Mad World Existence - 4. Chapter 4

Troy opened his eyes and found that everything was blurred, a physical representation of how he felt, but all of sudden he remembered where he was and the particularly weird dreams he’d been having lately. He called out for the nurse’s assistance as he found that he couldn’t move and that his arms and legs were strapped to the bed. He was confused, he didn’t understand what had happened to him and why the hospital staff had felt it necessary to strap him to the bed, but the most present feeling was that of fear, and when no one came, a slow feeling of despair crept over him, starting somewhere near his toes and slowly moving upwards until he was shaking. He didn’t really understand why he felt this way, but the fear and despair when combined virtually froze his mind, to the point that he didn’t even notice when the nurse came into his room to check up on him and untie his bonds.

The next several weeks were filled with visits from doctors, specialists, therapists and other people who he had no idea why they were there, but he tolerated their presence, because he wanted to leave and commit the one act that he thought would bring him eternal peace. During his long and arduous period of recovery the ‘thing’ that he thought he had seen hadn’t appeared and so he decided that it must have been a figment of his imagination or a manifestation / hallucination of one of his fears, according to his therapist things like this could happen during times of extreme stress and periods in a person’s life where they suffer extreme emotional trauma.

Later that month he was released from hospital, despite the fact that the therapist assigned to him had wanted him to stay another couple of weeks, he had been overruled by the hospital administrator who was a porky sort of woman that sported a short haircut and talked with a nasal kind of voice. In addition to all these things, she had a terrible sense of fashion and her skin looked like she had bleached small patches of it over her arms and what was visible of her face. Troy totally preferred the nice, young and rather hot therapist that he had been seeing during his sessions. The therapist had soft, brown hair that was styled in a funky haircut that looked as though it belonged on someone younger, although Troy thought that it suited him just fine. He also admired the body that his therapist had, at least what was visible through his clothing at the times when he tried to manipulate the situation in order to see more. It turns out that the therapist’s name was Allen, he was twenty-five years old and that he knew that Troy was bisexual. At least that was the pretense that Troy had maintained with Allen, he sometimes felt as though Allen could see right through him and that he knew that he was secretly gay. For some reason he felt slightly ashamed, despite there being no one to pass judgment; all of his family no longer wanted anything to do with him and all of the people that he had thought were his friends were nowhere to be found. The day he walked out of the bleak hospital, filled with blinking lights and endless beeping, he approached Allen and told him two simple words;

“I’m gay”

Allen responded by saying, “it took you long enough, I went through all those therapy sessions waiting for you to acknowledge yourself and after all that, you tell me only once you were released?”

Troy smiled and said, “Well at least now I don’t have to listen to you analyzing why I hid it from you”

“So why did you hide it from me?”

“Do want the sad truth or something to make yourself feel better”, he asked Allen

“Definitely the truth”, Allen responded

“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you….I suppose that I was scared of how you would react, and yes I know that you’ve told me like a million times that whatever I am is okay with you and that you don’t care, but you can’t deny that me telling you that I’m gay and that I think your totally hot wouldn’t change the doctor patient dynamic”

“My, my aren’t you feeling better”, laughed Allen

Troy blushed and his whole face turned red causing Allen to laugh even harder, attracting stares from some of the more nosy hospital staff, the other moving about their mundane duties, never stepping outside of their routine. It was rather surprising, the realization that the people who worked at the hospital behaved just like the mindless drones that worked in offices, particularly those in the public service offices, ‘gee they were incompetent’.

Finally Allen stopped laughing and gasped for air and wiped the tears from his eyes with the black woolen jumper that he had worn upon Troy’s suggestion. Troy had a good laugh when Allen had worn that jumper, it was hideous, but Allen had worn it just for Troy.

At that point Allen reinitiated the conversation with, “I will miss you buddy”

Troy’s heart sank at them precise moment that those words left Allen’s mouth. He was attracted to Allen and he had dared to hope and now all of his hope of anything every happening between them drained away, like soapy water down the sink drain, but without the all the drama of noise.

“I’ll miss you too, thanks for everything you did for me”, said Troy

Allen responded by saying, “that’s okay buddy, now don’t forget if you need anything come and visit”

Troy knew that the invitation was an empty one; it was something people just said when they didn’t know what else to say to you. Another example of this came to mind when his friends had said, “you’re not fat, you’re skinny and no we aren’t joking”. They all lied off course, but that wasn’t the point, they had just been too nice to openly say, “You’re fat, get on a diet you pig”.

Ending on that thought, he said “see you later” and left the hospital, heading towards the alleys that surrounded the CBD, with what remained of his possessions, which constituted the clothes on his back and those odds and ends that were in his pockets.

As he entered an alley that appeared to be safe from the entrance, he noticed that the shadows had begun to lengthen and that he had just walked through a sea of people that were all walking around on autopilot, with their i-pods blaring and going about their monotonous routines. He shook his head to refocus on the situation he was in as he had nowhere to sleep. It at that precise point in time that he decided that the safest place for him was this alley, as the only thing that appeared to be remotely threatening was the black cat that was licking a cube of rancid butter in the gutter, next to the trash can filled with rotten ‘stuff’ that once resembled food.

He moved some cardboard from inside the dumpster and placed them in a fashion that would allow him to cover himself up. He sat down, pulling the last cardboard piece into place and resisting the urge to shiver and cry, he lay his against the side of the dumpster he fell asleep, still giddy from the medication that he had been on.

His peaceful slumber was disrupted by a crash nearby and a group of voices shouting and cursing…