Jack's Desire

(via veneno--vil)

CHAPTER 8

The narrator: “About my boss, Tyler tells me, if I’m really angry I should go to the post office and fill out a change-of-address card and have all his mail forwarded to Rugby, North Dakota.
Tyler starts pulling out sandwich bags of frozen white stuff and dropping them in the sink. Me, I’m supposed to put a big pan on the stove and fill it most of the way with water. Too little water, and the fat will darken as it separates into tallow.
"This fat,” Tyler says, “it has a lot of salt so the more water, the better.”
Put the fat in the water, and get the water boiling.
Tyler squeezes the white mess from each sandwich bag into the water, and then Tyler buries the empty bags all the way at the bottom of the trash.
Tyler says, “Use a little imagination. Remember all that pioneer shit they taught you in Boy Scouts. Remember your high school chemistry.”
It’s hard to imagine Tyler in Boy Scouts. Another thing I could do, Tyler tells me, is I could drive to my boss’s house some night and hook a hose up to an outdoor spigot. hook the hose to a hand pump, and I could inject the house plumbing with a charge of industrial dye. Red or blue or green, and wait to see how my boss looks the next day. Or, I could just sit in the bushes and pump the hand pump until the plumbing was superpressurized to 110 psi. This way, when someone goes to flush a toilet, the toilet tank will explode. At 150 psi, if someone turns on the shower, the water pressure will blow off the shower head, strip the threads, blam, the shower head turns into a mortar shell.
Tyler only says this to make me feel better. The truth is I like my boss. Besides, I’m enlightened now. You know, only Buddha-style behavior. Spider chrysanthemums. The Diamond Sutra and the Blue Cliff Record. Hari Rama, you know, Krishna, Krishna. You know, Enlightened.
“Sticking feathers up your butt,” Tyler says, “does not make you a chicken.”
As the fat renders, the tallow will float to the surface of the boiling water.
Oh, I say, so I’m sticking feathers up my butt.
As if Tyler here with cigarette burns marching up his arms is such an evolved soul. Mister and Missus Human Butt Wipe. I calm my face down and turn into one of those Hindu cow people going to slaughter on the airline emergency procedure card.
Turn down the heat under the pan.
I stir the boiling water.More and more tallow will rise until the water is skinned over with a rainbow mother-of-pearl layer. Use a big spoon to skim the layer off, and set this layer aside.
So, I say, how is Marla?
Tyler says, “At least Marla’s trying to hit bottom.”
I stir the boiling water.
Keep skimming until no more tallow rises. This is tallow we’re skimming off the water. Good clean tallow.
Tyler says I’m nowhere near hitting the bottom, yet. And if I don’t fall all the way, I can’t be saved. Jesus did it with his crucifixion thing. I shouldn’t just abandon money and property and knowledge. This isn’t just a weekend retreat. I should run from self-improvement, and I should be running toward disaster. I can’t just play it safe anymore.
This isn’t a seminar.
“If you lose your nerve before you hit the bottom,” Tyler says, “you’ll never really succeed.”
Only after disaster can we be resurrected.
“It’s only after you’ve lost everything,” Tyler says, “that you’re free to do anything.”
What I’m feeling is premature enlightenment.
“And keep stirring,” Tyler says.
When the fat’s boiled enough that no more tallow rises, throw out the boiling water. Wash the pot and fill it with clean water.
I ask, am I anywhere near hitting bottom?
“Where you’re at, now,” Tyler says, “you can’t even imagine what the bottom will be like.”
Repeat the process with the skimmed tallow. Boil the tallow in the water. Skim and keep skimming. “The fat we’re using has a lot of salt in it,” Tyler says. “Too much salt and your soap won’t get solid.” Boil and skim.
Boil and skim.

Marla is back.“

CHAPTER 8

The narrator: “So I can wash the pants, Tyler has to show me how to make soap. Tyler’s upstairs, and the kitchen is filled with the smell of cloves and burnt hair. Marla’s at the kitchen table, burning the inside of her arm with a clove cigarette and calling herself human butt wipe.
"I embrace my own festering diseased corruption,” Marla tells the cherry on the end of her cigarette. Marla twists the cigarette into the soft white belly of her arm. “Burn, witch, burn.”
Tyler’s upstairs in my bedroom, looking at his teeth in my mirror, and says he got me a job as a banquet waiter, part time.

“At the Pressman Hotel, if you can work in the evening,” Tyler says. “The job will stoke your class hatred.”
Yeah, I say, whatever.
“They make you wear a black bow tie,” Tyler says. “All you need to work there is a white shirt and black trousers.”
Soap, Tyler. I say, we need soap. We need to make some soap. I need to wash my pants.
I hold Tyler’s feet while he does two hundred sit-ups.
“To make soap, first we have to render fat.” Tyler is full of useful information.
Except for their humping, Marla and Tyler are never in the same room. If Tyler’s around, Marla ignores him. This is familiar ground.
“The big sleep, `Valley of the Dogs’ style.
"Where even if someone loves you enough to save your life, they still castrate you.” Marla looks at me as if I’m the one humping her and says, “I can’t win with you, can I?”
Marla goes out the back door singing that creepy “Valley of the Dolls” song.
I just stare at her going.
There’s one, two, three moments of silence until all of Marla is gone from the room.
I turn around, and Tyler’s appeared.
Tyler says, “Did you get rid of her?”
Not a sound, not a smell, Tyler’s just appeared.
“First,” Tyler says and jumps from the kitchen doorway to digging in the freezer. “First, we need to render some fat.”“