Songs for Cripples Michael Nelson University of South Florida

University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2009 Songs for cripples Michael Nelson University of South Florida Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the American Studies Commons Scholar Commons Citation Nelson, Michael, "Songs for cripples" (2009). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/2119 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Songs for Cripples by Michael Nelson A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of English College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Rita Ciresi, M.F.A. Lawrence Broer, Ph.D. Ms. Suzanne Strempek Shea, M.F.A. Date of Approval: May 1, 2009 Keywords: Love, sex, God, abuse, death © Copyright 2009, Michael Nelson Table of Contents Abstract ii Introduction 1 Songs for Cripples 4 Sorehead 25 God’s Presents 41 In and Out of Holes 56 The Whispers of Little Pricks 81 Acts of Animals 99 Picture Books of Injured Children 115 Old Monkey 132 Epilogue 154 i Songs for Cripples Michael Nelson ABSTRACT Songs for Cripples is a fragmented novel or collection of stories which attempts to commingle the profound and the profane while scrutinizing the absurdity of inexplicable hope and the endless pursuit of avoiding loneliness. ii Introduction There is a woman I know who wears pink mittens in summer, only makes right-hand turns and carries a spiral notebook filled with numbers. She diligently tracks the numbers of books she reads each month including the number of pages. She takes special note of the differences between shorter months and longer months and colder months, when she stays in bed, doesn’t dress and reads. She makes an effort to read more and more, smashing her own previously attained records, treating the whole affair with the kind of ferocity and determination of an Olympian. In a nod to irony, or paranoia, she once told me, “Never write anything down.” I wish I felt the way she does. Writing is awfully disappointing. Not always, but typically. I’m certain I’m not the first person to compare the act of writing to the act of masturbation, but it is an apt comparison. It’s self-gratifying and embarrassing, occasionally orgasmic and sometimes strangely unsatisfying. And it’s so often merely functional. I’m horny. Now I’m not. The metaphor, of course, looses all momentum when you suggest that the work itself is a collection of these expelled fluids. This proposition is undeniably gross, but then again, come is quite literally the stuff of life. Conversely, it is almost always wasted, wiped up and flushed, collecting in fabrics or carpets, dried on walls, smeared in dirty socks. But, on occasion, it gives birth to something. It may be something deformed, but sometimes there is beauty to be found in even the most flawed things. The book that I present here is deeply flawed. Flawed in the same ways that I am. It’s ugly and mean and self-indulgent. I hope, 1 though, it’s also strangely sweet and acutely funny when it’s not genuinely sad. Songs for Cripples begins with Frank, a lonesome man in his mid-twenties who works at a nursing home and lingers in bars, being asked by his paraplegic father to assist him in arranging a rendezvous with a high-paid escort behind the back of Frank’s mother, a kind and devout Jehovah’s Witness. At the last moment, Frank decides to spend time with the escort himself and his relationship with his father quickly deteriorates. Frank’s lack of faith, his feelings of disconnection between himself and his family and his ongoing inability to have a genuine relationship with another human being spurs his escalating desperation and declining mental health. His absolute feeling of isolation permeates the work as a whole, even as the stories drift into other areas of concern and Frank is absent from the narrative. Songs is everything I have as far as writing is concerned. It’s years of work, of things I purposely lost and additions I never imagined at the start. It’s born, in part, from endless late nights and big glasses of red wine. It’s revision after revision and the absolute recall of trivial criticisms that stick to the ears like warm honey to toast. The protagonist is “too whiney,” “he’s completely unlikable,” “not believable at all,” and the ever-present, “what’s the point of this story?” On occasion, the work is enhanced by the encouragement and suggestions of people worth admiring for his or her own keen writing talent and wonderful intellect. More than that, though, Songs is an exercise in capturing my particular demons in an artful, concealed, but honest fashion. My own father is not paralyzed and he would never speak to me in the way that Frank’s father speaks to him, but I often speak to myself in a very similar manner. Thoughts of self-loathing can be as frequent as the need to urinate. 2 In truth, I’m very uncomfortable speaking about the book. The idea of writing an introduction or reminiscing about how I came to write or admitting that I have a desire, a need to write or suggest that I have written something worth reading is unquestionably distasteful. The most arrogant man I’ve ever known once remarked to me, “I don’t want people to mistake me for being vainglorious.” I smiled as big I could. I wanted to hug the old buzzard. “I’ve never, ever thought of you that way,” I assured him. On those rare occasions when I mention to someone that I’ve written a novel-length book, the inevitable question is always the same: “What’s it about?” I begin to stammer and shake my head, completely lost as how to respond. Once, my cousin with Cerebral Palsy, asked, “What’s it called?” I said, “Songs for…” and then stopped. I looked away from him, sitting in his wheelchair with his knees kissing and his right hand balled up, his thumb peeking through his fingers. “Uh, cripples,” I said. “Emotional cripples.” When I looked at him again he wasn’t looking at me. I don’t know how to talk about Songs. I don’t know why I’m drawn to writing. I have no lofty goals when it comes to writing other than being pleased with the final creation. I might never be published, my book might never be represented by a stray pencil mark in the spiral notebook of a woman wearing pink mittens, but I take solace and gratification that some bit of me is captured in the words of Songs, and the creation of the work was an honest attempt to unearth my own pain, a tactic to dull my own hurt, maybe even put it off little, defer it. I am certain that art has that kind of power. 3 Songs for Cripples Her breasts were a good size for a thin girl, and they were quite upright, Frank noticed, maybe filled with helium or stuffed full of clouds. She was intimidating in her beauty, dark hair streaming down the sides of her head, her lips as fat as tangerine wedges, her eyes like two orbs of light beaming out of her skull and Frank wondered if she was full of love. After all, love seemed so elusive. And maybe it was in this chick’s heart, he didn’t know. Or maybe it was in the fat of her breasts, pushing out under the tips of her nipples, waiting to drip out, be born into the world. Maybe it was somewhere in her belly, dissolving in acid and then it would tunnel through her bowels and then dangle out of her little anus. Maybe love continually passes through us, Frank thought, and some of it sticks and some of it’s lost. Sometimes it burns the heart, gets puked up, farted out or just turns to shit, but it seemed so necessary. He imagined he could find love in her, the two of them naked on a bed, Frank’s fingers dancing over her thick thigh, and up along her stomach, over the little hump of fat below her belly button and his fingers would be sensors, detecting love under her flesh, in her blood or maybe he could use his tongue as a swab in her mouth, and then have her saliva tested for love. He was sure she was riddled with it. She moved towards Frank, smiling. “You want another drink, sweetie?” “Yeah,” he said, grinning, and then said nothing for a long moment. It was the type of dazed pause that comes after three apple martinis. “I’ll have another one of these,” he 4 said, holding up his near-empty glass like it was a trophy. She turned to look at the man seated next to Frank. “How ’bout you, Clovis? You had enough?” “No, baby. I’m still upright.” She smiled again and her teeth were white and straight. Clovis was black and straight. “You’re drinking Heinekens, right?” He nodded and she moved away from them, down towards the end of the bar. “She gotta lotta ass for a white girl,” said Clovis. Frank nodded as the observation was apt.

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