Spider on My Tongue (9 page)

So there you have it.

She has yet to tell me about her death.

She added this, too:

And, occasional, that stuff garbled and matted and full of red hair, for which there is no blame but the frequencies, there is this, in fact, there exists
no
blame but the frequencies, running into one the other, and making all the nonsense marvelous.

And she was gone.

~ * ~

I must congratulate myself, make a good pot of coffee, a nice raisin-nut cake, a casserole that pleases. Or maybe I'll open a good Merlot, toast with it to myself and my working brain, because, shit, I know so awfully much, now. I know why I see, and why I don't. I know who Phyllis was, and where she isn't, and Sam, as well. I even know, in oblique ways, who I really am (it's what we're all after, isn't it? Self knowledge), and why I'm here, in this dim house in the dim woods, and I know that Death wears many disguises and speaks in many voices. I know it believes itself immortal, too, and omniscient, even playful. And I know that all I know,
everything
I know (my name, my age, my place in the universe) is based, after all, on hunger, rationalization and ignorance (which is surely the beginning of wisdom).

It will be a good Merlot, then, and, to follow, a coconut cream pie, in congratulations.

I'll buy it at the village store, from the bald man whose name I can't remember and I'll urge him into a discussion of food.

I'll share the pie with the passing misery.

They'll be very pleased.

And so will I.

It will be like a party.

Perhaps we'll sing, and do some dancing, engage in heady conversation, solve the problems of the universe, nod and smile and know one another well.

Then, before they can flow away into one another (as they do), and make themselves scarce, I'll embrace them.

I haven't learned to shield myself from them. I've been told there's a way to do it. But they insinuate themselves upon me almost continuously—if I'm eating my breakfast, usually shredded wheat and milk, no sugar, and I've just popped a spoonful of that crunchy stuff into my mouth, and I'm withdrawing the spoon, I see slow, dark movement reflected in the spoon: it isn't the movement of my mouth chewing or my eyes blinking, or the illusion of movement as I take the spoon away from my face, it's
their
movement, or
his,
or
hers.
And, even now—after I've experienced that movement five hundred times in the long months since I came here—I still whirl about in my chair and see them, or
him,
or
her,
fading into the ambient light that is the dim kitchen.

Or if I glance into the house's only mirror (it's small, oval, and sits on a wall in the short hallway leading from the living room to the kitchen), because a brief glance is all I can muster (a glance for reasons that might seem odd—to recall the contours of my face, to see if it still exists), and it's morning, just after sunrise, and the sun's light has filtered through the hallway, creating a kind of soft yellow haze, I see them gathering around me, as if I'm in an elevator and a crowd is boarding.

I hear them almost always. Their burps
^,
their laughter, which, even when I believe it's right at my ear, sounds like laughter from another room. And I smell them, too—the biting odor of ionization, as if the air is painfully clean. And, quite often, I feel them breathing on my face, or my bare hands, or, when I've stepped out of the shower, on every part of my body, sometimes, though notably on my cock (Oh, God, I remember a time when it would have been impossible for me to make any reference to my cock, even in response to a doctor or nurse. I was raised to despise my cock, to fear it, and to "leave it alone." Phyllis went a long way toward giving me some love for it, though, because
she
loved it).

I seem to be repeating myself.

As I reread, I realize I'm repeating myself.

I wonder if I'm becoming a fool.

~ *~

I'm thinking about the voice that called my name, "AAABBBNNNEEEERRRR." Phyllis drew it out like that at the end of our time together. "AAABBBNNNEEEERRRR." Perhaps it was a game she played—she had a great sense of humor; a lot of these people do. (Christ, is that the first time I've referred to
them
as "people"? I'll have to have a quick look backward.)

No, it isn't.

But that wasn't Phyllis saying "AAABBBNNEEERRRR." She isn't here. She's everywhere, sure, but she's not here.
I'm
here,
they're
here, but
she's
not here.

She could be here. That wouldn't be a problem for her. She's omnipotent and potentially omnipresent, I think. Her incredible sexuality makes her that way—omnipotent and omnipresent. She's the stuff that the march of generations is made of—lust and
otherlife.

She as much as said so: "Look at me and ask yourself what you see and what the fuck
you
want,
Abner." She is not alone in herself, ever—spread legs and a heaving chest; she is
everywoman.
And, sure, I am
everyman.
It fits, don't you think? I do.

If she
is
here, I want to see her and touch her. Maybe that's who I feel on me after I leave the shower. What an idea! The wondrous and lustful wraith gives a passing blowjob to the fool in his little house.

~ * ~

Has it been years, now?

~ * ~

They lumber past my windows and peer in, mutter something I can't hear and, because their faces are little more than an oval blur, I can't read their lips, either, and so, at times, I simply give them a brisk, one-fingered salute, or I sigh, or look away, or close my eyes and wish that Barbara W. Barber had never been born.

~ * ~

It has been too long since I've eaten, of course.

They
know this and I know too well it makes them happy. I can
hear
them laughing.

~ * ~

This is what I have in the kitchen:

Some soup in a can.

Some bread going moldy.

Something that might once have been mayonnaise.

A small pear.

Eggs I will not touch.

And I'm within walking distance of the little store where I bought this stuff in the first place. Sure it's a long walk. Hours, at best. But that's no matter; walking is no better or worse than sitting, which, over prolonged periods, causes bedsores and atrophy of the muscles, too.

It's reasonable that I should go there. To that little store. I'll buy more foodstuffs. I'll talk for a few long minutes to the bald man. I'll nourish myself.

And I'll leave
them
here, of course. They'll never follow. Personalities don't much interest them. They have no ties to me. They'll amuse each other, diddle with themselves amongst themselves.

You see, this: I don't want to starve to death and leave an unappealing corpse.

~ * ~

I will set out soon for there, then. And see if they follow.

~ * ~

I have returned, bearing nothing
but
departed people I have no hope of knowing.

~ * ~

Sam Feary is certainly here, in this house, or around it: he knocked on my front door—he used the knock we used when we were young and we visited the house of the other: it's a double knock,
pause,
a
single knock, pause, a double knock, pause, a double knock.
We used this knock because we were pretending to be spies. We spied on everyone. We even spied on each other, though neither of us knew it until we were well into our teens and Sam was only a few weeks from performing his great act of stupidity—joining the Army and getting shuffled off to `Nam.

We spied on my mother and his mother. We spied, of course, on our fathers, our brothers and sisters, some of our teachers (we each had a very grave crush on a tall, leggy, redheaded science teacher named Miss White who had a perfect body, a perfect smile, a perfect walk, a perfect voice and perfect bedroom eyes (though neither of us knew that's what they were called when she was practicing her perfection on us at Bangor Junior High School), and who, we were both convinced, flirted with one or the other of us almost nonstop, both in and out of class, though she hardly ever spoke to us (we knew why; it was taboo for teachers to become involved with students; taboos were quite a turn-on, of course)).

But he's here, and I know it, because he used our knock last night, on my front door.
Knock, knock, pause,
knock, pause, knock, knock, pause, knock, knock.
It said so much. It helped me to overcome my hunger, which was beginning to grate on me and making me focus on it, which I decided was pointless. And when I went to the door and found nothing but shadows upon shadows, it was okay, because I realized it was Sam's way of telling me he was here, at my house, but that he was playing the spying game, again, that he was ready to play the game, again.

So, now, not much later, a few hours at most, three or four hours, perhaps five hours at most, possibly six or seven hours, I'm still smiling, and I need to play the game.

~ * ~

You see, there's this: they lumber along behind me, I lug them along behind me: I had a puppy once who grew into a dog, and, when he was a puppy, though not when he was a dog (and had become independent), he followed me throughout my days, close enough, at times, that I felt his small puppy body against my ankles and calves, and I looked down at him, now and then, and said something affectionate ("I love you, Galway," or, "I love you very much, Galway."), or I said, "I don't want to step on you, Galway," which was his name, after a writer I liked, and he looked at me with his oversize puppy eyes and I knew he understood nothing I was saying, and, of course,
everything
I
was saying. So it's the same with these departed. I feel them, too.
I
see their oversize departed-people eyes staring at me throughout my days, and, then, throughout my nights, and in whatever dreams I have (which I want to remember, but can't; it's a shortcoming of age, or it's one of the perks of age—you can't remember the details of your dreams, but you can remember their very basic structure, and if it was pleasant, that structure, you look forward to sleep. I never look forward to sleep).

But the oversize eyes of these departed don't stare as much as
settle,
as if the mind beyond them (or behind them) is gone or is concentrating on some other topic—the life just past, maybe, or lovers, or the taste of food, which may or may not be past.

Hunger high into the bones.

I
read that phrase somewhere. And I'm repeating it because I'm a hungry plagiarist.

Have you noticed how well I punctuate?

What a miraculous thing the mind is Its what computers are
patterned after. And the mind can figure out many things (how to
get someone to the moon, how to bring someone back from
schizophrenia, how to take an old, tired heart out of someone’s
chest and put a new one in), but it has trouble with other things.
Like the things that Phyllis and Madeline and the boy on East
80
^th
Street introduced me to. The mind turns inward. The mind
stiffens up and says that it would rather leave such things alone.
Go to bed,
it says.
Get some new shoes,
it
says
. Turn on
the tube and watch Love Boat,
it says.
But the mind cannot fool itself long. At last it has to admit
that it has learned some very frightening things, some very
confusing things, but that it is still ignorant, too, and needs to
learn a lot more.