Hard, Dark Things

The hard, dark things always seemed to make us feel better. Take, for example, when Bob ate Dotty’s nose. There we were in their kitchen, watching from our dream state, taking it all in, sipping our Clubtails in cans. I was enjoying a way-too-strong Tom Collins and you were slurping down a margarita. I think you often drank margaritas because they made you feel like you were on vacation in Mexico or something.

You summoned from your imagination a warm, golden light coming through yellow and baby-caca ochre vinyl spring loaded pull shades with a cartoon flower pattern, filling the kitchen, while we’re watching as Bob takes the plate and places it neatly in the center of the table. He tucks a napkin into the collar of his pink Izod Lacoste polo shirt that makes him feel athletic every time he wears it, even though it’s pink and he’s no athlete. Bob looks down at the nose on the plate in front of him. There is a baby carrot stuffed in each nostril. He stares at it, and it seems to Bob that toaster ovens have one major flaw: they can’t toast for shit. The edges of Dotty’s nose where it was excised are crusty and a bit burned. Edges become more defined as they harden. And hard, dark nose hair – poor ugly fucking woman, he muses.

Bob lived with one simple rule: Never fuck until you’re fucked with. Someone had left the box open in the cupboard and the crackers were stale. Probably Dotty. Inconsiderate bitch.

Bob and Dorothy Grisman owned the Chef’s Inn, a smelly diner near the exit of a strip mall. Your stupid, junky boyfriend worked there as the chef, although I’m not sure whether or not what he did could be called culinary. Still, we ate there often, you and I, feeling somehow more important than the rest because you were fucking the cook and all of our meals were free. Plus, there was the cabin in the hills that for some reason Bob and Dotty believed you deserved to live in without having to pay rent. I thought about this often as I watched you and the junky snort cocaine in your cabin’s gratis bathroom.

I will not forget the Grisman’s narrow shouldered, flat, melba toast daughter, Patty, who was continually hoisted into my face in the hopes that I would want to mate with her. Humorless, vague and with an aura of disaster, she could not have been more unattractive to me. No, I didn’t want to dance with her nor did I want her putting suntan oil on my back at the beach. I could feel it in my loins that I never wanted to sow my seeds in her field. On some deep, genetic level, my being could sense the darkness surrounding Patty and I recoiled from her on every approach, visibly, my autonomic nervous system taking over when my mind lost control.

We mulled them over, the Grismans, your erstwhile benefactors. Little did they know the contempt with which you referred to them, not only biting the hands that fed you, but filleting and serving those hands with a sauce of venomous sarcasm. There, on the floor, flat on your back, slipping your fingers into the crevasses of the brown hi-low carpet and sipping your canned Mexican vacation, you’d play your game, while the junky slumped against the cabin’s wood paneling across from you, dirty dishes surrounding him as he snored and drooled. I’d crawl onto the mattress folded in two under the big mirror, curl up with a pillow between my legs and listen while you’d define the game of the moment.

The game was to think of the worst possible, hard, dark things that we could. It was the only way to feel power in a world that had no place for us. If we could just come up with something horrible, so disgusting, so vile, then our own lives might seem much better. The Grisman’s were an easy target – they seemed to have the security we lacked; nice home, nice business, and enough money to help you. Perhaps it was your shame that made you play the game with them as the targets. Who knows? You perhaps suggested we picture Bob eating Dotty’s nose, hoping this invented horror in their lives would somehow surpass our real suffering.

Of course, no one could have foreseen what would transpire. As usual, the dry bread daughter had been thrown in my face for a dance at the Grisman’s holiday party. I only agreed to go get ice with her so I wouldn’t have to dance. And yes, she seemed small behind the wheel of her brother’s Corvette.

You’re right – I felt scared as we rocketed down the twisty, mountain road, her inability to control the giant, rumbling beast apparent as we neared the intersection at high speed. And finally, I admit to my disbelief as the car fishtailed and I saw Patty's hands lift from the wheel as the tops of the pine trees were flooded by the headlights. Sure, there was a moment of exhilarating horripilation as the Corvette lifted-off, sailing for three seconds through the air, until it came crashing to the ground with a horrible, metallic shatter. It is correct to assume that the smell of our blood filled the crushed vehicle, and that until then, I didn't know - no one ever mentioned how you can smell the blood after an accident. And finally, I’m so sorry Patty died.

After the accident, we didn’t play the game anymore. No more noses, no more kitchens. The hard, dark things had stopped making us laugh.

*A note to the reader: I'm inspired to write sometimes from my shadows - the places and moments in time that are not for the lighthearted. I'm am an admirer of Poe, Burroughs, Kerouac - authors of that sort of edgy, bleak nothingness that resides outside of what necessarily feels "good" to read. This piece above is told in character - a character I once was. A disenchanted 18-year old, already aware of how cruel the world could be, and angry about it. I'm no longer this narrator, but I want to give him voice and a moment to be heard - and perhaps, healed. I want him to know that there is room for him at my table, and that he is embraced, and that he is not alone.