Short Story / Papi Chulo: Recounting the Story of an Existential Struggle (Analysis)

 Manhood requires passages of sometimes brutal violence and so here I am.

This is it.  This is what happens when you let a grudge go – it grows, eating like no man can cuz grudges don’t eat light – or cheap; they feast on nothing less than your innards (all that meat and muscle), until you’re left in the end, a shrunken shell of what could’ve been, barely standing, swaying in the wind (too late).

Why I’m taking my shot now – I’m scarcely skin and bones and have a limp besides, but I’ve been consulting on the sly with grudge killers and am now prepared as I can to do it, to murder the fiend.

But not before I kick his ass; names will be taken later, if I feel so inclined.  There will be only one – his.

I can no longer be on someone else’s schedule.  As I said, this is it.  Business is what I mean; I’ve left my heart and cell phone at home.

Eyes on the prize, baby boy.  Eyes on the prize.

 

 

My finger rings the bell, holding it down ten seconds too long.  I stand and wait, contorting my face into one of the masks I’ve collected of late, ready to shovel a fresh pile of bullshit from my mouth, if need be.

The door swings open and there he is.  No use – he knows it’s me and because he does, it takes him by surprise when my hands go directly for his throat and apply pressure.

“Tha fuck?” he manages.

“I’m takin you out,” through gritted teeth.

“What?”

“I’m takin you tha fuck out.”

His eyes bulge out at me, part perplexed, part pissed and even part amused.

He is a crummy, silver-tongued breaker of hearts, the ingratiating, nefarious villain of a thousand Hollywood mens’ pictures – a slick exterior hiding nothing so much as perhaps a bottomless cold.

“No small talk,” I say and knock his nose with my forehead.  This is how male opponents settle disputes.  “Excoriate, eviscerate, annihilate, e-ra-di-cate.”

Blood pours like Old-fuckin-Faithful from his shnoz and I see with crystal fucking clarity what he led me to do.  To be a narcissist, to mythologize my life.  To hide myself from Love.  To lead women on, fearing accountability, responsibility.  To keep myself from The Truth – that I am one of those full of light, massive and transcendent of where I’ve been.  It broke me – I’ve been out of order for over a decade.

So I invoke devastating memories, provoking my fury and letting it all out on his face, which I pummel with both fists clenched and swinging like Thor’s gavel.  I allow myself this torrent – countries of pent-up disappointment, rage, confusion.

This is it, motherfucker.  This.  Is.  It.

His blood is on me but I’m prepared – I sealed all cuts and am wearing his favourite clothes, none of which are comfortable, but I didn’t want to soil any of my own.

My hands find his throat again and squeeze, so hard I can feel the pressure in my own neck.

Here is where my inner-child peeks his lil head out, causing me to falter and question the violence, which in turn allows my fiendish foe enough slack to easily pry himself loose.

“Jesus D. Godd,” I think he says, while coughing heavy sepulchral coughs, as if Hell itself were churning in his chest.

After a minute or so, it begins to subside and the mind games begin.  He chokes on every third word, but I’ll spare you the onomatopoeia:  “I ain’t ready to go yet.  And quite frankly, babe, you ain’t ready, either.  Like all those portoricans think they can be independent of the U.S.,” he shakes his head and coughs again.  “S’ridiculous.”

He does this a lot, wielding his cleverness like a Republican does arrogance.  I don’t take kindly to it, mostly because it inspires my own tendency towards being glib – no doubt why he does it so often.

“You’re Dinkins to my Giuliani…you’ve got no credibility, baby.  You need me.  Those balls are mine – you have none of your own.  You should be thanking me.”

This is what he does, getting under my skin.  I squeeze my right hand till I feel blood thump; it’s sticky with his blood and clammy besides.

“I’ll thank you when you’re dead,” I say like Eastwood.

“Thou shall not kill.”

“You’re not even real.”

He pshaws, then says, “Wake up, brother.  I’m realer’n you’ll ever be.”

I swallow.  Barely.

That hurt.

I pull the bottle of whiskey out of my – his – pants pocket, unscrew the cap and chug.  He smiles.  In one, two, three, four, five swallows I suddenly realize what I’m doing and chuck the bottle like a grenade across the room – nihilism is his crutch, not mine; I believe.  The bottle doesn’t shatter but spills blood – my grandfather’s, father’s, and a couple of friends’.

“Y’done?” he says, then shakes his head and we stand there, staring at each other a few beats before he asks, “Do you really think you’re ready to get rid of me?”

I nod when I know I should scream.  Then remember what the grudge killers taught me: Act as if.

I nod more emphatically.

His laugh sounds like a reversed hiccup, a smug grin with only one side of his mouth raised, like Bruce Willis back in the day.  I am not a threat to him.

“Lemme ask you another question…are you ready to fully accept love, unequivocally, unconditionally, into your life?  Or at least, what passes for your life without me?”

“I won’t know till I rid of you,” my instinct for self-preservation answers and it takes him by surprise (a part of me knows him almost as well as he knows me).

“You’ve gotten rid of me before.”

“Obviously not.”

He scoffs.

“You’re not gonna kill me.  You can’t.  ’Sides, aren’t you supposed to be your brother’s keeper?” the bastard says, an effort to regain his power stature.  “I mean, wouldn’t Jesus advise you to bring me to the light?”

“Whadayu know bout Jesus?”

“We were raised in the same space, remember?”

“Yeah, but you’re a heathen and I’m God’s son.”

“We’re all God’s children.  Aren’t you tired, brother?  Aren’t you tired of caring so much?”

He pauses, thinking it’s sinking in.

“You always did have a hard time letting go,” he continues, “but maybe you should.  Maybe you should.”

Again, this is what they do, playing you till you don’t know who’s the aggressor and who’s the victim.

“C’mon…lemme take over for a while.  Look – I’ve got porn,” he says, leering.  “Been a long time, no?  Got mags, DVDs – I’ve even got those videos you made with A—”

I take the gun from behind my back and shoot him once in the chest.  He flies back, falling flat onto the table, breaking its legs and his vertebrae in the process.  I walk up to him and fire eight more rounds into his chest and stomach.  He convulses and I feel horrific.

“It was my therapist’s idea,” I think I say, then walk over to his mini-fridge and grab the bottle of vodka sitting on top of it.  No cap – he’s kept it ready for me.  Glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug.  Ouch.

A doorknob is turning in my Soul and it’s too much to bear.  What the fuck am I doing? – a practical, ethical and moral question I shift into rhetorical so as I can get the rest of the job done, cuz, like that other Hollywood villain Jason, he ain’t dying; I can hear him moaning, working his way up to laughter.

Then it hits me – he’s flammable.  I grab the other alcohol bottles and empty them on his body, then find his lighter (One Toke Over The Line, Baby he’s written sideways in black Sharpie), and

Light

It

Up.

WHHOOOOOOOSSSHH!

And God, do I love fire.  It’s sensual, seductive…um, fiery.

I almost fall into it, then remember my ancestors.  They make me put him out (love water, too; nothing exorcises demons better).

It wasn’t enough.  Amazing – his chest, neck and ears are burnt, but his face remains intact (eyes blink).

I giggle and shudder, knowing what I have to do.  From my back pocket, I produce a stainless steel razor the grudge killers gave me as a dead last resort (how prophetic).

Take another fat slug of vodka and cross myself.  Let out a mental sigh.

With the stainless steel razor, I slit open his stomach – a sharp, strong line – then try and plunge a hand inside.  No dice – my cut not deep enough.  I try again, harder, and blood bubbles gurgle to the hairy façade surface.  Ha!  A resolute opening!  I shove my right hand in and grab hold of his intestine.  He shifts – I knew it.

I need something.  Some.  Thing. 

I look next to the filthy sex-stained couch and there it is – a Cheech-and-Chong-sized blunt the size of our dick.  I light up, take an extensive – nay, gluttonous – drag, sucking in the sticky weed and deciding whether or not to inhale.  Fuck it.

Wwwwwwwhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwww………………………………………………………………………………………...….nice.

Another draaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggg.  And, let it out.  Okay, here we go.  Pa’lante.

I take a knee and start on his arm as he trembles and twitches.  No good – bone trumps razor.  Then I remember – nothing cuts like a Ginsu.

 

 

A little later, whilst sawing through his thigh with the Ginsu, I remind myself that there were things he never did get me to do – coke, crack, orgies, using expletives in front of women and children, for example – though I suppose murder and dismemberment negates these.

It occurs to me I have been stuck in my father’s mind but with my own sensibilities, which were what led me to want out.  Others inherit land or money – I inherited utter chaos and, with the curse of a conscious, have been rendered nearly immobile.  No longer.  Right?  Right?

His blood-red eyes look up at me and I know this is no good.

“I know this is no good,” I say, ashamed, wondering how I can ever come back from it.  This.  My horrifying bloodbath.

At this point, I am more than willing to take suggestions.

Start by giving up your will, a voice says to me and it sounds sound.  Clean.  Honorable.  Like Gary Cooper.

And so, feeling uglier than the ugliest part of myself lying before me, I come clean.

Help.  Dear Lord God in Heaven, please help.

“Help save me from myself,” out loud.

I drop to my knees and pull his torso to me, cradling his head in the crook of my elbow.  He leans into my chest and it takes me a moment to realize he is listening to my heartbeat.

“Wow,” he croaks, a line of black blood trailing from the right side of his charred and battered mouth onto the floor.  With my left hand I run my fingers through his hair.

“I’m sorry,” I say.  And the tears come.

They’re for him and they traverse any human emotion I’ve yet experienced.  They scald and redeem at once – our past and my future.  It is extraordinary.

“I love you,” I say.

“Ain’t that a bitch,” he says back, then…

Then he smiles, exposing himself, and it sets off flickering images behind my eyes – hazy red-hued 4x4 photographs of us as a child, standing alone on green grass, peeking out from behind a tenement doorway, looking up from writing our first novel (bored one rainy Saturday afternoon twenty-three years ago, we announced to our mother, “I feel like writing a book,” and did – something about a battered woman and her young son, written from the latter’s POV); it’s the same smile.  The same smile.

I weep some more – thirty years worth – and when I am done, he is gone.  He is gone.

Thank you.  Thank you.  And goodbye.

 

 

The CDs materialize from my jacket pocket.  I put the first one in, aware that this house is now my own.  My own.

As.  Stevie.  Old school.  It was a shot of adrenalin even during those years under siege from the man who just died – from myself.

Place right hand on belly, left hand up in air and shimmy hips like a latin dancer, which I am.  I am.  Upon the chorus, joy floods me and my glee comes not from his suffering but from feeling myself regenerating, from invisible to bold.  My hunger for freedom is no longer – I’ve arrived.

Madonna’s Substitute for Love is next, followed by The Nutcracker (inner-child music if I ever heard it, here light and playful, there grandiose and sentimental) and after that, we’ll watch Spongebob and Laurel & Hardy and then, well, then we’ll sleep.

Just as Stevie fades, I look to the calendar on the wall (Big Booty Black Bitches in Fishnets) and realize…it’s Valentine’s Day.  Valentine’s Day.

Both hands on my chest, I exhale.

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