Doomed (18 page)

My point is that Camille Spencer is the closest thing our world has to a secular martyr. She is the saint of our modern era—nothing less than our Moral Compass—ritualistically sacrificed time and time again. She and my dad are the social consciousness of a generation, saving endangered species from extinction, curing pandemic plagues. No famine exists until my parents call it to our international attention and record a hit song, with all the profits going for food relief. This woman whom we’ve seen suffer and survive every cruel atrocity, for years she and my father have determined what’s good and bad for the entire globe. No political figure holds higher moral authority; thus when Camille and Antonio Spencer renounce their nondenominational lifestyle and embrace a single true faith, Boorism, three billion rudderless agnostics are bound to heel to.

Thrilled as I am to have the world’s attention, I wish it wasn’t for an ill-considered lie. My blog followers in the underworld advise me that living conditions—living conditions?—in Hades are in rapid decline. Already my calls for more expletives, more belching, more coarseness are resulting in a steady uptick in the number of inbound souls. According to CanuckAIDSemily, these newly dead are arriving with the expectation that they’ll be in Heaven. Not only are they disappointed—but they’re ticked off! Everyone blames me. Everybody’s going to Hell, and they’re all going to hate me. Even worse, they’re all going to hate my parents in every language. Perhaps my dad
could handle that, but my mom’s going to hate being hated. She’s a skinny beautiful lady with perfect hair; she’s just not equipped to deal with hate.

It breaks my heart to imagine my folks killed by Japanese harpoons or a freak bong explosion, and then getting their skin flayed by demons because I sold them a bill of goods.

Outside my little airplane window, the sun is blazing away, half sunk in a tufted mattress of clouds. There are no angels. At least, no angels that I can see.

Gentle Tweeter,

The work of a supernaturalist never ends. As my flight begins its initial decent into Calgary or Cairo or Constantinople, you find me worming my ghost self into the port provided at my seat for stereo earphones. I’m shimmying deep into the electronic innards of the airplane. Tracing wires. Bridging relays. By satellite, I’m hacking into the various servers which control the security cameras ogling my parents’ far-flung abodes. Not so much to spy on them; no, I’m accessing the archived history files. By referencing the time codes I locate video footage of myself celebrating my tenth birthday, that long-ago, clothing-optional kids party where my parents hoisted a heavy piñata poured full of prescription pain medications and recreational hallucinogenics. There I am, that prepubescent me, mortified, clutching pastel-colored napkins to cover my exposed fleshy shame even as the naked adults disembowel my festive papier-mâché burro with their bare hands. These former-punk, former–New Wave, former-grunge scenesters, they squirm together on the littered floor like a mass of sweaty, drug-hungry eels.

It’s for the comfort of perspective that I seek out video of the most demeaning, most humiliating events of my former life. To all you predead people, please take note.
Whenever you’re feeling depressed about being dead, duly remember that being alive wasn’t always a picnic. The only thing that makes the present palatable is the fact that the past was, at times, torture. For further solace I retrieve the cringe-inducing video files of my six-year-old, living-alive self Morris dancing, naked, around the base of an old-growth pine tree. I review footage of my four-year-old backside splayed to the camera as I gingerly utilize the shared bamboo toilet stick at ecology camp.

Ye gods, my childhood was atrocious.

Scanning through random video time codes, I glimpse my mother. In Tashkent or Taipei, she’s telling someone over the phone, “No, Leonard, we have yet to identify the right assassin.…”

On a different time code, I watch my dad on the phone in Oslo or Orlando, saying, “Our last would-be executioner ran off with Camille’s credit cards.…” Both tiny flashbacks occurred in the final few months of my life.

To savor the unhappiness of someone other than myself, I retrieve the video of my brother, Goran, on his last birthday. If you must know, Goran was my brother for about fifteen minutes. My parents adopted him from some tragic refugee-camp situation, largely as a publicity stunt. Said adoption was not, shall we say, a success. In the video they’ve rented Disney’s EPCOT Center and populated it with the outlandish players of a dozen Cirque du Soleil productions. Members of the media outnumber the guests, making sweet, sweet public relations hay for my mom and dad. Cameras and microphones broadcast every smidgen of the magic as my folks proudly trot out their birthday gift: a pretty Shetland pony. What was Goran
to make of this situation, he who’d only recently arrived from some veiled post–Iron Curtain regime? Surrounding him were crowds of capering French Canadian clowns and nymphlike Chinese ribbon dancers. Here, he was clearly the guest of honor, and his hosts were presenting him with this young, tender animal. The pony’s mane and tail were braided with blue satin ribbons, its fur dusted with silver glitter. My father led the pony with the reins of a silver bridle, and a silver bow the size of a cabbage was tied around its diminutive neck.

Not that I, movie-star scion that I am, have ever seen an actual cabbage.

On the video, every eye is glazed with happiness. Or serotonin-reuptake inhibitors. Goran has been handed an ornate antique knife for the purpose of slicing and serving a mammoth birthday cake. His sinewy gulag body is decked out in Ralph Lauren togs, to fulfill the legal obligations of a commercial tie-in contract. Like an anarchist’s mask, his dense hair hangs down to hide his stone-colored, disdainful eyes. The casts of a dozen Andrew Lloyd Webber productions swing into a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday,” and the horror ensues.

It was not entirely Goran’s fault. In many cultures an animal so merrily presented would read as a blood sacrifice. It’s the equivalent of, say, blowing out birthday candles before ritualistically butchering the cake and handing portions of it ’round to guests. In such lusty, throwback cultures fresh meat amounted to the greatest tribute. Recognizing that, we shouldn’t have been so stunned to see the huge knife blade lash forward. Using the same effort that an American child would to extinguish every flaming candle with a
single breath, Goran gripped the knife’s handle and swung it as would a hale gladiator: to execute a hearty feast. Here, I slow the video to a frame-by-frame analysis. The prancing clowns are fixed in their manic attitudes. The silver reins are wrapped twice around my father’s hand. In moaning slow motion my mother says, “Make … a … wish.…”

There’s no blood, not at first. What follows comes in slowed strobes of tragedy. Goran wields his weapon in a wide, gleaming arc, and the tip of the blade passes cleanly through the furred throat of the startled pony. Even before it drops, before a hot fan of blood bursts from its nicked artery and bisected windpipe, exploding in every direction, the animal’s eyes roll backward until only the whites show.

Like a matador’s crimson cape, the curtain of equine blood sweeps over the massive birthday cake, melting the sculpted sugar flowers and dousing the tiny flames of its thirteen candles. The pony’s flailing heart casts thick gobbets of blood that splash the rainbow sequins and spandex of the Cirque clowns. Even as network cameras continue to roll, hot pony gore assails the elegant Xanaxed facades of my parents’ placid smiles. Even now, watching this on video, I see myself in the background as the poor little horse collapses on the lawn. The assembled multitudes shield their faces with their upraised forearms and duck their heads for protection; fainting or dodging, this vast field of onlookers appears to be bowing in humble awe. As the pony slumps to the ground, everyone falls, everyone but Goran and myself. Only my brother and I remain upright. The pair of us stand alone in the center of what looks like a battlefield, a massacre of blood-smeared victims.

This, despite the counsel of my mother and Judy Blume,
this forceful red spouting is how I’d always imagined my first menstruation would present itself. Therefore, I remain steadfast.

Judging from our calm expressions, it’s clear that Goran and I have both borne witness to far worse atrocities. Me, in an upstate restroom. He, in whatever war-torn hamlet he’d originated. Neither of us is a stranger to the cold reality of death. Neither of us will be stopped by it. Despite our youth, we’ve been tempered by secrets and suffering that these goofy clowns—the real clowns, I mean, not our parents—could never surmise. The Shetland pony sputters the last drops of its wet life into the grass at our feet, and the ancient kingdoms of the world surround us: Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, albeit crafted in quaint Disney microcosm.

Such a grisly panorama this presents. A tableau of Armageddon. Countless populations bowing, subjugated, baptized in hot blood, and at the center a freshly slaughtered beast is flanked by a young Adam and Eve, unfazed, examining one another’s blood-streaked bodies with newfound curiosity and admiration. Through the blood-spattered lenses of my horn-rimmed eyewear, I recognize a kindred spirit.

I’d never really fit in the world, not easily, not like coffee fits into a cup. However, seeing Goran’s cold assessment of his own mistake, I realized that I was not entirely alone. Even on low-resolution security video, my living-alive self was clearly and unmistakably in love.

Gentle Tweeter,

Please take note, you predead persons: as former-cynical, former-snarky former nihilists, you’ve eschewed all forms of religious faith for years. Woe unto you, for it leaves you primed for a false prophet. This spiritual anorexia has left you starved, poised to gorge yourself on whatever newish theology is set before you. Witness my escort, the “psychic bounty hunter” sent to corral my ghost and wrangle me home to my parents. Walking through the arrivals level of LAX, Mr. Crescent City believes he’s hugging me close, but he embraces an armful of air.

“Little dead angel,” he says, loping along, “first we need to find our chauffeur. Then we need to catch the helicopter to get us to your mom’s boat.”

We stride past a young mother who leans over her toddler, cooing and coaxing it, “Say ‘fuck,’ sweetheart. Say ‘fuck’ so you and Mommy will never be separated, in this world or the next.…”

It goes without saying that I am following at a distance well outside his distasteful grasp. Even the slightest contact with Mr. Crescent City means a comingling of his earthly form and my spiritual one, a union more intimate than even the most passionate goings-on of an earthly marriage.
His touch is, well … imagine huffing a vast toke of vaporized depression. Or guzzling a tall glass of bitter regret.

“When I get to fucking Heaven,” says Crescent, “I’m teaching kids that drugs are a detour for the rest of your fucking life.”

As Crescent leads me through the crowds, LAX looks more tragic than I’d ever noticed. Among these milling hordes I see human beings so racked with hunger that they’re reduced to eating triple-bacon cheeseburgers dripping with a sauce identical to the loathsome fluid which once spurted from between the pages of the
Beagle
book. I see whole families forced by global inequalities of wealth to wear prêt-à-porter Tommy Hilfiger. A glance in any direction reveals such scenes of hardship and deprivation. It’s one thing to hear that such grinding poverty exists in the modern world, but it’s heartrending to actually see people compelled to carry their own luggage.

An ancient crone, almost my mother’s age, not an hour younger than thirty-two, walks past wearing last season’s Liz Claiborne, and the pathetic sight brings a flood of ghost tears to my eyes. One has only to see the damage wrought by home hair coloring and carbohydrates to feel the same passionate empathy that spurred the progressive likes of Jane Addams.

These sullied throngs of travelers—who, unlike my parents, are not being paid to wear their clothes—they must be crazed. Either crazed or intoxicated with drugs. Because? Because everyone is grinning the same exaggerated clown’s leer. They’re poor and pimpled and clutching coach tickets to Sioux Falls, and still—they’re smiling. They stroll along as if ambling through the Jardin du Luxembourg
listening to the splash of the Medici Fountain. This is no 6th arrondissement. There’s nothing but thin plastic carpet laid atop airport concrete. Inexplicably, these apparent strangers coalesce into groups. They join hands while they wait for flights, forming impromptu prayer circles in sterile gate areas. Once assembled, they close their eyes. In somber unison they chant, “Fuck.…” Their eyes closed, they make church faces. With their heads tilted back, they sing hymns of “Fuck … fag … nigger … cunt … kike …,” their words slow and deliberate as a NASA countdown.

Gentle Tweeter, how peaceful is a world where everyone gives offense but no one takes it. Within my circle of vision everyone is littering and spitting, and no one seems put off by those uncivil acts.

What’s more, I shudder to say, fat people are holding hands with thin people. Mexican tongues share ice-cream cones with white tongues. Homosexuals are being nice to other homosexuals. Blacks are happily rubbing elbows with Jews. My hero, Charles Darwin, would be so ashamed of me. My meddling has so destroyed the entire natural order of living things.

“The whole fucking world loves you, little dead girl, for showing us the righteous fucking path.” As Mr. Crescent City says this, we’re gliding down an escalator. We’ve no luggage to collect. Below us, our chauffeur waits among a bevy of other uniformed chauffeurs. One snaps his fingers, drawing our focus. He holds a clipboard hand-lettered with the name
Mr. City
. Even indoors, this chauffeur wears mirrored sunglasses and a brimmed cap. No name tag. He wears old-school black riding boots with gray-wool jodhpurs. Despite the Los Angeles heat he wears a double-breasted
coat, like a driver right out of Agatha Christie sent by way of the Western Costume Company circa 1935.