Good mania, bad trouble
July 06, 2008
The laundromat is uphill from my apartment, and so it doesn't make much sense to skate there. It makes sense to skate back though. When I say skate, I mean roll, because while I'm not very good at skating, rolling home from somewhere uphill is hardly challenging. So I take the skateboard with me, wedged beneath the small of my back and my swollen with laundry backpack. Stepping outside, I can feel the sun on my skin. It's warm and dry today, this is the way I like my weather.
With the right knowledge, it's easy to gauge my mood from afar. Flatfooted, arms a dangle resigned in gravity's clutches; this is a down Eric. Laundry Eric is not a down Eric, not today. My arms do not dangle directly down. They and my torso and the earth I walk on capture and define space to either side of me: small, defiantly acute triangles. My hands, like my arms, do not wish to droop towards the center of the earth today. Instead, fingers joined and extended, they angle up at the wrist, making them closer to parallel than perpendicular to the ground. I walk on the balls of my feet, alternating feet placed directly in front of one another, as if walking an invisible tight rope. Sometimes, my arms extend out and behind me rigid, and my thumb and middle finger clap together briskly. This is an amused, or concentrating, or both, Eric.
I get to the strip mall that the Laundromat is in. The weather has turned windy, but is still good. Before laundering any clothes, I need juice, and fruit. My feet are bare, and their soles are thinly coated with tar and dirt. I buy two bananas, two plums, an apple, and some blackberry juice, then head to the laundromat and deposit my clothing in a machine. I sit outside, on my skateboard, listening to music and staring at large buildings and eating fruit. Glorious. I imagine being presented with an opportunity to give someone some fruit, and this pleases me.
Sometimes, when you are really high on powerful drugs, you stare at a fascinating hallucination rapt, only to realize it is a real object, often something simple like a ceiling or a door. In my limited experience, this is not a disappointment, but a great mix of astonishment and relief. Sitting on my skateboard, my mind, (no drugs), wanders through happy strange space like a twig in rapids. A big quiet picture of space unfolds in my head. When I say big, I mean infinite, it gives me that falling feeling in my stomach. The pictures that come together to make this bigger space picture are complicated. They twist and curl and wring, echoing hollow and pleasant in the mania cavity in my torso. Sometimes, the most bewilderingly complex thoughts explode and split like the million tongues of a bolt of lightning, only to implode back in on themselves with a hiccuping realization that what I am thinking about is simple. A face, a person, a relationship, a feeling. Simple in that infinitely complicated sort of way. This stuff puts adrenaline in my veins, and makes me laugh out loud. This is what I wait through depression for.
My laundry is done, and so I fold it. I put it all in my backpack, thank the owner (a small man, I would guess vietnamese if pressed), and leave. I am still smiling to myself. This is the fun part, rolling home. The entire way is mildly downhill, just standing on my skateboard is the beginning of an easy ten minute journey. And so I stand on my skateboard, and begin crawling slothy across the parking lot. It won't get much faster than this, unless I do something about it, which I won't.
A car is making it's way slowly up the lot. It's trajectory intersects mine, but not alarmingly so, as we are both moving lazy and careless, or so I think. We are feet away from each other now, and closing; as long as neither of us change speed, I will clear the path of the car in a second, just barely. This is all background brain work, as I am smiling and looking at buildings between terse glances to asses my status. I am two feet away from the car, a black man and woman are inside. I distractedly notice the woman looks impatient, and even angry. I relate this to my status, namely, that I am in front of their car. If they want to accelerate, I am an impediment. I could push the ground a bit, with one foot, and speed this up. This is all happening in an instant. I glance down; there is no room between me and the car, (inches?), for me to push off with my foot. No matter, I'll be out of the way in two seconds, because I am, albeit slowly, still rolling. Two seconds, apparently, is too much time, This woman cannot wait, and she is angry with me. She yells at me out of her window, stomps on the gas, and her car pushes me out of the way, and on to the ground.
This is a surprised Eric. A surprised, angry Eric. A surprised, angry, recovering Eric with adrenaline dumped into his blood like a water balloon to the face. Things get blurry, instantly. I manage to get the "What" from "What the fuck do you think you're doing?!" out of my mouth before I've forced half of my skateboard, (now in hand), into their car by way of the windshield. The car is stopped. The glass was shatterproof, and my skateboard is stuck in a sticky mess of a 'bits of glass' curtain that appeared in place of the windshield. I tug hard on the skateboard, once, twice - then the man from the car grabs my right forearm, shouting something. I wrench it free in a flash, and then put my fist on his nose, post haste. There is warm, dark blood on my hand, and a bit splashed on my face. The man is retreating back into the car, pressing both hands onto what I can only assume is a broken nose. The woman is screaming, and out of the car. She claws at my shirt and arms for a bit, and then ducks back in the car and bumbles around the floor, perhaps looking for something.
Holy shit. I am trying to asses the situation. In the last five or so seconds things have gone horribly awry, and I am trying to remember my part in it. This all seems like a fuzzy memory of some seventh grade play, and I'm having great difficulty reassembling the different acts. Ok, ok. Act One. I am skating in front of this --
Wow. Ears ringing. I'm on my back, staring at the blue sky. My ears are ringing something powerful, and I can't really make any other noises out. There's a black woman nipping in and out of the edges of my field of view. I feel the rumbling of an engine on the ground beneath me, and smell burnt rubber. My vision is fading rapidly to white, and I can't shake this fish out of water feeling. I swallow for air to no avail. My hand is on my stomach, and my stomach is covered in blood. In fact so is the ground around me. Vision fading. Suddenly, a painful and shocking revelation. This can't be good. And now the fear.
Tags for this piece: fiction story manic laundry