The Verge (featured in FIELDING. (2021 print, written around 2019)

Once I had gotten high I could hold a conversation. Weed is like coffee for me now, in that I am unable to function at optimal levels without it. Ripping the piece four or five times, I had only a little bit left from two eighths I had bought two weeks prior. 

Not a bad job rationing supplies if you ask me. Being alone at mine, I had taken my meds and fed my cat but I realized that if I returned to her place in the same mood with which I had left that she would just get fed up with me. 

In the darker times I become a brick wall, a lock box, a poker player; no tells. Stop trying to think you can read me. Just a bowl full of herb helps the medicine go down. Now smoke a cigarette and go try to salvage this thing. 

Returning to her place, where I had not spent the night prior, I was immediately able to calmly and rationally explain my thoughts, without the corresponding emotions. Once again, marijuana dragged me out of a state of despair and gave me just enough of an adjustment as to avoid running everything into the ground. 

For now. This was supposed to be a summer fling, we both imagined and agreed, and here we are late into fall. We talked; it was fine. 

“It’s like I have this inferiority complex and I just imagine some other guy can give you what you want, or what you need, when I can’t.”

“That’s not true.”

“But there are reasons why this could happen…why you would feel justified doing something like that and not tell me the truth. You’re scared I’ll find out and break up with you, or that I’ll kill myself.”

“That isn’t how I think of you.”

“But we were broken up. You had every right to do something.”

“I didn’t. I wouldn’t.”

The sensation that something is amiss, that I am missing something, that I am being lied to or played with, does not abate. For weeks we had not been loving to one another, and then I had become unlovable, and then I had become even further suspicious than I naturally am when I am not in a relationship. 

Now my paranoia was not about unseen forces in our society, it  was about misunderstandings in my relationship. Without any evidence to support it, I had started calling her out for being untrue. 

“He’s the kind of guy I used to be. Life of the party. Fun to be around. Seemed to have your attention.”

“He’s just a friend. We were barely even friends at first.”

“But I embarrassed you. I made a scene. You would have every right to do this.”

“That’s not what I want. I know myself enough to know that’s not what I need.”

“It felt like everyone there wanted to separate us from each other. It felt like you were following him around.”

We had agreed to maybe go to the park or maybe go get lunch but I convinced her we should go for a walk. This is not an argument. And we left down the stairs from her apartment, out the front door of her building, and north up the block, for nowhere in particular. 

There were leaves everywhere and pedestrians sparsely meandering to their destinations. The sounds of children in the neighborhood schoolyard gave the chilly day an eerie feeling, like the weather is perfect for a Sunday but the kids are in school so of course it is a Monday. 

Her sunglasses complimented her frame and her personality, but I feared I did not compliment her anymore. Pretty certain I never could.

“We can just keep heading north for a while and then decide where to go?”

“Yeah that’s cool…uh…”

“That’s not good.”

And out of the next alley bound a white dog, young enough by size and energy to draw attention even if leashed, but this dog was unleashed and apparently lost. She called out a ‘hey’ and got the pup’s attention as it lunged confused into the street, seeing us but unsure of what to do next. 

A friendly dog, I thought. I whistled a command to get it to come, and we must have seemed friendly, because it immediately responded by arriving at our feet. Without hesitation, she reached her hand out to pet it and I grabbed the dog’s collar.

“Cute dog.”

“Yeah, looks like a husky mix or pup or something.”

“Check the collar.”

“Got ‘Cookie’ written on the back in Sharpie. Looks like a rabies tag.”

“Is there a number?”

“Yeah.”

Retrieving my phone, I typed the phone number of the vet listed and made the call. This dog seems loose and his name is Cookie. Looks young, maybe a neighborhood dog because he’s not too confused or scared. Seems a little uneasy. White husky maybe. 

And I gave them my name and number for the veterinary clinic to reach out to the owner. If the dog gets picked up by animal control and taken to the pound it would cost someone a couple hundred dollars to get it back, but there are worse things that can happen to a trusting dog that has lost its owner; dog pound or no.

“Are you a boy or a girl?”

“Looks like a girl. Yep, girl.”

“So friendly. Sit, Cookie.”

“She may be too young to sit.”

“She’s a good girl. Someone misses her.”

“I don’t know what to do. We don’t have a leash.”

“And I have my cat so I can’t take it back into my place.”

“Same here. Maybe the owner will call us back in a minute.”

“Here. Take the collar.”

I took Cookie by the collar and we walked back down the block towards the apartment. We were unsure now, but we felt we were doing the right thing by the dog. Being good to dogs is in our natures.

My phone rang. The owner, who upon picking up the dog intimated that this had happened before, left us feeling distraught for the life of this pup. We stood momentarily in the external confusion, briefly escaping our separate internal dilemmas.

A careless owner is dangerous for any pet, but a dog is more likely to leave if the owner is careless. We continued north.

“By the time I texted you I was already like four blocks away.”

“Yeah. I was just so frustrated that I didn’t really want to have a scene at the show.”

“I can’t handle the thoughts as they come in so I just leave before making a scene. I wanted to punch him and then stomp him. I wanted to come up and kiss you. I wanted to yell. Instead, I left.”

“I wish you would have said how you felt. Tell me what’s going on in your head. But making a scene would have been too much to handle.”

“I’m a coward. You were having a great time and all I could think was that I didn’t want to fuck that up for you. Then I did.”

We took a left, heading west now. The college slums are quiet in the middle of a Monday, though that charm is shattered any given night of the week. The houses are quaint and orderly, relics of post-war success and prewar hard work.

Remains of whatever America we lost, rented to students who have no concern for a heritage that is a driving force behind the cost of living, and of course the homes are often neglected by the landlords, or slumlords depending on your financial standing in the community. 

Every semester a fresh crop of eager beavers show up looking to spend their college fund finding themselves only to be destined for their predetermined role as just another cog in whatever wheel we are spinning on. Send your kids to this town and it is guaranteed the rent won’t be cheap.

“Do you see something in him that you don’t see in me?”

“No. He’s a friend.”

“But he is like I used to be; like I want to be. Life of the party.”

“I don’t want that. I want you.”

“I have these feelings of inadequacy, I guess. Like I’m not good enough for you. I’ve lost something and I don’t know how to get it back.”

“You haven’t lost anything. It’s all still there.”

“I get in my own head and can’t think past the moment, can’t see beyond my own thoughts to reality. Then I leave.”

“Stop leaving.”

Another left and now we were heading south around the several block circle. The walk had turned into an adventure with the sighting and retaining of a lost dog. The air had changed from confrontation to elation. What next?

“Can you see a future with me?”

“Yes.”

“Was that too much to handle? I can be too much to handle.”

“I was upset, but it was not too much. If the alternative is you confront him or me in a room full of people, I’m glad you left.”

“I don’t want to be this overbearing, resentful, suspicious boyfriend, but that’s what I was and I’m sorry.”

“Tell me what is happening. Talk to me. Don’t just let me imagine what is going on.”

“I don’t want to spread these thoughts. I just want them to not happen.”

“You can’t keep them to yourself. It’s too much for one person.”

“But it’s too much for two people, from what I have experienced. Suspicion ruins everything. I need you to understand something.”

“What?”

“I will always be like this. I’ve been like this in every relationship and I don’t know what to do differently.”

In my pause, her eyes flittered to my cigarette.

“I know smoking doesn’t help but the thoughts are there even when I don’t smoke. Smoking just helps me express the problem verbally while mulling it over internally.”

“So what do you think the problem is?”

“Trust. I can’t trust you because I don’t trust myself. Can’t, really.”

“Why can’t you trust yourself?”

“I have failed me too many times? Too many untrustworthy thoughts? I don’t know.”

“Then trust me. Trust yourself with me. It’s like that dog…”

“Cookie?”

“Yes, Cookie. Don’t be like Cookie. Don’t run off. Don’t run away. Stay. Stay with me.”

“I don’t think I can, but I will try. I’ve been writing about you.”

“I know. You’ve shown me some. It doesn’t seem like it's for me.” 

“It is. I just don’t have the thoughts fully sketched out before I write so I think what comes out feels incomplete.”

“It’s like you’re writing for someone else. Like it doesn’t apply to me.”

“It does apply to you. It is for you. Perhaps there are still things lingering but the intent is for you.”

We walked along down the block leading back to her apartment. The sun was at the point in the sky where it is not quite dusk but surely the gist of the day is done. 

You get the point, the sun proclaims, it is a fall day and they start later and end earlier so move along. Approaching the steps, we come to an agreement. 

“Just let me know what you’re thinking.”

“I don’t think you want me to do that.”

“I do. I truly do. You shouldn’t be alone with that. I can help.”

“Maybe I don’t want your help. Maybe I want to handle it myself and not burden you or make you feel bad.”

“Just be honest with me.”

We hugged, kissed, and parted ways. I had to be at work soon and she was working on something. In the coming months, the communication drove further to negative, farther from ideal. 

The cycle repeated in a degenerative sort of pattern I had gone through in every relationship so that by the time things ended, there was nothing to be salvaged. We drank from one another until the last drop. Exhausted all options, all attempts, all second chances.

And this is the nature of trust. Through the heart of it all a weed can grow and uproot the most solid of foundation, perhaps even the most fulfilling of seasons, before the turning of the leaves.

“The Couple”, Rafael Zabaleta, 1957.