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the rushing sound 20 January 2006 - 14:18 There's this choking feeling in the back of my throat, like ick that just won't go away. And today, just now, in fact, my father scared the shit outta me. He raised up one of his pant legs and pulled down his sock, revealing a strange rash on an old scar of his. He got the scar back when he was twelve or thirteen. And now it's red and flaky. Upon closer inspection I realized it's not just on the scar, or on that one leg. It's starting to spread on his other leg, and it scared me. See, diabetes runs strong in my family, as it does in most latinos. Both my grandmothers died of diabetes, my mother has it, and my father has it too. Aunts and uncles from both sides of the family hail the same disease. Well, my Abuela Figenia, my father's mother, she got gangrene on her foot because of it, and I can't shake the feeling that this might now be happening to her aging son. And it scares the fuck outta me, you understand that?! This is my father, I don't want to see his leg get chopped off, does anyone have any idea what that would do to him?! He'd die inside, I know it. He fears his mortality, and age is a sure sign of it. He wants to die young, like I do, and I'm sure his casual talk about it is just a fuckin' mask. He's trying to hide the fact that he's scared shitless too. And what can I do? How can I help him? I can't, I just stand and watch him grow old, wither away and die before me and I can't stop it! I can't stop any of this from happening, and I marveled with horror at the wrinkled soft quality of his skin as I stroked his leg and looked for more blemishes. That ick in my thoat made me get all choked up; I wanted to weep.And the truth is I've been like this for quite a while already, I just keep pushing it away. But at work I want to sometimes cry for no reason, or just send everything and everyone to hell and beat the crap outta everyone. I want to slam Juan into a wall and hurl Aaron onto the moving conveyer belt along with the boxes. And that's because I get along great with these fuckers, mind you. In fact, Juan told Zamira and I that we should all go out to this club called Jalape�os on Monday night after work. I passed the word to Aaron and he thought it a great idea. Just us ODC team, goin' out and having a few drinks. Maybe that's what I need, apart from a social life, o'course. I need to get out of this house, away from this computer, away from my aging parents, away from this reality that haunts me every fuckin' day worse than any nightmare possibly could, away, away, away. I have nothing to distract me except school and work, which is why I give myself to both things wholeheartedly. I live for UPS, I breathe German and Sculpture now, and that's because this is the first fuckin' week of the semester. I'm desperately seeking ways to get out, but then I feel guilty about abandoning my parents (at least in my thoughts), and I rush back to them and worry over something that could really be nothing, like now. I'm so pent up all the time now, and I really hope we do go out on Monday, because God, I swear... I need me some tequila... 14:27 HRS. The fuckin' computer froze on me and I had to restart this shit. Gah. I was saying...? Yeah, the need to break something, to rip, to tear, to kill. Because I can't kill time, I can't stop this whirlwind of blurry movement and color that makes me dizzy. And 'Ama says it's all because I've been penting shit up inside again, since Crus died last year. Fuck it, since I found out he was going to die. Since I spoke to him on the phone, since I saw him last May riding away into the Mexican horizon on his rickety bike. I never cried over his death. Never. And I don't think anyone realizes just how much that man meant to me. He was the father I never had, always wanted to have. I grew up, in a sense, ashamed of my father, of the father I had. I loved him to death, yes, but he didn't seem to love me, and that hurt. Crus, Tio Crus? Why, he loved me more than anything! He was an excellent father, he cared about me and my sister, looked at us always with kindness and joy, there was tenderness in his eyes that are just like mine when he looked at me. I look like him, y'know. Like Crus and Carmen. People tell me the likeness is uncanny and creepy. Time and again relatives exclaim that I should have been Carmen's kid, not my dad's. �Pero la nariz? My nose, nah, that's Crus right there. But no, he's not right there, on my face, he's there, buried six feet under and I'm not even quite sure where, because by the time we got to Laredo, he'd been buried already. And nobody wanted to go to the cemetary on Christmas Eve to show us where his grave was. His freshly dug grave. God. It might be that, like 'Ama says, it might be everything. It might be none of it. I could just be fuckin' psycho. Again. And then Dud's having problems with her marriage; she calls me, crying, and I can't console her, dammit! How I wish I could just transport myself over there, wrap my fat arms around her and bring her home, where she belongs, with me and 'Ama, where we love her, where she'll be safe from her fuckin' husband and his wack-job of a family. I just want her close so I can hug her and tell her I'm gonna make everything all right. And I promise, Totita, everything will be alright. Just wait for me, I'll find you a way out of all that mess. Wait for your Piojo, I'll do something. I gotta do something...! And my shoulders sag underneath all this damn weight; I feel as though no one could possibly understand, and I just wanna be ALONE to myself, leave me to myself, so I can consume myself in all my misery and grief and who-the-fuck-knows-what-else. I don't want to go to work anymore, but I get there and love it, then I don't wanna come home, because I know all the shit that waits for me there. Here. Not that I have a bitch of a mother or anything, no I love her. She doesn't know, doesn't understand. I just torture myself all the time now, heaving too much responsability onto my plate. I mean, no one told me to take the place of Head of the Family when 'Apa took off; it's probably only a position that's occupied in my mind's eye only. Both my mother and sister are tough-ass women, they can hold their own just fine. But I don't want them to have to do that shit, y'know? I wish I could just take care of everything, make it all be all right. But who the fuck am I trying to impress here? I can't do it, I fall apart, and I'm no use to anyone like that. And last night, at work, I started getting suicidal thoughts. That happens to me sometimes, and by the time I know it, whoops, I just dug my boxcutter into my hand again, into my wrist. And I stop the blood flow quickly so no one notices I just cut myself, I brush it off, if anyone saw, it was an accident, a'ight? Quit looking at me like that already. Quit looking at me at all. Just go away. Just let me be, let me die, let me lie. 'Ama says there's only so much a person can take, but I take even more. And she says I get like this because I'm about to burst, about to snap, about to break. But when the fuck have I ever broken? Never. That, my friend, is a lie. I've only ever broken down once, no, twice in my life before. Once, when I was four years old and had no choice. My father had transformed himself from a church-going, loving man, a good man, to a piece of filth that beat and yelled and treasured prostitutes over his children and wife. The other time? Well, that was a few years back, four, I believe, when I was eighteen and Marco was suddenly forced into sixteen forever when a drunk ass rammed into the truck he was traveling in and sent his body hurling into the concrete, battering his body and breaking him... into nothing. They wouldn't even let me see his body at the funeral. They wouldn't even let me get fuckin' close! I wanted to see him, to show him my black Ninja Turtle T-shirt I had worn especially for him, for his funeral. Do ya like it, bro? I asked him silently, but no tears came. Can you see me? I can't see you anymore, get up so I can see you. But he would never rise again. Only in my dreams. Yeah, I broke down then. I kept seeing him everywhere, I still do, at times. He sits next to me on the passenger seat of la Josefina when I'm driving alone, on my way to school or on my way home from work late at night. He won't talk to me ever again, though, he just sits there and smiles through a bloody face. I swear, people must think I'm crazy. And I might be, in fact, sometimes I'm sure I am. I broke down then, thinking about my lost friend, and 'Ama says I'm breaking down now. Zu viel Stress. Too much anger's more like it, but I don't know what it is I'm pissed off at. I just know I want a smoke, a nice long smoke, alone, at night, and everyone and everything can just go straight to fuckin' hell in a handbasket. If we do go out on Monday, I know I'll be fine afterwards. No'mas necesito una buena peda, and a hangover to match it the day after. Yeah, bitch. A couple of drinks and a few Marlboro Red's should do the trick, ease my pain away... At least, that's what my father taught me, and look where the fuck it got him. God. I'm screwed. On a completely unrelated note (or maybe it has everything to do with what just spewed out of my fingertips, I dunno), my naginata and other assorted weapons arrived via UPS Ground service today. I'll take advantage of the fact that I work at the warehouse to pick that shit up. Well, there goes my cell ringing... it's my sister. I gotta go. |