first person
I am sitting in a corner café with a girl I despise. I despise this girl. She is ugly and has the most annoying lisp in the world. Her voice tastes of cigarettes and I am being burned repeatedly by her speech. She goes on about her problems with Boy A and her falling out with Boy B and the entire time I’m twiddling my thumbs and checking my watch. It’s a Swiss watch which was passed down from my grandfather to my father to me when I was just six years old. I’ve worn it everyday since I was six years old and I am quite proud of it. It’s an antique and definitely worth more than a hundred dollars so it’s like I’m wearing a hundred dollars on my wrist. I like to feel I own a great deal of money though this is far from the truth and I am currently two thousand dollars in debt. I work at two different pizzerias fulltime seven days a week trying to make up this debt but I have to eat and go out with friends. If I didn’t eat, if I didn’t go out with friends, I would rather curl up in a ball and die because what would be the point of living? There wouldn’t be one.
She has curly brown hair and she really isn’t attractive at all. I’ve heard some of my friends call her a bitch and ugly on multiple occasions. One of them even called her a dirty slut but I wasn’t sure if he called her that because he had had sex with her and experienced an unpleasant carnal act or if he was just saying that as a means of condescendence. Her face is a blobby white mass with freckles scattered here and there. Her eyes are spaced too far apart and her mouth is hard to distinguish from that of a trout – I have no doubt she could pass for a retarded person. Her body is commendably thin though, so you can tell she at least tries to keep in shape regardless of the fact that her face will prevent 75% of the umpteen guys she adores from ever taking her seriously. She has good breasts and by that I mean I wouldn’t mind putting my mouth around them if I ever got the chance which seems quite likely given her thoroughly depressive attitude at the moment. Yes, she seems easy to manipulate and take advantage of and I am certainly going to do so once she finishes whatever it is she is ranting about.
“Are you listening?”
“Yeah. Yes, I’m listening.” You were talking about how you really like Patrick and think you have a great connection and would like to spend more time with him and you’ve been calling him repeatedly and he hasn’t called you back once. Which is totally understandable because you are a fucking ugly bitch and I would like to place my mouth around your breasts, possibly enter you, and then have nothing more to do with you for the rest of my life.
“God, I miss him. I really do.”
The girl’s name is Lana and we have been sitting in this café on the corner for the past hour and fifteen minutes. I am bored out of my skull. I feel a pimple on my forehead and groan to myself on the inside. Acne annoys me. It makes me feel oily and imperfect and I fucking hate that feeling. I suddenly wonder if Lana even finds me attractive, if she would be willing to let me put my mouth around her breasts and possibly enter her. I wonder if she would be willing even to put her mouth around me because I suddenly have an urge to put myself in her mouth and maybe even come. I’m thinking yes this will make her shut up finally and when I come I will feel good about myself and forget about this pimple, this pimple which continues to plague my thoughts and make me paranoid that she will not want me to perform a sexual act on her or vice versa. I rub it vigorously for just the right amount of time so she won’t notice I did anything.
She is in the middle of saying something when I interrupt her.
“Listen Lana, would you like to go back to my place and perform oral sex on me? I’ve been really stressed out lately what with these two jobs and this debt and I just don’t know what to do. I’d feel a lot more open-minded – well not open-minded but relieved and relaxed and all that and maybe be able to dig myself out of this hole I’m in right now. Now I know you’ve been having your own problems, I’ve been listening really carefully, really intently if you will about what you’ve been saying and I think the best solution, really, for both of us not just me, is for you to perform oral sex on me and if that’s not enough in the end maybe we can fornicate. You have fantastic breasts.
“Gosh Patrick this is so sudden I don’t know what to say. You’re so sweet and I love you and I really do enjoy the time I spend with you. But I don’t know that I would be able to do what you want me to do because as you know recently I’ve been having some problems with it. I can’t do it right and if I can’t do it right I don’t feel as if I deserve to do it to you because you really are special and I only want the best for you. I’m really sorry.
“Lana. Lana. I don’t mind. I really don’t. I honestly don’t mind at all. In fact, it kind of turns me on when you do, you know, what you do and I think that adds to the experience as a whole. To be totally blunt with you, I think it’s fucking incredible.
“Alright, alright, I’ll do it. But I want to do it now. Right here. In the bathroom in this café. It turns me on just thinking about it. I want us to go in the stall and take off our clothes and fuck. I want us to fuck. You can put your mouth around my breasts while we do it. Then I’ll perform oral sex on you until you come even though I might throw up in the process. I want to do it right now, Patrick.”
I drank too much coffee. I have to use the restroom.
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You can’t even begin to understand the level of fuckedupness my situation is. You can’t comprehend the moral dilemmas I deal with on a daily basis. I can’t interact with normal people. I’m an outcast from society because no one will accept what I do. But what do I do? I make masterpieces. Now I know you’ve heard this before in your books and your movies and all that bullshit America makes you swallow but hear me out, okay? I fuck and kill prostitutes. Alright, alright, I know that’s shocking. Even a little fucked up. But listen: it’s not what you think it is. It’s not the act of a depraved, perverted lunatic. I’m just taking what’s available. I mean, I can’t kill real people. You know, real people as in the people you see everyday in your malls, your restaurants, your movie theaters. They have jobs, lives, families, things like that and I can’t mess with that. I can’t fuck with that because they have a good thing going there. I’m not going to ruin it. That isn’t me. But meanwhile in the slums we have these Godforsaken ugly whores lazing around on the street and soliciting their bodies as if they have something worth giving. Don’t these people know the meaning of chastity? Is nothing sacred? Good God the media should be praising me for getting rid of this filth and contributing masterpieces for the public to cherish forever. I’m featured in five hundred websites for Christ’s sake. People worship me and display my masterpieces on their pages. Occasionally I meet some of them (disguised, of course) in coffee shops, bookstores etcetera and we talk current events. I don’t hurt any of them. I just talk. And they’re really comfortable about it and even record our conversations and put them on their websites. But I need more than this. I need more interaction. I can’t spend my entire life in disguise and not be the real me, because the real me is so much more interesting than the disguised me.
An excerpt from How to Make an American Masterpiece
Step 1: First you need to split the body into three parts: the head, the torso, and the legs. I suggest doing this using a serrated knife so you can slice through the bone with minimal effort. Wrap the parts in plastic and freeze them. Drain the excess blood into buckets; you’ll need about four of them.
Step 2: Purchase a canvas. The larger the better. Pour the blood and spread it all over. The white space should be entirely covered. Wash your hands or lick your fingers for a taste of bliss. Let dry for about a week.
Step 3: Get a gun. A glue gun. Defrost the head. Scoop out the eyeballs. Glue them onto the canvas. Put the head in a pan and fry it. Cut it into five pieces and send one to each of your best friends.
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I started writing a story and I thought about what was going to happen and I decided that it was going to be about this guy that falls in love with this girl. You know, classic love story. But with a twist. Well a couple of them, actually. You see, the girl was his long-lost sister whom he had been separated at birth from. It was a total coincidence that they might meet and that they might meet at a strip club.
He was kind of a lonely guy, had been divorced for a couple years, and decided one night to go to this club and make himself feel better with the sight of naked women, a sight he hadn’t seen for many years. So he first saw the object of his affections – his sister – while she was pole dancing. He was really, really, really turned on by her performance. She was made up all over and wearing a silver bra and panties. Really attractive, not just to the guy, but to everyone. Now the guy had had a little too much to drink and he was sitting there, sitting in his chair, and he was watching totally, completely captivated by the gyrations of her now naked torso. He started to imagine himself in a kind of vortex and in that vortex he was with her making love to her and their bodies were swirling around melting into one another and all the colors of the rainbow were shooting out from their orifices. A couple minutes later he was on the stage and he was grabbing his sister, forcing her mouth to his and slamming her down and touching her until she was pulled off the stage by security and he fell and was punched and kicked into this bloody, unrecognizable mess and kicked out of the club.
His sister was escorted backstage and everyone acted really concerned because she had cuts and bruises from falling and her lips were torn and gushing blood. The manager got an ice pack and a paper towel and tried comforting her but she didn’t really need comforting. She wasn’t crying or anything, just physically hurt and even that was minor. The truth was she wasn’t really bothered that a strange man had went onstage and tried to fondle/molest/fuck her. Deep down inside she felt flattered almost, flattered that a not unattractive man had become so enraptured with her dancing that he lost total control of his emotions and succumbed to an animalistic urge, an urge that turned her on.
Early in the morning she left the club and found her brother next to the dumpster, bloodied and disoriented. A few of his ribs might have been broken. It was cold outside, but the sun was shining bright. She thought briefly that it might have been shining for them, their relationship-to-be, whether or not it was going anywhere. She helped him to his feet and introduced herself. Barely conscious, he began to apologize profusely for his behavior. Tears formed in his eyes, hazel nut brown like hers. Wordlessly she put her arms around him and asked him if he would like to go to her apartment for a little while. To sleep. Or whatever. At the apartment she cleaned him up and they had unprotected sex.
I’m not sure what’s going to happen next, but I know it’s going to end with one or both committing suicide.
---
I watched the beautiful young Chinese or Japanese or Korean woman dressed in purple turtleneck and jeans playing with her daughter in the brightly lit Asian fast food restaurant while her European husband chattered on about funny things that had happened to him during the day, and I felt sorry for her because she didn’t smile at or acknowledge the man, merely captivated by the animatedly robotic movements of her offspring in a half-smirk.
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Everything has been so depressed lately. My mother said the aliens don’t exist. She’s dead.
I visited Martha the other night. I said the world was going to hell. “I’m going to hell, you’re going to hell, we’re all going to hell. Don’t fucking touch me!” I said I didn’t want to see her again and to fuck herself. “Go fuck yourself, you stupid whore!” She cried. Blue tears silently, unnoticeably rolled down her cheek (“cry, homeless bitch, cry”) but then the fiery orange sun came out and they evaporated almost as quickly as they had fallen. After a length of time, the sun began to burn the head of my hair and it gave off a putrid smell. I hope Martha didn’t notice (although she did stare at me oddly). Her gorgeous eyes made me tell the truth and nothing but the truth, save for a few lies. I still love those eyes even though I no longer love her. The leafy green pupils peered out of the cardboard box she called her home as I approached the decrepit San Francisco alley she called the world.
Her frizzy red hair exploded in my face. She licked soiled lips and rubbed a dirt en blood-crusted nose. So pale, utterly pale her skin and teeth the whitest I’d ever seen filling that small but more than capable mouth of hers, her cheekbones and chin angularly curved as to appear unmistakably feminine. Dressed in an oversize brown paper bag from Cub Foods, I could easily have taken her home and bathed her and let her sleep in my bed myself sleeping on the couch and the next day take her shopping for clothes and make her my bride, doves flying as we marched down the aisle. But my bride already exists and I think I love her. It’s not Martha.
I first learned about the aliens from a thin rectangular book (gray) I found at the library and checked out countless times. It’s hard to remember the name because it’s so long. Apparently it broke an unrecorded record for longest book title ever and deservingly so. There were pictures of aliens dissecting human beings. One of them in particular stuck in my mind – I’ll never forget it.
I need a haircut. My hair smells terrible; it’s really getting annoying and I think my girl is starting to get annoyed too. I’ve been developing a thick sheath of dandruff under my hair and no amount of Head and Shoulders is going to kill it all. Believe me I’ve tried. For six months I’ve tried everything short of professional help and nothing’s worked. And I’m not going to seek professional help because dandruff is such an embarrassing problem that I wouldn’t be able to show my face at that doctor’s office again should I develop another problem. I am getting married in exactly three days. Trivial pursuits I have no time for, no time at all I’m so busy, can’t even spare a few minutes just to masturbate/keep myself in check. I need to go to the barbershop and get a haircut. Something that’ll look nice for the wedding, please.
The lady cutting my hair is divine. I love her scent, a manicured scent that makes her a lady not a girl, not like the brunette teenage-looking but really 30-year old slash ex-model slash plastic surgery massacred girl I am marrying. She has a fifties-style blonde hairdo hair-sprayed to glam gloss and gold reflected perfection that I absolutely adore and ardently admire because I personally am fascinated by the particular decade of the fifties and find the women of the period quite attractive. Her tight-fit, perfectly-picked blue cardigan bends over my face so often that it is starting to turn me on. Oh how I’d love to go back in time and take her to a dance and shake, shake, shake her until she cries in everlasting oh, oh, ecstasy. But now’s not the time for impure thoughts and I’m disturbed by the fact that I am thinking them. Maybe I should change my mind, but the girl I am marrying garnered a reputation after slashing her last boyfriend – a once-famous producer responsible for launching a certain but to remain unnamed rap superstar’s career – for jilting her. Thank God Almighty the Lord he didn’t die but is only confined to a cold metal wheelchair for the rest of his life. I’m being sarcastic of course, and I’m only joking. I’m not afraid of her.
I’m driving in a stolen sports car that my friend’s friend let me borrow. My friend’s friend is a thief and a considerably dangerous one – masterminded the violent three killed, 25 injured heist of several, several prestigious, prestigious paintings from the most famous artists you can’t remember the names of at a high-brow, high-attendance art gallery in close proximity to the outer chambers of the second or third-degree motherland that is Great France – at that but we get along. I call him Pierre and for obvious reasons that is most certainly not his real name. He tells me he has impersonated nearly two hundred Frenchmen, even New Wave actors notorious for being difficult to impersonate, in his lifetime and he isn’t even French. Fluent speaker, though, and just to clear things up, the car he stole that I’m borrowing is American make. Zero to a hundred in four seconds, baby. You can’t even begin to imagine how fast that is. Just make sure you don’t accidentally slide on the ice and crash head-first into a five just about six star multimillion dollar Italian restaurant complete with Mafia men eating homemade-style spaghetti for old times sake and ready to tip hundreds of dollars for the virgin Italian waitresses who are none too petit but just right and laugh cutely at every rude joke/flatulence that emerges from the Mafia men, their purple mouths and purple veins bursting out their necks, sleeves rolled up, bloody red-stained napkins tied snugly around their necks, and forks twisting the overcooked noodles and sauce round and round and round till the fork is buried, completely buried and only the most purple of mouths can envelope the mound, tongue releasing buckets of acid saliva in order to make the arduous process of consumption that much easier. Because if you do, I’m dead and you’re dead first. By me.
Reaching my house at quarter to six and sporting the swankest of dos, I am suddenly overtaken by nausea. I vomit in the rose bushes outside my fifteen million dollar featuring thirty truly from the bottom of the depths of my soul honestly exquisite, avant-garde artist-designed vivid and tasteful but uniquely themed bathrooms mansion. Oh but it does come out, all of it, everything I’ve eaten and some things I haven’t in the past 24 hours – you can use your imagination to describe it to yourself because I sure as hell don’t have the stomach to list it all here.
My mother’s condition degenerated over the course of thirteen painful years. She had contracted a mysterious but ultimately fatal disease that stumped every doctor my father took her to. On-and-off treatments ensued for years to no avail. My father became increasingly distressed and depressed and gradually sank into a proverbial depression that negatively affected the upbringing of both myself and my older brother. Eventually, a heart attack killed him. He had been preparing chicken noodle soup for my mother when it came and falling suddenly, his brittle vein-jutted hand brushed the pot handle and sent scorching hot liquid, not to mention an overused silver pot heated to a temperature equivalent to hellfire, flying all over – an unpleasant occurrence that explained a number heinous burn marks on his face. Barks and convolutions shook his body for several minutes until the muscle finally gave out and the smallest bit of blood emitted from his left nostril. I was at soccer practice; my brother was learning about his body with a “fucking hot” girl that lived down the street. Following an extended dribbling drill that left me near-asphyxiated and dying of thirst, the red-faced and heavyset coach hurried me off the field and into his van. He got me to the hospital just in time for me to see my loving father of eleven years who successfully ended his life years earlier by devoting himself entirely to the care of my mother, die sprawled out on a stiff white bed – the sweat-drenched sheets of which would be removed, washed, and indiscriminately assigned for placement on another – the heartbeat monitor playing its trademark tune reserved for one occasion and one occasion only. The coach put his arm around my shoulder as a profound sadness like I had never known before descended and painful tears appeared in the hollow crevices of my eyes.
I gently pushed open the door to my mother’s room. I seated myself on the bed in close proximity to her permanently sad and decaying face. She smiled briefly before a disgusting coughing fit overtook her.
“Mom.”
“Bill. Wonderful Bill. My Bill. I love him so much, Kevin, I love him so much. I really do. I remember the first time I met him. It was at a saloon in the Old West. He came in all bloody and beat up, overalls slung loose, his shirt tearing from one shoulder. The people there laughed and snickered and made jokes but not me. He captured my heart from the first moment I saw him. He just sat down at the bar and said ‘I’ll have a beer, please’ and the bartender poured him the beer and he drank it in one gulp. He said ‘Give me another.’ And the bartender poured it and he drank that in a gulp too. After the fifth time, he began to attract the attention of the other bar-goers. Over the course of four hours he drank 25 glasses. I was amazed but also worried that he might hurt himself or someone else. I had never seen anyone drink that much before. When he finished the last drink, he slammed the glass on the floor and slammed his fist on the counter and said ‘Bartender, I’m really sorry but I can’t pay for these drinks. I’m broke and broken faced and broken hearted above all. Even if I had the coin, I couldn’t pay you because I’m in debt. I owe a lot of people a lot of money and each time I miss a deadline, this happens.’ He pointed at his bruised face. ‘I need to fix my life. My Lenore left me and she says she ain’t coming back so long as I keep drinkin’ and rackin’ up this goddamn debt. Well fuck you, Lenore! You don’t understand me. You don’t know what it’s like being addicted to alcohol. If it’s poison, it’s the best goddamn poison I ever tasted. I’m never gonna stop drinking it. And you can go ahead and punch me or shoot me or God help us rape me but you ain’t ever going to get the coin for these here 25 drinks though you do have the memory, the memory of the pathetic 28-year old half man half freak of nature that came in here torn and bloody and looking to drink and drink and drink and drink and drink until it all disappeared, his entire memory of anything and nothing and I don’t know what at the same time, until he had a clean slate and could fuck things up again. Fuck you, fuck you all. You don’t know me and you’ll never know me because you’re all too fucking stupid.’ He stumbled off his chair and clumsily made for the exit. Then someone shot him. Just like that. Right in the back. He was still standing. It started bleeding heavily and I ran and grabbed a cocktail napkin and covered it up. He didn’t fall once but just stood there as I applied pressure. I don’t remember the name of the person who shot him, but he got up and helped me carry your father to a hospital. Guess he felt bad. When your father woke up in the morning, I had fallen asleep on a chair next to his hospital bed. He slid his hands through my hair and kissed me gently. I pretended I was still sleeping, but I wasn’t and I thought I was the happiest girl that ever lived.”
I had never heard my mother use the F word in front of me before.
“Mom. About Dad, he…”
“This disease it makes my body shake. As I speak to you my legs are shaking and I feel my stomach vibrating as if something needs out. My eyesight has deteriorated. It’s as if there’s a red grainy filter over everything punctuated by occasional flashes of bright light. I see the outline of your head, your body, sitting on this bed but I know no detail. That is left to my memory and I feel that going too. It’s been thirteen years. Bill isn’t dead, is he? He isn’t dead, right? Please tell me he isn’t dead. Please don’t tell me. Don’t tell me, don’t tell me, don’t tell me!”
She suddenly sat up and grabbed my shoulders. I swallowed hard.
“Mommy, he’s dead. He had a heart attack.”
Her last words before the screaming began and her life ended:
“I have the book, Kevin. Your book. The one about the aliens. I checked it out and never returned it. It’s hidden under the bottom of the trunk in the closet. Your father read it to me cover to cover and described all the pictures. At the end, I came to the conclusion and he came to the conclusion that the aliens don’t exist. We spent hours in this bedroom researching and that is the definitive conclusion. There is no conclusive evidence that aliens exist. The book is a lie. But the pictures are real. The image of the aliens eating the fetus is real. Except they’re not aliens. They’re people, Kevin, humans dressed in alien costumes. Oh God, he’s dead. They’re all dead. Jesus no, oh God no, they’re dead, they’re all dead. The aliens are dead. Burn the book, Kevin. You have to burn the book. Burn the book please, you have to burn the book! Where’s Bill? Where’s Bill? Bill, come back.”
I take the lady that cut my hair to see a film at the local art house. The film is called Vivre Sa Vie and is about a money-less girl, played by the beautiful Anna Karina, that descends into prostitution. It’s divided into twelve sections, each a couple minutes long, that show her at different points in her life. There are the happy moments and the unspeakably sad ones. Interestingly, the girl never cries or betrays any emotion as she is forced to carry on a morally degrading lifestyle.
It is nearly midnight and I should be home. After all, the wedding is soon and my girl must be worried considerable. There are preparations to make. From the corner of my eye I spot the lady crying next to me, her agreeable makeup smeared and tears running fast into her lipstick-covered mouth. I put my arm around her and realize I am in love.
Walking down the center aisle of the metropolitan church, curvaceous stone architecture dating back to Victorian times, with expensive multicolor stained-glass portraits of illustrious saints adorning west and east walls, I know not what I’m thinking before interminable Martha with her wild hair steps out from the crowd wearing that trademark paper bag of hers (I notice the slightest bit of piss dripping from her leg) and wielding a sharp butcher’s knife that cuts deep into my moist face, she dropping the weapon and running immediately after out into the thick urban wilderness where immeasurable numbers of station wagons, sports cars, taxis, and pedestrians intermingle, as befuddled attendees struggle to apprehend her, so that beautiful, bodacious cherry red blood ejaculates generously over my five thousand dollar designer suit and my girl soon to be wife’s fifteen thousand dollar white wedding gown, creating Rorschach patterns on fabric that will be photographed thousands of times over then distributed on the Internet for further analysis.
Her voice was young. I hope I die.
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