Damned (2 page)
The exact means by which I arrived in the underworld remain a little unclear.
I recall a chauffeur standing curb-side somewhere, next to a parked black
Lincoln Town Car, holding a white placard with my name written on it, MADISON
SPENCER, in all-caps terrible handwriting. The chauffeur—those people never
speak English—had on mirrored sunglasses and a visored chauffeur cap, so most
of his face was hidden. I remember him opening the rear door so I could step
inside; after that was a way-long drive with the windows tinted so dark I
couldn't quite see out, but what I've just described could've been any one of
ten bazillion rides I've taken between airports and cities. Whether that Town
Car delivered me to Hell, I can't swear, but the next thing is I woke up in
this filthy cell.
Probably I woke up because someone was screaming; in Hell, someone is
always screaming. Anyone who's ever flown London to Sydney, seated next to or
anywhere in the proximity of a fussy baby, you'll no doubt fall right into the
swing of things in Hell. What with the strangers and crowding and seemingly endless
hours of waiting for nothing to happen, for you Hell will feel like one long,
nostalgic hit of déjà vu. Especially if your in-flight movie was
The English
Patient.
In Hell, whenever the demons announce they're going to treat
everyone to a big-name Hollywood movie, don't get too excited because it's
always
The English Patient
or, unfortunately,
The Piano.
It's
never
The Breakfast Club.
In regard to the smell, Hell comes nowhere near as bad as Naples in the
summertime during a garbage strike.
If you ask me, people in Hell just scream to hear their own voice and
to pass the time. Still, complaining about Hell occurs to me as a tad bit
obvious and self-indulgent. Like so many experiences you venture into knowing
full well that they'll be terrible, in fact the core pleasure resides in their
very innate badness, like eating Swanson frozen chicken potpies at boarding
school or a Banquet frozen Salisbury steak on the cook's night out. Or eating
really
anything
in Scotland. Allow me to venture that the sole reason we
enjoy certain pastimes such as watching the film version of
Valley of the
Dolls
arises from the comfort and familiarity of its very inherent poor
quality.
In contrast,
The English Patient
tries desperately to be
profound and only succeeds in being painfully boring.
If you'll forgive the redundancy: What makes the earth feel like Hell
is our expectation that it ought to feel like Heaven. Earth is earth. Hell is
Hell. Now, stop with the whining and caterwauling.
On that basis, it does seem clichéd and obvious to arrive in Hell and
then weep and gnash and rend your garments because you find yourself immersed
in raw sewage or plopped down atop a bed of white-hot razor blades. To scream
and thrash seems... hypocritical, as if you've bought a ticket and seated yourself
to watch
Jean de Florette
and then complain loudly, resentful of the
fact that all the actors are speaking French. Or like the people who travel to
Las Vegas only to harp about how it's so tacky. Of course, even the casinos
that take a stab at elegance with crystal chandeliers and stained glass, even
those are crowded with the din and cacophony of plastic slot machines flashing
strobe lights to seize your attention. In such a situation the people who whine
and moan might imagine they're making a contribution but really they're just
being another petty annoyance.
The other most important rule worth repeating is: Don't eat the candy.
Not that you'll be even remotely tempted, because it's scattered on the dirty
ground, AND it's the candy even fat people and heroin junkies won't eat: rock
candy, rock-hard Bazooka bubble gum, Sen-Sen, saltwater taffy, black Crows, and
popcorn balls.
Given the fact that you, yourself, are still alive and Black or a Jew
or whatever—bully for you, you just keep eating those bran muffins—you'll have
to take my word for all of these details, so listen up and pay close attention.
Flanking your cell, other cells stretch to the horizon in both
directions, most containing a single person, most of those people screaming.
Even as my eyes flutter open, I hear a girl's voice say, "Don't touch the
bars...." Standing in the next cell, a teenage girl displays both her
hands, spreading the fingers wide to show her palms smeared with smut. There
really is the most dreadful mildew problem in Hell. It's like an entire
underworld with sick building syndrome.
My neighbor I'd wager is a high school junior, because she has the hip
development to hold up a straight-line skirt and she has breasts instead of
just frills or smocking to fill out the front of her blouse. Even with smoke
clouding the air and the occasional vampire bat fluttering through my line of
vision I can see her Manolo Blahnik shoes are counterfeit, the kind you might
buy sight unseen over the Internet from a pirate operation in Singapore for
five dollars. If you can stomach yet another piece of advice: Do NOT die while
wearing cheap shoes. Hell is... well, hell on shoes; anything plastic melts,
and you don't want to walk barefoot over broken glass for the rest of eternity.
When it comes your time, when the proverbial bell tolls for thee, seriously
consider wearing a basic low-heel Bass Weejun penny loafer in a dark color that
won't show dirt.
This teenage girl in the next cell calls over, asking, "What are
you damned for?"
Getting to my feet, stretching my arms, and dusting off the legs of my
skort, I reply, "Smoking marijuana, I guess."
Out of courtesy rather than genuine interest I ask the girl about her
own cardinal sin.
The girl shrugs her shoulders; pointing one stained, smutty finger
toward her feet, she says, "White shoes after Labor Day." Her sad
shoes—the ersatz leather is white and already scuffed, and you can never
actually polish counterfeit Manolo Blahniks.
"Beautiful shoes," I lie, nodding my head toward her feet.
"Are those Manolo Blahniks?"
"Yes," she lies in return, "they are. They cost a
fortune."
Another detail to remember about Hell... whenever you ask why anyone is
damned for all eternity, she'll tell you "jaywalking" or
"carrying a black purse with brown shoes" or some such petty
nonsense. In Hell you'd be foolish to count on people displaying high standards
of honesty. The same goes for earth.
The girl in the next cell takes a step closer and, still looking at me,
she says, "You know, you're really pretty."
That statement exposes her as a super, all-out, major-league liar, but
I don't say anything in response.
"No, I mean it," she says. "All you need is more
eyeliner and some mascara." Already she's digging in her shoulder bag—also
white, fake Coach, plastic—picking out tubes of mascara and compacts of
turquoise Avon eye shadow. With one dirty hand, the girl waves for me to lean
my face between the bars.
It's my experience that girls tend to be terrifically smart until they
grow breasts. You may dismiss this observation as my personal prejudice, based
on my own tender age, but thirteen years seems to be when human beings reach
their fullest flower of intelligence, personality, and pluck. Both girls and
boys. Not to boast, but I believe a person is her most truly exceptional at the
age of thirteen—look at Pippi Longstocking, Pollyanna, Tom Sawyer, and Dennis
the Menace—before she finds herself conflicted and steered by hormones and
crushing gender expectations. Let girls get their menstruation or boys have
their first wet dream, and they instantly forget their own brilliance and
talent. Again, here's a reference to my Influences of Western History
textbook—for a long time after puberty, it's like the dark ages that fell
between the Athenian Enlightenment and the Italian Renaissance. Girls get their
boobs and forget they were ever so gutsy and smart. Boys, too, can display
their own brand of clever and funny behavior, but let them get that first
erection and they go complete
moron
for the next sixty years. For both
genders, adolescence occurs as a kind of Ice Age of Dumbness.
And, yes, I know the word
gender.
Ye gods! I may be pudgy and
flat-chested and nearsighted and dead, but I am NOT a moron.
Yes, and I know that when a supersexy older girl with hips and breasts and
nice hair wants to take off your glasses and to paint you a smoky eye she's
merely trying to enroll you in a beauty contest she's already won. It's a kind
of slummy, condescending gesture, like when rich people ask poor people where
they summer. To me, this smacks of a blatant, insensitive "let them eat
cake" type of chauvinism.
Either that, or the attractive older girl is a lesbian. Either way, I
don't offer my face even as she stands ready, brandishing a gloppy mascara
brush like a fairy godmother's magic wand, to turn me into some floozy
Cinderella. To be honest, whenever I watch the classic John Hughes film
The
Breakfast Club,
and Molly Ringwald leads poor Ally Sheedy into the girl's
bathroom, then brings her out with those hideous 1980s smears of rouge under
each cheekbone and Ally's hair tied back with that preppy ribbon and her lips
painted that dated
red-
red like a cheap China doll version of Ringwald's
own sellout Whorey Vanderwhore
Vogue
magazine conformity, poor Ally
reduced to a kind of living, breathing Nagel print, I always yell at the
television, "Run, Ally!" Really, I scream, "Wash your face,
Ally, and
just run!"
Instead of submitting my face, I say, "I'd better not, not until
my eczema clears up some."
At this, the magic mascara wand jerks back. The Avon eye shadows and
lipsticks all clatter back into the fake Coach bag even as her eyes squint,
searching my face for signs of inflamed, red, flaky skin and open sores.
It's like my mom will tell you: "Every new maid wants to fold your
underwear a different way." Meaning: You have to stay smart and not let
yourself be pushed around.
Other cells cluster around our two, some cells empty, others occupied
by lone people. No doubt the football jock, the rebel stoner, the brainy geek,
the psycho, all serving detention here, forever.
No, it's not fair, but chances are good that I'll be in this cell for
centuries to come, pretending to suffer psoriasis even while hypocrite people
scream and complain about the humidity and the smell, and my Whorey Vanderwhore
neighbor squats down to try to spit-shine her cheapo, white plastic shoes with
a crumpled wad of Kleenex. Even against the stink of poop and smoke and sulfur,
you can smell her dime-store perfume like a mixed-fruit flavor of chewing gum
or instant grape drink. To be honest, I'd rather smell poop, but who can hold
their breath for a million-plus years? So, simply out of courtesy I say,
"Thanks anyway, about offering the makeover, I mean." Out of sheer
politeness, I force myself to smile and say, "I'm Madison."
At this, the teenage girl almost lunges toward the bars which separate
us. All breasts and hips and high-heeled shoes, now obviously, pathetically
grateful for my companionship, she grins to show me her every mass-produced,
porcelain-veneered incisor. In her pierced earlobes, she's even wearing diamond
earrings—so very Claire Standish of her—only vulgar, dime-size, dazzle-cut
cubic zirconium. Saying, "I'm Babette," dropping the wad of tissue,
she thrusts a smutty, stained hand between the bars for me to shake.
Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. Please don't feel hurt, Satan,
hut my parents raised me to believe you didn't exist. My mom and dad said you
and God were invented in the superstitious, backward pea brains of hillbilly preachers
and Republican hypocrites.
According to my parents, there's no such place as Hell. If you asked
them, they'd probably tell you I'm already reincarnated as a butterfly or a
stem cell or a dove. I mean, my parents both said how important it was for me
to see them walking around naked all the time or I'd grow up to be totally a
Miss Pervy McPervert. They told me that nothing was a sin, just a poor life
choice. Poor impulse control. That nothing is evil. Any concept of right versus
wrong, according to them, is merely a cultural construct relative to one
specific time and place. They said that if anything should force us to modify
our personal behavior it should be our allegiance to a social contract, not
some vague, externally imposed threat of flaming punishment. Nothing is wicked,
they insisted, and even serial killers deserve cable television and counseling,
because multiple murderers have suffered, too.
In the spirit of the classic John Hughes film
The Breakfast Club,
I've begun to write an essay in the same manner the student detainees at
Shermer High School were required to write one thousand words on the theme of
"Who Do You Think You Are?"
Yeah, I know the word
construct.
Put yourself in my penny
loafers: I'm locked in a barred cell in Hell, thirteen years old and doomed to
be thirteen forever, but I'm not totally self-unaware.
