"So, what brings you here on this inclement midnight?" I asked Emmett when he was brushing snow from my clothes.

            "It would have been an inclement evening, but I was working." Emmett stamped the snow from his mukluks and entered my modest residence. "After lunch Brian called me to say you were suspiciously up-beat today. And also you did not answer my messages."

            "You sent me pics of waiters' asses. What should I have answered?"

            "One pic was of a cat. So, I decided I would go visit my good old friend Teddy. To have some coffee, to talk." The last word Em pronounced emphatically. 

            "We talked already. And there is no need for more talks." I went to fetch a floor cloth to put our boots on it.

            "Do you call a talk that "Blake and I decided we overgrew our relationship" bullshit? No, that was an ad poster. Pop a magic pill and go climb fucking mountains."

            "Emmett," I threw the cloth to a mop bucket. "Do you know when everything Blake and I had went up the ass? When he started to hang out with Rita instead of having sex with me. They had lots of coffee and talks. Does it ring any bells?"

            "So now you decided to shift the focus on me? Fine. Let me tell you something. Stop that crap about us letting you crawl into a crack and croak there quietly. If I will be fucking Drew Boyd and then learn that meanwhile you…" Em shook his head. "Well, my sex life will be over." 

            "Your sex life managed to survive way tougher times."

Em wrung the cloth out and emptied the mop bucket into the toilet. I felt ashamed and decided to play a pi for a little while. I sat on the couch and put a look of extreme openness to my face. My friend hugged my shoulders and said in the tone of a wise, gloss magazine reading lady,

            "Do you know that fuckistry about 7 stages of grief?"

            "That denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance thing?"

            "Are you sure the order is right?" Em frowned and scratched an eyebrow. "You have just ruined my concept."

            "We can google it," I gladly reached for my laptop, but Em intercepted me.

            "Never mind. Denial is behind you. You passed it when you did not believe you and Blake were over and when decided to fuck half of Pitts. I would have said it was bargaining, but since anger comes first in the list…" 

            "We can think outside the list, Em."

            My friend gave me a sharp look as if he was calculating the percentage of sarcasm in my words. I made saucer eyes, lifted my eyebrows and nodded. Emmett shook his head and continued: "Either way, you are on the anger stage now. And there is something I cannot understand, Teddy. Why did you decide to focus all your anger on yourself?"

             "What makes you think so?"

             "Let me see… In a month you managed to bash your condo, scrape all your fingers (I do not even want to think about your ass), almost lose the job you worship and, from the looks of it, to stop sleeping completely. And tonight I found you in some dog-pissed snowdrift. If your anger was not addressed to yourself, you'd be lying in a warm bed."

             I was really hating that conversation. I did not want to continue it and withdrew. But Em nudged me and gave the next cue.

             "Is it you who makes tornadoes?"

             "What?"

             "Tornadoes. Big twisting things that ruin houses?"

             "No, absolutely not. I never make tornadoes, Emmett."

             Apparently, my friend wanted me to catch hold on this metaphor. Like, I am not responsible for everything that happens into the world. And that the world is not revolving around me. But were not we speaking about my small world and those local tornadoes I was making for my near and dear. Who knows it any better than Emmett? Therefore, I just stared on the floor, gloomily and silently.

             "So, Ted, you have to go through the anger stage to get to honest depression and then acceptance. I'd rather you did not eat your heart out on this way. Blake broke it several times already, whatever was his motivation. And as long as you do not believe that he did it again this time, you will continue to hate yourself. Fuck, why am I angry with Blake and you are not?!"

             I wanted to object that Em was biased. And he really was biased! Hardly anybody hated Blake as much as Em. But after yesterday's night visit I did not want to protect my ex. Had he bothered to give at least a little thought to what condition he was going to leave me, would he have come? Of course, not!  Cruelty is not his thing. Blake's element is urge and fling!

             And I really was hating myself a thousand times worse. Because in our relationship, Blake was not a child only once: when I, smashed by withdrawal, was languishing on a drip in the rehab. Then he was holding my hand and wiping my snot. No sooner than I recovered, he returned to his favorite "I do what I want and let others think". Does not the one who thinks hold all responsibility?

             Did I ask for such a load of it? O yes, beyond any doubt. I cannot do otherwise. The Chariot of Fate is steered either by Theodore the Almighty, the Master of the Universe, or by no one. And since the responsibility is exclusively mine, so is the guilt. And then it dawned on me with extreme clarity: I needed someone to steer everything at least for a little while. And also Em is right: I had to vent my self-hate ASAP somehow. With so much of it I won't manage to rehabilitate myself. And I will punish myself until I hit the bottom again. And it will make my chrystal spree look like a black-tie function.

             Well, my birthday was due in a week. And I realized what present I will give myself. 

             "Em," I said with all cordiality I could, "you cannot help me by sleeping on my couch. Go home. Word of honor, there is no syringe with heroine and no choker under my pillow. I have too much on my mind to think about what Drew Boyd will say about your sleepovers here. If you send me any messages tomorrow, I will answer all of them. You can even put a baby monitor here. And by all means we will talk. Just not now."

             Emmett nodded, kissed me on the cheek and called a taxi.

             And I took my laptop and wrote to my course mate Dale Wexler. That very guy who gave me a milestone night in his dungeon. I worried he would not find a spot for me in his busy agenda. But Dale was surprisingly glad to take part in my initiative and invited me to celebrate yet another thirty fifth birthday in his secret chamber. He promised to take care of candles, and as for a cake, I can do without it.

***

              "I am glad you got it," Wexler said. "In reality, all this is not about sex. It is about control and pain. You can give control to someone else and take your inner pain and release it outside. So now we will do it as big boys." 

              "Can I hope for sex as well?" I asked.

              "Sure, Schmidt! Do you think I am some kind of a sadist or what?" Wexler laughed. "Go downstairs and take your clothes off."

              I cannot say I liked it, because it was something different. I do not think anyone can like that stuff. But I definitely felt clean and pleasantly empty when I came home. At least my urge to destruct myself was left behind, fluttering on the floor of Dale's torture chamber. With all my heart I was hoping that a cleaning lady will flush that urge down the toilet with all other relics of my presence there. 

***

             In the evening Em came over. I gave such a flinch when he hugged me that he unbuttoned the collar of my shirt and looked under it.

              "Yikes. Had a good time?" my friend asked.

               "Not a bad one."

               "Got to buy something in a drug store."

              When Emmett was rubbing an ointment into my back, I was thinking what to do with my life, after all.

               "Em," I asked, "why did Blake and I not make it?"

               "Besides the fact that he is a cunt? Well... Ted, such things happen. An oil can mix with another oil, but it can't mix with water. You can try real hard, shake them real long and get an emulsion. Do you know two-phase make-up removers? After you leave an emulsion alone, it breaks into oil and water again. It is not written on folks who is oil and who is water. We have to learn it from experience. But, look, concrete is used to build houses; so hard it is when it is dry. It is also a blend - water, sand and other stuff."

              "Too bad that when you mix shit with sticks, you get just shitty sticks."

               "Teddy…" Em sighed. "I am really sure the concrete for you to build your house will be mixed sooner or later. You will find right ingredients. But sure it won't be water with oil and shit with sticks. That's all."

               My forehead touched my pillow, and Em covered me with the blanket. Then he kissed me on the shoulder and left.