Dream in Color II

Dream in Color ii

Looking at the black and white photos of the couple that called themselves his parents provided him little warmth or comfort.  How could these old people manage to live as long as they did without something bad happening to them?  They stared at him with the cold white glow of love manifest without demand or reward.  How could they propel him into the streets completely unaware and unprepared to deal with the obscure gray darkness that pursued youth and inexperience? How dare they show pride in his accomplishments as though they had something to do with it?  He really should have told them how he achieved what he had.  Maybe they should have gotten a picture of that to hang on their refrigerator or to pass around at parties.  Maybe he should have shown them the nauseating plum purple of his passion.  Then again, his color was about nuance, not bluntness.  In reality, it didn’t matter.  Nothing really did.  They died just the same.  Their animation in life matched their animation in death.

His friends used to wonder how he could be so black in demeanor, pale in skin, and altogether dense yellow-green bile inside.  It was one of his favorite colors.  He would wear a jacket of it to all of their funerals, every last one of them.  That was a lie, a ball-faced lie, as his father would say.  He didn’t go to all of their funerals.  If he had, he wouldn’t have been able to do much else in life.  People were dying left, right, and center, behind and practically on top of him.  It was appalling.  Or, at least, it would have been if he cared.  Whoops, another lie.  He cared.  It was the fact that he cared that caused him to forgo so many opportunities to wear yellow-green bile.

It was beginning to get dark outside and just as always, he was beginning to twitch.  Not the twitch of a drug addict, he couldn’t imagine being a slave to that.  He’d never had the urge to poke holes in his body nor share droplets of blood with friends.  Watching a drop of his blood swirl and turn a liquid pink did not bring him joy and the anticipation of injecting someone’s lysed cells into his own was not credible.  How bizarre?  And smoke?  Why, so he could get black lungs to match his black heart?  Black on black was not a match; it was a crime.  Alcohol was simply and clearly uninteresting, unless dyed some unnatural color, and besides, it smelled.

He pulled himself up off the sticky leather couch.  He thought he would get up, but instead, he just sat there sticking his butt to the couch, staring at the ceiling until his neck hurt.  Then he stared at the walls until they blurred.  He could have sworn they were moving, but he knew they weren’t.  They never were.  It was an optical illusion his mind replayed to prompt him to move.  It usually worked and did so this time as well.  He got up.

He walked across the room and stared at a plain navy-blue framed canvas hanging at eye-level.  He’d spent too much hard-earned money on it to ignore it.  Staring deeply into the canvas, he could see himself exactly where he was and exactly where he was going to be, as alone as a cocoon of spider food.  He told himself that was okay.  That was just as it should be.  That was not depression.  That just was; still the object of someone’s attention and undeniably his own.

Still sitting in his moisturizing bath three hours later, he was busy watching his skin wrinkle and wondering to himself if he would live to see it happen for real.  It didn’t seem likely, but then again, what did?  Life and death mattered to the living not to the dead.  Would he manage to finally get himself dressed and walk out beyond the stoop of his building or would he panic in the foyer and scurry back inside if somebody said hello?

After an hour deciding what to wear and another hour fretting about it, he was once again staring at the blue painting as he quietly unconsciously undressed, and for the first time in many years, began to seriously cry.

This was not the usual drop or two of salty tears managing to expose only the lightest trace of mascara.  These were Tammy Faye Baker mascara clumping nightmares.  He skin was black from the torrent, his bronzer streaked, and it was this visualization that snapped the cascade.  He began to laugh.  Something had broken inside him and it felt good.  He hadn’t been able to laugh at his frail obsessions in years.  It was the middle of the night and he was tired and unafraid to close his eyes.  This was a good sign; at least he hoped so.  He needed a good sign. 

Curling up on the floor, he encircled himself with his red comforter and used it to hug himself as though he deserved it.  It was almost like the sun was shining in his eyes against closed lids.  He would sleep well tonight.  He knew he would. He knew he would, and he knew he would dream in color.