“Do you know where the wild things go? They go along to take your honey,” Justine laughed, attempting to wake Gio up from his alcohol induced coma. You could hear the steady beat of Alt-J’s Breezeblocks from somewhere in her apartment – her attempt at trying to keep things upbeat. Gio stirred awake, an unhappy groan emerging from the boy before he rolled over. Two weeks had gone by in a blur, and now he was face down in some near stranger’s mattress. Justine was nice, he supposed. She kept trying to take care of him, as if he was incapable of doing so himself – as if he was some sort of injured baby bird.
“Well, good morning to you –“
“It’s morning?” He mumbled, not bothering to face her.
“No, actually. It’s noon.”
He put his arms above his head in a feeble attempt to block the light out. His head was pounding, not in a hangover sort of way, but in a comedown sort of way. What had he taken? “Dan says FIJI has something going on tonight, I think it’s Cancun themed. Do you want to go?” Gio groaned, still refusing to move. Living close to NYU was cool and all, but fuck their Greek life. And who the fuck throws a Cancun themed party? “I could probably get a few tickets for free, so it’s not like –“
“No, I need to go home and shit.” He didn’t mean to come off as harsh as he did, but he was tired. He was bone deep sort of exhausted that no proper combination of sleep, drugs, or alcohol could fix. It was the sort of tired that he hoped would be sorted once he was finally dead. If he had been paying any attention he would’ve noticed Justine’s nods, the way her face screamed ‘I’m sorry, I’m just trying to help you.’ But Gio didn’t want her help, and he didn’t want her friendship, and he didn’t want her. And he didn’t want there to be any room for confusion.
The train ride back home was uneventful, his body swaying relentless, back and forth as the train stopped at 34th then 28th street. The first time Gio tried cocaine he had been sixteen years old, and two hundred and fifty miles away from home. He was nestled somewhere in a triple dorm at Boston University, and he had a fake ID that had given everyone a run for their money. Or maybe not. Maybe that was part of the illusion of college. No one cared enough about anyone to look into anything, did they?
Cocaine was fun because it made him feel electric, it gave him the energy he could never really seem to muster otherwise. It made him an indescribable sort of happy, it put him at the top of his game. Gio didn’t mind that it made his heart race in his ears, stopped him from getting laid – in fact that was some sort of desert blessing. He spent too much of his time whoring himself out anyway. He didn’t particularly mind the comedown either. Headaches, a runny nose; whatever, he’d had the flu before. Worse could happen.
The reason Gio had coke on the brain was because he knew there was an eighth sitting on his desk at home. One hundred and five dollars, cut with Strawberry Quik and he couldn’t wait to get his hands on it. He was doing that thing again, and he knew it. He was spreading himself too thin, signing up for too many things at once. He knew realistically this would all come to bite him in the ass later; that he’d crash and owe too many people favors – but then he’d just move on and find new “friends” again. He couldn’t handle the idea of owing anyone anything, not when the world owed him so much.
Five hours later he was in some tattoo artist’s loft, and he couldn’t seem to stop blowing his nose. To his right, there were a line of dudes trying to safety pin their faces. ‘The last real Punks’, they called themselves. If those were the sole survivors of the subculture then Punk was dead and gone. He had the shakes and he couldn’t seem to sit still for shit. “What if I ran through that window?” He would ask, emphatically pointing with a cigarette in his hand. “What if I kept running and never stopped, what then?” But no one was really listening, because no one really cared. So, Gio found comfort on the balcony. March cold sunk into his bones, but he couldn’t really feel that either. “In like a lion, out like a lamb.”
Street signs passed him by, and some girl named Naomi had convinced him to wander out to Montauk. Gio didn’t bother to wonder how he would get home, mainly because he’d forgotten home had existed. He couldn’t get his mind to focus on any one thing, his thoughts were buzzing so loud he couldn’t understand any of them. There were fragments, bits and pieces of sentences he could hear, but nothing substantial.
The beach was cold, and if he weren’t so crossfaded he would’ve pointed out that he’d never been to Montauk before; that he’d never gone farther than Valley Stream. Naomi kept trying to pull him inside, kept tugging at his sleeve, kept pushing at his internal organs, kept trying to find a home for herself. Gio would say something that came off as too mean, and she’d throw a plate and yell, ask him what’s wrong with him. The answer was always the same.
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