Jerk

Four in the morning -- sleepy time. Roll into bed, covers over head,
pants down. Ah, the warmth and glow, the power of an erection. No one
around, it's four in the morning. Plus, I need my exercise. So I
begin?


Starts off a memory, a couple I once knew and loathed. Their
lives passionate as mine was drab, seemingly unending. It made me angry
to think. Sex like epileptic fits, convulsing, writhing; hold your
tongue. They slipped and twisted in sweat drenched sheets, collapsing
in sleepy heaps. They lay in their fluid, uncaring. To them, that is
love. To me? Desperation, stagnant as unfiltered coffee in workplace
break rooms.


Old, old women. Cripples with no hands. Paraplegics in
wheelchairs. Female gymnasts with ipecac personalities. Girls wearing
nothing but black wigs and fishnets. Clowns with sad faces. Little
boys. Little boys? How conventional. How papal. How drab. My heart's
just not in it.


Change the channel. Stoic, static resonance of choppy
implications, never before imagined. Some kiss by the book; I kiss by
television. Rabbit ear antennae, covered in tin foil desire, mocked by
satellite envy, replicating with heightened sense of self-approval.
Invigorating it is, to hate so fervently.


She hates me. She glares and screams at me, calling me
selfish, and a liar, and all other things unspeakable. I sit there
blankly, until she holds up my favorite photo of her and begins to rip
it to shreds. I scream and glare at her. Why, oh why, must you tear
yourself apart like this? You've been doing it your entire
life.


Mother spilling hot soup on my legs, skin welded to polyester
pajamas, screams of pain ooze from a wounded household, unmitigated by
familial love. Questions abound, knowledge limited. Spatial thinking
never claimed to be ethical. It never claimed anything at all. My flesh
exposed, to the bone. They're going to take my legs, you know. They're
going to let them fall off at the ends, cook them until the meat falls
off and lies drying in heaps. I won't scream. I won't. My heart, it's
weak.


Instead, I will sing a song of myself at the top of my lungs,
in crowded rooms. Sing loudly. All will be absolved. Misguided,
forgotten derelict superhero failures swoon at sounds of intonations
repetitive. It is their failings in life that make our successes valid.
It incurs meaning into an otherwise meaningless life, even as meanings
shift like maggots in a basin of grain. Instill value with age, wine
and cheese and comic books. Antique clocks. Autographed windfalls.
Denial of sincerity, of trusts and trysts. Broken wrists rendering the
lonely single men of the world purposeless. I lost far before I even
got to play the game.


Here I sit, shirtless, examining my chest hairs, search for
blackheads to push, exfoliating my chest, so my lungs can breathe. Talk
to myself openly about ancient people with childlike minds, godlike
hearts, minnow-like esteem. They couldn't have made themselves this
way, could they? For I, I will never allow myself to reach the pinnacle
of self-loathing. My parabola only extends thus far, to the edge of my
elbow. I am at one with myself, karmic, stroking my ego much more
diligently than my prick. My stamina worthwhile, notwithstanding of
impenetrable boundaries, I thrive on my solitude, and relish in its own
gentle and underestimated splendors. No impeccable misinterpretations
will assuage me. No lost causes will hinder me. I come with towel
worthy-force and contain it in the breadth of a white paper
napkin.


Finally, a climax.