The Poetics Of Shane

The following short story was written 3 years ago...

I am awake. It’s about three o’clock in the morning, or so I am guessing. I haven’t bothered to look at the clock as I am distracted by a vision of you in my mind. I have a tingling feeling throughout my body, a feeling as if something momentous has just occurred, like a premonition of death or a message I am about to receive. Are you trying to send me a message? My initial thought was that you had just died. Thought maybe I’d read about it in the paper today. Sure enough, nothing in the news. I figured I was being a bit ridiculous. Did you fall to your knees and pray to god? The frequency of your spirit is flowing through my veins quite clearly.

I could have stayed with you forever, entranced in our erotic betrayal. The two of us, tightly pressed together, lying on my boyfriend’s weathered black couch. If I had moved even an inch I probably would have fallen off of it onto the floor. I felt cold. You were warm. Your finger tips gently caressing my shoulder. Without hesitation, I melted into you. I remember your hands, the way they moved across my skin, each motion seeming premeditated. I recall you sitting on my kitchen floor once, playing your guitar; deeply penetrating every chord. Stacking red plastic trays onto a garbage bin became your symphony of orchestration.

I had no idea you would end up in so much trouble. The last I had heard is that you skipped town on a bus and moved out west to hide from your debts. Sticking needles in your arms, I was told. A sense of dread came over me. I wondered where you had gone. I pictured you sitting on a street corner, dirty and cold, numbing your pain. We were all high back then. Getting a fix whenever and however possible. I know I was feeling pretty messed up! Judging by the pill bottles on your bedside table, you were feeling about the same. My family supported me and I got help. Naively, I assumed the same fate for all of us. For three years I witnessed the downfall and prevalence of everyone we knew and befriended. But my concern for you was greater than the rest. I saw something in you, an awareness of yourself no one else seemed to possess. An inner confidence trapped behind a wall of disappointment and shame.

I think you’re beautiful
I thought you were wise
You are talented, yet in disguise
Why Shane?
Why all the drugs?
Why all the pain?
It’s only life
It’s only a game

Running late for a flight, I left your room one morning, assuring you I would be back. I left you to face the repercussions of our infidelity alone. For a month I sat at my Grandmother’s hospital bedside, taking care of her. She was ill and developed Dementia, a disease that causes confusion leading those affected to lose touch with reality. I told her beautiful tales of the life I was to return to. All lies in reality, but truth to me. At night I would return to my Grandparents’ empty house, alone and craving my next high. I phoned my father and proceeded to tell him I was lonely and needed to return home, so I could get a fix. I was sick! I needed help! I wasn’t ready to admit it to myself or anyone else. I continued down my path of self-destruction for one more month. This time I was drowning. I drank myself into a stupor one night. I broke down in front of everyone at the bar. Realizing my humiliation I grabbed my things and left. I found myself standing at your window. I screamed for you. I was angry with you. I was angry with myself for wanting you. I even threw a couple of snowballs and possibly some rocks at the glass pane in a fit of rage. That was my “rock bottom”. I was about to fall even harder once I stopped abusing myself… I miss it sometimes, getting high. , except you spend all your time on the bottom looking up. I spent the next six months pulling myself together. My aunt offered me a room in her home. Slowly, I had begun to realize what I had been doing to myself and why I was doing it.

A year had past since I saw you last. I came out west to escape what I once was and start fresh. I started to dream about you then. I dreamed your picture was pinned to a lamppost, meshed together in a collage of flyers. As if it were placed there like a photo of a missing cat. I spent a month in Vancouver, but the city eventually chewed me up and spit me out. We must have walked the same streets? I thought perhaps I’d run into you. I would imagine all the possible scenarios; I would find you on the street and take you in my arms, help you get your life together. We would fall madly in love. Or I would find you working in a restaurant downtown. We would sit, chat and ultimately become good friends. I was living in a fantasy. I could have found you if I had tried a little harder, but I was still fighting my own demons. My wounds were too fresh. I moved back east again. I would move out west and return to the east once again throughout the following year. Standing on the streets of Vancouver, I would search every face in the crowd for you.

I loved the way you looked at me. I admired you. I admired all the things in you that I saw in myself. We hold the same spirit captive in our hearts. Self-punishment has a firm grip on us.

I lost you somewhere
Between now and then
I want you back
But I don’t know when
You moved me when I was naïve
You have left me now
Everyday I grieve
What is this memory I cannot forget?
I stare at the wall
My eyes are wet

Three years had gone by. The west was calling me once again. I was getting better with time. I had a clearer picture of what I wanted. I still found myself hitting walls, but now I had the tools to knock them down. Was I brave enough yet to expose what was on the other side of these walls? This was my test. I moved to Vancouver Island. Having family out here helped cure my lonely heart. I found myself a good job and a place to live in Tofino, a small tourist town on the west coast of the island… I started to dream of you again… religious dreams and daydreams. It was like I knew I was close to you. I could feel you…

In the spring, I took a trip to Victoria with a friend. She was a small town girl and hadn’t spent a lot of time in any city. Tofino, with a population of about twelve hundred residents in the winter months, was starting to close in on me. We were both looking forward to getting away for the weekend. We wandered up and down the streets, spending all the money we had saved. My friend’s eyes were as bright as a young child’s are when they try something new for the first time. She pointed at all the flyers on the streets, advertising up and coming bands, and promotions for bars and clubs. We were hungry and needed to find a place to eat. I wasn’t familiar with Victoria. It was new to me as well. We walked into the first place we spotted. Fast food was on the menu that day.

I see you on your knees
And I fear what I am about to say
My lips are empty
I let you touch me naked
Yet, I can’t even speak to you
I wander near you
What am I doing here?
What’s wrong with me?
Why can’t I just let it all go?
Tell me old friend
Why am I here today?

Not a word between us when I saw you on your knees, looking up at me. I was in shock, gradually moving into denial. You were different… so thin and frail. Your face pale and your eyes tired. The tight blonde curls peaking out of the back of your blue cap should have given it all away. You became a dream to me and now you had become my reality. I was afraid. Both of us hesitant to pinch ourselves in the midst of this chance encounter, the sheer terror of our own reflections.

If you only knew what I wanted to say
I wanted to speak to you in so many ways
Yet my conscience kept my heart at bay
Trapped inside
I didn’t know where to begin
I was afraid of how it was going to end
All the things I did not say
If I only knew what you wanted to say
I wanted you to speak to me in so many ways
All the things you did not say

Your voice was always so soft and fluid. Like you were whispering in my ear a secret only the two of us could hear. I always felt at ease with you. Your body, as if sculpted by Michelangelo himself. I remember lying in your bed, tracing with my fingers, every inch of you. I was up all night trying to hold on to that moment. I knew I was leaving you. I wonder if I had stayed, would you have held onto me? Would it have mattered?

I heard you had been arrested and put into jail a number of times. Assault and theft, I was told. Alone, behind bars with only the Lord to speak to, that was your story. Making sure everyone knew you loved God. As if it would excuse you from all of your sins, asking out loud for his forgiveness. He loved you like a father, but you were the adolescent that would not listen. Have you made amends? Does god watch you or does he rule you? Am I your angel? That would explain the pain.

Blue, your eyes pierced right through me
And I was second-guessing
The blackness in your face tells me where you’ve been
My thoughts of you are constant
Unending until I see myself in you
Broken, my heart still beats in the morning
I hear sirens
Do they make noise for you?
I feel regret and anxiety, my greatest downfalls
We share the same mirror.

Months went by. Once more, I found myself searching for you. I wanted to let you know I was there for you. I wanted to make sure you were okay. I returned to the fast food place, but you had disappeared. I had lost you. Or did you lose me? Running from what is real. I know what that’s like! Blurring the lines of truth and lies? Will you catch yourself before you fall into a lonely grave? Will it be another three years until I see you again? Maybe this was it. Fate had brought us together. Instead of listening, I turned the other way and walked out the door. Was I happy having you solely exist in my dreams, a safe haven from reality? Maybe I fear what I really want from you is non-existent. Something I simply made up to keep myself entertained? Or, are you my way of holding on to the past?

I remember sitting across from you one night, at a table in the bar we frequented. Staring intensely into my eyes, you had me exactly where you wanted me. “A woman read my tarot cards," you said. "She told me about you…”


Conclusion:

I ran into Shane again this past January. He called out my name three times until it finally dawned on me that the blonde man, that I was staring at, sitting cross legged on the sidewalk and calling out my name was in fact Shane. It had been three years since I saw him last!