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My eyes, once bright green and alive, are now dead and unreflective of feeling. My hair, once cut close to my scalp by my father’s own hand, is now well past my shoulders and a mess of brown waves. It’s only down after a shower or bedtime; otherwise, it is always tied up in a knot on the back of my head. I don’t have any damn desire to go to the barber. That would mean I would have to talk to someone. I’m functioning just fine here without making those types of connections, and there is no appeal in changing that up.
I run my hand over my beard. It’s been three days since I last groomed. I shave every fourth or fifth day, but never down to the skin.
I am six-foot, five-inches of intimidation. I weigh in at two hundred and forty-eight pounds of muscle, and my skin is covered in black prison ink. I have no desire for anyone to look at me and become confused as to who I am. No desire to have someone look at me and want to know more about me, or who I was. I have no desire for anything but the occasional release I can get anywhere. All I have to do is force a smile and say a word or two in order to get that need met.
My appearance is intimidating. It keeps people away. I’m not trying to give off the illusion that I’m unapproachable. Illusion would imply it wasn’t real.
It is real.
I am Michelangelo Mazzini. I was once called a saint by my peers, my teachers, and anyone who knew me.
Not anymore.
Now I am known as Kid.
I lay on the king-sized mattress that sits in the middle of the floor and stare at the ceiling, waiting, waiting, waiting for sleep to take me. The numbness that is my life isn’t holding me back. Rather, it’s my mind that won’t turn off, waiting for the next move.
I try not to close my eyes on my own. I wait for exhaustion and the drugs to do the work for me. Otherwise, I will be fighting a losing battle.
Chapter Two
“Tatum, this is not what’s selling anymore. We need something...” Melanie pauses as she sighs.
Melanie and I have been friends since I sat next to her in a Shakespearian literature class we both enrolled in as an elective while attending Columbia for our Masters’ programs. Hers was in the classics; mine was in religion and journalism.
She loved fiction, a story you could get lost in, and I loved nonfiction, a story that didn’t allow you to run from your boring life, but showed you a life that you could get lost in and know it was real. Fairy tales were never meant to be believed in. They are stories written to scare children into behaving or else, so why waste time on them? Show them how to cope, what to avoid, and maybe a story that inspires them to do the right thing of their own accord.
She is the yin to my yang, the spring to my fall, the day to my night. The point is, she’s the lost-in-her-head kind of daydreaming chick, whereas I am the one who wants to get lost in reality to avoid getting lost in my head, and worse yet, believing that shit is even possible.
I am sure she has no other writers like me on staff. I am sure of this because one night, over drinks at Hotel Empire, she told me so. She told me in the sweetest way she could that I was my own worst enemy. That I had talent in abundance and was just too stubborn for my own good, and that if I were anyone other than “the Tatum” that played her Romeo a couple years ago, gaining us both an A in that godforsaken class, she would have walked away a long time ago.
We are opposites in our views on life, but who we are on the inside isn’t much different from the other. Both of us left our hometowns, knowing we were destined for greater things. And unlike most, we are willing to work our asses off to become. It landed us both in New York City, a city where we knew no one and no one knew us. A city that I swear wants to eat up young girls’ dreams and spit them back in your face.
Nothing about here is easy. What it is, though, is real. It’s gritty, it’s hard, and it’s all-consuming. If you can live here, you can live anywhere. Mark my words.
I know she could walk away at any moment, but Melanie would never. Even if she should run and not look back, that’s not who she is. It’s not who we are together.
We are forever friends, through thick and thin. The type of friends who you could talk to once every six months and pick up right where you left off. Though, in reality, we may go weeks without speaking due to work, but we have never gone more than a month at the most. She is my soul sister, and I am hers.
