The Liar

You have driven over the bridge on the freeway many times on your commute. 

Your eye is drawn to the concrete slab that stands as a gatepost of it. 

On the hamster-wheel work-days you have thought

of what would happen if your car struck it. 

It wasn’t a particularly bad day. 

You were driving home and thinking about the notices

that you were getting from the cable and utility company. 

Your debit card tied to those accounts expired,

and you were going to have go through a series of password resets

to get the new card information set up. 

It was a small aggravation, and in that moment

the slab presented itself as an option for sweet relief and peace.

Except you were not granted relief. 

No. 

You were crippled, a quadriplegic, barely able to talk,

kind of like Stephen Hawking. 

Except you are not a brilliant physicist, you are you, just some guy. 

You are a fully functional head, floating atop a completely useless body. 

Your household was struggling before, but now you have lost your income

and there’s the added cost of your home health aid, Andy,

Andy is a stoner.  He is goodhearted, if inattentive. 

When your wife gets home from work,

she is exhausted. 

But she’s got to cook dinner, spoon-feed you, clean-up, change your diaper,

and get you ready for bed. 

You were seriously talking about having children before the accident. 

Now your wife has a child, you. 

And the despair you feel, trapped, as you are in a body, you can no longer

command, unable to contribute, unable to produce,

you can see that despair spreading to her.  

She is trapped too, and tired. 

There is no relief.

You have tried sex together.

You ask her to let you give her oral,

but after a couple of times she stopped doing it,

claiming that she can’t orgasm without something inside of her. 

It was never a problem before. 

You suspect that the dreariness of the scene is the actual cause.

The patient, the hospital bed, the musk of your body odor

that never rely gets sponge-bathed away. 

The funk of Campbell’s cream of something soup and diapers.

Years pass.  The household becomes dirtier, every surface sticky,

but you and your wife settle into the tedium. 

You realize that she needs to have some fun, pressure is building, 

You need to find a release valve before the whole thing blows. 

She may simply leave for work one morning

and never come home. 

You encourage her to start dating, an open marriage. 

You don’t want it, but you beg her, you beg her to go on dates and have sex.

She is unwilling. 

You badger her incessantly.  You lie:

you tell her that you want to hear about her adventures,

that it will be a shared experience,

that you will get a vicarious thrill from the whole thing. 

She reluctantly agrees.

From your hospital bed one Friday night you witness your wife

getting ready, blow-drying her hair, clicking her high heels around the house,

She puts on lipstick and makes a little kissy face. 

She looks beautiful.

You tell her and she beams. 

You know that it is not for you,

that you have nothing to give her but despair and grief.

She leaves and you distract yourself with war documentaries

Young men engaged in the ritual of killing one another,

it soothes you.

You never used to watch TV before. 

Now it is a big deal. 

It is your only connection to the world outside of your house. 

You have your bed and your motorized wheelchair. 

It is possible to have outings from the house,

but the production of it: motorized wheelchair, ramps and lifts, makes it rare. 

You have soaps, sports, TV dramas, police procedurals, and documentaries.

She comes home. 

She is excited. 

You have not seen her this excited in years.

This is what you wanted:

her to have fun. 

She recounts the dinner, her delicious mussels frites with Bryan,

the widower with two tween daughters,

“What a great guy, he wouldn’t stop talking about them.”

They shared their grief, they connected, and before they parted

in the parking lot of the restaurant, they kissed. 

She assures you that he is not as good as kisser as you. 

The gleam in her eye tells you otherwise. 

It dawns on you, the danger of this situation. 

She might not leave you out of despair. 

She might leave you because she finds love. 

You feign happiness for her.

The next time they go out, they have sex. 

It seems a little abrupt to you. 

She didn’t have sex with you that quickly,

but in the grind of adult life, maybe there’s little time for courtship. 

She gives you all of the details, including a complete description of his penis. 

She assures you that his is smaller than yours. 

Not that it matters, yours is useless. 

They did a variation of missionary position where one of her legs was down and

the other was up and against his chest. 

She described how she rolled on to her belly,

so that he could take her from behind. 

She tells you that she did this for you, because that was always your favorite. 

Somehow, even though you are unable to feel anything from the waist down,

you feel actual pain in the empty cavity of your chest. 

You force yourself to smile. 

You force your eyes to widen. 

You lie and tell her, you want more details. 

She tells you that as he was riding her from behind,

he started to squeeze one of her nipples with one hand,

and rub her clit with the other, until she came. 

This becomes a weekly ritual. 

You have to listen to your wife’s sexual exploits,

And pretend to be aroused by it all. 

You spend your days scheming ways to end it all. 

It is a complicated puzzle your mind can’t stop working on. 

The puzzle is always resolved with the same impossible solution,

you need someone’s help,

But there is no one in your life both loyal and hard enough to actually take you out.

Thanksgiving.  Bryan is coming over with his daughters

and the five of you are going to dine together. 

His daughters are freaked out by you, understandably. 

At dinner one of them asks you what you do all day. 

It is not malicious, it comes from a place of genuine curiosity. 

You try to make a joke, ‘I don’t do anything all day, nothing, it’s great!’ 

It falls flat. 

This is not the story of the cripple who wins people over with his stunning wit. 

No, you are just grim. 

So it comes as a bit of a surprise when you learn

that Bryan and his daughters are moving in. 

Your wife and Bryan are able to help each other and support one another.

Bryan was struggling financially, so this will be a big help. 

Your wife explains that having his daughters in the house will cheer things up. 

You lie and tell her that you could not be more happy with the whole thing.   

When she hears this, she leaves the room, and Bryan comes in. 

He tells you that he loves your wife. 

There’s that pain in your chest again. 

He asks your permission to move-in. 

You know that this is courtesy. 

You have heard him hefting his belongings into your house for the past few days. 

You tell him that you would appreciate it very much if he did move in, a lie. 

You tell him that you would appreciate having someone to take care of your wife

and your house, because ‘I’m in no position to do it.’ 

It occurs to you, as you are lying to Bryan,

that just about all of your communication to everyone is a lie. 

There is no one you can speak plainly to.

You are required to lie in your daily conversation. 

You can hear Bryan and your wife fucking. 

They fuck a lot. 

Much more than you did with her when you were in your prime. 

And your wife still comes to you and recounts their exploits. 

It has become so repetitive now that you are numb to it. 

You are surprised that it no longer touches you. 

You are surprised that a deep swelling anger rises in you,

not from the descriptions of sex with Bryan,

but from your wife’s constant complaining

about having to pick-up after Bryan’s daughters.

Bryan suggest that his daughters, Jessica and Maribel,

should start contributing to the household, by taking care of you. 

You tell your wife that you are not comfortable with that, because you are not. 

These girls are freaked out by you, and you don’t need that energy. 

Brian insists. 

They start checking on you, feeding you, changing the channel on your TV. 

The girls are not developing any kind of connection to you. 

You are not a cute wounded creature to be nursed back to health. 

You are something smelly and gross, a smelly and gross chore. 

If they could wish away your stinky room and you in it, they would. 

So it is not a surprise to you when your wife tearfully confronts you

with Jessica and Maribel’s accusation:

you were offering to pay them to take of their clothes and dance for you. 

You are not that surprised that it came. 

You are surprised by their cunning and creativity,

because they not only claimed this transgression,

but they also say you parlayed that into a blackmail scheme

to make them sit on your face many many times,

otherwise you would tell Bryan about their stripper dances.

The detective who comes to interview you

is right out of central casting, handsome, sport coat with elbow pads,

over his shoulder holstered handgun. 

He asks if he can interview you. 

He produces a small digital recorder and asks if you mind if he records. 

He asks you if you know why he is there.

You deny. 

You explain that you would be unable to force anyone to do anything. 

He asks you if you are angry about Bryan. 

You lie. 

You give him the line about not being able to take care of your wife or your house. 

He nods, but his face shows you that you are full of shit. 

He asks if you are angry because your wife stopped letting you give her oral. 

And now you know that your wife has used your sexual failings with her

to shore up the fake story of Maribel and Jessica. 

You have been adrift on your own for years,

but now you have reached an ocean wilderness

where there are no passing ships or contrails of jets flying overhead. 

There is nothing.  So when you are asked by the detective, why do you think

someone would do something like this? 

You answer honestly.  It is the first honest thing you have said in years. 

You opine that someone who was hurt,

or who was hurting real bad would hurt someone else,

someone vulnerable so that they could share the hurt and not feel so alone,

and so that they could feel powerful for a change. 

When officers from the Sheriff’s Department arrive with paramedics,

you are scared, really scared. 

They lift you onto a gurney and inexplicably manacle your useless wrists to it. 

You are transported in an ambulance. 

You arrive to your new world: cinderblock, fluorescent light, a musky odor of men,

and the profound feeling of danger. 

It is a strange thing that you have wanted to die for many years,

and now that you are in a dangerous place, you are scared. 

What are you scared of?  It doesn’t make sense, but that is what you feel. 

You are taken to a room and strip-searched.   

You are wheeled to the head of a line of shackled men

about to be processed into the jail. 

You are interviewed by a heavy-set middle-aged woman officer. 

She asks if you have had thoughts of suicide. 

You answer honestly, ‘all the time.’ 

You qualify that you have no way of doing anything about it

what with being quadriplegic.

She stamps your paperwork with a red, SUICIDE WATCH.

You are wheeled into the medical ward. 

There a curtain is drawn almost all the way around your bed. 

You are stripped by the orderlies and straps are cinched down

over your legs, chest, and arms. 

The overhead fluorescent, you discover, is never turned off. 

A guard, or orderly sticks their head into your curtained area once every hour.

If you are sleeping, they wake you with a little slap on the cheek. 

There is no TV. 

No one speaks to you. 

You can feel something changing inside of you. 

The part of you that is a person seems to receding somewhere. 

You feel more animal, caged animal. 

You are an animal exhibit at the Zoo. 

But feeding time at the Zoo is an event, not so here. 

A plastic tray of lukewarm or cold food is brought to you

and an orderly will spoon it into your mouth,

but sometimes the tray is just left in front of you, and no one feeds you. 

You see them note on your chart that you are refusing to eat. 

Your court appointed lawyer comes to visit you one day. 

She’s young and blonde and pretty. 

You try to drink her in with your eyes. 

She questions for you, ‘why would these girls make up this story up? 

You tell her that they didn’t want to look after you,

that they wanted to get rid of you. 

She tells you that she can’t work with that at trial,

a jury won’t believe it,

and with your own wife testifying against you

about the oral sex thing, it doesn’t look good. 

You better take the plea offer, ten to twelve years in State Prison. 

You’ll get more than that after you lose at trial she says.  

Ok, might as well minimize the damage, you suppose.

You are not even brought into court. 

The whole thing happens over video,

which is just as well, because it’s pretty galling when Maribel and Jessica

read their victim impact statements to the judge.  

You have taken so much from them, their innocence, their childhood.   

But, they will not let this moment define them, no ,

they will not let you define them. 

They are not just victims. 

They have realized that they have the strength to overcome what you did to them. 

They are strong and powerful and it is you, who is weak,

weak with your inability to control yourself,

weak with your need to hurt others. 

They feel sorry for you,

that you have to live with the weakness inside yourself. 

You can see your wife and Bryan tearfully embracing

the girls when they are finished.  Bravo. 

The judge exceeds the agreed recommendation of ten to twelve years

on the grounds that you abused your position of authority in the household,

and exploited your disabled status as a cover

for your nefarious exploitation of young girls who were caregivers to you. 

‘Talk about biting the hands that feed you,

in all my years I have never seen anything like it,’

twelve to fifteen years. 

The hospital ward at the jail at least had regulated temperature. 

You did not realize that this was a luxury until you arrived at the State Prison. 

Your new digs are alternately drafty and freezing, or sweaty and hot,

depending on the outside temperature and the vagaries of the heating system. 

You are on an open floor with other hospitalized inmates. 

You are one of ten beds, bed 3. 

There is a TV,

but it is mounted high up on the wall and at the other end of the room. 

You can partially see the screen, but you can’t hear it. 

The inmates on either side of you are unconscious. 

Based on your record of refusing to eat, you have a feeding tube implanted. 

You are no longer spoon-fed. 

You once hated it.

You find yourself reminiscing about the human contact and proximity. 

That leaves only diaper changes which were humiliating at first,

because the orderlies would not even close a curtain, there are none. 

You had gotten used to it.  But, without advising you, or obtaining consent,

you have permanent catheter and colostomy implanted one day. 

No one speaks to you no one touches you. 

In this darkness you find some light

Some warmth that radiates and gives you comfort.

It’s not Jesus.

It is the realization that you no longer have to lie,

That feeling having lies drawn out of you,

Is mercifully gone.