Happiness & the Fish, by Our Lady Peace. I’ll come right out and say it: Our Lady Peace isn’t such a great band, but I never claimed that I deserved something great.*
Once, when the day was fresh and snow ravaged the land, I accidentally ran a rusted, grey Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera (that also, for your information, suffered from a slightly ruptured heater-core) into some hulking, unidentifiable mass of hirsute flesh. Shortly thereafter, I knew not what to do, except to smoke countless cigarettes and ponder the words most apt to describe the convoluted situation. Still lacking cognizance, I loaded the splintered beast into the trunk of the automobile, smoked a few more Marlboros, and developed a voracious appetite. The fact that I was unable to possess any useful thoughts at that particular moment once bothered me, until I induced that:
Talking is just masturbation
Without the mess
Addiction leaves you sad today
And unimpressed
For me, the inevitable muddle is the worst part of masturbatory jubilation, as the most appropriate metaphor would be a fire hose gone awry. Speech is indeed pleasurable, and while I do, in a sense, disagree with the notion that talking lacks any mess, it nonetheless elicits far greater joy than fondling ever may, unless I were to travel back in time and maul Caroline Munro. But that’s not entirely about sexuality; blurring the supposed line between nooky and addiction comes naturally to me, and it probably does for you as well.
Which is not to imply that all -let alone the most pervasive of- addictions be conceived, directed, and fulfilled explicitly. I can smoke cigarettes, drink beer, eat contaminated burritos, and utter nonsensical sentences till my body disintegrates, but those are conscious predilections, and thus they may be contained, while, say, consuming the misshapen creature was a necessity that I never would have envisioned, yet could scarcely deny. Furthermore, I should have realized that:
I can’t remember all the names [and]
Everyone you meet today
Is just so fucking vain
I did come to understand, albeit implicitly via the art of reflexive, abject satiation. As mentioned previously, I had dined on the greatest of big game and, without a moment’s hesitation, rolled nude upon the once -merely- oily concrete floor of my garage to soak up the excess of blood, bile, lubricant, and somatic excellence. I felt ecstatic, and yet quite dirty; not due to the aforementioned delicacies but, rather, because there was something about my skin that seemed so decidedly phlegmatic, so devoid of standard deviation. I couldn’t bear such a proletariat stimulus, you see, and despite the longing to continue my wallowing in sacrosanct refuse (so to speak), I was compelled to expel the sensation of filthiness.
Standing within a meager shower compartment, I did a dance of sorts while the water rained across my naked body. To be candid, it wasn’t much of a dance, per se; more of a spasmodic jiggle, suffice to say that I was making a ruckus, so much so that I took no heed of what was being washed away by soothing waters. A subtle plop! followed by a splashy sound (one like the sound made that time when Sparkles and I threw water balloons at some random kid in a wheelchair) broke my frantic trance. Blame it on ardor, but I should have noticed that my manliness departed in a much better way.
Lovers and enemies are, at times, discretely similar I suppose, and I felt much the same toward my wayward appendages. As the flesh dissipated, sinking down the drain toward oblivion, I yearned to make an appropriate gesture, although it was a rather daunting task given the disconcerting scenario. Had the water been soothing, acidic, or something beyond either, which is to query: did I really care about that which had been lost, or about the nebulous advantage henceforth gained? (You would be extremely generous to attribute such trite contemplation to me, but please do so now.) Amidst such vainglorious sophism, all I could do was to watch the once-coveted, oft-lamented appurtenances wash away and hum a slightly modified version of the dandelion song. You know, ‘It loves me, it loves me not’ for at least six minutes, but less than seven, because time is irregular like that.
Things had been going quite well, and as luck would have it:
I’m upset
Happiness is not a fish
That you can catch
Widow curtains and facial features make for splendid urban attire, and while not quite the proverbial fish sought by countless lost souls, they do constitute a delectable substitute. Coupled with the bemusing loss of genitalia, one should assume that I deserve forgiveness for mistaking gaiety for happiness.
red light
I really shouldn’t admit to such a dastardly act, and yet I yearn to accurately portray an innate, jovial nature that exemplifies Psychedelic Kimchi, so let’s get on with our mundane recital, omitting any of the juicy details for the sake of proprietary decorum.
green light
The girl’s mother had become such a bewitching object, delineated neatly by the mark of an eviscerated eagle. That her flesh had been twisted, almost beyond casual recognition, is of little consequence, nor is it particularly important as to whose mother it had been; that a woman had given birth to another human being of similar temperament and, perhaps, inaccurately surmised that her child would grow into something -anything- other than an insipid malfunction is what concerned me, as we’d ache to believe. So I had stretched her face upon my very own, which was remarkably onerous, if one were to apprehend clearly what my visage entailed.
Did that make sense? I should hope not, because at that juncture, what had been her upper lip barely arched across the bridge of my reddened snout, and to note that vision had been obscured would be an understatement, on par with the notion that idealjetsam is a sexy beast.** Seriously, though, it’s as I mentioned earlier: divine happiness had been the motivation for my actions, at least the majority of them, and you know what sages say about good intentions, but my inability to properly traverse temporal reality is notorious, so I need to backtrack a tad.
Previously, when she had thought it was me that she had been speaking with, the beloved mother invited me to share leftover Chinese food, and Hy-Vee Chinese Express isn’t so terrible when your appetite is insatiable. Even privy to the knowledge that she was doomed, the woman sat in a chair and watched, almost detachedly, as I shoveled chunks of sesame chicken, a glob of steamed rice, and an egg roll (not quite fried to perfection) into my gaping maw, while she sipped from a glass filled to its brim with deluxe Franzia merlot. Let’s refer to the woman as Julianne, for the sake of simplicity.
That the brute allowed Julianne to finish her wine was an exemplary gesture, and that neither screamed, cried, or writhed in agony throughout the baptismal was a gallant display of self-deprecation, I suppose. Tearing into her chest, I located, cracked and, subsequently, spread Julianne’s petite ribcage wide for none but the gods to appraise. It was a brief exchange, and less than surgical in precision, but the sudden jolt sent her innards astray in an astonishingly delicate manner. I distinctly recall that as her lungs slid outward, Julianne’s face first contorted and then her jaw dropped open. Initially, I presumed that pain had ushered forth catatonic, spasmodic convulsions and, perhaps due to charity, I drew a bloody, clawed hand toward her face in order to silence any potential outburst, but oddly enough, she saw fit to sink her teeth (as deep as a dying person may) into my leathery flesh, as if it were a bit. Slightly taken aback by such a display of fortitude, I was momentarily awash with an inkling of reciprocity, so I gently took hold of her left hand, thrust those exquisite fingers within a mire of jagged teeth, and leisurely gnawed through the bones. At some point, the hand fell away from my mouth, as the digits were freed from their mooring, and eventually the fingers lost their savor, so I spit them out until only a hard, metal object remained. Julianne’s diamond ring, from an estranged husband no less, had been the most luscious morsel of all.
At some point, while I rolled the golden ring around the infinite expanse of my mouth, Julianne departed from the world of the living. I wish that more could be said to describe such a seemingly auspicious event, as death, on whichever scale or spectrum a party deems appropriate to gauge it, is worthy of proper disrespect. A final gasp of precious oxygen, however minute by comparison to the travesty of the world’s stage, should be noted, and I confess that it was only after her teeth ceased to grate upon my gaunt, elongated fingers that I paused my marital revelry, and the once significant piece of metal slid between a crevice of my teeth and into the vermilion abyss of flesh spread agape. Blurred discrimination, then, but not without its own inherent synergy; the distinction betwixt the two of us thinned as flesh smeared itself upon flesh, eliciting opacity. As stated previously, I had some difficulty adjusting the requisitioned tissue to properly fit my peculiar proportions. Stretching, tearing, and manipulating the pelt required the utmost concentration (of which I possess little, if any, capacity), further complicated by an insatiable desire to look upon my past life with newfound clarity.
Supposedly, expectation is often humbled by actuality. To be fair, I hadn’t anticipated much beyond what the corpse had to offer: a bloody, disjointed skull decorated with an tangled mane of kinked sepia, plastered against the remaining bone and cartilage. The jaw had been unhinged -by sheer necessity, I fiercely contend- but was otherwise unspoiled, while the ears had been cast away in their entirety (what could be done with them? Be honest, and you’re bound to agree). It was just a dilapidated shell, nothing more, and that’s part of the problem. The sight of what you had once been should be an abreaction, and despite my inclination to jaundice truth, I’ll be politely forthright and admit that had I yearned to desecrate the life of one dysfunctional mother, I would have been satisfied, replete, surfeit, and bloated. Furthermore, had it been my intention to take a trophy, a pancreas would have sufficed, so scratch that off the list.
A Freudian sleuth of Denz proficiency may extrapolate that my motivations (as well as actions) were being fueled by a need to recapture my lost sexuality or, in some inversely perverse fashion, recalibrate an engendered identity. Such a scenario has rummaged throughout my mind, but it’s a theory fraught with flawed symbolism. Physiology need not be a forte to hypothesize the difficulty in somehow extracting the female genitalia, to say nothing of the act of embedding it into my own state of being.*** Actually, if one is to grant the veracity of all other events hitherto depicted, then the transubstantiation of a vaginal cavity is no stretch of the imagination, the caveat being that I could scarcely refrain from shouting the virtues of my triumphant, transsexual rebirth from the tallest building in Iowa.****
Where does that leave my indiscretion? That it was a maniacal, deviant act of bombastic vandalism requires scant reflection. Beyond that, it’s just that I craved to be a better mother than Julianne had ever been to her child, and by doing what I did; by adorning her peeled, misshapen visage; by salivating over a misbegotten wedding ring; by expanding her chest to divine, accipitral proportion, I had so nearly convinced myself of maternal fulfillment and, momentarily, it felt as if I were the embodiment of a Phil Collins album (although I can’t be certain as to which album it was).***** In other words, it felt kind of good, but the kind of good that causes you to cough and guzzle the backwash at the bottom of a bottle of beer, while you await an erection that shall never arise. I hadn’t felt much like a mother either, but that’s all rather retrospective.
I couldn’t bring myself to allow her vacant form to be seen as I had perfected it, and I had grown tired of the two dislodged, hazel eyes that stared desolately in separate directions, so I clutched the exposed spinal column of our once beloved body and tossed it toward the ceiling, where it met with a whirling fan comprised of cheap wood and illumination. It was a twisting heave, so the body spun, as did the fan, until both united and, subsequently, ceased to function. Julianne’s lithesome form returned to its resting place, upside-down with ribcage set to resemble an outstretched eagle even further, while the fan sputtered and drooped low, ceasing its revolutions completely, and two of the three bulbs had shattered in a rather disappointing display, leaving the scene a ghastly, faint tawny hue. The end, mostly.
In hindsight, ‘a rather disappointing display’ aptly denotes the affair, but at the time, I was merely content with my recycled, state-of-the-decrepit-art identity, although I also felt as if some revision of wardrobe would be in order (up until then, I had been leaping around without a shred of clothing, but without genitalia, it’s not the taboo we’d like it to be). That being the case, I ripped a flowing, beige curtain from its resting place and wrapped it around me as if regalia, and also managed to gaze upon my reflection in the newly exposed window. I shan’t bore you further, except to say that I felt like the King and Queen of a nonplussed populace, and at the time, that was good enough for me.
I didn’t crash through the window, as one may come to expect of my infantile disposition: I quietly exited through the front door. So there. I did, however, attempt to make a few snow angels, the success of which matters not. (I did, however, hum Sussudio while doing so, if that helps you budding detectives.)
This is all about Korea, in an allegorical sense. Really.
Doppelgängers Gone Mild
P.S. Sparkles was like 'Time for someone to make a ridiculously long post', and I was like 'Well shit, give me some of your cocaine, and we have a deal.'
______________________________
*Having said that, I do expect a post from TMH in the near-fucking-future, that gifted bastard.
** If he would stop stealing my girlfriends with his devilish wit and dashing appearance, I’d leave him alone.
*** The battle of twisting Kmart’s sexuality continues, but you lose this round, Denz.
**** We have a two-story Burger King. Believe it.
***** Probably No Jacket Required
Before cell phone videos, YouTube, and Akon, there was this: The Blastmaster KRS ONE tossing PM Dawn's Prince Be off the stage at Big Daddy Kane's birthday party-slash-concert* because Prince Be told a reporter for TV Guide (my memory may be hazy here; it may have been Word UP!) that Boogie Down Productions "[made] mountains out of molehills." 
