vacate

Yesterday, driving south to Austin from Dallas, I created beautiful images in my head. I danced on an empty wooden floor, surrounded by empty tables, the tike lights glittering through the wavering trees. It was dark but lit autumn-like, the dead of summer sterilizing all it’s victims and keeping them in their hotels to rest and relax after hours at the beaches. Inside the hotel was staunch and sticky and mysterious. I was glad we had the bar to ourselves, the few other couples sipping their strong special-occasion nightcaps, and the thoughtful loners that would graze past, lost in thought or the transience of what was left behind.
In my mind, I would be walking away from Evan and his faceless friends. I’d strand myself along and stop on the wooden dance floor. I’d move to unrecognizable beats and pretend they were mixtures of styles combined to make me feel emotional, but stable and detached.
I’d close my eyes and feel the breeze; I’d open my eyes and look through the trees, around at moments between the bartender and his bottles, the elderly couple with their shawls around their necks. I’d feel the laughter and calm curiosity ruminating between Evan and his friends. It felt relaxed and happy and young and calm, but there was something else that only I was a part of. I stood on the dance floor unnoticed, not really looking at anything, the momentous emitting from my eyes and fingertips, feeling some vivid, unrestrained tranquility. I was invisible, beautifully invisible and I felt like air.
Events get fuzzy after that. Projections of him and I leaving Brazil together, alone from the rest of the group, and going off on our own linger around the ending.
Projections of seeing Adam at the bar: me holding a Vodka and listening to the ice cubes tanker into one another, it’s bitter smell daring the salty sea and sweat and body odor staining the air. I’m always speaking Portuguese and feeling free like language, full of the essence he drains of me.
Through my projections, we’re there for a long time. Staring at Adam, holding Evan's hand and transporting somewhere else, somewhere simpler.
I’m driving down the highway, halfway between Dallas and Austin, and I’m gazing up at the clouds. I want to explode into them and I’m pretending the sky is my mind and the clouds are people and memories and feelings. Everything’s equal and there aren’t really choices to be made.
Fantasies eventually intertwine and emotions unravel to create knots of tragedy and tension. The end I could never see. Sometimes, I’d look into Evan’s eyes and see into his mind and we’d be in a backyard, swinging on a hammock. All the parts of me he can’t relate to – all of the angst, and pointless thoughtfulness – I’d keep it to myself, while his hand rests on my thigh, our bodies slowly rocking, our faces upward looking through the trees. Eventually, it might strip away and fall down like leaves in front of my eyes. I’d look off and try to connect my thoughts and relate them to him, but they’d sound trite and nonsensical. We’d keep swinging and it would be all right.
Sometimes I’d be driving down roads with Adam. We’d watch things and think during the day and push everything out as soon as nightfall hit. He’d talk and talk and talk and I wouldn’t feel lonely by it. We’d look at our faces and at one another and keep driving.
I daydreamed for almost two hours about the small details: the crisp, pungent Vodka, twinkling in its clear glass. I thought of one morning on the beach, when I’d wake up at dawn and leave the hotel room to go down to the shore. I’d run and stop and look around and it would be empty. It would be the end of the world, like a beautiful scene in my mind with all of the sensory aesthetics tangible to my muscles and body and mind. I’d run into the water and lay back, languish in the womb. I’d float and stare at the clouds and the sky with my ears underwater. It was what it was like to be born and to stay there, without having to swallow the restrictions of living.
Although it was yesterday and things have changed those images, rendering them childlike and typical, I still think I’d like to drive from Dallas to Austin forever, being at some remote place in Brazil, tasting salt and sweat and smelling fresh breaths. I think I’d like to find a place where I can be that way all of the time. The pictures in my head are always different than the ones that unfold each day.


The reason I drove to Dallas on Tuesday only to come back on Wednesday evening was to steal Adderall from my brother. I think I should introduce that now as it may indicate something about my character or shed some light on the spiritual malaise you are about to take on as your own. It’s not necessarily the drugs that would make you think these things of me, but it’s the desire to steal them that would rightfully so suggest some character flaws. Maybe you understand and agree or understand and disagree or think a million different things. The point is, I haven’t said anything to warrant judgment up until now, so I wanted to make it straightforward.
I told Evan I went home to study the menu I have to memorize in order to resume my job as a waitress at a seafood restaurant here in Austin.
Adderall isn’t that important. It’s just a short divergence from everything else. It gives me a reason to feel illogical and rational and not really make sense, and it’s a relief from feeling how I do without an excuse.
My brother is prescribed to Adderall, which I don’t like, because I think it will invariably make him depressed and restless and lead him to the path I have decided to take. It’s long and dry and infinite and you feel no relief. It’s a life of self-punishment when you feel content, a life of false meaning and cravings for the ability to relate to other people without feeling gross. Drugs do that sometimes.
Or, for those who have fully worn out the delusion of escape through drugs, it just makes you feel comfortable feeling bad. Relishing in your sadness can feel very nice; when I’m wallowing at the times I should be smiling naturally, I feel a strange relief.
It’s like when I used to cut the soles of my feet. I’d cut off skin until it felt a little uncomfortable. I’d walk on it and feel tall and tolerant and savagely proud. Eventually, I would start cutting the whole underside of my foot: the arch would be covered in dried red smears and the palms would feel like bones clacking against the concrete.
I discovered it out of boredom, really. It was something to ameliorate normalcy, to rebel against all of the ignorant people feeding their stupidity and egos to feel life was easier until they died feeling alone for the first time. When I die, I’ll be prepared, as I’ve been living my whole life free of the apparition that you’re not alone.
Every time I’d walk on my freshly speared flesh, I’d wince and remind myself that I was always alone, that I’m the only person really inside my head. I’d cut close to the sides, so it’d be a risk for people to see and be disgusted and throw a fit. Only once did someone see without me showing them and however embarrassed I was for its ugliness, I still felt proud. Everybody’s ugly, I just took the mask off.

When I got home from the drive, I was buzzing with the shock of Adderall in my system. I had stolen four pills as not to create a problem for my brother who has probably become dependant on them to study and whatnot. I was warm all over and attributing everything to it, so I wouldn’t think the happiness and focus was real. I felt like I was flying, and it was a challenge to ground myself.
I’ll excuse feeling a shock of it into my system, but not out. It should just slowly fade away and I should forget what’s the difference. My reminders of its fakeness and dirty quick fix made me fall into the Atlantic Ocean but I didn’t forget how to swim.
I sat in front of the computer and listened to a CD. I chatted online and relished my CD. I could have left for Evan’s at any time, but I knew how I’d feel when I got there. I’d feel restless for feeling and not being able to expel it from me. When I sit there beside him, too angst to commit to anything but reading short stories or internet articles, all the thoughts I want to indulge in are pushed further inside of me. If I want to feel my solitude but I’m with someone else, then it’s lonely inside.
It doesn’t matter that I love him.
I walk through the bedroom door and we hug for a little bit. We end up on his bed, frantically pumping our hips into one another, me trying to divulge myself unto him, him kissing my neck and his scent making me crazy with love.
I’m not wondering what it’s like to be him or someone else. I feel like we’re the same people and I know what it’s like to be him always because he’s showing me his insides. Then it’s over because I climb on top and he looks peaceful and I don’t want him to be peaceful when we’re doing this right now, so I lay down beside him. I stare at the spinning fan and think of the loose images in my mind from driving and how they seemed as real as this. I wonder if this is going to be a longstanding image during the lonely moments – me thinking of feeling good and surrounded with effrontery and collisions between disaster and dream.
All night, our eyes glaze over the computer and the television, protruding like wasted little bulbs. I start to read short stories, but feel too affected to finish. I try not to clench my teeth. I wonder if I’ll be able to fall asleep tonight.
We lay in bed for a couple of hours and talk. It feels nice.

“You’re uncomfortable with happiness. You keep looking for things because you crave drama,” he is looking at me when he says this, perfectly calm.
We lay in his bed, with the lamp on. It feels nice to be wrapped up in one another. I hate when people tell me these things, but I’m egging him on because I like to hear his analyses of me.
Although it feels like he is belittling me, it closes some doors and leaves me standing in a dark closet. I always feel like I’m standing there in this dark, unfamiliar closet, wondering whether or not to stay there or turn on the light and leave. I get the feeling if I do so it will be his idea of joining the rest of the realistic, rational adults.
Whenever I’m with him, I’m the closest to flipping the switch, shrugging my shoulders and swallowing logic. Times when I’m alone or talking to someone whom I relate to about this devoid-of-diction type of nothingness, I feel like I could never leave the closet because the mystery of the darkness is so much more beautiful than everything you see in the light.
“Reality is just as interesting as fantasy,” he’s saying. “There’s no need to go around making up fillers. Once you realize that life is logical, everything makes more sense. Religious fanatics or pseudo-science devotees or people that go around looking for things to believe in are just looking for things that aren’t there… ignoring all of the things that are there through science and just…” his voice softens and I nod.
Sometimes I get in patient moods where I really want to hear him talk about all of this, even though I feel like I know what he’s going to say. I like these times, when we lay together and talk about things on a larger level, rather than talking about a specific band or movie or news event or person or story.
“I know.” I begin to dismiss, but don’t know where to go, so he picks it back up.
“I know, I know. I used to be just like you. I used to sit in my room and lay on my bed and listen to the Cure, staring at the ceiling, listening and singing,” he smiles real big and he knows he’s belittling my irrationality. To him, it makes sense. He thinks it’s funny because it is a passing phase of everybody at some point, it’s the coming of age moments he had thinking of thinking of things that were deep and profound. I scowl.
“I’ve been looking so long at these pictures of you… looking so long at these pictures of you! But I never hold on to your heart looking so long for the words to be true but always just breaking apart my pictures-of-you…” he keeps singing his old sixteen year old anthems and I’m flustered because I want to be serious right now and he’s being irresistible. Whenever I want to be somber and he knows it and still laughs and plays I try hard to be annoyed, but I usually can’t.
I wish I had had the Cure CDs around when I was graduating high school. I wouldn’t have been so torn between being loyal to all the friendships that weren’t real and connected, to the whole big farce of high school fashion shows and attention-starved teens. I could have lay in my bed watching the fan spinning around listening to the hollow beauty of the piano and the mind-jerking stories.
“Oh come on. I know, and it’s not like that, I know about that-”
“I love your teen angst!”
I look away and we keep talking but I’m not really there. I’m thinking of somebody else. I’m thinking of how he knows what I’m talking about feels it, too. I’m thinking about how I only want to be here where I am now, but am thinking about somebody else and feeling a longing that’s contradictive to what’s real – us laying here, and it being the best thing in the world. Thinking the name feels dumb and embarrasing and repulsive.
We talk and talk and talk and fall asleep.

Sharp images of violets swinging from vines overtop Brazilian verandas, of empty dance floors and the women singing in Arabic over down tempo beats dissolve like the ice cubes in my stale Vodka.
I’m sitting down at the bar and talking to the bartender, only nothing comes out when I try to talk. I hear Evan shouting and he’s fighting with somebody. My first reaction is confusion and I can’t watch his eyes wild and tone of voice get hotter. I walk through the path, the trees hanging blanketing me like a canopy. I walk slowly and I hear excited voices towards the shoreline, sounds like kids.
The sand speckles over the branched pathway and it’s deserted. I hear children talking, frantically but it sounds farther away. The water looks black and the residue sticks to the sand like tar. I sit down on and it is probably getting on my dress, but it doesn’t matter.
Adam and his girlfriend walk up. Her hair keeps changing from short to long; every time I look back and forth between them, her hair changes. I’m confused and he’s laughing and her eyebrows are bent towards her temple like she’s concerned. I look back down at the sand and gut my fingers into the sand.
“What’s wrong?” she asks and I bury my hands deeper. The sand grinds against the webs between my fingers. Cuticles coughing up their last breathe as the grain attack the skin under each fingernail.
I shrug and watch the sand, distorting its color and the night sky in my mind.
They walk away because I’m alone, staring at the sand with sickness in my eyes.
I lay on my back, on the sand, and my hands are sandy and gritty. I look at them and my fingers twirl loosely into thick, black spider legs; my palms are pits of spider bodies, two dirty, malicious looking black knobs of poison and death. I place them on my stomach and the legs flutter around and I’m growing lightheaded. I open my eyes but all I can see is black fuzz. The outline of my body is a shaky red static that traces around my legs and arms. I can’t see my hands, but I feel them scratching into my stomach, fists of spider bodies juicing into my flesh, my head’s shaking up and down. My head bashes the dampened sand. I can hear the children crying out again, but this time it’s wicked and creepy, deliriously excited. The sand shakes with the vibrations of their feet stamping the ground, running. The sniggers and maniacal laughter suffocates my air and steals my breath until I can feel my head being gripped and pulled down, deep into the sand. Dark and chalky and swirling bitterness snapping at my skin, my stomach an empty chaste of devoured insides.
I can hear too many voices and I’m biting down on my tongue to keep from swallowing it. Chunks of vomit swishes around my tonsils and seeps through my cheeks. The spiders my hands have become dart up my chest and start shaking-shaking-shaking me, ripping at me.