helicopter dream

Sorry for the absence. I’ve been writing and reading. Also studying. But, I guess my kind of studying is just writing and reading. Usually the other way around. It’s getting warmer. Maybe that is a good thing. This winter felt easy. Too easy. Anyways, I was sick.

I had the flu for some amount of time. I’m not sure how long, but it was at least a week that I felt constantly dizzy. Not the fun dizzy (duster, roller coaster, sex, etc), but the vomit dizzy. The swollen head, tight chest, sweaty hands kind of dizzy. I ended up at a doctor in the suburbs and she told me whatever I was feeling was normal for whatever I had and I will get better whenever my body decides to stop destroying itself. I am mostly better now, but I’m worried about the world.

There was someone I loved like a brother. He came into my life when I was about eleven or twelve. He was just like an older brother, but way cooler. He existed in this constant sardonic swing from loving cynic to anti-everything. I was awed by his bipolarity, completely starstruck by his ability to be so athletic with his emotions. He seemed to know exactly how to handle every situation. He was only a few years older than me, but that’s a lifetime when you’re thirteen. He told me to watch Top Gun to better understand his references and I did, but I think I missed the point. He loved the witty banter between the pilots in the dogfights. I loved how Tom Cruise's smile was displaced slightly to the left and how he loved Meg Ryan so much. I remember a scene where they danced. Someone played ragtime or something on the piano. He told me to watch Archer and South Park, so I did. That ended up putting me on this whole spiral towards internet gore and whatever. I remember he played football. He told me not to do it. He said I was too angry. Wouldn’t be able to focus.

I remember he’d come on our family trips. Leyton, we’ll call him. He shook my grandfather’s hand with so much vigor and kissed my grandmother real light on the cheek. “It’s lovely to meet you, Mrs. Whatever,” 

That’s when I knew he wanted to marry my sister. She was beautiful, charming, funny, and confused in a very teenagery way. She didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life, but she knew it had something to do with helping people or animals or something. She looked like me, but with a prettier face, better hair, and a smile that was a little less adorable and a little more beautiful. We both looked like our dad. Leyton and my sister dated for some number of years. They’d break up because he was caught doing something stupid and my mom would wait outside of my sister’s room as she cried and cried and cried tears I will never understand because I didn’t know Leyton like she did. Eventually, they’d get back together and start talking about their wedding. (Beaver Creek, Colorado. Ritz Carlton. Medium sized guest list.) They were early high schoolers at this point. He held her tight. She was someone who needed love like that: the kind that was constantly broken down and reinforced like a cell or something. Or maybe a callus.

Leyton died when I was maybe fifteen. I’m not good with numbers. What I do remember is screaming. My mom was driving me home from math tutoring (numbers) when my dad called. He said something like, “I don’t know how to say this, but-”

And then he said it. Mom didn’t stop the car. I guess there was no point. Someone had to drive me home. My sister and Leyton had been broken up for a year or so by the time he died. He had some emergency surgery and complications led to complications leading to infection spreading and his whole body shutting down in the middle of the night and his wonderfully charming mother finding him dead in the morning. Everyone loved him, but no one knew him how my sister knew him. They spent their most formative years bolstering and eroding one another until he, once rock, eventually became the sea. She dated some asshole who fucked up my drum set and another guy I couldn’t remember, but she always loved Leyton because she was Leyton and he was her.

Allow me to reconstruct my dream:

I was on a football field or maybe in the gymnasium of our old middle school. The place was impossibly large, dark around the corners like a vignette filter with the opacity way up. He was diffused, Leyton, and I knew he was dead even in my sleep. He opened his mouth and asked how I was doing. He was older now. Just a bit. Like how he was supposed to be before the rapid infection and zero heartbeat death etc. Just a few years older than I am now. Or maybe I was younger in the dream. He asked me how I was doing and I knew what he meant was

Do you think about me?

Yes. All the time.

What do you think about?

The time in Ocala when I went up in the helicopter with my brother and you and my sister stayed on the ground.

I remember that.

There was no one else at that fair. Just the family.

Your sister was pissed you’d been playing a gorey game on your laptop in the car. She was tired of looking at it.

She was always so mad at me then.

She loved you more than anything and was scared.

I think I know.

How do you feel?

I’m not sure. I think I’m alone.

(Something something something something its blurry now)

I miss you.

I know. I’m sorry.

My parents really miss you a lot.

I miss them too. And your dogs.

(I’m crying as I write this.)

They always loved you so much.

I remember when they were still puppies and they’d tear up the whole house.

They were so mischievous.

(Laugh laugh laugh laugh. Still crying)

(A beat or two. Three. Deep deep breath.)

I’m proud of you. I’m really proud of who you are, Charlie.

Wake up. It’s three or four in the morning. Mouth tastes like salt. Tears. I’m sweating, my back sticks to the bedsheets. I can’t see much of anything. There’s some yellow light coming in through my window. It’s a streetlight. Outside it's snowing. It’s the end of winter. Somewhere in the city someone is asleep dreaming about their version of me. Somewhere in the city a little boy dreams himself into adulthood. Somewhere in the city a girl dreams about her dead ex boyfriend and his wit, his black hair hanging just above his eyes. Somewhere in the city someone wakes up to the sound of their baby crying and feels nothing but relief. Alive. Heartbeat. No need to worry. Right now is the time and everything is completely still. 

Snow stops falling, freezes in mid-air. It’s almost morning, but still nighttime. A man stops mid step on my street, looks up at the sky and traces Orion with his middle and index fingers. He closes his eyes and sees me asleep in my bed, shaking a little and crying a lot. He knows what I’m feeling. He’s lost too many people to count. Somewhere on his body he’s got tally marks tattooed. Shaky hands, but his eyes are open again.

Photos of/from the helicopter. Outside Ocala, Florida. November 21, 2015.

None of this is fiction. I need you to believe me. You’re half the equation. Dream me awake, okay? Please, please, please, please keep me. Can you do that? I chugged a bunch of beer to try and impress you. It didn’t work. I feel like shit. I need to sleep, but I need to write. I’ve been reading Dennis Cooper. You told me his stuff was too gross. I can’t help but feel like you’ve lived your whole life running away from something. I can’t help but feel like you’ve lived your whole life trying as hard as you can to be alone. I pay for my beers with a slight smile and foreign currency. I’m just young enough. I’m just old enough. I remember my high school. I remember my old car. I remember sex in the back seats. I remember sitting on the floor of the gymnasium. I remember school assemblies about drugs and cheating on tests. We constructed such weird morals in those sweaty years.

The last projectionist in Montréal came to my house a few months back to fix my Super 8 projector. We both cried watching old reels of his kids growing up, projected on my kind of white wall. Roberto, I love you. You are the last light maker. We cried when his little daughters came on the screen. He lost the house in the divorce. Or maybe he got the house in the divorce. He said he filmed his kids as much as he could on Super 8 because it looked like a dream. It looked like a dream. He said his kids are married now. One of them is sick. Or maybe his ex wife is dying. He told me all their names. He’s old now and he’ll be dead within twenty years. I don’t miss anyone. I don’t miss anything. When the winter is over, I’ll be back in Georgia.