Everybody's Rock

The corny commercials on TV rotted Clark Hall’s brain into mush and froze his heart into an arctic glacier. The sounds of his girlfriend Sydney Farrow sobbing only a few feet away from him did nothing to bring him out of his trance. Even when Sydney took a few seconds to blow her nose or sob even louder, she couldn’t get her boyfriend’s undivided attention. She wiped away her tears with a napkin and finally asked, “Are we going to talk about this?”

“Nope,” said Clark without even thinking about his answer. Instead he just flipped through channels in a vain attempt to find something that will rejuvenate his porridge mind.

“Say something!” shrieked Sydney.

“Something.”

After one last wipe of her drenched face and smeared makeup, the pajama pants and tank top-wearing Sydney ripped the remote control out of Clark’s hand and turned the TV off. All he could do was stare her down with a frosty expression, not even a little burst of energy. With her hands animated, Sydney freaked out when she said, “Clark, why won’t you talk to me?! Just once I’d like to have a real conversation with you! For god’s sake, do something! Sing! Dance! Anything! Do anything at all!”

“Anything?”

“Yes, anything at all!”

Taking her words literally, Clark moseyed on over to the kitchen table and sprinkled salt n his own head. “There, I did something.”

Wide-eyed and slack-jawed, Sydney asked, “What the hell’s wrong with you?! Are you fucking insane?! You knew damn well what I meant! You’re taking a serious situation and ripping the piss!”

“Serious? You want to talk about seriousness? How am I supposed to take you seriously when you keep crying every damn day?! Every fucking day, it’s the same thing! More tears! More drama! More bullshit! You know why I watch so much television? Because it’s the only thing that can take me away from your horseshit!”

Holding Clark’s hand in hers, Sydney wept, “Please, stop talking like that! You’re scaring me!” In typical Clark Hall fashion, the stone cold lover dropped to his knees and rattled off in devilish tongues. Sydney finally snapped, “You’re scaring me!”

Seemingly taking this conversation seriously, Clark stood back up and gazed into his girlfriend’s damp eyes. “You’re scared, huh? That’s okay, baby girl. I’m scared too. I’m scared of where this dramatic diarrhea will take us. I’m scared of never being able to feel happy again. Your sadness is making me sad! The only difference between you and me is that I’m not allowed to cry, seeing as how I’m a man and all.”

“Nobody said you couldn’t cry, Clark!”

“Bullshit! That’s bullshit! I hear people say that shit everyday! I’m always the one who has to be the strong superman for everybody! I’m the one who has to be everybody’s rock! I remember being a kid when I rode my bike and landed on my ass! Did anybody let me cry? No! Not one fucking person! Not my dad! Not my mom! They both wanted me to be a so-called real man! Well, congratulations, fuckers! I’m a real fucking man now!”

Taking her boyfriend’s hands once again, Sydney delicately said, “You can cry in front of me if you want, Clark. I won’t judge you. I’d never judge you for something like that.”

“Yeah right! If I start sobbing, who are you going to have left for comfort? Huh? Who’s going to be there for emotional support? I don’t even know how to fall to pieces! Twenty fucking years of pissed off feelings, Sydney, and I ain’t done a damn thing with all that rage! Now what?!”

Eyebrows furrowed, teeth clenched, skin pink, and muscles tensed, Sydney’s rage boiled over when she whispered, “You want to cry? Go ahead, Clark. Do it. Do it! Cry, damn it! Show some emotion for the first time in your fucking life! Be the man I fell in love with so many years ago! The one who wrote me all that poetry! The one who didn’t give a shit what anybody else thought of him! Come on, damn it, cry! Cry!” Her last few words were punctuated with shoves to Clark’s chest.

He brushed his hand through his thick brown hair and used his Pink Floyd the Wall T-shirt to air himself out, but no tears came. Not one drop. Just clenched teeth and a pointed finger. “You can’t do this to me, Sydney. You’re not going to break me. Not tonight, not ever!”

Sydney brought Clark’s face over and planted a wet kiss on his lips, get a few teardrops on his shoulders in the process. The boyfriend’s eyes widened at the gesture while the girlfriend remained pissed off and intense. “Now cry, damn it. Cry! You have my permission even though you never needed it. Open those floodgates!”

Clark’s breathing intensified while he tried in vain to hide his face from his girlfriend. His muscles tightened, then relaxed, then tightened, then relaxed again. His face was concentrated on his black socks and teal sweatpants. Twenty years of being pissed off. Twenty years of nothingness. Twenty years of emptiness. It all resulted in a primal scream of the F-word followed by several punches to the couch cushions. It didn’t matter how hard he punched, because no amount of toughness could prepare him for what came next.

The first tear dropped on the couch pillow. Then the second. Then the third. And then they swarmed and multiplied until the emotional dam finally exploded. For the first time in Clark’s life, he felt absolution from being “everybody’s rock”. He tried hard to suck back his tears, but it was too late: the floodgates had permanently opened. “This isn’t fair,” he muttered. “This isn’t fair!”

As Clark sobbed some more, he felt Sydney’s fingernails gently scraping down his back while the softness of her other hand petted his hair like a kitty. She whispered in his ear, “Of course it’s fair, honey. Don’t fight it. Let them come.”

“How? How could I let this happen?”

“It’s okay, Clark. I love you. I always will. Scoot over, I want to lay next to you.” The two of them snuggled together on the couch sobbing silently into each other’s arms. It was as Clark prophesized: more drama. More tears. More bullshit. More awkwardness. But it felt right. It felt as though this was where the conversation was meant to go all along. Twenty years of bitterness could never have become twenty-one no matter how hard Clark tried. He didn’t remember much from that night, but only because he fell asleep on the couch shortly after, taking Sydney’s cherry kisses with him into dreamland.

By the time the butt crack of dawn came shining through the apartment window, Clark Hall was so drained that he didn’t even have the energy to open his eyes, which were still damp, salty, and fiery from the night before. The only difference was that Sydney wasn’t in his arms anymore. Clark slowly picked his head up off the pillow and saw that she was drinking coffee at the kitchen table, still in her tank top and pajama pants.

The psychologically emancipated boyfriend peeled his body off of the leather couch and stumbled towards the table to join his equally drained girlfriend. A cup of coffee was already there waiting for him. He took several sips of the sugar and cream-drenched stimulant, but still couldn’t wake up. If he spent eternity on that couch, it would be alright with him.

Breaking the awkward silence, Clark asked, “Did you want to talk about last night?”

“Did you?”

“No, not really,” said Clark as he stretched his arms out. “I have to be at work in an hour. All that crying drained me the fuck out.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“I don’t even want to go today, but it is what it is. Maybe we can talk about this tomorrow?”

“…Yeah…tomorrow…”

The two of them absentmindedly sipped their coffee while the lessons of the previous night struggled to sink in. Would tomorrow be another dramatic spell? Would Clark spend more time in front of the TV? He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know. All he wanted to do was go back to sleep and maybe take a sick day. But just like with all things in life, it was back to the grind again. Just another day, just another lousy paycheck. “Tomorrow…tomorrow…I love you…tomorrow…” Clark sang in his head.