The Story Isn't Mine

 

            The noise from the main floor slowly declined until the house descended into perfect silence, communicating to Roger that his parent’s had gone to bed, most likely setting the alarm that monitored every door and window as well as motion sensors in the living room and family room. Just to be sure, he waited for an extra thirty minutes to ensure that they were both asleep, slipping a refrigerator magnet on the window monitor in his room. Black shoes, black jeans, a black jacket and a black stocking cap rendered him virtually invisible for a discreet trip across town to meet with his best friend, Alexander.

              The two boys, both seventeen but larger than most, met at the corner opposite the one gentlemen’s club in their city. They watched as clientele came and went, waiting for a moment of higher customer volume, hoping to slip in without drawing too much attention to themselves. The deception was successful, and they found themselves surrounded by women, most not much older than them, only inches away from being completely unclothed. Roger could feel his heat thumping in his chest and sounding in his ears, thrilled at this unbelievable opportunity.

              After three hours of free entertainment, and one fairly costly lap dance, he and Alexander exited the building and made plans to repeat this evening exactly one month later. In what became a routine for the two boys, they found themselves becoming hardened and inattentive to their female classmates, making jokes to one another in a comparative manner to the women at the gentlemen’s club.

              After graduating high school, both boys attended the same university and continued their late-night forays into gentlemen’s clubs, but now with multiple choices as the new city surrounding their university was much larger than their hometown. As the years passed by, Roger found himself becoming bored with normal female interaction, as most girls his age seemed overly modest, tame, and mundane compared to what he and Alexander regularly enjoyed, no longer once a month but now, every weekend.

              After graduating from college, Roger slipped into the habit of bringing home the dancers to watch them leave within hours with far too much of his cash in their hands. His new routine became such a commonplace occurrence that he began supplementing his experience with copious amount of cannabis and alcohol, which only further drained his bank account.

              He and Alexander sat together at a local pub, staring at one another across the table, wondering how they managed to reach their fortieth year without finding a spouse, without having children or owning a home. The two men hugged, said goodbye and later that evening just before bed, Roger looked at his haggard, wrinkled, flaccid body in the mirror, wishing he could ignore what had gone so wrong with his life, but knowing full well that every choice he made brought him to this exact, empty, hollow moment.

              In a mirror like moment, he and Alexander found themselves sitting together at the back of the room in their favorite gentleman’s club, coming to the realization that they were each now the stereotypical dirty old man, leering at and groping girls young enough to be their granddaughters. “Another ten years have passed, Roger,” Alexander said, “what are we doing? What have we accomplished?"

              Roger could hear the disappointment and despair in Alexander’s voice, knowing full well that the two of them had completely wasted their lives, finding temporary pleasure and distraction in the unfortunate and desperate situations of others. “We need to get out of here and never come back,” Roger said, “we have become two pathetic, sad, empty old men with nothing to show for our years of work and time.”

              Substituting their routine of meeting once a week at the gentlemen’s club, they transitioned to visiting actual social settings with others their age, which usually consisted of walks in the park, bingo games at the community center, and the occasional visit to the old folks home, which was Roger’s idea based on the hope that they would find other lonely souls with whom to interact and hopefully connect.

              Before dipping into the world of genuine social interaction, they both fabricated stories about their past lives, knowing that revealing a multiple decades long story arc of strippers and prostitutes would not win them any favor, connection, or sympathy from potential friends. For weeks beforehand, Roger and Alexander practiced telling their respective fabricated histories to one another, knowing that telling a convincing story was vital to their future success.

              Casual, friendly connections were made and as Roger approached his seventieth birthday, he returned to a cold, empty house, to find something to eat, take a bath, and get his needed eight hours of sleep. His meal of microwaved black beans on a tortilla settled pleasantly enough on his stomach, and his warm bath brought relaxation to his tired and aching body. He extracted himself from the warm water, dried himself, slipped on his striped pajamas but only traveled partway down the hallway to his bedroom to suddenly drop to his knees with a crippling pain in the center of his chest.

              From his prostrate position, he managed to dial 911, to waken later in the hospital, looking up into the face of Alexander, gripping his hand and mumbling something that he couldn’t quite make out. Asking his friend to repeat himself, Alexander spoke a second time, this time much slower and louder, explaining that he had suffered a small heart attack, but the doctors were certain that he would recover relatively soon.

              The two men sat together, mostly in silence, reminding one another of the brief and casual friendships they had attained while visiting others their age over the past couple of years. A nurse entered the room, asking Roger if he wanted her to contact any family members or loved ones, to which Roger replied that Alexander was his only friend, and he had no family to contact. Watching Alexander shuffle from the room, Roger felt empty, lonely, afraid, and disappointed at how he had spent his last forty-five years since graduating from college.

              At some point in the midst of his emptiness and self-hatred, he slipped off to sleep, to awaken the next morning, finding Alexander sitting at his bedside, holding two disposable cups of white chocolate mocha and a smile. The two old men spent the entire day talking through old memories, the multitude of different girls they had connected with and then lost over the many years. The daylight hours passed, and Roger watched Alexander leave the room, while he ate the last of his less than desirable hospital dinner.

              One day, then two days, then finally more than a week passed, with no more contact from Alexander, leaving Roger feeling even more empty, alone, and disappointed in himself. With the next visit from his nurse, he requested a notebook and a pen, feeling the urge to write down his thoughts, detailing his vacuous, empty life and hoping to find some sort of philosophical answer to who he was and why he was.

              Sixteen pages into his personal ruminations, he closed out his thoughts with a simple phrase, “The story isn’t mine,” to which had added, “I should have created and left behind something of value to pass onto someone I loved, instead of immersing myself in the meaningless, physical contact that gave me nothing of value.”

              He closed his eyes, folded his arms across his chest, and realized that he was no longer alone in his room, having been joined by two very large, handsome, muscular young men, who helped him from his bed, insisting that they were there to take him home to enjoy the relationships that he should have cherished while alive. As the three of them stepped out of his room and into the hallway, Roger found himself strong, robust, and literally tingling with energy standing in a vast, rolling green field, surrounded by the hundreds of faces that he recognized from his sad and sorry life.

              Beautiful woman after beautiful woman approached him, hugged him, reminded him of their names, and thanked him for the brief interaction that they had enjoyed from his company. As he reached the top of a small hill, he sat on a wooden bench to be joined by Alexander, who squeezed his shoulder and shared with him that he had been waiting for him for what seemed like an eternity. The two men finally finding a sliver of joy in their new reality.