Part I ~ Part II ~ Part III ~ Part IV ~ Part V ~ Part VI
The Kris Story, Part VII
or...The Walk
4.16.8
It's almost embarrassing now to recount the amount of times I forgave her. I had failed to graduate high school on time because of that trip to Reno; while I was sitting in a jail cell, she had been drinking and having sex on her own personal party bus. Even after that I had let her back into my life.
Our relationship became a parody of itself. The same tragic stories kept repeating themselves over and over again. The exact circumstances were different each time but the heartaches were the same...and I stupidly subjected myself to it all. I kept trying to break the cycle somehow, but like yellow flashing lights on a casino, we kept running in circles, continuously tracing out the same highs and lows.
The problem remained that those highs were so thrilling to me that I had almost resigned myself to simply accepting each inevitable fall. This story doesn't do much to illustrate the times when she was decent to me, but those moments were plentiful. I simply can't put them into words interesting enough to print. Her saving grace was really in the simple things. It was those perfectly enjoyable days we spent together that made me think I could spend my life with her.
Plus, I always had the standard excuses for her behavior. She was definitely a different person sober than she was stoned. Unfortunately, she had graduated from marijuana into even harder drugs, which didn't help matters. As time passed, she eventually had tried damn near every drug known to man. I also accepted the daddy card every time she pulled it. Both of these things affected her in a very real way I suppose. My willingness to let them affect me, however, was unacceptable.
Yet it continued. For the next year and a half, she came in and out of my life regularly. For every high achieved, a new low was just around the bend.
After leaving my parents' house and moving into an apartment of my own, I had found a great job bartending. When I realized that Kris too was looking for work, I got her a job as a hostess/occasional underage cocktail waitress. She was very happy and appreciative. Another high!
A few days after she started, we went to celebrate her new job with a few friends. The other bartender had rented a motel room for us to hold the party in. After everyone else had left, the three of us were lying on the bed, falling asleep. At least I was...until I heard the sounds of her making out with him right next to me. This was despicable, even for her. Angrier than I had ever been at her, I jumped up screaming and cursing. I grabbed the phone, tore it from the wall and threw it across the room, breaking it into several pieces. I then picked up a chair and shattered it on the ground. I soon ended up outside, continuing my outburst by kicking a drainpipe into a brand new shape while they tried to stop me. Eventually, I calmed down and (after pouring my heart out to her) they went back inside, leaving me to spend the night in her car. The next night at work I drank so much that I ended up vomiting in the bathroom before passing out upstairs, thus completing the crash to a new low.
Later on she was beginning to regularly hang out at my apartment: High.
On one of those afternoons (as one of our acquaintances was having a little too much fun strapping her hands to the futon with a belt) my friend O'Malley and I decided to secretly administer a test. Curious just how little respect she had for me, we turned on my phone tap/tape recorder and took a quick trip to the store. Obviously, she fucked him in my living room during the short time we were gone: Low.
But then...I was just setting myself up for failure anymore, wasn't I? I kept thinking I was giving her the benefit of the doubt, but I was really just giving her opportunities to do what she did best: Hurt me. Like Wile E. Coyote, I needed to learn that I was chasing after a cruel, vindictive being who would always win. It became hard to feel sorry for me when I kept placing myself under that falling boulder with nothing to protect me but a tiny umbrella and a sign that read, "HELP."
In a particularly self-destructive plot, I had come up with the idea of "The Walk." While it never came to fruition, I had talked about it with my closest friends on more than one occasion. O'Malley especially liked it, offering to come with me if I ever did it.
The Walk was a 1,900 mile journey from Aurora, CO to Cape Canaveral, FL. The basic idea was that I would traverse the country on foot in some grand gesture to prove my love. Symbolically, it was like rescuing a princess from a dragon (simultaneously proving my worth and inspiring her into true love). Throughout the 2 month long trip, she would hear updates about us and where we had been. My dedication would certainly make her smile...at least in private. Towards the end, she would be given a plane ticket and a choice. Would she meet me at the edge of the ocean (which she had never seen but always wanted to), or would I arrive and find myself alone and disappointed?
It was the kind of over-zealous romantic idea that I imagine would make a better movie than a real-life scenario. It was said that if she didn't show up, I was to keep on walking into the endless unforgiving ocean. I knew it would never come to that, but a plan this absurdly surreal needed an equally artistic ending. In reality though, whenever potential scenes from The Walk played in my head, I always saw it as becoming a quest of self-discovery somehow. I knew that it would change me, and by the time it was over I probably wouldn't have wanted her regardless of the choice she had made. I doubt I would have regretted the experience, at least.
I never told her about The Walk, but one of my friends did. After that she avoided me for quite some time. It also led her to come up with her new favorite pet name for me: "Psycho."
I had already thought of mine for her. It was "Whore."
To be continued...
