OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- The walls melted away as the sky outside turned dark purple, the sunlight replaced with the gloom of an afternoon thunderstorm.And then the breeze kicked up, pushing through the windows, scattering everything in its path.
I was standing at the bathroom door, somewhere, in some strange old house.
As I stared from my omnipotent vantage point, the toilet came right up off of the mounting, the wooden seat and the porcelain flapping in the breeze like a wet shirt on a clothesline, laughing.
I heard her voice behind me, the sound of someone familiar, someone long gone from my life and almost forgotten.
Last I'd heard, she was wanted for all sorts of things out in Colorado, warrants issued and probation violated. I guess I'd heard wrong, since I could hear her voice behind me, garbled and soft.
I turned just as her knife dug a hole in my chest, down between the ribs, right into my beating heart. I waited for her to say something, anything, but she quit speaking as soon as she put the knife through me.
Instead, as I watched, helpless and at the moment of death, she pulled the blade from my chest and cut out her own eyes.
I used to stare into those brown Cherokee-Creole eyes at night, used to run my hands up from her cafe au lait skin... DON'T DO IT!
Terror.
Pure terror as I collapsed to the floor, blood squirting from my chest and blood shooting from her eye sockets, the toilet still flapping in the breeze.
Death had caught me. A creepy, floating toilet laughed at me as the world ended, pitch-black and whimpering nothing.
* * * *
The alarm clock went off just as I hit the floor, just as I was murdered.
Dream. Another stupid, goddamn nightmare.
Got up, went to the kitchen, and put on the coffee. Powered up the laptop and turned on the television. Adjusted the rabbit ears, compensated for the various atmospheric phenomena that usually interfere with good ol' airwave broadcasts.
"... A robbery turns deadly in Over-the-Rhine ..."
Great. Fucking great.
I have a nightmare about my ex-fiancee cutting out her own eyes after murdering my sorry ass, and the first thing I hear on the morning news is something about another murder down in Cincinnati.
At least there wasn't a floating toilet involved, I tell myself.
And I think the house in the dream was that old abandoned place out in Ault, Colorado, the one "Jada" and I once broke into during that hail storm, on the way back from Cheyenne...
I hop in the shower. The water's lukewarm, the building's boiler tapped out by my neighbors and still reheating. I debate hopping back out, letting the shower run empty for a few more minutes, to allow the old furnace time to recuperate.
Instead, I lather up quickly, wash my hair, and put in some conditioner....
Suddenly, I realize why I'd had the nightmare in the first place. And it wasn't the butternut squash ravioli or the cup of yogurt I'd had for dinner the previous night, either.
* * * *
The conditioner was the same brand that "Jada" used to use. The same kind we used, back when I was strung out, back when we lived in that renovated former sorority house, back on 8th Avenue in 1997.
By accident, I'd picked it up from the grocery store. I saw a sale tag and grabbed the sucker without looking, in the here and now, 2007.
Ten years ago. Ten years? I've been drug-free for ten years?
And ten fucking years ago, my fiancee tried to kill me, tried to stab me in the heart with a very real steak knife. And back then, the toilet bowl didn't come up off its pedestal, and the wind didn't blow through that stagnant apartment, either.
But that smell was there, the smell of honey extract fragrance. Unmistakable. And that smell had filled my apartment as I'd slept.
I literally jumped out of the shower, ran to the window, pulled open the screen, and flung the whole bottle out onto the street below. I hung out the window, naked and gloating, as the plastic container exploded on impact.
A college kid, in flip-flops, preppy white shorts and Green Beer Day tee shirt, looked up and yelled something profane, something about the bottle almost ruining his pristine Rich Kid outfit.
"Kid," I yelled back. "Ask me if I give a shit!"
* * * *
We used to shower together, every morning, after that first taste of angel dust pulled us out of our hangovers, at the asscrack of noon.
And sometimes we'd get caught up, white dicks slapping against black asses in that shower, reaching for that conditioner...
Every time I smell that smell, that honey-flowery smell, I think of two things: fucking my ex-fiancee in the ass (she hated vaginal sex in the shower and liked the "feel" of the conditioner inside her), and the fact that the only things we had in common were sex, drugs, and malt liquor.
Both thoughts are but two sides of the same coin, different versions of the same memory. I was, yes, a junkie ten years ago, a reporter by night and a dope fiend college student by day. I did more blow than half of Colombia, smoked more PCP-laced weed than half of San Francisco.
Who you were in 1997 almost got you killed, you ugly sonofabitch! I told the mirror as I shaved that morning. Next time, read the fuckin' labels on the Suave bottles.
I don't need the perfume from some haircare product taking me back to that place, or filling my nostrils as I sleep.
* * * *
A friend of a different ex called last night from Los Angeles.
Some former boyfriend of hers was stalking her. He'd sent her flowers, despite a warning that she'd file a restraining order against him if he ever made contact again, ever so much as sent her a text message.
Her manager had called the cops on the guy a while back, after an altercation at a nightclub, after he'd left bruises on her arm and shoulders because he loved her. Her publicist had told her to just slap him with the order anyway.
She resisted, because, well, part of her liked the attention, the excitement.
When the flowers showed up, she freaked. The guy wasn't just love-sick. All of those nights when he'd stagger with her into clubs drunk, those nights after she'd gone to rehab, when he'd literally squatted in her house, all of those times when he'd just wanted her to go back to being a cokehead ...
He never hit me until I went clean. Fuck! I can't believe I just said that...
She's been holed up in her house for two weeks, sleeping on her couch, watching old movies that I'd recommended, her registered 10 millimeter next to the stacks of books and copies of various fashion magazines.
And last night, she just called to talk. She was lonely. She wanted to hear a bedtime story.
Against better judgment, I told her about my nightmare, about the ten-year anniversary of my attempted murder, about the bottle of conditioner I'd sent rocketing, accidentally, towards a preppy undergrad.
I expected my tale to go over badly. It was a horrible story to tell, a horrible PTSD flashback to share with someone coming to grips with their own domestic violence issues.
Los Angeles Girl just went quiet. And then she laughed.
Dude, right now, I just want to kiss you, just want you here. You or Lee Blanchard. I think you may be the only guys who get where I'm comin' from...
It took me a while to figure out who Lee Blanchard is - had to actually look the guy up on Google. Should've figured he'd be a character from James Ellroy's novels.
She's a huge Ellroy fan, loves noir literature and film. And she has a similar, sordid past to mine, too. I think that's why she likes to call when she's lonely - nice just to have somebody to talk to, somebody who gets the references to L.A. Confidential and Shaun of the Dead.
I figured I'd give her something else to read, a more print-ready version of the story I told her last night. It'll give her something to do, keep her off the streets.
Nothing like two former addicts swapping stories to make for one hell of a conversation.
This is the sanitized version.
Yep.
Ripped out eyeballs and anal sex. Cocaine. Even me describing my actual, almost murder at the hands of my ex.
Sanitized version.
- # # # -
* For those who've been there.
And for those trying to go clean.
Don't try. Just do. It's worth it.
And for those trying to go clean.
Don't try. Just do. It's worth it.
