                     
                                PORNOGRAPHY
                                    By 
                               Black Sunshine
     
     
     Not with a bang but a whimper.  That line keeps repeating
itself in my head over and over, pounding deeper every time.  And
the harder I try to rid myself of the annoying thought, the
faster it swirls, repeats, swirls, repeats, and I wish I could
throw it against the wall and watch it shatter into a million
silent pieces.  That's how I wish this night would end, this one
final Halloween night.  I'm driving through the darkness, the
madness, wishing we could just be there, wherever it is we're
going.  Kathy keeps insisting there's a party on the north side
where we can score some crystal meth but we have been on the
north side since before sunset and she just tells me to keep
driving and keep driving and I'm getting tired and it's getting
hard to see.  Damien keeps coughing and I wonder if his allergies
are acting up again or he just wants me to feel sorry for him and
Tracy leans over the seat to ask him to pass it back and Kathy
asks me what happened to my friend LeRoy and I can't remember
anyone named LeRoy so I tell her he moved and she says "oh" and
someone turns up the radio and it's Sepultura and Jeff says "They
suck" so I turn it up louder and I am looking into the rearview
mirror and I can see Jeff and he's all over Tracy.  

     Someone hands me a glass and a whisper, "Drink this," and I
do and the liquid burns my throat going down.  Kathy finally
tells me she can't remember where the guy having the party lives
and I pull into a convenience store and Damien hands me his
cigarette but I don't smoke so I toss it out the window and he
says "I wasn't through with that" and Kathy screams with
laughter, barely covering the soft cries from the backseat--
Cries of pleasure or cries of pain?  It's all the same anyway. 
Not with a bang but a whim-- but I cut the thought off again by
banging my forehead on the steering wheel and Damien hands me a
hundred dollar bill.  "Yeah Damien, like their going to have
change for that" Kathy says and snatches the money from my hands,
pocketing it, and Damien says he'll just go in with me and gets
out on the passenger side and I get out of the car and Kathy gets
out on my side before I shut the door and the fluorescence blinds
me for a brief second and when I blink a few times I can see the
neon signs telling me they have milk and beer and bread and gas
and I turn to look back at the car and I see Tracy's long
chestnut hair floating out the window on a breath of cold October
wind as she leans over Jeff's lap and into the shadows.

     Damien lays three cartons of cigarettes on the counter and I
am trying to find some bottled water, but I don't see any so I
grab a liter of orange juice and join Damien.  There is a melon-
colored, grinning styrofoam pumpkin next to the cash register and
I feel like crushing it with my fist but I don't and Kathy has
already found the magazine rack and she picks up the one, the
one, and tears it open, the plastic and censorship wafting to the
floor and the cashier yells "Hey you can't do that unless you pay
for it" and Kathy squeals and holds it up and says, "Here it is,
it's you, it's the one with you in it" and I squirm and turn away
and suddenly I'm feeling sick and Damien looks interested and
seizes the magazine from Kathy and looks and I watch him look and
he's getting excited, I can tell, and my sick feeling is going
away and Damien looks up and says "You never told me" and his
eyes look at me differently and I suddenly feel different and I
reach out to take the magazine but Damien jerks it out of my
reach.  

     I got married last night.  In the Green Grove Cemetery at
midnight-- only I don't think Damien remembers:  too much poison. 
He will remember later.  I am his poison now.  But it is Kathy
not me that goes to work on him once we get back in the car.  I
open my container of orange juice and Tracy, who is now sitting
up again, asks for a drink and I hand it to her and watch in the
rearview mirror as she licks the lip of the bottle first then
hands it to Jeff and when I get it back there is vodka in it and
I gulp down the rest of it and hand the empty bottle back to
Tracy.  And Jeff says "Fuck it, let's go back to my place" and
Kathy holds her wet hand in front of my face and asks me if I
have a tissue and for some reason the sight of her hand, the
reality of it, is funny so I laugh and now somehow I am
remembering something, but I can't quite grasp it all, then it's
gone and I only have the fleeting feeling that I almost
remembered-- like a jewel that glitters for an split-second in
sunlight then draws back into its colorless tangibility. 
Sometimes I think that jewel is me.

     I'm remembering too much.  Chasing a dream really,
faltering, crying blood.  Memories are leaving red, wet
handprints on my mind, and Kathy looks at me and asks me why the
fuck I'm crying, but I can't remember, don't want to remember,
this is the one night I want to forget everything so I do, and
Jeff says, "Hey, Sally, you're supposed to be driving" and now he
turns to Damien and says, "Isn't she supposed to be driving?" and
he's right so I wipe the tears from my face and the blood from my
mind and turn off onto the interstate that will take us to his
house and Jeff asks me if I did all the White Crosses and I say,
"No, but I can't get to them" and Kathy grins wide and tries to
reach into my jeans pocket to get them, but I pull away from her. 
Are we just going through the motions so certain people can cover
themselves?  It's just a joke, honey.  Where you been all day? 
Hey, I asked you where the hell you've been...

     "Stop here," Tracy says, her first words since we got in the
car and I know what that means so I pull over and lift up my seat
and Tracy stumbles out of the car and leans over and pukes her
guts out and Damien gets out of the car and I turn up the radio
and now it's Alice in Chains.  And Kathy is flipping through the
magazine she bought in the convenience store, showing Jeff my
pictures and he looks up at me and says "But Damien has the real
ones" and my heart starts to pound.  Damien leans into the car
and says, "I have the real what?" and Jeff shows him the magazine
and Damien looks at me and says "Remember?" and I nod, swallow,
reach into my pocket and pull out the rest of the White Crosses
as Tracy gets back into the car.  God.  The darkness swallows me.
     
     It's almost midnight now.  There are no more kids roaming
the streets in sheets and greasy make-up and plastic suits.  It's
almost midnight and I know what that means and I feel both
heartbroken and relieved and I know there is no time to go to
Jeff's house.  Because Damien wants to show everyone his pictures
and I know what they are of.  We all know, but he gets them out
anyway, out of a pocket in his black leather jacket.  Out of the
corner of my eye, I see the body, the blood, the lifelessness,
but I can't look, and Kathy grabs them excitedly, and Jeff and
Tracy lean over her shoulder and Damien is looking at me.  "Time
to go back to the cemetery" he says and that's all.
        
     Green Grove Cemetery.  Looks much the same as always. 
Halloween has not changed it any, nor has the fact that my body
now lies within its gates, buried in it's ground.  Shuddering
again, I stop the car near the entrance, in the shadows.  Damien
motions for me to get out of the car so I do.  He gets out with
me, but the others stay in the car.  "Time to go home" he says
and I beg him to let me choose another night, but he tells me we
made a deal and I tell him I want to live another night and he
tells me it's too late.  "You have already relived your night" he
says and I say that I hadn't wanted to relive the night of my
death and he tells me that I never specified, I never chose and
he's right but it's still not fair and I have no choice.  He is
my poison now.  I married Damien last night in Green Grove
Cemetery.  Oh, what a terrible price.

     I'm remembering too much.  Chasing a dream really,
faltering, crying blood.  Memories are leaving red, wet
handprints on my mind.  Why the fuck am I crying?  I remember
Halloween night last year, trying to celebrate my first big
break-- my pictures being printed in that magazine and it was
going to be my ticket, opening doors to carpeted hallways at
which I would find my fame and fortune at the other end.  Kathy,
Tracy and Jeff-- three weathly socialite brats whom I had just
met the week before.  In the business, or trying to be anyway and
I remember too many mixed messages, mind games, too much crystal
and then I remember the car wreck, my face smashing into the
windshield, splinters of glass in my cheeks, bloodying the whites
of my eyes.  I remember my body slamming into the steering wheel,
crushing my ribcage like a roach crushed beneath a shoe on a
sidewalk.  One year ago tonight.  And he promised me a night, one
night, and then made me relive this one.  

     I turn back to look at the car, but it's gone, of course
it's gone, it was never there to begin with.  I find my grave,
forgotten, filled with the desolation of a life ended too soon
and the desperation of a tormented spirit, of me.  Damien
approaches, still holding the pictures, the damn pictures.  I
wasn't beautiful in those.  I was dead.  I lie down, but I can't
see those plush carpeted hallways anymore, the ones that lead to
my great, full, rewarding life.  I know only the impact of two
cars, each going too fast to stop and the shriek of twisting
metal; eighty-five to zero in under two seconds, stop-time 
jarring bodies, mangling vitalities.  And in the end, there was
only me.  Not with a bang but a whimper.
                    
@ 1994, by Black Sunshine
