Running Against the Wind

Note:  I’m currently reading Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk.  He is one of my favorite writer guys.  When I first had Jane show up I couple of posts back, I knew she was evil but I wasn’t sure why.  I wouldn’t call the following plagiarism, but maybe it is.  Here’s the thing.  Jane turns out to have a lot in common with one of the characters in that book.  It’s not coincidence.  Chuck Palahniuk is so graphic in his descriptions of pretty gross stuff that it kind of won’t go away real easy.  Plus it’s really easy to come up with crazy ideas if you just read them off of a piece of paper.  So seriously.  Go read Invisible Monsters.   It’s really weird.  Or even better, Damned by the same guy.  Or I guess you could read “Fight Club” if you don’t have a DVD player.

 ~~~

Everything is perfectly perfectly ready.  It’s just good fortune the good Dr Johnson (no relation) didn’t get the courage to ask me out while I was still madly in love with him.   Of course he wouldn’t have had anything to do with me back then.  He spurned my advances so vehemently I had to learn fancy words to describe what had happened.  Oh I’ve known Jack (Herman) for a lot longer than he thinks.  I was just a goofy kid when I first laid eyes on him.  I was instantly in love, but knew it was not possible.  No way he’d fall for someone like me.  He was just too old fashioned and I was just …

But I did my homework.  I did what it took to become a woman he’d take notice of.  If you really want something.  Anything.  It can be yours.  But you must be willing to make the sacrifice.  Everybody gets everything they truly want.  If it’s too hard, you just don’t want it bad enough.  At least that’s what I believed when I first embarked on this journey.  I gave up everything to become what I am now.

I was not the classic beauty.  Hell, I was not any kind of beauty.  I was heavy.  Big boned, they always said.  So I did what was necessary.  I had a single goal.  Win over the smooth walking Dr. Herman Johnson. 

When we first met, he said he liked me, but I knew because of my plain looks, we were destined to be “Just friends.”  For the first few years, I thought as he got to know me better, maybe his feelings would change.  He’d see that we were meant to be together.  But I was wrong.  That’s when I decided he would never love me so the thing to do was become somebody else.

But I also knew that if I started dieting and exercising and getting the necessary plastic surgeries required to become the woman of his dreams, I couldn’t do it while he watched.  No, he’d always see that other person.  The person I hated most.

So I had to move away for a while.  I said my goodbyes to everyone and disappeared.  When I returned, I had a new face and a new name.  Not even my parents recognized me.  I’ve served them coffee hundreds of times and they haven’t a clue.  They think I’m some big successful executive out west.

The irony is that after I went through the pain to become what I thought Herman wanted, I no longer wanted him.  I have desired a man for years who would never love the real me.  Only the mutilated me.  And that shit ain’t right.  That’s why I have to kill that buttery gait bastard.

~~~ 

It is the evening of the day.  That is what Burt Rasson was thinking as he sat at Dr Johnson’s kitchen table fiddling with the card lock thing he used to enter the premises.  “Oh great, now I’ll have that stupid song stuck in my head,”  He thought as he gazed out the window, watching the children outside play.  He was amazed that the games they were playing were the same old games he used to play, but of course everything is new to children.  He thought about these thing as black tears soiled the good Dr.’s kitchen table top. 

When did everything change?  He and Dr. Johnson had been inseparable for many years.  He wasn’t a doctor yet.  Hell, they were about 15 years old when they started hanging out occasionally.  Then all the time after Burt saved Herman.  There was a fire at a second hand store downtown.  Herman worked there in the afternoons counting things or something.  The fire had started a couple of doors east of the shop, but the whole block of shops was one huge brick structure that was built around the 1890’s.  Once the heat was enough to set the bricks ablaze there was no stopping it.  It moved down to where Johnson was working on the second floor of the shop.  He was completely oblivious to the fire because he had his Rolling Stones cassette tape blasting into his ears thanks to his brand new Sony Walkman.  “My riches can’t buy everythi-i-i-ing …” young Johnson screamed along with Mick Jagger as he inventoried some stuff or something.

By the time anybody realized he was in there, the lower floor was all flames.  Nobody would go in after him.  There was a really dramatic scene where the fire chief yelled at Burt Rasson saying the skinny, smooth walking kid probably got out and anyway, nobody’s going in there.  It’s just too dangerous.

“Oh yeah, that’s cool.  Ok.  Bye.”  Went Rasson’s little trick as he sidled to the back of the building where there was, ahem, a fire escape.  He scaled the stairs wondering why Herman wouldn’t have just come out that way.  The steps were hot enough that Burt’s shoes were sticking to them and he couldn’t use the handrail, because … it was hot too.   Once he got into the second floor room of the second hand store, smoke and visibility were issues.  He didn’t see Herman anywhere.  “J”  he shouted several times, feeling his way around. 

Eyes stinging, throat burning, choking, he turned to leave when he saw movement under an old military style metal desk.  Blinking ferociously, he ran to the desk to find his friend trapped where part of the floor had given way and toppled the desk onto J’s leg.  Adrenaline went to work as Burt effortlessly tossed the desk aside and dragged a delirious “J” to safety.

“Smiling faces, I can see, but not for me …” Johnson continued, but it was all warped sounding because the heat had damaged the cassette.

“Don’t quit your day job J,”  Rasson joked.

“Looks like I got fired R,” Johnson replied all raspy and stuff.

After that day, they only went as “J” and “R”.  Since they were always together, people just addressed either one of them as “Janer”

But as Burt now sat at the good Dr’s kitchen table wearing his best melancholy, he tried to work out when he and the Dr started to drift.  Burt figured it was his own damn fault.  He had no other friends and everybody liked “J”.  Burt had been jealous.  When one of J’s friends, Marv, started hanging around more and more and J had no intention of blowing him off, Burt voluntarily walked away.  “Stupidest thing I ever did, I realize that now.”

That’s about the time Burt’s new lifelong friend, “Joe the bottle of Gin¹,” came along.

~~~

I’m looking through the glass in the early autumn evening.  Already darkening outside, but still warm.  I see my reflection like a ghost.  My hatred obscured by lots of makeup.  I am ready.  The Dr will be here any minute.  Should I go with him to the carnival or coerce him in for a drink and get it over with.  Still.  I like fun houses.  And there’s nothing like the feeling of having a handsome fella hand you some piece of shit stuffed animal he won “for you”.  I suppose if you can knock over milk containers with a baseball, I should spread my legs for you.  No wait.  That’s not right.  Oh it escapes me.  Anyway, I’ll take the fuzzy panda or monkey or whatever the hell it is.  Yeah, I guess I can lug the damn thing around.  I’ll throw it on my bed with the others.  The other failed attempt at the real prize.  There on the bed.  A reminder to all suitors.  You’re not the first guy to knock over my milk bottles, if you know what I mean.  Wink Wink.

After a day at the café, I’m dead tired.  I don’t want to stand anymore, let alone walk to the carnival.  Yes, it’s less than 3 blocks away, but my feet are swollen and hot.  But Dr Johnson never drives anywhere.  Who can blame him?  The finest Cadillac doesn’t glide down the road as smooth as Johnson down the sidewalk.  That settles it.  I’m poisoning him before the carnival.  Seriously, I’m just too tired to walk to the carnival and I don’t know when I’ll get the chance again.  I suppose I could just tell him to stop calling me Madge.  Then the headaches might stop.

 

Ok, where’s that brown bottle.  It was just here.  Let me know if you see it.  It’s got a skull and crossbones on the side with a big XXX underneath it.  Oh wait, never mind.  It’s in the toy room.  Hang on.  Ok, just a couple of drops into the tumbler on the left and the years of struggle will certainly die with “J”

Oh what’s this?  There a smooth Cadillac pulling up to the curb out front.  Who could that … It can’t be!  Johnson drove?!? What gives?

~~~ 

“What gives, Dr Johnson?”

“Our date was supposed to be tonight right?”

“No, I know, but I’ve never seen you drive before.  I was just going to ki…”

“Well, I figured since you’re probably on those sweet gams of yours all day, they could use a rest.”

“Aren’t you sweet.  Care for a drink?”

“I’d love one,  I’ll just pour some of this whiskey into the tumbler on the right and give it to you.  You know Jane, you really should keep the brown bottle of poison in a safe place.  Now just a little whiskey for me in the tumbler on the left.  My left.  Jane?  What’s wrong.  Jane?  JANE!”

Oh no.  I’ve done gone and drank my own poison.  I can’t control myself.  Falling.  “Doctor.  I have to tell you something,”  Holy crap.  That was in my old voice from back before I was beautiful.

“Marv?  Is that you,”  The doctor has just kind of figured out my secret and now I’m going to die.

“Air – I need air.  Can’t breathe.”  It has started to rain outside, but the Doctor is pulling me out the front door.

“Seriously Marv, I totally did not recognize you at all until I heard your voice.  What a trip.  Oh and do you happen to know what that Poison was?  Because you appear to be dying.”

“Do you know where I came up with the name ‘Janey’”, I know he does.

“That’s the thing you called me when we met at Louis’ that one time,” J realized all philosophically and everything.

~~~

1.      Ok, sorry about this, but I just realized that I once read this book by Tim Sandlin, called “Sorrow Floats.” It was the second book of a story line, not really a trilogy per se.  But anyway, the narrator was a huge alcoholic and named each of her bottles of booze.  One day, I will have an original thought.