Noise (10 page)

Listen, this whole Jesus caper has gone too far. You know how sometimes you realise that someone has misunderstood you and you know you should set them right but for some reason you just leave it alone and then the misunderstanding gets passed on to other people and they pass it on to still more and it changes form and grows and grows and then it has a whole life of its own that has nothing to do with the original incident and the prospect of sorting
it all out is overwhelming but you have to try anyway because some serious shit is at stake? Yeah, well, that's what's happened here, see?

I'm not saying there was no such person as Jesus, you understand. I mean, there were scads of men with that name in my village alone. But I know, and you know, that we're not here to talk about those other men–those rabbis and rabbis' sons and craftsmen and fishermen and layabouts. Because, even though you know Jesus was a popular name in my part of the world and that it continues to be popular in other, newer parts of the world, the name really only ever refers to one man. Jesus, to you, means the Christ, the Messiah, the Saviour, the King of Kings, Light of the World, Son of God, the one and only Lord. My brother.

That last title is the only one he's earned and that's the problem. Jesus–Light of the World, King of Kings,
yada yada yada
–was born of woman, lived a short but racy life and then died a painful and humiliating death. And when I say ‘died' I mean it in the full human sense of the world. Jesus is as dead as Princess Diana and Napoleon and your great-great-grandma. He's as dead as Elvis (yes, he is), Marilyn Monroe and Jimmy Dean. He's as dead as you will be someday. (Don't let that worry you by the way: I'm dead and I'm fine. Most of us are.)

Anyway, as I said, my brother Jesus was born–OK, before I can go on I have to clear something up and…well, this is hard for me to say, because she's my
mother
, you know? But even I can't pretend that a woman can have ten children without ever having, you know,
done it
. Sure,
now
it could happen because you all have the technology but back in the day there was just the old-fashioned way of getting knocked up, so…OK, enough about my mum.

Actually, no, that's not enough. See, some of you have got some weird ideas about the old girl and there's no point setting you straight about JC if you just transfer all your prayers and whatnot on to her. (JC, by the way, is what most of us up here call him nowadays. It started as a joke–we gave him heaps about the whole ‘Christ' thing–but then as more and more Jesuses came through the gates it became a matter of practicality. I mean, call out ‘Yo, Jesus' up here and you get a stampede, you know?)

Anyway, back to my mum, Mary. (A while back some idiots started calling her VM, thinking that was funny the way calling Jesus JC was funny. But calling someone's mother a virgin is not on a par with calling a young fella Christ and, well, my mother has a lot of sons and none of us could stand for her being disrespected like that, you know? So she's just plain Mary now, thanks very much.) Anyway, the point is that Mum is a dear but she's no more a saint than she is a virgin so you can cut out all that praying and candle-lighting.

Back to JC. He really put Mum through some serious shit in his day. You know how it is with kids–one day he's a little angel playing under Daddy's feet in the workshop and giggling while you shower him with kisses before bed, and the next he's a gangly-limbed, long-haired stranger hanging around with thieves and prostitutes and denying he's even related to you.

And JC being the charismatic, confident guy he is, well, people flocked to him. They gathered at his feet, jostled to walk alongside him, gave away their belongings and abandoned their families to go walkabout with him. There was nothing miraculous about it–weak people, people who've fucked up a lot, people who are kind of lost–those kinds of people are very attracted to confident, charismatic young guys who claim to have all the answers.

Man, it sounds like I'm saying he was a charlatan or sleazebag or something. He wasn't. He was just a sparky young fella whose popularity went to his head. It's not like I would have handled it any better. I mean, after he died I had control of his mob for a couple of years and I about choked on the power. When I think about how agitated I used to get about whether or not my followers had their todgers snipped or not I feel like a total prat. I just wanted to keep the old gang together the way it had been when JC was alive. I had no idea it would turn out like this.

Look, my brother is a super guy, truly. He's just not a super
natural
guy, if you see the difference. Lots of people don't. Lots of people talk like the fact he was kind to lepers and whores means he
must
be holy. It's weird for us old-timers, not just because we know the guy to be, well, just a
guy
, but because in our day nobody connected goodness with godliness. Deities were selfish, vain, unreasonable tyrants who would send pestilence or a flood as soon as look at you. Now everyone equates God with peace and justice despite the fact that the world is just as unfair and brutal as it ever was. The only reason they expect it to be fairer and nicer is because they think my brother promised it would be, and the only reason they think that was because this batshit crazy salesman called Saul told them so.

Look, Saul (he's gone back to his original name now–part of his attempt to pretend none of this ever happened) is nice enough, but he's a couple of locusts short of a plague, if you know what I mean. Like, he never even met my brother until he got here and that meeting was one of the least divine things I've seen in my life and death. It was also the funniest. Hearing the father of the Christian Church cry out, ‘But Lord, you're supposed to love your
enemies!' while said alleged Lord kicks the stuffing out of him is worth waiting eternity for, I can tell you.

To be fair, it's not all Saul's fault. If it hadn't been for those resurrection rumours, he never would have latched on to my bro's story in the first place. He probably would have decided to evangelise Artemis or someone instead. That resurrection bullshit was tough to take, man. It still is. It's not that I'm sad he didn't rise from his tomb–I mean, the dude's right here with me, so I'm cool with the fact he died. It's just that if you knew what crucifixion was like you would understand that all anybody who loved him wanted at the time was for him to be pulled down and buried in the cool earth for eternity.

They left him up there for nine days. The nails broke through the meat of his hands and what was left of his arms dropped down towards his shredded feet. By the time they took him down he was indistinguishable from a butchered cow. What they buried was a slab of meat, not a man. Did I see my dead brother walk? No. I only saw him desiccate and rot.

Like I said, he's here with me now and that makes the memory of his crucifixion easier to bear. For me, anyway. For him, it's a different story. It's like it wasn't bad enough he had to die so horribly, you lot have to keep on about it, day after day, year after year, millennium after fucking millennium.

In the early days he had a sense of humour about it. When I first got here he clapped me on the back and said, ‘You had to be martyred too, didn't you, James? Always gotta copy everything I do. Tough shit, though, kid, only one messiah per family.'

He used to talk about the pranks he'd pull when his followers arrived, how he'd let them catch him on his knees worshipping
John the Baptist. And when that bloke in the Arabian Desert started gathering followers, JC got all cocky, because he had a bet going with some of us that the whole Christ cult wouldn't last more than a millennium and it looked like he had won with centuries to spare. But then…Well, you know what happened then.

Look, most of us take a peek at the world of the living from time to time–eternity is a drag without new information to talk about and new events to place bets on. (We've stopped betting on political elections, by the way, so if you're electing these douches just to fuck with us you can stop now, OK?) Anyway, human beings are a damned despicable bunch much of the time, and so most of us keep our exposure to a minimum. But old JC can't keep away. I used to think he was just being vain, wanting to hear himself worshipped day and night, but then a little while ago some joker claimed to have found my ossuary and the whole little earth was buzzing with theories about me and my life, and I admit I went into full-on surveillance mode. I was big news for less than a year and I was exhausted; my brother has been dealing with far worse for two thousand years.

There's this expression some of you use: ‘Jesus weeps.' Well, he does, it's true. Wouldn't you if it was your name being hollered every time a child died of cancer or a little baby was raped? Wouldn't you weep if whenever swords were pushed through squishy human flesh or men were locked in cages or women beaten with sticks or nations destroyed or sweethearts buried, someone somewhere screamed out your name?

He weeps, because you celebrate his death and decorate your houses with obscene portraits of his bloodied corpse. He weeps because in your desperate attempts to find meaning in life you have
made his meaningless. He weeps because he was once a man and you have made him a symbol, which is the same as making him disappear. Jesus weeps, you selfish fuckers, because you keep on calling him to fix stuff and he can't and you won't so the pain just keeps on.

I told him I was going to tell you the truth and he just kind of shrugged. He said it won't make any difference. He said that people don't believe in something because it's true; they believe in it because they need to. Maybe that's right, because
I
believe that one day human beings are going to wake the fuck up and take responsibility for their whining, murdering, torturing selves. I need to believe that because unlike you delusional, selfish pricks I actually do love the man you call Jesus. He's my brother, OK? And I believe it's time humanity backed the fuck off.

Guys just stare at my tits without shame. It doesn't matter what I wear. I'll throw something on with a plunge and my whole day is chaos. Every neck cranes freakishly, every eyeball almost popping out like fingers nervously brushing me. The sound of their breathing like an asthma ward. Slow cars cruising beside me. Some of the women have to hold themselves back. They all want to kill me.

At least I can get some service at the hardware store now. Not like ten years ago, when I was going on dates with record-store clerks and delivery men–guys who welcomed the non-threatening stature of my small sickly-looking titties. I couldn't even call them tits. I had a child's chest. Titties. A cute name. But mine were horrible and that was why I ended up smashing people's shit. I'd get fed up with everything and I didn't trust nature or God or even my friends.

When I was twenty-eight, I somehow ended up with a guy twice my age. My family gave up on me at that point. They didn't even know his name. They just called him
the old guy
, even though his name was simple, strong, standard.

Jack.

He didn't really give a shit about anything. I mean, Jack was really nice but he was a rebel, a man who couldn't be told what to do or think. He made a bunch of money working for some drug company and getting out just before they got sued for clogging up some kid's heart valve or something. They even talked about it on
60 Minutes
and when they tried to interview Jack he just smiled and said he had nothing more to do with the company. The reporter, some black lady with feathered hair poofed out like Farrah Fawcett, asked him something else and Jack stuck his hand out to block the camera and climbed into his Porsche. It was so cool. Sometimes I'll
watch that clip on some website and imagine that I'm there too, in the Porsche, wearing sunglasses and a really expensive dress. And sometimes, yeah, I'll tell people I was there. The camera never gets a good shot into the car.

Besides, I have been in that car. I've been all over that car. I know what the dome light of that car feels like on the bottom of my left foot. I know the perfect way to brace myself against the leather steering wheel. I know the exact position to put the rearview mirror so I can see all this happen. I liked to watch him do it to me, his furry back clenching and sweating. It's why they call it a rear-view mirror, I joked to him.

But he hated my titties too. He asked me if I had cancer the first time we had sex. Or at least it seemed like he was asking me that. His face made a horrible face. He screwed me real fast because he wanted to get it over with. His anguish over my body matched my own level of self-hatred. I came despite the hate, or because of it. Then he said I had a pretty face.

I shouldn't say I hate myself. That's not right. I do have a nice face. Cute hair, brown and wavy. My arms aren't gross. I'm thin around the waist and ankles. My ass is actually pretty good. I went to school. I achieved some goals. I type eighty words a minute. I can go a whole weekend alone without killing myself.

So Jack set it up for me pretty quick. Had me quit my job and send the boys to Grandma's. I didn't mention my kids yet, did I? Twin boys. Thurston and Lee, eight years old. Good kids, independent, always prowling the neighbourhood with those Hispanic kids from down the street. Those little guys are proof that I was once loved by someone my parents approved of. His name was Lesley, like a girl. Won't Lesley be surprised?

It seemed like an eternity later when I could finally remove the bandages. I dragged myself around the halls of the hospital and felt like I was taking someone else's body for a walk. Jack sent me new swimsuits every day while I healed. He said they were actual ones he saw in the swimsuit issue of a sports magazine. He couldn't wait to get me out to the beach.

I'll always remember that moment of the bandages circling off me. I watched in the mirror that the nurse held just right, so all I saw was my middle, now top heavy, ready to burst forth. It was like watching myself being born again, without a face.

It's amazing what boobs can do. It feels so weird to even say that word in regard to myself. I always used it when talking about others. Ashley's boobs. Naomi's boobs. Someone once said,
If they don't bounce, they're not boobs
. Now I bounce. Jack liked to see me bounce. He didn't want to go a night without doing something obscene to me after my operation. His enthusiasm cranked up my confidence and helped me grow into my new body. And it did feel like a whole new body. Like my tits had taken over my body.

As soon as my scars healed and I got used to the sheer mass and weight of my breasts–the almost ridiculous presence of them–I emailed an old boyfriend from ten years ago and dropped a hint about my new look. This is someone who jokingly called me ‘little boy' until I started crying. We went out for a whole year and
only
had doggy-style sex. Sometimes he told me to put a T-shirt on when we did it. I think he gave me my first orgasm.

Steve emailed me back and said he was working in a music store, giving guitar lessons to kids. He told me he'd send me a guitar if I sent him photos of myself. I looked him up on the Internet and saw that he was still cute. I don't really know what I'd do with a guitar
but I wanted him to see me so I asked Jack to snap some pictures of me. I didn't say anything about Steve, though I'm sure he probably wouldn't care. He talked to his old girlfriends and I didn't freak out about that.

They turned out pretty good. In one of them I'm sitting on the edge of bed, leaning over a little, the silicone working its magic, staring straight through the lens. There's a profile shot where you can really see what a nice job the surgeon did. Jack said we should send that one to the doctor. He could put that one on his business card, Jack said. We took a few in some of my new swimsuits too, and then several in the shower. Jack asked me to soap myself up. I liked touching them for the camera. I felt like I could do anything with them and they'd look good. I sent a couple of the photos to Steve and he wrote back saying they looked
sensational
. He said he wrote a song about me and wanted me to hear it. I asked for his phone number so he wouldn't call when I was with Jack. I was jittery about calling him, though, and it took me two weeks to gather the nerve.

He sounded the same as he always did when he answered. Really sweet but with a nasty temper buried somewhere. He asked if I was sending more photos and who took the ones he'd already seen. I lied to him and told him a girlfriend had taken them. Stacey, I said her name was. She had hers done too, I said for some reason. We talked for about an hour. He'd ask about my parents and my kids and my life but the discussion always ended up on my tits. Or
breasts
, as Steve first called them. It took him a few cautious moments to warn up to
tits
, but then he really enjoyed saying it. What did your parents say about them? What do your kids think about them? Sometimes it was like he was interviewing just my tits.

Finally, he played me his song. He set his phone down next to where he was, picked up his guitar and started serenading me. He stopped halfway.
Can you hear me?
he yelled down at the phone. Yes, I shouted back. He continued his song. Over the phone it sounded like a fuzzy old radio. Some of the words were hard to make out. There was a part where he said something about my face looking hard or maybe he was saying my face made him hard. I didn't want to ask. By the time he got to the third verse I was able to ignore the terrible melody and focus on the words. They dripped with nostalgia, regret and horniness. I asked him to sing it again and I touched myself as he did. I couldn't quite bring myself off but it was enough for me just knowing that he wanted to have sex with me again.

The next day, he sent me an email saying that he was
thrilled, maybe too thrilled,
to have talked to me. He wrote a description of the kinds of photos he wanted me to send next and asked if he could see a photo of my friend Stacey as well. I responded and told him Stacey wouldn't do it. He sent me a snippy reply, one that was rude and all business. Something like: ‘Talk to Stacey some more and tell her I'll make it worth her while. And send me some photos of you with your wig.'

I had told him, while on the phone, about buying a wig after the operation. I didn't say anything about Jack wanting to see me with long blonde hair. I didn't say anything about Jack at all. I said something dumb like,
I'm just into having fun now
. To him it probably sounded like,
I'll hump anything with a penis
. Anyway, I so happen to have a couple of wig shots. I sent them to him. I titled the email: ‘Say Hello to Your New Blonde Goddess'.

After that, Steve insisted on calling the blonde me by a different name.
Letecia
.

I started to have panic attacks and stopped emailing with Steve. Jack was getting more possessive and I was starting to worry he'd find out.

One night at dinner, Jack said he wanted to get me liposuction. Imagine yourself with fifteen pounds chopped off, he said. You'd be a knockout. I thought it was a weird thing to talk about at dinner but I was happy. I knew that if Jack was spending that kind of money on me it meant that he really loved me. He wanted to make it easy on me and I felt my heart swell and lift. I felt like I couldn't breathe for a moment and when I saw tears form in his eyes, I started crying too. I touched his face and he leaned forward into my hand. He moved to kiss me and his hands moved over my breasts so gently. My
breasts
. I don't mind that word right now, at this moment. It seems right and pure. They were warm to his touch. Always warm.

But the next morning, I realised that I didn't want another surgery. I looked over at Jack as he slept. He had wrinkles, spots, grey bristly hair. Sometimes I forgot what he looked like when he wasn't around. I'd imagine him as a superior being, a master of life, of getting things done. He got things done for me. But what about him? I never noticed that hair growing out of his ears. The weird lines all over his neck. Not wrinkles really, but lines. Like graph paper. I smelled his neck. It smelled like Band-Aids. My eyes and nose circled his head slowly as he wheezed. Sometimes when he slept he made so much noise it was like he was fighting with someone. There were age spots on his scalp. His hair barely survived there. He was too tan. I wondered if he'd get cancer. I pulled the sheets back and looked down on his body. He had half of a morning hard-on but it was hard to notice under the girth of his belly. His belly
button the size of a quarter. I reached over to my purse and took a quarter out. I set it there and it fell inside. For a moment I wondered how far it went. Did it actually disappear in there? Would he carry that quarter around for a few days before noticing it?

I got out of bed quietly. I picked some clothes out of the closet and took off my pyjamas quietly. There was a full-length mirror on the closet door. It was a double door, so the mirror was actually in two pieces. In one mirror, I looked at myself naked for a couple of slow minutes. In the other mirror, I watched Jack sleep, the covers pulled down. I wondered if he would wake up if I stared at him long enough. I slowly got dressed, trying to stare at him without blinking. My eyes started to hurt. I finally left the room, closing the door softly. I walked by the boys' room and they were already up and gone. It was a school day. A warm, promising, no clouds in the sky kind of day. I opened the front door and felt the sun on my skin. It lit up my body and I felt good. I slammed the door right then and there.