Fade Away

Fade Away



Fade Away



I survive on alcohol, cigarettes and coffee. I love the taste of smoke, the dark bitterness of coffee, and the burn of alcohol. I can’t remember the last time I ate anything. I can’t remember being hungry or thirsty, only needing a drink or a smoke. It’s not really surviving if I’m dead though is it? At least I’m pretty sure I’m dead, and therefore a ghost. Right? I don’t feel like a ghost, more like a burnout. I haven’t been out of the house in a long time.

It was weird how it happened, my death I mean. I think I died to The New York Dolls Trash, or at least that's the last song I remembered before the...uh...well...mm afterlife. I went to this party, at a friends house or something. I think he was a close friend...it was...hmm, maybe it was my place or... Any ways that doesn’t matter, I was at a party and I must have passed out, or I guess died, I don’t know. So I wake up and everyone's gone, without a word to me. I thought they were a bunch of assholes, no one wakes me up or leaves a message or anything. I think, ha, I think Black Angel of Death was playing, but that could be a produced memory. I was right pissed off.

I get off the couch and go out for a coffee and a cigarette. I had a pack on me so that wasn’t a problem, but I go to this dinner. I sit at the counter, Tom Waits-Raindogs, and wait for a long time, half an hour, an hour, could have been days ( I lose track of time easily now). No one serves me. I’m all ready pissed and this just makes everything worse. I get up and get right in the waitresses face, and she finally notices me.

“What do you want to drink?” she asks. Like I just got there.

“Coffee.”

She gets me one and I sit there drinking my coffee and smoking. I finish it off and wait for her to come and give me a refill. She doesn’t. I get up again and get right in her face. It’s not like I have to yell or anything but she didn’t really seem to hear my words either she just kinda understood what I wanted. I swore like a sailor at her and she didn’t even twith. Didn’t get angry, or embarrassed, just nothing.

I finish my coffee and decide that the service wasn’t worth paying for so I walk out. Didn’t even try to hide the fact. No one came after me. Whatever, I’ve done it before without anyone noticing so I guess it’s just hindsight that brings out that fact.

Next on my to do list was a pack of smokes. Guess what, it happens again. This time its worse though, because I’m sitting at the till forever. No one walks through me to the counter or anything like that, just no one goes to the counter that I’m at. And then they close the till. With me standing there waiting. My day has been bad enough, I need to smoke. I’m running low so I walk behind the counter and get a couple packs. Then I walk out. No trouble at all. I haven’t paid for anything else since.

So then I’m smoking, it’s when I do my thinking, and reflecting on my day, on how fucked up it was. I finally realise somethings up. I know I sound stupid. All this shit happens and I just now realise something’s wrong. But it’s on such a huge scale that it’s hard to wrap my head around.

I go through all the options in my head. I’m invisible, it’s not that much crazier than being dead. I throw that away cause people just don’t notice me, whether my voice or body, but they still respond when I really get in their faces. There’s some grand conspiracy against me, but that goes out the window faster than the previous dumb ass thought, its just too far flung. I realise I’ve stopped moving and I’m just sitting there trying to figure out what the hell is wrong.

Some kids are on the merry-go-round singing. The song snatches away my thoughts.

“Here we go ‘round the prickly pear, the prickly pear, the prickly pear...”

It sounds familiar, maybe that’s why it caught my ear. It’s pervasive, I have to move out of earshot just to regain control over my head.

Well I don’t figure it out. My mind finally explodes, just goes blank. I’ve run up against a wall. I need something to do so I don’t go crazy. So I try to get a hold of my friends. I go to their houses but no one says a word to me. I think I might have lost a couple of my marbles, if you’ll excuse the quaint cliché, cause I don’t really rremember what happened after that. I may have took a swing at one of them. I can’t remember if I hit them and they rationalized it or my fist just went straight through them. I don’t think I want to remember.

When I finally got my mind back after an ambigous amount of time I regained my mind, maybe. So I stuck a plan together.

First I had to reconnect with my old best friend. He was my number two man. It’s my theory that every group, or at least every group that wants to have some fun, needs two specific people; the leader and the second. Now the second is the one that says yes to all the good, and only the good ideas, of the leader. The leader can come up with all kinds of cool ideas, or anyone else can, but without someone who’s up for anything and will second the motion all you get is waffling. But once you get the support from a second person it all kinda falls into place. The second takes some random off the wall idea of the leader and turns it into a viable option by saying that he’s up for it.

So that was him. I found him valiantly trying to lead the group. Now he was a good second but he didn’t have the what was required to lead; and thus the group was floundering.

“What are we gonna do?”

“I don’t know. There’s nothing happening tonight.”

“’There’s always something happening, you just need to have the eyes that see’ isn’t that what Quin always said”

It’s nice to hear that I’m still needed.

“Well I’m sorry I’m not as fucking all-knowing as Quin”

“How the fuck did he find the time to sniff out all the good parties in town?”

That’s the key though isn’t it. It takes some serious dedication if you really want to have some fun. It’s the ability to track down, from the slightest whiff, all the fun that is going down. Hell if he couldn’t find at least a half assed party at the drop of a hat then he is not the man required for the job. I wasn’t really surprised by that I must admit. He never did seem like he had the discipline to lead.

So then I piped in.

“I know a party.”

But, surprise surprise not a single person even blinks.

“ I don’t know if I’m up for a party tonight anyways. I may be growing up. It’s sad I know but after what happened. I just don’t know if I can keep on like that you know. I don’t want to end up another Quin, dead at 25 and nothing to his name.”

Owch. I meanI was getting used to people ignoring me but that last line really hurt. It may have been the first time I heard that I was dead. It made it easier I think. At least then I knew what I was dealing with. It wasn’t that surprising thought really. I may even have known it all along, or maybe I didn’t. I don’t know.

But what really surprised me was that the old group was falling apart. If just one person fell away it would start a rapid unravelling. Then what would I have left?

I think I followed them around for a little while. I mean, like, a couple days, maybe even a couple weeks.

I WAS THE FUCKING FLY ON THE WALL! The fucking third person narrator. I was at a loss.

I decided that without my prior life, life is not worth living. Fuck, I mean, ah fuck just rearrange that sentence however you want to take into account that I’m dead. I’m fucking tired of trying to think of how to say things differently just cause I’m dead. So I kept at it.

It was damn hard to get those guys to pay attention to me. It took me months of going to every party they went to, it must have been hundreds of parties, before they would actually look at me and not just past me. Even then they didn’t connect me with my past life, just as the new guy that they’ve seen at all the new parties.

Then if I didn’t keep seeing them and reminding them of who I was everytime I saw them they would forget again. It just wasn’t worth it. I wasn’t going to get it all back. Hell I wasn’t even going to get a little of it back. But I was getting used to this new existence and I thought I could make a go of it on my own. We were born alone and we’ll die alone, all that bullshit.

Bolstered by this new found purpose I get some new clothes, nicest I’ve ever had courtesy of the five-finger discount, and I go out. But before the hunt there was one more person I needed to see, my old girlfriend. Just in case you know.

Now girlfriends, like the second man, need to be special people. There are certain aspects about many women that will drag you down. And when the heart gets involved everything gets messy. I suggest keeping yourself at a distance until you’re assured that the potential lady in your life won’t have any unwanted characteristics. It doesn’t do to just give your heart immediately to anyone with a pretty face. They could be right bitches and then when you have to leave to keep your sanity you have to break hearts; yours, hers, usually someone’s gets broken.

Everyone is different when it comes to personality traits that they can’t stand, but if you want to live like I do, did, then here are some pretty standard characteristics you have to stay away from: First is a girl who is jealous. Now a jealous girlfriend is the last thing you want hanging off you at a party. If you get drunk and a little frisky with a random chick when your girl is out of sight you don’t want her to freak. I’m no man whore but I can say there were times when I was drunk and went a little to far in my flirtations. But she was cool about it, its not like she was a saint either, the road goes both ways. You can’t be a hypocrite about these things, if you want to be given that leeway in your relationship, and aren’t willing to give it you don’t want a girlfriend, you want a subordinate.

It took me a long time to find her. I went to the parites, the old restaurants. I scoured the scene. I finally found her one day by accident.

“Honey, don’t you think we should look at purchasing a house instead of constantly renting.”

Now you may think that she was moving fast. Fuck she’s already moving in with someone. That’s what you’re thinking isn’t it? But first of all I got to say I’m not even sure how long I had been dead by this time. It could have been ten years. Ok so I’m exagerating probably no more than a year, probably. But I’m sure she moved on pretty quick. It’s not like we were inseperable anyways. It was just a mutually beneficial relationship. What you would be thinking if you really knew us is ‘Whay the hell is she talking about buying a house. You might as well pound nails through your feet into the ground.

“Isn’t that kind of expensive?”

“I think we can afford it. If I bite the bullet and work some extra hours we could do it. And if we ever want to have kids we’ll need a house. Besides I’m ready to settle down. I want Something That’s Ours.”

She grinned at that. I never knew she was such a sucker. And to think she spent all that time with me, and this is what she wanted. Man, what a trooper. It makes me wish she had dumped me and went after this sooner. I mean was she actually hoping that I would one day get over my wild days and settle down with her? What a cute kid.

And kids? I’ve got nothing against them but man they take a chunk out of life and I intend to use every part of my life. I don’t have time to raise them. I’ll have to deal with the fact that I don’t have a legacy. No big deal.

I bolted after watching that exchange. If I was gonna have any fun in the afterlife then I wasn’t gonna get it hanging around them.

I just hoped she wasn’t gonna go down the path of complete stagnation. You know the types. Hell, I swear everyone’s older cousins are that type. They grow up and get married, and music, dancing, these things don’t matter any more. The most obvious cue is the music collection. It usully consists of fifty CD’s, combined between the two of them, that runs the gamut of bad pop country and women cradling their acoustic guitar like a lover. I will never stagnate like that.

So now I was at a loss. There was no one else to search for. I’d have to remake it all.

I mean those weren’t the only people in my life: there was my work friends, close enough to grab a drink with if nothing else was going down, but not close enough to bring into the group; my room mate(s), a succession of serious fellows with steady jobs that you were sure would pay their bills; A few people I would hang out with to get the lowdown on what was going down. You know the normal people you meet, most of them aren’t willing to live a life like mine. They just wanted to be around someone who had the convictions to go all the way. A little peripheral living. It takes commitment to suck everything out of life and some people don’t have that commitment. If they don’t have that commitment then I can’t find the time to really get to know them, it’s that easy.

Now I just had to get in contact with someone so I could find a party.

I walked to one of my old haunts and just kind of hung out. It was a gold mine of events when I was still alive. Sure enough everyone’s talking about a the next big thing on the horizon.

“I know this great party going down its..”

“Gonna be huge man. A real mash up.”

“Fucking huge house party…”

Hell, I didn’t need to get into contact with anyone, just overhearing was good enough. And I heard of some killers. Plus there was a concert that I was going to ghost into (you would not believe the amount of shows I’ve seen while dead). I was fucking thrilled.

The party was awesome. Well I know everyone else was having a good time. You could see the fire in their eyes. I was just frantically trying to get into the thing.

It used to be so fun. The parties were ecstatic man. Nothing but fun. The drinks and music. Bright lights slowly getting over powered by the first rays of the new day. It was nice just knowing that life had grabbed a hold of us so fast that we couldn’t be bothered with sleep.

But here I was a ghost, I mean I don’t even need sleep (it takes all the romance out of staying up all night), and all I wanted to do was go to home to bed (which I didn’t really have at that time). And the worst part was I couldn’t even get drunk. Apparently ghost can’t be inebriated…who knew? And of course all the conversations I had were finished too quickly by the other person forgetting I was there.

So my first party alone was a bust, but I was determined to make the most of whatever I had. Man if I had been told that death was just a free for all where no would catch you doing all that bad shit you try to hide in life I would have killed myself on the spot. Unfortunately it’s not as good as it sounds.

Then all my friends and acquaintances stopped going to the parties. It was just as I had thought. They just trailed off one by one. First they wouldn miss one weekend’s events and then they would slowly slip away. When they still went I used to get at least a little bit of a kick out of them. A little vicarious living is all. I watched the couplings and the squabbles. Even got a little high off their energy. Closest thing to being alive since I died. But even that thrill is gone

So I just stopped going to the parties. I started living in houses that were up for sale or apartments that hadn’t been rented. Each time someone moved in I leave and find another one. I’ve been at this one for quite a while now. I don’t think anywone has moved in. It’s hard to tell sometimes though. I don’t get up much, and I think my vision and my hearing are going too.

So any ways, that's pretty much it. I mean I’m a ghost and there’s not much going on for me. I guess I’m supposed have something left undone, like someone murdered my girlfriend in front of my eyes, right. And then I put on some makeup and kick ass. But so far no such luck. I’m just chillin’. I mean I don’t need to take revenge on anybody. No one pissed me off that much. All I really want to do is hang go to have fun again.