I Got Soul, But I'm Not A Soldier (An Honest Mistake)

 

My most emotional year was probably when I was Twenty-five.  It was for so many reasons, but the events of the year before really created that.  I didn’t know how to deal with life much for the previous decade or more; I just kept riding highs and running away from lows.  I’d been through so many drugs and moves and chaos and disasters, of which I created about half of, and finally was starting to put it together.  I thought I had it down the year before.  I had girls, I had music, I had work, I had school, I had a place to live… but by the end of that year it was all falling apart again.  It’s probably my own fault, but I know it also all revolves around a single girl, and well, honestly, that was always my problem…

I met this girl online.  We had similar music tastes, and were both writers.  We were both looking for something else in life.  We didn’t know what, we just knew that we’d both been dealt a shit hand, and we wanted something different.  The American dream doesn’t work for dreamers, so we kept chasing something new…

She was a Russian model, a disaster of a human being who had only been out of jail for a few weeks when I met her, still bearing the scars of when the police shot her, and I was infatuated before I laid eyes on her.  She was enthralled by me, the chaotic poet, before we met in person too.  She had a boyfriend at the time, but we still fucked in my car the first night we met.

She had called me while I was gone, when I was on a week long lake trip with my friends, with no phone service, and she left me a message.

(People
They don’t mean a thing to you
They move right through you 
Just like your breath)

I called her on the way back.

The first night we met was on campus at the school I was attending at the time.  She was an out of work veterinarian, living with the engineer who had fucked her over, but still paid all her bills.  We spent the night driving around, listening to music, smoking cigarettes, and trying to deny the connection between us.

As I was driving her home, that first night, we pulled up to the corner of her building, and I said “Fuck it.”

We had been listening to the Bravery’s “Honest Mistake” which was brand new at the time, and was a song we both loved.  She told me she liked the way I sang along, and I pulled the car to the curb and kissed her.

(But sometimes
I still think of you
And I just wanted to
Just wanted you to know
My old friend…
I swear I never meant for this
I never meant…)

I drove to the nearest parking garage.  I dropped the seat, and fucked her in her skirt.  I couldn’t resist her.  I let her go that night, knowing there was so much more to come.

The next time we hung out, we drank at the bars in downtown San Jose for about two hours before it was time to go home.  My car and her apartment were the same distance, but in different directions.  Instead of walking home, she walked to my car.  We fucked in my car in the parking garage that night, again.  Some asshole kept driving by, just circling the almost empty lot, like he was going to catch a view, or join in, but we didn’t care.  We enjoyed our moment.

A week later, I introduced her to my friends.  They all told me she was too cold.  She was too skinny.  She was too small.  She was a cold-hearted bitch.  Fuck them.  She was gorgeous, and by far the most interesting girl I had managed to score up to that point.

(Don’t look at me that way
It was an honest mistake 
Don’t look at me that way 
It was an honest mistake
An honest mistake)

I was so infatuated, I was in love.

She and I went home that night and fucked like rabbits.

It turns out that all of her fucked up past and her issues made her amazing in bed.  I wish I could say we made love, the way they do in the movies, but that simply wasn’t true.  We were so passionately infatuated that we fucked like hell.  Every position we could think of, every brutal way to fuck that we could, we did…

We set a date for a few days later.

She flaked.

I didn’t get a phone call, text, email, or anything.  She just didn’t show up.  I tried every way I could to connect with her.

Three days later I finally got her online.  I started to chat, she cut me off.

She told me that she decided to work things out with her boyfriend.  The one she wanted to leave: the fucking piece of shit who put her in jail, and kept fucking her over.  She told him that we had fucked.  She told me that we weren’t going to be in contact anymore.  She had deleted all of my info, and was going to keep the promise to him.  She wished me good luck.  That was the nicest thing she could say.

I called her immediately.  I told her I was going to, and that I wanted her, and that I needed to hear her voice say this to me, at least over the phone if she couldn’t tell me in person, as I deserved that much.  She told me the same thing over the phone, but ended the conversation by telling me she was pregnant.  “Don’t worry; I’ll make him pay for the abortion.”

I drove over to one my best friends’ house.  I was a wreck.

(Sometimes
I forget I’m still awake
I fuck up and say these things out loud)

Several of my friends were there playing poker, which I’m normally not a big fan of, as it just feels like throwing my money away.  But I joined in anyway.

I was dead inside.  There was no expression on my face.  My friends asked, and all I could tell them was that she had dropped me.  They accepted that and moved on with their night, because they knew me well enough not to press.

I ended up winning the poker game, by a lot.  I went up about a hundred dollars on a twenty dollar buy-in.  A few of my friends are big gamblers, and don’t like giving up unless they feel like they’re at least even, but that night, because of my mood, they all ended up walking from the table and letting me have the pot.  They couldn’t have beaten me anyway; there was no way to read my face in that state.

I had a few beers that night while talking to her online.  I had a few more while playing poker, along with a few shots of whiskey.  I kept drinking after the game ended, but it didn’t seem to matter much.  The alcohol didn’t seem to affect anything.  My mood wouldn’t change, and I couldn’t feel anything.

Everyone called it a night and I drove home.  I had a few beers sitting around the house, so I drank those too.  Suddenly I found that it was about four in the morning, and I was out of booze.  I drove back over to my friend’s house where I had been playing poker earlier, because I knew they were partiers, and I hoped the mood there had picked up after I left.

No one was awake when I got there, but there were still several bottles of whiskey laying around, and a beer or two.  I sat there in the silence of that house in the suburbs, and I opened a beer.  I had a pull or two off the whiskey bottles.  No one woke up.  My situation didn’t change.  I decided I needed music.

I grabbed a bottle of Bushmill’s that was sitting there, walked out to my car, and took off.  It was still dark.

(My old friend
I swear I never meant for this
I never meant)

I drove up the freeway for a bit in the South Bay, then decided to cut into the mountains.  I had an incredible sound system in my car, and just wanted to crank it, and cry.  No tears were coming yet, but at least I could turn up the volume.

I started up Highway 9 out of Saratoga, towards Santa Cruz, which if any of you readers have ever driven, is a nasty road under any condition.  It’s especially nasty when you’re drunk and emotionally unstable.

I had a bottle of whiskey in one hand.  I had the wheel of the car in my other hand, and the pedals at my feet.  I turned up the music and drove.

As I went up the hill, I started out cautiously, because of the cops in that town, but once I knew I was clear of them, and the music kept getting better.

I had my dark mix on, a mix that I had made just for when I felt low.  “Honest Mistake” was on that mix.  I floored it.  I just couldn’t care less.  I was buzzing up that hill like a Nascar driver, just ripping as fast as that poor little car could handle.  As I neared the top of the mountain, where the road gets nastiest, that song came on.  The tears started. 

I lost control of my car near the summit.  It was the last sharp turn on the way up the hill; a true switchback.  On one side of the road was a mountain.  On the other side was a cliff, with a nearly two-thousand foot drop, and nothing but a guard rail to stop you.

That guard rail wasn’t going to stop my top-heavy car from going right over.

As my car lost traction in that turn, going about thirty miles an hour, I slid to the right, and glanced quickly at the guard rail.  The bottle of whiskey was in my lap, and my cigarette was in my mouth.  I dropped it into first gear and slammed on gas, while I cranked the wheel to the left.  The ass end of the car slid around, I spun twice, and ended up in the other lane, facing downhill.

I still don’t know how I pulled that off.

(Don’t look at me that way 
It was an honest mistake 
Don’t look at me that way
It was an honest mistake
An honest…)

I drove down the hill at a normal speed.  I drove back to my house in the suburbs, just after dawn.  I tried to drink the whiskey with no chaser, but realized I couldn’t.  Fortunately, it was Six AM, so I walked to the local bodega, and bought a bunch of beer.  The broken, cold, shell of a façade that I had been wearing all night was starting to break.

I drank for a few hours by myself.  With my headphones on, I must have listened to that fucking bravery song at least ten times.  I needed something else.  I needed a friend.

I hopped into my car again, drunk as piss, ready to break completely, at about ten in the morning.

I drove over to the house of a new friend, someone I didn’t know that well at the time, but who knew the whole story with the girl.

I managed to make it to downtown San Jose without getting arrested, and banged on the wall.

I woke DMZ that morning, about to break.  I was so close to crying, all he said was “Go sit on the couch, gimme a minute in the bathroom to get ready.”  He wasn’t ready for me at all, even after coming out of the bathroom.  He still had a few beers and let me pour my heart out.  After about three hours I passed out.  He woke me up at about eight that night to go out to the bars with his friends and find a new one.

That’s how you know who your friends are.