Innocence Creates My Hell

 

It must have be a Saturday afternoon when I bought my first copy of Facelift. It must have be August, 2001. As I remember it and as I write these lines, I still can't believe Layne Staley would be dead eight months later. I still can't believe his parents would find his corpse half decomposed from an overdose, at his apartment, eight months later. Still can't believe his death would tragically coincide with the eight anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death. 

Anyway, even if I knew these data, I wouldn't mind. I kinda disliked Alice In Chains 'cause they were the favorite band of Suzy's ex. She was my girlfriend but we had a murky relationship. She always spoke of him. She always kept him informed about our relationship and so he appeared each time we had a fight, like if he were a gentleman and a mature guy.

Though he was almost thirty years old and we were in our early twenties, he behaved like a silly teenager. He was a hypocrite, a coward and a blackmailer. Short after Suzy and myself started to hang out, he blackmailed her. He told her that he would commit suicide, if she didn't become his girlfriend again. He told her that he and his friends were going to kidnap me and to torture me to make me feel the pain he was suffering. He was such an idiot. Suzy broke with him several times before we started to hang out 'cause he was a moron. I had nothing to do with it. I didn't help him out to be a moron. He was an expert in being a moron. 

Anyway, as I believed I was so ugly and so stupid to call the attention of another woman and as Suzy was so afraid of loneliness, we had this murky sickening relationship. We believed we were adults, but we behaved like teenagers. We hated each other but we we're so co-dependent that we could barely be apart. We were working on the experiments of our bachelor's degree thesis', so we had to see each other from Monday to Friday.   

Earlier on that day, we went to a mall and I bought Facelift and Broken at the record store. for a reason I don't remember, she slept that night at my parent's house. All I wanted to do was to listen to this album, but she had another plans. 

As soon as we got to my parent's house, we must climbed up the stairs and we must went to my bedroom. We must smoked a cigarette on the balcony and then we must lied on the bed and then we must spoke about silly things. 

She must have told me that she had to make a confession. 

Like The Coldest Winter Chill

I'm pretty worried. I have a thousand things to do and I can't tell anyone. 
I feel so guilty, like if I were a lazy and irresponsible guy. 

The last couple of weeks, I've been working in home. 

The last days I went to the university, I shared space and time with four women.
Two of them are pregnant. Other is younger than me and probably she travels on a daily basis from Lerma to Mexico City and viceversa, and she's exposed to unknown viruses from unknown people. 

The other woman maybe has my age. She has told me that we knew each other when we were postgraduate students, almost ten years ago. She says someday I went to the lab where she worked and a friend of her introduced us. Honestly, I dunno remember that day.

Her husband works at a hospital and they have two kids. He was exposed to COVID-19 suspicious' patients the entire week. She was snoozing and coughing all day long and she told me that she was allergic and that she had forgotten her anti histamines. I believed her. 

Even though we avoided physical contact, some students went to the office. Some of them tried to give you the hand and some of them coughed and sneezed. 

Also, on an everyday basis I was traveling from my house to the university and back from university on public transportation. In Lerma, there are some sort of shared cabs and I took four of them each day. Passengers were pretty close to me. Some of them coughed and sneezed, like if they were harmless behaviors. It was impossible to keep distance. 

The last day I came back from university, I was OK. 

The day after, I had to go to the supermarket. We we're running out of food!

We took an Über. We did what we needed to do, as fast as we could. 

The supermarket was sort of empty. There were just a few customers walking here and there. 
I saw an elderly couple making their shopping and I suddenly imagined that my wife and myself could be those elders at some point, and I felt excited. 

Even though I have a bad feeling on that, I just can't stop thinking of one period of my life on which I can do all the stuff I love to do –writing, playing my electric guitars, reading–, just as I do now, but excluding all these horrible bureaucratic issues I sometimes have to deal with... and just giving a fuck for the entire world.  

It called my attention one thing: the section of canned food was almost empty. 

As we were about to pay our shopping, I started to have the chills. 

Later, back in home, I felt sort of ill. I had abrupt changes of temperature and I felt weak and sleepy. I felt my bones hurting, like if I just had walked for miles under a heavy rain. I was exhausted and I thought I was about to have the flu. 

On these days it's impossible to be unaware of COVID-19 symptoms' and I got worried.

Maybe I was just paranoid, but what if I was about to get sick...?, what if I would have to isolate from my wife and from the world...?, what if someone in the job had just infected me?

To things get worst, my wife is hypertensive...

I talked to my sister in law –she's a physician– and I told her how I felt and she recommended me to take some Paracetamol pills. 

I had a couple of terrible nights. 

I dreamt my colleague –the one who was coughing and snoozing in the real world– and myself had some sort of ill relationship. We were hiding from all the people who know us and trying to have a serious conversation. I sensed that she was pregnant and I was so afraid and I felt so stupid. 

As the dream progressed, the environment became darker and colder. It seemed that the Earth was getting sick, too. 

I also had hypnopompic hallucinations of my colleague and I woke up several times repeating a magic word who supposedly would end up this pandemic. 
Obviously, I was febrile. 

I had nightmares and I barely slept three or five hours per night. 

The entire weekend, I felt so weird. 

I convalesced watching some old Headbanger's Ball shows' with Alice In Chains on YouTube. It was very strange. They were premiering some videos of their 1995' eponymous album. I have heard that album several times, I like it a lot. I even own a physical exemplar of the compact disc. I bought it at El Chopo a couple of weeks ago. It's sad to realize that compact discs are in extinction pathways. 

Nevertheless, I hadn't watched their videos. Neither I had seen an interview of the band around that time. 

As I saw Layne Staley, with an heroin-addict appearance, trying to focus on the silly questions of Riky Rachtman, I realized that I never think of him as a contemporary of Kurt Cobain and Mark Lanegan –even though I'm a big fan of Tom Hansen's awesome novel, on which he describes, in a pretty rad way, how “heroin world” was in the early 90's–, but as a musician from another time and genre. 

I supposed my opinion is influenced by the fact that someone who I really dislike introduced me to Alice In Chains and that he was crazy about Mad Season. 

It was pretty strange. 

And, for a couple of seconds, as I died on my bed, I felt I was fifteen years old and that I was watching for the very first time an Alice In Chains' music video. I ended up thinking about myself back then. In resume: in 1995, my life wasn't as boring as it seemed to me. I just was a damned stupid. I didn't even know how to play “Queen of the rodeo” on guitar. All I wanted to have was enough time to read poetry, to write poems and to befriend with a crazy punk rocker girl. 

Now, as the disease spreads across the country and the authorities seem to give a fuck about the physicians, the small businessmen and the rest of the citizens, I have to deal with the fact that my colleagues might see me as an irresponsible lazy guy. 

(Really guys, believe or not: my life would be on risk if I moved from Lerma to Mexico City, on a daily basis.) 

I live in Lerma 'cause I have to teach classes almost everyday, 'cause I have academic meetings almost everyday... 'cause I have to work on a million bureaucratic issues... I don't have a car to move by my own resources and by my own risk to Mexico City. I don't even drive. I have not even had a driver's license!

Besides, I can't eat as a normal person. Moving implies many complications to me. 

A couple of years ago, I had a surgery and I can't fast for more than three hours and I cannot eat the food normal people eat. Moving is not a simple option to me, right now. 

My colleagues perform some experiments in Mexico City. They are allowed to do it before 14: 00. I spend three hours from my house to the lab. Public transport currently has some limited schedules. It's pretty complicated. 

Hate to say so. 

On this quarantine, I wake up early in the morning and I turn on the laptop and I start to work from 8:00 to almost 18:00 0r 19:00. 

Usually I have a couple of meetings via Skype, at last once per week. 

For two weeks I've been writing the discussion of a paper. Normally, I don't even have time to do it. I just, in general, dislike the data, but I must publish this paper, some way or another.

Right now, I have to write a protocol from a totally different research project... I have to make an awful tax process... I have to start writing at last one review from a totally different topic... I have to start to prepare virtual classes for the two courses... and I wish I could enjoy everything I do, but I feel so guilty. 

I really hate it. 

Heaven Beside You

If Tears Were Liquor I'd Have Drunk Myself Sick

The night was dark and quiet, but Nadine felt her heart was shining aloud. She told me so. I felt the opposite 'cause I didn't love her and I didn't want to stay anymore with her. She used to control me and she had threatened me many times. All the time, she was about to break up with me and to get involved with her favourite ex, again. He was an idiot, a sad stalker. Once, he'd tried to kidnap me and beat me up, just to make me suffer as he suffered because Nadine was in a relationship with me. I didn't understand why Nadine told me so, but I felt sorry for him, and I also hated him. He was pathetic. 

One of Nadine's dogs', a Great Pyrenees called Layne, in honor to Alice In Chains' singer, had died on the last week, so I couldn't be rough. We crossed the parking lot and got to the Taurus. A few minutes ago, we were watching Pulp Fiction, and I'd just hated when she mentioned that Tarantino asked Cobain if he wanted to appear on the movie as a drug dealer. Of course I'd heard of it. That anecdote was so popular, and I was sick of it. You just had to read the booklet of In Utero to have an idea. Nevertheless, I smiled and hold her hand.  

Under the moonlight, Nadine looked like a movie star, blonde and fragile as Marilyn Monroe, but somehow stupid and selfish as Cindy Crawford. I was profoundly confused and tired. My thoughts were focused on just one thing: I wanted to end up that relationship. 

Suddenly, Nadine stared at me. Dim lights made it impossible to not look at her pale blue eyes. They were absolutely beautiful. Then, she asked me if I was sick, and I just told her that I was tired. Ironically, I started to feel sick. I just wanted to sleep. Abruptly, she started to cry. I tried to feel empathy, but I couldn't. "If you need someone to support you, you should call Andreas... He's always available for you", I told her, and she screamed and freaked out. 

We got into the Taurus and I turned on the radio, and the radio was playing a Mark Lanegan's song. Nadine drove the car as I enjoyed and felt connected to the music. She was silent and angst, and, in the middle of nowhere, she told me that she definitely was breaking up with me and that Andreas was a better guy for her than me. She stopped the car, and asked me to leave her alone. I was scared, but I felt drunk and happy.    

What else should I do?

via GIPHY