1. Struggler - BtMI!

Part 1

 

Pseudologia Fanstastica

 

 

  I knew I was in a place mentally that I could never come back from when I wondered what sounds the guy I was standing over would make if I stabbed him with the knife he had just dropped. If right in the middle of the beautiful snow covered forest, I took his head and slammed it against a tree. How much blood would there be? What if the razor that was in my coat pocket that I had been playing with within my fingers like a poker chip not an hour before happened to catch some of his skin? What would happen if suddenly he ceased living in the most brutal way right then and there?  This is what I had become and it was becoming increasingly difficult with each day to hide it. A façade clinging onto something that didn’t exist anymore that would eventually be my downfall. I would need to give in so I could survive

 

My name is Wes Baumgardner.

 

I am 19 years old

 The difference between being alone and being lonely. Why do we feel lonely though sometimes we are not alone?

1. Struggler �" BtMI!

 June 8^th, 2012

17,

  was a year of firsts for me. First time I really punched someone and got punched, first time I drove a car and during that first time would crash it, first road trip, first time I kissed a girl and subsequently had sex.

It was a summer worth remembering even though some parts are still a bit foggy
 

 I was walking around my home town of Astin Springs on my way to see my best friend Francis who had just gotten home from a vacation with her family in California. I wasn't in a real hurry as it had only been 2 days since I last saw her and the summer had just begun. I thought I’d drift around for a little while.
  Astin Springs was a wonderful place to grow up. It snowed in the winter and was beautiful in the summer. The rain in the fall would never outlast its welcome when spring came along wanting to spread across the world.
 Bogey's West being still the best music shop/club I've ever been in. Going to Sky View 6 on Sunday's, paying for one movie and spending the rest of the day movie hopping and watching everything else that was in the theater.

 Stephen and Tabitha (the owners of Bogey's West) never minded me hanging around (and neither did my parents since they were off doing god knows what and defiantly not with each other) all day just picking up different guitars and playing, having long conversations about music and then Tabby would give me much needed advice on anything I would ask about. Stephen telling me stories about his time in the Army, one of my favorites was when he told me about a top secret mission to steal mass quantities of German socks. I looked to them for everything. I thought of them as parents. Then at night they would go down the street to the Dairy Queen, buy me dinner, lock up the store and I would play piano for them till my hands couldn’t take it.
 I did that once a week until Stephen got sick the next year. He fell down the basement stairs in the shop, hitting his head on the cement floor and had to go to the hospital and he was never really the same. After the accident he would forget little things here and there, Nothing much to worry about. Then he talked less. Then one day I walked into the store and he didn’t know who I was. Nearly destroyed me 
 Tabitha and him moved to Montana a month before Stephen died, so they could be alone together, back to where they met. I never thought I would lose my hero so early. I had built him up in my mind that I thought that he was invincible, god like almost. Then even when the time came when he did eventually pass, his teachings would still be alive through me and my family. I guess all kids see their parents or parental figures in this light even after they have grown up. As protectors, as people who will be there to save you if anything should happen. I had just lost my protector

I cried. I hadn’t since and I was looking for a reason to.

  It was 8 pm and the sun was just now starting to set. The sky was starting to change to that beautiful pink color and blend with the clouds into darkness. I was walking on the sidewalk next to the Red Barn Bar and Grill when a cars stereo screamed to life behind me and thus scaring the living s**t out of me. "Change" by Shadez of Brooklyn progressively getting louder as I looked over my shoulder to see the car said stereo belonged to stalking me from the Red Barn's parking lot. Mark Chapman was behind the wheel of a junk '73 Oldsmobile Delta with his younger brother David in the passenger seat, who I had kneeded in the face after he tried to get forcefully frisky with Francis one day after school. The car pulled out into the road and pulled alongside me, matching my pace.

 "Hey Wes....whatcha doing?" Mark said in a calm tone grabbing the pack of Morley cigarettes from his striped polo shirt pocket.
 "Nothing Mark, nothing man just taking a walk. Ya know. What are you guys up to?" I asked very unsure of where this conversation was going. He took a cigarette out of the pack and put one in his mouth, capping off the set of movements with the stroke of a match off the dash and light his cigarette.
 "Celebrating…you should join us”
 "Oh, I don't know man. I'm supposed to be meeting someone and…"
 "You just said you weren't doing anything." David spoke dryly as he played with the radio trying to find something.
  My mind was racing trying to think of anything that would get me out of there but I couldn't. I didn't want an excuse to get me out of there. I wanted to go. In that instant a feeling came over me. I wanted to be somewhere I shouldn't be. I had lived a very boring life at least from my perspective up until that point and I had been thriving to make it exciting if even just for one night.
 "Come on Wes. Get in the car buddy" said Mark as he gestured to the back seat waiting for me to join them.

I got in.

We drove for a little bit with David fumbling with the radio until he put in a CD that started playing a song I hadn’t heard in many years. Bringing back memories that I welcomed into my head but I ultimately wish I hadn’t. I love and hate that about music. Staring out the window at the changing scenery and thinking about the first time I heard “Neighborhood Threat” by Iggy Pop. 

I wonder what would have happened if our brakes failed?

 I instantly recognized where we were when the car finally stopped. I was told the previous day that there was going to be an end of the school year party out at the Gaslight baseball field. I didn’t plan on going but that obviously changed.
 There was already plenty of people there who looked like they were already well into a night of adulthood or what they thought adulthood was like. Walking into the complex for the first time in several years felt odd. I had played ball when I was younger and had serious aspirations of playing baseball at a professional level but with a lack of interest growing in my mind on top of having a nervous breakdown in the dugout during a game at 13, it ended things.
 As we walked onto the infield of Field #6 and found a seat in the dugout, I locked eyes with Olivia Fairbanks. Her red hair all tattered and a mess, her Pygmy Geek ringer shirt ripped at the shoulder as if on purpose and her jeans covered in dirt and cut off at the calf, frayed at the bottom.

Looking at me she bit her lip and every ounce of blood in my body rushed to my crotch

 I had seen Olivia around at her job that was in the mall but we had never really talked. She worked the prize counter in the arcade. I would go there and play Dig Dug and Pole Position till I either ran out of money or my eyes bled. I knew she read books like Burn Ohio Burn, and I had seen her when I went in the arcade once watching Heathers but I was too afraid to approach her. She also liked Pygmy Geek which were a great punk band from Oregon that if not for The Kinks would be my favorite band.

 

 The party continued well into the night without much happening except for a wonderful drunk rendition of “Semi-Charmed Life” which I have to admit I joined in on. I tried to get the courage up to go talk to Olivia but couldn’t. I probably should have got a little tipsy but I never had a drink of alcohol and I didn’t want my first drink to be there.
 It was only Me, David, Olivia, and some other people who were the last still around when the sun came up.
“So I take it were walking home?” I turned and joked to David as we realized Mark had left us
“Guess, so” He laughed. We stood up to get on our way. I wondered if Francis would be mad at me then a voiced echoed through the park

 “That’s the f****r” said an unknown voice behind Olivia’s Boyfriend. The Boyfriend took a step forward and flicked his cigarette on me. I nearly passed out due to how bad his breath was reeking
“Oh sorry” he mumbled
I didn’t say a word
“You minds if I sit here?” His legs almost collapsed beneath him
I didn’t answer. He sat anyway
“I’m fucked up”
He was indeed “fucked up” as he put it and I wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere. Russia, Texas, Japan, Gallifrey. Anywhere.
“You got any cigarettes?” he asked
“No, man. Sorry” I said in my shy I want this drunken jackass to get away from me voice. It took him a second to reply
“Bullshit”
“I don’t!” I replied thinking, now I defiantly wanted to be anywhere but here

I turned to David. He looked just as uneasy as I probably did. Olivia’s boyfriend got up, making his way to the parking lot
“So how is everything?” I asked. I hadn’t really talked to David in a long time (for obvious reasons) even though we sat next to each other all night
“Good. Good. I got a job lined up for the summer. Should be fun” David said. I didn’t ask but I knew what the job was. He was really into and great at photography and he got an internship with something that involved taking photos for a magazine. He would get to travel. It had the makings of a good conversation. I was gonna ask him about the job, where he thought he would get to go, what kind of magazine, and then we reached the parking lot.

“HEY!” Olivia’s Boyfriend approached us, almost falling over.
We ignored him and continued walking
“HEY!” he started walking our way as we began a light fast walk/jog
“HEY!” screamed Olivia’s Boyfriend, now in a sort of sprint. As much of a sprint as a totally smashed person could be in
“WHAT!!” David shouted back at him which stopped him in his tracks as if confusing him
“HEY!” he repeated…again
“Is this guy serious?” I asked David
“I have no idea. WHAT’S UP!!” I really wish I didn’t enter this conversation. If you want to call shouting Hey! And What? A proper conversation
“YOU GOT ANY CIGARETTES?!?” he roared. I could tell his throat was giving out
“NO!!” I yelled.
“BULLSHIT!!” and like that he was on his way over to us again. I could hear the tone change in his voice. Like the flip of a switch he went from ‘I’m fucked up’ to ‘I’ll f*****g cut you’
“Let’s get the f**k out of here” David whispered to me, I agreed but it was too late. Olivia’s boyfriend was already there giving me a swift shove in the chest

 I took a deep breath after I got some air back in my lungs and shoved him back. I wasn’t gonna take that s**t, I wanted to go home and why me? Why did he shove me and not David? Was he so “fucked up” that he couldn’t tell us apart? The only problem with my plan of not taking his s**t was he didn’t move when I shoved him.

1-0           1-0  Boyfriend

His fist connected with my face at what seemed like slow-motion but when I heard the collective in unison OH! from everybody in the parking lot I snapped back into reality or at least I did when I got my composure back.

2-0           2-0 Boyfriend

He hit me harder the second time. There is probably more as to what happened after he hit me but I was too unconscious to notice.

 I do remember waking up. In the heat of the moment, as I was taking my 2 punch beating I guess David had called somebody and that somebody was Francis. She was driving and David was sitting in the passenger seat his head leaned back against the chair rolling around with every turn of the car as if he had no neck. I came to a little more to realize that David’s face was just as damaged as mine probably was, maybe even worse.

“Hey there” Francis said her smile reflecting in the rearview. It hurt to laugh. Trying to muster any facial movements was torture but no matter how much it hurt I still smiled.
“Hey….My face hurts”
David interjected �" “That makes two of us pal”
“What happened after I went lights out?”
“Well, let’s see. He hit you. You went down. I jumped on his back. Which I quickly realized wasn’t the best place to be as he tossed me onto the hood of somebody’s car. Then he hit me a lot.
“Sorry man”
“It’s alright, was worth it. I dented the hood! Most living I’ve done in a while”
I understood what he meant but not fully because at a certain point during the party he slipped away (which I obviously didn’t notice) and got to third base with a college freshmen named Lily.

So not everything about the previous night was bad

“Hey Francis, where exactly are we going?” I asked but I didn’t really mind. Any destination would have been good
“Well I was gonna drive you and David home but then I had an idea” she said in a very coy way
I perked up in my seat as did David
“How would you two feel about bowling?” she teased
“Bowling? Right now? Are you serious?” David questioned
“I indeed am” she answered, that smile still beaming across her face
“Francis, It’s 7 in the morning. Can we even get into an alley?” I also was concerned

“Wes! It’s not like they turn you away because you got some bumps and bruises!” she let out
“I know. I know. But how would we get in? You don’t work there anymore”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t have a key” she professed turning around in her seat to see my reaction
“Wait, they gave you a key after your summer job last year?” I stammered, questioning how she came into possession of this key
“Not really” she quietly said
“You stole a key to a bowling alley!” I yelped
“Calm down. I see how bad it is but I mean s**t! Bowling alley access whenever we want”
“Francis we could get in some real trouble for that!”
“Yes, I know that Wes. I’ll make a pact with you and get rid of it”
“Good”
“As soon as we go bowling”
I let out a sigh knowing protesting would be pointless. David had been exceptionally quite during mine and Francis’s conversation. He had fallen asleep but he had a smile on his face.

We pulled up to Royal Crest Lanes and got out being the only car in the lot. Leaving David, Francis pulled the key from her bag and we proceeded inside. She ran behind the shoe counter and turned on the lights for the place. I sat down at lane 6 as the radio began to play something awful
“SORRY! I’LL FIND SOMETHING” Francis screamed from behind me
I relaxed trying to will myself to get a ball but I couldn’t get up. The pins weren’t even out so I didn’t see the point. Then David Bowie’s “Lady Stardust” started playing and I was at peace. Francis came and sat next to me bringing me a Coke from what I assume was from the vending machine. She rested her head on my shoulder and wrapped her arm around mine.
“I missed you” she crooned hugging me tighter
“It was only two days”
“I know but I still missed you”

 All the time I spent practicing what to say and how to say it never prepared me for this moment, I tried to put together a sentence that could express how I felt about this woman but I couldn’t get the words together

 I remember the first time I saw her; it was October at the first high school football game I had ever willingly decided to go to. Her hair a dying pink and draped over one eye. The left side of her head needed a trim to maintain the side shave hairstyle.
 I had been there for a while catching up with some friends I hadn’t seen in a while when I saw her walk in. In that instant I got the wind knocked out of me, it has remained the single greatest feeling I have ever experienced. But never would I dream to tell her this. Tarnish a friendship I truly cherished because she didn’t feel the same way? Always too afraid to find out, too nervous to ask a question deeper than Hey, what’s up?

Coward

“I brought you something back from California”
“You didn’t have to do that”

She reached into her bag and pulled out a book. A book I had always talked about wanting to read but could never find no matter how hard I searched. It was “The Illusion of a Legacy” by William Porter

“I missed you” I said knowing that I couldn’t have missed anything more than her