scribbles in many mediums

BELLY BELLY (2024)

House

The first time we meet, I am gone.

By which I mean:

The first time we meet, I am drowsy and too slow to wake; she is a blur but for her eyes- sharp, over-round and asymmetric.

Somehow it is evident by the way her gaze brushes past buckled ceilings and splintered, moon-cratered floors that she is seeing something that isn’t.

Or, that isn’t anymore.

Sometime it was that these were polished and warm, smooth against your feet, the gold-red hue of ponies in the sun, and straight as your daddy’s back used to be.

The first time we meet,

I don’t know her name and she doesn’t say a word, just runs her fingers over wallpaper that used to be splashed with happy looking freesias, that used to be painted lovely, with green arsenic and lead paint, that used to be like velvet on your fingertips, but has long faded and ripped and turned ugly [piss yellowbrown]

I hold my breath

this moment pulses in my marrow and I cannot, will not, accept its transience- she must stay, she must keep touching the walls and the floors and the perennially scarred countertops until they turn whole again. Until the flowers grow again. Until I learn how to be alone again.

I am full, so full, in a place which I have only known to be vacant for what might just be forever.

I want to show her the parlor where there was a red velvet chaise lounge that looked like satan himself anointed it with blood and candied apples- I want to lay her out on my memory of it and feed her bowls on bowls of cherries while I lick her from root to stem-

I want I want I want, I want so voraciously and so intensely it’s almost like I was never gone-

I have been alone and aching for-

when she leaves I can smell the clean of her shampoo

for days.

(HOUSE pushes those with her to CHRIS for 3B; fades back into the paneling)

theatre/immersive

excerpts

The Botfly

Charlie was electric- I don’t know how to describe it any more clearly- Ha! This one time we were scouting campsi-

Oh, no. That’s not her name. Her name’s Enkidu. I just-

See I got her this thing… beeper from the 90’s-

Oh right, I guess that deserves some- she hates cell phones. Hated? Hates. They freak her out.

I mean, she didn’t always hate them but after the botfly-

Fuck, botfly guy! You don’t know about botfly guy! Right, hold on, rolling it back. There’s this dive across the street from my- our- my- place. Super cheap, three dollar beers. loosies for 25 cents

So this guy came in- oh, right, she worked there- Charlie - or, you know - anyway.

Do you know what a botfly is? Of course you do. Nasty, manipulative little fucks. The only parasitic fly to make humans their host, their larvae come to maturity in the subcutaneous layers of human skin, but the fucked part, the part that got Botfly Guy his name, is how they get ‘em in there. See, the botfly doesn’t have the internal mechanism to plant its eggs by itself, doesn’t even have mouth parts, so they’ll catch mosquito and attach their eggs to its unsuspecting carcass before releasing it. Obvious what the next step is- mosquito lands on a person to feed, the hatched larvae and/or unhatched eggs drop off the insect and make their way into the wound, opened by the feeding. Boom. Parasitic infestation.

So. The botfly. The botfly didn’t seem to have the mouth parts necessary to effectuate his desired outcomes. So he would wait. And stare. And wait. Always the same table, right there in the corner by the busted darts machine. Never said anything. Never really did anything actionable, just made sure she would… experience the intensity of his attention. She was always friendly, y’know, and sometimes people misread that and assumed it meant more than it did and-

this guy, the botfly, thought that- thought her politeness meant something more, got obsessed

and

he

burrowed

got her number from her boss. I still don’t know how.

Oddly, for a man with no mouth, he called and called and called and called. . And she started-

I mean she was anxious already. And it’s worth mentioning that she never wanted to be here in this town let alone at that bar- she had a great job in Milwaukee, did I tell you? Everything she’d ever wanted. She came here for her mom, her mom was sick-

look I’m just trying to say there was always a layer of… of obligation, maybe, to her presence that consumed me with what was either guilt or a pure desire to make her happy even if I couldn’t make her fulfilled.

What was I?

Right. Panic attacks. She started having panic attacks. Every time her phone buzzed. Just eaten up with the idea that he might show up at our door, might follow her home. The botfly. And what are you going to do, I mean, a restraining order only goes into effect when it’s violated. And let’s be honest, if you’re sane enough to care about a restraining order, it’s just going to piss you off. If you’re not… you’re not.

So when we went to the river that day and her phone started up again, she just fucking lost it. Chucked that shit straight into the water.

Bought her a beeper the next day. One for me to match. I started calling her Charlie sometimes, after that. And she called me ‘Angel’.

Anyway. Back to… what? I had a- something important-

I can’t remember.