“So you’re a poet, right?” Eric asks, dropping back to where I’m tailing.
I smirk, nearly throw up, cough a few times, take a drag from my Winston, and say, “Don’t you know it.”
And Eric laughs.
“Listen, man. You’re alright, man,” he says, still chuckling.
I envision putting an ax into the back of his neck, but only halfway, out of pity.
Out in front of the Great American, Sanchez and his date make out and Gem fumbles with her keys as five tattooed, pierced-up, snarling twenty-somethings hop, skip and jump toward us yelling, “Ge-em! Ge-em! Come out and play-ee-ay!”
And when they’re close enough, Gem giggles and hugs each of them, folds into all of their arms like soft origami, the blue moonlight spilling over us, and they all seem to care about each other profusely and I just try not to dry heave or pass out.
As we push behind Gem through the first set of doors, and then the second, we become immersed in pitch blackness. No one says anything as Gem curses, seems to bump into something, curses again. Then there’s a series of clicks and slowly the music hall begins to glow before us, its ornate gold ceiling and mezzanine, the red walls and pillars, and the wood floor stretching before us toward the stage.
“Hold on,” Gem says, putting a finger of warning up, then disappearing into a room behind the bar, off to the side, as all of us stand still, unwilling to disobey her order while the place around us warms up in light.
Suddenly Janet Jackson blares from the speakers around the hall and Gem comes running out laughing from her hiding place and starts dancing on the wood floor where Sanchez and his date and the party of fanciful tattooed kids join her.
I walk behind the bar, search around and find the plastic cups, and watch everyone dance on the floor to “What Have You Done for Me Lately.” I pull myself a foamy cup of Anchor Steam Pale Ale and sip it, light up another Winston, look at my phone and see that I’ve missed no calls, no text messages.
One tall kid with long brown hair and the left side of his head shaved runs over and says, “You the ‘tender?”
“I’m behind the bar,” I say and keep my place.
“Mind pouring me a PBR?” he asks over the enormous beats.
I look around, make a motion that says, take in your surroundings, jackass, and explain, “You know, this is all free. You can have whatever you want.”
He gives me a confused look. I sip my pale ale, pour myself a shot of Maker’s Mark, then pour the sad sap a PBR and lean back behind the bar, watch this girl with long red hair in a short black dress and blue eyeliner dance. I hadn’t seen her among the troupe of the tattooed and realize she must have come in after us. She moves with lithe motion, sexual and controlled. She’s laughing hard, her neck bent back, beautiful as a misshapen tree winding out of the swamp. Then I see Eric passing out bumps and I perk up, lean against the bar as all on the dance floor partake.
The song ends and the hall fills with the sound of chickens clucking and ruffling feathers before the harmony of a thousand birds being slaughtered decks the halls. Eric sees me behind the bar and sort of jogs over to me through a snowfall of red feathers, though no one seems to notice them.
“Hey, wordsmith. Want some?” he asks, motioning to a very tiny plastic bag of white powder.
“I ain’t paying for it,” I say.
He chuckles and offers the bag to me. I take out my keys, dip in and indulge.
He laughs again and says, “Hey, can you pour me a PBR?”
A Debbie Gibson song bursts overhead. Debbie Gibson—the first female singer I’d ever obsessed over. I was eight-years-old and in love in a way I haven’t been since. I wonder what Debbie’s up to these days.
Before getting the PBR, I look around, and to my surprise find a half-full bottle of Black Maple Hill twenty-three-year-old Kentucky rye behind a package of paper towels. I mix up a couple manhattans in plastic martini glasses then take a straight shot from the bottle. Next, I look around again for the plastic cups, pull one from the bag and throw it at Eric, say, “Get it yourself, douchebag,” and make my way out to the dance floor with the manhattans.
“Only in My Dreams” blasts overhead and things start to brighten.
Gem dances with me before realizing I’m standing as still as a fence post trying not to spill the drinks, then she guffaws and gently pushes me away, moves on. I’m looking at the redhead but she’s now dancing with Sanchez and his date is off leaning against one of the red pillars, pouting.
I step in between Sanchez and the redhead. “Hi,” I say, and hand her the drink. I look at Sanchez and motion with my eyes in the direction of his date, which he quickly understands and so leaves us alone.
The redhead takes the manhattan, sips, and says, “Thanks, but this is far too strong for me.”
I put my free hand on her hip, pull her in and kiss her hard, tasting the whiskey fresh on her lips. And she lets me, for a moment, before pushing me away, laughing, spilling half of both our drinks soundlessly onto the wooden floor.
“A little presumptive?” she yells, wiping her half-smiling mouth.
“Life is short,” I say, and look at my drink, regretting such waste of the good stuff.
“It’s not that short,” she says, walking past me.
I stroll over to the stage, think about heading backstage, but instead get on the stage, put my drink down and look down on the small crowd below me. I sway to the music and feel that they’re all there for me. Dancing for me. Enjoying life because of me.
Then the floor below me populates with a mountain of dead, discolored bodies. A few left alive struggle underneath the mass to get free call my name and ask for help, but I cannot move from the stage, cannot dive into that mess of rotting flesh to save anyone. Not now. Not then. Not ever.
Then the lights flicker and everyone dances. The redhead dances alone as Sanchez consoles his distraught date, a crowd of painted up flesh surrounds Gem, and Eric dances on their outskirts, arms pumping, yelling out “woot” and “biatches” too frequently.
I consider again going backstage, but feel I shouldn’t. The song changes to Milli Vanilli’s “Girl You Know It’s True” and I hop from the stage, jump into the middle of the jitter-bugging crowd and start breakdancing, spinning on my back, twirling on my head, the music hall gravitating around me upside down, legs and feet gyrating the wrong way up, and they all shout my name through fits of laughter over and over and over and over.
I awake backstage on an old green couch in a little room with pale green walls. The paint’s peeling, the linoleum floor’s stained grey, and there’s an empty cooler next to me. The pounding bass from the music hall, slightly muffled, still shakes the place. Eric wanders in and I projectile vomit all over his feet in the entranceway but he doesn’t seem to notice.
“So this is where the stars hang before hitting the stage, huh?” he asks, sitting down in a dingy orange chair across from me and lighting up a joint.
I sit up, put my head in my hands, and say, “No stars play here.”
Eric chuckles, “Yeah, right. But I bet you’re feeling right at home back here, famous poet that you are.”
A bat that was sleeping in the corner of the room flutters awake and exits through the open door.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I say and search for my Winstons.
Then the redhead walks in.
“Hey, watch it with that kind of talk. I could be a Catholic school girl with virgin ears.”
She collapses onto Eric’s lap and they kiss, Eric handling her like too many fistfuls of spaghetti.
I get up, about to puke again, when Eric reaches over the redhead, pushes me back onto the couch, and says, “Hold on, hold on.”
I hold on. The bile in my throat burning.
“This is Abigail,” he says and I vomit hard against the wall, though they don’t notice. I wipe my mouth, feel for any loose teeth, then wipe my hand on the green couch and shake her hand.
In taking my hand she gets
up and takes a seat next to me.
“You don’t seem like a good person,” she says, her blue eyes darkening.
“Excuse me?” I say.
“There’s something wrong with you.”
“What makes you say that?” I ask as Eric hands me a bottle of MGD. I take a sip.
“You don’t like people.”
“Which people?” I ask.
“All people.”
“How do you know that?”
“I can see it in your face. In your eyes.”
“Jesus,” I say, looking at Eric. “Fucking hippies, right? Can’t get away from them.”
“You’re full of hurt,” Abigail says.
“And how the fuck do you know that?” I ask as I down half the beer. Eric smirks to himself and pulls out a bag of something.
“Just as I know that my name, Abigail, is your favorite among all names. It may help you keep the fantasy alive, Luke, but it’s just a name. I also know you’ve got very little to be sorry for. Just as I know you blame the world for your own shortcomings. Just as I know you think yourself more important than you are because you never tried hard enough to be anything important. Just as I know you hate yourself for that. And just as I know you’ve been staring at me like a rabid dog all night long.”
I exhale an enormous amount of air, surprised the walls don’t come down, and look to my sudden and best ally, Eric, and say, “For fuck’s sake. Can you believe this shit? Who is this girl? Who the fuck does she think she is?”
Eric stands up in the small, pale green room and takes a long drag from his joint, holds the smoke for a while, lets it out, and says, “She’s your fucking conscience, man.”
“Don’t fuck with me,” I say, grabbing the joint from him and taking a drag, filling the room with green smoke. “I don’t appreciate morons trying to philosophize with me.”
Then a sudden vibration. Everything moving first to the left, then to the right, in herky-jerky motions over a sequence of five seconds, like a filmstrip fighting its way through a reluctant reel.
“Luke, quit kidding yourself,” Abigail says, and looks away toward the exit leading to a hallway that leads back to the main room.
That exit that seemed a few feet away minutes ago stretches into miles before me.
“Who’s kidding who?” I ask, stand up, and feel the earth yank me back to the couch.
“You’re lost. You’re sick. You’re so sick it makes others sick. You need help, but you won’t accept it. You think it’s everyone else that has the problem. Don’t you? You do. I can see that. Your sickness is so rooted, so old, you can’t even tell it’s yourself that’s wrong. You’re the problem. You’re the entire problem. You’re just deformed inside now. And you only begrudge others their happiness because you simply can’t understand it. Right?”
She lights a long Marlboro and her face glows brighter than anything in the room. Green smoke lingers before her face. Then she very gently removes the joint from my hand, takes a drag from that and a pull from a bottle of wine she must have found beside the couch. She returns the joint to me.
“I’m… Abigail, I don’t think…” I manage to say, excited and confused at the brushing of her fingers against mine in the exchange.
With silence between us all, I consider further and say, “I’m trying, Abigail.”
Abigail crosses her legs, puts the Marlboro to her lips, sucks back the smoke and blows it out her nose, then looks at Eric who lounges crossways in the chair, amused and dopey-eyed. She smiles at him sincerely and my heart snaps like an old floorboard under heavy feet.
I watch Abigail’s beautifully pale face, crystal blue eyes, cascading red hair that radiates in the green light, and feel my throat slit open, blood gushing from my split neck. As I put a hand to it to stop the gushing I realize it’s just the words stuck in my throat trying to get out.
I finish my beer, give Eric back the joint and he hands me a fresh MGD though I don’t know where he’s finding them. Then Tiffany’s version of “I Think We’re Alone Now” seeps into the room.
“You’re a sad person, Luke,” Abigail says. Sweet smells fill the room along with green clouds.
“No more sad than you or your pusher,” I say, motioning toward Eric.
I half-laugh, which causes them both to laugh, seemingly, along with me, and before I know what’s happening I’ve broken my beer bottle into a jagged handle, which goes through Abigail’s ribcage far more easily than I would have thought, the sound and feel of it like puncturing stale cardboard, and the bottle pulls out even easier, so fast, in fact, that I slice open Eric’s throat before he can gather what’s happening, blood showering me from head to toe, the room going from green to brown.
With Eric collapsed in the same crosswise position in the chair and Abigail collapsed over the side of the couch and exsanguinating, I stand up, find Eric’s secret stash of MGDs behind his chair, pop one open, sit back down next Abigail, and watch as she discolors the already discolored couch, watch as her pale, slightly flushed face goes blue.
I sip at the warming beer, feel the blood caking on me with each second as my stomach turns over. I hold back the convulsion, though, not really needing to throw up now.
The bat that left the room earlier returns to its corner, a folded note clutched in its mouth. I’m unwilling to pull the thing from its tiny black mouth and read what’s there.
Eric is blue. The walls are pale green and brown in splatters of drying blood. I weep profusely, convulse and dry heave, hold onto my own ribs as I bend forward, shaking.
Then I pull Abigail’s body to my own and feel the lightness of her bloodless figure, the frailness of it. I hold her to me, kiss her cold forehead, run my fingers through her blood-soaked hair and choke on my own sobbing, squeezing her tight as I yell, “I’m sorry! I said I was trying!” until my throat is sore and I can no longer hear the music from the other room over my own voice. “I’m sorry,” I say again. “I’m sorry.”
I apologize as many times as it takes and for as long as it takes.
I then leave the room with a clear conscience and re-enter the pulsing music hall where lights flicker, a warm hue blankets the vibrant gold and deep red motif, and the mangled few shimmy to a booming Color Me Badd song.
When Abigail and Eric exit backstage just after me, my heart sinks. My breathing stops. My feet turn to stone. I’m weighted down by a crippling embarrassment and an immense sadness and loneliness that hollows out my gut. And both of them refuse to even look me in the eye before rejoining the dance.
BRET EASTON ELLIS
We’re at Borders at the Stonestown Mall surrounded by deadbeats, hippies, half-dead college students, fat, uncrippled men that wear catheter bags anyway and smell of moldy skin. A kind of old, rotted cabbage aroma wafts over the crowd seated in folding chairs in the all-too-bright space as Bret Easton Ellis reads about his fictional self in Lunar Park with a bit too much confidence, arrogance, and dramatic whimsy.
People mill about behind him with their lattes, wearing expensive suede jackets and face paint that says “Dickless” or “my other bike is an SUV” and they’re stopping the frazzled-looking Borders employees and asking them where books on colon cancer or Oprah are and the employees keep wetting themselves but neither the customers or Bret Easton Ellis notice.
Then Bret Easton Ellis takes off his black Wayfarers to accentuate a particularly poignant part of Lunar Park where he meets a character he invented grown into flesh and blood. He says, “Brilliant, right?” and smiles at us all and everyone erupts into a cacophony of clapping, whooping, and yelling, and two guys throw their tidy whities at him.
I stay silent, put my hand on Abigail’s knee, feel its ice coldness. She smirks, then scoffs and pushes my hand away.
“But I love you, I say,” I say, for effect.
She smirks again and says, “You’re a cancer,” then kisses me on the cheek and puts her hand on my dick and leaves it there as her face fills with tumors.
“I
hate your fucking guts, she says,” she says, for effect.
Bret Easton Ellis notices and keeps his eyes on us and I feel bad for Abigail that I’m unable to get hard because her face is full of tumors.
“Cancerous love,” Bret Easton Ellis says, and then the entire audience turns around and stares at us.
The guy in face paint and the expensive suede jacket walks up to Bret Easton Ellis and asks him where the books on ass cancer are and Bret Easton Ellis directs him to children’s books.
Everyone claps again and I cough up a feather even though yesterday all I could cough up was helium. The music overhead turns to gunfire, then lightning, then the exact last sounds of everyone that died of the plague seven-hundred years ago remixed to a Daft Punk beat.
After the reading, Abigail wanders off to the café and I walk up to Bret Easton Ellis as he gathers his things into a leather carrier bag—books, papers, pictures of tied-up people getting shit on while being read Nazi propaganda, pens, little bags of fingernail clippings, and magazines like The Economist and Teen Beat.
“Lunar Park,” I say, standing before Bret Easton Ellis who is tall, balding, and pudgy-faced.
He smiles knowingly. “You like it? It’s good, right? I felt like I really changed the way horror stories can be approached and that I pushed the boundaries of where fiction and nonfiction begin. Also, I’m pretty sure it’ll be made into a movie.”
“It’s crap,” I say. I put my hands in my pockets and Bret Easton Ellis’s head goes in and out like bad TV reception, returns as Big Bird’s head then Bela Lugosi’s, then Big Bird’s again, then back to Bret Easton Ellis’s. Then back to Big Bird’s.
“Oh,” he says, seemingly reserved. “So you’ve read it?”
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