Chapter 15: Anemia

Tom did not know that he had scarcely any red blood cells left. He was a freshman in high school at the time. In the mornings before school began, the staff supervised everyone in the cafeteria, and Tom sat on one of those backless stool seats, the kind affixed to tables which can be folded up and stored elsewhere.

His acquaintances largely ignored him, engrossed in their grandiose plans to get this girl or that girl, or to start a band, or to make the basketball team. It was winter, but no one shivered as frequently or furiously as Tom. He wore khakis and a loose-fitting maroon sweater, the finest he owned. The label announced it as an Eddie Bauer. Tom, flaky-faced and skinny, held his arms close to himself. He tried to concentrate on Algebra 2, but his head nearly bounced off the table as a wave of chills and exhaustion washed over him.

When he walked into his home that night, he found himself alone. He shuffled to his room, ran into the bathroom and collapsed. He clenched his teeth to prevent them from chattering. The waves had returned and kept coming. Miserable cold mixed with weakness tore at Tom.

As the bathtub filled with water and steam, he drug himself across the floor, waiting to wiggle out of his clothes at the last minute. Then, just as he thought the water might cover most of him if he entered the tub, he heard voices downstairs, coming nearer. Soon he could discern words. The voices bellowed with demands.

Had he finished his homework?

Had he fed the dogs?

Had he practiced the piano?

Had he been watching tv when he was not supposed to?

Had he tied up the phone line with the internet?

Had anyone called with an important message?

Tom turned off the water. He would have to begin answering soon and he could not shout over the noise.

Poor little Tom Drake, an invisible and unidentified voice laughed in his mind. All alone with no one to help him, the voice continued. You will never recover from this.

Suffer it now and bear it with you for the few years left ahead.

Chapter 14: Give the People What They Want

On a particular night in April, Tom Drake stood on the balcony of his condo, smoking a Dunhill. He’d picked up the new brand from Alexandra, a friend of a friend with whom he used to drink with during his early days in Chicago. His neighbor, James approached from his respective balcony. They exchanged greetings.

“You got another cigarette?”

Tom handed an extra across the short distance spanning the balconies. James began smoking. The topics they collectively discussed spanned books and movies to fashion and women. To the latter, James believed that everybody always gets all fucking confused when it comes to the best way to approach a woman.

“You want to know what the wrong way is?” he said. “Wasting your time thinking about what the right way is.”

Tom remembered those days, stricken with worry, unsure if the women he wanted to be close to him could handle knowing he was not perfect. James’ girlfriend Kelly emerged with a cigarette already burning. A stark blond, she wore a white tank top. They continued to talk of fashion.

“You’re just getting into this aren’t you?”

“Fashion?”

“Yeah.”

Tom nodded.

“You want to come over and hang out?”

When he arrived moments later, the discussion resumed.

“In the last couple months,” Tom said, after Kelly repeated her previous question.

“Just wait. You’re gonna end up like me,” James pointed at the chairs of his kitchen table, each of which had an article of designer clothing draped across it: a blazer, a tie, a woven dress shirt and trousers.

“You better give him the first rule of the addiction,” Kelly said. James laughed.

“Don’t pay retail. Ever.”

Tom laughed, nodding his thanks. “Just stick with that and you’ll be fine.”

“I feel like it’s slightly more complicated than that,” Tom said.

“You’ll get there,” Kelly answered. “So how did it happen? What do you like about it?”

“I feel like I have this power over other people,” Tom shifted from one foot to the other, eyes darting from James to Kelly and back and forth.

“Oh it totally does,” Kelly said. “Don’t kid yourself.”

They both spoke with such confidence that Tom felt joy surge through him. He had been right all along about this power of fashion, known to these elite circles who would not have introduced him into their ranks of their own accord but — sensing he might understand the secret knock — beckoned him nearer to their greatest secrets.

“At the end of the day, you have to give the people what they want.”

“And what is that?” Tom said, eyes wide and ablaze, requiring the information with both desperation and wonder to the point where he could not hope to mask it. Kelly answered.

“They want to see that guy, the one who no one can help but be drawn to, to stare at, to envy and admire. The guy who should obviously have the hottest girl in the room on his arm.” She paused as James smiled at her eloquent presentation.

“Just think about it in your head: giving it to the people. You have to own it. It helps to think of the most amazing girl you can imagine.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Tom grinned. No matter what had hurt him before, no matter what had broken him as a boy, he had been reformed as a man — the kind who could own a room, sign an autograph — the kind whose eyes burn with a never-ending rage to achieve and to conquer. He realized then that everything he accomplished took so much more weight, so much more gravity, and left others with even more wonder when they knew what he had fought and beaten to get it.

Anyone can be dealt a straight-flush, but Tom Drake was the man who caught a low pair on the deal and made himself a full house.

As he thought of Ginger, he couldn’t help but wonder if she could handle it.

“You have someone in mind?” James asked.

“I do.”

For Tom Drake, that choice no longer existed. Few would be the women who could handle the power of what he had to give to the world anyway. And finally his vision was complete. When he saw her again, their eyes would inevitably find one another, and within Tom now pulsed that renewed charge:

“You want it? ” he thought, “I’ll give it to you.”

Chapter 13: Theology

Fifteen years ago, Tom Drake sat in a majestic church. His back ached as he listened with bowed head to pronunciations of his inadequacy, wealth of sin, and condemnation to death for a laundry list of atrocities. He felt sick as his mother breathed on him, reaching to hold his hand as if to console him for all these things he had done wrong unknowingly.

Nearly choking on the sick stench of perfume that diffused away from her, Tom exhaled slowly and regarded church as nothing more than an extension of his home life, in which blame fell upon him for all wrongs committed within or in violation of the laws of the household– of which there were many. His eyes drooped with shame and misery, but he survived the sermon.

Outside afterwards, finally filling himself with the lightly fragrant spring air, his eyes widened and betrayed a man who stood on the edge of humane and animal, literally a moment from surrender to any force — literal or metaphysical — that would take him away from that place.

Chapter 12: Raw Bar

Tom Drake walked into the bar like he owned it.

He wore a charcoal blazer with gray pants, golden BOSS shirt and diagonally striped Burberry tie, alternating violet, gray, azure and bronze stripes. Tom tied it earlier that morning using a Pratt knot, a new style he’d acquired in which the back sides of the tie are both facing out as the knot begins. Maybe that made the difference. On this particular Friday, he began to believe that everything he had learned would — in fact — place him that much closer to the top, to the coveted state of being unstoppable.

He’d survived the first month in Corporate America and now spat smiles and names better than Bill Clinton. He knew who dressed well and who remained clueless. Most importantly, he had met all the hottest girls. He still didn’t own the office, but he’d advanced. And that little bit of momentum propelled him into the evening, when he would meet some of these newly-found work friends for drinks.

The bouncer regarded him as he entered. Tom got the impression the guy was dim based on how he clearly saw Tom enter but had not yet reacted visibly. Then he nodded at Tom, who had reached into his pocket for an ID, then raised his eyebrows as the bouncer raised his hand.

“Not at all sir. Enjoy yourself tonight.”

The power of fashion surged within him. The bouncer considered it too much of an imposition even to card someone like Tom, who realized that fact as he advanced to the third floor. There he saw the pairs and cliques of his company, predictably spread from the bar to the pool table. Tom approached a blonde named Ginger who sat near him in the office.

“You made it,” she said, a hand playing lightly on his arm. She looked like a cross between a model and a porn star, and Tom could easily explain which traits mapped to each profession. He believed her to be just a little bit dirty inside, but coated with faux sweetness that rested within her smile.

“Time for a drink,” Tom grinned.

They made their way to the bar; Tom nodded at a number of office acquaintances. Tom shouldered his way into an open space and ordered them two pints of New Castle. They chatted aimlessly. As the beer warmed him, Tom lusted for all the talent in the room, though his eyes were increasingly drawn to Ginger’s breasts.

‘Easy, boy. You’re still at work,’ he reminded himself.

And that conflict embodied Tom Drake — eager to be edgy but indissolubly tethered to responsibility. These two forces had fought themselves inside him for over a decade, since the first moment he had broken free of the monarchy which had held him back for so long prior. With so many years worse than lost, he had since fought to unmake what had been made. On this particular day, responsibility had been weakened: already he found his hand aching to grab Ginger’s ass. She was a girl who could make a man hornier than a few dozen oysters shot with vodka, and the power imbibed from this reality sent Tom’s blood roiling.

When Tom looked at her, he felt like she was a woman who made him think of the hottest scenes he’d observed in films like Cruel Intentions. They returned to the middle of the floor to mingle with a few other familiars. New faces approached and interjected themselves into the mix. Tom stumbled when asked about his upbringing in a popular basketball town in the Midwest.

“What do you mean — you don’t like the Spartans?”

“Hey man, you gotta love small town basketball,” Tom said.

“Did you see where one of their guys got a full ride to IU this year?”

Tom hadn’t, and had no clue how to go about obtaining that information. He found himself with no one to talk to, as pairs formed and reformed and he clutched his drink and downed it faster and faster till it was gone. In mere moments he had crashed, dropped like lead and smacked pavement.

Nearly tripping as he reached the stairs, Tom Drake bounded for the exit to save himself from further embarrassment.

Chapter 11: The Forest and the Rain

The first weeks tried to destroy Tom.

Each night he went home beaten and tired, shaking his head in a vain attempt to empty it of everything that had corrupted it. He stared at the walls, empty of inspiration. He didn’t work-out. He felt himself grow slow, tired and fat. He rubbed his eyes each morning and saw a falling star.

Fallen.

During the days he slouched in his chair, nervous and insecure. Around him he saw threats to destroy him, to take him down at the knees and beat him till he bled. And at night he grew slower and weaker, eating and wishing and hoping. It wasn’t one thing; it was everything: pair after pair of eyes staring at his every move. When he walked into the room, dozens of people saw him, and he hated it. And somehow the power of fashion failed him. He could not understand how he’d been betrayed by all of them. A younger man would have fallen and given-up. But yet within Tom were the weathered trials of five lifetimes and the sorrow of a man much older and beaten. And, as with all of the worst sorrows, there was a girl involved.

Tom often thought about his childhood, thought about those nights in the woods when he built campfires and slept in a tent, rising early to walk the rounds and stoke the coals for breakfast. He remembered the training he’d been through, waking wet and shivering in the forest with two matches and an egg. All the firewood was wet from the rain. But mostly he remembered the worst times of all.

The sickness.

Tom had been the happy age of eleven, running through the summer grass of his family farm, chasing his golden retriever through the ponds and the weeds and the fields. But that Christmas he had been struck down and left with the impossible before him: to overcome that which could not be overcome. Sometimes he still felt it return, like horror movie flashbacks threatening to breach reality.

But what had once been sadness and despair had hardened to anger and bitterness. He wanted to trust, but he was so often presented with qualities that could not be trusted, such as he saw in the eyes of everyone in the office who threatened to destroy him. He thought of this one night after work, hunched over his computer. He stumbled to a mirror and stared at himself before speaking:

“Do you know what kind of pain you have to endure, the torture and the misery in order to keep going hard enough to become so good that complete strangers tell you how perfect you are and how you’ve done so much for them even though you haven’t done a thing for yourself? When the whole time all you had was a pipe dream clogged with delusions.”

Then, Tom went to bed, his mind confused and stretched by so many desires — more than anyone can ever hope to handle gracefully. It’s like when you meet a beautiful girl, the kind that inspires you to become more than you deemed worthy of yourself. You know it will become too powerful to control, yet you cannot stop it.

Tom knew he must rise, even if it meant falling again to the dirt and the ridicule.