"You can't park here," I said to the lady. "You're parking in front of a home where handicapped kids stay. They load and unload them right there. You're going to get towed."
"I'm handicapped," the woman said, avoiding eye contact. She had big, curly blonde hair that hid her face well. "I have a sticker on my windshield. I'm handicapped."
"No, there are handicapped kids that go to this building," Michelle explained, pointing at the building. "Para Transpo drops them off and picks them up here."
"There's no OC Transpo sign," she said.
There was, however, an obvious no parking sign. Furthermore, someone had placed several upside down green garbage cans along side where she parked, and each can said, NO PARKING on it.
"You're going to get towed," I said.
She ignored me and started walking off towards the concert. At a guess, I'd say she was in her late forties. It was roughly fifteen minutes before the Kiss concert started, and she was desperate to get there on time. That's why she picked a spot that every other car had obviously ignored, because they read all the signs.
It's Blues Fest in Ottawa again. Kiss, at Blues Fest? Right, because Blues Fest has nothing to do with the blues. Except for those of us in our neighbourhood. We sing the blues every night there's a concert.
It's nice to see the bylaw officers out, ticketing cars. A parking ticket during a special event runs you around $70, one bylaw officer informed me. All the same, people park as close to the show as they can.
And when they're not parking illegally, they're pissing on our property. One guy told his friends he would catch up, he was just going to take a leak. He then walked into our co-op, ready to go behind a tree and piss.
When two female members of the co-op confronted him -- they were standing right there when he announced he had to pee -- the guy called them uptight cunts and said he could piss where he wanted and that's why "god invented trees". While one co-op member was on hold with the cops, the other lost patience and turned a garden hose on the guy. That was the only way to make him go away.
Yes, people are selfish assholes. What's more amazing is that they're unapologetically selfish assholes. Catch them urinating on your home, and they say, "Stop giving me a hard time." Catch them blocking handicapped kid drop off zones, and they're indignant that you would dare to speak to them.
It gets worse every year. I can only hope that the city is going to make a killing with all the parking tickets they're handing out. Maybe that can held fund a concert where we can hear some blues. You know, instead of the garbage they play at Blues Fest.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Twitter Poems
When I first looked at Twitter, I thought it was the retarded little brother of blogging. They call it micro-blogging -- a tweet can only be 140 characters long. Who has an attention span that short? Teenagers.
But then I saw how Twitter could work as a news feed. The New York Times and CBC both have twitter feeds. Every tweet they send out features a brief headline with a link to the full story. And then I discovered the ability to tweet a link to a picture, sound file, or video. With an iPhone, and the right application, you can do all of that on the go. Very cool.
I also use Facebook, but it often feels like a maze of options. It's easy to get lost. Twitter's streamlined nature makes this even more obvious. Forget walls and notes and status updates and applications and surveys and quizzes and all that garbage. Twitter gives you one simple feed.
And then there's Twitter poetry. Can you write a meaningful poem in 140 characters or less?
Here are all the poems I have tweeted, so far.
* * *
The infant child up and died
but managed his first step at 5.
How'd baby manage the trick?
Daddy's skill at mechanics.
* * *
Crackheads are a horror.
Wine collectors are connoisseurs.
Escargot or just a slug?
Only one gets crushed in the war on drugs.
* * *
We are all so soft and sweet
Let us kill and chew and eat!
Though we haven't eaten long,
Soon all of us will be all gone.
* * *
If you're interested in seeing my tweets, just follow nikmaack on Twitter.
But then I saw how Twitter could work as a news feed. The New York Times and CBC both have twitter feeds. Every tweet they send out features a brief headline with a link to the full story. And then I discovered the ability to tweet a link to a picture, sound file, or video. With an iPhone, and the right application, you can do all of that on the go. Very cool.
I also use Facebook, but it often feels like a maze of options. It's easy to get lost. Twitter's streamlined nature makes this even more obvious. Forget walls and notes and status updates and applications and surveys and quizzes and all that garbage. Twitter gives you one simple feed.
And then there's Twitter poetry. Can you write a meaningful poem in 140 characters or less?
Here are all the poems I have tweeted, so far.
* * *
The infant child up and died
but managed his first step at 5.
How'd baby manage the trick?
Daddy's skill at mechanics.
* * *
Crackheads are a horror.
Wine collectors are connoisseurs.
Escargot or just a slug?
Only one gets crushed in the war on drugs.
* * *
We are all so soft and sweet
Let us kill and chew and eat!
Though we haven't eaten long,
Soon all of us will be all gone.
* * *
If you're interested in seeing my tweets, just follow nikmaack on Twitter.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Poem: Cemetery Hill
Cemetery Hill, that's where I work.
I put dead folks down in the dirt.
I bury mommies, daddies, girls and boys.
When they're dead they don't make noise.
Only sometimes, I make a mistake
and they're not dead, just not awake.
I guess then they make some sound
but I can't hear 'em through the ground.
So, dead or alive, screaming or still,
it's quiet up on Cemetery Hill.
I put dead folks down in the dirt.
I bury mommies, daddies, girls and boys.
When they're dead they don't make noise.
Only sometimes, I make a mistake
and they're not dead, just not awake.
I guess then they make some sound
but I can't hear 'em through the ground.
So, dead or alive, screaming or still,
it's quiet up on Cemetery Hill.
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Dead Baby Jokes
I have been working on this story, in many different forms, for years. I don't know why it suddenly came out, all pink and healthy and crying, but it did. Many thanks to a university professor whose name I have forgotten. He assigned us one of those stereotypical creative writing exercises, and it's what spawned this story. I broke all the rules to the exercise because I thought it was stupid. But it gave me an interesting idea.
As always, feedback of any kind is appreciated. Email me at crediblewitness@gmail.com or leave a comment.
DEAD BABY JOKES
by Nikolaus Maack
Julia entered the bedroom, looked into the crib, and saw the baby was dead. It was obvious. She could tell just looking at it. The sight froze Julia in place -- she just stood there, staring down at the thing, not knowing what to do. After a minute or so, she made a conscious decision to check how she was feeling. She wasn't sad. Instead, Julia was overcome with a sense of relief. It was the same sort of feeling she had waking up from a dream, realizing a terrible experience wasn't real.
There was this baby, and she had to care for it all the time. It cried, it latched on to her, it made demands. She could hardly ever leave the house. She couldn't have a life. Everyone expected Julia to love this baby with all her heart -- only she didn't. She hated it. And now Julia was waking up. There was no baby. It was dead. All the pressure, all the pain, all the worry, the failure to bond, the expense -- all her problems disappeared. This little blue face, the brown eyes open wide, the chest not moving -- it meant she was free again.
The baby was so very still. So silent. The tiny fingers clenched into fists, the grim little line that was its mouth, the delicate blue tinge of its pink skin... It was strangely beautiful. Funny, when it was alive, she never thought of it as beautiful. In death, it looked like a piece of art. It was an intricate sculpture.
Him, she corrected herself. Not "it". Him. She'd been doing that ever since she brought the baby home -- calling him an it. Why did she do that?
I should do something, she thought. I should tell Roger. She sat down on the edge of her king-sized bed and stared at the thing in the crib. They'd kept the baby in their own bedroom. It was less than a month old.
Once she told her husband, everything would change. Roger would cry. He would panic, dial 9-1-1. Scream. Yell. She couldn't face that right now. This was her moment.
Julia just sat there, in the darkened bedroom, listening to the complete silence. Basking in it. How terrible it would be, to destroy this tranquility. Why did Roger have to ruin everything? Why did he always upset her? She inhaled deeply, stared, and waited.
After she'd been in there for fifteen minutes or so, she heard Roger coming down the hall. He was looking for her. Then he called her name. And finally he was in the room, standing next to her. When Roger saw the dead baby, he frantically scooped it up in his hands, moaning, "No, no, no!" and then collapsed on the floor, on to his knees. He held it tenderly in his big hands, sobbing great big shuddering sobs that shook his entire body, as though he were about to explode apart.
Julia knelt down next to him, and put a reassuring hand on his back, stroking him faintly.
Roger's chaos, she thought. Right on schedule.
* * *
Q: How do you make a dead baby float?
A: Take your foot off its head.
* * *
Julia's life felt like riding a wave. Her birth was a shipwreck, and ever since then she'd been clinging to a scrap of wood, sitting on top of an enormous wave that rolled across the ocean. It was never up to her where she went or what happened to her. She went where the wave took her. She hoped some day to be dropped on dry land. But that never happened. The wave just went on and on.
All of her friends from college decided to travel through Europe. So Julia went too. She met Roger, a fellow traveler, working in the same hotel as her. They started a romance, and lived together in West Berlin for three months. He proposed. Not knowing what else to do, she said yes. She wasn't sure she loved him -- but she'd been saying "I love you" for a long time. It made him happy and seemed the thing to do. Roger was likeable enough. He seemed reliable.
They moved back to Canada. For a while, they lived with Julia's parents and saved their money. Then they bought a house. They spent a long time choosing furniture and decorating. And then, apparently, it was time to have kids.
Looking back, trying to figure out how it all happened, Julia couldn't make any sense of it. She never really remembered choosing to do anything. A life sort of grew up around her, without any of her input.
Roger said, "Let's move in together," and she said yes.
He said, "Will you marry me?" and she said she would.
He said, "Let's move back to Canada," and she agreed.
He said, "Let's buy a house," and she went along with it.
And then he said, "Let's have a baby," and she smiled and said okay.
Over and over, she'd agreed with him. These decisions might look like choices, to an outside observer. But to Julia, she was just riding the wave. She agreed with Roger because she didn't know what else to do with herself.
And then one day, she was in the hospital, her legs spread wide, in intense pain. And someone dumped this messy little creature on her stomach and said, "Congratulations, it's a boy."
She looked down at it, feeling nothing, and asked herself, how did this happen? How did she get here? This was something she let happen that she could never take back.
Or so she had thought.
* * *
Q: What's the difference between a dead baby and a trampoline?
A: You take your boots off to jump on a trampoline.
* * *
The only thing more depressing than picking out a crib for a baby is picking out a coffin. Julia and Roger went to a funeral home together. Roger said they had to do this as a couple -- it would help them heal and stay together.
"So many couples break up," Roger told her, "due to the death of a child."
Julia nodded, wondering where he'd learned that particular piece of trivia. Probably from one of the many books he'd bought on the subject. "Grieving for Idiots." "Mourning the Death of Your Child for Dummies".
At first, they sat in an office, flipping through a picture book of possibilities. These were coffins specifically for children that would have to be special ordered. Many of the child coffins looked like cribs. Some were even blue or pink, as though a coffin were just another piece of clothing for your baby. Several pages were devoted to all natural wicker coffins. To Julia, they looked like boxes to store fish.
"None of these feel like real coffins to me," Roger said.
Next, they went down into the basement, where the "real coffins" were kept. They were lined up in angled rows, like cars parked at a slant, a gap between each parking spot. They were all adult-sized, but some worker all in black told them smaller versions could be made.
"Maybe this one," Roger said, looking at a casket.
Julia nodded. "Maybe," she agreed.
But really, she didn't care and was hardly paying attention. All of these coffins looked the same -- shiny wooden boxes that would be buried in dirt. And a funeral for something barely alive three weeks seemed extravagant.
Cemeteries were such a waste of land. Roger's parents had a plot of land in a cemetery. They offered Roger and Julia part of the plot, to bury the dead baby. Roger accepted, of course. Julia supposed it was the sort of present you can't turn down.
Better to cremate the dead baby, put the ashes in a vase. Then you put the vase on display on the mantle for a month or so. One day, you put the vase in some back cupboard, and forget about it. Wasn't that the modern way?
Julia said none of this. She could tell Roger was in a lot of pain, so she kept this sympathetic, mournful look on her face. Feigning sorrow was so tiring. Roger of course assumed she was tired because she was full of sorrow. So it all worked out.
"What about this one?" he asked. "I like this one."
"I don't know, Roger," Julia said.
"You're right. The first one was better."
It doesn't matter what I say, Julia realized. Roger couldn't hear her. Or maybe she just never said anything real. Julia mumbled random words, and Roger interpreted the gibberish into something sensible. How long had that been going on? Since the day they met, she supposed.
Why was she only noticing this now? Maybe it was the contrast between their feelings. She was so happy the baby was dead and out of their lives, hiding the joy as best she could. And Roger was so depressed. That difference -- it brought new clarity to her.
"So, we're agreed?" Roger asked, pointing at a coffin.
"Yes," Julia said, glancing at it. The coffin was a large, white monstrosity.
Roger got out his credit card. Buying a coffin, in the end, was just like buying anything else.
* * *
Q: What's the difference between a truck load of bowling balls and a truck load of dead babies?
A: You can't unload bowling balls with a pitchfork.
* * *
There was an article in the paper once. A fat woman went into a public bathroom with what she thought were intestinal cramps. Maybe she'd eaten a bad burrito. Only she didn't have a crap -- the fat woman gave birth. Right there, in the Wal Mart bathroom. The woman never even realized she was pregnant. Her size had hidden the pregnancy for the entire nine months. And she was so out of touch with her body, she'd never felt a thing.
That's what Julia's pregnancy was like. Her stomach grew, her back hurt -- but she never felt very different.
Roger and Julia went to birthing classes together at a community centre. The other women were all glowing and serene. Like fat Buddhas.
"I was never very spiritual," one woman confided to the class, "until I got pregnant."
"It's hard to be an atheist when you're experiencing the miracle of life," someone quipped in agreement.
All the women smiled, nodding. And Julia nodded too, vacantly. But inside she was thinking, what the hell are these idiots talking about?
A foetus is a parasite. No better than a tapeworm. It steals nutrients from the host. No one ever looks at a tapeworm and makes vapid comments about "the miracle of life". If anything, getting pregnant proves there is no god. Life is all about genetic machinery, desperate to perpetuate its own existence. Sex feels good, so you're tricked into getting pregnant. And the parasite grows, and hormones in your head force you to bond with the thing. These biochemical deceptions are called "motherly love".
Only it doesn't always work that way. Julia, it seemed, was a special case.
She felt a sort of perverse pride when she failed to lactate, and they had to bottle feed the thing. Take that, you tapeworm, she thought.
* * *
Q: What's the difference between a dead baby and a styrofoam cup?
A: You don't harm the ozone layer when you burn a dead baby.
* * *
Something woke Julia up in the middle of the night. Maybe a sound. Or just a feeling. The bedside clock showed 3 AM, and she was wide awake, staring into the darkened room. It was unusual for her to wake up like this. She always slept soundly. Roger was sound asleep next to her, his face deep in his pillow.
Julia sat up, certain something in the bedroom woke her. Something moved. There it was, in the air -- a shape hovering in place, over the foot of the bed. A bat, maybe, she thought. It took a while for her mind to process what she was seeing. It was her dead baby. It was floating in the air, flapping its arms slowly, as though they were wings. The baby looked pretty much the same as it looked when she found it dead in its crib.
It had on a diaper and the pinkish skin was tinted blue. The eyes were open wide, staring at nothing.
"I'm dead," it said in a calm voice, its lips not moving, "because you're dead."
It had a cartoon baby voice, almost lisping. It would have been funny if it weren't so horrifying.
"I'm alive," Julia whispered.
"You're not. You've always been dead. You've never been alive."
"That's not true," she said, getting irritated. "You're lying."
"And because you're dead, you only give birth to dead things."
"You get out of here. You don't belong here."
"What do you mean?" the dead baby asked. It flew closer to Julia, lower and towards her face, always slowly flapping its arms. "Of course I belong here. I live here. This is my home. You're my mother. Aren't you my mother?"
The little blue face approached Julia, seeming to fill her vision completely. She scrambled to get away from it, pulled her legs up, grabbed hold of the headboard, pressing herself against the wall without turning away. She wanted it gone. Forever.
"Get out of here!" Julia screamed, "You don't belong here! You don't even have a name!"
Her yelling woke Roger up. "Honey, what is it?" he asked. He fumbled for the bedside lamp. When he turned it on, the room filled with light and the dead baby disappeared.
Julia cried and shook. Her body was hysterical, but her mind felt clear. What was that all about, she wondered? A dream. A nightmare. An hallucination.
Roger held her and told her it was all right. He wasn't at all disturbed by her yells or her crying. If anything, he seemed a little relieved. The idiot thought she was finally grieving.
But that wasn't what she was doing at all. Was it?
* * *
Q: What is charred black and screams?
A: A baby getting his toy out of the fireplace.
* * *
"We need to put a name on the gravestone," Roger said.
"I don't want to talk about it," Julia said, her face pointed down at her bowl of cereal.
They were eating in the "breakfast nook". That's what Roger called the cramped little booth tucked into an awkward corner of the kitchen. Roger thought it was cute, and it was one of the deciding factors in buying the house.
"We need to discuss these things," Roger said. "It's painful, but it has to be done."
Painful, Julia thought. That wasn't it at all. She was bored of talking about the dead baby. Tomorrow was the funeral. Maybe once it was in the ground, they could talk about something else for a change.
"We put off giving him a name for so long," Roger said. "We have to give him a name. Something to put on the marker."
"No," Julia said firmly. "No name."
"But... why?" Roger asked.
Because I had a nightmare, Julia thought. The dead baby woke me in the middle of the night, floating above my bed, accusing me of terrible things. Giving it a name would make it all the more real. Keep it vague. I can forget the thing if it's vague.
Roger said, "I was thinking we could name him after my grandfather -- Michael. What do you think?"
And that was it. The dead baby was named. The name was in the air, and nothing Julia said could take it away again. There was no way for her to fight it.
"Fine," Julia said, her voice flat. "Michael works just fine."
"Are you sure?" Roger asked. "I don't want to force a name on you."
"It's fine."
* * *
Q. Why do babies have soft spots on their heads ?
A. So the nurses can carry them around five at a time.
* * *
The service was in the same funeral parlour where they picked out the coffin. Family and friends were there -- maybe fifteen people. Roger said they should keep it small. They were Roger's friends, really. Julia didn't have any real friends of her own. She didn't seem to have the time or the energy for them.
Her family made an appearance. They didn't really speak to her, beyond a few platitudes. Julia's sister said, "How you holding up?" and that was pretty much it. Everyone stared at their shoes and said it was a shame. Her father smelled suspiciously of booze.
I don't even have to lie to my family, Julia thought. They can't even pretend to care.
Roger's parents -- Albert and Lorraine -- insisted on hugging her. They were old, white haired people who always seemed to be leaning forward in an earnest, interested way. They creeped Julia out.
Albert was a doctor and he carried a black bag with him. A little black bag of doctor's tricks, brought specifically to save Julia should she get all girly and faint. Were her inner feelings so buried no one could see them?
"Oh Julia," Lorraine said, and started to cry.
Julia recoiled slightly from her mother-in-law. I'm going to have to comfort her, she thought. Or does she expect me to cry too and hug her? What the hell am I going to say to her?
But Albert stepped in, taking hold of his wife by the shoulders and whispering something in her ear.
Roger's parents were so sane and reasonable. It confused Julia to no end.
When everyone was settled, Roger stood up and made a speech. Julia hardly listened. She was so tired. And she'd heard the speech already. Roger ran it by her, when he was writing it. This was a non-religious ceremony, but he had wondered if maybe the words "precious miracle" were still appropriate to describe the fleeting moments they'd shared with their child? Christ, it was disgusting.
Julia did not get up to speak. She'd told Roger she had no intention of saying anything and he said he understood. Whatever that meant.
Ten minutes later, Roger tearfully finished talking and sat down next her. When Julia didn't get up to speak, everyone stared with sympathetic, understanding looks on their faces.
They assumed because she was a woman and a mother that she was completely devastated. Women are so fragile. They have a special bond with their children. Women are emotional and empathetic and caring and nurturing and gentle and kind and...
Fuck all that sexist bullshit, Julia thought.
* * *
Q: What's red, sits in the front of a mirror, and gets smaller and smaller?
A: A baby combing it's hair with a potato peeler.
* * *
There'd been some sort of mistake, and they dug an adult-sized grave instead of one suitable for the tiny casket. Julia heard the cemetery staff -- two anonymous men in black suits -- apologizing to Roger. And because the hole was the wrong size, the device to lower the coffin wouldn't work. They'd have to use ropes, do it the old fashioned way. Roger bit his lip, but said it was fine.
The grave looked like an enormous pit. As far as Julia was concerned, it could never be deep enough.
A priest who wasn't really a priest but just some man with a deep voice -- he read a passage from a book of poetry. The words barely registered. Julia was curious, and strained to hear, but it was like her senses refused to comply with her demands.
"...at peace... sudden... mysterious... life... miracle..."
Those were the only words she could make out. Why are all funerals the same? Julia wondered.
Roger stood next to her. And Roger's parents were there too, watching her, sympathetic looks on their weepy faces. Julia's own family were supposed to be around, but had mysteriously never arrived. Knowing her family, they'd simply gone home. Later they'd give her some feeble excuse about getting lost on the way to the cemetery. The graveside was what, a twenty minute drive from the funeral home? How incompetent and embarrassing her family was. How lazy.
As she was thinking these idle thoughts, hardly paying any attention to her surroundings, the two funeral parlour employees began lowering the coffin with the ropes. One of the men shifted slightly, to get a better grip, and the rope slipped, causing the coffin to wobble.
That was just enough for the lid to open a crack -- Julia swore it had opened. And the dead baby, Michael, floated out and up, flapping his arms like wings. He hovered over the grave, in front of Julia's face. The dead eyes looked blankly at nothing.
"You're dead," Michael said in his cartoon baby voice. "You should be down there in the hole. Not me."
I'm hallucinating again, Julia thought. She looked around, to see how the others were reacting. They weren't looking at a flying dead baby, at Michael. They were staring down, or looking at the pseudo priest. Lorraine turned to face Julia, and gave a weak little supportive smile.
"They can't help you," Michael said, still hanging in space. "I'm no hallucination. I'm real. And I'm going to be with you forever. You can never get rid of me. I'll float along side of you everywhere you go, watching you. Reminding you that you're dead. That you were born dead. You never say what you want to say and you never do what you want to do. You just drift along, your eyes barely open, letting Roger, my daddy, make all your decisions."
"Shut up," Julia whispered loudly. "Shut up."
The fake priest faltered in his poetry reading, then simply stopped.
"Honey?" Roger asked. "What's the matter?"
"You're dead, mommy," Michael said in his cartoon baby voice. "You're dead. You've always been dead."
"Shut up!" Julia yelled. "Shut up! You loathsome thing, I never wanted you! I never wanted to have a baby, I never wanted to be a mother!"
Roger, his eyes wide, barked, "Julia!" And then more quietly, "Please."
Albert, standing next to his son, whispered to him reassuringly, "Grief takes many forms. Go easy on her."
Julia turned on them, her face demonic, her eyes wide, her mouth gaping and savage.
"I'm not grieving. Oh please believe me, I'm not. I couldn't give a shit. At all. I'm glad the baby died. I never wanted a baby. I never wanted a husband. Or a house. I just didn't know what else to do. I'm glad he died." She held up her trembling, twisted hands and said, "I only wish I'd had the courage to wrap my hands around his tiny throat and choke the life out of him myself."
Albert was digging through his doctor's bag of tricks, looking for the right pill, potion, or injection to shut her up. Roger staggered back as if struck, then fell to his knees to cry again -- the fucking faggot. Lorraine was sobbing, her hands bunched together under her chin. The fat fake priest had dropped his pretty book of poetry in the dirt.
"That's it, mother," Michael said. "Tell them all your secrets. Bring it all out into the open. Show them what a loathsome thing you are."
"I will kill you myself," Julia yelled, and in one motion turned and threw herself at the flying baby. He deftly slipped from her fingers, floating up higher, and Julia tumbled into the open grave.
* * *
Q: What's pink and red and silver and crawls into walls?
A: A baby with forks in its eyes.
* * *
When she came to a few seconds later, it was dark and damp. She turned her head and saw an earthy wall a few inches from her face. Underneath her was the coffin. Her weight had crushed it. A smashed egg, she thought strangely. Her egg. Did that make this grave her nest? Her womb?
High above her, she could hear the voices of her husband, his parents, and the two attendants, all trying to figure out how to get her out of there or what to do next.
Albert was saying, "We can't move her -- she could have damaged her spine!"
The others were all disagreeing or agreeing with him in a mad babble.
The fake priest was yelling into a cellphone for an ambulance.
I'll fight them, she realized. I'll fight them if they try to move me. I'm staying down here. I'm never coming out. This is where I belong.
Julia tried to roll over. She wanted to look up at the sky, at Michael. Everyone started yelling at her not to move, but she paid no attention. Her left leg felt strange. Numb. Maybe she'd broken it.
On her back, staring up, she could see Michael floating above, blocking out the sun. The little fucker, she thought. The cursed tapeworm. If only she could get him close enough to her, so she could strangle him. Kill him again. But what would he want? Her son. A dead son born from a dead mother, from a dead womb.
A weird thought came to Julia, and a twisted smile crept on to her face. She began to unbutton her blouse.
"Is this what you want?" she yelled. "Are you a hungry little dead baby?"
The panicking people above her fell silent, stunned. In the distance was the sound of an approaching ambulance siren.
Julia opened up her shirt, unclasped her bra, and offered her breast to the ghost of her dead son. She would make milk, damn it. She would. Squeezing herself as hard as she could, something gave, and Julia let out a yell of triumph. But the feeling was short lived. A fluid oozed out of her breast -- greenish black and sour, more like pus than milk. The stench of it made Julia gag a little. The milk in her tits had curdled, rotted.
Michael floated above her. He didn't fly any closer or say anything.
Julia let out a humiliated sob of pain. She produced the kind of rancid milk that not even a dead baby would drink.
* * *
Q: Why do doctors always bring boiling water to a birth?
A: In case the baby dies, they can make soup.
* * *
"There's postpartum depression. And then there's postpartum psychosis. It's very rare."
That's what the doctors whispered to Roger. Julia heard everything, and resented them talking about her like she wasn't in the room. They were treating her like an object. Of course, ever since they pulled her out of the grave she refused to move or speak. Dead people don't move. Dead people don't talk.
Now she just lay strapped down in a hospital bed, staring up at the ghost of her dead baby. Michael floated a few inches above her chest, facing her, always flapping his little arms in lazy waves. They stared at each other, Julia and Michael, eye to eye. Not speaking.
Julia knew she was dead. As dead as her baby. And dead people don't move and dead people don't talk. So she would just lie there, staring at the dead baby in front of her. Michael would make sure she stayed that way -- obeyed the rules.
They would medicate her. And maybe her thinking would clear up. And maybe Michael would disappear. But even if Julia couldn't see him, he would always be there. Always watching her. Always making sure she stayed dead, until the day she died.
Julia stared into the dead eyes of her dead baby -- cloudy yellow orbs -- and stayed absolutely still. And she felt a strange thrill of pleasure. Not moving. Doing nothing. Being dead. She'd gotten off the wave that dragged her through her life. She was on dry land, for the first time ever.
Finally, Julia was doing exactly what she wanted to do.
* * *
Q: What is 12 inches long, cold and stiff, and makes a woman scream in the morning?
A: Crib death.
As always, feedback of any kind is appreciated. Email me at crediblewitness@gmail.com or leave a comment.
DEAD BABY JOKES
by Nikolaus Maack
Julia entered the bedroom, looked into the crib, and saw the baby was dead. It was obvious. She could tell just looking at it. The sight froze Julia in place -- she just stood there, staring down at the thing, not knowing what to do. After a minute or so, she made a conscious decision to check how she was feeling. She wasn't sad. Instead, Julia was overcome with a sense of relief. It was the same sort of feeling she had waking up from a dream, realizing a terrible experience wasn't real.
There was this baby, and she had to care for it all the time. It cried, it latched on to her, it made demands. She could hardly ever leave the house. She couldn't have a life. Everyone expected Julia to love this baby with all her heart -- only she didn't. She hated it. And now Julia was waking up. There was no baby. It was dead. All the pressure, all the pain, all the worry, the failure to bond, the expense -- all her problems disappeared. This little blue face, the brown eyes open wide, the chest not moving -- it meant she was free again.
The baby was so very still. So silent. The tiny fingers clenched into fists, the grim little line that was its mouth, the delicate blue tinge of its pink skin... It was strangely beautiful. Funny, when it was alive, she never thought of it as beautiful. In death, it looked like a piece of art. It was an intricate sculpture.
Him, she corrected herself. Not "it". Him. She'd been doing that ever since she brought the baby home -- calling him an it. Why did she do that?
I should do something, she thought. I should tell Roger. She sat down on the edge of her king-sized bed and stared at the thing in the crib. They'd kept the baby in their own bedroom. It was less than a month old.
Once she told her husband, everything would change. Roger would cry. He would panic, dial 9-1-1. Scream. Yell. She couldn't face that right now. This was her moment.
Julia just sat there, in the darkened bedroom, listening to the complete silence. Basking in it. How terrible it would be, to destroy this tranquility. Why did Roger have to ruin everything? Why did he always upset her? She inhaled deeply, stared, and waited.
After she'd been in there for fifteen minutes or so, she heard Roger coming down the hall. He was looking for her. Then he called her name. And finally he was in the room, standing next to her. When Roger saw the dead baby, he frantically scooped it up in his hands, moaning, "No, no, no!" and then collapsed on the floor, on to his knees. He held it tenderly in his big hands, sobbing great big shuddering sobs that shook his entire body, as though he were about to explode apart.
Julia knelt down next to him, and put a reassuring hand on his back, stroking him faintly.
Roger's chaos, she thought. Right on schedule.
* * *
Q: How do you make a dead baby float?
A: Take your foot off its head.
* * *
Julia's life felt like riding a wave. Her birth was a shipwreck, and ever since then she'd been clinging to a scrap of wood, sitting on top of an enormous wave that rolled across the ocean. It was never up to her where she went or what happened to her. She went where the wave took her. She hoped some day to be dropped on dry land. But that never happened. The wave just went on and on.
All of her friends from college decided to travel through Europe. So Julia went too. She met Roger, a fellow traveler, working in the same hotel as her. They started a romance, and lived together in West Berlin for three months. He proposed. Not knowing what else to do, she said yes. She wasn't sure she loved him -- but she'd been saying "I love you" for a long time. It made him happy and seemed the thing to do. Roger was likeable enough. He seemed reliable.
They moved back to Canada. For a while, they lived with Julia's parents and saved their money. Then they bought a house. They spent a long time choosing furniture and decorating. And then, apparently, it was time to have kids.
Looking back, trying to figure out how it all happened, Julia couldn't make any sense of it. She never really remembered choosing to do anything. A life sort of grew up around her, without any of her input.
Roger said, "Let's move in together," and she said yes.
He said, "Will you marry me?" and she said she would.
He said, "Let's move back to Canada," and she agreed.
He said, "Let's buy a house," and she went along with it.
And then he said, "Let's have a baby," and she smiled and said okay.
Over and over, she'd agreed with him. These decisions might look like choices, to an outside observer. But to Julia, she was just riding the wave. She agreed with Roger because she didn't know what else to do with herself.
And then one day, she was in the hospital, her legs spread wide, in intense pain. And someone dumped this messy little creature on her stomach and said, "Congratulations, it's a boy."
She looked down at it, feeling nothing, and asked herself, how did this happen? How did she get here? This was something she let happen that she could never take back.
Or so she had thought.
* * *
Q: What's the difference between a dead baby and a trampoline?
A: You take your boots off to jump on a trampoline.
* * *
The only thing more depressing than picking out a crib for a baby is picking out a coffin. Julia and Roger went to a funeral home together. Roger said they had to do this as a couple -- it would help them heal and stay together.
"So many couples break up," Roger told her, "due to the death of a child."
Julia nodded, wondering where he'd learned that particular piece of trivia. Probably from one of the many books he'd bought on the subject. "Grieving for Idiots." "Mourning the Death of Your Child for Dummies".
At first, they sat in an office, flipping through a picture book of possibilities. These were coffins specifically for children that would have to be special ordered. Many of the child coffins looked like cribs. Some were even blue or pink, as though a coffin were just another piece of clothing for your baby. Several pages were devoted to all natural wicker coffins. To Julia, they looked like boxes to store fish.
"None of these feel like real coffins to me," Roger said.
Next, they went down into the basement, where the "real coffins" were kept. They were lined up in angled rows, like cars parked at a slant, a gap between each parking spot. They were all adult-sized, but some worker all in black told them smaller versions could be made.
"Maybe this one," Roger said, looking at a casket.
Julia nodded. "Maybe," she agreed.
But really, she didn't care and was hardly paying attention. All of these coffins looked the same -- shiny wooden boxes that would be buried in dirt. And a funeral for something barely alive three weeks seemed extravagant.
Cemeteries were such a waste of land. Roger's parents had a plot of land in a cemetery. They offered Roger and Julia part of the plot, to bury the dead baby. Roger accepted, of course. Julia supposed it was the sort of present you can't turn down.
Better to cremate the dead baby, put the ashes in a vase. Then you put the vase on display on the mantle for a month or so. One day, you put the vase in some back cupboard, and forget about it. Wasn't that the modern way?
Julia said none of this. She could tell Roger was in a lot of pain, so she kept this sympathetic, mournful look on her face. Feigning sorrow was so tiring. Roger of course assumed she was tired because she was full of sorrow. So it all worked out.
"What about this one?" he asked. "I like this one."
"I don't know, Roger," Julia said.
"You're right. The first one was better."
It doesn't matter what I say, Julia realized. Roger couldn't hear her. Or maybe she just never said anything real. Julia mumbled random words, and Roger interpreted the gibberish into something sensible. How long had that been going on? Since the day they met, she supposed.
Why was she only noticing this now? Maybe it was the contrast between their feelings. She was so happy the baby was dead and out of their lives, hiding the joy as best she could. And Roger was so depressed. That difference -- it brought new clarity to her.
"So, we're agreed?" Roger asked, pointing at a coffin.
"Yes," Julia said, glancing at it. The coffin was a large, white monstrosity.
Roger got out his credit card. Buying a coffin, in the end, was just like buying anything else.
* * *
Q: What's the difference between a truck load of bowling balls and a truck load of dead babies?
A: You can't unload bowling balls with a pitchfork.
* * *
There was an article in the paper once. A fat woman went into a public bathroom with what she thought were intestinal cramps. Maybe she'd eaten a bad burrito. Only she didn't have a crap -- the fat woman gave birth. Right there, in the Wal Mart bathroom. The woman never even realized she was pregnant. Her size had hidden the pregnancy for the entire nine months. And she was so out of touch with her body, she'd never felt a thing.
That's what Julia's pregnancy was like. Her stomach grew, her back hurt -- but she never felt very different.
Roger and Julia went to birthing classes together at a community centre. The other women were all glowing and serene. Like fat Buddhas.
"I was never very spiritual," one woman confided to the class, "until I got pregnant."
"It's hard to be an atheist when you're experiencing the miracle of life," someone quipped in agreement.
All the women smiled, nodding. And Julia nodded too, vacantly. But inside she was thinking, what the hell are these idiots talking about?
A foetus is a parasite. No better than a tapeworm. It steals nutrients from the host. No one ever looks at a tapeworm and makes vapid comments about "the miracle of life". If anything, getting pregnant proves there is no god. Life is all about genetic machinery, desperate to perpetuate its own existence. Sex feels good, so you're tricked into getting pregnant. And the parasite grows, and hormones in your head force you to bond with the thing. These biochemical deceptions are called "motherly love".
Only it doesn't always work that way. Julia, it seemed, was a special case.
She felt a sort of perverse pride when she failed to lactate, and they had to bottle feed the thing. Take that, you tapeworm, she thought.
* * *
Q: What's the difference between a dead baby and a styrofoam cup?
A: You don't harm the ozone layer when you burn a dead baby.
* * *
Something woke Julia up in the middle of the night. Maybe a sound. Or just a feeling. The bedside clock showed 3 AM, and she was wide awake, staring into the darkened room. It was unusual for her to wake up like this. She always slept soundly. Roger was sound asleep next to her, his face deep in his pillow.
Julia sat up, certain something in the bedroom woke her. Something moved. There it was, in the air -- a shape hovering in place, over the foot of the bed. A bat, maybe, she thought. It took a while for her mind to process what she was seeing. It was her dead baby. It was floating in the air, flapping its arms slowly, as though they were wings. The baby looked pretty much the same as it looked when she found it dead in its crib.
It had on a diaper and the pinkish skin was tinted blue. The eyes were open wide, staring at nothing.
"I'm dead," it said in a calm voice, its lips not moving, "because you're dead."
It had a cartoon baby voice, almost lisping. It would have been funny if it weren't so horrifying.
"I'm alive," Julia whispered.
"You're not. You've always been dead. You've never been alive."
"That's not true," she said, getting irritated. "You're lying."
"And because you're dead, you only give birth to dead things."
"You get out of here. You don't belong here."
"What do you mean?" the dead baby asked. It flew closer to Julia, lower and towards her face, always slowly flapping its arms. "Of course I belong here. I live here. This is my home. You're my mother. Aren't you my mother?"
The little blue face approached Julia, seeming to fill her vision completely. She scrambled to get away from it, pulled her legs up, grabbed hold of the headboard, pressing herself against the wall without turning away. She wanted it gone. Forever.
"Get out of here!" Julia screamed, "You don't belong here! You don't even have a name!"
Her yelling woke Roger up. "Honey, what is it?" he asked. He fumbled for the bedside lamp. When he turned it on, the room filled with light and the dead baby disappeared.
Julia cried and shook. Her body was hysterical, but her mind felt clear. What was that all about, she wondered? A dream. A nightmare. An hallucination.
Roger held her and told her it was all right. He wasn't at all disturbed by her yells or her crying. If anything, he seemed a little relieved. The idiot thought she was finally grieving.
But that wasn't what she was doing at all. Was it?
* * *
Q: What is charred black and screams?
A: A baby getting his toy out of the fireplace.
* * *
"We need to put a name on the gravestone," Roger said.
"I don't want to talk about it," Julia said, her face pointed down at her bowl of cereal.
They were eating in the "breakfast nook". That's what Roger called the cramped little booth tucked into an awkward corner of the kitchen. Roger thought it was cute, and it was one of the deciding factors in buying the house.
"We need to discuss these things," Roger said. "It's painful, but it has to be done."
Painful, Julia thought. That wasn't it at all. She was bored of talking about the dead baby. Tomorrow was the funeral. Maybe once it was in the ground, they could talk about something else for a change.
"We put off giving him a name for so long," Roger said. "We have to give him a name. Something to put on the marker."
"No," Julia said firmly. "No name."
"But... why?" Roger asked.
Because I had a nightmare, Julia thought. The dead baby woke me in the middle of the night, floating above my bed, accusing me of terrible things. Giving it a name would make it all the more real. Keep it vague. I can forget the thing if it's vague.
Roger said, "I was thinking we could name him after my grandfather -- Michael. What do you think?"
And that was it. The dead baby was named. The name was in the air, and nothing Julia said could take it away again. There was no way for her to fight it.
"Fine," Julia said, her voice flat. "Michael works just fine."
"Are you sure?" Roger asked. "I don't want to force a name on you."
"It's fine."
* * *
Q. Why do babies have soft spots on their heads ?
A. So the nurses can carry them around five at a time.
* * *
The service was in the same funeral parlour where they picked out the coffin. Family and friends were there -- maybe fifteen people. Roger said they should keep it small. They were Roger's friends, really. Julia didn't have any real friends of her own. She didn't seem to have the time or the energy for them.
Her family made an appearance. They didn't really speak to her, beyond a few platitudes. Julia's sister said, "How you holding up?" and that was pretty much it. Everyone stared at their shoes and said it was a shame. Her father smelled suspiciously of booze.
I don't even have to lie to my family, Julia thought. They can't even pretend to care.
Roger's parents -- Albert and Lorraine -- insisted on hugging her. They were old, white haired people who always seemed to be leaning forward in an earnest, interested way. They creeped Julia out.
Albert was a doctor and he carried a black bag with him. A little black bag of doctor's tricks, brought specifically to save Julia should she get all girly and faint. Were her inner feelings so buried no one could see them?
"Oh Julia," Lorraine said, and started to cry.
Julia recoiled slightly from her mother-in-law. I'm going to have to comfort her, she thought. Or does she expect me to cry too and hug her? What the hell am I going to say to her?
But Albert stepped in, taking hold of his wife by the shoulders and whispering something in her ear.
Roger's parents were so sane and reasonable. It confused Julia to no end.
When everyone was settled, Roger stood up and made a speech. Julia hardly listened. She was so tired. And she'd heard the speech already. Roger ran it by her, when he was writing it. This was a non-religious ceremony, but he had wondered if maybe the words "precious miracle" were still appropriate to describe the fleeting moments they'd shared with their child? Christ, it was disgusting.
Julia did not get up to speak. She'd told Roger she had no intention of saying anything and he said he understood. Whatever that meant.
Ten minutes later, Roger tearfully finished talking and sat down next her. When Julia didn't get up to speak, everyone stared with sympathetic, understanding looks on their faces.
They assumed because she was a woman and a mother that she was completely devastated. Women are so fragile. They have a special bond with their children. Women are emotional and empathetic and caring and nurturing and gentle and kind and...
Fuck all that sexist bullshit, Julia thought.
* * *
Q: What's red, sits in the front of a mirror, and gets smaller and smaller?
A: A baby combing it's hair with a potato peeler.
* * *
There'd been some sort of mistake, and they dug an adult-sized grave instead of one suitable for the tiny casket. Julia heard the cemetery staff -- two anonymous men in black suits -- apologizing to Roger. And because the hole was the wrong size, the device to lower the coffin wouldn't work. They'd have to use ropes, do it the old fashioned way. Roger bit his lip, but said it was fine.
The grave looked like an enormous pit. As far as Julia was concerned, it could never be deep enough.
A priest who wasn't really a priest but just some man with a deep voice -- he read a passage from a book of poetry. The words barely registered. Julia was curious, and strained to hear, but it was like her senses refused to comply with her demands.
"...at peace... sudden... mysterious... life... miracle..."
Those were the only words she could make out. Why are all funerals the same? Julia wondered.
Roger stood next to her. And Roger's parents were there too, watching her, sympathetic looks on their weepy faces. Julia's own family were supposed to be around, but had mysteriously never arrived. Knowing her family, they'd simply gone home. Later they'd give her some feeble excuse about getting lost on the way to the cemetery. The graveside was what, a twenty minute drive from the funeral home? How incompetent and embarrassing her family was. How lazy.
As she was thinking these idle thoughts, hardly paying any attention to her surroundings, the two funeral parlour employees began lowering the coffin with the ropes. One of the men shifted slightly, to get a better grip, and the rope slipped, causing the coffin to wobble.
That was just enough for the lid to open a crack -- Julia swore it had opened. And the dead baby, Michael, floated out and up, flapping his arms like wings. He hovered over the grave, in front of Julia's face. The dead eyes looked blankly at nothing.
"You're dead," Michael said in his cartoon baby voice. "You should be down there in the hole. Not me."
I'm hallucinating again, Julia thought. She looked around, to see how the others were reacting. They weren't looking at a flying dead baby, at Michael. They were staring down, or looking at the pseudo priest. Lorraine turned to face Julia, and gave a weak little supportive smile.
"They can't help you," Michael said, still hanging in space. "I'm no hallucination. I'm real. And I'm going to be with you forever. You can never get rid of me. I'll float along side of you everywhere you go, watching you. Reminding you that you're dead. That you were born dead. You never say what you want to say and you never do what you want to do. You just drift along, your eyes barely open, letting Roger, my daddy, make all your decisions."
"Shut up," Julia whispered loudly. "Shut up."
The fake priest faltered in his poetry reading, then simply stopped.
"Honey?" Roger asked. "What's the matter?"
"You're dead, mommy," Michael said in his cartoon baby voice. "You're dead. You've always been dead."
"Shut up!" Julia yelled. "Shut up! You loathsome thing, I never wanted you! I never wanted to have a baby, I never wanted to be a mother!"
Roger, his eyes wide, barked, "Julia!" And then more quietly, "Please."
Albert, standing next to his son, whispered to him reassuringly, "Grief takes many forms. Go easy on her."
Julia turned on them, her face demonic, her eyes wide, her mouth gaping and savage.
"I'm not grieving. Oh please believe me, I'm not. I couldn't give a shit. At all. I'm glad the baby died. I never wanted a baby. I never wanted a husband. Or a house. I just didn't know what else to do. I'm glad he died." She held up her trembling, twisted hands and said, "I only wish I'd had the courage to wrap my hands around his tiny throat and choke the life out of him myself."
Albert was digging through his doctor's bag of tricks, looking for the right pill, potion, or injection to shut her up. Roger staggered back as if struck, then fell to his knees to cry again -- the fucking faggot. Lorraine was sobbing, her hands bunched together under her chin. The fat fake priest had dropped his pretty book of poetry in the dirt.
"That's it, mother," Michael said. "Tell them all your secrets. Bring it all out into the open. Show them what a loathsome thing you are."
"I will kill you myself," Julia yelled, and in one motion turned and threw herself at the flying baby. He deftly slipped from her fingers, floating up higher, and Julia tumbled into the open grave.
* * *
Q: What's pink and red and silver and crawls into walls?
A: A baby with forks in its eyes.
* * *
When she came to a few seconds later, it was dark and damp. She turned her head and saw an earthy wall a few inches from her face. Underneath her was the coffin. Her weight had crushed it. A smashed egg, she thought strangely. Her egg. Did that make this grave her nest? Her womb?
High above her, she could hear the voices of her husband, his parents, and the two attendants, all trying to figure out how to get her out of there or what to do next.
Albert was saying, "We can't move her -- she could have damaged her spine!"
The others were all disagreeing or agreeing with him in a mad babble.
The fake priest was yelling into a cellphone for an ambulance.
I'll fight them, she realized. I'll fight them if they try to move me. I'm staying down here. I'm never coming out. This is where I belong.
Julia tried to roll over. She wanted to look up at the sky, at Michael. Everyone started yelling at her not to move, but she paid no attention. Her left leg felt strange. Numb. Maybe she'd broken it.
On her back, staring up, she could see Michael floating above, blocking out the sun. The little fucker, she thought. The cursed tapeworm. If only she could get him close enough to her, so she could strangle him. Kill him again. But what would he want? Her son. A dead son born from a dead mother, from a dead womb.
A weird thought came to Julia, and a twisted smile crept on to her face. She began to unbutton her blouse.
"Is this what you want?" she yelled. "Are you a hungry little dead baby?"
The panicking people above her fell silent, stunned. In the distance was the sound of an approaching ambulance siren.
Julia opened up her shirt, unclasped her bra, and offered her breast to the ghost of her dead son. She would make milk, damn it. She would. Squeezing herself as hard as she could, something gave, and Julia let out a yell of triumph. But the feeling was short lived. A fluid oozed out of her breast -- greenish black and sour, more like pus than milk. The stench of it made Julia gag a little. The milk in her tits had curdled, rotted.
Michael floated above her. He didn't fly any closer or say anything.
Julia let out a humiliated sob of pain. She produced the kind of rancid milk that not even a dead baby would drink.
* * *
Q: Why do doctors always bring boiling water to a birth?
A: In case the baby dies, they can make soup.
* * *
"There's postpartum depression. And then there's postpartum psychosis. It's very rare."
That's what the doctors whispered to Roger. Julia heard everything, and resented them talking about her like she wasn't in the room. They were treating her like an object. Of course, ever since they pulled her out of the grave she refused to move or speak. Dead people don't move. Dead people don't talk.
Now she just lay strapped down in a hospital bed, staring up at the ghost of her dead baby. Michael floated a few inches above her chest, facing her, always flapping his little arms in lazy waves. They stared at each other, Julia and Michael, eye to eye. Not speaking.
Julia knew she was dead. As dead as her baby. And dead people don't move and dead people don't talk. So she would just lie there, staring at the dead baby in front of her. Michael would make sure she stayed that way -- obeyed the rules.
They would medicate her. And maybe her thinking would clear up. And maybe Michael would disappear. But even if Julia couldn't see him, he would always be there. Always watching her. Always making sure she stayed dead, until the day she died.
Julia stared into the dead eyes of her dead baby -- cloudy yellow orbs -- and stayed absolutely still. And she felt a strange thrill of pleasure. Not moving. Doing nothing. Being dead. She'd gotten off the wave that dragged her through her life. She was on dry land, for the first time ever.
Finally, Julia was doing exactly what she wanted to do.
* * *
Q: What is 12 inches long, cold and stiff, and makes a woman scream in the morning?
A: Crib death.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Things I Learned Reading "Case Studies in Sex Therapy" (So Far)
Freud argued that everything is about sex. Most people think Freud is out-of-date. And yet, it's pretty obvious that everything really is about sex. The easiest way to prove it is to point at the Internet and say the word "porn". Or watch an episode of one of the stupidest and most popular TV shows on the planet, Baywatch.
I happen to think Freud was on to something. If the sex drive moves us through the world, knowing the secrets of sexuality is like knowing magic. That's why I love reading about sexual deviance, fetishes, and other sex oddities.
Recently, I bought the book Case Studies in Sex Therapy (1995), edited by Raymond C. Rosen and Sandra R. Leiblum. It's a collection of chapters written by multiple authors, with three main sections:
1. Sexual Desire Disorders
2. Sexual Performance Problems
3. Sexual Addiction and Compulsion
I'm about two-thirds of the way through the book, but I can't wait -- I have to tell you some of the things I've learned.
* * *
A big part of sexual performance anxiety can be the feeling of obligation. "You made me feel good, so I must immediately reciprocate by making you feel good."
This caused the writer, Bernard Apfelbaum, to suggest renaming performance anxiety as "response anxiety." He argues that the sexual revolution created "a virtual epidemic of response anxiety. It is now as if being good in bed is what sex is all about."
Many men and women pride themselves on being "great lovers" in the sense that they make their partner feel good. When it comes to lying back and feeling pleasure themselves, they become anxious and self-conscious. This way of thinking can result in problems. Say Bill perceives himself as a "great lover" in the above sense -- he can dish it out, but he can't take it. He might blame any sexual difficulties on his partner, Jenna.
"I know I'm great in bed -- so all of our problems must be her fault."
But Bill is wrong. His very unwillingness to experience pleasure himself messes with the sex. For example, say Jenna comes up with a sexual adventure that requires Bill to be passive. He'll panic, the sex will fail, and Bill will blame it on her.
It's strange to think of it this way, but sex can be used to AVOID intimacy. If Bill is in charge, insisting Jenna always be passive, Bill never finds himself in a position of weakness. He never has to let his guard down. His focus is entirely on getting her off. This kind of sexuality prevents intimacy.
One of the key exercises used in sex therapy is sensate focusing. Each person takes turns lying down, letting their partner touch them all over. This typically starts as touching of non-sexual body parts -- no breasts, no genitals. Later exercises include the naughty bits, and the passive partner can indicate what they like and what they don't like.
Some find the artificiality of sensate focus exercises as quite off-putting. Where's the spontaneity? Where's the freedom to express yourself?
But the idea is that the forced passivity simultaneously removes any "response anxiety" while forcing someone like Bill to confront his need to be in control. Bill has to lie there and take it, while Jenna touches him all over. This can lead Bill to understand the roles he has been imposing on both himself and Jenna. Not only can this empower Jenna -- granting her more control of sex -- but it can also lead to greater intimacy.
* * *
Baby boomer lesbian couples often have lots of sex at the beginning of their relationship, and then very little sex as years go by -- less sex than gay male or heterosexual couples. Writer Margaret Nichols says the term colloquially used to describe this is lesbian bed death. (That also happens to be the name of a punk band.)
The studies that examine this specifically focus on the 1980s. I suspect, therefore, that lesbian bed death applies mostly to baby boomers. Modern, Gen X lesbians seem to be a lot more sexually open. All the same, lesbian bed death is so common, many different sexologists and lesbian theorists have tried to explain it:
- Cuddling and closeness is enough intimacy for lesbian couples. Who needs sex?
- Some lesbian couples get so close that their identities blur into one. Nichols says this is usually referred to as "fusion or merging". Where does one woman end and the other woman begin? Nichols writes, "within the context of already excessive closeness, the act of sex, characterized by even greater union, may be too threatening".
- Women of the baby boomer generation were taught that men pursue the sex, not women. Put two women together into a couple, and you double the sexual repression.
-Women are more likely to be abused or raped, so a couple made of two women is more likely to involve those sorts of issues, and therefore have less sex.
- Maybe the sexuality of baby boomer lesbians doesn't necessarily involve a lot of orgasms and sex. So what? Who are we to say that it's not "correct" or "normal"? Isn't that the patriarchal way of judging sexuality? How do you count the number of sex acts, anyway? If we were studying heterosexuality, and only counted the sex acts where the woman achieved orgasm, wouldn't the frequency of sex acts drop dramatically too? No one is even sure what sexuality is for, beyond procreation. We're in no position to judge the lesbians.
- Lesbian sexuality, among some baby boomers, is a minefield of politics and judgments, which leads to even greater sexual repression.
To delve more deeply into the last point, Nichols presents a case study. Two women, Mickie and Cheryl, go for sex therapy. Nichols describes meeting the women for the first time:
"Our initial interview was cautious and tentative. Far from treating me with the deferential respect some clients display in facing a 'professional', Cheryl and Mickie interrogated and challenged my credentials -- my credentials as a feminist and activist, that is. I was frank about being bisexual rather than lesbian; my frankness earned me some points that compensated for those I lost through bisexuality. My activist history and obvious familiarity with feminist theory, combined with the recommendation they had received from their couple therapist, whom they trusted, allayed their initial suspicions."
It turns out one of the big issues in Mickie and Cheryl's relationship is that Cheryl's sexual interests are "politically incorrect". Because of this, Mickie looks down on Cheryl's sexuality. Cheryl herself feels obliged to repress her "wrong" sexual desires.
Politically incorrect sex? Yes. Some old school boomer lesbians believe certain types of sexuality are "masculine", patriarchal, controlling, and wrong. On a simple level, any penetrative sex is bad. In a more complicated sense, any power play is improper. No costumes. No bondage. No pain. Anything that puts one woman in a position of authority over the other woman is "patriarchal". (That makes no sense to me at all, but I'm a heterosexual man, and presumably part of the problem.)
Politically correct lesbian sex is almost socialist in nature. No one-sided sexuality is allowed. "Either we both orgasm, or no one orgasms." Both women slowly and simultaneously build pleasure. This sex is mutual, egalitarian, sensual exploration.
At one point in the case study, Mickie refers to Cheryl's interest in non-PC sex (bondage, enemas, and other games) as a "slut mentality".
With these sorts of rules, is it any wonder so many boomer lesbians give up on sex altogether? Talk about pressure. If the personal truly is political, does every orgasm have to be authorized by your local political representative?
Earlier I talked about using sensate focusing exercises to show a controlling sex partner how they are preventing intimacy. That's exactly what happens in this case. When forced to lie down and simply be touched by Cheryl, Mickie realizes how much of her energy is devoted to controlling the sex.
* * *
If a man has his prostate removed because it's cancerous, this can cause erectile dysfunction and incontinence. There are drugs that can be injected directly into the penis to create an erection. (This scares me.) Penis pumps are another alternative. The pump draws blood into the penis, and then a rubber band is placed around the base of the penis to keep the blood in.
(The book was written in 1995, prior to the arrival of Viagra, so they make no mention of it. How quickly things change.)
People have "sex scripts" making up the routine of their sexuality: who initiates, what happens for foreplay, what happens during the big act, what sort of cuddling takes place at the end. When a script gets disrupted (say, by sudden erectile dysfunction) it can cause anxiety, discomfort, and avoiding sex altogether. The couple will need to learn a new script, get comfortable with it, and learn to have a sense of humour about any difficulties that arise.
One chapter discusses how a man's prostate removal caused difficulties. Mr. Smith was particularly concerned and embarrassed by his incontinence. His penis was always dribbling and squirting urine, so he was forced to wear a diaper. The idea of his wife touching his penis and getting urine on her really bothered him.
The sex therapist helped them change their sex script. Sounds simple, but it takes time and effort and patience on the part of everyone. Which leads me to probably my favourite sentence in the book, so far:
"When, at a time of lovemaking, urine squirted in Mrs. Smith's face, this ultimate of embarrassments was dealt with with humor and mutual kindness."
How sweet.
* * *
Sexual abuse during childhood can cause sexual pain in later life. This is kind of obvious, but it can take unusual forms. One case study talks about a woman named Mary who was sexually abused by her father roughly from age 6 to 14. Mary had no pain when she inserted fingers into her vagina. But inserting a penis, or even a dildo shaped like a penis, caused pain -- even though the fingers and the penis were roughly the same size.
The therapist, Julia R. Heiman, describes in detail all the different exercises and approaches she used to try to change Mary's feelings towards sex. One technique that struck me as interesting was trying to change Mary's understanding of what a penis is. From Mary's perspective, all penises were the same -- bad and hurtful. When asked to give the words she associated with "penis", Mary said: "hairy, ugly, disgust, rage, purple, hard, betrayal, invasive, snake, demand, guilt, need, insatiable, hose, alien, fear."
That's a lot for a penis to handle.
Heiman attempted to teach Mary to differentiate a "good" penis (her husband's penis) from a "bad" penis (her father's raping penis). In doing so, it was hoped that Mary would also learn to differentiate good sexuality from bad sexuality.
Mary was having many bad dreams about snakes, and understood consciously that these snakes were bad penises. The therapist suggested she try to turn this "bad penis" symbol into a "good penis" symbol. Mary couldn't consciously do this. Unconsciously, she had better luck. She had a dream where a snake jumped at her, and turned into a cat which she caught in her arms. This transformation in her dream led to a healthier feeling towards a "good" penis, and she stopped having snake dreams.
Heiman is very big on letting the patient decide what's working and what's not working, and even to suggest approaches themselves. Allowing that sort of freedom seems particularly important when dealing with someone who has suffered through incest. The approach lets them know they're in control.
At one point Heiman suggested Mary buy a penis-shaped dildo. Heiman writes:
"While Mary was reluctant, she did attempt to use the penis both in individual and couple work for about four sessions but decided that she 'hated it', and it only reminded her of her father's penis. Several months later, the penis met its fate by being buried in a Canadian lake, along with several other mementos from Mary's childhood, as part of a small 'cleansing ritual.'"
Mary and her husband Paul performed this ritual as part of Mary's therapy, to help her deal with her incest. They invited friends and Heiman to be there as witnesses.
* * *
Sexuality is awesome, complicated, and still taboo. While we're definitely more open about sex nowadays, most sexologists and sex therapists still get looked at as perverts. I have to admit, that's part of why I enjoy reading about these things. A lot of people want to know about sex, but they're too nervous to explore it. An open interest in sex is seen as suspicious and weird. And if it's weird and makes other people uncomfortable, count me in.
Speaking of sexual repression in modern times, I've been exchanging emails with a fundamentalist Christian in the States who proudly calls himself an ex-masturbator. Let's call him Jacob. (Did you know you can buy an ex-masturbator T-shirt? You can!) I wanted to know more about Jacob's take on things. Chatting with him is very depressing. He quotes bible passages to explain why jerking off is sinful. While Jacob tried to convert me to Christ, I tried to convert him to REALITY. It didn't get me anywhere.
So what if 90% of men and 60% of women masturbate? That just shows you how sinful the world is! Forget those studies that show it's actually medically beneficial for men to wank -- it prevents prostate cancer and keeps your sperm "fresh". (The older the sperm coming out, the less likely they are to fertilize an egg.) Ignore the entire history of masturbation, which shows the original masturbation scare was created to sell questionable "cures". And forget the history of medical devices designed to prevent middle-of-the-night boners. (Picture a condom with a metal spike on the inside, that stabs a dick when it gets hard.)
None of that matters -- BECAUSE THE BIBLE SAYS MASTURBATION IS WRONG.
Well, actually, it doesn't. It says stuff about bad sex, a little bit about spilling your seed, but nothing you can specifically look at and call a boycott on masturbation. It does say that if your brother dies, and you're a single man, you have to marry the widow. (Deuteronomy 25:5) And it says women aren't allowed to speak in church. (Corinthians 14:34) But those are old and out of date and silly.
Meanwhile, Jacob tells me, pleasuring yourself today is just as bad now as it was 2000 years ago.
It's hard to believe this level of sexual repression is taking place on the same continent where the sex research is taking place.
One of the more interesting aspects to sexuality is the weird biases people have, without even knowing it. For example, a lot of people think having sex means strictly inserting a penis into a vagina. If you've done EVERYTHING but that (anal, oral, etc) you're a "virgin". So if a man and a wife get together and masturbate, is it sinful? And is it sex, or is it masturbation? What if they get together and masturbate each other? The man plays with her genitals, and the woman plays with his, simultaneously. Is that sex or masturbation?
I put it to Jacob, and he seemed unable to wrap his mind around it. A young guy, an ex-masturbator, and presumably a virgin, Jacob insisted that sex is when you stick a penis inside a vagina. And why would a man want to masturbate with his wife when they could have sex instead?
For variety. For fun. To explore. To play. To vary the sex script. To discover new levels of intimacy. To grow as human beings. That's why. And shouldn't religion encourage these kinds of things?
Isn't it funny that hard core political lesbian baby boomers and repressed ex-masturbator fundamentalist Christians have so much in common? They've both arbitrarily decided that certain sex acts are "wrong". They both torture themselves. They both mess up their sexuality. And by doing so, they decrease the intimacy and the love they both claim are so important for a healthier and saner world.
And yet these people think of each other as bitter enemies. How awesome is that?
I happen to think Freud was on to something. If the sex drive moves us through the world, knowing the secrets of sexuality is like knowing magic. That's why I love reading about sexual deviance, fetishes, and other sex oddities.
Recently, I bought the book Case Studies in Sex Therapy (1995), edited by Raymond C. Rosen and Sandra R. Leiblum. It's a collection of chapters written by multiple authors, with three main sections:
1. Sexual Desire Disorders
2. Sexual Performance Problems
3. Sexual Addiction and Compulsion
I'm about two-thirds of the way through the book, but I can't wait -- I have to tell you some of the things I've learned.
* * *
A big part of sexual performance anxiety can be the feeling of obligation. "You made me feel good, so I must immediately reciprocate by making you feel good."
This caused the writer, Bernard Apfelbaum, to suggest renaming performance anxiety as "response anxiety." He argues that the sexual revolution created "a virtual epidemic of response anxiety. It is now as if being good in bed is what sex is all about."
Many men and women pride themselves on being "great lovers" in the sense that they make their partner feel good. When it comes to lying back and feeling pleasure themselves, they become anxious and self-conscious. This way of thinking can result in problems. Say Bill perceives himself as a "great lover" in the above sense -- he can dish it out, but he can't take it. He might blame any sexual difficulties on his partner, Jenna.
"I know I'm great in bed -- so all of our problems must be her fault."
But Bill is wrong. His very unwillingness to experience pleasure himself messes with the sex. For example, say Jenna comes up with a sexual adventure that requires Bill to be passive. He'll panic, the sex will fail, and Bill will blame it on her.
It's strange to think of it this way, but sex can be used to AVOID intimacy. If Bill is in charge, insisting Jenna always be passive, Bill never finds himself in a position of weakness. He never has to let his guard down. His focus is entirely on getting her off. This kind of sexuality prevents intimacy.
One of the key exercises used in sex therapy is sensate focusing. Each person takes turns lying down, letting their partner touch them all over. This typically starts as touching of non-sexual body parts -- no breasts, no genitals. Later exercises include the naughty bits, and the passive partner can indicate what they like and what they don't like.
Some find the artificiality of sensate focus exercises as quite off-putting. Where's the spontaneity? Where's the freedom to express yourself?
But the idea is that the forced passivity simultaneously removes any "response anxiety" while forcing someone like Bill to confront his need to be in control. Bill has to lie there and take it, while Jenna touches him all over. This can lead Bill to understand the roles he has been imposing on both himself and Jenna. Not only can this empower Jenna -- granting her more control of sex -- but it can also lead to greater intimacy.
* * *
Baby boomer lesbian couples often have lots of sex at the beginning of their relationship, and then very little sex as years go by -- less sex than gay male or heterosexual couples. Writer Margaret Nichols says the term colloquially used to describe this is lesbian bed death. (That also happens to be the name of a punk band.)
The studies that examine this specifically focus on the 1980s. I suspect, therefore, that lesbian bed death applies mostly to baby boomers. Modern, Gen X lesbians seem to be a lot more sexually open. All the same, lesbian bed death is so common, many different sexologists and lesbian theorists have tried to explain it:
- Cuddling and closeness is enough intimacy for lesbian couples. Who needs sex?
- Some lesbian couples get so close that their identities blur into one. Nichols says this is usually referred to as "fusion or merging". Where does one woman end and the other woman begin? Nichols writes, "within the context of already excessive closeness, the act of sex, characterized by even greater union, may be too threatening".
- Women of the baby boomer generation were taught that men pursue the sex, not women. Put two women together into a couple, and you double the sexual repression.
-Women are more likely to be abused or raped, so a couple made of two women is more likely to involve those sorts of issues, and therefore have less sex.
- Maybe the sexuality of baby boomer lesbians doesn't necessarily involve a lot of orgasms and sex. So what? Who are we to say that it's not "correct" or "normal"? Isn't that the patriarchal way of judging sexuality? How do you count the number of sex acts, anyway? If we were studying heterosexuality, and only counted the sex acts where the woman achieved orgasm, wouldn't the frequency of sex acts drop dramatically too? No one is even sure what sexuality is for, beyond procreation. We're in no position to judge the lesbians.
- Lesbian sexuality, among some baby boomers, is a minefield of politics and judgments, which leads to even greater sexual repression.
To delve more deeply into the last point, Nichols presents a case study. Two women, Mickie and Cheryl, go for sex therapy. Nichols describes meeting the women for the first time:
"Our initial interview was cautious and tentative. Far from treating me with the deferential respect some clients display in facing a 'professional', Cheryl and Mickie interrogated and challenged my credentials -- my credentials as a feminist and activist, that is. I was frank about being bisexual rather than lesbian; my frankness earned me some points that compensated for those I lost through bisexuality. My activist history and obvious familiarity with feminist theory, combined with the recommendation they had received from their couple therapist, whom they trusted, allayed their initial suspicions."
It turns out one of the big issues in Mickie and Cheryl's relationship is that Cheryl's sexual interests are "politically incorrect". Because of this, Mickie looks down on Cheryl's sexuality. Cheryl herself feels obliged to repress her "wrong" sexual desires.
Politically incorrect sex? Yes. Some old school boomer lesbians believe certain types of sexuality are "masculine", patriarchal, controlling, and wrong. On a simple level, any penetrative sex is bad. In a more complicated sense, any power play is improper. No costumes. No bondage. No pain. Anything that puts one woman in a position of authority over the other woman is "patriarchal". (That makes no sense to me at all, but I'm a heterosexual man, and presumably part of the problem.)
Politically correct lesbian sex is almost socialist in nature. No one-sided sexuality is allowed. "Either we both orgasm, or no one orgasms." Both women slowly and simultaneously build pleasure. This sex is mutual, egalitarian, sensual exploration.
At one point in the case study, Mickie refers to Cheryl's interest in non-PC sex (bondage, enemas, and other games) as a "slut mentality".
With these sorts of rules, is it any wonder so many boomer lesbians give up on sex altogether? Talk about pressure. If the personal truly is political, does every orgasm have to be authorized by your local political representative?
Earlier I talked about using sensate focusing exercises to show a controlling sex partner how they are preventing intimacy. That's exactly what happens in this case. When forced to lie down and simply be touched by Cheryl, Mickie realizes how much of her energy is devoted to controlling the sex.
* * *
If a man has his prostate removed because it's cancerous, this can cause erectile dysfunction and incontinence. There are drugs that can be injected directly into the penis to create an erection. (This scares me.) Penis pumps are another alternative. The pump draws blood into the penis, and then a rubber band is placed around the base of the penis to keep the blood in.
(The book was written in 1995, prior to the arrival of Viagra, so they make no mention of it. How quickly things change.)
People have "sex scripts" making up the routine of their sexuality: who initiates, what happens for foreplay, what happens during the big act, what sort of cuddling takes place at the end. When a script gets disrupted (say, by sudden erectile dysfunction) it can cause anxiety, discomfort, and avoiding sex altogether. The couple will need to learn a new script, get comfortable with it, and learn to have a sense of humour about any difficulties that arise.
One chapter discusses how a man's prostate removal caused difficulties. Mr. Smith was particularly concerned and embarrassed by his incontinence. His penis was always dribbling and squirting urine, so he was forced to wear a diaper. The idea of his wife touching his penis and getting urine on her really bothered him.
The sex therapist helped them change their sex script. Sounds simple, but it takes time and effort and patience on the part of everyone. Which leads me to probably my favourite sentence in the book, so far:
"When, at a time of lovemaking, urine squirted in Mrs. Smith's face, this ultimate of embarrassments was dealt with with humor and mutual kindness."
How sweet.
* * *
Sexual abuse during childhood can cause sexual pain in later life. This is kind of obvious, but it can take unusual forms. One case study talks about a woman named Mary who was sexually abused by her father roughly from age 6 to 14. Mary had no pain when she inserted fingers into her vagina. But inserting a penis, or even a dildo shaped like a penis, caused pain -- even though the fingers and the penis were roughly the same size.
The therapist, Julia R. Heiman, describes in detail all the different exercises and approaches she used to try to change Mary's feelings towards sex. One technique that struck me as interesting was trying to change Mary's understanding of what a penis is. From Mary's perspective, all penises were the same -- bad and hurtful. When asked to give the words she associated with "penis", Mary said: "hairy, ugly, disgust, rage, purple, hard, betrayal, invasive, snake, demand, guilt, need, insatiable, hose, alien, fear."
That's a lot for a penis to handle.
Heiman attempted to teach Mary to differentiate a "good" penis (her husband's penis) from a "bad" penis (her father's raping penis). In doing so, it was hoped that Mary would also learn to differentiate good sexuality from bad sexuality.
Mary was having many bad dreams about snakes, and understood consciously that these snakes were bad penises. The therapist suggested she try to turn this "bad penis" symbol into a "good penis" symbol. Mary couldn't consciously do this. Unconsciously, she had better luck. She had a dream where a snake jumped at her, and turned into a cat which she caught in her arms. This transformation in her dream led to a healthier feeling towards a "good" penis, and she stopped having snake dreams.
Heiman is very big on letting the patient decide what's working and what's not working, and even to suggest approaches themselves. Allowing that sort of freedom seems particularly important when dealing with someone who has suffered through incest. The approach lets them know they're in control.
At one point Heiman suggested Mary buy a penis-shaped dildo. Heiman writes:
"While Mary was reluctant, she did attempt to use the penis both in individual and couple work for about four sessions but decided that she 'hated it', and it only reminded her of her father's penis. Several months later, the penis met its fate by being buried in a Canadian lake, along with several other mementos from Mary's childhood, as part of a small 'cleansing ritual.'"
Mary and her husband Paul performed this ritual as part of Mary's therapy, to help her deal with her incest. They invited friends and Heiman to be there as witnesses.
* * *
Sexuality is awesome, complicated, and still taboo. While we're definitely more open about sex nowadays, most sexologists and sex therapists still get looked at as perverts. I have to admit, that's part of why I enjoy reading about these things. A lot of people want to know about sex, but they're too nervous to explore it. An open interest in sex is seen as suspicious and weird. And if it's weird and makes other people uncomfortable, count me in.
Speaking of sexual repression in modern times, I've been exchanging emails with a fundamentalist Christian in the States who proudly calls himself an ex-masturbator. Let's call him Jacob. (Did you know you can buy an ex-masturbator T-shirt? You can!) I wanted to know more about Jacob's take on things. Chatting with him is very depressing. He quotes bible passages to explain why jerking off is sinful. While Jacob tried to convert me to Christ, I tried to convert him to REALITY. It didn't get me anywhere.
So what if 90% of men and 60% of women masturbate? That just shows you how sinful the world is! Forget those studies that show it's actually medically beneficial for men to wank -- it prevents prostate cancer and keeps your sperm "fresh". (The older the sperm coming out, the less likely they are to fertilize an egg.) Ignore the entire history of masturbation, which shows the original masturbation scare was created to sell questionable "cures". And forget the history of medical devices designed to prevent middle-of-the-night boners. (Picture a condom with a metal spike on the inside, that stabs a dick when it gets hard.)
None of that matters -- BECAUSE THE BIBLE SAYS MASTURBATION IS WRONG.
Well, actually, it doesn't. It says stuff about bad sex, a little bit about spilling your seed, but nothing you can specifically look at and call a boycott on masturbation. It does say that if your brother dies, and you're a single man, you have to marry the widow. (Deuteronomy 25:5) And it says women aren't allowed to speak in church. (Corinthians 14:34) But those are old and out of date and silly.
Meanwhile, Jacob tells me, pleasuring yourself today is just as bad now as it was 2000 years ago.
It's hard to believe this level of sexual repression is taking place on the same continent where the sex research is taking place.
One of the more interesting aspects to sexuality is the weird biases people have, without even knowing it. For example, a lot of people think having sex means strictly inserting a penis into a vagina. If you've done EVERYTHING but that (anal, oral, etc) you're a "virgin". So if a man and a wife get together and masturbate, is it sinful? And is it sex, or is it masturbation? What if they get together and masturbate each other? The man plays with her genitals, and the woman plays with his, simultaneously. Is that sex or masturbation?
I put it to Jacob, and he seemed unable to wrap his mind around it. A young guy, an ex-masturbator, and presumably a virgin, Jacob insisted that sex is when you stick a penis inside a vagina. And why would a man want to masturbate with his wife when they could have sex instead?
For variety. For fun. To explore. To play. To vary the sex script. To discover new levels of intimacy. To grow as human beings. That's why. And shouldn't religion encourage these kinds of things?
Isn't it funny that hard core political lesbian baby boomers and repressed ex-masturbator fundamentalist Christians have so much in common? They've both arbitrarily decided that certain sex acts are "wrong". They both torture themselves. They both mess up their sexuality. And by doing so, they decrease the intimacy and the love they both claim are so important for a healthier and saner world.
And yet these people think of each other as bitter enemies. How awesome is that?
Sunday, June 28, 2009
The Principal's Apocalypse
If this story seems familiar, it's because it's based loosely on this case study I posted about in the past. As always, feedback is encouraged. Email me at crediblewitness@gmail.com or just post a comment.
The Principal's Apocalypse
by Nikolaus Maack
When I received the first obscene note, it amused me. Some brave student, I decided, just an adolescent, his mind awash in hormones -- he wrote it, folded it up, wrapped it in twine, and then put it in my mailbox. That's where I found the note, in the mailbox that hangs on my office door. The twine was an odd touch. It was as though the contents of the note would explode outwards if not contained.
This all happened years back, before my sudden retirement. I was a high school principal. In those days, I walked the halls, imagining myself as a cop on the beat. It was unthinkable to me that the children would challenge my authority -- me, their principal, their policeman.
Mind you, I'm not a tall man, nor am I muscular. You might even say my physique borders on the unhealthy. I believed it was the force of my personality that intimidated the children. My grave, solemn manner put young miscreants in their place. I'd lock onto them with my steady, steely gray eyes and they would cower under the threat of my anger. And there was my large, dark gray moustache -- it gave me the air of a police detective.
"HEY GUNTHER", the note started. That it addressed me by my first name seemed particularly bold.
The letter compared me to excrement, described me as mentally unsound, unfit to be a principal, that I could lick the writer's bottom, and on and on. The whole thing was silly. The note emphasized this childish tone by being written entirely in large block letters on yellow notepaper. I shook my head, opened a drawer in my large oak desk, and dropped the letter inside -- twine and all. It sat among slingshots, dirty novels, whistles, firecrackers, and other contraband.
I idly wondered which of my "usual suspects" might have done this. But truth be told, it was a Friday afternoon, and I just didn't care all that much. My plans for the weekend sprung to mind -- I'd purchased a bottle of sherry I was itching to sample. The whole thing was quickly forgotten.
It was Tuesday morning when I found a second note in my mailbox. This time, I wasn't so amused. Once was understandable -- a momentary lapse. Twice implied something more lasting.
"HEY GUNTHER, YOU ARE SICK. YOU ARE A LOUSY PRINCIPAL. EVERYONE CAN SMELL YOUR SHIT WHEN YOU WALK DOWN THE HALLS. YOU ARE SICK SHIT."
I'm slow to anger. In those days, it felt like my emotions were in the room next door, and I could only hear them as muffled noises coming through the wall. I studied the note more closely, and snorted. At least all the words were spelled correctly. I toyed with the notion of doing something, and decided uneasily to let matters rest.
When the third note arrived Thursday morning, I was startled by my own rage. My hands shook with so much anger I nearly tore the note, and my face became red and hot. Clearly my emotions had come crashing through the wall. Something had to be done, I decided. This sort of disrespect was intolerable.
"HEY GUNTHER, YOU ARE NOT FIT TO BE A PRINCIPAL, YOU SHIT. WHO DO YOU THINK YOU'RE FOOLING? WHAT RETARD PUT YOU IN CHARGE OF A SCHOOL? YOU ARE A FUCKING LOSER AND A MORON."
Once I had my feelings in check, I stepped out of my office into the adjoining administration room, and spoke to one of the school secretaries.
"Delores," I said. "A word?"
Delores was an old battleship of a woman -- broad and gray. Entirely reliable, perfectly discrete, I knew I could count on her no matter what the situation. She got up from her desk, picking up a pad of paper and a pen, and marched into my office.
Once she had settled herself in a chair, I handed her the three yellow notes without comment. Delores read them, one at a time, blushing slightly and fluttering her eyelashes in surprise. By the time she was halfway through the second note, a deep line of annoyance appeared between her eyebrows. I had been waiting for that crease to show itself. Whenever that line appeared between Delores's eyebrows, I knew my own instincts were correct. The line was a confirmation of my own feelings and a signal for me to take action.
"Any ideas, Delores?" I asked casually. "On who might be so bold?"
"No, sir," she said, still looking at the notes. "I can't think of a single boy who would stoop to this."
"Then I guess I'll have to interview the usual suspects this morning, Delores. One at a time."
"Of course, sir," she said.
"Starting with Jarvis."
She tilted her head slightly. I wasn't sure if this indicated agreement or uncertainty.
"Of course, sir."
Ten minutes later, alone in my office again, I heard a forceful knock at the door. Curse that boy. When a student knocks, it usually sounds more like a tiny mouse scratching. I positioned myself squarely behind my desk, picked up a pen and started writing nonsense on a blank piece of paper.
"Come," I barked.
The boy swaggered in. Always with a swagger. Could the lad not simply walk from place to place? I continued to scribble on the paper, pretending to be writing some important words.
I hated Jarvis. The boy was only fifteen, and he was already two inches taller than me. Endowed with a natural athletic ability, the boy's body was muscular and solid. He excelled at sports. While not exactly stupid, Jarvis was a poor student out of laziness. Everything came easy to him. If it didn't come easy, he wasn't interested in it.
Of course all the children adored Jarvis. Blond, blue eyed, strong and brave, Jarvis regularly tested authority. Whenever a teacher let down their guard, you could be sure Jarvis would be at the ready with a wisecrack or prank. All the same, he didn't get in trouble often. That was because of his beauty, his poise. The teachers forgave the boy almost anything.
But not I. No, I'd been watching Jarvis carefully. And this latest prank seemed to carry the lad's signature swagger and audacity. Who else would be so bold? And even if Jarvis wasn't responsible, I felt it was an opportunity to teach him a lesson in humility.
I let a half a minute pass, continuing to doodle nonsense as the boy stood there, waiting. I then noisily dropped my pen, scowling as if irritated by this interruption.
"Jarvis, take this piece of paper, and this pen, and write 'HEY GUNTHER' in block letters please." I slid a blank sheet of paper and a pen across the desk to him.
The boy blinked, almost smiled, and then caught himself. Without a word, he walked over to the edge of my desk, picked up the pen and did as he was told. He then stood there, hands clasped behind his back, staring at me. Most boys would stare at their feet. Not this one, the little shit.
"Will that be all, sir?" he asked.
"You're not curious at all what this is about?" I asked icily.
"Don't want to pry, sir," the boy said, without a trace of irony. "I'm sure it's none of my business, sir."
"We'll soon see."
We remained silent, staring at each other, for five long seconds. How I longed to beat this child. It was ridiculous, I know that now, but I felt a thrill at the thought of picking up a cane and bringing it down on the boy's back, knocking him to the floor. Where's your swagger now, you little shit? I could hear myself screaming the words. Where's your swagger now? To lay one single, crushing blow on his broad shoulders would be delightful. Yes, even orgasmic.
"Will that be all sir?" Jarvis asked once more. The rage on my face had to be visible, but Jarvis behaved as though nothing were amiss.
"You may go," I said.
When the door closed behind him, I collapsed back in my chair. I felt furious and pathetic -- that a mere boy of fifteen should fill me with such terrible thoughts and feelings. The hate I felt was so overwhelming, so ridiculous. It horrified me to think it, but if I tried to beat the boy, he could turn the tables in an instant. He would rip the cane from my hand and beat me senseless, compounding the humiliation I felt just looking at him. My weakness, my impotence, middle aged and alone and a mere high school principal... And him, young, fit and strong, his whole life ahead of him, everything coming to him so easily...
The other children I interrogated that day were much more frightened, and I hate to admit I took comfort in that. Their shivering little faces; their wide, teary eyes; their quavering voices -- I soon felt my old self again. I bellowed at them, demanding they reveal all their secrets. I made them all write "HEY GUNTHER" on pieces of paper.
"You will tell me everything!" I practically screamed.
Despite the satisfaction I felt making children suffer, my investigation amounted to nothing. None of them knew anything. I could tell this immediately, being quite an expert in bullying the young.
I spent the afternoon and early evening behind my desk, carefully comparing the collection of handwriting samples to the original notes. My large brass magnifying glass, purchased on a whim, was finally put to some use. None of the children wrote "HEY GUNTHER" in a style that matched the notes. It was possible they could have disguised their penmanship, but I believed I would see through such a ruse. While no graphologist, I felt I had an eye for analyzing evidence.
Annoyed at my lack of progress, I got up to leave -- and was startled by the late hour.
The next morning, I went into work early. I was eager to launch back into the battle. Out of habit, I opened my mailbox, and there it was. Much to my surprise, there was yet another note waiting for me. Who dared to do this? Who dared to leave notes like this, knowing I was hot on their heels? The audacity of it made me growl in anger. I had never growled before in my life.
"HEY GUNTHER, YOU ARE A RIDICULOUS OLD FART WHO LIKES TO SNIFF BICYCLE SEATS. YOU ARE SHIT. YOU ARE WORSE THAN SHIT. QUIT YOUR JOB NOW YOU OLD LOSER. YOU STINK."
Complete nonsense. Childish and idiotic and pointless. All the same, it took every ounce of my strength not to crumple the note in my fists.
Evidence, I told myself. It's evidence. Preserve the evidence.
I carefully put the note down on the edge of my desk, and then kicked my metal garbage can as hard as I could. It ricocheted off the wall with a clatter, then rolled to a stop, dented beyond repair. Fortunately it was still early, and no one heard my outburst. No one knew of my fury and despair.
The teachers gathered in their lounge at around eight in the morning. I decided that I would need to confront them with the notes as well, to see if they had any guesses as to who the culprit might be. The idea of speaking with the staff made me shudder, but I felt I had no other choice.
My relationship with the teachers was rather distant. I told myself that a good leader knows how to let the workers run the show themselves, interfering only when absolutely necessary. The truth is, the teachers frightened me, and I wanted as little to do with them as possible. Some managers have an open door policy. I preferred to think of myself locked away from them all, coming out of hiding only as required.
When it came to matters of faculty, I told myself, I was the school's secret weapon. To be used only in emergencies. Like an atomic bomb.
In this way, I hid my fear from myself.
When I stepped into the staff lounge, all conversation stopped and everyone stared at me. I couldn't remember the last time I stepped into this room, and looking at the gaping faces, I could see they couldn't remember either.
The room was supposed to be a place where teachers would confer with one another on lesson plans and other scholastic strategies. Instead, it was more like a common area in a frat house. The carpeted floor was littered with paper cups and crumbs. Every surface was dirty with bits of food and spilled coffee. The lighting was entirely artificial. Thick curtains covered the windows, as the last thing anyone wanted was children peering in to the inner sanctum and realizing that the teachers aren't in fact human, but filthy animals.
I smiled nervously, and muttered, "Good morning."
There was a chorus of half-hearted good mornings. God, they couldn't even muster that much.
"I don't mean to interrupt your morning rituals," I said, "but a matter has arisen that I would like to bring to everyone's attention."
I handed out the four notes I had received, and they were dutifully passed around, and examined in little clusters of teachers. Our high school was fairly small, so there were only 12 teachers in total. The youngest was a short, ugly blonde woman dressed in mannish clothes that made her as unappealing as possible. She could have passed for a student. The oldest was a man aged beyond his years, refusing to retire, hunched over by weight of his own egg-shaped head. He clung to what he called a "walking stick" that everyone knew was a cane.
They were a pathetic bunch. But they had direct access to the children. They could provide me with the vital information I needed for my investigation.
"These notes," I said, "have been slipped into my mailbox over the last two weeks. Should any of you have a notion as to who might be responsible, I would be most grateful for any and all information you might provide me. The boy responsible is clearly deranged in some fashion, and requires some psychiatric assistance. That is my only concern at this juncture."
I paused, and studied the teachers faces. They were all looking rather grimly at the floor, and I felt some comfort. They seemed to understand. I took back the notes, and invited the teachers to come see me at my office, should they have anything to say. I said good morning, and left.
Three steps down the hall, I heard the laughter. It stopped me dead. The twelve teachers were laughing. I backed up to the door and stood there, listening.
Someone did an impersonation of me, making me sound like a pompous British buffoon. "Should ANY of you have a NOTION as to who might be RESPONSIBLE..." the teacher was saying. I couldn't tell who.
"My god, he really is a little shit," a teacher said, laughing.
"And he sniffs bicycle seats," another chimed.
They all laughed uproariously.
I rushed back to my office, my hiding place, utterly humiliated.
The rest of the morning was spent mulling over my situation, and what I could do next. I picked up a pen and doodled absent-mindedly as I thought things through. The teachers, obviously, were against me.
"Teachers, no help," I wrote.
So far, I had accumulated no real evidence implicating anyone. There was the attitude Jarvis displayed. Where all the other children trembled in fear, he stood there, meeting my gaze. His attitude spoke volumes.
"Jarvis?" I scribbled, and then drew a grinning, evil face meant to be the boy's.
Perhaps if I escalated matters, he would crack. I could arrange for a meeting with the school superintendent and Jarvis and myself. Instead of playing coy, I could lay down the notes, insist that Jarvis did it and...
I wrote, "Superintendent?"
But the handwriting. Jarvis had written HEY GUNTHER and it didn't match. As I thought about this, I wrote "HEY GUNTHER" several times, mimicking the block letters of the original note.
Something about my handwriting bothered me. I picked up the magnifying glass and looked at my "HEY GUNTHER" more closely. I pulled out the notes -- they were always at hand, never far from my reach -- and compared my hand-writing to the originals.
"No," I said to myself. "Utterly ridiculous. No."
But there was no denying it. The handwriting was a perfect match.
I told Delores I wasn't feeling well, and slipped meekly out of a back door of the building. During the bus ride to my bachelor apartment, my mind was wrapped in fog. I couldn't think. Could hardly see.
As I opened the door to my home, I realized this wasn't just my apartment any more. This was the crime scene. I would have to make a systematic search, inch by inch.
In a kitchen drawer, there was twine. A perfect match to the twine used on the notes. In my desk was yellow lined paper. Exactly the same, right down to a slight discolouring of the edges from age. There was no doubt about it -- I'd been writing the notes myself, all along.
"I'm insane," I muttered to myself with wonder.
My apartment now felt suspiciously like it didn't belong to me. I looked around the room, as if seeking out further proof of my own madness. But everything was ordinary. A bed, a couch, a desk... All very proper and masculine and simple. I joked sometimes that I lived like a monk. Everything clean and ordered.
And yet, I lived all alone. Middle aged, no wife -- there never was a woman in my life. Not for very long. Isolated. A freak. Mocked by my peers -- the teachers. There was something wrong with me -- that much was obvious, even if this apartment appeared perfectly normal.
The notes were mine, written by me, addressed to me, put in my own mailbox by me. While there was no such memory in my head, I knew it to be true. It went beyond the evidence. My entire body seemed to vibrate with newfound certainty.
I must have written the notes, tied them in twine, put them in my mailbox -- all in some kind of dream state, like a sleepwalker. Then, coming to my senses, I opened the mailbox and "found" them.
Why? Why had I done this to myself? I took the notes out and read them again. This time, a theme emerged. Ignoring all the "shit" and "bicycle seat sniffing" nonsense, each note said I was unfit to be a principal, and I should quit. Was that what I was trying to tell myself?
"What should I do?" I muttered.
It was difficult to sleep, that night. I had the distinct impression I was being watched.
The next day, I went to work. There was my mailbox, hanging on my office door. Somehow I knew there would be a note inside. Again, there was no memory of writing a note, tying it twine, dropping it in the mailbox, or any of that. As far I knew, I'd just arrived at my own office. Hesitantly, I opened my mailbox -- and there was the note I expected.
I took it to my desk, and opened it.
"HEY GUNTHER. 1. APOLOGIZE TO JARVIS. 2. QUIT YOUR JOB. 3. SEE A SHRINK."
I'd already deduced I should quit and see a psychiatrist. But apologize to Jarvis? That caught me completely by surprise. What for? What had I done to the boy, really? Submitted him to a few interrogations, that was all. Nothing too serious.
That's what I thought, intellectually. But there was a dark emotion in my belly, that burned and twisted like an epileptic snake. I owed Jarvis an apology. But the humiliation of it -- a man of my stature, apologizing to a boy of fifteen. It seemed outrageous.
All the same, I had no choice. Clearly, despite outward appearances, my mind wasn't functioning properly. This other, the "me" writing notes, seemed to have a better grasp of things than I did -- if I ignored all the swear words. To use the jargon, my unconscious had a firmer grasp on reality than my conscious mind.
When the bell rang, indicating classes had begun, I asked Delores to have Jarvis come to my office immediately. As I waited, I decided to come out from behind my desk, out from behind my shield. I took two heavy padded chairs and positioned them in the middle of the room, about five feet apart, facing each other. Then I sat in one of them and waited.
Jarvis knocked, and I said, "Come in, please."
He swaggered in. But when he saw that I wasn't behind my desk, he stopped, startled.
"Is something wrong, sir?" he said nervously.
I indicated he should sit down across from me, and he did. "Something wrong?" I asked.
"An accident, or something?"
It took me a moment to realize what he thought was going on -- that I had come out from behind my desk to break some bad news to him. Why else would I let down my guard in this manner? Presumably he worried his parents had been killed in a car accident or something of that sort.
"Oh, no, sorry," I said, and laughed a strange little bark. "No, no. Nothing like that."
A look of relief came onto his face, but he said nothing.
We sat there for a moment, as I tried to figure out what I wanted to do or say. Much to my own surprise, I took all the notes out of my pocket and handed them to Jarvis -- all the notes that is, save the very last one. I smiled as I handed them over. The boy took them uncertainly, confused by the expression on my face, then began to read.
He let out a nervous laugh, then quickly looked up and said, "Sorry, sir."
"No, no," I said. "That's quite all right. They are funny."
Jarvis said quickly, "I didn't write them, sir."
"I know, I know. Please read them."
Jarvis read the notes through while I waited. As I watched, I realized I never looked at the boy closely like this. Much to my surprise, he seemed quite genuine. In the past, he struck me as putting on airs, acting all superior. Now, he seemed human. Just another boy. Confident, yes, but just a boy. His blond hair was mussed, slightly. His shoes were scuffed.
He read the notes with a strange earnestness, as though he would be tested on them later. When he finished reading the last note, he held them in his lap, and looked confused. I held out my hand and he handed them over.
"I don't know anything about the notes, sir," he said.
Again, I let out a barking laugh, and it caused him to flinch. "Sorry," I said. "Of course you know nothing about the notes, Jarvis. You see, it turns out that I wrote them myself."
Jarvis blinked at me. "Sir?"
"For the last two weeks, I've been finding these notes in my mailbox. I thought someone else had been writing them. And so, I started an investigation. Which child wrote these? That's what I have been asking myself. I immediately suspected you. It was entirely unfair. There was no evidence against you at all. Because it turns out, in the end, that I wrote the notes. I have no memory of writing them, but I know I did. I'm... It would seem that... I'm not at all well."
Jarvis looked momentarily frightened. "Sir?" he said once more, but so quietly it was almost inaudible.
"I want to apologize to you," I said. "So many times, Jarvis, I have assumed the worst of you. Jealous of your youth, of your strength, of your confidence. I made you out to be my whipping boy for everything. I want to apologize, I want to... I've thought poorly of you, and it was entirely unjustified. You're... I think you're a good lad, with a bright future ahead of him. And I... I just wanted to say I'm sorry."
Jarvis stared at me, seemingly not comprehending a word I was saying.
"It's not easy, getting old. Being lost. I have no life. That's what I've learned, recently. This job is all I have. And I'm quitting. Right after you leave this room, I'm going to walk over to the phone, call the school superintendent, and tell him I'm unfit for work. I'll ask for a medical leave of absence, but I have no intention of returning here. Ever."
I paused, and leaned forward in my chair. "Do you understand what I'm saying? You've won."
"You wrote the notes, but you don't remember writing them?" Jarvis asked tentatively.
"That's right."
"But, why?"
"I think maybe I buried a part of me so deep, that I couldn't remember it anymore. That forgotten part of me took on a life of it's own. And it wrote the notes. To try to get me to change. To try to get me to quit my job and live a real life. A life that has value."
"I wrote the notes, sir," Jarvis said.
"What?"
"I wrote them," he said.
My mind reeled. Was I not insane after all? "But, no, all the evidence says I wrote them. I know I wrote them."
"That may be, sir, but I'm telling you -- I wrote the notes."
"The paper is from my home. The twine is from my home. I even have a pen, that writes exactly like the ink of the notes. All the evidence..."
Jarvis interrupted me. "The evidence is wrong, sir."
I looked at the boy, and his face was hopeful and sincere. He was trying to save me, I realized. Save me from my own insanity.
"That's very kind of you, son," I said. "But no. I wrote them. Thank you for trying. You really are a very good lad."
I stood up, to indicate the meeting was over. Jarvis got dutifully to his feet.
"You'll be missed, sir," he said.
"I doubt that very much," I said, laughing bitterly.
"No sir, it's true. We will miss you. We always found you so funny."
A pang went through my chest, an ache. The worst part was that the boy genuinely meant what he said to be a compliment. It seemed none of the children respected me or feared me. I wasn't a police detective, prowling the halls with my sombre gray moustache and steely eyes. I was a clown.
"Thank you, Jarvis," I said, and I smiled. "Thank you for everything."
The boy nodded at me, smiled slightly, and then left the room.
The Principal's Apocalypse
by Nikolaus Maack
When I received the first obscene note, it amused me. Some brave student, I decided, just an adolescent, his mind awash in hormones -- he wrote it, folded it up, wrapped it in twine, and then put it in my mailbox. That's where I found the note, in the mailbox that hangs on my office door. The twine was an odd touch. It was as though the contents of the note would explode outwards if not contained.
This all happened years back, before my sudden retirement. I was a high school principal. In those days, I walked the halls, imagining myself as a cop on the beat. It was unthinkable to me that the children would challenge my authority -- me, their principal, their policeman.
Mind you, I'm not a tall man, nor am I muscular. You might even say my physique borders on the unhealthy. I believed it was the force of my personality that intimidated the children. My grave, solemn manner put young miscreants in their place. I'd lock onto them with my steady, steely gray eyes and they would cower under the threat of my anger. And there was my large, dark gray moustache -- it gave me the air of a police detective.
"HEY GUNTHER", the note started. That it addressed me by my first name seemed particularly bold.
The letter compared me to excrement, described me as mentally unsound, unfit to be a principal, that I could lick the writer's bottom, and on and on. The whole thing was silly. The note emphasized this childish tone by being written entirely in large block letters on yellow notepaper. I shook my head, opened a drawer in my large oak desk, and dropped the letter inside -- twine and all. It sat among slingshots, dirty novels, whistles, firecrackers, and other contraband.
I idly wondered which of my "usual suspects" might have done this. But truth be told, it was a Friday afternoon, and I just didn't care all that much. My plans for the weekend sprung to mind -- I'd purchased a bottle of sherry I was itching to sample. The whole thing was quickly forgotten.
It was Tuesday morning when I found a second note in my mailbox. This time, I wasn't so amused. Once was understandable -- a momentary lapse. Twice implied something more lasting.
"HEY GUNTHER, YOU ARE SICK. YOU ARE A LOUSY PRINCIPAL. EVERYONE CAN SMELL YOUR SHIT WHEN YOU WALK DOWN THE HALLS. YOU ARE SICK SHIT."
I'm slow to anger. In those days, it felt like my emotions were in the room next door, and I could only hear them as muffled noises coming through the wall. I studied the note more closely, and snorted. At least all the words were spelled correctly. I toyed with the notion of doing something, and decided uneasily to let matters rest.
When the third note arrived Thursday morning, I was startled by my own rage. My hands shook with so much anger I nearly tore the note, and my face became red and hot. Clearly my emotions had come crashing through the wall. Something had to be done, I decided. This sort of disrespect was intolerable.
"HEY GUNTHER, YOU ARE NOT FIT TO BE A PRINCIPAL, YOU SHIT. WHO DO YOU THINK YOU'RE FOOLING? WHAT RETARD PUT YOU IN CHARGE OF A SCHOOL? YOU ARE A FUCKING LOSER AND A MORON."
Once I had my feelings in check, I stepped out of my office into the adjoining administration room, and spoke to one of the school secretaries.
"Delores," I said. "A word?"
Delores was an old battleship of a woman -- broad and gray. Entirely reliable, perfectly discrete, I knew I could count on her no matter what the situation. She got up from her desk, picking up a pad of paper and a pen, and marched into my office.
Once she had settled herself in a chair, I handed her the three yellow notes without comment. Delores read them, one at a time, blushing slightly and fluttering her eyelashes in surprise. By the time she was halfway through the second note, a deep line of annoyance appeared between her eyebrows. I had been waiting for that crease to show itself. Whenever that line appeared between Delores's eyebrows, I knew my own instincts were correct. The line was a confirmation of my own feelings and a signal for me to take action.
"Any ideas, Delores?" I asked casually. "On who might be so bold?"
"No, sir," she said, still looking at the notes. "I can't think of a single boy who would stoop to this."
"Then I guess I'll have to interview the usual suspects this morning, Delores. One at a time."
"Of course, sir," she said.
"Starting with Jarvis."
She tilted her head slightly. I wasn't sure if this indicated agreement or uncertainty.
"Of course, sir."
Ten minutes later, alone in my office again, I heard a forceful knock at the door. Curse that boy. When a student knocks, it usually sounds more like a tiny mouse scratching. I positioned myself squarely behind my desk, picked up a pen and started writing nonsense on a blank piece of paper.
"Come," I barked.
The boy swaggered in. Always with a swagger. Could the lad not simply walk from place to place? I continued to scribble on the paper, pretending to be writing some important words.
I hated Jarvis. The boy was only fifteen, and he was already two inches taller than me. Endowed with a natural athletic ability, the boy's body was muscular and solid. He excelled at sports. While not exactly stupid, Jarvis was a poor student out of laziness. Everything came easy to him. If it didn't come easy, he wasn't interested in it.
Of course all the children adored Jarvis. Blond, blue eyed, strong and brave, Jarvis regularly tested authority. Whenever a teacher let down their guard, you could be sure Jarvis would be at the ready with a wisecrack or prank. All the same, he didn't get in trouble often. That was because of his beauty, his poise. The teachers forgave the boy almost anything.
But not I. No, I'd been watching Jarvis carefully. And this latest prank seemed to carry the lad's signature swagger and audacity. Who else would be so bold? And even if Jarvis wasn't responsible, I felt it was an opportunity to teach him a lesson in humility.
I let a half a minute pass, continuing to doodle nonsense as the boy stood there, waiting. I then noisily dropped my pen, scowling as if irritated by this interruption.
"Jarvis, take this piece of paper, and this pen, and write 'HEY GUNTHER' in block letters please." I slid a blank sheet of paper and a pen across the desk to him.
The boy blinked, almost smiled, and then caught himself. Without a word, he walked over to the edge of my desk, picked up the pen and did as he was told. He then stood there, hands clasped behind his back, staring at me. Most boys would stare at their feet. Not this one, the little shit.
"Will that be all, sir?" he asked.
"You're not curious at all what this is about?" I asked icily.
"Don't want to pry, sir," the boy said, without a trace of irony. "I'm sure it's none of my business, sir."
"We'll soon see."
We remained silent, staring at each other, for five long seconds. How I longed to beat this child. It was ridiculous, I know that now, but I felt a thrill at the thought of picking up a cane and bringing it down on the boy's back, knocking him to the floor. Where's your swagger now, you little shit? I could hear myself screaming the words. Where's your swagger now? To lay one single, crushing blow on his broad shoulders would be delightful. Yes, even orgasmic.
"Will that be all sir?" Jarvis asked once more. The rage on my face had to be visible, but Jarvis behaved as though nothing were amiss.
"You may go," I said.
When the door closed behind him, I collapsed back in my chair. I felt furious and pathetic -- that a mere boy of fifteen should fill me with such terrible thoughts and feelings. The hate I felt was so overwhelming, so ridiculous. It horrified me to think it, but if I tried to beat the boy, he could turn the tables in an instant. He would rip the cane from my hand and beat me senseless, compounding the humiliation I felt just looking at him. My weakness, my impotence, middle aged and alone and a mere high school principal... And him, young, fit and strong, his whole life ahead of him, everything coming to him so easily...
The other children I interrogated that day were much more frightened, and I hate to admit I took comfort in that. Their shivering little faces; their wide, teary eyes; their quavering voices -- I soon felt my old self again. I bellowed at them, demanding they reveal all their secrets. I made them all write "HEY GUNTHER" on pieces of paper.
"You will tell me everything!" I practically screamed.
Despite the satisfaction I felt making children suffer, my investigation amounted to nothing. None of them knew anything. I could tell this immediately, being quite an expert in bullying the young.
I spent the afternoon and early evening behind my desk, carefully comparing the collection of handwriting samples to the original notes. My large brass magnifying glass, purchased on a whim, was finally put to some use. None of the children wrote "HEY GUNTHER" in a style that matched the notes. It was possible they could have disguised their penmanship, but I believed I would see through such a ruse. While no graphologist, I felt I had an eye for analyzing evidence.
Annoyed at my lack of progress, I got up to leave -- and was startled by the late hour.
The next morning, I went into work early. I was eager to launch back into the battle. Out of habit, I opened my mailbox, and there it was. Much to my surprise, there was yet another note waiting for me. Who dared to do this? Who dared to leave notes like this, knowing I was hot on their heels? The audacity of it made me growl in anger. I had never growled before in my life.
"HEY GUNTHER, YOU ARE A RIDICULOUS OLD FART WHO LIKES TO SNIFF BICYCLE SEATS. YOU ARE SHIT. YOU ARE WORSE THAN SHIT. QUIT YOUR JOB NOW YOU OLD LOSER. YOU STINK."
Complete nonsense. Childish and idiotic and pointless. All the same, it took every ounce of my strength not to crumple the note in my fists.
Evidence, I told myself. It's evidence. Preserve the evidence.
I carefully put the note down on the edge of my desk, and then kicked my metal garbage can as hard as I could. It ricocheted off the wall with a clatter, then rolled to a stop, dented beyond repair. Fortunately it was still early, and no one heard my outburst. No one knew of my fury and despair.
The teachers gathered in their lounge at around eight in the morning. I decided that I would need to confront them with the notes as well, to see if they had any guesses as to who the culprit might be. The idea of speaking with the staff made me shudder, but I felt I had no other choice.
My relationship with the teachers was rather distant. I told myself that a good leader knows how to let the workers run the show themselves, interfering only when absolutely necessary. The truth is, the teachers frightened me, and I wanted as little to do with them as possible. Some managers have an open door policy. I preferred to think of myself locked away from them all, coming out of hiding only as required.
When it came to matters of faculty, I told myself, I was the school's secret weapon. To be used only in emergencies. Like an atomic bomb.
In this way, I hid my fear from myself.
When I stepped into the staff lounge, all conversation stopped and everyone stared at me. I couldn't remember the last time I stepped into this room, and looking at the gaping faces, I could see they couldn't remember either.
The room was supposed to be a place where teachers would confer with one another on lesson plans and other scholastic strategies. Instead, it was more like a common area in a frat house. The carpeted floor was littered with paper cups and crumbs. Every surface was dirty with bits of food and spilled coffee. The lighting was entirely artificial. Thick curtains covered the windows, as the last thing anyone wanted was children peering in to the inner sanctum and realizing that the teachers aren't in fact human, but filthy animals.
I smiled nervously, and muttered, "Good morning."
There was a chorus of half-hearted good mornings. God, they couldn't even muster that much.
"I don't mean to interrupt your morning rituals," I said, "but a matter has arisen that I would like to bring to everyone's attention."
I handed out the four notes I had received, and they were dutifully passed around, and examined in little clusters of teachers. Our high school was fairly small, so there were only 12 teachers in total. The youngest was a short, ugly blonde woman dressed in mannish clothes that made her as unappealing as possible. She could have passed for a student. The oldest was a man aged beyond his years, refusing to retire, hunched over by weight of his own egg-shaped head. He clung to what he called a "walking stick" that everyone knew was a cane.
They were a pathetic bunch. But they had direct access to the children. They could provide me with the vital information I needed for my investigation.
"These notes," I said, "have been slipped into my mailbox over the last two weeks. Should any of you have a notion as to who might be responsible, I would be most grateful for any and all information you might provide me. The boy responsible is clearly deranged in some fashion, and requires some psychiatric assistance. That is my only concern at this juncture."
I paused, and studied the teachers faces. They were all looking rather grimly at the floor, and I felt some comfort. They seemed to understand. I took back the notes, and invited the teachers to come see me at my office, should they have anything to say. I said good morning, and left.
Three steps down the hall, I heard the laughter. It stopped me dead. The twelve teachers were laughing. I backed up to the door and stood there, listening.
Someone did an impersonation of me, making me sound like a pompous British buffoon. "Should ANY of you have a NOTION as to who might be RESPONSIBLE..." the teacher was saying. I couldn't tell who.
"My god, he really is a little shit," a teacher said, laughing.
"And he sniffs bicycle seats," another chimed.
They all laughed uproariously.
I rushed back to my office, my hiding place, utterly humiliated.
The rest of the morning was spent mulling over my situation, and what I could do next. I picked up a pen and doodled absent-mindedly as I thought things through. The teachers, obviously, were against me.
"Teachers, no help," I wrote.
So far, I had accumulated no real evidence implicating anyone. There was the attitude Jarvis displayed. Where all the other children trembled in fear, he stood there, meeting my gaze. His attitude spoke volumes.
"Jarvis?" I scribbled, and then drew a grinning, evil face meant to be the boy's.
Perhaps if I escalated matters, he would crack. I could arrange for a meeting with the school superintendent and Jarvis and myself. Instead of playing coy, I could lay down the notes, insist that Jarvis did it and...
I wrote, "Superintendent?"
But the handwriting. Jarvis had written HEY GUNTHER and it didn't match. As I thought about this, I wrote "HEY GUNTHER" several times, mimicking the block letters of the original note.
Something about my handwriting bothered me. I picked up the magnifying glass and looked at my "HEY GUNTHER" more closely. I pulled out the notes -- they were always at hand, never far from my reach -- and compared my hand-writing to the originals.
"No," I said to myself. "Utterly ridiculous. No."
But there was no denying it. The handwriting was a perfect match.
I told Delores I wasn't feeling well, and slipped meekly out of a back door of the building. During the bus ride to my bachelor apartment, my mind was wrapped in fog. I couldn't think. Could hardly see.
As I opened the door to my home, I realized this wasn't just my apartment any more. This was the crime scene. I would have to make a systematic search, inch by inch.
In a kitchen drawer, there was twine. A perfect match to the twine used on the notes. In my desk was yellow lined paper. Exactly the same, right down to a slight discolouring of the edges from age. There was no doubt about it -- I'd been writing the notes myself, all along.
"I'm insane," I muttered to myself with wonder.
My apartment now felt suspiciously like it didn't belong to me. I looked around the room, as if seeking out further proof of my own madness. But everything was ordinary. A bed, a couch, a desk... All very proper and masculine and simple. I joked sometimes that I lived like a monk. Everything clean and ordered.
And yet, I lived all alone. Middle aged, no wife -- there never was a woman in my life. Not for very long. Isolated. A freak. Mocked by my peers -- the teachers. There was something wrong with me -- that much was obvious, even if this apartment appeared perfectly normal.
The notes were mine, written by me, addressed to me, put in my own mailbox by me. While there was no such memory in my head, I knew it to be true. It went beyond the evidence. My entire body seemed to vibrate with newfound certainty.
I must have written the notes, tied them in twine, put them in my mailbox -- all in some kind of dream state, like a sleepwalker. Then, coming to my senses, I opened the mailbox and "found" them.
Why? Why had I done this to myself? I took the notes out and read them again. This time, a theme emerged. Ignoring all the "shit" and "bicycle seat sniffing" nonsense, each note said I was unfit to be a principal, and I should quit. Was that what I was trying to tell myself?
"What should I do?" I muttered.
It was difficult to sleep, that night. I had the distinct impression I was being watched.
The next day, I went to work. There was my mailbox, hanging on my office door. Somehow I knew there would be a note inside. Again, there was no memory of writing a note, tying it twine, dropping it in the mailbox, or any of that. As far I knew, I'd just arrived at my own office. Hesitantly, I opened my mailbox -- and there was the note I expected.
I took it to my desk, and opened it.
"HEY GUNTHER. 1. APOLOGIZE TO JARVIS. 2. QUIT YOUR JOB. 3. SEE A SHRINK."
I'd already deduced I should quit and see a psychiatrist. But apologize to Jarvis? That caught me completely by surprise. What for? What had I done to the boy, really? Submitted him to a few interrogations, that was all. Nothing too serious.
That's what I thought, intellectually. But there was a dark emotion in my belly, that burned and twisted like an epileptic snake. I owed Jarvis an apology. But the humiliation of it -- a man of my stature, apologizing to a boy of fifteen. It seemed outrageous.
All the same, I had no choice. Clearly, despite outward appearances, my mind wasn't functioning properly. This other, the "me" writing notes, seemed to have a better grasp of things than I did -- if I ignored all the swear words. To use the jargon, my unconscious had a firmer grasp on reality than my conscious mind.
When the bell rang, indicating classes had begun, I asked Delores to have Jarvis come to my office immediately. As I waited, I decided to come out from behind my desk, out from behind my shield. I took two heavy padded chairs and positioned them in the middle of the room, about five feet apart, facing each other. Then I sat in one of them and waited.
Jarvis knocked, and I said, "Come in, please."
He swaggered in. But when he saw that I wasn't behind my desk, he stopped, startled.
"Is something wrong, sir?" he said nervously.
I indicated he should sit down across from me, and he did. "Something wrong?" I asked.
"An accident, or something?"
It took me a moment to realize what he thought was going on -- that I had come out from behind my desk to break some bad news to him. Why else would I let down my guard in this manner? Presumably he worried his parents had been killed in a car accident or something of that sort.
"Oh, no, sorry," I said, and laughed a strange little bark. "No, no. Nothing like that."
A look of relief came onto his face, but he said nothing.
We sat there for a moment, as I tried to figure out what I wanted to do or say. Much to my own surprise, I took all the notes out of my pocket and handed them to Jarvis -- all the notes that is, save the very last one. I smiled as I handed them over. The boy took them uncertainly, confused by the expression on my face, then began to read.
He let out a nervous laugh, then quickly looked up and said, "Sorry, sir."
"No, no," I said. "That's quite all right. They are funny."
Jarvis said quickly, "I didn't write them, sir."
"I know, I know. Please read them."
Jarvis read the notes through while I waited. As I watched, I realized I never looked at the boy closely like this. Much to my surprise, he seemed quite genuine. In the past, he struck me as putting on airs, acting all superior. Now, he seemed human. Just another boy. Confident, yes, but just a boy. His blond hair was mussed, slightly. His shoes were scuffed.
He read the notes with a strange earnestness, as though he would be tested on them later. When he finished reading the last note, he held them in his lap, and looked confused. I held out my hand and he handed them over.
"I don't know anything about the notes, sir," he said.
Again, I let out a barking laugh, and it caused him to flinch. "Sorry," I said. "Of course you know nothing about the notes, Jarvis. You see, it turns out that I wrote them myself."
Jarvis blinked at me. "Sir?"
"For the last two weeks, I've been finding these notes in my mailbox. I thought someone else had been writing them. And so, I started an investigation. Which child wrote these? That's what I have been asking myself. I immediately suspected you. It was entirely unfair. There was no evidence against you at all. Because it turns out, in the end, that I wrote the notes. I have no memory of writing them, but I know I did. I'm... It would seem that... I'm not at all well."
Jarvis looked momentarily frightened. "Sir?" he said once more, but so quietly it was almost inaudible.
"I want to apologize to you," I said. "So many times, Jarvis, I have assumed the worst of you. Jealous of your youth, of your strength, of your confidence. I made you out to be my whipping boy for everything. I want to apologize, I want to... I've thought poorly of you, and it was entirely unjustified. You're... I think you're a good lad, with a bright future ahead of him. And I... I just wanted to say I'm sorry."
Jarvis stared at me, seemingly not comprehending a word I was saying.
"It's not easy, getting old. Being lost. I have no life. That's what I've learned, recently. This job is all I have. And I'm quitting. Right after you leave this room, I'm going to walk over to the phone, call the school superintendent, and tell him I'm unfit for work. I'll ask for a medical leave of absence, but I have no intention of returning here. Ever."
I paused, and leaned forward in my chair. "Do you understand what I'm saying? You've won."
"You wrote the notes, but you don't remember writing them?" Jarvis asked tentatively.
"That's right."
"But, why?"
"I think maybe I buried a part of me so deep, that I couldn't remember it anymore. That forgotten part of me took on a life of it's own. And it wrote the notes. To try to get me to change. To try to get me to quit my job and live a real life. A life that has value."
"I wrote the notes, sir," Jarvis said.
"What?"
"I wrote them," he said.
My mind reeled. Was I not insane after all? "But, no, all the evidence says I wrote them. I know I wrote them."
"That may be, sir, but I'm telling you -- I wrote the notes."
"The paper is from my home. The twine is from my home. I even have a pen, that writes exactly like the ink of the notes. All the evidence..."
Jarvis interrupted me. "The evidence is wrong, sir."
I looked at the boy, and his face was hopeful and sincere. He was trying to save me, I realized. Save me from my own insanity.
"That's very kind of you, son," I said. "But no. I wrote them. Thank you for trying. You really are a very good lad."
I stood up, to indicate the meeting was over. Jarvis got dutifully to his feet.
"You'll be missed, sir," he said.
"I doubt that very much," I said, laughing bitterly.
"No sir, it's true. We will miss you. We always found you so funny."
A pang went through my chest, an ache. The worst part was that the boy genuinely meant what he said to be a compliment. It seemed none of the children respected me or feared me. I wasn't a police detective, prowling the halls with my sombre gray moustache and steely eyes. I was a clown.
"Thank you, Jarvis," I said, and I smiled. "Thank you for everything."
The boy nodded at me, smiled slightly, and then left the room.
Friday, June 19, 2009
The Caged Pimp: a Vincent Story
This is fifth Vincent the Bartender story. The other stories are, in the order they were written:
The Dutiful Son
Pickled Eggs
Hot Wet Opera
Six Eyes Scratched Out
Each story is meant to stand alone on its own. So don't be intimidated.
As always, any feedback would be appreciated -- good or bad.
Feel free to print out any of the Vincent stories and share them. But do not use them to make money. I'm not getting paid for this, so why should you?
There are some additional comments at the end of the story.
* * *
The Caged Pimp
by Nikolaus Maack
The first Saturday of every month, there was a poker game at Vincent's bar. It took place after hours, in a back room just off from the kitchen. The walls were bare. A round table was bolted to the floor. The chairs were heavy and well padded. This made them comfortable, but also difficult to pick up and throw.
That night, six players ringed the table: two cops, a judge, a drug dealer, a mob lawyer, and a pimp. They were big, serious men with serious faces. The judge smoked cigars, filling the room with smoke. Not everyone appreciated the stink of the cigars, but the judge had deep pockets and was a lousy card player.
An anonymous waiter sat in the corner, studying every movement of the cards. He kept things friendly. Anyone caught cheating would be suitably reprimanded.
Vincent, the bar owner, sat at a chair outside of the game. "I can't fucking play cards myself," he explained every week. "You know what they say -- lucky in love, unlucky at cards."
This always made the men laugh. Vincent was big and fat, like a mountain with the face of a constipated bulldog.
Vincent kept the beer flowing, occasionally ducking in to the kitchen for snacks. He didn't bother keeping tabs. The house took a cut of the winnings at the end of the night.
The pimp was named Shark, and he'd been drinking too much. Early in the evening, he started to lose. The more he lost, the deeper the crease between his eyebrows got, until it started to look like a little ditch in his face. During one particularly bad round, he threw down his cards and yelled:
"Mother fucker!"
The faces of the other players darkened slightly.
"Shark, come out front with me," Vincent said. "Take a break. Clear your fucking head."
It was worded as an invitation, but Shark knew it wasn't one. He silently got up from the table and the two of them went out front.
"Want a Coke or something?" Vincent asked.
"How about a beer?" Shark asked.
“Did I fucking offer you a beer?”
Shark paused. Apparently he was cut off. Well, he was pretty hammered.
“Soda and lime?” he asked.
"Fine." Vincent assembled two sodas and brought them over to a table. He flicked a light on, and a pool of yellow shone down on their drinks. The rest of the bar was dark and empty. It made the table feel like an island in the middle of an ocean.
Shark got his name from the plain gray suits he always wore, and his plain, tough demeanour. His eyes were dark dots set deep in his face. Despite being a pimp, there was nothing flashy or peacock about him. He was too smart for all that - smart, and thoughtful, and quiet. Where other pimps were regularly hassled, the police often failed to notice Shark in the crowd.
Shark took a sip of the soda, and then ran a finger around the rim of his glass. He looked up at the yellow light, blinking, and then looked back down at his drink. He wanted to talk, but didn't know how to start.
"What the fuck's with you tonight?" Vincent prompted. "You're not the type to get rattled by a few lousy hands of poker."
"I came here tonight to forget about something," Shark admitted. "Distract myself. But I can't forget it. This feeling, in my chest..."
Vincent said nothing.
"I don't know if I can be a pimp anymore," Shark blurted out, surprising himself.
"Why not?"
Shark paused for a moment, then let out a sigh. "Being a pimp -- it's a contradiction. A weird Catch 22. You ever been broke and hungry?"
"Sure."
"Being a pimp is like that. I'm standing in a restaurant, and there's all this amazing food. And I'm starving. But I can't afford to eat. All this food, passing me by, and I can't touch it. But, in my life, in the life of a pimp... It's not food that's driving me crazy. It's women. Sexy, crazy, lusty women. And I can't fuck them. Because it would destroy me. A good pimp doesn't fuck his whores. Soon as he does, he's a chump. He's finished."
"How come?" Vincent asked.
Shark thought for a moment, then said, "One of my whores fucks a customer and gets paid. What percentage do you think she gets to keep?"
"Twenty percent?" Vincent guessed.
Shark laughed. "Lower."
"Ten percent?"
"Try zero percent," Shark said flatly. "She gets nothing. All the money goes to me. I tell the girls that I'm their banker. They give me all the money, and I'll give it to them when they need it. The whole thing is about control. I pay their rent. I buy their groceries. I take them shopping for clothes. They see me as their guardian, their benefactor, their priest. I give them things. They don't give me anything-- they can't. Control. They all think they're in love with me, and that's fine. Hell, I'll tell them I love them. I’ll kiss them, chastely, like a brother. But I'll never fuck them."
"They can only give you money," Vincent said.
"Right."
“They give you anything else, you lose control.”
“Right. I let them give me so much as one blowjob, they think they've got something on me.”
"And that's why you're a starving man."
"Exactly," Shark said, falling back in his chair. "And it’s not just the lack of sex. It’s more than that. I've got a wall around me and I'm trapped inside it. The women throw the money over the wall to me, and that's it. No one gets in. No one."
He fell silent, and stared at the tabletop. The ice in his drink gleamed like diamonds. He shook the glass and the diamonds sang.
“I must be drunk,” Shark said. "I never talk this much."
"No one gets in?" Vincent prompted, smiling slightly.
"Well... That's how it used to be. Until recently. This one woman, she calls herself Veronica. Like in Archie comics. I don't know her real name. Pale skin, big smile, dark black hair. Real ripe. A brunette Marilyn Monroe -- that's what everyone says about her. I met Veronica a few times, talked. She seemed interesting to me, no big deal. A good fit for my stable of girls. So yesterday night, I went to the bar where Veronica hangs out and I was all ready to start turning her, make her a worker. She was sitting across the room, smiling at me. So I gave her the stare."
Shark laughed. "I don't know how it works, but I have this look I give women, and they come to me. My eyes hypnotize them, I guess. I'm not exactly a handsome guy, but something about the stare just works. Hungry eyes. Don't ask me. I feel silly talking about it. Anyway.... Fuck, I’m drunk. So, anyway, I stare at this pale, dark-haired girl, and she comes right over to me, and she's laughing.
"And Veronica says, 'You need glasses or something?' Teasing me, real nice. Then her tone completely changes, and she says, all serious, 'You're in a lot of pain. That's sad. A nice guy like you.' And that's all it took. She came right through the wall and touched me, with just a few words. The real me. Touched me right here."
And Shark punched himself in the center of his chest.
"She touched me, smiling, and then she just walked away, smiling over her shoulder at me, leaving me gasping in my chair as she walks out the door of the bar. It hurt. My chest started to ache, like I was having a heart attack. I can still feel it now. It hasn't left me since she spoke. A dull throbbing, right in the middle of my chest. With just a few casual words, she showed me my pain, made it real.
"Now that I can feel it, I know it was always there, before Veronica said anything to me. I just couldn't feel it, until she showed it to me. All she did was reveal who I am and what I've been feeling. It’s amazing.
"Today, all day, I've been walking around, feeling this wound in my chest. Just thinking about this pain. Feeling the edges of it with my mind. What does it mean? What do I do with it? What's it for? What am I supposed to do now? I've never felt anything like this, and it feels crazy. A sucking chest wound, like I've been shot.
"Part of me is scared that it's never going to go away. That I'll feel like this forever. And some other part of me wants to hold on to it. Hug the pain tight and close, like a lover. Some part of me wants to feel this pain, forever. Because this pain, it makes me human. Up until now, I haven't been human at all. I've been a business man, a pimp. A fucking shark."
He slumped on to the table, his head in his hands. "I thought I'd feel better, talking about it. Fuck, I just feel worse."
They were quiet for a moment. A car went by and the headlights briefly lit up the bar like a lazy flash of lightning.
"Take off your shirt," Vincent said. He quickly got to his feet and went behind the bar, started washing his hands. There were other noises as he wandered around the dark.
"Wh-what?" Shark stammered.
"Let me take a look at this wound of yours," Vincent said. "See if I can do anything about it."
"There's... There's nothing to see. I mean, it's not a real wound."
"Take off your shirt. Show me where it hurts. That's all."
Shark stood up, from his chair. He tottered a little on his feet, and realized he was still quite drunk. He didn't trust himself. "Are you... Are you serious?"
"Do I fucking look serious?" Vincent asked.
Shark, standing next to the pool of yellow light, couldn't see anything in the darkened bar. He couldn't see Vincent to tell if he looked serious or not. Then, suddenly, Vincent was standing in front of him. The bartender had rolled up his shirt sleeves and his hands glistened, wet under the yellow light. The man's bulldog face was stone.
"I... I guess you are serious," Shark said, and hesitantly began to untuck his shirt.
"I grew up in the south," Vincent said, gruffly. "My parents were very religious. Almost to the point of insanity. I'm not religious now. Gave up on all the shit years ago. Still, I learned some things from my parents. People said I had 'the gift' -- whatever the fuck that means. I try not to take it too seriously, but, it was a calling. Maybe not god. Maybe some other fucking thing. The universe. Some kind of power. Who the fuck knows? I try to ignore it. But you can't always ignore this kind of thing. Sometimes the moment arrives, and you've got to fucking do something."
Shark stood there, nervous. His chest, muscular and mostly hairless, was exposed. He draped his shirt over the back of a chair.
Shark started to say, "You better not be..." and Vincent waved away the words and anger with his meaty hand.
"Show me where it hurts," the bartender said.
Shark made a fist with his right hand, and put it on his chest. "Here," he said.
Vincent nodded. "Let's see," he said.
He laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. It sounded like gunshots in the quiet bar. Vincent raised his right hand in the air, palm up. He lowered the tips of his fingers on to Shark's chest. When the fingertips touched him, Shark let out a little gasp. The touch felt hot against his skin.
At first, Vincent's fingers were spread out. He bounced his hand around, like a spider jumping into the air and landing. With each bounce, his fingertips came closer together. Then all five fingers were pressed at a particular point. Vincent tapped the back of his right hand with the index finger of his left. He cocked his head, as if listening to the sound.
"Here," he said, with conviction.
"Right," Shark said.
"I'll need you to lie down on the table," Vincent said, and he began clearing off the table, under the light.
"Why?" Shark asked.
"Psychic surgery," Vincent said. His face was utterly serious.
"You're shitting me,” Shark said. “I’m not that fucking drunk, I mean you can’t…”
"Do you want to deal with this thing, once and for all? Do you want to get your shit together? Or do you want this hurt your whole fucking life? Now lie down on the fucking table."
With some difficulty, Shark sprawled on the table, on his back. The table was round and his legs and arms hung down. Drunk, he found it difficult to keep his balance. The table wobbled slightly, but stayed upright.
"If I was sober,” Shark said with feigned cheerfulness, “this would not be happening.”
Vincent ignored him. He held up his hands, spread his fingers. Using his right hand, he found the spot on Shark's chest again, and lay the palm of his hand flat on the spot. He closed his eyes and seemed to be concentrating on something.
"Pain's a funny thing," Vincent said. "We're afraid of it. Every time we get so much as a headache, we're taking pills to chase the pain away. Working bar, I've seen people drink their whole fucking lives away. Everything hurts them. Getting out of bed, walking around, talking to people. They're in constant pain. So they drink and they drink and they drink, so they never get hurt. But sometimes, you've got to hurt. To know you're alive. Pain pushes you in the right direction, like when you stub your toe in the dark -- you know you went the wrong way."
As he spoke, Vincent pressed down on Shark's chest, and wiggled his fingers.
Sitting up slightly on his elbows, Shark watched as Vincent pushed his fingers down. It looked like the fingers were penetrating the chest. And was that pink fluid of some kind? It seemed to be dripping between Vincent's fingers. What the hell was it? Where was it coming from?
Vincent dug around with his fingers, as if reaching for something. "Deep pain. Soul pain. It's the best and the worst kind. That's when your heart is talking to you, telling you how you feel."
Shark saw something red and solid, in Vincent's fingers. There was a bowl nearby -- small and white -- sitting on another table. Vincent dropped the red thing into the bowl, then started digging around inside Shark's chest again. He quickly pulled out two more red things and dropped them in the bowl.
"What...?" Shark managed.
"That girl, Veronica," Vincent said, digging around some more. "She gave you a gift. She put you in touch with your pain. You should be fucking grateful." Vincent pulled out a few more red things and dropped them in the bowl. "There. That should be all of them."
As Shark sat up, Vincent grabbed the bowl, moved it further out of the light.
"Here's your shirt," Vincent said, handing it over. "Why don't you go to the bathroom, clean yourself up a little."
Confused, dazed, and drunk, Shark did as he was told, staggering off to the bathroom with his shirt in his hands. As he headed towards the back of the bar, he could hear the judge and the others talking as they played poker. Somehow it was hard to believe those men were still here. Shark had just undergone something, but he had no idea what it was.
Turning on the light in the bathroom, Shark saw himself in the mirror. His chest, where the pain had been, was smeared with pink fluid. Tentatively, he touched it. The fluid was sticky, and smelled sweet. He took some paper towels, ran warm water on them, and cleaned himself up.
The pain was gone. It took him a moment to realize it. He felt good. His mind was clearing, a little. Shark put his shirt on and buttoned it up.
When he came back out to the bar, Vincent was sitting at the table -- the island in the light. As he walked up, he saw Vincent reach into the white bowl, take out one of the red things, and eat it.
Shark blurted out, "What the fuck?"
Vincent turned around. "Oh, there just maraschino cherries, from the bar. Squished a little out of shape, but still good. Didn't want to fucking waste them."
"Cherries?"
"Right. What, you thought I was really doing psychic surgery on you?"
"Son of a bitch," Shark muttered. Then laughed. "What the fuck was the point of all that shit?"
"Sometimes, when I talk, people don’t listen. Especially when they’re drunk. It’s not enough I give them words. They want a song and fucking dance. That’s the only way the words get in. And you feel better, don’t you?”
"Yeah. I do."
"Then the operation was a fucking success."
Shark sat back down at the table. His mind was all over the place. He didn't know what the hell to say or do.
"Way I see it," Vincent said, "I don't know if you should quit being a pimp or not. But one thing you've got to fucking do -- you should find this Veronica girl again. Forget about making her turn pro. Ask her out on a date. Show her a good time. If a woman gets your heart talking, you don't want to lose something like that. You need to find out if she got in because she got lucky, or because she's fucking special."
"I... I suppose so."
Vincent got to his feet. "Now go home. You're drunk. You’re fucking up my poker game with your bitching. What, you think I make money around here selling drinks? It's my cut of the poker winnings that keeps the fucking doors open.”
Shark stood up. "Okay. Thanks."
Together they headed towards the back door. Walking past the poker room, Shark stuck his head in.
"Good night, everybody," Shark said. "Sorry about earlier."
Everyone wished him a good night, and he went out the back door, into the alley, and off into the night.
Vincent sat back down at his chair, near the poker game.
"You settle things with Shark?" one of the mob lawyers asked.
A cop laughed.
"Sure, I settled things," Vincent said. "I gave him a talking to, showed him a magic trick. He's fine. Good kid."
The judge took out a fresh cigar, and began preparing to light it.
* * *
Some additional comments...
I wrote this story months back, and then sat on it. Faith healing? Really? What the hell was that all about. No one was more surprised than me when Vincent told Shark to take off his shirt. It seemed ridiculous and insane.
Characters don't always do what I expect them to do. That is, if the characters are any good. They take on a life of their own and behave in their own way. It becomes my job to just write down their actions.
Embarrassed by the faith healing stuff, I decided this was a flawed story and I'd have to think about it some more. When I reread the story yesterday, I was surprised at how much I liked it and how the faith healing seemed to work -- so long as you understood it was just Vincent screwing around to keep Shark's attention.
Pickled Eggs
Hot Wet Opera
Six Eyes Scratched Out
Each story is meant to stand alone on its own. So don't be intimidated.
As always, any feedback would be appreciated -- good or bad.
Feel free to print out any of the Vincent stories and share them. But do not use them to make money. I'm not getting paid for this, so why should you?
There are some additional comments at the end of the story.
* * *
The Caged Pimp
by Nikolaus Maack
The first Saturday of every month, there was a poker game at Vincent's bar. It took place after hours, in a back room just off from the kitchen. The walls were bare. A round table was bolted to the floor. The chairs were heavy and well padded. This made them comfortable, but also difficult to pick up and throw.
That night, six players ringed the table: two cops, a judge, a drug dealer, a mob lawyer, and a pimp. They were big, serious men with serious faces. The judge smoked cigars, filling the room with smoke. Not everyone appreciated the stink of the cigars, but the judge had deep pockets and was a lousy card player.
An anonymous waiter sat in the corner, studying every movement of the cards. He kept things friendly. Anyone caught cheating would be suitably reprimanded.
Vincent, the bar owner, sat at a chair outside of the game. "I can't fucking play cards myself," he explained every week. "You know what they say -- lucky in love, unlucky at cards."
This always made the men laugh. Vincent was big and fat, like a mountain with the face of a constipated bulldog.
Vincent kept the beer flowing, occasionally ducking in to the kitchen for snacks. He didn't bother keeping tabs. The house took a cut of the winnings at the end of the night.
The pimp was named Shark, and he'd been drinking too much. Early in the evening, he started to lose. The more he lost, the deeper the crease between his eyebrows got, until it started to look like a little ditch in his face. During one particularly bad round, he threw down his cards and yelled:
"Mother fucker!"
The faces of the other players darkened slightly.
"Shark, come out front with me," Vincent said. "Take a break. Clear your fucking head."
It was worded as an invitation, but Shark knew it wasn't one. He silently got up from the table and the two of them went out front.
"Want a Coke or something?" Vincent asked.
"How about a beer?" Shark asked.
“Did I fucking offer you a beer?”
Shark paused. Apparently he was cut off. Well, he was pretty hammered.
“Soda and lime?” he asked.
"Fine." Vincent assembled two sodas and brought them over to a table. He flicked a light on, and a pool of yellow shone down on their drinks. The rest of the bar was dark and empty. It made the table feel like an island in the middle of an ocean.
Shark got his name from the plain gray suits he always wore, and his plain, tough demeanour. His eyes were dark dots set deep in his face. Despite being a pimp, there was nothing flashy or peacock about him. He was too smart for all that - smart, and thoughtful, and quiet. Where other pimps were regularly hassled, the police often failed to notice Shark in the crowd.
Shark took a sip of the soda, and then ran a finger around the rim of his glass. He looked up at the yellow light, blinking, and then looked back down at his drink. He wanted to talk, but didn't know how to start.
"What the fuck's with you tonight?" Vincent prompted. "You're not the type to get rattled by a few lousy hands of poker."
"I came here tonight to forget about something," Shark admitted. "Distract myself. But I can't forget it. This feeling, in my chest..."
Vincent said nothing.
"I don't know if I can be a pimp anymore," Shark blurted out, surprising himself.
"Why not?"
Shark paused for a moment, then let out a sigh. "Being a pimp -- it's a contradiction. A weird Catch 22. You ever been broke and hungry?"
"Sure."
"Being a pimp is like that. I'm standing in a restaurant, and there's all this amazing food. And I'm starving. But I can't afford to eat. All this food, passing me by, and I can't touch it. But, in my life, in the life of a pimp... It's not food that's driving me crazy. It's women. Sexy, crazy, lusty women. And I can't fuck them. Because it would destroy me. A good pimp doesn't fuck his whores. Soon as he does, he's a chump. He's finished."
"How come?" Vincent asked.
Shark thought for a moment, then said, "One of my whores fucks a customer and gets paid. What percentage do you think she gets to keep?"
"Twenty percent?" Vincent guessed.
Shark laughed. "Lower."
"Ten percent?"
"Try zero percent," Shark said flatly. "She gets nothing. All the money goes to me. I tell the girls that I'm their banker. They give me all the money, and I'll give it to them when they need it. The whole thing is about control. I pay their rent. I buy their groceries. I take them shopping for clothes. They see me as their guardian, their benefactor, their priest. I give them things. They don't give me anything-- they can't. Control. They all think they're in love with me, and that's fine. Hell, I'll tell them I love them. I’ll kiss them, chastely, like a brother. But I'll never fuck them."
"They can only give you money," Vincent said.
"Right."
“They give you anything else, you lose control.”
“Right. I let them give me so much as one blowjob, they think they've got something on me.”
"And that's why you're a starving man."
"Exactly," Shark said, falling back in his chair. "And it’s not just the lack of sex. It’s more than that. I've got a wall around me and I'm trapped inside it. The women throw the money over the wall to me, and that's it. No one gets in. No one."
He fell silent, and stared at the tabletop. The ice in his drink gleamed like diamonds. He shook the glass and the diamonds sang.
“I must be drunk,” Shark said. "I never talk this much."
"No one gets in?" Vincent prompted, smiling slightly.
"Well... That's how it used to be. Until recently. This one woman, she calls herself Veronica. Like in Archie comics. I don't know her real name. Pale skin, big smile, dark black hair. Real ripe. A brunette Marilyn Monroe -- that's what everyone says about her. I met Veronica a few times, talked. She seemed interesting to me, no big deal. A good fit for my stable of girls. So yesterday night, I went to the bar where Veronica hangs out and I was all ready to start turning her, make her a worker. She was sitting across the room, smiling at me. So I gave her the stare."
Shark laughed. "I don't know how it works, but I have this look I give women, and they come to me. My eyes hypnotize them, I guess. I'm not exactly a handsome guy, but something about the stare just works. Hungry eyes. Don't ask me. I feel silly talking about it. Anyway.... Fuck, I’m drunk. So, anyway, I stare at this pale, dark-haired girl, and she comes right over to me, and she's laughing.
"And Veronica says, 'You need glasses or something?' Teasing me, real nice. Then her tone completely changes, and she says, all serious, 'You're in a lot of pain. That's sad. A nice guy like you.' And that's all it took. She came right through the wall and touched me, with just a few words. The real me. Touched me right here."
And Shark punched himself in the center of his chest.
"She touched me, smiling, and then she just walked away, smiling over her shoulder at me, leaving me gasping in my chair as she walks out the door of the bar. It hurt. My chest started to ache, like I was having a heart attack. I can still feel it now. It hasn't left me since she spoke. A dull throbbing, right in the middle of my chest. With just a few casual words, she showed me my pain, made it real.
"Now that I can feel it, I know it was always there, before Veronica said anything to me. I just couldn't feel it, until she showed it to me. All she did was reveal who I am and what I've been feeling. It’s amazing.
"Today, all day, I've been walking around, feeling this wound in my chest. Just thinking about this pain. Feeling the edges of it with my mind. What does it mean? What do I do with it? What's it for? What am I supposed to do now? I've never felt anything like this, and it feels crazy. A sucking chest wound, like I've been shot.
"Part of me is scared that it's never going to go away. That I'll feel like this forever. And some other part of me wants to hold on to it. Hug the pain tight and close, like a lover. Some part of me wants to feel this pain, forever. Because this pain, it makes me human. Up until now, I haven't been human at all. I've been a business man, a pimp. A fucking shark."
He slumped on to the table, his head in his hands. "I thought I'd feel better, talking about it. Fuck, I just feel worse."
They were quiet for a moment. A car went by and the headlights briefly lit up the bar like a lazy flash of lightning.
"Take off your shirt," Vincent said. He quickly got to his feet and went behind the bar, started washing his hands. There were other noises as he wandered around the dark.
"Wh-what?" Shark stammered.
"Let me take a look at this wound of yours," Vincent said. "See if I can do anything about it."
"There's... There's nothing to see. I mean, it's not a real wound."
"Take off your shirt. Show me where it hurts. That's all."
Shark stood up, from his chair. He tottered a little on his feet, and realized he was still quite drunk. He didn't trust himself. "Are you... Are you serious?"
"Do I fucking look serious?" Vincent asked.
Shark, standing next to the pool of yellow light, couldn't see anything in the darkened bar. He couldn't see Vincent to tell if he looked serious or not. Then, suddenly, Vincent was standing in front of him. The bartender had rolled up his shirt sleeves and his hands glistened, wet under the yellow light. The man's bulldog face was stone.
"I... I guess you are serious," Shark said, and hesitantly began to untuck his shirt.
"I grew up in the south," Vincent said, gruffly. "My parents were very religious. Almost to the point of insanity. I'm not religious now. Gave up on all the shit years ago. Still, I learned some things from my parents. People said I had 'the gift' -- whatever the fuck that means. I try not to take it too seriously, but, it was a calling. Maybe not god. Maybe some other fucking thing. The universe. Some kind of power. Who the fuck knows? I try to ignore it. But you can't always ignore this kind of thing. Sometimes the moment arrives, and you've got to fucking do something."
Shark stood there, nervous. His chest, muscular and mostly hairless, was exposed. He draped his shirt over the back of a chair.
Shark started to say, "You better not be..." and Vincent waved away the words and anger with his meaty hand.
"Show me where it hurts," the bartender said.
Shark made a fist with his right hand, and put it on his chest. "Here," he said.
Vincent nodded. "Let's see," he said.
He laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. It sounded like gunshots in the quiet bar. Vincent raised his right hand in the air, palm up. He lowered the tips of his fingers on to Shark's chest. When the fingertips touched him, Shark let out a little gasp. The touch felt hot against his skin.
At first, Vincent's fingers were spread out. He bounced his hand around, like a spider jumping into the air and landing. With each bounce, his fingertips came closer together. Then all five fingers were pressed at a particular point. Vincent tapped the back of his right hand with the index finger of his left. He cocked his head, as if listening to the sound.
"Here," he said, with conviction.
"Right," Shark said.
"I'll need you to lie down on the table," Vincent said, and he began clearing off the table, under the light.
"Why?" Shark asked.
"Psychic surgery," Vincent said. His face was utterly serious.
"You're shitting me,” Shark said. “I’m not that fucking drunk, I mean you can’t…”
"Do you want to deal with this thing, once and for all? Do you want to get your shit together? Or do you want this hurt your whole fucking life? Now lie down on the fucking table."
With some difficulty, Shark sprawled on the table, on his back. The table was round and his legs and arms hung down. Drunk, he found it difficult to keep his balance. The table wobbled slightly, but stayed upright.
"If I was sober,” Shark said with feigned cheerfulness, “this would not be happening.”
Vincent ignored him. He held up his hands, spread his fingers. Using his right hand, he found the spot on Shark's chest again, and lay the palm of his hand flat on the spot. He closed his eyes and seemed to be concentrating on something.
"Pain's a funny thing," Vincent said. "We're afraid of it. Every time we get so much as a headache, we're taking pills to chase the pain away. Working bar, I've seen people drink their whole fucking lives away. Everything hurts them. Getting out of bed, walking around, talking to people. They're in constant pain. So they drink and they drink and they drink, so they never get hurt. But sometimes, you've got to hurt. To know you're alive. Pain pushes you in the right direction, like when you stub your toe in the dark -- you know you went the wrong way."
As he spoke, Vincent pressed down on Shark's chest, and wiggled his fingers.
Sitting up slightly on his elbows, Shark watched as Vincent pushed his fingers down. It looked like the fingers were penetrating the chest. And was that pink fluid of some kind? It seemed to be dripping between Vincent's fingers. What the hell was it? Where was it coming from?
Vincent dug around with his fingers, as if reaching for something. "Deep pain. Soul pain. It's the best and the worst kind. That's when your heart is talking to you, telling you how you feel."
Shark saw something red and solid, in Vincent's fingers. There was a bowl nearby -- small and white -- sitting on another table. Vincent dropped the red thing into the bowl, then started digging around inside Shark's chest again. He quickly pulled out two more red things and dropped them in the bowl.
"What...?" Shark managed.
"That girl, Veronica," Vincent said, digging around some more. "She gave you a gift. She put you in touch with your pain. You should be fucking grateful." Vincent pulled out a few more red things and dropped them in the bowl. "There. That should be all of them."
As Shark sat up, Vincent grabbed the bowl, moved it further out of the light.
"Here's your shirt," Vincent said, handing it over. "Why don't you go to the bathroom, clean yourself up a little."
Confused, dazed, and drunk, Shark did as he was told, staggering off to the bathroom with his shirt in his hands. As he headed towards the back of the bar, he could hear the judge and the others talking as they played poker. Somehow it was hard to believe those men were still here. Shark had just undergone something, but he had no idea what it was.
Turning on the light in the bathroom, Shark saw himself in the mirror. His chest, where the pain had been, was smeared with pink fluid. Tentatively, he touched it. The fluid was sticky, and smelled sweet. He took some paper towels, ran warm water on them, and cleaned himself up.
The pain was gone. It took him a moment to realize it. He felt good. His mind was clearing, a little. Shark put his shirt on and buttoned it up.
When he came back out to the bar, Vincent was sitting at the table -- the island in the light. As he walked up, he saw Vincent reach into the white bowl, take out one of the red things, and eat it.
Shark blurted out, "What the fuck?"
Vincent turned around. "Oh, there just maraschino cherries, from the bar. Squished a little out of shape, but still good. Didn't want to fucking waste them."
"Cherries?"
"Right. What, you thought I was really doing psychic surgery on you?"
"Son of a bitch," Shark muttered. Then laughed. "What the fuck was the point of all that shit?"
"Sometimes, when I talk, people don’t listen. Especially when they’re drunk. It’s not enough I give them words. They want a song and fucking dance. That’s the only way the words get in. And you feel better, don’t you?”
"Yeah. I do."
"Then the operation was a fucking success."
Shark sat back down at the table. His mind was all over the place. He didn't know what the hell to say or do.
"Way I see it," Vincent said, "I don't know if you should quit being a pimp or not. But one thing you've got to fucking do -- you should find this Veronica girl again. Forget about making her turn pro. Ask her out on a date. Show her a good time. If a woman gets your heart talking, you don't want to lose something like that. You need to find out if she got in because she got lucky, or because she's fucking special."
"I... I suppose so."
Vincent got to his feet. "Now go home. You're drunk. You’re fucking up my poker game with your bitching. What, you think I make money around here selling drinks? It's my cut of the poker winnings that keeps the fucking doors open.”
Shark stood up. "Okay. Thanks."
Together they headed towards the back door. Walking past the poker room, Shark stuck his head in.
"Good night, everybody," Shark said. "Sorry about earlier."
Everyone wished him a good night, and he went out the back door, into the alley, and off into the night.
Vincent sat back down at his chair, near the poker game.
"You settle things with Shark?" one of the mob lawyers asked.
A cop laughed.
"Sure, I settled things," Vincent said. "I gave him a talking to, showed him a magic trick. He's fine. Good kid."
The judge took out a fresh cigar, and began preparing to light it.
* * *
Some additional comments...
I wrote this story months back, and then sat on it. Faith healing? Really? What the hell was that all about. No one was more surprised than me when Vincent told Shark to take off his shirt. It seemed ridiculous and insane.
Characters don't always do what I expect them to do. That is, if the characters are any good. They take on a life of their own and behave in their own way. It becomes my job to just write down their actions.
Embarrassed by the faith healing stuff, I decided this was a flawed story and I'd have to think about it some more. When I reread the story yesterday, I was surprised at how much I liked it and how the faith healing seemed to work -- so long as you understood it was just Vincent screwing around to keep Shark's attention.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Take Away My Hammer
Have you ever met someone who has a hammer in their hand, and they keep smashing themselves over the head with it? Carl is like that. He's at a dinner party, hammer in his hand, whacking away at his temple, walking among the other guests. He's even wearing a work glove on his right hand, to keep the wooden handle from slipping from his grasp.
As is typical in this kind of situation, everyone in the room tries to be polite. They don't want to point out Carl is smashing himself endlessly with a hammer. They avert their eyes, sip their wine. They smile politely. They try to talk about anything else.
Carl notices that people are treating him a little oddly, and can't understand why. People have always treated him this way. He assumes there's just something about him that makes people uncomfortable. He has no idea what it is.
"I have this terrible headache," Carl complains casually, just trying to make conversation. "All the time. It never seems to go away. I have no idea what's causing it. I suppose I should see a doctor."
"That does sound like the best course," says one older lady.
And still no one tells him. It's too embarrassing. Too personal. Too awkward. No one can talk about the hammer in Carl's hand.
But I can't stop myself. I can't just let it slide. Maybe if I hint at it.
"Hey, uh, Carl, what's your opinion on hammers?"
"Hammers? Uh, I don't really have an opinion on them. Why do you ask?"
And meanwhile, CRUNCH, CRUNCH, CRUNCH as he hits himself in the temple over and over again. Blood is running down the side of his head, staining his T-shirt.
People shush me.
"Nik, please."
"Yes, Nik, please stop it."
"You're being mean."
Carl hears all this and simply looks confused, smiling, tilting his head to one side. He doesn't understand what we're talking about.
Why can't we tell Carl about what he's doing? Why can't we say something? Why is it considered rude? I want to ask everyone at the dinner party about it. I want to stir everyone up. But when I turn to look at the faces around me, and see their irritation and embarrassment, I chicken out.
It doesn't matter, I suppose. Even if I bluntly told Carl about his hammer, he probably wouldn't believe me. And the sad thing is, I know from experience he might even convince me I'm wrong. My own resolve would crumble.
You're right, Carl. There is no hammer in your hand. I'm mistaken. How silly of me.
So the dinner party continues, and Carl keeps smashing himself in the temple with that hammer of his, and no one says anything.
Of course there are people at the party with their own problems. They have their own hammers.
There's Roger. He keeps dating the same horrible men over and over again. If given a choice between a saint and a drunk, Roger would always choose the drunk.
"I know he loves me, in his own way," Roger says. "He's like a project I'm working on. There's hope for him yet. Not like the last jerk I was with."
There's Helen. She has this incredibly screwed up relationship with her son.
"Spoiled brat! Don't you cower like that when I scream at you! Now come here and give me a kiss. Why don't you love me? What's so horrible about me that you can't even bring yourself to kiss me?"
And much to everyone's embarrassment, she begins to cry.
There's Derek, the rebel. He's aloof and snooty, sticking to the corners of the room, quietly judging the rest of us. While he'd never say out loud what he's thinking, it's easy to read his thoughts.
Everyone hates me, Derek thinks, so I may as well hate them first, before they get a chance to hate me. That'll show those idiots.
Then there's me. What am I doing to myself, that everyone else can see, but that I'm blind to? What is my hammer?
And how terrible to think I'm hitting myself in the head, right now, and no one is telling me. They see it, and they say nothing. They smile and nod, remaining polite, while I keep hitting myself with whatever happens to be my personal hammer.
Despite all of the hammers in the room, the dinner party is uneventful and bland. It ends rather early.
A year later, Carl dies from an untreated concussion.
There's another dinner party, and the guests all cluck their tongues in unison.
"How sad," everyone says. "We all saw it coming."
And none of us said anything to stop it.
As is typical in this kind of situation, everyone in the room tries to be polite. They don't want to point out Carl is smashing himself endlessly with a hammer. They avert their eyes, sip their wine. They smile politely. They try to talk about anything else.
Carl notices that people are treating him a little oddly, and can't understand why. People have always treated him this way. He assumes there's just something about him that makes people uncomfortable. He has no idea what it is.
"I have this terrible headache," Carl complains casually, just trying to make conversation. "All the time. It never seems to go away. I have no idea what's causing it. I suppose I should see a doctor."
"That does sound like the best course," says one older lady.
And still no one tells him. It's too embarrassing. Too personal. Too awkward. No one can talk about the hammer in Carl's hand.
But I can't stop myself. I can't just let it slide. Maybe if I hint at it.
"Hey, uh, Carl, what's your opinion on hammers?"
"Hammers? Uh, I don't really have an opinion on them. Why do you ask?"
And meanwhile, CRUNCH, CRUNCH, CRUNCH as he hits himself in the temple over and over again. Blood is running down the side of his head, staining his T-shirt.
People shush me.
"Nik, please."
"Yes, Nik, please stop it."
"You're being mean."
Carl hears all this and simply looks confused, smiling, tilting his head to one side. He doesn't understand what we're talking about.
Why can't we tell Carl about what he's doing? Why can't we say something? Why is it considered rude? I want to ask everyone at the dinner party about it. I want to stir everyone up. But when I turn to look at the faces around me, and see their irritation and embarrassment, I chicken out.
It doesn't matter, I suppose. Even if I bluntly told Carl about his hammer, he probably wouldn't believe me. And the sad thing is, I know from experience he might even convince me I'm wrong. My own resolve would crumble.
You're right, Carl. There is no hammer in your hand. I'm mistaken. How silly of me.
So the dinner party continues, and Carl keeps smashing himself in the temple with that hammer of his, and no one says anything.
Of course there are people at the party with their own problems. They have their own hammers.
There's Roger. He keeps dating the same horrible men over and over again. If given a choice between a saint and a drunk, Roger would always choose the drunk.
"I know he loves me, in his own way," Roger says. "He's like a project I'm working on. There's hope for him yet. Not like the last jerk I was with."
There's Helen. She has this incredibly screwed up relationship with her son.
"Spoiled brat! Don't you cower like that when I scream at you! Now come here and give me a kiss. Why don't you love me? What's so horrible about me that you can't even bring yourself to kiss me?"
And much to everyone's embarrassment, she begins to cry.
There's Derek, the rebel. He's aloof and snooty, sticking to the corners of the room, quietly judging the rest of us. While he'd never say out loud what he's thinking, it's easy to read his thoughts.
Everyone hates me, Derek thinks, so I may as well hate them first, before they get a chance to hate me. That'll show those idiots.
Then there's me. What am I doing to myself, that everyone else can see, but that I'm blind to? What is my hammer?
And how terrible to think I'm hitting myself in the head, right now, and no one is telling me. They see it, and they say nothing. They smile and nod, remaining polite, while I keep hitting myself with whatever happens to be my personal hammer.
Despite all of the hammers in the room, the dinner party is uneventful and bland. It ends rather early.
A year later, Carl dies from an untreated concussion.
There's another dinner party, and the guests all cluck their tongues in unison.
"How sad," everyone says. "We all saw it coming."
And none of us said anything to stop it.
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