I grew up with the horror of my own city. It was the only kind I knew. Dead friends, some to guns, others to drugs. Fights that go wrong and beefs that go bad. Whole families fucked over. Empty homes become new housing zones. Babies reach for bottles and crackheads reach for the K2. The pills all crushed into powders.
Noah's mom's ex-boyfriend sold us a minivan for two grand. The bottom was rusted out and it broke down a lot but our friend Aaron Naves gave us a skull to hang for good luck on the rear view mirror.
I'd never seen the rest of America, thе horrors of this country outside my city. People struggling in homеs, and in woods, on lawns, and in trailers. Drugs looked different in government form. Poverty looks different surrounded by the woods.
A woman visited the doctor. She said, "Doctor, doctor, I need a lethal dose." The doctor asked the woman why she wanted to die and she replied, "Everyone I know is dead and gone, I can't go on living without them." The doctor frowned inside and said, "Okay." He wrote her a prescription for hundred thousand milligrams. She visited the doctor again the next day and said "Doctor, doctor, I want to live forever. I have a baby now and I want to show them this beautiful world." The doctor laughed and said, "Don't worry, you'll be in a coma by the morning." They both laughed and they peed in their pants.
We went to our friend's mother's home on a lake. She got a little drunk and called Harlan – "Hitler" and the N-word, and then went to sleep. Our friend told us about the winters there, how everyone drinks and throws objects from their homes out on the ice, waking up to find what was thrown overnight. Bottles, chairs, a broom, some birthday cake.
I heard a story about a family who lived across the lake. They had money and a daughter, they were nice people. The daughter went to the local high school and brought all her friends back to the house. They sat in the jacuzzi and her mother brought them soda and things to eat. A boy at the high school decided he was in love with the daughter and she agreed, they were very in love. Then they decided that they were so in love they it'd be alright to kill her parents and run away with their money. So the boy broke into the house. He found a sledgehammer and a knife in the garage, and the father. He stabbed him in the chest. He tried to get away but the boy bludgeoned him with the sledgehammer. The mother was out but when she came back she screamed and ran around and the boy laughed and chased her and took he caught her and bludgeoned her too. I don't remember if the daughter and the boy got away.
A neighbor next door was burying a dog in the lawn. I asked him if he was sad. He said, "No, it was always an ugly bitch." He told me that he used to have a full back of hair until one summer when it was bitten by a tick and lost it's sight and hair. After that no one liked the dog. It had blind and had no hair, some kids used to go by and kick it, then run off. Before it died, it started to bark and wouldn't stop. It barked for weeks and they had to wrap it's mouth with duct tape. After that, all they heard was the dog's belly going in and out. I must have looked sad 'cause the neighbor said, "Don't be sad, no one cried when it died."
We met up with a kid who took us to the train yard. In New York they have so many trains, if you hit one they won't run it 'til it's buffed. In the country, they run what they have. The trains they got are old and rusted out but they'll run as long as the Bulls can still read with the company printed on the side, train number and where it's going. Everything else is fair game. He said, "Watch out for the Bulls. They don't arrest no one but they'll beat the shit out of you." Grown people with kids feel despair the same they just take it out in different ways. If I ain't shit, and y'all ain't fuckin' E. coli.
The next town over is a cul-de-sac mandala piece of shit. Usually in the middle of a cul-de-sac, I think, is a school or a shop. Monks make mandalas and put something secret in the middle. The people who built this town put a prison in the middle. Everyone there are neighbors. The guards have a short commute and so will the inmates when they get free.
That afternoon, we played in Uncle Craig's backyard. Craig lives in a small apartment with a cat he rescued. The cat's name is Charlie Girl. Living in the country unable to express himself sexually, mental illness, confusion and abusive relations led him to drugs. After a coma indused by a bath salt overdose, he decided only to take the drugs prescribed to him by government doctors. He told us about going to the clinic and trying to get painkillers. Said they wanted to do a blood test first but he refused. I guess he didn't want them to know what was in it.
While we set up to play, Craig's neighbor returned to the apartment with the apartment complex manager. They had Fatboy motorcycles but only one of them was fat. After we played, Craig's neighbors were happy. The apartment manager introduced himself and thanked us for coming. His name is Louie. Craig's neighbor Joe came over to smoke. They told us about finding their neighbor in a coma with maggots around her mouth. Said she'd been there for three days after eating a large cheese pizza by herself. Craig said he thought that was selfish.
I am two humans. A burning bridge born in the bedrock. When we dream, we twist and fold my arms person crossed and underside until we wait and they hang asleep in the morning like a body in the woods. When we clean myself, we dripped the soap between my toes, waiting for the sound of bone on porcelain. The wash of water over flesh hard and wet while I reached for the towel. When we meet another, we whisper stories of gore and lies about their brothers and sisters in my ear. When we meet someone that is good, we want to die with them. A friend asked me who had done me wrong and all I could see was my mother's sweating face.
It felt good to play. We're used to bringing young kids together. Back in New York, kids from every borough come together. Gives me a reason to stay alive. Like an initiative or community center. It's the only thing I'm good at and the only thing we like to do. It's a way of coping with reality, but it's really something else too.
