The Bobo and Margarita -- Part 3

Oh where, oh where can my Bobo be? Oh where, oh where can he be?

Sometimes levity can be found in desperation. A little song, a little dance. Is the pain in my foot fading or increasing? Is life getting harder, here in the land between, or is the place itself rendering such questions mute? I was having a hard time. I see that now. It bubbled to the surface like the black goo of the La Brea tar pits. My God. It's a sad day when you realize that life has snared you. That you have become all the things that you swore to yourself you would never be. That your inner child has gotten old and that you are still ten years behind. And other sad cliches. But then, one day you find yourself wrapped in a particularly lucid dream. A dream where the tree bark is made of fine flaky chocolate, and you say to yourself, at least I have this. At least the trees are made of chocolate, because if they weren't, I might be tempted to jump off this cliff.

She was confused. That's my eulogy. It's also in the eye of the beholder. And I agree. For most of it, before it ended, before the walls came crushing in, I was confused. And as I sat there, sit here, (I forget what tense I was/am in), I could see quite clearly the confused person I had grown into. What does confusion do? Nothing. It does nothing. It gets by. It sits still. Afraid to move in any direction for fear that it might be the wrong one. It lets things happen to it, instead of doing things, anythings, for itself. It builds a prison with pretty walls, and good smells, and old chairs, and comfy blankets, and it keeps out the world. It observes. And inevitably, it longs. (Oh God, does it long...) And inevitably, it dies.

I sat on the precipice, feet dangling into the abyss and had this thought -- I have too much blood. I could feel it pounding in my ears, in my veins, and pulsing, not in my heart, but in my foot. Without Bobo, I was sure the end was near so I comforted myself with thoughts of proposals past. I had been proposed to seven times. Of the seven, one was in person, two were in writing, one was by phone, and three were by text. I accepted the first, but never made it to the wedding. Confusion saw to that. Confusion is a death sentence. I inched a bit closer to the edge, attempting to see through the fog. It sparkled. Who tempts sirens to their end, I wondered? The ghosts of dead sailors coaxing them onto land? Do they shimmy on their fish tales, into taverns and sushi joints looking for love, only to find they have gone too far inland? Have I shimmied in too far? Are my gills drying out?

"Tell me what to do," I said to the sparkling abyss, "lead me now, out of confusion and deliver me from evil, or into evil, anywhere. Just deliver me. Just lead me. Give me a rule. Something to follow."

It is a dangerous thing to fall into the hands of a living God. Oh, God...

"You're pathetic."

I turned so quickly that I almost killed myself by accident, but his strong, gloved hand saved me. Saint Peter. How I envied his clarity. He had gotten a jump on life. They all had, all the Saint Peters I had known.

"Bobo is missing. Please..."

I was tearing up looking at him. He was standing over me in his dirty suit, lies drying on the pant legs. He told me so many times that I was his one and only. And I probably was, in my universe anyway.

"Bobo's fine. He went after a squassum."

"A what?"

"Body of a possum, tail of a squirrel. Or is it the other way around?"

"Why?"

"They're irresistible to cats." Fey, nonchalant, sexy, as if he was smoking, but not.

"No, why did you do this to me?"

"Dulcinea..."

He called me that from time to time. Dulcinea. The princess of La Mancha. 'Her hairs are gold, her forehead Elysian fields, her eyebrows rainbows, her eyes suns, her cheeks roses, her lips coral, her teeth pearls, her neck alabaster, her bosom marble, her hands ivory, her fairness snow, and what modesty conceals from sight such, I think and imagine, as rational reflection can only extol, not compare.' But he said it with sadness and a tinge of irony, making the slice in my leg hurt less by comparison. His feet crunched over the blades of sugared grass. He sat, elbows resting on his knees, on a tortoise shell, sans tortoise.

"You betrayed me, and it took the clarity of pain to show you just how much. There is a lesson here. You can stay and learn it or you can go back to your prison. Your choice. But remember, when your time ends and your body is planted in the ground, when your marble bosoms fall away and turns to mulch, you will stand in judgment before Me. The abyss that tempted you will become your new prison. You will fall. And you will never stop falling."

"You loved me once. How could you be so cruel?"

Saint Peter helped me to my knees and pulled me close. With his ever-gloved hands he traced the lines of my face and neck, mumbling Cervantes under his breath. I could feel him falling into me, his passions rising, his breath quickening.

"Dulcinea..."

I put my hands on his chest, strong and elusive, with no sign of a heartbeat. I could feel the pulsing in my heel and imagined it was coming from him. I inched my fingers toward his collar and the perfectly placed tie, both spotted with trace stains of lipstick, saliva, and the faint commingling scent of hundreds, upon hundreds, of different perfumes, post coital cigarettes, and late night hotel menu items. My fingers slid to his neck and made contact, flesh on flesh, for the first time. But before the touch could become a feel, he seized my wrists and pried them off, holding me at arms length, a fire in his eyes. For a moment I was sure I had just kissed my other Achilles heel goodbye. But he didn't harm me. He spoke.

"I never said I loved you."

And with that he returned me to the sticky ground and vanished.

I dozed. I licked at the grass, which tasted like lime soda. A drooled a little and languished in my thoughts. Ah, sweet confusion. Could I perhaps make a little decision? One to trick myself into thinking I was on an upward path? A psychiatrist once told me to imagine a ladder in the desert. What did it look like? How may rungs did it have? Mine was made of aluminum. It had six, no seven, rungs. It magically stood at a forty-five degree angle though there was nothing holding it up. What did it mean? But my hour was up. My hour was up. Lick, lime soda. My hour was up. Lick, lime soda.

"What the hell? Did you go retard?"

"Monkey?!"

Oh God, he was back. I couldn't help myself, I grabbed him and cuddled his fur. I cuddled it like it was going out of style. My monkey. My chicken. My little love.

"Okay. OKAY." He jumped down and shook me off, and I could tell he had a little cock in his walk.

"Never. Never. Never do that again. You scared the crap out of me, Bobo."

"It was worth it though. Look at this, mom."

He hopped over the tortoise shell like a baby lamb, and after a bit of a scramble, dragged the ugliest amalgamation of possum and squirrel that had ever been set upon with human eyes.

"Oh... Bobo... You caught yourself a squassum. Good boy."

"I caught it for you. You appreciate it, right? You're gonna eat it, right?"

In our past life, the one in which I did all the talking, Bobo would bring me gifts from time to time. I never had the heart to tell him that what he found to be the purest gesture of love and respect, I found to be completely nauseating. And looking into his two-tone eyes, so full of pride, I knew that I would have to afford taking Bobo the same courtsey.

"I love it. And I'm really gonna enjoy eating it later on."

Bobo straightened up and gave his front paws a satisfied licking. I decided to let him have his moment and revel in it before telling him about my little talk with Saint Peter. I wanted him to be in a good mood when I told him that I'd passed up a one way ticket home in favor of a quest.

The Bobo and Margarita -- Part 2

In my dream, my foot was stuck in a crusher. I was on a conveyor belt with hundreds of beekless chicks. My foot, the bad foot, had jammed the machine but the conveyor was still operational, delivering a seemingly endless amount of fuzzy, yellow, baby chickens my way, and then, for some reason, doughnuts. I remember being happy as I watched in excruciating pain while the chicks nibbled on the doughnuts rather then meeting their violent end, ground up into God knows what, until I had the horrible realization that the doughnuts were made from the ground up chicks. Soilent Doughnut. It made no sense. It was pure horror, not reason. But terrifying nonetheless. I retched. I woke up. The purple sky was gone.

My heel still throbbed. It would for some time, I imagined. I tried to recall all I had learned about pain management from my days as an erotic pain management consultant, but nothing prepared me for this. This was not the kind of pain that could be managed. There would be no channeling this through my Kundalini. No pushing it down through my core into the pubic knot. No using it as an outlet for stifled emotions. No crying it out. No orgasming through it. No. This was the kind of pain that required the good drugs. This was a war injury. I was afraid to look at it. It felt as if the bottom of my calf muscle had begun to roll up towards my knee. I was sure that's what was happening, and expected to see a chambered nautilus made of muscle crawling slowly up the back of my leg, bone exposed in it's wake, a lost heel dangling somewhere below. But when I did look, all I saw was a foot, poorly wrapped in blood soaked paper towels, resting on a small hill of sand.

Where the hell was that cat? How had we gotten to a beach? I lifted my head again and scanned the sand for paw prints. There were several. And one fresh set leading towards the water. Bobo. I scanned the coastline for signs of him. Nothing. The mother in me worried. My baby pie, where was he? Then I saw something pink. He ran towards me at an alarming speed, shaking and cursing as he came.

"What's wrong with that water? Damn it. Damn it to hell."

Bobo sat in the sand and started licking himself, then he cursed again and made a funny cat-who-has-mistakenly-licked-the-peanut-butter face. He was pink, wet, and covered in sand. He looked hilariously adorable.

"What happened, Monks?"

"I was trying to wash the blood out of my fur, okay?"

I could see why he was tempted to try. The water was a crystal blue azure and calm as a mirror. If I hadn't been so thoroughly fucked, I would have run for it myself. The beach was hot, the sand scorching.

"But cat's hate water. Why didn't you just clean yourself like normal?"

"I thought I'd try something new. Is that such a crime?"

He was being pissy.

"Nope. Not a crime at all. I'm proud of you."

"Well, that water tastes terrible."

"It's salt water, Boo."

"Why the hell did they put salt in it? Jeez..."

He kept on with the licking and spitting. I guess talking Bobo, much like regular Bobo, hadn't ever been to the ocean.

"Listen, Monkey, how did we get here?"

"You passed out again. That little girl, the one in the party dress, she and her evil cohorts ran out of things to fling with that catapult and decided on us. I was too small to stop her, but gave her a few nice scratches for her effort before she counted down from three and sent us sailing. Look around."

The beach was indeed spotted with all my worldly possessions. My dresser, or parts of my dresser, was being gently lapped by the surf, and the ugly chair bobbed about thirty yards out to sea. My lamp had gotten tangled in a bright blue banana tree, and books, scripts, and papers occupied a fifty yard radius up the beach a ways like a an emergency library drop gone horribly awry.

"We fell from the sky?"

Bobo the independent, allowed me to wipe down his fur with my sweater, which I had taken off due to the increasing heat. He pretended not to enjoy it.

"That was the strange thing. We sailed through the air for a long while, but didn't quite land. The altitude knocked me out too, and when I came around, we were here. I found the kitchen stuff. There are cans, and some of your food seems to have made it too. I suggest you pull it together and pack a bag so we can get out of here."

"And go where?"

"To confront your lover, mother. Wherever he may be."

We needed a plan. The sun was rising in the sky making it next to impossible to think, but I managed to make a list of all the things I needed Bobo to find, the first being a small bottle of Vicodin. It took him at least a half an hour of nasty metaphors, but eventually he did find the pink striped bag in which I kept all my toiletries. The pill bottle was there, and though it only contained three precious Vicodin, it would be enough to get me through the day. I disinfected my wound with some peroxide and wrapped it up tightly with gauze. Bobo had to bite my arm to keep me from passing out again, but once the clean bandage was in place, and the drugs started to take hold, I felt ready to move, or wade rather, through the cottony haze of pharmaceutical bliss.

We packed a bag with cat food cans, power bars, water bottles, and bruised-by-catapult fruit. I took along a copy of The Brothers Karamazov, a book I had promised myself I'd finish reading before dying, which, by the looks of things could be sooner then I thought, a few more first aid supplies, and a half-empty bottle of vodka for when the Vicodin ran out. I threw in a tin of cat nip in case Bobo really started to get on my nerves, a few clean pairs of underwear, and a blanket with a poem about daughters knitted into it that my mother had given me for Christmas. A piece of drift wood served as a walking stick, and slowly, Bobo and I made for the wall of blue banana tress separating the beach from the technicolor jungle.

We walked for a while through a Dr. Seuss fantasy. A spongy, hot-pink ground sprouted with blue and orange trees, some of which grew upside down. Bobo, being color blind and not particularly interested in flora, couldn't care less, but I was on painkillers and found it all terribly entertaining.

"It makes so much sense now," I said to Bobo as we navigated a clearing of green flowers with yellow stems, "Saint Peter hid his whimsy. He didn't even bother to undress when he fucked me, remember that?"

"You think I'm watching, but I'm not," Bobo quipped in a tone that implied pity for my inebriated state.

"He didn't!" I could sense I was revealing too much, but felt helpless to stop myself. "He would let himself in while I was sleeping, pull back the covers, whip it out, and do me. It was that way every time, remember?"

"Nope."

"It was so sad. I mean it was hot, I found it hot, but now that I think about it, it was so... sad."

"LALALALALA..."

"I never felt his hands on my flesh. Or mine on his. He wore gloves, and had that dirty suit of his buttoned all the way up to his collar. I never dared touch his face. That would have been too intimate. I felt him inside me, but I never touched him. Isn't that sad? Then, when he was done (he was always so quiet when he came, like thunder rolling over a neighboring town when the afternoon is deathly still and humid), he would rumble, rumble above me while he shot into me. I know it wasn't normal. It didn't feel normal. It felt like knowledge. Like a liquid thought that had the ability to pass through the usual fleshy barriers and make its way to my spinal fluid. Then it would travel up into my brain and deposit a thought. 'You're mine', it would say, 'my possession, my property, my easy earth girl.' And I see it now. He did it all for me. What if all this weird beauty is really him and he was too afraid to show it? What if he appeared to me the way he did, all leathery and cool, because he wanted to make me happy? Bobo?"

I stopped under a blood red tree with Swarovski crystal leaves and scanned the area.

"Bobo!"

Ahead there was what looked to be another clearing and I made my way towards it screaming his name at the top of my lungs. What a mess, I thought. Just like me to spread my damage and confusion over a situation like spicy jalapeno jelly and alienate everyone I touch. But not Bobo. Not my pure little man. My sweet little guy, my innocent. The only living proof that I'm not a complete fuck up. Bobo; well behaved independent, polite, sweet, and gone.

I limped my way over fallen crystal leaves, which crushed under foot like thin panes of sugar towards the white hot sky. But it wasn't a clearing I found when I got there. It was a cliff. And below, for miles, there was nothing.