Self Immolation in the Name of Art
Cigarette’s almost burnt down to a stub. You pull up your sleeve, find a nice spot above the elbow. Somewhere not particularly visible is best. Grit your teeth and bring the still lit cigarette down to your arm. Crush the dust against your skin, really dig it in. It burns, God, it burns. But it somehow feels better than smoking the centimeter you had left on that thing. Here’s something you didn’t realize until you started doing this: it takes a long time to kill that burning stub. You’ve gotta hold it there, keep grinding it in and really feel it all. Your eyes are open but all you see are colors. Cigarette’s finally dead. You toss it on the ground, look down at your arm. The flesh is gone; you can see red where white used to be. Soon it’ll bubble up, not long after it’ll turn into a discrete little scar. Just like the ones on your legs and chest. Oh, sweet child. You’ll never change, will you?
You wobble inside, your teeth still grit, your body still shaking from the cold wind and hot ash. Your head hurts. Your arm hurts too, but not as bad as your temples. You grab a beer and sit down at your desk. You clear some space — in other words, you shove the empty beer cans to the back and find your laptop buried somewhere underneath. The unfinished drinks get gently set to the side. Your mind still spinning, you open the beer and take a few swigs. Somehow this calms you down enough to write, so you write. Crank out a few poems, lay down the groundwork for a short story or two. A good day’s work by your standards. And it only takes you an hour to boot. You get up and walk over to the fridge. The first beer was to get the gears turning, the second, a hedonistic celebration of your masochistic process. You could buy painkillers, but Heinekens work better. You poor, poor child. You’ll never learn.
But you’ve already learned. You’ve been happy, you’ve been content. And you didn’t write so much as a full paragraph during those few pleasant months. Now you hurt for it. You burn for it. You hack off pieces of your own flesh and sacrifice them at the altar in the name of your art. I mean, just look at that last poem you wrote. A happy person couldn’t write that. But you’re above happiness. You don’t need it; you’ll spit in the face of anyone who wants something better for you. You know too much. And you don’t know a damn thing.
She asks you if you’d consider antidepressants. You already know what you’re going to say. So does she. Still, you go through the motions. “I dunno, doc. You think it’ll mess with my writing?” She doesn’t break eye contact as she informs you that yes, there’s a chance it’ll do just that. There’s your out. Your easy little escape from the obvious solution to so many of your problems. “Yeah, I dunno. I’ll think about it.” You’ve already forgotten about it. She’s already lost hope in you. Yet still, you push forward. A piece of flesh here, a toe or two there. You gouge out your good eye and type up something so beautiful you wish you could see it.
Before long you’re left with nothing but the bare essentials. Half a stomach, a single wheezing lung. One eye just good enough to see the keyboard in front of you, tufts of hair on your head where a lion’s mane once resided. And you extend the one arm you’ve got left, the one sad little finger you’ve left yourself. Just enough to type, one letter at a time. You write a pretty decent poem, and you lose your last finger in the process. You’ve got nothing left to give, but that doesn’t stop you. You hold up your once graceful hand. Look it over, look at what you’ve become. And you beat yourself with it, knocking teeth onto the floor, spilling blood all over your desk. You manage to squeeze one last poem out. And as the room spins around you, you can barely even feel your nerves screaming in agony. The pain’s all blended into the background; it’s just another part of your world. Something you live with, something you couldn’t live without. Happy or not, you could die right here. Miserable and alone, you die right there.
