Hypocrite

Mikey was persistent, I’ll give him that. He said he was interested in being my friend, and he stuck to it. He’d given me his phone number when he and Terra left, and Mikey and I ended up texting each other back and forth all night. He was nothing like his brother – no drugs, no alcoholism. He worked at a music shop, while giving lessons in Bass on the side. Coincidentally, the store he worked at was two blocks away from my apartment, and I found myself spending more and more time with him after he finished his shifts.

Now was one of those times. I sat cross-legged on the floor of my art studio, smoking a cigarette and painting gesso across a canvas laid flat on the floor. Mikey sat against the wall to my right, his long legs stretched out and almost touching my thigh. Sometimes we talked, but a lot of the time I worked in silence while Mikey read his comic books or what-the-fuck-ever.

“Fuck, Marry, Kill. Beyonce, Jay-Z, Chris Brown,” He broke the silence, and I stopped prepping my canvas to think about that situation for a second.

“Fuck Chris Brown, Kill Jay-Z, Marry Beyonce.”

“Why wouldn’t you kill Chris Brown? He’s such a turd.”

I flicked the ashes off the end of my cigarette into the ashtray next to me and exhaled the smoke, “I like Beyonce, so I wouldn’t kill her. I also can’t fuck or marry her with Jay-Z alive, ‘cause he’d probably beat the shit outta me. I wouldn’t even marry Chris Brown, so he’s gotta get fucked while I marry Beyonce.”

“Jay-Z would cause problems. Okay.”

“Ninety-nine problems,” I quipped, tucking my cigarette back in the corner of my mouth and continuing to cover my canvas. Mikey stared at me for a long moment before taking his glasses off and rubbing the bridge of his nose.



“Why do you hate Gerard so much?”

Judge Judy was the soundtrack of our night tonight. With a bowl of popcorn between us, we planned to sit in a television induced stupor until Monday. Mikey had to work then, and I had to finally get my shit together and start painting. Everything was going well, until he broke the sacred silence.

I heaved a sigh and rolled my head to the side to look at him, sprawled on my couch, “I don’t hate him. I just don’t like him, I guess. Not in a romantic way. He’s nice to look at, but I don’t like how he handles things, and I don’t like what he does-“ Mikey interrupted me by sitting up, reaching for both my hands, and pulling me to sit up as well.

Squeezing my fingers with his own, he made sure I was paying attention to what he was saying, “I’ve been over here almost constantly for the past two months. Even on the nights you aren’t working, you’re almost always high. You’re addicted. I want to help you, but you need to realize you need it, first.”

“You need to leave,” I finally said, tugging my now sweating fingers away from him. He searched my eyes for something for a long moment, before leaning forward to kiss me on the cheek. I instinctively backed away, looking up at the ceiling to avoid him. He sighed quietly before slipping on his sneakers and leaving me to myself in my shitty apartment.

I stared at the door until I heard Judge Judy’s verdict, at which point I stood shakily from the bed and threw myself into a different kind of stupor. In my art studio, I stood before a commissioned painting and held the paintbrush in my hands. What was I doing? My stomach lurched, and I turned away from the piece, only to come face to face with the tarp-covered painting of Gerard Way’s shitty face. The lurch in my stomach turned into a lurch in my chest, and I stomped over to rip the tarp off.

After not seeing Gerard for over two months, the masterpiece in front of me was enough to make me pause. He was beautiful. I dropped my paintbrush on the floor, and tightened my left fist to punch through the canvas. I couldn’t deck the real Gerard, but I could ruin this disgusting thing, and maybe it would make me feel better.

I held my fist in the air for half a minute, before dropping it to my side. I couldn’t do it. I don’t know what’s going on with me, anymore. This shithead walks into my life and just jacks off on everything I knew. Dearly, I wanted to destroy this monstrosity that reminded me of him, but I just couldn’t. I let out a coughing sob, before scrambling for my phone in my pocket and dialing the familiar number.

After hanging up, I crumpled to the floor and buried my fists in my eye sockets to try and keep the tears in. They came through, wetting my face and causing my hair to stick to my cheeks. I stared up at the painting of Gerard and wasn’t sure how I felt about it anymore.

Despite telling him to leave at first, Mikey got to my apartment in record time and found me in front of the source of my misery. Murmuring words of comfort, he gathered me to his chest and we sat on the floor as I blubbered into his chest about how fucked up everything was. I was fucked up. Gerard was fucked up. My job was fucked up. My life was fucked up.

Mikey just stared at the painting behind me, humming some kind of song and probably agreeing with my words. Shamelessly, I wiped my eyes on the shoulder of Mikey’s shirt, and he started to rock back and forth, trying to calm me down even more.

“I don’t want you to feel lost anymore.”