Mixtape for the Apocalypse
Page 12
4) I’m losing my motherfucking mind.
Quit crying, pussy. Sleep is for the weak.
12 October 4:20 a.m.
Ha, ha, 4:20.
Ever get the feeling that your life is locked into a pattern, and nothing you can do is going to change that? I can’t figure out if they want me to kill myself, or stay alive so that the humiliations can continue. Maybe it’s just my suffering that’s keeping the world even spinning, because I can’t figure it out otherwise.
I don’t think Lise is asleep right now. She’s too tense. Her sweet, tender, curvaceous body is rigid under the quilt and her breathing is shallow and rapid. I wish she had been there, to protect me, although she probably would have gotten pounded too. All the same, I want someone else to suffer, I want some kind of kinship in this world. Something.
I never thought that Dave could be so violent—he seems too fat and good-natured to want to hurt someone so bad. Want to hurt me so bad. I just don’t understand. Or I don’t want to understand. It all makes a sick horrible kind of sense. This is my fate. This is why I was born. This is why. Everything makes a sick horrible kind of sense.
I can’t see out of my left eye. It’s an amazing color—bloody reds and purples and hints of blue. That was Randy’s shot, actually. The first one. The second one got me in the jaw and I dropped like a bag of Legos. Dave picked me up and propped me against the wall and hammered blows into my midsection—chest, belly, belly. Then he kicked my legs out from under me. Laughed. “I’ve always wanted to do that,” he said.
Randy laughed too. “You little shit,” he said. He kicked me on the side the head. Not hard, but hard enough.
It was at the Caravan. I had gone to see Old Gold, who are leaving on a tour of Europe next week. I was drinking. Randy and Dave came in. I went up to them and told them that they were a couple of hypocritical fucks, and that while snitching season was in, I had some interesting information about the two of them that Trace would be very interested in. Randy said I didn’t have the stones. I held up a quarter and quoted them Trace’s home telephone number, told them I had nothing left to lose. Then Randy grabbed me, practically picked me up, and dragged me outside.
Man, that was a real interesting bus ride home. I missed the band, of course. On the bus stop, a five-minute wait while I swabbed blood from my nose and mouth with the tail of my new T-shirt and rubbed it on the sleeve of my new jacket. Now they’re all crispy. Everyone on the bus stared at me in horror and disgust, and I almost didn’t care. My head hurt so much that I thought I was just going to pass out, but I never quite did. Tears ran out of my bad eye and ran down into my nasal passages, stinging the hurt part inside and making my nose run with bloody snot, which I wiped onto the sleeve of my jacket. Neither T-shirt nor jacket is black; light green cotton and cheery blue canvas. The blood stained both black. Should have just bought black ones in the first place. I tried to read the little poems that they display on the inside walls of the buses, but I couldn’t focus, and the light was flickering moth-inside madly. I couldn’t close the window and I had to keep changing seats because they were all wet, even the ones that looked dry.
As soon as I got off the bus I puked on the sidewalk. It was mostly blood, but there was some whiskey and beer. What a waste of money.
Lise freaked when I got home. I couldn’t really talk to her. I went straight into the bathroom, stripped off my bloody and torn new clothes, and took a long, hot shower, soaping up my body and rinsing it off, over and over. I brushed my teeth and used mouthwash. It didn’t help; I could still taste and see blood. I think one of my teeth is fucked up.
I should just change my name to Mike Pukey. I’ve never thrown up in my life as much as I have in the last couple of months. Je m’appelle Squire Puke. The Earl of Hurl. El conquistador del Vomitos. His most Eminent God-King of Reverse Peristalsis. Grout boy. I can’t ever get clean.
I am actually in the closet right now. It’s the best closet. It’s huge, in the style of closets of the apartments built in the twenties, almost half the size of the entire rest of the apartment. Lise actually doesn’t keep a whole lot of stuff in it. Most of her clothes are in her bureau or, mostly, on the floor. I put my egg-carton foam on the floor of the closet, stacked her shoes neatly on the perimeter, brought in my Itty Bitty Book Light so I could see to write. I just have to narrate all of this. The more I write out, the calmer I feel. What I really need right now is a cigarette and some Bunnymen—early stuff—simpler, more primitive, more primal. Serious stuff. Crocodiles.
I will listen to Crocodiles and then I will sit at the window and look out of it at the rain and the yellow sign. I will try not to bother Lise. This isn’t her dilemma; it’s mine. Mine alone. The mighty doomed struggle of Grout Boy, world’s greatest fuckup.
THREE: Mirror in the Bathroom.
16 October, 9:10 a.m.
I have a job interview today—working at Art Store. I scored an application from the cute goth girl, and the manager called me. I told him I had retail experience, which I do, from the bookstore, and that I knew pens, inks, paper, brushes, paint, the works. I just got my clothes from the dry cleaner and I’m having a cup of coffee at Triste. The nice hippie lady is working here again, asking after my health. Apparently my face looks a lot better now. She’s got her stupid kid with her as usual. I like that kid less and less all the time—he looks way too wise and experienced for someone who doesn’t even know how to read yet. He walks, though, all over the place. He’s always coming up to me and then falling down and howling. I’m sure his mom thinks I’m trying to molest him. She ought to get a goddamn babysitter.
11:55 a.m.
Well, so much for that job. I don’t know what I said, or maybe it was just my looks, but the manager’s face fell as soon as I came in. I couldn’t think of anything to say in response to their weird questions. “We’ll be in touch,” he said. Bastard. I could grind my polished shoe into his face. Fuck them and their art supplies I don’t need anymore and their retail. Fuck them.
17 October 10:20 p.m.
Worked on resume all day at the library. Lot of other bums there. Came home, made dinner, and then Lise and I had really wonderful sex for a couple of hours, laughing and oral and double orgasms for us both. She went to sleep; I’m watching Star Trek: The Next Generation with the sound off, listening to Bunnymen on headphones. Heaven Up Here. “Over the Wall.” It’s a Barclay episode. I understand Barclay.
I hope I can get some sleep tonight. I wish I hadn’t taken all those pills. Not that they do much good, anyway.
17 October, 10:12 a.m.
I hate life. Another job interview. This one with a temp agency. I said I’d die before being a temp again, but I have to try something. This blows. I have a headache and my Walkman batteries ran out right in the middle of “Lips Like Sugar.” Oh, well. It just reminds me of Juba. She doesn’t even know what happened. She’s probably getting bounced mail now and she thinks I’ve abandoned her. No internet access at home, and I can’t exactly ask Lise to try sending Juba an email from Pronto. I should have written down J’s phone number when I had the chance; I could call her and tell her what happened. She’d feel so guilty, though. It’s fucked. I don’t even know her real name.
1:30 p.m.
I answered the questions of my character test honestly.
Have you ever taken drugs? Yes.
Have you ever taken drugs at work? Yes. Aspirin, idiots. I wouldn’t waste good drugs on being at work! (I didn’t say that, of course.)
Have you ever gotten angry at work? Yes.
Angry enough to hit someone? Gods above, yes. Though I didn’t actually hit anyone. I spend every moment of my life in the workplace angry enough to hit someone.
Have you ever been accused of a crime? Not yet. Oh, no, wait, I have. Child pornography. Statutory eyeballs.
I think I have a migraine. It’s like there’s this red curtain in front of my eyes—red with green and yellow circles sliding across it. I’m in a bathroom stall at th
e mall. A relatively safe place. I need to calm down, to detox. Can rage be considered a controlled substance? Bitterness is a poison. At least it’s fucking Friday.
Sincerely, el Conquistador de Yak-Yak.
18 October, 4:10 p.m.
Sleep, wank, smoke, wander, read want ads, do crossword. Back to sleep. Lise is at a bridal shower at Julianne’s house. Hope she’ll steal a bottle of something and bring it back home; I could use a drink.
19 October, 8:25 a.m.
Lise went to work. I tried to eat some cereal, but it sickened me. I think I’ll go back to sleep. Fuck this.
20 October, 2:00 p.m.
What a waste of an entire week. Nothing happened. I slept. I read the want ads. I hated everything I saw. Lise is on her period and she doesn’t want to have sex with me, even though I told her I didn’t mind. I think going to that bridal shower and breathing in all that estrogen brought her menses on.
NextTech, Link-Up’s competitors, seemed interested, but apparently they actually talked to Beth, and undoubtedly, Beth told them they shouldn’t let me work for them. I didn’t even get to go for the interview—they called me about fifteen minutes ago, waking me from my stupor, to tell me that the position was filled. I guess I’ll see what’s on TV.
Lise came home at around six. A videotape of Friday the 13th which I’d gotten from the library was playing, but I wasn’t watching it. I was illustrating, in colored pencil, the green and yellow circles that I couldn’t stop seeing; I drew them over pages of my sketchbook, over finished and half-finished sketches of the defaced and perverted Cabby. I’d already listened to all of my Bunnymen tapes, and I’d moved onto the Doors, since it was nearly the same thing, just not as pure.
“How’d it go?” Lise asked, shrugging off her coat. It made me nearly sick to see her, day after day, go through the exact same physical motions, standing in place, to work and back and to work, each day the same as the one before. It wasn’t right. She deserved better.
“They dissed me,” I replied.
She scowled. “Oh, Squire. That sucks! I’m sorry.” It didn’t seem genuine.
“How was your day,” I asked in a dull voice.
“Guess what,” she prefaced, then paused, her excitement visibly building. “I’m an assistant manager!”
“Great.”
“Dude. I am so psyched. This is the easiest job in the world and I’m going to be making fourteen bucks an hour! Fourteen bucks! Can you fucking believe it? I think we should celebrate.”
“I don’t feel like celebrating,” I said.
“Oh, come on, Squire. It’ll cheer you up. It’s on me. Besides, they’re just job interviews. You might as well take it easy, enjoy your time off. I don’t actually need your rent money right now. Just take care of yourself.” She slid onto the chair next to me, wrapping her arms around me; she wasn’t hugging me, but just holding me between her arms, the rough material of the Pronto Printing polo shirt chafing my neck. “I’m worried about you.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m just kinda stressed out.”
“Well, shit, you should be.” Her hand went to my eye reflexively. “That looks a lot better now.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “I put a steak on it,” I added.
She didn’t seem to get the joke. “Do you want to go out?”
“Let’s go someplace where nobody knows me,” I said. “Somewhere we’ve never been before.”
I found that I couldn’t really eat. We went over to Hawthorne for Chinese, which for some reason never quite works in Portland. I had to sit with my back to the door, and I kept looking over my shoulder every time I heard the door or felt a breeze. The waiter was all over our table, filling our water glasses every time they dropped an inch, asking us again and again if the food was okay. I didn’t like his weird neck with the skin stretched over his Adam’s apple and scraped bald, or his false concern of whether we were “doing okay,” and eventually I snapped and told him us to leave us alone. Lise spent the whole incident staring at her plate like it was some kind of magical transport device to get her away. “You’re acting like a cokehead, Squire,” Lise muttered. “Just cut it out. It’s not funny.”
“I’m not . . . trying to be funny. I’m not trying to be anything,” I tried to explain. “I just . . . I don’t wanna . . . I’m not that hungry.”
“Damn it, boy, I finally get something to go right in my life, and you can’t even be happy for me. You are the most selfish person I’ve ever met.”
“I am happy for you,” I protested, trying to smile. It felt like I was opening my mouth for a dentist’s drill. “I’m thrilled. I just can’t figure out why this means so much to you . . . I mean, it’s just a job, right?”
“It’s not just a job. It’s fourteen dollars an hour. It’s a shitload of money. I’m happy about this, Squire. I’ve been so broke for so long. It feels good to know that I can put hard work into something, and get something out.”
“I wouldn’t know; I can’t,” I said.
“It’s not your fault. You were working in two brutal, shitty industries. They chew people up and spit them out again. I just got lucky. You’ve got to stop torturing yourself like this.” She crossed her chopsticks on her plate and ran her hand over her hair, which was getting rather long, only the very tips blonde now, the rest a soft thick pelt of mink-brown. “I love you, baby,” she added. “I hate to see you unhappy.”
I hated being called baby. “I’m always unhappy,” I muttered. “I was born unhappy.”
“Oh, Christ, back to that again.” She sighed. “Never mind, okay? Let’s just go home.”
At home she poured herself a stiff glass of whiskey and rolled a fat joint. “Have a drink,” she urged.
“I don’t want to drink anymore,” I said, gently shuffling things around the closet. “It makes me sick. Maybe I’m allergic.”
“Smoke some herb, then. That’ll stop you puking.”
“I might have to drug test,” I said.
She didn’t light the joint. “Shit.”
“I’m sorry. You can maybe . . . smoke it outside? I don’t know . . .”
We slept with our backs to one another.
25 October, sometime
There are those of us who are losers because we were excluded from polite society, and there are losers who chose to be outside from the get-go. Then there are people like me, the rarest, who at an early age decided to be extraordinary, and then too late had a change of heart and wanted to be like the regular kids. Of course we failed miserably at that and made idiots of ourselves. Somehow that hurts more than just having been a fuckup from the beginning; we feel as though we brought our loserdom upon ourselves, with our hubris (“I am extraordinary”) or our foolish choices (“Why shouldn’t I go to the prom or run for homecoming king? Everybody’s eligible, right?”). The one thing that a public high school adolescence teaches us is that whether we regret our choices or not, there they are; I’m a geek, and I’ll be a geek until age erases our differences and makes toothless old idiots out of all of us. That, more than anything, is the one thought that keeps me from suicide—if I kill myself now, I die a geek, whereas Mike Hunter the captain of the football team will also get broken down, glaucomatous, and senile, and then I can laugh at him.
“What’s the matter, Squire?” came Lise’s voice through the closed bathroom door.
I was in the bathtub, looking down at the wet smooth trail of hair that led from my belly button into my pubes, my penis small and relaxed and floating on the surface of the water. My journal lay on a towel beside the tub; drops of water blistered the surface of the paper. I’d been in the tub since it was light outside, and now it was dark and I heard prime-time television starting up outside.
“My head,” I replied pleasantly. “It’s as though millions of voices were crying out in pain, and then suddenly stopped.”
“I have to pee. Can I come in?”
“Sure,” I said, and dropped a face towel over my crotch.
“Yeah, great,” I said.
The sound of her urine stream echoed around the bathroom. “Sorry I’m home so late,” she sighed. “We had an emergency staff meeting. The bigwigs from Berkeley are coming next week, and we have to get the shop looking perfect or they’re going to be doing some firing. It’s yucky.”
“What time is it?” I asked.
“It’s a quarter to nine.”
I grimaced. My hands were a mass of pruny wrinkles, and my cuticles peeled off like so much wet tissue paper. “Oh, crap, it’s freezing in here.” I lifted myself out, weak as a kitten, and wrapped up in a towel. The water I’d been immersed in had gone cold long ago. Lise stood up and flushed, then grabbed another towel and dried my hair. It felt nice.
“You don’t look so good. Did you eat today?” She rubbed with the towel on my arms and back, tracing her fingertip over the Krazy Kat tattoo on my back. I’d forgotten I had it; I got it when I was eighteen, giddy and reckless with post-adolescent freedom.
“I didn’t, really,” I said. “I slept. And wrote.”
“Oh. I was gonna get a pizza.” She hustled me out of the bathroom and picked up the phone. “What do you want on it?”
“Make me one with everything.” Quivering with cold, I put on my new set of red thermals, matching top and bottom, wrapped up in the blanket, and lay in bed. I hoped that Lise would notice that I was poorly, but she was smoking, watching TV, flipping through her mail. I gave up on compassion and shuffled to the kitchen, where I put a pot of coffee on.