I push off from the side of Manual High, running up the almost 10 degree grade of Ligonier, blasting into Madison golf course, I don’t know where I am going only that I am leaving in five days and that I want more than anything for my last memory of Manual to be of running. Before I realize it I have skirted down the cement ribbon that is Sterling avenue in West Peoria and have arrived at the Nuclear woods, inexplicably dipping into the leafy leftover autumnal foliage across the street from the Franciscan Center, lost, pushing my way down to Farmington road, up the six degree grade of Sterling Hill, by myself simply running, thinking how high schools with successful state bound cross-country teams almost always run a twenty-mile workout once a week, realizing I am the only one who chose to individually work out today, wondering if, on the converse side of town Ingersoll and D’amico are running long, propelling past my second golf course, down past the Taco Bell where Patrick’s bike received its second flat of the day last summer in mid-august, the day we dared each other to ride out to the Tricentennial playground in Glen oak park and ended up making a sixteen mile loop to Northwoods mall. I run past SuperX, past Pizza Inn, Past Theo’s, past Eggroll Express in the shadows of Holy Family church with their inexplicable DIET RITE machine jugheaded out in front. I am falling in the direction of the mall, thinking about Dawn Michelle from last summer, thinking about how it felt when every second was somehow new, wondering if she got kicked out of her house again, wondering how she performed at state speech meet. From the parking lot in the mall where the parking lot (or, according to Mr. Reents' British jargon, car park) is demarcated by overhead scrabble numbers. I have not been to the mall since early January, my last date with Renae. Renae who now despises me. Renae who loathes me. Renae who wished death on me. Renae whose picture I caught Eggplant Elmore stroking the holier than thou Shepherd staff to during the Lutheran Youth Conference in Chicago when I briefly moshed with the red-headed girl, when I slow danced with a girl the size of a city fire hydrant who was classy and well-read and then made a vow to get back to Bollingbrook to find the red headed girl.
When the mall parking lot comes into imminent view I
sprint like there is no tomorrow.
In my periscopic peripheral vision I can see
Long John Silvers and the confetti spate of Seagulls seemingly kamikaze
nose-diving at the establishment from both sides. I look at the sunken Chinese
garden in West Lake. Somehow it is last autumn again and somehow every kiss is
new, how try as I made I just couldn’t stop willing to weld every anatomical
scent of my body into that of Renae’s forehead. It is Maundy Thursday and I am
dripping with sweat. It is Maundy Thurs and I am still moonwalking into the
cool breath of late autumn six month earlier. Even though I am sweaty and I
reek I go inside the mall and dip my head in the water fountain near the
restrooms, outside of Aladdin’s arcade. More and more youth are huddled around
MORTAL COMBAT than Street Fighter two, b/c it is more sanguinary. Because there
is more blood. Even from here I can smell Gloria Jeans coffee upstairs. I think about Patrick always quoting Hudson
Hawk and wonder aloud why you always have time to purchase a cappuccino but
never have time to drink one. The clock
in the center of the mall that looks like Big Be dipped in a vat of chrome
stated that it is quarter past three. Even though I am sweating and dehydrated
I order a cappuccino. I have fifteen dollars in my pocket. I take two sips and lose myself and jaunt
down to the payphone. I have her number memorized like a confirmation bible
verse. I pick up the phone clack in the pieces of silver Judas venally betrayed
for the sight of seeing my Lord and Savior crucified and strewn on a wooden
plus sign. The nautical whorl of the dial tone picks up after the fourth ring.
I ask if I might please speak with Dawn.
Dawn Michelle.
***
I have not heard from Dawn since December when she
moved back in with her folks. I called her on her 18th birthday and
we spoke for three hours. I tried calling her the night I won the Young
Columbus contest only her mom picked up vehemently demanding the identity of
the late night suitor. I want to call her in a weird way and thank her. I want
to thank her for last summer. I want to thank her for everything she taught me
about music and culture. I want to thank her for always having the time to hang
out with me. I want to tell her that I remember vividly the one time we kissed,
how I couldn’t refrain from sucking on the maraschino cherry that was her
bottom lip. I want to thank her for inculcating me into the world of kickass
music. I want to tell her how I swear my vocabulary has been enriched simply by
sitting Kindergarten round up crossed-leg style in front of the shoreline of
her sentences. I want to tell her that I
had no clue what blow job really was until she elucidated the details to me on
the phone. I want to tell her how I still fantasize about her bopping around
her bedroom listening to Depeche Mode’s early stuff in her panties, pogoing up
and down.
I want to tell her that when she speaks the cadence
and lapse of her narration turns the English language into porn.
A male voice alights the polar end of the phone.
He refers to me as dude.
***
"Yer that dude who was always hanging out with Dawn
last summer. That really young dude. Her little Theatre friend.”
I tell who I can only surmise is one of Dawn Michelle’s
stoners brother yes. He says that he can tell by my uber-polite mannerisms.
“Uhm, listen, Dawn, yeah. Hold on a second.”
I want to tell him that I am calling from a payphone. I wait. A recorded voice on the other end of
the phone that if I would like to continue this call I need to add an additional
seventy-five cents. I deposit the remainder of my change into the chrome slit.
I wait. Three minutes later the same semi-stoned voice picks up.
“Yeah man, she’s like not hear right now.”
“It’s okay I can call her back.”
I want to tell Dawn that I am finally mature. I want
to tell her that I am going overseas. I
want to thank Dawn in the way I wasn’t able to thank Coach Ricca.
The voice on the opposite end of the phone is
reffering to me as dude. He is saying dude, you don’t understand dude.
“I mean dude she’s not here right now. And even if you
call her back she might not be here. Even if she is here and you call she might
not be here. Here. Getting what I’m saying bro?”
I tell him that I get what he is saying bro. I hang up
the phone without saying goodbye. I still have a long way to run before I make it
back home. Before I commune with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ on the night
he first broke bread.
***
He is having trouble breathing. He is telling Martha
that it is nothing. He sits glazed eye in front of the television set, in front
of the TV tray. There are countless updates from Metropolis. He is having chest
pains. He is taking his medicine in front of his wife of forty years, placing
the pills below the tip of his tongue, going to the bathroom and spitting them
out before they dissolve. He has chest pains. It feels like someone is playing
a kettle drum with the inside of a scythe below his neck. Occasionally he titters. He says it is
nothing. Whatever if failing inside the damp –sack of potatoes he mistakes for
his own flesh cannot come soon enough.
***
It is Maundy Thursday and I have left everything
behind and it continues to rain. I am a
good seven miles from my abode in West Peoria. I told mom that I am going for a
long run. I will start packing for good sometime tomorrow scrunching my attire
for the next thirteen days into the suitcase my grandmother bought me. Rather than run down War Memorial I sprint up four blocks and turn down glen, trotting past the lariat club. Past the kiln like brick covering of the rival Lutheran school in town. The neighborhood with the coifed lawns near where purportedly Karen Christmas lived. I wonder if she heard that I was this year’s winner. I wondered if her wedding-cake cheeks smiled. I am running. It is Maundy Thursday, Christ celebrating Passover. Christ Breaking bread and sipping wine that is his body. Christ being interrogated by fellow fishermen in naiveté if he the one on schedule to betray.
.
It is Maundy Thursday.
As is the case Mom’s hand bells are ringing tonight
and on Easter Sunday. I have run further than I thought. Without
giving a second thought I turn on University and begin head home. The rain is
plopping, forming asterisks on wet cement. Before I know it the front of my
limbs have subconscious rowed in front of Peoria Players Theatre. There is a
sign for CCT. The play this year is to be OLIVER.! My sister Beth is going to
Music camp in Red Lodge Montana come early June and the family is taking a
vacation out west. I will miss Steamboat, the pinnacle of my summer, for the
first time since 1987. I wonder if Pam
will be directing. I wonder if the posse from Washington will be car pooling to
Peoria for rehearsals. I think about Anastasia. I wonder if Betsy will be
involved. Something inside my chest can’t possibly foresee Dawn powdering
make-up on anyone else’s chin but the angular slope of my own visage.
.
It is raining overhead.
The drizzle is transitioning into a down pour. I am transitioning
into tears. Jesus wept. The rain has an almost olfactory saw dust flavor
attached to it. Without thinking I walk
up to the side of Peoria Players and yank on the door, unaware that an adult
production of DAMES AT SEA is rehearsing upstairs, walking down into the
make-up room, looking at my wet visage in the adjacent reflected lens of
enjoined mirrors, browed with a string of bulbs, hearing the cast upstairs,
thinking only of last summer when lil Betsy wouldn’t leave me the fuck alone.
Hearing a director who sounds like he is suffering from some sort of terminal
nasal drip yelp at the cast during a tap dance number, turning around, exiting
the side door before being seen.
I wonder what ever happen with Andrea from my French
class.
I wonder what ever happened to Madame Breton. I
wonder what she would say if I told her I was getting an A in high school
French. I wonder what she has heard Depeche Mode’s latest, the album called
SONGS OF FAITH AND DEVOTION. The album whose color is the color of Lent. I want
to ask Martin Gore why, after making millions of dollars and traipsing over the
skipped aquatic countenance of the planet why he feels the need to compose
songs that are bruised in a key signature of almost Wagnerian hurt. I want to
ask then why they felt the need to jettison the synth-keyboard that made me
fall in love with them completely. I want to ask them if the single sounds lie
gridlock traffic in Trafalgar square.
I am leaving.
Upon exiting the stairwell of Peoria Players I swear
I feel Anastasia, whom I have not spoken with since Dawn Michelle. I swear I
feel my lips brushed against the piquant hue of her pomegranate forehead. I
swear we are talking on the phone and somehow she is not enamored with Anthony anymore.
Somehow I am kissing her and it is the fourth of July at Glen Oak park under a
neon bridal bouquet of fireworks and somehow it feels right.
I walk in the direction of the woods.
Christ meandering off by himself to pray so hard
that dollops of blood ski down his forehead in sheets of rain.
Behind Peoria Players Theatre it is raining and how
I wish I swear I can hear Pam, hear her laughter, hear her joy in every drip of rain.
It is Maundy Thursday. Christ is saying yes Judas it is you. Good Friday service traditionally is a Tenebrae. Tonight Rev. Schudde will preach and we will sing songs out of the blue Lutheran hymnal composed in the minor key. Pastor Schudde will talk about suffering and betrayal. He will talk about the Disciples falling asleep in the garden while Christ begged and supplicated with his heavenly father asking his father to let this cup pass from him, coming back to the sons of Zebedee asleep. Christ talking about the cock crowing thrice. Talk admonishing Peter for for brandishing his sword, healing the severed ear of a slave named Malchus. He will talk about how Christ had to die because I am a biological-sinful 98.9 horny-sheath of flesh who prays of every night, who loves the religion imbued onto him by his father and Grandfather, who can’t stop peeking through the aperture of doily-drape at the college girls renting the abode next door, that I felt the need to sacrifice Renae Holiday just so I could swipe my muddy running shoes on the welcome mat of the only heaven I have ever known.
When I reach the woods I form a St. Louis arch with my the caps of my thighs and knees and urinate. It is the same woods I relieved myself in after a tiff with Stacia last summer. The rain is pelting down. There is mud. Everything looks like java the hut. I doff my shirt. For a second I think about taking my shorts off and running around only I refrain. Instead I place both palms forming starfish prints into the mud below. I then smear my hands down my cheekbones, across my forehead. I make a lighting slash fissure on my chest. I write RH’s initials. I write that of Dawn Michelle. I write the word STACIA below my naval. I am still thinking about the red-headed girl from Bollingbrook. I want them each on my body, I want them to know how significant they have made my last year on this planet. For a cathartic lighting-slash fissure of causality it occurs to me that I’ve been on a trip the last year, that everyone I ‘ve met since I failed my 92’ attempt to win the trip to Paris. That everyone I met has somehow been born in a certain time/place in this planet that might somehow meet them, fall in love, dry-hump my floor thinking about them, that this consciousness I feel wielded in to the pigment of flesh, the frenetic emotional Geiger of aortic tics, the ontological blinking swallowed the visual baptism that is a succinct evaporated added teenage initial breath of this planet, that we are experiencing each other’s union, each other’s grief for a reason and that even in hurt it has meaning.
It is Maundy Thursday and I am running and I am thankful as fuck for the trip I have been on the last 12 months.
The rain is coming down harder. From the woods I can
see the seismic sway of cars blinking with their wipers.
I am pushing forward. My shirt is scrunched in my
fist.I am running towards the shore of England.
I am running home.
***
He is telling his wife that it was his idea Martha. He
seems himself back pedaling moments he can no longer recall. Watching him cavort
around the room as a super-human moppet. He is telling his wife that he loved
him. He is telling his wife that it was his idea Martha. He is telling his wife
that he knew that he was special the moment he found him, the earth harvesting
him in a crater in lieu of a crop of corn, he is crying, he is stoic, he is
cold, he is telling his wife that it should have been him as a jilting pain
worms up his left arm, that it should have been him, that it was all his fault.
That is was his idea, Martha.
His idea alone.
***
My shirt is still off. There is dirt on my face from
the ritual. I surmise that it is going on five. I will have just enough time to
sprint home, brew a cup of coffee, shower before heading down to church. My
first communion was less than a year ago. I have been going to every Lenten
service since I can remember my mother making a diorama on my bedroom wall
upstairs of the Lords prayer.
They call this Passion Week.
I feel like I am a zygote gestating in the ovum of
earth waiting to enter the next trimester of youth.
I zone out running down university with dirt
besmirched on my shirtless chest, forehead and cheekbones. I zone out running
past Shakey’s where I had a botch attempt to thank Pamela Tucker for everything
she added to my life, where lil’ Betsy was aloof and pissed at me and was
obsessed trying to glean the stuffed manatee with the sunglasses. Where I said goodbye to Stacia last
summer without saying goodbye, simply by holding the hand of the girl I thought
somehow was the one as we walked out the side door and I kissed her lips and
everything was for a post-coital sweat dollop of eternity, brand new. I run past the oversized caricatured bowl of Paul’s
Pipe shop. I run past Metropolis Books where I rode my bike two summers’ ago
buying X-men comics in bulk, buying role-playing, dropping ten-sided dice in
the back room during anther one of Tim Flanagan’s crazy role-playing campaigns.
I run past Doyle’s insurance and the dance studio and Accatuccis. When I reach
the cemetery across the street from the dilapidated dentist office. I cut through the cemetery. I run to Meinen
field and do a loop around the track, my body going all out the day before
while failing, my body breathing into every stride as the Chicago Cubs farm-A
affiliated franchise takes batting practice next door. I run down Nebraska,
nose diving into Bradley park I am less than two miles from home. I am picking
up the pace. Somehow the sun is beginning to sweat slants of sunshine. I am
pushing it over the hills I have run.At the top of the sidewalk will with the
REM spray-painted I take off flying. It
was the hill my father and myself would sprint up doing the Rocky theme song.
The hill with the Columbus statue at the top. The sidewalk hill where you go
all out on.
I need to book home and shower and brew a cup of
coffee before Maundy Thursday services tonight.
I need to get home and realize that I will not be going back to the
ashtray that is high school before I return home from someplace I have never
been before.
I am below the shadow of Columbus. My shirt is still
doffed. Stacia’s name in mud has melted into alphabetical warble into my
midriffs. I wonder why whoever answered Dawn’s phone and then paused in the way
Nat Pflderer has been pausing referred to me as her little friend from last
summer.
It is Maundy Thursday. The clouds have dispersed
only it is still somehow raining.
I am looking at the statue whose namesake is the
contest I won.
I am telling him that we did it, Chris.
I am telling him that we are going.
The sun is out yet it is starting to rain. I am
going to church tonight. I am being
baptized. I have no clue where I am going.
I have no clue what will happen to me over the spilled nest of molecules constituting the next week.
I only know that somehow I will leave the port that is central Illinois, the is puberty.
I only know that I will somehow arrive.
Luv the U2 video....miss hearing the riff of your voice read poems at Champs West...
ReplyDeleteCLW...