Knives and Russians and Arguments.

I had a dream that I was in an abandoned school with a girl I loved and a large group of Russian twenty-somethings were trying to kill us in the hallways. The girls were beautiful and they took their clothes off and I would cut them and they would bleed and still they would try to attack us. We hid in vents and around corners and soon they would find us again. We'd run and soon I fucked a dark haired girl. She was short and her make-up was dark and the girl I loved fucked her and then we killed her and someone else tried to trap us in a corner and we fucked and killed them. They would scream at us. We had done something to them, but I don't speak Russian. We turned a corner and a dark and long haired man saw us and he pointed his knife at us and charged us and from behind us the doors of the hall burst open and a swarm of them burst in and they were blood thirsty and blood soaked and the girl I loved disappeared. I knew then that she had escaped and she was okay and she was safe forever. I darted into a classroom and a red haired girl who had curves and thick lips and hips and the sense of smoke and death and sex and lunacy came in slowly after me.  She was nude and by so many standards perfect and she told me in poor English to kiss her and cut her and touch her and fight her. 

I did and my blood rushed and beat hard inside me and I ran from the room into an empty gymnasium. There was no light and there was no sound and I could feel them just on the other side of the walls and just waiting and just... waiting...

I was with Michael now and then I wasn't and I was on the phone with him. 

"Find a fucking drum set!" I screamed and threw a wrench I had only been holding as long as it took me to write this sentence. I threw it and I knew it had cracked his head. His head was bleeding and he laughed at me. 

A small group was walking with me and it was spring in Halcyon now. I had grown up, mostly, in Halcyon and perfect spring is spring in Halcyon. A mutual friend of Michael and I was laughing as I swore at Michael over the phone. I berated him and screamed at him and I knew it all came from somewhere else, that it all meant something else but I told him he couldn't ever play my songs right. He couldn't ever remember what I said to him. He couldn't ever understand. I thought about the short dark haired Russian girl I had fucked and I wanted to fuck her again and then She was in front of me. She wore a beige dress with deep red flowers and black flats. Her make-up was dark and her hair was black and she leaned over a fence near the road and I came to her and ran my hand up her bare thigh and under her dress and pressed against her and we were back in the school in the dark and I knew only blood and lust and she turned and dug her nails into me. I kissed her and felt all there was to feel and she bit my neck and my chest and the girl I loved pulled her hair and kissed her and I kissed the girl I loved. 

"I hate you," the girl I loved said.

"I hate you," the Russian girl said.

"Shut the fuck up," I said. 

When I woke up I stared at the ceiling and the girl I loved breathed heavily beside me. I breathed heavily beside her. I hadn't been sleeping well. I pretended everything was fine.

Walking in Snow.

It snowed that night. A good nor-easter as they call them. I enjoy walking in storms like that. The glow of the street lamps and the low visibility and somehow the snowfall is warmer than the still winter. It was past midnight and we were walking in it. In the thick of it. Marie and I.

The snow falling tickled my face. I had drank a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon before and we had heard the snow was coming late at night so I watched Star Trek and drank and waited. When it came Marie was tired but we hadn't walked in the blizzards all winter.

"Can we walk now?" I asked.

"You're the most manipulative motherfucker I know."

"Not if you realize I'm manipulating you."

"I didn't say you were good at it."

We put our coats and hats and gloves on.

On the ground the snow was still light. It hadn't yet built or accumulated like the weathermen say. It was small and thin and light still and as far as walks in blizzards go I knew I was jumping the gun but it was March now and I knew I wouldn't have another chance to see the walls of flakes and the glow of streetlamps refracted through a million billion shards.

I was drunk, even though I didn't actually want to be then. I wanted to see it and like years before experience it as it was and I knew Marie didn't actually want to be there. She wanted to be in bed. Listening to the television as she closed her eyes and the cat crawled over us and falling asleep. I wanted to walk. I wanted to explore. I wanted to see the snow. 

"It's beautiful," I said as slowly as I walked.

"Where are we going?"

"I don't know. Nearest open gas station? Pick up a twenty two for the walk home?" I was finishing the twelfth beer and was out after that except for a bottle of white wine Marie had in the fridge. I dislike white wine greatly and also it gave us a mission, so that's what I said. The nearest gas station.

"What time is it? Is anything still open?"

I tried to reach for my phone in my pocket but my glove was too thick so I took it off and tried again. My phone said it was one thirty in the morning. I told Marie.

"Everything's closed," she said.

"Okay. We'll just walk around the block."

I kept slipping. I said it was ice under the thin snow but I was drunk. Only drunk where you realize it in the morning when you check your phone for outgoing messages and pictures and not drunk where you think to yourself in a blizzard 'I think I'm drunk, maybe I should go home,' but that happens too sometimes.

I reached for Marie's hand and she gave it to me. For a few yards we walked hand in hand but then I slipped and she took it back. "You're drunk," she said.

"I know. Only a little."

"That's why you're slipping everywhere."

"It's the ice," I said.

"Sure."

We walked past the elementary school in our neighborhood and I felt vaguely nostalgic for a moment. I thought about a picture of me in my second grade yearbook. I had shaggy brown hair because my mother cut my hair every six months. I had a batman tee shirt. I had white stonewashed jeans. I was smiling wide. I thought about second grade and for only a moment I...

I could see the parking lot of the gas station now. It was dark. It must have been closing in on two in the morning now and it was surely closed. I thought that it probably closed somewhere around ten but I wanted to be sure. I could walk to the twenty-four hour grocery store just a few blocks further but my brain said "NO. DON'T MAKE EXCUSES. YOU KNOW WHAT PERSON MAKES EXCUSES." I knew and I didn't make excuses and I turned the corner away from the gas station and back to the house. 

"I think Star Trek makes an incredibly valid argument," I said.

"What?"

"I mean, we have this mentality lately, or I mean, I think we do, that unless everything is totally accounted for, all safety and precaution and hugs and shit, we shouldn't take chances."

"I guess."

""But Star Trek, in general, shows us that, well, you have to crack a few eggs."

"I'm not sure I follow," she said.

"Well, every crew, the original series crew. Picard and company. the DS-9 crew. Archer and everyone. Everyone. They all face these fucking perils. Sometimes people die. The new movie, for example. First scene. Kirks dad sacrifices himself to save, what is it? Eight hundred people? They crack some fucking eggs man. For what? The greater goddamned good."

"Sure. Yeah. Without that what type of show would it be."

"A boring one. That's not my point though. I watched a documentary once about how Star Trek had influenced cell phone development and a bunch of other shit and I was thinking that maybe we've overlooked the main idea, the 'prime directive' of Star Trek."

"Which is?"

"Sometimes you gotta crack a few eggs."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. You want to explore the galaxy? Someone is going to die. You want to engage in negotiations with another race? Someone's going to die. You want to advance technology? Some is going to fucking die. It's no wonder that races like the Aztecs or Mayans thought that human sacrifice was so necessary. You want progress? Give blood mother fuckers."

"What are you talking about?"

Snow had found its way into the hole in my shoe. I moved it around with my foot and it melted quickly but then my foot was cold for a moment.

"I... I don't know. I thought I was onto something."

"Okay."

"Will you hold my hand again? It's all I want right now."

"Sure honey."

She took my hand and I thought I was on to something. Then I thought about her hand in mine and thought I was on to something else. 

Fever Dream

When I was thirteen, Yiro was over and we decided to cut our wrists with an old box of razor blades we found. We bled a lot and went to sleep. For years after that I thought I was dying and living out a fever dream in my bedroom late that night. I know I am not and I know this is my life and this is me and this is what I have made.

Drink wine and look in the mirror and pretend you recognize yourself. Pretend.

Fingers to Lips, This Maddening Hush.

Some crushing static. That white noise shifting faint in the background forever, sometimes longed for, grows and grows teeth and one day you wake up and you hear nothing else. Only static. Only volume. Only nothing really and it is everything and all that could ever be. If only you could turn it off or even down. This fucking nothing noise. This maddening hush.

Lines (Part One).

1.

So far.

This year.

We sat in her living room and snorted cocaine and crushed MDMA off of the back of her post-punk validity selection and I didn't know what to expect. Her father rented this apartment for her but she wouldn't admit it. I kept catching glimpses of her underwear and her thighs and my wife was across the room and I didn't care and she didn't care and my wife didn't care. I made fun of her. I called her a trust fund cunt and she touched my thigh.

Her boyfriend is my close friend and I love him.

It was New Years Eve.

Drink. Laugh. Whatever.

2.

I had looked forward to leaving the house all day and we drove to my close friend's house for forty five minutes. My wife shaved her legs and pussy before and I wore whatever and we bought a ten dollar bottle of wine and drove. We laughed. She and I. We sang songs on the radio together and I tried to get her to suck me off in the car. It didn't happen and I smirked and let it go. I had thought before that I could let someone else fuck me and let someone else suck me and touch me and kiss me and still love her. I had thought it. I had felt guilty. I remind myself of my guilt.

We drove to my friends house, parked on the ice and snow and walked to the door. My wife was in heels and I held her up most of the way. She smelled wonderful.

I knocked and just went in.

“I'm here.”

“Come in then.”

He was in the kitchen. He wasn't drinking but we had the wine and when we got to the kitchen and found glasses he was and we all were. I had woken up in his apartment before and when I looked at the floor and the ceiling and the walls I remembered it. I felt it again and when I looked in his eyes as we spoke I was ashamed. I know I shouldn't have been. I was. That's another story.

She was heart-breakingly sexy, my wife. Her stockings. Patterned and tight, translucent and tight. Her dress. Black. Short. A mint slip underneath and showing through the black lace. My wife. Sexy. And mine. I know people look. I don't mind and I'd lie if I said I didn't like it somewhere in the rust and slop and trash of my mind and my dick. I sometimes thought it was a disgrace for me to think like that. I was ashamed of it foremost, it didn't stop me and I wondered if this was how homosexuals felt in the closet. Or pedophiles. Or murderers. In my mind, in private, in darkness, I allowed it. I reveled in it. I accepted it.

We sat in the kitchen and the wine was in coffee mugs that had sayings on them. Hers was “Young Fart”. Mine was “Kill Yourself and Feel Better.” His had a picture of a cartoon dog smelling a daisy and when he sipped from it his face scrunched and the wine soaked into his beard. I wondered where he got the mugs.

“It's terrible,” he said about the wine. It was. We all agreed. It sat thick in your mouth like tar and was both bitter and too sweet and attacked you. We had nearly three liters left.

“We can't go anywhere until it's gone,” I said.

We agreed on that too and muscled through the first mug worth each. There were framed pictures on the walls of the apartment. Show fliers. Clips from magazines. Collages he had made. Framed and celebrated irony. I looked around and my wife looked at me and her pink hair and black stockings and black and mint dress that rode up her thighs and I could have taken her then, had it not been so public. I wanted to rip her from her chair. Slam her to the wall. Tear her stockings and yank her hair. I wanted her there and then and I always do. It can be hard to look at her.

“There's this girl that's having a thing if you guys want to go,” he said.

“That's pretty fucking vague,” I said.

“You remember that girl that came to the Halloween party with me? With the knife in her head?”

“Yeah.”

“Her. At her place.”

“Oh.”

“Oh,” my wife said. “We tried to convince her you were a piece of shit.”

“That's nice,” he said.

“No, we really tried,” she said. “Are you still fucking her, or did she listen?”

“You know,” he said.

I laughed and my wife drank more wine. We had the rest of the bottle still and it seemed to be refilling itself.

The kitchen was filled with a pale yellow light and we sat uncomfortably on dinette set furniture and mumbled bullshit back and forth and then half of the bottle was gone and someone was walking up the stairs.

“You home Michael?” the guy called as he came into the living room and then the kitchen. He looked like all of us. Ironic tee-shirt. Black skinny jeans. Beard. Wool cap. We had to all notice it. We had to all see the idiocy in it. I don't think he saw it. Michael may have and ignored it. I drank more wine for the team.

His name was Zeph and he told us how to spell it. With a “Z” and a “P-H”. He assumed we could grasp the “E” on our own.

I introduced myself and he said he had heard of me somehow through someone maybe and I nodded. I got that a lot and I didn't know what it meant. I still don't. My wife introduced herself with a fake name and Michael and I knew it was fake but Zeph didn't and he shook her hand and was quick to shift his attention to the floor and then me and then Michael. Chair. Wall. Stockings. Hair. I understood.

“You want more wine Rachel?” I asked my wife who's name isn't Rachel.

“No, but yes, I guess.”

I filled her mug and mine again also.

Zeph and Michael were standing and talking about a girl they both worked with. They shifted and paced and we all muscled through the wine. They eventually went into the living room and I took the wine with me and sat on the couch near them and my wife sat next to me. Zeph and Michael went on about something that I don't remember.

“So, when do you want to leave?” Zeph asked Michael.

“When we finish the bottle,” I said.

“It's only halfway, though. We'll be here all night.”

“Drink up then,” I said.

“I'll get you a mug,” Michael said and got up to get Zeph a mug. I wondered if it would be a clever saying or a clever cartoon or cleverly blank and I thought about how hateful I can be.

“So you guys from Springer?” Zeph asked.

“No. Spier Falls.”

“Oh. That's kind of a drive.”

“Not really. Fifteen minutes.”

“Oh.”

Michael brought out a plastic yellow cup and filled it with wine and handed it to Zeph. “Drink and save us all,” Michael said.

Zeph laughed. Rachel (who isn't Rachel) filled her mug again.

We made small talk and Zeph was all right and Michael was sketchy and Rachel Who Isn't Rachel was intoxicating and so was the tar of wine we eventually finished.

“When the bottle was finally empty Rachel cheered and Michael clapped and Zeph looked sick. I brought all of our mugs to the kitchen.

“Christ,” I said. “Let's go now.”

There was an hour and a half until midnight.