executioner ran off with Camille’s credit cards….” Both tiny flashbacks occurred in the final few months of my life.
To savor the unhappiness of someone other than myself, I retrieve the video of my brother, Goran, on his last birthday. If you must know, Goran was my brother for about fifteen minutes. My parents adopted him from some tragic refugee-camp situation, largely as a publicity stunt. Said adoption was not, shall we say, a success. In the video they’ve rented Disney’s EPCOT Center and populated it with the outlandish players of a dozen Cirque du Soleil productions. Members of the media outnumber the guests, making sweet, sweet public relations hay for my mom and dad. Cameras and microphones broadcast every smidgen of the magic as my folks proudly trot out their birthday gift: a pretty Shetland pony. What was Goran to make of this situation, he who’d only recently arrived from some veiled post–Iron Curtain regime? Surrounding him were crowds of capering French Canadian clowns and nymphlike Chinese ribbon dancers. Here, he was clearly the guest of honor, and his hosts were presenting him with this young, tender animal. The pony’s mane and tail were braided with blue satin ribbons, its fur dusted with silver glitter. My father led the pony with the reins of a silver bridle, and a silver bow the size of a cabbage was tied around its diminutive neck.
Not that I, movie-star scion that I am, have ever seen an actual cabbage.
On the video, every eye is glazed with happiness. Or serotonin-reuptake inhibitors. Goran has been handed an ornate antique knife for the purpose of slicing and serving a mammoth birthday cake. His sinewy gulag body is decked out in Ralph Lauren togs, to fulfill the legal obligations of a commercial tie-in contract. Like an anarchist’s mask, his dense hair hangs down to hide his stone-colored, disdainful eyes. The casts of a dozen Andrew Lloyd Webber productions swing into a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday,” and the horror ensues.
It was not entirely Goran’s fault. In many cultures an animal so merrily presented would read as a blood sacrifice. It’s the equivalent of, say, blowing out birthday candles before ritualistically butchering the cake and handing portions of it ’round to guests. In such lusty, throwback cultures fresh meat amounted to the greatest tribute. Recognizing that, we shouldn’t have been so stunned to see the huge knife blade lash forward. Using the same effort that an American child would to extinguish every flaming candle with a single breath, Goran gripped the knife’s handle and swung it as would a hale gladiator: to execute a hearty feast. Here, I slow the video to a frame-by-frame analysis. The prancing clowns are fixed in their manic attitudes. The silver reins are wrapped twice around my father’s hand. In moaning slow motion my mother says, “Make… a… wish….”
There’s no blood, not at first. What follows comes in slowed strobes of tragedy. Goran wields his weapon in a wide, gleaming arc, and the tip of the blade passes cleanly through the furred throat of the startled pony. Even before it drops, before a hot fan of blood bursts from its nicked artery and bisected windpipe, exploding in every direction, the animal’s eyes roll backward until only the whites show.
Like a matador’s crimson cape, the curtain of equine blood sweeps over the massive birthday cake, melting the sculpted sugar flowers and dousing the tiny flames of its thirteen candles. The pony’s flailing heart casts thick gobbets of blood that splash the rainbow sequins and spandex of the Cirque clowns. Even as network cameras continue to roll, hot pony gore assails the elegant Xanaxed facades of my parents’ placid smiles. Even now, watching this on video, I see myself in the background as the poor little horse collapses on the lawn. The assembled multitudes shield their faces with their upraised forearms and duck their heads for protection; fainting or dodging, this vast field of onlookers appears to be bowing in humble awe. As the pony slumps to the ground, everyone falls, everyone but Goran and myself. Only my brother and I remain upright. The pair of us stand alone in the center of what looks like a battlefield, a massacre of blood-smeared victims.
This, despite the counsel of my mother and Judy Blume, this forceful red spouting is how I’d always imagined my first menstruation would present itself. Therefore, I remain steadfast.
Judging from our calm expressions, it’s clear that Goran and I have both borne witness to far worse atrocities. Me, in an upstate restroom. He, in whatever war-torn hamlet he’d originated. Neither of us is a stranger to the cold reality of death. Neither of us will be stopped by it. Despite our youth, we’ve been tempered by secrets and suffering that these goofy clowns—the real clowns, I mean, not our parents—could never surmise. The Shetland pony sputters the last drops of its wet life into the grass at our feet, and the ancient kingdoms of the world surround us: Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, albeit crafted in quaint Disney microcosm.
Such a grisly panorama this presents. A tableau of Armageddon. Countless populations bowing, subjugated, baptized in hot blood, and at the center a freshly slaughtered beast is flanked by a young Adam and Eve, unfazed, examining one another’s blood-streaked bodies with newfound curiosity and admiration. Through the blood- spattered lenses of my horn-rimmed eyewear, I recognize a kindred spirit.
I’d never really fit in the world, not easily, not like coffee fits into a cup. However, seeing Goran’s cold assessment of his own mistake, I realized that I was not entirely alone. Even on low-resolution security video, my living-alive self was clearly and unmistakably in love.
DECEMBER 21, 10:15 A.M. PST
Meet the Devil
Gentle Tweeter,
Please take note, you predead persons: as former-cynical, former-snarky former nihilists, you’ve eschewed all forms of religious faith for years. Woe unto you, for it leaves you primed for a false prophet. This spiritual anorexia has left you starved, poised to gorge yourself on whatever newish theology is set before you. Witness my escort, the “psychic bounty hunter” sent to corral my ghost and wrangle me home to my parents. Walking through the arrivals level of LAX, Mr. Crescent City believes he’s hugging me close, but he embraces an armful of air.
“Little dead angel,” he says, loping along, “first we need to find our chauffeur. Then we need to catch the helicopter to get us to your mom’s boat.”
We stride past a young mother who leans over her toddler, cooing and coaxing it, “Say ‘fuck,’ sweetheart. Say ‘fuck’ so you and Mommy will never be separated, in this world or the next….”
It goes without saying that I am following at a distance well outside his distasteful grasp. Even the slightest contact with Mr. Crescent City means a comingling of his earthly form and my spiritual one, a union more intimate than even the most passionate goings-on of an earthly marriage. His touch is, well… imagine huffing a vast toke of vaporized depression. Or guzzling a tall glass of bitter regret.
“When I get to fucking Heaven,” says Crescent, “I’m teaching kids that drugs are a detour for the rest of your fucking life.”
As Crescent leads me through the crowds, LAX looks more tragic than I’d ever noticed. Among these milling hordes I see human beings so racked with hunger that they’re reduced to eating triple-bacon cheeseburgers dripping with a sauce identical to the loathsome fluid which once spurted from between the pages of the
An ancient crone, almost my mother’s age, not an hour younger than thirty-two, walks past wearing last season’s Liz Claiborne, and the pathetic sight brings a flood of ghost tears to my eyes. One has only to see the damage wrought by home hair coloring and carbohydrates to feel the same passionate empathy that spurred the progressive likes of Jane Addams.
These sullied throngs of travelers—who, unlike my parents, are not being paid to wear their clothes—they must be crazed. Either crazed or intoxicated with drugs. Because? Because everyone is grinning the same exaggerated clown’s leer. They’re poor and pimpled and clutching coach tickets to Sioux Falls, and still—they’re smiling. They stroll along as if ambling through the Jardin du Luxembourg listening to the splash of the Medici Fountain. This is no 6th arrondissement. There’s nothing but thin plastic carpet laid atop airport concrete. Inexplicably, these apparent strangers coalesce into groups. They join hands while they wait for flights, forming impromptu prayer circles in sterile gate areas. Once assembled, they close their eyes. In somber unison they chant, “Fuck….” Their eyes closed, they make church faces. With their heads tilted back, they sing hymns of “Fuck… fag… nigger… cunt… kike…,” their words slow and deliberate as a NASA countdown.
