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In Negative

It’s kind of like a family. Like a den. Something with a core to hold on to.

Four spirits in mix, woven together by interest and habit—like a family. Kind of:

Four beings wrapped together by Him.

Ronita.

She was His girl.

She’s moved on now, but she was His girl then. She has like normal things to do now—an organizer with multicolored appointments and engagements for order. She’s still close with the family—really part of it—but now she’s got all her own concerns, tons of them. She’s got all those things that go wrong during the day, all those things that go wrong during a year; A normal responsible life. The things that go wrong on the way to school, go wrong on the way to a relationship, on the way to a job, on the way to a goal. To a reward, to a reason. Wrong, wrong, wrong. And she handles it all, hardly even thinking about Him.

She’s moved on now. She’s got the new man, Thomas (and he spends all his time thinking about her). She’s thinking about her concerns, about her normal life. The tiny grave in her stomach; the mother that won’t speak to her; and Thomas (she thinks about Thomas too). He’s so reliable, so clean, so managed and manageable, polite, delicate. The perfect guy for her. He’s in order, he’s normal. Ronita strided to school—that symbol of her new beginnings. She worried about the apartment—did she leave the coffee maker on, the oven, did she lock the door? Had she looked just right in the mirror that morning? She thought about the bastard guy she dropped before Tommy—the guy right after Him—what an awful mistake that’d been… She stepped over the dead leaves and the litter on the sidewalk of campus, appalled by the sight. Horrified by the burnt-orange, horrified by the death, the garbage and filth. It should all be discarded immediately, all of it, all of the trash and mess. Ronita thought that it was a dirty college, and she shouldn’t even be going here. Why on earth had she talked herself into going back to school? What was she trying to prove? She should move on, she thought, she should… but, no, she was not about to quit anything.

James.

James had been His uncle, His mentor, His role model.

James drove through roachy Hollywood, the streets slick and gray with regret—everything, the soot of failure. He thought about Consequences and Responsibility. Backbone, Bravery. Abstracts, he decided. He thought those things must just be made up words, the things of philosophers and motivational speakers. He saw a cloud sag. He saw gloom and ugliness in the gray skies. He finished the bottle of Jack and turned at Franklin.

Amouri.

Amouri had been His teacher, His college professor.

Amouri flipped back the mirror, and snatched up a vial of pills. The medicine cabinet mirror snapped back into place—his face blurring to focus, not the same picture it once was. The mirror could be lying, the lighting in this room could be unkind, not especially flattering. That sounded good. Yeah. But Amouri decided that he’d better be past that, past the point of deluding himself. It was cowardly to run from the truth, to hide in some lie, to run. There is nothing lower than cowardice. Amouri thought that he would die before he became a coward.

He saw himself in the mirror, a shadow, middle-aged. His body looked weak, sad—sagging. His skin looked cold, dirty, with scraggly hairs on his back. His spine slumped pitifully. His white boxers as dingy as his skin. His hair clumped and ragged. A mellow frown.

He turned from the mirror and walked into the darkness of his bedroom. His eyes started to blur even more. The pills started to hit. His palms got warm and his neck felt wet, hot. His forehead seemed to close, his thoughts shutting off, his ears turning off. It was Friday.

Julissa.

"Gramma."

She was really only His gramma, but Everyone called her that.

Julissa scrambled through the fog and cold, the grizzly breezes coming off the ocean—Santa Monica, a dreary morning. The church was two blocks away. It would take every bit of her strength to get there. A gust kicked and nearly lifted her from the concrete. A shiver crackled down her neck. Her feet scurried through the low hanging mist, aimed, intent, toward the church.

Julissa thought she would have to make it. There wasn’t even a question. She was past the point of debate, past the point of doubt. She acted on habit, on impulse. She knew it was much worse than that, but that’s what she told herself. She really did know, but only in the bleak quiet of night admitted, that she’d been hollowed out, carved into a simple creature of need and appetite. She defended herself against the serpentine conscience, crying that there was no one left. He was the only one that had mattered. She didn't know that then, how could she have seen, how could she have guessed. But now, of course, now, it was clear. Julissa’s lips squeezed taught. She couldn’t stand to think like this, like a helpless brittle wreck. She couldn’t stand it… but she was getting weaker (no way to escape that). There was no one to take care of her, no one to ease the brunt of the pain. Little Ronita ran around helping out James and Amouri, both scarred by the loss, but she would only do so much—and wasn’t even family neither. Julissa was a matriarch of the wretched den, mother to a hopeless foursome wrapped by Shadow. At eighty-eight she was in the burdensome role of Mother. Yes. It was their fault that she couldn’t really be herself, their fault she was sick and hollow.

A wet, salty gust spat up, hit her strong on her right side. She landed half on her shoulder, half on her knee. There was a sound of bone splashing. Julissa looked at the sky and cursed Him. It was all His fault.

Ronita poked the elevator call button. She poked it again. She poked it rapid fire. If this elevator doesn’t come…! Ronita screamed in her head. Her teeth were snapping and squeaking in grind. Her fists were balled up, white. She couldn’t be expected to hold all of this together. Why her? Why was this all happening to her. What had she done. If she didn’t love Julissa so much…Everything went wrong since Him. Never before had loving someone caused so much trouble in the world.

The elevator finally opened and Ronita smacked the button for the seventh floor. Gramma had been put in the intensive care unit three hours before. Amouri called Ronita on her cell in the middle of class—of course, she was the responsible one, she loved Gramma to death, she thought of her as her own grandmother. Together they took care of what was still left of this desert of a clan.

A ripple of pride squeezed into Ronita’s mind. Amouri had thought of HER. They all thought she was the responsible one—they all looked to her for support. Maybe if Julissa died she would be the supreme provider, she would be the den mother. No way. She couldn’t handle that—she really wasn’t that much in control, it was all a façade. And how dare she think about Gramma dying. How dare she. And she was in control, goddamnit! FUCK.

Ronita’s knuckles cracked as the elevator dinged on the seventh floor.

James sat in his car up on Beachwood canyon. The new bottle of Jack he bought across from the Scientology Celebrity Center was cradled to his ribs. James thought that had he turned out to be a celebrity he could be in that big castle of Delusion and Companionship instead of up in the hills, alone—drunk on something more powerful than whiskey. He looked down on the city and cursed it all out loud for breaking him up, for not being the world he wanted. He cursed Life for not living up to his expectations. He cursed Him. It was probably all His fault anyway. Everyone else thought it was.

James thought about the audition he went to the day before. Everyone must have been laughing him out of the building. He dropped his head. He re-created the laughter squealing behind him. He sketched their faces, their wickedly delighted faces, mocking him as he slipped out of the shadowy hall into the sun. The door closed behind him and the group went on, contorting exaggerated expressions and gesturing to one another. James squeezed his eyelids. He joined the group in the shadow, laughing, in his head—he agreed with their mockery. Everything is lost… everything. James couldn’t understand Characters anymore let alone get inside them, become them. He was so lost in himself he couldn’t see past his own skin. All the skills he had honed for years and years and years (…lost). Decades in the theatre. Years off Broadway. Lost. All the shots he’d had in Hollywood. Lost. All the auditions he’d just missed on. All the ones he’d flat out smoked off. All lost— The drinking started in there somewhere… And that small quizzical whisper started to creep into James’ field of thought. It crept in and kept coming. It was growing, throwing its elbows around for room, for attention. James, it said, Hello James. I’m your doubt. I’m your alcoholism. I’m your failure!

James bit down and turned toward the shadows, faced the thought—Am I an alcoholic? Have I washed away my life—in the name of fun, for the sake of all things Artistic and Glamorous and Glorious—to now be sitting here a never has been, a never will be? …lost? James sat for a moment in total silence, hanging on the edge of the thought, parked on a cliff over his dreams.

James hit the Jack. Nope. No way. No—He’d been drinking all the years when he was off Broadway. The drinking had nothing to do with anything. Drinking never had a damper on my craft! It was Him—that bastard. That all happened—all the failure, all the loss—happened right around then. With the mess.

Amouri sat in the dark on his bed. He moved from side to side. He had a frozen neck and helium in his head. Everything was light and slow—the curtains moved with a dead man’s grace. After he got the call from the hospital he had started to panic. He didn’t want to do anything. He couldn’t call James, the lush was probably on a bender somewhere. So he popped four yellow pills and called Ronita. She was still around and she would want to go take care of the old woman. Amouri didn’t want to do a thing. He didn’t want to see, he didn’t want to hear, he didn’t want to think.

Amouri hadn’t gone to work in almost a month (and he’d gone only sporadically since all that mess with Him four years ago).

Amouri leaned over to lie down. His skin felt like rubber. Perfect. No sensation. He thought if he took enough of the pills he might actually be able to go NUMB. He didn’t know if his eyes were open or closed, if there were sounds or silence. He could still smell though. He smelled his sweat, and in the sweat, his pain and regret. The smell brought Him back. Amouri could picture Him—more vivid than any dream. Conversations in his office, His comments and questions in class—the steel-arrow sight and the bright heart. Amouri could hear Him in stereo, a reminder of His clarity and richness of thought, promising to always remind him. Amouri felt the sticks of jealousy and condemned his feelings (all over again). Amouri tried to roll over. He tried to reach for the pills, but couldn’t move. He tried to shake the horrible vision. And then Amouri shook it all off with hate, with scorn. He painfully turned over cursing Him, the coward, the One who had ruined it all. The One they had kept nameless. The One they hadn’t talked about for four years. The One they all hated.

Julissa dozed and wept in a soggy half-consciousness. Her lips rattled in reflex—a habitual prayer (they really just flipped and fluttered like a window shade). Bubbles were pulsing through her veins: the dope was hot and fast. Whatever surgery they had performed was effective it seemed—she couldn’t really tell. A ghost walked in her room and Julissa prayed for all the shades and shadows in the world. She thanked everything like that, everything of that world, for being REAL. A buzzing chill went up her spine, up the back of her scalp. She squeezed her shoulders to her ears with the sensation. This was nothing like she was used to. She’d never had to deal with pain. She’d never had to suffer. She’d never had to be the one on the bed. This Was Humiliating.

Pain was a son of a bitch. Pain was what the weak had to deal with. Pain was a sign of sickness—a sign of inferiority. She had always been above that. She had been the savior, the one others looked up to.

Julissa squeezed her hands all she could. She tried to squeeze a prayer through her clouded head.

The ghost was patting her on the head as if she was some sick cat. Julissa tried to move but couldn’t shake the pasty dope groping her thoughts. Not even in control of my own body! What a sad loss The Body was. It wasn’t ready when you demanded greatness of it and it failed you when all you asked was numbness. Julissa had had great luck with The Body—born strong and beautiful, a plain sort of beauty, she had been blessed in the flesh. Men had adored her early on and she had responded. She’d stepped out with quite a number of them… when the lads were kicking. But as bitter luck would have it, when her body wanted it, when she really craved it, the men in the world were old, drunk, weak and stupid. Where was justice in the world? Where was dignity? Julissa weakly scoffed at the ideals. What actually was the point of respect? People had always respected her, and that never got her what she REALLY wanted. In the old neighborhood where everyone knew her and loved her, came to all of her brunches, packed her summer parties, and never missed a birthday. Even when she came West, popular and respected in the community, all that she had done for others—for what…? When was life for her? She hadn’t really thought of any of this four, five, years ago. She hadn’t troubled herself before that mess.

O, but why wouldn’t god come to her side. Why wouldn’t the lord whom she supported, the man of her dreams come and take care of her? She had given him everything: love, hope, and her devotion. She had give her body over to him. That skinny bearded soul in the flesh; why didn’t he bother with her? Her life had been in devotion. And even that promise fell flat on her, and there was no response. Especially now—stuck and exposed, in a hospital gown.Was she just a poor old hag? Had she become that which she always feared?

Julissa coughed a crabby old laugh. Another ghost came in the room. This one smelled familiar.

Ronita walked in Gramma’s hospital room. Slowly. Calculating. Was she awake? The room was so sterile, so bleak and…sterile. Like the dead. All Ronita wanted to do was run away—fly like the wind. How embarrassing. How could she thinking of running… at a time like this.

Ronita had always pretended that her inside thoughts were painted on the wind, that they were out there for everyone to see. She strutted like an actor, like James, exposed. This had always been a test of herself—a game—to really BE who she wanted to be. It was a Checks and Balances move. She had to proud of her thoughts, and she had to think only thoughts that she would be proud of. With her thoughts on the wind she was free to be Good, and chained to it as well.

And Ronita felt embarrassed in the stark hospital room with her thoughts of running bold as red paint on the blank walls. She never thought about running. What a chicken shit thing to do. Like taking the easy way out, or ignoring something you didn’t want to deal with. People who ignore and run are the same people that hang themselves in their closets when the rent is due. Ronita froze for a moment. A dingy fluorescent light buzzed. A sickly smell of the sea appeared.

Ronita clenched her fingers and walked over to Gramma.

James’s car fishtailed wildly, it jumped and lurched until he finally regained control. Dust skidded across Mulholland and kicked up into the evening sky, tinted city-light-red and -yellow.

The tangly black road, carving the dreamscape of the city. Mulholland wove James into LA, the way He had woven them all together—hours and months, good time, spent with people, gathered around His light, a dark path binding souls to a greater community. James found himself now attached to a city and attached to a family—Gramma, Ronita and Amouri, His family and now his family.

Amouri got up, a corpse. He limped into the bathroom. His image blurred and grew as he got closer to the medicine cabinet mirror. His hand streaked across the surface of the glass with a slimy squeak. He loved the routine. The little delicacies of the whole thing. The twangy click of the clasp when he opened the cabinet, the chalky rattling of the pills in the vial. He was too tired and upset to enjoy them now. Amouri thought he was over keeping the vial in the cabinet. He had done so only to keep up appearances—to make sure that he wasn’t ‘getting in trouble.’ All of that was through, washed out. He’d reached a breaking point and he was now free. Free from the paws of that pathetic den, sorrowful mourners; free from their watching eyes, the glare, the scorn and concern of a family misshapened by tragedy. He was finally free of his own guilt… Amouri dropped three of the slippery little tabs on the back of his tongue and guzzled some water. He staggered blindly toward the bed and his vision closed.

Julissa drooled freely. Her eyes washed over with a milky green fluid and she garbled a rough moan. She had soiled her sheets. All the real ghosts had disappeared, the room had disappeared. Julissa could hear the ocean. She could smell the bitter tang of the salt and seaweed, the air alive in her skin. She walked happily through the warm sand, gracefully, like when she was young. There she was, young again. The heavy blue silky air weighed on her and the sun cozily lapped at her pores. Long spills of black hair dancing. Julissa felt free—but so delicate. Everything was fragile and shallow. The sky could turn a bold steel; the ocean could whip, black and ugly and wash her away; she couldn’t hold on to the dream anymore than she could have held on to Him. Julissa muttered in her bed, blank and tired. Her thoughts rose up again: The will; The champion of life she had been. She mumbled and clawed her way up the rocky breech of consciousness. She fought against the tides and the absurd. She fought.

Until she reached a crevice nearly the summit. She could see the peak and could feel success and hope flood through her bones. She held the deciding stone, the step that would put her over, prized and holy. She could keep on, She Could Live!!

The younger Julissa reappeared, this time separate, from without; a foe. The young woman smoothly grabbed at the holy stone and took it fully in her two hands; Julissa groping, trailing the rock like a comet’s tail. The young woman whipped and thrashed her around. The young woman’s long muscles blazed, and she overpowered Julissa with a romanticized dexterity. Julissa thought the whole charade was pathetically romantic. She had always pictured her death pang being quiet, not a big old cumbersome epic. She could feel herself below the waterline of the heavy drugs. It felt like being under good sunshine. But she didn’t want to die on a beach—that’s for idealists, the people who can’t stand the cold or their belly growling a little bit. Even through the wet fog of her brain, Julissa still could feel the pull of reality. She knew she needed that stone if she wanted to come back; she knew she had to scale that cliff. Julissa groaned and drooled. She knew she was fighting herself.

She thought about the world she would come back to, rough and dirty; the world of Him; the world of that pain and injustice. The boy who had quit and taken with him all of the honesty and hope of that world. The young Julissa was wailing away; and Gramma cautiously reaching for the stone. She thought of the other world, cloudy and free. She could see her only loved one, the lord, her savior. Julissa felt the heavy drugs dragging on her, she felt the young woman tearing at her, she saw her grandson with the same regret. And the drugs got heavier, the shadow woman tore on stronger and her grandson grew and loomed and screamed.

Until Julissa finally stopped, forced her body down under the tide and she herself quit.

Ronita was called out of the waiting room. All kinds of bleeps and little sirens were going off. Ronita froze in the hallway. It was cold, in an immediate and intrusive way—the frigid white walls were brushing her elbows it felt. The tears started to run. Ronita sprinted out of the hospital. Her body was quaking, retching. Her stomach was touching the back of her throat—her head squeezing in. Her eyes were hot and smeared. Spasms went back from her forehead and came up her neck. Her mouth felt dry and burned. It took several minutes, fumbling with the keys and shaking the door, to get into her car.

Ronita collapsed.

Everything that had been her support, her skeleton and crutch, was pulled out. Somebody took it out and turned it around to show her The Pillar for what it was. Ronita sobbed, shivering, laying on her side in the front seat. The concrete ‘For Sure’s’ weren’t anything but wispy hopes and idealism now. Everything exposed. Her love for Julissa, grounded so deeply in trust and admiration, cashed out in dust and routine. Ronita’s goals in life, her strength, all looked like pathetic dreams. They all looked like leaps of faith, departures, from what was real. Departures, like the one He had taken. And Ronita barked a curse out to Julissa, for dying, for believing in god, for having believed in her and giving her that will. Fuck anyone with hope. Fuck anyone who can’t see how wretched—

A white hum hit Ronita, her thoughts went blue streak—screaming out doubt and fear. Only fear. Regret. All of the mangled hopelessness that comes from a defeated Fear sank down on Ronita. She was not strong enough; she was not what she thought; she was only weak and afraid. In a cold wipe of her life’s ethic Ronita became all that she had grown to hate. She sobbed pitifully about the pain and sorrow of her predicament. She felt weak. She felt inadequate and alone. Ronita lost all hope and gave in to her Shadow—She peeled off her terror, and saw herself standing in a stark white cell—face to face with Him. She saw his watery green eyes and felt a tragic sting, the roaring expletives of selfish loss and anger at the absurd.

But staring at Him she fell back in love. Staring at Him she hated the universe and the irreparable damage that is life. Staring at Him she was in love with life. And she didn’t judge, but tried to understand. It faded down, her streams of consciousness and tears giving out. Ronita lay there, silent, for what must have been hours. And like a shot she knew what she would do. She sat up and arranged herself, patting at what was left of her makeup with a tissue, and tearing off her wrinkled sweater. She started the car. She was going to take that role. She would be involved; The one that Cares and Acts when others won’t. She was going to be the savior, the mother. And she was going to start within their own den—she had to save James.

All the way through Westwood Ronita fought off tremors of doubt—this is too big for me; I don’t want to DO like this for others; I’ll never find him, I can’t do this!—but in her new and temporary resolve she kept on and headed to Hollywood.

Amouri realized he’d been awake for some time. His body was warm and comfortable, more so than he could remember. His muscles and bones felt agile and able. He thought that he could probably move, even get up, but he didn’t have the desire. The fingers of his left hand, on their own and out of his control, toyed with the pumpkin colored vial. Amouri felt clean of thought, clear and optimistic, in a way he couldn’t remember. His mind was free and it moved nimbly around as he surveyed his nerves and his emotions, looking for the pain. A new day seemed to be coming down on Amouri, or reaching up from under and elevating him back to a manageable stance. He opened a smile and sat there content. This is all he needed, this is what he had prayed for, a little grace, just a bit of help, to get back on his feet. It could possible now, he thought, as he opened the vial with a snap of habit. His legs came unglued from the stiff sheets and he turned to stand up. A rush of excitement and physical pep ran through him. I’m done with all this shit. I’m done with this! He felt his feet beneath him; he could see himself walking again along the beach, fuck it he could see himself BODYSURFING! Amouri’s mind raced to the idea that he would be out of his cave of intoxication, his perpetual filth, the lethargic hunger. A thick blue wave swelled toward the coast, it started to foam white at the crest and Amouri turned and shot out in the water feeling the push and freight of life, everything glistening and glorious. Alive and with a clean breath of the sunshine. Salt water in his lungs and sand in his hair. Maybe even a little skin-sore, taking a hit too long of the sun, and a stinging red sensation on his cheeks.

Amouri cursed the wretch he had become and clapped giddily at the thought of his life reinvented. His eyes lit like the day when the sun comes from behind a cloud, and a warmth, not like dope, a clean light warmth jangled through his bones.

There were so many plans to make, things to do. Amouri saw again the horizon, all the things he would be and become. His life had a new shape, it was bulkier and more present that it had been for the past four years. He stood in himself and stared at the horizon, and at the potential…

But a quick cloud stole the sky. And Amouri could see past the emerald tides to the ferocious blue-black waves. A horrible sea, and the long uneasy stretch. At the same moment everything collapsed in Amouri, everything hunkered back down in his fear and regret. It’s because of Him that I see these dark clouds. He created this in all of us. It’s all His fault!

In his right hand Amouri was palming a mound of pills. And he looked for the sun. And he looked at the horizon.

James shivered and sobbed. His eyes ran a painful vision, a nightmare, just like a movie. His whole body, his art and tool, was poor and inanimate. He reached in himself to scream, to cry for help, but nothing. The chills were getting more severe. He leapt off the bus stop bench where he found himself—reeling from a blackout that rattled his body and his memory. The gloomy specter of failure held a shadow over him wherever he went. It was there before he got there. It waited for him everywhere. He didn’t have a chance. He could never come in the room clean and make a first impression—It had already gotten there first.

James wanted out of himself, off this curb and out of the universe. James couldn’t think how to go or what to do. His hands and body were useless—a crippling realization: the haven you once sought, the strength you once felt, the art you once had, in The Flesh, has been ground away by time and the torture of other people. James felt his knees jello-ey and his sight started to gray.

James’s thoughts were only dry pangs. All he could see was Him. He groped after Him through the streets/in his mind. He groped after the person and after the deed. James wanted to follow His road. And the universe inverted—the mentor chasing after the boy, wanting to emulate Him, to be as He was, to do something as great and brave and heroic as He did.

The awful emptiness, bitterness and sunset of a lost chance, a poor failure. The One he had given his life to, given his life as a model, an example, the One who’s life he had worked to improve, inspire, create… gone. ALL FAILED, ALL LOST. ALL LOST. And as he stumbled into the street to throw himself into the rush and traffic, James saw Ronita’s car.

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