I blame Tamara.
I guess that's not fair and it certainly isn't completely correct, but I have to blame someone, right? Isn't that de rigueur for the times? So I blame Tamara.
Or maybe Joey.
It's funny. I never really used to think of myself in terms of my relationships, but maybe now that the last few have crashed and burned, I don't have any other way to do it. Or maybe nothing else in my life seems to be coming together so they're just the easiest things.
The French Quarter is depressing in the morning. Gray sky, gray streets, the drunks and the remorseful waking up and wondering what they did last night and if there's anything that the churches down the street need to hear. There's got to be some booming business in the confessionals around here.
I don't remember ever going to church. My parents never thought much of it, except when I was a kid and my dad was first elected Sheriff. He played the good Christian part to garner the right votes, but they usually left me at home since I could barely sit still through a hymn, much less an entire service. Something about your youngest son crawling under the pews trying to look up women's dresses apparently leaves a bad impression.
I stop at one of the cemeteries as the pomp and circumstance of a parade heads toward me. Another burial in New Orleans. The band is into it, somber but with an underlying sense of joy. I guess they view death differently around here. Or maybe they just live life so fully that dying doesn't seem like such a bad idea.
I can't help but smirk at myself. Jesus, when did I get to be this pathetic? When did I start believing my own press? Audrey was right. Is right. I'm not some knight in shining armor. I haven't been for ages, not since I tried to save myself and everything went wrong.
But begin at the beginning, right? Tamara.
She started it. Not just the sexual revolution of Pacey Witter, which was nice and for which I will always be in her debt, but the hero complex. If we'd never gotten caught, I wouldn't ever have had the need to come to her rescue. I'd have just been some schmo cruising along in life until I needed someone more my age or she moved on or found someone younger or…or who knows? But instead I blabbed to Dawson and the world found out and I had my first chance to play the savior.
That's heady shit for a guy who's always been the underdog. I imagine it's like mainlining some drug - a huge rush of euphoria followed by a craving for your next hit.
That doesn't put the best light on my relationship with Andie does it? Don't get me wrong, that wasn't what she was about in the beginning. I honestly thought that she could change me. Maybe I wouldn't think about that rush all the time if I were just a decent guy all the way around. But then her mom came into the picture and I saved her and Andie was so fucking grateful. God. That night after we got her mom home, she took me up to her room and gave me what had to be the best blowjob of my life. I had to stuff her nightgown in my mouth to keep from screaming.
Jesus, after that I was like some sort of junkie. Hell, I was about ten minutes from combing the streets of Capeside looking for kittens stuck up in trees when Jack gave me the opportunity again. It was just as fulfilling doing it for a guy. Maybe more so because I could honestly say my intentions were pure. Well, not completely pure, Andie is his sister after all, but when the sex didn't fall in my lap afterwards, the high from doing what I did was still tremendous.
I walk up the steps of the church quietly, listening to the air around me. The choir is practicing and there's laughter and music. I think there's always music in New Orleans. I head through the huge oak doors and walk inside and it's hushed and peaceful and noisy and beautiful. Candles are glowing off to the sides of the altar and I can't see them singing, but I can hear them.
I slip into one of the pews staring at the other people praying and gesticulating and slipping in and out of the booths.
Confession time.
When Andie and I broke up - when she cheated on me - it was a gift. I mean, she'd been cured, right? She was back on the right track, which really meant only one thing to me. There were no opportunities looming in my future. Maybe I knew that the second she left Capeside or maybe I just started realizing it as her correspondence fell off. I can almost track what she did with Marc by her letters. The kissing started when she stopped signing it "Love always, Andie" and then the fucking hits right about where it's just a short note signed with her name. And then nothing. Which could be guilt, like she said, or it could mean more fucking. As uptight as she could be, something tells me guilt didn't stop them at once.
You never stop at once though, do you? You just never stop, because you don't know how. I thought it was over, finished. Then she came to me with that fake rape story and served herself up on a platter the only way she knew I'd take her. Victimized, hurting, needing. Needing me. Like a buffet table spread out before me, offering herself up in bite sized hor de oeuvres, little tiny cookies and bottles saying Eat Me, Drink Me, Save Me.
What's a man to do, right? There she is practically begging me to take up her cause, mount my steed and carry her off into the sunset. But I just couldn't, you know? I just couldn't because I could sense it on the horizon. Something changing, something big. After all, Dawson had just thrust an emotionally distressed and upset Joey Potter into my lap.
Oh sure, I protested at first but I think everyone knew that I was getting in that boat the second he told me the story. Hell, I practically had a hard-on at the prospect. Not for Joey. Not yet, but just the anticipatory buzz of being there for someone new. The gratitude I expected to come was racing through my veins just like heroin or coke or X. Andie was just promising a temporary buzz. Joey…Joey was mainlining.
For wanting to stand on her own - isn't that why she broke up with Dawson in the first place - Joey is nothing without a man in her life. Maybe it stems from her father abandoning the family for drugs and other women and eventually prison, but there has to be some male figure there for her. She has to have someone to lean on, someone to save the day beside her or she's lost. Did she hate that it was me? Maybe. For a while. And then things changed. Did she fall for me? I still don't know. I know that I fell for her. Head over heels. Hard. Painfully fucking hard.
A lifetime of Joey Potter sure looks like you've hit the mother lode when you've got my problem. Or so I thought.
It turns out Joey Potter is the poster child for the DARE program. She can cure a man of what ails him faster than any person on earth. An overload of angst and bullshit and father issues and best friend issues and self esteem issues and every other kind of issue on the planet is enough to make any man rethink his addiction. Her going away to college was a blessing. I couldn't get rid of her fast enough.
That sounds unfair. I did love her. Do still. Always will. But I'll give an impressed whistle to any man who can sustain her longer than I did. Until she gets some serious psychiatric help, she's going to be too much to handle, even for a hero junkie like me.
After Joey I thought I was cured. I swear to God I did. A summer of fun and sex followed by several months of fun and sex. No one needed me to save them, and I didn't need anyone to save. I'd kicked it, you know? I was clear. No tracks on my arms or on my soul. No sores or scabs. A clean slate.
So maybe I was looking for angst. Maybe I wanted to stir up trouble. Maybe I wanted something to happen because life was going too well. Maybe I'm just as fucked up and just as prone to sabotage the good things in my life as Potter is. Either way, I thought hooking up with Audrey would be fun with just a healthy pinch of need. A job here, a movie part there. Just a little hit of it. Nothing too strong. Like a puff on a joint. Just one. Hold it in and release. A line of coke. Just one. I could take it. I could handle it.
But it fell flat. There was no angst, just more fun and sex. She didn't really need me and fucked me the same no matter what I did. And I was pretty happy, so I was sure I'd kicked it. Absolutely, positively fucking sure that I was free. I threw the armor in the trash. Set my noble steed out to pasture. Fucked Audrey all summer long, found a way to give my life a little direction - although not the direction I ever imagined for myself - and found a shot at respect. Even my dad and Doug wouldn't be able to look at me and wonder what the fuck I was doing with my life. I'd have money and respect and power and privilege and I'd be a hell of a lot better off than some cheap public servant in Capeside.
And yet I've been bitching about Audrey and the break-up. I'd wonder why, since I wanted it - still want it, because Audrey and I have no future - but all I can think about is the fact that if she's upset, she might need someone's shoulder to cry on. She might keep falling out of step with where she was and she might fucking need me and that turns me on something fierce.
It's like I can feel the armor closing around me as I walk. I can practically see the sun shining off the smooth white surface and I'm craving the rush. I can practically taste the need on my tongue. I say her name or think about her and all I want is to be the one to come running to her rescue.
Hell, coming to anyone's rescue. My first thought last night after finding out Denise was a hooker was to find a way to get her out of the life. Find some agency or something to help her get a real job that doesn't require her to fuck pathetic but wealthy losers. Actually, my first thought was how grateful she'd be if I did that.
God, I'm a sick, fucked- up bastard.
The writing's on the wall here. I can feel the shakes of anticipation coming on. Someone must need saving, rescuing, holding, helping? Maybe what Jack said about CJ is true and he's not into Jen. Maybe I can horn in on some comforting action, kick his ass for her. Maybe I'll just cruise around the periphery of my friends' lives for the rest of mine and wait for someone to need me. Someone to offer me a piece of worth, since I don't seem to have any myself.
Which, of course, I blame on my dad.
Leaning back in the pew, I look up at the cross, listening to the hymn they're singing. Something in Latin or Italian or some other language I don't recognize, but you know it's about doing unto others and all that. About God being the kind of God that doesn't do shit like flood the earth and randomly turn people into salt anymore. About how he's not the kind of God that condones raping and abusing children no matter what the newspapers say. About how he's good now, and merciful.
What the hell, huh? Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.
I leave the church, heading back to the hotel, to the airport, to Boston. I'm sure to find a fix somewhere along the way. After all, someone's bound to need a hero.