For Ever, Forever

Happiness

January, 2010

For people with no useful talents or academic interests, college was a waste of time. At least, it was in Marty's opinion.

He would never call his best friend a liar, but everything Ever said about "the best years" of college had not applied to Marty. The classes were harder than they had been in high school, especially considering that Marty was one of the undecided students. The campus was a labyrinth that he found himself lost in every day for the first three weeks of attendance. The dorm rooms were small, cramped, and his roommate was quite rotund with an aversion to showering and a habit of confiscating their communal computer for what he called his "private time." The worst part was the zero-tolerance drug policy in the residence halls; Marty had to shove a towel beneath the door when his roommate left or steam the bathroom with the shower's hot water just to smoke a joint. The latter would not have been as bad if he did not get so anxious without his weed. Whether it was for medicinal purposes or not made no difference in regard to the no-tolerance policy.

After one year of what he considered "the most hellacious institution to ever disillusion the occupational aspirations of youth in the United States," Marty dropped out. But not before engaging in the biggest argument he had ever had with Ever. Harsh words were exchanged - most of them from Ever's end began with, "Dropping out of college is going to ruin your life because..." - and various articles of furniture in Ever's apartment had been flipped on their sides before they both stormed out with tear-stained faces. It had been seven months since the argument, and seven months since they talked. Marty tried calling her twice, but would hang up as soon as she answered. He didn't think he could face her. He knew he disappointed her, but he still missed her terribly.

A part of Marty thought differently. That part thought of college as a place for people like Ever. People with dreams as vast as the sky and as deep as the sea. But Marty's dreams weren't big enough. All he ever dreamed of were great friends like Ever, Jay, Milo, Iggy, Doogie, and Todd. The larger part of him thought that college killed his dream. It surely destroyed his friendship with Ever. And the last he heard of Jay was that he was pursuing a career in football at a college out of state. And Doogie wanted to go to some medical program in Seattle. And Iggy was interested in an art school in New York. And he remembered Milo mentioning a technical institute on the other side of the country when they first met. And Todd wanted to travel across Europe before finding a university there. As absurd as it may have seemed, Marty felt like post-secondary education ruined his life. Ever was the last of his friends that he kept in contact with after high school graduation, but after the argument, he lost them all.

Following his dropping out of college, Marty moved back home into the small, three-bedroom house with his parents and five younger brothers. His brothers turned his side of their room into the Xbox corner, and so Marty was left with the cot in the basement. He guessed no one expected him to come back home. Although they didn't show it, he knew his parents were just as disappointed as Ever. That was what increased his self-medication into drug dependency, though, he would never admit that.

Marty spent his days creating cocktails of marijuana and crushed painkillers from his parent's medicine cabinet, and his nights on the streets with the addicts, thieves and prostitutes. It used to be his friends that made him happy, and although he called these crooks his new friends, he discovered that happiness was harder than it seemed these days.

Roaming through the filthy alleys beneath broken streetlights and half-lit neon signs at strip clubs on the east side of town was where Marty met Merida. She was a stripper at Go-Go's Go-Girls, but spent more time in the alleys smoking cigarettes and chatting with the homeless men than she did on the pole. She was Marty's age. Her hair was as long as her arms and as bronze as a newly polished penny. Marty had never seen eyes so green. If he squinted hard enough, she almost looked like Ever. Almost.

It was in the alley behind Go-Go's Go-Girls that Marty decided Merida would be his substitute Ever. Something like a rebound, but less commitment. Less commitment because Merida didn't want to know Marty. She didn't want to be his confidant. She just wanted someone other than the homeless men to keep her company, and someone to partake in her intoxication. Marty had no qualms about drinking the liquor she smuggled out of the club when her co-workers weren't looking. It reminded him of the nights he spent with Ever on Ellingston Beach; the nights of just the two of them drinking cheap wine, catching fireflies on the beach and her singing songs he didn't know while he strummed along to her voice. Even though Merida didn't make him feel as alive as all the nights he spent with Ever, she helped him pass the time.

As the nights in the alleyway with Merida came and went, Marty couldn't help but to feel like he existed less and less. There was a deep, dark cavern in his chest. He could almost feel it growing, pulling more pieces of him into the bottomless depths, the more the nights dragged on. Everything began to look a lot more dull. The neon signs weren't as bright. Merida's eyes weren't as green. And the memories of Ever and the rest of his friends weren't as vivid. It was the latter that upset him the most. It upset him so deeply that, one night, he cried. He burst into a fit of tears right there in the alley beside Merida. He remembered her looking at him as if he grew a thousand more eyes. Then she bit her lip, the imaginative gears behind her eyes slaving away. After a moment, she pulled Marty up from the grimy alley's floor, and she dragged him across town. He was too distraught to ask where she was taking him and too distraught to care. He followed her with his eyes dripping like leaky faucets and his legs feeling like stilts.

Merida took Marty to a squalid apartment building on the other side of town. The outside had been festooned in graffiti and trash. He remembered the air inside the lobby smelling of sweat and alcohol. She pulled him down the hall whose ceiling lights buzzed with threats of shattering. On the other side of the warped, numberless doors, Marty could hear people, some shouting and some talking, and he could hear radios blaring different songs, and he could hear the sounds of wood splitting and things being destroyed. His distraught disposition twisted into a near panic attack.

Merida stopped at the last door in the hall. The impression of the number thirteen had been left on the wood, but the actual numbers were long gone. The door was thrown open and a cloud of cigarette smoke lolled out into the hall. Half-naked girls strutted around the apartment with lowly men snorting drugs on the coffee table. The stereo blasted some heavy-bass song that nearly deafened Marty. Merida coaxed him inside.

Marty didn't know then - and he wouldn't know until he had a syringe jabbed into the vein of his inner elbow, and Merida's eyes didn't look as dull anymore, but resembled the greenest Christmas tree on fire - that that night would change his life. Merida had taken him to a drug den. Up until that point, the most Marty had ever done was marijuana and over-the-counter painkillers. After that night, he found himself spending a lot of time in that apartment building. When he was there and he felt that sweet sting in his arm and the euphoria rushing through his veins that made all the colors of the world look so much brighter, he didn't think about Ever, and he didn't think about Jay, and he didn't think about Milo, Iggy, Doogie or Todd. He didn't feel the shame of their disappoint. He didn't feel the hollow cavern of his chest growing, stealing away pieces of him. He felt full and alive. That syringe and the pseudo happiness inside substituted all those nights on Ellingston beach drinking cheap wine, catching fireflies, and strumming to Ever's voice. From that night forth, Marty was determined to never feel hollow again, even if that meant replacing all of his memories of Ellingston beach and the six people he once loved the most with images of Merida and the apartment building and heroine.

Suddenly, happiness didn't feel as hard anymore.

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