The Comedown (22 February 2010)

"Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse"

-TS Eliot, from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915).



I bought it at Wal-Mart. Call it a wardrobe, I guess. A construction of hollow metal poles and plastic support brackets, it was encased by a zippered shell made of some sort of woven blue plastic and stood about six feet off of my bedroom floor. Hazel would claw her way to the top in a desperate scramble, then perch on the corner nearest the window, her eyes rapt and ears pointed in swiveling surveillance. She'd curl up and then stretch out, luxuriating. A yawn and a rolling purr would bring her a doze.

At night, we could hear her tugging at the fabric, hooking a claw into the fibers and popping them loose one by one. She towered over us in the twilight, feline queen of the apartment, mistress and protector of the bedroom. If you tried to lift her off, she'd cling to the wardrobe, yowling in wild-eyed panic. She'd lay up high and mighty on that damned thing and groom herself, mashing saliva against her fur with little squishing noises. She would wake us up when she jumped, thudding.


**
Sunday afternoon. Nickey and I crouch in my kitchen, naked beneath our blankets. Delectable serenity. Our elbows gleam in the cold white light. Our cheeks redden at the bones, our eyes glint with the snowshine from outside. The sprigs of dried cilantro hanging in the window carve a silhouette in the brightness. Grinning, I hold out a tangerine, digging my thumbnail into its skin. “Listen,” I whisper. I pull back the skin as she leans in closer. The fur-edged crinkling fills our ears and our smiles stretch a little further. I pull off more of the rind and gently nudge my fingertips between the fruit's folds, easing the segments apart. As they separate, we hear the tiniest sigh, a delicate kissing crackle, a thrilling hiss of joy.
“Do it again,” she says in breathless wonderment. I pull off another segment and we lean in closer; my nose nuzzles her cheek. I hand her a piece and tell her to eat it. The juice erupts in our mouths; our tongues sing a biting citrus melody. Staccato sparks of sunlight race up our gums. Our lips meet in the electric silence.

**
Nickey and I huddle on the bed and Red Turtle Rabbit shows us her tattoos. A lapine shadow stands against a crimson turtle shell. The lines on the shell on the flesh of Red's forearm dance. I can see her pores and the hairs and the skin cells. I look up at Nickey and see the capillary webs clustered at the ball of her nose, wine-red gauze caressing her cheekbones. I see the redness in my own fingertips, in my knuckles, my kneecaps; the blood races in elation to our faces. I get up to walk and the floor sinks with my steps, yielding and elastic.

**
Hazel is sleeping on top of the Wal-drobe when it starts to collapse. I enter the bedroom and look up to see her scurrying back and forth in alarm as her throne tumbles beneath her. I call Nickey over and she braces her hand against the top. The wardrobe wobbles like it's made of toothpicks and marshmallows. “There's too many clothes in here,” I finally manage to say. “ It's gonna collapse. What'll we do?”
Nickey suggests taking the clothes out and we begin to do so. We heap them in a pile, laughing. We moon-bounce into the other room for more tangerines. Seen through the kitchen window, a silver maple erupts from the dirt next to the gravel parking lot. Myriad twigs and branches nestle in the sky's skin. I hold up the tangerine rind and we examine the veins on the inside wall. We see the same map etched into our palms, in winding rivers and forks of lightning. Nickey splays her fingers; I lock my own in hers and our hands join, a heart pumping new magic between two bodies.

**
I heard a report on NPR last week, stating that a third of the world's socks are produced in one town in China. One town makes buttons. Another makes novelty light switch covers with pictures of Jane Austen. These products are then sold in American stores. Toxic sludge is dumped into rivers; smoke blossoms in the air. More and more of the earth is devoured as more and more stuff is made. Thrift stores abound with clothes nobody wants; people trade junk at garage sales. Storage units are rented out; mansions are built to house material belongings in an economy that seems to thrive on infinite growth, spurred by infinite consumption of finite resources. More factories are built. More products are made. More more more.
I think about this as I poke my head into the newly gutted-out wardrobe. There is a factory somewhere (probably China) that makes and packages millions of shittily constructed wardrobes to be sold at Wal-mart so that people like me have a place to hang all the clothes that they never wear (also from China).

**
What if, at the instant you finish reading this sentence, all factory-driven clothes-making on this planet came to a halt? What if they stopped making pens, or cell phones, or plastic bags? What if they stopped building drive-thrus or Hummers? What if they stopped making Styrofoam cups or crown molding or doorknobs or gasoline-powered lawn mowers? Who would suffer? You could probably clothe and provide for several generations of people with whatever's left. Suddenly landfills would become treasure troves, and garbagemen would be treated like Santa Claus.

**
I now sense the evil presence lurking in the wardrobe. The unzipped flaps hang open; abomination gapes like a busted-open pustule, spewing gluttony across the room. The structure lurches forward and the clothes bulge into the room.
The thoughts buzz in my brain; with surging urgency I look around at all of my belongings heaped in piles. I look at the two bookshelves from Big Lots, swooning beneath their oversized loads. Too much. There's too much in here. I'm going to get rid of the wardrobe. I never even wear most of these clothes. I'm getting rid of those too. I'm going to tear this goddamn thing down. I'm going to tear it down right now. I'm going to tear it down and I'm going to simplify.
I look up at Nickey and the words burst from my mouth as the thought detonates in my skull. I shake my head, finally awake. “None of this has any value to me! These things don't mean anything!”
Red woo-hoos from the other room.
Elia and Nickey help me take it apart and we wrap the metal rods in the blue plastic cover. I cradle the remains of the wardrobe as I descend the stairs, a demon corpse in my arms, hunted and exorcised. I heave the bundle into the trashcan. “Out,” I say. Then, with more certainty: “Out! We don't want you here. You aren't wanted here.” I scurry up the stairs.
**

Hazel meets me at the top of the staircase, giving me a long indignant “mroowrr” before trotting into my bedroom. Bewildered, she sniffs the floor where the wardrobe once stood, pawing at the pens and dustballs and spare change that have accumulated in that space. She looks up at me, then Nickey, and lets out a long dolorous whine, grieving at the loss of her dominion. I begin sweeping the floor and she watches every motion, puzzled and scared. “It's ok, Hazel-bear,” I tell her. “You're still in charge. You've still got us cleaning up your shit.”
**

We lay face-to-face, cocooned on my bed. We lock eyes, smiles stretched in ecstasy. Our pupils engulf galaxies; star clusters shimmer in our tears. My arm encircles the small of her back. We look at each other and we understand.
**

There's a memory of the waiting room at Hudson. I wait to see a doctor. A wide screen TV obliterates the possibility of continuous thought. We are all sucked into an episode of General Hospital. Everyone on the show argues or cries. A woman wakes from a coma, frantically demanding to know what year it is. A twelve-year old talks to his dad, a twenty-something wrapped up in a super-trendy leather jacket. Two lovers stage a heated argument about something relating to a text message. He says something like “But, you know I love you.” None of the actors seem to believe their own words. They plod along through the plot, talking and gesturing, laughing and sobbing and shouting right on cue.
Right on cue, I rise as the nurse calls my name. I automatically remove my sweatshirt so she can take my blood pressure.

**
With my arms around her waist, I tell Nickey I love her. She says the same. The bed disappears. The room is gone. The walls and bookshelves, the broken ball-point pens, the dog-eared paperbacks, the blankets strewn around the floor, my guitars, my notebooks, my clothes, my shoes – they're all gone. We remain. I say it again. She says it too. We feel every thought, every laughing melody, every shiver, every grin and gasp, every breaking wave within the other. “This is it,” I tell her. “This is love. This is God. This is everything. Do you see? This is it! We're it. ” She smiles, nodding her head as tears pearl in the corners of her eyes.

**
Right on cue, Elia and I are buffeted by a chicken breeze from the KFC down the alley. We stand in the kitchen, barley and vegetables cooking on the stove. I swallow my nausea. At night, the giant fuck-all light from the Sonic drive-thru blasts our kitchen and Elia's room.

**
I once walked past the Sonic on the way to class and watched a truck empty out the grease dumpster, hoisting the galvanized metal box up into the air, tilting it forward. A cascade of sickly brown splashed down into the truck. I remember that now, as Nickey and I contemplate the glass of Coke on the bench that somehow passes for a kitchen counter. It looks like motor oil. A jar out of Mordor, brimming with vileness and ruin.

**
Nickey and I take my clothes off of their hangers; while the garments are folded and neatly stacked, a pile of plastic tangles grows on the floor, and once more I remember working at the dry cleaner. I would walk into work and Dave would point at a cluster of plastic garbage bags, filled with metal hangers. Customers, having nothing better to do with them, bring their hangers to us for re-use. It was my job to untangle the hangers and shove them into boxes. Meanwhile, some factory in China cranks out more hangers; an entire town built up – an entire generation and more – dedicated to satisfying our need for organized closets, bloated with the fruits of others' strife.

**
The garbage truck comes by tomorrow; hopefully they'll accept my offering to the Landfill Gods. I think Hazel has forgiven us for destroying her queendom. This morning she curls up in the crook of my legs, kneading the blankets, occasionally pricking my skin with her claws. Nickey lets out a restless dreamy sigh and I kiss the back of her neck, feeling my breath slide out to her shoulders. Before I drift back into slumber I glance at the wall once obstructed by the closet. The paint is sea foam green, and I imagine little waves rocking the apartment, the street, the whole town down into sweet tranquility.

**
There are stars the size of our solar system. There are nebulae that are light-years wide. Light years. Light, which will flee from your childhood room faster than you can even think about leaping under the covers, takes a year to travel that far. Right now, in the same space we occupy, galaxies are colliding. We are tiny people on a tiny planet, a dust mote on the universe's eyelashes. But we're here, and that's something, even if we crowd ourselves off of our own world and out of each other's lives with mountains and mountains of stuff.