The Absence Was Ecstasy

By Vincent Marco

The Absence Was Ecstasy is a chronicle of a young, struggling addict and his triumph over countless internal demons. This memoir illuminates the foundational elements of dependency in all of their forms from love to lust, drugs, and alcohol. It showcases how even those born into privileged circumstances can fall victim to the undiscriminating grip of addiction and lose themselves entirely. Throughout immeasurable suffering and loss, the protagonist fights tirelessly to believe that humor can be found in any circumstance he encounters, matching each tear with a smile and pushing on. Above all, he fights to leave behind pieces of himself in those he loves, with hopes of being fondly remembered if ever he loses his fight.

In present day, with a bleeding heart and a hopeless romantic, the narrator finds himself staring down at another lovers ghost. Haunted by the vices and habits of his past, he searches endlessly for purpose and direction, as the underlying question on his tongue remains, What now?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524586805

Vincent Marco

No ATA

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Copyright © 2017 by Vincent Marco.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2017902965

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-5245-8682-9

   Softcover               978-1-5245-8681-2

   eBook                    978-1-5245-8680-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 05/17/2018

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CONTENTS

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

J,

I hear your laughter in the resonation of every string, bent to its limits.

I hear your heartbeat in every percussive toe-tap, senselessly watching the days pass.

I’ve heard you singing through the static of my 30W, and I will never, ever, turn you down.

PROLOGUE

My head expels fevered perspiration onto the responseless touchpad of a refurbished Mac Book Pro. Insufferable martyr. Another failed gift for a ghost.

Whispering clichés to an unimpressed screensaver, I sail blindly into the void. Chalk it up to another shitty life lesson, I suppose.

What an asshole.

As the stale aroma of pistachio-vanilla pipe tobacco pumps from my nostrils, I struggle uselessly to slow my breathing. Another six-mile run punctuated moronically with a poorly rolled cigarette. Through thick bitterness I smile at the irony of my health-related condescension.

Who couldn’t love the sanctimonious man with a moral compass that spirals as if it were sitting idly on the North Pole itself?

A few painful examples come to mind.

Fuck ’em narrowly escapes my lips as I pull a patiently crafted scotch, force-fed to an overtaxed liver.

Drifting further, I daydream about the Swiss masochist responsible for the failed architecture of this couch. Infinite angles of adjustment yield the same disconcerting outcome. Undeniably, he moonlit as a chiropractor and was shaving profits at both ends. Brilliant prick. It’s the perfect crime.

For a moment, I’m sidetracked from my cognitive implosion by the labiatic characteristics of Trump’s neck skin. At long last a smile breaks through.

Turns out he’s not entirely untherapeutic.

While overcooked eggs gurgle violently, drowning in their watery grave from across the kitchen, I attempt to collect my thoughts on how the rest of my life will play out.

Fruitless.

The jury adjourns.

The mastery of the human brain is not something I frequently take for granted. As life progresses naturally through an unabridged track of hills and valleys, the repression of stages fade in and out of relevance like songs you’ve misplaced on your once-favorite playlist. Consequently, as one ex-lover slips through the cerebral cracks of a chaotic mind, others reemerge. Unwelcomed and unapologetic. Personally, I’ve never found retracing footsteps to unearth any form of development. Of course, this is predominantly because of their scattered arrhythmic placement observed when examining my past. If one can find a linear pattern of behavioral development in the actions of a man such as myself, I will truly be at a loss for words. A person who once evaded police captivity with an ass full of black tar heroin in waist-deep snow, clad only in boxer shorts and a stolen jacket, who now functions—more or less—among the top of his peers, isn’t exactly a staple of convention. Yet I digress. I’ve awoken from the love-induced amnesia, and as pieces of my past float back into focus, I feel it would be a disservice to myself not to give them a voice.

As a sidenote, I need to make something very plain: although at one point in my life I was plagued by the unrelenting grip of addiction, I’ve never identified myself as an addict.

Another long pull of scotch rips down my esophagus, and my stomach churns and laughs with pity.

I cannot subscribe to the notion that a person must hypergeneralize him or herself as a contingency for recovery. It irks me. Surely, the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize who slips from the reception’s stage upon departure and shatters his femur is still a person worthy of praise and accolades. Yet if this same individual were to become overly keen of his post-op medication, he would deserve, in the eyes of many, to be labeled as weak or sullied. To me, it’s beyond comprehension. It’s outlandishly absurd, and it instills a rage within my heart that knows no bounds. I am not defined by my past—least of all, my dark years. Rather, I am presently, and have always been, a massively incomplete person with an unsatisfied desire to be whole. I’ve chased this premise in the form of pills, poisons, laughs, lusts, loves, and life itself. I am not a victim of anything but myopia.

Tangled in the infinite web of longing, I’ve found in my later life that the only substance potent enough to eradicate every internal demon I’ve jousted with is love.

Vomits scotch onto pajamas, smashes laptop with hockey stick, and vows to never sound like Ghandi again.

Only when immersed in its sticky, viscous, and shamelessly unintelligent tentacles have I ever found life to be satisfying. As I holster the spade and pat the last of the fresh dirt onto the corpse of another dead relationship, I have nothing more to live for but those who have never given up on me. I pray these stories will transcend any pain I’ve caused and allow the reader to gain insight into countless moments I’ve never spoken aloud. My hope is that by laughing at these hardships, we may strip them of their power. Or perhaps further solidify the idea that I am inherently a fucking idiot.

I implore you to remember that humor can be found in the darkest of places. Seat belts on, please.

Mom.

1

The great tragedy of intimacy is that it’s bidirectional. We fall for each other in an ill-advised tidal wave of enchantment that completely bypasses logic and reason. Flailing aimlessly, we ride the surges of endorphins and oxytocin to our final demise. For some, that may be a cold bed in a sanitized room with linoleum floors, surrounded by loved ones and foreign beeping sounds. You hold your wife’s hand and remember a lifetime together as you drift into a milky permanent sleep. For the less fortunate others, the end of love is being called the C-word through a cracked T-mobile device, outside a gas station that smells like baby shit and Cheetos. To each his own.

Far more seldom discussed is falling out of love. That terrible blip when an entire synthetic future ceases to exist. Maybe it’s political differences. Maybe it’s ideology. Hell, maybe you’ve just spent a week driving through an Alaskan mountain range together. You’re rolling down the windows to scream the lyrics of the very song that started your relationship. You’ve practiced this moment in your head a thousand times, but as you turn and sing the crescendo from the depths of your soul, she doesn’t see or hear you. She doesn’t feel what you feel. In fact, she’s somewhere else entirely—in a different life, living a different destiny with a different future, and you’re a goddamn fool to stick around to see what happens next. Yet you will, because hope of better days is all you’ve ever known.

This is where the true bleakness of our spirits walks naked through the streets. Once you’ve felt it—truly felt that rushing unstoppable realization that you’re with the wrong person—there is no going back. From that moment on, you’re just the drunk asshole at a wedding, singing Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire. You don’t know the words. You’re lost and directionless, we all can see that, but you yell Marilyn Monroe! on tempo one time and no one thinks the less of you for it.

Yeah, they’re not a great fit, but at least they’re trying, you know?

No, Sandra, I don’t know.

I really fucking don’t.

I have no idea what that creature is. I stare in utter befuddlement across the playground. She’s new this year. Imported and it shows. All legs and ears with a smile that made me feel like the most worthless boy to walk the earth. That night, I categorically disregard every crush I’ve ever maintained in my journal.

Autumn is upon us, and I’m lightheartedly occupying my time catching leaves as they fall from my favorite tree on morning break in the schoolyard, each one a triumph that breeds happiness inside me I’ve never replicated to this day. Naturally, I stuff them down my pants, ignorant still to the premise of pockets. As the bell screams from across the grounds, I wave somberly to my companion and promise to visit him on the morrow. Approaching the entrance to the school, there she stands, in an outrageously pretentious outfit for an eight-year-old, bolstering a confidence that sent piss into my JNCO jeans, spoiling the plunders of recess. I’m without words. Worse so, there are undeniably bugs crawling on my penis.

Garrr, I’ll put a spell on all of you with my ugliness, is the first suave line that aborts itself from my mouth. Waving a fictional wand like the sorcerer of infinite virginity, I’m too immersed in the act to step away now. I commit, it’s terrible. To my relief, her friends have sensed the awkwardness of this moment reaching insurmountable heights. They fall gleefully into a pile of leaves backward as if stricken by my blow. I cast again, this time more indulgently. The chase is on. More tumble down, all but one. I turn to her; it won’t be the last time she makes my body shake relentlessly. I drain the whole reservoir of my pantomime skills to act out the most illustrious spell cast in my arsenal. Nothing. Instead, she turns to me, looks me dead in the eyes, and explains that she thinks the whole ordeal is humorous, but her coat is quite expensive. If I fall down, I’ll ruin it.

The white down jacket with the golden zipper turns and leaves.

Something unsettling bites my downstairs.

Years wash by, but my gaze never strays far. I watch her flourish and grow into a woman. I spectate as she receives recognition for top marks and decide academia is my best chance at impressing her.

Shame the wand thing didn’t work out.

Inadvertently, the wanting awakens something in me. I’ve found power in knowledge and strength in my studies. A decade later, I’ll recognize how long she has inspired my pursuit of intellectual betterment and feel forever in her debt. I’ll never tell her that. Instead, I’ll smile each morning at the portrait of the girl who wouldn’t fall as time collapses haphazardly—unplanned and unsophisticated.

We’re twenty-one, sitting on a hilltop in Northern Massachusetts. The sun beats down on my rapidly aging skin, eroding from the senseless abuse of my decisions. She tells me she feels responsible for not protecting me enough, that she should have stopped me before I got too deep. I see tears swimming delicately in her eyes. I pray one has the audacity to break away and traverse the perfectly sculpted contour of her cheek.

Could I mean that much to a person like you?

Listening to the faint cracks in her voice, my mouth comforts her and tells her the blame of my actions is for me alone. A soft breeze kisses the summer trees whose days are still far from numbered. My sprit smirks and wanders. I love you too, I always have.

This new desk feels horrendously unnatural to sit at. I’ve been facing the same wall for over three years. A promotion’s benefits are almost always first eclipsed by the sheer terror of the unknown.

It’s day 3—time to remove another picture.

The key to taking down portraits of a lost love is patience. One a day until they’re gone—those are the rules. Too quickly and your colleagues become suspicious, which leads to questions, which lead to pity,