Waking up, I could tell that the hangover was going to be bad. My eyes hadn’t even opened yet, and the mattress was already swimming underneath me. The pitch and roll of the bed mixed with the stench of stale whiskey clinging to the back of my teeth. With half-opened my eyes, my gaze tumbled from the wall. Holy Shit. This isn’t my apartment. My heart beat in a heavy, sluggish rhythm inside my chest, adrenaline failing to fire; I was stuck in half-panic. The room was sparsely furnished, save a wrinkled brown tapestry pinned to the wall, and I was alone in a four-poster bed with nothing but a blanket that reeked of sweat. Patting myself down, I noticed I was still fully dressed, only missing my shoes. I couldn’t feel my wallet, keys, and cellphone. My pockets were completely empty. If I had been robbed, there was nothing that could be done about it now.
Six years of Marine Corps training awakened within me, and I began looking for weapons and an escape route. There wasn’t much for weapons. I thought I could roll up a calendar I saw hanging on the wall to get in some jabs at someone’s throat, but quickly discarded the idea. There were only two exits that I could see. A closed door to my left and the windows in front of me. Getting off the bed, the swaying floor reminded me I was in no condition to fight; escape was the best option. Creeping as quietly as I could towards the window, the world tipped a bit too far to the left, and I lost balance, crashing onto the hardwood.
My body ached in a twisted heap on the floor as the room began to sway like an old bridge. Panicked thoughts started screaming their way through my head. Pulling myself over to the window ledge, I peeked out from behind the curtain. I was on the first floor of a building with an empty driveway. Ok, I can do this, I thought. The bright light that pouring into my face made me dry heave, but I swallowed it down. Pushing the window up, a swell of clean, humid air brushed past me. The wooden frame cracked and sagged under my weight as I began to make my escape. I was half-way out of the window when the door slowly creaked open behind me. A familiar voice filled the room.
‘Cody?’ it said in hushed worry.
‘Courtney?’ I asked. With some effort, I rolled myself back into the room, taking small strips of white paint from the windowsill with me. Sinking onto the floor, I felt the dry heave return.
‘Yeah,’ she said, pushing open the door. I would have recognised that tangled mess of red hair anywhere: Courtney Ellis, one of the few friends I had made since moving to the Portland. What is she doing here?
She crossed the room to shut the window, turned, and took a seat next to me on the floor. ‘Are you ok?’
‘Um, yeah, I guess?’ I lied, ‘What happened?’
‘Ryan and I brought you back to our house last night. You were pretty trashed, but don’t worry, your stuff is next to the bed,’ she pointed to my phone and wallet.
‘What?’ The last thing I remembered was playing pool in the billiard hall and having a laugh with some tourists from the UK, trying not to talk about Sara. There were flashes of the night sky, and sidewalks, but nothing else I could make out.
‘Yeah, Ryan and I met you at Old Port Tavern last night, remember?’ she said, putting a small hand on my shoulder. Her breath smelled like vodka and cigarettes. ‘We didn’t think it was safe for you to be left alone in your…state.’
‘Oh,’ I said. I wanted to say something else, but the slosh of beer and whiskey turned over in my stomach. ‘Where’s your bathroom?’
∆
Once I had purged myself and brushed my teeth with a spare toothbrush, I met Courtney in her kitchen. I took a seat at the table, which was overflowing with empty beer bottles and an assortment of crystal ashtrays that reeked of old weed. There was hardly room to put my head in my hands. Bare windows filtered the morning sunlight through vodka bottles that crowded the sagging windowsill, throwing out a kaleidoscope of fractals that stung my eyes.
‘I’m so fucking sorry,’ I groaned as Courtney placed a fresh cup of coffee in front of me. I watched the steam rise and disappear into the air. She leaned back on the cluttered countertop with a mug of water and smiled.
‘Oh, sweetie,’ she laughed, waving me off, ‘We’ve all been there, you were so fun, you kept saying that…’
‘No, please!’ I said, holding up a shaking hand in embarrassment, ‘Please no stories…my ego can’t take it.’
Most people have fun stories to tell about their drunken escapades, but I never heard anything that didn’t make me cringe. I couldn’t count how many times I had threatened to kick the shit out of obnoxious bar-goers, or how many women had to listen to me pour my stupid heart out about my military service. I would rather just be left in the dark.
‘Well, that’s fine,’ she said, pulling out the only other chair at the table.
‘At least, tell me…I wasn’t awful, was I?’ I asked, knowing I didn’t want to hear the answer.
‘God, no, you were a perfect gentleman the whole night. It was kind of cute,’ she said, running her hands through my hair.
It was the only sense of relief I had that morning. I took a sip from my coffee cup. There was a time when I didn’t need alcohol to be social. After Sara left me, though, that changed. When I wasn’t drinking, I felt empty and irritated by the world around me. It was only when I had whiskey in my blood that I actually felt something close to normal again.
‘Where’s Ryan?’ I asked. I’d only just noticed that I hadn’t seen her boyfriend yet, which was odd considering they were almost joined at the hip out in public.
‘He left for work hours ago,’ she said with a shrug.
‘Shit, what time is it?’ I pulled out my phone, but the black screen didn’t change; it must have died in the night.
‘Past eleven,’ Courtney said, checking hers. ‘You want me to call an Uber or something?’ she asked, taking another sip of water.
‘That depends,’ I said, slumping over, ‘I have no idea where your house is.’
I had begun to sober up and was becoming painfully aware of a pounding headache developing, thanks to dehydration. So, that’s why she has water, I thought. I wanted to ask for some but couldn’t impose any more than I already had.
Pulling up a map on her phone, Courtney plotted points from her place in the West End to my apartment on Congress Street. I squinted the screen, trying to make sense of the data. It looked as though I was only half a mile from my apartment, which was a ten-minute walk at most. On any other day, this would have been a nice brisk walk through town, but today, that half-mile looked like a marathon through hell.
Nauseated at the idea of doing anything else but hiding in a dark hole, I lied and told her walking would be fine. As she walked me out into the coastal summer air, ‘I finally get off a cane after two and a half years and look at me now,’ I said, my legs already shaking.
‘Be careful, yeah?’ she said with a wink.
∆
Part of the charm of old cities like Portland is the sidewalks. Aging faces of laid redbrick that have been shaped by the rains and snow of the northeast: there is nothing more authentically ‘New England.’ Walking back to the apartment, trying to avoid the blinding light of the sun, I kept my head down, face to face with these benign pieces of masonry. As nauseous as I was feeling in the baking heat, it didn’t compare to Camp Lejeune. Looking down at my shoes, I found it strange that only a year ago, they were tan combat boots begrudgingly making their way to formation instead of a shower. My stomach churned in large nauseating circles, forcing me to take a break in the thin shade of weather-beaten telephone pole. Completely dehydrated, my vision began to blur along the edges, but it was too late to ask for help now. The sidewalk, twisted from centuries of harsh Maine winters, carried my stumbling corpse under the sighing arches and painted doorways of the many 20th-century Gothic revival style buildings, like shit down a picturesque river. Taking the only turn in my route, I was relieved to be on Congress Street. At least this walk of shame wouldn’t seem out place on Portland’s main drag, which was filled with a mix of alcoholic college kids and drug addicts.
I was passing the 7/11 when the ground shifted violently under my feet, sending me in awkwardly looping side steps. My shoulder crashed into a cast iron streetlamp, which kept me from spilling onto the road. Every tender point in my body was ringing with pain as I collected myself. Standing back up, I felt the gaze of a middle-aged white woman burning through me as she gassed up her white Land Rover. When my eyes met hers, I knew exactly the kind of look she was giving me. Disgust. Something I’d seen too many times before. Glaring back at her, I stumbled on. Fuck her. She didn’t know the first thing about me.
When I medically retired from the Marine Corps, a large part of it had been because of a traumatic brain injury (TBI), which I had sustained during what was supposed to be an easy deployment. When our battalion touched down in Okinawa, it was wrapped in the colors of night, dotted with ugly amber lights of the base, hiding the deep emerald jungle and clear sapphire infused waters which lapped away at unmolested sand beaches. A vacation deployment they called it. For the first few months, it really did seem that way. Training on the weekdays, hitching rides on Blackhawks, which moved slowly against the azure skies. Our company got ordered up to the continent for an exchange program with the R.o.K. Marines of South Korea. I was rappelling down a cliff – it was an exercise, I was harnessed, safe from danger. A misstep. A brief moment of negligence on the rappel had me seeing stars. I was okay. It was just a bump on the head, right?
In my free time, I had taken up scuba to get my certification with PADI, but even in trying to relax, I couldn’t catch a break. On my final dive, a chance encounter with a cave wall shut my air off. I panicked. Blacked out. Woke up on the surface with a terrified dive partner. Within a few weeks, I had developed crippling vertigo along with a whole host of other problems. None of which I found any sympathy for in my unit. All the heroic and validating reasons for injury, getting blown up by an IED, getting shot at by the enemy, hell even rolling over in a Humvee, were not a part of my story. Because of that, I had to suffer that same look of disgust from higher-ups who reserved injuries only for the noble, for real heroes. It was a compounding shame that ate away at me.
Heroes don’t get hurt on vacation.
∆
Shambling forward once more over the uneven brick, I cursed the streetlamp for saving my ass from the onslaught of cars in the road. Every part of me hurt. Years of abuse in the Infantry wreaked havoc on my joints, the insides of my hip felt like they were shredding themselves apart. Reaching the door of my apartment building, I found myself once again needing to take a break. Sitting in the shade of the giant steel awning, I pressed my back up against the cold stone of the wall and shivered. My head was still swimming as I stared at the massive brick building across the street, with its many rows of identical square windows. My vision lazily falling from window to window, it finally hit the ground where I saw two doors that I had never noticed before.
Less than a foot apart from each other, and only separated by a sliver of a green wooden beam, they were both made of identical glass. Above the left door was a large metal sign, which read Optimal Self, and from what I could see through the glass was a gym. The door on the right had no sign but said in large printed letters: The Jewel Box Blues Bar, which made me laugh. Was that some sort of high-road, low-road joke? Revived slightly by my laughter, I peeled myself off the ground and headed into my building.
A sudden blast of air conditioning took the edge off my misery as I opened up the door. Standing in the lobby, I wondered whether or not it was acceptable to just sleep on the floor like the homeless do whenever they manage to sneak in. Eyeing the stiff fake leather couches, I decided against it and took the cement stairs up to the studio apartment I shared with my younger brother. Casey and I had shared a room growing up, and when we moved into the city for school, we decided that a studio would do us just fine.
It was cozy, with three grey walls, the fourth painted a bizarre shade of muted teal. Off to the left was a small, but modern kitchen with wooden cupboards and cramped counter space. The kitchen also had a spacious walk-in closet next to the fridge, which we used for storage. At the end of the kitchen was the bathroom that crammed a standing shower, sink, and toilet in only seven square feet of grey tiles. The only furniture we owned was a handmade bookshelf; two cheap L-shaped desks, Frankenstein’d into one ‘mega desk’; and a set of swivel chairs that had been on sale at the local Staples. With the desks and the bookshelf taking up so much of the floor space, there wasn’t room for a bed, let alone two. I slept on a beanbag in the window ledge, and Casey had an air mattress that folded up into a nook in the wall. Simple. If not elegant.
Breathing heavily from the trip up the stairs, I had to double-check to make sure this was our place as I struggled to put the keys in the lock. Pushing the door open, I was greeted by darkness and the soft glow of a computer screen. Flipping the lights on revealed that the place was empty. A yellow sticky note was tacked to Casey’s laptop screen, which read Gone to Hannah’s Be Back Later.
‘Alright then,’ I said to myself, crumbling up the note and throwing it onto the floor. I didn’t want him to see me like this anyway. In the few months we had been living together, he’s had to walk my drunk ass home at one in the morning or deal with my post-binge vomiting in the kitchen more than he should have. At least I can spare him this time. After shuffling out of my sweaty, whiskey-stained clothes, I chugged a few large glasses of water before cranking the knob in the shower all the way up.
Waiting for the water to get hot, I lay half-naked on the kitchen floor, trying to erase from my thoughts the face of that sneering woman from the 7/11, with no success.
Defeated, I crawled my way into the bathroom and locked the door behind me. The mix of heat and moisture filling the room didn’t feel great, but I convinced myself, like every other time, that it was purging the alcohol from my pores. Climbing into the hot water, I couldn’t keep myself from swaying side to side and so squatted into the fetal position. The shower was so small that I had just enough room to flex one ankle at a time. At least if I fall asleep, it will be impossible for me to drown, I thought. My sensitive skin cried out as the water beat down, but I didn’t move. Ribbons of water snaked their way around my toes and emptied down into the drain, my thoughts with them.
I don’t remember passing out, but I must have at some point, because I was startled awake by a falling shampoo bottle that caused me to jerk and hit my head against the hard-plastic wall. The steam had cleared my sinuses, and for the first time, I could taste how revolting my breath was. It was almost enough to make me sick all over again.
I need to brush my teeth and go back to bed, I thought.
I tried to stand back up, but my legs were asleep. Goddamnit. Shutting the water off, I pushed open the shower door, letting a rush of air shock my wet skin. It took a minute for the pins and needles to subside before I could finally get up and grab a towel. My hands were so swollen with water, they felt alien to me as I wiped away the fog from the mirror. In the clouded glass, two button-eyes lifelessly watched me from inside purple-rimmed sockets. My dehydrated mind went blank, not recognizing itself in the reflection.
I cleared away another round of fog from the glass and took one more step back to get a better look at the naked body in the mirror. It was a window onto horrors. On the other side, a humanoid creature followed my every movement, its waxy skin stretching like yellowed parchment over its torso. Its entire rib cage was on display. I followed it all the way up with wide eyes until the sweeping collar bone framed the ghastly image from behind its skin. Reaching towards the glass, it mimicked me, touching its face with my bloated fingers. Exhaling, I turned my back to the mirror, and the creature copied me once again. My heart pounded, and my hands started trembling as I closed them into a fragile fist. I could no longer bear to look at the thing in the mirror. I wrapped myself up in a towel and shut the light off and sat in the dark on the cold floor.
Facing the wall, I could feel the air escaping out of my lungs. What was that? My chest spasmed as I tried to gasp for air. Oh my God, that’s me. Tears stung my eyes, and I choked on the shame that erupted in my throat. No, please. I spun around and went back to the mirror, wiping the fog away in the dark. Even in the pitch black, I could feel the same hollowed eyes glaring at me from the other side. I collapsed onto the toilet seat and held my head in my hands; the truth of the moment overwhelmed me. The drinking, the late nights, and the hate had worn through my soul and out into my body. I was no longer able to hide from myself. My mind convulsed as I thought of Sara and Cameron, of the cold, of all the therapy sessions; and there in the dark, it hit me that I was not ‘ok’, as I was pretending to be. Even after moving to the city, going to school, starting life anew, I was still rotting, both inside and out.
My legs felt uneven under my body as I walked back to my desk chair. Turning my hands over, I thought of all the things they had done in the last three years. How many bottles have they held? How many times have they missed the chance to hold my son? To comfort my wife? How many times have they pushed away all that had meant something to me? Shaking, I looked up at the glass case on my bookshelf, which held the folded flag I was handed in my retirement ceremony.
‘I DON’T WANNA BE THIS ANYMORE, I DON’T WANT TO!’ I screamed into the empty room, crying in incoherent pain. For five minutes, I stood at its edge. Then I slumped down, exhausted, into the chair.
‘I don’t want to be ashamed anymore,’ I whispered at last. Collecting myself, I got dressed in silence. I really didn’t want to be like this anymore. Pulling a shirt over my head, I thought about the gym I had seen earlier across the street, Optimal Self. Making the decision on a whim, I decided that if I couldn’t change the inside of my body, maybe I could do something about the outside. Not wanting to return back to the bathroom, I rinsed my mouth out with some cold coffee Casey had left on the counter to cover the smell of whiskey on my breath, and headed out.
Pushing the glass door open, I was struck by the smell of rubber and sweat. The walls were painted a vibrant blue, but what caught my attention was a set of four white square pillars that supported a large balcony attached to the second floor. Each side of the pillars bore a single word painted in silver letters: Justice, Judgement, Dependability…fourteen words in all, and I knew them intimately. These were the fourteen leadership traits I had learned in the service. There were a handful of people moving around the cramped space, shifting weights, seemingly unaware of my presence. Above the squat racks on my right, a large American flag and black POW flag were the only decorations on the wall, and I knew immediately that whoever owned this gym was a veteran. My heart jumped at the idea of meeting another vet, but that excitement was quickly smothered by doubt. What if they find out about my injury? What’s going to happen when I tell them I didn’t get hurt doing anything special? Are they going to give me that same look of contempt? Of disgust?
As I fought myself alone on the threshold, my feet hadn’t moved. They stood rooted to a small patch of tile, making the decision for me.
