Ryan’s Life

Ryan Funk

Misery loves company. Unless of course it is bad company, then misery loves solitude. At the moment, misery was longing for the latter and being smothered by the floppy tits and bad breath of the former. Bad company at this moment was being played by a fat woman named Tiffany. I don’t think that any of those pregnant women in the seventies ever imagined that their fetus named Tiffany would grow up to be large, tactless women, or they probably would have picked something more suitable than Tiffany, but this one didn’t and now Tiffany is Tiffany.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” Tiffany asked, putting on a voice that was supposed to sound sweet but really made her sound as if she were humoring a child in front of friends- that is- if Tiffany had any friends, which I was sure she didn’t, being the awful woman that she is.

I didn’t answer, I didn’t care. I just wanted her to leave, leave or die so I could stuff her body onto the top shelf of the hall closet with my winter clothes. She didn’t do either of those things. She started to sweep dust off of bookshelves and things with her disgusting fleshy hand.

“This place could use a good cleaning,” she told me. Yeah, well, so could your face, I thought.

“I’m getting in the shower,” I mumbled at her, “I’ll show you out.” I don’t think I sounded annoyed enough because she kept on wiping dust. I started walking toward the door and she sort of followed, kind of looking at things. I opened the door and waited for her to go. As she walked out the door she started saying something about checking on me later but I shut the door before she could finish. I walked over to the couch and lay down. Dust clouds rose from the old sofa as if to illustrate Tiffany’s point: my house was a disgrace, but those things were unimportant now. Everything was unimportant now.

*****

I met Tillie through mutual friends. Well, they were her friends. I haven’t had any real friends since college. You only have so much friendship to go around and my supplies are exhausted because I spent too much of it making up to be people I insulted. The pseudo-friends and I were having dinner. The conversation around me was numbing but I couldn’t steer it anywhere. I didn’t want to say too much because I knew they would of course use it against me as soon as I left. The restaurant that we chose was one of those shity chain restaurants that try to pose as some sort of neighborhood bar and grill by putting up nostalgic decorations that have something to do with the community. Well, I wasn’t fooled. I can spot that kind of cheap lie a million miles away. When Tillie and I were introduced, I wasn’t paying any attention. She said hello and I just sat there staring before I realized what had taken place. I got a little embarrassed and so did she, but it gave me time to examine her. She was wonderful. Her eyes were the color of pea soup with little gold and brown flecks; they were strange in the best way. She had beautiful cheeks too; high and protruding and lovely. She really was a terrific beauty, everything about her. Well, except maybe her gums. They were probably too visible- but still. Her second hello came out soft and awkward. We began to talk and as she told me about herself her hair kept falling in her eyes. She would sweep it away and it would fall back into her eyes.

The next time I saw her, she treated me like we were friends and so I supposed we were. Weeks went on and we would talk for hours. I could use big words incorrectly and she would never notice. We would stay up all night talking about life, and I could always count on her responses coming back with a hilarious and sometimes maddening persistence. Tillie could talk to me about anything, and it was good for her. Frustration would sometimes paralyze her rational mind and then she would utter the most despicable things. Pirates would have been embarrassed. I though it was beautiful. She was always trying to get me to let go, she always said things just like that, she said “Let go, you are not some tragic hero.” Well, I don’t actually remember what she said, but it was something like that.

Once, one afternoon, she came and picked me up. We got into her car and she said she wanted to drive me someplace. We followed roads until they turned into dirt and then we stopped. She grabbed some blankets and climbed up a hill. Fall weather was mostly over- it was practically winter- so most of the ground was brown and dry and just really ghastly. It was far too cold to be out on hillsides in the middle of nowhere, but Tillie didn’t care. She wanted to come to this place! She whispered to me that she came here all the time when she needed to think. She was always doing really corny shit like that, always really corny and embarrassing- not to say it wasn’t endearing. It really was.

I loved her, and I knew it, and I think she knew it too. Me and Till were originals. We were a new breed. We could see through everyone, we had the kind of perceptiveness that psychiatrists would have killed for. We would do things that no one else would have ever though of, not in a million years, not in a million fucking years. I would laugh just thinking about it because seriously, no one would have ever thought of it!

Because of a history of rash decisions I have been called impatient. And I was getting impatient. I felt that there was this string, or rope or something that was drawing me and Tillie together, always closer. I guess she couldn’t feel it tightening; she didn’t seem to even sense my true feelings for her. So the time came to let her know, and I was not subtle. I told her about herself in ridiculously flattering ways- not that it wasn’t all true, because it was. I told her our love was perfectly scientific. I told her how our love would be better than regular love by at least two or three times.

Do you want to know what she said to me? She said “I would make you crazy.” Goddamn her. She can’t say that to me. What a child, how could she have said that to me? It was like she had just said the first thing that popped into her head, a devastating accident. A sort of dull pain set in, life had been bleached of all color, life wasn’t worth looking at anymore, so I didn’t. I just tried not to look.

*****

Far before I ever met Tillie, my best friend Arnold started writing a screenplay. He was trying so hard to be one of those fascinating people. I was called on to help edit the garish thing. The screenplay was insipid at best, so I tried to help out with subtle honesty. Horrible mistake. I should have lied, lied, lied. Revisions did happen and when the screenplay was sold it was a story about a man who thought, talked and acted exactly like me. Every clever thought I had ever verbalized was strewn together to form the dialogue, and Goddamnit, every theory and philosophy that had cost me sleep was thrown in for good measure.

Fine- my personality is stolen, I am ridiculously interesting. Fine, but did the damned thing have to become such a fucking hit? I don’t think I even know a twenty-something-year-old that hasn’t seen that movie. When I was given the revised script I should have ate the fucking thing. That was my gut feeling- destroy it, it is a desecration, but I didn’t. I didn’t do anything, I even let Arnold pretend that they weren’t all my ideas. I just said I thought it was good. What a ridiculous word ‘good.’ It doesn’t even mean anything, and I let that word steal my life away. I mean, after the movie came out, I tried to talk to people about my own original ideas and people would look at me, knowingly, and say, “You got that from Roscoe’s Life” or else new people would tell me, “Hey, you remind me of Roscoe!” If my life was washed out before, well at least it was my own. Now it is pop culture, now it is the property of hip, young professionals, to laugh about over their Goddamned imported beers.

I felt like screaming, screaming until my throat bled, then scabbed over and ripped open and bled again. I wasn’t happy before, but at least before there were distractions. There were things in the future to grasp for; there was true love, though I hadn’t seen Tillie for weeks. There was the prospect of doing or thinking something great, which is a lovely idea when it is hibernating, but it’s the most devastating idea ever when it is stolen from you by your awful, awful friend.

I came to realize that something had gone terribly, disgustingly wrong. Maybe it was me, I could have stopped Arnold’s thievery- and about Tillie- well, I must not have been able to tell Tillie the things that would make her understand. I knew the words were there, I had been thinking about what she meant for months. So all there was to do was reach into my brain, or my heart or wherever words are kept and grab them out, and try to keep them organized for just a little while.

“Tillie, there is nothing that I don’t admire about you. There is nothing to keep us from trying to love one another. If it doesn’t work out then we tried, we lived for the greatest human experience, we went for it, we tried for something. That is what the greatest human experience is, risking it all in the hope that the outcome will make us better humans. I love you.”

“The greatest human experience?” She said, “Did you get that from Roscoe’s Life?”

With desperation as my only ally, I drove home hardly able to see through the tears. I did try to weigh my options, but Goddamnit, this would make everyone pay. Tillie, Arnold, all those fuckers who saw Roscoe’s Life, and that kid who beat me up in second grade- the world would feel sick for what they did to me, and that was enough. I threw open the cupboard above the fridge- like anyone would keep their medicine anywhere else-and grabbed an entire bottle of pain killers that I had been prescribed when I broke my nose playing badminton (it can be a dangerous game if the utmost attention is not paid.) I choked down the whole bottle and realizing that a point of waiting had begun, I started to think, should I write a note? No. Fuck. How unoriginal. How Goddamned unoriginal, I thought. I started pacing around my kitchen, but then imagined some sort of forensic specialist telling everyone that I had paced around the kitchen, so I stopped. I lay down on the floor. I could hear the clock ticking. I bet that everyone on the brink of death hears the clock ticking. I started to think about how gross the floor actually was. Should I get up? I sat up and then lay back down. Was it working? I can’t feel anything. Should I take something else? I got up and looked into the medicine cabinet: a bottle of Tums for God sakes. That was the only thing in there. Should I take them? No. God, how stupid. Everyone will know you tried to kill yourself with Tums- but on the other hand why do I give a fuck? I will be dead and hey, they can’t hurt… no, wait I guess I mean they can’t help. I threw a handful of them into my mouth. They were like chalk. I was so thirsty. I started to walk over to the sink but somehow couldn’t get there. I took a couple of steps, and sort of fell over. I started to feel warm, and my vision got cloudy- no, chalky- my vision got chalky. It must be the Tums. Everything was turning pink, the sounds and the smells even- that must be the Tums too. Everything is supposed to turn black, not pink. I started to scream and the walls around me started to writhe viciously, but quite suddenly as it had started, it stopped. Everything went black.

*****

I woke up in the hospital. I knew it was the hospital before I even woke up. God would never allow heaven to smell like that, all sterile and antiseptic. How anticlimactic I thought, feeling thoroughly depressed. There was nothing to do but wait out my visit to the hospital, and so I did. That brings us to here. Therapy is twice a week, and once a day I get a visit from my loving, caring, caregiver Tiffany. My house is invaded, my feelings begged for in a horribly patronizing way, and my anger provoked. She could at least put on a little lipstick when she comes over and she really should stop getting her greasy fingerprints all over the house. I feel that to close this story neatly, some moral is in order so I offer this: if you are ready to stop the very ife that courses through your veins, then consider two options: be ready for Death, or be ready for Tiffany.

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