The bed sheets feel cold and smooth against my naked legs and the pre-sleep lamplight fills the room with warm ambience. Nadia and I engage in a mandatory hug, which ends the pre-sleep ritual. Unbeknownst to her, I silently fart several times. This is common. This is love.
Nadia has rolled over onto her side as I plug the jack into the stereo. I carefully place the headphones on my head. I visualise a king being crowned and immediately curse my delusions of grandeur. I turn the stereo on and the mechanical sound of a preloaded CD whirs into life. As I lay back I flick the lamp off, the room is minutely illuminated by the stereo’s blue display. My finger easily finds the play button on the remote despite the lack of light. I could perform every function on my stereo remote in the blackest void. My tactile memory is strong.
My anticipation drags the split seconds out as I wait for the first track to start. My eyes are closed, every atom in my body prepared for sustenance.
Through the left headphone speaker a slapping noise fades to life. It’s not until the meaty groaning begins in the right channel that I become completely confused. I flick the lamp back on and stare at the stereo. The display indicates that the CD is playing. I skip forward a couple of tracks only to be confronted with more slapping sounds, more groaning. I remove the headphones in a mild panic. I strain my ears, hoping that somehow the sounds I’m hearing aren’t originating from the headphones. There’s nothing to hear except the heavy breathing of Nadia beside me. I hold the headphones to my ear once more and there it is, clear as day. The same masturbatory sounds. I throw the headphones down on the bed beside me, while attempting to massage the stress from my brow. My eyes shift back and forward between the stereo and the headphones. I snap myself out of whatever reverie I’m in, intent on justifying the entirely odd phenomena. Without much thought, I pluck the headphone cable out of the stereo. Intensely loud, blastbeat ridden death metal pours into the room. Nadia wakes with a start, unusual for her as she will sleep through almost anything.
“Fuck, Michael! Use the headphones!!!”
I dive toward the stereo’s power button, cutting the sound off abruptly.
“Sorry babe, you don’t understand…”
“Just let me sleep.”
She rolls over, ignoring me, leaving me to deal with the situation alone. I don’t dare make a sound.
* * * * *
I try numerous CDs and every stereo in the house. The sounds differ from track to track, album to album but essentially it’s all the same; a vast cornucopia of wanking. Some of the wanking carries a strange, dignified air that fills me with immediate envy.
I cower pathetically in the corner of the lounge room, which suddenly seems foreign and foreboding. The occult headphones are plastered to my ears, vexation drowning my brain. The ceaseless masturbation crawls into my ears, pulling me in, ensuring I am part of each and every groan, pant and slap. The physical and mental exhaustion mercifully knocks me out at about 4 am.
* * * * *
Nadia finds me the next morning splayed out in the lounge room, fast asleep. The headphones are still steadfastly attached to my ears. When I don’t respond to her concerned voice she begins to kick me until finally I stir. My body is caked in dry, sticky sweat and my face is stained with tears. In a daze I remove the headphones and stare blankly, right into her eyes.
“What the fuck, Michael?”
Dull shards of understanding and perception emerge as my body tries to reboot. My brain attempts to scan for the appropriate wording to explain myself but I feel as if the wanking has erased everything.
“Have you been here all night? What was wrong with the bed?”
My only response is to feebly hold up the headphones, offering them to Nadia. “Listen,” is all I can say.
Tentatively she takes possession of the headphones while staring at me as if I were a stranger. Her body language places a psychological distance between us and it terrifies me. I watch closely as she listens and starts to hear what I’ve been hearing.
“What the hell are you listening to, Michael? What is this shit?”
She throws the headphones down and gives me an accusatory stare. I prop myself up against the wall, engaging in the conversation against my better judgement.
“It’s wanking, Nadia.”
“Yes! I can hear that it’s wanking! Why the fuck are you listening to it?”
“It won’t stop – it’s ceaseless and I don’t know where it’s coming from.”
“What do you mean ‘you don’t know where it’s coming from’?”
“It’s the new headphones you got for me. Wanking is all they will play. No matter what CD I put into the stereo, it comes out as wanking.”
“What shit are you on right now, Mike? You’re scaring the hell out of me.”
“I fucking wish I was on something. At least then there would be a fucking explanation.”
Nadia continues to stare, clearly unable to process what I’m saying. Painfully I stand up, using the wall behind me for support.
“Look, I know alright! It’s crazy, I’m going mad! I am completely willing to accept the fact that I’ve snapped and this is all some fucked up hallucination.”
Nadia slowly shakes her head involuntarily. Tears slowly creep from her eyes.
“Nadia please! Prove to me that this is a hallucination. Take the headphones, get them to play music. Please, prove that I’m going mad. I need a shower; I’m going to be late.”
I limp away, leaving Nadia behind to wrestle with the situation. I need to wash away the stink of my undoing.
* * * * *
I’m working up the strength to start pouring abuse at the blank wall in front of me when I receive a phone call from my supervisor. I hold the phone to my ear half expecting to hear masturbation. Instead I’m subjected to Dean’s intolerable smarm.
“Hi, Michael. Dean here.”
“Hi, Mr Hayes.” A familiar sense of dread always accompanies these chats.
“How you travelling, Michael?”
“Fantastic, never better.”
“Good to hear. We need to have a chat, Michael.”
“About what, sir?”
“Best not to discuss it over the phone. Come to my office this afternoon. Does two sound good?”
Silence at my end.
“You still there, Michael?”
“Umm… yes sir.”
“Two pm this afternoon. Does that suit you?”
Mr. Hayes hangs up before I have a chance to yay or nay the proposition. I’m hardly in a position to bargain but even farcical democracy is better than nothing.
Whenever someone asks me for a chat my defences tweak automatically. It feels like my internal organs are coming loose and rattling around my torso. The simpler they ask, the more devastating the result. At least that’s been my experience. I envisage absurdly melodramatic scenarios in my head, one of the worst being Mr Hayes questioning me about ‘all this masturbation you’ve been listening to’ and then whipping my bare arse with rhubarb. Most of the scenarios usually follow a typical, ‘you’re fired’ type trajectory and result in me walking home forlorn. There’s usually an equally forlorn looking puppy following me. We don’t befriend each other, I think he’s just attracted to the scent of my misery. I picture myself explaining the job loss to Nadia and watch as the guts of her financial security are violently ripped away. I watch her walk out the door, in too much of a hurry to put pants on. She’d rather expose her shame to the world than spend a second longer with me. She walks along the side of the road, thumb jutted out, imploring the perverts of the world to give her a ride – to take her away from me. A car load of horny men pull up beside her. Nadia enters the car without as much as a glance back in my direction. I never see her again and my life enters a period of total ruin.
I have this nasty habit of letting my imagination sprint away from anything resembling logic. By the time I’m even partially aware it’s usually too late. The damage has been done.
2 pm will arrive w
ith funereal dread. I spend the remaining hours before the ‘meeting’ staring blankly at the wall I’m supposed to be abusing. I cast my mind back to the headphones and have an unusual urge to use them. There’s something about their masturbatory consistency which appeals to me. It seems ordered somehow. Despite the confusion and discomfort, when I put on those headphones I know exactly what I’m going to get.
* * * * *
“It’s your readings, Michael. You don’t appear to be eliciting any response whatsoever from the walls you’re testing.”
My teeth grit as I suppress boiling rage. Mr. Hayes sits calmly across from me, a passive perversion accentuating every hate-filled chunk of his being.
“Can you explain these results, Michael?”
His smile momentarily disappears and I become aware of the unnatural fluorescent light bathing his office.
“I follow every procedure to the letter including the abuse to non-abuse ratio. Perhaps there’s no response to get.
His smile returns, brighter and more sickening than the office lights.
“Michael, Michael, Michael… I’m disappointed in you. Are you to tell me that you have no belief in Astenburger’s theories?”
Of course I have no fucking belief, I think. My answer is only slightly more tactful.
“Look Mr. Hayes, I’m just doing my job. Mine is not to question why.”
I notice his eyes bulge. In a flash he gathers his composure and attacks with more rehearsed bullshit.
“Any man worth his salt should question why on a minute by minute basis.” He places his hands in his pockets and begins a slow walk around the office. “Did you know that in your department you remain the only employee to have sustained a zero result?”
“No sir, I did not know that,” I say feebly, without any thought of defending myself.
“How does it make you feel?”
”Fairly ambivalent either way, sir,” I say coldly, devoid of emotion.
“You really need to shape up, Michael. I’m officially putting you on notice. You have two weeks to get your act together. Am I understood?”
I nod gravely.
“Excellent! You may leave now. I sincerely look forward to seeing you here again under more positive circumstances. Please believe me when I tell you that I don’t like doing this sort of thing. I guess in reality I’m a bit naïve, Michael. I have this unquenchable ideal that we can all work together harmoniously.”
A revolting smile crosses his smarmy face as he extends his hand out toward me. Against my better judgement I shake it. I coat his palm in my nerve-induced sweat.
* * * * *
“YOU FUCKING CUNT! YOU FUCKING CUNT!! YOU MOTHERFUCKING CUNT!!!’
I’m screaming at the top of my lungs to a wall that really doesn’t give a shit. “What the fuck do I have to do to you? What do I have to say? WHY DON’T YOU SCULL A CAN OF ELEPHANT NIPPLES YOU GIANT PIECE OF ELDERLY SHIT, WHY DON’T YOU GO AND BLINK PISS!!!”
My efforts strike me as particularly fruitless. I punch the wall, skinning my knuckles and leaving a streak of blood behind. To my addled mind the blood appears to spell the word pathetic and I really have to agree.
The urge to resign from this sham of a job multiplies within me. In the end its pure fear that stops me. The status quo may fill me with hate but there’s something to be said for comfort.
I stare hard at the instrumentation, willing it to fudge a reading. I’m sure dodgy instrumentation accounts for every reading registered by every other employee to date. I seem to have been cursed with instrumentation that refutes Astenberger’s theories even more vehemently than I do. In a way we’re allies in a house of fools. I can’t deny that a large part of me would feel incredibly disappointed if a reading were to occur. I still have some semblance of pride.
I cast my mind back to my psychopathic night spent with the headphones. My mind is far too sleep-deprived and hazy to formulate any meaningful theories. I know what I heard but I won’t discount auditory hallucination, except that Nadia heard it too! She clearly said that she heard it. Unless I was hallucinating Nadia’s reaction too. She may have been saying the exact opposite and I was contorting her words into what I needed to hear, in which case I am the very definition of crazy. She’s probably packed up her bags and left. I’ll arrive home to find that bitch gone with a hurriedly scrawled note in her wake:
Michael,
You make life hell. I’m outta here.
Fuck off and die!
Die! Die! Die! Die!
Sincerely,
Nads
It’s just like that bitch to fuck off when I need her more than ever. She could make it so much better. All she has to say is, “Michael! You’re right, I hear it too. Let’s fuck.” Instead she pisses off with a carload of dirty perverts. She’s telling them the most vulgar lies and the lousy cunts all snigger and fidget while they feel her up en masse.
Breathe Michael, breath… I feel as if every screw has come loose. I’ve worked myself up into an unbelievably stupid, inane panic. I’m too scared to go home… but I need her. I need her more than ever. She’s my anchor – she’s an unmoveable calm, devouring my pathetic tumults. I think my thoughts are trying to kill me.
The walls refuse to respond. Nothing I say is good enough.
* * * * *
The train ride home was wretched. I had to fight the urge to ask strangers what I should be yelling at my walls. There’s a perpetual feeling that everyone knows exactly what to say except me. My decisions are wrong, my choices are wrong – everything I have a hand in is wrong. I anticipated Nadia with equal parts intense need and dread. She wields the power to proclaim me sane or other.
Approaching my front door I slow down exaggeratedly; like a mime walking against invisible wind. I fumble with the house keys, dropping them on the doorstep. I can only assume this is a deliberate ploy to buy more time. The time I try to buy seems to correlate directly to the creeping dread expanding within me. I just have to open the fucking door! The door is a clotted bandaid, which I’ll tear off as fast as possible. I don’t care how much skin it takes.
I step cautiously over the threshold and enter my dimly lit house. The curtains are drawn, only slits of dying sunlight are granted entry. The vibe in this room stings my brain. The walls and furniture seem to cut at Dr. Caligari angles. I pick up on a bread trail of empty, contorted CD cases. I follow the trail through the house, arriving in the bedroom. I’m confronted with the hunched, shivering shadow of Nadia cowering in the corner with strips of daylight cutting searing lines through her body. The image chills me to the bone. I flick the light on, trying to douse myself in the safety of its basking glow. I wish I hadn’t.
Under the stark illumination lie hundreds of horribly shining CDs. The viscera from the empty cases which have led me to this point. I notice ten or so headphones like my own strewn about the refuse. Nadia stares directly into my eyes. She seems lost. Her eyes are choked with thick, jelly-like tears. She’s wearing the headphones. Unseen pressure building within her forces her upright like a tortured jack-in-the-box. She rips the headphones off, throwing them against the wall.
“Babe, what’s wrong?”
“They never cum, Michael! They just keep wanking and wanking but they never cum!”
She keeps repeating they never cum, lost in delirium. I take quick, nervous strides toward her and shake her hard by the shoulders.
“Come back to me Nadia. What the fuck is this?” Something registers in her eyes, the light of reason shines.
“I’ve tried every CD in the house. They all do it! I thought perhaps the sounds were coming from the headphones themselves but…”
“…but what, Nadia?”
“They all respond to volume control, track skipping and random play. The wanking stops when the CD stops. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Nadia gestures toward the other headphones with a shaking arm. “I went to the store, the store where I purchased your first set. I got every one they had in stock. None
of them do it. It’s just the set I bought for you!”
I stand a while, pondering Nadia’s maniacal words, an uncontrollable smile dances across my face. “You know what this means don’t you, Nadia?”
She stares blankly, I answer for her, “This means that I’m not fucking crazy! You hear it plain as day. So the only question is, where the hell is this shit coming from?”
“You tell me, Michael! I’ve been asking myself that question all day. I can’t stop listening to it. They NEVER cum!”
I hadn’t thought about it before but Nadia was right. The masturbation was ceaseless without any hint of climax. There was just perpetual momentum; a clockwork toy, winding up without release, without breaking. It was a disturbing thought. Who did these disembodied auditory signals of self-gratification belong to? Why were they being channelled through those headphones? These questions simply led to new questions, like rancid bog bubbles rising to the surface.
Looking at Nadia, wrapped in a blanket and warming her hands with herbal tea, I feel uncontrollably choked with tears. I resent her for breaking down. She’s my rock, Nadia’s not allowed to crumble. Whatever we’ve subjected ourselves to has affected us in a deeply psychological way.
“Nadia?”
She slowly turns her head to face me, waiting for me to continue.
“Let’s fuck.”
After gently placing her herbal tea on the coffee table she crawls on top of me, cocooning us both within her blanket. We claw at each other ferociously, trying to dig deeper into the other’s body. I bury my nose into her raw armpit, allowing the miasma to thrive within me. As we fuck, we cry. Our unstoppable tears intermingling. We thrust in agony, achieving a mutual orgasm, unlike the poor souls in the headphones. Afterward we remain entangled, sobbing and quivering. This is how we remain until morning.
A Million Versions of Right Page 7