Louis Jordan came home one night and crawled into bed next to his wife. A moment later she started stabbing him. He sustained a puncture wound an inch away from his heart that nearly killed him, deep slashes on his face and hands. The doctors were afraid that he would not be able to play his horn again. For a little while today, I hated you. I hated you for being so beautiful and real. I hated you for waking up at night to find your arms around me. I hated your honesty and the way you make people relax when you are around them. I hated you for loving me unconditionally. You have called me on years of cheap emotion and cruelty that came from my fears. When you look at me and smile I no longer feel scared or feel the need to run out of the room gasping for air. You don’t make me feel like life is a waste of time and that all you get is cold sweating, dark moments in small rooms all over the world, spending time with other desperate characters who are tearing a path across the night skies of desolation. Promotional item. On loan from Warner Cablevision. Not for resale. Could you believe that I didn’t know what to do with your slow, warm affection? Could you believe I was scared by your endless giving giving giving? It took me a while to be able to feel welcomed by your strength that never shows off, never brags, but just nourishes and makes time stop. The feeling of hatred passed in the time it takes for an eye to twitch, and I realized that I have to take care of myself because I belong to someone. Someone is thinking of me right now. I never doubt it. I know you will always be there. Yeah, I’m in my room somewhere. It’s freezing outside and I am exhausted. Too many things to do. Too many people to answer to all the time. From here I think of you. My body is wracked in pain and I am burning with fever. Promotional item. On loan from Warner Cable-vision. Not for resale. A lot of men want a woman to mother them. They get with a woman and all they do is regress to the point where you might think he might not be capable to take care of himself at all. I don’t want another mother. I want a woman. I want to rise to the occasion. I want to learn and bask in your glow. I want to protect you and do whatever I can to give you strength. There is no twist to this. I am not about to blow my brains out. You have not cut me up like others have. It’s just this. I want to love you with everything in me. I need your help because I don’t know anything about it. I am suspicious and ready to leave and hit the cold road for the frozen dawn. I am just going to trust you with everything in me. I see now that it’s the only reason to be here. After kissing you, I cannot remember what it was like to kiss any other woman. Promotional item. On loan from Warner Cablevision. Not for resale. At this point I am not sure if I ever have.
I missed it before it was gone so I would be ready for the time when it left for real. I knew it was on its way out because it was made by human hands. Greed always shows its flaws early on. Most don’t see. Too busy trying to make one of their own. If it’s possible to mainline shadows, I will find the way. Because I want out. I don’t hear the voices on the phone. There’s nothing they’re saying that I have to know. People are best on records and books because you can turn them off or put them back on the shelf. I prefer the crystallized moments of human artistic pursuit than to hear what horrors the idiots have done to each other on the news. People try to talk to me on the streets. I have my filter up to make very sure I cannot understand them. I hear the attempt at language, which to them is just sounds strung together in a mindless stream. I tell them to go cure themselves. Yes, cure yourself. Shut up and cure yourself. Get over it finally. If you’re going to beat yourself to death, fine, but don’t make me have to suffer your common stupidity. I tried to talk to one of them several weeks ago. It was like going to a movie. All of a sudden I was doing that warm-blooded-animal-stranded-in-a-city thing. I didn’t believe a word that came out of either of our mouths. I felt like I was a great actor working with a neurotic script. A method actor so deep in the part that I actually became it. Pretty insane, right? I like the shadows these days. Luckily the city I live in has lots of broken streets where fallen people live. This is where I walk. There are no bars for the idiots to crowd around and line up to get into. There are no clubs where you can wear stupid clothes and show off your hair to the other idiots. Just poorly lit, ruptured streets and sidewalks. And in this shadow world I breathe in darkness like a vaccine.
Seventies bedside memo from Hughes inside a blackout curtained suite in Mexico. I always planned on an early retirement. I was right about it coming, but I didn’t expect it to be this soon. A loner I have always been, but a recluse is the last thing I thought I would become. I sit in my small room with hardly anything in it. I wait for night to come so I can venture out. During the day it is too much. The stares and the continual bothering make it impossible to control my temper. I feel like lashing out at those who treat me like a prop for their amusement. It is, of course, my own fault. If you are good at what you do, don’t let anyone know. They will only drain you and take everything they can and leave you dead on the floor. They will not notice that they are leeching your blood. All they know is their own desperation. If you aspire to be more than average, then you will have to deal with the flak that comes when you inevitably mix with the multitudes. To be widely recognizable is a mistake. Anything you do to promote this gets you everything bad and you have no right to complain. It is your vanity, ego, and pride that will get you in trouble every time. The smart man knows not to put trust in anything but numbers and the weakness of man. Better to fully understand and accept human nature and deal with people knowing that they are always thinking of themselves even when they are at their most philanthropic. After all, acts of philanthropy are just expensively cloaked ways to demonstrate power. It is impossible for anyone to do acts of goodwill when they do not in some way benefit themselves. You can rule out the concept of friendship early on and make sure you find ways to keep your associates paid and hungry for more. That way they will more often than not be your “friends.” Make sure they never know all the facts and never hold all the pieces to the puzzle. In your absence they are capable of conspiring to take you out with their assembled bits of knowledge. It happens all the time. It happened to me. They don’t even know that I know.
I could fall in love with a cruel desert that kills without passion, a canyon full of scorpions, one thousand blinding arctic storms, a century sealed in a cave, a river of molten salt flowing down my throat. But never with you. There was a house I spent time in many summers ago. A woman lived there. Imprisoned by her touch and mocking smile, I was passed by time. I did not want to leave. The longer I stayed, the weaker I became. The days passed, and finally my self-hatred grew inside this beautiful house of paralysis, snapping me out of the coma of self-delusion I was in. All at once she was done with me and I was pushed out the door. Years later the memories of the house and the woman inside haunt me when the weather grows warm. Broken dreams of conquest stabbed with failure. Of hope driven mad by emptiness. Of the long march that ends in muted defeat, tricked by bad maps and dry riverbeds. Blood drying silently on stones under an unrelenting sun. All the time the truth was there trying to tell itself to me, but I did not heed the warning. And through the years she has risen out of heat-driven mists like a cobra. Different faces, same killer. Yes, they are all the same. I learned the lesson after many self-inflicted deaths. I understood the truth after mutinous nights where my thoughts threatened to reduce me to nothing. It was a revelation. And now their masks fall away when they attempt to meet my eyes. Our conversations are automatic. They see that they have no control over the situation, and they have no default setting for this. There is at first the display of anger at the secret revealed and then contempt because they know in order for me to know what I know, I have to have suffered the consequences of desire and desperation. Finally, the eyes narrow and a cold, mirthless reptilian smile creases the face with a million faces. A hiss emits from the mouth, and the truth makes a wall between us.
I put cardboard up on my windows. I left small strips to look out onto the street. It’s a paper-thin barrier, but it’s like blinders for a horse.
The less I see the better. I figure it might cut down on sniper attack. I prefer artificial light to that of the sun. If I had my way, it would be night all the time so I make my room perpetual night. At night I am the only one alive. All the creatures outside are just extras in the movie. My face still hurts from the operation. I had tear-duct implants placed inside my nasal cavity. All I have to do to make it look like I am crying is tilt my head forward and squint slightly and tears come rolling out of my eyes one after the other. I need the fake tears for my work. I’m an actor on the great urban stage. I have to get along with people, and since I can feel nothing for them or myself, I had my tear glands removed years ago. I had to get fake ones implanted. Now I see why many I know had them installed years later, or the real smart ones only had them tied off in the first place. I thought it was one of the extras the body comes with that I could do without. Now I can at least give the impression that I care. I can “cry” at movies, funerals, and other moments where it is advantageous for me to have feelings. I have been taking acting classes as well. It’s hard work. I can put on a good show when I have to. I do really good “concern” and my look of “understanding” is excellent, so says my instructor. The hardest was “fear.” To look like you’re “afraid” of something was beyond my comprehension for a long time. My instructor would stand in front of me and make these faces that I found very funny. I asked him what the feeling of fear was like, and he told me to imagine I was about to be murdered and “go with that emotion.” We do that a lot. Well, I remember being murdered, and I didn’t act like him. I was expressionless when it happened. Once I died I decided to stay dead. I don’t occupy places. I haunt them. When I’m by myself I don’t feel anything, I don’t fear anything, and I don’t want for anyone. I spend time with women but it’s only for practice. That’s where the tear-gland implants are amazing. I’m at a table in a restaurant and she’s telling about her dog running away when she was eight and how it still affects her and her work to this day, and right into my spaghetti, the tears come out. The look on her face is priceless—it saves me another trip to the acting coach. When I tell a story like that I will use her facial expressions to get it across. I look over at a guy at a table across from me and he subtly gestures toward his eyes and gives me the thumbs-up; he knows I have the implants. There’s nothing to fear. Stay dead baby.
I’ll be all that’s bad, and you can be all that’s good. Would that make you happy? You could be right all the time, and I would be wrong all the time. The only rule is you are not allowed to try and rehabilitate me in any way. You are not allowed to make me yours. You are not allowed to make me become like you. Can you deal with that? Save your breath. Parthenope calls me on the phone. She asks me how I am, and I tell her that I am feeling better than she ever will. She doesn’t get mad at the insult, she’s used to this. She starts in again.
“I think you are a good person but you’re misunderstood. I understand you and I am drawn to you. I hope this is not embarrassing you, but I cannot help the way I feel.”
I tell her that I didn’t hear what she said, could she say it again? She does, in measured, slow speak. She wants me to hear every word. She says, “I wish you would open up to me. I wish you would give me a chance. I am not like the others. I see you differently than they do.”
I tell her the acting classes are doing her some good but she has to get deeper into the part, she’s not convincing me yet. “More feeling you stupid cow,” I tell her.
This pisses her off. “No wonder you live alone. With the way you are, you’ll live alone for the rest of your life. I am ready to give you everything, and all you can do is make fun of me and put me down. You’re just showing me what a coward you are. If you were really as tough as you act, you wouldn’t insult me so. You’re afraid of real love. I am stronger than you’ll ever be, and you know it.”
I yawn. “Probably. That sounds good, we’ll go with that one,” I reply.
“You need me you son of a bitch. You motherfucker. You need me.”
She’s really mad now. I wait a minute for her breathing to calm down and then ask her, “Is there anything else you wanted to talk about, or was it just that?”
I hear the phone smash against the wall and glass break. I got a call the next day from a friend who lives in her building. He told me that she apparently threw herself out of her window and died on the sidewalk. Her body was found on cinder blocks, head, tail and claws cut off, radio gone, torso covered in graffiti.
The sky turned a beautiful blue, and the sun shone. My bank account filled with money, and I got laid three times in a week by three females who never asked my name.
You can get what you want. Never sell out. Don’t break. Don’t weaken. Don’t let the kindness of strangers be your salvation, for it is no salvation at all. Unless you sleep alone, you sleep with the enemy. Never come out of the storm. On the other hand, you should. You don’t have what it takes to go the hard way. Come out of the cold and sit by the fire. Let them warm you with smiles and the promise of friendship’s fortune. Lose your edge. A soft body and a chained mind suit you. Chances are you don’t have what it takes to walk the frozen trail. Stay home and relax.
Another night. The temperature is flesh. The moisture in the air is a poor man’s sauna. And on a night like this, you must have music. To my rescue comes Gene Chandler singing “The Duke of Earl.” The music hangs in the air so righteously. These moments make life bearable. People don’t mind their business enough for my liking. All that talk from nowhere. Zero on substance. Their experience knows the bounds of a postage stamp. Yet they tell you how it is and how it’s going to be. Booker T. and the MG’s playing “Green Onions” just came on. I remember watching Booker Jones, Donald “Duck” Dunn, and Steve Cropper walk onstage and pick up a Grammy. I was on my feet. Not because they won a Grammy, but because we were under the same roof. Honor the respect. It’s an honor to encounter someone who you must salute, someone who makes your respect stand at attention. Someone whose life deserves tribute. When you pay tribute to them you’re also acknowledging yourself and the heights that you aspire to. I have erased myself. My past is past. People I knew are dim memories. Few faces, names, or events exist in my mind. Now it is night. Summer. I do not remember the nights of my youth. I look at young people on the streets and wonder if I was ever like that. I wonder what they are thinking and if I have ever thought their thoughts. As I’m walking down this street, now that they have left, the silence has allowed my other senses to explore. Moths make furious attacks at the streetlights. The choir of insects is symphonic and seems to hang suspended in the air’s moisture. The smell of plants and trees makes the darkness full of rich and strong life. So strong that you can turn your back on it and take it for granted. You don’t have to remember it because it is a constant. Somehow truer than fact. One of the few memories I have is of having a memory that held every moment of my life like a vise grip. It was a memory that held every thought, every feeling, perspective, and perception captive. I vaguely remember that I was always angry, sad, or in some kind of need. I do not remember the moment or the events that led to my systematic erasure of my memory and associations with people. Now the seasons pass through me like a breeze through thin curtains. I remember no names when I am introduced. I don’t even know my own name or if I had one. I’m sure I did, but like every other fact on this planet, it just does not matter.
My flag is the color of late-night ceiling. On my flag are stars. They have all blown their brains out. Their shattered brilliance is scattered all over the worn cloth. In my removed-from-the-world room I am glad you are there, veteran. I am glad to know you are in a room somewhere silently bleeding. It is good to know that you know that no one will understand you. No one will know your wordless panic and empty stepping, slow-moving desperation. You are alone but not alone. You are crowded in with people who are alive yet who have not lived. When they reach out to you their well-meaning arms are but amputated stumps. Their concern is mutilated with guilt
and is limited to the confines of their tiny lives. You have been cast adrift in a sea of humanity and are shipwrecked invisibly. You are not alone. My fist hit the wall as yours did tonight. My phone did not ring as yours did not. The scars of my knowledge and regret are rising off my flesh as yours are. I know you’re out there in my night as I am out there in yours. Doesn’t matter if you’ve seen war or not. There are many ways to see too much. Experience comes back around to trap you in its claustrophobic, vast abyss. Those who want to be close only make you feel threatened. You like them, so you don’t want them to have to get a glimpse of the horrific clarity with which you perceive. How you see the end of the story at the beginning and go along with it anyway until the pain becomes so all-consuming that all you can do is sit alone and wait for it to pass. When you live as a warrior you don’t think that dying as one would take this long and be dragged out with such agonizing, dishonorable tameness. The minutes alive humiliate. The days mock and the voices fill you with rage. Wear it silently and walk on. Keep moving up the trail. Stay inside the tree line and never give yourself up because the natives are grotesque in their friendliness. They will kill you and you will go out worthless. Alone is the only way to walk the line, and you know it.
She smiled at me and told me everything was going to be all right. Then she tightened down the clamps that held my head still. The first blow of the hammer hit above one of my eyes, and then I passed out or died. When I could open my eyes again I saw that all my internal organs were nailed to the wall. I was still tied down to the floor, but my head had been released from the clamps. That’s how I was left. Alive, but emptied and ugly. I got out of the restraints and put myself together again. I am not bitter about it. Maybe I won’t get disemboweled next time. I am trying. If I believed in a higher power, I would tell it. I would say something like, “Lord, I am trying to be good and I am trying to like people. I know that everyone is doing the best they can. I will try to do better.” Instead, I just tell myself to be a good person. I work at it. I am not strong enough to maintain it. I am, for the most part, failing. There are moments when I triumph. I stood in front of the woman with the bad breath as she told me the same thing three times. I did not run away. I did not say, “Your breath is disgusting.” I stood there like a stuffed animal and took it. I did not attack the man who chased me on his bike trying to take my picture today either. I kept my head down and walked to work. I was polite to the drunk soldier who followed me for two blocks shaking my hand every five paces, telling me the same thing over and over. I did not say, “Could you please stop saying the same thing over and over to me while you breathe on my face? Would you stop holding my hand?” But he’s doing the best he can, right? Just like me. I should take that into consideration. There are the times when I am not strong enough. Someone smiles at me and my face freezes blank and my eyes go to the ground. Someone calls after me on the street and I hear them plain as day but I pretend that I don’t and keep walking to where I set out to go. I get tired of stopping when I want to go. I get tired of talking when I want to be silent. I get tired of answering endless questions and tired of the petty abuse for which I have no recourse. I try to be good hoping that maybe they’ll give me a sliver of space to exist in outside of this room. An insect-sized space I can be where they won’t invade and take everything away. I want for this because I just don’t have what it takes to keep taking it day after day. Liking people is the hardest thing I have ever tried to do. I am not cutting it. I feel myself slipping too often.
The Portable Henry Rollins Page 25
