Sugar in My Bowl

JumpJump

Sugar in my Bowl

I took it again, inhaled. Deep and slow. I felt the rush surging through my body and reach my head. My head swam in its relaxing grip. I exhaled. I tilted my head upwards against my tattered shadow of a couch. My fingers fell asleep and I dropped the joint. It fell onto my bare feet and burnt. I jumped alert, cursed and picked the remains from the floor, threw them in an ashtray. Then I sat.

I sat some more and thought slightly. I thought I smelled myself for a moment, and it wasn’t good. It was a deathly, putrid, hopeless stench. I ignored it and looked around. Mess. Everywhere. Clothes, cans, bottles, paper bags, plastic bags, empty beer crates, and a cat, somewhere. The mountain of a hundred stale party corpses lay right there in my living room. And a cat, somewhere. I hadn’t seen that cat in quite a while, now that I thought about it, and I wondered if he or she was doing as well as I was.

The rent was two weeks overdue. I hadn’t worked since I’d attacked that manager over an un-tucked shirt about a month ago. He hadn’t appreciated that. The attack, I mean. I sat and stared and did nothing. Technically, I existed, but by all reasonable accounts and expectations, I didn’t. I hadn’t had a woman in too long. Women didn’t like me, they took issue when I treated them like subterranean devil creatures. They didn’t know, but I treated everybody like subterranean devil creatures. I sat and breathed and considered getting up. There is something comforting about being a bum sometimes, something soothing about that total void of any responsibility. For a moment, I felt content. I didn’t get up, though.

A knock on my door. Hard, desperate. I assumed they were either insane or had the wrong door. I waited. Another stutter of taps. I pushed some socks and shorts off my lap and forced my body to its feet. I removed the latch, opened the door. George’s face, frantic and distraught. It looked at me and trembled. “Come in.” I said. He made a nervous path through my volcano of filth, sat down. My best friend, right here in my flat. It’s general ambiance of chaos and despair seemed to wake him for a moment from whatever was happening in his life. “Jesus, Luke.” he said.
“Yeah. Jesus” I said. He put his face in his hands like a distraught television mother and began to cry. I watched him for a moment, got up, made my way to the fridge, got two bottles of Miller, gave him one and opened the other. Still standing, I said: “What’s up?”

George and I had been best friends forever, and I mean forever. We had everything in common when we were young. Unshaped by the world. Pure. We were born very similar people, but, for whatever reasons, had lead polar opposite lives since we hit early adolescence. He got 525 points in the Leaving Cert, I left school in fifth year. He attended college, studied Business and Finance. I got fired from jobs, studied alcohol and drugs. He was under scrutiny by scouts from prospective businesses. I was under surveillance by authorities from government organisations. I looked at the man, all tears and snot and emotion, and wondered where it had all gone wrong for him.

“She left me.” he managed to say.
“Sharon?” Pause.
“Sharon.” he trembled with the spasms of a child crying too hard.
“F uck her.” I said. Pause plus one.
“I f ucking loved her, Luke. I really loved her.”
“F uck her,” I repeated, “Drink your beer.” He raised the bottle slowly, but exploded into another fit of distress, dribbling and sobbing. The bottle dropped onto the floor near his feet. I rushed and picked it up. Stood it on a table. “Jesus, George,” I said, “You’re wreckin’ the f uckin’ place.”
“She said she never wants to see me again. Over f ucking nothing, Luke. I feel so s hit.” he said, looking at me, “I feel so s hit. I’ve never felt this bad. Not once. Seriously. You have no idea. I mean it’s like…you know how happy I was yeah?” I nodded, but I didn’t. “Yeah, well it’s like that happiness…that ecstasy, reversed. I feel as bad as I felt good, you understand?”
“No.” I said. I didn’t. He frowned, still crying.
“You wouldn’t Luke,” he said, head lowered again, shaking, “You wouldn’t. You don’t feel anything.”
“Just as well, look at the state of you.” He stared at me for a moment, blankly, and broke down again. “What about Jenny?” I said.
“F uck Jenny.” he said.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll never be able to feel that again,” he said, “Sharon was f ucking everything to me. She’s perfect. She was it, she was it. There’s no way out of this way I feel…” he shot me the look of a maniac on acid and said: “Suicide is the only positive thing I can f ucking think of, Luke. That’s the only ray of f ucking light. I’m serious. I can’t live without Sharon. I can’t, I can’t…” He went on and I sat there. Numb. None of it made any sense to me, and I was glad it didn’t. A woman had destroyed him. I felt a hint of wisdom amidst my squalor. The Devil consoling the God.

George got up slow, and walked across my living room and into my bedroom. “I need to sleep.” he said. I went to the kitchen to get another beer. The fridge light was inviting and warm. I grabbed a cold Miller and walked towards my bedroom door, left ajar. I peeked inside before I closed it. The light was on but the room was empty. It gave a dead silence. It was undisturbed. I scanned it again, squinted. No sign. A cool breeze swam across my face and reminded me how the outside felt. I saw it, my large, glass window, gaping open. I walked towards it, and looked at a mound of human six stories down. Still. Peaceful. I took a swig of beer and, for some reason, I smiled.

Another knock, calmer. I walked towards my front door, opened it. “Hi, Sharon.” I said. She wasn’t very upset. She was slightly more nervous than usual, but not upset. “Hi,” she hesitated.
“Luke.” I said.
“Luke,” she said, “Is George here? We had a fight. He’s being a f ucking idiot. But I’m worried, he’s been gone a good while. You haven’t seen him, have you?”
“No.” I said, and closed the door.

I made my way to my bedroom. Closed the window, and sat back down on my bed. A cat peered out beneath me. Meowed.

---

Any feedback appreciated.

JumpJump

Any feedback at all?

dublinario

I think it's excellent JumpJump. I think you've got a loose style, throwing out grammatical rules when they don't suit your punchy delivery. That smacks of confidence. I'd say you are one of the few genuinely talented people contributing to the Creative Writing forum.

joe_dunne

Hi

I thought it was really good, very readable.

The ending doesn't ring as true for me as the rest of it, your mates kills himself and you have a little moment to yourself?

anywho very good.

Joe

JumpJump

Cheers dublinario, appreciate it.

Joe: Yeah, that was the point of the story (if there was a point at all). The original title was 'Numbness is sometimes the Better Option' but I changed it because it seemed too much like spelling it out rather than showing it in the story itself.

It's supposed to be a story on the idea that closing yourself off from everything, good and bad, can sometimes seem more appealing, because you're 'safe', from the highs and lows of civilised life and humane emotion, with all its peaks and subsequent pitfalls. The moment he has is him realising this with a certain smugness in his numb reality, seeing that his perfect friend resorts to suicide as he stands alive to witness it.

It was also an attempt to divide and characterise two extremes of my personality, and work out which one is really the better path, in the long run.

Matt Holck

jobs and wives turn friends into memories

JumpJump

You absolutely never make sense.

Matt Holck

is this Thunder Dome?



Relationships with old friends who are busy being successful detoriate due to time and common activirty.
Most likely the hero had fallen out of touch with his budy.