“The Statement of X--- Y--- Z---" Part 6

by Seuzz

Heh. I don't want to start off being argumentative, but no, I wouldn't call my move into Peter the "start of my new life." You're moving to fast and making too many assumptions about what I wanted and why I was doing these things. Yes, when I crawled into Peter I had no intention of going back to my old life, and yes, by crawling into him I was crawling into a new life. It was the start of a "new life" in that sense, I'll grant you. But I wasn't planning on crawling out of him any time soon, and I wasn't planning on crawling lots of other people, if any. So, if by "new life" you mean it was the start of my life as a serial crawler, no, it wasn't. That came later.

Well, I had lots of reasons for not wanting to leave Peter. First of all, it hadn't really occurred to me that I could live as a serial crawler. I'd had problems enough getting into and out of people, thank you very much, so I just assumed that I'd have to stay in Peter for a very long time. Also, mostly I was looking for a better life, and in Peter I'd found one. Not just better, it was itself a good life. He had a solid family. His father owned a small but successful business. He had a good mother and some younger siblings. He had a good body, a good-looking body, and he was, um, socially adept. He had friends, and he made friends easily. He had fun, playing sports and socializing with his circle. He had prospects. I was inside him by the time it came to seriously start applying to colleges, and we, or I, managed to get into the state university. He was going to go off to that school with his girlfriend, and we were already talking about getting married and starting a family. It was everything I didn't have, everything that you were supposed to want. Why would I want to change?

So I stayed in him, a little bit out of fear of not being able to get into anyone else if I left him, I'll admit, but mostly because I thought I had arrived.

Yes, I was looking for fun, and he had fun, in his way. The kind of fun I'd witnessed from afar in school, and the kind I'd been jealous to have. Sports, popularity, friends. We did have some new experiences together. Not long after graduation I took off with some of his friends. We were supposed to drive out to Omaha, to find some digs, but after we got out of town we took a long detour and wound up down at the beaches in Texas. Spent a week down there, living on the beach, playing on the beach in only our t-shirts and swimming trunks. We ditched the former during the day while we played football, flashing our young and healthy torsos for the benefit of the girls. I hooked up with a couple of them, even--a new experience for me and Peter both. We drove back up to Nebraska with some great memories and a nice tan.

In the middle of the summer I drove back to Omaha with my dad and got a spot in the dorms. Bought some necessities, and a few weeks later moved in. I drove around town, finding the bars and the hang outs. Christie followed soon after, so I didn't have a chance to play around any more. I tried out for the football team and got a spot, but it was clear I wasn't going to be a star. That's okay. We loved to play the game, Peter and me. We worked out and practiced on the field and made new friends. Classes started, and I buckled down to study. I joined a fraternity, and was invited to move into the frat house at the start of the spring semester. New friends, popular friends there. Christie and I stayed serious, but there was a bit of a drift. I found myself looking at the other girls and wondering if I should settle down so soon with one girl, with her. The trip down to Texas had whetted my appetite, and I cheated on her more than a few times. We had fights and then we had makeup sex. Christie was cute, but not so cute as to think that she could just hang onto me without any effort. The other guys made sure to remind me that I could do better than her.

Yeah, but I didn't think this kind of thing was out of the ordinary. A lot of my friends were going through the same thing, so I figured it was part of being a healthy, normal, college-age guy. And I saw enough other guys who were in worse shape. Small guys, thin guys, fat guys, guys who didn't have the advantages I had with Peter. So I had no desire to change. Oh, every once in a while I'd catch myself eyeing one of the other guys speculatively. Someone would have a hot girlfriend for awhile. Someone else would be hooking up with lots of girls. Someone would have more spending money or would be getting better grades. There were, of course, guys on the football team or on the basketball team who were better than me and got a lot more attention. But no one had a life that was clearly or solidly better than Peter's, and it seemed that if I made an exchange I'd simply be trading one set of advantages and disadvantages for a different set.

What happened was that the ceiling fell in on his life. His mom died.

It happened during my second semester, during the spring. I'd been Peter for a year, had grown totally comfortable as him. And his mother was a good woman, so it was a real shock to me. To both of us, though I wasn't always clear in my own head how much of our life was mine because I was Peter and how much of it was me just pretending being Peter. But it was a bad shock, and worse followed.

I was at school when one of his uncles called. That by itself was a bad sign. She'd had a heart attack, sudden and fatal. She wasn't an old woman, so it was surprise. I went home, of course, and found an ugly scene.

Peter's dad had gone to pieces. I got home and found that my-- his-- brother and sister, who were a few years younger than Peter, had left to stay with relatives. His dad was by himself, and when I found him he was drunk. He had never been a serious drinker, that I knew of, and I found him in the den, just sitting, unmoving. He wouldn't talk, wouldn't stir, just stared at the TV set, which was off, holding a whiskey bottle. There was a bad odor in the house. Not literally, but the air was still, and felt and smelled defeated, as though some spark had left it. I had to leave him as he was, in his recliner, seeing nothing and feeling nothing but death around him, and went to find that uncle. He was grim. He knew what was going on in that house, but had nothing to say about it. I had to go home, to more silence.

A day or two passed, and Peter's dad showed no sign of coming to life. The funeral home called to make arrangements, and he mulishly refused to acknowledge me when I went to find him. I had to talk to them, and wound up having to take over all the planning. I had no idea what to do, and that uncle had to leave town himself on other business. It all fell onto me--the coffin, the service, the minister. I agreed to everything they put in front of me. Peter's dad came to life briefly when he found me at the dining room table, looking numbly over the paperwork. He got pissed because he saw it was going to be expensive. We had a horrible fight.

He skipped the funeral, if you can believe it. I started dreading it when I had to leave the house, not knowing what I'd find when I came home--another dead parent, maybe. I hid the shotguns, but there are a lot of ways of doing oneself in.

And then there was the stuff afterwards. The insurance, the finances. She'd had her own money, a good bit of it she'd squirreled away out of her household allowance and from her own side businesses in baking and hair-dressing. She'd invested it, and done well with it over the years, so there was a broker and some lawyers to deal with. I found out all that myself, often in unpleasant ways.

I-- or Peter-- both us, I guess, lost all respect for his dad. I had to take over his business, long enough to furlough his employees, and had to tell them I didn't know if the business would resume. There were some half-completed projects--he did plumbing and electrical work--and not all of the customers were happy. I had to run interference, because there was no way I could expose them to Peter's dad, or him to them.

I got things into some kind of stable pattern long enough that I could return to the school. It was supposed to be a break from the shit back home, but it was worse, because I didn't have anything to distract me. I was in no shape to have a social life, and my friends were no help, because they kept partying and having fun with their normal lives. I couldn't sleep. I'd lay in bed, waiting for my roommate to come back, often with a date, so I'd have to move out into the common room. Things had gone south with Christie before Peter's mom died, and though we didn't break up, we were strained, and we didn't have fun with each other. She tried being good with me, but I was in no mood for it.

The breaking point came one night as I stared at the dark ceiling. Suddenly, I just wanted to crawl out of my skin. Peter did too. The difference was that crawling out of his skin was something I could do. Problem was, I'd been in him long enough that I had a hard time separating my feelings from his, and to give up on him in this crisis seemed like a terrible dereliction. An abandonment. But then it occurred to me that I couldn't do anything for him anyway. I had no strength or knowledge that he didn't. I didn't add anything to our partnership. He'd be no worse if I left him. And once I realized that, I couldn't get out of him fast enough.

Still, I knew that a change would have to be arranged. I couldn't just lunge from him.

I had to wait a day or two, a very tense time. Then one night I invited my roommate out to a bar. Supposedly just to hang out, but it was to get him drunk. I bought him round after round while keeping myself relatively sober. He got smashed, which wasn't unusual for him. I had to deflect him from the girls in the bar. It was touch and go for a bit--we almost came to blows a few times--but I steered him out of the bar, half carrying him, and got him home and into our bedroom, where I threw him onto the bed. Pulled his shoes and socks and pants off, turned him onto his back. He mumbled and grumbled and scratched at himself. He was a disgusting sight--filmy with perspiration and cigarette smoke and banked testosterone, and I don't think he'd showered that morning. Not an appetizing destination, but the only one I could set up. I turned off the lights and sat on the edge of Peter's bed, waiting. Eventually his breathing turned heavy and then he began to snore, sawing heavily. I waited a bit, in case he woke up. After a very long time I decided it was safe. I lay back on Peter's bed, and for the first time it occurred to me that maybe I'd been in him too long, that I wouldn't be able to crawl out of him.

A baseless worry, as it happened. It was like turning loose, unhooking a grasp I didn't know I'd been exercising. I didn't so much crawl out of him as I let him expel me. It was like bobbing to the surface of a thick pool. I rolled over and fell off him, and onto the floor. I held my breath, worried I'd been too loud, but I heard nothing except his roommate snoring. I slid over to the other bed and gingerly raised myself onto it. I took one last glance back at Peter, but he was just a dark mass in the black room. I straddled my new body and put my hands onto his face and chest. It was going to be bad when I woke up, I was sure. I'd have a terrific hangover. Then I took a deep breath and pressed down onto him. I sank swiftly into him.

It was awful when I came to. I was sick and shaking, and I didn't dare move. My head was a tangle of thick wool and cotton, with someone softly beating it with a mallet. I huddled under the sheets and wondered what would happen if I hurled--would I come out of this new guy along with his last meal?

Finally I woke up enough that I could move around feebly. I looked over at the other bed. Peter was gone. Shakily, I pulled myself together and sat up. When I felt strong enough I staggered to my feet and wove my way out of the room and to the bathroom. I bumped into someone on the way; he said something and I mumbled something back. In the bathroom I crouched on the toilet, head down, getting myself together. It was cold, and that did me some good, so that I could stand up again. I went to the sink, ran some cold water, splashed myself in the face with it. Then looked in the mirror.

You'll notice I don't remember the name of the guy I'd crawled into. I wasn't in him long. But I remember the face. Dark hair, thick, standing up every which way. A few days growth of beard. He wasn't a sports player, just a fraternity punk, so I didn't have much mass under the t-shirt. Gingerly, I ran through what I now knew about him. Nothing, really. Just a nineteen-year-old jerk, off to school to party and get laid. I grinned. After the drama Peter had to deal with, that was all I wanted.

This, really, was the start of my new life, if you want to pin a date to it. I decided I wasn't going to deal with any shit. I wasn't even going to let shit get close to me. Peter had had a good life, and then shit came out of nowhere and hit him in the face. I decided I wasn't going to stay inside anyone long enough for shit to have a chance of getting itself together for a strike. Certainly I wasn't going to stay in this new guy long. I didn't even want to look at Peter anymore. Maybe I felt shame for running away from him. But that day, that morning, I decided, I was going to find myself someplace new. And someplace new after that. And someplace new after that.