Читать книгу The Last Time I Saw You - Rebecca Brown - Страница 9

There are no others. There only was the one.

Well of course there were others, but they were different, they didn’t compare, they were a whole different league a whole different ball game.

The others came only later. After one could walk again and after the eyes no longer glazed, the hands no longer shook, the wrists no longer oozed but only dryly, whitely bore what one could claim were artfully, fashionably cut scarifications. One then experienced multitudes, made in fact a project of investigating closely, briefly, nocturnally, penetratingly both digitally and orally, first singularly, then in pairs, then severals (many of them were good about this: it has something to do with politics and property, about not owning or possessing. I never understood what they were nattering on about) then packs, slews of them.

Those poor miserable gals probably didn’t know what hit them, them cracking open this little can of worms and the can spewing out all over them, us, one, that stuck to us, that sticks to one, that sticks the guts together, that cements the brain, that chokes one in the dreams. Those poor decent gals didn’t know what hit them; they signed up for a diddle but got a baseball bat instead. They are, one must say, a sympathetic lot; they never, nary a one of them, called in the local authorities or had one arrested or hauled to the bin. They merely covered their faces with their arms and shooed or showed one to the door with instructions to never return, never show one’s sick perverted brain-fucked face in their bed, town, hemisphere, whatever, again.

You never told me to get over you. You never told me to forget. I didn’t. I remember you.

There were others, many good or kind, with better spirits. There were, indeed, rich handsome ones and gentle, wise, intelligent ones. There were compassionate ones and passionate. There were cute, delightful, darling ones. Among them even sexy ones.

Why didn’t I attach myself to one or another or several of them?

Why did I only attach myself to you?

Why did I tape glue mucilage super glue my skin, my bloody flesh? Why did I nail my hands and feet? Why did I swing by a rope from the thought of you? Why did I pushpin, thumbtack, staple—both hand-held and power gunned—myself to you? Why did I tack and stick myself? Why did I drain my carcass, shellac my skin, cram myself into a pendant and hope you’d wear what I had been around your neck? Why did I, like a sucker a lamprey a limpet a barnacle an octopus, suck my greedy voracious though effective, one thing about which we both agreed, greedy greedy sucker to you and not let go? Why did I attach my mouth my tongue my teeth my fingers my wrists my arteries my sloppy throat my beating begging jugular the chambers of my poor misguided dumb and bloodied messy heart to you?

Because you had told me, limp and naked, barely capable of speech, the mouth having been previously, and very happily it seemed to me occupied, you loved me.

You said you were my twin, my self, my other. You said that I was who you might have been. You said there were no others. Well of course there were others, there wasn’t something wrong with you, you were certainly desirable to others, but not like this, not like me. The others, you said, were trifles, slight, mere entertainments or obliged. They were different, they didn’t compare, they were a whole different league, a whole different ball game.

You said this to me more than once. You said it to me knowing. You said it when the mouth the tongue the teeth the tongue were otherwise unoccupied, when, it seemed to me, for I was young, there was no reason to say anything unless it was the truth.

* * *

This was many years ago.

Now I can say with all the experience of the intervening years, the perspective, the wisdom I have gained having grown and learned and at much great, great length reconsidered that if one could, if I was given half a chance, I would not hesitate. I would. I would go back and do it all again.

I still believe it was worth it. Maybe “worth” isn’t the right word. I still believe it was It? Not quite. Oh well. I still believe it was worth each time I threw myself against a brick or glass or electrically charged fence, each time I needed then drilled knocked blasted hacked or gouged another fucking hole in my fucking head. I still believe it was worth every time I tried to yank you back, every time I flung myself to where you were, each fete and do and soiree and affair and opening and invitation-only bash I crashed, flying in from the rafters, popping up from beneath the bed, leaking out of the heat vents, pushing up through the radiator pipes, splattering myself against the front end of your car like a deer in the headlights who waited for you, who sought you out when you drove home smashed again from yet another stupid idiotic party you’d performed at. I still believe it has been worth each time I’ve busted into your tidy little excuse for a life, each time you were screwing some poor well-meaning jerk and just when you really shouldn’t have, thought of me, and that poor clueless sensitive jerk said, Hey, is something wrong? and you made up some trashy lie.

It has been worth each time you pretended you didn’t know me when you ran into me in public, then how your stomach clutched and you excused yourself to the powder room and there puked up your guts into the toilet and/or splashed water on your face and though you hated to look at yourself made yourself, stared at your lying face in the mirror and wished you had the balls to blow out your brains. It was even worth those couple of B-release movie afternoons when I went to you, catching you when things weren’t going so well at home, and you ushered me in quickly so no one would see me, then welcomed me with your outstretched arms, dropped your dress skirt blouse pants undies onto the fabulously parqueted floor and after we’d gotten the business over with, broke down confessed wept, said you were so sorry, oh, so so sorry and that now, yes, finally, now, yes, now you understood. That your whole fucking life (I paraphrase) was a complete and utter fucking sham and if only I would understand.

But I did understand. I do. I have for years. It isn’t the understanding that’s the problem. Needless to say, I said none of this to you.

You started making your stupid facile promises again, the ones you’ve never kept and never meant to, to meet me if only I’d give you a little time to tie some things up, etc.…

For God’s sake, how do you live with yourself? You’ve got to be sick.

I’ve known for years what’s sick about you. In fact, I confess, I may have even had an inkling of it very early on. However, it has only lately occurred to me what a major sicky yours truly too has to be to play along, to have played along with you for years. At least you’ve gotten on with your life, as paltry and as much of a crock of shit as it may be. Whereas I have stayed stuck in the past. Not entirely, of course. There have been others, as I believe I mentioned earlier, in the words of a garrulous and largely appetited former acquaintance.

There were others and I apologize for how I was with them. I am ashamed of all the times I spewed the debris of my ludicrous past on those well-meaning, decent people who tried to love me. I regret and I am sorry for the thoughtless things I know I must have done but do not remember because my memory is, at best, selective. Is, in fact—the better half thereof—a mess. I have these ridges, these ruts, these craters in my brain from where the glaciers move so slowly. I can’t get out of them.

The past no longer happens and it cannot be undone.

I have been told to move along and get on with my life. Perhaps my life is to remember what is past.

The past is remembered differently. It can be different inside oneself and different also between two different ones.

Memory is its own kind of ill. It has its way of staying or returning. It can return in a spasm, a gasp. It can remain.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything.

May God have mercy upon our souls.