Submarine

I’m getting up.

I go over to my window. It’s raining, it’s too dark to see anything but the yellow street light. Out beyond across the street there’s a deli, which will open at dawn, dawn’s coming.

I can’t turn around. Something’s behind me. Now I’m thinking about turning around, but I won’t yet. My eyes are trained on the yellow light. Rain’s hitting the window, clock’s ticking behind me. Oh God.

Then I turn around and look around, the darkness adjusted, I can see there’s nothing but the bed, and the clock, and I go to my bed, and lay down on my back, and keep my eyes open.

An hour goes by. I can tell because I look up at the clock. 5 am. I get out of bed and get on my socks and shoes and get my damn wallet and get the hell out of there.

I walk down the street with the rain, rain’s following me, then I get to the deli, but it opens at six. If I walk further, I can get to the all-night store. Get some coffee. I look behind me.

Then I cross the street, and I keep going.

“You don‘t exist… I fucking dare you,” I say behind me.

The rain’s lighter now, and I get there inside the store, two doors inside, I wipe my feet after the second door, an old lady’s at the desk. I go over to the refrigerators. The lights are off in the refrigerators so I can see myself in there like a mirror. I look fine, I open the door, I get a, no, I close the refrigerator, and walk over to the coffee table, the metal machines on them, and get a cup and fill it, put in milk but no sugar. I blow into the cup and then take a taste. It’s not sweet but it’s clean, about as healthy as coffee gets, could use honey but there isn’t any, it’s ok. Good coffee, yeah, I put on a cap and go over to the desk with the old lady.

“‘Morning.”

“Oh, thank God. I only have a half hour more.”

“Actually, it’s closer to 45 minutes,” the clock isn’t facing her. I know when the shift ends.

“Oh,” she’s got this wonderful crinkly face talking. “Is that all?”

“Yes,” my cheeks are tight and warm with that. “Except there is no God, did you know that?”

“What young man? What did you say?” I see the lights from the refrigerators flicker a moment. God’s coming out of them, right now, or something else is, right behind me, it’s going to hit me harder than anything I’ve ever been hit by, and its face is going to be so white it’s bleeding, and long, and it’s going to be screaming at me.

“Sorry, never mind.” I say and leave.

The rain is dying, and the clouds are becoming light blue, but there’s no sun yet. Cars are going through the light rain, the highway’s a left turn away and most of them are getting on it, red and black and gold cars are going on, and big trucks are pulling into gas stations. I’m not going to be late today, and I’m glad for it. I think my boss, Harry, is a little mad at me, his small red face, it’s just mad at me. At the bus stop, I go in my pockets and find the bus card. Nobody is at the bus stop with me. Not that I’m feeling lonely, not that I’m telling you nobody is here because I’m lonely, actually I’m sort of glad for it, like being early. Like having nice hot coffee, and milk.

The bus comes. I need a girlfriend, that would be great, and I get on and swipe the card and move to the back of the bus. I put my feet up, and lean my head against the window, and I’m tired. I notice the “no smoking/drinking/loud music” sign. It’s always there but only the first and last really count, sometimes, so I keep drinking my coffee, getting more tired. No sleep. Instead what I did all night was I was thinking. About the whole God thing, and it was pissing me off. It’s sort of scary for me to say it, but there is no God, and I was trying to figure it out in my head how to stop thinking like there was when I got scared, and I couldn’t sleep. There were all these sounds around the house, and my legs felt a little numb. So I yelled out:

“Come and get me!”

And I waited. But nothing came. But the noises around the house got louder, since I was listening harder, and now I’m on the bus, and tired, and there’s the window and those things outside are out there believing in God without me now. I don’t care.

Then the bus stops at the next stop and a young girl gets on. She goes over and sits midway on the bus. The driver takes off again and on the next stop he gets a man with a brown leathery beret and a white mustache, and he sits right next to the bus driver and starts talking. Then on the next stop there gets on this old black lady, and she comes back a little closer towards me, and I don’t know what it is about old ladies but I love them. They smell like life is getting them down but they smile, and it’s just the right stuff to make me feel good. Then the next stop there gets on a guy who looks mean, but he’s heavy, and behind him gets on three boys, about the age of that other girl in here, and they say hi to the girl and sit near her and they all start talking about something.

I drink some more of my coffee. Then the sun is coming around just about the time the bus makes its way across a clearing, a park on the right side, and the sun is going through the bus windows on the left and hitting the pavement and you can see the graffiti from our windows casting shadows on the ground, and if you look up a little you see metal slide is shinning, and one of the swings is broke but the others are fine, and then the park goes back behind my window.

Then it’s my stop, so I get up and pull the cord, and it makes a bell go, and I get to passing the old lady, and I go to smile at her and she smiles at me, and I get off, and the sun is there.

I don’t really want to talk about my job. I’ll tell you I telemarket, and what we do is we hit the east coast where it’s already afternoon and we carry the calls back to the west coast as the day passes. It’s not the best job you could ask for. What I do is, I lie to people. I tell them they’re getting something good, yeah, I feel bad, and the conversation is recorded, and I leave out most of the costs, and they give me their information. But that’s only sometimes. For every sixteen calls you make you’ll get one person stupid or tired or too happy for you, and they’re enough, one out of sixteen, to keep people like me alive. But I’m good at it. I’m good enough to do this for a living and live on my own and everything’s ok. If you gave me the patience I might be able to sell you one of these deals. You’d never have to see my face, and you’d believe what I was saying was true and good and you’d buy it. Halfway through my shift I drank some more coffee, and by then it was cold. I drank the last of it cold, like I usually do, and Harry walked by a few times, but didn’t have anything to say.

Then work was over. I said goodbye to Sarah, and she‘s a friend of mine, and I get to the bus stop, across from the park.

In the park there’s all these people. They all believe in God, and they’ve got crosses on their walls and they put their hands together. And they talk to themselves. And I got to looking at the kids, and got to thinking about death. Death’s going to get me now. It wouldn’t get me when I was a with God, but now I’m not, and now death has a reason. I’d prefer hell to it, but death is going to kill me, it can’t get any simpler, and the bus comes. I get up there and use my card, the black guy driving it nods, the bus is full, chock full of people. I walk down the isle to the back towards one seat, but I don’t take it, it’s next to a teenager, and I don’t want to risk sitting next to one. I hold onto the metal bar overhead and go swinging in tight circles as the bus accelerates. If this bus crashed, with no seat belts, we’d all die, and only I’d really know it, unless there was another like me in here, but I doubt it.

I got in the house. I went to sleep. I went to work.

A week later, after work was over, I got out and got on a different bus, the driver was black and his face was beaten, I got in and sat in the back, and it took me far into bad neighborhoods, and people got on and looked at me, mostly black and Hispanic, and I got off, I walked down to where I knew the junk is. I walked up a stairway. Inside a thin door were three people. One of them was Creole, and he sat at the table with a gun. One let me in, and stood by the door. The other one was passed out on a chair.

“What the fuck do you want?” The man with the gun said.

I told him. He picked up his gun and sat with it looking at me, then he yelled at the man on the couch, who got up, and went into the other room, a bedroom or a kitchen, and he brought out a bag with a needle in it. It’ll fuck me up, the man said. It’ll fuck me up like I’m a fucking white trash vegetable. Seven hundred dollars. Good I said to him. I pulled out the money I had in the jeans and gave it to him.

“You’re one crazy ass white person.”

“I don’t believe in god,” I told him.

“What the fuck did you fucking say to me?”

“Nothing, nevermind.”

He told me to get the fuck out. I walked down the stairs with It in my pocket.

I rode the bus back. The busses were full and I had to stand. When I got to the house I put the needle under my pillow and called Sarah.

“Hello?” I heard her.

“Is this Sarah?”

“Yup who’s this?”

“This is Jeremy.”

“Oh hey what’s up?”

“I was uh, wondering if you could fill in for me tomorrow.”

“Oh, why?”

“I’m not going to be in. I really need to take the day off.”

“Oh.”

“I’m feeling sick.”

“Oh.”

“And hey do you know where I live?”

“Yup, do you want me to come over?”

“No thanks. I was just wondering if you knew.”

“Yeah, remember? I was at your house before.”

“Oh yeah.”

“Yup. Why did you ask?”

“I don’t know. Hey I have to go.”

I hung up fast. I went over to the book I borrowed from the library on the wooden desk. I opened it up and read a paragraph. It was a science book. The other day when I got it, it said easy things early on. About the universe. Then it got more difficult.

I undressed and looked down at my body. The cock, the hair, kneecaps, toes, it was all there. Breathing in the air. So different than when I had a spirit. So different than when the walls had space filled by them. So different when looking up meant more. Being naked was funny.

I’d forgot to pull down the curtains. I ran over to them and shut them, the room became dark, I turned around. I thought about daring anything to come out and get me, but I’ve gotten more used to the real world. Speaking out loud was ridiculous. I don’t need to rattle these walls with faith anymore. I laid on the bed and played with my cock. Nothing belongs to me but my cock, my brain, my fingernails, this bed doesn’t belong to me, it’s absurd, this ceiling is peaceful and that’s all it needs to be. My cock went hard and I thought of Sarah. She was beautiful. Sarah had red hair, and a voice, and she was against my ear, and she told me how grand it would be to fuck right now, her legs moving up and down me, her fingers on my cock, she mounted slow, letting her tongue in my mouth, how wild, how random. I cum into the air and on my belly.

So I go to sleep like that.

While I’m sleeping I have a dream. My grandfather is on his deathbed, he’s pale. Why isn’t he dead? I ask him. Oh, the doctors are doing a good job. I should have died years ago, but I’m going to die soon instead. Oh I say. I look down at him, and he turns and begins to sit up, and he’s so skinny and pale, and it’s horrific, he’s got multiple sclerosis, he has no muscles, his skin is almost dripping, he plants his feet into the ground, I’m going to try to get up, he says. I run after him as he stands, and falls, and his legs break. I hook under his arms and pull him up on the bed, I’ve got my chin over his shoulder, and I lay him down, and all his whiskers are looking at me, and his mouth moves again and he says he can’t do it anymore, getting up he means, and god’s got him and he’s going to go to him now. I say no! Fuck god! Fuck him fuck him fuck him fuck him fuck him fuck him fuck him! Stay alive grandpop, I look at his broken arms and legs, then, his shoulders and hips aren’t alive anymore, but I grab him and hug him, we’ll keep working out! I say. We’ll get stronger and you can live more! Then

I get up. I move to the curtains and stare at the window. The yellow light is on. Cum’s glued to my gut. I walk through the dark into the kitchen, get a rag wet and wash it off. My grandfather died years ago, and I never had a dream about him. But now he’s really dead to me, and I’ll never see him again. I decide to get dressed, but no underwear, underwear is stupid, no underwear is random, so random. And I get out of the house and walk to the all night store. I get in and go to the coffee machine, and I get to the register. My friend the old lady is there. She smiles and she rings me up. It feels good to get coffee from her. I should get coffee from her every day of my life. No, I should leave right now and run into the mountains. I should become an astronaut. I should live in a submarine. I should fish and firefight and farm, I should read everything I see. The old lady tolerates me, and tells me to have a good night. I sort of smile back at her and thank her, tell her to have a good night too. I drink my coffee as I walk back, some cars move on the highway.

I get back to the house, I walk in and put my coffee in the kitchen, and sit down and think long and hard about It. It was a good idea a couple days ago and it’s a good idea tonight, and I’m not going to be a coward, not tonight. I go into the bedroom and get the needle under the pillow, and get the wireless telephone. I go up to the bathroom, draw the water until it’s warm and plug the drain. Then I set the needle on the tub, then I get in the tub, and wait a half hour and think about things. I don’t remember what I thought about. Human things.

Then I dial for Sarah. In seven rings she picks up.

“Hello?”

“Sarah, it’s Jeremy again.”

“Oh hey you. I was sleeping.”

“I’m so sorry Sarah but I’ve got something to tell you. I’m trying to kill myself. Listen, I took a lot of pills, I need an ambulance. Please call an ambulance for me. I’m in the bathroom.”

I hang up. I grab the needle and tap it, I find a vein on my arm easy and poke it in and slide the shit in. I can’t even pull it out. I slide down and my nose is next to the water. The faucet is dripping. My ears can hear the drops hit underwater. The vibrations go all around my ears. Water tugs around me. I struggle to keep my eyes open, there around the room is nothing but brightness. Then darkness, everything’s blurry, my eyes must be closing, I’ve got to have a good last thought. I should have fucked Sarah when I had the chance. I want to be braver. My head sinks under the water. I can hear all these crickets and the water is moving into me, old lady, bus rides, chocolate beer where’s my shoe, I’ve got hands, mind it go around fast, I find a blue key, it opens all beeps chirpings thumpings old hands blackness goes here in here, everything‘s dark, the casket I live swings roller coaster, bumps someplace the universe that‘s purple. My lungs spread water. My throat pulls. Where’s ocean… I want to find ocean…

I get up, BANG, it sounds like, like a roar, a sunflower like a motorcycle is not a motorcycle until the juice is jumping through it, and my brain’s right back on and I’m looking around and the doctors are there and some nurses. Jeremy, Jeremy I hear, I look at the guy, I can hardly see and it’s all so bright, he’s holding fingers up. Yeah four I say. I can hear you, I’m alive. They give their good jobs to each other, then a few of them leave and a nurse stays to watch. Soon after they move me to a smaller room, without all the life-saving instruments. They me tell I’m stable now, and they’ll release me tomorrow after watching my heart beat some more.

Sarah comes into the room and she sits on a chair. I look at her as stupid as I am and I motion for her to hold my hand.

“Sarah hold my hand.”

She holds it.

A while passes.

Then she takes her hand back.

“Why did you try to kill yourself?” She asks.

“I wanted to see what it was like.” I wanted to tell her the truth.

“Death?”

“Yeah. So I know when I die for good.”

“Jeremy that’s terrible. You shouldn’t have done that.”

“I’m sorry. I really hope you can forgive me.”

“I don’t think I can.”

Now I’ve done it, I thought. Now she won’t go out with me.

“Hey, do you want to go on a date when I get out of here?” I ask.

“That’s terrible! That’s terrible!” She yells at me. Then she gets up and runs out.

The nurse comes in and smiles. I look at her some, I ask her to go out with me. You really are a crazy man she says. Do you believe in god? I ask her. Yes, she says. Then I wait. After some time she asks me:

“What did you see when you were gone?”

“Nothing. I dared everything to happen and nothing did. It’s like: far more things magical happen when you live than when you die. I can’t even describe it. It was forever and it was short, but it didn’t feel anything like a dream. It felt like what made me alive was pulled apart and set aside. And when I was revived it felt like the pieces came back and I could exist again.”

I thought it ironic that I couldn’t tell Sarah, that she hated me for it all. I had a good truth for her, and I’d have been good to her. But it’s my fault, and I don’t blame her for never talking to me again.

I wasn’t fired, and Harry, my boss, was even a bit amazed. He asked what it was like and I told him too. Then I told him to try it.

I quit my job. And then I sold the house. I was still young. I enlisted in the Navy. I had four new years with them. I told them I was looking for something.