"The only way to survive is to approach life at an oblique angle, swerve from our human habits of self-absorption."
—Kyo MacLear, in "An Uncivilized Love" (2012)
I wish I was still alive. I wish I wasn't dead. There are so many things that occur to me now — so many things that are clearer to me — things I could've done, that I let slip by . . .
Nobody tells you this while you're still living. Everything's immersed in (part of) something else, time gets consumed (by you) whether you wanted it to or not, and you (end up) making yourself into something that may-or-not be the "collage" of (little) sub-selves your heroes have as many of . . .
If you have any.
I didn't like anyone, so it was hard for me, moving to Portland — suspicion and distrust is what had kept me alive those 19 years, I can see that now. But, I called it "wariness" (having learned it too early, too early to call it "learning"), and, paradoxically, even though I felt like I'd be putting myself out on a branch that wouldn't support my weight, sure to break from under me . . . I figured I could be defensive about being defensive, and get myself through it somehow. Indefinitely. Insisting, in the face of all things, that I didn't know better, either.
I "chumped" myself, by not trusting anyone else. Wait and see, wait and see . . .
Then, time ran out.
You see, there wasn't much for a girl like me in the small town in Michigan I grew up in (I could name it for you, but you still wouldn't know what it was — so I'd have to do the usual thing, make my hand look like the state of Michigan and point to it, which I can't, 'cuz I'm dead, see?). It didn't take much for the first boy with an idea (he thought, anyway . . . ) to shoo me out the door and up the road and yonder.
Bobby Johnson. What a name — I wonder if he made it up? (Duh!) 29, and me just sixteen, and the laws in Washington state, well well. Daddy was too drunk most of the time anyway, and momma always was turnin' up her nose at everything in sight, like she was too good for it, or somethin' (guess I "proved her right" about me by leaving — what a relief to us both!) and my patience with school had worn thin. 3 D's, 2 F's, and a likely year I'd have to repeat.
Fuck that.
Washington wasn't what I'd thought — which is to say, it's a funny thing, when you didn't think anything about something specific, and when you see it, and you realize it's different from what you'd thought, which is how you find out that you had thought something, just to fill space. I mean — Washington State? Who cares in Michigan? (Well, maybe in Ann Arbor they care . . . or . . . I don't know. Detroit.)
But the point is: I didn't. I didn't know that I thought I'd know what Washington wasn't. It wasn't this. It was too different.
I was unprepared. (Which is how I found out I didn't know what "prepared" even was.)
I was in over my head.
No-one to complain to, no-one to blame . . . All of a sudden realizing I had decisive attitudes I couldn't make stick.
Which I kept to myself.
"Van-cou-ver?" I shouted, leaping out of Bobby's rust-bucket Chevrolet Caprice. "Isn't that in, like, Canada, or somethin' . . . ?"
The sound of my protest died out on the empty road and against the surface of boarded-up, indifferent buildings. The trees, leafless, blew in a little wind. Then stopped. Then blew a little.
Bobby snorted, lit a menthol with his Zippo™. The smell of the gas filled th—
"There's two," he snarled, in his contemptuous-but-clinging way. "One here, and one—"
O' course, we weren't there that long, anyway. An errand here, an errand there (me, of course, always kept in the dark about what was going on — if not the motel room, or the fuckin' car!), and next thing you know it, we're truckin' down, past that "Portland" place I'd heard so much about (for reals! sorta . . . ) down to this, um, other "Salem."
"But isn't that in Massachusetts?" I knew my geography that well.
I had to lean forward to do it; Bobby had all these boxes and shit, front and back, piled just high enough so he could see over 'em and drive, too.
I was just another item, apparently . . .
"Shaddup," he replied, and lit another menthol cigarette.
I hated those — reminded me of my great-aunt who died of cancer. She was 73 lbs. when they finally laid her carcass in the ground, after a lifetime of Nothin' Much to Speak Of.
I leaned back, and looked out the window. Oregon looked so trees-y. Not that Michigan didn't have trees, but . . . it seemed to define the place. Mark it, somehow. Envelop it, even.
Little did I know . . .
Salem seemed different. More itself than that place in Washington, you know? We were getting closer . . .
Bobby was laughing, outside some house in some back alley (it felt like — we just moved so fast through things!). He was talking to a guy who looked like he'd just gotten up — three-day stubble, wife-beater over a flabby-chested torso even though it was freezing out (he stood in the doorway; maybe the heat inside compensated enough — or, perhaps he was just a meth-head or other "numbed-skull") — but he probably . . .
They were laughing and pointing at the car.
At me.
I cracked the window a little — just enough to hear, barely making a motion doing so (I thought).
"Sixteen and I popped her cherry!"
"Lucky dawg!"
"Luck's got nothin' to do with it!"
My stomach crawled. Bobby had made me his common-law wife — nice ceremony! ("Hurry up! There's a line waiting!") — to keep it all on the "up-and-up" once we reached Oregon.
What had I seen in this guy?
"She'll come in handy . . . [unintelligible] . . . when the time comes!"
"HAW HAW!"
That's when I knew I was done for. Should have known . . .
Couldn't believe it. I closed the window and, still in shock, trying to absorb this little bit of data, listened to Bobby make obviously-trying-to-fill-the-space conversation ("Ooh! look at them Doug Firs! That's the Oregon State Tree, you know!") like he could give a shit if I was listening or not, like it mattered, even, how transparent it was that he was treating me like I was something to be kept only "humored," and mollified like a sullen child . . .
That part was the worst. His not caring if I could tell he didn't care. Even more damning . . .
I stared out the window. Familiarizing myself with the geography would do me little, if any, good — we kept moving before I could adjust and orient myself — but I committed myself to the task, anyway, noting every street light and intersection and group of houses, as though itemizing my descent . . .
I wished so desperately for home.
I didn't know what Beaverton was — it sounded sketchy. Turned out, it was suburbia with a vengeance: everything so nice, it couldn't doubt itself.
I felt glimmers of that Portland "nice" dribbling through — but it seemed to sustain the residents' smug self-satisfaction at doing what they Had Been Doing, All Along, Anyway. Reminded me of my mother.
And with that, a pang — despite it all, those days of rainy and snowy seasons in more than weather, that dour bitterness that seems to pervade everything and make people close off, inside . . . little moments. Stuff I'd have to stretch my mind to remember (How would I, otherwise? You've gotta have a reason!), like the time I came home with my Josie & The Pussycats™ plastic lunch box that I loved so much, and my hair was sticking up from just having pulled off my wool knitted purple cap and she broke into laughter.
"You look so cute!" Her cheeks so rosy then, for once — she was caught by surprise.
Let her guard down.
(Of course, I was trying to be a "big girl" by that age, so I sulked at my failure and stormed off to my room . . . slamming the door, (I thought) dramatically, breaking my mother's heart . . . )
She never let her guard down again.
I know what it feels like, now, staring out the window (I'm in the car again) to let those last shards slip away . . . glimmers of hope, something to hold on to . . . like apron strings, Mommy where are you?
You always hated me and I didn't mind. I came to pride myself on it—
Bobby opens and closes the door in almost one solid motion — KER-CHUNK!
He looks up at me (Bobby's shorter, even on the same seat-level), too amiably: "Ready to see something wild?"
It's so inappropriate — and I'm so out of my element — I feel like bursting into tears.
I'm married to this guy . . . ?
(Let my guard down. Now, I've got nothing left to do but, futilely, keep it up the whole time . . . I'm tired . . . when and how am I going to get past this?)
My seventeenth birthday is in a week. I have no way of knowing if he's referring to (something related) to that, or if he even knows it's coming.
He's staring at me — my hand is forced.
Just to fill the (empty) beat of conversation (it'd be awkward — and start to mean something else — if I didn't reply), I say: "Sure . . . why not!"
"Atta GIRL!" he turns the key in the ignition, and spits the word at the windshield, like he's saying it for another audience entirely — the crowd at home being addressed via TV.
I'm not even there.
He might as well have speared me in the heart with a dagger — his every word makes me flinch (inwardly), by this point . . .
I wish I had a home. (My dress, bra, panties, shoes are so ordinary — who needs a plain girl?)
Again, little did I know . . .
(Getting ahead of myself, here. I wasn't a total nobody before Bobby found me — or should I say "found" me? — but, I realize now, I had never "put down roots," either.
(Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Who'd expect a 16-year-old to "put down roots"?
(Well . . . there's your answer, right there: NOBODY!
(Nobody tells you these things. You have to figure it out for yourself.
(And when they do tell you "you have to figure it out for yourself," they sound just plain mean . . . like they're only too happy to . . . )
It was when I was in Beaverton that I first thought of escaping.
Funny word, isn't it? "Escaping." Like I was in some crime movie, or TV show. Thing with those things is — and it was a weird thing to notice — they're always interesting. Something's always happening next. Life's not like that (I found out). You have to wait and wait andwaitandwaitandwait until you get your chance . . . until maybe you get your chance . . . until you spot something that could, could be a—
Blink, you've missed it.
Back in the car. You're hungry, you've got to sleep too.
Why bother.
Beaverton offered, as I was saying, plenty of opportunities to witness how things hadn't really changed much — just that everyone, you know, "behaved better."
Even being from a small hick town, and agog as I was at all the cultural luxury available ("There was so many places to go to!"), it wore thin after a few — maybe three — days, and I got the gist: strip malls + amped up = "neater" + "more interesting."
Not that Bobby had much interest in taking me places. He had his business dealings — most of which seemed to involve keeping an eye out for the police, though I could never be certain, and if I pressed him, he'd deny it, irritated — and so it was just a string of Motel 6's I barely saw the outside of.
Of course, I always had a thing for HBO/Cable, my own mother having been too puritanical and cheap to have our house "wired" for it . . .
"Watcha watchin'?" Bobby prodded me, businesslike as usual (if "business" was inept animal-training), bustling in the door one dour November morning.
"A rerun of Girls," I said, and yawned. I was starting to hate how our convo's were starting to sound as impersonal as résumés, as dry as a relay click, and me with nothing better to say, no-one better to talk to.
No-one I could even imagine to talk to . . .
Let's face it: I had never really had any friends. I was basically learning what it was like from HBO.
"HAW-HAW!" he boomed, nearly jolting me off the bed I was sitting, upright and propped up by pillows, on. "I was watching some girls, too!"
I didn't want to know.
REFRAIN: Little did I know . . .
He took me to the place later that night, shameless. All the dancers seemed to be doing aerobics, naked, ignoring the audience, absorbed in their own little bubble.
"It's LEGAL to go completely nude here in Portland, wifey," he told me — the "wifey" so people'd accept our being there & together (for some weird reason; nobody else was paying anybody else — unless they came with them — much attention, and that almost-eerily-effective fake I.D. Bobby had procured for me not long after we were "married" (sob!) hardly caused a second glance at the door . . . besides, it was dark in this place, and people always told me I looked old for my age — "wise beyond my years" — for all the fat lotta good it did m—)
"WHOA!"
A somersault.
Cripe's sakes . . .
Fortunately, Bobby was too wiped from beer & "exertion" (driving, hopping up and down at the club, whatever "work" he'd been doing, and whatever amount of "sweating" — from heavy lifting or looking-over-one's-shoulder — that had entailed . . . ) to make me offer up my "prize" (ugh!), so I just slipped out the door to the sound of lumber being cut ("ZZZzzz..."), making sure to bring Bobby's hotel-room key-card, to check the place out.
It looked like all the other Motel 6's I had been to — I had the routine down pat. Funny thing was, once this became true — once this became ingrained, as it were — it opened you up to look for all the little variances. (Like: "Oh! The ice machine's over there, in this one!")
You took your entertainment — and your stability, apparently — where you could find it.
Chips. Coke™. That's where they are in this on—
"But I'm tryin'!" Female voice from behind Room 217. Not as muffled as I'd like.
Hallway quiet and dead, otherwise. The buzz of the fluorescent lights, if you listen hard enough.
Male voice: "Try harder!" Behind the same door — and the sort of emotional state (believe you me, I've found this out . . . ) that can only be reached behind a closed door.
Time to go . . . tip-toe . . . tip-toe . . .
(For nothing, really. Nobody's there.
(Me and my nerves . . . my useless, probably never to be deployed-for-real-purpose nerves . . . )
Fuck this shit.
I gotta get away from this whole scene . . . scenery . . . what-ev-er.
Bobby's still sleeping — I think.
"Where YOU been?"
Guess not.
"Out walkin' . . . you know . . . " Trying to play it casual.
"NO . . . " Immediately suspicious, his eyes beady, boring into me. " . . . I DON'T."
I forgot; I have no way to just "play this off."
NO excuse.
"C'-MERE . . . " He points at the bed, next to him.
Not "pats" . . . points.
Shit.
The morning light wakes me with a sudden start: it's not like it just got flipped on (obviously — it's the sun), but some hidden veil that had been keeping me safe, ensconced (where'd I learn that word . . . ?) in sleep had finally ruptured, reached its breaking point.
I wish I didn't have to be awake — the stupidest (and also most primal) desire I've ever felt.
I face the day with nothing.
Bobby's gone, and — by the time I get myself together, still sort from last night, hobbling around — I see, at last, that's he's left a note:
"Alexandra:
"You and me, we ain't built to last — I'm sorry, but it's the truth!
"I've filed the papers for divorce (and, no, your signature wasn't necessary — remember that "POWER OF ATTORNEY" thing I had you sign? True, you were a little drunk, but . . .
"We had some good times. Not enough, though.
"Consider yourself single.
"Check-out's at 11:00.
"Regards,
Bobby J.
"P.S. Don't try hitchhiking — it's dangerous — or trying to find me — it's more dangerous."
Shit and shinola, the little bast—"[KNOCK! KNOCK!] Room service hell-oh?"
Goddamn it.
I look at the discarded newspaper — idiotic, strained happenstance; wouldn't've dawned on my any other way — and realize what day it is.
I'm 17 yrs. old.
The street's no good for a seventeen-year-old — thankfully, Bobby's I.D. says I'm "ALEXANDRA JOHNSON," who's a 21-yr.-old
I schlump into the bar, the nearest one I could find, to collect my wits, my sanity (what's remaining of it, that is . . . ), and to blow half of my life savings.
Yup, that's right: I've got $18.34 in my coat pocket.
"I'll have a beer."
The bartender looks at me, eyebrows arched, prompting me further: "Uh . . . what kind?"
So much for learning from TV and the movies. What was is Daddy used to drink? No — fuck "Daddy" — what's on the menu, here, . . . let's see . . .
"OOH!" (I blurt; I look stupid, I'm sure, but I'm too frazzled to care — it's what I need the beer for!) "They named a beer after the mayor?"
The bartender gets a Wha? look on his face, approaches the place on the menu where my finger is pointing at, and laughs.
"You don't know your American History!"
He reaches under the bar.
"NO, I — " I'm still too loud, grateful for someone — anyone at all, really — to have any sort of reason to talk to.
I'm not sure what I'll do when my money runs out.
" . . . got an 'F.'" I finish, looking around the bar. Nice place.
He brings me the beer — "SAMUEL ADAMS BOSTON LAGER."
I pay him. (I can't tip him — how can I NOT tip? — maybe he'll kick me out.)
I better drink the beer.
The buzz is settling in. I now have $8.34 to my name.
"Buy you a drink?"
My saviour — anything you like, buddy.
I try to play it cool (not that there's much chance of that, but . . . ).
"Sure!"
Fuck it.
"Two Sierra Nevadas," the guy says, holding two fingers up in the air (lest there be any doubt . . . ).
There's doubt. "Which ones?"
The bartender quickly shrugs his shoulders with his open hands out, as if to say: Dumbass!
"Those." The guy points at a tap, no hesitation.
"Thanks!" I say, more in control now.
I look at the guy: he's more well-dressed than I'm used to (from Holly, Michigan . . . let alone Bobby), one of those "hipster" types I guess.
I feel so ashamed — a shambles. As it is, I look a fright (not even showered . . . ), and I'm sitting here in a sort of blind denial, a stubborn refusal to acknowledge how bad my situation is . . .
For lack of anything better to do.
"Who's this?"
I awoke, dazed & confused — groggy, abused — on a . . . whoa! very comfy sofa.
"This week's couch-surfer."
This didn't sound violent or threatening.
I put my head down.
A car alarm woke me, with a start — worse still, it was pitch black out.
My heart took a few beats to stop pounding, and then it downshifted from there (manual transmission talk — at least Daddy taught me something!), and, then, steadied off at a steady purr . . . only to realize:
It's coming from upstairs!
"Ah, no — that's the Dead C! They're from New Zealand!"
He turned it down.
"Hi, I'm Matt, d'you remember me?" I couldn't tell if he was trying to be funny — it wasn't an unfair question, actually.
He went on:
"We both got pretty plowed last night — or, well" (he looked at his watch) " — technically, the day before last . . . "
What could I say? Play it cool . . .
"Oh."
"Yeah," he agreed, since this seemed to serve as a prompt, "you owe me a lot of 'get the next one' rounds, you know!"
Whoops!
I feel more-than-vaguely alarmed, with nothing to my credit, and nothing to aspire for.
If this guy suddenly decides he doesn't like me, I'm out the door.
My life is over.
We're in a very weird car, cruising down a street I've never seen before.
I love Portland — I feel like less of a freak.
"What DID you SAY this WAS CALLED, again?"
For some reason, we're driving with the windows down.
"LO-FI!"
He glances back at the road.
"YOU LIKE IT?"
I don't know what to say. I don't know if I do.
No-one's asked me my opinion on music before.
This stuff sounds tinny — like banging on pots & pans.
I decide I do.
"Where are we? Where are we going?"
I want to ask these things, but I can't — I'm terrified! (After Bobby, anything seems like a "step up" — and this guy's so nice, so engaging and non-threatening, I feel like my every next breath, my every next word is going to reveal me to be a fraud . . . broke, penniless (literally — not a penny!), no friends, clothes that are just beginning to smell . . . I'm one smidgen (as my mom used to say — or, "overuse," really — everything was a "smidgen": jam on toast, milk in coffee, etc.) away from . . . what?)
Empty horizon.
Forever looming.
The party's crowded. I'm terrified-and-back-again, I can't just be a "wallflower," if I lose Matt — or cling too tight — I'm forever spurned.
Some weird girl he met once, too plain to register, too jumpy to remember or keep around.
"This is Z.," he says to a mixed-crew, gender-wise, in clothes that seem striking and carefully-chosen, like they know what they're doing, every hour of the day, and pick these like they pick their music, their friends, their time spent.
He elbows me in the ribs, too subtle for them to catch (it's like he's leaning in and back out again), but it's clearly meant to say: Right?
I'm "Z."
"Like the Costas-Gravas movie?" a short-cut redhead asks me, somehow like she's curious and could give a damn and I'd better measure up, all the same time.
"Oh . . . " (I'm flailing, here) " . . . among other things."
This bursts the (mild) tension, and they all crack up.
"Too true," she concedes (what's with my language? I must be "absorbing" something . . . all this funny talk . . . it's (almost) like I'm "speaking in tongues"!).
She raises her beer, sips it, and looks around.
"Z., where you from?" The same redhead asks me, at a (relative) lull in the conversation. (They're all busy gossiping, discussing the minutiae of subtle shifts in the political situation . . . my "absorption" continues, I'm finding parts of my inner self (huh?) that I didn't know were there . . . concerts this week, films scheduled to play in Portland (hopefully) in the none-too-soon Fridays to come, etc., etc.) We're sitting in some weird room upstairs — I thought it was a gallery, then everyone started sitting on what I thought was furniture, so now, it looks like it's an amalgam (???) of both — and I'm nursing my (second) amber-colored beer, wanting to down it but wanting equally, if not more so, not to lose track of myself.
"Michigandiopia," I say, not sure why, sounding (I think) like a kid's T.V. program.
They all laugh.
"Michelle's from Ann Arbor," redhead says, at the same instant the crew-cut black-hair-and-overalls gal she's pointing to says: "Wherein?"
I bobble my head back and forth, tennis-game-audience style, which gets another laugh (I'm hoping they think I'm a conscious wit and not just a dolt), and start to blurt out: "H—"
Then, everything goes black.
I awake in an ambulance. Everyone else is gone. It might just as well have been a dream.
I feel the institutional "neutral" vibe pressing down on me — it's "for my own safety," but still.
I remember this from breaking my arm in the fourth grade . . . I was climbing a tree . . . everyone was scared at my injury . . . somehow, I lost friends because of it . . . my mother weeping . . . she didn't let me out of the house after that, until it was too late . . .
"Hey — are you awake? Do you know where you are?"
The EMT guy (is that redundant? What does "EMT" stand for, anyway?) isn't cupping his hands around his mouth, bullhorn-style, but he might as well be.
Fuck you, dude.
I black out again.
I awake in a hospital bed, feeling drained, but, somehow — good.
The next morning, I awake again to find a black male nurse standing over me — a gentle giant, I'm sure.
(I'm thinking of the Jolly Green Giant — and I'm not sure if this is racist, or just T.V.-stupid, but it's probably both — and it's probably how these things happen!
(Lesson learned!)
"HELL-oh . . . " I start to bellow, but croak, as my inner 180° in attitude stammers out due to my (relative, but more considerable than I had thought) fatigue, and he smiles, half indulgent but non-condescending (a new one for me — good-bye, Holly, Michigan!), as though he didn't expect me to be capable of much (he was holding my "chart" — right? I guess T.V. taught me something! — which must have told the whole story!), but was bemused at my spirit in trying, anyway.
"Hi, Alexandra — " (not my name — but, then again, neither's "Z.") "— I'm Brian, and I'll be checking in on you. Try and get some rest . . . "
He paused, for a quick-and-deliberate instant, as though he was trying to get a bead on something without alarming me (what the fuck? what did the goddamn chart say?), but after my curiosity-spiked adrenaline faded in the next instant, I hit bottom inside myself, had to take stock of how little strength I had (I felt like a video-game energy-bar — or just plain ol' gas tank — dangerously near "E"), and had to scuttle any rebukes (??? — again that weird-language thing) and hopes for slyly-probing questions and settle for the meek-little "patient" routine expected of me: "O.K."
He nodded, as though this satisfied him.
"We'll talk later."
I blacked out, again.
I dreamt of the sky, above me . . . I was in it . . . I plummeted and swooped, plummeted and swooped . . . my arms must have had wings on them, but it took hardly a flicker of them to move my whole body . . . turning left, then right . . . I was hardly a novice at this . . . the moonbeams would break through clouds, stronger or less so, as their thickness increased or decreased . . . the clouds weren't changing position: I was.
I was standing on top of a mountaintop, sudden as braking a car, with the realization that I was the one responsible for my flight. I could see a settlement, below me: the mountain was little more than a big hill, it would appear. The place appeared to be in trouble.
By virtue of my concern, I appeared in the town — it mattered little to me how I got there from the top of the big hill, or whatever-it-was . . . I was already looking around the next corner, trying not to become progressively frantic, without much success . . . door after door had been boarded up . . . there were bloodstains on some, and bits of hair and flesh . . . bones too old to have been as recent as the bloodstains rolled around in the street, like abandoned toys . . . someone was moaning . . . it sounded like a woman:
"NOoh! — Help me!"
I almost cried.
It sounded like my own mother.
Without warning, I found myself in a cold dark room with unfamiliar objects.
It was the hospital —I could hear the creaks of gurneys (or whatever they were called — right?) in the hallway, plus murmured voices, and loudspeaker bings plus: "Paging Doctor Wh—"
I fell back asleep, nourished somehow.
When I woke up, I was chipper as could be. Brian had been replaced, this time, by a svelte Asian fellow named:
I squinted to read the nametag on his belt —
"Ed."
He smiled down at me.
"Hi, Ed."
He continued to smile. I must be doing better. (I even felt . . . a little . . . horny? Now, here, of all times and places? Great. Great for me . . . )
"Hi, Alexandra."
That name again.
"Look, I'm — "
He paused, patiently for the patient, the sort of not-insincere-but-nonetheless functional consideration I'd lacked, really, my whole life.
Too little, too late . . .
THREE DAYS LATER, after the most nourishing days of my life (I couldn't believe this was hospital food! The "Portland Nice" sure seemed to have bled into this organization — no-one was surly!) I found myself, lamentably, staring down the bill (Let's not talk about it, shall we . . . ?), with another all-too-understanding (from my point of view; I was so desperate, I wanted to cry! Give me something to cling to!) female billing-attendant (or whatever her title was . . . ) who took my address down as "VAGRANT" (I told them a little — but only a little — of my "life's story") before adding: " . . . there's things we can do. Just call us up, and we'll see what we can work out."
Yeah, right.
I can pay you: "NOTHING" . . . how's that?
Every last formality, every last perfunctory (???) greeting, made me pine for some "place" to stay.
I sat at the bus stop, with the single bus ticket she had given me and complimentary coffee (black, no sugar — I guess I'm like that Henry Rollins guy!) wondering what in the world to do next, who in the world would give a shit about me, why on earth a "GRAND MAL" seizure could happen to me, to begin with . . .
"There she is!"
"Hey, Z., over here!"
A crappy car, painted canary-yellow, belching smoke/cold-air plumes from every available orifice, calling my "name."
I almost cried, in gratitude.
"Why is this album called The White House?"
We were back at the ranch — I was looking at the cover of the "analog disc," as Matt insisted on calling it.
He pointed to the tree branch not-exactly-obscuring that Iconic statesman's home on the left side of the (semi-)haunting image.
"Pretty ominous, huh?" he responded.
That didn't exactly answer my question — but, somehow, it did. It gave me another question, in its place — a deeper one.
"I always end up thinking such interesting things when I'm in your vicinity, Matt," I said, tossing the cover back on the pile (my mind was starting to ache — too much deep thinking, for one day!), and reclining, exhausted, back on the futon.
"I know—" he said, but halted himself.
He looked at me, holding his amber-beer-in-a-pint-glass as stalwart as a sentry at "Order Arms" all-of-a-sudden.
"Things coming back to you, or . . . ?"
"Wha?" I half-asked, but the futon — meager, if cheery, as it was — was too comfortable, after the day I'd had . . .
I slipped into sleep. A moment later. A mom—
—entarily I was THRUSTING THRUSTING THRUSTING down on him he was inside me was breasts was bobbing in his face . . .
. . . nipples erect, his hands on my butt, his smiling face . . .
. . . I arched upwards—
—I was in a deserted field, wearing peasant dress . . . storm clouds were gathering above me—
"NA-than-iel," I knew enough to shout, desperate . . . he was gone
ALL OF A SUDDEN: Thundering hoofs . . . this doesn't look good . . . the cause is lost—
—I'm weeping, broken into, bloody, on my back, the pain is searing, the invader's face obscured by a beard-bramble-overgrowth, the light in his eyes mean, scary, terrible . . . I cry out and am hit in the head . . .
—I black out.
I wake up, again, with a start — another ostensibly-unfamiliar place.
I'm used to it, now: I adjust quickly, this time.
I fall back on the pillow.
Sleep comes, paradoxically, but only once the sunlight starts to stream through the window, and the birds start chirping — when it's too late!
"Upupupandat'em!"
This is not a dream. This is Michelle, from Ann Arbor, standing there, fully erect, with something draped over her folded-in-front-of-her-arms . . .
Sunlight. Waning. It must be, like, 4:30 pm—
"We gotta go."
She looks nervous, tempered with feeling sorry for having to talk to me, this way.
I get it.
I got it!
I'm up, following her instructions . . .
(Her relief is palpable. An un-understanding, obstinate person would only be an unfortunate liability, at this point . . . whatever-it-is.
(I'm used to this, too, by now . . .
(Movin' on.)
"You got a Facebook?"
"I, um — "
(At first, I was confused: I thought she meant powerbook, from one-of-those-appealing-titles I had grabbed from the shelf nearest me when, unable to make conversation and lacking a prop/suitable-object-to-distract-me, I recognized "Jeanette" from Ms. Winterson' book's spine — hey, I knew a "Jeanette" in 5th grade — and grabbed it, and . . .
(Boy, was I tired!)
" — uh, not yet . . . ?"
I knew what the thing was.
"Look for me on it."
And she was gone.
The rest of that life, I don't remember — or, rather, I don't want to.
I didn't come here for this: that's all I know.
Where to start over?
From whence?
Whose . . . fault got perpetuated?
I didn't like dying like that. It wasn't fair.
And now that I've thought it all through, to hell with it.
I'm gonna go get born.
(Amen!)
for Jenny Toomey,
Generation X's finest shining epitomizer