Broken Girl(10)
“You having those dreams again?” Sybil propped herself up on her elbow.
“Yeah, but I’ll get through them. Nothing I haven’t dealt with before.”
“Have you thought about going to one of them shrinks? You know those types you go and spill your guts to and they tell you if you’re crazy and shit?” She said, wiggling across her bed, she adjusted herself to sit up.
“Naw, I’ve always found ways to work through the shit clogging my head. The less people know about my business, the easier it is for me to forget about it. I sure in the hell don’t need anyone beating that f*cked-up day into my head over and over again. Besides, I don’t have the money to pay some shrink to f*ck with my head,” I answered truthfully. Every last dime I had saved was for the day I could get the f*ck out.
“They say it helps to talk about it to a professional,” she snapped.
“Who’s they?”
“They,” she answered.
“Yeah, I heard you say they, I just wanna know what they you are referring to?” I argued.
“They, the f*cking shrinks,” she spat.
“Right, ‘cause, there are plenty of f*cking shrinks sick enough to implant fake memories into your dome. Trust me Sybil, it didn’t help me, all it did was teach me how to keep these bastards out of my head. We are manipulated enough selling our bodies for money. These shrinks are nothing more than the cheap ass John waiting to take advantage of you.”
Okay, so maybe it was my defense mechanism; I always made someone the bad guy. But let’s face it; life wasn’t always about finding something beautiful in a heaping pile of shit. I f*ck for money; I made guys come because their wives or girlfriends didn’t have the gall to do half the kinky shit their men fantasized about. So their boyfriends or husbands found me on the corner of Geary and Taylor and paid a fist full of dead presidents to live out their kinkiest fantasies. There’s nothing noble or life altering in what I do. I’m a whore.
“Geesh, Ro, not everyone is out to f*ck with you. All I was suggesting was that maybe one of these shrinks can help you. That’s all. I wasn’t trying to sell you on their shit,” she huffed.
“Everyone’s out to f*ck you, Sybil. You’re the f*cking addict, who was disowned by her family . . . did you talk to anyone about that? I don’t need you worrying about my problems when you don’t even know how to deal with your own.”
Sybil let out a gasp before she wiggled back under her covers facing the wall, away from me.
Oh, man, I f*cked up.
Why did I always do that? It made no difference who it was or what they would say, it didn’t matter; I always pushed the other way. If she hated shrinks, I’d find words to argue for them. I was always the devil’s advocate, even when I didn’t agree with the bastard. I guess it was just my nature to push people away. A nature that was built upon the disappointments that were cast on me from the first day I was born. A destiny that was seared into my DNA the moment my dickweed father shot his sperm into the snatch of my narcissistic mother. Munching through the barrier of her egg, this f*ck’s sperm beat the odds and nine months later, voila, there I was breathing the stagnant air of a life born to a winning combination of alcoholic as well as abusive parents. It was nothing I could have changed and only something I had learned to embrace night after f*cking night when I’d hear dishes smash against walls, voices spewing hate, skin being slapped, then eventually fists cracking bones.
I’ve twisted my emotions into a tight knot and dropped them into the belly of ‘who gives a shit’ my entire life. Eventually, the defense mechanism that saved my sanity as a little girl became the character flaw that kept me isolated as a woman. I knew I should have said sorry. I should have used the thoughtless word to pacify Sybil, but sorry came at a price I wasn’t willing to pay. I can’t apologize for the sins of others, no matter how much they try to convince me it was my fault. This time sorry clung to the back of my throat and clogged the ability to find a way to express my remorse.
“Goodnight,” I chimed before I strolled into the kitchenette that filled up less than a quarter of our five hundred square feet. With exaggerated effort I filled the teakettle with water and plopped it on the stove. When all else failed, tea seemed to help.
There wasn’t any reaction from Sybil. I’d pissed her off and I was going to live with the consequences of her silent treatment until tomorrow evening when she and I’d go hustle our pavement on Geary and Taylor together. The vicious circle reared its head in every relationship I had. I never kept lovers and I had always kept friends at an arm’s length away. Even though Sybil was one of my only friends, one of two people I considered anything close to family, I couldn’t apologize, it was something I just simply couldn’t do.
The water in my kettle had begun to boil; I pulled it off the heat, robbing its opportunity to announce that it was ready. Marked by the moment I dipped the Sleepy Time tea bag into the scorching hot water, I finally felt the click of my mental clock and the need to go to sleep begin to rule over my need to relive the memory of that day over and over again. My eyes became too heavy to keep open and my mind stopped its endless barrage of torturous bullshit. “I’m sorry, Sybil,” I whispered under my breath . . . Finally I was able to fall asleep, without taking a sip of my tea.
OKAY, SO I was wrong about Sybil forgiving me for being such a bitch to her. I should have known when she took over Bambi’s corner for the last couple of nights down on Jones and O’Farrell that she wasn’t as ready to forgive me as I initially thought. Damn, I didn’t want to have to work at this. I just wanted to be friends without all the bullshit drama of hurt feelings and guilt trips. I guess that was asking way too much.