98 Wounds

by Justin Chin

  I lie in bed and wait for someone to save me. Many show up but then they are just the people inside of him. A trick of light and night. And again, I’m flying and I’m fearing and I wish for the chartered seaplane, the magic carpet, the spread span of wings to fail and let us crash so hard to the earth, smash into the smallest roots of the tallest tree, and there we shall stay, there we shall make a little home away from the cranking madness of it all.

  2.

  So many lovers diseased and maimed. I have seen everyone of them somewhere before, a bright red despair in my guts. The sounds always sound better with the moon full of cancer, and white beasts crawl across the unanswerable extent of my urges: the one I chose was the one with the white eyelids that peeled off. That was the due, the dotted line above his eyeball and the tiny lifting flaps that facilitated such an easy peel.

  And should I choose wrongly, should I choose at all from among this bunch of rejects, castoffs: the young one with skin so saggy, his face lifts off like a rubber mask. The one with nipples ingrown to dank pits in his chest cavity, the ribs parted to let the rot sink in. The hayseed one with fingers and toes, pieces of nose, a whole ear, fallen off in a year’s worth of leprous fits. The old one with gangrenous opals for eyes, asbestos pipes for hands, and chipped new age crystals for a cock. Should I choose what I chose, I chose?

  He was the only one in the running. I was only running. My pick would have such white eyelids that flutter and fall off like the last petals on the last white flower at an outdoor wake; I chose a funeral in a bitter storm. What was left behind after the wilting and falling were the bitterest eyes. Like a corpse, my dear soon-to-be late father said, just like a corpse.

  My siblings tell me stories about how certain unfortunate folk meet their ends with their eyes open: fiery deaths in closed spaces, rat poison suicides, hypothermia, certain blood fevers borne by biting insects no smaller than the period which ends all our louched sentences. I join in to remind them: Jeanne D’Arc met her glorious end with her eyes wide open in rapturous quiver; and so did our Christ, in some stories and certain version of the Gospel, where it is said that our Christ, in passion on the cross, faced the loss of His Father with eyes open, looking straight through the gates of Hell and beyond, all the way through into his boudoir in the Kingdom of Heaven.

  In school, we had to dissect rats. Mangy things with wet fur, their original white turned so muddy with sewer goop that they elicited no ounce of pity, even as their filthy rat-lungs squeaked and collapsed, as we pushed large pins into their crunchy paws, impaling them onto a tray of wax, preparing to slice through from neck to anus. No pity even as we grew up, weaned on cute singing mice and heroic rats in cartoons and animated movies, rodents intelligent enough to outwit cats and dogs and humans. The dissection lesson went routinely except for one incident. A young classmate, upon cutting into her assigned rat, found that the rat was cancerous; the stink emanating from the decayed insides of the rodent caused the student to scream out in sheer disgust, disrupting the class. Upon assignment of another rodent, the student dutifully cut into the animal only to be assailed with that familiar stench and the familiar sight of green-blackened guts. Two more rats were dug out of their cages, chloroformed, and assigned, but both were cancerous, too. Both reeking of that same foul stench that was judiciously taking over the classroom. An air freshener, supposedly Spring Linen, was employed to fight the whiffs of decay. By this time, the teacher was losing patience and ordered that the next rat was to be the last one assigned. Sobbing and shaking, the student held her scalpel and nervously brought the sharp edge to the final rat’s flesh. The surgical-precise blade only had to prick the second dermis of the rat, and that stench, now so familiar to all in the classroom, seeped out of the rat. Cancerous, again; but determined to maintain discipline and order, the teacher ordered the student to proceed; and sobbing and shivering even more, the student pushed on, picking out the necessary organs and stretching them out on the wax tray, sketching them in her workbook, documenting their color, texture, and what was partially digested in its rotting intestines.

  Later in the semester I saw that student’s workbook and the sketches of the cancered guts were the most beautiful things I had ever seen. I do not know whether that was testament to her artistic genius or if it was really what was found in the insides of that cursed fifth rodent. It was as if the slicing into the low, and lower still, in disease and rot; there, in the leak of failed organs and foul blood and stink, there in the face of a corpse or a suitor without eyelids, his holes perpetually pus-infected, one might witness a vision where angels of every order kiss one another secretly to their God’s displeasure.

  3.

  I came into the charms of this husband by way of the fantastic promises he whispered into my ear and my arse-crack when I was a mere innocent teenage virgin.

  I now hate his flaky peeling lips and the smell of his gums, but what choice do I have; poor poor pitiful me, forced to live with my equally poor poor pitiful sibling, my parasitic twin, attached to my coccyx, barely alive and breathing shallow like salamanders. I keep my twin hidden in the folds of my clothes; a task especially hard in the summer when everyone is wearing capri pants and espadrilles; there is nothing fashionable, off-the-racks that can properly hide a parasitic twin.

  But this was my destiny, fate, if you believe that sort of thing. At that tender age, I was rendered despondent, depressed by way of terrifying nightmares. In the dream, I saw a land of trees and greenery burning in flames, airplanes dashed overhead spewing orange plumes, the trees shrivel, and the landscape turns an unflinching sausage-brown. In the brown streets unshaded by these wilted bunch of branch and twigs, all manner of beast and child, naked, with open sores, pus and fluids running down their twig-thin bodies, third degree burns blistering and untreated, run like Olympic racers but with no sense of direction, nowhere to go. In one version of the dream, there is a diminishing jungle, the type seen only in movies, recreated in Hollywood back lots or on golf courses in the Third World; the jungle is chock full of animals though all of them are oddly silent; all their larynges have been severed; even the crickets and the cicadas do not make a sound, their legs amputated. The only sound is a pitiful whining and yelping, and the high-pitched whine gets louder and shriller and fades away and returns all year around, unceasingly; and the animals and insects sit where they are, transfixed by this sound which goes on for years; and no one moves for years.

  That was my recurring nightmare, my regression. My parents employed specialists and nurses, psychologists and mystics to lure a life out of me. They tried bribes of sweets and cash, threats of beatings, but nothing worked, the world of my nightmares stained its indelible scrawl in my immature mind, leached in, spread too vast, too hooked to draw its talons out. The parents threw their hands up in defeat. Let the little bastard be, they eventually declared.

  It was then I met the soon-to-be husband. He was a visiting houseguest, newly emergent in his time. His breath smelled of tarnished metal even then.

  One accidental whiff of that metallic burr of his mouth and I wanted to vomit but my stomach was empty, and still somehow, his funny loose ways flexed me, and I was finally bespoke in my still clasped clench.

  From then on, I saved my newly pupated life for the suitor-to-be-husband who waited as patiently as he did. Weather permitting, when the grass was cut, we lay on the damp ground, looking at clouds and all manner of flies; I enjoyed rolling around the lawn like a hedgehog. It was in this state that I thought I might conceivably love him in some manageable way.

  When I was years older, I imagined every excruciating detail about my shadow life ending. I crawled into my head and saw such simple uncomplicated dreams in all their crossed-haired wires, and so, nothing more. But that tarnished metal smell shocked me as smelling salts would, jerking me back to ground zero zero point zero one.

  On that last night, did he, metallic gums and all, mumble, there will still be time for salvage. (At least that was what I thought I he
ard.) And like a dream, I the somnambulist slowly climbed each rung of deep sleep, rung until the end of days.

  Sleep-paste worn off my eyes, I jumped back into my life; the husband was gone, left for another, a younger more innocent one. And my awful sibling twin, silent when I was, and still silent when I was not, did indeed die soon after. She breathed her last sighing breath and drooped from my tailbone, never to be missed, never to be answered to.

  4.

  I saw heretics at a wedding: great ugly behemoths casting a rain of rice and brimstone on the unfortunate couple.

  The groom in tails and tie, carnation in buttonhole, dashes down the aisle with his bride, a mob of white lace flying behind, a super-hero’s cape if that’s what heroes are reduced to these days. The rice grains burn as harsh as acid rain, scorch the guests and the minister, but the happy couple, protected by their unyieldingly sure devotion, were unharmed. The rings exchanged were ancient finger traps designed to amputate clean below the knuckle; the minister was a pederast fucking the flower girls and the pageboys behind a tapestry of the Virgin Mother receiving her immaculate conception, her cunt juices flowing so freely in rivulets down her legs, stray dogs would lap it up and pigeons would bathe in it, devotees collect the ichthyic fluid in goblets and in thimbles, and make communion from it. At the reception, the cake was spiked with ground glass; the punch was poisoned with latex emulsifiers; the salmon finger sandwiches harbored salmonella and bread mold.

  I saw heretics at a wedding kissing the bride and groom with the familiarity of a sea bass, a proud clown hired for a birthday party. The hookers and their pimps sashay down the street and leer; the bookie counts his wad and jots witticisms he overhears at the race track down in the little black book he keeps taped to his inner thigh; the panhandler paints himself red and writes manifestos about the rise of communism, claiming with Baptist fervor prophesying that the hole-in-the-wreck bar down in skid row will be the site of the revolution which will wipe the world clean of its vile greed and potato recipes, and every weekend will be May Day and the children will be let out of school early so they can wash their state-approved pets and learn about the institutions, like marriage, that they will have to participate in eventually.

  The happy couple kiss under the banner of god and family and love; they will fornicate when appropriate, they will create litter upon litter of newborns, all with sharp teeth and bawling dispositions; each litter of carbon-copies even genetic engineering couldn’t have created any better who long for mothers and fathers and milk and money and meat. This, this cycle, is multiplied over and over, unquestioned; and the heretics for centuries to come will never be unemployed, nor want for any entertainment, nor any passion.

  This was what I saw.

  Marriages

  1.

  My husband came home with The Clap. Actually, it was more of a standing ovation. His job in insurance has him traveling around the state to all sorts of podunk towns. It’s shameful that the public restrooms in so many of these places aren’t maintained to proper sanitary standards. The Surgeon General really ought to speak out about this issue. Use the toilet tissue to make a seat cover protector or use newspaper, I tell him, or squat on the bowl. But he never listens. On the positive side, the penicillin shots should help clear up the acne on his back.

  2.

  My husband and I have absolutely no qualms about public displays of affection. We often stroll down the street hand-in-hand, or arm-in-arm, gazing contentedly into each others’ eyes, not caring about who stares or gawks. When the mood strikes us, we might even embrace and kiss each other deeply and intensely. We’re not ashamed of our love. And if they don’t notice us at first, we double back and stand directly in front of them and kiss and make out and fondle each other, in a tasteful manner, of course. We believe it is important for others to see what perfect love looks like.

  3.

  When I got home, I discovered that my husband was possessed by an evil spirit, a horrible demon. I called the only exorcist that was listed in the Yellow Pages, but the earliest he could come was in two days. What could we do? We had no choice but to wait and tough it out.

  My demon-possessed husband yelled and screamed at me, calling me all sorts of hateful and mean names. Then he started smacking me around and throwing things at my head. He played twinkie porn loudly on all the television sets. He forced me to perform various vile and depraved sex acts but when I tried to kiss him, he would turn away with a repulsed look. He started calling his penis Neil, and his left testicle, Nigel. His right testicle refused to participate; Good for you, right testicle, I say. He, Nigel, and Neil would gossip viciously about me as if I wasn’t in the room. I’d walk into a room and find them huddled together whispering and sniggering and when they see me, they start giggling insanely and then I’d hear Nigel cackling from another room. How do they do that? The devil surely works in mysterious way among men.

  Actually, this was exactly just like it was in our regular life, except that he wasn’t trying to humiliate or belittle me in public or in front of our friends.

  When the exorcist came to our door, I told him we did not need his help after all, the demon had left and we were okay.

  4.

  My husband’s mother in a bid to improve herself has enrolled at the barely accredited College of Cosmetology and Cosmetic Surgery. They’re not the same thing, you know that right? I tell my husband.

  Well, duh, he says, obviously. Otherwise it’d be called the College of Cosmetology or Cosmetic Surgery.

  To show his support, he has offered to be her final graduating project. You’re not plain, I tell him. But he’s doing something to his face with a blackhead remover that is simultaneously fascinating and repulsive, and not listening to me. He’s ready for beauty.

  And now, he can hardly sit because of the silicone butt injections. The dark circles of his raccoon eyes belie the chemical peel, and peek from behind the bandages covering his face. Strangers, handsome men on the street, keep running up to him to give him their phone numbers or business cards, they give him obscene propositions scribbled on the backs of receipts and any old scrap of paper or napkin; they’re so sure that there’s a Clooneyesque hunk underneath all that bandage and surgical tape.

  I’m hoping that she fails. Or gets a C-. Or takes an incomplete. I’m not choosy.

  5.

  How did I go from being the most irresistible person in the world to becoming the most irritating person in the world? How long did that change, that metamorphosis, take to occur? Was there a pupating stage? And was I anyone else in the process? Most agreeable? Most nonchalant? Most oblivious? Most forgiving? Most wtf?

  Obviously I did not see the changes happening. So were they seamless transitions? Or were there definite beginning and ending points, starts and stops, as if we were driving a stick shift for the first time. Was it all plain for everyone to see? Or could only one person see this happening?

  Why won’t anyone tell me? The only person who knows all the answers is my husband, but he’s still not home. I’m calling his cellphone again. I’ve text-messaged him repeatedly and left countless voicemail messages but I still haven’t heard back one squeak from him.

  6.

  After dinner, while I was doing the dishes, my husband fished out $40 from my wallet and said he was going to the corner store to buy some cigarettes, a carton of milk, a bag of potato chips, Diet Coke, and some lottery scratchers. I like the Lightly Salted variety, I called out after him as he left the house.

  When he finally returned home ten days later, smoking his cigarette as he sauntered through the front door with a carton of rancid milk in his hand, I ask, what happened with the chips? He finished the chips on the way home, he said, he was sorry. And the scratchers? They didn’t have the kind he liked, and besides, he scratched them all and every one was a dud. And the Diet Coke? He forgot that.

  It’s not that he’s selfish or thoughtless, it’s that he sometimes just doesn’t think things through is all.
r />   7.

  My husband snores as if it’s the end of the world. We have a mid-sized studio apartment and I’m often cranky for lack of a good night’s sleep.

  Try sleeping on your back, friends suggest. Or sleeping with a tennis ball taped to your side. Or a golf ball. Try elevating your feet, or your hips. Try wearing thick socks on one foot. How about a nose clip? A hairclip on the right side? The left side? Try drinking some brandy before bed. Hot milk? Olive oil and apple slices? For me, they suggest, tug on his pillow. Elbow him sharply. Friends offer all sorts of advice but nothing works. Every night when we go to bed it’s as if a garbage truck is fighting with a hippopotamus right there in the room. Try a white-noise machine, someone suggests. But that just ended up with me trying to sleep on a beach while a garbage truck is fighting a hippopotamus as seagulls attack them both.

  So when he had a heart attack and had to be warded in the hospital, I was delighted. Finally! Finally I could get a good night’s sleep or two. But I could not.

  Now when he snores, I turn my back to him and press up close to him, back to back, so I can feel the vibrating timbre. The buzzing reassures me that he’s not dead in bed beside me. I stick a pillow over my head and I slowly drift off. I am in the Serengeti and we are sitting in lawn chairs amidst the tall grasses, the sun is about to set, and we each have a small tumbler of black coffee in hand. I look not unlike Isak Dinesen, before the syphilis turned her into a shriveled little monkey, of course. My husband reaches over and holds my hand as the sun dips below the horizon. In the distance, a garbage truck is fighting with a couple of hippopotamuses. Oh look! A puma and a lion stalking in the grass are about to pounce into the melee. What? The seagulls and a couple of buzzards and a pelican want to join in, too? Sure, why not. Here comes an ape with a spanner in one hand and a wind chime in the other jumping into the mess. This is going to go on for a while.