Free from Shame

Shhhh. The snap sound of impenetrable silence, the intolerable crusty rhythm of sleep-sleep, and off I carry myself to bed bed bed. But before I sleeples, I want to break the hush nothingness of country life with a goodnight song. Off, I carry my dreams and hopes and aspirations to a place rally coated in grime and dust. A greasy thought thrusting through my mind before the sweet innards of restful anti-peace.

"Mind Games" by John Lennon plays softly in the background. I sit on my psychedelic sofa, all black and gray stripes, fucking awful in a fever. The tv across, off and on and off again, flipping through the cable emptiness. Bulbous green lights playing across the beige carpet, littered with cigarette ash and drink stains and lord knows what else fallen and crushed within the tufts of once cloudy fabric. I ash my Marlboro into a product placement ashtray. Lucky am I for an apartment with central heating, for an icestorm gathers outside all frothy and chilly.

I light another one up, hell if I know why. It's chain smokin' time, about quarter til midnight. It used to be that time around 2am, but you grow up and grow out, and work comes earlier and earlier and you can't sleep on the job if you plan on keeping it. I have to urinate, big gulpy strands of it. I learned some time ago from an ex lover with a golden shower fetish to exhale the liquid, then hold back before letting it flow some more; and though we no longer see one another, I figured it would be perhaps useful in the future to keep such a skill.

I finish with all that and peer into the mirror. I suppose I'm now getting punished for having flawless clear skin as a youngin' because now I get these horrible pimples. They're grotesque in size and quite painful most of the time. I can't help but pick and pluck at them. Something gets a hold of my brain and says it'll make it all look better, like before, when it makes my face all red and scar-ridden at least temporarily.

I grab a hold of a forming in-grown one that had been causing me some trouble for a few days or so. It had to have been deep in there because not only could I not see anything, except, say, a bump where it should be. I dug and scraped with my nail, trying to bring it out, but it wouldn't give, so I took an eye brow plucker, and, with the sharp edge of it, I poked and prodded til I bled a bit and clear stuff cam running out. I had to have been close, so I kept going. I tore a layer or two of skin off the top and kept jabbing at it. And finally, I could see the white pus pouring out, line after line until it stopped jetting out in little bursts. But I know it's not done, it's never done until it stops hurting on the inside; and there's a definite difference between a pain of disease and that of a wound. I kept squeezing around it with both index fingers even though the pain was excruciating, and finally, finally! A massive burst came from my skin, ripping a hole far larger than what I had created and a shot of pus came flying out in a bloody, greasy horror onto the mirror, a good foot or two of force.

I felt a bit of bile in the back of my throat, but held it in. It's not that it hurt, though it did. It was the idea of the force behind what seemed like a small deal. It was disgusting and mesmerizing. I walked dazed to my room, good old messy room, where a dirty laundry kudzu forest over-took the majority of it, and a paper jungle surrounded sad-looking mattress. I curled up under my stinking comforter. I refused to wash it because it used to smell of a boy I once liked, and though I no longer desire him, I just grew into not washing it, not ever, not even after several [hundred] romps and so on. What to do now, I wonder. And then I decide to look through a clutter-stack of old pictures and postcards to kill the time before sleep set in.

I sift through photos of myself, my family, my friends. And still lonely in a city built for cars, where paychecks come before bills and the destitute are overweight. A maddening and sick world it is, but here I am, and here I stay. Then comes dear old dad's picture, a nice souped up ol' one from nineteen eighty-something. No silver hairs, no disgusting lines on his face like scars, no tell-tale signs of old age what-so-ever. He's a rally handsome man with a toothy grin that is not yet graying and aging and rotting out his mouth. Dark, curly hair, brown coruscating eyes, perfect skin. It's a real glamor shot, the kind people blow up and frame and egotistically set around their homes.