droolingheart

I have lately been visited at night by an enormous Russian man: forty or fifty years old, richly bearded, whose mother had him finish all of his vegetables and all of his milk. At least I think he is Russian. I can't get much from his accent, because he speaks very rarely, and even then with a mind-boiling softness.

He is focused on his work: he sweats. The skin around his eyes and mouth is pinched, is flushed and rigid. The expression he wears is the expression a razor would wear. I am splayed on a table, mostly nude, and he is tattooing my skin.

I ask What are you drawing? or at least that's what I want to ask. The words don't come. They turn into syrup, and they make the room darker.

He says nothing but glances up, like he has noticed a mosquito in the room, and clears the gutter of his throat and keeps working. His hands are chewed, and ribbed. They are wrinkled from ropeburn and effort and maybe hooks. I can smell him: sour wood and salt, and distance, and patience.

I ask A fisherman? or at least that's what I want to ask. You were a fisherman, weren't you?

And now I realize this is a dream: awake, I not only overlook details of people such as ropeburn, and patience, and maybe hooks, but also fail to piece them together into people.

He looks up again and I wish I could see what he is drawing. He is so focused. It must be something beautiful. But now the needle is gone and he is holding a knife - is wiping it on his pantsleg, is cleaning it - and tenderly he unzips me, and slowly he spills me, and gently he shows me the wires of me.

Ah, I say, or at least I want to say. My heart is a dazed thing in his hand: is gasping aloud: is drooling between his fingers. A surgeon, then.

[COM][plex]

Dinner was 35 mg of Concerta crushed in a fivedollarbill and taken up the nose with a Hardee's straw. It looked like Pixie Stick surgery. That's what Robbie thought, anyway. He must have messed up and missed, or something, because motherfucker the whole time it stuck and stung like habanero salt. He grunted and scrubbed his face with his hand while Laurel's shook-up sodapop laugh came from the bathroom.

"I think I cut my nose." He sulked back into the sofa and dropped his heels on her coffeetable. The straw was suddenly a fascinating thing. "You said trim it, didn't you?"

"The straw?"

"Mm-hm."

"Mm-hmmm."

Laurel had a magician's way of pulling sound along on some friendly, flirty, sing-songy string. Robbie loved when she did that. It struck him as cozy. Not grandma's quilt and lemon cake, no, not even close - more playground, Kool-Aid, lunchtable barter system domestic. Little Debbie for ham-on-white for Gummi Bears. Band-Aid barely-hanging-on-elbow. Cozy, in its own right.

Robbie smiled and listened to the pocketchange clicks of her makeup.

"How far up did you go?" she asked, sometime after his gears were good and going.

"Dunno. Didn't wanna see pink stuff coming out the other end, you know?" Robbie found himself double-checking both sides of the straw for just such pink stuff - just to check, just to see - and then again with his other hand. Weird things, straws. Hardee's straws. Robbie could bend and twist it all over the place. "I can kinda taste it. It's kinda sweet. In my throat, you know? I can kinda taste it. Not like normal, though - only back in my throat." The straw cracked splintery wintery all down one side and Robbie tossed it to the carpet. "It tastes sweet."

Except straws didn't really have sides, did they? "Why do they make it sweet?"

The cabinet confetticracked closed. "So they can hook 'em young, baby." It sounded like a purr. Like she was purring. Robbie could watch - was watching, looking at the scraps of her silhouette on the side of the wall. A dark warm tumble of pinwheel applejack, straight down the movieprojector hallway. Opening night for her finishing-touched hair. "You'll start seeing them in gumball machines, soon. Quarter apiece."

The bathroom lightswitch snapped into black and Laurel materialized: dressed like a themepark. Maybe just to tease him, or the both of them, or just herself, she splayed slow: like a licorice gymnast, up against the woodenframe of the hallway: melted ragdoll tabbycat, arched molasses back, jellybean skirt riding up lappingly.

Robbie loved her terrible then. Would do terrible things for her, then.

Then she wilted and made a face. "Hey, c'mon. Feet off the table."

He did her one better - he stood. Stood at full, starched, left-left-right-left attention. His hands itched. He wanted to grab her, to grab her, and then - then - well - Robbie wasn't completely sure what, then. He had an idea, sure, but he wasn't completely sure. He wanted to grab her.

"You look nice," he said eventually, and she laughed her laugh all fizz and aluminum. She showed her teeth and her neck when she did it.

"God. You're strung up, baby." Her eyes ate him whole. "You look like some sweaty little boy on his first date."

Did he? Robbie didn't think so. His hands weren't sweaty - just itchy. He wiped them on his pants.

She stepped around and turned her chin, sharp and birdy, dipping for the best angle of his pupils. "It hit you hard, didn't it? I told you to start slow. It's miles off from popping."

"Yeah."

"Triple the bioavailability, I think it is."

"Yeah." Robbie's hands itched.

"Guess I'm driving." Her arm came up and around his, darkly warmly tumble pinwheel applejack, keys jingling. She smiled and eskimo kissed him. "I've got some candy in my van, little boy..."

He slammed the door behind them, hard, once he managed to find the knob. Whatever was hanging on the back of it fell and shattered against the floor like a delinquent's Black Cat, right over Jacklyn's head, halfway through a sentence about the developmental patterns of glandular disorders throughout adolescence. She wanted to scream.

"Are you serious?" The textbook started to slip from her lap and she hastily grabbed it, crinkling some pages in her binder. She evil-eyed the ceiling like God had wronged her. "No, I mean really. Are you serious."

Outlining four chapters of bio would have been no-sweat, normally. Typically. If Jacklyn had had more than a single night to knock it out. If she had passed up on that ten-page tumor of an Ayn Rand essay. If it had been the five-page tumor of an essay, instead.

If if or if, then Jacklyn would have actual time for her actual schoolwork. As in, her work for school. As in, the comparatively dopey, plug and chug, only-takes-a-teaspoon-of-brains work. As in, say, outlines.

All that bullcrap was every kind of cake and pie and easy-peasy. Normally.

That extra essay, though - ten pages. Ten pages of Ayn Rand. Not that Jacklyn --

-- there was an obnoxious buzzing and she almost threw her alarm clock at the ceiling, ready to scream the building's policy on noise violations, but then realized it was just her cellphone, buried somewhere under her backpack on her desk, and sighed, and tried to settle back into trying to settle back into bio --

-- Jacklyn regretted it, no. At least not really. Another stab at another scholarship could never be a bad move. So for the Ten-Grand-Ayn-Rand essay? Show her the dotted line and she would sign it in blood. Actually scratch that. For ten grand, she would take a stab at her own kidneys.

Still, though.

Jacklyn pulled air in through her nose and - as slowly as possible, as smoothly as possible - let it out, out through her teeth, out around the plastic of her mechanical pencil. She had chewed through two already. "I don't even like Ayn Rand."

The phone tittered twice, warning of a low battery. Or voicemail? Something. Jacklyn took it as some divine cue for a break. Ten minutes, tops. She could pop some ginger tea in the microwave for three, and get dinner started in as much time. It would probably be cool enough to drink when she got back from checking the mail --

"Oh Chriiiiist," groaned something dead, or dying, from the bathroom.

"Mom?" Her textbook and binder tumbled to the floor as Jacklyn slipped off the bed. "Mom, you okay?"

Beatrice had gotten a nasty stomach bug from work. The past couple days could be summed up in the kitchen trash: 7-Up, saltines, a couple issues of Cosmo. It made perfect sense that Beatrice would catch something, considering the hours on her feet and all the dealing with sick people, but the idea still didn't quite take for Jacklyn. Even when Beatrice had pulled the thermometer from her own mouth, cold and damp and pale as fish at the kitchentable, shrugging - "Was bound to happen, I guess." - it simply did not fit together. It was one of those lopsided ironies that were only explored in sitcoms, in filler episodes. Like the mechanic with car trouble.

"Mom?" She tapped the bathroom door, gently. There was heavy breathing and cursing on the other side. "You okay? Mom? I'm coming in, okay?"

"Your funeral."

Jacklyn opened the door and gave herself a moment to ignore the salt slug shrivel of her insides. The big, watery, hornet's-nest smell of stomach acid was much stronger than she was expecting, but then she saw that vomit had gotten on the floor. "Oh, mom."

"'m fine. I'm okay." Beatrice was groping around for toilet paper blindly, with her forehead propped on the coralpink toiletseat. "Bit of a misfire. No problem."

"I'll get you a washcloth."

Beatrice mumbled something that might have been "don't bother," but Jacklyn was already back, already kneeling to wipe her mother's face clean. There was a bit of complaint but the job got done.

"This isn't so bad, from the other side." Beatrice sounded a little amused.

"Except for the whole puking-your-guts-out thing."

"Except for that."

And then she was cleaned up and being sent off to bed again.

"Can I at least sop up my own mess? Huh?" Her mother no longer sounded amused. She sounded a little embarrassed. When Beatrice was embarrassed she got angry, and so Jacklyn knew it was a good idea to be gentle about it.

"No. Go back to bed."

"Jackie --"

"I'll clean it up. Get some rest, okay?"

Her mother scowled at her. "You're gonna get ulcers like your aunt."

"I'm not going to get ulcers."

"Are you even done with your work? Aren't you busy?"

"I'm not busy. I got it." Jacklyn finished mopping up the vomit and flushed the toilet with her elbow. "No sweat."

The pipes gurgled and boiled when she did, Marcus scowled at his kitchenwall, at the sound of them. Just as he was headed for the faucet. It took the slightest things - just the tiniest, littlest thing - for the plumbing in this damn building to slack off into Chinese water torture. It took an hour to wash the dishes if someone even thought too hard.

He propped his hip against the sink, leaning, and wrung a hand over his new beard. He was getting fleecy. He was getting weak. Limping around an office and riding a desk and writing a pen was not what he liked, was not what he was used to. Every day his body was turning against him just a little more and Marcus could feel it.

Earlier he had studied the mirror and compared himself to himself. Six months back while under the badge: Polished leather panther, ripe bourbon sinew. This morning before his shower: Crooked cola alleycat, rotting on the bone.

The strings along his jaw flickered as Marcus watched himself. How did it get that bad? How did he let it? The shower behind him was finally running hot and wonderful but he ignored it, and traced himself like a stranger. The skin of his thigh was a good, smooth, milky coffee, healthy and rich, until the rip, until the hole, and there the skin was the skin of a burnt photograph: curled-up, curdled-in charcoal: ugly and fiendish.

By then the strings along his neck were flickering, too, his jaw clenched and pulling them along for the ride, and eventually by some unpunctual mercy the steam ate up the mirror.

Marcus leaned against the sink, and wrung a hand over his new beard.

"Daddy, I'm done."

He looked up to see his daughter again trying to squirm from her chair. Dinner had been served, to Janice's disgust, right in the middle of Coral Anna and the Sea, and because of this she spent most of it either stirring around her meatloaf and broccoli or staring at the television like it was a snakecharmer.

"Uh-uh." Marcus pulled up his chin and his eyebrows and looked at her. "You finish your plate."

"I'm done."

"Your plate clean?"

She said nothing, but kept watching the television like it took something from her.

Marcus scowled. The damn thing wasn't even turned on.

"You ain't even touched your broccoli. Wannem cut up?"

"I'm dooone..."

He moved behind her - limped behind her - and took his daughter's hands in his hands like a puppetmaster. "Cut 'em up."

"I'm done!"

"No you're not." They cut up her broccoli.

An ambulance started screaming, somewhere outside, and a dozen different windows slammed shut.

((One of my professors described writing as "a sort of neutered schizophrenia." That it involves "taking separate, neurotic pieces of oneself, constructing fleshy mouthpieces from them, and orchestrating one's own struggles and deceptions and death."

For a moment, we all reflected on that. Such things call for reflection - at least a little reflection. Reflection that I then shattered with: "I used to do that with Legos."

A few people cleared their throats uncomfortably. Then some guy in the back added "I still do that with Legos." IT WAS A GOOD DAY AND I WISH YOU'D BEEN THERE.

I enjoy neutered schizophrenia and I unearthed my mom's Raymond Carver book from my mattress and I am drinking ditchwater coffee from a Dixie cup and eating stretchy angel food cake with my fingers and I am thinking hard about Dali and life is not so terrible a thing.))

Slam Dunk, Man

By the time they cut Alan loose and he was back at the house, none of his clothes fit right. He was too leggy. His feet were bigger. There were gaps between the buttons of the button-ups and slack in the waists of the pants. Even with that nice caramel-colored belt that they gave him at his graduation party, the jeans would bunch up and outwards like they were gagging.

He gave up after about twenty minutes. He sat on his bed, and looked around. There were clothes all over. If there was a mirror in there, Alan could at least see what looked the least ridiculous on him. Alan wished there was a mirror.

Well, no.

Alan wished that they had left his mirror alone. Where he had left it. Right to the left of the door - right over the loose floorboard that was there.

Well, no.

That used to be there. They had sealed it up. Instead of the mirror there was a slinky Michael Jordan poster: threebyfour, in full kaleidoscope color. It was scotch-taped and a little slanted. The room had smelled smooth and new when Alan had first walked in, and it took him awhile to realize that it was coming from the poster: MJ had just taken it straight to the hole with more game than the Parker Brothers, was sticking it out with some major hangtime like he was renting out a place up there, with the dustbunny crowd in the background going absolutely ballistic here tonight, ladies and gentlemen, just absolutely ape, and Alan thought about tearing it down to see the police-chalk rectangle that it was hiding.

"Alan?"

There was a single belch of a knock at the door which immediately opened, and Alan's smiling mother eased in. She looked him up and down very quickly. And then one more time, smiling.

Alan's mother could talk and hold a smile with no problems. No mumbling or stretching her mouth too much. It was a good talent. It made her wonderful with people. She looked Alan up and down again, very quickly, just a bit of a flit of the eyes, and kept smiling.

"What would you like for dinner?" Her lips were straining like fishingline.

Alan sat for a moment. On his bed, hands in his lap; he needed a little time to think the question over. It wasn't one that had come up in the last nine months. He licked his lips, still thinking, and turned. "Steak?"

Her smile tugged and dipped. "Oh, um, but sweetie..." She was peeling at a flake in the doorframe with her thumbnail. "Steak would be a little... with a knife and all, I don't -- oh, no, I just mean that..."

Alan turned back to look into his closet. "Hamburgers."

"Hamburgers?"

"Hamburgers would be great."

"Oh okay, you bet."

Her thumbnail snicked at the flake in doorframe.

"It's just, you know, steak takes so long to make, and then--"

"It's okay."

"-- we don't even -- your father's blood pressure, you know?" She laughed, or maybe she was clearing her throat. "We cut way back on red meat, since you've been -- oh --"

"Hamburgers would be wonderful."

"Oh okay." Her thumb snicked at the flake. "Anything else special you want? For dessert? I just got some bubblegum ice cream."

"They don't fit right." Alan had his hands in his lap and was staring into the closet.

"We could... what?"

"These clothes." The cuffs of the dress shirt were choked halfway up his fishgutted arms. "None of them fit right."

She said nothing for a moment. Neither of them said anything for a moment. Everything was quiet, for a moment.

But then it passed and her thumbnail went back to work. "You can just wear what you wore for the graduation party, right?" Alan's mother was still smiling. He could hear it, even staring into the closet. "Or just, you know. Just throw on whatever you're -- you're comfy with. Okay?" She laughed, or maybe it was a belch. "You're having dinner, not going to court!"

And she laughed again while Alan nodded.

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay."

"Great." Her smile was full-sail as she swept back into the hallway. There was the sound of the fridge opening, and then of someone humming jazz.

Alan listened, and laid back on his bed, and looked up at the ceiling. Then he reached over for the caramel-colored belt. It was smooth and new - it smelled smooth and new. It was really a very nice belt. Versatile. It fit Alan just right, in all the right places.

He wondered if the light fixture would hold his weight.

((Michelle was talking about her lamp in her room in her host mother's house and how it was dangling quite precariously from a thin wire. So thin was this wire, she claimed, that one could allegedly "fish with it." (The validity of this assertion is still pending the deepest scrutiny.)

But anyway that somehow turned into a "fishingline smile" and somehow that turned into this and I have absolutely no idea how, what, I mean, I don't even.

let's get a goddamn forensics team in here or something, man, i mean goddamn))

Sarcophagal

Is that a word? I'd like it to be. The very utterance is getting my Spellcheck all flushed with indignity, but chalk that up to sour luck. I'm not letting sarcophagal, seductively useless little morsel that it is, be scratched out for the sake of form. No sir, no ma'am. Not after taking in a big drink of Emory this afternoon.

Maybe it's just the spoiled Surburbanite in me, but I can't help gawking at abandoned buildings as I pass them by. Abandoned houses in particular. I've spent most of my life in areas that - while they had some spat-up old gas stations lying around - were generally clear of them. Trimmed off neatly from the rest of the rest. They are quaint little artifacts to smile at while cruising over to Chick-Fil-A, tucked away on the side of the road, and not given much thought except by adolescents who need an avenue for adolescence.

Here, they are a necrosis. A fully-functioning one. An endearing one, even. Every minty-lawn sprinkler-system Volkswagen-veneer street has some weedchoked charity case: swaybacked, ramshackle, rundown. All Such Phrases Apply Within. There are literally dozens of gutted-out buildings within walking distance of campus. Barns and cabins and sheds and shacks - all perfectly preserved cripples. It's like God split a pouch of marbles over Emory, and just let them scatter.

But getting back to sarcophagal. (doesn't it just feel nice on the ears?) While staring down a ravaged pile of piles, glass and splinters and digested furniture, I had a very rare and very clear moment of conviction: "I'd pass on Giza. When I kick it, they should just kick me into one of these."

If the sun sticks around for the weekend, I'll try and charm a digital camera out of the IT center. Snap a pic or two for you, my beloved Internet, of these twisted little things. I swear that most of them would cave in the roof of your mouth.