Guernica

I’m so high that I’m out of my mind.

Someone’s fourteenth-floor apartment party, the blood is rushing to my head and the shitty imitation Rothkos on the walls are sliding in and out of focus, red white orange yellow rectangles swimming suspended in the aqueous film over my eyes like what’s left of my deteriorating retinas. Shards of shattered glass from a hand-blown vase crunch underfoot as I weave through a hallway, living room, something, the soles of my shoes grinding a rainbow of sharp multi-colored dust into the hardwood flooring.

I’m higher than a kite, but it’s still not fucking high enough. I’m so far gone that everything around me looks blurry and warped, a submerged Atlantis seascape, boiling deep-sea vents and angler fish with glowing lures enticing me further down, past the last glimmers of sunshine into silt-blackened, stagnant darkness…

I still need more.

I’m a sailor sinking with his ship, trapped on the fucking Edmund Fitzgerald as Lake Superior splashes her icy fingers over the railing, bringing wood and wires crashing onto the deck, a pirate gorged on rubies and blood silently surrendering his last breath to the hurricane waters of the Caribbean; I’m your broken Jonah, dancing in the waves with whales, I’m a shipwreck victim stranded in a sinking lifeboat, smack-fucking-dab in the middle of thousands and thousands of miles of churning blue-green sea, dying of thirst and dehydration, suspended above an entire ocean of untouchable, undrinkable saltwater which will shrivel all the cells in my body into pale red starbursts, poking through the walls of my veins.

I’m parched, I’m starving. Craving, crawling. You’ll find me on your bathroom floor. Pills on the tile. Hands in the red paint. You’ll find me at the foot of your bed. Blood on the carpet, syringes in the sheets.

Somewhere at the back of my mind there’s a pretty face, an ugly girl, a gunshot wound.

A ballerina trapped in an endless pirouette, a jagged hole in the river ice.

Left in fresh water, human tissue decays four times slower than in direct sunlight.

I don’t want to remember, I don’t want to think: I want to chop it up, block it out, block it out, black on black on black like bloody dirt, like a fucking Reinhardt canvas. I want to saw it off, cut it away, hack it into pieces, never and never again.

Skin buckles and folds into a wrinkled shroud as the water diffuses through the plasma membrane into every salty human cell, trying to even the electrolyte balance, creating an excess of turgor pressure; hypotonic cells, enough force and they would rupture deep beneath the surface.

All the things I know and don’t know, swimming like cancerous tadpoles in the dirty back of my mind, bulging eyes and bent tailfins, MAKE IT STOP.

Rock and sediment will weigh corpses down, but eventually, every body floats up to the surface, bloated and white.

Where is she? Suddenly it feels like I’ve been looking for her all night, on my hands and on my knees, I’m crawling, crawling, clawing, I’m a crippled man: you’ll hear my crooked legs on your back staircase.

She was here earlier; I remember seeing her silhouetted against the bloody red-orange moon (or maybe it was the dizzying blur of one of the fake Rothkos in the hallway), her wrists and cheeks all clouded with dull watercolor smudges. Like she was banging her head against a door for an hour, shaking out the bats.

I’m staggering, out of breath, out of my mind; I’m a crazy monk, muttering muttering muttering, looking for God.

Did she ask me to find her? I feel like someone told me to. Have I said this yet? I hate her. If I’m a monk, she’s the sinner. If I’m a conch shell at your ear, she’s the hot roar of blood, the echo of sparkling aneurysms in your head.

And it’s outside on the balcony that I find her, surrounded by the out-of-focus city lights, doubled over and retching, with her knees and her fingers bruised against the cold concrete. Her face glints yellow and purple in the smoky night air, and she’s just so ugly ugly ugly amid the haze of New York light pollution, lipstick-smeared mouth twisting open in a clownish grimace, exposing the choppy Picasso rectangles of her teeth. Her panicked eyes look black instead of brown when they flicker up towards my face, black as the mascara circles warping her sockets into those of a carcass, a dead raccoon. “Frank,” she whispers desperately, her low voice so shredded by screams that she sounds like she looks, a talking corpse, road kill, “Franky…” I picture a y at the end, the way she says it, like too many e’s on Frankie, the drawn-out inflection of a whore or a little kid. The pointed toes of her boots scrape noisily against the concrete as she wraps her arms around her stomach and rocks weakly back and forth, rubbing off the faux-leather in little black shreds that look like chewing tobacco.

“What the fuck do you want?”

Droplets of rain on windshield glass.

Headlights, humming engine.

Cold night air. Lit cigarette. Slick metal bridge.

Pixies in the cassette player, Hold my bones. Hold my bones. Like I could hand you my fucking pelvis.

She’s shaking, sobbing soundlessly, her body contorted into a perfect Guernica marionette, all angles and curves and disjointed bones and bruising indigo skin, ugly ugly ugly ugly and making me absolutely fucking sick. “I’m s-such a f-fuck-up, F-frankie.” Rocking, clutching stupidly at herself as though she’s coming apart; stuttering like someone is kicking in her teeth.

I watch her, feel my stomach turn, vomit splashing into vomit. Her legs are splayed out like somebody’s discarded baby doll, milky-white skin laced up in frayed fishnets, zipped into those stupid knee-high boots, and from where I’m standing, you can see all the way up the glowing, bruisey contours of her thighs to the darkness beneath her short skirt, screaming fuck me louder than her raw larynx could. She smells like liquor, she smells like sex, she smells like cigarette smoke and aluminum blood and salt and dead skin and guts spilled out on fresh asphalt, and when I feel fingers close like a trap around my ankle, it’s all I can do not to kick her, break that incoherent face even further, crack her nose and watch bright crimson flood the balcony floor.

“Frank!”

“What the fuck do you want me to tell you?!” I snarl nauseously, trying to wrestle my ankle out of her cancerous grip. “Get off me, you fucking cunt!”

“Why can’t I fucking help anybody?!” she shrieks, ignoring my words completely, dinner-plate eyes like two giant holes gouged out in her skull. “I’m trying so hard, you have no fucking idea Frank, I’m going to lose everybody and then what the fuck am I going to do?!”

“If I were your friend, I’d kill myself,” I laugh hoarsely, detachedly, the sound so rough that I swear I can feel tiny blood vessels bursting open copper fireworks deep inside my throat, even though there is no pain. I’m a doll, a puppet, a suspended marionette; watch my dancing feet betray the painted purple tears beneath my eyes. I’m a Pilates expert; picture a string connecting your cranium to the ceiling. A rope from your broken neck to the stucco above.

I was expecting her to scream at me, howl, get up on those bent-paperclip legs and claw off my face, but instead she just lets out an animal moan and scrunches tightly into the fetal position, violently shuddering, legs and knees and elbows all compacted into an ugly tangle of bone and skin. “Shut up,” she whines raggedly, breathing like a mangled hit-and-run dog. “Just shut up shut up shut up shut up, what the fuck is wrong with you?!”

“I don’t know, doll, I really fucking don’t.” It’s supposed to come out casual, biting, but my voice wavers nauseatingly, adding a bitter shiver to the last clause. I’m trying to stop them, but my eyes keep flickering to the shadows between her legs, dusky and warm in the cool night air.

“You s-stupid schizophrenic asshole.”

I try to laugh, but funnily, nothing comes out.

“You want to fuck me.”

I could just fucking sob at that; I don’t want to fuck her, I want to shove steak knives into her guts, squeeze shit and blood out onto the balcony, paint repulsive Jackson Pollocks of her insides on the exterior wall of the apartment, shiny and wet and reflecting the glimmer of distant city lights.

I want to kill her before she kills herself, before she wears herself down to nothing trying to fix the hopeless ugly ugly ugly ugly world that turned him ugly and is turning her ugly too.

“Why the hell would you ever want to fuck me?” she asks incredulously, voice spiky and hysterical, silent laughter starting to wrack her body in place of those desperate sobs. She thinks she’s a fucking riot, on her back now with knees up to her chest, shaking like a lunatic. Announcing “God, you’re higher than I thought; you’re out of your fucking mind Frank Iero!”

I watch her. I watch her and shiver. The disgust replaced by dread.

Down below, past the wrought-iron railing fencing us in, you can see Chinatown lights, warmer and softer than the blurry glimmer of auto paint reflecting neon from the highway, the toothy yellow-rectangle windows of neighboring apartments. You can see the rosy haloes of Chinatown lights dancing below us in the wind, and she’s lying with her crooked spine pressed against the balcony concrete, scuffed boots in the air, laughing at nothing. Ugly ugly ugly ugly, sick lipstick-smudged lips forcing out numb hysteria that even she knows is ridiculous. “Come on, mister. Call me a fucking selfish cunt again.”

“I never called you selfish,” I mumble, trying hard to focus on something else, cherry-blossom tea candles and hanging paper lanterns flickering as they oscillate back and forth, back and forth, blurry, fickle points of light cast across the grey sidewalk.

“Well I am selfish, Frank, fucking news flash.” She’s cutting out each syllable individually, biting and snipping with her fluorescent scissor incisors, over-emphasizing the consonants. “Since when have I ever been anything else? Selfish selfish selfish, crazy bitch.” Click click click. I know she’s going to say it, I know she’s going to say it I know she’s going to say it I know she’s going to say it and she fucking says it, crumpling onto her side so that it looks like her grey-violet lips are pressed against the cool cement: “If I wasn’t like this, he would still be alive.”

Quinn would still be alive.

Pixies in the cassette player, Hold my bones. Hold my bones.

Her chilling grin, Jack Daniels and coke, tugging at my sleeve with needy fingers, Let’s go play, Franky. Let’s go out on the bridge. Head lolling, eyes rolling, pearly-whites flashing in the darkness as she laughs, mouth cavern-wide—

His white, cold face burned blurrily into my retinas, eternally dancing behind my eyes.

“I’m so sorry, Frank,” she whispers.

Cold car dashboard, plastic ballerina stuck to the rubber, gaudy neon beads dangling from the rearview as it reflects the drug-fucked shine of her cacao eyes; let’s go out on the bridge.

Quinn in the backseat, nodding, laughing, manic; Don’t be such a pussy, Frank.

Don’t be such a fucking pussy, Frank.

The metal slick beneath my feet.

Vertigo and bitter whiskey twirling around inside my cranium like a spinning top, the view of the gelid water tilting below me – black and vacant and coated in delicate white ice – forcing a surge of hot bile into my throat.

Don’t be such a pussy, Frank.

The guide wires cutting angry red smiles into the flesh of my palms, Quinn’s liquor breath shimmering suspended in the winter air, clouds of pale, ephemeral warmth. “You scared, babe?”

Yes.

Yes.

YES.

I’m fucking scared, up amid the skeletal structure of the bridge where no one is allowed to be, past the railings, past the concrete, past the warning signs with their grinning skulls…

I shake my head.

“Are you thinking about him?” she asks nervously, on her knees on the ground in front of me like a first-time whore, looking as much like a fucking Tarot card as she always has, The Pitiful Fuck, The Murderer, now just The Ugly Girl.

Am I fucking thinking about him? I want to rip her face off, take her eyes out with a penknife blade. AM I FUCKING THINKING ABOUT HIM? He’s not a person any longer, he’s a cancer, metastasized throughout my limbic system and my bloodstream and my brain; he’s an uncontrolled hemorrhage, seeping through the walls of every vein and artery, staining my insides shocking crimson; he’s a fucking infection, contaminating my cells and spawning thousands and thousands and thousands of dirty viral replications; he’s necrotizing fasciitis, the bacteria eating my skin away.

“Tell me,” she says shakily, desperately, “Frank, I want to know.”

“You scared babe?”

The instant I lie, we’re climbing higher yet, twisting our bodies into the wires like parts of a massive sculpture, Quinn leaning away over the pitch-black water with his wild laughter echoing out to get lost in the night. Transfixed. “Holy fuck, Frankie, look at this!”

Nausea nausea nausea, don’t be such a pussy, Frank, and so I look; I lean outwards even though my hands are numb with cold, slick with sweat and blood on the cables I’m gripping to stay alive. And it’s fucking beautiful, the water, like a river of India ink frosted with translucent opal, but we’re so high up and the stars are still so far above us and it’s just so dizzying; my heart isn’t pumping enough blood and my chest feels like it’s filled with thumbtacks.

I’m so fucking scared. Batophobia. Fear of heights. I’m shaking, I’m sick to my stomach.

Quinn doesn’t notice.

For some reason, we’ve forgotten whose idea this was.

What neither of us notice is that she’s still there; she’s climbed up up up on the cables, trying to touch those blind, mechanical stars, and it turns out… she’s terrified too.

“Tell me, Franky.”

No.

“I want to know, Franky.”

Fuck you.

Fuck you, fuck you, FUCK YOU, I’m screaming before I even notice that my mouth is open; I’m a storyteller, dancing around fires and rattling gourds. You’ll find me hiding inside my own face.

Singing folk songs;have you seen the ghost of John?

Long white bones and the rest all go-o-o-one.
Oh, o-o-oh, wouldn’t it be chilly with no skin on?

Wouldn’t it be chilly with no skin on?

“You want to know what I fucking think about him?!” I’m the Phantom of the fucking Opera, cloaked in death; she’s ripping off my mask and exposing my raw hideousness to the acrid New York air. “I fucking hate him, for laughing when I was so fucking scared, for trying to save you instead of me, you stupid bitch!”

She’s terrified too.

She’s tangled up in the guide wires like an injured bird, shaking shaking shaking, hysterically whimpering “Help me,” whispering, “I’m scared; I can’t get down!”

No use arguing. Can’t change her fucking mind.

And I’m drunk and so cold that the roots of my teeth are shattering as I talk; THIS WAS YOUR FUCKING IDEA, but Quinn, fucking Quinn realizes how fragile she is, how lost and delicate, trapped up against the starry winter sky; he realizes how scared she feels, when he’d never fucking notice the fear in me.

She’s sobbing by now, curled up in the fetal position on the balcony concrete with its rough surface painting rosy red abrasions on her cellophane skin. I’m a stony Michelangelo sculpture, cold and feeling nothing; I’m a mortician, slowly sealing off the ties that feed your heart.

The instant I see it in his eyes, the spark, the free-floating ribbons of disgusting, tarnished chivalry and stupid mindless atom-bomb heroics, I know he is going to fucking save her.

Then a long, numb blur; my blood staining Quinn’s hand grenadine red as he reaches out and tangles his cold fingers briefly with mine; “Sit tight, Frankie.”

Sit fucking tight, pussy.

The last time I touched his skin, sticky and blood-smeared.

Scuffed shoes, rubber squeaking on wet metal.

Quinn with every muscle in his body taut and visible through his clothes, climbing a spiderweb of wires; me alone, yelling my head off: Just come the fuck down; it’s not that far; you won’t fucking fall—

“I’m sorry,” she whimpers; God, she said it the same way then as she says it now, “I’m so fucking sorry.”

Minutes slide, dawn is breaking over the east skyline, and I’m frozen in place with cold, watching Quinn – shivering now that the alcohol-induced influx of blood is starting to fade – force himself to keep going, hand over hand over hand and then he says “Grab my wrist,” and she whispers “I c-can’t,” distant searchlights reflecting off her irises and transforming her eyes into the vacant amber ellipses of a panther, like there are already pennies resting on her lids.

Don’t look down.

“I can’t do it.”

And I’m screaming at her to suck it the fuck up, and she’s screaming back that she can’t she can’t she can’t, and the wind makes the guide wires creak as tears pour down her silicone face.

“Help me.”

And as Quinn tries to grab the next cable, his numb fingers, still slick with my blood,

slip.

She’s in my arms now, tangles of bone and hair, smothering claustrophobia, all six-hundred-something muscles, twenty-eight blanched almond teeth and 206 bones; carbon hydrogen oxygen nitrogen, dazzling calcium-white, iron sulfur sodium and phosphorous, the whole hideous human ensemble, and her mouth tastes like spiders and lipstick as she twists her neck and all of a sudden our lips are moving against each other.

I’m a breathing corpse as she presses herself hard up against me; I’m a staggering Lazarus, clawing my way from the grave. Her tongue in my mouth, her skin on my skin; I feel dead except for the familiar, asphyxiating burn of guilt and loss searing my guts. I’m a risen Frankenstein, a magic act, abracadavers.

“Oh—”

I’m on autopilot with only core functions intact; I’m one of those anencephalic babies born without brains, the kind where light can shine straight through their heads and out both blank pupils, ga ga goo goo, dead at three months. I’m Saint Jude, patron of the hopeless cases; she’s twining around my legs, she’s clinging to my neck, “Frankyy…”

Dizzy, my hands are gripping her ass and thighs, resting on my hipbones, her legs wrapped crookedly around my waist; I’m a lover and a fighter and a monster, I’m a whore.

“Kay dumped me,” she slurs against my vertebrae, and suddenly I want to laugh out loud like a fucking maniac, giggle so hard that the walls of my stomach twist themselves inside-out, sending white-hot acid cascading into the cavern inside my ribcage, washing out the sticky filth of my heart.

Kay dumped her.

She killed my boyfriend, Kay dumped her, and now she’s fucking sad.

Slip.

Fuck.

Accident.

Quinn’s scarlet fingers uncurl from the wire as if in slow motion—

Who the fuck am I kidding?

It only takes an instant and he’s gone.

That was the gunshot wound: all-encompassing terror, loss, a consuming ache taking root in my empty chest and blossoming like a hemorrhage until I was submerged in it and drowning, ears eyes nose mouth all overflowed with a flood of hot, wet scarlet. Guilt and panic ripping through me like a bullet slices muscle and flesh, a toxic shock to stop your heart.