Walking On Stilts At The Edge Of Your Mind
In high school, you had outshined Peter in everything -- at least, in everything that mattered. He might have been smarter than you, but you were the better athlete and the better dresser, which is all girls care about anyway. To outsiders it might seem that you could have done better in finding a best friend, but what those people will never understand is that Peter is everything that you wanted to be -- the son your father never had.
You don't know what Peter gets out of this friendship. He never seemed to envy the new toys and gadgets your father bought you, only genuinely fascinated in that science-geek way of his. He might have been slightly jealous of your confidence when it came to girls, but one day he came into school not wearing his glasses and found the ability to talk to Mary Jane. He didn't need you for that either. You think that it might be possible Peter is the only person in the whole world who doesn't want anything out of you.
But you're still trying to get something out of him. Even though you have nothing to live up to anymore except the memory of your father, you're still trying to be like Peter, trying to outshine him.
You don't know what it is about Peter that you still need.
You're headed back to the office when you see a familiar figure making his way in and out of traffic. You tell the driver to cut Peter off and he swerves the car onto the curb. In high school, when you used to play this joke on Peter, he would flip over your hood and land awkwardly face-up. Nowadays, no matter how off-guard he seems, he always catches himself. Peter has reflexes that outmatch yours.
When the car screeches to a halt, so does Peter on his dinky motorbike. He recognizes your black sedan and a slow smile spreads across his face when you step out.
"I don't have time for this. I have exactly two minutes to deliver these pizzas," he tells you, patting the boxes tied to the back of his bike. You pull out your wallet and shove some bills into his hands.
"You're never going to make it," you answer and it's a strange change of pace when Peter doesn't try to push the money back into your hands. He thanks you while pocketing it, and you understand the slight hint of desperation on his face. Things have gotten a lot tougher for him since high school ended. Out of the corner of your eye, you see your driver silently take the pizzas and get back in the car, driving away to make the delivery in Peter's stead.
"I'm going to get fired," Peter says as he watches the car disappear down the crowded street, but there's relief in his voice.
"You should get fired. You suck as a delivery boy," you joke and you think Peter might be stronger than you now and even a better runner, but he's still Peter. He'll always be late to everything.
"I have to pay the bills," he explains and starts to push his motorbike down the sidewalk. You walk alongside him, peering at him through your sunglasses.
"Not by doing this. You probably owe the pizzeria more than they're paying you."
Both of you force out strained laughs. It's nothing like the inside jokes you used to have in high school, which would leave you on the floor laughing until tears came. Nothing is really like that anymore.
It's mostly small talk, catching-up talk. He asks about MJ almost casually, but not casually enough for you to let it go by unnoticed, and you tell him that you don't get to see her much either these days. You know that she's involved with someone but you think it's better that you don't be the one to tell him.
"I miss you, Harry," he says suddenly and you look up at him, stopping dead in your tracks. He's sincere, which is all the more infuriating because Peter is the most elusive person you know, yet he always looks as if he wants to tell you the truth, as if he would if you could just find the right combination of words to make him talk.
"I'm not the one who stopped calling," you answer sharply. As light and friendly as this conversation had been, you both knew where it was headed. This is always how your conversations end, which is why Peter doesn't return your calls anymore. Both of you are thinking of the same thing -- those endless arguments as you demanded Peter to tell you the truth, to tell you everything that he knew.
"You know I can't," he always said, which is what he says now.
"Can't, or won't?" you spit at him bitterly. Peter might have his secrets, but so do you. There's a dark place inside of yourself that only surfaces when you're around Peter. There's a place of anger and jealousy and hate that usually you can control in front of everyone -- even those insufferable board members -- but not in front of your supposed best friend. A voice inside your head tells you that the rage won't stop until you finally settle this, and Peter is the only thing standing in your way. That voice sounds frighteningly like your father.
Peter's eyes are locked onto yours, fearful but determined. He won't yield. You hear sirens growing closer and as a fire truck races down the street, his eyes break off yours to follow the flashing lights almost wistfully. You wish he could pay attention for one full conversation. You wish he could just give you that much.
"I have to go." The words are barely out of his mouth before he hops on his bike and leaves you there, wanting to yell after him but not being able to find the words.
It takes longer each time you see Peter for the rage to dissipate. Every time you see his face or hear his voice, it gets harder and harder not to hit him.
And then one day, you do. It's a slap across the face in front of New York's most elite, on the day that everything fell apart. You drank shot after shot of whiskey at the bar, threatening the bartender when he tried to cut you off. You saw Peter from across the room, you confronted Peter in the middle of the throng, then you raised your arm to slap him.
It's like watching another person do it. Your arm moving up, and then coming back down. The angry shouts and curses coming out of your mouth. You don't have control over this. You're not the one doing this.
But the sting is real enough -- the sting in the palm of your hand and the redness that blooms on his cheek, the horror and hurt in his eyes. Those are real enough.
You stare at the open window, leaning on the chaise where his body used to lie. The wind blows your heavy curtains back. Sirens blare somewhere far in the distance.
You were so close to finishing this, to stopping the anger and the confusion, but then you pulled off the mask. You were shocked, of course. You were frozen as you tried to reconcile Peter's face with your enemy's, tried to draw them in your mind as the same person. But somewhere deep inside, you must have always known. He was the one person you could never control yourself around.
He begged for your help to find Mary Jane. The voice inside your head (your father's voice) made you grip the dagger even tighter, but the look in Peter's eyes brought you back. You told him where to find her, because it was his face asking you, not the mask.
You're sitting there with the dagger in still in your hand, holding it so tightly that the intricate designs on the handle are cutting into your skin. The pain in your hand is real. The pain in your hand is something that you can wash the blood out of and wrap up. It's something you can understand.
What you don't understand is how you ended up here. On the long list of differences between you and Peter, this is just another thing that drives him away from you.
Spider-Man killed my father. Peter Parker killed my father.
You know that you never would have done that to him.
MJ used to joke, long before everything started to fall apart, that if she could just combine you and Peter, she would have the perfect man. You all laughed but no one at the time realized that really she was taking a stab at the both of you. She was saying that neither you nor Peter was a full person. One was lacking something the other wasn't. The other had faults the first didn't. Both were missing something that only the other could fill.
Your father's voice calls out to you, his face and his laughter. You follow it and it leads you into the dark hallways of his past. You reach out to touch the mask that's twisted into his smile (your smile), and things seem so much clearer and calmer now.
This is what Mary Jane meant, when she said that you'll never be a man unless you have Peter. As you feel the cold and smooth metal beneath your hand, you know that you'll never be complete.