by Luke Boyd

After seeing Robin a few more times I start getting used to her withdrawal from everything around her. Like when she puts on her headphones and reads William Carlos Williams poems right through her blaring Cannibal Corpse tapes. Or when she methodically stuffs a pillowcase full with wind-up alarm clocks, all set for the same time, and falls asleep clutching the bundle to her chest. Stuff like that.

I’ll admit it, with shit like this going on I start to feel pretty inferior after a couple of weeks. I walk around with these splitting headaches all the time and she just begs me to keep blowing a miniature air horn into her ear.

But then the headaches start to go away—or maybe I just stop registering the pain. Either way, things get better. I start to fall asleep most nights listening to the racket seeping out from the foam pads of her headphones. I find myself sitting closer to the t.v. than I used to. Turning the volume up higher. Little things like that. By this point Robin and I are pretty much living together so I guess I’m just adjusting myself to her lifestyle.

A couple weeks later and Robin and I are on my ripped up couch flipping through TV channels—I’m sure she’s subconsciously searching for the channel with the loudest volume. She’s the same mystery she’s been for the three months I’ve known her, but I’m not sure if she realizes that I’ve changed. I know she sees me sitting in my straight back chair directly in front of my living room stereo, listening to baseball games or the Oldies on Saturday mornings. But to her that’s normal. Just like sticking your head under the steel wheels of a moving train is normal.

So anyway, these are the changes that are coming over me after spending so much time around her. Most of the noise-related stuff she used to do alone we both do together now. All the electronics in my house—anything at all with a volume—it’s juiced up to the max. We go through about three stereos a month, mostly blown speakers and fried tweeters. It’s around this time I stop seeing Bill, too. He isn’t too keen on all the noise that has become an increasingly important part of my life. Plus there’s not room in the ambulance for more than one passenger anymore. The entire back section is gutted and filled with heavy speaker cabinets—mostly fifteen inch combos and bass boxes. Driving around in the ambulance has become a Robin-and-I-thing now. It’s different with her because I feel like we are on the same wavelength—like we’re probably the only two people who could possibly understand either of us. So you can imagine how weird it is the first time I see her eyes well up with tears, as she’s clamping her hands over her ears and trying to bury her head between her shoulders. We’re at the First Unitarian Church, up in the belltower. Taking turns putting our ears against the bells after they ring and come to a rest. They look copper or bronze and they’re cold when your ear is squashed against them. And even though they’re at rest, the metal is still ringing and it sends a piercing low drone straight through the middle of your skull.

“It’s too much. Too loud.”

I don’t even really comprehend what she’s saying the first few times. My own head is buzzing like a colony of bees and I can feel the hot blood rushing between my ears. I pull her against me, pry her hands off her ears, and scream straight in.

“WHAT?”

“I said it’s too much noise.”

“YEAH! I KNOW!”

I still can’t really hear what she’s saying. My head is vibrating so much that she sounds like she’s yelling from a distant mountaintop.

“I need to go back down. I don’t think I can handle it.”

She pulls away from my grasp, she seems agitated. I’m thinking maybe she has to pee or something. The real heavy sound vibrations do all sorts of crazy stuff to your body. Sometimes it feels like you’re going to fly apart because your insides are sloshing around so fast.

But that’s not it at all and when I finally come down from the belltower she’s sitting in the passenger-side seat in the ambulance. Curled up in a ball with her knees hunched up against her chest.

In total silence.

I wrench open the driver’s door and hop up.

“Whoa, that was amazing! For awhile there I thought my eardrums were gonna go!”

“Your ear is bleeding.” She is crushed up against her door looking at me with something like disgust.

“Huh?” My head still feels like it’s on a spring—all the sounds around me are muffled and suspended in the air.

“Your ear is bleeding!”

I hear her the second time and stick my pinky in to blot a crimson trickle that is making its way down my earlobe. I think it’s supposed to be like when a cokehead snorts so much blow that they bust open some veins in their nose. It’s supposed to be some sort of reality check, a wakeup call or something. Except it never is. Instead it’s kind of funny, and I chuckle at my stained fingertip.