“Shut up, will you? I can’t understand a word you sayin’, you big faggot. What you doing with your nipple pierced?”
He’s behind me, I can’t really see him, but I can feel the weight of his body pushing me down a long hall under blinding lights. My back is cold lying against metal. If we kill anybody, I had told her, it should be these motherfuckers out here, these perpetrator faggots or the police, look what they did to that guy Diallo.
“No, fuck the police. I want him dead dead DEAD. I’m not doing anything with you ever again if you don’t do it. You say you love me, I
told
you what he did to me.”
I’m a good boy I can’t do that. That’s crazy, girl! Crazy girl, crazy. No one understands me. No one understands me—
He leans over in my face. “Stop grunting,
pig.
”
Why does he talk to me like that? This must be a prison, if this is a hospital, where are the doctors and nurses? I feel my heart rising in my throat like it’s an elevator inside of me. I suck in my cheeks, the flesh inside my mouth, between my teeth, and then I bite down hard. The blood fills my mouth. I grunt, and when he leans in to taunt me again, I spit blood in his face.
“Ah! Ah!” he gasps. “Nigger, is you crazy!”
The smell of blood, his fist splits my lip, more blood flows, ignites me like a match to lighter fluid. I want to kill him, then fuck him, I feel myself getting hard. His fist upside my head sends me to black.
THE WATER IS BLUE.
I’m in a room, on a bed, looking out a window at a black woman, a native type, with a basket on her head, walking down a road toward the ocean. Or was the shade drawn, with just the smell of the ocean wafting in through the window screen? Yes, he would not have had the window open. There’s a picture on the wall; maybe it was another place or time. I remember now: the woman in the painting, her large feet, the basket on her head, the picture-book blue water. Brother John is blowing me on the bed. I smell something like ocean water. I’m eating popcorn at home with My Lai watching
In the Company of Men
on DVD. I’m at Kmart, crying, when Snake gets us both busted because he was shoplifting. They let me go; I cry some more. My mother is behind me, her hand is on top of my hand, which is on top of the computer’s mouse. I laugh when she says,
Click click.
The scenes coming through my head like this confuse me. I know I’m not awake. I’m afraid I’m dying. Very afraid. At first I didn’t think death could happen to me. How is it possible? I’m young strong beautiful. I felt that way at St Ailanthus that morning, how is it possible? Their white faces glowing like the walking dead in horror flicks. J.J.! J.J.! Leave the premises immediately! Huh? I liked it there. What else? I try to remember more, but it’s like there was no time before there and no time after. But I know a lot of time has passed. I’m sure of that. I must be old by now. And My Lai? Where’s my wife? I’m standing in a black pond. I know where my feet are, know they’re wet, but can’t see them, can’t see what’s in front or in back, can’t see the next step. In the dream the black water is rising. I stop it. I don’t want to dream that.
On Sundays at St Ailanthus, we have pancakes with butter and maple syrup, Spring Tree Maple Syrup Grade A Dark Amber. I know because when I had KP, I poured the syrup from the can into stainless-steel pitchers that I would put on a cart, and when the cart was loaded with pitchers, I pushed the cart to the tables and put a pitcher on each table. I was happy working. I was happy anticipating the taste of the pancakes, the yellow salty butter and the maple syrup all mixed up in my mouth.
Now I’m in a place with no taste except my blood in my mouth and the smells of alcohol wipes and bleach. No My Lai’s onigiri-and-curry cunt, her mouth swallowing my balls. No Brother John like a sex father or little kids waiting like rosebuds to open for me. No food here no music no touching. I love touching people, pressing against them in the subway, sticking my nose in people’s armpits, sticking my fingers in every curry pot. What did I do? No girl to drive my dick in, cupping her ass, smelling her juice, screaming me, the taste of her nipples, my big tongue, lips sucking home. Alone like this I feel dead, wiped away by the marshmallow shoes, voices like wind rustling the tops of trees in scary movies the moon frozen full in the sky the killer’s knife coming closer and closer. So how do I get to be a boy again?
What’s the opposite of death? Drums. Beat. House. African Latin heart beating like beat beat the drums in Imena’s class Jaime I remember him tan boy I know he loved me but he cut me!
“What for!”
“You know what for!”
SLASH. I scream and try to take the blade from him, he cuts my hand one two three CUT CUT CUT. But . . . but I thought you loved me, I’m screaming. My blood is turning everything red as I wipe my face with my bleeding hands. “I hate you. I hate your black ass, you fucking gorilla! You raped me!” Behind the veil of blood, I see the girl he is performing for. She’s looking at him. I recognize her look, she’s wondering. He’s come to me, to cut, to prove he’s not a faggot, to prove he’s man. Then out of what seems like nowhere, it’s a bunch of them. They move in on me punching kicking. Shithead! Maricón! Motherfucker! You black motherfucker!
“For God’s sake!” he screams like the bitch he is. “I was a little boy. You made me! You
made
me!”
Shit, I’m thinking,
they
made me. Then there’s no more thinking. I’m all the way down. They’re kicking me.
“What the fuck are you assholes doing!” It’s like a old man’s voice, one of the park winos. Everything halts. Indecision. Then one of them kicks me again.
The ice flick of a switchblade. “Come on, sonny boys, I’ll git at least one of you spics!” Then running. Heave a sigh of relief.
“I didn’t do nothin’ I didn’t do nothin’,” I mumble through the taste of blood.
“Don’t care if you did, dat’s what we got coppers for. Need to get someplace?”
“Thank you thank you, no, no. I just want to go home. I can walk. Thank you thank you.”
I had forgot all that. The scars fade away or into other hurts. The first thing I remember is how his little lips tasted, the skin of his belly, curly nigger hairs around his thing big like a man’s, different from Brother Samuel’s blue-veined red hair. He didn’t have to do that; being in our world didn’t make him a faggot, it was just our world, what else were we gonna do? The brothers had us,
me,
I figured; I thought he, the kids, loved me. I thought that was love. I remember his penis in my mouth my penis in Brother John’s mouth My Lai’s clit in my mouth my heart opens in my mouth her clit pulsing like a heart,
her
heart, in my mouth. She really loves me. She, we, danced; I thought that was love. Then why am I here without her?
“You don’t know what love is. You find out one day.”
Ah, yes. Roman. Roman said pussies could not be trusted. And they stink. He was wrong about that. My Lai doesn’t stink; she taste good. I can’t remember the last time I ate something. Is it dinnertime, lunch, breakfast? My mother used to fix me oatmeal with butter and a maplesugar bear melting at the bottom of the bowl. Tears are starting to roll down my cheeks. I can’t wipe my eyes. I feel cold shivery then hot burning up. My mouth’s dry. I see my tongue crawl out my mouth like a pink slug. I eye it on the pillow. It looks back at me as if to say, How’d we get this way? Yes, you’re crazy, it says, this is your tongue. It crawls up beside me on the pillow and starts to weep. I’m so lonely, it says, I’m so lonely I could die.
It’s time to wake up if I’m asleep. I’m way drugged; this is something different than I ever had. Straitjacket, that’s how I felt with Roman. Just be still, hold back, don’t kill, just get through the shit,
endure
this faggot and he’ll give me a life. And I was right, wasn’t I? But what it took, what it took. And now this, what is this shit here? I didn’t go through all that to end up here.
The door swings open. Black face, white coat, it’s one of the ones who wheel me and stick me with needles.
“Get up!” he shouts, his voice turning to little black monkeys swinging from trees screeching Get up! Get up! Get up! They scare me. Anyway, I can’t get up. What is he talking about?
“Get up, stupid. You ain’ that high, you only had a quarter of what they been giving up.”
Stupid? I’m not stupid. I may be bad, but I’m not stupid. Or did something change? Have they changed me with all their shit?
He kicks the bed. “You gotta shower, and we gotta clean that fucking bed.”
What’s he talking about? Is he crazy, not just peanuthead mean but wacko?
“Come on, man, you gonna make me really hate you, dude. I
said
get up. You ain’ as crazy as you make out.”
I jut my chin up, so I’m staring at the ceiling and the wall behind me.
“You got two minutes to quit the Looney Tunes routine and get up.”
I can’t get up; if I could get up, I would have gotten up a long time ago.
“I would appreciate your cooperation, you dumb motherfucker.”
Dumb? I am a bright boy, my future is shining light.
“Come on, gorilla.”
I’m a boy. Not a gorilla. Unless this is hell and I got turned into one. Did I get turned into a gorilla? I can’t see for all the fog, yellow fog. I’m paralyzed in this body that is not a gorilla, maybe he sees a gorilla. Maybe that is hell, not being seen for who you are.
“Listen,” he says into the fog.
“I—”
“I don’t care about your fucking ‘I.’
I
said get the fuck up. The doctor wants to see you.”
He shakes the rail at the foot of the bed. “Fuck it.”
He leaves the room, but the fog stays. I lay there. He comes back. How long was he gone? An hour, a minute?
“How long you gonna lay up and look at the ceiling, stupid?”
Am I high or crazy? How long
have
I been laying up, looking at the ceiling? My tongue feels like a boat sinking. Words sink down in me, their sounds disappearing—is this their dope or the new way I am? I want to flush myself away like a bowel movement. Look in a mirror and say I hate you I hate you I hate you.
You never talk you never talk you never talk, she says like a girl. Because she never stops talking, you are always talking I know everything about your childhood, your toys, tutors, and parents you hate. There’s no room for my big clumsy thick words. My words feel like constipated hard balls of shit I keep inside me. Why don’t these motherfuckers just kill me if I did such crazy shit I got to be treated like this? If this guy says one more word to me, I will, I will, I don’t know what. Actually, I don’t know why I’m raving. I feel better than I’ve felt in a while.
I look at the fool standing at the foot of the bed who thinks
I’m
a fool and say, “What time did you say the doctor would be here?”
“You fuckin’ bastard! You motherfuckin’ bastard!”
His hollering scares me, and I want to slip back to where I’ve been, silence, but I can’t. Whatever’s been making me android man, or whatever you call this state I been in, ain’t flooding my brain no more. I’m still fucked up, but not paralyzed with their shit.
“So what is you, one of them idiot savants or some shit, only you don’t draw bridges, you just come up with one intelligent sentence a year?”
A year? Jesus! Does anybody know my name? I’m going to kill you, motherfucker. That’s gonna be my “next sentence.” Without looking I can see him, big grinning skullhead nigger.
“Alright, nigger, I done tol’ you, git up, the doctor’s coming. You got to get cleaned up. We can do it easy or hard or, you know what, you dumb motherfucker, we can not do it at all. Jus’ shoot you up and forget about your black ass, fast-track you to Harry Potter. Know what that is, stupid? Code for potter’s field, you dumb motherfucker.”
Squeezing my eyes shut, I see skulls floating around the room. I try to shit more. I can’t. “Shoot you up.” I just want to give up. Why are they fucking with me? I thought I hated white people and faggots because of the brothers. But what is it with this shit here, these niggers? Now what do I hate?
“Look, stupid, I know you hear me ’cause they letting you hear—you ain’t as high as you been. But we can have you swinging from the treetops again, motherfucker. I’m telling you, get up now or stay the fuck down, I mean that. Get up or stay down.”
Who is he to tell me some shit like that, get up or stay down? He’s a small guy. I could knock him down and leave here. Whatever,
wherever
here is. I don’t have to know where I am to get out. Suppose you step out and it’s the North Pole in the middle of a blizzard or a really big hospital spaceship. That’s crazy, but ain’t that what I am now? How do you knock someone out without killing them? Suppose I kill him? Shit, how do you knock someone out
and
kill them? Maybe I couldn’t knock him out, maybe he knows karate or has a gun. Can I even get up? If I want to get out, I’ve got to get up. I’m scared. I’m scared I’m going to get up and my feet won’t be there, or they’ll be shrunk from voodoo powder sprinkled on them like Jaime said his grandmother did his grandpapi’s dick, I had forgotten him. No, I had remembered him? What time is it? When does the doctor come, why am I scared of this little nigger, what does he have except his syringes, if I ever get a hold of one I’m gonna stick him see how he likes it, what have I done to be here, I deserve an explanation, hey I’m human why—
“Why?” I groan.
“Why what, motherfucker! I know you better get up, take those shitty clothes off, and walk your ass to the showers.”
Take my clothes off, walk to the shower? Walk? The shower? That could be a million miles away. It could be like the Indians on the Trail of Tears. These people could be Nazis, I could be walking myself to the gas chamber, or hooks could come out of the drain and pull me down like in one of those Halloween horror flicks, dioxin could come out the showerhead or instead of water shooting out of the holes in the showerhead,
worms
! Tiny little threadworms that go up your nose, bore holes through your skin, swim around in your blood, and lay eggs in your heart, ahhh!! Stop! this crazy shit, I tell myself, and try to think like I have some sense, but it’s like trying to nail Jell-O to a tree. What monkey seems to be telling me is someone is coming to see me, I been in a hospital, is this a hospital, for a year? Longer, less? How come no one comes to see about me? Where are my clothes, my jeans? I see blurred shapes, rats’ feet whisper whisper. Am I like Rip Van Winkle, I went to sleep young, woke up old? Maybe I am forty years old or some shit. I don’t want no more needles.