(no subject)
My best friend from grade school became the leader of a cult for Christians with Acoustic Guitars. He & fifty others lived in tents on the outskirts of Texas till Nate began hoarding cult money for a getaway to Mexico, reasons unknown. He saved almost twenty-thousand dollars in a tattered copy of Pushkin’s poetry before his arrest. Everyone at home exclaimed such shame! But I envied, both him, & his followers. I didn't posses the ability to lead. Or follow.
Carlena, my best friend from middle school, ceased to exist by high school. On a trip to the CNN center she discovered the blowjob in a food court bathroom. The thing with the blow job, though, wasn’t that she became a slut but discovered how much she liked putting things into her mouth. She became a compulsive eater. On the first day of school, some gutterpunk shouted hey fatass! nice ass! Carlena winked, said I’m eating for two now, if you know what I mean. And so, it became her mantra, the pregnancy that never materialized. I saw Carlena not too long ago while mailing a letter to Montana. Carlena stood licking the stamp, asked How are you? I lied, said I wasn’t lonely. Carlena-oh, been busy buying things for the baby.
The letter I mailed wasn’t important. Mailed countless letters to Montana before. Was half in love with this boy. His main charm? He didn't respond. Situation got fucked when his return rate increased two per my one. In the last letter he wrote I have an affinity for you, then, asked to move in after his girlfriend broke a vase against his shoulder, & the girl downstairs, girl on the bus, girl with purple hair at a Starbucks said no thanks! to a date. & I did contemplate moving, brief second in my car, Tuesday afternoon. Thought about it, then, snuffed all flames that flicked well, maybe? I couldn’t be that pathetic, stoop so low.
The thing is-the idea of him or any him cramped my intestines. Last commitment? A job at the STD clinic. I volunteered at Sunnyside five years. The work was something I could be passionate about. Have sex, die. I left Sunnyside when a church from downtown shit stones over the fact we gave condoms to minors & petitioned the city to shut us down. When the center closed, I got a real job at a Target that gave minors condoms for money. Every morning the staff held team meetings-thirty kids in red chanting a song of togetherness. The entire Target Company stressed the importance of the team. The training brochure: your mistake is a mistake to all! Once when my drawer registered short ten cents, the manager said it hurt everyone on the team, personally, he was distraught.
The night I quit Target, I went drinking with my ex-best friend Sarah. In high school, Sarah worried ad infinitum about rudeness. So polite, in fact, she ate a peanut butter ball at the Molena Nursing Home where she volunteered despite her allergy to honey. I couldn’t say no! She pleaded, her throat seized. The staff director called an ambulance. A night at St. Catherine’s, & Sarah was saved! But me? Such a pussy, I thought. She said she understood.
Sarah called only cause she was drunk. That morning she applied to a local group. When she told the story, I laughed, spilled my drink. Sarah said I wanted to join; they wouldn’t let me. I laughed again, inappropriate. Fuck them! Took another sip.
I heard about Saddycore first on tv. How masses applied only to be rejected. How the members didn’t chose-they knew. How the rejected called the police warning a cult is forming!. Wasn't nervous application day. Went as a joke. Walked through the doors, smugger than smug, refused the nametag, the cookie & coffee, prepared to laugh my ass off but. A woman in tartan smock approached, her name Celeste or Charity or. She said-you yes you. You don’t need the name tag. You don’t need anything. I moved in that night. I hoped for tents on the outskirts of Texas, some sour wine & lots of romping through emotional badlands, but nothing. Saddycore proved impossibly boring.
My Schedule: wake up, sit at the table & no one talks. Feel like a loser cause I know these kids are a bunch of fucking downers but was prepared to be most popular! All I got, though, was snarls. Even the bacon, I thought, hates me. Later, I befriended a vegan girl named Clara who said the residents disliked me cause I never contemplated death. Oh me & Tom have. No blood. We’re getting married. He saved my life. Tom, a musician from California, wore rainbows on his shoes. The first thing he said to me? Rainbows cause I’ll never see the end.
Tom wrote acoustic songs about killing himself, so sad, in fact, they became funny. Clara met Tom in Saddycore back when she dyed her hair pink. Oh God, Tom. Whenever she’d gush, I wondered how anyone loved someone here? So pathetic. & yes, I was pathetic too, but stoop? I was looking to move up! Does Tom love you? Of course, he’s got no one else.
I started contemplating my escape three days after arrival. I stayed for Mark. The boy who cut his meat to tiny pieces cause chewing, man, too much enthuse. He wasn’t always so sad, so small. The first night he talked of a time where he fought with strangers over causes he no longer remembered. He hit a kid with a belt buckle once. A protest of some sort & the boy opposing Mark’s message. Mark ripped his pants off, whacked the boy first across the legs, then the head. The boy collapsed to the ground. I was triumphant then, so motherfucking strong. But I imagined Mark smaller than ever, small in the way of feral creatures, who know nothing outside their nature.
When Clara held Tom he became small, though he tripled her size. As if he folded more & more into himself, while in her arms, to become tiny enough for her body to comprehend. I watched them often in the commons while pretending to read. The only private conversation I ever overheard concerned a deer. They just left it there. On her way home from school, Clara hit a deer. The front fender gutted the animal so that it laid on the side of the road with its intestines exposed. It just sat there for weeks, its insides turning white.
When I heard the story, I didn’t think much, didn’t register its impact till the next morning when Tom refused his eggs & spent the rest the morning glaring at Mark who ate a sausage. By that point, Mark & I feigned closeness. I needed someone considering the extreme clingship of Clara & Tom. Us four spent countless afternoons laying on Saddycore’s lawn. Tom playing originals, Clara fawning. Mark writing bad poems & I making fun of them, telling jokes to myself, a raucous laugh. If they talked, I don’t remember. I recall only Mark’s stories. The belt buckle, the girl he loved from Oklahoma. Why aren’t you with her? She didn’t want me. And how since her, he only fucked married women. I could never love a cheater. Can you imagine? I couldn’t imagine Mark having sex with anyone & even when I could, I envisaged his face twisting the way it did when he slung the buckle into the boy’s skull. The sound of his orgasm twinning the heavy breath he took upon seeing the boy’s blood.
Every spring Saddycore took a trip to the dam on Pruitt. Mark was scared of water & the sun too hot without. We wandered into a clearing of trees where Mark collapsed onto the ground. & I lifted my dress, one movement, over my head, tossed it to the side--an effort that made me laugh; his face, though, stunned. He asked touch? But when he did my body, involuntary, retracted. He apologized & I tried to explain its not you, its.
After the dam, I worried about awkwardness, though Mark expressed no bitter feelings. We spent the waning weeks of spring getting stoned. Tom fancied the herb, becoming one with the fucking earth. He only smoked pot outside where he could press his flesh into the ground, press so hard the soil screamed of him. Clara & Mark liked smoking too, a bowl or so every afternoon while I watched with my back hard against a tree. Tom turned to me always, muttering you know, those cigarettes are way worse. I laughed, already aware tobacco was slowly but surely turning my lungs a crazed white. At night I envisaged my body seized with cancer, an image neither comforting or terrifying. You see, smoking appealed because I was so damn apathetic about it, so eh eh suck & puff & fucking light me another one. But pot? Felt like being forced to sing in church choir.
I felt the same about drinking. I drank my first drink at my parent’s 25th anniversary blowout. Fifteen, drunk by midnight & doing the twist while a boy licked his lips at me, sipped Englebrook in the corner. When the boy approached, he said you know the happy couple? Placed his hand on my hip. Not really. Hear they’re big assholes, though. The truth is my parents were really nice & loved each other all redblooded gush & I hated them for it. But at that moment, I wasn’t too concerned with my parents, was too busy lifting my glass above my head, letting the boy whisper his name into my ear. His name sounding a lot like well, you’re not a cousin so. When he told jokes, I laughed soft. When he led me up the stairs, down the hall, out the door, I laughed even softer. What are you laughing at? You darling you.
I didn’t drink alcohol for awhile after that night. I have tried, at various points, to drink myself into a flushed white oblivion; however, I fail. My self isn’t abandoned; it’s viewed through a dusty attic window where inside a cat cries & I can’t climb high enough. The bottle sees my lack of dedication, laughs; pot was worse. I hated the fake elation, but Tom refused to relent. Further prodding came from Mark. His drippy voice, incomprehensibly stoned, it’s gentle, I promise, like snow. So I pretended. Every day I took hits but didn’t inhale. I acted calm, giddy come oh man, I feel amazing.
Sometime around summer, Mark developed a penchant for beat authors, thought we should go on the road. The trip never materialized; he spent all his money on pot, jugs of Merlot. Later, he confessed the real motivation was to visit his parents in Utah. He hadn’t seen or talked to them in ten years & was only mildly upset at the prospect of not seeing them for another ten. It’s better. I’ll write just write them a letter. I thought then about how everyone at Saddycore had issues galore with their blood relations. On Tuesdays & Thursdays they held round-table discussions about deep stuff like why we didn’t call our parents & why they didn’t call us. The head of Saddycore opened each session with hope knows no bounds. She recited a line about patience too, one she read on a fortune cookie back when she ate refined sugars & bleached flour. Wait for change, don’t chase it, which was a lick of wisdom to justify our lack of parental contact. Everyone had their own justifications about their parents, stories ranging from terrible to pleasant to the nothingness of a crumbling relationship where at some point it easier not to.
Mark’s mom wanted him to be a lawyer, Tom’s dad didn’t like his glitter bong. When the head asked about my parents, I mumbled we wanted different things for my life, which meant I hadn’t eaten enough bourbon balls to speak a single stitch.
The only person at Saddycore in good contact with their parents was Paul, the Saddycore seducer. Paul: slick-hipped kitten who spoke of charm like color from a cocoon. He swooned the girls so silly, they developed intense crushes, leaving him coquettish notes, saccharine kisses & bodies spread all xo across his twin mattress. My third day in Saddycore, he sulked over, said we’re not like them, those fucking depressives. His use of the “we” made me smile. His avenue of seduction? Inclusion. He don juaned by offering the possibility of becoming part of something, which proved effective, near genius, in a group of angora wearing loners.
Saddycore began boring me when I began fucking Mark. He was watching the weather channel. Five day forecast of lets go for a walk? He looked at me as if to say rambling girl, settle yr ways. Previously, I made him take six walks & on each walk, I tried to gain the courage to fuck. Whatever stopped me at the dam dissolved into carnality. I pushed his shoulders into the soil, said want me to take you in my mouth now? No, I want to be inside you. I laughed at his sentimentality, untied his hemp pants, laughed again.
Afterwards, we laid in the dirt for hours & while doing so, I tried very hard to think absolutely nothing, to imagine my body instead as dusk wind blowing over any flat surface. & Mark? He never made me feel anything save orgasm.
When I left, the members of Saddycore threw me a party. I lied, said I had a job in Canada & man, can’t wait for the snow! At the party everyone got stoned, striped naked & danced except Mark who spent the night brooding, writing gritty poems in his room. After the party, I laid in bed thought about the last time we fucked. Hungover on a Sunday afternoon he said he liked best when I laid on my side. To wake after sex & find me smoking, my back turned. The impossibly shallow indent of my hips. Running his hand from shoulder to calf, he’d say nothing, your body runs so nothing. What he said made little sense but, I took it as him saying I was a straight line, incapable of meeting.
Carlena, my best friend from middle school, ceased to exist by high school. On a trip to the CNN center she discovered the blowjob in a food court bathroom. The thing with the blow job, though, wasn’t that she became a slut but discovered how much she liked putting things into her mouth. She became a compulsive eater. On the first day of school, some gutterpunk shouted hey fatass! nice ass! Carlena winked, said I’m eating for two now, if you know what I mean. And so, it became her mantra, the pregnancy that never materialized. I saw Carlena not too long ago while mailing a letter to Montana. Carlena stood licking the stamp, asked How are you? I lied, said I wasn’t lonely. Carlena-oh, been busy buying things for the baby.
The letter I mailed wasn’t important. Mailed countless letters to Montana before. Was half in love with this boy. His main charm? He didn't respond. Situation got fucked when his return rate increased two per my one. In the last letter he wrote I have an affinity for you, then, asked to move in after his girlfriend broke a vase against his shoulder, & the girl downstairs, girl on the bus, girl with purple hair at a Starbucks said no thanks! to a date. & I did contemplate moving, brief second in my car, Tuesday afternoon. Thought about it, then, snuffed all flames that flicked well, maybe? I couldn’t be that pathetic, stoop so low.
The thing is-the idea of him or any him cramped my intestines. Last commitment? A job at the STD clinic. I volunteered at Sunnyside five years. The work was something I could be passionate about. Have sex, die. I left Sunnyside when a church from downtown shit stones over the fact we gave condoms to minors & petitioned the city to shut us down. When the center closed, I got a real job at a Target that gave minors condoms for money. Every morning the staff held team meetings-thirty kids in red chanting a song of togetherness. The entire Target Company stressed the importance of the team. The training brochure: your mistake is a mistake to all! Once when my drawer registered short ten cents, the manager said it hurt everyone on the team, personally, he was distraught.
The night I quit Target, I went drinking with my ex-best friend Sarah. In high school, Sarah worried ad infinitum about rudeness. So polite, in fact, she ate a peanut butter ball at the Molena Nursing Home where she volunteered despite her allergy to honey. I couldn’t say no! She pleaded, her throat seized. The staff director called an ambulance. A night at St. Catherine’s, & Sarah was saved! But me? Such a pussy, I thought. She said she understood.
Sarah called only cause she was drunk. That morning she applied to a local group. When she told the story, I laughed, spilled my drink. Sarah said I wanted to join; they wouldn’t let me. I laughed again, inappropriate. Fuck them! Took another sip.
I heard about Saddycore first on tv. How masses applied only to be rejected. How the members didn’t chose-they knew. How the rejected called the police warning a cult is forming!. Wasn't nervous application day. Went as a joke. Walked through the doors, smugger than smug, refused the nametag, the cookie & coffee, prepared to laugh my ass off but. A woman in tartan smock approached, her name Celeste or Charity or. She said-you yes you. You don’t need the name tag. You don’t need anything. I moved in that night. I hoped for tents on the outskirts of Texas, some sour wine & lots of romping through emotional badlands, but nothing. Saddycore proved impossibly boring.
My Schedule: wake up, sit at the table & no one talks. Feel like a loser cause I know these kids are a bunch of fucking downers but was prepared to be most popular! All I got, though, was snarls. Even the bacon, I thought, hates me. Later, I befriended a vegan girl named Clara who said the residents disliked me cause I never contemplated death. Oh me & Tom have. No blood. We’re getting married. He saved my life. Tom, a musician from California, wore rainbows on his shoes. The first thing he said to me? Rainbows cause I’ll never see the end.
Tom wrote acoustic songs about killing himself, so sad, in fact, they became funny. Clara met Tom in Saddycore back when she dyed her hair pink. Oh God, Tom. Whenever she’d gush, I wondered how anyone loved someone here? So pathetic. & yes, I was pathetic too, but stoop? I was looking to move up! Does Tom love you? Of course, he’s got no one else.
I started contemplating my escape three days after arrival. I stayed for Mark. The boy who cut his meat to tiny pieces cause chewing, man, too much enthuse. He wasn’t always so sad, so small. The first night he talked of a time where he fought with strangers over causes he no longer remembered. He hit a kid with a belt buckle once. A protest of some sort & the boy opposing Mark’s message. Mark ripped his pants off, whacked the boy first across the legs, then the head. The boy collapsed to the ground. I was triumphant then, so motherfucking strong. But I imagined Mark smaller than ever, small in the way of feral creatures, who know nothing outside their nature.
When Clara held Tom he became small, though he tripled her size. As if he folded more & more into himself, while in her arms, to become tiny enough for her body to comprehend. I watched them often in the commons while pretending to read. The only private conversation I ever overheard concerned a deer. They just left it there. On her way home from school, Clara hit a deer. The front fender gutted the animal so that it laid on the side of the road with its intestines exposed. It just sat there for weeks, its insides turning white.
When I heard the story, I didn’t think much, didn’t register its impact till the next morning when Tom refused his eggs & spent the rest the morning glaring at Mark who ate a sausage. By that point, Mark & I feigned closeness. I needed someone considering the extreme clingship of Clara & Tom. Us four spent countless afternoons laying on Saddycore’s lawn. Tom playing originals, Clara fawning. Mark writing bad poems & I making fun of them, telling jokes to myself, a raucous laugh. If they talked, I don’t remember. I recall only Mark’s stories. The belt buckle, the girl he loved from Oklahoma. Why aren’t you with her? She didn’t want me. And how since her, he only fucked married women. I could never love a cheater. Can you imagine? I couldn’t imagine Mark having sex with anyone & even when I could, I envisaged his face twisting the way it did when he slung the buckle into the boy’s skull. The sound of his orgasm twinning the heavy breath he took upon seeing the boy’s blood.
Every spring Saddycore took a trip to the dam on Pruitt. Mark was scared of water & the sun too hot without. We wandered into a clearing of trees where Mark collapsed onto the ground. & I lifted my dress, one movement, over my head, tossed it to the side--an effort that made me laugh; his face, though, stunned. He asked touch? But when he did my body, involuntary, retracted. He apologized & I tried to explain its not you, its.
After the dam, I worried about awkwardness, though Mark expressed no bitter feelings. We spent the waning weeks of spring getting stoned. Tom fancied the herb, becoming one with the fucking earth. He only smoked pot outside where he could press his flesh into the ground, press so hard the soil screamed of him. Clara & Mark liked smoking too, a bowl or so every afternoon while I watched with my back hard against a tree. Tom turned to me always, muttering you know, those cigarettes are way worse. I laughed, already aware tobacco was slowly but surely turning my lungs a crazed white. At night I envisaged my body seized with cancer, an image neither comforting or terrifying. You see, smoking appealed because I was so damn apathetic about it, so eh eh suck & puff & fucking light me another one. But pot? Felt like being forced to sing in church choir.
I felt the same about drinking. I drank my first drink at my parent’s 25th anniversary blowout. Fifteen, drunk by midnight & doing the twist while a boy licked his lips at me, sipped Englebrook in the corner. When the boy approached, he said you know the happy couple? Placed his hand on my hip. Not really. Hear they’re big assholes, though. The truth is my parents were really nice & loved each other all redblooded gush & I hated them for it. But at that moment, I wasn’t too concerned with my parents, was too busy lifting my glass above my head, letting the boy whisper his name into my ear. His name sounding a lot like well, you’re not a cousin so. When he told jokes, I laughed soft. When he led me up the stairs, down the hall, out the door, I laughed even softer. What are you laughing at? You darling you.
I didn’t drink alcohol for awhile after that night. I have tried, at various points, to drink myself into a flushed white oblivion; however, I fail. My self isn’t abandoned; it’s viewed through a dusty attic window where inside a cat cries & I can’t climb high enough. The bottle sees my lack of dedication, laughs; pot was worse. I hated the fake elation, but Tom refused to relent. Further prodding came from Mark. His drippy voice, incomprehensibly stoned, it’s gentle, I promise, like snow. So I pretended. Every day I took hits but didn’t inhale. I acted calm, giddy come oh man, I feel amazing.
Sometime around summer, Mark developed a penchant for beat authors, thought we should go on the road. The trip never materialized; he spent all his money on pot, jugs of Merlot. Later, he confessed the real motivation was to visit his parents in Utah. He hadn’t seen or talked to them in ten years & was only mildly upset at the prospect of not seeing them for another ten. It’s better. I’ll write just write them a letter. I thought then about how everyone at Saddycore had issues galore with their blood relations. On Tuesdays & Thursdays they held round-table discussions about deep stuff like why we didn’t call our parents & why they didn’t call us. The head of Saddycore opened each session with hope knows no bounds. She recited a line about patience too, one she read on a fortune cookie back when she ate refined sugars & bleached flour. Wait for change, don’t chase it, which was a lick of wisdom to justify our lack of parental contact. Everyone had their own justifications about their parents, stories ranging from terrible to pleasant to the nothingness of a crumbling relationship where at some point it easier not to.
Mark’s mom wanted him to be a lawyer, Tom’s dad didn’t like his glitter bong. When the head asked about my parents, I mumbled we wanted different things for my life, which meant I hadn’t eaten enough bourbon balls to speak a single stitch.
The only person at Saddycore in good contact with their parents was Paul, the Saddycore seducer. Paul: slick-hipped kitten who spoke of charm like color from a cocoon. He swooned the girls so silly, they developed intense crushes, leaving him coquettish notes, saccharine kisses & bodies spread all xo across his twin mattress. My third day in Saddycore, he sulked over, said we’re not like them, those fucking depressives. His use of the “we” made me smile. His avenue of seduction? Inclusion. He don juaned by offering the possibility of becoming part of something, which proved effective, near genius, in a group of angora wearing loners.
Saddycore began boring me when I began fucking Mark. He was watching the weather channel. Five day forecast of lets go for a walk? He looked at me as if to say rambling girl, settle yr ways. Previously, I made him take six walks & on each walk, I tried to gain the courage to fuck. Whatever stopped me at the dam dissolved into carnality. I pushed his shoulders into the soil, said want me to take you in my mouth now? No, I want to be inside you. I laughed at his sentimentality, untied his hemp pants, laughed again.
Afterwards, we laid in the dirt for hours & while doing so, I tried very hard to think absolutely nothing, to imagine my body instead as dusk wind blowing over any flat surface. & Mark? He never made me feel anything save orgasm.
When I left, the members of Saddycore threw me a party. I lied, said I had a job in Canada & man, can’t wait for the snow! At the party everyone got stoned, striped naked & danced except Mark who spent the night brooding, writing gritty poems in his room. After the party, I laid in bed thought about the last time we fucked. Hungover on a Sunday afternoon he said he liked best when I laid on my side. To wake after sex & find me smoking, my back turned. The impossibly shallow indent of my hips. Running his hand from shoulder to calf, he’d say nothing, your body runs so nothing. What he said made little sense but, I took it as him saying I was a straight line, incapable of meeting.