Post by NICHOLAS VINCENT LOVE on Apr 24, 2011 0:50:13 GMT -5
lalala
restless heart syndrome
sometimes life doesn't turn out the way you wanted it to. it doesn't matter if you've set everything up like dominos, ready and waiting for your cue. things can go wrong and plans fall through, people change and others drop off the face of the planet, leaving hardly any trace at all, as if they never really mattered. i think i was always destined to be that kind of man, the one who hardly leaves any mark whatsoever. i'll be forgotten about long before any kind of convenient amount of time has passed. my wife will remarry, my son will have only the sourest of memories about me. and strangely, i'm okay with all that. success has never been about who can be remembered the longest. in fact, it should really be measured by who just squeaks by.
my life started with pain, and only a fool would have suspected the ending to be much different. i was born in 1962 in aveley, essex. as it turns out, i've never lived anywhere else besides essex until my son was twelve years old. that's when we moved to california. however, in the 1960s, i wasn't in california. i was still in essex and my mother was only sixteen and had been abandoned by her family. she named me michael after my father, not that i ever met him. the 60s were great, or they were for anyone old enough to remember them, anyway. my memory didn't kick in until the latter half of the decade, and even at that age, the time period wasn't all that memorable. my mother always struggled to make ends meet and to give me the opportunities that she thought i deserved. sometimes things didn't work out and we had to live with her friends or her boyfriend at the time for a few months. her boyfriends were rarely special and they were never kind to her. i suppose that isn't their faults though, because my mum was the one dating them all.
by the time i was out of school, i had hardly anything that was worth having, especially not money, but whatever i had my mother seemed to have even less so i left her home and took on a job at a nearby diner. the pay wasn't spectacular, but it didn't need to be. i just needed a place to stay and food to eat until i could save up enough money to do something with my life. however, it didn't take long before i realized that if i was going to rely on this job to get me anywhere, i was shit out of luck.
it was around that time that i met meredith. she was a year younger than i was with blonde hair that looked like it could fly away and big brown eyes that smiled when she did. we met in an elevator and talked the whole way up to the last floor, where we finally both admitted that we hadn't wanted to be the one to stop to conversation, and we'd both purposely not gotten off where we were supposed to. within months, we were in love and after a little over a year, we were engaged. luckily, meredith's family had the kind of money that had gotten her through college and she held down a job at a photography store while i studied art and started to write comics. they were never great sellers, but i made much more money from them than i ever had working at that diner. and so meredith and i both had jobs and we bought a tiny, two bedroom house and pretty soon, it wasn't just the two of us anymore.
our son was was named devlyn, a respelled version of meredith's maiden name, devlin. he was collicky and hard to deal with and liked to scream as loud as possible at any inopportune moment he was aware of, but both meredith and i were in love with the way his tiny, sticky fists curled up and his brown eyes matched his mother's. his hair grew like mine in dark brown curls that meredith claimed were an angel's blessing. meredith painted the nursery in shades of brown and cream because she said it reminded her of chocolate cake, which was her favourite kind of cake. not a day went past that i couldn't walk past the nursery and hear her cooing all kinds of silly songs to him, despite the fact that her singing was probably making devlyn's colic worse, it was so horrible. she read him stories about baby animals and other worlds and curled his ringlets around her fingers until they were absolutely perfect.
predictably, it wasn't long until meredith was begging for another one, trying everything she could to get me to comply. she'd always wanted a big family, she wanted a little girl to wear pink dresses and bows, she couldn't have devlyn growing up an only child, could she? she assured me that devlyn would be lonely and sad, but the fact of the matter was that we simply didn't have the money for two babies. meredith promised that she'd get a higher paying job, that she'd work longer hours, that she'd beg her parents for a small loan. but we simply couldn't afford it. and that was the day my marriage began to fall apart, when devlyn was only three years old. meredith started to get distant, but it took years for me to realize it, she'd done so at such a slow pace. she no longer woke me up in the mornings with tiny kisses, but instead reserved those kisses for the baby. we no longer sat in the garden with nutella and crackers, trying to make up a secret language that no one else would ever be able to crack. instead, we spoke about money and about how devlyn's day had been, and later about the stray cat that had become something of a pet to our family. by the time devlyn was eleven, meredith and i had very little to talk about.
i don't remember who brought up the topic of moving to california first. it might have even been devlyn who'd planted the idea in our heads, but something about eternal sunshine was appealing to all of us. somehow, we all came to the conclusion that california was the only place for us to be. we put the house on the market and within two months, it had sold and we were on an airplane to our new house in casper. for a couple months, it seemed like meredith and i could fall in love once again. she had started walking around in long, fairy-like white dresses and no shoes. she pulled back the already translucent curtains all over the house and painted everything she could a sunny shade of yellow. she smiled when i came home from work again and planted kisses on my cheeks when i was worn out. we got a puppy when devlyn was almost sixteen. devlyn named her rosie and bought her spiky collars and dyed a pink mohawk on her white labrador fur with food colouring. he claimed rosie was a punk puppy. it was around this time that devlyn developed his sense of self. he stopped wearing what everyone else wore and instead favoured his own style of clothes, though they certainly weren't punk. he wore loose black button-downs that he left open at the top, revealing long metallic chains. drainpipe jeans were the only kind of trousers he seemed to own anymore and he'd gotten very tall, an inch or so taller than me.
i could smell the pot and alcohol on him when he was dropped off at home late at night, but i never said anything about it. neither did meredith. he was a teenager and interfering would make him that much more likely to keep doing it.
when he was seventeen, a junior in high school, he met a childish boy named nicholas. i suppose they met in trigonometry shortly after nicholas had moved to casper from london. just the fact that nicholas was english caught my interest. ever since the first day they'd met, the two became inseparable. devlyn was always hanging out with nicholas or emailing nicholas or talking about nicholas. when i first met the boy, he introduced himself with a wide smile before continuing on to say, "and please don't call me nick because that's how people end up dead." it caught me by surprise, that was for sure, but at the same time, made me smile. i could see why devlyn was friends with him.
at the beginning of devlyn's senior year, i came into the kitchen one night to find nicholas sitting on the counter with devlyn in front of him. devlyn's hands were on nicholas's waist, pulling himself close to the raven-haired boy, who had his ankles twined together behind devlyn's back. they were kissing so fiercely, it took until nicholas glanced up, his eyes heavy lidded for them to notice me. all at once, the two came undone from each other and nicholas leaped off the counter, blushing uncontrollably. his eyes flicked between me and my son, waiting for someone to break the silence. finally, devlyn shrugged. "i'm bisexual," he said casually, planting a kiss on nicholas's lips, though nicholas turned a brighter shade of scarlet and didn't kiss devlyn back.
"i should go," he said, grabbing his keys off the counter where he'd just been sitting and practically sprinting past me towards the front door. a cloud of cigarette and marijuana fumes followed him right out the door. i looked at devlyn, unsure of what to say. "i'm going to bed," he said, grabbing an apple from the basket next to the sink and brushing past me lazily to the kitchen stairs. after a beat of uncomfortable, lonely silence, i followed him up the stairs and into my room, crawling under the blankets and hugging my wife in her sleep. not that she even noticed.
the next day, meredith told me that she was divorcing me. i can't lie and say that i hadn't seen it coming, but the timing was tragic. she looked me evenly in the eye as she told me, not making any excuses, not giving any reasons. we both knew this was coming, even if i'd hoped that it wouldn't. it wasn't fair to keep her tied down to me if she didn't love me. that afternoon, i found a flat in new york city that i could move into whenever it suited me. shockingly, devlyn seemed surprised when we told him what we were planning on doing. i'd thought the deterioration of our marriage had been painstakingly obvious, but apparently not to devlyn. it took two days and a visit from nicholas to convince my son to leave his room. and even then, meredith and i were not spoken to. devlyn regarded us as he regarded the furniture in the house; meredith made him dinner, i drove him to and from school, but that was as far as our uses went. we heard the screen door slam as he snuck out into the november night, undoubtedly to nicholas's car in order to go to parties and raves and dances that meredith and i knew nothing about. when he came home, the house smelled like alcohol for the few minutes it took for him to make his way to his room before he sealed himself away for the night.
we hired our lawyers, we split everything evenly, we showed up in court. davlyn was eighteen by this point, making everything far less messy. he chose to stay in casper, obviously, to finish out his senior year. i made it clear that he could come visit me when he wanted to, but he never did. i'd made it a point to try and create as many connections between me and him as possible. i gave him my email, my phone number, my facebook link if he wanted it. he knew my address. but he wasn't speaking to me, even then.
meredith and i kept in touch, of course, primarily to discuss devlyn who wasn't speaking to her either. but by february, our communications slowly dwindled and i was alone in the world again. i considered somehow making contact with my mother, but i hadn't spoken to her since before devlyn was born and i didn't even know where to began repairing that long broken relationship. i tried dating. it didn't work out.
by march, i was drifting away under the haze of too many sleeping pills, wondering where my life had gone wrong and where i'd screwed up in devlyn's own life. devlyn was my last thought. i missed my son.
my life started with pain, and only a fool would have suspected the ending to be much different. i was born in 1962 in aveley, essex. as it turns out, i've never lived anywhere else besides essex until my son was twelve years old. that's when we moved to california. however, in the 1960s, i wasn't in california. i was still in essex and my mother was only sixteen and had been abandoned by her family. she named me michael after my father, not that i ever met him. the 60s were great, or they were for anyone old enough to remember them, anyway. my memory didn't kick in until the latter half of the decade, and even at that age, the time period wasn't all that memorable. my mother always struggled to make ends meet and to give me the opportunities that she thought i deserved. sometimes things didn't work out and we had to live with her friends or her boyfriend at the time for a few months. her boyfriends were rarely special and they were never kind to her. i suppose that isn't their faults though, because my mum was the one dating them all.
by the time i was out of school, i had hardly anything that was worth having, especially not money, but whatever i had my mother seemed to have even less so i left her home and took on a job at a nearby diner. the pay wasn't spectacular, but it didn't need to be. i just needed a place to stay and food to eat until i could save up enough money to do something with my life. however, it didn't take long before i realized that if i was going to rely on this job to get me anywhere, i was shit out of luck.
it was around that time that i met meredith. she was a year younger than i was with blonde hair that looked like it could fly away and big brown eyes that smiled when she did. we met in an elevator and talked the whole way up to the last floor, where we finally both admitted that we hadn't wanted to be the one to stop to conversation, and we'd both purposely not gotten off where we were supposed to. within months, we were in love and after a little over a year, we were engaged. luckily, meredith's family had the kind of money that had gotten her through college and she held down a job at a photography store while i studied art and started to write comics. they were never great sellers, but i made much more money from them than i ever had working at that diner. and so meredith and i both had jobs and we bought a tiny, two bedroom house and pretty soon, it wasn't just the two of us anymore.
our son was was named devlyn, a respelled version of meredith's maiden name, devlin. he was collicky and hard to deal with and liked to scream as loud as possible at any inopportune moment he was aware of, but both meredith and i were in love with the way his tiny, sticky fists curled up and his brown eyes matched his mother's. his hair grew like mine in dark brown curls that meredith claimed were an angel's blessing. meredith painted the nursery in shades of brown and cream because she said it reminded her of chocolate cake, which was her favourite kind of cake. not a day went past that i couldn't walk past the nursery and hear her cooing all kinds of silly songs to him, despite the fact that her singing was probably making devlyn's colic worse, it was so horrible. she read him stories about baby animals and other worlds and curled his ringlets around her fingers until they were absolutely perfect.
predictably, it wasn't long until meredith was begging for another one, trying everything she could to get me to comply. she'd always wanted a big family, she wanted a little girl to wear pink dresses and bows, she couldn't have devlyn growing up an only child, could she? she assured me that devlyn would be lonely and sad, but the fact of the matter was that we simply didn't have the money for two babies. meredith promised that she'd get a higher paying job, that she'd work longer hours, that she'd beg her parents for a small loan. but we simply couldn't afford it. and that was the day my marriage began to fall apart, when devlyn was only three years old. meredith started to get distant, but it took years for me to realize it, she'd done so at such a slow pace. she no longer woke me up in the mornings with tiny kisses, but instead reserved those kisses for the baby. we no longer sat in the garden with nutella and crackers, trying to make up a secret language that no one else would ever be able to crack. instead, we spoke about money and about how devlyn's day had been, and later about the stray cat that had become something of a pet to our family. by the time devlyn was eleven, meredith and i had very little to talk about.
i don't remember who brought up the topic of moving to california first. it might have even been devlyn who'd planted the idea in our heads, but something about eternal sunshine was appealing to all of us. somehow, we all came to the conclusion that california was the only place for us to be. we put the house on the market and within two months, it had sold and we were on an airplane to our new house in casper. for a couple months, it seemed like meredith and i could fall in love once again. she had started walking around in long, fairy-like white dresses and no shoes. she pulled back the already translucent curtains all over the house and painted everything she could a sunny shade of yellow. she smiled when i came home from work again and planted kisses on my cheeks when i was worn out. we got a puppy when devlyn was almost sixteen. devlyn named her rosie and bought her spiky collars and dyed a pink mohawk on her white labrador fur with food colouring. he claimed rosie was a punk puppy. it was around this time that devlyn developed his sense of self. he stopped wearing what everyone else wore and instead favoured his own style of clothes, though they certainly weren't punk. he wore loose black button-downs that he left open at the top, revealing long metallic chains. drainpipe jeans were the only kind of trousers he seemed to own anymore and he'd gotten very tall, an inch or so taller than me.
i could smell the pot and alcohol on him when he was dropped off at home late at night, but i never said anything about it. neither did meredith. he was a teenager and interfering would make him that much more likely to keep doing it.
when he was seventeen, a junior in high school, he met a childish boy named nicholas. i suppose they met in trigonometry shortly after nicholas had moved to casper from london. just the fact that nicholas was english caught my interest. ever since the first day they'd met, the two became inseparable. devlyn was always hanging out with nicholas or emailing nicholas or talking about nicholas. when i first met the boy, he introduced himself with a wide smile before continuing on to say, "and please don't call me nick because that's how people end up dead." it caught me by surprise, that was for sure, but at the same time, made me smile. i could see why devlyn was friends with him.
at the beginning of devlyn's senior year, i came into the kitchen one night to find nicholas sitting on the counter with devlyn in front of him. devlyn's hands were on nicholas's waist, pulling himself close to the raven-haired boy, who had his ankles twined together behind devlyn's back. they were kissing so fiercely, it took until nicholas glanced up, his eyes heavy lidded for them to notice me. all at once, the two came undone from each other and nicholas leaped off the counter, blushing uncontrollably. his eyes flicked between me and my son, waiting for someone to break the silence. finally, devlyn shrugged. "i'm bisexual," he said casually, planting a kiss on nicholas's lips, though nicholas turned a brighter shade of scarlet and didn't kiss devlyn back.
"i should go," he said, grabbing his keys off the counter where he'd just been sitting and practically sprinting past me towards the front door. a cloud of cigarette and marijuana fumes followed him right out the door. i looked at devlyn, unsure of what to say. "i'm going to bed," he said, grabbing an apple from the basket next to the sink and brushing past me lazily to the kitchen stairs. after a beat of uncomfortable, lonely silence, i followed him up the stairs and into my room, crawling under the blankets and hugging my wife in her sleep. not that she even noticed.
the next day, meredith told me that she was divorcing me. i can't lie and say that i hadn't seen it coming, but the timing was tragic. she looked me evenly in the eye as she told me, not making any excuses, not giving any reasons. we both knew this was coming, even if i'd hoped that it wouldn't. it wasn't fair to keep her tied down to me if she didn't love me. that afternoon, i found a flat in new york city that i could move into whenever it suited me. shockingly, devlyn seemed surprised when we told him what we were planning on doing. i'd thought the deterioration of our marriage had been painstakingly obvious, but apparently not to devlyn. it took two days and a visit from nicholas to convince my son to leave his room. and even then, meredith and i were not spoken to. devlyn regarded us as he regarded the furniture in the house; meredith made him dinner, i drove him to and from school, but that was as far as our uses went. we heard the screen door slam as he snuck out into the november night, undoubtedly to nicholas's car in order to go to parties and raves and dances that meredith and i knew nothing about. when he came home, the house smelled like alcohol for the few minutes it took for him to make his way to his room before he sealed himself away for the night.
we hired our lawyers, we split everything evenly, we showed up in court. davlyn was eighteen by this point, making everything far less messy. he chose to stay in casper, obviously, to finish out his senior year. i made it clear that he could come visit me when he wanted to, but he never did. i'd made it a point to try and create as many connections between me and him as possible. i gave him my email, my phone number, my facebook link if he wanted it. he knew my address. but he wasn't speaking to me, even then.
meredith and i kept in touch, of course, primarily to discuss devlyn who wasn't speaking to her either. but by february, our communications slowly dwindled and i was alone in the world again. i considered somehow making contact with my mother, but i hadn't spoken to her since before devlyn was born and i didn't even know where to began repairing that long broken relationship. i tried dating. it didn't work out.
by march, i was drifting away under the haze of too many sleeping pills, wondering where my life had gone wrong and where i'd screwed up in devlyn's own life. devlyn was my last thought. i missed my son.
lalala
devlyn and meredith showed up at my funeral, even spent a week and a half in my apartment with nicholas. as far as i could tell, devlyn and nicholas refrained from any alcohol or drugs the entire time they were in new york, though it was obvious they both wanted some. it was the thought that counted, and the fact that they did that for me. after the funeral, devlyn began speaking to meredith again. i don't know whether it was out of fear or guilt or what, but they were talking. my son and nicholas were much more than friends, i learned, though nicholas still claimed to be one hundred percent straight. devlyn wanted a public relationship, but nicholas didn't.
soon, nicholas was in london again, leaving behind devlyn who was broken hearted, though he never admitted it. devlyn rented a flat in casper and began drinking heavily. for the three years nicholas was in london, devlyn spent his nights at bars or at strange men and women's homes. in fairness, nicholas was doing the same thing, thought lighter on the men and the alcohol and heavier on the meth.
upon nicholas's return to casper, he moved in with devlyn, though not for the reasons devlyn wanted. nicholas needed a place to stay and he had no intentions of staying with his parents and his sister. luckily for nicholas but unluckily for devlyn, devlyn's flat had two bedrooms. the second had been intended for meredith if she ever got lonely or sad in the empty yellow house, but meredith never stayed. she took care of devlyn's dog because pets weren't allowed at his flat, and that dog was all the company she needed.
soon, nicholas was in london again, leaving behind devlyn who was broken hearted, though he never admitted it. devlyn rented a flat in casper and began drinking heavily. for the three years nicholas was in london, devlyn spent his nights at bars or at strange men and women's homes. in fairness, nicholas was doing the same thing, thought lighter on the men and the alcohol and heavier on the meth.
upon nicholas's return to casper, he moved in with devlyn, though not for the reasons devlyn wanted. nicholas needed a place to stay and he had no intentions of staying with his parents and his sister. luckily for nicholas but unluckily for devlyn, devlyn's flat had two bedrooms. the second had been intended for meredith if she ever got lonely or sad in the empty yellow house, but meredith never stayed. she took care of devlyn's dog because pets weren't allowed at his flat, and that dog was all the company she needed.