Mixtape for the Apocalypse

by Jemiah Jefferson

  1:12 a.m.

  “Stop writing,” she says. But I want to say something, to put it down permanently, in case I’m liable to forget how wonderful everything is. She’s smiling at me from the bed, eyes foggy with dope and endorphins. Neurotransmitter Boy has been here and completely debilitated my girlfriend with his evil, delightful ways. Perhaps there’s a feminine equivalent of blue balls—it seemed as though she was saving up all her orgasms for the next time she got to let them out, and humble me in comparison. I haven’t even been jacking off recently, strangely enough—sexuality, even in a sick and twisted and loveless form, has been a stranger to me. I’ve really only been inside my own cerebral cortex, and even the hindbrain takes a backseat to that (no pun intended).

  Aah, it’s not a bad life, all told. Full of complex carbohydrates (only some of them burnt), stoned (very stoned!), a space shuttle mission on the television, and the Bunnymen (pleasure of pleasures!) on the stereo, repeating softly. Amazing how good it sounds even at near sub-sonic levels.

  The blue curvature of the earth softly lights Lise’s face as she closes her eyes and rolls over onto her side, away from me. Her chewed-off fingernails are tiny dark-red baroques. I can smell her vaginal juices all over my fingers, even though I washed my hands afterward. She begged me to finger-fuck her until my whole arm went numb, but I gave and gave, and she came until the tears streamed over her cheeks. How could I stop?

  So now she’s asleep and I can be free. I hate having to hide this from Lise, but she really doesn’t trust the journal, even though I’ve assured her that I have it under control. I can’t believe she went so far as to hide it from me. How ridiculous! I thought I was going to tear the place apart with my bare hands. I had stuff from the entire apartment in the middle of the living room, I had living room stuff in the bathroom. It was pretty obvious what I’d been doing. I remember that night with great clarity—I was crying and shaking and there was drool on my chin and my hair stung my eyes and I was going through the telephone book page by page, muttering to myself “I have to find it, I have to find it,” and I’d taken off all my clothes just in case I had hidden it somewhere upon my person. Yeah, it must have looked pretty bad. But goddamn it, it seemed logical at the time. Why should I trust the stupid links of logic? They’ve let me down before. I have learned not to trust anything. Anything. All of it is deceptive—truly Buddhist, I’m becoming. But I’m serious. Buddhists understand that all of this is a dream. All of it except my ideas, my ability to lay them out in print form. Printing. Look at my handwriting, isn’t it lovely? I’ve been working on it, mentally, I think, for the last couple of nights where I just crashed and slept and woke up just long enough to stare at the walls and the sounds coming out of the walls, the disconnected souls in between the molecules of air. My handwriting is perfect and beautiful and the lettering itself is artwork. I am a calligrapher of souls.

  At the witching hour between this glorious day and the next, I can feel myself coming alive.

  5 December, 10:03 p.m.

  From point A to Point B is not always what it seems. Sometimes it spirals and sometimes it goes dash-dash-dash straight across and sometimes it skips around—always in groups of five, like a leopard’s spots, that’s what old Seagal taught me in those long slow golden afternoons where my back was screaming and my hands felt like blood would run from underneath the fingernails! A leopard’s spots! Old Seagal! How did he know?

  Sensei Seagal, who would hit me if my crosshatching wasn’t good enough.

  Notions, notions, notions, all of it is notions, none of this need bother me, all those ants on the street, sleek and sliding forms like red and blue and white wet dolphins, coasting through hydroplane rain—all of it is imaginary and in my mind.

  Dark apartment, bathroom rug, rain, glass lens on the floor, broken eyeglasses. The page is a smear. I like it. My lettering is still precise like machine printing. I am a machine.

  Back to the drawing floor.

  10 December, morning

  No idea what time it is. I’m in the closet. My ski sweater makes a cozy pillow and I have a nice blanket and it’s warm and sweet and my breath makes the air bearable.

  I can’t believe I slipped. That day. Denny’s, for God’s sake. The waitress poisoned my coffee and molested Lise in the bathroom—she had bruises on her arms. That night. It all seemed so fantastic, so right, so fated to be. How stupid could I have been? I didn’t think I could get any stupider, but apparently, anything is possible when it comes in groups of five, like leopard spots. Five or six. NO, FIVE. And I spoke to my mother. How stupid! She called the postal service and made them send me something and the mailman gave me this smile and asked me “How it was going”. Fuck you, man! You know how it’s going. You know everything about me. I had no choice but to take the envelope away because he was watching me, and I brought it upstairs and put it in the middle of the kitchen table and came in here. I hope I haven’t gotten poisoned or dosed by handling the stupid thing. It’s white and plain and perfect for hiding things. It’s probably for Lise anyway, it’s just got my name on it so that the postal service could confirm who I am. Jesus!! How could I have been so stupid? And I was stupid in the Square across from the Courthouse, of all places. What I need is a time machine so I can go back and erase that whole thing. Well, at least I won’t make the same mistake again. I like it in here.

  10:12 says the microwave

  It’s morning. I have to get up and go now. I’m taking a minute to log in, between putting on the shoes and tying the shoes, just so that I know I’m here and I can get a good gauge on the time. I was lying curled up in the closet for a long time, thinking about sleeping, and then thinking about other things, and then I noticed that it was light and Lise was gone and I’d been staring at the ceiling all night with my head all abuzz. Enough. Gotta get going with my day. I haven’t a moment to lose.

  10:32am says the digital clock outside the bank

  Making good time. I should stop somewhere on the way and get some coffee and cigarettes. There’s something on my arms and I can’t figure out what it is. I think it’s on the page too. I think it’s something to do with the bus.

  10:34 on the bank

  Waiting for the next bus. Obviously the bus driver didn’t understand that I’m in a fuckin’ hurry—what does he think I have all these CDs for, do I look like a DJ? I was just trying to get that pink stuff off my sleeve and off my stuff. The driver yelled at me as he slammed the door in my face “It’s the light! It’s just the light, you crazy kid!” Like he would even know. He wasn’t even there. I hate it when people assume they know why something is happening when they don’t know.

  Fuck this, this is too long to wait. I’m going to walk.

  11:15 says the clock on the wall of the shop

  Stopped for a drink of water. Sun out. Tingles on the itchy back of my neck. I can still kind of feel the pink slime on my skin even though it barely touched my skin. It was like I was immersed in it up to the neck. I’m glad I walked. It was good to see the river. It’s a solution, if need be.

  2:32 says the clock on the bank

  What a score!

  The guy at the store gave me a lot for that crappy music—enough to buy three copies of Ocean Rain on vinyl, one on tape: two copies of Crocodiles on CD, the “Lips like Sugar” 12”, The Peel Sessions, two tape copies of Songs to Learn And Sing (Lise’s favorite Bunnymen album, so she can have one and I’ll keep the other), and all the copies of the grey album they had—I think it’s something like three copies on CD and two on tape and one, badly scratched, on vinyl. The salesgirl looked at me kind of funny when I was in line, but I wasn’t sure if it was because of the Bunnymen, or because of the fact that being tired from walking and being so out of shape I was panting and wheezing the whole time I was in the store.

  I have something like fifty dollars left, even after getting just the bare essentials. I should buy cigarettes, and coffee. This is way better than having a job.

  I d
on’t know what time it is.

  I lost my bus pass somewhere—that bus driver dickweed probably stole it while I was incapacitated, now I have to replace that too. I should drop by the bank.

  3:15, says the driver.

  I feel a lot better now; I’m on a bus being driven by a nice-looking, calm, silent black lady with thick braids and thick plastic-framed glasses. There’s nobody else on the bus with me; I’m going the opposite direction from everyone. I’m going towards the right place, and I don’t know where everyone else is going. I feel better than I have in ages. Maybe I should clean up the apartment. Lise would probably appreciate that. Maybe I can do the ironing and the hand washables and water the plant and take down the recycling and cook dinner and won’t she be surprised! I dunno. I can’t figure her out lately. Hopefully the presents will cheer her up.

  7:07 p.m.

  Oh well fuck shit blimey.

  Lise read me the riot act. I like that phrase—so much more descriptive than “yelling at me.” Reading the riot act sounds so much cooler. She was a one-woman riot, complete with looting. She let me have it about selling “her” CDs, all “her” precious CDs full of crap that we never listened to anyway. She didn’t care about the tape I bought her, since she’s already got a copy. Of course, this is an actual studio original and not just a crappy dubbed tape from high school, but she doesn’t care. She’s upset about the stupid Doors vinyl and the stupid Cocteau Twins box set and the rare this and the rare that. And then she had the gall to ask me where the rest of the money went, and I showed her the coffee and the TVs and the bus passes. I bought one and a spare for myself and a spare for her, and I bought ten pounds of black French roast and two television sets from Fairly Honest Bill’s. They don’t show TV, which is good, but they do show static, which is good.

  Now I’m all confused. We actually do need all that stuff. We do. If she loses her bus pass, won’t she be happy to know she’s got another one right there? And, I mean, shit, I just sold all the other music I own, but if I lost the only copy I had of Crocodiles, I’d go out of my mind. If I don’t hear “Rescue” at least once a day my head will just explode; that’s all there is to it. It’s good to have a backup of the important things, triple redundancies, first thing I learned when learning to use a computer. Stuff dies. Make a backup. At least one; preferably several redundant ones. I mean, shit; I had to buy that stuff. And she doesn’t get it. It was my money too.

  She took my Walkman and threw it out the window onto the courtyard stones and I could hear it break. Good thing I don’t care. It’s not that important to me anymore. I’m happy to listen to music at home.

  And doesn’t she love TV? What the fuck.

  11 December, post-midnight

  Lise and I didn’t even fight. She just came in and went straight to bed without speaking to me. Yesterday we fought. Yesterday we fought terribly. She told me I was being hysterical and unreasonable and she’d hoped I was on my way out. I told her she was an idiot for ever believing that I’d be all stupid and normal again, and wasn’t this better? Wasn’t it better to be honest? She was mad about me sleeping on my sweater rather than wearing it, and for taking the best blanket. I told her to find the shittiest blanket ever and give that to me, so she let me keep my original choice. She even shook me by the shoulders, but that made my head pound so much that I yelled and she let me go. That was after she threw my Walkman out the window. I thought she was going to throw the new TVs out the window, too, so I stood in front of them and growled. Her arms tensed up and I knew, just knew that she was going to hit me. But she didn’t. I don’t know why not; I’d have beaten my ass. Beat it to death and thrown it out the window.

  Tonight there was none of that. She came in and went to bed. She took off her clothes, but not her underwear, got under the quilt, and turned out the lamp. She sighed three or four times, turned over once, and slept. I watched her from the relative safety of the bathroom mirror. I’m sitting on the cold bare linoleum, staring at the curly piece under the sink that stretches up grotesquely like a dragon’s tooth, like the claw from my dream that gently caressed my belly and caused my innards to slide out like so many Thanksgiving gizzards.

  I actually went outside again today. I went to the convenience store for cigarettes. I go through a lot. Lise buys cartons of Winstons, but I sometimes smoke a lot and run through the carton before she gets home. She left me, on the table, a twenty-dollar bill and a note that said “Get cigarettes. This is your money. I cashed your check from the end of November—the rest of it is mine.” I don’t understand—what check? What money? I don’t remember getting anything. But I bought the cigarettes and a packet of potato chips. The Asian woman who works there looked at me really strangely today, too. I am glad I didn’t wear the sweater, even though it was cold and tiny cubes of ice were falling down on my head. I went out in my regular clothes—black T-shirt, black jeans, canvas tennis shoes. My hair is really long. I bet she can tell that I have these thoughts. Maybe I should stop going there.

  15 December, night time

  In the bath.

  Thrilling, this feeling, of not being contained within myself, of having no boundaries. I melt in the water. I’m going to watch some TV later. See what’s on Birth of the Universe TV.

  16 December, still night, same night

  The people in the static are speaking to me. When I got out of the bath Lise was asleep and so I made a pot of coffee and turned the static on. I watched for a couple of hours without effect or message, then I could hear the voices, softly muttering, the patterns and images coalescing at the same time. I wanted another pot of coffee, but I haven’t been able to move in case I miss something terribly important. Things I’ve made out so far:

  “Keep it down” (many times). “Sleep” (interspersed with a kind of gentle whispering—that word repeated sharply and distinctly many times over). “Glass.” And above all, “Wait.”

  Three watching unblinking glaucous eyes. My hands are cold and slick with anticipation.

  My heart is pounding.

  I am sick, but I am vigilant.

  11:45 a.m.

  This is for all the high school counsellors;

  this is for all the OLCC Nazis who card me with delight in bars;

  this is for all the Robs and Melissas;

  this is for the kids who didn’t get to go to Yale because their parents made too much money;

  this is for the indolent superstars of art;

  this is for all those people who laughed at me when I found out the Bunnymen had broken up;

  this is for crumbs in bed;

  this is my exhortation of rage, contained, I mustn’t speak out or I will be instantly crushed by cosmic justice; that cosmic justice the said I should be born so that I could tear out chunks of my own hair and arrange them on the kitchen table,

  born so that I could suffer and err—

  those sulfuric mailmen,

  those catalytic checkers-out,

  those concrete-layers,

  those grinders of wheat, spinners of nylon, devourers of Sizzlean,

  those bright-eyed, those passengers, those miserable freaks who are almost—so very close—to knowing what I feel, except that they can’t, because they’re not me.

  I’m alone in this.

  Juba could be dead. Mom could be dead. I don’t know. I can’t know. I could be deceived.

  “Wait,” it says.

  17 December, 5:15 a.m.

  Pouring a bowl of cereal is so incredibly stressful. You’re making this temporal contract with yourself—when you pour the milk on, you know you have only a very limited amount of time to eat all the cereal before it goes soggy. Will you pass this test, or fail it? So you stand there in the kitchen, milk box poised in space, drawing a detailed pocketwatch in your mind, you press the button—and pour. Or don’t pour. I couldn’t do it just now—I just got so worried that I’d fail and that my cereal would go soggy instantaneously. I don’t trust the milk anymore—it’s making the
same cereal soggy faster and faster all the time. Last time I got a bowl it was soggy by the time I got to the kitchen table. Milk—who needs milk, anyway? I’m probably lactose intolerant anyway and I’ve been slowly killing myself all this time without knowing it. And cereal is for little fucking kids. I should have toast or something manly like bacon and eggs. Fuck this cereal shit. It’s toast from here on out. I guess that means I have to buy bread, though. Fuck. Maybe I can get Lise to go get bread. I think I’ve got the money, and if I tell her she can keep the change, maybe she’ll go get it for me. Okay. All right.

  6:42 a.m.

  DAMN IT. I forgot all about the fact that the makers of potato chips are also thwarting my every move—I got hungry waiting for Lise to wake up, and I found a bag of some kind of orange-flavored chips and I tried to open them and eat its contents. But Mr. Lay, whoever he is, cleverly designed these packets so that I, Michael Squire, cannot open them neatly, silently, as befits a petty thief of other people’s lunch bag items. I simply cannot. I’ve been trying for half an hour. And no, I will not bend to the will of mechanical aids like scissors, or risk a chipped tooth trying to rip the bag open orally. It’s a good thing I don’t try it, I’d get a face full of orange flavored tear gas all over my face and hands and thermals like the lunchroom scene, that fabulous lunchroom scene that ended me in the nurse’s office having a bronchial emergency while an entire elementary school laughed their superior heads off at the weird kid who talks all funny who couldn’t even open a bag of chips for Chrissake. Who called them crisps. Still laughing. I can hear their laughter ricocheting through the linoleum and the glass and the walls and the body in the bed turning restlessly, as though caught in the same nightmare that I inhabit.

  I don’t want to cry anymore.