"Its gonna hurt," she said, "at first your gonna want to die, like the first time you bleed out of control, when you watched it come and come and you didn't know where it would end."
Jonathon wondered if that ever had happened before, but then he visualizes a scar under his chin that he earned at the age of four; before reality had set in. He hadn't mastered the brick wall in the backyard before the wall had mastered him. Nearly making it over the top, his velcroed shoes slipped, with the rest of him. He saw the top of the neighbors pomegranant tree before his eyeline was pulled away abruptly by his over excitement of being on top. He pictured his mother screaming more than him. He remembers her alarm, hysterics, lack of control as the warmth covered his yellow Seasame Street shirt and figured he knew what Anna was talking about, that loss of level, of knowing that it would be okay.
He had always been the type that wanted to know so that he didn't have to know what was beyond. He liked to know limits so he never had to extend past them. He often reflected on his life as if it were a resume; middle school: average, high school: average, college: average (if he ever finishes). Sterile remarks from teachers and professors, if they even remembered him. On the level, straight and narrow. But when he was with Anna, even level seemed bad; straight seemed predictable and narrow was the last thing he wanted. She was the opposite of all these things and he liked it. She was sharp enough to cut if you werent looking, kind enough to keep you interested, and always never, completely incomplete, hungrily starving, loud, unrestrained beauty in every sense of the word. Her, next to him, flavored his existence, made him cry for what he never did. The absense of her in his life made him desperate. The very idea of not seeing her tomorrow made him crazy, the kind of crazy that crack induces; gradual and without regard.
So he stepped forward, took it, and prepared for an experience he had only witnessed.