Shades of Grey

August 7, 1997, Providence KS.

Grey Townsen stood arms resting on the pew in front of him mouthing the words to psalm 119 X without ever making a sound. His mother was in front of the congregation smiling brightly, leading the singing just as she did every Sunday, her hand swooping gracefully in a pattern designed to keep her audience humming along at the proper tempo for this particular psalm. Of course this was rarely if ever successful. In fact, the congregation almost always wound up leading his mother’s motions through their lack luster way of singing to their own beat, consequently every psalm, despite its designated rhythm, was sung at the same distracted pace. Even so, the singing was always Grey's favorite part of church regardless of how apathetic the congregation was in its efforts. Hearing the sweet sound of God's word put to music had a way of soothing the hardness of his heart and comforting the sorrows of his soul. Of course, being a teenager he could never allow anyone to witness his pleasure, after all if someone were to observe that he found even the smallest thing viewed as positive to be enjoyable, they might get the idea that he had the capability of having a positive outlook on various other things in his life. To Grey, this was quite simply unacceptable. After all, he was a teenager. And so he stood, head down staring at his feet, moving his lips just enough to ward of his fathers rebuke yet not so much as to give an impression of enthusiasm.

There was no instrumentation at Grey's church, no modern day praise songs or even time tested hymns. Exclusive Psalmody was the RP way. (That’s reformed Presbyterian for all you heathens out there.) Yet, even without a hip rock band on stage singing repetitive praise songs designed to invoke a passionate emotional response void of any real substance, the melodies of the scripture were indeed a beautiful thing. “Before thee let my cry come near, oh Lord true to thy word, teach me.” Grey recognized the beauty of the words despite the fact he could rarely understand their significance. Of course, had he understood the meaning of this particular line at that particular moment, his understanding in and of itself would have rendered the phrase meaningless.

After the service Grey and his brother, who was himself a fairly young man though married with two boys, went with the other young men to debate various aspects of the day’s upcoming sporting events, which was almost always a football game. They would discuss the local NFL team, each with their own reasons as to why their team sucked yet again this year, how badly the coach had bungled last weeks calls, or how so and so couldn’t make a freaking play if his life depended on it. Occasionally one of the teenage boys would voice an opinion of optimism and would immediately be ridiculed for his ignorance. Grey would stand on the edge of the circle with his brother interjecting intermittently, saying things like, “yeah he sucks”, or, “yeah they suck” in order to fit in to the conversion.

It was always at this moment that Grey would take his opportunity to seek out and talk to Samantha Jenkins. Sam was without a doubt, the coolest girl Grey had ever encountered in his young life. Her hair was long, bleached with dyed strips of pink and orange. She wore small tank tops revealing her midsection and a studded belt to hold up her incredibly baggy skater style Jinco jeans. She had a bracelet with little spikes on it and wore lip gloss with tiny sparkles that drove Grey completely out of his mind. She was the only teenager in the church who didn’t go to the private Christian school, oh no, she went to public school. And, as if all this weren’t already too good to be true, Grey had recently discovered that Sam had a crush on him, Grey Townsen!!!!! Grey had wondered to himself how such a thing could be possible but after many hours of contemplation realized the futility in asking himself such a question. One might as well ask oneself how a beam of light can be made up of both particle and wave, or how when said beams are projected through the earths atmosphere in the early morning hours they display a work of artistic beauty so vivid and extraordinary that mankind, despite all its accomplishments, has yet to duplicate. It was a miracle of nature, and Grey would be damned if he was going to ruin it by thinking.

The approach towards the opposite sex was always a delicate procedure for Grey. He must not seem overly eager while at the same time he must not seem disinterested. Later in his life Grey would learn that women’s desire and need for directly contradictory modes of behavior in a man was just one of the things which made them insane. Trying to understand such things was again like trying to understand beams of light, although this was less a miracle of nature and more of a natural disaster.

Grey made his way over to the entrance of the nursery where Sam stood holding one of the church’s many children. She looked so cute, puffing out here cheeks in a comical fashion causing the toddler to erupt into a giggle fit. Grey did his best to ignore the anxiety which accompanied every approach, as if he had just walked through a spider web of self doubt yet remained undeterred in his path brushing aside the strands of panic seeking to hold him back. This was the ritual. He then attempted to put on the smoothest carefree slickster smile he could manage. A look that would, later in his life, get him into stranger places and more trouble than one might think possible, but for now it was pure gold.

“Hey Sam, what’s going on....” aaahhh the hard part was over. As usual he was greeted with a mischievous smile and the sweet spark in her eyes, as if she had her own private joke which she stubbornly refused to share with anyone else.

“Hi Grey, how are you doing,” her voice was soft, yet held great confidence. “I would have thought you would have dragged your parents out of here by now, aren’t the chiefs playing today.”

The coy smile that accompanied this remark was clearly to let Grey know that she understood he had only stuck around in order to speak with her.

“Yeah well, you know how hard it is to drag them away from their Sunday rounds, besides the Chiefs freaking suck this year.” The truth was that Grey’s parents had broken away from their individual conversations and now stood together next to the door, which was the sign that they were ready to go. “Hey,” Grey exclaimed as if he had just remembered something despite the fact that he had planned on this line of conversation throughout the service. “I heard you and some of you friends got busted breaking into the school last week,” by “the school” grey meant south junior high school.

“Yeah, it was really dumb, we got into massive trouble the next day. Principle Marsh is such a freaking tight ass, I swear, you couldn’t pound an insulin needle up his butt hole with a ball pin hammer.” Grey laughed and nodded his head as if he knew exactly what she meant despite the fact he knew absolutely nothing about principle Marsh or for that matter any of the public school staff members.

“Water tight, huh?”

“Hell yeah, we got three days out of school suspension. We weren’t even stealing or vandalizing anything”

“Yeah that’s right, I heard you guys got caught in the gym playing kick ball or something.”

“Yep, I told you it was dumb, but hey, what fun is life without getting into a little bit trouble.” The mischievous smile was back again and Grey stood mesmerized by it, unable to look away, powerless against its charms. He had to say something before it got awkward but what came out of his mouth next he could not believe.

“So, when are you going to invite me to come out and get into some trouble.” He waited breathless praying that she wouldn’t respond with a sarcastic remark or one of those, are you kidding me looks. But of course, as he had suspected he had nothing to worry about.

“Yeah, actually me and some of my friends are going out tonight if you wanna come.” She lowered her voice, “Andy stole a bottle of peach schnapps from his dad and I think were going to go to the park or something.” Now that the incriminating conversation had past she once again spoke in a normal tone. “So you wanna come along maybe.”

Grey was so overwhelmed with joy that his slickster smirk almost became a grin. So much so in fact that he was forced to summon every ounce of his will power in order to keep his oh so cool demeanor from turning into childlike giddiness. “Yeah, that sounds really cool. Besides what else am I gonna do tonight, go to youth group.” Sarcasm is the bastion of the weak and cowardly. Something Grey's father told him on a regular basis.

“Ok cool, I’ll just give you a call tonight when I find out exactly what were going to do.”

“Ok, sounds good.” Now he was ginning, he couldn’t help it, but that was all right because so was Sam and for a moment they were trapped in one another’s eyes.

“Um, I think your parents are ready to go.” Grey look across the foyer at his parents who were waiving at him.

“Oh, well I guess I better go, see you tonight Sam”

“Ok Grey, bye.”


Grey walked out of the church that day feeling as though he had just single handedly conquered a savage army and planted his flag in the soil of an unknown land, thus claiming it as his own. This was perhaps a bit premature but the feeling was undeniable. Now all he had to do was go home watch the chiefs loose, eat lunch with his family, and count the seconds until the sun went down.

********

December 02, 2007, Dodge City KS.

It was ten years later and thoughts of Sam and that Sunday never failed to depress Grey. The memories crept into his mind despite the years he had spent trying desperately to forget, damning him to relive the events of August 07, 1997 over and over again. As if he needed any help becoming depressed at work.

For Grey working the assembly line at the automotive parts factory was a living, breathing, death. He supposed that’s why his coworkers all looked so much like zombies pacing the factory floor. He sometimes imagined himself as a slave. It made things easier to think of his life in this way. He would visualize himself as a once proud young man ripped from the former glory of his old life only to be forced to toil without reprieve for the profit of his masters. He would picture himself shackled to his workstation, the rhythm of the assembly line suddenly doubling as the floor managers deep booming voice cried out over the intercom, “Production speed!!”

It was easier to think of things in this way because every time the simple fact that Grey was there by choice entered his mind it was all he could do to resist the urge to bolt for the nearest exit. He often wondered why it was that he could not be happy with his life as those around him seemed to be, and was once again reminded of Sam.

After Grey was released from the living hell of his job he was immediately returned to the slightly less painful purgatory of his life. He quickly punched his time card threw on his coat and gloves and began the walk home. It was the winter of 2007 now, 10 years since the day that had fatefully changed his life forever. He found it funny how people inevitable measure time in terms of tragedy. A German Jew counts the years since the holocaust, the entire world counted the years since the murder of Christ, and he counted the years since he had been left by Sam.

The sound of the snow compacting beneath Grey’s footsteps grated on his nerves as fingernails across a chalkboard. Grey hated walking. He was forced to walk everywhere he went due to the multiple DUI’s he had been charged with over the past several years. Grey’s doctors claimed that he was a textbook example of an alcoholic and a drug abuser. Grey claimed that doctors were absolutely full of shit in every regard. He supposed that they were probably both right.

Grey lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply as he rounded the corner of 17th and Harper. The smoke warmed his insides, reminding him that he was officially off work and that the witching hour would soon be at hand. Beer thirty baby, next stop numb Ville followed shortly by hangover junction. He new exactly what the scene inside his house was going to be before he even opened the door. It was, after all, the same every day. Sure enough, as he walked into the disaster zone of his small two bedroom house there, sitting on his couch was his roommate, shoeless boy wonder, smoking bong in one hand, X-box controller in the other. Shoeless sat surrounded by a plethora of empty pizza boxes, Ramen noodle cups, a variety of beer cans and bottles, dirty cloths and dishes from last week and an empty garbage can someone had gotten out in order to clean up before they quickly lost the desire or became distracted.

Grey didn’t even know the shoes real name, (the shoe is short for shoeless). Grey used to think that shoeless was his real name spelled with a “sch” and that he must be Jewish. Later someone had explained to him that it was actually a nickname the shoe had received in college. He had been so lazy in his dorm days that he quite literally never put on a pair of shoes for months at a time. He and Grey had been roommates for a year or so now and Grey had only seen him leave the house on rare occasions and even then it was without shoes. When they had parties on the weekends in order to attract the young and impressionable sort of girls only college parties can provide, the shoe used to impress the party goers by putting out lit cigarettes on the bottom of his feet. Shoeless was somehow quite the socialite despite the fact that he never moved from the couch.

“What’s up you fucking bum!” Grey exclaimed jovially as he burst through the door, “You get up to take a shit today or just do it in your pants again?” Grey was once again wearing his patented slickster smirk as he parked himself in one of the couches opposite the shoe.

“Actually,” he replied, “that nasty bitch you brought home last night wouldn’t get out of here this morning so I took one on her face instead.”

“Dude I bet that freak probably liked it”

“Oh she did.” he said in a matter of fact tone as he handed Grey the bong, “You know how the ladies love my funk bro, they cant get enough.”

If Grey thought that the first drag of his cigarette after work was good than the warm smooth thick liquid smoke from the bong filling his lungs was like gold. As he cleared the chamber he quickly plugged his nostrils shut with one hand so that as he began to gag on the deliciousness he wouldn’t loose any smoke through his nose. He soon couldn’t contain himself and erupted, coughing out a thick cloud of smoke which hung swirling about the ceiling.

“Goddamn!” Grey shouted as he jumped to his feet and headed for the refrigerator still coughing. He opened the fridge and removed a handle a Captain Morgan and a two litter of Dr. Pepper. He had been released from his job and it was now time to get to work. Greys job paid the bills but getting fucked up was his career. He took the ingredients over to the kitchen counter made some room by brushing some empty hamburger helper boxes and crusted over paper plates onto the floor replacing them with the rum and Dr. Pepper. He quickly threw some ice into his drinking glass, which was the only clean glass in the house, took a chug of rum strait from the bottle to get him started and proceeded to mix himself a cocktail. Now he could relax. The hit of weed had put a smile on his face and aided him in shrugging off the anxious feelings left behind from work as he settled into the couch once again, free to slip gently into oblivion.
Everyone has their roles to play in life and Grey was no different. Sadly, as of right now Grey’s role was of the clever alcoholic, which, as depressing as that is, is still better than just the alcoholic. People don’t like an unhappy drunk, but as long as he kept the smile on his face and looked up from his drink once in a while just long enough to make people laugh he would never be short on friends. Grey devoted a great deal of energy to this cause over the years but it seemed to be becoming exceedingly difficult of late. To Grey life felt like a vacuum; cold, dark, and containing an emptiness intent on tearing him limb from limb.

Something Sam had once asked him long ago had stuck firmly in Grey’s head, and it was something he often thought of with a feeling of guilt and remorse. She had asked how he managed to be so happy. He remembered being frustrated by the question due to the fact that he, in his teenage years, had tried so hard to give off the impression of a discontented youth, a facade he believed to be hip at the time. Grey had countered her comment by going on an extended rant about how it was all just an act, and had gone into great detail about how he believed life and the world around him was a terrible thing, full of hypocrisy, corruption, and shattered dreams. He never imagined his words would have such an impact.


Grey was now on his front porch smoking a cigarette and staring blankly at the cars as they passed by his house. Looking back he realized how ironic their conversation had been. Sam had been looking for some kind of hope, and for whatever reason she had found that hope in him. Meanwhile, Grey had been trying to impress her through his lack of hope. How could he have known?

As a car drove by he saw Sam’s face in the driver as it passed, as he frequently did, but of course, it wasn’t her. He would never see her again, at least not in this life. Lessons in life are hard learned; Grey wondered how many more he would have to endure before the Lord might hear his cry.