The rest of it doesn't have much to do with this scene.
I wasn’t in the best of spirits. To say the least.
Sick of life, sick of trying, sick of inevitable failure.
Underground, hidden away, head weighed down by gravity and staring into Hell. My ass was sore from sitting on the uncomfortable metal chairs. Every ponient little ridge against my soft bottom a mark, a permanent memory. Why can’t they put plush seats up in the subway? Bastards. They know people wait here all day, would it be so hard to invest a bit of money into soft seating?
I waited for a thousand years. Not waiting for any specific train, just patiently hanging around until the world to change into something else. If enough time passed than an escape plan might present itself. In a matter of time, no doubt, a solution would exist. So I told myself.
Maybe it wasn’t a thousand years, maybe it was more like a thousand minutes. However many hours that added up to. Down here beat the outdoors. One floor up, a thousand years ago, a California sun pushed heavy light through an ozone hole down my backside until it burned, a force of light weighing a hundred pounds ever present.
So I ran away, down the escalator. With little to speak of, with pockets full of the richness of nothing. The clothes on my back and some crap I could fit in a high-schooler’s stolen bookbag.
Was it supposed to be this hard? I know, I know, life is supposed to be a struggle, For a long time I thought I was okay with that. But at what point does one declare enough is enough?
I lived in the city for five years dragging my boulder up the mountain. I came so close to the peak, but I was too lazy to reach. So many challenges, none of them ever felt so insurmountable. Yet here I was, wretched and finished.
Cars, jobs, shelter, all that drag. Surviving without a car in the city was tricky enough for the last few months, but I made do. Busses and rides and even subways, I was getting along. And then my job evaporated. Kindness and credit made it seem survivable. But yesterday the final pillar of my crumbling foundation went under. She changed the locks. I was kicked out into the world, no more pity and no more excuses. All my bag of illusions ran out and I couldn’t fake it anymore. Nowhere to sleep tonight. With no shelter to call my own, no roof, everyone around me was sick of my freeloading and I was sick of asking. They were sick of giving and I was sick of taking, in that regard we were in harmonious agreement.
Janie kicked me out. We were done. She hated me, she wouldn’t talk. And she was right to hate me, she was right to cut me off. We were done for weeks, if not months. We hadn’t slept together since ancient memory, she was constantly upset with me, we could never stand to be in the same room. Who could blame her? I was a complete failure, nothing to offer but my obsolete state. A novelty worn off very quickly.
Constantly bickering, and I was only further defensive the more she told the truth. As if to rebel against this sorry life that had done me wrong, I refused to accommodate Janie. I wasn’t a very good stay-at-home-spouse. Why should I be her housewife and clean up, why should I pay my own cheap way in chores and sweeping, vacuums and dishwasher soap, trash bags and laundry? Why should I be fair to her when the world wasn’t fair to me? At least I deserve to relish my suffering in dignity. No cleaning up after myself necessary, no cooking, no shopping errands, cleaning appliances, no picking up my straps and starting over. Only the endless hum of a television in the background as I stared at the ceiling. This lasted months.
In that last month it came to Janie’s complete avoidance. She came home only to sleep, and of course never with me. My space was the living room couch, her bedroom off limits. I missed it, the soft matters against her soft form. I missed the scent of her hair, the taste of her face, the feel of her skin up and down her slender stretched body.
Why did I mess it all up? Because I knew I deserved it.
First the car, then the job, than the apartment. The girl was last. My final thread to hold on to life. I was a fool, I brought this upon my self. I was not suited for the reality of the situation once it manifested. Homelessness and self-punishment was not as romantic as the flagellation cults of old had me convinced. One night earlier I slept in the pavement in an alley for some four hours. Besides the scratches on my arms and the throbbing of my skull on concrete, far from a comfortable setting, I was too frightened that I would wake up stabbed and the twenty-dollar bill in my pocket vanished. Today, I thought, I’ll wait at the subway station and figure something out. I stole some food from the convenience store and wandered down. That was at dawn. I left a few times to pee in an alley and by the last route it was getting dark. How many trains passed me by? How many gusts of cold wind as my thoughts descended into formlessness?
So there I was, alone in a train stop, waiting for nothing. The hours sank away into the void like a toy boat with a sinking hole that won’t get it over with and drop into the bottom of the bathtub, but ever so slowly graduates towards the drain.
One seductive option intrigued me. Just before each train arrived the wind would warn me. I could time it so perfectly.
How easy it would be, time it just right, peek over the edge and see the lights coming past the tunnel.
And jump. Wouldn’t feel a thing.
Like I have the guts to go through with that.
Sometimes it’s fun to fantasize.
Every so often I would stand up and walk in a circle. Debate in my head to take a train to another stop to repeat the process, or go back up to the surface world and readjust. After a few short minutes I sat back down, my feet tired from the work. What would be different anywhere else?
My bookbag sat on the floor, my loyal companion. Containing three t-shirts and one pair of jeans, a paperback mystery novel that I couldn’t begin past the first three pages before my mind slipped away, and laughably one dozen copies of my headshots with sleek resume printed on the back. And my SAG card.
How did I get here? Two years at the Flighty Theater on Santa Monica blvd. Down in dirty grimy Hollywood edging towards the Eastern end, the real thick of it all. Miles and miles away from the posh gay scene in the West, the hard end of Hollywood. The times that were had. I was acting. It was real. While few in the world cared to notice me, I knew was moving forward and unbridled optimism filled my soul. The energy, it was true and it was for real.
Shitty art plays with no structure, room to rehearse smaller than my apartment (back when I had an apartment), audiences that you could count with one hand and far outnumbered by the cast, but performances well worth the ten bucks fee. We were all going to take over the world, Janie and me and all the rest.
The dream and to be alive. For all the hardships of life it wasn’t so bad as long as the faith was there. I didn’t care when they shut off my electricity and I couldn’t afford Ramen noodles. It was part of paying dues, I had ultimate faith that I would be rewarded in the end. Eventually, I would be disappointed.
None of us wanted to be Broadway stars and we knew it. We were about three thousand miles away from that dream. We were going to be movie stars. In all the filth, in all the cracked buildings and dirty smells and soggy dreams, we were in Hollywood and there was something magical about it.
Was this so bad? Was this worth the punishment? All I wanted was a better world for me. A world where I was famous and everyone loved me.
It didn’t work out. The Flighty lost its celebrity sponsorship, Miles Samson decided to fund someplace bigger, and nobody else wanted to hire me. My B.A. degree useless, I refused a 9 to 5 that would cut into auditioning, my landlord hardly empathize with my plight, my friends gave up on me, and now Janie was sick of my mooching. What to do?
Losing my composure, I started staring at the passing commuters. My solid sense of self, my inflated ego from so many years back, my core big-star identity, all chipped away these past months like marble rock at a waterfall. I didn’t notice the returning stares. I was invisible, I was disappearing, and that gave me the freedom to look.
Awkward, nobody likes being stared at by strangers. Was I so haggard looking? I hadn’t shaved in days but my half-Asian facial hair has never particularly apparent. My clothes were a little bit dirty since I hadn’t washed them in weeks, but at least it was a fashionable polo shirt atop clean slacks, if you ignored the rips and dirt.
The plump round Mexican mothers with their four children following behind the baby carts, they looked away. White people in suits stared back, as if to challenge, sneered, struggled, and then looked away in defeat. All sorts of people take subways, punk rock squatters with tattoos on their faces, naïve fat tourists who never predicted how disgusting Hollywood could be, small ethnic children left on their own to navigate the city, older kids on skateboards, gang-bangers who tagged the walls with thick Sharpie markers and made no attempt to hide it. A beautiful melting pot of a city.
One particular Mexican kid didn’t appreciate my audience into his affairs. I watched his silly graffiti, impressing his stupid friends with his brazen-ness. Four Mexican teenagers with gelled hair slicked back and baggie jeans and obnoxious attitudes. They were laughing about something, I don’t know what. The tags were those pointy geometric angles with abbreviated wordage, the Jewish star-looking ones that have the letters. You can tell the gang graffiti by how terrible it is, the artistic colorful fonts underneath the highway overpass was done by the good kids.
“What you looking at? You got a problem man?”
Ah, this is what I needed. A challenge, a goal. A motivation for my character to further the plot.
I thought of the worst things to say. You asshole, you street trash, you primitive son of a bitch. Let’s go.
I thought of the worst things to say. I thought of describing his mother’s cunt, poetic verse of such fat lips upon my pale smooth cock. Fuck you and all your world. I allow myself this anger, I allow myself these feelings. What’s to lose?
“Wha--, what the fuck?” was all that came out. I stood up, I walked.
He laughed at me, ready to perform for his friends. “Damn!” one of the yelled.
“What you think you doing? You better back up fucker.”
“I don’t know, you tell me,” I continued to walk towards, and stopped up close to his face, backing him against the grey wall. “What’s up?”
“Chinese faggot, you better get the fuck away.”
“What the hell you gonna do?”
His hands thrusted against my shoulders, strong fingers squeezing, and shifting me around until it was my back was against the wall and he pushed it into me. Fast and hard my back against the cold wall, I was out of breath for a brief moment. It took me a moment to process, and at the absurdity of it all I laughed.
“Ha! You guys are fun.”
They laughed in return. The three others at least. The fellow I’d become so physically acquainted wouldn’t budge his stilled expression. The others taunted.
“Man, he wants to start some shit.”
“Don’t let him get away with that.”
“Crazy-ass fool, you better wise him up.”
I smiled and spread my arms open. “You guys can all fuck off, you know that?”
They stopped talking. I noticed in the foreground the whites and the family Mexicans were staring at the scene, perplexed by me and perhaps even compassionate, but completely unwilling to intervene. The first Mexican kid grabbed me again.
“What’s your problem huh?”
I lifted my arms to twist myself out from his hold. With the force of my body I scraped his should against the grey wall, and for a moment I escaped. I hopped back and balled my fists. My heart was racing, it was incredible, I should have done this more often. When I had things to lose life was scary. Fuck it all, tomorrow no longer exists so why not take it out on the worst of the urban trash I could find? Made sense to me, at the time.
My heart thumping blood and adrenaline through my veins. My breath like the music at a 90s rave, drums pacing faster and faster. Fighting was a bit like sex, that nervousness and excitement and confusion all at once.
The kid’s fist was headed to my face and I ducked away. Wow, like a movie! With his torso open I pushed him by his shoulders into the wall.
The buoyant energy didn’t last. Faster than I could react a quicker punch connected. Bang! Flash of feeling into the middle of my face. I could feel his brown ashy knuckle against my cartiledge, a split-second of lightening over black, and enormous pressure in my skull.
“Ow! Fuck!”
I grabbed my face and fell back. In what was no doubt a comical addition, I fell down on my ass, which was already a sore area. “Ow ow ow ow!” I yelled as the blood escaped.
“Fucking asshole!” I heard, and felt a kick in my ribs interrupt the darkness. I couldn’t breath.
But they were merciful enough not to add anything. And their train was coming anyhow, we could all feel the wind.
“Fuck this guy. I’m getting out of here.” I heard. I opened my eyes and watched them walk dragging their drooping hands with one arm while carrying markers with their other. The staring whites and Mexican moms backed out of the way as they headed south, to a destination unknown to me and really I could have cared less.
The hot iron red fell through my finger tips down to my face. It had that metallic taste reminding me of a child chewing on aluminum.
Wash everything away, blood of my blood. Wash away this past and future and most importantly the present. I didn’t want to exist in this, it wasn’t doing me any good. I closed my eyes and pretended I left the planet Earth, to a better place of colors and light and no rules.
When I opened my eyelids back to this stupid world of vision I was still here. I looked at the familiar seat. Surrounded by a new round of patrons, the next batch of people waiting for the Red line going North sitting to the left and Southbound to the right, and at their dirty shoes my backpack was still there. Nobody wanted a rugged bag, there was no fear of theft at all. My clothes and headshots were safe. One last thing buried in the bag, my cell phone with two days left until they shut it off.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I guess I have to give in, I thought. I have to call my mother.
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