The Roof

“You wanna come with me?” He asks, and he points to the roof. “We can do whatever we want, on the roof of the gym and no one can see us.”

When he says that last part, “and no one can see us” it is as though my heart and lungs and my brain are ripped out of my body and shot up out of my person, far above the roof, toward the moon, but moving to a place far, far dirtier. It’s a scrap yard in space where cockroaches and maggots eagerly await eating whatever is left of me, and laugh at the terror it causes me while they chew. In this scrap yard, insects have teeth and taste buds that prey on me. For a moment it feels freeing, to be outside of my skull, but then I realize that my organs went up into the orbit fast and hard so they can rocket back down and crash into me yet again, burying me deep into the seat of this couch at Starbucks leaving me with just a pulse and a mouth. I feel like a cloud of rancidity. I am a bubble of sickness. I will throw up my low fat apple bran muffin and decaf green tea if I don’t shit it all into my sweaty workout shorts first.

I remember a dream I used to have as a kid, where a healthy, young-looking clown with a red nose and white make up is my playmate in the house. He is dressed like a basketball player in matching tank top and shorts and he has a purple wig, so he is safe. He is a sad clown unless we are playing. He listens to The Cure when we play and it makes our games sadder than they should be, then they will be when I play these games as an adult. He is a playmate who only wants to play with me in the back of the house, where no one can see us because though he is imaginary in his mind, neither he or I actually trust the limits of an imagination.

Because in my dream, I fear that at any point, he may materialize into real matter and if anyone in the house could see him, it would destroy our family, kill us all before sealing my fate as broken—the kid who never had a chance. The fear in my dream is always of being caught, but it’s also in never answering my parents in the other room, who continue to call my name because I’m late for school, for family night at the movies, for dinner. Lots of times it’s for being late to dinner, and I can’t leave the clown. I’m stuck with him in this room trying to help him be happier, and I feel so guilty it wakes me up. And I am not even ten years old yet.

But this is all a recurring dream that I haven’t had in a decade or more until this man asks me to go up on the roof with him. He walks outside the door with his backpack half falling off his back. A syringe falls out and he looks down at it smiling a wicked grin. For less than a second I remember my dream and wonder how real it was then and how real this is now. I feel obligated to him and his backpack. He has set up a secret place for us, and he has picked me to make him feel happier than he is usually.

My car is being cited for having an expired meter in front of the gym, and I now have a reason not to go up on the roof. He can’t blame me for tending to my car instead of him. My ticket is for $35 and I don’t try to argue my way out of it because that would expose my imagination. My punishment feels like a bargain compared to my dreams.