The Passenger: Chapter Two

The first time I met Johnny I had just turned nineteen. It was two months before Christmas and outside, the stars were brighter than I had ever believed possible. Our meeting was the obvious work of destiny because Johnny was a native of Boston, and I had grown up barely two hours away from his hometown. Yet we were in South Beach- over a thousand miles away- and somehow, we had managed to run in to the only other New Englander within a square kilometer. I knew instantly that he was mine, and in the very same second, knew I was his. There was something in his eyes that night. It was a strange and familiar radiance on either side of his nose and the wicked flair in his smile that took me captive, and even though I was rolling face- or possibly because I was rolling face- I simply knew that I had to have him.
The beach was aglow with a chorus of lighters, and the assortment of flames bounced off the ripples and waves of the ocean like fluorescent rocks skipping from the hands of eager children. Marijuana had never been more potent to me in my entire life. If Tommy Chong had been a pro-surfer, he would have never left the state of Florida and, if I hadn’t followed Johnny to my doom, I wouldn’t have either.
His enormous hands made their way down to my scantily-clad hips, worming their way into my swimsuit, and dug into my flesh, dominating my movement as we rocked back and forth against the blasting speakers in the fine, white dunes. The beach-side DJ spinning merely three yards away from us kept nodding in our direction, as though we were the only two completely enveloped in his ambiance. Johnny was honestly the only other gay man I had ever known to love death metal, gangster rap, and dubstep in the same spiritual capacity that I did, and it showed in our very first moments together. Fate appeared to have it in for us, because there were literally fireworks during our first kiss, and I mean literally.
Florida had apparently decided that October was a month for celebration, as was obvious by the pyrotechnic spectacle dotting the black horizon with colors I had only dreamed of. Aside from the fact that Johnny was a Libra whose birthday fell directly in the middle of the harvest month, there was also Halloween, and the birthdays of over twenty other people whose lives I felt grateful for at one or more points in my life in the same thirty-one days. It was definitely a time for elation and for parties beyond your wildest imagination. The two of us had found one another amidst the largest emotional orgy I had ever come across, and somehow, there was no room for anyone else. Not even enough room for the boy who had taken me there in the first place.
“You know, you got beautiful lips.” The most beautiful lips I had ever seen spoke to me. Most men who might have said something like that to me would have gotten a black eye, or bitch-slapped at least. But this guy was far different from anyone I’d ever met before. Even the most perverse comment sounded like praise from him, and I was more than happy to be his Madonna that night.
“Thanks.” That was quite possibly the lamest and most basic thing I could have said back. But honestly, it didn’t matter. Apparently he thought it was somewhat cute, because he grabbed me with more might than a rhinoceros and pushed his fantastically-chapped lips against mine in an atomic detonation. The world stopped spinning for a moment and everything went silent. I don’t know if maybe all the shit I was on had finally caught up with me, but I’m pretty sure that the event in Hiroshima had occurred all over again. My world had completely overturned, and every crevice and crack in my soul had been filled with a stellar caulk. I didn’t think that anything was going to disturb the madness, or the stillness within me, but apparently the guy I had initially come to the party with wasn’t as electrified at the experience as I was.
His name was Dave. Or maybe it was Dale… I can’t really be certain. But I’m rather sure it was Dave. He was charming, or at least as charming as I- a New Englader- had ever imagined a guy from Tennessee would be. We had met during Pride Week in New York which, let me tell you, is not a place to be meeting random guys with any sort of expectation. Now, I don’t normally go for red-heads, but Dave, or Dale, was really just the first guy that had hit on me at the time, so I grabbed him and kissed him, and after that he really just never left. I mean, we had only known one another for a total of four weeks at this point, and I guess it didn’t really bother me that he had stuck around. We had a lot of fun together, so long as I never took him too seriously, which, as I’m sure you can tell, wasn’t too difficult a task for me.
His southern drawl was really the only thing about him that I found alluring because he was about as dumb as a bag of bricks, and he made up for his lack of intellect with an impossible ego. Dave- or Dale- had once told me that his penis was the size of a Clydesdale’s, and I had found out the hard way- or rather, the not-so-hard way- that it was a complete deception. He had also told me that black people were the blight of all mankind, which was another truth I had known to be false. People like him were in fact the fallout of humanity.
And people like me.
He was a bulked-out and obvious dick-necked ginger who apparently didn’t like the fact that his carpet matched his drapes. Even after waxing everything off, there still wasn’t a whole lot to be impressed with. Dave/Dale had both pride and testosterone blasting out of his ears, which was an obvious refuge to his blatant insecurities. Those kinds of men generally disgust me in all actuality, which is ridiculously ironic. But I dealt with his obnoxiousness because I thought that, perhaps, in a physical altercation he was a force to be reckoned with. This, I also discovered, was complete crap.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Dave/Dale’s voice was despicably shaky, considering he had every right to be pissed at the fact that I was playing tonsil-hockey with a complete stranger.
I realize that I’m a whore. Get over it.
Dave/Dale was irate, and yet the undertones to his voice were oddly uncertain. It was obvious that he was upset, but I think that he was more surprised than anything, because I had played the innocent and harmless butterfly during our entire relationship- a relationship, mind you, where I had literally no idea what the fuck his name was to begin with. Peculiarly enough, he cared about me to the point of taking me to the complete opposite side of the country. He even paid for my flight there and back. I suppose his trust fund was another windfall I took advantage of. It didn’t matter too much at this point. He was a major-douche, and in the rush of my ecstasy-binge, I had no problem fucking him in the way he wished he could fuck me.
“Is there a problem?” Johnny turned his face away from mine just barely enough to look him peripherally. I could feel the corneas popping out of my skull, and my heart skipped a few beats in the second it took for me to recognize Fire-Crotch.
“Oh shit!” It wasn’t really a guilt-ridden proclamation, but more of a sudden realization that there was somebody mildly important who existed outside of my fantasy-bubble.
“Oh shit?” His voice was a scorpion that carved at my high with its toxic lash. “That’s all you have to say you nasty slut?”
That wasn’t a nice thing to say, though I suppose it had an apparent cognition.
“What do you think I am? You’re fucking meal ticket?” His tongue flicked out and licked the traces of coke off of his lips. I watched as the sparks of gold and green that exploded off in the sky illuminated his vacant eyes that grew wide as his brain rapidly filled with serotonin from the uppers. “I can’t believe I fell for your bullshit.”
“Dave, I…”
“Dave?” His jaw nearly unhinged. Apparently his name wasn’t Dave. “Are you really that fucked up right now?”
“I…” Yes.
“Come on. I’m getting you out of here.” He grabbed my forearm and tried to rip me away from Johnny’s gravitation. “We’ll talk about this later… fucking bitch.”
Jeez. Taking this a little personally aren’t we? I was so high I almost laughed.
However, Johnny didn’t find any light-heartedness in his words, because I immediately felt my entire body being flung, helpless, into the grainy, white sand, and had to watch as his colossal hands formed into two balls of knuckle and sinew that began to pound themselves into Dave/Dale’s face. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do but watch, as an audience of hopelessly intoxicated individuals began to swarm around the two animals that were literally destroying each other for the sake of my honor. Or rather, as the one insanely-ripped and sexy ex-Marine obliterated the face of the other insanely-ripped-but-not-as-sexy-socialite that threatened my imaginary honor, and the poor boy laid there, spitting blood and teeth, and taking every single knock to the face like the unavoidable reckoning of Thor’s hammer.
The sight of Johnny in action was enough for me to know in that moment that I didn’t need anyone else. He would always have my back, and I would never need anyone else to watch it. Therefore, it didn’t matter that the racist, son-of-a-bitch, incompetent piece-of-white-trash was getting his own personal form of shake-n-baby syndrome. Quite simply, he deserved every blow to the face that didn’t directly lead to his acquiring of much more brain damage than he had already procured. As far as I was concerned, Karma had reared its ugly Medusa-head in the direction of the flaming flamer. Really, he was just getting social justice.
Maybe.
But I suppose it was my own fear of the cosmic balance that drove me to pull Johnny off of Dave/Dale and stifle his deafening onslaught. I knew, deep down, that Fire-Crotch didn’t actually deserve what was happening. In spite of every desire in the pit of my stomach to watch Johnny’s proliferation of drug-induced, romantic violence, I knew that Dave/Dale definitely didn’t deserve to die for me. He certainly didn’t deserve for all of Miami and southern Florida to watch it happen. And so, I used every ounce of befuddled strength I had within me to rip the rippling monster off of him, and turned all of his rage and instability back onto me.
The fists flew toward my flinching face, and in that instant, I accepted divine punishment for my wickedness and lust. In that instant, I almost wanted to die for Fire-Crotch because I knew that the pain I would feel was nothing in comparison to the affliction I had caused on the destitute man. Despite his incessant and peulant rantings and idiotic ideologies, Dave/Dale had a fragile heart that I had just obliterated in one swift motion, as well as a fragile skull that my new beau had also razed. It may very well have been Karma that had just bitch-slapped Fire-Crotch, but if Karma had any sense of morality at all, I would have been next.

But to my amazement there was no contact. There was no pain. There was no blacking-out or fading in and out of consciousness.
I was still alive.
I opened my eyes to see Johnny’s knuckles mere inches away from me. He had stopped himself, mid-punch, from laying a hand on me, and I witnessed the demons within him resolving their twisted fury. It was a sight to behold: myself on the ground, slowly sinking into a world of rough quicksand while a beast of a man towered over me, covered in the blood of his adversary. The whole world was silent, yet again, until a mass explosion caught the attention of everyone. Off in the distance, green and red sparks flew in radical symphony, painting the stars with embroidered fire. The eyes of everyone around us had moved toward the light and only Johnny and I were left still staring at each other.
He just stood there, his fist never moving, still two inches away from sending my nose spiraling into my frontal lobe. The curious, rolling sea of onlookers had now channeled their combined interests in the direction of the fireworks, no longer engrossed in our gory conflict. Their resounding applause broke us from our trance, and we were deer in each other’s headlights no more. Johnny’s pursed lips uncurled, and formed that perfect smile. The lights came back on in his eyes and his fingers slowly unformed, reaching out for me to grab ahold of them. Our hands connected, and he pulled me back up onto my feet.
The haggard mess that was once Dave/Dale groaned, turning over and burying his toothless face into the sand. A small part of my stomach winced as my bare foot accidentally touched a spot of hot, red liquid that had come from the young man’s gums, or possibly even his brain at this point. Johnny looked down at the puddle of blood that was slowly being absorbed into the shoreline. In one rapid movement, he swept me up into his titanic arms like a weightless Disney princess and kissed me again. My knotted inners unraveled and a boisterous laugh burst out of my throat. Johnny joined in, and together we crowed beneath the bellowing aurora. He stepped over the bleeding shell, disregarding the remains of the broken man and carried me off into the darkness.
That was the last time I ever saw Fire-Crotch. Sometimes I wonder if he died on that beach. Looking back, I truly hope that somebody saved him the way Johnny had saved me- the way I had thought he saved me.
Johnny took me back to his hotel room a little after three in the morning. We burned a few spliffs and popped a few Percocet, downed with a spiced-rum chaser. I don’t think I’d ever undressed in that short amount of time before. Truly, I had absolutely no idea what was happening. I only knew that in the flashes between reality and transcendental illusion all my dreams were coming true.
This is impossible. There was no real way to describe the feelings surging through me; the tingles that turned my muscle and bone into rubber. Every caress, every time his sandpapery hands dug into my back, and even when his teeth cut into me and I watched his mouth remove itself from my neck dripping with blood, I felt myself inching closer to death’s door and being more than happy to kick it down. I was Cinderella on her wedding night, and there’s a reason why that part was left out of the fairy tale.
My prince was alive and real, and he was proving his manliness in ways that words simply could not formulate, and somehow, I had managed to weasel my way into his arms. And into his bed. And I’d be damned if I was going to let him get away now.

Little did I know, Karma had a whole lot in store for me. This would be the very peak of our relationship, and it was all downhill from here.

∞

When I awoke the following day it was after noon. Christmas Eve. Only four hours of sleep after Johnny and I had finished off the rest of Tina. Upon waking I instantly knew that there was no one in bed with me, but I still felt his warmth on my skin. I still smelled the deep scent of his musk in the sheets. I looked around the disheveled motel room, full of empty beer cans and our ripped off clothes strewn about. But there was no Johnny. I shot up, my eyes still foggy and unfocused, and scanned the room over, thinking- praying- that maybe I’d missed him amongst the whole seven square yards that was our home.

“Babe?” There was no answer, and the bathroom door was wide open with the light off. For some reason, I felt a sick sensation in my gut that told me something was wrong. My thoughts raced and I hopped off the bed bare-assed onto the fraying maroon carpet and quickly slapped my skimpy Green Lantern briefs around my waist that had been thrown all the way over by the door. Nausea again clutched at my bowels, but this time the added kick of the headache that accompanied withdrawal nearly knocked me off my feet. I ran to the toilet to puke up the rest of my water.
He got busted. I panicked, my face still in the bowl, waiting for more to come up. He went out to get more shit and the cops picked him up. There was no denying the possibility. I tried to remain calm, but paranoia held my breath in its jaws. I rinsed my mouth out in the sink and tried to balance myself with one hand against the mirror. The world began to spin and I hastily made my way over to the nightstand on Johnny’s side of the bed. I pulled open the drawer and rummaged through its contents:
A calculator.
Johnny was never all that good at math. I wasn’t that great at it either, but at least I graduated from high school.
A stack of cash in a rubber band that probably equaled close to five-hundred.
That's just a rough estimate.
A dirty spoon.
Need that.
Scraps of paper with shitty hand-written numbers on them: “Scott- call me.”
No thanks.
A bunch of pens.
A pink highlighter.
A Syringe.
Need that too.
An empty pack of gum.
A Bible.
I’m going to assume that it belongs to the motel.
And finally…
I took out the little black velvet box that once contained the diamond studs my mother had bought me for my sixteenth birthday. I only kept the box after I pawned them because of it was a good place to hide my stash. But I had replaced the real ones with cubic zirconia so that maybe, if we got raided, it wouldn’t appear too suspicious. I’m crafty like that.
Maybe he’s fine. I tried telling myself. But it didn’t do any good. Even if I could convince myself that my boyfriend was okay, the fact that my head and heart were pounding out of my body made it impossible to relax and think objectively. I took the earrings out of the box and carefully unfolded the velvet inside out to reveal the treasure trove of dope strategically hidden below the surface.
My love.
I took the Spike and the spoon into the bathroom and locked the door behind me. The click of the latch made me feel just a little bit safer. No matter what happened to Johnny I’d be able to handle it after I had my fix. No one could get me in here. No one except for me.
I turned on the cool faucet and cleaned out the Needle. There wasn’t time for me to do it again. It was going to be over in a second if I didn’t get it in me.
There was no stopping me now. I felt the reassuring tingle of anticipation in the soles of my feet that traveled upwards into my jugular, sending sparks flying into my brain.
Come on. Come on.
Johnny always said I had the prettiest veins. They certainly weren’t any more, but I didn’t even need to tie off before I stabbed at my bruised and purpling skin. I hated doing this myself. It was usually Johnny’s job. Like I said, he enjoyed watching me squirm.
Finally.
Euphoria eroded the shell of panic off of me, cleansing the immediate air of my rancid angst. The doubt had evaporated out of my muscles, and the fear in my soul had vanished. But the best part was that my head had finally numbed. I let out a heavy sigh of relief and rinsed the dark blood out of the Spike. The white water rushed out of the spigot in a purging torrent. I stared into my reflection and watched as a slight, upward arc appeared on my lips. The pupils in my grey-blue eyes had shrunken to the size of pin-heads and I was at peace with the world. Even if something had happened to Johnny I knew that I wouldn’t have to feel it for at least another hour or so.
And, for just a second, I almost didn’t want him to come back.
Maybe I’m free. The notion was dreadfully whimsical. I had never truly entertained the idea of a life without Johnny- a life without the anchor of a madman dragging me into the depths- which was silly, because I had only known him for a few weeks. Yet, he was a part of me now- a scar on my heart. He was a thick and hearty slice of cherry pie that sat in my stomach, slowly rotting away and never giving me the chance to fully digest everything else that threw itself down my throat.
In all of eight weeks, I had never truly thought about a life without pie.
But the thought only lasted for a moment. It was a star’s wish made in vain. I would never be free, even long after his absence, because as soon as the relief and the guilt set in I heard the bolt to the room’s door unlock, and familiar footsteps came through the threshold.
He’s back. My heart skipped a beat. I had thought the anxiety would have receded, yet it was oddly present, like my gut was still telling me that something was off. Then again, when it came to Johnny everything seemed a little crooked. Maybe I thought he would sense the guiltiness in my heart. I just wanted to jump into his arms, and slap him across the face for scaring me so. Or maybe it was for coming back. But the door didn’t latch shut right away. The foreign rhythm of another person pitter-pattered in behind him.
Who the fuck-?
“Sammy?” I heard Johnny’s hallowed voice through the door. My ears perked up like an over-excited puppy whose master had just come home.
“In here!” I shouted back. “Who’s with you? I’m not dressed.”
“Good!” The one word almost made me jump out of my skin.
What the hell?
“Stay that way. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
Excuse me?
I wasn’t sure what to think, or even what to do at the sound of the connecting sentences. I stood with my forehead pressed against the door, hoping that amidst my hesitation Johnny’s companion would have decided that it would be better to leave, and that maybe I wouldn’t have had to find out exactly what he meant. The buzzing in my head was already beginning to fade at the uncertainty in my imminent future.
No way. I wasn’t going to let him ruin my high. I had already wasted way too much energy within the past five minutes worrying about him. Now was the time to enjoy life. He had already taken enough out of me. Besides, I knew he wasn’t really going to hurt me.
Would he?
My eyes squeezed shut, and in a leap of faith, I slowly turned the shaky handle, confronting head-on whatever Johnny had in store for me, knowing that whatever came afterward, I was probably going to live to regret it. The white light of the open window rushed into my brain like celestial grace. But the visage of what was to come was anything far from divine. I struggled to make out the faces of the two men who now held my life in their hands, and as they became clearer I began to wish that the door had stayed closed.

I was anything far from innocent at that point, and I didn’t realize it right then and there, but after hearing those few words, I had fallen into a whole new level of Hell, and there was no turning back.