Doomed

^{DECEMBER 21, 10:09 A.M. PST} A Birthday Offering

Gentle Tweeter,

The work of a supernaturalist never ends. As my flight begins its initial decent into Calgary or Cairo or Constantinople, you find me worming my ghost self into the port provided at my seat for stereo earphones. I’m shimmying deep into the electronic innards of the airplane. Tracing wires. Bridging relays. By satellite, I’m hacking into the various servers which control the security cameras ogling my parents’ far-flung abodes. Not so much to spy on them; no, I’m accessing the archived history files. By referencing the time codes I locate video footage of myself celebrating my tenth birthday, that long-ago, clothing-optional kids party where my parents hoisted a heavy piñata poured full of prescription pain medications and recreational hallucinogenics. There I am, that prepubescent me, mortified, clutching pastel-colored napkins to cover my exposed fleshy shame even as the naked adults disembowel my festive papier-mâché burro with their bare hands. These former-punk, former–New Wave, former-grunge scenesters, they squirm together on the littered floor like a mass of sweaty, drug-hungry eels.

It’s for the comfort of perspective that I seek out video of the most demeaning, most humiliating events of my former life. To all you predead people, please take note. Whenever you’re feeling depressed about being dead, duly remember that being alive wasn’t always a picnic. The only thing that makes the present palatable is the fact that the past was, at times, torture. For further solace I retrieve the cringe-inducing video files of my six-year-old, living-alive self Morris dancing, naked, around the base of an old-growth pine tree. I review footage of my four-year-old backside splayed to the camera as I gingerly utilize the shared bamboo toilet stick at ecology camp.

Ye gods, my childhood was atrocious.

Scanning through random video time codes, I glimpse my mother. In Tashkent or Taipei, she’s telling someone over the phone, “No, Leonard, we have yet to identify the right assassin….”

On a different time code, I watch my dad on the phone in Oslo or Orlando, saying, “Our last would-be executioner ran off with Camille’s credit cards….” Both tiny flashbacks occurred in the final few months of my life.

To savor the unhappiness of someone other than myself, I retrieve the video of my brother, Goran, on his last birthday. If you must know, Goran was my brother for about fifteen minutes. My parents adopted him from some tragic refugee-camp situation, largely as a publicity stunt. Said adoption was not, shall we say, a success. In the video they’ve rented Disney’s EPCOT Center and populated it with the outlandish players of a dozen Cirque du Soleil productions. Members of the media outnumber the guests, making sweet, sweet public relations hay for my mom and dad. Cameras and microphones broadcast every smidgen of the magic as my folks proudly trot out their birthday gift: a pretty Shetland pony. What was Goran to make of this situation, he who’d only recently arrived from some veiled post–Iron Curtain regime? Surrounding him were crowds of capering French Canadian clowns and nymphlike Chinese ribbon dancers. Here, he was clearly the guest of honor, and his hosts were presenting him with this young, tender animal. The pony’s mane and tail were braided with blue satin ribbons, its fur dusted with silver glitter. My father led the pony with the reins of a silver bridle, and a silver bow the size of a cabbage was tied around its diminutive neck.

Not that I, movie-star scion that I am, have ever seen an actual cabbage.

On the video, every eye is glazed with happiness. Or serotonin-reuptake inhibitors. Goran has been handed an ornate antique knife for the purpose of slicing and serving a mammoth birthday cake. His sinewy gulag body is decked out in Ralph Lauren togs, to fulfill the legal obligations of a commercial tie-in contract. Like an anarchist’s mask, his dense hair hangs down to hide his stone-colored, disdainful eyes. The casts of a dozen Andrew Lloyd Webber productions swing into a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday,” and the horror ensues.

It was not entirely Goran’s fault. In many cultures an animal so merrily presented would read as a blood sacrifice. It’s the equivalent of, say, blowing out birthday candles before ritualistically butchering the cake and handing portions of it ’round to guests. In such lusty, throwback cultures fresh meat amounted to the greatest tribute. Recognizing that, we shouldn’t have been so stunned to see the huge knife blade lash forward. Using the same effort that an American child would to extinguish every flaming candle with a single breath, Goran gripped the knife’s handle and swung it as would a hale gladiator: to execute a hearty feast. Here, I slow the video to a frame-by-frame analysis. The prancing clowns are fixed in their manic attitudes. The silver reins are wrapped twice around my father’s hand. In moaning slow motion my mother says, “Make… a… wish….”

There’s no blood, not at first. What follows comes in slowed strobes of tragedy. Goran wields his weapon in a wide, gleaming arc, and the tip of the blade passes cleanly through the furred throat of the startled pony. Even before it drops, before a hot fan of blood bursts from its nicked artery and bisected windpipe, exploding in every direction, the animal’s eyes roll backward until only the whites show.

Like a matador’s crimson cape, the curtain of equine blood sweeps over the massive birthday cake, melting the sculpted sugar flowers and dousing the tiny flames of its thirteen candles. The pony’s flailing heart casts thick gobbets of blood that splash the rainbow sequins and spandex of the Cirque clowns. Even as network cameras continue to roll, hot pony gore assails the elegant Xanaxed facades of my parents’ placid smiles. Even now, watching this on video, I see myself in the background as the poor little horse collapses on the lawn. The assembled multitudes shield their faces with their upraised forearms and duck their heads for protection; fainting or dodging, this vast field of onlookers appears to be bowing in humble awe. As the pony slumps to the ground, everyone falls, everyone but Goran and myself. Only my brother and I remain upright. The pair of us stand alone in the center of what looks like a battlefield, a massacre of blood-smeared victims.

This, despite the counsel of my mother and Judy Blume, this forceful red spouting is how I’d always imagined my first menstruation would present itself. Therefore, I remain steadfast.

Judging from our calm expressions, it’s clear that Goran and I have both borne witness to far worse atrocities. Me, in an upstate restroom. He, in whatever war-torn hamlet he’d originated. Neither of us is a stranger to the cold reality of death. Neither of us will be stopped by it. Despite our youth, we’ve been tempered by secrets and suffering that these goofy clowns—the real clowns, I mean, not our parents—could never surmise. The Shetland pony sputters the last drops of its wet life into the grass at our feet, and the ancient kingdoms of the world surround us: Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, albeit crafted in quaint Disney microcosm.

Such a grisly panorama this presents. A tableau of Armageddon. Countless populations bowing, subjugated, baptized in hot blood, and at the center a freshly slaughtered beast is flanked by a young Adam and Eve, unfazed, examining one another’s blood-streaked bodies with newfound curiosity and admiration. Through the blood-spattered lenses of my horn-rimmed eyewear, I recognize a kindred spirit.

I’d never really fit in the world, not easily, not like coffee fits into a cup. However, seeing Goran’s cold assessment of his own mistake, I realized that I was not entirely alone. Even on low-resolution security video, my living-alive self was clearly and unmistakably in love.