Wide Eyed (3 page)

I went into the bedroom, removed the penis candle from the nightstand, put it on a dish, and took it out to the porch, where it melted into a blue, waxy puddle. Then I placed it below the feeders in hopes of imprinting hummingbird tracks upon it. Back inside, I started slicing lemons to drop into a pitcher of sun tea. The knife slipped and cut through my fingernail. I sucked the blood off my finger, feeling happy to know where the pain came from. I thought of the bird, sucking her pain away.

START ME UP

When my mom and aunt were single, we lived in this bachelorette condo. I loved choreographing dances to the records they’d bring home—Fleetwood Mac, Genesis, Juice Newton. My aunt had a Doobie Brother-ish boyfriend, Bob, who had the face of a clown without makeup: it was roseate and overly happy in an unreadable way. He brought over some lobsters to cook one night after we’d already been pigging out on chocolate fondue with bread and cheese. I was thrilled to be eating chocolate for dinner and I wasn’t initially opposed to the lobsters. Still, when I saw their rubber-banded claws, I felt a twinge of pity, and once my mom started to boil them, things got much worse.

There were four lobsters, two in each pot, and they exuded that gnarly ocean smell as soon as they hit hot water. For several minutes they cried in shrill tones—in a special lobster emergency pitch, I suppose, used to call fellow bottom feeders. It was this
EE-EE-EE
sound, as if they were trying to enunciate, “Don’t cook me.” It sounded like they were either emerging from the depths of hell or entering it.

“Please, mom, stop!” I yelled.

“They’ll stop soon,” my aunt answered. “We made the water real hot.”

I didn’t care. There was no justification for this abomination of a meal, especially compared to a sweet crock-pot full of melted Hershey’s bars.

I had to block the cries from my ears like I was watching a horror movie. I pulled out the newly purchased Rolling Stones album,
Tattoo You
, and put on their hit song “Start Me Up.” It all makes perfect sense to me now because it was the first time the power of rock really hit me. That song was the perfect backdrop for the Satanic party going on in the kitchen. I sat on the brown shag carpet in front of the speaker, following the catchy guitar riff that I adore to this day, and stared at the olive-green velvet patterns on the wallpaper. I have no recollection of the lobsters being consumed, but my mother says they were delectable and buttery. She claims that the cries I heard were imagined. How would an eight-year-old imagine the sound of death?

Shortly after that feast, my mom started dating this man who always brought me or my calico cat a present which I didn’t want because it wasn’t from my dad. He’d bring nail polish, catnip, key chains. He French-kissed my mom after each date—I always spied on them from behind the upstairs banister. My brother stayed in his bedroom, sleeping peacefully, and I wondered how he could rest knowing our mother was out there macking on a stranger. I questioned whether or not my mom was being forced to kiss this guy against her will, lured by the expensive dinners he bought her. Still, she didn’t seem to fight when he reached his hairy hands behind her neck. I could see his face, eyes closed, swaying through the air like he was wasted on love. Their kisses were so lengthy that I had time to grab my cat and bring her back to pet her for the duration.

So how appalled was I when she and this same man got married and served lobster at their wedding dinner a few years later? I looked at that lobster on the white china plate and the Rolling Stones started playing in my head. My mom looked over at me and said, “You look pale, honey, try to eat,” but there was no possibility of that. I started to feel nauseous and excused myself to go vomit in the banquet hall bathroom. My grandma held my hair back and said, “He’s not so bad.” She knew how messed up it was to be getting a stepfather. But since he wasn’t mean, I had no real excuse to hate him.

In fact, a few years later when the
Beatles vs. Rolling Stones
debate had begun between my real father and I, my stepdad was the one who sided with me on the Rolling Stones’ side. The two dads were making me decide which band reigned supreme, because apparently for true fans there was no middle ground. At first, when my real dad passed down his Beatles record collection to me, I’d freaked out on
The White Album
super hard. I sang the songs “Julia” and “I Will” in every shower because the length of time it took to sing those two songs in a row was a perfect amount of time to get clean. But then my stepdad gave me his first pressing of
Their Satanic Majesties Request,
persuading me to listen to it by hinting that all the Beatles’ faces were hidden in the holographic cover. (I still haven’t found Ringo.) When my real dad opted out and said he’d always liked The Who best anyway, I knew that my stepdad had won the battle, sort of. I mean, I still love the Beatles.

But the Rolling Stones rule. I love
Tattoo You
’s inner sleeve, showing a goat’s hoof wearing a stiletto heel. This either means that women and animals are equal or that sexy women are demonic. Earlier Rolling Stones—from
Meet the Rolling Stones
to
Between the Buttons
with that jaunty song “Something Happened to Me Yesterday”—are great because Mick tries to sound cute but naughty. The more loaded-sounding
Goat’s Head Soup
with “Angie” is okay, but Mick sounds constipated. When I play this album, I attune my ears to Charlie’s epic drumming or to Ron’s subtle bass lines.
Exile on Main Street
and
Some Girls
are both perfect. Every three years I have a Mick Jagger movie marathon, which begins and ends with
Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus,
featuring Brian Jones and Marianne Faithful, sick from just having aborted the baby that would have been Jagger’s. Maybe she was nauseous like I was nauseous when I had to get a new parent—gaining and losing relatives must be similar. I watch her on film and think about how hard it would’ve been for her to do that scene, singing in a circus ring under the spotlight after such trauma. Mick must have a sadistic side—in
Cocksucker Blues,
a groupie sadly wonders aloud about what sperm she currently has inside her, Keith’s or Mick’s.

Speaking of sperm, here’s the connection between Mick’s sperm and the dread of acquiring a stepdad— having a new man in the house throws the balance off. I liked it when it was just my mom, my aunt (who was always visiting), and myself. My little brother counted, but he was too small to assert his male power. I sang Beatles songs in the shower because I wanted to channel my dad, my protector, while I was naked. Not to sound inbred, but I didn’t want my stepdad coming in and dangling his penis around like a big guy. Nudity in the presence of your father is one thing, but nudity with a fullgrown, musk-scented mystery man who’s balling your mother is entirely different. It’s not cool. He’s the sperm spreader, the seed planter. And he’s sowing his seeds in the wrong garden.

Lying in bed one night when I was seventeen—just before I moved out on my own—I had a conversation with Mick Jagger. I was thinking about how much I hated having this random man around the house, and I was getting really repulsed by the whole sperm thing. I’d been studying oocytes—reproduction and cellular biology—in science. Mick’s voice came into my head, saying, in his British accent, “Sperm’s not so bad, mate.”

So I said, “Antoni van Leeuwenhoek discovered spermatozoa in 1679 during one of his research sessions wherein he placed semen under his self-made microscopes.” I was totally nerdified. “Leeuwenhoek claimed that he got his sperm samples ‘not by sinfully defiling himself, but as a natural consequence of conjugal coitus.’”
¹

Jagger laughed. “Yeah, right.” Then he asked, “What else did this sick bloke do?”

“He dissected animals’ genital organs,” I said. “For example, he cut the testicles off a rabbit so he could see how many sperm were inside it.”

“And what is this I hear about your not liking lobster meat, young lady?” Jagger asked. “I eat it constantly because it makes me horny.”

THE TIDE OF MY MOUNTING SYMPATHY

But get thee back, my soul is too much charg’d
With Blood of thine already.
—Macbeth, Act V sc. 7

My friend Karen walks in, out of breath and wearing one shoe.

“Your fucking friend just attacked me,” she says.

She was in my basement music room so no one heard her yelling through the egg-crate covered walls. I’m hosting a Hawaiian-themed party. Ukuleles were blaring until I turned them down to hear her out. Apparently, Karen was playing guitar when John flipped the light switch off, grabbed her leg, and yanked off her sandal, which was strapped around her ankle. Her ankle’s turning purple!

“What’s wrong with him?” she asks.

“Why did he want your shoe?” I ask.

“He tried to rub my calf. Then I started yelling and he wouldn’t let me leave,” she says.

We can hear someone hurling in the bathroom.

I feel so ashamed it’s like I stole the shoe. Then Charlie, a man I barely know, tells us he’s going downstairs to “throw the creep out.” That creep used to be my friend. I didn’t invite him tonight, but he heard about it somehow and came anyway. Charlie brings John through the kitchen, where I’m watching Karen rub her ankle.

“You have to leave,” I say to him.

“What did I do?” he asks.

“You attacked Karen,” I say. “Get out. Don’t come back.”

Karen stands behind me. “Give me my shoe,” she says. John pulls it from the back of his pants. What a freak.

John walks down the street, cussing the whole way. My house is on Macbeth Street. That’s the main reason I moved in.
Macbeth
is my favorite Shakespeare play. I attribute violent outbreaks to the street name. I’m careful to eliminate weapon-like items from my list of belongings because one day I might go crazy and start chopping people up like in the Polanski film. I would’ve made
Macbeth
a gorefest too if my wife had just been stabbed to death by Mansons.

One time, John grabbed me and tried to kiss me. Another time, he stole my camera that had pictures of my girlfriends and me in bathing suits. At my old house, he used to sit on my porch waiting for me to come out. Every couple hours I’d crack the door open and ask him to leave. “I don’t want to talk to you,” I’d say. He’d sweat, telling me he had to see me. When I asked him why, he’d mumble something about my socks, or say, “Hey, I like those jeans you’re wearing,” and I’d shut the door in his face. He kept escaping from the mental hospital. He had taken too much acid and started stalking girls during his first semester of college. He’d hang around the dorms even after being expelled, following girls to class then waiting outside their classrooms. I felt sorry for him; he had restraining orders against him, and doctors said he was schizophrenic. I never called the police when he bothered me. He was tripping out on female beauty. I wasn’t flattered, but I suppose I was glad he didn’t think I was repulsive. He didn’t seem dangerous, just fetishistic. He’d show up now and then, and I’d wonder how he got my phone number or address.

I read werewolf books to comprehend how a person can be so attracted to someone that he wants to devour them. Lycorexia is a canine desire that manifests in humans as a need to stuff oneself with human flesh. But werewolves crave putrid meat. John wants live women. Sometimes I imagine what he would do to me if I let him trip out all the way. Would he eat me? He’s hairy. I think he would bite. The time he tried to kiss me, he pulled my head toward his mouth and clumsily pressed my lips hard against his teeth, as if I were a ripe peach he was biting into. His hand clutched the back of my head. To gain control, I had to peel his hand off with both of mine. Are his teeth sharp? Does he get vicious at night? Does he howl? Does he have two personalities?

The next morning, we wake up from our drunken stupors. The house reeks of piss because someone took a leak on the couch. Karen and I drag the cushions out to the curb, then the frame. I’ll get a new sofa. That one was only $25 at the thrift store. There are seven people who never made it home. One guy puts coffee on, and Karen and I talk about John some more.

“You should stay away from him,” she says.

“I try, but he finds me,” I say. “He’s not going to hurt anyone, he’s just gross.”

“What if you’re alone though?” she asks. “He’s weird.”

“Barf Man was weird,” I say.

Barf Man was Joshua, another grody guy who used to bug me. I literally had to move across the state to get rid of him. He’d give girls heroin if they’d never used it so they would get high and barf. Once you got used to getting high, he’d lose interest because you weren’t barfing enough for him to get off. He was six feet tall, had long black hair down to his butt, and always wore a shiny black trenchcoat and hat. He had a Glock collection.

“Want to see my new gun?” he asked me.

“Sure,” I said.

We were alone in my dorm room. It was my sophomore year of college, about 2 a.m. I had a history test the next day, but I decided I’d rather look at a weird man’s gun than study Mesopotamia. Joshua put a bundle on my bed and unwrapped his Glock, a handgun of some sort. I don’t know about guns, except that some are ugly and some are elegant. This one was slender, had a comfortable handle, and looked like a gun James Bond would use.

“It’s pretty,” I said.

“Let’s go to the beach,” he said. He looked down at the floor, sad and resolved. I had no idea what he was sad about.

We drove an hour out to the beach, over windy roads through farmland. He told me he was bringing his loaded gun to protect us. We parked his beat-up old Volvo station wagon, smoked some heroin, and then he asked me to climb into the back end with him. I realized maybe he had been sad back in my room because he thought he was going to kill me. I figured it was better to make out with him than to die. He was a moody dude. He’d come into my room sometimes and start bawling, crying so hard he couldn’t even tell me what was wrong.

When he tried to roll on top of me, I had to think of something quick. I told him I felt sick. He perked up and grew sympathetic, like I was his baby bird and he was going to feed me a worm. He walked me to the end of the pier where I bent over and made myself puke into the water. That’s the only time I’ve been able to barf on command. My legs felt rubbery, and Joshua was clearly into this. He stooped beside me, looking up through my legs at my spewing mouth.