Vertigo

I was reading mimiinnewyork.blogspot.com, and I came across this entry titled "Vertigo" ... anyways I just thought it was an interesting read, especially since I feel like I've met someone like that in my life time ... it's not disheartening, but it makes you rethink what you thought, and see things from a different perspective ... or maybe I'm just overthinking things.

Vertigo
You know when you're right at the top, looking over, and you have that overwhelming desire to throw yourself off?

"Vertigo." he said. It's a fear of what you might do even when the rational mind registers the drop, acknowledges the inevitable mess that will ensue and still buzzes that furtive little message through the neurons, jump, jump.

I think I lack vertigo, which is how I've survived for so damned long. There was never any fear for the wellbeing of this body. What I was carrying around I couldn't give a shit about. So long as it was fed, drugged up, fucked and drunk, my body did me fine. It carried me where I wanted to go, and hell, if it hit the bottom hard, so be it. Smacked up, stung, soiled - I was loving every fucked-up minute of an existence I couldn't recall because the brain cells had been damned near destroyed by living too hard. I was falling, falling, falling, but couldn't remember the jump, and the bottom seemed to be evasive. So I tried a little harder.

My eyes were rolling and I could feel it along with the pang of a jaw strung taut, frayed elastic ready to pop with the gurning, and I couldn’t remember where I’d been, but I knew where I was, and when he opened the door he knew where I’d been because my eyes told him. So without a word he led me in, lay me down and there were no kisses, not that I remember, not that I could feel, but what I could feel was the drug shuddering through my body and my body following instinct not instruction. Instinct dictated what I did, because my head was incapable of it. I remember it didn’t hurt but from somewhere I felt like it should, and all the while I stared at the sordid red glow from the cigarette which dangled loosely from thick lips, burning embers and flecks of ash drifting into a sepia night, and from the light cast I could see that my body still looked young even as it felt so old, cold and trembling from the inevitable comedown. This time I think it did hurt, but by that time I was out, gone, on the move again, and the streets were quiet because it was 7am and France had not yet woken up.

He called me later when I was sitting on the bow of the boat, looking out across the harbour and the crew had gone to The Blue Lady. It was a pink sun, always a pink sun, and the Mistral was starting to blow, because summer was nearly over and it was time to go.

"You never said goodbye," he said

"No, I didn't." and I hung up, called the next one. "I'll be in Palma in two days. See you there."

Kept jumping right into the next addled day sodden with alcohol and the echoing, stark numbness of a beer-sodden soul still reeling from a chemical high and the smack of the night. I forget every man, but I remember every morning, my eyes wide and vacant, unable to speak. I'd sit at Bar Toni, down espresso and nod to the French guy with the curly hair and the dirty, long, yellow fingernails who sold me shit I'd sell to tourists for twice the price. I left my men like I left my boats: abruptly, before I got kicked off for turning up for work at 6am with no sleep and a jaw locked tight, clenched shut - whether through drugs or something else, I couldn't tell. Still can't.

In Palma he came with an unspectacular yelp like a small dog while his wife roamed the streets for him, calling a cellphone which beeped uselessly beneath the bed next to the suitcase and the flip-flops.

"I'd leave her for you, you know," he sighed, and he would, I knew it. He'd jump, knowing that the fall would be swift and clean and the result a carnival of crushed and splintered bones, intestines oozing like reptiles across a baked sidewalk. Whereas I'd just walk away.

When I got to Gibraltar he'd left a message for me. I ignored it. And then we sailed to the Canary Islands - which island I forget - and it rained, and we sat in a bar sipping Bailey's staring at the masts of sailboats kissing dirty grey clouds. He called me again.

"I want to leave her. I've decided. I'll meet you in St Maarten."

But I hung up, and when the Captain looked over to ask me what was wrong he caught my eye and smiled, and he knew, having mastered the exquisite art of falling, falling, falling for all eternity, without fear or retribution or spilt blood - ours, at least. I time them to perfection, my leaps over that cliff, waiting until the bow of the next boat noses close to mine and I can spring over in a perfect arc, clearing salt water licking at my heels, fall to safety, fall on my feet, hit the deck cleanly, half wishing I could feel the same sting that everyone else gets from the impact of earth punching body.

I'm always on my way out, ready to jump. Bag slung over shoulder, moving on, ticket in hand, a flight, a boat, a train. It's a solo occupation. On reflection maybe I never mastered the vertigo. I just lived with it until it became part of my soul, and every night was just jumping again and again, senseless, exalted, perfect. I don't know if I can give it up.

"I don't know if I can give it up," I told him at 7am after a night of hard drinking, and ash from my cigarette spilled like wine onto my lap. "I think that even though I want a normal life and clean living and everything to be nice and what it's never been, I know that at some point I'll get to that cliff, and I'll want to jump." It felt weird saying it out loud. But he was the one who told me about vertigo. And he said he mastered it by jumping, so that's something, at least. That's something.

"It's OK," he replied, and I could tell it really was. "'Cause if you get to the top, and you want to jump, I'll jump with you."

I wanted to say that wasn't the point, but then it occurred to me that maybe it was, and it would be OK after all. I thought some more. All I said in the end was "Thanks." But I think he understood.