My mother used to sit at my feet as I lay and pray:
“Spin, spin, gentle moon-lit sphere. Bring daylight bright with new warmth and cheer.”
When she left I would imagine her as someone else: with dark hair and a coarse face, something malevolent; with calloused hands and hairy toes; something so conspicuously cancerous that it made you want to walk by it in hopes that it would latch onto your soul or hack off your limbs and boil them; something like that. I named her: “Earth Destroyer.”
…
It wasn’t just when she sang to me or read stories, it was almost everything she did. When she gardened I would sit out on a lawn chair and watch. She wanted me to learn.
“Life begets life.” She would tell me. “There is no greater joy than the gift of nurture: to see roots flourish and buds blossom. Like you, my little bud.” She’d say, kissing my forehead or combing my hair with her fingers.
But I didn’t want to see her flowers bloom. I didn’t want to see her soil healthy or her tomatoes ripe. I just wished she would dismember them all with her giant feet; usurp them from the soil that was rightfully her’s.
Of course, she never did any of that. But I soon learned that I didn’t need my mother, sweet and caring as she was, to carry out my desires: that was a pipe dream. She cared too much about cows to sustain herself with their meat. She had too much reverence for trees to use their wood to keep herself warm. The instincts that she had were not those of a predator; she had been preyed upon her whole life. I couldn’t cultivate killer instincts within her. Even if I could, she had no need for such tactics. A killer’s mind is not a sanctum she would ever find refuge in. Such a place would only make her anxious and mournful for that which she could never understand. She would feel as I felt about her garden: nonsensically infuriated.
I didn’t know much about what pleased my mother, but I knew that exposing her to my own ideologies in hopes of challenging her to think as I thought, as in most cases, would be anything but pleasing. No, my mother had dreams of her own; I had no plans to stand in her way.
…
At ten years old I learned that if you hold your breath long enough under the water, you’ll resurface with more water in your lungs than air. I thought this was a neat little trick. I imagined what a lung full of water would look like; would I blow bubbles out of my nose when I exhaled? To start, I had to do my research on what a lung looked like in the first place; what was I working with here? An oval? Was it long and stretchy? Small and compact? Upon seeing its true shape I decided it was inconsequential to whether or not I would be able to blow bubbles out of my nose.
My mother was not as amused with my at-home experiment. She knew damn well that I knew how to swim, she was the one who had taught me. Of course, she couldn’t possibly have perceived I would willingly ignore my ability to breathe. God bless her pure soul. Anyways, I don’t remember much from that day, but I do remember my mother jumping in to pull me out. More specifically, I remember that she never asked me what had happened; she already knew. I hadn’t shown any signs of struggle. I hadn’t flapped my arms up and down or called out for help. I wasn’t in need of any help. I hadn’t asked to be pulled out of that pool. I remember the immediate resentment that came upon me as my eyes saw the bright daylight once more. How I wondered what it would take for her to allow me to capitulate to the darkness. I wasn’t a helpless little boy. I didn’t need anyone to keep me alive; I wasn’t a fucking crop on a farm. I was a free-thinking, opinion-having, (barely) living, (barely) breathing creature who had made a choice to keep his head under the water for as long as it would take to kill me. She could watch me grow or she could watch me die, but both would be on my terms. She would be without a say in the matter. I wasn’t drowning in that pool, I was pushing the very malleable limits of my very malleable life. And that, was yet another thing my mother would never understand.
…
Life was neither here nor there until I declared war. But war required energy, resources, time and the will to actually give a fuck. Most days you couldn’t pay me to go out and find a fuck to give. This especially pissed my mother off. She couldn’t understand why I spent so much time in my room, alone. I’d spend hours on end debating on smashing my head against the wall until I lost consciousness. Other days I didn’t need wall-smashing to feel removed from my own body; I just needed to exist. Some days were just easier than others. That’s all I could really chalk it up to. Some days you actually go out and live. Other days you just exist. To live, to exist, either way I dwelt in space undefined; space untouchable. Yet, I was as tangible as a ladybug; sifting through voids like sand through fingers; straining here; oozing there. The residue belongs to you and I. The bulk is recycled into the natural order of things. Where it goes? Nobody knows. Spring water bottled clearer than a summer dream; cleaner than a hollowed log, so they say.
...
At age thirteen I learned the difference between giving up and being defeated. That was the same year I decided not to speak for an entire month. It wasn’t a conscious decision either, it just sorta happened. I didn’t feel the need to speak; didn’t feel that anything I could say during that span of time would have any merit. If I couldn’t fill a room with substance, what good was I to a room? I was learning the art of measurement; the art of filling Albert Hall. And I didn’t like setting myself up for failure. So I remained silent for a whole month.
It was during that same month that my mother was defeated. She hadn’t given up, she just simply had no way to further combat my unprecedented need to be independent of her. She would ask me simple questions, futile ones like: “What do you want for dinner?” but I would just shrug and continue watching the television. Some nights I would cook for myself. Other nights, if the television was playing something good like The Naked Spur or Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, I felt no need to eat. Outlaws didn’t operate on full stomachs; bounty hunters didn’t stop for a night because they were tired or hungry. What fragile, sheltered, run-of-the-mill thought processes luxury has inculcated within us. Leave it to my mother to be the chained leader of the free-world.
I took my life, never truly mine, as it would so kindly come to me. But I often had urges to seize it by its very throat. I didn’t need much, and luckily, not much was required of me. I was to breathe, I was to eat, I was to die. When I learned to bow to that which was beyond my control, everything fell as it should. My teachers didn’t think much of me. They had seen (were seeing) a million of me. I was a blade of grass: to grow, to have my growth regulated, to burn out and die, and of course, to make way for new grass. I had proximity-friends: folks to grow or die beside; each of us deciding which was right for himself. But we were slated; we were always slated and we all knew it. We didn’t check bulletin boards, didn’t read final roster cuts or wait to hear our name during roll call; we already knew.
...
In high school there was this girl who used to dress up as a lizard most days of the week. We all called her “Lizard Bitch.” Not that she was really much of a bitch, it was only a way of capturing the right level of mystique that none of us could put into words. So then, “bitch” would have to do.
Somehow or other, Lizard Bitch and I became pretty good friends. She would come over sometimes after school, still in her full lizard garb: scaly skin, crop-top green shirt with her under-belly painted. She even grew her nails out to get the full effect. But I didn’t care much about whatever it was she was trying to be. I didn’t ask either. I think she liked that about me. There wasn’t much that I did like about Lizard Bitch, except that she was a girl. I felt that I could control her if I wanted to. She could be mine if I willed it so. There was something to be said about my restraint. I didn’t understand why I never did. I just understood that I always could. Beyond that, something was always telling me that I should.
…
Aside from hanging out with Lizard Bitch, I had lots of dreams about her as well. In one particular dream, she was reading to me, something she had done a lot in real life too. She had come across her mother’s collection of Haruki Murakami books. “Murakami wrote about nonsense, but in such nonsense, he made sense,” is how Lizard Bitch explained him. We read about his wild chase for sheep, his journey through an empty well, which served as a passageway into a secret underground world, and even his experience when the sky had opened up and poured down fish.
I didn’t say much when she read. I quite liked the way that her tongue smacked the roof of her mouth when she emphasized certain words; enjoyed the way her throat moved up and down when she swallowed between paragraphs. I saw no reason to interrupt these occurrences. Besides, I didn’t care much for Murakami or anything he had written. In fact I thought it was all pretty shit. And if I interrupted to ask about a certain detail of one of his bizarro stories, that would only give her more of a reason to analyze his shitty work using her even shittier opinions and judgements.
In this particular dream she was reading a story that involved a talking monkey and a decrepit inn. The monkey drank beer, spoke English, bathed middle-aged Asian women, the list goes on. It was one of the few times I had ever interrupted her reading, both in the dream and in real life.
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“I want to be the Earth Destroyer.” I blurted out.
She didn’t hesitate: “Fuck” she said, she really liked cursing. “So be it.”
I thought for a moment. I didn’t want to say anything more, I felt I had already said too much. I could have nodded and moved forward, motioned for her to continue reading. But Lizard Bitch was sweet and I knew she cared for me. Plus, she was a girl.
“Dust knows its place: in corners, along crown molding, on the blades of the ceiling fan; anywhere it can hide.”
An introspective silence came over her after that. “Am I dust?” I imagined she asked herself.
In the dream I reached between her legs to feel her love buzz. I had always imagined her lying naked on my bed, fingers inside herself, waiting for me; to acknowledge my being there.
When at last she felt me I said: “I am the Earth Destroyer.”
Her eyes rolled back in her head. Her mouth widened to a grin and she spoke: “Be as you wish.” Slowly her neck forced itself back until her skull touched the naked spine. “Come as you are.” She repeated for as long as her throat remained intact. Her entrails forced their way out of the porous shell. I stood over her, stroking my penis into the gape, now devoid of life. When it was finished, I got down on my knees to peer through the tunnels of light; light which dissipated as the seeds enriched themselves in soil. The soil then gave way to roots; roots that grew rapidly downward, nestling themselves where the buzz had begun. For an unknown period of hours, I stood producing new life; tugging and pulling at creation; the harrowing labors of a father. At last the fruition of my troubles: buds had blossomed; vibrant, multi-colored flowers lit the Torch of Heraclitus, a sign of things to come. And so it was; life begets life.
...
I didn’t see Lizard Bitch very much after that. Maybe I had come to understand how useless she really was to me. She was nothing to me if not exploited. And I knew, as much as I may have desired, I could never make full use of her.
She, however, did not seem to understand. She had this incessant need to periodically keep tabs on me. I found this infuriating. In fact, it brought about this longing to grab her by the neck and crush her head like a blow pop. That’s all it would take; after all that she had done to create such an outlandish image of herself, sticking out like a sore thumb all the while, all it would take is my thumb prints upon the larynx of this wild lizard bitch. If she couldn’t play dead to me she would have to die. Life, afterall, lies just beyond a slit neck.
…
Lizard Bitch found that she couldn’t reach me anymore, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying. For a reason I’ll never remember and forever regret, I gave her my telephone number. She must have called me five times a week for over a month. She’d leave voicemails, asking when she could come over next. Sometimes she’d even recite whole paragraphs of Murakami. I saw little incentive to listen, and even less incentive to ever call her back.
I felt such power, took such pride, in being unreachable. My spirit was once again rejuvenated with childlike magnificence. And on this go-round, my treehouse had no ladder; when mother gave me an underdog I swam amongst the clouds. Oh, the exhilaration! To hear mere echoes of those who shout and cry out your name! Come catch me! Come find me! Let us play, let us play. The earliest of the early risers gets the top crop. Enigmatic engineer: mother won’t understand all I’ll craft. Crash by midday, she calls me “The Grog.” I’m heavy, I’m sluggish, I sink like a pebble in a pond. Come alive through the night and pray and prey.
Dreams, dreams,
They’re not so bad.
You’ve lost your head,
Little bug,
You’re mad, you’re mad.
…
My last interaction with Lizard Bitch came, in fact, by a matter of providence. The day began in the early hours of its own moonlit dawn. But nothing really got rolling until fifth period where I, admittedly quite noisily, cut, buttered, and scoffed down a toasted poppy seed bagel.
I’d gotten midway through buttering the second half of the bagel when the teacher took notice of what he ascribed tomfoolery. He made some remark to the effect of: “Excuse me, you can’t eat in this lab.” Cutting short whatever bullshit he had been spewing, he turned the full attention of the class toward me as I licked the poppy seeds from around my lips.
“How long have you been doing that?” He asked.
I wiped the crumbs from the table, feeling no shame for the animalistic manner in which I’d gone in on that bagel. Fifth period, man, it was like 11:40. I was fucking hungry.
“How long have you had that dick in your ass?” I answered, taking a sip of my fruit juice to clear my poppy-encrusted throat. “Has it been there a while or is that a recent occurrence?”
The class seemed to get a rise out of this. I, having embarrassed a grown man in front of thirty some-odd teenagers, was asked to rise and exit the classroom. Life was forever tempting me with a good time, but it always seemed that everyone else was having all the fun.
…
Detention brought back vivid memories of my nights as a child: damned by an inability to articulate what was bothering me. Often I would scream and cry the whole night through. My mother, there beside me, would do all she could to console me; bless her heart. I don’t quite think she ever realized that it was her who vexed the whole of my very being. It was her that I longed to escape. In my head I could run on air, swim through the full emptiness of space, watch the rocks mindlessly float from no end of the vacuum to the other; tactless all the while to who I may be or what I may have to say. I too am debris; I too am inconsequential; without consequence; no consequence but expulsion.
But when I awoke, she was always still there, waiting for me to effloresce; to salt the Earth with her. But the Earth was never mine to salt; I just wanted to dust the stars.
“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.” She’d say, rubbing my back or combing my hair with her fingers.
...
Detention Prick was in tune with my mother’s sentiments: he wanted answers. He, however, seemed unwilling to rub my back to get them.
“What’s a matter with you kids these days?” He asked, squishing his mouth to his nose real smugly. “All juiced off a junk tree. Where’s the integrity? What’s integral about you?”
What could I say to that?
Integral; a leaky faucet, riddled with rhythmic drip-drops and innumerable all-for-naught-tightenings of the wrench. I am not the steady stream which effortlessly glides from the nozzle head, no: I am the leak. As it stands, my fate is all but sealed. At the mercy of the infinite source, from which I am merely puddled-runoff, I await caulking.
…
At that moment my phone began to ring. As I remember, Prick was still on his join-the-corps rant when, as it hit the fourth or fifth ring, he stood up and motioned in such a way that I nearly placed my hand in his to be kissed and called “m'lady” thereafter.
“Lizard Bitch?” he asked in abhorrence. I gave him a cheeky grin, as if to shrug my shoulders.”Your guess is as good as mine.” Is what I wanted to say.
He let it ring a few more times and then handed the phone back to me, Lizard Bitch’s face still flashed across the screen.
“Take care of that.” he commanded. “Fucking kids, I swear. Rabid off a mulberry bush.”
…
“Holy fuck, you’re still alive?” Is the first thing I said when I answered the call, or something to that effect.
“When are you leaving?” She responded.
For a drawn out moment, all was silent. Until she repeated the question.
“When do you leave?”
“You can’t come.” I blurted briskly.
“You can’t come. You can’t come. You can’t come.” I repeated nine times over.
“Just let me say goodbye.” I could feel the glare of her glower through the phone.
I held my breath, closed my eyes, and pushed my neck back until my nose faced the ceiling.
“Meet me at Dirtbag Capital.”
“When?” She asked giddily.
I grunted and hung up the phone. That meant as fast as her little lizard legs could run.
…
As I walk by, a mother and her son are buying a metro pass; I smash their heads together and rip the ten out of the machine before it can go to a wasted fare.
I pay the toll, bump shoulders with a dude hustling, what’s his problem? Doesn’t matter, I kick the back of his knees in and introduce his face to my Nike Zoom 2000’s.
Two officers are patrolling as I make my way up to the station. I b-line to the bigger one, unholster his gun and pistol-whip the other fucker. Newly-unarmed, he clubs me with his nightstick.
*Thunk* *Thunk* *Thunk* Good, yes, more; beat it out of me, beat me out of me.
Where have I gone? Who have I become? Am I just some mother’s wasted son?
…
I got off the subway and walked about four blocks until I stood in front of my destination. The sign read “Dirtbag Capital Hardware: Screwing you with great rates for over 50 years.”
I entered to the sound of a bell on the door. I watched myself walk in the TV monitor hanging above, and then in the mirror along the wall, and then at last in the reflection of the eyes of the man who stood behind the counter. “We cut rope” was written on a piece of computer paper hanging behind him. I pointed to the paper. We stood staring for a moment until his eyes quickly led me down a labyrinth-esque hallway, complete with punctually-cornered stairwells and a lack of adequate handrails. Come what may, I followed.
At last we arrived at a doorless, well lit room, where a figure lay face down on a boxspring. I followed the man in, but stopped as he approached the raw bed frame. The figure lay motionless until the man grabbed its shirt and began repositioning, I could see now that it was a woman. He draped her legs over one side of the bed, her head floating lifelessly over the other.
Upon penetration we locked eyes again.
“What are you?” He spoke between grunts.
“I am the Earth Destroyer.”
He chuckled a bit and flipped the woman onto her back. “So be it.” He began. “Even the ‘Earth Destroyer’ has to chop his wood and carry his water.”
I studied the way his hips thrust back and forth, at times with more urgency than others. I had never chopped wood before.
The woman was now moaning, loudly. The man put his hands over her mouth and lifted her on top of himself. He now hung with his legs dangling over one side of the bed frame. And with his head upside down he began speaking once more.
“Get a couple men to fear you and their will becomes yours. Get a couple hundred more and that fear becomes reverence. Make it a few thousand and you’ve got an army. Multiply that a few times over and they’ll crown you King. Win a couple wars and suddenly you’re a God; the boot-print of a fallen soldier forever cemented in mud they’d never subject you to walk on. You want to have your way in this life? Become a God, an unrighteous God, they’ll worship anything they don’t understand.”
His thrusts grew more forceful. The moans grew louder, fighting through his palms and reverberating throughout the otherwise empty room.
“I don’t want to be a God. I’m going to the moon.” I shouted in response.
He had remained fixated on me.
“Okay, Mr. Destroyer.” He said, chuckling again. “Safe travels.”
I stood studying him for a while longer until I heard the bell on the door. For a brief moment, the man seemed as though he hadn’t heard; I felt that I was the constant in all the motion.
She must have walked around the store for five minutes until she began to call out for me. She had this uncanny ability to sense where I was. The calls became louder and closer, and then both. Truthfully I think she had heard the moans. I wished he had covered that woman’s mouth and trapped every last breath inside of her; snapped her neck and bit into it like a chicken wing: anything to shut that bitch up.
But it was too late. In came Lizard Bitch, blissfully oblivious as ever. All at once he disposed of the other woman and snatched Lizard Bitch into disbelief. I watched as he tore through her shirt, exposing her green belly. She clawed all the while, but it wasn’t long until he was on top of her, thrusting as forcefully as I had yet seen.
He rummaged under the bed with his free hand and tossed a piece of rope at my feet.
“The world is burning, Mr. Destroyer.” He said. “If you put your face close enough you might just be able to light your cigarette.”
And he was right: at that moment it had all been doused in gasoline, bent over, fucked in the ass, and ignited upon penetration.
…
Dreams, dreams,
They’re not so bad.
You’ve lost your head,
Little bug,
You’re mad, you’re mad.
Death To Light:
A lullaby.
Hushed to sleep,
By sirens’ cry.
Tired eye,
Who lights night sky.
Death To Light:
A calm goodnight.