chuck young — get empty

by Chuck Young

Just another day that has turned into just another night. At least, he thinks it is night. He looks out broken window and sees that the sun has indeed set. As usual. He takes out his phone. His battery is low. He notices that the group of girls in the corner is glancing over at him. He can’t tell if he sees pity in their eyes. He thinks about updating his facebook status.

The music has done its in between song pause. This makes the party seem more crowded and loud than it might actually be. Then he hears the chords and melody of an intro that haunts him in dreams. The exact part of the song that he remembers agonizing over years earlier while doing pre-production for the record that it was to appear on. He still hears these notes before sleep finds him. These are the songs of his insomnia. The party, he’s pretty sure, has gone quiet. Satch stumbles over to the ipod and quickly changes it. The song that gets landed on is from American Hi-Fi and it saves the energy of the night. Satch apologizes to him profusely. Satch is drunk, which should be obvious but somehow isn’t when everyone has been drinking all day. He feels like he sees one of his friends touch his ear piece and then speak into his wrist. As Satch explains to him that he forgot those songs were on his ipod, another friend approaches and guides Satch gingerly away from him. Satch is still trying to explain himself. The girls in the corner are now definitely giving him the sad eyes.

He gets up, grabs the first bottle of hard booze he sees and walks outside amongst the smell of fresh cut grass and chlorine. He takes a healthy swig of brown. It gags him a bit going down. His eyes fill with water. This is as close as he ever comes to crying: this sting. He knows someone will come out to find him. They will be wearing surgical gloves. They will dust him for fingerprints. They will have packing peanuts. They won’t know that it’s only the sting of the alcohol that has him choked up and watery-eyed. They’ll have something to talk about now: new evidence. His suspicions are confirmed. He takes another swig.

“I’m fine.” He says annoyed.

“Yeah. No. We figured. Thought we’d get some fresh air.” One friend speaks.

“Oh yeah.” He lets out a laugh. “You need to stop with this shit.”

“What shit?”

“Come on. You might as well be wearing sunglasses and have a little white wire coming out of your ears.” He takes another healthy swig.

“I don’t know what that means. Do you guys know what that means?” One says and looks around at bashful feet.

“Oh. Fuck you. You’ve been choreographing this big dance. You’ve rolled out the red carpet and loaded it with eggshells.” He looks out into the field across the street. “I’m sick of the tip-toeing.”

“You’re drunk. You’re mixing metaphors.”

“I haven’t had a real fucking moment in a year. You’ve seen to that.”

“You’re blaming us!?”

“Yup.” Another pull coats his throat. “Yup.”

“You don’t know what it’s like when you’re not around. The things that we say to each other.”

“You talk shit behind my back is what you’re saying.”

“That’s not what I mean. We allow ourselves to talk about it. We lost someone too, you know.”

“Oh. Oh. Yeah. I forgot. You lost someone too. You lost someone from the comfort of your fucking living room. You lost someone over the fucking phone.”

“You always do this. You make it a competition.”

“Yup. I win, asshole.”

“This is stupid. Just come inside.”

“No. I want to hear about how much I hold you guys back. I’m holding you guys back, right? I’m the one holding people back.”

“You think we’re holding YOU back!? We’d love nothing more than to see you take off. The other guys moved on. They’re out there. Doing it. Finishing what you two started.”

“Yeah. It’s crazy what the promise of money can do. What a great tribute.”

“Alright. Alright. We get it. What do you want us to do? This is how we know to be here for you but you make it fucking difficult.”

“Sorry for making it so hard to be a real person. To be real people. I’m a fucking statue. You get that, right? People walk AROUND me. Talk ABOUT me. You know the difference between small town famous and real life famous? Fucking tragedy.”

“You think small town fame is your problem.” There’s a sarcastic nod in there from someone.

“Yes. Yes, I do. I was there. I held him in my arms. I watched him take his last breath and I watched my future die with him. People around here love that shit. You guys were at your houses watching fucking Entourage and jacking off over this fantasy life you were to live. And now you go home and watch fucking Bodyguard or some shit and resent me for killing the dreams of Turtledom, or E-dom or Johnny-ness. You’re a bunch of Kevin Costners now and you fucking hate me for it. Well, just go back to being my friends. Stay out of my shit. Get rid of the protective bubble you’re constantly blowing around me.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re right. We don’t talk about it around you. We assume you don’t want to re-live it. But, there’s no conspiracy to keep you at a distance. We’re not pulling any strings. We’re living like we’ve always lived.”

“Great. Great. Thank you. Now, go the fuck back inside and leave me alone tonight. Let me live tonight.”

“Sounds good.” They collectively undulate like a wave back to the garage. “We’re here for you.” One adds.

He takes off running down the street. He thinks he hears voices calling out for him but he can’t be too sure. He sips as he runs; the decrepit and translucent man behind the curtain inside of him getting closer and closer to the control center of his body. He can feel the transition into the Weekend at Bernie’s version of himself that is starting to take place. He senses the puppeteer hand of God penetrating his asshole, tunneling its way through his insides and up to his mouth. Someone pulls the chain on the light bulb that is his consciousness.

***

He feels the weight of the aluminum. He can tell, due to repetition more than science, that what he feels is hollow. He lifts it to his lips anyway. He tastes the bullet. He lingers in the stale smell and remembers early hangover clean ups after throwing parties when parents are away. He closes his eyes for a split second deciding to stay within the expulsion of memory.

He struggles a bit to get himself off the spring-less couch. This act always makes him feel fat. He glances around to see if anyone is looking in his direction. He makes his way over to where the rest of his cans live. A stranger hovers over his Styrofoam. She looks somewhat graceful given the fact that she’s assuming the position most reserved for untrustworthy toilets. He approaches. She looks up at him with eyes and lips.

“I’m empty.” He says. And means it.

She laughs. She’s nodding her head. She isn’t moving. He shakes the can in his hand.

“Oh.” She says, looks down at the cooler and stands up. “I thought you meant…” She doesn’t continue.

He reaches in the cooler. He fights his way through his empties to find something full. The cooler has no ice. He feels her eyes on him.

“So, who here are you dating?” He taps the top of his can and feigns looking around. She is a stranger.

“You.” She replies deadpan.

“Oh yeah? If we were dating, I wouldn’t bring you to a Party Garage.” He smirks. No one seems to be listening. Can she really have stumbled in on her own?

“If we were dating we would probably do math problems as foreplay or play chess and I would push you into sprinklers when we were walking down the street together. A lot of the time we would get Thai takeout and we would eat it on the floor.”

“True. Until I figured out how to make pad Thai and we would eat that on the floor.”

“Sometimes I would throw fits and you would try to pet my head or my hand and I’d slap you but it would be okay in ten minutes or twenty and we would eat sorbet like dogs.”

His smirk turns into a smile. He nods his head and sips his beer.

“Your family would be from Georgia, or somewhere.” She continues. “And when we arrived everyone would hug a lot and hand me iced tea with a lemon, sliced, hanging on the glass. We would swim and have conversations and walk around at night, holding hands more than we do at home. On long drives I would play the same songs over and over maybe ten times in a row, and you would sing along each time, never getting frustrated.”

“And I would look away from traffic to lick the side of your face when we came to a red light.”

“And we would recognize how fragile human beings are treating each other with great care, like we were made of glass or weak bones. And this would all probably last three months at most, because anything more than that seems impossible. And then sometimes, even after those three months, I would curl up in a ball on your bed.”

“And I would tell you you looked like a bagel.” They dwell in the collective silence of accomplishment. He reaches in the cooler and hands her a beer.

“Take me somewhere.” She leaves the can unopened. He waves his hand in the air before them and as she walks in front, he pounds his in a gulp and a half. No one asks them any questions. There are no roadblocks; no goodbyes that need to be spoken. He doesn’t understand where she has come from but it’s a moot point. It has the feel of transitions in dreams: point A to point C.

—
some dialogue appropriated from a poem by mal coppenrath
title art by colin spencer
follow chuck on tumblr dot com