Drums made of human skin stretched over ribs beaten with severed arms. Playing all night, paying homage to love’s annihilating, all-consuming hunger. The dancers scream as the flesh melts from their bones. They rush forward, begging for extinction. I can feel the blood leaving my body. There is a pool rapidly forming around my midsection as I lie here on the sidewalk. I hear traffic sounds and I can see people peering down at me. People are talking about me but no one is talking to me. I am cold and alone. A moment ago I was walking. I heard gunshots and then something pushed me to the ground. Am I dying? Yes I am dying. I can feel life leaving me. It’s strange that amidst all the noise and confusion around me I am clearheaded and my thoughts are calm and rational. All I can think of is you. All the things that I never told you, how much you meant to me. I don’t know why it is now that these things come rushing to me so clearly. It is sad that you will never know these thoughts of mine. The things that I am feeling while I inhale the smell of car exhaust and blood. It just occurred to me that it is my blood that I am smelling. You will surely find out of my death but not of these moments. I must tell you that I was always afraid of the fury with which I loved you. It overwhelmed me. I thought it beyond comprehension, therefore my silence. I felt overshadowed by the power of it, so much that I was afraid of it and afraid of you. So strong and pure was this passion that it came out as pure venom. I know that you will always think I hated you. If only you knew how wrong you were. I remember when just the sight of you would send me into a fit of rage so blind and molten I would claw at my flesh until I drew blood, hit myself in the face, and cry. I remember the last time I saw you a few months ago. You were so kind and I was so hard and sullen. It was all I could do to contain myself. A rose trapped inside a fist. If I had not walked away quickly after my short reply I would have been at your feet begging to be at your side forever. It is the only place I ever wanted to be. To me you are more than a woman. You are a creature of beauty, a creation of a higher order. I will die knowing that no one will ever love you as I have loved you all these years. I will now attempt to say your name with my last breath.
I am the flying-saucer man. From another world, trapped on yours until they come to rescue me. The saucer will land, Jimi Hendrix and John Coltrane will open the hatch and tell me to get in before someone tries to blow up the ship. I’ll just ask them what took them so long. Within seconds we’ll be out of here. Quietly I sit in the hotel room. The door has three locks on it. No one knows I am here except the lady at the front desk, but she doesn’t care. Traffic passes by the window, no one yells my name out. People pass my door in the hallway, but no one knocks. The city glitters and blinks outside my window. It’s times like these when life is almost bearable. No phone calls, no one’s company to endure. I can think my own thoughts. Dodge their arrows and stones for a while. People make me sad and lonely for solitude. I feel better when I’m walking alone. I like eating alone. Movies are better alone. Alone is safer because you attract less attention, and when you’re alone, you are harder for strangers to figure out. Also, you only have to look out for yourself and you don’t have to worry if the people you’re with can handle themselves in a bad situation. I’d rather be outnumbered and alone than have a weak person with me. Music sounds better when you listen to it alone. Books are better read alone in a room. It’s great to look at paintings but only when you don’t have to listen to someone breathing next to you. People ruin almost everything. Being around people makes me think I have nothing and that I’m a creep. On my own I don’t feel half bad. I got tired of being a vulnerable idiot telling someone what was on my mind. I got tired of humiliating myself over and over. Only a fool trusts a human. All you can do is predict what they will do next and prepare yourself for what might happen. Look at all the divorces happening. You would think that people would figure out that it doesn’t work and just give it the slip. I hear about people getting their bank accounts cleaned out because of a divorce. It’s hard to believe that these people got together because they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with each other. Imagine the feeling of failure that must be. People spend years after divorces in deep depression, they have to go into therapy. They are mad all the time. Can’t feel sorry for them, they bring it on themselves. Waco, Jonestown, they always bring it on themselves. Then they’ll tell you that if you don’t get out there and at least try, you really haven’t lived. Haven’t really lived in hell you mean. Right now, in some city, somewhere there’s a light on in a window. The curtains are partially drawn, and you can’t see in from the street. There’s music playing and the door is locked. That’s me.
The beautiful scarred ones went all over the land, setting buildings on fire and breaking clocks. All structures became an endangered species. Time was destroyed. Real life rose to power. They became true gods immediately. There’s no need to speak. We will communicate by touch and instinctual expression. We don’t need words. We’re well past all that now. It is our destiny to be born beautiful into an ugly age. We breathe life in the face of Death’s high command. It is your animal grace that keeps me alive. It is your feral eyes and taut skin that bring my veins to the surface. You are beautiful like demolition. Just the thought of you draws my knuckles white. I don’t need a god. I have you and your beautiful mouth, your hands holding on to me, the nails leaving unfelt wounds, your hot breath on my neck. The taste of your saliva. The darkness is ours. The nights belong to us. Everything we do is secret. Nothing we do will ever be understood, rather feared and kept well away from. It will be the stuff of legend, tall tale and endless inspiration for the brave of heart. It’s you and me in this room, on this floor. Beyond life, beyond morality. We are gleaming animals painted the color of moonlit sweat glow. Our eyes turn to jewels, and everything we do is an example of spontaneous perfection. I have been waiting all my life to be with you. My heart slams against my ribs when I think of the slaughtered nights I spent all over the world waiting to feel your touch. The time I annihilated while I waited like a man doing a life sentence. Now you’re here and everything we touch explodes, bursts into bloom, or burns to ash. History atomizes and negates itself with our every shared breath. I need you like life needs life. I want you bad, like a natural disaster. You are all that I see. You are the only one I want to know.
We willingly drank the toxic water. We stood all day while the jets passed overhead and shelled the city randomly and locusts crawled all over us. Even when we saw the others who were in the line ahead of us going into convulsions and vomiting blood after they drank. We were so thirsty, and besides that, we wanted to get close enough to you to see you smile. I don’t think any one of us minded dying that day. I want you to know that if I had another life to live, I would have done it all over again. I watch your mouth move. I listen to your voice. I do everything you tell me to. Minutes later I find myself sitting on a metal chair with my hands cuffed behind my back. I tell you that this is the second time that I have been cuffed in my life, the other time by cops. You say nothing, but your expression makes me think that you don’t care about this. I don’t mind being in this position because I trust you, and even as uncomfortable as this is I don’t mind because it’s time spent with you and any time spent with you is special to me. You ask me why I love you, and I tell you that no one ever talks to me like you do. When you call me and we talk late at night it’s the most wonderful time I have ever known. You smile and ask me if I want to kiss you. I tell you that I want to kiss you every day for the rest of my life. You lean in close to me, lock your eyes onto mine. You open your mouth slightly and move in closer. In the instant before your lips touch mine I see the glint of the cobra’s head inside your mouth. You pull me forward and clamp your mouth onto mine and the cobra goes down my throat. Followed closely by a few more and then several scorpions. You pull back and I can feel the creatures in my guts biting and stinging. I ask you why you have done this to me. You say, “You’re mad at me because I don’t want to fuck you.” I tell you that I don’t care about that a
nd why did you hurt me when I have never done anything to you. You stand up and pull out a knife. You start to stab yourself and I ask you to stop. You tell me to beg you to stop. I beg you and tears are streaming down my face. The snakes and scorpions are forgotten, all I can think of is your safety. You say, “I’m showing you how weak and stupid you are.” I black out. When I awake I am on the floor of a hotel in the middle of nowhere. The rug is warm and I am glad to be alone. I look up to see the door, and to my great joy it is triple-locked. It’s the first thing I do when I come in, never knowing how the curse will manifest itself. Whatever happens, no one can be here unless it’s a dream of you or a cobra you might send to keep me company. Alone is perfect because it’s all I can handle. I was never able to deal with company who stays too long unless it’s you with your flesh-cauterizer words. Almost everything and everyone outlasts their welcome. Human nature is antihuman. I dream of anonymous room-numbered nights on flat ground near major highways. I always stay below the windows, and I never answer the phone anymore. I know it will never be you.
You forgave me in a dream the other night. The more you told me it was all right the worse I felt. I know that you were only doing it because you knew I couldn’t possibly hurt you more than I already had. I could see what forgiving me was doing to you. I know that you think I’m too stupid to figure it all out. When you forgave me you knew that it was finally over. The pain would leave me, I would forget you, and you would never see me again except in a dream. It is sad that the things that we saw in each other are no longer there. It is a shame that we tore each other apart looking for things that we needed desperately but couldn’t describe. It is tragic that we only wanted to give to each other but only stole from ourselves and blamed each other for the emptiness in our lives. I see you differently now. I no longer fear you. It took years to see you for what you are. I no longer associate you with the screaming and dry heaves. You know what? I see now that you gave me the courage to addict myself to the sickness that your presence in my life offered. The puking and blackouts were just some of the slight side effects from the heights of the crippling pain you inspired me to climb to. Years later when the scars were all that I had to show for all the time I spent with you I would dig at them to make blood come out. It made me feel closer to you. I would be alone in a room, years and several thousand miles away from you, screaming and bleeding and wanting to die, but now I see that I was just trying to get back to you. Yes I am ashamed but it’s the truth so there’s nothing I can do. When I saw you recently and you put your arms out to embrace me I cannot describe the joy I felt when my flesh started to tear away. So many years alone gouging myself, and the whole time you were waiting to have me back. Your voice of one thousand black-night ravens. Your soul-erasing eyes. I can’t believe that I had survived without you and the pain that you caused me to inflict on myself. Can you believe that for a time I hated you? That I wanted to see you dead? And when I didn’t want to see you dead I wanted to die myself. I used to spend days at a time thinking how nice it would be to not exist. I wanted to die because I blamed myself for all the hatred you poured on me without end. Now I see that we need each other. All those years I spent away from you. I hate to think of how you got by without me to burn and scar. I hope you don’t think that I abandoned you. I was selfish. Now I only want to be near you and to give you everything. It’s okay to come out, bright eyes. Sit here. Now like before, talk to me real nice, and gently drain the blood from my veins. Help me destroy what is left of my life with your neurotic, insane screeching. Infect my thoughts so that everyone I meet will seem strange and threatening, causing me to alienate them. Your lips are thinner now that you’re older, but they still pull back over your teeth when you’re about to strike. Spend a little more time with me so that my last years will be bitter and wrenched. Pass every confusing, enigmatic facial expression of yours on to me so I will see it on the faces of others and always blame myself. And tell me that it’s going to hurt, otherwise I’ll never get to sleep tonight. Please bright eyes. Some magic, one more puncture wound.
You are all colors. You are the birth of true jazz. You are ten thousand years of flowers blooming at once. You are the flavor of sunset. You are perfect like winter stars that watch over me in the night sky of winter. I’m in a room with a mattress on the floor and little else. The rent is paid by washing dishes. I clean what they leave behind. I have enough to get by. I have no radio, no way to listen to music except to hear it through the walls from other rooms in the building. I don’t read books because anyone who writes them must be oppressive and insecure. If they really had something to say, they wouldn’t feel the need to write it down. I only want to know about you. I have a picture of you that I cut out of a magazine. I look at it all the time. Even though my clothes are worn and dirty and I have almost nothing, there is not the slightest trace of filth on your picture. Nights have passed unnoticed as I stare into your eyes. I imagine your mouth. Sometimes all I can think of is what a miracle it would be to kiss you and for you to want me to. Your unmoving face speaks to me. I close my eyes and can see your face clearly. I wonder what I would say if you told me to tell you everything. I never talk to people unless I want to get information from them or want to keep them at a distance. I use language as a shield. So much of what I do is an act. I act like a human. That’s why I walk through the city as much as possible. I want to get as many human traits as possible so I can utilize them when the need arises. At work I try to think of things that I could tell you. I have never spoken to anyone because I wanted to know about them or wanted them to know me. I have always spoken out of survival or fear. With women in the past I just repeated things I heard other people say. I used catchphrases. I have never loved a woman. I have been with some but I never knew why. I just went through the motions. I don’t know if it felt good or not. Afterward, I would be silent, staring at the ceiling. They would ask if I was okay. I would reply with something I heard somewhere like, “Can’t complain,” or “No sweat.” They thought I was strange. They would always leave me and I never cared. It’s different when I think of you though. I never write anything down because I think it’s a waste of time. I know what I know, and what I do know I know for a reason and don’t need to be reminded. If I forget something, then I didn’t need to know it. So, I systematically go through all my thoughts, sifting through the facts of my existence and the things that I use as deception, to keep humans from knowing me. I want to know you. I want you to make me tell you everything about me. I want you to be the only person in the world who will ever know me. I want to hear you say that you want me. I want to feel your arms around me. I want to feel your heart beating against my chest and your breath on my neck. If you want me, you can have me. I have never kissed your picture. Out of respect I never speak to it. I never take it out of the room. I don’t love you. How can you love a piece of paper or what you think it represents? Something that could be burned in a few seconds, thrown out and hauled away with tons of garbage. I just stare, prepare myself for our unlikely meeting, and make sure I get to work on time.
The moon will never lie to anyone. Be like the moon. No one hates the moon or wants to kill it. The moon does not take antidepressants and never gets sent to prison. The moon never shot a guy in the face and ran away. The moon has been around a long time and has never tried to rip anyone off. The moon does not care who you want to touch or what color you are. The moon treats everyone the same. The moon never tries to get in on the guest list or use your name to impress others. Be like the moon. When others insult and belittle in an attempt to elevate themselves, the moon sits passively and watches, never lowering itself to anything that weak. The moon is beautiful and bright. It needs no makeup to look beautiful. The moon never shoves clouds out of its way so it can be seen. The moon needs not fame or money to be powerful. The moon never asks you to go to war to defend it. Be like the moon. I trust you from my room. From here we are tight. It is late and the lights are low. I am away from the world finally.
Two flights of stairs, double-locked. From here, neither of us is the frustrated, ready-to-explode animal that others see when they pass us on the street. Our eyes are not wild and full of compressed hate. The streets scream. The buildings howl as their backs support floor after floor of sweating lab experiments. It is no surprise to me that hardly anyone tells the truth about how they feel. The smart ones keep themselves to themselves and for good reason. Why would you want to tell anyone anything that’s dear to you, even when you like them and want nothing more than to be closer than close to them? It’s so painful to be next to someone you feel strongly about and know that you can’t say the things that you want to. I have been in that hell many times, and so have you. On that one, we’re united. There’s nothing like the small room and some music. If you’re lucky enough to have that, you know what I mean. The late-night soundtrack takes me away from the one-way strangers from the street, and all becomes as it should. I used to like reality, until they screwed it up and cheapened it so badly. I used to defend reality until they shot so many people and crushed so many spirits that I could no longer stand to be part of it. They tried to break me. Of course, they failed. Johnny Hartman is tonight’s late-night soundtrack. He never got his due. I think of him singing like a sad alien in a lounge somewhere until closing time and going back to a hotel to chain-smoke himself to sleep. His voice lets me know that he was well acquainted with pain and late nights. He is dead but I know him well. He is part of my self-created reality. He comes here and fills the air with his words and it’s good to be alive. It’s not a matter of not being tough enough to take what they give out. I can hack it anytime around these parts, but only a fool would waste the time. What do you have to prove? It’s hard to find anyone who’s worth a second of your time or even the slightest bit of your truth. But from here we can do it. In this silent, understood relationship, I am glad you are here and hope for your well-being. From this room with the anonymous location, we don’t have to dwell on the ordinary, grinding tasks that keep us alive and make us dull. Here, in this moment, we are beautiful, nocturnal creatures and our thoughts and words are jewels guarded by the moon.
The Portable Henry Rollins Page 24