Jack’s Rotations and Hallucinations: Life after Marla

Life after Marla was gone was not easy. She finally was taken away to a mental institution… Hazelden: The world’s happiest resort for the mentally deranged. If she was going anywhere, it had to be to a place where she could sit in the same booth Paris Hilton goes to every time she has a breakdown. The place is so sophisticated, they recently opened the Britney Spears Wing.

Did you know that 1 out of 5 adults is secretly diagnosed with a mental disorder? Chances are, the “mentally disorder-ed” are sitting right next to you, opposite to your cubicle: Drinking your coffee in the morning, then running off to find a bum who will allow them to burn holes in their arms with cigarettes in exchange of a few dollars.

Marla was the source of all my problems, but also my number 1 source of entertainment. Where to go now? I decided that, I was ready for adventure, yet too broke to actually travel. Right after I returned to the workforce after my little “accident” in which the tip of my thumb got amputated (never try to close rusty french windows at the Dominican Republic), a recession hit the country. I guess the iPhones weren’t selling as well as expected. So, even with my “dignified” office job, I could not do impromptu weekends to the Hamptoms, or Tahoe. Besides, I’m not really the “resort” type of person. The only exercise I like is sex and walking with no clear destination.

With no money, I decided to open my social circle from what resembled an Edward Hopper painting to one of Lautrec’s brothels. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a happy brothel story. Not at all; it is not as if the solitude disappeared. Because solitude goes hand-in-hand with madness. They are just different moments of the day.

My “mentally disorder-ed” boss just tapped the left corner of the table. He always does this. Every time I feel his silhouette creep from behind me, I hear a “tap.”

Of course, this wasn’t planned. Like everything good or bad in life, it happens by chance.

After a fight with my boss over taking too many cigarette breaks during work hours, I stormed out of the office, and walked aimlessly. Marla, where are you when I need you? Where is the cat fur I’m allergic to, and that makes my face swell until babies cry at my sight?

I stumbled upon an old acquaintance who said we should go for a drink. I never really liked him, and the truth is, generally I would have declined his invitation, but I believe in the universal string theory, and therefore it would have been criminal of me to decline his proposal. That, and I had ran out of cigarettes, and knew he always carried two packs with him. Marlboro Lights when he was by himself, and Marlboro Regulars when he’d meet a girl. Not for the girl, but for him to smoke.

Girls love guys with Regulars.

Five beers later at some hipster bar, and I was ready to go home. My friend offered to give me a ride, and I accepted. He said we had to make a stop first though… some party, a friend owed him money there. I knew where this was going, and just went along with it.

Sometimes people are just band-aids.

We get to the party, and they aren’t serving any beer. Everyone is having water. And yes, you can tell where this is going. This is the first night in which, wishing to forget about Marla, I decided to give hard-core drugs a try. Yes, growing up in a conservative Pentecostal environment, and watching Hollywood movies in which the images portrayed of drug addictions are those of an initial neurotic high, followed by a crying Jennifer Connelly being gang-banged on a stage… you can understand why I put up a resistance. Also, Marla and her Valium enduced 3-day naps were not helping the cause either.

But life wasn’t worth shit anymore the older you get, and conspiracy theories lose their strength. I could afford a couple of highs.

Happiness can sometimes come in the shape of a pill. Sometimes people in post-apocalyptic costumes can look appealing. Sometimes fire can burn without one tongue of flame caressing you.

Soon enough I was living a dream. My friend gave me 2C-B. I don’t know why that was the first designer drug I did, because nothing could compare to it afterwards. Acid and E in a place in which people are dressed as ducks and tigers doesn’t seem like the appropiate spot to give these things a try. But what can I say.

At first, I thought the pill wasn’t working. I just thought the colors were beautiful in themselves, and that the music was beautiful, and that basically the abandoned warehouse we were at was the most beautiful place I’ve seen in my life. In fact, when it got to be too overwhelming, that’s when I started to suspect I was high.

I sip some water.

Ok, so this is what it feels like. It feels like crying when the music enters me. My ears are raped by the low decibels of electronic sound. Lights surround me, and make shapes of bunnies and rainbows on my surprisingly soft skin. The whole room is a blue screen with old movies being projected on it. And as I walk through the installations that surround the building, I feel like I can understand art’s true meaning for the first time.

I sip some water.

A woman places her hands on me. Her pupils were dilated, and she has the face of an angel. She says I’m a handsome guy. I say, “Thanks.” I take my iPhone out and snap a picture of her immediately. I must find out if I’m hallucinating. Strangely enough, the image looks so mundane and normal, I feel sick feeling this reality I’m living, this woman who is touching me, is not “real.” I’m still too caught up in “real reality;” even fucked up, I cannot let go.

She rubs my back, my chest, my ears. I feel love. We dance. Our hands intertwine like snakes. I laugh and ask if she can see it. She says she can. See what? We never specified. We are more connected to each other than some ionic bond in a world filled by matter, a world in which evil anti-matter lives 10,000 billion light years away. In reality, the profane anti-matter was 3 hours away, and could be found Downtown, in all those empty offices filled with blinking monitors.

Sunrise. I have to get to work, and I’m crashing. All I want to do is sleep in the grass as the sun comes up. To be caressed by nature. I don’t even bother to see if some well-trained dog has left a gift on the spot I’m doing “snow” angels on. I investigate my body, no canine feces on me. So, I just lay there. In silence. I realize this would be a good time to commit suicide… feeling I fear nothing.

My band-aid friend I lost in the begining of the night. The woman I was with was gone too. I felt her presence turn diabolical somehow. I ignored the feelings and just closed my eyes.

-Jack