Page 2 of Way Down Deep

The very worst crime you’ll ever be guilty of is making me rewind something back to the beginning.

4

Monday

1.48am

I hope this won’t wake you.

I hope that, yet there I went sending it anyhow. Just more fodder for my growing asshole cred.

The first time you replied I got a little freaked out, because it popped up with someone else’s name. Someone who wouldn’t be texting me back unless Jesus fell off the wagon and started drunkenly tossing miracles around.

Speaking of drunk, yet again I’m probably not what you’d call entirely lucid. No doubt the liquor played a part in loosening my fingers enough for one to slip and hit the send button.

All afternoon, I tried to talk myself into deleting your number, so I wouldn’t wind up spraying my sad all over you again in a fit of sloppy weakness exactly like this one, but in the end I couldn’t. I just changed the contact from the old name to Stranger.

Anyhow, it was nice to hear from you, stranger. Like I was shouting into the void and the void was kind enough to whisper back. The void cares more than most of my friends, as it turns out.

Also, what are you watching? I’m watching some Nazi documentary. What is it with British TV? So goddamn many Nazis.

2.58am

You don’t have to worry about waking me up. Chances are you won’t be. I sleep like someone trying to start an engine stuffed with sugar—in stuttery fits and starts. Really you’re saving me from staring at the ceiling. Or from nightmares that are usually about me, staring at the ceiling.

Oh and I don’t care if you’re drunk, either. My stone-cold sober is usually weirder than most people’s blotto. I mean, when you said you wanted to call me Stranger, my first response was a burst of happiness at the idea of having a secret name. How ridiculous is that?

And is it more or less ridiculous that I’ve already given you a secret name back? Smith, I’ve called you, after the author of that poem. You know the one—I was much too far out all my life, and not waving but drowning.

Hopefully that’s not too pretentious. Or too much of a reminder of the miracle that isn’t happening. Or the friends that aren’t calling. They’re all fools to not want to talk about Nazis on British TV at three in the morning, I promise.

I want to talk to you about it, and I barely know you. I don’t even know where you’re from. Up until this point I thought you were British, and so understood our strange ways. But now I see I will have to guide you through them. Explain in detail why we love dull-voiced documentaries about Nazis so much. Help you understand what makes them so vital to our country.

Here it is, the big revelation:

I haven’t got a bloody clue.

It’s as much a mystery to me as it is to you.

I don’t even think I’ve ever watched one all the way through—right now I’m in the middle of The Killing. Give me dismembered bodies and haunted detectives and rain-drenched roads over grainy footage of Churchill any day of the goddamn week.

3.18am

Hi, stranger.

I stayed awake on the off chance you’d reply. I waited and watched that entire stupid documentary, and then there was a ping just as the credits rolled. And then another. Nine pings, and I waited for them to stop for good before I read what you wrote.

Was I afraid to interrupt you? I think maybe. Or maybe something else. Some greedy cousin of anticipation.

I held my breath and waited, waited, and the pings kept coming, like a box of chocolates filling up. It made me feel strange, and warm, like this middle-shelf bourbon is doing. Plus some other bad food-and-beverage similes I can’t think of just now.

Yeah, I’m not from these parts. I’m from the States, New Mexico. It’s a long story how I wound up here, in a tiny little turd of a village just off the M1. It’s not quirky and picturesque and beset by a disproportionate number of murders like the British villages in the shows my aunt likes to watch on PBS. I’d kill for a murder. This place is dull as fuck.

But here I am, and here I’m stuck for the time being. It’s very wet and gray. I don’t mean to piss on your country, but I won’t lie, it’s rough. At least when you come from a place that’s dry and sunny 362 days a year, it is. And if you’re a whiny douche who can’t handle a little rain.

I’m homesick, ignore me. Maybe only March sucks. Maybe April will be better.

Hey, look at me, the eternal optimist!

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