New Jersey Me

Most of my life has been spent in the dark: drinking in bars; sitting in strip clubs; sleeping; fucking; searching the black sky for U.F.O.'s. You name it. That's Me. Lights Out Me. Gone Moon Me. My best dark moments were in my mother's womb. It was a nine-month vacation like no other. Beat the shit out of Atlantic City or the Seaside Heights Boardwalk during the summer. Inside mom's dark-belly Eden, I was naked and free to do as I pleased. I slam-danced to the music of her heart. Surfed the waves of her every breath. With fistfuls of blood and placenta, I scrawled graffiti all over the walls of her insides.

I couldn't help myself. I was out of my mind with delight. Made crazy by the bitter fruits of her vices. Whatever she smoked, I smoked. Whatever she drank, I drank. Didn't care for the Virginia Slims or Yuban coffee though. All that menthol smoke and bitter grounds made Fetus Me ball up even tighter. Kick out of time with her heart. But the occasional Bloody Mary, that was another story. The vodka helped me relax. Made my eyes shine bright. In that amniotic ambrosia, I was my own fixed constellation of hyper illuminated joy. Star Me. Super Nova Me. All around me spun fiery planets, frozen wastelands. I was a full-blown space cadet—Laika the Astronaut Dog and all that. Nothing could throw me out of orbit. Not even the skim milk music like "Georgy Girl," "Up, Up and Away" and other Top-100 crap mom would play and tap her tummy along to while driving.

But that's how it was for me back in 1967. That's how I began to sense the world outside me, all around me. For days I'd sit with my newly formed ear pressed against my mother's belly. Listen to our small town Jersey life. There were the hacking coughs and curses from the crusty old men fishing in the marina; the bitching about high prices and home life from the blue hairs shuffling through the aisles of Shop-Rite Supermarket; the tired gossiping about friends, enemies, and who's doing who between lip smacks of gum from the high school kids hanging out in front of the local strip mall. And all their smells: Red Man Chewing Tobacco and snapper guts; Ben Gay and mothballs; Double Bubble and clumsy first sex. From where I sat, my town of Blackwater, everything about it, added up to nothing more than a dismal Hit Parade of Boredom bleeding into my dark Eden.

The boredom. It was everywhere. I could hear it in the muffled voices of bank tellers, pharmacists, and gas station attendants. I could feel it in the way my parents spoke to each other, touched each other before drifting off to sleep. All that boredom pushed up against my mother's belly; worked its way inside. I exchanged her oxygen, nutrients, and metabolites for that boredom. Fed myself on it non-stop. Tried preparing myself for life in Blackwater: a place with no huge malls, rock clubs, or movie theaters. Only hot rods, adultery, and alcohol—all the things to make you spin faster or slower around the boredom.

An even greater threat than the boredom, though, was the Crab Creek Nuclear Power Plant. Its radioactivity seeped through my mother's skin. Made me tingle, gave me headaches. As the months went on, the poison blended in with my parents' DNA—twisted helixes of father's rage, mother's fear, married despair—to form my tiny hands, feet, spine, and brown eyes. Human waste dump Me. Emotional Frankenstein Me. All these parts of me felt even more toxic than the Jersey I'd soon be dropped into.

But it wasn't all skull and crossbones tragedy. Like I said, those nine months of blackness were the best moments of my life. There were evenings when, over the gentle sounds of mom's gestation factory, I could hear a different small town: the hum of crickets and bullfrogs tuning for evening's symphony; late night April rains drumming "White Rabbit" on the roof; the distant, hungry howl of the legendary Jersey Devil. And the girls: all the sweet dark dwellers over at Duffy's Bar. I'd hear their voices whenever mom went with my cop old man to watch him down a beer or two. Those girls and their sultry gin and Marlboro-drenched ramblings; their voices nearly killed me. Love Crush Me. Spin the Stillborn Bottle Me.

Rib by rib, breath by breath, all those beautiful sounds of Blackwater built me. Sang me into being. With the erratic beatings of my mother's heart as a humble metronome, I kept time with this music of my little town. The music that filled me with hope; hope that once I left my paradise-dark, life on the outside wouldn't be so bad.

There were other hopes along the way, too. On clear spring days when I'd kick and shove, send mom to her bedroom window to rub her tummy and console herself, I'd disconnect my umbilical cord. Use it as a periscope to peer out through her belly button. I could just make out distant lands that shone like beacons of possibility: Seaside Heights, Asbury Park, and if I squinted real hard, New York City. With my dim radioactive glow as a nightlight, I charted out road maps on my mother's inner walls. Lulled myself to sleep counting off the miles between those faraway places and me.  Lost Me. Magnetic North Me. Those places I realized, even in pre-birth, would be my future sanctuaries. Places that would feed me things Blackwater nor my mother ever could: loud music, wild women, and lights, bright, bright lights.

When I finally saw those bright lights, I thought I'd made it. Thought I'd been born into another world besides my dumpy, little town. But it was only the delivery room lights I'd spotted as the doctor dragged me out of my mother. I put up a good fight though. Tried strangling myself with my umbilical chord, coming out middle finger first. Breech Me. Freedom Rock Me. Nothing worked. The doctor pulled me high into the blinding light. I kicked and screamed as he smacked the pain of breath into me.

After he cut my umbilical periscope, he placed me, Bloody Valentine Me, into my mother's arms.

Through her sobbing, she spoke my name for the first time: "Mark."

Even then, Tiny Seed Me knew I was doomed. Being kicked out of her dark-belly Eden, smacked on the ass, and branded with a name was bad enough. But she had sealed my fate in a far worse way. Comfort and security hadn't been a legacy passed on to me. Only the knowledge that as soon as I could walk, I'd be running. Running both to my little town of Blackwater and away from it. Part ghost, part half-empty shot glass, part dual-exhaust high performance dream machine. There I'd be. Just a blur. That's me. All me. New Jersey Me.