Chapter 8

It had become colder.

…..

I should just admit to myself that I don’t know everything, that everything’s not my fault…or even has to do with me at all. Maybe I don’t know anything. Every time I think something it changes. I keep getting hurt when I think I’m happy, and I always think I know why. Am I a detective or just another moron left to sift painfully through the coincidences of life? Have I ever solved anything, known anyone? Have I ever been in love? I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I don’t know a goddamned thing. Mother-fuck-fuck-ass-dick-shit-fuck-nothing-fuck…never!

…..

I drove away in silence.

…..

A forceful, liquid wind washed over us as we walked through the forest, the last afternoon of the Indian Summer. Cary said the leaves flew like confetti. There was an uncertain bliss that slid down the wind-waves, and across the mingled scents of her soft fruit perfume and the acorn and oil aroma of leaves that blew in the surf. The day had such impression, such detail.

The relationship was new and it had that awkward pivot between a few days of passion and a few of curious engagement. In the beginning, when there is yet a rhythm, like the wind’s flow that at times pushes forward and at other times blows into you and makes the walk hard work. In the beginning, when you want to express those feelings that have yet to find their words.

We walked, Cary and I, through the autumn day that pretended to be June. We told stories from our lives, our memories, our families, the foods we liked, noted the quirks of the forest around us. The trees, white, stripped of their leaves and bark, looked like polished chalk. The ground was smooth and rustled with confetti. I’d brush by her hand with mine, and then I’d hold it, and let go, and walk. Smooth rocks peered like game pieces. After we exchanged a smile we’d be silent. I liked that her hand sweat. I felt closer to her warmth. I liked how her hair looked, and how her subtle smile had such an effect on me.

It is so hard to tell what the hesitant moments mean. Was she having second thoughts? Did I do something wrong? Is she wary that the walk may move too fast?

A strange bird flung from a bush, chirped like a cricket, and appeared to have a snout. It was like a pigeon or a quail in size, but hummingbird in shape. It flew forward, an orange shadow, and squawked, awkward against the wind. I looked for it again as we walked some more. Cary laughed and said that we had found an elephant bird. I grabbed her hand and kicked leaves as we walked away. We saw no other animals.

I wanted to tell her how she cleaned me with an unexplainable swirl. An uncertain reaction, to wish time would speed up, that her inner voice would sound in my head, so to alleviate the nervousness and wonder. Was it good to be uncertain? Should I have said more or less?

Sometimes, when our hands would let each other go I thought that it meant I’d have to earn it back, that the attention had shifted from the feel of us as whole to the ambition to understand each other as unique. The day was so beautiful, details shook in the wind. A bee’s hive, a quarry, thorn bushes, abandoned sheds, telephone poles with no wires, water and wind, confetti and perfume, touch and interest, talk and silence, desire, desire, hope, fear, effort and ease, confetti and waves, an unidentified bird, smooth hands, fallen trees, charred trees, white trees, large dried leaves, simple smiles, and loaded conversations. Hope was a catalogue of details, a replaying of past moments.

…..

I drove down New Guernsey’s historic street. The columns of the Old Dutch Church reminded me of a cage. The night sky was clean and the moon was a blue circle.

…..

I am embarrassed and sad. I am a coward. I am weak. She would have stayed with me. I miss her. I miss her. I have had nothing since I had her. What the fuck? I am idiot too…. I need to accept what I’ve done…………………

Max’s big break was his gallery opening in SoHo…. Last week…. He’s on his way now. I could tell that the patrons really loved his work, the way they knit their brows as they paced through the square room and saw tornados on the wall that had come from Max’s brain. There was wine and cheese in the corner, and even though I was enjoying myself, standing in that corner, gorging on triple cream brie and drinking glass after glass of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, I still felt very out of place. With my faded Levis and my white untucked shirt I felt like a random mess, like a painting of a tornado on the wall, volatile, unwelcome, yet unrefined enough to qualify as a piece of art.

Max mostly showed his tornado paintings. Some were of plain tornados in different settings. The crowd’s favorite seemed to be his painting of a tornado tearing through Times Square. He painted the billboards shattering, taxicabs flying, and even a subway car had been ripped out from its underground tunnel. Another one of his paintings was of a tornado chasing an airplane. The end of the funnel seemed to keep reaching for the tail wings of the plane, only to come up a few inches short. The best part of that one was the way Max painted the pilot in the cockpit. Through the small window the pilot was leaning into the steering wheel like he was racing a car rather than a plane. He even had a little sweat on his forehead. My favorite one, though, was Max’s painting of a tornado devouring Loch Ness. The water of the lake formed a second spiral around the tornado, and in the center was the Plesiosaur, the famed Nessie, floating in a torrent above the lake while a crowd on the banks stood, all with their jaws dropped and their cameras to their faces.

I had too much wine, and I started to get a bit dizzy. I had to make a point of avoiding the corners of the gallery where the most people congregated, however, that didn’t make me look any less conspicuous. It probably brought more attention to me. I was the lone, underdressed man with the buzz, hardly paying close attention to the paintings I had seen many times before. But I didn’t give it much credit. It actually wasn’t standing out that I was afraid of. It was being part of that posh group, having to ramble about my appreciation of Max’s work while my breath stank of wine, now that was what paralyzed me. I didn’t want to be part of the crowd, because I was unique that night. I was the best friend of the artist, there to support him and not his work.

Max, on the other hand, stood right in the middle of the largest crowd. He pointed to specific works, talked and smiled, and nodded his head as he listened to their comments. And then he noticed me as I stood in the empty corner, and I watched him mouth, “Excuse me,” to his patrons before he left, and walked over to greet me. He was dressed all in black, black suit, black shoes, black shirt.
“Hey Bear. How ‘bout this? What do you think?” he said.

“This is great Max. You must be feeling pretty good right now.”

“It ain’t bad. I see you put on your best jeans.”

“You know.”

“No, seriously, I appreciate it man,” he said.

“Don’t mention it…. So what’s the news? Sold anything?”

“Five paintings Bear. I can’t believe it.”

“…Good money?”

“Let’s just say that it looks like I’ll be able to buy the bottom floor of the house. I’ll finally have the whole place to myself,” he said.

“That’s awesome man. You’ve definitely earned it,” I said.

“What’s the matter with you ? You seem a little somber.”

“Oh no man…I feel fine…I just feel a little out of place, that’s all. Don’t worry. I’m handling it fine.”

“Really? Is that what’s bothering you?” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Your lips are a little red. Let me see your teeth,” he said.

“What?”

“C’mon, smile for me,” he said.

I faked a quick grin.

“Shit Bear, your teeth are purple?look at me… Yep, you’re busted Bear. I can see it in your eyes, they’re a  bit wider than usual. So tell me…you’ve got a pretty big buzz going, don’t you?”

“Gimme a break Max. I wasn’t the one who stocked this show with some really good wine.”

I genuinely grinned.

“That was my agent Patricia’s doing. I actually hadn’t had a chance to have any yet… Good stuff though?”

“Real good.”

Max laughed. He seemed a bit more comfortable, like his normal self. He grabbed my glass and took a sip.

“Shit, that is good?Spicy, mouth-coating, delicious.”

“I told you?now give it back.”

“Alright dude, but don’t go making a scene, OK,” he said.

“You got it.”

We laughed for a while, about memories, distinctly our dorm roof story. After that Max became solemn himself, and his expression was serious. He looked around a bit, like he was looking for someone.

“Listen, Bear,” he said.

“What do you need?”

“”Nothing?just listen. Something wierd’s been happening tonight.”

“You mean when people actually buy your work.”

“No?shut up?There’s this guy who keeps following me, I mean, everybody here keeps following me, but this one guy keeps leaning in and whispering fucked up shit in my ear,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Like, ‘Are you proud of yourself,’ and ‘Nice work Max,’ and ‘What are you going to do now’ and ‘It’s time to do the right thing with what you’ve made,’ and ‘I’m going to keep an eye on you Sandmann’…stuff like that.”

“Those sound like what you’d expect to hear at an event like this,” I said.

“I know, but, it’s the way he says it that freaks me out. It almost sounds like the guy hates me,” he said.

He looked around again.

“Well, what’s he look like? Where is he? I’ll beat him up for you.”

“He looks like everyone else, an older guy in a suit?let me see.”

Max turned around and peered at the single faces in the crowd.

“There,” he pointed.

I didn’t see him, or at last I couldn’t tell which one he was pointing to.

“Which one?”

“Right there.”

He kept pointing.

I looked in that direction, but I saw someone else instead. Not some guy in a suit, but the most beautiful woman I had ever touched. The girl whose heart I broke. The only girl who ever said she loved me.

It was Cary.

“I can’t believe you’d do that to me,” I said to Max.

“What? Did you see him?” he said.

“Max. That’s Cary you’re pointing at.”

Max saw Cary and dropped his arm back to his side. His face opened up a bit, and the excitement seemed to fall off his body.

“Oh shit. I wasn’t pointing at?sorry. I forgot to tell you that I sent Cary an invite.”

“Thanks Max.”

“Well, she’s my friend, and I’ve kept in touch with her…. I guess I figured she wouldn’t come.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I’m sure she figured that you’d be here. I had to be courteous though.”

Cary stood in front of Max’s painting of the tornado over Loch Ness. She chuckled, turned toward the next panting and that’s when she spotted Max and I in the corner. She looked right at me, and she loosed a resistant smile. I smiled back at her.

She looked older than when I had last seen her. She looked a little tired, but she carried herself with more dignity than I had ever seen her carry. She looked…mature in her pink button down shirt under her green v-neck sweater. Her red hair was longer than I remembered, but the color seemed to have deepened. She was still beautiful, and she still had those sweet eyes. She walked slow to greet us…and then she was there.

“Hey Max. Great show.” She hugged him. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Thanks Cary. I’m glad you could come,” he said.

She let go of him and turned, and faced me.

“Well…Benny Bouchard. I guess you’ve given up on suits,” she said.

“Yeah…I guess…. It’s nice to see you Cary,” I said.

I felt dizzy.

“Yeah…you too,” she said.

“Hey Cary, how ‘bout I get you a glass of wine. It’s real good,” Max said.

“Sure Max, I’d love one.”

“OK. I’ll be right back.”

Max left us there.

We stared at each other.

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” she said

“Yeah.”

“How’s the grocery store doing?”

“Not bad…for now,” I said.

“My father wants to destroy you, you know.”

“Yeah. He’s pushing for a supermarket to come in to town. I guess when that happens…well…it doesn’t matter.”

“You know I have nothing to do with it, right?”

“I know you don’t Cary.”

The wine glass shook in my hand. I couldn’t think of what I wanted to say. I couldn’t think about anything. I was just dizzy and trying to fight the involuntary quivers in my arm.

“You know Benny…My housekeeper described a man that pretty perfectly matched your description.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, she said he stopped by about a week ago, looking for me.”

I looked away.

“Did you want to see me Benny?”

I looked back at her face and couldn’t help but smile a guilty smile.

“I did. I was helping Max set up for his show and…I thought I’d say Hello.”

“She said you left pretty quick. Didn’t even leave your name. You actually freaked her out a bit.”

“I didn’t know you had a son,” I said.

We stared in silence for a few seconds.

“Well…I do,” she said.

She didn’t seem the least bit nervous. She was proud.

“It’s funny. It hardly took any effort at all to get one of your father’s assistants to give me your address…but in all this time…nobody’s ever mentioned that you’re a mother now.”

“Do you want to talk about it,” she said.

“No. It’s not my place to. I just hope your family’s doing well.”

“Don’t worry Benny, we’re doing fine….”

“Good.”

“You know I’m playing a concerto with the New York Phil in a couple of days. Chopin’s First.”

“Wow…. That’s incredible. You must be pretty excited.”

“I could grab you a ticket if you want. I’d get Max one but he’s still banned from Lincoln Center.”

“Do you think they’ll still ban him after he’s famous?” I said.

“Musicians don’t easily forget things like that, famous or not,” she said.

“Well…I can’t go. I have to work, but…thanks. I hope?I know you’ll be amazing,” I said.

We once again stared in silence for a while. Cary kept smiling, like she was flirting, but I know that couldn’t have been the case. The last time I had spoken to her was the day after our supposed-to-be wedding. She was a mess, hysterical, screaming at me, crying, cursing, saying she’d never love again, that she had already had her great love, that she’d never be with anyone again, and now here she was smiling at me, with a child back at home. She looked like I had never hurt her.

“I’m coming up to New Guernsey in a week. I’d…like it if we could have dinner. We should talk some more.”

“Um.”

“I’m not angry at you Benny. We’re a part of each other’s lives. Maybe it’s time we acted like it,” she said.

“…Sure…dinner would be nice…. Just call me when you get into town.”

I smiled back at her.

“Had a few glasses of wine Benny? You could use a toothbrush.”

“Yeah. It tasted so good…. What I really need though is a glass of water.”

We laughed together.

“Well…I’m gonna go. My sitter told me she has a test tomorrow. I might as well be nice and let her go early.

“What’s your son’s name?”

“I’ll tell you next week.”

“C’mon, what’s his name?” I said.

“Matthew.”

“Nice choice. You said you’d have a Matthew one day,” I said.

I don’t think I should have said that because it made the smile disappear from Cary’s face. She looked more serious and a little sad.

“I’m going to go congratulate Max…and tell him not to bother with the wine…. I’ll see you next week, OK?”

“Sure,” I said.

“OK…Bye.”

She leaned in and we exchanged a very quick hug. But even though it was the shortest hug we had ever shared it still felt the same. It was old touch of Cary. As I held her for that one second it was like I had defied all of physics and traveled back in time.

She walked away.

I stood in the same place, and I didn’t move a muscle. I felt sad. Someone else had hurt Cary like I had, but this guy left her with a child…. At least I only left her with memories.

After a few minutes of staring off into space, Max came back.

“How you feeling Bear?

“Demented.”

…..

I pulled into the same parking spot I had left from. I got out of the car, and the broken bottle was still spread across the tar. By now Lester had probably bought another one. He was probably sitting scared on a bench somewhere, drinking as he called me a faggot or a witch. I was glad. I had the last word. I had woken him up, I hoped.

I heard cackles from Main Street. I heard cars drive by, the stereos blasting inside of them. I could hear the bass shake the windows of the cars that crawled down the street. I walked out of the lot, to Main Street. I heard a few kids ‘Woo’ and someone yell ‘motherfucker’.

I felt like I was entering the stadium, walking towards the fight, concealing my limp in an effort to look strong. Both my ring and my opponent was Main Street, or what was concealed in it. I knew somewhere in the center was the phrase as it stared me down, and Max was somewhere in my corner, and the old man was hidden in the crowd with his wager already made. I walked, and nobody cheered. The alley was empty.

I noticed that I frowned, and that I was hungry.

I ended up behind a few sorority girls when I rounded the corner. They chanted a song in unison. “The only fun is Delta Pi fun.” They all wore tight pants, most black khaki, sandals or tennis shoes, and tank tops of all different colors. Most of the girls folded their arms into their chests. They thought the words of their song, they thought about boys, and they thought, shit, it’s cold. They thought they looked sexy, and a few of them were much more proud than the others. Some had specific boys in mind, and some didn’t care who they went home with. However, one girl, the girl in the blue top, knew  that she’d probably make the cold walk home a lone, drunken journey. “The only fun is Delta Pi fun.”

I kept walking behind the sorority on the way to Rusty’s, an unfortunate cross between a frat house and an Irish pub. There was a line at the entrance. I stood behind the girls, and they stood behind an equal sized group of college guys. While the guys waited they turned around to look at the shivering girls. And as the girls shook and rubbed their arms, and laughed and used the word ‘shit’ a lot, the boys catalogued them. Hot, nasty, prude. I’m getting pussy tonight.

Great ass, thought one of the boys on line.

I waited for the line to move. Through the windows I could see how dimly lit the inside of the bar was. The dim light covered up blemishes.

I stared up at Rusty’s neon sign, and back down, through the windows. I saw the people inside, their wide-eyed glances, drinking, smiling their appetites. I wished hard that some answers could be found in there. I had no idea what else to do. I guess I could have been walking around, looking for the old man, or perhaps I could have told the police. Maybe I just wanted to handle it myself, and I wanted to have Max with me, especially if he wasn’t well. Some triumph might have been all we both needed to shake our dementia. I hoped that Max was already inside the bar. I couldn’t enjoy my power with all the problems it showed me, all the mystery. My gift should have eliminated mystery. I needed solid reason, and I needed to grab what it was that eluded me, so I could travel forward and not askew, so I could overcome the insanity that I feared Max was infected with. I was up for a fight, a showdown between the new me and the same old world.

At the door, the bouncer Joe nodded at me and thought…

Bear…yep. Just stand here, look around…any trouble? Everything’s cool. Are they gonna lie or tell the truth? Is that a cop? I don’t care…No way she’s 21.

This man was the same man I was. This man was his job, never moving, day in, day out, in a corner, to watch people in a bar. He thought his sad duty, his shitty duty.

I said, “Hello,” as I walked past him, into the bar. I knew him, he knew me, that was all. To each other we were the same name. Hello.

The bar danced and I stood still. There were clumps of people, and lonely ones too. I looked through the crowd, but could not spot Max. It didn’t surprise me. It actually made me feel better about the situation. This meant that Max hadn’t completely flipped. He was still Max, and Max never was early, apparently, even if he’s losing his mind.

I walked up to the bar and sat on a stool. I still itched and was impatient.

The wooden stool was uncomfortable.

…..

Who would listen to me? I am only alive as billions of others are alive. I am unique only because I exist with my own name.

…..

The bar looked like a volcanic island that rose above the clouds of smoke. Its brass spouts filled glasses with foamy beer, everybody’s poison. Ashtrays laced with fine grey dusts and crooked butts were spread in front of me. Most people in the bar smoked and looked strange as they spit ropes of white, churling air. The polyurethaned bar top was speckled with oblong burns and shimmered when the bartender spread wet film over it with a rag. The bar top was also sticky. There were cardboard coasters that had logos of beer brands. Cocktail napkins lay wet and discarded at my feet as well as a cherry that had picked up grens from the floor. The cherry was covered in dust, hair, whatever else…

In a few glasses on the bar top, cigarette butts floated in a grey inch of beer. Empty Corona bottles with limes and butts in them stood next to the ashtrays.

…..

I’m alive for a reason and I know I’ll die for one too. That’s how it is for all of us…. I think that my death will have something to do with frogs. Either I’ll be mobbed by a plague of them, or one will swim down my throat when I’m swimming at the lake…. I’m sure they’re plotting right now.

…..

Everything there seemed caught, and illuminated with a surreal glow. The dim lights did make the faces in the crowd look soft and without blemishes. A disco ball in the back spun and shot freckles into the crowd, and around it and under it people were laughing.

I ordered a beer from the bartender.

“Excuse me. I’ll have a Guinness,” I said.

“Sure.”  I think that’s the boxer guy who runs the grocery. He’s cute, a little heavy in the stomach, but do-able. Ok, one Guinness…. It’s coming out pretty slow, maybe they should clean the fucking taps like I told them Fuck it. I’m not mentioning it again…. OK, all done. Bring it back to the boxer man. “Four dollars,” she said.

I gave her five.

“Thanks.” He seems nice.

I gulped a foamy sip. The bitter, chocolate malt was creamy and cold.

In one of the corners, by the pool table, a short young man with a bent nose and his hands in his pockets stood and watched the crowd. He paid attention to the bodies, the bounces of different breasts. He likened it to a rodeo. He thought that he wanted to ride some bull. He watched the women move in their tight shirts,  hypnotized by the outlines of their tits. He compared and contrasted the different nipple types he imagined under the tight shirts. He especially liked to watch the girls as they came into the bar from the cold, with diamond cutters under their shirts. He saw the denim they wore and compared it to skin. It’s like their skin, because you see what you get. Damn, I can see every curve on these chicks. Fuck if I screw any of them, it’s like their naked already. Wait. I still want to smack some ass tonight. I’d fuck all these chicks. I want her?yes you, baby, I’d fuck you,…shit, definitely that one. Look at those shoulders. I just want to bite into them. Oh great eyes. Hello sexy. He pursed his lips and nodded as the girls passed him. As they walked away he stared at their asses.

A girl in a silver shirt with only strings tied behind her back walked to the dance floor. She wore boots that came up to her knees, and she had a full head of straight brown hair that was wanton and tasseled about her eyes. When she strode over the floor boys  turned and stared. She looked back at them, long and deep, but also pretended to be only a touch shy. She examined their faces and their bodies, their checkered shirts and their brute expressions.

Take me if you want. It doesn’t matter…shy boy…it’s gonna be fun…who cares. You want me, I know…go for it…have me…I don’t care…take me…talk to me. I’ll do it…it’s fun…he’d be fun…but I’m gonna pretend that you got no shot, shy boy…I’m gonna tease you……..this place is silly.

She kept moving. She tested each boy she passed with a gaze. It all depended on how they looked back at her…and also how they looked. She waited to find the man who really wanted her. And only I knew they all did.

At the other side of the bar’s island there was an old man that had sagged cheeks, and his white moustache was stained brown beneath his nose. He drank. He looked into his cup with his fallen eyes. They were veined, and grey where they should have been white. He counted his sips. He was aware of every ‘tap’ and ‘clang’ of toasting bottles and pints around him, but he never looked away from his glass.

Alone, he smoked and thought.

Can I even hurt anymore? Do I feel anything? I’m numb…three sips left. I don’t feel anything. Fuck. Put it all away…drink…2 sips left. I’ll forget. I can’t hurt anyway, anymore. Can I? Maybe I can still feel it, maybe I can’t. But I can forget. I can forget anything…one more sip.

And as he sipped, his mind turned and turned back like that, forward backward and in on himself, always back to hurt. He was the only lonely man in Rusty’s who knew that he was, or at least admitted it. In the crowded maze of the bar, of the laughter and lights that flashed, he tried to be numb, he tried to be blind, and tried hardest to be as lonely as he was. His sorrow took effort, the strength to throw back beers and be sad.

He only blinked when he sipped, or thought the word hurt.

I looked away from him.

…..

It was my mission to exterminate every frog that lived in the artificial, man-dug creeks that veined the eye-blur of the condominium village. Creek Hills Condominiums, with one hill and many creeks. We lived in number 1972. My mother said it was good luck because that was also the year of my birth, which she also reminded me often of it being the first happy year of her life. 1972 Creek Hills, Brook Drive, Blue Spring Circle #12…it sounded like a corner of a nightmare, a block of utopian paradise complete with sewers called Red Rill #2821, and Bucolic Boulevard. People shouldn’t live that way, shouldn’t let themselves be convinced that an abacus is an enchanted forest. I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your hills down.

It was my mission to exterminate all the frogs. Sick little kid I was. Eleven years old, babied always by my mother whose only joy, it seemed, at that time was her limitless involvement in everything I did, wore, knew and enjoyed…but she never knew I killed frogs for fun. It was my mission. I hated them so much, how they’d pop out from the sides of the creek whenever I walked by, jump and make that low chirp, and splash and disappear. I’d wait, soon the frog comes up, eyes and head only. I’d make another move and down it goes again to pop up somewhere else in the creek. You never know where it will go next, where it comes back to, or when, but it always does. Maybe it hides in the plastic tubes that regulate the creek so it don’t overflow, in a network that I, as a boy, imagined to be where the frogs met and stared at each other, and said nothing.

It was my mission to exterminate every frog, for looking at me and saying nothing.

In the creek there was a reflection of a fat little boy who never knew his father and was too loved by his mother, a boy who was sad and angry…and when the head of a frog popped up in the reflection the ripples of water made his paunch squirm and jiggle, and the sadness shook off, and the anger grew to take the space that the sadness had left. All I hated in the world was a silent, staring, floating and disappearing creature, and it became my mission to exterminate it.

…..

I spied another girl walk away from the dance floor.

I looked elsewhere.

…..

The feelings come after you admit you love someone. Before you say it to yourself, or to the other….Before, when you don’t know what exact detail it is that makes you smile. When you replay the minutes of a day spent together. When you find yourself repeating what you said to her yesterday as you stand alone the next morning and shave and brush your teeth. When you have no specific reason for calling her, or repeating her name as a whisper in your brain. Before, when the smell of her perfume is impossible to miss and you find yourself whipping around to stare at strangers because you’ve caught a whiff.

Lost, is a good assessment. You overturn your preset hopes to an ambivalent call that takes you further into pre-destiny, vast as all comfort, and it’s cozy enough to inspire a new march forward, down different trails, at sunset……..even if you’re afraid of the dark.

…..

At another corner of the bar a different girl talked with a friend as she waited for the bartender to see her. She nursed the Heineken that was almost finished and looked around the bar with a broad glance. She was…thick, a muscular girl. She was very pretty with round, baby cheeks. I wouldn’t say she was fat at all. She was full and healthy, fine by me. I had a gut, a big gut.

She stood and talked fast and animated to her friend. On and on…and her thoughts were the same, rambling lines that came out of her mouth.

So we go and we follow this group of guys they’re cute you know, get wasted have a good time. I look so fat in this, why did you let me wear this look at me should I go change? Do you want to stay here. I really want to find them you know we should all hang out together get wasted have a good time are you sure I don’t look fat.

She was mad, non-stop. It made me concerned as I pried into her. I wanted to walk over to her and say, “It’s OK. You look fine. Enjoy yourself, relax. It’s O…K. Have some self esteem.” But I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t say anything. By just hearing her go on-and-on-and-on that way, while the girl she talked to nodded and thought the other looked fine and needed to relax. I realized that no matter what I said I could not soothe her. I could tell that people had tried and given up.

…..

I stood silent as I watched Todd walk into the cornfields. So what, I killed a fucking frog. They’d all die anyway when summer came and dried the fake, ugly creek. They’ll make more, bury their eggs and by the following spring they’d be rampant and abundant, and silent and stupid. Todd’s a pussy to give a shit about a fucking frog. They’re jumping around the creek all the time. I can’t sneak up on them, no matter how slow I walk—and most of the time I can’t even find them until I walk by ‘em and they jump and make that annoying chirp-grunt-croak and then splash. And then I have to stand there for five minutes until they pop up. I’m glad I’m not using small rocks any more. I missed too much and then another stupid five minute wait for those stupid eyes to pop up and pretend not to see me. They can see me, those eyes on the side of their heads. I know they can see all around them. No, I’m glad I’m using big rocks now. I like it, when the big splash gets all over and it only takes a couple seconds for it to pop up, feet first, upside down, tongue out—Wait, there’s one, maybe I’ll try to catch this one. I’ll just kneel down very slowly…and reach out my hand-and-it’s gotta be quick…as fast as I can move, and, NOW—shit, holy shit I got it. It’s fucking slimy, ‘Stop kicking’—stop kicking—Oh shit, I dropped it, ‘Come here,’ shit, OK I got it. You ugly, slimy, stupid, annoying fuck, I’m going to throw you up against that boulder over there. Say goodbye. I gotta throw it real hard so it breaks into pieces. ‘Hear that fucker, I’m going to smash you. Bet that would make Todd puke.’ Let’s see if I puke. I bet I won’t. I’m gonna laugh. Here I go, just run up to it and throw. One, two, three—Oh shit, that made a weird sound. It was kind of like throwing a tomato up real high and letting it hit the street. Oh shit, its jaw is hanging by a thread. Look at that tongue and one of its eyes is smashed. I’m gonna get another one. Over there, there’s more, there’s a lot more. Alright—there’s one—same thing…real slow…reach out—Shit—OK there’s another one—C‘mon Benny, get it—got it—‘Oh, you kick just like your friend did…yes you’re ugly, let me show you your friend…look, look how fucked up he is.’ I bet he’s never seen frog blood before. OK, I’m gonna smash him. Wait—the tree. I know what I’m gonna do with you. I’m gonna tie your legs to that tree and let you hang there…. Now, what do I tie him with. I don’t have anything, shit—Wait. What if I just tie his legs in a knot around the branch. Stop kicking. OK, now just tuck one under the other. It’s not easy—oh shit, the legs broke. ‘Stop moving!’ Ok, fucking shit ugly motherfucking stupid shit shit ass dick frog, there, now your legs are in a nice knot—

“BENNY!”

“———“

…..

It became harder to follow the thoughts of the people one by one, there were too many of them. There was a group of English majors that sat in one of the booths. They talked about Hemingway and how modern writing was lost, how nobody captured anything anymore because there was nothing worth capturing. One of them was waiting for an opportunity to use the word ‘ubiquitous’ in the conversation…and it finally came. ‘Bad writers in America are as ubiquitous as Education majors are in this bar.’ Bravo buddy, Don’t try too hard.

And a different group sat at another booth. It was another hovel of guys. They were individually looking for this other guy named Paul, but they mostly called him dickhead. They wanted to knock out his stupid ass. They planned to get even with Paul because he had kicked the ass of their friend Mike. Mike sat with them and he felt special because his friends were going to avenge him. Mike’s jaw still hurt.

Turn.

There was a guy with blonde dyed hair who thought about ice climbing and how much he loved it.

Turn.

A girl was upset because Bill had spent the night with her. They had sex, but he never called her after. She spots him in a corner talking to another girl.

Turn.

Bill tried to think of a way to get Tamara out of the bar without walking past Anna. He didn’t want to fuck up a possible lay. He liked possibility. The theme of the night is possibility. Next to him stood some bikers in leather vests and torn black t-shirts. Only one of the bikers had on a bandanna, but all of them were very conscious of looking tough at all times. They intended to scare people, or at least intimidate them a bit. That’s right, look the other way. Another biker thought about his bike, and another thought that he should buy a car.  It’s fuckin cold riding in the winter.

The sorority girls I had entered Rusty’s behind were dancing in a close circle. They smiled and sang along with the music. Every once in a while a boy would break the circle and talk to one of them. That girl thought, Wow, does he like me, he’s cute, while the other girls thought about whether or not they approved. This boy’s name was Josh, and some of the girls thought, go for it, and some, I’ve heard things about him, and one, does he even remember me.

Turn

A guy wondered why he came to Rusty’s, and he didn’t have an answer.

The drunk people had some pretty funny thoughts like, He doesn’t respect me like I told him you know shit, or, trust me, you trust me I know silly fight ass-dick.

The bartender was annoyed because Marshall had forgotten to stock the bar. He has no idea about responsibility.

People laughed and thought the sounds of their chuckles.

Turn

Sitting alone at a booth was a young face. He had blonde hair that was natural, not out of place, but let to fall on its own. He wore a black shirt that backgrounded the reflected freckles of the spinning disco ball. He was writing. He stared at the page and turned and stared at the crowd. Back and forth. He rubbed his fingers over his eyebrows. He looked into the crowd, he didn’t just watch it. He searched it and was disgusted. He squinted his deep-set, wandering eyes, and he looked as if he was ready to strike.

I was intrigued by him. He looked out of place. I watched him put down his pen and run his palms over his face.

I had seen his stature before. I had felt his presence before. I remembered his black shirt,… because I had dreamed him, the booth, the scene, the smoke. I then heard him think and my already perched curiosity flapped its wings and flew high above the steep peak it had reigned.

Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth. Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth. Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest nature’s rule. Cursed be the gold that guilds the straightened forehead of the fool.

His thought was eloquent and beautiful, and his eyes cowered as he thought it. He was a new mystery, and I felt like I should talk to him.

I was calm. The freakishness of seeing a character from my dream did not shake me. I had already been quaked that day. I just hoped the worms wouldn’t also arrive.

He sat alone. He picked up his pen and wrote. He smoked a cigarette and drank what looked like whisky, and he thought poetry.

I slid off the wooden stool and walked towards him.

His thought changed.

A tornado is reflective reason.

No way. I was right. I was right to come to Rusty’s. I believed now that anything I thought would come true, a side effect of my power. Max would soon follow and then the old man we would thwart. But now I found the first thing that had to be found. It was the phrase. It was him. It was his voice I had heard all day long. There was no doubt in my mind. It was his raspy, tenor-baritone voice that I had heard the night before, and at work, Max’s house…. I had found him, the source, as I knew I would. I now believed that not only could I hear the thoughts of the world, but also in me were puzzles that showed the future.

I couldn’t believe it, the coincidence. I wanted to run towards him and scream, ‘What does it mean?’ with excitement and irate energy. But I didn’t want to startle him. You can’t just run up to someone and say, ‘I know what you’re thinking, so out with it, now.’ No. I had to stay calm and think of a way to start up a conversation…. But I had no idea how to do that.

…..

Turn off brain. Turn off brain. Don’t think Bear. Turn off your brain, stop thinking. Feel things, respond with feeling. You think and think and think but you never act an impulse. You think about it first. You ask your brain about love and listen to what it tells you that you hate….Feel Bear…run quick when you feel. With an empty head you will see God in the end, and your heart will know all that you’ve felt. Start feeling things Bear.

…..

I walked slow to his booth. I watched him write in his unlined journal. Then I stood next to him. He looked up at me, closed the book, and put the cap on his silver fountain pen.

“Yes,” he said.

“What are you writing?”

“Nothing…”

“…”

“What do you need?” he said.

“Nothing. I’m just curious about what your writing.”

What the fuck does this guy want. “Um…not much, really…just something I’ve been thinking about.” He doesn’t look drunk.

“Can I sit down?” I said.

“Sure.” OK, this is weird.

I knew I was staring at him, but I didn’t know what to say.

Is this guy coming on to me? I hope not. I don’t mind talking to someone, but he’s got to talk for that to happen. “What is it?” he said.

I paused a little longer…and then I just said what came to mind.

“I hear thoughts.”

Great, the crazy guy in the bar picks me to talk to. This is interesting. “Really, well me too.”

“See all these people…I know what their thinking,” I said.

“Yeah? So do I.” He took a drag of his cigarette. “It’s written on their faces.” Oh, so he’s the stupid philosopher type. He’s having some flashback to his youth. That’s sad, he misses casual sex. I just hope he’s not after me.

“No…you don’t understand…. I hear them…in their voices, in my head, and I swear I’m not full of shit,” I said.

Funny, he doesn’t look like he’s on acid. He does look crazy though. He probably is a drunk asshole. He just holds it well.

“I’m not some drunk asshole,” I said.

He wavered. I had his attention. He knew that he had just thought that, but still, he wasn’t convinced…. So I said some more.

“What was it?Yeah. Cursed be the…social wants that?”

“No way. Stop…. How are you…How do you know that?”

“I told you. I heard it…I heard you think it.”

No fucking way.

“Did you write it? It’s beautiful,” I said.

He was silent and did not move. His eyes were open large. His tightly shut mouth extended ever-so-slightly over the girth of his face. He wasn’t scared. He was actually a little thankful that something unusual had come along.

Well, this is weird, but…I guess it’ll be something to write about. “Um, OK…Why not?… No, I didn’t write that. It’s from a poem called ‘Locksley Hall’…I’ve memorized it.”

“Really, I guess I missed that one in college.”

He took a full slug of his drink.

“Man, this is fucked up…. You can?yeah, the poem. It’s about a guy who is denied the love of his cousin so he decides to spy on her?” What am I doing?

“You’re just talking. That’s?”

“Alright. Fine. We can talk. I want to…. This is pretty incredible. You sold me. I believe you and, man, I’d love to hear about it?But one rule,” he said.

“Sure.”

“No reciting my thoughts back to me, or answering them even. Cool?”

“Fine,” I said.

I still hadn’t figured out what to say next.

“So, the poem. I like it…because it could have been written today?Did you just hear the words of that song,” he said.

He looked up and winced.

“Excuse me? You mean, right now?” I said.

“Yeah. Here. Right now. Everybody’s dancing to it, dumbass.”

“I’m a little?”

“It went, ‘You and me baby ain’t nothing but mammal, so lets do it like they do it on Discovery Channel,” he said.

The crowd danced and sang along.

He looked angry-excited as he spoke.

“Now tell me that’s not sinning against the strength of youth, or guilding the straightened forehead of the fool. Some moronic fool in some big office building probably wrote that…Or somebody on drugs,” he said. He stopped to slug his drink again. “It makes me feel ashamed to speak English. Fuck. I’d like to meet the man who coined the phrase ‘sex sells’. I’d ask him if he eats through his ass and farts out his mouth. SEX SELLS. Isn’t that the mantra that pimps and ho’s meditate on. Ommmm, sex sells, Ommmm. Is our modern period built on a doctrine invented by the oldest profession on earth.? Whoopee! We have genitals and we’re not ashamed of them anymore, we can be sexual and open minded about it, and THAT”S GREAT. I mean it, but they’ve taken an historical moment of liberation and used it to build a stronger market economy. You get it? Fuck…. I bet they had better sex back when it was forbidden to talk about it…. I’m sorry. That stupid song got me started,” he said. “DANCE YOU ANIMALS,” he screamed to the crowd.

“Lighten up, kid. You look like you’re about to burst,” I said.

“Oh, and the poem, right? There’s a line about Rusty’s in it. ‘Eye to which all order festers, all things here are out of joint. Science moves, but slowly, slowly creeping in from point to point. Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, creeping nigher, glares that on that nods and winks behind a slowly dying fire.’ ?You hear that? Science. Ordered reason, justified events hardly exist in here. If they do, they creep in and hide somewhere. Ask somebody why they come here and they say ‘because.’ No reason…. But I don’t blame anybody, in here. It’s those mysterious fools in magazines. Those bad actors, those adult nursery rhymes on the radio. Oooo, living the ‘Vida Loca’, great. There’s nothing ‘loco’ about doing what the radio tells you to do. I don’t care if it is in song version…but I’m ranting,” he said.
It was hard to follow what he was saying, he was too animated when he spoke. His eyes opened big, his hands waved and pointed, and his body rocked as he preached. The boy also looked as serious as he did excited.

“I hear what you’re saying,” I said.

“I bet.”

“But you’re giving bad things too much credit, and by doing that you also venerate these things you spite. I’m not telling you that you’re wrong, you have a point, but you’re not taking enough into account.”

This guy loves to lecture, I can tell. “Thanks Teach,” he said.

“C’mon.”

“No, really, I mean it. I hear you Nostradamus,” he said.

“What?”

“So, you’re a psychic then. I knew another psychic. This guy?big guy, half black half white, he always has to wear sunglasses when he talks to you, or else he looks too intense and freaks you out.”

“No, I’m not psychic, not really.”

“But you are telepathic, right?”

“You know, I don’t know what the hell I am. I can’t see the future, clearly, but I have instincts. All I know is I can hear what’s going on right now, in everybody’s head. I can see clearly the present, I guess.”

“Hmm. You’ve proved to me that you can read minds, but nobody can see clearly the present. There is no present,” he said.

“What?”

“Forget it.”

He dragged on his smoke.

“Oh, OK, I get it. You don’t want to tell me, you’d rather me get it out of your head on my own. Fine, I’ll just recite it back to you.”

“I told you. Don’t break the rule.”

“Then tell me. I hear it very clearly.”

“What?”

“Say it.”

“Say what?”

“Dammit kid, say it!”

“It’s nothing. It’s just a weird sentence,” he said.

“Say it!”

“Why? You can hear it?” he said.

“Yes I can. And I have heard it…all…day…long.”

A tornado is reflective reason.

“Yes. That’s it.”

“This is fucked up. I’m not?”

He stood up and grabbed his journal.

“Wait. C’mon kid. This is what you want. You want something extraordinary. You hate this place, it’s always the same and you don’t fit in. You used to think that a night at the bar was like a Monty Python sketch being played live in front of your eyes. And the only reason you come here is because every time you hope, you pray that just maybe this time something bizarre and original might happen. Well, it’s happened. I’m here. Write about it some day, I don’t care, make it into something, anything you want…but, dammit kid, follow it through. Live it out,” I said.

He stopped moving and breathed as if he was building up for a fight. It was a little too much for him, but he put his journal back down on the table, and sat down.

“Fine. But no more cryptic bullshit. No playing with my head. And I want you to stay calm. You can look pretty demented when you get excited. Has anyone ever told you that? It’s kind of frightening.”

“Fine. It’s just a little tough to stay mellow today.”

I saw a girl fall down on the dance floor, and I laughed a little.

“What?” he said.

“Nothing, it’s just, this girl just had a pretty funny fall out there. She took two other girls down with her,” I said.

“Yeah, that happens here?so…the phrase.”

He took another sip of his drink.

“Whiskey?” I said.

“No, Scotch.”

He smoothed his fingers over his eyebrows and then he tapped his nose a few times with his thumb. I figured that I’d finally ask him what I wanted to.

“Listen, kid. I’ll tell you. Ever since last night, and all day long I have heard that sentence, in your voice, in my head. I’ve been looking for you…. I need the answer,” I said.

“What’s your problem, man? Are you too lazy to form your own opinion? You can figure it out, they’re only words.”

“Just tell me what it means,” I said.

“Man, you’re fixed on things that don’t exist?the present, the answers. Who am I to say what anything means?”

“But you wrote it.”

“I didn’t write it. It’s not mine,” he said.

“Whose is it then, another poet’s?”

He made an effort to look straight into my eyes. He was still waried by the situation, but now he wanted to talk.

“No…”

“Well?” I said.

“Fine, relax, I’ll tell you. I’m not sure how…if it really was an outside voice, or something that came out of my sleepy mind…but, last night, when I heard it…I was startled and I jumped out of bed, grabbed my pen?” He picked the pen up to show me. “?and I wrote it down in my journal…and I went back to sleep.” He placed his hands flat, palms down on the table. “When I woke up this morning it was the first thing that came to mind, and I checked to see if it was really in my journal, to see if I dreamed the whole thing or not…and it wasn’t a dream. It was still written in my journal.” He folded his hands like in prayer. “So, I thought about it, a lot, trying to define it, but nothing really made sense…. But I didn’t give up.” He pointed at me. “And frankly, my brain hurts from pondering it all day. I was determined to understand it…I have to…because I think it is my thought. But it’s not a conscious thought of mine. It’s more like something my subconscious understands, but I don’t. Am I making any sense?” he said.

“Sure.”

“I think it’s some kind of universal truth. You see, I believe that the truth,  or the answers are in nature, and we are nature. Therefore, we have all the answers, maybe in that theoretically unused majority of our brain. But just because we have the answers doesn’t mean that we understand them.” He took a sip of his drink. “I think a universal truth might appear simple at its core, but really, there are too many facets, to much contained in the truths that are born into us. To fully understand the universe is to be the craziest man in the history of crazy men on Earth. For example, how do we really know that murder is wrong. Because it’s one of the commandments? I don’t think so. We just know it’s wrong. That’s your universal truth, murder is wrong. But for us it’s not that simple, there are too many facets and conditions to go crazy over. What about as self-defense? What about capitol punishment? Can you really punish murderers by murdering them? What about euthanasia, or allowing civilians to die in war? Is war murder, or do certain intentions make murder OK? Is hunting animals murder, or eating meat? It’s done in the animal kingdom, it’s merely survival. Is murder an integral part of man’s survival? I already feel crazy and there’s probably a thousand other circumstances that make it hard to just accept the truth, that murder…is…wrong. It works the same way with the phrase we’ve heard. Listen. A tornado is reflective reason…. Murder is wrong. They’re both the same kind of sentence, they’re both declarative statements. The meaning of the phrase is the phrase. It’s the applications of it that we have to figure out…. And I didn’t give up. I’m glad, too. About forty-five minutes ago, I figured it out for myself,” he said.

“And what’s that?”

I leaned forward.

“Weren’t you listening to me. You have to figure it out for yourself, figure out your stance and your own applications of it. I am not the authority.”

“Fine, you’re right, but I want to know what you think.”

“I thought you could do that on your own,” he said.

The noise of the bar was louder then before. The kid and I had to raise our voices to hear one another.

“Not like that?Listen, you seem like a smart dreamer kind of guy. Understand this. I have heard your voice all day. There’s a reason for that, I hope. I believe that I’m supposed to get your opinion, I believe that you are supposed to teach me something. Just tell me. It doesn’t feel like I have much more time. C’mon, I am putting a great, supernatural value on your thoughts. Not everybody thinks like you, at least in New Guernsey they don’t,” I said.

“Well, I guess I’m flattered.”

“I giving you full license to preach. I know you don’t mind that,” I said.

His face illuminated and he smiled.

This is fun. “OK. So let’s say that the tornado is man, or humankind to be P.C., and that makes sense because everything man touches he changes. Man’s as dangerous as he is beautiful. So, the tornado is man…but a tornado is reflective reason…well. The real question is?What is reflective reason? So first, what is reason? Reason is the basis, or motive, for an action, decision or conviction. Basically, it’s how we justify our forward motion. Life is forward motion. We move in time. Every second we use is lost, and can never be relived…except by one thing,” he said.

“By our memories, right?”

“Right. By reflection.” He sipped his drink. “Reflection is what we used to keep hold of, or relive, the past. What is history but a written down, recorded reflection.”
“Because you can’t record something as it’s happening,” I said.

“No, not truly we can’t. Time moves too fast. Everything is either reason or reflection. Reflection is how we view the past, and reason is how we see the future. With reason, we see what is going to happen.”

“Sure,” I said.

“But what do we use to reason. On its own, without reflection, reason that focuses on the myth, the present, will only yield wayward predictions that the slightest change in situation can nullify.”

“Because there is no present, and to base anything on it is to base it on nothing,” I said.

“Yeah. Try to catch the present, right now…that just happened, poof, it’s gone. Keep trying and you’ll see that it all has happened already. You’re right, you can’t base reason on nothing.”
“So is that what you think the universal truth is?”

“No. Not at its core. That’s too complex to be the core,” he said.

“Do you know it, then?”

“I told you, I don’t know anything. I only suppose.”

“And what do you suppose?”

“That the phrase defines how we move through time.”

“How?”

“We are constantly moving in opposite directions. One way is forward, forward through time, through life, through circumstance, through our hopes and wishes and plans and our bodies. But we are also moving backwards, by reasoning with what we have already done, by seeing the past, everything we carry with us, and using it to define us and to make decisions about where we will go. We move back and forth, living and remembering. That is how we experience time, by reflecting and reasoning?Think about it. When you examine who you are, what you feel, think and know, you don’t base your conclusions on what you think will happen in the future. Unfortunately, we are not what we hope to be, we are what we have done. Because we don’t truly know what is going to happen, unless we equate it with something that has already happened. You know, that’s how I think psychics work. They don’t see the future, rather, they probably see what has already happened in your life, and they reason it?draw conclusions based on the patterns of your past.”

“But there has to be a present, there has to be something that connects the two,” I said.

“That’s right, we are constantly living it, the joint between past and future. We are the present, we are where they meet. You understand? It’s us. Past and future overlapped, contained in one thing, a constant movement of opposite directions, forward and backwards, as one body, as one definable structure, and what moves in two directions at once?” he said.

He pointed his index finger and held it at his eyelevel. He moved it left to right, right to left, back and forth and then with that moving finger he drew a spiral instead of a line, to the left, right, left, right, down until it landed on the table.

“A spiral,” he said. “Two directions connected as one. But a spiral, a plain spiral is just a geometric dream, it’s not real. So what’s a real spiral then, one alive enough to be compared with man. I’ll tell you. We all move forward and turn back on ourselves at once, like a tornado.” And that’s it. That’s what I think. Good job.

He was pleased with himself, he enjoyed himself. It was actually the first time he had coherently organized everything he had gathered in fragments that day. It all made good sense to me.
He drank the small sip that was left in his glass.

“Think about it,” he said. “I’m gonna get another drink. You want one?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Let me guess.  Maybe I got the power too. Um…Um…, where is it? You got a lot of shit in that brain of yours. What? You eat doodie. That’s gross?wait, there it is…Johnnie Walker Black, straight.”

“That’s what you’re having.”

“So are you,” he said.

He stood up. His face had on it a huge grin and a clownish squint circled both his eyes. He was definitely a weird kid, but I was glad that he thought so much. The guy cared about people, as much as he despised them for being stupid. He was both dark and like a jester. He loved life, and most of all, he loved trying to understand it. He walked to the bar with a strut in his step.

When he reached the bar a fight broke out on the dance floor. It was an interesting spectacle, a pageant of stupidity. First, a circle opened wide around the fight, creating a ring for the scuffle. Two guys. One wore a red velvet shirt that was tight and crept up his arm so his biceps could be clearly seen. He landed most of his punches on the other guys face. I’m kicking your ass, he thought. The other guy wore a iridescent, silver polyester shirt that glowed under the neon lights. His shirt was pocked with sparkles of light from the disco ball that spun over him. He was losing the fight…bad. Fuck, ow, fuck. He went down on one knee after the red guy landed a hard overhand right between his eyes. The red guy also dropped to one knee, but not because he was hurt in any way. He just wanted to hit the guy some more, and look him in the eye as he did it. The red velvet guy landed a killer uppercut on the silver polyester guy’s jaw. Silver polyester was knocked out cold.

Finally, after fighting to get through the circle around the fight, the bouncer tore through to the center. Godammit, get the fuck, move, oh shit this guy’s hurt. He grabbed red velvet, tight, and pinned his arms to his side. The bouncer then lifted red up, and carried him to the exit of the bar. Red velvet thought, I kicked his ass.

The young writer was back with the drinks. He put them down in the center of the table.

“Crucify him!” he yelled into the crowd.

“What?

He sat down and pushed my drink closer to me.

“They just carried the modern Jesus out of the bar. He is. Don’t look at me like that. Red velvet guy is our new icon, the founder of the new Church,” he said.

“C’mon, that’s bullshit. He’s no martyr.”

“Oh, really? Tell me that violence hasn’t become a kind of church. A church proclaims to have the final word. Here, violence is the final word?and I know they weren’t thinking anything. You know why? Violence doesn’t require thought. I bet I could walk up to anybody here and just…make some high-pitched squeal in their face, and if I’m relentless, if I refuse to stop squealing at the guy, no matter how much he threatens, I bet he’ll resort to violence in order to stop me. Now what kind of thought process could conclude with the decision to pair an annoying squeal with a punch in the face. None. No thought equals violence. Just like religion, the final word. Blind faith, senseless violence…same difference,” he said.

He shrugged.

“You’re stretching kid. That theory needs work?and besides, we’re not having this conversation, OK?”

“What, big church-goer, are you?”

“We’re just not going to have it, OK.”

I curled my brow and shot a severe glance at him.

“Sure, man. Drink up,” he said.

He raised his glass. I did the same.

“To freaky shit,” he toasted.

I nodded, and sipped the warm, smoky scotch.

Silver polyester guy was conscious again. Three people helped him to his feet. The circle closed around him and dissolved back into a mob of dancers. Silver polyester thought, Shit, I got my ass kicked.
“So, I think I might have an added take on the phrase,” I said.

“It’s about time you thought for yourself.”

He took the last drag of a cigarette he had lit at the bar.

“OK, explain,” he said as he blew out the smoke.

“I accept what you’ve come up with. Maybe we are the tornado, and we do move forward the same time as we reflect and remember. But, a tornado is destructive. It might be a little too vague to say that because everything man touches he changes or destroys that he is like a tornado. Maybe there is something specific. Something specific that is being destroyed.”
“Alright, what do think?”

“Maybe it’s the real past that is being destroyed, the past we don’t remember,” I said.

“The real past?”

“Yeah…. I think that when you remember the past you actually destroy it.”

“Prove it,” he said.

“Well…think back to the sixth grade. Did you have a sixth grade dance?”

“Yeah.”

He lifted his rocks glass and drank.

“OK, so you remember the chaperones, and the music that played, and the girl you awkwardly slow-danced with, and how it took a little time before the girls and boys started mingling with each other. But…you don’t really remember who you were then. You don’t truly remember what you thought. You remember your impressions, but the exact words that were in your mind are gone. But that doesn’t mean we don’t remember it. We remember the dance as we see it, right now, through this moment.”

“Yeah. So, I don’t think I follow,” he said.

I drank a little scotch.

“You’re not really remembering the dance. You’re only seeing it with the mind you’ve become, everything you are right now. So, that past you’re imagining is not the real past. The real past is how we saw it when we lived it, not the past we remember. So, I realize that when we remember something, when we look back on the past we actually destroy it. It was real before you chose to remember it. It’s like, you can never be what you were, you’re only what you’ve become.”

He laughed.

“Wow. We should make a poster out of that and hang it in the gym. ‘You’re only what you’ve become’.”

He laughed harder.

“Gimme a break,” I said.

“No, I hear what you’re saying, it’s just funny how you wrapped that up with a cute maxim. I do understand though. When we remember something we actually change it because we’ve changed. The original event becomes only what we think about it now. It’s a perfectly valid point…. A little depressing though.”

“I’m depressing? You just compared religion to violence. That’s grim,” I said.

“Alright man. See? This is good. You’re proving yourself wrong,” he said.

“How?”

“You thought you didn’t understand the phrase, and now you’ve got your own theory. To you the truth is that we destroy the purity of the past when we remember it. That’s good, I like it. All of our memories are distorted versions of what we once were. That’s pretty, really illustrates how forlorn we all are. I’m going to remember that. Maybe one day I’ll create this demented, depressed character, and that’ll be his motive. He’ll try real hard not to remember anything, the oblivious sad man. That’s good.”

“Don’t be a dick.”

“I’m kidding, sorry.” He drank again. “But…your trope…it kind of makes your whole story exposition. With out memory, everything’s exposition. It’s almost like you’re saying that the life you’ve lived has no relevancy to the life your living right now. It’s too in the moment?You like pizza?”

“What?”

“You like pizza?” he said.

“Sure.”

“Well, every time you decide to eat pizza it isn’t a fresh spontaneous impulse that makes you want it. You like pizza, and some time ago there was that first time you had it, and it’s then that you decided that you liked it, and because of that you still do. I think you’re a little off. You can’t destroy the past, the most you can do is either forget it or distort it, but it’s always gonna be there. You want my advice?… Get over whatever it is that haunts you and…I don’t know…love life, enjoy your story,” he said.

“Listen, all I’m saying is, there is no way I can truly remember how it truly felt to have pizza for the first time. I can’t forget how it tastes now.”

“This conversation is ridiculous. You know?” he said.

I laughed at myself. I did feel ridiculous. I was really stretching. As I laughed I realized that my point was stupid, rhetoric about perception. The young writer was much smarter than me.

“Yeah, we’ve gone from universal truths to pizza,” I said.

“Cheers.”

He laughed and raised his glass. I raised mine and tapped his and slugged another sweet sting.

“So…My story?” I said.

“You want more of my postulates? More of my theories? I’ll tell you if you do.”

I looked around the bar and Max still wasn’t there. It was 10:50.

“Sure, I’ve got time. You know, I feel better talking to you. I guess I needed to listen to my own mind a bit, rather than feed off strangers. You’re theories get me thinking, so what’s this one?”
He was excited, and happy that he was having a real conversation in Rusty’s. He was a lonely person and it felt good to him that someone cared about what he thought. He wanted me to listen, someone, anyone to listen to him, to the philosophies he had spent his life amassing, figuring and creating. He was definitely smarter than me, but I understood him fine. He was a pure thinker, determined to think more than do anything else. He lit another Camel.

“OK,” he said. “So we’ve decided that we can’t really see the future, right?”

“I think so.”

“Fine, but if we can’t then something must. It is very evident to me that there seems to be a balance to everything, one that naturally occurs. I think that there’s a good time for every bad time we’ve had. And maybe not in exact numbers. Some events are stronger than others, good or bad…. Maybe it’s just a supposition, but even if it’s been good and perfect your whole life, something bad is bound to happen that will carry the weight of all that good. I think history might support that. It’s Pax Romana and the Holocaust.

“I’m not sure about that,” I said.

“Yeah…It’s still a little shaky. I need to spend more time thinking about it.”

“It’s a bit of a generalization, that’s all.”

“But, you do believe in balance,” he said.

“I do.”

“It’s certainly not an original thought, and not new too. The Zen and the Taoists live by it,” he said.

“I know.”

“Well, that’s what I’m arguing. Something must see the future if we can’t”

“God,” I said.

“Now, that’s a generalization. I believe in God, I do, but not as a personified being. I think that there is an answer that is more unique to each of us.”

“Which is?”

“A script, a draft. You see, I believe that we’ve already been written. Like we said, it’s already happened. I think it’s recorded too, that everything has a script, that each of us is a solid story, and that it’s complete from start, the end in the back pages. Look into your past, organize it, understand its shapes, and tell me that it doesn’t seem like your life has been scripted. There is too much irony to think otherwise. Those heavy-handed times made you who you are now. There are themes, there are bit characters and mentors. There are those moments that change your life. There are justifications and grudges, and most of the action is timed perfectly, exactly when it was supposed to happen. Our stories are well written, real, educational, unbelievable, sad, happy, progressive, heady, and sometimes thrilling. We are not freak occurrences, and even our randomness becomes organized as we live new random events. People are meant to do things, they are driven to do things, because it’s been written before and it’s impossible to change that. Einstein was meant to define modern physics, Lincoln was meant to free the slaves. You were meant to hear thoughts, and you were meant to come here, and we were meant to have this conversation. In the end you realize that nothing has been random. I mean…feel it…. Why else would you come here today? Look around, listen to it. It smells like shit in here. It’s loud and the collective smoke from a hundred smokers burns your eyes and makes you blow brown snot out your nose the next morning. You drink things that make you piss a lot, and the only bathroom available is utterly disgusting. And you! Why are you here? You’re probably the oldest guy here, except for the bouncer and those bikers that were here earlier. Did you come here to have a good time and get drunk like the rest? You could have stayed home and spun yourself around while looking at the ceiling and you’d probably feel like you had a few beers. You might even throw up?Look, that guy just spit on the floor. Gross…. I know you say you followed my voice here, but tell me…is that really why you came here?”

“I don’t?”

“No, you don’t have to answer, because maybe you don’t know yet. But you will. Was coming here circumstance or insight? It doesn’t matter, it already happened. Because you’ve been written to be here. Because, when you reflect on this moment that just left, you’ll dream something new, hope for something, whatever’s next, good or bad,” he said.

He leaned back and smirked. I’m right.

“I believe you, but tell me something. Who writes these billions of scripts. Do you  really think they just exist? There’s too much awareness in our stories, and that awareness has to come from somewhere. Wouldn’t you say?”

“I don’t know. I do know that you want me to say God. That’s what you’re getting at, right?”

“I guess so,” I said.

“Maybe that idea is popular because most people do get the feeling, after examining their lives, that everything has been arranged too perfectly to be random. People get the feeling that their living a script?as long as they don’t think that anybody really lives a John Woo film. I sincerely doubt that any one of those billions of ethereal scripts out there are like ‘Face Off’, or ‘Broken Arrow.’ …Anyway, what are you gonna do when you find out that it’s already been written. You pray, that’s what. You pray that you got a good story with a happy ending. But I can’t say any of this with certainty. I know that I just don’t understand God yet, and I’m not sure I should suppose anything about people. Bottom line…I don’t know other people’s motives.” He paused and drank. “But I’ll tell you this.” He clenched his face. He had taken too big a gulp. “Damn…this heaven and hell bullshit. I can’t imagine it. If we really were made in God’s likeness, then God too must understand that not everything has a happy ending, not everything is good. God is all good, and for good to exist there must be evil. But where does he keep this evil? In a Devil. Bullshit. That’s a cop-out. You know what I think? We carry the evil, that’s the point of our existence. We hold onto the evil that defines God as good. Our job is to recognize that it’s in us, and to reject it, fight it, merely hold onto it and never act on it, and when we die, we go back to the good and the same old evil that’s been down here since it started gets picked up by someone new. Maybe that’s where reincarnation comes in. Maybe we get as many chances as it takes to live a life with all that evil in us until we finally get it right, and reject it the whole way through. Maybe that’s impossible. Maybe Christ was the only one to do it and that’s why his entire body went back to the good. I don’t know. But as it stands, man is both good and bad. If you’re a good story, you reject more bad than you accept. But there are also bad stories, bad people. It happens when someone reflects back on their life, too much on the bad, and then they think they are bad, and then they act bad. The answer to your question, though. I don’t know who writes it all. Funny…when I look around here, this place, my vote goes to the ‘Sex sells’ guy,” he said.

“Yeah, maybe? But I got one problem with your idea,” I said.

“Shoot.”

“If people spend too much time thinking that everything’s been written already, then why would they ever give a shit about what they do. It’s kind of a helpless feeling to think that you have no control over your life.”

“Why? Why feel helpless? We never knew what was going to happen. We don’t have a copy of the script. To us it’s all improvisation. Our pasts have scripted our scenarios. Now we either do what fits or what rebels. Only the complete story knows the ending before we do.”

I looked into the crowd. No Max yet.

“But why care about your life at all? That’s what I’m saying,” I said.

“Well, besides the obvious. I mean…Why care about your life? C’mon, because it’s your life…but…fine. It all comes back to our enigmatic phrase. We have to care about what’s going to happen because it’s gonna define us when we look back and learn from it. Stories themselves are opened and closed, but we’re not just the stories, we’re also the characters…and character is what can change in the story, character is what can be interpreted in more ways than the plot can, character is a reaction to the story. You know, that’s why some characters seem so flat and undeveloped. It’s because those characters haven’t watched themselves. They have done little reflective reasoning. They just experience the story,” he said.

…..

I only pray for one thing—To one day forgive myself and blow my load of relief.

…..

“But why bother? What if you don’t expect anything? What if you’ve long thought that your story has a bad ending,” I said.

“Jeeze. You’re dark for a religious man. You’re forgetting about faith. Maybe that’s really where the belief in God comes from. Maybe that’s the big mystery that we aren’t universal enough to understand. Maybe we do have some knowledge of the future, like I said, locked in our intricate, unused minds. Deep in the same crevice that stores our memories of the womb, and being born. That place where the disappeared memories hide. In there, maybe we do have a copy of the script…and maybe…our dreams, while awake or asleep, are just our mind giving us cryptic hints of what lies before us…I mean…. I want to be a writer, I’ve always wanted that, and somehow, I know I will be. That I will succeed. My dream, to me, is like a premonition. Maybe dreams are what gets ahead of the story.”

He stopped and fished his Camels out of the front pocket of his black shirt. He pulled one out and slowly put it in his mouth. Out of his pants pocket he fetched his brass Zippo. He snapped it open and lit his smoke. He blew out a thick drag.

…..

I don’t go to church, and maybe that makes me a bad person. I don’t care either way. The mass is too certain. This is and this is not, and this is how you should live…blah, blah. There’s no room for debate…at least…no opportunity. You’re supposed to shut up and listen. I might go if I was allowed to argue with the father about his homily, or even his vows…if there was a segment of the mass set aside for us to raise our hands and ask the man in black, “Why celibacy Father? Isn’t sexual love an instinct that in being human must also be part God?”  Forget it though. They’ve got tradition on their side. Traditionally we are told to serve God’s servants, the ones who wear black and never have sex.

…..

“That’s a lot of faith for someone who doesn’t believe in religion,” I said.

“Yeah…but I’m young. I don’t know anything. None of my prescriptions are by any means law. I only know what I think, and I don’t know religion yet. I know God though. I know it’s there.”

“Maybe one day you’ll find a church.”

“Doubt it. But I’ll tell you. I am intrigued about the old, the traditional tools,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well…I opened up a Bible the other day and read whatever it was I randomly opened to. It was the 94th Psalm,” he said.

“Yeah. What did it say?”

“Check it out sometime. My ideas, your present experience, it’s all in there. When I read that Psalm I lost a little bit of what I presumed to be unique in me. It was humbling, and kind of a bummer. It made me feel like an original idea is an impossible find. It’s all been written somewhere. Maybe it’s time to restate unheeded ideas…I don’t know,” he said.

He turned his head and faced the dance floor. He rolled his sight around the bar. Inside of him, he was happy, he was glad that I had listened to him, that I gave him credit for what he worked hard to gather. He felt like I respected him, yet he was a little worried and pensive. He felt that some of his ideas were still rough, and whenever he stated an argument the other side of it immediately came to mind. He then thought another line from the Tennyson poem, I assumed.

Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast, full of sad experience, moving towards the stillness of his rest.

He turned back and looked at me again.

“I feel bad for you,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because.” He pointed to the crowd that danced under the disco ball. “You know what they’re thinking,” he said.

I smiled.

“See those two girls next to the bar,” I said.

“Which ones?”

“One’s got a denim shirt, the other a white V-neck.”

“Yeah, why?”

“They both think you’re cute. Actually…they’ve thought you were cute for a while, I guess. One was in an English class with you.”

“Denim girl,” he said.

“Yep. She thinks you have a great voice, and she really wants to meet you,” I said.

He sipped his Scotch and then pulled a drag from his cigarette. He blew the smoke out slow.

“Well. That’s great. So maybe she’ll come over here and I’ll say three words and then she’ll say ‘I never met anyone like you’ and then I’ll call her and she won’t return the calls because she’s afraid that I might treat her well, that I might care to know her, and I won’t enjoy ‘going out’ to the bar and partying with her. I’d much rather cook her dinner, go for a drive or see a movie. Unfortunately, I could never be an MTV vee-jay so I’m ruled out as one of those nice guys who, not with her, but eventually will find the love he’s looking for. But I won’t if every girl reacts that way. That’s how it’s been for me. It fucking sucks…. Those girls thinks I’m cute. Great. Who cares,” he said.

“Don’t be an idiot, go talk to her. There’s a good chance you’re wrong.”

I guess I could. I do need to give my brain a rest. And I did used to check her out when I was in class with her. Well. C’mon man, do it. So what if it turns out bad, crazy-mind-reader-dude might be right. It could be good. “Why not…. She’s gorgeous,” he said.

“Good,” I said.

I turned then to look around the bar for Max. I first looked into the one of the far corners…and there I saw the beautiful, blonde waitress, Calzone Girl. She had on a thick, billowed coat that hid, from everyone except me, her pregnant shape. She did a shot of Tequila and chased it with a swig of Bud Light. She clenched the bottle tight in her left hand. She turned back to the bar and did another shot, and then another swig. She coughed a little and then chugged the rest of her beer.

I was furious. I wouldn’t accept it. How could she do that? Who was the asshole who let her in, and which goddamned bartender sold her those drinks? Where were her friends, where was her boyfriend? I felt more concerned for the unborn child than her at that moment, but  both of them at that moment were in pain. I also felt a little stupid, and partly responsible. She must have taken the twenty dollars that I had tipped her and used it to buy that batch of poison. She just inhaled it. It was too quick to stop, it was irreversible. What was she doing? She was pregnant. She just fed her child tequila and beer. I was so angry, but I still don’t know what made me so mad. It wasn’t just her, and seeing her hurt herself. I hated everything in Rusty’s at that moment. Everywhere I looked I found something I could judge. The way the guys looked at the women, like they were lecherous, low-lifes, like evil was in their eyes. Even the women as they danced angered me because they provoked the whole scene. I was disgusted enough and inside I felt a quake. I tried hard to still it. The fervor and the anger swelled shy inside of me. I looked back at her. I loved her. Never really spoke to her. But I felt like I’d jump in front of a bus to protect her. I guess I just cared, and I wasn’t going to let her wound herself…

“So what’s she thinking?” the young writer asked.

I couldn’t tell. The gift changed, the effect changed. It started with the entire crowd as a blur, like a thousand car horns blown at once, as they all jumped into a focused euphoria. They screamed because ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light’ came on. Everyone danced, and sang the words of the song to each other. Their heads shook like they all had been shocked…and their thoughts…the thoughts of every single person in that glow, in that foggy den…blended together. The gift was a loud curse.

It was impossible to avoid the waves of simple words as they roved through my head. There disappeared the separations between the thoughts. Instead I had no sense of where or who they came from. It was like one long phrase and the words alternated with different voices that choired in my brain. I began to hear the whole, the ugliness. The thoughts oozed of the mirth of the crowd, and I felt pressure inside my skull like it would soon explode. Cankerous and wretched, depression with other rotten ill-humored sickness, mixed together and cooed a pungent verse. The thoughts had rhythm, a relentless tick that moved fast and steady, and sometimes coincided with the words of the song. The rhythm was vanity, and all of it together composed the most awful song I had ever heard.

See me take for want cunt what’s he doing and I look fat dick in this goddamned Marshall doesn’t know Chrissy responsibility gonna puke are they real that motherfucker never felt so good never felt so right I feel fine he’s got a boner touch me here is he looking Hell and great tits did you see that break his jaw gotta piss nobody wants me can we go yet I see him get real there’s no fun fuck like isn’t that the grocery store can I hurt he’s a jerk where’s my keys those tits are great I’m touching it’s warm her ass blow me kill that I’m drunk motherfucker more beer will you love me forever bitch don’t know he is looking this song want Hell is great he’s cute great tits dickhead wanna fuck me did he can he she no way she lick my does he she balls me bitch prude a thousand times all night me like a tidal wave what’s her name cock can I hurt ubiquitous fire dancers I’m to get dick stoned pussy bathroom snort don’t know my face hurts kid got want him in pounded in the face he said on someone grabbed what’s face her name grab her ankles I don’t look stand want it I will my she she got to be look don’t touch boner boyfriend she’s cute so I’m praying for the end of time dick and I don’t know Hell Scott want Troy Beth touch is Mary Hell wait no fuck him an asshole yes that motherfucker what’s his problem look look boxer taste shit that boxer dude can we go great ass kick his ass she’s mine he don’t what know my walk away strength bitch want a Oh yeah hurt if I have to spend another minute with you Hell take tornado that motherfucker you should fuck me.

I trembled as I heard the crowd’s fever. All their thoughts were a dank froth. No ideas, only violence and pity and sex, inebriation and that awful song. The lights of the bar seemed to whirlwind through the dry-moist cloudy air. The glitter from the disco ball bounced from one sinister smile to another. Their thought-blend passed through me like silence, a collective, like the silence of by bedroom, the tick, hiss, knock. This one huge ghastly thought was the hiss of the bar, was evil-intricate and it puzzled me mad. These were not the sounds of good times, the sounds of fun to be had. Want, want….want something else, please!

I was terrified. My head hurt. It was too loud and I couldn’t take it. I didn’t want it anymore. This was a bad part of the story. Erase it, can’t handle it. I suffer, I suffered. My stomach hurt. I felt weak and swooned and spun and it all had to stop. What could I do? I had one impulse, and it was to scream, scream terror and panic while the blend of the bar’s thought continued.

Yes no want who’s screaming fuck him he’s the OK let’s go who’s screaming great tits motherfucker whose beer where’s Bear fuck who’s screaming paradise Hell who’s screaming what’s he screaming what’s he why’s he screaming Hell there she is screaming why Hell screaming who’s screaming screaming Hell what that they are screaming vanity what the fuck’s he screaming screaming screaming for.

My throat burned and felt like there were dull pins stabbed through my voice box. The strain felt like fire, the scream rasped like flames. My thoughts were gone. Only pain, pain spiked in my head and I suffered and I hurt.

And then where I looked I saw the calzone girl. She looked at me, but right next to her a kid with a velvet shirt punched a kid who wore a striped shirt. The punch surprised him and he started to fall. He caught his balance before falling, and squared off to fight back. He cocked back his arm fast for an overhand right, and when he did that he elbowed calzone girl hard…on the side of her head.

I flashed with instinct and burst out from my seat in the booth. I charged through the crowd after the kid in the stripes. Everybody moved out of my way and gawked at me like I was demented. The fight broke out between the two kids and a circle formed around it. Calzone girl was trying to push her way out with one arm. The other she held to the side of her head.

I ripped open a hole in the circle and grabbed the striped-shirt guy I wanted. I spun him around and hit him hard across his jaw. He went limp and before he hit the ground I caught him and put him in a choke hold.

Calzone girl ran out of the bar.

“Turn off the fucking music,” I screamed.

I held him tight, choking him.

“Turn it off!…I’ll break his damn neck!”

I stared at the bartender. She rushed to the stereo and turned it off.

“Now…EVERYBODY…clear your fuckin heads. NOW…stop thinking.”

What the fuck he’s crazy crazy is he going what’s he crazy

“Now, do it now. DAMMIT, SHUT OFF YOUR GODDAMNED HEADS.”

“Bear, put him down, OK,” the bartender screamed.

I choked the kid harder.

The bouncer started to push his way through the circle.

“Don’t do it Joe. Don’t charge me. I’ll do it…DAMMIT…MOTHERFUCKER…. I got another wish to make. I wish I could be both evil and generous,” I said.

…..

By the end of that spring it was impossible to find a frog in the creeks, and there never was any more for the rest of the years I lived there…. Today, I’ll swerve to avoid a frog in the road…but I’ll never touch one again.

…..

The circle around me opened wider as they all gave me space.

“I wish this would come down on you. I wish that I could strap every one of you down and then I’d curse you…I’d give it to you. I want you to hear what I just heard…I wish that I could inflict that type of revenge.”

Joe inched forward so I tightened my grip again and twisted the boy’s neck a little. Joe backed into the circle.

“GODDAMMIT…I wish I could judge you…but I can’t…I’m just like you. I’m just as fucked up as all of you, but I’m not proud of it. You are! How much longer is this gonna be fine, how much longer is this gonna be regarded as acceptable behavior? How much longer is this wicked shit gonna go on. You guys are winning, this crap is winning. We are all wicked fucking winners because you don’t know how bad it is. The evil, ugly, rancid and hurtful words you use. The threats. You threaten everything and you don’t even care. We just do what everyone else does, and for some reason we think that it’s something we should brag about. This violence, this way we crave like animals, this complete lack of respect IT SEVERS US. From our families, from our endurance…from any fuckin hope that we could ever have. THIS IS AWFUL. This is murder, and don’t you think that it’ll be noticed, that we’re killing the chance that we could ever be pure. How do you feel…knowing that this putrid fucking behavior is gonna be thrust back in our faces, and who knows how that will happen. WHO CARES? It will though. Listen, you might think that I’m just some crazy asshole but you know what. I heard you. Now listen to me, you guys who just want to fight and cause pain, overextend your desires to be dominant, who got to be brutish, like apes, and even you idiots who don’t know any better, who just follow along…I heard you. YOU CAN BE HEARD. Your bullshit is no secret, not at all. Look at the rage in me, look what hearing you has done to me. Now imagine if there’s something, some force a billions times stronger than me who heard the same thing. What does it think? Maybe it doesn’t, it just reacts. How would it react to us? What if it’s revenge it wants? Revenge is going to come to us very large, because we’ve been watched as we hurt each other. Your thoughts are heard, dammit. There is something that knows everything you do. Imagine that. Do you think you should hide if that’s true. YOUR SECRETS ARE KNOWN, YOUR THOUGHTS ARE KNOWN, AND THEY’RE NOTHING. Just hot air and self indulgence. NOTHING ELSE. The good people know the rules, they don’t hurt each other, they don’t hurt themselves, and they’re the ones who’ll have a goddamned happy ending. But the bad people are gonna one day find themselves in a ditch with nothing but their pain and their ignorance to cover their coffins. And that’s your own doing, and nothing else can take credit for it. The universe doesn’t doom you…we sentence ourselves.”

I shook the boy as I spoke. I hardly noticed that I held him any more, even when he struggled.

“You can be the judges if you want to be but, god, do it as a good person. Do you know how tall you all can be, how much compassion and strength you can have. Instead I see you all hunched up, a bunch of fucking Igors in here. Stand your damn selves up. YOU KNOW THIS IS BULLSHIT. YOU DON’T HAVE TO THINK LIKE THIS. Fuck, if there’s no good people then who’s gonna make the bad people leave?…I shouldn’t be doing this, I’m nobody to be preaching like this, but I asked to hear it all, and now I have no silence anymore. Something is holding me up even though I don’t want to be standing here. You lowered me to this, so I need you to please think of better things. I need you to save me, not kill me and you are killing me because for the longest time I’ve so little faith in myself. Now you’re making me have no faith in you. We don’t exist if we don’t have any faith that we do. God, do you think we’ll be given anything, do you think you deserve anything? Listen to your thoughts! They’re awful. They destroy everything, and they will destroy us, even the good us. And what’s our defense? Do we just hide behind a rock and wait for all our bullshit to come back to us. We will be forgotten if this is how we live. We will be cut off, and we will be forced to hear our many wicked thoughts…”

fuck him he’s crazy who’s he fuck him think he is to judge crazy asshole where crazy hypocrite police coming

I threw down the boy and stormed towards the exit. Joe jumped in front of me to stop me. I charged and shoulder checked him. He cowered, bounced off the wall, and fell to floor.

I kicked open the bar door, and ran outside. Someone was throwing up across the street. This sucks.

I ran around the corner, and finally heard my own thoughts.

…..

I never wanted to hurt Frank. He was a good kid, a friendly kid, a smart kid. But Pete…I wanted to hurt him bad. That asshole, I wonder how long he waited to try me again. He probably touched himself while he dreamed about beating me up. Unsatisfied prick. He wasn’t happy having beaten me once when I was younger. It was like he couldn’t stand that I had grown up, and gotten bigger and stronger. Sure, I thought about getting him back a long time, and yes it was his face I sometimes imagined to be painted on the heavy bag I spent hours punching. But fuck him. I would never have started with him. I knew that he could never hurt me again. I guess he had to find out for himself. And because of that, his need to renew his pride, Frank got hurt.

I had gotten over it, even though I enjoyed staring him down as he passed me in the hallways of our High School. Maybe I did hope that one day he’d try again, now that I wasn’t so small and round. But years had passed and I wasn’t going to be that immature, I wasn’t going to avenge a fight that had taken place before puberty.

Pete had not gotten over it though. He must have never forgotten, the way he had lived off the pride he felt after beating me, when he urged other kids to join in on the beating. That wasn’t enough? What a bullshit way to be alive, like a predator when the rest of his species had become civilized. He was an animal with a first name, and the smell of me, the girth of the pride he would get from beating me up just four weeks before graduation was just too much for his idiot instincts to resist.

And so it happened, right before the last class of the day. As he walked past me in the hallway he butted me with his shoulder. I would have kept walking if he hadn’t called me “momma’s boy” as he bumped me. I turned around, and he turned around. We stepped to each other and began the staredown. “What are you gonna do Momma’s boy. You don’t want me to fuck you up again, do you? I still remember how much you cried,” he said.

I was silent at first. I just stared at him as the anger inside of me squeezed juice from my adrenal glands. I could feel my insides shake. My hairs felt like they were standing on end.

A crowd gathers fast around a possible fight. Most of my classmates had noticed how much bigger I had gotten over the years. I guess they were curious.

“You’re a pussy Pete,” I said.

His face dropped its goading smile.

“Excuse me?” he said.

“I said…you…are…a…pussy…Pete. Pete the pussy. Pussy Pete.”

“You wanna go, Bouchard?”

He grabbed my shirt.

“Don’t touch me…Pussy Pete.”

He flinched, like he was just about to throw a fist, but before he could I pushed him hard, throwing my open palm into his chest. He flew backwards and dented the locker he slammed into. I took a step back and held up my stance, leading with my left.

He rushed me, his fists clenched but his arms to his side. I took a step forward and jabbed him with a left. I hit his nose, and blood burst out of it, over my fist and his face.. I stepped back again and held my stance. He lunged and this time I landed a right hook on his cheekbone and hurt my hand. I ignored the pain as I got more and more excited, and even more angry. I stepped back again. “Fuck you Bouchard,” he screamed. I watched him wince. “Your mother’s a whore Bouchard. Who’s your father? Do you know? Didn’t think so…most whores can’t figure out which bum got’em pregnant. She fucked around too much, asshole. You’re a momma’s boy to a whore.”

I didn’t wait for Pete to charge me again. I ran right into him and grabbed him by his collar and landed right after right on his chin. My hand was cut and I felt one of my fingers break, but I kept hitting him…knocking out his teeth. He became limp in my grasp and I still kept hitting him. I cocked my arm as hard as I launched it…until I threw my elbow back again….and felt something collide with it behind me. I dropped Pete and turned around to see Frank. He was tossing around on the ground, grabbing his neck and spitting out blood. He had run in to stop me. I guess he knew that I could have killed Pete. I had elbowed Frank in his voice box, and it shattered.

Frank Lewis was the valedictorian of our graduating class. At the commencement he had to have his speech read for him by the principal…. He still can’t speak.

…

The young writer was wrong, about balance. Ugliness could be stronger than beauty, and that was sad. I had thought I was noble and celestial enough to pillage the thoughts of others, to hear their secrets and relate back to them like I was a god. I defied balance with this power. I didn’t have enough strength in me before to be able to manage such a burden. I wasn’t ready to detail the sewers. I was balanced before, when I didn’t know what types of shit flowed under the sidewalk. But it happened. I was made aware of what an idiot I was. I had fished for secrets in the sewer, for secrets that floated with the other excrement, the ugly thoughts, the ugly past that I too had been guilty of. I had once done everything I heard in Rusty’s, and I felt even worse about myself. I should have gone to a monastery instead of Rusty’s.

I stopped running and trembled on the sidewalk.

…..

I have to take this gift away from here. I have to travel. I’m not too sure that I like New Guernsey anymore. I thought I did. Maybe it’s the routine I like. I don’t know when it started, when I couldn’t manage a second with dirt on my hands. Is it guilt? I’m sure it is. I’m guilty. I once exterminated an entire population of frogs. Sick little disturbed fuck I was. I am guilty. I hurt people in fights. I hurt Frank in high school. I am guilty of that. I left an amazing woman, embarrassed her, humiliated her by not showing up at our wedding. What a fucking miserable thing to do. I hurt her and embarrassed her whole family. A whole family should never be made to feel sorry for one of its members. She had to look at all of them when I didn’t show. She must have felt…dammit. I hurt her so much, I am guilty. I gave her up because she didn’t match my DREAM?! I was—I am such a dissolute dick. I gave her up, I hurt her because I was afraid. And now this gift, a call to travel away from here. I can understand people. I cannot be lied to. And as I see everything honest in the world, good or bad, I will know the truth about how we all live. What is our common thread. Is it guilt? I can wash off my guilt with good deeds, with compassion. But I don’t have that. I’m not good enough. In order to be I must lose my past, and move away. In New Guernsey I will always be Benny the boxing, grocery manager, deadbeat, washed-up, guilty maniac Bear. But outside of the bubble I can be a healer, first for all, and lastly for myself.

…..

I felt dirty…and then I heard I sweet voice…a sad thought with a sweet voice.

I don’t want it.

Flickr photo by Thomas Hawk

© 2009, Henry E. Powderly II. All rights reserved.

Related posts:

1. The Host: Chapter 10
2. The Host: Chapter 9
3. The Host: Chapter 7
4. The Host: Chapter 6
5. The Host: Chapter 5