These past couple of weeks have been a bit strange.
I could make an entire post enlisting reasons, but that wouldn’t be very interesting. The short story is that I tidied up my apartment, and now I’m shopping for some specific supplies—high-quality shit. I’ll elaborate on it some other time. Putting that aside, I’m up to the same thing I’ve been working on for nearly three months now.
My meth lab.
Nah, I’m just fucking with you. As a very few of you may know, I’ve just been rewriting excerpts from this old journal; written primarily in the spring of 1981, to be exact. My weird uncle gave it to me on my birthday. The journal entails experiences from an unprofessional hellhole called Ophelia Hollow Prison.
Writing about it and discovering these things has been a mixed bag. Some parts are, in all honesty, outrageously stupid. Some are oddly disturbing, disgusting, and make me squint at the old pages for a while. And then there are these moments that feel…real. Not in an honest-to-God-truth sense, (though I do have reason to believe that), but more on an emotional level.
I could probably put each entry on a scale of these three things if I wanted to. I don’t know where I would place this one. As always, I feel it’s an obligation to state that this is a series (as if the flair didn’t make that obvious enough, huh?) You could probably take some stories on their own and be relatively content, but knowing the full context won’t ever hurt. Also, as the title suggests, this is yet another two-parter. I’m a bit tired of dividing these entries up, so hopefully, the next one won’t suffer the same issue.
I’m rambling, aren’t I? Alright, enough with the bullshit. Here is today’s entry:
Almost is an absolutely filthy word.
That six-lettered word has dragged me by my hair my entire life, leading me to where I am now. It’s grown up with me in a sense. Just that feeling. That feeling of triumph overshadowed by shame because you weren’t quite enough. Victory, happiness, validation, love; all just within arms reach, yet never truly in your grasp due to that very word. Myles A. Monroe. What does the A stand for? It depends—Myles “Almost Perfect” Monroe. Myles “Almost Functioning Addict” Monroe. Myles “Almost White-Passing” Monroe. The actual A may or may not stand for Aurnad. The list goes on. My piano performances at church? Almost flawless, according to my mother. Almost flawless was never good enough for her. What about my Valentine’s Day gift? Almost what my partner wanted. My life? Almost a complete mess.
This word is even haunting me through my imprisoned predicament.
After the warden threw out his wonky coffee maker, I went along with my following days feeling satisfied.
Any tensions between the warden and I had been eradicated. He wasn’t evil, and that was always good. Sure, I learned about the presence of a cult, but my experience with these soul-selling cultists proved that they weren’t necessarily bad people. Just desperate. Despite her petty treachery, Venus planted no seeds of doubt in my mind; all my thoughts revolving around her were pleasant. There would be no more coffee-made monstrosities either. I could start looking toward the future and plan to meet up with Dolly. I finally decided it would be good to tell her about my latest discoveries. I smiled a lot thinking about it.
….
Things in Ophelia Hollow Prison can’t be good. That’s a fact. I mean, it is juvie. But things were almost good.
Almost.
After all, I still had to handle Matvey Trotsky.
Trotsky, Trotsky, Trotsky…oh boy.
Our relationship is akin to the eyes on one of those old little cat clocks. Back and forth with any sudden occurrence. But recently, the clock broke after many exhausting days filled to the brim with tonal whiplash. The eyes were stuck in the middle, balancing on a tightrope. On the cusp between total, dysfunctional disaster and solace, solid friendship.
Trotsky could be comforting when he wanted. Sometimes he’s supportive and tries to make my days a little less hectic. But it’s a well-known fact that my cellmate is quite a violent individual. He hurts whoever he feels like, and it doesn’t seem like he gives anything a second thought.
Exhibit A would be the teeth-hurling inmate.
Trotsky had made that guy’s life a living hell. He traumatized him, leaving him without any teeth or emotional stability. I’ll admit, I’m not the most morally sound person. I still think I’m undeserving of my assault charges, but I’ve done bad things. Even then, if I were to knock a guy’s teeth out and shove them down his throat, I would be racked with guilt for years. But Trotsky wasn’t. He had never uttered a word about it; never even lost a wink of sleep over what he did! He only showed a sliver of sympathy after I had gotten mad at him for it.
This naturally put a strain on our relationship. A part of me desperately wanted to abandon him, yet I knew that was impossible. Why? Well, the other part of me longed for things to go back to the way they were. Trotsky made me feel nice in some instances, and I wanted that. More than anything. But I was stuck in that torturous midpoint.
There would be moments where the cat’s eyes nearly looked in another direction. Around the time of the coffee maker incident, Trotsky composed a routine. He would make a sly remark as I awoke before stating he would go to the library after breakfast. Then, he would look at me with that stupidly handsome grin and invite me to join him. Every morning as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, I contemplated saying yes.
“Sure, let’s go hang out.”
“Maybe we could find a good book to read.”
I also envisaged telling him off.
“No. Go eat shit and die.”
“Give it a rest. You’re awful, and I never want to talk to you again.”
Yet every single time, I would reply with the same thing.
“I don’t know. Maybe some other time.”
The eyes stayed in the middle.
I used to beat myself up over it all the time. Just in the middle of the day, I would reminisce on it and smack myself upside the head. Way to go, Myles, you stupid asshole, you blew it. Then I would typically laugh.
Blew what? This is for the better. What would you even say if you gave a precise answer? Yes? No? You can’t make up your mind.
That was true. My feelings for Trotsky were unmoving in their inconclusiveness. Unchanging.
But Trotsky certainly was changeable.
It started with his appearance. It was hard to tell at first. You see, Trotsky always has this look to him. He has these really dark lashes. And his face always looks tired and oddly sensual. It’s a weird comparison, but it’s like the face of a glamorous rockstar doped up on something devilishly strong post-orgasm. But he managed to look this way sober and never, if rarely, post-orgasm; and somehow, that made him an Adonis. But when I woke up to look at him one day, I couldn’t help but notice these dull, dark circles under his eyes. Those were new. And his face, once slightly sun-kissed, began to lack any hint of color.
There would be moments when I wanted to say something. Just to verbally acknowledge that he was, in fact, changing. One morning, I almost did.
“Trotsky?”
“Yeah?”
Damn. He looked at me with eyes that didn’t sparkle. They sat on his face with mist and a hint of misery. Practically drooping, dreary compared to his usually bright eyes. He looked outright exhausted in a way that sent pity straight to my heart.
“Uh…” shit. If I said something then, I would’ve just felt like a dick. “Never mind. It’s nothing, really.”
He raised his brows, flashing a weak, weary smile. “Always so indecisive, Myles.”
“Indecisive?” I chuckled, patting him on the back, “that’s a big word for a foreign idiot like you.”
I expected him to reply with something more sarcastic or belittling. Instead, bleak words met my ears.
“Yeah…” He looked off somewhere in the distance. “I will head to the library after breakfast. You may join if you’d like.”
“I don’t know. Maybe some other time.”
He didn’t give a response to that. I lowered my head, overwhelmed with a strange sense of guilt. Is it bad to feel culpable over a sadistic communist? Is it wrong? Maybe. However, right or wrong didn’t concern me. I felt sorry, and I decided to atone. I would sit down and talk with Trotsky later that evening.
I got to work on that once we reunited in our cell. Dancing around his physical decline, I talked about whatever I could think of.
“Venus tells me a lot of weird shit.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Like, she talks about this homeless guy sometimes.” I laughed, “she says he’s always all up on this one bush—having sex with it. I mean, that’s just the craziest thing, is it not? Well, it gets worse!”
I threw my hands in the air, “apparently, he got mad at it one day and had a boxing match, which lasted for hours. But a few weeks later, he apologized. He stole a box of chocolates from an old lady and gave it to the bush. Talk about a cute love story, huh?”
I glanced over at Trotsky, anticipating a response. But my cellmate was preoccupied.
As I was talking, he seemed to be struggling in the embrace of sleep. Sitting beside me on the bottom bunk, head sinking as he inched closer and closer to slumber. But then he would jolt back up, eyes widening, only to descend once more. This continued for a few seconds, and I simply watched. Trotsky hadn’t even noticed my silence. He didn’t seem to care. Finally surrendering to his somnolent urge, he closed his eyes.
He fell asleep right on the spot.
I looked at him for a while, stunned by the blatant absurdity of it all. It was easy to feel offended, but in all honesty, I was more curious than anything. I mean, how does someone even manage to do that? He fell asleep mid-conversation! I was almost impressed. But I couldn’t just leave him on my bunk; I had to wake him up somehow. So, with a fixated stare, I raised my left hand.
I smacked the shit out of him. It was backhanded, in case you were wondering. Just a few times, taking amusement from the little echoes created by my hand meeting his face. There were many other ways to wake him, but that way felt suitable for some twisted reason. I don’t know why; I had never harmed Trotsky before. Simply insulting him was a risky task. Under normal circumstances, my actions would’ve made me nothing more than a mangled corpse. But that didn’t happen.
After a few hits, he opened his eyes with a numbed look of awareness. It took a few seconds for him to process what had happened. I expected outrage, heated words, and threats of reciprocating the violence. But Trotsky simply looked at me with a blank face, rubbing his cheek. “That was uncalled for.”
“‘Uncalled for?’ Really? That’s all you’ve got!?” I grabbed him by the shoulders, “I’m hurting you! Invading your privacy! Stripping you of your sense of pride! You just got pimp-slapped by an American douchebag who used to wear eyeshadow! Why aren’t you registering how embarrassing that is? Your cheek is red, and all you, Matvey -fucking- Trotsky, has to say is ‘that was uncalled for?’ That’s bullshit!”
Trotsky squinted, “what is up with you?”
“What’s up with you!?”
Something was wrong, clearly wrong, yet Trotsky denied it. According to him, he was fine, flawless, even. When I told him something seemed fishy, my cellmate asked me what I thought it was. When I didn’t give a response, that proved he was well in his eyes. If something were genuinely amiss, I should’ve been able to point it out with confidence; but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, so my opinion was invalid.
I tried to craft some sort of rebuttal, but it was pointless. Trotsky was still a stubborn jackass; I’ll give him that. He wouldn’t listen to me. He didn’t even say another word that night.
A midnight sky soon painted the world, and I dreamt of enjoying it. But I couldn’t. I sat in a cold, dark cell, sighing as I listened to nothing but the rats’ skitter. I beat myself up again.
What the hell was that? An intervention? That was awful! Why is he being so weird? Why is he falling asleep mid-conversation? Wait, why do I even care?! Trotsky’s gross and stupid. With his stupid jokes, stupid politics, stupidly good looks, and that stupid accent!
Wait.
My eyes widened as it dawned on me.
…Could Matvey Trotsky even read English?
Sure, he could speak it well enough, but that didn’t mean he could read. My sister Ruby spoke French just fine, yet she could barely read a lick of it. This speculation on its own was uninteresting, but it brought my uneasy suspicions to light.
Why was Trotsky going to the library if he couldn’t read?
This place is packed with prisoners of different origins, but I would bet the library didn’t have a single book written in Trotsky’s language. He was Slavic, that was for sure, but I didn’t know his specific nationality. Something in that USSR area. If he were anything other than Russian, I was sure the library didn’t harbor a book he could understand. Even then, there was no guarantee. I’m guessing the shelves of the prison library are only stacked with English and Spanish literature to begin with.
But I would give Trotsky the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he could read English. I would find out the following day.
Despite his bleak metamorphosis, he still woke up earlier than me. I saw him simply sitting on the floor, staring at the cold concrete as if it were a work of art. He stayed silent.
“Hey.”
He didn’t even look up. “Hello.”
I reached from under the bed to find this journal. I flipped to one of the neater pages, clearing my throat and presenting it to him. “I wrote something, but I don’t know if it’s any good. Could you check for me?”
He nodded, scooting closer to me and peering at the page with a squint. I was patient. I waited in quietude, observing Trotsky for any hint of a reaction. Minutes flew by, and his face displayed a look of guilt. The type of guilt a small child gets after an adult exposes one of their lies.
“Well, what do you think?”
“Uh…”
“Hm? Is something wrong? What does it say?”
Trotsky’s eyes sunk to the floor.
“Can you understand it?”
After a few seconds of pure silence, he shook his head in a surprisingly meek fashion. I laughed.
“I knew it! You can’t read English!”
Trotsky tried to brush it off, miserably failing at not looking suspicious. “So?”
“What books have you been reading at that little ol’ library?”
…
“What’s that? You haven’t been reading anything? I caught you red fuckin’ handed!”
My cellmate grumbled a bit, upset that I had caught on to his lie. “I will still go to the library today after breakfast. You may join if you’d like.”
“No. Honestly, Trotsky, I don’t think either of us should go.”
“I’m going!”
Those two words echoed in our cell immediately after my statement. His brows were angrily arched, and his voice oozed with strangely firm desperation. It was the most animated I had seen Trotsky in a while, which naturally took its toll on him. After his sudden shout, he began to cough. It was a raspy noise, practically violating my ears before getting louder. God, I didn’t know people could sound like that. Nearly unearthly, gasping for air in a tragically ill fashion.
He coughed up something black.
I didn’t get a good look at it. The substance landed on his hand, and he stared at it with stunned, wide eyes for what seemed like an eternity. He didn’t seem upset. It was as if he had lost his sense of shock. It was no big deal to him. The same couldn’t be said about me.
“Trotsky, lay back down! Now!”
With a pale face, he nonchalantly flung the goop to the ground. “Why? I said I was going to the library!”
“No! You plop your ass right on that bunk and stay here!” I shook my head, “what just happened wasn’t normal!”
“Oh? And what would you know about normal?” He laughed. Despite it all, he laughed. “Eleven siblings and no father. You know who else has eleven siblings and no father?”
“Your mom?”
He got real close to my face with a snarky tone. “A rabbit.”
He continued to berate me. “Actually, the more I think about it, you are very similar to a rabbit. I do not think that is normal. Not at all.”
“Whatever. At least I don’t smell like Walt Frazier’s ballsack.”
“What?”
“I know you’re sorta shoddy with your English, so let me give you a little lesson,” I spoke in the most condescending tone I could muster. “There are these things called showers. They’re meant to make you clean with soap and water. And shower time, as the name suggests, is supposed to utilize these showers. So maybe you should spend some time bathing instead of getting fucked in the ass!”
“You know nothing of what I do in the showers!”
“Well, I know that despite being naked, -surrounded by other naked men, may I remind you-; you never actually get clean. Doesn’t leave much room to the imagination, does it, dumbass?”
I know it’s bad to say this, but I smiled. I was getting a reaction out of him. His face flushed red, and his tone was a close constellation to the Trotsky I had known.
“You know, I actually have been learning things.” He huffed, “I learned the term ‘verbally abusive.’”
“So?”
He crossed his arms like a petty schoolgirl, “this is a very verbally abusive relationship! You are always degrading me, saying all these nasty things.”
“Don’t call this a relationship. It makes us seem like a dysfunctional gay couple when you say it. But speaking of dysfunctional, don’t act like you’re some sort of victim. You’ve assaulted multiple people, and you’ve hurt me with all your threats and manipulation. You’re an asshole! Why do I even care about you?” I scoffed as memories of Trotsky’s sins flooded my head, “you know what? Whatever. I’m done with this. Keep going to that stupid library. Marry it for all I care.”
“Maybe I will.”
We departed at breakfast, simply letting our bitter sentiments simmer. I picked at my food as I thought about it all.
Trotsky set his heart on going to that damned library. It was like an addiction. He would probably rather die than listen to my reasoning. It was better to let him be. So what if he was doing something undeniably strange and harmful? So what if he was coughing up unidentifiable black goop? I did my part. I offered a feast, but he wanted to starve. That wasn’t my problem.
…But after breakfast, I sat down and truly analyzed the whole situation.
Trotsky couldn’t read English. That was a fact. Then why was he going to the library? To visit somebody? That seemed the most likely. His times at the library could’ve easily been dates. That explained why he returned so often. There was another question itching my brain. How did he learn about verbal abuse? He certainly had to learn it from someone. I imagined someone consulting. Someone who could talk him through his problems with odd charisma that made him come back every time. Someone who brightened his world.
….
I dashed around blindly, looking for the library with desperate eyes. I ended up going down the hallway that led to the rarely-used theatre. This hallway acted as a concrete artery, leading me towards the heart of Trotsky’s downfall. Loud footsteps echoed as I saw a familiar face.