Friday, January 29, 2010

Where do all the Ducks go?


So I don't really care about all this. It just seems so phoney. He was just a guy who died and I know that he had family who loved him but I did read some stuff about him and all those sexy girls he used to hang around with and I thought that maybe he wasn't as happy as all that. Not that I care of course. I'm sorry if you loved him.

Some of the jocks used to say that I owed my life to him but I don't know about that at all. Pheobe liked him a lot because she says she was more like him than I was and that all the time the professors and the shrinks were saying that he was just me, he was really writing about Pheobes. And because my little sister is like the most unphoney girl in the world, I like to think that I should believe her. I hope she doesn't end up like me. She might be more like Ally I suppose but he's dead so we'll never know. All that noise in my head just sort of stopped the other day, like he was making it all happen - like he was sending it from him to me, through the air. I can't work out how that would happen but then I never really did like science. Oh I could write down things alright but when it came to all those numbers they used to just dance around in front of my eyes and wouldn't stay still. It's as if numbers are the bad cousins of letters because I like letters and they go where I say. Like that essay I wrote on Ally's baseball mitt. It all sort of just flowed out like I couldn't stop and I didn't know how to stop and there were all these tears just coming out, the first for ages.

Today it seems that these words are all that I have left, like I'm fading away. I'll have nothing to do after they've gone; I'll just sort of sit in front of the TV watching goddamn game shows and eating those crappy snacks that we have lying around. There are only a few pages left in the notebook now, a few pages until I run into the messy lists at the back, those numbers of girls that you promised to call, and someone's mother who said we must visit in some really fake way that made it quite clear that you'd better not turn up because she really didn't mean it. She'd be at the door looking like she was all smiles and behind her back you know she was signalling to the maid - because they always have maids to go and get some cheapskate stuff because it was obvious she didn't really like you. And then her daughter would smile at me in her own fake way and I'd have to suddenly remember that I had to be somewhere else - to meet the guys or bring them something they really needed and I'd run off and I'd never look back because I hated to see how their fake smiles all turned to real ones once I'd gone.

When I went back to see Pheobe all those days ago when I was in the middle of all that bad stuff, I thought about how I'd like to just hide away in the apartment, looking out of the window when the lights were off with the distant light of the streets all that way below. And I could look up at the Pennsylvania Hotel with all those floors going off into the distant sky, into the fog and think about the people up there. It's quite quiet in our place - you can sometimes hear the traffic below but they built the windows all thick and that blocks out the sound and with that and being so high up it is really quiet. But up in the Penn the rooms must be so quiet that you cannot hear anything. I went up there once with a girl and her mother who had a suite up there and even with the window open it was quiet. The window didn't open all the way because they had stopped it just so as no one could suddenly decide to jump out and funnily enough when I thought about that I wanted to jump out myself just to see what it would be like to float down to the pavement. I was fine before but the thought that someone might want to jump out made me want to jump out and I had to go all tense to stop myself going over to look out of the window and see if I could take out the nail that stopped it opening. And the girl and her mother - like the ones I talked about before looked all anxious because it was as if they could see what was up with me and how tense I'd gottten all of a sudden. Anyway, I wish I could stay at home in the quiet with Phoebe looking after me and I'd look up the Penn and see if I could see anyone at the window looking out as if they were fiddling with the windows and then maybe I could stop them. I don't know how I'd do it. I could shout at them or maybe call the goddamn fire brigade or something but then all they could do would be to come around with one of those sheets they hold out in stupid phoney comedy movies where they have to stretch it so people can jump out of windows if there is a fire or something. But that wouldn't work for someone so high would it and by the time they had driven round here - there's still loads of traffic even in the middle of the goddamn night - the person would have jumped and floated past me and hit the floor. I wouldn't want to look but I would have to like all the other idiots who would stand around looking at the mess and asking why they did it. And I'd know why they did it because I've been up there and wanted to do it and not wanted to do it. It would be so difficult. I always want to go to the edge of something and I always feel as if I want to jump off.

It's not that I'm sad or anything. The doc says I am but I'm not at all really. I just have this sort of naturally sad face and the wanting to jump off things is not because I'm sad but because of this strange thing in my head. It's not sadness - I'm really happy I am - but it's just that I cannot seem to get my body to do what my mind wants. I could be happy at home with Pheobes and with my parents not knowing I was there, and she would bring me food and little things she had bought and I would teach her things I knew from school, though to tell you the truth she probably knows more than me and of course if I was here secretly then I wouldn't be going to school and I wouldn't be learning new things so she would get better than me. Then she would go off and get a job or more likely get married and leave and I would be on my own unless I went and lived secretly at her new house but then I'd have to put up with the phoney guy she had married. They are always phoney. The girls - all those girls I have the numbers for - are brilliant when they're on their own but get them with their goddamn mothers and their businessmen fathers, they all work on Wall Street and make loads of money that they are forever splashing around on big expensive things that no one really needs. Anyway, get them away from their parents because their parents are teaching them how to be phoney and grown-up and they will marry you because you have a good job and you look good in a suit and tie.

I hope Phoebe stays away from them. We could go and live together and look after each other and we would never get married because they love you for a bit and then it all turns into dressing for parties and dressing for dinner and going to special places along the coast where they have guards to keep out anyone who doesn't spend so many dollars on their dressing up.

Anyway I suppose this guy - the one they say is me - wasn't a phoney at all - he went away like I want to do - and he had all that money and he could hide away up in the mountains and anytime he felt lonely he'd have all these girls - well they were women but they were younger than him and they'd come up the lonely road to the lonely man and they'd be happy for a few months like I suppose I would be if I married one of the girls if their parents got killed or something and they lived with an elder brother or something like that. Anyway he'd look out of the windows at night and he wouldn't have the Pennsylvania Hotel to look at and so he wouldn't have any worries about people dropping out of the windows. It would all be mountains and complete darkness apart from the storm lantern on the roof over the stoop. I'd love to live like that. Maybe he was me. I can see that house in my head so maybe he is writing everything I think. That's stupid isn't it. Maybe we are all just imaginings of other people. But what if the people who imagine us are just the thoughts of other people? Where does it all stop? Maybe he's my imagining and I'm his like a big circle. I love thinking about this - it seems real but don't go thinking about it too much because it makes your goddamn head hurt like a punch. This man who died must have loved making me hurt if he is making it all happen because I got beat up a lot. I'm a little guy really. Not so little that I look like a kid but short enough to get beaten up by almost everyone else a school.

So maybe I won't get hurt anymore now he's gone and I won't want to jump out of windows or feel like screaming at all the phoney parents of the girls I know for being so fake and for being so out of touch with what the rest of the world is really like. They just like spending money, other people's if they can get it and they do get it like thieves they are but sort of legal thieves pretending that they really care about you and then just running off with all your dollars to go and pay for some scheme on the other side of the world. And they come back in their tropical kits just to let you know they've been around the world and they laugh about how funny all the people were there. I hate all that and I hate that this is all that my parents want me to be. I don't want to learn about money or science - it just doesn't interest me - I want to learn about writing and how the great writers got to know about all that stuff they write about. Because I won't be going around the world or falling in love with really beautiful sophisticated women so I won't get to know anything kind of strange or different from what I do know, you know - just bumming around town so my parents don't know I'm here. Because none of you would want to read about that would you. I'll just have to make it up like my dead friend does. Or did because he's dead and can't write any more.

That's made me want to cry. I wasn't that bothered before because he's just a guy you know but now it made me think of all the other dead people and all the people who died today and all the people who will die tomorrow and where they all go when they are dead. You walk around the city and you can't spit for hitting live people and yet when they die where to they all fit. It's like there's no room for all those still dead people. Ally is there somewhere out with all of them and I even know where he is because I was there when we put him there but it's like I don't know either. There are two of him like there are two of every goddamn one of us - the real bits of us - the skin and flesh and all that and then there is the rest of us - the bits that make you have a fake smile at someone you don't like but don't want to offend or anything. I might call that a soul I suppose, the funny thinking bits inside. My thinking bit is running away with itself. I want to stand aside and take my body by the neck and shake it to make it slow down. Pheobe always says I think too much and today it is just too much altogether. Maybe I won't stop now he's dead. Maybe I'll just keep on going faster and faster. He was not the engine - he was the brake and now there is no brake so I will keep running and running and thinking and thinking and wondering when it will all stop. Even when I'm asleep I dream at high speed - there are lions after me - strange noises that I know are just cats outside or foghorns in the docks but they speed up my brain until I start seeing bright lights and I want to lie down or throw myself out of the window.

I don't have much more space now. I am so close to all those numbers but I don't want to see some of them because they worry me about what is going to happen. Some of the girls are nice I suppose but they all don't like talking to me know since the little problem at Christmas. And now it's snowing and it is so cold and the lake will freeze again I suppose. Then all the old questions will come back and I will have to answer them all again. Pheobe says that the real problem is not that I think too much though she says I do that as well but that I just don't know how to stop.

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