Authors: Arty Nelson
The next thing I know, I’m being kicked by a simple german girl with dreadlocks and nose ring.
“Ze blane…” she barks, “Zit’s loadink!”
I jump up, still in a haze, and bound for the ramp. I finally fall asleep and the next thing I know I’m missing my ride. Dreaming
about everyone I’ve ever known, swirling around in a big grey foggy toilet bowl. No big deal? I sit down on the plane and
rub my eyes. Europe, no turning back and nothing to turn back to.
“Fuck it!” I yell loud enough to feel reckless. “I’m going.” I let out a nice morning fart, eggy and wet, just in time to
welcome a small bookish woman. Her hair shows signs of the swimming pool wars—green and straighter than Mother Teresa. I have
a window seat with no seats in front of me. I’m in paradise. The blonde next to me could be an L.L. Bean poster child, and
looks like she knows a thing or two… About everything. She also could use a few meals in her. Earthy widewales, a fishman’s
sweater, and not a single pouf of makeup on. Her hair is WAY straight. It reminds me of my college guidance counselor, the
one who refused to talk to me after I dropped out one year. Yeah, suspiciously like that bitch! Probably read all those same
OLDE english books that even english people don’t understand. We say a quick uncomfortable hello and talk about the awkward
smell on board. I look back out the window—one last glance at the States. I feel that feeling, that feeling of triumph from
high school when my forged note from home would free me for another day. Nothing left to do but smile and run.
I open my eyes and I see her next to me, pale and shaking. Upright in bed with my fists clenched and throbbing, veins bulging
in my forearms. My face buried in the blankness of the wall. Hyperventilating. I try to laugh for a lack of anything better
to do.
“Morning,” I gasp.
“Call it what you want to.” She spits.
“Kind of a rough one last night,” I add in subconscious defense.
“Yeah,” she says, pointing to the mattress. I look down, knowing only too well but still hoping. No
Such Luck. Like a little boy… Pissed my bed again.
“Well… I guess it’s better than blood.”
“Well, if I’d known that was what you wanted I would’ve brought you into the bathroom with me ten minutes ago.”
Waking up in a puddle of piss is old hat for us, more like an, “Ah Shucks” kind of thing. There’s gotta be more to this story.
“Whatta ya mean, Babe?”
“I mean it isn’t ‘morning,’ it’s the afternoon and you’ve already made a DAY of it!”
The merry-go-round starts to wind slowly. The music grinding in my skull like a 33 playing on 45.
“I was in the bathroom a few minutes ago. I got my period a week early. That is… I guess it’s my period. Forty-five minutes
of you ripping into me and drooling brought it on early this month. I guess we don’t have to worry about me being pregnant.”
Some stories have no face, only images, flashes of color, and shards of sound—a merry-go-round, like I said before… Of Shame
and Horror. Doing things I never thought I’d do… Things I can’t remember.
“You came in… I was in watching TV… Do you remember coming home?”
“No,” I say… But really I do… Just not that much of it… Just shadows, a laugh here and there… Pressure on my eyes… The sweat
on my forehead… Some voices.
“You actually pulled my top down and started sucking on my boob in front of everyone in the living
room… You kept saying that you thought it was SEXY… I knew you were beyond stopping… So I came in here with you.”
The story begins to take horrific form… The shame tightening my lungs making it hard for me to get air… Spinning… I remember
faces in the living room… A nipple in my mouth… A hand across my face… Pushing… Laughter… Arguing… Someone cheering… Someone
throwing pillows at me… Me like an infant… Pushing with my face against a hand….
“Your nose was bleeding… You smashed your face against a chair while you were crawling around on the ground… Then we came
in here… And you shut down completely… You didn’t even know who I was… You were disgusting… Blood and spit dripping off your
chin… Telling me to rub my clit so we could be in love again… Asking me if I liked it… You’re such a pig… Like I love being
pounded into until I bleed… Asshole… I gotta get outta here… You said you’d change… But you can’t… You’ve lost it!”
Listening to HER story… Hearing who I am, or what I can be… I remember the bottles… And the laughter… The sun… Coming home…
People laughing at me… And the nipple in my mouth… People yelling at me… Not caring… Not caring what they think of me….
“I just shut down… Asshole… I died… I let you fuck a corpse… All I could do to save myself… Was to die… It was all I could
do… And I let you just rip into me until you finished… And then you passed out… I laid there next to you… And then you starting
puking all over the place… Then you passed out again and pissed in the bed… You just mumbled through it all.” She says, looking
at me in utter disgust, “Look at yourself… JUST FUCKING LOOK AT YOURSELF!” And begins pounding on my chest. I cover my face
and absorb the blows. Each hate-filled blow actually soothes me while my head begins to kick out pieces of the final minutes.
The final moments that I remember in bed… Pounding… And grunting… Hoping that an orgasm will bring back our love… Just one
more and she’ll love me again… We’ll be happy… I know we will… Rub… Yeah…That’s it… Rub… Rub it and all of this will go away…
You’ll only remember the fun parts… Rub it long enough and you’ll only remember the good parts… Gasping… Searching… Trying
to find the love again… Her screams… And the fists on my chest… Every once in awhile catching me in the head… Until finally…
She stops and begins to cry… I try to hug her… But she recoils… I feel the loathing in her limbs… It’s beyond her… She is
beyond me.
We roll over top an endless blue shag. So calm, the ocean, a painting at 20,000 feet. Sharks rip tiny fish into finger foods
and all I see is a huge blue pillow.
“No, thank you. I don’t eat meat. I phoned the airlines in advance and I SHOULD be getting the vegetarian plate. I’ll eat
chicken, if I must, but DEFINITELY, NO RED MEAT.”
It’s the woman next to me. I knew it’d be a matter of seconds before she’d start ASSERTING herself.
“Hi, how ya doin’?”
“Hello… Fine,” she scoffs.
“I couldn’t help but just hear you and I was wondering, are you a devout vegetarian? I mean like izita philosophical thing
with you? Or are you just healthy?”
“Actually, I WILL eat meat. I just PREFER vegetables, especially in London.”
Very relaxed, no second-guessing words. I admire that in a woman… Scares the hell outta me.
“So, you’ve been to London before?”
“I’ve been studying in London for six years. I’m on my way back to complete my thesis on the Bronze Age. I’ve always been
an Anglophile and
Archeology is my chosen field of study. It’s been an excellent opportunity for me to fuse together two things that I treasure.”
“I know what you mean. I always wished somebody’d make a movie where the Flinstones meet the Jetsons,” I say, not quite sure
what the Bronze Age is.
“So why are YOU going to London?” she says.
“It’s kind of a long story but… Really, it amounts to a basic desire to see a friend and leave a few behind.”
“Really,” she hesitates, “I thought maybe you were in school.”
“No, that nightmare is long over.”
“You didn’t like school, I gather.”
“School didn’t like ME and I REACTED to it. I weighed too much, in the eyes of my professors, to appear capable of grasping
the ethereal qualities of the Classics.”
“I see?” she says, with a fidget. I look at her hair outta the corner of my eye, greasily tucked behind her right ear, and
spot a certain confusion in a fresh bloom of perspiration.
“School, to me, was more of a sixteen-year seminar in What I Don’t Ever Want To Be—a preventative thing.”
“I’m not quite sure I follow… The physical weight thing seems kind of odd to me.”
“I gutted it out long enough to grab my sheepskin, wave it at the family, and run… I’ve spent the
last couple of years going to great lengths to forget everything they taught me in school.”
“Your experience sounds so…” she pauses, “… Unpleasant.”
“It wasn’t that bad… I read a few books I never woulda forced myself to read.”
“The Classics?”
“Exactly.”
“Any favorites?”
“The Scarlet Letter
… I sometimes fantasize about Hester Prynne to this day.” She gives me a subtle Marty Feldman look.
“My name is Karen by the way.”
“Hi… My name’s Jimi.” Our introduction, more of a good-bye than a hello.
The minute steak and powdered eggs’ve made me drowsy. I put my seat back and turn off the overhead. My dream state takes me
back out the window. It’s dark outside and it feels good to be above the clouds. I drift along nursed by the hum of the engines.
I see why my cat sleeps on my chest at night—a massage to the soul. I feel quiet… I’m not asleep… I’m in and out… I just don’t
feel like having my eyes open….
“
WE ARE APPROXIMATELY TWENTY MINUTES WEST OF LONDON
’
S HEATHROW AIRPORT. THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT WILL BE COMING AROUND WITH IMMIGRATION CARDS. IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A PEN, PLEASE RAISE
YOUR HAND AND WE WILL GET YOU ONE AND
…
PLEASE
…
BE PATIENT
.”
It’s gotta be half the problem with this lame world—too easy to travel. It used to be that if someone wanted to go somewhere,
they really had to WANT to get there. Nowadays… It’s a matter of making a phone call to the airlines and booking a flight.
OK, so every once in awhile a plane drops out of the sky, BIG DEAL. I’m talkin’ cannibals, or hurricanes, or deserts—things
that slow down a trip. When’s the last time some poor bastard got buried up to his neck by Apaches and slowly eaten by huge
red ants? It just doesn’t happen anymore! Traveling used to be a sign of vision and courage. Now it’s all about leisure and
cash.
I see the United Kingdom off to the left of the plane—a huge galaxy of islands, painted by a string of lights that shoot off
in every direction and come back into a thousand circles. I’m landing on another planet. No grids? Every street with a mind
of its own, roaming where it pleases—an elegant chaos that busts America for the capitalist graveyard that it is. Here pal,
you work at E-23, and sleep on the south corner of L–97, and fuck your old lady at Z–49. When it’s all over, your corpse will
reside in T–65—It’s a nice plot. So… Pre… De… Ter… Mined.
The stewardess passes out immigration cards. I’ve
never even heard of the things. I peek over Karen’s shoulder and do whatever she does. I figure that she’s a pro at this kind
of thing—probably took a seminar on the shit. It’s crystal clear to me now. No prior knowledge. I’m free. A worm reborn in
another land. My only luggage—a muddy conscience and a few cool T-shirts. I didn’t even remember to bring socks or underwear.
The plane touches down and everyone begins to panic in their seats. So terrified that they might be the last ones off the
plane. So scared that someone might get in front of them, or just LOOK like they know MORE what they’re doing. I have to hustle
myself because I’m trying to follow Karen and she’s moving down the aisle like a hooker in debt. I don’t get it, nothing the
chick studies has changed in a couple thousand years! How many archeological breakthroughs can there be on any given day?
She’s moving fast. I gotta elbow the simple german girl just so I don’t crush this old lady in front of me wearing a flowerpot-like
hat on her head. The hat blinds me for a second and I panic, thinking I’ve lost my way out. The airport’s a blur. My eyes
are glued to Karen as she navigates through the crowd.
She doesn’t let up the pace until she hits customs. I’m not talking to Karen anymore. I’m simply using her to get from point
A to point B.
The line I’m in is the longest. It reminds me of staggering home drunk, wishing every nextdoor is home. Waiting, with nothing
to do but think of the rest of my life. Counter 22 opens up just as I’m about to buy my second house in the suburbs with kids
who don’t trust me and a wife who eats for all of us. There’s a very normal-looking, middle-aged, bearded guy at the helm.
He’s sporting a sweater of brown and, as I soon find out, reeks of the most putrid tobacco—stale socks treated with cat piss
and aged in a sauna. Nothing short of severe childhood trauma could make a man smoke tobacco that smells like he smells as
I walk up to him. He takes one look at me: the pompadour, the burnt eyes, the fake Beatle boots, and I know there’ll be questions.
His moustache is quivering and stale sweat beads frame his face.
“So… Lad…” he says, “…‘Ow long do you think yu’ll be in London?”
“I don’t know… Maybe six months or something like that?”
“Quite a holiday? ‘Ow much money do you have with you?”
He’s baiting me. Trying to make me pay taxes. I know it! I’m pissed Helms never told me about this! I hate to NOT KNOW when
I’m fucking myself up!
“… About three hundred dollars.”
“Three hundred dollars?” he snaps, all jolly and arrogant. “That isn’t quite a lot of money now, is it?”
“No, but I think I’ll probably get more from home when I get settled in.”
All the other lines are moving along, as I sink deeper and deeper into the immigratory quicksand. What are they gonna do,
make me go home for being broke?
Things go from bad to worse and within minutes, I’m in a small blank neon-scorched room with two very similar gents who are
making it their business to know my business. I’d say from the way the one guy is cupping my ballsack, that the gang all got
together and decided that I’m a smuggler. It’s an offhanded compliment for any loser to be considered dangerous, and I stand
proud as they gauge the weight of my testes and rifle through my journal. This goes on for ten minutes until they’re satisfied
that I’m just lost and not really a threat at all. They tell me, snickering, to have a nice stay in London and stamp my passport.