Alex & Irene

Crazy

 The craziest thing crazy people do is to hide their

craziness. Alex knew all about it. He was crazy. We were slumped

in our seats. Our faces covered in blood and shards of glass

from the broken windscreen. The dark brown mahogany colored

dashboard was lined like a runway strip with glass and blood.

 Our blood.

 When you are in an accident, the volume gets muted and you

develop synesthesia. Your ears block out all auditory signals,

and your eyes get hyper sensitive to light. Cars whizzed down

the highway in sync with Doppler and his effect. Some slowed

down to survey the wreckage, but none stopped. Nobody wanted to

stop. Not at this time of the night. Not on the highway. Alex

had counted on that. Being a “Good Samaritan” is overrated. When

push comes to shove, you would rather be the one doing the

pushing than the one being shoved. It was just a question of who

would make the final push and who would stand up at the end of

the night.

 Alex was crazy. He always has been, ever since we knew each

other as kids.

 ‘Mike’ Alex gurgled.

 Blood and syllables dripping out of his bleeding mouth. His

shirt was getting a quick and dirty crimson dye job. When you

watch enough television, you learn that the standard seat belt in a normal sedan is meant to ensure that you don’t suffer from

massive cranial injuries in high impact car crashes. The seat

belt however in eight out of ten cases is found responsible for

broken collar bone, broken ribs, punctured lungs and ruptured

spleen and kidneys.

 ‘What?’ I coughed.

 ‘Mike… The headless chicken…’ He grinned.

 Mike the headless chicken had managed to stay alive for two

whole years after having its head chopped off. The axe had

missed hitting the jugular vein, leaving just enough brain stem

attached to the neck for him to survive. For two whole years,

Mike was fed and watered with an eyedropper. Mike gained three

more kilos after he got his head chopped off. I knew what he was

talking about. Alex knew all sorts of things. He knew the kind

of things which you wished you could learn just by watching

television.

 Blood had started to coagulate on his face, a messy bed of

crimson lava hardening itself on soft flesh and tissue. I looked

at myself in the rearview mirror. Alex grinned. You can taste

fresh blood, but can’t really smell it. Not till it begins to

dry up and congeal. There are varied accounts as to how blood

really smells like. It smelled like copper to me and tasted

ferric. Alex lifted his hand, the shards of glass twinkled under

the streams of flashing headlights. He unbuckled himself from the deadly seatbelt and clutched at the open gash on the side of

his torso.

 ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

 Alex laughed.

 His heart excitedly pumped out blood.

 Alex coughed.

 There were way too many openings for his blood to stay

contained within his body.

 I knew what he was thinking. I always knew what he was

thinking.

 As long as he felt pain, he knew he was awake and alive. He

grinned some more. He was trying to keep himself awake. Flecks

of dried blood fell down amidst shards of glass to show more

fresh blood.

 Alex was as crazy as crazy gets.

 He wasn’t always crazy. Not till he wanted to kill me

anyway.

 We had been friends since we were kids. Best friends.

Inseparable. I thought we were friends. Best friends. But now, I

was confused.

 One moment we are pleasuring each other. And the next

moment, we are bleeding to death, in the car.

 The vehicle’s stability around turns is directly related to

the probability of the car being engaged in a rollover accident. This stability is determined by the equation between the center

of gravity of the car and the distance between the left and

right wheels. A high center of gravity and small distance

between the wheels, makes the car extremely unstable around fast

turns or sharp changes of direction. Like an extremely drunk

elephant with its legs tied together. It is bound to fall down.

That’s what happened to the car we were in.

 I knew all this, because they had done a special program on

the increasing number of rollover accidents at high speeds. Alex

still explained all this to me as my feet pushed the pedal down

harder till it could go no further south. The speedometer needle

raced.

 80 KMPH.

 90 KMPH.

 100 KMPH.

 110 KMPH.

 The car groaned, reminding you that you were traveling well

over hundred kilometers per hour inside a metal cage. The needle

shivered with excitement as it inched slowly but steadily closer

to the 120KMPH mark.

 Alex knew exactly what he was doing. He knew exactly what

would happen when he reached out and pulled hard at the steering

wheel. He had explained it hurriedly and in detail. He knew the kind of things you wished you could learn just by watching

television.

 As the car tipped, I understood Einstein. I understood the

relative bullshit about time and space.

 Alex was crazy.

 Bat shit Fucking crazy.

 My vision was getting obscured by big black colored

balloons. The effort to keep my head straight seemed too much.

Blood dribbled out some more onto my shirt as my chin fell down

on my chest. I pressed down hard against my wound. Pain would

keep me awake.

 ‘You still don’t get it do you?’

 Alex chuckled, spraying blood down his chin. With his free

hand he reached inside his pocket and fished out a cigarette.

The broken, brown stained paper stick dangled from the corner of

his mouth.

 There was still hope.

 The only question that remained unanswered was who would

stay alive when the medics did come and get us.

  ‘To be OR’ Alex coughed some more blood, ‘not to be. That

is the question’ his eyes held up the challenge, waiting for me

to accept.

 I couldn’t die.

 A girl like me.

 Not like this.

                           Period

   In 1946, Walt Disney released, ‘The story of menstruation’,

as an education aid for sex-ed classes. It was most likely the

first film to use the word ‘vagina’.

   The first time I met her, Irene was bleeding between her

legs. She had many questions. But one question shadowed them

all.

   ‘Why?’

   She was in pain. A lot of pain. The kind which makes you

want to break things. The kind which makes you punch yourself in

the gut. The kind which makes you want to curl up and hope for

the bed to swallow you.

   And that’s how I met Irene.

   It starts with a light heaviness in the belly. The

heaviness turns into a dull throbbing disco ball of pain. And

then the party really kicks off.

   Menstruation comes from the Latin word, ‘menses’, which

means ‘month’.

   Menstrual pain is lot like a drunk on a binge. He starts

off with a slight buzz, a dull ache from the first couple of

beers in the lower abdomen and pelvis. He steps out and meets

few people he knows. He spreads all the way to your lower back

and legs. He really begins to party hard. Pounding beer after beer. After the first couple of hours, he forgets what he has

been drinking all night and starts to mix his drinks. He just

wants something liquid and yellow to guzzle down. Anything to

keep the buzz going on and the party rocking out. Before he

knows, the buzz gets too much to handle and he vomits. You

vomit, he makes you nauseous. You throw up all over yourself.

You feel really ashamed. This is the first time you have hosted

a party in your groin. And it hurts.

 A lot.

 The drunk makes you promise, never again. Never, ever.

 Women lose an average of 4 to 12 teaspoons of menstrual

fluid per cycle.

 I call the woman. The woman, who Irene insisted on calling

as ‘mother’. The woman rushed into the room, screaming in shock

and surprise. The woman clinically ordered Irene to go have a

shower and change into fresh clothes as she pulled clothes off

Irene’s back. She changed the stained duvet cover, and threw it

aside along with Irene’s dirty blood stained underwear, while

muttering holy incantations. I stepped out of the room. In the

evening the three of us, Irene, the woman she called her mother

and me went to see the doctor.

 ‘There is nothing to worry about Mrs. McBain. You should be

happy that there are no complications given the resident condition. It is only normal for a girl her age to menstruate’

The doctor smiled as he scribbled in his notepad.

 ‘There is absolutely nothing to worry about. Here, these

should help with the pain. One after dinner and one after

breakfast’ he instructed and chose to ignore the shocked look on

Irene’s mother’s face. Irene’s mother asked both of us to wait

outside while she finished talking to the doctor.

 Periods tend to be heavier, more painful, and longer in the

colder months. This was November. The cold wave was just

beginning to arrive.

 ‘You feeling alright?’ I looked at her contorted face. She

was cute, small and waif like.

 She nodded with a smile. Her cheeks blushed.

 When we blush, our stomach lining turns red too. I showed

her the pair of syringes I had picked up from the doctor’s

table. She smiled despite her pain. I followed her eyes which

seemed transfixed with the nurse drawing blood from one of the

patient’s arm.

 Long after dinner, long after everybody had retired to bed.

We searched the internet to know more about menstruation. It is

not every day that somebody starts bleeding from their privates.

I was curious and anxious. I didn’t know women bled between

their legs every month. This biological revelation made me feel

extremely uneasy.  Aunt Flo, On the Rag, At a Red Light, Surfing the Crimson

Tide, Checked into Red Roof Inn, Curse of Dracula, Leak Week, My

Dot, and Monthly Oil Change.

 The nicknames didn’t help either.

 A regular human has 46 chromosomes. A fertilized egg with

two X chromosomes will grow into a girl. A fertilized egg with

one X and one Y chromosome will grow into a boy. Gorillas and

potatoes have two more chromosomes than humans.

 ‘Do you think we can see those chromosomes in our blood?’

Irene excitedly waved the dirty sanitary pad around as she

jumped up and down.

 I wasn’t sure. But there was always a way to find out these

things. And we had the required tools. We tore the plastic

wrapping around the syringes. We exchanged gleeful smiles in the

bathroom mirror. We rolled a rubber band over our forearm,

bunched our fingers in a ball and flexed our arms. The same way

the nurse had instructed the patient at the hospital. The arm

went numb and heavy, like it belonged to somebody else. The

slimy green colored vein over the elbow, turned a shade darker

and swelled like a lonely noodle gone bad.

 When you try to draw your own blood, you learn about

pressure and force. You learn which side you favor. You learn to

love the sweet tinge of pain as you struggle to pull the plunger

and the needle shuffles underneath your skin.  I favored my left.

 The first time the needle hadn’t penetrated deep enough. I

tried again. This time, I was rewarded with the sight of the

thick viscous cough syrup colored liquid fill up the syringe.

The syringe had markings.

 5ml.

 10ml.

 15ml.

 20ml.

 I stopped when I had 15ml of blood. 15ml of my own blood.

The first thing you notice is just how thick and dark it is. You

look at it, expecting answers.

 ‘Maybe we ought to keep it aside for the night. Maybe we

can see more clearly in sunlight’. Irene suggested.

 It had seemed like the only thing to do. I certainly didn’t

want to squirt all this blood into the sink.

 I was mesmerized. I lay awake in bed replaying the image of

blood filling up the syringe. There was something beautiful and

cool inside the syringe. I felt compelled to draw more blood.

 I was too excited to fall asleep. I switched on the

bathroom light and pulled the needle out of the resting syringe.

I pricked index finger and felt the now familiar sting. A small

bubble of blood erupted from the perforation. I pressed the base of the puncture to draw some more blood. It was fascinating. It

was pleasurable. It reminded me of the times I felt happy. Truly

happy.

 My psychiatrist tells me that I exhibit masochistic

tendencies. He says that I use pain to both reward and punish

myself. He is right, for once.

                        Payback

 Alex was never like the other kids. He was what the

neighbors called as a problem child. Alex fancied himself to be

a young William Blake. William Blake was many things. He was a

poet. He was a painter. He was a printmaker. Alex believed that

he was just like William Blake. A misunderstood visionary. In

1809, William Blake held a one man exhibition, prompting one of

his critics to call him a lunatic.

 Lunatic.

 Mad.

 Weird.

 Psycho.

 Names Alex was referred by when people spoke about him in

third person. But all these words were a bit too highbrow for

college kids in his class. The name calling slowly and steadily

descended to something more in line with an average college

student’s IQ.  Alex never made any friends in college. He was a loner. He

liked being alone. His only connection to the outside world was

me. There were days when didn’t feel like going to school. So I

would get him proxy attendance. He worked all night at the IT

lab and would sleep throughout the day. The best part about

college was that we got to share a small house on the outskirts

of the city. The commute was a bitch. But we didn’t care. For

the rent we were paying, which was almost nothing, it seemed a

steal. Alex was extremely happy with the place. It was far away

from campus, far away from people who knew us.

 And that is where he and me were different.

 I couldn’t be a loner.

 I wasn’t like him.

 I was a girl.

 A girl has to have friends. That’s what you learn from all

the movies and television you watched. I loved television. You

learn so much which regular college doesn’t teach you. College

meant that you spend time with friends. You get into all sorts

of mischief. You fall in and out of love. You learn all about

loyalty and learn to deal with betrayal.

 On the days when Alex did have to go to school in the

morning, he would return angry and upset. Despite all the books

that Alex read, he didn’t understand people or why they picked

on him. Boys picked on him, girls found him creepy. But I managed to make few friends, despite everything Alex did. Alex

liked being alone. Alex thought he was William Blake.

 Just like William Blake, Alex got called names too.

 Fatso.

 Fatass.

 Faggot.

 Freak.

 Elephant tits.

 Hippo.

 Each of these names soon began to be prefixed or suffixed

with a creative usage of the word ‘Fuck’. He kept quiet, burying

himself in his books, scribbling things down in his little

notebook. The name calling got nastier. It wasn’t long before

they physically started picking on him. He stopped attending

classes altogether. He got the notes and lectures from the

online archives from the IT lab where he worked at night. He

would take the first bus of the day from campus and sleep. Sleep

for hours. Sleep through the day and wake up at night.

 ‘You can’t pretend that you are not fat or none of this

bothers you’ I yelled at him. He grunted before turning over to

the other side.

 ‘Don’t you want to make friends?’ My voice didn’t drop. He

turned his head around, wiping the spot of drool trickling out

of the corner of his mouth on the pillow cover.  ‘Friendship paradox’ he mumbled, eyes squinted as he tried

to make out the time on his wrist watch. It was originally his

father’s wrist watch which Alex now used as his own. His father

didn’t mind Alex using his watch.

 ‘What time is it?’ he questioned.

 ‘It’s nine in the evening. And don’t you dare give me that

bullshit about how on average most people have fewer friends

than their friends have’ I continued yelling. He always tried to

change the topic he didn’t feel like talking about by referring

to some weird thing he read or knew. Like the friendship

paradox.

 He grinned. His pudgy face broke into isolines, isopleths

and isarithms.

 ‘Don’t you want to hurt them? Don’t you want to punch them

till they stop talking?’

 I was fuming. For some odd reason, it hurt me more than it

hurt him. I felt horrible every time he got called names. I

found it difficult to make new friends because of him. He was

ruining college for me.

 He quietly got off his pudgy bottom and handed me his

little notebook he scribbled in. I flipped it open. The pages

were filled with his squirrely scribbles. I had to squint to

make out what he had written.

 ‘I want to kill them.’

 ‘Choke them.’

 ‘I want to punch right in their larynxes.’

 ‘Isn’t the chemistry lab left unattended during lunch hour’

I questioned as the vague outline of a plan started forming in

my mind.

 ‘Yeah! I guess’ Alex looked suspiciously at me. He knew

what I was thinking.

 ‘So we sneak out a bottle of sulfuric acid. Pour it in the

water tank and watch them yell screaming in pain and agony.

Watch them how the acid corrodes their larynx. Their esophagus.

Their faces.

 ‘This can be done...’Alex remarked as he began to connect

the dots and fill in the blanks.

 ‘But?’I questioned. I knew there was something else

troubling Alex.

  ‘It is just a fantasy. I don’t actually want to hurt them.

I am fat. There is no way to avoid being called fat when you are

fat you know’

 ‘Fuck that shit! We don’t have to get the sulfuric acid

from the chem. Lab. It is risky. We can make our own’.

 This was exciting.

 This was just like television.

 The college experience could still be had.

 It is an often used trope in movies and television shows

where the nerds get their revenge. The jocks and cheerleaders

realize how mean they all were. The hottest person on campus

falls in love with them. In this case, it was Peter Samuels.

 This was exciting. And despite his reservations, Alex was

going to help me win Peter’s heart. He didn’t know about Peter.

He didn’t have to.

 The next few days, we boosted car batteries from car parks.

 There were few things you have to be careful about when you

are stealing car batteries.

 1) There should be no sulfate build up around the battery

   terminals. They usually look like whitish or bluish

   deposits. This meant that the car the car didn’t have

   much sulfuric acid in it. And the owner didn’t take much

   pride in the ownership of his car.

      a. You don’t want such batteries.

 2) We had to wear gloves. The sulphuric acid is highly

   corrosive.

      a. Alex almost lost his fingertips the first time

        around.

 3) You had to ensure that nobody smoked in and around you.

   The electrolyte solution inside the car batteries are

   highly inflammable.

 I didn’t know about it, till we set a car on fire. Alex was

unscrewing the screws on the terminals when the ash from my

cigarette dropped over the battery. The next thing we knew, we

were running away from the burning flame which enveloped the

car.

   If you know what you are doing, you can open a hood of a

car, unscrew the battery and get away under three minutes. After

the first week, we were clocking just over two minutes and

thirty seconds. We knew what we were doing.

   The average car battery weighs about 10.8 kilos.

   On good nights, Alex could easily carry two batteries each.

It helped that he was strong. And fat. I was too pretty to get

my hands dirty. So I just watched and gave instructions to Alex.

   When we finally had enough car batteries piled up in the

corner of our little house. We began emptying it in a big blue

plastic cauldron. The big blue plastic cauldron people used as a

makeshift dustbin. The kind which doesn’t react with the acid we

poured in it.

   The big day was looming close. The college was hosting a

visiting college basketball team. It was a friendly game to

inaugurate the new built basketball court. I knew that the match

would draw massive crowds.

   Proud parents.

   Anxious players.

 Giggling girls.

 Cocky boys and hassled teaching staff.

 It was going to be a circus. A flea circus.

 Flea circuses were an actual thing till the 1960s. The

fleas weren’t trained. Instead they were tortured by being glued

to musical instruments and harnessed to wires. Their bottoms

would be heated up to make them try to jump and give the

illusion that they were playing the musical instrument. We were

going to be the flea masters.

 ‘Fire sprinklers?’ I inquired as I carefully poured the

concentrated sulfuric acid into something with which we could

carry it in.

 ‘I don’t want to do this’ Alex feebly mumbled. He was

crying. That fat piece of slob was beginning to dissolve himself

into a big puddle of tears and sweat.

 ‘You are probably right. The first acid will eat away the

rubber lining before it reaches the sprinkler part’ I beamed.

 ‘I don’t want to hurt anybody’ he was crying. The acidic

fumes were burning the hair in my nostrils.

 ‘Well, they are not going to call you names anymore fat

boy’ I smiled. He looked terrified.

                        Hormones

 Humans have the same number of hair follicles as

chimpanzees.  There was hair growing all over my body.

 Hair here.

 Hair there.

 Every day when I took a shower, hair had found a new place

to sprout from. Places where hair had no reason to grow. It was

growing under my armpits. It was growing down there. My face

started sprouting bristles under my nose. It even began to grow

between my bum. Irene had devised a neat way to deal with this

problem. She started applying her mother’s bleach. She said she

saw this on TV. It wasn’t long before she convinced me to buy a

shaving kit. She said that usually the father buys a boy’s first

shaving kit. She said she wanted to surprise me.

 There is a distinct sense of satisfaction you feel when you

shave. It is almost as much fun and gratifying as making shapes

on a beach and then wiping it all clean. After the first time,

my face was covered with little nicks and cuts. My neck, my

chin, resembled an abandoned minesweeper game.

 When I wiped my face clean, I looked like a different man.

Irene couldn’t recognize me anymore. She said I looked pretty.

It felt good. So I shaved every single hair I could see and

feel. I shaved my armpits, down there, my legs, my arms. My skin

felt weird and alien like. But it was soft and smooth. And it

felt weird and wonderful.  Things were changing. A lot of things were changing. I

could sense it amongst my classmates too. Some let the ugly

growth under their noses grow and some shaped it in different

shapes. The girls had started growing top heavy. Irene called

them her girls.

 ‘That’s what I saw the girls on telly call them’ she smiled

as she cupped her girls.

 ‘Feel them’ she prompted as she lifted her t-shirt. I was

repulsed by it. They were soft and when my cold fingertips

touched them. The nipples hardened. I felt a strange sensation

in my pants. My willy was beginning to pain. Irene placed her

hand on my willy and cupped it.

 ‘It’s paining isn’t it?’ she smiled as she pulled my zipper

down. ‘It’s paining for me too’

 I didn’t want her to touch me. I didn’t know what was

happening. And why my willy was hurting.

 So I ran.

 I ran like my father.

 I ran as fast as I could. I ran till my legs ached. I ran

till I could run no more. I stooped over, trying to catch my

breath.

 ‘Your fly is open’ I heard her speak. I looked at the girl.

She was trying hard not to break into bout of giggles. I straightened myself up and hurriedly pulled on my zipper. It was

embarrassing.

 ‘My name is Susie’ She said as she got off her cycle. Her

face still smiled at me. The smile which uses all the twelve

muscles involved to smile. Pair of two muscles which ran from

her high pale cheekbones to the corner of her full lipped mouth.

Two muscles around her brown eyes made them crinkle. Two muscles

pulled up the corner of her red lips, two muscles pulled them

sideways and two muscles made the curved the angle of her mouth.

It was a warm smile. And her smile was infectious.

 ‘What’s your name?’ she inquired curiously.

 ‘Alex’ I replied, smiling.

 ‘You are cute’ she said as she got back on her cycle.

 I tousled my hair as I avoided looking at her. My cheeks

got hot. My stomach lining was turning a bright shade of

beetroot red.

 ‘Want to walk with me?’ She questioned.

 And that’s how Susie and I became friends.

 Right before I ran away from home.

                        Dreams

 ‘What do you want to be when you grow up? When you pass out

of school?’ Dr. Milchard looked up from his diary. The one he

always scribbled in every single thing Alex and I spoke about.

 ‘I don’t know. Normal I guess’ I spoke for Alex.

 Dr. Milchard smiled patronizingly at us.

 Mum took the two of us to see Dr. Milchard every Monday,

Wednesday and Thursday at five in the evening.

 Dr. Milchard didn’t call it as Five PM. He called it as

1700hrs. That’s how the guys in the armed forces call time. Dr.

Milchard was in the armed forces. He used to take care of

soldiers returning from war, suffering from PTSD. He liked

jargon. Which is why I suppose Alex liked talking with Dr.

Milchard. He had for some odd reason quit active duty and had

started his own private practice along with his wife. Mum had

found out about Dr. Milchard when we had gone to see the doctor

about my periods.

 ‘He is nice isn’t he?’ Mum rhetorically remarked as we

returned home after our first session.

 ‘He is alright!’ I mumbled.

 ‘Well for the money he is charging he better be nice’ Mum

playfully ruffled my hair and started to stare out of the cab

window.

 Mum never wanted to know what we spoke with Dr. Milchard.

She was just happy to pay the bills.

 Never did like Dr. Milchard.

 Or the waiting room filled with middle aged men, old women,

young boys and girls. Could never for the life of me understand their need to get to share their deepest darkest secrets to a

stranger like Dr. Milchard.

 I knew Alex’s secrets.

 He didn’t know mine.

 He didn’t have to.

 If he did, he wouldn’t have tried to kill me.

 But it was always good to know what he was thinking. So we

went, every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. Think the only

reason mum felt like we had to meet Dr. Milchard more often than

she visited the house of god was probably because she felt that

Alex needed a father figure and Dr. Milchard could help him.

Alex didn’t really help his case with the thing he did with the

blade every time he felt sad and depressed.

 Alex and I never discussed about what we spoke inside Dr.

Milchard’s room with mum. Though she did try and get things out

of us. But we didn’t.

                      Meet The Shrink

 Behavioral biologists do not agree on what constitutes

‘behavior’.

 Psychologists cannot agree on what ‘personality’ means.

 It was a Monday. The first time mum took me to meet Dr.

Milchard. I sat outside in the waiting lounge while mum went to

speak with Dr. Milchard. The receptionist smiled at me before continuing to speak with whoever she was talking to on the

phone.

 I sat on the edge of the red velvet sofa. My feet didn’t

touch the floor. If I tried to touch the white tiled floor with

my toes, I slid off the sofa. Soon enough, I got bored trying to

cheat gravity.

 The red light on the receptionist’s phone started to blink.

She pressed the button on the keypad and looked at me with a

polite smile on her face.

 ‘You can go in now’ she spoke with a smile.

 I walked through the corridor, covered with posters of

happy smiling faces.

 I walked through those corridors every Monday, Wednesday

and Thursday at five in the evening, and walked back out at six.

 For an entire hour, Dr. Milchard would ask me questions.

 ‘How do you feel?’

 ‘How are things at school?’

 ‘Get into any fights?’

 And I would tell him about how I felt. I would tell him

about why I felt shy when I visited the boys’ room. I would tell

him about how the kids at school bullied and made fun of me. I

told him about how much I hated my mother. How she was weak,

always crying and whining.  ‘Do you feel angry Alex?’ He inquired as he furiously made

notes in his diary.

 I nodded.

 ‘What makes you angry?’

 I didn’t have an answer. A lot of things made me angry.

Kids at school, my mother, stupid people, were right there at

the top of the list of things which made me angry.

 ‘And what do you feel like doing when you feel anger?’

 ‘Hurt’

 ‘Hurt who?’

 ‘All of Them’

 ‘Alex, I want you to do something for me’ Dr. Milchard

looked up with concern at me.

 ‘I want you to keep a diary. And I want you to write

everyday in it. Everything you feel. Whenever you feel angry, or

feel like you want to hurt somebody, I want you to write it in

your diary’

 I nodded my head.

 ‘And if you like you can let me read it’

 I wasn’t going to let him read it. But I nodded

nonetheless. I knew I was not the perfect child my parents

wanted. I was not the things people said to me or behind my

back. I was not going to the job I would work at. I was not the books I read or the movies and music I liked. I was not a lot of

things. I was definitely not what most people thought I was.

 ‘You are nothing but a blimp on the normal bell curve, the

sum total of wasted potential.’ Irene had once remarked.

 Potential.

 That word rankled me.

 It irked me.

 It upset me.

 It made me angry.

 It made me want to hurt myself. It reminded me of my

mother.

 ‘Why? You are so smart and gifted. You have such great

potential. Why do you want to hurt yourself?’ she used to say in

between heaving sobs and pregnant tears.

 I don’t remember the first time I had hurt myself. But I do

know that there is a certain evolution to harming yourself. You

don’t just start off by cutting or burning yourself. That takes

times.

 It all starts with anger. You are angry at your father for

being unjust, for ignoring the fact that you tried your best.

You are angry at yourself because you have disappointed your

father again. You are angry and sad, because you know it is

because of you that mum and dad are fighting. You oscillate

between wanting to cry yourself out and wanting to burn everything. You start by punching the pillow you are crying

into. But soon, the anger overtakes your body and you start

punching the walls till the skin around your knuckles come off.

Till they are red and bleeding.

 You wake up the next day, you remember the previous night.

You remember the hurt and the anger. You open and close your

fist, you feel the sting and stiffness and it helps soothe the

pain inside you.

 The hurt is the unguent to your suffering.

 The negative to make things positive.

 As long as it hurts, you find the strength to fight the

world.

 But a stiff knuckle is noticed and questions get asked.

Questions you don’t want to answer. You lie. You know nobody

believes it, but you don’t care. You are ashamed. You feel

exposed. The pain and suffering inside you lies exposed to

everybody. The next time you find yourself holding a penknife

you use to do school projects. You run the blade through your

forearm. The skin splits, you feel the familiar sting and it

burns as you dig the pen knife deeper and burrow vertical lines

on your forearm.

 You wear long sleeved shirts. There are no questions till

the shirt goes to the laundry. You get taken to the psychiatrist

to talk. You evade, you talk about everything, everything else other than why you have fallen in love with pain. You are listed

reasons why you shouldn’t harm yourself. You are reminded about

the lies people have told you.

 ‘Your mother loves you’

 ‘Your father would be proud of you’

 ‘You are smart. You have such great potential’

 You smile and nod your head. You see that you are

surrounded by lies and liars. You recognize that you are not

what you think you are. So you read books, watch movies, listen

to music. Anything which makes reaffirms your belief that what

you are feeling is not unique. That it is not just you. That the

world you live in is as fucked as you think it is.

  I knew I wasn’t alone the day I met Irene.

 Irene used to tell me about this one moment. This one

moment that occurs in everybody’s life. A moment so scary that

they deny it exists. A moment when they could disappear from the

face of the earth and nobody would know. It was in those moments

that they truly knew who they were.

 I wanted to be in that moment forever.

                  Pursuit of Happiness

 I was Alex’s Kali, the Hindu goddess of death, violence,

sexuality and motherly love.

 His friend, only friend and confidante.

And I was beginning to get worried about him.  Very worried.

 Worried because he was depressed, worried because he didn’t

want to be John Lennon.

 A five year old John Lennon.

 You see, long before Mark David Chapman shot him dead. Long

before he formed The Beatles and then watched Paul McCartney

take credit for disbanding. John Lennon was just the apple of

his mother’s eyes. John Lennon’s mother had once told him that

the key to life was happiness. When John’s teacher asked him to

write an assignment about what he wanted to be when he grew up.

He wrote ‘Happy’. His teacher told him that he didn’t understand

the assignment. He told the teacher that she didn’t understand

life.

 Alex wanted to be everything but be happy. And it worried

me that he would start harming himself again.

 Alex was selfish that way.

 It was always about what he wanted.

 And I was getting pretty annoyed with it.

 But you couldn’t help but worry. Worry that he would start

cutting himself again. College may have been boring and filled

with self entitled pricks and princesses prancing about. Showing

off just how rich and smart they were. Alex just felt more of an

outsider than he already felt. But at least he had his books.  His study was always littered with obscure book titles

borrowed from the Public Library.

 The Flat-Footed Flies: (Diptera: Opetiidae and

Platypezidae) of Europe (Fauna Entomologica Scandinavica) by

Peter J. Chandler. A book which basically listed the 44

different kinds of flies.

 The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers

by David Wells. Like the name suggests, a dictionary for numbers

with trivia like 2,520 being the only number which can be

exactly divided by all the numbers from 1 to 10.

 101 Uses for an Old Farm Tractor by Michael Dregni.

 Suture Self by Mary Daheim.

 The money from the out of court settlement helped ease the

pain of having to move back home. All the 33 victims got paid.

The college had to close down for three weeks while the police

investigated the acid attack.

 12 dead.

 33 injured.

 Those were the official numbers reported. Those were the

numbers the news channels kept flashing at the bottom of the

screen every time they spoke about the incident. Alex and I were

part of the 33.

 The indoor stadium had been rigged with sixteen confetti

cannons. The plan was to drop the rubber balloons filled with the acid down the confetti cannon’s chutes. One of the balloons

had accidentally burst as we dropped it down the chute. The

splash had left first degree burns on Alex’s hands and feet.

 The cops had questioned everybody in the college. The

pressure to hang a scapegoat and pin the blame grew with every

passing day. The 24/7 media cycle didn’t relent till they could

have their scapegoat served to them on a spitfire. The police

were thorough in their investigations. They spent countless

hours recording witness statements. Cops questioned us too. Alex

didn’t know what to answer the cops when they came to question

us. Once the cops made their highly publicized arrests, we moved

back home with mother. She didn’t have much time left anyway.

 The cops had arrested the dean, the confetti cannon vendor

and few other students. The dean and the vendor were arrested on

account of gross negligence. The group of students who were

arrested had absconded from the game to get high. The news cycle

changed from wanting justice to the growing trend of youngsters

chasing the new high. Nobody suspected us. We were part of the

causality list. So when we decided to quit college and move back

home, nobody thought too much about it. We obviously had to

leave forwarding address with the cops. ‘Just in case’, they had

said. Just like they show in the movies. They didn’t suspect us

though.  When we did finally move back, Alex didn’t leave the house.

All he seemed to do was read, eat and sleep. It was fine with

me, but you couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. He said he

felt guilty. He felt depressed. Looked like he had been watching

a little too much of Oprah re-runs.

 The kind of things he was reading reflected his mood. You

couldn’t help but worry about him. One wonders as to what sort

of a person reads how to suture oneself. Unless of course he was

planning on cutting himself open and then stitching himself up.

 Well, it was Alex and he was crazy. He was known to do

stupid things.

                           Ma

 The woman always used to say that the bond between a mother

and her son is the strongest. And no matter what happened, I

would always be her son. Her baby. I was her gift from God.

 I was not her son. I was not her baby. I was not God’s gift

to her.

 Imprint.

 That is the word which is used to describe the bond a new

born creates with its primary carer.

 The idea of ‘imprinting’ was made famous by Konard Lorenz

(1903 – 1989), an Austrian animal behaviorist. He noted that the

graylag geese hatched in an incubator would bond with the first thing they saw move within thirty six hours of hatching. In

Lorenz’s case, it was his pair of wellington boots.

 Imagine a YouTube video where a gaggle of graylag geese

cackling and running behind anybody who wore those pair of

wellington boots, expecting to be fed and cared for.

 Humans do not bond or ‘imprint’ in any way we think that we

do. The age old wisdom of placing the baby with its mother is

done more to help the mother than the baby. You would be

surprised with the number of women who suffer from post partum

depression. You would be even more surprised with the number of

newborns who die at the hands of mothers who suffer from post

partum.

 Research on Development of Human Attachments, done in 1999

by the University of Minnesota outlined the human bonding

process.

 16 hours – Babies prefer the sound of human language over

other noises. They have no preference for a particular voice.

 2 days – Babies can tell the difference between their

mother’s face and that of a stranger. They still don’t have a

preference.

 3 days – Babies clearly prefer human voices, especially

their mother’s.

 5 days – Babies clearly prefer the smell of their own

mother’s milk.  3-5 weeks – Babies become interested in faces, especially

their mother’s eyes.

 3–4 months – Babies start initiating social contact with

their mother, or other primary carer.

 3–7 months – Babies begin to show strong preferences for

other members of their own family.

 A Canadian research team found that, up to the age of three

months, newborn human babies respond almost as positively to the

calls of rhesus monkeys as they do their mothers’ annoying baby

talk.

 But then again, behavioral biologists do not agree on what

constitutes ‘behavior’.

 But both Irene and I agreed that my mother was few nuts and

bolts short of being labeled a complete cuckoo.

 You see, she married young. She was in love. She married

the first man who she permitted to go first base with her. She

married the man who stole the remaining three for a run. She

married because she was pregnant with me. And the man she

married wanted a boy.

 So she prayed, day and night. She did all the things

possible for her to deliver a healthy baby boy. She quit smoking

and drinking. She gorged on chocolate to lower the risk of

getting preeclampsia. She gave up meat. She started listening to

classical music. She began to include folic acid in her diet to lower my chances of getting spinal bifida. She got herself

tested for German measles. She started to think of baby names.

 Oliver.

 Edward.

 Arthur.

 Alexander.

 She even took up knitting. All for the love of the man she

married and for the baby boy who will make the man fall in love

with her again.

 And then I was born.

 The sham of a happy married life fell apart. Bills began to

pile up. The man took to alcohol. The man wondered and pondered

long over the life he could have had, had he not married so

young. He had gone All-in into his marriage and the good Lord

had dealt a nasty hand to him. Now he was cleaned out. He was

out of luck. Stuck with a wife he didn’t love. Burdened with a

child he didn’t want. But he was a good man. He knew what the

world expected him to do. He knew he had to do the right thing.

Blowing his own brains out was an easy option, but he was a

strong man. So he did what any strong willed man would do. He

ran. Leaving behind the woman who continued loving him and a son

who reminded him of his failing as a man.

 Alexander McBain.

 That was the name he chose for me, right before he scooted.

 I was everything my mother hadn’t hoped and prayed for. I

was the only thing which reminded my mother every moment of

every day of the man who she still loved. And she loved me even

more than the man. I was her son. I was her baby. I was her gift

from god.

 For me, she was just the woman. I was not her son. I was

not her baby. I was not God’s gift to her.

 I was the man’s constant disappointment.

 I was a mistake.

 I was the unwanted byproduct of the man’s overeager

swimmers and the woman’s pious eggs.

 I was the mutated zygote of the woman’s optimism and man’s

crippling reality.

 And now she was dying of cancer. The good Lord she prayed

to so often and piously chose to give her cancer.

 Cancer of the kidneys.

 The doctors called it the BDC, short for Bellini Duct

Carcinoma. They said they wanted to keep her in the hospital to

study the cancer. They said it was rare. They said the cancer

looked like a bubble wrap. Have always loved bubble wrap. Now I

loved it even more. Now that it was killing the woman.

 A bubble wrap.

 Pop.

 You could cover yourself with thirty nine layers of bubble

wrap and jump off six stories and still live.

 Pop.

 And with each passing moment, she was getting closer to

death.

  Pop.

 I wondered if I could kill Irene by asphyxiating her with

bubble wrap.

 Pop.

                          Telly

 Boob tube.

 Idiot box.

 The small screen.

 Whatever name it got called by, it was singularly

responsible for raising an entire generation born to working

mothers and absent fathers.

 I was forever fascinated with it. One moment you want to

know who killed Mrs. Hudson. The next you are learning about

urea content in the fertilizers being used in the local farms.

You learn about mythological figures and historical figures. You

learn about conspiracy theories and scientific facts.

 Television taught me how to talk, think, kiss, and

pronounce items on a restaurant menu. The internet was good. But television was great. It was easy to get lost in the information

super highway. But it was lot more fun to channel surf.

 Television was my first teacher. Television taught me that

I was a girl. And a girl is meant to look pretty and play dress

up. A girl gets to enjoy the simple things in life. A girl

didn’t have to compete. She didn’t have to be smart or

intelligent. All she needed to be was to look pretty.

 Television taught me to love everything about being a girl.

Television taught me to pay attention to details. That nothing

hurts a person more than the feeling of not being heard. Not

being listened to. It taught me to listen to the things people

spoke out aloud and the things they didn’t. It taught me to

stand up for what is right. It taught me to say no to people.

 Oprah and Dr. Phil taught me to be a strong woman.

 Baywatch taught me that the world makes way for a pretty

girl in red.

 Bold and Beautiful, well it was just plain entertaining.

 Every day was something new to be discovered. I learned how

to cook and put make up on my face. A hint of concealer, a touch

of blush and a dab of eyeliner changed the way I stared back

from the mirror.

 Television got me addicted to drama. It got me addicted to

wanting an audience. To perform, to blend, to be invisible. It wasn’t long before I was spending my money and time on makeup

and wigs.

 I was a shy blonde.

 I was a smart brunette.

 I was a fiery red head.

 I could be anything I wanted. When you are a girl, a very

pretty girl - The normal rules of the society don’t apply to

you. You are the society. You make the rules as you see fit.

When you are a girl, a strong independent girl – You are free in

ways a man only wishes he was.

  Television taught me how to kiss.

 Surf.

 It taught me how the apache Indians made bow and arrows

from animal bones.

 Surf.

 Television taught me to watch people. You learn a lot when

you watch people, when they think you are invisible. When they

think nobody is watching them. You watch them dig their noses.

You watch them step out of the washroom without washing their

hands. You watch them scratch their groin or adjust the

underwire on their bra. Alex told me that this was called

voyeurism. I didn’t care. Watching people and judging them was

powerful. It made me feel superior. And when you feel all

powerful and superior, you can’t help but show it off. It is like when you hear bunch of nitwits talking about who was the

greatest James Bond and they never mention Sean Connery. It is

just like superman shunning his alter ego every time danger

loomed. This is what we called as the smart-arse syndrome.

 All I had to do to be invisible was to be more like Alex.

Follow his lead and be awkward and unattractive. But the chubby

kinds wouldn’t let me be.

 Infomercial for a new kind of exercise machine. Guarantees

you rock hard abs in six weeks. All for 1999/-.

 Surf.

 It taught me about the new social structure the noughties

seemed to usher in. Every era reassembles society and

restructures the social hierarchy. That was the chaotic self

evolving kind of civilization we had subconsciously made for

ourselves. Every era, the society clumped all its contents and

found a new way to divide itself. Like an exercise of

rearranging furniture in a room to give it a new look, feel and

a vibe. There was the class divide, the religious divide, the

race divide. And now our society was dividing itself into the

beautiful and the ugly.

 Ugliness had a single defining characteristic. It was

cannibalistic. It feeds off itself. It grows till it implodes

itself.  Alex and I were on the opposite ends of this societal

divide.

 Surf.

 Television was my happy place. Place a television in front

of me, give me the remote and I am happy girl. And since Alex

had broken the television at home, we visited the nearby bar to

watch telly. But there was a problem.

 You see people like Alex and their waistlines and girth

have their own private gravitational pull on people’s eyeballs.

Everywhere he went, their eyes followed him. Their tongues

wagged and their fingers raised themselves like a sign post on a

four way traffic junction. Alex of course, could do nothing

about them. He would just get moody and want to leave. Taking me

away from my beloved television.

 It was always the chubby ones.

 The chubby folk who didn’t think they were fat.

 The chubby folk who made resolutions every year to lead a

healthy lifestyle.

 The chubby folk who bought new trainers and track pants to

jog but couldn’t be arsed to get up in the morning.

 The chubby folk who couldn’t see their penis when they took

a wee.

 The chubby folk who believed that humor was a mighty good

defense.  The beefed up buff cakes were always too conscious about

their own body to comment on somebody else. And the skinny ones

were always trying too hard to get noticed. It was always those

chubby kinds who blanketed themselves under their own fat and

inflated sense of self confidence. They were always the ones who

would raise their fingers and laugh at people like Alex. The

skinny girls, and their deep seated oedipal and Electra issues

would giggle and call the chubby man mean. Nothing seemed

funnier than saying the obvious.

 Fatass.

 Thunder thighs.

 Elephant tits.

 Hushed whispers always followed by the loud rambunctious

laughter.

 When they got really loud, when all I could hear was their

laugh over and above the TV volume, those were the times when I

would be forced to drop my façade of a blonde, a brunette or a

plain Jane. And confront them. I would turn and stare. Sometimes

they would shut up. Sometimes they would look right past me and

stare at Alex. Their masculinity challenged in front of women

they fancied. I couldn’t do anything. Not at that time. Not in

front of Alex. Not after the call from the doctor. Not after

mum’s death. Not after what happened at the college.  But, I was a girl. A pretty girl. And when you are a girl

and you are pretty. The normal rules of society don’t apply to

you. So, I would send Alex back home to his coffee and books.

And I would wait for those mean chubby folk.

 Don’t get me wrong here. Not all chubby folk are mean and

nasty. You see, the thing with chubby folk is that they fall

under two categories.

 The first kinds are funny, polite, self conscious and revel

in self deprecating humor. Alex was the first kind. And I adored

them.

 Then, there are the second kinds, the mean bastards. They

believed that being aggressive meant that they could defend

themselves. They believed that the world owed them something.

They usually had been abused as kids and understood no other

language. They deserved what awaited them in the parking lot.

 You learn a lot whilst watching the Discovery channel. You

learn that when you scream and run at somebody, you are doing

two things. You frighten and confuse your enemy. Secondly you

are taking a giant gulp of air, which pushes more oxygen in your

blood stream and the adrenaline travels faster through your

veins.

 You learn that when you stick your fingers in a V-shape and

attack in a gouging motion, the first reflex from the other

person is to step back and push your hand away. You learn that when they do this, it leaves his Adam’s apple exposed. You learn

that when you punch it hard, it severs his wind pipe. Your body

and his body is now acting solely on reflexes. You notice that

both his hands reach to cover his bruised Adam’s apple. You

strike with the knife edge of your hand against the bridge of

his nose. This causes the nose cartilage to break, sharp pain

and temporary blindness.

 You learn that if you deliver a blow to the broken

cartilage with the heel of your palm in an upward motion, it can

drive the bone to the brain.

 You learn that when a man falls down on hard concrete there

is a definite flat sounding thump.

 You learn a lot when you watch television.

                       Halfeti Roses

 Hospitals, trees and people have one thing in common. After

a point of time, none of them care about how they came into

being. They are the exact opposites, very unlike the mythical

creations of God, the house of God, or the tumor which was

killing the woman.

 Hospitals don’t understand why someone got pneumonia or

renal failure. All they do is to ensure that you get out of

there, preferably alive.

 Trees don’t care if they were planted by an eco-friendly

tree hugging hippie or the seeds found their way out of the business end of a bird’s bottom, that just moments ago was

pecking away on the good bits on a rotten fruit.

 People don’t care much about how they were born or where

they were born. They are always worried about what the world and

the society around them sees them. They worry about their jobs,

their health and the things they call their own.

 On the other hand, the house of God, the idea of God, or

the cancerous tumor, they were all self aware. Self aware of why

they were created, how they were created and the devastation

they left in their wake.

 When you spend enough time in hospitals, you can’t help but

get all Plato and Socrateian on yourself. I was two week shy of

my eighteenth birthday. I got wheeled into the operation theater

and then after six hours, wheeled back out. My hospital room

number was 1C, ICU ward.

 The woman was admitted into room number 1F, ICU ward.

 Hospital ICU wards are unlike any other wards in a

hospital. The ward has its own dedicated set of nurses,

attendants and on call doctors. The rooms are architected in a

semi circular manner, their glass sliding doors facing the

nurses’ station. You are required to cover your footwear with

protective shoe cover.

 But even before you get to put on those lime green colored

plastic things over your feet.  Even before you get to press the button ‘3’ on the

elevator. You have to place a call from the lobby. You didn’t

want to see the woman being given a sponge bath.

 ‘No ma’am, no outside food allowed’ we heard the nurse tell

the woman holding a giant box, probably filled with homemade

cookies.

 ‘But they are his favorite. Butter and cream cookies’ The

woman was on the verge of tears. Motherly emotional blackmail

out on display.

 ‘Her son has gastrointestinal hemorrhage’ Irene remarked as

I held up a hand against the wall and adjusted the shoe cover.

 ‘He has ulcers all over his intestines. All his shits look

pitch black. Darker than the darkest black you can think of.

When he shits, he is basically bleeding.’ Irene continued with

her unrelenting commentary.

 Halfeti roses. That was the picture which popped up in my

mental projector. The solid black colored roses which grew in

the tiny village of Halfeti in Turkey. That is what I imagined

his asshole looked like. A black rose.

 ‘That one suffers from…’ she pointed with her eyes and

eyebrows to the young girl in my old room, 1C. She stopped

herself. Guess she saw the look on my face picturing the poor

boy’s Halfeti asshole.  Irene greeted the woman. And the woman beamed. I looked

around the room. Her room and the room I was admitted to four

years back looked exactly alike. I was doing everything possible

than make eye contact with the woman. I even listed out the

things you would commonly find in a hospital ICU room.

 These are the things you would find in almost ninety nine

percent of hospital ICU rooms.

   •   There are the usual things - A sliding door to the

       hospital room and the private bath, foisted in a

       manner that it always opens quietly and you could

       never slam it shut. A single bed. The IV drip stand by

       the headrest with a digital monitoring system that

       tends to beep incessantly when a new bag is needed.

   •   A bedside table with a vase filled with plastic

       flowers

         o They never kept fresh flowers. The hospital never

            knew what allergy the next patient may suffer

            from.

   •   A chair for visitors.

         o You never were allowed more than five minutes to

            visit a patient in the ICU ward. And only one

            person was allowed.

         o Exceptions were of course made for family.

• The walls colored in neutral tones.

  o Colors which made you realize if you were a glass

     half full or empty kind of person.

  o The hospital doesn’t want you to have false

     hopes.

• The clean, cold, sterile tiles on the floors remind

you to face facts and mortality.

• Windows which always look out to the parking lot, away

from the ER ward.

• A Private bath that can’t conceal its functionality.

  o Handicap railing on the toilet and the shower

     area.

• The bed covered in sterile white sheets with a dark

colored blanket.

• Phone attached to the bed with a cord.

  o The call button also attached to the bed.

• The lights in the room always giving this unidentified

déjà vu feeling of being inside a casino or a movie

theater during interval.

  o Just bright enough and just dark enough to not

     make you think or wonder about the sun’s position

     outside your window.

 • Little table attached to the underside of the bed that

         you can move around the bed, to keep everything handy.

     •   Stainless steel Emesis basin, with a matching

         stainless steel water pitcher on the bedside table.

 As I stood and surveyed the room, avoiding eye contact with

the woman, Irene pulled up the lone chair. It was strange being

a visitor instead of being the patient. When you lay on the bed,

immobilized by drugs and pain, you begin to feel what the

animals at the zoo feel like.

 There is a story about a chimpanzee named Santino. Every

day, right before the zoo gates opened for visitors, Santino

would gather rocks and stockpile them. The zoo keepers reasoned

that Santino wasn’t being driven by impulse to satisfy an

immediate physical or physiological need. He had formulated a

plan for his future and was working towards it. It was Santino

who gave me the idea to wait, plan and execute.

 I wasn’t going to spend my eighteenth birthday in a

hospital. So, I waited. Stole money from the woman’s bag, the

money which would have paid for my next round of operation. And

I ran.

 As I boarded the bus out of the city, I tried to picture me

as my father. Wondered what he felt like.

 Relief?

 Pleasure?

 Guilt?

                          Hope

 I could hear the wailing sirens far away in the distance. I

opened my eyes. I felt tired and weak. I smiled. I looked at the

rearview mirror, Irene had closed her eyes. I hoped and prayed

that the medics took their own sweet time. Give me just enough

time to make sure that Irene sleeps forever. I stuck my finger

deeper inside the opening in my torso and curled my finger. The

pain woke up Irene.

                         Irene

 We were at Dr. Milchard’s office. Mum had made me promise

that we go see him at least once. She worried that Alex would

harm himself once she was gone. She thought Dr. Milchard had

helped Alex deal with his habit of self harm and mutilation. She

was on some serious medication.

 She joked and promised that she would still be right there

on the bed, waiting for us to return. The last time we went to

see Dr. Milchard, Alex had spoken about his father. He never

knew him. Whatever he remembered, he had been trying really hard

to forget. What I understood from all the movies and TV shows

was that, a boy needs a father.

 Since our last visit, nothing had changed. The same old

paintings, hung on the hallway. The same old woman, Janet

Summers, manned the phones in the reception. Her table still covered with a clear plastic sheet, assorted files, a year

calendar sponsored by Johnson & Johnson propagating the drug

called Risperidone, and an old crummy desktop computer. The only

personal item Janet had on her table was a framed 4x6 picture of

a young couple proudly cradling a newborn baby and posing for

the camera. Must have been a picture of her son or daughter and

her grandchild. Her reason for existence, framed and set in a

place of respect.

 I looked around at Dr. Milchard’s other patients, sitting

and waiting for old woman Janet to nod at them. And I could tell

their reason to be there.

 All they wanted was to constantly hear that somebody loved

them.

 All they wanted was a reason worth living for.

 All they wanted was to belong.

 All they wanted was to be heard.

 I looked at Alex and the magazines placed aesthetically on

the coffee table. Nobody would ever love Alex. He could never

find a reason worth living for. He could never belong.

 And I wanted it all. I wanted to be loved. To live. To

belong. I knew Alex wanted these things too. He just didn’t know

it yet.

 I was Alex’s protector.

 I was Alex’s lover.

 I was Alex’s reason to live.

                     Paying Respect

 In the novel that the movie Pinocchio was based on, Jiminy

cricket was brutally murdered and Pinocchio had his feet burned

off before being hanged by villagers.

 I read the book years before Irene and I saw the movie

being played on television. It was the first book which made me

cry. The first book which made me feel weird and ugly about my

own self.

 The doctor had called time.

 08:24 PM.

 The woman was dead, finally.

 ‘Pinocchio’ Irene whispered.

 I hated her for bringing up Pinocchio. We were surrounded

by nurses, doctors, other patient families. Irene took me to my

sad place. And I cried. I cried till one of the doctors ordered

a shot of muscle relaxant to be injected up my bottom to calm me

down.

 Irene suggested that we cremate the woman. She said that’s

what people did nowadays. The local law states that the coffin

in which the body arrives is the same one which goes inside the

incinerator. Like anybody gave a hoot about what the law stated.

The only thing good about the whole cremation process was to

feel the intense heat rush out at you when the door opened and the conveyor rolled the coffin to consume it. The crematorium

provided a ground for us to spread the ashes. People left you

standing at the edge of the garden holding a brass pot with the

ashes and remains.

 ‘I always hated you’

 Sprinkle.

 ‘You were stupid and selfish’

 Sprinkle.

 ‘Thank you for dying’

 Sprinkle.

 ‘I hope you stay dead’

 Sprinkle.

 Irene told me to hurry back home. They were going to show

unseen footages from her favorite reality show.

 As Irene hurriedly opened the lock on the door, I thought I

saw Susie getting into a bus. It had been years since I last saw

Susie.

                          Flashback

 ‘You have to admit him’ Dr. Milchard insisted to mother who

sobbed herself in.

 ‘He needs help. He is getting increasingly unstable. He is

posing a threat, both to himself and to you’ Dr. Milchard

continued. Mother looked at us, with those sad teary eyes. You

know that look. You have seen it a million times before on television. It is the look which a mother shares with her kids.

A look which tries hard to convey that she is sorry. That she is

helpless. That she failed. That she is guilty. That she is glad

that somebody else will take the fall.

 Alex lay strapped to the bed. He was scheduled for a series

of surgeries.

                         Susie

 It didn’t long for me to rekindle my friendship with Susie.

She had started work at the supermarket as a checkout girl. We

spent all our free time walking and talking. When we weren’t

together, we constantly texted each other. We spent talking on

the phone till day break. She was amazing and I was in awe. And

she laughed and giggled and called me silly names. On Sundays,

her day off, we would go to the park, eat ice cream and feed

bread to the ducks waddling about in the pond.

 Donald duck’s voice started out as an attempt to do an

impression of a lamb. She was always so amazed I knew all these

‘silly’ tidbits.

 ‘I don’t like her’ Irene had exclaimed irritated one day.

Irritated enough to mute the television.

 ‘You act all weird around her’

 ‘But I like her…’I had blurted.

 ‘I wonder if she knows your secret?’ She spoke with a

sinister smile.  ‘I wonder if she knows that you keep all the things she

throws away.’ She mused as she opened the drawer on my study

table.

 ‘How?’I demanded. I always kept that drawer locked and I

always carried the key with me.

 ‘You think you are the only one with the key?’ she smiled

again before she burst out laughing loud.

 ‘I love her’ I yelled as I slammed the door behind me. I

was mad at her. I was mad at her for telling me what to do and

what not to do. I was mad at her for going through my stuff.

 At that time I had no idea what Irene would do. But when it

happened, I knew exactly what had happened. And who had done it.

 Susie and I had become more than just good friends. We

would sneak into the washroom and make out. We would kiss and

she would allow me to pet her over her bra. I so wanted to touch

her breasts. They felt softer and bigger than Irene’s.

 ‘I wnt 2 do it?’ Susie had texted me during her break.

 ‘Do what?’

 ‘U knw…’ She texted back with a winky smiley. I was scared

and excited.

 ‘Folks lvng town for sm stupid wedding. Cme over @ 10’

I was excited as I surveyed my wardrobe. I shaved and combed my

hair even more than I usually did. I ran all the way over to her place. I now knew what people meant when they said they felt

butterflies in their tummy.

 ‘U ter?’I texted her. She opened the door and hurriedly

motioned me to come inside. She was dressed in shorts and a

flimsy top. She giggled as she closed the door and held my hand,

leading me to her bedroom. She closed her bedroom door and

stared at me with a wicked smile playing across her face. She

lifted her top over her head and threw it on her bed.

 ‘Go on! Take it off’ She urged as she untied the knot on

her shorts. I unbuttoned my shirt and removed it. Susie looked

gorgeous. She stepped closer and kissed me. Her hand ran over my

chest, her index finger rolling over my nipple. The feeling of

her warm naked body excited me. My hands travelled over her

naked back covered in goosebumps. Her hands were slowly moving

down my body. I pulled her shorts down.

 I kissed her deep.

 I kissed her cheeks.

 I kissed her neck.

 When I looked up, I saw Irene standing behind her. The

window open and her face covered by the blowing curtain. I

screamed in fright and pulled away from Susie. Susie still had

her hands down my pants. Her face looked shocked. Irene pushed

Susie on her bed and sat atop of her.  ‘I told you!’ Irene yelled at me as she pinned Susie’s

hands above her head.

 Susie was yelling and struggling against Irene’s vice like

grip. Irene grabbed Susie’s top and stuffed it deep in her mouth

to stop from screaming. Irene slapped Susie hard across her

cheeks and whispered.

 ‘Stay quiet…’

 ‘Irene! What are you doing?’ I yelled as I tried pulling

Irene off Susie. Irene pushed me back hard. I remember the back

of my head hitting against something hard. The last thing I

remember was Irene whispering into my ears.

 ‘I told you to call it off!’ Her whisper was cold and calm.

 I woke up to find myself in my bed. Irene was sitting on

the chair by the bed, looking expectantly at me.

 ‘Phew! You are alright’ she exclaimed and got off the

chair.

 ‘Susie?’ I asked the first and the most important question

among the swirl of questions which floated around my head. My

head hurt. My body ached.

 ‘Don’t worry’ Irene smiled. And I knew something horrible

had happened to Susie.

 My Susie. I looked at Irene. She had pulled her chair to

the computer and was reading something.

 I was scared.

 I was angry.

 ‘Why?’I couldn’t help but cry.

 ‘Because you have me’ Irene replied. She turned around to

see me. She saw me crying and smiled.

 ‘It will get better’ She said, ‘I promise’.

 My tears had finally dried up. I got off the bed. Something

on the computer screen caught my attention.

 The moment I read the headlines, I knew what Irene had

done. I knew what happened to Susie.

                       “Young Woman Commits Suicide”

 1 in 45,000 young adults aged between 15 to 28 commit

suicide each year.

 The news article said

   “that a suicide note was found next to the victim. The family of the victim, who

were out of the city at the time of the incident have been informed. The note doesn’t

   blame anybody. The police are treating this case as a suicide for now.”

 I stared at the picture of Susie the article carried along

with it. I felt like crying again, but I had dried up all my

tears. I didn’t notice Irene enter the room. She leaned over my

shoulders and put her arms around me. Her hands traveled down my

chest. Down my tummy. Her fingers got under the elastic band of

my shorts.

 ‘It is going to be okay…’ she whispered softly in my ears

as her hand moved up and down.  Alex

   Alex was smart. But sometimes his smartness proved to be

irrevocably stupid. He had gone to the cops.

   ‘I KNOW WHO KILLED SUSIE ORMAN’ He had yelled as he barged

into the police station. The officer in charge had taken a

visibly disturbed Alex to where he sat and offered him a cup of

tea.

   ‘Susie Orman?’ The officer checked his notes.

   ‘Yes. It wasn’t a suicide… She was murdered’ Alex weeped.

   ‘Yes, right! Susie Orman… Hey Dick!’ The officer called out

to his friend. ‘This boy seems to be talking your tune’ the

office leaned back in chair. His shirt still held crumbs and

stains from his morning breakfast.

   ‘So what do you know kid?’ The man, the officer called as

Dick turned Alex’s chair around.

   ‘I know who killed Susie. She didn’t kill herself. Irene

killed her’ he weeped.

   ‘And what’s your name?’ Dick questioned as he quickly took

out his small pocket notepad.

   ‘Alex. Alexander McBain’ he mumbled.

   ‘And how did you know Susie?’ Dick continued his line of

questioning.

   ‘I was her boyfriend’ he claimed, he dried up his tears.

   ‘Nobody is going to believe you’ I whispered into his ears.

 ‘And who is this Irene?’ Dick questioned.

 ‘She is my friend… My sister…’

 ‘I am his one true love’

 The other officer who had busied himself with typing

clackity-clack on his computer turned around to the man he

called Dick. ‘There is no Irene in the records. But there is a

warrant out for Alexander McBain’

 Alex bolted from the room. His mind was clearly buzzing

with questions. Poor boy. The answer was staring right past all

the mirrors he crossed as he ran back home.

                        Epiphany

 ‘Who the fuck are you?’ I yelled.

 ‘I am you. You silly boy!’ Irene was smiling. The kinds

which used all 12 kinds of muscles.

 ‘You are me. Though I did have to use all these wigs and

make up to look pretty.’ She pointed at her entire cosmetic

range which she so diligently used to look pretty.

 Suddenly the raw knuckles, the fight at parking lots, the

accident at college. Susie. They all began to make sense.

 I had what doctors called as ‘Ambiguous genetalia’. Which

is when a person appears to have both male and female sexual

organs. A vaginal opening and an enlarged clitoris. Or like in

my case, a less than average penis.  I heard the police sirens wailing in accordance to the

Doppler effect.

 ‘Run fatboy run!’ Irene yelled as I grabbed the keys to my

dead mother’s car.

 As I sped through traffic and took the exit to the nearest

highway, night had fallen over the horizon.

 ‘God! You are hot when you finally begin to take action’

Irene smiled. Her hand, my hand moved away from the gear stick

and slid under the pants. I was hard and wet.

 The vehicle’s stability around turns is directly related to

the probability of the car being engaged in a rollover accident.

This stability is determined by the equation between the center

of gravity of the car and the distance between the left and

right wheels. A high center of gravity and small distance

between the wheels, makes the car extremely unstable around fast

turns or sharp changes of direction. Like an extremely drunk

elephant with its legs tied together. It is bound to fall down.

That’s what happened to the car we were in.

 I knew this, because they had done a special program on the

increasing number of rollover accidents at high speeds. But I

still explained it out aloud as my feet pushed the pedal down

harder till it could go no further south. The speedometer needle

raced.

 80 KMPH.

 90 KMPH.

 100 KMPH.

 110 KMPH.

 The car groaned, reminding me that I was traveling well

over hundred kilometers per hour inside a metal cage. Irene

started moving her hands harder, and faster. The needle shivered

with excitement as it inched slowly but steadily closer to the

120KMPH mark. So did I.

 I pulled hard at the steering wheel as I came.

 The cops and the medics were still fifteen minutes away.

Enough time for me to bleed death.

 And that would the end.

 Our end.

 Hers and mine.