The Egotist Read online

  Lemus walks into the room, his eyes slightly distorted behind a new pair of glasses. He has a jagged hesitance to his walk, appearing very much like a child who’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

  “Yes, it does say that, doesn’t it?” he says sheepishly.

  “Right here on page one,” I say, pointing to the page with stunned certainty.

  He begins to pace as he explains. “Well, you have to understand. I started to write about my experiences in prison, about fifty pages worth. Then, when I read them, they were just so dry and boring. So, one night after a couple of beers, I went through the pages again and . . . sort of spiced them up a bit.”

  “Aren’t you worried about public opinion once you tell people that you’ve spent hard time as a victim of fictional tortures? Do you want to be known as that guy that got raped every five pages? Do you know what that’s going to do to you?”

  “I understand what you’re saying . . . and, yes, I have thought about that.”

  “And?”

  “I’m going to change the names. I’m going to present it as fiction.”

  “You mean to tell me that this whole book is just one big romanticized story . . . about inmates?”

  “Sort of a Gone With the Wind behind bars,” he states proudly, and a little too quickly. My God, I think, he’s already thinking about the promotion. That’s where years of working in a bookstore will get you, I suppose.

  “I see.” I think about it for a second, weighing the idea. It certainly would be more interesting than reading about Lemus’ real life in jail, which I’m sure would consist of a lot of talk about the conditions of the urinals, the slop at the cafeteria, and the cold, hard stares of the merciless guards. I decide to postpone judgment and proceed to surf my friend’s creative waters.

  “Okay, Lemus,” I say soothingly. “I’ll bite. Give me some time to get through this thing, and for God’s sake don’t sit in the other room waiting for me. Go jogging or something.”

  He smiles, and I feel better about the whole exchange. As a roommate, Lemus was really growing on me in a way he never had when we were just friends. I feel like he really needs me, and it so happens that my maternal instinct, or whatever you want to call it, has kicked in at just the right time. It makes me stronger to have people need me, and being stronger is what I’m all about.

  He heads into his room to change or whatever, and I continue reading.

  Three hours later I’ve read every page, stopping only twice: once for water, once to urinate. It’s mind-bending work, I must admit. A real soap opera. It’s the kind of rubbish dumb people just might buy.

  Sure, it needs editing. Yes, I made some notes on some things that need more fleshing out here, a little less description there, circling characters I cared about and crossing-out ones I didn’t.

  But I’ll be damned if he isn’t onto something. Real crap for the masses. I decide right then to become his agent, his personal trainer. With the right guidance, the kid could be on the fast track . . . and thirty percent never hurt anyone.

  Barflies

  I decide to take a break from the spinning wheel and call my friend John Liggins, inviting him to the neighborhood bar. He hasn’t met Lemus yet, and I figure now’s a good a time as any. For that matter, I realize that neither John Liggins nor Lemus have met Marie, and so I give her a call as well.

  Lemus and I walk down to the bar and we’re already a good two rounds into it when John Liggins finally enters. I introduce the two of them, deciding for now to refer to Lemus as “my writer friend.” I even leave out that he’s living with me, deciding to let the two get to know each other better before bogging the whole thing down with details. A few minutes later Marie comes in. I’m positively glorified to see her.

  I make another round of introductions, and everyone hits it off smashingly. There’s laughter and pointing and funny faces - just like a real beer commercial. Looking around me, it’s hard to believe that it’s my own life I’m looking at. I have to admit, there’s nothing like being surrounded by one’s friends to really give one a feeling of invincibility.

  Lemus’ past comes up rather naturally as he refers to buying the next round with what he calls his “prison money.” Marie and John Liggins are fascinated with the whole story, and, by the end of it, we’re all half-in-the-bag. John Liggins decides to embarrass me by telling the story of the time I had gotten into a fight in this very bar - once again everyone’s amused.

  I have decided that things are definitely looking up for me. As I look from left to right, I see my new girl, my lawyer, and Lemus, my money train. If Marie was a certified Doctor it would have completed the scenario, and I would have deemed myself a Saint of the Catholic Church on the spot, for divine light would have surely been shining on me then. I’d be hanging out, speaking in tongues, writing divinely-inspired scripture, wearing robes and not shaving . . . what a life!

  Marie is the only one who seems a bit off with the whole story of my fight in the bar and she decides to address me with it right there. At this point, she can insult me using pretty much any name in the book because I’m so drunk I can hardly stand, and I’ve always been a cheerful sponge.

  “What’d you do, W.? Beat up a woman?”

  “No Marie, that’s crazy. I’d never hit a woman.” I ignore Lemus and John Liggins spitting laughter from the other side of the table, and can’t help but feel suddenly isolated.

  “Well, according to John, you hit a woman.”

  I look at John Liggins, searching for a bit of help. He just looks at me real drunk-like and offers nothing. Finally, smiling stupidly, he says, “I can tell you one thing, Marie. Being a prosecutor, if W. had struck that woman, it would have been purely in self-defense.”

  I decide to settle the matter myself.

  “Look Marie, don’t listen to him, he’s drunk. I didn’t hit any chick.” I motion at John. “He wasn’t even there! He came after I had been thrown out of the bar. Now, a guy I did hit, that I admit. But even that was basically this fellow’s fault,” I complain, pointing again toward John Liggins.

  “I call him and I say, ‘Should I puke or hit him?’ and he says, ‘Don’t puke.’ So I went over and hit the guy. It was my attorney talking, I couldn’t ignore him. That’s the way it is, just ask Lemus, he’s an ex-con!”

  At that statement, both men break out into hysterical laughter, enjoying every bit of my anguish. The whole thing is getting a bit tired, and I am sick of being grilled by Marie.

  “Can we just forget it, please?” I groan, hoping my acquiescence will appease her.

  Marie gives a bitchy little lift of her eyebrows, but feigns having no further interest. I am glad she has finally dropped it, if she had kept it up much longer I would have hit her.

  About an hour later the four of us stumble out of the bar. It’s very late, the bar has stopped serving, and we have closed it well.

  Thunder strikes our happy little boat the second we step onto the sidewalk. Whether by fate or by planned espionage, I happen to look down the street to my left just in time to see my sister, Beth, leaving a small club about a block down from the bar. I feel the blood drain from my face. It’s not just seeing her that burns me - that would be enough - but it’s what she has become that catches me completely off-guard.

  In the course of a few months, or whatever it’s been, she has turned into some sort of neo-nazi, punker-lookin’, skank-ho thing. Her eyes are underlined thickly in black, she’s smoking like a criminal, and what she is wearing could better be described by what she is not wearing. And that guy! Who is this loser? Some mohawk freak, wearing chains and leather like some weird dinosaur leftover from the eighties punk scene. I feel as though the love of my life has been violated, pissed upon! The whole thing turns my stomach, and I can’t leave it alone and continue to think of myself as any sort of man. Why couldn’t she have just left it alone?

  “Where are you going, W.?” John Liggins asks as I begin stalking toward the gruesome twosome.
I ignore him and pick up my pace.

  “Hey!” I scream out, “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  I see their heads turn toward me. My sister gives a brief look of alarm, then settles quickly. Turning away from me, she mumbles something to Curiosity Boy, causing him to turn toward me and flip me off.

  Now I am livid! I’m beside myself! Forget my sister, I’ll deal with her later . . . but this Flock of Seagulls reject is going down.

  My blood boils as I replay the look on his face while giving me the bird. I see myself beating him in so many ways that I can hardly restrain myself from breaking out into a dead sprint.

  I move to within a few feet of them, trying desperately not to completely lose control.

  “Just what is this?” I yell, gesturing at her like a mishandled UPS package, upset not so much with the package itself but by the attitude with which it’s being presented.

  She looks at me, astonished.

  “Are you kidding me?” she mumbles in what seems sincere confusion. “Since when do you care about me?”

  She had a point. My temper was maxing itself out, and I wasn’t exactly sure why. I hadn’t spoken with her for quite a long time - had avoided her, in fact. I can’t think, now . . . nothing is clear.

  “I don’t care,” I say dumbly, hiding my confusion behind anger, “I just want answers.”

  “Well, I don’t have time for this.”

  I grab her by the arm, hard.

  “You’ll make time.”

  “Drop dead, W,” she says, turning away.

  I can tell that the dispute has left the thinking stage and moved into the instinctive roles of Attacker versus Attacked. Two snakes are in the pit now, and reason be damned.

  Behind me, I can hear the somewhat out of breath panting of my friends, and my peripheral vision catches the twitchy head of the circus hybrid playing the boyfriend in this little charade shoot up to note them.

  “What are you bringing your friends here for? You looking for trouble?”

  I completely ignore the wank, and focus on my sister.

  “What happened to you?” I say, gritting my teeth and trying to keep my blistering temper under control. “Are you on drugs now or something?”

  “Get lost!” she snips quickly, and my rage turns frighteningly quick into action. A black veil covers my vision, and something inside me snaps.

  I grab her violently by the front of her dental-floss dress and push her roughly against the side of a car parked in the nearby street.

  “I’ll get lost all over your ass!” I scream in blood-curdling fury, my heart pounding with diseased rage as the whites of her eyes explode across her face.

  “W., don’t,” she says quietly, causing my aggression to check itself.

  I hear the sound of a wink of metal from behind me.

  “You’re nixed, pegboy,” a voice slithers.

  My body clenches like a fist as a blast of pin-point heat erupts in my side. Before I can react, a second blast shoots through my back, except this time more to the right, near my kidney. My eyes feel like they’re popping out of my head, my throat has become a vice. I hear voices scream, some angry, some frightened and confused. There is a shove from behind, and I release my sister and fall across the hood of the car I had pinned her against. I slide bonelessly to the ground and my head thumps against concrete hard enough to make things go fuzzy.

  Hot liquid fills my pants, and I don’t know whether it’s blood or I’ve pissed myself. Feeling dizzy, I drop to the curb, finding myself staring dumbly at a Mercedes hubcap.

  Mercedes, I think disgustedly. Nobody buys American anymore.

  The screaming dies down, and the pain begins to subside. I’m upset about wetting my pants, if that’s indeed what I have done, but it doesn’t bother me too much as I grow very tired, there is screaming that drifts away, away… I close my eyes, and roll off the world into something very close to sleep.

  BOOK EIGHT

  BODY

  Birth and Pain

  Everything is secondary to pain. Everything.

  Love, honor, grades, family, life, death, freedom, chastity, sex, money, fun, hate, baseball, summer cottages and frisbees are all secondary to pain.

  When you are in pain, you are alone in the world. You are a solitary figure standing on a giant, dark landscape with no one around you. There are a few rocks, sure, but nothing of any interest. When you are in pain, you’re transplanted to a world far, far away from the Earth and the people on it. You become your gut, your emotion turns into a black, swirling funnel cloud and your mind is the epicenter of an earthquake. You are no longer man or woman, husband, wife, or lover - you are an enigma, a phantom, a pure being.

  They say that you are never closer to death than when you sneeze. Well, I say that death is a threshold, and there is much beyond it. Pain transcends death. There are times when death can seem like a loving substitute to pain - a remedy, a glorious golden pill that will take away the dark clouds and transport you off the black rock of solitude.

  When a woman gives birth, she feels a lot of pain (or so I’ve heard). But what kind of pain is it? Deep pain? Sharp pain? Throbbing pain? Mind-exploding pain? Personally, I don’t think it’s any of these. I think birth is a kind of work pain. The same kind of pain a person would feel if they had been hauling cement in a wheelbarrow for an hour or so straight. Now, I’m not knocking it. I’m sure the pain is bad, but I don’t think it’s the worst. Maybe that’s because I’m a man, or maybe it’s because I resent the entire process of child birth. Either way, the pain the child must bear while being squeezed out of a body like that - in combination with the fear of being in a new world, transported away from his or her safe cove of luxury inside the womb - has to be the worst pain of all. If the child only knew what lay ahead of it, I’m quite sure the shock of the entire experience would utterly stop its peanut-sized little heart.

  I don’t mock the woman, I confront her. Don’t call me sexist, call me fair. Birth is a privilege, not a burden. If I have to hear one more TV sitcom-type remark about how awful it is for the woman to deliver a child, I swear I’m going to be sick. Even if it does hurt, aren’t you experiencing something that’s wonderful? Aren’t you bringing something into the world that only you can bring? You are suddenly such a unique creature, a silver, glossy being amidst a world filled with ugly ape-like forms. At that moment your are so beautiful . . . so exclusive. To mock that does not allow me any room for sympathy. It makes me nervous, angry, and a little nauseous.

  There are so many terrible types of pain a person can go through - ugly pain like torture, starvation, fear, uncertainty, longing, broken bones, and broken hearts. Loss.

  I hope when it’s time for me to step up to the plate and do something unique and beautiful for my world and my society, I won’t protest it. I won’t flout it. I won’t complain and shudder and whine. I’ll have that baby and I will love it until the day I die. I will take care of it when it is in pain, and I will endure pain for it. I will be its protector, nurturer and provider, and nothing will ever separate us. If there is pain between us, I will absolve or absorb it. I am ready to birth, I am ready to give something back, and then I will be ready to die. I think for a woman to die in child birth is a poetic thing, giving everything for that chance to create, to become unique.

  Pain is a very bad thing. And when you feel it, you know that you are vulnerable and alone. You realize the paltriness of things and of events, and the insignificance of the people around you.

  I wish pain on no one but cannot help feeling a rush of superior power run through me when I deliver it, for on the opposite side of pain is power, and every choice in life brings you one or the other.

  In this instance, I have chosen poorly.

  My Time of Dying

  The wheels spinning beneath me are making hard, grating sounds against the floor. I’m laid out flat and moving quickly, and although the world is spinning I can see white above and all around me. I feel as lig
ht and uncontrollable as a feather. A mask is covering my face and I can feel moisture running down my cheeks and onto my neck.

  The last thing I can remember is my sister, looking awful. I remember grabbing her . . . then the hot blasts of heat in my back and side. Now, here I am, lying helplessly on my opposite side, my healthy side, a thin sheet covering my half-naked body. I see people blow by and realize that I’m moving at a rapid pace down a dingy white hallway. It reeks of disease. I make the foggy-headed assumption that I must be in a hospital.

  Purest clarity is far away, evading me. My head feels heavy and my back burns as if on fire, the pain becoming more acute with every passing second. I raise my head a little, I see my arms. There are tubes snaking in and out of them. One of the tubes is red, one clear, another clear…

  Someone says, “He’s waking up.”

  Suddenly, I feel vomit racing up my throat, and I convulse to try and keep it down. I try to move one of my arms to pull the mask off before I throw up in it, but they are both strapped to this rolling, clattering deathbed.

  “I’m going to throw up!” I scream, except the sound I hear is much closer to “Momfmo thope!”

  They seem to understand, and panic ensues throughout the small crowd accompanying me. My mask is pulled off and I’m turned halfway onto my belly. I see a blue plastic bucket before white fire shoots through my throat, and I close my eyes and hurl my guts out. Whether I hit the bucket or not is trivial. Right now, I’m trying very hard not to lose my mind all together.

  “You done?” a woman’s voice says, and I feel my eyes roll up into my head.

  When I wake up again the movement has stopped and I’m looking at the floor. I feel somewhat better . . . at least my head’s a little more clear. The mask is off my face, and I can see a clear line of drool bridging from my mouth to the floor a few feet below. I try to move my hands to wipe my lips, but again, they’re restrained.