98 Wounds by Justin Chin Page A

tricks which he obsessively and lovingly places in old apothecary bottles and labels. It’s a different kind of journaling.
    I once knew someone who took snapshots of each of his tricks’ assholes. He compiled these photos in dozens of photo albums, the kinds with the puffy, hard cardboard, fake leather covers. This was before digital cameras, and he shot these with a regular 35mm camera, which meant that these rolls of film had to go somewhere to be developed. In this digital age, anytime you go online, on any hookup site, sometimes not even, you’re simply confronted by greasy butthole shots, whether you want to look or not, even if you avert your eyes, they are there, waiting to slap you in the face like a clammy washcloth. So it’s no small wonder that this man possibly had the largest collection of pre-digital greasy butthole shots in the world. Flipping through those albums, and when the pages were opened out end to end I remember thinking first that it looked not unlike the bed of coral reefs. Some pages later, it began to look like some meaty new wave paint chip sample, a color wheel of browns, pale orange earthtones, and mauve that you wouldn’t want on any wall. This man that I knew also happened to die very suddenly of a heart attack. And it was left to his college-aged twin sons from an earlier, straighter life to come and clean out his downtown apartment. I’m sure there’s a story in there somewhere, I just don’t want to look.
    Of the personal diary, poet Adam Zagajewski writes that they are often “uncommonly irritating — as it should be” with its “extreme narcissism” and “ill humor,” adding that the diary that “doesn’t bother everyone is one that has clearly been falsified.” In thumbing through modern day journals, one thing in common reveals itself: the last entry is simply an abrupt drop, a page of a day hanging in mid-air, like in cartoons when the ground has vanished under the character’s feet. And the poor thing is standing there with a gorblock expression on his face before he plummets.
    No one journals right up to the bitter end. I’m certain it’s because by then the shit has certainly hit the fan and is pinwheel splattering the room. The run up to that is likely spent dealing with a whole hog of issues, medical or otherwise, and taking care of business, loose ends, all ends to the end.
    Reading that last page, you sense that the person is still unaware of what’s coming up ahead around the bend. And even if they know they’re chronic, that last page still is unaware of the time line. The stopwatches ticking, the alarm clock with the snooze button pried off.

    * * *
    The new meds gave a new lease on life to many who had decidedly checked out or were prepared to. Going into overtime, the next round, the sequel. Would we be so gauche as to call it ‘sudden death’?

    * * *
    This one was about to sit for his real estate license. This one would do something at Franklin Templeton. This one and this one only wanted nothing more than academia, to be absorbed into the postgraduate miasma. This one returned to the Midwest never to be heard from again. This one got married and had four kids and a life down low. These ones moved to the suburbs for their techie jobs and turned to fungus. This one turned to fungus right where he was. This one moved to New York and made it big. This one moved to Los Angeles and gave up. This one got all corporate. This one jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. This one hung himself. This one got sober, then not, then again. This one moved back home to take care of his mom. This one became a born-again Mormon. This one became a porn star, which is to say he acted in some porn movies. This one got 10 to 15 years in San Quentin. This one always had his eye on higher political office and his plan was right on track. This one sought a higher spiritual existence. This one drank the