URI GELLAR 

PART 1: DIE, EATERS OF FOOD! DIE! DIE! 

There might as well be the end of the world at the bottom of your cereal bowl
It's coming
I am listening to it.
Surely you must hear it too
The sound of your spoon
The sound of your spoon
The sound of your spoon
Telling me you are going to get
Every
Last
Cornflake

I hope they were worth it.

PART 2: MOUTHFULS

Dinnertime was not for eating. Not in our house. Not breakfast or lunchtime either. Instead, it was for gritting teeth and clutching our knives and forks.  It was for glaring at my grandfather as he ate. Our cutlery gleaming under kitchen light. Hoping to spoil his appetite with meanness. Or for cats to land on his plate and knock it to the floor. We wanted him to hear all our sighing as he lathered his hands with butter. Spit crumbs up into his eyebrows. Let us listen to how wet even the most overcooked meat sounded in his mouth. 

“Don’t spend your life with someone who chews with their mouth open”, was the only advice I ever received from my grandmother about marriage. About girls and all the things I would grow to hate about the ones I loved.  

But I didn’t need her to tell me this. I had already learned all of it from watching her. Staring at her husband eat. Tears in her eyes.  Knife in her hands. The meat growing dryer and dryer with every passing year, as if she could somehow bring an end to his endless lubrication with her bad cooking. 

PART 3: FUN WITH GROOL 

After his stroke, grandpa got different food than us. A sort of grool that got all over his face and fingers. On the sweater vest he wore every day. He was still trying to dress up for dinner. Would even comb his hair with his bad hand before coming down and being seen by the rest of us. 

All sorts of things went into grandpa’s dinner. Things we’d forgotten to eat. Or that were no good in the first place. My grandmother would mix them all together in a bowl then scoop it onto his plate. Put a foul smelling string bean on top as garnish before dropping it in front of him. And he would sit there not saying a word. Start to eat, even though he knew he was being watched. 

Sometimes we’d get good food for ourselves. Pizza or hamburgers or Chinese. While me and my father went to another room to watch TV while we ate, my grandmother would sit at the table with her husband. Eat this good food in front of him.  A big plate of the things he liked most but could no longer have. 

He’d never look up. He'd just stare into his dinner. Hang over top of this grey lump he was given to eat. Moving his mouth. Making noises. Getting messy. My grandmother watching him, forgetting she had a dinner of her own. Much too focused upon all that dripped from his mouth. And what he managed to keep inside to make noises she didn’t like. But also always smiling. As if this is what she had been waiting 50 years for. The butter dish and salt shaker out of his reach. Him sitting there, trapped and unable to go anywhere else. 

PART 4: SPOON DEATH 

Sometimes when I visit my grandmother on the weekend, she comes towards the couch where I’ve been laying by myself after dinner. Carrying a bowl of ice cream. And a spoon.  

I always hope she will go into another room, but she’ll sit in a nearby chair. Somewhere behind me and out of sight. But I’ll still hear her sitting there, asking what I’m watching. Asking why I still eat in front of the television all alone. Listening to her as she starts eating in front of it too. Scooping up ice cream. Putting it in her mouth. The sound of metal in a bowl. Metal between her teeth. I will sometimes turn and stare at her, with the kind of intensity that should be able to bend that spoon right around her fingers. Keep them from doing what they are doing.  

“Remember all of the noise grandpa used to make when he ate?” I ask. “Wasn’t that horrible?” 

“Oh, you’re too hard on him”, she says, her spoon scraping and clanging against the inside of the bowl. Her tongue appearing to lick at what it can find. “Your poor grandfather”.  

Hours later, she is still finding ice cream in her bowl. Still clutching her spoon. And while it may be clear I am no Uri Geller, and my grandmother is now older than my grandfather would ever be, I just keep turning around and staring. And staring. And staring at that terribly old face of hers and all the things she hasn’t kept in her mouth and have dribbled down her chin. 
 

I figured this would probably go in the Page Ponderings section, but strange do what strange does.

And strange spoons.

Excellent.

Vivid depiction brings back memories of that kid, the one ravenous for violence as long as his skin wasn't in the game. I always fantasized that the scufflers in question would turn on him. "Oh, you want one of us to get our asses kicked, do you?" 

BETWEEN THE TAPE

Part 4: Basement Lutzes 

On weekends we didn’t meet at the sewer. When we saw each other, it was in basements. And when we were in Garrett’s basement, we all agreed he had the best one. Good toys and a big TV. The place we wanted to be, even though he sometimes refused to turn on the TV. Or let us play with the toys we wanted to play with. 

In time, wrestling soon would take over this place too. He had dozens of plastic dolls of famous wrestlers down there. The colorful spandex outfits each of them had been painted with rubbed naked from constant handling. And in the center of the room, sitting on the carpet, there was a toy wrestling ring waiting for us to gather around. It was now our time to watch. Our turn to make crowd noises with our mouths as the fighting began.  

But unlike the schoolyard, down in the basement only Garrett could be a wrestler. He was the only one who could touch them as they marched towards the ring. Towards competition. And all we could do was sit in the cheap seats and watch as he prepared each of them for what was to come. Always beginning by delicately crossing their legs at the ankles. Then spinning them so they would pirouette in the air. Nothing like the wrestling we did at recess or that you could watch on television. A very different sport for a very different boy. And as Rowdy Piper made a perfect landing, we would all be witness to a triumphant Triple Lutz bringing the crowd to its feet as the roar of its approval filled the room.  

“This is no friend of mine”, I thought to myself, clapping and scribbling a score onto piece of paper. Holding it up for all to see. All of us showing a perfect six! And Roddy Piper dancing, triumphant into the center the ring. Garrett pretending to wipe away tears as if he was a proud mother. And me,  chanting the victor's name, but growing quieter and quieter as I slowly filled with resentment and the feeling someone had to die.

The next week, in another basement, I convinced Mark to gather all the wrestling dolls he owned, and cut them into pieces with a large knife. I watched the birthmark on his face growing more and more purple as he sawed away. And, after it was all over and we sat there, looking down at his carpet, covered with all the arms and legs and heads he had cut off, I told him he probably shouldn’t have listened to what I’d said. I could hear his mother coming. There was going to be trouble and I wasn’t going to take the blame. Especially not from Mark as he wasn’t even in the gang. At least, not officially.  

And so I saw no reason not to hurry out a back door, and run home, thinking the whole way of dead wrestlers. And figure skaters whirling like spinning tops. And my nose began to bleed from all the frustration and confusion my many ruined recesses and weekends were beginning to cause me. 

Last edited by crumbsroom (6/08/2022 6:54 pm)

Rampop II wrote:

 

Exactly!

A SUMMER INTERLUDE: PATIO LOUNGE CHAIR

I figured you could die sitting under the sun. At least eventually. The cushions on the lawn chair would get so hot in summer. Maybe you might too if you didn’t move. Maybe even hotter.  

I’d lie there worrying about how all the stuff I had inside was starting to warm and boil. All the guts and stuff you don’t want to see. Growing softer and softer underneath the sun. Keeping myself still from fear of it sloshing around and curdling. 

It was not a moment worth remembering. Just summer vacation, doing nothing. Happened all the time. Had to go outside sometimes, after all. Just lay there in the backyard. Maybe some television later. I’d forget about all of it by tomorrow, anyways. 

I wasn’t even frightened that everything around me was about to go away, it didn’t matter much. I just looked up at clouds that might as well not have happened. Listened to the sound of trees blowing in a wind that had already disappeared. Looked down at the grass my grandmother mowed, even though she was no longer here and had gone back inside.  

Even I wasn’t here. Not really.  

Then the sun grew warmer and I squinted as everything got bright. There was a hole between my feet. A place where black birds had pulled out the stuffing inside the lawn chair. A pile of cushion foam on the lawn. Yellow and sweat stained. 

I looked at it a long time. So long I suddenly found myself remembering it today. So many years later. And I started to laugh, already somehow knowing this is what will come to me in my last moments. Staring at a hospital ceiling. Yellowed and sweat-stained. A pile of cushion foam on a lawn and nothing else left. 

THE NEXT CHAPTER
Part 1: Felt Feelings 

This woman none of us knew, and no one had ever seen before, came into the classroom to warn us. It could happen anytime, she said. Eventually to everyone. All of us. This very peculiar thing.  

It had probably started happening to some of us already. Mostly likely the older ones who had their birthdays in the summertime. But no one admitted it. Instead, all of us were left looking sideways at each other. Wondering which of us were full of tentacles. Were about to grow moustaches. Hump pillows. Unable to really trust each other ever again. 

She told the girls about the blood, and the boys were supposed to cover their ears. Then she told the boys we’d wake up in the morning with our underwear full of bulging black tadpoles. I worried the girls might be listening to our secrets as I had been to theirs. Scratched at my skin. Began to wonder if I cut my own head off to stop it, if it would grow back like a salamander. If there was any escape at all. 

After school I climbed a tree with Richard and JR, who were younger and so hadn’t heard about any of it. And when I told them, they didn’t believe me either. 

“She brought tits with her. Giant felt nipples on them. Was just holding them in her hand in front of all of us. I think she made them herself, on a sewing machine” 

“Shut up. No, she didn’t”, said JR. His freckles looking like dirt. 

“Can we talk about trains”, pleaded Richard. “I want to talk about trains” 

“But it’s true. And they had velcro on the back so she could stick them on all the girls she called to stand with her at the front of the class. It was really something” 

Even though I acted like this had been funny, I don’t remember the laughter feeling any good. It was just a noise to make as the girls in our class stood there in front of us with these horrible appendages dangling from their shirt. Frowning, heads down, pig tails lank and greasy. 

But what did any of it matter once I was up in this tree. Nothing mattered. It was October and so doom was already in the air. All the leaves were dying. Shaking off as we climbed higher and higher. Maybe I would too as the branches bent beneath me. Dangling from them until I was called in for dinner.  

Then, dropping to the ground and running across the street, in through my front door, where it was dark and full of voices I recognized but couldn’t bear to be around, I would eat in another room all by myself. Not even looking the people on the television in the eyes. Swallowing my food slowly. Worrying about what it was I was feeding in there.

Part 3: 

More and more of these delicate, nearly invisible hairs continued to be spun every evening by some night spider. An inescapable fate. A moustache. Still faint. Nearly translucent. But clearly growing.  

In no time, it got bigger. Had a look about it that made me seem as soft as a kitten. The type of soft people can’t help but to reach out and touch. A terrible worry I carried with me every time I locked eyes with an adult. Realizing they had seen it. That they were thinking about what it meant for the rest of me. If it was as soft as it looked. 

Their eyes would move up and down. I could see they were suspicious of this thing standing in front of them. Maybe trying to figure out if they really knew who I was anymore. Then they’d go back to looking at my moustache. And I’d watch their hands. And no one would move for a long time. 

Part 4 

I suspect it was cleverness. Something must have got me looking in the medicine cabinet. That's where the tweezers were. Next to a bottle of castor oil, which was usually what I turned to for help. The one I sometimes took sips from when training myself to do things I couldn’t figure out. Troubles with my shirt. Or shoelaces. Or saying words wrong. The taste of my long dead great-grandparents coming to my aid. The perfume of their dried up and sipping lips still lingering inside this old bottle. At least a hundred years since their last drink. Something that would stick to the teeth for hours. Get me to put my shirt on right side front.  

But it could not be of any help with a moustache. Would at best get it sticky. Get it to glisten and be more obvious. I had to be clever. And so for this, only the tweezers could help. And with them in hand, I turned to the mirror my grandmother did her make up in. The one that made everything bigger. That let me see every hair, and where I should start pulling them from.  

And as my moustache slowly disappeared, I said goodbye to it. Gritting my teeth. Plucking my face clean until it went numb. The fine red veins in my eyes looking as if they were about to pop. So big in my grandmothers mirror it was gruesome. But also the skin around my mouth. A burning pink ring, as if I had burned my moustache off with matches. 

But what mattered was I had won. Not that I was wounded. Delicate to the slightest touch. Now that it was gone I didn't think it would dare come back. Not when it knew what I was capable of. How I would keep it weak and terrified and never ever shave it. Always pluck it until my face burst open in flames.  

And as I stepped from the bathroom, everyone in the house stopped me when they saw me. Looking down at my face and wondering what had happened. Looking at my mouth as if they were staring back in time and seeing the person I used to be. My skin growing hot and red and bashful under the sensation of all of this looking.