The Misfit Confessions of Telegraph Hill: Part II

Composition #6 December 17, 1957

I didn’t even tell you about why yesterday was the worst day of my life. I thought about it after I left and at first I didn’t care, but I figured if I am going to do this bullshit, I might as well finish it. At least in wasting my time, I can have something to show for it. I guess I could tell you. You know though. It’s kind of your fault. You were a coward. Maybe that’s the reason you have trouble standing up straight. I used to think you had some type of scoliosis, but that’s not it. A coward can’t stand up straight because they have no ethics…and ethics surely contribute to posture. I can’t prove it but I’m sure they are related and if I could prove it, I would make you my case study. Just like you have made all of us your case studies. He’s a dead kid. It’s your fault. I know you aren’t doing anything about it. I don’t know if there’s anything you’ve ever done about anything. I hate you for that. You are a sad person and I hate you for making me sad because I have to look at how sad you are. If I have to answer another question on one of your tests again, I might shoot myself. Do you know where I can get a gun? You wouldn’t tell me if you did because you’re a coward. I would never answer one of your questions. The compositions are the only work I’ll do for you…because it isn’t really something I’m doing for you. How about I ask you a question and then you can see how mind-numbing your tests are? I won’t make it short answer. I’ll make it multiple choice for you. More considerate than you.

(1) Taking into account your complete lack of knowledge of

other human beings, your complete ham-handed,

backward way of communicating with others, what choice

best describes your place in this world (too

generous)…in this town?

(a) maladroit

(b) gauche

(c) discomfited

(d) Fuck you.

I’m interested to know what you chose, but I’ll probably never know and you probably aren’t even reading this. You lazy fuck. My day was bad yesterday because I woke up in the morning and I sat in the white painted wood nook by my bedside. I looked

out the window and it was dark. I put my lips up against the glass and breathed through my nose. I made some shapes with my

breath on the glass. (b) Kaleidoscopic. That would be the best word to describe the shapes I made. Kind of Busby Berkeley, if

you know who he is. You only get (b) because that’s the right choice. I don’t need to show you the other three because kaleidoscopic is the best description and I don’t need your approval on my vocabulary. The window. You ruined my moment at the window and thus began the worst day. It was dark outside and I loved that time before yesterday. Before yesterday, it was only a little cold and I could use my toes to chip away at the white paint by the window. The time passed seamlessly. And then yesterday came and it was one of those lengthy early morning hours where the time moves so slowly. The time barely moves at all and nothing about the trees has changed since I went to sleep. You stopped the time, I think, and I was fuming. I was thinking about the morning. About how I would remember the torpid feeling of that morning, the morning that I buried my friend. And then you took it…because I worried so much about the composition that I misstepped in my daily routine. Watching the sunrise was my morning job and because of you, I did slipshod work at my post. A slapdash job, if you will. You took my morning away from me. It went right from 6AM loneliness to your room. And I hated the windows in your room. I learned nothing from looking out the window. There’s nothing more worthless than a window you can’t learn anything from. There might as well be nothing but wall there. I’d rather watch the slow death of the yellow wallpaper. At least she understood the depression and the paper never judged her. I can’t say the same about you. You’re a judge. You’re a thief. You stole my morning sunrise from me and all I could think of was that somewhere on the other side of the world, somewhere near Fiji, someone else watched my sunrise. I never knew that person, but they were my soul mate for the day, every day I saw the sunrise. They were my best friend because they saw what I saw while everyone was asleep. We stole the beauty of the sunrise together. We stole it before everyone woke up and I put it in my pocket for the day. There was no pocket in my dress yesterday and I wondered if you had planned it that way. I needed dawn on the day I buried my friend and I didn’t get it

because of worrying about your soul searching “assignment.” I didn’t need a soul search. I needed to see the sun come up. The sun was never mine. But the peek abo0. That was tangible. That was my connection to all the places I had never been…all the places I need to go to get the fuck out of here. To get the fuck away from you. Fuck. It’s only 12:37PM. Are you slowing this day down, too? I think I saw you touching the clock earlier. Maybe. 12:37:14. I think the clock is melting. Fuck. I think you did touch the clock. Once I heard you talking about Salvador Dali and The Persistence of Memory. You sounded happy. How pathetic. The only thing you could get that happy about was something you had nothing to do with. You envied it. I think you moved into the painting and you took the melting clocks. You thought you could bring them here and we wouldn’t notice they were melting. But I’m not boring like you. I don’t need to blur the clock to forget about what I haven’t done in a day’s passing. Don’t steal any clocks on my account. Doing shit like that is exactly why no one likes you. I mean maybe it’s not the only reason, but it’s definitely one of the main reasons I don’t like you. It’s selfish…and frankly, people in Telegraph will find another clock. You’re clock isn’t the only one. And your window isn’t the only way I should see the world. When the bell rings, you’re clock will be wrong. And I’ll be gone. You’ll still be here with the clock that’s wrong. The clock you stole and thought I wouldn’t see. I’m not a narc, but I can be if I want to. I think it’s worth it to be a narc if someone is stealing your sun and using it to melt your clock. I want to strangle you and tell you that I know it was you. I know it was you with the graffiti and the fuck you on the wall in Phoebe Caulfield’s school. You’re not who you say you are. If you knew how upset you made Holden, I don’t think you would have done it. And I don’t think you would have stolen the clocks either. Graffiti. Pitiable, I suppose. 12:38. Goddamnit.

Composition #7 December 18, 1957

The backyard smelled of burning leaves tonight. I don’t understand why our neighbor does that, but I love the glow coming from over the fence. I love it because when the light shows through the cracks in the wood, I can see patterns. New patterns every time. New orange and yellow. It’s weird that he needs to burn the leaves. It’s like he waits for them to fall and then wipes them away forever. He’s freeing his yard from imperfection. I can’t put my finger on it but there’s something smart about him doing it. Like he knows something about the leaves. Something that none of us know. Do you know? Probably not. You never know anything until you’re told…and even then, like a true coward, you keep too many secrets. My yard was full of lightning bugs. I had my glass jar and I was just waiting for one to flash so I could make it my friend for the night. I put the jar on my nightstand and I talked to it. It took me 27 minutes to come up with a name for the bug and I finally settled on Sherman. He seemed like a Sherman. Sherman was a good name for a confidant. It was innocent. It was just boring enough to make me the more interesting one in the duo and it felt right. Sherman lit up when I said mean things about you, when I devised my plan of how I was going to get you back for killing him. He was agreeing with my plan. I’m thinking about what I’m going to do and since you aren’t

reading this, I see no reason why you can’t know how I’m going to kill you. It’s only fair that I tell you, that I document my strategy. That way, when you’re gone and the bumbling idiots are spending all their time trying to figure out what it all

means, I won’t need to be here to spell it out for them…but I guess I’ll know I made something of this ridiculous task. I made something of the time. Instead of it being wasted doing this for you, it will be my last thoughts here. I’ll be like a J.D. Salinger, a literary one hit wonder, a famous prodigy murderer who outsmarted the expert. I won’t be around to see it, but it will be my finest hour. And I’ll leave Sherman back to watch it all unfold. I won’t be here, but my stories will markmy time in this wretched place. I’ll be successful. I’ll do what you never did and I’ll belong gone from here and the only thing they’ll have left is me telling the dark secrets of why this town should be nothing short of forgotten. Pillow talk is over. Sherman and I are in an intense staring competition and I hate to admit it, but I’m losing to a bug. I can’t even see his eyes. I can see his whole body and the bulb. This should be easy victory, but it’s not. It’s your fault. I’m getting a little dizzy, a little uneasy. It may just be the

staring that’s shaking my contest. Nothing can make you second guess yourself, your stamina, your smarts, and your confidence like a staring contest. No talking. No bullshitting. No changing the subject. I can tell this game would be hard for you. I might try it tomorrow when I see you. I’ve been thinking that it might be a good way to get ideas of how I’m going to finish the job on you. I have a plan, but not the whole plan. If I stare at you again, I think I can figure it all out. That sounds good, right? You would know if it sounded good. You should know how I could kill you most efficiently. Nobody would know better than you. Actually, now that I am thinking about it, I don’t know that you know yourself better than anyone. I think you might be the only person I know who isn’t their own best friend. God, that’s fucking lonely. I always think that you gotta be your own friend because no one’s going to do it for you. Then you can have other friends. None of them will last forever for you…except for yourself. And that’s how it should be. You come in the world alone. Everything meaningful, everything you teach yourself, everything you do to befriend your mind, comes from your experiences being alone. So if I could just stare, if I could just watch you for a little, I’m certain that you could be my perfect case study. Study for what, you say? Or not, because I know you aren’t looking at this. If you were, you would have stopped about a page back and called the police about my initial threat. You’d be my case study and the research would be on how to murder a man, how to really figure out how to kill him in the most creative way possible.My case study would be an amateur attempt at becoming a legend. Seems ridiculous, I know. But then again, all the instant legends

of our time were like that. They were what I call the “swift numb.” James Dean. Jean Harlow. They were amateurs. They

were going to be great. Really great. But they were destined to die like that…like they were…the fresh face, the movie star, the

amateur in life and experience…the amateur in appreciation for it all…but for everything that made them novelties, their deaths

would make them legends. They would disappear like they were supposed to. No one was supposed to know them after that day. People would know them for who they really were. They would never have to experience the slow decline to death, a decline in the public eye, where everyone could continue questioning their lifestyle, their worth, their longevity, and the very idea of who they are. I’m going to be like them. You won’t be the legend in this story. Fuck.9:48PM. Fuck. Sleep.