The Wrapping and the Tigers

[This is based off of a true-ish story, it is not fact nor a re-encounter of my life]

There was that eerie growing flutter of shuffled feet from behind the balcony wall, just tall enough as means of privacy that summer morning. It passed, a syncopation between the intake of breath, and the exhale into the didactic day's warm breeze within an exact expectation of time. The front door to one of the copycat homes came to a adamant close.

He shuffled the cancerous bud between his fingers, the way that gamblers do to assert their dominance over a crowd, and put it out on the stone table with a gentle twist and watched as the opaque fumes swarmed around and around each other, into a dissolve. He dusted his father's pajamas, and stood to dance his way inside through the screen glass door and between the hanging blinds. The apartment felt muggy, and passing through the youthfully cluttered living room, into the short hallway, the thermostat read 83. He felt it in his throat, and it increasingly made it’s way to his stomach as he clenched the bathroom sink handle, and let it run. Balancing his heavy head on his rusty forearms, waiting for the wave to pass, and it does, but the nausea caused him to cough up the black tar that hung in his lung and clinged to the inner pockets of his intestine.

He didn't look himself in the mirror, nor did he brush his teeth, but took the still water and raked it onto his skin and through the mops of greasy hair just thick enough to keep it’s shape off of his forehead. The hum from his silent phone came from the greenly slumped couch in his bedroom, it was The Killer.

"Come pick me up from work," she said, and gave the leeway of time in which she would be off. He looked at his toes, his head a bobber letting it float in neutral disdain.

"Alright, I love you," came from his dusty tongue and let the phone line hang, and at the weakened wrists, let the weight of the phone fall into his front pocket.

He breathed in place, letting his body take him into the split wooden chair, placing his arms on the canyons of the dining table between the hoarded piles of unpaid bills and clippings of coupons and children's drawings. His hands wringed in rhythm with the stagnant breaths like a rusty air conditioner losing faith. His pocket tapped against his flesh, and revealing the screen up against to face, his profile illuminated in whites and blues.

The corner of his mouth curled in his cocked fang-like smile, the one that he despised, but was genetic. That couplet of seconds burned his chapping lips, as he remembered why he fell in love like this as he read over the incoming messages, and let his body grain dissolve into the white noise. Clicking off the screen, he sat in this lapping shore, feeling the thrash of conflicting salts and sands making a murkiness of sea in his gut, but let the tide take him to his room in an effort to shake off the film. Disrobing and manufacturally drowning in the dirty uniform, previously sprawled in a pile behind his bedroom door. He looked in the mirror and desperately searched that foreign face for a means of recollection, that man with the willowy skin and over-grown blades of scruff.

What was this universe, and how mustn't  it feel so impermanent? This irrationality fumbling over a reason to feel so isolated, like a stranger trying to make reason of a foreign billboard, was the simplicity of such complex emotion. He pushed at the folded fabric against his sternum, and intaking the sharp rich oakiness, almost savory fragrance that clung to the cotton as he picked up his keys and slipped on one of the pairs of frayed sneakers with the porous soles that crowded around the front door. His medial fingers desperately felt for the comforting cold of the two hanging beads on his left hand that draped from the striated earthy bracelet around his chiseled wrist. He didn’t look back at the apartment number, but simply waltzed down the exterior hall, like a man walking down the bow of a bounding ship. Paradoxically, this was his routine and unfortunately, this was the comfort of reality.

So, Here is How it All Started

This past month has been fucking agony.
To back-track a little bit, I was recently broken up with by the man I am certain I am going to spend the rest of my life with. You might think, "wtf are you crazy, you clearly aren't together so why are you saying this?" well, here's why.
This man I speak of, is deeply afflicted. No like, really bad. Like his father dies when he was 3 due to an infection that spread way too fast, shortly there after his mother married a man, had a kid, and then his sister moved to New York. Yeah, well this man completely abused him, mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally. Only a couple of years ago, his mother and this man divorced, yet keeping very close in contact. All while, completely neglecting him to grow up on his own and become an adult very quickly. At a young age, he got into a lot of trouble. He beat up kids, was a bully, vandalized, did drugs, all not good things in general, however slowly when he got into high-school he started to change. He made some fantastic friends, became the class clown and the best friend that everyone could rely on. He was an amazing boyfriend to many girls, and broke a couple hearts along the way. Everyone knew him, and everyone loved him, for good reason, because he is the kindest and most genuine hearted person that has ever existed. He is very afflicted though. Since he was young, he has always smoked marijuana because it was always present in his life. His mother, as of now, is a recovering alcoholic and he still destroys his kidneys every chance he can. Since he started working, at the age of 16 to pay for rent because his mother was constantly drunk and could never find her ground which led them to loose the house he grew up in, he started smoking cigarettes. And I don't blame him, its the industry and its what you do when you have a break, plus it helps alot in which I know now as I started smoking after this entire shit show has gone down over the past month. Well when he working, that's all he does. He nearly worked himself to death dropping 30 pounds and throwing up everything he ate even though he wasnt eating, because the bills were high, and that's all that mattered to him, because all he has ever had was his mom and little brother. He was dating a girl at the time, and everything was fine, but there were issues and he needed to work as much as possible, and I don't know all the details, but he hated her and completely blocked her out of his life because he couldn't handle it. Well, he eventually had to quit that job because he was dying and his grades were failing, and ultimately he needed to take a second and care about himself for once. That was around April I believe, and now its September. I guess you are wondering where I play into this, well here you go.
Throwback to December, I was put in a group chat for my friend who was going to commit suicide and we were trying to find a way to stage an intervention for her. In this chat that lasted a good 3 days maybe, I got into an argument with this random number who was saying some really fucked up shit about our mutual friend. He was saying that she was doing this for attention and us doing anything would just feed that craving, which in hindsight was totally the case, I was just pissed that he had the balls to say it. I ended up finding out who he was, and I saved his number, which then led me to add him on Snapchat. I actually met him in person for the first time in like January, and he was totally sweet. He walked up to me and introduced me, and sat beside me as I was playing piano for their improv team. I still had his number saved in my phone as "**** the Asshole" which I still think is so fucking funny. Skip to the end of school in May, I check my Snapchat story and see that he had posted a selfie with a vague caption about having insomnia and how he couldn't sleep. You know, I'm an odd guy I'll admit, so when I reached out to him for support, as I too have had chronic insomnia since like 6th grade, I thought he would totally ignore me or like make fun of me for saying anything. However, he was genuinely appreciative and asked to hang out sometime.
I was so shocked. Like. What the fuck. Does this guy know who I am? Does he even know that Im a guy??? So many questions ran through my head.
I ended up asking my friend for a ride back to her place, so he could pick me up and we could talk.
I remember that intense feeling while in the car, not knowing what the fuck I was getting into. I was probably going to be raped, or hog tied and made fun of, or somehow would end up dead, and did I care? No not really, in my gut I had this feeling that it was going to be okay, whatever may happen.
I think that memory of him was my favorite, I got out the car and say this beautiful man dressed in Elmo pajamas with a Bob Marley t-shirt on. He walked me to the passenger seat, and held the door open for me. As he shut it, there was a brief few seconds before he got in on his side in which I though, "Oh fuck. What have I gotten myself into. Am I being punked right now???".
As we drove with the windows half down, and a lit cigarette hanging out the side of his mouth, we pulled into the apartment complex. He got out and let me out, and we walked through the ever darkening hallway to his door. I made a note of the apartment number "1131. November 31st. Got it" you know, just in case I needed to call the police. We walked into this tiny apartment, and I immediately saw this cat and I threw myself at her. She was so nice and she liked me immediately, which was something I didn't really know about myself but I totally seek comfort in uncomfortable situations in cats or any small animals for that matter. Nevertheless, we walked into his kitchen and he offered me a bottle of water which I don't remember if I took or not, but that's not important. He walked me to his room, and we sat on his green and blue couch and I remember looking around the room, at every small detail on his aluminium entertainment system, every crowded trinket covered in dust, trying to piece together the man who was sitting right beside me. I remember being so self conscious about the actions I was making, every breath that inflated my heavy lungs, to the expressions my face skin made. He apologized for smoking, and asked if it was okay, into which I said something like, "Oh yeah its totally fine dont apologize". And after chatting for a bit, he asked if we could go outside onto his patio, because the 11:00 summer night air was much less hot then what the AC was set to inside. We went through the blinds onto this small crescent shaped patio with a wall that was just high enough to give an excuse of privacy. We sat on these chairs, his in the shadow and mine was just barely in the orange street light that it illuminated half of my face. He  introduced me to his dying house plant, in which I gave verbal hope that It would survive this brutal heat in wicked Arizonian summer. We talked so much, about everything. Conspiracy theories, our pasts, our mental health, our hopes, and dreams, our ideologies, our thoughts, we talked about us. I remember, we talked about suicide for a bit. We both spoke and came to an agreement in the thick melancholy air that flows in when you talk about visceral things like suicide, and we agreed that it was the most selfish thing a person can do. We said that there is no chance to grow, or to get better, if you don't give it time to do so. By the end of our conversation, it was around 4:30 in the morning and we mutually agreed that we should probably get some sleep. Keep in mind, I had no idea that I was staying the night, but I had a feeling I was going to anyway. Back in his room he started to put on a movie, he said it was one of his favorites and hoped that I liked it. I sat on his couch while he jumped into bed, and I saw as the black screen turned to color and I reconized that it was Spirited Away. I was so excited, and confused, like "am I dreaming right now?". I sat for a good minuet before he looked at me and asked, "Are you sleeping there or do you want to come lay with me?". I was so flustered but I said I didnt know, and felt my body glide over to the side of the bed, and as I lay on my side, he put his arms around me. What the fuck was happening to me? These things don't happen to me, this must be a joke of some kind or if not he must not know that I am a guy, because there is no reason for a man like him to want a person like me. But I lay there, and next thing I know he starts vigorously kissing my neck, in which I don't complain because what I'm feeling now is amazing, but also what? He stopped after a while, and with him around my frail body he falls asleep. At some point in the night I realize that my eye was watering and I couldn't see out of it, but I ended up trying to watch the movie, because I had never seen it before and wanted to, but my vision was completely blurry so I listened to it all the way through and tried to visualize what was happening. The movie ended and the room went dark aside from the dancing lines of blinds that illuminated the ceiling. Long story short, I didn't sleep that night and when I thought ready, I pried the very sweaty, very warm man's arms off of my body and looked into his mirror at my eye. I was horrified to find that my left eye, blood red and competently swollen, looked as If I was beaten. And he was going to wake up and see me like this? Fuck me. I laid back down in hopes to pretend that I was fast asleep, and the next thing I know, his mom comes in the room and turns right out. He got up and went to talk to her and after a long time had passed, he came back in the room with a cup of coffee for me. I was so happy and appreciative and the mug was this little Christmas penguin which was all too cute, and I tried to hide this hideous crimson boil on my face that was my eye from him. He got his work clothes on, and when he was finished he laid on his bed in astonishment. He was probably thinking what he had gotten into as well, and was trying to make sense of the night we had together. Nevertheless, he had to take his mom to work and me home. I made brief acquaintance with his mom, before we all headed out to the car where I discovered that his mom couldn't drive because of a revoked licence. We dropped her off at Costco, and I got back into the front seat and gave him directions back to my house. When we pulled up, he got out and opened my door for me, hugged me a long goodbye, and I frantically scampered back to my house and let myself in.
What the fuck was I doing?