PRL Serials

It’s no secret that I, Roy Cureton, have been going through some personal stuff that has impacted the regular schedule of the PRL Serials. I apologize and assure you that we will finish up this year. While I get my s*#! together, enjoy the s*#! I’ve been posting about my personal struggles. I want to say that I’ve been writing for entertainment, but honestly, I’ve been reaching out, hoping someone will hear me and know that I am sorry for my shortcomings and give me a second chance to make things right after I messed up a very good and easy thing that I long for. But, read you all should read it as entertainment despite the personal nature; I’m only airing it to show that I don’t mind embarrassing myself for something that means so much to me. The conclusion of Vol. II will commence soon and I will guarantee that we will finish before the end of 2016. I’d hope to give you some Halloween stories, but don’t count that out just yet; I’m itching to continue the story of Silas in Hell, and the warped story of Illuminatos, so don’t count us out. While I get my shit together, I want to present this, the collected Roy In Love series that is true and real, unless it’s fiction, but it’s not, until it talks about impossible things, then, it’s a mix of reality and fiction. And I hope I don’t get sued for using a character that you can find in the comics of a major publisher. And if YOU are listening, we really need to talk; turns out I need you and I’m disappointing my waiting fans who just want resolution, but I can’t do that until I have it. So, here it is, RIL 1-7, and we will continue again very soon. Please stay tuned.

Roy In Love

1

I’ve done some cool shit this weekend, but it feels hollow cause I can’t share it with you. Maybe I’m prone to hyperbole, but please believe it, I’m better with you. I’m prone to hyperbole, and I have some growing to do, but when I’m done, I hope it impresses you. I’ll do anything for you to see me. And no I’m not talking to Ms.America, though if you’re not interested I think she’d be open to having me; I punched through to another dimension that she inhabits for breaks from us and we talked. She’s seeing a nice girl that makes her happy but my tears moved her to the point of pity.

“You cry now?” She asked.

“Apparently, but it was so weird for me, I assumed the worst.”

“You’re dumb, Cureton. You have to know it could be so much worse. Stop being an idiot please, you’re so much more fun when you’re not wallowing and regretting.” She said cavalierly.

“I’m gonna get sued America, cause I’m posting this ASAP and you’re the intellectual property of Disney’s puppet creators.”

“Me?” She laughed and I heard him, I saw that jaw that I want to feed. I saw the cynicism and disdain, I saw the patience and regard for others despite the labor to supress.

“Just tell me how to move on.” I said unconvincingly.

“If that’s what you really wanted it’d be done.” She said.

And she was right.

2

I keep doing it and I know why. It’s cause I regret. I regret losing you, if I ever had you. I miss you more than I can express, I don’t know enough words to make it sound as eloquent as it is. Now, sitting with America who wastes my premium cashews, throwing them at my head while I look pensively into the past and remember you, tall and statuesque just outside the lights from the court we left, fresh cut in a white t that I want to press against your body with mine, now, I have so many regrets. Can I drink myself to death? Not for you or because of you, I would do it because if I live, I know that it will happen again…it’s happened 2 times before…

“Cut that noise Cureton. If you die, I will resurrect you, kick you in the balls, and then kill you myself. And that won’t be the end. I will do it time and again. I don’t have that power but I will find it.” America keeps wasting my premium cashews that justify my Sam’s Club membership, thudding them against my temple. “You’re just thirty and think everything bad is fatal, it’s a sign of your age. You better live through this or live forever dying, ressurecting, then having your balls kicked up past your kidneys.” She thuds another whole, sea-salted cashew against my glasses.

“I could change course Chavez, but I dont,” I say, “How do I let it go?”

This time, she punches me full in the face and the stars I see are the ambiance as I swirl through the in between, the space between existence itself. And what I see gives me sense enough to put down my drink (truthfully I dropped it), and never pick up another. Cause, and hear me out folks, the 3rd times the charm, and I can never do it again.

3

“I’ve been burping up chicken sausage for 2 days. It’s good but it’s definitely not worth this.” I’m nursing a bonfire with my little brother, holding a conversation about company trips to Columbia, but the burps won’t stop and America’s side-eyeing me like a pro.

“Isn’t that a good thing? You get to taste them even though you already ate them.” America has s’more stuff but it’s from another dimension so I only get to watch her enjoy gooey marshmallows on melted chocolate and graham crackers. My brother and I didn’t think ahead.

“It’s fuckin gross, Chavez, I might as well be eating baloney.” I burp loudly and long and I want to die when my brother asks if I’ve been eating baloney. My burps have never smelled like anything before but now I’m an American consumer because Sam’s Club discounts are too good to pass up and when you see cheese infused chicken sausage, how can you say no? And now I’m burping a process that will no doubt give me colon cancer.

“Stop eating them.” She says it cooly enough that I doubt my ability to control myself. Have I been waiting for the solitude of single home ownership just so I could eat without shame? All I do is eat. I eat breakfast now. I wake up at 5am to scramble eggs and make roast beef grilled cheese with aged white cheddar. That’s me now. And my burps smell like a rich man’s and I’m sure I’ll have gout soon.

“I will. I’m gonna sow a garden. Stop looking at me like that,” America rolls her eyes, “I’m gonna do it, and I’m gonna make collard greens a thing cause they grow best in the fall, the realistic time frame I can bet on actually planting things.” I hate the way she sees right through me. By the time I finish paying for all the things I need inside my house, there’ll be nothing left over for personal gardening, and she knows it.

“Ok, Cureton. You hold on to that.”

I would hate her if she had not supplanted the real love of my life, the jaw and the white t, actual love of my life.

4 (ft America, Max, Wes, and a lot of shameless plugs)

“Are you done? Can we get back to it now?”

I’m lying on my face in what will eventually become my personal library and Max and Wes stand over me, to my right and left respectively. Max is angry and Wes is simultaneously calming him down and speaking to me gently like he’s talking me down from a ledge.

“We’re not rushing you, we understand that you’re going through something, but we’ve put this off for a year.” I can hear that Wes is knealing, his voice is slightly closer than before, but I don’t see him with my nose scrubbing the carpet.

“Roy, who the fuck are you?” Max explodes and yells down at me and Wes tries to interrupt him. “Seriously. What the fuck did you do with Roy?”

This makes me roll over onto my back. “Fuck you Max. Fuck you and Ladoga.” I like making him mad. When he’s mad he yells the truth that I need to hear. “Fuck VIV and fuck Old Man Young…” Wes caps my mouth with his hand to shut me up.

“When I move my hand, apologize, then get up and talk to us like you have some respect for us.” I don’t like to upset Wes, when he gets upset he cuts my ego and it’s hard to recover. I apologize and we sit at the bar in my kitchen eating leftovers from the food I grilled for my brother on memorial day.

“I didn’t mean for it to go like this.” I open a beer and Wes and Max give each other a look I choose to ignore. “I thought we’d have finished by now, I really thought we’d be doing Volume III this summer. Please forgive me guys. It’s just that some things snuck up on me.”

“Stop fucking drinking Roy!” Max is definitely mad.

“Don’t put it on that. We did the interim shorts while I was drunk.” And we did a good job I think.

“Talk to us then, stop apologizing and making excuses. What’s that thing you’ve been writing? Are you heart broken Roy?” Wes is looking at me like he cares which means he probably does.

“Are you talking to imaginary friends?” Max asks.

“Yes, cause I’m in a place so foreign to me that it might as well be an imaginary space.”

“What happened?”

I take a deep breath and try to explain. “I’m not in love, not really. I can’t be. You guys know I don’t believe in that. And if I did it would have to take longer than the time I had. But I do have a heart, I do have feelings and I don’t like to have a negative impact on someone else. Especially someone whose friendship I value. I think I was an asshole and then I overcompensated and made shit so much worse. I think it all got conflated with other things that have been changing at the same time. I bought a fucking house in SC. I didn’t even want a house a year ago, and in SC? It’s all so crazy and it happened so fast.”

Max and Wes look at each other and then Wes says gently, “We won’t ask the obvious question, and we’ll keep the pronouns neutral, but this person, did you apologize? Is it as bad as you think?”

I slump down 2 inches, “It’s unsalvageable and in the past I could just move on. I’m very good at moving on, or I thought I was. Maybe I’m good at supressing feelings, but even that is shit now. I’m not myself, my old self anymore. This shit is eating at me and that’s why I’ve been drinking. Well, not just that though, I’ve also been drinking because I’ve been celebrating with people but it hasn’t been fun for me because I can’t shake this feeling that I fucked something up that would have been awesome for me. And I did it because I think I’m smart enough to predict the future, like I’m the Alia or something.”

Max interrupts, “Speaking of, Wes, we need to reign that story in, there’s too many characters…”

“Not now Max, he’s getting to something vital. And fuck you, I got my shit together. What’s up with the timeline on VIV is Real?”

“I fixed it! I think…”

By this point my face is on the bar and Wes says, “you did what you thought was best. But feeling bad and trying to drink yourself to death won’t make things better.”

“I’m not trying to drink myself to death. I’m not suicidal, and if I were, this couldn’t make me do it. The strong feelings I’m having come from the fact that I’m unrecognizable to myself. I didn’t think something like this could happen to me.”

Max looks sympatheic and says, “You didn’t realize you were into du…” Wes elbows him.

“It’s not who it is, it’s the fact that it happened at all. I don’t know what I believe anymore. This is big. If I have regrets now, they might go back further than this because this isn’t the first time. But this time hurts the most. This time feels like legit loss.”

“Talking about it makes it better. You can talk to us.” Wes says and pats me on the shoulder.

Max lines up beers on the bar. “We’re gonna change the context of being drunk. And we’re gonna finish volume II. Put em up, lets toast.”

I hope he’s right. But then I see America leaning against the sink and shaking her head.

“I can punch you again if you think that will help.” She says.

I shake my head as we toast to the completion of Volume II. “No, I still remember the first one. I’m almost out of the woods.”

“So we’re doing this then. And I think it’ll help. We’ll come over once a week, make sure you’re not on your face.” Wes says.

Max says, “Or email or whatever.”

“No,” I say. “That’s really not necessary. I really need to be alone to process all of this. But yes, we’re getting this done.”

I can’t take anything back, it probably wouldn’t help all that much if I did. So I’ll move forward. Maybe I can disable text messaging on my phone. That would solve 99 percent of my problems.

5

I am psychic, everything happens the way I see it. I’m not a crazy narcisist who bends reality to suit his worldview, and I don’t harass others until they lash out in ways that are characteristic of bad people as I labeled them from my first encounter. I don’t need to do that stuff because I am psychic. I can see through any artificial layer to a bedrock of festering malintent and if anything, I bring it up to the surface so everyone can see their honest selves. Me, I’m not a bad person, I would definitely know it if that were true, there is not a bad bone in my body. I just have these misunderstood abilities that make other people hate me and I’m cool with that because I know that I am a very good person who is making everything better for everyone. I am above reproach. I only cry in the dark because I am also very human, you can’t ignore some instincts.

America is stunned silent. She looks good as always and the sneer on her face compliments the way she wears her hoodie like a badass. I’m waiting for her response to my soliloquy, hoping she won’t just punch me because those have become largely ineffective; the first time was an out of body experience that made me want to be better, but of course I couldn’t be.

“You’re leaving a lot out, Cureton.” She says finally.

“Like what?”

“Like the truth. You’re missing a lot of truth.” She looks me in the eyes and there is no humor. I don’t think she appreciates my sarcasm and irony.

“Chavez, I know that its all bullshit, I’m not crazy. The whole thing is a joke. I’m a fucking joke.”

She slaps my face quicker than a blink and I taste blood in my mouth.

“Don’t curse at me.”

“I was just saying…”

“Don’t curse when you’re talking to me. That’s not you and I won’t watch you lose yourself.” She’s never this humorless.

“I curse all the time…” She slaps me again and I feel the cut in my mouth bigger, there is blood on my cheeck.

“Why do you need this to be different? Huh? Why can’t you just grow and mature and change like people do? Why do you have to bloodied to be your best?”

I spit, my mouth is filling with blood.

“Why can’t you be honest with yourself? Why do you laugh at the truth? You’re miserable because you choose to be. You’re smart enough to make everything you want happen, but you’re sitting here with me in a fake dimension, spitting up blood, making unfunny jokes, choosing to be alone. Tell me why?”

If I knew I would tell you. “I don’t know…” Another slap. I do know. “Cause I’m at my best on defense.” The words sound weird because my mouth hurts. “I don’t know how to make anything happen, I just go with the flow until things work out. My best actions are reactions.”

She yells at me to spit, then stands and grabs my face around my mouth tightly. The cuts inside disappear.

“What do you do now?”

“I just want to wait here forever for him. I know he’ll come.”

“What if he never does?”

“At least no one else will find me here. I won’t have to worry about it happening again. Not that it could.” I sound pitiful, and honest for the first time.

“You loved him that much…”

“Love, I love him that much.”

“You have to leave.” America looks around as the sky darkens, it had been a nice day. “You can’t survive it hear.”

I nodd. “I’ll leave. And I know I can’t come back. Thank you for everything. You kept me honest.”

“You’re not that great Cureton. What you did was mean and petty and if I were him I would never talk to you again either.”

I want to cry but I can’t anymore.

“He did things too.”

“But they’re forgivable, right? What about your actions?”

America kicks me in the chest and I fly back through the aether, in between time and space, and land on my bed in my dark room in my dark house.

6

I have a watch that I use to communicate with America now that she won’t see me anymore. I wear it all the time, I’m afraid to take it off because I know that I’ll forget to put it back on. She’s been good about answering me, but its not the same, I miss her mean glare that kept me in check, and honestly, I miss the way her punches made my face numb, like the part of my cheek where she hit me was in some far off place I could never catch up to. But she was right, it’s not good that I needed that and I was wrong to make her my abuser; she’s so much more than that.

“Chavez, I haven’t had a drink in a week.” I said into my watch the last time we talked.

“So, you’re not an alcoholic Cureton. That was never your problem, you just adopted it to lay over your real problem that you refuse to deal with.”

“But it’s progress right.”

“Are you asking or telling? Either way, it’s nonsense.”

“I’m not waiting for him anymore.” I said and my voice broke, my eyes stung. “He’s better off right?”

“Are you done? I’ve got some ass to kick and this is boring me.” I pictured her flying into battle against some interdimensional monster with hundreds of tentacles, in a space far beyond dreams and imagination. How dare I even bother her.

“I miss you.” I said weakly.

“You miss him. You just fucked it up and now I have to hear everything you want to say to him. Don’t use this line again until I get my friend back, I miss Roy a lot.”

It’s been a few weeks.

7

I went out today, to dinner with a cousin, and we had Mexican food. I enjoyed forgetting about everything that I regret to discuss things with my cousin that were interesting to us both; it’s true, marvel comics are now full of RDJ Tony Stark clones, and Civil War had just as many plot holes as BvS. And then he mentioned that he is watching Breaking Bad and I felt a pang, realized my reality, then powered through, I can talk about Breaking Bad for hours in autopilot, it just takes me back, to a summer before this one that I will remember forever as one of my favorites, when I first watched the show in a mad dash to see Walter White get his comeuppance. It was a good dinner and I left following my GPS from Waxhaw to Rock Hill on roads that I had never driven before, and I realized that I am still justifying my move south. I am a North Carolinian, very proud of it, and I’ve made jokes my entire life denigrating South Carolina and it’s inhabitants, not because I really believed it, but because South Carolina is the butt of NC jokes like New Jersey is for NY. As I was driving home, I was listening to Fresh Air, an interview with the writer of a book called Blood At The Root about a racist town in the south that drove out its black population in the 80s and my fears about dark country back roads started to nag. But the drive was beautiful; it was dark, but it was obvious how pastoral the scene was with the light of the full moon glossing it; two lanes of traffic both ways lined with trees, then lots of grass, then random spatterings of trucks parked on hills, then bridges over black rivers too far away to really see. My windows were down and traffic was steady, not heavy, and 55 felt like an easy 40, I almost liked driving again. It was nice, and not once did I reach for my watch, I didn’t need the rescue.

I dream of one day driving with you (you drive, and I’ll look past you through your window with your hand in mine, kiss your cheek and love you forever).