Clayton Street

I thought that maybe I'd just make a shitty entry about nothing, but when I get down to it and start moving my hands to craft these little instrumental words of anti-song, it always has to end up being about something, no matter how much of a nothing the something is.

Thinking about Clayton. Not a person, not really. As much of one that a house can be, or a street. Clayton was the old people's ghetto. No black and white division, just division by age. Only my own household and the one directly across the street (the Hindus that always smelled like exotic spices) had any younger people in them.

A lot of nothings happened there. My nearly two years in silence, speaking less than ten words a day total to anyone, including myself. That's counting the "Oh shit" when I was late for work and the "unngggghh" when the alarm clock would go off, too.

That's the house where I got dumped twice, once thirdhand through a fucking yearbook, and once by time herself. My shortest relationship ended up leading into my longest one, only to come back and cause the longest one to leave me anyway. Never could blame either one of them. The first didn't know the second would be pissed that I even talked to her, and the second had every right to be pissed anyway. I was stupid for not writing off half of my soul when I could've.

The first one knew she was going to replace me and could only stand to wait two weeks. At least the one thereafter, though she knew she was going to, waited like a month. That made me feel a little better. I still wanted to stab myself in the throat with a jagged piece of glass, but a little better anyway.

I called the second a few times. We'll talk and joke, but we have nothing to say, really. She's always gone anymore, and she's happy being gone. I'm happy for her; she's one you can send off and be happy for even though it kills that bit of you. I called the first one. Once. I thought to myself that maybe she would have more than ten words. I thought that sometimes people change, and maybe she could bring herself past whatever shame or hatred it is that she has. But, naturally, it's as I said in my life before this one. People don't change, only dreams change. As she sat silent and I struggled for her yet again, I looked over and saw the one person who's never betrayed or abandoned me coming up the road. And as I waved to Dunkel, I spoke into the phone: "I'll wait until I hear from you."

"Okay," she said.

Who thinks I'll ever hear from either one of them ever again? Dreamers, maybe, or people who like to see me fail. Sometimes there's just no more to be said. Sometimes you just have to toss your hat onto the rack, slip off your shoes, and lock the door behind you.

Clayton was the home of my insanity. When I went crazy, I told very few people. Only one bothered to show me that she gave half a shit what happened to me at all. At the time, I had no pure emotion. I was a mechanical on the borderline of shizophrenia: remorseless, empty, without guilt or sense of humanity. I was a machine of destruction, a vessel of nothingness. Knowing, afterward, that my state of being crushed this girl's heart and brought her to shed tears...for me...emptied me even further. But it emptied me in a way that made me feel again.

I still ended up a masochist, though. Everyone who's never been there likes to make fun of the people who bring blades to themselves, and sure, fuck those goths and poets. But like I said, I was just plain crazy. I did it to feel something. I didn't do it because I was already empty; I did it to become anything but empty. I have crude, frightful paintings made out of the rich waters that came out. I know the taste of my own blood and can taste it even now. I will die with scars of shame, with permanent reminders that once I was a shell. Having been this shell, though, I am able to understand humanity and emotion to such an extent that most people barely even acknowledge exists. You lose a basic extremity like your ability to feel, and once you get it back you appreciate it far more than normal entities that have alwalys taken for granted that they'd always have it.

Clayton was the home where I was forced to go to therapy for being a freak. Waste of my fucking time.

It was also the home where after not talking for a year, my momdroid decided to tell me how worthless and ignorant I was one time too many, so I threw some shit in a bag and started walking. Running away isn't the term that came to my mind...more of...throwing shit in a bag and leaving. But that's what I was doing. Things sucked so bad at home that I'd have rather been a bum in the gutter than lived with that bitch for two more minutes: that's just sad. Before I went, though, she told me to scrub the floor of the bathroom. I decided to scrub out the toilet bowl with her toothbrush instead.

Maybe therapy wasn't a waste of time. My therapist hated my momdroid too, and when I told her that, she laughed pretty openly. That's something I'll never forget. I don't know why, whether it's the sadism or satire, but I won't forget it.

Speaking of the droid, Clayton is the place when, after coming home and falling asleep on the couch and her seeing my scars, she had the audacity to say, "I had no idea you were so unhappy." Perhaps if she'd taken that half hour of watching Wheel of Fortune every goddamn day, or at least said something during the commercials, she might've known. The truth is, she knew all a-fucking-long and didn't want to admit it. She knew that if she bothered to take five minutes to hear what I had to say, she'd be forced to acknowledge that more shit was out there than the brown heap she had on her own plate.

Knowing that you have one parent, and that that one parent doesn't give enough of a crap about you to take note that you're still alive, well...that sucks. Latchkeys all the way.

Clayton was the house where someone knocked on the door, and I looked out the window to see who would actually bother to come to our house for anything. I opened it when I saw nothing, expecting the Hindu boy to be there with a stack of poetry so I could proof his English, or the little kid that had just moved in next door holding his hockey gear and wanting me to play with him. Instead it was a police officer telling me he had a warrant for me. I asked him if I could leave a note, though I don't know why I bothered. He said that was fine, so I wrote one in the kitchen with him having followed me through the house. "Police came, going to Cole County jail." There was no sense in writing anything else. I kind of wondered how long it would take the droid to notice it or even do anything about it. I still don't know why I didn't just grab a sepukku dagger right then and finish it off. Sometimes I wish I had.

A lot of the time I wish I had.

More often than not, I wish I had.

But.

I didn't.

Now I'm not on Clayton Street anymore. My family still doesn't give a shit about me, I decided any girl who had an interest in me was probably legally retarded, and the only thing I've drawn with any sort of medium in ages are dreams. I've put a little initiative into my hands. Minimal initiative, but more than anyone else will ever take with me, that's for sure. I got myself into new schools in a new place where I won't have to make excuses for not introducing my friends to my family. Where I can have the job I want and not serve slop to ungrateful bastards every day who insist on ordering things that obvioulsy aren't there. But it's a job that I got for myself, that I go to from an apartment that I lined out for myself (despite Chaos' mating partner incessantly trying to take credit for all success).

One thing I've got now that I made no effort to get is some real comrades. Over the past five years, I've made less and less effort at being a good friend to those who'd have me be one. It's paid off more and more. No one puts me up on the podium and pedestal anymore. No one expects me to know the right answer to anything. I haven't been called the Great Red by some random Pakistani hacker who chopped into Vin's machine in years. It feels good to be a nobody, and it lets you enjoy a little more humility.

Plus, without strife, Seta found his way back to calling me a comrade. When your little brother leaves, creates suffering of his own, and comes back to say that suffering at your hands was far more pleasant, well, it means a lot. Not that the suffering at my hands wasn't his own damn fault to start with, but, you know. Little brothers do what little brothers do. Sometimes they fall and you just have to let them hit the ground before they appreciate all those other times when you tried to catch them.

Clayton Street actually sort of holds a fondness with me, however, it's the place where I had to give away the kitty I had since I was six. For that, it can burn to the fucking ground. I miss my kitty.