Karen Wurl

The Boy Who Burned Down the Universe

You'll never read this.

A long time ago, when my name was Racine and I was in the hospital, you had long hair and you came on visiting day to see another girl as crazy as me. You saw me through the window. I didn't give you a second thought, then, but I saw you giving me a second thought and it seemed to me then that that could only mean one of two things: either I was fit to be on the other side of that window, or you were fit to be on mine.

The girl you were visiting was named Paulie, a big fat girl from Mount Prospect, a girl with healthy aggression, a girl who obviously did not puke her Twinkies and her ice cream like I did. She had got this idea that we were buddies, she and I, and she had got this idea that you and I should get together.

Through the glass I saw her mouth the words to you: That's Racine, the one I was telling you about. Maybe she mentioned that I had a slight tendency to attempt suicide with paring knives on alternate Wednesdays; nothing to be alarmed about, all I needed was a little self-confidence and a boyfriend like you. You and Paulie were sitting outside the triple-paned plate glass window, on a bench, the orderly loitering nearby. Paulie had a plastic strip around her wrist that identified her as female and dangerous; so did I. I was wearing a red sundress that I'd asked my mother to bring from home. On my side of the glass, in a red sundress, I saw you pretend not to look at me.

A few days later when my insurance ran out, they sliced the bracelet from my wrist and pronounced me greatly improved. I cannot blame them that they never suspected that I'd spent every night of my twenty-one day stay hanging my head over the toilet in my room, evicting each evening's feast of stolen cupcakes and red licorice candies from my digestive tract. The white hospital towels would be smeared with pink and the sour milk smell of sickness; but only the housekeeping staff knew that and neither they nor I volunteered the information to my doctor, who thought a mild and hysterical incapacity to life my only complaint. My mother came to the hospital to collect me and you were in the parking lot. Going home? you asked, and I nodded, looking wistfully back at the building as we passed. Maybe I'll see you around you said.

I can say what I like now because you'll never read this: Oh Peter. You were twenty; two clean decades of kindling in search of a killing flame. Boys who pick up girls they meet in the parking lots of psychiatric hospitals have only themselves to blame.

When Paulie got out of the hospital she called me. Let's go to a movie she said -- it turned out that let's included you. She gave me directions to her house and when I got there I found the two of you waiting for me.

We got stoned in the car on the way to the movie and decided not to go in. We drove around aimlessly for two hours as if obligated to spend the precise amount of time out as we would have at the movie. I was driving, grateful for something to do as Paulie did all the talking, telling me about you and telling you about me. You didn't talk much, because you were the quiet sort, and as for me, I can now tell you the truth. I know that I once told you that it was a combination of the pot and my nervousness in your compelling presence which caused my shy silence in those first days of our acquaintance, but that was so much bullshit, Peter -- I told you that to please you, as I told you other pleasant lies. I felt nothing that day akin to nervousness; I felt nothing at all. Something had happened to me since getting out of the hospital; I felt all the time as if I were wrapped in gauze. I would poke at my skin and the sensations were all muted; I would listen to people speaking to me and their voices were underwater, audible but indistinct. My sleep was shallow and fretful, discernible only by posture from my wakeful hours. A polite somnambulism characterized all my actions; I was too fatigued for suicide.

Something seemed to be expected of me. You wanted me to have a good time, you and Paulie. I smiled constantly, not wanting to disappoint. You asked for my phone number and I gave it to you. I was living so much by rote in those days, if you'd asked for a melon I'd have gone out and bought one, if you'd asked for a blood transfusion I'd have opened my veins unquestioning. I was beyond interpretations or meanings, or the mere idea that you would use the phone number to call me.

You called me several times and they were idiot conversations, you trying so hard to engage me, and me with the responses of a stone, echoing and paraphrasing every remark you made and offering nothing else. I would forget in mid-sentence what I was saying - did it show? About the third time you called, you asked me if I wanted to see you sometime and I said yes. We never set a time, and you stopped calling.

And then a curious thing happened. The numbness lifted, and a pain began to come in. It was a relief. The pain at least was treatable; it responded to alcohol, and it responded to sex. I found your phone number and called you.

So we got together. We met late at night because you worked in that restaurant. We did little talking, other than to decide what to drink, what to smoke, and whose bed to spend the night in. We did not plan; to stay together, to break up -- we made no provision for either eventuality. Was it a meager life for us? Maybe. We worked low-paying jobs rendering services to those who had more meaningful employment. We did not go to college or entertain many ambitions. The things that we wanted were simple: enough money to move out of our parents' houses, enough money to keep our cars in decent repair, enough money to drink and smoke and eat. It was so with most of the people we knew. We all graduated from high school into a series of transitory jobs and alliances. We turned twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two. We changed jobs and changed partners without missing a beat; the routines of our lives apparently inviolable.

Who were you, Peter? I remember nothing of our time together except lying naked beside you. Did we have conversations? What did we care about?

Did we care about the future? Did we expect it?

Oh I know sometimes, sometimes we talked of a nebulous future, wonderful for some unexplained reason, as if by magic or miraculous means. We were going to have a band, and tour the country in a van, and move into a great apartment in the city, or establish a commune in the country. Once we named our children; the week of the abortion, I think.

Did you really want to know if it was yours, or was that just the obligatory masculine stance? I can tell you now: I don't know if it was yours, Peter, but I was.

We took the train into the city and walked in the cold to the clinic, lost like orphans on the streets. Do you remember we couldn't, after six hours in the clinic, find our way back to the station? And we asked that elderly man, who told us to fuck off. We finally got back to the suburbs, had pizza at Wayne's, and I took tetracycline capsules for a week or so.

We named our children: Ian and Michael and Elise and Madeleine and then we had a fight, I never knew about what, and we broke up. I never knew about what.

I saw you only a few times after that. Several months had passed and I called you. You asked if I wanted to come over, and I did. We made love and I went home. We did that for three or four weeks. Then you called me one morning and told me something had happened.

It was fire; fire was what had happened. I drove over and you walked me through what was left of your mother's townhouse. We shouldn't by rights have been in there. The floors on the ground level were badly burned in places, we could easily have fallen through a weak spot. But you had to show me.

The fire had originated in the basement, in your room. The candles - you always burned so many candles! You must have fallen asleep. You showed me what had become of the room, what the fire had made of your bed, your records, your books, your guitar.

When I remember you that is the day I remember most vividly. I remember standing in the charred shell of your room, identifying the remains. You were looking for something, a small quantity of hashish, I think. We did find a bong, twisted and melted beyond recognition. I kept saying, Let's go, let's leave.

But you were digging through the ashes, producing every few minutes some new example of the mutating power of heat: a wire hanger welded onto something which must once have been wooden, though we could never be certain, the necklace I gave you condensed to a tiny silver puddle the shape of a half-moon. It's here somewhere, you kept murmuring. Like a mantra: It's got to be here somewhere.

That's how I left you, in the burned-out cellar that was once your bedroom. A month later my car broke down and in response to that I got on a bus to Portland, where I pursued my calling as a drug addict. I shot heroin for four years; why it was you who died in 1981 and not me I'll never know. I'd love to be able to tell you that word of your demise affected me greatly or led to my eventual recovery, but Peter the truth is, I don't remember feeling much of anything at the time. Like the period years before when we first became acquainted, my time in Portland is a blank to me. I have a deep scar running the length of my left inner thigh; a knife scar I assume, and they tell me it was probably the work of a client. I have other such scars, but they, like the news of your death, were delivered as if to a vacant house, and were neither grieved nor comprehended.

Peter, a good thing happened after you died. I started to hurt again, and this time I asked for help. I came home from Portland, and I got a lot of help. I started telling the truth and that's why I'm writing this.

I've been clean almost three years now, Peter. I'm healing. I went through inpatient treatment for the dope and then later for the eating disorder, which resurfaced at ten months sober. In between hospitalizations, I spent time in a halfway house with seven other recovering women. One of them, Sonia, is helping me deal with your death. Though it happened some time ago, I never dealt with it. She helped me find out where you're buried, and tomorrow we will visit the cemetery.

Ian Michael Elise Madeleine. I'm surprised I remember. I remember, too, you weren't crazy about the name Madeleine - you were just going along with it for my sake. And what was the harm anyway, they were only names for children we will never have.

I can say what I like now because you'll never read this. Or perhaps I can say what I like now because I know what I want to say - I never did before. I miss you, Peter. I think I loved you, if I loved anybody.

They tell me you were in good spirits. Some people go so far as to say it was an accident. Peter I don't believe in accidents. You already knew so much about fire.

I think of that day, our eerie fascination with the twisted leavings in your room and I can't help but wonder what fantastic object the flames made of your body. And sometimes I see myself, digging through the remains of a room I never got to see, shifting ashes and repeating like a prayer, I know it's here somewhere. It's got to be somewhere.

Karen Wurl is a dramatist, poet and songwriter. While awaiting film stardom and marriage to a series of Oscar®-nominated actors, she studies Theatre and Speech at Kennesaw State University, and works part-time in a video store. Miss Wurl has a small but rabid cult following (consisting of at least four people); her further ravings may be found at http://www.mindspring.com/~ophelia and http://pigseye.kennesaw.edu/~kwurl/. Contrary to rumors she may have started herself, she does not really mind being known as a confessional poet.