Mykel Board says: You're Wrong

January, 1998

You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

By Mykel Board

 

Like the line between genius and madness, the line between heaven and hell is a thin one. One slip can plunge you into the abyss. Despite the heaven part, I wish this could've been the April Fools column, rather than the last one. It's not.

If I were writing a novel, I'd start from the beginning. First I'd explain the heaven: a perfect month. First week: a smart, fun punkrock sexpal. Then Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

I'd tell you about how much I looked forward to her visit. How much I bragged about her, showed off her letters, jerked off to her photo before she arrived. I'd introduce you to her. I'd show you the good times. I'd paint pictures of us huddling in the movies to get out of the cold. I'd tell you how we got drunk listening to bums talk about how "homos are just like roaches."

I'd talk about making home porn videos with her fingers up my ass and her mouth around my dick.

"Why'd you pick me?" she once asked. "Everybody wants to fuck Mykel Board." I laughed and hugged her for that one. I only wished it were true.

I'd tell you how we covered each other with hickies. Our bodies looked like the advanced cases in the AIDS-ward. I might put in the story of our unsuccessful hunt for crack. She wanted the true NY Experience, she said. My friends said we should forget about crack and buy heroin.

If I were writing a novel, I'd tell you how sorry I feel when she has to leave. After her week's stay, we go to the train station.

An older Negro sits behind bulletproof glass at the Amtrack counter. He tells us her reservation was for Friday. This is Saturday. Still, he promises, he'll get her on the train. She thanks him. She has to meet a friend in Wisconsin, she says. It's all arranged.

Before the train comes, she tells me I should leave her alone. She hates goodbyes, she says. I leave.

Later, she calls me. They wouldn't let her on the train. Her ticket was only stand-by, she says. The Negro at the counter didn't tell her, she says. I'm happy when she tells me the next train isn't for another week. I believe her. Even though you can almost always reschedule for the next day, I still believe her.

We return the next week and find that time too "Amtrack fucked up." They booked her for the wrong day. I believe her. I get mad just like she does. She would leave in a couple of days and that is ok. She doesn't and it isn't. Things get bad.

I should've known, they tell me. I should've suspected something when she went to the bathroom every ten minutes. I should've known something was up when she walked with her head down-- and never talked.

I didn't know. My bathroom is small, but amicable. A giant mirror hangs on the inside of the door. You watch yourself shit, or make faces. There's plenty to read and plenty of porn. I spend a lot of time in there, why shouldn't she?

Sure, she's quiet, but I like that. If she's got nothing to say, she says nothing. How many people do that? That's a plus. Not a defect.

What did I know?

Maybe I should've known when she said she's not afraid to walk by herself in the city.

"I have a gun." she said. She'd say that to me many more times.

The second time "Amtrak fucked her over" and she couldn't leave, she told me, "I had to deal with that asshole behind the window. If it happens again, I'll blow his head off."

It did, but she didn't. The fifth time she couldn't leave, I finally whiffed the rotting truth. Amtrak "fucked up" three times and twice her friend got sick and couldn't meet her. Maybe this is where I should start the story.

She makes her final reservation. I call to check.

She's reserved-- on the train-- for sure, they tell me. After my call, she decides not to go by train, but take a bus instead, a day later. I get angry.

Around this time, she starts to stumble. I work at the computer. She comes out of the bathroom. Her shoes thump heavily, irregularly.

I looked around the corner and see her slide. She tries to brace herself. Her hand slips down, tearing a poster off the wall.

She stumbles into the room, tripping over a broom handle.

"What the fuck?" I yell.

She laughs.

She trips over a suitcase. She sprawls to the floor.

"What the fuck's the matter with you!" I yell. "Are you so fucking drunk you can't walk?"

"Whatsa matter little Mikey?" she says. "Are you so upset because of your poor little suitcase?"

She picks up the suitcase and carries it into the apartment hallway. She lies down on the floor, caressing it, rocking back and forth as if she were comforting a small child.

It's impossible to work. I go to bed hoping she'll just lie in the hall and sleep off the booze.

At sleep's brink, she stumbles again. She falls against the television. She knocks over the phone; slams against a lamp. It blinks once and goes out. I climb down from the loft. I grab her by the coat lapels. (Why is she always wearing a coat indoors? It never occurs to me to ask.)

I throw her onto the couch.

"Stop it! Just lie there and stay still." I yell. "Can't you let me sleep? Why are you torturing me?"

"Wow, what a big tough man." she says. "Just because I slip in the dark, you have to be violent. What a big tough man!"

"I just want to sleep." I beg, "Please, just let me sleep. Can't you just sober up?"

"You know what, Mykel?" she says. "I'm not drunk. I'm a drug addict. That's right. This isn't alcohol. It's drugs. Not heroin, but something just like heroin. An opiate. How about that, Mykel?"

I don't answer.

"Hey Mykel," she says, "can I come up there and sleep with you?"

"No!" I yell and pull a pillow over my head. Somehow I sleep.

The next day I'm sitting in a chair in front of the computer. She's still lying on the couch. She's angry. I hate her for tripping over a suitcase, she says. I don't argue.

"Oh you hate me?" she says. "Things are more important than people? You can throw me down because I hurt a thing."

She stands up and begins kicking. My slide projector, books, magazines on the floor. She reaches me.

"You want violence?" she says. "I'll show you violence."

She grabs my shoulders and pushes me backwards. The chair tilts and slides out from under me. I'm on my back on the floor. We struggle. She's on top of me. Holding me. Turning me over. I push her off.

"Get out," I say, not yelling. "Leave. You have to go now."

Control slips. My legs shake. I can't think. My stomach curls around liquid shit and squeezes. I hurt. Every nerve switches on, burning like a 50 watt bulb with 100 watts going through it.

I walk toward her bag in the hall, across from the bathroom. She follows, talking.

"You don't know pain." She says. "You're throwing me out. It hurts. You feel nothing."

I don't answer.

"I'm running out of drugs. I'm gonna get sick." she says, "How can you do that to me? Don't you feel anything? You can't know how much it hurts."

I hold on to the bathroom doorknob and smash my forehead against the door.

"You want pain?" I ask.

I smash my head again, hearing the wood give way, slowly splintering.

"You want pain?" I ask again. "Here's pain..." I hit my head again. "Here's pain... You happy? Want more?"

Again and again I slam my head against the door The outer plywood splits. Then the inner latticework gives way. The crunching wood begins to squish.

She grabs the door handle. She forces her way past me. She slams the door from inside. The mirror on the other side, loosened by my pounding, gives way. It crashes to the floor.

I run out. Down the stains. She's behind me. I jump. A flight at a time. Out the door. She doesn't follow. I don't stop.

Down Sixth Avenue, across Prince Street, up Thompson to the park. Running. Running. A thin warm line oozes from my forehead past my eyes.

I imagine her in the bathroom. She takes the broken mirror shards and runs them against her arms, her cheeks, her legs. She'll show me. My pain is nothing compared to hers. She'll prove it.

I return. I'm wrong. The glass is cleaned up. She lies on the couch, under the covers.

"I cried," she says. "I never cried for anyone before. Not for years. You made me cry."

I look at her. I want to go to her. Touch her, hold her. I see myself doing this. It makes me sick. I'm silent. I go up to my bed in the loft.

"Can I sleep next to you?" she asks.

I grunt.

She climbs the ladder into the loft. I turn my back to her and face the wall.

The next day at 2PM she's still lying in bed. She asks if I have a steak knife. I don't answer.

"I just like to look at the ridges." She says.

"Buy some potato chips." I tell her. She gets up.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

"I'm going to the bathroom." She says, "Don't I have a right to go to the bathroom."

"Not if you're going to hurt yourself." I tell her.

"I won't hurt myself, I promise." She says.

I wait outside the door as she goes in. I don't ask her why she wears her coat to the bathroom. I'm used to her in a coat. Junkies are cold.

I listen for the sound of piss. (Junkies don't shit.) I don't hear anything. I wait.

The doorknob turns. She walks out, a bit unsteady. I look at her t-shirt; a fresh blood stain just to the right of where her navel would be.

"She's been shooting up." I think.

"You've got blood on your shirt." I tell her and point.

"Where?" she asks.

I push her back into the bathroom and pull her jacket off to look for tracks. There are none on her right arm. Bloody strips of skin hang from her left arm. Fresh wounds bleed from her elbow to her wrist. A bloody Bic razor is in the waste basket.

"You fucker!" I yell, searching for bandages, gauze, disinfectant, anything. "I hate you more than I've hated anyone in my life."

(Continued next month.)

ENDNOTES:

 

-END-

 

back to "You're Wrong Index"