Bang

This is not about the rain, or how it rained at the funeral. This is not about the accident, about how her arm stayed soft and warm for a while, how her head was turned so her hair covered her face. I'm staying where James Bond stayed at the end of that film. I'm a goddamn fucking time cowboy now. I'm stepping back, and it's just like it never happened. I've decided to be like Fellini now, and be in a movie like he does a movie where we can sorta dream at will and anything is possible, because I'm in my head now. This is a story of me now in my head. No, I take that back, I want to be outta my head. Rain drops keep falling on my head, just like on the smallest coffin you ever saw. My torso is covered in welts. Okay, go play checkers with my brains— that doesn't sound right, but go ahead. And while you're at it, rearrange the furniture and paint because we're gonna end up divorced probably anyways. I'm going to try hard now, nail this shit down and shine through if I can – to the Lighthouse, ya know what I mean? To the Lighthouse. Fuck you Virginia Wolfe. I'll try hard this time, not make excuses or get caught up in images. It is very simple. I like that word. Simple.

Specifics? Last year I lost my wife (35) and my daughter who had just turned (3) when our Jeep Cherokee (a model 99) overturned and slid on its side and hit a tree trunk. The tree was unscratched. But later it still died. Ain't that a laugh riot? Everybody involved in the crash dies but me. Even the tree. My wife's family has blamed me exclusively for the accident. I think they are angrier that for once I wasn't drunk, that it was just a freak accident not having to do with excessive speed or anything like that. No, to them quite frankly, I was the freak. Fuck you fuck the blame. Fuck up. Fuck over. Fuck off. No thoughts. Dark. Well, a little light. Like in a Fellini film -- things come into focus so slowly at first with no sound, in reverse-dissolve George Frederick is sketching, he eats lunch, he participates in group therapy. On an improbable 'red letter day' he is released, he goes home, he says no I am fine, don't worry. Neighbors show up, ding dong. I just need to be alone, to grieve. He grieves in the empty big colonial style house that is five years old near Sterling, Virginia. It does not help. The house or the grieving. Under control and in his own mind he shoots himself in the head with a pistol.

(In truth, he puts the pistol down. He didn't have the courage to shoot himself like he wanted to. I mean, I don't. I mean, obviously I didn't, as my name is George Frederick. I just buried the Sig Sauer 9mm three feet deep in my backyard, where I used to watch my daughter Sara play, Sara pretending to be a princess of a far way kingdom that I’ll bet looked just like Disneyland. I want a gun tree with 222 little toy guns. No, I don't want a gun tree. I want to write something funny here. I wanted to end this with something more poetic or more semiotically clear, a better symbol or symbolic action to round out the story. But I guess I don't have it in me. My wife once said to our daughter, "Fill me a thimble full of tears, and then...bla bla bha blah blah." I can't remember what she said while I was in the other room being a stone-hearted fuck. Well, I've cried my thimble full and more, and there's no going back once you've started that business. But I took my thimbles of tears and I emptied it. I just cry regular now and let the tears go down my face and splash on my jeans. Some tears land in my hand. I carry them like they are little birdies and I sprinkle them out our bedroom window. I can imagine certain things now, very specifically. Fly away you two fly fly away. And sure enough Jesus Christ, just like in a Fellini flick, I see from the camera's perspective -- zooming up into the sky, all the while looking down at me lying in the Jeep on that rainy night the whole time, the camera zooming away astonishingly fast and smooth as a rocket or missile with no flash and no noise and no smoke. Oh excellence! I know it makes no sense, too many mixed metaphors. But that is how it is, now. I can hear glass exploding, steel crumpling. The seatbelt tight enough on Sara to strangle her. Then we hit the tree. Bang.)

(Live over at www.opiumnagazine.com, today.)