Diez Anos con Jim Thomson (Chapter 5)

Chapter (5) Damaged

The band rented a storage unit for practice every Thursday night. Sometimes I showed up just to listen for a while. When music is overwhelming, as it usually is live and loud, you listen with your ears and your eyes and more. The band becomes divided and each member is on their own island, yet part of a common world. The audience is divided from and included in the experience. I love music and it’s always been a part of my life. But that’s insignificant now.
One of the practices began strangely. Jim was quiet and abrupt as he set up his drums. He was pale and did not look well.
“What’s wrong?” Bobby said.
“Well,” Jim said. “I have a story for you guys.”
We all sat on the floor in front of the drum set, and Jim told us about a girl. It was a girl Jim met on the internet from another town who claimed to be a witch. She walked with a limp but was otherwise cute and attractive. He told us that she liked to bite and she was rough from the beginning. She pulled his hair—hard, and jerked him around confrontationally, and screamed at him. He played back, but he was a little freaked out. It escalated to fight sex and masochism.
“Choke me,” she said.
Jim choked her with one hand as he lay over her.
“No,” she said. “Choke me hard—try to cut off my air.”
Jim didn’t feel right, but he choked her harder and harder with both hands. And she loved it. She loved to die during sex. There’s something like death in all sex. Sex and Death are in bed together. But to love is to be vulnerable to the worst punishment.

Eventually Jim had to ask the witch-girl to leave. He didn’t like her. She was hurt and he didn’t care. How commonplace.

Between Halloween and Thanksgiving that year, Jim had a strange couple of days. He’d gone to Denver to see a metal band that he and a friend liked. They had good seats and all was normal at the concert, except that Jim saw the witch-girl, and he was still a little uneasy about that whole occurrence. He told me at one point she turned from her seat several rows up, looked at Jim in the eyes, and mouthed something. And Jim could not read lips well enough to know what she said through the music.

When Jim got home that Sunday night, he was tired. The neighbors’ dogs barked and barked and kept Jim from deep rest. He said, he thought the dogs were in his room and in his dreams pestering him.
The next morning, Jim’s grandmother had him doing yard work, because their houses sat on the same property. Jim quickly noticed a large pile of dirt out of place. It was next to an old bathtub converted into a large flower pot, between to small pine trees. The wilted flowers lay scattered around the front of the porcelain base, the dirt piled near an end, and a dead white rabbit lightly buried in the tub.