I think I love the taste of rain after it has run down my face. It is cleansing those things, the blood of those things that are haunting me, but I want just to taste them as they wash away. I want to hold on to them one last time because they are my own. There is no need for daylight anymore. There is no need for moonlight anymore. Just keep the rain coming so it can drown out my thoughts. And why have I wandered over here, to my friend Connor’s house? Has this been just a blank-out wandering in the rain thing?
Hey, it looks like he’s watching Leno. Maybe the pieces don’t have to fit together. Maybe there is just time for laughs and entertainment. Maybe the rest can be buried. If it wasn’t in my front pocket. If it wasn’t already in pieces, and the whole of it is never again attainable. And I can’t laugh when all I see is that look on his face, the way his eyes just blank out and his face twists into a smile. Who the fuck smiles at a time like that? How can a smile really be something that seems like the end of a barrel shoved in your face?
Maybe Connor knows. Maybe he can just say something so I don’t have to hover here, peeking in his window like my name was Tom Tookalook. Hey. That’s what the Raven keeps saying over by the McDonalds. That one in the parking lot, the one with the tuft of hair that puffs up like punk rock, like aloe vera, like wet denial. He sits up high in his tree and says “tookalook, tookalook,” over and over, strung together real fast. Then that other one, in the tree that teeters above the hardware s
Yeah. Those are things to think about. Except this rain. This rain that tastes a little like tears, a touch like blood, a lot like fresh dirt. Maybe things can be buried after all. Maybe they don’t come back like the predictable end of the horror movie where the hand comes back up through the soil for the millionth time like it is just some bad-horror-stock-footage that they keep in the basements somewhere for when the writers suddenly shrug their shoulders, never knowing what comes before those words “the end.”
But that face, that face. I don’t even remember what happened after that. Only that I ended up in the rain, and there were all these shards of my favorite baseball bat everywhere. I thought of Ken Griffey Junior and the way he just flew into the wall in the outfield, sacrificing his body to make the catch. Nothing is routine. His signature was on that bat, maybe it can be pieced back together. But since he made that killer catch I figured the least I could was pick his name up off the ground. That part didn’t have any blood on it. That part could be still, saved.
And who is that on Leno tonight? Man, I hope it’s Pat Benetar. That “Love is a Battlefield” thing is ringing pretty true right now. Except we’re not all young, and we are no longer standing heartache to heartache. Maybe there is more to that song than just the chorus, but hell, that’s all I remember right now. Fucking MTV. If they just put all the words on the screen I wouldn’t be in this situation.
But wait. The rain. Connor. There he is in a comfy chair in a quiet room where the volcanoes do not make their regular eruption. Where the kitchen table does not have to shoulder the abuse, to the point that it is wrecked all over the backyard. At least I don’t think so. His family’s furniture all look pretty good, but maybe it is the ones without imperfections that are plotting to blow up the world and not just the mom. Not just the child. Not just the end of the tiny unit.
And this rain, it hasn’t quit for days. It hasn’t lifted and it made gathering that baseball bat a royal mess. Mud in my fingertips. Blood, maybe, in my hair. And why don’t the pieces fit? I was watching television. Maybe a rerun of some show that was on years ago and everyone wore sweaters and laughed at each others’ jokes and there was always resolve in the end. Resolve. All you need is half an hour, less even because the problem has to be introduced. What today will baffle the Huxtables today? The answer is on the used up stick of a Jello pudding pop.
But this rain. Shit. It keeps pushing the sweat down my face and I taste it as I breathe heavily. I should lose weight. I should go to the gym. I should knock. I should hide within this thing we call night and take my broken baseball bat, the shards of what could have been a home run, and settle for a fielder’s choice. But what the hell does that mean?
I was watching television, there was a show on and they had real problems. None of that mickey-mouse I forgot to do my homework shit. No. There was some yelling, something that rang out real high pitched, the kind of ringing in your ear that makes you think for a second that you might be spider man, or part labrador. Wild footfalls down the stairs. “Stay the fuck away from me!” It was a shrill voice, high pitched almost blending in with that whine and ring in my ears.
The rain. The rain. My room was intruded. Why does mom have a bruised eye? There’s dad, I can hear that movie where he came in, with this sick parody of Johnny Carson’s nightly introduction. The moments spin around themselves like the silk of a spiderweb. Everything is there. Even the rain. She looks to my closet. She grabs my favorite baseball bat and in that moment I cannot even hear the shouting voices. And in that moment I cannot feel the rain yet pressing long strands of sweaty hair to my forehead. All there is, is fresh green grass, like a neighbor mowing on a hot sunny day. Maybe a hot dog, or some popcorn. Maybe someplace I have never been.
There’s the pitch. The one that counts for all things. It needs to introduction. Swing away, swing away. Go for the fences. I will run out. I will run out. I will try to catch it when the pieces are strewn across the landscape.
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