an open letter to every girl i've ever known
i'm seventy-three years old, and i'm staring down into a vacant burial plot in one of last surviving neighbourhoods in my hometown after the union riots broke out. it's winter and it hasn't stopped raining in two weeks: the levy-wall is on hemorrhage point, and this drought-stricken jerkwater estate will soon be up to its respective eyeballs in the swollen clarence river, uprooting a million forgotten graveyards and sending their waterlogged carcasses up to the surface like floating debris, impressing morbid watermarks against my slowly descending forehead. because i'm seventy-three years old, and even when that penultimate puddle of water comes spilling over the brink of that useless viaduct, i'll still be standing rooted to this very spot; my eyes down in a mournful glare at this hole in the earth, where i should've been buried over a decade ago. instead, the assassin who should've overseen my crashing end never completed what was to be his final contract, struck down in the first stratum of the great smallpox resurgence of 2041-43; remaining on his deathbed for a total of seventeen days before mumbling something incoherent into his wife's bad ear, then rattling out his death-throes as he half fell out to the floor, his hand stopping limp just inches short of a three-inch symmetrical stain on the carpet at the foot of his three-drawer bedside dresser.
i'm seventy-three, and i've murdered four people in that jumbled timespan. none of them directly, but still four separate acts of murder out of my careless actions. it was the date of my twenty-third birthday, when i was attending the funeral of the first benefactor of my misfired misfortunes; only to discard a lit cigarette in the garden courtyard of the wake, incinerating a fledgling flowerbed, as well as the other three aforementioned recipients of my ill luck. i'm seventy-three years old, and my superannuation never paid out because the stock market went to smash just one week after my retirement: the date of the successfully choreographed assassination of three successive world leaders, the economy never fully recovering thereafter.
i'm seventy-three, and the number of women i've physically slept with can be counted on one hand. but damn if i can remember any of you, and damn if i'll try. none of you offered me anything valuable, none of you offered me a hand to take into mine down a church aisle. none of you tossed your filthy corset into the clamouring hands of my bachelor friends. none of you wanted to meet my parents. none of you ever amounted to anything, and yet you would've all made spectacular partners: just as shallow and without fibre as myself. we could've been a great team: together our combined lack of substance could've fooled the majority into assuming we were at least worthy of the truths and attentions garnered to a singular citizen of upstanding stature. together we could've forged a path of least resistance, cut the overhanging branches down with our puffed chests. we could've sent children flying out into the world, firing them out from between your thighs like cannonballs to assault the invisible architecture of our combined failures; just so they could set the skittles back up again for their own offspring to knock into oblivion.
i'm seventy-three years old, and i've been drunk since i turned twenty-one. i've been drinking the distilled blood of my own muscular heart in thirsty revelry ever since; i've been fermenting the platelets in a silo buried somewhere within my ribcage, tapping my veins, setting the draught to run like an open bar from my peripheries. i've been holding my bloody fists up to the sun, and suckling on the effluent that runs down my shrunken biceps. i've been sinking my teeth into my own carotid, gnashing my fangs up against any patch of exposed virgin flesh i have left. i've been farming a small garden of narcotic hydroponica in the deep fertile fields of my lower gastrointestinal tract, pruning off the blooming opiate puffballs and inhaling their spores up through the sinuses of my prostate, an umbilical mainline transporting a hallucinatory broadcast into my frontal synapses. i'm seventy-three and i tried heroin for the first time just five days ago, and now there's no turning back. i've already stolen from everybody i know, and you're motherfuckin' next.
i'm seventy-three, and i'm starting to think i have a penchant for young men. sex no longer appeals to me the way it once did; decade after decade of forced celibacy tends to steer you toward extremes. the masturbatory panoramas you create in the dark recesses of loneliness start to take on vivid forms as the boom-gate of time begins to threaten you with decapitation. you start to manually guide your own fantasies into beguiling new territories, then you begin to challenge yourself. you start to intentionally disturb your own deep-rooted conventions. before you realise it, you're craving all types of relief you never even imagined. i'm seventy-three and i'm finally coming out. but my closet isn't the type you've been trained to imagine after a decade of post-modern television programming, my closet is full of skeletons. i refuse to come out to the sound of canned applause and bugle fanfare, instead i come out backwards adorned with the dismembered remains of my fellow inmates. i hold a skull aloft in my left hand, my torso and waist entwined in morbid bone-jewelry; and a belt fashioned from an engorged ascending bowel.
i'm seventy-three years old, and you could've saved me. you could've engaged the allies in a pre-emptive strike that would've detonated the rodent infestation in my head, the evil tea-leaves in my aura, the fire in my loins. you could've put a stop to this. you could've saved a young man from slowly disintegrating, from slowly losing touch with his own moralistic foundation, from uprooting it all and impaling himself on the resultant cartilage. you chose not to, you chose to ignore the man drowning in sand. you chose a life of moderation, you chose to choose your own adventure: you chose to turn to page seventy-four. i'm seventy-three, and i stare into this open burial plot. i wonder what will happen if i just climb on down there, and snap my femur with a shovel. that way i can never climb back out. i'm seventy-three years old, and i only have myself to blame.
i'm seventy-three, and i've murdered four people in that jumbled timespan. none of them directly, but still four separate acts of murder out of my careless actions. it was the date of my twenty-third birthday, when i was attending the funeral of the first benefactor of my misfired misfortunes; only to discard a lit cigarette in the garden courtyard of the wake, incinerating a fledgling flowerbed, as well as the other three aforementioned recipients of my ill luck. i'm seventy-three years old, and my superannuation never paid out because the stock market went to smash just one week after my retirement: the date of the successfully choreographed assassination of three successive world leaders, the economy never fully recovering thereafter.
i'm seventy-three, and the number of women i've physically slept with can be counted on one hand. but damn if i can remember any of you, and damn if i'll try. none of you offered me anything valuable, none of you offered me a hand to take into mine down a church aisle. none of you tossed your filthy corset into the clamouring hands of my bachelor friends. none of you wanted to meet my parents. none of you ever amounted to anything, and yet you would've all made spectacular partners: just as shallow and without fibre as myself. we could've been a great team: together our combined lack of substance could've fooled the majority into assuming we were at least worthy of the truths and attentions garnered to a singular citizen of upstanding stature. together we could've forged a path of least resistance, cut the overhanging branches down with our puffed chests. we could've sent children flying out into the world, firing them out from between your thighs like cannonballs to assault the invisible architecture of our combined failures; just so they could set the skittles back up again for their own offspring to knock into oblivion.
i'm seventy-three years old, and i've been drunk since i turned twenty-one. i've been drinking the distilled blood of my own muscular heart in thirsty revelry ever since; i've been fermenting the platelets in a silo buried somewhere within my ribcage, tapping my veins, setting the draught to run like an open bar from my peripheries. i've been holding my bloody fists up to the sun, and suckling on the effluent that runs down my shrunken biceps. i've been sinking my teeth into my own carotid, gnashing my fangs up against any patch of exposed virgin flesh i have left. i've been farming a small garden of narcotic hydroponica in the deep fertile fields of my lower gastrointestinal tract, pruning off the blooming opiate puffballs and inhaling their spores up through the sinuses of my prostate, an umbilical mainline transporting a hallucinatory broadcast into my frontal synapses. i'm seventy-three and i tried heroin for the first time just five days ago, and now there's no turning back. i've already stolen from everybody i know, and you're motherfuckin' next.
i'm seventy-three, and i'm starting to think i have a penchant for young men. sex no longer appeals to me the way it once did; decade after decade of forced celibacy tends to steer you toward extremes. the masturbatory panoramas you create in the dark recesses of loneliness start to take on vivid forms as the boom-gate of time begins to threaten you with decapitation. you start to manually guide your own fantasies into beguiling new territories, then you begin to challenge yourself. you start to intentionally disturb your own deep-rooted conventions. before you realise it, you're craving all types of relief you never even imagined. i'm seventy-three and i'm finally coming out. but my closet isn't the type you've been trained to imagine after a decade of post-modern television programming, my closet is full of skeletons. i refuse to come out to the sound of canned applause and bugle fanfare, instead i come out backwards adorned with the dismembered remains of my fellow inmates. i hold a skull aloft in my left hand, my torso and waist entwined in morbid bone-jewelry; and a belt fashioned from an engorged ascending bowel.
i'm seventy-three years old, and you could've saved me. you could've engaged the allies in a pre-emptive strike that would've detonated the rodent infestation in my head, the evil tea-leaves in my aura, the fire in my loins. you could've put a stop to this. you could've saved a young man from slowly disintegrating, from slowly losing touch with his own moralistic foundation, from uprooting it all and impaling himself on the resultant cartilage. you chose not to, you chose to ignore the man drowning in sand. you chose a life of moderation, you chose to choose your own adventure: you chose to turn to page seventy-four. i'm seventy-three, and i stare into this open burial plot. i wonder what will happen if i just climb on down there, and snap my femur with a shovel. that way i can never climb back out. i'm seventy-three years old, and i only have myself to blame.