I think about death as often as most teenagers are supposed to think about sex. I don't know which one's scarier. I was stood up last night. I don't care. We were supposed to fuck. She wanted me to steal away her virginity. I found her tragically unerotic. I could care less. She's interested in my personality less than in my potential as a plaything of warmth, friction, fluid transfers and groaning. I've got such disdain for my body. Actually, more a disregard. My body’s not bad. The only respect I have for it, is that it's the only surviving part of me that is a virgin. The rest is soiled goods.
It's a beautiful night; a slack yellow moon just hanging low, drooping like an eyelid a frame before sleep. I'm by my window, I want to touch the night and smear the moon with my thumb, like crayon across the canvas; turn the waning moon into wax; lick the residue off my thumb and enjoy the taste of freedom. I've always coloured outside the lines. If I smear the moon generously across the sky, I’ll be stretching wide the escape route, reopening some cosmic wound. Like we're an unrepentant, subterranean species of afterthoughts, and the moon is a portal. Collectively, maybe we're paying for Icarus' major goof by being anchored to each other and the deadening earth. I’d spread it so thinly that gaps would burst from the domain above, bleeding a fresh light into the void; bringing new life to the world. I guess that’s the sting with nuclear power. If evolution is mutation maybe we’re simply assisting evolution. Perhaps it’s a catalyst for the insurgence of a new dominant species on earth; one so immaculately inspired that it enlists the old species to self-abort, freeing up room for the new super-species. We’re not even worth retaining as slaves to the new breed. I may as well quicken the process by shaving a few zeroes off of the population. Perhaps I’ll be granted the key to the next level; the strategy to thwart the end boss is to swear allegiance to his cause; like a parasite hitching a ride; like John Connor befriending The Machine. I know their time is up. So it truly is of no consequence what I do until the final roll call because, as a species, we’re already going down. My impulses say go to war and punish the ignorant. It sickens me being genetically confined to such a dismal architecture as the human being
Living in my head is like watching several reels of film superimposed on top of each other. One’s some primary-coloured saccharine Disney bilge - my jugular wired up to a gallon drum of seratonin; then there's some poor-quality pirate edition of the Texas Chain Saw Massacre and in between this bad celluloid marriage, seven psycho dwarves gambol around suburbia slamming tetanus-coated hatchets into people’s bare necks and taping electrodes to the mouth-braces of insecure prom queens, just for being so complacently superficial. And every door-frame in this domain is actually a guillotine, and every set of sordid, stained sheets is lined with rusty staples. A kaleidoscopic sadist hell. Sometimes I wanna evacuate myself from me at will and for good. I wanna run downstairs, throw the empty vodka bottle at my dad’s head (don’t wanna waste good shit on a bad shithead) and scream:
“Right you cold motherfucker. Bleed to death. I'm bored of movies. I’ve perforated your face, I wanna see real blood spurting from your depressurised head just to prove you’re at least biologically human how could you so coolly annihilate your entire family do you think your daughter’s ever ever ever coming back you piece of shit even if she is so fucking great? Yeah vodka stings doesn’t it? Apparently tears do but I wouldn’t fucking know since you cauterised shut every gland in my body so I can’t smile sincerely without having graded the probabilities of response from everyone present and adjusting accordingly.”
(I’m so fucking choreographed. I’m like a cyber-ballet. I can’t respond sincerely to anything anymore. I think I used to have fun when I was a kid. Now I feel like a God sewn together out of scars. Every action is mediated and reconstituted at least a thousand times before I say it and somehow I’ve got so good at this that people think my reactions are spontaneous. I’ve been doing this for so long that the process of programming myself for each new set of circumstances is so fucking fast it’s virtually precognitive. The kids at school always congratulate me on my sharpness. If only they knew the whole database of other responses I’ve discarded before settling on the one they ultimately get. They’ll get the idea before long.)
I just want to sustain one line of thought for more than three seconds. My mental state is close to the antithesis of meditation. I think, I see, hear, feel everything at once. Channel-surfing. I’m this overstimulated timebomb and just sometimes I want to jack in my head in for a slower model.
While my dad’s head empties itself into a blood/vodka suspension I’d leap across his stunned body and land on his stomach; buckling him so he pukes all over his face. I'd leave him to bleed. There’d be a whole blancmange of agonised secretions. I’d get this all-consuming sense of mental and physical fortitude and relief at having neutralised the enemy and I’d crouch on the brim of the sofa surveying the field of war. Then my strategic advisor, somewhere near the frontal lobe would regretfully inform me that my victory was Phyrric because actually when anyone found out I’d murdered my dad in cold, cold blood, a new set of interfering agents would move in, with new designs to own and control and puppeteer me. And nothing would get any better. And the head-cramps would come back, and my stomach would feel like it was digesting itself and my whole body would erupt in seeping holes like a collapsing voodoo doll. My lungs would spasm as the futility of my every action became excruciatingly apparent. The eyelid anvil would drop, extinguishing that last scintillating filament of hope from my vision. The mental tightrope between clarity and quicksand snapping under the tension, I’d find the first appropriate power tool and jam it straight into my disease until a geiser of fucked-up thoughts and nasty bilious smog mentalness sprayed all over the garage wall. My nutjob fuck-the-world-testament splattered inconsequentially across some vague surface in this fruitless fucking sewer of a world. I can’t do that. I can’t go through all this and be remembered as anonymously as every other self-aborting headfuck. Mein very own kampf deserves a legacy of substance. I’m not gonna be filed away under the Schizo-act as though my ‘condition’ were ‘symptomatic of an ailing society’ (once you become a category all capacity for change is rendered nul). I’m gonna kill the infected cells and let the rest of society breathe in the space their absence creates. Lazy fucks. Stupid fucks. Thoughtless fucks. Non-spontaneous people really get me insane. Unoriginal fucks. Clueless rent-a-cliché spastic morons. One day I guess, I'll realize that, no matter how many people I fuck up, the real enemy is myself; that seeing as I gave up regarding other people as real, self-aware beings a long time ago, their deaths are just as empty and futile as their lives. But while I'm in denial I may as well exercise my fragile moral logics on them as flambuoyantly as possible. I'm a teenager and therefore allowed to. One day I'll grow out of it, and wake up int a coffin, strapped to a warhead.
The moon sends me whacko, I know. For now, at least, expunging this shit on the page just about stops me going AWOL. If I miss a day my head aches real bad. Perhaps I’ll make an appointment to be trepanned. There’s a cult in America that advocates trepanning as a spiritual pick-me-up. There's another, bigger cult in America which advocates genocide and invasion as means to attaining world peace. I'd rather be trepanned than confront them. I'm sure they'd prefer that.
When these sado-sick-fuck head-wanderings first found my head I went through a karma crisis. I’d been reading a load of stuff about spiritual emanations, and the collective unconscious, where there’s this mass of thoughts hanging in the air waiting to be intercepted by the correctly tuned mind. I started hallucinating sick and graphic violence when I turned twelve. I sought respite in visualising something seriously gruesome happening to people I hated. it made me feel powerful. But I also had a notion that every one of these sick scenarios would actually manifest somewhere in the world; that I was indirectly responsible for the undisclosed acts of some ripe-minded serial killer carving up kids in his basement. It’s just like television. Jeffrey Dahmer used to get off on the Emperor from Star Wars and TV’s only a jumble of abstract frequencies translated into pictures by the machine. Like, what if my idle thought constitutes the pixel that glints at the knifepoint, upon entry into some poor kid's chest? If my thought hadn't happened, then the knife would be blunt and the kid might escape with a rough pink dent. So, thoughts of every flavour get uploaded into this shimmering network somewhere south of heaven and downloaded by the vessel with the right physical make-up to translate the thoughts into ‘pictures’ i.e. act upon them. ‘A man must take responsibility for his actions’ my dad used to say, whenever I’d disappointed him by lying or cheating my way into good stuff i.e. when he couldn’t prove that I was lying or cheating. So I applied this to my karma crisis and decided to take measures to be directly responsible for the carvery in the basement; take responsibility for my actions. That way I'd forever be in control. And flesh out my imagination with experience so nobody will dare trivialise the imagination ever again. Of course, I've yet to do approximately anything, I have no doubt whatsoever that one day I will. Then, perhaps, my stupid dad will regret hammering that one home. He’ll probably accuse me of misinterpreting it but then I’ll say:
“Bullshit, a cliché’s supposed to be have universality you soft bastard; there's no such thing as small print, so get used to being implicated in everything I do from now on because I’ve taken you up on that responsibility crap and things aren’t a whole lot better.”
“But son, I don’t wanna see you go to jail.”
“Aw, don’t worry dad, you won’t. I’ll be dead long before they know what the fuck just happened, and even if I miraculously survive my shitstorm vendetta campaign, there’s no way you’ll be around to see me sentenced.”
“Oh, ok. Have it your way.”
“Thanks, I intend to.”
“Whatever makes you happy, son.”
“Well, it eases the crippling headaches if that counts for anything. Ya know, blowing up a whole assembly hall full of mediocre assholes. Windows blasted out by flying limbs, rivers of young poisoned blood rippling across the courts. Fields of death, etc.”
“Well, we all need to let off steam once in a while. That’s why I play golf. A good cathartic swing on my nine-iron and I’m ready to face another day.”
“I know what you mean dad; levering a kid’s ribs up with the head of your golf club is immensely satisfying. It just takes the edge off things. I like it when they’re too gone to cry. I get a sense of kinship.”
“Well, each to his own.”
“I prefer: ‘every man for himself.’”
“Well, whatever you do, take responsibility for your actions, that’s all I ask.”
“Whatever you say dad.”
“Thanks for listening.”
“By the way…”
“Yeah?”
“Do you still think I’m gay?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that why you’ve disowned me without actually disowning me?”
“Hell kid, you’re good.”
“So you aren’t ashamed enough to throw me outta the house, but you are ashamed enough to totally deny my existence, all based on a suspicion that I might not have turned out according to your strict fascist blueprint?”
“That’s the one.”
“Isn’t that a bit hypocritical?”
“Erm.”
“Are you taking responsibility for your actions.”
“No.”
“Right. So you’re being a hypocrite.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Have you tried talking to your kid?”
“No.”
“So you’re basically responsible?”
“I guess.”
“You make me sick. Where’s the fucking role model, man?”
“He’s carving up some kids in a basement.”
“And who's fault is that?”
"Yours."
I think I’m too altruistic for sex with someone else. The idea of penetration is scary. Unless it’s with a bullet. Or a knife. Or a bayonet. I’d love to rig up a bomb in my chest that detonates the moment my heart stops. Some fucking legacy. Go out with a bang etc. I’m gonna buy a gun over the net and slide the barrel up the cunt of the next fawning bitch who stands me up and listen good for her shrill yelping. I’ll be so removed by then I’ll have to listen hard. When I hear it, I’m gonna fuck her harshly with the gun and shoot my ‘wad’ into her guts so she slowly bleeds to death from her mermaid’s purse; I’ll explain to her that it’s ironically analogous to childbirth. Seeping death from a portal of life etc. She’ll regret trading in her innocence so soon. And yet she’ll have been fucked by me without my hallowed end getting dirty and infested with squirming pussy-molluscs. Best for both parties. I wonder if she’d enjoy the stimulation of the cold metal punishing her insides; or whether she’d be too shit-scared to notice it. Nerves short-circuiting nerves. I wonder.
I can’t adequately express my billowing hatred with words it all sound so fucking trite. Words can only express something that is known. Nobody knows anything. There's only faith in crude suspicions, which only work within the context they were created. And I don’t know why people repulse me so much. That isn’t concrete. There's too many factors. We're fucked. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Even ‘fuck’ loses its capacity to relieve after a while. Everything grows impotent through repetition, like this fucking race of imbeciles to which I loosely belong. I can’t even jerk-off properly at the moment. It looks like I’ll have to wrestle back my hopes for salvation from this phantom abstract that hasn’t materialised; the one that hasn’t descended from a cloudy idyll above this asbestos-puking sewer. The moon; like a manhole that’s been rusted shut by a flimsy god in submission, denying me the hope of ever joining the cool, blind, appealing darkness at the roof of the sewer. I'm embarrassed by, amongst other things, my genes, my body and my apathy towards action. All the while I 'think' as often as most teenagers 'do'. My back aches. I passed a run-over dog on the route back from school. We're all roadkill to society's juggernaut. I'm gonna derail the juggernaut. Some of my classmates are on ritalin. They recommend it for my condition; I tell them I'm the only one in this dismal fucking town that doesn't have a condition. They'll always be in the middle of the road. Drugs are counter-productive. I don’t want escapism. I want to not need to escape. I want to escape need. I don’t know. I'm so scared. The stitching's loose and I refuse to be anybody's toy anymore. And there's nothing I can do about it except stage an apocalypse in my own bedroom.
Nick Hudson.
