I Am Not Lenny Coolidge -2- Sometimes I get these headaches.  How I will describe them is that they are like if you took a big stick and hit me on the side of the head a lot, and you did not stop even if I asked you very nice with sugar on top, or offered you some money or a bite of one of my mother’s grilled cheese sandwiches.  Also, when I masturbate, that makes my head hurt.  And the heat.  Oh, man.  The heat really makes it really bad.  All of these things make me very ANGRY, too.  It is very hard for me to remember if I liked being married to the woman who used to be my wife. I can remember some things, but other things I can not.  I remember our toilet would never flush the right way and you had to jiggle-wiggle the handle or else it would keep on running forever and always, and it would never quiet down.  But I do not remember what it was like to sleep in bed or have lots of sex. Sometimes I am afraid that it never happened.  It probably did, I think.  But it is like what Raymond Michael Douglas does when I am sleeping—I can never be all-the-way sure.  Raymond Michael Douglas is not here right now. Today is the day he goes down to the clinic to donate his plasma.   He does this so he can afford to smoke his cigarettes.  Raymond Michael Douglas is poor.  The money he gets for his plasma helps Raymond pay for them.  There is no one in the apartment right now. It is only me. My mother is at work, and it is just stupid soap operas, and the dog across the street is laying down, so even though I am not Lenny Coolidge, I think I can tell you about him if you promise to keep everything I tell a secret.  Do you promise?   Lenny Coolidge is a man, and one day he shot his mother.  And his wife.  And his two children.  And then—and maybe you will think this part is not very believable—but the paperboy was pedaling by to deliver the newspaper, and Lenny Coolidge shot him too!  When Lenny Coolidge was finished up shooting everybody, he put them all inside his mother’s car. Then he set that car on fire. I saw all about this on the news—they said when the firemen came, Lenny Coolidge was sitting on the front porch with a lit cigarette and a can of beer. He waved at the firemen and said, What’s up, guys!  Then he asked if they would need any help to put his fire out.  Since I am not Lenny Coolidge, I did not do any of those things. But sometimes I do wonder:  If I do them right now, could there ever be a chance? Maybe it would not work because I do not have any children.  And I like the paperboy.  He is for one thing the boy who brings the newspaper, and also one time he helped me put the chain back on my bicycle when Raymond Michael Douglas would not help me because he was still asleep inside my closet after he had too much to drink.  Oh, hey!  There is Raymond Michael Douglas now. Wait a minute!  He is smoking one of his cigarettes inside the doorway.  Not inside, I tell him.  I say this because if my mother smells his smoke she will blame me, and that will make her ANGRY.  I am not allowed to play around with fire.  Now Raymond says he is woozy from giving away his plasma.  He wants to know if he can lay down with me together on my bed.  I ask him why not on the floor, or on my clothes in the closet where he is supposed to sleep.  Didn't I just say I was woozy? he says.  C'mon, he says.  Please?  I tell him, Okay.  But he better not try to rub his hand all over up and down my leg this time.  Oh, man.  He rubs his hand all over up and down my leg.  He knows he should not do something like that.  First I break the TV, then I break the floor lamp, then I break my bedpost, then I break my finger.  Raymond Michael Douglas leaves the apartment in a very big hurry, and I am so ANGRY, I am glad to see him go.  But in a minute I am not so glad anymore.  Pretty soon I miss him, and I wish he would come back.  My mother has a boyfriend who only visits her at night, and when he is here, they have lots of sex, and she yells out loud, and it embarrasses me, sometimes, to hear. This boyfriend’s name is Horace.  I know because Horace is what my mother always yells when they are having all their sex.  Horace is a fisher guy, and Raymond Michael Douglas and me used his poles this one time without asking. One night while he was making my mother yell, we stole them from the back of his truck, and now—oh, man!—they are way down at the bottom of Foster Pond.   Just look at this apartment!  What do you think will happen when my mother gets home?  I think when she sees this mess I have made, she will not want to sing “Rolling on a River,” that is for sure.  And I do not think Raymond Michael Douglas and me will be going fishing together anymore.  That is what I am feeling right now.  Sometimes, also, Lenny Coolidge did not know that he was Lenny Coolidge.  This is another thing I heard.  On the news they said he could once in a while think he was really a man called Parker Reeve.  It did not matter who he was, though.  THEY killed him with THEIR sleep medicines anyway.  I am not Lenny Coolidge or Parker Reeve, but it is getting so much harder for me to remember. A little while ago, my mother came home. And it was just like I thought: she was not happy that everything was broken, and she called THEM at the WARD. Now they want to take me back.  She says she will not fight them. She says she thinks to not fight them “seems as though it would be in the best interests of everyone involved.”  What will be hard will be to get everyone I need in the same place at the very same time.  For an example, the lady who used to be my wife does not visit me.  And Raymond Michael Douglas will be hard, too, because he has not been back to see me even one single time since I broke everything along with my hand.  One of his dirty shoes is still inside my closet, even.  This afternoon I took it inside the bathroom and sat on the toilet and sniffed it.  It is just I am so lonely without him.  The shoe still smelled just like Raymond Michael Douglas’s real life feet.  I think maybe in my plan Raymond Michael Douglas could be the paperboy, because I would never shoot or burn the real paperboy.  Wait, no!  Horace can be the paperboy!  Oh, man.  I am really getting ANGRY this time, more ANGRY than usual.  Lenny Coolidge did not think this out very good.  I will only have room in the car for two of the neighborhood kids, and I want to do all of them.  There are not enough parts in the story for all of the terrible people I want to burn.   On the WARD you are not allowed to masturbate yourself. If they catch you, it is very bad. Tomorrow THEY are coming to get me.  A new bed has just opened up.  My hands are very messy. I have been at it all day long.  I wonder if I could run. I wonder if I could take that big black dog across the street, and he could be my protector, and we could live in the sewers together until I have had more time to think about my plan.  But thinking makes my brain hurt even more, and since I am not Lenny Coolidge, it is not really even my plan.  It would be too hard to find a gun.    Everything is too hard for me. I do not know how I would even start a fire that big.  But here is something funny:  My hand is broken, and it does not even hurt one bit.  I think maybe it is because of all this THUMP-THUMP-THUMPING in my brain.  Have you ever watched something burn?  I have.  One time I set the living room carpet on fire with some of Raymond Michael Douglas’s matches.  The fire was pretty smelly, but it was not very big.    A neighbor who must have smelled my fire ran into the apartment and put it out.  Hey! I said.  What did you do that for?  This neighbor wanted to call the fire department or the police, but when my mother came home she gave him some money and asked him very nice with sugar not to do that.    Later, she held my head in her lap.  She sang “Rolling on a River.”  She said, “Proud Mary keep on—” But then she stopped. Burning! I said.  Burning! Burning!  Burn!  That is when my mother smacked me on my mouth.  Then she started to cry.  She said, What am I going to do with you, Randy?  Just what in the hell am I going to do?  I felt really sorry because I made my mother cry, and I felt even more sorry because she smacked me.  But in the end it was all worth it, even the smacking, because of how I got to watch some fire burn.  Uh-oh.  THEY are here now, and THEY are pretty big.  THEY grab me on my wrists and on my ankles. THEY do not look me in my eyes.  I can feel that, I tell them.  Ouch, I say.  That hurts.  Easy, I say.  Can you be easy? Please, I say. Please, can't you hear me?  You're hurting me, I say.  You're hurting me very bad.  THEY do not say anything because THEY are not supposed to say anything.  THEY are just supposed to make sure THEY get me to the WARD.  This is the WARD.  Today I met a man named Clark.  His eyes looked different ways and not at my eyes.  He had some drool on his lips and some more drool on his chin.  He asked me, Who are you? I told him I am Randy Gardener. I am Randy Gardener, he said. No, I told him.  You are not. He asked me again, Who are you?  I told him again I am Randy Gardener.  I am Randy Gardener, he said.   No, I told him.  You are not. I am Randy Gardener, he said.  Yes, I told him.  You are Randy Gardener.  He asked me again, Who are you?  I am Lenny Coolidge, I told him.  No, he said.  You are not.  He was right.  I am not Lenny Coolidge.  This is my bed, and I will sit on it now.  The room is white and so very empty.  There is nothing here to break except myself. But I am already broken.