Chuck Palahniuk - Diary

Diary

By Palahniuk, Chuck

For my grandfather, Joseph Tallent, who told me to be whatever I wanted. 19102003

June 21 The Three-Quarter Moon

TODAY, A MAN CALLED from Long Beach. He left a long message on the answering machine, mumbling and shouting, talking fast and slow, swearing and threatening to call the police, to have you arrested.

Today is the longest day of the yearbut anymore, every day is.

The weather today is increasing concern followed by full-blown dread.

The man calling from Long Beach, he says his bathroom is missing.

June 22

BY THE TIME you read this, youll be older than you remember.

The official name for your liver spots is hyperpigmented lentigines . The official anatomy word for a wrinkle is rhytide . Those creases in the top half of your face, the rhytides plowed across your forehead and around your eyes, this is dynamic wrinkling , also called hyperfunctional facial lines , caused by the movement of underlying muscles. Most wrinkles in the lower half of the face are static rhytides, caused by sun and gravity.

Lets look in the mirror. Really look at your face. Look at your eyes, your mouth.

This is what you think you know best.

Your skin comes in three basic layers. What you can touch is the stratum corneum, a layer of flat, dead skin cells pushed up by the new cells under them. What you feel, that greasy feeling, is your acid mantle, the coating of oil and sweat that protects you from germs and fungus. Under that is your dermis. Below the dermis is a layer of fat. Below the fat are the muscles of your face.

Maybe you remember all this from art school, from Figure Anatomy 201. But then, maybe not.

When you pull up your upper lipwhen you show that one top tooth, the one the museum guard brokethis is your levator labii superioris muscle at work. Your sneer muscle. Lets pretend you smell some old stale urine. Imagine your husbands just killed himself in your family car. Imagine you have to go out and sponge his piss out of the drivers seat. Pretend you still have to drive this stinking rusted junk pile to work, with everyone watching, everyone knowing, because its the only car you have.

Does any of this ring a bell?

When a normal person, some normal innocent person who sure as hell deserved a lot better, when she comes home from waiting tables all day and finds her husband suffocated in the family car, his bladder leaking, and she screams, this is simply her orbicularis oris stretched to the very limit.

That deep crease from each corner of your mouth to your nose is your nasolabial fold . Sometimes called your sneer pocket. As you age, the little round cushion of fat inside your cheek, the official anatomy word is malar fat pad, it slides lower and lower until it comes to rest against your nasolabial foldmaking your face a permanent sneer.

This is just a little refresher course. A little step-by-step.

Just a little brushing up. In case you dont recognize yourself.

Now frown. This is your triangularis muscle pulling down the corners of your orbicularis oris muscle.

Pretend youre a twelve-year-old girl who loved her father like crazy. Youre a little preteen girl who needs her dad more than ever before. Who counted on her father always to be there. Imagine you go to bed crying every night, your eyes clamped shut so hard they swell.

The orange peel texture of your chin, these popply bumps are caused by your mentalis muscle. Your pouting muscle. Those frown lines you see every morning, getting deeper, running from each corner of your mouth down to the edge of your chin, those are called marionette lines . The wrinkles between your eyebrows, theyre glabellar furrows . The way your swollen eyelids sag down is called ptosis . Your lateral canthal rhytides, your crows-feet, are worse every day and youre only twelve fucking years old for Gods sake.

Dont pretend you dont know what this is about.

This is your face.

Now, smileif you still can.

This is your zygomatic major muscle. Each contraction pulls your flesh apart the way tiebacks hold open the drapes in your living room window. The way cables pull aside a theater curtain, your every smile is an opening night. A premiere. You unveiling yourself.

Now, smile the way an elderly mother would when her only son kills himself. Smile and pat the hand of his wife and his preteen daughter and tell them not to worryeverything really will work out for the best. Just keep smiling and pin up your long gray hair. Go play bridge with your old lady friends. Powder your nose.

That huge horrible wad of fat you see hanging under your chin, your jowls, getting bigger and jigglier every day, thats submental fat. That crinkly ring of wrinkles around your neck is a platysmal band . The whole slow slide of your face, your chin and neck is caused by gravity dragging down on your superficial musculo-aponeurotic system .

Sound familiar?

If youre a little confused right now, relax. Dont worry. All you need to know is this is your face. This is what you think you know best.

These are the three layers of your skin.

These are the three women in your life.

The epidermis, the dermis, and the fat.

Your wife, your daughter, and your mother.

If youre reading this, welcome back to reality. This is where all that glorious, unlimited potential of your youth has led. All that unfulfilled promise. Heres what youve done with your life.

Your name is Peter Wilmot.

All you need to understand is you turned out to be one sorry sack of shit.

June 23

A WOMAN CALLS FROM Seaview to say her linen closet is missing. Last September, her house had six bedrooms, two linen closets. Shes sure of it. Now shes only got one. She comes to open her beach house for the summer. She drives out from the city with the kids and the nanny and the dog, and here they are with all their luggage, and all their towels are gone. Disappeared. Poof.

Bermuda triangulated.

Her voice on the answering machine, the way her voice screeches up, high, until its an air-raid siren by the end of every sentence, you can tell shes shaking mad, but mostly shes scared. She says, Is this some kind of joke? Please tell me somebody paid you to do this.

Her voice on the machine, she says, Please, I wont call the police. Just put it back the way it was, okay?

Behind her voice, faint in the background, you can hear a boys voice saying, Mom?

The woman, away from the phone, she says, Everythings going to be fine. She says, Now lets not panic.

The weather today is an increasing trend toward denial.

Her voice on the answering machine, she says, Just call me back, okay? She leaves her phone number. She says, Please...

June 25

PICTURE THE WAY a little kid would draw a fish bonethe skeleton of a fish, with the skull at one end and the tail at the other. The long spine in between, its crossed with rib bones. Its the kind of fish skeleton youd see in the mouth of a cartoon cat.

Picture this fish as an island covered with houses. Picture the kind of castle houses that a little girl living in a trailer park would drawbig stone houses, each with a forest of chimneys, each a mountain range of different rooflines, wings and towers and gables, all of them going up and up to a lightning rod at the top. Slate roofs. Fancy wrought-iron fences. Fantasy houses, lumpy with bay windows and dormers. All around them, perfect pine trees, rose gardens, and red brick sidewalks.

The bourgeois daydreams of some poor white trash kid.

The whole island was exactly what a kid growing up in some trailer parksay some dump like Tecumseh Lake, Georgiawould dream about. This kid would turn out all the lights in the trailer while her mom was at work. Shed lie down flat on her back, on the matted-down orange shag carpet in the living room. The carpet smelling like somebody stepped in a dog pile. The orange melted black in spots from cigarette burns. The ceiling was water-stained. Shed fold her arms across her chest, and she could picture life in this kind of place.