. If my time with you was reduced to only that moment, I’d have no choice but to love you forever. And that was only our beginning. 

When someone is detoxing - dope sick - you tell that person confidently that this end-of-the world, absolute-shit feeling will pass, and that all the poor bastard really has to do is keep going on his way through it. That’s trite and totally unhelpful in my situation too, but it’s essentially true. I will pass through. I will pass through this pain, this love, this world, this life. But I want to stay here, Sunny, with you.


Sanchez

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