Thirty-Seven

by Peter Stenson

  This makes O’Connor’s assertion not only erroneous, but interesting. I imagine he was not able to conjure any other explanation for why we showed up at One’s doorstep and asked to be made sick enough to die. O’Connor couldn’t fathom a world where you’re given teeth of those who’d died in your house to file into dust. The sex, the Reprieves, The Day of Gifts—how else could any of this make sense unless we believed One to be God? How could a seemingly normal person destroy century’s worth of societal and moral norms in the blink of a few months?

  Dr. Turner would always tell me things weren’t my fault, that I was a victim of abuse and cruelty and mental instability and circumstance.

  Toward the end of my stay at CMHIP, I came to believe these things.

  Because I’d been John Doe and then Mason Hues and then Thirty-Seven.

  Because I’d wanted nothing but connection and my father couldn’t brave the ten feet from the doorway to my bed.

  Because I’d done unspeakable things that no longer made sense.

  Because I was once again filled with want.

  Five once told me there was nothing lonelier than acceptance of failure.

  One once told me I was a once-in-a-millennium seeker of Truth.

  Maybe the reason O’Connor insisted that Dr. James Shepard was playing the role of God was merely an act of transference. O’Connor must’ve imagined himself in our positions with ruined lives and distorted views of humanity, must’ve seen himself taking Reprieve and taking Cytoxan, being asked to break into somebody’s home to leave a death threat. He couldn’t imagine himself doing these things because nobody can imagine doing these things. But he kept trying, knowing he had to get deeper to the emotional core of those he wrote about, and he realized it was about trust; O’Connor couldn’t think of anything he could or would trust that much besides God. So he engaged in his own faulty modus ponens and deduced we must’ve all seen One as a Savior.

  But unlike us, O’Connor had never faced certain death and begged for it to be as long as possible, only to be guided through every stage of grief by a loving family of our own choosing, who’d gone, or were going, through the exact same thing. He’d never turned his life over to the destruction of Self. He’d never been granted the fruits of complete Honesty, The Gifts of Understanding, the tingles of ceasing to exist, the connection to unnamable Truth.

  We had. We’d been given insights normally reserved for the fluttering of eyelids and retardation of hearts. We knew God was a crutch to allow people to cheat and steal and murder and fortify themselves inside of semi-customized homes in subdivisions and to withhold love and to scapegoat gluten and Muslims and homosexuals and masturbate over their sleeping children with a smile because all they had to do was feel guilt and repent.

  Or maybe that’s all bullshit.

  Maybe I intuited that we had destroyed ourselves and became Gods. Maybe that’s why I’d felt comfortable with raping and pillaging my consciousness.

  Maybe I’d struggled with this notion, keeping the One Truth hidden because I feared its power, instead allowing blame and reduced sentences and victim-based psychotherapy to fill its void.

  And maybe everything happens for a reason—Two coming into my life, her yearning leading to questions, her questions leading to Truth.

  30. PARDON

  Two and I walk around town at night because sleep doesn’t feel important and because we like the cold air and because we’re invisible. We hold hands and sometimes arms. We’re in love with our lives and how our bodies feel and maybe one another. We speak to homeless people because they have a special talent for noticing Seekers. Some of them are rude and tell Two they want to fuck her throat. But most are nice, kind, broken. Sometimes we sit with them for hours. We listen to their stories because nobody else will. They initially speak about all the ways people have screwed them. Once blame is established, they talk about plans for getting off the streets. These are heartbreaking because not even the homeless believe these stories. Sometimes, if the person has a natural inclination for Honesty, he’ll tell us about what it was like before. He’ll tell us about things he’d had that are now gone—job, car, big-screen TV, a family—always in that order. He’ll regress here, once again casting blame, but it’s a short rebuttal to Truth. He’ll circle back to his soft voice. He’ll say something about fucking everything up with drugs or war or drink. Sometimes he cries. These aren’t selfish tears, but more about time, the loss of it, a eulogy. “Ten years,” he’ll say. “I’ve been on these streets for ten years.”

  One night we speak with a black guy in his mid-thirties. He looks rough, the kind that comes with rapid aging from inhaled coke. He’s angry. He’s angry at us because he thinks we’re Nazis or maybe because we’re white. It’s hard to tell. White spittle crusts at the corners of his lips. He is in the blame section of his monologue. He jabs at my chest and then Two’s and he tells us we’re cocksuckers for not giving him money.

  The skin connecting his ear is wrinkled it’s pulled so tight. I’m about to tell Two we should go when she jabs the man in the chest. He is startled and instinctively reaches up to rub his sternum.

  Two says, “Whatever you did—raped your little sister, shot some kid, or just pissed away everything your mom worked so hard to give you—it doesn’t matter. You hear me? It. Doesn’t. Fucking. Matter. Not anymore.”

  “Bitch, don’t poke me,” he says. He takes a few steps toward Two. She cocks her head and he stops and I know she is connected to a power greater than any combustion of atoms.

  “It’s over with,” Two says. “Behind you. You no longer have to kill yourself over it. You no longer have to make it disappear. Because it’s gone.” She places her two fingers on the man’s lower forehead, right above his wide nose. “You’re forgiven for everything you’ve ever done or thought or wanted. You’re free.”

  The man closes his eyes. Two presses. The man wets his lips, moving around the white globs of detritus. When his eyes open, they are clear, or clearer. They are Honest, moist. He blinks. A tear falls. His lips tremble. He tries to find words. Two shakes her head like speaking isn’t necessary. She takes my hand and we walk away.

  I tell her that was amazing. She tells me it had come to her, a Gift of Understanding, knowing this man was in the process of killing himself for the sins he’d committed. Two says, “And like you said, what’s the biggest reason a person turns to God?”

  “For the assurance everything is still okay,” I say.

  “Which is another way of saying forgiveness.”

  We keep walking. Two feels good about her actions. I like that she has taken ownership of this gift because it only came due to her dedication to sickness.

  Now we go out every night with a purpose: to pardon the unlovable. Some of them are ready to be forgiven and some of them spit in our faces. But overall, we are making a difference. We are enacting change. We are becoming better versions of ourselves. We give gifts that only God can give. The homeless start to recognize us. The first guy whom Two had pardoned always crosses the street when he sees us, but he waves, smiles. Word spreads. An old guy with ripped pants and one eye gets off his cardboard box after we’ve passed by. He struggles to jog after us. He mumbles, but I understand him: “Jesus and Mary, make me better.”

  I press my fingers to his head.

  Two holds his filthy hands.

  We tell him it’s all over with, his guilt, his past, every atrocity he’s ever committed.

  We make our way to the river. We see fire. We hear drums. We walk over and there’s maybe a hundred kids spinning poi and playing drums. The air smells like skunk and dirty sheets. I watch a girl spin two flaming balls on chains around her body. She’s beautiful and she has her eyes closed and isn’t trying to show off. Some kids have skulls painted on their faces and they wear the baggy clothes of previous generations. One kid smashes a bottle against a playground, and then they all do, these Juggalos, these boys who hate because it’s easier than being rejected. Two and I walk ov
er. We watch them break everything they can. There’s so much testosterone and so much hurt. One of the kids turns. His painted face is ghostly white and it makes me think of Thirty-Eight. He’s about to say something but stops. He smiles. His teeth are ruined from soda and neglect and crystal.

  “You’re them,” he says.

  “We’re who?” I say.

  “Jack and Jill.”

  His boys laugh and he smiles but no sound escapes.

  “Those two God freaks. Yeah. You’re them. You have to be.”

  He steps closer. He’s the kind of skinny that knows how to fight. Two doesn’t hold my hand even though I want her to.

  “You come here to preach at me? Save me?”

  There’s laughter. A group of seven boys circles us.

  “Well, here’s some news for you: I don’t want your bullshit religion.”

  I’m granted a Gift of Understanding and it’s this kid growing up in Kansas, this kid one of five children and a mother who smokes in the house and a father who beats with God’s Righteousness and there’s Bible school and inappropriate touches and huffing paint, this kid an outsider of a dying town, this kid hearing angry music with a cult following and then everything making sense, makeup and the doctrine of nothing mattering, family.

  He is me from a different tax bracket.

  I feel sad. He’s in my face yelling about what a piece of shit I am. I feel empathy.

  “Nobody asked for your forgiveness,” he yells.

  “You didn’t have to ask,” I say.

  “What about if I grabbed your he/she and fucked her ass? Would you still forgive me?”

  I don’t say anything.

  Two says, “Yes, yes we would.”

  He laughs and it’s a horrible laugh, one practiced before it became ingrained. He says, “And what about you, faggot? You still be all high and mighty if I fucked your ass?”

  I take Two’s hand and start walking away. I know it’s not smart to turn your back on drugs and shame, but standing there isn’t smart either. He calls out to us: “We’ll see how godly you are.” I can’t decide if this is a threat or a promise.

  We walk back to the river.

  I’m angry. My body is a single flexed muscle. Two tells me it’s not a big deal. I nod. I close my eyes and breathe out selfish fear. I bump into somebody. It’s the girl I’d watched spin fire. She looks annoyed and then she looks sweet when I apologize. Two tells her she was amazing.

  “Thanks, sister.” The girl raises her arms to hug Two. Her armpits are hairy and she presses her face to Two’s. She turns and does the same thing to me.

  “Sarah,” she says.

  “Two.”

  “Two?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Rad. You?”

  “One.”

  “One and Two? Are you guys for real?”

  Two tells her we’re for real.

  Sarah looks at both of us and then nods and says that’s cool. Her jaw moves back and forth, but it’s not out of deceit or anger— it’s something chemical. She reaches out and takes our hands and she says, “One and Two,” and she rubs her thumb over the back of my knuckle and I realize she’s rolled.

  “You guys are beautiful,” she says.

  “You are,” Two says.

  “Are you sick?”

  “Not in the way you think,” I say.

  “But you’re getting better?” Sarah says.

  “Trying,” Two says.

  Sarah’s jaw grinds back and forth. She shivers. I ask if she has a jacket and she tells us somewhere. Two starts to take off hers when Sarah stops her. She holds onto Two’s arm. She says, “You were going to give me your jacket?”

  Two nods.

  “You’re one of the few good ones, Two. Both of you.”

  We smile and feel warm because praise is praise.

  There’s some shouting from the street. Flashlights dissect the blackness. Somebody yells five-oh. People disperse, some walking, some running.

  Sarah’s eyes become wide and she flinches into herself and I know she’s scared of being arrested because she’s high or because she has secrets.

  “This way,” I say. I take Two’s hand. She holds Sarah’s. We are illusionists because we become invisible to the cops and even to the Juggalos throwing bottles at the oncoming policemen.

  Sarah says she likes our apartment. She says it’s rad how simple we live. We offer her rice and she politely declines and then I offer her Mr. Pibb and she says, “Okay, but just a little.”

  We sit, Two and Sarah on the mattress, me Indian-style across from them. Sarah offers to smoke us out. We don’t want to seem rude so we partake. I’m not used to weed and my head becomes a contrail to a plane flying into the World Trade. Sarah talks about spinning fire. She tells us she was raised going to cheer camp and we laugh and she tells us she’s serious. She tells us she left home because it was all bullshit. We don’t push for details. She tells us she’s been in Denver for a month. She likes it. But hates the motherfuckers on the streets. Two asks about the Juggalos. Sarah shudders. Sarah tells us she has a few more weeks before she’ll head down south to Arizona for the rock and gem circuit. She says it will probably be better, living on the streets in the warm weather.

  We’re high and nodding and Elvis’s voice sounds like a muffled plea for help from my computer speakers.

  Sarah looks at me, studies me. She says, “What do you guys know that I don’t?”

  This is a question a Seeker would ask. I tell her we don’t know much of anything, but try to live simply, Honestly.

  “You guys are lucky,” Sarah says. “Finding each other. Your love is out of this world strong.”

  Two tells her it’s not like that, at least physically.

  “You two aren’t…”

  “No,” Two says.

  “Why?”

  “Because that sort of intimacy has a way of clouding the search for Truth,” Two says. Sarah nods. I feel hurt by Two’s comments even though I’m the one who’s taught her this.

  “Back to my question,” Sarah says. “What do you two know that nobody else does?”

  “I’ll show you,” Two says. She sits up. She takes Sarah’s hand. She says, “I want you to tell me a few things. That’s it. Tell me a few things about yourself, or the experiences that have shaped who you think you are.”

  Sarah laughs because she’s suddenly nervous. But she nods. Two tells Sarah to speak directly into her ear. Sarah nods again. Two tells her to be as open and honest as she possibly can. She tells her there are no wrong answers, nothing to feel embarrassed or ashamed by. Two leans forward. Sarah leans closer to Two’s head. Two asks her to describe her first love. Sarah smiles, but starts talking. She tells Two about a boy named Michael who she stated dating as a freshman and how it was different from all her friends because it was actually real. She talks about how they’d lie by the lake and not talk or even fool around, just listen to one another breathe. They dated for two years and it was magical and it was real. And then it ended, Sarah drunk at a party, Sarah drunk and stupid, Sarah sleeping with a lacrosse player who she’d never spoken to before. Two asks about her favorite memory. Sarah is closer to Two’s ear, her nose touching cartilage. Sarah tells her about Christmas when she was young, probably seven or eight. She tells about her father returning from the first Gulf War and how she ran to meet him in the airport and how he held her that night, wouldn’t stop loving her, wouldn’t stop kissing her cheeks. Sarah’s crying. Two asks about her biggest regret. Now the tears are real and angry and earnest. Sarah struggles to form words and then she’s telling us about a fight she’d had with her father, how strict he was, how he tried to be a father even though he was always gone. She sobs. She says they fought before he went to Afghanistan. She can’t speak. She wretches into Two’s ear. Time loses the battle of rigidity because Sarah is a teenager and she’s yelling at a man she’ll never see again, yelling because she’s scared and hormonal and wanting attention. Sarah tells Two she told
her father she hoped he died.

  Two holds Sarah’s head.

  She presses her forehead to Sarah’s. She pets her hair. She keeps saying shh. She tells her we are not our pasts. She tells her we can change. She tells her everything—absolutely everything—happens for a reason. She tells her that those who seek Truth eventually find it. She tells her that we are living a simple life dedicated to Honesty among a loving family of our own choosing. She whispers that Sarah’s father forgives her.

  I wake up on the floor. The sun isn’t out but it’s close. I look at the bed. Two lies there bald and beautiful. Sarah’s gone. I look around the apartment. Her pack isn’t there. Neither is my computer. There’s a note. It says, “I’m sorry. You two don’t deserve me.”

  I understand some people aren’t ready for forgiveness. I understand nothing happens by accident, that ideas grow, especially for those searching. I hope she gets a good price for my computer. I hope she finds Truth.

  I climb into bed and hold Two and she murmurs something that sounds like love you. I match the cadence of my breathing to hers. We are one with our inhales. We are nothing with our exhales.

  31. EDICT

  It was New Year’s Eve and people were joyous and flirtatious and we took Reprieve around a campfire with snow falling on our bald heads. I saw bodies burning before I realized they were family members sitting across from me. I felt like water contained in a stainless-steel thermos. I thought about power and about Truth and wondered if they weren’t one and the same. People were too excited and happy with themselves. Thirty and Nineteen fornicated. I wondered if maybe I was simply jealous. The vestige of bodies burning wouldn’t leave my mind’s eye. Things kept building and smoldering and orange was red and red was everywhere and everything tasted like bile. Sickness bears Honesty, Honesty bears change. Therefore, sickness bears change. We weren’t sick. We were, but not enough, not the kind that made you pray for death or ask for help. We were drunk on our national attention. We were invisible and we wanted to be rock stars. We were nothing but preachers using fear to fulfill selfish wants.