Down In Me

“I’m being funny again,” I laugh.
With the seriousness of the world,
At my shoulders.
I can barely walk today:
My legs are immovable sandbags,
But I shrug and clear my throat.
“You yield to me,” I sing.
A touch too loudly.
A hair too painfully;
A galaxy of too much aching fun.
The world in all its seriousness,
Crumbles at my giggling back.
No time for hysterics now.
No time for you,
Because -
There’s beer to be drunk,
Songs to be sung,
Women to be made love to,
Clichés to embody,
Tautologies to spew,
Pretensions to pretend to.
Et cetera to proffer,
People to fuck,
Lies to lie,
Fools to be made to look foolish,
Lives to live.
Families to watch die.

Did you know? I upset you once, I might do so again. But the tender way you relate her stories, well. Something about words gleeful and strange, mewling or howling words, the fickle creatures, they leave me wanting and go curl up purring at your feet.

Read this part last I know you won’t

I’m really sick of me. Are you sick of me? I’m kind of really fucking sick of me now. Too much, too many years being this. Same. Me. I want to be sucked into your photo and become you. All of you. Any of you. I am tired. I think the weight of a thousand hundred million unoriginal thoughts repeated a million hundred thousand times over is a little heavy multiplied by a factor of thirty. 30. These numbers are accurate, I tell you, precise. TO THE DATE. To the decimal. Numbers. I always hated them and replacing them with letters to represent their changeable, infinite nature is a sin. A sin against god almighty, who taught Maths IV at a pre-school level in a small town near Sedona.

Prologue

But now, this time, I want to talk to you about entertainment. Why we find such solace in it, how it came to be, how I came to be such a bloody entertaining girl, enthralled by entertainment.

The horse’s head is meaty and none but fools do eat it

It all started the night that my sister brought two friends home from a party. She made them hot, sweet tea with a shot or four of bourbon and a slice of apple pie each. And I looked at them and I thought, wow, you’re so much prettier than me, your lives so much more interesting, even that one, the one that shares half my very own genes; the slightest alteration produces an entirely different creature, a completely different set of neuroses, an entirely different batch of insecurities, a completely different nose and head of hair.

They stifled giggles so as not to disturb my mother, who wasn’t sleeping as much as half-dead on Valium in the other room. And I thought, girls, girls I just don’t get you. We have roughly the same body parts and yet I ogle your tits and your mouths speak gibberish to me, much the same way ‘red-blooded American males’ are said to think. Girls, how come you’re so soft? so close? your eyes and lips and hair so shiny? I’m not supposed to touch your satiny skin and yet here you are, sleeping in my bed (two beds, four girls, infinite equations), reeking of alcohol, sweat and smoke underneath the thick layer of Hollywood II by Gina Seducé (pronounced seh-doo-say) you so tactfully bathed in earlier this evening. No man should have to endure this. No MAN.

I’m shitting you, nothing started that night. Put that thing away. It all started much earlier, much much much earlier, a long and longer and getting longest time ago. The End.

Epilogue

I am still sick of me. I am sicker than ever I have been sick. I am going to crawl under the motor home now and refuse to come when you call. To wait for death alone. Only to crawl back out a few weeks later, manky, smelling of piss, rail thin and glad to be alive.

Did you know? She tempts me wild with her rabid punctuation. She fills my head with horrorshow bugs and tales of a girl I wish I knew. Between vodka shots, I’d french twist her hair and we’d clickety clack on old typewriters, donning creamy silk blouses edit-stained with red ink.

Did you know? Apparently, his skull’s finally been cracked open and his head really is fit to burst with girls’ body parts and other unphotographables. There’s nothing strange about either of us, though. Except maybe the company we keep.

You like the idea of a girl tossing and turning in bed, sweaty tearing off the sheets in frustration. You like imagining the floral scent fuming off her skin pushing damp in the shadow dark; blushes spread and flush. You like the idea of girlish fear invading your nostrils as your fingers invade the honeyed musk in the folds of her pink matter. Because of course, in the end you only want to save her, protect her, fit her lovingly into a little glass vial to store on bunched up white tissue paper in a periodically accessible corner of your mind. She’s beautiful in there, she’s rich with sex and vitality, she’s wild with your nose in her hair. Time passes. She watches daytime television and eats when she’s not hungry for food, she decays, she grows old, she develops a pack a day habit and bad skin, she nurtures bad posture and a healthy dose of guilt; bored, she’s sour. She flags, she sags, she flabs, she’s spent. Douse liberally in petroleum jelly and wait to decompose.

And meanwhile, what about you?

Take me, for example. I seem to have many theories on human suffering that curiously never apply to myself. I looked at the pictures and wished to be in them. Not as me, of course, because that would never do. I hate pictures. No, I don’t. I love pictures. As long as they don’t show me what I don’t want to see. Apparently, cameras suck the souls from their targets. I learned that at a very young age and I’m afraid it stuck. Or rather, it didn’t. That is, the soul didn’t. I don’t really know what the word means.

I want to say something I’ve never heard before, but I keep rehashing the same, tired old themes, it seems. I use too many commas, mostly.

A colon should never be followed by a dash:- Who would do that? And to what end?

Leafing through this moderately heavy, reddish-orange book, my head is full;- my thoughts muddled. I’ve always been passively rebellious (well, I used to be more active, but the years wore on). I’m not being purposefully morose - I’ve got: problems. With commas, with pronouns. With clarity. Thankfully none of that keeps me from communicating with you. I think. In some way.

Back to human suffering, though. I believe everyone suffers equally and everyone has a right to suffer. No burden is more / less heavy than any other. All mules have a back on which a ton is loaded and they must all make it to the: - wherever it is mules go to drop off their load.

So why should it be then, that I’d happily trade my load for yours? Why does another’s load seem so much more attractive? I go out of focus again when I think about it. It screams at something I’d rather not shine a light on.

I seek out avenues to feed my escapism, if not to fully escape. This, what I’m doing here, now, this is a way of not facing reality. Open a blank page on which to wander, turn the music up on high, light a cigarette, make a drink - immerse myself in imaginary worlds, worlds that, curiously, aren’t very imaginative.

And when I’m tired of that I’ll force myself to sleep for 10 hours or more if I can. The very first hint of awareness or consciousness is to be extinguished immediately and without question. Goodnight, curious.

* * *

Update: somewhere I have heard this before, in a dream my memory stored:-

I am a capitalist pig.

1. Reinforce eggshell daily, specially the top/laser paint with steel and blue as needed
2. If feel soul attempting escape via top of head, employ mercenary combat teen (MCT) to retrieve
3. Stuff tentacles back in crown, repair ruptures and seal with additional steel if necessary
4. Make popcorn and fresh lemonade
5. Show director’s cut of movie (nothing too Lynchian) in third eye cinema
6. Kiss baby goodnight and switch on night light

My dead father, long-time dead, apparently sat by my cradle watching me all night the night he died. Ever the immature child, I still like to wonder if he watches me masturbate or fuck guys or take shits or paint my nails. Sometimes it even makes orgasms more elusive.

My boyfriend, my dead boyfriend and our hilariously tragic drama. I dream of your warm, rosy lips flush against my skin, but I see your blank, grey face overwhelmed by your gaudy, overstuffed coffin. Speaking of which, you never did come for me. Bastard. At the very least, we should have started fucking sooner and you should have pulled the trigger later.

The people I have wronged are all suddenly waiting in the darkness to exact their revenge. I dredge up my excuses and justifications, my logical reasoning, but none of it helps assuage my guilt, not tonight - it’s too much and they’re hungry for a feast tonight because no one likes going to bed on an empty stomach.

I start to see the swirls and movement in the dark space between me and the walls, me and the wardrobe, me and the edges of the bed. I toss and sweat. I become confused - the dead, the living, the ghosts, the monsters - they’re all the same make-believe and fact and out of focus stories that I tell. I want to cry or scream, emit a primitive sound to indicate that I’m alive, that I’m here.

Can he see me typing now? Is he more dirt than dust? It really doesn’t matter, does it? I’ve got real concerns when the sun rises and instead of partaking of the restful period, I’m pissing time away psyching myself out with pointless questioning thoughts and this treacherous body plays along. Quickening heart, sweating palms, drying mouth and heightening senses, making everything an affront: the hum of the fan, the rumble of motorbikes, the passing planes, swirling darkness, the muffled voices - they all want something from me and I’m just too tired. I want to sleep for a thousand years and wake up just in time to sleep again.

I wish whatever’s going to get me would stop fucking around and come and topple me now. Give me my cancer battle, my rapist-murderer, my horrible accident or whatever unglamorous downfall you have in store for me, life - even a wisp of my own hair brushing against my shoulder is freaking me the fuck out tonight.