Resume
by Peter Schwartz

In childhood, time is something different. At ten my father tells me to sit on my bed and wait for my punishment. He will be back in five minutes.

In those five minutes I become a farmer, a security guard, a thief, an addict and then a caveman. If only I'd known, I would have wrote a postcard to myself. Farewell, I would have written in dark, bold letters.

By the fourth minute my hair has turned pink and I've lost all my teeth. I am superhuman, not human at all. I become myself sixteen times, over and over, in rapid succession. I picture my grandma naked, crying.

A 'D' is not acceptable, my father says. This was my first bad report card and I now hate my teachers so much for doing this that I know I will never be anything. An 'A' is acceptable, he says.

I black out as if to music as he does what he thinks he must. I wake up covered in glitter and dust.

I'm now a figure skater, a hair stylist, a palm reader, maybe even a murderer but there is no one weaker to kill. I paint my toenails and picture sucking dick. The world shrinks to the size of a parking lot.

My father's worst threat is the belt because it represents a distance. I am too shitty to even be touched by hand. He catches me in my mother's coat one stupid Sunday and I see that look in his eye.

You're getting the belt.

I learn to make an art of failure, my worst moments my greatest. I fail the same math class twice, forget to shower for a week. I smoke pot with homeless men, catch crabs from a girl named Lisa. I break my heart like a surgeon, I am so thorough it almost never hurts.

Years later a man on a kibbutz asks me if I'm mute then spits on the ground. How can I explain to him that I'm dying of inwardness and that this is the journey I've chosen? He is just another man. I picture him in nothing but socks, grunting on top of his wife.

Now I read everything. Part-student, part-astronaut; I study foreign languages under my bed or in the closet. I use the Internet like a pair of gloves and love and hate people like some bad soap actor. I believe in my demons and talk to no one. Occasionally I sell a story to an online journal. Or lose it and lay in the bath for twenty-four hours.

I masturbate to the most beautiful women on Earth. I am a poet.