Having lost my faith in e-connects, I would trust in flesh and blood. Two hearts beating as one, two hearts breaking even, same difference. As long as we’re in the same room at the same time, that’s all that matters.
Kaddisha didn’t care what hour it was when I showed after midnight. She had aced an important paper on the inconsistencies of U.S. foreign policy actions versus stated policy goals and planned to cut class the next day to celebrate.
Her cheeks were rosy in the candle light, her deep brown eyes pools of chocolate. I offered her a beer, apologizing for the brand. She called it cat pee, said it was once a high school favorite.
Amped up about her essay, she launched into a monologue, giving me time to adjust my mood. We sat side by side on a patchwork quilt at the edge of her futon. “You can’t get what you say you want,” she said, “when your behavior is counterintuitive. This undermines national interests, turning allies into adversaries and ultimately leading to self-destruction of the state.”
“Nothing is real,” I said, toasting, slugging down my drink.
“In politics,” she quoted John Berger, “nothing is merely ever itself.”
“Everything is possible,” I quoted Living Colour, “but nothing is real.” I crushed the spent beer can, slung it across the room.
“I’ll show you something real,” she said, climbing on top of me, shedding her striped cami, tossing it on the floor. I grabbed her by her girlish waist. Her nipples were hard and dark. She poked them into my mouth. “Left, right, left,” she sang. I nearly bit them off. “Here, puppy puppy,” she said, cupping her breasts in her hands.
She punched them into my eyes. “Blind me, por favor,” I said. She plugged up my nostrils. “You’re all the breath I’ll ever need.”
“He likes to be smothered. Boom boom—”
“Out go the lights,” I said. Por favor.
She still wouldn’t let me taste her lips, though my tender tongue roamed along her bird-thin shoulder bones, the whorls of her ears, pierced severely with shark teeth, the gentle slope of her neck. There were two freckles just above her collar bone. Trendy.
She scraped at my chest, peeled off my T-shirt. Growling, she tugged at my belt and said, “Telltale sign of the angry young man.”
I told her I was at peace with the world, with all God’s creatures great and small.
“This here’s a great creature,” she said, wringing my shaft with both hands. She leapt off me, bounced across the room, rummaged through my pants pockets to get at my cellcam. She mounted it on her desk, facing the palm-sized monitor toward us so we could watch our performance. She slipped out of her shorts and panties, skipped back to where I lay stiff, sweat-soaked, trying to appear cool.
“You don’t have any air,” I said.
“Who needs air when we’ve got each other,” she whispered, sliding over me like a copperhead.
Who needs air, I thought, bearhugging and rolling her onto her back. I pinned her arms above her head with one hand, licked the fingers of my other, touched her lips just so, my fingertips a hummingbird’s flutter. Then I inched up into her, slow as I could, spreading my thighs, back arched for balance. She tried to push all of me inside but I resisted, watching the terrified delight in her eyes. The cadence I set made her crazy, she said. She’d never not fucked fast before. “Have you ever done this?” I released her arms, seized her neck with both hands.
“What are you doing?” she cried out.
I let go at once, leaning on my elbows, staring down the line to her navel. “I saw you,” I said, “on fallenangels, I thought—”
“No,” she groaned, adjusting her hips beneath me. I looked up to see her grinning. “Bad bad boy,” she said. “You’re not doing it right.” She placed my thumbs on her windpipe. “You have to put the pressure here, on my throat, silly, not my neck. Do it, baby. Kill me softly.”
I did what she said, pressed down where she told me to. Her eyes were black moons as she began to gag. I drove into her full-force, head plucking at the mouth of her womb. Her long dark hair splayed on the quilt like rays of an unforgiving sun. I flashed on an image of the ex asleep. Kaddisha grabbed my wrists and I squeezed harder, slowing the tempo to prolong our pleasure. I could feel her trachea bend, collapse, as her eyes grew wider, wilder, empty. She was so beautiful on the cellcam screen. I kissed her on the lips. That’s when I knew she wasn’t breathing.
THIRTY
I could have been wrong. Kaddisha wasn’t dead. I called 911 from her phone. Voicemail. I left a message. I pocketed her cell along with my own, bagged the cans we drank, walked out to the F150 and drove home.
There were no surveillance cameras in her neighborhood. I was on the interstate in no time. The road . . . desolate black space. Whitetail and wild boar a danger at this hour. I couldn’t afford another collision.
I kept to the speed limit for the first few miles, tracking the reflection of my high beams on the guardrails and the plastic nubs between the yellow lines. At a certain point, though, you can only aim your vehicle and lay on the gas. What vaults out of the darkness into your path is beyond your control. I was comfortable with this. I rolled down the windows, kicked the pedal to the floor.
On an isolated stretch I steered onto the shoulder, headlights flooding the opposite embankment. I let the engine hum as I popped the memory card from my cell, set the targets against the trunk of a young Carolina pine.
I shot up her phone first, then my memory. The gun handled nicely with the shortchop barrel, like a pistol, I imagined. It was fun to shoot. I emptied the clip, climbed back into the cab, resumed the quiet drive.
It’s my hope, little brother, this testimony will serve as both confession and explanation if the incident with Kaddisha brings the law to my door, which would be an injustice, as I’m sure you can see, since everything happened exactly as I’ve put it down on these pages.
I realize now I should have held on to the video as evidence, but I didn’t want to see myself in such an ugly position. It’s unfortunate as well that I wiped out fallenangels. There was a detail on there I could have used in self-defense: Kaddisha’s death wish.
On her DEAR DIARY page she had posted responses to several silly questionnaires, the sort that often circulate among the cubicle class. To the inquiry, “How will you die?” she answered: choking/suffocation.
Did she really want to be killed, like she had written and said to me, or was her desire a simple erotic fantasy that may have crossed the line? What did I have in mind when I pressed down on her throat? Was I playing the Almighty? Avenging the loss of my son? I did see the ex.
No no no, I’m not a murderer. And if I’m called to testify, I’ll faithfully say what happened—what we said, what we did—by mutual consent. Why may remain unknown, unknowable beyond me meaning to give her what she said she wanted.
Afterwards, “we” disappeared. No lipstick traces or love bumps. No messages the next morning.
_________
I’ve been writing almost non-stop since I returned to my apartment, hoping any minute to email you these words, brother, to use at your discretion. I haven’t slept for nearly seventy-two hours. I’ve talked to no one.
I did send the Reverend a note to cancel our appointment yesterday. We rescheduled for the end of the week. In the meantime, he urged me to “monitor with diligence” the FEAR NOT blog, which he feared had spiraled out of control. He wasn’t overreacting.
It seemed on the day before the election panic in the community had reached mass hysteria. Folks were crying Alzheimer’s from aluminum wraps on their burritos, MSG poisoning from No MSG! restaurants, EMF-leukemia from cable TV. I offered these antidotes: eat American—Fuddruckers, Piggly Wiggly, Chick-fil-A; be e-smart— satellite, DVD, webphone.
If the posts were to be believed, eyeballs had imploded from bacteria-spiked contact lenses, E. coli had plumped livers to pigskin-size, bronchial tubes had melted from radon exposure in single-family homes with overextended mortgages, and vanilla milk
shakes with Salmonella had afflicted an entire eighth grade class at an elite Christian academy with the runs. Per the Reverend’s instructions, I presented the voice of reason: laser eye surgery, plastic body suits, always pay cash, chocolate over vanilla any day of the week, nigga.
There were links to news reports of meth lab explosions in nice neighborhoods, children drowning from dangerous inflatable pool toys, regional banks shuttering their doors or caving to bids by global financial institutions at ten cents on the dollar. The rational alternatives? Go ghetto! Keep your feet on the ground, eyes on the prize, that is, if you don’t wear contacts. You’ll never lose a dime with the Mattress Money Fund.
Dozens of stories suggested unprecedented cases of consumer mishaps at chain department stores, including severe paper cuts (on too crisp receipts), dismemberment (in revolving doors), fatal falls down escalators (the culprit: saggy pants). All-caps bulletins alerted parishioners to the rise in AMUSEMENT PARK ABDUCTIONS, DRUG RUNNING AT FITNESS CENTERS, CULT INDOCTRINATION AT LOCAL NIGHTCLUBS. A report titled AFTERHOURS SEX TRADE IN CHURCH PARKING LOTS recounted the gruesome scene of a recent homicide in which an alleged prostitute, a young black girl—not my saintly superhero, I prayed—was beaten, hogtied, burned alive and stuffed in a dumpster to die. Frantic threads railed on omnipresent electronic eyes, mob violence at high school football games, Buy Nothing perverts at the malls, wronglooking folks everywhere you go.
I tried to ease the upset with posts of corporate press releases (Buy with confidence!), excerpts from past sermons (Pray with conviction!), slogans from stump speeches (Your vote—your voice—counts!). I included links to reassuring media sound bites: The Fed promises rate cuts will bolster the economy. . . . Security is one hundred percent guaranteed. . . . Record turnout expected at the polls. . . . The Initiative for Peace is a Golden Gate Bridge.
I did my job the best I could. I admit it: I’d been distracted from work in the past few weeks. But no longer. It was important for me to step up my game. My integrity was at stake. It mattered little whether the fears of parishioners were overblown or justified, tabloid fiction or based on hard fact. These people were vulnerable, unavoidably so, it seemed like, and I could make a difference.
Adopting the Reverend’s language, I jotted down the following pick-me-up, copied it to all the frenzied threads: Bearing witness as a true Christian means living in Christ, which may not always feel pretty or safe or easy, given what we’re up against out there in the wiggy wide world, but it’s necessary and requires acts of fortitude, facing the enemy, without and within, head-on. This is our redemption song. We are cleansed through suffering. As a community, we must endure the wages of our collective sins. Yet through prudence, charity, forgiveness, moral constancy, virtuous behavior and neighborly service, we can embrace who we are—our identity born anew in Christ—and together we will rise to meet our heavenly reward. Never forget: faith is good food. The banquet hall is open. Eat, drink and fear not!
As I was managing the blog and racing to complete this document, Cyrus phoned three times. I didn’t pick up.
His first message: “Hey brotherman, how goes the war? Call me. Later.” His second: “Hey JAG, somethin’s wrong with fallenangels. Check it out. Get back soon. Hear? Late.” His last: “What the fuck, JAG? Call me back, beeyatch.”
Joy also left a note. Cyrus had hit her up after me. She said we could troubleshoot together later in the week, if we were both around. I almost texted her back, but I couldn’t.
My attorney rang as well, more than a dozen times. His messages: “I’ve just met with your wife. I don’t know what game you’re playin, JAG, but we need to talk. Please call me at once. . . . Mr. García, Mr. Green, whoever the hell you are, if you think it’s funny to waste my time and your money, you’re mistaken, son. . . . Look, JAG, I will continue to phone you until you return my calls. I’m not droppin this without answers. You owe me an explanation. . . . FYI, sir, you will be billed for the time that goes into leavin you these messages. . . . I strongly suggest a thorough psychological evaluation. . . . You are somethin else, boy, some thin else.”
I accept responsibility for all I’ve said and done, what I did and didn’t do, what I could have done different, perhaps should have, but that’s spoiled milk now. Please explain this to my son, little bro. Maybe I’ll get the chance to tell him myself first, depends on what happens next, and what lies beyond.
You know how I was there for him. I built his bassinet by hand, brightened his room with all those colorful mobiles and choochoos. I raced him to the hospital, never left his side. Three days and nights I prayed for him to be his little gurgly self again. But there would be no resurrection. The ex blamed me.
Do I wish my days had turned out otherwise? I learned from the ex you can’t wish for what will never be yours. Thou shalt not covet, brother. Nothing to be gained. That said, I can’t stop thinking on Shannon . . .
If nothing else, you can say I’ve been my own man these past few months. That must mean something in a world where everyone bullies you to be what they want, what they need you to be, what they say is right, what’s right for them.
I know right from wrong, little bro. Morality is not blinking at the choices you make in a climate where the sun never sets. I accept the light and the heat, now and forever. No fear.
_________
As I write these last lines in the First Church parking lot, my heart is pounding my rib cage. It’s after midnight, the polls are closed, preliminary results have been broadcast for hours. I’m not paying attention.
The air’s a swamp. It’s a struggle to breathe. The sky looks old and dirty, cobwebs in a tomb. No moon, no stars, no night birds on dark branches. My hands are sweating on the keyboard. Good Charlotte just went home. I had called her on her cell. An emergency, I said.
I curled up in her lap, my head tucked beneath the steering wheel of her Suburban. She brushed her fingers through my hair, said she liked it dark. Her touch was maternal. She waited for me to speak. I couldn’t for the longest time.
Then I started heaving with sobs, panting like an asthmatic hound. If only someone had put me down long ago. “Aw, sugar,” she said. “It’s not so bad.”
“You don’t know.”
“Tell me,” she said.
“I can’t begin to. I’m bad, is all. Good for nothing.”
“Who told you you were bad, JAG?” She stroked the hair around my ear. “No one’s as bad as they make themselves out to be.”
“I’ve done bad things,” I said.
“We all make mistakes, sugar. That’s human. But who are we to judge when the good Lord forgives?” She squeezed my arm, kissed my cheek. “You’re not bad at all, I reckon.” I felt my pants tighten.
Sitting up in the shotgun seat, I wiped at my nose with my shirt front. “Aw, sugar,” she said, patting my thigh.
I turned away from her, pulled myself out of the car, shut the door, leaned back in the window. “You are Good Charlotte.”
“You’re good too, JAG,” she said. “Call me mañana?” I gazed at her, puzzled by the word choice, nodded and she was gone.
My only chance for redemption, however remote, I realize, is to honor my commitment to happyhappy. She’s waiting for me, I can see her, naked, needy, beneath a single cotton sheet on a hard twin mattress purchased special for this one-time use. She’s been praying for deliverance longer than she cares to remember. I assured her I’m the one to bring the healing she deserves.
But when the violence comes, will I be able to summon the rage, carry it to the end? Can I do the unspeakable that violates my own moral values? I’m not a violent person. The hurt she says she needs is the worst I can imagine. But wouldn’t it be as bad or worse, after all the prep and promises, to tell her rebirth is a myth, good for Christ and Lazarus but not for happyhappy?
I can’t say what I’ll do, bro, but I’m outside her place right now. I’ll creep around the back, like she told me to, that much is certain. I’ll punch my elbow thr
ough the glass, reach inside with a gloved hand, turn the lock, listen as the door creaks open. I don’t know what I’ll do on the other side.
I’m willing to find out.
Acknowledgments
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following magazines and web sites in which portions of badbadbad appeared, sometimes in drastically mutated forms: Monkeybicycle, 3:AM Magazine, The Good Men Project, The Nervous Breakdown, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Orange Alert and Inside Higher Ed. Personal acknowledgments may be found at badbadbad.net.
Transmedia
A soundtrack of songs derived from the narrative, a documentary film based on themes of the book, a YouTube playlist of tunes referenced in the text and videos of live nude words are available at badbadbad.net.
Bio
Jesús Ángel García is a writer, musician and filmmaker based in San Francisco. badbadbad is his debut novel.
Table of Contents
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
Badbadbad Page 22