The Coffee Table Story

I have a scar that runs over the top of my right ear. It's about three inches long and wide enough that if I pull my hair back without brushing over it, I have an inch wide bald patch. It happened when I was twelve or thirteen. A bunch of us had been crashing at the apartment of one of the older punks in our scene. Kevin was schizophrenic and was on social security and housing. When it got cold, we could always crash at Kevin’s if we brought beer.
It was the middle of a nasty Utah winter and we had just come back from some gig at the Speedway Cafe. In 1986 there were a bunch of all age clubs and gig venues in the Salt Lake valley. I.D. was never checked and we could easily panhandle enough outside the mall for a pack of smokes, a hamburger at Ben's or a bagel and coffee at Nordstrom's Cafe, the cover charge at the club, beer and if we were really lucky, enough for a hit or two of acid. This was one of the lucky nights.
Every inch of the one bedroom, attic apartment was covered by a dirty, tattooed body and the bundle next to them, waiting for the serotonin mind fuck of acid to begin. You always had to keep an eye on your shit with that many people crashing out. This was especially important while tripping. Those that didn't have a backpack or duffle bag rolled up their stuff inside whatever extra layers of clothing they carried. The bundles served as pillows which also kept your shit safely under your head. I had parked myself up against the archway leading into the kitchen because it had a great view of the window across the living room. We had turned off all of the lights and cranked up some Skinny Puppy. The window glowed a milky white from the streetlights outside. I began to lose myself watching the animated silhouette of anyone who stood in front of it. The music seemed to support the antics of my shadow actors, jumping in and out of frame. Lil' Jay stood and took off his leather. We called him Lil' Jay because he was considerably smaller than the other Jay in our scene, who was of course called Big Jay. Real last names were rarely used among street punks. Nicknames were often used instead. Sometimes they were your only name.
I knew it was Jay because he was the only one there that night who had a double fin hawk (that's two mohawks side by side). I watched it bob and sway as he bounced his head to the cacophonous industrial beat marching from the ghetto blaster in the corner. Neon tinted tracers followed the fins as he slowly slide back to the floor. They swirled and swayed in time, filling the screen. I was definitely tripping now.
The murmured conversations from the bedroom blended with the guttural moans and rhythmic panting of the threesome taking place in the bathroom, into a symphony of philosophical and physical gratification. The stone monolith that was my German skinhead friend Uva rose up from the floor and stretched wide. His sculpted form blacked out most of the window.
Uva was another of the elders of the scene. He was a raging alcoholic and one of the most loyal friends you could have at your back. Firstly, he was one of the biggest muthafuckers I have ever seen in my life. Secondly he was fun as hell to hang around with. He was responsible for teaching all of us the infamous scrotum song and engineered the "Bavarian Tuna Paste" scam. He would carry it out with Tony award winning feeling every time. We would go to any grocery store that was close by, always in the middle of the night because stockers don't give a fuck. Uva would walk in first and distract the stock guy watching the door by asking him for assistance finding "Bavarian Tuna Paste". He would ply them with some story about how it was his favorite food from home.
I personally think it was more his size than anything. I think having a six foot two slab of marble with a heavy German accent ask you anything in the middle of the night would be fuckin' scary, no matter how politely. While the stocker was away from the front of the store, a few of us would raid the cigarette counter and another team would venture further in to snag as much food as they could. Beer runs were almost never done at grocery stores because it was way too far to run between the beer aisle and the door.
An orange flash illuminated Uva’s thick features. It reminded me of the giant heads at Easter Island. He exhaled a cloud of swirling neon and immediately raised the cigarette to take another drag. The tracer from the cherry danced in the space around him. It made me dizzy. I leaned back and closed my eyes. Time and space lost all meaning as the stars behind my eyelids began to form themselves into geometric shapes that created new worlds as they collided into each other.
I watched his scream rip through the eyelid galaxies, and then I heard the boom. A star had gone super nova. The explosion knocked me to the floor. I could hear the scramble and shout from the crowded floor. The male body came bursting from the bathroom with a bellowing "What the fuck!?" He was hitching up his pants. The females were cooing in consolation to each other behind the door. I stood and flipped on the kitchen light. The room was chaos. Everyone was surveying the room trying to asses the cause of the explosion and resulting damage.
Something was in my eye. A hush fell over the crowd as I attempted to wipe it away. Everyone was turned to me staring slack jawed. The smell of bodies, stale beer and incense turned my stomach. I couldn't get my eye to work. Kevin was still screaming from the corner. I couldn't make sense out of the growing din from the crowd. "Is she OK?" "Oh my god there's so much blood." "Get her in the bathroom." I scanned the room for the river of blood that everyone saw but it was all a blur. I tried to wipe my eye but there seemed to be a leak in the roof. Then the copper ozone smell washed over me. My hand was a deep red. As I studied it my gaze fell to the floor and I lost myself in the crimson Rorschach forming on the floor below me.
Someone guided me into the bathroom. Generally speaking, the last place you want to be when you're frying is in front of a mirror. Your skin ripples and twitches continuously. Your pores swell and shrink with each wave. One could spend hours lost in the landscape of their epidermis. My face was exhibiting the expected twist and roll but the cascade of cells and plasma rushing down my face and neck complicated everything. Someone was pressing a wad of toilet paper to the side of my head, another tried to wash my face and neck. I was fascinated by the whole process. The harder they tried to wipe, the more they smeared it into my skin.
"Out damn'd spot!" I began to laugh. "She's in shock, get her in the bedroom." Kevin’s screams had melted into a blubbery soft apology. "It wasn't supposed to do that. They never said anyone would get hurt." They sat me on the edge of the bed and some preppy fuck kneeled down and put his hands on my shoulders. "Who let the preppy fuck in?!" I shouted to little Jay.
"He's okay. He came with Chloe. He's up at the U with her. Pre med, right?"
"I will be in two years. But I was an Eagle Scout so I know first aid."
"A fucking Eagle scout?! Why are you in school? Shouldn’t you be on a mission or something?" I stared hard at him. His Judd Nelson face started to twitch manically. "Um, yeah, I started college early. I leave at the end of this semester for the MTC."
Fresh blood gushed with each convulsion as deep belly laughs rolled out. I hated fucking weekenders. Weekenders were kids from the Avenues or the burbs, usually Mormon. They’d come downtown to slum it on the weekend and run back home on Sunday. While some of them went to the U or Westminster, weekenders were a different breed from the beanbag philosophy students who were regular fixtures in the tripping set. They lived on top ramen with the rest of us. Weekenders had nice cushy homes and parents with nice cushy wallets. They were more like the Matthew Lillard character in SLC Punk. That movie bugged the shit out of almost all of the surviving members of our scene. While we all agree that Matthew Lillard generally rocks, the story was definitely from a weekender perspective. The writers knew our friend Fightmaster and allegedly based some of it on their experiences with him. Fightmaster was actually his real last name and he was a fixture in our scene. The crazy heroin addicted son of an Avenues social worker. I wasn't present for this particular incident, but it's well known that he was the brand of crazy that fucked a housecat at a party and peed in the corner before he left. We all did one or two really fucked up things in the eighties but he never grew out of it. He died last year of an overdose at late thirty something. I didn't go to the funeral because I couldn't bear to see the wrinkles and listen to endless arthritis and bad back stories of my aged punk rock comrades. I still say the writers of SLC Punk were weekenders.
"Does your bishop know where you are?" He replaced the wad of toilet paper on the side of my head.
"How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Eleven." I shot back.
"I think she'll be OK. When those guys get back with the bandages we should walk her around and keep her awake."
As if on cue, Uva and his longtime on again off again girlfriend Debbie walked in pulling packages of bandages and antibiotic ointment from deep within trench coat pockets. Judd Nelson commenced with clumsily wrapping my head. "You gotta keep pressure on it." He lifted my hand and placed it over the wound. "It's still bleeding pretty good. I'm pretty sure it's cut down to the bone."
He stood to talk with Jay and Uva. It was decided that we would take a walk around the block just to make sure I didn't fall asleep. I wondered if the John Hughes stable boy was just blowing smoke out of his ass about the Eagle Scout first aid thing. It didn't really matter anyway. I wasn't going to set foot in a hospital so if there was a subdural hematoma brewing, let it strike me down.
We were all peaking right about then and as everyone knows it is vital for a good trip to have a mission. Keeping me awake had become that mission. Uva, Debbie, Little Jay, Judd Nelson and some guy I had never seen before all set out into the frigid night. I loved walking around on a snowy night on acid. Snow sparkled in a completely different way, the condensation clouds were exhaled in a rainbow. My head was buzzing but it didn't really hurt. I watched the stars for a bit. Jay had me propped up on one side and Judd was on the other. Chloe had vanished long ago and he had committed to ensuring that I make it safely to morning. Everyone decided to go on a beer run while we were out. I could never stomach beer when I was frying. While they were deciding what store to hit, Judd chimed in that he didn't think it would be a good idea for me to run and that he would be sure to get me back to Kevin's safely.
When we returned to the warmth of the apartment Kevin met us at the door. He was still crying. "I'm so sorry. That wasn't supposed to happen. I thought you were dead and they were getting rid of your body."
"Seriously, I'm fine. I think it's even stopped bleeding."
"You need to stay here. You get the bed. Please please stay."
"Don't worry, I'm staying."
His entire being relaxed and he wandered further into the living room to inspect the milk crate of records in the corner. I saw him at a seven eleven a few years ago. He looked exactly the same as he had that night. I tried not to catch his eye but apparently a hundred pounds, long hair and a corporate monkey suite were no disguise. He not only recognized me but in spite of my protests, he insisted that he did know me and proceeded to apologize for hitting me with the coffee table those many years ago. I graciously thanked him for the apology and left the store as quickly as possible. It still freaks me out not only that he recognized me, but that he had not changed in the slightest. I wonder if he survived.
Judd and walked into the bedroom and took off my jacket. I was still frying balls. "You should let me check your..." Judd pointed to his head.
"Sure." I sat on the end of the bed and smoked a cigarette while he fucked with the bandages.
"So, you really going on a mission?"
"Yup."
"Where?"
"Denmark."
"That's cool. I'm Danish on my Dad's side."
"So what does your Dad think of you hanging out with these guys?"
"I'm sure it's pretty rough on him when he comes out of his room. He's depressed most of the time. My Mom couldn't give a shit less."
"I see. How old are you anyway."
"Seventeen. Two weeks ago." That was the standard age I gave to anyone outside of the scene, unless I was buying smokes or beer.
"What's your real name?" I rarely told anyone my real name. That left way too many doors open. I had been missing for quite some time and the fewer reasons I had to look over my shoulder, the better.
"Why?"
"I don’t know. That’s usually how people start to get to know each other.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m sorry; I didn’t think that was a big deal. I've just never met anyone who wouldn’t tell people their real name."
“Are you sure about that? I mean, how would you know? What if it wasn’t something obvious like Rat or Skid or Gerbil? What if they used something like Joe or Mary. You’d never know the difference. I’m just forthright about it.”
“Forthright?”
“Yes, forthright. It means…”
“I know what it means. I wouldn’t expect you to use language like that.” I laughed. “Use language like that? Why? I know how to read and I don’t have a home. In the winter the library is the warmest place to be. Not to mention that I’m extremely gifted and have always had a large vocabulary. Most of the people in this apartment are incredibly intelligent and well read. You might want to reconsider some of your perceptions about people that aren’t in your ward.”
“I…I don’t know. I…” I still couldn't tell if he was frying or not.
“I think there’s a lot you don’t know.”
“I think you’re right. Chloe always tells me that. That’s how I ended up here tonight.” "Yeah? Expand.”
“I guess there’s not much to expand on. I grew up in Sandy, went to church and scouts and haven’t dated a girl more than two or three times, and I’m going across the world, alone, to teach a religion that I’ve never really thought about. She thought I needed a taste of real life.”
“And?”
“And, I’ve got a lot to think about.”
“Sounds like it. Look, I'm tired. Can we just light those candles and lay down for a while?" So I lied. Sleep was the last thing my acid soaked brain wanted. I never really liked to talk when I tripped. I dropped acid to loose myself enough to examine the Universe without all of the menial chatter that obscures the big picture. I really wasn’t interested in dissecting a poor Missionary kid’s existential angst.
"Sure." He looked crestfallen. Fuck, let Chloe help him work it out. I still had a couple of good hours left on this trip.
I climbed to the top of the saggy mattress while he lit the candles placed in bottles around the room. He took his shoes off and climbed in next to me. He tentatively stroked my neck. His hands were like ice. It felt like Heaven.
“How’s your head?”
“It feels like it’s still bleeding but it doesn’t hurt.”
“That’s good. Just try to rest.”
I lost myself in the flame of the candle next to the bed. It moved in synch with the Bauhaus album raging forth from the living room. I must have slept. It felt like I just blinked but the room was dark. Bauhaus had morphed into Souxsie and the Banshees. I could hear the stifled moans and the slap of bodies nearing there coital conclusion. I raised my head to see Debbie riding Uva in the corner. We were alone when we lay down.
Shaking hands clumsily withdrew from under my shirt. Holy fuck! Judd was copping a feel! I could make out his features in the darkness. Our faces closed in on each other as I reached for the stiff front of his jeans. His tongue filled my mouth as I felt his zipper give way in between my fingers. His clumsy hands resumed their quest to map the landscape of my body. I wondered for a moment if he would share this with the grim faced officials at the MTC before departing to gather new souls for the church. Would he revisit the soft folds of my body in his mind while sharing the gospel with the wide eyed Danish girls in his mission field? As he came, I felt fresh warmth underneath the bandages on my head. It still didn’t hurt.
He was gone the next morning when I awoke and peeled my head from the blood soaked pillow. I never saw him again or even knew his real name for that matter. I still wonder if he's a Bishop with seven kids somewhere in South Jordan. Never telling his lost sheep or his Prozac popping wife about the punk rock chick with the gash in her head that he fucked awake twenty some odd years ago.

So We're all clear...

Dear Jerks,

I am taking a very long break from blogging, as I am busy working on big important stuff. (Well of course by that I mean playing video games, ripping off music, watching cartoons and feeling sorry for myself) This blog belongs to my sister. I'm trying to get her ass to write more. So please enjoy her.

OUT!

The alarm on her cell phone was screaming from the cupboard in the hall. I hadn't raised my blood caffeine levels yet so my brain was still in sleep mode. I pounded on her door fiver six times before I realized where the cacophony resided. The phone was broken. She'd put it in her back pocket and sat on it. It was essentially fine; however, the miniscule display screen had shattered. It now resembled a psychiatrist’s ink blot on acid, making it impossible to disable the screaming alarm. I turned the phone off and chucked it back into the cupboard. We'd swapped out phones the morning before. My husband had insisted that I get a PDA and I'd given her my old phone so she could text her friends again and save our cell phone bill. The phone in the cupboard was just a spare. I made a mental note to finish transferring the contacts from my old phone when Olivia woke up. Jeebus only knows who she was talking to this week. I tried to keep all of her current "BFF's" numbers in my phone but the list was ever changing. It had gotten to the point that I had twice as many of Olivia's contacts as I did my own. I headed into the bathroom to hunt for a ponytail holder. My searched took me to her "makeup drawer". I dug through the hairpins, assorted neon eye shadows and discarded eyeliner pencil nubs. Buried deep in the aesthetic wreckage I found the nearly empty, broken and quite sticky remains of the raspberry espresso lip gloss that had disappeared from the makeup bag in my car, one day after its purchase. My jaw clenched. I'd found my only tube of mascara hiding in the back of the drawer the prior morning. This had to stop. She had been wandering out to my car, where I normally do my makeup and kifing whatever caught her eye, in addition to whatever she was originally looking for. I stormed back into the hall and began an enthusiastic battery of her bedroom door. The sharp edge of the sticky container dug into my palm with every blow. Silence. I tried the knob. It resisted. I pressed my ear to the cold plywood and heard only the hollow space in between the thin layers of pressed wood pulp. I twisted the knob until I felt it give. The lock had broken during a raucous teenage giggle chase between the kids some months ago. I pushed the door through the pile of junk that had accumulated behind it. I nudged my way into the room. Week’s worth of discarded cereal bowls and fruit rinds snuggled between the piles of papers, books and discarded clothing. Grounding her had had no effect on the state of her room. The TV would be the next thing to go. It had become a health hazard. The couch she had insisted we let her sleep on was empty. The exasperated sigh slowly curled from my mouth and formed a puffy cloud of condensation in front of my face. She'd left the window open. She must have gone to the guest house in the backyard to see my nephew. He shares 900 square feet with my sister. I heard something pop under foot. Why was it so difficult to keep things clean? There was light at the end of the tunnel. Five or six years and it would just be me and T sitting around lookin' ugly at each other. No kid messes anywhere. I navigated my way to the window on a sea of junk. Fuck, my gas bill was going to be monster. The swish and slam of the window closing jarred the thoughts train free from the tracks of my brain. As I set foot on the hallowed, debris free hallway floor, the realization dawned that sent the train over the cliffside. If the door was locked and she was not in the room, the only way out was the window. No, the cool voice of reason interrupted, she must have been talking to him out the window and in her excitement to see whatever new video he'd made for YouTube, she simply left the window open and shut the door on her way out. Occam's Razor prevails. The simplest explanation is the most likely. "Why did you touch the window!" one might scream at their HD plasma TV while watching any of the pantheon of criminal forensics shows, all comfy and warm in your big chair, snacks and remote within easy reach. People entirely take for granted how much information that each and every one of us takes in and discards every day. Additionally, the brain will try to find order and sense in anything. During those first moments of the day that would shake the perceptions of everyone involved, my sleep and caffeine deprived brain had not creaked to life yet. In fact, I don't feel like I ever woke up at all. There wasn't the hint of a wisp of the thought that Liv was anywhere other than the house or the backyard. I was operating completely in the default programming. Olivia wasn't allowed to wander freely. All of her friends were in school and her shoes were downstairs on the couch. Who in their right mind would immediately make the jump to the best ideas for preserving a crime scene? Trying to retrace the thought processes behind every action you unconsciously took, while the thought that your child is missing is slowly chewing through every neural pathway in the fist full of grey matter tucked upstairs. I bumbled around the house making a feeble attempt at getting dressed before I called Mimi for our daily coffee run to 7-11. Not considering for one moment, that every reported thought, decision and resulting action that I took would be dissected analyzed and often criticized by the hoards of detectives that in one short hour, would descend upon my house and car, amplifying the smallest action and assigning importance that would not exist otherwise. I stopped myself before I let my mind wander down the dark and twisted path of my mind. The path littered with pieces of my baby girl's violated preteen body. No, I would call Mimi and if she wasn't there, I would drive to the church and library. She wasn't allowed to walk the six blocks to the mall and she was fully aware that she was grounded. She had to be at Mimi’s.

"If the sky were to suddenly open up, there would be no law. There would be no rule. There would only be you and your memories, the choices you've made and the people you've touched." – the shrink in "Donnie Darko" (don't bother seeing that movie, it's way over your head.)
I wish more humans could subscribe to this school of thought. Humans, on the whole, are not that readily accountable for their actions. Humans must justify their actions, to themselves and others, no matter how disturbed, or disturbing, they might be. In fact, the more reprehensible the action, the greater the need for justification. The really unstable variety of meat sack, such as yourself, will justify whatever it is that they did, or failed to do, so much to themselves that they actually buy their own reasoning, if they didn't, they would have to admit to themselves just how much of a monster they were. I like to call them "the brick wall people".
The brick wall people know deep down just how unstable they are. They will spend their entire lives trying desperately to keep all of the bricks in their façade straight. So afraid that someone will peek in and see the monster. Nothing they do will ever be good enough, and they know it. They will miss out on the true beauty and goodness that surrounds them because they are too concerned with who's watching them. Who might talk about them? What they might say.
Yup. That's the scary one right there. What will they say about you? Will you overhear the whispers about your bankruptcy? The law suit? The child abuse allegations? That you even lied to your family about your Bachelors Degree, or more precisely your lack thereof.
Surely someone as shiny and polished as you wouldn't care what everyone's saying about you behind your back. What even your own children say about you behind your back.
Some of your grown children tell horror stories at parties about all the ways you fucked them up in their youth and how strong they are to have survived you. Others still play sycophant to their domineering matriarch to make up for the years of endlessly disappointing you and scraping for the love you not only withheld, but never knew how to give in the first place.
After one of your manic, screaming tirades, those that are still small, utter petrified whispers and frantic prayers to a god that you promised would save all good little children, if they would just behave. Gosh, I'd be mighty ashamed and sad if my children ran and hid from me. I guess you think nobody knows. You were right about one thing, we do have VERY different ideas about parenting.
Just keep up the façade for the neighbors and everything will be fine. Everything will be just fine.
When the plastic surgery has turned you into an even more grotesque caricature, than you already are, and the money is gone, again, what will you become? Will your fashionable "faith" be enough at the end of the day? In your struggle to prove your worth, will you alienate EVERYONE that ever cared, until all that you have left are your baubles and the vultures waiting to pick over your bones? Will "God's Plan" that you proclaim just a bit too loudly, fit in your life then? Mark my words, she will come back to me someday. I created her from the very cells in my body and she will find her way home.
What will you do at the end of the day when it's just you and your memories? Walls won't matter in the end. Hell, they won't even exist. Why should you work so hard on putting them up now?