11/24/08
I gazed into her eyes, or rather the lenses of the thick rimmed seductive spectacles riveted to her temples. The plastic glass lens (alternating my focus from the right to the left eye) revealed to me a lie I was not yet prepared to face. It was the heartache I sought.
She was there to save me. Or just to do her job. I convinced myself of one or the either on every odd day. Inviting me in, I found I needed her for some reason. There was a vacuum in her soul, an emotional void that was endless. I saw a challenge in winning her over, a task I had flawlessly executed time and again on those around me.
But this would be a challenge. I was institutionalized. I do not recall what for, nor do I remember why I have forgotten why I was there. I must've fallen ill. Gotten my wish and thrown the switch, sending me into the care of trained professionals, here I was in her office.
I usually lose her within a few minutes of getting on a roll. I feel comfortable enough to let the brain patterns unfold through verbal communication, but once the complexity hits a grey area, and when even my understanding of the ideas in my skull are limited, despite believing them in my heart, I am foiled. I see the connection break.
"December 21, 2012. Mayan calendar. I am a binary Buddha, a chaotic Christ. I see patterns emerging, fate threading through, tethered to faith, I fly."
It makes so much sense when I think it. Why does it seem so wrong when I see her eyes, magnified and on display for me, her glasses, rectangular microscopes into her soul?
"I'm not sure if I follow, Charles. Where are you?"
She crosses her legs and I withdraw. My mind has been lost in a maze of my own design for so many years that I have given up on communication with the outside world. I sit on my hands.
"Whatever. It's just that all these ideas are in my head. I read so much information off of everything that I can't process it. My brain can't keep up."
"Well, just take a breath and relax. There's really no reason not to just be in a situation now and then. There's nothing more to this than two people talking is there?"
I have to admit, I was comfortable. I was so tired of acting the fool, the hero, the victim. I felt I could own up to my darkest, most base desires. I should dig deep in my ID and expose it to the light. Expose it to her.
"No, I guess not. I'm sorry. I just can't fight the impulse to stifle myself. To invalidate everything I feel. To convince myself that I am unknowable."
I sat for a minute in the mire of my self-pity before adding, "Alone."
She says it was a good session and has an orderly bring me back to my room. I glance over my shoulder and I saw those eyes watch me go away.
The door clanks behind me. Isolated, again. No human contact til later. TV and maybe cards and maybe some time to write. Later. Now, after therapy, I'm sent to my cell. I don't appreciate opening up and then having to shut down. It is bad for my emotional well being.
I pound my fist in a daze against the wall. It's just plaster, sheet rock, paint. But I've never punched anything, except perhaps my girlfriend when she attacked me in a drunken rage. No, that was a slap. She punched me though.
Pity, self-pity, goddamn pity party! There's a hole in the wall when they wake me up. I'm not sure where I am, a hospital, my apartment, her apartment? My knuckles are bloody. I hate myself. I want her. To save me.
'I didn't mean to!', is throbbing in my internal dialogue center as the medication starts wearing off and the door to my prison opens.
I'm out for a walk, thinking all the while. Never stop thinking. I am focused on the bench, my walk, the step by step procedure that gets me there. I ignore the looks, but not really. I take them in and make them judgments. They see everything because it's radiating from me.
Notice me. No don't. I can't. Stop thinking about me. I mean about them thinking about me, which if they are it's because you're telegraphing some weird vibe. Stop!
I run back home. Lock myself in. Everyone says too much while saying nothing at all. Tears of revelation of our sad states is only a moment away. The drugs wear off and suddenly feeling returns. But emotional feelings only, still numb to the touch.
Bed is safe. Curled up. Fetal. Dreams keep me distanced. Who I am is a burden. What I've built is a cage. It fits snuggly atop my persona. I will myself alive as often as I can as I struggle under my limitations. Self-imposed, self-destructive, self-serving needs.
I skip the next session with her. I can't face acceptance right now. I can't justify my existence, nor do I want it to be confirmed, to be made okay. Suffer, bastard, suffer. You are strangling the life from yourself, flagellation of the mind, beating your consciousness into submission. Find your own way out.
So I write. The words bind my negatons, sharpen my syntax, forge furious feelings. The sentences are ideas, ideas are the prison. Constructs of immateria that give us the boundaries of self. I can't do it. This is who I am. This is the way I will always be.
Change.
In the rec room I'm piecing together a jigsaw puzzle. I've hidden the last pieces from myself, but I don't know that yet. I'm not ready to see the whole picture yet. That's why I'm putting it together upside down.
I replay the past as rounded parts snap into rounded slots. A cycle of puzzles, solved and dissolved. What I did with her, I had done to me next. I sought punishment after punishing. Then started anew. Each spin around the track provided a clue. I need something drastic to have a breakthrough.
So I escaped. Slipped out from under their watch. I spent the last of my money on a plane ticket. I'd have to find out where I came from to discover where i'd have to go. My feelings about my family would hold me down until I faced them. I got there and was reborn.
"So remember when you told me that I should think about how I relate to people, the cycles of behavior I keep repeating, and how it relates to my wanting to learn how to connect with my family?"
"Well, I think you may've said that, but I do recall that session, yes."
I was back in the asylum a week later discussing it with her with animated fervor.
"I saw my aunt and we talked. And it was like everything made sense. We were Crowns, and we are insane thinkers. Our insanities mask our sensitive natures."
I closed my eyes for a minute basking in the glorious feeling of connection. That is my addiction. Connecting with another. I don't want to be alone, but everything is telling me I am. I keep telling me I am.
"I had lunch with my grandma and I even stood up for myself when she called me a college dropout in front of my cousin. I got my associates degree, and maybe I've only recently gone back for my bachelors but I had a degree."
I have never successfully stood up for myself. I usually rely on friends or lovers to provide me with self-esteem, self-worth, and to do my talking for me. My niceness makes everyone want to take care of me, for I am naive and unable to function in the world.
"But I defended myself. And boldly, firmly, stood up to the overbearing woman who had praised my father into prince status. The manipulative maiden of my genetic masculinity. And I wasn't hurt like the sensitive baby I always was."
She nods and semi-smiles. I may've gotten too abstract in an effort to make my life more poetic. So now I've lost her. I could be rambling mad. This makes sense in my mind. But something in her face makes me think I have not gone anywhere. That I am imprisoned, entwined in a intense insanity that will never end.
Reality is bleeding. Or is that my arm? I have a shard of glass in my left hand. There's a wetness dripping from the other. She's staring at me sympathetically, but I feel stupid, sad, pathetic. I glance at my forearm and gaze upon the lightning shaped gash carved into it. A jagged wound, the mystical thunderbolt, the power of Zeus.
"Charles, just put it down now. You don't need to hurt yourself. Or me."
Is there another option? I mean really. I don't see any other way for things to go. We can really only condemn each other, pushing others down to advance, being pushed down to become submerged and bob back up to the surface as equilibrium is sought and we fuck it up once more. The world is drowning in sadness.
The electricity pumps through my body. My body spasms and dances convulsively in the office, freeing the glass from my grip. The orderlies catch me as I fall back. It's a peaceful thing to be made to submit against your will. Sometimes it is necessary, for your own good.
They drag me back to the cell. Alone in the dark again. I watch a movie of my life, memories scultped by stories told. The lingering of electric impulses make my body feel alive, charged with purpose. If only I could make it fit into the world, if the habits could be broken, if I could get what I wanted. What I really wanted.
I follow a thread of the web and it pulls at the corners of all that I know. I work out the angles. Co-dependency. Imprisonment. Fear and anxiety. Low-self esteem and guilt. I need conflict. I dread conflict. Who could handle me if I can not?
I get my medication and sit in the common room. I watch some movies beside some peers. We're all sitting, soaking in the fictional sentiments of paid professionals. I cry at the parts that one is to cry at. But for all the wrong reasons. I want to feel. We all want to feel.
"Hey friend. I know your secret."
A bearded inmate was begging for my attention, his sight set on me in my peripheral. He had a friendly smile but his tone was sinister.
"What secret might that be?" I scanned him from the side. He was two-dimensional and now so was I.
"You're not crazy. You're trying to drive yourself mad. But you're sane and shirking responsibility." He inched closer.
He spoke what I feared, what I knew.
Later, we found ourselves in his room, I was undressing, lying back naked as he climbed atop me. My body tensed up, his muscles and body hair bristling up against my flesh. I recall the calm serenity that came over me as I ran my hands up his back and pulled him into me. Two male bodies embracing in the nude in the naked white light of angels transcending physical form.
All is peace.
My being was possessed by pure joy, and I sought everything. I placed him in my mouth, gripping him firmly, pressing my face into his stomach. The soft, spongey flesh of him filling up my mouth, gliding along my tongue, driving deep down my throat. A true wand of power placed within my body, imbuing me everything I was missing, all the power I had blocked.
I sucked for all I was worth until I could taste him. I tried time and again to get him to release himself, to allow me to drink from him, swallow the genetic map of his manliness. But he refused. So I hurt him.
He needed to learn. To take it. I held him down and caressed him forcefully with my tongue. One knee holding back one arm, my clenched fingers of my left hand pinning him to the bed, the right, delicately held his balls. I needed his cum and I’d crucify the fuck until he gave it up.
Finally, after furious, fist pumping action, the hot cum shot forth from the tip of his splendid cock and slid into my mouth, and across my lips. I opened my eyes, turning my gaze towards the crown, and Jesus smiled at my cum covered face.
“Charles!”
She had burst in on this moment, that fucking whore. She’d never be able to do for me what you just did. God, everything has changed. You’ve helped me like I never knew was possible. Thank you.”
“Charles, you’re going to hurt your neck if you don’t…”
I hissed at her, the light from the doorway igniting the cooling semen dripping down my chin, splatters flipping from my lips. But suddenly my weight shifted and everything began to reassert itself. Gravity swung around and I hit the floor hard. My pants were down and my cock was in my hand, thankfully preventing it from becoming damaged in the fall.
“Jesus?” I looked up to the bed.
“Charles.”
I was allowed out for walks more often after that, despite the cold weather making me all crackly. I drifted along day after day until I began to notice that people would talk to me, stop to say hello, or to ask how I was. They smiled when I seemed happy, and sad and withdrawn on those days when I forgot. Suddenly everyone was my friend, and no one didn’t not like me, I was loved. By Jesus.
For years later, I got shit for this chapter. Too pretentious is the way it was often referred. But this is what I wrote up until the day I woke up. My life was truly split up into two parts: before this chapter and after. I had escaped my internal institution.
This is my fucking book and I’ll do whatever the fuck I damn well please.
Including sucking Jesus’ cock, you jealous fucks.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
Tower of Brahma 52 - House of Cards (first draft)
7/16/08
"I fold."
That was my one solid move in Poker. Folding. Well maybe in life I should say. Once in a while I try and bluff. But in the end, I just lose my chips.
Sean clears the pot towards himself with a sweep of his arm. It's not much for us it's everything. Juan, across from me, deals out another hand. Brian throws in without even looking at his hand. Tom's seat next to him is empty. My turn.
"So, what's your book about Juan?" Sean puffs his cigar, filling the basement with the smell of tobacco and an ethereal swirl of smoke.
Juan bids in and covers his cards. "Well, there's this guy who just starts compulsively working out and then discovers he's a sleeper assassin."
"Sounds cliche." Brian folds. No one notices.
"Nice. Should be able to sell. Seems like the market could sustain a series like that." I'd been trying to read up on publishing and marketing, and mostly all I came up with was frustration. I raise.
Sean calls. "Fuck yeah. People love that thriller intrigue stuff. They're all over the subway ads."
We show our cards and once again a single King does me no good. Juan hauls in the pot and we begin again. As I get my cards I read the others before me.
Brian bets recklessly, not caring what he's holding, barely invested in the game. Sean kicks back, puffs away, and cracks jokes, but he's playing for real underneath. He needs the money. Juan just deals and plays a straight game, showing nothing from behind his poker face
"So, who's the guy supposed to kill? Who's he working for?" Sean has got a good hand. I can tell.
”I haven't really figured out which way to take it just yet. I sort of wanted to go political, but now I'm thinking cultural." Juan raises.
"Cultural? Like a celebrity assassination? How bizarre that culture begins with the word cult." Brian is bluffing with a double sized bet.
"That's interesting. Contrast his compulsion for improving his body image with celebrity fascination. The real versus the ideal." I wasn't bluffing this time.
We play a few more hands when I feel the barrel of an all too familiar gun placed against the back of my head. Then Spider spoke to me telepathically as he said: 'Kill them. They're going to kill you if you don't.'
I tried to focus on my cards and found myself glancing at Tom's empty seat, then at the others. My poker face sucked and I knew it. I was tipping my hand.
"I see your ten and raise you twenty." I tossed some chips into the pot absent-mindedly.
The game continued and I heard the cocking back of a hammer. I knew Spider would be concealed from the others but that wouldn't help me. He'd kill me here, if just to prevent them from doing it.
'Look at them. They're the enemies, competing for dominance over you, over this world.'
I peered up from my cards. I followed Juan's movements as he upped the ante. The pot was growing and he didn't bat an eye. I had no idea what was going on in his mind. He could kill me if he wanted.
'Get your gun out and fire or I will.'
In my peripheral vision I saw Spider's arm as it swung his hand cannon towards Brian. I tried not to focus on it as I began to sweat. I avoided eye contact. I was showing all my tells. I fingered the revolver in my pocket.
“I fold." Brian rested his cards on the table. He looked over at me as it was up to me to call it.
Sean was overplaying it, holding not much of anything but he knew he could intimidate me with his confidence. He'd take me down if he could.
"I call." I tossed my cards on the pile of chips. "King of Hearts. King of Clubs. Ace of Spades."
Juan locked his eyes on me and I knew. This was going down and there wasn't anything I could do about it. One of us was going to die, right here, right now.
"Pair of Jacks." Juan spread his cards out before him. "Looks like you got me."
Spider's gun whipped towards Sean as Juan kicked the table up at me. Brian tipped over in his chair, scrambling for safety. I drew the gun from its resting place and raised it up.
Chips flew and cards scattered as Spider fired. With a snap of his wrist Sean launched his cards at Spider with deadly accuracy. The table hid Juan's actions from me but I knew his nine millimeter was reaching out to me.
I shot from the hip, the bullet rocketing through the air, punching through the Ace of Spades before splintering the table with a hole big enough for me to see Juan through. His eyes locked on and lining up his shot.
I kicked back in my chair, sending me tumbling backwards as Juan's bullet blew a hole through the center of the table, right where my face would have been. Spider emptied his clip as the table passed between him and Sean. There was an explosion of splintered wood. And time froze.
I rolled backwards. Spider ducked as he released the clip with one hand and slapped in a new one in one fluid motion. The debris that was the poker table began falling all around us. Juan extended his arm, preparing another shot. I was looking off to the side as Brian scampered off for cover.
My attention slid to Spider who I could see now was wearing Tom's persona. It flickered on and off as he penetrated this reality. He was preparing to shoot as I lost myself in the scene.
Juan fires. Spider fires. Sean flips backwards. I sit and ponder. I lower my gun to the ground as a bullet spirals through the air between Juan and myself. My sight travels along the ground like mist, filling up the room. Everything slows in my mind. I see all.
'Kill him Fenris.' Spider switches his aim towards me. 'Move or die.'
"Everything is possible, nothing is sacred. Nothing is possible, everything is sacred." I move.
Time cracks like lightning and Juan's shot smashes my chair. I dive forward, sliding past Spider, rolling onto my side and click out five shots. The empty shells from Spider's gun drop down on me like hot rain.
The first shot hits Juan's hands, removing his weapon. The second collides with his soul, shattering his faith. Third shot blows away his mind and the fourth denies his existence as it deactivates his sense of self. The annihilation of his own personal reality, the obliteration of all he thought himself to be, sprouts from the final bullet.
With a crash, a wave of normalcy settles onto the room. Gunsmoke trailed off into the ether as time flowed freely once again. I got to my feet and brushed splintered wood from my shirt. Spider reverted to Tom once again and his gun was gone.
I made my gun disappear, as well as Juan's. I helped Brian up to his feet as he stared in disbelief. Together we walked over next to Tom. Sean was picking up and reshuffling the deck of cards. Juan knelt on one knee, his head bowed low.
"Hey, you okay?" I held my hand out to him.
"What'd you do to me?" I think he was weeping.
"Something I don't like to do. Something I did to myself a long time ago." Perhaps I was still doing it, still there in that moment, stripping everything away.
I went over and lifted him up and dropped him in his chair. He held his face in his hands. I'm not sure how much of him was left.
"You're free now. We all are. We made a mess, now let's clean it up." Tom was flipping the table back onto it's legs. Brian collected the chips. Sean riffled the cards between his hands.
”So, blackjack anyone?"
We stood around Juan and we all knew in that silence that we were going to have to fight, that some of us would die.
"What about war?"
"I fold."
That was my one solid move in Poker. Folding. Well maybe in life I should say. Once in a while I try and bluff. But in the end, I just lose my chips.
Sean clears the pot towards himself with a sweep of his arm. It's not much for us it's everything. Juan, across from me, deals out another hand. Brian throws in without even looking at his hand. Tom's seat next to him is empty. My turn.
"So, what's your book about Juan?" Sean puffs his cigar, filling the basement with the smell of tobacco and an ethereal swirl of smoke.
Juan bids in and covers his cards. "Well, there's this guy who just starts compulsively working out and then discovers he's a sleeper assassin."
"Sounds cliche." Brian folds. No one notices.
"Nice. Should be able to sell. Seems like the market could sustain a series like that." I'd been trying to read up on publishing and marketing, and mostly all I came up with was frustration. I raise.
Sean calls. "Fuck yeah. People love that thriller intrigue stuff. They're all over the subway ads."
We show our cards and once again a single King does me no good. Juan hauls in the pot and we begin again. As I get my cards I read the others before me.
Brian bets recklessly, not caring what he's holding, barely invested in the game. Sean kicks back, puffs away, and cracks jokes, but he's playing for real underneath. He needs the money. Juan just deals and plays a straight game, showing nothing from behind his poker face
"So, who's the guy supposed to kill? Who's he working for?" Sean has got a good hand. I can tell.
”I haven't really figured out which way to take it just yet. I sort of wanted to go political, but now I'm thinking cultural." Juan raises.
"Cultural? Like a celebrity assassination? How bizarre that culture begins with the word cult." Brian is bluffing with a double sized bet.
"That's interesting. Contrast his compulsion for improving his body image with celebrity fascination. The real versus the ideal." I wasn't bluffing this time.
We play a few more hands when I feel the barrel of an all too familiar gun placed against the back of my head. Then Spider spoke to me telepathically as he said: 'Kill them. They're going to kill you if you don't.'
I tried to focus on my cards and found myself glancing at Tom's empty seat, then at the others. My poker face sucked and I knew it. I was tipping my hand.
"I see your ten and raise you twenty." I tossed some chips into the pot absent-mindedly.
The game continued and I heard the cocking back of a hammer. I knew Spider would be concealed from the others but that wouldn't help me. He'd kill me here, if just to prevent them from doing it.
'Look at them. They're the enemies, competing for dominance over you, over this world.'
I peered up from my cards. I followed Juan's movements as he upped the ante. The pot was growing and he didn't bat an eye. I had no idea what was going on in his mind. He could kill me if he wanted.
'Get your gun out and fire or I will.'
In my peripheral vision I saw Spider's arm as it swung his hand cannon towards Brian. I tried not to focus on it as I began to sweat. I avoided eye contact. I was showing all my tells. I fingered the revolver in my pocket.
“I fold." Brian rested his cards on the table. He looked over at me as it was up to me to call it.
Sean was overplaying it, holding not much of anything but he knew he could intimidate me with his confidence. He'd take me down if he could.
"I call." I tossed my cards on the pile of chips. "King of Hearts. King of Clubs. Ace of Spades."
Juan locked his eyes on me and I knew. This was going down and there wasn't anything I could do about it. One of us was going to die, right here, right now.
"Pair of Jacks." Juan spread his cards out before him. "Looks like you got me."
Spider's gun whipped towards Sean as Juan kicked the table up at me. Brian tipped over in his chair, scrambling for safety. I drew the gun from its resting place and raised it up.
Chips flew and cards scattered as Spider fired. With a snap of his wrist Sean launched his cards at Spider with deadly accuracy. The table hid Juan's actions from me but I knew his nine millimeter was reaching out to me.
I shot from the hip, the bullet rocketing through the air, punching through the Ace of Spades before splintering the table with a hole big enough for me to see Juan through. His eyes locked on and lining up his shot.
I kicked back in my chair, sending me tumbling backwards as Juan's bullet blew a hole through the center of the table, right where my face would have been. Spider emptied his clip as the table passed between him and Sean. There was an explosion of splintered wood. And time froze.
I rolled backwards. Spider ducked as he released the clip with one hand and slapped in a new one in one fluid motion. The debris that was the poker table began falling all around us. Juan extended his arm, preparing another shot. I was looking off to the side as Brian scampered off for cover.
My attention slid to Spider who I could see now was wearing Tom's persona. It flickered on and off as he penetrated this reality. He was preparing to shoot as I lost myself in the scene.
Juan fires. Spider fires. Sean flips backwards. I sit and ponder. I lower my gun to the ground as a bullet spirals through the air between Juan and myself. My sight travels along the ground like mist, filling up the room. Everything slows in my mind. I see all.
'Kill him Fenris.' Spider switches his aim towards me. 'Move or die.'
"Everything is possible, nothing is sacred. Nothing is possible, everything is sacred." I move.
Time cracks like lightning and Juan's shot smashes my chair. I dive forward, sliding past Spider, rolling onto my side and click out five shots. The empty shells from Spider's gun drop down on me like hot rain.
The first shot hits Juan's hands, removing his weapon. The second collides with his soul, shattering his faith. Third shot blows away his mind and the fourth denies his existence as it deactivates his sense of self. The annihilation of his own personal reality, the obliteration of all he thought himself to be, sprouts from the final bullet.
With a crash, a wave of normalcy settles onto the room. Gunsmoke trailed off into the ether as time flowed freely once again. I got to my feet and brushed splintered wood from my shirt. Spider reverted to Tom once again and his gun was gone.
I made my gun disappear, as well as Juan's. I helped Brian up to his feet as he stared in disbelief. Together we walked over next to Tom. Sean was picking up and reshuffling the deck of cards. Juan knelt on one knee, his head bowed low.
"Hey, you okay?" I held my hand out to him.
"What'd you do to me?" I think he was weeping.
"Something I don't like to do. Something I did to myself a long time ago." Perhaps I was still doing it, still there in that moment, stripping everything away.
I went over and lifted him up and dropped him in his chair. He held his face in his hands. I'm not sure how much of him was left.
"You're free now. We all are. We made a mess, now let's clean it up." Tom was flipping the table back onto it's legs. Brian collected the chips. Sean riffled the cards between his hands.
”So, blackjack anyone?"
We stood around Juan and we all knew in that silence that we were going to have to fight, that some of us would die.
"What about war?"
Monday, November 16, 2009
Tower of Brahma - 51 - stop me if you've heard this one before
2/16/08
"Eris, Kali and Loki walk into a bar..." Sean starts into his usual jokes with no punchlines.
It's his free form improv writing technique. Each of us has our individual techniques. Sean and his jokes, Juan’s historic anecdotes, Brian’s stream of consciousness, and Tom’s…well, I’m not sure what Tom is up to. Personally, I like to let it build up and explode out. Like a mental time bomb.
We all gathered there in the basement, looking pale and ghostly under the fluorescent lighting. The air was thick with smoke, the fragrant odor of cheap coffee, and our futile aspirations. We called it ‘Write Club’ but we hardly ever wrote. Actually that was what got us all together. Not being able to write.
Juan cuts off Sean's one-liners to tell us about the ten books he's read since our last meet. He’s a good foot and a half taller than Sean and so literally overshadows him as he steps into the circle of chairs in the center of the room.
"So, JFK's older brother was the one with the political design but when his younger brother came back with all them medals, well he did what any sensible overachieving sibling did. He flew a plane full of explosives towards a German factory ready to bail out at the last second when BOOM!"
I stopped double-checking the historical anecdotes he spouts after the first few weeks. As fictional as the things he says may seem, they always turn out to be true. As I get older writing seems more and more impossible, for what is there to really write about with reality being far stranger and beautiful in its symmetry to our chaotic minds.
I look off as Sean shoves Juan battling each other for verbal dominance. Intellectual alpha male social Darwinism never appealed to me. Brian’s sitting off to the side again scrawling and scribbling out in his spiral notebook, his long hair draped across his face. I make my way over and glare over at Tom as I do. He's by the coffee maker, back to the wall and eyes on the door.
I sit down next to Brian and light up a smoke.
"How's the writing?" he says, not looking up.
"Meh. You know. I got some ideas. Taking some time to structure them out, get something coherent and interesting down. Something with a point." I reply.
I take a drag off my cigarette and lean back. Nothing sucks like being a writer. All this pressure to make sense and make people care, in a medium that's nearly dead. And here we are pounding in the final nails. Writers in a pop star era, with flash fried masses devouring endless streams of sugar-coated spectacle. Follow the formula to success: don’t be original. It’s not art.
"I got some poems I'm just about happy with." Brian flipped back a few pages. He stopped on one filled with ink.
I had read a few of his pieces before and they were genius. Dark, mad poetry that made the mind cringe and the soul cry. He came across as aloof, but a severe sensitivity forced him inside. He gutted his pain out, spilling it across the page in fluid lines from a black ballpoint pen.
"Okay, okay, wait...Decartes, Kant and Hume are on a plane about to crash and there's only two parachutes..." Sean waves his arms frantically, trying to draw us all back into another round of jokes. He wrangles Brian back into the circle reluctantly where Juan stands with his arms crossed.
I don’t much feel like laughing so I walk over to grab another coffee and stub my butt in the ashtray, blowing out the last lungful of smoke. Tom still has his eyes on the exit, hand gripping his styrofoam cup. I imagine that he’s staring into an alternate dimension, killing time with a gang of hacks in a church basement as he monitors a multiverse of possibilities.
"I read your book Charles."
I slap six sugar packets together and rip the corners off.
"Yeah? And?"
"I don't know. It won't sell."
"Thanks. I figured as much."
His words sting. Lately I’ve felt like I’ve been wasting my time trying to put my thoughts into words, crafting words into stories; all this effort to communicate, but to what end? To become a paid, professional writer? So I can afford to continue to place myself into situations that I can later idealize and then trivialize by demeaning them to a bunch of letters, lifeless symbols, just so someone else will fork over cash to be momentarily entertained?
Truth to tell I had almost totally wiped my hands clean of my unholy text. The story made sense to me when I lived it, and now that I’ve re-read it, I can see how I got here. I even enjoyed it as a fusion of poetry, prose, and essays. Except for the end. I couldn't bring myself to read the ending.
"It'll be appreciated after you're dead." Tom looks over at me as he says this.
I swig a huge gulp of lukewarm coffee, shake my head, and glance over at him to size him up, to regain some semblance of pride. Sadness weighs his eyes down. It’s more emotion than I imagined from him.
'You poor bastard.' I hear him think to himself.
Tom flips off the lights and locks the door behind him as we all shuffle up into the temple. It was an unspoken tradition now to walk silently through the church, leaving our ramblings behind that heavy wooden door, down in the darkness.
The chatter picks up outside as we all man hug and go our separate ways. Sean belts out one final half-joke as he saunters backwards down the sidewalk.
"Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, and George W. Bush are in a burning building..."
No punchlines here Sean. Other than my life. I feel the same post-meeting depression that hits me on the walk home every Wednesday night. I haven’t written enough, I’m not good enough; I’m wasting so much time just existing. Merely living.
I walk back to my apartment, which is just a few blocks away, but it takes me twice as long tonight. My legs are wobbly and I feel anxious, more than usual. The streets of the East Village are empty and loneliness overtakes me. I want to stop thinking and I don't want to go home.
But I do. And there she is. Waiting for me. I tell her about how the meeting went. Detail out some of the highpoints as she sits vacantly on the couch. She’s recording the data, as is her function. She sits there like furniture, a fancy gadget that happens to be made of flesh and bone, although I can’t prove that she is human at all.
I go to the fridge and grab a beer. I pop the cap and stand there looking over at her. There’s nothing I can see about her that would indicate anything. A void of perfect function, she gives no information of herself, and defies my empathic vibe sense. The blankness surrounds her and I, of course, fill it with stories.
I imagine who she was before she started this. Whether she had done this before with other writers. If any of them felt the way I feel about her. This longing to be near her, to feel safe and like it all just doesn’t matter, because in the end, when it’s all over, nothing will matter. Just this moment, me watching her, wanting from afar.
This leads me to too much thinking, so to counteract it I take a few swigs of the beer and head to my room. I type up some ideas I had from the night and email them to myself. Ideas that would sit with all the other unread emails.
"I've got to write something."
I grab my handheld and sink into my papasan. I start typing away, drawing out an impossible romance. It was coming so easy, literally dancing out of my fingers and across the keys.
A warrior, burdened with a mission doomed from the start. He was hell-bent on killing the beast at the center of the Universe, although he could not remember why. A maiden is found lost along the way, her soul seeking salvation. It is only by chance that they cross paths and together they learn they are fated to topple an empire.
I finish the second act, stopping after they exit the labyrinth to finish off the beer and light a cigarette. I sit for a while, letting the last few words I had written resonate within my eyes before letting them seep into my brain.
It was a love story. Not my specialty, but I believe it’s what I had always secretly wanted to write. Something foolishly and hopelessly romantic with larger than life adventure and awash with grand gestures. It was naive and beautiful, if not a tad too ethereal and melodramatic.
I let the cigarette burn all the way to ash, then smoke the rest of the pack. I needed an ending to this, but how could I write up the end of love? How could I destroy something so precious, something so wrenched from my gut, something spoken truly from my heart?
'I won't end it. I refuse.' I decide, and bury the story among the rest of my thoughts.
I get up and brush my teeth. I watch her sleeping on the couch. Slowly I run my fingers along her hair and look down at her and let loose a sad sigh.
‘Who are you?’ I try to telepathically transmit to her brain.
I rinse my mouth and hit the light. I collapse into bed and roll over, hugging the covers tightly. My heart was racing my mind, and neither could possibly win. My soul in turmoil, I toss and turn.
And suddenly, I thought of a punchline.
"Eris, Kali and Loki walk into a bar..." Sean starts into his usual jokes with no punchlines.
It's his free form improv writing technique. Each of us has our individual techniques. Sean and his jokes, Juan’s historic anecdotes, Brian’s stream of consciousness, and Tom’s…well, I’m not sure what Tom is up to. Personally, I like to let it build up and explode out. Like a mental time bomb.
We all gathered there in the basement, looking pale and ghostly under the fluorescent lighting. The air was thick with smoke, the fragrant odor of cheap coffee, and our futile aspirations. We called it ‘Write Club’ but we hardly ever wrote. Actually that was what got us all together. Not being able to write.
Juan cuts off Sean's one-liners to tell us about the ten books he's read since our last meet. He’s a good foot and a half taller than Sean and so literally overshadows him as he steps into the circle of chairs in the center of the room.
"So, JFK's older brother was the one with the political design but when his younger brother came back with all them medals, well he did what any sensible overachieving sibling did. He flew a plane full of explosives towards a German factory ready to bail out at the last second when BOOM!"
I stopped double-checking the historical anecdotes he spouts after the first few weeks. As fictional as the things he says may seem, they always turn out to be true. As I get older writing seems more and more impossible, for what is there to really write about with reality being far stranger and beautiful in its symmetry to our chaotic minds.
I look off as Sean shoves Juan battling each other for verbal dominance. Intellectual alpha male social Darwinism never appealed to me. Brian’s sitting off to the side again scrawling and scribbling out in his spiral notebook, his long hair draped across his face. I make my way over and glare over at Tom as I do. He's by the coffee maker, back to the wall and eyes on the door.
I sit down next to Brian and light up a smoke.
"How's the writing?" he says, not looking up.
"Meh. You know. I got some ideas. Taking some time to structure them out, get something coherent and interesting down. Something with a point." I reply.
I take a drag off my cigarette and lean back. Nothing sucks like being a writer. All this pressure to make sense and make people care, in a medium that's nearly dead. And here we are pounding in the final nails. Writers in a pop star era, with flash fried masses devouring endless streams of sugar-coated spectacle. Follow the formula to success: don’t be original. It’s not art.
"I got some poems I'm just about happy with." Brian flipped back a few pages. He stopped on one filled with ink.
I had read a few of his pieces before and they were genius. Dark, mad poetry that made the mind cringe and the soul cry. He came across as aloof, but a severe sensitivity forced him inside. He gutted his pain out, spilling it across the page in fluid lines from a black ballpoint pen.
"Okay, okay, wait...Decartes, Kant and Hume are on a plane about to crash and there's only two parachutes..." Sean waves his arms frantically, trying to draw us all back into another round of jokes. He wrangles Brian back into the circle reluctantly where Juan stands with his arms crossed.
I don’t much feel like laughing so I walk over to grab another coffee and stub my butt in the ashtray, blowing out the last lungful of smoke. Tom still has his eyes on the exit, hand gripping his styrofoam cup. I imagine that he’s staring into an alternate dimension, killing time with a gang of hacks in a church basement as he monitors a multiverse of possibilities.
"I read your book Charles."
I slap six sugar packets together and rip the corners off.
"Yeah? And?"
"I don't know. It won't sell."
"Thanks. I figured as much."
His words sting. Lately I’ve felt like I’ve been wasting my time trying to put my thoughts into words, crafting words into stories; all this effort to communicate, but to what end? To become a paid, professional writer? So I can afford to continue to place myself into situations that I can later idealize and then trivialize by demeaning them to a bunch of letters, lifeless symbols, just so someone else will fork over cash to be momentarily entertained?
Truth to tell I had almost totally wiped my hands clean of my unholy text. The story made sense to me when I lived it, and now that I’ve re-read it, I can see how I got here. I even enjoyed it as a fusion of poetry, prose, and essays. Except for the end. I couldn't bring myself to read the ending.
"It'll be appreciated after you're dead." Tom looks over at me as he says this.
I swig a huge gulp of lukewarm coffee, shake my head, and glance over at him to size him up, to regain some semblance of pride. Sadness weighs his eyes down. It’s more emotion than I imagined from him.
'You poor bastard.' I hear him think to himself.
Tom flips off the lights and locks the door behind him as we all shuffle up into the temple. It was an unspoken tradition now to walk silently through the church, leaving our ramblings behind that heavy wooden door, down in the darkness.
The chatter picks up outside as we all man hug and go our separate ways. Sean belts out one final half-joke as he saunters backwards down the sidewalk.
"Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, and George W. Bush are in a burning building..."
No punchlines here Sean. Other than my life. I feel the same post-meeting depression that hits me on the walk home every Wednesday night. I haven’t written enough, I’m not good enough; I’m wasting so much time just existing. Merely living.
I walk back to my apartment, which is just a few blocks away, but it takes me twice as long tonight. My legs are wobbly and I feel anxious, more than usual. The streets of the East Village are empty and loneliness overtakes me. I want to stop thinking and I don't want to go home.
But I do. And there she is. Waiting for me. I tell her about how the meeting went. Detail out some of the highpoints as she sits vacantly on the couch. She’s recording the data, as is her function. She sits there like furniture, a fancy gadget that happens to be made of flesh and bone, although I can’t prove that she is human at all.
I go to the fridge and grab a beer. I pop the cap and stand there looking over at her. There’s nothing I can see about her that would indicate anything. A void of perfect function, she gives no information of herself, and defies my empathic vibe sense. The blankness surrounds her and I, of course, fill it with stories.
I imagine who she was before she started this. Whether she had done this before with other writers. If any of them felt the way I feel about her. This longing to be near her, to feel safe and like it all just doesn’t matter, because in the end, when it’s all over, nothing will matter. Just this moment, me watching her, wanting from afar.
This leads me to too much thinking, so to counteract it I take a few swigs of the beer and head to my room. I type up some ideas I had from the night and email them to myself. Ideas that would sit with all the other unread emails.
"I've got to write something."
I grab my handheld and sink into my papasan. I start typing away, drawing out an impossible romance. It was coming so easy, literally dancing out of my fingers and across the keys.
A warrior, burdened with a mission doomed from the start. He was hell-bent on killing the beast at the center of the Universe, although he could not remember why. A maiden is found lost along the way, her soul seeking salvation. It is only by chance that they cross paths and together they learn they are fated to topple an empire.
I finish the second act, stopping after they exit the labyrinth to finish off the beer and light a cigarette. I sit for a while, letting the last few words I had written resonate within my eyes before letting them seep into my brain.
It was a love story. Not my specialty, but I believe it’s what I had always secretly wanted to write. Something foolishly and hopelessly romantic with larger than life adventure and awash with grand gestures. It was naive and beautiful, if not a tad too ethereal and melodramatic.
I let the cigarette burn all the way to ash, then smoke the rest of the pack. I needed an ending to this, but how could I write up the end of love? How could I destroy something so precious, something so wrenched from my gut, something spoken truly from my heart?
'I won't end it. I refuse.' I decide, and bury the story among the rest of my thoughts.
I get up and brush my teeth. I watch her sleeping on the couch. Slowly I run my fingers along her hair and look down at her and let loose a sad sigh.
‘Who are you?’ I try to telepathically transmit to her brain.
I rinse my mouth and hit the light. I collapse into bed and roll over, hugging the covers tightly. My heart was racing my mind, and neither could possibly win. My soul in turmoil, I toss and turn.
And suddenly, I thought of a punchline.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Tower of Brahma - 50 - We're Building the New World: Order
1/14/08
They opened the door to my cell, my padded solitary confinement, without warning one day. A well-dressed man with perfect hair and a royal blue suit walked in wearing a smile that brimmed with empathic tenderness.
"Hello Charles. I'm Mike Gallows."
"Hey." It was all I could muster from beneath the drug slumber.
"Let's go for a walk." He extended his hand to me and helped me up.
I trailed along beside him, dragging my feet, as we made our way through some sort of building I don't recall entering. It was old and clinical, like an outdated mental hospital, and then transforming into an office building with the turn of a corner.
"This is our main office, for now." He waved his hands and cubicles, worker drones, computers, all seemed to materialize with his words.
As we walked, the business casual clad workers all peered out of their private hives to get a peek at this deranged madman the boss was giving the grand tour to. I hated them and their inquisitive eyes.
"We've got a few projects in the works, but we consider your book a top priority." I swung my head up towards him from my hunched stance. "I'm not sure if you know what your work has meant to some of us here."
"Where am I?" I don't remember sleeping.
"Well, that's sort of one of the tiny problems we're working on. We're not quite sure."
Gallows starts walking and as if on a leash, I lurch forward, shuffling along behind like an obedient dog. The office interior fades and a shimmering laboratory sparkles in its place.
A young lab technician, hiding behind mousy brown hair and glasses, tinkers with various, unscientific looking tools. Blunt objects, odds and ends from a junk drawer, and a handful of rocks. She continues to arrange them in some manner of specific order, known only to her, seemingly oblivious to us having entered her arena.
"Now, we're going to need you to hop up on here and let us have a look at you." Gallows guided me to some sort of medical surplus lounge chair and shoved me down into it.
He rotated around me, appearing in doctor's scrubs when he re-entered my line of sight. I began to feel a soothing comfort trickle down my body. Numb nothingness filled the everywhere of ache and pain. My teeth went first, then my chest, my limbs.
"Just sit back and relax and we'll see what's going on here." Gallows activated some out of sight lever, coercing the dental lay-z-boy to draw me deeper and deeper into comfortable oblivion.
I felt electromagnetic pulses, radioactive tracers, psychic emanators, all probing my body looking for disease. Seeking answers. Locating my soul.
When eternity had just started to become a teensy bit tiresome, the procedure ended. A bright light still shone on my exposed aura. I was vibrating, tingling pins and needles as physical sensation began to awaken within me.
"Well, everything seems to be in good working order, and I believe we can help you with the last piece you're missing." Gallows began to raise my chair up to a sitting position.
Sitting across from me, he appeared to be relieved. "Looks like you came through relatively unscathed, considering your story."
Gallows snapped off his latex gloves and jotted down some notes in a folder before handing them off to the assistant. A pure, silvery mirror was wheeling itself into the room, gliding on invisible monofilaments no doubt.
The mirror came to a stop just a few feet away. As Gallows readjusted it directly before me, I glanced over at the young lab assistant who was cleaning away the bric-a-brac that was strewn across the countertop. All that crap seemed awfully familiar and now possessed by some sentimental force that was overwhelming me.
"What is all that? What does this have to do with me? What is the tower...?"
I turned to face Gallows but instead saw my own reflection. I gazed upon my duplicate, my shimmering clone that truly existed nowhere, and I saw how lost he looked. I saw his despair and struggle, but how could you not with it weighing his face down like that.
That poor schmuck. All alone on the other side, unable to do much of anything. Just the exact opposite of myself, here in this cold, hard reality. But this reality didn't feel real. It hadn't in a long while. Before the book was written. Before moving to the city. Before the deal.
Innocence was the vital ingredient in this stranger's eyes. Unbitten by bitterness, my god, this simpleton was so long gone. I had forgotten what it was to be like you. To be lost and then refound. Bound by the immaterial, I buried you where they could never find you, the other side of here.
Over my howls of joy at this momentous occasion of me reclaiming my self, I overheard Gallows instruct the young girl to watch over me in these final stages.
"Be sure to wait until it fully dissolves, then give him the sedative. Let him take all of it in before he sleeps. Then have him meet the others."
Gallows gently tapped the edge of the chair and whispered, "Welcome home Charles. Everything will be amazing."
As I absorbed all that I had left behind, every good and decent fiber of my being, the whole of my sane mind, as all that soaked into me all I could think was that everything is already amazing.
It always has been. It always will be.
"Novus Ordo Colligo."
They opened the door to my cell, my padded solitary confinement, without warning one day. A well-dressed man with perfect hair and a royal blue suit walked in wearing a smile that brimmed with empathic tenderness.
"Hello Charles. I'm Mike Gallows."
"Hey." It was all I could muster from beneath the drug slumber.
"Let's go for a walk." He extended his hand to me and helped me up.
I trailed along beside him, dragging my feet, as we made our way through some sort of building I don't recall entering. It was old and clinical, like an outdated mental hospital, and then transforming into an office building with the turn of a corner.
"This is our main office, for now." He waved his hands and cubicles, worker drones, computers, all seemed to materialize with his words.
As we walked, the business casual clad workers all peered out of their private hives to get a peek at this deranged madman the boss was giving the grand tour to. I hated them and their inquisitive eyes.
"We've got a few projects in the works, but we consider your book a top priority." I swung my head up towards him from my hunched stance. "I'm not sure if you know what your work has meant to some of us here."
"Where am I?" I don't remember sleeping.
"Well, that's sort of one of the tiny problems we're working on. We're not quite sure."
Gallows starts walking and as if on a leash, I lurch forward, shuffling along behind like an obedient dog. The office interior fades and a shimmering laboratory sparkles in its place.
A young lab technician, hiding behind mousy brown hair and glasses, tinkers with various, unscientific looking tools. Blunt objects, odds and ends from a junk drawer, and a handful of rocks. She continues to arrange them in some manner of specific order, known only to her, seemingly oblivious to us having entered her arena.
"Now, we're going to need you to hop up on here and let us have a look at you." Gallows guided me to some sort of medical surplus lounge chair and shoved me down into it.
He rotated around me, appearing in doctor's scrubs when he re-entered my line of sight. I began to feel a soothing comfort trickle down my body. Numb nothingness filled the everywhere of ache and pain. My teeth went first, then my chest, my limbs.
"Just sit back and relax and we'll see what's going on here." Gallows activated some out of sight lever, coercing the dental lay-z-boy to draw me deeper and deeper into comfortable oblivion.
I felt electromagnetic pulses, radioactive tracers, psychic emanators, all probing my body looking for disease. Seeking answers. Locating my soul.
When eternity had just started to become a teensy bit tiresome, the procedure ended. A bright light still shone on my exposed aura. I was vibrating, tingling pins and needles as physical sensation began to awaken within me.
"Well, everything seems to be in good working order, and I believe we can help you with the last piece you're missing." Gallows began to raise my chair up to a sitting position.
Sitting across from me, he appeared to be relieved. "Looks like you came through relatively unscathed, considering your story."
Gallows snapped off his latex gloves and jotted down some notes in a folder before handing them off to the assistant. A pure, silvery mirror was wheeling itself into the room, gliding on invisible monofilaments no doubt.
The mirror came to a stop just a few feet away. As Gallows readjusted it directly before me, I glanced over at the young lab assistant who was cleaning away the bric-a-brac that was strewn across the countertop. All that crap seemed awfully familiar and now possessed by some sentimental force that was overwhelming me.
"What is all that? What does this have to do with me? What is the tower...?"
I turned to face Gallows but instead saw my own reflection. I gazed upon my duplicate, my shimmering clone that truly existed nowhere, and I saw how lost he looked. I saw his despair and struggle, but how could you not with it weighing his face down like that.
That poor schmuck. All alone on the other side, unable to do much of anything. Just the exact opposite of myself, here in this cold, hard reality. But this reality didn't feel real. It hadn't in a long while. Before the book was written. Before moving to the city. Before the deal.
Innocence was the vital ingredient in this stranger's eyes. Unbitten by bitterness, my god, this simpleton was so long gone. I had forgotten what it was to be like you. To be lost and then refound. Bound by the immaterial, I buried you where they could never find you, the other side of here.
Over my howls of joy at this momentous occasion of me reclaiming my self, I overheard Gallows instruct the young girl to watch over me in these final stages.
"Be sure to wait until it fully dissolves, then give him the sedative. Let him take all of it in before he sleeps. Then have him meet the others."
Gallows gently tapped the edge of the chair and whispered, "Welcome home Charles. Everything will be amazing."
As I absorbed all that I had left behind, every good and decent fiber of my being, the whole of my sane mind, as all that soaked into me all I could think was that everything is already amazing.
It always has been. It always will be.
"Novus Ordo Colligo."
Monday, November 2, 2009
The Tower of Brahma: Chapter 49 - Boy Cries Wolf
12/3/07
My brain is broken. Forehead feels hot to the touch as my mind boils alive in my skull. Something has gone horribly wrong.
I spend days at a time sleeping against the barrel of my gun, only waking when Spider comes to bring me some soup. I've let something out of my head, leaving whatever was left vulnerable, defenseless.
They send me to see a specialist, who specializes in something special no doubt. I don't care. Nothing feels real, no one believes me anymore, and there's nowhere to go. So, now I get to sit down with some egghead who wants to poke and prod me, work out my glitches. Awesome.
She comes in and catches my eye immediately. In fact I can't look away, or I won't, and I don't think I want to. She looks away for us both but keeps returning back to my gaze from behind her specs. The glasses frame her small, inquisitive eyes; amber pools drawing me in, eager to capture knowledge.
"Do you know why you're here?” She looks up from her clipboard and file folder. It seems we've started.
"I've a good idea, I suppose." So, I could meet you, I thought to myself.
"Well then, let's begin."
I pour out my soul to her, as it comes so easy to one of my disposition. I've known the zigs and zags of my life for years now. Recalled and examined the woes over and over and here it is all over again. Presented one more time in a rambling stream of sentimental sentences spilling forth and washing over her. She seems unfazed.
I give my diagnoses and the suggestions I tried to act upon to correct it all. The positive wavelengths I tried to ride all the way to a healthy mind. I scraped out the gunk and washed it clean. Molded the mess into a novel and sold it. Wiped my hands of the whole affair and walked away. God knows who's reading my travesty, if anyone at all.
She says very little in response. A flicker of life dances in her as I bombard her with the worst I have, laughing at my misfortunes which I'm sure come across as two-demential as they sound to me. I'm sure her own pains are worse, her suffering paramount to all others, but here she is trying to help me. Or maybe she's just earning her paycheck.
I want her to tell me I'm being selfish, or melodramatic, or that I'm too sensitive. And although I've dreaded it, fought the idea my whole life, that I need medication, that I should be drugged and mellowed out, well now that sounds so appealing. I don't want to be sitting on the edge of feeling too much anymore.
It's all lies. My repeated suffering and exorcising of personal demons. It's all flat, unemotional, detached anecdotes about this pretending madman charicature I've made myself into.
I hate being Charles Crown. I hate the Agent Fenris character in my book, always preferring to be Spider, the charismatic psychopath that does as he wants without reservation or consequence. A silent killer with no remorse. But I care, I feel.
"I care too much godammit!” I scream, pounding the table. She does not stir.
I kick back the chair and stand. "Why?! Why do I feel so much, yet nothing at all?!"
My anger swells, frustration simmering internally, until I truly feel mad. "I'm feeling something for god's sake! I can't just be making this all up! I just goddamn can not be!"
I flip the table and scream, "This is real fucking pain I feel! Why the fuck can't I just feel it, accept this bullshit, swallow the whole fucking sadness that's making me hate this whole godforsaken world?!"
I reach past the girl across from me who is no longer there and slam against the two-way mirror that they're watching me from behind. I rage against the glass, hoping that I am imbued with enough strength to shatter it where I'm sure the countless others before me were unable. I hope beyond hope that it's me that brings everything crashing down.
But I don't. I just crash to the floor myself in exhaustion, knuckles and palms bruised and bloodied. I'm crying everything out, tears mixing with blood as I wipe the evidence of weakness from my face. I'm trapped in here and no one is listening.
My brain is broken. Forehead feels hot to the touch as my mind boils alive in my skull. Something has gone horribly wrong.
I spend days at a time sleeping against the barrel of my gun, only waking when Spider comes to bring me some soup. I've let something out of my head, leaving whatever was left vulnerable, defenseless.
They send me to see a specialist, who specializes in something special no doubt. I don't care. Nothing feels real, no one believes me anymore, and there's nowhere to go. So, now I get to sit down with some egghead who wants to poke and prod me, work out my glitches. Awesome.
She comes in and catches my eye immediately. In fact I can't look away, or I won't, and I don't think I want to. She looks away for us both but keeps returning back to my gaze from behind her specs. The glasses frame her small, inquisitive eyes; amber pools drawing me in, eager to capture knowledge.
"Do you know why you're here?” She looks up from her clipboard and file folder. It seems we've started.
"I've a good idea, I suppose." So, I could meet you, I thought to myself.
"Well then, let's begin."
I pour out my soul to her, as it comes so easy to one of my disposition. I've known the zigs and zags of my life for years now. Recalled and examined the woes over and over and here it is all over again. Presented one more time in a rambling stream of sentimental sentences spilling forth and washing over her. She seems unfazed.
I give my diagnoses and the suggestions I tried to act upon to correct it all. The positive wavelengths I tried to ride all the way to a healthy mind. I scraped out the gunk and washed it clean. Molded the mess into a novel and sold it. Wiped my hands of the whole affair and walked away. God knows who's reading my travesty, if anyone at all.
She says very little in response. A flicker of life dances in her as I bombard her with the worst I have, laughing at my misfortunes which I'm sure come across as two-demential as they sound to me. I'm sure her own pains are worse, her suffering paramount to all others, but here she is trying to help me. Or maybe she's just earning her paycheck.
I want her to tell me I'm being selfish, or melodramatic, or that I'm too sensitive. And although I've dreaded it, fought the idea my whole life, that I need medication, that I should be drugged and mellowed out, well now that sounds so appealing. I don't want to be sitting on the edge of feeling too much anymore.
It's all lies. My repeated suffering and exorcising of personal demons. It's all flat, unemotional, detached anecdotes about this pretending madman charicature I've made myself into.
I hate being Charles Crown. I hate the Agent Fenris character in my book, always preferring to be Spider, the charismatic psychopath that does as he wants without reservation or consequence. A silent killer with no remorse. But I care, I feel.
"I care too much godammit!” I scream, pounding the table. She does not stir.
I kick back the chair and stand. "Why?! Why do I feel so much, yet nothing at all?!"
My anger swells, frustration simmering internally, until I truly feel mad. "I'm feeling something for god's sake! I can't just be making this all up! I just goddamn can not be!"
I flip the table and scream, "This is real fucking pain I feel! Why the fuck can't I just feel it, accept this bullshit, swallow the whole fucking sadness that's making me hate this whole godforsaken world?!"
I reach past the girl across from me who is no longer there and slam against the two-way mirror that they're watching me from behind. I rage against the glass, hoping that I am imbued with enough strength to shatter it where I'm sure the countless others before me were unable. I hope beyond hope that it's me that brings everything crashing down.
But I don't. I just crash to the floor myself in exhaustion, knuckles and palms bruised and bloodied. I'm crying everything out, tears mixing with blood as I wipe the evidence of weakness from my face. I'm trapped in here and no one is listening.
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