driving while suicidal or through the ninth circle of hell
a collage exercise
The emerging blood of twilight helps to minimize the intrusion between stoplights. Check your calico gauge and emissions of remorse, note the mesmerizing, lavender-swirling flames within the stucco storm drains of Avalon. Do this seven times before the sun sets. Never forget you're a Taurus and a tourist. The best way to learn from your mistakes is through the anise-stained floors and potholes of gas burners, portrait griddles, chandelier journals. Be sure to stock up on Haviland china figurines and Exacto knives. Scatter rosemary in the AC vents. Ignore the traffic cop in lima green Dolce and Gabbana but paint your eyelashes in magenta and puce. Drive with windows down the black-walnut, latte-white, cancer-paradise landscape. If you get hungry, munch on pimento cheese sandwiches and chocolate-covered cherries. For unique and extraordinary is the imaging sod-grove, the final, old-men, pie-cut architecture of your soul.
falls in repose dry-withered scroll of bone tender-brittle wisp of a husk with veins like mine I cradle it in my palm like a cup of shadow my offering to its unassuming ineffable perfection
variegated grays and browns flake off its surface even now like words of a poem falling onto my fingers perhaps it's not a leaf after all but a regard ring I can make out an inscription delicate translucent as fairy-wing I attempt to decipher its message listen to its faint thread of music as it curls further in on itself like a witch's crooked finger or some ash-hued miniscule infant craving the solace of fetal recumbence to shut out the world
On a whim, I buy the box. The cheap kind, Queen-Anne style, a thin cathedral of luscious brown housing white, gooey centers.
Your kitchen cabinet was always stocked with at least two boxes of the things, cardboard smelling of cigarette smoke. "Toni, have a cherry!" you'd gently admonish, winking at me behind Mother's back. Always your arms and the candy drawer opened wide, unconditionally, without question. Only once, you'd slapped my hands for watching a sex-education show on TV in the back room where I slept, the little guest bed with the crocheted quilt; walls framed by art deco hanging cabinets filled with delicate china shoes without feet or mates.
You've been dead now for years. I held your gnarled hand in mine, watched your frail body disintegrate in the humid box of a hospital room. Nothing would have kept you here, surely not the likes of me. I've often wondered if my child would have appeased you, but you and I were too alike, she certainly didn't appease me.
How you loved the child housed in me, the long, white-blond hair, open, smiling face. It was when I grew older I'd somehow failed you though neither of us knew the precise reason why.
Maybe it was the way I became you, dyed-raven-haired, solemn-eyed beauty; I even dressed like your apparition, all Bettie-Page bangs and flesh-colored nylons under the sprawling oak tree playing the ukelele. Though we smoked and conspired together to Mom's horrified chagrin, your thin twigs of cigars made me cough. It stung you that I'd rather smoke my own. "Grow your hair long and golden," you'd scold, and somewhere, softly, I hated you for it.
My body is frail now from its utter lack of frailty; my brow creases in wary mistrust as yours did while driving, the car ashtray overflowing with butts, gray snowflakes like dancing motes.
I trudge to my vehicle through the infernal heat of the shopping mall, slam the car door and simultatenously blast the AC. Uncover my paltry treasure, peel the thin scrim of cellophane from two plastic crates.
When that first gush of white-oozing sweetness melts over my tongue, a lone tear slides down, just like the Indian on TV, the one nestled between reruns of MASH and The Love Boat, mourning over all that waste.
"I know my own way back, Don't fear me! There's the grey beginning."–Browning, "Fra Lippo Lippi"
In the grey-beginning hours of dawn, sunlight has already begun to drip along the earth like light in an open mouth. I raise my face to its waxy sweetness in rapt supplication. Barely a breeze, everything quiet and still. Except for the occasional car like a bullet streaking through the tranquil waves of early morning silence. The pain is knife-edged, made unbearable by restless irritability. I want the drug I had before. It allowed me to read: I was sad enough to write when inspired, yet calm enough to seek escape through the written word. It erased the hurt of love–that I still love and want and yearn, the fact I cannot have love now. Not like I am. There is no one. No opiate vessel of flesh, my true drug of choice. I've driven to a secluded vantage point behind a building. I look to my left and am rewarded by a breathtaking sight. Tiny daises. Sunlit centers, goldenrod eyes-of-suns, framed by feather-light petals of white, like fairy-lashes. All against a backdrop of glittering-vivid, verdant moss. They thrive in the gentle shadows of this spot, its perpetual gloaming, like sheltered hearts, coupling softly with the wet and damp. I've run out of synonyms for the word ache. How to describe this pain–one must describe it, it's too general a term for this knife-kissed rippling. Throb of want, a burning hum, this vehement sickly paroxysm of need. A black, brutal symphony of lips and limbs, a trail of living fire scorching the weave of my soul, life and death interlaced in a rustling tapestry... How can one be so emptied, so carved and hollow like a shadow box, by the lack of intertwining arms and legs, the sinuous lullaby of flesh on flesh? The air is too laden with moisture to smell crisp and clean. It's like the ghost of a cloying perfume from another room, or an evanescent spirit wafting from an open window. Bringing in its wake the beating wings of a breathless music. The ethereal-grey tentacles of pain emanating from me have dissipated like wisps of fog; the thin veil of introspection slips away, like a woman's dress sliding to her feet. I start the motor, listen to its silky purr for some seconds, then drive away.
Our mouths are dry. Our eyes heavy from sleep, like small children crouching as not to be put to bed. In the beginning, spiritual fervor seizes us, please God, no, don't let it happen... The dark, elegant horse of Hope, the one with the kind and humble eyes, the eloquent tongue, crushed by the--no, better not say it.
Now the stars are out. The earth has become an ocean of waves of undulating candlelight. We have never witnessed such a splintering sight; we are running out of our homes at midnight, embracing each other as if alive for the first time and drawing our first parched breath, honeyed air bursting the frail breadth of our lungs, joy and tears surging their milk-white throb beneath our newborn breast. Rejoice. Rejoice. We open our mouths to the rain and somewhere in between our tongues and teeth slips the sweet, cool, uncoiling word of the New. Of Change. Rejoice. Rejoice.
(Another exercise in creative writing class, on mood and setting.)
The Carousel
I sit in front of the vanity mirror, staring at my reflection multiplied within the double connecting panes. What soothes my trembling hands is the miniature carousel before me, lying squat upon the amber mahogany surface of the vanity and turning at a caterpillar's pace. It is an elaborate, well-crafted thing, for it was fashioned before the Roaring days and once belonged to my grandmother as a young girl: gilt-embossed, many florid lines and details about its dark verdant base, delicate gold filigree horses moving round and round, up and down... It is somewhat dusty, though. Cobwebs faintly glisten and creep throughout its ribboned posts, trembling slightly with the movement as I will my own fingers to desist their soft quivering. Deep from within the darkened recesses of the carousel's body emerges the grinding and squeaking out of an innocent and melancholy tune–but oh tonight I am innocent but not melancholy! For tonight the ballroom of this boardinghouse where I have spent the past ten years of my life will be dressed in flowing streamers of gold and silver lamé, and the arched bay windows will be thrown open to let in the musky evening fragrance of the rhododendron blossoms. First we will enter, the ladies of the house, then the men will saunter in (for this is an upscale boardinghouse, a proper boardinghouse that follows all the customary rules and time-honored traditions of respectable society). And for some few hours, all will be heaven, indeed. With the carousel turning, I add the remaining touches to my appearance: the fine, pale powder, a spritz from the perfume decanter, one delectable wave of lavender water sent rushing and swirling throughout the punctuated, promise-tinged air. I do not care for the style of cosmetics en vogue these days among young ladies such as myself: the heavily-blackened eyes and nude, nearly imperceptible mouths–as if a woman were some strange Cheshire cat, eyes feral, glowing, and suspended in mid-air with nothing to accompany them! This evening, my own lids are softly dusted in dove-gray powder, my lips emboldened by a deep rose. I am wearing a gown of white ribbed silk. My slender neck is encircled by a pink velvet ribbon, and in the center of this ribbon is suspended an exquisite cameo, also passed down to me by my grandmother. One last furtive glance in the mirror, and I can hear the other ladies shuffling noisily out of their rooms. This is a boardinghouse that does not discriminate in age or wealth, but it is still upscale, and there exists the unspoken doctrine that we are all ladies, so we must act like ladies. I leave my room, enter the hallway, and stare nakedly at the other women. Their trepid, hungry excitement is palpable even as they wave and greet me and begin to form a ragged line at the main door. But how odd they seem tonight, their sense of fashion is awkward and clumsy, their painted slashes of lips and rouged, sunken cheeks appear garish and bitterly disparate from the lively atmosphere. Their own gowns hang like shrouds upon their gnarled, emaciated bodies. Oh, they are not lovely like me–I am the belle of the ball tonight, I am Scarlett! In the prime of my youth, pale and plump, not yet embittered, not yet hollow-eyed and empty and love-lost.
* * *
The lady who runs this boardinghouse, Mrs. Hatherly, once told me that I had murdered my own grandparents. This is the reason she took me in, for she accepts under her care many lost yet still respectable souls. But she has been greatly misinformed. Still, I have never bothered to correct her, for she is a kind, genteel matron, and I do wish to be polite. I was raised in this manner, you see. I possess inherently good breeding. But from time to time, I do experience bittersweet, nostalgic memories of my grandparents. My grandfather wore large, wire-rimmed spectacles that made his eyes seem as if they were peering at me from the bottom of a fish bowl... I never knew what happened to my mother. My grandmother would never speak of her; she would only tell me, if I happened to ask, that my mother was too ill to care for me, and therefore, they had adopted me as their own. I always felt that my grandmother was not telling the whole truth, that my mother's illness was of a nature far deeper and darker than she cared to allude to... But as the years passed, I learned to keep my curiosity (as well as every other disquieting emotion) contained inside the fragile vessel of my own body. Grandmother was very kind to me, though. She was an innocent old woman, one of those rare souls who had only perceived the good around her. Nature had rendered her blind to much of the darkness that invariably inhabits the dusty chambers of the human soul. And how I remember her dusty parlor, the finest room in their house, with furnishings and decor that remained from the 1920's (how they were still trapped within the silver-lipped web of their youth!). As a young girl I would sit for hours in that parlor, sipping phantom tea from glazed Haviland cups and entertaining a small pageant of phantom guests. It was there I learned to be a lady, to speak with poise and grace, to hold my fingers gingerly with the digits slightly raised in an air of pleasant expectation. There was even a rusty old phonograph that sat upon an ornately carved curio chest, and I adored her scratched 78 recording of "The Days of Wine and Roses." And it was this theme, wailing and fuzzy as if evanesced from some ethereal dream, that perfumed the backdrop of my silent ghost galas. ...It's the eyes that haunt, it's the eyes I only remember about a person. When I remember someone, I remember their eyes solely, as if they were some strange Cheshire Cat hovering about in the murky gray areas of my mind, devoid of a mouth to speak and a nose to breathe.
* * *
After we ladies have spent a respectable time loitering impatiently in the ballroom, the men come shuffling in–such stark, terrible glamour to behold! Suddenly I spot him, the one I have been waiting for, have spent the last three hours preparing myself for. My breath lodges in my throat, for tonight the vision of him is almost too lovely to bear. He leans against one of the Corinthian columns: a tall and lean figure in an ebony tuxedo, some might say gaunt, with hollowed cheekbones and heavy eyelids. There is a tortured, ashen quality to his face, some essence of a shut-in life that has produced the fossilized remnants of desperation. He wears round-rimmed spectacles, and a fringe of pitch-black hair flops roguishly in his eyes. After a time, he notices me watching him, and he walks towards me. Suddenly I can hear nothing. All is suspended as he strides to the spot where I stand transfixed, as if we are caught in some strange force field where all is slower and only he holds the power to move. He extends a long, graceful hand. "Shall we dance?" he asks in a voice laced with honey and black velvet. I nod, and we glide out onto the polished floor, dancing close together, the orchestra performing the soft, melancholy strains of a Tchaikovsky waltz. The scent of him is sandalwood and spice and something painfully, deliciously male. His gaze has ensorcelled me, and I cannot tear my face away from his. Our bodies are pressed close to one another when I feel his erection straining against the silk of my dress, and instead of crying out in shame and horror, instead of alerting one of the elders, I welcome it. How agonizingly sweet it is this evening–oh, he wants me, oh, he loves me! "Come out to the terrace," I whisper excitedly in his ear, rubbing against him as if to erode the fabric that would cruelly separate us. His beautiful face grows pained. "I cannot," he whispers. "You would reject me?" I ask. "But I must," he replies, glancing nervously about him. "No," I whisper. "You don't understand. Tonight was meant to be different. It is our night, a night of magic and new promises. We need not fear anything this sacred evening, nor anyone." "Ah, my little Lucy," he murmurs in a breath of frost and glass. "You were always such a selfish child." I flinch, hurt beyond words, but my hope has produced a throbbing, white elation that cannot be ignored. "I did not mean to be selfish, Gregory. I was simply thinking what a lovely time we'd have if–" "No, Lucinda!" he shrieks, and the room falls silent. The scent of sandalwood has grown cloying, overwhelming, sickly. For a second I witness the storm clouds of fury etched upon his brow, his pupils as they grow in such moments: tiny, fierce marbles of blackness. But the exchange has ended, the storm is subsided, and he walks away. I feel myself falling, as if my spirit were abandoning me and slipping down a lightless cavern. It is only then I can hear the distinct sounds of chaos occurring around me: glass, tables, chairs being upended, the distant, bird-like screams of women. And throughout the kaleidoscopic blur of it all, I think of how the awful clarity of splintering glass tends to pierce me straight through, as if human hearts were fashioned from such fragile stuff, and meant to be played in brittle, tinkling arpeggios.
* * *
It is much later that I sit quietly, my tears dried, subdued in a room Mrs. Hatherly has deigned the "quiet room"–one of rest and meditation. But where is my evening gown? It seems I am dressed in something else, a fabric not soft like silk but tough and impenetrable. Though I can still move my arms to lift a cigarette to my lips, they feel weighted down and sluggish, like the sensation one has while being pursued within a nightmare. Soon Mrs. Hatherly enters the small room, sits herself at my table, and stares openly at me. I am still smoking, though I dare not blow smoke in her face, for that would be too unladylike. "Lucinda, who were you dancing with tonight?" she asks at length, futilely attempting to rid her peacock-blue blouse of creases. "You know him," I say, pausing to languorously exhale a thin stream of acrid smoke. "'Gregory' is his name." A pause. "Oh, I see. It was the young man this time, I presume?" "Well, of course," I laugh. "Didn't you see him?" She looks away, then back at me. "Well, Lucinda, no, I cannot lie. I did not see him. I only saw you dancing in the middle of the floor, with your arms upraised." Ha, I think. Even her own eyes misinform her! She sighs, a hollow irritating sound, then drums her long-nailed fingers upon the table, turning slightly away from me. "I was afraid we might have an episode tonight, what with the dance and all," she breathes, turning back to confront me. "Ah, so much progress, and then this. Of course, I'm to blame, and not you. I'm your doctor, after all. I should have realized that the very atmosphere of the dance might cause a regression..." I know my face remains impassive, and a pathetic sense of urgency crosses her own visage. I think she might reach out and clasp my hand in hers, but she doesn't. "Oh, Lucinda, you were so very sick when you first came here–do you remember? Your night terrors were debilitating, your delusions were out of control, but recently you've been so calm, so demure. I couldn't believe how lovely you looked this evening; not even a mirror to guide you by, yet you made your face and hair up so perfectly..." Those sickly pleading eyes, how they fill me with such rage! "You know, I was intending to surprise you with this good news tomorrow, but I suppose I'll have to inform you of it now. I had just devised a new plan of recognition for us to pursue, and one that might lead to your eventual discharge. It's been proven to produce fast yet excellent results." "But what would I possibly have to recognize?" I ask with incredulity, tapping my ash into the tin ashtray upon the table in as much a dismissive manner as the fabric will permit. To my humor, her lips purse slightly, a gesture somewhat familiar. "Lucinda, I know this is entirely the wrong procedure... But I want you to think very, very hard for me. Do you remember what you were doing when you were found at your grandparents' home, all those years ago?" "Yes, I was watching over my grandmother. She was sleeping." "Lucinda, she wasn't sleeping." "Yes, she was. She had discovered what my grandfather was doing to me all those years, she had finally opened her eyes and witnessed it, and the shock of it made her go to bed and sleep for days." Mrs. Hatherly leans back in her chair and emits a deep sigh of defeat, in turn causing a resurgence of my pity and affection. I think of how she would be a perfect smoker, so very elegant and all. "Lucinda, please let me affirm that I can understand how difficult those years must have been for you. What your grandfather did was unspeakable," here she shudders inwardly, "and a child should never have to endure such things. But you must face the truth of what happened, and I can't permit you to hide from it any longer. When the officials found you, both your grandparents had been dead for weeks. They had been suffocated by a pillow in their sleep. It was what had been done to them afterwards..." She shudders once more, and I must suppress the urge to smile. Ah, what a precocious child I am sometimes! "They had both been enucleated. Their eyes had been removed with a silver serving spoon. You were found in one of your grandmother's dresses with her cameo round your neck, blankly turning her carousel. You hadn't eaten for days, your dress was soiled and you were glassy-eyed, practically catatonic. It was only later that we discovered you'd, ahem..." here she coughs, "...consumed their eyes. Though when you were admitted here I couldn't bear the attendants to take away the carousel and cameo from you, they seem to hold some grounding capacity, some significance..." Her gaze falls puzzlingly to my neck, as if the answers to all her problems are etched in the creamy bone enamel of the pendant. And then, in a tragic flash that I never see coming, her steely blue eyes lock with mine, morphing into hard little sapphire marbles flecked with dizzying spots of red. "Well, if you will not grant me your cooperation, I guess this means we must go back to the upstairs ward, for a month at least..." Oh, no, I think, not the upstairs ward. How I worked to get myself out of that place! An old woman who scrubbed the cracked tiles for hours with a dingy tooth brush, for she was convinced they were bloodstained! Not a library in that place, no etiquette books to read, no Emily Post! But soon serenity overtakes me, and I can successfully drown Dr. Hatherly's voice from my thoughts. For she does not know what I possess upon my vanity. Yes, I did have a tantrum some years ago, when I was not as docile, as composed as I am now. I had smashed the vanity's double panes of silvery glass with a flower vase they permitted me to keep in my room. It was one I filled everyday with withered dandelions picked from cracked earthenware pots on the terrace. And they thought they had collected all the shards! But I have one, I found it in the corner after those pale-faced maids left: spear-shaped, a small thing, but useful. I taped it to the bottom of the carousel, and there it waits for me. Oh, the knowledge of it–how it has been my drug, my nameless silent opiate throughout all these years! I have touched it countless times, lovingly, protectingly; it seems to emanate a heartbreaking aroma of sandalwood, spice, and musky death. It has been a balm to my tortured, empty soul; I know that, if I needed it, it would chase away all those memories, all those faceless eyes that haunt, hanging midair within my mind, glowing and grinning like spectral Cheshire cats. And what Dr. Hatherly does not know further is that I shall put it to good use tonight. And when I do, perhaps I shall invite Gregory to my room for tea. Oh, my sweet Gregory... No, I do not believe he would withhold the pleasure of a final tea from me–not if I am a good child, and an unselfish one, at that. A kiss goodbye, one last triumphant ride on the carousel, and I might even ask him to hold the shard, so carefully, within his strong fingers... At least while I prepare my lavender-scented wrists. And then I shall enter into that lonely night that discloses its final passing breeze, filled with memories and golden smiles, and I shall say farewell to those heady days of wine and roses!
(For Creative Writing class, we had to write a story based on a newspaper report. This is what I came up with.)
Cornbread and Milk
"I wish they'd hurry their asses up." "They'll be here." Monte pacing again, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his low-slung jeans. The waistband of a pair of white boxers peeking out, a cigarette drooping from his mouth. Jim sucks on his own, bites back the urge to cough. He hates cigarettes. "Stop pacing, dude. I said they'll be here." "I don't like it," Monte says, not to Jim, but to someone else who isn't there. "Don't like it one bit." "We don't need 'em, anyways." "Like fucking hell we do. We don't need 'em." Monte's stupid. Jim knows it, and Monte himself knows it. He's got good plain street smarts, though, something Jim doesn't have and desperately needs to learn. He's the best teacher, they all say. But he could never tell Monte he likes English. The only fucking class he likes in school. That he looks forward to it, even, in a perverse way. Better than having his ass kicked by his old man all the time. Like when they read Hemingway last week. The Sun Also Rises. Those long-ass French meals, all the–what the fuck were they called–aperitifs, what a trip, they ate and drank like nobody's business. As if it all hadn't happened like eighty fucking years ago. The same. People never changed. All they wanted was to get drunk and get laid. There was something beautiful in that. The guy got his dick blown off in the war or something, the girl was pissed 'cause he couldn't fuck her properly... It tripped him out. It reminded him of himself. Why, he couldn't explain. But he could never explain that to Monte. He'd probably beat the shit out of him. His idea of culture is playing X-box. Grand Theft Auto. "Your mom know where you are?" Monte asks. "She's drunk off her ass." "She's a cunt." Jim hides his flinch, as if Monte had struck him a blow. Even though it's true, he knows he doesn't mean it. In his own sick way, it's a compliment. You wanted this, now you've got it. Gotta ride it all the way. A picture of his mom flashes before his eyes. She's sitting in front of her vanity mirror, shaking out her long, black hair. His dad used to call her "Crystal" after Crystal Gayle, because she'd let it grow past her waist. Their song was always "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue"... They'd be dancing in the middle of the kitchen floor like idiots, humming and laughing, practically screwing right there. At least, when he wasn't knocking the shit out of her. Jim had tried to stop him, once. His mom went ape-shit on him. Her hands hard on him, pushing him away, slapping at his face. The shock and shame and hurt in her eyes. Like he'd been the one that had punched and kicked her and left ugly, mottled bruises on her arms and neck for fifteen years. A wave of black bile rises in his throat. Tears sting his eyes but he blinks them back. Smoke and breath hiss out in one furious plume. Monte stops pacing. His lips curl back in an ugly grimace. "Fuck this shit. I'm fucking tired of waiting. We do it now, then run back to the house. They'll have the door unlocked. If not, we'll run out back and jump over the fence. Hide out on the patio." Jim nods. His feet feel frozen in their black, steel-toed combat boots. He scuffs the soles across the hard, shiny gravel, reveling in the defiance of that abrasion. It's too damned cold to think. The adrenaline is like a pulse, a motor set to running, a thin steady beat waiting to kick in and seduce him. "So who will it be?" he asks. "Doesn't matter. But they gotta be old. Or a woman. Somebody weak-lookin'. You'll know. You'll feel it. It's all about the feel, the ride, you know? Like sex. Like crack. It takes you for a ride. It'll be a good trip. You just feel it, man. Smooth as ice." Yeah, Jim was high and tripping already. Good shit it was, too. Everything in his line of vision hard and glittering and polished. "Fine. Let's go." Flicking their cigarettes out onto the cold, black, wet finger of the street. The butts ricochet off the asphalt, where they hiss and spit tiny fumes. Jim raises the hood of his jacket over his head and thrusts his hands in his pockets. His tall, lean body moves with the wind. A man walks out of the pharmacy. Hunched over, wobbling, a brown paper bag cradled in his gnarled hands. No, Jim suddenly thinks, Monte's face a black blur on the periphery of his vision. It's too quick, too easy. It doesn't seem like such a good idea anymore. Suddenly he thinks he's going to vomit. The high is diminishing already, leaving behind this vague sickly urgent emptiness, and he needs another hit to ease his stomach. No time, man. Gotta do it. Just do it. Like the fucking Nike commercial. Something about the old man, the feeble way he's walking, reminds him of someone. Glasses. Watery eyes. The old-man shirt, the polyester kind with needlework on the front. Ballpoint pen in his pocket. ...Jim's grandfather had always kept a pen in his pocket, to use everyday on the crossword puzzles he loved. He was too smart to use a pencil, for he always knew all the words. When Jim was nine, he'd shown him how to eat sweet cornbread soaked in a glass of milk with a spoon. They'd eat cornbread and milk and watch The Love Boat together. Or Fantasy Island. God, those shows were great... Later, Jim would get to sleep in the big bed, nestled right between his gramma and grampa. Everything warm and cozy and safe, the portrait of Jesus glowing and winking at him in the dark, his gramma's delicate head propped on a weird pillow to keep her crazy beehive hairdo safe. God, he'd loved his grandparents. When they both died within a year of each other... The rapid blur of motion is like a dance. A scene in a war film. No music, no voices. Utter silence amidst a storm of images. Running, shooting, falling and ducking on the ground, bodies flying... The old man suddenly doubles over, sucking in great gulps of air as if he were choking. Jim realizes Monte's dealt him a single felling blow to the gut. "Dude! Get the wallet!" Jim's shocked into action. Suddenly his hands are like instruments, or surgeon's hands. Smooth and quick and precise, as if he'd been doing this for years. The paper bag's already been mashed into the ground. Orange plastic bottles have burst and splintered on the sidewalk, like weird, angry sunsets. Red and blue capsules wounded, their guts spilling out in white powder and granules... He's found the bulging leather wallet. Now the man falls in a sitting position to the ground, sensing the end, clutching at the pain in his stomach as if he can remove it. "Run!" Monte yelps. Faster and faster now. Still the music-less soundtrack–only this time it's accompanied by the hollow, reverberating thud in his ears. Somewhere, a part of his consciousness dislocates, watches him detachedly from afar. He's fascinated by how his body knows where to turn, even though his mind doesn't. This way, that way. Smoothly, seamlessly. Why, in that moment, does he think of her? The one in his English class (what was her name, Sarah?), with the short blond hair. Just like the chick in the Hemingway book. She'd look great in that weird style of dress they wore back then, the cropped hair, no tits (though hers were pretty big and beautiful), the boyish, sexless dresses. The way that chick had thrown herself at the narrator, rubbed against him in back of all those damned taxis they took across the moonlit city... Jim had been under his desk, thinking about it, about his Sarah. Later that day, he'd had to go with his dad to the supermarket to buy formula for his infant brother. They couldn't buy the expensive kind, they had to buy the generic with food stamps. He'd tried, fumbling and ashamed, to tell his dad about Sarah. "Have you fucked her yet?" his dad asked loudly in the aisle. "No, Dad." He was hot with rage and embarrassment. But he couldn't tell his dad he was still a virgin. The conversation had been dropped until his dad noticed a young girl, no more than ten years old, in the canned vegetable aisle. "Hey, son," he'd asked with a leering grin, pointing to the girl. "How 'bout that one?" "I dunno, Dad. She looks pretty young." His dad laughed, a rough, gravelly sound. "Old enough to bleed, old enough to breed, right? Well, she's probably a little bitch, anyways. They all are, son." They'd said no more after that. Jim had thought maybe his dad was right. Back at the apartment, the door is thankfully unlocked. Ron and Kevin are waiting for them. The air is permeated with the stench of weed, beer, and cheap incense. "You got it?" Ron asks. Monte takes the wallet from Jim's hand and lumbers to the couch, slaps it in Ron's hand. They begin talking, but Jim can't make anything out. He mumbles something incoherent, goes to the bathroom, and locks himself in. Harsh spasms of vomiting shake and rattle their course throughout his body. He sinks into the corner, his tall, too-big body wedged between the toilet and the bathtub's mildewed edge. Huddles his knees together and wraps his lanky arms around his legs and lets his face fall into the darkness of denim. It's like a cave fragranced by the smoky, vomitous stench of his breath. He cries softly, like a young child, like when he did when first his grampa died, then his gramma. The doctors had said it was the emphysema that finally did her in from the smoking, but she'd been fine before; he knew, after Grampa was gone, she'd had no reason left to go on. Nobody to make her "famous" sweet cornbread for or yell at for forgetting to turn off the TV. His body shakes with the force of his sobs. He thinks he can hear music from the living room, a black voice raised in angry rap. Somebody knocks on the door but he tells them to go away, everything's okay, he's fine... He's hungry. Hungrier than he's ever felt in his life. He wants his gramma's cornbread and milk. He can taste the cold, white milk, the golden, sweet, fluffy cornbread, light as air. Hours seem to slip by. Finally he hears the front door of the apartment burst open. They've found them, as he hoped they would. A smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. He wonders if they serve cornbread in prison. Seconds later, a cop busts through the frail bathroom door, and Jim looks up with a tear-streaked, swollen face, already resigned, hungry, and praying for the worst.
what am I dreaming of today where has my mind transported me
the dingy fountain on the porch has become one in a grand palazzio I sit at a café near the Duomo watching waxy-golden light drip onto her dove-gray spires men sprawled like stick figures across wrought iron chairs
oh bella lingua the musical legato of the language tickling my orchestra-hungry ears si, buon giorno, grazie Tuscan coffee and siesta filling the open mouths of tourists while peals of sunlight fill the open mouths of grottoes and churches
this white-marble cloud of a city water lines backed into houses like necklaces etched beneath pale throats sable rooftops of intertwining arms enveloping Florence in a tender embrace
a young count with silver-gray eyes like the afternoon light is courting me oh do you love me, il conte naturalmente, signora mi bella amare
are you shy he asks no I am not he laughs at my abruptness the black-velvet cadence of his voice slipping down the tongue of the street
oh do you love me il conte si si, naturalmente, signorina take me with you
The doc expostulating about my stubborn depressive symptoms, and giving me a new medicine. Abilify is a frightening drug. It's like cocaine. The first FDA-approved "add-on" to stimulate the potency of traditional SSRI's. I feel a hundred times better on it - vibrant, alive, coherent, and utterly manic, restless, and irritated. Oh, its dark side. For two days I did not sleep. Remembering the terror of sleeplessness from cocaine nights. Finally I did knock myself out, after drugging myself on Remeron and Clonopin (spelling? It's bad when you can't spell what you're feeding your own body). Mom's terrified, as expected, says I'm living like Elvis - a sad litany of uppers and downers.
But more and more I am an open wound. Seething and simmering with raw emotion. I have been consumed by [?], frighteningly. The crash is eminent, I can taste it around the bend... The song of the week is Metro Station's "Shake It" (yes, I know, I'm so belated in my loves). I am moved by fancies that are curled around the images of Mason Musso. Jesus, talk about robbing the cradle. Ach, my emo boys with pretty faces...
The onset of Halloween bringing a blessed slew of classic horror films on TV. The "gems" that are the ones dating from the early thirties, locked in between that distinctly yet hauntingly rough transition from silent's to talkies. The poor film quality and even poorer, ominous, too-quiet accompanying sound tracks creating ghostly, unparalleled works of art. What could better inspire poetry? Finding the blessed instances when the two masters Lugosi and Karloff came together, not amicably, of course. Watching The Raven and White Zombie with Mom, remembering my "obsession" with Bela in high school, how I wrote to his son, a then-attorney in Los Angeles, the warm and touching response I received (it is somewhere in my mess of things). A fixation made more unusually painful by the novel accouterment of the actor being long deceased - the overall sense of indirect necrophilia only strengthened by the general quality of films Lugosi acted in, the gothic era of the jazz age... Madge Bellamy in White Zombie a living apparition of a specter. The unnaturally powder-pale foundation which seemed to mark the late '20's and early '30's, the pencil lines of eyebrows and pointed Clara Bow lips, the "Marseilles" finger-wave flat on the head, creating an urchin-like aura, and heavy black eye makeup (Mom claiming that at times the women would simply "draw" their lashes under their eyes, lending an even greater sense of doll-like delicacy; I think I've seen this in a few photos of silent stars). My appreciation for Bela coming back - how truly gorgeous a man he was, tall, graceful yet condescending, the piercing blue eyes and beautifully sculpted face, and what beautiful artist's hands he had. Remembering all the biographies I'd ordered from the library at fifteen, and how I cried when I read them! A man truly haunted in life and immortalized in death. My ultimate dream. Ha.
