My Hot Nun
I've ruined things with words. I've destroyed whole places and times
with words, and always accidentally. I mean words sent: emails,
letters, phone calls, texts; they do me in. There's always a missing
moment to explain yourself. I am rarely understood. It's awful.
For instance; I once had this beautiful girlfriend, she was away
studying to be a nun, but a healthy nun; the ones who can indulge in
nature's perpetualness. You know, fucking. I wrote her this beautiful
letter, one of my greatest works, except it was full of sarcasm and
irony, funny sarcasm, insightful sarcasm. I know, there is no funny or
insightful sarcasm and you are right.
She read the letter, probably more than once, probably more than
twice. Sure, she got the Hellos; the Goodbyes; the Loves. The lines
that tried to explain my lust for her and her body. A body now in some
castle wrapped in black cloth cloaking its curves.
She understood that I had spent so much time away from her locked in
my brother's basement that I felt like an ivory key aching for her
fingers, her slow moaning songs. She understood the lines where I
pressed some bleeding part of my soul on the page and then traced its
outline with its own gore.
She understood all of that.
She didn't understand the irony, the shitty fucking sarcasm. Fucking
Sarcasm, I hated you before you ruined my life and now I have left
hate behind, traded it in for pure emotion and a white fiery blur I
call #*&^%!! Well, you can't hear the smashing glasses or the
blistering hot pans crashing through the windows to the courtyard
below like miniature UFO's drenched in bacon grease, but that's what I
have in place of hate for sarcasm: a lonely, wicked, violent, hissy
fit.
She didn't get the sarcasm.
She took it like the good parts of the Bible, like truth.
When she returned home as a nun I was waiting outside our apartment
leaned up against a borrowed sports-car. When she returned home as an
angel, with tits pressing through a garb that could never keep them
from inflaming the world, all she did was walk past me and straight up
the stairs to our apartment. A stiff angry stare and then soft feet
brushing the stairs to the second floor. I followed that draped
wagging bum, her ankles peaking their Achilles anger as they tightened
and loosened their way up each step.
She felt holy.
Whether she was or not didn't matter. She felt holy because we had
buried ourselves deep in each other's hearts months ago, for months
and then she had left, to become great, well, great in Death's way
anyway. Now she had returned and all I felt was her, walking up that
skinny staircase. And the feeling was big, unexplainable; maybe holy.
She opened the door with her key. By the time I caught up she was in
the front room holding that letter, the letter I had sent, my work of
art, that stained letter of both wine and blood, that gore bespattered
beautiful piece of unmade confetti.
She struck a match to it: cheap fucking blazing paper.
She let it drop out the window just as it was burning her fingers. A
giant melting snowflake. I felt my toes go numb. She grabbed my foot
locker and with an amazing smoothness thrust it out the window. The
sound of a great crash banged up back to our second story window as
the last pieces of glass tinkled to the ground. I think she`d hit my
brother`s car.
I ran to her when she went for my signed first edition of John Fante's
'1933 Was a Bad Year'. I got there just in time, stepping in front of
the window and grabbing the book, but with one easy gesture she cried:
"You write the worst fucking letters!" and pushed me on to the window
sill and over. Out the window.
The fall was quick.
I lay on the ground not sure if my eyes were open or closed listening
to the crashing of wooden things hitting the sidewalk. I focused or
opened my eyes and watched my clothing flutter and float peacefully to
the ground. I focused on her, past a giant denim snowflake, as she
screamed and told me I could pick the rest of my stuff up when I got
out of the hospital. Stuff like my Grandfather's rifle and my
Grandmother's grandfather clock.
She always loved my grandfather clock.
She felt like it was her personal sentry when I was gone.
cg
