From the Archives: Chase Scene #107 - The Self-Pity Guy Chases Redemption, &c

This, believe it or not, is only ninety-nine percent fiction. The bit about getting knocked into the Welland Canal is, in fact, true (except, of course, that I'm the girl, not the narrator, and I didn't really run away and leave the poor guy there. I'm horrible, but not THAT horrible.)

At any rate, this is another of those dreadful chase scenes I feel compelled to insert from time to time, when I'm too exhausted to do a real journal entry. This one is based on a challenge I was presented with recently: Yeah, but can you write a chase scene where no-one actually moves?

Why, yes. Yes, I can.

In my case, all the clichés are true, every last one. I do live in my parents' basement, and I am over thirty. Although I've put on a little weight round the middle since then, there was a time, in my twenties, when I weighed exactly ninety-eight pounds. (This, in spite of the fact that I'm tall enough to bang my head on that one rafter that rides low over the basement stairs.) I have claimed to be a black belt in no less than six different martial arts, one of which, I later discovered, exists only in the movies. Soon after that discovery (which was, of course, public and humiliating), on my way home from a Dungeons and Dragons game, I got my ass kicked by a sixteen-year-old girl. She said I was looking at her tits. I don't remember that night too well, because of the concussion, but she was probably right. I do look at tits. Whenever a lady walks by me, whether she's eight or eighty, I get that horrible feeling like when you're on the edge of a cliff, and you get that mad compulsion to jump. Except, for me, it's a mad compulsion to lower my eyes. In the instant I think of looking at the tits--No! No! Don't look at her tits!--I find that I am looking at the tits, and then there's that disgusted look they get (the ladies, not the tits), and--

I have never had sexual intercourse, not even once. When I jerk off, I think about Rose from The Legend of Dragoon. Beautiful Rose! Oh, how your dark hair falls over your pale face! How your bare shoulder gleams in the moonlight! Rose, Rose, Rose--turn around, Rose; they're playing our song! (Our song: that one from Trainspotting--wait for it--) oh, yes, Rose! (Oh, your hair is beautiful) Rooooooose.... (Oh, tonight) Rose, my Rose, I'm yours forever! (Tonight, make it magnificent, tonight....) --and everything's stars, and she is magnificent, all pearly skin and heavy eyelids, smiling at me as she--

--augh, what a mess! Why can't it go in the tissue, just once? Man, I do this every night!

My masturbatory life is an allegory for my actual life. Everything that ought to be bright or beautiful turns out to be lumpen and jizz-stained, in the end. I feel terribly, terribly sorry for myself. I do nothing all day, every day, not because I am lazy, but because the world has ground my spirit to ashes. I am clinically depressed. I am a man destroyed, incapacitated, incapable. (Next Tuesday, when I get the money Joe owes me, I will buy a new suit, get myself a job, and start the glorious life I know I deserve. Everything will be different on Tuesday. Until then, I'll play Baldur's Gate and piss in a Big Gulp cup because I hate going upstairs, where the bathroom is. Ma always looks at me with those disappointed eyes. After Tuesday, I'll be able to meet her gaze. After Tuesday, I'll be one of those sparkling-clean TV people, who never pisses at all.)

On my first day of kindergarten, Mrs. Edwards caught me with my hand down my pants. I wasn't touching myself. I was pretending I had pockets. (Don't ask me why, but I swear it's the truth.) One instant, I was sitting there, watching a butterfly riding on the wind. The next, in the blink of an eye and the sting of a slapped cheek, my life was ruined.

"You filthy, filthy boy!"

That was what she called me, right there in front of the whole class. A filthy, filthy boy. It wasn't true before then, but it has been ever since. I became clumsy, awkward, painfully self-aware. I started getting gas all the time. Every fart between first grade and high school graduation was blamed on me, and it was usually true. One day, I sat in a chocolate brownie, then, all unawares, went up on stage to give a speech on global warming. Everyone said I must've farted too hard and shit myself. It was a joke at first, but then everyone started believing it. Guys I didn't even know were coming up to me--"Hey, John, is it true that you freaked out and shit yourself when you had to give a speech?" After a while, I almost believed it myself. I did have a lot of gas that day. Nerves always do give me extra gas. Was it possible that I'd...?

Then came puberty, and grease, and zits, and I--I had more zits than anyone. Even my zits had zits. No exaggeration: it was blackheads on whiteheads on constantly drifting continents of red, inflamed skin. My armpits were sweltering furnaces which no deodorant could tame, and I got ten random erections per hour. And the shit thing, too, was still following me around, except now everyone was calling me "Skidmarks". There were these underwear, see, in the changeroom, after gym class one day. They--do I even need to say it?--they had the biggest, brownest skidmark imaginable in the crotch; and then, someone noticed I was going commando. I almost cried.

The shitty underwear weren't mine, but the year after that, just as the Skidmark Scandal of Seventy-Eight was dying down, I puked and pissed all over myself in algebra class. There was nothing I could have done about it. I was sitting there reading a detective book behind my algebra book, when the teacher asked me a question. I tried to ask him to repeat it, and choked on my own saliva. Choking turned to gagging, which turned to retching, then spewing, which made my bladder relax. The rest, as they say, was history. Half the school called me Puker; the other half called me Pisser. It was a pisser, all right. A royal, royal pisser.

My first (and last) year of college, I tried to turn things around. I can't talk about the results. I can hardly even bear to think about them. Suffice it to say that there was a girl (more beautiful, even, than Rose), that I tried to kiss her, that she recoiled as though I'd stuck a venomous snake in her face. She pulled away, indeed, with such force, that she knocked me off-balance, and I fell in the Welland Canal. She didn't even help me out. She didn't want to touch my hand after it had been in the canal water. She just stood there for a moment, trying not to laugh, then ran off to find help. (Said help arrived fifteen minutes later. She--my angel, my salvation, my beloved--did not. I never saw her again. I heard on the grapevine that she'd moved to Salt Lake City. I always wondered if it was because of me.)

I am a filthy, filthy boy. When I wipe my ass, shit always gets under my thumbnail. When I blow my nose, the tissue always breaks. When I cough, when I sneeze, when I laugh too hard, boogers fly out of my throat. I spit when I talk and fart when I walk. I have never gone to a public swimming pool without catching foot warts, nor worn tan pants without falling victim to the Curse. The corners of my eyes are always crusty, and my crotch always smells. My breath is always sour, and my new nickname is Mr. Snow, on account of my dandruff.

Please note that I never said my breath is always sour no matter how many times I floss, however, or that I fart when I talk even when I eat all the right foods. I never said Selsun Blue couldn't snowblow my scalp, or that my flip-flops had proven impotent against the assault of the mighty verucca. I've never remembered to floss more than two days in a row, see, and I never eat any of the right foods. I use my mother's shampoo (Herbal Essences), and go barefoot at the pool. I've never even tried to learn a martial art, and I haven't asked a girl out since the Kiss of Death by the Welland Canal. I haven't applied for a job since 1987, and, goddamnit, I never even get to DM at the Sunday night Dungeons and Dragons game.

I am a loser who makes no effort. I chase redemption only in my dreams.

In my dreams, I am clean.