The Gorgeous Slaughter

by Christina Hart

  “Is there a reason you’re awake this late?” I ask him.

  And I don’t have to start the timer, because he starts typing, almost like he had the message open already, and maybe he still did. Was he about to say something? Did I ruin it? Did I speak too soon?

  “I have a little trouble sleeping,” he says.

  “Any particular reason why or is it insomnia?” I ask, trying to sound like I know what I’m talking about.

  “I guess a little bit of insomnia, or I just can’t sleep haha idk no one has diagnosed me.”

  “Well I’m not here to diagnose you. I don’t do that,” I say. And I leave the message thread open because he’s answering so quickly.

  “You don’t diagnose people?” he asks.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “But your IG name. Are you a psychiatrist?”

  “Of sorts. I mainly just listen and try to help people help themselves,” I say.

  “Do you treat them?” he asks.

  He sounds curious now, and if I didn’t know better I’d say he even sounds interested.

  “In a sense. But my method of treatment does not involve medication or labels. I believe in helping people just by being there, by being someone they can talk to. A lot of people hold a lot of stuff in.” Shit. I think I let my lack of actual professionalism slip there. Will he know I’m a fraud? Will he even care?

  “That’s pretty cool. I agree. I think a lot of people hold stuff in.”

  If he cares it doesn’t seem like it and I keep going. We’re talking. This is not a one-sided conversation and I can’t let it die. “They do. WE do. It’s unfortunate, and sometimes, tragic.”

  “I never thought about it like that,” he says.

  “I have to.”

  “Why?” he asks.

  “I have people to watch out for. Good people. This job mostly consists of talking people off a ledge most nights.”

  “Yeah, is that one thing you posted true? Hours 9pm-3am?”

  “Yeah, it’s true. I make special exceptions for patients I really connect with, and people who really need someone to talk to, but most nights I only communicate with them between those hours.”

  “Do people actually call you?” he asks.

  “Yes. All the time.”

  “Do you mind?” he asks.

  “Not at all. It helps me, knowing I’m making any sort of difference in anyone’s life.”

  Seen.

  I can’t let it end like this. We’re so close to a breakthrough.

  “You could call me sometime, if you wanted,” I say.

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks.”

  “Of course. You can even call me tonight if you want. Since you can’t sleep.”

  “Lol I don’t know about that. My girlfriend, she might get mad if I call someone I don’t even know.”

  Bingo. He brought up Tracy, I didn’t. I knew she wasn’t as perfect as she pretended to be. I take it she has a bit of a jealousy streak. But with a psychiatrist? A therapist? Does her jealousy run that deep?

  “You think your girlfriend would get mad if you spoke to a therapist?” I ask. I pry. He invited me to, so I do.

  “Well when you put it like that, maybe not. I don’t know. She gets jealous pretty easily haha.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?” I ask.

  “Not over the phone. Sorry.”

  Charlie, he’s warming up, but we’re not quite there. Not to the point I want us to be at—together.

  And I didn’t know it in that moment, but it would take almost four weeks to break him down before he would finally agree to call me for the first time.

  Twenty-Three

  Four weeks after the first time I asked Charlie to call me, I tried again. We had been continuously talking here and there. Getting to know each other, so to speak. Via Instagram DM and conversations that were getting deeper by the week. He wades in the waters gently at first, LOL’ing his way out of a lot of topics, running for the shore. Meanwhile, I try to coax him in, throwing him life jackets, oars, inviting him to be adrift with me.

  Because if he’s lost at sea, I will be the anchor. I will try to stop the waves that come and take him every night. Tracy can’t be the sea that soothes him. This tide, rising and falling, it’s all I know. I let it take me.

  I message him stats on his post. How many views it gets, the likes and comments. I let him know that his video is helping people all over the world. And yes, even that, where the video reaches. Who sees it, who engages with it the most. I invite him to the behind-the-scenes of it all. And it might not be impressive, but it’s all I have. This invitation into my life, my page, my world, and I think he sees it. For the first time, I think he notices me.

  He starts opening up more, randomly, but more often. He tells me about his foster mother, the woman who adopted him, the person he calls mom. He tells me how he remembers growing up in Boston, “Southie” as he calls it. How he hears the sounds of the neighborhood sometimes in his dreams. The kids playing street hockey outside, calling his name. The sound of his mom’s tea kettle, whistling. He says it seemed like that thing went off every hour on the hour and that she was always making grilled cheese and cookies. Always inviting the neighborhood riff raff in for treats and lemonade.

  He often says she was a good woman and he did not deserve her, that he’s never even thanked her for giving him a home. For being a mom to him when she didn’t have to be. For cleaning the blood off his knees and elbows every time he fell, which was a lot according to him. Being a rebel will take you in that direction, he says. And we have this in common. He didn’t have to tell me what it was like, being a rebel, taking a path outside the one that was lit for you.

  He says Tracy doesn’t even really know him. The things he’s done. The things he’s said. Every incident, spoken phrase, hurtful action that he regrets to his core. I ask about specifics, but he won’t tell me. He never does. He’s vague, and he’s good at it. It’s almost a gift, the way he can maneuver around questions. But he’s convinced his accent is why Tracy likes him. He says she brings it up constantly. How it reminds her of how different they are and she loves it. But for him, he’s not so sure he loves how much they lack in common.

  He doesn’t love how she grew up in a vastly different way. In a mansion, as he calls it, and I don’t doubt it. He says he grew up poor, with a woman who gave him everything she could when she hardly had anything.

  He tells me about tax documents he found in his mother’s drawer dating all the way back to nineteen ninety-eight. His adoption records.

  He often says, “What made her choose me? My mother. The saint who lived on D Street. She couldn’t have children of her own but she had me. She chose me. Why? It’s the nagging question I always want to ask but never have the balls to.”

  And these are questions I don’t have the answers to. I insist that he asks her, that he tries. That he gets this out before the chance slips away. Because it will. It always does. Time is a luxury we don’t often appreciate. But he responds without answering my suggestions. He just says she’s getting older and he doesn’t know how to bring it up. And he answers with more questions, and his own answers.

  “And how did I thank her instead? By becoming a street punk who partied too much and tried too many drugs. By throwing parties in her small apartment in the projects. By sleeping with girls in my bedroom when she was in the next room. I never stopped to wonder if it was disrespectful. If it was ungrateful, inconsiderate. If I was a trash person. Now I know that I am. It took me nineteen years to learn that the hard way.”

  Sometimes I just listen. I toss him words of encouragement, or questions to inspire him to dig even deeper. These things, these questions people have inside them, they never go away. The punctuation marks get bigger, the questions more intense. But most people, if they’re good at anything, it’s the escape. The running away. Ignoring your problems until they appear in your face and you have nowhere else to go.

  He says, “Ev
eryone in Boston thinks they’re better than you. And they probably are, but it’s not the case for me. I’m not better than anyone.”

  He’s humble. Honest. And my gut feeling was right, there is a sadness in him and it’s one I’m not sure he wants to go away. Because sometimes sadness becomes so familiar to you, sometimes it becomes another limb that doesn’t feel like anything extra. It’s just there and you feel like you’ve had it with you this whole time. Sometimes, you don’t know who you’d be without it and you’re almost afraid to find out. I’ve heard people say cigarettes are hard to quit, that it feels like you’re losing a best friend. If cigarettes can feel like a best friend then sadness is a lover, a soulmate. It is something that wraps around you at night and travels with you during the day, staying quiet at times, but always there. What is it about us humans that makes us so afraid to lose things? Almost like the fear is worse than the actual loss. We soak in it, the fear, roll around in it and get dirty.

  While we’re talking via DM, Charlie says Tracy is calling again. It’s the third time in the last hour. He says he should answer, but he just doesn’t want to talk to her.

  I tell him he can call me instead. And I don’t expect him to. But my pre-paid rings. My heart starts pounding and I pick it up and it’s a local area code.

  “I have one suit,” he says, when I answer. “One suit. My mom’s ex-boyfriend gave it to me. Hand-me-down clothing, that’s what I know, you know what I mean? I never needed a fancy suit and I’ll be damned if Tracy makes me think I start needing one now. I’m not that guy. Maybe her coworker is, but not me. And Tracy, she just can’t stop trying to turn me into him. Make me the kind of guy she can be proud to be with.”

  “Wait, slow down. What coworker?”

  “Some fucking guy Tracy works with.” His words are a little slurred, like he’s been drinking.

  I pick up the Jack that Nikki left here and I take a swig. I almost forget that I should be nervous, talking to Charlie for the first time. On the phone. Voice to voice. Here we are, ear to ear, and I don’t have time to be nervous. To roll around in the fear and get dirty. To soak in it.

  “You don’t like him?” I ask.

  “I don’t know him,” he says.

  “What about him don’t you like?”

  “He wants my girlfriend.”

  “But she’s yours. I’m sure she doesn’t want him.” I’m sure. Who would want anyone other than you? Time is moving too fast and now my head is spinning from the Jack I took two swigs from in three minutes. “She’s lucky to have you.”

  “My foster mom, she said to me once that anyone would be lucky to have me. She also said I was just like her. I guess I do take after her in some ways. She always said I did but I didn’t believe it. I said to her once, ‘How can I take after you? I’m not even your real son.’ And she said, ‘You don’t have to be related by blood to inherit characteristics of people who love you.’”

  “That’s probably true,” I say.

  “Yeah, it probably was. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. But you’re missing the point. I hurt her, and I did it on purpose.”

  “Then tell her. Apologize now. It’s not too late.”

  “No. It is. I don’t know if she remembers it and I don’t want to be an asshole again all these years later by bringing it up. But I know one thing, it just shows that anyone wouldn’t be lucky to have me. It’s probably the opposite. And that just proves it.”

  “You’re being too hard on yourself. You were a kid,” I say.

  “I’m not a kid anymore. And here I am, ignoring my girlfriend, talking to some stranger on the internet.”

  “Ouch,” I say. Because that hurt. “I’m a person, you know.”

  “Sorry. I just meant, you know what I meant. All I know is that Tracy may not really know me but she gives me something no one has given me in a long time. This hope that maybe I’m not this piece of shit I always thought I was. This idea that I could have someone who’s better than me see something in me. And it’s dangerous believing that, because when you start thinking that you might be a good person, you go and do something awful.”

  Twenty-Four

  It’s been seventeen minutes and thirty-three seconds since his last message. I don’t know if he’s playing this game with me on purpose. Playing with my heart, tugging that invisible string that makes me crazy with need. Pushing every button inside of me that makes me blind to everything but thoughts of him. The longer he takes to respond, the more I want him to. The more I need him to.

  I think he likes this. I think he wants this from me. My attention. My want. My need of him and only him.

  My phone vibrates in my hand and I check the timer. Twenty-two minutes and forty-six seconds. That’s an awfully long time, Charles. I stop the timer and reset it. I open my messages to take a quick peek at the beginning part of the message. I need to know what it says but I like to savor this moment. The newness. The excitement. The getting to know each other.

  The honeymoon phase. That’s what we’re in. He just doesn’t know it yet. But the red of my wine would pair nicely with the red of his heart and yes, I think this is something. I can feel it. I can taste it. The potential.

  His name lights up my screen. Charlie.

  It’s been a few minutes but I think I’ve made him wait long enough and I open the message.

  “I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should end it,” he says.

  Of course I’m right. Why would he need a girlfriend who doesn’t worship him, let alone value him? Charlie is lost. According to him, he has some issues he has to work through. Some things he needs to get over before he can love someone the right way. He blames his father. I blame fate.

  But that’s where we’re different, Charlie and I. He believes his issues can be fixed. Healed. That one day, he can be whole again. I know the truth. I’ve tried this before, too. I am as whole as I will ever be and I think this was my destiny. To go through the things I have gone through. To suffer. To survive. To come out the other side and know being fucked up is fine as long as you’re okay with it. That’s where the real acceptance comes in to play. In the knowing. And in carrying on anyway.

  I message him back. “I never suggested you end it. Those were your words. I simply suggested that maintaining an unhealthy relationship will never set you on the path to healing. And healing, that is what you want, isn’t it?”

  I start the timer again.

  Reset.

  This has been our routine for the last seventeen nights now. Sometimes it’s DMing, if only briefly. Sometimes it’s a phone call that lasts for hours. This game, this reset. This is the beginning of our happily ever after. Unconventional, maybe. But it’s the era we live in.

  I open up to POTG, studying my logo. Wondering what Charlie thought of this design when he first saw it. If he liked it.

  There’s no gimmick. No mission statement. No cheesy tag line. I think my people, sorry, patients, like the anonymous factor. Not having to look a therapist in the eye when they confess their sins, their issues, the things that plague them. And Charlie does, too.

  He’s more honest at night. More open. Just like the rest of them. More likely to say the shit they would never say in the daytime when the world is still judging them, still relying on them to be what it needs them to be that day. A businessman. A cashier. A CEO. A nurse. A single mother with three kids. A father. Someone’s employee. Someone’s employer. Someone’s rock. Because rocks can’t always be rocks. Sometimes rocks need to fall apart, too.

  And I understand this. I know this. People trust me for a reason. I may not be licensed, but I can listen. And isn’t that a big part of what therapists mostly do anyway? My patients know what they’re signing up for. There will never be face-to-face sessions. There will never be any sort of actual treatment outside of what can be offered on the phone or through messaging.

  A voice. A text. Someone on the other end of the line. Someone to talk to. Someone to listen. That’s what they need,
and I provide that. Plus, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than actual therapy, which some of them could never afford. I am a solution. An alternative. An escape route. And sometimes, Charles, a healer.

  My phone buzzes again. I check the timer. It’s been eight minutes and twenty-eight seconds since I sent my last message to him. I stop the timer.

  Reset.

  “How do I forget the bad stuff?” he asks. “Tell me.”

  I don’t make him wait. I answer. Because that’s what he needs. And it’s about him right now. It’s always about him.

  “That’s not something they teach you at school. It’s a slow process. It takes time. And it’s not about forgetting, it’s about accepting. If there’s a lot of ugliness, there’s got to be some beauty underneath it all. You just have to find it. And when you do, well, to me, that’s healing.”

  I watch the screen as he types back and I wonder if I even mean what I say sometimes. But there it is. The most honest thing I’ve ever said to him. For just a second, I stepped out of my role as his therapist and stepped back into me: Love. Just a girl who has no idea what she’s doing. A fraud. A scam artist. A liar.

  A girl who is hanging on every word he says. And I know I’m in dangerous territory. The sharks are swimming. The need, it’s taking over. I am giving him advice on how to heal and I am not healed. I am not well. But I know it and that makes me more sane than the rest of them. The people pretending they are fine, just fine. Every single day.

  I restart the timer but I am too late. He messages back. He’s eager now. Hopeful. Hanging on my words like they will set him free. And one day, they just might.

  “I’m trying,” he says.

  I put my phone down because he is not digging deep enough. He knows he needs to try harder to get what he wants. But he is stuck in a routine, a routine that is slowly killing him, with a girl who is quickly draining him. In a relationship that will keep him unhappy as long as he allows it to.

  And here I sit, timer in hand. Waiting for the day he realizes he is worth so much more. Waiting for the day he grows some balls and ends it with Tracy. Tracy. The hair in his pong cup. The water in his whiskey. The roadblock on his highway. The woman standing between us and our possible future together, living one life, side by side, broken hearts mended by each other’s. Healing, together. Healing each other.