Roadkill
“No one will ever love me!” Isabel intoned, giving voice to the image of a bright-eyed fat girl smiling at us from a bus-stop advertisement. She puffed out her cheeks and let rip a raspberry. I was drinking a milkshake, and pink goo ejected from my nose. I decided to give my heart to her then. When later we kissed, I learned that hers was the most aggressive tongue I had known.
The last thing we spoke of pertained to baby sex, as in people having sex with babies. She heard an infant had been hospitalized. It gave me the icky shakes—and right before I had to step into the great wide world, full of all those strangers with their secret minds. How many people on that morning bus had been asleep just an hour before, dreaming up some truly unsettling imagery, only to ponder in horror the extent to which they might take responsibility for all that? Then out the door, wearing faces of common decency, into dangerous proximity with other silent nasties.
Would I have said something romantic had I known she would be dead before lunchtime? Certainly, I would not have gone to work. Certainly, I would have stayed home and tickled her, fingers trespassing the boundaries of her granny panties. I would have reminisced and caressed. But if, for whatever reason, I absolutely had to leave… I just don’t know what I would have said.
Men often die first, worn by years of secretly expending the energy required to repress sadness and rage. I would joke that if and when I died first, I would have her lean in close over my death bed and I would whisper, so tenderly, the word “shart” into her cute little ear. She would poke me hard in my belly when I said this. She would often poke me in the belly or punch me in the arm. Consequently, I would cower and yell “domestic violence!” which would prompt further assault.
“I love you” was said at the beginning and end of every day. It was sprinkled generously throughout. An abyss of love-yous. Sometimes, self-awareness would lead to the most inane of conversations. “I love you. No, I mean I really, love you. I mean it. More than you comprehend. I really, really love you. You are so loved. God it’s frustrating that I can’t explain it to you.” Blandness via repetition.
“Goodnight. I love you.”
“Goodbye. I love you.”
Our earliest impressions of one another were constructed via the joyless toil of cleaning up nice. Such theater is tricky. One wants the camouflage to fulfill its function of deceiving the potential mate, yet the intended object of affection must recognize that this image of perfection is maintained at too high a cost of energy and is, ultimately, false. Metabolically, ugliness is more efficient. One hopes to be found out.
The big breakthrough in our getting to know the ugly truths came when she showed me the picture of thirteen-year-old Isabel. What a dweeb. What a complete vacuum of sex appeal. This is no insult. I, too, was a goober at that unfortunate stage in my life. I think we wore the same fuck-me-not glasses. That a thirteen-year-old should lack sex appeal is appropriate. However, retroactive vanity produces bizarre desires. Isabel would love to know that gown-man-I would have let thirteen-year-old her bounce on his leg (yee-haw). What am I to do? Hurt grown-up Isabel’s feelings by refusing her imagined advances?
When she was fourteen, a chatroom stranger requested photographs of her feet. She obliged. She told me this story with a subtly hint of pride. If only she could be longed for as she was by that internet pervert. That was all she wanted.
Did I adore her feet as did that stranger? Did I know her as well as I could-have-should-have? Did I give her my true self? I hate to think I hid a secret hubby the whole time. A stranger in her bed….
Never. I was an honest grotesque, like those who hand about the churches.
Yet neither truth nor love did save her.
Never more shall Isabell and I bear our uglies. She was crossing to get a pint of ice cream from a 7-11 and was hit by a car. As she died, sprawled upon the pavement as the inconvenienced driver tried to force her to accept his apology.
The call came when I was at work.
”My wife is dead.” I told my boss. “I need to leave.”
“Aw no,” said he. “Sorry to hear that. You can go. Just make sure to clock out.”
Besides having killed my wife, the driver was quite upstanding. He donated to feed hungry children in war-torn countries—he made sure I knew.
Because Isabel was too busy bleeding out in the street to reassure him that it was obviously just an accident and that he remained new-born innocent, the responsibility fell to me. I pardoned him. Why not? I did not like the man, but it occurred to me that he really was too new-born stupid to be evil. Isabell and I used to make fun of men like him. McDingleberry: a character I would perform for her benefit. I would never have imagined that McDingleberry would be responsible for her death.
Before McDingleberry was taken away by a cop, I asked if Isabel had shared any final words. He told me that she did but, he couldn’t make them out, as her mouth was full of blood. What he thought he heard made no sense.
The next day, I saw a rat lying in the street with its intestines spilled over the blacktop, gushed open. There was nothing to be said about it, nor anyone to say it to. No way to transform the obscene into its opposite. The eviscerated rat was simply what it was, like a fact. It was ugly. It was honest. It was what it was.
Horror Sleaze Trash 