by sam paul
Flash forward. I am staring at the twisted tree where I had my bike chained before I got put away and it was stolen. My bicycle apparently sacrificed itself for the tree previously by taking the brunt of a drunken frat boy’s car. It’s in bad shape and as I stare at the mangled mess of tires I turn to see the emerald Mustang with the beautiful blond girl racing towards me, quite obviously intending to fuck me the same way the frat boy fucked my bike. Her perfect girlish grin smiles as if to invite me to suck on her perfect small girl breast, exposed by a perfectly rumpled maladjustment of the sexy oversized tank top she always wears. Perfectly. I’m fixated on herbodyhersmilehersexher as the emerald front of the car, gleaming mystically brighter than any green can be, even as its custom front end, sharper than a razor blade, cuts me in half pinning me to the tree. My waist falls away under the car and she’s there watching and giggling, still playing up and getting off on the thrill of her own body, her own sexy come hither glance. Her eroticism is perfect but it’s as false and practiced as a porn star. Her body dances in its seat, wriggling as if to say, “come to me poor boy as you are dying, you’ve suffered so much at least let your last moments be filled with pleasures beyond anything you have known.”
My upper body is still hanging, practically perched on the front of her hood, my back against the gnarled tree, thick red blood soaking from my torso into the car’s unnaturally green glossy surface with little wisps of smoke as it drains from my body, my heart is still pumping, believing that my body is still intact. My vision falters as I start to get dizzy from lack of blood but I can already tell that her/its body has been created to be the accumulation of all my supposed inner desires. Suddenly it’s as if she’s standing beside me with her lips softly grazing my ear as I hear her finally say to me in a low, slow sultry whisper of sexuality that of course matches her form perfectly, “Icangiveyoueverythingyou’veever-wanted…justsaythewordanditwillallbeyours…youdon’thavetodiehere…thereis-somuchwecandotogether.”
As my own blood begins to fill my lungs it slowly drowns me from the inside, it runs from my left nostril now and bubbles from between my open lips. I only manage to gurgle as I try and speak but my mind is clear and words thunder in my head. I can almost see them flashing around me with a life of their own in the still night air, “Get the fuck away from me beast!”
That’s the point where I wake up knowing beyond all else that something is trying to get inside me while I’m weak. My body is weak from too much emotion and too little food, but I’m meditating now and saying silent prayers. My defenses may be weak but in my waking hours I’ve started to create a mental wall of protection around my body, around my head, my thoughts, my mind and my soul. Get out of my head dream demons; this weakened vessel is not for you. I say this over and over as I build. Over the course of a few days I construct my defense brick by brick, applying a substantial amount of mortar to each of the strong earthen porous bricks that I’ve molded individually with a prayer and fired in the kiln I’ve constructed in my mind. It’s slow going but as I lay the bricks around me, the thick mortar oozes from each crack and hardens as it runs down the wall. As I get closer to completing my wall of protection, the dreams that attack at night intensify in their desperation and brutality. Vivid images of blood and pain, sex, blood, drugs, family, hurting, blood, betrayal and always those infernal fucking unnaturally colored emerald green Mustangs forged in the depths of someplace that’s better not mentioned or put to paper. I’ve awoken several nights yelling and thrashing in my bed. As my wall gets higher tendrils of emerald green plants try and grow up the outer side of the wall, desperate to reach me or deposit seeds that will grow inside and feed. It’s harder and harder to resist so I’ve taken to trying to stay awake during the night and sleep during the daylight where the vivid images are not as strong. I should be done with my wall soon and if I ever find a way to get at the thing/person/devil/beast responsible for having the audacity to fuck with me I will make it pay very dearly.
Jen sent me a letter. Well not a letter, an empty envelope with a 2 inch clipping of an article out of the Denton Record Chronicle that informed me my friend Bobo is dead. Oh it hurt so bad to read that, even touching the already yellowing paper hurt my hands. If only I had been there, been around or been out. Could I have even done anything to help? Oh God, another friend gone, please show mercy and take her into your arms, lead her into your light.
The right answers have always seemed to make sense and come to me a majority of the time, but I have never been smart like this. The world moves around me in patterns and shadow now. I see the ebb and flow of desires, the slow motion reactions on people’s faces in day-to-day life. I’m in tune with something I searched for so long. An eternal invisible dangling carrot taunting me with the hope that it actually exists, I could smell it and hear it swing and even caught a glimpse as I walked through the fog of my life, but it was only when I stopped looking and finally relaxed that the empathic touches to life showed themselves to me fully.
I am in the middle of my war, a modern day version of my real father that I swore I would never become. What did his Purple Heart get him? A whole platoon full of dead friends and nothing to come home to except the sweet succulent bodies of bikini-clad beach women. I’ve built my wall now, the dreams are mine again, the demons cast out.
Necessity is breeding desire. The desire is making me crafty smart and able to feel the energy I have to read people. I have to have an edge that puts me one step ahead or a little bit higher on the brain awareness level. I know when they no longer care. I know the face of apathy, but I also have the desire and the need to take what I want without unnecessary involvement. I pinch it all. I knick it, I shoplift it and I get away, lickety-split, and the adrenaline rush of success is as sweet as any victory in my long forgotten war, as sweet as any drug and as sweet as being happy because it is happiness, energy and life.
I woke up with a thought of true genius fluttering through my head, but twas lost twixt bed and paper. Can you use twixt nowadays without insuring the wrath of the critics? I suppose I will find out. It’s finally time to go and make a home now. I’m not scared anymore.
“In this lucid moment, Epps concentrates and see the world with harsh, objective clarity: all of God’s children are simple animals, of no more or no less interest to the clinical observer than a leaf or a clamshell…”
—Caricature, Daniel Clowes
PART IV
THE REST
Epilogue:
So they, meaning them, the powers that be in all their glory, deemed me worthy enough to take my 36 hour pass. Finally. After all the sweat, blood and tears, I am being granted the freedom to roam (under their tightly organized schedule of course) away from the compound for a day and a half. My sister picks me up and we go home where the usual awkward fawning over the wayward son goes on. The “Oh don’t say anything too controversial, he might go crazy and attack us with a heroin gun or something” kind of conversation.
Please.
I finally see and touch my niece for the first time and she fears me because I am old and a relative stranger to her. Jenifer says they watch me closely whenever I interact with her too. I would never have noticed if she hadn’t said that. I wish she hadn’t said that actually. And then we go to the movies, trying to see something or other and I end up riding with Jenifer in her car from my parents’ house to the theater. A couple of miles, tops, and I look around and notice all the details. The faint hint of vinegar scent in the upholstery and the brown flecks of stain. The little droplets of dried smack on the windshield where some of the precious liquid shoots out the end in order to clear the potentially fatal air bubbles from the syringe. I am getting nervous because between us, and the obvious awkwardness of the situation where we have been so often in the past, is the console. The little storage place in her car where she keeps everything—everything that got me arrested. I know at that moment if I open the top of the compartment between us I will find
the remnants. The cotton and needles and everything that’s needed and I don’t know what to do. She’s nervous and a little fucked up and I am nervous and scared to get fucked up and there we are in a situation I should not be in. My cells are screaming with ache to peek and look and put something into my veins and I just can’t do it. None of it. Not the casual socializing or talking or love or anything. Not while the console and all of its contents are there between us.
And that’s when I know. All the bullshit from the counselors and numerous attempts to open my eyes come down to this. Would I give my life for hers? Absolutely. I tried for so long. Would I change places with her in a second, be paralyzed never again knowing the intimate contact of sex or even the simple gratifying ease of knowing when to use the restroom? No question about it. But do I destroy our lives together? There it is, the big question. The answer leaves me reeling. I start to shake and I know I have to get out of there. I know I love her. I know it and I know that I always will love her but this isn’t right. This is no longer who I am or what I want to be. I’ve had a revelation, a dream, a will, a need to exist and survive. The knowledge that there is something more. To go back to her will be all there is and we will die.
I fought it for so long. I feel so guilty and selfish like a fucking bastard. But there they are. The fucking smack drips and the hollow eyes meaning the person I fell in love with is not in that car with me.
I didn’t make the decision far away in a safe shelter where I knew that harm would never come near me. I didn’t phone a friend and tell them to tell her that we should see other people. I didn’t fade away and avoid it all, like I want to now that I know. I held on to the dream and prayers for hope that I needed to believe in. I went back to her with the same love and devotion I’ve had since that miraculous sunset in Oregon and I finally saw what the score was. We were apart too long and I guess we are going to stay that way.
Before the wreck we were falling apart. Held together through commitment and friendship and a common need, but we were nothing but the robots we tried not to become. Not the worker bees that we feared but lecherous vampires that prowl upon them. It was all so glamorous and shitty and not at all who I am anymore. I will fight no more forever. I am born again, completely new, and there is a lot of pain and loneliness and guilt ahead. Some days all I have is a reminder that I’m not the poor bastard they dragged out of the cell next to me. Some days all I have is the memory of God’s mischievous silent smile as he touched my mind. Every day I have is a gift, thanks to that poor fuck and God’s intervention.
That was the day I killed myself.
That’s why on a cold lonely evening in jail I took that belt from around my waist and methodically attached it to the empty bunk in the holding cell. That’s why I gave my final pleas and told the world go about its business without me. That was the day my old life died and that’s why I committed suicide. That was the day I started this painful process of re-crawling out of the womb and into the harsh lights and sounds of what we call reality.
And you know what? I am very glad that I am here to talk about it. All the rehab and psychotherapy in the world can’t make things right until they are supposed to be. The patience and understanding and knowledge didn’t come from me. I feel more secure knowing that I had help. I feel even better knowing that I am here when I didn’t want help even though I’m the only one who made it difficult to get life’s lessons through this thick head of mine. True happiness is a drop of morning dew dripping off the leave of a giant redwood as it basks in the rising sun. The world is perfection and we are only graffiti.
.gradually we just drifted apart, me on the strict path that a moral society supposedly needs to set as its standards and her on her own longer path to acceptance and recovery. After the visits tapered off and dried up we became better together as friends. As lovers we are poison to each other, but to know that one of the greatest minds and loves that I will ever have is still around makes it ok that we’re friends nonetheless.
“I’ll call you” and “We’ll have lunch” invariably gets delayed and protracted over days, then weeks, months and now years. Sure I’ve run into her every once in a while and we still have that magic spark of electricity when we speak and touch, but it isn’t an all consuming torch or flame anymore. We both know the situation and with more than a little regret we remain close friends. Ex-lovers with a large dancing child and a big elephant in the room, bonding them forever.
Well, I hope this all works out.
Thanks to Neal Cassady—d. 1968
www.whyicommittedsuicide.com
ENDNOTES
* The dictionary says metamorphosizing is not a word. It should be.
* A hot-shot is just the slang term used for a really strong dose (usually lethal) of Heroin (or anything) due to the quantity cooked up or a higher purity level. Most junkies die because of a change in the quality of their usual supply. If the quality gets worse, there’s no problem, just a lot of pissed off junkies, but if the purity gets better and someone uses the amount they usually use, it can be too much and kill them. This happens in NY a lot where the stuff from overseas varies in consistency.
[1] The dictionary says metamorphosizing is not a word. It should be.
[2] Let us seize sweet things; for, indeed, after death you will become ashes and a story.—Persius