Nothing is noticed here and mothing is missed.

I look around and sometimes think I’ve gone all the way, but I know there’s more – I know that no matter how far you go, you can always go further.

That feeling alone could put most people down.

Who would have ever thought that human beings could survive on Skid Row in wheelchairs, or on crutches? Or with half a face or both eyes gone? But it was one of the first things I noticed – all the sick and disabled people. It surprised me at first, but then I remembered where I was and then it made sense: Of course there would be more sickness here, more accidents – more casualties that end up here.

Like that woman.

For a long time no one paid any attention to me here.

Now there’s that woman across the street.

And she thinks she’s still clean.

She thinks I’m clean.

Nothing is clean here.

A street sweeper rolls by every night while I lie awake. Every night they sweep the streets and spray a thin layer of disinfectant over everything.

The spraying is a hopeless routine, like washing and feeding someone who’s dying: wetting down the streets, disinfecting them, taking away the garbage, the people sleeping in garbage, and in the gutters with the rats. New stacks start piling up as soon as the old ones are taken away.

Layers of dirt and disease accumulated over decades: a coating of dirt everywhere – a mixture of human suffering and filth and disinfectant covering everything. You smell it everywhere. It gets in your hair, your clothes.

I prefer it this way.

It’s more believable this way, and I do want to experience the truth while I die.

I’m dying, and there’s still too much time.

I used to think I was dying and that there wasn’t enough time, but that was an imaginary death – a mixture of paranoia and fantasy – while the will to continue was still there.

I would tell her I was dying because I wanted her to try to help me: I wanted to see if she would.

I’d go through the motions of reaching out to her:

“I’m dying,” I’d say. “You’re killing me,” but we both knew that it was me who seemed to be killing her.

Though no one has died yet that I know of.

I have been able to bring death closer. I’ve drawn it to me by surrounding myself with it, and being aware of it, and feeling it clearly.

The woman across the street needs to do that, and she knows it, but right now she’s afraid.

Right now, she’s afraid of everything, including me.

She thinks I’m after her, and that worries her. I can hear her say to herself: “Why does he keep looking at me?”

She knows I know these things – that I can hear her thoughts.

And I know that she thinks she wants to die, but there’s still some drive to survive in her. That’s why sh’e afraid to go out.

She doesn’t want to face more, but she can’t avoid it, she can only puy it off. Because there’s no limit for some people – no stopping point – no matter where you are.

That realization will creep up on her – especially here, in this place, because you can’t forget here.

That’s the irony: People come here to forget but that’s impossible.

I came here to forget.

For me, winding up here was actually a long process – something that happened over time – though it felt like it happened all of a sudden: One moring I just woke up and here I was – like I’d always been here.

At first I’d come down here and just drive around, but I never got out of my car. I’d drive around for a long time – sometimes hours – and then go back “home” – to her.

Then I got bolder: I’d park the car and walk. Sometimes I’d spend a whole day just walking around.

Pretty soon I was coming here to get high instead of oding it with my friends after work. I started spending most of my time, and most of my money, but I’d always end up going back to Her.

Then it happened, and shortly after that, I left her:

I did what I did and came here for good.

When I first came here, the hardest thing was realizing that where I was wasn’t the stopping point. Fro me it was like it is, or soon will be, for that woman across the street: In my case, I knew it right away – as soon as I got here: I knew that I had to go through more but I couldn’t accept it. I didn’t want to accept it. I told myself I’d gone far enough – that I was ready to continue as I was, but things kept happening anyway.

Before, there was my “Love.”

I’ve left her – it’s been years – but she’s still with me.

It still goes on.

I see us:

I see her, I see us, and that´s all. Nothing else. Only our lives – day to day nothing else.

We had nothing to give each other, except for emotional and physical pain.

Not after catastrophe, and not after lines were crossed that should never have been drawn in the first place.

When we were together I denied there was nothing between us. For a long time I denied it to her, and to myself, but the signs were all over.

Once I put her in the hospital. She wanted me to do it.

She begged me to hit her harder and fuck her harder. Then she handed me a steak knife and told me to cut her.

The doctors and nurses thought we were both garbage.

We tried to be “normal.” We thought that was what we wanted. We tried everything. It was no use.

We taped our voices so we could hear what we “really” sounded like. She told me what she thought of me and I told her what I thought of her. Every time we played a tape back it sounded the same to us: We could each only hear our own version of what was being said.

When a tape was over the tapedeck would make a tapping sound – two taps, and that would be the signal that it was time to decide what came next.

Sometimes she’d look at me and say, “You think you’re a man. If you’re really a man, you’ll do something ... you’ll hurt me. You’ll make me know that you’re really a man.”

She was always daring me like that – always attacking my manhood.

I would ignore her for as long as I could. I wanted to be alone.

Several times I tried to leave.

I’d tell her it had to stop. “This isn’t right,” I’d say. “I can’t keep on doing this.”

She’d scream and throw things and say the worst things she could think of. She’d hit me and then I’d hit her.

Then she’d cry and plead with me: “You can’t go! You can’t leave me like this!”

Sometimes shed say – quietly: “I really do love you,” and she would remain calm for a while, so then I’d stay.

To myself, in my thoughts, while I sat with her there on the couch, or on the bed, trying to reassure her, I would imagine insanity. I would think about it carefully – planning it, looking forward to it.

The men I worked with were always telling me I should have a family, like them. I didn’t want a home and family, and neither did she, though she said she did.

I didn’t want anyone.

At work I’d look at the hot metal and think that I wanted to scar myself with it – to ruin my face with it. I wanted tochange myself so that I could never change my mind and go back.

I wanted to achieve perfect insanity and get out before she saw me. Then she wouldn’t know me afterward.

She wouldn’t know me now.

For a short time after it happened I wante to believe it would make a difference – that maybe it could create something between us. But that was impossible.

All I could do was leave – first do something as horrible to myself – to pay my debt – and then come here and finally be free of her.

But it’s been years and I’m still not free of her, or what happened.

Not all these years later – wherever she is, whatever kind of person she’s become.

It was a crime without compassion – torture and cruelty for their own sake, and the thrill. It forever changed her life, and mine, even though when it happened the two of us were already changed: We were no longer connected to each other in any way.

After it happened, she couldn’t forget. That would be impossible.

She didn’t want me to forget either.

She didn’t do it with words ... She was quiet afterward. For the short time that I stayed after it happened she was quiet. She didn’t have to say anything becasue we both knew her words that were spoken so often before:

“You’re never here,” she’d say. “I’m always here alone.”

And the more she said it, the more I stayed away.

I remember the last time she said it, before it happened. She was standing at the kitchen sink and I was sitting at the table. We were arguing.

She started coming at me with a knife but then she threw it on the floor.

She said I didn’t care about her. “YOU DON’T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT ME!” she screamed, and I agreed with her.

I walked out and stayed away for three days. I was here.

It happened a couple of hours before I went back.

When I went to see her in the hospital she wanted to say: “You knew this was going to happen. That’s why you stayed away – becasue you were waiting for something like this to happen – only you were hoping that it would be worse.” I could see it in her face, but she didn’t say anything, she just looked at me.

We both knew she blamed me for it.

I wasn’t there, after all ... I was out, doing nothing.

While they cut off her hand for a ring and a watch.

They tied a tourniquet to her arm so she would survive.

In her kitchen, where she spent most of her time – the one place where she could at least try to be normal.

Where we were living, if anyone heard her screaming – and I can’t imagine they didn’t – they wouldn’t have done anything. They didn’t do anything. They stayed out of it. They probably thought it was us: There was always so much screaming coming from that apartment.

But not at the moment I walked in and found her. At that moment, the entire world was silent.

She was unconscious when I found her. At first I thought she was dead.

She was lying on the floor, covered in blood.

I found her and knew that whatever came to my senses during those moments – to my eyes especially – I knew that those images would be with me the rest of my life. I knew those things would always be on my mind.

And they are still on my mind.

I knew what was happening to me while it was happening to me. I was aware of the imprints while they were being made – while they were being burned into my mind, like the hot metal I used to burn my face.

I ried to close my eyes but it was no use. I knew I’d still remember everything – even clsoing my eyes. It didn’t matter, and I had to look in order to help her:

There was blood and a table.

She was lying on the floor.

Blood was all over the walls and cabinets.

And on the floor were a hand and arm that were inches apart.