With Friends Like These.
by Elijah Brahmi
I dreamt last night I was completely alone; for the first time, my so-called friends were nowhere to be seen. Just me and the aching, yawning silence I had forever been dreaming of. But as soon as I fell in love with the peace of mind, the echo of the void began to tug at my shivering naked body; where I was, I was nowhere to be found. I hate how nothing can just be simple and good, not even in my dreams. But at least if I disappeared, I wouldn't have to suffer my friendship anymore; if I couldn't be content in waking nightmares, asleep, or in dreams, at least I could find something resembling peace in death. Maybe then, at last, I could be free.
I was painfully awoken by the blare of my alarm clock. I jolted up, frazzle-haired, crusty-eyed, and moaning. I kicked the parade of legs beside me and groaned as I realized all my stupid friends had decided to spend the night. As if they weren't satisfied taking up all my days; now they had to steal my nights too, and what little sleep I could squeeze in between the energy drinks, booze, and endless hedonistic excursions.
How… functional and productive. I'm truly the image of 21st-century success.
Let’s see. I have five awful roommates to split the rent and split my skull, a low-level position at a dying rag, no boyfriend, no family except my self-righteous brother, and no future prospects. Always a cough or one incident with my friends away from being fired, or homeless, as my friend Rachel always likes to remind me when she's not going on about the world ending. All my other friends dropped them, but I'm stuck; I have no choice but to deal with them. They keep me down in the dirt, always a million words behind, unshowered, confused, awkward, stupid, retraumatized, scared, paralyzed, reckless, and poor.
Like that time Rachel convinced me my ex-boyfriend gave me AIDs just because I had a bruise on my chest and was coughing up blood, which turned out to be from a beating at some mosh pit Cleo dragged me to. Or that time Conrad tried to remind me of my traumatic, fucked-up, don't ask, childhood by driving me to the scene of the crime. Or retarded Mable, who made me think someone wanted me to kiss them when they didn’t, who is always leaving me second-guessing the most basic social interactions and feeling and confused and embarrassed and just plain dumb all the fucking time. God, I hate her. Or that time Mimi made me miss all my deadlines at grad school with stupid, distracting bullshit like impulsive vacations, or what Ben Franklin said about casual sex, so I had to drop out, fucking bitch. So yeah, they say you can't choose your family, but you can choose your friends; whoever said that hasn't spent a week with mine. Not everyone has such awful friends, so not everyone can relate; they understand I stay living with them for rent, but can't understand why I'm such a doormat. To be honest, I do not know either. I've tried to tell them off. They always come right back. It's been so long now; I can't imagine a life without them, but I wish I could.
Mimi sat next to me on the bed, dressed in leg warmers, a crop top with a thousand necklaces, and a rainbow tutu, looking like she had just gotten back from preschool. She was smiling at me like the Cheshire cat, sending shivers down my spine. When I pulled out my computer to work, she grabbed my phone and started to scroll, shoving the phone in my face
“Hey, Eddie, I just created a new Kahoot quiz: who is the best gay friend group. I added characters from EastSiders, Queer as Folk, and a bunch of other shows …Wanna play?”
I put my computer down and scrolled on my phone to see the quiz. She looked giddy. I looked back at the unwritten document Trevor would surely have my ass for. I had to finish this right now, not later; I didn't have later. But it was too late. I had already forgotten about my work. Two hours later we had gone through seven quizzes, created two, read several short stories I wrote in middle school to laugh, called several old friends and exes, watched four funny videos, and that's just what I can remember.
“Wow this is so funny,” I said, lost in the 10th funny music video we were watching.
“Yeah. Oh…you reminded me, we should go see that movie that came out today, Love Sick, about a hot rich guy who’s dying of cancer, and his boyfriend and girlfriend and other boyfriend are all fighting, but also try to do his dying wish of building a home for troubled teens.”
“Yeah, we should, but don't we have, like…something to do today?” I asked. Mimi simply shrugged in vain.
“WORK! WORK! WORK! YOU’RE GOING TO BE LATE FOR WORK AND GET FIRED! AND THEN YOU'RE GOING TO BE HOMELESS AND DIE! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT, YOU STUPID, INCOMPETENT LOSER?” Rachel screamed, bursting in. I looked at the clock—fuck, we were late— looked back at the Google Doc, and realized this whole time I hadn't written a word.
“Oh my god, fuck you, Mimi!! This is what you wanted, isn't it, to distract me again!”
“I just wanted to have fun with you Eddie,” she whined, hardly apologetic. She does this daily.
“FUN? Who has time for that?”
Later at work I stumbled in looking sick and unkempt. Trevor gave me a private talk, saying I'm on thin ice.
“We said you can keep your job if you really knock it out of the park with this week's issue. You did finish it this time…didn't you?” I sighed, giving as guilty a look as ever I could muster. Trevor stroked his beard and snapped his fingers. He always was really good at pretending to like me, so he must have convinced himself he’d feel real bad about what he was about to do.
“Listen, Eddie I don’t want to have to do this.”
“Save it, I quit.”
I walked away and out the door, flipping off Trevor. The world felt fast. Things were happening before I could think them through or even process their crash-burn, rocking, shaking aftermath.
“God, you know what, Eds, I think this was for the best. Now that you don’t have to give your talents to these hacks, you can be your best self, and you won’t be tied down by such a demanding job,” Mimi said. “Now you can have more time for yourself, for your book.”
“For your neglected romantic resume,” Cleo swooned, practically catcalling an attractive gentleman walking by. Honks, screams, the trains under our feet, pigeons getting ready to shit overhead, and the blaring sun burned. It was rush hour, and I couldn't take much more of this. I held back some tears and rubbed my hands, trying to maintain composure in public. I was going home to get some rest. Of course, they chased after me. I could feel my heartbeat increasing, full of stress and regret.
“Now that we don't have a job, how are we going to make friends? You know how hard that is for us,” Mable said, removing her beanie as if to mourn.
“Wait, Eddie, does this mean we can see the movie now?” Mimi said, noticing I was at the crosswalk by now, waiting anxiously for the light to change before they caught up to me.
“Hey, where are you going!?” Mimi cried after me as I crossed the street. “HOME!”
“Wait, what do you mean HOME!??? Eddie, you don't have a job; we're all going to die sick, homeless, and fat!”
Rachel followed me and wouldn’t let up with her catastrophizing, making me quake with nervous nausea, with fear and jittering uncertainty and the overwhelming need to act based on what I knew was paranoia. How could I let someone as pathetic as Rachel affect me so deeply?
Back home, I raced up the 5 flights of stairs, only to find an Eviction notice on my door.
“See, I told you.” Rachel said, smugly.
I unlocked the door anyway, thankfully seeing all my stuff still inside, and flopped on the bed. In anguish and helpless frustration, I put on Apple TV. It started playing my sad playlist: plenty of Fiona Apple, Hole, Nirvana, Lana Del Rey, The Cure, The Smiths, and REM. Before I could even begin crying myself to sleep, Cleo stood arms crossed in the doorway, still clad in his party clothes.
“No, you aren’t going to be such a sad sack. Cheer up bitch, we're going to the club.” I sighed, wanting to be happy, to be high so bad, I rolled with his punches. He took me to three clubs, one banging neon adventure after another. We felt like we could do anything: more drugs, more men, more music. After a while we flew too close to the sun, leaving us a long fall. Cleo’s grief was infectious. I was so sad, I forgot how we were ever so happy. As our wallowing hit its peak at a local dive bar, Conrad came along, and Cleo went home in tears. Conrad, with his black trench coat, floppy black hair, and devious smile, took me under his devil's wing to wander around Bushwick, predicting my darkest thoughts. They made so much cold, perfect sense when they slipped through his silver lips. They slithered into my mind until the night went dark. I did things I can't remember, all blended together in one tired dance. If I have friends who want me dead, at least they’re honest about it. What does it matter? The world still goes round. What does it matter when you know you wouldn’t be missed, you’ve never been loved or meaningfully kissed, you never had a happy day to call your own, you feel everything like it’s a line of code in a pre-programmed drone, aware of its own artificiality. You can’t remember a childhood, a happy life, or a peaceful mind. You can’t see a future, or a present, or a past, and the world moves too fast.
You never even get your peace in sleep, or in your words. You write suicide notes and cries for help when you long to write memoirs without being too ashamed of your own life to follow through, to write something happy and sad, real and fake, a story that makes people's days better than it would have been, but you'll never publish something with your never-ending downward spin, you'll never have your moment, you'll never win, you'll never grow beyond this painful bottom-feeding routine, never get a day where life doesn't feel like a punishment for being alive, never get a real escape, and the world spins too fast, and you can never get a minute to think. A minute to rest, or think of something better to try, to break free. I think I might need to start over. Maybe the afterlife will have a better deal for a guy like me. Maybe they will have better subways with less construction and have better friends who don't ensure your destruction.
I can hardly remember what I did, just that it was the farthest I’ve ever fallen, and Conrad was pleased, telling me over and over I deserved worse than death, and I deserved to bleed, he really liked saying that to me. I saw a rat. It smiled at me.
Somehow that made me cry.
Men on the street knew something was wrong, because men aren't supposed to cry.
Then I left, and I wish I had said goodbye to who I couldn't tell you. Well, I wish I said goodbye to that rat, he looked like he was going to miss me. I guess he’s the only one, so I didn't feel any conflicted doubts or remorse. I don't think I felt anything at all.
***
As if nothing at all had happened, I woke up. It was my brother, Ralph. He wasted no time before racing over, as he threw his arms around me.
“Eddie… I’m so glad you’re alive,” he whispered into my shoulder as I put my right arm on his back for a confused pat.
“Why did you do this to yourself, Eddie?” “Do what?” I said, genuinely confused.
“The pills, where you trying to kill yourself?” Always so to the point. I give myself a headache trying to think.
“I … I can’t remember.” I said with total honesty, but I’m sure that would soon change. “Do you … know why you’re here Eds? You overdosed on ... Ketamine,” he struggled to say the drug’s name. Later my brother talked to the doctor and decided I should stay in a psych ward for a few days. I had nowhere else to go.
I met with the first doctor after a week of boredom, forced medication, painful self reflection, and a billion different tests. He sat me down in his office on my last day in the hospital, after my brother had agreed to have me stay with him for a while upon my release. Until I'm back on my feet, whenever that happens.
“So, Eddie, do you know why you had to come here?”
“Psych wards are scams. The only reason anyone should be forced into this boring jail is if they try to kill someone else or themselves and might do it again.”
“And you do … fit the latter description.”
“I guess so.”
“But that's not quite what I meant, and you knew that, didn't you? Why overall do you think your life choices up until this point have been so unstable? Unstable enough to end up here?”
“Yeah, isn't it clear? It’s my fucking friends; they ruin everything. This time they’ve taken it too far.”
“You don't have any friends. Your brother said you never have.”
“What do you mean? Of course I do! You know, my freaking life ruining, roommates. Mimi, Conrad, Celo, Rachel, and Mabel, he didn't tell you about them? Well, they’re more like frenemies Enemies if we're being honest.”
“Your landlord said there was no one else in the apartment, Eddie, you lived alone.” “No, I-”
“Eddie, do you have any history of mental illness?” Suddenly I couldn't speak; my mind had gone blank.
“No…I don't think so, I'm just a failure. There's no extra reason for that.”
“Eddie, let's take a look at your diagnosis together, shall we? Which one do you want to see first?” I took the papers. Before reading it, I looked around, and for the first time my friends weren't there.
Once again, I was completely alone. But maybe this time, I wouldn't have to be.