Maudlin

K.T.: Why are you smelling that mint? Do you think I’m trying to kill you?

A.L.: No, I’m just trying to figure out what flavor it is.

Voluminous information about the two of us right there.

***

My grease-stained fingers don’t smudge this notebook paper anymore. It’s caked in, like a henna tattoo. I think, I believe, if reincarnation is true, then stained fingers are a recurrent theme throughout my many lives, the trademark by which you may recognize Me. Ink, blood, saliva, xylene, alcohol, grease. And that’s just from this life. There isn’t a great story to go with each, but there is some.

Ink. So much ink spilled over the course of this life, to say nothing of any others. Some of it may have gone to good use. The fluid closest to my heart, aside from the nutritious blood sustaining this corpus. Through all the hard times, there was writing, and even when I turned my back on writing, it still called out, begging for satisfaction. I could never resist its siren song for very long. Even when I crow my swan song, it shall be with pen in hand.

Blood. Countless cuts and scrapes while growing up, and cautious testing of the wound. Later, a damp feeling on my fingers, cold and wet and tacky, after I betrayed people. Perceived or actual, it’s happened more than once, and will continue to happen. Not that there have been many betrayals, many outright denials before the cock crowed thrice, but when it has happened, I have never spoken to those people again. Still recall them all, like shadow puppets in the corners of my mind.

Saliva. So many meals, much too good to waste even a crumb. Culinary heresy right there, forgive me for my waste O Heavenly Gourmand, let me atone by licking my fingers in penance. Hot buttered corn on the cob, salty and sweet and fresh. Overloaded pizza slices, chunky tomato sauce spilling onto the plate, carrying with it bets of tender sausage, crisp peppers, loathed olives. Mom’s spring rolls, scalding and oil stricken and I just burned my tongue, so each bite is muffled, the mélange of flavors an echo of their true savory.

Xylene. Lab assistance. We used xylene to clean something which I don’t recall, but xylene warped latex gloves, melting them after enough time. They felt like used condoms, slick and gooey and ill-fitting on your finger. That job was K.T. as an incipient doctor. That job was K.T. paying his dues in the darkroom, getting high from the fumes. That job was K.T. learning more about people than almost any other time in his life. And, let me not forget sacrifice-in-the-name-of-science, killing sanctioned by research, great moral dilemma for a fourteen year old.

Alcohol. Oh alcohol, the bitch I can’t escape, the whore I always return to. I embrace you to fit in and to forget. You demonstrate if I want to fit in and forget, you aren’t the answer. You swiss cheese my brain, fermenting large gas pockets within, pushing out all sorts of memories. Memories I can’t miss since I never really had them. Teaching me I can’t forsake my responsibilities.

Grease. Work is the last time I will do greasy manual labor. Yet another transition point, sustaining me in the stumble from student to laborer. A slow, pregnant shift, swelling and groaning, until it bursts open, and I find myself garbed in corporate shill raiment, screaming and shying away from the light, wondering what the hell just happened. Grease staves off the oncoming future one more day.

I wash these hands every day, whether they need it or not. Every day, the stains of the past remain caked in. These unclean fingers, the unclean memories, manipulating me.