by Trisky
I've been thinking about life and death a lot lately. I don't want to, but ever since Ben got out of the hospital it just comes to mind at the strangest moments. I was selling some kid a comic book the other day and he looked perfectly normal. I had no reason to be concerned. Suddenly, though, I had this one little moment where I kind of flashed on him coming from some sad home. Maybe one of his parents had died and he escaped into comic books in order to forget. I do that all the time now with my customers. I create some life for them, make up stories about their past, trying to figure out why they're so interested in superheroes and villains. I know why I am. I just wonder why everyone else is. Ben tells me that it's because I'm a writer now and my brain is always thinking of stories to tell. I didn't even realize I was any good at it, until I did it. It didn't turn out half bad. He says that's how most things are in life. It's a crapshoot. We know who we are through testing ourselves. Like the time my mom told me to give up comic books for Lent. I didn't last a week, that's how I knew they were so important to me. When she made me give up baseball or TV, I was fine, but not my comics.
What did the priest used to say when we went to church on Ash Wednesday? "Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." That kind of freaks me out a little. Like all we really are is nothing, no matter what we do in life. That kid who got choked, no one thought anything of him. He was just dust and in the end that's what he returned to, dust. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
We don't really control anything. Ben can't control his T-cells, no matter how many cocktails he ingests. They just do what they want. I can't control my brain from thinking about all this depressing shit. George couldn't control his heart from giving out on him. It just happened. Justin couldn't control that psychopath from hitting him in the head with a bat. He was almost dust. Poof, he would have just blown away in the wind if Brian hadn't been there. Brian's the only one who ever seems like he has any kind of control over anything. Some superhuman fucking power to just stop anything from getting to him. Nothing and no one will ever touch Brian again. No amount of dust up his nose makes him fall down, no people with their fists pounding on him, and especially no guy giving him his heart. He just doesn't feel anything anymore. He's spent his life making sure of that. Only now he seems to be totally out of fucking control. I don't know when he started to lose it or if he even realizes he has, but it's all gone. And now it all feels like a lie.
I should be happy about this. Happy that he's decided to join the land of the living. Now I'm not so sure the living is worth all of that, if we're all just going to wind up ashes in the wind eventually. Even superheroes are dying, and they're never supposed to die. Who knows if Rage will ever see the light of day again. I can't predict that right now.
"He asked me to be the one." I just drop it out of nowhere. Why not? Brian lives to shock. Sometimes I have some tricks up my own sleeve.
"He proposed?" He gives me a quick, curious glance from his perch behind the wheel, speeding with the top down on one of the most beautiful nights of the year so far. I look at his face, searching for something. I'm not sure what. I might have thought there was jealousy there once, now it just seems like what it is, confusion.
"No. He pulled a Ted on me. He wants me to decide if he stays on the life support or not, if it ever comes to that." I've been thinking about death a lot lately, because I don't want to think about it.
"Can you do it?"
"No."
"Will you?"
I sigh deeply. "I don't know." That's the first time I've admitted that out loud. I've tried to avoid the subject as much as I can. If I don't think about it, then I don't think about what I'm agreeing to. How do you tell someone that you're okay with signing their death warrant?
And if I do this, then I'm telling him I'm there for the long haul. I'm still not really sure I can do that. I love him, I really do. And not in the way that I loved David. I love Ben the man, not like the superhero I think I imagined David was. He could do no wrong and he'd come to rescue me, of all people, from my boring life. Ben's not like that. He has more real things to worry about, like saving his own life. How do I know how long we really have? Maybe Brian was right all along. After the way I fell apart when he was in the hospital, I have no idea how I'm going to handle having to do it over and over again if comes down to that. And then there's just always this thing hanging over my head. This thing that just stops me... You don't control who you fall in love with anymore than you can control when it's your time to go. There's no explanation. It just happens when it's meant to happen.
"Don't over think it. Go with your gut. You'll drive yourself crazy otherwise. Trust me." He's right. If all we are is just a pile of dust and ash in the end, what does it matter how much thinking we do beforehand? I'm not really famous for my thinking anyway. It's not such a bad thing because when I think about things too much, I usually cause more of a headache than I need. Ma says I do my best thinking with my heart. Some people are book smart, some are street smart. I'm heart smart, people smart. Brian got the brains, and most of the time that doesn't bother me. Except when it does, like tonight, because he should know better. He should know that Justin won't ever let go now. The scary part is that I don't think *that* bothers him.
"Could you do it?" I don't know why I want to know this, but for some reason it's important to me. Maybe I just need his courage.
"Could I shut Ben's life support off?" Even when we're talking about life and death he still manages to be a wiseass. I roll my eyes and look at the trees speeding by me.
"If you had to decide when Justin was in a coma, could you have done it?" I know he won't answer me. He doesn't like to think about all of that. I don't really blame him. It was a horrible time. But I think I'm beginning to understand that if we don't appreciate the life we have, then we're all just going to wind up one big waste. Just one big lump of ashes being mourned by people who never really knew us, either because they didn't want to or because we didn't let them.
"It wouldn't have come down to that. His mother is his next of kin. She would have made the decision." I turn and see him stare down the road ahead of him. I knew he would never give me a straight answer. Brian talks a good game about living on instinct, but his brain gets him in trouble because he's always thinking. He never stops. Everything that comes out of his mouth and everything he does is something he's thought about beforehand. From the look on his face, I know that he must have spent time considering the possibility that it might come down to that when we sat in the hospital. We all did.
"So you never thought about what it would be like to have to do that to someone that you..."
"No." He cuts me off before I head down a path he doesn't want to follow. I don't know if it's because he doesn't want to think about Justin almost dying or... the other thing.
I'm pretty sure now that it's love that makes life worth it in the end. The way your parents love you, or you love your friends, or love to read comic books, or love to fuck your brains out. Maybe we all do start off as nothing but dust, but something has to carry you through until you become dust again. I guess that's love. We all need it in whatever way we can find it.
Even Brian. Especially Brian. No matter how much he'd like to control all of that.
It just fucking hurts is all.
"Would it be okay with you if I changed my mind and let Ben decide instead?" He looks relieved. "I mean if he's going to trust me with something like that, then I think I should trust him with it."
"I never wanted to do it anyway. You'd probably hang on long after you should be gone, just to piss me off." He grins without warning, but I know he's serious. He doesn't want to be responsible for being the one to cut off the life of someone he loves. And he does love me. Even if he's never actually said it, just talked around it. It's just not... "You're still going to have to do it for me though. I don't have anyone else who'd be willing to step up to the plate. Well... maybe Melanie. But she'd get too much pleasure out of it."
"You have my word."
That's what Brian has always needed. Someone who's going to stand up and do the right thing by him. Someone who's going to look out for his best interests, even when *he* doesn't know what they are. That can't be Justin. I'm sorry, it just can't. Not after all that's happened. But Brian seems to think it is or else we wouldn't have had that little scene back at the gallery. We wouldn't have been anywhere near a gallery on a Saturday night, on a night we were supposed to just hang out like old times.
I guess he's still in some fucking control, because that's where we wound up anyway. We'll all just move in whatever direction he points us. I won't, not anymore. I will not follow him down that road because I know it's leading nowhere. I don't care how many explanations he has. I like Justin. He's a nice kid, but he's got some growing up to do. You'd think he'd appreciate the guy who saved his life just a little more than he did. I know Brian is in love with him. God... that still isn't any easier to say. But I was in love with David and look where that got me. I think Brian's more in love with the idea of Justin than he is with Justin himself. Like I was with David. I mean really, what does Brian know about being in love? Absolutely nothing.
Love has to be solid and it has to be real if you're going to rely on it to get you through. Otherwise you may as well just turn to ash right now. Does he really believe he could ever rely on some 19 year old kid who can't decide what bed he'd rather be sleeping in, to decide whether or not he should live or die?
"If anything happens to me Mikey, make sure Gus is taken care of." The thought of something happening to him makes me tremble. This is why thinking gets you in trouble.
"I'll make sure he doesn't like pussy, even with two mothers." We both chuckle lightly, but he's still subdued.
"There's something else I'd want you to do."
"Name it," I grin. He knows I'd do anything for him. Like I said, love is real and solid, and given some of the shit I've had to do for him, there's no way he could doubt that.
"Keep an eye on Justin, the way you've kept an eye on me. He needs a friend like that." I just nod my head and smile a solid, impenetrable smile.
Fucking Brian... never does or says a thing without thinking about it first, does he?
"Could you drop me off at Ben's. I'm not in the mood for Woody's."
"The night's still young and beautiful. Are you sure?"
I nod again. He's right, it is still young and beautiful. It always will be, even when it's nothing but dust blowing around the wind.
I guess Ben's right. We learn the most about ourselves when we put ourselves to the test. I just wonder why the test part always has to be so difficult. It's like we can't find ourselves until we have to face the test of giving up something we love or jumping into the unknown and just taking a chance that it'll blow up in our faces, things like that. It's always the difficult shit. It seems kind of backwards. We should be able to know what's good for us, what we're good at, with the easy stuff. That's the stuff that should come naturally, not the stuff we have to make mistakes with over and over before we get it.
I've just been thinking too much lately, that's the problem. All this life and death stuff, it's all bullshit. We live and we die. Whatever we do in between isn't going to buy us another day.
After all, if a superhero can turn to ash, then what the hell chance does a man stand?