Saturday, December 30, 2006

Part Twenty-Three

With Melanie arching high above me, I gazed up the arc of her body, transfixed by her motion and her form. She held the spray paint can above her head as if a sacrifice to God. She brought the can down, slowly, ritualistically, and shook it again. She laid her body over mine, her hair spilling around her face. My body was thrumming again, the miserable rhythms of all my pains in time to my quickened pulse, and in my head again, Yes, Yes, Again Yes.
I closed my eyes and let myself go, trying to become one with the moment. I embraced her, pulling at the skin of her back. Breathing heavily, she made an odd movement then, getting her arm and elbow up between us, interrupting the sensuality of the moment. With my eyes held shut, I imagined that she was positioning herself for something new and interesting when I felt the nozzle of the spray paint can pressed up against my nose.
“Suck on this, Lableman,” she said.
I could not tell you precisely how much paint she injected into my nasal cavity, but it seemed she held the can there a very long time as I writhed in pain beneath her. She had me pinned, and I could do nothing but thrash my head about and gurgle as the paint began to run down my throat. The propulsion of paint into my nose caused such a roar in my head that it overwhelmed every thought except this: I remember thinking that you’re only supposed to use short bursts with spray paint and that I should tell her that. I finally succeeded in throwing her off, or she leapt off of me. The paint can clattered on the cold tile, and Melanie’s feet pattered off across the church under the knelling of the paint can.
My mind burst open. It was like I fell into a fire head-first and the fumes from the paint exploded my head from the inside out into a billion embers erupting into the high dark ceiling of the church. The embers rained down, day-glow butterflies scattering nectar, rushing up into trade winds that moved in a stream from the altar to the door and were gone. The tiles stood up on an angle and began to twirl in place, a sharp pirouette to the grinding sound of marble on sand. Candles dormant around the room sprang to life with momentous flames, melted away and set the flames dancing among the tiles. Snapping their bolts from the floor, the pews rose up and tiptoed through the tiles, arranging for a session of bottle-caps the next morning. Mary and Joseph freed themselves of their bases and brought Jesus down from the wall, cross and all, then took turns dancing the polka with his outstretched arms. On my shoulders, the scabs around my postit tattoos began to itch terribly, but the itches soon released themselves from the wound and crawled across the skin of my shoulders, chest and neck until they found a home in the moist, cavernous space of my nose. Each station of the cross now joined into the dance, crushing tiles under their gilded feet rather than tiptoeing around them. And the church building began to buckle at the walls, and spin, and topple about. I was thrown from the altar, and all the dancers thrown together with me like a gigantic load of clothes in the dryer until we came to a stop, a mountain of thrumming junk in the middle of a burning church.
The can of spray paint landed in my limp, outstretched hand where I lay prostrate atop the mountain of junk. I looked at it and felt suddenly inspired. Forget the sharpie and the postits. Spray paint was the way to go. This was more permanent and more effective, and more traditional. And I knew just where I’d start this time. With the intangibles.
I brought the can close to my chest and shook it vigorously, the muted clang of the ball within the can a comfort to me now. I reached out and began to paint the air in a massive non-serif font that spanned my view of the ceiling. I spelled it out carefully, wanting to make sure I started off on the right foot. I wrote G-O-D on thin air and collapsed into an oblivious stupor.

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