Lately I’ve been burning down highways blindfolded. There are only three ways out of town: east, west, south. He sits in the passenger seat and keeps one hand on mine. Wants me to learn surrender. When the road curves he tilts the wheel. We are a delicate balancing act. I know the highways by heart because I am always threatening to run. Know how the road hugs the lake, cold and endless, prone to swallowing men whole. Know the gas stations and tourist haunts. Know the dirt roads, the ones that raised me, but we don’t fuck with dirt roads. Dirt roads don’t lead anywhere.
Once I came home, stinking and wild-eyed, after five days. He said you are going to have to learn to go and stay gone.
Sometimes we play chicken with oncoming traffic. Transports, especially. He yanks the wheel left and I bite down hard on my cheek, but I don’t holler. Time stretches endless under my blindfold. Last time I took my hands off the wheel completely. Folded my arms as the opposing driver blew the horn. Imagined my body through the windshield, bloodied and broken among the roadside lupines. Last second he yanks the wheel right and corrects. Never could commit to the bit.
~*~
Lately I’ve been doing comedy in churches. Go up during funerals or mass or meditation and steal the mic. Tell all the old favourites. A priest, a psychiatrist, and a psychic walk into a bar. Knock knock, knock knock. Figure they’ll know what to call back. The Catholics should, at least. WHO’S THERE. Isn’t that what we’re all here asking, anyway? One day you are all going to find yourself at the gates and go knock, knock.
When the priests or the pastors or the ministers try to kick me off the podium I steal the mic and lead them on a goose chase around the altar, far as the cord will let me go. I channel the bravado of a streaker on a football field and contort my body around icons and statues and coffins and flower arrangements, careful not to knock the candles over. My life is a series of fires I cannot seem to put out.
Here is what I can tell you. The Presbyterians have the worst sense of humor. The Baptists have the best. The Mormons and Jehovahs want to save you. The Protestants want to nail you; the Catholics want you to burn. The Muslims look away. The Jews want an encore. The Buddhists accept you as you are; the Hindus know you’re going to be dealt with, one way or another.
When they tackle me to the ground I yell THANK YOU I’LL BE HERE ALL WEEK. I’ve gotten myself kicked out of sixteen and counting. They are making lists. They are posting community bulletins. They are writing headlines. But they are bad at spotting disguises, and I will be here yelling KNOCK, KNOCK until someone answers.
~*~
Lately I’ve been stealing husbands for sport. Haunt my favorite barstool in a dive on the edge of
town. Pickup trucks burn out and good old boys never find the bottom of the glass. I light cigarettes and tell the bartender I’ll put them out in his eye when he asks me to stop. I throw bottles at the band. The cops won’t come for me anymore. Here comes the regular.
Lipstick and cheap perfume and open thighs; I am a lazy hunter making fools of fish in barrels. Baby, let’s get out of here. Lure them when they’re back from the bathroom so they don’t piss themselves. When they’re drunk enough they get in my car and I run for the border. Baby, let’s go for a drive. I cover my plates and make the engine whine. Baby, let’s howl at the moon.
Mile out from the border I stomp the brakes. Pull a gun from under the seat. Don’t shoot, don’t shoot. I have a wife. I have a family. Use the same blindfold I had, make him get out and throw his phone into the woods. Kneel in the ditch, execution style. Go on, howl.
Who are you, they scream.
Your wife, I say. Your family.
Leave them there, shaking and spitting and screaming. Play chicken with the transports on the way home, wishing I still had the blindfold. It’s getting harder to feel anything; fear left me long ago. Instinct is all I have left. I keep thinking they’ll say something to one another, but they stay quiet. They’re too ashamed, and I keep getting away with it.
One guy follows my orders but doesn’t shake. He faces me when I tell him to kneel in the ditch. I push the gun to his forehead and he says, quiet and steady: do it. He is the only one I actually consider shooting. But I don’t. Staying alive is punishment enough.
~*~
Lately I’ve been saying prayers in strip bars. Park myself at the rail and fold a rosary into my tented palms, thumbing the beads while the girls gyrate above me. They strut in their pleasers and peel layer after layer, closer to god than any man covered in robes. Hail Mary, full of grace. Worshippers lay bills at their feet on Saturday nights, same as they pay tithe on Sunday mornings.
I am not one of them but they’re fond of me. They pull me into the champagne room and tell men it’s extra if they want someone to watch. I can do that. Bear witness. I make the men uncomfortable, and they like that. I am a consequence not yet known. Silence is holy, more powerful than any security guard posted at the door. Hold your tongue in any situation and you will find out. People will trip over themselves to fill the silence, grow angry when they cannot move you.
You can spot true believers. Men who understand they are courting divinity. There is a pair of young men who shut the place down five nights a week. Handsome adult sons with bearded jaws not yet softened by time. Overalls and workboots. One of them flashes his cash, gives the girls a standing ovation. Buys dances and rounds. His friend sits perfectly still with his face tilted upward, sweet and doe-eyed. They pay more attention to him. Sit on his lap between shows, plant kisses on the crown of his ballcap. He flushes red. Hands planted on the arms of his chair, penitent for the sins of handsier men.
He watches me closely as I shuffle the beads of my rosary. Performing my daily matins. One night he lays a hand on my shoulder, asks if he can confess. Begs my pardon. I tell him I am not in the habit of forgiving, much less forgetting, but he can try.
I am getting my fill now, he says, gesturing to the girls. I’m ridding myself.
For what, I ask.
For whom, he says.
~*~
Lately I have been setting off bombs in my living room. I plant one and sit still until he steps on it. Like all men, he is prone to finding landmines. Tense pause, like a shadow caught against a wall, waiting for detonation. The longer he has to wait, the more he longs for annihilation. There is nothing else that will make him hard anymore, though he is loathe to admit it. There are holes in the floor from all my wrath; soon we will have nothing left of a home.
Once he came home, stinking of perfume and sobbing. I said you are going to have to learn to come and stay put.
But he can’t commit to the bit. Takes his foot off the bomb and dives, a coward simpering at my feet. I imagine his body blown to bits, piles of meat on throw pillows, eyeballs sticking to end tables, sinew coating the divan. Final acts of surrender; we both know I am not the one who needs to learn them. I left god behind on dirt roads, ones that lead nowhere, with my gun to the head of a man who asked to meet his maker.
It’s me, I said. I’m her.
Maybe this is why I tell them. The KNOCK KNOCKs. They shout WHO’S THERE and I’m the only one who knows the answer. But they are bad at spotting disguises, and they will be here yelling until they find an answer they can live with. Let them. My silence is holy, cold and endless, prone to swallowing men whole. There is not a single prayer that can pry my teeth apart.