This
comes days from the end of it, moving on into autumn with the last wasps
sluggish mere inches from the ground.
Skunk:
This is unfamiliar... and this is not me.
He may or may not be himself. The
evidence suggests not: the hair upon his arms is pale, not dark; the flesh
itself unmarked and pristine. His ankle strong, supportive, the accordant lack
of stick. The clothes he wears are free from logo and there is something of
nostalgia about the super-saturate yellow awareness forced upon him by the polo
shirt, the intense blank black of the shorts. Indeed, Brother Skunk is so far
out of his head as to be partway inside someone else’s.
His left eye is shot through with blood
and a pain he feels best described as a vice tightening upon the optic nerve.
Following self-administered drops he finds his vision blurred, and this may go
some way to explaining the current travelling trompe l’oeil; the liquid film
upon the surface of his eyeball has reduced the current foreground to the
identical fence, tree, and open gate passed and passed again. Until he stops.
cog:
The voice is self-important, and about
eight years old. And something else: it runs on sounding as though someone has
edited out all requisite breathing, or as if every known word had been recorded
in this voice and thereafter spliced together on demand, the emphasis and
intonation falling therefore random, and suspect.
Through the open gate and into a
backyard, a little girl at a stall selling what he cannot see for sure. Her
drawings? Home-made lemonade? (He could use some home-made lemonade.) Much
squinting offers up “PSYCHIATRIC HELP 5¢” and the lower of the boards assures him that “THE DOCTOR IS IN”. There is no question whatsoever that the
single coin afloat in the pocket of his shorts will be anything other than a
new-minted nickel, which is now placed into the fat and tiny palm.
cog:
and she holds it up to the sky, then
kisses it with an audible ping sound before laying it on the desk.
cog:
Skunk sits down awkward on the stool and
leans forward, quiet, holding the heel of his left palm tight to his eye,
engaging the little girl now in monovision.
Skunk: Help me.
cog:
Skunk: No. No no NO! HELP me. I need
help
now close to tears.
Skunk: I need HELP!
reaching up and banging the flat of his
hand hard against the top board; the weightless picayune seems to float, the
little “IN” sign rattles and swings, settles.
Skunk (attempting to control his
breathing): Inasmuch as I am the man asking, I need help.
cog:
Skunk: The main problem is
that everyone is dead. Everyone is dead
and saying this at a time when he has no
real reason to even suspect that deleted name
is now dead as well.
cog:
Skunk: I am grieving, but
I can’t... It’s almost a year since my mum died, and I can’t, I can’t... I
don’t have a
Pause.
He starts finger-drumming upon his bare
knees.
Skunk: The more time passes it just
seems the worse it gets. I know I should be, I should, it should be getting
easier to ehmmmm, to, to
There is trouble finding the word,
because it does not exist.
cog:
Skunk: I don’t know, no, it shouldn’t
have been so bad, really. Mum had been, she’d been kind of dead for
a long time, so
cog:
Skunk: She, she was in a, she was looked
after, she didn’t talk or, I think she just, it was as if she, she couldn’t
function anymore, and she just had to be looked after. All the time. So I don’t
think it should have been so difficult when she died.
cog:
Skunk: Well I had to do it.
There wasn’t anybody else. I mean, I don’t think the neighbours... It was
almost a, it wasn’t, it didn’t... What it was was eh, she’d been in hospital
before, and and then she got out and things seemed to be, you know, I really
thought she’d come through and...
cog:
There is nothing in the air but his own
exhaled breath, and he begins to feel drunk, or at least, he feels himself
adopting the same attributes of intoxication: fatigue, lack of inhibition, a
certain abstraction from emotion.
Skunk: Oh there were lots of things,
whole pile of them. You ever, you know that thing... Actually, this is
something that I used to love, that thing where say you’re watching a film with
someone, or anything on tv really
cog:
pronouncing it in just that way, with
the emphasis on the first syllable.
Skunk (allowing himself a wry laugh):
Well, maybe not. But I used to love that thing of having to leave the room for
whatever reason, say you need to go to the toilet, or the telephone goes,
whatever, and then when you come back you get to ask the person in the room
what’s been going on in your absence, and they quickly fill you in on whatever,
you know, the little plot developments, or who’s done what while you were away.
And I used to do that when I visited my mum at home, you know, watching tv and
stuff. But ehm... I ehm... I noticed that if I was
clearing his throat, before
Skunk: I noticed that if I was gone to
the toilet for
his hand going back to his eye.
Skunk: If it was obvious I’d been gone
longer than for just to take a piss, and when I came back downstairs, mum would
always go... You know, instead of me coming back down and asking mum what had
been happening in the film or whatever, she’d always say, well, she would go up
to the toilet as well, after me. And
that happened too often for me to think, it wasn’t just a case of, some kind of
trigger-suggestion that she... I knew,
I knew she was going up there and
sitting on the toilet and, knowing I’d
just been on the toilet... I can’t explain it, and it’s one of those things you
instinctively understand or you
don’t. And I don’t think any amount of analysis could make you see that
cog:
Skunk: Oh Jesus, loads. One time she was
having some cornflakes when I came down to breakfast, and yet when I went to
get mine I found the milk was off. And I mean, it wasn’t just on the
turn, I mean it was actually rancid. And another thing was she started to...
Ever since I was a kid my mum has hated any tv programme or film she saw that
had that, you know when one actor plays two parts? It used to happen in “Star
Trek” when there’d be a sort of replication thing going on, and William Shatner
would play not only Captain Kirk, but also an evil Kirk as well.
He suddenly looks across the desk at
her, bewildered.
Skunk: I don’t know that you would know
that.
cog:
Skunk: But you know if I was at home,
and that kind of thing was on, it as almost like mum would have some sort of
fit, and I’d have to get her to bed and just...
Too long a pause.
cog:
Skunk: I’m dried out. I need something
to drink. Do I get something to drink included in my five cents?
cog:
and rises, heading across the garden for
the backdoor. Brother Skunk pulls at the arms of his polo shirt, uneasy to find
the material dense and hanging with perspiration. He puts both hands inside the
front and lifts it to wipe down his face. It is far too hot for today.
When his psychiatrist returns, she’s
weaving a little under the weight of a red tin tray (actually the lid of an old
biscuit tin) upon which are balanced two glasses and a bulbous jug of iced and
cloudy liquid.
Skunk (his mouth tacky with anticipatory
saliva): Thank you. Is it just me, or does this feel like the hottest day of
the year?
cog (pouring out the two glassfuls):
They both sit drinking in silence a
little while, Skunk drinking and again trying to instil some discipline into
his breathing, inhaling deeply through his nose until he feels his lungs
swollen to capacity, then deflating them to the point of collapse.
cog:
Skunk: I don’t know, I get, sometimes I
start to feel a, I panic, and that’s when things get, you know, I lose any
setting his glass upon the desk and then
pulling his hands back through his hair.
cog:
Skunk: Mmhm. Well... I don’t, I can’t allow myself to
look at it too closely
picking up the tumbler and placing it
cold against alternate temples
Skunk: but I, you know, it just seems to
me that God, before my mum was born, God mapped out a life for her with, you
know he’d have a chart or a grid or something and he’d be plotting all these
points on it with, say ehm, okay, you’ll fall in love here, really young, and
this’ll be the man you marry, and you’ll have a little boy, and then you’ll
have twins, and you’ll be a lovely family and and, but then someone else got
hold of that of that chart or graph and just flipped the whole thing over, so
all the co-ordinates instead of heading up towards
drawing all this in the air as he
speaks, the glass still in one hand
Skunk: the whole thing now
his hands pass each other
Skunk: is over here, or even
down here, so now you’ve got tragedy
here, here, and here. Oh, and here as well. And that’s what, that’s my mum’s life, and that’s what I walked out from, that’s
my life too. All that, I’m part of that too, and that’s
cog:
Skunk: I don’t see it like that, I don’t
see it like that at all. I can’t see
it like that.
cog:
He refills both their glasses.
Skunk: My girlfriend. She ehm, she was
pregnant, and she died with the baby. The baby died. It didn’t...
his voice fails, his hands wring
themselves.
cog:
Nothing.
cog:
Again he concentrates on his breathing,
decelerating in the hope that his heartbeat will fall into synch with the
imposed rhythm.
Skunk: Can I tell you a joke? Do you
want to hear a joke? It’s not, I think it’s relevant.
cog:
Skunk: Oh nothing, nothing that’s... I
can... Okay. Once upon a time there was a beautiful woman, and she lived in a
beautiful house, but the
cog:
Skunk: Shush! It’s a joke, okay?
Anyway, she lived in this beautiful house, but the only problem was that
sometimes when she was going around the house, which was rather large, she
would smell a terrible smell, a really noxious odour the source of which she
never could quite locate. Anyway, one day she decided that since the house
would be perfect without this foul
stink, she decided she would find it and purge it, and then the house would be,
you know, perfect. So she spent a whole day going through every room of the
house, from top to bottom, from way up in the attic to way down low in the
basement, even out in the garage
cog:
Skunk: Whatever, I say garage myself, but... “even out in the garage” if you must, but she still couldn’t find
where the smell was coming from. And then finally, just when she was about to
give up, she happened upon a door she’d never noticed before, so she opened it,
and behind the door was just just a, she could see a little way in, and it
looked like a long and narrow room, but it was very very dark and she couldn’t
really see what she was doing, but the smell! Oh, the smell. So she knew that this was the cause of all her worries. She tried
to feel her way along the walls, but she was afraid of how dark it was, so what
she did was she went and got herself some matches, and then went back to this
dark room to
cog:
Skunk (sighing): That’s as maybe, but it
does have a punchline, believe me.
cog:
Skunk: Thank you. So,
she returns to this black room where she knows this toxic stench is coming
from, and standing a few feet inside the doorway, just beyond the limit of
visibility, she strikes one of the matches, but before she can even hold it up
there is a tremendous explosion, and the next thing she knows she is high in
the branches of a tree on the other side of the street and looking down on
what’s left of her house which is now no more than a pile of burning rubble,
and she says (cue drumroll)
cog (soundtracking her drumming mime
with air blown through loose lips):
Skunk: she says “Whew! Looks like I got
out of there just in time!”
Neither of them are laughing; even while
relating the punchline Brother Skunk has a frown deep-lined across his
forehead.
Skunk: That’s about it, I think. That’s
what I think about, anyway, when I think about, about...
cog:
Skunk (worrying at his forehead with
trembling fingers): I lost them both, just in that one, that was it, gone. You
know, you have this idea that, a vision that moves into, that stretches way
beyond, and then... that’s it.
cog:
Skunk: I can’t say. How can I say? How
could I tell you that? You know, I don’t even know if I value this at all. It’s not...
You, where you’re, what I’m talking
about is a commitment to something that, there’s just no way you could know.
cog:
Skunk (both hands now tight between his
bare knees): Okay okay. Say ehm...
thinking.
Skunk: Imagine you’ve spent a whole day
building some little model, say a, something really intricate like a, one of
those old ships with all the rigging and the sails and everything. You’ve got
all the pieces out and the instructions, and you build the whole thing up from
scratch, and all the rigging and then you paint it all up and eh, you know, you
mount it on a little stand and make a plaque for it and then just when you’re
standing there admiring what you’ve done, your brother comes in and
accidentally, or even, no, say he deliberately swats it with his blanket and it falls to
the floor and smashes into tiny fragments. You know, that’s it. There’s your day’s work.
cog:
Skunk: That’s exactly what I’m
saying. Imagine what it’s like to spend eight or nine months making something,
and then
cog:
Skunk: No, but I am selfish
enough to feel that way at least in part. I can’t imagine what it’s like to
waitaminute waitaminute, what do you mean selfish? There is only me.
cog:
Skunk: That’s as may be, but then I can
still see what, for those parents who lose a child when it’s grown, when it’s
your age
his speaking becoming manic
Skunk: or even older, you know, fifteen
or sixteen, all that time spent, everything you did just to get someone, to
create them in the first place, and then everything that has to be done just to
get them to that point and then that’s all gone. How do you start again? That’s
my question. I think that really is what I’m looking for. How can I start again?
You know, what if that was your last chance to have a child, if you were at an
age that dictated this was your final shot at it, and then years later your
child dies or is killed, whatever, you know...
cog:
Skunk (his eyes seeking focus on
something, anything): Well, I just think it’s kind of hard to see it that way. I, I see the loss in terms of,
but it’s not that, I can’t
his breathing erratic and on the back of
a pulse that feels induced, strychnine and he grabs at the desk with both
hands.
Skunk: Stop, STOP IT SLIDING! STOP IT
SLIDING!
He
feels something clean and accurate upon his arm, and looking down finds himself
forced to contemplate an opening the size of a pubescent vagina parting his own
flesh, a dull purplish hive there beneath the split meat skin. With his head
turned away, he slowly reaches over with his right hand to bring the flesh
together with a grip whose force he cannot assimilate into the pain, resulting
in terrible bruising visible when the support bandage is removed the following
day.
Strangest
of all: when he finally arrives at A&E, a crosstown distance of perhaps two
miles and covered on foot, he really is
wearing the banana-bright polo shirt and the black knee-length shorts, and
neither of these bearing reference whatsoever to Levi Strauss and Co.
