SPAM--Sacramento Poetry, Art and Music scene

Hank Kirton

When you’re done reading this, forget you ever knew me.

For starters, take a look at my old college ID. The photo was taken when I was a pathetic, nineteen-year-old virgin. Look at that ridiculous hair. 1986 seems so far away to me now that the pic might as well be a daguerreotype or a photogravure (whatever those are). Like I said, I’m nineteen, but that pale, smooth, insipid face belongs on a 13-year-old. Look at me, grinning like a simpleton, squinting and wincing against the flash as if it were a phosphorous bomb. I look like a creep. A pervert. A clueless dork.

And I am.

Now picture me standing in the library at eight a.m., waiting for the girl I’m stalking to appear. I do this every day. I actually set my alarm. Shit, I give myself the creeps just thinking about me. I’m standing in the stairwell, watching for her out the window. I realize now why stalking is a crime. I should be locked up. I should have a scarlet “S” branded into my forehead. Lock me in stocks and flog me at the mall. But here she comes and my eager little heart goes all fluttery and loud, my pulse rebounding and echoing across the bottomless chasm of the stairwell.

Somebody put me out of my misery.

Her name is Jessica York and she sits beside me in

Western Lit. She’s quiet, but not in the same weird way I am quiet. She has red hair and freckles. I sneak glances at her in class and imagine things; terrible things that usually begin on filthy bathroom floors (think truck-stop; think gas-station) and culminate with ribbons of my semen lashing across her trussed and slippery body (my sex-life resides wholly within my rancid, porn-forged imagination). I study her small white hands and the puffy letters she makes in her notebook. Her periods and dots are over-inflated balloons. She is fond of smiley doodles.

I’ve only spoken to her once. She asked me the date, and scared, pathetic faggot that I am, I said, “I don’t know,” even though I DID know. But I lose whatever thin residue of confidence I possess under the bright, burning spotlight of her green-eyed gaze.

What a loathsome little fuckweasel.

Anyway, this is the day (Nov. 11, 1986) I’ve decided to work up the courage to try to talk to her; maybe even ask her out.

I know, I know. Wait till you see how this turns out.

She walks up the steps and into the building. That’s my cue to leave the stairs and move into the stacks. She sits in the same place every day; down among the W.W.II books. I slip quickly into my hiding place to wait.

I feel like a serial killer and that idea has actually been worrying me lately. Did Ted Bundy start this way? How many young men did John Wayne Gacy stalk before he started cuffing and killing them? I never tortured animals and I don’t masturbate to autopsy photos, but this still seems like a dangerous path.

And then there she is and I forget all this serial killer nonsense.

She sits at a small, two-chair table, plunks her books down (emitting a weary sigh that makes my sad little heart tighten), and then flips open her notebook, chewing on the end of her pencil.

Okay, so what’s the plan?

1.) Approach.

2.) Greet.

3.) Say something witty.

4.) Sit down.

5.) Engage.

Great plan. My testicles recede into my abdomen just thinking about it. Who am I kidding? I can’t do this! I can’t pretend to be cool and calm and suave. I’m not the fucking Fonz! My entire sexual history at this point consists of a brief, uncomfortable handjob from Debbie Harrison behind the garage. And that was THREE YEARS AGO!

Shit, why can’t I be normal like other people? Why do

I have to be a scared, ludicrous douche bag? I suddenly see myself with such stark, merciless, PAINFUL clarity that I begin to panic. It’s like looking into a mirror on bad acid. I have to get out of here! Abort! Abort! I turn to sneak away and my elbow hits a loose book. A huge, hardcover biography of Adolph Hitler hits the cement floor like a thunderclap.

She looks up, startled, and sees my wide eyes looking at her through the books. Exposed! Shit, what do I do? I can’t run now! A voice in my head yells, “Get a hold of yourself you wretched little spaz!”

Acting on instinct - my senses screaming - I bend down

and pick up the book and say, “Jesus!” as if I’d startled

myself. I come out from behind the fortress of books.

“Sorry about that,” I say to her. “This is heavier than I thought. I’m really sorry...”

She smiles and nods. “You scared me,” she says.

“Sorry, I’m sorry.” How many times am I going to apologize?

“It’s okay.”

I shrug and she’s looking at me with those vivid green

eyes and I feel revealed, as if she can see every dirty little perversion, every shameful secret hidden inside me.

“You’re in my Western Lit class,” she tells me.

I nod. “Yeah.”

“You start your paper yet?”

I shake my head. “No.” We’re supposed to write a term paper applying Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s five stages of natural development to Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (or somesuch thing). It’s due in a week and I haven’t even finished reading Anna Karenina yet. “Did you?”

“Yes. I finished it last night,” she says. She pulls her paper out of a folder and holds it up. “I was up all night typing* it,” she tells me.

*Remember, kiddies, this takes place back in the Olden Days, when most people used typewriters instead of computers.

“Wow,” I say, genuinely impressed. “Mind if I take a

look?” The question seems to hit the atmosphere as if dropped from above; it doesn’t form in my head first.

“Sure,” she says. “Have a seat.”

OH MY GOD! Have a seat! I feel like my head is going to explode and blast steaming gobs of overheated brain matter all over the room.

I drop the Hitler book on the table and sit down across from her. She hands me the paper.

It’s thick – thirty pages at least. I start looking through the neatly-typed pages. I can’t actually READ anything; the words may as well be Babylonian hieroglyphics. Nothing can pierce the frantic, self-conscious force-field around my brain.

And then something terrible happens: I sneeze. I sneeze without warning; without a nose-tingling forecast. No “AH...AH...AH-Choo!” Just “Choo!” and a gobbet of snot lands - splat! - right in the middle of page 14.

I look up at her horrified, disgusted expression and the whole world seems to collapse around me.

And then the blood comes. Dark red droplets hit the paper like Biblical Rain and I actually look up. I look up! As if I expect to see slaughtered livestock hanging from the ceiling! I finally realize I’m bleeding and reflexively pinch my nose, causing the stream of blood to arc out and spatter the front of her white blouse like a Jackson Pollock brush-flick.

She screams and jumps up. I let go of my nose and start to say something (WHAT, I don’t remember) and my nose lets loose with a renewed gush of blood, soaking her term paper. All I manage to say is, “Uhn!”

I stand up and race to the bathroom, leaving a trail of red asterisks behind me.

In the bathroom, I keep my nose pinched with a wad of toilet paper and stare at myself in the mirror. Some invisible wiseguy taps me on the shoulder and says in a Dan Duryea voice; “Real smooth, Romeo. But you forgot to ask her out.”

I remain in the bathroom long after my nose stops

bleeding. I never return to Western Literature (never finish Anna Karenina either). I see her a couple more times on campus and she averts her eyes and avoids me and my stomach hurts whenever I glimpse her.

I don’t bother coming back next semester.

Now go away and pretend you never read this.

End

August 25, 2008