Revenge

Revenge of the Reptilian Brain

The first time is the strangest. Endorphins aside, you have to get over the whole self-protection thing and old-fashioned double-sided razorblades are hard to find these days. They’ve been replaced by disposable plastic things. Ridiculous to even try. Progress seldom thinks of the needs of those who occupy its underbelly. Our will to survive has kept the species going for millions of years. Or thousands, if you’re a Creationist. Either way, the conscious choice to take up arms against yourself means battling against all those superior genes picked out of the pool specifically for their ability to protect and defend the host. Like a Crusade of sorts. But the infidel is you. Then again, the mental process that brought you to this point has probably been going on long enough and generated enough loathing for the enemy (meaning yourself) that by the time you draw your sword, it’s all a moot point.

God knows we all need vices. But sharp objects had never been one of mine. When you grow up in a religious household with a mother who is the perfect embodiment of a saint and then at the tender age of eighteen marry a would-be preacher who spends the next twenty years roasting you slowly on the spit of his own guilt, well, you can expect a little scar tissue. After the divorce a counselor talked of the need to heal my wounds. For a while I tried using a little harmless flirting. Beautiful young men of various ethnic proclivities, invariably artists or musicians with large soulish eyes and sweet lips. My wounds proved harder to heal than I had anticipated. Later I added a couple of fingers of Bombay Sapphire and a few fat Vermouth-soaked olives.

Sometimes I have trouble sleeping. I get in my car late at night and drive around Charleston. Just to see if anyone else is awake. I like driving over all the bridges. Seeing the lights puddle in the water around the boats at the marinas. Wondering who owns them all. The bridge to Mt. Pleasant is on its third reincarnation since I’ve lived in the Holy City. This latest one is transcendent in its dimensions. Like a Retro-Post-Neo-Modern Cathedral. Mostly sky, held up with tiny threads of steel. Driving over it is a spiritual experience. Especially at two o’clock in the morning when my car is the only one occupying that particular air space. As I approach the apex I’m a supplicant holding out my hands for the wafer, or no, holding out my tongue. I’ll be Catholic and not touch the sacred host, but let it dissolve slowly as it mingles with the sinful spit of my mouth. Flying down the other side yelling Holy Mother of God in Heaven, I’m a new creation, forgiven, reborn for the rest of the ride. I sleep better after that.

I tried putting myself into a state of pre, semi, un-consciousness where I could live, write, create, without my neuroses always getting in the way. I wanted to get to that place where Henry Miller goes in the middle of Tropic of Cancer after he’s used the word cunt six hundred and ninety two times and has starved himself halfway to India and back and finally has an epiphany about how to live the rest of his life—with complete abandon, all out, like an animal trying to survive this moment. Not stopping to worry about tomorrow’s food or drink or fuck. It’s harder than it sounds.

So I go to the local hobby shop and look over the various Exacto-type knives. I finally choose a # 1 Light Duty. Surgically Sharp. Couteau de précision. La Manche guilloché, á la tete et au milleau du couteau, permt une excellante tenue. I’m not being pretentious. That is actually what it says on the package; although it was made in the U.S.A. Somewhere in New Jersey, I think. It takes days before I feel brave enough to slit the skin of the cardboard backing and take out my weapon of choice. And days more before I feel strong enough to use it on my own skin. Like I said, the urge to protect the self is the strongest thing we know—a bull in a china shop. All brawn and no brains. Just straight out panic no stops survival mode. Your cortex has to take a dart gun loaded with anti-anxiety chemicals to that ancient reptilian part at the base of your neck that says you’ll have to kill me first. Which of course is the point.

I guess that’s why people smoke weed. Isn’t it supposed to calm frayed nerves? Open up passageways to places inaccessible in normal circumstances? I’ll have to ask Andrew. He was one of the beautiful artists. We haven’t spoken in six months, since my mother’s death. It will be her birthday in two days and I’m contemplating a celebration that involves her ashes and weed and Andrew. Our first date was five years ago on her birthday. Strange coincidence. I don’t want to get back together. Just reconnect for old time’s sake. Maybe it will become a Neil Simon Same Time Next Year sort of thing. Every year on my mother’s birthday. I don’t even know if he’ll do it. I don’t know if I want him to. Maybe I’ll just go out to the beach alone. Let her ashes go and watch as they blow and scatter, mingling with the sand of a thousand years. Or maybe I’ll just roll them up and smoke them.