Multiple Personality Wounds

A warm glass of milk slid across the countertop, just to stop perfectly square in front of me. I put down my cigarette to light up another one; the first drag always feels the best.

“Thanks Bart.”

The bartender flashed a half-grin.

“You know that you can’t smoke in here, right?”

“Fuck off.”

He caught the lighter I threw at him and reached into his shirt pocket to pull out his pack of smokes. As we stared idly into the nothingness stretching out of the window, the pub was slowly starting to fill in. Sarge was the first one to walk in - we never knew why we called him Sarge, but we never asked. Even though it was never explicit, there was a patina of respectability around him; we all knew the saying about old men in a profession where men died young. We both heard his voice through the swinging door - it’s usually hard to pin down one of us from just the voice but we had all come to recognize Sarge just from the sheer weatheredness of his.

“Good evening y’all.”

We both nodded our heads in acknowledgement. He sat right beside me at the counter where his drink was already prepared. He pulled out his pipe (which was an item of great discussion among us as none of us smoked a pipe and we were all deep down curious about where the diversion had occurred) and started packing the tobacco in slow, deliberate movements. I turned my head right to look out of the window just for a man to appear out of thin air on the seat beside me.

“This motherfucker…”, muttering under a breath while rubbing his jaw agressively as if he had just realized that it was there. “Edge is going nuts Sarge, I think you should go talk to him. He fucked me up real good.”

“You know that it’s none of our business.”

“Well at this rate it’s going to be just you, me and Bart.” I didn’t even dignify his smug gaze.

“I would finally have some peace of mind then”, flashing a smirk that was the mirror image of the one Bart wore constantly. We all knew that Kaczynski, despite being a mass murderer and a sociopath, had a soft spot for Edge. They had split off from the same ancestor on a fateful night where one of them decided to kill himself, and the other one decided that he might as well start with other people if he was going to go down this path.

“He has to figure it out himself like we all did. We can’t figure it out for him. Who knows, maybe you get a new friend out of it even.”

Kaczynski was half-lost in the ripples of his drink already and chose to let the conversation die. I realized that the room had filled up a bit more in the meantime. Bart was chatting with Socrates, Freud and Smirnoff; Buff was munching on a bowl of salad in the corner. Rust and Pop were shooting pool. No one had deigned to give the Family Pop [REDACTED] a nickname because we all resented him for obvious reasons. He especially was my arch-nemesis though.

“Hey Flanders, your wife is going to be mad if you go back home smelling like an ashtray”

“I’m surprised you can say ‘wife’ without getting sucked up into your own asshole, Byron” he shot back.

I raised my glass to his glass of milk, the spirits were high all around. “Good day for us”, I thought to myself.

I turned back towards the counter. Sarge and Kaczynski were abjectly staring into each other in the same way that opposite walls of a room stare at each other.

“Sarge have you ever made it to the girl on the subway in İstanbul? Cold November morning, I don’t remember the year. I think around 16 or 17.” It had become a game to try to figure out Sarge’s timeline because he never talked about it.

He gave me long side look (we were all the same after all), and choked the last remnants of the tobacco in his pipe.

“Yeah, I did. I can’t tell you what I did though.”

“Her name was [REDACTED], we ended up being together for 2 years.”

“2 years? That doesn’t sound like you at all.”

“You know what we were like back then.”

“I actually don’t - wait, is this Pop’s wife?”

“Nah, he ain’t got the balls.”

“Fair, how did y’all end up splitting?”

“Multiple Spouse Wounds”

“See, that sounds more like you.”

I reckon he was also in a pretty good mood because he decided to spread the love; “Hey Kaczynski, you ever touch a woman?”

“Jesus Christ dude”, he seemed rather exasperated “Yes I did, I loved her dearly.” He cleared his throat; “She’s dead now. You guys would have loved her too.”

I don’t think either one of us had expected this from a man we thought not capable of emotion towards anything that was not himself.

“I’m sorry dude.”

“It’s fine, it was our fault.”

I shrugged and got up; this conversation felt like it would be better without me in it. I hoped for a less sociopath-goes-to-therapy conversation and more of a japanese-waifu conversation and walked up to Kenshi smoking by the door.

“We need to escape this place samurai - you and me.”

“You never get tired of that joke do you?”

“Ain’t no reason to fix what ain’t broke.”

He extended a pack of Peace filterless - an offer I can never refuse. I pondered how we all had the habit of puncturing difficult tasks with tobacco. I extended my hand forward enough to miss the body of a man materializing in the space right between us, which promptly proceeded to collapse on the floor. Kenshi and I locked eyes for a prolonged moment in an exchange of unfinished emotions - I squatted to get a closer look as he tilted his head. The blood flowing from his wrists -our wrists- had turned the white knuckles into a pugilist’s gloves and had already started pooling beneath him. Everyone gathered around slowly.

“Is that Prod?”, Smirnoff inquired.

“Looks like it”, I replied; left hand keeping the right eyelids open to reveal abject eyes boring holes into infinitude.

“Wrists? The balls on that kid.”

“It finally got to him.”

I saw Smirnoff pass along a 50 note to Freud, “I thought it was gonna be Byron” he remarked without bothering to address anyone in particular.

“I wonder if he took anyone”

“Not if he spoke to Kaczynski anytime recently”

Sarge moved through the crowd and knelt beside me, you never knew if he was at a loss for words or just in general didn’t particularly respect the institution of language.

“Speech, Sarge?”

A wave of careful consideration passed behind his eyes before he opened his mouth.

“Well, he’s doing his integrals in heaven now.”

He pulled out his pipe - and everyone followed with an automatic motion to reach for their smoke packs. I took the whole pack from Kenshi, took one, and passed it along to Pop. Even he wasn’t above lighting one up after a loss.

“Bach, play something.” Rust yelled towards the back of the room. Bach started opening his violin case, changed his mind midway through and walked over to the jukebox. The first beats of The Spoils by Massive Attack echoed in the smoke drowned room as Bach turned towards us, leaning on the jukebox.

“Kid loved this song.”

As melancholic it was, the loss of Prod was deep down a relief to all of us. A secret that everybody knows, a secret that everybody knows that everybody knows, but still a secret none the less. What this tells about me, what this tells about us; hell, what this tells about you, is both obvious as it is peculiar.

Sarge and Buff moved to raise the body as the commotion subsided and Bart pulled out his bucket and mop. I found a spot at a table with Smirnoff, Socrates and Freud; they were already dealing a hand of poker as I sat down.

“You’ll need to wait for the next round.” Smirnoff said as he put down the deck. I absentmindedly grabbed it and started twirling it between my fingers. Smirnoff reached over to grab my arm and said “Don’t fuck up the order, the fates of the players are set now.” I pulled apart and cut the deck in half between my hands, “All that Dosto has rotten your brain Smirnoff, you know that’s fucking bullshit”. “Should’ve been you” he groaned between glugs of vodka and snatched the deck from my grip. Freud was grinning across the table.

“Why are you so afraid of commitment Byron?”

Now it was my turn to groan. “Ugh, I really set myself up didn’t I”, I decided to counter with an ad-hominem, knowing full well that that shit wouldn’t fly. “Look, we all know you got into that psychodiarrhea because you’d rather try to change other people than yourself, and could feel good about yourself when you inevitably failed.”

Freud burst out a laugh: “You think I don’t know dude? I’ve been down more layers of contrivance than the number of ugly whores you’ve put your rotten dick into”. Socrates smirked to my left, “Come on, what better time than this? We are already one down and with some downers we could speedrun the whole pub”, he took a swig, “You know it tends to come in waves.”

“Is tonight the night? Finally?” said Smirnoff grimly.

Everybody folded. Shit hands. Smirnoff gathered the cards and passed the deck to me. I shouted for Bart as I set on shuffling the deck. Every motion a new possibility, my fingers twirling the threads of fate like a lover’s hair. I took a sip of my whisky to keep bad metaphors at bay and dealt everyone a hand. Not bad.

“I’m game if Brothers Karamazov over here shuts the fuck up.” I said.

Smirnoff dropped his cards to reveal a 3 of clubs and a 7 of hearts which we couldn’t look away from fast enough, and said “I’m out.”

“This is not russian roulette Smirnoff, you can’t just dodge the blind.” Socrates was visibly annoyed.

“I just did, I don’t have any horses in this race.” and sunk back into his chair. He probably could’ve metabolized it if his vodka turned out to be poison at that moment.

“Well then” sighed Freud, looking at me expectantly.

I dealt the flop slow and deliberately (and didn’t deal a burn, which I knew would drive Smirnoff insane), buying time to construct what I was going to say; knowing full well that I would forget all of it as soon as I opened my mouth. And yet, I saw a line.

“When you say ‘Why are you afraid of commitment’, you make it sound like it has an intrinsic value - and that it’s something to be afraid of. Life was meant to be lived fluidly, yet -“

“Meant by whom? God?” Socrates interjected.

“Retracted. Life is to be lived fluidly, not trapped in some filthy neurosis borne by fear of abandonment. Face it, that’s what you are all living; no layers of contrivance, no amount of circular up the ass thinking can save you from that. The only thing you can feel is anxiety, and the only anxiety you can feel is the one taught you by the rancid soup in your skull that keeps pestering you to reproduce and you expect me to feel sorry for myself that I don’t get to spend the rest of my life with someone I lost interested in 10 years ago? I can love as much as you all can, the only difference is that I’ve got the balls to admit to myself when I don’t instead of furiously tugging on a shriveled, anxious attachment trying to turn it into something it’s not.”

I had to stop lest psychosis would start leaking out, we all knew this. I downed my glass and threw the ball to Socrates.

“What do you think philosopher boy? Got anything smart to say?” That was my call. And of course he did, he had been listening patiently since I had started speaking. Faint shadows stirring behind his face; 300 years of continental philosophy trying to keep his head from imploding and exploding at the same time - gears turning faster than Husserl would in his grave if he was reading this.

“Why do you care about what I think?” he barely tried to hide his glee. “But I’m being uncharitable, apologies.” He downed the remainder of his wine in a single motion and fixed his glasses for dramatic effect.

“When you say ‘life is meant to be lived like this’ you’re ascribing a certain meaning to it all. This is not an easily defensible position.” He shifted, looking for the perfect words. “Had you…You must place your beliefs on a firm ground. If you think this soup”, he tapped his temple with his index finger, “is meaningless, then what is? God? You don’t believe in god. You picked a losing fight just by choosing to talk about meaning.”

I tried to retort, but he cut me off: “Don’t say that you retracted it, we all know what you’re thinking. Had you said that ‘there’s no meaning, so my meaning is as good as ony other meaning, take it or leave it’, I would not belabor this point. But you did, and I think the fact of the matter is that there’s no meaning (Smirnoff grimaced at this but was too tactful to interject) and you can’t come to grips with it and you’re just externalizing your search of meaning in the form of multiple sexual partners. We are condemned to this soup, this soup of existence so I think it would be beneficial on your end if you came to terms with that.”

“Do you ever have original thoughts Socrates or should we just replace you with a robot that says Kierkegaard repeatedly?” said Smirnoff dryly.

Socrates hesitated for a moment to muster a reply but he thought better and let Freud cut him off.

“Knowledge is necessary for the illusion, Smirnoff.” Freud added with a similar dryness. “But it is not the content but the authority with which it is said. So yeah, if we all agreed to pretend like Socrates’ robot was speaking the truth, we would be able to get rid of him right now.” He wiped his nose. “You don’t need to go very far to see the severity of mental decay inflicted by philosophy; ugly fuck Sartre and his banshee witch goblin wife were certified child predators. They thought too much about what it meant to be human, they forgot to be human. Apparently don’t molest kids was too deep of a moral conundrum for them to untangle.” He was boring right into Socrates with his eyes.

“Ad hominem? What’s next? No you?” retorted Socrates, quite irritatedly.

“It’s not an ad hominem you retard.” Freud drew in half of his cigarette with a single breath. “God could be real and what they were preaching could be gospel and I would still shit on them. Who gives a flying fuck about truth if it can’t save you from your cretinous existence?” He turned towards me. “Don’t think I forgot about you, fuckface. You think you’re slick slinging around those big boy words? Socrates was right about you for the wrong reason - you’re just a mama’s boy but mother is gone and you need a new one.”

I spat my drink on the table - this had caught me off guard. I started laughing hysterically, “My mom? Is this the best you got dude? You don’t have to take your nickname so seriously you know.”

Freud was unmoved: “You’re not just that sophisticated Don Juan, I’m sorry. Standard issue issues. You’re just a serial disappointer because you’re looking for the unconditional love your mom didn’t give you, and you really need to disappoint people, just to see what they’re going to do, aren’t you? Except it ended up becoming your whole personality, they can’t be disappointed by the real you if you just force them away first. Except THIS is real you.” He was really reveling in the cruelty.

“You’re disgusting Freud.”

He must have thought he was, in fact, not disgusting enough; so he doubled down. “Am I disgusting? You would probably fuck your mom if you could. You’re disgusting.”

Smirnoff was plainly disgusted: “Don’t talk about our mom like that.”

“Fucking freak” I had to add.

“Fine, retracted. Call.”

I dealt the turn, again without burning (Smirnoff was unimpressed).

Smirnoff was a natural born Gambler - he could play without cards. He had given me the ammo I needed.

“Don’t you see the fatal flaw? We all had the same mother, yet you all jerk yourself off to sleep every night and I don’t. It all computes: young Socrates is trying to hide his own impotence under countless layers of drivel - not even his own drivel, he’s a cuckold; you’re trying hide your own impotence under your projection. If I was a craven bitch like you, you would have said that I was a people pleaser because I was transfering people to my mom, whom I couldn’t please. But I’m not, so you instead just decided to vomit the bullshit you just spewed. YOU can’t stop thinking about your mom. While it has nothing to do with anyone’s mom, at least not more than it has to do with any other woman.”

I had him in my sights. “All in.”

Socrates was not impressed “You cavemen can’t muster a thought more complex than 2+2 without resorting to no you. I’m out.” He wanted no part in this; he got up and left.

Freud’s expression shifted grimly. “You’re right, it actually doesn’t have anything to do with any of that. Shall we reveal?” Everyone nodded. I had a bad feeling in my stomach.

Freud flatly revealed his royal flush. “Why are we having this conversation?”

“What? You were the one who started the conversation!”

“But you did sit at the table didn’t you? Why? Did you think we were going to talk about football? No. You knew, deep down. This was never about anything we said at this table. The mother thing was just passing time, a bluff if you will. The truth, and I don’t mean that philosophically, is that you sat at this table for a reason. You were looking for something - what, I can’t tell you. Probably that’s what you were looking for, a what. We sit around this table spouting bullshit the whole day, and you were hoping that some of that, any of that would rub off on you.”

Smirnoff sharply snapped out of his daydream and turned to me: “You’ve got spirit kid - but you don’t need me to tell you that.” He passed me his flask - “If you’re going to take anything, take this: you don’t need us. For better or for worse.”

I downed the bitter vodka, tonight had been rather eventful. I passed the flask back to Smirnoff, he said “Keep it, I’ve got more.” We all got up. Socrates had just returned. “Bart is kicking us out.”

We exchanged a quickdraw crossfire of glances and nodded, then turned into a slow procession heading to the door. Sarge and Edge were walking in as we were walking out, I saw Edge rubbing his eyes but decided I’d find out another time.

I crossed the threshold and found myself alone in my bedroom. I turned to face the mirror.

“Do I need you? Do you need me?”