My journey began with an all or nothing: she loves me; she loves me not. She gave me no response. Her answer was clear. She loved me not. I grin at it now, if only in denial. But her non-response gave me an invaluable gift: an acute awareness about my death.
Death, my ubiquitous companion, floats along from catastrophic failure to modest triumph – waiting to collect. I’ve thought about surrendering willingly without an epic struggle or an interminable delay.
“Damnation,” my father shouted, “the boy’s trying to hang himself.”
He walked in mere moments before my neck reached the noose. I panicked and hurried the job with calamitous results. My head slipped unceremoniously from the noose and plummeted towards the floor. My jaw smashed into the chair, losing several teeth in the process.
That night, after a quick trip to the hospital, I overheard my father’s voice. He was disappointed with my screw-up.
“That boy ain’t the brightest. He couldn’t even kill himself without mucking it up.”
Proper. Apropos. Fitting. It was fitting the way my father passed on. He smoked three packs a day since he was ten, but died from the bird flu that was so en vogue those days.
“God damned chickens,” he cursed the bucket of fried chicken, brought to his deathbed by his doting son. “Avenge me, son.” While I’m, admittedly, not the brightest guy, I was understandably perplexed about how to avenge my father’s death. His eyelids fluttered slowly and shut for the last time. He passed on – invariably worried his son was a homo. I wasn’t. Indeed, I planted the family seed in three different ladies of the night.
There was Destiny – who moonlighted (or is that daylighted?) as a waitress; Monique, a tall ex-contortionist; and Bea, a former accountant turned heroin fiend. Bea died during a back alley abortion. Monique had her kid - he grew up to be an incredible athlete – All-American in everything – and turned out to be a promiscuous prick like his daddy. But that’s an entirely different story. Destiny, well, Destiny was a different breed.
She wanted the suburban home, the white picket fence, the mini-van, and the two and a third brats. Think about that. All of that for a whore? I think not. I strung her along for a while – going house hunting, leafing through bridal-wedding magazines, and even keeping a steady job – and left her just as her water broke. But that’s me - all or nothing. Destiny was nothing to me.
Thorough. Disciplined. Organized. I organized a protest and nobody showed up. I planned to protest a most hideous plight on human life: vaccination. Most thought it was absurd and neglected to show. Others, bored and uncreative cretins, took to heckling the lone protestor. Some threatened me. Others simply laughed. A handful of them bypassed both threats and ridicule and lobbed stones. Who knew vaccination was such a sacred and inviolable institution?
Night brings anger. I am desireless without it. Only anger drives me. But it does not endure and I return to nothing.
Staring out of the enclosure, my mind paints a nauseating canvas: a boy and a girl sitting along library shelves, sharing a bag of starburst while ostensibly studying. It was my portrait: a portrait of young love and innocent ideals. A portrait of my past painted with equal strokes of kitsch and pastiche. It was my accursed Eden, my unforgivable original transgression.
