Getting Out

“The people in small towns are all the same.
They believe the same things, go to the same church and social gatherings, they wear the same clothes, they work the same jobs. They’re all robots; drones programmed to be like one another. They have the same accents and, most of the time, the same last name.
They don’t know of life outside of their fucking town, out of their comfort zone.
"They don’t dream of escape, they don’t want out. They’re only content when they’re living in the luxury of the life they’ve always lived. They’re happy here and that’s the worst fucking part.”

Destin is sitting with his back against the rotten wooden beams barely supporting the pier. His yellow-gold eyes are glowing in the dark. We're sitting alone, in the dark, watching the waves roll in, barely illuminated by the moonlight glimmering off the green waves of the ocean.

Smoke is billowing from his lips as speaks, as he raves about the same shit that he’s always raving about. He’s quiet for a moment as he brings the cigarette back to his lips and the sound of ocean is soothing; it calms me down and distracts me from the rough hatred in Destin’s constantly pissed off voice. But then he’s done inhaling toxins and tar and chemicals into his already beaten lungs and it’s right back to his rave with his rough voice and his agitated hand gestures.

*

“They don’t exist without their friends, without their designer brands, without the comfort that living in this town brings. They wake up every morning and can plan the day out completely because nothing different ever fucking happens. Things here don’t change. Things here have never changed. The people don’t change, the buildings are falling a-fucking-part because they’re afraid of not being able to get them back the exact same way, nothing here ever changes.”

Destin’s been talking about getting out for so long that it’s like a record player without a switch.

I know all of his speeches, I can repeat them all back to him, can mouth along with him when he’s not watching. He doesn’t know that I’m sick of it, that I’m sick of listening to him whine, because I don’t have the heart to tell him to stop. I’m the only one he ever talks to about anything anymore and telling him to stop scares me. I listen and I try not to make faces and roll my eyes and I let him talk because it’s what he thinks he needs to do.

*

“I can’t be happy when I’m stuck here. You- we- we can’t be happy when we’re trapped in this fucking place, filled with the same fucking people. I can’t take it, the close-mindedness, the ideals, the way everyone has to act. It’s like… it’s like, soul-crushing or something. It makes my head pound, it gives me stomachaches, my hatred for this place does. Have you ever hated something so much that you went through physical pain because of it?”

Destin is zoned out; he’s stoned. When he’s stoned, his rants aren’t rants so much as a rush of words, words that usually don’t make sense. His dark hair is down in his eyes and it’s greasy, like he’s not showered for a week and knowing Destin, he probably hasn’t.

I’m laying down on my stomach on his bed with my face smashed against his leg. His fingers, the rough and callused digits, are tracing over the ink on my back. He’s outlining, with perfect precision even in his stoned state, every bend and break of the owl that was permanently etched into my tanned skin a few years back. It’s soothing. It’s taking my mind away from his saddening talk of the town that we’re stuck in all over again.

This talk is a new one, it’s one I’m not used to; he’s never told me about the stomachaches or pain at all. He’s scaring me.

We’re in his house, the basement with its dingy lights and battered concrete walls. It’s worn down and scary; it offers no amenity and does nothing to settle the swarm of butterflies that Destin’s words are disrupting in my stomach.

To get out of here, the cold basement, and to settle Destin down, to be able to be around him in an environment that doesn’t make him sick, it’s all I really want at this point in time.

*

When Destin jumps off the pier in the middle of December a few months later in shorts and he doesn’t resurface, I can’t cry. I tell his mom, who doesn’t know shit about anything, let alone her only misunderstood son, to have him cremated. I tell her that he doesn’t want to be stuck here, not buried in the frozen ground that he’s always hated with every fiber of his no-longer-living body.

She gets the vase, ugliest fucking vase I’ve ever seen, a few days later and she sets it on the fireplace and puts a picture in front of it, so that it’s blocked from everyone’s vision.

It’s months before I work up the nerve to head over there and disappear into the basement, to pick up my movies and c.ds, t-shirts and scattered panties from off his floor and shelves. I look at the bed and I’m crying. I strip down until I’m in nothing but a ratty pair of underwear and pull his favorite sweatshirt, a ripped hoodie I bought him when I went to New York a few years back, down over my naked and frigid skin.

I’ve got this feeling, then, it’s bubbling out of me and I can’t even think straight. I throw everything that I’ve already picked up already down on the bed, c.d cases cracking and DVDs rolling out on the floor, and race up the stairs. I’m barefoot and my coat and jeans are all on the floor downstairs, but I grab his vase off the fireplace and fucking fly out the door.

There’s no one home at his house, but it doesn’t matter. I’m crying and my heart is racing and I can’t get my breathing under control until fifteen minutes later when I’m out on the freeway, teeth chattering, with Destin’s finally free ashes strapped into the passenger seat.