110618 some people enter your life with such a destructive force that you don’t even have time to wonder if you should let them into your life before they’ve destroyed it maelstrom here i am sitting in my pajamas ermembering my painting that i bought from natalie wright. because i was just sitting in the bathroom, the little phone booth sized bathroom by the front doors, and i heard my neighbor leave for work.and that of course made me think of the giant canvas with a chair and a desk and not much else. and that made me think of what it would be like if it hadn’t been destroyed. been destroyed. ha. if *she* hadn’t destroyed it. “accidentally” because it represented the part of my life that she could never touch. back before, i remember, back before, in my old place before the ruin of my life was solidified, the first time she really sliced herself up for my benefit, she had told me that she wanted to crawl into the painting and hide there, because she knew it would be a safe place because she knew i cared about it. she knew i cared about it. so then when we moved out here, she made me hang it up *in the basement,* because she didn’t like it, and she didn’t like the way it was cut unevenly-- she even had the temerity to suggest that i cut it off to make it an even rectangle-- she said it looked “ghetto.” Fucking takes one to know one. So there it hung, in the basement, because I did whatever she wanted in those days, even when it wasn’t the least bit sexy to do so. Until the day I was at work-- having left for work, presumably making the same noise with the screen door as my neighbor just made a few minutes ago-- being the unknown neighbor of the words of the painting-- yes, the *words* of the painting-- the painting was called “I sit here,” and that’s what it said: “My neighbor leaves for work. I sit here, watching, waiting.” I think it said something else before that, but I honestly can’t even remember right now-- and somehow the toilet in the little bathroom backed up-- was that the day she blamed it on our neighbor, the little neighbor girl who always managed to show up at our door any time we were making bacon?-- and overflowed, and the water was too much to be contained by the little phone booth, and it leaked right down into the basement, saturating my painting. and she said, I tried to take it down, to move it, to save it, but it just ripped right apart, and I feel so bad! This wouldn’t have happened if I had just let you keep it upstairs! with much wringing and gnashing. And I said, yeah, you’re right. It wouldn’t have. And she said, half mad half wryly laughing, hey, you’re supposed to try to make me feel better. But I couldn’t. Not that time. I just cut the rest of the painting up, into piece-of-paper-sized rectangles. I typed on the backs of some of them-- random chapters of my first “novel” that I never quite finished. I never quite finished anything in those days. I’m not sure if I quite finish anything, even now, honestly. Eventually I guess I must have thrown the pieces away, or burned them, or-- ? Are any of them still down there, in my old trunk that was my dad’s dad’s? I don’t know and I’m not going to go dig through everything under the stairs and look. If there are some pieces in there, then I or someone else will find them someday. If not, then there’s this. Me typing this will be all that’s left of my beautiful painting, the one that caught my eye and held me transfixed at a college art show that I went to with my then girlfriend. The painting I bought from Natalie Wright for I think $500 back when I could barely afford a hamburger. Oh we had homeowners insurance. We filed a claim and got the money. I just had to send in a copy of the receipt. Our neighbors-- the ugly, pill-addicted, arguing, soon-to-be-divorced parents of the girl who ate all our bacon-- couldn’t believe it. There was no way a painting could have cost $500! They kind of laughed, assuming we’d done what they would have done: lied to get more money. The money was nice I guess. But I’d send it back now plus 15 years’ interest if I could have my painting back. I’d say if I could have my *life* back, but to whatever extent has been so far possible, I got that back, by other more terrible means. A series of accidents and atrocities. I guess the painting is the doorway into the part of my life I can never get back. Destruction is destruction, after all. You let someone like that into your life, and you wake up a decade later with your clothes stripped from your back, your dignity in the toilet, and parts of you so thoroughly lobotomized that no amount of therapy or cleansing nightmares can ever restore what you once thought of as normal. The maelstrom passes and you’re standing out in the street, among your neighbors, just looking around stunned as the TV cameras pan around and people at home are sitting there thinking, damn, that’s hard to imagine. I’m glad that’s not me. And then you start to rebuild. You rebuild your personal New Orleans, your personal Oklahoma, your personal Joplin. You live in tornado alley, son-- hell, we all do, eventually. It’s just a question of who gets unlucky, when. So here I am, in the dark. The shower is running upstairs and I can hear the water draining down through the pipes, the way it’s supposed to. There’s a computer in the basement now, where I do my work-- that’s how much confidence I have that the past doesn’t really repeat itself. I guess the pipes could leak again, but they haven’t, not once, not since back then. So here I am. Waking up. Taking a piss. My neighbor leaves for work. I sit here, watching, waiting. I sit here.