24/7

My brain cells are dying from too much TV, because life has become an endless assault on the senses since we saw the planes hit the buildings and watched them fall, repeatedly, unbelievably. We watched to understand the incomprehensible or to convince ourselves it wasn’t true, but then we watched numbly, and the networks had our full attention, and soon it was all we could do, watch to know, watch to forget, until we were hypnotized and at the mercy of the screen’s pulsating lights and sounds.

I watch stories about a prolific serial killer, the end of the world as signified by depleted bee colonies, and something about sand dunes on Mars. Unrelated events, but I surf between them to splice them together: The killer was described as a quiet man….and entire colonies of bees died off….as atmospheric conditions caused the sand to drift more slowly. It’s more interesting and disorienting in a way that entertains me and provides a respite from the real stories. 

I’m the new human: self-contained, practically a machine hooked to real machines. Like a shark, actually. They move forward constantly or die. I’m like that. Except instead of a vast ocean of endless possibilities, I’m in a small apartment, the world laid out before me on a 27-inch screen, my past a swirl of murky water and silt. 

I know I’m not the only one who watches the wrath of God, the end as it is written loosed upon us. But it’s time for the news. It’s always time for the news. I see a teaser on one of the stations for a piece on climate change, how the clock is running out sooner than you think. The revolution won’t be televised, but the whimper at the end of the world will be simulcast by every network and streaming service for an additional fee in three easy-to-pay installments. 

I’m ready. Bring on the apocalypse. I want to watch the four horsemen race. I want to see the finish line and figure out what we were all doing here. I settle down on my seat on the couch where the cushion is closer to the floor from the daily force of my inert body weight. I matriculate from channel to channel, each fragment of image and dialogue punching a hole in my brain as my thoughts drift slowly and without a discernible pattern, like the mysterious sand dunes of Mars.

U-Shaped Johnny

I stood in the grocery store and navigated the produce section with my eyes as I tried to remember what to buy to sustain me for another week on earth. I held a bag of apples, contemplating the eat-to-rot ratio, when I heard Johnny Thunders singing “You Can’t Put Your Arms Round a Memory.” At first, I thought I misheard. What were the odds? But I stood in the aisle and listened for the duration. 

I was still holding the apples when the song was over. I heard a voice say, Excuse me. You’re blocking the aisle. A woman with a face comprised of worry lines and small catastrophes, short blond hair, a woman the age when women who were once very beautiful begin to wear brightly colored scarves around their necks, my age in fact, was standing there with an annoyed look aimed at me. I said, Sorry, and put the apples down in the bin. She didn’t seem placated, but I was at a loss about how to explain to her the cognitive functioning of my brain over the last few minutes, the associative firing of synapses that transported me from where I stood in the aisle to the past and back without moving a muscle. As she walked off, she glanced back at me a few times, the irritated look stuck in place.

Now that I was back on the planet, I grabbed the apples and put them in my cart. I moved through the aisles and added more things I assumed I needed--bread and milk, a package of deli ham--and paid at the self-checkout. I proceeded to the parking lot and put the groceries in the back seat of my car. I stuffed myself in the driver’s seat, thinking about the past and stunned by my existence in the present. 

When Johnny died, they carried him out of his New Orleans apartment in a body bag. Rigor mortis having set in, his body U-shaped. Conflicting reports of his cause of death. Drugs. Leukemia. Murder. 

As I was pulling out, I noticed the woman who had spoken to me. She was pushing a cart filled with grocery bags. I drove up next to her and lowered the window. 

It was the song that was playing. I was surprised to hear it. Do you know Johnny Thunders? New York Dolls?

No, sorry, she said and began to push her cart in a rapid display of controlled fear.

I drove to the end of the row of parked cars and turned, but instead of heading home, I went around to the other end of the row and drove back down. I pulled up next to the woman as she loaded groceries in the back of her SUV. I lowered the passenger-side window and yelled: I was listening to a song by Johnny Thunders. Did you hear it?  She shook her head abruptly and pulled into herself, a time-lapse withering flower.

I drove off, looking in my rearview mirror, and saw the woman had stopped putting her groceries in the trunk. She held her right palm against the car’s fender and seemed about to collapse. I drove back around and pulled up next to her, slowly, so as not to startle her. She didn’t seem to notice me. I could see she was in distress, her face pale, her lips pursed. I parked in the spot next to her and sat there. She never looked up. I got out hesitantly and approached her. She looked up. It was as if a demon shadow crossed over her face. She recoiled. In a clipped tone she said, Don’t touch me. All I could say was, I’m sorry. Not myself these days. She looked at me as if I had stolen some of her knowledge about the world and replaced it with another reason to fear it. I put the rest of the groceries in her car and shut the hatch. 

She drove away without acknowledging me. I stood in the parking lot and understood how some humans wander the earth cursing until they’re locked away. As I stood there, an older, white-haired man in a black Cadillac pulled alongside me. A blue-and-white parking tag hung from the rearview mirror. I looked at his angry, lobster-boiled face as he said, Hey, you’re in the handicapped spot.

In those days, it was popular to ask, What would Jesus do? I crucified myself for days.

Tilted

There is one thing from childhood I remember more than any other thing: the pet store at the mall where my mother worked in a dress shop a few storefronts away, selling clothes to feed us. A widow’s might. I had a dollar bill and hours of boredom ahead of me. I stood and watched a terrarium crammed with turtles. They plodded and slapped their fin-feet against each other’s crusty shells. It was endless. As soon as one reached the top, it would lose traction, slip, fall to a lower realm of the slime pile. 

I was supposed to be down at the five-and-ten-cent store’s lunch counter to purchase something for dinner, but I decided to watch the turtles and buy an assortment of candy bars to eat instead. I couldn’t tear myself away from what I was beginning to see as the metaphor, though I wouldn’t have called it that then, for all existence. What was Paradise Mall except a terrarium where commerce took place, a capitalist’s idea of heaven? The slogan read: It’s always 72 degrees in Paradise. 

I was the observer, but I was stuck in my own climate-controlled realm, waiting for my mother. There are other memories from then, but they all blur together. Time spent in front of the bank of TVs broadcasting the same game show, slightly out of sync, on each screen in the department store. The music store’s row of exotic guitars with their phallic insistence. But I can’t conjure a single image of myself in either place as vivid as the one in the pet store. It was a humid, foul-smelling paradise inside a temperate one.

What do I know for certain? I know we are meat that walks and believes it is holy and pretends it never dies. If I think about it, if I think about the earth and the sun, and how the sun is a star, and how the earth is a sphere, I feel myself tilting forward slightly in anticipation of a great falling off. Not just me, but all of us. I look to others for signs, but it often occurs to me that I’m the most tilted. 

I know a guy who always answers the door with a gun behind his back, who, when he smiles shows you the emptiness where he used to store his teeth. He says, You never know who’s on the other side of the door. He concerns himself with what he calls the inevitable, though he can’t define it, can’t do anything but fear. Perhaps he is more tilted.