UNIVERSAL
I was in this bed that was in no way my bed.
It was like pretty good amateur porn.
It was like the videos my brother got of ugly people fucking.
Nights, as kids, we would watch these videos, me and my brother and his friends, in our basement.
And we would drink what my brother’s friends brought to drink.
And we would laugh our heads off at these ugly people doing their fucked-up ugly shit.
It was just like amateur porn.
Because of his soft body I could see the outline of in the dark.
Because of the ugly words he was saying into my hair.
The words were only ugly out of context.
Like if I said them here or on the street.
Like if I said them to a stranger.
Or to your mother.
I should say he was a doctor.
I should say, as well, I was not impressed.
I was only impressed with the smaller details.
Like his eyes, his wrists, the words he used.
And the doctor’s kit beneath his bed.
It looked just like you’d think it would look.
It looked like the kits we played with as kids.
There were tools in it that looked like toys.
I was prettier than the girls in the videos.
I was in better shape than the girls, but let’s face it.
I was just physically in better shape.
My brother’s friends wanted to see me undressed.
They wanted to see me bent like the girls in the videos.
They wanted my legs behind my head, a bored look on my face.
They wanted me drugged and dumb and sweating, and my brother, I know, could have said to them, Stop.
It was my brother who told me about religion.
It was not our religion he told me about.
We had no religion in our house.
He told me about his girlfriend’s religion.
It was terrifying, what he told me.
Something about the rapture, and I was terrified.
Something about bodies floating upward into the air.
I didn’t believe in the rapture.
Because I didn’t believe in religion.
But I could imagine my body floating upward, my head pushing through the ceiling.
I could feel the force that would push my body straight through to the room upstairs.
I should say something here about my father.
But mostly I couldn’t get near him.
I mean he was too important to get near.
There was all the important work he did.
There was the study where he did his work.
There was the universe spinning around it.
I was in this bed that was not in any way my bed.
Because I was not good at getting out of things.
It was my biggest flaw that was not a physical flaw.
There was always something that made me stay too long.
Some desire to keep a light lit.
A desire I didn’t understand.
And I could ignore what needed to be ignored.
Like his soft body pressing mine into the bed.
Like his girlfriend’s things all over the room.
Like my time, my mind.
Like your pride, my brother might have said.
And where is yours, I might have said back.
My brother thought he was better than me.
Just because he met a girl he thought was kind.
Just because he left the house at seventeen.
Just because he left me with my father in the house.
It doesn’t matter how I got to his bed.
I mean the specific details don’t matter.
We had been to a dinner at someone’s house.
I had gotten just too drunk.
And I had pushed myself as far as I could.
I had pushed myself, if you can imagine, to pushing nearly out of myself.
It was all of it too ugly.
Just imagine the ugliest desperation.
Just imagine the bloom just before blooming.
I mean imagine the bloom before one can call it a bloom.