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You’re seven years old and you’re falling.
In a few seconds - but it’ll feel much, much longer and you’ll replay it forever - in a few seconds you’ll hit the ground, hit the fence and your guts’ll be all over the backyard and you’ll be too shocked to make a sound but your Mama’ll yells so loud she’ll wake the whole neighbourhood.
But for now you’re in free-fall, spiralling into nothing while above there’s nothing but stars.
(You’re wild like your Mama, she’s given you stuff that makes your head spin but nothing like this. Nothing like this.)
You’re never gonna tell anybody this, not sober anyway, but you’re gonna spend the rest of your life chasing that high.
-
You kiss your first boy a week after your first girl. He kisses you back and gives you a hand job for your trouble and then shatters any illusions you had by breaking your nose.
It takes some getting used to, bending both ways, especially since this whole thing started as a way to piss your daddy off and yeah, that might be the oldest cliché in the book but you’re determined. You’re driven.
You’ll get a rise out of him someday and when you do it’ll be spectacular.
You lose count of the amount of times you call him from jail somewhere around the twentieth, the emergency room somewhere between the thirteenth and the sixteenth (or was it more than that? You used to keep a tally in an old school notebook that you’re pretty sure you ended up burning.) He pulls you outta fights and drug dens and the whole time he keeps a straight face.
You keep expecting to be hauled off to some out of the way rehab or shipped off to boarding schools for fucked up kids but it never happens. Nothing happens.
It’s fucking suffocating.
(It’s like the hospital, drab and grey and everyone tip-toeing around him like you’re liable to explode at any minute.)
So you go bigger.
You run away at fourteen, hitchhike your way up to New York and stay gone for a year. You do it again at seventeen and it doesn’t go as well. You set fire to the school shed, you steal cars and break your daddy’s things and you know deep down you’re just another angry kid beating your fists bloody but being self aware doesn’t mean you’ll change.
(You pretend not to anyway.)
-
Somewhere along the way you learn how to play the game (or so you think.) You learn how to talk the talk and walk the walk, you learn how to talk people into things and out of things and around things and damn, you're good at it.
All you gotta do is flash 'em a smile and walk around like you own the place and they're eating outta your hands.
You get good at things; you get good a pretending to be good at things and honestly, you could do great things if you wanted to, if you focused if you stuck around long enough.
-
Simon's the first boy, the first anyone, you think you could love (but you're pretty sure that part of you rotted away in that hospital bed waiting for your mom to show up.) He gets you, you think, in that way that makes you itch all over.
You know he's gonna say it before he does, you're expecting it. You rehearse your reactions, go through endless scenarios where you stutter the words back to him because you do - or you could or something but then it happens and he knows, he knows the split second those words come out that you're not gonna say them back and you don't.
(God, you'd like to though.)
You fall asleep with your head on his chest and you know something's shifted.
You're still surprised that he's gone the next morning.
That he's left the country without so much as a note.
(You wreck the hotel room, do yourself a decent amount of damage but it's not enough or maybe you're not enough and you probably never will be.
You make plans, stewing in a new hospital bed to jump off something tall or maybe you'll get into design, fuck Simon over by being better than him.
Neither of those things happen.)
Your daddy gets wind of it somehow, hauls you back to the good old US and gets you a job that keeps you busy.
"That's what you need, Joe," he rumbles on the jet back. "A good job to keep that mind of yours occupied."
-
The thing is you love the chase. You love the chase and the frantic scrambling and the chaos. You like to break things and watch people pick up the pieces, you like to force people into unfamiliar situations and watch them panic, you like breaking people down and building them back up.
You just don't like sticking around for the finale.
-
You tell yourself it's your daddy's dumb job that's turned you into such a husk, made up of empty smiles and quick hard fucks that leave you feeling more empty than usual. It's the people you're surrounded with, carbon copies of some model worker, dull suits and dull ideas, crunching numbers and writing codes and yes sirs.
You still like to break things, you still like to burn things, you drive your car too fast and hit baseballs in the house. You still like to wreck people, you still like to fuck with the wrong people and your daddy still has to bail you out of jail a few times a year.
Only now you put a suit on the next morning and haul ass to work.
-
The people you work with think you're dangerous, they tip toe around you.
(The people you work with think you're delicate, they tip toe around you.)
-
Cameron changes things.
Gordon changes things.
Changes you.
Gordon doesn't ask questions, is as disinterested in you outside of work as you are in him and in his own way Gordon's just as fucked up as you are. He's easy pickings, you know exactly where to push and prod and mould to make him yours.
(Donna's an unexpected variable though, sees right through you and isn't sure she likes what she sees. She could be brilliant too, is brilliant. Maybe you should have gone with her in the first place.)
Cameron though, Cameron.
She's brilliant, she's so brilliant, and so human and she doesn't ask questions until she does and you keep expecting her leave but she doesn't (until she does and even then you're expecting her to come back and that throws you - you're in orbit again, spiralling out of control and Gordon's not enough to keep you grounded - )
-
You do your best on this thing. You do your best by the Giant. You're gonna change the world, you're gonna be up there with the greats.
(You do your best to keep it down, you set fire to trucks and fiddle with programs, you're gonna be a footnote.)
You and Gordon and Donna and Cameron.
(Cameron and Gordon and Donna.)
-
Your dad tells you the truth about your mother.
You're thirty-two years old and rich, you've worked for IBM for damn near a decade, you're good at what you do, cut-throat, hard as nails, "It's time you knew," he says like it's nothing, like it's something you should have figured out by now.
Like it's something normal, the family secret, the skeleton in the closet.
"She's dead, Joe," he says and right then you're numb (number than usual.)
"She's been dead a while, dad."
And he looks at you over his scotch, "No, son. That's not strictly true."
-
It's never bothered you before, that you don't really have anyone. Not until that hurricane, not until you're prancing about outside trying to make those kids laugh, trying to get Donna not to worry (and god, when did this happen, when did you start caring?)
And you drive to Cameron's and let her in, tell her that one big secret you've kept from everyone (she's the first whose not bought one of your standard stories, or maybe she's just the first one who cares that you're lying.)
You don't want her to see that you're just an angry kid underneath all the flashy suits and the slicked back hair but she does.
Of course she does.
Of course she leaves.
-
The thing is, you're not really sure who you are when you're not around people.
The thing is, when you're not around people that's the only time you're you.
-
You're thirty-five years old and you're falling.
Not off a roof this time (but god, it might as well be), you're on a precipice, you're holding a lit match and in front of you is the first you've (they've) ever made.
You don't create things, Joe. You only destroy them.
There's part of you that's trying to convince yourself that you didn't know you'd do this, that you'd be able to resist the urge, that you're over this anger, (except it's not quite anger anymore, it's more a buzzing in the back of your mind that builds up and needs quieting.)
In a moment you'll hit the ground. In a moment it'll all be over.
But for now you're in free fall.
You flick the match and up it goes.