Fall of All Seasons

Fal For Al Seasons: Considered for this season's best publications

Samantha Hartley
12 Observatory Ave.
Providence, RI 02902
774 521-7092
[email protected]

1,732 words

Fall For All Seasons
 by Samantha Hartley

I get in my car and see, on the passenger’s side seat, one cigarette protruding from a forgotten pack and nothing else but trash, remnants of unhealthy eating habits scattered about, leaving a lingering chill that could be bottled into a cologne named absence. I breathe in then scream until air runs out. I get out of the car and go back into my apartment. One escaped wrapper is the tumbleweed livening my tracks.

        He’s moved on.

        People say I feel too much. Maybe they don’t feel enough, but that’s like being called weak and retorting, “Well you’re strong.” I don’t feel too much, just an overwhelming sensation of absence.

        At 24, I become socially anxious, make history by hiding in my room from Nazis like Anne Frank, drink myself into a blind, Christopher-Columbus oblivion of self-convinced brilliance but, like him, am off target.

        Depression is evident, so I take an online (obviously)course in writing comedy for $75. I invent a lovely tale about a French man, Gaston Maximillion, who, when removed from his
country for being obnoxious, is forced to report on American ridiculousness. He spoofs the ability to embrace homosexuality,but enjoys the rendition a little too much. In the end, he realizes he’s gay.

        My teacher writes back, instantly, saying that my humor is questionable, and suggests taking a lighter, less offensive approach when generalizing America, France, and
homosexuality.

        Assuming he’s Canadian, I apologize.

Often, when corrected, I excuse myself to be the exception, not the rule. I’m creative because I exist in my own head " my own head only. At first, everyone denied J.K. Rowling’s “juvenile” Harry Potter series. Now she’s a bajillionaire. I neglect my teacher’s notes and submit the tales of Gaston to a group of boys who invite, in an ad on Craigslist, a writer to join their sketch comedy group: Twisted. Perfect. Gaston will translate better on Youtube, like “Charlie Bit My Finger" if Charlie bit the whole finger off.

       The boys request I cease contact after I, J.K.-Rowling-persistent, sent three preceding E-mails enquiring if they’ve read my story yet.

       The thing is, I’m heartbroken. The culprit shatterer, since this morning, is in a new relationship, something Facebook conveyed " a heartless machine who, unlike gossipers, probably
has accurate facts. One of the lovers sent a relationship request, and the other approved, all before I finished my shower, ate a poorly microwaved bowl of oatmeal, and declared the day to be good when I found some old cinnamon in the back of my cupboard to add to my oatmeal. I opened my laptop, saw a heart above his and her name, immediately shut it, and pushed my oatmeal aside. The reaction menu: scream, cry silently, punch a wall... I went out to my car.

       Today is an accidental add-on to the official calendar. There’s no way the keeper of days counted all Leap Years correctly; there could be more time.

       Because the messenger often gets killed, we now have social media to indicate when we’ve moved on, genius considering how I wish to shake him clear, but cherish my computer screen,so instead, remove him as a friend.

       I seize a bottle of vodka and box of Triscuits because that’s all I own, not because they taste good. Suddenly, a sharp pain shoots up my right side. Panic strikes. Am I pregnant? Do I
have liver failure? Appendicitis? Pregnant? Will I be found dead as the drunk, maybe-pregnant girl who has Triscuits instead of Wheat Thins for some god-awful reason? I Google symptoms. Cancer
appears, as well as the ABC’s of hepatitis, and Ebola. Ebola,that’s ridiculous. I’ve been in my self-made quarantine. I do not have Ebola. Unless it’s airborne. Is it?

       I see red. The dead part of my heart rots and infects sight, every color, red, but my red differs from others’ " brighter, sharper, more painful. Insidious rejection defines what I see, rendering me blind. I’m blind. Ebola is kicking in. The fever of loss has to be more deadly than a hemorrhaging one.

       Everything is okay. We’re no longer Facebook friends. Any future couple-selfie or pending engagement announcement is left dead with the messenger. He moved on long before this, I
think " I cannot speak for his heart, although I once thought to know it well. Through seen action, it may be so, in half-lit love being half chance, he never loved me. I don’t feel for him, I feel the absence of him. Truly. I do.

       My teacher contacts me and asks to meet at the college where he works in the city where we live: Providence, RI. I want to respond with, “Can’t, Ebola,” but, even though it’s somewhat comedic and somewhat true, I’m already offensive to my online community and would be the girl who ignites a worldwide war just from her laptop.

       I hate meeting people. I hate self-defined huggers who ask me things like, “Where did you get your shoes?” So I answer, “Nordstrom,” which they know is a lie when the real answer is " I don’t know " Target? They gain distrust and I begrudge them for belittling. Another pointless interaction. I wish people would just say, “Hey, why do you dress weird?” and I’d say something like, “I don’t know, doesn’t everyone dress weird?” and we’d partake in a moment of joined-in, deep thought.

       Sorry, I’m a writer.

       I’m a writer because I’m successful when alone with assignments where my editors define lines of appropriateness. I like discovering Earth from a removed nest.

       Everyone in my life has moved on, and I’m disconnected, panicked, and not funny, even though Gaston attests otherwise.

       So I meet my teacher. Different than imagined, he’s young, not Canadian, accomplished for being young, as young as me " a girl who’s greatest accomplishment was walking across
campus, shuttering at how infantile everyone looks " the high school senior of Providence with no where to date but down.

       In online forums, he talked like a bald person would " warm and pithy, maybe an association I made with a cold head, but, unlike everyone, he didn’t use emoji’s. I appreciated that, but also assumed they offended him with lack-of hair. In my mind, his peppered mustache complimented a funky bowtie while he read riddle books to prove wit, making $75 each from us grown
agoraphobics.

       Not always withdrawn, I used to be the life of the party, had relationships riddled with odd, but normal-for-my-age affairs. I also fell in love, which we all know about. I loved being with people: him, his friends, my friends, but especially his family who had that whole unconditional thing going on that I spent the better part of my healthy adult-life verifying
existed.

       Our love stopped coincidentally when time did, but only I froze.

       I moved to Colorado because Colorado sounded like a nice place to be cold in, partied too hard and lived with an obsessive drug dealer who cried in his sleep and kissed like a camel, moved back to Massachusetts to live with my addict
parents and fair share of police call-ins, and lastly, ventured to Rhode Island and decided I didn’t want to be around anyone
because people hurt.

I have a sixth sense for anxiety. I’m the little boy who was only in that one movie because he rudely outted Bruce Willis. I do the same by feeling too much absence and spoiling it for the living. In the theatre, I screamed, three-quarters in, “He’s dead!” and a bag of popcorn hit my head. True story.

       My teacher sports slightly wrinkled khakis, no quirky bowtie or missing hair, but seems... alive and well " spoil-proof.

       “You’re a great writer,” he says. I frown
uncomfortably and makeshift a showing of humbleness. I knew there was a closeted Gaston fan (pun intended). “You’re just in a lot of pain.”

       I don’t agree or disagree, just peer at the door.

       He pulls a full-length mirror over to my front. “Start talking about life.”

       My heart pounds, hands twitch, eager to clench, I’m afraid he’ll mistake rigidness for Tourette’s rather than the Ebola it really is. “I can’t do this.” I look at him, the cynosure of well.

       “Just go, say anything then vent.”

       “Anything, something, okay...” I lock eyes with my eyes " green, not red. I talk to who hurt me. “My eyes are green. Your eyes, well, your eyes still look at me. I can’t tell if I can’t escape them or never want to. I’m just scared of how I care so much without seeing you, which means you’re... a feeling I made up,” I tear, “and I hide hoping you’ll find me, but only you, no one else, not even me, but now I’m looking at me, and I forgot my eyes were so green.” I look back at my teacher with no idea if I did the assignment right or made a fool of myself.

       “You see,” he says, lifting eyebrows and nodding.

       “My next stand up act?”

       “You resolve pain by looking to yourself,” he says, “and you’re incredibly complex. Not like anyone... I’ve seen in a while. You have a presence,” he starts to laugh " not funny ha-ha " but looks down and straightens a khaki wrinkle. “I can just tell you are something else,” he says to his khakis, but really to me.

       “Right.”

       “Keep going, talk to yourself, but now use humor.”
       “Oh God.”
       “It’s okay, with resolved pain comes laughter. The greater the pain, the greater resolution, the greater the laughter.”

       “I’m uncomfortable,” I say.

       “Comedians strive for awkwardness.”

       “Something funny. Something funny,” I loosen up, “I may be broken hearted, but at least I’m not Taylor Swift.”

        We laugh.

        “Okay Taylor Swift,” he shoos, “you’re free to go. Oh,” he throws me a flyer, “but come to my show tonight.

        It takes self-convincing but I go, late. He’s on stage when I arrive. I grab a beer, and sit in a dim corner. 

	I know I matter when he sees me and chokes, “Um, um… sorry. Anyway...”

        After his successful set, we grab more beers. In the lonely corner of the loveliest kind, he laughs uncontrollably when I enact Gaston, prancing about with a French accent that could be mistaken for Tourette’s. We were... well it was something else.

       Types of falls: big ones that hurt, pratfalls that entertain, and the fall that trumps them all �" love.