This story came to an end last week. Here, we present the entire story in one sitting.
Audience of Shadows
Chapter 1
For the first time in a long time I can't remember a detail: How many bullets do I have left?
I fired one into the air, one into the head of my girlfriend, and one into the leg of the bastard she was sleeping with. Keeping up with what's been discharged isn't the problem; it's how many bullets I loaded in the first place. Had I loaded a full clip? Or were there some missing from the time I'd spent practicing? I can’t remember the details, and I'm pretty sure it's from the goddamned medicine.
I might as well be a librarian, or a researcher. My aptitude tests say either would suit me fine. I spend most of my time collecting information.
What I remember about walking down the hall at school:
Three doors on the right.
Four on the left.
Total of fifty-seven steps and counting...
I used to try to count the lockers as I passed them, but the numbers got jumbled up with the doors and the steps, and I ended up having to go back to the classroom I started in and go through the whole process again. After that, the lockers laughed at me when I walked by. You can't quantify us, they mocked. We are here, and you won't ever know how many of us there are.
When this fact bothered me to the point of stomach upset, I went to the school office and asked to see the blueprints so I could count the lockers. When the secretary I spoke to looked at me like I was crazy (an accurate perception, according to most) I said Just go ask Mr. Granger, Ok?
When she returned, she had the blueprints in her hands. "I'm sorry," she said, "I talked to Mr. Granger, I didn't know." Not sure what to do, she rolled it to me across the desk. It was like a steamroller; every inch of it came into contact with years of germs and microbes, except the area right around the rubber band, where it was raised just enough to save that virgin white from being contaminated. That’s where I picked it up, using two fingers.
"Thanks," I said. She smiled, visibly relieved; she'd done her job and done it well. She told me with her actions she didn't want to touch me; what she didn’t say was why. Was it because she knew about my phobia? Was it because she was afraid she might catch whatever it was that I had?
"Whatever it is" is the name a lot of people give to my disorder. Disease is another. Most people think I deserve a handicap-parking sticker. I’m not handicapped, I tell them; I can still walk. I just have to be very, very careful where I step.
Dirt is where I'm standing right now. Lots of dirt, with thousands and thousands of years of microbes and germs and god knows what else waiting to be stirred up with just the kick of a shoe. A thought comes into my head: how many feet above sea level are you? It makes a difference. Some germs die at higher altitudes...
The screaming brings me back, this infectious high-pitched laugh of a scream. That's coming from the guy she's been sleeping with. I used to know his real name, but it's the one detail I'm happy to forget this evening.
He stamps his leg, screaming over and over about hospitals and tests and IVs and all we had to look forward to after this night. Jail cells, thin cotton sheets on even thinner matresses, we got 'em all. Come on down.
His stamping is stirring up dust. I don't notice this as immediately as I should; damn medicine. I watch the thin spirals burst into the night sky, up and up, riding on the light air at this height (I should have remembered the altitude) thousands of years of rot and decay looking for a place to rest, and more than likely, at least some of it would end up in my nose, in my lungs, a part of me.
I put the gun to my side for a second. I realize that I just thought "at least some of it would" contaminate me. But some of something every day gets into our bodies and roots around. ‘What good is all of this,’ screams a part of myself I had successfully shut up years before, ‘if you can't even be conscientious of the most important means of preventing infection?’
It's a voice I've heard so often in my life. My psychologist calls it Rationality. Rationality, she says, is almost like another person in my head, and he just can’t let himself be heard over all the commotion of the main part of my head. She doesn’t have a name for that part. She says once the medicine starts working, I will be able to listen more carefully to Rationality and leave old What's-his-name? behind.
Rationality makes sense tonight, for the first time ever. The guy is still kicking around, stirring up dust; I lean over into it. Tendrils of the stuff caress my face, and I breathe in, soft at first, until Rationality says, "Go for it. It won't hurt. Most importantly, it won't kill you."
That last part's the kicker. My psychologist says that half the reason for my disorder stems from an unwarranted fear of mortality I haven’t dealt with. I tell her I've dealt with death my whole life. She isn't talking about just experiencing it, she says; she’s talking about incorporating it into my ideal self, into the person my soul wants me to be.
The dirt tickles my nose, and I sneeze, and it feels good; I don't sneeze that often. I keep a list of places and situations that can cause sneezing, as well as remedies to arrest the urge, in the "Things to avoid and ways to avoid dealing with them" part of my brain. It's the biggest part of my brain, I think. And I wonder if, after tonight, there’s going to be any use for it.
Damn medicine.
“Who's fault is it?" asks the guy my girlfriend's been sleeping with. "Is it mine? Or hers? Is either one right? Either one to make you feel as though you aren't the one to blame. Well you know..."
I put another bullet into his leg to shut him up. The screams multiply. It sounds like there are two voices screaming. I look at him and realize he isn't making a sound. His mouth is open, but nothing comes out.
I turn around. I'm caught between the warring factions of my mind, watching, listening, as sirens and blue and red lights slowly work their way through the town laid out below us. I have to think, and the screaming in my head doesn't help. I have to think back over what's happened, what led up to all this. Then I can decide whether or not to kill the bastard.
That is, says one of my minds—I'm not sure which—if you still have any bullets left.
Which I had not thought of when I shot his leg.
I'm breaking apart here.
Open the bedroom door.
One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one thousand...
Open the fridge and get out shot glass. One one thousand...
Open the cabinet, get out vodka. One one thousand...
When I hear the tequila bottle break it ruins everything. Who knows what will happen next? My dad might clean it up. He might still be drunk from last night. I don't really know what time it is; I haven't had a working clock in my room since I was ten. But I wake up every morning when he gets out of bed. I hear the creak of his mattress through the apartment's thin walls. That's the longest count: forty-five one thousand. I picture him sitting on the edge of the mattress, head in his hands, wondering whether or not he'd hit me the night before, although, I had to admit, he was probably most concerned with how he'd gotten home and why he hadn't gotten laid, whatever that meant. After this, I hear him thud across to his bathroom. I can actually hear him taking a piss. I used to hold off counting at this point, until I realized that every morning his piss lasted between twelve and fourteen one thousands. Never the full forty-five he always took up on his mattress. Everything else in the bathroom; brushing, a quick shave with a dry razor, was twenty-nine. Still, nothing stood up to the time on the mattress.
That morning, I waited to hear the door shut to the outside. I started counting once the bottle had dropped. By ten one thousands, he had done nothing.
By twenty, I was getting a little worried. What was he doing, just standing there? I hadn't seen my father in over two weeks and had no desire to confront him now.
At fifty one thousands, I got out of bed, left foot first, took three large steps to the door, and opened it. I walked through the doorway one, two, three times, each time setting my right foot only outside in the hall and then turning swiftly on it, only the last time leading out with my left foot and down the hall, five steps, across the doorway three times, and finally into the kitchen, left foot first.
He isn't there.
Wondering how he managed to get away from the kitchen without me hearing the creak of the floorboards horrified me. I should have heard that. Because there was only one place he could go.
He's in his bathtub. I should have been able to count the steps. Had he treaded so lightly on purpose? Did he know my routine as well as I did?
"What," he said, drowning the last bit of liquor in his glass.
I stand, like I always do, ashamed to ask a Question. One of those Questions that I know is stupid, that I know isn't worth anything, but that something inside compels me to ask. My psychologist tells me that if I listen to that something, I'll never be able to live life to its fullest. I tell her that she needs to find a way to shut that something up.
"Dad, if I masturbate while I'm in the shower, and it gets on the shower curtain, do I need to wash the shower curtain? Can people get germs from me that way?"
I stare at him, waiting for his reaction. He might just answer nonchalantly, tell me I was worried about something that wasn't important, and encourage me to use my brain in more productive ways. He might ask me why I thought that was important, and help me figure out why I was concerned about it, and whether that was warranted. But those were fantasies. He would probably go nuts on me. Maybe he would break my nose, I think. Then I could go to the hospital, they would say, "My, this fine young man lives with such a monster. He would do so much better on his own; we should put him up in a nice apartment and see how he does for himself."
Who was I kidding. I would go straight to a psych ward.
"Jesus Christ," he mutters, his face covering his hands.
He says nothing else. Just sits. And I'm standing there, wondering whether he thinks I've asked a stupid question, or whether his amazement is an indication of something I've done wrong. Guilt flows from the wellsprings of my mind. Wellsprings of serotonin and GABA receptors.
He leaves that morning without saying anything to me. In fact, we missed each other, as he left while I was cleaning my toilet. And then I had to clean the gloves I used to clean the toilet, which took the longest, but then when I was done, I had to use the toilet, and the cycle started all over again, until I was late for school, and decided that instead of going to learn about chemical reactions and attending driver's education in the afternoon, I would clean the whole fucking house. Then, my father and I would at least have something to talk about that night.
The kitchen, my room, the living room, and the hallways took about an hour. Disinfecting spray, a quick vacuum, more disinfecting spray, and a final vacuum (with a new bag). His bedroom was messy. It took an hour to do that, then another hour for me to get myself clean, and then clean my bathroom again. The last room was his bathroom.
It's the most disgusting thing I've seen. Ever. Mold grows in every crack and corner. I see some of it pulsating. The bottom of the bathtub, which is visible from where I stand in the doorway, has dirt in it. Dirt from the old man in the bath tub. The dirt of his life.
One thing that happens when I'm in unpleasant environments is panic attacks. And the biggest cause of these attacks is germs. Germs, dust, and dirt. So when I see the bottom of his bathtub, I feel a throbbing pain in my chest. And by the time I register all the mold, my left arm is numb.
When he finds me after he gets home that night, I'm in bed, curled up. There's nothing else I can do.
"Have another attack?" he slurs. Even feet away, the liquor on his breath makes me gag, and I can't answer. After a moment,
"Did you take your pills?"
I don’t even have the mind to remind him that the last time he managed to steal Xanax for me was several months ago. He used to buy it. But now…
Only the black tells me that the door has closed. He leaves the conversation with no goodbye, no wishes of a good-night's sleep. He just leaves.
The next morning, I wake up without knowing what time it is. I listen for his first movements.
Open the bedroom door.
Open the bedroom door.
He never sleeps late.
Open the bedroom door.
Open the bedroom door.
By the time I realize the apartment is empty, the phone is ringing. I pick it up.
"Hello, this is H. Ellison High School, and we just wanted to confirm with your father that you are absent from school today. Can we speak to him?"
"My father's gone," I say as I hang up the phone once, twice, three times, using my left arm first...
If you have to think of the word you use the most, the one single word in the world you use the most, what would it be?
In a survey of one hundred people, one percent may say fire (as in "You're Fired") or God (as in "Praise Be to God") or freeze (as in "Freeze—you're under arrest"). The other ninety percent will say hello, or one of its many variants.
As if everything isn't a variant of something it isn't.
Any conversation anyone has usually starts with some sort of greeting.
The word I use the most is quirk. When someone asks me why I walk through the door to a classroom three times, I say, "It's a quirk." When they ask what I'm counting, I tell them, "Just counting my footsteps--it's a quirk."
"Why are you washing your hands again?"
"Well, I touched part of the towel dispenser, and it might be dirty. It's just a quirk."
Nobody ever says hello to me. Their greeting is always a variant of "Why are you doing that," and I answer, "Quirk."
My own little variant of goodbye.
Because anytime anyone hears that it's a quirk, they shut down. Everyone is concerned, not for me, but themselves. "Why is he walking through the door three times? Is it for any good reason?" No, just a quirk. "Phew," they think, "as long as it doesn't have anything to do with me." Their faces are all compassion.
Feigned pity and madeover relief are the two emotions I get from people.
At my new school, the one I go to after my father leaves and I'm shipped to a "Home for Displaced Children" across town, things are the same. I hear people talking to each other, saying hello-goodbye, then people talking with me in the why-quirk language I'm accustomed to.
Familiarity with ritual breeds surprise when that ritual is called into question.
"Why did you do that?"
I turned. I'm in the library at my new school and was putting a copy of The Stranger back into its spot on the shelf one, two, three times.
"Quirk," I say out of habit.
"Oh," she says, coming to stand beside me. "I like quirks."
She's not looking at me; she's searching the stacks for something. It looks like an attempt to be close to someone, but nobody has ever tried that with me before.
"Have you ever had naked lunch?"
My heart pounds, my stomach wrenches tight, a clamp on itself. I'd never been hit on before. My tongue swells up in my mouth, my brain goes crazy/ier trying to figure out when to kiss her, hold her hand, do all the things I had to admit to myself I knew nothing about.
"No," I manage. "But I'm up for anything."
It's the kind of line that I always hear guys in the movies saying, but it comes out as a strained jumble of words I'm certain she won't understand.
"Well you should try it," she says, and leans up close to me, where her breasts are touching my arms, firm beneath the fabric of her shirt, and I think I'm going to come right then, and then she leans the length of her body against me, her breasts pressing against my arm, my first contact with that flesh, and I do come, right then, in my pants.
"Burroughs is an amazing writer," she says, looking at the cover of the book she's just pulled from the stack right above the copy of The Stranger I was looking at. She hands it to me before walking away.
Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs.
For one brief moment, I have an independent thought—one that doesn't stem from my disorder at all. In that second, I forget that I'm walking through a door only once. I forget that I have a disgusting mess in my pants that I have to clean up. I forget everything besides what I observed during my conversation with a beautiful woman:
It's amazing how much 'read' can sound like 'had' when you want it too.
Another part of me says it isn't amazing, not at all.
Just quirky.
Chapter 4
What my father won't tell me is where he keeps his porn.
This was long before he left.
"If you want to know about sex, read a book," he yells through slurred words and the aroma of malt liquor. "They've got books about stuff like that in school"
Not in our school, I tell him.
"So make friends with some older boys. Ask them. That's what a boy’s friends are for."
What my father won't tell me, I decide to find out for myself.
After he's gone, they let me go back to the apartment. I'm sixteen now, and that's old enough for even that bit of autonomy. "Give him time," I overhear one of the case workers saying, just right outside of the distance adults think they have to get so kids won't hear their conversations, just inside the distance she truly needs to be.
I go to the closet in the living room. Inside, under mounds of old clothes and packed boxes, I find the slab of whitewall that had been removed so many years ago, I'm assuming to hide what was inside from my mother.
What was inside fit on a film reel that he kept in his bedroom. After my mom died, we used to watch home movies on that reel and sit up in bed. He would drink beer. That was back when he might drink a six pack of beer a night, get smiley and happy, and sit with his arm around me, telling me he loved me. That we would be alright, that things would change, that see, he wasn't even hitting the hard stuff, just enough beer at night to help him relax.
Just two months later, when my father wouldn't tell me where he kept them (insert aroma of Wild Turkey), when he wouldn't talk to me about sex (insert the smell of Mad Dog 20/20), I spent my two hours between when I got home and the earliest he ever stumbled through the door looking for them. I found them, without incident, underneath the boxes where he kept my mother's things.
This afternoon, I found them where I had left them the last time I used them. Underneath the boxes, which were now underneath all the clothes my father had become to thin for. I used to think his skin just melted into his clothes when I was younger. I was old enough to know now that it was the alcohol that absorbed every part of his body.
I put one of my favorites on the old newsreel. Two men, one woman. The men were fucking her hard. I knew that much, because the woman kept saying it. “You are fucking me so hard,” she would say as she spit on her hand and wiped it on the other one's penis, dick, whatever, same thing, and started to jerk him off. I knew she was jerking him off because he said how good she was at jerking him off. I'm pretty sure what I was doing right then as the film spun and clicked and clacked beside my head was jerking off, but I wasn't sure if it made a difference since I didn't have a girl and another guy there, or a girl and a girl, or two girls and a guy, or two guys, or any one of the myriad other assortments and arrangements of partners I had seen on these films, my outlet to the world of fucking.
It was all I knew, because I had no friends to ask about it. People treated me like I was invisible. I was quiet, I kept to myself, and there were other people to pick on. The geeks, the dorks, the fags, they were all more valuable fodder than some kid who walked in the door weird every now and then. The fags and dorks walked around weird all the time. No use picking on the guy with the quirks.
I sufferred this shit in silence, anger welling up. The anger was fueled by not being able to go to some guy I knew, some guy I called a best friend, who knew me, who cared about me, who loved me as a friend, and say, “Hey man, do you know what making love is?”
What about fucking?
Ass fucking?
Sucking off?
Felching?
Because I do. I hear the people on the pornos I watch talk about it all the time. I can tell you about them, if you tell me something.
This is the kind of friend that would say sure in a heartbeat, say lay it on me, what do you want to know, my big brother's told me everything!
And I would say, what's sex? Because that's the thing I hear people at school whispering about the most, gigling about, talking about after seeing the new couple walk down the hallway, holding hands. I would see people watch them, “Do you think they're having sex?” and giggling, and I know it has something to do with what the people on the pornos are doing, but it's the one word I never hear them say.
Chapter 5
My art teacher tells me it has to stoppp. The threes threes threes. They have to stop. They have to stop. They have GOT to stop.
I tell her with the way she's talking, it sounds like my quirk is catching.
This is from the day when I meet Mr. Granger.
She sighs and tells me to follow her. We march down to the school office and she signs me in, then says she has a class to attend to and leaves me there. The secretary tell me I'll have to wait, he has a scheduled appointment, and I say that's fine. I've been waiting my whole life. She gives me the very funny look I've become used to and I smile and wait politely, patiently.
In about an hour, after kid after kid walks out around me, some through the office because its a good shortcut, some to see the principal, or one of the three vice principals, and even after that, when the halls are calm again and the final bell for third period has sounded, finally Mr. Granger calls my name. His blue eyes peek out at me from behind horn-rimmed spectacles, which I immediately notice need cleaning very badly.
"Well, let's see here. Miss Finney seems to think you may have an addiction to the number three."
I laugh. I tell him Miss Finney has an addiction to ignorance.
Despite my expectation of scowl (a variant of “You know better than that you little smartass”) he laughs softly and smiles.
"Well, she does think she knows a little more than she really does, in some cases, though as a teacher, she is extremely competent. Why did you walk through the doorway three times when you came into my office?"
"It's a quirk I have."
He writes this down.
"Right, I understand that. But why do you do it?"
I shrug, frustrated.
He writes this down.
"You see, your identifying this as a quirk is fine and good, but identification is a far reach from explanation. I want to know what compels you to do it."
I shrug again. "I don't know what to say, it's a quirk, I just feel I need to do it. Like breathing, or taking a shit."
He writes this down.
"I understand you are probably upset right now," he tells me, "but if you wouldn't mind, I take offense to the words fuck, shit, piss, pussy, cunt, dick, cock, or asshole." He looks up from writing. "I'm not partial to tits, or any other variants on breasts."
As if everything else isn't a variant of something it isn't.
What about damn and hell? I ask him.
"I can get into trouble for even mentioning those words, let alone forbid their use. They are tied very deeply in religion," then he stops, remembers something, and begins writing again, "and it is my job to stray as far away from that as possible when talking to you kids."
“How do you do that?” I ask him.
"Do what?"
“Write while you’re talking. How do you separate those two functions?”
He shrugs, then starts writing again. "I don't know. How do you not know why you walk through the door three times?"
“You ask that as if the answer to both questions are the same.”
He shrugs again—this time while he's writing. It doesn't affect his output. "Maybe it is," he says, and then, with grave finality, closes the notepad he's been writing in and says, "Listen. I've seen your scores on the Iowa tests. They're good. Have you ever had an IQ test before?"
I shake my head.
"Would you be willing to take one?"
I nod.
"Good. I'll have to clear it with the State, since they are technically in charge of you now, but I'll arrange it. In the mean time, tell me about your parents? About your father. How are you holding up after the loss?"
There is a whirr of the fan in the distance that I just notice. It makes an unsteady tapping noise that I can easily divide into threes if I concentrate hard enough.
"I said how are you holding up?" asks Mr Granger after the third set of threes weighs down the silence between us too much.
Solid, I tell him, somehow dividing my mind between my counting task and his question. I'm holding up fine, two three, six, two three...
Chapter 6
There is a language besides English that I am fluent in. It's spoken in every country in the world, and I assume on any other world in the universe where people say things in front of people they don't want them to hear. It's called Hushedwhispers.
It took me longer to learn Hushedwhispers words than it did to learn English, mostly because the words in Hushedwhispers aren't spoken at all sometimes. It's a language of nodding heads, or arching eyebrows, or clever smiles. It's a language of deception. There is no Hushedwhispers-to-English dictionary; don't look. It is a language you have to learn on your own. And you only have a chance to learn it when people are talking about you in Hushedwhispers. It's hard to tell sometimes. My trick is to find two people talking in Hushedwhispers and walk toward them, concentrating on the face of the person looking in my direction. If that person looks to me quickly then goes back to the conversation, I don't have to worry; I’m not being talked about. But if he or she smiles, goes out of his or her way to say hi to me over the shoulder of the other person, or moves the conversation to another location, I can be guaranteed that the conversation is about me.
You get better at it as you go along. The first few times you try this, the people will move away. Make sure this isn't because you're creeping them out. Don't stare at them, just make obvious attempts to gain attention. Look repeatedly over a small period of time—you'll always catch someone's eye. Smile a little, just a friendly, how-do-you-do-sorry-didn't-mean-to-stare-I-was-zoned-out smile, and then see what happens.
Of course, none of this will be necessary once you begin to understand your name in Hushedwhispers. The audible language of Hushedwhispers is, in its English equivalent, composed primarily of hard sounds made with the tongue, for example, 'S' or 'Ch'. Don't expect to hear this right off; it is very muffled and hard to detect. But slowly, the more you listen to conversations in Hushedwhispers, the more you understand. Pretty soon, words will come together. They may sound like English words, but if you spelled them out phoenetically you would see they are quite different.
When you can hear and understand Hushedwhispers (nobody actually speaks the language) you have to learn the other 'words/phrases/sentences' used commonly in Hushedwhispers. An eyebrow arched in your direction, combined with the correct Hushedwhispers translation of your name, means either "That guy over there" if you are not acquaitances with the people talking, or "[Insert your name here]. Look, he's sitting over there." Arms up in the air in a shrugging motion can mean "I don't know" (or variation); "I don't know what he was thinking" (or variation); "I don't know why in the hell he did that" (or variation); "I don't know who the fuck he is" (or variation) and so on.
When you have reached a casual listening level, you can begin listening to conversations for extended periods of time, as long as you look natural and occupied around the people in dialogue. I like to carry one book for pleasure, at least one piece of homework to work on, and a pad of paper. You can carry more, but the rest of my bag is filled with handi-wipes, antibacterial soap (I keep it in a glass jam jar), and Kleenex. I need those things more.
Because I can't forget, you can't forget, that nothing in my life at that point is a priority, NOTHING, except remaining clean, pure, through physical cleansing, as well as careful evaluation of and repetition regarding the events of any day.
With all the other shit going on here, it may seem like that's in the background sometimes.
And sometimes, for small fleeting moments, during a sitcom you like, or when you're talking to someone, or when you're doing something mindless, like a crossword puzzle, it is. But only for a second before it comes screaming back, and you chastise yourself when you realize all the things you're going to have to go back and do again because you didn't do them in threes that time, or didn't wash your hands before picking up the soap, or you touched your eye with a finger that clearly brushed up against the backside of a man in the elevator seconds before, and how the hell are you supposed to clean out your eye?
And on and on. Throughout the day. Always there. It becomes a friend. But not all friends are good for you.
You have to remember, you are seeing a rare few moments where my mind gained a little solitude from Friend. And even then, as I look back, I'm doing some fucked up shit. But not as fucked up as what I'm doing right now.
My girlfriend, who I shot in the head from point blank range no less than five minutes ago, just coughed.
Chapter 7
It's one thing when people can tell just by looking at you that you're different.
Not me, though. I wear the same t-shirts, the same baggy pants. My style is non-descript. Blend in. Camouflage for the unwashed masses.
Short hair, nothing fancy, nothing I even need to run a comb through in the morning. People used to call it a buzz cut, but now so many people I go to school with sport them that it's become the norm, and there is no reason to distinguish the norm from the abnorm with a name, because it blends in. It's ignored.
Invisible.
You can only tell I'm different by really watching me, and high school kids are about one step below paramecium in their ability and/or propensity to pick up knowledge through careful, analytical observation. Plus, I have my 'quirks,' and I have them so rehearsed that I can pull them off naturally. I watch people walking into the classroom, waiting for a time I can go in and stop-start-stop-start in the doorway--my prerequisite number of times to enter any room—without anyone knowing any different. Touched a desk without wiping it down? No problem! I just head to the bathroom, act like I'm taking a piss, and then wash my hands. Nobody will bother someone because they washed their hands after taking a piss. A couple of people have said things about my hands being too dry. So I started lathering them in Vaseline and sticking them in socks at night. Dry hands equal attention. No dry hands equal just another guy at school.
That day, I'm going through my ritual in the parking lot. After waiting for most of the students to leave, I begin my walk past the rows of parking spaces. I'm walking by, doing my look right, look left, look right, look left, look right, look left, alright next two rows, look right, look left thing, when I hear someone running up behind me.
"I'm Melissa," pants the girl from the other day in the library.
Somehow I manage to spit out a garbled version of my name. I don’t see how she can understand what I said, but she repeats it. It's been a long time since anyone has introduced themselves to me--no reason to introduce yourself to something in the background.
We stand there for a second. I shift on my feet. Ok, who's job is it to start the conversation? Anyone? Anyone?!?
"So you like Camus?"
I hear camels and think she's asking me out on a date, which makes me even more nervous and I slide back into a car and the alarm goes off, and I stutter, and she walks over to me, pulls at me to get me standing up.
"Are you alright?"
I tell her I like camels.
She laughs. "Me too. Maybe we should go to the zoo sometime. But I saw you taking Camus out of the shelf the other day in the library. Wondered what you thought of it?"
I panic. First I think she asks me on a date, panic, then find out she wasn't asking me, but then she does, and now I feel like a complete fool fool fool...
She doesn't call after me as I run. Just stands there, silent, watching, observing. More than I'd ever seen any of her peers observe anything. A part of me, a part I think used to speak up a little more a long time ago, screams for me to turn around, to get back to her, she obviously wanted to talk.
But the part of me I listen to at this stage in life says to run, and to count your footsteps in multiples of three, six, nine, yes that's right, eighteen, twenty-one, twenty-four...oh yeah, you know the way to rock my world...
Chapter 8
It isn’t long before I have tax-break foster parents. What that means is that the people who take me away after I’ve been in the foster home for a couple of months take in foster children for the tax breaks. In my short time at the home, I saw fifteen through seventeen year olds snatched up every day. You'd meet one, the next day they'd be gone. Most of them had been to jail a few times, and talked about life 'on the outside', and how rough it was, and all they wanted was a couple of tax breakers and a room of their own. Just kind of chill until eighteen. I always said it sounded good to me.
The thing is, the rest of these kids that I watched come and go every day, they were off the streets. Or tossed out by some other foster family. But me, my father had left without a single word. That meant baggage. That meant that I would be upset—possibly suicidal—and upset kids meant trouble. Most of these kids talked about doing nothing but sitting in their rooms, smoking dope, just relaxing until they could turn eighteen and hit the streets to be on their own. Because the tax breakers didn't give a shit, as long as you didn't give them any trouble.
"You don't talk much, do you," asks my foster dad Edward on our way home from the home.
I shake my head.
"That's a nice change of pace," he laughs, slugging his wife Tillie a little on the arm. She laughs too, and slugs him back.
"You can't hit the driver!" he shouts, happy as a little boy wrestling with his best friend. I have to smile a little.
She turns around. "Eddie thinks I talk too much. I say it's all relative. You like Einstein?"
I actually do. "Yeah."
"Smart kid. Well listen, let's get home, and you talk if you want, don't if you don't. What do you feel like eating?"
I shrug.
"We were thinking pizza."
I haven't had a pizza in over a month. I want it like dogs want bones.
Over pizza and a little beer, we talk about the rules of the house. Come and go as you please. In their opinion, my way of paying rent is the tax breaks they get, and they tell me that point blank, and that is that. But the only way it will work out for all of us is if I obey their rules. No smoking indoors (but I can do what I want with my lungs outside the house, even in the backyard). No parties (but I can have one or two people over at a time if I ask them and we stick around upstairs in my room). I think it's bullshit until they show me the eleven-hundred square foot loft that would be my home for the next two years. Last: use common sense when interpreting the rules; just because they didn't say I shouldn't smoke crack doesn't mean I should start up.
I like them because they don't say things over and over, and they make sense, and most of all, they seem to respect me.
What I see in my room now is a wall. There is a large vagina on the wall, the largest I've ever seen. That's because it's the biggest wall I've ever been able to use the projector on. I'm jerking off, watching these two men shove a beer bottle up this slut's pussy. She's not shaven, which I dig, and the guys are hung like horses, which I also kind of dig in a weird, guilty way. She's really getting off, and pretty soon, her juice is everywhere, all over the guys, and they're licking it off of her, and she's still moaning and cumming and the juice is running everywhere and the guys are both jerking off and then they cum, all over her tits and face and she's lathering herself up with it, rubbing it all over, massaging it into her skin, the whole time still moaning, and then I cum, all over the place, an unexpected, TNT-type of explosion, and just then the reel runs out and starts fap-fap-fapping on it's roll, and my eyes are closed tight throughout, and when I open them, Tillie is standing at the edge of my bed. The top of my erect cock hides her face from view, but the curly red hair is a dead giveaway.
She's looking at me, panting, and I search her face for anger, but I can't really look at her eyes, because she's looking down, but not down at the ground in shame of finding me this way.
She's looking at my cock.
"You can watch anything you want," she says. Her voice is sultry, different from when we were in the car earlier. Then it was chirpy, PTOish. Perfect mother. Now, she uses a voice I only hear on the porns I watch. "Just keep the volume down a little. Edward needs to sleep."
She looks me in the eyes for one second before she leaves, and smiles. Then, on her way out, she pats my bare foot a little. It almost feels like she rubs the bottom of it with her thumb, and this immediately makes me hard again. I watch her walk out, hips swaying underneath the shiny fabric of her gown. Her tits swing a little, and I realize they were a little bigger than I initially thought.
I listen to her go down the stairs. I count her steps. When she gets to thirteen, she stops. There are nineteen steps.
Shaking and thinking of her, I reach up and rethread the film. In less than a minute, it's ready to play, and she hasn't moved from the thirteenth step. I start it up, with the volume turned very low, so the only noises are so muffled I can barely hear them, and lay back down on the bed. She's left the door open. I start to jerk myself off again, a little sensitive to the touch after the first session, but get into it pretty quick, and I listen, and then she's moving down the stairs again, onto the carpet, where I can't hear her walking, but she's in my head, and there, I can see her naked.
Chapter 9
"Have you ever heard of obsessive compulsive disorder?" Mr. Granger asks me when I finally make it back to his office for our next meeting. I shake my head.
"Let me ask you something." He leans up on his desk, supporting himself with his hands. "Do you ever do anything that you don't think is necessary?"
"I'm here, aren't I?"
I didn't really mean it, I explain. Just seemed like the right answer at the time.
"I appreciate your honesty, but that isn't really what I mean. You know, like counting things, or washing your hands, or anything else that most people would not do?"
I nod. "Everyone has their quirks."
He shakes his head. "You use that word a lot, quirks. I do not think it means what you think it means."
"So what does it mean?"
"A quirk is a habit or practice someone has that may seem abnormal, but doesn't do any harm. It doesn't get in the way of normal life for a person."
"I don't see how my counting gets in the way."
He writes this down.
"So you do count things, is that what I'm hearing."
"Well, everyone counts. You can't make it through the day without counting."
"But you can't make it down the hall, correct?"
He's looking at me over his glasses. I feel like he's asking a rhetorical question.
"It's not that I can't, it's that I don't want to. I want to know what's there, I want to count. It's my meditation; it's the way I relax on the way from one class to another."
He shifts in his chair. "What about talking to friends? Do you ever talk to friends in between classes?"
I look down. "I haven't been here that long, and haven't had time..." but I can't finish because he's already writing.
"Can you stop that!" I yell.
He looks up. I'm more shocked by the outburst than he is.
"I'm sorry, but..." I sigh. "I'm supposed to be talking to you and I don't even feel like you're listening to me. Just writing things down. I can't even see what you’re writing down?"
He writes this down.
"No, you can't. I know it's frustrating, but I have to work like this. I can't tape you—because that's illegal—so I have to write down what you say because I may not remember it later, and it's later, when I'm pouring over all of this, that I really start listening to what you say. You might as well think of this time as me just collecting information."
"Then what the hell do I get out of it?"
He writes this down what seems like four or five times.
"You will hopefully get some decent advice and guidance by the time all of this is over. But for now, I have to learn more about you, about who you are, so I can try to figure out how to help you. Now, have you met any friends at school?"
Just a girl that turns me on so much I want to fuck the shit out of her every time I see her. I want to grab her tits and shove them in my face and suck until they're bright red with the blood running to the surface. I want to plant my dick so far inside her she screams with pain but asks for more. I want to make her feel me.
"Yeah, a girl."
"What's her name?"
"Melissa."
He does not write this down.
"Melissa who. Is she your year?"
"She's a senior."
He puts down his pen and stares at the wall, over my head. I turn to see if there's anything of interest there, but it's just a blank wall, covered with the institutional white paint that lined the halls of the school.
"Melissa Cantrell?"
It catches me off guard. "Actually, I don't think I know her last name. I mean, I don't know her last name."
He writes this down. I wonder if he's left her name out.
"Good. Friends are good. Melissa is a good kid. Tell me something, how is your life with your new foster parents?"
Seems okay, except it seems like my foster mother is kind of kinky, and I'd like for her to come up to my room one night and watch some pornos with me, and then fuck me, I want her to fuck me, to fuck me rotten, to leave me so sore that I might have to call in sick from school the next day, or at least walk around kind of funny.
"Fine, so far. Nothing special. They give me my space."
He writes this down.
"Now you know that nothing you say here goes anywhere else, right?"
I don't give much thought to the question when I shake my head yes.
"Good. So how is your sex life?"
"My sex life?"
"Yes. Are you sexually active, or not?"
It catches me off guard.
"You mean, do I have sex with people?"
He nods.
"No, I've never had sex with anyone," I say.
He writes this down. Then he takes off his glasses.
"You don't have to answer this question if you don't want to. I really shouldn't be asking you, but I trust you. I don't think you're the kind of kid who's going to run out of here shouting that you were asked an uncomfortable question. I don't think there are uncomfortable questions for you.”
He waits for me to say something, but there’s nothing for me to say. He’s right.
"Do you think of sex as something dirty?"
My answer is no. He sighs, relieved. The bell for lunch rings, and he asks me if I'd like to see him again the next week, and I say yes, because I have a couple of questions to ask, and as far as I can tell, Mr. Granger is the only person who might give me a straight answer.
Chapter 10
There are three main places you touch a woman to get her off. I know this because it is what my foster mother tells me the first night we fuck.
Tits: you touch the tits how the woman wants you to.
"In fact," says my foster mother as she slides into bed next to me that night, "you do everything like the woman wants it. Let her tell you. As for you…"
I feel her hand on my crotch. My dick immediately leaps from the front of my open boxer shorts. She laughs.
"That's the thing about you young men—you're always ready for action. Now relax, and..."
I come. I come all over the place, all over her hands, the sheets, myself. She giggles--she stifles her giggles, they are so powerful--and just starts wiping me off on the sheet.
"Don't laugh at me!" I whimper, still conscious of the importance of keeping volume to a minimum while Edward sleeps below. I finally know what it is like to be on the other side of a conversation spoken in Hushedwhispers. I start sobbing like a baby, and she turns sympathetic, and holds me, lets me cry into her, and I don't know for how long, but by the time I am done, the film on the reel we'd been watching is flapping.
"Feel better?" she asks.
"I'm sorry," and I start to stand up and take the sheets off the bed.
"Wait," She orders.
I stop.
"You haven't learned your lesson."
For a second I think she is going to spank me, and I try to decide whether that's something I want or don't want, but then I remember the three places.
"Oh," I manage.
"Now, for review," and she walks toward me, "What is the first place to touch a woman so she comes?"
"Tits," I smile.
"Very good. The second place is her love button, way up inside the pussy. Sit down, I'll show it to you."
She pushes me down on the bed so I'm laying down, then straddles my face and sticks her fingers inside her pussy. She separates the lips and asks if I see a little button. I tell her that it's too dark. She tells me to feel for it.
I probe softly, exploring. She lets me. I study the outside with my fingers for a while, and eventually go inside with one, until I find a small, hard nub in the soft flesh, and when I probe at that, she lets out a moan like I'd never heard on porns. She begins to buck against my finger, moaning in rhythm, until she bites her finger so the moans aren't so loud. Finally, she bucks so far forward that she almost falls. Holding herself against the wall, she makes a noise almost like someone choking, but inside out.
She looks down at me, a lone tear falling down her cheeks. "Amazing," she says, her hand finding my cock through my shorts, "You are a clever one," and then she gives up the search altogether, rips my shorts down my legs just past my knees with both hands, and starts sucking me off.
Right when I'm so hard I think I'm going to bust (except, after the initial explosion, I don't have anything to bust with) she takes her mouth off and jumps on my cock, and I feel myself in her, and she starts to buck immediately.
"You have a decent-sized cock," she says nonchalantly in the midst of moans of pleasure. "But that doesn't mean you can work it. You have to be able to feel where to put it in any woman to really get her off, and for me, its right here!"
She bucks a little bit farther forward than she had before, and then comes down hard. I feel the tip of my dick hit something, and on the second thrust I come, a flood of it from I don't know where, and the more there is, the more it seems to like it, and she bucks a couple more times, but by this time I'm done and so spent that just the feeling of being inside her has me shaking, and she gets off and collapses on the bed.
"I came too quick," I say.
"No, no, that's the beauty part!" She turns to me and puts her head on her hand. "You got me off before you came—that's the important thing! Because I told you how. But some girls, they aren't comfortable enough with themselves, or they just don't know their bodies well enough, but they won't tell you what it takes to make them feel special inside. So it's your responsibility to be able to figure out, instantly, how to get them off. And I'll teach you that while you're here, if you want."
I consider this for a millisecond and turn back to her. "I need a towel," I say.
"Use the sheet."
I need a towel, I want to yell. You don't fucking understand! I can't use a sheet that you are laying on naked to wipe off what I piss with. No way!
I stop then, realizing that, in the court of law, this is my mother telling me what to do.
A legal guardian can go a long way.
Under her advice, I wipe off with the sheet, three good swipes, and turn back to her, trying to avoid the wet spot. "What's the third place?"
"I thought you'd never ask!" she squeals. "Turn on one of your movies and I'll show you."
I stand and get out my favorite, "Surprise Party," and set it up on the reel. From behind me, my foster mother says, "And skip it to the juicy stuff, huh?" and I nod, not looking back, because I can tell she is moving around on the bed, and something tells me it would be wrong to look at what she's doing. It is only when I hear her squirting some of my lotion out that I turn around. She's in doggy position and reaching back, rubbing lotion all around her asshole.
"It's a fact of life," she says when she notices my shocked face. When my expression doesn't change, she says, "Trust me. You're going to love it. The guys on these movies do."
I look at the film. The surprise party is in full swing, and the host and guest of honor have just been matched for seven minutes in heaven, but decide to go at it in front of everyone. Right when everyone else joins in on the orgy I feel her hand on me.
She leads me to the bed and gets back into position. She pulls me further. I get up on the bed, awkward, almost falling, so she scoots up a little, and then I have plenty of room (I found out the next time she had intended me to stand, but didn't have the heart to say) and she guides me into her. I shiver at what I'm doing, but my 'mom' told me to do it, she said it's ok, and somehow, repeating that thought throughout the act, I'm able to forget about all the germs and shit and everything else and realize that what she said earlier, it's right.
I love it.
Chapter 11
I know the girl sitting outside Mr. Granger's office the next day.
"Hey you!" she says. "Like Camus?"
Sounds a little rehearsed, I say.
"Well, it's just that I've been trying to ask you about it for so long, but you keep ducking me. I thought," she said pensively, "that maybe there was something wrong with the mirrors in my house."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I mean, I thought, maybe these mirrors are tricking me, you know? Like, maybe I'm not a beautiful girl after all. Maybe the mirrors are programmed or enchanted or something to show me a beautiful girl, when I'm really an ugly piece of shit. Then I thought, no way, what about all the other mirrors in the world, but then, what if there is a curse on me, so that every mirror I look into shows me what I wish I looked like, but then I thought no, what about my family and friends, they wouldn't lie to me, but maybe they would, you know?"
She stands there, as serious as possible for a second, then bursts out laughing. "Good one, huh?" she says.
I look at her, speechless.
"You know, you know," she says, waving her hands in the air and rolling her eyes. "I'm acting crazy? I kind of figured you thought I was waiting to see Granger and supposed I was crazy."
Still blank.
She sighs, gives me that oh-I-forgot-you're-new-here look. "The only people who see Mr. Granger are kids the teachers think are crazy. You know, nutballs?"
I nod. I know nutballs, alright.
She shakes her head. "Anyway, what are you here for?"
First thought that comes to mind. "Just passing through."
"It is a good shortcut," she says. "Walk me to class?"
She takes my hand and leads me off in the opposite way from where I was headed. I turn around to look at Mr. Granger's door, and he's standing there with one of those I'm-disappointed-but-that's-too-cute-to-get-mad looks.
"I want to see you sometime," she says as we file past the other ants on their way to second period.
Now I know she's asking me out, so I start counting steps, one, two, three...
"You know, a date. How about tonight?"
I nod.
"Well?" she says after a while. She's still not looking at me.
"Yes," I gulp.
"We're here."
People are filing into the class, all seniors. She turns and looks me in the eyes. I'm trapped in her gaze.
"Here's my number," she says, pulling out a marker and grabbing my hand. When she's done, she caps the marker, and kisses me on the lips. Oohs and cat calls spring into the air around us.
"Shut up," she says to some of the passing people, laughing. Then she turns to look at me again.
"Call me after school," she says. "I want to see you."
She touches my hand and before I know it, my dick is standing straight on end. As soon as she's out of sight, I run, covering my crotch with my chemistry book, to the bathroom. I jerk off really quick in one of the stalls without a door before going to see Mr. Granger and try to explain to him why I missed our appointment.
I call Melissa as soon as I get home from school.
"That was fast!" she says.
I explain that I live really close to school.
"Me too. You aren't in the Contour complex, are you?"
I tell her no, I'm not sure what a contour complex is.
"My apartment complex. I stay here with my mom."
The way she says 'stay here' makes it sound like she's more tenant than daughter.
"Why don't you come over to my place first?" she says. "We'll have a drink or something before we go out."
I ask her how to get there from school. She tells me, says she needs to shower, cook dinner for her mom, who works nights, and eat with her, and then she'd be ready, probably around seven.
I'm pretty far from my house, and I only have enough cash for a taxi one way, so I slink around that part of town for a while, walking, counting, trying to find patterns of three in things around me. I have to stop every now and then to use a bathroom and wash my hands, though most of the places I stop are so dirty they leave me with a worse feeling of filth than I had going in.
I start walking to her place at about fifteen until seven, and by the time I get to the complex, find her building, and scale the steps to the third floor, it's three minutes after seven.
"Come in!" she yells when I knock on the door.
The apartment is nice, average. There is a light on under the door of a room down the hall.
"I'm back here!" she yells.
I walk back and open the door, then immediately close it. She is standing in her bra and panties in front of a mirror.
"Sorry, sorry, sorry. I should have knocked."
She pads to the door and throws it open. She stands in her bra and panties, staring at me like I'm an idiot.
"Come in here silly," she says, and drags me into her room by my hand.
She turns around, faces the mirror, and begins combing her hair.
"How's it going?" she asks.
Fine, I manage while I take in the contour of her ass.
"You get here ok?" she asks.
I nod as I trace the lines of her back all the way down her legs.
"Geez," she says, and I realize she is looking at me looking at her. "It's like you've never seen a woman before."
I instantly realize that I've been so nervous and concentrating on counting steps that I didn't enter any of the doors in her house three times and I jump up and yell that I'll be right back, and run out of the room, three times, and out of the apartment, three times, back in, three, in the room, three, and then I sit down on the edge of the bed and make an effort to avoid her gaze.
"You are truly bizarre," she says. It doesn't sound admonishing. In fact, it sounds kind of like a compliment.
She turns around and begins work on her hair again. She applies a small amount of makeup while she talks, but not too much.
"I was thinking about Campisi's," she says. "It's an Italian restaurant down the road, pretty nice. You like Italian?"
"Yeah," I finally manage to speak.
"Good deal. Let me put on my clothes," and she looks at herself in the mirror, licks her lips, turns to face me and claps, "And we'll be ready to go!"
I'm ready to go right now, I think, hoping my erection will go down before I have to stand up.
Chapter 12
"Why?" asks my girlfriend, blood spurting from her mouth when she says it.
To answer, I point the gun at the guy lying on the ground next to her, but then I realize she can't see, what with all the blood in her eyes.
"Why did you fuck him?" I yell.
"Same reason I fucked you," she manages. "For fun. For the hell of it."
I ask if she had sex with him.
"They're the same fucking thing!!!" she screams. She's said it to me time after time; this is the only time she's mad about it.
"They're the same fucking thing," she repeats, coughing in the middle on a stream of blood shooting out of her mouth. "No matter how much they mean to a person, sex and fucking boil down to the same thing."
I put my head in my hands, let out a scream. "But they aren't—they may be the same physically, but even then, there are times..."
"Just because there is emotional meaning behind a sex act doesn't make it different than any other sex act."
I scream again, and, not realizing I have my finger on the gun trigger, squeeze, and fire a shot into the ground next to me. The mystery comes back then: how many shots do I have left?
"What the fuck!" yells the bastard. "What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck! What the fuck is going on?!?"
"We're dealing with a really messed up guy here," says Melissa. "Not only has he learned about sex..."
"Fucking!"
"Fucking!" she blurts, a bubble of blood forming around her mouth, and as she breathes out, it expands, and the portion of our world that it highlights turns a ghastly red. She breathes in and it collapses on itself and into her mouth, and she gags, then continues. "Not only has he learned about fucking solely through watching pornography, he's got some mental disorder."
"It's called OCD," I mumble.
She laughs through her blood. "It's called fucked, that's what it's called."
"It's called obsessive compulsive disorder," said Mr. Granger about a month before all this gunplay and attempted murder (at least up to this point) had started. Before the really intense fucking happened, before I got so deep into sex that I couldn't climb out, I went in to see Mr. Granger. This was the night after I fucked my foster mother.
"That sounds bad," I reply.
"It can be, if it isn't treated. It can seriously impair someone's quality of life and ability to think logically, to extrapolate the right data from erroneous conversations."
I nod, understanding what he's talking about, especially the last part. He stares at me. "What?" I say after a few moments. "Am I breaking out?"
"How did you understand the last thing I said, um, I can't remember it exactly..."
" 'Extrapolate the right data from erroneous conversations'? "
"Yeah," he smiles. "That."
I shrug. "Well, I could be wrong, that could mean a couple of different things, but given the context, and some things I might have said to you before, I thought it was about me listening in on Hushedwispers conversations."
He nods. "It was. Those are just words that most people your age aren't familiar with."
He is careful never to say the word 'kids' or children. Always, 'people your age,' or 'people between the ages of x and y'. But never anything demeaning, patronizing, like kids, or my personal favorite, young'uns.
"I used to read a lot."
"But you don't anymore?" He begins to write again.
I shake my head.
"Why not?"
Because in the life of a book, more than five hundred different people touch that book. More if you get it from a library or buy it used. Not to mention the number of machines that touch it when it's made, or the people who made those machines, the people whose hands they shook that day, and on and on until infinity. Touching books is just one more thing I can avoid, that I don't have to mess with, that life doesn't force me to mess with, and I let them go.
"No time."
"No time," says Granger, and he flips back through the leaves of paper in my file, "and yet last Tuesday you said you had '...nothing but time. Time to count. Counting time fills it, and vice versa.' I'm still a little unclear on that last part..."
"Filling time counts it," I interrupt. "If you fill time with action, then dividing time between different actions is implicit. This is where you start doing one and stop doing another. Sometimes they overlap, but mostly it's a pretty clear start and stop. Counting is simply division of a whole into understandable parts; acting in time, or filling it, is the same."
"I see," he writes furiously, then looks up. "But that wasn't what I was going to ask—you interrupted me."
"Sorry."
"That's ok. What I want to know is why you said you had nothing but time on your hands last week, and now you can't even pick up a book because you're so busy?"
"Things have changed in this past week."
"How?"
I shrug.
He closes his file. "I think you should go see a psychologist. This obsessive compulsive disorder, I think you might have it. In fact, I'd bet my job on it. If you can get help there, things may start going better in other parts of your life."
"I don't believe in psychologists."
"Oh, they exist, I guarantee. I'm married to one. But you won't be seeing her. At any rate, this could help you immensely. I think you should go."
I stare at him.
"You realize I'm talking to you as a friend now, don't you? I can't force you to do anything. You can go or not go—it's up to you. And your foster parents, of course, but from what you said about them, I don't think they would care much."
That last part is almost hurtful. Then who?
"So you decide. Sleep on it—this isn't something that has to be taken care of overnight. But the sooner the better. Because when you let something like this get a hold of you, when it takes over," he sighs and looks down at his hands, "it can ruin a lot of different parts of your life."
He's still looking down at his hands when I decide to ask my question, the question that had been bothering me for years, but seems so much more important after I fucked my foster mother.
"Mr. Granger."
"Yes."
I sigh. I hope this isn't a question I should know the answer to. I don't feel like it is. "I've seen plenty of people fuck. I mean, I've watched the videos. And I fucked someone myself last night, and it was fun and all, but I'm waiting for this one great thing—sex—that everyone keeps talking about. I kind of think it's like fucking, but it's different, you know?"
He looks up from his hands.
"Mr. Granger," I ask, hoping I will leave here with more knowledge than I had when I came in, "What the fuck is sex?"
Chapter 13
Melissa fucks different than my foster mother.
It's hard to say what the difference is exactly. I don't have too much to compare it with. Forced to describe it, I would say Melissa is sort of clumsy, but a little more enthusiastic. With her, things feel more…organic.
During our dinner at the Italian restaurant, Melissa talks constantly. As much as I try to listen and participate, I can't keep my mind off the utensils in front of me. How could I know if they had been cleaned properly? In the life of a restaurant fork, thousands of people put that fork in their mouths. A restaurant plate, which usually has a longer life then the fork, can have tens of thousands of meals served on its surface. A restaurant glass is the worst. They are never cleaned properly. More often than not, they are simply emptied, dipped in a vat of tepid soapy water, rinsed, and left out to dry. The glass is the Petri dish of the restaurant world.
Even though I barely touch my food and have to leave three times to go to the bathroom and wash my hands, Melissa assures me that she is having a great time. When we walk out of the restaurant and get in her car, she asks me if I have to go home.
"Well, I have to go home at some point…" I answer, confused about the question.
"You are so weird," she says. As usual, it sounds like a compliment coming from her. "What I mean is, can you come back to my place for a little bit?"
She puts her hand on my leg, and rubs it a little with her thumb. I smile, and mumble that I suppose I can come over.
About an hour later, we're in her bed, and she's going down on me, and I'm thinking about two things: how good it feels, and how she washes her sheets.
Anything that comes in contact with your body, in my opinion, needs to be washed with the hottest water possible, as well as antibacterial laundry soap. And you can't simply throw the laundry into the machine and assume the water is hot enough. After all, if someone has just taken a shower, there may not be any hot water left. To make sure all bacteria is destroyed; you have to make sure that the water coming out of the washing machine is as hot as possible. It only took me a little bit of time at the foster home to realize that not everyone shares the same opinion as I do when it comes to washing things. And that's scary.
When Melissa quits going down on me and gets on top of me, I start to forget about laundry.
This is after Mr. Granger told me that he couldn't talk to me about sex—it could get him fired. This is after I tell him I don't know who to ask, and he tells me I should talk to my foster parents. This is before I decide to find out for myself what sex is all about.
The lights are off in Melissa's bedroom, but when she gets on top of me, she says she wants to turn one on so she can see me and I can see her. She reaches over and turns on the lamp on her bedside table. The room fills with shadows. Our audience.
As I stand at the top of the hill, the gun heavy in my hand, Melissa's labored breathing sending ripples through the pools of blood collected beneath her, I wonder how things would have been different if I had learned about sex before I went on my date with Melissa. Before I went on my date, I knew two things about sex: it was something people liked to do, and it had something to do with fucking.
After my date, I go home. My foster parents are out for the evening. I decide to find out for myself, once and for all, what sex is.
I go to the computer and type the word into a search engine.
It turns out that I had been having sex. I'd had sex with my foster mother, as well as Melissa. Sex and fucking, for the most part, are the same thing.
That's interesting, I think, as I browse through more pages on the subject, reading about positions, legal implications of sex (I laugh when I realize that, in some places, having sex with my foster mother would be illegal because of my age), and sex in religion. It's interesting, and for a brief moment, I relax in my newfound knowledge, happy that an answer to a question nobody would answer for me has been discovered.
But only for a brief moment. Because the next topic on the page I'm reading is "Sexually Transmitted Diseases."
Something in my stomach twists, and for a moment, I think I'm going to throw up. The feeling increases as I read.
Chlamydia. It can cause infertility in women. In men, it can cause painful discharge from the penis. An estimated three million people in the United States have the disease. One out of every one hundred.
Gonorrhea. In men, it can cause painful, colorful discharge from the penis. An estimated one million people get this disease every year. That's one in three hundred people.
Viral hepatitis—you can die from this one. It affects the liver. It's all over the place. Even being in the same house as someone with hepatitis puts you at risk of contracting the disease.
Genital herpes. The most common STD there is. One out of every five adults in America has it. And you can't get rid of it.
Before I can read anymore, I'm in the bathroom. Checking to see if my eyes are still white (the liver problems associated with hepatitis can make them turn yellow). Looking for spots on my dick with a magnifying glass. Forcing myself to pee so I can find out if it stings. I think it does, but I'm not sure if it is because I've caught something, or because of the force I use to get it out.
That night, I sit in the shower until all the hot water is gone. No matter how much I scrub, no matter what I do, I can't feel clean. I've exposed myself to disease. After all my work, after everything I've done to make sure I kept germs and bacteria out of my body, I've made the one mistake that could completely fuck me over. For good.
The website assures me that if I take precautions such as wearing a condom, I can still have a healthy and satisfying sex life. Which raises the question—in the life of a condom, how many people come in contact with it before I use it? Because if just one of those people has one of these diseases…
When my foster parents come home that night, they find me still in the shower. The water is cold, but it doesn't bother me. My foster mother turns it off and stands me up, wrapping me in a towel, while my foster father keeps asking what's going on, what's wrong with me.
"I think I want to kill myself," I finally explain to him.
The next day, I don't go to school. Together, they drive me to a small office in a strip mall. That's where I meet my psychiatrist.
Chapter 14
Part II
"What does it feel like?" asks Melissa.
"I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know?"
"I mean, I don't know. I don't have anything to reference it to."
"Because you've always been this way?"
I nod. We're walking down the street at dusk, passing storefronts that have been closed for two hours now. The restaurant we're going to, she assures me, is very clean. This is a couple of days after my first appointment with my psychiatrist.
That first day, I walk into the office with minimal apprehension. I feel blank. I feel like there aren't any feelings inside me at all. Just me, peeking out through my own eyes at a world that wasn't really a true representation of itself at all.
As if everything isn't a variant of something it isn't.
There are all sorts of colorful toys lining the walls of the waiting room. Big wooden platforms with squiggly metal bars drilled into them. On those bars are small little shapes that you could push up and over one squiggle, only to watch it fall victim to gravity as it careened down to the bottom of the loop. The entire thing is bolted to a table. And why not? Who could trust kids with mental problems? If that thing wasn't bolted down, some messed up bastard could pick it up and throw it across the room.
There are colorful magazines. One of them is even named Rainbow. Under the title is the tag line, "Because every child is special."
Special is one of those words that mean something different to the person saying it than it means to the person hearing it.
"You're just special," says my foster mother on the way to the doctor's office. "And we want to make sure that since you're so special, you're happy."
This from a woman who was fucking my brains out three nights before. A woman who is supposed to care for me and make me safe. Now she's calling me 'special' like I have a fucking disease. She can't even look at me. She didn't have a problem looking at me the morning after I was balls-deep in her asshole; but now that I'm 'special,' she won't meet my gaze.
There are stuffed animals in the waiting room. Most of them look worn out. They have been touched by the hands of thousands of children, in my estimation. Grubby little hands that probably hadn't been washed after they wiped an ass. There is one teddy bear in particular that rests up against a plush unicorn. The bear looks worn out, tired. It's missing part of its bowtie and an eye. The fur is worn and dingy, blackened from years of handling by children who just didn't understand what germs are, what they can do to you.
A small child waiting in the office is staring at me. I stare back. He's sitting next to the only available seat, on a small leather couch facing the receptionist. We just look at each other for a moment. Then he sneezes. Snot comes out all over his hand, which he wipes on his jeans and on the couch.
"You can sit anywhere you like," says the receptionist, not looking to see that there is only one other place to sit, whether I like it or not.
"I'll stand, thanks."
My foster parents are working on the papers with the receptionist when my name is called.
"Dr. Norovim will see you now. Third door down, on the right."
Well, this will make things easier, I think. Three doors, I can handle that, and so I walk through the first door into the hallway, one, two, three times.
I don't realize that there is a woman at the end of the hallway, outside the third door to the right, watching me. I stand still.
"That's ok. Keep doing what you're doing. Just walk down here like you would normally walk everywhere."
I walk up to her door. Will she try to shake my hand? Will she understand if I refuse to shake hers back? I'm thinking about this as I walk through the door to her office one, two, three times. When I get inside, she follows, closes the door, and sits across from me.
"Hello. I'm Doctor Norovim. I understand you're suffering from some anxiety issues?"
I shrug. "I haven't had anymore panic attacks, if that's what you mean."
She starts writing this down. Again with the writing. Won't anybody just listen?
"Your foster parents said they found you last night curled up in the bathtub with ice cold water running over you. You wouldn't call that a panic attack?"
"A panic attack is when you feel like you're going to have a heart attack. I didn't feel like that last night. I just felt…numb."
Her pen scratching against the paper is the only sound I hear.
"Panic attacks are very strange," she says as she writes. "Some of them feel like what you described first—a heart attack. But others can feel different. Did you feel like yourself last night when this happened?"
I answer immediately. "I didn't feel like anything at all."
"Tell me about the way you walked in here, just a second ago. Walking through doors three times. Do you do that all the time, or just when you're nervous?"
"I do it all the time. It's when I don't do it that I start getting nervous."
"What other things make you nervous?"
How much time do you have? I think to myself.
"We have plenty of time," she says, reading my mind. "And we'll talk again in the week, so don't feel pressured to cover everything today, because we won't. Now tell me, what else makes you feel nervous?"
"Germs," I manage. "Just the germs that are everywhere, waiting to infect us. Things not being clean. Screen doors that let too much air in from the outside. Talking on a telephone that hasn't been properly disinfected. The idea of running out of soap in the shower—that's terrifying."
"What about…"
"People not keeping to their schedules," I continue. "People who act like my schedule doesn't matter. They're the worst about it at school. You can sit all day in the office, waiting to talk to someone, and it's like they don't even care that you're waiting there, that you may have something else more important to do."
She's writing feverishly.
"I don't like not knowing things. Not knowing how people feel about me. Not knowing why people talk to me the way they do, or what they're saying in Hushedwhispers."
She puts the pen down for a second. "Hutch wispers?" she says, as if it's in a foreign language.
"No, hushed whispers. The language people use to talk about you when they aren't sure whether or not you can hear them."
"Did you come up with that name by yourself?" she asks, writing again.
"Well, kind of. It's from a book. The Castle in the Sky. I can't remember the author. The line goes something like, 'He could barely hear what they were saying in their hushed whispers, but he knew it was about his family.' "
"So people talking behind your back makes you nervous?"
"It isn't even that. People talking behind my back wouldn't make me nervous if I didn't know they were talking behind my back. It's just knowing that they're talking about someone behind their back, and not knowing whether it's me."
"It sounds like you care a great deal what people think about you."
"That's just it—I don't. I don't give a shit whether Sally Whatshername thinks I'm weird, or whether Bobby Jockhead wants to beat me up. I don't care."
"Then why does it make you nervous?"
"I don't know!" I say, frustrated, louder than I intended. "Sorry."
She puts down her pen and looks at me. "That's ok. You can yell at me—I won't get upset. Sometimes everyone needs to yell."
She's nice. By the time we're done that day, I feel comfortable with her. She tells me that she wants to talk to my foster parents, and that I'll see her again in a week. In the meantime, she gives me some pamphlets to look over: "The Obsessive Compulsive Personality," "Depression: Don't Suffer Silently," and "Anxiety and You."
In the days before my date with Melissa, I thumb through the pamphlets and discover that I have almost all of the symptoms they talk about.
"Will they give you medicine for it?" she asks as we get closer to the restaurant.
"I don't know," I say. "Some of the pamphlets said that sometimes you can get over it with therapy. Sometimes you can't."
She hooks her arm around mine and leans in closer to me. "I went to a psychiatrist once. He said I needed Xanax. You ever taken Xanax?"
"Never heard of it." Cars screech past, one two three, one two three. We walk together. I time my steps with hers, one two three one two three.
"I took one, didn't like it. Felt like I was all messed up. It's supposed to relax you, but they say some people get even more anxious because of it."
"That doesn't sound any good."
"Well, it wasn't for me. I ended up just letting my mom have it after she begged me for awhile. Now I just go back to the psychiatrist to get the prescription refilled so she can have more. Tell him it's working, blah blah blah, I think next time it might be my breakthrough. God, it sucks that you have to lie to please people in this world."
When we arrive at the restaurant, my first thought is that it isn't as clean as Melissa originally insisted. As we sit down, Melissa asks a question that raises another thought:
"What will the medication do to you?"
It isn't long before I find out, because it isn't long before my doctor puts me on Prozac. Now, up on this hill, with my almost-dead girlfriend and the bastard she was sleeping with, I can't help but think that all of it—all of this, all of what I've become—is because of that Prozac.
That goddamned medicine.
Chapter 15
It's been a week since my foster parents found me in the shower, and my foster mother still won't look at me. I walk downstairs and see her sitting in the living room, and she buries her face in the newspaper. She didn't even read the newspaper before all of this started. I walk in from school and see her standing at the window in the kitchen, looking out on the neighborhood, and she doesn't say hi. I try to start conversations with her, but her answers are always monosyllabic. Uncaring. Unsympathetic.
One night when my foster father isn't home, a night that up until that point would have meant vast amounts of sex in every position and place imaginable, she's washing dishes. I don't know what she had for dinner, because we don't eat together anymore.
"Why won't you look at me?" I ask, startling her.
"Jesus Christ!" she yells, catching her breath. "Don't sneak up on people like that!"
"You barely even talk to me anymore. Why?"
She sighs, and looks down at the sink.
"You know damn well why," she says, then begins scrubbing again.
"No, I don't." I walk around the table to stand beside her, where she can't help but see me, even if it is only out of the corner of her eye. "That's why I asked."
Silence forms a barrier between us. She breaks it at last. "You've got enough going on in your life right now. The last thing you need is for me to get involved."
She downs what remains in her wine glass, and with a shaky hand, fills it up again.
"But I want you to be involved. If you weren't involved, I wouldn't have gone to the psychiatrist in the first place. I would have gotten frostbite or died of hypothermia from sitting in that ice cold water too long."
"Yeah, well, maybe that would have been better."
I didn't think I had any emotional attachment to her. I didn't think I had much emotional attachment to anyone. I had my quirks to deal with, and they didn't give me much time to worry with things like friends, or love. So I was a little surprised when I felt tears well up in my eyes after she said that.
"Look," she said, then downed the new glass of wine. "You are a sweet kid, but you are seriously fucked in the head, and I know what it's like. I know…" She stops, and stares out the window over the sink. I don't know if she's thinking, drunk, or both.
"I know that what's ahead of you, what you're going to have to go through—I know that there will be times when it seems like it's too much for you to handle. There will be times when you think that it would be better if you were just dead. If there was no more you, no more 'quirks', No more anything. And I just think it's a shame you're going to have to go through that."
I listen silently because there isn't anything for me to say.
"And the last person you need trying to guide you through all of this is me. Jesus, I slept with you. You aren't even sixteen. Have you ever asked yourself why a woman my age would sleep with someone your age? Would sleep with someone they took in as a charge, when they were that someone's legal guardian?"
I shake my head.
"I'll tell you why—because you aren't the only one here who is fucked in the head."
I back away and watch her as her head falls forward on a loose neck. And while there is no sound, I know from my training in Hushedwhispers that she's crying. The way her head moves up and down, the way she is breathing. And though crying and laughing often look and sound the same, there's no mistaking that the way she shrugs her shoulders with every movement isn't a sign of joy.
"Just go," she says. "You probably have homework or something to do. Maybe a girlfriend to see. But just go. And forget about all of this."
I do have a girlfriend I can see, but I can't talk to her about fucking my foster mother. So when Melissa finally answers her door after I've been knocking for five minutes—hair a mess and clothes askew--and asks me what's wrong, what I'm doing there without telling her I was coming over, I say, "Panic attack."
My newest variation of "Hello."
"Jesus," she says. Something in the way her frame stoops down while she's talking indicates that she doesn't sympathize with me. "I, um. I have someone over. We were studying."
"I can come back?" I offer, thinking a walk around the neighborhood might be a good thing.
"Yeah, do that, would you? Come back in about fifteen minutes."
The stars aren't out that night. Masked by the dark clouds. The moon shines through only a little bit, and the pools of light on the street are from street lamps and storefronts, some of which close down as I walk past. Almost as if I have the plague.
My mind starts to run with that. I always think that other people think I have some sort of illness they can catch. Some of the pamphlets call that "awfulizing." They say that someone like me takes an idea and turns it into something horrifying. Instead of looking at my watch to see that it is nine o'clock sharp and coming to the rational conclusion that shops are just closing down, I think of it as a sign of something far worse. I think that people are putting themselves in quarantine when I'm around.
"Which is simply not the case," says a part of my brain that my psychiatrist will eventually call Rationality. But it's been so long since that part of my brain has said anything that it almost doesn't even register. Instead of listening to Rationality, the other part of my brain grabs onto the one word that will give it the footing it needs to be the One Voice again: quarantine.
Which then brings me full circle to STDs, which I think about all the way back to Melissa's house. I can't fathom how, with a couple of rash decisions made without decent information, I have put my health, and the health of other people like Melissa and my foster mother, in jeopardy. The phrase, "It isn't fair—I didn't know any better," cycles through my mind like a carousel. But the comfort it offers is minimal, at best.
"You have to call if you're going to come over," says Melissa as she lets me in. "What if I hadn't been here?"
I shrug. "I could have waited. I didn't have anywhere else to go."
She shakes her head. Whether or not it's what she wanted to hear, it was the only thing I had to say.
"This…panic attack," she says, leading me to the couch. "Was it a bad one?"
Again, I shrug. "Same as usual."
"Well," she says, smiling wryly, "I know something that might make it better." With that, she starts kissing my neck, slowly working her way down.
"Stop," I say finally, when I think I'm going to be sick. "Just stop. I don't feel like it right now."
She sits back in a huff. "You've said that every time I've tried to make love to you for the past week. What's going on?"
What isn't going on, besides the fact that I'm still grappling with the possibility that through my behavior, I might have caught a disease that could kill me slowly and painfully? And since I've had sex with multiple partners as well as unprotected, I might have passed that on to someone else. And that with all of that weighing on my mind, I can't even bring myself to get an erection, let alone make love to someone.
"So you don't want to talk about it," she sighs as she stands up. "You know, maybe we should take a break. Until this all works out for you."
This doesn't have the emotional impact I think it should. She's breaking up with me. My first girlfriend, is breaking up with me.
Yet, I have a hard time finding the energy to care.
It isn't a long walk back to my foster parent's house. When I walk in the front door, I hear sobbing, and smell something very strange—something familiar, but I just can't quite place it.
The sobbing in from my foster father. I follow the sound until I find him in his bedroom. He's looking at a piece of paper, reading something on it, and mouthing the words. I only catch the last part, but in Hushedwhispers, I can tell exactly what he's saying: I fucked him. I'm sorry. I just can't take it anymore.
The smell, I don't know what the smell is. Hours later, I understand and remember where I first smelled it, when I was with my father years ago. But at that moment, it's still a mystery. Had this all happened after I was up on this hill, I would have known it instantly. The smell is gun powder.
My foster father looks up and sees me. "Go," he says. "Get the fuck out."
"Where do I…"
"JUST GO!" he roars.
I go upstairs and get what I think I need. Thinking about what you need for the future and procuring those things is usually done in vain, because you are rarely correct about what it is that will eventually come in handy. Nonetheless, you do it, because you have to. Because, like so many other parts of your life, you can't imagine doing anything else at all.
Chapter 16
“How are you handling all of this?” asks my psychiatrist on my second visit.
‘All of this’ is a phrase people use when they want to let you be the one who actually brings up a problem. Most people don’t want to point out problems they see other people as having—they want those people to provide those problems themselves, and then begin their criticism.
“You’re going to have to be more specific,” I reply.
“Let’s start with how you feel about the death of your foster mother.”
Oh, the woman I lost my virginity to? The first person in this world to show me the carnal side of life, who took advantage of me, who could go to jail for what she did if she wasn’t a coward and hadn’t offed herself? How do I feel about the fact that she wrote a letter to her husband and told him we had been together and that’s the reason she put a bullet through the back of her head?
“I feel fine. I mean, it sucks, but I feel fine. I didn’t know her that well.”
“It must have been difficult to leave that night. The state gave me a little information. You were picked up by police?”
Literally. When you walk around for nearly ten hours without anything to eat or drink, your body breaks down. I had been walking all night, since I left my foster parents’ house. I didn’t have any other idea what to do, had no place to go. I couldn’t go back to Melissa’s—it was too late. I didn’t have any friends, family, anything. I just had a change of clothes, Kleenex, and antibacterial hand sanitizer. And that was about to run out when I fainted.
“Yeah, they took me downtown until my foster father could come pick me up. I tried to tell them that there was no way he would pick me up, that he had kicked me out.”
Not only had he kicked me out, he had displayed quite a bit of control since he hadn’t picked up the gun and shot me in the face for fucking his wife.
“And why did he kick you out?”
I shrug. “I guess he blamed me. For his wife dying.”
“Why would he blame you?”
I could feel heat rise in my cheeks as I blushed. “Hell if I know. Had to blame someone, I guess.”
She writes for several seconds, then puts her pen down. “But your foster father did pick you up, didn’t he? Otherwise, you probably wouldn’t be here.”
Surprisingly, she’s right. He came into the station less than an hour after they called him. I heard him tell the clerk that I had run away that night, that we’d had a misunderstanding after he found my foster mother, and that he’d been out looking for me.
“Yeah, he did.”
“And how are things going between the two of you? What did he say to you?”
He told me that he’d be damned if he lost his tax breaks because of this. He said that I needed to stay the hell out of his way and not to make a sound. Told me I should start seriously thinking about coming home as late as possible and leaving as early as possible to avoid seeing him, because he doesn’t know if he’ll snap the next time he sees me. He told me that he’d still pay for my psychiatrist. When I asked him why he would do that, he said, “Because that only costs me ten dollars. That’s nothing compared to what you save me. And I don’t want to come home and find you in the shower again.”
“He just said that he probably wouldn’t feel like talking to me for awhile.”
“So how are things for you now?” she asks, writing more.
Oh, just dandy. I get up at 5 in the morning so I can avoid my foster father. I walk around aimlessly until it’s time for school. I go to school and spend the day worrying about what I’ve touched and who’s touched what and was that just a stinging in my dick and oh my god I must have caught something and maybe that’s the reason my foster mother killed herself because she found out she had something or holy crap could she have been pregnant? Then it’s off to the bathroom to either puke or have diarrhea because I’m worrying myself so much my stomach is doing horrible things. I spend time after school wandering around town, stopping at a phone every now and then to call Melissa, to see if she’s around, but I only get her the first time I call, and then she says she has work to do and tells me she thinks we should take a break and shouldn’t talk, and then I ask her why and she hangs up. So I continue to walk until it feels like my feet are going to fall off. I usually make it home around 10, quietly make a sandwich, and try to wash off all the dirt and grime from the city with a long, hot shower.
“Things are fine.”
“You aren’t talking much today,” says my psychiatrist as she’s writing.
“Not much to say.”
Or not much I feel like I can say. How can this woman who doesn’t even really know me help me with these problems? The counting, the germs, everything else, I’m sure she can help me with that. But not this.
“I can’t help you if you don’t talk,” she says.
“Talk about what? You know my problems. It’s your job to fix them.”
Writing. “And I want to, but you have to be open with me. You know, other parts of your life are affected by your disorder. The way that you deal with those other parts--that’s part of your disorder as well.”
I break. “What, are you saying that the way I deal with the fact that my foster mother and I fucked like rabbits for the few weeks before she offed herself has something to do with my disorder? Are you saying that the fact that I can’t even look at my girlfriend without wanting to vomit because I found out exactly what kind of disease can be spread through sex has something to do with my disorder? How about the fact that I’m starting to wonder if she has another guy on the side, and I’m scared what I’ll do if I ever find out that’s true. Does that have something to do with my disorder?”
She looks up from her pad. “Not something—everything.”
I’m not sure what I expected, why I didn’t tell her these things before. Maybe I was worried she would turn against me. That she would find me disgusting. Maybe I was worried that she would tell me she couldn’t see me anymore, or send me to a psych ward, or call the police and tell them about all of this. But I realize I was worried about something, and as I sit there, staring at her staring at me, watching her face free of all emotion, I realize that all that worry was in vain.
I realize she isn’t here to judge. She’s here to help.
“Well,” she says, looking at her watch, “we’re out of time today. But I want you to come back next week. We have a lot of ground to cover, especially in light of what you’ve just told me. In the meantime, I’m going to write you a prescription. It’s for Prozac. Prozac is an antidepressant, but it helps people who don’t necessarily suffer from depression. People like you. I want you to take one capsule—twenty milligrams—every day. You probably won’t notice anything at first. You might not even notice anything before you come back next week, because it is a time-release medicine. But it will start working soon.”
She hands me a piece of paper with illegible writing on it.
“Don’t worry,” she laughs as she sees me trying to decipher her handwriting. “Take it to the pharmacy next door—they know my chicken scratch.”
How could she be like this? I just admitted what horrible things I had done over the past few months. And now she’s joking with me?
She stands and sticks her hand out. I shake it, trying to repress the anxiety that causes. “Take care this week, ok? I think we had a really good conversation today. And don’t forget to take your medicine.”
It takes them fifteen minutes to fill my prescription at the pharmacy. I buy a water and down my first pill in the parking lot. I take the second one when I wake up the next morning. I take my pill every day, every day, waiting for something to happen, but nothing ever does.
And then one day, about two weeks later, after I’ve been back to the psychiatrist and told her I’ve noticed nothing whatsoever, I wake up and find importance in the nothingness.
For the first time in years, I don’t have the urge to wash my hands. I sit there on the edge of my bed, and think, “What’s the use? There are germs everywhere. Washing your hands fifty times a day isn’t going to do anything to keep you from getting sick. Just wash them when they’re actually dirty. But that time isn’t right now.”
It’s a familiar voice. But this is the first time I’ve actually been able to listen to it.
And that’s when things start getting weird.
Chapter 17
When Melissa first asked me what it felt like when I was on Xanax, I told her it felt like I was drunk. She said, “I thought you’d never been drunk before. I told her she was right, but that my dad had taken one of my pills one day and told me it made him feel drunk. For me, it felt good, like my head might float away, or my limbs were rubbery. But really, the only thing that I cared about was that when I was on the pill, I didn’t have to worry about panic attacks. The point is, when you are on Xanax, you know you’re on Xanax.
The same doesn’t go for Prozac. You don’t feel anything. You simply wake up one morning, like I did, and realize you don’t care about doing some of the things you normally do anymore. Activities or situations that used to terrify you just aren’t that big of a deal after you’ve been on the medicine a couple of weeks. You sit on the edge of your bed, reeling from the fact that you don’t care about whether or not you wash your hands before you go eat breakfast. Then you realize you didn’t wash your hands the night before either. You’re a little frightened about the fact that not only didn’t you wash your hands before bed, but you didn’t think about the fact that you weren’t washing them.
But pretty soon, that fear subsides as well.
In the middle of second period, you realize with a start that you haven’t used your hand sanitizer all day. You would have used it countless times just yesterday. But here you sit, not concerned about the germs crawling around on your hands. They might make you sick, but who cares? Everyone gets sick every now and then.
You walk down the hall and touch things. You explore the texture of surfaces that used to make you gag. You use the water fountain by the bathroom--the one you wouldn’t even go near a week ago, even if you hadn’t had water in days—without worrying about who else might have had his mouth on it, or whether germs from the bathroom had migrated out, just waiting for an unsuspecting victim to pounce on.
At lunch, you buy your food from the cafeteria for the first time ever. You don’t worry about whether or not it was prepared in a sanitary environment. After all, you’ve never heard of anyone getting food poisoning from the food at school. But even if you get food poisoning, it doesn’t matter. Pretty much everyone gets food poisoning sooner or later.
Pretty much everyone.
You walk up to a table of guys and girls where there is an empty seat and ask to sit down. It isn’t something you’ve ever done before. They look at each other and eventually invite you to join them. Before you know it, you’re eating pizza that tastes like cardboard and laughing it up with everyone. You make jokes, and you don’t worry whether or not people are going to like them. In fact, the one time you do make a joke that nobody laughs at is when everyone (yourself included) eventually laughs the hardest.
You make plans to go to a party that weekend, and go to your next class feeling excited. You don’t even notice that you touch something wet on the garbage can when you’re throwing away your fruit cup. You just wipe it off on your jeans and keep going.
That afternoon, you go to the library and pick up a book. You don’t look on the inside front cover to see how many people have checked the book out before you, then calculate how many hands that means have touched its pages. You flip through, page after page, until the pages are screaming by, then you put it back and get another one. You do this with several books until your hands feel grimy. And even then, you never think of reaching in your bag for the hand sanitizer.
You check out several books. You write your name on the sign-out card using a pen that’s probably been touched by hundreds of different people. You don’t really care. You carry your books to the bathroom and drop one on the floor. You pick it up without even thinking about what’s on the bathroom floor. After taking a piss, you consider washing your hands. It is the first time this has happened to you for as long as you can remember. Washing your hands after going to the bathroom has always been a necessity—not a consideration. You leave without doing it.
Of course, this doesn’t happen in just one day. It happens slowly, over a period of weeks. But looking back, I can see what a drastic change it was, and it almost feels like a day, it happened so quickly. How the medicine turned off whatever switch it was in my brain that served as the conduit for all my obsessions and compulsions—in hindsight, I still perceive it as something that happened overnight. Prozac is a hindsight drug. You don’t even realize it’s working until you look back on your actions and thoughts and examine them.
One would think that such a change would be constructive and meaningful. That whoever this is happening to would be grateful that they are “better,” that their “sickness” has gone away.
But there’s one missing variable. People like me—the obsessive compulsives of the world—we love control. Losing control over any situation creates a significant level of anxiety in us.
I didn’t notice that the medicine had stolen control from me for the first few weeks. I didn’t notice it when I was going through my day and leaving behind rituals that had become my companions. When I was at the party, dancing with Melissa, telling her I was better and planning a date with her for the following evening, I didn’t notice it. Over the next two weeks, when I started making new friends at school, hanging out with different groups of people, raising my hand and talking in class without the least bit of anxiety, it never registered.
Then one day, Mr. Granger calls me into his office.
“It’s been awhile,” he says. “How are you doing?”
“Great!” I answer happily, smiling. “Better than ever, in fact. I’m on Prozac. It’s doing some amazing things.”
“I can tell. You only walked through my door once!”
It wasn’t supposed to be a remark of any significance. In fact, it was supposed to be comforting. Mr. Granger was simply highlighting the progress I made. I understand that now, but it doesn’t change the way I felt when he said it.
What I felt when he said that was a complete and utter loss of control. I understood then that the medicine was controlling my mind. I felt like I wasn’t me anymore. The person that I had been no longer existed, and it scared the shit out of me.
When I leave Mr. Granger’s office, I run to the bathroom. I begin washing my hands. I dry them off. I wash them again two more times, each time using three paper towels to dry off, each time motioning toward the waste basket three times before actually pitching the used towels inside.
It isn’t that I need to because I’m worried about getting sick. I don’t care about that anymore. Germs are the farthest thing from my mind. The only thing I’m thinking about is control. The control the medicine takes away from me, and the control I intend to take back.
I pull the bottle of Prozac out of my backpack and empty the contents into one of the toilets. I flush it away. Then I go back to the sink, where I wash my hands one, two, three times…
Chapter 18
What I don’t understand when I flush the medicine is that Prozac is a time-release drug. That means that even when I quit taking it, it stays in my system for awhile. So it really shouldn’t have surprised me when I woke up the next morning and still felt no desire to wash my hands.
But it does.
“I thought this was supposed to go away,” I say to myself.
“Residual effects. Probably soon,” my say to Iself.
For obsessive compulsives, internal dialogue is an extremely important part of every day activities. We rehearse possible situations, practice possible conversations with other people, even practice exactly how we’re going to say something that we plan on saying. For an actor, rehearsal gives him control over his lines, the movement on the stage, his interaction with other actors. For the obsessive compulsive, our internal dialogue gives us a false sense of control over the world itself. We plan out a situation with a conversation like this, all taking place in the comfort of our own brains:
Futility
A play in one act
Cast of characters:
ME
OTHER ME
ANXIETY
RATIONALITY
ME: So, another party tonight.
OTHER ME: Yup. Should be fun.
ME: Yeah, but there are going to be a lot of people there.
OTHER ME: So?
ME: So, what if you get into a fight?
OTHER ME: Why would I get into a fight?
ME: Why does anyone ever get into a fight? It isn’t because they want to.
OTHER ME: Well, there are some people…
ME: You know what I mean. You get in a fight because some jackass has something to prove to some chick. And guys like that are all over the place at parties like this.
OTHER ME: So I’ll walk away, tell him to fuck off, no big deal.
ME: But it is a big deal. What if you walk away and he throws a bottle at your head and knocks you out. Hell, if it hits you on the temple, you could die.
[Cue Anxiety, enter stage left.]
RATIONALITY: [To himself.] Well, that may be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.
ME: Come on, seriously? Why would anyone do that?
OTHER ME: [Shrugs.] You got me man. All I know is that I’ve heard of that kind of thing happening before. But even if that doesn’t happen, what if you take the other option you mentioned and tell the guy to fuck off.
ME: What about it?
OTHER ME: Well, maybe he’s got a girl there and decides he doesn’t like some little shrimp saying stuff like that to him, so he decides he and his friends are going to rough you up a little. Things get out of hand, you end up in the hospital with a coma.
RATIONALITY: [To himself, words muffled by Anxiety’s hands over his mouth.] I spoke too soon.
ME: God, how embarrassing would that be.
OTHER ME: You’re telling me. I mean, you’re telling yourself. You know what I mean.
ME: I gotcha.
OTHER ME: And you’re going to be there with Melissa. Which makes it even more likely that some guy is going to try to show you up. You'll want to be on the lookout. Because what would you do if she got hurt?
ME: Got hurt because of me?!?
OTHER ME: Exactly. How are you going to feel riding in the ambulance with her mutilated body on the way to the emergency room, trying to tell paramedics exactly why you couldn't stop a gang of thugs from raping her.
RATIONALITY [Barely a whisper.]: That's ridic…
ANXIETY [Loud and authoritative.]: How would you feel?
ME: I'd feel…I'd want to kill myself.
OTHER ME: And we can't have that.
ME: What if we just went to the movies?
OTHER ME: What if you sit in front of some thug and crunch your popcorn too loud and it pisses him off?
ME: We could always go to a restaurant and then go back to her place?
OTHER ME: Why, so you can make a fool out of yourself and drool all over her only to vomit when she mentions sex?
ME: Christ, what am I supposed to do? Sit at home and play with myself?
OTHER ME: In all honesty, that's probably the safest bet.
ME: [Screaming.]: But it isn't fair! I deserve to go out and have a good time. I deserve to do the things other people want to do. I want to live like a normal person goddammit!
OTHER ME: A great man once said, "You can't always get what you want."
ANXIETY [Soothing and calm.] Here, it is safe and comfortable. If you stay here, no harm will come to you.
ME [Taking off shoes and jacket.] Dammit. Where did I put Melissa's number? Think she'll buy it if I say I'm sick?
OTHER ME: Assuredly.
ANXIETY [Trailing off.]: Safe and comfortable…
Fin.
That’s the way these conversations with yourself go most of the time. I imagine, had I been off the medicine, that’s almost the exact dialogue I would have had before taking Melissa to the party. But even as the days go by and I keep searching for the effects of the goddamn medicine to wear off, I can’t get nervous. Anxiety isn’t there. I think about getting beat up and immediately throw the idea off as ludicrous. I think about going back to Melissa's place after having a few beers and having sex with her and the only feeling in my stomach is excitement—no nausea. What I had control over before I was taking the medicine—the only part of the world I had control over—is gone. There's something else in control now. Because this is the conversation I have as I lace up my boots and get ready to go pick up Melissa:
ME: This is going to be fun!
OTHER ME: I know I shouldn't, but I'll probably get drunk tonight.
ME: S'okay. Everyone needs to take a load off now and then. We can take a cab. You have cash right?
OTHER ME: Of course.
ANXIETY [Timidly.]: But what if…
RATIONALITY [Booming.] There is no "what if." You will have a good time. You are, and always will be, safe, secure, and confident. No need to worry—everything is going to be OK.
Rationality. As I lace up my shoes and put on my jacket, I realize I’m really starting to hate that motherfucker.
Chapter 19
No matter where or when they happen, panic attacks are not fun. They are probably one of the most difficult experiences someone can go through. The hardest thing about them is, there’s almost nothing you can do to stop them, unless you've been trained in relaxation techniques. They’re monsters that don’t really do anything. Just sit in the corner, freaking you out, threatening to come and get you. I’ll take a real monster clawing at me from under the bed over the corner monster any day of the week. Then, at least you know for sure what you’re dealing with. But with the monster in the corner, you don’t really have a clue. You’re pretty sure he isn’t going to come after you, but he keeps telling you he’s going to get you, and it’s confusing and scary as hell at the same time.
Panic attacks come in many shapes and sizes. Some people, there are particular places or situations that set off a panic attack. Maybe they’re claustrophobic, so being in a big crowd is what gets them going. Maybe they’re scared of heights, and one look out of the airplane window is enough to set them off. I always think that I would prefer it if my attacks were like that.
My attacks, just like a lot of people out there, come from nowhere. That’s the scariest thing of all.
That night, I go pick Melissa up. We have sex before we leave, something that still kind of bothers me, but Rationality and a little foreplay easily relieves that feeling and makes me second-guess my decision to stop taking my meds. We head out into the night, her driving her mom’s car.
On the way we talk—really talk. It’s the happiest we’ve been in weeks. It only takes a few minutes to get from her apartment to the party. Somebody’s parents were out of town, obviously, because the house was gorgeous, huge, and there were already at least thirty people spilling out from the inside to the front lawn.
As we approach the front door, a streak of white darts into the night. Instinctively, I reach down and grab it just as it passes my feet. It’s a small poodle, and it squirms in my hands—so much so I almost drop it.
“Goddammit, I told you motherfuckers to keep the door closed!” screams a beautiful girl who has just emerged from the front door of the house. A few people groan as she approaches us.
“Thank you so much,” she says to me as she relieves me of the squirming tangle of white hair. “This little shit has been trying to get away all night.”
“What’s his name?” I ask, feeling like it’s an important question.
“We call him Ollie for short, but his full registered name is Oliver Crandall Dannington. Weird, I know, but that’s my dad for you. Little Ollie definitely has a mind of his own.”
I know the feeling, I think to myself as the girl leads us into her house.
“Well I’m Tracey, and please let me know if you see anyone going upstairs, ok? I never got the stains out of the linen from the last party. The drinks are in the kitchen, and no smoking in the house.”
Tracey leaves with Ollie under her arm. The house is filled with people. You can’t get past anyone in the kitchen to get a drink. The line for the bathroom stretches into the living room, which is occupied by about thirty people when it probably only has room for ten or so. Melissa and I find some people we know, I go and wait in line to get beer for all of us, we talk for awhile, they introduce us to some of their friends, and we basically have a damn good time. The music is good, I feel like I’ve found friends I can mesh with, and I feel ecstatic.
And that’s when it happens.
“Ow,” I say, feeling a sharp pain in the upper-left side of my chest. I grip it and shake it off, but then Melissa says, “Are you ok?”
“Yeah, just a little pain.”
If Melissa hadn’t said anything, I think I could have ignored it. But as soon as I reply, Other Me asks a question.
“Are you sure you’re ok?” asks Other Me. “Maybe you should go to a hospital.”
I ignore it at first. “Another beer,” I say, leaving the group, hoping the alcohol will calm me down a little. When I walk into the kitchen, it’s filled with even more people than before.
Then my left arm starts tingling.
“Heart attack,” mutters Other Me. “Should have gone to the hospital.”
“Shut up!” I yell. People turn and stare.
This is when things start going downhill. Now, the pain in my chest is pulsating, and I can’t feel my left arm at all. My heart feels like it’s beating at a thousand miles a minute, and my brain shuts down except for the voices inside screaming “OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT” all at the same time. My first thought is that I need to run, to get exercise, fast. That should have tipped me off—exercise isn’t the first thing to come to mind for people having heart attacks. But my mind is going so crazy I don’t hear that, I just keep hearing the “OH SHIT” mantra.
I try to get through the crowd. I need fresh air now. I need to get outside in the open. But every time I push, the crowd seems to draw in tighter around me. I’m stuck in the middle of a goddamn Chinese finger trap, and I can feel everything closing in. In seconds, my vision begins to blur. I can’t catch my breath. Both those things worry me to the point that I no longer register any pain in my chest. My focus is now on why I can’t see straight and what that means. Stroke? Aneurysm? Anything's possible.
Once I break through the crowd and out into the front entrance, my way out is blocked by Tracey standing in the door, lecturing somebody about puking in the rhododendrons.
"Those fucking flowers are older than you are you ass! Get the hell off my lawn."
I bump her out of the way and stumble out onto the sidewalk. "Oh no you don't!" she yells, grabbing my by my collar and turning me to face her in one deft move. "I'm not having someone else puke on my…Jesus Christ."
She's looking into my eyes.
"You look like shit man. How much did you have to drink?"
"One beer. Maybe two."
Before she can respond, I start to see blue and red lights out of the corner of my eyes. These, it turns out, aren't just a manifestation of my panic attack.
"Hurry, everyone out!" screams Tracey, leaving me and running back inside. "The cops are here!"
The people streaming out the front door are windy blurs whizzing by me on either side. At one point, I'm knocked into the grass. This is where I am when Melissa finds me.
"Shit," she says. "You're white as a ghost. What's wrong?"
I can't see her or who she's with. I still can't see anything too clearly.
"Panic attack," I mutter. "Please…"
She's kneeled down next to me. I put my head on her leg, and I know I'm safe. Rooted to the ground. She's an anchor of sorts—for a moment, I don't feel lost at sea.
Things fade to black after that. I really come to when I'm in her apartment and she's feeding me ice cream and hot tea.
"I was worried about you," she says when I open my eyes.
"That's something new."
"What do you mean? I worry about you all the time."
"I meant something new for me—not you."
She lets me fall asleep on her shoulder that night. I don't remember my dreams, but I did wake up feeling warm and happy the next morning, if not tired. Of course, all of that is dashed when the front door to the apartment opens.
"GODDAMMIT MELISSA!" screams a large, brash woman silhouetted against the bright sun outside. "I thought I told you no more guys sleeping over?"
Melissa's voice comes from her bedroom. "Be right there! I can explain everything."
My voice, weak, barely squeaks out of my mouth. "No more guys?"
Some words change the meaning of an entire sentence. In this case, had Melissa's mother left out "more," I might not have thought anything was up. I might not be here right now, looking down on a now-shivering Melissa and the bastard she was sleeping with, who has been unconscious for the last ten minutes or so. But "more" means that there were guys before me.
The question is, how long before me?
Or whether they were "before" me at all.
Chapter 20
"I don't buy it. I don't buy it for a single second."
What Melissa's mother doesn't buy is Melissa's assertion that I'm just a friend from school who had a misunderstanding with his parents and needed a place to crash.
"You're trying to say this isn't one of your fuck buddies?" asks her mom, looking between the two of us.
"Fuck buddy?" I ask.
"MOM!" Melissa yells.
Ms. Cantrell just laughs. "Hey, I told you before, if you want to slut it up with whoever walks down the street, that's your choice. I'm not paying for no baby or no STDs though."
I look at Melissa—her head is in her hands. "No Ms. Cantrell, you don't get it—I'm her boyfriend."
This time, Ms. Cantrell shrieks with body-shaking giggles. "Boyfriend? Oh that's rich. Now don't tell me this girl actually convinced you that you were the only one."
I just stare.
"Well hell—I guess she did. Maybe I should give my daughter more credit in the future."
"Are you saying…"
"Don't listen to her," says Melissa, "she's just being a bitch."
"Woo hoo hoo!" says her mom. "Just a bitch, huh? Let me tell you something," she says, turning to face me. "You ain't the only one I've caught like this. You're the first one I didn't catch naked in Melissa's bed, or in the shower, or on the kitchen table—that's for sure. But you aren't the first."
"Mom…"
"There was that guy a few months ago. Jesus, I could hear them going at it when I pulled up in the parking lot. So loud they didn't even hear me walk in."
"Mom…"
"Then there was that girl I found her with in the shower. That was a weird one."
"MOM…"
"Or what about that guy last week? She had his cock so far down her throat she almost gagged when I walked in."
"STOP IT NOW MOTHER!"
My eyes are filled with tears. Ms. Cantrell swivels her head from me to Melissa, me to Melissa, then smiles—an evil smile. "Oh dear. I've said too much."
Melissa is staring at me with a pleading look in her eyes. "I'm sorry," she manages. "I didn't want you to find out this way. I was going to tell you."
"I need to go," I say, feeling the pain in my chest begin to throb. My heart starts beating faster and faster. I reach to pick up my watch on the table, but my hands are so sweaty it slips from them, as if I'm grasping for air.
"I'm coming with you," pleads Melissa.
I rarely yell at people for things they have done to wrong me. With the amount of time I've spend worrying about what I've done to other people, I've never felt it necessary to put them through any grief over their mistakes. Which makes what I say next so surprising.
"No, you aren't. You can stay here, find some more dick to suck. Another girl who wants to mess around in the shower. Find someone else to fuck you in the ass, to pull your hair. Someone else to call you 'daddy' when you're bucking on top of him like a professional bull rider. Moreover, find someone else willing to listen to your problems, someone else to sit and listen to you bitch about your mom. Find someone else to watch you at a party, to make sure you don't get so drunk you end up naked in a pool. You can just stay here and find someone else, cause that someone sure as fuck isn't going to be me."
Her mother's ghoulish laugh fills the air as I storm out of the apartment.
Melissa catches up with me in the parking lot, as I'm walking away, trying not to cry, and trying to ignore her shouts insisting I stop so we can talk.
"Wait," she says, grabbing my arm and turning me around. Her face is coated with tears—her hair clings to the wet spots, and she pants heavily as if she's been running for hours. Or fucking for less.
"I'm sorry. I have a…problem."
"We all have problems, Melissa. But for most of us, those problems don't involve the inability to keep sexual organs out of various bodily orifices."
Her face changes to one of anger and disbelief. "Oh yeah? Is that why you were fucking your foster mother and me at the same time?"
"I…where…"
She laughs deeply. "What, you think that's a secret? You think nobody at school has heard about your foster parents? You aren't the first guy to live with them, you know. A couple of perverted fucks, those guys. Mom fucks the guys cause Dad likes to watch."
"Likes to…"
"Likes to watch, yeah. You think he didn't know?"
"If he knew, why would she have killed herself?"
Melissa shakes her head. "Most guys they kept used to come to school and tell stories. 'Man, you won't believe this crazy bitch. She lets me fuck her up the ass while her husband crawls up in the attic where he can watch us through a hole in the wall. But fuck, what do I care if some old pervert likes to watch a kid fuck his wife.' "
"I…"
"Then there was the guy who actually wanted her husband to join in. Husband kicked him out when he heard that."
"But…"
"But you—you aren't like those guys. You didn't even know that there was a difference between sex and fucking! You were naïve, you were innocent, and most importantly, when you found out all about sex, it seriously fucked you up, didn't it? That's why you didn't want to have sex with me for so long, I imagine. She didn't kill herself because she fucked you. She killed herself because of what happened to you after she fucked you."
"Melissa, it was…"
"So don't you lecture me about appropriate bedroom behavior."
We stand for a few moments, just looking at each other. The scent of bread floats through the breeze from the bakery down the street.
"Who was he?" I ask.
"Who was who?"
"The guy with his cock in your mouth."
"What the fuck do you care?"
I look her in the eyes. "I care, because I'm going to kill him."
I turn and walk away. When I finally venture to look behind me, to see if she's still there, I'm greeted with an abandoned parking lot.
Back on the hill, they are both conscious. Melissa coughs a lot, and the bastard she slept with continues to whine and protest. The pools of blood around them have grown larger. They shine black in the moonlight, stretching so far across the dirt between them that they almost touch.
"Is this the guy?" I ask Melissa.
"WHAT GUY?!?" she screams in a blood-soaked voice.
"The guy—the one with his dick in your mouth."
At this, the guy laughs. "Buddy, that's a pretty long list you're looking at there. We've all had our dicks in her mou…"
The blast deafens me for a moment; the instant light blinds me. When I regain my senses, I see blood bursting forth from the hole in the guy's head. I hear Melissa screaming, or at least, trying to scream. But above all that, I hear Rationality—a Rationality that has taken on a morbid life of his own—asking me over and over again:
"How many bullets left?"
Chapter 21
In the dark, in my foster father's house. Not a light on in the place.
The week before, after I left Melissa in that parking lot, Mr. Granger says there's something different about me.
"You look like something's on your mind."
"There is. I know my purpose now."
He starts writing. I'm tempted to ask him how many pens he goes through in a week. I remain silent.
"Your 'purpose,' well that's good. What is it?"
"Making things right."
"You mean, like a police officer?"
"Yeah," I say, almost a whisper. "Something like that."
He smiles. "That's a noble profession. You know what? There are personality traits that all obsessive compulsive people have that aren't negative. The more you learn how to control those, well, they may be very helpful in a line of work like that."
"How so?"
"Say you're a police officer approaching a house where a crime has taken place. Someone without obsessive personality traits might not think about everything involved—maybe he would just bust in the front door without asking himself questions you would. 'Is there someone inside? Is it the time of day that person might be asleep, and if so, how long do I have to take him by surprise?' That kind of thing."
"Ah."
I stare at the air conditioning vent. Momentarily, it turns on and emits a low, steady buzz. I feel the cool air caress my face, my hair—too long now—barely touching my forehead.
"Are you sure there isn't anything wrong right now?"
He's looking at me. Maybe he can see through it. Maybe he knows there's something else underneath it all. But maybe he's just a hack—just a guy with a specialized degree and a little knowledge of how to get information out of people. Maybe this is just part of a script.
"Well, I am missing Algebra."
He looks at his watch. "Oh crap, I'm sorry. We've gone over. I'll write you a note."
"We've gone over." The phrase repeats as I sit in the darkness, the nondescript bottle by my side, a soft cotton hand towel in my lap.
The day after Granger, I see my psychiatrist.
"You look different somehow," she says as I sit down.
"Been hearing that a lot lately."
"Why are you so vengeful?"
So, Granger was a hack. This woman immediately sees in me the emotion that I tried so hard to hide from the world.
"Don't ask," she says, writing. "It's something I've seen a lot. I've experienced it myself. I can tell. That's all you need to know."
"I just want to right what's wrong," I say in what I hope is a confident voice.
"And what makes you the authority on right and wrong?"
I think for a second. "How do I know how you exist?"
"Many scientists place a good bit of confidence in empirical evidence. You see me, therefore, I exist."
"But what if my senses are wrong? You see things all the time that don't exist. Mirages, shadowy figures in the corner of your eyes. Who's to say that you aren't the same?"
"Who's to say you aren't a brain in a vat?" she asks.
"What?"
"You aren't the first person in the world to ask these questions. Descartes, the French philosopher, said 'I think, therefore I am.' Otherwise, he doesn't think there's anything else he should believe is a reality."
"Sounds like a smart guy."
She shrugs. "It's debatable. He bent to the Roman Catholic Church and changed his conclusions in what he touted as a proof that God exists. Pretty pathetic if you ask me."
She continues to look at me. It's the longest I've ever seen her go without writing things down.
"Anyway, it's the first argument that's interesting. How are we to know that anything exists besides us? And if we can't make that assumption, why have any regard for the things that our mind leads us to believe exist?"
I nod my head in agreement.
"That's an extremely dangerous attitude to foster," she continues.
I stare at the leather on the chair. It is defined by its wrinkles.
"When you disregard the value of others, their rights, their very existence, you're left with a way of dealing with them that can lead to consequences which, if your theory proves to be false, have terrifying consequences."
The carpet is worn by the thousands of feet that have trampled it.
"This is what Kant called a necessary postulate. Whether or not you believe what you're saying is true, you can't practically act as if what you're saying is true."
Her chair is perfect. It is new. It's newer than the one she had last week. Which is newer than the one she had when I first began seeing her.
"You're subscribing to a point of view that, if you allow it to infiltrate your life, will produce actions that you may regret one day."
With these three things, I can see…
(One two three…)
"I think I need to see you later on this week…"
That she cares more about her than me…
(One to three…)
"Please schedule an appointment. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with where you are now."
Where I am now is in the living room of my foster father's house. There's a steady wind blowing through the large oaks in the front yard. I hear his car pulling into the cul-de-sac where the house sits. I hear him pull into the driveway. I hear him wait. He does this every night. He'll come in stinking of booze. He'll stumble through the doorway, and will probably fall down. If I look outside, I'll see on his car the damage done from the dozen or so curbs he's run up against this week. But I won't look outside. There isn't anything for me out there.
He sits out there for an eerie amount of time.
Forty-seven seconds.
Inside, he stumbles as expected. His senses are dull. He doesn't notice me approach him from behind. He doesn't notice anything at all…
…until he wakes up in the attic. In my room.
There's a mirror on the wall in front of him—the mirror my foster mother used to dress herself in front of. A mirror where he can see all of himself. It's covering the hole where he used to put his eyes.
He's naked, and tied to a chair. There is a handkerchief in his mouth, gagging him. He begins to struggle. And I'm standing behind him.
"So," I say, running the edge of my knife against my palm. I make a small knick in the fleshy part under my thumb, but the pain seems enjoyable.
"So," I repeat. "You like to watch?"
He starts struggling more, and I let him. The rope is already tearing his flesh—I can see the rawness begin to develop on his neck. He fights and fights—an animal caught in a trap. Though he knows it's useless, he continues to fight.
"So," I say finally, "You like to watch?"
He begins to cry.
"Well, watch this," I say calmly as I stab the knife into his sternum one, two, three times…
Chapter 22
Melissa’s crying now because she knows she’s going to die. She knows she’s going to die for one reason. It isn’t because of all the blood she’s losing. If the ambulance gets up here fast enough, they might be able to patch her up. It isn’t because I just killed the bastard she was sleeping with. There was still a chance I would have a change of heart and let her go free.
She knows she is going to die because I tell her I’m going to kill her.
“Do you have any idea why you won’t live through the night?” I ask.
“Because you are a sick, twisted fuck, that’s why.” Her words aren’t that clear. Blood spouts from her mouth with every syllable.
“Wrong. That’s only the reason that I am going to be able to kill you. Were I in charge of my mental facilities, I wouldn’t be able to rationalize what I’m about to do. No—the reason I’m going to kill you is that you don’t deserve to breathe the air on this planet anymore. After what you did to me…”
“And what was that?”
“That” is what I should have been concerned about from the beginning. What she gave me.
The day after I kill my foster father, I’m cleaning the house. My OCD is back—with a vengeance. Nothing can be too clean. I polish the faucets at least a dozen times each, and every time I go back to look at one, I see a place it could shine a little brighter. I put all the linens and laundry through the cycle—I even wash the shower curtains and liners. Every drawer in the house is expertly organized. The closets too. When I’m done, it’s nearly 10 at night—I’ve been cleaning for almost fifteen hours. I make some toast and watch the news. Salmonella outbreak at Jack in the Box. Doctors being sued for improper sanitization practices. Germs reaching havoc on organisms thousands of times their size. Everywhere.
I finish my toast. Now it’s time to dig.
The backyard looks out onto a greenbelt. The privacy fence rises ten feet above the ground—the neighbors on either side can’t see a thing.
I have on two layers of plastic gloves and one layer of real working gloves. I'm wearing a trash bag poncho that covers my entire body (three bags cut apart and then put back together with duct tape). I found an old surgical mask under the sink in the kitchen. I look like a Hazmat worker if he was imagined and filmed by Ed Wood.
It rained the night before, so the ground is soft and gives easily to my shovel. I dig with fervor, carefully placing each shovelful on the ground beside the hole. It doesn't take long before I'm already two feet down. In less than two hours, I'm inside the hole, tossing dirt out over my head.
The body stinks. I know that because I could smell it the day before, when I went into the attic to make sure it's still there. As if a corpse could rise up and just walk away from the scene of its own demise. An irrational thought, perhaps. But these days, I'm taking comfort in my old friend Irrationality.
That's why I've lined the inside of the surgical mask with Vicks Vap-o-rub. As I'm loading the stiff, bloated corpse into the wheelbarrow I lugged up to the attic, all I can smell is the nostalgia of being sick as a child. As I slowly take the wheelbarrow back down the stairs, hoping some random limb doesn't flop out of the tarp I've used to wrap up the bastard, I think about the days I would wake up coughing. My dad would come into my room, rub Vicks on my chest, and call to tell people I wasn't coming to school. At least, that's what he did when he wasn't drinking.
Digging and refilling the hole is the hardest part of disposing of a body. Everything else is easy. Cleaning up the mess—hell, that's what I was born for. Sending an email from my foster father's email account telling his work he wouldn't be in for a couple of weeks due to a death in the family—just as easy as finding his password and username in his Filofax. Wrapping him up tight and snug in the tarp they used to use to cover plants when it was freezing—only hard part about that was the time it took to clean up afterwards. And like I've said—I'm relishing that kind of thing these days.
But the hole is different because of the dedication it takes to do it and do it right. After all, I have to make sure that I can get somewhere to pick up some borders and tomato plants the next day. "New garden, huh?" the neighbors will say. I'll nod. "Say, where's Tom?" they'll ask, having noticed my foster father's absence. "Out of town," I'll reply.
But at one in the morning, when you've been standing up all day long, cleaning, bending over, cleaning, lifting bodies and wheeling them outside, you start to get tired, and part of you just wants to quit. Fortunately, it's a part of me that I can shut up easily by just counting the shovelfuls of dirt as they're thrown out of the hole. I can shut it up later, when I'm counting the shovelfuls as I pitch them back in.
One two three one two three.
At the hardware store the next day, the guy checking me out asks me if I know the first thing about growing tomatoes. I tell him that ignorance about what I plan on doing has never stopped me from doing it. He laughs as he scans the stakes I'll use to set the plants up.
I spend the afternoon at the grave of my foster father, planting tomatoes. The temperature these nights should be fine for them—usually just a hair over fifty-five degrees. I have two kinds of seeds: Brandywine and Roma. Brandywine was more expensive, and I still don't know why I was drawn to it. It's an heirloom tomato cultivated by the Amish. Maybe it's the simplicity of the Amish lifestyle that draws me to it. Good, clean living. Sounds like my kind of deal.
That night, I start packing. I know where I'm going, I know what I'll need. Changes of clothes. A pillow, a towel. Plenty of sanitizer—there won't be any showers where I'm headed. But I'll have to get used to it, because I can't stay at the house. Sometime, someone will catch on. And hopefully by then, I'll be gone.
I sleep until ten the next morning. My bags are next to my bed. I get up, pick them up, and head for the door. Before I leave, I turn around to look at the house. "Completely clean," I think to myself. Then I notice the urge to take a piss. I put down my bags and walk to the bathroom down the hall.
As I'm watching a steady stream splash into the pristine toilet, I notice a sting. And then another one. And then it becomes constant.
"What the fu…"
My thought is cut off because of the almost excruciating pain. I double over, piss getting everywhere.
"Which one is it?" is the first thought that comes to mind. Because a lot of them have this symptom. When you read about them, the symptom is listed as "painful urination." That's science's variation on "It hurts like Satan himself ripping through your scrotum."
As if everything isn't a variation of something it's not.
I zip up, a sinking feeling in my gut. I can't go to the doctor. I can't do anything about this. I'm screwed. There's only one thing I can do.
Before I leave—after I sanitize my hands and, for some reason, clean the toilet I'll never use again—I check my bag, just to make sure I have the gun. It's in there, nestled next to the bullets and a box of Kleenex. "You sure you know how to shoot that thing?" asks Rationality as I zip up my backpack again.
"Hell yeah I'm sure," I think. "I was taught by the best there was."
Thanks Dad.
Chapter 23
If Tim didn’t have any booze, there would be no way I could sleep in this place.
Where I am is an abandoned warehouse. There are several dozen people here, all kids my age—some a little younger even. All of them running from something. Abusive parents, a grabby uncle, juvenile detention centers. All of them have something chasing them, breathing down their back. Not like me. I’m the predator. I’m the one doing the chasing.
And my feet are really fucking tired.
There’s a large bonfire in the middle of the room. The entire place smells like piss and pot. People are smoking drugs that probably don’t even have a name yet. Combinations of things you find under the bathroom sink. The entire place is concrete. It’s cold and it echoes.
How I hear about this place is pure chance. I’d call it luck, if I believed there was such a thing. A Hushedwhispers conversation unlike most I’ve heard. Two boys in the back of a classroom, about three weeks prior.
“It’s on the corner of Wilson and Lockhill,” says one of the boys.
“When are you going?” asks the other.
“Tonight. I gotta get out of the house. If my dad hits me again, I’m going to kill him.”
That night, when I go to the corner of Wilson and Lockhill to check it out, it’s drizzling rain and pretty chilly. But I go anyway, because I don’t have anything else to do. At first, it’s quiet. Then I notice a kid who has to be younger than I am jump the chain link fence and walk inside. Then another. And another. In less than ten minutes, at least half a dozen kids have gone inside, and more than that have come out. They pass me without looking. I’m just another part of the world they don’t care about. I’m a shadow.
Knowing this, I don’t know why I’m surprised at how many people are actually inside. After I leave my foster father’s tomb, I stop to get some water and food at a convenience store, and then head to the warehouse. When I jump the fence, there are some kids outside smoking cigarettes. They don’t look at me. As I walk through the front entrance, I pass two girls who are obviously intoxicated. They look right through me.
But Tim comes up to me as soon as I walk in. “First night?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say, not sure how much to divulge to this stranger.
“Tim,” he says, sticking out his hand. “Good to meet you.”
“How can you guys stay here?”
“What, you mean why don’t the cops bust us? Fuck man, they don’t care. They come by every so often, make sure we haven’t killed each other. Then Angie,” he points to a pile of clothes in the corner that vaguely resembles a human, “she gives the patrolmen blowjobs and they take off. It’s a pretty good deal.”
“Good deal for the cops.”
“Nah, Angie likes giving head. Shit, just go ask her—she’ll blow you off.”
“No thanks.”
“Well, anyway man, it’s pretty chill here. Just don’t mess with the crackheads and you’ll be fine. That group is crazy. I’m surprised they haven’t all killed each other yet.”
“So what are you?”
“What—you mean what group am I in? Shit man, I pretty much stick to myself. Not a lot of people in here up for stimulating conversation, if you know what I mean. Nah, I got a couple of friends here. One guy goes to his parents’ house every week and steals a coupla bottles while they’re playing bingo. Gives me one—usually takes me through most of the week.”
“And why does he do that? Out of the kindness of his heart?”
“Nah,” Tim answers. He takes the bottle of Jim Beam he’s holding and takes a long, drawn out pull. After wincing, he says, “Nah man. I saved his ass. He OD’d. I took him to the hospital. Even paid for his bills with money I stole from my folks.”
“And why did you do that?”
Tim takes another pull. “Out of the kindness of my heart.”
He smiles slyly and hands the bottle to me. After about thirty minutes, we’re in the corner by ourselves, gulping down the whiskey and exchanging stories.
“They always do that?” I ask, pointing to the boy and girl having sex on the other side of the room. They’re both completely naked, making all sorts of guttural noises, not caring that people can see them.
“Ex.”
“What?”
“Ecstasy. The drug, you know. They manage to get quite a bit of it somehow. Take it all the time. That drug takes hold, they don’t give a fuck who is around or where they are—they start going at it.”
“Why don’t you take drugs?”
“Motherfucker what you think this is?” Tim says, holding up the bottle.
“I mean hard drugs.”
He sighs. “I did, back in the day. Really nasty stuff, that. See, I don’t like feeling out of control—know what I mean?”
I nod.
“Tried coke. Before I knew it, I was jonesing for more. Didn’t even want more, but it’s like I had to get more of that shit in my nose. I tried acid, and went insane for about twelve hours. I tried ex too.”
“What happened?”
“Ended up like those two over there. ‘Cept the next morning when I woke up, it stung like hell when I pissed.”
“What did you have?”
“Just a little case of the clap. Got some antibiotics, cleared it right up.”
“Know where I can get some?”
“What, the clap? Hell, I bet most of the chicks in this place…”
“No, no. Antibiotics.”
He takes a long pull from the bottle and puts it down with a clink on the ground next to him. “There’s a guy in here, he can get you almost anything you want. For a price.”
“And how much is it? I’ve got money.”
Tim laughs—a long, somber laugh. “He don’t want money man. He’ll get you anything you want. You just gotta let him fuck you up the ass.”
“Are you fucking serious?”
Tim laughs again. This time, it’s forced.
“Shit man—how do you think I got my antibiotics?”
And then he takes another pull from the bottle and leans in real close to me. He looks into my shocked eyes and says, “Sometimes man, you just gotta do what you gotta do.”
I’ll be damned if I ever let some vagrant motherfucker peg me, I think. I’ll just have to learn to live with the clap or whatever this is. After all, there are much, much worse things in life.
Unfortunately, I didn’t know it, but I was about to find out what those things were.
Chapter 24
In the midnight darkness, under flickering flames from a nearby bonfire, Tim and I sit in the corner of the biggest room in the warehouse drinking, watching a group of people shoot heroin in their own little corner of this world.
"How the hell can they afford that stuff?" I ask, gulping down the last of the bottle of Jim Beam Tim got for us the night before. Tastes like what I'd imagine motor oil tastes like. It's a chore to get down, but it does the trick.
"This is America. Easiest place in the world to make a buck. There's always someone willing to pay you to do something nobody else will do," he replies, getting out another bottle, cracking it open, and taking a long, hard pull.
I've gotten used to the place. At first it was intimidating, but I stuck close to Tim and he showed me the ropes. I met a few other people, and by the third day, there was a little group that I fell into. Tim and a girl he would fuck occasionally named Lisa, her friend Angie who seemed to be stoned out of her mind all the time. Then there was Terry, a rough-looking black kid who was one of the nicest people you'd ever meet. Tim thought Terry was the reason people didn't fuck with us. He's the kind of guy who looks like he could put you six feet under with a single stomp of his foot. But once you know him, he'd give you the shirt off his back, just to keep you warm.
We pass the days drinking, mostly. Terry goes out every few hours and shows up with food for us. We never ask where or how he gets it. Other than that, we huddle together in our little corner of the warehouse, trying to avoid the junkies, meth addicts, and other folks who are the reason this place stinks like piss and shit.
But I'm getting used to that as well.
"Like what?" I ask Tim.
"I'm sorry?"
"Like what are people willing to pay to do?"
"Shit man," he says, his speech slurring as he passes the bottle to me. "Just about anything. You name it. Sex, BJs, hell, most of the chicks in here will let you plow them in the ass if you have enough cash. Pay even more, they'll let a couple other guys join in."
"Really?"
"Fuck yeah man—prostitution's the oldest profession there is. And we've got some professional ho's around here."
"So why don't you get with any of them?"
"Besides Lisa? She's cool, but those other chicks, I wouldn't fuck these bitches with your dick, son!" he says. "They got what we call Petri dish pussy. No tellin' what's growing in that shit. Plus, I got no money. I rely on Terry to get me food. Other than that, only thing I need is my booze. And that's free."
"I do," I say. "I have money. Two thousand dollars I found stashed away in the back of my foster father's closet.
I thought Tim would be pleased. But he wasn't.
"Listen up man, don't you ever say shit about that to anyone else. You shouldn't have even told me. People in here man—they'll rip you off second they find out your worth more than the puddle of shit you're sitting in."
"Yeah, but you won't."
Tim looks down at his feet, sighs, takes another long pull from the bottle. "Nah man, I ain't gonna do that to you. Money ain't nothing but trouble. But you need to keep an eye on that shit man. You don't keep those cards next to your tits, trouble's gonna come looking for you."
"So who do I talk to?"
"Talk to about what?"
"About getting laid."
"You serious?"
"Yeah I'm serious. I'm drunk. And I'm horny."
And I'm not thinking straight. Not thinking about germs. About what he said about the Petri dish—that's the kind of comment that might have sent me into panic attacks a month ago. But right now, with the warmth of the bourbon coursing through my veins and nothing else that I want to think about, I want sex.
"I wouldn't be a friend if I didn't try to stop you from doing this," says Tim.
"You're forgiven. Now who do I go to?"
"You've had too much to drink."
"So have you."
"Yeah, but I'm not about to go puttin' my johnson in a Home for Wayward STDs."
"It isn't your problem."
At first, he looks like he's about to speak again, but then an anger washes over his face. I start to notice the other sounds in the warehouse. If you listen, there are moans coming from everywhere. Some are painful, some sound like they come from people banging like crazy. Some don't sound human at all.
"Angie'll suck you off for ten bucks. Screw you for thirty. Anal for fifty. For a hundred, she'll let you and a friend pull a train on her."
"You interested?"
"Fuck's wrong with you man? What's gotten into you tonight? You're gonna fuck up big time if you don't watch out."
"Won't be the worst thing I ever do."
"And how exactly do you know what the worst thing you ever do will be?"
I can't help but smile. I know, because I already have part of it planned out.
"Where is she?"
Tim drains the rest of the bottle and throws it up against the wall in disgust. It shatters, glass raining down on some of the people sitting nearby.
"Fucking where she always is. Getting high out back."
I take eighty dollars with me. Might as well get both.
She can barely stand, but smiles when I walk over and whisper in her ear what I want. She opens her eyes, looks at me, and through the haze of smoke lazily drifting from her mouth, she says, "Oh honey, I thought you'd never ask."
She passes her joint to the person to her right, who takes it without any acknowledgement. She takes my arm, leans heavily into me, and starts to lead me back inside. We wind down a couple of hallways, and begin passing rooms with closed doors. The rooms emit noises I've never heard in my pornos before. Melissa didn't make those sounds, and my foster mother sure as hell didn't.
"Thirty for regular, fifty for anal," she says as we enter a room and close the door.
Inside is bare. There are blankets and sheets, all of them filthy, lining the walls. She begins to take her clothes off, her shirt getting tangled in the matted mass of her hair. I wobble and fall against the wall, the alcohol really setting in by this time. The moonlight streaming in through the solitary window in the room casts beautiful shadows on the contours of her body. Even the filth of this place couldn't mask the beauty of her breasts, the outline of her legs.
She comes over, gets on her knees, and starts to undo my pants.
"So what's it going to be cowboy?"
"Both."
"Both, eh? Then we'll start off with a little freebie." The last part is muffled as her mouth envelops me.
There's something different about sex when you pay for it. It's simpler. There are no emotions. There are no expectations. It is purely physical, a force of raw power with nothing to hold it back and nothing to weigh it down. The sensations, while the same, take on a completely different context.
"Where'd you get your money baby," she asks when we're finished an hour or so later.
I remember Tim's advice. "I stole it."
"Well," she says, as she hoists her dirty clothes over her head, "you stumble across some more, you come see me, kay?"
I nod. In the act, I didn't notice what the alcohol had done to me, how fucked up I was. I only noticed the sex. Now, afterwards, my stomach rocks like I'm at sea.
I stumble out the door, and make it about three doors away before I double over and puke on the floor. I lay there, hoping it's the only time it will happen, when a door behind me opens and voices flood the hallway.
"Fuck man, that was some good shit."
"Yeah man, these homeless chicks give it up like no other."
Two guys, leaving a room. I hear their steps slowly click down the hallway away from me. I can hear a girl sobbing from inside the room.
"Shut up bitch, you got your money!" yells one over his shoulder.
"Bet it's better than that fucking Chandler ho, huh?" continues the other one.
"Pfft, Melissa? Shit, that bitch is still crazy. But it ain't as fun anymore—not since we don't have to run around behind her crazy ass boyfriend."
The nausea both subsides and multiplies at the same time. I turn around. The two have their back to me, and I can't make anything out in the limited light.
"You're still gonna keep fucking her though, right?"
The other one laughs. "Hell yeah. Tap that shit till the well runs dry. Fact, I'm going over there on Friday. Her mom's out of town. You down?"
"Wouldn't miss it for the world, brother!"
The last thing I hear is the slap of their hands together as they turn the corner.
Friday is only three days away. No matter what, I've got to get everything ready by then. It may be my only chance.
But that will have to wait until tomorrow. Because the booze is coming back up again.
Chapter 25
The next morning, I wake up and look around. Besides the tweakers, everyone is still asleep. There's a distinct taste in my mouth that seems to stem from the back of my nose. My tongue is dry, and as I wipe my mouth, flakes of something brown fly off at an alarming rate. Then I remember.
My stomach reels and I run to the nearest trash can, which is still smoldering from the fire the night before, sparks flying up into the air and disappearing into the cold of the warehouse. I vomit as the thought finds conscious expression--against all of my sober instincts, not even thinking about the consequences, I had done something the night before I can't even imagine now that the alcohol has had time to run its course through my veins.
Did we use a rubber? I seem to remember Angie putting one on me. But I can't be sure. Even then, rubbers don't always protect against STDs.
I stumble out into the courtyard to take a piss, trembling as I anticipate what I believe is the inevitable stinging sensation. Sure enough, there it is, but the moment I feel it, I remember—I already know I have the clap or something like that.
My stomach reels again. That means that, the night before, I had actually put someone else's life at risk. I had endangered them.
The spiral begins—a neverending coil of rationalization that I'm so familiar with. And it really, really pisses me off.
But I had learned something the night before. There was one thing that could keep me from falling through that spiral. Well, maybe two.
Tim is awake by the time I get back inside. "Eye opener?" he asks, holding up the half-empty bottle of whiskey we'd worked on the night before.
"Thought you'd never ask," I say, smiling.
We finish the bottle before either of us says anything.
"Plans today?" Tim asks.
"Errand. I'll be back soon." The warmth in my belly is starting to spread through the rest of my body, and my brain has ceased ranting and raving.
"Well I'll be here man. Someone's got to keep this place in line."
I haven’t been to a shooting range in ages. I don’t tell Tim I’m going because I don’t want questions. Just practice.
Right now I’m squeezing shots off into thin paper targets about forty yards away. One two three. One two three. One two three. Boom boom boom. Recoil recoil recoil. Reload.
The target is shaped like a man’s head. I wish it was an entire body. I don’t intend to shoot at any heads at first. When I finally do, it won’t matter whether I hit or miss. I’ll have plenty of time to try again.
One two three. One two three. One two three. Boom boom boom. Recoil recoil recoil. Reload.
Once the target is decimated, I push a button on the wall next to me and it whizzes back up the zip line. I take it off and replace it. Grouping isn’t bad. Not as good as I used to be, when my dad would take me out every Sunday and teach me the finer arts of target practice. But still good enough. I put another target on the clip, push the button again, and watch as Silhouette Man flees my merciless guns.
One two three. One two three. One two three. Boom boom boom. Recoil recoil CLICK.
CLICK.
CLICK.
I look at the gun curiously. Had I lost count? How many had I fired? I check—there are no bullets left. Had I not loaded a full round?
“Doesn’t matter,” I say to Silhouette Man, out fluttering in the breeze like the shaking coward he is. I begin to reload. “Won’t matter for you in the end how many bullets I have left. Won’t matter for me either. It’s all going to end the same.”
I take aim for his head.
One two three. One two three. One two three. Boom boom boom. Recoil recoil recoil. Reload.
I want to take off my earmuffs. As if blasting my eardrums with all these decibels will keep Irrationality at bay. As if it will drown him out.
One two three. One two three. One two three. Boom boom boom. Recoil recoil CLICK.
How many bullets had I loaded?
It's after that I understand what's happening.
"Prozac is a very safe drug," my psychiatrist told me as she was writing out the prescription weeks ago. "But, like all drugs, it has side effects. Some of them are mild. You may have the sensation that you need to urinate when you don't need to. Might have some hot flashes or cold spells here and there. If you start to get dizzy, call me, and if you can't find me, go to the emergency room."
"Why the emergency room?"
:"Just because they will keep you stabilized until the spell passes. Really, it's just so you don't fall down and hit your head on the concrete.
"There are some other more serious side effects—most of them mental. If the dose is too high, it's possible you'll swing too far one way into a manic state, where there's nothing that bothers you. That isn't good, because it isn't natural to be like that, and some people do dangerous things—such as gambling and drugs—when they are in such states. Another is memory loss."
The goddamned drugs.
"Prozac has been known to lead to short term memory loss. What this means is that your brain will take in information to the short term memory—or your memory that lasts about ten seconds—and won't transfer things to long term, which lasts a lifetime. You won't notice at first. But then, traditionally, you'll be doing simple tasks—counting out cups of water for a recipe, for example—and then in the middle of it you'll forget what number you're on. This happens to everyone occasionally, but if it starts happening at any regular intervals, you need to let me know. We'll have to take you off of it, and because of the nature of the medicine, the effects will stay with you awhile."
The fucking goddamned medication.
"At any rate, I don't think any of these things will pose problems. Just watch out for yourself, ok?"
An experiment, I think as I stare at Silhouette Man, who is now moving less with the wind, what with all the holes.
I pick up a handful of bullets and begin loading them into the gun, counting them one by one. I stop when my hand is empty. Seven.
Then, I go inside and get a coke from the vending machine. The owner is still at the cash register, chatting up a couple of trashy looking girls, showing them his new t-shirt with Chalrton Heston on the front holding up a semi-automatic and giving the thumbs up with an American flag rippling behind him. Had it not been for the girls, I probably never would have gotten past the guy, but as it was, he'd just asked for the money for the range time and let me go on my way.
As I walk back to my spot on the range, I think about how I'll never understand the rabid gun nuts out there. But everyone has to concentrate their lives on something.
Which is what I wasn't doing. Seconds later, I'm holding the gun, wondering how many shots I loaded. There is nothing I can do to remember. I remember loading them—the way they felt in my hand, the sound of them plunking down into the clip. But that's it.
"Time's up, 15," says the voice from the intercom.
How many do I have? I raise the gun and point it at Silhouette Man's head.
One two three. One two three.
And then I remember. Six shots. I loaded six. Smiling, I absent-mindedly pull the trigger one more time, shocked to find it fires once more.
"Fifteen? No more shooting—time to pack up."
As I walk outside, bag in hand, gun in bag, an uncomfortable feeling creeps over me. I threw away the medicine to regain control. But now, the medicine has ripped that control away yet again. And this time, there seems to be shit-all I can do to get it back.
Shit-all except get so loaded that it doesn't make a difference to me.
Which is exactly what I decide to do.
As I walk back to the warehouse, thinking about whether I should try someone other than Angie tonight, I see her across the street, talking to a guy in a car. She's still beautiful, even though I know she's been used more than a community towel at the YMCA. I stare a little longer than I mean too, lost in her hair in the breeze, bits of it looking like they are stretching to get away from her. When she sees me, she leans over to the guy, kisses him, and starts running across the street to meet me.
"Hey," Melissa says when she arrives, out of breath.
"What are you doing Friday night?"
I'm sure there's a part of my brain that understands why I say it, but that part doesn't communicate with any other part at all.
"I've…got plans. But I would like to see you. Things shouldn't have ended the way they did."
I chuckle. "I've got a feeling things aren't quite over yet."
She looks at me curiously, then smiles. "I was kind of thinking the same thing."
A car horn next to us startles her. I don't break my gaze.
"Can you come over tomorrow night?" she asks.
I shrug. "Sure. What time."
"Between seven and eight? Will that work?"
I nod. "Need me to bring anything?"
"Nope," and she draws in close to me, and she smells so wonderful, but then she shrinks away. "You smell awful."
She doesn't say it with surprise, distaste. She says it with sympathy.
"It's been a rough day. See you tomorrow."
I start to walk away and she yells for me to wait. "Here," she says as she runs to meet me. "I have a meeting for Student Council right after school, so in case it runs a little late, take this and let yourself in."
She hands me the key to her apartment.
"It's a spare," she says. "Just make sure not to lose it."
I smile and nod, grasp the key firmly. "I'll see you tomorrow," I say, and I lean down, kissing her exactly like she did the guy in the car.
I'm sure there's a part of my brain that formulates the plan, but that part is completely silent. All I know is that before I turn to walk away, I understand what I need to do and how I'm going to do it. As I begin to smile, at peace for once in my whole life, Irrationality attempts to ambush my positive emotions. "B-b-b-but last night!" it whines, losing its foothold.
"Fuck last night," I say out loud, walking faster. "Last night's not shit compared to today, and both of them add up to nothing in light of what's going to happen Friday."
As it turns out, I had never spoken truer words in my life.
Chapter 26
The bubbles of blood ballooning on Melissa's lips glimmer in the moonlight. The stench of gun powder clings softly to the air, the light breeze not able to take it away from this place. Melissa makes a noise, something guttural and inhuman.
"Pardon?" I ask.
"Why," her voice like gravel being scraped across concrete.
"I'd think that would be obvious by now Melissa."
She moves, winces, a blood bubble bursting and the dark red liquid trailing down the side of her cheek. Slowly, she manages to shake her head from side to side, droplets of the stuff flinging off this way and that, turning the dirt around her into a primal Jackson Pollack painting.
"Why," and then she breathes in deep, her entire body shaking, rattling. "Thursday."
"Oh," I say, realizing what she wants. "You mean why didn't I come over on Thursday?"
She slumps back down onto the ground with a groan, clutching at the spot on her torso where one of the bullets is most likely lodged in a vital organ.
"I didn't come because I'm not stupid. I may not have known at first that sex and fucking were the same thing. I may not have known that you didn't really give a shit about me and were just some skank with daddy issues ready to gobble up as much dick as possible to please whatever man she can find. I didn't know that I should have been safer, or that what I was doing with my foster mom was inappropriate, at the least. But that's not because I'm stupid. It's because nobody cared enough to teach me.
"I'm not stupid Melissa. And I know when I'm being set up."
On Wednesday, with the key in my hand, I trudge back up to the warehouse. That night, I sit quietly with Tim and our friends, listening to various stories, not hearing any of them. Time passes calmly. At one point, Angie comes and sits down next to me and asks if I want another round. I tell her to fuck off. Instead of being angry, she just shrugs and walks across the room to another group of people, some of them looking all too happy to see her.
The next morning, I walk across town to say goodbye to my foster father. The house has a sign in front of it: for sale. There's nobody around, so I peek over the fence.
The tomatoes are growing. Small, green globes of fruit, hanging wistfully from the vines. I open the gate and let myself inside. Carefully, I pluck one and turn it round in my fingers. Too ripe; it's firm. I hold it tightly now, squeezing slowly, until it bursts violently into a green mess of seeds and juice.
"See what you've started?" I ask my foster father. I don't hear an answer from his home six feet under the garden. I walk out and shut the gate tight behind me.
The courtyard to the warehouse is empty as I crawl through the hole in the back fence. All the stoners must be taking naps. Inside is quiet as well, save for the few suggestive noises emanating from the sex rooms. As I approach the main room, I hear a group of people singing drunkenly, augmented by the occasional smash of glass against a wall. When I turn the corner, one smashes against the wall less than a foot from my face. The singing stops, and a group of people all turn to stare at me.
"Jethus mang," says Tim drunkenly. "Ifsh I'd knew you'd be there, I woulda aimed better."
He hiccups and begins to laugh riotously. A couple of the others join in, but begin laughing more uncomfortably as I approach, eyes focused on my friend.
"I need a bottle. Two actually."
"I shaid I wash shorry," he says, rolling his eyes. Then he falls on his back and winces as his head hits the concrete harder than he expects.
"Two Tim. Whiskey."
He realizes I'm serious and sits up with help from the girl next to him. "Well, that's going to take a day or so," he mumbles, the hit to the head helping him regain composure. "I can't go back…"
I leap across the room and tackle him back to the ground. This time his head hits the floor so hard I hear a crack and his eyes roll back in his head a little. I grab the front of his t-shirt and, sitting astride him, pull him up so my breath is hot on his face.
"I need two bottles, NOW, you lousy fuck. There are things going on you can't imagine. Terrible things. And there's no way in HELL I'm going to get through them if you don't give me something to shut up these goddamned voices in my brain. So you figure out a way to get me those two bottles of booze tonight or I'll grab a piece of that bottle you almost clobbered me with and show you exactly what I would have done had it hit me."
The rest of the people in the group begin to back away slowly. It's to my advantage that, in the end, nobody here has friends. A friend is someone you stick up for, no matter what. Someone that you can count on to have your back no matter the odds. But these fuckwits were nothing but leeches. And when they sucked you as dry as they could, even a small threat of danger could get them to let go.
"Two bottles," he manages through shallow breaths. "In my bag. Take 'em. Jesus, my head…"
Only one of whiskey, and one vodka. I hate fucking vodka. But if it's all there is, so be it.
I take the bottles, put them in my backpack, making sure the tops are screwed on tight. Tim's still on the ground, panting.
"I…thought we were…friends," he manages, gulping back tears.
As I shuffle around more in his bag, a creeper of guilt grows around my soul, because Tim was the closest I'd ever had to a true friend. If it weren't for him, I would have died that first night. Or worse.
"We are friends," I say finally, standing up, done with his bag.
"Then why'd you…"
"Tim, if you hadn't noticed by now, I've got some issues I'm going through. Sorry you had to be at the receiving end. I've put something in your bag. It might help ease the pain."
He looks wearily at me, his head swaying, one eye pointing a different direction than the other.
"At the least, it will take care of your emergency room bill. I think I gave you a concussion."
I shoulder my bag and turn to walk out. The group that had previously been singing so merrily with Tim has now gone to different corners of the room.
"Thanks for everything Tim. Depending on how this all goes, I'll keep in touch."
When I leave him, he's still staring after me. Part of me starts to worry. Had I caused any permanent damage? Would Tim get the treatment he needed, or would he languish with his injuries, possibly getting better, possibly dying in his sleep?
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" I scream as I continue to walk. The noises from the sex rooms stop. The door to one of them opens and a scared girl pokes her head out, watching me walk down the hall mumbling to myself.
"Shut up shut up shut up," I keep repeating. Always in threes.
I don't know which one says it: Rationality or Irrationality. I can't keep the two straight anymore. Whichever one says it, it's a fucking brilliant idea.
"You've had a long day. Have a drink."
***
It doesn't take long for a drink to turn into half a bottle. As I walk through town, I turn into every alley I see, take some shelter behind the nearest dumpster, and take three large gulps from the bottle of Smirnoff. By the time I reach Melissa's apartment complex, I'm through half the bottle, and the sun is beginning to set.
She wants me there between seven and eight. I'm there at six. There are a few cars in the parking lot, and more streaming in from work. I stand and stare at the front door to her apartment, hoping to catch a glimpse of any sign of life. There is none.
The complex is big, so I walk around slowly, watching people welcoming spouses and kids home. There is a group of people at one of the barbeque pits, laughing and drinking beer. I walk up to them, ask to have one of their plastic cups. A man hands me one with a sense of urgency. The children with them are beginning to comment on my smell.
Back in the parking lot, I walk to the dumpster that looks on Melissa's apartment. I hop inside, my feet sinking in the squishy trash. Before I can get anxious and start washing myself in hand sanitizer, I fill up my cup and drink the entire thing in one gulp.
Peeking through the lid, I can clearly see the door to Melissa's apartment. Time ticks by—nothing. I don't have a watch, but I can tell by the twilight glow that it's well past seven.
Then I see the first one.
It's unmarked, but it's a Crown Vic alright. As it passes underneath one of the lamps illuminating the parking lot, I notice the "exempt" designation on the license plate. Not more than five minutes later, another one creeps along. Both park not thirty yards from the stairs leading up to the apartment.
I continue drinking and watching. More time passes, and the sun goes down completely, leaving an eerie glow of moonlight and lamps that spreads shadows around the ground. Then, from the left, Melissa walks into the parking lot, but instead of going up her stairs, she goes straight to the first Crown Vic that pulled in.
I close the lid to the dumpster, turn around, and sit down in disgust. The bottle almost empty, I take the last few sips in succession. My vigil complete, I'm overtaken by the effects of the alcohol, which had been secondary until now. I let go of the bottle, and quickly, my consciousness, as I fall into a deep sleep.
Chapter 27
I don't know what time it is when the lid to the dumpster is lifted and a bag full of bottles is thrown inside haphazardly, reigning down a thunderous “Good morning” on my head. Where had common decency gone?
Upon waiting several seconds and then opening the lid myself, I see the sun already high in the sky, its heat augmenting the putrid stench that cloaks me.
The night in the dumpster had passed without any incident. Despite what I drank, I feel refreshed today. Perhaps that is due to the sense of purpose weighing on my mind. Regardless, the fact of the matter is that I don't have any time for a hangover. There are things to do before the real fun begins.
I can't help smiling as I shoulder my backpack and head up to Melissa's apartment. I'll have the place to myself all day. Just because her mother has a night job doesn't mean she'll be home.
“Most days, she doesn't come home at all,” Melissa told me once after we'd fucked on her mother's bed during lunch one day. “We don't have anything to worry about.”
“I thought you said you ate dinner together every night?”
“I said I make dinner for her. Doesn't mean she's here to eat it.”
“Where is she?”
Melissa shrugged. “Hell if I know. Some bar. Or some guy's house. Probably a guy she met at the bar.”
Inside, it smells like Melissa smells when she has her clothes on. That and fish. But the fish is definitely from me. Slowly, my brain comes around and realizes what filth I'd exposed myself to in my drunken binge. My heart begins to race, my chest tightens, and for a second, I'm worried that if I have a heart attack, I'll forget the number for 911. Desperate to silence everything, I plunge my hands into my bag and retrieve the bottle of whiskey I had been saving for tonight. No matter—I know Melissa's mother has some more stashed away that will get me through this whole ordeal.
My clothes I throw in a garbage bag and leave outside the door. Then I go into the bathroom, stand in front of the mirror. My skin has an eerie glow—greasy, slippery. I run my finger down my chest; a viscous liquid collects underneath the uncut nail.
After drinking more of the whiskey, I get in the shower, more to relax myself than to get clean. With the whiskey, I don't need to be clean. I just need to be. It's something the medicine never gave me. It helps me maintain a focus on the now, to forget about then, or tomorrow, or all the what ifs that have been following me around like iron filings to a magnet since before I can remember.
I always loved the smell of her hair, I think as I rub her shampoo into mine. It always smelled so good, so clean.
“Why are you talking about her in the past tense?” asks Rationality.
I only smile.
“Have you thought this through?” he asks again.
“No. Maybe that's why it's such a good idea.”
“Listen, there are ways around this. You don't have to...”
Rationality, that bastard, talks when he shouldn't, never there when I need him. Fuck him. “Fuck you,” I say, under my breath. “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”
I reach out of the shower, grab that whiskey bottle sitting a foot away on the back of the toilet, and take a long, hard pull.
“Fuck all of it. The whole fucking world. Me, them, everything. What does it amount to? Jack shit. All I have are these fucking piece of shit voices in my brain. Voices...”
I come to some time later, sitting on the floor of the tub. The water's still running, still warm. Had I sat down? Fainted? Just zoned out?
More whiskey.
In her room, I search Melissa's drawers and eventually find shorts and a t-shirt I can wear. After putting them on, I go outside, careful to lock the door behind me. Now I'm feeling tipsy, and I stumble a bit going down the stairs. It's more funny than anything, but reminds me that, to do what I'm going to do, I can't be shitfaced. Or at least, I really, really shouldn't be.
“What are you going to do?” asks the man behind the register at the hardware store.
Even though I know what I need, I take my time wandering up and down the aisles of the hardware store. Rat poison—aisle 11. Plant food—aisle 9. Garden supplies—aisle 3 3 3.
Some habits are hard to break, no matter how much liquor is pulsing through your veins.
“What are you going to do?” repeats the cashier.
“Even things out.”
“Ah,” he says knowingly. “I have a chair I've been meaning to do that with for quite some time.”
“No, I mean, I'm going to set things right.”
“But, you know, somehow, you never find the time you need.”
He isn't listening.
“So, I just sit there, wobbling, my kids laughing at their dad...”
“What did you say?”
He puts down the duct tape he was trying to scan. “I said, I just sit there...”
“No, before that.”
“What—there isn't enough time?”
It's fucking hilarious. I laugh until I think my gut's about to explode. “Time?” I ask. “Time?!? Not enough? Fuck man, that's all there is! That's what all this shit is about!” I yell, motioning around me, other patrons of the store turning from what they are doing to watch. “You ever sleep in a dumpster? Fuck a chick with herpes? Man, you don't know what time is. You don't know how it works—but I DO. And you need to worry about doing more with it than leveling the legs on some fucking chair.”
He looks at me like I'm a leper and scans the duct tape. “That'll be twenty-seven fifty-two.”
“Fucking money—money marks time, you know?” I say, handing him thirty bucks. “And you can keep that fucking change—use it to fix your chair.”
I walk out with my bags. Security is following me through the parking lot, so I start to run. Running feels good. I feel the whiskey sloshing around in my belly, but I continue to run. As fast as I can I concentrate on pounding the pavement, driving gravel through my shoes, up to my feet, letting it pierce my skin, enveloping it, making it a part of me. Integration. Assimilation. Annihilation. It's all the fucking same. Become me, I say to the earth. Be my soul.
I look around and I'm standing in Melissa's kitchen. I don't remember getting to her apartment, let alone going into her apartment. The whiskey bottle hangs loosely in my hand. I regard it for some time before taking a long pull.
The bag I carried home from the hardware store is at my feet. The duct tape has rolled across the kitchen floor. There are already three lengths of rope cut and placed very carefully next to each other. Each looks about one inch longer than the one adjacent.
I look around the apartment. Some other things have changed. Things I've done I don't remember doing.
Melissa and her mother were never ones to keep a clean house. It wasn't so dirty that I had panic attacks there, but dirty enough that I would often hold my piss for hours just to avoid going in their bathroom. Even that morning, I noticed (though I didn't care) how much the place could use a good, hard scrubbing. But what I'm looking at now is spotless.
I walk to the trashcan. Empty. Completely. As if the trash has just been taken out.
Into the bathroom. Nothing different. Nothing different in Melissa's room either. Nothing different in the hall. Except a missing clock. There was one that hung there—right over the picture of Melissa in the second grade. It was an old wooden clock—antique.
I look down the hall. The door to Melissa's mother's room is open a slit. Faded light leaks onto the carpet outside. The door easily swings open, my hand barely brushing it.
Sitting on the pillow of the bed, propped up like a hospital patient, facing the door, is the clock from the hall. A knife is sticking out of the face, the rest of the wooden surface stained with glass blood. Gathered around its base are at least six or seven other clocks—old fashioned alarm clocks, digital clocks, and there, a watch or two—all in states of complete destruction. As I draw closer, I notice the knife is stabbed through a piece of paper. It says, “Counting divides time. And vice versa.”
Something makes me chuckle. More of a feeling in the stomach than anything. It's so funny I decide to down the rest of the whiskey bottle. I laugh to myself as I check the bathroom...
No clocks.
Melissa's room?
No clocks.
I laugh the hardest when I'm back in the kitchen. Every fucking clock in the house—destroyed. Killed Wasted time.
More whiskey. Gotta have more. I'm a little dizzy as I stretch to reach the top of the shelf where Melissa's mom “hides” her booze. I come up with a half-full bottle of Crown Royal.
Bottle in hand, I go back through the house, turning out the lights, leaving it the way it was when I walked in earlier today. Still grinning, chuckling, I go into the kitchen, grab my backpack, and sit down on the floor in front of the rope.
I imagine my teeth, white, shining through the darkness, my kinfe-cut grin their window to the world.
I load the gun carefully, counting the bullets. One two three two two three three two three...
There's the sound of a car pulling up. Doors opening. Doors closing. People laughing. Three people. Two guys. A girl. The floor reverberates with their pounding steps. Space bends around this place as they approach. The sound of metal on metal—her key in the lock. I realize I have an erection, and wonder why for a split second.
The door opens.
I don't remember anything else...
Chapter 28
...until this:
“Oh my god, he's starting to wake up. There's blood everywhere! You have to do something?”
Whose blood? I think, turning around so quickly I almost veer off of a dirt road that, apparently, I'm driving a car down.
“Who the fuck is that?!?” I scream.
“Who?!?” she cries.
“The fucking guy bleeding all over the backseat!”
“His...name is Taylor—what's wrong with you?”
“Where the hell are we?” I ask.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Melissa manages through sobs.
“GODDAMMIT MELISSA!!!” I cry, my voice reverberating through the car. “Just give me a straight fucking answer!”
She makes a noise, most similar to a laugh, but far too intimidating, even in her debilitated shape. “You're blacking out, aren't you?”
“It's the fucking medicine.”
My headlights illuminate a barren gravelly road kicking up dust around us. There are intermittent pings as rocks fly off the car's undercarriage.
“Bullshit,” she says. “You've turned into a fucking drunk. The way you were stumbling around in my house, the stench of booze, it was like you'd been drinking all fucking day.”
“If I was so drunk, how come you guys didn't overpower me? Hold me down? Call the cops?”
Her breathing becomes more labored. “Because I had a dick in me and the other guy had his in his hands, and you had a gun.”
“So why do I feel sober now?”
She approximates a shrug by barely lifting her shoulders. “I guess that's what happens when you kill somebody. Johnny...” she mutters.
With that single name, it all comes back in a flash, and I know that all the details are there, waiting to be retrieved, but it takes minutes of thinking before it all bleeds into my consciousness.
I'm sitting on the kitchen floor with the gun in my hand. The room is grimly illuminated as the door swings open, then tossed back into pitch when it closes. There are two voices.
“I've been waiting for this all day baby.” The bastard.
“We'll get a drink after round one. I want your cock now.” Melissa.
Then there are other noises, muffled kissing, the unzipping of pants, footsteps into the back part of the apartment. I'm still hard, feels like I'm getting harder by the minute. When the footsteps stop and I hear another door close, I stand up and walk slowly back to Melissa's bedroom. The booze burns fiercely in my belly as I listen. Melissa is starting to moan, and I can hear the bastard saying, “Yeah, fuck that ho. Dirty bitch. Give her what she has coming.” I try the doorknob—locked.
I step back and regard the door with curiosity. A question—when I see what is on the other side, will I be able to do what I came here to do? And that's when I stumble drunkenly backwards, making an awful noise as I smash into a small table outside the bathroom.
“What the fuck was that?” says a voice from inside the room.
Now it's time to move.
The door gives almost too easily from one swift kick, and it's so light it only swings inward about a foot, but I can clearly see a guy about my age on the bed, on his knees, looking at me with horror, and I watch as he pulls out of Melissa's ass long enough to say, “Who the fuck are...”
And then the door comes swinging back on me with vengeance. I stumble back out into the hallway again as it swings open to reveal another person—one who hadn't made a sound—lunging at me with his pants around his ankles. “You little bastard!” he screams, seconds before he becomes tangled in his drawers and falls face down, inches in front of my shoes.
“Dammit!” he screams, “we're gonna kick your ass boy—don't even think about running!”
“No problem,” I say, watching as he struggles to put his pants back on. I point the gun at his head.
Target practicing is easy. But I had been curious as to whether I'd be able to pull the trigger when facing another person. With one squeeze, I understand that not only is it pretty much the same thing, it makes hitting your target even more satisfying.
There's blood on my hands. I lick it instinctively.
“JOHNNY!” screams the bastard, staring at his dead friend.
Another squeeze, and the bastard goes down. “My fucking leg!” he yells, crumpled on the floor.
By this time, Melissa's in the hallway, screaming. “What are you doing?!?”
I point the gun at her. “Get your fucking keys, pick him up, and get your ass outside. I'll let you live a little longer.”
“What kind of incentive is that?” She's in hysterics, barely able to utter a complete sentence.
“If you live, I might tell you why this happened.”
“You aren't going to get away with this,” she mutters as she reaches down to pick up the bastard. His dick is still hanging out of his boxer shorts.
“Put that thing up or I'm shooting it off,” I say, motioning to his member with the gun.
“Jesus—NO!” he screams.
I club him over the head with the butt of the gun, but unlike on the movies, he doesn't pass out immediately. His head just kind of rolls around on his neck as he makes guttural noises. So I hit him another time, this time hard enough that it draws blood. I hold it up to my nose and sniff.
“What the fuck happened to you...” asks Melissa as I lick the blood.
“You did.”
“Fucking shit,” she says, sobbing into her hands, “FUCKING SHIT!” she yells. “The cops will be here any minute—I'm sure one of the neighbors called them.”
I shake my head, smiling. “Now Melissa, you know that's not true. You remember what you told me that time we shook your headboard so hard it put a hole in the wall? 'Don't worry. The guy next door is an intern and is gone most nights. The lady downstairs is deaf—can't hear a thing.' It was reassuring then, and it's reassuring now. So help me pick up this son of a bitch and take me to your fucking car.”
“Do you even know how to drive?”
“NOW!” I scream.
She's crying now, sobbing uncontrollably, as she bends down and throws the bastard's arm over her shoulder. I watch her face. What pain she's feeling. What desperation. I chuckle.
“Are you going to help me? He weighs almost twice as much as I do, I can't do this by myself!”
I walk over, tuck the gun into the front of my pants, and grab his other arm.
“So is this the guy gave you the clap?” I ask as we slowly make our way down the stairs.
“Fuck you,” she sobs. The sleeve of his shirt is wet; she's been wiping tears on it.
“Ever call out my name when he's eating you out?”
“Shut up...”
“Melissa, do you ever think of me while he's fucking you in the ass?”
She stops as we reach the bottom step and turns her face to look at me.
“No. But I thought of him every time we were together.”
The shock is like a punch to the stomach, and as I stand there wondering what to do next, she drops the bastard and lunges at me. Suddenly, her breath is on my face, and her hand is down my pants. Holding the gun.
“So what now, little man,” she dons an evil grin. “You fucking needle dick. Aren't so big when a woman has the controls, huh?” I can feel her reaching down further, searching for the trigger. “There it is,” she says succinctly, smiling. She throws her head back to get the hair out of her face, looks at me with that killer smile, and flutters her eyelashes.
“I wonder,” she says, caressing the gun like she had me so many times. “I wonder how long it would take you to kill yourself if I shot off your balls. You know, assuming you recover. You're so obsessed with them, aren't you? Nothing but sex on your mind. Fucking problem with the world today, if you ask me. Parents, teachers, the clergy—they talk to kids about how bad sex is, how dangerous it can be, instead of teaching them what they need to know about it, so they end up like you—learning about it from pornos, wondering what the difference between fucking and making love is. And I'll tell you—there isn't a difference between fucking and making love.”
Even with her hand so close to ending my friendly relationship with my penis, her breath still smells like heaven.
“Not that it's going to matter when I get done with you.”
Her skin shines in the moonlight, musky from her sweat and stale cigarette smoke.
“Because you won't be able to feel either.”
She squeezes.
“What the...”
She squeezes again and again, nothing happening, except when I finally come in my pants and lose my erection. Her eyes are wide, and before she can completely pull out, I punch her, her face giving way to my fist in an satisfying crunch.
“Safety, Melissa,” I say as she sits on the ground, holding her face in her hands. “No idiot would put a gun so close to his dick without having the safety on.”
I tuck it back in, slowly, careful to make sure I really have the safety on. “Now get the hell up, and let's get on with this.”
Once I have them loaded in the car, we pull out of the complex, the shadows playing games of catch with each other on the dashboard in front of me. Driving isn't as difficult as I imagined. Only takes a few minutes to get used to the brake sensitivity. I go slow anyway; no reason to call attention to myself.
“He's in really bad shape,” Melissa says as we approach the end of the road. The moon is high, painting the world in glowing blue light. Where we are is high above the town below. Lights blink off, lights blink on. In the distance, a police siren.
How could I be forgetting so much, I ask myself as we get out of the car at the top of the hill. Fucking medicine. Fucking goddamned medicine.
By this time, the bastard's awake. Screaming. Help, help, help, but there's nobody here to help. That's why we're here in the first place.
“You are a sick fuck, you know that?” asks Melissa, stepping out of the car, then following me to where I'm standing in the middle of the clearing at the top of the hill. “I tried to help you. I tried to love you. And this is what happens?”
Her shadow barely touches my feet. The moon behind her, she stands as a silhouette, black against the midnight sky.
“You don't love me,” I laugh, tracing my steps around her. “You've never loved anything.”
She's crying as I level the gun to her face. “You don't even love getting fucked by whatever guy you can get your hands on. You just need it. And those are two very different things.”
I squeeze. This time, the safety is off. And I don't miss my target.
Chapter 29
The bastard's body is heavy. Heavier than I thought it would be. But I need to drag it out in the clearing. I want him to be there, to see her, before I ask him the questions. As I clench my fists more to keep hold of the back of his shirt, I notice resistance, and turn around to see him digging his feet in the ground. He isn't awake yet—it's just an instinct. But he will be soon.
I throw him on the ground less than five feet from her, and turn his face so that she's the first thing he will see when he opens his eyes. Already, blood is pooling around her head, mixing black with the dusty dirt. I walk over, dip the toe of my shoes into the viscous liquid, then draw it out, making wide, sweeping lines in the ground that shine in the moonlight.
There's a cough, and I turn to see the bastard slowly waking. He's not bleeding as badly anymore. The legs of his jeans are a sharp crimson color, in some places, almost black. I go to him, kneel down in front of his face, and watch as he pitches and turns. Finally, his eyes flutter open.
“You did this to her,” I say before he has a chance to talk. “I saw you that night. In the warehouse. You pay homeless chicks to let you do god knows what to them. You and your buddy—he's dead, by the way—you treat women like useless mounds of flesh. It's all your fault that this happened,” I say, standing up and pointing the gun toward Melissa's lifeless body.
The look on his face is satisfying in so many ways. A representation of the disgust I've come to associate with him and with what he, and the rest of us, are truly capable of. It encapsulates the horror of death I have lived with for so long, the horror that, in my estimation, drove me to all this in the first place. But there, also, is a look of satisfaction.
He mutters something under his breath that I can't hear, but I can recognize the words as they form on his lips: “What the fuck have I gotten into?”
“Why are you happy she's dead?”
This question breaks his silence. “Happy?!?” he groans, chest rising dramatically as he sucks in air, as if the utterance of the word had stolen the breath from him. “How could I be happy?!? You've killed my best friend, you killed Melissa, and I imagine I'm next.”
“You are.”
“So why the fuck would I be happy?”
I shrug, and turn around to face her. Still talking to him, I say, “I don't know. Maybe it's some kind of absolution of guilt for all the things you've done to her. Taking advantage of her.”
“I never...”
“Just because you didn't get her drunk or slip drugs into her wine so you could get laid doesn't mean you aren't guilty of taking advantage of her. Hell, of anyone. All the girls—underaged girls, I might add—you pay to suck you off, you've taken advantage of them too. I bet you had a track record with your buddy back there too. Maybe a little something more between you two?”
“Fuck you.”
“Lonely night, sitting together, drinking beer, maybe one of you says, 'Have you ever thought about being with another ma...' ”
“Shut the fuck up.”
I turn to face him. He's trying to get up, but his legs won't support him.
“Tell me, when I walked into the bedroom tonight, who was he jerking off to? Melissa, or you?”
He lunges at my legs, unsuccessfully, and comes down hard on his right knee. His face hits the ground with a “splat,” and he doesn't move. I shoot a bullet into the air. No response. Passed out from the pain, I gather.
That's when I hear sirens again. Closer this time. The one I heard earlier was no coincidence. It was for me.
In the city below, streets zigzag across one another under a sea of incandescent lamps. In the clear night, I can see each one individually. People walk here and there, mindless of the world around them. There's a man walking into a restaurant, the one Melissa and I went to the time she convinced me not to use hand sanitizer for four hours. There's the bench where we sat down when, thirty minutes into it, I had a panic attack.
There's the school, where Mr. Granger would arrive the next morning, no doubt having heard the gruesome news. “Mentally disturbed student kills three,” the headline will read.
That's how I'll be remembered, I think with a start. As someone insane, someone so out of touch with the world that he could commit such crimes, such brutal displays of complete disregard for human life. As if I had a choice, as if the things that had happened to me wouldn't have had the same impact on another person.
It's easy to call a person insane, but when it's you that's been driven to that point, it's hard to understand how people could exist any other way.
People fucking each other is pretty much all I've seen for the past year of my life. Aside from Granger, my psychiatrist, maybe a couple of others, there's nothing that has happened that doesn't seem like one person taking another person and bending them over. My foster mother fucked me. My dad fucked me when he left. My foster father didn't give a shit. And somebody gave me something that was eating away at my cock. Even my “friends” at the warehouse, for the most part, needed me for something. Tim needed a drinking buddy. Angie needed a john. Questions flood my mind. Do people ever do anything for others that doesn't help themselves in the long run? Are we doomed to this kind of parasitic relationship with those who come into our lives? Are we human, or are we the ticks on the Earth, the tapeworms of experience, gorging ourselves on the lifeblood of whatever and whoever we can latch on to?
One question seems to rise above them all as more important. How many shots do I have left?
The screaming brings me back, this infectious high pitched laugh of a scream. That's coming from the bastard. I used to know his real name, but it's the one detail I'm happy to forget that evening.
He stamps his leg, screaming over and over about hospitals and tests and IVs and all I had to look forward to after this night. Jail cells, thin cotton sheets on even thinner matresses, we got 'em all. Come on down.
His stamping is stirring up dust. I don't notice this as immediately as I should; damn medicine. I watch the thin spirals burst into the night sky, up and up, riding on the light air at this height (I should have remembered the altitude) thousands of years of rot and decay looking for a place to rest, and more than likely, at least some of it would end up in my nose, in my lungs, a part of me.
I put the gun to my side for a second. I realize that I just thought "at least some of it would" contaminate me. But some of something every day gets into our bodies and roots around. “What good is all of this?” screams a part of myself I had successfully shut up years before, “If you can't even be conscientious of the most important means of preventing infection?”
He's still stirring up dust; I lean over into it. Tendrils of the stuff caress my face, and I breathe in, soft at first, until Rationality says, "Go for it. It won't hurt. Most importantly, it won't kill you."
That last part's the kicker. My psychologist said that half the reason for my disorder stems from an unwarranted fear of mortality that I hadn't dealt with. I told her I'd dealt with death my whole life. She said she wasn't talking about just experiencing it; she was talking about incorporating it into my ideal self, into the person my soul wanted me to be.
The dirt tickles my nose, and I sneeze, and it feels good; I don't sneeze that often. I keep a list of places and situations that can cause sneezing, as well as remedies to arrest the urge, in the "Things to avoid and ways to avoid dealing with them" part of my brain. It's the biggest part of my brain, I think. And I wonder if, after tonight, there's not going to be much use for it.
Damn medicine.
'Who's fault is it?" asks the guy my girlfriend's been sleeping with. "Is it mine? Or hers? Either one right? Either one to make you feel as though you aren't the one to blame. Well you know..."
I put another bullet into his leg to shut him up. The screams multiply. It sounds like there are two voices screaming. I look at him and realize he isn't making a sound. His mouth is open, but nothing comes out.
I turn around. I'm caught between the warring factions of my mind, watching, listenening, as sirens and blue and red lights slowly work their way through the town laid out below us. I have to think, and the screaming in my head doesn't help. I have to think back over what's happened, what led up to all this. Then I can decide whether to kill the bastard.
That is, says one of my minds—I'm not sure which—if you still have any bullets left.
Which I had not thought of when I shot his leg.
I'm breaking apart here, and it's pretty fucked up. But not as fucked up as what I'm doing right now. Melissa, who I shot in the head what seems like moments ago, just coughed.
Chapter 30
"I didn't ask for this," I told my psychiatrist one day.
"That's the biggest complaint people have about life. They didn't ask for it. They didn't ask for what comes along with it, all the pain. They say that if they were given the choice, they wouldn't have taken it."
I nodded in agreement.
"And I tell them they do have a choice. Anybody has the ability to end his or her own life. But the fact that they are still here, talking to me, shows me that at least one part of them—no matter how small it is—sees how important it is to continue living, to strive on through that pain."
Right now, there isn't any pain. There's nothing. Nothing but me, the dead bastard, and Melissa, struggling to hold on to her life.
"Why are you doing it?" I ask her.
"What?" she gurgles.
"Holding on. You should be dead by now. Why are you clinging to life?"
She manages to plant her elbows into the ground and, grimacing, pushes her torso up so she can look directly into my eyes.
"Because I don't want to die."
"So you just want to continue living so you can keep doing the things you do? So you can keep fucking whoever you want? Leading guys along, letting them fall in love with you, then leaving them just because they have some fucking issues? Leaving them for some scumbag who doesn't give a shit about you or who you are, as long as you have a warm wet hole for him to put his dick in? Christ Melissa, you let that guy watch you. Some guy was watching you get fucked by his friend, jerking off in the corner of the room. That isn't normal."
"Neither is shooting people in the face," she mumbles, falling back onto the blood-soaked earth.
"What was I supposed to do?"
"Get on with your life? Deal with it rationally? Hell, I don't know, you taking a shit in my locker would have been better than this."
"Shit doesn't last. It doesn't stick. I could ignore you, I could leave you, I could let all this slide and go about my life. But that isn't the way it works. Letting you off the hook, it isn't permanent. Not like death."
She starts to have a coughing fit and manages to roll over on her side before choking on the blood. A mat of hair falls around her face. I reach down and touch it—warm, dark, shiny, wet. I move it out of her way, and when she finishes coughing, she says, "Thanks."
"My dad left me," I say. "When I didn't have anyone else in the world, he took off, because he couldn't handle what I was. Someone with problems. Not that it mattered—he couldn't handle his own problems, much less mine. But at least he was there. And he's still here. On this planet somewhere. Drinking too much in some shitty bar, fucking some woman he shouldn't be fucking, but he's doing it without having to worry about me."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that if my dad would have just killed himself, none of this would have happened. If he was just gone, gone forever, it would be different. I'm going to make sure that kind of thing never happens to me again, Melissa. I'm sorry that you decided to leave me. But I can't live in a world where the two of us exist, where I'll always know you're out there with some other guy, sharing with him what you shared with me. Something I thought was love."
The sirens ring in the air. Far down the path we drove, I see shadows moving. The cars are getting closer.
"You don't understand..." she starts.
"That's just the thing Melissa—I don't understand. Nobody explained it to me. I had to learn it all myself. No friends, no father, no mother. It was just me. And that's a shitty way to learn any lesson, much less how to live in this world."
"This doesn't have to be the end..."
"Yeah, it does. One way or another, it does."
She lets out a groan and starts coughing again.
A new wind comes in from the west, carrying a familiar smell. As I watch the shadows on the path changing, bouncing up and down as the sirens close in, a light rain begins to fall, but no clouds block the moon. The gentle raindrops sparkle as they land on the dirt, on our clothes, on their blood, winking at each other a thousand at a time.
My mind jumps to the life I have to look forward to. The cops might shoot me. I might die up here, tonight. Maybe I'd get arrested, roughed up a bit, taken downtown. Thrown in a cell, quick trial, then off to the pen, where I'd probably end up playing catcher to some three-hundred pound gorilla who calls himself Debbie. Maybe I'd just go in there and end up so crazy that I don't even know what's going on. That's what I've wanted all along, I realize. I just don't want to be aware.
Suddenly, I remember how many bullets I have left.
I fired two into the air.
I fired one into Johnny's head. Three.
Two I used on the bastard at the apartment. One more to his head at the hill. Six.
One fired into the ground. One fired into Melissa. Eight.
The clip was full. I know I had nine in there. There's one more bullet left.
The sirens fill the air, and I'm blinded for a moment by the headlights shining from the opening of the path. The first car swerves to avoid hitting us head on, the second follows, stirring up clouds of dust that coat my face, and the ambulance following them stops at the entrance to the clearing. Seconds later, doors slam shut and the loudspeaker addresses me.
"Drop the weapon and put your hands on your head!"
Melissa is still on the ground, too weak to get up, but cranes her head back to look into the lights.
"This is the second time I'm going to warn you! Drop the weapon and put your hands on your head!"
"I didn't ask for any of this," I say to Melissa.
She turns to look at me. "Neither did I."
"Yeah," I say. "I know. But you want it, whether you asked for it or not."
I reach in my pocket.
"Hands in the air—NOW!"
Quickly, I uncap my hand sanitizer and pour some on the barrel of the gun.
"DROP THAT WEAPON!"
It's still warm. It's almost pleasant as I place my lips around it. I taste it with my tongue.
"Son, NO! STOP!"
The last experiences I have are the smell of gunpowder, intense heat throughout my body, and a complete obsession with each.
Epilogue
Tim lazily rolled his head so he could look at Angie.
"How much is left?" he asked, his speech slurring, as if he couldn't gather the energy to speak.
"A gram. At least."
Tim slowly shook his head. "No, no. The money."
Angie moved in what could only be approximated as a shrug. "Three, four thousand?"
"Four thousand?" sighed Tim, feigning disbelief. "How could we spend so much in three days?"
"You tell me," said Angie, lighting her Zippo underneath a sterling silver spoon.
"We could do something with this money. Get ourselves on the right track."
"You said that yesterday."
"We could move into a nice apartment, get some jobs."
"You said that yesterday too."
Angie handed Tim the syringe she'd finished preparing. He regarded it with curiosity for a moment, then made a noise, as if indicating he had just that second understood what it was for.
"We can do it tomorrow," Angie said.
"Aren't we getting more tomorrow?" Tim answered.
"Oh yeah. The next day then."
"Yeah," said Tim, sucking in his words as the needle pierced his skin. "The next day."
* * *
I try, but I can't look her in the eyes.
"So, tell me about yourself."
I want to answer. I really do. But I can't speak. Something inside me—the something I hope I can get rid of here—just won't let me.
"Mr. Granger told me about everything that happened. I understand that things must be extremely difficult for you now. I want you to know that I'm here to listen and guide you through the rough emotions you're experiencing."
I can't talk, and it isn't because my jaw is wired shut. My hand shakes, making it hard to hold the pen, let alone use it to form a coherent sentence writing in the notepad on my lap.
"Melissa, please. Tell me why you won't talk. Take your time."
It's all I can do to make straight lines. Slowly, with her watching my hands the whole time, I make my uncertain marks on the page. When I put down the pen, she walks over to look at what I've written. When she sees, she goes and sits back down across from me.
"Melissa, I know you're scared. It's normal. What I want you to do is relax. I'm going to try and teach you a relaxation procedure. The first thing I want you to do is to breathe in deep. Then exhale slowly."
I do it.
"Now, I want you to keep doing that, but I want you to count to ten between each breath. Can you do that?"
I grasp the pen and scribble, more confident now. I hand the pad to her.
"Yes, you can divide up your counting any way you'd like. It doesn't even need to be multiples of ten. Whatever it takes to help you relax—that's the goal."
Knowing that, I'm sure I can do this. Especially if she's letting me count the way I want.
I breathe in. The pain is still there in my chest, where the tube was for so long. There's pain everywhere, but it's the chest that hurts the most. They've told me it will go away.
I breathe out. My entire face pulses, the bones reconstructing themselves, making me into another version of my past self.
Everything is a variant of something it isn't.
I start to count the only way that makes me relax.
One two three.
One two three.
One two three.
Archives
I stabbed myself in the heart 16-18 times.
Good God, what a day. Rod Beck, one of my favorite players ever and a helluva character, was found dead at age 38. That's a year younger than I am (insert a BLAST of sudden mortality here). Also, Chris Benoit and his wife and son were found dead Monday, June 25, at their suburban Atlanta home, a suspected double murder/suicide. There are also reports, unconfirmed as this goes to press, of copious amounts of steroids being present in the house . . . I know many people look VERY far down their collective noses at professional wrestling and they can go perform the usual anatomically-impossible act. I've been a lifelong fan as I mentioned in an earlier burst of bad craziness. There is something to be said for a violent, acrobatic soap opera for men and that is what pro rasslin' is. And small guys usually never are the big dogs of the show; most don't generate enough "pops" from the audience. This was never true about Chris Benoit, who wrestled in his native Canada, Japan and the United States. At 5'11" and 234 lbs, Benoit packed a lot of muscle into a small frame which, when combined with his arsenal of aerial offense, made for a hell of a show. His upper-rope Flying Headbutt was famous around the wrestling world and his ability to sell a match was matched, maybe, but never equaled. Whatever the cause of his demise, I prefer to remember the Rabid Wolverine as a great performer who realized his lifelong dream of being a champion professional wrestler - RIP Chris Benoit.
Random baseball babblings: the Cards are promoting Troy Percival, hoping he can settle a pen that is in shambles; the Red Sox are a lock and the real action is gonna be on the wild-card slot with Cleveland, Seattle and maybe Oakland hooking up in some serious deathmatch-style shootouts; 'Bye, Ozzie - enjoy anonymity, you zero; the Brewers will have to go over the cliff to miss out on the NL Central title and the NL West will be gory; the Bravos have two problems: they need another veteran starter BAD and Tim Hudson is schizophrenic, with Good Tim being dominant and Bad Tim being essentially league-average. He is also getting hammered at Turner Field (.272 BAA and .681 OPS). God help . . . Joe Torre will be enjoying dark chocolate and Italian dessert wines this time next year. You can make book on that.
Boise Idaho. Not Iowa. And it's pronounced Boycee. There's no "Z" in Boise. Actually, if you want the proper French pronunciation it would be Bwah, but no one here much remembers the French much less wants to call it Bwah. I mean really, Bwah? Sounds like you're blowing a kiss with peanut butter in your mouth. 
Webster is also famous for, at one time, having more bars and liquor stores per capita than any other town in Massachusetts. They also have an abundant number of pizza shops and gas stations as well as two Dunkins and a bowling alley, though it should be noted that most towns
A few months back someone I knew died of an overdose. I know his cousin Isabel and his Mom, but Victor and I were passing acquaintances at best. He was a groomsman in two weddings that I attended, and I used to see him around occasionally, but the only actual conversation we ever had that I can remember started with him explaining some scam he knew how to work trading cheap new videos at the movie store and ended with him showing me a bag of weed he had. He was particularly proud of it, and I sniffed it, and eyed it, and had to agree it was indeed a fine bag of weed. As time went on every time I saw Victor he looked worse than the last. I would hear about 'hereditary stomach ailment' this, and 'partying too much' that, and I was inclined to believe the latter although there really would be no way to tell. If you keep waking up vomiting because of some affliction; basic survival instinct would prompt you to stop ingesting strange and wonderful recreational pharmaceuticals long enough to find out what was wrong with you. Maybe that's just me, but that is all the advice I could offer Isabel when she mentioned that his doctor could not figure out how to help him. "Tell him to stop getting high long enough that they can find out what is wrong with him."
Around 8 a.m. Layla found Victor not breathing, and this time he was in no condition to refuse the paramedics that carried him out of his family home. But he was gone. They tubed and wired him up, and for three days people prayed and cried and hoped and misquoted what doctors had said, and on Friday they signed off on donating what organs weren't too polluted and/or destroyed to be used, and Layla fell to pieces. I found a picture of Victor from the last wedding, and I superimposed it with one from another occasion and had it printed, got a frame and had someone take it to her for me. It was all I could do, I couldn't attend the funeral, I expected a lot of drama that I was not willing to be a part of, stuff involving Wesley the piece of human garbage and the likelihood of his making a scene. Not just that, there were people that I couldn't face seeing, I'm a wimp but I just didn't think I could take that much guilt on parade.
So what happened? Age? Maturity? Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I point my accusing finger at what I perceive to be the two biggest problems The Weirdness presents us with…exhibit A: Iggy’s supremely stoopid lyrics. Not that anyone ever mistook him for Bob Dylan, but back on the original triptych of Stooges majesty the simplicity and bluntness of his words had a certain kind of street poetry that complemented the thuggish force of the players backing said words. And I know, I know…a 60 year old wine connoisseur living in Miami is gonna have a different outlook than a 23 year old drug-fueled miscreant hanging on the fringes of Detroit in 1970. But to these ears it just seems like the man’s been drawing on his status as legendary “elder statesman” as lyrical inspiration since way before the Stooges reunion. Don’t get me wrong…I truly don’t think it’s an ego thing, and he genuinely seems to be a pretty cool guy, and he sure as shit runs circles around men one third his age when he’s on the stage. (Seriously…I don’t have that kind of energy now, and if I have half of it at that age, I’ll realize I’m a goddam superhero and it’ll take 30 federal marshals to bring me down as I storm the gates of Skywalker Ranch to piss on George Lucas’ grave screaming, “Jar-Jar Binks? Jar-Jar fucking Binks?!?”) It just seems forced now, like he’s trying too hard. 
That’s not enough, though, for the modern sophisticate. I read through the goofy profiles and it seems like everyone is all ready at any moment’s notice to pack up all their junk and jet off to some hellhole or another. They list all the wild and crazy places they’ve been or would like to see, which I assume is supposed to be impressive but really just gives me a damn headache. I can only imagine loafing around one day doing my favorite thing (meaning nothing) when potential girlfriend destroys my precious tranquility with the idea of flying to Papua New Guinea for two weeks, dragging me away from my house and my stuff. Folks, there’s a reason why I live where I live. I chose it. I like it. Seeing it every day doesn’t bother me a bit, any more than eating a medium rare steak with a baked potato every night for a year would not grow tiresome. I know what I like and I stick to it. Is that boring? Yes, but I am rarely in for any unpleasant surprises.
If you’re looking for something more interesting, there’s this little place called Yellowstone. Ever heard of it? I hear it’s quite nice.
What did I have: A computer with the regular accoutrements (a Celeron 400MHz, so no barn burner, though this was 2002), an Ibanez Gi0 guitar, a Dean Playmate bass, a Fender Bullet Reverb practice amp, and Cool Edit Pro multi-track recording software (I also have a Rogue bass amp, but didn’t use it). 
Having a little bit of an idea of acoustics (not much though), I wound up taking a large box and putting the amp into it. I further put two pillows and a quilt in the box to absorb any echo and put the mic barely in the box at a corner opposite the amp. 
This setup, as white-trash fabulous as it may be, worked quite well. I was able to lay down guitar and bass tracks this way and synch it all up in Cool Edit. Took about an hour to do all this (after the drum track was already done). I am not linking to this experiment because it sucks donkey balls. But it proved to me the process was sound. 
Now came a new problem … vocals. I have a real Nady mic I was going to try to use, but because of the bad sound card, I could get nothing useable. What I did not think of, and, in retrospect I wish I had, was to run the vox through my practice amp. But, I wound up singing dry directly into the computer mic. This didn’t work out very well. Singing through the amp I could have “heard” myself better, not so this way. Plus, it was about 2 or 3 in the morning and I was trying to keep my voice down. So the vox turned out like crap. 
Extremely Loud takes place post-9/11 and uses that event as a backdrop for the story of Oscar, a nine year old who lost his father in the attacks. I wrote at the time that the novel was "a brutal, emotional, exhausting book." Meanwhile, Everything Is Illuminated uses the Holocaust as its backdrop, interweaving three narratives which slowly tie together throughout the book, with the atrocities of genocide asserting themselves as the reader moves deeper into the novel.
In the end, I think this is the only true way to understand these events. The scale is too immense. It's too much pain, too much horror, to truly understand and absorb, to calculate and to file, to make sense of, to categorize and then continue on with life. You have to discard the sheer size of it and then, to really understand, take out that one Polaroid, that small snapshot that discards 99% of the image but ultimately allows you to focus on the 1% that contains all the important details—all the truths and pains and devastations—and stare at it, study and learn it, memorize it and slowly, slowly, begin to comprehend. Begin to absorb. Begin to grasp, through that small scale representation, the true size of what happened—the true horror, the true incomprehensibility.
Once we were satisfied that we'd found all there was to find, we arranged Mr. Sozinho in his new home. Dad put his skull in last, empty eye sockets facing out over the sea. "There, that ought to do it, for a few more decades at least."
First, apologies to Alton Brown for stealing his show title, but it works. I'm glad to be back writing on FTTW, but I have to admit, I've been getting bent over at work and I haven't been cooking all that much.
Our country is doomed because even I know who Paris Hilton is. Rock stars, actors, athletes and spoiled, rich kids are not heroes and role models-they really contribute little, or nothing to society and we should treat them, accordingly. 
But today we are here to talk about The Half-Blood Prince. Book six in the seven book series that began with a boy finding out he was a wizard. The day I picked up that first book I was transfixed and transformed. JK Rowling tapped in to a well of creativity that is based on mythology and language and a marriage of a thousand years of imagination. Taking the best pieces of everything we might have known in a fairy tale and reworked it into an innovative and exciting set of characters and adventures that turned out to be the key to grabbing a whole new generation of kids and addicting them to reading.
Another change from previous books is Dumbledore. He is no longer an omniscient being, he has flaws and uncertainties. He might be wrong. That's something Harry has to cope with a well. Understanding his heroes don't know everything and he would have to learn some things on his own.
before the static starts learn to lie and deceive and sleep easy with its sting walk with thieves run with murderers and curse the birds when they sing trust the god in your wallet and place your faith in a fiend and steal the bread from the mouths of the children as they bleed remember son that it’s only you whose needs be met live with these words and my long life you’ll get Old Man i said what kind of lies you tellin’ me long life a reward for waste and crime and greed he looked at his hands and the lines on his palms and he sat silent for a while and then his words fell real calm my reward for this life has been long years to bear witness to the seeds i have sown watch them die early long before they had grown or grow up too soon and find solace in a bottle in the money they spend or the pills that they swallow rest their head in a jail and live with the horrors within or in a mind whose fears make it no less a prison see them age with bitterness mean and saddled with sorrow go now son i got another grandchild’s funeral tomorrow
His mismanagement of a once-proud Oriole franchise is nothing short of, say, criminal. He bought the team in '93 and had some early successes with Ripken breaking Gehrig's record in '95 (a MARKETING success); the wild-card berth in '96 (hello, Jeffrey Maier); and the division title wire-to-wire in '97. Then, the Great Man has a spat with manager Davey Johnson and fires his ass posthaste. Since then, it has been a world of suck with lots of losses; massive on-field and front office turmoil; and egocentric media circuses that a young Steinbrenner would've been proud of. The ego of lawyers is impossible to overestimate, most of the time . . .
Damon Albarn - Blur (ya know, that song that went "whoooo-hoooo!" like nine million times) and Gorrillaz, which have only been slightly larger than Scientology since they hit.
We've had the Combine, we've had the Draft, The Patriots went out and scooped up all the top free-agents that were looking to score, we've had rookie camps and mini-camps… All that stuff is out of the way and done. That means that this little stretch of dry spell here is the end and then it will be time for full fledged training camp and pre-season games. Then the next thing you know, it will be Football Season again!! And I'll have something to write about. That will be cool.
It was the best fucking chicken I have ever tasted. In my entire life, I have never had chicken this good. It was tender and succulent, soft enough to cut with a fork, but firm enough to have an excellent feel in the mouth. Breading and a bath in boiling oil encased the morsels of flesh along with their juices. The spicy, orange glaze provided just the right touch of sweet, hot, and hint of sour. 
My brother and his fiancée live in a very happening place, with all the buzz of life going on around them and an awesome view from the apartment. Standing on the roof of the building, we could see Lake Michigan, the Tribune building and the Water Tower while all the little ant-like people milled about on the street far below. If you’re into that kind of thing, it must be a very cool way to live, and my bro and soon-to-be sis absolutely love it. In fact, standing on the roof and looking about the town, I thought that I would love to live like that as well. It was when I hit street level that I knew that I was not a city boy. 
For example, my neighbors all recognize me, but we never speak to each other. It’s like the best of both extremes: they know who I am and where I live, so it isn’t like being part of a faceless mass, but they don’t show up on my doorstep with baskets of strawberries and bother me while I’m doing homework. We know each other in a sense, but we also have our privacy. All the big chain stores are nearby, so if I want to rent a movie, buy a book, pick up groceries, or order a pizza, no problem. What am I missing out on? Well, things that I thought I liked eight years ago, like clubs and bars and live music, though we have all those things within a ten minute drive. We don’t have hipsters, because no one around here could possibly call himself hip. He’d just look ridiculous. Ummm, what else? Nothing that I can think of, really.
Basic plot line. An “insane” bomber wing commander decides to attack the Russkies pre-emptively and kick off World War III, convinced that the political leadership in the US is ignoring the threat of the Global Communist Conspiracy. So he orders his B-52 wing, armed with nuclear weapons and cruising at the fail-safe point, to proceed with an attack. Desperate to avoid the nuclear conflagration, President Merkin Muffley attempts to thwart the attack by helping the Russians shoot down the invading planes, which cannot be recalled (due to super-duper anti-enemy being sneaky measures that involve a recall code only crazy general knows).
I don’t get around to much Wilco back at home base, mostly because a certain friend of mine is a freakin’ nut for them. Hanging out with him almost always involves: copious amounts of beer, sometimes brewed by him (we like us our barley and hops, what of it?); bad movies (I don’t know how we went one more day without checking out Gingerdead Man…Gary Busey in da house!); and, oh yeah, after he’s got a little sauce in him, there’s about a 99% chance of Wilco. Sometimes an LP, sometimes the I Am Trying to Break Your Heart movie. There’s a moderate chance of Uncle Tupelo, but strangely, rarely any Son Volt, although I know he’s got it. I rarely mind, depending on my level of drunkitude. There are sure as shit worse friends to have than Wilco fans. 
disclosure, I do kinda miss the “damn, what are they gonna do next?” vibe I got from the last two, but Sky really sounds like a band comfortable in its own skin, with nothing to prove. Besides, it’s not like “normal” pop rock tunes with guitar, bass and drums topped with “Ooh, babe, I miss you.” The creativity on display here is more akin to the Band. You won’t be wowed by how “out there” Wilco can get, but if you’re inclined to liking intelligent, confident songcraft, give ‘er a shot. Piano, Hammond organ, lap steel, Mellotron and more all create a warm, friendly atmosphere. Kingpin Tweedy’s words still tend towards relationship matters, but often open to interpretation. They convey a mood without being specific, which is a true songwriting talent. Forgive me while I quote a lengthy chunk of “You Are My Face”: “I remember my mother’s / Sister’s husband’s brother / Working in the goldmine full-time / Filling in for sunshine / Filing into tight lines / Of ordinary beehives / The door screams I hate you / Hate you hanging around my blue jeans / Why is there no breeze / No currency of leaves / No current through the water wire / No feelings I can see / I trust no emotion / I believe in locomotion / But I’ve turned to rust as we’ve discussed / Though I must have let you down / Too many times / In the dirt and the dust”. Incidentally, the harmony vocals as the verses lazily jangle along remind me of “The Boxer” by Simon & Garfunkel. It doesn’t sound like it, and I’m probably just addled by sleeping sickness, but there it is. The twin lead guitars towards the end of “Impossible Germany” (while a third plays rhythm – fuck yeah!) come off like a languid Thin Lizzy. (By the way…if your musical diet doesn’t include a healthy dose of Thin Lizzy, four out of five doctors agree you likely have poor eyesight and erectile dysfunction. Hey, I have no medical background, I just report the facts.) “Sky Blue Sky” lopes along with a down-home lilt that comes effortlessly to these guys. “Please Be Patient with Me” is a heartfelt plea to a partner, and I’m playing it for my girlfriend the next time I see her, as it articulates in 3 minutes 19 seconds what my paralyzed tongue can’t. “What Light” exhorts all, “If you feel like singing a song / And you want other people to sing along / Just sing what you feel / Don’t let anyone say it’s wrong”. The 
chorus is simple, catchy as hell, and kinda dumb. Also stuck in my head at work today the entire time I’m listening to some woman tell me she wants her account number changed because it ends in 666. Instead of telling her that’s AWESOME like I should, I let the song play in my head while she implored me in some indeterminate accent, “Because dat is de mark of de debbil.” (Ah…sometimes I like my job.) “On and On and On” ends things on a pseudo-hopeful note with a mid-tempo piano riff, because “we’ll stay together yeah” but still “we’re designed to die”. I’m thinking of having it play at my funeral, right after “Baby Got Back” but before “Fuck Christmas”.
So, in honor of Wednesday being the age-old hump day, I bring you my top five tunes to set the mood.
I’m kind of talking about a movie I saw last weekend, one that I mentioned in my last new post. I’m talking about Wolf Creek. This is a great movie for people who love horror movies but haven’t had much stress in their lives lately. This is a movie for people who need a little fear but don’t get scared by demons or vampires; this is a movie about things that actually happen, or could happen. And as a lot of us have said, it’s that type of movie that is the creepiest of all.
So here’s the story; as much as I can give you without ruining the movie anyway. Three friends, two British girls and an Australian guy, hanging out and partying on vacation. The guy, Ben, has just bought a crappy car that they’re going to use for road tripping. They load up and take off for Wolf Creek, the site of one of the biggest meteorite craters on the planet (it’s actually Wolfe Creek, but, you know…). The movie takes its time here, letting you get to know the characters a little. Far from boring if you’re into that thing; I find it really helps the viewer once the dying starts. Anyway, it’s a three hour hike to the crater, three hours back, and it’s getting pretty late by the time they get back to the car. Which won’t start. And they’re in the middle of fucking nowhere. 
The next thing we see is one of the girls, Liz, as she regains consciousness the following afternoon. She’s tied up in a storage shed. That’s when she starts to realize her situation. And the more she learns, the less you have to chew on at the end of your fingers. And yes, oh yes, you will curse the suspense.
#8 Metallica - Ride the Lightening: I’m kind of upset at putting a Metallica album over a Megadeth album, but hell, it happens. As far as its importance, Ride the Lightening secured Metallica’s name in the lexicon of great metal acts. Sure, Kill ‘em All was a great album, but there were other bands doing similar things, and no one knew if they could follow up KEA with a solid sophomore release. Ride the Lightening shattered doubts and left many screaming for more. There is a feeling that permeates both this album and Master of Puppets. I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but it’s in the production quality of the album. It’s not quite perfect, but at the same time, it’s perfectly not perfect. It’s an ambience that does creep up your spine, much as they describe in “Creeping Death.” Personally, I think Metallica got it so right with this album and Puppets, that I have been thoroughly disappointed with everything since. 
#6 Black Sabbath – Paranoid: Wow, it was hard to narrow down what Sabbath album I wanted here. I mean, I knew I wanted #6 to be Sabbath, and I had originally put We Sold our Soul for Rock and Roll, but since that’s a greatest hits album, I decided it was kind of cheating. So, I went with Paranoid on the strength of the title track, War Pigs, Iron Man, and Fairies Wear Boots. Great stuff. These songs probably defined what metal was to become. The use of power chords in minor keys set the mood that would permeate metal albums to this very day. There is probably no band that has been more influential on metal music.
may have been better musicians than Pantera, but there has never been a band that can make you feel exactly what they are feeling like Pantera could. There has never been a band before or since that can translate a boot to the freaking head like Pantera. Perhaps that’s a good thing.
album had the production value of some of Megadeth’s later albums, this would definitely be the #1 album.
a little while later, she had gotten into one of those quiet fights with her friend, the kind of fight that seethes venom and threatens violence. i remember him grabbing her by the arm and jerking her body towards him. her hair fell into her eyes and, the way her jacket moved, i could see that the shoulder on her sundress had torn. so i took the dare and stepped up to them, telling some lame joke and maybe get him to relax. well, he wasn't having any of that, and he quickly dotted my eye. i stepped back, still with the beer bottle in my hand - neck up, down at my side - and shook my head. i laughed a bit and started to explain myself when he hit me again. i mean, square in the nose this time. see, i had had my right arm at my side with my hand around the neck of the beer bottle. i learned to do that when i was younger. it was a good way to hide it when underage drinking in public, or at least make things less conspicuous. as it turns out, it also allows for a quick swing. i really didn't think about it, it was something more or less like a reflex. the bottle crashed into the side of that motherfucker's head, and he crumpled to the floor of the kitchen bleeding and screaming. a couple of other guys came towards me but stopped short. i looked down at the jagged glass in my hand. by this time, Lemon Yellow was standing behind me, tugging on my shirtsleeve to leave. we left out the back door like some Bonnie and Clyde shit.
1) Like Bettman is ever going to let you move one of his precious expansion teams, to CANADA. You know he hates Canada right?
In Other News...
Does everyone have issues with their place of work? I know most people do but I went to work the other day and was subject to the complete soap opera that is my new workplace. I had employees that I was supposed to be learning from speaking negatively about management and also even some of the guests!
To begin my employment at a facility that is almost a hundred times more expensive, where the employees act like I have witnessed is just appalling to me. Does anyone else have these issues when they work?
shoe leather diet. MLB's Specialist for Media Relations, Michael Teevan, must be on an ethanol binge after this fiasco. Gary Sheffield is like gas stored in a plastic gas can sitting in the hot sunlight - it's just a matter of time before there is a spectacular explosion . . .
known. Oh well. Hey Paul Draper - reference serotonin; the Book of Mormon; and Richard Rogers in one work such as "Six" and I’m sold. The Marquis de Sade asides are just wonderful bonuses . . .
It was a close game in the final minutes. While the Spurs had the lead, it really was anyone's game in the fourth quarter. The Cavaliers were successful in keeping the score close and not letting San Antonio run away with the game toward the end. They had a legitimate shot to win. But in the end, they weren't able to pull it off. It was brutal for me to watch, and I'm not even that big of a Cleveland fan. At that point, I was just rooting for them to make the series interesting.
To make matters even worse, the Spurs didn't play well in Game 3. They served up a golden opportunity to Cleveland and the Cavaliers were unable to take advantage of it. The gods (or perhaps their own skill?) seemed to be conspiring against them. Hell, even on the final play, at home, with the ball in the hands of the biggest star on the court, the Cavaliers were unable to get a foul called against Bruce Bowen. A foul, in fact, that was intentional. Bowen purposefully fouled James and the refs didn't give a single blow on their whistle. And LeBron shot his three, and he missed, and that was the game.
That's the way this 'getting old' crap compounds itself. You're getting old and stuff starts changing without notice, and this coincides with over 20 years of basically the same face looking back at you each morning. You don't really look at it with any real interest, no matter how handsome you think you are; you've seen it too many times before. You look up the nose as you turn off the trimmer, you look at the teeth and the tongue after you scrub them, look at the locks as you brush them into whatever wannabe Conan pomp you can manage, and then you turn off the light and get on your way. You're not exactly expecting anything new, in fact, that is the one good thing about your own face: predictability. That is, until this afternoon when I felt something crawling on my eye.
In Texas, all sodas are cokes. This is simple efficiency, how many goddamn words do you need to waste on these things?
foreign country, but I am blessed with being utterly unimportant in the grand scheme of things. If, for example, I’m wrong about something Hemingway or Spenser wrote, no one is going to die. I’ll just look kind of dumb, and while that sucks it carries no dire consequences. So, as usual, I’m crossing my fingers and expecting the worst. That being said, I’m still pretty relieved.
junior, and how they were probably about to enter into lifelong and lucrative careers, and I couldn’t help but…well…I know that envy is an ugly word in our “I’m okay, you’re okay” society, but yes, that was about the closest feeling I had. 
Karl Hendricks formed the first Trio after a lo-fi crash ‘n bash solo debut, the I Hate This Party EP, which followed the breakup of Sludgehammer. Four great songs I still listen to more than any of the early 90s 4-track stuff that actually got heard. (In college radio-type circles, but still.) It looks like Randy’s hooked by the time “Beergasm” blurts from the speakers. “I didn’t know he was ever this punky”. He smiles, but Karl Hendricks 101 has just begun.
Randy’s looking anxious about too much geekspeak…time to get down to the meat and potatoes, the crux of the biscuit if you will. (Suddenly kinda hungry…should we order a pizza? Maybe I’ll just offer Randy some Ramen noodles. The pizza guy seems terrified of this place.) 1998 saw the arrival of Declare Your Weapons, the king daddy of Karl Hendricks Trio albums, the one where it all absolutely clicked start to finish for me, where one of my favorite bands became one of the Most Important Bands Ever for me. Randy raises an eyebrow, and I’m just shitfaced enough by now to get up on my soapbox, although hopefully still with it enough to make some kind of Max sense.
At the center of this fine LP we come to “I Think I Forgot Something…My Pants”. (Still with me, Randy? I’ll take the thumb up as a yes…wait…don’t…you’re gonna clean that up, right? Good…you do that while I get us beer and open a fresh pack of Mavericks…geez…did I smoke a whole pack already? I’m a retard…) Pure pop music perfection in a rock ‘n roll context. Karl the narrator lets us know folks with any fashion sense won’t sit next to him (“No matter how crowded the bus or how great the movie”) before revealing “I left the only woman I ever loved / At a Dunkin’ Donuts in Cleveland.” He’s got some pictures of them together, but Jesus Christ, you never want to see them. Key the chorus, while the band kicks it out with conviction: “And I think I forgot something [pause] my pants / My dignity, my armor and my lance / I think I left all my original thoughts back at some bar / I thought I had some friends around here somewhere / Now I wonder where they are.” A few verses later, after declaring the love in his heart for various marginalized folks (the saints and the robbers, hot Asian babes) the story changes and the only women he ever loved were left at a strip bar in Cleveland. *sigh* People line up at the troughs for miles around because they can’t get enough of Rod Stewart croaking out the fucking “standards” they’ve heard a billion and five times before, and The Jerks Win Again languishes in the cluttered shitholes of a few assholes like myself. When will the goddamn poor wise up? (Randy hi-fives me. I love that guy.)
use of a chainsaw. There’s this one guy who is way more bad news than any horror villain who has ever appeared onscreen, including some prepubescent chick who pisses on the carpet at parties and stabs herself in the crotch with crap from the parish gift shop. That act was, like, so 1973.
Franklin takes a spill on the side of the road? Sure thing! Should we laugh when the poor crippled guy in the wheelchair goes ass over tits down a hill and spills a jar of piss all over himself? Of course not. Wait, that’s the same scene. Mom always told me not to laugh at people with physical handicaps but Franklin was fucking asking for it, okay? Who the hell starts poking at a van’s interior with a knife for the hell of it? Who the hell thinks that the best way to find a lost person is to wait for them to find you? Who the hell thinks that a wheelchair will work as well in the woods as it will on pavement? Who exactly had a few things in common with the hitchhiker, such as knives and an interest in slaughterhouses? FRANKLIN! I’m not laughing at Franklin because he was handicapped, I’m laughing at Franklin because he was a fucking dolt. That chainsaw in the chest was long overdue and a welcome relief from the hell they call The Life Of Franklin Hardesty.
I begged my sister to grab her fifteen minutes of fame on decorating television. I wanted to write to the producers of "Clean Sweep" and enclose pictures of Disorderly's disorder. Her junk. Her stuff. They'd never pass up a unique chance to challenge their "organization experts" like this.
Then came kids and a mortgage. A starter home with too many plastic things in primary colors. For years I decided to let the house dictate my style and my style could be summed up with the word "distressed." The distressed style happens when wood is made to or left looking in need. You convince yourself that you love the worn look of many years of neglect. Your furniture screams of your silent acceptance of fate.
After hearing all that great music live, I can safely say, I hate live albums. Inevitably, they never live up to the actual experience of sweat, and pushing bodies, and bass amps in clip. However, certain live versions of songs have been able to transcend the studio version and become something magical.
able to come stay at her house after her exploratory surgery? My older brother would be taking her to the hospital, but she needed someone to stay the night afterwards, to make sure she didn't have any trouble recovering from the anesthesia. I'm not sure why, but she seemed surprised that I was willing to help. On my brothers advice, she had told no one outside of the family. We didn't yet know what it was, and she didn't want the burden of reassuring everyone else who would ask until she knew for certain.
When we arrived, my brother waited in the outpatient loading area while I went in to collect Mom. Mom was groggy and annoyed, and really just wanted to go home and get in her own bed. She was anxious to go, but still too nauseous to get to her feet. I talked with the nurses, who were all relentlessly up beat and cheerful, and who cheerfully gave Mom an IV shot of some sort of anti-nausea drug, then enthusiastically helped her to the bathroom. When we were all satisfied that Mom wouldn't pass out or throw up, the nurses got her unhooked from all the tubes and wires, helped her into her clothes, and put her in a wheelchair.
I suppose Vanuatu sounds familiar to those of you who watch TV. This afternoon, I learned that TV show called “Survivor” did a season here. Though I’ve never watched it, I understand the premise of the show is to dump people somewhere, starve them, make them perform like circus monkeys, and watch them act like asshats, hopefully. 
in the late ‘80s, he might very well still be languishing in semi-loserville waiting for his VH1 special instead of standing astride a thriving musical empire. Zakk is not only a gifted guitarist, he has one of the most unique sounds in all of music, EVER. You can tell Zakk is playing in fewer than 20 seconds. His guitar tone, scale choices, rhythm style and his signature pinch harmonics (that screaming note that permeates his music) all give him away and it’s a good thing. 
#13 Dream Theater - Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory: This is actually my all-time favorite album. However, in the interest of the list, it’s down further than I’m comfortable putting it. In fact, this is such a personal choice, that it’s higher than most people would put it. Most folks would have Queensryche’s Operation: Mindcrime in this spot. However, since Queensryche is, or was, rather, progressive metal, I put DT here because they completely and in every way pwn Queensryche.
Back to RIP … this album is amazing! When it came out, I wore the tape out in about two weeks. I had to record a copy from a friend after that. I tried like mad to try and learn how to play songs off it, but it was too damn complex for me. Still is. I mean, if you have any doubts about Megadeth’s musical abilities, listen to this album, it’s damn near progressive metal. These guys pull no punches in speed or complexity of composition. Of course, when the track calls for it, the lay down some simple riffs also. It’s a matter of taste and Mustaine knows how to write a tasty lick. Can you tell who’s one of my favorite bands?
#10 Judas Priest – British Steel: Another difficult choice because Screaming for Vengeance was very good. But, come on, “Breaking the Law” is on British Steel. What Priest song has had more play and is more influential than that? “Living After Midnight” is also a hell of a song. I kind of hate to admit this, but I’m not that big of a Priest fan. Their influence and musical ability is undeniable, but I’ve always been rather pissed at their production quality. Here you have one of the arguably biggest metal bands ever and their recordings sound like they were recording inside of cardboard boxes. People always tell me, “Well consider the time frame and the equipment they had to work with.” Well, you know what? Screw you! The Ramones, hell The Sex Pistols were recording in the same time frame, with lower budgets and their production quality has always been spot fucking on. Why does this piss me off so much? Because every Judas Priest album up to Painkiller was mixed where Rob Halford’s voice sounding tinny and the guitars sounded ball-less lacking low end. Just think if there was a fullness to the recording … this shit would have stomped any other band around. So, why are they #10 if I bitch about them so much? Because even with the crappy recordings people still sing their shit and they influenced almost every metal band that came after them. 
Were you raised by wolves? After a mere cursory glance at your submission, it was clear that you not only lacked the skills to work at [deleted], but you lack even a rudimentary grasp on what it means to be civilized. And your “gift” has set off a wild chain of legal repercussions that began with an FBI search of our mailroom, followed by the arrest of Manuel [deleted] – our beloved mailboy who simply signed for the package – and has locked up our legal representation for the next six weeks.
While Paul is out of town on business, NC is nosing around in his library, snooping on the top shelf and found a copy of Kama Sutra as well as a mysterious book full of blank pages and one woodcut image of a dragon. Within the dragon's claws is a banner with a single word, "Drakulya". 
Now, I don't want to sound like this book was complete shit. It wasn't. There were moments of enjoyment for me. It started off interestingly enough, but after about 30 pages I got bored. I kept at it, and it snagged me again around page 280. Lost me again at 500. Page 591 gave me a bit of "ooh, that was unexpected" and then immediately I became annoyed because how in the hell does someone who is being held captive by Dracula have the time to type out pages and pages of letters in a day or two? 
watching it at the time. It was poignant and entertaining. But what did we get out of that little story? Mobsters don't like gay guys. And that's about it. I thought that maybe we'd see something more come of it this season, when the family had to come to the rescue when Vito Jr. was being such a little shit (and taking shits in the gym showers). But it looks like that storyline has come to a close, and for what? The little it added to the machine that is The Sopranos makes it obvious that somebody had to fill time in the sixth season.
Ejections seem to be on everyone's mind lately. Here's Bobby Cox one or two away from the all-time record but I can't be precise 'cause he may be tossed between when I transcribe these fever dreams and when you read them. The viral video of the Mississippi Braves' manager Philip Wellman being ejected has been number one with a bullet over the past few days. If you haven't seen it, Google it now! The hand grenade bit is priceless. Just to top it all off, Wellman was the Lookouts' manager for four seasons, the latest being 2003. Nice to see Chattanooga make the news somehow . . . oh yeah, EJECTIONS! Godamighty, Lou Piniella channeled Billy Martin last Saturday, the day after Michael Barrett and Carlos Zambrano fought for the heavyweight championship IN THE CUBS' DUGOUT! You must, must be shitting me. Team falling apart, fights on the bench, hemorrhoids . . . I know! Let's pitch a bitch and kick dirt all over the third base umpire (who looked ready to stomp some old man ass, believe you me). Cubs fans, you get what you deserve. Stay home and don't watch on WGN either. Otherwise, the baseball equivalent of that brutal prison sex that you are on the catching end of will continue with NO lube. Roughly a cool $300 mil was invested over the off-season and it looks like they would've been better served going to Pimlico and trying for the trifecta. Next time just sign the Centobites and save time, huh?
No musical revelations this week. I'm just here to tell you that anyone who writes two pieces as sublime as "Johnny and Mary" and "Looking for Clues" has to be taken seriously. The voice that I heard at the age of six wailing Moon Martin's "Bad Case of Loving You" was unreal. My God, with all the treble being upped by producers of that era (in order to sound better on AM, natch), it literally pinned my ears back. Robert Palmer was a badass when it came to singles and some of his albums also stacked up well. "Riptide", "Pride", and "Clues" were all phenomenal and widely ignored for the most part. His blues album, "Drive", was superb. However, all anyone will remember will be the Power Station singles (and videos, for my era), the Identical Girl videos - "Addicted To Love" and "Simply Irresistible" and "Bad Case of Loving You". Too damn bad for the unwashed. They are the people who only know Warren Zevon from "Werewolves of London". Do yourself a favor - get "Live At The Apollo" (or if the gods smile on you with a copy of "Maybe It's Live") and turn it up pretty loud with some good wine and your Other, ya know, the one that makes you you, completes the puzzle, soothes your soul . . . you get the idea. Anyway, groove out. Robert Palmer's music really said a lot that I didn't understand until I had a lot more scars on my liver and miles on my feet. Fine music for people with mileage . . .
Well according to NBC? Nobody. NBC recorded their lowest numbers EVER for a prime-time slot for the final game of the Stanley Cup finals (EVER, not just for a sports event). That means High Mountain Rangers
1. Get RID of Bettman, for the love of Dog! Get someone who understands hockey, marketing and doesn't have a Napoleon complex.
This was before television, and long before pacemakers, microchips, and oral contraception. Chump. That kind of thinking is what is wrong with 99% of all science fiction books, tv shows, and movies. Granted, a lot of those simply use other worlds or the future as settings for traditional storytelling, so for whatever reason they don't use present day Earth; they aren't intended to predict technological advances so it doesn't matter much that they don't.
Back to that friggin' bicycle, how could it possibly take so much thought to make the wheels similar in size, and especially, closer to the ground? Sure, you give up some speed, but that 'not falling to the ground from great heights' part had to be a motivator. Don't forget the 'being able to get on without a stepladder' part. Eventually, as we know, they trimmed that first wheel down and switched to rear-wheel chain-drive, but it certainly took long enough. Interestingly (I think), it was a pair of bicycle makers that first attained flight, so there were some progressive minds in the bike biz.
We mostly grow two things in this part of Texas, neither of which you eat. Well, not directly anyway. The first is hay. 
One thing you can’t do when you cut this stuff and bale it, you can’t bale it wet. Wet hay will start to decompose, and the temperature of the decaying plant inside the bale will get hot enough to start smoldering and eventually ignite. Farmers down here have an expression for people who cut and bale wet hay, if they see it burning out in a field somewhere. They call them “dumb asses”.
Cleveland again, for the same reason. I thought James would power them through. Well, both times, it worked out for me. James was not spectacular in every game against the Pistons, but he was good enough to get the Cavs into the Finals. In particular, he was ridiculously good in Game 5, which involved him scoring 29 of Cleveland's final 30 points. And the last 25 points, including every point in the two overtimes. Further, he did it with some amazing shots and plays, and a couple of monster dunks. Think about that for a minute. 29 out of the final 30. That's ridiculous.
Yet, I can't shake the feeling that Cleveland might prove surprising. Over at TrueHoop, Henry Abbott took a look at every single possession by James against the Spurs in the two regular season games between the two teams, and he found that the Spurs simply were unable to effectively guard James. In fact, James was able to get to the rim multiple times, despite the fact that normally that's a tough proposition with Duncan clogging the middle. Hell, there was one particular play in which James dunked right over Duncan, which has to leave you wondering what he might do during this series.
First up for discussion is Alabama Thunderpussy’s latest, Open Fire (Relapse Records). Gotta hand it to these guys, it’s a freakin’ corker. I’ve always liked them, and I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t heard the last few albums, so I don’t know exactly when the shift from southern boogie-tinged stoner rock to full-on raging Metal came, but it’s a damn fine fit. (You’d think the half-naked barbarian dude on the cover with blood-drenched mace and sword while knee-deep in hectic slaughter would’ve tipped me off. I can be thick like that.) No one really gets psyched when a band they like replaces a singer, but new guy Kyle Thomas belts it out like a champ. There’s still some southern flavor, but the thrash ‘n groove of these tunes smacks you around the way all good Metal should, sans cheese. It’s a mighty enough record that the Frazetta-style painting kinda makes sense after a spin or two. Songs about greed, valor, distrust…and I can pretty much guarantee “Whiskey War” will be stuck in my head for the rest of the summer. Kudos to guitarist Erik Larson for leaving Avail to devote his full attention to this first-class outfit. (Finding an Avail fan over 15 is a tough task, like trying to find any relevance about Paris Hilton.)
From there we’ll head down the pike to one of the boners sitting in this stack o’ wax in front of me. It actually hurts a little to put this on after the Morgen LP. I got suckered into this Crippled Black Phoenix 10” (Invada Records) by three things: pretty snazzy name, the pedigree of the folks involved (members of Electric Wizard and Mogwai?), and the fact the announcement of its arrival screamed “limited to 500 copies!” Well, crap, I better jump on that before it’s gone! If I don’t act now, I’ll probably never be able to find it for less than 50 bucks someday! 
For the real deal, you’re gonna have to get ahold of Altar (Southern Lord), the sunnO)))/Boris collaboration. (And then bust out the candles and mushrooms.) A pretty unique experience that blends elements of both bands while not really sounding like either, it’s most definitely not for everyone. Tones and sounds shift and phase and rumble, creating an atmosphere of dread like few things I’ve heard before. It’s sure as hell not catchy, you won’t hear “hooks”...a lot of people probably wouldn’t even call it music. Those people can kiss my ass. The open-minded, those open to the sheer possibility of sound, will get it. Now…the track that stands out for me in this creepy sonic nightmare (a good thing, don’t misunderstand) goes by the name of “The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)”. Unexpectedly, it’s sung by Jesse Sykes, a fine artist in her own right, but leaning more towards the country side of things, kinda surprised to find her here. The song’s a melancholy dirge, and beautiful and haunting in a way I can’t even really begin to describe. The first time I heard it, it captured me in a way few things have recently. Maybe I just can’t resist the Boris folks’ quietly controlled electric guitar strumming, maybe it’s the way Stephen O’Malley taps the piano keys at the end less and less until there’s finally silence, or maybe I’m still thinking about a recent death that was due to truly shitty circumstances, I don’t know. Fuck. All I know is I’m borderline obsessed with this song and I’ve listened to it almost every night since I got Altar.
At some point since then he became a big ol’ born again Christian. Which, according to common knowledge, usually means if you’re a musician your recorded work is about to become the equivalent of aural feces. I’ve seen that Jebus-rock infomercial that says millions of young folks actually want that in their ears. I’d rather have a sharp dagger in mine, thanks. But wait…I mean, I have that Victor Griffin solo album that’s not bad at all, especially for a bunch of demos. Well, hell, I’ll check out Love Through Blood. 
Recordings). Whether you’ve found them silly or scary, too extreme or just flat-out powerful, Slayer has always been a ballsy band, and they must be carting them bad boys around in wheelbarrows these days. If you’re putting out 10 songs and most of them point the finger at religion as pointless mythology that starts wars, not to mention possibly dragging the human race kicking and screaming right to the doorstep of the apocalypse, you’d better be prepared to catch some shit from a few people. Tack on the front of it a painting of a banged-up armless Jesus with an eye patch knee deep in blood, and you’ve got a product that would probably bunch up Tipper Gore’s panties more than anything Slayer did 20 years ago, when the general public thought a band like this was coming straight to eat your babies. Don’t worry that Slayer are concentrating on Christianity, though, as all faiths make it into their crosshairs. From “Cult”: Religion is hate / religion is fear / religion is war / Religion is rape / religion’s obscene / religion’s a whore.” Who else would make an anti-war album (and that is the big picture here, make no mistake) that so single-mindedly identifies one of the causes and then hunts it down so relentlessly, regardless of who’s offended? U2, in-between ipod commercials?
Soon enough, I wound up back in jail because I had no money to pay the fines for all of this bad behavior. I’m sure a lot of unfortunate stories start this way, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, but I was just a naive young stripling and had no idea of how the world really worked. Anyway, I served my jail sentence and they let me back out into the cruel world of the Imperial City in much the same condition as I was in when I was busted. I was idling around the Market District one day, since I had nothing better to do, when a strange person approached me and told me to be at a certain place in the harbor around midnight. Since I had no parents or responsible guardians, hell, since I had no childhood at all as far as I could remember, it didn’t seem like such a bad idea to go off in the wee hours of the night and hang around the harbor, so I did just that. And that’s what led me eventually to the sorry state you see me in now. 
Then one night I came across this homeless guy sleeping near the harbor. I don’t know why, but I had this strange urge, like an itch. So I bit the guy, and while I didn’t feel quite as strong afterward, I certainly felt a lot better. Moreover, I looked almost normal again and people would talk to me. That was when I began to understand what had happened and that was when I began to lose control. 
Amazingly though, I didn’t take a trip to the zoo. What I did do, and what I need to do more right now, was sat on my couch, with a beer at my side, and a book in my hand, and listened to cds. We all have those songs that always make us feel better, those artists we turn to at the pivotal moments of our lives, and in my lowest moment, music kept me sane. It may have seemed like my world was caving in around me, but in those moments in the buggy twilight, the soundtrack I made for myself showed me the other side.
And maybe that was more of a coincidence than I ever realized, because each of those records are about change, and about searching. And each of those records held up a piece of my heart for me until I could hold it up on my own again.
This has been a pretty crazy couple of weeks in my house. It all started 2 weeks ago when my husband traveled to PA to pick up some fireworks to bring to our Annual 4th of July Party that we have in New Hampshire. He has gone to PA for the past few years to get these fireworks, brought them back to NY until we go to NH for the holiday. Well, this year was a little different. This year he was followed from PA straight into NY where he was pulled over and arrested and charged with the Possession of Fireworks. You see, it is illegal to transport/posses fireworks in the state of New York. This of course is something that we all know but never really thought that we would get in trouble for it. Well, after spending the night in jail, completely horrified by what he encountered there (and he was just in the holding cell all night), and now having to deal with court appearances, we will not be bringing fireworks to NH this year - or any other year for that matter! We did not tell our son that Daddy was in jail, although he did ask where Daddy was when he didn't come home. "Daddy's car broke down and Mommy has to go get him..." He's 5 so this worked fine...and when the fireworks didn't come home with Daddy we just said that we would buy them in New Hampshire. We decided not to tell our son about the jail thing because we knew he would have been scared and upset. Either that or he would have laughed in his fathers face which probably would have been worse!
The next movie I picked up, which was the first one I actually watched on Saturday, was the remake of The Omen. Most of what I’d heard about that movie was fairly positive, and I have to say they did an alright job. It was a pretty faithful remake… and hey, on that topic, what is it with us and remakes? Most people have some kind of complicated views about them, or at least, I can’t figure out the logic behind my own view. If the remake is too different, then they weren’t faithful to the original and the work suffers. If the remake is too similar, people wonder what the point was of remaking the damn thing to begin with (money of course, but people still wonder about it). Remakes really are a mixed blessing. If it wasn’t for remakes there would be a lot less horror movies coming out, but at the same time, a lot of those remakes suck. What to do?
And nothing is for no reason either! When I realized that we couldn’t watch The Beyond, I started looking for something else. I was just about to mention Wolf Creek to my wife when she came across a horror classic on TV that was just about to start. One that I’d never seen in its entirety and had always felt like a bit of a goof for missing.
1 rack of lamb (about 8 chops), frenched* and trimmed of all fat
Dream Theater
Walking back from the pool, it was as dark as twilight, even though it was only late afternoon. I hurried, trying to stay out of open spaces and under the trees. The insects droned on, and in the far distance there were flickers, followed at some length by a subdued boom. The air was filled with the smell of the approaching storm. As I understand it, the smell comes from ozone, created by the masses of charged particles colliding and interacting as the cloud's masses of hot and cold air slide into each other. If you have ever smelled it, you know exactly what it is like. If you haven't, try pouring water on the sidewalk on some hot, sunny day, and you'll come close. Or you can try a sharp blow to the face, which seems to induce a similar smell for me at least. Hot sidewalk is without a doubt the less painful way to experience it, if you can't manage a trip to the mid-Atlantic or the South during summer.
The cigs well, they just aren’t around anymore. No smoke to wake up with over a cup of coffee. Coffee’s not even the same. The whole mood is wrong. The scent is off, taste, everything. This morning I tried something called teasan, flavored with some African rubber tree bark, or something like that. It was red and smelled like this medicine I was forced to gag down when I was 5 and got pinworms. Some things just stick with you, kicking you in the teeth when you’re down, decades later, I guess.
I’ve grown up a lot in ways I like. Responsibility, ambition. Spiritually, I feel closer to my center than I have in a long time, and being an adult is actually kind of fun.
When I first started thinking about how to go about compiling the list, I thought I’d just narrow down my top 25 and put them “in no particular order.” Though, I guess that’s kind of cheating. So, I have decided to commit to a list. My criteria were threefold: What did this album mean to metal? What did this album mean to me? Did it really rock?
#22: Anthrax - Among the Living: Anthrax is a mainstay metal band to this day (in fact, they are back to their original lineup). It is unfortunate that their chosen name became controversial in recent years, but they have always stomped. And that is the best description of Anthrax’s tunes – music to stomp by.
#16 Danzig - Danzig: Again a somewhat personal choice. There are plenty of bands from this era that had a similar sound to Danzig’s blues-based metal (though his sound has changed in recent years). But Glenn Danzig is important to metal primarily because of his punk band The Misfits. Their sound significantly impacted many of the early ‘80s LA metal bands – Metallica primarily.
But that's cool. Not too many places in the world anymore you can see stuff like that, and that's part of what makes me proud of this state. But some of the stereotypes, they're harmful. For instance, just last week, I opened up the latest offering from Travis's column. I always look forward to reading Travis's stuff. The guy's fucking hilarious. So I was a bit dismayed to read this quote at the end of the first paragraph: “And you fucking assholes in Texas can eat a sugar frosting flavored fuck off the end of my dick, 'Everything’s bigger in Texas,' yeah like assholes and retardation.”
Actor, Writer, Director, Musician and Voice-over for Animation. All of these describe Weird Al Yankovic. From his debut of "My Bologna" (parodying The Knack's My Sharona) on The Dr. Demento show all the way through 3 decades of parody music to "White & Nerdy" in 2006, Weird Al has not let age, music shifts, or fashion slow him down in his pursuit to become the most famous nerd in history.
4. Katie Holmes is keeping up her T.G.I.F. snacks on the set of her new movie...this week it was sno-cones! For the past few weeks she has been bringing treats to the more than 200 workers on the set. So far we have seen reports of pizza, cupcakes, Coke floats and now sno-cones! Let's make some guesses in the comments on what could be next!
But then he said something that frightened me.
So I was a bit trepidatious when I picked up RJD2's newest album "The Third Hand". I waited 3 or 4 days after buying it before I even took it out of the shrink-wrap. Shit, RJD2 is the last hip-hop DJ I can count on, and I really didn't want to see him destroy his style because he "didn't have the resources to clear so many minute samples." I understand the logic behind it, but still...
This is an autobiography. But there's more to it. It's charming and self-deprecating, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading every word—and by every word I mean every single word. See, I'm that person who actually looks on that one page with all the publishing info and Library of Congress filing position. To my surprise I found a not only a Kinsey scale pinpointing how straight/gay Eggers is but also other little informational tidbits. 
How does a person laugh at cancer? Or laugh at a friend who took a header off a balcony and ends up brain damaged? Or write that your own brother stinks like pee and you're worried that he's gonna be that kid in school who wreaks? Who decides that sending out a press release that Adam Rich, star of the old show Eight is Enough, is dead? Well, that would be Dave Eggers, the fella who thought that writing his life's story at age 29 was a good idea. Turns out he was dead on. 
One explanation for this might be informed by a trip to the Bark Park. For the uninitiated, a Bark Park is a designated place you can take your dog, ostensibly to play with other dogs. In reality, it more resembles a giant outdoor butt-sniffing and humping canine orgy extravaganza. Bark Parks are rife with “mounting.” “Mounting” is something dogs do to demonstrate their dominance over other dogs. I believe the compulsion that Americans feel within five minutes of meeting someone at a party, to ask, “What do you do for a living?” is a form of verbal “mounting.” Happy Hour at Yard House = Human Bark Park. 
So, you and Chuck would look at each other and think that maybe Burt understood the spirit of the conversation and you had been a little hasty in your judgment of him and say, “Yeah…Chuck did.” 
You can help us in a couple of ways:
Solid defense? Haven’t seen them yet.
The NL West is the WWE cage match of baseball, with three teams within a game of one another and no one leaves unbloodied. Arizona, San Diego, and Los Angeles in three-way King of the Ring and winner take all. Speaking of cage matches - if you have never seen the Undertaker/Mick Foley Hell In The Cell cage match at King of the Ring 1998, do it now and understand the primal draw that is pro wrestling. Growing up in the South, I never had any idea the rest of y'all were the great unwashed when it came to rasslin'. Man I tell ya when I was a kid I thought Rome, Georgia was the center of the universe because, by God, every Saturday night down there, IT WAS ON. Andre the Giant; the Anderson brothers; Dusty Rhodes, the American Dream; and the one and only Natureboy, Ric Flair. WHOOO! Wrestling was more real than the chair I am sitting on right now and my father and I bonded over wrestling better than any bullshit Dr. Phucking Phil could have suggested. Another thing where what you "know", what you may have been "taught" is wrong. Play your instincts and go with your first answer. That's the secret of "testing well", a useless skill I'm quite accomplished at . . . Enjoy rasslin' or roller derby or, in my case, Arena Football and to hell with the infidels . . .
More Nada Surf. More Hellacopters. More Robert Fucking Palmer, who will be a large part of next week's column. Less packaged horseshit. Hell, I don't care if you like Alabama, as long as you mean it. Death to poseurs and scenesters. Power to the people and kick out the jams, brothers and sisters. Listen to the MC5 now and bring me the head of Ryan Seacrest . . .