__________
(07FEB2010)
I lost Him. The stress getting to me, I guess. So I took eight more pills without telling House. Later when it was clear that we’d really be going home, I took eight more because I couldn’t remember anything again, and wasn’t shifting either.
Somehow I made it onto the bus getting us out of here and on to our home state. There was a little trouble as far as me and House getting on the same bus, but it worked out.
House sat beside me on the bus bench and slept on my shoulder. I could feel the hair of his head against my chin and right cheek. I looked out the window, the three angles of the American landscape. House started to fall over, so I put my left arm around his shoulders, then I fell in and out of sleep, House’s smaller body fitting more and more into the crook of my arm.
House asked me, _How do you want it to be when we there?_ I just want to stay Cool,_ I replied. Really I was saying I just want to remain Him.
I got really drunk last night and now everyone’s acting really impressed with me. Like I’m the coolest guy ever. I don’t remember the last five hours of it or so. Murc___ was impressed and said: _I didn’t realize you were so into politics_ referring to something I must’ve said last night.
The pills are kicking in and the vodka that House had handed me on the bus, along with the headphones blasting Crank Rock Steady. Invisible Man is still on my mind and that woman talking about what freedom is. They’re saying it will be an eight and a half hour bus ride to our home state.
Voices -- that’s all that comes through. I hear J__’s voice on the cell phone. He and his wife are going to meet me when I get off the bus. I’ll pass House off as my little brother if I have to, but probably won’t. I remember that he’s pretending too, and that I have to remember the ridiculously civilian storyline -- Obama, deployment, war, American middle class values, this new civilian world.
As long as I can hear my own conscience, I’m okay, right? I’m free, like the old woman said.
Ralph Ellison proved with the book Invisible Man that the world I’ve known as Real -- the waking world -- the world I’ve been seeing as the most important when shifting, is actually not Real, as UnReal as a dream.
Ralph Ellison proves that the un-intoxicated, un-inebriated, un-high, un-drunk world, isn’t Real either. No wonder K__ prefers to be high on weed all the time. He’s not missing out on anything Real.
The bus arrives in our home state, finally. It’s dark and the pills have caught up with me, and I’m a little paranoid that people can tell I’m high. J___ can’t make it to pick me up, but his wife and daughter have.
His daughter freaks me out. She seems to expect sexual favors from me. I introduce them to House, who, thankfully, is talkative with them.
They drive me to their house, where my Jeep is waiting. I ask House to drive, because the world is still three sharp angles at the same time. I pretend to sleep in the van ride and the jeep ride, but really I’m shifting like crazy.
It used to be easy to know whether I was in the wake world or the sleep world, whether I was in the past of the future, because in the sleep world I’m not numb, in the wake world, I am, but now my barometer is becoming useless.
We drive to his Mom’s apartment, a modern one in the big city. I’m still shifting while I’m awake instead of asleep and it’s making me feel unstable.
My perception is starting to waver. I’m sure it’s the pills, but I like the fearlessness required to see the world at another angle. House’s easy intimacy with me, like we‘re close brothers. The way his Mom and Aunt are treating me, as if they’re simply managing to accept that me and House are a gay couple, without actually saying it out loud.
Are me and House a gay couple? Did I somehow miss that? Is it obvious to everyone else? Shouldn’t there be a certain sexuality required for us to be a gay couple? Does House expect that sexuality from me? I’m going crazy. His Mom seems crazy to me, talking in a Minnie mouse voice and asking probing questions like where I work and where I live and who my family is.
His Aunt is an old hippie who can’t cook but I eat it anyway, wondering what is going on, trying to act normal. House takes me into another room and gives me some clothes so I can change out of my military uniform. The clothes are too small. It’s been awhile since I’ve worn civilian clothes.
Now that my perception is wondering if we’re a gay couple and I’m the last to know, I was hesitant about changing in front of House. House’s body is pretty normal. Small people always look fit. My body is larger, and taut. I remember how my abs were famous at the FOB, I would field questions about my biceps. A world away now.
I watch to see if he glances at my body. He doesn’t, but he has before, same as K___, same as W___, so the info doesn’t really help much.
I remember W___ watching me come out of the shower years ago when we were ridiculously young, he was talking to me, so it seemed normal, but then he took a strong glance at my shoot.
_You look great!_ House says to me, the black t-shirt embarrassingly skin tight and the pants without room enough for my shoot.
House asks me if the pills are still in my system. I lie and say no, so I don’t have to confess that I’ve been taking more than I tell him. There’s one bed and I wonder where I’m supposed to sleep, or where House is supposed to sleep, or what exactly is going on.
House convinces his Mom and Aunt to go on to bed and we’re alone. We go back into the bedroom and sit on the bed. His easy intimacy with me is still the same. Now when he reaches into my pockets I don’t feel the easy brotherly innocence of it anymore.
He pulls out some marijuana and gives me a class on it. He shows me how to break it up and how to prepare the paper. He shows me how to roll it. He smiles at me. He’s acting like he’s doing all this for me, like it’s a gift from him to me. When he looks in my eyes, it’s like he can see the memories I can’t remember. By the way he treats my eyes, those memories must be Bad.
His Mom’s apartment has a balcony that looks out over pine trees which grow not fifteen feet from the building. House leads me out there, and encourages me to smoke on the joint. I do, not knowing beforehand what he thinks is common knowledge -- it only takes a few hits. I took at least ten, and finally, suddenly, was high.
House turned a radio on low and started jumping around the balcony, skipping, dancing, throwing his face and neck up and down, back and forth; he’s experiencing his own high.
It raining lightly outside and the drops on pine needles become like crystals, while the needles themselves come sharp into focus, and the whole world is extremely beautiful, like being inside a Thomas Kincaid painting.
I thought it was wonderful, a wonderful way to live, because my mind was unaffected, only my eyes had changed, I didn’t feel drunken or inebriated at all, then suddenly I felt my neck straighten, my posture seemed to go back to its natural position, at the base of my neck came a strong pull. A strong, strong pull backwards, so strong it frightened me. Something’s wrong, I thought, something’s wrong. It pulled, and I pulled back, it pulled me backwards and I kept pulling forward.
No, this is the world, I thought inexplicably, this is the world, not that one. That one’s in my head.
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House led me back into the bedroom. He could tell I was high by the way I was looking around at everything. _Let’s watch a movie. You’ll be surprised what it’s like when you’re high,_ he said. He was acting like he was in his own little world, and I suppose I was too.
_Something’s wrong,_ I whispered to no one in particular, sitting on the bed, my back against the wall since there was no headboard.
_The first time I got high on weed, I stayed in the bathroom, throwing up,_ he said to me, _You’ll be alright, just relax._
_No, man, no, man, I’m getting pulled backwards into the wall, and it’s strong._
_Just allow it man, just allow it to take you wherever it takes you,_ he replied, and slowly turned back to the movie.
So I did. What was on the other side of the wall against my back was the Johnston House, in God‘s Country, vivid, except this time I was seeing it through the boy’s eyes. I was there, actually there, not remembering it, but actually there, standing there in the House, as if the future had been a dream, the escape, the Wild years, the Deployment. The shifting had never been this strong before, had never been this vivid.
_Holy f-ck,_ I whispered suddenly. _My heart stopped beating._
_What?_ House said, _Man, you just gotta stay calm. Maybe you’re gonna be sick._
_No, it’s not like that, this has nothing to do with my being high. There’s a memory behind me, and I keep getting pulled into it, and whenever I allow it my heart stops beating and I have to pull myself forward to let beat some more, then I go back into the memory, then I have to come back forward to get it beating again. Goddamn. Goddamn, I’m screwed, House. I f-cked up._
I started breathing hard, started losing control of my body, it would pull itself into the fetal position, then straighten back out, the whole time I’m rubbing my face and head with my hands.
_Just watch the movie, man. You’re tripping that’s all._
I realized that House had no idea what I was talking about. He comes from abuse, true, but I don’t, I come from Horrific, and what we have in common story-wise is simply incidental. I realized I was alone in this.
There were two perceptions. In order for one to live the other had to die. To me it was experienced as there being two worlds. One on one side of the wall and the other on the other. The true one was pulling me into it. I knew it was the true one because that was where all the memories were, and the strong feeling, so strong it frightened me because I wasn’t used to being so not-numb.
No, no, I thought to myself, I don’t want to destroy House. No, no.
I thought that once my perception changed, the House I knew would be gone forever, and the K___ I knew, and the W__ I knew. Because I was high, I felt the destruction harshly, so that I kept thinking: no no no.
This is the real world, the one in front of me, it has to be, it has to be, it has to be. But it wasn’t. The memories, the not-numbness, was on the other side of the wall, where my heartbeat would stop if I stayed too long.
Also when I entered the other side of the wall, the memory was in real-time, so that it was like I was starting my life over, would relive every memory over again, which meant I wouldn’t wake up and come back into the wake-world for another twenty six years. I was deeply afraid of that outcome. Would my body just stay in some sort of a coma? I was also feeling the terror I felt as a boy.
The memory was my parent’s bedroom and the room me and my sister shared when we were very little.
My little-boy chest would pound for days and nights, so that it would feel sore, from pounding for so long, the muscles and connective tissues simply would wear out from exhaustion, and literally hurt.
I was a baby and he was raping me, holding me with his two hands and using me like some hand-held rubber vagina, pounding into me, thrusting quickly back and forth and back and forth, faster and faster and faster . He was doing it as some sort of punishment. I was a baby, small enough to cradle in two hands.
House watched me, my body writhing and me rubbing my face and hands, trying to keep breathing.
_I’m going to leave you alone man; just rest, you know .. I guess you don’t want to watch the movie._
He slowly got up, and closed the door behind him. He was obviously disappointed, moving slowly because he was hoping I would snap out of it. I saw him with the new perception: the other-side of the wall perception.
He thinks I lied to him, I was the Real one, I was the one who had already gotten a true hold on Life, was perceiving it correctly. A person like that would be able to get infinitely high on weed and never trip. Now he doesn’t know what to think of me.
F-ck, I think when I see that look on his face, f-ck; I’ve f-cked up, f-ck, f-ck.
Then I went back to the memories. I didn’t know I came from horrific. I didn’t know I was a liar, claiming to be from something manageable like extreme child abuse and extreme sexual abuse and a case of amnesia of everything before the age of twelve. All along I came from the Horrific.
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