by Timmy Reed
Maybe I'll sleep, she thinks. No, not yet. Maybe a cigarette? Wish on another satellite? Maybe I'll run the vacuum? Maybe I won't run the vacuum and instead dream up some other task?
I think she drinks in bed at night, naked and sweating in front of her fan. I find empties in her closet. She's a whole bundle of nerves. Can't clear her head. Her brain never stops moving. It's like a bumblebee. Or a shark. I wish to god she'd smoke weed.
It's too bad she doesn't, too. If anyone deserves to chill out, it is my mother. She works hard as HELL all week long. Even at night somebody is always calling from work. They can't show up tomorrow. Their dog is sick. They're hungover. The bus missed their stop. The terror alert is rising. The sky is falling . . . Ungrateful bastards. And us kids don't give her much time for proper relief either, that's for sure. Especially me, always getting in trouble. Always with the phone calls from school. Parent-teacher conferences. My probation officer. Another fistfight. More stitches. It's always something with me. I feel bad.
“I'm so relaxed,” she says, ironing. “This is such a nice weekend. I'm just going to enjoy myself. I'm just going to relax. All weekend. Just relax.”
I get annoyed with her. “I get it, Mom. You're going to relax. You already told me. It is a nice weekend to relax. When are you gonna get started already?”
I'm a nasty little shit. A bad person in most ways probably. You know, I try to do things for her. But she doesn't like to be waited on. Whenever we go out to eat, I swear she'd offer to clean off our table if only the restaurant would let her. I wish I could do something to help her chill out. The other day I slipped a phenobarbital into her coffee. I don't even think she noticed. She just went on scrubbing. And making phone calls. Lighting cigarettes. Coughing. “I'm just going to relax,” she said. “All weekend. I'm so happy to be home. Maybe I'll go for a walk. After the dishes are done. Did you know we have apples in the fridge? And ice cream in the freezer? Pretzels in the cupboard? Do you want me to order a pizza? How about I make you a tuna sandwich? I'm just going to take it easy, I think . . .”
Then she'll pour a few more cups of coffee. And run through another list. And try to relax . . .
~
Those goddess lips! Eyelids like flower petals! Lashes like wet leaves! Hair like golden honey dripping off her beautiful empty head! Awww, fuck it. I refuse to let poetry slip from this tongue . . . Poetry is for suckers . . . It always feels like a confession. But then again, this is supposed to be a journal . . . and therefore secret . . .
In case you haven't figured it out already, I saw Ashley Vidal today. I went up to the pool. On the table at the gate where the sign-in sheet is, sat her little brother Kevin. He was wearing two black dress socks on his forearms. Puppets with white buttons for eyes and purple yarn for lips. Kevin had glued plastic miniature collectible baseball helmets to the place where the toes usually go to simulate sideways ball caps. He was putting on a show for whoever would watch. I was the only one standing there. I think Kevin is funny. The socks were dissing each other in Ebonics, talking mad shit. Ashley came out the gate in a bathing suit and an oversized T-shirt, dripping, trying to suction water from her ear.
“Mom just phoned,” she warned Kevin. “You have a doctor's appointment. She says I have to walk you straight home. To make you sure you don't run off.”
Kevin groaned.
“Fuckin-a,” she told him. “Let's go. Now. I'm trying to tan.”
“I'm not going unless Retard walks back with us,” he whined. Kevin likes me.
Ashley looked at me sheepishly and apologized. Then she turned back to Kevin. “Let's go,” she told him. “Now.”
“I don't mind going for a walk,” I said. I gave her a fake little smile to show what a swell, easygoing dude I was.
“You sure you don't mind?”
Was she kidding?
“Naw, I don't mind.”
We walked her brother home. He kept picking up cicadas and she kept taking them from him. On the way back she pointed to one of the carcasses on the ground.
“Those things are so foul,” she said.
“I think they're molting,” I told her. I wasn't sure.
“What's . . . molting?”
“Like, shedding their skin.”
“Gross,” she said. “It looks like they're dying to me.”
“I think they die after they mate,” I said, trying to sound real smart. “Then the babies stay underground for seventeen years. And then they come up to mate. Or something.”
“That's gross,” she said. She started walking a little faster. I took the chance to check out the spot where her butt cheeks meet her long skinny legs. Damn was that little patch of skin mysterious. I could stare at that one spot for the rest of my life. I was starting to lag behind. I tried to catch up.
“So,” I started, not sure what to say. “Um . . . You wanna get in the sauna?”
“I don't like it in there,” she answered. “It makes me sweat.”
I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying DUH . . . Ashley was so clueless and innocent.
“Yeah . . . But it feels real good when you jump in the pool afterward.”
Next thing you know we were back at the gate to the pool. I had left my towel on the ground. I picked it up. I kind of flexed when I did it. I was hoping she'd notice my abs. She didn't.
Before heading over to her seat she told me thanks for helping with her little brother. “He can be such a pain,” she told me. “I
hate him.”
I wanted to sit next to her, but I didn't. I sat a couple chairs down. She took off her T-shirt and put on her headphones. And a towel over her face. I watched her for a while from behind my sunglasses. I watched a bead of sweat drip off her belly, onto her chair, then into the grass and presumably the earth below.
Eventually, I got up and hit the diving board. I pulled just about every trick in my bag. Backflips, gainers, misty flips, rodeos, even the flying squirrel. I was hoping she'd notice. I'm not sure that she did. Finally, I gave up. I dipped out to smoke a joint on my father's back deck. I watched the crows for a while. They were sitting on a bulldozer in the empty lot, pecking dirt off the tires. I wondered how it tasted.
~
Ate crabs tonight at my cousin's and the Old Bay and the vinegar kept getting into the cuts where my cuticles should be—my fingertips look all haggard on account of biting my nails. Even as I write this it stings. But the stinging feels good. Like summertime. Like freedom and long afternoons. I'm at home now. The A/C is on high. I'm lying in my bed. I have a big smile on my face and I smell vaguely like a fish . . . Life is swell.
~
That banjo music keeps playing in my mother's neighborhood. Especially in the evenings, around sunset. Between that and the cicadas, it's like a genuine orchestra. Loud as shit. I like to smoke pot and listen. Sitting outside, with the moles.
~
I get really weirded out by my body. It disgusts me. I HATE IT. It's too scrawny, too short . . . I swear I'm finished growing. I'll always be some kind of fake dwarf. With dry, poofy hair. Nothing like the hair you see in movies. My hair, you can't even run a comb through. It's too thick. It hurts. So I don't even bother. And my legs are too twiggy. Skin and bones. Bird legs. My ankles stick out. Like I'm hiding walnuts in my socks. And my fingernails are always bloody. My chest is loaded with phlegm. When I cough, I sound like a bedridden geriatric. My teeth have already gotten yellow. My eyesight is terrible. But I never wear my glasses. I'm too proud. And by the way, I'm redundant as hell.
But more than anything, I hate my butthole. Really. I hate that the most. It's an evil little fucker. A ridiculous thing. Hiding out down there between my ass cheeks, beneath two layers of clothing. Letting farts slip out on the sly. Blowing them through its filthy lips . . . Come to think of it, I hate everyone's butthole. All of them. Buttholes in general. They're gross. And nobody
gets them clean enough. The whole world is walking around with dirty anuses. Farting their brains out. And smiling all the while. Girls especially. From ear to ear. Telling each other how beautiful they look. Pretending nobody has to poop. Nobody just did. They live their whole lives that way. Until they realize they're starting to die . . . They're just waiting for the bad news . . . Then things start to get real . . . Farting is not so serious . . .
Well, maybe it's not just my body or assholes in general that I hate. Maybe I can't stand human bodies in general. They ooze into the world, they grow, they die, they rot, they stink . . . It's weird to even think of things like having a brain. An actual pulsing nerve center–type brain, like a brain-type brain inside your head. It's gross. And the other stuff too. Organs. Tendons, ligaments, muscles, bones . . . All pretty foul. If I could be part android, a bionic man like Robocop, with no asshole or guts or nagging brain, I'd do it in a second. Live forever, no nasty cancers, headaches, no more struggling to take a leak in the men's room at the ballpark, no more random boners. Robots have it made.
Shit, I'd rather be anything than a human. A dog or a squirrel. A thornbush even. At least you'd be too dumb to notice your body changing, dying, the foul condition it's in. Too dumb to realize you feel bad about things. But even then you'd get hungry. Or thirsty. Or sick . . . I guess I'd still rather be a cartoon than anything. Cartoons are the shiznit.
~
Sometimes I don't feel right and I have to go out and buy things to feel better. A videogame, a CD, DVD, comic book, new hat, sneakers, a skate deck, weed, a T-shirt, whatever. It's the only thing that will help. Like I feel empty inside, deflated. I need something to puff me back up again. Or I'll feel incomplete. I absolutely HATE this about myself. And about other people too.
I mean, seriously, what am I missing? What's wrong with me? Did cavemen have this problem? Not like the Flintstones who had money and gadgets of their own, but real cavemen. You know, naked uncivilized brutes. Maybe they did. Maybe they needed a shiny rock to feel secure. Or a cave painting. A skin. But what about the animals? They seem to do all right without money or toys . . . They eat, they shit, they fuck, play games, build nests . . . NESTS. Maybe that's it. Does a squirrel feel the same way about shoebox stuffing as I feel about shoes? Does a piece of string blow their hair back the way a new T-shirt does mine? I can't tell. But probably not. A nest is like shelter. And shelter is a PHYSICAL NEED, right? Not like a vintage comic. So why do us humans require all this other junk to feel good about life? We don't have a clue what to do with ourselves. It's a curse. On all of us. We're too smart for our own good, but never smart enough to be happy . . . All this fucking stimuli. Too easy to get bored. And boredom makes me feel uneasy about myself, about everything, just bad in general.
Sometimes I sit on the floor in the middle of my bedroom and surround myself with all the stuff I've collected. CD cases, comic books, skateboard wheels covered in flat spots . . . Like a pack rat alone in his hole. I'll just pick things up and look at them. The way I did with my stuffed animals when I was younger. But eventually I grow bored. I need to surround myself with new stuff all the time . . . Yuck . . . The very thought of it makes me feel desperate.
What if reincarnation really does exist? No, seriously. What if we, all of us, have actually been here before? Like possibly hundreds of times? Maybe that would explain why everyone is so bored.
~
Secret: Every time I happen to glance at a digital clock and see that it's just one number repeated (1:11, 2:22, 3:33, 4:44, 5:55, or 11:11) I make a wish. Most people just do it at 11:11 but I really like making wishes so I take every chance I can get. Usually I wish that my mom will live a long, healthy life and be happy for most of it. But sometimes I wish for other things too. Like money or sex.
~
I'm sitting on my molehill in the afternoon, safely coated in insect repellent, with a bag of chronic on my lap, smoking a doobie. All is well. I guess. My mom's been depressed a lot lately. And really stressed out. And being a total bitch. Her bosses came to town from Texas or someplace to see how she's been managing the office. She thinks they're going to fire her for being too old. I try to comfort her, tell her not to worry about it. But what do I know anyway. I'm just a kid. Maybe she will get fired. Maybe she is too old . . . Besides that, the sun is up and there's a breeze. The firs on either side of me smell fragrant and the moles seem active. I think I can feel them moving around in the earth beneath my rear end. I'm not sure. I might be imagining things. But I've got a bag of the super dank and a full pack of cigarettes. And the stitches in my lip have begun to dissolve and fall out on their own. So life can't be all bad, I suppose.
I'm thinking about all these things and also about dreams. I'm wondering if coma patients have dreams. If they do, then being comatose might not be such a bad a way of life. It might even be more satisfying than real life. And maybe seem much longer in fact. It would certainly be more fantastic. And if the dreams are vivid, then WHY NOT enjoy a nice long coma? I'm not gonna lie to you, running all this kind of stuff through my head, I'm feeling a little zoned out . . .
But reality kicks in right off when I notice the fuzzy slippers at the foot of the mound. For all I know I could have been staring straight at them for an hour! A lifetime even! I jump in my skin, I panic. Fuzzy slippers! The whole situation is sketchy as hell. I try to stuff the herb in my pocket, but I'm sitting Indian-style and my shorts are drawn too tight across my thighs for me to get my hands inside. So I just stare at the ground for a while, hoping the slippers will walk away or dissipate if I stay perfectly still. After what feels like forever, I look up to see who it is.
He's just standing there, holding his hat in his hands, looking down at me . . . Mister Reese . . . “Hello there,” he goes. He points to the bag in my lap. “You wouldn't mind letting me see that, would you, young man?”
My muscles tighten up. I'm preparing to take off at a sprint. Go shit in your hat, I want to tell him. “What are you gonna do, tell my mother?” I ask instead, getting all defensive. “She won't care. She's got her own problems, dude.”
“As do we all,” he sighs, and starts coughing. “As . . . do . . .
we . . . all . . . ” He looks left, then right, then over his shoulder, like to make sure nobody's watching. “No, siree. I won't be speaking to your mother. You've got my word on that score.”
“Then what do you want to see it for, huh?”
“I'm an old-timer is all. And I imagine you kids get all the goodies. Curiosity is all . . . I can leave you alone if you like.” He turns slowly and begins to shuffle off in his slippers.
I watch for a second, bewildered, and then something comes over me. I'm like, “Wait up. You can look. Here. Come back and check it out.”
He slips a pair of reading glasses over his nose and squats down on the edge of the molehill. His joints creak like the Tin Man's. He must have arthritis I think. I watch as he carefully picks out a choice bud. He holds it over the baggie carefully, by the stem, so nothing falls off. He examines it for a moment, then brings it up to his snout and takes a deep breath. His nose hairs go all wild. It's gross.
I'm blushing. I can't help it. I'm not sure whether I'm smiling because A) I'm embarrassed someone will see me squatting on a molehill with this oddball geriatric, B) I'm way super proud of how heady my nuggets must look, or C) I just can't get over what a character this dude is. Maybe all three, I suppose. Or something else.
He looks up from the bag. His glasses slide down his nose and fall in the dirt. I lean forward and pick them up. He wipes them off on his shirt. “Those are some magnificent flower-tips you've acquired,” he says. (FLOWER-TIPS!?! I think. How old is this guy!?!)
“Can you get any more?” he asks me.
And just like that I'm thinking this could be the start of a very profitable relationship.
“It depends on what you're looking for,” I shrug, trying to come off lik
e a pro. “As far as weight goes, you know?”
“Why don't you come over sometime and we can discuss it,” he suggests. “I live right across the cul-de . . .”
“I know where you live,” I say, cutting him off. A smile spreads across the old man's face. His teeth look big and fake. He nods once, tips his hat, and scuffles off.
~
Gary called me and asked if I would go to TGI Fridays with him and Kari and then to the Towson Commons for a movie. Amy was coming with Kari so it would be like a double date. I hadn't seen Amy since U.B. Fields and I was nervous. On top of that I had a pimple. I don't get zits very often. Puberty hasn't hit me hard enough yet I don't think. But when I do get one, I totally freak out. They're humiliating. I pick at them, squeeze them, try to push them back in my skin. I don't understand blemishes. They're so weird. Growths coming out of your face. It's freaky. What causes them? My mom says soda sometimes, but other times she says stress, and other times she says not washing up before supper or eating chocolate . . . So which is it?
Anyway I popped my pimple that morning, but by the middle of the day it looked even worse. Now it was a lumpy scab in the shape of a pimple. Bigger even. I didn't know what to do. I waited a few hours to see if it would go away. Of course, it did not. I picked off the scab, but that didn't help either. I was all ready to cancel and hide my head under a pillow for the rest of the week. Then I got an idea. I took out my pen knife and headed over to the mirror. I stuck the point into the scab and tugged the knife down the side of my face, giving myself a nice-sized vertical slash. It looked like something out of a pirate movie. A cut seemed less embarrassing than a pimple. I mean, I've heard that chicks dig scars, right? So now I was all ready to go. I was even admiring my new look in the mirror when the doorbell rang. I looked tough.