Troy Weaver - Witchita Stories

Virginia Woolf (drowning)

At three years old, with a thick mass of curly hair and a smile that could break your heart in half, my brother shoved his pet cat into the freezer and shut the door. He was watching his favorite TV show and she was fucking everything up because she kept scratching at the screen. The cat fucking died. No one really knows how long she was in there. Long enough to shit everywhere and freeze solid. Long enough for her soul to get out into the air, enter my father’s scrotum and mix with his seed. I was born a year later. Every time I think of my brother I find it difficult to breathe.

We took a bus down to Dallas, TX, probably forty or fifty of us, and spent the night praying for our families in a large hotel room. The next morning we drove to the temple. We had to change into all-white clothes when we got inside. There was a large dressing room. Old men of no relation changed their clothes next to teenage boys, not even attempting modesty. We filed into a big room. The light was dim. We all sat in pews, observing the baptisms as they progressed. They went on and on well into the afternoon.

The baptismal was a large basin, about fifteen feet in diameter, elevated atop statues of oxen. Everything was white. Nothing was pure. As soon as I got into the basin and the water hit the shriveled thing I call my penis, I peed my pants. I didn’t feel too bad about it, either, like I thought I would. Then this guy read a few things about the lives of the dead — a few Jews, some Catholics, a crippled agnostic. He dunked me under the water each time he read a new name. It went on like this forever. When I finally got out, I felt like shit. I had water in my nose, inside my sinuses, and bad thoughts all shot through my head. But there I was, the obedient Mormon, newly baptized for twenty poor, dead, non-Mormon souls. Finally , somebody said, these people have been elevated to the gates of heaven .

Amen.

On the bus back to Wichita something in me clicked. I experienced the mind-numbing madness of depression for the first time in my life. And later that night, after getting home and telling my parents how great the trip had been, I crawled up into my bed and pulled the covers over my head, prayer-less, and fell asleep. It was a conscious decision I made, not praying, not even going through the motions. I just didn’t feel like doing it anymore, not even for the souls of the living. I didn’t feel like doing anything. But I couldn’t stop thinking about things. As I lay there, all cocooned in my bedspread, I couldn’t stop, my mind reeling through thousands of memories, thoughts, questions and questions and questions, all rapid-fire and all at once. God? God? Are you there, God? Are you listening?

My buddies used to buy weed from a guy who had a Confederate flag draped across the wall in his living room and a stuffed monkey hanging from a noose in his entryway. They called him Racist Bill. He wore tank tops and cowboy boots and spit his tobacco spit into empty Bud Light cans. I personally never met Bill, but I listened to their stories with quite a bit of interest, especially the one about the time they took our friend A. J. over to buy some weed. A.J. was six feet five inches tall, about three hundred pounds, and he happened to be half-black, too. Bill wasn’t so big and bad anymore, with A.J. around. He took him into his home without a word. In fact, he laughed when A.J. made fun of some of the items he saw laying around his house. What the fuck is that? Ah — man, why would you want to hang a monkey? What do you have against monkeys?

Bill shrugged, face red, a bit of nervous laughter, and said, Guess I just thought it was funny.

This girl I knew in eighth grade had the hugest crush on me and wouldn’t stop talking to me whenever I saw her. Sounds nice, but it was actually a big problem for me. I was unapologetically in love with her best friend, who wasn’t in love with me, and I made no bones about it. This Yak-Yak Girl’s enthusiasm really pissed me off. She’d come up to me in the morning near the vending machines, and in the halls during passing period, and outside near the busses at the end of the school day, suffocating me with her I ❤ U sign language and bear hugs. It was like being waterboarded. Not to be a dick, but I wasn’t that into her. Every single place I went— poof —she’d be there too. She’d just come along and start talking about the stupidest shit, messing with my musical tastes and personal flavor. She’d yak-yak my fucking ears straight off if I let her.

And then my birthday came. I had to invite this yak-yak girl, otherwise the girl I liked wouldn’t come. At my party she tried to kiss me. I pushed her away and said: Eww. I don’t want you. I want her, and I pointed a finger toward the girl of my immediate obsessions, who happened to be right there, standing in my best friend’s backyard, sneaking a cigarette. And the girl I wanted, the one who I was painfully in love with, she gave me what I thought I needed — out of pity. We made out for a good twenty minutes, and the whole time, I thought: I love you, I love you, I love you. But I could hear the Yak-Yak Girl crying during all of this, one of my friends over with her on the porch trying to tell her it just wasn’t meant to be, you know . When it was all said and done and the night was over, I started crying, too. I lay there, on the floor, drunk and alone, my eyes stinging, cheeks red, thinking out loud in the hoarsest of whispers: Next year we’ll all be in high school. This kind of shit happens all the time in high school. These are the moments that lives are made of.

“Putting the Damage On”

“Silent all these Years”

“Winter”

“Cornflake Girl”

“Pretty Good Year”

“Mr. Zebra”

“Icicle”

“Crucify”

“Little Earthquakes”

“Leather”

A few years after high school, this rich kid I knew got really fucked up, started looking like a clone of himself, only thirty years older and dead in the eyes. Meth. Turns out he did some time in jail. Like I said, he was rich, but apparently, even though he was back living at home, mommy and daddy had cut him off financially and he found himself out of dope one night when they were out of the country on vacation. Out of money, too, and probably going through the first throngs of withdrawal. So he tried to find a way around that. Instead of doing what my brother did and stealing from his own family, he did the respectable thing. He decided he’d call in a pizza. Pepperoni, cheese, supreme, doesn’t matter — he didn’t give a shit about the pizza.

When the pizza delivery guy got to his front door, this rich kid, he pulled one of his daddy’s guns on the poor man, robbed him blind. Surely didn’t make off with much. But the kicker, the thing that gets me going is, he went and got the drugs and then returned to the scene of the crime to do them. So when the cops came banging on the door of his parent’s mansion, he thought he’d just be able to talk his way out of it. It’s that poor immigrant’s word over mine, he probably thought, as the rich often do. Wrong. He got locked up for quite a while.