The sidewalk bends where your house ends
Like the neighborhood is on its knees
(from HEM: stupid mouth shut)
“the sidewalk bends where your house ends.” i barely made out the words over the others’ chorus of high shrieks and giggles. (awful sounds, these. as bad as you can get, tear-your-eyeballs-from-your-face-and-stomp-on-them sounds; there ought to be a word for it… shriggles?) then i heard it again, as if whispering in my ear. and indeed it was, for i could feel the little demon whiskers brushing against my lobe: “…sidewalk bends where you house ends.” it was as poetic a thing as i’d ever heard the voices utter, and it was intriguing: the voices had not before employed nuance, to any degree. now, though, during this most unlikely of times, there it was: an intriguing turn of phrase, and one that rhymed, to boot. the voices, you should know, took many forms, but in this period had elected to manifest as demon monkeys that lived in my hair. (they did this for reasons that were unlikely but also practical, eg, close proximity to the back of my head, and ease of travel, but i would not learn of these considerations until much later.) this was the umpteenth physical manifestation of the voices, and it represented a positive evolution in their quest to use me as their earthly muse: you see, i liked monkeys. as a boy i had longed to own one, only abandoning the quest when uncle leroy left for me a buckshot-filled squirrel with a little red hat duct-taped to its head. and now here they were, more monkeys than i could count, living in my hair. the only problem was that they were also tawdry little demons, squealing constantly, shriggling about how they felt overlooked, or whatever. they were of one voice, not like a proletariat collective voice or anything, but in the sense that they shrieked all differently but at the same time, and when they stopped, they ceased en total. all the more surprising, then, that one would elect to whisper to me a private message. i went and stood in my doorway, where i saw only what i expected: no sidewalk at all, but instead a moshed muddy path that ran from my aerostream, through the bramble and weeds, and over the hill into the parking lot. so it was as i expected, and yet, i could not see the parking lot, nor any other part of the trailer community, for all was hidden past the bend in the hill … if the dirty path counted as sidewalk, i reasoned, perhaps a hill was good enough to be “bends.” it was all beyond reason, my sudden to go and inspect the parking lot. but then, one must remember i had demon monkeys living in my hair; as such, reason was a relative undertaking. and sure enough: as i rounded the bend in the hill the demon monkeys started their shrieking – not the shriggling i described earlier, but a frenzy of delighted, anticipatory screams. it was a state of demon anarchy, a monkey rave happening in my hair, and as i rounded the bend and looked down at the lot below me, i knew why. there , in close circles around a series of bonfires, were grouped all of the residents of my un-gated community, plus many others, engaged in a convulsed dance. and all of these had monkeys swinging from their hair, whooping wildly as they clawed and swirled, spinning their headly perch and the rest of its owners around in circles with the combustive force of their movements. and i was transfixed by it; even the demon monkeys in my hair went quiet with the sight. for it was almost beautiful, like orgasm without forewarning, like grace without the coordination part; like the neighborhood is on its knees.
*one of my favorite patton oswalt lines.
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