Warnings: A certain angry character's dirty mouth.
Special Thanks: To "Rog" again for fixing some typos and punctuation errors.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything that is not mine.
A/N: The last paragraph of Ch. 1 has been edited. Please re-read if you have previously read Ch. 1. Also, excuse the lack of ruler lines. They weren't working for me at the time of this post. Hope it is not too distracting.
"April 25, 12:54 AM Eastern Standard Time. Grading finished." I lay down my red marking pen and the last paper and pull my pillow closer to my body, smothering my face in it and holding back a bout of sniffles and sobs and other self degrading actions. I'm cold, but I don't feel like getting off the bed right now to find a t-shirt. I'll have to remember not to lay in my room with only boxers on next April. Unpredictable New York temperatures. . .
You know, I realized this afternoon that funerals aren't for the deceased. They don't give a fuck once their gone, right? Once the cold, mean world has stopped trying to pry into their hearts. Stopped trying to rip into them and change who they are at the very core of themselves. No, funerals aren't for the dead. We only honor their memory in a hope that they won't be forgotten; that they can keep living after their gone. I sure as hell don't want to be forgotten.
Funerals are for the survivors, though. The sole purpose of a funeral is to let the lonely survivors feel like they've paid some sort of fucking tribute to the deceased when really there is absolutely nothing to be said that can make the situation even in the least bit graceful.
You feel as if nothing can be said to do the dead one justice. You've been through hell and back together—you smiled on the way in and you were sure as hell smiling on the way back out—yet you can't manage to think of a few meager words to say so your friend can look good at his goodbye party. There's absolutely nothing left you can do, right?
So when you walk to the front of that church, determined to make these people watching you remember your best friend, all you can do is squeak out a few fucking measly words, run your hand through your hair, adjust your glasses, laugh nervously while choking on your tears, and run back to your seat.
The whole time you know some of these people are already forgetting him. They're wondering what they'll have for dinner or how they'll pay the bills and the rent. Who's putting the kids in bed tonight, John?
They're feeling bad that you've had to suffer through this and what a shame it is that he had to die. But really, he's just a number to them. He's just another statistic, and you hate statistics. You've seen so many fucking statistics on so many fucking health pamphlets that you're about ready to die yourself, buried under the overwhelming odds of survival. That wouldn't be so bad, right? But the world needs you; at least that's what he said.
You want to resent them for their lack of care, their apparent apathy and false sympathy, but you can't. Though you wish they would realize just how much the world lost when he breathed his last, you know they have lives, just like you do. They have best friends, too, and jobs and children and lunch meetings at one o'clock. So you try to resent them for their meager concerns and eager plans, but you can't.
You're feeling so damn lost; all you can do is sit on your ass and stare out the window. But at the same time you're feeling so much that you can't even express it. You're feeling so passionate about him and his life and all the other lives that you weren't able to do justice, that you can barely contain it. Your camera isn't solving this problem very quickly, so you just sit there and stare, occasionally shaking with anger and exchanging empty words with your other friend and roommate, Collins. Now your only friend and roommate.
Two weeks later, your friend will reschedule your college class unbeknownst to yourself and haul you off your ass to your classroom, where a group of students will be sitting, eager to hear the excuse for the five missed classes and eager for a new assignment. So now you have to tell them you've lost someone close to you, someone whom had a relapse after the HIV was nearly undetectable in his body, and you've crashed into the ground. You tell them you'll be okay, though, and let's see those edited clips and essays. Right now, group presentation.
Everyone fumbles through their backpacks and satchels, pulling out video cameras, compact disks, papers, note cards, and pens. And then the presentation begins. They suggest you go first, so you fumble excuses and eventually end up spitting out an answer about your lack of preparation. Some of them give you sympathetic looks, so you change your mind and stand up anyhow.
"It's not edited. The film, I mean," you hear yourself splutter, "But I did finish an accompaniment—though I didn't proof read it either, so it's kinda bad—before I had my little nervous breakdown." You laugh uneasily, and a few of the students laugh with you, but you know they're just being polite. A kid with wire-rimed glasses—Jason—is smiling at your encouragingly. You damn well don't feel like the teacher right now; your life's out of your damn hands. But that's what you wanted, right? La Vie Boheme? You viva-ed it, man. It's all yours now.
"Well, here goes. It's just under the requirement I gave you, so. . . Sorry. Don't run off to your parents saying what a god-awful teacher I am. I delved into my emotions, and this is all I came out with." You take a shaking breath, flash a watery smile, and begin.
It was so cold that night, that when I dropped my glasses I though they were surely bound to shatter to a thousand pieces on the floor, taking my monetary income, food, bills, rent, AZT, DDT, Prozac, various other medications, and prospective grad school education with them.
It's beyond me why we didn't stay with Joanne and Maureen that night. God knows they have heat; hell, even carpeting and a cappuccino machine. Mimi could have used heat, but she was resistant to any handouts. It's also beyond me why we did not force her to live with Joanne and Maureen, you can't call anything from friends a handout, but Mimi had some twisted ideas concerning independence. As did I, but I was not the Boho on the edge of the brink of death, so it was not my sick ideologies that mattered.
God only knows why I flipped out after "The Needle and the Damage Done." Perhaps the realization that it really was the damage done that was playing out in my life that I could not handle. It was drugs that pulled Roger, Collins, and I apart and the aftermath that kept us—not to mention the family—together. "A little part of it in everyone. . ." Neil Young might as well have been singing that to all of us at a Life Support meeting. It was in everyone, wasn't it? The drugs, the sex, the art, the AIDS. Seemed like everyone had AIDS. But this was the life I wanted, right? Bohemia?
I loved the Village, I still do. I loved my lifestyle and my friends, but as they started slowly disappearing, my love for the village started waning. Two years after Mimi died, Collins, Roger, and I got a place on the Bowery, on the East and West-slash-Greenwich Village border. Closer to NYU, convenient for both Collins (as a teacher) and myself (as a new student). Rog started teaching music lessons out of our little apartment, and everything was good.
But back to 1991. Why the hell I even filmed, the Man, I don't know. I guess I wanted to have the object of my resentment on film, so someday I could pull out the old dart board Roger and I used to obsess over (even though Collins smeared us every time) and pin his picture to the middle. Perfect bullseye. But still, I could have gotten myself killed that night. In fact, if I weren't so adept at hiding, I probably would have.
But now, that's all in the past, right? I have no regrets. "Forget regret, or life is yours to miss." I would go back to twenty-one at any time, and do it all over again. Drugs, death, HIV and all. That was the happiest—well, in all honesty that's probably not the word. That was the most satisfying time of my life. No corporate America (well, maybe a little), no laws (well, a few), just me, my friends, my art, and rent.
When I got back to the loft early that morning, I fell asleep on the floor by the warmth of the illegal stove and awoke to the smell of fried bacon, eggs and toast, and the sound of someone's melodic voice. Mimi and Collins were cooking (with Joanne's food, I might add) while Roger sat on the counter singing to them, making the most ridiculous faces and flailing his arms overdramatically.
I hopped up, and sleepily sauntered over to them. Mimi smiled at me, "Morning, Mark!" She said cheerfully.
"Morning, Meems." I answered, leaning against the counter across from Collins.
Roger stopped singing and dangled a piece of bacon in my face. "Want some pig, Mark?" He swung it dangerously close to my nose and I recoiled slightly.
"Ew, gross, Rog, no!" We all burst out laughing, and Mimi playfully smacked Roger on the cheek before feeding him a piece of bacon sensuously.
Yes, everything was back to normal, and it all worked out in the end.
They stare at you for a moment, before the kid with wire-rimmed glasses starts clapping and the whole class joins them, along with your friend who gives a hearty "That's my boy!" in the middle of it all. Eventually the next person reads theirs and you are nearly blown away by all of their creations, especially Jason's. As they are filing out at the end of class, you get a few hugs and well wishes, and Jason asks you and Collins to lunch to meet his friend that was previously in the hospital. You'd almost forgotten about his problems, and try to make it up to him.
But all of that feel-good stuff doesn't change the fact that in the end, it's just me and Collins and the girls up town. So I should just try to plow on, drudge through life, and hide in my work until it all becomes normal again.
So, no, I'm not suicidal or depressed. I'm just coping. It's been one month since the funeral and a fucking thirty-five days since his death. I've finally decided to take what he told me to heart.
"Go do things, after I'm gone. Make another film, whatever it fucking takes. But Mark, and excuuuuse the sentimentality, you have so much more to do for the world. I just know it, okay? So get the hell out there and do it."
So I unbury my face from my pillow and neatly stack the last of my students' red-marked papers into the grade book. Sliding off of my bed, I walk to a drawer, pull out a long-sleeved t-shirt reading
"ACT-UP New York" and yank it over my head, catching my glasses before they hit the ground. Crossing to my closet I pull box after box out and drag them into the living room.
Collins looks up at me questioningly from his spot in the pink wing backed chair by the radio, but continues reading and highlighting some book he's teaching. I wheel my projector and editing equipment out of a coat closet and set them up. Flopping onto the couch with one leg hanging off the armrest, I turn on my camera.
Collins looks at me from across the milk crate, duct tape, and plywood coffee table we painted way back in 1990. It was the summer before Angel died. We'd all painted our names on it and decorated the whole "table" with paint and newspaper and glue on jewels, laughing and joking the whole time. We all ended up very painty after that. "Mark, you won't get a story from the ceiling."
I roll my eyes and sit up, facing and focusing the camera on him. "I was contemplating the meaning of life, Tom. Jeez."
He laughs and stretches as he stands from his chair. "I'm making breakfast, do you want some?"
"It's 1:27 AM, Collins. You're fucking kidding, right?" He winks at me and heads into the kitchen. "Okay, then yeah, if we have toast or tea or something."
"No problem," he calls. Several seconds elapse before he sticks his head around the corner again. "Hey, Mark, man?"
"Yeah?"
"Keep your chin up." Before I have a chance to respond caustically, he adds, "Nice t-shirt, by the way."
I laugh, "Thanks, Collins." He disappears again.
I turn off the camera and set it up on the tripod, facing the couch at my eye level. I turn it back on and hop onto the couch.
"April 25, 1:31 AM, Eastern Standard Time. Mark's learning to cope while making another FF, or fucking film as they were once so kindly referred to back in the Boho Days. However this time, the film was suggested and the idea also inadvertently supplied by one Roger Davis, who I never thought would ever encourage me to pick up my camera, let alone set me up with a documentary idea. Well, here goes. . ."
I turned off the camera and headed into the kitchen to help Collins. I crack an egg on the side of a cup and am in the process of fishing out a stray shell with a fork when Collins interrupts me.
"Hey, I'm proud of you, man."
"Why?"
"Because Mark Cohen Version 1998 does have emotions. That was right sweet in there," he nods towards the living room, grinning cheekily.
"Oh, shut up, Collins!" I exclaim, jumping up and grabbing the knit beanie from the top of his head, dangling it over the water boiling for tea.
"Hey!" He shouts. A wrestling match ensues, and I'm pretty damn sure I know who's going to win. He tickles me and I fall to the floor in a fit of involuntary laughter and release his hat.
Collins pulls it back on his head and helps me up, ruffling my hair. "There," he says, "Everything's back to normal."
And it'll all work out in the end.
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A/N: Comments, Questions, Constructive Criticism? Drop a review. Also, I'd like to know if you'd like to read more stories about Mark, Collins, and Roger's lives after Rent (based in the same universe, if you will). Let me know. :)
