The Side Effects of Starving - Chapter Three
Today when I leave work, my boss, Kathy, says, "You come and go, and we don't see much of you in between. Well, you're doing great. Just great."I just smile my someone-else smile and say in my someone-else voice, "Thanks. See you tomorrow." And my voice continues in my mind, in a voice that's mine, a voice that Kathy has never heard, "And the next, and the next, and the next, until I finally just collapse and die."
It's amazing how good it feels to walk from my office to my car. The air tastes different - sweet - all the way to the parking lot. I sing to whatever song is playing on the radio while I drive home.
I guess you could say I've grown less patient with scenery. If I stay in the same place too long, my thoughts start to avalanche, and I'll stare into space until my eyes start to close. I have to get up and walk around. I used to like spending lots of time on my computer, but since I've started my job, I've grown impatient with it. My mind has atrophied from the mindlessness of my so-called career, and I don't have the strength of will to do anything for very long.
I study the book of demons more intently than the textbooks I had in school. I use highlighters, I annotate. But after a few moments, I'll become lost in thought. My life is the alternating between chaotic thought and mindlessness. Somewhere, in these details, in the "Law and Order" re-runs, the mechanical tasks, the not sleeping and crying and worrying, there's a person. At least, I like to think so. I was warned that when we grow up, we lose ourselves and die without knowing it. I feel myself becoming less than human, but I don't know how to stop it. It's so easy to get caught up in the details.
Most demons have the ability to shape-shift in order to trap their prey.
"You come and go, and we don't see much of you in between." What does that even mean? What does this woman want from me? I wonder if she likes her job. I wonder if anyone likes their job. I wonder if the species should be held accountable for allowing this system to go on, I wonder if I should. I wonder how long I could survive without an income. I wonder whether my job is really killing me, or if it's all in my head and I'm still the same, or if it's something else entirely that's eating my insides. I try to remind myself, before I get, as the doctors say, "carried away," that life is not rhetoric, or melodrama. Life is going on, enduring, hitting rock bottom and then climbing your way out, alone. And it can't always be a story that's worth telling. If life were only moments, you'd never know you had one.
I am not an advocate of emptiness, I remind myself. But sometimes, it's just necessary.
I grew up thinking I could earn my living writing. I fell in love with the idea of the starving artist. And life became a war between passion and convention. Convention is winning right now, and I'm writing at night. And I am alive as long as I am writing while the rest of the world sleeps.
Most demons are nocturnal creatures.
I try to tell Steve about Life-Sucking Capitalism and the rest of it, but I'm less articulate about these things than I'd like to be, and I can't help but feel that one of us is missing the point. Steve works in insurance, and no matter how much I hate my job, I know I wouldn't survive his. That he manages to have a sense of humor or personality of any kind is nothing short of miraculous. Conversations along these lines always end with him telling me that I'm one of the most colorful people he knows. "Besides," he says, "if you were really soul-less, you wouldn't worry about it." Like most things Steve says, this makes a unique kind of hesitant sense.
He didn't know me when I was my most juvenile and colorful. There was a time when I would float hopelessly from one infatuation to the next, afraid only of rejection.
Every now and then, something happens to let me know that I haven't changed all that much.
The phone rings, and it's Shane. He wants to know if he can come over. I fumble to act nonchalant.
All demons have a weakness.
A few hours later, we are sitting together on the couch. I cross my legs towards him, I flip my hair, I'm wondering how long I'm going to have to keep listening to him before I can make him kiss me. I try to relax, but his stories just keep getting less and less amusing with every over-exaggerated hand gesture and feigned smile. If I start to talk, he interrupts me, stealing the spotlight back.
Shane is a lighting designer for an opera house in another state. He used to be passionate about the avant-garde experience, and now he creates atmosphere for cheesy musicals, the kind we both used to hate together. He seems happy enough, which is what troubles me most of all, when I let it.
He's still a performer, though he's moved his act from the stage into my living room. And sometimes I think I'm little more to him than an attentive audience member. I used to love being Shane's audience. It was enough to try to soak up his wisdom and passion, like an adolescent sponge. I loved him when we were both romantics in that temporary way, when he would hold me in his arms and we would fall asleep in my bed.
Sooner or later, I have listened long enough, and we kiss without touching.
No one leads.
I have the fleeting notion that the more cynical we become, the less time we spend on foreplay.
The other difference is that he doesn't hold me afterwards anymore, and I don't want him to.
About an hour later, I lie next to him in bed and I quickly dismiss the idea of offering to let him stay with me while he's in town. He leaves around four in the morning, while I pretend to be asleep.
When he's gone, I sigh deeply as I stretch out in bed. My bed is on the small side, and there's not enough room in it for both of us.
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