Exit Nothing by KUBOA
***
Winter 2006, February maybe. I was drinking a lot, going to honky-tonk bars with my brother Chuck. Staying out all night. Having a damn good time. Sometimes we’d also hang out with Dennis, an alcoholic a few years younger than myself whose hands shook all the time. And yet. And yet Dennis could beat almost anyone at pool.
It was in one of these honky-tonk pool halls just outside Birmingham where I met Heather. She looked like a lesbian. And she was, at least partially. But she dug on guys sometimes and I just happened to be at the right place when she was looking for one. She beat me at a few games of pool and just as the sun started to rise outside the barroom windows, I kissed her and she reached into my pocket and grabbed my cock, hard and ready for her hand.
Kaye eventually found out about Heather, but that wasn’t the reason I left town. It didn’t have anything to do with that. Or maybe just a little. In truth, Heather’s kiss freed my imagination. And I imagined freedom. I finally knew that I wanted world-rejection. And rejection! Reject everything, ask questions later. Walk. But where to? Everywhere, and for no reason at all.
And fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.
“Man,” Chuck said, “Kaye’s gonna be pissed.”
“Probably,” I said, taking another drink from my cider beer.
Hank Williams, where art thou?
Henry Miller, where art thou?
Reject, reject. Maybe find something useful in the rubble. But, above all, reject.
I slice salty death thin and then hold it out for the customers to inspect. Take it. Eat it. Pay for your pudding. Stick your dick in it. Swirl it around. Pay no attention to the ice freezing against your spine.
Chuck laughed. “Sure. Right. What’re you gonna do in Philly?”
“I dunno,” I said. “Have adventures, maybe. Write.”
Chuck and Dennis left the bar in search of something to eat. I called the Mad Poet.
“So you’re coming up?” he said.
“You still got that empty room?” I said.
“Yeah. Sure’s I do. You can have it too. We could use a few more people like you up here. Real pirates, you know? Can you bring a few bucks with you? I’m running low on bread.”
And that was it.
***
“I thought I told you not to come home at five in the morning anymore,” Kaye said.
“I was just having some fun,” I said.
“You’re killing yourself.”
“Don’t worry. You won’t have to deal with me much longer. I’m moving to Philadelphia.”
And then she sat up in bed, crying. And it was my fault. Again. How abandoned, how unloved did she feel? I can only imagine my rottenness.
“We can go anywhere you want after I finish school,” she said.
But how to explain that it had to be now? The ice was spreading throughout my body. All I know is that I wanted to be a hobo. But I also wanted to be a writer. Living with the Mad Poet seemed the answer to both.
And then, less than a week later, around midnight or one, I shoved a bunch of clothes and a few books into a black trash bag and went outside and threw the shit into my car’s backseat. I went back inside and Kaye was standing in the kitchen, crying. She put her arms around me and rested her head on my chest.
“This isn’t the end,” I said.
“I don’t believe you,” she said.
I kissed her on the forehead. “It’s not over.”
It’s never really over.
And so I drove into the early morning and then the yellow daylight, driving east and then north. And the ice in my spine began to melt. I was gone, leaving madness for madness.
Exit Nothing
I’m not sure what my name is.
Enter madness, exit nothing. The void, the infinite.
Life is calm now. Perspective. Anne is in our bedroom, sleeping. Perspective. Peace. Perspective.
Maybe it’s too heavy for me. I don’t really know.
I’m sometimes sick with melt and waiting for new adventures. Maybe, though, I can breathe now.
Somewhere, the Mad Poet. Otherwhere, Kathy Change. Neither ever wrote a bad line.
Maybe the crux of it is that my adventure eyes have been gathering dust.
Madness is the stuff of dreams. And only the mad are in love. Remember this, if nothing else.
All I want to do is dream.