I Can Hear Everything

I lost my fight pretty terribly by what people told me. They said things like “you did great”, “thanks for letting me come watch” or “I loved watching you fight”. People only say those things when you absolutely failed at something. I only remember the first half of the fight, I think I got hit pretty hard, but it’s in the past. It doesn’t matter.

Michelle, my girlfriend I was having dinner with, just finished her food and drink all while avoiding eye contact with me, looking off at the band on a half lit stage somewhere behind me. I was on my fourth or fifth glass of water. Why did she hate me? Why did the band strike at my ears with such malice? Why was the waiter taking so damned long? Nobody could know the answers to these questions, and I squeezed my eyes shut at the pain of trying to find an answer.

Talking to Michelle was impossible. The music was deafening and it pounded my brain with each strike of the keys or slap of the snare. On top of that vomiting smoke machine was the fact that the lighting in the room was particularly rancid. I could hardly see my hands and my eyes screamed in their sockets. What bothered me most was that there was something I wanted to ask Michelle, or tell her, but the thought kept getting lost between my shattered neural pathways. And she didn’t say a word to me the whole dinner. Maybe because she saw me get knocked out, maybe because she couldn’t see me or probably because she despised me. It was like I wasn’t even there. I cupped my hands over my head and wanted to hear nothing. It hurt, every single sound that cut through my brain like a knife. I heard it all, I saw it all, and I wanted no more of it. And when Michelle finally spoke, her words split my head.

“I think you did really well tonight.” Michelle said, hardly audible and not lifting her eyes to me.

I heard the words within her words, there was an effort to her speech. The way she brewed the sentence in her throat for too long before releasing it, the way she swallowed after speaking, the way she held her eyes on the table, she didn’t mean it. She lied to me.

I nodded and got up. She asked where I was going. I told her I was going to pay and she laughed one of those awkward chuckles that one does when they’re kind of unsure of where they stand. You know, one of those laughs that generates high in the throat, the flat toned and empty kind. The band struck a high note, holding it too long for my tastes and I winced.

I concluded that if she wanted to come with me she would, and if she didn’t, well, she wouldn’t. So, I paid for our table, which was only her meal, and left. It didn’t make a difference whether I returned to her or not, she had her thoughts of me either way. Whether I turned left, right or went straight also didn’t matter, all I knew was that I couldn’t go back into the restaurant and sit down in front of Michelle. She hated me and I knew it. I couldn’t bear the dishonesty any longer. Eventually, the wind landed me in front of a library.

There was something about the chipped brick walls, weathered steps and faded sign that caught me. There was no deceit laid into this building, with its face forfeiting everything there was to understand about the place. The library spoke truthfully to me in a language I could not hear but fully understood as it’s cobblestone steps passed under my soles, its rusting rail under my palm. It grabbed me by the neck, pulled me in and told me “you too, one day, will decay.”

I feel truth, but why can’t I hear it in their voices?

Making my way through the aisles, I heard nothing for the first time in what felt like an eternity. Without the music in the restaurant, the traffic and street sounds outside, my head was free, liberated to spill itself into the air. But it was too much freedom. My mind had nothing to latch on to and I shook my head away from my own thoughts.

They lie because they do not trust you.

They lie because you do not deserve truth.

They lie because they pity you.

They lie.

I didn’t want to think, no, I didn’t want to hear it! I walked between the books with fragmented consciousness, unable to make sense of the letters on the books, but I needed something other than my own mind to accompany me. My hand seized a book and I clutched it to my chest until I found a seat. I glared at the book’s face forcing myself to see something, but I found nothing. I rolled the title of the book over and over in my head but I only heard the sound of the clock ticking, I saw shapes with no meaning. At least it silenced my mind. After turning the first page I blinked and opened my eyes to the find the coarse paper against my cheek.

A prickly hand shook my shoulder, the dry skin raking across my shirt. I forced my eyes open and was met with the face of a frail looking man with a white mane that dangled to his mid chest. His skin hung off his bones like a deflated balloon and his breath smelt like the pages of old books. On his shirt was a badge that said “SECURITY”.

“You sleeping?” He asked.

“I think so.” I said.

“We’re closed, I’ll walk you out.”

The old man and I made it to the door and I noticed my fingers were still wrapped around the book. It was a social psychology textbook, and I gave it to the old man to put back. The muscles on his face pulled up at his eyebrows.

“Is it interesting?” He asked as his bones seized the cover.

“Probably.”

“You know. I was a psychology professor back in Germany some many years ago.”

“What a coincidence.”

I was in no mood for conversation, and wished that I could dismiss myself without being overly rude. This person had nothing to say that I wanted to hear, so I thought. The old man turned the book in his hands, coughed all over it and glared right into my soul.

“Boy, I can tell you things about yourself.” He said.

And I believed him. He drew in a slow breath and I awaited the knowledge that would slip from his tongue and pierce my skull. I waited and waited, and as his lungs filled with more air to spill more secrets, I leaned closer and closer. What insight could this learned man gift to me? Was it help that I needed? Maybe, but it was an answer that I wanted. Why do they lie to me? I hear them but I hear nothing. I hear it all but I hear no truth!

Then he sneezed and coughed over my face. He sniffled, tossed me an undoubtedly used handkerchief and wiped his nose.

“I’m terribly sorry. Anyways, you’re a decent type of kid.” The old man said as he turned on his heels and sauntered back into the library.

Again with the lies!

Had he truly been sorry he wouldn’t have done it in the first place. He sunk into the jaws of the library, likely to go sneezing and coughing all over the books. I dropped his handkerchief on the steps, preferring my own sleeve for the job. I wasn’t bothered by the old man’s mucus spread over my face, but I was dwelling on what he said. He spewed lies. I heard it in how his pitch started too high and in how he dragged his last syllable. It was clear.

I wasn’t bothered by the truth, I was shaken by the lack of it. That’s what I wanted to hear from him. It could have been anything, but so long as it was honest, that’s all I wanted.

The streets had quieted and I checked my phone to see a few missed calls from Michelle. When I called her back she didn’t answer. I decided to go straight and then right.

Michelle hated me and the old man thought I was a bum. It was all bitter-sweet. I took solace in knowing their true perspective, but wished they would tell me what they really thought. There was a group of teenagers blasting music on a small speaker and skateboarding under a bridge. I watched them for a while, and it was funny hearing them talk. Noise.

“Yo, Nick got shitered at Micah’s eh.”

“Yeah, Nick’s a goon.”

“That guy, Nick.”

“He's nuts.”

The mood struck me, however moods strike these days, and I walked up to one of them. My body spoke for me.

“Hit me.” I said.

“Nah man. Are you good? What are you talking about?” Was the kid’s response.

Michelle hated me because I wasn’t good at nothing, and the old man thought I was a deadbeat because I fell asleep in the library. That didn’t matter, but I just wanted them to own up to their lies. I needed to see true colours, now, wherever I could find them.

“I’ll give you a dollar.” I said.

“Dude, no.”

“You need an ambulance, man?” Another asked.

“Nah,” I said, mimicking them. “I’ll put in two dollars for one of you to just hit me.”

“You need help.

They snatched their belongings and left, keeping one eye on me from over their shoulder as they walked away. They didn’t even care enough to hit me once, and I would’ve paid them for the courtesy. All I could think about was how they were a bunch of posers, pretending to care about me and all. They offered to get me an ambulance but they just wanted me gone, they suggested help for me but offered none of their own. Their pulled back posture, their slingshot dialect and their tone gave it all away. I was no fool. I heard it all, I understood the half truths.

I was just looking up trying to find a star when Michelle called me.

“What the hell?” Was her first question.

How was I supposed to answer a question like that?

“Where did you go?” She followed up.

“I went right, I think. I’m not one to take left turns.” I told her.

“I was worried about you.”

“You’re not mad at me?”

“Are you okay?”

“I think so.”

I heard Michelle sigh on her end of the phone and it occurred to me I wasn’t going to get the truth out of her any time soon. So I played my boldest strategy, an all or nothing approach. Michelle would reveal herself to me, one way or another, and if she didn’t, that would be revealing enough in itself.

“I know you despise me. I want to hear you say it.” I said.

“What? I… love you. Why would you say that?”

I hung up the phone. She hesitated and her pitch was too low, too calculated. She had lied to me, and in an open invitation to truth! I was hoping for different results, but I wasn’t pained, I had anticipated her response. So I turned my phone off and headed up the street. Those kids were better to me than Michelle, who took my money and wouldn’t hit me when I asked for it. How can you accept half a deal? How can you submit to an honest exchange and offer only deceit?

The night was oozing with silence until someone called out to me from the shadows of an alley. The voice was soft, but one that knew what it wanted to get at. A solid type of soft. There was intention shrouded by intention.

“How you doing?” The voice asked.

And I knew it when there was emphasis on the “you”, she didn’t care to know. I turned to see a woman in a flannel jacket and toque cough into her elbow and take one step into the light. Her shirt crumpled unevenly at the side of her waist and I knew she concealed a knife. She held one arm behind her back, her hand resting on the hilt of her tool. There was a way about how she held herself, and that knife. She held options, but no intent to do do any thing until she had gathered enough information.

There was nothing left to lose, I had heard enough lies and was not about to spit one myself.

“I don’t know how I’m doing. It all seems so predictable sometimes. People say one thing and I look at them nice and proper to discover they never mean what they say. I don’t know why people guard the truth from me. Surely it’s not to protect me. I hear the unsaid and what pains me most is not what I hear, but what they actually say. They say they love me when I know they don’t. They say I’m decent and all but I know what they really think. And they offer me help when it’s plain that they are willing to give nothing. I can hear everything, and nobody speaks the truth. There are always meanings behind meanings behind meanings. I need something real.” I said.

The woman was taken aback, and her hand slacked behind her back. She was frowning and cast a heavy gaze at me as she stepped forward once, twice. She didn’t have to speak but there was something resoundingly different about her. Her presence and intent was exactly what it was. There was no mask and I accepted it.

“Oh.” Was all she said as she punched my ribs.

I winced, looked down and saw that I hadn’t been hit at all, I had been stabbed.

“Oh.” Said I.

She took everything out of my pockets and I was surprised to find myself on the ground. When her silhouette rose with my wallet, I saw the muscles around her cheeks contort and heard her sigh deeply in solemn understanding.

“Call an ambulance before you bleed out.” She said with such a matter-of-fact tone that I reached for my phone as she spoke. “ And kid, relax, it’s all about perspective. You take things too seriously.”

She believes what she says!

It was all in the even cadence of her breath, the way her words slipped right from her mind to her tongue without filter and how they flowed with such an ease from her lips that I knew she was being honest with me. She didn’t seek to disinform. She had provided me with her honest response to my plight.

Who knows how much blood I lost while waiting on the line for someone to pick up. As I laid on my back in that faithful alleyway I caught a glimpse of a shooting star streaking between the clouds. It appeared and left just as quickly, just like the woman who stole my wallet. It was raw, real and undeniable. She was right, I had no need to fret. The world presented itself to me how it wanted to and I would always find lies where I looked hard enough for them, but there was truth to be found despite it all.

The world retreated from my ears and I was glad. I could hear no noise, no lies, no truth, no thing.