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Curly knows he’s fucked up, okay? No one has to bring it up as if it’s shocking news. It only makes sense. Tim is fucked, Angela is fucked, Mom is fucked. Curly’s fucked. They were a fatherless greaser family who were known solely for their gang activity, it’s not surprising to learn that they were also fucking insane. It must be genetic. Their mom had It so they got it from her, that bitch.
She drinks too much, sometimes she stays in bed for days moaning about how useless it all is. Curly remembers her door always being locked when he was a kid, leaving him to fend for himself. Then sometimes she starts getting really excited, taking her kids to church in their best clothes, which wasn’t saying anything. She’d get into a lot of relationships and flings. She would be in a real good mood, but she’d do real crazy things not typically associated with happy people. Worst of all was when she got all paranoid, thinking that someone was out to get her. That’s when she really went crazy. Other than that she mostly just yelled a lot and the family would get into screaming matches about the most arbitrary things.
Curly realized Tim had It too when one day he didn’t come home for a week after days of being in a bad mood. He had been worried, not just for Tim’s safety but because the family couldn’t be supported without him. He’d even started looking for a job when Tim came back all excited about some flight of fancy or what not. He’d get into stupid fights for fun, too. And then a few months later he got drunk and nearly hung himself from the rafters in his room. Curly had found him, and he never looked at Tim the same way again.
Angela was more subtle for a while, because Curly had just thought she was a bitch and a slut. Bias, he supposes, because Tim was just as slutty. But really she got into all those romances because she was manic and impulsive and because she longed for power and control she couldn’t get anywhere else. One day she just crashed and scream-cried for hours, no one could calm her. When she topped that fit off by burning herself with a cigarette Curly had known.
Finding It in himself was easier after that. He didn’t have to look too hard to realize he was a reflection of his family. He saw It in himself when he robbed that liquor store. He found It at night when he was too empty to sleep. He felt It festering in his brain when he sat on a ledge for hours waiting for It to finally kill him. The family did not rely on each other and they did not love each other, not like they should. They couldn’t, they were too busy hating themselves. But there was something that kept them together, that kept them fighting for each other through it all. Solidarity. They were the only people who could understand each other and they all knew it, even if no one acknowledged it.
There was actually one other person who Curly felt could understand him: Ponyboy Curtis, of all people. He was like Curly and his family. He had It. Who knows how that worked, Curly had met both of his brothers and neither seemed to be the same. Whatever, all that mattered was the Pony was. The best part was that he talked about it openly, how he felt and the way he didn’t understand his own brain from time to time. How out of control he felt and the shame that was inflicted on him.
“Darry doesn’t get it,” he’d say, “he keeps trying to say that it’s all in my head and that I could be happy if I just wanted to.”
“Yeah that’s exactly how it works, Darrell,” Curly mocked, “Lemme just get a brain transplant first, think you can foot the bill?” Ponyboy giggled a little. He dug okay. Ponyboy had it better though, because had people who loved him. Curly did not.
When Curly dies, and he will soon, after Tim gets shot down by the police sometime, he hopes Ponyboy will find someone else who understands. Someone who can love him the way he deserves. Ponyboy will survive this disease, he knows, because he’s much stronger than Curly will ever be. Maybe because he’s allowed to be weak. For now he resigns himself to watching sunsets to placate Pony’s nerves, pushing the boundaries so Ponyboy can have a bit of fun. For now he tries to give Ponyboy what he will never have.