LAST NIGHT
I SANG TO
THE MONSTER
LAST NIGHT
I SANG TO
THE MONSTER
A NOVEL
BENJAMIN ALIRE SÁENZ
CINCO PUNTOS PRESS
www.cincopuntos.com
Last Night I Sang to the Monster. Copyright © 2009 by Benjamin Alire Sáenz. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written consent from the publisher, except for brief quotations for reviews. For further information, write Cinco Puntos Press, 701 Texas Avenue, El Paso, TX 79901; or call 1-915-838-1625.
SUMMERTIME (from “Porgy and Bess”). Music and lyrics by George Gershwin, Dubose and Dorothy Heyward and Ira Gershwin © 1935 (Renewed) George Gershwin Music, Ira Gershwin Music and Dubose and Dorothy Heyward Memorial Fund. All Rights Administered by WB Music Corp. Gershwin ®, George Gershwin ® and Ira Gershwin ™ are trademarks of Gershwin Enterprises. Porgy and Bess ® is a Registered Trademark of Porgy and Bess Enterprises. All Rights Reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. No reference to any real person is intended or should be inferred.
FIRST EDITION
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sáenz, Benjamin Alire.
Last night I sang to the monster / by Benjamin Alire Saenz. —1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Eighteen-year-old Zach does not remember how he came to be in a treatment center for alcoholics, but through therapy and caring friends, his amnesia fades and he learns to face his past while working toward a better future.
ISBN 978-1-933693-79-8 (alk. paper)
[1. Self-esteem—Fiction. 2. Psychotherapy—Fiction. 3. Alcoholism—Fiction. 4. Emotional problems—Fiction. 5. Family problems—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.S1273Las 2009
[Fic]—dc22
2009015833
Thanks to our great readers: Jonathan Hunt, Becky Powers, John Fortunado and
Ailbhe Cormack Aboud
Cover and book design by Antonio Castro H.
Home at last! Isn’t El Paso always better than New York City?
Many thanks to David González whose image graces this cover.
Brian, do you still want
to know if I believe in miracles?
In a monstrous time, the heart breaks and breaks
And lives in the breaking.
—Stanley Kunitz
LITTLE PIECES OF PAPER
I want to gather up all the words in the world and write them down on little pieces of paper—then throw them in the air. They would look like tiny sparrows flying toward the sun. Without all those words, the sky would be clear and perfect and blue. The deafening world would be beautiful in all that silence.
CONTENTS
WHAT GOD WRITES ON YOUR HEART
PERFECT
WHY I DON’T BELIEVE IN CHANGE
DREAMS AND THINGS I HATE
THINGS I DON’T WANT TO KNOW
SUMMER, WINTER, DREAMS
WHAT DOES THE MONSTER WANT?
THE MONSTERS OF NIGHT
THE REASON I HATE WINTER
WHEN RAFAEL STOPPED SINGING
THE WAKING
I HATE THEM FOR LOVING ME
THE MONSTER OF GOODBYE
THE LAST STORM
THE WORD CHANGE ON MY HEART?
WHAT GOD WRITES ON YOUR HEART
-1-
Some people have dogs. Not me. I have a therapist. His name is Adam.
I’d rather have a dog.
After our first session, Adam asked me a lot of questions. I don’t think he liked my answers. I kept saying, “I’m not sure. I don’t remember.”
I think he got tired of my answers. “You’re not sure about a lot of things, are you, Zach?”
“Guess not,” I said. I did not want to be talking to him.
He just looked at me and nodded. I knew he was thinking. Adam, he likes to think—and he’s a friendly guy but I was not into friendly. “I have homework for you,” he said. Homework. Okay. “I want you to tell me something significant about yourself.”
I just looked at him. “Something significant? Like what?”
“I think you know what I mean, Zach.”
“Sure.”
He smiled at the way I said sure. “You can do it in writing or you can draw something.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said.
“It’s all right if you’re angry with me,” he said.
“I’m not angry with you.”
“You sound a little angry.”
“I’m tired.”
“Who are you angry at?”
“Nobody.”
“Can I be honest with you, Zach?”
“Sure, go ahead, be honest.”
“I don’t think that’s true. I think you’re really angry.”
I wanted to say something. Something that began with F and ended with you. But I didn’t. “I’ll do the homework,” I said.
When I got back to my room, this is what I wrote down:
I don’t like remembering.
Remembering makes me feel things.
I don’t like feeling things.
As I’m staring down at the piece of paper, I’m thinking I could spend the rest of my life becoming an expert on forgetting.
It’s entered into my head that I exist in this in-between space. Maybe that’s just the way it is with some people. And there’s nothing anybody can do to change it.
I have it in my head that when we’re born, God writes things down on our hearts. See, on some people’s hearts he writes happy and on some people’s hearts he writes sad and on some people’s hearts he writes crazy and on some people’s hearts he writes genius and on some people’s hearts he writes angry and on some people’s hearts he writes winner and on some people’s hearts he writes loser.
I keep seeing a newspaper being tossed around in the wind. And then a strong gust comes along and the newspaper is thrown against a barbed wire fence and it gets ripped to shreds in an instant. That’s how I feel. I think God is the wind. It’s all like a game to him. Him. God. And it’s all pretty much random. He takes out his pen and starts writing on our blank hearts. When it came to my turn, he wrote sad. I don’t like God very much. Apparently, he doesn’t like me very much either.
Adam asked me, “What do you remember—about coming here?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I don’t remember anything.”
“Nothing?”
“I was somewhere else. And then I was here.”
“Somewhere else?”
“Yeah.”
“Where was that?”
“Home.”
“Where’s home?”
“El Paso. El Paso, Texas.”
“And that’s where you were before you came here?”
“Yeah. That’s where I used to live.”
“Used to live?”
“I don’t live anywhere anymore.”
“What else do you remember, Zach?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re sure?”
I really just wanted Adam to stop interviewing me. I just kept staring at him so that he was sure I was serious. And then I said, “I want you to stop asking me what I remember.”
“Well, listen, Zach, amnesia is not uncommon in cases of trauma.” Trauma. Yeah. Okay. They like that word around here—they’re in love with that word. So maybe I can’t remember or maybe I don’t want to remember. If God wrote amnesia on my heart, who am I to un-write what he wro
te?
Look, if I could get my hands on a bottle of bourbon, I’d feel a little better. Maybe I’ll tell Adam that bourbon might help jog my memory. Maybe bourbon is a miracle cure for amnesia. Like he’d go for that. I can just hear Adam’s response: “So blackouts are a cure for amnesia? Tell me how that works, buddy.”
The thing is that I only remember my past life in little pieces. There’s a piece here and there’s another piece over there. There are pieces of paper scattered everywhere on the floor of my brain. And there’s writing on those pieces of paper and if I could just gather them and put them all in order, I might be able to read the writing and get at a story that made sense.
I have these dreams. And in some of those dreams, I keep hitting myself.
Adam wants to know why I hit myself in my dreams.
“I probably did something wrong.”
“No,” he said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Like he knows. I hate that he thinks he knows.
“Okay, Zach, if you did something wrong, tell me what it is. Make me a list—of all the things you did that were wrong.”
Shit. That could be a long list.
Adam’s trying to tell me that my thinking is all screwed-up. He says that it’s my addict who does all the thinking for me. My addict. Who the hell is that guy? Did I miss something? Okay, you don’t have to be a trained therapist to know that I am one screwed-up guy. But do I have to blame that on my addict self? I don’t even know if my addict self exists.
The way I see it, Adam is trying to get me to create more pieces of paper. Why would I want to do that? I wish I could get rid of all those pieces of paper, and I wish I could get rid of my dreams. And I wish to God I wasn’t living in this place full of people who are even more screwed-up than I am.
Okay, maybe they’re not all as screwed-up as I am, but, okay, okay, like Adam said, “It’s not a contest, Zach.” You know, all the people that the world screwed over, they’re all here. It makes me sad and it makes me sick. I mean, okay, let’s say we’re all going to get better. Let’s just pretend we will. Fine. Where are we going to go after we get all better? What are we going to do with all of our newfound healthy behaviors? Back out into the world that screwed us up and screwed us over. This does not sound promising.
I wish I didn’t have a heart that God wrote Sad on.
Some people think it’s all very cool to have a therapist. Me, I’m not into this.
Will somebody please just give me a dog?
-2-
I have this dream. I’m out in the desert with two of my friends, Antonio and Gloria. All three of us are in the middle of the desert and there’s an ocean right there in front of us. An ocean with real water. It’s so fantastic and beautiful, and part of me just wants to jump into the water. But I don’t because I don’t know how to swim. But then I think that it would be okay to jump into the water anyway. I would drown. But it would be such a beautiful way to die.
God, it’s all so perfect and beautiful, the desert and the sky and the ocean.
Gloria’s long black hair is blowing in the breeze as she sits there and smokes pot and she has this look on her face that’s better than anything I’ve ever seen. She is as perfect as the sky or the clear blue water in the ocean or the desert sand we’re sitting on. She’s laughing. She’s so happy. She’s so happy that it breaks my heart. And Antonio, he’s as perfect as Gloria, with his green eyes that seem to swallow up everything around him. He is shooting up—which is his favorite thing to do. And he’s as happy as Gloria. He’s so, so happy.
And me, I’m sitting there with my bottle of Jack Daniels. I don’t know if I’m happy or not. But maybe I am happy because I’m watching Antonio and Gloria.
And then we’re talking to each other and Gloria says, “Zach, where are you from?”
And I say, “I don’t know.”
And Antonio asks me, “Where do you live?”
And I say, “I don’t live anywhere.”
And they look at each other and then they start having a conversation in Spanish. And I wish I could understand because it seems like they’re saying such beautiful things to each other. And it seems like they’re becoming one person, like they belong to each other—and I don’t belong to anyone. That makes me feel sad. I’m crying. I can see Gloria and Antonio. They’re happy and they’re talking and they’re beautiful. They’re beautiful like the sky and the desert and the ocean. And me? I’m not beautiful. And I can’t talk. And I can’t understand anything.
I’m seeing the whole scene. Happy Antonio and happy Gloria. And sad me.
I drink and drink and drink. Until it doesn’t hurt anymore.
I hate dreams almost as much as I hate remembering.
-3-
I had this plan. The plan first entered my head when I was in the first grade. I was going to make nothing but A’s. I was going to get a scholarship and go to Stanford or Harvard or Princeton or Georgetown or one of those famous schools where all the students were very smart. And very happy. And very alive.
Something went wrong with my plan. Shit.
If Mr. Garcia could only see me now. Mr. Garcia, he was a very cool guy. He was young and smart and he was real. Mostly, I think people are fake. Well, what do you expect? The fake world we live in conspires to make us all fakes. I get it.
But somehow Mr. Garcia escaped the monster named fake. He had this really cool goatee and he wore tennis shoes and jeans and a sports coat and he always wore white shirts that were a little wrinkled and, well, I really liked the guy. He had the friendliest face I’d ever seen. And he had really black eyes and hair so black it was almost blue. His voice was soft and clear and he made people want to listen. “You have to respect words.” He said weird and interesting things like that. He memorized poems and recited those poems to us out loud. It was like his whole body was a book—not just his head, but his heart and his arms and his legs—his whole body. I got this idea into my head that I wanted to be like him when I grew up. Not that I think it’s such a good idea to want to be like other people. It never works out.
Once, he wrote on a paper I turned in: Zach, this is really fine work. You blow me away, sometimes. I’d like to talk to you after school. If you get a chance, do you think you can come by? So I made my feet wander over to his classroom after school. When I walked in, he was pacing around the room with a book in his hand. I could tell he was memorizing a poem. He smiled. It was like the guy was glad to see me. Wow, he was really wigging me out. He pointed to his desk. “Sit here,” he said.
I pointed to the chair behind his desk. “There?”
He nodded. “Yeah. That’s a good place, don’t you think so, Zach?”
So I sat there like I was the teacher or something.
“How does that feel?”
“Okay,” I said. “It feels okay. Weird.”
“Maybe you’d like to sit there someday. You know, teach kids about poetry and literature. Memorize poems, read books, teach them. How would that feel?” He smiled. You know, the thing about Mr. Garcia was that he smiled a lot and sometimes it would wig me out because I just wasn’t used to people who smiled a lot. Especially adults. And even though Mr. Garcia hadn’t been an adult for a long time, he was still an adult.
It was just strange to see someone like him. The world sucked. Didn’t he know that? Maybe he was a freak of nature. Look, the guy had no right to be that naïve. And then out of nowhere he looked at me and said, “Zach, did anyone ever tell you that you’re a brilliant kid?” Brilliant? The dude was absolutely stunning me out. What exactly did he expect me to say in response to that?
“You don’t like compliments, do you?”
“They’re okay,” I said.
He looked at me and nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.” He sort of grinned. And then he said. “The papers you write, they’re amazing.”
“They’re okay.”
“They’re better than okay. I think I used the word amazing.” He walked up to the board
and spelled it out. Always the teacher, that dude.
I stared at the word. I knew that word did not apply to me. But I just wasn’t going to get into an argument with him so I just said, “Okay.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.” And then he sort of shook his head and smiled. “You know something? I like you, Zach. Is that okay, too, if I like you?”
Well, big deal, the guy liked everyone. How could you go through life liking so many people? There just weren’t that many people in the world worth liking. “Yeah,” I said. “I guess that’s okay.”
“Good,” he said. “You like music?”
“Yeah, music is good. It’s okay.”
“You want to hear something?”
“Sure,” I said.
He walked to his closet and pulled a trumpet out of its case. He blew into it, you know, like he was clearing it all out. He ran his fingers along the valves and played a scale. And then he said, “Okay, Zach, ready?” And then he started playing. I mean the guy could play. He played this really soft and beautiful song. I never knew a trumpet could whisper. I kept looking at his fingers. I wanted him to keep playing forever. It was better than any of the poems he’d read to us in class. It was like the whole loud world had gone really, really quiet, and there was nothing but this one song, this one sweet and gentle and brilliant song that was as soft as a breeze blowing through the leaves of a tree. The world just disappeared. I wanted to live in that stillness forever. I wanted to clap. And then, I just didn’t know what to do or what to say. I was high. I mean it. High and torn up to shreds.
“How was that?” He was smiling again.
He looked like an angel. He did. And thinking that really wigged me out. I didn’t know what to think about myself with that thought in my head. “Well,” I said, “it was better than okay.”
“Better than okay? Wow,” he said. “That’s the best thing anybody’s said to me all day.”
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