Marigold

'Kinesthetic Boy'

x.Roxas.x

Luxord's brilliant plan for the survival of Promise probably would have been really, truly brilliant under different circumstances. What he had in mind was an encore performance that would set the crowd wild—something real sexy, real definitive, real pop culturesque. What Luxord had in mind was a Promise rendition of Billie Jean. What better way to break into the big charts than to pay tribute to a big name? And not just a big name, but the biggest of all names. No one made pop like Michael Jackson made pop. Daring to pull a song like Billie Jean out of the hat might even have been considered to be kind of presumptuous, but it was a risk Luxord took—and took wisely, as producer. I never said the guy wasn't good at what he did. Let it never be said that ambition can't fill your pockets. It can fill it like nothing else can.

So there we were, all five of us in front of the big British man above, completely not knowing what to do. How were we going to pull a thing like that off? Better yet—how were we going to pull a thing like that off with so little time to figure out what the hell we were doing? Still better. Why were we even doing it?

I think it was Tidus who actually asked that question. But you can bet we were all thinking it.

"So. Why are we doing this again?" he went.

"I think we all know why," Luxord said. And the truth of the matter was, in some way, on some level, all of probably did know why. It was a last-ditch effort to save whatever dignity the group had going for it—one last attempt at a bigger name before we were sold off one by one—not a group, then, but facets of a whole that had once been. I suppose that if I actually really cared about the fate of the band, it really would have been a whole lot sadder for me than it kind of was. Weird, then, how the only two people I really did care about were the only two people who really did want the band to make it. Nothing I could say here could express how pained Kairi and Demyx looked at that moment, both their gazes to the ground, refusing to look me in the eye.

It was then I realized that I had done to them exactly what Axel had done to me. I'd ruined their dreams, and I couldn't find it within myself to care enough. I let my own selfish reasons for what I did stand between me and reality as some sort of reason for doing what I'd done. I tried to console myself any way I could—tell myself that it was okay because the both of them were better than pop—had to have been better than this dumb five-boy-scene they'd wound up in. But regardless of what they deserved and what they could have had better, I'd destroyed their chance at it. Axel had destroyed my chance at it. I was no better—no different—than he. And I had never hated myself more.

x x x

They put me in this idiotic costume—probably as some kind of really weird form of revenge for ruining their careers. It was sort of hard not to get the feeling that I was being tarred and feathered before some sort of public execution took place—and when I say it was an idiotic costume, I really do mean it was an idiotic costume. The shirt was some kind of clingy white spandex with these… tube lights stretching from under the arms to the hem of the shirt—the hem of the shirt that, just for the record, didn't even fully attach in the front. Not that it was unbuttoned—buttons could have, well, you know. Been buttoned. It just had these slits in it, one from the top and one from the bottom and I might as well just not have worn any shirt at all.

Coupled with a pair of blank pants that felt five sizes to small and looked five times too shiny, it really was just that bad. I don't think anyone should be able to look at their legs and see themselves. There's just something metaphysically troubling about that… I think.

I also think it kind of goes without saying, but… I don't know. For your benefit, I'll say it anyway. I wanted to die. But Luxord wanted to make sure that my death was as publicized as my affair had been.

Twenty minutes before the show, I stood in the dressing room and stared at myself in the mirror. I was an undersized boy of eighteen, no closer to being a man than I'd been at the age of five. What I saw in the mirror then was all the world would ever see or know me as. Roxas, the boy who didn't make it as a teen pop idol, the boy who would live on in the black and white of The New York Times as that and only that. The boy who screwed around and got caught. The really stupid, pathetic boy who screwed around and got caught, at that.

I started wishing that they actually would tar and feather me then, because at least then it would create the illusion that there was still some pride left to be lost. And even if it didn't pull off any kind of illusion like that, maybe I'd be lucky enough to look a little more intimidating as a tar-and-feather monster than as a… well. Whatever I was dressed as. I couldn't really tell. And I couldn't really bring myself to care about it a whole lot either, on account of the fact that I suddenly realized that my life had peaked and the only place it had left to go was down.

It was probably a good thing that Demyx knocked on the door when he did then, because otherwise I probably would have driven my skull into the dressing room mirror and not given it a second thought—mostly because I probably would have been unconscious and unable to give it a second thought. It really doesn't matter. I'm just talking at you. Sorry.

Anyway, he said, "Hey Roxas," and, "You okay?"

"I'm fine," I told him. "Really."

He looked around the room for a few seconds—just long enough to make me kind of annoyed and get me kind of wishing for some alone time so I really could hit the mirror. But then he looked back up. He almost looked kind of sheepish. And he said, "It's gonna be alright, yanno?"

When he said it, he said it awkwardly. Sincerely, but still awkwardly. It was the kind of awkwardness that told me that Demyx had no idea, really, what he was doing in my dressing room like he was, but that what had driven him there was, most likely, some kind of unfortunate, obligatory impulse to comfort someone he didn't even really know all that well to begin with. I can't really say it made me feel all that comforted or anything, but… it was nice of him. A nice, if slightly bizarre thought.

With Demyx in the doorway like he was, I understood something that I'd been missing all along. For all that there were people in the world—people like my mom, like that dad, like the dirty old guys I used to bum rides from at the lake house—for all that there were people like that who didn't want to play a big role in my life at all, there were still people like Demyx, maybe, who did. There were still people who, even if they didn't know me that well or even if they hadn't embedded themselves in my life or anything, would bend over backwards and then some for me, if for no other reason than because they felt they should.

"There's nothing… you know… un-noble, or anything about jumping ship," Demyx said. He had stopped looking at me. He was picking at the peeling paint on the doorframe. "No one would… think less of your or anything if you didn't go out there tonight."

What he failed to mention was that no one would have thought less of me, probably, because by that point, they already thought so little of me that to think any less of me would be to not think of me at all. But I don't think Demyx was big into making those kinds of assumptions. I think he was just trying to tell me, in his own way, that I didn't have to be tarred and feathered and killed—that I could sneak out the backdoor and run quickly and quietly away and that would be that.

So why didn't I? It was that easy. Demyx said I could. He gave me an exit. He did everything short of shoving me through it and waving me farewell right there, right then in that dressing room. Why didn't I do it?

The answer?

I still don't know.

But this isn't about giving you answers, remember. This is about telling you what I did. And what I did was I nodded at Demyx, thanked him, and then went and met up with the rest of Promise for our short pre-show meeting we'd worked into our schedule from day one. And Demyx never again mentioned the door I didn't take.

The room we met in was a sort of off-white—the color the lake house had been before Axel showed up. I don't know why I was thinking that when I sat down with everyone else, but there it was—that thought—and I couldn't shake it so easily. Everyone was staring at me with their own unique kind of expectancy and there I was thinking about the siding on my dad's house… I was completely out of it. I was still thinking of slamming into the mirror back in my dressing room, only instead of a mirror, there was the side of my house, and at the bottom of that structure was a tiny door that was rapidly shrinking. I'm really almost completely and totally positive that that was some sort of meaningful alert my subconscious was throwing up for me, but I was too far gone to grasp that at the time.

I was only pulled away from my weird thoughts by this kind of dim realization that Hayner had just said something rude. You could tell because Kairi was glaring and Demyx was perplexed and everyone else was silence.

And all I could do with all the tact I definitely didn't have was stupidly ask, "What?"

"I said what the hell is wrong with you, man? You don't even realize that this is IT, do you? We're not gonna be doing anymore of this shit after tonight, yanno? You screwed up," Hayner said.

"I want to make movies."

"You can't make movies, Roxas," Demyx said. He said it surprisingly quiet—usually he was loud and sure, but… was he uncertain or something? That hurt expression was back with Demyx again and I would have given anything to make it disappear. I couldn't help it. I had (and still do have) this weird devotion towards anyone who seems to care about me in the slightest, and Demyx's earlier conversation with me had somehow made him, in my mind, some kind of… saint. Okay, not saint, but… I don't know. I didn't want to hurt him. Not when he'd offered me the door.

But, "For God's sake," he whispered, "Luxord knew what he was doing, Roxas. Why didn't you just trust him, man? You needed connections. There's not a magic button you can press for instant fame." I wasn't going to tell him that there actually was—that there must have been, because there I was, living proof, man of instant fame and glory himself, in the flesh. Some months ago no one knew who I was—I was a kid in my bedroom with a messed up family and more dreams than I could hold inside my head. My only conclusion was that they got so big they just exploded, and some resulting cosmic spasm triggered this whole fame-and-glory business I'd landed myself in.

…Yeah. Yeah, that was it. That was exactly what had happened.

"What you have in front of you right now is an amazing opportunity," Demyx told me. "A million people may go through their lives waiting for this day, waiting for what you have, and they will never get it. You have it, man. Right here. Why would you walk away from this? Why would you do anything to compromise this?"

He was contradicting himself—going against what he'd told me earlier, that it was okay to back out. Had it been okay to back out then? Was it not okay to back out now? I couldn't understand. Everyone was staring at me and I was trying to figure out what was and was not okay—when I could and couldn't leave.

"It's not what I want…" I tried.

It was Hayner's turn to speak then, whether linguistic logistics were on his side or not. Slamming his way into the conversation, he came fist-clenched and angry and very, very Hayner. "Well I'm sorry, Roxas," he said. "I'm sorry, but you don't get exactly what you want all the goddamn time in life, got it? I mean—how dare you fuck up this opportunity! Not just for you, but for all of us!" I wanted to kick at the ground until it would open up and take me in. Give me the door again, I thought. Hayner was right. Hayner asked, "Why can't you just go with it?"

Demyx had gone quiet, and after Hayner's little explosion, the entire room seemed to turn back to Demyx for further instruction. Maybe it was because he was the oldest there. Maybe it was because he was probably the most qualified one of us for making it in a band in the first place. Either way, when Demyx finally spoke, everyone listened. I was glad for that. I was glad that in spite of everything, Demyx was still Demyx and Demyx was still respected, weird as it may seem to you.

He placed his hands on his thighs, leaned forward in his seat, and addressed me. "Well… have a look around, man," he said. "Do you see anything worth staying for?"

I looked.

And I didn't see anything worth staying for. At all.

There was nothing in that room that I would give myself up for. Kairi with her big blue eyes, Demyx with his guitarist's hands, the rest of the boys who—I'll admit—I never even bothered to get to know that well. You couldn't be close to everyone. Even in a group of five, you can still make splits. You can still make breaks. Only I'd broken and split until it was just me. And, seeing that, I accepted it. I wasn't a part of Promise anymore. It wasn't even a matter of me deciding not to stay—I couldn't have. Even if I'd wanted to more than anything.

I shrugged my shoulders and Demyx gave me a nod. He wasn't angry anymore, if he ever had really been angry. He was probably still hurt and he probably still didn't understand entirely where I was coming from. But somehow, regardless of all that, when Demyx gave me that nod, the boys cooled down. They were resigned to what awaited them. And part of their resignation, I think, was due to the fact that they knew that what awaited me out there was infinitely, infinitely worse than what awaited them.

x x x

I had been covered with gasoline and thrown into a fire pit and it burned so bad, I didn't know what to do. I'd never really gotten stage fright before. I wasn't a fearless madman on the concert scale, but I wasn't petrified to be out there. It had always felt like I was possessed for a while, that the real me sidestepped out of my body for a few hours and this fake me took hold of it, pulling and tugging and working my arms and legs and mouth through the entire thing. But that night? At that concert? I knew it was me those people were staring at and I knew there was no alter ego that could save me then.

We were on stage and I could see was a sea of girls and women. Maybe there were men there—I don't know. In my mind's eye now, though, all I can remember are the women. There were so many of them and some of them screamed, some of them shrieked, some of them shouted questions, and some of them stood silent. I couldn't begin to tell you how many of them stood silent and stared on with some kind of fascination. Marry me, Roxas—I know you don't like dick—We all love you—Het pride. What was that crap? The signs, the posters, the t-shirts? Where the hell had they come from? I couldn't tell if people hated or lusted or denied anything and everything. I didn't know what they wanted, but I definitely knew that I could never give it to them.

Not as a pinup pop star failure. Probably not as a director, either. And that was a terrible realization. The night was full of them. One after another. They came and hit me and wouldn't stop. I was on stage in front of thousands and having some sort of mental breakthrough or breakdown—I couldn't tell you the difference now even if I tried.

We went through our normal set and I kept it together seamlessly—I almost felt proud. My brain and body were on fire, but I was doing okay. I felt invincible—if I could do this, I could do anything. And the crowd seemed to believe it, too. I was winning them over and I didn't even know it then. They were buying right back into the image Luxord had built for me and I knew the man was a marketing genius—he could create and sell people like candy drugs and I was so close to becoming this legalized, addictive substance for teenage America. It was so close to me. It was right there for me, that one night.

And God, but if you could have heard them when the legendary beat pumped for Billie Jean. It sounded like they were dying, every one of them from the thousands there, screaming until they ruptured and then screaming some more because they were possessed and crazed and drugged on the idea that pop was good and true—that I was good and true and that they knew me better than pictures and tabloids they did. Those possessed, crazed, drugged girls. I could have had them all if Luxord hadn't gone and made the one mistake that would dismantle his career and carry him down with us.

All five of us, all members of Promise were lined up and halfway through the sequence. I couldn't moon walk, but no one cared or noticed because no one there was old enough to know what the move really was supposed to look like. Halfway through and then the lights flashed. Something was wrong and the fire was back—I wanted to be sick. I saw a girl on stage and in whatever kind of haze it was that had hit me then, I thought she was a harpy for a moment, one from the possessed crowd. But she wasn't screaming or squawking. She was quite, calm and beautiful. She was perfect and she was Naminé.

Of all the stupid moves Luxord could've pulled. Almost nothing could've been worse. I hadn't seen Naminé in months; there had been petty celebrity gossip that our "relationship" was on the fritz. That we needed change. That we needed time. But the truth was that we'd never needed anything because there'd never been an 'us.' We were each other's complacent stepstools and we were polite and kind and considerate to one another but that was it. Naminé being up there made no sense. I couldn't move myself forward to touch her because it wouldn't have felt right to touch her, not having probably soiled her reputation like I probably had. She didn't deserve that. And I definitely didn't deserve to hold her and act like we were something we weren't—like something we never had been. What was I supposed to do?

It wasn't in the routine, and because it wasn't in the routine, I didn't know what to do. All strings broke and I stood there stupid, not moving at all, not moving my mouth to the words, not prancing around to the tune.

Kiss her, hold her, dance with her—something!

I don't know if those words came from my head or from someone around me. I don't know how long I stood there. Naminé was composed as any good actress could make herself out to be, but the longer I stood there, the more her eyes started to betray her. She was scared and humiliated for me. Her knees shook. The light hit her in a bad way and she looked too skinny, too tired to stand.

The entire place went silent. It stayed silent for ten seconds—at fifteen there was a murmur that bubbled up like acid in a sick stomach—at thirty there came shouts—"What are you doing?", "What the hell's wrong with you?", "Do something!"

To the right of Naminé's ear, some ways far behind her offstage was a man with a camera dressed all in black. All I could do was stare into the lens while the world exploded, while everything finally flared up and burnt down to nothing.

I should have been the man with the camera.

It was all I could think.

It was all I still think.

Someone shouted "fag" in the audience. I ripped off my mic and threw it at them—those possessed freaks who had actually been dumb enough to think I was worthwhile. And then I walked offstage for the last time.

x x x

In my hotel room that night, I wondered what would happen to everyone. I couldn't think about me anymore—not because I already knew what was going to happen to me, but because I was so tired of thinking about myself that I just couldn't do it anymore. I decided that Luxord would become a bartender, Demyx would become a small-time musician who would play in Luxord's bar, Kairi would become a prostitute who would stand outside the bar on summer nights and inside the bar on winter nights, and the rest of the Promise boys would become regular bar-goers with regular salaries and regular lives.

Once I decided what would happen to everyone, I didn't have anything else to think about anymore.

Oh, there was the obvious. The What now? The Where from here? But none of it seemed to matter. I was growing lighter by the second, I felt, and soon I'd lift off the ground and hit the ceiling, if I wasn't careful—if I wasn't grounded in thoughts and reality—thoughts that seemed too thoughtful to think, and a reality that seemed too real to be real.

I imagine that while I sat in my room and unplugged myself from the world and drifted around by the ceiling, the rest of Promise was meeting, was writing its will, was bidding farewell. I could picture each of them in an otherwise quiet lounge, cursing the day they wrote me in and showed me the ropes of their twisted world that was all they knew. And I wanted to laugh at them, but I couldn't. They weren't the ones who had failed, after all. That was all me.

At some point—maybe around six in the morning—someone knocked on my door.

It was Kairi.

She asked me the only things she seemed to know how to ask me—how I was. What I was doing. Where I was going. But really…

"Roxas… are you okay?" I stood there and stared at her and suddenly wanted more for her than prostitution and a nowhere-name. I even thought about telling her this, because she probably had a right to know. Because she probably had a right to know that I wanted her to leave Promise alive while she still could—to somehow make a name for herself. Team up with Demyx! I wanted to say. Both of you could make it—combined, I know you could. You could be like the new Belle and Sebastian or something. If you guys just stuck together you could do it. Sure, you'd have to tell Demyx you're actually a girl, but he'd get over it! Everyone would get over it and you'd get what you want and you'd be happy, Kairi. You'd be really, really happy.

Instead, I just said, "I've got some things to do now, Kairi."

I didn't really know what it was she had come to offer me right then. A place to stay, an ear to listen, a support system, an out. Maybe she knew of a door Demyx had missed. Maybe. Possibly. But I didn't see how I could accept anything from her. Not after what had just happened.

"Okay," she said. And then, because she probably gathered she'd never be seeing me again, she added, "Bye now, Roxas. Have a good life, alright?"

But how is it possible to have a good life if it feels like your life is already over?

Does that even make sense?

I don't know.

I let that thought roll around my head for a while as I packed my bag in silence. Then I entered the elevator (silence), went into the lobby (still silence), and turned in my room key without saying a word (self-explanatory silence.) I went outside to wait for who-knows-what in the not-so-silent Detroit air, and I felt that maybe that was the only smart move I'd made in a long, long time because as long as there was that noise around me, I couldn't really listen to myself being silent and stupid and lost.

Since I'd left home, I hadn't really given much thought to my hair—not because my hair was in this supernatural state of looking good all the time, but just because other people took care of it for me. I hadn't touched a hairbrush in some months and I definitely hadn't seen a pair of scissors within twelve inches of my skull since then, either. So for the first time in a long time, I was thinking about getting a haircut. Weird, how you can experience the major fallout of your lifetime, find yourself suddenly homeless, friendless, and without any sort of promising future and all you can seem to think about is getting a haircut.

Once I'd broken free of the Hilton, I was out on the streets, duffel bag in hand and not much else to my name, save a reputation that probably wouldn't even have gotten me in good graces with a pack of alley cats on the Detroit side streets. It was deja vu like I'd never felt before, and it hit me cold and hard. The only difference I could see between the me of that moment and the me of some months ago—homeless on Axel's doorstep—was that when I'd been homeless the first time, I'd at least had a really, really nice video camera. Not for long—not after Axel happened to it—but at least I'd had it for a while.

Axel… he hadn't been at the concert, had he? I couldn't figure out why I'd frozen in that one moment—why I'd assumed, even for a second, that he'd care enough to show his face there. In the one real moment I'd needed him there, he was nowhere to be found. I realized then that I was probably an idiot to ever have thought might have been different. And to this day, I don't even really know what I would have done if Axel had been there. For all that I've run through that concert over and over in my head a million times and more, always playing out as it could have been, as it should have been, were things different… for all that I've gone through the motions time and time again, I can never answer myself that one question—never picture for myself that one change. WHAT IF AXEL HAD BEEN THERE?

I tell myself to think about it. I can't. I fast forward to the moment where I'm burning up on stage, under those lights, praying for something to happen, praying for someone to come to my defense and still no one does. No one ever does. I can watch myself scan the crowd countless times and still Axel will never be there, no matter how hard I focus, no matter how hard I hope. I guess that puts the reality to a situation like that—if it's so impossible you can't even force your brain to wrap around it. I've never been out for being lame and materialistic enough to… shop away my sorrow or anything, but I didn't really know what else I could do at that point.

First, I went to the nearest posh-looking hair salon I could find and had them cut my hair. On impulse at the cash register, I bought a bottle of hair dye and later went into a public restroom and spent an hour bent over a sink, dripping toxic sludge down the drain and killing brain cells with violent vapors. When I looked at myself in the mirror again, I was a brunette. I'd become Sora in almost every way I could imagine. Only Sora was happy. After that, I pulled on my sunglasses, mussed up my hair, and hit the streets again. This time no one glanced at me twice.

I flagged down a cab and got started.

I bought Kairi a dress from Neiman Marcus, a Gucci bag, Steve Madden pumps and a mink fur coat that was so soft I had to kinda hold myself back from just curling up on the sidewalk and falling asleep wrapped in the thing. I bought Demyx more of that high-end hair gel he was always going through, not to mention a 24k gold guitar pick that I'm not even sure you could really use on a guitar. I bought a jar of olives for Luxord, a 3lb. box of Godivas for my mother, and a pair of Armani shoes for my dad. Why I bought anything for Luxord or my mom or my dad—well, I just don't really know. But I did. I bought a top-of-the-line digital camera for Larxene, which I thought was pretty clever of me at first, but later just thought pretty obnoxious, so I ended up giving it to some kid who was looking for his dog. Now that I think about it, that didn't really make a lot of sense, but again, it was just a think that sort of happened on me.

I thought about buying a car, an LCD TV, an arcade system, a Jacuzzi—but then I realized I didn't have a home to put any of it in. And so then I thought about buying a fancy apartment—that penthouse I'd wanted, even—but then I realized I would have nothing worthwhile to put in it. I could fill it with all the pointless junk my money could buy—which was a lot of pointless junk—but… what then? What would I have aside from a really nice, expensive, elite little box to rattle around in all day? I couldn't see myself living there. I couldn't see myself living anywhere. The only place I could see myself was in the backseat of a Detroit cab, racking up a hundred-and-fifty dollar cab fare and nearly drowning to death in designer shopping bags rolling around the backseat with me. And let me just tell you, if you've never experienced it before, it's a pretty terrifying thing to realize that you've worked yourself into a corner you can't get out of, no matter how much you want or how hard you try.

I could picture myself nowhere but exactly where I was.

I don't want you to think I didn't buy Axel anything. I did. What better way to waste money than to buy random junk for the person who most destroyed your life, right? Exactly. So when I came across this camel hair coat in the window of the shop whose name I'm not even going to try to remember… well, I figured that was it. It cost me somewhere around three hundred dollars and it was wrapped in tissue paper and laid out in a box. The person doing the wrapping asked if it was a gift. I told them it was. He added a huge, red bow to the box and then charged be ten more dollars for gift-wrap. I wondered why three hundred dollars wasn't enough to buy a cheap red bow on a box, but I didn't question. I was questioned out. I went back to the cab.

From there, it was just a trip to the post office to send packages to their respected destinations. And from there? Just a familiar trip to a familiar lake and a place that no longer felt familiar enough to be home.

x x x

If you want to know the details of how Axel and I ended up sitting outside his apartment, you can forget it. All I'm going to tell you is that when I went to him that afternoon, I didn't want him. I didn't want him in my life and I didn't want to be in his. I wanted to give him his coat and I wanted to leave. A parting gift and that was all. But as I stood in front of his door, I suddenly had this impulse to set the jacket on fire and just leave it—this burning pile of poorly spent, dirtily earned money—sitting and smoldering in front of his apartment.

Skip that. Axel was beside me, we were sitting on the curb, the coat was between us in its box. The red bow had gone and gotten mud on it, but Axel didn't notice. He was too busy staring at my weird, brown hair. "Roxas. …What happened to your hair?"

"I dyed it," I said. "What does it look like?"

"Well, I…" He was trying to be supportive and it was sad that he couldn't really tell me how much he thought my hair sucked. I wanted my old Axel back. If I had to have Axel, that was the Axel I wanted. The old bad-ass boy who had lured me to parties and boats and apartments not my own—not the guy next to me then, just looking to please, just looking to apologize. Not the Axel who lied to my face and told me very carefully, "It looks okay. I mean, I kinda… liked the blonde, but if this is your thing, it's—"

"I dyed it so people couldn't recognize me, Axel."

"That bad, huh?" he asked. His face looked like it wanted to smile and a sound hitched in his throat. Suddenly I was aware that I didn't want the old badass Axel, either. I didn't want a man who would lure me in, play me up, and then cut me down and…

"Are you laughing?"

…And laugh about it.

"No! No, no—me? Never!" But he was laughing and all at once I felt the same humiliation and self-pity I'd felt up there on that stage, but ten times colder, ten times lonelier. In the shadow of Axel's shop and home, he was the only one to see me lose my last ounce of pride. It would have been better to lose it all in front of thousands, the way real people go down in real stories. That was what I told myself, because I knew that if I couldn't keep resenting Axel, I would probably just end up curled up in his lap and crying about everything. I would rather die, I thought—and a hundred thoughts like it followed suit. When Axel spoke, his words jarred me like a gunshot—BANG BANG BANG BANG—and I blinked and stared and tried to tell myself I wasn't going to think anymore.

"Hey now, Roxas, come on," he was saying.

Stop thinking, I was telling myself. No thought, just action. Enough with thought. Forget thought.

You're not an intellect.

You never will be.

No one will ever know your depth and you yourself will never truly explore it.

Let it die.

But let it die in a burst of fucking glory

And so it began.

"No, I won't 'come on', you idiot! This is all your fault anyway!"

"Why is it always my fault, huh?"

"It was you and your stupid siding business and your stupid lightning episode that got us into this in the first place, Axel!"

"One: it's my old man's business, not mine. Two: I thought there was no us? And three: …Dude. I mean. Seriously. I'm not self-destructive enough to, like, summon lightning down to smite me good."

I think he instantly knew that was the wrong thing to say, because I wasn't caught off-guard and I wasn't fumbling with my words. I was finding myself just getting more angry—this huge, uncontrollable anger like I'd never felt before. Like I'll probably, hopefully, never feel again. It felt like a drug, like someone had just pumped my veins with some chemical and they were swelling—my entire body was swelling to try and make room for whatever was building up and getting ready to completely explode.

If you were Axel, you'd probably make a pretty dirty joke right about now. But that's honestly what it felt like. You can't know unless you've felt it, too. The best explanation I can come up with is that it was some kind of really basic, pure rage. Almost primal. Almost enough to send me lunging forward, ripping and tearing Axel to pieces with my bare almost-man hands.

Well, I managed to keep myself in check, for the most part. Not completely, but if there was ever a beast in me right then, I kept it down. I just didn't keep it silent. …Actually, I didn't really keep it down too well, either. …To be kind of, sort of, completely honest, I actually really lost it.

I started screaming and raving like the maddest madman: "Well where the fuck WERE YOU when they fucking CRUCIFIED me, Axel?"

I was crying and shaking, and before I knew it, I was hitting him. I felt my fist hit his face, which I had always thought was so stiff, so bony, so lacking. But I felt skin there—wet skin, wetter still when it broke and bled—when my fist connected with the front of his face. I split his lip, I watched him bleed. I wanted him to go down. I wanted to see him fall down and bleed harder, and then, I thought to myself, I'd kick him. Until he bled more. Until he cried for me to stop. "Where were you?" I was shouting. Completely out of control. "You always go on and on about how much you care, how sorry you are! How about you show it, for once, instead of just saying it? You could show me I mean something to you—there's a brilliant idea!"

"Roxas, just calm the fuck down, already, would you?!" He was speaking around the blood in his mouth and I wanted so badly to drive my fist into it again. It was disgusting. It was sick. But it felt so good.

"SCREW YOU!" I think that was probably about the time when I threw myself down on top of Axel and started trying to punch him in the face again. Only the problem with trying to punch people when you're getting really emotional is that you can't really see well if you're crying and you can't really pack a good punch if your fingers aren't focused enough to form a fist. So basically it was just kind of me sitting on top of Axel, kind of beating around the general area I thought his face was. He got his hands up there and I don't think I even really laid a good blow on him after that, but he was cursing enough to make it seem like a pretty valid fight.

He managed well enough to catch both of my fists in his own palms, which I never realized were even big enough to hold my curled fists to begin with. Axel looks like such a small person from afar, that it's easy to forget how not-small he actually is. He stands like a tree—a tree that could get knocked over with a good gust of wind, sure, but still a tree all the same. It probably wasn't as much of a challenge for him as I would have liked—him gaining control and shoving me up and off of him, me still trying to scramble and beat him some more, but the worst had come at gone in a flash and instant. Axel was bleeding and Axel was restraining my stupid, weak attempts at violence with relative ease. The only reason I had probably landed any successful blow on him at all was probably because Axel was stunned stupefied into a state of numbness and didn't even notice he'd been hit until after the fact.

At some point Axel's elbow knocked me in the mouth and I was ecstatic to find myself hurting. And then, just like that, I was off of him, sitting to his side while he poked at his own blood with some kind of morbid interest and just fixed me with this looked that stood well on the line between fascination and complete and total hurt.

"Screw you," I said once more, like it had some meaning to it. I was mad because my lip was swollen and I'd either wanted to make it through a fight emerging untouched or emerging as a bloody pulp. A swollen lip meant Axel had gone easy on me. A swollen lip meant that I had lost my temper and Axel had done a pretty good job of restraining his. I had never felt so young and immature next to him as I did in that moment, the two of us sitting outside the porn shop, lights off and with nowhere we really felt like going.

"What, you're not man enough to say 'fuck' again?" Axel asked. If he was trying to get me riled up again after all that, I have to admit that it worked out pretty well.

"Just stop it already!" I could hear myself snapping at him. I didn't know where I got the energy to do it. All I could think about was how I should have set the jacket on fire and run, like I'd planned on doing in the first place. "You've wrecked everything, isn't that enough for you? Just stop now!"

He sighed. "Roxas," he said, "you're such a goddamn drama queen sometimes, I swear it just kills me." He tried to put his arm around my shoulders as some sort of friendly gesture, I guess, but I almost punched him again.

"Don't touch me."

"Listen to me, man."

"I'd rather not."

"I'm sorry you think I destroyed your life."

"Can't you do anything other than say how stupid and sorry you are?"

"I would, but you won't let me. Can I give you a hug?"

"No."

"See what I mean?" He sighed again, this time leaning forward, elbows on his knees as if breathing out exhausted him. "Yanno, there was a time when all you wanted me to do, probably, was hug you." I remembered Axel and me laughing in a hotel somewhere about something that probably hadn't been all that funny. I couldn't remember, then, if we'd been clothed or not, and I couldn't figure out why I seemed to think it mattered. I shook my head to try and get rid of the thought—that much I know—but Axel took the gesture as a response to his question. "No?" he asked.

I couldn't find it in me to explain, so I just played on like it was meant to be. "No."

"I don't believe you." Axel turned back toward the street and toed at a torn up patch of asphalt with his toe. I'd forgotten he wasn't wearing shoes and I almost wanted to care about his feet getting cold, but I tried to keep myself in check. I tried so hard to not care. Especially when Axel said, "So. Heeere we are."

"There's no WE, Axel. I'm here and you're here and there's NO. WE."

He seemed to think over my words for thirty seconds out of sheer politeness, but eventually he just sighed again in that really extravagant way Axel tends to sigh—leaning back, lungs filling to their absolute capacity with air, shoulders rising—and then the massive gust of a sigh released. It was no wonder he looked so exhausted after sighing. No one should make that much of a show of breathing heavy.

"…Here we are," he said again.

"Go away, already…"

"Can I make it up to you?"

"I doubt you're much into self-sacrifice."

"You'd be surprised. I mean it. Can I do something for you?"

"You can feel miserable for the rest of your pathetic life," I said. I knew I was being immature, but that hardly mattered.

"I'm serious, Roxas."

"So am I, Axel."

"You don't mean that." I did mean it, the second I'd said that, but immediately after—immediately as Axe said the words 'You don't mean that,' I changed my mind. Okay, no, I didn't mean it. Especially not when Axel kept going, when he kept right on talking in this strange voice that I didn't even really think belonged to him: "You can't mean that…"

And then something really strange happened.

I thought it was a facial twitch at first, and that made me start thinking that maybe all this had actually taken some kind of toll on Axel that I didn't know about. His entire upper face just sort of blinked, almost—it scrunched together for a split second and then released. The tip of his nose and the very ends of his earlobes turned pink in the streetlamp light and his eyeballs started moving rapid-fire and his entire face was just this cataclysmic explosion of muscle and vibration. And then I saw it. A tiny speck of moisture inked its lone way out of the corner of Axel's eye, crawling from his tear duct like some kind of deranged water-baby being born into the Earth. The thing didn't even have enough mass to it to roll as a tear properly should. It was so small that its movement down Axel's face was agonizingly slow, and by the time it reached his chin, where it should have dropped off and into the air, there was almost nothing left of the tear that had been doomed to such a short and unfulfilling lifespan.

I said the only thing I could think of saying, and to this day I wish I'd never been such an idiot. "What's wrong with your face?" I asked. Stupid. Callous. Unfeeling me.

"Whaddya think, you dumbass?" Axel growled.

"Axel, what are you doing?"

Some sick part of me really wanted to laugh when he grabbed at his hair and pulled it around, screwing it up even more than it was usually… you know. Screwed up. His mouth was this distorted line of a thing and I started picking up on the fact that Axel was just one of those people who looked really emotionally disturbed when they cried. And I felt like for all Axel had ever done to me, I could definitely have jumped on this freakish flaw of his and rubbed it in his face. I probably would have, if he hadn't had that slightly damp cheek and if he wasn't about to pull his hair out in chunks and fistfuls.

He groaned/moaned/snarled, "I'm crying, you stupid fucking dip! GOD! I know I screwed things up for you—I mean, I really, really did—and I know, I know, I know, and I'm sorry! Jesus, Roxas! What more do you want from me? I don't know what I can do to make it any better and I'm sorry! There's not a single damn thing I can do. I'm sorry. How many times do I have to say it to make you understand? I'm sorry. They're not just words, Roxas. I mean them. I'm still sorry! I would do anything to prove that to you."

He took a breather then, removed his hands from his hair and licked his lips. In the span of two minutes, he'd traversed whatever grounds of emotional chaos he had within him and had come full circle. Axel cleared his throat. The facial twitch was gone. The world was right. "And I'm still sorry," he said. "And you love me," he said. "You have to love me, you completely fucked-up idiot."

It was weird, but as I had watched Axel rip himself up over the whole thing, the less terrible I felt. There's probably some sort of evil, psychotic process at work there, but no matter what it was, I know I started to care less as Axel cried. I felt redeemed, somehow, that it killed Axel so much to have caused me pain. It felt good to know he was suffering and good to know he was inflicting that suffering, for the most part, on his own self. Like I said. Twisted. Evil. Psychotic. But it calmed me down.

My fingers felt rubbery against my swollen lip and I had to fight the urge to smile. I said, "I wonder why you didn't die." And Axel was still twitching in that way that most people probably don't twitch, but he looked at me bewildered, he looked at me wide-eyed and half-teary and open. I realized that those words probably made it seem as though I wanted Axel to die, which wasn't the case. That had never been the case and it never will be, either. That much is safe to say. "That time you got struck by lightning," I said, trying to elaborate, trying to sound not quite so morbid. "I wonder why you didn't die then."

"Grace of God," he almost moaned.

"If there is one," I said.

"I didn't die because I was touched by an angel, baby," he said pathetically.

"Screw off."

"There we are again—failure to use the word fuck."

"I don't want to talk to you. Beat it."

"Ah, but that's where you're wrong. You must want to talk to me, Roxas. I mean. You are here, and all." That obnoxious, self-assured Axel was back again and it almost made me wish for another breakdown to fall on his big head. Especially as he leaned closer and—I swear—crooned, "A very wise man once said 'all you need is love.'"

"The Beatles?" There was probably some kind of derisive snort-like noise here. Knowing me and knowing how annoyed and conflicted I felt about anything Axel-related at that point—even his words about old legends. "Yeah. Definite wise men."

"This coming from the kid who sold his soul to pop music?" he asked.

"I wasn't joking," I said.

"Oh." Somehow he skirted around his blunder, back in time a few minutes to a previous topic. I noticed, but it's not like I cared. "Maybe," he said, "I didn't die because all this was supposed to happen. I mean. Suppose we have predetermined destinies and all that shit."

"Somehow I find that very hard to believe." Even thinking that some greater being intended to have my life turn out so miserably didn't really change the fact that… my life had still turned out miserably. Given the circumstances, you could even maybe go so far as to say that if there was some greater power in control of my life, then said greater power must have been having something close to the time of his own life screwing with mine. …Sorry. My bad. 'Fucking' with mine—that's what I meant.

"I bought you a coat," I told Axel. Kind of awkward timing, but nothing else was going on.

"You did?" Axel asked. As if didn't notice that there was a definite physical something sitting right there in between us. He was either oblivious as always or just pulling my leg because he felt like… well, pulling my leg. But even if he was pulling my leg, I doubt even he understood why I'd gone and had the impulse to buy him something after he'd—you've heard it thousands of times by now—ruined my life.

"Yeah. It's in that box." I thought about it for a second, and then decided to go on ahead and finish what I was saying. "I was gonna set it on fire. But now that you're here, you might has well have it."

"…You mean now that you're here?"

"…Look, it doesn't matter, okay?"

"Why'd you buy me a jacket?"

Because I couldn't really think of a reason as to why I'd spent thousands of dollars buying random things for people that day, I just said the first and foremost thing on my mind right then. "Because I hate my life." As if that was a real explanation, Axel took it in stride. He opened the box and pulled out the camel hair coat, letting out a low whistle and running his hands over it like it was an actual camel or something.

"Fuckin' expensive shit, man," he said quietly.

"Who cares?"

"You know what you are? Jaded."

"Get off me."

"I love how you always say that, but never mean it. Would you be here if you did?"

"I was going to set the jacket on fire and leave it by your door," I reminded him. Instead of actually thinking about what that message meant, Axel just nodded and started talking again.

He said, "One time Demyx n' me—we shoveled up a bunch of his dog's shit and put it in a paper bag." I couldn't really see where he was going with that, but it sounded like the worst possible tangent to be on after the fallout of my life I'd just gone through the night before.

Still, I couldn't really think of anything else to say other than, "…Okay?"

"Then we set it on fire and threw it at our French teacher's door."

"She ever find out it was you?"

"He," Axel corrected me. Then he smiled. "And no," he said. "He never did find out. Not as far as I can tell, anyway. But. Jackass had it coming."

I pictured Axel and Demyx running wild as teenagers and setting things on fire. That was a chapter of life I'd probably never experience. I couldn't see Axel running around launching projectile flaming dog dung at doors anymore and I couldn't see myself going along with it, either. On that note, I shrugged. "I probably wouldn't have gone through with it, now that I think about it. Burning the coat, I mean."

"Yeah, I figured. It's a sweet coat." That was Axel's way of saying 'thank you', in case you're curious. I doubt you are.

"That's not why I wouldn't have set it on fire," I told him. He just shrugged his shoulders and ran his fingers along the coat some more. He admired the finished seams and pulled at the buttons to see if they'd come off. In a way, it was laughable, watching Axel examine such an expensive, stupid thing to see if it had any real quality to it. But, seeming satisfied and happy, he finally folded the thing up carefully and returned it to its tissue paper and cardboard shrine. I doubt he even noticed the red bow, much less the mud that flecked it.

"Face it, man. You're in deep," he said.

"Hardly."

"Truly. Fully. Completely and totally submersed. In. Deep. Like I said."

I didn't know if he meant I was in deep—stuck in a situation I'd gone and dug myself into—or in deep—stuck in a time-bomb "romance" I'd gone and gotten myself into with him. The latter I was sure was only temporary. The former… I wasn't so sure at all. I couldn't tell Axel that, though. He wasn't the kind of person who ever believed that there was a point that could be hit where nothing was right anymore. The problem between us was that I knew full well that that point was realer than anything. Instead of telling him this, I just spoke the closest truth I could jump to. "I don't know if I can ever forgive you."

"To be honest, I don't see how you could."

"So what now?" I asked.

"I dunno." And he really must not have known, because he jumped topics wildly then, not like he was desperate, but just like he was putting trouble on the backburner in favor of something nicer, lighter, cleaner. He said, "I ever tell you I wanted to be a gardener?"

"One of your many life's passions left unfulfilled, huh? Axel…"

"Yep. Gardener Axel. I thought it'd be wicked. The girls would go wild. Then, when girls were no longer a deal, I figured the guys would go wild 'cause I'd always smell like a fucking girl—fuckin'… flowery and shit."

I tried imagining the same flaming-shit-flinging Axel tending flowers. I think it goes without saying, but the image just really wasn't there. "I really can't picture you as a gardener," I said. "No offense or anything, I mean… you just…"

"Hey, it's cool. Truth is, I sucked at it. I always watered the goddamn plants too much, yanno? I was so afraid they'd fuckin' die on me if I left them alone for, like, two seconds. I was out there every day, watering this whole giant patch of flowers I put in. I mean, that's what they need, right? H-two-O. And that's it." "I ended up drowning most of the stupid garden, anyway. The ones that didn't drown died when fall came and didn't bother coming back the year after."

"What else did you want to be?"

"A rock star." He laughed, looked like he was about to playfully hit me in the arm, and then seemed to think twice about it. Instead, he counted off on his fingers: "A playwright. A journalist. A zoologist. A comedian. A lawyer. An actor. A mechanic. A chemical engineer, a mechanical engineer. A physician, psychiatrist, orthodontist, paleontologist. Astrologist, meteorologist. You name it, I wanted to be it."

"You ever want to be the owner of a porn shop?" I asked him.

"It occurred to me." He grinned and that time he couldn't resist a little sock to the arm. "Why?"

"You're just saying that because it's what you got."

"Maybe. Doesn't matter. Don't see me complaining, do you?"

"No…" I said. "I don't."

"Roxas." He leaned forward. He said my name again and then he made his case. "It doesn't matter, man, what you do in life. It's who you're with in life. That—" he smiled "—that's the shit that matters. That's the shit that gets you."

I realized then that Axel was, before anything else, completely and totally naïve. I didn't know how I'd missed it before—how I'd been so sure of my knowledge of him and yet had drawn a complete and utter blank in where his brain should have been. It wasn't that Axel was brainless or emotionless. Axel had plenty of brains and emotions to go around. It's just that whatever knowledge, whatever feeling that all amounted to was that of some idealistic moron I couldn't understand or relate to. So with that realization I stood up. I dusted the dirt off, ran my hands through my hair and checked my watch like I had somewhere to be. I didn't, but I couldn't exactly stay there. You know how it is.

"I'm out," I said.

"Will you come back?" he asked.

"I don't know." And because I didn't know much of anything—where I was going, what I was doing, what I was supposed to say—I borrowed Axel's owned words and twisted them to fit. "To be honest, I don't see how I could."

That's when I began walking. And I didn't intend to look back.

I was, in that moment, where I'd begun. When I reached the gas station, I almost laughed when I thought back on the day and realized that in all that shopping and all that spending, I had never bought myself the new video camera that had sent me out on that whole chapter of my life in the first place. Still smiling to myself and no one else in particular, I got a ride off the next truck that pulled in heading south. I figured I would wander and spend for as long as it took to find out where I was.

The truck driver was a pretty well fed guy with saggy, hairy arms and a bald spot that took over most of his head. He seemed to think that because all his hair was white, he was a wizened kind of guy aiding the young. At least, that's what it seemed like. Like he was a prophet of some kind. Like he was trying to enlighten me. Old Man Prophet was so focused on enlightening me—his follower, I guess you could say—that he wasn't all that good with keeping his eyes on the road. We swerved around a little, but I wasn't all that worried. Nothing could possibly have gotten any worse. Nothing could possibly have worried or upset me by that point.

Old Man Prophet told me, "The road is knowledge, kid. You move down the road as you move through life—that's the way of it all. The more time you're on the road, the more you know about how things are. And how things are? Things are bad. Bad each day and getting worse." Rolling around the floor of the car was a tin of chewing tobacco. It slid and clinked against the door with every swerve, like it was trying to get out.

"Boy yeah," Prophet was saying. "Boy yeah, things is gettin' worse still. And still, boy. Never stops. I tell you…" And he did tell me. He told me about the road, about how he met his wife on the road. She was a waitress at a truck stop. They had three children—one of them died at a young age, one of them got pregnant at a young age, and he didn't mention the third after saying that it was born. I wondered if every man who ever aged either became more like my father or more like Old Man Prophet. The differences between them were obvious enough.

Old Man Prophet kept talking at me. I wasn't paying all that much attention, but I took enough in to let out the appropriate kind of noises that gave the impression I was hanging on his every word. When he told me about Des Moines, he said it was his hometown. When he talked about his wife and remaining kids, he talked about Shiloh. When he talked about he trip home, he talked about Philly. And when I was smart enough to put them all together, it meant I was smart enough to actually worry about myself. But by then it was too late.

The tin of tobacco hit the door again. There were no pictures of a wife and children on the dashboard. The only decoration was a palm-sized iron emblem of a pair of bullhorns, swinging from the rearview mirror.

Old Man Prophet nodded his great head slowly. He said, "It's a long, hard road, no matter which way you take it, yeah. And it gets terrible, terrible lonely, it does."

When Old Man Prophet pulled off to the side of the road, I realized it could get worse. I realized I didn't know where I was and that wasn't an okay thing. I realized that I didn't want this. Whatever, whoever is listening to me, I thought, just take some stupid pity on me this one time. I swore I'd fix whatever wrong I'd done, I swore I'd pull my life back together. I'd donate my money to charities, I'd go become a monk, I'd go and move on and get out of this rut, but I had to have someone hear me first. Whatever, whoever is listening to me, please, please, I thought.

Old Man Prophet touched my face and I screamed.

I bit his fingers, he cursed. He threw me back against the window, I cried. I kicked him in the gut, he flinched. He flinched and cursed and threw his meaty arms at me and I fumbled blindly with the latch and fell so far until I hit the gravel by the side of the road and rolled into the ditch.

Without another word, the Prophet slammed the door and drove on.

The grass grew tall there by the side of the road and I figured no one would see me if I just bedded down in it for the rest of the day. I wouldn't move. I wouldn't do anything. I closed my eyes, I heard the voice of Old Man Prophet—"It's a long, hard road, no matter which way you take it, yeah. And it gets terrible, terrible lonely…"—and wondered if he really was a prophet and if the road really was so hard whichever way you took it. And that was the only thing I thought, lying on the side of the road, staring up at the sky at the end of the line. It was going to be night soon.

Hours went by. Cars went by.

And then someone kicked me and I really, seriously did think then that I was going to die. That it was Luxord back for vengeance, that it was Kairi's dead baby looking for its father, that it was Old Man Prophet come back to ensure his word was final. But no. It wasn't any of them.

It was Axel, and he came with the night and sat down in front of me.

I don't know if you've been to hell and back. Somehow I doubt you have. We all picture hell as a burning inferno, and maybe it really is just that. But trying to break free of it is less like breaking from a fire and more like breaking from an ocean. It's easier, in my opinion, to drown in hell than it is to burn in it. The surface is always there; it's just always too far away. Axel's persistence was the hand that finally gave up waiting above the surface and plunged through to drag me out… as the saying goes… come hell or high water.

"There's no getting rid of you, is there?" I asked him.

He said no.

"How did you know where I was?"

"You forget, man." And he shrugged his shoulders and he leaned back and he might have smiled—must have smiled—because it was in his voice when he said, "I know you. I know how to find you."

"So now…?"

"Now? We head home. And that's all there is to it."

We walked all the way home. It took us all night and well into the day. But in the end, we were okay.

And that's what you wanted to hear.

If you want the rest of the story… well, that's not a story for me to tell.

If my life was an epic arc of movies, and that entire part of my existence made up just one film, the credits would have started rolling at that point. When I left with Axel right then, not sure if he would make me happy, but more than positive that he was better than the road right then. But in the metaphorical credits we're talking about? My name would have appeared a lot in the list of names, of actors, of contributors—Axel's once or twice, and the theme song would play throughout, and after it faded away, there might be an instrumental cover of it—something not-too-slow and not-too-dismal, something that would say with some sort of certainty, "This is not quite the end."

And then maybe, once the last of the names had disappeared and the last notes of music had died away and the screen had gone dark… then, maybe, one last thing would happen. Because, after all, if it was a movie about my life, it would be a movie about the universal life—life in general. And the thing you have to understand about life in general is that it will always surprise you and keep going, even when you think it's over.