Damn
By J Brown (copyrighted 2000)
Splat and be foreign. It’s the only way. Be furious and rigid about the passions you scream about when no one was listening. That’s what I did.
Wind slight and my stride full on a blue beach day. The past was a collection of cement slabs comprising a sidewalk with old gum as moles and cracks like the lines of a weathered face. I got that weathered face, and who knows, maybe I’m somebody’s sidewalk. It’s a very crazy city but, like Twain said, take out all the ‘verys’ by writing ‘damn’ so your editor will take them out like they should’ve been in the first place. I’m a bunch of damns. Damn, damn, damn. I wonder if there is anything to me. I am not a goddamn good- for-nothing I’m just damn. Damn this and damn that. More screeching and the blue day. They are metal rainbows, filled with creamy clouds. A sandwich, if you must. Waiting at a huge crosswalk. The traffic is like disjumbled train cars, at odd spaces and strange colors and I wait. The other side is like another state and there are even different street signs over there. Am I going somewhere new? Or is it just across the street? It’s that perspective that we play with, who is right and sane. It’s lunch and I should be working. We should be working, but we’re dying. I might even die before I get this out. It hurts. It hurts to be here, and tell the truth. It probably hurts to read this. Don’t tell me it hurts damn much, it makes no sense and it’s forced. I’ve been squinting the whole time, by the way, and even the black street blinds me carelessly. Crossing, up the slight mound and traversing to the new side. It is today I should be here. I sit on a bench and tell you. It’s hard to walk and talk and hurt. Yesterday was bright too. Somewhere by Sawtelle the cars were stacked rainbows shinging against the lights. Foreign languages like printed worms offered food specials and the buildings housed businesses that were armored soldiers, tough and unfriendly. They needed every buck they get. Seven-Eleven, bought a sewing kit. I couldn’t go to the police, they might be looking for me. My old lady, you know what I’m saying. She got me good, but I hit her first. My black shirt was sticky and matted red on my right sleeve. I sat on a bench promising I’d get lucky if I sat there. Hey, you never know. It turns out I wasted the money, I didn’t need stitches. I put the sewing kit in my pocket and it was in that little box. I went home. She was there, one of her hands holding on of my cold beers to her purple eye. It’s the sauce baby, I’m sorry, I tell her. How’s you arm, she asks with one eye. It hurts like a bitch, I tell her. It does and I show her. It is sweaty red and the scraggly hairs near the wound are blond red. She’s glad I’m hurt. I get the great idea then. I pulled out the small sewing kit and hand it to her. What’s this? I thought we could patch things up. Very funny, she said. Damn, I said. What? Nothing. I grabbed my beers (you think she was gonna take anymore) and drank them at Stoner Park. I watched the Mexicans play soccer until dark and then talked to a homeless guy until he got a beer out of me and left. Racing. Red. Sore. Damn, I dreamt in the grass of a quiet soccer field. Dame la pelota, his arm is raised. I walk on the thick purple grass and beg for forgiveness. He says things I can’t understand. Please—and then he slaps me. No one can understand you, he says. The morning was dew sparkly and the left side of my body is damp, the right side is red. Breakfast at Dolores. Coffee, toast, three cigarettes on my way to Bundy. She works somewhere off Broadway and Twelfth in a boring building. It wasn’t until I got there I found she had called in sick. Damn.