- Jimmy Broccoli
The False Beauty of Being Numb
The False Beauty of Being Numb
In this neighborhood, children play in the street without shoes –
The sidewalks are buckled and cracked, defeated after years of neglect –
Weeds in the front yards – weeds in the side yards –
Dilapidated houses, small – with the exterior paint peeling and discolored -
The police or ambulance sirens sounding so often, it’s almost musical
It’s near dark as I walk down this unfamiliar street –
The parents are calling their children inside from the day as they drink whiskey or scotch or beer and sit on their porches in plastic chairs –
They do not recognize me and look upon me with suspicious eyes
4 young men, perhaps mid-20s – all in muscle shirts or white beaters -
swaggering along the other side of the street -
visibly drunk – it’s Friday night – male pack mentality –
…I’m where I want to be…
[I don’t remember what it is like to feel emotions –
I used to feel them –
…I no longer feel them…]
I cross the street to meet the oncoming pack -
I call the largest one – the one with the muscles - a derogatory word –
and I spit it at him -
The young man looks at me sideways and with surprise –
then with extreme anger - as I call him the word again
[I just want to feel
I just want to fucking feel something –
fucking anything at all – even if it be for just a moment]
(there is no beauty in being emotionally numb)
I am thrown to the ground and the punching and the kicking begins –
…one of them spits on me repeatedly…
The pain begins - and I do not fight back
In this neighborhood, people don’t call the police
____
It is now dark –
I look up at the streetlight several feet above me –
I watch it struggle – its light blinks on and off –
it is injured, as I am
I lay in the gutter, discarded water soaking my blood-stained clothing -
as I am near unconscious -
I cannot move my right hand normally
and I am unable to see clearly out of both eyes –
I touch my face and its swollen landscape feels unnatural and unfamiliar
and I don’t regret a moment –
not a moment
I just wanted to feel something
I just wanted to fucking feel something –
fucking anything…
I feel something [I begin to smile, a swollen and lopsided smile] …
I listen to the ambulance sounds from somewhere in the distance
as I descend into blackness
Image: The "Rabbits" mask - imagined by Jimmy Broccoli - created by Briana Botsford of Bots Media.
