|
Everything, Michael decided gazing around his apartment, really does happen in threes.
He remembered
as a child watching his mother at her vanity as she smoothed powder across her cheek or crushed vermillion on her lips. She
always played classical music before going out to dinner and dances with his father.
And she always had a glass of chilled
vodka and several pills at her vanity which made her dreamy. Michael would watch her chase the pills with vodka vaguely thinking
it grown up medicine. One night after they had gone out he had helped himself to this grown up medicine, gulping a handful
of pills and most of the bottle of vodka. The vodka burned but he had held it down--it was, after all, medicine.
Michael
had passed out and awoke in E.R. beside his white faced parents who had found him on their return (the babysitter had never
noticed his absence).
In threes, Michael now mused, like a sign.
When he was sixteen--God, eleven years ago--his teeth
had begin to kill him on a daily basis. The utter though of a dentist's tiny drills kept him addicted to Vicodin for two years,
moving around in a numb daze.
And now...Michael curled his hand around the full bottle of Oxy.
The sign of the three.
He
had come home as usual from work and began to tidy up. Chad worked third shift so Michael would not see him until the morning.
Chad had been his lover since high school. After graduation they had rented this apartment and got on with life and love.
Michael couldn't imagine life without Chad.
Today was March fourth, 2005. Laundry day. A day like any other. Michael
had vacuumed, done the laundry and innocently glanced in the ashtray before discarding the contents in the trash. Three cigarettes,
three different brands.
Michael smoked Benson & Hedges, Chad was a Marlboro man. Neither smoked Newports yet a half
smoked Newport lay in the ashtray taunting him.
No one visited them---not friends, not family. It was them against the
world. Two queers in a one horse hick Michigan town. Of course Chad had been working alot of overtime lately but that was
hardly unsusual for factory workers.
The Oxy clutched in Michael's cold sweaty palm was orginially Chad's grandmothers
who had since passed away. Chad had nicked the bottle from her bathroom cupboard after the funeral--"a momento"--he had tearfully
smiled before popping one. Since then the bottle had languished in their bathroom cupboard untouched and dusty.
A Newport.
Who smoked Newports?
An image flickered in his mind like summer lightning.
Half smoked.
The truth crashed upon him
like a cold tidal wave, bringing him to his knees.
IT WAS US AGAINST THE WORLD, IT WAS US AGAINST THE WORLD, IT WAS US
AGAINST THE WORLD!!
Last year on their anniversary Chad had taken him to Mario's, their town's closest effort
to fine dining.
Michael had immediently picked up on the waiter's intrest in Chad. It hadn't been subtle. The waiter had
smiled lazily at Chad, held his stare lustfully and refused to look at Michael even when taking his order. Michael had been
amused at the time yet he had kept an eye on this bitch who retreated to the waiter's station to smoke a cigarette. Or half
of his Newport.
Michael gasped through his tears, laying curled on the carpet. Why, baby, why?
Michael imagined he could
feel his heart break at this very moment. Yet another image flashed into his mind: the cool white bottle of vodka in the fridge.
He
was calm as he poured himself a tall glass and begin counting out the pills. He would, of course, need more then three....
|
