The annual Labor Day trip is over, and I wish I could spend my time talking about the things I did and, as always, failed to do. But I work tonight, and there's still someone who wants to bite my teeth out of my head waiting for me at the Sleep Center. I have tried to write about the man by my father's grave, Barry, who hangs out at the cemetery because he'd already bought his plot and then lost his house. Now his grave is the only place he owns. Well, owns isn't the right word. He has to hide at dusk when they shut the gates, but he does have a lot of Doritos and sandwiches hidden around the cemetery, so it's kind of like he owns it. Every time I try to write about Barry though, I think about that guy who wants to hang me with barbed wire from the high branch of my burning family tree.
I'd also like to write about the homeless man who hung around Audubon's statue and who wouldn't listen when I told him that loud smells of other creatures keep birds away, and so surely he could find another place to sleep in his own vomit-encrusted military jacket. Every time I write about that man who wouldn't speak to me but instead gave himself splinters by scratching the wood benches, I think of the guy who wants to deliver my colon to the orphanage my children will soon be sent to.
I'd also like to write about how I can't ever get used to the fact that my mother's grave is actually on the property of a Ruby Tuesday's--and the Ruby Tuesday's was there first. When she died she hadn't gotten over the fact that the manager at her local Ruby Tuesday's told her--after she demanded that since she was blind her check should be reduced since half the cost is to put "stupid shit on the walls I can't see anyway"--that maybe she should dine elsewhere. She made us bury her urn in the middle of the night by the flagpole in front on the front door, and people always look at me when I put flowers there and talk to her. Once the hostess came out and asked me if I was alright, but I told her to go to hell because I thought that's what mom would have liked. I'd like to write about all that, but instead I think of the guy who is going to brush his teeth with my ashes and a toothbrush made out of my elbow.
I'd also like to write about my uncle's grave which, other than my father's, makes me the happiest. His drunk friends sometimes hang out around his grave until they are kicked out, but then come back when they're drifting through the state again. They write all over his tombstone, and sometimes it gets washed off, but then they put more messages right back on. This time I went none of his friends were there, but they had recently written on his grave:
"Ask the devil if it's your turn yet"
"Charlie!" (my uncle's name is not Charlie)
"I poured out nine beers here on August 4th"
"Remember [unintelligible] yeah!"
"Wake up, seepy-boy"
"Apollo is a peckerhead"
And someone put the lyrics to a pop song: "Lo! 'tis a gala night / Within the lonesome latter years!"
But I can't really get into all that, because I think of the guy who hasn't eaten for three days just so he has enough room to digest my entire brain.
I'd even like to write about the other graves I saw, and about the whippoorwill that I saw for the second year in a row at the grave I spend the night at. The whippoorwill must have a nest near the grave, and it sang its nocturnal song for the whole night, and that made me so happy I couldn't sleep. But then I think of the guy who wants to clone me and then push my clones into traffic while everyone who ever loved me watches.
