Squanderer

feeling out of place no matter where you go

I have a subtle accent that everyone notices but me. It’s not exactly a twang or a mispronunciation of vowel sounds. It is difficult to explain, all I can say is that this accent symbolizes a lack of education, something to be frowned upon. My father was a construction worker turned alcoholic. My mother was a Stay-At-Home-Mom turned pillhead. My aunt was known as the cliche town witch that everyone in a thirty-mile radius feared. My backyard was a cornfield belonging to the Winters’ family. Their daughter was my best friend. This life experience, the only one that I know and the one that informs the rest of me inside-out, is both a 1st Place Blue Ribbon and a shard of glass stuck in the sole of my foot. I am proud to be a small-town-fag, until everyone in New York acknowledges it as a “quirk” or even worse, indirectly labels me as lacking. Suddenly, Hick becomes outsider. Hick becomes unlovable. Hick becomes unwanted.

I will give you the situational example. Gowanus, a neighborhood in Brooklyn. Home to a canal that is artistically polluted to the point of lavender pigmentation. Home to my favorite speakeasy located behind a refrigerator at a Bodega that sells my favorite cigarettes, Tareytons. Gowanus is pronounced guh.wah.nuhs. The correct pronunciation flows out of the mouth like cursive writing. Its elegance does not match its clunky letters: W, G, U, N - an alphabetical combination that breeds an accident prone tongue. My pronunciation matches this perceived clunkiness. Gow.wahn.uhs. I pronounce it similarly to Gown and Wand.  The incorrect pronunciation that I can never seem to get the hang of has a specific staccato. It trembles, crashes into a room, breaks glass, trips over its own two feet. 

When I speak my version into existence, it is followed with a specific chill, a silence I should anticipate. I am met with blank smiles, blank eyes, I can practically see the pupils transforming into question marks. I should expect this, but I never do, I’m dense. I am forever naive. Eternally stupid. Endlessly dismissed as lacking.  

“Excuse me?”

This two word question is all I need to hear. These two words translate into a diatribe that only explains to me why I am trailer trash living in New York, I will never be one with the city, or any city. I am a corn fed thin-sliced American. My feet are more at ease in fields, barns, starry nights, and Yuengling. I will never be metropolitan. I will never be an avid reader of the Times. I will never drink Martinis. I will never wear tweed. I don’t think anyone wears tweed, this goes to show that my lack of knowledge of the “upper echelon” makes me, in fact, a hick. 

I am reminded of this fact for the three week period I am spending endless nights snorting lines, swallowing pills, and drinking copious amounts of vodka, whiskey, gin, and the like. I am staying in an apartment building on Carroll Street overlooking the lavender canal. I spend mornings smoking on the balcony in little to no clothing - it’s winter but I am on drugs and having sex all day and night. I am in a pair of boxers and a fur coat - neither belong to me. I am smoking and staring into the lavender waters. I think that, sure where I am from, we will never have skyscrapers or baba ganoush, but we have clean water and clean air. Having said that, I can’t decide which one I value more. 

I wonder, if people really cared about the environment, they would not only stop performing all the acts that are harmful to our formerly green planet, but maybe the people would leave these metropolises, these meccas that are at the epicenter of culture, of birth and dilapidation. Having said that I realize it’s not just the cities and I move on. My attitude conveys to me that I am just resentful and perhaps - uneducated. 

It’s freezing. It's March, and Donald Trump is President. It’s the morning after the Academy Awards and I can hear Bill on the phone. He’s high on meth, holding a pipe in his hand and shouting about how Margot Robbie’s victory was swindled. 

“I, Tonya was robbed! I want to break Nancy Kerrigan’s legs again!”

His voice is high pitched and he’s overly-gesticulating with his hands. He claims he talks with his hands because he’s Italian, but we all know it’s because he’s a faggot. We all know that he is claiming “Italian,” because not only is he a faggot, but an insecure faggot of the X-Generation. I don’t know who he is on the phone with but I don’t care. I continue smoking my cigarette, looking at the overcast bright sky. I am uncertain if it is dawn or dusk. We haven’t eaten in days. We haven’t left the house in days. We’ve been dancing to records and watching reality television for what feels like weeks. 

We sat watching the Oscars, Bill posed on the carpet in a beige robe that was sticky from Pancake syrup. His gray hair was in disarray. He was sitting pretzel-style captivated by the screen, by Hollywood, by what I cynically refer to as the Mirage. Everything that is outside of Christ and Agriculture is fake. New York City is a fictitious place. The canal is lavender -  a clear indicator that we are in a fairy tale that just doesn’t quite belong to us. 

He was in the middle of doing a line of cocaine off the glass table when Frances McDormand was announced as winner, ultimate achiever, victor over LA, master of making a lie believable. He screamed, the white powder dissipated across the table due to the breath of his lungs and the spit from his tongue. I would care but I didn’t pay for the drugs, I wasn’t paying for anything. I didn’t have a job and I wasn’t living anywhere. My stuff was in a storage unit. I lived this way for the better part of a year, scrounging up money from here and there and depending on the kindness of strangers. If I’m being honest, I was abusing the kindness of strangers - but this was New York and I had no pedigree and no degree. 

Earlier that same day, or maybe it was another day altogether, we watched Party Girl with Parker Posey. Her repetitive and comedic line was “I am not a waitress!” as she refused to work hard labor to make ends meet. I am not a waitress! I, too, am not a waitress. Now she deserved an Oscar. A performance that I painfully related.  

I met Bill at a bathhouse in Harlem. While I was poor and looking for men to give me money, he was looking for a twink to fuck. Although he wasn’t willing to pay me for a sexual encounter, he suggested he’d take me home and give me some shelter and entertainment. He phrased it as “We can party and talk for as long as we want.”

Upon entering the apartment building in Gowanus I mispronounced the neighborhood, he scoffed and said “You’re clearly not from here,”

I am resentful, but horny. I am angry, but need shelter. 

I am high and drunk upon entering the building with a revolving door, concierge, and tall ceilings. The marble ceiling makes me think of the inside of the Winters’ barn that stands beyond the cornfield of my childhood home. Every tall ceiling in New York makes me think of the barn. Within the cracks you could see stars at night. You can’t see stars here. I’m so drunk I am seeing stars. 

The elevator ride feels long although it’s not. I’m nauseous from the vertical motion and craving sex like a drug. I don’t even know Bill’s name at the time - he’s just a body to end my restlessness. A body to help me forget I am going nowhere and have nothing to offer the world. His cock acts as a knife, helping me leave my body - just a bit. 

The apartment comes straight out of 1985, I assume it’s a time capsule of Bill’s perceived hay day - when things were considerably good for him. Now, he has a drug addicted faggot in his arms - giving him permission to feel like a child too. He is not 49 when he’s with me, he is my age. I know he looks at me with hopes that I could be the one to save him. I can save him for a night, or three weeks. 

We fuck all night, we fuck all day and this is how I end up starting the first days of March smoking cigarettes naked in a fur coat staring into the abyss that locals supposedly know as the Lavender Lake. The only human interaction we have is men coming and going with little baggies filled with substances. Bill only wishes to dissociate, and I am his voluntary hostage. 

We lay post-coital on the carpet and the oven clock in neon green reads 3:45. It’s night. I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve been there at this point. I ask him if he has a job because at the rate we’re going it seems like he has no place to be, nowhere to go. He tells me he’s working on a book and he’s in between jobs. I ask him what he does, he goes on a tangent running down his resume. In this monologue of supposed professional acumen, I realize he hasn’t worked in a long time. I realize he’s living on savings. I realize he comes from family money. I realize the money must be running out. I realize that he is in fact, a living squandered opportunity. He is a life and money wasted. He doesn’t do anything. I try not to judge any further, I too am a squanderer. Two squanderers imbibing in sex and drugs hoping to reach the end of time. 

He asked me how long I had been in New York. 8 years. He asked me what brought me here. There was no one like me where I was from. It was either community college or a one way bus ticket to Manhattan. I chose the latter. He asked me where I was from. New Derry, Pennsylvania. He looks at me with warm eyes. He takes my face in his hands, brings me closer to him. He thanked God that I made it out alive. I asked why. He thanks the lord because it’s not a real place. He claims I escaped a fake place, instead of claiming the reality. I escaped an abusive place. I did, in fact, escape a real place. 

New Derry is a real place. It doesn’t have a Lavender Lake. It grows produce and has soil that can grow vegetables. It can destroy lives in an authentic way - you can starve and rot there alone, with no witness to your life. It has an egregious soul that takes. The man that claims New Derry is not a real place is not a real man. He’s not a human. Bill was not a man. He was a squandered opportunity. I get up and walk naked toward the kitchen counter. The cocaine is there. 

Bill lays unconscious naked on the living room floor. An episode of the Jefferson’s plays while I sit at Bill’s desktop computer. I look at his license in his wallet rested next to the keyboard: William LaMontagne. I look him up on a web browser. I snoop. His parents are Ethel and Robert LaMontagne. His mother, a famous chef - a household name amongst other housewife cooks. I don’t know how to cook, and clearly Bill doesn’t know how to either. I steal one of Bill’s cigarettes, I want to save mine. I put on the fur coat and step into the cold. I watch Bill serenely sleep, naked and sprawled out like a child. Never a care in the world while I am young and act as a feral animal in order to survive. This isn’t real to me.

Days go by and drugs flow through our systems. I am so high when I am looking at Bill’s veins in his arms. They’re protruding through muscle. They’re Gowanus lavender. I look at mine, the veins are not visible. Just flesh. I will never be New York. It’s all over my skin. I will never be good enough for a metropolis. 

I wake up naked atop the fur coat with a copy of the New York Times next to me and a handwritten note. I instinctually slide the fur coat on my cold body. It’s morning, I am waking up at a decent hour. My body has reset, or so I tell myself. I read the note written in chicken scratch. 

Parents Died. Off to bury them. 

I start looking for my clothes. I go on the computer and see the LaMontagnes died in a car crash in Berlin. I am waking up while Bill is in flight, probably sobbing over vodka on ice in first class. The apartment is a wreck. Cocaine, Meth, and other drugs scatter every surface. 

I never find my clothes. I managed to find a pair of pants that fit me. I tuck in one of Bill’s blouses which is extremely billowy on me. I put on the fur coat. I stole a pair of brown oxfords, we are the same size. I went for a walk and bought a latte and couldn’t help but complain about the price. I complained about the wind, I complained about the loud noises, I complained about sunlight. 

I call my mother from my cell phone and ask her to buy me a bus ticket home. She does but not before she mocks me for how I slurred my words. I shouldn’t have called. 

I board the bus with nothing. When I arrive, there is snow on the ground. It snowed in New Derry. It no longer snows in New York. The lake near the bus station is murky, but it’s not lavender. I am at ease. The air is clear. I get a breath of clean fresh pine. My mother picks me up and drives me back home. The narrow road is a straight shot surrounded by expansive and empty fields. I expected to see it tall and green but then I remember that it’s the end of winter. Everything is dormant. Everything is dead. 

My mother tells me my father is away on a construction trip, but I know that’s not true. He’s at a hotel across town with another woman and several Yuengling six packs, avoiding his needy wife and faggot son. I ask about the Winters Family. I inquired about Kiara. According to my mother she just got married, returned from her honeymoon in Tulum. My mother has never heard of this place, she can’t even pronounce it correctly. I try to conceal my disdain. “How exotic,” she proclaims. I have been to Tulum twice, both times on someone else’s dollar. I don’t have a dollar to rest upon. My mother might not know about anything beyond the borders that Trump wants to build a wall upon, but at least she can buy me a bus ticket. At least she has a roof over her head. I have nothing in place. I have a storage unit in Manhattan and I will probably lose that too. 

I walk up to my bedroom and it’s still the same. I open a window and let the chill in and I go to bed. I wake up in the middle of the night. The house is quiet. The night is quiet. I put the fur coat on and went for a walk. I smoke and stumble through the empty cornfields. I look at the stars and enjoy every drag of the Tareyton. 

You can’t see the stars in New York, only vibrant streetlights, blue and red police car lights, and the windows looking into brownstones reminding you that you will never live like that. I miss this place, despite the fact that it does not want me. It spat me out in the way that Los Angeles is supposed to. Los Angeles has nothing on New York and New York has nothing on New Derry. This place is dark and ominous. The only light is bright, beautiful, and far away. Unlike the Three Wise Men, I cannot find the North Star and although this is my only home, while I am here it doesn’t feel like home. Despite my pride in a place like this, it feels like it was never mine. It never loved me. 

I walk toward the barn in dress shoes. I hope to find Kiara there, but she is not. When we were little kids we’d always meet each other here at night and look at the stars. Her parents were just as bad as mine, struggling to make a living, struggling to make ends meet, struggling to show love, struggling to show up. Kiara and I only had each other. We went to Sunday School together, we got our first communions and confirmations together. We supported each other’s dreams. She wanted to be a ballet dancer and I wanted to be a fashion designer. We both promised each other we’d get out of this town together. When she decided to go to Penn State University, I opted for New York. I wasn’t smart enough to get into Penn State and she wasn’t talented enough to dance for the Met. She didn’t have the gumption to go to New York with nothing. I did. She had everything else, but I had that. I had bravery. Her path led to marriage. My path led to drugs. I was the squanderer. She never escaped. 

I sit by and look at the stars. I hear Mr. Winters yell out. 

“Who goes there?”

I put out my cigarette and walked toward him. I go to open my mouth, to say my name, and I hear the loud exaltation of a shotgun. I hear the shell casing stumble onto the wooden porch floor. I was a trespasser, but I was just looking at the stars. I can’t see them in New York. New Derry, New York, Penn State, Bill’s apartment, My mother’s room - I didn’t belong anywhere. I try to say my name but my voice is gone. The blood is sticky on the fur, I think of the pancake syrup stuck to Bill’s beige robe. I don’t belong anywhere. The stars shine brightly in New Derry.