Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk (best time to read books txt) 📕

life. And, turning the tag over and over in her hand, still looking at it, Comrade Snarky says, “The way I see it . . .” She says, “Anne Frank had life pretty good.”

And Saint Gut-Free, his mouth full of corn chips, watching us all in the rearview mirror, chewing salt and fat, he says, “How's that?”

Director Denial pets her cat. Mrs. Clark pets her breasts. Mr. Whittier, his chrome wheelchair.

Under a streetlight, on a corner up ahead, the dark outline of another would-be writer waits.

“At least Anne Frank,” Comrade Snarky said, “never had to tour with her book . . .”

And Saint Gut-Free hits the air brakes and cranks the steering wheel to pull over.

Landmarks

A Poem About Saint Gut-Free

“Here's the job I left to come here,” the Saint says. “And the life I gave up.”

He used to drive a tour bus.

Saint Gut-Free onstage, his arms folded across his chest—so skinny

his hands can touch in the middle of his back

There stands Saint Gut-Free, with a single coat of skin painted on his skeleton.

His collarbones loop out from his chest, big as grab handles.

His ribs show through his white T-shirt, and his belt—instead of his butt—keeps up his blue jeans.

Onstage, instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment:

the colors of houses and sidewalks, street signs and parked cars,

wipe sideways across his face. A mask of heavy traffic. Vans and trucks.

He says, “That job, driving tour bus . . .”

It was all Japanese, Germans, Koreans, all with English as a second language, with phrase

books clutched in one hand, nodding and smiling at whatever he told the

microphone as he steered the bus around corners, down streets, past the houses of

movie stars or extra-bloody murders, apartments where rock stars had overdosed.

Every day the same tour, the same mantra of murder, movie stars, accidents. Places

where peace treaties got signed. Where presidents had slept.

Until that day Saint Gut-Free stops in front of a picket-fence ranch house, just a detour

to see if his parents' four-door Buick is there, if this is still where they live,

where pacing the front yard is a man, pushing a lawn mower.

There, into his microphone, the Saint tells his air-conditioned cargo:

“You're looking at Saint Mel.”

And, his father squinting at the wall of tinted bus windows,

“The Patron Saint of Shame and Rage,” says Gut-Free.

After that, every day, the tour includes “The Shrine of Saint Mel and Saint Betty.”

Saint Betty being the Patron Saint of Public Humiliation.

Parked in front of his sister's condo highrise, Saint Gut-Free points to

some high-up floor. Up there, the shrine of Saint Wendy.

“The Patron Saint of Therapeutic Abortion.”

Parked in front of his own apartment,

he tells the bus, “There's the shrine of Saint Gut-Free,”

the Saint himself, his pigeon shoulders, rubber-band lips, and baggy shirt,

reflected even smaller in the rearview mirror.

“The Patron Saint of Masturbation.”

While each seat in his bus, nodding heads, craning their necks, they look to see

something divine.

Guts

A Story by Saint Gut-Free

Inhale.

Take in as much air as you can.

This story should last about as long as you can hold your breath, and then just a little bit longer. So listen as fast as you can.

A friend of mine, when he was thirteen years old he heard about “pegging.” This is when a guy gets banged up the butt with a dildo. Stimulate the prostate gland hard enough, and the rumor is you can have explosive hands-free orgasms. At that age, this friend's a little sex maniac. He's always jonesing for a better way to get his rocks off. He goes out to buy a carrot and some petroleum jelly. To conduct a little private research. Then he pictures how it's going to look at the supermarket checkstand, the lonely carrot and petroleum jelly rolling down the conveyor belt toward the grocery-store cashier. All the shoppers waiting in line, watching. Everyone seeing the big evening he has planned.

So, my friend, he buys milk and eggs and sugar and a carrot, all the ingredients for a carrot cake. And Vaseline.

Like he's going home to stick a carrot cake up his butt.

At home, he whittles the carrot into a blunt tool. He slathers it with grease and grinds his ass down on it. Then—nothing. No orgasm. Nothing happens except it hurts.

Then this kid, his mom yells it's suppertime. She says to come down, right now.

He works the carrot out and stashes the slippery, filthy thing in the dirty clothes under his bed.

After dinner, he goes to find the carrot and it's gone. All his dirty clothes, while he ate dinner, his mom grabbed them all to do laundry. No way could she not find the carrot, carefully shaped with a paring knife from her kitchen, still shiny with lube and stinky.

This friend of mine, he waits months under a black cloud, waiting for his folks to confront him. And they never do. Ever. Even now he's grown up, that invisible carrot hangs over every Christmas dinner, every birthday party. Every Easter-egg hunt with his kids, his parents' grandkids, that ghost carrot is hovering over all of them.

That something too awful to name.

People in France have a phrase: “Spirit of the Stairway.” In French: Esprit d'Escalier. It means that moment when you find the answer but it's too late. Say you're at a party and someone insults you. You have to say something. So, under pressure, with everybody watching, you say something lame. But the moment you leave the party . . .

As you start down the stairway, then—magic. You come up with the perfect thing you should've said. The perfect crippling put-down.

That's the Spirit of the Stairway.

The trouble is, even the French don't have a phrase for the stupid things you actually do say under pressure. Those stupid, desperate things you actually think or do.

Some deeds are too low to even get a name. Too low to even get talked about.

Looking back, kid-psych experts, school counselors now say that most of the last peak in teen suicide was kids trying to choke while they beat