Disingenuous

10. Sleepwalking

A Word on Time 

There was a 5 year period where Jackson didn't remember much. Things moved too fast or too slow depending on how he was coping, and sometimes memories blurred together. He came up with a few tricks to help himself, but mostly he was content not to recall a lot of it. He kept track of the years by noting one or two major events that happened during that time. He was content to let everything else sort of flow away.

2005

It was defined by drinking. Jackson had never given into that powerful sleepy feeling like that before, but he didn't do anything without its warm blanket for a while.

They started in Paris, arriving right on Christmas and celebrating into the New Year with a group of people Jackson didn't know. The only person he knew on his travels was Sibyl, so he just followed her around and did what she told him, making friends with her friends, drinking with strangers, and occasionally taking little pills she'd provide him that would make his problems feel as far away as Carver was; all the way on another continent, where he couldn't see or hear anything.

Sibyl said that Carver texted her asking where Jackson had gone the day they arrived. She told him. He accepted it and asked that she tell Jackson to call him. Jackson didn't have a phone and didn't want to speak to Carver so he didn't, and that was that.

The chapter closed. Their story ended there.

Instead, Jackson slept on couches in Paris for a month while Sibyl and her friends bounced from party to party. Jackson was legally old enough to drink in Paris, and apparently in most of Europe. That made things easier because he still had money and could buy drinks for himself. He could go all the places Sibyl wanted to go. Even the clubs.

After more than a month in Paris a fight rocked the friend group. Jackson genuinely didn't know what the fight was about and truthfully, he'd only lightly socialized because most of the time he was drunk and really tired, so he took Sibyls side in whatever the conflict was and she suggested they go to Amsterdam where she said she'd met a woman in a chat room online. Jackson was pretty sure she was fake. She offered to buy Jackson's ticket, and Jackson kind of wanted to go somewhere that didn't speak French because he'd failed to learn the language in any way, so he agreed.

They were there for three months. As it turned out, the woman was real and her name was Janette. She let them stay in her little apartment with her. Jackson was half asleep the entire time. He was taking more of those pills from Sibyl. It felt like he was dreaming most of the time. The woman and Sibyl had loud sex often. Things seemed to be going well, but travel laws said they couldn't stay longer than three months so they broke up amicably and Jackson agreed to follow Sibyl to Berlin. She wanted to see Nollendorfplatz in Schöneberg. She'd heard it was intensely queer friendly and she was right.

Berlin was weird. Jackson had spent so long trying to sleep and not think that he was starting to doubt his own mind. He was basically out of money and following Sibyl like a puppy around queer scenes and parties.

Sometimes men would talk to Jackson in gay bars and sometime in Berlin Jackson began talking back to them because he learned that men would buy him drinks if he was nice. He didn't speak German, but it didn't seem to be as big of an issue as it had been in France. He was getting a friendly mix of people that sort of spoke English enough for it to work. It helped that jackson was used to only listening to half of the conversations he was in anyways.