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writing :: fiction :: Deena November |
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Death In Dreams and Life In Reality I Have Lost the Owners Manual to My Insanity Fun Pack: An Endophasia (Internal Audible Voice) ---- Death In Dreams and Life In Reality February 19, 2003 I have died in my dream twice. The first time was a night that sleeping
was as distant as repentance to me and I lay awake. I began to tell myself
over and over again that I have to fall asleep. At four in the morning
I thought to myself okay if I fall asleep now I could still get five hours
sleep. Then five a.m. came rushing by the Trazidone kicks in and I become
drowsy. Shortly after I fell asleep. In my first dream I had killed someone and was on death row and that’s
where I entered the dream. In Pennsylvania you get the electric chair.
I remember while I was in my single jail cell my mother came to visit
me. Yet all she could do was rebuke me. I stole a vile of poison from the prison guard that I knew would kill
me instantly and painlessly. I thought this was a good idea so that I
wouldn’t have to go through the pain of an electric chair. My mother
however was very bothered by the fact that I was going to kill myself
without the drags of suffering. She believed it wouldn’t be fair
to the family of the victim. My mother said that it would be the worst
thing I could do to the victim’s family after I had killed their
only son. I had no sense of guilt in my dream for the murder, I felt justified
somehow. She said to give the victims’ family the pleasure of my suffering.
Usually I don’t listen to my mother but for some reason in that dream
I did. I throw out the vile of poison, the vile of painless death that
could have spared public death in a dream. I put up no fuse against my
mother or the law. When the time came to lead me to the chair, I was the
triple C’s cool, calm, and collective. Instead of a one way mirror in the execution room I could see my audience
just as clearly as they could see me. The victim’s family sat quietly
with smiles on their overjoyed face. Even my mother was in there, ready
to witness her oldest daughters’ death. Why was the womb I climbed
out of there? I saw myself die and awoke to the song, Lake of Fire off
Nirvana MTV unplugged album. Hitting the snooze button I returned to sleep
only to begin yet another dream of my end. My second dream offered
no comfort only a worse self-reflection and death to follow. Looking up
at the looming sky as I drive in my dusky blue car, down an alley that
seems never ending. The alley is behind run down buildings and surrounded
by foliage and evergreens. The alley is narrow and the air moist in disappointment
even in this disillusioned state. There are many curves to this alley
at first and I begin to ignore my eldest brothers’ advice and accelerate
at the start of each curve. Sepia film tones were all that surrounded the car and me except a mad
dash of muted green seemed to have been shoved in the trees of my dream
somehow. All these colors began to remind me of my grandfathers’
old cub scout uniform that now sits in the moth ball closet of my family’s
attic. I can smell the freshness of water in the air as if next to a lake or
river. Following that scent, I crash down from the alley to the next level
of buildings. I crash as the alley drops about 25 feet, breaking through
blocked off by a gate and a sign that reads, “abandon all hope.”
My car that has been through Jody trying to fit his bike in the back seat
while we drive around hopped up on coke. Crying to one another that this
will be our last line and we promise we will quit just as soon as we finish
the last ounce sealed in a zip-lock bag. My car and all the memories of
hot days where my body had become stuck to the non-air-conditioned car
seats making us one. The car lay tilted now nose first into cement of
another dank alley ready for ignition. After an hour or so of unconsciousness I awoke in my dream and turned
my head to the left. I saw a small child in the building window with a
choppy haircut neglected wearing my old nightgown but it’s all worn
out and thinner than I could recall. I ask the child what to do but without
opening my mouth. We communicate through our minds like the child and
his grown-up friend in The Shining. The little girl replies with a satanic smile that I should accelerate, I think of my plans for tomorrow and agree. Accelerating my own death my car explodes and I see myself die after consciously deciding to follow the sepulchral voiced little girl speaking into my brain and not my ears. Then I follow my own intuition to press on the gas testing the limit. I wake once more to the sound of Nirvana’s “Come As You Are” and jump out of bed, I’m not ready to die I have to record these dreams and make the 8:05 bus. ---- I Have Lost the Owners Manual to My Insanity Fun Pack: An Endophasia (Internal Audible Voice) February 18, 2003 It’s not fair! I know I learned there is no such thing as fair however
it’s not right. I’m that bloody disgusting repulsive gummy string
that attaches the last baby tooth to some young girl’s mouth. I’m
only a slimy revolting thread I can rip out any moment. True I have tried
to put that tooth back into its old place even after it falls out or I
have ripped it out but it can’t stay and neither can I. I’m
gone forever once that shattered nerve rips and the droplets of blood
are swallowed in the back of some little girl’s throat like a cocaine
drip, the best part. My mom’s a bitch making me a cliché before I take off my
grandfather’s hat or uncap my pen. So how can I call myself an artist,
a hypocrite is more like it. Yeah you’re a hypocrite just like everyone
you hate and promised never to become. A hypocrite to love for its being
out weighed by depression, insanity and anger. Saul says my mother looks like Ozzy Osborne with her hair flapping about
in no particular style. I should take offence to this, I would have been
upset maybe a few months ago when my mother’s honor would have meant
something more to me than a check a month to survive. Now I agree with
Saul, she’s anything and everything that became unattractive in this
world and the one below as well. I have no fingerprints on my left thumb and index finger; wish they were
all like that. I could start it all again, life that is. A lady who reads
palms would be frightened like my therapist was when I said I plan on
matching all my fingers with this untraceable and erratic life. A life
in which I can make my own paths and not those inflicted upon me by conditional
parents or religious hypocrites arguing over high priced meals and whether
or not they can use the coupon advertised on TV for the carpet they already
purchased a month prior. I want to rid myself of all that and pull away
at it like the lint from the dryer net. That’s one of my favorite
activities; those raunchy, stinky clothes had to put up with each other
in the basket for two months while I couldn’t even take a shower
or shampoo my own hair. Then the clothes finally made it to the washing
machine where they were crammed, red sweaters next to white shirts, red
running rerouted onto white in soapy cleansing success like my tears in
the shower running onto my lathered body. I’m in such a rush shaving
in the shower. I cut my ankle bare and it bleeds more then my sister’s
closet of expensive trendy clothes. It bleeds even more than the red sweater
and white shirt now pink, the tub now streaky burnt red. Looking at my
wrists I know it’s not as easy as it seems. Those veins look tender
but it takes desperation and I’m beyond that stage, I surpassed desperation
months ago. I begin to pull apart my split ends obsessively and I hear my mother,
“you’re burning the candle from both ends.” Why is that
the only thing I can think ofevery time I light up a cigarette or slam
down a finished beer? Jeremiah hands me another beer in secession of the
last always as if a marathon is taking place but I know what he’s
all about. I know Jeremiah wants to see what Andy was talking about, “does
she have a cute slash hot ass?” My mom warned me I would have a fat
flubbery butt like hers, its genetic there’s no erasing the DNA structures
I made in high school Biology or was that Chemistry? My butt turned out
decent so why are people talking about it, it’s mine. I wish they
would shut up and give me my body back. Craving for my brain to just shut up already, I’m out of control.
My pen and fingers can’t keep up with the demands this clumsy head
presses upon my neck giving off orders to my hands. In Kurt Vonnegut’s
Slaughter House Five each paragraph is another point in time and at first
it confused me then I related to the disorientation except I can’t
make any sense of my own travels even as I walk around a building and
turn left instead of right and I go the long way. I only wish my insurance
still-covered Concerta. Maybe that would set off a manic episode. I’m
crazy enough without that today. Okay, vision focus, lose vision, vision
focus, lose focus. I think I died in my sleep. Focus on something. Anything.
Quick. There that’s decent. She is tall and goofy looking with that
rash all over her face. She is moving too much. Focus on the heater sounds
like the noise given off by the flag flapping against a tall pole across
the street and I’ll just pull the pillow on top of my head and try
not to breathe. I’ll think of great conversations I’ve had with
myself like why does no one remember The Moon Dreamers cartoons from the
eighties and their typical moral dilemmas? Pealing off flakes of parched skin from my lips with sharp teeth inside
my mouth, these flakes turn to pulp sticking to my top two front teeth
reminding me of grits. Grits I had in Florida with my grandfather early
in the morning. Now I’m surviving on a couple artichoke leaves, a
few strands of raw thin spaghetti noodles, and apples. Apple cores absorb
foul odors, I wonder if I put an apple core in a room with my mother and
I will it digest the hate. Yesterday I thought I was okay and today I think I’m going to die, 4 Advil and an hour and a half later the headache’s gone but pounds of baffling amounts remain and show like a battlefield of leftovers in a giant freezer. Ew, I keep on pulling long threads of Dresden blue from the corners of drier beyond Chapstick lips. I need to get rid of the dumb shag carpet; my dog sheds less. This weather is destroying my skin faster then my addictions. Ha, I love watching the skin fall from my eczema-plagued head as I scratch the scalp that besieges my mind. ---- I woke in the noon of day unable to do anything. My mind had pins
and needles like both my legs and I didn’t know if I was ahead or
behind anymore. Scaring me, the cell phone rang in the loudest ring as
if I could no longer hear, even my half-deaf grandfather has a quieter
ring and yet I still miss the calls but this one I picked up on. My mother
was calling out of her own interest and not my health. She called to ask
about pricing, working at the same silver store I had worked during winter
break. The whole time as she spoke I was starring at the water dripping
off the out door parking garage. Cars were sheltered by an aluminum top
and poles to support the shelter for these spoiled kiss ass parent’s
kids I can and never will be able to relate to. The whole time on the phone I kept pulling and readjusting my bra,
I had lost so much weight in the last month. I hadn’t eaten since
Monday night and it was already Thursday afternoon but I wasn’t hungry.
I bought a few new bras because I thought my boobs had shrunk from thirty-six
c to thirty-four c but now my boobs were popping out and I was fat even
with no food in me. Maybe my boobs had grown back to my best friend Jody’s
favorite groping size once again. Jody is a guy not a girl. The sun was shining through the poles casting a shadow on to the pavement
before me and I had and I new I must capture this exact moment on film;
capture something to show Progress. Drip, drop, drip, and drop, as icicles
melted it all turned into music and I could barley hear my mother yelling
at me anymore about my ridiculous lifestyle. I only wished I could have
captured that sound in my photographs along with any degree of tranquility.
That dripping was what I wanted to be my own burial soundtrack, someday
maybe way too soon from the sunset and yelling mother. As soon as I got off the phone with my mother or whoever had possessed
her body since I was nine years old, I began to walk to my apartment complex.
Then in shock I caught a glance of myself in a spoiled mamas boy’s
BMW. I saw a fat girl stretched beyond repair, My hat made me shorter
than I was and I drew to the conclusion that I looked like a mushroom
trying to pull off a turtleneck but failing oh so miserably. I fumbled and began to shake like I had a return of tremors while
I unlocked my apartment door and entered. Immediately I pulled off my
shirt then the black bra and the wires digging into my underarms were
finally thrown to the floor with the promise of abandonment. A few of my pictures duck tapped to the wall a week before had already
begun to fall to the floor that hadn’t been and still hasn’t
been vacuumed since November 1, 2002. I began to re-affirm these pictures
back onto their wall space even as my boobs were bewildered and I was
only wearing pants and shoes. Standing on a chair half nude with the blinds
open I knew something was off. I kept an eye on the window to make sure
the sun had not set and my shot was still in place but I delayed myself
with manic insanity. I was changing my backpack to a tan briefcase and
then my new shirt to a five years old and unworn in 10 months shirt. Then a glimpse of red caught my derangement and I pulled out my red
"Global Gateway" bag that my grandmother had given me to take
to the beach and eventually let me keep. It still has sand in the bottom
now no matter how many times I shake it out or clean. Like sand in your
butt crack after the beach as you soak in the tub and yet sand still remains
even after you drain that tub because its too heavy to be pulled down
the drain. I put all my writing ideas, notes, pens, pencils, cigarettes, film,
notebooks full of countless ramblings I tell others are ideas for the
show, book, or poem all go into that small red canvas bag. Then I see
that the sun has begun to languish and I knew I had to hurry if I wanted
to catch the entirety of what I had seen outside. Outside, I took fifty pictures and thought of a million ideas. Everyone was out walking around even though there are no sidewalks here in Binghamton. I couldn’t stop snapping and winding the film. The film was out after two rolls and I began to think of everything, what I had to do for each class and how not to goof off or go crazy enough to find work impossible again like in the past few weeks. My mind was winding faster than the finished film in an automatic camera rolling back up. The film began to snap with me, there was an instantaneous pull of the film snapping my sanity. ---- Friday night with Joe S. and Saturday night she was with Joe R. Monday Joe R., Tuesday Joe S., Thursday Joe R. Two friends fondling the same breast, tasting and inside the same girl. This couldn’t last and it’s not a soap opera so nothing is drawn out till the next season. Often I wondered after the Joes had left for the night if the next day at lunch they would compare the exaggeration of my orgasmic face. Tuesday night fucking with Joe S., I couldn’t even give him the dignity of his emotions toward me by calling it sex or even lovemaking. I called it what it was, a fuck, set the rules and expected Joe S. to follow even if I called him to do something besides sex. I was on top of Joe S.; the couch creaked like those in movies. The baby in the apartment below us cried and I could hear his lungs getting bigger every single day and then the condom broke. I watched him refigure his life and beliefs, abortion, bear a child, or run away to Canada and send money or look at this pleasure tool. I wanted to see a guy know how it felt when you just don’t know anymore. Joe’s face turns from sexually satisfied to a possible father, scrunching up his vein set out of his forehead. Then after I had enough of watching Joe turn white and sober I spoke, “I take birth control” and repeated, “I take birth control…don’t worry.” He said he was relieved, smoked a bowl and 2 cigarettes , then left me alone. In the shower I pulled out a piece of broken condom, stuck my fingers
down my throat crouching over the pink toilet bowl and tried to throw
up the night. Who was I becoming? This couldn’t continue. I need
something more but I’m too weak maybe a man not a boy could help
me out of this bathroom, my life. I used to have Jody but now he wants to see other people “maybe” he adds as I begin to see my mascara run in the mirror. I know what that means though he wants to have sex with a different girl not me anymore and I try to throw that up too.I remember the sluttish girl I became when I wasn’t in a committed relationship. I try to forget those scenes where I forget the boys’ names. Drunk, I would let myself get kissed, groped and fucked but I don’t recall ever being a part of my body and the sex that I could never enjoy. Well my friend Nicole with her flat-ironed hair and potato pancake oiled face that was always upstairs having sex and getting high with boys she said two hours prior after momentarily meeting them that she would either have his babies or reject him. I was always downstairs showing off my cleavage wearing Nicole’s strapless white push-up bra to random housemates. I went into a room while one of the housemates kissed the back of my neck and unbuttoned my pants. I don’t remember what he looked like as I stared at the ceiling trying to connect water stains to form some sort of picture. I fell asleep and when I woke some other guy was fucking me and I began to cry. He didn’t stop until he was finished with my body and himself; finished being a human. I didn’t move I stayed still in the fetal position in the stranger’s bed. Nicole came down to collect me but I was crying still and she couldn’t get me going. Nicole had to dress me, it’s difficult enough to dress a baby with those snap up footsie outfits, and Nicole’s dressing me drunk wasn’t any easier. I wish I could throw-up my existence and flush it down with out the pink toilet clogging and getting stuck but I’m sure that isn’t feasible anymore. I told Joe R. lets just be friends no sex. After saying this I knew how
overused that excuse was and how much it hurt as Jody used that line.
However, I continued on saying, “It makes me feel so cheap and sick
all over.” Joe S. I told nothing to, people always say you might
as well keep a spare around. I’m in Pennsylvania, in a state of depression. I want to feel sex all over my body, render it meaningful again but no one wants to date me, have a “real” relationship with a little girl I become in a man’s bed, too frightened to open my eyes and see it’s not who I’d like to be with it’s who I’m left with after pulling a piece of broken rubber out and throwing-up whatever will resurface into my pink toilet. I’m young and my grandfather says I’m intelligent and beautiful so I shouldn’t get depressed. Yet, I just want a man not a boy who can give me a bath when I can’t move anymore, a man who will walk a mile leaving his warm bed behind him to get to my apartment, to scoop me up off my hallway floor, where I have been crying for two days unfed and awake. A man to put me in my bed, to pull me against my own self-destructive thighs, blackened lungs, and liquored liver. I need to know that caring for someone can be returned truly by a man and not a boy, without the promise of his orgasm. I must know how it would feel because right now I’m throwing up returned love into my pink toilet making room for something richer. ----
2003 1-42 Online |