Burst by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview
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Chapter 3
The preceding overview of my recent and long observations serve primarily as an outline of what was going on between the three of us. Our visits lasted about a year. For the first six months there had never been a couple more close. After that; I really don’t know what happened; suspecting that the decline was something like that which happens in most all relationships, with differing particulars. The devil as well as the most interesting parts is in the details. Frankly, this approach also relieves me from the burden of inadequately attempting to emulate the interminable itemizations foisted upon an audience akin to that of my idol; the otherwise great David Foster Wallace. They say Dickens got paid by the word. Ha. Rather than attempt to detail all of the laborious renditions of each of my meetings with my temporary partners once known to ourselves only as “The Unholy Trio,” it also seemed better to abandon the chronological methodology. There were not exactly a plethora of
“momentous” days. In ninety percent of our get-togethers, that is all we did; get together. We’d play music, comedy, get smashed, and eat whatever Rikki brought. In addition, it seems no violation of a confidence to the participants, nor a
“spoiler” for the reader to be told that Rikki and Mal’s, like all relationships, generally start out high, have their low, and
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then sometimes either end or start all over; the difficult and brave reach for that second chance a key.
So, to go back to some sort of time induced logic, we are now temporarily returning to the day when I am expecting them to show up for our second get together. I’m anxious as they’re late. Mal is killing time with video games; and Rikki is having her usual getting-out-of-bed, sometimes violent crank. That’s what they told me anyway.
Two days after our first meeting they again showed up at my back door. I noticed them right away as I was anxiously waiting.
They had said they would get there by twelve, and it was now two. They walked apart; one ten feet ahead of the other. Since they regularly took turns, I can’t remember which was which this particular day. They saw me through the glass and smiled. I let them in and just like the last visit Rikki headed for the kitchen, while Mal and I sat in front of the computer, which was tuned or not-tuned, depending on “artist” to YouTube. I guess that since he could play one, he favored watching the guitarists. Unlike most people I’ve met, he didn’t only know the ones from his own era, but could apparently appreciate anyone who did it well, even including those from before even my time.
After she made some chicken, she served us and sat with her own plate. I said that I wanted to show her something on the
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computer. At the time I was a member of a Goodreads group of threads which had discussions about conspiracy theories. I put credence in a few and thought most crap, but mostly wanted to be there because the common-web-knowledge-known-to-be-crooked thread operator and his ding-dong daddy claimed to be film producers, among a myriad of other innocent-alluring things. I learned that they were indeed producers insofar as that may be gleaned from unverified web posts; as they did claim credit for a couple of extremely low budget, unreleased, Bollywood credits; in addition to their falsified involvement with an American release which bore the same name as their “working” title of one of their “never was” swindles emanating from Australia or New Zealand. In an apparent display of another “triumph” of believing one’s own bullshit, the younger of the two further
“contributed” to the “main” event by using his pronounced head and stilted speech in the starring roles of both, enhancing them through the utilization of his stated “Brando inspired method.”
His pompously arthritic presence in the two 24 hour shoots which made extensive use of vintage stock footage was subsequently unreleased. Despite the poverty level production, at the time I thought I might sell or give him the film rights to one of my books; and maybe someone would make note of my name somewhere in the barrage of stuff the duo puts on the net.
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The younger had requested my participation. At the time I thought it possible his assessment of “good stuff” would translate to some greenbacks. For the few of you readers who may not yet have been introduced to Goodreads, it is an easy to use, comprehensive, book-cataloguing website owned entirely by Amazon. That’s the easy part. It takes some time there to note that 90% of the posts are put there by writers no one ever heard of and likely never will, who are trying to impress readers with their “brilliance” and humor, in the hopes that someone will buy their book. I confess to being ordinary.
Regarding Rikki, I guess I wanted to impress her by telling her that I wrote and was on the verge of a movie deal or something. So I showed her the site. Anyway, when she saw the conspiracy threads, accompanied by a photo of the late thirties operator, she said; “I think I want to marry this man.” That was said right in front of a non-reacting Mal, who just stared at the screen. I soon found that she had been extensively exploring conspiracy theories for more than a decade and Mal shared her beliefs most of the time.
The conspiracy aspect is truly a longer story and not the subject of this book. The brief is that she joined Goodreads and the group of conspiracy threads; me mentioning that to “my pal,”
the younger operator. She soon started to receive love letters from him. Considering them humorous, she wanted to show them to
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me, but I refused to look. Maybe she also wanted to assure Mal that this was not the least bit serious. Mal was aware, but not particularly thrilled, as the two of us seemed to know that Rikki was angling for a movie deal and the operator was trying to extract information useful to his conspiracy business; the standard business relationship. I was later convinced that Rikki knew how to handle such things quite well. Mal too became a minor Goodreads participant; occasionally sending a derivation of a “Fuck you all” post; once rudely under my name while I had excused myself for ablutive considerations. But for the day, all seemed new and interesting. Three minds languidly wandered through the cyber manifestation of a Christopher Marlowe short story.
During one of their openly pissed-at-the-world visits, she truly shocked me by telling me that; “Rikki is a name I prefer over my parental given name of Rosearik. That’s not even a girl’s name. I absolutely hate both of my official parents, and sometimes have wondered if it was only social proprieties which put their names on my birth certificate. I’m pretty sure that my father is not termed that in the field of biology. My mother is a reclusive, gun-carrying nut. I often fantasize killing them both in order to get legal possession of their house.”
Stunned, I pragmatically asked; “Do you have any siblings?”
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“One faggy brother with a real bull dyke of a wife who my folks hate. I’m the executrix of the will. I wouldn’t have any guilt about it. I just have to figure a way to get away with it.
My mother never leaves the house, and walks around, xaanexed out, in a bathrobe, carrying a handgun. She makes me clean the whole fuckin’ house every day.”
Mal had previously mentioned his teenage encounters with a pedophilic uncle. He had mentioned it often enough to make me think it was still a very significant issue for him. However, its mention made me extremely uncomfortable and I always tried to divert the conversation with some distracting generality; the details not wanted in my head. Mal always stopped there. Maybe in an effort to balance things out, Rikki, once said; “I was repeatedly raped as a kid.” She never specified by who; and I just felt so out of place, wrong, sorry, horrified, shocked, and not wanting more of an image; I hoped the details would not be forthcoming. They weren’t. Maybe in the same brain dynamic which usually allows me to not remember the tortured kitten of my helpless sixth year, thereby selfishly for me, I wanted to forget that their youthful horrors ever happened, hoping it another Oprah, popularly induced false memory. Mostly, I knew that I couldn’t stand to have the picture more filled in. Later, at a time I can’t put in context out of memory considerations; Mal held up Rikki’s arms, giving me an unmistakable view of my
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initial impression, which my mind had kindly blanked out. He showed me the scars from her many previous suicide attempts; saying; “I love this girl.” I saw her eyes moisten, while his were resolute. Though it was long in coming, at that moment I realized that any nonsense which dealt with a return to the supposed “Summer of Love” had as much credibility as the latest Sanderson Superman regurgitation.
Up until then I had always said that I preferred truth; but now that I had seen an unexpected aspect of it, I wanted to go back to being four years old, when Mom once again showed me how to leave milk and cookies for Santa Claus.
As always, we were watching some music videos. It was probably one of their choices of one of the few contemporary groups which thought they had some sort of bomb message; or it was my choice of the 1968-1972 Bob Dylan bomb messages; with which they had no previous familiarity. They both said, and I believed them, that they had never heard anything like the late twenties Bob. They hadn’t much cared to hear much of Dylan’s pre-banal cop out previously, and seemed to greatly prefer it over the la-la-everything-is-beautiful stuff, popular in my youth. Out of the deep blue, Rikki announced; “I am totally logical. .......... Just logic.”
I was kind of thrown and saddened; thinking of Goddard, Lemmy Caution, and “Alphaville.” She had matter-of-factly said
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that she no longer feels anything. For me, contrarian that I can be, I sought an alternative mental process, finding none. For likely self-preservational considerations, I chose to believe that she was lying on that one. It was the easiest thing for me to do. I looked at Mal, who seemed all too purposely, to keep his eyes on the little screen which currently displayed a forgotten grunger in indecipherable over-estimation; his current cyber existence a courtesy of the collective Cobain mass memory.
Sometimes it helps to go elsewhere. Almost invariably, those who can bravely travel; at least evoke the induced movement construed as an excuse to not be in a prolonged cerebral stasis. In that regard, with the most meager of interests, I had seen the news one day; the day on which David Bowie had died. During one particularly tranquil visit, I had remarked how his passing elicited many more internet sympathy posts than that of Glenn Frey of the Eagles or Prince. Rather than indicating any sympathy for or affinity with any LGB&T
interest, Rikki’s spoken apathy seemed to emanate more from the philosophy of Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers.” For the prior six months she had been trying to convince Mal that destiny necessitated him being Mallory. He seemed to have some sort of undisclosed problem with that, at least in my presence, primarily, but not only because he wasn’t a killer. She seemed
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both pleased and disappointed in that regard. My personal intellectual listlessness, which had already absorbed Mal’s “On the Border” flirtations with what many analysts considered to be more seriously rule breaking than Che began and ended there.
Like, anyone ever hear of ancient Greece and Rome? Easy for me to think, I guess.
In what might have been another prior context, he said; “I just take stuff. Unwanted stuff. We all do. If rich people are dumb or hollow enough to leave it lying around; all’s fair.” He broke for one of his smirks. Then he added; “Like fingerless rings or unused cars left at the curb.” His attitude seemed reminiscent of something gone. It was kind of like the archaic, though still existing legal concept of squatter’s rights; currently viewed by the bourgeois as theft, petty or grand. Most likely, one of the reasons Mal and I got along was that I had lost my last ring at the former base of a demolished barn and I kept my car in the closed garage.
Did I ever tell you? It’s a bit out of sequence and thereby possibly confusing, so I probably left it out. As an early teenager, Mal was a Goth. Long, black MuSkin coat, and long, long, dyed blond hair, much like that of his mother’s natural. This was his outfit when he strummed on stage and bunked with his pervert uncle. Since Rikki, he had stopped using the peroxide and cut it all off; his hair that is. Well, not all. He sported
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the stubby, dark remains of a marine or a gangsta with some Vaseline on top; rather than below.
In the recent past, he had long-haired it through a few years with Lydia, the chlamydia jokes unfortunate. This light skinned Latino had tits which must have inspired the literary character named “Big Boobenstein” with a brassiere disdain and a taste for skimpy tops. Mal’s problem was that she also had a taste for Mal-less coke parties; which was almost tolerable until she came back pregnant from one. If not curtailed here this may get a bit tangential. It’s just that Mal kept getting text messages from BB saying how good he was last night which Rikki would somehow access. It seemed to me that these things were nothing more than a short flare-up between the two; a five minute bitch.
Rikki did have some kind if issue with the LGB&T currently sacred cow. She really didn’t give a shit what they did, but took it as a further sign of an imminent apocalypse, which she often welcomed. The end was indicated by her conspiracy research; the event originally destined to be a kindly one in her estimation; which had been “managed” into an illusion of hell or the hell of an illusion. I think now that Rikki wasn’t sure at this point; and often don’t.
She said that her friends were into “most everything.” I can’t be certain, but I think it very possible her feelings were
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affected by her personal experience. Her husband announced that he was exclusively gay after years of marriage. Goddammit, the queers have their deserved rights; but so do the heteros have a right to be treated fairly. ........... Hmmnnnn. This was not intended to be a philosophy book.
She said that she wished they would just shut the fuck up about the ancient diversion and just do it; but knew that was not possible; as the Millenials had evidenced some sort of need to perennially announce their meta “discovery.” Maybe this was their payback to the world which encouraged and allowed their mommies and daddies to pay them inadequate attention. She took my long hair as an indication of a bad, blurring sign. She jokingly referred to it as a mullet; the first time I heard the word. She believed that when 1960’s men started to sport long hair it was indicative of a destructive unisex wish. I didn’t agree, though I never argued that one very strenuously, as for a short time back then there was a fashion trend named “unisex.”
On a personal level, when I was little my father made me get a Mal cut every summer; and like all the other kids so afflicted I hated it. I never told them for obvious reasons. Rikki and I didn’t always agree on things. But we never got adamant about anything and always gave the other a good excuse for second follow up thoughts.
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Rikki played a lot of Nine Inch Nails depression and Lana Del Rey implied suicides. Trent Reznor especially resonated with her, almost as much as her decade long infatuation with conspiracy theories. She liked to discuss each and didn’t mind at all if I disagreed or questioned. She wasn’t seeking agreement; just discourse. She just considered categorical dismissals to be stupid.
One of her favorite conspiracy guys was an elderly gentleman, whose information must have been deemed so detrimental to the powers that be that you can’t find his name on Wikipedia. Wiki carries a statement which says that nothing is allowed to be posted; though once in a while, if you can read French, a paragraph appears. This is despite him having published more books and tapes than David Eicke. Rikki told me that he disappeared for a year sometime in the 2010’s. She also said that he and his family were killed and that doubles now have replaced them. This does sound far-fetched, but I have to admit that the post-disappearance videos on Youtube do not match his prior appearance very well.
Though there were usually more fundamental considerations in the air, Rikki shared her basic belief that since creation, there has been what is essentially a race war going on between the thirteen tribes. Humanity is plagued by one belligerent, but not overly brainy group which has been able to attract the
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services of the “best and brightest” in an attempt to obtain control of more land at any cost. Rikki referred to today as
“The Harvest,” during which the tribe who seems to be on top of the food chain is in the process of wrapping things up while they still might be able to. You see, they know that there is a defector somewhere out there spreading information, and they are frantically and fruitlessly searching for him. That’s what the increasing surveillance is really all about; the unnecessary blood testing, the e-mail and general cyber monitoring, the facial recognition software, et al.
Sounds like another website selling a book or two, doesn’t it? Unfortunately yes. But, Rikki wasn’t selling anything. In my case the possibility that there was some truth in it was more compelling as, by pure chance, I was very familiar with a number of the ways in which Thomas Beckett’s life and death have been depicted by differing, and maybe conveniently unknown sources.
In at least one he despondently advised the King; perhaps equating that with logic. Then something, maybe a religious experience, made him change his mind and he broke away from the king, eventually being martyred for it. There is much, much more to the story; a suitable subject for many books; but this modest one is just intended to be about Mal and Rikki.
I didn’t fully believe her at first; and always retained some degree of disagreement in the detail. It was not through a
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distrust of any kind; but rather a consideration that even someone well intentioned can be misinformed and that ultimately such ideas can never be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Names change and the protagonists inter-marry with the blameless. But through Rikki’s soft sell I became .......... how you say in Amellica? More open? She could place everything in a consistently logical pattern and had an uncanny habit of being able to predict next week’s news.
Leaving the Sabre toothed tigers and their winning, sympathy gathering imitation of the all too real, sacrificed tigers in abeyance, have I yet mentioned that since age five, Rikki had been trained to be expert at Muay Thai? Her father insisted. Muay Thai is sometimes called the “Art of Eight
Limbs” and is known for its substantial use of elbows, knees, and objective of quick opponent death. As mentioned, at first it was the dictate of her father; but now it was just periodic fun for her to make a demonstration here and there.
You wouldn’t think that to look at and talk to her. She had long black hair, which was the result of laborious daily straightening of the kinky version she was given at birth. Her face was what sculptors try to sculpt. I think I’ve already mentioned the curves on her five foot four, one hundred twenty pound frame. She spoke eloquently, except when she wanted to play get-down-ethnic, without any noticeable didacticism or
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overbearing insistences. She had a master’s in biology and had the resultant crippling level of unpaid school loans, un-serviced through the lack of suitable employment. One possible chink in her armor was that it was very irrational for one who stated to be guided by logic to major in something other than business or computer “science.” I suspect that there was a later change of heart somewhere in there. At the time of our acquaintance, she was still technically married to that unemployable gay guy she had met in biology class. To pay the rent, she had gotten a job as a waitress in a titty bar, where she paraded in her undies, and told the patrons to sit on their hands while she relayed their orders and dropped their food.
At the time, Mal was working for some car re-possessor; one of the technicians. His job was not directly for the repo company. So I guess that technically he was working for his friend, who in turn worked for the company. Because he had two felonies for stealing cars, he was not a suitable employee for a licensed legal car thief; except indirectly. Smirk, smirk, nudge, nudge. Who knew what when and various other excursions into the land of Yadda Yadda? Is that still a question? That’s either US law or licensing procedure; and makes as much sense as a few other tenets existent in the Western World. Anyway, he assisted his friend who would give him a hundred bucks for getting the assigned cars lifted in about two minutes apiece;
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and after the short work day take him out for a few beers at the titty bar in town; or what passes for one in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He was immediately infatuated with Rikki. And, by his own precise admission, it wasn’t just based on her good looks.
It was that since she made him wait a few months, his infatuation increased.
It was a game, which reluctantly, each of them had come to know well; neither particularly seeking knowledge of the sort.
Some things just have a way of imposing themselves. Perhaps the only curious thing was that he was thinking that this girl should be dancing on stage making more money; while she was thinking about why this good looking guy was still on the tab of some loud, low-life asshole.
Inevitably, the only thing worth doing was to try to find out.
So, in a few months Rikki quit smiling in her
unmentionables and Mal quit jacking deadbeat’s cars on his
“friend’s” list and they had a honeymoon together. Then they met me, and I don’t know if I’d quit before them; suspecting the right answer to be a collage of contradictions. Then one day my perceptions changed. At Rikki’s suggestion, we were all watching segments of Tim Burton’s “Nightmare Before Christmas.” It was clearly her choice, though Mal knew the words to every song by
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heart. She told me that Jack and all his cohorts in Christmas Town were all dead. At the time I intellectualized, thinking back to my Eastern dalliance with “The Egyptian Book of the Dead,” “The I Ching,” and Romero’s “Day of the Dead,” or whichever one of his was set in the mall. As the sad songs played, Rikki made me aware that Jack would like nothing more than to just bring presents to the smiling children; but because he is dead the children fear and are repulsed by him. Mal murmured the words of Jack’s songs.
I anticipated the follow up; simultaneously hating myself for doing that. I quickly found 21.37% solace in the understanding that I had no control over where this mysterious organ went. That estimation came within a long context of imprecise algorithms in raised powers, and all-too-fleeting, colored thought forms; in the flash; like something amorphous opening a nothing which is also amorphous; both, seemingly without brown shades, colliding in my head, yet doing no damage to each other or me, to which I have lost the details; if I ever had them. Rikki said that I was dead. ....... I kind of knew that to be true in some senses of the word, but didn’t like it to be discussed or public knowledge. ....... She made it comfortably softer when she added; “We all are.”
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