The Masochist Boy (5) Her jaw dropped. Amazing. It was so completely not what she expected that she could scarcely believe he had written it. It wasn’t what anyone would expect from the grim and angry boy that Rob was. And yet it was just like him. It seemed like he treasured every letter, every comma in every sentence. There was so much quiet beauty in every word. He strung them together like pearls on a silver cord. They sparkled like moonlight on a river at night. It was so beautiful. And at the same time, it was as bitter and twisted as Rob always was. He had written something called ‘Purple Cocktail’, which sounded like a madman’s ravings about his drugs; he’d written things which were obviously products of hallucination; things that were obviously crazy. Then there were beautiful lines about a sick girl in a hospital that he’d seen during one of his numerous stays, couplets about his aunt’s mirror, a sextet on the stupid crudeness that has been cultured in young people these days. He wrote them all as nothing more than an objective observer; never did he place himself in the scene. And then there was one piece about himself. It was titled ‘The Masochist Boy.’ It was alive with pain. He wrote about going to school and being beaten in the halls. He wrote about going home and being blamed for every problem in existence by his cocaine-smoking mother on the couch. He wrote about going into his room and finding his uncle trashing all his things and being beaten again when he protested. He wrote about being thrown cold oatmeal as a kid and he wrote about staying in on field trips because his mother never signed the papers. He wrote about being teased for being so thin and so pale. He wrote about being sick and throwing up and burying himself in blankets because he was so horribly cold and crying and nobody listening. He wrote about sitting up at night, all alone, after a nightmare, waiting for some one to come in and tuck him in and tell him everything was going to be alright, and knowing at the same time that nobody would. He wrote about something that ached in his head and in his heart every night. He couldn’t make it go away. And in the very last paragraph, he wrote about coming to like physical pain because it was so much preferable to mental and emotional pain. He wrote about suicide and pills and slashing his arms to let the pain seep out of him along with the blood. He wrote about wanting to scream and strangle himself and not having the means to do it and when he had the means not having the will. The handwriting was still as precise and cold and neat as always, like a child who doesn’t realize the impact of what he just said, and accepts it as completely truthful and normal. And he ended it like so, words dripping with irony: Pain is my world Pain is my life My love is Ecstasy My king is a knife I’m the masochist boy-- I love suffering too much to die. The notebook slipped from her hands and fell to the floor. She was crying. She understood it now. She understood it. Footsteps, light and swift, up the staircase. He was coming back. In one quick and fluid motion she stooped down and slid the thing into her pocket. It was small enough; she imagined that was where he kept it. He poked his head in the room and sighed: "Hey, Vivien…" She nodded, eyes wide. It was as if she was seeing him for the first time; the quiet screaming in the black eyes, the weariness in the pallor of his face, the mind-numbing emptiness in his voice. He was so tired. The dark hair that could use a cut and a combing and probably would never get one; the black clothes that were old and didn’t fit properly and probably had been from a charity. Suddenly, she knew him. She knew him better than he knew himself. She wanted to cry for him and hit him at the same time. "Listen," he continued, oblivious. "My mother says you’ve got to go. Don’t ask why; she’s been smoking that bleeping weed again. Walk you home?" She nodded again, and followed him out of the room. She had no words. She was aware of his glance all the way to her house. He didn’t understand her silence; it wasn’t like her. She had a million things she wanted to tell him, but did not trust herself to say any of them. Her heart ached and her mind was in complete disarray. So she said nothing. They reached her door; he waved goodbye, a puzzled frown on his face. She read the entire thing through. Guilty? Of course she felt guilty. She knew without bringing herself to realize that it was something awful to read someone’s private musings. But she couldn’t restrain herself-no, she couldn’t. She read it through and came out bleary-eyed and crying and wishing violently that she could somehow go back in time and undo all the hateful things everybody had done to him. She wished she could have been there the day he decided to take the stupid powder. She wished his mother would get up off that stupid couch and scold him for all he was worth and hug him when she was through; that’s what her mother would have done. Some of it he had told her, and some of it he hadn’t, but what she wouldn’t give to go back and stand up for him when he wouldn’t stand up for himself; just to give him a hug and tell him that his parents loved him and nobody wanted him to die and everything was going to be alright. Except that he wouldn’t have been fooled anyway. He seemed as sick of it as she was. He wrote in his notebook about one of his numerous hospital stays: I don’t feel so good today I’m kind of sick. I drank three bottles of Robitussin My arms I pricked with Novocaine I swallowed twenty-three prescription pills And slashed my wrists and watched the blood pump out. I don’t feel so good today. I really think I’m sick. I spent my week lying on the floor When I stand up it’s only to get more Throw up in the bathtub Hit my head when I pass out Slash my wrist and watch the blood pump out With every delayed heartbeat From my drugged slowed body I don’t feel so good today. I don’t feel that good today I think I hate my life this way But I’m too ill to care Lying on my bedroom floor I don’t see the need to live Another day anymore Crawl to the kitchen Pick up a knife with a good sharp edge Empty bottle of cough syrup Hate my life, hate my life but I Can’t do what I want to do Drop it to the floor Collapse on the table Crying, sobbing, blood flows from my arms Pick up the phone and dial 9-1-1 Shaking so hard I might die My head’s in space My heart is dead The pain pounds inside my head Fall clattering down to the floor Paramedics through the door Again drank three bottles of Robitussin My arms I pricked with Novocaine Swallowed twenty-three prescription pills And slashed my wrists and let the blood pump out And I don’t feel really good today I think I might be Sick Then, all in capitols, furious but still carefully neat: NOTHING’S ALRIGHT NOTHING IS FINE HOW CAN IT BE WHEN I AM SITTING HERE CONTEMPLATING SUICIDE Her first instinct was to fling the thing down; but instead, she put it carefully on the desk. It was important to him; it was special. She wouldn’t trespass that far. She heard a song on the radio that reminded her strangely of him: You're just a screwed up kid, Who doesn't know who he is Fights the words in his head, Screams he's better off dead. What did you sell your soul for? What did you sink so low for? Rob sat on his bed, legs crossed, eyes closed. It had been such a strange day he didn’t know where to start. Oh, no, he did. His notebook. It was missing. He could have sworn he’d left it on the bed yesterday; but no matter how many frantic times he ravaged his room he couldn’t find it, not a hint of it. He checked in his desk at school, went through all (three) his pants pockets and even the threadbare jacket’s which he hadn’t worn in months. It was crazy. He’d looked outside his window to see if it had blown out with the wind, for crying out loud! It wasn’t fair. That was his-it was a piece of him! It had been for years. To have a piece of you just torn away… He half-smiled bitterly. Just his luck, he guessed. What rotten luck he had. He couldn’t focus through class; not without his notebook. The teachers had all denounced him, this time even more firmly than usual. He didn’t care. The day had trudged by. He almost couldn’t wait to be home, and what was stranger than that? What was stranger… Vivien. He wasn’t sure what had happened there. He honestly didn’t know. They’d been walking through the park, like they always did…nothing different at all. She was quiet…and that wasn’t like Vivien. Quiet and absent minded; her thoughts were elsewhere. So were his, but they always were. He remembered vaguely saying something about how his uncle was coming and making him sleep in the bathroom closet-not news to him, nothing shocking- And all of the sudden, she had whirled around and hugged him. Hugged him tightly, rubbed his back, and whispered that it was all going to be alright, and that if he needed anything at all he knew where to find her and she would always be there because she knew what a wonderful person he really was inside. She had been crying. Even after they let go of each other in a famously awkward moment, she was still crying too hard to talk. He’d asked her if something was wrong, if there was anything…No, she had whispered, and smiled weakly. She was alright. Was he alright? For some reason then, he had felt like crying. He’d shrugged and smiled, and thanked her for the hug. It had been a strange day, alright. The notebook was a problem. He needed it and paper just wasn’t the same. He didn’t know what he was going to do. But somehow, it didn’t seem as bad after the hug as it had before. The next day she left his notebook on his desk again. She never told him she had read it. She wanted to ask him many things, but she pushed them out of her mind. Always pushing them off of her mind; she couldn’t risk losing his trust. He needed to be able to trust her. She knew this: She was the only person he trusted even a little. To grow up trusting nobody stunts people. She knew someone who had grown up that way, and it was very sad. He had gone to a mental hospital. He had driven himself clinically insane because he was alone in his head and sympathized with no one. She did not want Rob to end up in a mental hospital. She liked him. He informed her that he’d found it later that afternoon as they were walking to the park, and what a coincidence that was. She said nothing. So it went. They lived in their own worlds, the two of them. It focused around their lives-which is how it should be; all young people need a certain amount of self-absorption in order to grow and develop love for the things in their life, like their home, their family, their religion. Selfless teenagers exist; but few of them lead happy lives. Vivien thought it was wonderful. Vivien would have loved for someone to invent a little bubble for her to exist inside of all day long; she would have loved to be so insulated from everyone else that nothing hurt anymore. She suspected that that was what kept Rob on drugs, however; this seemingly harmless desire; and so she allowed her own introversion to go only so far. Still, to them, nothing outside of their day to day existence really registered very heavily on their minds. Things going on in the rest of the world; they really didn’t care. Things change, though. There was talk of war; big headlines in the paper. JOIN THE MILITARY campaign ads flashing on the television; on the radio. Join the Navy, the ads said. Be All That You Can Be. And Rob thought about it. Of course, you would probably have to have graduated high school, and you would probably have to be clean-cut…no drugs. But he thought about it anyway. It would give a purpose to his life. He mentioned it to Vivien, and she flipped. "Let me get this straight," she would say, eyes wide with disbelief. "You want to wake up at four in the morning to be yelled at by people with tiny brains and buzz haircuts who want you to get a lethal weapon and stand in the middle of a hot desert like a big bullseye in hopes of losing a limb?" "No," he would admit. "Thank you." "But it would give me a reason, you know? I’d be able to wake up in the morning and say: Well, I may be in the middle of a desert thousands of miles away from home, but I’m doing something for my country, and somebody out there isn’t dead because of me." "I’ve got a better idea," she would say. "Why don’t you fight against your addiction? That way you can wake up in the morning and say: Well, I may have to go to school and put up with Vivien and all the other kids, but I’m doing something for myself, and I’m not going to die from an overdose today or a fatal cancer tomorrow because of what I’m doing." And then he would sigh in exasperation and explain to her that she just didn’t get it, did she, and that would be the end of that. This was the way they spent their junior year. And then, summer. Rob, as always, wrote down the major changes from last year to this in his little notebook. On the one hand, he had an actual friend, and he figured that in that column he was plus one thousand points. On the other hand, his grades had stayed the same. Some were better, but most were just as bad. On yet another, his addiction had gotten much, much worse, and he was worried about his mother, who was beginning to look as though she might actually be sick. What would he do if she was sick? The question hung unanswered. Vivien had gone to spend the summer in a bungalow colony. Of course. He felt even more miserable at her leaving. He didn’t know what he was going to do with himself for the next two months. The days threatened to stretch into a long endless moment again-he could feel the despair, waiting for him around the corner, and he feared it- And then, despite himself, he sat down and started to write. It wasn’t poetry or songs. It was a story, and he poured all of himself into it. He put himself into the characters, into his characters, into his world. It was all his world; all his. No one else decided what happened there but him. He could make or break people there. But he didn’t want to be powerful; he wanted things to turn out alright for everyone. He wanted to make them feel pleasure and satisfaction with their lives. First he had to write about their struggle, of course, but always he knew what was going to happen, and that they were going to be happy in the end. He lived in his little world; he lived there all summer. It gave him a tranquility and detachedness without drugs.
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