Tweaker

i. the triple f life

i. the triple f life

     MY FIRST MEMORY of him -- my first real memory of him that hasn't gone hazy, that hasn't started to fade or twist or curve into something else was when we sat outside on a cool spring morning, just outside the school.  We were smoking cigarettes on the curb at five in the morning.  As to what we were doing at five in the morning on a school night, not having slept through the darkness, but rather been walking around town, hiding from pedestrians, drinking beer from glass bottles and throwing them off the bridge?  Neither one of us was entirely sure -- but we did know one thing. 

     Being with each other?  Those were the times I felt most at peace with myself, with my body, with my mind, with my past, with my mistakes -- with everything.  I had never felt more free in my entire life than when I was standing next to Finn Fintry. 

     His name was one of the few things I ever had the pleasure of saying: Finland Franco Fintry. 

     My reasoning was not because it was an alliteration, not because it ran together so well -- even though it did -- but because Finn and I had built the Triple F's off of it.  Each "F" was because of a situation we'd been through, together.  We had reason for all of them . . . more reason that I could ever begin to explain. 

     They were simple: fuck rules, fuck everything, fuck life. 

     The first was as obvious as we could make it: Finn and I never followed the rules.  We were known as the Terrible Two in our school and town.  The cops knew us, not just on paper, but on a personal level.  Whenever something went wrong, the first people anyone ever looked at was us . . . and usually, they were right.

     We wouldn't carry ourselves around and act like saints, especially when something went wrong and we either A. knew we could've prevented it or B. knew it was our fault.  We had a good laugh every day over the things that people said, the things that people did, the things we were blames for -- whether we did or didn't do them -- because that was part of fucking the rules.  We laughed about pretty much everything, no matter how serious or un-serious it was. 

     That's just how we functioned. 

     The second F: fuck everything.  

     That one was pretty self explanatory, too . . . until you looked into Finn's reason for saying it.  As kids, neither of us had a good childhood.  Sure, we had what we needed -- food, clothes on our backs and a place to sleep -- but we didn't have the love, care or support from our parents or family or friends.  We'd only known each other for two years . . . but everything before those two years was shit.  My depression was unbearable; Finn's anxiety was even worse . . . and put together, one would expect a raging storm, a tornado that no one could control. 

     That was true, more or less . . . but if someone were to get Finn Fintry and Greyson Harris in a room alone together, everything would end up being evened out.  He was calm, I was calm and everything was okay, for once in our miserable lives.  Everything was in step, we felt put together, we felt invincible . . . and together, we were. 

     The third F: fuck life. 

     That had an entirely new level added to it after yesterday.  When we'd made the long walk back to my house after being downtown for nearly six hours straight, doing absolutely nothing in a nothing-filled down, he'd just looked sad and exhausted.  I figured if it meant enough to him, he'd tell me . . . and thankfully, he did. 

     "You know . . . "  He started, lighting up a cigarette in the basement after I'd turned on the dehumidified and shut off the smoke alarm.  Obviously if we were in the basement, we were going to know if a fire started or not.  Of course there was the possibility that we'd fall asleep and forget to put out our cigarette, but we were both willing to live with that as long as the smoke alarm wasn't buzzing every ten minutes because the place was too fogged up.  I wasn't sure if my parents knew Finn had followed me into the house, either, and even though they wouldn't mind that we were smoking in the basement, they still wouldn't want to be woken up by the smoke alarm.