A DUDE GOT HIS FREAK ON

I moved into the bathroom, trying to skirt the blood as I took pictures. It was hard for me to work out what I felt about this loss of life. My ego was in the way. The answer was too dependent on what kind of person I was, or, more to the point, what kind of person I wanted to be. Did I feel for this wasted life? Was it a tragedy? Or was I simply indifferent to it? I looked through the lens and pondered as I snapped away, aware that I should care, slightly aware that I didn’t, but very aware that I wanted to switch to my wide-angle lens so that I could get more of the blood in the frame. Only now, looking back, can I honestly say I had no feeling at all. I knew nothing of this life. To me it wasn’t even a life, it was just blood on a wall, fingerprints on the phone – a guy called James who I had never met. It was an article I was being paid to write. But Neal’s crassness made me feel like I should care. If I didn’t, who would? Did someone like James have any loved ones? If he felt the need to lock himself in a strange room and cut his own wrists, he clearly didn’t think so. But without putting a face to the death, a body maybe, what can you feel? It’s just blood on a wall.

“Alan if you want any of that porn you should just take it, it’s just gonna get thrown otherwise,” offered Neal.

At this time my wife lay in an apartment in San Francisco, suffering the pangs of morning sickness. As sweet as the offer was, I didn’t think transgender porn stolen from a dead guy was a suitable gift for her. As I slowly edged nearer to fatherhood I wanted to celebrate life, not mock it.

The motel room door clicked and opened. A tall, thin, well-groomed man in his mid thirties poked his head round the door. He was wearing a yellow tie with red dots that he stroked while he spoke.

“Do you have any idea how long you guys are going to be? This room is booked out.”

Booked out? I thought to myself. There’s a guy’s blood on the floor, drugs smeared across the table and a rubber breast on the bed. Could he let this room out? Was it legal? Was there not supposed to be a cool-off period? An exorcism at the very least? No, corporate America wasn’t about to tolerate James’s attempt to screw with a schedule.

“Two hours max. He was good enough to stay in the bathroom so this will be fast and easy.”

“Just the way you like it,” I said flippantly, and I really was referring to the availability of the room. But of course, when I realised what I had said a laugh slipped out. I knew it was wrong- – both to say what I had said and to then laugh about it, but there was no keeping it in. Neither Neal nor the manager batted an eyelid.

“Okay, well just as soon as you can.”

“Did you see the porn?” Neal started to ask the manager.

“Yes.”

“Do you want to take any of it?”

“Just put everything in the garbage!” The manager left the room un-amused, slamming the door behind him.

“Jeeeeeez Alan! You can’t insult my clients like that.”

“Neal I really never meant to. I really didn’t mean it like that. It just came out wrong.”

“I know, I know. I’m not sweating it, dude. Did you see his face? He didn’t think that was funny, dude. But then he didn’t think the porn was funny either. Christ! Lighten up Mr Manager Dude!”

Neal was on his knees in the bathroom. He was wearing a blue all-in-one protective suit and yellow rubber gloves. In his right hand he had a bottle of chemical enzyme that he kept pumping up with pressure before spraying it over the floor. He squirted small areas and then with tissue began to mop up the blood. Singing to while away the time as he worked.

Whether it’s a scabby knee or a hanging head

We don’t care just as long as you’re dead

We’ll clean on our knees happily

Just as long as your check clears the bank

God! I thought. What a nasty bastard. The editors will love you.

::::::::::::::: From the best selling cult crime book Mop Men ::::

Day Eight
11am – On the street

Why do people have to stop dying when I’m in town? How many days do I have to go without a suicide, without a murder? Every day I wake up and I am annoyed that I am not already awake; that I wasn’t woken up at three in the morning because fifteen people were mowed down with a sub-machine gun in a McDonalds. I am panicking. I call Neal every two hours to see what’s going on. He is getting annoyed with my constant phoning, but with every passing day, hour and minute, I get more irritated that people aren’t killing themselves. Whenever my phone does ring I stare at it wide-eyed, mouthing the words, ‘Please be dead! Please be dead!’ But they are always alive.

This morning, leaving Starbucks I let the door slam in somebody’s face. I didn’t even look up, I just moved on. Three days ago I would have leapt out of my seat at such rudeness. Now I am simply disappointed that the glass in the door didn’t shatter and slice the vital arteries of the woman who stood there staring in consternation. Did she not know that I have a book to write, that I can’t write about dead people if they are still alive? And if I’m honest with myself that’s what it comes down to, this is my first commissioned book and I need people to die to complete it. I have become all of the things that I despised Neal for one year ago.

My phone rings:

“Hey it’s me…”

It’s my wife.

“Hey, how are you? How’s the worm?”

“We’re good. You don’t sound too happy though. Is everything okay?”

“No it’s a nightmare. Nobody has died for eight days. I’ve flown and driven all this way and I’m watching fucking movies. It’s costing money to be here and…”

“Yeah, but Alan. Come on!”

“I know all about ‘come on’ Christine but what am I going to do if nobody dies? I have nothing to write about.”

“But do you really feel comfortable complaining about that?”

“What does comfort have to do with it?”

“I thought you wanted to highlight that attitude as a bad thing anyway? Do something else. I can understand you’re frustrated if all you’re doing is watching movies every day. Do some research or something.”

“I know… I’m going to a bereavement counseling session tonight.”

“Well that could be a good interview, no?” asks my wife encouragingly.

“I’m not interviewing. Nobody I called would let a journalist in, so I called another place and told them that my dad had died and so I’m going to sit in on a group session to…”

“Alan for God’s sake! What are you thinking of?”

Of course I know how awful my conduct is. Half of me is shocked at my behavior, knotted with compunction, the other half of me is on my knees, hands together and looking at the sky.

I take the piece of paper with the phone number and address for tonight’s counseling session and I tear it up and place it in the bin on the sidewalk.

“Why don’t you give Rachel a call… go out for dinner again?” my wife suggests before hanging up.

My wife is right. This town is doing odd things to me. The boredom is eating into my character. I need a change.

“Walnut Creek? You’re still in Walnut Creek?” Rachel asks, incredulous.

“Waiting for people to die believe it or not,” I say, thinking I heard another question.

“Oh that sucks. Hey listen, I have an idea. One of my room-mates has suddenly moved out. There’s an empty room here now. Why don’t you come and stay here for a few days?”

“Would that be okay? I really do need a change.”

“Sure, but I’m not around tonight. I have tickets to see Michael Moore. He’s giving a talk at the San Francisco Uni. But you can just come over and we’ll grab a coffee and I’ll give you some keys.”

I am packing my case as if I am late for the airport. The relief is instant and it washes over me in a tide of joy. Goodbye Motel 6, depressing little hovel that you are. I examine the room and the bathroom, looking for forgotten items. It’s a depressing place. It’s not surprising that most of the suicides Neal cleans up are in motel rooms. The motel room does after all show a certain seriousness about what you’re contemplating. If you choose a motel room as your exit point you have put thought into several important aspects of the suicide. The biggest being, that unless you intend to announce it through a loud speaker, you are unlikely to be disturbed while attaching yourself to the ceiling fan with the TV cord. You are unlikely to be disturbed by your wife coming home early, or your roommate entering your room to see if you have any clean socks. You will not see a framed picture of your children, or a pair of shoes that remind you of the good times that exist. The motel room, the lonely void that it is, will more than likely see you through the job.

You will also, by using motel facilities, be ensuring that a loved one won’t be confronted by your dead body, possibly swinging from the aforementioned ceiling fan, or casually lounging on the bed with a replica Pollock where your head used to be. You are ensuring that your loved one, friend or fellow student will not have to get down on their hands and knees to clean up your remains. You are sparing them tainted furnishings and a room condemned to bad memories. If you check into a motel room intent on ending your life, you may consider yourself serious about it. Goodbye.

I, luckily, am only serious about bidding farewell to Gap Creak.

Everybody in the house, including Rachel, welcomes me unquestioningly. They offer me beer and games of pool. They invite me to theatres and bars that they are already attending with other friends. I go for Mexican food with one of Rachel’s roommates, Cat, on her motorcycle. It’s a warm evening, and I can think of nothing better to do than zap around San Francisco while clinging to the back of a motorcycle.

“You can ride back if you like,” says Cat.

“Are you kidding?” I ask shocked at the offer, I can ride a motorcycle, but Cat has no way of knowing this.

“No, it’s real easy to ride a bike.”

However, after we finish eating I don’t take Cat up on her offer. She needs to go home as she is working early in the morning. I on the other hand, have no idea whether I am working in the morning. Besides, I want to take a look around the neighborhood. There are several cafés and coffee bars around here and I’d like to poke my head into as many of them as I can.

“I have a tropical farm about ten miles away, you should come and see it.”

Yes, this really is the opening line of a conversation. I am in a bar called “Bliss.” It’s fairly busy so I sit on a stool at the bar. The guy sitting next to me, also alone, is around sixty years old and drunk. The bar is dark. The brightest light shines in from outside, back-lighting the tropical drunk, rendering his facial features hard to see. The décor, or at least what I can see of it, is trendy.
“Wonderful though the offer may be…” I start to tell the guy next to me with exaggerated pomp.

“Let me buy you a drink.”

“No that’s okay. I’ll get my own.” To the barman I say, “A Corona please.”

As the barman places my drink on the bar the guy next to me says. “Here, George, it’s on me.”

“No really I’d rather buy my own.” The barman ignores my hand, which is holding out money and removes a ten-dollar bill from Mr Tropical’s little pile of money that he has sitting on the bar.

“I have a tropical farm about ten miles away, you should come and see it.”

“Are you mad?” I ask for lack of anything else to offer.

“What do you mean – mad?”

“You’ve already invited me to your tropical farm.”

“And?”

“And I declined.”

“We can chase after the ostriches!” At this point he slips off his stool and I have to catch him. Needless to say I drink up, thank the old guy for the beer and leave. He is still talking to me as I walk out through the door and turn the corner.

A few blocks down I come across a used book store that’s open until 10:30. What a wonderful thing. There’s something great about buying books in the evening. You end up buying books that you weren’t looking for, because you have the time to browse, to read a few pages of every book you pick up. An hour later I leave with ‘Old Goriot’ by Balzac and go back to an Italian café that I passed on the way down. There is only one table available outside. It’s big and has five chairs around it, but the waitress says it’s okay to take it while I wait for a smaller table. As soon as my glass of wine arrives a party of four turn up and want the table. They sit down with me. There’s a mother, father, son and the son’s friend. The boys are around thirteen years old.

“Hi, I’m Isaac. I’m a writer,” the friend informs me.

“Fantastic,” I say, choking on a little my wine.

“What do you do?” he enquires.

“Me?” I pause “I write…” and then realizing how silly this now sounds “…birthday cards.”

“You do? Oh my God! And you tell people? Brad did you hear that? He writes birthday cards. I didn’t think people really did that.”

“That’s so funny!”

“I write poetry mainly, and novels,” says Isaac.

“Where are you from?” the mother asks.

“England,” I say.

“We’re all San Francisonites,” says Isaac, ending the conversation. I smile at the mother and she actually winks back at me. I am unsure whether this is to confirm that they are all indeed San Francisonites or to confirm that Isaacs is indeed a little pubescent twat. The most amazing thing about this conversation is that they all remain completely straight-faced. I’m doing everything I can not to cry out in laughter, but the parents are discussing wine. I hide myself behind Old Goriot.

“Balzac,” Isaac exclaims? “Balzac,” he whispers, more to himself.

A couple start to get up to leave. I quickly grab my wine and leave this poet to his diet coke.

The evening is so perfect for sitting outside with a book and a glass of wine that I end up staying here outside the café for quite a while. At some point I hear Isaac in the background asking the waitress for a pen and paper. He finishes off his request with the words: “I have a poem that I need to lay down.”

A dog stops and starts sniffing my ankles. His back leg flinches as if he’s about to cock his leg, but for whatever reason he changes his mind.

“I thought he was going to piss on me,” I say to the girl on the other end of the leash.

“Yeah, so did I,” she giggles.

I start laughing. “And you were going to let him?”

“I would have pulled him back.”

“Oh, are you sure?”

“You’re reading Balzac, have you read Balzac and the Little Seamstress? It’s by a Chinese writer called Dai Sijie. It’s about re-education during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. It’s really great.”

“I’ll have to check it out.”

“Enjoy your wine,” the girl says as she leads her dog up the street.

People really talk to each other in this neighborhood. It may be about tropical farms, laying down poems and dogs that look like they may piss up you leg. But they do talk. There are a lot of people passing on the sidewalk. Many of them appear to greet absolute strangers. The girl with the dog has now stopped three tables down. A girl and her boyfriend are telling her that they really like her jacket.

Isaac & Co are leaving. As they walk past me, Isaac places a piece of paper on my table.

“It’s a poem I just wrote. You can use it in one of your birthday cards.” Isaac turns and walks off.

I blame Jack Kerouac for the existence of Isaac. If Jack Kerouac were alive, and here right now, I’d punch him on the nose.

Isaac’s friend stands in front of me, he looks round and watches Isaac’s back as it saunters off. He looks back towards me and with eyes almost tearful with admiration he snatches up the poem and stuffs it in his pocket before jogging off to catch up with the rest of his gang.

It’s only as I sit here now, writing this, with no poem by Isaac to set down on this page, that I realize that I should have stopped him.

As I walk back towards Rachel’s house the steep hill looms ahead of me. Luckily, before it gets too steep I stumble across another café where I manage to drink another two glasses of wine. But then I am woken up as my forehead collides with the top of my book. It’s time to tackle the mountain. Very quickly, the calves begin to scream out in pain. They haven’t worked like this since I was forced to run cross-country at school. Being drunk doesn’t help much, not with the walking anyway. It does stop me from feeling self-conscious when I start to include my arms in the climb like some city dwelling baboon. I hear a car coming up the hill. I turn and wave my arms at it. Yes, this car can return the favor of my previous lift to strangers. The driver slows down, crouches over the steering wheel, realizes he doesn’t know me and drives off. That’s when it occurs to me just how much sense zigzagging makes.

::::::::::::::: From the best selling cult crime book Mop Men ::::

HEPATITIS C YOU LATER


Just then there’s a knock at the door, the owner of the complex has stopped by to check on the work.

“Well, it’s really been an easy job, the lino was so old and worn that I just pulled it, everything has been scrubbed or doused with enzyme. ” Says Jake.

“Well, it looks good to me. When you’re done drop the keys back at the manager’s office and she’ll sign your paperwork for you. Thanks for coming out so quick, the neighbours were starting to complain. See ya later fellas”

“Do you know what happened here?” I manage to get out before he takes a step.

“Oh it was nothing. He died of natural causes.”

I laugh. The bloody body print that was on the linoleum suggested anything but natural causes. Any of the three different murder scenarios given by the neighbours would fit better with the mess we saw on the linoleum.

“Yeah, he had Hepatitis C. Apparently he passed out, fell and cracked his head open on the floor and bled to death, he wasn’t found for ten days.”

I freeze from head to foot. No instinctive laughter sneaks out now. I no longer have any dumb-ass questions for the complex owner. Instead I look at my minidisk recorder sitting on the kitchen counter. I look at my camera bag sitting just outside the kitchen on the floor. I look at my camera on top of the TV. I look at Jake in his all-in-one protective suit and respirator. Then in a mirror I see myself, dumb-ass, wearing jeans, T-shirt and an expression like my penis just fell off. I have only had the knowledge of Hepatitis C for about ten seconds and already I feel contaminated.

I look through the back of my head for the door. But the complex manager doesn’t know I’m a journalist. He has assumed that I am a cleaner. It’s best not to blow my cover. But he should feel free to leave. I have no further questions.

Complex man moves away and waves goodbye. I see him off the premises, an inch behind him all the way. As soon as he is away up the path I gasp for air, having not taken any air in since I heard the word “Hepatitis.”

I know nothing about Hepatitis C. But I knew instantly that the best procedure was to stop breathing and get outside, where I now stand. What did I touch? Where have I put my hands since? When will I lose control of my bodily functions? At what point will I pass out and crack my head open on the cement floor?

Jake comes out of the apartment laughing.

“Dude, you should have seen your face! Christ it was just instant panic. I thought you were going to just turn and run. I really didn’t think you were going to keep it together.”

I’m not keeping it together. What if I take Hepatitis C home to Christine and Selma, the gift of transgender porn all of a sudden is not looking as thoughtless as it once did.

“Alan, you’re okay, you can’t get it by breathing.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Shit no, if someone with Hep C sneezed on you be concerned, but you know, it’s a blood-based pathogen. You didn’t lick the lino while I was out at the truck did ya?” Jake asks with a severe expression on his face.

“What about if he sneezed on the counter, and then I touched that and somehow got bacteria in my mouth or something?”

“Er… I don’t know about that,” says Jake frowning. “But I’m sure you’re fine.”

“My minidisk and camera and everything is in there, on the kitchen counter, what if he has sneezed or bled on that counter and…”

Jake interrupts “Don’t worry, we’ll clean it all with pure alcohol, it’ll be fine. The chances are so small, but then if we clean everything, the chances are zero okay?”

I believe him, sure. But that doesn’t mean I’m okay. Had I had forewarning I would never have helped remove the lino, or laid my effects down inside the apartment. I would have worn a respirator. In fairness to Jake, he never asked me to help. He also didn’t know about the hepatitis.

Jake brings my stuff out; I line it up on the pavement as if it’s going to explode in my hands, holding everything at arm’s length. Jake passes me a handful of cloths and some cans of 100% alcoholic foam. I start with the minidisk, carefully wiping all the surfaces several times. I run a fresh cloth up and down the cable that runs to the microphone, spending a couple of minutes on it. Once all the equipment is clean I cover my hands and arms and rub vigorously. But my whole body is starting to itch, so I take my T-shirt off and cover my body in foam. Passers-by point at me and laugh. Then they see that I am standing next to a Crime Scene Cleaners truck and they stop. Next I take my trainers off, throw them onto the sidewalk and go about pumping up the enzyme canister. Once it reaches full pressure I use it to blast my trainers up and down the path, making sure I target them inside and out. Jake finds this all very comical. But you never can be too sure, that’s what I say as I stand here with no factual knowledge of hepatitis, nor even a movie reference to account for my fear. Why couldn’t it have been a boy meets girl, girl dies of Hepatitis C type saga, then I would have been educated in the ways of this blood-based pathogen.

I throw my socks away and I smother my feet in alcohol along with the bottoms of my jeans. I think that the now-gathered crowd will agree that I have well and truly covered everything. I am ready to be released back into normal society.
“What happened?” One of them asks, grimacing at the thought of my answer.

“It’s hard to believe,” I tell him. “But absolutely nothing.”

“Oh you got the heebie-jeebies huh?”

“Fuuuck yes! The heebie-jeebies.”