“John, your mind is not healthy. How could it be?”
“It’s all a matter of perspective, my dear. What’s normal to the spider is chaos to the fly.”
“And we are all flies. The doctors, your family. Me. I am one of many caught in your web.”
“Nonsense. You wouldn’t have come near me if you weren’t drawn in some way. Come on, Susan. Don’t you see? We chose each other for a reason. You’re a spider, same as me.”
She thought about that for a moment. My pain was surfacing through the opiates. I felt it burning, throbbing, freezing, and I saw it in my mind’s eye. If this pain had a color, it would be black. It would be big, black inkblots of agony. I heard myself whimper. Susan snapped up and looked at me. “What is it?” she asked.
“You’re stronger than you look,” I said. “But of course you are. You’ve been carrying me around all these years.”
“You need a shot?”
“Would you, please?”
“I should let you suffer,” she said. I was happy to see she still had a sense of humor.
She got up, injected me again, smoothed the hair off my forehead, and then took her place beside me in the bed. I smiled as the drug diffused through my body like a warm rush of liquid electric blanket. Yes, she smoothed my forehead. It was a sign. I had faith that this initial shock for her would all blow over. She was already falling back into her usual habits with me.
“So, you don’t like the pain,” she said.
“I love the pain. And I love equally the relief of the pain. You can’t have one without the other, and the greater the pain, the greater the relief. You’ve given me some incredible pain, Suze. And it makes the Demerol injections that much better. I could never be one of those drug addicts who just wants to get higher and higher. I understand that I have to come down in order to re-experience the enjoyment. I think that’s what gets most addicts killed. They keep wanting to go up a level and end up getting to that deadly dose. I will never go there. You see what I mean? I know you sometimes worry.”
“I do, but I still don’t understand.”
“The shot is making me ramble,” I said. “What I’m trying to say is that I program my drug use so that I can use them, in a very controlled schedule, to optimize the highs and lows of pleasure and pain.”
“Jesus, John. How intricate is this madness?”
“It’s not madness, my love. It’s a lifestyle, one I’ve been developing for years. I’ve been through many trials and errors. I’ve made some grave mistakes, like the antifreeze. That nearly cost me my life, but overall I believe I’ve perfected my methods.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I know it’s unusual, perhaps unheard of. I have never heard of others quite like me, but open your mind, dear. There are swingers, and S-and-M-bondage types. There’s body modification, tattoos, brands. Women mutilate themselves to have larger mammary glands by putting foreign objects inside their chests! What could be more gruesome? Stretching their sagging skin back over their skulls. Having fat vacuum-sucked from their asses. The obese have their bodies cut open and their stomachs crudely sewn into small little pouches because they can’t stop fucking gorging themselves. How can you be disgusted with my way of living?”
“Because you’re a fraud. A liar,” she said.
“My behavior is taboo. People don’t understand it. I have to lie.”
“Not to me. You shouldn’t have lied to me.”
“You weren’t ready yet.”
“You burden people without their consent.”
“I’m learning now that I was wrong. And I’m going to work to change that.” I reached for her hand and squeezed it. “Now you’re complicit with me. We can work together.”
“Complicit? Are you out of your mind?” She took a deep breath and steadied her voice, taking on the practical persona of her nurse role. “John,” she said, “we need to get you psychiatric treatment.”
“Oh, please spare me. Then you must go too. Do you think it’s normal to hammer down your husband? Shall we check into an asylum together? It will be like a second honeymoon.”
“That was an outburst.” Her voice rose in pitch. “I, I … lost my temper.”
“And don’t blame my drug habit all on me,” I continued. “You don’t think I notice that you give me extra some nights? You try to knock me out when you want to sleep. How ethical is that, Nurse Suzie?”
“That’s not true. Not true!” She launched herself from the bed and strode out the door. I touched a nerve with that one. I heard her treading down the stairs.
“Susan! It’s okay. I’m not mad about it. I understand. Suze?”
My Suze never shouted like that. I’d crossed the line with my sarcasm, not unusual for me. She still didn’t reply, and I felt a rush of anxiety at the thought of her leaving me. She could easily refuse me—this freak that I am—walk out that door and never come back. What would I do? Where would I go? Who would keep me company?
“Suze!”
“Damn it, John. I’m just getting a glass of water!” I heard her yell from the kitchen.
I composed myself, feeling foolish for my moment of weakness. Normally my emotions, or portrayal of them, was carefully executed, controlled, and monitored. Just like my self-injury; I took mental notes on everything to make sure I knew just how far to go with people. I analyzed which behaviors gave me the desired outcome for any particular manipulation.
Of course, now that Susan knew all about me I would have to cease this handling of her. She wouldn’t appreciate that. She may have been blinded by love, but she was not stupid, and it was worth the loss of the small pleasure of deceiving her to have someone wholly with me. I had been so alone, not being able to share my triumphs with anyone. No one to witness my achievements. No one to appreciate my work. There’s an artistry to my performances, you see. They mean a lot to me.
Susan returned with two glass of water. She pulled a straw from the small, mostly useless pocket of her scrubs and dropped it into the glass. Always thoughtful, my Suze. With my mouth in its swollen state, sipping water from glass would be uncomfortable, if not messy. She knew my needs before I did.
I was surprised at my thirst, and I stared into her eyes as I sucked down the full glass of tepid water. “Good boy,” she said, her voice flat. She still wasn’t buying it, but I knew somewhere deep inside, she was listening. I would get to her.
She walked to her side of the bed, set the glasses down on the nightstand, and laid her body once again next to me. “So finish your story,” she said. “I want to understand. I really do. What happened with Pete?”
*
As the years passed, I made “dates” with Peter, who looked terrified, horrified, every time he found me in the garage. He knew what I wanted. Sometimes he’d even try to talk me out of it.
“I won’t do it. No more. Never again. This has to stop.”
We were far beyond the point of no return. If Peter tried to explain what was going on now, no one would believe him.
I remember one particular evening when I asked him to hammer over my existing bruises. My latest contusions were of such wonderful shapes and colors; I hated to see them fade so quickly. I was fascinated by their life cycles, like flowers that at first bloomed black and blue, scarlet and purple, and eventually diffused into ugly browns, greens, and yellows. Within a week or so my skin would be pink and new again because my young body healed so quickly. I wanted to add to my marks as a painter adds to his canvas.
I took off my clothes and inspected my body reflected in the polished car door. I stood in my white briefs and took an inventory of my long, supple legs. Some of my most striking purple and red mottled areas had already faded into brown and yellow. I thought about how nice they would look with a fresh splash of purple in the middle. I was curious to see if it would be more or less painful than when Peter hit the good skin. My ribcage expanded and contracted and my abdomen pushed in and out with excited breath. My body, my flesh—I was the owner of a young ma
n’s frame, yet I didn’t feel like it belonged to me until I was united with it in pain.
“Clear off your work table.” I said to Peter. “I want to lie there under the light. You must be able to see what you are doing.”
“You are still all banged up. Look at you. I can’t hit you again!”
His refusals were like background noise to me now, nothing more than a formality. We both knew the routine already.
I put my back against the table and hoisted myself up. I lay on the scratchy wood, feeling powdery sawdust beneath my skin. My limbic system already anticipated the pain. A naked bulb swung over me in the warm, thick summer air, and I heard clearly Pete’s shaky breathing and the crickets grinding from their dark hiding places. All senses were amplified by the adrenaline that flooded my body, preparing it for what was to come.
Pete walked into the darkness making a strange, hollow whimpering. The awful sound was his crying. Then he approached the table with his pitiful, twitching lips. The sweat beaded up on his blackheads and gritty stubble. He had a screwdriver in his hand. He held up the butt end. “Can’t we just use something like this? If it’s just a game, we can pretend I’m hitting you with the hammer, but it will be this plastic handle. Then you won’t get so hurt.”
He didn’t understand that it wasn’t a game anymore. It wasn’t just about my mother. That became a secondary issue. It was about the ritual. The breaking down and the healing. The pain and the pleasure. The obliteration of all thoughts and fears when that hammer crashed into my flesh and bones, sending the nerve impulses crackling up into my brain.
“Put on the record.” I said.
“What record?”
“You know the record.”
Pete shuffled away to the storage room in the back of the garage with my grandparents’ old things in it. Among the junk was an old record player and collection of albums that Pete was permitted to use. I could usually hold back the screams but not always the groans, so I’d asked Peter to begin playing music during our sessions.
The first time he’d played an old-fashioned song about how when you meet the perfect love, all the world is right. You are part of nature and its perfection, and you will know it instantly, and your heart zings with this knowledge. The woman’s voice was as mad as my zeal for the hammer. I never wanted any other song.
I heard the needle scratching against the record. “And bring the hammer!” I said.
He returned with the hammer in his trembling hand. “Please, don’t make me do it again.” He started weeping.
“Stop being so dramatic. Just begin. A few whacks on each side of my rib cage. Then I want you to hit in the middle of the fading marks on the thighs and the shins.”
“You’re all messed up already.”
“Just do it, you idiot! What happens if I tell them how you hurt me? You think they’ll believe I asked for it? They’ll think you’re a sicko.”
His face flashed with the anger I saw in him when he’d strangled Carnegie.
And then the first hit. It was always the most difficult to take. I often fantasized about how good it would feel to scream as loud as I could through the pain. One day, I told myself, I would be free to do so. In a perfect world. The world in the song. In the meantime I clenched my teeth into a manic smile. Between blows I opened my eyes and saw Pete’s miserable grimace.
“Harder!” I said, my throat tight from adrenaline, my pubescent voice squeaking. He blinked back tears as he swung with determination. “That’s it!” I said.
He began making this awful guttural sound, and the corners of his mouth retracted backward as if being yanked by fishhooks. I tried not to let his grunting and sobbing, the snot flying from his hairy nostrils, disturb my enjoyment, but it was distracting. He either had to shut up or hit me harder still.
“Come on, Peter. I won’t let you stop until you’ve done it properly.”
He would save my shin for last. That was my favorite part because it was where I could most keenly feel the contact of the hammerhead with the bone. Sometimes I even heard a little crunch of a small fracture.
“Cover my mouth,” I said.
He almost appeared to gag. “You promise I can stop?” he pleaded.
“I promise.”
He clamped his calloused, sandpapery hand over my mouth, raised the hammer high, and sent it crashing down into my leg. I yelled into his clammy palm. I felt my eyes stretch wide, and there was a strange, warm stirring in my groin. The pain zinged through my nervous system. It was so intense I couldn’t see though my eyes were open. All I could see was black and yellow plasma.
Then the hitting stopped, and the pain ebbed away until a warm rush of euphoria washed over me. I was vaguely aware that Pete’s hand was gone, and I breathed rapidly through my mouth. I relaxed into the swimming sensations. The song on the record player, scratchy and distorted, echoed through the natural chemical storm swirling in my brain. I wept blissfully, and through my crying, I detected a noise—not a horrid or awful one, just a noise. Suspended in one single moment of purity, I could not judge anything yet. Then my mind cleared enough to label it.
It was the unmistakable sound of Pete heaving, the vomit splattering on the cement floor.
*
Susan was speechless, motionless. She looked ill.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I think I’m nauseous.”
“I know it sounds like some sort of dysfunctional situation, but it seemed perfectly natural to me.”
She clenched the duvet in her tiny fists. She wouldn’t look at me.
“What? What is it?” I asked.
“Pete played that Judy Garland record for you?” Her voice faltered as she said, “‘Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart’?”
Then it occurred to me what she was thinking. Susan and I had made love many times to that record. “Oh God, Suze. Please try to understand it. Step out of common morality for a second and see it for how it really is. I simply like these sensations. Yes, they do arouse me, but not because I have any sort of attraction to Peter. It was a physiological reaction. And he was simply an instrument I used to obtain that reaction. The song is a trigger. My body remembers what happened to that song.” I tried not to sigh in contentment. I hadn’t thought about the beginning in so long, and I was savoring my recollections.
“This is so far beyond my understanding ... I ... I ... never heard of anything like this. Who’s at a fault? You were just a boy. How could Pete do it?”
“Pete isn’t a bad man. He would never want to hurt me, and any reasonable person would’ve wanted to strangle that dog. I gave him no way out and no time to think about it. Once he hurt me the first time, I knew I had him forever. No one would believe I, as a child, somehow convinced him to ‘abuse’ me.”
She stood up and paced around the bed, her elbow supported by her left hand, her right fingers holding her chin. “This is so complex, so deeply rooted. Is it possible to undo all this damage?”
“I don’t want to undo it.”
“Of course you do. What kind of life is this?”
“Once you let go of your preprogrammed notions, once you open your mind just a little, you will see that I am a very happy man, and that just because you can’t understand my enjoyment of this lifestyle doesn’t mean it’s wrong. I’m an adult who chooses to do what he wishes with his own body. It is my right.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Let me make a comparison. You hate escargots. I love them. You don’t understand that, it disgusts you, but are you going to forbid me escargots simply because you don’t like them? Even if I’m the only person on the planet who likes them, shouldn’t I still be allowed to choose? It’s the highest respect of free will, which is what your God gave us.”
“Stop using my belief in God against me. It’s cheap. And that’s a stupid comparison. You’re not hurting anyone by eating escargots.”
“I’m harming the escargots.”
She was no
t amused. Her paces quickened. “You’ve been deceiving me, your family, and the whole world for your own gratification. It’s wrong.”
“Oh, please. People deceive each other every day. We pretend to like people when we don’t. We tell our white lies and hide our secrets, the perverse things that turn us on, the things that fill us with hate. We are victims to marketing that promises to solve all our problems yet delivers emptiness. We sell ourselves poison and then collect the dividend checks from it. We prey on ourselves. Our cannibalistic society is based on duping one another. Maybe I do it on an exaggerated level, but at least I admit it. At least at the very heart of it all, I’m honest with myself if not with anyone else, which is something most people can’t say.”
She was quiet, thinking about what I had said. “You think I’m in some sort of denial?”
“You’re an idealist, sweetie. I love that about you, but now it’s time to grow up. Welcome to the real world. Nature is the only god, and we are nothing more than animals.”
“But we’re the most intelligent animals by far.”
“We are just intelligent enough to know what’s wrong, but still too stupid to figure out a way to control ourselves. Like the diabetic man who knows the junk food is killing him but can’t stop eating it. He’d rather stab himself with a syringe full of insulin for the rest of his life. Or the decrepit smoker wheezing with emphysema who drags around an oxygen tank. Think about the brutality of it, how we can’t keep from harming ourselves. We love the pain, the self-destruction. And I’m embracing that. You should too.”
Her blank stare unnerved me. I hoped my charisma wasn’t going to scare her off.
“All I’m wishing you to do is think about it,” I continued. “All the laws in your Bible, in America, in the world, those were created by men. They are limited by the human mind and are shaped by the circumstances they were forged in. I say live by the laws of nature, the laws that were here before man, and the ones that will be here long after we’ve inevitably destroyed ourselves. Those are unshakeable. Eternal.”
“How is it that you’re living according to nature, John? Surely damaging your body, risking death to do it, is against not only common sense, but also the laws of nature. What living creatures hurt themselves?”
SICKER: Psychological Thriller Series Novella 2 Page 4
