The Apprentice
I wish you would come back to me. The only time I’ve ever felt really, truly, utterly in love was with you. I have only been in love once– it was when we went to the local swimming pool at the country club which was smaller than an outsider would think, I think, and I saw a lot of blurry lights. That was a while ago.
There was one night I sat in my room, biting the skin peeling off my finger. I glanced at the broken standing mirror beside me, which had taken a blow ever since I discovered how to transfer my rage to my hands. I looked at myself through the cracks, the spiderweb, the distorter. I saw myself, not as a boy, but as a diagram, one with concentric circles. One with connecting lines connecting stuff, one with acne, one with two metal beads stuck in the hairy greasy eyebrow, I looked ugly and angry. A portal, a new message, a demonic drawing, a summoner, saying shit like, it's all fucked up. I have claws on my feet, Need to shave. I was fucked up.
All my belongings were packed up in cardboard boxes, they were all labeled wrong, all half-flapped open with stupid bullshit inside.
It was a month since I moved to my uncle Ricky’s house, he was fucked up too like me, but not as obvious. Getting fucked up on pills. I was stealing booze from my parents and horribly mean to them and my step-brothers, I was smoking inside the white bathroom at my old house turning the walls yellow, I was waking up surrounded by puddles of drool and sweat and blood and puke, I was hanging dead animals from the ceiling fan and watching them soar. They had enough of me, they were afraid of me because I was absolutely stupid, and I couldn't get any pussy, and all of this shit led them to hand me over to my uncle because he was a former military sergeant who came out of the Iraq war with a lazy leg and an adoration for painkillers mixed with whatever was left in the liquor cabinet. He was floored every night, I did whatever I could to survive and be noticed. But if I snuck into his stash, and I mean the alcohol, he didn't give a shit about the pills, but if I tried to take even a little sip, and mind you I was 14, he would give me the looniest lob left hook right in my jaw and I would fall down on the cool kitchen floor.
One time, he was sitting outside on the porch in the moonlight with a cigar in his mouth. I plopped down and joined him, put my feet up, and lit a cigarette butt I had found on the ground to make him mad at me. The junk in the backyard piled up, and the silhouette looked like a big junkyard mountain, that scrappy mangy dogs lived in and screwed and had sick dirty babies. Wooden chair legs stuck up into the sky pylons and then I imagined that in the backyard it was not trash but a massive airplane that had crashed into our backyard with a bunch of dead bodies and crushed muscles strewn about. A bat flew across the navy blue sky. Everything in the yard smelled like sweet rotten milk.
I imagined a girl pulling up her skirt for me, my black chuck had a splatter of shit, something yellow at the bottom, I wanted to put out the cigarette on my arm but I didn’t because I wasn't cool or old enough yet.
“Uncle Ricky,” I pierced the smog of potent silence with my gay little voice. “Do you ever think I’ll be cool?” He squinted at me, his mustache quivering.
Stoic. His eyes cast upward at the skies. He was an all-knowing God, a pyramid, blessed and lucky to be an alive slave to Home Depot, the place where he worked at the time. But I don't know why I asked him that, because I shouldn’t’ve cared about his opinions. He beat me up, he gave me shit for everything I did, he clowned on me, he fucked with me just to be evil, and most of all, he was worthless. So I don't know why I cared at that moment if he thought I was cool.
But Uncle Ricky just kept looking up at the sky like he didn't hear me, but I knew he did, he was just thinking, ‘cause it takes him a really long time for him to think of anything to say, trust me on that.
It was a long while until he finally said this:
“You must not know shit about fuck because I ain’t goin’ to pity you. I know you’re the devil. You’ve got,” he clicked his tongue, a nervous tic he had. “somethin’ not right. But I don’t feel bad for ya. You’ve got everythin’ you need.” click. “But I ain’t your daddy, so you better’” click. “cut that sappy boolshit out and leave it at the damn door, alongside your” click. “shit-stained undies. I ain't your daddy, I’m your” click. “uncle. I don’t care for this whole daddy business. Get a fuckin’ job,” click. “fuckin’ girlfriend or something,” click. “fuckin’ friends,” click. “not my problem, but get the hell out of my fuckin’ house ‘cause your mom’s callin’ me nightly sayin’ she worried about you. Shit, she worried about you you wouldn't forced to be here with me, sittin’ there all slack-jawed, ‘cause I won't let you off that easy.” His mouth became dry, so he took a slurp from a clear boxy glass of vodka tonic.
“ I won’t let you torture me like you did to her.”
I just sat there for a while, I couldn’t move, couldn’t say shit, just stared at the squirrel stalking me from the top of the dark tree.
I need sunshine. I stopped thinking on dead days, dead air. I sat cross-legged in front of the mirror and imagined myself as you, Rosaline. I feel like a piece of shit. I feel like an absolute monster. I imagine myself as you, sweet tiny baby girl, getting beaten down and railed by a monster. With horns, with smoking nostrils, with red eyes, with huge pulsating blood filled flaming muscles, with hooves. A giant disgusting slobbering beast and you’re beautiful you. And I try to feel what that would feel like to be totally out of control. And then I switch. What would it be like to be me, fucking you? And losing control too. It’s a game I play;
I try to imagine what it would feel like for you to love me.
I looked out and saw you standing at my window concealed by a bush. You saw me seeing you and stepped out.
You were slightly sweating in a white tank top and cut-up light blue jeans, you had blushing cheeks, your nose had a little twinkle, a shine like a shoe, and you looked like you were made of plastic, I wanted to take you right there like a doll. Your flesh exuded a citrus smell. Your eyes darted feverishly. You had a halo floating, you seized my hand, and we just skipped town. We ran, escaped, and everything was classic. I didn’t even look back at my dismal room, nothing inside it except music still playing from my radio. I loved you so much. But in that glowing floodlight of daytime, I saw the sores on my skin. I saw the piercing and demonic gaze of pedestrians.
I don’t see you anymore, you were alllll dreams, you were an energy field and you were minerals but when all that is gone then you’re nothing at all.
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