Chuck Palahniuk - Invisible Monsters

like a piece of meat. I should just walk out.

"Fuck 'em," Evie's screaming by this point. "Fuck 'em all."

Me, I'm not angry. I'd be getting strapped into this incredible leather corset by Poopie Cadole and leather pants by Chrome Hearts. Life was good back then. I'd have three hours of work, maybe four or five.

At the photo studio doorway, before she'd get thrown out of the shoot, Evie would swing the assistant stylist into the door jamb, and the little guy would just crumple up at her feet. It's then Evie would scream, "You people can all suck the crap out of my sweet Texas ass." Then she'd go out to her Ferrari and wait the three or four or five hours so she could drive me home.

Evie, that Evie was my best friend in the whole world. Moments like that, Evie was fun and quirky, almost like she had a life of her own.

Okay, so I didn't know about Evie and Manus and their complete and total love and satisfaction. So kill me.

Jump to before that, Evie calling me at the hospital and begging me, please, could I discharge myself and come stay at her house, she was so lonely, please.

My health insurance had a two-million-dollar lifetime ceiling, and the meter had just run and run all summer. No social service contact had the guts to transition me into God only knows where.

Begging me on the telephone, Evie said she had plane reservations. She was going to Cancun for a catalogue shoot so would I, could I, please, just house-sit for her?

When she picked me up, on my pad I wrote:

is that my halter top? you know you're stretching it.

"You'll need to feed my cat is all," Evie says.

i don't like being alone so far out from town, I write, i don't know how you can live here.

Evie says, "It's not living alone if you keep a rifle under the bed."

I write:

i know girls who say that about their dildos.

And Evie says, "Gross! I'm not that way at all with my rifle!”

So jump to Evie being flown off to Cancun, Mexico, and when I go to look under her bed, there's the thirty-aught rifle and scope. In her closets are what's left of my clothes, stretched and tortured to death and hanging there on wire hangers, dead.

Then jump to me in Evie's bed that night. It's midnight. The wind lifts the bedroom curtains, lace curtains, and the cat jumps up on the windowsill to see who's just pulled up in the gravel driveway. With the stars behind it, the cat looks back at me. Downstairs, you hear a window break.

Jump way back to the last Christmas before my accident, when I go home to open presents with my folks. My folks put up the same fake tree every year, scratchy green and making that hot polyplastic smell that gives you a dizzy flu headache when the lights are plugged in too long. The tree's all magic and sparkle, crowded with our red and gold glass ornaments and those strands of silver plastic loaded with static electricity that people call icicles. It's the same ratty angel with a rubber doll face on top of the tree. Covering the mantel is the same spun fiberglass angel hair that works into your skin and gives you an infected rash if you even touch it. It's the same Perry Como Christmas album on the stereo. This is back when I still had a face so I wasn't so confronted by singing Christmas carols.

My brother Shane's still dead so I try not to expect much attention, just a quiet Christmas. By this point, my boyfriend, Manus was getting weird about losing his police job, and what I needed was a couple days out of the spotlight. We all talked, my mom, my dad, and me, and agreed to not buy big gifts for each other this year. Maybe just little gifts, my folks say, just stocking stuffers.

Perry Como is singing "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas."

The red felt stockings my mom sewed for each of us, for Shane and me, are hanging on the fireplace, each one red felt with our names spelled out, top to bottom, in fancy white felt letters. Each one lumpy with the gifts stuffed inside. It's Christmas morning, and we're all sitting around the tree, my father ready with his jackknife for the knotted ribbons. My mom has a brown paper shopping bag and says, "Before things get out of hand, the wrapping paper goes in here, not all over the place."

My mom and dad sit in recliner chairs. I sit on the floor in front of the fireplace with the stockings by me. This scene is always blocked this way. Them sitting with coffee, leaned down over me, watching for my reaction. Me Indian-sitting on the floor. All of us in bathrobes and pajamas still.

Perry Como is singing "I'll Be Home for Christmas."

The first thing out of my stocking is a little stuffed koala bear, the kind that grips your pencil with its spring-loaded hands and feet. This is who my folks think I am. My mom hands me hot chocolate in a mug with miniature marshmallows floating on top. I say, "Thanks." Under the little koala is a box I take out.

My folks stop everything, lean over their cups of coffee, and just watch me.

Perry Como is singing "Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful."

The little box is condoms.

Sitting right next to our sparkling, magic Christmas tree, my father says, "We don't know how many partners you have every year, but we want you to play safe."

I stash the condoms in my bathrobe pocket and look down at the miniature marshmallows melting. I say, "Thanks."

"Those are latex," says my mom. "You need to use only a water-based sexual lubricant. If you need a lubricant at your age. Not petroleum jelly or shortenings or any kind of lotion." She says, "We didn't get you the kind made from sheep intestines because those have tiny pores that can allow the transmission of HIV."

Next inside my stocking is another little box. This is more condoms. The color marked on the box is Nude. This seems redundant. Next to that, the label says odorless and tasteless.

Oh, I could tell you all about tasteless.

"A study," my father says, "a telephone survey of heterosexuals in urban areas with a high incidence of HIV infection showed that thirty-five percent of people are uncomfortable buying their own condoms."

And getting them from Santa Claus is better? I say, "Got it."

"This isn't just about AIDS," my mom says. "There's gonorrhea. There's syphilis. There's the human papilloma virus. That's genital warts." She says, "You do know to put the condom on as soon as the penis is erect, don't you?"

She says, "I paid a fortune for bananas out of season in case you need the practice."

This is a trap. If I say, Oh, yeah, I roll rubbers onto new dry erections all the time, I'll get the slut lecture from my father. But if I tell them, No, we'll get to spend Christmas Day practicing to protect me from fruit.

My dad says, "There's tons more to this than AIDS." He says, "There's the herpes simplex virus II with symptoms that include small painful blisters that burst on your genitals." He looks at Mom. "Body aches," she says.

"Yes, you get body aches," he says, "and fever. You get vaginal discharge. It hurts to urinate." He looks at my mom.

Perry Como is singing "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town."

Under the next box of condoms is another box of condoms. Jeez, three boxes should last me right into menopause.

Jump to how much I want my brother alive right now so I can kill him for wrecking my Christmas. Perry Como is singing "Up on the Housetop."

"There's hepatitis B," my mom says. To my dad, she says, "What's the others?"

"Chlamydia," my father says. "And lymphogranuloma."

"Yes," my rnom says, "and mucal purulent cervicitis and nongonococcal urethritis."

My dad looks at my mom and says, "But that's usually caused by an allergy to a latex condom or a spermicide."

My mom drinks some coffee. She looks down at both her hands around her cup, then looks up at me sitting here. "What your father's trying to say," she says, "is we realize now that we made some mistakes with your brother." She says, "We're just trying to keep you safe."