Post by Mimi on Aug 18, 2006 10:44:39 GMT -5
“I hurt myself today to see if I still feel. I focus on the pain, the only thing that’s real.” John picked up his shot glass of tequila and took a bitter sip. The liquid burned as it rode a familiar path down John’s throat toward his stomach.
“The needle tears a hole, the old familiar sting. I try to kill it all away, but I remember everything.” John picked up the glass and motioned for the bartender to give him a much-needed refill. He watched with half-closed contemplative eyes as the attractive redhead expertly filled another glass and set it down before him. He has too tired to appreciate her low-cut shirt which more than showed off what God or some doctor had given her.
“What have I become my sweetest friend, everyone I know goes away in the end.” John laughed at the irony of the words to the song that was playing on the jukebox as he picked up his glass and studied it.
“And you could have it all, my empire of dirt. I will let you down. I will make you hurt.” John raised the glass to his lips, threw back his head and downed the pale liquid in seconds. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Roman Brady sit down next to him and motion for the bartender.
“I wear this crown of thorns upon my liar’s chair, full of broken thoughts I cannot repair. Beneath the stains of time, the feelings disappear. You are someone else, I am still right here.” John picked up another shot glass in a toast to Roman, lost in the words of the song. Memories of his conversation with Marlena came to the forefront of his mind. Who was Marlena? Was she still the same woman that she was always was; the kind and generous woman that he passionately and completely loved like no other? Or was the real Marlena coming to the surface, the same person that she always was, but he was just too blind in love with her to see? How much pain and hurt was worth that love?
As Roman listened to the words of the Johnny Cash song, he studied John. John was facing the bar, staring straight into the decorative Coors mirror. Was he staring at himself or seeing someone else?
“What have I become my sweetest friend. Everyone I know goes away in the end.” John felt a deep coldness in his soul. It was true; everyone and everything that John ever held dear to him, was always lost in the end. Princess Gina, Rachel, Isabella, Marlena…
“And you could have it all, my empire of dirt. I will let you down. I will make you hurt.” Twenty years of a complicated relationship with Marlena. Twenty years of a love so completely consuming. Twenty years of the most fulfilling happiness that John had ever known. Twenty years of so much pain and hurt. John wondered as he lifted his glass to his mouth once again to down another shot, was all the pain really worth it in the end. Was their love true and pure enough to mitigate any pain that they continually had to go through to experience that type of love?
“If I could start again, a million miles away. I would keep myself, I would find a way.” He often wondered if it would be better for him to move to another city, far away, and start over. He wondered if Marlena ever felt the same. The more he felt her pull away from him and their family and friends, the more he thought it was true. If given a choice, Marlena would probably leave. Roman watched John silently and felt for him. John looked defeated, like he’d lost his best friend in the world, which to Roman, meant something probably happened with Marlena. Marlena was the one woman in the world who could put a look of such despair and hopelessness on John’s face.
“John, do you want to talk about it?” Roman asked, gesturing to the line of empty shot glasses in front of John. He counted at least ten, and wondered how many more the waitress had already removed.
“There’s nothing to talk about, my friend,” John said, as he turned to face Roman.
“Did something happen with Marlena? Did you to have a fight?”
“I wish,” John laughed. Someone had put more money into the jukebox and an upbeat song was playing. John didn’t want upbeat; he wanted sad and depressing. He wanted Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson. He wanted the alcohol to quickly take effect and numb the pain and hopelessness he was feeling. Why wasn’t it working?
“Is Marlena still the same?” Roman asked, well aware of their marital difficulties.
“Unfortunately yes, I don’t know how to help her….I don’t know if I can help her…I don’t know if she wants to be helped Roman.” John was slowly becoming resigned that this was just the way that things were going to be. He was trying his hardest to reach out to her to make her feel loved and appreciated before she had amnesia and after, but the more he reached out, the more cold and distant she became.
“Did something happen?” Roman asked as he picked up his can of beer and took a sip, knowing that one of them needed to remain sober.
“No, just the usual. I can see that something is bothering her and when I ask her about it, she shuts down.” The bruises on her arms still bothered and concerned him immensely. If only he could figure out what she was trying so hard to hide.
“Is that why you’re here and not at home with her?” Roman asked as he watched John take his cell phone out of his pocket and made a call.
“She’s not at home right now anyway…we had a conversation and she left?” John said as he listened to the familiar voice of the automated cellular service informing him that the customer he was trying to reach wasn’t available. That was laughable, she hadn’t been ‘available’ for months. Where the hell was she?
“Where is she?” John noted the concern in Roman’s voice. The alcohol that slowly was invading his blood stream was starting to effect his thinking. Why did Roman want to know? Did he already know? What did he know?
Shaking off his thoughts, John responded. “Hell if I know. I asked her if she was going to go to the hospital to see the babies and she said no, end of story. She left in a hurry and like always, I seem to be the last to know where she’s going or what she’s thinking.” John grabbed a handful of peanuts from a basket on the bar and popped them into his mouth. He wasn’t in the mood for the psychoanalysis of his and Marlena’s marriage that Roman seemed to be pushing. “Roman, you probably know more about what the woman is thinking right now than I do.” John wasn’t in the mood to talk with Roman or anyone for that matter. He just wanted to have his drink and be left alone, company with his own thoughts.
“That doesn’t sound like her at all.” Roman wisely chose to ignore John’s last comment, not wanting to debate the sore issue with him.
“God,” John moaned as he put his head into his hands and leaned on the bar for support. “That’s the problem…Nothing that she does is like she used to be…And I’m getting tired of it.…I’m really contemplating having Mickey file the divorce papers for real…Maybe this is the universes’ way of telling us that we don’t belong together.” Roman had to strain to hear what John was saying, his voice muffled in his hands. Loud music continued playing in the background.
“I don’t believe that John. Both of you have fought too hard to stay together. Give her some more time, she’ll come around.”
John sat back up in the chair and looked at Roman, motioning for the bartender to bring him another shot of tequila. “And if she doesn’t? I can’t continue living with her the way she is Roman…It’s like living with a stranger. Emotionally she’s not available. Sure we make love and its good, but it’s not the same. It’s her but it’s not her…”
“What did you just say? You’ve already made love to her?” Roman interrupted, convinced that he didn’t understand what John said correctly.
“Several times…why?”
“John, didn’t the doctor tell you to wait at least until six weeks after the she had the babies to even attempt it…her body isn’t ready.” John may be on his way to getting seriously inebriated, but surely his judgement wasn’t impaired when he was sober.
“Oh I beg to differ my friend,” John said with a laugh, “Her body was more than ready.”
“John Black, I cannot believe that you didn’t wait and I can’t believe that Marlena let you,” Roman exclaimed as he playfully slapped his friend on the arm. John reeled back in play, faking that Roman had hurt him.
He quickly picked up the shot that the bartender sat in front of him and downed it. “Awww, that burns,” he said to Roman, becoming pensive once again. “Sometimes she’s almost too willing, I know too much information for you, and it seems that through physical intimacy she is deriving emotional intimacy...hell I don’t know, ignore me…I’m not a shrink.”
“I wonder why?” Roman said as he tried to push the image of Marlena and John making love out of his mind. Even though he didn’t romantically love Marlena and was not interested in her, a small part of him still found it painful to hear about their sexual relationship. Maybe it was due to the fact that since his marriage to her ended he had yet to find the same level of passion and undying love with another woman. Sure, there had been other women, Kate included, but it just wasn’t the same.
“Because I’m a fucking enabler Roman,” John said as he slammed the shot glass down onto the counter in anger. “For the life of me I can’t call her on her shit….A couple weeks ago she apologized to me for accusing me of raping her…instead of calling her on it and saying damn straight you should be apologizing to me and to a whole lot more people, I fucking tell her that she has nothing to be sorry for… I’m half of her fucking problem.”
“You love her,” Roman said quietly, glad that John was finally talking about the real issues instead of glossing them over as he had a tendency to do.
“But that doesn’t give her a free pass on how she’s been acting….I’m getting so tired of it…tiptoeing around her not wanting to upset her. That’s not how a marriage should be.”
“Give her time John…Don’t do something that you’ll regret.”
“I know what you’re saying pal, but sometimes she just makes it so damn hard.”
“If it makes you feel better, call her on her behavior then.”
“I can’t…I’ve tried and I can’t…I just look at her and become undone, unable to.”
“Is this different than before?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, could you talk to her and confront her about things before she lost her memory?”
“Now that I think about it, yes…but not at the same level as in the past.”
“I’m confused.”
“Sorry pal, I think the tequila is finally starting to kick in…about damn time,” John said with a laugh.
“Why not scotch?”
“I needed something different to take the edge off this time,” John revealed as he picked up another glass and quickly downed it. “When is it going to stop Roman…if its not my past coming back to put a kink in my relationship with Doc its something else, now that something else is her past….is this gods way of saying that we aren’t destined to be together? Life shouldn’t be this hard.”
“I don’t know but I’m confident that you’re not going to find your answer in the bottom of a shot glass.”
John laughed, “I don’t care about answers right now…For once, I don’t want to feel anything.”
“Come on John.”
“No, I’m serious…. why the hell does someone keep paying money to listen really bad songs?” John asked as another bad 1980’s song played on the jukebox.
“Focus John,” Roman said, noticing that John was starting to slur his words.
“I’m not drunk Roman…. although I wish I was…I’d like nothing more to feel the numbness that alcohol provides…for once I think I’d like to stop thinking and feeling and just be…What the hell is wrong with her Roman? What happened to the amazing woman I married?”
“She’s there Roman, but for whatever reason she doesn’t seem to be herself.”
“But that’s not okay…its not okay Roman.”
“I know that, but what are you going to do?”
“Call Shane.”
“What?”
“You heard me…It’s time I got to the bottom of this…She’s my wife dammit. I love her and I’m gonna find out what the hell she’s been hiding from me.” “And what do you think Shane is going to tell you?” Roman asked, hoping that he’d be able to convince John not to make this colossal mistake.
“I want to know all about Julie,” John said as he dialed Marlena’s cell phone number again. Once again he was told that the cellular customer he was trying to reach was not available. “I wanna know every little detail about her life before she came to Salem. I want to know all about her fucked up biological parents…I want to know how Alex North fits into all of this and why he’s obsessed with her…I want to know about my fucking wife and what she seems to think is soooooo fucking bad that she’d rather fucking shut me out of her life than tell me,” John said as he became angrier and angrier, finally slamming his cell phone down on the counter, knowing over an empty shot glass.
“Don’t do it John,” Roman warned him, knowing what John would find.
“It’s too fucking late…I should have fucking made the call to Shane when we were on the island months ago…I’m getting answers and I’m getting them tonight,” John said as he stood up, pulled his wallet out of his jeans and threw a hundred dollar bill on the counter.
“Keep the change…later Roman,” he said as he picked up his cell phone and put it in his pocket. Instead of numbing his pain, the alcohol provided him with some clarity for once. He was going to get his wife back.
“The needle tears a hole, the old familiar sting. I try to kill it all away, but I remember everything.” John picked up the glass and motioned for the bartender to give him a much-needed refill. He watched with half-closed contemplative eyes as the attractive redhead expertly filled another glass and set it down before him. He has too tired to appreciate her low-cut shirt which more than showed off what God or some doctor had given her.
“What have I become my sweetest friend, everyone I know goes away in the end.” John laughed at the irony of the words to the song that was playing on the jukebox as he picked up his glass and studied it.
“And you could have it all, my empire of dirt. I will let you down. I will make you hurt.” John raised the glass to his lips, threw back his head and downed the pale liquid in seconds. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Roman Brady sit down next to him and motion for the bartender.
“I wear this crown of thorns upon my liar’s chair, full of broken thoughts I cannot repair. Beneath the stains of time, the feelings disappear. You are someone else, I am still right here.” John picked up another shot glass in a toast to Roman, lost in the words of the song. Memories of his conversation with Marlena came to the forefront of his mind. Who was Marlena? Was she still the same woman that she was always was; the kind and generous woman that he passionately and completely loved like no other? Or was the real Marlena coming to the surface, the same person that she always was, but he was just too blind in love with her to see? How much pain and hurt was worth that love?
As Roman listened to the words of the Johnny Cash song, he studied John. John was facing the bar, staring straight into the decorative Coors mirror. Was he staring at himself or seeing someone else?
“What have I become my sweetest friend. Everyone I know goes away in the end.” John felt a deep coldness in his soul. It was true; everyone and everything that John ever held dear to him, was always lost in the end. Princess Gina, Rachel, Isabella, Marlena…
“And you could have it all, my empire of dirt. I will let you down. I will make you hurt.” Twenty years of a complicated relationship with Marlena. Twenty years of a love so completely consuming. Twenty years of the most fulfilling happiness that John had ever known. Twenty years of so much pain and hurt. John wondered as he lifted his glass to his mouth once again to down another shot, was all the pain really worth it in the end. Was their love true and pure enough to mitigate any pain that they continually had to go through to experience that type of love?
“If I could start again, a million miles away. I would keep myself, I would find a way.” He often wondered if it would be better for him to move to another city, far away, and start over. He wondered if Marlena ever felt the same. The more he felt her pull away from him and their family and friends, the more he thought it was true. If given a choice, Marlena would probably leave. Roman watched John silently and felt for him. John looked defeated, like he’d lost his best friend in the world, which to Roman, meant something probably happened with Marlena. Marlena was the one woman in the world who could put a look of such despair and hopelessness on John’s face.
“John, do you want to talk about it?” Roman asked, gesturing to the line of empty shot glasses in front of John. He counted at least ten, and wondered how many more the waitress had already removed.
“There’s nothing to talk about, my friend,” John said, as he turned to face Roman.
“Did something happen with Marlena? Did you to have a fight?”
“I wish,” John laughed. Someone had put more money into the jukebox and an upbeat song was playing. John didn’t want upbeat; he wanted sad and depressing. He wanted Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson. He wanted the alcohol to quickly take effect and numb the pain and hopelessness he was feeling. Why wasn’t it working?
“Is Marlena still the same?” Roman asked, well aware of their marital difficulties.
“Unfortunately yes, I don’t know how to help her….I don’t know if I can help her…I don’t know if she wants to be helped Roman.” John was slowly becoming resigned that this was just the way that things were going to be. He was trying his hardest to reach out to her to make her feel loved and appreciated before she had amnesia and after, but the more he reached out, the more cold and distant she became.
“Did something happen?” Roman asked as he picked up his can of beer and took a sip, knowing that one of them needed to remain sober.
“No, just the usual. I can see that something is bothering her and when I ask her about it, she shuts down.” The bruises on her arms still bothered and concerned him immensely. If only he could figure out what she was trying so hard to hide.
“Is that why you’re here and not at home with her?” Roman asked as he watched John take his cell phone out of his pocket and made a call.
“She’s not at home right now anyway…we had a conversation and she left?” John said as he listened to the familiar voice of the automated cellular service informing him that the customer he was trying to reach wasn’t available. That was laughable, she hadn’t been ‘available’ for months. Where the hell was she?
“Where is she?” John noted the concern in Roman’s voice. The alcohol that slowly was invading his blood stream was starting to effect his thinking. Why did Roman want to know? Did he already know? What did he know?
Shaking off his thoughts, John responded. “Hell if I know. I asked her if she was going to go to the hospital to see the babies and she said no, end of story. She left in a hurry and like always, I seem to be the last to know where she’s going or what she’s thinking.” John grabbed a handful of peanuts from a basket on the bar and popped them into his mouth. He wasn’t in the mood for the psychoanalysis of his and Marlena’s marriage that Roman seemed to be pushing. “Roman, you probably know more about what the woman is thinking right now than I do.” John wasn’t in the mood to talk with Roman or anyone for that matter. He just wanted to have his drink and be left alone, company with his own thoughts.
“That doesn’t sound like her at all.” Roman wisely chose to ignore John’s last comment, not wanting to debate the sore issue with him.
“God,” John moaned as he put his head into his hands and leaned on the bar for support. “That’s the problem…Nothing that she does is like she used to be…And I’m getting tired of it.…I’m really contemplating having Mickey file the divorce papers for real…Maybe this is the universes’ way of telling us that we don’t belong together.” Roman had to strain to hear what John was saying, his voice muffled in his hands. Loud music continued playing in the background.
“I don’t believe that John. Both of you have fought too hard to stay together. Give her some more time, she’ll come around.”
John sat back up in the chair and looked at Roman, motioning for the bartender to bring him another shot of tequila. “And if she doesn’t? I can’t continue living with her the way she is Roman…It’s like living with a stranger. Emotionally she’s not available. Sure we make love and its good, but it’s not the same. It’s her but it’s not her…”
“What did you just say? You’ve already made love to her?” Roman interrupted, convinced that he didn’t understand what John said correctly.
“Several times…why?”
“John, didn’t the doctor tell you to wait at least until six weeks after the she had the babies to even attempt it…her body isn’t ready.” John may be on his way to getting seriously inebriated, but surely his judgement wasn’t impaired when he was sober.
“Oh I beg to differ my friend,” John said with a laugh, “Her body was more than ready.”
“John Black, I cannot believe that you didn’t wait and I can’t believe that Marlena let you,” Roman exclaimed as he playfully slapped his friend on the arm. John reeled back in play, faking that Roman had hurt him.
He quickly picked up the shot that the bartender sat in front of him and downed it. “Awww, that burns,” he said to Roman, becoming pensive once again. “Sometimes she’s almost too willing, I know too much information for you, and it seems that through physical intimacy she is deriving emotional intimacy...hell I don’t know, ignore me…I’m not a shrink.”
“I wonder why?” Roman said as he tried to push the image of Marlena and John making love out of his mind. Even though he didn’t romantically love Marlena and was not interested in her, a small part of him still found it painful to hear about their sexual relationship. Maybe it was due to the fact that since his marriage to her ended he had yet to find the same level of passion and undying love with another woman. Sure, there had been other women, Kate included, but it just wasn’t the same.
“Because I’m a fucking enabler Roman,” John said as he slammed the shot glass down onto the counter in anger. “For the life of me I can’t call her on her shit….A couple weeks ago she apologized to me for accusing me of raping her…instead of calling her on it and saying damn straight you should be apologizing to me and to a whole lot more people, I fucking tell her that she has nothing to be sorry for… I’m half of her fucking problem.”
“You love her,” Roman said quietly, glad that John was finally talking about the real issues instead of glossing them over as he had a tendency to do.
“But that doesn’t give her a free pass on how she’s been acting….I’m getting so tired of it…tiptoeing around her not wanting to upset her. That’s not how a marriage should be.”
“Give her time John…Don’t do something that you’ll regret.”
“I know what you’re saying pal, but sometimes she just makes it so damn hard.”
“If it makes you feel better, call her on her behavior then.”
“I can’t…I’ve tried and I can’t…I just look at her and become undone, unable to.”
“Is this different than before?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, could you talk to her and confront her about things before she lost her memory?”
“Now that I think about it, yes…but not at the same level as in the past.”
“I’m confused.”
“Sorry pal, I think the tequila is finally starting to kick in…about damn time,” John said with a laugh.
“Why not scotch?”
“I needed something different to take the edge off this time,” John revealed as he picked up another glass and quickly downed it. “When is it going to stop Roman…if its not my past coming back to put a kink in my relationship with Doc its something else, now that something else is her past….is this gods way of saying that we aren’t destined to be together? Life shouldn’t be this hard.”
“I don’t know but I’m confident that you’re not going to find your answer in the bottom of a shot glass.”
John laughed, “I don’t care about answers right now…For once, I don’t want to feel anything.”
“Come on John.”
“No, I’m serious…. why the hell does someone keep paying money to listen really bad songs?” John asked as another bad 1980’s song played on the jukebox.
“Focus John,” Roman said, noticing that John was starting to slur his words.
“I’m not drunk Roman…. although I wish I was…I’d like nothing more to feel the numbness that alcohol provides…for once I think I’d like to stop thinking and feeling and just be…What the hell is wrong with her Roman? What happened to the amazing woman I married?”
“She’s there Roman, but for whatever reason she doesn’t seem to be herself.”
“But that’s not okay…its not okay Roman.”
“I know that, but what are you going to do?”
“Call Shane.”
“What?”
“You heard me…It’s time I got to the bottom of this…She’s my wife dammit. I love her and I’m gonna find out what the hell she’s been hiding from me.” “And what do you think Shane is going to tell you?” Roman asked, hoping that he’d be able to convince John not to make this colossal mistake.
“I want to know all about Julie,” John said as he dialed Marlena’s cell phone number again. Once again he was told that the cellular customer he was trying to reach was not available. “I wanna know every little detail about her life before she came to Salem. I want to know all about her fucked up biological parents…I want to know how Alex North fits into all of this and why he’s obsessed with her…I want to know about my fucking wife and what she seems to think is soooooo fucking bad that she’d rather fucking shut me out of her life than tell me,” John said as he became angrier and angrier, finally slamming his cell phone down on the counter, knowing over an empty shot glass.
“Don’t do it John,” Roman warned him, knowing what John would find.
“It’s too fucking late…I should have fucking made the call to Shane when we were on the island months ago…I’m getting answers and I’m getting them tonight,” John said as he stood up, pulled his wallet out of his jeans and threw a hundred dollar bill on the counter.
“Keep the change…later Roman,” he said as he picked up his cell phone and put it in his pocket. Instead of numbing his pain, the alcohol provided him with some clarity for once. He was going to get his wife back.
