My first time was with a fork. I know: such a cliche. I spent an hour
nervously scanning the silverware with my finger tips. What tool will feel
the best? The fork seemed obvious, the two-prong skewer was more
anatomically conducive, and the butter knife seemed desperate. I wet my
hands, picked up the fork and slid it in the electrical outlet with ease. I
had never had 110 volts run through my body before, everything was light.
My eyes rolled into the back of my head like cherries in a slot machine.
Bingo. I was hooked.

As a novice, there was nothing refined about tastes. I had no hard limits,
all electrocution was welcome. Fortunately, the human body is a wet sack of
conductivity and I was a neon saint ready to absorb the blood of machines.
Signs warning “high voltage” were my exponent of breath. It was like
edging, but with death. As my love grew like a mold, the crystals in my
head held each spark.

The first sunset I saw was a migraine. My mother held me in her lightning
bolt arms. The glowing ball in the horizon of my skull ached brightly.
Anointing my voltaic devils, it all began as a small prod: the first
sensation. During childhood, my wool sweater collection grew exponentially
when I detected static biting my skin. Then, it was the balloon shipwrecked
to my hair at the birthday party, the further romancing of electrostatic.
After, the humid August where I stayed in the lake during the lightning
storm naked, a virgin electric. Running my hand over a fleece blanket over
and over in the dark. The time I tried to keep electric eels as pets.
Holding a bouquet of light bulbs. And my first kiss was a zap. The sound of
the toaster hitting the bath water between my legs. And the forks, the
enormity of utensils, over and over, wrecking my body like a dream.
Eventually, casually considering red murder to get the electric chair and
quickly realizing I live in the wrong decade. So many times, wetting my
fingers, cracking the bulbs like eggs, all the dissected kitchen appliance,
the “lost” extension cords, band-aid bound, burned, bruised, AC, DC.
Edison, silver, copper, but always galvanized, always wanting more.

It was 7:36pm. Right on time. The sun had just gone down and I pressed my
stethoscope against the light pole. Then it came, like the first breath
after anesthesia. All the street lights turned on in a simultaneous
orchestral hum and suddenly I was the doctor, the conductor; Tesla seeing
the very first flicker into the future. The dark also had its rituals, each
night I christened myself. I gathered all the tangles of holiday lights, my
particular eucharist, coiled them around each limb like a festive mummy,
plugged them in, covered myself with a sheet and fell asleep. As a luminous
ghost, a BDSM Christmas tree, I knew somewhere inside I was fallibly human,
anticipating the failure in my fetish.

What they don’t tell you when you get hit by lightning is, if it doesn’t
kill you, it leaves a fantastically painful, tree-shaped fractal scar on
your skin. This is called a Lichtenberg figure or lightning flowers or
sometimes electric treeing. How ominous to name something so fatal after
delicate flora. I found it rousing this scar shape abided by the language
of the universe, the golden ratio. And I never cared for real trees outside
of the flesh, but transmission towers, these were my cherished beacons.
They were a symbol of humanity’s collective ability to streamline lightning
bolts into walls & homes. You see, we all fetishize electricity, just
in different forms. Yours may be just a glowing screen, but we are not so
different.

I guess this is the part I should mention I am dead. “After all that?!”,
you ask. Yes. All it took was one bad apple. In my case, forgetting
everything in Europe runs on 220 volts instead of the standard American
110. The Europeans have always been extra. And there are only so many
glasses of champagne, French clawfoot tubs, bubble baths with several
toasters and Edith Piaf blaring until the human body simply fails you.
Ashes to ashes, dust to toast. When you die, you return to the first
source. And there you are free of your phantoms, tinctures, ceremonies and
infatuations. This is where, for first time, the communion of light and
dark bent and I saw backwards into my skull. I am the light.