Blood and Guts in High School (2 page)

of the room as fast as possible.)
Janey:
Wait a minute.
(Collecting her emotions and stashing them.)
I didn't

mean it. I was going to be calm and supportive like Bill said.
Father:
What'd Bill say?
(Janey repeats the conversation. Everything comes

splurting out now. Janey's not good at holding words back.)
You've

completely dominated my life, Janey, for the last nine years and I no

longer know who's you and who's me. I have to be alone. You've

been alone for a while, you know that need: I have to find out who

I
am.
Janey
(her tears dry):
I understand now. I think it's wonderful what

you're doing. All year I've been asking you, 'What do you want?' and

you never knew. It was always me, my voice, I felt like a total nag;

I want you to be the man. I can't make all the decisions. I'm going

to the United States for a long time so you'll be able to be alone.
Father
(amazed she's snapped so quickly and thoroughly from down hysteria

to joy):
You're tough, aren't you?
Janey:
I
get hysterical when I don't understand. Now everything's OK.

I understand.
Father:
I've got to go out now - there's a party uptown. I'll be back

later tonight.
Janey:
You don't have to be back.
Father:
I'll wake you up, sweetie, when I get back. OK?
Janey:
Then I can crawl in bed and sleep with you?
Father:
Yes.

Tiny Mexican, actually Mayan villages, incredibly clean, round thatched huts, ducks, turkeys, dogs, hemp, corn; the Mayans are self-contained and thin-boned, beautiful. One old man speaks: 'Mexicans think money is more important than beauty; Mayans say beauty is more important than money; you are very beautiful.' They eat ears of roasted corn smeared with chili, salt, and lime and lots of meat, mainly turkey.

Everywhere in Merida and in the countryside are tiny fruit drink stands: drinks
jugos de frutas
made of sweet fresh fruits crushed, sugar, and water. Every other building in Merida is a restaurant, from the cheapest outdoor cafés, where the food often tastes the best; to expensive European-type joints for the rich. Merida, the city, is built on the money of the hemp-growers who possess one boulevard of rich mansions and their own places to go to. Otherwise the poor. But the town is clean, big, cosmopolitan, the Mexicans say, un-Mexican.

Mexico is divided into sections: each has its specialty: Vera Cruz has art. Merida has hemp, baskets, hammocks.

Uxmal: Mayan ruins, huge temples, all the buildings are
huge,
scary, on high. Low low land in centre. Everything very far apart. Makes forget personal characteristics. Wind blows long grass who! whoot! Jungle, not Amazonian swamp, but thick, thick green leafage so beautiful surrounds. Hear everything. No one knows how these massive rectangular structures were used. Now birds screech in the little rooms in the buildings, fly away; long iguanas run under rocks. Tiny bright green and red lizards run down paths past one tiny statue, on lowish ground; on a small concrete block, two funny-monkey-hideous-dog-jaguar faces and paws back-to-back. Janus? The sun?

A small Mayan village in the ruins of an old stone hacienda; church, factory, the whole works. Huge green plants are growing out of the stones; chickens, lots of dark-brown feathered turkeys, three pigs, one pink, run around; people, thin and little, live in what ruins can still be lived in.

And further down this dirt road, another village. On Sunday the men, normally gentle and dignified, get drunk. The man driving the big yellow truck is the head man. All the male villagers are touching his hand. They're showing him love. He will get, they say, the first newborn girl. In return, he says, he will give them a pig. All of the men's bodies are waving back and forth. The women watch.

By the time the clock said five (a.m.) Janey couldn't stand it anymore, so, despite her high fever, she walked the streets. Where could she run to? Where was peace (someone who loved her)? No one would take her in. It was raining lightly. The rain was going to increase her infection. She stood in front of Sally's house. Then she made herself walk away. She walked back into her father's and her apartment. She hated the

apartment. She didn't know what to do with her hateful tormented mind.

At 7:30 a.m. she woke up in her own bed. As she walked by her father's

bed to get to the toilet, she saw her father and spontaneously asked,

'You must have gotten home late. How was the party?'

Father:
I didn't go to the party.

Janey:
You didn't go to the party!?
(Realizing the truth. In a little girl's

voice.)
Oh.
Father
(reaching for her):
Come here
(meaning: into my arms).
Janey:
No.
(She jumps back.)
I don't want to touch you.
(She realizes

her mistake. She's very jumpy.)
Just go to sleep. Everything's fine.

Goodnight.
Father
(commanding):
Janey, come here.
Janey
(backing away like he's a dangerous animal, but wanting him):
I

don't want to.
Father:
I just want to hold you.
Janey:
Why d'you lie to me?

Father:
It got late and I didn't feel like going to the party.
Janey:
What time d'you get home?
Father:
Around seven.

Janey:
Oh.
(In an even smaller little girl's voice.)
You were with Sally?
Father:
Come here, Janey.
(He wants to make love to her. Janey knows

it.)
Janey
(running away):
Go to sleep, Johnny, I'll see you in the morning.

Janey
(a half-hour later):
I can't sleep by myself, Johnny. Can I crawl

into bed with you?
Father
(grumbling):
I'm not going to get any sleep. Get in.
(Janey gives

him a blow job. Johnny isn't really into having sex with Janey, but he

gets off on the physical part.)

Three hours later Johnny woke up and asked Janey if she wanted to have dinner with him that night, their farewell dinner, and then she would leave. Janey said 'No' in her sleep because she felt hurt.

As soon as Janey woke up, she called Bill, desperate. 'Everything's even worse, Bill,' she said. 'Johnny's trying to hurt me as badly as he can.' How? He told her he'd spend the night with her and then he spent it with Sally. Then he told her he felt about Sally the way he had never felt about another girl.

Bill tells Janey Johnny doesn't love Sally: he's just using Sally to hurt Janey as much as possible. Johnny has become very crazy and Janey'd better stay out of his way.
Janey:
Do you think he'll want me again?

Bill:
There's always been a really strong connection between the two of you. You've been together for years.

In the Merida marketplace there are beetles about an inch to two inches long crawling in a box, their backs covered by red or blue or white rhinestones.

Outside the church a woman sells all sorts of tiny cheap silver trinkets. People buy the appropriate trinket (an arm is a broken arm, a baby is problems with baby, a kidney, a little worker . . .) and take the trinket into the big church to give to the Virgin.

Monumental ruins.

Lost in the grass. Huge buildings that are staircases, staircases to the heights, steps of equal height so high legs can hardly climb. Some buildings are four walls of hundreds and hundreds of steps. On top is nothing, nothing but a small stone rectangle containing an empty hole. Every now and then a huge monster rattlesnake sticks its head out. The stones are crumbling. The oldest buildings are so ruined you can hardly see them.

The next mass of buildings. The architecture is clean, the meaning is clear, that is, the function. A habitation. Hiding tunnels run through each horizontal layer of the habitation. The scale is human. There are

wells. There are no pictures or religious representations. A clean people who didn't mess around with their lives, who knew they were only alive once, who disappeared.

The next section contains the largest buildings, vast and fearsome. Thousands of endlessly wide steps on all sides lead up to a tiny room, eagles and rattlesnakes, outside, inside? Inside this structure, steps, narrow, steep and wet, deep within the structure a small jaguar whose teeth are bright white, mounted by a reclining man. The outer steps are so tiny, the burning white sun endlessly high. The climb. It is easy to fall.

All of the other structures are the same way. Heavily ornamented and constructed so beyond human scale they cause fear. Ball parks that cause fear. What for? Why does Rockefeller need more money so badly he kills the life in the waters around Puerto Rico? Why does one person follow his/her whims to the detriment (deep suffering) of someone that person supposedly loves?

'No one,' a booklet says, 'really knows anything about these ruins,' and yet they raise human energy more than anything else.

Don't say it out loud. The long wall of skulls next to the ball park repeats the death.

ANNOUNCE. Johnny stopped in his apartment for just a second to change his clothes. Janey told him she wanted to go out to dinner with him. Johnny replied he thought she didn't. She pleaded that she had been feeling jealous and she didn't mean to feel. She promised that she wouldn't feel jealous as long as she knew what to expect. He warned her to watch out for her jealousy, he knew all about jealousy. He had just spent the night on a rooftop with a girl who was telling him that she was madly in love with David Bowie. Janey started protesting in her head that that wasn't the point; she shut herself up, and calmly asked when and where they would be having dinner and please, before she left, could they pretend they were in love. It would be a very romantic two days and then nothing. She was better at handling fantasy than reality.

Johnny left the house so he could see Sally.

Inside Janey's favourite restaurant, Vesuvio's, the only Northern Italian restaurant in Merida:
Janey
(searching for a conversation subject that doesn't touch upon their

breaking up):
What's Sally like?
Father:
I
don't know.
(As if he's talking about someone he's so close to he

can't see the characteristics.)
We're really very compatible. We like

the same things. She's very serious; that's what she's like. She's an

intellectual.
Janey
(showing no emotion):
Oh. What does she do?

Father:
She hasn't decided yet. She's just trying to find herself. She's into music; she writes; she does a little of everything.

Janey
(trying to be helpful):
It always takes a while.

Father:
She's trying to find out everything. It's good for me to be with her because she goes everywhere and she knows everything that's happening. She knows a lot and she has a fresh view.

Janey
(to herself):
Fresh meat, young girls. Even though I'm younger, I'm tough, rotted, putrid beef. My cunt red ugh. She's thin and beautiful; I've seen her. Like a model. Just the way I've always wanted to look and I never will. I can't compete against
that. (Out loud)
It must be wonderful
(trying to make her voice as innocent as possible)
for you to have someone you can share everything with. You've been lonely for a long time.
(Janey trying to make herself into nothing.)

Father:
Let's talk about something else.

Janey
(very jumpy every time something doesn't go her way):
What's the matter? Did I say something wrong?
(Pause.)
I'm sorry.

BLACK. The conversation petered out.

Father:
Sally's always wondering what's right and wrong. She's always wondering if she's doing the right thing. She's very young.

Janey
(apologizing for Sally):
She's just out of college.

Father:
She's a minister's daughter from Vermont.

Janey
(knows from her sources that Sally's a rich young bitch who'll fuck anyone until a more famous one comes along as young WASP bitches do):
Well, you've always liked WASP girls.
(Can't keep her two cents out of it.)
They don't want anything from you.
(To herself: Like you, honey.)

Father:
She reminds me of my first girlfriend, Anne.