FanStory.com - DUEL with the DEVIL - Chapter 22by Jim Wile

Recap of Chapter 21: Brian picks Julia up for dinner after getting a few hours’ sleep at his motel. They eat at Olive Garden, then go back to the motel to watch some TV, but they begin making out, which leads to their first sexual experience. Perhaps this is what Julia finally needed to release all the tension she has had about the audition because she performs very well the next day with very few nerves. They spend the rest of the day in New York, then leave for home the following day in Brian’s car. Three weeks later, she is accepted into Juilliard.

Chapter 22

Summer, 2009

Fran returned from her vacation relaxed and in good spirits. She and her friend had met a couple of guys on the ship, and the four of them hung around together most of the time. She looked great, as if a heavy weight had been lifted from her, which, I guess, in a way it had. She was no longer responsible for parenting me, and now we could relate to each other in more of a sibling capacity. That didn’t mean I changed my behavior because of it. She may no longer have been my parent, but I was still greatly beholden to her and cared what she thought of me. I didn’t want to disappoint her again.

She mentioned she had really hit it off with one of the two guys on the ship named Mike Pekarsky, who hailed from Wilmington, North Carolina. He was a lineman for Duke Energy. He was a couple inches shorter than she was but built like a fireplug, she said. He was also into lifting. Wilmington was only three hours from here, and they planned to visit each other in a few weeks. I was happy for her.

We talked about Julia’s audition and how I drove up to be with her. She was proud of me for that and delighted for Julia.

High school graduation came and went with little fanfare, and summer break was here. Right after graduation, I underwent a microdiscectomy for a herniated disc in my upper back. Two of the herniated discs had eventually healed themselves, but this one had become sequestered, meaning a piece of it had broken off and traveled away from the original site of the herniation and lodged itself painfully against a nerve root. This was the major source of my pain, although there was also some facet joint pain. It’s been two years since the accident, and the pain was only marginally better than it had been following the accident. Still holding at a constant level 6.

Following the operation in early June, I had to give up mowing lawns with Derek. The doctor said I couldn’t do anything strenuous for four to six weeks. I couldn’t do any weight lifting either, and was only allowed to do mild exercises.

We also discussed using Tramadol, a mild opioid, for pain relief following the surgery, but he said there would be a risk of developing a dependence on it in light of my history of opioid abuse. I opted for nothing except extra-strength Tylenol. This didn’t do much for the pain, but, being an addict, I feared any kind of opioid medication, even a weak one. I just had to grin and bear it, but there was a lot of bearing and not much grinning.

The thing that seemed to help the most was having sex with Julia, which we did whenever she came to my house. The endorphins released during sex were extremely effective in taking my mind off the pain. I wasn’t really supposed to have sex for a few weeks following the surgery, so we took it easy at first, but this eventually became more vigorous. She had her driver’s license now and would come over two or three nights a week. Even after I had sufficiently recuperated, she continued to come to my house a lot more than I went to hers, mostly for that reason.

I still needed to earn some money, and I was fortunate to be able to line up a few tutoring jobs for kids who had to attend summer school. They were good enough to come to my house for their lessons, so I didn’t have to arrange transportation to their houses. I wouldn’t be allowed to drive for a few weeks following the surgery.

Julia, likewise, was earning money by giving lessons to a few beginners this summer at her house. This was a new experience for her—teaching—and she said she enjoyed it. I enjoyed teaching too and was good at it, as I had been with Sandi a few years ago.

As summer’s end was rapidly approaching, it was time to start getting ready for college. NC State was to begin a week before Juilliard, and the night before I had to leave, Julia came over to help me pack and say goodbye.

After packing my suitcase, boxing up the remainder, and loading some of the stuff into the car, we relaxed out on the porch with some Cokes.

“Have you figured out yet what you might want to major in?” she asked me.

“Not really. It will most likely be in math or science, but beyond that, I honestly don’t know. I think about sex a lot and how it seems to be a natural painkiller. I’d like to understand it better from a scientific standpoint.”

She smiled. “Yeah, I think about it too, but as a pharmaceutical, that could also become addicting, couldn't it? Can you imagine having the pleasure of sex all day long? Mankind would never get anything else done.”

“Exactly. Raffi and I used to talk about that—not about sex per se—but about separating pleasure from pain relief. For some people, sex addiction is a real thing, just like opioid addiction, but not exactly like it because you can’t really OD from sex, can you? I don’t know. Maybe you can, but I don’t think it would kill you. But like you said, it’s an addiction all the same. The point is that mixing pleasure with painkilling just confuses things. It may be nature’s way of distracting you from pain, but man-made drugs that mix the two just screw things up.”

“So, maybe you should study something like biochemistry and find the solution to this.”

“Very perceptive of you. I’ve actually been researching that a little. Biochemistry has several main areas, but the one that seems most appealing to me is neurobiology. I’d like to understand how pain signals are transmitted and how the body’s endorphins work to learn how to suppress them. Hey, but let’s not worry about suppressing ‘em right now. Instead, want to go see if we can produce a few? It may be a while until we can do that again.”

She stood then, took my hand, and began leading me toward my bedroom.

She ended up spending the night with me after calling her parents and telling them about her plans. Her mother seemed to be extremely liberal-minded about this. Now that Julia was 18, her mother didn’t care so much about her having sex. Her main objections were that the amount of time we spent together ate into Julia’s precious practice time. Plus, she just didn’t like me and thought my being an addict was bad for Julia. Julia, however, was beginning to not care what her mother thought about things. Whatever her father’s opinion was of premarital sex or me, it didn’t seem to count for much of anything in that family.

Fran joined us for breakfast the following morning—pancakes and bacon. When it was over and the dishes were cleared and put in the dishwasher, she and I said goodbye. As we hugged, she said, “You take care, little brother.”

This was a joke between us because, at 6’-2”, I was now three inches taller than she was and outweighed her by 40 pounds. “Okay, big sister. I’m going to miss you, Fran. You take care, yourself, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

She gave me the expected response: “That gives me a lot of leeway. Be good, and be safe, and call once in a while.”

“I will.”

Julia then helped me pack the few remaining items into the car, and it was time for us to say goodbye. When the final moments came, she started tearing up. I took her in my arms and held her for a long time.

I said to her in a commentator’s voice, “AND SO BEGINS A NEW PHASE IN THEIR YOUNG LIVES. God, I wish we could be together, Jules. I’m going to miss you so much. Let’s try to make a Skype call every day for at least a few minutes, no matter how busy we might be. That okay with you?”

Smiling, she said, “DOES HE EVEN NEED TO ASK?” imitating my commentator voice. “Hey, Babe, we’ll make time if we have to. I love you so much. This is going to be hard.”

“I love you too, Babe. You better believe it will be hard—in more ways than one!” We laughed about that. “And I don’t believe Skype sex is illegal. Maybe Skype will be just the thing we need if we can’t be together.”

“We’ll have to try it if we can get our roommates to be gone for a while.”

“Sounds like maybe the next best thing. Well, I guess I’d better go.”

We hugged and kissed again, then I got into the driver’s seat and buckled up. I put the window down, and she leaned down, and we kissed a final time. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” she said, as the tears formed again in her eyes.