German retro pullover

The threads are like barbed wire on my skin, course wool grating against my body, clawing at my flesh like fingernails dragging across cadavers. The pullover is old, and from so much wear it should be soft. Why is it not soft? It was an accidental child of the 80s, manufactured in some great German warehouse as punk began to lose meaning. Similar to myself.

I don’t know who owned it before me, but someone has worn it I am sure. It has stains on it that I could never have created, horrible monsters bearing their teeth at me each time I pull it off of the hanger. I have to get rid of it. I cannot emotionally deal with its presence, but I cannot destroy something whose biography is so close to mine. I have no wish to commit suicide. It must be given to someone. The right someone.

I used to sit in the hospital emergency room waiting area. I’d watch all the people coming in, bleeding, crying, unconscious. Bones protruding from skin, wobbling awkwardly as the victim walked. Faces mangled from fights. It was one of my favorite places to spend my time and I always took the same route to and from the hospital down the streets of this city, sometimes at night and sometimes in the morning, whenever I had any free time.

My treks would be made in any weather. I did not care if my toes would go numb from the cold or if my clothes drank all my sweat and hung heavily on my body, pulling and pulling me downward so that I might have to visit my destination for a different reason. A reason that it was designed for.

Today, the story of my pullover truly begins, as it leaves me and joins another.

I walk my exact same route, passing familiar strangers, my hands in my pockets. I am not sweating and I am not cold. It is a perfect day that is rarely seen here.

I look up for the first time as I walk since leaving the lovely, gore-filled waiting room (today I listened hard enough to hear the blood dripping onto the tile floor. It belonged to a boy who had slit his arm so that muscle puffed out like lips). A sound had shaken me, a loud popping sound from outside mixed with the crunching of metal or plastic and a muffled cry. I saw a group of people in a circle gathered around a body. A guy about my age runs up to the group with a camera slung around his neck, snapping pictures of the body. I move outside by him.

“You with the paper or something?” I ask him.

“No,” he says, not looking away from his subject, snapping snapping. “Just a hobby.”

I look at the body. A twenty-something man lies on the ground, thrown from a car or hit by a car, I can’t tell which. One side of his face is ground by the pavement and his white shirt is soaked on one side in blood. I can see bone somewhere, but I do not examine him long enough to know from what part of the body; my eyes are back on the photographer. I don’t think he’s looked at me yet. I smile.

“Can I ask you a question?” I say.

“Sure,” he says. He sounds completely void of curiosity as he stares through his camera. Now he’s snapping pictures of all the people standing around, gazing at the accident. Some are on cell phones. I wonder if they are calling 911 or their friends.

I take my pullover from my bag. “Will you take this?” I hand him the folded sweater. He looks at it, still not looking at me, and grimaces a little. “It’s not dirty. Really, it’s just…I mean, it’s washed and all, it just has stains.”

“Clorox,” he says, and looks through his camera.

“What?”

“Clorox. Bleach would probably get them out.”

“Oh, yeah.” I stand there for a second. “Will you take it?”

He looks at me for a minute, right into my eyes, then says, “Okay.” He takes it and puts it in his bag. “Where did you get it?”

“I don’t remember really. A friend maybe — I don’t think I bought it. But it’s German. I think it was made in the 80s.”

He smiles. “Okay thanks.” He sticks out his hand and I shake it.

I continue on my route, past the group of people and the body, a pool of blood forming beneath him.