"
"You," Eva says, and pokes a trembling finger at me. "You hurt my woo-woo."
These stuck old people. "Oh, you said it was just our game," she says and rolls her head, her voice getting sing song. "It was just our secret game, but then you put your big man thing inside me." Her bony, carved little finger keeps poking in the air at my crotch.
The trouble is, anywhere at St. Anthony's it's the same deal. Another old skeleton thinks I borrowed five hundred dollars from her. Another baggy old woman calls me the devil.
"And you hurt me," Eva says.
It's tough not to come here and soak up the blame for every crime in history. Yo want to shout in everybody's old toothless face. Yes, I kidnapped that Lindbergh baby.
The Titanic thing, I did that.
That Kennedy assassination deal, yeah, that was me.
The big World War II gizmo, that atom bomb contraption, well guess what? That was my doing.
The AIDS bug? Sorry. Me, again.
"Yeah, Eva," I say. "I boned you." And I yawn. "Yup. Every chance I got, I stuck it in you and humped out a load.
Her twisted little finger wilts, and she settles back between the arms of her wheelchair. "So you finally admit it," she says.
"Hell yes," I say. "You're one great piece of ass, baby sis."
These same old, old people. Every time I visit, some old raisin down the hall with wild eyebrows, she calls me Eichmann. Another woman with a clear plastic tube of piss looping out from under he bathrobe, she accuses me of stealing her dog and wants it back. Anytime I pass this other old woman who sits in her wheelchair, slumped inside a pile of pink sweaters, she hisses at me. "I saw you," she says, and looks at me with one cloudy eye. "That night of the fire, I saw you with them!"
You can't win. My mom's roommate, Mrs. Novak, she's all nodding and satisfied now that I've finally fessed up to stealing her invention for toothpaste. Another old lady is jabbering and happy as a parrot since I admitted to peeing in her bed every night.
Yeah, I tell them all, I did it. I burned down your house. I sold you a shitty blue Nash Rambler in 1968. Then, yeah, I killed your dog.
I tell them, heap it on me. Make me play the big passive bottom in your guilt gang bang. I'll take everybody's load.
And after everybody's humped out their load in my face, they're all smiling and humming. They're laughing at the ceiling, still all crowded around me, patting my hand and saying it's all right, they forgive me. They're gaining fucking weight. The whole hen party's chatting at me, and this real tall nurse walks by, and she says, "Well, aren't you Mister Popular." You can win, after all.
"
Choke
