BANG OUT

Round it up and you have 25,000 days to live.  Bird tweets and sprinklers are tick, ticking.  It’s a limited-time offer, so act now.

And I did, at a college bar, where the crowd howled from the patio.  After a few slices of lime I found her, floating on the dance floor.  It was a Howard the Duck party.  She wore her beak sideways.

“I noticed you.  Your beak is styling,” I said.

She shook her head.

“Look, it’s my last night,” I said.  “Ever.”

The song washed away, and she thumbed behind her.  “Sluts are aisle 2.”  She pulled the beak over her face.

“Aisle 2, I like that.”  I took a step and caught a beak in the eye.

She cupped my chin.  “You okay?”  There were flashes of white static – the disco ball, she deduced.

“Deduced?”  I rubbed my eye.  “Dude, you’ve got thorns.”

She slumped.  “Protecting against parasites, maybe?”

“That’s so venus flytrap,” I said.  I leaned again, more cautious this time, and told her I should’ve been this bold years ago.  But I’d be dead by noon.  I didn’t want to bore her with the gory details.  Some things just end up one way.  “You won’t have to deal with it.”  I’d sneak out, I reassured her.

“I feel a weird pressure, being your LAST.”  She shook her head. “I’m sorry, that doesn’t sound right.”

“I just need company right now,” I said.  “My only desire is cuddling.”  I patted her hip, as if it were a crosswalk button, made of soft metal.

We didn’t take a cab.  It was warm, and moony.  Memories stenciled the streets: I climbed the roof there; that pharmacy had been a diner with perfect sweet potato fries; I’d never pee in that alley again.  Or that one.  But I hushed.

I snuck out at dawn, with a headache and a tiny hop in my step.  I ate a hearty breakfast, in the gray light.

###

A few months later I attended a Teen Wolf party.  I wore a giant moustache.  I queried the girl by the skeeball machine.   She was having a crisis over her senior thesis, so I recited the titles of some useful articles.  Her neck stunk of vanilla.  “I hope the candles at my funeral smell this awesome,” and then I added,  “Is that TMI?”  She asked where it would be held, and I said I didn’t know.  Her cuddle transitions were so unprecedented, so technical, it was hard to leave.

Lawn mowers blew mating calls through fences.  The sun pulled the clouds over its head and turned over.

###

I stumbled into one of those outdoor festivals where girls wear underwear and wigs.  Every costume was a masterpiece, accentuating the best feature: the neck, a calve, delicious feet, a face.  The embodiment of using what you’ve got.

Sunshine and crunchy beer cups.  Medicine cabinets shaken by their ankles into backpacks.  The music wriggled, like an airplane going down.  That wobble wobbly bass.

The girl with the cartoon fox mask smelled familiar, like cantaloupe.  She may have been with me on one of my last nights.  The crowd was cut into large cubicles.  The sunlight was disorienting.  Backed against the gate, I felt the need to apologize.  “I never really thought I was worth enough to hurt anybody,” I began.  Something started to release.

I told her my real name.  Told her I’m a serial cuddler, that I suffer from acute anxiety over impending doom, and I have intimacy issues.  Dr. Drew speaks to me over the radio, and still I don’t fix a damn thing.  I should sign my goodbye notes, The Zodiac  Snuggler, or maybe Son of Cuddler, and jot on a sticky note about the 25,000 day calendar, and wish them the best.  Admitting this gave me tingles.  It reminded me of the last segment of a TV sitcom: a group hug with Urkel, pants jacked up to the heart.  I don’t know what she heard.  Her eyes weren’t tuned in.

Perhaps selfishly, I continued.  There was always someone who would listen.  I saw myself as a distributor of information, and passed it along, like pollen.  Here’s an example.  Fruit flies live a day, a science girl told me once.  She had a learning disability and was tired, so that may not be accurate.

The ground fidgeted, because I was standing somewhere I shouldn’t be.  My instinct was to climb the fence.  The floats bled into one another.  The plasma of white noise, rising.  Everything tilted an inch.  And then glass rang.  And port-a-potties toppled.  And kegs rolled.

Something hit my head.  I felt offended, then at ease.  I dreamed of the earth opening; kids rushing in with Sharpies and spray cans to tag the raw pink flesh first.  It didn’t melt their markers or blow up their cans, but I could taste it, the scent of recess.

The girl rustled me awake.  Butterfly wings and wigs mashed together.  Papier-mâché road kill, snug on barbwire.  A dude in a water-tube fiddled with a high heel stuck in his forehead.  Fire hydrants rehydrated the murals, their peeling complexion, spraying the bricks.  Devil and bunny tails popped under our feet.

The girl, smelling of maple syrup, asked if I’d meant what I said.  Her sunglasses had lost their frames, so I could see her eyes.  Clumps of hazel and blue, two layers of a jawbreaker met.

“I think so.”  This may not have been – no, this was not the other girl, not the fox mask.  And I couldn’t stay out of her eyes; they didn’t appear to take me serious at all.  No man can step away from that.  “So, is this an earthquake or war?” I asked.  Who knows what we really heard over the gooey noise that poured from the spilled speakers in the street.  That rumble, it could have been the world turning onto its side, deeper into sleep; or stirring late in the afternoon.




Copyright © 2009, Joe Cervelin