I've Seen a Lot of Blood

I've Seen A Lot Of Blood

I've seen a lot of blood in my time. When the world was still black and white, I watched as my father bled out the deer he had killed off The Mountain. The blood the streamed and pooled like tar but the smell was of the hot iron train tracks I liked to walk. I'm here to tell you that the saying about chickens with their heads cut off is true. I saw my grandmother take her chickens to a tree stump and cut off their heads with one swing of her axe. The chickens got up and ran around spewing blood from their necks and it looked like oil spurting from an oil well.

When I took the axe to my father back in the shed where we kept firewood, a black gash opened above his eye and you know how a head wound can bleed. He wasn't much hurt though; just needed a few stitches. But this rash act sealed my fate and I ended up in St. Andrews Home for Screwed Up Children even though my father deserved that axe. I tried to tell that to the social workers and lawyers and the court but no one was listening. They just said You Are Very Lucky You Didn't End Up In Jail.

When the world turned from black and white into color it wasn't a sudden thing like the Wizard of Oz but more like a sunrise. There were hints of pink on the high places and gradually over several days the whole world was filled with color. There are advantages and disadvantages to this. Like a photographer will often choose to take pictures in black and white, the world lost a certain artistic integrity when it turned to color but it picked up a certain excitement. Science cannot account for the change in the world; is it a change in the actual world; a change in human perception; or a change in my imagination? I had not imagined that blood could be so red.

I make love to my girlfriend even when she is on her menses. The first time she said, I won't do this for you. I said that's OK; I wasn't expecting it. But was this a metaphor for the whole relationship? Or am I merely being clever?

St. Andrews wasn't too bad. It was located on a series of hills, the tallest of which held a large cross. Many kids were afraid of this hill and cross because they thought it marked a giant graveyard and maybe it did, but when I wanted to get away for a bit, I'd run for the cross and then down the other side of the hill where there were trees and a small creek. Once I even caught a fish with my bare hands.

The Episcopalian Church sponsored St Andrews and Father Bob decided he would spend a meal with each of the cottages. He never came back to ours. Martha asked him if he would like to fuck her, she was willing and Joan started screaming non- stop until she bit into her arm and drew blood. I don't blame him; I wouldn't eat in that cottage either if I had the choice of eating in a nice quiet rectory.

My girlfriend is semi famous, known to those in the know for her astonishing ability to play even the most difficult new music. I know what it cost her. She practices day and night on the piano and in all that practice I don't think I heard a normal, old -fashioned chord. I have to wear big earphones in defense. Finally I decided to take piano lessons so I could play my own chords and any time she wasn't around, I practice at home or I go to the piano store and practice. I've gotten to be pretty good and I envision myself getting my own gig, maybe as an accompanist to a gospel choir or maybe a nice piano bar. One day she caught me practicing and tears ran down her face. They weren't tears of joy. I guess we could play some Mozart four hand music, she spat. It's kind of funny that in a world of color, we playa black and white instrument.

I met Conrad in the Rec Room. He was hunched in a corner during Bingo.

I thought I would be a good person and set him straight. Just go through the motions, I whispered. They just want to see Participation; they're very big on Participation. You can Participate without actually Participating. Thanks dude, he said. His hair was long and not very clean. He was a couple years older than me. I asked him if he would like to be my boyfriend and he said yes. After that, we walked around the place holding hands. Holding hands was against the rules so we had to be sneaky.

This all made my secret girlfriend mad. She was my roommate in the cottage bedroom. We pushed our beds together and then pushed ourselves together. My breasts were just budding but hers were nice and full. I loved that feeling between my legs and that sudden wavy feeling like falling off a cliff into the ocean. You'll probably have sex with Conrad, she said. Yuk, no, I said. He was a platonic boyfriend. After about a week a staff made us push the beds apart. She said it was against state law for beds to be put together. This was my first annoyance with government; as if they didn't have anything better to do than make laws about where kids beds were placed.

After a while Conrad said I could call him Connie. Most of the other kids called him The Dude and he was held in high esteem. He was struggling to die. I feel like a load of wet laundry trying to dry out in the rain, he said.

Sometimes I want to just kiss my girlfriend all night. She lays there asleep with a little line of drool running down the corner of her mouth. I think she is the most beautiful woman I know and her lips are like that cliché, a cupid's bow. I lean down and barely touch my lips to hers. She stirs and smiles in her sleep. I kiss her again. She wakes up a little. I just want to kiss you, I say. OK, she says and I kiss her and gently suck her lips for about an hour.

One of the attractions of Saint Andrews was Marla. For a dollar she would let you see her breasts. These weren't just any old breasts; she had a double set. The top breasts were regular breasts about medium size. But her bottom breasts were a smaller echo, complete with their own nipples. For five dollars you could touch all four breasts but I could never get that much together.

They were always trying to get Connie to cut his hair. But he said with long hair he had long thoughts and with short hair his thoughts would be short. One day they held him down and cut his hair. The minute they were done he crashed his fist into the window of the nurses' station and got a big piece of glass. Then he ran the glass up the inside of his arm. Blood pumped out of his arm, spurting with each beat of his heart. One staff put his own hands over the spurt and held on tight. An ambulance came and they saved Connie's life.

Often I go to concerts. I only go to concerts where my girlfriend is playing but she plays in a lot of concerts. Then I get to see how what she has been practicing works with all the rest of the instruments. She usually wears an Armani suit with high heals. She wears diamond earrings, and diamond studs on her shirt cuffs that flash and blaze with the movement of her arms. I know that I don't exist for her at these times. I am so proud of her and love her so much that I hope it will be forever. I wonder if she will ever leave me, maybe for a conductor.

After they got Connie patched up, he was put into the ICU unit on the locked ward. I got to visit him and he was in hell. He thought monster bugs were eating his flesh and his skin was raw and gouged from his attempts to get them off. I was allowed only five minutes and that's about how much I could stand it. A little later I heard over the intercom Code blue north, Code blue north. I knew. Connie had managed to hang himself to death with a bed sheet. They gave him CPR for half an hour. They said his face was black. He died a bloodless death.

I sort of flipped out and started to bang my head against the bricks on the wall. A staff grabbed me and kicked my legs out from under me. She held my arms crossed over my torso, making a straight jacket of my own body.

She clamped my legs with hers. She was behind me and all around me. I couldn't move and for the first time in my life I felt safe.