Bent (I)

I’m so scared that I’ll never get put back together

“Is anyone out there? Hey… Yo… Come on, is anyone the fuck out there?” I am flat on my back, buck naked, my arms at my side in an oddly familiar rectangular container. My feet touch the bottom. My elbows, when I push them out, nudge a boundary on either side. When I exhale in this absolute darkness, my icy breath comes back into my face, leaving no need to lift my arms to know the ceiling is not more than a few inches above me. I confirm it anyway, rapping my knuckles on the ceiling, seven or eight inches above my hips.

Only now, as panic starts to set in, do I remember that my words, oddly, had no sound to them. They were hardly more than thoughts, as though trapped in my throat. I try again: “Hey! Hey! Help me! For Chrissake, get me the hell out of here!” Am I only thinking it? Are my lips just miming the words? How can I feel the air forced through my throat, yet hear no sound? My frigid breath is blasting its puffs now back against my face and my attention is brought to my chest which is rising and falling more raggedly now.

My chest! My chest! Shit! With sudden nausea, I slide my right hand up my stomach to my chest and feel there the six-inch incision and explore the hole beneath the flap that, like chilled hamburger, two fingers of my hand can slip into — and do. And with it come rushing back the memories:

Three circles of glaring white light I am staring into — staring because these eyes won’t close — and a dull, moss-green-smocked mass now looms over me, blotting some of the glare. Out of the collar of the smock, a sensitive orb with caring eyes and glistening sockets are above the white mask, grayed in its corners by sweat, sucking in where the mouth would be and then puffing out with his exhale. Another orb materializes beside him, eyes magnified behind his glasses. More light eclipsed. Other faces now. The clink of metal against an unseen tray. A jumble of voices, male and female:

Doctor, shall I… No use… low caliber shell ping-ponged off the ribs, exited the chest… Didn’t know what hit… This poor slob tried to stop… Shoots him…Guard shoots her, dies on the bank floor… Which bank?… My God, that’s where I… My sister knows the teller. Sue Zapu. Sue Zapu! What a name! Finished here. You two got the gurney? Douse the lights, okay? Sure, handball? You’re on… The club at 7:30… Maybe dinner, after.

That image ends abruptly. And, now this. I’ve heard of these things happening before. A person rises up from his coffin at his funeral. Until today I thought they were just urban legends. But, now… “Hey out there. Open this fucking thing up, will ya? There’s been a mistake!” The words form angrily, feathered with panic, in my mind.

Being unable to give them vocal expression infuriates me and further feeds my panic. I summon up all my strength and anger and push my feet against the barrier with everything I have inside me. My entire body quivers against the strain, seems now to vibrate madly, like a tuning fork, filling every crevice of my confines, then gradually funneling it down my body to my feet where there is the sound a balloon would make when stretched to its capacity. And, as the balloon bursts through at its weakest point, so I, with a wind-filled, audible wooouuufff am sucked through.

“Which means?”

I hear the voice first, a pleasantly modulated sibilance, and now I see that the words proceeded through full lips beneath an unruly black mustache, drooping at its ends.

He smiles, watching me shoot a look to my trousered crotch, then tug at my shirt. Atop his head, a baseball cap with NY emblazoned on it, is cocked at an angle. A profusion of coarse, black hair clings to thin arms which extrude from a red polo shirt with lettering across the front asking: “Have you hugged your therapist today?” He is leaning back behind a large, expensive-looking desk, his palms webbed together at the back of his head. He is smiling, obviously enjoying my discomfiture. “Which means?” he repeats. He has crinkly skin around his eyes. These are eyes used to smiling. I feel at ease with his big, friendly face. But I don’t feel at ease with anything else.

“No-no-no-no-no,” I machine-gun. “Wait… Who are you?” I recognize of course that I am gibbering. “Who? And, where am I? And… And, why?”

He laughs, as jolly as Santa would (a younger Santa, before his hair turned white), then nibbles at the corner of his mustache. “It wasn’t too long ago,” he says, “you were asking if anyone,” — he refers to a notebook — “if anyone was the fuck out there. Well, here I am, Johnny.”

I feel ashamed that Santa had heard me use that kind of language, and it must have shown on my face because he laughs again and puts a finger alongside his nose.

“It’s okay, Johnny… You may express yourself in any way that pleases you.” He guides with his tongue some strands from the other side of his moustache into his mouth and nibbles while he seems to study me, still smiling — a bizarre, lopsided smile due to the nibbling. Does the guy ever stop smiling? “So, Johnny… What did that sound you made mean? It sounded like a person who can’t whistle trying to whistle.”

I know the sound he is referring to. “I didn’t make it. It made the sound that somehow — I don’t know — that somehow it — it — it caused me to be here.” Seeing the confused look on his face, I decide to cut to the chase. “Listen, is this hell I’m in? This is hell, isn’t it? ’Cause I know I don’t qualify for heaven — and,” I add, “you don’t look a lot like Saint Pete.” I see him try to stifle something with a fist over his mouth. “Or, are you interviewing me to see if hell’s even an option?”

“Shouldn’t it be an option, Johnny?”

“There you go with the Johnny, again. How’d you know — “

“If you think I’m the gatekeeper for hell, Johnny, wouldn’t you think I’d know your name?”

“I’d think you’d do your homework.”

“Why shouldn’t hell be an option?”

“A lot of people don’t like me — didn’t. And, some with good reason.”

He takes his fist away and says through a grin, “What makes you think it’s either heaven or hell, Johnny? What’s the hurry?”

“I don’t know that I have a whole lot of choice, Mister… Mister… Who the hell are you, anyway?”

“You really don’t remember, do you?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t be asking you, now would I?”

“Okee-dokee, I’m Charles Leitner — with a Doctor in front of it. Everyone calls me Charles. And, why don’t you have a choice?”

“You’re a doctor?”

“A shrink — a doctor shrink, which is only important because I’m allowed to prescribe drugs. And, why don’t you have a choice?” He is enjoying this.

“You know — because I’m dead.”

“Hmmmm.” He seems to consider this. “How long have you known?”

“Well, it’s true, I am dead, right?”

“How long have you known?”

“A day, two, three tops. I was there when the doctors said I was dead.”

“Of course … I would have expected — ”

“I heard the doctors say I was dead. You know what I meant.”

“Hard to resist.”

“Next thing I know, I’m in one of those boxes in the morgue.”

“And, yet you’re here. Hmmmm.”

“Hey, Chuck, I’m as surprised as you are.”

He smiles. “I’m not at all surprised.”

“You don’t think I’m dead? You think I’m crazy?”

“Or both? Or neither? Or sometimes one, sometimes the other? Life’s like that, isn’t it?” He smiles at me while he brushes down his mustache with thumb and forefinger. After a moment he adds: “How much do you remember of your dying?”

“I told you the doctors said I was dead.”

“They told you?”

“Dammit! No, I listened to them talking about me being dead.”

“Interesting … but you could hear them — though dead?”

“Yes.”

“Hmmmm. What do you remember about what caused you to be dead?”

“You mean what killed me? The doctors said it was a gunshot wound.”

“But what do you remember?”

I try, but it’s like my history goes no further back than the hospital. He is waiting for my answer, scratching behind his ear, now pulling an earlobe.

“Do you remember who shot you?”

“The doctors said it was a girl on drugs.”

“But you were dead at the time… How reliable a witness would that make you?” He chuckled. “Do you remember a girl on drugs?”

I shake my head.

He ponders this. “You said a little while ago that some people had good reason not to like you. Remember?”

I’m uncomfortable with the question. “Yes,” I say.

“Who do you mean?”

“Well, I — ” I seemed to know, earlier, exactly who I was referring to, but now it’s evaporated.

“You don’t remember, do you?”

I shrug.

“Do you know your mother’s name? Your father’s? Where you were born?”

“No.”

“Interesting,” he says. “Do you want to know, Johnny? I mean, if I could tell you, would you want to know? One memory can grab onto another and tug it, along with a whole lot of tag-a-long memories that maybe you’d just as soon leave buried. You get one, you may get them all.”

I wonder how he knows about me, but it is just one of a lot of things to wonder about. The last two or three days have been crammed full of wonderings, not the least of which is if I am dead, where am I, who is this doctor, and is he a guardian of the afterlife? How else would he have his knowledge of my personal history?

“So, tell me, Johnny — you want to know?”

“I…um… I think I do.”

“You don’t sound sure,” he says. “Johnny, look at your arms.”

I glance down at my biceps, right then left.

“Your forearms.”

I feel sick. “Jesus.” What looks, at first, like dirty, gray parchment from crook-to-wrist of each arm, at closer scrutiny, are isolated into variously shaped islands of white-capped scabs and dull, gray scars. “Christ, why would I do — ?”

“Ah-ha! So, you have some memory? You know what you’re looking at?”

I raise my shoulders and drop them. “Looks like needle marks.”

“Along with considerable infection.”

“Jesus! How would I — ?how could I — ?”

“Any memory of it?” He flips through some pages in a notebook. “Does Betty do anything for you?”

The name teases with the back of my mind. The name, Betty, brings up scattered, disorganized images of a song, or rather the lyrics of a song. I hum it, trying to get the lyrics to fit.

“You’re a Matchbox 20 fan?”

“Matchbox?”

“Yeah, Rob Thomas — one of my favorites. The one you’re humming. You know the title?”

I shake my head, frantically, flustered. The name Betty. Why would that bring up a few lyrics to a song whose title I don’t know?

“Big hit for Rob. Think it won him a Grammy. Called Bent. It ring a bell, Johnny?”

Start it again, Johnny, okay? I’m so fuckin’ wasted. And, you agreed to fuckin’ stick to weed. Remember? Come on, Johnny. Number three. Third song. Please, Jon-Jon. Pretty with me on it. That’s good … Listen:

Can you help me I’m bent I’m so scared that I’ll never Get put back together You’re breaking me in And this is how we will end With you and me bent

I hear my voice, thin, reedy, like a child’s, singing the lyrics and I don’t realize until I am halfway through singing it that I am watching myself, lying on a frowzled, flowered blanket on the floor. I am alongside a woman, not a pretty woman, whose eyes are vacant, whose very existence is locked at this moment into the lyrics of this song. She is moving sinuously, thinking it is dancing.

“Dance with me, Johnny,”

“Shit, you can’t even stand up, Bett.”

“I am. Aren’t I standing, Jon-Jon, here, by the drapes?”

“They’re not drapes, Bett. It’s the carpet and you’re lying on it.”

“I’m dancing on the drapes, dancing on the drapes, ha-ha-ha.”

“It must mean something to you, Johnny.”

My body jolts at the sound of the doctor’s voice. Here he was sitting across the desk from me all the while, probably studying every movement I made, but now it’s been like he’s been eavesdropping on a very private moment. The memories come flooding back with the remembered name Bett. I remember — not necessarily that night since one night was much like the next — waiting as long as I could, feeling a warped sense of pride in being able to hold out so long before I shoot up. And, then I do, and now it makes perfect sense to dance on the drapes.

“What?” I ask him. “What must mean something?”

“You kept singing it, Bent, three, four times. And, you had a kind of nostalgic smile on your face. You were remembering something. Weren’t you?”

“Nostalgic — no… Blissful — Oh, hell yeah! I always smile when I’m pumping heroin into my vein. I’m a fuckin’ addict, Charles!”

“But, that’s all over, isn’t it, Johnny? Being dead and all.” He glances down at his notebook. “Um… so you don’t remember a Betty?”

“Betty was the one I did drugs with. She loved that song.”

“Bent?”

“When she was strung out. It meant something to her.”

“Were you a couple?”

I stare at him. “We supported each other.”

“What happened to her, Johnny? You know?”

I find myself laughing and I don’t stop until the tears come to my eyes and the doctor swims away.

“You find that funny, Johnny. Why do you find that funny?”

I rub my eyes and blink the doctor back behind the desk. “I don’t even know where I am, Charles. I’m not even sure who I am. And you’re asking me where she is. That’s kind of funny.”

“Has anything changed, Johnny? You still want to know? You want the gaps filled in?”

I nod, but slowly and not without deliberate pause. Not too many minutes ago I did not know I was — and I don’t know, now, whether I still am — a drug addict.

The doctor bends over his desk towards me, his eyes seeming to burn into mine. “Johnny — listen Johnny… Once you’ve drunk deep from the River of Lethe, it’s not cowardly to hesitate over embracing remembrance.”

“I want to know,” I tell him.

“Excellent! I’ll just take a moment to review my notes. Meantime, make yourself at home. Fly on over and get yourself a drink of water, or look over a book or two from the shelf. I’ll call you when I’m ready and you can, um, fly on back.” He said it so casually.

“I’m not thirsty, Doctor, but what’s all this flying here and flying there shit?”

He smiles a broad smile. “Everyone knows ghosts fly, through the air, through walls. All that.” He turns to his notes.

“I’ll walk, thank you.” I lean forward and push onto my feet, but then I find myself floating two or three feet above the chair. Probably as an outward expression of my consternation, I find myself spinning in slow, willy-nilly, spiraling circles above the doctor’s desk. I look briefly down on him. He is turning the pages of his notebook. Evidently, not aware I am hovering over him, he is scratching an armpit, reading, nodding.

Let me know if you liked the first half. Then, fly on over with Johnny and get yourself a refreshment — but hurry back for the conclusion you won’t see coming.

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