box_of_fire_3_a_gift
raze ( box_of_fire_2_first_moves )


that night i had the worst panic attack i could remember having in a long time.

as well as i can remember, this whole thing started four years ago, right around the time i first found myself here, in this city, or town, or whatever it wants to be called, and in this house.

there have been small pockets of respite, affording me a few nights of relative peace here and there. once in a great while, i've even gone a week or two without anything more than a little low-level anxiety. but it's only a matter of time before the noise comes back.

in a way, i've come to look at it as the friend i never asked for and can't get to go home. the kind of friend who pisses in your bathtub because he doesn't feel like aiming his dick at the toilet, and then, when you catch him in the act, he gives you a look that says, "hey, you should be thanking me; i could have just as easily pointed it at the floor."

at least it hasn't been a static or predictable friend. so there's that.

it started with my brain confusing the encroachment of sleep with the process of dying. i would be half-asleep, and then, without warning, the fear would set in and i would start flailing around, trying to talk myself down. i'd give myself a run-on sentence of a desperate pep talk, my heart would slither out of my throat, and eventually i'd be able to relax again.

sometimes this would only happen once in the course of a night. sometimes it would happen eight or ten times. it got steadily worse over a period of several months, then tapered off to almost nothing.

then came the strangeness.

when i first got to experience what it felt like to kiss someone in a romantic, sensual way, that sensation wormed its way in there, and for a short time the more conventional anxiety attacks were replaced with the deeply unsettling feeling of the immense wet lips of dread kissing my brain. i can only describe it as a slow, hideous suction.

then there were revelations involving some pre-sleep ritual i'd neglected to perform. i got it in my head that everything would have been fine, if i'd just remembered to do a few small things before closing up shop.

these things i'd forgotten to do didn't exist. they were half-formed ideas that came from somewhere inside one of the more confusing cupboards of my subconscious.

i started to notice a video camera in the dark, attached to a motorized track, sliding across a thin metal bar on the ceiling, or attached to my typewriter. each time, the camera would be a different colour, a different design, and in a different location.

that could only mean one thing. someone had been watching and manipulating everything i was doing all along. the whole thing had been a game. a show. the camera had always been there. i just hadn't been able to see it, because i wasn't tuned in to the right frequency.

once i lit a match or turned on the light, there was nothing there.

these hallucinations dissipated, and four years later i'd come full circle, right back to good-old fashioned "oh shit i'm dying" panic attacks. it made me miss the murky paranoia a little.

this_is_the_noise_that_keeps_me_awake most nights, until exhaustion kicks in and my brain shuts down.

this night, it started the same way it did most other nights. i was floating around in that place between being awake and asleep, where your thoughts start to get away from you. a few wires got crossed in a familiar way, my body bolted upright, and i started yelling at myself before i knew what i was doing.

"i'm fine! i'm fine! i'm fine, i'm fine, i'm fine, i'm fine. i'm fine."

i couldn't calm myself down. no amount of telling myself i was okay was going to make me okay.

"i'm having a stroke," i thought. "i'm having a heart attack. i'm having an aneurysm. jesus christ, i'm dying. this time i'm really dying."

each time before, it had felt real. this time, it felt more than real. it felt final.

i staggered upstairs to the bathroom. i couldn't feel my feet touch the floor. i felt like a visitor inside my own body. i turned on the light and stood at the sink. i filled my hands with cold water and threw it in my face. i looked at my hands. they were shaking.

i looked at my reflection in the mirror. i saw a twenty nine year old man with wild dark hair and wild eyes, wearing a tattered pair of blue jeans, with no shirt on. anger welled up inside of me.

i punched the mirror with my right hand. it shattered more violently than i was expecting. shards of glass rained down into the sink. they looked like tiny jagged crystal cities.

i looked at my hand and saw a small piece of glass embedded in my middle finger, just above the knuckle, with a bit of blood swimming around it.

"right between the metacarpal and the proximal phalange," i said. i burst out laughing. "what a stupid thing to do. knuckles don't grow on trees, you know. but if they did..."

i laughed some more, so hard it doubled me over for a minute. it was a little unnerving. at the same time, it felt cathartic.

"i'm losing my mind," i said, wiping tears from my eyes.

i pulled the glass from my skin and winced a little. i cleaned the wound and wrapped my hand in a white handkerchief, making a knot against my palm to keep it in place. i left the broken glass in the sink. i went downstairs and put my shirt and shoes back on.

my hands had stopped shaking.
121222
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raze the bar was only a ten minute walk away from my house. i figured if i drank enough, i wouldn't have to worry about the possibility of putting my other fist through what was left of my bathroom mirror.

jim was closing up for the night when i walked in.

"late night?" jim said.

"something like that. actually, that's kind of why i came here. i just didn't realize it was so late."

"and here i thought it was my charming personality and boyish good looks that kept you coming back. tell you what; let me lock up here, and i'll give you a ride back to your place. maybe we can hang out for a bit."

"that sounds great, but i don't usually...uh...have people over to my place."

"why not?"

"give me a ride, and you'll find out."

not much more than five minutes later, we were standing in my living room.

"shit on a stick," jim said. "this is some place you got here. you just move in?"

"i've been here four years."

he made the kind of face you make when you've just seen an animal get flattened in traffic. we both cracked up.

"you mind waiting here a bit for me to grab something from my place and then head back?" he asked.

"no, that's fine."

"good. 'cause i've got something i think you could use."

twenty minutes later, he was parked across the street with a small upholstered couch propped up sideways in the back of his pickup truck. i helped him carry it inside. we set it up against the back wall in the living room.

i took a good look. maybe it could seat three people, on a good day. vertical stripes slashed all across the cloth — green, red, and white. there were two matching throw pillows. it was the kind of alien couch you'd see sitting in your grandmother's spare room, in immaculate condition, and sixty years out of time.

i wish i had a picture of the two of us standing beside each other, staring at the thing. jim was smiling, happy to have helped a friend. for my part, i think the look on my face must have been something pitched between shock and horror.

"found this at a garage sale a while back," jim said. "it was so funny-looking and cheap, i couldn't resist. couldn't figure out what to do with it, though. since you don't have any other furniture for it to clash with, well...someone oughtta get some use out of it."

"jim?"

"yeah?"

"i appreciate the gesture. really, i do. but this...this is the *ugliest* fucking thing i've ever seen."

he flashed a toothy grin and clapped me on the shoulder.

"you're welcome, brother."
121222
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raze we sat down on the ugliest couch in the world, and i couldn't help myself from laughing again.

"what?" jim said.

"it's this couch. for as hideous as it is, i gotta say it's pretty comfortable. thanks, man. really."

"don't mention it."

i saw his eyes scan my hand for a second.

"i'd ask you about that, but i'm guessing it's probably not something you want to talk about."

"you can ask."

"okay. what happened to your hand?"

"it's not something i want to talk about."

"oh, fuck youooh!" he chortled.

there was something that had been burning a hole in my brain for the past few days. i didn't know who to bring it to. i hadn't known jim that long, but i trusted him as much as i could remember trusting anyone. so i thought i'd run it by him and see how he took it.

"can i ask you a potentially awkward question?"

"yeah, sure," he said.

"what do you remember about who you were before...this place?"

he grimaced a little and ran his tongue across a few top teeth.

"because i've been thinking about this," i said, "and after living in a fog for a long time, i'm starting to wake up to the reality that there's something not quite right about this place. if i sound crazy to you, we can drop the subject. but i really don't know who else to talk to about this. you're pretty much the only friend i've got right now."

"you sure you wanna drop down this rabbit hole with me?" jim asked.

"yeah. i'm sure."

"okay. here's what i remember. i remember my mother's hands. how soft they were when she touched my face. and the smell of soap. i still think of that scent sometimes when i'm wigging out about something. it calms me. i don't remember her face, or her name. i remember i loved someone, and i wanted to spend the rest of my life with him, but i don't remember a thing about him. i should pause here to say i know i'm not your stereotypical-looking gay man, whatever that is. but you're not really my type, so you have nothing to worry about there."

i laughed. "i'm all for people loving and getting naked with whoever they want to, believe me. and just how am i not your type?"

"it's not something i can really put my finger on. it's that spark that happens between people, you know? that animal magnetism. it's either there, or it's not. you're someone i feel like i can trust, as a friend. and i'm good at choosing friends. it's not a decision i make lightly. plus, i saw you checking out that girl writing in that book that one night at the bar when our thin friend there put on a show, so i know you don't swing my way."

"there's no way i was—"

"brother, you were checking her out. don't even try and deny it. what was i saying? friends. right. so i know how to choose my friends wisely. when it comes to relationships that involve sex, though...i tend to gravitate toward your lying pieces of shit, your duplicitous asshats, and what have you. i don't think it's a conscious thing. it's more like my heart and my dick are magnetized in the direction of the worst possible people for me. d'you know what i mean?"

"yeah."

"anyway. i remember that i was gay before i was here. i know that was something i always felt. i can remember a shiny blue car. i don't know what make it was, but i can still see it vividly. maybe it belonged to my father. i don't know. i can't remember anything about him. i don't know if i had any brothers or sisters. i remember bits and pieces of other things. faces. feelings. but not enough to put it all together in any way that makes much sense."

he stopped and looked at me with concern in his eyes.

"am i freaking you out here?"

"no, no."

"you're looking at me like you're thinking, 'this puddle is deeper than it first appeared, and now my socks are soaked'."

"no," i said. "it's just...everyone just kind of goes along with things. nobody asks any questions. hell, i stopped asking questions a long time ago, and packed away most of my feelings and better instincts, and accepted the way things are. i stopped questioning why there's almost always a light drizzle of rain outside, but no one ever seems to get wet. why certain places and buildings seem weirdly familiar, but there's always something just a little off about the details. why most of the supporting players in this thing i call my life never really come into sharp focus for long no matter how hard i try to concentrate on them. why i don't think much about eating or bathing, but i'm somehow always clean and fed. and why i feel like i'm a fictional_character in someone else's dream...like i just fell into the archetype of who i was supposed to be a long time ago, knowing the moves i was supposed to make without knowing *why*. i know i'm not dead. i know i'm not asleep. but wherever i am...wherever we are...i don't know how we got here, or how we leave, or if that's even an option. i mean, what do we even call this place? this city, or whatever it is? it doesn't even have a name."

"i came up with a name a while back that i think fits," jim said.

"yeah? what's that?"

"fuckedville. population: us."

we both laughed a long time. i appreciated the bit of levity breaking up the conversation. when the laughing stopped, jim's voice got quiet and his eyes were on the floor.

"but seriously," he said. "this place is like a bridge, right? stay with me here. a proverbial bridge between where we were before, and, well, who the hell knows where. and i don't know where we go or what we do to try to get back the way we came, or what happens if we try. but i think there's a sound this place makes late at night, when everyone's asleep. it's not the wind howling. it's like a collective sigh."

"the bridge of sighs?"

"yeah."

we both stared off into space, not saying anything. after what felt like an eternity, jim turned to look at me.

"hey. can i give you a bit of advice, from one friend to another?"

"sure."

"give some serious thought to just how far you want to come out of the fog you've been living in the past few years. because once you wake up, it's not so easy slipping back into sleep. ask_the_wrong_question...you might not like the answer you get."

"you're not a puddle, jim," i said.

"oh yeah? what am i then?"

"you're a goddamn ocean."
121222
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suggested listening: ("bridge of sighs" by robin trower) 121223
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