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{chemical purgatory} tom johns They cut the electric. Jeffy sat in the dark listening to a rigged up MP3 player that worked on a battery operated ghetto blaster. He was losing it; his eyes had adjusted to the dark and he no longer felt amusement park high and pleasantly blind. He longed for ten minutes ago. The longing migrated to ten minutes after, and so on. His cheap cell phone vibrated across the glass table he was under, further breaking the darkness he craved and revealing, in momentary neon-blue blasts, the detritus of his fractured existence: porn mags, pizza boxes and paraphernalia--"Oh won't you die fucking--electronic--fucking--Christmas tree, bird, raven--albatross!" He wanted in a living tomb, not a call from Connecticut. He wanted to not be dead, but not quite alive. He wanted to fall down the clear plastic funnel with comfort floating about him in the peaceful dark. He wanted to be half-awake with a window where vague images were there when he wanted them...if he wanted them. He didn't want to be dead; his heart didn't feel so good. He figured he was sweaty--sweating a slimy, greasy sweat. The phone wouldn't stop. They couldn’t leave him alone in this facsimile of his want; there would be knocking at the door soon. What time was it? A landlord, a cop (at the behest of his mother), a friend looking to mooch, unaware of his rapid new squalor--there was no more to euphemistically borrow, unless they wanted some of the PAM, assuming there was some left, assuming there was some left. It was no longer loud, he had adjusted once more, he could feel the bass itching at his insides, the tiniest bit he could; the MP3 flashed its own "not now!" strobe, he was running out of batteries, he was running out. He kept waiting for the panic, he kept waiting for a new sensation or an old one to return, but no--just...just a waiting that wasn't anything like the freefall he lusted for (but it wasn't quite lust, or if it was it was the lust one can feel for medicine). He tried to think of the "hers" in his life, and no face would come, just fragments of blonde hair and disembodied lace B cups that didn't arouse anymore, didn't mean anything anymore. It was TV on the Radio, it was distorted by low batteries and high volume, it was something he once felt something about. Now it was just hard noise in his sternum; it was just a saucer of milk for a dying kitten. It was just the ersatz heart of his mother beating where he could find it in the dark, not quite willing him to live, but reminding him not to die. It was worth another minute on this earth--his fate was not worse than leaving his consciousness permanently, not yet. Was that his heart beating like that? He used to fantasize about heaven, the place that came after. There was never an alternative while he was home--hell hadn't existed until he got his first blow job from Cindy Carlisle in the back of a Datsun B210, until he was caught, until he was made aware that a perverted God was watching. Judging. The blow job became more worth it with every passing day, because heaven died--going the way of Christmas and mood adjusting food, going the way of all things not long for this world, fruit flies and red woods and Volvos. The door was about to come off the hinges--cracks of dirty, yellow hallway light made their way into his artificial sepulcher. And hell? His last friend told him that just because there was a hell didn't mean anybody was in it. He spoke of universal salvation; he promised him that Jesus loved him, wouldn't give up on him no matter how dirty he had gotten his soul--it could be cleaned--God would see it cleaned. He imagined his soul as overalls on a child in a detergent commercial--a Technicolor, sunshine commercial with a blond kid he guessed he once looked like. He jerked as the city's finest flashed their heavy-duty, skull-cracking Mag-Lites into his dilated pale blues. His friend had one thing right. No one was in hell. But Los Angeles was quite well populated, and the movies were all letting out. |
