- April 19, 2002 - No Shame Iowa City
Performed by Chris Stangl.
Inferno
by Chris Stangl
LIGHTS DOWN
LIGHTS UP
Chris hangs from the underside of the table for a moment. The people wonder what's up. He jumps down, and they get their answer:
We suspended Matthew through steel hooks going through his skin. I didn't like it. One thing I guess you can do is suspend your body from giant fishhooks through your flesh, and hang there with no support. Your mom probably didn't ever tell you not to do this. Perhaps she didn't know about it. Perhaps she thought you would figure it out on your own.
Matthew got the idea to do this from a book about body modification around the world! He was hoping, when he ordered it, to shock the bookstore lady-- so used to selling Danielle Steele novels-- and her mouth would make a perfect O like this: O! Nobody gets hooks through their muscle tissue in Danielle Steele. In Africa and South America when you cut open a teenager it is a profound rite of passage. When white Midwestern teenager's cut themselves it is a symptom of clinical depression. If you are an urban bohemian, though, performing ritual suspension is probably a symptom of
Abeing a poseur.@Matthew couldn't suspend himself from a hook by himself. He needed a... Hook Guy! I imagined the grossest part to me would be the little tents of skin stretched to the ropes. I really did not want to see a man suspended by skin hooks. I did want to see it go horribly wrong, though. The best way to ensure this was to be the Hook Guy.
So I said
Ayou are in luck! I have done this to a man before!@ That was a wrong thing to do. I think you should be morally aware in your life, and some decisions are wrong. The wrong thing. I said Ameet me at City Park by the swing set in one hour, I have to stop at the grocery store for supplies!@AThis is how they do it in India,@ I told Matthew and I sprayed a bunch of PAM cooking spray all on his back. So the hooks would go in easier, right? Right!
The biggest hooks you can get at a fishing and hunting tackle store are called Fifteens. They are for salmon fishing. If you ever get in this situation you cannot resist telling the fish tackle clerk you are using those salmon hooks to put through a man! And when you see how he breaks into a nervous sweat in his Hard Rock Cafe shirt you will be unable to resist comforting him by explaining
Ait is a new homo-sex thing.@ And that it is really cool.I was going to mark where the hooks should go in Matthew's back by burning little spots on Matthew's back skin with strike-on-box matches. I have wanted to do this for awhile. Sometimes when I would see him walking down the street I would mime flicking a match at his back and imagine a pinhole of flame gradually engulfing his shirt, until all his self was a blazing red ball, except the head which would be poking through the top as his face makes an round O-mouth!
So I was going to mark the hooking spots with a little match-burn. But the PAM brand cooking spray immediately ignited on contact with flame, as per its intended use and design, and much to my delight.
AOh oh,@ I said, and I pushed Matthew to the ground. ARoll about in the cool summer grass, Matthew! Get the fire on your body out!@ And he rolled rolled and I stomped stomped! AOut with the fire!,@ I hollered!Well then a bunch of hooks had to go in. With a pair of bolt cutters... I gingerly removed the rubber strip of a seat from between two parallel chains on the swing set. How many immature asses have dangled here? I pondered aloud! And now another shall join their ranks! Then I started putting these hooks through Matthew's skin.
I couldn't see where I'd marked, because the back was now a map of blisters and smoldering gray scar tissue. The extensive nerve damage was a blessing of sorts because sadly Matthew did not flinch or cry out at the first hook.
AWell give it a whirl!@ I said. APick your feet up, for a test.@ But that single hook just ripped out of that soft hot skin like a fat guy through the Shakey's buffet. Rriip it went!So I knew I would have to affix those hooks to the spinal cord. Which I promptly did. In very messy and unnecessarily twist-y fashion. And when Matthew shouted that he could not move his legs, I just hoisted him over the swing set cross bar myself. This is how they do it in India I thought. And I know Matthew couldn't feel it. Maybe. But some places the spine was actually pulling out, and in those spaces between the vertebrae column and the shallow trench in Matthew's back the sun was setting, shimmery with orange heat. That orange glow consumed the horizon.
As the mangled, charred... mangled gristle of Matthew swung from the chains of the City Park swing set, in the setting August sun... he laughed.
Chris stares in disgust, horror and disappointment as profound as the audience
>s. He shudders and buttons his suit:He laughed and laughed a tinkling, crystalline giggle. This was... this was exactly what he wanted.
I pulled my shirt around my ribcage. Because my heart is in there and... that's not something it needs to see.
LIGHTS DOWN
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Performed by Chris Stangl.
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