Man Up

I could say that I was a war hero, decorated in Fabergé eggs and hung on a wall like a deer head. I could say that I was proud of my career path and that it was fulfilling, that I was happy with what I did and where I was. That my hands were calloused like my father's and his father's before his. But I'd be a liar.

                I've been having nightmares about my job. Nightmares of phone chords wrapping around me, whispering in my ears, white noise and promises of golden apples. If I thought psychology was a science I might have gone to the therapist when it got bad. I didn't need to know, though. I knew why my nightmares were happening. I got a confirmation on it a month later.

                My girlfriend had gone skydiving. The tickets were held over my head like mistletoe for three months but I kept putting it off saying that I was busy with work. I was scared of heights, scared of going out of my comfort zone for her to be honest. Kim...well Kim had come from Elsewhere—she was different than me, she was born with a ripcord in her back and the consciousness to pull it herself. She scared me for that reason.

                I would often catch her staring out the window after the trip. She would be in the kitchen using her thumb to blotch out planes in the sky. I would go to say something but she would look at me with this look, this look that held all the ambiguity as some foreign text, something ancient. I had no rosetta stone for these stares.

                The sky called to her she said—like some primordial feeling she yearned for it. She wanted to go somewhere where there were no chem trails, no train that passes by at thirty-two minute intervals. Her change was a maternal instinct of some kind, always spouting platitudes at me like some kind of chicken soup for the soul spokesperson. She was a cult of personality, the kind of person that could give a sermon on the mount and have people tell about it for years.

                She told me that when the lease was up, so would lift up her roots. She wanted to travel and would use the money that was awarded to her upon her father's death to do it. She never apologized, she never tried to console me. It was as if she figured that I knew this was coming all along. I had my doubts, everyone does. I didn't say anything in my defense when she told me she was leaving. I told her she had to do what she had to do. The day the lease was up she kissed me on the cheek and grabbed a mountaineers backpack stuffed with toiletries, clothes, and a few personal belongings and left. I uprooted the rest.

                Between apartments I lived with my friend from highschool, Johnny. Johnny had an exciting job, he was like Kim in that same way. He had drive and he had bolts and screws in the right places, he conducted electricity and let it flow through him and into others. I felt like rubber in his house.

                I worked, looked for apartments, and for fun started feeding the birds out back of his house where the retention pond had formed a stygian cess pool for all kinds of mangled wild life. I had become friends with one of the ducks whom I named Donald. Donald had green feathers, the color of oil on asphalt, a duck of modest stature. However the thing about Donald that I grew to love is that he only had one foot. He hoped around from crumb to crumb using that one leg, swam and flew with just that one leg.

                Donald had approached me one day while I sat in a plastic chair in the grass out in the lawn, blades of grass jutting between my toes. My head was tilted back and I was looking at a spider web behind me where a large banana spider wrapped mosquitos up to-go. The duck hopped over to me and bit my pinky. Out of reflex I kicked the son of a bitch but it came back because it saw the half eaten sandwich I had on my lap. I broke some of the bread into portions and fed him. He let me pet him. I felt useful to Donald and I appreciated that.

                Donald was dead a week later. While flying a car had hit him and he launched into the air, curtailing and eventually stalling back down to the ground. I stood in front of his twitching body, his eye blinking probably from reflex. Funny. I always thought Donald would have died from some sort of black bomb. That his beak was going to twist around to the other side of his face. I buried him in an old Nike box and lit a bonfire over his body that night. I cried. Mostly for myself, but some for that god damn duck.

                Johnny approached me a few days later. We had barely talked because of his busy schedule and he invited me out to brunch at waffle house. I agreed with gusto, seeing as I had been stuck in the house for the last week since Donald died, searching through apps and websites looking for the perfect apartment. It would be a nice change of pace.

                "Scott. I love you, man. But you're boring." He always did cut to the chase.

                "You're so boring that Kim left you and now you're falling down this repetitive pit where you get even more boring."

                "Good to know that you're always on my side, Johnny." I cocked my eyebrow and sipped from my sweet tea. Rotten.

                "I started this conversation with I love you and I'm gonna end it with I love you. But we've got to get you out of this rut, bud."

                "Donald died."

                "How?"

                "Hit by a car."

                "A car?"

                "Hit him."

                "Just like that? Duck-dead-down."

                "Don't say that."

                "Quack quack SPLAT!" Johnny motioned with his hands.

                "I liked Donald."

                "You liked him enough to bury him in one of my shoeboxes. Man I can't to see what you do at my funeral." He cut into an egg, then used his bread to soak up the yolk.

                "See your problem is that you're addicted to being comfortable. Live outside your boundaries."

                "Your problem is that you always see problems in people."

                "Yeah but I have a wonderful girlfriend who I can actually excite."

                "You're boring, Scott." He continued.

                He stopped talking after that and focused on eating. I did too. Once we had finished a bit of our food he spoke up again.

                "Scott," he said wiping his mouth.

                "You're a good guy Scott. But it's time to man up."