Ziggy, Stardust and Me

by James Brandon

Sunday, June 10, 1973

  I HAVEN’T MOVED.

  I haven’t eaten.

  I haven’t stopped crying.

  I’ve withered and wilted to a puddle of nothing.

  More than I deserve to be.

  I’m holding Ziggy on the Cross. Squeezing it so hard. Praying to be someone else. It doesn’t work.

  I slap my headphones on, turn the player to max volume, try to nuke my thoughts. Doesn’t work.

  The Ziggy eyes in my closet don’t blink.

  Mom doesn’t smile.

  I can’t even stand to hear my own voice.

  * * *

  —

  I am sick.

  I am broken.

  * * *

  —

  I can’t wait for tomorrow.

  I will fix this. Once and for all.

  There’s no other way.

  * * *

  —

  The cross in my hand breaks in half.

  24.

  Monday, June 11, 1973

  NOTHING’S COMFORTABLE. I HAVE to sit on this stupid Oriental rug thing that may as well be a splintered board, because if I hear the squeak of that leather couch one more time I’ll dial up Nurse Ratched myself. I’m this close as it is.

  It’s so hot in Dr. E’s office, the paint’s dripping off the walls. Crying. The room is crying for me. Because I have no tears left inside me. My T-shirt’s pricking my skin like it’s sewn together with thorns. I try to wrestle it off me, fling it out the window. I try to wrestle my skin off, zip into a new one. Nothing works. Nothing.

  Except one thing: the treatments. That’s the only reason I came out of my room, the only reason I’m here. If it doesn’t work now, nothing will.

  Crouched on the floor, head between my knees, I rub my wrists together like they’re two pieces of kindling, like I’m going to start a fire and burn myself away.

  That’s the hope, anyway.

  I jump up when she walks in.

  “How are we today, Jonathan?” She’s all sunshine and lollipops and I rip it to shreds with one daggered look. “What happened?” She throws her blue glasses on the desk and her eyes grow, filled with the skin-crawling care of every mother on the planet. Don’t deserve it. Not now.

  I start pacing behind the leather couch. I can’t look at her. “It happened again,” I say. God, my voice sounds like a termite.

  “What?”

  “You know what,” I say, still pacing.

  “I need you to tell me.”

  “No.”

  “Jonathan. I need you to tell me if we’re to move forward today. Sit down and—”

  “NO.”

  Maybe if I pace fast enough and hard enough, it will rub the wood to nothing and it will break in pieces and I’ll fall to the center of— No. Not now. Not playing this stupid imagination game. You’re here. You have to deal with this. It’s the only way— Crap. I think she’s talking. She is.

  “—and maybe you’re not. There are other ways, so maybe this isn’t—”

  “What?” I stop, look at her. Her hair’s twisted back, stretching her face, which makes her look even more worried than she probably is. She’s wearing some long dress that I’m pretty sure was made from my grandma’s polyester pants cut up and patched together. “What did you say?”

  “I said we could discuss other ways, other options to—”

  “NO. Absolutely a thousand percent no way. It has to be this way. It has to be. I have to fix this. I have to get rid of this for good. Please.”

  We stare. I dare not blink, flinch, budge. I cannot let her see fear or she won’t let me do the treatments.

  Her eyes wrinkle up. She wipes them with her sleeve. Is she crying?

  “Sit down,” she says. I do.

  “Close your eyes, take some breaths, please.” I do.

  “Now. Tell me again. What happened?”

  When I open my eyes, she’s sitting at her desk, hands folded in front of her, focused. Her eyes and voice back to analytical doctor, far away from overprotective mom. Thank Ziggy.

  I can’t believe what I’m about to say. But it has to be said if this is going to happen. “I kissed him.”

  She nods and calmly says, “Kissed whom?”

  “Web.”

  She nods again. “And how does that make you feel?”

  How does that make me feel? Like I was living in the middle of Fourth of July fireworks. Like I was exploding with so much joy there would have never been a Vietnam War because my joy would have caused world peace.

  “It’s wrong and I’m sick.” That’s what I say. Because anything else and I’ll be carted off right here, right now.

  She looks at me. “Do you believe that’s true?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve known you a long time, Jonathan. You’re one of the brightest people I know. And you’ve made some wonderful progress over the past four years.” She swoops in front of her desk and sits on the floor in front of me.

  I still don’t blink. I’m not even sure I’m breathing anymore. Maybe I’m dead and this office is purgatory. God, that’s the most sense I’ve made of anything lately.

  She holds my hands. “I know we planned to do your final treatments today. And I thought maybe it was the right thing because of everything you’ve been telling me, but—”

  “But? But what? And why are you talking past tense?”

  “But I don’t know, Jonathan. I’m not sure it’s right now.”

  “Yes it is. It has to be right. This is the only way. I hurt him. Web. You should’ve seen the look on his face when—GOD—I’m so fucking tired—sorry—of hurting someones because of this, this . . . sickness. I did to Web what Scotty did to me and—”

  “What?”

  “Right after his Ape friend caught us kissing, Scotty punched me to the ground, called me names, made my life a living hell. Then Dad found out, and he was about to throw me in jail or the nuthouse or—I don’t know what—but instead he found you and you fixed me. Because I am sick, Dr. Evelyn. I need to be fixed again. Please. I don’t want to be this person anymore. I don’t want to— Are you going to tell Dad?”

  Her eyes are wide. Tears slide down my face, but my eyes stay locked on hers. Because I will not back down.

  “Only if you want me to tell him.”

  “No. I most definitely do not want you to tell him. He’ll flip, and then who knows what and— No. It was a mistake, Dr. Evelyn. A mistake that can be fixed again. I know it can. Please.”

  She stares. And stares. And stares. Then she shakes her head and looks out the window. “There may be other ways . . . I don’t know . . . I’ve been researching . . .”

  “No. There is no other way. DR. EVELYN?” She snaps back. “Please.”

  This time I see it. A lonely tear springs from her eye. I follow its slow stream down her cheek.

  “I need you to be one hundred percent certain this is what you want,” she says.

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.” For once, the truth.

  Neither one of us moves.

  Then she wipes her tear away and says, “Let’s go.”

  25.

  WE WALK DOWN the hall. It’s only a few doors down, but I suddenly feel like she’s donning a black-hooded robe and dragging a shiny blade behind her that scrrraaaaappppes against the linoleum.

  I hold on to my wrists.

  We don’t speak.

  She opens the door, flips on the fluorescents. The lights give the fresh coat of piss-yellow paint an extra gloss. There’s the smell of disinfectant spray and rubbing alcohol: extra-pungent, extra-clean. Almost too clean. I’m pretty sure this is the room Rosemary just had her baby in.

  A mirrored wall behind the wooden table and chair reflects back someone I don’t recognize. I jump when I
see myself: paler than usual, eyes hollowed, stained with red and circled with blackness. God. At least I remembered to put on deodorant.

  “Okay,” she says, pulling a screen down over the mirror and plugging in the slide projector. “Do you remember everything here?”

  “I think so, yeah.”

  I sit in the chair, familiarize myself with the setup:

  4) A huge box, like an amped-up record player, dotted with knobs and numbers and scientific words I don’t understand.

  3) Four electric wires with leather-buckled cuffs, connected to the box, each neatly wound in front like little rosaries.

  2) Extra-padded headphones, so thick and cushioned an A-bomb could go off and I wouldn’t know.

  1) A red panic button of relief, also connected to the box. Push it, the slide on the projector changes and the pain stops.

  “You know not to turn any of the knobs, right?” She fidgets with some wires. “We’ve put them at the exact levels they’re supposed to be.”

  I nod. She stops and looks at me. She smells like dead flowers.

  “Jonathan, you’re sure you want to do this? We can—”

  “I’m sure,” I say.

  “. . . Okay . . .”

  She buckles a cuff around each wrist. “Too tight?” I shake my head. She hands the other two to me. I buckle them around my thighs.

  “Lean forward now, press your face into the finder,” she says, adjusting it to fit my head. A viewfinder extends from the box, not unlike the red handheld View-Master my grandma gave me for Christmas one year. But without the Hanna-Barbera slides.

  “This,” she says, handing me the button. I sit back in the chair. “This is your key, remember? Press it anytime. Anytime at all. If it’s too much, we’ll move on. That simple. Don’t push yourself too hard, okay? This is for you, not for me.”

  My heart’s vibrating, readying itself for the attack.

  “Last thing,” she says. “Remember, it’s best to keep your mouth shut. Staying quiet keeps your thoughts focused and steady for the fullest impact. I’m right there in the next room if you need me.”

  She smiles, but like a doctor who just told you you have cancer, and places the headphones over my head.

  The Infinite Silence of Space.

  Whoosh whoosh whoosh.

  I lean forward, suction my forehead to the finder, one step closer to the black hole. The fluorescents flip off. Darkness. My heart throbs in my ears.

  Whoosh whoosh whoosh.

  I close my eyes. And I pray to my broken Ziggy on the Cross. Four words:

  Please. Forever. Fix. Me.

  A distant hum pierces the silence. A slide projector clicks on, filling the screen in front of me with a blinding white light. My eyes squint and adjust.

  Okay, okay, okay, you can do this, Jonathan Collins. You can forever fix yourself.

  Ch-click. The projector’s carousel turns, revealing the first slide in my viewfinder:

  A picture of a beautiful, tanned blonde in a polka-dot bikini fills the screen. She’s lying on her back in front of a painted tropical beach backdrop, looking up at me as if to say, “Oh, you naughty, naughty boy.” Her bikini strap’s undone, so the minute she sits up she’ll be topless.

  I feel sorry for her. Her eyes look sad and lonely and desperate. Probably made two dollars posing for this. Probably wants to be a famous actress or something. I wonder if she knew what she was posing for. I wonder if she knew she was posing for someone like me, looking back at her, all strapped in like some crazy electrified pervert. I wonder if she would have posed if she knew—

  Ch-click. The carousel turns.

  The bikini-clad blonde is replaced with a different slide: a tight-trunk-wearing Mayor of Mansville. Jesus. His perfectly rippled muscles crash against the rocks he’s posing on, bulging extra-big between the legs. His feathered hair and mustache match the blond patch on his pecs. I swallow. He looks like Scotty, except older and—

  A volt sweeps through my thighs, shocks my penis. FuckingFUCK. Another volt pierces my wrists, shoots up my arms, electrifies every nerve along its path, blasts them to smithereens.

  I scream.

  Keep your mouth shut, keep your mouth shut, keep your mouth shut. Keep your thoughts focused to fix this once and for all.

  Legs convulse and twitch.

  Arms spasm and sting.

  Fingers tremble over the red button.

  Don’t push it, Jonathan. Not yet. You need to keep going. You need to forget. You need to fry this part of you, obliterate it into a bazillion bits so it can never be pieced together again.

  My nerves strangle inside me.

  SweetZiggyontheCross, it hurts. You deserve this. Take it. Don’t back down now. It’s your last chance. Your only hope.

  The image flashes in front of me, in and out of focus, shaking in a fit of spasms with me. Skipping around like a TV channel that’s out of sync.

  Keep going, keep going, keep going.

  I push the button.

  Ch-click.

  Another girl appears on the screen. This one’s wearing a sheer pink negligee cuffed with feathers, combing her long black hair in the mirror. You can just see a small tuft of hair poking through down there.

  Her image blurs. Tears must be streaming down my cheeks. I can’t feel them. I can’t feel my face. Everything goes numb. I push forward. Determined to fix this once and for all.

  Round and round the carousel goes.

  Round and round the pictures flash: A boy appears, I am pulverized; a girl appears, I am not. That’s the trick; that’s how I know it’s working. The relief I feel seeing the girl is the relief I’m supposed to feel in the real world. That’s how I know I’m normal, how I’m forever fixed.

  Each slide clicks forward, clicking me back into the Me I’m supposed to be.

  Round

  and

  round

  and

  round.

  Until there’s nothing left of me but the stillness of space.

  * * *

  —

  The fluorescents flicker on, singeing the air.

  Dr. Evelyn lifts the headphones.

  She half smiles and wipes my face clean of sweat, tears, and shame with a damp cloth.

  “How are you, Jonathan?” she asks.

  I try to open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. I just nod. My eyes feel wild, like they’re bulging out of my head. I can see through things: frenetic dust bits bouncing in every direction. Colors pulse. My entire body: aflame. I am the phoenix rising from the ashes, I think. Even though I feel like anything but.

  “You did it,” she says, unbuckling the cuffs from my wrists and thighs. “Made it through the entire carousel of slides.” She’s not smiling anymore.

  I nod again. It hurts to nod. It hurts to move.

  She hands me a glass of water. My brain thinks I grabbed it. I see it in my hands. But it’s not. Instead it falls, splashes all over me. Dammit, looks like I pissed myself. Or maybe I did without knowing.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she says. Her eyes look desperate, examining me like a specimen under a microscope. “Let me help you.” She pours another glass, lifts it to my mouth. I sip some, but most of it gurgles out and down my chest. God.

  I turn away, throw up in the plastic bucket next to me. Throw up what? There’s nothing left of me to throw up. The little bit of water, I guess. She wipes my face clean.

  “It’s okay,” she says again. “It’s all part of it, remember? You’re okay.” She lifts my wrist, feels my pulse. Which is probably equal to that of a rabbit clutched in the jaws of a coyote. “Why don’t we go lie down in my office for a minute, okay?”

  She pulls me up. My brain thinks I’m standing. I see myself standing. So why am I on the floor? I can’t feel my legs. They’re wob
bly pieces of goo.

  “It’s okay, I gotcha,” she says.

  I’m a drooping dandelion, flopping down the hall in her arms. With no seeds left. Wishless.

  She lays me on the couch. I don’t even hear the squeaks.

  * * *

  —

  I have no idea how much time has passed, but when I open my eyes Dr. Evelyn’s looking at me and the sunlight has shifted to the other side of the room.

  “How are you?”

  “Okay,” I say. “Better.” My brain forms thoughts and words again. I smile and sit up. Rub my head, my face, my arms, my legs, make sure all the pieces are still there.

  She sits on the floor next to me. “So, you did it. The final treatment.”

  “The final one.”

  My scar sears my brain, but I don’t let her see. Stupid scar. That’s why I put a razor to my forehead a few years ago: to give myself the Ziggy Bolt. Since I’m branded an electrified freak for the rest of my life, I thought I could become Ziggy and help all the lost children of the world.

  Yeah, right.

  “We’ll give it some time to settle in before we assess—”

  “I definitely think it worked,” I say. “I am fixed.”

  She nods and starts talking some psychobabble hooey I don’t understand, so I close my eyes to get lost in the place I feel most safe: a distant galaxy far away from here—

  But instead, I see his face.

  Still.

  Even after all that.

  Web’s smiling face, tickling me on the moon. His lonely face lost on Desk Island. His broken face splashed in tears. Before he ran.

  And for the first time since that day it happened at the lake, I think,

  Maybe I can never be fixed.

  part two.

  TIME STITCHERS.

  i saw your spiders weaving threads

  to bandage up the day.

  and more,

  those webs were filled with words

  that tumbled meaning into wind.