2002
Bumfuck, New England
You're finally out of your mom's place and it feels like life is truly beginning, at age 22.
You're living with Erik, who started off as one of your customers when you were working third shift and you noticed his Bauhaus shirt and chatted him up, and became friends. Erik is 6'5", goth, and gay.
For the last couple years you've been in a Tool/Korn/STP cover band that sometimes plays original songs, because these are the days before your joints got so bad you had to stop playing guitar, the days before your anxiety got so bad you stopped singing, the days when you could strut around on stage with no fucks given. You're a cool rock chick and you have bi women throwing themselves at you every show, you can get all the pussy you want, even when you sing "Sex Type Thing" - for some reason especially when you sing "Sex Type Thing" - but you still like men much better. Unfortunately, the dudes at your shows are gross idiots who yell things like "Show me your tits!" so you bring a posterboard covered with cutout pictures of birds. One night you throw a beer bottle at a guy who gropes you, and your band is banned from ever playing that one place again. Oops.
What you really want is to be with a man as a man. You joke about being "a gay man trapped in a woman's body". You read stories of "the love that dare not speak its name", men loving men across history, and it makes you wistful, like a place you've never been but still know is home. Your go-to fantasy involves you having a dick, involves blowjobs and frottage. When you were a kid, you asked Santa Claus to give you a penis.
Somehow you do manage to get a boyfriend, but one is abusive and that lasts about six months and then you meet a nice guy but it doesn't last longer than a couple months, because he finds out you sometimes self-injure in private when life stress gets really bad, so he thinks you're too fucked up. And when your boyfriend dumps you, Erik holds you and lets you cry, and then a few days later he seduces you, even though you're still an egg, because he thinks of you as an "honorary dude" and says you have "male energy".
Your now-ex-boyfriend was the first person to handcuff you and spank your ass and you really, really liked it. You feel like you're in a permanent state of subdrop, losing him... and Erik picks up the broken pieces and dominates you. You especially enjoy going for "walkies" on a leash.
Erik is an artist and a musician, like you. He's on disability for bipolar disorder, and his mom is well-to-do and helps him out a lot.
When you first got to know Erik, you smoked weed together and had long, epic conversations about the deep and meaningless. Life, the universe and everything. On your nights off sometimes you went hiking together and watched the sunrise in the forest. Sometimes the two of you make Cocteau Twins/Black Tape For A Blue Girl type music together. Sometimes he paints while you jam on your guitar, sometimes you draw and paint while he composes on his keyboard, and it feels like a special magical ritual, sacred space.
Erik sometimes uses speed and cocaine, unlike you. The people in your band are using, but you don't touch anything stronger than alcohol, weed, or E. You're also fairly live-and-let-live about recreational drugs, so long as people aren't irresponsible with kids or pets or using on the road.
Then Erik scores heroin from your bass player. At first you think once in awhile won't hurt - you don't like it, you remember Kurt Cobain, you have concerns, but you try to tell yourself he's an adult, he knows what he's doing, it's just a sometimes thing... till he asks you to help him with his tourniquet, because he's still too fucked up from his last bump to do it properly.
He's doing it more, and you're starting to have concerns that this has progressed from recreational use to an addiction. You still don't know what to say or do, and every time you dance around the subject he assures you he's fine.
Erik is usually your ride home from work. One morning you're exhausted as fuck and he doesn't show at 7 AM like he usually does. It's 8 AM and he's still not there. You call a cab.
As you walk down the hall towards your apartment, you can hear Kate Bush playing. This isn't abnormal; Erik is a vinyl enthusiast with a really good sound system... and much of what he listens to is 80s goth. Bauhaus, The Cure, Siouxsie, Joy Division, Killing Joke, Nick Cave. You and he are the biggest Cocteau Twins fans ever.
You come in just as "Running Up That Hill" starts from Kate Bush's Hounds Of Love album... it's playing on repeat. It's one of your favorite songs. Erik is wearing his KMFDM XTORT shirt and black cargo pants, passed out on the couch, his latest hematoma visible on his right arm.
"Erik, you forgot to pick me up," you announce.
He just lays there.
You see the syringe and the spoon on the coffee table. That's part of your concern with how much he's using, is seeing drug paraphernalia just casually lying around now. You wince in distaste then come over and shake him. "Erik. Erik."
He's still laying there, unresponsive. He looks... paler than usual. You're taking EMT courses to try to get out of this fucking retail job and you put that knowledge to use now - he still has a pulse but it feels weak.
Your heart hammers in your ears like the drums of the song. You're in fight-flight-or-freeze mode and your brain decides to freeze, so the only thing that exists is that fucking song as you're trying to shake Erik, hoping that if you just shake him enough, he'll wake up.
Come on baby, come on darling
Let me steal this moment from you now
Come on angel, come on, come on darling
Let's exchange the experience, oh
"Erik. ERIK!"
If I only could, I'd make a deal with God
And I'd get Him to swap our places
And be running up that road, be running up that hill
With no problems
You call 911. You ride along with him to the hospital. You are asked a lot of questions. You are terrified you're going to get arrested.
But the worst is when Erik's mom comes and gives you that cold, disapproving look and you know the words she isn't saying: Why didn't you stop my son?
You don't hear the words conflict aversion for another decade, but it still applies to you. Your father drank and used cocaine and your mother was also an occasional substance abuser. Your father was a violent asshole under the influence and your mom was always terrible even when sober. You learned from a very young age to just look the other way and not argue. Talk shit, get hit.
When Erik is eventually out and back home, there's a tension between you that wasn't there before. You saved his life, but he's also in trouble. And finally, one day, he lets you know on no uncertain terms he blames you - that by calling 911 and making sure he didn't die, you "fucked up his life".
It's your night off from work and he takes you on a date, to go see a movie. On the way back he starts driving way too fast on purpose... while playing "Running Up That Hill" on full blast, the same song playing when you found him overdosed. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't just drive into that post and kill both of us," he says.
You plead with him, you beg for your life, and his. The worst part is that you do struggle with suicidal thoughts and he knows this, so your case for why you get to live rings hollow. He accelerates, going 120mph with a 65mph speed limit, and you think to yourself this is it, I'm going to die, he's going to kill me.
"You're dead, you fucking bitch," he yells as he keeps speeding ahead.
Then suddenly he slows down and doesn't do it, and when the adrenaline crashes you vomit on him.
A week later during your EMT training you have a random panic attack so hard they send you home, then you get held up at gunpoint at your third shift job two days later. Three days after that you are in the hospital from a suicide attempt, and your life changes forever.
Everyone wonders why you hate July and August.
Flash forward 20 years, it's 2022 now, and you can't fart without "Running Up That Hill" playing somewhere, because of Stranger Things. The elder goth in you is annoyed that people are just now hearing the song, and the same people who would have kicked your ass for being goth in high school think this is the greatest thing since sliced bread...
...and the traumatized 22-year-old part of you is annoyed the song is so ubiquitous and you have to be reminded of when your boyfriend overdosed on heroin and also tried to kill you in the car and then you puked on him.
You still love Kate Bush, but you only play "Running Up That Hill" when you've hit a certain threshold of crazy, it's a tell you're not doing well, same as when you listen to Tori Amos. It's like ripping open a wound just to watch it bleed.
You always worry about being Too Much when you tell other people about your life. Worried that nobody will believe you that you've been abused by that many people, been in that many fucked-up living situations...
...faced death more than once.
But now it comes with an added dose of not wanting to harsh people's squee about their new favorite song. Do people even say "harsh one's squee" anymore? God, you feel old just typing that.
The saddest thing is looking back on your string of ex-lovers and he's still one of the least bad ones on the male side, even though he literally tried to kill you.
Say if I only could
Be running up that hill
With no problems