James shrank back a little at that suggestion. Some part of Seth’s reputation for being a jealous lover must have reached him because it seemed he didn’t want to go any farther down that path. We made the trade. James assured me he’d given me a good deal, even though I wasn’t an expert on the exchange rate of heroin—if that was even what it was. I did know that it was a lot of product, which meant Seth wasn’t just planning on getting high that night. Seth always did like to buy in bulk, I thought bitterly.
James also told me there were plenty of queers in the movement and that Japan was the model of an ethnostate. I told him fascism was not a good look for him. Then he left, via the cold dark portal to hell from whence he came.
I clutched the baggie in my fist. It was almost the size of a golf ball. Nothing good could come of it.
NOW
You know how when you’re a kid and one of your parents pisses you off, so you envision all kinds of scenarios to get back at them? Running away, for instance, or being stricken with an incurable disease. You imagine yourself laid up in some hospital bed with tubes running through your body like freeways. “If only you’d let me have that first-person shooter video game,” you’d tell them, already so weakened by the sickness that you only have the strength to utter those final, damning words.
That will teach them.
I did what I did because I wanted to hurt Seth. I wasn’t even thinking about my own safety or well-being. I was consumed by my desire for revenge. I wanted him to feel even a fraction of the pain I was feeling.
It’s a little frightening to think about how readily I took that plunge. It wasn’t even that hard of a decision to make because there was so little left of me by then. Seth was a roaring house fire, and I was a match, burnt-up.
What makes me so mad now, is that if I had succeeded, it would have been just one more thing I’d given to him.
THEN
I asked Mitchell for the keys to the Malibu. I’d ridden my motorcycle to the party, and Seth had his van keys, but the Malibu felt like a fitting place to sever our bond because it was such a large part of the Before.
Mitchell asked me if I was okay.
“I drank too much. Just want to sleep it off a bit before I get on my bike.”
He gave me a concerned look, but in true Mitchell fashion, didn’t ask questions. Instead, he gave me his keys and told me not to pass out on my back and choke on my own vomit. Also, not to barf in his backseat. I chuckled like that was a funny joke.
After some trouble because it was dark and I was emotional, I found the Malibu. I wondered if Mitchell and Jeannie would sell it or trade it in for something more reliable. I imagined them with a kid, and even though I was, for the most part, a pessimist, I thought perhaps they could make it as a family, especially if they were working together to raise a child. Didn’t parenthood have the potential to bring out the best in people?
I climbed into the backseat and pulled up an old playlist on my phone from when Seth and Mitchell schooled me in the ways of rock ‘n’ roll. It was a mix of all of our favorites—Elvis, Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, Lou Reed, David Bowie, Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, Black Mountain and more. I listened to “Tonight, Tonight” and remembered that fateful camping trip to McKinney Falls when I told Seth he sang like a fallen angel.
You mean like Satan?he’d said with an affectionate chuckle.
If you looked at our relationship from very far away, like through a telescope, where you could only see a small sliver of it, it was so very beautiful. And perhaps that was what I was attempting to remedy. In my quest for the truth, I wanted to expose the ugly underbelly of what we’d been through, what an all-consuming love and obsession could accomplish. Perhaps this would be my final work of performance art. Seth could even write a song about it. I’d always been his inspiration, his muse, and the band’s number one groupie, so why would this be any different?
But he would suffer, that much I knew. As cruel and vicious as he’d been to me just a little while ago, his soul would ache for me. Maybe not when he was onstage basking in the applause. Maybe not when he was seducing some pretty young thing into his bed. But on the nights when he was lonely, and no amount of drugs or sex or music could fill that gaping hole inside of him, he’d yearn for me.
And that was enough.
I cut up some lines using an old CD case of Mitchell’s as a surface and my Austin Public Library card as an edge. I wasn’t careful about dosage. I didn’t give a shit. I would get high until I couldn’t anymore, so even after the initial three lines, I cut up three more, and three more after that. I don’t know how many lines I snorted because shortly after, I lost consciousness.
I remembered thinking as I faded away, wouldn’t my skin make a beautiful rug for Seth’s apartment?
NOW
In all the secrets I’ve disclosed to Dr. Denovo, there is one confession I have not made. It’s that my overdose wasn’t an accident. For some reason, I can’t bring myself to tell him that. Even with all that I’ve shared, I don’t want him to think less of me for it. Fucked up, I know, but we live in a culture of vicious shame.
I won’t tell anyone, ever. It’s a secret I’ll take to my grave. Only one other person could guess at what I was trying to accomplish that night.
And fuck him.
THEN
I woke up in an ambulance, jarred awake by a shot of Narcan, confused and sick and surrounded by strangers. I was disoriented for most of the ride to Seton Medical Center, but my first coherent thought was that even in this attempt, I had failed. My second thought was that my parents were going to find out. The transfer to a hospital room gave me some time to figure out what the hell I was going to say to them. As the medical staff was moving me, I saw Sabrina turn a corner and come running toward me, but I couldn’t remember seeing her at the party.
“Your parents are on their way,” she said to me as though it was supposed to be reassuring. I wanted to ask her what had happened, but they told her to wait outside of my room until my parents arrived.
The withdrawal was coursing through me, stronger than ever before. The shot must have reverse-engineered the drugs to make them start attacking me. I asked the nurse for something to take the edge off. Instead, she gave me a snotty look and told me I was lucky to be alive.
