My Jesus Novel
Chapter One
The First Time We Met
It’s February 1993 and I’m trying to write a poem on the subway when an old, bearded homeless man parks himself on the seat next to me. They always sit next to me. He smells like broken windows and rain puddles. He’s holding a large, yellow garbage bag. I hope there’s no garbage in it.
“Hello,” he snorts.
I look away.
I’m pretty sure he didn’t send that “hello” my direction. I hope not.
“Plurk,” he burps. “Sorry.”
His big overcoat pushes against my new cotton vest, and the smell from his mouth drifts towards my face as the car turns around a wide turn underneath downtown Manhattan. I cough slightly and watch his eyes droop over his cheeks and his grizzled, wet mouth sloppily opening and closing.
A man passing by with a crispy black business suit sticks a coin in the hobo’s hand.
“Thanks.”
I’m thinking about giving him a dollar or two too. I mean, I’m sitting by this poor man, and I don’t even know how he got to the subway. Where he got the money. I just hope he’s not going to buy any beer if I give him some cash. I know I have to give him something. A token something. Or else I’ll feel guilty. I always feel guilty when I don’t give the homeless man I’m sitting next to on the subway the dollar he deserves.
I reach my purse.
He’s breathing on my neck. I think he is. Somebody’s cough seeps into the air. The subway stops, then rushes back to its track. People shuffle in front of me with their gray trousers and tourist jeans.
Somebody ate fried chicken for lunch. I’m about to puke.
I don’t want to puke into my purse. I don’t know what to do, and the throw-up is beating against my throat and I’m opening and closing my mouth like I can’t breath, like I got a bone stuck in there, but nobody notices. I’m looking around for some kind of acknowledgement. It probably looks like I’m choking. They still don’t notice.
I’m about to die in here, folks.
That raw, eggy sensation looms into the far back corridor of my mouth. It gushes like a broken dam through my teeth and through my lips and through my neck and I don’t know where it’s going and my stomach is queasy and all I’m thinking about is, Jesus, when will they learn not to eat fried chicken?
I look around, bottom, up, everywhere, not knowing where the actual thing went. It’s nowhere in site. A few people manage to stare at me, but none of their stares give me any clue as to actually where the discharge went to. One woman passing by me stops and puts a hand on my back and I don’t hear what she’s saying and I don’t hear what I’m saying and now she’s leaving with a very frustrated expression on her face. I keep looking around for it.
And then I land on the damn thing.
Amazingly, I’ve managed not to purge into my purse.
The homeless man’s neck has a bubbled, thick crust oozing down his flapping black shirt, and a half-solid, half-liquid substance slowly pouring down his back. At first, his bulging fist-sized eyes—possessing a drunken, weary stupor—don’t go anywhere. Then he looks at me. Then he looks back at his front shirt.
And then he watches me for five seconds. His eyes are strong, sad eyes. Each one looks like a clock. Black and full like an olive.
And then, his eyes bring a slow, dull memory from Christmas 1992 up to my own eyes.
It’s December 1992 and Karen Carpenter is moaning in my sister’s living room.
She’s half-dead.
With sunken eyes.
And bony cheeks.
She’s moaning angrily.
Her eyes twitch a little under thin, evanescent eyelids.
She’s moaning angrily now.
Almost screaming.
She’s whispering.
I’m thinking about writing a book about Karen Carpenter. About how much I despise that woman. That silky smooth voice. Like a pair of warm house shoes in a snowy winter. I hate that.
Somebody once told me that I should meet Woody Allen. That somebody was my former best friend, Elizabeth Heart Wallace.
Elizabeth Heart Wallace hated Woody Allen. That was the first thing she told me when we met two years ago.
“I absolutely hate Woody Allen,” she said. “I wish he would rot in hell.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. “I absolutely loved Annie Hall. I think it was a perfect movie.”
“No such thing.”
“As what?”
“A perfect movie. No such thing as a perfect movie.”
“If there’s one perfect movie,” I said, “it’s Annie Hall.”
“If there’s one perfect movie,” she said, “it’s not Annie Hall.”
We were perfect for each other.
My second conversation with her about Annie Hall was the second-to-last time I talked to her. It was over the phone. I was in the bathroom, twirling the cord around my middle finger.
“I don’t understand.”
“What?”
“God.”
“God?”
“God made death. I don’t believe in God.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Why don’t you believe in God?”
“Because I’m going to die.”
“I think you like Woody Allen too much.”
“I think you hate him too much.”
“For good reasons.”
“Hmpf.”
“I think you should meet Woody Allen. He’ll ask you on a date. You’d go out. It would be perfect.”
She actually looked like Karen Carpenter. Died like her too.
In Elizabeth’s funeral, I was thinking about the future. I thought about my new best friend, Rebecca Hirsh. She was second in line. A little too sweet, a little chubby. Wore those little black skirts every day that curled around the edges like a clitoris.
She was wearing one now. There was no reason for her to wear a gothic kilt that resembles genitalia to a friend’s funeral, but Becca was always sentimental like that. At least she was crying.
Someone stared back at us to see what was doing the dying whale snort noises.
I almost puked.
Elizabeth Heart Wallace, you little bitch—why did you have to do this to me?
Try rewording.
