Totality II;

If all roads lead to somewhere, one sequence of wrong turns led me to the Russian gal.

She was a holler from a sore throat, and a hoarse one at that.  She was as American as

you could get, despite being from Saint Petersburg or something, and spilling features

like a Faberge egg.  Loved beer, spiked seltzer, hamburgers, had a shitty upbringing in

the states, contemplated killing herself because of capitalism, you know, American.

And she taught me a lot.

A lot about drinking, especially.  For one, that despite a spinning room and a

roaring sick, THE DICK MUST WORK.  She was my first dose of real, unfiltered crazy.

Like the type that would rip out all of your teeth and cut you to pieces with them.  I

miss her like I miss red wine—I’d give in to a compelling feigned interest, fall into

its arms, drink in the sweet, perfumed notes, but it’s a slippery slope.  Leads to

regret, a pounding headache, and how the fuck did I get here?  Again.  I’d just wind

up doing what I always did.

We’d walked to a chicken shop once, completely hammered.  She tripped over

the stoop, through the front fence, and down to the sidewalk.  I was ten steps behind

her, hobbling a bit, but managing.  I was making sure the door was locked and that I

had my wallet.  She, now leaning against her car’s passenger door, was reminding me

how fucked up she was.

“We should drive to get more alcohol,” she said as a fragmented mumble with a

belch as punctuation.  I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not.  (We didn’t drive

anywhere.)  The shop was two doors down from her apartment, a campus staple for the

fraternity houses, apartment complexes, and fixer-uppers that lined Union St. like the

ticks on a ruler.  She could barely walk.

It felt like I’d have to carry this woman across the entire university campus, her

legs about as useful as if made her DIY pegs with the cans and bottles we had piled on

her counter, fusing them to her hipbone like some sorority Frankenstein’s monster.  I

escorted her to and guided her down on the side of the shop—having gambled against

the twists and turns of her body—her head proceeding to droop and settle between her

knees: a type of fetal, alcoholic prayer position.  I went in and ordered.  I was still fine.

At that point I was already shadowboxing withdrawal in my free time, so I was certain

I could drink her under the table and then around the world.  I’d take on anyone in a

drinking game.

See, my take on alcoholism is this (coming from experience), it leads to chore,

painful chore.  Fighting the same demons in the same way, everyday.  You shake

them away, slaying them with a shot or two in the morning coffee; sip between the

literal shakes until you’re stock-assembled—of slurred, but sound mind, body and

spirit.  You then have permission to carry on like your typical heavy drinker, pound

for pound, exactly what got you there in the first place.  Tolerance becomes paying the

daily debt and having your fun for dessert, the type of dessert that eventually makes

you shit blood and keel over the toilet, fighting aerating your previous meal or bile into

your lungs—poison.  Keeping elevated is tending to a swollen ankle, icing with icebox

malts, and alleviating all of the sore muscles with “enriched” blood; elevating, until you

lose feeling, have to borrow better blood, and then you die.  Your liver shriveled like a

PCR brown paper bag.  The swelling subsiding and stopping.  Forever.

A forever a lot like waiting for those chicken baskets.  She was still outside, on

her feet now, still couldn’t walk.  I now had the task of charting the initial course

backward, balancing to-go boxes and a Russian doll.  I could hear the scrape of her

sneakers on the pavement over the hum of a few idling sedans heating up their

interiors.  We made it back, eventually, but not before trekking the 14-step staircase.

One hand projected upward supporting her lower back, one hand supporting the

chicken hind-quarters, I felt like a tipsy waiter, and she was my human serving tray.

She laughed about it.  We cleared the stairs, carpeted with cheap fabric, and she

made a joke about knocking on the door of her upstairs neighbor (the only one on

that second floor, mind you) while I fumbled with her keyring.  One of seven opened to

the six-hundred and forty-four square feet that never felt more comfortable.  Until

after we ate.

She had eaten what she could—didn’t like the sauce, the tenders weren’t like fast

food tenders, her stomach hurt, etc.  I thought it was quite good.  The sauce sweet and

savory, the meat and breading had hints of cajun spice, it was flaky, satisfying, still

fryer-warm.  My stomach-lining was thinned from all of my extracurricular drinking,

but nothing intolerable.  A little indigestion?  I’d sleep it off next to her.

But in all of the emotion from the mundane meal, she had somehow been

transplanted from the tiny second-story apartment into the arms of her biological

mother back in Russia.  She spoke of not being wanted—from birth to present—no

one loving her, and threw in an extra side of hurt with how careless she is with sex,

relationships and substance abuse.  How she never cut herself deep enough.

A search party 50,000 strong couldn’t bring her back now.

I listened and waited for an entry as she got up and walked across the dining

room and kitchen, all of five and a half feet.  She opened the silverware drawer,

sobbing now, directing blame at me for some masqueraded part I played in all of it.

She grabbed the largest knife in the bunch, wielded it.

“You know what?  How about I fucking kill you and then kill myself?”

Talk about an entry.  Her eyes ripped through me, her makeup, now ruined,

running down her cheeks and landing in black globs on her Victoria’s Secret

sweatshirt.  I can’t remember exactly what I had said amidst the sobering blur and

possible fight or flight options to consider, including but not limited to: how fast can

I clear 10 feet and unlock the door?  How many stab wounds can I take before

wrestling the knife out of her hand?  How strong is a drunk Russian?  Do I pray?

And to whom?

It was overwhelming, clearly, for both of us. I said something, and took a few

steps, one large step back in reproach, then a reconsidering step forward to lean on

the dresser.  I chose my words wisely.  At this point, I had already been slapped,

punched, had my sale bought Ralph Lauren polo ripped from neck buttons to belly,

all drunkenly-received blows out of anger and romance.  I could talk her down

again, surely.  Whether or not she would’ve used the weapon is beyond the

question.

I didn’t need to study this any deeper than necessary.  There was more than

one logical fallacy in justifying this potential homicide/suicide (but then again

there’s this thing called “post-mortem analysis” on psychopathy and its social

manifestations); one was how much I felt I meant to her—the place I built within

this Matryoshka doll with a tortured past.  Another was that I promised her

groceries.  Not sustaining alone can be better than dying.

What I manifested was either a feat of God or a nothing-burger.  I’m certainly

not dead, and neither is she, although she seems to have felt the change deeper

than I; moved on to a new outer form, much like a Matryoshka doll with a new

sheath.  Needless to say this was another example of parts not piecing together.  I

wish her well.  Well: like water seeps near and away.