The blood you take is equal to
the blood you make
CHRISTOPHER SALERNO
To Tim it May Concern:
I had a quiet Christmas, Tim, spent with friends and family who have claimed to love me, whom I have claimed to love as well. Yet amid such an air of congeniality, of such lighthearted laughing and imbibing, followed by a reciprocation of vapid gifts, I felt myself slipping further into a dejected funk. Why could I not be happy? Why was it I who had to suffer in the presence of such holiday bliss? Let me begin.
I was a sensitive boy — a trait, I learned, that was not universally desirable. My mother praised my early artistic pursuits: portraits I would paint with ink extracted from mashed blackberries, collaged photographs of rain, sestinas I would write on frost-fogged windows. Yet my father, a robust man with a chin like a brick and a penchant for sporting, did not approve of my lifestyle — for he had yielded “a son, not a daughter.” Despite this, I could not change my ways. During televised football games, I would find myself sneaking away to the solace of a sock drawer filled with pilfered books — books, I knew, if my father were to ever exhume, would be used as kindling for the next winter’s fires. Once, in fact (which I am chagrined to admit) I found my treasured copy of Lolita torn to tatters, only to discover it a day later, appropriated as lining for the cages of father’s twin snowy owls, spoils earned from having won a duel. After the image of hot scat smeared atop Nabokov’s words had been properly cemented into my brain, I knew, for the rest of my home-life, that I would have to internalize my more delicate tendencies.
It was perhaps this recollection that sent me spiraling into a dust devil of depression this Christmas. Snifter of brandy in hand, I sat stolidly, watching my relatives interact with one another. This one was sealing this deal with that client; that one had just acquired this patent, this degree. The successes, the immaculate hairlines, the garrulous laughter. Oh, Tim. I could not take it! I darted into the nearest bathroom and sobbed for hours. Enrobed in a blanket of self-pity, I wept for all I had lost: friendships, romances, the sense of the world as a place I could navigate. I wept and wept and yet nobody seemed to notice my absence, for there were no knocks on the door, shouts for my name, nothing; only echoes of ambition making waves through the halls. Soon, I grew bored of myself and pressed my ear to the door. I heard the tap of high heels, the thud of boots, and then, the inimitable click clack clap of my father’s Oxfords, accompanied by the bludgeoning baritone of his voice:
“How’s he doing, did you ask?”
“Yes,” I heard my grandmother say. “We’re all worried about him. Such a quiet boy.”
“Well,” said my father, ”I’ve been worried my whole life. You know, that boy; never once has he made me proud. Sad to say, but he’s become little more than a paper bag, fluttering through the world without direction, carried only by wind, little else.”
To this, my grandmother sighed, and the footsteps continued while my father’s laughter boomed through the crowd. I felt my face grow hot. I flushed the toilet twice, so as to mask my plaintive moan, then washed my hands and sulked through the night.
For what seemed like days, all traces of slumber eluded me. My father’s words, like the peal of bells, reverberated through my ears at every hour. Carried only by wind, little else. I had so many things I wanted to say — to him, to myself, to the planet. My bed felt like a coffin, and I wished for an untimely death to arrive at my door. Perhaps a car, avoiding a deer, would burst through my windows and sever my head. Or maybe a satellite, knocked out of orbit, would fall through my walls and slug me to bits. Then dad would notice me; then dad would care. It was at that moment, from that precise thought, that a light flicked on in the attic of my skull, for I had devised just how to gain Father’s approval.
I had to work rapidly. My first step involved riding my bicycle to the Home Depot, where I demanded to be shown their collection of mini-woodchippers.
“What for?” asked the saleswoman, glancing skeptically at my tenuous frame.
“It doesn’t matter,” I lied.
After lugging home the most expensive little ‘chipper, I sought to accomplish phase two: making sure my parents would be watching the ball drop at Times Square.
“Yes,” said my mother through the phone, “In fact, your father and I were thinking about going to Manhattan to watch it live!”
“Perfect!” I squealed, then corrected myself. “I mean, how lovely. You’re going to have the time of my life.”
“What?”
“Uh,” I stammered, “the time of your lives. Gotta go. Bye.”
Phase three, Tim, involved securing a hotel room in plain view of Times Square.
“Yes, sir,” answered a man, “we do still have a few rooms available.”
“Great,” I replied. “How much?”
“Seven-thousand for the night.”
I mulled it over, knowing my life savings teetered off somewhere just beyond that amount.
“A real steal,” I said. “I’ll take it.”
Phase four was to throw the most unforgettable New Year’s bash the world had ever seen! I quickly commissioned a graphic artist (a delightfully loquacious gentleman with a Norwegian last name) to send cards to all of my friends and relatives. There were only a few days left until the big night, but I was certain that no person would be able to turn down a party held in one of New York City’s finest penthouse suites.
As fate would have it, the RSVPs rolled in like severed heads in Revolutionary France. On the morning of December 31st, I woke up to wet sheets, quickly deducing that I had urinated myself out of sheer excitement.
9:00 PM, New Year’s Eve
Guests were filtering in by the droves, which made me feel like a very loved man. I was dressed to the nines, wearing an all-black tuxedo with a bright, bright red bowtie — the perfect sartorial accent.
“Smashing party!” called a friend whom I have hated since grade school.
“What’s the occasion?”
“Happiness!” I shouted, “happiness, laughter, and love!”
The man and I clinked glasses, whereupon I instantly felt nauseous, which was comforting.
I was drinking quite a bit and began sweating beneath my suit. A quartet was supplying the jazz, and through the elegant picture windows, I gleaned all the sights of human achievement and prosperity — handsome buildings drenched in every fluorescent color, their occupants waving from the windows, blowing streamers, throwing confetti, shouting excitedly to guests on the streets, which reminded me of Mom and Dad! Had they made it to Times Square? I pulled out my phone and dialed my mother. No one picked up, but a few minutes later, she sent me a text that read, “too loud to talk. But we won contest lol and r standing right under the ball!” I almost squealed with delight — not for their fortuitous fate, but for my own.
The tedium of socializing slinked by in a stupor of half-drunk hours. I tended to my wristwatch as a mother would a newborn, until finally, the hands hit eleven. Covertly, I snuck into my room, snagged the woodchipper, and darted down the stairs. Surprisingly, none of my friends or family questioned me, which made carrying my plan to fruition all the easier.
I took the elevator to the bottom of the complex, nodded to the doorman, and burst into the street. Such din, Tim! Such clamor! There were humans of all creed and color, drunk as debutantes, screaming and cheering, yucking and crooning. It made me absolutely sick, but my smile, which had not left my face for several days, remained plastered to my skin like a garish tattoo. I bobbed and weaved through the crowd, my mini-woodchipper a lead-filled football, tucked under my arm. I was exhausted, but my need to succeed outweighed my dearth of strength. I looked to the clock: only fifteen minutes till the ball would drop!
“Gang way!” I shouted, sprinting faster. “Move it!”
I bonked several people with my chipper, but I knew if I did not hasten my pace, I would never make it to the center of the square in time. The clock was ticking, literally, right in front of my face; giant, austere, digital.
Within mere minutes of the ball’s descent, I made it to the center of the crowd. I set down my woodchipper and was about to turn it on when, suddenly, I heard two voices shouting my name. Mom and Dad! I waved with all the cordiality I could muster and flicked the switch on my ‘chipper. My father looked perplexed; my mother, horrified. Yet the crowd, this heap of strangers, hardly took notice. The fools! They were so enamored with the festivities, bright lights, and transgendered celebrity sightings that they did not notice me.
“Sweet humans!” I shouted, “Bear witness to a feat of true tragedy, of retribution!” Then it was that din again, Tim; my well wishes were all but drowned out by this cacophony of merriment! Frustrated, I mounted the woodchipper and looked toward the sky. The ball, that gaudy bauble of light, had begun to plummet from its perch!
“TEN, NINE, EIGHT…”
I bent my legs and prepared to swan dive into the blades, but alas, I slipped and stumbled feet-first into the machine. There was no escaping the clutches of metallic teeth. Oddly enough, I felt myself getting very aroused.
“SEVEN, SIX, FIVE…”
As the ball neared its destination, I watched in agony as my blood, bones, sinews, and skin doused the crowd in bright red confetti. How I wanted these people to feel my pain, to make notation of my suffering! But alas, no such thing seemed to occur, for despite being drenched in my guts, the crowd remained nonplussed; their celebratory ecstasy had far outweighed the fact that a very many hundred of them were now caked and coated in slivers of me. They were dancing, cheering, parading through the square in a blood-filled frenzy!
“FOUR, THREE…”
While the machine began to engulf my calves, my knees, and finally my thighs, I couldn’t help but ponder the irony of existence, how the human race, despite believing it has graduated from Animalia, has not. We are the most primitive creatures of all, surrounding ourselves with diversions — media and apps: voyeuristic devices to distract ourselves from the crucial fact that finality is inevitable, that suffering is our rite of passage.
“TWO!”
We are flawed individuals, Tim, operating in absolutes, spending our days making black and white decisions in a grayscale world. How I pitied not only my life, but the lives of the people before me. How could they not be yanked from their confetti and self-complacency, even for a second, to save me from this machine, which was swallowing my frame as would a rabbit a carrot?
“ONE!”
I forgave my father, Tim. In my final millisecond of consciousness, I gleaned his beautiful irises with my own, watched his hands, his big authoritative hands, reach for mine, knowing all too well that I was already gone, and had been gone for twenty-four years. As we wept from our separate distances, I grieved for us, for our filial miscommunication; I grieved for the fact that that there is no accounting for the differences in the souls of our parents from the souls of our own. And finally, I grieved for my own hypocrisy, that I was operating under the same absolutes that my fellow humans were — only I had taken the far darker route. Suicide, I surmised, is no answer, Tim. Living spitefully is. Thus, New Year, New Me? Wrong. New Year, No Me.
Artwork by @basper01
