Skinless
Suburban keens.
I really relate, Sean, confessed the voice note, I really do relate to these people I see in old photos. People who are dead. Not, you know, because they are dead and that is what I sometimes want to be (between you and me) but because of their being somehow frozen in a moment. My life is now like a photograph—a photograph of a catastrophe. Its devastation is right there on my face like someone held me down and painted it on at a very evil carnival. I wish I could paint it right back. It’s only fair. I’m texting you a photo of my grandma for reference. Don’t be confused by the fact that she is very beautiful in it.
I don’t see us as friends, declared the voice note between hesitant chokes, it’s just that you know me. I’m known. By someone.
Talking to you, whispered the voice note most discreetly, has made me realize how much of a stranger I've become here. I am a stranger to my mom and Jerome. Even as I sit down to dinner with them. Even as they ask me questions about my life and how I’m getting on and how work is going and even as I answer back mostly with the truth or something like it, I feel like I’m riding on the bus and they’re pestering me with small talk because they are alone and their lives are empty and meaningless, and they have some sort of entitlement to seek solace from me. The same with my friends, who are now like neighbors—the kinds you don’t know, don’t trust, and don’t like. Who are always intruding, always looking with a hostility form-fitted for you and some totally made-up offense against them. They look at me like I’m skinless, like all my secrets are on display because I haven’t mowed the lawn in forever. They trade them amongst themselves all garbled and embellished. Then they have the nerve to invite themselves over with an awful rubbery pie they made with sugar borrowed FROM ME. (Yeah hold on a minute.) So I’m at a diner right now.
I wrote this poem, the voice note congealed in conclusion after much sobbing, that I was going to read aloud into this. But no. No. I’ve actually written many poems. Or just the one many different ways.
I called him a baby, trembled the voice note. I called him a giant baby and asked him, in a baby’s voice for some reason, if he needed his diaper changed. That’s the first thing that came into my head when he told me that he was afraid of the dark. He took me to dinner and said he had something to tell me. That’s what he told me; not totally in those words but that was the gist. I thought he made it up. I thought he was avoiding something. I just remember his face losing all of its color instantly. I just couldn’t. That’s literally the last time I saw him, Sean.1
It really seeps into your head, the voice note seemed to echo through a spectral prism with no mind to a destination, without really telling you what IT is supposed to be. I thought it was loss—but it’s something that’s, like, beyond loss. There’s pain too. But it just floats above you like a bullying angel. I should write these down before I send them.
so um fuck you by the way I know it’s not your fault what happened but even you need to admit that you’re the next best thing you were there too right he was the same person to you as he was to me but like with enough difference between us that you could get a different set of information information I’m sure you saw and may even have been given despite doing basically nothing with it taking no action and relaying to no one who’d find it helpful you’ll say ‘well I just interpreted differently’ INTERPRET SHIT, SEAN someone needs to feel the weight of this and the consequences think of it from my point of view I’m left with nothing I had no recourse to anticipate I could not alter my expectations or make necessary changes in time you’ll say ‘okay I’m sorry but not everything is fair’ here we go the fairness again huh FUCK FAIR, SEAN you are the king of unfairness you’ve taken the crown and rule the kingdom with no thought to the feelings of your subjects (me) I bet that gives you some satisfaction are you happy, Sean you’ll say ‘no’ WELL GET HAPPY THEN go and be happy having power over others and hoarding memory like gold just be goddamn rainbows and sunshine all over town fuck fuck fuck, keened the voice note
This can’t be, whimpered the voice note interspersed within white noise … This isn’t what it is … not really … creaks and bangs, objects being rearranged, maybe thrown … I’m in the throes of … of … hard but small footsteps thudding on carpet then smacking on tile, papers being crumpled, or more like flung about … This can’t be … a TV in another room, faint growls roaming near and far, a toilet flushed but no faucet roared … This can’t be …
These are outgrowths of a story I wrote some weeks ago. It is still a mess and I don’t yet know what I’m going to do about it. In fact all but the footnoted of these voice notes aren’t actually in the text, serving here as an extension of the character’s state of mind. Maybe that will change; they seem fine on their own.