Vexing

I can remember perfectly, the day when everything changed. When my world wasn't so fucking upside down and straight up synthetic. The winter was coming in fast, warmth was forsaken, and in a way I was grateful. I've never been a fan of summer. The idea of having to shed more clothing to be comfortable is just weird. Actually, the fact that summer was leaving was completely parallel to my life at the time; I hadn't known it yet.

New York, it's charming and appealing and full of tourists. But as every action has an equal or opposite reaction; New York holds an adequate share of secrets. One of those has taken Dustin prisoner. When I was younger, I would pry into conversations if I heard the word secret; something kept between an entity and another entity. Throughout my whole life, this was the only secret that I wanted no part in. Dustin could keep this enigma with New York.

Prior to all of this, Dustin was my everything. He remains my everything, but I'm smart enough to know not to tell him.

I met him earlier this year, in January. I was downtown, my legs aching from the cold. I smoked cigarette after cigarette attempting to warm myself but to no avail. I am small. I'm five foot three and weigh all of 98 pounds, the 26 degree weather is enough to freeze my bones until they shatter. New York at night is beautiful, even in the winter. It is magical, the only Universe necessary for many people. The city lights mingle with the leftover Christmas lights to create a comely glow that reflects off of the snow that has fallen everywhere. Some of the snow has mixed with the dirt and litter, I can't help but think it represents the filth that this city hides.

I walk down Main street in search of solace, something warm to bring me back to life. I come around a corner on the left a few steps, that opens up to a street that I frequent. It's familiar to me. It is also dark, a road thinner than most, with a hole in the wall tattoo shop on the left; basking in a neon glow that bellows disease. Next to it is an old shell of a strip club that was closed down due to building code violation. There's a diner 20 steps ahead on the right, my destination. My hands are in my pockets, my left ones tracing the square box of Marlboro 27's, my right hand shakes, for a second I feel as if it's a tremor, am I really that cold? No, my phone's vibrating. I pull it out and glance at the screen, 'Stella calling'. I put the phone to my ear and manage to chatter out a hello.

"Are you still coming or am I stuck here by myself?" Stella asks.

I feel a sudden warmth rush through me as her voice is comforting. Stella is my best friend, essential, my other half. We often come to this diner to do the homework we always put off.

"I'm almost there, I'm walking up the street." I reply.

"Alright then, see you soon."

I have every intention of just getting there. I can't think of anything but the cold, and I want to get inside, order coffee and thaw myself.

There aren't many people comparatively on this street. There's the occasional beatnik with a guitar and a rolled cigarette, the odd couple keeping a small child safe in between them. I'm used to, for lack of a better word, the 'weirdos' of New York. So I'm not surprised when someone approaches me, I expect them to ask for a couple dollars or to bum a cigarette, but this time was different. After I place my phone back into my pocket, I look up to see someone stopped about 5 feet in front of me. He's taller than I am, with brown hair, I think it's brown but it's so dark outside, I can't be sure. I don't know why, but I am instantly drawn to him. It's obviously not his looks, for I can't see him, and I have no idea who he is, but his outline against the shimmering reflections of winter behind him, it is completely vexing and hypnotizing. In my head, I sketch what I imagine his face looks like. He is beautiful, with a strong jawline, dark eyes, resembling nobody I have ever seen before. I need to know him. In the thirty seconds that I didn't realize I had stopped walking; I also hadn't realized that he was staring right at me, through me, I could feel his eyes (though I couldn't see them) tracing me up and down.

What was I doing? I could have written my epitaph just by standing there, no protection. I don't know him, I don't know what he's planning or if he's planning or why he is staring at me or why I haven't started walking again. New York streets aren't the safest in the world. I remember my mother telling me to trust nobody on them, and my father giving me a pocketknife to keep with me always when I am alone. Of course, I could never think of a situation where I would actually use a pocketknife to stab somebody. That's not me.

Irregardless, pocketknife or no, here I am.

He walks up to me. He is more handsome than I imagined, wearing a long brown jacket. Now I have absolutely nothing to say about him. I can't speak, and I don't know if it's because my jaw is frozen. I'm doubting it.



"Hello Miss." His voice is calming and threatening at the same time. I don't know how to interpret it. I waver. His eyes are effervescent.

"Hi...Excuse me, I've got to be somewhere," I mutter with haste, and push past him.

I walk two steps until I realize I want to turn around and delve into him. I always act on impulse, that will be the death of me. As I rotate back around to say something to him, we are gazing at each other. He smiled a transcendental smile, and that was all it took.

Needless to say, I never made it to the diner that night, and I figured that Stella figured something along the lines of what happened-happened. She knows me. But how could she know what happened when I don't? I don't understand how it is feasible to be so spell-bound by a stranger on the street. I probably will never find out what drew me to Dustin, but that smile, that person my world spun around, was long, long gone. He frittered away so quickly, obliterated.

After I met him that night, Dustin and I were inseparable. I fell in love with him at once. That night, we stayed together in my loft for hours, talking, discussing, interpreting and arguing. That's something that I found vexing but also endearing; he would argue his point until he couldn't breathe. He always wanted to be right. You could tell him the grass was green and he would argue for hours that it were purple. And if you dare check him in an argument, be prepared for a follow-up to how you're sort of right, and he knew that, but he knows more about the colors of the grass and the sky and the eye's perception of color; because, after all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But the world is only correct when it's seen through Dustin's eyes.

December 20th, I get a call from Dustin.

I decided to visit my family who lived just across the city from me. My parents had gone out for the night and my sister and brother were long asleep. So much for a visit.

I'm sitting on the couch, listening to my iPod, shuffling through the sounds of Radiohead and Morrissey. I don't have many vices personally. I like music, I like to spend time alone. With Dustin, our relationship seemed to be symbiotic. I needed him to survive and how odd it was to find out that day, that one day I decided to take time to myself, that he needed me more. Dustin fucked up.



"Jo, help me please, I can't open my eyes! My eyes won't open!" Dustin slurred on the other end of the phone.

"...what?" I am so confused. Dustin is not the sort of person to find humor in anything really, he's not like that.

"I don't know what to do Jo! Come find me! Please! HELP ME!" Dustin was screaming now.

"I...I...Dustin...open your eyes, describe to me what's around you, and I'll come get you."

So many thoughts flooded me. The first one was that of relapse. Before I'd met Dustin, he'd been in and out of rehab as many times as I have been to the grocery store. His mom had a problem with drinking, he grew up thinking vodka was as common a necessity as bread. He'd known only of how to bury everything with drugs and alcohol. However, alcohol was not Dustins vice of choice, Dustin was a heroin addict. Dustin started dancing with Mr. Brownstone when he was fifteen. It was his father, who lives in New Jersey that cleaned Dustin up. About a year before I met him, Dustin's dad tracked him down o the corner of some slum in Brooklyn, threw his half alive corpse in his car and drove him to some detox clinic outside of Atlantic City. Dustin did very well, he'd been clean almost a year now, and although I never knew the druggie Dustin, I could hear a stranger in his voice that disgorged a volcano of bile in the back of my throat. I knew it.

"It's...uh...it's so dark...Jo! Please!" Dustin was breaking down, I could hear the terror and affliction and a hint of affection in his voice, he was being overthrown and swallowed in a heroin embrace.

"Okay, just tell me something. Who were you with?" I ask.

"The monsters and me." That was all I needed to hear. The vagueness of his response told me more about where he was than any degree of latitude or longitude. He told me about how he used to shoot up by himself in the back of a pigeon holed, forsaken piece of shit apartment building off of Garden Road. If he's really by himself, that's where he is.

I'm grateful now that my family's not around to see me leave to find Dustin. I throw on as many sweatshirts as I can find, and top it off with a scarf. New York has a harsh fucking winter.

I run and stumble down the icy steps to the street to get into my car. Having a car in New York isn't the best financial move, but in the winter, when it's cold, there's no way I'll spend twenty minutes hailing a cab, which is actually how long it takes during the rush of the holidays. My car is a piece of shit compared to the BMW's and short limos that are populating the streets. It runs, which says a lot considering it's an 87 Grand Am and the oil probably hasn't been changed since I got it as a hand me down sixteenth birthday present two years ago. I unlock the door and thank God that they key didn't freeze like it usually does in the winter. I start the car, and with a deathly growl, I pull out of my terrible parallel paring job.

Somehow I managed to get to E. 32nd St. without actually realizing what I was doing. So often this happens to me, where I begin driving and it feels like seconds later, I've reached my destination, yet I can't recall driving there at all. At any rate, I'm turning left down a small street, almost what you would call an alley.



It’s so dark; maybe Dustin wasn’t as high as I thought, maybe he really couldn’t see through this thick patch of night we both have found ourselves in. Once my eyes adjust to the lack of light, I can see well enough to park. I close my eyes and take a deep breath as I open the door. I can’t even say that at that moment I was hesitant, though I should have been. There’s not much to my surroundings, I’m staring down a road of pavement, I can make out that there is a door on the left of the two brick great walls on either side. It’s so damn cold, but I’m shivering more at the reason I’m here. There are old, almost decrepit trash bags lining the whole length of the alleyway, old McDonald’s wrappers and empty pints of Popov. As I approach the door, I can’t even get my hand to gravitate towards the doorknob, it’s almost as if I expect this door to swallow me. The door is huge, and intimidating in rust and various stains that I would relate to blood because right now I’m scared shitless and that would just make sense. My heart is racing as I turn the knob, I pray he is in there and alive.



The walls are made of slate, the floor is made of slate, and as soon as I fixate my eyes, I too, am made of slate.



Have you ever seen a car crash? Or flipped through the movie channels late at night and stopped on a bad porn? You’re staring at something so vile and stomach turning, yet you can’t look away out of sheer curiosity. That’s how I feel right now.