Reality of a Junkie Dream

Ich Habe Keine Lust

A German statement made when one has no interest in sex. Wait, should I step back and explain a bit more?

Ich (I) Habe (Have) Keine (dispositive interest) Lust (Fucking... Actually a lack of affection.)

A fun sentiment, especially for any of us that have heard it.

That's where Jake's day began; his blonde haired, blue eyed beauty turned to him and said those key words. Jake was an American, but the son of European decent. He knew enough German to be functional. He also knew his love was not pleased.

He looked at her. She ignored him. This was a constant method she used over the months. She tried to reach out to him; he just drank.

Finally realizing he had fucked up, he drank again. Ever the constant fuck-up. He couldn't quit. By now; So addicted that the withdrawal was a constant bother.

Jake stared into the mirror. He felt anger. He felt disgust. Fuck this world.

And that's when it happened. He hit the mirror. He began to bleed out. Everything inside him was at a ten. His drug abuse, his broken relationships with everyone, his indifference to all of it...

Jake broke. It would be several days till he woke. Dumbfounded and staring at a ceiling fan. Wondering where his memory went. Wondering where the cloths he could never fit came from.

His only friend cuddled closely. Mr Kerruffles. A small purr constantly emitted from his little furry throat.

It was Jake's only solace.

___________________________________________________

She left in the middle of the night. There was no note, no warning, no goodbye. He woke, ate, slept; life continued without final resolution. His thoughts lingered much like the fragments of a dream in morning haze. Was it a lucid vision brought on by his new found loneliness? Could the sudden shock of sobriety have lead him to be so desperately detached from comfort he allowed subconscious needs for affection to manifest a moment of beauty to escape the psychological toll of his drug abuse?

Silently he lay, arms wrapped tightly around his pillow. So vivid this delusion, yet so faint any trace of tangibility. A new day was dawning with warmth and vigor. Birds chirped, flower buds began popping their way to the surface, leaves formed and a cold, gray world slowly started bursting with vibrancy. Winter’s slumber was over, spring was in full rapture, spiriting away the remnants of decay mirroring the memory of a moment not meant to be; from barren to bountiful.

Jake moaned lightly as he lay wrapped in his sheet. Daybreak hit, waking him as sunlight invaded every nook and cranny of the room, basking it’s contents in a gentle warmth while simultaneously blinding the freshly woken. He stayed wrapped in his sheet, like some larval form tucked into a cocoon, warm, safe from threat. Even without sight, he could feel the mass of another beside him, he stretched his neck out and nuzzled his companion with his nose.

Mr. Kerfluffles woke, eyes slightly cracked at first, lackadaisical staring face to face with Jake. Mr. Kerfluffles let out a refreshing good morning yawn, his jaw opened to the point it appeared as if it would unhinge much like an anaconda. Jake peered into his mouth, greeted by a row of white pointed teeth secured in fleshy pink sockets lining the upper and lower recesses, guarding a coarse red tongue. Mr. Kerfluffles mouth snapped shut and he stood, jutting his rear into the air while his arms stretched forward to extend his joints full length before raising his shoulders to level. He then sat back on his ass and began the daily ritual of cleaning his long coat of fur.

Jake smiled reaching one hand from under the sheet to scratch Mr. Kerfluffles chin. It started as a low hum which broke out into a full roaring purr. Kerfluffles soon abandoned his cleaning process in favor of cuddling against Jake’s chest. Jake continued to pet and scratch at Kerfluffles, this was his solace, his tangible proof of love.

Nothing on this earth will love you like a cat. The penultimate in companionship, cats will always listen, adore affection, give as much as they take, and require only minor provisions to sustain life. A cat will never be too busy to spend time with you. They’ve no interest in human hedonism, they don’t need alcohol to have a good time, and as long as they have your affection, they don’t need to find it from someplace else.

Jake stopped petting and stared across the room. Hung over his desk chair was a black T-shirt. He could barely make the design out, it appeared to be from Michael Jackson’s Thriller days. He twitched, flashes of fragmented memories shot through his mind. He couldn’t distinguish whether they were real or not, so abstract were they. He recalled a sent, a slight touch, moistened lips. A still frame of a girl with elegantly long brown hair, her face shrouded.

His mind was still foggy, he’d been clean for 5 days now. His mind had been playing tricks on him since. Had he been in love? Were these flashbacks honest memories or some mental trickery brought on by detoxification? Everywhere in the house were little ornaments of Deja Vu. The shirt, a pair of fleese Colts pajama bottoms, a small tooth brush; were these his things or were the dreams attached to them truly memories?

He threw the sheet off the picked up Mr. Kerfluffles long enough to reseat him upon the pillows. He suspiciously walked over to the shirt, lifting it from it’s perch atop the chair and bringing it to his nose. He sniffed and instantly his mind recoiled with images, painful and overbearing. More still frames, more brown hair, alabaster skin, a bewitching smile accented by twinkling dimples.

He threw the shirt into the corner and shook his head. 5 days he’d been clean, 5 days had come and gone and not a single phone call or visitor. If she was real, what sort of bastard must he have been to spur her so? Did no one care, did this illusion not care?

He pushed his thumb and index finger into his eyes and began rubbing. He shook his head, no, no this was all fake. If she were real, why wasn’t she here? Surely there would be a note. No note, no fractured mental image of a goodbye, he couldn’t even remember her face.

He had searched his apartment for any signs of companionship. No tampons, no underwear, no feminine hygiene products. Not a single picture or letter or note tacked to the fridge. His answering machine blinked zero, his caller ID was blank. She had to be a dream, conceived in detox, picked from bits and pieces of his past, stitched together by threads of longing.

He’d spent the last two years with a needle in his vein running from a past he didn’t know how to accept. One hit turned to two, two turned to eight, and so on. That’s the way an addiction goes. He’d started using heroin after his wife served him divorce papers, he continued using heroin after he lost his job to out sourcing. His addiction peaked when the bank foreclosed on his home and took his car as collateral.

In two years he went from a well to do white collar to a jobless, loveless junkie squatter. His apartment was housed in a condemned structure on the toxic side of town, across the tracks surrounded by industrial complexes and parking lots. A holdover from an era of blue collar workers, when sweat and blood mixed with determination, now nothing more than a dilapidated remnant. A reminder of how all things fall in time. Just like the seasons mirrored Jake’s ambition, constantly dying only to be revived, tempted, filled with just enough hope to hang on for the inevitable crash. This building too mirrored another portion of Jake. Within the confines of these desecrated walls was a sad little man hiding from the reality of his broken life, ironically hiding within a rapidly deteriorating waste land.

Jake walked from room to room feeling lost. He paced the hallways, around the kitchen table, he paced up the stairs leading to the rooftop and down again. Every room held a hint of something more he couldn’t recall. He walked back up to the roof. As he stood looking down at the street below, more flashbacks. That scent, so alluring. Her hair a mess as the wind whipped it back and forth, another flash of a dazzling smile. It seemed so real, he could almost taste her lips as they pressed to his within his mind’s eye. He felt a chill in his spine, more flashes still. A peripheral glimpse of her face, her lips close to his ear, her breath so tender against the nape of his neck, his hairs stood on end as she whispered the sweet edicts of endearment.

It was love, such a passionate and ferocious affair could not be mistaken. In that instant he was overcome, his emotions swelled as a tear streaked down his cheek. He felt her grip upon him, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck as if she feared falling, head resting against his chest, breathing in sync. She always held him tightly, always so close. She would wrap her arms around him and he would wrap his around her waist, lifting her inches above the ground. She would dangle silently, their entire world calmed no matter the external chaos. He felt it now as if she were right there with him, holding him close. Such a touch, a small token we take for granted so often. Her’s was mysterious, different. Never in his life had he felt someone touch him in such a way. Her lips did not grace his, her arms were not clasped around his neck, this was far deeper. She had reached into him and pulled out the frail soul he kept hidden. It was a bond that went beyond any physical means of explanation.

He turned away from his view of the street. Could such a deep emotion, such a feeling of absolution be nothing more than a junkie’s dream? He didn’t wish to dwell on it any longer, he’d spent half the day chasing this mental apparition and had gained nothing more than a melancholy demeanor. He walked down the stairs, his hand grazing the banister as he took step after step, mind wandering. Like a cut that’d heal if you stopped tearing away the scab, he couldn’t push her from his mind. He spent the rest of the day lounging around his apart with his mind absently engaged.

More days would pass, more flash backs would test the limits of his mental fortitude, there was never a call or a note or a piece of evidence to give credence to his mind’s claims. Slowly his life reformed. He took a job at a warehouse a couple blocks away. He continued on, always with the thought gnawing at the back of his mind. That what if, that what could have been, that day dream that you can never fully realize.

And so went the life of Jake, a former junkie, a lost lover, dreaming forever of his brunette muse with a starry eyed smile and scent of spring’s wake.