“I remember the day was warm, not really
hot enough for a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, but definitely warm enough to be
all sticky and feverish in fancy wool slacks. The kind that gave you prickly
bites on your legs until you’re about to go insane and your mind has to learn
to ignore it.”
“So you didn’t like the pants. I get it.”
“Yeah.” The whole body drain after sex
thing has left me susceptible to regression. She wanted us to share our secrets
and somehow convinced me to go first.
“Go on.” Isabel sits straddling my hips,
nipples at attention and her skin flushed from the past exertions. She needs to
know all this. Although I would much rather just lie here and watch her.
“You’re stalling again. Stop staring at my tits and get on with it.”
“So anyway. There I was, all dressed up and
colored in faded green grass stains and yellow hot dog juice. I was a clumsy
kid, and lunch ended up on my lap before I got a chance to eat it.” She’s
smiling. “So I had decided to escape. I’d had enough of the picnic, and I knew
it would be awhile before the adults were done. They were busy praying and
eating, leaving the kids to fend for themselves. Some picnic revival where most
of the adults ended up drunk, and I never did see anyone praying.”
She leans over the side of the bed and
reaches into my jeans for cigarettes and a lighter. It’s a choreographed
movement the way she enacts the whole process in one smooth motion. By the time
she comes up she’s already lighting it and takes a few drags before handing me
the cigarette.
I bust out laughing at the side effect of a
sudden memory flash. “The guy watching us kids was a pathetic ex-hippie born
again who was still clinging on to his old ways, probably out of habit or the
hope it would all mean something again. He had a ponytail of matted unwashed
hair. It was supposed to be dreads, but his hair didn’t really take to it. He
wore sandals and frayed jeans with a tie-died shirt and played the guitar. I think, he wrote his own songs.”
She takes the cigarette out of my mouth;
her movement is as graceful as an old movie, tossing her hair back before
placing the cigarette on her lips, inhaling long and slow, holding it in for a
second before exhaling, as if the whole process was some natural human action.
She slides off my stomach, taking her weight off her knees and onto my hips.
The shift of skin on skin friction is enough to warm the blood. She hands me
back the cigarette, and this time I meet her hand halfway with mine, as well as
shift my weight under her to show her my rising predicament.
“No. We promised we would do this before
anything else. ” She’s not in the same mode as I am and is sticking to the
plan. I smile and take the last few drags from the cigarette, poking it out in
a pottery class refugee on her bedside table.
There are dozens of these creative melt
downs all over the house, some painted in tacky colors of middle age retro
fashion and others just charred clay. They belong to her mother; she had her
crisis a few years ago and felt the best way to get through it was creatively.
“Why pottery?” I asked. She said her
mother needed something else to do with her hands.
“You’re stalling again.” She pokes me in
the ribs, and my convulsions of ticklish protests almost throw her off the bed.
“Alright then. There I was sitting by
myself trying to avoid the world around me. I found this nice spot some
distance away under a tree.”
“Some things never change.”
“Some things change a great deal.” How many
times have others tried to get me to tell this story, and now it’s just
spinning out of my head like some mechanical recording device gone haywire. It
just all seemed to go wrong from then on. Even when it happened, it was hard
for me to talk about it without sounding like some dictation machine. It begins.
“The official excuse, back in the day, when they were all trying to explain how
it happened, stated that is was a seizure, a dementia that struck a part of my
brain.” I’m finding it harder to look at her.
“It’s all right. Go on.” Her eyes lead to a
perfect moment of stillness within me.
“As I looked around at all the people,
everything seemed normal, a regular picnic setting, almost postcard like. Then
there were the sounds, faint at first and almost inaudible. I thought it was a
radio in the distance, some sort of traffic noise that I never realized before.
Within a few minutes it began to get louder. It sounded more like grunts and
snorts, the kind barn animals make at feeding time. I still thought it was
funny, believing somehow it was external commotion going on somewhere.
“I noticed one of the church lady’s eating
her food like an animal. Her face was covered in slop as she dredged through
her plate. A minister was grabbing random things from the table and stuffing
them in his mouth, his face no longer human but monster like. I was no longer able to tell who was who
while they gorged on whatever they could get their hands on at the table. Some
of them broke out fighting over scraps that had fallen to the ground.
“The kids were all separated into packs.
They looked more animal-like than the adults, cartoon creatures with human
characteristics but with animal heads.
Some were fighting each other, and as one lost, the pack that was with
the loser became the winner’s. Then the ones within the pack started fighting
the new members, and then they were all fighting each other.
“The victorious ones would continue
stomping and kicking the fallen. But as they kept stomping and kicking they
became disease-ridden, decayed and old, and they would fall and another would
take its place kicking and stomping until it decayed and withered. I just stood
there, watching the whole sequence being played out before me. I detached from
the whole moment, never considering if I was next or losing my mind; it just
seemed so normal to be standing there watching. Then it stopped.
“My mother was calling me. At the moment I
heard her voice it all became normal again. I just panicked, thinking that my
mom had found out that I had ruined yet another dress shirt or had gotten into
another fight. No profound realization of what had just happened affecting my
motives beyond saving my ass.
“I just moved around the tree away from
anyone’s view. I freaked out mostly because I just knew she wasn’t calling me
for some endearing mom thing. I could tell by the sound of her voice; it had
that loving call with the mild undertone of “you’re in deep shit”. I figured I
had been ratted out by one of the kids for fighting during the kick ball game.”
Isabel reaches for another cigarette and I
develop a compelling need to get her off me. I start sitting up and sliding
from underneath her. She looks at me with eyes that don’t say anything beside
the fact that they’re trained on my face.
“Go on,” she says as if prompting me into
the next line of the act.
“I had called this kid a cocksucker during
the game after lunch. I didn’t know what it meant and don’t think he knew
either, but he took offense to it. We ended up rolling around in the grass, his
hands at my neck and my thumbs in his eye.” I bring up a nostalgic chuckle at
the image of that cocksucker. She catches it and laughs with me.
I think I’m falling in love. She kisses me
on the lips, still with that smile of smiles.
Somewhere a voice is screaming at me to
run, scolding me for unraveling myself like this, berating me for giving in.
We’ve been hiding things about ourselves, me and her, scars and frailties that
never allowed the other to get too close. She wanted us to come clean before we
got any further in a relationship.
I have never known anyone like her. We
agreed and promised to break down these walls, completely leave ourselves
vulnerable in front of each other, figuring from there nothing else would seem
so bad. I can feel her watching me. The room is compressing me with a cloud of stale
smoke, deodorant, sweat, and sex. The smell of her aura seems to penetrate it
all, and it helps me find the way through.
“I’ll catch you if you fall,” she whispers
and, for whatever reason, even when so many have promised me similar things, I
utterly believe her.
“In my panic, I held my breath, believing
that my mom would notice my breathing. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath
until I started feeling the pressure on my chest and in my head. I really don’t
know for how long I was holding it but by the time I realized I was, it seemed
natural. It was a lot easier than I had ever imagined. I could ignore the
pressure, the exploding little prickles on my skull and face, and once I
realized this, it became easier.”
“Our bodies have a self defense mechanism,”
she says, “that prevents us from doing anything stupid like that and dying.
Some sort of life preserving fail safe.”
“Yeah. One of my doctors mentioned that to
me a while ago.” I’m fidgeting and she’s holding on tighter. “I knew either way
that I wouldn’t die, that nothing serious was going to happen to me, and I
wanted to test that notion in my head.”
“How dangerously zen of you at such a young
age” Isabel’s voice goes low in a seductive actress motif.
“I met a man who was seriously into that shit.
He would go on about achieving these altered states of consciousness by methods
of depriving the body and self inflicted pain. He had all this information
about Native American tribes and other primitive societies in the Amazon and
Africa that incorporated pain-inducing rituals as a way of enlightenment. He
was intense, always looking for heaven or whatever it is that’s out there.
“He had been fasting for a couple of days
when his sister found him collapsed in the garage. He was piercing his body
with these long sewing needles when his body went into shock, and he passed out
while in the process. His sister called the paramedics, and the authorities
later committed him because he posed a danger to himself.”
“That sucks, having your quest shut down
like that. I mean, he probably was just having some mid life thing and needed
answers. My mom should do something like that. She’s been looking for answers.”
Isabel pulls my hands to her chest, folding her arms against herself but never
letting go. My fingers conform themselves to the soft responsive tissue of her
breasts.
“The pottery?” I look around. There were
several different styles of pottery in her room alone. Each representing a
different phase in her mother’s breakdown habits: bowls, vases, animal-like
figurines, and truly expressionistic mounds of beaten earth that ranged from
smooth curvilinear pieces to hard edged, rugged manifestations that hinted at a
troubled mind.
“At first I was proud of her,” Isabel says.
“You know, doing something to express herself and her anger, like one of those
late blooming artists. No matter how much I couldn’t tell what the hell she was
making, I kept telling her to keep at it. It kept her out of the house, she
wasn’t getting drunk with whoever the guy of the moment was, and she seemed to
be getting something out of it.” Isabel’s trailing off and talking more to her
bedspread than actually talking to me.
“What happened?” I ask.
“She was fucking the instructor.”
“Damn.”
“He was married. It seemed that whenever
one of her pseudo-relationships would collapse, she used him as a standby. A
fix to get her through till the next big one came along. She has a plaster mold
of his penis in her bureau, which is about all she has left since his wife
caught them, and he had to close up shop.
“The weird part about it is I really didn’t
care so much that she was screwing the guy. He must have been doing something
right because she really appeared happy in a way that she never is or has been
with any of the guys she slums with.
“It’s just that she made me think that she
was actually doing something to better herself, and I encouraged her to do it.
She took it as I approved of her banging the guy, and somehow my approval
forgave her of whatever wrongs her mind made her feel she was doing.” Isabel
crushes the remaining cigarette filter in a blue glazed bowl on her bedside
table.
I hadn’t noticed the tension until it was
released from her face; there was hope for her now. Her look was in transition,
and I just stare at her awhile as she vacations in her ideas.
“So what happened next?” Isabel’s question
stabs at my gut. “You have to finish. It’s important now. You were detaching
yourself from existence and…”
I sigh and do it again, allowing myself to
be put back in that spot, in that time.
“First the sound got turned off. As if I
had just shut the radio off after listening to it at full blast for an hour. It
felt vast and completely overwhelming. These dark curtains were closing in on
my vision, and I was watching myself sitting there with my face all red and my
eyes bulging out. My hands were around my neck. It was silent, as I watched
myself about to explode. But I was also watching myself watch me. I was older
and really thin and tired looking, but it was me watching me.” She’s moving
behind me and enfolds me in the large blanket, her body pressed against my back
and her arms wrapped around my shoulders. I could simply sink into her and
never have to think again; my own tension being absorbed into her.
“I looked past the child that was sitting
there about to pass out and saw all around me was nothing. The light of a
thousand fluorescent bulbs was radiating everything. There were shadows of
people walking along what might have been the horizon. The darkened forms were
stick figures blurred by the illusion of rising heat. I couldn’t tell where
everything ended through the intensity of the glare. I shielded my eyes to see
it all clearer. The land stretched out before me past my field of vision, like
a desert, a flat and arid desert, with a sky that looked as if it was one giant
oil fire plume.” I stop and breathe. It feels like the first breath I have
taken since that moment. It all felt connected. That this is what happens next.
After all has been eaten and after all have been beaten. “This was the end of
something, something inevitable. I could hear the sound of the ocean lapping
lazily on a shore.
“I awoke lying in my bed. It was dark, I
was in my pajamas and I could hear my parents downstairs watching TV. I had had
a memory blackout. Even though I was conscious the whole time, my brain wasn’t
recording any of it. This was how the doctors came up with the seizure theory.
It’s a common side effect.
“My mother, I was told, was already at the
‘my child’s been kidnapped’ scenario when one of the kids found me under the
tree. I was grounded for a week for
fighting and running off and although I was conscious, according to mom, I was
staring into space the whole ride home, looking at her with a blank expression
every time she asked if I was all right. I never mentioned what I saw until
after the funeral.” I fold myself deeper into Isabel, and she holds me tighter.
“My mom never really believed any of it. She wouldn’t look at me or even be in
the same room alone with me. My father thought it a sign from God, an omen.”
I’m pausing again as it plays out all over again in my head; it’s as clear as a
re-run on television.
“They
divorced a year later. Dad took the whole end of the world vision
seriously. He convinced a whole bunch of
parishioners to follow him to Arizona back in ’94. They were a real Heaven’s
Gate group just sitting and waiting, my dad at the control of the spaceship.”
“Was that the last time you saw your
father?”
“Yep. They had bought this old hotel and
converted it into a church with living areas. There were almost a hundred
people when I got there. He was using what happened to convince all these
people that the end of the world was coming, and that he was blessed for having
an early warning provided to him by his son. They treated me like I was
royalty, like I was some sort of prophet.”
“Wine, gold, and all the concubines
you could fuck.”
“I was 11. I stayed in the only
air-conditioned room with all the toys and video games I could want. Some of
the followers took shifts watching me. My father showed up at night and would
pray a lot. He wanted me to tell him some great secret. When I had nothing to
tell him, I think he made shit up.” I can still smell the memory of cedar in
the room and the sun burnt people who watched over me.
“That’s sad.”
“One Christmas he tried to get me to
go out there again. But my case manager didn’t think he was stable enough to
provide a healthy environment. The last letter I got from him was just before
the new millennium. He ranted on about the coming tribulations, about those
that will be risen up and those that won’t. He had written me off as one of
those who would stay behind because I had denied that which the Lord had
granted me. The irony of it all is that I never felt that any Lord granted me
anything. I’ve come to believe that we are all capable of experiencing more
then we see and believe, if we happened to allow it. I think believing the Lord
was behind it all made it easier for him to accept all that changed
afterwards.”
“Who died?” Her words pull me, like a cord,
back in time.
“My
sister was born a couple of months prior. Everyone talked about the sibling
rivalry that happens with a new baby in the family, but from that first day I
saw her, when my mom came home from the hospital, she was the star in my sky.”
“What was her name?” She’s running her
fingers through my hair, and I try not to slip into oblivion.
“Julie.” It’s been a thousand years since I
last said that name out loud. “They put her crib in my room after the first few
months. My father had intentions of buying a house within the year. When I woke
up I was pretty dazed and stunned. It took a few minutes before I processed the
whole thing. Everything played out in my mind in slow motion while I lay there.
What was playing in my mind was nothing
I could relate to. It was this whole new scenario I wasn’t really prepared for,
and it wasn’t some pearly gates fantasy with winged infants and white clouds.
It was an end. I just wasn’t sure to what and when, but it was going to be
ugly, and a lot of people were going to be suffering for it.
“Julie was awake in her crib, and I got up
to see her. That’s when I noticed this throbbing in my head. I stumbled to the
crib and there was Julie just staring out into nothing. She had that amazed
look babies have; everything was new, even her own hands and voice.
“I lowered the bar to her crib and climbed
in with her. I wasn’t that big a kid, skin and bones mostly, so the bed held my
weight all right. She was warm and smelled like lavender and baby powder. I had
just added a whole new universe to her perception. I started humming a song,
and she hummed along in her own baby way. She finally fell back asleep after
awhile.” I stop and my mind feels as if a switch has been hit. The dictation
machine begins to warm up, and the tape starts to turn.
“I put my hand over her face. Her breath
warmed a small spot on my palm that had turned ice cold. I watched her as she
slept; unaware of anything that was going on. I couldn’t imagine her being a
part of what I had seen. Back when my mom was pregnant a friend of ours had a
baby that died shortly after being born. Everyone said the baby was an angel,
that all babies became angels when they died because they never did anything
wrong. I knew Julie was better off an angel.
I apologized to her and told her she would
be better off in heaven. I told her I loved her, and that I hoped she could
watch over me. I told her to tell God that it wasn’t her fault. My mom found me
in the crib the next morning.”
The tape has busted and is now turning
violently in its wheel. My face is wet and warm and my vision blurred by the
salt. Isabel, rocking back and forth, swaying me along in the rhythm; the river
gushes out, and I hear her humming a song.
