The More You Ignore Me (8 page)

DOCTOR

(frowning)

Your kitty's clean. Keep taking the medicine and we'll send you to a specialist in a month if it doesn't clear up.

ME

But the medicine makes it worse!

[The
DOCTOR
nudges me on the shoulder with his left hand and nods down to his right hand, which is out for me to shake. I shake it.]

DOCTOR

(sliding out the door)

All right. You have a good one!

[I stand in the cold room with my pants off. (Humiliation!) A nurse eventually comes in to shoo me out to the payment desk where the receptionist baffles me with paperwork.]

[
FADE TO BLACK
]

So you see!

My talent for revelation extends to many genres! Of course, I've been told my work is a bit challenging, that it would take a true
auteur
to fully realize it, but I shall not pander or dumb it down.

Lest you worry about my “condition,” you should know I have it under control. I keep a digestion diary, recording everything I eat, how my stomach feels after, and what kind of excremental end point the whole process comes to. There, I am able to read that my condition is improving.

On a camping trip by myself in March, for example, I noted that I had, from morning until midnight, ingested nothing but tamari almonds and red wine.

I fell asleep on a partially inflated air mattress in my tent and awoke just as dawn broke over the hills.

I felt an overwhelming urge pressing at my lower back.

After running into the freezing woods, I unleashed, with an ecstatic grunt, an inverse cast of my large intestine.

I stared at the steaming pile in wonder, then scrambled back through the wet leaves to my tent to record the event in a joyous fever.

That digestive event remains one of my most cherished memories of the past few years; not a birthday, not a vacation, not a party—that big defecation alone has made me happy!

But whom could I share this happiness with?

The last girl I dated, a thirty-five-year-old hussy (who, I should note, misrepresented herself in her online profile to a nearly criminal degree) remained squeamish about digestion issues the whole time we were together, claiming to her perpetual horror that “boys always have to talk about it.”

Always one to zig when the boys zagged, I acted very prim when I was first with her.

No bodily conversation, no restroom visits without matches, and thorough wipings of the bowl after urination.

It had become such a
repressed
digestion environment that once, when I hovered over her on her couch, kissing her neck in my patented way, she adjusted her weight and squeaked out the tiniest piff from her digestive tract's end point.

I laughed and told her it was like the sneeze of a rabbit.

Eyes wide in horror, she ran out of the room in shame, thinking I was disgusted at her little explosion.

I realized then that I had perhaps overplayed my hand.

Our relationship ended soon after—for obvious reasons.

Back to the point: I believe in you, dear readers, and I know, since I have recorded “rough cuts” of a few of the “Charli” screenplays whilst playing each part myself, that these scripts are not
unrealizable
.

Looking back on my most recently finished scene—one that I may indeed post for you should anyone express an interest—I am astonished at my facility with the genre.

What a scene! I admit, I have impressed myself.

It's only a matter of time before you see this scene (and the others I have on file!) on screens across the country.

The full-length feature will be called, I think,
The Rapists of a Generation
.

I see David Duchovny playing a certain pivotal role.

But please don't be distracted by this hint of riches!

Come back to me, dear readers!

I have merely mentioned the screenplay to illustrate a point, that the
TRUTH
is being suppressed.

How do I know these things?

How can I predict the future in this manner?

Is it because I possess a superhuman intellect?

Perhaps.

I have never been given the proper tests, but I believe this genius is simply a product of observation and deduction—and age, of course; it does beget wisdom about some things, despite what you have heard.

Strange, isn't it?

I'm beginning to reclaim all the power now despite what it might look like.

I have nothing, you see.

I am a nobody.

What could this puffed-up somebody possibly do to me that hasn't already been done by countless others?

I'm like the Vietcong, the Sandinistas, the
PLO
, the American Revolutionaries, while Chris is just a bruise in the side of a dying empire.

A bedsore.

I know.

But it is just those bruises, those bedsores, that will become infected and run with pus and eventually weaken the immune system so that the host will cough his last burbling soon enough.

Yes.

He appears to have everything, but more importantly he believes himself to have everything. Of course that makes him weak.

A name, a job, a reputation, a “family.” I have none of these things. But, you see, I will take it all away from him. I will make him into a creature beneath me, so he can feel what it's like, finally, to be shunned.

It does not feel good.

Though I imagine there will be some consolation for him, knowing, as he does, that he deserves his fate.

Will I ever be happy again?

Will I ever feel free of the excruciating burden of this crusade?

It is torture, but I admit it is a kind of exquisite torture for I know I am in the right.

I am like Buster Keaton beset by distracting morons in
The Passionate Plumber
.

I must remain true and keep my eyes closed to the temptations of defeat and appeasement.

He has offered, I admit, appeasement.

Chris has offered to “talk things through” over the phone, but what could he possibly say to me?

That he is sorry?

He could only bewitch me with his sophistry as he has bewitched all the rest.

I refuse.

You see, the real tragedy of my banishment is not personal, but that we were on the cusp of exposing the secret cabal hiding in plain sight, the gentlemen's agreement between powers that, through miraculous circumstances, can be revealed on an admittedly humble wedding blog.

Yes, I'm aware Chris implemented this wedding blog simply out of obligation to follow the fashion, to, in what has become commonplace, coopt an authentic community like the one we had for a time over at
BlissfulBasket.com
,
YoungUns.com
, or even
AdamsFuneralHome.net
.

I don't blame him or any of the other mindless followers!

For what courage would have had to be on display for a man to stand up in his soulless office building, in some gray meeting room, and say, “No! This, at long last, is finally something that is not ours to take!”

Oh, it surely would have caused heads to burst open in wonder, fetid juices splattering over dull paperwork just to have someone acknowledge the unchecked greed underlying all the actions of these organizations; but not just this organization—each and every organization involved, wittingly or no, in this cabal!

They are all in it together!

American capitalism knows how to profit off of a perpetual war machine funded by the state, so instead of cranking up production to meet the war needs, the state cranks up war to meet the production needs!

All throughout the empire, citizens trade their time and energy with the “machine” in exchange for comfort, and so comfort keeps the wars going.

And you all, if you won't stand with me, continue to aid and abet this comfort by colluding in the conspiracy to silence the comfortless!

But, you see, I am standing up where you would not, and, dear me, most likely
could not
.

You have much to lose—or so you think, though in fact I hope you can see that you couldn't be more wrong—whereas I, lonely, bereft, cut asunder by the world, have nothing to lose.

I am offering you my undying loyalty in exchange for what?

Nothing!

A mere acknowledgment that, yes, I exist, that you do in fact hear me, that this isn't all in my mind, that I need not be
RESTRICTED IN THIS MANNER
!

As you may know, I offered the same to this know-nothing underthing Chris, but he refused me.

In fact, I suspect he hired a vandal to deface my (rented) property in an act of hateful defiance to my overture, for the day I posted a few revelations on the blog, I came home from my grocer rounds to find a fresh egg cracked on the door to my residence.

Can you believe it?

I am still almost unable to type it without flying into a destructive rage—and, in fact, the only thing that keeps me from dashing my brains against the wall is that the vandal wasn't able to penetrate the outer ramparts of the building to defile my actual door, only the front door of the building itself.

To be honest, it was more of the sidewall to the east of the door, but his point was made, the motherless scum!

How could such a lunatic even be allowed near Charli?

It pains me generally but also specifically in my heart's leftmost chamber to know he could succeed in his campaign to destroy what could conceivably be a fruitful union.

What concerns me terribly is that Charli has become so acclimated to corruption through our “society” that she would allow Chris to ravish her under the guise of some sort of “open marriage” while Nico fiddles unaware.

The whole thing must be stopped, but I can see that we will allow this “best man” into the wedding, that no one will stop him.

And, most importantly, I will remain excluded, so the event will proceed.

Is it difficult to continue to imagine what might happen even though we have been banned?

No.

We need merely apply the force of our imaginations to the information already gained from
Charlico.com
/blog.

We know there will be a “family luncheon” and a “bachelor/ette party” at the Inn, so we know the best man will stroll into what the Inn calls its “open-air ballroom” at the tail end of this very luncheon.

We know from viewing the online floor plan that this room at the Clark House Inn is more of a functional storage space than a “ballroom,” but why quibble with novice architectural terms?

The space has the requisite ten thousand square feet of hardwood to hold the bar carts, the sushi “stations,” and the 107 guests in town for the free drinks, the louche party, the chance to spy some young bridesmaid in a drunken sprawl.

And, of course, the wedding itself.

What a disaster!

When I take time to breathe, to practice my ritual cleansing (I imagine my inhalation bringing the good forces of the outside world into my body through my nostrils, and then I imagine the good forces of my interior world exiting my body through my nostrils upon exhale), I can
vividly see in my mind's eye how the wedding will proceed, how Chris will slither his way through the family, partaking in the occasional frottage until he is there by the bride's side as some sort of dance circle forms.

Music from Pink, Beck, Sting, or some other one-named hack will blare. You can hear it, I'm sure.

But can we imagine a proper ending to this scene? Can we imagine one where a certain friend of your narrator finally delivers on a long-ago debt? Let's call him
HORACE
, and let's open our minds to the possibilities.

EXT. CLARK HOUSE INN. NIGHT.

[
HORACE
, in a trench coat, stands in the shadows at the edge of the ballroom. In a flash,
HORACE
raises a rifle from inside his coat and aims first at
NICO
, then at
CHARLI
. No one notices. The blissful couple remains unaware, watching in wonder as
SOME CHUBBY KID
dances in abandon to a gay torch song. The rifle's site first frames
CHARLI
. Beautiful, she casts her gorgeous hair first in one direction, then the other. The site moves on to
NICO
—
nervous, breathing through his mouth, balling his hands into fists. Then, finally,
CHRIS
, in contrapposto pose, his arm secretly sneaking around
CHARLI
'
S
waist, his mouth twisted into a smirk.
HORACE
steadies the barrel with his left hand.
HORACE
breathes in.]