Just One More Time
(Day 12: Thursday Night)
Carlos sits on the edge of his bed with his hands clasped together, as he stares down at the brown flowered carpet. No. There's no way he could be that stupid, but the longer Jay remains in the bathroom the more he finds himself wanting to do it. Maybe it's the pressure of the elapsing time. He doesn't know. All he does know is that he had hoped that keeping his hands together would lower the temptation, and yet it hasn't. Just one minute. He looks up at the bathroom door. It would just be one minute.
He looks down at his bedside table and separates his hands, before he opens the drawer to reveal the cigarettes and lighters. He takes out a cigarette, runs his fingers over it once, and then grabs the blue lighter to ignite it. He just sits there for a minute, holding it in his left hand, as he watches the paper and tobacco slowly start to turn to ash. He sees how his right arm hangs over his knee, and he slowly moves the cigarette over it, positioning it so that it would be just below the inside of his elbow. He tilts the cigarette up, lowers it down, and watches in confused shock as it's taken away and put out on the table. "What the hell?" Carlos looks up and sees Jay half dressed, his hair still dripping wet. "What is this? What were you doing?"
Carlos looks away from him, "Nothing. It— it was nothing."
Jay stares down at the open drawer, "I saw you throw those away. I told you to throw those away."
He doesn't look at him, "I'm sorry."
"What? Did you get more?"
"No," Carlos mumbles. "I just threw the boxes away. There was nothing inside them."
"So, you lied to me," Jay accuses.
Carlos doesn't even try to deny it this time, "Yes."
There's a minute of silence before Jay finally asks, "Why? Why would you do this?"
"I don't know," Carlos immediately responds, but then he shuts his eyes as he cringes at the lie. He does know, or at least he thinks he does. Sure, there's been this overwhelming need to do it, but he started thinking about it even before that had built up. He had thought that if he could experience it just one more time, then maybe he'd be able to understand. Am I just one of those people trying to feel something, or is it something I actually kind of like?
"I think you do know," Jay comments as he sits across from him on his own bed.
Carlos shakes his head, "I just had to do it. Okay?"
"What do you mean, you had to?"
"It was just building up. It was all just building up." He glances at him for a moment, but only a moment. "It's the only thing that's ever been able to calm me down from it all."
"Calm you down?" Jay shakes his head, failing to understand. "What? You mean from the anxiety and fear you had from your mother, because that's over now. And how could your mother hurting you possibly make you less anxious or fearful of her?"
Carlos stays quiet for a moment, not really understanding it himself. "It relaxed me. There was just this feeling, this… it's stupid."
"No," Jay asserts. "Tell me."
Carlos looks up at him again, before he bites his lip and stares off in the other direction. "There was this relief. There was this sense that everything was going to be okay. It felt…" Nice. It felt nice and— and good. He shakes his head and places a hand to it. He must be crazy.
"It felt… what?" Jay prods on.
"Nothing," Carlos glances at the floor, before he forces himself to see Jay. He has to know what he really thinks of this, especially this next thing. "It may have hurt for a minute, but the pain never compared to those other things. The pain was only there for a moment, but it was necessary to act as a gateway to those other things."
"Like the relief?"
Carlos hears him get angrier as he watches him struggle to keep calm. "I know how it sounds, but I had to do it. Or… at least I had to try."
Jay shakes his head and responds in frustration, "You want to know how you sound? You sound like a drug addict."
Carlos rolls his eyes, "It's not like that."
"Oh. Isn't it?"
"No," he asserts. "Just because I wanted to do it doesn't make me an addict. You only think that, because you think it's harmful. But no one calls someone an addict when they're addicted to exercise or knowledge." He sees Jay about to draw a line between the comparisons, "And what about you?"
"Me?" Jay asks in shock, before it quickly turns back into anger. "What about me?"
"You're always hooking up with someone," Carlos points out. "That's not very good for you either, so why are you getting so on me about this?"
"Okay. First off," Jay laughs in stress. "The only person I've had sex with since I got here is you, and that's been what? A whopping total of two times?"
"Technically once," Carlos quietly corrects.
"See," Jay proves. "I'm not the one with the problem here; you are… And even if I still make out with people a lot, it's completely different."
Carlos blankly stares at him, "How? How's it so different?"
"Because I do it, because I like it," Jay sternly answers. "Not because I have to."
"What if you have to do it, because you like it?" Carlos contemplates.
Jay shakes his head, "I told you, I don't have to do it. I'm not addicted to it. If I was, don't you think I would have gone to make out with that girl rather than sit and talk to you at dinner the other night?"
"I get it." Carlos looks away from him, "You don't have a problem."
Jay huffs before nearly yelling, "What's wrong with you. What? Does not getting hurt somehow make you more irritable, or are you just this mad at me because I stopped you from doing it?"
"I'm not mad at you," Carlos whispers.
"Then what is it? What is it that's making you say these things and act this way?"
Carlos swiftly turns his head back at him, taking a deep breath before shouting, "Maybe I just want to be left alone." Jay falls silent, his expression becoming more neutral. "I'm not the type of person that figures things out through talking. When people talk to you, you're unable to stay in your own head long enough to figure everything out." He shakes his head and continues at a lower volume, "All of this prodding and interrogating you're doing isn't doing anything but confusing me even more. I needed time to think. Just because I haven't really spoken to you or that I haven't been, as you put it, responsive, that doesn't mean I'm mad at you. It just means I have too much going on to deal with anyone."
"Why can't you just tell me what you're dealing with? We could figure it out together."
"No." Carlos shakes his head, "You still don't get it." before he looks into his eyes. "I don't know what's wrong with me. That's what I needed time to figure out, but I'm not going to be able to figure it out when people are telling me their assumptions or asking questions that may not even be relevant."
The room falls silent for a minute, before Jay softly asks, "What was I supposed to do, just stand there and watch you hurt yourself?"
Carlos looks down for a second, "I didn't even know you were there. If I had, then I wouldn't have even tried to do it"
"But you said you had to do it," Jay reminds him. "If that were true, then you would have done it whether I was there or not."
"It's embarrassing." He attempts to smile, but it barely forms before it falls back down, "And, I guess, with how everyone's reacted to it… it's just made me so ashamed too."
"Did I ever make you feel that way?" Jay questions.
Carlos doesn't want to make him feel bad, but as he remembers how Jay had reacted to the burn while they had been making out, he knows he has to say, "Yes."
Jay shuts his eyes and lets out a breath, "I'm sorry." and there's a moment of quiet before he continues. "The last thing I'd ever want to do is to make you feel ashamed of yourself. I just really don't understand why you're doing this."
Carlos laughs at the unfunny situation, "That makes both of us." but he doesn't smile. "Part of the reason why I was going to do it was just because I don't understand what I'm getting out of it… I just thought that if I did it once— just one more time— then I could figure it out."
"You know that it's never just one more time."
Carlos smiles and places a hand to his head, "Yeah. I— I know."
"Look." Jay scoots to the edge of his bed and reaches for Carlos's hand, "I don't want to make you feel like you have to lie. You may need space to figure this out, but you can't go through whatever it is that you're going through alone. If I promise to try not to prod you with so many questions, then can you promise me that you won't lie to me anymore?"
Carlos nods, "Yeah." as he holds onto Jay's hand.
"Good," Jay smiles.
Carlos looks from his hand to him unsurely, "If we're going to do this… you should know that I will probably try to do it again."
Jay frowns but nods, "Okay."
"And when I do," Carlos continues, "I don't want you to stop me or freak out when you find out." He sees him about to speak, "I don't want you to feel guilty about it. You need to know that what I'm going through, it has nothing to do with you. And don't beat yourself up over the prospect of not stopping me, because you know that even if you were to throw all of these things away and keep your eyes on me that I'd just find another way to do it." Jay shuts his mouth. "Whatever's going to happen, it's not your fault. When it happens, it will be nothing more than my decision and my choice."
"But you're sure it's a choice, then?" Jay asks.
Carlos inwardly laughs, "Even if it's not a choice, it's still happening for a reason." He looks away for a second, "I don't know how else to figure this out other than to just test it."
"This isn't one of your science experiments," Jay warns. "It will have lasting effects."
"I know."
Jay nods, before he brings himself to say, "Just be careful. If you take it too far— if you need help—"
"Then I will let you know," Carlos assures him. "But, honestly… I don't think it's going to turn out like that. When I said before that there's a chance that this is nothing, I wasn't lying."
Jay takes his hand back and stares down at the ground, "Then why do I feel so horrible?"
"Probably because you were never a villain." Jay looks back up at him, and Carlos can see slight shock peeking through his sadness. "You were always a hero. You may have stolen things, but you were always there when someone was in desperate need of help." Carlos looks away from him, "And it's probably because of that that I feel pretty shitty for practically making you ignore what's happening to me" He looks back up at him, "But I honestly don't know what else I could possibly do."
It takes a minute for Jay to come up with enough courage to say, "If this is something you really have to do, then I won't stop you."
- That's it for days eleven and twelve. Next up is Day 15, the start of Ben's storyline. I think you're really going to like it.