Flooding with Love for the Kid

Before I became a sexually active human being, I was pretty much obsessed with homoerotica across an impressive spectrum of forms — capital P porn, literature (well, smut), Netflix’s foreign gay film catalog, the subtext on Hannibal, Magic Mike…if it was dripping in sexual gay energy, subliminal or not, I was all about it. Simpler times. You know what turns me on now? Alcohol and loneliness.

Loneliness seems like such an imprecise term. I can’t call it boredom — not given the paramount levels of stress I’m willing to endure to have mediocre sex. Calling it a dEsPeRaTe NeEd FoR CoNnEcTiOn verges on being too sappy especially since I almost exclusively sleep with the most abysmal of characters; not because I’m drawn to their exhausting personalities but because — and damn me eternally for this! — I’m just not willing to try that hard for casual sex. Let’s just say there’s a desolate part of my soul that wants nothing but to be fed vice and needless anguish.

I obviously need a therapist but I can’t afford it. Actually, I’m not sure; I just assume I can’t. I’ve never actually checked. When I was 17 or 18 (I can’t believe how quickly, in life, you start not to remember), I got very and scarily drunk at the first house party I’d ever been invited to. Instead of locking me in a cupboard or murdering me, my idiot friends went across the street and got my mother. It was one of the most traumatic things I’ve ever put her through. My penance was never living down the shame amongst my peers at school who divided themselves into three camps — feeling abject pity for me, feeling juvenile but genuine hatred towards me to go along with the hatred that was already there, and feeling that I was, without a doubt, an absolute freak.

After the incident, one of my more dimwitted-but-tragically-confident-in-wits-they-don’t-possess pals diagnosed me with a psychotic disorder, convinced my brain was anomalous and broken. She wasn’t wrong, you know…she was just very wrong. A girl who’d been my best friend but no longer was (on account of her being a godawful bigot) sent me unsolicited bible verses until I told her never to text me again. I mean, my intellectually challenged friends and I may have been convinced there was a place for me in some asylum or psychiatric ward but God was the least equipped person (Spirit? Thing? Delusion? Stop me when I get offensive.) to fix me.

I went to a GP but because of my nervous countenance and the fact that I was a teenage girl, I wasn’t taken altogether seriously. He did suggest I go to some group counselling thing but I never did. Can’t really tell you why. I don’t remember but it’s probably for the same reasons I don’t go now. Casual sex isn’t the only thing I don’t care to try for, I guess.

Skip ahead a couple of years to 2015, a couple of months before I enrolled into college. I still drank — in fact my drunken antics had mutated into falling off the edge of verandas at home under the African moon and blasting Alt J in the bathroom while soaking in the tub (literally!) for hours. But that’s not why my aunt suggested a counselor to me. It was because of my explosive, furious outbursts and constant unhappiness. I didn’t go, obviously; I may have been angry but I wasn’t wrong so — ha! — no fixing me.

Then I did go to college. There I met a very beautiful girl with whom alcoholism looked like hanging out and talking about boys and discussing our fantasies and gossiping and plotting and, basically, being twenty-one. The friendship didn’t last very long (on account of her being a godawful everything) but occurred simultaneously as a relationship whose problems made me run to liquor quicker than I ran to sense.

In spite of such obvious character flaws, my best friend chose to be just that — my best friend. I blame her youth, for the most part. She’s five years younger than me and I’m twenty-five. She still has toxic ideas like redemption and re-invention corrupting her shockingly hard-as-brass-in-hope soul.

I’ll tell you, I tried my damnedest. Really, I did; but for the first time in my life, I couldn’t refuse a helping hand because no matter how many times I tried to push it away, it wouldn’t leave me. This kid just would not let up in trying to help me. She was sneaky about it as well, employing nefarious mind tricks like getting me to open up about my feelings and patiently explaining to me why it’s not okay for people who say they care to treat you like they don’t.

A more intricate method of her long term scheme was never giving into my fake truths about my life. If I told her I was having fun with my partner in delinquency, she’d say “happy you’re in great spirits. I still don’t like her, she’s a bad friend. Toss her.” If I told her the monster in my bed had paid me a compliment instead of becoming angry because I loved him, she’d say, “Hate him, dump him.”

Eventually, upon her further manipulations, I followed her instructions. I’m going on two years without the monster. The delinquent, who proved much harder to move on from than the literal abuse the monster inflicted, hasn’t heard from me in over a year. I still drink but not to avoid my life and not in a way that could kill me. I mean, that’s progress right?

It takes so long for me to learn lessons but she’s patient. When I ask her how she can stand this, the kid says, “I’m your friend and I love you.” Near enough my whole life, I’ve been running in the wrong direction of help and then it stopped me dead in my tracks just because it had the face of a child. I told you I need therapy.

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Remember how I said I almost exclusively sleep with abysmal characters? That almost is because of a boy I used to know whom I think is the only man I’ve genuinely ever been friends with. We started having sex months after I’d moved on from the monster and stopped a couple of months ago when I told him I was interested in dating him.

Telling him was difficult, not because I knew he’d reject the idea but because I knew that after he did, we’d never sleep together again and — like I said — I’m just not willing to try that hard for casual sex (and other things).

The kid and I made a decision tree to weigh my options. If I didn’t tell him, I was going to keep convincing myself that I liked him (I mean, I did but not enough to justify exclusivity) and I would continue to misinterpret his sudden and increasingly tender behaviour as an indication that he’d want to settle for an amicable, if somewhat passionless, courtship. If I did tell him, what came to pass would have come to pass.

At this point, however, I’d already endured a couple of weeks of the former disadvantage, reeling every time he did or said something particularly thoughtful or getting a little too cosy when he’d hang around at my house all night, not having sex with me; instead making conversation; making me laugh and making me angry; making me forget that desolate place that feeds on vice and needless anguish. I wasn’t in love with him or anything — but he was the best man I’d ever met.

That’s definitely not saying much but the thing about this boy is I’d known him long enough to see him transform from an insufferable — but oh so very attractive — nuisance into a pretty okay guy. Not stand-up, per se (God knows!), but okay. And okay is better than abysmal, isn’t it? And didn’t I deserve to catch a break?

We made another decision tree to help me figure out what to do in the absolutely certain event that he’d tell me he wasn’t interested. There was no need to prepare for any other outcome. I wasn’t joking about him being my friend. And because he was my friend, I knew him. Besides, even if the laziest cupid in the world shot him with an arrow, it was mine and his business what to do about us, right? The kid can’t instruct me on everything.

After he said no, I told him I had to duck out on our friendship; a decision we only spent about a week-and-a-half-respecting. When he texted to ask if we could still talk, now that I’d ruined everything by getting soft — something only he was used to doing (he’d want me to add that it only happened when he was drunk) — we got right back into the swing of our former correspondence. Beginning with me telling him about the boy I’d met the day after I’d told him I wanted to explore the tumultuous and downright abominable state of dating in Malawi. It did not take very long (3 days tops!) for him to try to convince me to let him come over. I didn’t. He thanked me for saying no when he’d sobered up.

Just as I’d begun to settle into our new status quo, we fought. He and I had always fought but sex (or at least our mutual apathy toward finding new people to have it with) had always brought us back together. The friendship, it turned out, had only persisted as a collateral advantage. At least on my end. When he got in touch a couple of weeks later, to thank me for my encouragement on a matter I won’t betray here, I did not get right back into the swing of things.

I missed him terribly. The new boy was abysmal (reader, I implore you to recommend me a therapist). Late in the night if we weren’t having sex, I hated to be in his dull presence. I hated to laugh out of politeness and to bite down on my anger; and I hated to be back in my desolate place. God, I missed him. It’s just…okay might be better than abysmal but dammit, don’t I deserve to catch a break? I accepted his thanks, expressed my genuine wishes that he live a good life and then never spoke to him again.

When I gathered the strength to go without rather than settle for consistent but mediocre sex, I got rid of the new guy too.

The kid says she’s proud. I still need a therapist.

I need a therapist because if not for the kid, I’d be dead. I wish I were exaggerating. Admitting that the only reason I can wax pathetic about my life is because of her kindness and dedication to love me beyond my flaws — beyond my pain — isn’t exactly what I’d call my finest moment.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate it. Of course I do, I’m alive because of it. It’s just — I’m flooding with love for the kid. Enough love to no longer want to her to bear the burden of making sure I’m okay. Enough love to want to make sure she knows I won’t fall apart when she leaves. Enough love to want to better myself through my own machinations — if not for myself, then for her.

I love her so much that I’m willing to do something I’ve spent years avoiding. I am willing to try.

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Unsuccessful entry to a writing contest the author now cannot remember, circa 2018 (or 2019, who knows)