The Kid (43 page)

“It was a great idea, Scott. What doesn’t come off opening night, we’ll tweak that shit and tighten during the rest of the run.” Snake.

“Or leave it alone. The purpose of taking the images off the screen was to foreshadow the action that’s going to come. To make them feel something for these guys who are going to do this horrible stuff. Whatever effect the bombardment has, I say let’s go with it.” Amy.

“Yeah, I agree, there’s no way to ‘tweak’ this. We got to let it fall where it falls.” Me.

“I was talking more about the tech.” Snake.

“OK, then everyone’s changed. Bare chest men, women dance bras fatigue material, everybody fatigue tights.” Scott.

“Yoho! Charlie Company!” Snake.

“Bet.”

“Bet.”

“So tomorrow we meet before the show?” Amy.

“Here, the ’Bucks and walk over to the theater together.”

“Astor Place?”

A chorus of “Cool”s.

“Nobody late, hell or high water.” Scott.

“Gotcha.”

“Gotcha.”

“Bet.”

“On it.”

He recalled it far more vividly in his dream than he had done in memory.

—FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY,
Crime and Punishment

Is this a hospital?

Where are the doctors, nurses, other patients, telephones in your room, nurses’ station, charts, thermometers, people coming with their flowers? Where are the other people, windows, interns, the nurses walking up and down? What’s going on here?

How did I get here? Yeah, how did I get here, and how long have I been here? What
am
I? Whose body is this laying here? Where’s my black machine?

“You ain’ crazy. You lucky to be here,” some punk in marshmallowlooking white shoes tells me. He knows I’m too full of the death he gives me to jump up and kill him. Here? Where’s here? How did I get here? What
am
I? Is this my body laying here like a broken machine? How could I be “lucky to be here”? Unless someplace else is worse, but where could I be? When will I get out of here? Ever? I try to count the days, but counting eludes me like when I was little and used to try to grab goldfish. And where is it I used to do that? I don’t remember.

I do remember My Lai. Where is she? We were in this together, together, that’s all I remember, together after being alone so long. This is how it ends? What is the love shit they are always shitting you about? I don’t know. I just think her. I want, oh, I don’t remember what I was saying. I do remember leaping, jumping, that’s clear. But that was when I was a dancer?

I feel like a drooling
lump.
It’s so frustrating when I try to remember anything. I don’t remember, let’s say, dancing, but I
know
it. Every day it’s like my mind is a stolen wallet returned; I’m going through it, knowing shit is missing but not able to remember what. Every day it’s pills and shots, inhale this or swallow that. It might be fun if I didn’t have to do it. I look for names but don’t see any; I don’t remember eating or if I even can, but if I could, I would. Even though I’m not hungry, I feel a hunger to be hungry. They think I’m asleep, or do they? Who’s
they
? In a way I am asleep, even though I hardly ever sleep; it seems to me that I just go someplace I forget in between being awake, which feels like a nightmare, a quiet one but a nightmare just the same. You really can’t call this being awake or alive. What I want to do is remember what turned me into a weird lump, so I can turn back into myself. A bird. Hey, maybe I’m where the bird was? Is Basquiat here? Am I dead? Is this hell? Where, where is here? Who is they? And why am I alone? This is not supposed to happen. I remember the swans in Prospect Park; we had gone to see Prince. And she said that’s us, swans. We know our mind, we’re in this for life, we mate for life. Or is that something I read and then thought she said? She said she would die before she would let them—No, that’s a movie I saw. But who is them? Is she here? This is so hard. Everything is erased; I can make the outlines of words written in my head, but there’s no ink, only a raised white shape on white paper. Maybe what braille is, but I don’t know braille. If I could read something, move, write, move, if I could move, I would know. I wouldn’t be in . . . in . . . I can’t be in prison. I can’t be. It’s the shots they give me. I’m sure of it until I get a shot. Then I don’t know. In biology they show the white blood cells as wide white smiley faces with stick legs and running shoes. And they run to whatever bad thing is in your body. I wish they was in me now to eat the shots. They would dash out like smiley-face Batmen and eat whatever was coming down the needle, because I’m way too tired, dead, to do it. I can’t even think of doing it. Yeah, I mean no, I can’t even think, much less fight.

“They must hate you, homeboy, ’cause you gittin’ it old time. They don’t even do it like this no more. They want to see how your ass will react. Why else? Watkins come check out Big Dick.”

“Shut up, you sick freak. What do I care about his dick? Bite down! Bite down!” Watkins, he’s the devil.

Zip zip ZAAP!
My body flip-flops—a fish, then it’s erect and quivering under the restraints. My brain drops, an egg, on a hot sidewalk.
FRY
. Passersby SPLAT step spatter yellow.

Is this really happening to me?

My bowels empty with a furious ejection of putrid liquid shit, even though they already gave me an enema. My hands are strapped down. Are they afraid I’m going to kill myself or them? If I wasn’t strapped down, I’d fill my hand with shit and smear the blind white wall. I’m tired to my bones.

 

 

THE CONSTANT SMELL
of bleach and alcohol, alcohol wipes, wiping, scrubbing, the smell is so strong it’s as if the ceiling was one big white alcohol prep pad sending fumes down throughout the room. The smell is so strong I know it can’t be real. Sometimes the workers’ voices come at me from underwater; other times they’re sharp as firecrackers hurting my ears, or a hammer that could shatter my heart, which feels like an empty glass in my chest. I hear fat marshmallow shoes fluttering around me when my eyes are closed. Mean ghost heads filled with feathers that they fly away on.

Alone, hate is my friend. Hate kill God friend hate kill God revenge. My body is swelling. My body has swollen. I’m a whale, a whale with a rash. A rash that begins behind my knees creeps up my thighs into the creases where my arm bends at the elbow and breaks into hives and boils and pus that smells like a dead rat trapped in a wall and that feels like ants stinging when I sweat. The pus cannot challenge the smell of bleach and alcohol, but it tries to. I itch, but I can’t scratch. I’m restrained. Tied up. Tied up restrained talked at. I feel soft, as if I’m beginning to melt, as if my bones are dissolving. Am I dreaming? Why won’t I wake up? I seem to not know things, the central knowledge of my life, how old I am, what my name is, for God’s sake. I feel sure here is a real place, that I’m not dreaming it. But I’m
not
sure. I ask one of the men in marshmallow shoes, Where am I, where am I? But my tongue doesn’t work. The words don’t seem to come out of my mouth. I’m in a hospital? A . . . a
where
? Something must have happened. Sometimes I feel within this dreaming, I am dreaming, and in that dream I’m someone with a name. My Lai is there. I tell my muscles, move. I command, speak. Nothing happens.

This must be hell. A white place without music, with lights that never go off. Just above my head is the devil, two fluorescent lamps, two long tubes, bulbs, in each fixture, covered with a sheet of semitransparent plastic. Four bulbs on all the time, how is that energy-efficient? The long white lights never go off. I close my eyes to see dark, but the lights eat the darkness out of my head. Sometimes a needle goes in with some darkness, but it’s fake. The lights overhead don’t go off. This room is about, what? Eight feet wide, ten feet long. The way the ceiling is shaped, I feel like I might be on the top floor close to the roof. Have I heard the sound of rain above my head? There’s no windows. The only furniture is the metal bed that I’m strapped in and a metal chair with a white plastic seat. The floor is white scarred squares of linoleum.

Lucky to be here? The meanest of the men in marshmallow shoes, I can’t call his name. He stands out for being mean and blacker than the others and always chewing something in his purple lips. What time of day is it,
year
is it? Am I old, still young, sick, handsome, did I get something? AIDS? Or leprosy from the Bible?

“Be still.” From ghost devil out of nowhere. “Be still,” he repeats, though I haven’t moved, and wipes some stuff on the side of my face. He raises a pair of clippers so I can see them. CLICK BUZZ.

“Don’t move,” he says. I have no intention of moving. The clippers feel good on my face, his fingers tilt my jaw, and then he moves to my head, black bits of hair fall on the white linen. Have they done this before? I don’t remember. How old am I? Why am I here? The air feels good on my shaved temples. Is this a dream? Some kind of state I never learned about in catechism—purgatory two or something? Did I do something wrong? When I hear my own voice, it sounds like a retarded echo of itself. Am I fat, bigger, taller, finished growing, a grown-up? I can’t fix my tongue to make all the words I am thinking. Why? I ask. I sound to myself like retarded kids we used to make fun of, like they are rolled up in my mouth. My tongue is a sack of cement.

“UH-wah-wah
why
?”

“What?” he snaps.

“Wh-wah wh-wh-why?”

“‘Why?’ Is that what you said, big-ass nigger?”

Why is he talking to me like that? He’s black. Does everybody hate me? I’ve got to get away from here. In the dream, but it wasn’t a dream. I’m on a ship, it
is
a dream. I can smell the salt water; usually in dreams I can’t smell. I’ve still got to get away, water or not. I’ve got to try to swim back to shore. Everybody on the ship is dancing! Dancing like in the olden white days, they all, we, I’m one of them, have on breeches like from Shakespeare’s or George Washington’s time, gauntlet gloves, and embroidered shirts like from costume rental, dah dah dah, we do the mincing cinque pas. We’re in the garden now. We’re all light-skinned, white (except me!), sipping tea, in white ruffled shirts. The music sounds like it’s played on a tin piano, a tin prissy sound. I stop dancing, and the whole court turns to look at me. I’m speaking in the carefully enunciated, elevated tones of a Shakespearean actor when I grab my sword—

“Look at you, you big drooling fool! You can’t stay here no longer than a minute at a time. Can you? What are you talking about, shithead? ‘Why?’ Why what, nigger?”

His stupid voice kills the garden. Even if I could talk, I don’t know what to say, or how to talk in his head like he talks in mine, not my ears but ringing in my head like a stupid bell bong bong bong “Why what, nigger?” He wants to know why? Why
what
? What does he want to know why about? I want to know why my tongue can’t run or fly anymore. Broken bird. Hey, I remember that:
if dreams die life is a brokenwinged bird that cannot fly.
Where? From my mother. He said I was lucky to be here. Let’s talk about that. Why do you think I’m lucky to be here? If you think I’m lucky to be here, you must know where here is. Where is here? I demand to know.

He grabs my arm, ties a tourniquet just above my elbow, make a fist. I don’t. Smell alcohol, wipe, evaporates cool on my skin.

“Don’t give me a hard time, motherfucker, you big-ass freak. You lucky to be alive after that shit you pulled the last time.”

I don’t know what he’s talking about, if he’s really talking. Pop. Needle plunges into my vein. “Shit you pulled”? I did something he didn’t like?

Cool wipe of alcohol, another needle, he loosens the tourniquet. Blue clouds rush me wrap me in warm blue water and float float to a heavy gray place. I feel the Velcro wrapping me, and my bed grows wheels; wheels wheel me to another room, turn me onto a steel slab. Why? Why? No tongue. When my tongue comes back, I’ll ask. Now I’m an animal. I smell hear see but without the sky colors. I remember in pieces, then not at all. I want to be left alone. Leave me alone. But the dark faces with marshmallow shoes and white jackets are all around me. One of them asks another one exactly what I’m thinking:

“Why are we doing this?”

“We just are.”

“I don’t understand why he doesn’t go all the way under if he’s gonna fry.” A woman’s voice.

“For Christ’s sake, let’s get this over with.”

They pull straps on my feet tighter, stuff my mouth, attach silver things to my shaved head. Then I’m hit.

Then it’s blank except for the smell of shit.

Then another shot no rush but the smell of chlorine, weird blue eyes the color of the bottom of a swimming pool I’m flailing grabbing at the water the bottom opens up panic rips my breath then the fall in black no thing.

 

 

I’M LYING ON
a blanket at the beach, the hot sand warming my back as I watch white fluffy clouds floating by. As I stare at the clouds, they start to change, taking on shapes that look like children. They’re round with big eyes but no arms or legs, just cloud bodies. Their big eyes are staring at me. Why? Do they like me? I don’t like them. I want to get rid of them. This is no beach. I’m here, with nothing; why aren’t they nothing too? Why can’t I get rid of them? I want to get rid of everything.

Yeah, I want to get rid of everything and just keep the colors of things, the Charlie Parker sounds—these colors. The color of My Lai’s clit pulsing like a heart alive in my mouth. Alive in my mouth like an animal or a curry. I licked her whole body with my tongue like a mother dog. I took her like she was my mama’s tittie, I sucked her cunt like she taught me, diving into her black jungle hair. She taught me, she’s a smart girl,
I
made her body scream, she’d be sweating, dripping because of
me,
her sweaty hips slipping in my hands like a fish, her long legs, toes, her whole body spasms of desire for me. Oh oh oh! That’s how she’d come, thin, her body didn’t scare me. She wasn’t all fat and fluffy like Amy. I wasn’t scared of My Lai. I fucked her so hard we bled. I smeared the blood on my cheeks and forehead like war paint. I want that . . . I want that . . . I want that. Why am I here? I want to get out of here. My Lai Desiré. I want to get out of here. I remember her nipples hard beasts, her big fishy tongue. Roman said,
No girl do you like I do.
He was wrong, anybody can suck a dick, My Lai blew me good. Roman? I had forgot about him. Does he have anything to do with me being here? He hasn’t been in my head in a long time. It’s so confusing here. She wanted me, I wanted her; what happened to our dance? Dancing? Blow me! Bloooow me! What are they doing to me? Why can’t I move? Are they going to kill me and cut my heart out for some fat old white man like that story in the
News
about the guy who went to Pakistan and bought him a kidney; he didn’t care that he hated the people he got the kidney from or that they hated him, he lived. Their asses got five grand, maybe. They won’t care about me either. My body parts will be all over Long Island and the Upper East Side. They will eat me! Why can’t I
move
? Do I have a name? Arf! Arf! Meow! Am I a cat, a nigger, a boy, a man? What’s the difference between a cat and a nigger? And a man? Why is everything so bleary? Where is yellow? Pineapple? Green? Trees? Ice cream? The pink bulb of My Lai’s clit, her deep pussy, why isn’t she here? If someone is yours, why don’t you own them? If you’re free, an American, why can’t you leave when you want? I must be someplace else. Where the fuck is
here
? I want a mirror. Where’s a mirror? Get these straps off of me. I’m tired of being strapped down like, like a . . . a prisoner of somewhere. I’m tired of being strapped down, wheeled around, blinking lights in my eyes, needles, brain fried. I’m hungry. I don’t want a tube in my nose. I want some pork fried rice, real food, wonton soup, some fried chicken and mashed potatoes. A WHOLE chicken, potato salad, two double Quarter Pounders with Cheese and large fries Dunkin’ Donuts glazed jelly filled double chocolate cinnamon sugar I want to kill something and eat it, a baby, or a pig, kill and eat it raw, I want to run naked through the Amazon in . . . in wherever it is, I want to be free, grow long hair, and live in a cave like ancient white people in Europe, I want to be Jimi or Jean-Michel I rather die I rather
die
than this shit.