For Loneliness and Lynn

12/16/2010

"Do you think of me like I dream of you?" - The Breeders

Do you see me? Press your hand against the glass and feel me, inhale cold monitor light. The machine breathes life in ticking rhythm. When you write enough words are all you are. The current begins in endless places and ends in one, join the orgy of ideas and taste the river. How does the story of your life flow? Choppy and erratic? Polluted and neon lit? Up and down like tear-stained waterfalls, drunken fratboys riding along in barrels? This is an old bend in my endless battered tide.


I got home at 8 that night, it was a Friday after a long week of school and too much work. I watched the sunset itching for something out of reach, twitching with the boundless energy of youth. Tonight was a night for a new drug. I lock the doors, crack open the dust and inhale, the earth waves hello with a smile. Waves appear in the too-angular lines of the endless, repetitive constructs of too much precedence, colored chaos reins in the dull grey prison of the modern mind. Carson Daily is on television, and he leans in too close to the camera.

"Call Lynn" Carson says into the screen. Up this close I can see his nose hair.

"What?"

"John! Call Lynn, she's in trouble!"

I rub my eyes, Carson backs off and interviews the latest plastic MTV band with a twitch.

The phone rings and I jump. It's Lynn calling from Florida, she says "Hey, did you just call me? I was in the shower, your number is on my caller ID."

A mental image lumbers into my brain of Lynn showering over a naked corpse, with blank eyes and a red mouth. She is standing on it's wrinkling hands. I shake my head to clear out the gore and chat with Lynn for a while. The details of the conversation are sketchy, like always when you are too intoxicated to talk on the phone. I remember telling her I would mail her a candy bar and she said I was sweet. After chatting for a spell, we hung up and I zoned out to the land of Pink Floyd for a couple of hours, flying pigs and angry mobs, melting televisions. Then, there was a tapping on the front door.

Outside was Mr. Thin, sporting sunglasses, a case of cheap beer, and a grim look. I opened the door to crickets and stars.

"Hey man, come in. What's wrong?"

"Hey, you look like shit. Have a beer first" he replied. I obliged, gagging down a can of the urine-like swill Thin favored.

"Lynn's dead, she shot herself yesterday morning.
They sky is still, close drone from ceiling fans.

That, my friends, is the story behind my first and only experience with inhalents. Flashback to another scene in the hijacked production. Open palm against the glass walls of this 2-dimentional world. Sirens in the distance, braying streets below the window. Light a cigarette and wait, the telephone is silent.