Destroy (9 page)

The end.

I turn the webcam off and save the video. Then I grab Tao Lin's book
Shoplifting from American Apparel
and read a few pages before the alarm goes off on my phone.

It's five.

I grab the tinfoil and smoke the rest of the Oxy.

I've found that being really high on this shit makes playing the piano for three hours in front of my mother much more fucking bearable.

“JAIME, JAIME, JAIME . . . PLEASE WAKE
up, baby. I need your help.”

The voice on the phone is my mother's. It's her wasted and high voice.

It's one in the morning and she's been drinking all day. I saw blue powder on her nose twice while I was playing piano for her. Both times were after she excused herself, glass of red wine in her hand, to use the bathroom.

I sit up in my bed.

“What's going on, Mom? Where are you?”

“I'm at the place where the monsters come to get me, Jaime. I need you. Please come save me.”

“Where are you?”

“Hell.”

“Mom! What bar are you at?”

“The Checker Board, sweetie. Oh, please come and save me. Please, my boy.”

“Okay. I'm leaving right now.”

I jump out of bed and throw on a T-shirt and a pair of black jeans. This hurts. I'm so pissed at her. I grab the switchblade from the desk drawer and put my earphones in and put that Kendrick Lamar song, “HiiiPoWeR,” on repeat to get me pumped.

Like a minute later, I'm on my bike.

And I wonder if it's a good idea I didn't get high before I left.

THERE'S MY MOTHER AND SHE'S
got this guy all over her and they're pushed up against the side of the bar in the parking lot.

I jump off my bike and yell at them. My mother, she starts to push the guy off of her.

“Stop it, you jerk,” she hisses at him.

He laughs and rips her arms off of him and then slams her back against the cruel brick.

“Leave me alone!” she screams this time.

But he doesn't stop. He puts his mouth on her neck and jams his hand over her crotch and tells her to calm down.

My skin is red.

Blood is boiling.

I rush over to them and I grab the guy and try pulling him off of her.

He turns around and looks shocked to see me, this fucking kid, trying to break this up.

“What the fuck?” he snaps, and then whips an arm around my head.

I knee him in the thigh and he gets pissed off now, which is what I want.

We struggle.

He's trying to get his other arm around me, but I've got him off balance and he can't do it and then my mother swings her purse right into his ugly face and demands that he get his hands off me.

This is when he fucks up.

He pulls his arm loose from me and charges at my mother.

“You cunt bitch!” he yells. “What is this?”

“Leave us alone,” she says, then swings her purse again. This time he bats it away, and then he grabs her shoulders and shakes her.

“Get the fuck off of her!” I'm yelling. “Don't touch her!”

Dude spins around and smacks the side of my face. “Scram, bitch!” he growls. “This is none of your business.”

When he turns back to my mother, though, I grab a rock the size of my fist and lunge at him and smash the rock into the side of his head.

He yells out and then tries to duck away.

When he does this, I hook my foot around one of his and yank it back and he trips and falls down.

“Jaime,” my mother cries out.

The guy looks up at me. He's so fucking nasty and gross.

I can't believe my mother.

My beautiful, sophisticated mother, who was once a ballet star in New York before she had me, would even talk to a piece of shit like this, let alone kiss his lips.

I'm so furious as the man sizes me up.

Then he laughs and goes, “Now you're gonna get it too, boy.”

But right when he starts to get to his feet, I take my switchblade out.

He stops.

“What?” I go. “What?”

“Are you fucking crazy?” he snorts.

“Is this what you do with your pathetic life? Stalk the drunkest woman in the bar and force yourself on her?”

“Fuck you.” He laughs.

“What?” I go, and then grab his hair and yank it as hard as I can.

He screams in pain and I say, “You will never touch her again.”

“That cunt doesn't deserve to be touched by me.”

I pull his hair even harder and then start ripping the blade through it.

It's tough.

It's stubborn at first.

And it sounds like sandpaper rubbing against gravel.

But finally, a huge chunk of it comes off in my hand.

“You bastard,” my mother shouts. “You miserable, pathetic bastard.”

She spits on him and then the door opens and this guy walks out and tells us he's calling the cops.

My mother grabs my arm now and goes, “Let's go, Jaime. Now.”

I drop this dude's shitty hair and then I knee him in the face before me and my mother take off running for her car.

“Give me the keys,” I tell her.

She hands them to me and we both get in and then I start the car and peel out.

BAM!

The car bounces up and down and there's this horrible crunching noise.

“What the hell was that?” my mother goes.

“My bike,” I tell her, pressing the gas pedal even harder. “I just ran over my new bike.”

“Oh.”

Me, I don't say anything at all after this. I just drive us back to the house as fast as I can.

MY MOTHER WALKS OUT OF
the downstairs bathroom wearing a white nightgown. Her beautiful auburn hair hangs straight down her back. There are traces of blue powder below her nostrils. Dark circles dominate her face. She looks so exhausted.

She opens the liquor cabinet in the dining room and pours a glass of whiskey.

Her eyes, they're so empty and lost.

Her eyes can be so beautiful too when she's not wasted and high, which ain't very often anymore.

She downs the drink and pours another.

She looks over at me finally. “What?”

“This has to stop,” I say.

She looks irritated and rolls her eyes.

“Mom.”

“What?” she screams. “Goddamn it! I do everything for you. I gave up my career as an artist for you. I've made you so talented and smart. And now you come after me? You come after me!”

“I'm not coming after you.”

“Yes, you are.”

“I'm not. This is the fourth time in the last month you've pulled this shit, and you never remember anything the next day. One of us is going to get hurt real bad.”

“I was having fun, Jaime.”

“I sliced off a chunk of a guy's hair. Are you for real? I had a knife pulled on some drunk stranger you were kissing. I'm gonna get killed one of these times.”

My mother, she looks away and doesn't say anything.

“I can't do this anymore. I don't know why you're trying to destroy yourself so hard right now. It's like you're trying to get away from me, this world, and it's scary and it's sick. You don't care that I'm gonna get fucked up real bad one of these times. You just don't even care, and that's the worst part.”

I'm glaring at her and she's shaking and her cheeks are getting red. And just like that, she whips her glass across the room and it shatters against the wall.

I jump back.

“What are you doing?”

She turns toward me, scowls at me. She looks like she hates me, but I haven't done anything except help her. I've done everything she wanted me to—practice piano, guitar, drawing, learn about philosophy and literature. And she still resents me because of what I represent to her. She hates looking at me because of how much I look like my father.

My father I've never met.

I watch her grab the bottle of whiskey and pour some down her throat. Then I walk toward her and I go, “I can't watch you do this.”

She makes another face. “And what are you going to do, huh? Where are you going to go?”

The fact that she's being so fucking evil to me right now is really making me resent her.

I don't say anything.

And she says, “I'm all you have, Jaime.”

Stopping a few feet in front of her, I say, “Oh yeah? What about my father?”

The way her face contorts, well, I wouldn't wish this image on my worst enemy.

My breath leaves my lungs.

My face turns white like snow.

My mouth goes dry.

“How dare you?” she rips. “After what he did to me, the way he ruined my life. You have the fucking nerve to stand there and say that to me.”

“I don't know anything about him except from the things you've told me. I bet if I went to live with him in San Francisco, he wouldn't put me through this kind of shit.”

My mother's reaction sends chills down my body.

I've never seen anything this wild.

“Excuse me,” my mother whispers.

I double down.

No way I'm backing off.

I say, “All you do is demand things from me. Perfect piano playing. Perfect guitar playing. Demanding I debate Sartre for hours. And I've never complained. I always do what you want.”

“You don't have any friends.”

“I don't have
time
for friends.”

“Why are you saying all these mean things to me?” she cries.

“Because I do everything you tell me to. Every fucking thing. And the only thing I'm asking of you is that you stop this madness before one of us gets hurt or dies.”

“Just shut up!” she yells. “You're not making any sense.”

I look away from her and bury my face in my hands.

“I can't stop,” she barks. “I need this. It's the only way I can deal with this horrible life.”

Shaking my head slowly, I go, “Then maybe it's time for me to go to San Francisco.”

This bloodcurdling scream just unleashes from the pit of my mother's gut and she runs at me, grabbing my shoulders and pushing me into the wall.

My head slams so hard that chunks of plaster rain down.

“Stop it,” I tell her. “Why are you doing this?”

“Take it back,” she says.

“What?”

“Your father did this to me,” she barks. “He did
this
!”

Then—

POW!

Her right fist slams into my left eye. The rings on her fingers gouge flesh on my cheek.

My ears ring.

Then—

WHAM!

The same knuckles pound against my temple.

This time, though, I grab ahold of her arms and beg for her to stop while she furiously tries to shake herself loose.

My grip tightens.

And she starts crying.

“Just stop it,” I beg again. “Leave me alone.”

Her whole body goes limp. She looks so worn.

She stops fighting, and I let go of her, and she falls down, curling up into a fetal position.

“I'm so sorry,” she sobs, over and over and over. “I'm so sorry for bringing you into this hell.”

Blood's running down my face.

I grab a paper towel from the kitchen and hold it against the cut.

I wanna vomit.

I don't recognize this lady right now.

The greatest woman that ever lived.

At least she used to be. Until a minute ago.

The only things I'm thinking are how pathetic she's acting and how skinny she's gotten.

How beautiful her skin and hair still are, and how fucking thrilled I am knowing she won't remember any of this tomorrow.

She'll never know what she did.

I'll never tell her.

My mother, she deserves way better than that.

She deserves my silence.

IT'S FOUR A.M. WHEN THE
Morrissey records stop spinning downstairs. I can hear stairs creak next. Every time one does, I wince and my body shakes.

I hold my breath until her bedroom door finally shuts.

A couple minutes later, I smell the dope she's smoking.

I'm sitting at my computer. Three lines of Oxy remain on the cover of the book
Our Band Could Be Your Life
.

I've read it twice since someone recommended it in this Sonic Youth chat room I was in a few months back.

I lean down and go.

There's only two lines now.

That Youth Lagoon song “Montana” is playing on my computer. This is the third straight time I've listened to it.

Their first record changed me.

“July” was the first song I heard from it.

The music ripped a hole in me. It struck an emotional nerve so deep, I felt debilitated by the time the song was over. Never in my life has music pierced me so hard I felt like my life had been stolen from me once the music stopped.

I cried when I listened to it the second time.

And when I played the entire record in order, the spell of nostalgia that was cast over me was so potent and heavy, it was like I was still clinging to a beautiful dream when the final track had concluded.

The music is mesmerizing.

It's not sad, but it makes you yearn for those afternoons or mornings or nights when you felt so damn alive and attached to the moment. Those times when you were really experiencing life instead of thinking about how you wished you were experiencing it.

The feeling is gorgeous.

Its beauty lies somewhere in the sentimentality of the past. It doesn't matter if the memory was of a great moment or an awful moment. It was an important moment.

And the nostalgia gives you all the comfort you need in the present.

Everyone needs the comfort of nostalgia.

This is the genius of the first Youth Lagoon record.

When the song ends again, I grab my acoustic guitar and continue writing this new song of mine called “Black Vulture.” It's pretty good right now, but it can be so much better.