A boy from the class above me, who became a military medic, was dishonorably discharged for servicing a severely wounded Iraqi civilian before servicing a mildly wounded US soldier during one of these raids. He would come home to the town he had grown up in and live in the house he purchased before leaving for Iraq. Within a month, his wife would leave him for another man, the one she started seeing while he was in Iraq. He would start getting drunk at local bars and telling people the story of his dishonorable discharge, over and over. Five years after losing his home to foreclosure, he swallowed a handful of pills, and was simply gone.
Tyson got shot in the leg and returned with a Purple Heart. The leading man in his American gangster Christian film, he returned a war hero. The town put a sign up for him in front of the high school, welcoming him home, naming him a hero. He was famous in the town. He got loans. He bought a nice house and married Emily. He took over ownership of his family’s grocery store. He had three children. They were baptized in the Catholic church. He bought a Jet Ski. He stayed fit, except for a beer belly that formed in his mid-thirties. In his mid-thirties, the war was still going, going in a crusade against an ever-expanding enemy. Victory had been declared numerous times. And he thought it was a victory, in a way, for himself at least. His house was two stories tall, with a swimming pool, and game room, and shiny new cars always in the driveway. He was a local hero. He rode at the head of the military float in the town’s bicentennial parade. He stood next to the mayor when the ribbon was cut in front of the new library. And once a year, he visited the fourth-grade class in the school he’d attended as a child. He brought in his Purple Heart. He brought in the bullet shell that had been embedded in his leg. The class passed it around from one to another and awed. It was a miraculous token of war heroism, manifested before them from overseas, from a place that seemed so far away, and sometimes even, on the news.
A LITTLE ASIDE
The sky is blood. I know you probably don’t see it that way. Most people probably don’t see it that way. But I see it clear for what it is. That’s how I see things; clear for what they are, and that’s how I know what the sky is, ’cause I ain’t afraid to look at it and see it for what it is. Things have a way of showing you their true selves when they’re transitioning. Their true selves is there in the moment between, when they go into the space between, like how the moment between calm and anger, you see what a person really is; if they are a scared person, or a sad person, or just a hard motherfucker. In that moment between things it’s all, we’re all just changing clothes, putting on a new cloak, a new mask to play out the next part. And if you look close, and if you train yourself to look most close at those moments, you get to see the bare body under it all while it’s changing. You see what it really is underneath that’s wearing that mask. I only look at the sky during the time between day and night, when the sun’s going down and it’s spilling red, that’s the bare body of it, the truth of it all, pink and red and spreading open. The sky is blood. We’re just wading around under a big pulsing ball of blood. I know that. I looked at it clear. The sky is blood. But the hell of it is, it’s our blood up there.
I know other things about the world I seen from looking at it clearly too, ain’t many others seen. For instance, I know the sea is the night. I known that blackbirds are bruises given by loved ones. Grass is fire. Snakes are your innocence daring you to kill it. Paintings are tombstones, and tombstones don’t even exist, except for trees, which are the real tombstones. Stars are old men. The only thing I found that is what it is is guilt. Guilt is guilt. Romantic love is never love, but it can be just about anything else. Children are funhouse mirrors that ain’t no fun really. Mountains are turmoil. Cornfields are the vulgarity of lust spread thin and hiding. Peace is everywhere that we aren’t. Fish are God in little pieces. God is a bunch of little fish looking like a big whale. Teeth are the same as toenails. Sex is rest. Pain is pi. Strength is falling. And freedom is not being in fucking jail.
They put me in here this afternoon. I still ain’t got to talk to a fucking lawyer even though they told me they appointed me one. I ain’t seen no lawyer. Where the hell is he? I’d like to know. I’ve been in here for three goddamned days. They told me I have the right to speak to an attorney. Well, how’s about it? I’m ready. I got time! God knows I got time. Those state-appointed lawyers don’t give a shit about you anyway. I think half the time they want me to go to jail just as much as the prosecutors, really. Damn.
Sometimes I feel like a big red bird on fire, like an American flag on fire, like a big red bird tearing out from the red stripes of the flag on fire.
The feeling of guilt is one thing, but the state of being guilty is a whole ’nother. I feel guilty about a lot of things, but I ain’t guilty of nothing. What do they got on me? An empty baggie that could’ve been full of anything. Bath salts? What do they know? They don’t know nothing. Said I was acting weird in the Walmart parking lot. Well, is that a crime? Is acting weird a crime? Last time I checked, that weren’t fucking illegal. They want me to say some shit, I know, want me to say some shit so they can put me away for god knows what. Probably want me to say something that they can call me a terrorist for. The FBI got my number. They call me and pretend to have the wrong number, asking for people with made-up names: Angelina Georgina, Tammy Hall, Candy Hill. Those sound like real names to you? Fuck no. They just want to hear my voice. Catch me saying something I shouldn’t. They’re recording everything. People laughed at me for years when I told them, but it came out, it’s true. I was right about it all and they ain’t laughing no more. I don’t know why more people don’t care about that.
They been testing bombs on the moon, and no one cares, though we didn’t get a chance to vote on it. Democracy, my ass. I know about it. They’re mining up there; Obama and Putin and the pope, they’re mining up there, even though they told us the moon don’t have no resources. I know what things are. I read about it.
The world is full of evil men. Evil people are blending in with the good ones, pretending to be good. I read some people think there are lizard aliens taking human form and running our government. But they ain’t just in the government. They’re everywhere. When I was little, I saw them. They showed me what they were. My dad’s friends when I was little, took me out, hunting they said, and took me instead into an old shack in the woods and showed me what they were. Shape-shifting demons, and the blood sky and the blood dirt; it ain’t what they’re from.
I know what things are. I look at them the moment between, when they’re thinking, finishing or starting and I see what they are. They got jagged teeth and they look like a horned scaly creature. That’s what Dahmer’s victims said he did. Shifted shape. They’re around.
There are lots of things. I know when it’s coming. I know when it’s gonna happen: 12/21/2121. We don’t got much time left. You ever hear that old song that was written about what Nostradamus predicted? It goes, “Blackbird singing in the dead of night.”
I just want my family with me when it happens. What if it’s really in 2021? If it happens sooner, when we’re still alive, we’ll just tuck our heads in tight and think about the wormhole so we go with the light, together. I’ll pray to Jesus to take us through that wormhole, into the light.
I’ve seen the rainbows on things dancing and singing. It’s a sign from God, like He sent before the Great Flood, but tiny ones, instead of one big one. I got my shit ready to go. They better let me out of here. They ain’t got nothing to hold me on.
Free country, my ass. My fucking ass it is.
A NEW MOHAWK
Most of the Mohawks in America are unincorporated territories, areas that lie outside of any municipality or township. I didn’t even know these places still existed. Apparently, unincorporated territories are either so small, destitute, or isolated that no city, town, or respectably incorporated area has found reason to claim them; neither have the people who live in these unincorporated territories seen fit to claim themselves. There’s La
ke Mohawk New Jersey, Mohawk Indiana, Mohawk Oregon, and Mohawk Tennessee. (These are all described as unincorporated areas.) I still can’t figure quite why these places would all be named Mohawk, but maybe it has something to do with a Mohawk being an inherently in-between space. This last year, I’ve been trying to find out as much as possible about Mohawks. I looked up a lot of information. The term “Mohawk,” of course, comes from a Native American tribe. The Mohawk Indians originally lived in what is now New York State. The indigenous word for their tribe meant “people of flint.” “Mohawk” meant “eater of flesh.” And they only wore their hair in what we now refer to as “the Mohawk” when they were preparing to go to war.
There are all kinds of Mohawk haircuts today that have nothing to do with unincorporated territories or war. You’ve got the bi-hawks, tri-hawks, cross-hawks, curly-hawks, faux-hawks, no-hawks, shark-fins, and my favorite, the psychobilly Mohawk, which is really just a spiky quiff, a lock of hair running down the center of the head and combed to one side. Quiff also means promiscuous woman, and I liked the idea of wearing that on my head all the time.
Maybe it was that kind of thinking that started this mess. I never did get a quiff. I don’t have any of those others I named either. I’m the only person with this particular type of Mohawk I’ve ever met or heard of, and if more people had the kind of hair I have, I promise you, the world would be a very different place.
It was almost a year ago today. I had a huge crush on this girl, Kimberly. I’d been trailing her for a couple of weeks since we made out at this anti-Valentine’s Day party. But she’s a kind of wholesome do-gooding sort and was making me work for my dinner, so instead of ever inviting me out alone, she invited me to group events. On Sunday morning we cooked breakfast with Food Not Bombs and served homeless people in the park. On Friday I rode in a Critical Mass with her. It was nice going out with her those two weeks and seeing lots of people. I’d been spending too much time at my retail jobs, or alone sketching and submitting portfolios to galleries, most of which were turning me down. But to be honest, I was kinda just chasing her tail and getting nothing but community activities in return.
The third time we went out, she invited me to a political rally. She said we could go to a rock show after, so I thought, why not? I’d done my share of rallying. I cared about things. And this rally came with the added plus of a pretty girl.
The rally was about Palestine and Israel. It was back when Israel was going hog wild and just bombing the fuck out of Palestine, in retaliation for rockets being launched into Israel. I’d seen it all over the news for two days, and yeah, it was awful what was happening. But there are awful things happening everywhere all the time. Just not usually here.
So, I met Kim at the rally in Union Square. We stayed for two hours. It was nothing out of the ordinary. People were really upset and solemn and sincere. Then there were a few fiery speeches, as well as a small group of Zionists pinned in holding counter-protest signs across the street. A band played, and Kim held my hand and skipped around in a circle. One of her sandals came off and she scratched her foot, so we went to sit in the grass. I bought us two soy dogs. We ate them. Hers had relish and mustard, mine had ketchup. I’m recalling all of these banal details, because it seems so outlandish to me now just how ordinary everything was then. Nothing remotely strange happened. I keep playing that whole day and night over in my mind, trying to remember some sign of something, anything exceptional. But there was really nothing. It was an uneventful political rally that I went to because I had a crush on the girl who invited me and nothing exciting happened.
After finding a Band-Aid for Kim’s foot and sitting around a little while, we went and got two cups of coffee, then headed over to this place called Arlene’s Grocery for the concert. Kim did a lot of dancing. I mostly sat on the couch drinking and listening, thinking how much I missed CBGB. But then I thought maybe it wasn’t CBGB I missed, but being twenty and feeling like I was really doing something drinking with a fake ID and being able to drink as much as possible without really feeling it, and most importantly, everything, absolutely everything being new and exciting.
It just doesn’t feel the same listening to live rock when you’re going to be thirty in a year, and your second drink is already making you more tired than drunk and you can’t help but worry you’re going to feel a little sick and depressed the next day. My mind started wandering to sort of existential crisis thoughts, like the fact that I’d been trying to convince art galleries that my charcoal comic strip sketches were gallery-worthy since I moved to the city, and I wasn’t getting much further with that than I was nine years ago, and I can’t blame it all on being a boi instead of a boy, and wondering if I even still really liked live rock; wondering if I even still liked anything really, ’cause the things that used to seem so exciting now seemed so commonplace. Was it actually those things I liked, or was it just the newness?
(I don’t worry about that kind of stuff anymore.)
Kim came and interrupted my quarter-life drunk-think. She handed me a beer and smiled, then sat down next to me, her leg crossed in my direction, touching my knee. I remember this very clearly. She took a sip of her beer, tousled my hair and giggled. “You’ve got such a thick head of hair, Sheldon. It’s really . . .” She paused long like she was wondering whether to say it. She’s a few years younger than me and seemed to be getting pleasantly drunk. “Sexy,” she said, and smiled, leaning in.
I gave her a sort of signature nod I have, and tried my best to look as sexy as she said I was through my increasingly tired version of buzzed. “Yeah,” I said. “You know what I’m gonna do tomorrow? I think I’m gonna do a Mohawk again.”
“No way! That could be really good.” She started twisting my hair around one of her fingers. I don’t think it really was at the time, but I remember it now as a mystical few moments when she kept touching my hair and talking about it, smiling too big and leaning in, giggling over nothing. The light was dim and the place smelled sweaty. The music was loud. Mediocre and insanely attractive people were dancing and beginning to make out around us. “What kind of Mohawk exactly are you going to do?” She took my brown hair in her fingers like a comb and held it up in the center, then tilted her head, trying to picture it.
“I was thinking about doing a quiff.”
“A quaff?”
“No. Quiff. With an i.”
“Quiff?”
“Yeah.” I described a quiff to her and then told her that quiff also means promiscuous woman, and I said that I like having promiscuous women on my head. She blushed and went, “Mmmmmmm.” Then she crawled on top of me, straddling my lap, and we made out till the band stopped playing.
We walked together to the subway. I asked her to come home with me. I really thought she would, but she said it was already two o’clock and she had things to do the next day, “Sorry.” She kissed me on the cheek and went to her side of the subway. That moment really sucked. So I waited thirty minutes for the train, alone, feeling not drunk enough and too tired, frustrated and lonely, my hands shoved in my pockets, watching some junkie not fall repeatedly until the F train came. I got into my apartment and just crashed on top of the covers, in my clothes.
I usually would have slept until at least noon. But I woke up really early, like at eight o’clock. I couldn’t figure out was wrong for a second, then I realized my head was itching like crazy. I sat up in bed and started manically scratching it, but that only seemed to make it worse. As I was scratching it, I was shocked to feel tons of little things moving around on my head. Bedbugs! I immediately thought. Huge ones. I stood up and pulled back the covers. They were all clean. No sign of the red plague. But god, that itching was awful. I ran to the bathroom and looked in the mirror.
I think it was Dr. Phil who said there are only about five principal events in every person’s life after which they will never be the same; five events that change you forever. Like, you become a markedly different person after these things happen, and there�
��s no going back to who you were before. I only have two, and I doubt I’ll ever have any more. The first one was when I was twenty-four and I decided to do the tea and the top surgery (get my tits hacked off) and become a real boi. My second “principal event” occurred when I looked in the mirror that morning.
For a while I just stared at it. Then I started feeling around very gently patting at it with my hands, mumbling to myself, my mouth opening and closing slowly like a dying fish. I watched very closely, mesmerized by what I was seeing: the soldiers standing guard at the checkpoint, the line of cars and people at the base near my neck and the empty deserted area near the front, where, on one side, every few minutes, I thought I could make out some people shifting in the nearby bushes. I fingered the wall that ran like a Mohawk down the center of my head. It was solid, hard stone and did not give under the weight of my touching. Suddenly, I felt something singe my fingertip. I pulled my hand away and jumped back to the tiny sound of three little bombs exploding quickly. I put my hands in the air and pressed my back against the wall. I could make out the microscopic sound of screaming. Something fell from my head to the floor. I got down on my knees and pressed my cheek to the tile to get a good look. It was a little bigger than an ant. Well, I shouldn’t say it. He was a little bigger than an ant, a miniature man wriggling on the floor, blood gurgling out of his mouth in bubbles. By the count of five, he was dead.
I jumped out of the bathroom, grabbed my keys off the table, and bolted down the stairs and onto the sidewalk, faster than I’d ever run. I didn’t even think to try to get on the subway or grab a bus or even a cab. My body just started going and didn’t seem to want to stop till I got where I needed to be. It only took me twenty minutes to get to my doctor’s office. I’d never wanted to see a doctor so badly in my life. It seems silly to me now, that being my first inclination. But in those twenty minutes, I just kept telling myself that all I needed was a doctor.
Things to Do When You're Goth in the Country Page 13
