AM 20 YEARS OLD and I have another STD—chlamydia they
say it is this time, and I ask is that the clap, and they say
no the clap is gonorrhea—but there’s a chance for
all of them if you keep up this high risk behavior, they say—and
I want them to be specific but they load me up with pamphlets,
a bag of rubbers and a prescription and send me out the door,
the worst part being the Q-tip in the Jap-eye, and as I’m
walking toward my next drink I think I should tell Stella and
Liz and Sara and Heather and mostly I gotta tell Karly, but that’s
not shit I can deal with right now, is it
and when I get to Scruffy’s it’s 3 in the afternoon
and packed—exams are finished, the amateurs all tying one
on after their all-nighters—I despise them and their nerve
as they sit and chat and chuckle while ruining my bar, this place
where I’ve washed it all away, where I’ve lived and
loved and suffered—it’s part of me, isn’t it,
and when these goddamn weekend warriors show up the dynamic is
lost and my spirit sinks—I find Pope and Brian and Dougie
in a back booth far away from our regular spots and I sit down
with a pitcher and Brian deals me in and as we throw out cards
we talk about what to do tonight, and Pope says the scene will
be swarming with amateurs, mate—he’s english and
says that mate shit a lot and I’ll tell you it’s
caught on with the fratboy types he deals to—so I throw
a Jack of spades and say we should have people over my place,
we’ll only let in professionals, we’ll get a keg,
and Dougie chirps in like Dougie does and says we can let some
of these amateur birds in too because they’re dripping
for it, and I say that fucking reminds me I got the chlamydia,
and there’s high fives all around and Pope’s laughing
because he’s had it twice and knew it was only a matter
of time
Karly comes and sips off my drink and shakes her head—Can
you believe all this negative energy, she says, and we nod and
drink our drinks and I think of telling her about the clams but
who wants to have that conversation in a bar, right, though I
know of the girls I should tell she’d be the coolest about
it—then I wonder if she’s the one I got it from,
and I remind myself to tell Pope and Brian to stay away from
her for the next few weeks, though I know what happens happens—and
Karly asks about my summer plans and I tell her a whole lot of
nothing, working in the shipyard with my uncle again, passing
time until I gotta make classes again, take tests and slide by
again, and I look around at all the real students drinking, all
the tight-ass fuckers with good grades and nothing to talk about,
and Karly kisses my head and leaves for the toilet and I watching
her ass for a second before I wonder if she’ll burn in
there
AM 21 YEARS OLD and I can’t pay for another semester
so I’m making an effort to get to the classrooms, do the
reading, and some of it’s not so bad—I read straight
through Heart of Darkness though it’s three weeks after
the test—and my advisor, who I just met, said I have to
pass some chem class with a C- and I want to ask him what’s
the purpose of having Ds
but there’s this drama class which isn’t really
a class—it’s like pretend time—we do breathing
exercises and read plays and movie scripts and do scenes with
partners, and my teacher seems to like me, she took me aside
after class one day to tell me I had ‘ability’—but
how hard is it to pretend to be someone else, I think, most people
do it all the time, and it makes you feel good for awhile to
get away from yourself, doesn’t it, to not have your own
goddamn problems or worry about being you because these other
people’s problems are never so tough
so now I’m studying in my apartment and when I begin
to feel a little strung out a smoke wards off the skeevies but
I just get so goddamn sidetracked when it’s dark and I’m
reading while the others are off drinking and sucking and snorting
and fucking and I’m hoping this school shit will stay in
my head long enough for me to dump it into the little circles
on the fucking scantron—my head rattles as I flip the fucking
pages and try to take it all in—but I have this trick when
I start to feel weak—I act, I get into the character of
one of those jackoff amateurs, the studious ones, and I sit in
front of these books and replace myself with some smart tight-ass
motherfucker who refuses to see this world as it is and I buckle
down, as they say, I bury my nose in the books, as they say,
I become one of them for just long enough
then the door opens and in comes Karly with coffee and white
crosses, and she tells me my energy feels good tonight, are you
sure you don’t wanna come out she asks, and I look at her,
she’s dressed for a night out and she’s so goddamn
perfect, and though my heart is shivering inside me I stay strong
and say I gotta do this, and she says I’m proud of you
baby, she kisses my head, and I say adios hating to see her go
because instead of imagining something like a life with her I’m
seeing her beautiful lips sift through all that excess skin at
the end of Pope’s uncut english prick for another bump,
another line, another gram
AM 22 YEARS OLD and a college graduate aren’t I, but
what’s it all for when no one will take on a 2.1 GPA and
your uncle’s telling you to get your union card—even
Karly asks why get a degree if you’re just gonna be a shippy,
and she has a point—I’m at the yard by 4:30 a.m.
and I’m home by 6 p.m. and it’s no ballplayer’s
salary but the hours pile up and when Karly’s home from
the club she’s good about having hamburger helper or something
and we drink a few then maybe cut some lines, and I don’t
mind the expense because I need the lift and it makes her happy—but
sometimes I come home and it’s all gone, she’s on
that train and staring at those damn date shows—at least
wait until I get home, baby, I say, and we fight it out, and
I can usually stay mad at her about as long as she keeps her
clothes on
but now she’s clothed and telling me my nails are dirty,
you need something respectable she says, with an opportunity
for growth she says, and I figure she must’ve heard these
things somewhere so I tell her I’ve been sending the resume
around, but what I don’t tell her is that I wonder why
I’m wasting my goddamn time—I look back at everything
that led to this moment and I wonder if I ever had a choice,
if it could’ve been different, because these are the things
you spend your time thinking—the thoughts aren’t
original but they just keep coming, don’t they, and what
I come to realize is that I’m playing another role, going
through the motions of some character who’s not me, flipping
through the pages of some shitty script, and it’s times
like this when I think if I knew any better I would’ve
left this fucking town ages ago
Karly tells me she’s going to bed and I just kind of
nod because she never sleeps, only lies there until morning
because that’s her role, the character she plays, and
as I watch her walk off to the bedroom I can say that one thing
that hasn’t been affected by all this is her ass, and
the heat wells up inside of me, keeps me going, and I tell
her I’ll be in soon, though most nights I don’t
fall asleep either, but most nights I don’t want to—all
I want is to be in her and sleep in her and wake in her and
suck her up so fucking much that it makes my goddamn skin hurt
wouldn’t that be a way to live? to live a life loving
a woman instead of submitting yourself for approval for some
bullshit that you have to pretend to take so goddamn seriously,
the shit that comes to replace actual meaning, the shit that
wouldn’t leave a mark if it rotted away tonight—this
is what I gather from the interviews, the ridiculous meetings,
the human resource drones that demand the look-at-me attitude,
the please-accept-me smile, the let-me-get-under-the
desk-and-blow-you eagerness, and you know it’s bullshit going in but ten
years later, ten years of moving bricks back and forth across
your life, it just might turn out that you meant those lies you
told, those lies have become you
—ring ring ring—
hello?
and
just like that they want a second interview, don’t
they, and Karly is up and around and wants to celebrate, go for
a drink—she can feel the positive energy, she says, and
her smile and life is contagious so I cut some lines but it’s
not enough so she urges me to call Pope, and I tell her I don’t
have the money and we argue until the neighbors knock on the
walls and we end up not leaving the apartment—in bed I
try to lock it all out, the shit that went down with her and
Pope before graduation, the shit that was so long ago but is
still right with me—she was into him for more than I thought,
it became something it never should’ve been—I tell
myself that’s all behind us, that we’re beyond it—I
must tell myself this—I need to believe that what we have
is untainted and that I am the only one who has what she needs,
I need to believe there are no other forces at play, that this
is pure, that I am the one I am the one I am the one—but
life doesn’t sort itself out like that for you, does it,
and you can’t stop the thoughts from coming and now I’ve
got the image of his goddamn foreskin in my head, that fucking
accent saying, I’ll throw her one more, mate, and we’ll
call it square, and I get this sickness inside, all dry and black
and burned, like my organs fill with ash
then she’s at the bathroom door, letting her robe drop,
coming to me, and here she is here she is here she is, all of
her and the love consumes me so suddenly so completely that I
can’t control my apologies, they’re pouring out of
me and I’m saying I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m
sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m
sorry
AM 23 YEARS OLD and look at me, a regular working stiff—9
to 5, isn’t it, but it’s more like 8:30 to 6 which
is still nothing compared to the yard though I’m pulling
down about the same—but look at me, in my own cubicle because
Mr. Levin said he liked my face—an honest face, he said—and
I signed the papers and went through the orientation and watched
some videos on how to properly sexually harass should I want
to, and now here I am, here’s my computer, here’s
my fucking stapler
look at me
but if you asked what my job was I’d say take your pick—I
don’t think anyone in this place knows what they do—this
is what I know: I wear a tie most days, Fridays it’s jeans
and no tie, and my time in the office is spent in front of a
computer inputting data piece by piece—tab F2 shift space
enter, tab F2 shift space enter—then I hit happy hour with
some of the amateurs I work with who won’t do Scruffy’s
because they say it’s a locals dive, they like the clean
classy places, so we pay a little more for our two drinks until
they’re off to the wife and kids or the prime-time television
or the lovers or illicit affairs or secret addictions, the lives
we live but can’t reveal—and some nights I wish for
the old days, that Pope Brian and Dougie were around to make
a proper night of it, because it seems such a waste to leave
before last call
I imagine Karly is satisfied that we have something of a normal
life now, that my nails are clean, but when I mention work
the disgust rises from her, and now, tonight, in a hotel ballroom
for an office banquet, her energy dips, turns sour—but
I’m happy she’s with me, that she’s on my
arm as they say, and we find our name cards on the table and
get pulled into some pointless smalltalk and I can feel her
hatred for these people—she didn’t understand how
9-to-5ers really are, and either did I at first—they’re
not pleasant, are they, trying too hard to be the likable versions
of other people they met in other places—she cuts short
a couple questions like What do you do, Where are you from,
How long have you two been together, but now I’m all
too aware that there’s something called office politics
so I smile and get into character don’t I, I talk about
my old neighborhood and how long we’ve been together
and I say something about the weather and as I’m talking
to Levin about how the company’s moving in a good direction
she escapes to the bar or the bathroom then maybe slips into
the wind to smoke a cigarette, and later, when we’re
mid-main course blood streams onto her steak tartar and I try
to get a napkin to her face but it’s too late, everyone
at the table has seen, and she giggles and holds her hands
out in front of her, loudly sniffing and shaking her head as
I try to stem the blood—everyone is looking now and I
say something about the dry weather, help her up and as I lead
her past the other tables and out of the ballroom I see the
pained expressions, the sadness for me because my life is not
like theirs, they project their sympathy on to me and it makes
me burn and hate them because of how predictable it all really
is
and Karly continues to laugh as we find the lobby and I’m
trying not to laugh as I keep the napkin on the bridge of her
nose and it’s then that I am taken aback, as they say,
I am floored by the energy that’s humming between us and
I know now that this feeling isn’t passing—it’s
not a whim or a rush or chill—it’s real, something
that possesses you like the ghost of a relative—and as
blood runs over her lip and chin I finally let out my laughter,
I can’t contain it, and I pull the stained cloth from her
nose and her face is smeared crimson and that’s when I
say, with one of the tuxedoed hotel employees standing by, I
say Karly, you crazy fucking bitch, why don’t you marry
me? and she laughs some more and her energy takes me and I feel
like we’re the only two who will ever get it
AM 24 YEARS OLD, a married man, a working man, and I can
no longer deal—I can’t take the goddamn fluorescent
lights and the goddamn meetings and office gossip and deadlines
and parking garages and water coolers and barbeques and being
this fucking character—I hate having to act like this
jackass, being a full-time amateur, and I hate that fucking
acting teacher from college and I hate being so goddamn good
at this shit that I’m convincing myself
but I do it don’t I, and the inside hates the outside
but the outside is what gets us by, pays the bills, keeps an
even keel—and I know if I do this long enough there will
be no more convincing to do, I’ll go blind, like a fish
in a cave, and that will be just goddamn fine with me won’t
it—the pain will be so much a part of me that I won’t
feel it anymore, it will blend with everything else, my awareness
will slip away with what’s sustained me—is that what
happens?
I’m sipping coffee and nodding my head in agreement with
Levin and watching it all happen and I’m welcoming it—I’m
fucking welcoming it—and since getting hitched Karly says
I’m fucking boring and my inside cringes as my outside
tries to explain that I’m in an adjustment period, I’m
swamped, I have deadlines, it’s the end
of the quarter and I’m tired honey I’m so goddamn tired but I still
love you I love you I love you more than you know baby, I’m
doing this all for you, I want to be with you as much as I ever
did and I still want to fuck you every chance I get—and
that’s the most important, isn’t it? because once
that basic urge is gone it’s over, right?—but she
hates the suits the ties the casual Fridays, hates the way I
eat breathe sleep, she’s fucking done with it she says
and she breaks a wine bottle and I just kind of look at her because
that’s all I can really do
because I am helpless, because I still love her so fucking
much
I take off the tie, the suit, I sit on the bed and I count—I
count to a hundred because I heard on talk radio that this is
something you can do to control your rage your anger your pain—and
when I come out of the room the broken glass is cleaned and she
holds me and says she knows I’m working hard, she knows
I mean well, she tells me I’m the one I’m the one
I’m the one, and I know that what I like best about her
is that she makes me do what I don’t expect, like let her
shit on me or pierce my vein or watch her be with another man
or forgive her too fucking easily because whatever she asks of
me feels so fucking natural and completely sane making this absurd
routine I’ve put myself in that much more tolerable
her pupils are swollen and she puts on a date show and says
I talked to Pope today and as the taste of the ash hits my throat
I get to the toilet and sit on it for a while and she stands
outside the door asking what’s wrong what’s wrong
what’s wrong, and I tell her it’s something I ate
but she knows it’s the mention of Pope—with a hint
of an english accent she asks me if I want to know what she told
him—she tries the doorknob but it’s locked because
I don’t want her to see me crying, to see my insides coming
out like this—Do you want to know what I told him? she
asks, Do you want to know?—finally I say what what what
did you tell him, tell me what the fuck you told him if it’s
so goddamn interesting
and she says, quietly, simply
I’m pregnant
we’re having a baby, she says, you and me, we’re
having a baby—and now she wants me to open the door open
up open up open up and I can hear her crying but I don’t
say anything and she says, You’re gonna be a daddy—and
I think about that: I’m going to be a daddy, I’m
gonna be a daddy I’m a goddamn daddy—and my heart
shakes my body and she asks why aren’t you saying anything,
why are you so quiet, but all I can do is concentrate on my breathing
because I know any other sound would ruin the beauty
AM 25 YEARS OLD and watching the clouds move in, watching
them connect shift shape then separate, and I’m thinking I’m
25 years old, 25 years old, 25 years—things change so
quickly, don’t they—and I wonder if this is when
it’s all supposed to fall apart, right when you think
you’re getting it together
they told us it was a boy two weeks before she lost it, and
since then Karly isn’t Karly and I guess I’m not
really me and what was between us once isn’t what’s
between us now—instead there’s an awkwardness—no,
an absence, and the awkwardness results. We were deciding between
names when it happened—she wanted something hippie I wanted
something tough—and now what we haven’t said in words
has been said with the empty space and you try to say the things
that haven’t been said before, you try to be original about
your feelings, you try to be honest with each other, but total
honesty would rupture the pattern you’ve been in for too
long, so you avoid it, don’t you, you avoid it even when
it’s necessary—like what should be done with the
empty crib in the corner, with the tiny clothes in the drawer—and
pieces of the day kind of float by above you and the clothes
stay in the drawer and the crib stays in the corner and is eventually
covered with laundry, and soon your houseguests mistake it for
a hamper—and when you go to bed at night, when it’s
too dark to know if she’s sleeping, you wonder if you would’ve
been good parents and you wake up stuck in another day and all
you can say are the same things that have been said, and you
try to mean them, you try to mean them so much, don’t you,
but it’s impossible to mean anything because you can’t
put meaning into what you can’t feel and the numbness is
everything
—when it was happening, when things were coming together,
you would talk, man you would talk, wouldn’t you, you would
talk about the things you’d do as a family, you’d
talk about breast feeding and school districts and you’d
debate techniques of discipline—you bought all the books.
When it was happening you doubted you were prepared, that you
had what was necessary—but on the day it ended you knew
you’d been prepared all along. And you look back and
you know you did what was necessary because those are the things
you do, and the clouds spin and darken and lower themselves
over your small place in the world and you want to make things
right, you want to change the course, but all you can do is
take up the space you were given, all you can do is breathe
the air under your nose—
I think about the little piece of light the doctor pointed
to on the ultrasound to show us it was a boy and I remember
how I was floored, truly floored, that something so right in
this world could have come from me, that such a sad, abused
part of me was capable of this kind of magic
his due date was on my birthday
we’re gonna be twins, I’d tell Karly, you’ll
have to make one big cake, you’ll have to sing happy birthday
twice
and the wind blows in the rain so I close the window and take
the clothes off the crib, fill a small box for good will and
I wonder how many times these same things have been done before
—everything has been done before—
And I spend too long in the office now, more time than is necessary or healthy
and I know it gives the trouble thicker edges but coming home has become too
much—there are no more date shows, she only stares at the screen and
doesn’t acknowledge me and I haven’t seen her eat and I wonder
what memories are inventing themselves somewhere else
and the rain pelts the glass and rolls through the gutters
and I hope all the water will push up the flowers, I hope they
bloom and are as colorful as they looked on the package, I hope
they can disguise the pain in this house. We bought the place
for stability, to have an asset, we bought it because it was
bigger, and after a promotion we could only just afford it—the
neighborhood was nicer than we were used to, there was more space
than we were used to, and we spent the last couple months filling
it with nicer things than we were used to. It was good to spend
the money knowing we weren’t buying just for us, wasn’t
it, and as we walked through home stores with our hands together
on a shopping cart I imagined us as a black-and-white snapshot
framed on the hallway wall, and when we filled as much of the
space as we could and the baby’s room was ready we brought
home sushi and I rubbed Karly’s slowly rounding belly and
talked to it and kissed it and I pulled her off the couch and
we rolled on the floor and undressed each other and there she
was so full and naked and beautiful and I felt right and good
and there was nothing to apologize for anymore and it would be
something, wouldn’t it, the three of us, we’d make
something of what we were given after all, this is where we were
supposed to be, this is where we’ve been headed, and she
kind of blushed and said come to me daddy and we blessed each
room with our union and when we lay connected on the floor in
the baby’s room surrounded by the baby blue wallpaper and
the neatly stacked diapers and the receiving blankets and the
small stuffed rattles and the purple Barney doll and as the mobile
hanging above us shifted gently in the wind she touched my nose
and said we sure made good use of all the extra room, didn’t
we, daddy?
AM 26 YEARS OLD and my time is spent going over charts documents
schedules, making sure the people under me are up to speed—I’ve
put a plant in my office and become comfortable here, I know
what I’m doing, I’ve become willing to settle,
haven’t I, though none of this makes me feel better about
Karly leaving. But this is how you succeed in this world, I’ve
learned, this is how the outside reconstructs the inside—you
do well with some parts because you avoid the others
she’s staying with Pope out by the college, I hear, close
to his client base, and I send a check to a PO box every month
because I’d hate myself if I didn’t—sometimes
I’ll try to pinpoint the day she got back on that train,
I remember coming home to find the place trashed, the baby’s
room gutted, but I couldn’t tell you when it all started
again. I try to recall the exact look on her face, her eyes,
and I wonder if choices are ever really made
Levin puts some files in a box on my desk marked In, and I
take one of the new guys out to lunch—he smiles when I
order margaritas but he’s quiet and uncomfortable and his
shoes are scuffed and dirty and he shifts in his seat and he’s
a little hungover and I wonder what his night was like, wonder
what he does for fun, where he gets his drugs, if he knows what
he’s doing to himself by taking this job, how long it will
be until he quits, who he’ll be ten years from now, if
his parents are proud, what he really wants, if he’s doing
this because he thinks this is what he’s supposed to do,
who he’s fucking, what he’s thinking and I wonder
I wonder I wonder and he avoids eye contact and I direct his
attention to the hostess’s ass but he just smiles and sips
his drink and picks at his food until his plate is empty and
now I wonder if what I saw in him that reminded me of me was
accurate or if I’m just trying to force some connection
I am staring at the irregularities in the wall plaster when
Levin takes papers from the box on my desk marked Out. He pauses
and nods and asks how I’m doing and I say fine, just
fine, and I ask him to close the door behind him and he reminds
me of a 3:30 meeting with clients and I nod and I nod and I
nod and I nod. When he’s gone I dump the remaining contents
of a vial on my desk, arrange a few lines and clean the desk
then stand at the window, look down four stories to the street.
It’s quiet today—it’s still. Everyone’s
doing what they’re doing, living the only way they know
how. I sit and write a letter to Levin, the last couple sentences
reading, I’m sorry I have to leave without sufficient
notice. Working here has been great opportunity… I see
the error but let it go and leave the office, ignoring the
secretary’s questions
At home I make a drink and sit on the couch and struggle to
fill the time—I am anxious, I am uneasy, I am destructive
and I miss her. I go through the usual channels—blaming
work, the new place, our time apart, her struggle to stay clean
and me being a constant reminder of all that went wrong—but
I know one of us had to leave or the emptiness would have been
too much. Now that I’m alone with the emptiness I come
across her robe, the heels she danced in, maternity clothes she
never grew in to and living here has become too much. This place
has become unbearable. This is how decisions are made, isn’t
it.
Standing across the street, the heat from the flames tightening
the skin on my face, I watch our house become engulfed and await
the wail of sirens—I know they will come, because while
you’re in this world you can not leave it behind you on
your own terms, your choices are never completely yours. The
fire roars and swells and just as the sour burnt stench saturates
the air, the engines arrive and long steady jets of water cut
through the flames, hiss against the framework of the house,
and I’m asked by a man in a rubber coat if I know what
happened, if I saw anything, and I tell him, no, I don’t
know anything. I don’t know anything. What I don’t
tell him is the one thing I do know—that I can take this
character no further. The flames come down, are eventually drowned,
and I know that this character—this man who I’ve
become, who I am—has gone as far as he can go
AM 27 YEARS OLD, three away from thirty, I haven’t shaved
in months and I’m at Pope’s door: She left weeks
ago, mate, he’s saying, we had a bit of a row, he’s
saying, do you want a taste of me new stuff, he’s saying,
and all I can say is where is she where is she where is she but
he doesn’t answer so I fucking shove the foreskinned prick
but he puts a trigger between us, doesn’t he, he thinks
a 9mm should be enough to get me out of his doorway, but I step
into it, say you’re taking some advantage of that second
amendment, mate, and he says I’ll do it mate and I don’t
say a word, just adjust my demeanor to say go ahead, go on and
do it, just do it get it over with you motherfucker—and
I really want him to, don’t I—because this is the
time we die, isn’t it, when it becomes clear that we can
go no further—go the fuck on and do it fucking prick—but
he slams the door and turns the lock
So instead of being tagged and zipped I’m walking across
town knowing that with Pope I was no longer acting, that I was
real on that doorstep, and the streets are dry and warm and I
have no idea what time it is and when I piss in the alley I feel
the familiar burn and I smile—I look at my prick, my 27-year-old
prick, it’s 27, I think, my prick is 27 and my balls are
27 and my legs are 27 and my arms are 27 and this fucking face
is 27 and they’ve been with me all this time and only my
hair is getting away, and as the piss slows and the burn turns
to sting I’m thinking about Karly and I’m thinking
about our boy and then I’m inside Scruffy’s and the
place has been cleaned renovated updated and I am lost among
all the new yuppie amateurs and I see some of the guys from work
but I know they won’t recognize me so I have a few drinks
until my cash is gone and the barman asks me to move it along
and when I get back she is there—washed-out and pale, her
cheeks sunken her eyes yellow her thin skeleton pushing through
her skin, her breasts have fallen and her ass is gone and I wonder
if I look as bad as she does—she follows me to my basement
apartment and sits on the couch and eventually I cough and she
coughs and sniffles and we look at each other and she tells me
she’s out of cash and I tell her I am too, aren’t
I, and she asks what about the settlement from the fire, from
torching the house, and I shake my head because even when you
get away with a scam you get fucked, don’t you. there are
five more minutes of sniffling and silence until I get some beers
and eventually we’re talking about the life we had—it’s
remember this, remember that, but it’s all bullshit, isn’t
it, because she came for money, and now that she knows there
is none she feels obligated to hang around, so I tell her it’s
not necessary, and she starts to cry—she tells me she loves
me, that she made mistakes and she presses herself into me and
calls me daddy and her shirt comes off and her odor takes me
and though it’s not the same body it was the memories return
its power and here I am listening to my voice saying I’m
sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m
sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry
when
her clothes are back on I tell her I’ll get some
cash soon, I promise, and she asks me how much and when I don’t
answer she leaves—I don’t ask where she’s going,
just drink the rest of what I have, smoke my last cigarette and
know that I will never again see her in this lifetime, and for
the next few hours I just kind of gaze at nothing then doze off,
and when I wake and I know she is long gone and has forgotten
about me, I pick a nice silk tie from my tie rack and stand in
front of the mirror and tie the thing just right around the soft
skin of my 27-year-old neck—I look at myself, a heat rises
in me—my throat tightens and tears soak my beard and I
can feel all that’s in me coming out and out and out and
out until there is no more and I’m empty and hollow, and
I’m
hoping that will be it, but I still don’t feel right, do
I—I don’t feel ready—so I wash my face and
clean my nails and comb my hair back all nice and proper and
I put on a suit and shine my shoes and I thank the practical
bastard who invented ties as I straighten it, and now, looking
in the mirror all sharp and gussied, I consider screaming or
breaking something or tearing this fucking place to the ground,
but that has all been done before
I pull a chair to the middle of the room knowing there was
never another way, that everything else was for show, just acts
of a character
and I stand on the chair and loop the tie over the exposed
piping in the ceiling and knot it, and as the chair wobbles my
knees buckle, legs shake, but I know this is the response of
an outdated instinct, the body’s reaction to something
the mind knows better
and I remember that it would’ve been his birthday today
because it is my birthday today
and I shift my balance and wonder if she knew or would’ve
cared
that he’s three years old today
and veins swell skin stretches pressure builds my hands clasped
behind me—not letting go not letting go not letting go
until the air stops coming blood gathering in bulging eyes feet
kicking absently at the overturned chair
now letting go
letting go
I’m coming for you boy
gonna sing happy birthday to my boy
[END]
© 2005 Jerome Edwards - Contributor's
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