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Can't Even Breathe

There is a theory about the Earth saying that the planet itself is a life form named Gaia. This theory says that no matter what happens, there will always be some form of life, and like all living organism, it has its own natural protection against illness or parasites. As we have antibodies, Gaia has viruses. If this theory is correct, humans are parasites, and Gaia does not benefit what so ever from our existence. As such Gaia is trying rid itself of us through diseases spread though our reproductive cycle. Humans are unnatural to the Earth. A plague. Gaia does not want us here.

When Kim told me she had tested positive for HIV all this ran though my mind. What do you say to something like this? I can't tell her that she and I and her daughter and everyone else around us are nothing but parasites on the planet. That the Earth doesn't need or even want us and is in fact trying, very literally with everything in itself to rid itself of us.

I just stare blankly at her.

She stares back, and her eyes are on the brink of tears. I've never seen Kim cry. This is the same woman who I've seen dumped by the guy she was dating for two years, smile, light a cigarette, and go partying at a Puerto Rican bar on the bad side of town all in the same hour. So proud. So indestructible…

I haven't a thing to say, so I take her hand gently in mine and kiss it. She looks into my eyes again and finally breaks down into sobs. Little ones at first, then escalating into body wracking, knee weakening, gut wrenching sobs.

I walk over to her and hold her as tightly as I can. She cries harder and harder, and her life has just begun to end and there's nothing in the world I can think of to say.

This goes on for an hour, her crying. I can't blame her. And when she's finally done, Kim excuses herself and heads upstairs to the bathroom.

I sigh and sit down at the kitchen table. I'm trying to find words, to think of something human to say, but nothing comes to mind.

I fucking hate being in her house. Its so stereotypical white trash and, not in a cute David Spade movie sort of way. The whole house stinks of stale cigarette smoke and dog piss. The carpets are so dirty that they've gone from tan to black. The kitchen floor is sticky from God knows what, and I'm afraid to ask what's dried on the table. It doesn't look like food…

This is sick. All I can think is Should I be tested? There have been more than a few nights when we've both been so drunk that neither of us knows how or when we had gotten home the next day. God knows what we've done after we had blacked out.

Fuck.

I snap myself out of the chain of paranoid though I've locked myself into, and reach for my book bag. I'm almost about to plop it down on the table and start rolling joints from the oz and a half that I usually carry for sale. Then I look at the table. A crack fiend wouldn't roll weed on this bio-contaminated table. I find a sponge that's not too rancid looking or smelling and run it under hot water until it runs clear. I sponge the table clean, and dry it with a clean looking baby shirt lying on the floor.

The shower is still running and I'm sure I can still hear Kim sobbing upstairs. She's still alive. I consider turning on the radio and decide against it… I start by rolling two joints for her and I to share, but I decide to make it four on the simple not that this is some heavy, hard and fucking awful shit to deal with. I roll another five for myself alone later, listening to the upstairs the whole time.

The shower is off now, and I can still hear her crying, though not as hard. Thank God for thin walls.

In a few minutes she's downstairs but not dressed in the usual hooker on the town kind of way that she usually dresses. Instead, she's dressed like a normal 20 year old, in a grey and black ankle length skirt with a slit on the either side up to her knees, an old black Nine Inch Nails T shirt that I thought I had lost weeks ago and a pair of sneakers. It takes a second for me to realize that she has also taken a pair of electric hair clippers and shaved her hair completely off.

She's almost as bald as I am under my ski cap, and my jaw hits the floor when I see her. She smiles that shy Kim smile with tears in her eyes. "I've always wanted to do this," she says in almost a whisper. "Its cold… how do you deal with it?"

I take the four joints off the table and put them in my right front pants pocket. My five are in the left. "Now you know why I wear the hat." I say with half a smile. I find the keys to my Buick in my flannel shirt pocket. "Come on. We're going for a long ride."

With no argument, Kim follows me out the door and locks it behind us.

It's early November and the trees here are already done turning. Most have already dropped all their leaves to the ground and are now stark skeletons of their usual green summer selves. A few still struggle to hold to their branches, but there is a stiff breeze coming off the Delaware River, and the battle will soon be lost. In another two or three weeks, there won't be a single tree on this street that has not dropped all of their foliage.

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