by Brian Hodge
I wondered if it might not be easier to contract some hideous disease — surely Syd and Brendan could qualify the symptoms — then summon Dr. Kevorkian. I pictured his arrival like that scene from The Exorcist when Father Merrin finally shows up to battle the devil, standing still in black silhouette beneath the streetlight in front of that foreboding house, his mysterious and holy bag in hand.
And then my thunder got stolen again.
When Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain put the shotgun in his mouth and thumbed the trigger, it sent shock waves through our house. All of us, even Camilla, would look at each other as if we’d been living a movie and one of the reels of film got put in upside-down, or out of sequence. It felt as if we were all on the verge of saying, “No, wait, it’s not really supposed to be like this.”
And it wasn’t. The weatherman, now he’d been a frat boy. He was supposed to turn out miserable and hollow at the center of it all. But this was something else entirely. Kurt had done it all his way and flipped everyone the bird from his breakthrough album, and it still wasn’t enough, so what chance was there for the rest of us?
Oh … never mind.
We left MTV on all weekend, saw the same varnished newsreels until we could’ve recited them by rote, and I don’t know that we were grieving so much as we were simply horribly justified. We’d come of age, an entire demographic group of us, from Seattle to Key West. We finally had our JFK — where were you when you heard the news? — and no, he wasn’t in the same league, but he was ours.
By early the next week my T-shirt shop had already coughed up its paean to tastelessness and commemorative gallows humor, and I brought home a half-dozen prototypes of the shirt. In a rare era of unity, all six of us wore them that night, black shirts with a picture of Kurt on the front, thick stringy gobs of red and gray ink blasting furiously from the top of his head, and above this it read:
nirvana [noun]: The state of perfect nothingness
We liked to think Kurt might’ve at least appreciated the irony. Especially since Megan looked the word up in Webster’s and found that nirvana literally meant, in Sanskrit, “blown-out.” Some things you just can’t make up.
So we wore our shirts and later got bold, maybe masochistic, and flipped on Rush Limbaugh. It really was quite astounding, the authority he’d become on Kurt, considering until a few days before he’d never heard of the guy. We watched Rush chortle and bluster his way through a denunciation of nearly everything that was under thirty and not Republican. A bunch of lazy whiners who’d had everything handed to us — yeah, so what’s your point? We all sort of knew we couldn’t do anything right, but I’d always thought that that’s the sort of judgment you prefer to reserve for yourself.
“He’d been trying to kill himself for twelve years,” said Rush. “He finally had to buy a shotgun so he wouldn’t miss.”
“Well at least he didn’t have to buy a goddamn airplane!” I shouted at the TV, and couldn’t recall feeling quite so cranky in years.
It was an epiphany, glorious and violent. For the first time in maybe forever, I wanted somebody to be dead, and it wasn’t me.
“You know how they used to execute horse thieves?” I said, not caring who was listening and who wasn’t. “How they used to tie one leg to a northbound horse, and the other to a southbound, and fire a gun?”
“Make a wish,” said Pam.
“I’d really like to do that to him.” I jabbed at the round, jack-o-lantern face on the TV. “Label one horse’s ass ‘Dad’, and the other one ‘Mom’, and just see how well he handles that.” I really started to cook then. “And maybe a couple more horses for his flabby arms, too. And another one for his big fat neck. Label those ‘truth’, ‘liberty’, and ‘the pursuit of happiness.’”
They were all staring at me. Even Rush, but I’m sure that was just a fluke of timing. And I burned with the fury. It was the Gettysburg Address and the Sermon on the Mount and Henry V’s rally of his troops at Agincourt. Well, to me it was.
They all knew I was alive then, and oddly enough, so did I.
I slept with Megan that night, and it didn’t seem nearly the mistake I was convinced it would be. And then dawn came in on the songs of birds as I looked at her, her black hair bunched upon the pillow, thick enough to tie a cable, a lifeline. Not a noose.
“Morning,” she murmured, with a smile, and I wondered how many others across Chicago and the rest of the country were waking up alone, knowing with prophetic certainty that they always would. I imagined they must number in the millions. And of those I had to wonder how many listened to Kurt’s music and thought he’d written it just for them, or fantasized of sitting beside the weatherman to share that fragile cockpit’s ultimate dive.
They deserved a voice, at least.
“Can I borrow some money?” I asked Megan, and she didn’t even ask what it was for, just said sure.
In the colorful and tragic circus after Kurt’s suicide, when it seemed that everyone with a forum, an agenda, and a vocabulary had to say something, I was surprised that no one mentioned Ernest Hemingway. Three decades plus change lay between their deaths, but I would imagine shotgun shells taste the same, no matter what their vintage is.
Kurt left a note, told his wife and the world he didn’t have what it takes anymore, that he couldn’t fake it.
Then, thirty-some years before, you had Hemingway, up in years like he never really wanted to be. Couldn’t fight any more, couldn’t fuck. Prostate trouble, too, if the gods were feeling particularly vicious. I don’t know if he left a note or not, but even if he didn’t, he really hadn’t needed to. It was all there in the books to begin with.
And there you have them, two influential artists with their own singular visions, lives gone, their motives as clear as their demises, and still no one understands. They’re all too busy crying foul to pay attention.
So I ask you: What chance does the average underachiever with a death wish have of being understood?
I went my own way the next several days, placid through my angers. Didn’t bother watching the forecasts. Rain or clouds or sun, I’d gotten to the place where I preferred the surprise to the tipoff. Then the next round of free weekly papers came out, the ones you find at all the better bars and bookstores and coffee shops. The ones whose deadlines I’d caught after borrowing from Megan. I swept down on them and brought home one of each. Sat on the couch as the ebb and flow of life went on under our mad roof, browsing the classifieds until Megan came home.
“I’m writing again,” I told her. “I wanted you to be the first to know.”
“Are you really?” She seemed very happy to hear this, and she was so decent, you know, she didn’t even say the obvious. Oh yeah, well how about writing me a check sometime soon?
“I’m putting together a portfolio,” and then I handed her one of the papers, folded back the way my father always read them, and left them for the next person. I showed her where to read, my ad under “Special Services.”
SUICIDE NOTES
FOR ALL OCCASIONS
• Don’t waste that last opportunity to have your say … you’ll never get a better chance to explain.
• Custom-written just for you, or choose from among our many demos.
• Blame laid, guilty consciences eased, more.
And on it went, with my evening number and suggested hours, but of course I realized I’d have to be flexible. Emergencies do come up.
“That’s morbid,” said Megan. “But I admire your ability to find a niche.”
“Most people need help just writing a resumé,” I said, and she nodded, remembering. I’d helped her write one two weeks after I’d moved in.
And for all the days of soul-searching, I actually felt good about this. It could prove to be a valuable service, one less thing to worry about at a really shitty time. Making money off the misery of others? I didn’t think of it as selling out. I preferred to think of it as buying in. I’d been there, could relate.
Eagles do fly highe
r than vultures, but at least they both get off the ground. After that, what really matters?
Megan and I curled into the couch, and then each other, and we talked until the phone started to ring, and once it started, I wondered if it would ever ever stop.
Heartsick
i. need
The wet spot is still on the bed when they retreat, come first light of morning, or sooner. After she sees the last of their backs out the door there is plenty of room in the bed, but still she sleeps atop the wet spot. Cool beneath her, sticky to the touch. Beneath her hip sometimes, other times her back … perhaps even her shoulders, depending on earlier acrobatics.
Awake and dreaming, tracing fingers through that dewy patch, their mingled fluids — mostly his, the ever interchangeable he — and she brings its musk scent to her nose. Then dips her nose to the source itself, breathe deeply now, as if to swim in their communal pool. Or duck beneath and drown.
The wet spot is still fresh when they leave.
But Stefan is different.
Connie, awake and dreaming, all nude and half covered by the rumpled sheet. The visible breast is small, firm, pointed. Her hair still crimped and now in stiff clumps, last night’s mist having lost its hold like so much surrendered self-control. And will she cry? No, no more, at least that’s one benefit of lowered expectations.
Two can play the game, gender being no barrier, affirmative action and equality: I can be just as callous as you, bastard, and if we were at your place instead, you couldn’t keep me from that door. Just you try.
Sure. Sure.
Just try, once, just … once?
Connie smiles dimly at the ceiling with lips that recall the press of another’s. Oh, the places she’s put her tongue. In retrospect it’s probably best she never sees them by true daylight; the night adds so much more mystique. In the dark, anything can dwell, any promise hold a core of truth.
Fan above, blades of wood and cane, slow circles for a draft to cool moonlit sweat, flesh on flesh, ghost white on silver. And if this ceiling could talk, what 3AM murmurs might it have learned, parrot-fashion?
i don’t usually do this, really i don’t … but it was your eyes i think
don’t you hate that smoke smell, so do i, isn’t this better?
your hands, i love the way your hands feel, i need them here
i love to give head
i’ll do anything you want
need them here too
okay? okay?
walk your dog now? i thought you said earlier you didn’t have any pets
Sometimes these exchanges seem as rehearsed as they are spontaneous, and probably this is so. Identical players memorizing identical scripts of hunger and desperation and pathological fears of loneliness, endlessly played out by new pairings of performers. On interchangeable stages.
But Stefan is different.
Endeavoring to persevere, Connie has tried pursuit, a follow-up of the heart once the ice of loins has been broken. Pop-psych gurus, “Don’t be afraid, men are flattered when the woman takes the initiative,” and now she has a whole shelf filled with pastel paperbacks she’d just love to cram down the throat of the next self-appointed expert. Here you go, digest this and see how it correlates with actualities out there, see if you can look me in the face then.
And then…?
…maybe I’ll buy your book anyway. It can’t hurt. Can it?
Taking the initiative, she knows all about that. Connie knows romance. Knows her heart and her soul, knows that fairy tales really can be hammered out of them with enough force.
The catered lunch at Andy’s office, address right there via Tuesday night’s exchange of business cards — are you surprised? she asked, flushing with obvious pleasure, and yes, oh yes he most certainly was, then had a question of his own, and her face began to crumble like a broken mask. connie. connie martin? we met … the other night, we … um… Standing unprotected in a strange office she’d never seen before, and how brutal the air suddenly felt in her throat, on her eyes, peripherally aware of the caterer in his white jacket, starting to squirm and shuffle his feet and refusing to look up any more. She supposed it was his idea of discreet pity. Share her embarrassment and maybe he gets a bigger tip.
Overpriced luncheon, trout almandine, taken home in the world’s most humiliating doggy bag. White wine half-drunk in the taxi, one batch of leftovers eaten in front of evening TV news and quickly thrown up into the toilet, the other shoved to the back of the fridge until it grew blue mold. So much for romance.
She’s far wiser these days. Lapsing occasionally, still that hunger for another, deeper, voice to reassure her of beauty, of desirability, even if it is calculated for short-term goal attainment. But overall, preferring to stick with the certainty of lowered expectations and its attendant sure thing. That guarantee of no abrupt abandonment.
Stefan has brought that much into her life, at least.
ii. desire
Connie knows she’ll not get back to sleep, not now. With barely an hour left before the alarm and shower and curling iron and work, it’s hardly worth the effort.
She rises, doesn’t bother with the robe hooked on the back of her bedroom door. Carpet soft beneath her feet, and then she’s in the hallway, varnished wood suddenly and pleasantly cool. She lies naked out here some mornings, stretches herself along the bare hallway floor like a scrawny cat in a windowsill. Ever the sensualist, tender skin soaking the night’s chill from rigid floorboards. Although this summer she doesn’t do it nearly so much as she used to.
Not since Stefan. Aesthetically, he and the morning floor have so much in common.
Down the hall to the second story’s other bedroom, she’s known all along she would be coming here this morning. That gentle ache inside, something left untouched earlier, some hollow unfilled. Some flower ignored.
Stefan waits on the bed, flat on his back, as always, and she draws down the sheet that modestly covers him. Never speaking in moments like this. With her eyes there is no need, and he has long since lost the ability. He’s limited to the occasional soft, low grunt. She’ll speak to him afterward, when it’s more meaningful. He will appreciate it more then, she’s sure of it.
Connie slides into bed with him, draws alongside as her eyes close with waking dreams. Letting fingers become her eyes, taking in his smooth lines, muscled curves. His flesh warm in places, cool in others, always comforting because he’s there, going nowhere. Stefan has time for her. At last, she is someone’s priority. Connie finger-traces him from toes to knees, knees to waist, waist to chest, chest to eyes. Kissing him in the wake of her fingertips, and if there is any common denominator in the miracle of this particular male physique, it is that everywhere he is so very very hard. Like a man of marble. It’s not unarousing. Alien, yet familiar.
She pulls herself to her knees. Throws one tender leg across him to straddle his thighs, leans forward to run palms along the cobblestone path of his stomach, chest. Her unkempt hair brushes across her face, barely touches Stefan, and she wonders if he can still be tickled.
Connie’s breath quickens, oh the heat, and it’s always a pleasure to feel Stefan warming beneath her. He is Michelangelo’s David come to consciousness, so pale, the color of chalk. Would that he could return these tender caresses. She would give much to feel the rough warmth of his hands again … cupping a breast, splaying her thighs. But Connie has quickly realized this was a trade-in for his loyalty. At least his eyes follow her. His gaze was not frozen in place with the rest of him.
She lets it build inside…
build, her tongue on him, like licking a salty stone…
and at last she mounts him, positioning herself above his permanent erection, lowering herself until they are joined. She rocks, front to back, and tries to tell herself that a fleeting glimpse into Stefan’s eyes doesn’t really register his fear. She’s careful, never reckless, knowing full well that if she were to let go with too much abandon, she could snap him off at the root. Leave hi
m like an ancient statue, emasculated by vandalism, or erosion and acid rain.
Silly Stefan. Connie’s a considerate lover. Responsive to a touch made perfect by precision rather than brute pressure. Does Stefan even understand that women are all different that way?
She grinds upon him until she trembles over her brink, then rises up and off with utmost care. His shaft glistens alabaster in the morning sun, and she dries him with the sheet. Sighs and lies beside him with her wound still wet, still throbbing, and for now the ache has been assuaged.
“I know what my problem is,” Connie tells him, this man like stone whose bed she shares. “Emotions.”
Silence in the house. Outside the birds are near, and the morning traffic distant enough that she never has to worry about distractions, intrusions into their sanctuary.
“I’m addicted to emotions I haven’t even felt yet.”
iii. icon
He’s a man in a shell, and the shell used to feel. Used to flex. If he lost his mind, maybe he could leave the shell behind, free of care and no longer shackled to its tonnage.
When he’s dead, will he rot? Or lie as a stone mummy, his own flesh become his sarcophagus?
Stefan has ample time for contemplation. By admittedly loose calculation of dawns and dusks, he’s been here just over a month. Immobile, his limbs and trunk and neck no longer his own, instead a sculpture frozen in the pose of sleep. Muscles brittle beneath skin like stone.
Ossified. Flesh gone to bone.
And how has this happened? He remembers an evening a month distant, but in these two-plus fortnights of silent immobility, he’s lived a numbed eternity. Memories of vertical perspective and movement beyond eyelids seem ancient.
An evening of newfound companionship, it would do for a night or for a week. Her name was Connie — wasn’t it? It seems so very long ago since those guardedly suggestive introductions over drinks and happy hour hors d’ouevres, and since then she has never referred to herself by name.