The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets Read Online Free PDF

as to scorn the toy in front of his mother. She was not fooled: the monster slept with him every night. With time the house grew relatively peaceful again, with only the occasional pile of folded laundry strewn or a splattering of “blood” on the front door. Now Godzilla spent most of his time guarding the beta fish (who were not concerned for their safety either way). Though James’s appetite for destruction had cooled, the Godzilla remained adored and admired; he liked the shadow of the monster cast on his wall by the night-light.
    Because Jackson had always been privately jealous of the Godzilla, and played with it in secret, casting the doll as a gentle giant who sang to the smattering of tiny cowboys and Indians and carried hurt G.I. Joes to rescue in its mouth, he knew it well. It was of an older design, its claws likely hand painted, with hard bumps on its plastic to represent gruesome skin. A seam ran down its face, its protruding stomach, down the tail, and up the back.
    The task would require a surgeon’s precision, but Jackson was confident and appointed me as his assistant. I watched as Jackson took a pillowcase from the linen cabinet and placed it over the Godzilla, covering its head first. From the kitchen he took a knife his mother used for choppingvegetables and a jar of peanut butter, placed them both in the pillowcase, and we headed out the back door.
    I was conflicted, but Jackson was so intent, his eyes so needy, that I agreed to help. We decided my living room had the best light and the most space, and placed lingerie ads and classifieds on the hardwood floor to reduce the likelihood of evidence. I held the monster’s arms down while Jackson considered his best angle, deciding finally that throat to crotch would be the easiest. The first jab required more pressure than he thought, but after a couple tries it came easier; the knife aligned itself to the seam nicely as Jackson sawed in and out of the hard plastic.
    “Peanut butter,” said Jackson, who watched hospital dramas with his mother.
    “Check.”
    “Spoon,” commanded Jackson with a grimace.
    “Check.”
    A smooth curve of the metal worked initially, but to really pack the monster’s guts, Jackson realized he would have to use his hands. When all the hollow spaces of the stomach were filled, Jackson pressed the seam back together, delighted at what an adhesive the peanut butter had turned out to be. It wasn’t apparent, either, unless you were up close, that the creature had been operated upon. With ten minutes until James returned glowing from backstrokes, Jackson and I hurried back to his house and placed the monster in its original position. The sunlight of four thirty p.m. slanted perfectly in through the window, threatening playfully to ooze the innards of James’s Godzilla.
    I was pleased and proud, and I felt the sensation of Us so strongly that I reached for his hand and squeezed it. What I felt were words I didn’t know yet, words like “clammy” and “trembling.” Even when you are so young, seeing a child suppressing his tears, biting his lip, is strange. It is at this age we are allowed to feel generally how we like, and so to be ashamed, to begin to view one’s emotional outpours as events that would be judged, was odd. I let go of Jackson’s hand, shocked, and his quaking gave way to sobbing.
    Ultimately, it was Jackson who ended up squeezing the peanut butter out of the monster, Jackson who was made ignoble by something destroyed by his own hand. Remembering him and the splayed-open, exploding figure, it is clear he loved it just as much as his brother had; it is clear he loved it for how much James had loved it, by proxy of loving James; it is clear he hadn’t wanted to hurt anything that amounted to love, that he hadn’t seen the equation clearly.

 
    I know my mother because my father has given her to me. As concession for her not being around, he racked his brain for details that would soothe the lack, that