The reason for this feud is that when my predecessor at the projector died, the job was promised to the husband of one of the babushkas in the cafeteria. The day I got here she was the one to serve me my first meal. That day they had some wonderful Polish foods as they sometimes still do. I was rather tired and hungry from the long train from near Warsaw. I kept trying to point to the pirogies and galumpki, but she kept pushing this plate of rancid beet salad and boiled turnip into my hands. At first I thought it was one of those cute foreign misunderstandings. But I soon learned not to stand in line when she was ladeling out the food. I can understand how she felt though I mean, all of a sudden I show up, a walking where-are-they-now for Poland, and took this job and the extra food right out of their mouths. But the party bosses had to put me to productive work somehow, to get me out of their hair. After all, I was a potential embarrassment once they found out the real story behind my defection. If that had ever come out I suppose I would have been deported to Cuba or something, and I really hate the heat. In the beginning I really dug being a national hero and all, and even if I do not have one drop of Polish blood in me they dug me too. After all this was before all that trouble with that Welenca fellow, and somehow I suppose I made Poland feel like they were playing with the big boys. After a time, the novelty wore off, and nobody was coming to the rallies to hear me speak about the evils of capitalism. So, understandably, it got pretty expensive to keep me in my villa. I don't know what I was expecting. And like I said, once they found out,we all realized it would be better if they stuck me in a nowhere job so everyone would forget about me as quickly as possible. At the time I really didn't want to be forgotten, But I knew it was for the best.
I'm quite surprised that you found me here. And I am even more surprised that that anyone actually remembered about me at all. I know when I defected it was a pretty big deal, but it has been over forty years and like I have said, I have had to keep a low profile for quite a few years now. I don't even go to town much anymore. Oh, at first I did. But I was much younger when I first came here, and still very much used to being then center of attention. Evenings, even though I did not really want to have to deal with a waitress, I would go and sit in a pub. And drink Radegast (the only cold drink around is the beer) and bask in the innocent wide doeeyed stares of all the locals slamming back beer and frnet after the end of their shift. Sometimes, they would come up to me and speak in broken English how they had heard my last speech on their crystal set at home or how they admired me for being brave bigboy in the world, but most people ask me why I had come to Osswhiem to live (with a declarative point at the sawdust and puke floor) because here, we make nothing. I always thought it was funny how they never said a word about what they really thought of America or what I had done or the party. Mostly they talked at me because they thought I was still a linchpin in the machinery. Then people started to believe the roumours about stealing the job, and about how I lived in the projection booth and not some posh government apartment and so they stopped their tentative good days and Nastrovias. And in time they, especially those related to the cafeteria ladies, started to stare at me with disgust.
So I fell from grace with the townsfolk and I actually felt bad about it. I still had a sort of decaying celebrity, I even replaced the town fool in stature. But now I hated being known for all those things that I couldn't even explain if I wanted to. So I would walk into town, past all the cemeteries, and go into the only Pramen open after five. I would buy a sack full of Radegast or Pilsner Urquell, when they had it, and walk back to my room depressed with all the dust on my clothes and all the burnt tasting air in my throat, which somehow is more burnt at dusk. I would sit and drink and look out the small window on the theater and sometimes I would sit in the theater and try to forget by thinking about some new film I could make if only I had the camera or by just trying to remember how to speak my atrophied English. I would wish that I hadn't gotten so spooked, all they could have done was sent me to prison, and they probably wouldn't have done even that. After all I hadn't done anything wrong. That was the point. They were really going after me because of what happened between me and Roy. And only Roy knew about it. He fabricated all this evidence that I was a communist and there was nothing I could do. I knew that if it came up that he was a homosexual nobody would believe me, and, even worse, it would come out about me too, and believe it or not, somehow back then, being a red wasn't nearly as horrible.
Roy was my first and one of the very few. Of course in fifth grade I was in love with Billy Baxendale but didn't know it then. We had a secret club in behind the old Agway warehouse by the traintracks. Our club was originally a hobo camp and we would sneak out there and watch the bums drink from tincans and get loud and talk and sometimes punch each other but mostly they would talk about women they had been with and special things they had done together. So Billy and I would lie on our stomachs in the tall grass listening and our young bodies tightening up and we didn't really know why. Then one day they were all gone. And we only ever saw one more hobo ever again. All they left was one old boot with a bite taken from the toe, all the tincans, and their tarpaper shacks and tunnelhomes. So Billy and I had a secret club in the tunnels and shacks and we would take our clothes off and talk about girls and look at each other and bang rocks together and smear the sandy redclaydirt on each others bodies in a mock Indian spiritual ceremony. We were really just curious about each other. And we never talked about our club to anyone else or each other. But we would just both end up in that hole together each afternoon deep into the early frosty days of October. Until the last hobo showed up and caught us and tried to grab us and the callouses on his hands burning the skin underneath my twisting arm and the sweet grandfatherly smell of urine and liquor. I started going back to that place a week later. Billy never showed up. so I would sit naked and alone in the earth feeling sad and empty and cold and not knowing that he was never coming back. Not understanding why the only person who was as curious as me wouldn't even be on my team in phys ed. class, and why did he punch me that day that I asked him to come over to my house to play checkers? My nose bled almost until dinnertime, but I only cried alone at night in the dark. And the next day in the yellow sunshine shafts in a tarpaper shack out behind the Agway warehouse, by the traintracks.
Roy was my first relationship . Thinking back I realize what a scumbag he was for pushing it along, for forcing it on me before I really knew. I was only fourteen for chrissake. He was at least ten years my senior and ugly as hell, but the only one of the group that would play with me. Everyone else gave me advice and council and I am happy that they did, or I would probably still not know. And I would be getting a golden spindle watch fob for my retirement from northeastern textiles, Inc., Fall River Mass. After forty years of trudging back and forth from my dingy brown and yellow tenement and my miserable manly wife who henpecked me into a simpering little old queen, too timid to even reach down and relieve myself in the privacy of my own third floor tenement bathroom.
But with five words and a marijuana cigarette he showed me who I really was. Lying on the beach, after spending the night before together, touching, but fully clothed, he said those five words. and reached over and put his tongue in my mouth and worked at my groin. I had not been kissed like that since I was very young and the sand on his palm burned. His words were my mantra throughout the whole horribly disgustingly liberating experience. 'TRY IT, DON'T DENY IT' And as guilty as I felt that he paraded the fact that he 'got my cherry' to everyone else and I was in a way proud that I was finally one of them. And we lived together for almost two years out there on the fingernail of the little pinky of Massachusetts, Cape Cod.
Those first two years in Provencetown were wonderful in a way because I finally knew, and because I was learning wonderful little things that you couldn't find in books. But at the same time I lived under a perrienneal cloud of unease, I hadn't realized it yet, but I was not really in love with him, he was just the first person that I had slept with. And we all fall for the first person we sleep with. Perhaps the thing that made me feel even worse was that in our little colony we were the only non-artitsts. I thought they treated us differently because of it. There was always one more thing to do that would make me whole, always one more thing that kept me separate from the people that I admired the most in my fifteen year old world. So I tried to write. Roy didn't like that at all. He said that I shouldn't be concerned with what they thought, I had him after all, and I loved him with all my heart and soul, and one day we could leave and live in that real world again and it wouldn't matter what those assholes thought about us because we would live as father and son, very special father, and I was his little boy forever and ever. And things would be all right as soon as he stopped taking all those pills and got his act together, yes we could go out into the real world and we would be rich. He wanted to adopt me. And everything would be alright as soon as I quit with that damn typewriter and come in here and shutup. Shutup. This will shut you up. And again I would sit naked and alone (in most ways) And I never really understood for a long time that I hated him. All I knew was that it would be alright.
Meanwhile, Everyone else took me under a collective wing in their own special ways. They started to teach me as if I were the child-king of their own little art world. They were all artists, painters and writers, photographers and sculptors. And together, they gave me a movie camera for my sixteenth birthday. That was 1943 and I made my first movie about him. I had intended it to be a private thing for him and me, I had wanted to do something nice for him to interrupt our cycle of fighting and sex. By this time I was losing a little of my innocence. I was slowly realizing that things with Roy were not the way that they should be. We both knew that things were deteriorating, but we both tried to ignore it and live like we always had. Roy was on the other end of the stick now that I was not the fawning little boy that I once was and I came and went as I pleased and I was learning that not everybody lived like we did. Meanwhile he was stopping with the pills and getting his act together enough to take a job with a high prestige firm in New York city. 'Now it will happen' he said. But I told him no, and he never forgave me. I even left town and went down to Pleasant bay in Chatham to stay with someone's grandmother in a little cottage nestled among the fir trees and beach plum bushes, as he tore up everything in our house and tried to set it on fire with one of those huge cigars that he used to smoke underneath that turkey wattle nose of his. And the film did not survive, as I know that it was the primary fuel for his anger. Despite all my concious efforts it just did not make a very flattering film.
Roy finally left town and I moved in with a playwright and together we made films. We were never very well known outside of the fledgling artfilm world of the nineteen forties. But I was prominent enough for Roy to keep tabs on me and wait. He knew it was coming. But he couldn't have wished a worse fate upon me. I have always thought that it was rather Ironic that I ended up here alone and forgotten, and he is moldering in an aids infested hole eaten by worms. And he rots, and I rot running this film ten times a day, every day, and without even a drink of cold water. And I have asked for an airconditioning machine, believe me! But they say that would not be appropriate and shoo me out of the office and I have to walk down the gravel path in the dust and the burning morning air to fill my Luke warm demijohns and get to work. My job is not really all that bad. I mean I don't want to be morbid or anything but I have seen the film in so many times that it really does not effect me any more. Even the first time I saw it it was not so bad. They do not really even show any real suffering. It was shot by the Russians when the camp was liberated. It shows all the survivors. Sure it tells about the things that went on, but it is only a film for goddsake. Not that I am a sadist or anything but they make this big deal about children under that age of thirteen seeing the film, which doesn't show anything that bad at all, but then kids can walk through and see the piles of confiscated prosthetic devices? And the blankets made from human hair? And the candles? The pictures they have on display are much worse than anything that they show in the film. The pictures are the real thing. The last time I was actually inside I saw one picture of a little girl that still gives me nightsweats. That was about five years ago. What bothers me even more is the fact that they really don't care about the appearance of this place, they mow the lawn once a year and certainly don't care about litter. People stroll around the place with doublescoop cones of lody and drop wrappers, napkins and all sorts of just plain garbage all over. And it sits there. Or it did until after the revolution when Israel started to send these groups of survivors over to clean once every two months or so. My God! Think about it, these crumpled old men and women who were forced to tidy the place as part of their slave labor assignments come back of their own free will to keep it clean? It goes without saying that it is very sad. But, at least they don't care about the grass either.
I clean the auditorium. Tanja, the woman downstairs, is supposed to clean in between ticket taking and enforcing the thirteen and under rule. But she doesn't. She stands in the lobby and tries to flirt with the boys who sell the tickets in their window, near the poster of St. Maximilian Colby. It is rather sad seeing her try to pick these kids up. They are all very young, and she is old. like me. Although, truth be told, I haven't seen many of those boys that I would not mind having a crack at, but then again I have not touched a man in over twenty five years and to start again would only ruin me. So at the end of the day after Tanja has gone home and the pavilion is locked up, and I have choked down one more meal at the cafeteria, I clean. There really isn't really much mess in the theater itself, it is not like they sell popcorn or snowcaps or anything, but there are usually a lot of wadded up Kleenexes, maybe some ticketstubs and cigarette butts. But this just proves that they all hate the foreigner, think about it, they cannot get me an airconditioning machine because that would not be appropriate, and the garbage would just pile around the feet of the viewers if it wasn't for my embarrassment? Sometimes I think that this place is screwed up. It bothers me that people actually want to work here. I was forced into it, and now I cannot leave. They grow up in this town dreaming how great it would be to work here instead of the cement factory or whatever that is on the other side of town. They end up here by luck, I ended up here by hard luck.
I don't think anyone in the real world knows the true story of my defection. It wasn't something that I planned out. When I was called up to the HUAC investigation I had no Idea why. I was running with a fairly wild crowd, but none of us actually cared anything about politics, and I didn't even know what communism was, nevermind being able to quote Marx. I thought that it was all some part of an elaborate joke on me, and when I realized that indeed I was in the government's hands, I did not think for a minute that I was in any sort of real trouble. That is until I was led in and sat down in front of the committee and saw him sitting there right to the left of ol' senator Joe Mcarthy. That simpering little queen gave me one of those bitchy fag smiles that only a fag can give, hiding behind a three piece suit (not the lace and brocade that I was used to my dear) and a nameplate that read simply, Mr. Cohn Esq.
And I was just a kid, so they browbeat me and duped me into sounding like I was the great grandson of Frederick Engles. I knew what was happening but there was nothing I could do. So that night I went out for a walk, on what I was convinced would be my last night as a free man, and as luck would have it, I walked right by the Turkish embassy. On impulse I ran in when I saw the red field of their flag, I ran inside and started raving about political asylum. The Turks were terrified of me, who had ever heard of someone defecting to Turkey? Someone recognized me and they wanted to wash their hands of me as soon as possible. I think that they were holding something against Poland, I think it was something about losing the big badminton match to Poland in the intra-embassy sports league. In any case, they pawned me off on Poland. By the time I was safe inside the Polish embassy, it was already an international incident. The people from our government in my face, from their government in my ears and slipping me notes, and every body kept asking me about the Turkish connection. I was so confused and scared that when the Poles said 'lets go' I was actually happy that I would never see the states again.
Now, I am not so sure. I would go back to see the dunes of the Cape again. I loved the place. I remember when I was little I had a little superman cape that my grandmother made out of some old rags. I would wear that cape on the beach and hide in the rocks of the jetties and throw stones at the seagulls when it became too cold for my tiny body to go swimming. And the smell of the salt marsh behind my house. I think I miss that the most of all. But I understand that it is different now. That there are no empty lots left anymore, and downtown Hyannis sounds a lot like the new section of Krackow. No longer is it a place for getting by on fish and family farm or artistic trade, but a place infested with things I do not understand like miniature golf and these things called condominium. At least I can still remember it like I knew it. It was too late for my folks to even have those memories when they got old. They just kept getting pushed south and west to get away from it all until they were squeezed right off of the cape and died with out a place to even call a place of their own.
It was sad, but understandable that my father's death really didn't affect me all that much. It probably would have broken me up more if it hadn't been such a short time after I came here. I knew that what had happened to me was such an embarrassing mess for him. He probably preferred to be dead than have people connect him to that no good Polack red. I really hurt him. I didn't mean to, but I had no choice. And He lay bleeding in the snow on President Ave with out even the dignity of his arm. I can see him now bleeding and shocked and scared but not asking for help, and calmly sitting, not even being smart enough to know that he was going to die. I can't blame anyone for laughing when he died though. Even I couldn't help but get a twisted kick out of it. He was run over by one of the trolley trams that used to shuttle the textile workers from their ethnic slum to the factory and back. Six days later was to be the last day the trolleys were going to run. The second main concern for their extinction was safety concerns. They didn't even have enough money to buy him a grave stone, so he is in an unmarked paupers grave somewhere in Fall River. At the time I could afford a headstone, and actually had one made for him, but the U.S. government wouldn't even accept it. I guess the wounds were just too fresh, so I planted it in the garden behind my villa, right next to where I expected to be buried, where I thought I had a place to call home. I used to go out there and apologize and talk to that stone but I can't go there anymore. It's a private farm now.
I often wonder what happened to the headstone. These people are among the most pious in the world, and here is this poor guy, with his very own plot of land for the first time in his life, and smack dab in the center is a grave plot. All I can picture is this guy plowing around the headstone until he dies, never realizing that there isn't even a hole under there. I don't know where they will bury me when I die. I'll probably get the paupers funeral here: cremation and a ceremonial wash down a drainpipe somewhere. Heh, Yeah, cremation. That certainly is the way to go. There is that pond two kilometers from here. It is still grey from ash and nothing but ragweed grows anywhere near it. I know. I have seen it. I almost wish that I was a rich pole. I see their funerals sometimes when I walk into town to buy my weeks supply of Slivoce and beer. It is wonderful sad. Like nothing anyone in my family has ever had. It is beautiful in the cemeteries, miles and miles of them, and everyone in the town shows up, and nobody says a word as they wind back and forth among the tombstones and the three priests attending to the funeral wear hats with tame ravens perched right up on top next to the black pom-pom. This I have seen too. Many times. I am sorry if I seem like I am obsessed with death. I'm not really. But that is all that there is around here, and I get very lonely up there lying on my cot without anybody, looking at the Truro light, listening to the film, petting my cats.
I actually did sort of try to have a relationship with this Gypsy girl once. Her name was Katerina and worked in the public restrooms downstairs cleaning up and collecting the five zloty fee for using a stall, three zlotys for the Uryna in the men's room. We started being friends when I was about forty five and she was just a sweet little eighteen. We ended up sharing a table in the cafeteria mostly because nobody else would let us sit at their tables as they joked and laughed a little too loud and I would teach her words in English. She learned slowly but I knew that she had a good heart because she would always smile at the babushkas behind the counter even when we both knew that they were spitting in our mashed brambors and yams. It never really worked out though. We would spend a lot of time together when we could actually talk a little, and for the first time in a long time I was not really lonely. I also thought that I was attracted to this hairy dark skinned Gypsy. She always smelled of musk and smoke, and I remember that first night that we went on a walk together. I remember that it was a red moon from the factory across the town and we could see each other in the light. Neither of us had anyplace we could go to so she led me to that other, bigger camp two kilometers from here. We climbed over the small fence by the traintracks, there was not any barbed wire left there, and we played hide and seek in the chimney forest left when most of the barracks were burned down. Later we lay down in the ragweed by the grey pond and we listened to the evening hymns from the on-ground convent bouncing over those dry fields. I can't remember who kissed who first, but it was in the barrack for the division that worked hauling the bodies in and out of the ovens. She lay me down on one of those plywood bunks that accommodated six, and even though the straw had long since rotted into the dirt on the floor, the bunk cradled us. She gave me my first kitten when she left. But even still she didn't love me like she thought, she probably loved me like I loved Roy. And I couldn't love her after the shock of what it really felt like to be with a woman. I expected it to be sweet and loving and gentle. And tender. But she was worse than a man and I quickly found myself vomiting in the bushes outside from what she made me do, the second time I lost my virginity.
So she went away. She left shortly one of the no airconditioning people saw her leaving my room in the morning. I was the only one that was allowed to actually live in the pavilion. I have to admit though, I did not feel as bad as I should have when she went away. She really clung to me and, like I said, all the love I had for her ended the first time she pressed that gaping hole of hers against mine and moved my tongue around inside. I was actually glad to be alone again, trying to be a human being again after so long was too difficult, and, after all, she gave me the kitten.
I named her Mengle, and she had kittens in the spring. I kept Himmler and Rommell, and set the rest of the litter free. Of the three only Himmler is still alive, being the only male cat that I keep around, he is the father, grandfather and uncle to each and every little girl I have. They love me and I love them back, as much love as I am capable of at this point in my life. I buy cream and tunafish for all of them when I see it, but mostly they eat horseflesh left over from a glue factory in Krackow that I visit every Sunday. I do not really break the law to get it, after all this is a free market now, but I still get a rush trading zlotys for that burlap sack in behind the rancid dumpsters. My cats do not seem to mind the heat, and have fun playing in the shadows cast by the lightbulbs and reels. They all get used to the bells after they have been around for a while. The no airconditioning people say that my room stinks, but I don't mind, I am used to it. There is no such thing as kitty litter here and newspaper treats us just fine. Himmler is getting old, and has been slowing down considerably in the past few years. I think in the next litter I will pick out a boy or two to keep. But then again, I am sick from living here and breathing all the brown coal smoke for all these years. I think that I have been slowing down over the past few years too. No, I think that I will stay here. There is no point in me going back or telling anyone my story. I still defected, and I don't think anyone would ever forgive me even if they knew where I have ended up. I will always remember everything that has happened to me, because not all that much has. And after all, as much as I bitch about getting an air conditioning machine, i do productive work and I do live in the only room in the complex that stays warm enough for no shoes or mittens in the winter.
--Matt Lowe
I turned from him with a mug in each hand, ignoring the sparse greetings from the people who felt as if they should say hello. Jan was sitting at the right hand side of the bar. My nightly seat was to her left, and I was mildly surprised to see that it was still empty. I slid down onto my seat (have you ever noticed how magical the height of a barstool is?) and passed her beer over. After being with Jan for three months that horrid threshold between affection and love had just been crossed, and I hated myself for letting it happen.
"You are no good for me, you know that don't you?" I said just before I gagged on my first slug. Fifty-cent drafts always tasted of soap and plastic, and never failed to turn my stomach a little.
"Yes, I know," she said with that flat tone that makes you think that they don't care at all. And for all the torment that she could think up, I still loved her. She was a goddess. A goddess that had the most beautiful legs. She never hid them behind stockings, they always lay naked beneath her mid-length skirts. But it was not how she looked that held me, it was the way she moved, with a fluid determined manner, yet with a child like quality because of that layer of alcoholic fat that she had like so many of us. And even after sitting there night after night, and the inevitable fight back at our room, she would always come to bed with me. I needed that.
Neither of us had much to say to each other while sober, so I turned to the bar and watched myself drink about five mugs through my reflection in between bottles of Baily's Irish Creme, and some hellish rotgut whiskey named "Old Overholt." Both bottles were perpetually dusty.
By the time that I had something worthwhile to say, She was talking to some wiseass student from the art school around the corner. He was better looking than the usual ponytail/shaved head bunch, which served to piss me off more. Jan had a way with my emotions, and she loved to play games with me. I don't know, I suppose we both needed these little flirtations. She boosted her middle age self image by making college boys hot, and I guess it made my thirty six year old self feel better than them when we would leave together. But then it was an insult that slid down my soul like a razor, I was never sure if this time she was serious. She did this every night. And her real motivation was making me mad, if you keep someone on a rollercoaster, they never get bored I guess. I spun away from her with a slam of my empty mug. I turned to the only reliable things I knew, liquor, and Paddy. I called him over. "Two more?" he was almost whispering.
"And three shots," I guess my anger had seeped out of my face, and it seemed like Paddy thought I was pissed at him. That made me feel bad. It had never come out like that, I usually was pretty good about keeping it in. Well, I guess he must have felt some kind of real affection for me. Or maybe it was the fact that I was such a reliable source of income. In any case, he returned as fast as his hunched body felt like going. In penance, I handed him my last ten spot, and told him to keep the change. I still had enough money for a few more drinks, and a pickled egg, and plenty of booze at home. Paddy smiled through his white moustache and said with a chuckle:
"Women."
I slid Jan her refilled beer and a shot. I still don't know how she could leech off me like that when she treated me so poorly. With a slight self-satisfied flourish, I downed the first shot. Tonight it was schnapps, I always forgot to tell Paddy that I liked bourbon. I took the second with some beer to kill the taste. I still gagged.
That little punk was practically licking her thighs when I turned back to them. I can remember muttering "this sucks" just before I asked her "Who the hell is this?"
"What is your name anyway? she purred at him. He proceed to say something terribly collegiate and witty about how names are meaningless today, to her oohs and aahs. I groaned to suppress the rising desire to lunge at his throat. He went on to give us a lecture on some terribly fantastic work of art that he had just painted on this very subject. His masterpiece did have a name by the way. He was drinking some light green drink. Typical. I whispered to Jan as he was trying to flag down Paddy.
"What a little faggot"
"Oh, He's nice" (with a drawn out purr on nice) "and he is so innocent, its as if he has never been kissed"
"Well, maybe I'll tell you about my first kiss sometime" I said. After about five minutes he turned back to us. Paddy always took longer for his type. I was developing a real hatred for him. I asked him what he thought of Satr, that little fag loved him to death. It figured. I bet he thought that pornography was insulting to women too. He proceeded to tell us about how "No Exit" changed his life when I first noticed it. His hand was on her knee, with her hand caressing the top of his. She was really pushing me. I tried to ignore it while Jan nodded and interjected inane questions. I tried to cool down by downing the rest of my beer. I was staring at her in the mirror, muttering.
"I hate it when you do this to me . My fingers tense in my fist and then I think I can feel tiny nicks on my face. What can I say? I'm just never any good at these things, I don't know exactly why. When someone gets too close I just short out sometimes. I've never been good with girls, and relationships in general. maybe nobody really knows what they are doing in relationships. I know I've felt you shaking before, seen your match go out before you could mate it with your cigarette. Don't lie. It happens to you to too. But you feel it too late for it to take hold. I don't even care for godssake. it just is. My first kiss? yeah, I guess I'll tell you."
I noticed she was still talking to the kid, and I was still just as angry.
So I gathered up my smokes and slid off my Naugahyde thrown. I tried to make it to the bathroom before I did something that I would regret. I slammed into the pool table and fell. The big dumb pourtagee helped me up. The smell of rotting fish on his clothes made me fight rising vomit. "Thanks Manny" I gulped out. With breath full of port, he asked if I was OK. I ignored it and went into the bathroom. I filled the sink as I was mumbling to myself, as I often did in that too small room when I was too upset to be around people. I was angry at myself for running away again, running away from things I know I can't beat with guilt. I splashed the putrid water on my face, and felt it was not enough so I plunged my whole head into the basin. Rust stung my eyes. Stupid move. I sat down with a cigarette as the sink drained. Somebody was knocking, but I didn't pay attention to that either. What I did was read the graffiti again. It was all bathroom Clich (here I sit broken hearted...) and drunken attempts at wisdom (What was Ford trying to pull with that swine flu business in '76 anyway?). After staring at these walls so often, it was only then that I realized that much of the writing was in my chicken scratch. It made me loath what I was, hiding in there so often. Even though there was no mirror in there, I could see in the walls how ugly I really was. And I decided to punch that little fucker for making me see myself like that, to get back at her, to get back at myself.
They were not fondling when I got back, but he was lighting two of his hand rolled cigarettes, and giving one to her.
"What's going on?" I asked, half convinced that he would talk me out of it, so I could go back to my beer that Paddy had filled in my absence. Instead, he looked at me with this stupid grin on his face and said:
"Huh?" It didn't work, I socked him, sort of. My arm was too drunk to fully connect. I just kind of cuffed his ear, and his mouth dropped open to flash me his perfect teeth as if to mock my crooked, nicotine stained mouth. My next punch felt good. My knuckles stung from where those perfect teeth cut into my skin. I felt good. I felt alive.
But it still didn't make me feel any better about myself after Jan started screaming, and the kid started crying. Manny had me in a head lock. All I wanted to do was help the kid up off the floor, but my anger still had me. I kept squirming and fighting with the arms around my neck. The stench was worse beneath his armpit, and I couldn't get away from it this time, so all the rest of my beer came back up all over Manny's leg and the floor. He let go.
I fell into my vomit and hit my face on the brass railing at the foot of the bar. This time nobody helped me up. Paddy was yelling for someone to get me out of the bar, but nobody wanted to touch me. There was a short time when there was no noise in the place except the short whimpers from the kid. But then I guess most of the people got bored with the situation and started in with their old conversations, or maybe they were talking about me.
I started to make my way up the side of the bar, Paddy grabbed the back of my shirt and helped. Jan was kneeling picking up a broken beer mug. The kid was sitting on the floor holding his mouth. there was blood on his hands. I wanted to help the kid, I knew I was in the wrong, but what could I do? It is not as if I could pat him on the back and say "sorry" and have everything come out all right. So I turned and left after looking Paddy in the eye. He knew.
Out side I didn't quite know what to do. I didn't want to be there when Jan come home, If she came home. So I started walking away from where our room was and ended up in a playground. I ended up thinking about Jan, even though I was trying to forget the whole thing. What caught my attention at first was a full box of cracker-jacks that I found all crushed and flattened. I was a kid once and I liked cracker-Jacks too. So there I was drunk and cowardly, sitting on a too small swing wanting to forget who I was and eating my way to the prize. It seemed that they tasted much better when I was young. I was lying on the ground when I opened the prize. It was a small square of cardboard with pink fuzz on one side. Supposedly it could predict the weather, what fun. But for all that, who would have predicted that I would end up loving someone who made me do terrible things, or rather, lets me? How did I end up with someone who thought that the scourge of innocence was a kiss? I closed my eyes to fall asleep, but my mind kept throwing Jan into everything. Goddamnit, I kept seeing her picking up that Fucking mug. I kept thinking I shouldn't have left, I should have stayed and apologized, even if it wouldn't have made a difference. I should have smoothed things with Jan. I got up off the ground and walked home.
When I got into the room, she was in bed with the kid, that same kid who was crying just a few hours ago. They didn't even notice me, or maybe they did, maybe they knew that it hurt worse than a fist in the mouth. I can't really explain the sensation, but I think I was hyperventilating, and the room was spinning three times as fast as it does with bed spins. I grabbed whomever was on top to stop it, the spinning and the sex, I grabbed them and threw the body off the bed. I fell to my knees, as if the bed were an altar.
The next thing I knew, Jan was sitting on the floor next to me and the kid was gone. She said she was sorry, but we both knew it was exactly what she had hoped would happen.
"I guess he's had his first kiss then?" I said with all the bile I could muster from my empty stomach. She didn't say anything. "do you want to know about my first kiss? Her name was Stephanie Johnson. (At least it wasn't with you.) She was a marvelous creature back in sixth grade, To me at least. You know I would have much rather been going out with Trish Flynn or Sandy Snyder or Mary Baxendale(who was not very bright, but had the most developed chest in my class), but I was only on the fringes of popularity so I had to settle for Stephanie. You know how these things work.
"I guess I wasn't all that bad, at least I had a girlfriend, and everyone called me by my last name. I'm not sure how it was where you came from, but in my school yard, that was a badge of semi-coolness. It beat the hell out of being "stinky" or "liver lip" or something. I kind of hung out with the cool kids, but it wasn't like they ever invited me over to their houses to sleep over. But once I started going out with Stephanie they all treated me a little better, I got to sit closer into the center of the table at lunch, and best of all I was allowed into their conversations about sex they had in the bushes over by the art building. (I've never figured out why it was called the art building, nobody was ever allowed to go near it, much less in). It was about a week before Frank Wagner's party when I first found out about the phenomenon known as french kissing. What a strange thing to do i thought, but I kept saying 'Oh yeah?, What does the guy do next?'. It seemed Kind of stupid to do that when you could (I'll Whisper here) Put your hands on her tits (a/k/a second base). 'Oh yeah, but do you blow into her mouth? just kinda suck huh? all right, but will her braces hurt? You guys have done this before, right?' that kind of thing. of course they were all experts, all I knew about girls I had learned from a copy of Playboy I stole from some teenagers down the street. Of course the girls in the magazine were not real people. I wanted to learn more from these Jr. Kinseys but they changed the subject. I think John Grady started to tell us about for a girl to have a baby, she has to kiss the guys organ. All very interesting and incomprehensible to me.
"So the pressure was on, I had a girlfriend and now I had to go through with this thing called "french kiss" at the party on Friday night. Well, the party itself was not as bad as I thought it would be. I expected all kinds of screaming invisible demons to rest on my shoulders and exude body odor and bad breath and I would trip on my feet when I was supposed to trip the light fantastic. But It was dark, nobody saw my parents drop me off, I smelled of my fathers bay rum, and Stephanie looked beautiful. The Shangra-La's (it was the only record John owned) was blasting in the dark, so I didn't have to go through the exercise of small talk. Dancing was easy, after I realized all you had to do is hug'n'spin slowly. Nobody even objected when I abstained from spin the bottle, however, there was no escaping the seven minutes in heaven, in their eyes, or in my own curious mind.
"Well, our turn came up. It turned out that "heaven" was actually a cedar closet with a beanbag chair on the floor. It was blue. I could hear a muffled "remember walking in the sand" and her heavy breaths in the spaces in between mine. It was hot and I could not even see where she was. I started to sweat. I tried to start off slowly by reaching out to where I thought her neck was so I could pull her close and give her little pecks on her cheeks. Which I did after she got over having my thumb in her eye. It was tense. We both knew what was expected of us. I asked her if she wanted to french kiss. I guess she didn't know what was expected of her. she didn't know the term "french kiss". I told her that I would show her, 'just relax your jaw.'
"And I did show her. It was hot in there, and the whole time my tongue felt as if I was licking a 9volt battery. and her braces did hurt and our faces were covered in spit and sweat. And her long blond hair was getting into our mouths ant the whole thing tasted of Herbal Essence shampoo.
"'Oh, I'd really rather not do that anymore' she said. That was ok, at least I had done it. We continued exchanging love pecks until I made a half hearted attempt to put my hand inside her shirt and she stood up and opened the door. we went to our respective gender determined corners of that basement rec room to each tell our versions of what had happened.
"Some time passed and we finally approached each other on the neutral ground of the dance floor. we danced. I was happy, I had the admiration of all the boys. 'you really got her shirt and bra off? Shit, I've never done that!' I was still smiling when she whispered 'kiss me like in the closet'. I pecked the back of her neck. 'NO, like the closet!' There? In front of all those people, Damn, I'll figured I'd sit next to 'ol John Grady in the center of the table on Monday! Well, I tried to kiss her but she slapped me and let loose the worst string of obscenities you have ever heard an eleven year old. Ironically,"Great big Kiss" was playing, and all the girls were laughing. all the boys could say was 'What the hell?' It still depresses me to think of that, to think that I went through all that when I was only eleven years old.
I looked at Jan for the first time since I started the story. (My eyes were shut the whole time I was talking.) And she was laughing, and not just chuckling, but hysterical, with tears and everything.
"You're pathetic, you made that story up, and I don't feel bad in the least." She said, after she could catch her breath. I broke, after all that I finally broke completly. The final and most important realization of the night hit me. I was not in love with her, I didn't even like her, I was in love with having someone to drink with and sleep with. Now, with a clear head I did the only thing that I could have done to excise her from my life, the only thing I could do to get rid of all the hurtful things I had been carrying around for years.
My fist caught her square in the right eye the first time, I stopped paying attention after that, I just kept hitting her face over and over as I held onto her hair with my other fist. She stopped making sounds after about the third punch, she may have been unconscious. I finally felt pure, I finally felt the haze lift off of me. I wouldn't drink anymore, I wouldn't smoke, I wouldn't sleaze around with people like her, I might even go to church again.
I let go of her hair and I wiped my bloody hand on her deadweight (still naked) buttocks. I picked two of her broken teeth from her blue carpet and kept them in my hand, as a momento.
The air outside was nice and cold and my nostrils stung. The teeth felt good in my palm. I started walking to the New York System, they were open all night, and I knew the cook, who gave me free wieners sometimes.
--Matt Lowe
And it's true, I have never felt better. I have nothing; but that's good. Things are looking up. Everything smells like roses and the bluebird of happiness is on my shoulder. I have nothing to lose so the headshrinkers come up here and ask me if I want to talk about what they call the incident Incident hell, I was cleaning my toilet I tell them and then they say that there is nothing they can do to help me until I want to help them help me. And I tell them the only thing that they can do to help me is release me so my hospital bill is $45,000.00 instead of fiftythou. But the fuckers have you. They tell me that I am not mentally competent enough to even release myself A.M.A. Fuck. In prison you have rights you know? Now I'm on solids and my rights extend all the way between Salisbury steak and turkey pot pie. Jello or salad.
I just want to get back to my apartment and feed the cat. I am worried about her and I have no Idea how long I have been here or what day it is for that matter. That is what they ask me every morning when they come in here. Hello mr S-- How are you feeling today? (that's where I tell them that I am feeling just great thank-you) and they ask me how many fingers, if I feel this and then if I know what day it is and every day I tell them no I do not but I would appreciate it if they would tell me because I do not have money to have the television turned on and I have no change to give to the woman who comes through with the paper every morning. Hell, I know the number for time and temp but that's all they give you. No dates. And the doc's won't tell me they just nod their heads and say ummmm, and I say tell me what day it is. Fuck. And then they have the nurse give me 10cc of haldol, I.V. Chemically restrain this one they say. No more chances for him.
Like I said I have no idea how long I have been here and until I can figure out the date they have me. I mean I can't even tell you the year right now because I know they had me on a lot of drugs for a long hazy time and for all I know I could be here a year and I am absolutely terrified of giving the wrong year 'cuz then I'd be really fucked. Right? So when they say, now Mr S--, can you at least tell me what year it is? I just clam up because for all I know they had me in some fucking suspended animation coma for years and people are zipping around on jet rockets and moving sidewalks or some shit outside. I don't really believe that, but it could be true you know. Right?
And then the nurses come in here and fuck with you when you are sleeping. I woke up once with a broken nose and a disintegrated arm. I came into this place for second degre burns in my throat. And all I wanted to do was clean my toilet. But nobody believes me and this really goodlooking doctor is in charge of me now. A Newport type with his chino's and dock shoes with no socks. He is really tall and I know he sails because we talked about it once. I am sure he owns a forty foot sloop or something. Lives on it too, down at the Shooter's marina and he brings a different girl back to his boat every night. I can just see the fuck now sitting up there on the outside deck with his white lab coat and stethoscope still on and these fucking tiny girls with their underclass, (dirty) scarborough-sand tans fucking his hand under the table until he turns to the tiniest of them all when he drains his last glass of Galliano and says:You see that boat? No, the big one. No, the one with three masts. That's where I live. And so he doesn't have to worry about any of the dirty underclass whore disease because he is a doctor after all and can get his hands on all these secret drugs that keep the doctors with doctors and all the tiny girls on welfare even though they Fucked a medical doctor on his yacht last night. All night.
Anyway, this doctor is the worst of them all you know. He tells me that he is an osteopath and he is always fiddling with the screws in my arm and shit, but he tries to be so nice to me. He is trying to build trust. I know this for a fact because I heard him talking to the nurse one night.
She said: Mr. S-- is so difficult. I hope he didn't give you any trouble.
(all the while wishing she was tinier and could have his hand fucking her in one of the examination rooms. In fact he was the reason she transfered to this ward. She wanted to see Doctor Diamond all the time. She was in love with him, but she was so desperate for him that she would settle for just screwing him in some back closet somewhere.)
And he said: No, not at all. I am building trust with Mr. s--.
(all the while he was thinking about how itchy his balls were and he wanted to make a mental note not to screw any Portuguese anymore because they were always lousy, child-bearing men. No matter how pretty. And he always had itchy balls afterwards. Portuguese are such dirty people)
So I know that he was called in special to handle my case. That's why they broke my arm so badly. you always gotta have a cover story, right? And he is the one that I told about my cat before I knew. And about sailing. But nothing else because he is just some fucking evil yacht club gorgeous boy who just wants to crack me open like a kiwi fruit that has been in his fridge for too long and then serve me in a cocktail to all the other headshrinkers who are so drunk from his tan frame and Eddie Bauer Jeep to see that I am nothing but a dried up morsel; not even nearly as sweet and pretty as I once was.
And I think that if I was gay, I probably would have fucked Doctor Diamond already right here in this hospital bed. With the screws in my arm digging into that perfectly formed adam's apple of his neck so nobody could hear us. And I know he would have loved it every bit as much as one of these tiny girls.
I am lucky that I quit smoking months ago because I know that they would never let me smoke in this place. Although I have to admit I would love to light one up right now, and smoke it down to the filter. Just like the old days.
But the old days were horrible and I am glad that they are over. Listen, I still drink but, not for nothing, I don't drink like I used to. Couldn't even if I tried. Before I got here I was drinking one, maybe two bottles of champagne a day. No sir, none of that miserable heartwrenching gin or the awful bloated weeping from too much beer. Just a nice crisp bubbly champagne high and a very clean apartment. After all these years I figured out that the simple act of washing my dishes and scrubbing the floor can keep me feeling great and free. Of course I didn't feel free until I lost my job, the last one. Before this, every single one, when I would get fired I felt terrible for months and couldn't even deal with driving by the former place of business with out feeling like a piece of shit. But this time it was different. It wasn't like getting the boot from the convience store for eating candybars and taking dirty magazines home. It just wasn't like that.
Like I said, those Portuguese are so dirty and that guy kept spitting on the flume. It's not like the luggage factory. we were working with food for Chrissake. We were working with fish and fish is the purest, cleanest, most wholesome food there is. Just a self contained package of nutrients, unadulterated by chemicals and pesticides and fat. The fishermen hunt for fish for the love of Jesus. They go out there and risk their lives to put food on the table of people across the world because they believe in their product. And that fucking pourtugee was spitting on it. The fish.
At the fishermen's co-op we sent fish out all over the world. There was nothing that made me prouder than packing a box of perfect AAA grade squid into a box, in layers. Each one picked out by me for size, consistency and integrity of skin. Out of hundreds and hundreds of pounds of squid it would come down to just one or two boxes that I personally culled to go to Japan where they would be sold for thousands of dollars. And I was the one who made those squid worth thousands and the rest catfood, fertilizer and calimaries down at Aunt Carrie's on the point. And this fucker spits on this pure thing and contaminates it with his personal diseases. He was contributing to the desecration of a holy thing I told the police when he decided to press charges. But they didn't care, neither did the flume boss. So I lost the job for trying to do good. And I didn't mind. I didn't even ever tell about the Venezuelans that passed the best lemon soles out the back with a slip and a good clean slap! Into the beds of their rusted out dodges. I didn't tell because I knew everybody knew.
Half of the people who worked there were illegals and they worked for far less than I did so I think that is why they didn't mind losing a good fish or two everyday. After all it wasn't the flume boss that was losing the money. It was the captains. And it is only the captains who could get away with what I pulled. I really thought that I was doing something good. I thought that they would understand because a week beforehand I saw a captain beat an illegal Korean with a gaffhook for chrissake. Because he dropped a 20 pound monkfish (and that's without the head even) right into the harbor. In one of those petrol rainbow slicks. But I guess you can do that to the illegals. But I guess you can do that out on the docks and not on top of the largest fish-flume in the lower 48. If you know what I mean.
So I said fuck. I don't need this job anyhow, right? No unemployment, right? And I understand that because then you would have guys smacking each other in the head with pipes all the time just to collect. And I did do something good. I was trying to stand up for something that I knew needed protecting. None of that vichy-france fascism. All those fucking french are fascists. Their entire gene pool was destroyed back then because everyone was itching to become a NAZI. They all fucked Germans, every last one of them and now their national sense of humor is nil. And do you know why? Because not one of them minded when the Germans wanted them to eat their schnitzels and greasy jew-fat sausages and took away their fishes and fed them to the gestapos. I don't think they knew why they were all fucking Germans. It was because Germans had the fish. And so I smacked the guy and got fired. Right? Fuck.
Life used to be miserable, back when I was still smoking and still with her. It all really gets back to her. And everybody knows because everybody has one. She was the reason that I bought the rifle you know. I bought that rifle because we were living together and I would come back from the bar and there she would be screwing away with somebody right in what I used to call our bed. It was actually two beds, a double and a twin pushed up into each other because she always wanted a king but the place was furnished and plus we couldn't really afford furniture. So she would screw these guys and I could do nothing until I pointed the rifle at them and told them to get the fuck out. And then she would tell me that she loved me and it would never happen again. and I believed her. Then I would go to sleep in the gap between the two matresses like I had to every night. That's the one. You've had one too. Everybody has one, you know.
Life would be miserable and we took good care of the place, I took care of the grounds and maintenance and she collected rent and did the books and all that shit. I could never do numbers very well and I would have probably kept the job for a long time after she finally left me if I could have. But it only lasted about two months after she was gone and that was probably a good thing too. Because of the accident.
Anyway, I don't want to think about that, or talk about it because I know they have this intercom thing and can listen in whenever they want. And the accident is what they want to know about really. The Jew headshrinker said so. Fucking kid looks like eighteen. Says he graduated from Johns Hopkins, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was in an explorers troop for psych, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, you know. You'd better know or the'll kill you in here.
Before they broke my bones I was in a room with this guy who is always drunk or high, he said. He was in for detox even though all he wanted was a beer. He knew that he had to detox or face two weeks on the streets before his check came in. He also had a touch of gangrene. Can you believe that? Gangrene in a civilized fucking city like this? These doctors just shit on us because they can. This guy said that he was in the drunktank at least once a week and they said nothing about the gangrene until he got to the floor. He says E.R. docs kill people just for kicks. Just to make money on their organs. Fucking three hundred thou for a bloated enlarged alcoholic heart and send the pituitary to China so they can make some love potion or some shit. Sell it for ten grand. A pituitary and your sister and nephew won't even know its gone. And Doc Diamond replaces the teak in his galley (with your organ) because one of those tiny bimboes, the one who gave him the clap, threw her wine all over the walls and it stained.
So we lived in that little apartment and we were really happy in a dimply domestic sort of way. Free rent and we were scraping together enough to move to some third world country where we could live like ugly American prince and princess and the happy natives could bring us our tequila on silver serving trays and we could ride elephants in the afternoon. she would have a parasol made from reeds and I could wear a white linen suit and a pith helmet. It could have happened. It still can, you know, only without her. We don't speak very much anymore but every once in a while I will get some mail for her and then she has to come over to get it. When she does she never tells me that she misses me but I can tell that she does. Not that she is unhappy, I think that she is as happy as I am in fact. She belongs to a yacht club now, that's how her husband is. But whenever she comes for the mail she lets me fuck her. That's how she is.
And that is what was happening the day that they brought me in. She was comming over to get her mail. It was junk, all the important stuff stopped coming before she even got married, but she still calls every once in a while and then I say yeah you got another thing from J.C.Pennys or something came in from the lab where you used to work. And she drives the hour and a half to get junk. When her husband is at work. And I know it isn't the mail. And I know that she just needs to feel like something hot again. I bet none of his friends will screw her or maybe she just wants to feel like she still controls something. And that's the thing. Believe me. If I wanted to kill myself I could have done it a thousand of other ways. The rifle. But I just forgot that I was using a chlorine 2000 flushes, the chlorine ones don't even make blue water. It's clear. And I dumped the whole bottle of ammonia right in there. That's it. Next thing I know I'm in the back of this hack volunteer rescue this town has and they are snaking a tube into my fucking nose. I just wanted her to see me in a clean apartment. You can't keep your apartment clean if you don't have it together you know? Ask Doctor Diamond. He understands about these things. He keeps everything clean and neat. He even presses his L.L. Bean camp shorts. He said so once right before he pumped morphine into my I.V. for some pain I was having.
They are saying that I have to have a part of my pancreas removed as a result of inhaling the gas. It's the same gas that they used on Hitler in the first world war you know. Can you believe that? Me and Hitler have something in common. Except I never ate any human flesh. They say that he used to right before Eva Braun did her thing in his mouth. I never did that either. Blonde tutonic godess I mean. Heh.
And The docs come in and ask me if I want to talk about it. And so I ask them what's to talk about, how they clean their toilets? Then they say they are afraid for me because I won't open up. Fuck them. I know that I am wide open. I know what I am doing and get out of my face. So they give me some more Haldol. They keep me doped up and hazy so I can't ask someone what day it is. If I could just get that right they couldn't keep me here. No more mysterious system failures or broken bones. You know what they told me when I asked what happened to my arm? They said that I bit the top of a nurse's ear off and then smashed my arm against the bulletproof glass window. And that I was lucky I didn't get sued. Bullshit. Why would I want to do that? I am not stupid and plus, I would remember something like that. Even the worst things that I do when I am drunk or stoned, the things that I don't ever remember about, I know that I did them because of the dreams. And I ain't had no dreams about that shit. So they keep me ignorant and pump drugs into me to kill my pancreas and all I can do is let them because I know if I pulled my I.V. out I would get sent away to someplace and get tied up and I know that I am not strong enough to tear free like Batman or some of that fucking comic book shit could.
Listen, they are just keeping me here until they can homogonize me. They get scared by people who know about their yachts and thir secret meetings and all that. And I'm not even telling anybody all that I know. I just want to be left alone with my business. They'll still make all their money and I'll still eat shit. But they cannot stand that a shit eater could have been like them but wasn't. Isn't. They can't understand why I could do all these amazing things and still hate them so much. So they call in the specialists for the head. But I am not mentally ill. I go about my business and keep to myself mostly and all the Doctor Diamonds around me want to screw me, but know they can't. So instead they try to make the perfect martini out of my brain for conversation before this year's awards ceremony on the bridge of the fucking U.S.S Constitution. They cannot stand that I am my own man and I don't subject myself to the underclass V.D. that they want me to, to keep me ineligible to become a part of their gene pool. They want to fuck me hard. and keep me from fucking them while they do it.
And I don't blame them. They know how it feels. Even with all the power they think that they have, they still had to have the souls ripped out of them to get where they are. That's what they don't show you on television and in the medical school brochures. But by the time the soul starts tearing it is too late and besides they have to know what is coming just by looking at their professors. Once you know that type of pain you become addicted. I know. I know how good it feels to have bone crunching under my own strength. The last time I came into the hospital. And I wasn't even on the motorcycle. I was just doing all that I could to help. And I did help. But nobody really knows about that. And that is how I come to learn about doctors. They couldn't even tell that I was perfectally fine. They kept me in for three days that time. Only that time wasn't as bad as this one of course. It never is.
When I was little there was a kid in my neiborhood who got hit by a car because he was chasing another kid around with a stick. After he got hit he was in a full cast from his waist down. that meant that he had to have a hole cut in the cast for him to shit. My mother used to make me go over and visit this kid even though he was portugeese and his parents used to make me eat those candy coated almonds that the portugese love so much. My mother used to say even if he is a pourtugese, he is still lonely without playmates. As if that justified making me go into that room of his. It was right off of the kitchen and the stench of rotting seafood and the almonds were making me sick already. And the room was just big enough for the bed and a nightstand and a chair and the door and a embrodiered rug hanging on the wall so that the kid could go to sleep every night under jesus thoughtful gaze from the top of calvery. And his room still smelled like rotting food and the little white dog with the rhumey eyes and runny nose would follow me in and the whole room would smell like shit. The doctor had not made the hole big enough so that every time the kid tried to go to the bathroom a little bit would get deposited inside the cast. And I don't think the kid even cared. Fucking making me sick just thinking about it. See even then they were trying to fuck anyone that they could you know? I mean this family was already eating shit, and the doctor goes and makes the kid smear himself with shit every time he tried to get rid of it. I bet they thought that was funny down in the doctors lounge.
The doctors lounge where they eat shrimps and champagne punch and brie cheese. While I mush my salisbury steak into a paste so it won't hurt as much going down. And drink luke warm apple juice. But you know what? Once I get out of this place I am going to be the one eating shrimps because I am going to get out. Yes sir, enough of this bullshit for me. I'll get some credit card and just charge the price of a plane ticket to that miserable third world country and then dissappear. Even the citibank can't find you in the jungle. And then I will eat the shrimps and the good cheese and drink cold russian champagne. Nothing can stop that. Maybe there will be no linen suits or elephant rides, but you can be sure of one thing, those people are happy with their great heaps of nothing. And I will be too right along side of them. And do you know why that is that they are so happy? It's because they all eat roots and jungle bark and shit to heal themselves. And I can learn all about it. I am a pretty smart guy you know. And I will be a fucking witchdoctor with a spear and a great big mask and an even bigger black couldren. Fuck. I will stir the cauldren over a great big bonfire out in the middle of the jungle and it will already be really fucking hot out. But that will be o.k. Even on the hottest of days in the jungle I will still remember doc diamond sticking his fingers in my ass and pulling out when I clinched down on them. He said: Wow. You are pretty hot. I am going to start you on antibiotics right away. When I am out in the jungle I will be able to feel his fingers in my ass every time I start to feel too hot. I'll be able to feel them working around like ice cold glass rods. And I will be happy to be hot and sweaty instead of that kind of cold that doctors have to live with. It feels good to be hot and I know that I am so hot that I burn their fingers when they try to examine me.
Out there on his yacht deep into december when the only girls he can find get seasick and his last bottle of brandy just spilled all over the floor, I won't be hot because of the jungle or the bonfire, but because I will have a beautiful native wife at home making poi. While he scrambles around on his knees sucking at the floor through one of the tubes he pulled off his stethascope, sucking the last of the brandy out of the dusty cracks.
--Matt Lowe
The elders knew that Cybok was weak as he was a member of the gupwaherr since birth. An as a member of the gupwaherr he was raised to think that even the most horrible pain was acceptable if the elders deemed it so. And in return for his weakness and accepting nature he was allowed to hook up to the suirqhidater while young to develop his brain. But the problem was that Cybok was already really, really smart and the elders didn't know that he was getting really, really, really, really smart. He saw the injustice and started to educate all the members of the all the collectives on all of the colonies about the injustice and his new concept of shk-zet .
The elders had almost killed him several times with their vicious zeta-zed warriors and their almost invincible timtim suits. But Cybok was too smart and he always managed to escape while using humane methods to humiliate the tormentors (of all the members of the all the collectives on all of the colonies) in the process. But this neural agonizer was insidious and even the great Cybok didn't know how to defeat it.
Now was the moment of Cyboks greatest battle deep within the nevron camber in the biggest of the zeta-zed battle cruisers. They couldn't find him because he had shorted out the cybersensor station at check point gamma fifteen centorgs ago. and the reason the they wanted his eyes open was because they were going to transmit a shlubiack throb from all of the cruiser's transmission ports. Cybok was ready. He could anticipate that too, and he was sure his superior intellect could survive even the strongest of shlubiack throbs.
However, while he was preparing his mind for the iminent throb, three zeta-zed warriors located him using the agonizer's homing beacon, which Cybok had neglected to dampen during his preperations. The Warriors used their timtim suits to send a concentrated agonizer pulse at cybok, and after he had been thrown against the wall from the pulse, the zeta-zed warriors tourtured him into unconciousness.
AND THEY WERE ALL ANTS!!!!!!
--Matt Lowe
He would be careful that he only walked on certain necessary parts of the floor, for example, and that kept it under control a little. He had tried to get her to do the same thing when she had lived there with him, but she was lazy and didn't bother and so he didn't bother either and then she blamed him for picking out an apartment with a lousy kitchen floor.
Part of the problem was that the house was so old, part of the problem was that the only door they had opened right into the kitchen, but, once she left, the biggest problem was the cat. He tried to keep the floor as clean as he could so that when she came over she would see that he was right that it was her fault that the floor was always dirty, but the cat was old and semi-incontinent and then he had all those dirty trails. He had to mop a lot so he wouldn't have to admit to himself that it wasn't really her fault after all.
It didn't matter anyway, he thought to himself sometimes, because she had not come back since the day she moved out. Sometimes he would just let the floor go for a long time, especially when he was working the double shifts. And then she would call. Drunk. She would always make plans to visit later in the week . And then he would wash the floor again.
Sometimes he would think about getting a burlap sack and putting the cat inside with a rock and tying it up. The river was close to his house and he was getting sick of litter pans and special expensive catfood for elderly cats and cleaning catshit with paper towels. His father hated cats too, and his father always told him if he could catch a cat that they would put it into a burlap sack with a rock and throw it off of the pier near where he grew up. But once he did catch a cat and his father had yelled at him and probably smacked him good when he brought it home. I guess his father was never really serious about offing a cat like that. Besides, he would think as he watched the poor blind thing bump into the door frame again, I don't even know where to find a burlap sack these days. The closest thing he could think of was the woven red plastic sacks that he saw in Stop & Shop with ten pounds of onions inside. And he didn't know what the hell he would do with ten pounds of onions all by himself.
In fact, about two weeks before that night, he was so drunk that he lost his car keys and had to hitchhike home. The man who picked him up had told him that he knew a girl who liked to have sex with two guys at the same time. Then the guy drove around for a long time and said that he couldn't find the girl's apartment. But the thing was that he really didn't know any girl like that, in fact he just liked to have sex with other men and was waiting for an opportunity to propose something to his drunk hitchhiker. He told the story about the girl to test the waters, so to speak. But the driver lost his nerve. I think that he knew his passenger was drunk enough to get violent if he felt threatened.
Then they Talked on the phone a little longer and he was trying to tell her about those assholes at the K-Mart where he had to get tires that day. His tires were bald and he had to get new ones in order to get the inspection sticker for his car. The K-Mart had tires on sale, but they told him there was a two dollar disposal fee for each one of the old ones. He had told them that was O.K. He could get rid of them himself. And those assholes told him that if he wanted to take them home, there was a five dollar fee! For each tire. And they were his own tires too. Those fuckers, he had thought, and he was already out $213, not including the extra eight for disposal. That was most of his next unemployment check, and his insurance premium was going to be due soon too. Either way, he really was not expecting to pay much more than the advertised sale price. And he wanted to tell her about all of this because she was the one who knew about the money back then. He figured that maybe she would have some advice. Or at least some sympathy. At least.
But he didn't get to tell her the whole story because she told him that she had to go. Her two friends were driving her to the bar and they had just pulled up into the driveway, Love you!
After he hung up the phone he said bitch. He muttered it, but if you were in the room you would have clearly known what he was saying. That is what he always said when he hung up after talking to her. It was a habit because when she said love you, he was angry because he hated it when people lied to him, and when she didn't say it he knew that the new boyfriend was there with her laughing at him.
He kept those magazines under his mattress because he didn't want any girls to see them when they came home with him from a bar. Which was something else that he thought about a lot but never really happened.
After the floor he did the dishes and washed the toilet and the bathroom sink, which had a lot of whiskers stuck to the toothpaste ring. Then he poured the dirty bucket of water that he used to mop the floor into the toilet. This was always his favorite part of washing the floor. The water would flush down the toilet all by itself and there would only be just a little left at the bottom because it hadn't really been flushed. He thought that was neat and he could never figure out how the toilet knew to flush when that certain amount of water was in the bowl. He figured that there was some sort of door that opened when there was enough water pressing down on it in the pipe. He was wrong. Close, but wrong.
After he finished cleaning he walked to the liquor store and bought some beer and an expensive bottle of champagne. He didn't like champagne but then, he had only ever had cheap bottles of the stuff. Like when he graduated from college and had a five dollar bottle in his lap. He almost got sick because it was really cheap and it got really hot in the sun. It was June and he drank all of it himself. He couldn't find anyone he knew in the crowd to share it with, and his mother saw him drinking it too. Later on in the day, she told him that it was disgraceful that he had been drinking a bottle of champagne during graduation.
When he got home from the liquor store he sat down at the kitchen table and opened a bottle of beer. He read a book and tried not to think about how close she was to his house. He wanted to go see her. He really did. But he knew that he would just get real upset and probably real drunk and then have to drive home. He knew how many cops would be out on New Year's and the last thing he needed was to get arrested and lose his licence, not to mention the five hundred dollar fine.
Then around eleven-thirty the other girl called him. He really liked this girl and he thought that maybe she even liked him and I know that she did. But she was always giving him mixed signals so he never did anything to let her know how much he liked her. And she thought he was giving her mixed signals. And so she never did anything to let him know how much she liked him either. This was all too bad because if one of them had any guts they probably would have been very happy together. They were both too sensitive. The were both Pisces.
She had called him from a pay phone because she was at a bar, and she had to keep putting nickles in every three minutes and she was very drunk. She was talking a lot, and much of the time he didn't know what to say when she finished. I'm blowing it, he thought to himself. But she didn't even notice that he wasn't saying much. Actually, she thought that he was being really funny. But, of course, he thought she was laughing because he sounded foolish. And then she ran out of nickles and they got cut off before he could wish her a happy New Year. At a quarter to. The phone was dead but he said Happy New Year Jessica! anyway. He could almost imagine that she was doing the same for him, but by that time she was already back at the bar getting another drink. They were cut off when he was in the middle of saying something, and he didn't notice she wasn't there until there was no giggle when he was finished, which was a shame because what he said really was funny.
Midnight came and he turned on the television to see the ball drop and he heard a car drive by his tenement beeping its horn. He turned the t.v. off because he didn't want to hear auld lang syne. He was too sensitive because he was a Pisces and that song made him cry sometimes, and he really didn't want to cry right then.
He drank the rest of his beer and never even opened his bottle of expensive champagne. And by the time he fell asleep he was just as drunk as both of the girls who had called him that night when they had gone to sleep. Of course he was up much later than both of them. He was much bigger than they were and so he had to drink a heck of a lot more than they did to feel as drunk.
He couldn't remember the fact that he had talked to the first girl again after the bars were closed and she called him.
He couldn't remember the part when he tried to make tyson salisbury steak dinner. He couldn't remember the part where he threw two beer bottles out the window into the street. And in fact later in the day he saw the smashed glass and said those assholes are lucky that I didn't see that. He laughed at the joke he was going to make, because I was so drunk last night I probably would have chased them with the baseball bat. He really was mad at those assholes too. There were little kids in his neighborhood for chrissake.
He couldn't remember these things and I think that it was good because he felt bad enough just about the fact he got that drunk, when he got that drunk, never mind the things that he did. When the first love called after the bar and asked if she could come over with her friends he said some really mean things. About her. And the friends. And I think when he said them he really meant them too. If he had remembered, he would have kicked himself because he had blown his chance to have her see the clean floor. If he had known about the drunken resolution that the three of them had made about visiting him, he would have really kicked himself. Hard.
He was still in college then and lived with some other people that he worked with and some Irish kids too and he really didn't know any of them at all. And this night, it was his night off but there was nothing to do that he wanted to because he wasn't quite old enough for the bars. And everybody else was at the bars or at work. But at least he had managed to get someone to buy him a bottle of expensive gin. However. And he could remember that he felt really devilish breaking the seal and pouring a drink for himself with nobody else at home. I think that he felt that way because it was the first time for something for him.
He could also remember feeling sophisticated because of the kind of drink he was making with the gin. He thought that Gin and Tonic was the kind of drink that the rich people drank at the resort where he worked. He really didn't know what types of drinks they drank because he just cut grass and never even got near to the bars. But he was right, you know, because the rich people did drink those kind of drinks. But to be truthful, he was a shining example that anyone can buy expensive gin and drink it. And lots of unsophisticated people buy gin when they want to feel like hot stuff.
So. He was alone in the house with the fancy gin drinks and he was not even drunk when he decided to put on his seersucker suit that was actually a size too small for him. He was feeling really sophisticated now. He really felt good too. And when he put on the suit he did it for himself. Not like when he acted like an ass at the bar. Trying to act funny. Not like when he would do odd things in the street for the benefit of anyone who cared enough to pay attention to him. Trying to act like something else. He was doing it for himself and then the two girls came over. To visit him.
They had been about three years younger than he was which meant high-school and they worked cleaning rooms. The taller one liked him a lot, but the other one wanted to 'make it' with him just because the taller one did too. And they came over and saw him in his seersucker suit and his gin and tonic and thought that he really had it together. If they knew how to put it then they might have said that he was the classiest guy they knew. If you know what I mean.
The suit was not so small that you would have noticed. It was just really uncomfortable for him to wear.
And they told him that he was so cute in those clothes. And: you are so funny. They really did think he was funny, just like the way Jessica had the night before. And: you are so... and the taller girl trailed off and laughed a little and looked at her friend, who was giggling too. He knew that they were not laughing at him. Something about the way they laughed let him know that they were laughing because of something good.
That night he was really something else, and he could remember it. It was like when he read about the Great Gadsby. Or something.
And at four in the afternoon in the laundromat he thought about those two girls and he thought about how he would make out with one girl while the other used the bathroom. That night he took turns kissing two best teenaged friends. He thought that he had gotten away with something grand. Even though all they let him do to them was kiss. Even though they both left as soon as all the gin was gone. The truth of the matter was that he hadn't gotten away with anything at all. The truth of the matter was that when he went to the bathroom they compared notes. And they both decided that he was a terrible kisser. And that it was gross that they could see what they could because his seersucker pants were a size too small. But they also decided to endure the making out because they were both very young, and they didn't know anywhere else where they could get booze at that time of night.
And then he was done thinking about that because he had to move his last load to the dryer. When he was doing this he started to like something was wrong. And he thought that it was strange because, even though he hadn't gone out in public, and all the things that he had remembered about with the phone were cordial, and all that he remembered about the night were parts when he was well behaved, he still felt like something was bothering him. And he even told himself it was just that he was worried about weather the towels had enough quarters to get dry.
If they didn't finish drying he would have to figure out if he should walk back home for more quarters or just bring the towels home wet. He couldn't make decisions like that. He was thinking about having to make that decision, he wasn't thinking about how fast something can get dry in the warm winter heat from a natural gas heater. His mind was back in the humidity with a gin and tonic even though it was January 1. He thought he was bothered by his towels. I can tell you he honestly thought he was bothered by his towels. And later that night when all he had left was the expensive bottle of champagne because the liquor stores are all closed on new years, he still couldn't really figure it all out. But he knew now that it wasn't the towels, because they had dried. He knew that something else was bothering him, he knew that it was really something else, but the floor was still clean, and everything else was in order in his house. He had only started the bottle of champagne and he could feel it already.
By the third glass he had decided that he didn't like champagne at all, and he wondered why that was the stuff you were supposed to drink to celebrate. Shortly after that, after the cat had sprayed cat diarrhea all over his clean floor, he decided that even if he had the thickest burlap sack there was, he would never really be able to kill the cat after all. He knew that even after all the times he thought about it, it wasn't the fact that he couldn't think of a humane way to do this thing, it was that he knew he really didn't have anything to complain about, really. And the cat was always there to complain about; when he couldn't figure out what to say next.
--Matt Lowe