Nelson

TW: suicide, homophobia

His heart was still racing and he had a sick and sour taste at the back of his tongue. He remembered the blood pumping through the bulging veins in his forehead, through the tense, pumped up muscles of his arms. There was a violent, sinking feeling in the cavity of his chest; he felt like vomiting. It had taken all his will power to force his wrists to relax, to mentally instruct his fingers to release their vice-like grip. To make his body go completely limp. He had almost been unable to do it. He felt so vulnerable and weak now, his breathing shallow like a rabid and panting dog. Yet just hours ago, he had been inches, no seconds away from, taking a life - his hands around the gristly throat of that tall skinny skull, shaking it rhythmically into the concrete... up and down, up and down, up and down...

Here it was again…. the blood lust, the violence, the out-of-control rage, the need to injure, destroy, hurt - something, anyone... the need to strike back, crush, defend, annihilate. This wasn't where he wanted to be. He thought he had put all this behind him. He had been on the run, served his time, and had since brought God into his life. He’d surrendered unconditionally, tried to leave the fury and the curse of the street behind him. Every day he prayed, asked God's forgiveness; he’d been building a new life.

Where did this fury come from then? After so many years out of the can. Meditation, discipline, back to school, and even a job. He’d come further than he ever thought possible. And now this. Like a trigger finger or a bad reflex, an old habit refusing to die. The embarrassing, but all too true, he recognized it - killer instinct.

It had begun innocently enough. A casual afternoon at a Westside mall. He’d been to the very place when he was on the run from the law. The sky was harmlessly blue, the air just a little too warm. The guys were waiting outside a movie theater. It was a regular Sunday thing. He’d driven them there to get them away from the halfway house in downtown LA. Ex-cons and drug and alcohol offenders. He was resident house manager, a minor miracle. It was his job to break up the routine, let them blow off some steam. Recovery was a hard pill to swallow, and as “The Man” who had made it off the road and out of prison, through three years without a slip, the guys looked up to him, were willing to take a little more of his shit. He was tough on them, it was true, but no tougher than on himself. He tried not to think of it that way. He just knew he wanted, no needed, to change. Inside himself. He had to. And he had finally found a way. One day at a time.

It was one of the guys. A real bone head -- Nelson. A skinny, wiry dude he knew from the can. An absolute, came-out-of-the-womb-that-way, loser. Talked all the time, a fucking, bug-eyed speedball. Always on the edge, jumping out of his pants. Just rubbed everybody the wrong way. Couldn't help himself. Had this need, like a tick for skin. Always at you, in your face. Who knew why? His momma took her tittie away... who cared?

"Hey, man, check this out. I gotta major investment for ya. You wanna catch some tail? You wanna score a little weed?"

It didn't matter what he was after. Whatever. The guy was always in your face, trying to get something from you. Something you didn't want to give. He was like a fly, a gnat, a bole weevil. There was always trouble when he was around. In fact, that was about the only thing you could count on Nelson for -- trouble.

So there they were in plenty of time. Milling about the mall, checking out the babes. Like they might actually do something about it. Bragging to each other, and in front of each other - out loud -for effect - how they were gonna do what to whom. Like a bunch of high school studs. Like a bunch of big bad he-men, with hard steel cujones. What a joke. These guys hadn't been with a real woman in months. Most of them, years. Maybe a prostitute now and then, probably high out of their minds on coke or crack or something or other. But a real relationship, with a real woman, forget it.

These guys were broken men, soft in the gully when it came to intimacy, family, commitment. Him too. He wasn't making any claims. He'd had a wife, a couple of kids, a couple more out of wedlock. But now, he couldn't get close to a woman if his ass depended on it. He wanted to, could taste it in his mind, even longed, yearned for it. But when he'd step up to the plate, actually stand close enough to a woman to smell the perfume on her skin, feel the heat of her body, his eyes would hit the floor, his head turn away, his heart sink to the pit of his stomach. No, he just couldn't bring himself to it anymore. He felt like damaged goods.

And now there was Nelson. Playing around with the ATM machine. With some phony piece of plastic. Making himself obvious. Putting them all at risk. He went up to him the first time, made some kind of crack, like "Knock it off, Nelson. It's Sunday. Give it a rest." Nelson laughed, a little too loud, and walked off to look at all the things he couldn't buy in the glossy store windows. A few minutes later, the jerk's back at the bank machine, trying to make it work. "Yo, Nelson, whataya doin'? Stop wastin' your time." Nelson turns at him with annoyance and snaps, "In your neck, chump."

Suddenly, he feels a rush of blood run up the back of his shoulders, the old street fighter grabbing hold of his bones.

"I said, Nelson, don't mess wid me. Knock it off."

Nelson flips him the bird, and he feels himself start to go. He takes a deep breath and rolls his eyes up to the sky. He walks over to Nelson and grabs his arm which is still playing with the door release. Nelson pulls it away.

"Go play with the other girls, dickhead."

He sticks his mouth right into the hollow of Nelson's ear and whispers tightly, "Let's not make a scene, Nelson." Nelson grabs his face and kisses him on the mouth. Then Nelson says loudly so everybody can hear,

"I told you, sweetheart, I'm not that way."

He wrenches his face away from Nelson's and wipes his lips with the back of this hand.

"You're outta here, Nelson. Your privileges are gone."

He's said this a little too loudly, and the rest of the guys have formed a circle around them. This is exactly what he's been trained to avoid.

"Oooh, I'm shakin'," says Nelson.

A few of the guys laugh, several tell him to forget it, calm down, ignore the asshole, Nelson. There are a lot of "normies" looking on now.

"No movie today, Nelson. Wait in the van."

"Kiss my ass, faggot."

Nelson stares at him defiantly. What can he do? He's not thinking anymore. If he was, he'd figure something out, some kind of anti-confrontational technique he'd learned in that damn school, some kind of count to ten, Mary had a little lamb, kiddie mantra that'd calm him down, keep him from boiling over. But no, he wasn't thinking. There was that other thing taking over, that animal instinct that simply and uncategorical wanting to smash fucking Nelson in the goddam face. He felt a couple of the guys at both his elbows. He saw about three others standing behind Nelson. There was a larger crowd surrounding them, fear in a lot of the eyes. What did these fucking soft belly mall rats know about the laws of the jungle? What did they know about a street fighter's pride?

He pulled his right arm free from Bobby O and extended his index finger towards Nelson's mocking face. He'd done this same thing before. Many times. Many years before. It was the last gesture before the strike. Nelson didn't know this; how could he? He stood there shaking, part of himself watching from some disembodied part of his rational self, the rest of him coiled like a piston waiting to explode. Nelson then boldly wraps his hand around the out-stretched finger, and drawing it slowly to his mouth, kisses it wetly. Obscenely. Disgustingly. He draws his finger back with repulsion, and feels his hand tighten into a fist. Nelson smiles at him, almost asking for what he surely knows is coming, almost begging for this public humiliation. Then it happens.

Nelson spits in his face. The censor snaps. He feels his arm drawing back into a colossal arc, and with lightning speed and tremendous force, it erupts violently into Nelson's spongy but still smiling face. Nelson crashes to ground like a side of beef. Then just as suddenly, as if only by instinct, he's sitting on top of Nelson, hands wrapped around his throat, trying to bang the life out of this sniveling excuse of human excrement. Up and down, up and down, up and down... There is blood coming out of Nelson's mouth and nose, but he's still conscious, a vague sense of a smile on his angular face.

As if from the deepest recesses of his twisted psyche, this beating is the closest thing to ecstasy that Nelson has ever known. He stops millimeters within Nelson's life. The guys pull him off. He is breathing like a Gatling gun. Sweating like a decathlete. The sun and the Sunday afternoon come crashing back on him. He looks up and around, expects to see the prison guards, the uniforms, feel the anger and elation of the clubs. He knows what is coming - the solitary, the reprimand, the punishment, the confinement. The weeks on end in the black, soundless hole. But no. The guys surround him like a veil or a shield of mercy. They scoop Nelson up off the concrete, and like a wave crawling back out to sea, they carry the two gladiators down into the bowels of the underground. Back into the parking garage. Back to the van. They lay Nelson out on the floor, wash the blood off his face. Nelson's broken in two, but still smiling. They hit the highway and drive.

Two hours later, he's back in the halfway house. Back in his little room, trying to speak to his God. He's asking for forgiveness. He's asking for understanding. Nelson too, is back in his room. Asleep. Sown up, but asleep. Staring up at the whiteness of the ceiling, trying to remember exactly what happened. But somehow, he can't. It's already been covered up, buried instantly in the fog of survival. Yet somehow, miraculously, it's all been explained, taken care of, resolved.

Harriet, the program director has been understanding, compassionate; she insists on sweeping it all under the rug. She says she needs him here at the house, that there's no one else who can do his job. That the other guys all understand, that something will have to be done about Nelson. She hugs him strongly and settles him in his room. She says she loves him, and that she forgives him, as she knows God will too. He closes his eyes and prays. He takes a deep, deep breath, and falls heavily off to sleep.