—H Rollins. Sworn Anti-Man
Fear
The man was a boy once. There is a room. Square. A bed, a table, and a chair. A single bulb hangs from the ceiling. A man sits in the chair. A naked woman walks into the room. He takes his clothes off and they have violent sex on the bed. She remains passive and wordless for the length of the act. After the man ejaculates, he takes a large knife from under the bed and stabs her several times in the face, ribs, and stomach. He stops when he is out of breath. He gets up and puts his clothes back on. Moments later, the man’s father walks into the room with a baseball bat. He hands the bat to the man. The man bludgeons the father for several minutes. The father’s brains are all over the floor. The man drags the father’s body into the corner. The man’s mother walks into the room. She hands the man a gun. He shoots her in the face until the gun runs out of bullets. He drags the body into the corner and sits back down in the chair. It starts again in ten minutes.
Soundtrack for the rest of my life. Summer. Heat and damp, night and day. You can’t escape it. You sleep and sweat, you fuck and sweat, you think and sweat. The smell of your two bodies fills the air in the room, and the moisture holds it and makes you relive it over and over breath after breath. You die without going anywhere. Stomachs slick and rubbing together. Cum and sweat. Wet hot greasy necks trying to break themselves. All the sucking and smacking sounds. The sound of teeth clicking. Makes me think of what it would sound like to hack a human to pieces. Stabbing the chest cavity. The sucking wet sounds it would make as you stabbed. The heat works on your brain. You’re living in a fucking monkey house. The heat bends everything. The heat beats down with lead gloves. You understand the monster.
Gunshots as poetry. The man in the sedan cuts off the cab driver. The cab driver beeps his horn and the sedan’s window unrolls and a pudgy hand comes out and limply flips off the cab driver. The cab driver gets out of the cab, his face streaming with sweat. He tries to get the man in the sedan to come out of the car so he can beat him up right there on the median strip. There’s nowhere for the sedan to go. There was an accident at the intersection, and traffic is at a total standstill. The cab driver stands outside the sedan looking down at the man inside. The man is looking straight through the windshield trying to ignore him. The cab driver’s hand turns into a solid rock, and he starts to punch the sedan’s window with steady pounding thunder. After a dozen blows or so, the window splinters and cracks. Blood streams from the cab driver’s knuckles. The man in the sedan looks like he just ate a big plate of his own shit. The cab driver looks at the small crowd that has gathered to watch the confrontation. He looks in at the man again and slowly goes to his cab, gets in, and waits for the traffic to clear.
Animal act. I can’t talk to you. When you call me my throat starts to close. You ask me what’s wrong with my voice, and I tell you that I’m a little tired, hoping that will mask the fact that I want to slam the phone down and rip the cord out so it will never ring again. I don’t want to go into the parts about wanting to see myself dead and the part where I wake up almost every night now in a total panic. Telling you doesn’t do a damn thing for me. If I did tell you, you would try to say something to make me feel better and that would just make me tell you to shut the fuck up you stupid bitch what the fuck do you know about me. You would say something about wanting to touch me and that would make it worse. It’s the thought of someone touching me that makes me want to hack their arms off so they won’t try to reach out to me ever again. I wake up in dread. I think I’ll choke one of these nights. All I can think about is Death. In the middle of the night I fear it. I really do. I don’t want to fuck you because you’re a human being. You’ve got the human stink all over you. When I fuck, I know that I’m just following her fucked-up footsteps. I’m just hopping in the grave with her. I try to form words to fool you into thinking that I’m fine so you’ll stop talking to me. But really, all I want to do is scream and break things and kill.
The sidewalk spits in your face. It occurs to me now that I have never been the same after you left me. I feel humiliated and empty. I feel like a fool. Somehow I think I should have seen it coming. I have been with other women since you, and it’s been such a waste of time. I used to laugh at people who said that when their hearts were broken they had a hard time finding someone they could be with. I never thought that would ever happen to me. I had contempt for anyone who ever cried or wasted time lamenting over a relationship gone bad. I don’t laugh anymore because I would only be laughing at myself. The whole thing has had a bad and long-lasting effect on me. I like to spend more time alone than ever before. I have immediate dislike for anyone who says they like me. I reject people’s advances with a knee-jerk speed that’s disturbing. And if you were to call me right now and tell me that you want me back, I would tell you to go fuck yourself. Not because I hate you but because I don’t want anyone to be close to me anymore, not even you.
Larry über alies. Movie Idea: Larry is thirty-two years old and works at an office in a low-level position. He is overweight and has a low self-opinion. He lives alone and doesn’t do much on the weekends besides watch television. When he watches, he doesn’t pay attention to the show, he just passes time. One day at work he hits upon the idea that he should kill himself. He goes out and buys a handgun. He sits with the gun at home looking at it, pulling the trigger down on empty chambers. He looks over all the bullets in the box that he bought. He picks one. This will be the one that he kills himself with. He carries it around with him. He puts it on his desk during the day and talks to it occasionally. For the first time in his life, he feels alive now that he has plans to end his life. For the first time his life has direction. It occurs to him that he better look good when he goes out. He signs up at a gym and starts to work out in earnest. As the months go by, we see Larry lose body fat and become more muscular. He starts to cultivate a healthy amount of self-respect and people around him start to notice. Women smile at him when before they never noticed him. All the while he talks to the bullet, which is now shined to perfection. He flips it in his hand when he talks to people. Someone asks him about it, and he tells them it’s his lucky charm. Months go by and Larry is looking good. He takes his lucky charm and shoots himself in the head with it and leaves a good-looking corpse from the neck down. The end.
The great explorer broke down and abandoned his search. Humanity had spat in his face too many times. He turned it around and killed three. Moments before the gas, we hear his antispeech. My mother’s mother drank herself to death. It all comes running out of me, this black water. I see her on the floor, the way they found her days later. She had started to decompose. Her body in a frozen crawl, turning black, fluid leaking through the cloth of her nightgown into the floorboards. From the position of her body, it looked like she was trying to get to the phone. My mother’s father drank himself to death. He died down in the cellar. He lived alone. By the time his body was found, he had exploded. You never escape me. I have you with me forever. You will never escape my eyes. You will never escape my voice. I have you in my spell for the rest of your life. You will never forget the way I speak to you. I can see the room the way I want it now. The two of them are on the floor. The two corpses, oozing and putrescent. My mother is on the couch looking at them and crying. Her tears are made out of wood and coal. She has never had a real feeling in her life. She was never really alive. She sees everything through the eyes of a dead thing that has never seen the light of day. She sits on the couch looking at the dead bodies, the two dead drunks. She thinks, They used to fuck and I came from this. I came from this filth. She sees what she is now. She wants something to take her mind off of herself. She looks around the room for a man to fuck. She throws a leg over the body of her father and attempts to have sex with it. I come into the room and see them all on the floor. I kick them. Mouthfuls of black blood come flying out of my mother’s mouth. While in my holding cell, I have thought of nailing her hand to the floor and kicking her until she explodes.
So many times I have killed her for all the times that she made me feel dead like her. I come from death. I come from darkness. I am the most alive and brightest-burning thing there is. To you, I am a superstar. I overcome myself by incinerating myself. Her bloodsucking vomiting body is convulsing under the weight of my vision. You will never forget my voice. Okay, I’m ready. Let’s do it.
Now it can be told. The man goes to the television station and waits in the parking lot for Jerry Rivers, the television talk-show host, to get off work. Eventually Rivers comes outside and starts walking to a sports car. The man walks stiffly toward him and does his best to impersonate a harmless, starstruck fan. The man asks for an autograph. While Rivers is signing a piece of paper, the man pulls out a length of pipe and bashes him in the head as hard as he can. Rivers falls to the ground and starts convulsing in mute stupid animal panic. The man kicks Rivers’s head until his brains and eyes come out. You should have a piece of wire tied around your dick and be led out into traffic and then shot at a red light. Put that in your book. Go fuck yourself. Go march in a parade. I’ll be the one in the crowd who opens up on all of you with a machine gun. I won’t miss. After I get to you, you will only be recognizable by your dental records.
Friend. You can fake them out so easily. You can lie with a smile, and they’ll tell their friends that you were so cool when they met you. You can almost make the words come out of their mouths. You want to compliment them and ask them the answer to easy questions so they’ll feel that you are stupid and they are smart. It’s a great way to make someone give you what you want. Make them think that they’re in control. All the while you’re laughing behind your eyes calling them every name in the book. Be careful though. You don’t want to come off as patronizing. You see those shitheads on television talk shows do it. I saw some piece of shit talking to this very corny actor whose name I won’t mention because I don’t want him to sue me, resulting in him getting his kneecaps broken. Anyway, I wondered what in the hell you could say to this guy that would be a compliment and also be true? “I think your wife’s mustache is funny enough, but tell her not to take her clothes off in films anymore. It puts me off my food.” No, this is national television. The ass-kisser complimented the guy on his new piece-of-shit movie that he did and got him to open up and say the stupidest shit. Another way to make people work for you. Agree with everything they say. Don’t let them catch on of course. They will tell others how cool you are and how you two really “connected.” People are such suckers. That’s how serial killers get away with so much shit. A guy pulls up in a van and tells a girl to get in and go for a ride. She gets in and the guy rapes her and throws the body off a cliff and drives home. Easy. The pigs found her a year later with the ice pick still in her head. Basically, you want to make a person feel good. When they feel good, they think that they’re powerful. When they’re under that delusion, play ’em like a fucking video game. Hack them up, pull their teeth out, drive them to tears, make them fall in love with you, just for something to do. When they love you, then you get them to take out all the money in their bank accounts and give it to you. Then you tie them to a chair in their living room, cover them with gasoline, and torch them. Keep telling them that they’re great and in charge of their lives. It’s what I did to my parole officer, and it worked out fine. More later. Bye!
Weapon. Don’t tell me that you love me. I’ll start laughing in your face. You don’t want to make me angry. Shut your fake-ass mouth and get the fuck out of my face before I hurt you. I don’t want you to love me. Don’t feed the bullshit machine, there’s already enough in it. You think that no one can live without love? You’re wrong. You have inflicted enough damage into me. I’m still trying to get the glass out of my guts. It’s unbelievable to me that I haven’t killed you yet. It’s because of you that I won’t hesitate to take affection and use it against the one giving it. You should see me in action. I should have a fucking sign around my neck, DON’T PET THE ANIMAL. I can’t help myself. When a woman tells me that she likes me, I hate her immediately and only want to fuck her and leave. I’m at the point now where I don’t even want to fuck them. I just want to scream at them to get the fuck away from me. So next time you see me, don’t say a fucking word and just keep walking.
Cancerous fire-breathing bitch. In the first scene, he comes home from school and finds his mother in the living room standing rigidly with her hands on her hips. She opens her mouth to speak, but her mouth keeps opening well past the normal width. She exhales and at first all you hear is the sound of someone getting their skin torn off their back. Her throat expands, wide, wider. A fully developed fetus complete with afterbirth comes shooting out and lands a few feet away from the boy. She wipes her mouth off and lights a cigarette and kicks the fetus. She starts to speak, it sounds like a dozen beer bottles caught in a lawn mower. “Your fucking father is late again with his fucking check! I fucking hate him. He ruined my life. Look at me. Do I look like a mother to you? Jesus fucking Christ… oh goddammit.” She bends over and retches. A large steaming mass of blood and tissue falls from her mouth onto her shoes. She looks up at him. “I hate you. I fucking hate you so much!” There is no second scene.
Could it be I’m falling in love? I’m in a hotel room on the second floor. It’s 6:04 a.m. I am awakened by the sound of the sliding glass door to the balcony being forced open. I quickly exit the bed and pick up a ten-pound barbell from the floor. The door slides open slowly I am waiting with the iron plate. The intruder comes in. I bash the intruder as hard as I can in the head. I turn on the light. It’s a man—Caucasoid, medium build. He’s dead. I pick up the body and throw it off the balcony as far as I can. The body falls onto the sidewalk. I wipe off the handle of the door so his fingerprints are no longer there. I wash the barbell plate off in the tub. In the morning a policeman comes to the door asking if I heard anything strange last night. I tell him no and show him the earplugs that I sleep with. He tells me that they found a body in the parking lot and they’re looking for leads to see if anyone might have seen who dumped it. He thanks me for my time and leaves. It’s great. The lady behind the checkout desk says that the cops think the stiff got dropped off by a car in the middle of the night. She says that kind of thing happens out in these parts. I got to kill somebody and get away with it. I feel great. I mean, wouldn’t you? You’re like me. You know how many times you’ve fantasized about killing someone and getting away with it clean. You’ve always wondered what it would be like to kill somebody. In your mind you’ve killed so many times it’s not funny. You’ve killed your parents, lovers, bosses, etc. You know that if you ever did, you would feel like the most powerful person in the world. I bet you’ve come up with ways to do it and not get caught. That’s the only thing that stops you—fear of getting caught and doing time. That and guilt of course. I feel fine. I don’t care about human life. You’re all strangers to me. You’re all its and them. Fucking insects, that’s all you are.
Kicking the pigskin. I saw the pig in his car. I was crossing the parking lot. There was no other way I could go. The sidewalk was blocked by construction. I didn’t want to walk by a pig car with a pig in it. You never know what could happen. Pigs are weak and they lash out. I walked by the pig car as quick as I could. I tried not to look in at the pig, but I had to so I would know if I had to run. I wish I didn’t look. There was some boy sucking on the pig’s dick. I shot the pig in his mouth. I will never forget the look on that kid’s face when he looked up at me from the pig’s lap. His face was covered with brains and cum. It was then that I recognized him. The little shit lives three doors down from me!
Urban contemporary blues. I called and called. She never picked up the phone. All I would get was her answering machine. I would leave thirty-minute messages telling her how much I loved her and missed her and would she please come back to me. The days passed like glass splinters under my skin. I couldn’t understand for the life of me why she wouldn’t at least talk to me. She had dropped me so abruptly. She ha
d never told me why she had started going out with this other guy. I thought things were going so well. I stopped calling her. A few months went by and I thought I had it beat. You will call me a damn fool for what I did next. In a fit of romantic rage, I cut off my ear and sent it to her. I figured that she would at least call me or something. Maybe she would see that I was the one who truly loved her, because you know, I did. Do you know how hard it is to cut off a human ear? It’s hard as shit. I had to do it in the mirror. I nearly chickened out halfway through. The pain was beyond belief. So yeah, I sent her my ear in the mail, first class. A week later, I got a slip in the door that said I had a parcel waiting for me at the post office. I went and got it. It was my ear. The envelope had a sticker on it that said RETURN TO SENDER. NO LONGER AT THIS ADDRESS. UNABLE TO FORWARD.
War on our shores. I want to impress you in hopes that you might trust me. I want your trust more than anything in the world, more than I want to live. I run my hands up and down your beautiful body. You show me all the scars that your father put on you. All the cigarette burns and bite marks. There are so many of them. You’ve been hurt so many times. I touch the necklace of human teeth that hangs around your neck. The teeth are yours. He pulled them out of your head with pliers in the basement every Sunday until you had no more left. You can’t stop feeling his hands on you. You thought the scar tissue would dull the pain, but it didn’t. I know you could not possibly have killed him enough times in your mind to have him dead in your dreams forever. I know this. I feel the same way. I will be the one who will always love you no matter where you are. I will be the one you will remember as the only one who didn’t bring you pain. I take you to a large walk-in freezer. I take you on a tour of the hundreds of corpses hung up on hooks. All of them my mother and father. Killed so many times, so many different ways. You see many similarities. The father with the hook through the neck, face beaten to an unrecognizable mess, entrails. Killed so many times. Trying to take the pain away. Blinded by scar tissue. Aren’t we all. I look at you to see if I can detect anything in your eyes. You look at me and I can see that you trust me. You see that I’ll never hurt you. We drop to the ground and fuck on the floor under the slowly swaying feet of hundreds of broken-knuckled aborted screams. Your scars make you look better. I know you’re real.
The Portable Henry Rollins Page 18
