Sometimes the paranoia creeps on every noise until everyone is asleep at their ten pm.
And I don’t want to leave the house the whole day, it’s gotten to the point that sometimes I just can’t stand either of them, curling up under the covers entirely and sulking, because nothing seems to go my way. Because nothing really ever goes on, nothing swirls enough outside my own personal void to do anything at all. And if I can’t beat my own melancholy how am I supposed to live outside it?
In the end Lazarus ends up knocking on my own door and I just shoo him off right after giving him some sugar which I didn’t even bother to ask if that was something he had decided to come after. I peeked out and looked at all of the closed doors, because everyone still wanted some privacy besides Peter who would smoke cigarettes in the kitchen, scrubbing his eyes and observing Dick spit in other people’s food. Peter was the owner of the apartment, an immigrant himself and oddly enough in the apartment we were all filled with people from elsewhere who came in here perhaps for a better life, but I couldn’t answer that for anyone at all. I didn’t know what had we all decided to live in the same place, that’s why English was so widespread in the house and was what everyone spoke to each other, never nagging at any other skill, which was something my mom warned me, pulling my collar up, doing my tie for some event.
I hadn’t called her in a good while and I could see her short hair tucked behind her ears to reveal her earrings and her constant short fringe which went through all of the years. Mother never changed.
Lazarus excused himself, quickly glancing at Peter who just sat there looking ahead. I wondered for a brief while what were Peter’s problems and what was it that ended up upon his thirty year old shoulders. He didn’t work and Dick had told me that he hadn’t worked a day, since he rented this out to five other people, something which was very common to see. People would end up getting big spaces and then rent out to everyone else who was in need and due to the crisis which made everything seem a bit dystopic in the capital due to that, so in the end you would see landlords not working and making more than enough. Peter just continued to look ahead and barely even blinked as I poured myself a coffee, because I didn’t want to fall asleep still at nine p.m. regretting that the day had been spent entirely sleeping, avoiding all the noises which had been coming from Dick’s room as his boyfriend had been over. They were a wide theatrical closing curtain of arguments, love and even louder fights. Today they didn’t bother to hide their excitement and I was presuming Peter could’ve been hiding from it in the furthest room which was the kitchen.
The person who I barely saw these days was Frank who was an early bird and I had nicknamed Cock who has breakfast at four a.m. every single day and usually turns on the old radio rather quietly or the telly, just something to numb his thoughts and all of the apartment house was filled with people who were somehow lost. Somehow had forced us to rent a room whether it was unavailability or lack of funds. Cock was the only one of us who was a father, with his girl visiting us from while to while and she would always make a mess out of the bathroom, which would leave Peter furious if it was anyone else other than Cock. But they somehow bonded as friends and I had mistaken them for lovers in the beginning, because I always presume that two close male friends are lovers. I always had.
I stared at them for a while, before realizing how straight had both of them been and realizing that most likely the only gay men had been me and Dick. Then Nathan, a much older gay man had moved in who didn’t talk a lot, but Peter would do the talking after he had once shared a cigarette with him in the kitchen and had heard everything.
Usually they’re very strict on pets, but when it came to Nathan he was allowed all of his cats. Which included three, two black ones and an orange one. They would wander all over the place and the problem started showing up when Julien began to get allergic to them. He would sneeze really loudly so I could hear him across the corridor and he would complain about the mucus nearly all the time, as one of the cats would pass. Nathan himself was a former rent boy as we had found out. That was all Peter had told me as I had passed it onto Dick later on in the day, as he was counting his needles for some reason in his room. His room had been rather tidy and seemed to match him. He would work out usually in front of an audience or he would keep the door open.
I wondered what caused him to move in here but I just presumed it had been some trans issue and looking at him I could only wonder what a great misfortune it had been to grow up as someone else and only then find yourself. But then I wasn’t one to say how exactly was it, but then maybe it would’ve been easier to find yourself entirely if you knew you had to start searching perhaps? Would that have actually made everything easier or much worse? I didn’t dare to ask Dick and I felt bad, but then I heard that he actually went by Dick with a bigger smile than Richard, which had sounded far too formal. He had a boyfriend who was trans as well and who would shoot glares at me. Once said boyfriend was eating a donut and stared at me, saying that he was just as gay as I was, to which I replied, well, of course, doh. But I still had gotten a glare. And I just decided to avoid the fellow, but instead he would glare at me very oh so often.
I wondered too much about them in the beginning, more out of curiosity like I knew that I didn’t know much about Nathan or Julien. That kind of curiosity but the more I would try to speak up, the boyfriend who didn’t even bother to introduce himself didn’t even bother to talk to me at all. They at least seemed to be dating for quite a while, which seemed surprising because Dick wouldn’t glare at me and sit with me on the balcony as we would exchange cigarettes, the main event of course was the fact that his surgery was ahead. I found out that his boyfriend wasn’t going to have it anytime soon, entangled with the fact that he was too busy sorting out his mental health history with a psychiatric doctor and that was holding him back from actually going out and signing up for all the therapy which would determine the fact that he was all okay to go and proceed with the said surgery.
I just kept listening to Dick as he was playing with the pack of cigarettes which I had set to the table up to offer, looking at me a bit dazed and confused, too many things going around his head. He joked that trans men all have the same haircut, since he and his boyfriend had an undercut and a few fellow other ones he knew had the same cut as well. I just didn’t know what to reply. With Dick for some reason maybe due to some online fighting Lazarus had told me, I just decided to keep my mouth shut on trans issues and I knew that I had known nothing, that’s why I only listened when it came to Dick.
Lazarus didn’t get along with Dick either, actually Lazarus didn’t get along with anyone besides me, because on the days when I had the dawn of my depression, that’s usually what happened, I would just solely listen to people. It was hard to read and let my eyes rest on any page at all, so I would just jump around and listen. Heck, I’d even wake up earlier or just not go to sleep to see Frank’s morning rituals of him cooking his eggs. And one of those morning he had sat there, and the thing is if you stay with people long enough they’ll talk to you. The thing is, everyone talks.
For a day I stayed in another guest house and I noticed that the whole family slept in the living room, it was three of them and that seemed to shake me inside, wondering about the jobs and employancy, how did it work. It wasn’t something I was too happy to see at first, but it surely was interesting to see how many people gave up work entirely or work had given up on them and they had given up every single room in their place for someone else to rent it and get money. I wondered how long would it take that said family to move out of their living room.
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I'm posting the chapters as the length of each Nano day to be very honest and I've finally caught up on my word count, I'm currently neck to neck with every day, but I'm proud. I have been struggling to write, so I brainstorm for every chapter with Callie because then it's easier and then I just start storytelling but until then my mind is blank, so that has been my method of work.
I didn't speak of the influences for this story in it's entire form. Callie had used to write a lot as well and that's how we met (she drifted into more historical fiction and now edits my work for typos and is my historical advisor for To Miles) and her Nano novel a few years back was about a set of guys which were going on a trip and it was filled with different stories sort of Trainspotting-esque, which she says was inspired by my novel Papercut (which you can find on this blog), so her Nano novel inspired me to write this. Also Trainspotting and Pulp's music heavily inspired the mood of this novel as well.
I've had really really bad experiences with apartments up to the point that my paranoia had gotten ptsd levels of trauma, so that's the side which explains where such feelings come in this chapter. Also I'm trying not to rush ahead to tell xD
Also I'm doing youtube videos these days, so don't forget to check out my latest video.
I hope you're enjoying the animal so far, if you are, please tell me so below in the comment section.
Thank you
<3
Jamie
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