Yesterday, I was a child. A child faced with an insurmountable problem breaks out in emotional spasms, and the words to describe its pain slip from its grasp like dust suspended in a beam of light. Yesterday, I was that child; I was that dust and I was that beam of light. Today, all I am is a man or a woman but never both. A child and a man and a woman, a dog and a bird and a machine. Mostly a machine mostly a machine mostly a machine mostly a machine. I can’t move. I can’t get out of bed. Can a machine get out of bed? Wait and see. Every call is an opportunity to chastise me, but you miss them all. The cars on the highway cast long shadows in the early morning, I can hear the ocean from my bedroom window drowned out by the roar of a siren – a police siren – and my neighbor’s children are playing in the yard; they’ve told me their names before but I can’t tell you their names because their names aren’t relevant to the story I’m trying to tell you, and the story I’m trying to tell you is important because it might be the only story I’ll ever get to tell you because you’ll hate me after I tell you but I have to tell you because if I don’t tell you I’ll die. I don’t know how to tell it, where to begin, what tone of voice to affect to get you to see that I’m serious, that this really is life or death.
Sorry for the melodrama, I’ve learned it’s the only way to get your attention, and that’s all I ever wanted, really… how do I even tell you the truth anymore, when I can’t tell fact from fiction. It’s not real anymore, none of it. Two things can be true at once, three things, four things, even; n+1=TRUE / an infinite amount of truth just beyond the firmament. My upstairs neighbors stomp their feet all night, they stop me from getting my eight hours with their dance parties. Every night. I won’t say anything; I won’t say anything even though I want to. I need to get some rest, stop the wheel from spinning long enough to re-stabilize everything that’s come undone in the move and explain everything to you.
There’s no money left, no more gold being mined in California, no more lost horses dying of thirst in barren deserts. I spent all the money on hardware upgrades: veneers, larger breasts, a few more inches on my femur or my tibia and long blonde hair that everyone thinks would look beautiful if I dyed it red. After I’m “enhanced” will you tell me I’m beautiful? will you gaze at me longingly despite not being able to touch me, or will you abstain from lusting after me in order to keep my ego in check? It doesn’t matter, so long as when I finally come to you, you still love me. Sometimes I feel like my capacity for love is shrinking, shrinking, shrinking. The moon is sending me cryptic messages tonight, mocking me like you would if you were here. It calls me repugnant and worthless. I try to ignore it and I mostly succeed; after all what can she say that I haven’t already heard. In the story, I’m going to tell you there will come a point where I describe an insurmountable problem and you naturally try and give me a solution, so I just want to let you know in advance that there’s no solution.
When will I see you? smell you? touch you? hear you? breath in your air? Something…someone… someone told me when; they told me the exact date and time and its sincerity belied something more sinister, but the deal we made prohibits me from digging any further. The deal we made was worth it, because now I know I will see you, tell you everything, show you myself in the truest sense. My reality bends around you, careful it doesn’t break. Tomorrow I am renascent, spectacular, in love; I can’t hear anything anymore, except the sound of the miracle that’s coming.
There was no flashpoint, no single moment where it all began but it began anyways, gradually over the years and it never ceases like the current of an infant river broken free from the rigidity of its mother the Ocean, filled with secrets, now bleeding out into the forests and bringing them life. Only you know why it ever started, beginnings are clouded, obscure to the rest of us. Only you know why it started, but after my story maybe it’ll stop. I built a machine with a special mechanism to extract heavy metals from my body before they leach into my blood and into my love for you, to avoid the toxification of a precious arable substrate from which that love can grow. You want it to grow, don’t you? please say yes, please say yes please say yes please say yes but if the answer is no my story will change your mind and we’ll be unified like the dissonant sounds of two distinct wind instruments coming together to create a beautiful unnatural musical note.
I did what you asked and now I’m coming. Anesthetized by a sudden rush of blood. The sirens are distant now. I’m coming to tell you my story; I’m coming to tell you my story; I’m coming to tell you my story.
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Sergio Brito is a writer in Los Angeles, CA. He will pass away on January 17th, 2073.