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Alcoholism and death make you omnivorous, amoral, desperate. Do you really believe that? Sometimes. Sure. No. Yes.
I would never tire of it, being with her, so close to her skin and the blood rushing beneath it, drains me of hatred.
My poems] may hurt the dead, but the dead belong to me.” (A. Sexton);
The author would like to acknowledge that he did, indeed, vote for Ross Perot in 1996, and is not the least ashamed about it, because he is an ardent fan of the rich and insane, particularly when their hearts bleed, which Mr. Perot’s does, it really does.
You will not be disappointed. Unless you are usually disappointed, in which case this will be yet another disappointment.
Come to think of it, you may be reading this far, far in the future—it’s probably being taught in all the schools! Do tell: What’s it like in the future? Is everyone wearing robes? Are the cars rounder, or less round? Is there a women’s soccer league yet?
Mom prefers the show where three young women sit on a pastel-colored couch and recount blind dates that they have all enjoyed or suffered through with the same man.
had joked to the doctor. The doctor did not chuckle. I wondered if he had heard me. I considered repeating it, but then figured that he had probably heard me but had not found it funny. But maybe he didn’t hear me.
One should joke in the face of adversity; there is always humor, we are told. But
Kirsten and I met in college, had dated for many months, and for a long time we were tentative—we liked each other a great deal but I expected someone so normal and sweet-looking to find me out soon enough—until
There will be Father Mike, a young red-haired priest assigned to us—how do they assign the priests? I picture something like a police dispatcher, barking commands—“O’Bannan, you’ve got the disaster on Waveland”—with the priests groaning once given their orders.
All words will be considered her last, until they are followed by others.
His brain is my laboratory, my depository. Into it I can stuff the books I choose, the television shows, the movies, my opinion about elected officials, historical events, neighbors, passersby. He is my twenty-four-hour classroom, my captive audience, forced to ingest everything I deem worthwhile. He is a lucky, lucky boy! And no one can stop me. He is mine, and you cannot stop me, cannot stop us.
We cannot be stopped from looking with pity upon all the world’s sorry inhabitants, they unblessed by our charms, unchallenged by our trials, unscarred and thus weak, gelatinous.
Only here are you almost sure that you are careening on top of a big shiny globe, blurrily spinning—you are never aware of these things in Chicago, it being so flat, so straight—and and and we have been chosen, you see, chosen, and have been given this, it being owed to us, earned by us, all of this—the
Beth and I take turns driving him to and fro, down the hill and up again and otherwise we lose weeks like buttons, like pencils.
It’s great fun. We are attacking California, Toph and I, devouring what we can before the fall comes and hems us in, and so while Beth and Katie do whatever they do, and Kirsten does job interviews, Toph and I drive down to Telegraph and look at the weirdos.
Will she even be around? Will she mellow when she finds a job and a car? Should I lighten my hair? Does that whitening toothpaste really work? Toph needs health insurance. I need health insurance. Maybe I’m already sick. It’s already growing inside me. Something, anything. A tapeworm. AIDS. I have to get started, have to get started soon because I will die before thirty.
The house was perfect. Or rather, it was not at all perfect, but was far less imperfect than anything else we’d seen.
When it’s a matter of expense versus convenience, the choice is not a choice. While my mother would have driven forty miles for a half-priced tomato, I’ll pay $10 for it if it means I don’t have to get in the car. It’s a matter of exhaustion, mostly.
Certain things get us motivated. One day, his friend Luke, all of eleven, walked in and said: “Jesus. How can you live like this?” And for a week or so afterward we cleaned thoroughly, set schedules of maintenance, bought supplies. But we soon lost our inspiration and settled back in, allowing things to fall and stay fallen.
And though we daydream aloud about the existence of a simple pill, one pill a day, that would solve our daily dietary requirements, I recognize the importance of cooking regularly, though I have no idea why cooking regularly is important.
“Hiyyyyy!” I yell, stepping toward him, because threatening children with seventeen-inch knives is funny.
We are either sad and sickly or we are glamorous and new. We walk in and the choices race through my head. Sad and sickly? Or glamorous and new? Sad/sickly or glamorous/new? Sad/sickly? Glamorous/new? We are unusual and tragic and alive.
They are crinkly and no longer have random sex, as only I among them am still capable of. They are done with such things; even thinking about them having sex is unappealing. They cannot run without looking silly. They cannot coach the soccer team without making a mockery of themselves and the sport. Oh, they are over. They are walking corpses, especially that imbecile smoking out in the courtyard. Toph and I are the future, a terrifyingly bright future, a future that has come from Chicago, two terrible boys from far away, cast away and left for dead, shipwrecked, forgotten, but yet, but yet,
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The school is full of nice children but eccentric children, delicate and oddly shaped. They are what my friends and I, growing up in public schools, always envisioned private school kids were like—a little too precious, their innate peculiarities amplified, not muted, for better and worse. Kids who think that they are pirates, and are encouraged to dress the part, in school. Kids who program computers and collect military magazines. Chubby boys with big heads and very long hair. Skinny girls who wear sandals and carry flowers.
MOTHER How long ago was this? BROTHER A few winters ago. (BROTHER thinks about how much he likes the “a few winters ago” line. It’s new. It sounds dramatic, vaguely poetic. For a while it was “last year.” Then it was “a year and a half ago.” Now, much to BROTHER’s relief, it’s “a few years ago.” “A few years ago” has a comfortable distance. The blood is dry, the scabs hardened, peeled. Early on was different.
OH I COULD BE GOING OUT, SURE. It’s Friday night and I should be out, across the Bay, I should be out every night, with the rest of the young people, fixing my hair, spilling beer, trying to get someone to touch my penis, laughing with and at people.
I want to save everything and preserve all this but also want it all gone—can’t decide what’s more romantic, preservation or decay.
I’d be a little manic about it all, a little overeager, laughing too much, drinking too quickly, hoping for something to happen, hoping we’d go somewhere good, anything to make the night count, make it worth the hassle, the constant worry, the visions—I felt so detached sometimes, went for weeks at a time without really being around people my age—
Everyone is talking. People have come with friends and are talking with the friends they’ve come with. They’re out with people from work. They are looking into the faces they see every day and are saying things they’ve said a hundred times.
There’s too many of them, of us. Too many, too similar. What are they all doing here? All this standing, all this standing, sitting, talking.
Why do we all bother coming out, gathering here in numbers like this, without starting fires, tearing things down?
These questions. These people should know better. Are all my friends morons?
Jesus. These people. I look down at the crowd, all the dumb people down there.
You wouldn’t believe what people will believe once they know our story. They’re ready for anything, basically—will believe anything, because they’ve been thrown off-balance, are still wondering if any of this is true, our story in general, but aren’t sure and are terrified of offending us.”
mocking—that was probably bad, what I just did to Deirdre; a therapist would say that was bad—up
She will look up my way. She will look up at the porch and see me. She will open the passenger door and tell me to come with her and share her bed. I was hoping you’d ask, I will say, kind of suavelike. I will not care what we do, anything would be fine, nothing is okay, too. It does not matter. A bed with room and warmth and her legs entwined with mine underneath. I will comment on how cold her toes are and she will rub them against my legs— Things like that sometimes happened.
Oh if only something would happen. Nothing ever happens. This is all some terrible machine, where only the expected passes through.
while wondering if I am blind and if we’ll both be dead soon. What a stupid way to go. Is this how people die? Can we outrun them? I refuse to have these people kill us.
We’re alive, we’ve won! Powerful us! They were scared. We scared them off. They feared us. We won. We told them to go away and they did. I am the president. I am the Olympics.
I’m alone and will never go out again. When will I get out again? It will be weeks from now. It will be never. I am lost.
It’s like the ’60s! Look! Look, we say to one another, at the imbalances, the glaring flaws of the world, aghast, amazed. Look how things are!
Oh look at her. More than I want to be on Laura Folger’s show I want to settle down with her, to raise a family with her, on ten or so acres on the North Carolina coast. We’ll have a dog named Skipper. We’ll cook together, for her parents, for the neighbors. Have a crowd of kids that look not like me but like her, with strong, delicate features, that wonderful nose—
they were showing a video for a Bob Dylan song called “Jokerman.” We liked the video. There were things hurtling toward the screen, like in 3-D. I had just started reading Rolling Stone, and had heard of this Bob Dylan, and knew if I was to know anything I had to know and like Bob Dylan, and so I really wanted to like the song, but then Ricky beat me to it. “I like this song,” Ricky said. I was kind of pissed. I decided to let it go.
(why do we seem so boring, all of us? Are we as utterly boring as we seem?)—it
I have no idea how people function without near-constant internal chaos. I’d lose my mind.
Holding me responsible for keeping hidden this information is ridiculous. I was born into a town and a family and the town and my family happened to me. I own none of it. It is everyone’s. It is shareware. I like it, I like having been a part of it, I would kill or die to protect those who are part of it, but I do not claim exclusivity. Have it. Take it from me. Do with it what you will. Make it useful. This is like making electricity from dirt; it is almost too good to be believed, that we can make beauty from this stuff.
If you don’t want anyone to know about your existence, you might as well kill yourself. You’re taking up space, air.
Dignity is an affectation, cute but eccentric, like learning French or collecting scarves. And it’s fleeting and incredibly mercurial. And subjective. So fuck it.
