The Brain was Enlarged to Store more Memories

[Ina]

Oh my! I am posting this because most of you know me, otherwise I think I would be slightly hesitant.


After the photo shoot she dropped me off in front of our place and placed an oily hand on my oily knee. “Good luck” she said with the forced worried look that only a hired best friend can muster up. In the loft, where we had just shot our photos, the light was maneuvered, aligned and controlled by the photographer’s minions; on the outside the earth controlled the light and it was not flattering to her skin. Looking up I saw that dawn’s strongest ray of light was focused right on our living room window as if through a reverse prism. I thought for a second how easily our old wooden floors would spark and catch on fire if dawn wasn’t soon to be knocked off its stand.
I tried to turn the knob to our apartment but because my hand was soaked in oil, it awkwardly slipped off of the handle. I heard obnoxiously loud music on the other side of the door. My heart sank into my stomach like a fertilized egg into the womb. He only played music this loud when he got unearthly drunk.

The photographer did not like his ‘subjects’ to drink before the shoot. This was specified by everyone working for him, even the dog growled at my flask. So, I reluctantly spilled my flask into the flower pot.
“We can have wine afterwards!” chirped the make-up girl who was really a naughty lawyer’s secretary, in the office and in the bedroom.
“Wine…yea. Sipping from a tiny tea cup. What is this… no liquor rules…pure fascism. “ I muttered so my statement fell only on my best friend’s ears. She could have used a drink more than I wanted one. The thought of being naked had her toes curling upwards. I laid my cell phone on top of my empty flask and went to watch beautiful, naked, oiled up people soberly creating art. May I ‘p.s.’ here a second and say that sobriety and art have never made magnificent contributions to the world. My cell phone rang 16 times in the next hour.

I gripped the doorknob and pushed my body against the door. It cracked open the length of a movie stars eyelash and hit something on the other side causing my palm severe soreness. I heard cries. No, it was more like laughter. High pitched laughter, hiccupping laughter, like someone laughing on a buggy crossing the Rocky Mountains. I realized the degree of seriousness waiting for me behind the door even before I saw the actual scene. The other side looked like a psychiatric case the madhouses rejected because they didn’t have enough tranquilizers. I pushed harder against the door, the laughter got louder and my tears scrambled to the top faster.

The girls had me pinned in between their hips. My best friend living out her most obvious fantasy and the other girl going for what was un-doubtfully promised to her if she did the shoot which just happned to be me ( I am only this narcissistic if it is true or if the situation needs comedy, you figure it out). I had been in painfully uncomfortable situations throughout my life, two lesbians were nothing I couldn’t handle. But I really wanted a drink. I looked soberly at the flower pot where the trader dog was licking the last grains that remained wet. I slid from in between their throbbing clits and went into the kitchen where the photographer was taking a wee bit of a break from shooting. He was talking to the one and only Black Jesus Brian which means nothing to you and really nothing to me either. I started opening the cupboards trying not to attract too much attention to my raging alcoholism.
“Are you having fun?” Mr. PhotoTaker asked me as if the whole shindig was arranged for my amusement. The little guy I like to call Narcissist living in my brain pulled out a flash card on which the words THIS IS ALL FOR YOU BECAUSE HE WANTS YOU were written in lipstick. I freesbed that flash card out through my eyes. He saw the skeptical look I couldn’t help but hide.
“I mean are you ready for your shoot?”
“I have been ready since Carrie got all oiled up and balance a bazooka on her shoulder while flicking her clit to the rhythm of a…box spring.” I pulled open the last cupboard to find the whole cupboard lined with Johnny Depp pictures and in the center was a freshly rolled joint.
“Come on, Ina, this shoot isn’t for erotic exposure. I hope you feel comfortable,” he said. The flash card did a 180 and fell through my eye onto a cork board.
“Oh I know. It’s a great art project. I told you I’m down, though I think my boyfriend is a bit frightened that I decided to pose nude for you.” I didn’t really know why I told him that extra lard of info. Maybe because he was two decades older, had a soft voice, wore a worried mask on his face or because I wanted him to know that I was in a rocky relationship.
“He has nothing to worry about. This was your decision. And you even invited him.” All of a sudden a big hug was aimed like a Russian Missile at my waist. I let it take off, hit its target, hinder for a few seconds and retreat back and away away from its target. Not one cell in my body helped him achieve this great hug strategy. I have learned that hugs can quickly morph into sexual fondling of all sorts, vertical or horizontal. When he left I took off all my clothes. Naked, I walked towards the girls who were getting ready to pose. I threw my clothes on top of the cell phone-flask combo. By then he had send me ten text messages.

Inside the apartment broken furniture like vomit leaked onto my feet. There was a shit storm of clothes, bottles, cds, hangers, and canvases, papyruses of poetry, screams and tears. I wadded through my broken furniture and underwear which reached up to my ankles. I walked into the room where so many nights we made love on the futon. I saw him and my back broke and a splinter rammed into my heart, my tears finally jumped off the cliff, and my hands picked up the vibrations of the base…to put it lightly. The sanity I had been rebuilding since I moved out of my mother’s house, spiced alcoholic rum mommy, crumbled like an unfinished skyscraper with a loose screw. His body, like a skin of a lemon, rocked back and forth on the love plated futon. In his hands he held a razor which he rammed against his bloodied wrists and its neighborhood. Vodka bottles had red fingerprints on their necks only the whiskey bottles were clean; they were the slave owners of his mind. His face was twisted into what only a circus clown would consider a smile. His eyes looked detached; they seemed to be squirming in his eye sockets wishing their way out. All of a sudden the haggard eyes rolled upwards, they scraped the film off of the windshield and I saw the monster inside my boyfriend ready to cause serious damage to the one who hurt him; which as you might have figured out by now was – yours truly.

I never suspected how un-erotic I could feel wearing an army gadget belt on top of my flesh while a bunch of GAP gone GRITTY people stared at my awkward poses. While I stood there listening vaguely to his commands of where I should throw my hips and where I should hang my wrist, I thought about my boyfriend. We were supposed to meet up after the shoot. Did we say 11 pm? Because it was surely way past 11 pm. Would he care that I had skipped our promised meeting? I asked myself while the photographer softly ordered me to grab the sword lying next to me. A lonely Samurai makes for an un-pretty Samurai. I realized I had not looked at my phone in ages. My boyfriend and I are never intellectually apart thanks to the text messaging system, poems and pictures (dirtier pictures then the ones that would come out of this photo shoot). But I have broken this pact. I have forgotten to wet a beating heart. The fact that I did not feel remorse, slight apprehension about facing him maybe, was troubling. No use worrying about it now. No use in...

The cell phone propelled across the room and I picked it up while his screams ricocheted in the white light, the room was so bright, the blankets we used to cover up the windows ripped off, wet and bloodied. On the phone was a friend. His friend. Maybe even my friend god knows anymore.
“Ina, he is bad.”
“No shit! God. Fuck! What am I suppose to do? I cant handle this!” I kneeled in the corner away from his raging octupus arms. He had kicked me when I tried to get the phone away from him. Kicked me right where my belly button attached to my heart.
“Call the cops” the friend said calmly. Click.
“I hate you. You cunt! Its over! You sick fucking bitch! I loved you!” and on and on he screamed at me. When the cops came I was outside with the GirlFriend who had made “possible lesbian” the most valuable piece of art in my life portfolio and was trying to keep the Mexican neighbors away from the flying razors Josh was now throwing through the window, they were aimed at me. The cops could not find him upstairs because he had run away to the other part of the apartment, hidden. I had to go up there and help them find him, like a wild beast he was pacing back and forth, a bottle in his hand. His eyes...I will never forget – how we could ever get over the hate in his eyes is a human mystery. His arms were butchered, the crevices of his elbow like baby backyard pools, his wrists had flesh hanging like snot. They strapped him down and I broke completely. Hysterical, insane in thoughts and in gestures, ticks and quivers of the body. My girlfriend did the calls to the parents and to the friends, all I did was bawl and steal hairs from my bangs. His friends came to the hospital, hell they even took me out to dinner. All I wanted was to sit on him and hold him so he can’t move, talk, or see but I had to play a game with the people. Here I am, I am strong, lets eat and shit all over ourselves with stories while the one I love is doped up on tranquilizers and fingered by therapists.
I did not forgive him and moved out.
Three months later I moved back in.
Two months after that he killed himself.

[Jen]

This will definitely prolong my getting to sleep tonight. That image, of the boyfriend, with flesh hanging from his wrists... it was so disastrously picturesque. I mean, I shivered at the thought of that, but, thinking about it, it's a wonderful image to recreate.
Blast logic.

[The Artful Lost]

Wow... this is by far one of the most enthralling pieces of prose I've ever read in my life.
I've missed work like these, ones that do not always seem clear in the beginning, but come together at the end with such emotion, it's capivating and thought-provoking. Excellent prose, Ina.

[Ina]

Wow... this is by far one of the most enthralling pieces of prose I've ever read in my life.
I've missed work like these, ones that do not always seem clear in the beginning, but come together at the end with such emotion, it's capivating and thought-provoking. Excellent prose, Ina.

Thank you so much Artful. I have a few parts like this, all about my relationship with the insane man, Josh. Because it is based on "real life" it is so much more difficult to share!

[love it]

Ive always liked your unflinching confessional style Ina. You have turns of phrase that make my coccyx tingle

[Ina]

Ive always liked your unflinching confessional style Ina. You have turns of phrase that make my coccyx tingle

Oh my. you have "always" liked my style meaning that we must know one another, but I cannot recognize you by your nickname.
Serjei? But I am reaching here based on the poem you wrote....

[love it]

=P *cape* oh i want to be all mysterious now, but im afraid it is only me (sarah...bear promoter... 'It' from the old place...myspace kudos giver).

[Ina]

=P *cape* oh i want to be all mysterious now, but im afraid it is only me (sarah...bear promoter... 'It' from the old place...myspace kudos giver).

so effin happy you are here!

[Divya Jyoti]

I had a faint idea it was real.. because.. you involved yourself in the story and amazingly represented well every side of your personality. Now that i'm sure it's real.. i can jusy say you've out done your previous best in imagery["square orange hips" i think from one of your poems on fppf].

[Ina]

I had a faint idea it was real.. because.. you involved yourself in the story and amazingly represented well every side of your personality. Now that i'm sure it's real.. i can jusy say you've out done your previous best in imagery["square orange hips" i think from one of your poems on fppf].

my god Tina, I cannot believe you remember a wording of brain performance I had so long ago! I am so flattered I am faltering in my typing.
this story is sooooo important to me. he hates it...

[Divya Jyoti]

haha i don't forget my favorites.. and it should be important to you.. its awesome.

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