Last Night I Sang to the Monster

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  “But they took care of us and the house was peaceful. My uncle worked at the post office and my aunt stayed at home. She was involved in church things. I don’t remember very much about those years. I was bored. I don’t remember. I read a lot of books, and I got really good at pretending that I was happy. That was important to my aunt, that we be happy.

  “When I was in the eighth grade, my uncle and aunt had to go away somewhere. And we all had to stay with my uncle Vicente for the weekend. I just didn’t want to go to his house. But I didn’t say anything. I thought my heart was going to leap out of my chest. And everything I was afraid of happened again. Uncle Vicente came to my bedroom at night. There was beer on his breath. He made me kiss him. I could feel myself floating away. That was when I started walking around by myself. It was just something that I did. I got a part-time job at some warehouse, helping to unload stuff three evenings a week. I wasn’t old enough to work, but the guy paid me cash. He’d pay me ten dollars every night I worked—which was a lot of money. So I made thirty dollars a week. I gave my aunt ten dollars a week and the rest I kept. She said I should save it, but I hardly saved any of it. I picked up smoking and then I got this idea that maybe I’d like to drink. So I’d hang around outside a liquor store and get someone to buy me pints of cherry vodka. So I used to walk around and drink and smoke…”

  I kept thinking that Rafael and I, we were just alike—the whole thing made perfect sense to me. I knew exactly what he was talking about.

  “…and all my friends thought I was a very happy human being. Because that’s how I acted—like a really happy human being. But all that pretending made me tired. If I had acted the way I felt, then I doubt my friends would have really hung out with me. So the pretending wasn’t all bad. The pretending made me less lonely—if that makes any sense. But in another way, it made me more lonely because I felt like a fraud. I’ve always felt like a fake human being.

  “High school was non-eventful. I made decent grades. In fact, I made very good grades. I’d drink a lot on weekends with my friends and I always had some kind of part-time job so I could bring in some money. It’s funny, I had a lot of friends. Lots and lots of friends—and no one knew me. One time, this girl who liked me asked me, ‘Who are you, Rafael?’ And I just looked at her and said, ‘I am unknowable.’ It was the most honest thing I’d ever said.

  “My uncle and aunt spent money on my sisters, but they didn’t spend money on me. My aunt said they gave me a place to sleep and food to eat and that I should be grateful. And I was grateful. I was. When I graduated, my uncle told me that maybe it was time for me to go out on my own. I told him I thought that was a good idea. He said he didn’t really like my drinking and now that I was old enough and had a high school diploma, I wouldn’t have a hard time making it. But he said if I wasn’t careful that I’d drink myself to death. He said I was just like my father.

  “I don’t think my uncle or aunt ever really loved me.”

  And there they were again, Rafael’s tears. It tore me up to see him cry like that. That was the thing about telling your story, it tore you up. It didn’t matter that all those things happened such a long time ago because everything felt like it was happening now. I got that. That’s why I didn’t want to tell my story. I didn’t want to feel those things in the now. Hell no, that’s not what I wanted.

  I watched Rafael drink from his bottled water. I wondered what his life would have been like if he’d had kids. I mean, I knew he didn’t have kids because he’d have told me. And I thought that was too bad because I think he would’ve made a good father. Because he was a kind man and even though there was something angry and broken inside of him, there was something very gentle inside of him too. He was hard but he was soft. And the soft side was stronger than the hard side. Maybe that doesn’t make any sense. Look, what the fuck did I know? And God, I was hoping that Rafael’s story had some happy stuff in it because I really liked Rafael…

  “…and hell, I was really scared. I didn’t know what to do. I was eighteen, but I didn’t know anything about how to live on my own. I got a job at a janitorial service and my uncle let me live with them until the end of the summer so I could save some money. Then I moved out and found a crappy one-room apartment and got a second job—which was good because I didn’t have as much time to drink. I worked seven days a week, read books and smoked. That was my life for about two years. I lived in my head. That’s really where I lived.

  “At the end of two years, I’d saved enough money to go to college—though I didn’t know anything about what I should do to get into a university. I’d had really good grades in high school, though I don’t know how I’d managed that. I’d hated high school. Look, I won’t get into the details, but I finally did get into college and I even got some kind of scholarship. College is a big haze. I drank a lot, went to school, hung out with people who liked to drink and graduated.

  “I went out to California and thought maybe I’d like to become a writer. Drinking and writing were the only things I was ever good at. I don’t know why I thought of California—but I was twenty-four and it seemed like a good idea at the time. When I got out there, I had very little money and I went looking for a job. I went out to a bar one night and struck up a conversation with a guy who worked building sets at Universal Studios. I told him I wanted to write screenplays though that was a complete lie. The idea of writing screenplays had never entered my mind until that moment. Me and that guy, Matt, sat there and got plastered and talked all night. He told me if I wanted a job working on sets, that maybe he could do something for me. He gave me his number and two days later I gave him a call.

  “We got together and things got weird. He said if I slept with him, then he could get me a job. I wanted to know how I could trust him. He said, ‘look,’ and he took out an application form. ‘We’re hiring,’ he said. ‘There’s a couple of positions right now.’ So he had me fill out the application form and the next day he said he’d show me around the place. But after that, he said if I didn’t sleep with him, then he’d make sure I didn’t get the job. And he did show me around and he even introduced me to his boss and told him I’d put in my application, so I thought that maybe Matt was being straight with me.”

  Rafael laughed when he said that. “Straight, well, yeah, much to my great shame, I slept with that man. I didn’t feel anything. I just let him do what he wanted to do. It was just like my uncle Vicente. I was just an empty thing that was lying there. I didn’t feel. I went away somewhere.

  “But I did get the job. And when Matt wanted to sleep with me, I’d let him. And I knew that I was nothing but a prostitute but I just didn’t give a damn about anything. But that didn’t last long. He found a new guy which was okay with me. The new guy seemed to like him and Matt had gotten the idea that I just wasn’t ever going to get into being with him. I liked my new job and it paid really well and I thought I was rich. I tried not to drink so much and mostly I was pretty successful at not drinking. I learned on the job and I really liked working there and, after a few years, I got friendly with some people and eventually I worked my way into writing. It took me about seven years, but I did become a screenwriter. Not that I’ve ever written anything important—a movie here and there. But it’s how I make a living. And that’s the good news and the bad news. Writing screenplays always left me a lot of drinking time. And I was as devoted to my drinking as I was to my writing…”

  -3-

  Rafael went on for a while, going back and filling in details about his drinking and his work and his one failed marriage and it all sounded really sad to me. But the thing of it was that Rafael had made something of himself. I mean, the guy had read everything. I knew that just from talking to him. He knew stuff—all kinds of stuff. He wasn’t just some hack writer who made a living writing shit for a lot of money in Hollywood. Yeah, he made himself sound like that, but he wasn’t like that at all. He was real and he sounded like he had always been real lonely. And, okay, the guy was a serious a
lcoholic. Okay, that was true, and that was a problem. But I didn’t see him as just this hurt guy who’d been sexually abused by that bastard uncle of his. I mean it when I say I really hated his uncle. I seriously hated him. But I don’t know why, I just didn’t see Rafael as some sad beat-up guy. He was bigger than all that pain. That’s how I saw him. Maybe that’s how I wanted to see him. What the hell did I know?

  Look, I know that Rafael had thought about suicide. He’d told me so one night when we’d stayed up talking. Well, I asked him, that’s how the topic came up. “Have you ever thought about suicide?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  He hesitated and then he told me this story—almost in a whisper: “I used to picture myself driving out to the Mojave Desert, parking my car, and then just walking out into that wasteland, then stripping off my clothes and walking. Just walking, the hot desert sand burning my feet. I pictured myself walking and walking until I began to burn—until I felt myself on fire, burning on the inside and burning on the outside. I pictured my body lying on the desert floor, dead. I would hold that picture of me in my head and think, yeah that’s what I deserve. I deserve to die like that.”

  I didn’t say anything for a long time—but then I asked him, “So why didn’t you do it?”

  “I came here instead,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I decided I wanted to live.”

  And then he smiled. I thought he had the best smile in the world. Sometimes, I just didn’t know what was real. But right then I knew that Rafael was the most real man I’d ever known.

  I was sitting there, thinking about all the things Rafael and I had talked about. And then I realized Rafael had finished telling his story. The room was quiet. I had it in my head that it was a respect thing. The world beat the crap out of us and we were talking about it—okay, I wasn’t talking but Rafael and the others were talking about it—and hell, we all respected that. So that’s why we were quiet.

  Sometimes, Adam had questions before anyone gave the storyteller feedback. Sometimes, Adam waited. Today, Adam didn’t wait.

  “Let’s go back,” he said. “You didn’t say very much about your marriage. How long did you say you were married?”

  “Almost fifteen years.”

  “That’s a long time.”

  “Yeah,” Rafael whispered. That’s when the tears ran down his face again. “I hurt her,” he said. “I can’t talk about it,” he said. “I can’t.” And then he started sobbing. And I couldn’t take it and I wanted it all to be over and I just wanted to tell Adam to call the whole thing off. I was too torn up to keep listening. And I knew I was going to zone out. Adam called it disassociating. I didn’t give a damn what you called it, I just knew I had to be somewhere else and I knew how to go away. That was the good part of not remembering. That was the good part about disassociating. It helped me to survive. So what was wrong with that?

  But maybe living is supposed to be more than survival.

  After group, I just went walking around.

  I was supposed to be at another session. Yeah, yeah, okay. I didn’t care. I just wanted to be alone and get some air and people could call it isolating if they wanted to, but sometimes I just had to spend some time with myself.

  It was strange to walk around sober. Before coming here, every time I went out, I’d take the bourbon with me. And now, I just took myself. I was getting to like that. It was like I could really think. And I wasn’t crying as much. The crying thing wasn’t working for me anymore.

  So I just walked around.

  I wanted to be alone. Yeah, I guess the alone thing was a big addiction too.

  The grounds were really beautiful and nice with trees and shrubs and stuff. And after walking around a while, I decided I’d walk the labyrinth. See, there was a labyrinth that was supposed to calm you down if you walked it and sat in the middle. I liked the labyrinth thing. It made sense to me. Not like the Breathwork thing everyone was always talking about.

  Adam had told me I should do the labyrinth thing. He said I should have an intention when I made my way to the center of the labyrinth.

  I thought of Rafael. I knew more things about his monster now. And then I was thinking about my own monster. Rafael, he’d read to his monster all his life. He’d read to his monster to try to keep himself from being swallowed up. And I thought that maybe I was doing the same thing.

  I entered the labyrinth and I focused on my monster.

  What did the monster want?

  What was I supposed to give it so it would go away?

  REMEMBERING

  I stared at the date on my calendar. February 2nd.

  I counted the days I’d been here. Here—at this place that’s supposed to heal me. I still wanted a drink.

  Yeah, well, maybe I was an alcoholic.

  You know if I wasn’t an alcoholic, I wouldn’t be craving a drink. Yeah, so maybe I was just eighteen. Maybe I hadn’t finished high school yet. But high school and age had nothing to do with addiction. I was thinking that maybe Adam was right.

  I’d been here thirty-three days. Whatever my life had been, now there was only this place. There was only Cabin 9.

  And what was the past anyway? What was it for? What did it mean?

  “You know,” Rafael said, “my aunt had Alzheimer’s before she died.”

  It was like I was overhearing a conversation he was really having with himself.

  “Did she remember anything?”

  “No, Zach, she was sixty-four years old and she didn’t even remember she’d had a life.”

  “That’s really sad,” I said.

  “Yeah, it was really sad. It was like she was dead.”

  “I guess so,” I said, “but, you know, maybe that’s what we do before we die, we start forgetting.”

  “Are you planning on dying soon, Zach?”

  I knew exactly what he was trying to say to me.

  Look, maybe I was like his aunt, dead, even though I was still alive.

  THE MONSTERS OF NIGHT

  -1-

  Sometimes the blood in my dreams feels real. Last night I swear I heard my brother’s voice floating in the night or in my head and it didn’t sound at all like Mr. Garcia’s trumpet. There was a crack like thunder. There was a storm. I woke up shivering. I must have been screaming because Rafael and Sharkey were asking me if I was okay.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” Sharkey sounded a little freaked out.

  “I guess it was just another dream.”

  “You were talking to Santiago,” Sharkey said.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Nights are tough on you, dude.”

  “Yeah, my dreams are killing me.”

  “Zach, it’s not what’s happening in your sleep that’s killing you.” That Rafael, he always said stuff like that.

  “You’re full of shit, dude.” Sharkey was always so fierce. I liked hearing them talk in the darkness. Their voices made me feel like I wasn’t the only person in the world.

  “It’s the way we live—that’s what’s killing us. Think about it, Sharkey. That should scare the holy hell out of us.”

  Sharkey laughed. “Where’d you learn how to think, Rafe?”

  God, I loved their voices. They didn’t sound like the night.

  I fell back asleep listening to them talk.

  When I woke, I felt as though I was standing at the edge of something, maybe like the shore, you know right at the spot where the water begins and the beach ends. But I just couldn’t bring myself to jump in the water because, well, because I might drown. And that’s real to me because I never learned how to swim and the ocean scares me. And I got it into my head that the monster lived in the water. You know, in the water that was my memory. And if I got to remembering everything, then what would happen to me?

  The dreams were living inside me now. Rafael’s drawing of the monster had made me feel small and scared and real
ly I knew that Rafael had drawn himself in that painting. It was him as a boy and I kept picturing him reading to the monster. I thought that maybe reading to the monster was a way of feeding it. It was like if you fed the monster with stories, then he wouldn’t be all that interested in eating you. This is stupid, I know, but the monster feels real to me and I know I’m not nuts because the monster feels real to Rafael too and Rafael is an adult and he’s smart and he’s not all screwed-up like me. Well, okay, he’s sad, but after hearing his story, I can see that maybe his sadness is kinda normal.

  I’m thinking too much. Adam says I’m always thinking too much and that thinking too much isn’t helping me out. Well, I don’t know how to stop thinking.

  -2-

  And another thing that was bugging me and that had me all torn up was all this Breathwork talk. I mean, I was always hearing how great it was, this Breathwork stuff, and to me, the whole thing sounded pretty screwy. I was not interested in Breathwork.

  Yeah, so of course, I go to see Adam for one of our sessions. You know, one of our friendly conversations and the first thing he says is, “I really want you to start doing some Breathwork with Susan.”

  “I don’t like Susan.”

  “Is that true?”

  “She’s not real.”

  “She’s not?”

  “Hell no, she’s this white lady who’s all about this new age bullshit, you know? You know, I’m not into people who aren’t real.”