(no subject)
Here's the only section I actually like.
After this, it's all shit, folks.
Part one / Part Two.
I rip off Palahniuk. I eat Ramen noodles. I look up ecoterrorism and I feel like crying. I want to write schizoslash.
Instead of doing the laundry the next afternoon, Neal drives me to the Blue Moon where some of my old friends from work usually meet on Fridays. Cindy is doing more overtime tonight, maybe sleeping with her boss if she can help it. Cindy can survive if her white blouse isn't washed, bleached, and ironed by tomorrow.
My entire life seems to revolve around her.
In the morning, it's a game of Don't Wake Up Cindy as I make breakfast, then she hands out a list of chores I have to have finished by the end of the day or she'll have me live in Antoine's cockroach motels.
I wouldn't put it above her.
Then it's mow the lawn, clean the gutter, weed the garden, fix the table leg, buy more milk and a peanut butter (creamy not chunky), make dinner. Even she didn't do all this when I was working. I never did all of this. She just spends all her spare time thinking these up.
Someone used the trashcans outside as a toilet.
When she comes home, it's a game of Make Sure Cindy Doesn't Explode. She's the sole breadwinner now, she reminds me.
Electricity.
Gas.
Credit cards.
Insurance.
We already decided not to remodel the kitchen or buy a larger refrigerator. She's just milking this for all its worth. When she got her paycheck, she waved it in front of my face after particularly unpleasant overtime at the office.
When I accidentally cut myself slicing the bread, I let my finger bleed into her ravioli filled with a blend of ricotta and Romano cheese, topped with a chunky tomato sauce and accented with herbs and spices.
This is nothing personal. This is business as usual.
Someone left empty bottles of rum on our front lawn.
I ask Neal how Sophia is doing and he says something about her just going after his trust fund.
Neal is not a great liar when he doesn't make an effort.
His hair is just a few millimeters long in a dark fuzz over his head. He runs his fingers through it as if it was longer and tells me he'll be back at nine.
The Blue Moon is cheap, cheaply cheap, with strung-up Christmas tinsel nobody every bothered to take down and drinks watered down to the bare minimum. I duck under the Mardi Gras decorations and Jason is sitting there, intently twiddling his thumbs. He's got so many freckles he looks tanned. Freckles like your wouldn't believe, freckles bleeding into freckles and spotting his back. One giant freckle.
Hey.
Hey.
Jason looks up.
"Hey Scott. How're you?"
Shit. I am shit with a capital 's'. Shit doesn't even begin to cover it.
"Same as usual, then?"
"Yeah. Where's everybody else?"
Jason grimaces. He's holding his stomach, his other hand grabbing the table. "Most of them aren't coming. Everett has to work late for his new job at IBM, Marshall is taking a family holiday to Florida..." With a gasp, he manages to get out, "How's the job search going?"
"Are you alright? You look like you're about to puke."
"I... bathroom..." he says before running off.
Funny. I usually don't have that effect on people.
I order a beer and when he doesn't return after a few minutes, I decide to take a trip to the bathroom to see if he needs anything. Soothing sounds of the ocean and nature on tape. An ambulance. CPR. Removal of an appendix.
There are two stalls but one toilet is clogged up with brown paper towels and the urine and water is dripping and leaking into the rest of bathroom.
Never, ever sit on a public toilet seat.
Don't even use a public toilet if you can help it.
Hold it. Find some bushes. Unless you're in a fancy restaurant with linen tablecloths, avoid using the bathroom. The gas stations are the worst. There's enough bacteria to fuel a second coming of the Bubonic Plague.
If there's no soap by the sink, run out immediately.
Jason is spitting on the floor.
I can see his gray pants bunched up down by his shined leather shoes, and his head is hunched down between his ankles. Spitting. Another is problem is that the crack between the bottom of the stall door and the floor is not a few inches and more like a few feet.
"Are you okay?"
He half-whines, half-grunts. "It. Hurts."
"Did you drink bad milk or something?"
He keeps on spitting on the floor. It occurs to me he's probably sitting on the toilet seat.
There's no soap by the sink.
I'm just happy this isn't me.
"Paaain," he whines. I imagine this pain is like somebody shoving an extra-long knife up your ass and hacking at the internal organs. This is not a good image.
The drain in the urinal is clogged with hair and cigarette butts.
Pain like a million woodpeckers are searching for larval insects in your small intestine.
Pain like you swallowed an entire can of Pepsi in one gulp.
A man walks in. I'm squatted down by the bottom of the stall. It occurs to me that it looks like I'm trying to take a peek.
I see his boots. Big, black boots reinforced with steel toes and laces. Black laces on the right, white laces with an orange stripe running down the middle on the left shoe. Jason grunts and tells me go away. He's in pain. He's not thinking correctly.
The man takes this the wrong way.
He's huge and has a big, droopy blond mustache.
I know this because he is lifting me up by the front of my shirt and my face is now level with his.
God, if this man doesn't hurt me, I will not let my blood drip into Cindy's Swedish meatballs.
But that doesn't mean I'll recycle for her sake.
I hate environmentalists.
He's carrying me out of the bathroom, my legs bruising on the door swinging shut, and everybody in the bar is watching now. My shirt rips and he grabs a bigger chunk of fabric, grabs my armpit, my collar is choking me now. A button pops off. He kicks open the door to the bar with his big, steel toe, and throws me out.
I make a big belly flop on concrete.
Whoosh.
The lower half of my body landed on some grass but my stomach and ribs kissed the parking lot. They French kissed the parking lot. Tonsil hockey and everything.
The man is calling me a faggot. I don't have the breath to answer.
Where's the skin on my hands?
I lift my head. My chin and lips burn. I poke out my tongue and lick my lower lip. Blood. I test my lower teeth. They wiggle a bit more than I remembered.
I lift my body up and some of the skin is gone on my chest, too. I breathe. Close my eyes, hum, count to ten.
It's only six o'clock.
I drag myself to the pay phone and find four quarters in my pockets. I call Neal, then I call Antoine. It's a good thing Neal is unemployed right now.
Neal shows up fifteen minutes later in his Porsche, smoking a Kool.
I have never felt this angry before.
I am shaking with rage. I hold the anger of a million wronged persons. My anger sandpapers my throat and puts nail marks in my fists. I want to run back in and shove an extra long knife up that man's ass and hack away at the internal organs.
This is a good image.
Antoine knows things. Important things. How to make a great onion dip. Molecular theory. Hamlet's soliloquy.
Neal rolls down the window and says, "Get in."
He tosses the butt out the window and it crushes under the car wheel as we drive to Antoine's apartment.
Antoine opens the door. He's only wearing his PVC pants and a pair of flip-flops. He's singing, warbling. "But I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo, what the hell am I doing here..."
He looks at the dried blood on my sleeve, the spots of blood sticking my shirt to my chest. My palms are still burning. I spent the car ride picking bits of gravel out of them.
"Pain is just an extension of our minds to prove our existence," Antoine recites.
"But that doesn't stop it from hurting."
"That's true."
I explain everything that happened, not doing the laundry, Jason spitting on the bathroom floor, the steel-toed boots, doing a belly flop in the parking lot. Antoine takes my hand and turns it, palm up, looking at the dents in the raw, magenta skin. The small the raised parts right below my fingers did the worst. Where my head and life lines are in the indentation in my palm, it is an island of skin surrounded by a bright pink sea.
When I think about it, I get angry again. Bullfight angry. Basketball coach angry. I think I'm to going explode angry. I am fucking livid.
"This is not about being thrown out," Antoine says with his purposeful voice. "This is not about today."
Antoine is all calm and standing there, one thumb hooked in the pocket of his pants. Antoine is having a Moment.
Antoine in his PVC pants.
Antoine singing, "I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo..."
"What happened was nothing personal," he continues. "How you feel has to do with everything else in your life.
"You are a reflection of other people's preconceptions and fears."
Oh, all-knowing Antoine, show me the Noble Eightfold Path towards Nirvana.
Show me the Four Noble Truths.
Tell me what teen spirit smells like.
"What you are feeling," Antoine says, "is your anger about things you cannot control."
Life means suffering.
"You've been fired from your job and being controlled by your wife."
The origin of suffering is attachment.
"You want to break away from her but you feel helpless to do anything about it except follow her orders."
The cessation of suffering is attainable.
Antoine is all serious. He is Siddhartha Gautama's reincarnated spirit, Moses leading the people to the Promised Land. This is Antoine. I notice his hair is still wet and it's dripping down his neck and back.
This is the path to the cessation of suffering.
"You have to fight back. You have to prove you are what you think of yourself by rebelling against her. You cannot just follow along and obey everything she tells you."
Siddhartha would roll over in his grave.
On his table, Antoine has a booklet that says, "101 Uses for a Dead Roach."
And how do I fight back?
"Think," Antoine advises. "Think about what you really, really hate about her, what you really hate that she makes you do. Start a little at a time. Squeezing the toothpaste from the top. Slamming the screen door."
And then what?
He smiles and starts singing again. "I don't belong here, I don't care if it hurts, I want to have control..."
What I am feeling is anger about things I cannot control.
I hold my palm up and look at the blood lying in a thin red sheen over the flesh. I could make a great handprint if I pressed it against the wall. I ask Antoine if I can.
"No. Don't."
I place my right hand on the dirty white walls and it burns even more. When I to pull it away, my raw skin sticks slightly to the plaster. My hand is on fire.
Little flakes of skin are stuck to my stamp on the wall. The print is a red-brown, some of the wrinkles filled in with more blood.
Neal knocks on the door.
I told Neal it wouldn't take long.
Antoine opens the door and he walks in, smoking and wearing a pair of eyeglasses I've never seen before. He sees the print on the wall and my hand, still out in front of me.
Neal says, "Cool."
Antoine smiles at me proudly, putting a hand on my shoulder and turning towards Neal as if putting his graduating son on display for the camera.
The cessation of suffering is attainable.
Neal just looks at the PVC pants, the wet hair, the Roach Motels.
"Hey, are you gay?" he asks.
Antoine ignores this.
I think the rich live in a different world from us.
We leave quickly. I want to go find man with the steel-toed boots, shake his hand, and thank him for everything he's done to me. I want to hug all the too-large cracks in the bottom of bathroom stalls. I want to thank Jason for spitting on the floor. The world is beautiful all of sudden. Things are clearer. The grass is greener. The dogs are barkier.
I tell Neal this and he just looks at me.
Cindy never sees the blood on my shirt or notices the lack of skin on my palms. When she mentions the big scar on my chin, I say I got it cooking. She doesn't ask anything more, just slaps down the Help Wanted ads on the kitchen table and a red Sharpie.
She tells me to look at them. I don't.
This is about control. This is spouse abuse.
I have to start small. I still heat up Uncle Ben's Spicy Cajun Beans & Rice, but I use the glass plates she hates. I make her drink tap water and tell her we're out of mineral.
It feels good.
Cindy scents something is off about me, I'm not looking sulky enough, I'm too quiet. She looks at her rice suspiciously and oddly enough, this is the one of the few times I haven't put my blood in her food.
There is not a lot of nutritive value to blood.
"I'll be busy Saturday," she says.
I poke at a bean on plate and nod.
"I have a class."
I eat the bean and nod.
This is Scott rebelling. It's a silent sort of suffering, but life is suffering. I hold my hand palm-down at all time and carefully hold my fork. She's not paying much attention, anyway.
Cindy's been looking more and more like my mother lately. She's wrinkling prematurely and we can't afford Botox, so she's trying to cover them up by growing bangs and makeup bought from some infomercial that promised to make her skin look flawless.
Flawless.
She doesn't touch her water.
This good feeling doesn't feel so good. It's diminished. It doesn't bother her.
I need to give her my anger.
I'm such a generous person.
After dinner, I go online to check my email. There's three times as much spam as actual mail - all they want to do is help me.
Penis enlargement.
Free Viagra.
Low interest loans, regardless of credit.
Prescription medicine online, no more waiting at the doctor's office.
All this wonderful stuff that you want that they just can't wait to offer you. Spammers must be the most kind-hearted and generous people in the world. All they want is for you to save money, improve your sex drive, and meet hot single people in your area.
God must be smiling down on them from his big computer terminal in the sky.
But they're like missionaries who knock on your door when you've converted to Hinduism or Paganism or have decided to go Wiccan. You want to tell them with their crosses and pamphlets to fuck off. You don't care if God will save your eternal soul. You don't care if He loves you. They can take their preaching and weight loss supplements to somebody who cares.
Today, I can get a free cash grant, get a free school diploma, reorganize my debt, and check out naked girls waiting for me on cam. If I buy a two-month supply of their weight loss supplement, I can get another free!
They really, truly care about me.
Think about what you really, really hate about Cindy. What you really hate that she makes you do.
I find a chat room.
If this isn't rebelling, America is still owned by Britain.
If this isn't fighting back, I've been cooking all our dinners from scratch.
Cindy hates the Internet. She thinks everybody out there is just looking for ways to lure people into the nearest McDonalds so they can strangle them with wire and dump their bodies in a ravine. She's been reading the newspaper too much.
When she saw I was in a chat room, she thought I was trying to pick up thirteen-year-old girls.
I had to explain it was customer support.
She keeps one email account and checks it every three months.
There's twenty-two people in the chat room and in between actual conversation, people are pitching links to porn sites at complete random. On the voice chat, feistythang204 is pressuring clubbinhollywood96 to show her his picture.
I am paralyzed.
The voice chat is like getting a crossed line. Feistythang says that Joe is cute, Feistythang wants to see studly1034's picture, suddenly Bounder2025 enters and tells Feistythang she's a cunt. Things go downhill from there.
Cindy yells, "Are you talking to somebody?"
I say I'm watching South Park.
Feistythang is wailing she's a virgin, he can even ask her mom. I probably should have told Cindy I was watching MTV.
Except don't they usually beep out the word "fuck" on their shows?
I close the browser window and turn the TV, at the same time jumping into my usual chair. Cindy walks in a with her paint samples, holding Patio Brick next to Memory Fog and asking if it looked better with that or Desert Star. I point at the closest one, and then she gives the chore list for tomorrow. "Remember the Help Wanted ads," she reminds me.
I remember what Antoine said instead.
I look at her handwriting. Picking up the dry cleaning. Bringing the cans and bottles to the recycling center. Folding and packing away the winter clothes. Dinner. She gives a look, almost sorry, almost self-suffering.
I'm more helpless than ever.
Like misery, anger is a force. Anger over wrongdoings from the government leads to protest, anger from oppression leads to rebellion; anger makes us temporarily fearless enough to do something violent, something uncontrolled.
Rage is beautiful.
Get a group of people angry at something else and they'll do something about it. Get a group of people angry at each other and they'll kill themselves. Productive vs. Destructive.
Though in some cases, it's destructive either way.
I hate environmentalists.
I never wanted to save the whales.
Now she wants me to recycle and keep our planet beautiful. A lush orb of green and blue. Welcome to Earth. Population: too many to count, but it ought to be less.
Cindy is calling me a worthless jackass, a lazy bastard. Cindy, whispering, "I'm with you every step of the way, Scott." Cindy, closing her eyes, humming, counting to ten.
Oh, I have every right to be angry.
Cindy leaves for her class with a duffel bag, wearing a pair of sweatpants unearthed from the deepest recesses of our closet. I open the refrigerator door and stare inside, frozen.
Somebody rings the doorbell.
I yell, "Coming!" and take a few seconds to close the door.
It's Sophia. Fully dressed. She looks sulky and brooding without making any effort at all.
Sophia says, "Do you want to come to the bloody mall with us?"
Bloody mall?
"I'm trying to be British," she explains. "It means something like, 'goddamn.' Neal thought you needed some distraction."
Sophia provides the most distraction when she's not wearing anything, but I don't this out loud.
"Neal is a bloody great bloke," Sophia continues. "He really cares about other people."
I translate this while following her outside. I'm not sure if Sophia was just saying that for a chance to use "bloody" again, or if she really meant it. Sure, he's nice, but he isn't your average suburbanite. It feels like he's chauffeuring me around, but I figure you get awfully bored when you're young, rich, and unemployed.
"Scott, hey," Neal says, obviously in a festive mood as he's wearing colors other than blue, black, or gray. "Coming along?"
"What's it for?"
He shrugs, pulling a knit hat down lower so that it's covering his eyebrows. "Just to have some fun. You're not having too much of that... hanging around that weirdo, getting thrown out of the bar, you know. I thought you needed some cheering up."
"Thanks a bunch."
Sophia continues to look sulky, her darkly penciled eyebrows swooping artistically low over her eyes. "If you don't want to come, you can bugger off if you like."
I don't know what buggering off is and I don't want to find out.
It might be painful.
There are only two seats. Neal says, "That alright. Just share a seat with Sophia."
Am I going to regret this?
Sophia's leg is slung over mine and the bony edge of her hip is engraving into my side. Her body is like Meredith's, tall and skeletal Meredith, only she is more well-endowed. Which makes all the difference. She's wearing a sleeveless silk thing, more like a slip, and she waves at passing cars. I duck my head down into the ergonomically shaped seat so nobody can recognize me.
I can see Neal likes to show off. He drives a little too fast, honks a little more than necessary. Everything about him is in carefully planned excess.
Grinning, he looks at me and asks, "Isn't this fun?"
Sophia announces, "I'm king of the bloody world!" with her arms outstretched like she's on the deck of the Titanic.
I keep my head down and think about the all alloy engine.
Neal takes a spot somebody else was waiting for and smiles winningly at the irate driver who telling him to do things physically impossible. I think about the good things about this situation:
1) Cindy would never do any of this.
2) Cindy would not approve.
But what is rebellion when it is unintentional?
We wander around the stores and Neal has fits of kleptomania every so often, stuffing miniature cans of sardines and packages of hair barrettes into his jacket pockets. Useless stuff. Harmless things. I don't know what he's trying because he buys the most expensive thing in the store afterwards, a metallic hairdryer with a retractable cord. He gives it to Sophia to hold and tells her, "Happy birthday."
I'm so normal looking next to them, I look out of place. Sophia with her super-short sleeveless dress and a pair of towering heels. Cranberry lip liner. Neal obsessively adjusting his knit cap.
The mall is an elaborate scheme to suck us out of money we don't have in the first place. I can imagine the owner of the Gap in conference with Bath and Body Works about a way to have a bunch of stores in one place where with a conveniently located food court and without clocks, they could keep consumers buying.
Loading up their credit cards.
Lugging around shopping bags.
Eating their greasy food.
No wonder everybody in America is in debt.
Neal empties out his pockets into the box that held the hair dryer and throws the dryer out in a trashcan. Sophia puts the box back in the Rite-Aid bag and they walk into another store, a store full of useless things that you would only buy in a store exclusively for these useless things. You know, you would never buy ceramic plates in a supermarket but go into a ceramic plate store and all of sudden you have a need for one with pretty paintings of violets on the edge for your table.
It's a conspiracy.
This store is full of soaps and shampoos, soap in cute shapes like ducks and turtles with hats. Neal takes a daisy-shaped soap and a soap-shaped soap and when nobody's looking, he grabs a bottle of peach body mist. Sophia is squeezing the testers to smell Grapefruit Jasmine and their Coconut Lime Verbena.
I'm distracted.
When one of the staff comes over, I'm sure my blood vessels will explode but Neal smiles and asks where the conditioner is. It's for his mother's birthday, he explains. Her hair always so dull and he thought he might do something nice for her. The staffer smiles back indulgently, leading him like a little boy towards where a rack of overpriced hair products is.
How do I get myself into these situations?
Sophia is sampling the Gardenia Lily.
Neal pays for two bottles of conditioner and we leave. I nearly trip over myself trying to get out of the store.
"What do you need all the stuff for?" I ask.
"Petty theft keeps them on their toes," he answers. "Enough to piss them off and keep on them their guard so they don't get lazy."
Sophia looks adoringly at him.
Impossibly, she still manages to keep her sulky expression.
"This is for the betterment of society."
Oh God, he sounds like Antoine.
"See, I told he was a bloody great bloke," she says, examining her red fingernails. "He's bloody brilliant, in fact."
"Without any crime, it makes us vulnerable. Look at those areas that never get earthquakes. They're never prepared for when it does happen. Then when it does, they're screwed because they're too busy being lazy and thinking they're safe."
"And if you get caught?"
Neal shrugs. "I get my dad to make a few calls, no big deal."
This is where I say the thing about the rich living in a different world.
Neal has everything to lose and nothing to gain.
Neal is insane.
"I want to go home."
"Hey, that isn't very nice. What do you think of my project?"
"You can't bloody leave now."
Sophia grabs both our hands and drags us into a clothing store, one with a giant poster in the window of a two women holding striped surfboards. "Kiss and make up," she orders, staring at us expectantly.
She taps her stiletto, still waiting for us to do something.
We are behind a rack of tank tops with silk-screened flowers. Neal coughs.
"Come on," Sophia insists.
He sticks out his hand. I shake it. Neal has really been a nice guy to me. He's just young and delusional like the rest of them. He just thinks that he can make a difference in the world.
I used to think that, too.
She seems vaguely disappointed, as if she was actually expecting us to kiss.
"I'm young," Neal says. "I don't have the inconvenience of hindsight."
Next up: he develops a personality. Sort of.
After this, it's all shit, folks.
Part one / Part Two.
I rip off Palahniuk. I eat Ramen noodles. I look up ecoterrorism and I feel like crying. I want to write schizoslash.
Instead of doing the laundry the next afternoon, Neal drives me to the Blue Moon where some of my old friends from work usually meet on Fridays. Cindy is doing more overtime tonight, maybe sleeping with her boss if she can help it. Cindy can survive if her white blouse isn't washed, bleached, and ironed by tomorrow.
My entire life seems to revolve around her.
In the morning, it's a game of Don't Wake Up Cindy as I make breakfast, then she hands out a list of chores I have to have finished by the end of the day or she'll have me live in Antoine's cockroach motels.
I wouldn't put it above her.
Then it's mow the lawn, clean the gutter, weed the garden, fix the table leg, buy more milk and a peanut butter (creamy not chunky), make dinner. Even she didn't do all this when I was working. I never did all of this. She just spends all her spare time thinking these up.
Someone used the trashcans outside as a toilet.
When she comes home, it's a game of Make Sure Cindy Doesn't Explode. She's the sole breadwinner now, she reminds me.
Electricity.
Gas.
Credit cards.
Insurance.
We already decided not to remodel the kitchen or buy a larger refrigerator. She's just milking this for all its worth. When she got her paycheck, she waved it in front of my face after particularly unpleasant overtime at the office.
When I accidentally cut myself slicing the bread, I let my finger bleed into her ravioli filled with a blend of ricotta and Romano cheese, topped with a chunky tomato sauce and accented with herbs and spices.
This is nothing personal. This is business as usual.
Someone left empty bottles of rum on our front lawn.
I ask Neal how Sophia is doing and he says something about her just going after his trust fund.
Neal is not a great liar when he doesn't make an effort.
His hair is just a few millimeters long in a dark fuzz over his head. He runs his fingers through it as if it was longer and tells me he'll be back at nine.
The Blue Moon is cheap, cheaply cheap, with strung-up Christmas tinsel nobody every bothered to take down and drinks watered down to the bare minimum. I duck under the Mardi Gras decorations and Jason is sitting there, intently twiddling his thumbs. He's got so many freckles he looks tanned. Freckles like your wouldn't believe, freckles bleeding into freckles and spotting his back. One giant freckle.
Hey.
Hey.
Jason looks up.
"Hey Scott. How're you?"
Shit. I am shit with a capital 's'. Shit doesn't even begin to cover it.
"Same as usual, then?"
"Yeah. Where's everybody else?"
Jason grimaces. He's holding his stomach, his other hand grabbing the table. "Most of them aren't coming. Everett has to work late for his new job at IBM, Marshall is taking a family holiday to Florida..." With a gasp, he manages to get out, "How's the job search going?"
"Are you alright? You look like you're about to puke."
"I... bathroom..." he says before running off.
Funny. I usually don't have that effect on people.
I order a beer and when he doesn't return after a few minutes, I decide to take a trip to the bathroom to see if he needs anything. Soothing sounds of the ocean and nature on tape. An ambulance. CPR. Removal of an appendix.
There are two stalls but one toilet is clogged up with brown paper towels and the urine and water is dripping and leaking into the rest of bathroom.
Never, ever sit on a public toilet seat.
Don't even use a public toilet if you can help it.
Hold it. Find some bushes. Unless you're in a fancy restaurant with linen tablecloths, avoid using the bathroom. The gas stations are the worst. There's enough bacteria to fuel a second coming of the Bubonic Plague.
If there's no soap by the sink, run out immediately.
Jason is spitting on the floor.
I can see his gray pants bunched up down by his shined leather shoes, and his head is hunched down between his ankles. Spitting. Another is problem is that the crack between the bottom of the stall door and the floor is not a few inches and more like a few feet.
"Are you okay?"
He half-whines, half-grunts. "It. Hurts."
"Did you drink bad milk or something?"
He keeps on spitting on the floor. It occurs to me he's probably sitting on the toilet seat.
There's no soap by the sink.
I'm just happy this isn't me.
"Paaain," he whines. I imagine this pain is like somebody shoving an extra-long knife up your ass and hacking at the internal organs. This is not a good image.
The drain in the urinal is clogged with hair and cigarette butts.
Pain like a million woodpeckers are searching for larval insects in your small intestine.
Pain like you swallowed an entire can of Pepsi in one gulp.
A man walks in. I'm squatted down by the bottom of the stall. It occurs to me that it looks like I'm trying to take a peek.
I see his boots. Big, black boots reinforced with steel toes and laces. Black laces on the right, white laces with an orange stripe running down the middle on the left shoe. Jason grunts and tells me go away. He's in pain. He's not thinking correctly.
The man takes this the wrong way.
He's huge and has a big, droopy blond mustache.
I know this because he is lifting me up by the front of my shirt and my face is now level with his.
God, if this man doesn't hurt me, I will not let my blood drip into Cindy's Swedish meatballs.
But that doesn't mean I'll recycle for her sake.
I hate environmentalists.
He's carrying me out of the bathroom, my legs bruising on the door swinging shut, and everybody in the bar is watching now. My shirt rips and he grabs a bigger chunk of fabric, grabs my armpit, my collar is choking me now. A button pops off. He kicks open the door to the bar with his big, steel toe, and throws me out.
I make a big belly flop on concrete.
Whoosh.
The lower half of my body landed on some grass but my stomach and ribs kissed the parking lot. They French kissed the parking lot. Tonsil hockey and everything.
The man is calling me a faggot. I don't have the breath to answer.
Where's the skin on my hands?
I lift my head. My chin and lips burn. I poke out my tongue and lick my lower lip. Blood. I test my lower teeth. They wiggle a bit more than I remembered.
I lift my body up and some of the skin is gone on my chest, too. I breathe. Close my eyes, hum, count to ten.
It's only six o'clock.
I drag myself to the pay phone and find four quarters in my pockets. I call Neal, then I call Antoine. It's a good thing Neal is unemployed right now.
Neal shows up fifteen minutes later in his Porsche, smoking a Kool.
I have never felt this angry before.
I am shaking with rage. I hold the anger of a million wronged persons. My anger sandpapers my throat and puts nail marks in my fists. I want to run back in and shove an extra long knife up that man's ass and hack away at the internal organs.
This is a good image.
Antoine knows things. Important things. How to make a great onion dip. Molecular theory. Hamlet's soliloquy.
Neal rolls down the window and says, "Get in."
He tosses the butt out the window and it crushes under the car wheel as we drive to Antoine's apartment.
Antoine opens the door. He's only wearing his PVC pants and a pair of flip-flops. He's singing, warbling. "But I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo, what the hell am I doing here..."
He looks at the dried blood on my sleeve, the spots of blood sticking my shirt to my chest. My palms are still burning. I spent the car ride picking bits of gravel out of them.
"Pain is just an extension of our minds to prove our existence," Antoine recites.
"But that doesn't stop it from hurting."
"That's true."
I explain everything that happened, not doing the laundry, Jason spitting on the bathroom floor, the steel-toed boots, doing a belly flop in the parking lot. Antoine takes my hand and turns it, palm up, looking at the dents in the raw, magenta skin. The small the raised parts right below my fingers did the worst. Where my head and life lines are in the indentation in my palm, it is an island of skin surrounded by a bright pink sea.
When I think about it, I get angry again. Bullfight angry. Basketball coach angry. I think I'm to going explode angry. I am fucking livid.
"This is not about being thrown out," Antoine says with his purposeful voice. "This is not about today."
Antoine is all calm and standing there, one thumb hooked in the pocket of his pants. Antoine is having a Moment.
Antoine in his PVC pants.
Antoine singing, "I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo..."
"What happened was nothing personal," he continues. "How you feel has to do with everything else in your life.
"You are a reflection of other people's preconceptions and fears."
Oh, all-knowing Antoine, show me the Noble Eightfold Path towards Nirvana.
Show me the Four Noble Truths.
Tell me what teen spirit smells like.
"What you are feeling," Antoine says, "is your anger about things you cannot control."
Life means suffering.
"You've been fired from your job and being controlled by your wife."
The origin of suffering is attachment.
"You want to break away from her but you feel helpless to do anything about it except follow her orders."
The cessation of suffering is attainable.
Antoine is all serious. He is Siddhartha Gautama's reincarnated spirit, Moses leading the people to the Promised Land. This is Antoine. I notice his hair is still wet and it's dripping down his neck and back.
This is the path to the cessation of suffering.
"You have to fight back. You have to prove you are what you think of yourself by rebelling against her. You cannot just follow along and obey everything she tells you."
Siddhartha would roll over in his grave.
On his table, Antoine has a booklet that says, "101 Uses for a Dead Roach."
And how do I fight back?
"Think," Antoine advises. "Think about what you really, really hate about her, what you really hate that she makes you do. Start a little at a time. Squeezing the toothpaste from the top. Slamming the screen door."
And then what?
He smiles and starts singing again. "I don't belong here, I don't care if it hurts, I want to have control..."
What I am feeling is anger about things I cannot control.
I hold my palm up and look at the blood lying in a thin red sheen over the flesh. I could make a great handprint if I pressed it against the wall. I ask Antoine if I can.
"No. Don't."
I place my right hand on the dirty white walls and it burns even more. When I to pull it away, my raw skin sticks slightly to the plaster. My hand is on fire.
Little flakes of skin are stuck to my stamp on the wall. The print is a red-brown, some of the wrinkles filled in with more blood.
Neal knocks on the door.
I told Neal it wouldn't take long.
Antoine opens the door and he walks in, smoking and wearing a pair of eyeglasses I've never seen before. He sees the print on the wall and my hand, still out in front of me.
Neal says, "Cool."
Antoine smiles at me proudly, putting a hand on my shoulder and turning towards Neal as if putting his graduating son on display for the camera.
The cessation of suffering is attainable.
Neal just looks at the PVC pants, the wet hair, the Roach Motels.
"Hey, are you gay?" he asks.
Antoine ignores this.
I think the rich live in a different world from us.
We leave quickly. I want to go find man with the steel-toed boots, shake his hand, and thank him for everything he's done to me. I want to hug all the too-large cracks in the bottom of bathroom stalls. I want to thank Jason for spitting on the floor. The world is beautiful all of sudden. Things are clearer. The grass is greener. The dogs are barkier.
I tell Neal this and he just looks at me.
Cindy never sees the blood on my shirt or notices the lack of skin on my palms. When she mentions the big scar on my chin, I say I got it cooking. She doesn't ask anything more, just slaps down the Help Wanted ads on the kitchen table and a red Sharpie.
She tells me to look at them. I don't.
This is about control. This is spouse abuse.
I have to start small. I still heat up Uncle Ben's Spicy Cajun Beans & Rice, but I use the glass plates she hates. I make her drink tap water and tell her we're out of mineral.
It feels good.
Cindy scents something is off about me, I'm not looking sulky enough, I'm too quiet. She looks at her rice suspiciously and oddly enough, this is the one of the few times I haven't put my blood in her food.
There is not a lot of nutritive value to blood.
"I'll be busy Saturday," she says.
I poke at a bean on plate and nod.
"I have a class."
I eat the bean and nod.
This is Scott rebelling. It's a silent sort of suffering, but life is suffering. I hold my hand palm-down at all time and carefully hold my fork. She's not paying much attention, anyway.
Cindy's been looking more and more like my mother lately. She's wrinkling prematurely and we can't afford Botox, so she's trying to cover them up by growing bangs and makeup bought from some infomercial that promised to make her skin look flawless.
Flawless.
She doesn't touch her water.
This good feeling doesn't feel so good. It's diminished. It doesn't bother her.
I need to give her my anger.
I'm such a generous person.
After dinner, I go online to check my email. There's three times as much spam as actual mail - all they want to do is help me.
Penis enlargement.
Free Viagra.
Low interest loans, regardless of credit.
Prescription medicine online, no more waiting at the doctor's office.
All this wonderful stuff that you want that they just can't wait to offer you. Spammers must be the most kind-hearted and generous people in the world. All they want is for you to save money, improve your sex drive, and meet hot single people in your area.
God must be smiling down on them from his big computer terminal in the sky.
But they're like missionaries who knock on your door when you've converted to Hinduism or Paganism or have decided to go Wiccan. You want to tell them with their crosses and pamphlets to fuck off. You don't care if God will save your eternal soul. You don't care if He loves you. They can take their preaching and weight loss supplements to somebody who cares.
Today, I can get a free cash grant, get a free school diploma, reorganize my debt, and check out naked girls waiting for me on cam. If I buy a two-month supply of their weight loss supplement, I can get another free!
They really, truly care about me.
Think about what you really, really hate about Cindy. What you really hate that she makes you do.
I find a chat room.
If this isn't rebelling, America is still owned by Britain.
If this isn't fighting back, I've been cooking all our dinners from scratch.
Cindy hates the Internet. She thinks everybody out there is just looking for ways to lure people into the nearest McDonalds so they can strangle them with wire and dump their bodies in a ravine. She's been reading the newspaper too much.
When she saw I was in a chat room, she thought I was trying to pick up thirteen-year-old girls.
I had to explain it was customer support.
She keeps one email account and checks it every three months.
There's twenty-two people in the chat room and in between actual conversation, people are pitching links to porn sites at complete random. On the voice chat, feistythang204 is pressuring clubbinhollywood96 to show her his picture.
I am paralyzed.
The voice chat is like getting a crossed line. Feistythang says that Joe is cute, Feistythang wants to see studly1034's picture, suddenly Bounder2025 enters and tells Feistythang she's a cunt. Things go downhill from there.
Cindy yells, "Are you talking to somebody?"
I say I'm watching South Park.
Feistythang is wailing she's a virgin, he can even ask her mom. I probably should have told Cindy I was watching MTV.
Except don't they usually beep out the word "fuck" on their shows?
I close the browser window and turn the TV, at the same time jumping into my usual chair. Cindy walks in a with her paint samples, holding Patio Brick next to Memory Fog and asking if it looked better with that or Desert Star. I point at the closest one, and then she gives the chore list for tomorrow. "Remember the Help Wanted ads," she reminds me.
I remember what Antoine said instead.
I look at her handwriting. Picking up the dry cleaning. Bringing the cans and bottles to the recycling center. Folding and packing away the winter clothes. Dinner. She gives a look, almost sorry, almost self-suffering.
I'm more helpless than ever.
Like misery, anger is a force. Anger over wrongdoings from the government leads to protest, anger from oppression leads to rebellion; anger makes us temporarily fearless enough to do something violent, something uncontrolled.
Rage is beautiful.
Get a group of people angry at something else and they'll do something about it. Get a group of people angry at each other and they'll kill themselves. Productive vs. Destructive.
Though in some cases, it's destructive either way.
I hate environmentalists.
I never wanted to save the whales.
Now she wants me to recycle and keep our planet beautiful. A lush orb of green and blue. Welcome to Earth. Population: too many to count, but it ought to be less.
Cindy is calling me a worthless jackass, a lazy bastard. Cindy, whispering, "I'm with you every step of the way, Scott." Cindy, closing her eyes, humming, counting to ten.
Oh, I have every right to be angry.
Cindy leaves for her class with a duffel bag, wearing a pair of sweatpants unearthed from the deepest recesses of our closet. I open the refrigerator door and stare inside, frozen.
Somebody rings the doorbell.
I yell, "Coming!" and take a few seconds to close the door.
It's Sophia. Fully dressed. She looks sulky and brooding without making any effort at all.
Sophia says, "Do you want to come to the bloody mall with us?"
Bloody mall?
"I'm trying to be British," she explains. "It means something like, 'goddamn.' Neal thought you needed some distraction."
Sophia provides the most distraction when she's not wearing anything, but I don't this out loud.
"Neal is a bloody great bloke," Sophia continues. "He really cares about other people."
I translate this while following her outside. I'm not sure if Sophia was just saying that for a chance to use "bloody" again, or if she really meant it. Sure, he's nice, but he isn't your average suburbanite. It feels like he's chauffeuring me around, but I figure you get awfully bored when you're young, rich, and unemployed.
"Scott, hey," Neal says, obviously in a festive mood as he's wearing colors other than blue, black, or gray. "Coming along?"
"What's it for?"
He shrugs, pulling a knit hat down lower so that it's covering his eyebrows. "Just to have some fun. You're not having too much of that... hanging around that weirdo, getting thrown out of the bar, you know. I thought you needed some cheering up."
"Thanks a bunch."
Sophia continues to look sulky, her darkly penciled eyebrows swooping artistically low over her eyes. "If you don't want to come, you can bugger off if you like."
I don't know what buggering off is and I don't want to find out.
It might be painful.
There are only two seats. Neal says, "That alright. Just share a seat with Sophia."
Am I going to regret this?
Sophia's leg is slung over mine and the bony edge of her hip is engraving into my side. Her body is like Meredith's, tall and skeletal Meredith, only she is more well-endowed. Which makes all the difference. She's wearing a sleeveless silk thing, more like a slip, and she waves at passing cars. I duck my head down into the ergonomically shaped seat so nobody can recognize me.
I can see Neal likes to show off. He drives a little too fast, honks a little more than necessary. Everything about him is in carefully planned excess.
Grinning, he looks at me and asks, "Isn't this fun?"
Sophia announces, "I'm king of the bloody world!" with her arms outstretched like she's on the deck of the Titanic.
I keep my head down and think about the all alloy engine.
Neal takes a spot somebody else was waiting for and smiles winningly at the irate driver who telling him to do things physically impossible. I think about the good things about this situation:
1) Cindy would never do any of this.
2) Cindy would not approve.
But what is rebellion when it is unintentional?
We wander around the stores and Neal has fits of kleptomania every so often, stuffing miniature cans of sardines and packages of hair barrettes into his jacket pockets. Useless stuff. Harmless things. I don't know what he's trying because he buys the most expensive thing in the store afterwards, a metallic hairdryer with a retractable cord. He gives it to Sophia to hold and tells her, "Happy birthday."
I'm so normal looking next to them, I look out of place. Sophia with her super-short sleeveless dress and a pair of towering heels. Cranberry lip liner. Neal obsessively adjusting his knit cap.
The mall is an elaborate scheme to suck us out of money we don't have in the first place. I can imagine the owner of the Gap in conference with Bath and Body Works about a way to have a bunch of stores in one place where with a conveniently located food court and without clocks, they could keep consumers buying.
Loading up their credit cards.
Lugging around shopping bags.
Eating their greasy food.
No wonder everybody in America is in debt.
Neal empties out his pockets into the box that held the hair dryer and throws the dryer out in a trashcan. Sophia puts the box back in the Rite-Aid bag and they walk into another store, a store full of useless things that you would only buy in a store exclusively for these useless things. You know, you would never buy ceramic plates in a supermarket but go into a ceramic plate store and all of sudden you have a need for one with pretty paintings of violets on the edge for your table.
It's a conspiracy.
This store is full of soaps and shampoos, soap in cute shapes like ducks and turtles with hats. Neal takes a daisy-shaped soap and a soap-shaped soap and when nobody's looking, he grabs a bottle of peach body mist. Sophia is squeezing the testers to smell Grapefruit Jasmine and their Coconut Lime Verbena.
I'm distracted.
When one of the staff comes over, I'm sure my blood vessels will explode but Neal smiles and asks where the conditioner is. It's for his mother's birthday, he explains. Her hair always so dull and he thought he might do something nice for her. The staffer smiles back indulgently, leading him like a little boy towards where a rack of overpriced hair products is.
How do I get myself into these situations?
Sophia is sampling the Gardenia Lily.
Neal pays for two bottles of conditioner and we leave. I nearly trip over myself trying to get out of the store.
"What do you need all the stuff for?" I ask.
"Petty theft keeps them on their toes," he answers. "Enough to piss them off and keep on them their guard so they don't get lazy."
Sophia looks adoringly at him.
Impossibly, she still manages to keep her sulky expression.
"This is for the betterment of society."
Oh God, he sounds like Antoine.
"See, I told he was a bloody great bloke," she says, examining her red fingernails. "He's bloody brilliant, in fact."
"Without any crime, it makes us vulnerable. Look at those areas that never get earthquakes. They're never prepared for when it does happen. Then when it does, they're screwed because they're too busy being lazy and thinking they're safe."
"And if you get caught?"
Neal shrugs. "I get my dad to make a few calls, no big deal."
This is where I say the thing about the rich living in a different world.
Neal has everything to lose and nothing to gain.
Neal is insane.
"I want to go home."
"Hey, that isn't very nice. What do you think of my project?"
"You can't bloody leave now."
Sophia grabs both our hands and drags us into a clothing store, one with a giant poster in the window of a two women holding striped surfboards. "Kiss and make up," she orders, staring at us expectantly.
She taps her stiletto, still waiting for us to do something.
We are behind a rack of tank tops with silk-screened flowers. Neal coughs.
"Come on," Sophia insists.
He sticks out his hand. I shake it. Neal has really been a nice guy to me. He's just young and delusional like the rest of them. He just thinks that he can make a difference in the world.
I used to think that, too.
She seems vaguely disappointed, as if she was actually expecting us to kiss.
"I'm young," Neal says. "I don't have the inconvenience of hindsight."
Next up: he develops a personality. Sort of.