30.11.08

Chapter 16

4/29/07

Mrs. Robinson


I wake up in a cold sweat, breathing heavily, naked. And I look to my left—it is the monster; she is fast asleep.
We all have monsters in our closets, but I have one in my bed.

It is at this moment, I realize that my arm is trapped beneath her silky frame. And I am thinking about my therapist. I am thinking about the endless list of crude sexual acts.
The coyote.

Not Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics—the sex worker activist organization, whose soul purpose is to decriminalize prostitution. I am thinking about a different coyote. It is what you do when you wake up next to a horrifically unattractive broad after a long night of drinking. You realize your arm is trapped underneath her, and the only way you can give her the slip is if you gnaw off your own arm. But I don’t want to get blood on my sheets; I just bought them.

Yet, I have been in this very situation countless times before, and I have a particular, foolproof method. The Tuck and Roll.

I begin to hold her close, and then gently roll her away, while pushing my imprisoned arm against the bed. I move with her, rather than push her away, that way she stays asleep and I am able to free my arm—the only thing that is asleep at the moment. Yet, as I am attempting this method, the phone rings something loud and obnoxious. She wakes up and looks at me with those fiery eyes and her aptly scorched countenance. I am too sober for this, for her.

I wipe down my phone with a sanitizing wipe and answer it. It is my father; he is crying hysterically. And in between pants and wails he tells me that my grandmother is deathly ill; she is in the hospice and my father wants me to go and visit the Crypt Keeper. I assure him that I will and hang up the phone.

“What’s wrong?” sleeping ugly asks, now wide-awake.
“It’s my grandmother, she’s going to die,” I respond nonchalantly.
“Well are you going to go see her?” she asks as if she believes I truly have any real human emotions, as if I care.
“No.”
“Well—well why not?” she asks, unable to fathom such candor.
“It’s part of life,” I say. “She should’ve died decades ago.”
“I think you should go. It’s the least you can do; she’s your grandmother,” she says unconvincingly.
But I just want her to leave.
“You’re right, I guess. I guess your right. Fine. Fine I’ll go visit the old hag.”
“Do you want me to come, you know, for comfort?”
She came last night—that was…sufficient.
“No that’s ok; this is something I need to do for myself,” I say admirably. “I’m going to head out now.”
“Ok, well do you want my number, to call me in case of anything? To talk about the book even?” she asks desperately, like so many others.

And…Action.
“No—no it’s better that I just remember you for who you were last night, not for who you really are. That…well that doesn’t concern me. Good luck though.”
“What about a quick one before you go?” she persists.
“No…I’m too sober for that right now,” I say without ever looking back at her, at my past.

And I leave her there naked, with her smooth, silky skin and her ugly insecurities. A beautiful swan—now an ugly duckling. And I leave her there with the pattern of pain meticulously stitched across her face. It wraps her soul, topped with a bow, left under a goddamn Christmas tree. I think she understands the book now. And I leave her there to sulk in her own shame, so that she knows to never fuck with me again, to never make me feel helpless again. That car accident made me realize the control I have over my own life can be taken away. It is fleeting; it was fleeting.
Never again.

As I enter the hospice, I am bombarded with the stench of disinfectant, piss, must, and the metallic smell of blood. It reeks of death.
What’s a four letter word for fecal matter?

But I am drunk as hell and my forelimb burns from all the hand sanitizer I put on it during my drive here. I pull out some more hand sanitizer and generously apply it to my hands and arms. Then, I put on my famed pair of gloves.

I am walking through the main room and dodging old people dressed appropriately in hospital gowns and slippers. The slit in the back reveals their old, wrinkly butts, drowsy from the exhaustion of life. The sagging of their asses is much like the growth rings of a tree—the more they droop the older they are.

And I am lost as hell because my grandmother is intensely delusional. She has changed her name about three times since I was born and I have no idea which celebrity she thinks she is now. But I love her because she was the one who had shown me the beauty of Ayn Rand, James Joyce, John Steinbeck and George Eliot.

I am wandering from room to room, peering through door cracks, and seeing old men beating off to Baywatch, waving bottles of Viagra in the air, praising the magic blue pills. I see elderly women knitting quilts with Nazi signs surreptitiously lining the outer edges of a message—I love my grandchildren. Love dressed in the costume of a heart.
What’s a seven letter word for irony?

I am stumbling from room to room, my breath reeking of Southern Comfort—such an appropriate name. I get to room twenty-three, and I am thinking about symbolism. And there, in the cold, uninviting room is a woman in her seventies, looking at a photo album—snapshots of her life. She doesn’t seem to notice me. I wait a few minutes; I observe her from afar. I am searching for the right moment to enter her life.

A trail of tears travels from the base of her eyes and meanders down her cheeks to the edges of her lips. She sniffs. I enter slowly and stand directly in front of her hospital bed. She never looks up. Another trail forms. I sit down at the foot of her bed, never saying a word.

She coughs and utters, “They don’t visit me anymore…my grandchildren.” She never looks up, and says, “My oldest, he and I used to go to the shore in the summer. He would run around, the sun shining over us, and he would collect shells and sticks and he would build these intricate sandcastles right along the edge of the beach. He would spend hours building and shaping and molding. And I would watch him from a distance, observing the progression of his masterpiece. You know, I find that to be the most beautiful part—the process. It’s where the artists are most vulnerable. They’re looking deep inside themselves, past the lies and the façade and they’re finding something unique, something worth sharing. They’re finding themselves.”

I take out a clove cigarette. “Do you mind?” I ask politely.
“No dear…actually may I have one?” she asks in an attempt to seem youthful.
“Of course,” I say without hesitation, knowing damn-well that if she is in this place, she’ll be dead any moment anyway. But I’m praying to a heedless God the cigarette won’t kill her.

And she coughs something mighty and continues, “And when he finally finished his work of art—his sandcastle—he would look at it with great appreciation. He found a peace in himself that wasn’t there in the beginning, and he would smile—this big beautiful smile—and then do nothing. He realized his work was finished and he would just sit there and do nothing. And a few hours later, the tide would come inching in until it reached the gates of the castle. It would pillage his masterpiece, leaving behind nothing but a mound of sand, a few scattered shells, and some sticks poking through the dune. And that peace disappeared. I could see a bright, glimmering pain in the twinkle of his eye. Then, he would get up and start all over again.” And she ashes the cigarette into a cup of tapioca pudding and continues, “You see—you have to understand—an artists’ work is not immortal. Everything in life has an end; everything dies. A few strokes of paint on a canvas or sticks in the sand can’t change that.”

And I have found my new objective; I want her to be a part of my masterpiece. I want her to be a few strokes on my canvas. She is nearing the gates of death and I want her to experience pain one last time. I want to give her my perspective before she dies. And her life will be but a few lines in my work of art, a few sticks in the sand, before the waves come and take her away.

Name: Greta Cubicula
Age: 76
Height: 5’1
Weight: 135
Eye Color: Blue
Hair Color: Grey
Perfume of Choice: Formaldehyde
Book of Choice: A collection of photo albums.

And it is all about perspective.
She hands me a picture of her grandson and says, “You know, you remind me a lot of him. You have that same look in your eyes.”
I have never really seen this woman before.

She hands me a picture of her husband and says, “And this is my husband, Osvaldo, recently deceased, but everyone in our village in Colombia would call him Pío. Look at his eyes; he’s got that same twinkle.” She looks admirably at the photo, which is in black and white, and old, but—for some reason—survives in good condition, which is more than I can say for Greta. “I loved him…love him.”

I examine the picture and I see this youthful man, reminiscent of a young James Dean, with perfect teeth and a head full of hair.
A white smile in a dark room.

I put out my cigarette, take off my gloves, and wash my hands in her sink.
She puts out her cigarette in the uneaten tapioca pudding and continues, “He was the most beautiful man I’ve ever met. He was strong and audacious—much like you. He had a cock like a stallion. We would spend our nights just making love…fucking till the sun came, until we came.”
And I am caught off guard. I quickly learn that this woman is nothing more than a perverted grandmother. A freak in between hospital sheets.

“Have you ever practiced tantric sex?” she says without thinking twice.
Now I am beginning to feel comfortably uncomfortable.
“No ma’am, I can’t say that I have.”
“Please, call me Greta.”
And she talks like my grandmother.
“Okay Greta—”

“You see, the thing about tantric sex is, its very fundamental features revolve around the experience of subtle energies within our sensual incarnation, and the accessing of these energies both to enhance pleasure and challenge our egotism into its dissolution. You see, tantric sexuality often cultivates ecstatic consciousness as well as increased spiritual awareness of this erotic consciousness that pervades our human embodiment as well as everything that contextualizes this embodiment.”

She sounds like a sexual Britannica, a prurient Webster, but I understand her licentiousness only when I see the book Juliette lying on top of her personal desk. And I think I love her.

“The key element you want to accomplish here is to have both partners climax at the exact same moment,” she says, illustrating her words using hand motions. “This does not necessarily involve coital communication so much as it requires a remarkable sexual understanding between two sensual beings. It transcends this concept of just getting off, this notion of external pleasure, into a realm where ecstasy becomes internal, ethereal.”

And I am at half-mast. I realize that it is time for me to play the role.
And…Action.
“You know, you’re a very beautiful woman,” I say in a familiar voice.
“Oh, thank you young man, you are very flattering, but you don’t have to be so nice. I know that I look way beyond my years,” she says, her excitement now transforming into melancholy. “I’m nothing more than a lonely woman wrought with depression.” And she breaks down. “These damn wrinkles drape my face…they mask the beauty that’s underneath—my youth; they cover up my contentment. I’m in no place to acquire the gift or the grace of a face lift.” And she looks up at the ceiling, trying desperately to capture the tears at the base of her eyes so that they stream back to their source, but cries, “You see, the world’s a lonely place, my boy, dreadfully lonely when you’re old.”

And I’m thinking—we’re all connected, intertwined.

“You see, Greta, it’s not about outer beauty to me. Much like tantric sex, it’s about this—this inner magnificence that generates an understanding between two sensual beings. You see, when you close your eyes, your partner is flawless; your partner can be anyone,” I say, trying to sound like her. “But it is at that point of incision that everything on the outside is meaningless. It is at that moment of coitus, we transcend that notion of external beauty. I can see you for who you really are, and that’s all that matters.”
“Young man, you’re trying to seduce me.”
I laugh.
“Well, aren’t you?”
“I’m merely trying to have a suitable conversation, that’s all.”

She looks at me with those wise, kind eyes and says, “Do I know you? I don’t recall ever meeting you, but there’s a vague familiarity that presents itself when you’re in the room.”
“I get that all the time,” I say while winking with the same wise, kind eyes.
“Well, why are you here?” she asks with such impatient curiosity.
Unable to answer I respond, “Excuse me?”
“Why are you here? At this hospice, at this moment.”

“Well, I don’t really remember why. I guess—I guess it never really was that important,” I lie, sort of.
“Then, I’m glad it wasn’t. You know, no one ever visits me anyway. No one of importance. It’s nice to see somebody real for a change.”
“Real?” I ask, fearing for this woman’s sanity.
“Yes…real. For some strange reason I get visitors who seem, to me, to be nothing more than a figment of my imagination, as if the conversations we’ve had have all been dreamt up by me and my withering mind,” she says, closing her eyes, then opening them methodically, trying to convince herself I am not just an hallucination.
“Well I can assure you I’m real. And it was a pleasure talking with you, Greta.”

“Do you have to leave so soon?”
“Don’t worry I’ll be back tonight,” I assure her. “I’ll bring you a nice meal and an exquisite bottle of champagne. But could you do something for me?”
“What is it dear?” she asks excitedly.
“Wear your hospital’s best for me. Slip into your best hospital gown and try and remember some of those tricks you were telling me about,” I say half-jokingly. I wink at her and she smiles, her tongue gazing at me through gaps in her teeth.
And…Cut.

Next thing I know, I am driving down Boulevard East going sixty-five miles per hour; my head is hanging out the driver side window as the manufactured breeze generates tears that escape my eyes and dance in reverse.
What’s an eight letter word for boundless?

Next thing I know, I am in my car on the Turnpike, sitting next to two bottles of Dom Perignon, one empty. Transference. Next thing I know, I am swaggering down the hospice corridor, looking for a Greta Cubicula. No one has heard of her. And I am starting to believe I really am going crazy. I feel as though my lack of sleep has finally caught up to me. And for an instant, I feel like God, as if every event in my life up until now has been a tale of fiction—something I have created, as if I am just writing a contemporary Bible. A neo-Old Testament. And I'm feeling infinite.

But at that exact moment of transcendence, I stumble upon what looks like Greta’s room. Bottle in hand, I greet her with open arms and pants button.

And she looks at me cautiously and says, “You’re drunk.”
“So?” I ask, slurring my one syllable word. “I feel nothing.”
“It’s only temporary, my dear.”
“Everything is temporary, remember Greta?” I laugh.
“Well then, sweetie, pour me a glass.”

I reach into my bag of goodies and hand her a Peking Duck in a doggie bag and two Percocets. She smiles. Then, I set out two champagne flutes and pop open the bottle. Her smile now engulfs her face.

“Let’s make a toast,” she shouts youthfully.
“To—to what?”
“To inner beauty,” she says, now screaming.
“To inner pleasure,” I shout at the same decibels.

And the flutes they clash as the champagnes splash, like waves, they pass until the last drops trickle down the side of the glass—remnants of our empty pasts. And she handles herself now with a loose bluster that she once had when she was younger, more naïve. And I wonder, how old she is under that gown. But I want her now.
What’s a twelve letter word for destruction?

And the director yells, ‘Action!’
“So…Gret-t-t-ta…you going show me some of those moves?” I say like an old school, black pimp.
“Moves, my dear?” she asks, utterly confused.
“Hand me your glass,” I say in an attempt to regain my composure.

I fill her flute to the brim, realizing that I am just not getting the part down. She kills the champagne in one swift sip. A sip that rivals a gulp. And she stares me down.

I am staring up at the ceiling fixtures, then down at the waves of her eyes. I want them to splash down her sandy cheeks; I want to destroy whatever is left of the masterpiece, of her beauty. Right now she is but a mere chalet in the sand, and I will not stop till there is nothing left of her. Not a mound, not a shell, not a stick. I am going to give her but a taste of immortality; and at that moment of intransience, I am going to drown her in her own ignorance. And she will finally feel the sharp grip of mortality.

And I grill her beautifully burning, aquatic eyes and say, “I want to make you feel young again…feel alive again.” But just for a moment.

“Ah, now I know you are just an illusion. A fabrication of the mind.”
And she thinks she is playing God.
“I like the gloves; they’re very…fitting,” she says, attempting to give me a compliment.
“No glove, no love.” I shout in such a stupid, drunken voice.
She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t get it.

I set the glasses on the nightstand, lean in towards her and breathe in her loneliness. I lean in a little closer, my lips touching hers, and I taste her despair. My hands steadily move toward her mound and I feel her dejection. I know this feeling all too well. It is the only thing real I have felt since my first love, my first true love.

Her head hangs back and she silently screams, the fictional words reverberating through the colorless room. And her breasts stare back at me, drooping like anemic flowers. And I enter her gracefully, slipping in with such ease, her rosebud moist like a virgin’s lips. Like an icicle on a grille. Verily, it is the only thing that hasn’t really drooped with age. A gothic Vogel with cathedral-shaped arches. A baroque attic with elaborate drapery. Her hands clasp my arms; she is holding on for dear life. And this could never be closer to the truth.

And my words echo, “What is it that keeps you from going, keeps you from quitting, just leaving this place behind?”
“I guess—I guess I’ve just been waiting for this moment…waiting for you to come back.”
And when you close your eyes, your partner can be anyone. But she doesn’t realize—the soul is still there, it still pervades this misty, calloused air.

Yet, she continues to scream, “Oh, Pío! I knew you’d be back. My stallion. My savior, my Pío.”
And she is nearing the point of no return, and I am whispering into her ears her requiem. “I know what death is like; I feel it in my dreams—A rush of blood, a touch of love, a tearing at the seams. Bounded by the hands of death, just drowning in his voice.
I'm trying desperately to catch my breath, but my arms were lost at the deathly cost of a butcher knife's rejoice.”

And she moans.
And the eulogy continues, “So sell me what I've come to buy. How much does athanasia cost? A broken leg, a weepy eye, a heart that I, as a child, crossed?”

I am digging deep; I am razing her soul—mounds of dirt before an epitaph. Everyone just wants to be remembered. Remember?

And my macabre voice sings, “A word as simple as goodbye could suture this glowing heart of gold. And as riches pour from inside, I, decrepit, abhor the old.”

And the vultures they tap at her window. They salivate at the very sight of her elastic flesh. The vultures’ eyes grow wide, expanding like rubber balloons. The jet-black hue of the room, I think, soon becomes the same as a blink.

And the chilling choir chants, “I sip, in vain, from this fountain hoping to find my youth, but I couldn't find the helm of time, I only found the truth.”
And bubbles sway inside her IV. A medicated cauldron for the old hag. Lake Placid in a bag.
And the vultures croon, “So bade goodbye these hazel eyes, this age old lie is a grave demise. So pay the price and bathe in sighs, for tonight, the light hides from the skies.”

A Solar eclipse.
Life is euthanasia.

And for a moment, I shade the people who hate the sun’s disparaging rays.
And to the sun I scream—

You great ball of nothing in the sky, you’re just as shy as the clouds are high. No thank you, sun, I think you’re done, for I’m the one who knows who dies.

And I murmur to Greta, “And your last breath, it reeks of death. These bones are left, alone, bereft.”

And she collapses. And the electrocardiogram slows down till it is nothing more than a few mounds on a screen.

And I whisper softly into her left ear, “Tell me Greta, is it God that chokes the hopeful throat to a celestial place, profound?”

And I whisper into her right ear—a whisper that rivals a scream, “Or does Mother Nature write the note to an apathetic ground?"

Here lies Greta Cubicula: A Pervert, A Loving Grandmother to No One, to Nothing, A Mortal.

And I am remembering those sandcastles, and how much I hated the waves for ruining my masterpieces.

And my grandmother's eyes roll back, while I continue to whisper, “I am the Sistine of all your dreams, my hands unclean, with what’s between. I am the codeine and you’re the fiend. I am the flat line on your machine. Your life—it is meaningless to me. Hayden Santiago, not darling, not sweetie, what you get is what you see, a figment of your reverie, a masterpiece.”
Satisfaction Guaranteed.

And I look over at the director, but he is too speechless to speak.