Housebreaking

About ten thirty. Thirty past and thirty two to nothing to do. Should have started earlier, could have started later, but what did it matter when there was nothing to do. I get up out of his bed, walk over and look at myself in his mirror. My chest itches. I scratch it. It itches more. I scratch it more. The itch is back. I thought I could leave the itch behind in New York, but apparently not. Apparently it came with me. Perhaps it wants to see Japan too. I walk over to his fridge, open his refrigerator’s door, and take out my eggs. I fry them up sunny side up using his oil and his frying pan. Out of the window I drift over the overrun lawn and through the narrow spaces between the cat’s cradle of power lines to meet a pigeon perched on a railing.

I’m back when I smell the burning smell in his kitchen. Damn. I’ll have to clean his frying pan before he comes back. Wait. No. This is my frying pan. He’s not coming back. I’ll have to clean my frying pan before I come back. Wait. No. You know what I mean.

Taking over someone else’s life is a tricky thing. I thought stuff was just stuff. Sure, I’ll take your couch. Of course I’ll buy your rice maker from you. Pots and pans too. Widescreen TV? Absolutely.

Sure I’ll take the coffee table where you taught your friends how to play dominos. Of course I’ll buy the guitar you used to write a blues song about your friends mopping the floor when the sink overflowed during the night and no one was awake to notice until the next morning when Nick slipped, tripped, fell on his ass. The ‘Somebody loves you’ teddy bear that your girlfriend gave you too. All the books that your parents shipped you, wasting tons of money when you could have just bought them here by yourself? Absolutely.

Maybe it’s not his stuff that’s the problem. Maybe it’s just that my stuff isn’t here. But whatever it is, I can tell I’m a stranger in this house. My house. His house.

I don’t have an appetite anymore. I need a shower. Leaving my eggs on his table, I walk to the next room and grab a towel off his hanging rack. It’s one of those racks that wedges itself in where the walls meet at a corner. It’s very precariously perched. Every time I neglect to show the most extreme caution, the whole rack falls and with it tumbles down my towels and hangers and pants. Many times I’ve pulled just a smidgeon too hard on the towel, or bumped the wall ever so innocently to set the tragic events in motion.

I remove the towel and the rack falls. But I swear to God I did not pull too hard this time. And I certainly did not bump the wall. I did it perfectly. But still it fell.

"You bastard! How many times did you fall on him?!" The word 'him' is clawed and red. I cough it up. "I didn't pull too hard! I didn't bump you! Why did you fall?! ANSWER ME!" But it just laughs. "This house is mine now. You are mine." More laughing. In a flash of white I'm on my hands and knees, beating the shit out of a piece of wood. I tear it apart joint from joint. "If you will not follow my rules, you will not be welcome in my house!" In a flash of white, I am on my feet, standing, pointing, and yelling at a piece of wood. I am outside, smashing a cylinder of wood into bits on my concrete porch. I try to snap the next one on my knee, but it won't snap. I persist, confident that it's feeling it more than I am. I kick the scraps into the overrun grass and collapse in my kitchen, onto my floor. It's over. With my back against the kitchen sink, in one big exhale all the tightness leaves and I am lightheaded. I fall asleep. I wake up and I'm home.