Irreverensibility

A short, muscle-bound man stood sweaty in his bikini briefs, unzipping a tan canvas case in the back of a small walk-in closet. He returned to face his two too tired sons and an already bruised wife, pointing his Vietnam era pistol at his right temple.

“Is this what you want? Is this what I have to do to get you to show me some goddamned respect?” he asked, whiskey stupid, demanding an answer over and over in that charming way that drunks do.

“No, no, please no” we replied in chorus. We wanted our stucco ceiling stained red, but were too afraid to say it. We were standing in the middle of a wood paneled master bedroom, surrounded by the middlest of classes. Small Lakes, Monte Carlos, Coney Islands. We had barbecues, and uncles fought over grilling duties. We went on vacations, and were beaten for ordering too much ice cream. We stayed awake in bed while our father worked the night shift — wondering what would happen if we put ourselves to sleep.

A man returns home late from work, a doberman steals a hot dog and has her ribs broken for it, her cries wake young boys, a woman defends them and is beaten, a bullet is chambered. Time flows forward, never back — except in dream. I can see his skull fragments being ground into the carpet, I can taste the iron in his blood dripping down our walls and I fantasize about the peace in the violence of his death; recursively replaying it while Synchronicity spins on my first record player.

“...Guns are like vacuum cleaners operating in the direction of life — pull the trigger and bullets are sucked back out of the recently dead into the barrel, and the Great Irreversible is actually reversed...” — Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow