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jtkarl · 4 years

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Anthony and I used to be real good friends. I met him when I was like 12 or 13, when we were in the same drama class in 7th grade.

I don’t like drama and I never have, but I have always kinda liked speaking in front of other people, so I took that class. And I’m glad I did cuz that’s where I met Anthony.

Anyway, whenever Ms. Terry put us into groups, Anthony and I would pair up cuz we sat next to each other and neither of us knew anybody to walk across the room to. You never walk across a room full of strangers to go meet new people. You look around you for somebody who’s got the same look on their face that you feel in your stomach, and you inch a little closer, wondering which one of you is gonna say hi first. So I guess it’s always who you sit next to that you’re gonna be friends with first. Those kinds of things make me wonder if fate and destiny are real, or if those are just pessimistic words for luck and instinct. I don’t remember exactly, but I bet Anthony was the first one to talk cuz he was always smiling, and always able to make anybody feel comfortable.

After talking to each other a ton, I realized that Anthony was pretty funny, plus we both liked to talk about this girl Rachel in our class who was a total slut. Both of us were virgins, so we didn’t know anything about what to do if our dreams became reality, but we knew that Rachel put out for James and we spent hours talking about what it must be like to be the popular guy getting to touch a girlwoman like her.

I guess that that was the first time that I used a wingman. I mean, I guess the point of a wingman is ultimately to help you score a goal, not just take a shot, but I still think Anthony was my first wingman. Girls always kinda interested me, but I always kinda was too scared to do anything about it, and since everyone found Anthony welcoming and funny, I just kinda used his personality to start talking to Rachel. Anthony was the one who had the balls to talk to new people, and I was the one who was lucky enough to sit next to him those first days, and Rachel and I spent the rest of that year doing some pretty hardcore flirting. Only softcore touching though.

After 7th grade Anthony and I took math and gym together, and continued to have fun just talking about other people. We would talk back to Mr. Eggleton in math, and we would talk shit to the douche bags we couldn’t stand in gym. But we got good grades in both, so we never got in trouble.

And again, there were the girls that would occupy most of our minds. When we weren’t laughing at each other’s jokes, we were talking around each other’s boners, trying but not really trying to talk those incurable curses away. No matter how uncomfortable it was to walk, Anthony and I made the most of middle school and its blossoming youths. As the pants got tighter on our classmates, our conversations grew more and more frequent and less and less diverse, and our opinions of ourselves grew along with our manhoods. We quickly learned that the more we stared, the easier it would be to catch their eyes. And if they were looking at us, that was proof that they were at least a little interested. And if they were at least a little interested, that was proof that girls thought about sex too. And if girls thought about sex too, well, that was more than we could handle.

When 8th grade ended, Anthony and I really started having fun together. We both took a public speaking class together as freshmen, and we were pretty much as close as two people could be. Much like that first drama class two years before, public speaking was mostly filled with Anthony and me just talking about anything. That was the year he introduced me to BriAnn, and the year we fought each other for the right to get in Candice’s pants.

Candice was a new girl in our speech class, and because Anthony and I would rather get a hand job than an A, we spent most of our rehearsal time talking to her. She had long blonde hair, clear bright eyes, and a sharp face. Her chest was the curviest, firmest, largest wet-dream-inducer that either of us had ever seen. I would spend what seemed like hours at home closing my eyes, wondering what she looked like without all those inconvenient clothes obstructing my view. The way her body moved and curved and stayed tight all at the same time reminded me of the free pornos I snuck on my parents’ computer. Not the way porn stars actually look: torn and used and not happy and exhausted. No, Candice reminded me of the way that girls looked when I dreamed, or of how a porn star looked when I closed my eyes.

And the craziest part was she actually talked to us. She actually seemed interested in what we had to say, and what we thought was funny she thought was funny. She laughed at all of Anthony’s jokes, and she sat next to me about as much as I sat next to her.

Sometimes, after school, Anthony and I would sneak out of his parents’ house at night, walk the mile or so to Candice’s house down the street, and he would call her as many times as it took for her to pick up. And then we would just walk with her in the middle of the road under the starlight. Anthony had a bike that he would ride everywhere, but when Candice was with us, he would make sure to be a gentleman and lend her the bike, and we would stare and stare at the way she rode it. Something about the way she rode that bike would set our teeth on edge, get our blood pumping, and neither of us ever mentioned it to each other. I know there were more than a few times I would go home with a sore crotch in those days, and I can’t imagine Anthony being any better.

Of course, our sights were set way too high yet again, and fucking James started fucking Candice before either me or Anthony even got to see a nipple.

That March was when I took off BriAnn’s panties for the first time.

That April was when Anthony started asking if I wanted to drink cough syrup with him before speech class.

I don’t know why, probably cuz I was just too scared, I told him no every time he asked me. In those days, I was content with sneaking porn behind my parents’ backs and smoking cigarettes out my window, or taking extra Percocet from my wisdom teeth surgery prescription.

Anthony started coming to school higher and higher every day, and Candice and I started talking more about him than with him. Lots of days he wouldn’t come at all, but I never really thought too much about it cuz BriAnn and I were spending so much time together.

Even though BriAnn and I started hanging out because Anthony and her were such good friends from way back, she and I just started hanging out by ourselves more and more as that summer wore on. As the nights got hotter, our nights got sweatier. As Anthony started drifting away, I couldn’t figure out whether BriAnn was me or I was BriAnn or we were two separate people always trying to become one.

That Fall, when I was in the same English class with Anthony and BriAnn, one day he just stopped showing up all together. I remember that week, on Wednesday BriAnn and I realized he hadn’t been in for three days, and then Thursday, and then Friday, and then the next week.

BriAnn eventually told me that Anthony’s parents told her that he had been checked into some rehab place somewhere. That he had been snorting cocaine in the bathroom at school, and stealing his dad’s oxycodone prescription pills to either swallow or crush up and snort.

I don’t think I ever knew any of that was happening when it was happening, but now, since everything has happened, I don’t really remember.

When Anthony came back to school like three months later, I tried to welcome him. I tried to laugh with him, and talk with him, and ask him questions and shit. I remember one time he pulled a coat out of his locker and told me that it still had cocaine on it from when he used to snort it all the time. And didn’t I realize that he had been high that whole time?

For some reason he was smiling and I was smiling, like every other time that we had talked, except this time I didn’t have anything to say back to him, and nobody was laughing about anything.

Sometime after that, I went over to his house one night, and we were gonna go walking and sneaking around like we used to, but he had run his bike through a fence earlier in the evening, and he was still bleeding from the crown of his head and his feet and his palms. When I got there, there were other people there too, but they said they were going to go get some alcohol, and did we wanna come with? I didn’t say anything, but Anthony said no thanks—in his welcoming way with that same smile I saw all the way back in 7th grade—and they all left in a good mood and said we were missing out. And us two were just left there sitting by ourselves.

For a moment, it felt like everything was going to be ok. For a moment, I knew that Anthony was sorry, and I wish I had told him that I was too.

But I don’t think we said much to each other that night. If we did I don’t remember. All I remember is my brother coming to pick me up from Anthony’s house, and as I sat down inside my brother’s car, Anthony unfolded a chair on his driveway, and brought out a spoon and a bowl and a gallon of milk and a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. And then he just sat down by himself, still bleeding a little, and started eating that bowl of cereal silently in the starlight. Silently. And though he was looking right at us, it was more like he was looking behind us. It made you feel like we were all in hell, and you could see each other and feel each other’s pain, but you couldn’t do anything about it. And even though you saw everyone else, they couldn’t see you. And even though you could reach out to everyone else, they couldn’t feel you. And no matter how loud you yelled they couldn’t hear you. And you knew this was the everlasting end. And he just sat there eating that Cinnamon Toast Crunch like it was all of our last days in Eden. And my brother and I pulled away wondering where our stomachs had gone off to.

The next day, Anthony was gone again.

I spent the next three years wondering what happened to him. I mean, I know he went back to rehab and shit. I know he got out of rehab and took his parents’ money and broke everyone’s hearts. I know he said the best day of his life was when he ran through that fence and BriAnn was there to bandage his wounds. I know he told her he had always loved her.

But that smile, and the way he could make anyone laugh at any time.

I always wondered why he couldn’t make himself laugh, too.

I got the call that he had finally killed himself just a little bit before Christmas, almost five years since I had seen him last. They said they thought he died of an overdose of some morphine pills that he had stolen from his dad. They said he died alone, in a mall parking lot, in his parents’ stolen car. They said he died on his birthday.

Somewhere in there I didn’t ever see BriAnn again either. From bliss to ruin, our souls somehow grew out of ourselves. Like one of those little hermit crabs having to find a new shell cuz the old one suddenly doesn’t feel right anymore.

At some point in there, I cried uncontrollably for hours, the sobs shaking me as if I was still in the womb and my mother had the hiccups. When none of us cared about tomorrow, and all of us cared about ourselves, all of us could smile and didn’t think too much about today either. And then suddenly, somewhere between deepening voices and choosing for ourselves, somewhere it all shattered like a pain of glass stuck between two walls. Like if you were trying to push this pain of glass through a crack that was just a little bit too small, but you kept pushing it anyway cuz that glass had to make it through those walls cuz you had already come so far and turning back would be giving up, and even though it wasn’t like you were strong enough to shatter that glass on your own, when you finally bent it just right enough, just wrong enough, with it stuck in between those two walls, suddenly, the whole thing exploded in your hands. And suddenly you didn’t have a pain of glass at all anymore. All you had was shards that used to be this part of this whole thing that used to be something. But now it was just lots of nothings, lots of nothings that could tear the shit out of your hand or your foot if you didn’t handle it carefully enough.

And every time

You walk over that piece of memory

With nothing but your skin to protect you,

With nothing but yourself between you and razors that used to be something,

That used to be a beautiful work of art that meant everything to you,

You’re reminded of the mistakes of yesterday.

You’re reminded that the art of your life used to be much more beautiful

When you were looking at it straight on,

But then you change perspectives, and suddenly your feet are bleeding from

The mistakes of yesterday.

And I’m left wondering about all the things that used to be,

And all the things that brought me to today.

And the shards tear into your memory, where sunshine used to be,

And yesterday stings, and tomorrow is a dull ache,

And today you’re left wondering

#addiction #mental heath support #drug awareness

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