Fighting My Demons
by Marcelo Medone
“You need to eat
something. Even if you don't want
to,” my son said to me, firmly.
I sat down on the bed.
Philip brought me a bowl of
hot soup and made me take a spoonful. It was a thick chicken broth, rather
tasteless. I managed to swallow three or four spoonful’s.
“I brought you
a steak and mashed potatoes,” he added,
showing me the plate he had set on the desk.
“Thank you. I'll
eat it later. Sorry about the
mess,” I said, trying to cover the syringes and needles with the sheets.
“If you keep doping,
you're going to end up like
Grandpa,” he said, with his adolescent directness.
My father, Philip Corrigan
Senior, had been a
prominent district attorney for many years, until his heroin addiction became
apparent, and he had to leave public office amid increasingly frequent and
hard-to-hide scandals. After gaining public recognition, his personal life took
his entire career and threw him into the abyss.
When I was the age my
son is now, he had told me:
“You have to pick your battles well; don't waste your energy fighting the
impossible.” He gave me this sage advice, but he spent his whole life fighting
imaginary giants that plunged him into the lowest of human condition.
I don't want to end
up like him, but I have
genetics against me and inherited bad family habits. A bad combination. I have
my fate marked, as clear as my first and last name.
“History repeats
itself, first as tragedy, second
as farce”, as Karl Marx once said. This was what had happened in our family. My
father's life had been a tragedy, which had sunk him first. Then, my mother,
who could not stand it and committed suicide, and me, his only son.
Foreseeably, I turned his legacy into a pathetic comedy.
With a total lack of
imagination, when my only son
was born, I also named him Philip, perhaps to see if the third time was the
charm. In my case, I did not reach the academic or professional stature of my
father, being a complete failure, becoming, due to the ups and downs of my
life, a criminal, that is, the type of person my father dedicated himself to
fighting professionally.
I became a bank teller,
until I ended up in jail
for stupidly trying to steal money from the place where I worked, thinking I
was smarter than I really am. In prison, I ended up graduating as a petty
criminal.
From the list of crimes
and offenses in the Criminal
Code, I think I have achieved too many, probably more than most of the
prisoners in jails all over the country. Fortunately, I have not been caught
again, even though I have made every possible mistake. Against all odds, in
prison they said I looked like a respectable and intelligent man. They
nicknamed me “Smart Phil”.
The one who does look
like a fool is my son,
Philip Corrigan III, who inherited my faults and added stupidity, cowardice and
weakness. Though, deep down, I know he is a good boy.
“It would be good
for you to eat something,” my
son insisted, snapping me out of my reverie.
I looked at the plate
with the steak and mashed
potatoes and told myself that they could wait.
“Okay,”
I said, “I'll try a bite later. Right now,
I need some privacy.”
Philip looked at me
with a reproachful expression.
“I need to go
to the bathroom,” I said, just to
clear the air.
My son left me alone
and I tried to pull myself
together. I went to the bathroom and took a long piss, feeling relieved to do
so. Then I washed my face and looked in the mirror; I had a stubble and dark
circles under my eyes that made me look dead. “You're going to have to pick
your battles better,” I said to myself.
I stepped into the shower
and felt the warm water
soften my stiff muscles from lying in bed for so many hours. I massaged my hair
with the shampoo and let the suds work their way down my body. I had a powerful
erection and masturbated standing under the shower until my legs cramped, and I
had to kneel to ejaculate into the drain grate.
I got out of the shower,
dried off and dressed in
light sports clothes. I was hungrier than a wolf.
I put some background
music on my stereo. As I
listened to Moanin' by Charles Mingus, I devoured the food Philip had
left for me. I love jazz. It had always seemed to me that Blues and Roots
was Mingus' best album, with the ensemble of his masterful bass and saxophones.
Being totally happy,
I decided not to fight my demons
this time. With the dexterity of habit, I injected myself with a good dose of
heroin. I felt I was heir to the addiction tradition of Mingus, Charlie Parker
and so many other jazz musicians, even though I was a miserable loser with no
art to contribute to Humanity.
I felt my room take
on a minuteness of detail, how
the world expanded wherever I laid my eyes. I felt my heartbeat steadier and
slower, as if every beat mattered. Time stretched until every second lasted a
blissful eternity. A surge of pleasure invaded every corner of my brain, giving
me a million reasons to stay alive in such a miserable world.
I was at the height
of my private ecstasy when the
door to my room opened and a figure who looked too much like me walked in.
“He-hello, Philip,
I see you ha-haven't learned
a-anything” he said, stammering. My father stammered when under pressure,
something we have all inherited to a greater or lesser degree. Being stoned
saved me this annoying inconvenience.
It was hard to recognize
him. He looked more like
his younger self than I remembered him. Now I looked older than my own father.
“What are you
doing here? Leave me alone!” I spoke.
“I ca-came to
say go-goodbye.”
“A lifetime together
has made us inseparable.”
“We are of the
same flesh and blood, but we are
separated by a generation and a world. In the end, we each choose our own
path,” he said, no longer stammering.
“Impossible to
avoid my fate,” I replied. “The
evidence is there for all to see. The only difference is that I don't intend to
die alone in a puddle of vomit and urine like you.”
“Don't think you're
so special and invulnerable,”
he replied, as he cupped his face in his hands and began to tear at his skin
with his fingernails, which had grown into claws.
As Blues and Roots
continued to play, I
watched my father's face transform into a jumble of bones and bleeding flesh,
with a pair of bulging eyeballs glaring mercilessly at me, while his lips
muttered an unintelligible curse.
I felt an icy fear washing
over me. My breathing
almost stopped, and I felt unbearable nausea. I looked down, trying to avoid
the horrifying sight.
“Don't shun me,
you coward,” he said, with
fatherly authority.
I looked up and tried
to hold it steady. His eyes
rolled slowly in their sockets, as if they were gloating at the spectacle they
were putting on. Then they stopped and focused mercilessly on me. My father had
become an implacable tyrant.
“You're a loser,
you always were. But the
succession line of losers ends with you,” he said, as he pulled the skin back
over his skeleton and I could see his familiar face correctly.
Then my son turned and
slammed the door.
Marcelo
Medone (1961, Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a Pushcart Prize and Best Small
Fictions nominee fiction writer, poet, essayist, journalist, playwright and
screenwriter. He received numerous awards and was published in multiple
languages in more than 50 countries around the world, including the US. He
currently lives in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Facebook:
Marcelo Medone / Instagram: @marcelomedone
