This is a tie-in to my story wild horses if you're interested in reading that. I also give credit to my great, wonderful friend and even more wonderful writer HappierThanMost for creating the story The Trip because that is where some of these characteristics of Soda come from.
Enjoy!
TEARS OF MY FATHER
Sometimes, if I really focus on what happened, I become my father.
It's like a possession; it's involuntary, completely beyond my control. It's both complex and simple all at once. It's messy and dirty and disgusting and yet it's so enticing, so inviting, that I can't help but fall into the deepest and darkest parts of myself in order to see him.
I find him when I'm sitting at the dinner table, picking mindlessly at my food. I find him when I'm shaving and I cut myself, and catch myself just watching the blood run down my jaw and onto my neck. I find him when I'm fucking some broad––no cause, no purpose to do it, but commit the act just because it feels good. Just because it's what Dad would do, and it sickens me, but it also gives me some sort of high.
Dad used to say there were worse things than being an alcoholic. I don't think there was anything worse than becoming him.
For years, I've promised myself I wouldn't resort to alcohol to fulfill a need. I wouldn't resort to drinking or even drugs to get my fix. I told myself that my father was a man I could learn from to not do that sort of shit.
Apparently, I haven't learned well enough.
Because while I'm sitting here, on some girl's musty goddamn couch with her tongue in my mouth, I'm getting that high. I'm getting that storm, that thunder, that power. It feels close to what Dad would call his 'feeling better than I have in years'. He used the drinking as a coping method; I'm not too sure what I use it for.
When the girl tells me she loves me, I feel nothing.
When she settles herself on my lap, I feel nothing.
When the fucking stops and she finally slips off of me, high on her own feelings, I feel nothing.
I only do three things: stand up, say thanks for the "good time", and walk out into the street.
Like my childhood, the street is dark and depressing. It reminds me of my dad; solemn when sober, haunting when drunk. The small light that comes off of the street lamps reminds me of my––comforting, warm, bright. I don't know how the hell a man like my dad could get a woman like my mom, but I guess life throws you for a loop sometimes and that one special person is the only thing holding you together.
I don't know how long I walk for, but it feels like years. I don't know where I'm walking until I'm standing right in front of it, and it's staring back at me like the darkness that's kept a hold on my heart, my chest, my entire being for years.
I get on my knees, bend my upper body so I'm curled in a ball. I lean my head on the railroad tracks and I wait.
I wait for something to hit me. Maybe the train that hit my parents. Maybe the impact of their death that I've hidden for so long inside of me, that Darry or Pony has never let me get out of my system. I wait and I wait and I wait.
Nothing comes, and that's what hits me hard. That's what makes me fall to my side as if I've been kicked in the stomach, and I groan in pain. I lay there, listening to the painful silence around me, and think of only how the track is going to make my cheek all red when I stand up.
I remember the night Darry got the call. I remember the way his face fell when he looked at me, when he looked at Pony, still sleeping on the couch. I remember Darry driving like a maniac to get to the hospital, remember him praying and clutching my hand like his life depended on it. I remember him skidding to a stop in the front of the hospital doors, telling me to follow with Pony when I was ready.
I remember watching him go inside, take one look at the people covered by a sheer, off-white sheet, and immediately fall to his knees in tears.
The thing about it all was that Darry cried over Dad's body the most. His abuser and his hero, all wrapped into one man. The man that used to beat him with a broken bottle and used to slap his ass with a paddle until Darry couldn't sit straight for three weeks afterward was his all-time hero. He didn't cry over Momma's body like I thought he would.
We've told Ponyboy ever since they died to never, ever drink; to never get involved with drugs. Yet here I am, laying on the tracks where my father died, drunk as he always was, crying the tears he never seemed to have.