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[A little bit more than I ever wanted
A little bit more than you could ever say
Did you really think that I'd forgotten?
Kicked out the windshield, water coming in
Fade away, fade away ...]
I can't feel my feet, and for one sickeningly long second I think I'm back in the infirmary, still broken in half, still angry...still in love with Chris Keller. The bus hits a pothole on the long winding road out of Oz that is neither made of yellow brick nor a path to something better. It just goes on. But the jolt brings me back here, back to myself. Back to the comforting and stifling prison of self. The French philosopher Rosseau is quoted as saying "Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains" -- but was Rosseau ever in Oz, and was he ever loved completely and utterly by Chris Keller? No. I alone earn that distinction. Earned with everything I've left Oz with..and yet, everything I've left behind comes with me as I leave.
In the gym, Sister Pete tried to understand, but she couldn't. Her husband was pushed off a truck by a lunatic. The man I love, god, despite everything, in spite of everything...I still love him. The man I love threw himself off an Em City balcony because he loved me. And in that, he's doomed me, freed me, brought me pain, helped me remember that pain tells me I'm still alive. It's the line between numb and dead, and as long as I'm alive, I'll always keep us alive. This bus can roll right into Hell, and I'll sit here knowing that with his last possible breath, Chris loved me. No Pete, I'm sorry. You'll never understand.He loved me so much he died for me. But like I can ever tell her everything? You can't tell a woman anything because they know everything. Pete's a nun, and a shrink, but she'll never know absolutely everything about me and Keller. We're Oz's Gordian knot. Impossible to untie, and slicing us in half never worked either...
[Push just a little too late
Is this what you want? What you need?
Is this what you wanted me to be?
Always loved me strapped to you
Lock it down and drive me through]
I wanted to be with him so goddam bad -- and he with me -- that you needed a scorecard to count the bodies that kept piling up. If we couldn't be together, no one was safe. Not Shermin, not Browne, and certainly not Barlog.
But I don't say those names. Instead I just say his. And when she'd asked me if I'd pushed him... she stared at me, and even though Mukada's not here I feel like confessing anyway, circling around that gym floor like it's a drain. Like I could bleed everything out right here. I smile at that thought, because I've bled on this floor too. That day in the gym. It's funny again, how I have to remind myself to remind her of what I'm talking about...because while every instance is That Day, and That Day, and all memorable to me, it's not the case with her. She wasn't in the gym That Day. I bled on this floor, completely ready to die...and Death was by my side, holding me, cradling me, and I smile more at the thought...that if the last sight I ever saw was Chris looking down at me, then there was really no reason to complain that the end was near.
I hardly think Pete will ever understand. Ours was (is) not a love bound by marriage or duty or any of what my marriage to my wife was. Gen and I loved each other and I love my children, but what I feel still, for Chris Keller has everything I knew before paling in comparison. I knew duty and purpose being married to Gen. Being in love with Keller taught me everything else. I'm out of Oz for now. Because of Keller and his masterpiece. His master plan. Again, for me. For us. Imperceptibly, even to me, he was making moves. He pulled them on me, on Vern, on McManus, on Pete, on everyone. We were all players in his grand production. MacBeth became a play within a play, within a play. Layers and layers...god, I could drive myself crazier thinking of how intricately everything wove together. I remind myself to ask Pete : Your husband ever hit you? Ever wrap himself around you and break you apart? No. You say that love is the grand excuse for any wrongdoing, but it wasn't. Not here. Everything balanced out because of what Chris felt for me. If Chris truly was Death, then he was merciful -- because he let me live. Poetic, really. To love Death, to be accustomed to his presence. Death in every form -- crushing and feral, and all-encompassing.And freeing. I can't forget that.
Every moment we ever had, including the ones we had apart, we were always together. Fighting it....well, we know how that turned out. I think to ask Pete if she can ever give me an example of "To love someone to death" even though I know she can't. But I can. Through all the pain of the past six years, there's an even greater amount of love and something equally intense as pain.
Every life is precious, so let me live. Leave me alone.
[I tried to give more than you thought I'd take now
Taking more than you could ever say
Push come to shove you kicked me in the head
You knock me down I ripped the handle off again
I wanted more than this, wanted more than this
Fade away, fade away]
Was what Chris did really a surprise? Of anyone else, I should know better. I'm the one. The only person in the world Keller ever truly gave everything to. His body, his soul, his love, his hate, his blood, his life...
I'm out of Oz, and he's here with me. He's in my blood, under my skin, and settling in my bones. And why wouldn't he? He's been in me as deep as blood and just as close as my skin....and as for my bones, well, he broke them with as much as he protected them once I healed. Chris Keller broke ol' Tobias into pieces. The old Toby died screaming on that gym floor, and baptized in that horrific rush was a new Toby. Die to live. The old Beecher just couldn't hack it. Haha. At least Metzger's not here, and no one knows why now except me.
"He did love me, Sister. And I loved him." If there were truer words to be spoken, I couldn't find them at that moment. I still love him, and though I didn't tell her that, she knows anyway. If she's taken anything with her away from Oz, she knows that much. Her face asked me why, in McManus's gym-maze. I could only say that no one will ever love me....all of me, like Chris did. I asked her if she remembered that day, and she asked me, "What day, Tobias?" and I just smiled sadly and told her, "The day he left me the first time." He left for me. Twice he's left me and both times so I could live.
[Push just a little too late
Is this what you want? What you need?
Is this what you wanted me to be?
Always loved me strapped to you
Lock it down and drive me through]
"The day he was transferred." I say to her. Recognition dawns in her face, and there's something else I can't really read, but I remember her and Chris sitting together when the gates opened. When I could hold him again. " I tried to keep those bruises," I think I'm rambling, but I can't stop myself. " I wanted to keep the bruises he gave me, because I couldn't keep him. Because even though he'd hit me in the face, it was one of the last times he touched me. It pales to the embrace we had, or the kiss he gave me -- shit, everything pales to that. Can you understand that?" I say to her silent face. "I would rather have the pain of that forever if it only meant I could see him every day."
When I mention Adam Guenzel, her eyes snap to mine. Here's the confession I couldn't tell her that day of the interaction, where she'd stormed out, sick of me, sick of Schillinger, and even sick of Said. Just sickened by the three of us, and the misery we created.
"Adam got me Keller." I say. And she's not understanding, so I go on. " Adam was what I exchanged for Chris Keller. I wouldn't do any thing differently if I had the chance to." She's starting to look like she knows where I'm going with this. "For two minutes with Chris Keller, I gave Vern Schillinger Adam Guenzel. Free to do with as he wanted. Do you understand? I gave Vern Adam Guenzel so that I could have a hundred and twenty seconds with Chris." My voice softens further. "Can you imagine what I would have given and done to see him for two hours?"
And I can live with my part in Adam's death because, hey, it's not all on me. Pete's got part of it, and Vern has most of it. Adam has some, because it's HIS death. God gets most of the distinction too, for obvious reasons.
But I got what I wanted and that made it worthwhile despite all the old Beecher guilt crashing down around me. I touched Chris for the first time in forever, and you know what?
I'd trade a hundred Adams for Chris Keller. So tell me again how Toby's a victim, and how Toby's just so much better than everyone else in Oz...tell me a lie, Sister, so I can tell you the truth.
[Hands gripped to the wheel held too tight to feel
Face pressed to the glass, please don't ask
One more breath, one more, it's alright
I could never give enough, have enough, be enough
You could never stand to stay there
Only only only, fade away, fade away]
Pete stared at me, and I asked her questions in my head while she tried to figure me out.
Sister, would you ever die for someone? Chris did. He gave me everything I wanted even when I didn't know what it was that I wanted. I wanted him away from me -- I wanted to live....so he died for me. I wanted so much more than this. Than Oz. We both did. And when he died, I knew even in death he couldn't stop loving me, nor I him. He loved me completely right up to the end. if there's truly anything after death, he'll be standing outside Heaven, or Hell, or Purgatory, or wherever and refuse to go anywhere until he can see me again.
Do you know how he defined heaven and hell to me one night? The night I found him crying on the floor of our pod? Heaven was every single moment with me. Of knowing I loved him and that he loved me, and that we loved each other. Even in this miserable fuckhole, we had something beautiful. Hell was never seeing me again. Never being able to touch me. Hell was the three months I was in the infirmary, and how he snuck in to see me while I was asleep.
I can't imagine one day in here without you.
It's all so fucking painful but I hold it close to me. It's this marvelous rolling feeling of anguish and ecstacy. No combination of any drug I've ever taken, nor drink I've ever had has been able to make me feel like Chris makes me feel. He did absolutely everything for me, and for us, and there's no way I could ever repay or measure that. He could always give more of himself to us than I could.
"Did you know he could quote Shakespeare?" She starts a little at that, and her eyebrows come together, as if the idea of Chris Keller reciting soliloquies was a harbinger of the Apocalypse. "
"I remember him being rather attached to this one bike magazine, and when I was cleaning, and it turns out there were handwritten notes in the pages...his writing.. I saw him in the library a lot... he, uh, read Neruda to me during the lockdown..." I trail off : this is getting too painful, but again, it's like bleeding. Hard to stop it while my heart's beating.
She's looking at me strangely. I can't help but bristle at how I can see her disbelief that Chris had been literate. She'd be further fucking shocked to hear that Chris had his extremely eloquent moments as well... Of course no one else would have seen them -- he'd only speak that way in the dark, to me.
Movies are bullshit. Love's not a cure-all for what ails you. Love is the source of life. In Oz, love was our only way out. Pete can never understand how precious that was to us. We guarded it passionately - we killed to keep it. The hell with everyone else, to hell with everyone else. We were all that mattered. We were alive in a place that keeps everyone else in here the walking dead.
When we were together, I never once craved alcohol. And not heroin. From that first kiss, and my own admission.
Hey Pete, you should have known...but you couldn't.
"Tobias, are you in love with another man?"
Another? No, Sister, there never was another -- never will be. It's just him. It's always been him. I'm guilty of loving him, of loving us and wanting more of us in a place that just can't support love. Oz is a prison -- Oz is slow death by monotony. Being with Keller made me recognize that days and minutes and hours still existed. And we stole that time from OZ -- stole it for us. And stealing in a prison seems laughable. Where are they gonna put us? On the outside as punishment? Chris and I on the outside...well, I guess we both are now.
When we were together, Oz ceased to exist. That's a pretty heavy damn victory for who we are.
Chris proved it ultimately though. Because of love, Oz ceases to exist for either of us. We're both out. We're together. We're free.
We win.
And I'll never feel guilty about wanting more.
[Push just a little too late
Is this what you want? What you need?
Is this what you wanted me to be?
Always loved me strapped to you
Lock it down and drive me through
Push just a little too late
I wanted more than this
I expected more than this]