Feeling For The Lightswitch In The Dark

12.07.08

It is the molecule of the soul. Floating above my head just out of reach as the fiber of life contracts around me like static electricity during a blinding lightning storm... and the sky is darkening outside...violet, vanilla, gentle?... The whole time I'm sitting in the club, in the corner alone, big black hat over my eyes, silent obsession, sitting in a swamp of pulsating light, with a cigarette fog rolling through. I'm feeding the illusion, what else can I do? The lights fade to a brown murky haze as I look up at an attractive female waitress walking by. I signal her to bring me another manhattan. As she's walking over to the bar a smooth jazz band starts playing which seems to make the whole building float over water. I can feel it under my feet. The manhattan arrives and I look out the window onto the busy nighttime street, tears of rain streaming down the pane as a burst of thunder overpowers the sound of the jazz band. With the orange hue of a street light on my face I think about Bill, I think about Marie and how I've got nothing to do today but smile. I wonder where they are now. Dead at the bottom of a blood red river, swept off their feet on a primordial beach somewhere, fighting in a heroic battle on the sweeping plains below the highest mountain in the universe perhaps. I come out of my trance thought and dive my hands into the pockets of my gray long coat as the thunder seeps into the club. I take a drink and laugh to myself realizing what I've found in there. I look up again as the tone of the music turns slightly melancholy. I thought I recognized him but it was someone else. A foreigner perhaps. Attack the Russians? Are you kidding me, I know those people! Damn the New York Times. I pull the pipe out of my coat and study it on the table surface leaning forward. Shit, this is the one from the night with the tranny strippers on 53rd! I roll up the resin into a ball and attempt to light it. This shit was potent, there was something else in it. Something from the wild. Something....something of insanity coursed through my mind. Probably the bits and pieces of my lung as I hack violently from the inhalation of it. I fall back onto the seatback and blow it out my mouth. Looking back out the window, hmmm.... I wonder what's become of me. Mother? Father? I want you to come and find me here. Find me like this, your experiment gone wrong. My biggest fear... you catching me masturbating. How trite I had become. How beautiful mistakes can be though. As night falls, I sit and go deeper into the caverns of my frantic mind. I think the club patrons are looking at me. I look out the window as an arc of lightning slices the eternal night. Lucifer save me! I cry into my drink reflecting my face. Marilyn Monroe walked by my table as a skeleton. Come here, come here I cry out. I'm the young man in the 22nd row who see's you as something more than sexual, more than just our Marilyn Monroe! Like she knew what that meant. The jazz band playing earlier is filing out the front door into the moist summer night of neon lugging their instruments behind their back like actors in a forgotten movie. An acoustic loner takes the stage doing a rousing rendition of Homeward Bound by Simon and Garfunkel. I stumble over to the stage laughing crazily as I turn my head to look back at my seat. The entire place elongates in my mind, it looked a million miles away. I crawl around and make paranoid jolts with my head. Jesus, fifteen miles to Marlboro Heights and I'm smoker of the month! 6 foot cigarettes, butane lighters right to my lip, oh the humanity! People surround me, looking at me, pointing, the guitarist even stops to look what's the matter.The whole experience turns discordant and upside down. I begin to sob on the floor, the overhead lights shining harshly on me, purple shifting to blue to white. I had to get out of this trap. I was like a rat in some experiment. I looked up and a panoramic of eyes looked at me like I was some diseased rabid animal. Get out of here one of them said and they all turned back to the guitarist, mumbling amongst themselves. How did I get over here I thought. I stumbled back over to my table, avoiding crashing into all the non- existent cactus branches. I threw the glass of manhattan on the floor and gave them all the finger. Probably the wrong one but they got it alright. I scrawled out on a napkin with a half broken pen, "goodbye all you beautiful people, i'll see you on the other side!" "There!," I screamed," this one's on me." I took out my wallet and threw it into the expanding alcohol puddle before kicking the glass door open with my black leather boot and out onto the streets of dashing chaos, walking like an Egyptian insect, prayin' mantis, cough- cough. Things always get so out of hand wherever I go. Insanity builds crazy skyscrapers in my conscious, God fiddles my brain with old angel wings. A Nike ad flashes across a screen in midtown. Just do it I automatically thought. Auto -suggestion.... Just do it... I realize I turn into this person each night. As I gaze up at the towering buildings and flashing ads in a mind numbing stupor, the hallucinations intensify. Marilyn..... marilyn.... marilyn.... marilyn.... your candle burned out long before, your legend.... ever did. The lights all wrap around my head, a schizo- panoramic. The firefighters rush past me in a hurry, a slow motion of sweet dreams. I imagine myself in the end of a movie; the camera zooming out above me. The audience erupting into manic cheers. Manic cheers, manic cheers. I remember.... you've got to keep dreaming the dream even after you wake up. And I can't remember the last time I slept.