A summer evening. I’m sitting on a stone ledge in the parking lot of the Masquerade, an all-ages nightclub in downtown Atlanta. It’s an old paper mill, now covered in sheet metal, painted black. My fifteen-year old son and his friends are inside, crowd surfing and slamming into each other in the mosh pit. I’m the mother-on-duty tonight, my assignment is to bring the boys home unscathed.
A book of poems rests on my lap, unread as I scan my surroundings. The only other adult in sight is the bouncer, a thirty-something guy, head shaved, with a sun and a moon tattooed on each of his burly calf muscles. He’s working the ticket booth outside the club entrance.
A tall boy wearing a cap with the bill turned backwards sits near me on the ledge, next to a pale blonde girl in black Converse and a scarlet halter dress.
The tall boy, who I’ll call Kyle, says to the girl, “See that kid over there? I’m going to bring him over here. You won’t believe what he does.”
The girl, who I’ll call Camille, sips silently from a dragonfly-green can. Riffs of punk ska thump, blare, and crash from inside the club.
“Hey, dude, come here. She wants to see it too,” Kyle yells.
A boney teen with a faux hawk ambles across the parking lot to the ledge where we’re sitting. I’m an outsider, invisible to them. He nods to Kyle.
“What’s up?”
“Camille hasn’t seen you do it.” Kyle glances at Camille and says, “He’s done this four times already tonight.”
She takes another sip from the can she holds, her eyes hooded. The bouncer looks up from the ticket line, and marches over.
“What’s in that can? You can’t drink that out here.”
Camille takes another slow sip. “It’s Mountain Dew. What’s the problem?”
“Just make sure you’re not drinking beer out here.” He returns to the ticket line, back to his job scanning for kids trying to get in free.
Again Kyle says, “So, how about it? You want Camille to see?”
The kid takes a light bulb out of the deep pocket of his low-slung jeans. Could it be a magic trick, like a fire-eater at the circus? Will he swallow the light bulb whole, like a sword swallower, and then regurgitate it?
As he brings the bulb to his mouth I hear a sharp pop, and then a tin clatter as the metal socket screw drops to the ground. He then begins to take bites of glass into his mouth. A fresh round of wailing brass instruments from inside the club prevents me from hearing the grinding and gnashing of glass between his teeth, but I notice how his jaw moves in a circle to mash the light bulb to a paste. This must be a movie prop, it must be made of hardened sugar. We’re all dupes, falling for the kid’s sleight of hand.
Kyle says, “Dude, can you believe this?” Camille lights a cigarette and saunters away without saying a word.
It’s as if Kyle’s hoping for some kind of reaction from Camille for bringing this side show to her attention. He follows her into the club.
Now the kid and I are alone on the ledge. He takes a sip of water from a plastic bottle, and spits blood onto the pavement. Splotches of deep red create a biomorphic pattern at his feet. Hope that he is a magician fades.
When I look away from the kid, the bouncer’s gaze meets mine for the first time. He puts his index finger to his temple and traces circles, letting me know he thinks the kid’s crazy. Are the bouncer and I in collusion? Am I now his accomplice in allowing the boy’s slow suicide to go unchecked?
I imagine the kid’s bleeding stomach and his lacerated intestines. I see the flowering stains of blood on the asphalt, and then the boy’s shadow under the fluorescent streetlight as he walks away.
My son and his friends leave the club, sweaty and laughing, ready for me to take them home. As I stand I spy the metal base of the light bulb wedged against the stone ledge, and pick it up. Splinters of glass line the cold, metal ridge. It’s real.
I want to believe in smoke and mirrors, hold out till the last minute that the sideshow is an illusion. It keeps me from facing the harder questions, like what motivates the glass-eating boy? What does he lack that the glass provides?
My belief in illusion allows me to hide from myself how I remain a silent witness to internal bleeding. Maybe I need him to eat glass for me, so I don’t do it myself. We all have our roles to play, we all have our deficiencies. And in my role as a mother, I failed to protect and nourish the glass eater.
Christine Swint is the mother of two teenage boys. She also is a yoga instructor and Spanish teacher. Her poems, stories, and essays have appeared in Long Story Short, Burst, and Tiny Lights.
