blustocking | Apocalypse Monday

Mother fuck. Netscape fall down, go boom, lose update. I will be half-way intelligent this time and type this out in Word.

When I left the apartment this afternoon, I went to close the door and noticed a rather odd brownish-orange tint on everything. I turned around and looked up at the sun and saw a hazy, yellowish cloudlike filth covering it. I thought maybe I slept through some bomb droppage or a large fire, but no...that's just Los Angeles.

Currently, the sun is a surreal ball of fire setting on the horizon among a tinge of violet and pink.

I work in an odd industrial/commerical/residential neighborhood. It's as if the best and worst of this town has converged in this area, meeting in waves of strip malls, restaurants, stores, movie studios, a bakery, and a meat packing plant(the meat packing plant's slogan is: "You Can't Beat Our Meat"). I often have to disembark the bus at Meat Corner and walk the two blocks to work. Meat Corner is appropriately named. Imagine rotting beef, fresh beef, and bus exhaust all wrapped in a wonderful heady bouquet.

Morgue.
Mix dead beefy smell, multiply by 10, throw in some bile, rotting flesh, preservatives, and you've got a good idea of what Eau de Morgue smells like. I realize, some of you already know. I won't go into the part about the class except to say that the forensic investigator teaching it was this petite, strawberry blonde girl who seemed rather nice, until you pissed her off, then she was stern and quite mean, to my delight. One fine young offender was in the class for street racing, doing 90mph in a residential 35. He said, "not that fast" and that's all she needed to hear to bust out with "Not that fast? That's fucking fast. You, I have no respect for." Her face changed from nice and inquisitive to pissed off and hard. It was joyous. She singled him out for much of the class. After about an hour of getting settled in and introductions, she showed us slides taken from recent cases she had been on.

The first set was of a girl doing 80mph on the 60 freeway. She was late to work, attempted to get into the number three lane and didn't see the car coming behind her, she corrected and went back into number two...corrected at 80mph, she lost control, spun out, and sailed off the highway into the bushes, flipping her car, ejecting her body, and decapitating herself. There was little blood at the stump because it was such a clean cut. Her head was resting a few feet away. Married, Mother of four.

The second set was of two cars racing, again, I believe, on the 60 freeway. Both were doing 105mph when the bumpers touched sending them both out of control. The driver of one car survived, the driver and passenger of the other car did not. All were in their teens, 17 or 18. The car with the two passengers wrapped completely around a pole and separated into three pieces, the midsection containing the passengers, a girl and a boy. The boy's (driver) seat ended up completely on top of the girl's(passenger). His intestines were spilling out into a fast food drink cup and his neck literally pushed his brain clean out of his skull, splattering it against a pole. His face hung limp tot he side of his head. Her head was still intact, but her pelvis was shoved into her abdomen. In order to identify her, they had to reach into her gut to pull out her I.D. It was her birthday. Her boyfriend had taken her out for fast food and a little joyride. Nice.

So after the slides, we go down to the morgue for about a 20 minute tour. They hand out booties, rubber gloves, and duck bill-like masks and the 20-25 of us are led to the basement. You prepare yourself for the stench and I thought I was being a smartypants by deciding to breathe through my mouth. Wrong. I tasted morgue for about an hour and a half after I left. The smell also permeates your clothes and you stink for about an hour afterwards. You walk in, dead body. At first all you see are toes and feet in various states of preservation and decay. But they're wrapped in clear plastic, so most can be viewed if you want to look. Further down the hallway, bodies are unwrapped to display gunshot wounds. Many gunshot wounds...hello Los Angeles. We're led into a photographing room where a young black man is being laid out for documentation. Gunshot wound to the chest, homicide of course. I should note that most of the bodies don't look real. They look wax, fake, Hollywood...but you know they're not, and that makes all the difference.

Next was "the crypt", a large refrigerated room lined with bodies on shelves like books, only made of rotting flesh. The room was packed with them, many on carts because there was no more room on the shelves. Various states of decomposition. Some bags were simply filled with fluid, an undescribable greenish grey fluid. Many were bloated, many more were blatantly visible, no privacy for the dead mind you. There was a charred victim...the only one I didn't look at. Obviously died in a flaming car as his wrists were broken from the impact and his hands were curled from the fire...like a torched piece of paper. The investigator forced, and I mean forced, as in yelled and commanded the speed racer guy to come and look at that one. Lots of dead, lots of decay, lots of naked, lots of smell...and little cubby holes to place little bundles of dead baby. On the way out of the crypt, I glanced over and saw the most decomposed body yet. His body, what was left, was black and looked like it was caked with dark dirt and mold. No, that was just his skin, now shrinking around his body. John Doe, baby. There was also a security guard who died of a gunshot wound in the crypt. This affected me on some weird level which I'll explain later.

Upon leaving "the crypt" we were shown the autopsy bays, 10, when most places have 3. Los Angeles county has the largest coroner's office in the U.S., if not the world. The county is large, the homicides are large as well...so there you go. Our investigator said she handles probably 5,000 cases a year and she's merely one of many. Autopsies are done 354 days a year. They get Christmas off. I saw open heads, entire rib cages being sawn off, bodies poked and prodded, lovely stuff. A tour of the x-ray room and a drunk driving victim speaking upstairs and I was free to go.

So, thoughts on this whole experience?
I'm stuck somewhere between abject horror and morbid fascination. I solemnly believe that every single one of you, everyone, should have to tour the morgue at least once. For hours, days, after I would look at people and imagine them dead, how they would look, which isn't pleasant, but there you go. When I got on the bus after the morgue, so that I could go to work, I couldn't stop looking at the young security guard riding the bus as well. I kept thinking how easily it could have been him lying there in that cold room, dead from a gunshot wound. How this town is too big for anyone aside from his family and friends to know or care if it did happen. So many people in this town, this world, are disconnected from life. You drive around in your car and you're not forced to deal with other people, when you are, you get testy and anxious. Riding the bus is only a little better, but you're just forced to be more tolerant, more patient. Alas, you're still as disconnected as ever. Everyone should tour the morgue at 15, 25, 35...hell, maybe just every ten years. There are so many stories in this town, so many lives lost, and no one seems to give a damn. Maybe some asshole gang-banger would see one of his buddies lying on a cold slap, being pried open and he would wake the fuck up. Maybe, maybe not...but it's worth a try. That said, my gratefulness noted, my experience filed, my curiosity sated...it was horrible in all the right ways. Me, Jill, sleeper of all sleepers, could not easily get to sleep that night and the next. I just kept seeing dead bodies. I'm fine now. Not much fucks with my sleep. It's my escape, the one place I can go and forget. Ex boyfriends have always remarked at how lovely and peaceful I look when I sleep...that's because I am. Of course, now, in waking hours...I still see them, but it's okay, because I'm grateful. It's something I can use.

Bodies are disgusting, fluid-filled bags. You're already rotting away. How does that make you feel? I don't want to be buried and I don't want to be cremated. I don't know what I want. Either way is pretty disgusting when you think about it. It makes me sad to think of my friends and family having to go to the morgue, being treated like that...but it will happen.

You'll all go there eventually. Just don't be as fucking stupid as I was. I could have died, I could have killed...please learn from my mistake.

I didn't do this justice.

p.s. where's my dirty email, slut.