My hotel room has bloodstreaks on the walls where, before I moved in, junkies squirted their hypos between hits. Pollock, that painter famed for dripping pigment on canvas, has nothing on these organic artists. High above a soiled mattress someone has scrawled these words in red letters--e pluribus unum--Latin for *one of many.* The artist, with a looping flourish, signed his masterpiece with a scatological sobriquet. I think about that for a while, but then I have to use the shitter.
The toilet, the crapper, the once Beautiful porcelain bowl is rusted and gurgles with the randomness of a slot machine. When I'm done urinating, a tepid stream, I flush with my foot.
Why do I live in this snarly pulchritude?
Some say I'm a schizophrenic who lost his homosexual lover in a car accident and others claim I'm DEA working undercover. My wife, before she sawed her wrists with the Ginsu and bled crimson on the backyard patio, claimed I was Lucifer himself and had ascended Hades as her personal tormentor.
All false testament, I say. Give them no more credence than a beatific Jerry Falwell smile. I am simply one of many who have given up; shot my wad as my rapturous neighbor from down the hall claims with her lips split and her teeth bared. That's the bitch knocking at the door now. Hear her with the dope in her hand? Hear her with the spoon in her pocket? Hear her with that knuckled-rap swelling the room and thrumming my brain until my synapses fire ElectricBlue. That shit head!
That bitch! That cunt! She is my apocalypse, my savior, my Knight in tarnished armor.
Please God, for the love of all that is righteous, please don't let her in. |
