Eyeheart Everything (11 page)

Doors slammed, engine gunned, Keith pulled rapidly into traffic as the back-seat struggle continued. James was on the right, taking Rebecca’s shoes off and trying to tickle her feet. She thrashed violently, kicked Scott in the back of the head and gashed James’ cheek with a red-painted toenail. She chewed savagely on my hand, right between the thumb and forefinger, muttering invective as she did so, and Scott for some reason decided it would be smart to start spanking her stained and odd-smelling butt with the plastic map-holding envelope from the glove box, which split open, being antique, and spilled maps all over us, and then Rebecca got some of Keith’s hair and started pulling it, and Keith screamed and swerved and the tires squealed a bit, and that’s when everybody froze for a second ... and then Rebecca stopped struggling and started weeping and wailing and screaming, and continued to do so for a while.

Pretty soon we got to Seaside, the little town next to the beach we like to have fun at. Keith asked if we should get anything, and Rebecca said she really, really, really, really needed a bathroom, and please, please, please, please, could she have one. And so we stopped at the little M&P gas market there by the main town road, and Rebecca climbed out, assumed some composure, and went inside. Then Scott got out and went inside as well, and pretty soon everybody was inside, milling around in a weird mood, saying nothing at all, picking up idle bits of snack food and squeezing them. Scott bought another case of beer. The shopkeeper was an old Korean woman, who seemed pretty nervous to have us all in the store at the same time, milling about, not talking, not looking at her, picking things up off the shelves and then putting them back in the wrong places. Eventually everybody bought a candy bar. We waited outside in the car for Rebecca, and she took a long time but eventually emerged, slowly, with dignity intact, and got back in the car without argument, still saying nothing. Wet splotches at this point were appearing regularly on the windshield.

When we got to the beach proper it was about five p.m., windy and cold and continuing to begin to rain. We had planned on some sunbathing, but instead decided we would build a fire. Kevin said that he wanted to burn his guitar, but James said that his guitar could be fixed, and then Kevin showed James some parts of the guitar, and James had no reply. So we all wandered around the beach collecting bits of wood, all of which were moist and wouldn’t light too well.

Rebecca said: Wow, now we are finally having Fun, the sarcasm was thick in her voice, My good friends and I are at the beach having Fun! Then Scott started yelling at Rebecca about how she had (apparently) insisted upon coming along, but once along had done everything in her power to bring everybody down and be a nuisance, and she said So I made Mike drink and smoke dope and try to run down a hitchhiker? And on and on. Nobody had the energy, really, to argue with Rebecca about her attitude. We were all in a coma, finally arrived, not wanting to do anything except stay warm. We all wanted to be home, but none of us wanted to get back in the car. So we gathered wood.

Scott and Keith and James together piled the wood in a weird-shaped stack, and tore up the empty beer case box for kindling, leaving the beer cans all over the floor of the car. The case itself was also fairly soaked with spilled beer. Kevin added the broken remains of his guitar, sticking them in the pyre at odd angles, which disintegrated the structure of the heap — it all collapsed. It didn’t seem to me like any of them knew how to build a fire, and they assumed masks of fake confidence while building it which assured me it wasn’t ever going to get lit. When I was a child, as a Boy Scout, I earned a Webelo patch for starting perfect campfires out of damp wood. But after almost killing everybody, I didn’t feel safe near open flame.

They fiddled with it, using their lighters that went out instantly in the windy rain, Scott, Keith, Kevin, James, the men-folk, while the women-folk, Sparrow, Angie, Rebecca, stood to one side telling them they were doing it wrong. I went to clean the beer cans out of the car, and got more and more pissed off as I started really thinking about how badly I had fucked up, how much work it would take to fix the car, and about how my so-called friends litter trash all over said car like it’s their personal dumpster. I pulled cans out of every crack and space, and stomped them into little disks on the ground beneath the driver’s side door.

Angie came over and stood by me, saying nothing as I picked cups and lids and straws and wrappers out of the Funmobile. She took my hand. We got in the back seat together and laid down, her on top of me, and we just laid there staying warm and not talking, for a while. We kissed, and she nuzzled my ear with her nose.

Scott came back to the car and stuck his head in, and said that they had all been talking and that the general consensus was that this was the most horrible fucked-up day in recent memory and that everybody wanted to go home and sulk, and what did I think? I agreed that going home and sulking sounded like a fun idea. So we all got back in the car and drove home, silently, not stopping once, as heavy rain continued to fall, and the wind whistled through the twisted body holes, and we played no music on the stereo and told no jokes and did no drugs and picked up no hitchhikers and when we got back to my place they all went their separate ways, and Angie and I went to sleep, and the next day we went to work early in the morning and that was no fun either.

i was like, this letter, number, okay, i just invented my own math. that’s what i do a lot, actually. what i hate is when i get like a bad test and everything’s like adding, subtracting, multiplying six. 860/6 instead of putting like one, i latched a zero, so i put thirty instead of like three so i got points knocked off like that. that was really complicated math like that i finally got down i hate that! yeah. well it’s hard to tell if he doesn’t let you use ... Mr. Molnard won’t let us use a calculator on that test, for those equations ... i can’t check if it’s like that. those two problems are going to be worth 30 points. it’s friday. it’s friday? i can’t sleep! you should go in 7th grade to make up ... i seriously have no idea ...

so that’s like ... i don’t take French anymore. oh that’s right. sorry. who else is going? did you already turn in your thing? it’s due today? oh well, i’ll be like ... that’s what i thought ... my dad’s like why do you have to go and ... health, personal stuff ... why are you asking me these questions? i don’t know. underneath you write three. so we have to find like ...

this is a right triangle, right there, so let that g h g cosine equals ... do you know what i mean? okay, forty times three is nine forty point two eight, feet per second okay. we’ll ask him this morning. forty degrees. cosine forty times 940 point two eight yeah i will. i can tell these are your drawings. it’s not bad, it’s just ... the little flowers ... those aren’t mine, i didn’t draw them. and then if he asks, like if you did that, say, i don’t know, you tell me! that one thing he showed us you know the angles, the right angles, good job guys.

i’m going to have friends because of math. seriously monster nightmare story problems, you know what, i hate story problems the most out of all math. i can do the logic with Mr. Gatter. i love logic. i love that kind of stuff, but it’s like either that or that, figuring it out. is this logical? no, it’s not. looking at a problem and being able to say what, is where, how to do it, and i like, i know how to do like, rectangles, totally know how to do that, airplane and wind problems, i think i know how to do, but when i read this problem i don’t go okay, equal measures, the cosine, blah blah okay that’s easy. forty second? my brother ... what’s um one down? it’s two O’s sorry, over and over, present has two Rs, another holiday they have two Rs though ha ha okay, two down it’s enough. water. s o s? what? everything is land, how? i do that, i do that, 80 degrees where’d my picture go? see, i always do problems harder than i need, i have no idea. soft moonlight ... blue moon in the sky ... this is like the back, for, let’s, spoken, huh? yeah. it seems to me like, did you? Mr. Wright yesterday said like, it was the last day, i had it all filled out, i wrote his, more involved? i’m sorry. i’m so sad cause ... i love Mr. Wright. let’s just ask him for problems four through five, you know, just convert this so it’s our times six plus two equals nine, no we have to add, i can’t add, so it’s nineteen, twenty, all right, see, i just always oh, but i just do, nineteen? the tangent? here, square root, no that’s, yeah, we added four and twelve. no, this is for converting oh it’s nega— it’s inverse here, negative one, so it’s ten to the negative one of what? like, sixteen M? point four, four point one four, fifteen over nineteen? there are bad things ... the blues ... what’s the other one? twenty point four eighteen, square root, right. what’s the no name for ... the blues will come and they’ll find you ... dinner problem? yeah! the blues ... if you’re born with, you’ll die with, the blues, think what you choose ... the happy beat in your if you can’t pay the dues ... with the blues ... do ba bum bee doo, dey boo ... aaaaa! i hate story problems!

ARE YOU STONED? MSL invites you to take this simple test. One: are you already finding this incredibly funny? Like, are you laughing out loud right now? Two: are you unable to figure out why it is that you’re still reading this, and yet you feel oddly compelled to keep reading, and furthermore to OBEY? Three: are you finding you finding yourself easily yourself confused? Five: are you having trouble keeping your place in this paragraph? Five: are all of the people in the room with you noticing the fact that you are saying your answers to these questions out loud and giggling and snorting, and are they glaring at you? Eight: are these people watching you? Are they thinking that you are a loser for being such a huge stoner? Seven: have you noticed how they all seem to be able to talk to each other telepathically? Can you hear what they’re saying? Eight: do your toesie-woesies feel tingle-wingle? Nine: have you just masturbated, or are you thinking about masturbating, or ... eeew, are you masturbating right now? My god, you are such a freak. Sure. Go ahead, masturbate. I give you permission. Just keep reading these questions. Ten: Okay, are you masturbating? Good. Eleven: do you believe in God? Twelve: is the feeling that you get when you masturbate similar to the feeling you get from God? Thirteen: is your buzz wearing off? Maybe you should smoke some more pot. Fourteen: are you watching television? What are you watching? Isn’t TV fascinating? Fifteen: is there something that you’re supposed to be doing right now that you’ve been putting off for a while, that you thought you might do today, except that you got stoned instead and now it’s out of the question? Sixteen: do you believe that smoking pot affects your concentration? Seventeen: hello? Eighteen: are you susceptible to intense feelings of worthlessness and low self-esteem? Eighteen: do you think there might be a connection there, someplace, between all that pot that you smoke and your inability to do anything with your life and your bad, unhappy negative feelings? Nineteen: is it all too much to think about? Twenty: are you loading another bowl? Twenty-One: isn’t it funny how you can know what the problem is but not be able to do anything about the problem? Twenty-Two: don’t you wish someone would just tell you what to do to escape from this trap? Twenty-Three: would you believe the MSL Catalog is the solution? Twenty-Four: no, seriously, I know a guy who’s a brain surgeon, he’s constantly stoned but he reads the MSL Catalog and he’s got a loving wife and three kids, and he wins awards and shit. Twenty-Five: wouldn’t you like to be like that guy? Or like this other guy I know who ordered a bunch of stuff out of the MSL Catalog, and now he’s a famous artist in LA and makes lots of money and has groupies. Twenty-Six: how much would you pay for this miraculous Catalog, which is available mail-order for a fee? Twenty-Seven: how much is salvation worth to you? Twenty-Eight: send a dollar and a self-addressed stamped envelope to:

PLEASE RESCUE ME FROM MY LIFESTYLE
MSL
5536 NE 27TH AVE
PORTLAND, OR 97211-6230

Now I’m doing jumping jacks! Because my writing needs more energy! ENERGY! It must SEAR! It must TINGLE! Raw emotion — screams of the unconscious — the screwdriver of desire jammed in the toaster of human misery! Aaaah! Now I am hitting myself on the head! On the HEAD! With a hammer! A HAMMER! I am striking blows of freedom against my own complacency! Oooch! Aaah! It hurts!

Not enough ... not ... ENOUGH! NEED MORE ENERGY! Heart must explode — brain must shut down — pure reflex takes over — the reptilian mind tells no lies! Now I’m in the Congo, our safari is lost, the insects swarm and pester ... the million mindless creatures of the carpet and the carapace are singing their insanity ... Madness haunts us! Reflex only! Abandon rationality! From behind the bluff, the lion springs! Instant! Danger! What are the words! To type! To fend off! This monstrous creature! Combat words! Bladed sentences! Pointy consonants! Like the letter X! Letter X now! Another! XXX! Letter X forever or we are DOOMED!

No! Too late! Not soon enough! How to escape this shell of convention? How to break through to the surface? Honesty is our submarine — dignity is our iceberg — ENERGY is our Polaris missile! Melt the ice caps! MELT THEM NOW! MELT THEM!

More ENERGY! More POWER! More FEELING! I am sticking my penis in the light socket now! Soon I will flip the switch! Then ... then I will suffer for my DREAM! Then I will taste what it means to be ALIVE! I am flipping the switch! NOW! OOOOOOOOOH! PAINFUL! Is this what pain means? To be in pain, always hurting, hurting always, hurting from the agonizing PAIN? STOP THE PAIN! STOP THE MADNESS! OW! OW! OW! OW! OW!

I am driving now. I am driving faster. I am driving faster still. I am approaching the speed of light. 55 ... 60 ... 61 ... faster and faster! The speed, it does something for me — it makes me feel FAST. 65 ... 70 ... 75 ... the fuselage is shaking! The rear view mirror vibrates menacingly, as if it could at any moment DETACH and SHRIEK through the air, or splinter into a thousand fragments, or splinter and THEN SHRIEK! 80 ... 85 ... I didn’t know a Fiesta could go this fast ... I am EXCITED! I am ENERGETIC! My life is ACTION-PACKED, and so is my writing! I feel ALIVE! I feel MACHO! I have neglected to slow down for this turn! I have no insurance, but I must SKID!