...when the world ends...(part two)

I couldn’t sleep. I heard someone was moving around in the kitchen downstairs. Being tired of laying in bed checking the news and my e-mail, I donned on some shorts and ran downstairs.

My mom was awake and sitting in the den, petting our cat, Mz. Bojangles’ fur. My mother was dressed up to go to the gym. My mom has this ridiculous ritual to go to the gym at four in the morning and function through the day. Sometimes, I have to remind my mother that although she is not superwoman by depriving herself of sleep and working herself to the bone. I am already proud of her.

My mom questions why I’m up so early in the morning. I was frustrated that I couldn’t sleep. I tried to eat some foods that would calm my body down. Maybe it was the caffeine I ingested when I closed last night. I thought to myself as I ate a yogurt.

I tried to go back to sleep. But my body only teased me by keeping my in and out of consciousness.

10 A.M. I woke up nervous. The beginning of my roller-coaster of emotions had finally arrived. I rolled over to look at my phone. No missed calls nor text messages. Allowing myself to welcome the First Horseman of Apocalypse: the reminder of absence and the side of Jeff I didn’t like: the “I’m too independent to remain in contact with someone because I have to save minutes on my phone” side.

I waited until noon to finally get myself ready for the day. I took a shower. I had made a list of things I had to get done for the day. Go to the gym, pay my student loans, pay my cell phone bill, and send out some mail. I had finished my errands and was feeling pretty accomplished. But there was one errand I still had to accomplish before my day was complete: the gym.

I had avoided the gym for a specific reason: Jeff might be there right now. I don’t plan on running into Jeff at the gym. That is not what I had planned in my head. But I was going to suck it down and improvise. I quickly slammed down a Rockstar and stormed into the gym.

For some reason, my emotions are ignited into anger. I was no longer nervous but just frustrated that it is two-thirty in the afternoon and he has made no contact at all today. Maybe he got cold feet and he knows that I might yell at him. Like a dog that knows that he should not have peed on that dress that was laying out to dry. Then comes the Second Horseman of the Apocalypse: what he did when we were dating. His disappearance.

He disappeared with friends days before our five month anniversary. We were supposed to go to San Diego and go to the Foam Party. I called off work just so I can spend time with him. No one had heard from him, he wasn’t at his work, I was panicking. Days later, he returned and broke up with me; all of this was done right before finals, the most stressing part of the year.

I am not saying he is disappearing for that reason. But his problem is he never follows through with things. He would rather be spontaneous, because it gives him control. Realizing this made me angry, I amped the treadmill to a faster speed as I cranked the volume to a song with enraged-embedded lyrics.

Then suddenly, came the arrival of yet another emotion. As I was sprinting while listening to some Orgy. A hot guy from the basketball court passed behind me and threw his towel over his shoulder. The towel hit my shin which made me turn to look at the person passing behind me.

Time had suddenly slowed down as my gaze panned from watching the hot guy showering near the pool, to the guy behind me. For around two milli-seconds, the guy looked like Jeff. He smiled at me just like he used to. Reasons why I liked him number 6,394: his ever-welcoming gaze.

Time sped up again to reveal it wasn’t Jeff but someone else. Someone not nearly as attractive and had a tattoo of Jesus, Mary, and his baby’s mama on his right shoulder. My heart dropped. Images of his smiling face still flooded my mind, smiling not in deception, but with kindness. I try to shake my head away from it all, I even cranked up the music volume so that the lyrics would avert my attention to the lyrics instead of my wild imagination. As I am running, I decide to give him a deadline: If he doesn’t call by nine o’clock p.m., then I am going to never speak to him again.

I couldn’t believe that sentence came out of my head. I am making a deadline for someone. How sad is that? And yet arrives the Third Horseman: the War. A time for war is now underway. But will there be a time for peace? I sincerely hope so.

Four o’clock. Each minute that passes, my heart grows more heavy with despair. Is he going to call me? Or are we going to be parting ways once and for all? A part of me did not care either way, but that small shard part of me still held onto what solace I had left.

It was when the clock struck five that I was starting to feel the heavy effects of the Final Horseman: Death. Death was looming near and I had no way to stop nor a way to prevent it. Death comes for us all. Even in relationships. And this finally introduced me into my second to final emotion: sadness.

I sat in my car. Preparing myself for the end of my friendship with the man that had changed my entire outlook on things. So this is how the world (as I knew it) ends. I thought to myself. The man that had introduced me to a world where even ugly ducklings like myself can become swans too. Since coming out of the closet, I have a stronger sense of who I am and feel very comfortable with myself.

I stared at my phone, praying for a text message, phone call, anything to get the assurance that I needed to keep holding onto whatever solace I might have left for Jeff..

I decided to leave the gym and go to Starbucks to get some writing done. But I stared at the screen and nothing else came to mind but him. It has never occurred to me just how much I truly still care about this guy, even after all the adversities we have experienced and put on each other these three years that I have known him. Enduring through them have brought us so close to each other, I thought I had nothing to worry about.

I went to Barnes and Noble because my sister was studying and wanted someone to keep her company. By this time I was feeling like I was calling it in early. I had finally just leave it be and just let it die. My heart was slowly decelerating it’s pace. Soon it will stop beating and I can just move on. I mean, if Tin Man can live without a heart, then certainly I would be able to as well.

I sat down reading. My legs sitting crosslegged on a chair that barely has enough for my ass let alone my legs. I was hunched over a copy of The Hours, a book that Riddick had let me borrow that has recently become my obsession. Since reading this book, I have noticed a completely different writing style that absolutely intruiges me.

Virginia Woolf, as morbid as this sounds, had a very poetic suicide. She felt like she was starting to become out of reach and was starting to lose touch with reality. I feel like if I was going to wait on Jeff like I do every single time, that I might do the same. Why invest time on someone when they don’t have time to…

The phone rings.

My heart jumps like it was just jumped with an automatic external defibulator (AED). I came back to life. I looked down to see the same area code. I look up to my sister. She and I exchange glances.

“It’s him.”

I wanted to answer the phone, but while it was ringing, a small part of me had already given into the hoax of an Apocalyptic event. I continued staring at the screen, listening to the cute xylophone ringtone resound in my ears, as well as nearby students studying tfor their AP World History exam. It’s the noise I wanted to wake me up in the morning, but I waited nearly sixteen hours for this phone call. And now I am not even sure I know what to do.

...when the world ends...(part one)

I sit in the car outside of the gym, understanding that the end of my life and the world as I knew it was drawing ever closer. I prepared myself for it all. What would be the most memorable way to call a time of death? Should it be memorable like Virginia Woolf in The Hours? Will there be an afterlife? Will I go to Heaven or Hell?

My heartrate keeps dropping as I watch with a haunting gaze at the clock. It is five o’clock in the evening. Four more hours and it all ends…my heart will finally stop annoying me with its incessant beating. I have done everything to prevent the end of the world, but it’s out of my hands. I may wait in hope that there will arrive a cure; but with the arrival of yet another minute—five-oh-one—my heart gives up.

Forty-eight hours earlier…

Jesus once said that the world will know the signs of the End Times by “Labor Pains.” Tragedies that will occur that will only remind us that the end of the world is near. I got my first labor pain of the End on Friday, April 24th 2009.

DING! DING! My iPhone chimes as I am about to leave the break room and back to work. Text Message! Curious, I return to my phone to check out the text message I had received. I hit the home button and my phone came to life to reveal a number that I had not expected to read.

Jeff had texted me. I may have deleted his phone number, but it has been forever engraved into my head.

My heart dropped. I couldn’t believe the fucker had the nerve to write me on such a bad day to want to talk to me. I was already having a bad day with not only being called into work on my day off, but also to be dealing with complete idiots and their ridiculous drink orders. The fact that Jeff had the nerve to write me just drove me out of my mind with anger.

“I’m back!” the message heralded in all caps. So annoying. “I just added minutes on my phone! I have Monday and Tuesday off this week if you want to hang out.”

I simply did not have any time to deal with this at this time. I groaned as I angrily bit back. “Wow. You exist.” As I threw my phone back into my locker and back to work.

For the entire rest of the day, I was already fighting several emotions. I did not want nor expect to hear from Jeff again. Over the past month or two, he has abandoned me and left me to fight my own battles. Granted, it was something that I might have needed, but to have my best friend betray my trust, miss his birthday, and leave me in the dark was downright mean. And unfortunately, I got over his immaturity of not wanting to talk to me and simply tried everything I could to move on.

Later that day, I texted him and told him that I was going to be off Monday. He told me that he was going to be hanging out with his former roommate in my town for the day and wanted to meet up with me then. I agreed.

Once I agreed to meet up with Jeff, I was overcome with anxiety. I had no idea what to expect, how I was going to react, or how to even approach him. I couldn’t really trust my body and my emotions at the moment. To be honest? I want to lunge at Jeff and sock him for abandoning me and going back on his promise he made to me. But at the same time, I wanted to have a decent conversation and try to let it slide.

Saturday and Sunday moved like sands escaping the broken hourglass that crashed on the floor. I became very reserved as I asked close friends and gay men for honest advice that can either relate or have talked to Jeff. Usually, I am the one person giving advice, but this time, I had to seek people wiser or more perceptive than I into resolving this situation. After much conversing with my friend. I had come up with a plan when Jeff calls to meet the next day.

Three A.M. I woke up. The sound of my snoring brother in the opposite corner of the room echoes into my ears. I shuffle around in bed praying for a quick arrival of another REM cycle. Then I felt my heart and realized what was going on. It was Monday morning and my heart was pounding like a bass speaker at a hip-hop club. My body is nervous. Although I didn’t feel nervous in my emotions, my body was reminding me that my instincts were not ready. After trying to distract my mind with fantasies of hot men or stories I am creating for my screenplays, my emotions were shook up too. Today is the arrival of Judgement Day in my Showdown with Jeff.