Tuesday, March 1, 2005

superhero

I

I read of comic book lore, those modern mythologies, and I wanted to be one of those heroes, I wanted an alter-ego. So I began exercising and lifting weights, and I underwent all forms of martial arts training. If you had a bucket, and took every ounce of sweat I perspirated, it is sure it would be filled to the brim, even leaking. It would've took three buckets to hold all the blood from wounds and cuts and scabs. And if you had a bucket to hold all my determination, you would need a bucket which was bottomless.

So I toiled for around three years of pain, triumph, let-down, beauty. When I was done, I was exasperated. I felt drained as a human being. Every ounce of me had been beaten and hit, and I was born anew.

I looked at myself in the mirror that day. I had emerged. My muscles bulged, my mind was a sharp shard of glass ready to slit, my eyes were an alive, wavering flame. I felt like I could take the world upon my shoulders and carry it for eons. Nothing would get in my way.

II

The weights I had lifted were words. The blood I had bled was from the piercing, in-your-skin prick of the syllables as they flew off your mind and into your tongue. They made me sweat. I learned how to make words kick at other words, how to block words, how to break them in half with one swipe of my hand. Words became me. They defined me. The dictionary was my holy bible, my religion. I knew all the stories.

Writers are the Gods. The Creators. The hero you always wanted to idolize. The answer to your purposeless, mundane life. In those three years, that is what I became. I became more than a man, I became a hero. The words were my costume. I became someone else through them.

I rescued those who were being beaten up by this world. Who were black and blue to it. I gave them meaning. I gave them life. I promised them absolution. I delivered. I told them there was something beyond this cyclic circle spinning around, and around, and around. I was their flailing voice. My voice soothed them and brought justice to their enemies.

When I looked in the mirror that day, I was morbidly obese. I weighed 400 pounds. I was the perfect picture of the average American. All this weight only covered what dwelled inside. Inside I was sinuous, I could lift the entire universe on my finger. I could give people strength. I was the dark knight, the man of steel. My words could death-grip you.

III

Each day was a passing bore. I went to my job, sitting in a cubicle all day, doing what amounted to nothing. Then I came home, sat, and brooded. I sat with junk food in hand, satiating my discontentment with life. Everything was empty, but the food filled me artificially. My fat stomach, chubby arms, and flabby face made it seem full. The fat covering my body hid the fact that I was thin and starving from what my life, and so many countless others', was.

Then I would sleep. Sleep was my only solace, my only pleasure. In it, I existed without consciousness. In it, I dreamt and the world I wanted felt real. I would only gain this to be reawoken each morning by the blare of my alarm, telling me it was time to work, then come home feeling sorry for myself and bask in pity by engorging myself with food.

IV

When I was younger, I read and wrote. While we learned which direction North, South, East, and West were, I was writing or reading because that was my direction. It encompassed every direction. There was no need for any other. While we learned the months of the year, while we learned anything, I was more intent on reading and writing. The only thing I cared for was spelling, and whatever else we did with language. I would pass each spelling quiz with flying colors, I would shout out answers asked about a short story we may have read.

I went through my schooling. When I was in 10th grade, we began writing essays. I hated it. It killed everything in me to write like they made you. Creative writing was the only writing I agreed with, writing that was from the heart and soul.

I would give my 10th grade teacher some of the things I had written, telling him this was writing, unlike our essays. He would always disagree with me. He would have me stand in front of the class, and read what I had handed into him. Then he would proceed to tear apart what I had written as I read, telling me it wasn't writing. That was the turning point. I was reigned from my writing. I felt it was wrong. When I stood in front of the class in tears, and the teacher still giving me his stern eye, the class laughing, that was the end.

I went through the rest of my few remaining years of school feeling I was "going through the motions." By 11th grade, I had a menial job and I hated it. By the time I graduated, I had no clue what I wanted to do. I ended up going to college, getting a major, and getting a job I also hated.

V

Something reawoke in me. It came out of nowhere, in between my usual, routine life of working, engorging, and sleeping. It was as if from 10th grade on I had been sleeping, and I had startled, opened my eyes, and was alive again. More alive than ever before.

I had been cleaning up my huge mess of a house one evening. I was putting some things in the attic when I came upon a yellowed age-old paper. I bent down and reached over my bulging belly. I read it. It was written in child's writing. At first it was foreign. I hadn't a clue why it was here. What it was. As I read on, I realized it was mine. I continued reading it until I finished. I stood there for the longest time.

Lying in bed that night, sleep didn't come so easily. My eyes peered out in darkness, but in my head there was a flaming lamp lighting everything.

When I dozed off to never-never land, and my alarm rang to awake me, I prepared for work and went. All day, in my cubicle, words whispered to me. They talked to me. Words that had long since become dust relics were suddenly glowing trophies. They wouldn't leave my head. That was where I belonged.

The day dredged on, and when I went home, instead of consuming food, I consumed words. They filled me, nourished me. It was food. The best food to ever taste.

What I wrote was the first step. It was the hardest step of all. It had taken years and years to be taken. Once it had been taken, it could not be held back. From then on, I was obsessed. I lived to leave work and go home and consume words. There was a monster in me, and he was raging.

VI

At day, I am an ordinary person. At night, I wear my words. I softly write telepathy. Each letter is a tally for everyone living caged. Each sentence is a punch, a kick. The period will break your nose, and make you bleed. The comma will comb your hair right off your head. The words will eat you alive.

I'm a superhero. You'll never know my name.
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