My Name Is Jimmy and You Better Not Wear It Out

Shit.

How could I let this happen?

Gloria CAN'T be like Sara! We weren't exclusively fucking each other, were we?

"Fuck yes you are."

Oh for the love of fuck, not now.

"You haven't taken your pills for days, this was going to happen eventually."

The Saint grinned at me, fully manifested only in a manner of seconds.

"Go away. Please, just go away."

He laughed his cold, cruel laugh. "I'm not leaving until you're fucking dead, Jimmy boy."

Ignore him. Ignore him and try to figure this out. What could I do to make this go back to normal? What could I do to make sure this wasn't like Sara?

"You could cheat on her before she cheats on you."

It was a passive statement, and I immediately ignored it. Why would I listen to him? What would he do to help me? Absolutely nothing, that's what. He was out to get me, he wanted to royally fuck up my life, he wanted me locked up in a white padded cell where I wouldn't ever see the light of day again. Only him, day in and day out, laughing at me while I screamed and trashed and tried to get the fuck away.

But GOD, what could I do to fix this?

"You could fuck someone else before she does, that's what."

"Gloria wouldn't-"

"Says who? She could be just like Sara, waiting to fuck someone else at any moment. Hell, she could even be fucking someone else right now and you wouldn't even know."

I don't know what made me listen to him. Maybe it was because I was tired. Maybe it was because I was scared. Maybe because it made sense, at least as much sense as it could make coming from him, to beat Gloria to the punch. And maybe it was because he was giving me the advice that Tunny would give me. Tunny would tell me to fuck someone else, to not let this girl get attached, to roam free and fuck the world.

"So what should I do?"

"Fuck someone else. Good lord, Jimmy boy, you are really losing it if you can't even remember what I said about five seconds ago. Usually you remember everything I say."

"But who?"

"ANYONE, dear God, what is wrong with you? You used to fuck every girl in PLAIN SIGHT, and now you just sit around with Gloria day in and day out. THis is turning into exactly what was going on with Sara."

Shit. He was right. He was so right. What could I do? What could I do?

I shot out of the apartment and went downstairs to where the congregation was waiting as usual, drinking and getting high. I ignored the usual shouts of "JIMMY!" and pointed to the first girl I saw. I hadn't fucked her before, but I had the vague sense her name was Emily.

"You, my apartment, now."

She didn't question, she just followed me eagerly. Just like any one of them would. It made me sick how they would probably jump off a fucking cliff if I told them to.

I closed the door to the apartment and locked it, terrified that for some reason Gloria would come bursting in at any moment while I was doing this. Then I was pulling off Emily's clothes and she was pulling off mine and then there was a lot of thrusting and grunting and sweating.

And when it was done, I lay on the mattress breathing heavily, but not for the same reason that Emily was. She had this look of amazement on her face, pure joy, as if she was five and had done something naughty that she knew she would get away with without being put in time-out. It surprised me that she could even make that sort of face while being high off her ass.

Me?

I was terrified that Gloria would find out. My head was a jumble of confusion and terror. I had the vaguest sense that Emily had been a good fuck, but it wasn't fun. It wasn't like how Gloria was. Emily was so damn baked, and I was so damn scared through the whole thing because I was thinking about how Gloria would react if she found out-

Then it dawned on me.

Gloria could never find out.

In that exact moment I wanted to purge the whole room of evidence that this had ever HAPPENED. I told Emily to get dressed and get out, and she did. Immediately after I pulled on all of my clothes and started smoking, trying to rid the room of her perfume and the smell of sex and sweat. Then I took a shower. A long, hot, burning shower. I scrubbed everything and washed the whole surface area of my body three times. If I was clean, Gloria would never know. She wouldn't ever be ale to find out what I had done.

The next two days spent with Gloria felt strained. There was this hanging tension that I knew she could feel but couldn't quite figure out. I felt guilty and I wanted to get away from her whenever she was near me, but whenever she was gone I wanted to be with her and tell her what I had done. To tell her I was so fucking sorry and that I would never do it again and I was so god damn motherfucking sorry.

Then one day she didn't come back to my apartment after she had gone to her apartment to change. The whole room felt empty while she wasn't there, and my stomach started clenching into knots. What if she knew? What if all this tension has just screamed I SLEPT WITH EMILY THREE DAYS AGO AND I HAVEN'T TOLD YOU.

She didn't come back the next day either.

And the day after that I decided that I had to tell her. I woke up early and stood outside of her apartment door, nervously tapping my hand against my thigh, dragging up all the courage I had to try and knock on the door.

It took a minute or five, but I finally did it.

"Go away."

Not the response I had been expecting. And her voice sounded different. Horse, as if she had been screaming a lot, or crying or something.

"Gloria? Gloria-please let me in."

There was a pause.

"Jimmy, go the fuck away. I cannot BELIEVE you would even come here after what you did to me."

I pulled a blank. I couldn't even figure out what she was talking about for a few seconds. Then I found myself speaking.

"Gloria-wait, what? Let me in?"

"NO! GO AWAY!

"Come on, please! Tell me what's going on!"

She opened the door, and it took me a second to realize that the person in front of me was actually Gloria. Her hair was a mess, she had bags under her eyes, and her usually clear, chocolate eyes were blood-shot.

"When were you going to tell me?"

My heart started pounding, but my mouth was speaking of it's own accord. "Tell you what?"

"This."

I took a step or three inside and closed the door as she crossed the room to stand by her answering machine. Gloria didn't have a phone, but she had a phone number. Her mother had insisted on this when Gloria had left her father's house, just in case she needed to reach Gloria from wherever she was living. Gloria had told me once that she thought her mother was living in Florida, or at least she had been after the divorce, but she was constantly vacationing in Mexico.

Gloria hit a button on the machine and it started to play the outgoing message.

"Nobody likes you, everyone left you, they're all out without you having fun."

I grinned for a second at Gloria's sing-song mockery of anyone leaving her a message. She herself didn't really like answering machines, and she didn't like people who left messages. People who left messages expected an answer sooner or later, and Gloria didn't answer messages. I was broken out of this chain of thought when the actual message started to play.

"Gloria? It's Emily, your ex-best friend. Guess what? We fucked. It was great. He was great. I don't feel bad at all, and he liked it."

Gloria looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to speak. I opened my mouth, but I couldn't think of what to say. All I could think was fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK.

"Tell me it isn't true, Jimmy. Tell me you didn't. Tell me it wasn't you."

"Gloria, I was going to tell you-"

"GOD, JIMMY, WHY?"

"I don't know! I was freaking out and I kept seeing Tunny in my head-"

"FUCK TUNNY. YOU ALWAYS GO ON ABOUT HIM! 'TUNNY'S SUCH A DOUCHE BAG. TUNNY SAID THIS, TUNNY SAID THAT.' TUNNY LEFT YOU HERE, JIMMY!"

"I KNOW THAT!"

"THEN WHY DO YOU STILL CARE WHAT HE THINKS!?"

I stared at her. Why did I still care? Of course I still cared! Tunny had taught me everything that was IMPORTANT.

"Tunny made me who I am, Gloria."

"Tunny did nothing but fill your head with lies and drugs."

"Lies? What the hell are you talking about!?"

"His philosophy on love, Jimmy. LOVE ISN'T-- Love isn't just some addiction, Jimmy."

"Yes it is, Gloria! I thought you understood that!"

"If you really think that, then why did you come here to apologize for fucking her?"

I pulled a blank. This conversation was going in a horribly different direction than what I had thought it was going to be. Finally I found words.

"I did not, I came here to-"

"You came here to what? To FUCK!?"

"MAYBE!"

I didn't know what made me say it, but it gave me a feeling of satisfaction as I saw her face go blank. She hadn't been expecting that. When she spoke again, her voice was low.

"No, you didn't. I can see it in your eyes, Jimmy."

Now it was my turn to pause again. What was I going to say now. Gloria looked hurt. God, I wanted to make her feel better. I wanted to take the pain away.

"Gloria, I'm-"

"Oh, NOW you're going to say it! AFTER I call you out on it. Smooth, Jimmy, really smooth."

"Well what do you want me to DO, Gloria? I'M SORRY I FUCKED HER!"

"Well, it's too damn late. It's just too late!"

"God, Gloria, why is this such a big deal!?"

"BECAUSE I LOVE YOU JIMMY!"

I found my words caught in my throat. She just stared at me with uncontainable look of pain painted right across her face. My heart started pounding. She didn't say that, she couldn't have just said that.

"You don't mean that, Gloria..."

"THE HELL IF I DON'T! You're just too scared to admit how you feel!"

"Too scared to admit how I feel about what?"

She looked at me as if I had just slapped her across the face.

"ABOUT ME!" I opened my mouth but she held up a finger. "Don't you try to deny it, I KNOW! It's in how you look at me during and after we have sex, it's in how you hold my hand when you know no one's looking, it's in how you kiss me-"

I said the first thing that came to mind, I just wanted her to stop talking. "Gloria, you're kidding yourself."

"No, Jimmy, YOU'RE kidding yourself. You hide in your haze of intoxication, too afraid to feel real emotion. You're terrified of committing, and your experience with Sara just pushed you back down that path even though you were so close to GETTING OUT."

"HOW AM I AFRAID OF THAT?"

"GOD, JIMMY, PRACTICALLY EVERYONE IS AT SOME POINT! EVEN I WAS UNTIL I MET YOU!"

"Exactly why I slept with someone before you could!"

"How could you even say that? Don't you know me well enough that I would never do that!?"

"I don't know, maybe I don't!"

She looked at me like I was a complete idiot, and I actually wanted to hit her for abut five seconds.

"Jimmy, you need to look at the REAL WORLD here! Have you seen how messed up everyone is since you took over?"

"What do you mean?"

"No one's angry anymore! They've all turned into fucked up forms of hippies! All the drugs and no love! No one's rioted in the streets for months, not like they used to, and everyone's just looking for their next fix and their next sexual experience! YOU'VE FUCKED UP EVERYTHING!"

"EVERYONE WAS FUCKED UP BEFORE! LOVE IS COMPLETELY USELESS! EVERYONE IS BETTER OFF WITHOUT IT!"

Gloria looked like she was on the verge of tears. And then she was crying. "God, Jimmy, how can you even say that? How could you say that when I've loved you for weeks? How could you say that when you've been spending all your time with me this whole time?"

I immediately crossed the room to her and wrapped my arms around her. I hadn't ever seen Gloria cry. I had seen her angry and I had seen her sad, but I had never seen her cry. "God, Gloria, I'm sorry-"

She pushed me away and shook her head, her bright hair moving back and forth across her shoulders. "Jimmy, I'm just so scared. I don't know what do anymore. You've fucked everyone and everything up and-and--God, Jimmy, I'm late."

I looked at her. "What are you talking about?"

Her eyes locked with mine and I saw a fear I had never seen there before. She looked at the clock she kept on the wall then back at me. "I-I'm late. I'm late for school. I have to go."

She threw her random dance things into her duffel bag and was out of the apartment before I could even say anything. I stared around me and ran over her last few words in my mind. She was late? What the hell did that mean? It was so early in the morning, she couldn't be late for school-

Oh.

OH.

I flew out of her apartment and down the stairs and onto the street. I looked into the early morning crowds, trying to find her bright red hair, but I couldn't. I slammed my fist into the wall, swearing loudly. Why wasn't I more quick on the uptake? How could I have not understood what she meant when she said she was late?

I went up to my apartment and stayed there until the usual time I would leave to pick Gloria up from school. I practically sprinted through the City on the path I had memorized to get there, but when I got to the front gate her two friends said she hadn't even come to school.

She wasn't at work either.

And she didn't come home.

I didn't bother calling her, I knew that she wouldn't respond.

Three days later I woke up and found a note that had been slipped under my door. It was Gloria's handwriting.

I can't take this place, I'm leaving it behind.

And I was terrified. And still she hadn't come home.

I spent the week after taking morphine and not leaving the apartment. The only people allowed in were the ones who brought food and didn't try to talk to me. It wasn't like I would respond anyway.

Then two days later, someone brought me a letter. Again it was Gloria's handwriting. No return address, only the words NEW YORK written in the upper left corner.

And I read it avidly, getting angrier with each word. She wrote things that made no sense to me. How was the City's motto "What's in love is now in debt?" That was MY motto, MY reminder not to fall in love. And how was I supposed to know the town bishop was an extortionist? How was I even supposed to KNOW she knew the town bishop? And when had I ever said that something's "not my burden?"

AND I KNEW THAT I WASN'T THE JESUS OF SUBURBIA. TUNNY WAS THE JESUS OF SUBURBIA, I HAD TOLD HER THAT.

I threw the letter aside, then found two extra slips of paper in the envelope. The first was a picture of a man. Blond, smiling, perfect-looking. The second was a note.

P.S. His name is Nate, we're going to get married. He actually loves me.

And immediately I was thinking That's not true, there's no way he could love you more than I do. I love you. I love you more than anything--

And that's when I realized what I was thinking. That's when I got angry at myself and her all in the same moment.

She made me into the American Idiot. I fell in love with her!

I looked at the envelope and at the words NEW YORK and I realized something. In her first note she said she couldn't take the City.

What she really meant was that she was leaving me.

Aug. 18th
Dear J,
Where have all the bastards gone? The
underbelly stacks up ten high. The
dummy failed the crash test, now
collecting unemployment checks like
a flunkie along for the ride.
Where have all the riots gone as the
city's motto gets pulverized?
"What's in love is now in debt" on your birth certificate.
So strike the fucking match to light this
fuse! The town bishop is an extortionist
and he don't even know that you exist.
Standing still when it's do or die, you
better run for your fucking life. It's not over
till you're underground. It's not over before
it's too late. This city's burning "It's not my burden".
It's not over before it's too late, there is nothing left
to analyze. Where will all the martyrs go when
the virus wires itself? And where will we all go
when it's too late?
You're not the Jesus of Suburbia
The St. Jimmy is a figment of your father's
rage and your mother's love. -W.

Made me the Idiot America. It's not over 'til your
underground. It's not over before it's too late. This
city's burning. "It's not my burden." It's not over before
it's too late. She said "I can't take this placeI, I'm
leaving it behind." She said "I can't take this town,
I'M LEAVING YOU TONIGHT"