Last Night I Sang to the Monster

A NOVEL

BENJAMIN ALIRE SÁENZ

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

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.

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?

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:

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 wrote?

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?

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.