Oedipussy (20 page)

April 9, 1976 - June 11, 2012

"Everyone I love is dead,"

My disembodied voice was pulled into the thin, cold atmosphere. It sounded like nothing. I was speaking into a pillow. It was all but smoke rising from my mouth. I felt another hand on my shoulder.

Emma stood next to me. I felt empty.

"I'm so sorry. I wish things were different for you."

I reached out and traced the outline of the granite. It was jagged and sharp with flecks of quartz. They were the sparkles of sweat that I would read off of her breasts as I traced her curves when we were teenagers. I remember that. I remember I would smell her on my fingers for days. I would have that scent of her on my skin as a keepsake and it would make me think of her coming, and of her smile, and of her loving me. I would walk the halls of my high school with an erection just thinking about being loved.

The sky darkened, and Emma said something. She excused herself. I didn’t hear anything she said.

I thought of the time I brought Jenny out to have sandwiches at the diner. And making out with her in the car as soon as we were together again. And the mall, not spending money but being together. And the goddamn trivia game.

I was alone, now.

I took out my bourbon and took a long pull.

I remembered how much her parents appreciated me, but there was always that light strain of mistrust. It went away once we got into her room. When the door was shut. When we read poetry. When I pulled her panties down with my teeth and she laughed and breathed.

I needed more bourbon, and I wish I was listening to “What's The Frequency Kenneth” like we used to… and make out.

I drank for both of us. I was black and blue with bonded birthday bourbon.

And again our trivia. Oh, our trivia on that shitty old computer. And my journal. My journal and writings were on that computer. I would have to give that a shot again and see if I couldn't get them off of there and-

No.

No, all I could think about was how tightly we would hold each other. We would be playing our trivia, and there on the stereo was our music, and the Screaming Trees would be singing “I Nearly Lost You” and everything would be fine because we were right there. We were right there.

I had never nearly lost her, I have exclusively lost her and I’m going to die. I want to get fucking drunk and transmute myself from this body and into space or somehow see her again.

I polished off the booze. I threw my letter spinning toward her headstone. I began the fucking ride back home.

The first hour was fine. I thought of my lips on her legs, and the warmth of the whiskey. I felt it in the dips and the hills of the pavements, as though I wasn’t there at that moment. Not in Twin Falls, not in my chair, and not alive.

One particular dip and shot up piece of pavement caught my rear wheel and the trees sped by. I pressed my joystick into the other direction and crooked, and then the world tipped along with me. I was on the ground in my warmth, laughing and feeling absolutely nothing even though I was certain that I didn't want to do anything like break my neck again. I was totally miserable. Absolutely miserable. Totally and utterly absolutely broken and miserable. Miserable misery.

And Shakespeare and the CDs were everywhere, and while I still had haphazard use of my arms, I was pinned.

"Help!" I said to no one.

But there were no pedestrians, just me, and cards - no - "cars," hah! Cars driving past with their headlights on and completely dismissing this mess of a man.

"Help!"

And, oh god, Jenny is gone along with everyone else, and what is there to do? I’m so drunk, and I close my eyes to smell Jenny in the pavement, and pretend I was prostrate on her pelvis and smelling her perfume rather than the nothing in the cold air anywhere but here. I tried to remember what her skin was like, or her hands, or her face, and it seemed her face was even beginning to blur in my mind.

A man walked by.

"Help."

He kept walking.

I doubted my mind and how I remembered what she looked like. No. Yes. Why hadn't I taken more photos of her and had something to enjoy now? Because I had her. Oh, but I don't any longer. No one does, and she lay there in a grave, cold and rotting, and here I am on broken Twin Falls sidewalk trying to get as close to the ground as I possibly could. I couldn't get any closer, and yet I wanted to be there with her and mingle with whatever was left. The scent must be there, and there would be something to wrap my arms around.

Tail lights slowed. Someone got out.

"You okay, budee?" An accented man. I couldn't see his face because I was stuck.

"I fell. I tipped over."

"You want I can holp?"

I heard a groan as he turned my chair over, and I heard it rattling and the metal structure reacting to his hasty toss.

"How I can pick you up?"

"Just, uh, I think a hug and into my chair, maybe?"

He struggled to bear hug me into my chair. I was afraid I might be dropped again onto my drunken head, but he made it. He was a kindly looking Armenian or Greek man with a dark complexion and strong features.

"Can I-" he began gesturing toward his car, but then his face turned sour. I smelled what he smelled and saw what he saw. The small pavement accident rendered my various bags of human waste connected to my colon and bladder tattered within my clothes and spreading like sticky hellflowers. I couldn't feel how cold and miserable it must feel thanks to the liquor, and I didn't care. I looked and smelled like a drunk.

"No, no," I responded, knowing even my limit of asking for charity in good taste. I lied. "Thank you. I only live ten minutes from here."

He drove away.

An hour later I was home. I still had a buzz, but it was wore off into a fuzzy top of my brain melting down my back. I smelled like shit. I rolled to my CD player and put on a best of the Pixies album and pulled back up to the kitchen table. The bourbon and I stared each other down.

As much as I wished to think about Jenny, I could only drown myself in whiskey every time a thought peeked into my mind. It was a drinking game - every time you saw or smelled or heard or imagined or conceptualized or built up Jenny in your mind, take a drink. The more I drank, the more I thought of her. I was a wreck. She was at the table with me. I broke bread with her in my mind, imagining the fuzzy fortysomething woman across from me, smiling and laughing.

She was beauty.

She was a skeleton.

I grabbed the bottle, pushed my dirty joystick to the stair lift, locked in, and rode up. The stairs were helical as I spiraled up the stairwell stretching out before me into the second floor. The chair turned, I unhooked, and twisted into my bedroom.

The room spun pivotally around my laser line of sight as I focused my eyes on the old computer's CPU. I directed my chair toward the machine, and powered up the computer by running my index finger down my lightsight and the red button. The room tilted and swayed. I swigged from the bottle. It was a bad idea, but it was something to keep my hobby of self-loathing and depravity.

The command line prompt appeared in green glow. I typed in the command for the trivia game, but no, I whispered it. I typed 'wperfect.exe' and began navigating the files. There was the copy for The Dawn Ego press kit and all of my words and my work in files, files, files. Would they fit onto a five and a quarter floppy? Or could I find a three and a half drive?

"Don't Copy That Floppy," I said aloud, and laughed as my eyes rolled in my head.

I tucked another sip of bourbon down my throat. My eyes tried to focus on the screen, line by line.

My journal file. To read and scroll through years of junky teenage nonsense is divine with a sore heart.

January 12, 1989..
.
and I can't believe that Mrs. Smith is so preoccupied with getting me to spell a bunch of vocabulary words that I will never need to use. I did the math. Forty words a week for thirty six weeks is over fourteen hundred vocabulary words. Why? Why?…

August 14, 1991..
.
and I wish I had a girlfriend so bad. I jerk off too much. If I had a girlfriend it would be so much better. We could both win, I mean, she could get off, I could grab her boobs, I could get off, but its just too much. I buy playboys from the store on the corner on my ride back from the library. They don't ask for an ID in front of the other people because that would be embarrassing for everyone. I don't give a shit. But the women in the magazines are twice my age - just someone my age would be fine. A girl who wanted me and we could experiment and be fin
e
...

September 8, 1991..
.
A beautiful girl. Too much of a pussy to do anything
.

June 4, 1992..
.
I went bowling with Jenny tonight. Mom picked us up, and I loved watching her smile and laugh. I could hardly tell what I should do and what to say. I felt like I was laughing too loud, and saying things too loud, and making jokes that weren't funny. At one point I slipped my hand over the bucket seat and across to hers, and we held hands for the rest of the night. I had an erection just from that touch and her vanilla perfum
e
.

July 12, 1992..
.
The summer has so much energy, and the rest of it is spread out. I kissed her. I kissed Jenny and it was beautiful and disgusting but disgusting in a beautiful way that the grossness didn't matter. Her boobs touched me through her Sonic Youth t-shirt. We kissed in the woods behind her mom's apartment building and it was dark out even though it wasn't late. My lips ache, and the skin around my mouth feels chafed, and I still smell like her on my clothes. Oh, it is beautiful.

And I was so drunk. My eyelids were heavy and my watch said it was four-forty because it was in my line of sight on the floor. The darkness was dark...and the carpet was carpet...Jenny was here soon, and I was practicing Dawn Ego songs in my head.

The Dawn Ego's guitars whined and... Jenny.  We would...I would beat her in trivia and take her ni... I would take her nipples into my mouth and see her smile and hear her... I did it in my mind, in the darkness awash with green letters on the computer screen, and as I suckled and held her breast I cried.

I cried and the cold tears pooled in the dips of my eye because my face was on the carpet and the tear had nowhere to go.

I envisioned turning my face in her lap.

I tasted her, the feel of her skin after she shaved herself, and the folds of skin in between her legs. I would hear her moan and smell her on my fingers for days.

I was crying, and drunk, and everything spun, and all I wanted was my mouth on her and making her come.

We wouldn't be...We'd be... Quiet...

...

...The hands seemed to come out of the darkness and I felt them moving around my body. Arms wrapped around my trunk, lifting me upright, and a grunt, and I helped a little with my arms as I was moved into my chair but my neck told me that my head weighed a thousand pounds and everything spun. It lolled along on a pivot and spun with the room. I opened my eyes, but whoever was manhandling me pushed me from behind in my motorized chair. Good luck, fucker.

I smelled vomit and my armpits. Vomit in my armpits.

Band name, "The Vomit Parapets."

Blurrily, bushy hair tousled down around to the front of my chair.

"Todd! Todd!" A few smacks to my face popped my eyes open. He spoke in a loud register to get through to me. "You're a mess, man. What, did you hit your head? You... Two black eyes. I am running a bath but I don't know how this stair thing works so I need a little help. I can't carry you downstairs."

The young voice. Chuck. Teenaged lead singer coming over for... to see me? Did they have practice? To give me a bath?

I popped the chair into my lift by pulling back on the joystick. I didn't buckle in. I didn't feel like explaining how to do it, and I'd be fine. The second I clicked in, the chair moved slowly down and I struggled to stay awake. I drifted off until the 'beep' at the bottom of the stairs jolted my eyes open and one of my eyes was crooked and I just wanted to go back to sleep, but it all didn't make sense.

I remembered listening to my fifteen year old self talk about Jenny, her smile, her fresh and clean and everything perfect body, and how she lived for nothing else but me, and oh, and oh, and oh, I started to cry again. Me. My drunk self, me. Mr. Piece Of Shit, me.

There was a kick, a click, and I started moving. Another hand was on my joystick, guiding my throne of dirt into the bathroom. Running water echoed through my mind, and towels were spread over the floor. The room was warm, and the red heat lamp radiated infrared over the rising dunes and dips of terrycloth.

Dozy and woozy, arms hooked under my own and pivoted me down onto the towels. I was stripped. Cold where my shit and my piss and my puke caked and chafed me. Warming under the lamp, it improved.

The faucet was shut, and the comforting sound of cupping and sloshing water. A facecloth was prepped like mother, and warmth as I was toweled down, toweled down, cool, warmth, and the sense that I was caked in shit and feeling intense natural humanness wallowing in my own filth, but now cleaned.