The Resume of a Hypochondriac

 

And indeed the jealous lover, like the contemporaries of a historical event, is too close, he knows nothing, and it is for strangers that the chronicle of adultery assumes the precision of history, and prolongs itself in lists which are a matter of indifference to them and become painful only to another jealous lover, such as I was, who cannot help comparing his own case with that which he hears spoken of.

    

-Marcel Proust

 

 

 

Preface

 

Since I’ve decided to dive headlong into the writing of a story, I should first try to undertake defining what a story is for. Underlying it all, in this definition, is a deep sense of blindness by sight: the inability to see because of a hyperopic sense of personal placement, the awareness of this inability fueling our morbid tensions.

A story should be an exercise in recovering lost views. A story should reflect an evolution of the judgment of views. It should pathologize how one judges in relation to one’s self, and how one’s interprets inputs of judgment. In short, a story should contain observations that fluctuate between ideal and real.

            How should a story begin? It is infuriating to consider a diction of self alongside the (Ecclesiastical) idea that there is nothing new under the sun. Most minds say that one can only re-invent the wheel. This begs the question: How is it be possible to write something new and to say nothing new at all? Reluctantly, I accept this as the truth. But perhaps I could write something refreshed of language? Debatable or controversial of theme? Ah! but the audience. . .

My problem is that writing, in my understanding, is done for some audience. With an audience, one must write so as to be easily understood, and then praised or forgotten (there is a prediction involved here: that most people will reject writing that makes it difficult to coax narrative or fails to give multiple meanings). I shouldn’t write, in this case, to compete with or augment a cannon. This would be senseless as I have nothing new to say. Nevertheless, if writing for an audience has a motive, it must be a selfish one. So in order to avoid any accusations of false artistic altruism or apathetic creation, I should set about writing with myself as the audience, and with selfishness as the understood motivator of my efforts: in my mind, I must be you. As a consequence, the harvest of writing must be the cream of self-indulgence.

            I will begin by telling you about. . .

                                                                       

 

Otto and Amnesia

 

H. didn’t like old people: “They’re too slow. They are poor performers.” To H, it seemed like each encounter with one presented him with a new and less pleasant feeling than the last. I repeat, he never liked old people. That is, he never liked them until he met Otto.

            Otto Rasmussen was 86 years old. His mother immigrated from Denmark in 1917, in some way the result of the sale of the Virgin Islands. Otto was five years old at the time, and was orphaned soon after. He had no memories of the early part of his life. The interesting thing is that his early memories were relatively recent: he didn’t remember anything before his 33rd birthday. This meant that his mother had died before he had conceived his memory.

During one of the first conversations between H. and Otto, H. asked, “Have you ever sustained any head trauma?”

            “Are you asking me if I injured my head?” Otto re-directed, “Or are you asking me if I experienced something traumatic that’s remained in my head?”

            “Either. Either - or,” H. said.

            “Well, I can’t remember. Both, perhaps.” Otto put on a serious face. “It was a long time ago. Hm, almost 30 years now. I met a woman at Immigration and Naturalization Service who was Danish. By and by we established a common ground of mutual acquaintances from Denmark, one of whom had known my biological mother. After some correspondence, I asked him if my mother ever spoke about our time in Denmark. I suspected that I had incurred some trauma en utero, or possibly during the exodus. He spoke of 1927, of the difficulties for everyone, offering some vague explanation as to the possible fates of my mother, something happening en route or when we became US citizens. Certainly my mother must have been traumatized. Maybe her it effected me indirectly. I don’t know.”

            “So your memories began how many years ago?”

            “I was thirty-three.”

            H. nodded in contemplative interest, and they sipped coffee in silence, Otto enjoying the colorful leaves and warm, sporadic breeze, H. enjoying the thrill of mysterious past. Blues in Green emanated from hidden speakers at café volume. 

            So it goes. Otto had an interesting history and a mysterious life. There were no remnants of his Danish heritage other than the occasional allusion: he had no accent and his grammar and pronunciation lacked the usual second-language mistakes. His clothes were from JCPenny’s. H. didn’t know if Otto worked, where he lived, who or what he lived with. He was an enigma to H., and H. harbored vague doubts about his existence outside their meetings. Nevertheless, H. had always met him with rejuvenated enthusiasm at the university’s café La Scene: every day at 3 o’clock. In other words, he was a regular there. A partisan.

To reinterpret the initial point, H. liked Otto even though he was elderly. H. could identify in Otto’s case that time made some things better, as well as worse.

H. and Otto engaged in the same kind of dialogue whenever they met. Predictable in form, but not in theme, H. never lost interest in them, having become almost dialectical. H. felt those talks were his real education. Moreover, meeting Otto helped him to feel OK about leaving things to chance, about accepting life as whatever happens, happens. If Otto could be content with 30 years omitted from his life, nearing 80 with death around the corner, then H. could be happy knowing even the little he did about his own life. Mind, H. wasn’t actively trying to discover himself, as the words vision quest had recently come to conjure images of hippies actively conspiring to waste his time on semi-private walks in the forest: “Listen to the inner news,” he had once heard a hippy say as he left the forest. Nevertheless, he couldn’t help recognizing who he was: that he could recognize but not define himself was his first beneficial breakthrough. But that would come later. First, let it be September, the beginning of the school year.

 

 

Mary’s Symbolic Equivalent

 

            H. met Mary on his first day of school, but they didn’t really become close until just before Winter Break. H. thought Mary was flirting with him, but it turned out she was really interested in one of his friends. H. had won the role of Disenchanted Expediter of Love. It happened easily enough: after H. suggested she rendezvous with him and the friend at La Scene. They met, were introduced, and for some time talked about nothing. They left after an offer to see some item of mutual interest in the other’s bedroom had been made. After a few days, H. still hadn’t heard from Mary, so he decided to pay her a visit.

He rang her apartment and she buzzed him in: through the iron gate and up to the stoop. H. let himself in at her beckon, and found the normally unkempt flat clean and tidy, a clear indication of an impending show of helplessness. Mary was sitting on the floor in a blue Oxford shirt, boxers, and argyle socks. Her hair was held off her face by plastic yellow butterfly berets.

            “Hey,” she greeted H., looking at her hands instead of him. H. became aware of this deliberate body language. Meanwhile, Mary was sitting Indian style, holding her ankles with her hands and rocking back and forth. Her normally enthusiastic voice was stifled by a slight, but he thought intentional, tremble.

            “OK. What’s wrong?” H. began.

            “What do you mean?” she asked, nearing whisper.

            “Well, your house is spotless, you’re acting upset, and you’re rocking back-and-forth like that lady on the bus.”

            “Acting upset!” she yelled, timing it a bit late, but still according to script. “You think I’m acting like this?” Her mouth morphed a smile, depending on your definition.

            On the other hand, her reply acknowledged an awareness of a second mode of expression, some entity separated from spoken human language – body language in a way – but without the gesticulations and sexual positioning usually connoted by the phrase.

Sensing the inappropriateness of his comment, H. apologized. There are some things we just don’t say, thought H., who was anxious not to prolong the ritual.

            “I’m sorry. You just seem out of character, and I hadn’t heard from you in a few days. I’ve never really seen you like this,” he said as if patronizing a starlet.

            “I know,” she began the confession, “I just . . .” That was H’s cue to further the interrogation.

            “We need to talk,” he said, trying to sound as female as possible: lots of inflection. “Come on. Throw on some clothes and we’ll get some coffee.” And cut.

            As Mary left to her room to change into café cloths, suppressing a smile similar to Mary’s (depending on your definition), H. reflected on his anticipation par excellence: “throw on some cloths” he had said; the point being that looking good is so important to Mary; “throw on” showed her that H. just didn’t care about her looks. By bypassing narcissistic impediment in Mary, H. had conveyed a sense of urgency that struck a lower chord: there were some things that were more important than appearance, like companionship and authentic human sympathy. That was logic. Of course, H. had the feeling that the dialogue was far more cosmetic than any mascara. Take Five began playing in his head.

           

It was before noon when H. and Mary made for the café. H. looked to the corner table outside (just in case), but Otto wasn’t there yet. H. felt he had to go to the bathroom, so he gave his money to Mary and asked her to order him a 12oz. coffee with room. She responded with the cadence: “yes, sir” and gave him a sibling’s punch in the shoulder. It was nice to see her in a better mood already, thought H., noticing her bosom before walking around the corner into the annex where the toilets were installed.

Luke “Mullet-boy” Rodgers was playing pinball, per usual. H. gave Luke the “wassup” half-nod because they had been drinking beer at the same parties on occasion. Then he went into the restroom and pulled up to a stall. He peed on himself a little during the final phase, but decided that if anyone asked, they would be told it must have happened as he washed his hands. Then H. left without washing his hands, pleased with the secret rebellion against social and sanitary convention, and passed Mullet-boy without giving the half-nod – two half-nods equaled a conversation – and slouched in to get his java.

Mary had just received the drinks and indicated this to H. by raising them a few inches in the air. Meanwhile, H. sensed someone standing beside him. H. turned:

1) Hair

2) Dimples

3) Teeth

4) Black cardigan

5) Heather gray skirt, short

6) Legs

7) Mary Jane’s

Tick-tock. Lub-lub.

            It was Biancha. H. kept thinking of her for the rest of the afternoon their encounter. Of course, not of the real her. Rather, he thought a catalogue of her collective parts, the way she had seemed when he first saw her:

4a) Arms

4b) Fingers

5a) Skirt button

6a) Knees

She had put two fingers on his shoulder and said “excuse me,” causing H. to practically tumble over an adjacent table as he attempted to get out of her way. “Sorry,” he replied, sounding the pubescent squeak not unlike a deflating balloon being pinched at the stem. Then she walked out of La Scene, probably, H. thought, laughing to herself at his failed cool. But in H’s private world, she loved him – this is a most important point – and laughed proudly at his jokes. H. fantasized about a genie lamp that through a series of defects could only grant one wish; dreaming of a three-wish lamp was not necessary. Just one wish. No problem. . .

            H. looked back at Mary, who hadn’t moved; and the same coffee gesture was there, too. Time had apparently stopped, or perhaps she hadn’t noticed anything. H. indicated a table midway between them and raised an eyebrow, meaning “shall we?” She gave the floor a grin as they headed for their places in opposite directions.

H. was prepared to digest her confession in earnest, with all the humble acceptance that follows failure; what she had to say was dramatic enough to make her an actress, but predictable enough to make H. a director.

They sipped coffee and exchanged questions about the genders, and H. crossed his legs in the way he thought looked most intelligent. If Biancha could see me, he thought, she would confess to one of her friends that she knows it sounds strange, but he sits very intelligently. This is what gave H. the edge over the other young men.

Feeling unacknowledged for his foray into gender politics, H. tried to give Mary an answer that would satisfy the purpose of their meeting – which had already served its purpose for H. – while at the same time confirming Mary’s single status and unchanging body-language cipher. “Sometimes people can’t communicate,” H. said in the end.

“Yeah,” she agreed.[1]

Before H. could reply – have the last word, in other words (the conversation had been over words ago – Mary told of some errands, and excused herself with an invitation to join her, which she knew he would decline. Then she removed a pocket watch, sprung the cover, and gawked at the time. She left with a mannequin’s face. She had taken his coffee. And he had failed to find a symbolic equivalent.    

Thus ended their meeting. 

Eventually someone would notice H’s inner life, he thought, reflecting on his own comments and perceived mastery, and care enough to ask him about them. And that would be worth his time.

 

Differentiating People

 

            “Terrible. Just terrible,” Otto began, hacking out some coughs as if to confirm his analysis.

“Hello, Otto. What’s new?” H. offered as Otto made his way over, shaking his head.

As H. watched Otto shuffle over to the table, a vague feeling of sickness came over him. Even though Otto was a relatively new installment in his life, H. had seen this before. An elderly repeat. They made H. sick, conversational leftovers to be regurgitated with renewed false enthusiasm, decomposing déjà vu, parlayed putrifications of rhetorical retch.  Normally, H. would try to tender some amateur psycho-analysis to help Otto recover memories of his past. Psycho-recovery? Someone somewhere probably claimed to specialize in this, thought H. But he was not interested in Otto’ past today. He was feeling cynical because he had failed to defeat Mary with his cleverness, to stun Biancha with his cool. He couldn’t even negotiate the path between tables without botching the attempt, suggesting a problem with his physical self to boot. Meanwhile, Otto sat down, still muttering “terrible”. H. felt sick as he imagined Biancha and Mary talking together.

“What is it Otto,” H. asked, the tone of his voice still reflecting his bungled movements but trying to retune itself for Otto. Nevertheless, the feelings of sickness washed over him every time he contemplated changing the subject from “what did I do?” to “what does Otto think is terrible?” So he decided to ask Otto for advice on women instead, cutting Otto off mid-sentence using an intonation that precedes the asking of favors:

“Otto?”

Otto raised an eyebrow that looked old and mechanized.

“So, Otto, what’s terrible?” asked H, thinking he had to circumvent the current mode before he could switch to women; to do otherwise might offend Otto’ sense of propriety.  

“My cough is terrible. Sometimes I feel like my insides are turning to Borscht. Oh, but I’m alright. You look like you’ve got spring fever, on the other hand.”

“Do you remember anything about women? Because I wish I knew something about women.”

“Which woman?” Otto asked, outmaneuvering H. by using the singular.

“Which woman?” H. repeated, his voice surprised, face stretched latitudinally. “Do you mean ‘Which woman am I asking you if you remember?’”

“I want to know who the woman is you want answers about,” said Otto, pleased to have been invited to share H’s youthful dilemma, “it’s helpful to have a face in mind when we are asked to give advice.” He was always amused when he had to re-explain, finding humor in the failure of his earlier attempts.

“Why?” H. asked, “Do you know many women on campus? I don’t think you know this one. Hu-ho no. She doesn’t come to the coffee shop very often.” He was afraid Otto did know her and would suggest that H. had no chance.

“Alright. Never mind the face,” Otto said. “Tell me why you like her. Then we’ll see if I can give ya’ some advice.”

So he explained to Otto the strange relationship between the café encounter and love, between fate and coordination, about how he’d never felt before. Otto sipped coffee. Sip-sop. Tic-Toc.

When H. finished his verbal fantasy, his undressing of her, Otto wondered if he’d ever been in love himself. Then Otto advised H. could be objectifying the person. “Sounds like a concept from a Women’s Literature class,” said H. Otto wanted to know if H. considered the object to be love or the physical woman, if the woman and the feeling found union in definable ways. If so, what ways.

            “Of course,” H. said, feigning a well-drawn conclusion. “And I don’t think she’s some thing. Not the ‘objectified woman.’ I mean, I know she has a mind and makes choices. There’s another girl too. Just a friend, but she seems jealous sometimes. It’s nice. But the feeling and the person go together. When I see her, the feeling comes. When I see Biancha I mean. He-ho, not Ma-ry.”

“Maybe you blend the feeling for your friend with the physical aspect of Biancha.”

H. blinked in silence, trying to get some meaning from Otto’s words.

“Ever been in love?” Otto broke in, making reference to H’s first, and only, attempt at a relationship.

H. still hadn’t formed any clear definitions of his former relationship. Even in the unmuddled selectivity of retrospect – though contrary to proverb, his hindsight was quite hyperopic – the events seemed at several removes from reality. Did Otto want a summary of it, H. wondered. Definitions, changes, her stages of insect-like growth from larval human to social butterfly. Romantic debacles? What did Otto’s definition of love require?

H. finally came up with: “I was in love, she was self-important.”

“But you’re still saying you loved her?”

“No. I’m saying she didn’t even try to understand me. The little things that mattered to me, the subtleties. It wasn’t possible for her to understand, her goals being elsewhere. I’m sure it wasn’t a unilateral misunderstanding though; I probably didn’t understand her either. We said we loved each other, felt it, I think. Hell, I don’t know.”

“So do you think you could relate to Biancha, who you don’t even know, in a non-objective and sympathetic way? She can’t possibly understand you either. Here’s what you’re saying: she doesn’t understand but you do, so it’s potential love. Does that make any sense?” Otto looked at his coffee, shaking a little as the elderly do. “Certainly you see the more obvious aspects of the love problem.”

“No. It’s different,” H. replied, “Because there’s hope with Biancha.”

Otto sipped his coffee.

“No,” Otto said. “It’s not different. Hope is a constant. It’s constantly neither here nor now. The only variable is recognition. It can’t be one-way. It ­needs an audience. Otherwise you’re a jack-off,” Otto said sounding like a mid-western moralist as he trailed off the final metaphor with a flat accent of a Sioux City trucker.

H. liked the subtle mathematical metaphor in

“a constant,” so he had to nod, even though he didn’t really understand what Otto meant.  Metaphor notwithstanding, H. decided to ignore Otto for a moment while he attempted to recover a sense of his former relationship. He began this thinking aloud.

 

 

Joan’s Parasite

 

“Joan was perfect at first. I thought I understood her – a girl comes from a string of cruel and manipulative men was in dire need of real love – a girl I could relate to, and who would relate back.  I think that was my idea at the time.”

H. paused for approval, and Otto gave it by sticking out his bottom lip and leaning slightly forward over his coffee. Otto then turned his wrist, looking at his watch for a long while.

“Alright,” H. continued, “So what I didn’t realize was how fast she would outgrow me once she realized she could operate alone. And by alone, I mean with autonomy. She had been dependent on the men she attached herself to for her sense of identity. So I became romantically involved with her before she felt she could operate as an individual. She had no friends to help her out, and no defined goals. She wanted to be a movie director or something. So she depended on me for her life, and at the time I confused that morbid dependence for love.”

To this Otto nodded, his face sympathetic. Then he inspected his coffee again, which cued H. to continue for fear of losing Otto’s interest to the coffee.

“Uh,” H. forgot where he was. “Alright. So Joan started coming out with me and meeting people. I was surprised that she already knew so many of them: why hadn’t she just been friends with some of them in the first place? She had made herself out to be so pathetic and impotent when it came to making friends. And that made me feel that I was her only link to the happy social world. But I was really just a crutch for her to take risks. These weren’t real risks: she just wanted to make friends. I think she was surprised - or at least that’s how she acted: “can you believe people are actually calling me?” - that she made friends. I wasn’t surprised so much as I was jealous of them. I had never listened to her when she talked about how she felt before, too busy looking for clever solutions. I just waited for my turn to talk. I mean, I was three years older and so I thought my advice was panacea, as if I were a bona fide sage. So of course I gave her this advice constantly. She was probably getting sick of it, and it made her more confident. But her confidence had a kind of buoyant effect: as her “Waters of Confidence” rose, my own dropped. She’d basically become a project for me, like a child. A larval human. But being a woman meant freedom to her, and that freedom had to include freedom from me.” H. became self-conscious of his rambling voice, perpetually out-of-breath, so he paused to sip his own coffee. “Brevity is the soul of wit,” he told himself before continuing.

“I didn’t realize it until it was too late, but through all this nurturing of Joan – or what I flattered myself into thinking was nurturing – I had been deriving all measurements of myself based on what I judged to be her growth.”

Steam had ceased to rise from Otto’ drink, giving H. an impression of how long he had been thinking aloud and also symbolizing the cooling effect he had on conversations in general. Otto looked sad, as if mirroring H’s own remembered sadness, as the summary of Joan concluded:

“Then she began a weaning process. But she wasn’t weaning herself, she was weaning me. She began meeting with her new friends more, and me less. Finally, I ascertained the pattern, and tried in earnest to convince her we still needed each other. What I actually communicated was that I needed her. The tables had turned. She had a life, and I didn’t.”

Laughing away, H. leaned back in his seat so gravity could keep the emotions at bay, and then continued until the end.

“At first I blamed her. As if she used me or something. Maybe I was using her to avoid delving more deeply into an assessment of myself.”

Otto raised an eyebrow.

“I was afraid I’d discover I wasn’t very interesting. In the end I did some objective, calculated thinking and realized that there were too many variables to blame anyone. It wasn’t a matter of ethics or psychology or gender. Our whole relationship was simply contingent. Variables that came up arbitrarily and then become obscured by self-interest. Worthless! I wish I had paid more attention to her.” H’s body language had become fitful by that point, as if he were drinking whiskey rather than coffee.

“All Joan and I did was make choices, right? That’s philosophical imperative. But we couldn’t control our options or their outcomes. That’s Heisenberg. So our relationship just happened. That’s it.” 

Just as he thought he was on to something, Otto devil’s-advocated.

“Well, be careful. You say you loved her one moment, the next you talk about contingencies. You’re trying to reconcile determinism and free-will, abstraction and representation. You say you had choices, but that they were limited by physical constraints. Do you leave out emotion when it suits you? Or perhaps you think that these are dualities, that you’re the victim of Yen and Yang. Seems like all you’ve really discovered dating Joan is variation on a theme. You mentioned the theme already. Can you guess the one I mean?”

H. thought for a moment. He didn’t know, so he offered a perfunctory answer hoping Otto would tell him the right one: “You mean that she became an object?”

“No.” Otto sighed, disappointed. “I’ll tell you then. Your problem, in my opinion, was that you didn’t listen to her. You said you waited for your turn to talk. That’s the worst kind of self-deception because you try to love the other by exclusion. In other words, you can see them any way you choose, because they have no input into that system. They become malleable, formless. I also think you were on the right track when you said you used her to avoid having to measure yourself.” He trailed off, to gather new thoughts and to let H. catch up. 

H. had just thought of something insightful to tell Otto when he recognized the problem for the first time in its raw form: he was waiting for his turn to talk. He hadn’t even been listening to Otto, but only picking out the parts of conversation he needed to augment a preferred interpretation. 

Meanwhile, Otto went on: “You don’t have to see it as lacking sympathy. You thought you could make her into a woman. Your woman. Ha! But don’t feel bad. You helped her evolve.” Otto inserted a pause to change the tune. “But it wasn’t your advice, your choices, or your Platonism; it was how you behaved around her. You didn’t help her by being wise, but by being natural. Your advice was in vain because she was only listening to how you said it. Always be aware of your inflection around women.” Otto laughed quietly and winked at H.

Then Otto sat up straight, re-proper, and continued without sentimentality. “My advice to you right now is more or less in vain as well. But not because of my inflection!”

He was building to moralization.

“If you want to be happy with yourself, you have to recognize what comes naturally. But don’t make the mistake of doing everything that comes naturally. You have to train your sense of recognition to see what is important, and to crowd out what isn’t. Your recognition can’t be codified or defined, contrary to what systematic philosophers would have you believe. Recognition is ineffable. It might as well be God. If I may, Mr. Shakespeare: There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Otto rose from the chair and drank the last drop of coffee. He had great timing: the “clockwork detective” put H’s mood into perspective. All could be harmonized with some practice, thought H., happy to have at least found a path to contentedness: the best thing is to have a goal.

H. was almost 27.

Upon thinking this, he asked Otto one last question: “So what am he supposed to do now? Recognize recognition?” It had sounded infinitely more clever in his head.

 Otto was putting on his hat when he replied a curt: “No.”

Not a repeat, H. thought, re-listing the day’s dialogue as Otto walked old-man down the stairs, using all the railing he could.

“Oh,” Otto added, “don’t try to make predictions about people. When you predict, you define. When you define, you obscure everything you can’t define. That’s no life.”

 

 

 

Symbiosis

 

H. walked around for the rest of the afternoon thinking about Joan and recognition and Otto. About how he hadn’t listened and how his predicting had not only supplemented much of his stress, but probably caused it outright. H. wished he hadn’t let Otto leave, because he still wanted to talk on the subject: great conversations always ended before they were finished. Mary was out of town, and Bianca was as yet unapproachable. The thought of contacting Joan crossed his mind, but the prospect faded quickly as his stomach knotted up in protest to a revisited past. More time ebbed by, like a dark shadow adumbrating a never-before-seen déjà vu. This was H’s sense of an undirected day, a paradox of what it meant to live.

 

It was a cool afternoon. H. looked around seeking some Zen-like relief from a renewed “Joan-and-I” mode of thinking. The trees looked nice, he supposed, and wind was in fact blowing leaves. But staring into the skyline like that, he realized how phony his attempts at fulfillment were: maybe some girl would see him, and walk up and touch his shoulder and say “You’re into Zen meditation, I see. I also like trees and leaves blowing in the wind. We should fall in love.”

H. looked down to his feet instead, at his “stupid shoes,” as his stomach knotted up again to remind him of the pains of imaginary living.

It was four in the afternoon, according to the toll. The energy gain from his conversation with Otto was waning. He felt weak, and sat down right on the cool dirt below. Bending his knees towards his chest, H. supported himself by clasping his arms about his shins. Suddenly he felt deathly afraid, the self-conscious prognosis of which agitated him further by retaining so much of his concentration that he ceased to breathe. He sensed he could go unconscious at any moment. Defiantly, he urged himself to his feet, to get away from that spot – from that dirt – in his life as he looked around and saw other students, all oblivious to his symptoms. “Death is upon me,” he thought, and faced the direction of his home. Then he felt stung, numbed, and all faded from his view, swept over by darkness.

H. awoke in a calm. He hadn’t died at all, although he felt a similar blissful endorphin secretion. What had died there in the dirt was the hope that Joan loved him. He concluded that “hope is suppressive, and that what it suppresses are more difficult measurements: hope prevents recognition.”

But when the idea of Joan died off, something new began to grow in its place.

H. had to get out of his element to find out what it was, he thought. What that meant about school was, metaphysical understanding or not, no more school. He decided he wouldn’t consider himself a drop-out, because the opposite was drop-in. He never did. No, he never dropped in on anything, he just attached or obsessed. Like a Lumpfish, or some other ancillary life-form. But with the Joan-parasite gone, his newly hatched “I” desperately needed a more symbiotic biome.

 

 

Morning Glory in Ballard

 

Ballard is a neighborhood renowned for its fisher people and Scandinavian ambiance. It’s separated from the rest of the city by a ship-canal and the Hiram Locks. And even though drawbridges had connected Ballard to Seattle-main at various points along the canal for nearly a century, it failed to evolve with the rest of the city. Old warehouses with the original leaded-glass windows were now inexpensive apartments sitting atop an assortment of pubs and salons. This was Ballard Avenue, which ran perpendicular to the canal for ten blocks until its terminus at Market Street. Beyond those ten blocks was a beach with restaurants to the west, boring residential blocks to the north and east; Seattle-main was south.  

H. decided to take it easy at first. He would use the remainder of his college tuition to supplement a lifestyle; his school having been premium priced which translated to a decent daily routine. He rented out a small studio above a Cajun restaurant on Ballard Ave, a block west of Market. It was situated perfectly for the establishment of a patterned life. Every morning at 7:00am, the machines down at the ship yard woke him up. When hadn’t been drinking a lot, it really didn’t bother him. He liked how the “ship-yard-alarm-clock” was built into his life.

H. left his apartment without washing and went over to the Scandinavian market for some løftse, backtracking after the purchase for some coffee at Morning Glory. Then he walked around aimlessly and smiled at the people running their small businesses, or at the old Scandinavian couples out for a stroll. Sometimes people would look away, airing reproachful opinions, as if they knew he was not a productive member of the Ballard community. He was just an onlooker, a watcher, an eye.

On his third day above the Cajun restaurant, he was particularly startled by the ship-yard-alarm-clock. His heart raced and he felt a strange sensation between his shoulder blades as he arose.

“Oh no! a heart attack,” H. said to himself as he checked his carotid artery for a pulse. It was there, strongly so, but he didn’t trust it. Pivoting out of bed, he swore a couple times in condemnation of his unstable health and grabbed a shirt off the floor, smelling it for wearability. He dressed quickly and locked up, and hurrying down the stairs.

“I’d better get tea this morning, and some egg breakfast. Need protein to make me calm and satisfied,” he said in self-prescription. But there was a more serious issue at hand than a new breakfast or change in routine: why was his diseased déjà vu back?

H. hadn’t had a paranoid attack since he rid himself of the Joan-parasite in the dirt that day, so he had associated the cause specifically with her. Consequently, this instance seemed phantom. He knew that the cause had to be something more general, something intrinsic and rooted more deeply than Joan in his psyche.

“I’ll dedicate today to finding the cause of these attacks,” he told himself, turning the corner into Morning Glory.

“Morning,” he said to the barista who ran the place. There was no line.

“Hey, morning,” she said a little slower than normal. H. smiled at her hippy-like speech affectation, and ordered a chai. She appeared confused as she bumbled around looking for her steamer cup. H. was not charmed by what he thought was an act to endear through incompetence. He remembered a Grateful Dead show he had seen in Portland two years before, and laughed again as he imagined his barista holding up her index finger and requesting a “miracle.” He wondered what her name was, but decided for the time being he would call her Janis after Janis Joplin.

“Here ya’ go,” she said slowly, and purposely set down H’s “for here” chai just as he reached to take it from her outstretched hand. She looked up from the drink at the same speed she spoke, and smiled. And with that, she shed her hippie’s veil, and became beautiful and refreshing in H’s eyes. They were on to each other, thought H., hippy and critic.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said slow and confident as he reached for his wallet. She had meant the mess around his cup, but H. assumed she meant the cost of the chai and so didn’t pay. 

H. decided it was fate talking, and sat down with his drink at a table adjacent to the counter rather than leaving for his usual stroll about the neighborhood.

Next, H. went over by the window to get a Stranger from the rack, to check for indie comics and read the restaurant reviews. But when he sat down, he realized “he didn’t come here to read the Stranger and flirt with Janis,” that he had to devise a method for locating and destroying the cause of his unwelcome paranoia. So he folded the Stranger and looked out the window. 

“Mmm, good chai.”

The first thought that entered his mind struck when he was looking for patterns which might elicit the attacks.

“In both cases I’d become comfortable with a routine. Initially, meeting Otto for coffee at La Scene every day at three. Routine. And that very morning as the ship-yard alarm-clock sounded to begin my typical day. Routine. But I can’t figure out why a comfortable routine would cause paranoid attacks. Maybe my subconscious is telling me that I’m not living right, that I’m wasting my time.”

“Both of the attacks were triggered by time-specific events: Otto at three, ship-yard alarm at seven. Perhaps that’s it. How many hours between 7 and 3? 8. Typical work day. When the world reminds me of time, I panic about it. I  panic because I only have a finite amount of life, and the ebb and flow I feel before the attacks is time squeezing the life out of me. That must be it!” he thought.

So maybe it wasn’t Joan at all that made him feel diseased, but rather what she represented as a function of time: its waste. H. reaffirmed that it had something to do with comfortable routine. The remedy he came up with was to simply begin an uncomfortable routine. Since uncomfortable is a relative sense, it meant for H. that he would get a job.

H. further decided that living was an art. So he reasoned that he needed to find an expressive outlet for his pent up, self-limiting perceptions of the world. Not being much of an artist, H.  decided to start by recording his dreams. 

Sitting up, H. looked at Jannice as she looked up from Anias Nin and smiled. Then he walked over and put his empty glass in the plastic bus tub. “Thanks. Great chai,” he told her. Then he winked at her. No one winks anymore, he thought to himself. Then he added: “Hey, would you happen to know of any job openings around here?”

She reflected. “Yeah. Actually, they’re hiring just up the street. I’ll tell you where to go.”

H. hated the ubiquitous use of “actually” as a filler word in the day’s vernacular. It was proof positive that people felt perpetually helpless, and were trying to predicate life by saying – contrary to the contingency life presented them with – what they actually wanted life to be. Nevertheless, she was helpful and bright, so he didn’t hold her uninspiring speech against her. Actually, he liked her a lot.  

 

 

Ice

 

The job Jannice led him to was perfect for his situation. H. was hired as a hot shot at local ice delivery company, All City Ice. As a hot shot, his duties consisted primarily of janitorial projects, but also small delivery runs to local convenience stores. That meant more than just delivering because it gave him plenty of time to think about things. At least that’s what he told himself for lack of any real perks.

“I can master the art of sweeping: if one focuses wholly on the task at hand, it’s Zen,” he would explain to his more credulous side. 

Or, if curiosity prompted him, he could ask about the goings on in the production freezer. Delivery dispatch was adjacent to production.  That would make it a real-life learning experience in the field of logistics. Not like the erudition he was paying for at the University. And as if all these built-in bonuses weren’t sufficient to convince H. he’d found a friend in work, there were two good looking girls at the salon across the street. And then there was his boss.

The boss was a human anomaly: a binary system, a catalog of contradictions. He never smiled, but he was always happy. He was a tireless worker, but was festooned with a portly carriage. He was always first to work and last to leave, but he didn’t mind H’s own occasional tardiness. H. assumed that since it was a Scandinavian neighborhood, the owner would have a name to match: Sven, or Bjorn, or Knut. But the owner’s name matched him, not his job or local. “Bill,” he said as he shook H’s hand. He sounded just like John Wayne.

On one of the brighter, warmer days at work, Bill had H. raise all the garage doors so the place was open and could “air out”.

“It’s gettin’ a little stuffy in here,” Bill explained. To H’s mind, the place couldn’t possibly air out because the source of its signature aroma was contained in various greases throughout the facility, To remove these now, he thought, would be to compromise the structural integrity of the whole building. In any case, he opened the doors and let in some fresh air. Then Bill put on some sunglasses and got to work under one of the vans that was currently up on hydraulics, while H. went about preparing the various sites of disposal: garbage, oil drain, coolant flush. But before H. was finished, he received a second.

“I want you to clean the bathroom before you finish. It hasn’t been cleaned in a while.”

He said it matter-of-factly, and H. didn’t think it should challenge him at first. After all, it was coated with the same greases as the rest of the garage. Familiar territory.

Returning from the supply closet, he looked outside as he had conditioned himself to do. Two girls from the salon were sitting out front having lunch. H. watched them for a until one of them noticed him and smiled. Somewhat startled, he turned towards the bathroom and tried to appear intelligent, as though he had a lot on his mind, in case she was still watching. H. began to realize how ridiculous it was. He made the circuit across the garage and set the sponges, ammonia, bucket, and mop down in the corner. But he still felt as though he was being held as a suspect by the girl(s) at the salon.

H. imagined one of them saying, “that janitor was looking at us.”

So he walked to the edge of the garage and stared, his facial musculature straining, at the awning directly above their heads. The idea was that they would begin to doubt whether or not he had been looking at them, or the interesting awning. Then he shook his head to show he still did not understand some aspect of the salon’s awning.

H. returned to the garage and his bathroom duties confident he had erased any notion that he was the kind of person who would blatantly look at another of the opposite sex. He tried to imagine what he must have looked like through their eyes. He pictured the front of the garage and himself looking out with a broom in his hand. How unappealing he must have appeared. He remembered overhearing a model at the University say that “people are the sum of their outward appearances.” With that entrenched in his consciousness, he looked in the bathroom mirror to compare the sum of his face with the one he imagined. Then he noticed the salon’s awning in the mirror. That meant the salon girls could see the bathroom from their seats.

H. didn’t want them watching him clean the bathroom, so he closed the door. He hadn’t even noticed if they were still sitting outside. In the interim, he had turned on the light, and begun cleaning.

H. didn’t want them to see him cleaning because he didn’t want them to associate him with his job. It seemed to H. that what one did for a job was always interpreted as shorthand for who one was. “He’s a janitor,” he imagined one of them saying. Then he imagined the other one thinking “he’s just a janitor, and nothing more.” But he was more.

H. had so many aspirations, and he had always thought of himself as clever, often the center of attention during social gatherings. And although his living was earned by cleaning the bathroom – here he concentrated at a spot near the base of the toilet, sensing a meditative quality – his real assets could only be measured in the currency of inner strength and mental heroism. H. had never suspected cleaning the bathroom would have become a means of self affirmation.

His day’s work done, H. clocked out and said goodbye to Bill. He left watching his feet as they carried him five blocks back to his apartment. He thought of the salon girls, of making love to them, of best combinations. “Work has done me good. More good than school, that’s for sure.” H. recognized that, he thought, and wanted to check it with Otto. “Am I listening to myself?”[2]

That night H. remembered the revelation he had had at Morning Glory: he needed an artistic outlet. And so, having awoken amid his slumber, he recorded a dream for the first time.

 

 

 

The Dream

 

October 12, 1998

For whatever reason, I needed to find B____. It was dark, even though it must have been spring, and the ground was wet and spotted with puddles. I was in a schoolyard, at an alternative school for delinquent teens. There were some girls smoking around a yellow four-square painted on the asphalt. I recognized one of them – Carolina – because she was an acquaintance of B____’s. There were three other girls, too, each standing in one of the four squares. Each of them wore the same dark uniform: black skirt and hosiery, black pea coat on top. The only variant was in hair color, with each represented: black, brown, red; Carolina was the blond. In addition, each wore a hair ribbon that matched the hair in which it was tied. I recalled that B____’s hair contained, when viewed from various angles, all four colors of hair, and that she wore no ribbon. Nevertheless, I needed, for whatever reason, to find her.

“Morning,” I said with a wave, and then clasping my hands behind my back, “have you seen B____?”

 I directed the question at Carolina, but it was intended for each of the squares.

“Yeah,” Carolina answered, her head turned towards me and her body still facing the center of the four-square. She smiled as she re-faced the center and the eyes of the other three squares fixed on her and smiled, too. Then she turned around completely about on her heels and took a step towards me.

“B____ went to Chris’ a while ago,” she said, drawing a flat, gold box from her pea coat pocket.

I put my hands on my hips and looked up at the gray, sunless sky. Then I suddenly became conscious of my feet, that they were damp and cold, which caused a vertigo  somewhere in my center. I recovered by looking back at Carolina, who read my face.

“Sorry,” she said in an assuring tone. “Why don’t you just meet her over there?” She paused and looked me in the eyes, although I didn’t return the gaze.

“Here,” she said, holding up the gold box. Then with the press of a button, the lid flipped up on the thing revealing a lone cigarette. “Have it. You look like you could use one.” I looked at her thankfully, although I didn’t smoke, and she added, “don’t worry, there are others.”

I reached out and took it, gave her a thank you and a nod, and went off towards the gymnasium.

Just adjacent to the gym was a small storage room that had been converted into a den. There was a television in there, a coffee table, and a couch. The room was warmer and humid, as if a cloths dryer had been venting inside. I laid down on the couch and turned on the TV using the remote on the coffee table. The game shows were starting. There was a gold disposable ash tray and a book of matches on the coffee table, too. So I decided indulge in the gift Carolina had provided. I lit it and inhaled deeply. I noticed I had become very tired, and so drifted off to sleep. I would find B____ after my nap.

I awoke in a daze in the driveway at Chris’. I had no recollection of having made the circuit between the school and the church. Because that’s what Chris’ house had apparently become. Still, I did not discover this immediately. I was half-waking, half-asleep. But where? Or rather, in what?

I was lying supine across the seats of what I gathered, now focusing my faculties, was an electric golf cart. I sat up and spun my legs around to the side. As I stood up, my head spun, so I zigzagged to the front of the of the cart. It had been outfitted to look like a mouse. Big plastic eyes, whiskers of ironmongery. A small, painted grimace; subtly sinister. All I knew for sure was that I had been transported from the school, and deposited in the mouse cart. Whether or not this was by virtue of my own somnambulant prowess, or by some 3rd party, I could not discern. Nevertheless, I remembered R____ was rumored to be here.

I turned to walk up towards the entrance when two emaciated models burst through the French doors. They were followed by a balding man in business cloths. He moved his hands together as a housefly preparing for a meal of excrement: he was about to speak. But before he could, the models turned on their heels and began to deride him.

“We’re already late for our next assignment. And I didn’t want to do this stupid commercial anyway.”

The man froze, mouth half-open, defeated, and put his limbs back into their pockets. Then the models came towards me and asked if I would “move my stupid mouse car.” I answered in the affirmative because I agreed that the vehicle lacked certain qualities, but they took this to mean I would do as they asked. I sidestepped them, noticing their bright white eyes behind dark sunglasses, and went up to the door.

There were tones of frustration coming from the white-eyed models behind me. “Redundant,” I thought, as I knocked on the door. While I waited for an answer, I turned to see the models speeding off in my mouse cart. I smiled at what I felt was an appropriate ending.

Chris answered the door wearing a periwinkle suit a la used car salesman, circa 1960.

“Hello,” he smiled, “come on in. I was just filming a commercial for my new gum.”

As he said this, two bald bodybuilders appeared at the bottom of the split-level stairs inside the front door. Each was covered with slime: one green, one blue.

“That’s Apple Gum Man,” Chris explained, “and that’s Grape. But let’s go upstairs for now. You haven’t seen the place since mother remodeled, have you?”

I shook my head and followed him up. His mother Mary had become quite religious, almost to the point of fanaticism, since she left the hospital.

An area equaling about half of the upper floor had been removed, and a mahogany railing added, to crate a kind of balcony. A pulpit had been built facing the balcony on the lower floor, with several rows of pews filling the remainder of the space. There was a grotesque crucifix standing behind the alter. It appeared to be carved from deodorant soap. The light was fluorescent, though candles flanked each pew, straining eyes attempting to adjust to both versions of light.

“So what do you think?” Chris inquired.

“It’s strange, but a good project for your mother, I’ll bet.”

We both looked around for a few moments, as if to confirm my observations. Then I got to the point.

“Is R____ here? Some girls over at the school told me she might be.”

Chris looked strangely, curiously, into my eyes before he answered, as a doctor might before a grim prognosis.

“No,” he said slowly, still looking at my eyes. “I saw her here earlier. She said she’s going to the swim meet.”

“Swim meet?” I repeated, indicating insufficient information.

“Yeah. It’s at,” then he looked at the clock, trailing off. “It’s up at Meadowbrook. You know the place? Up north.”

“Sounds far. Your models took my mouse cart,” I said, to put the transportation issue to him.

“Here,” he said, handing me a key. “Take my car. It’s the Buick Electra Station Wagon out front.”

I thanked him, told of my hurry, and bade him farewell. He did likewise, never losing sight of my eyes.

I headed north up Meridian Street. The tires were loud because the ground was still wet. I only know the general area of Meadowbrook, but after some circumnavigation, I found the aquatic center. I parked the Buick and went inside. Once inside, I did not find what I had expected. Rather than an attendant selling tickets to the swim event, there was simply an empty room featuring a sign that issued a challenge. The sign was on the wall opposite the entrance, and a pool of water ran along the width of the wall, and out from its base about three feet. The sign read:

In a show of respect, we ask that you swim to the swimming pool. You must swim underwater for 20 meters. If you feel you may drown, we suggest you refrain from swimming. Swimwear is provided, with locker, on your left. Thank you.

 

I was fairly sure I could manage this, so I changed into swim trunks, and hopped in. The water was warm, and, I thought, more viscous than water should be. I treaded water in a small circle and watched the ripples move slowly away and disappear into the walls. Then after a few deep breaths, I dove towards the tunnel. It became dark quickly, and for a few moments, I had lost most sense of direction. I felt the walls against my fingertips and I sculled my arms; the tunnel seemed to narrow. But then I felt a current of the thick water behind me that had the effect of propelling me towards the main pool at the other end. The water, which had been quite warm, dropped about 20 degrees as I swam out into the illuminated area of the tunnel’s terminus. As I popped my head out of the water, my ears were filled with the sounds of cheering. I then pulled myself up out of the pool and made my way towards a crowd of spectators. My friends Spencer and Toby were among them, so I figured they might provide me with the whereabouts of R____.

R____ had been there earlier, but had gone. Spencer and Toby  eyed me in earnest, as Chris had at his mother’s church.

            “Are you feeling alright, man?” Toby asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”

“You don’t look so good. Maybe the swim in here was a little hard on you,” Spencer said. “Why don’t you come with us. You should see yourself.”

I followed Spencer and Toby into the locker room, where they directed me to a mirror. Looking into it, I was shocked. My eyes were rolled completely back in my head. There was no way I should have been able to see my reflection, or anything else either. At that time, I noticed I lacked peripheral vision. Instead, I saw a clear center of view, that blurred outwards to the periphery. I became nervous, felt sick.

“Shit!” I cried. “What should I do.”

“Don’t worry, man. We’ll take you to the doctor.”

We hurried through a series of hallways and doors and came to a parking lot. Outside, sitting in the car he had loaned me, was Chris.

“Thanks for coming,” Spencer said, giving Chris a nod.

We all got into the wood-paneled Buick Electra, and headed out, eventually merging onto the freeway. First heading south, then east through the driving rain.

We headed east, further and further. Traffic was becoming thinner, and thinner. There was snow mixed in with the rain. The car was warm, but Chris, Spencer, and Toby were silent.  Staring blankly at the road ahead of them, like children listening to something that bored them. I was silent also.

We reached the pass in due course, and as we crested, we must have crossed some kind of meteorological plane, or rain shadow, the weather on the eastern side being a parallel version of the western skies. I could see the sunshine on the other side. But not, I realized, with my eyes.

 

H. stopped writing. He would finish later if he had some perspective, and when he no longer felt the need to make it linear: He felt pressured to force a narrative.

The next morning was per usual. H. went to Morning Glory for chai and a bagel, and then off to work at the ice company. He was later than usual, however, and already anxious about having a bad day. When he arrived at the corner of Ballard Avenue and Market, he could see an ambulance approximately in front of the garage. His first thought was that Bill had overworked himself into a heart attack. He hurried down the street and as he had before his lapse in the dirt at school: whenever he predicted the future or deciphered the past, incriminating himself as a helpless pawn in its midst, H. felt the attack. Ebb.

Tic-toc.

Arriving at the garage, the first thing he saw was Bill’s large frame standing over two medics and an unidentified third person. H. didn’t join them, only stood in the doorway. Bill eventually looked up and noticed him there, and made his way over. Bill rubbed his hand through thin hair.

“This is real bad. Oh Jesus,” pulling a brown More© from his pack and lighting it.

“What happened?” H. asked at the same time, staring at the clump of a body between the two medics.

“Came to repair the safety on the lifts,” Bill explained, breathing heavily through his nose. “Couldn’t get the van down. Safety’s near the hydraulic piston. After he freed it up, one  of the seals on the high-pressure line cracked. Van came right down on him.”

H. stood still for a while, imagining how it must feel to be crushed by a van. One of the medics rushed out to retrieve something from the ambulance, allowing H. an unobstructed view of the person in the clump. Clump person.

He was flat in the middle. But his lower abdomen was distended and variegated: black, blue, hues of yellow. The hand he could see was covered in grease and contorted grotesquely, as if grasping an invisible, handle shaped object. The other medic rushed back in and the two of them worked feverishly for a minute or so. Bill and H. both noticed when they slackened their pace. One stood up and came over to Bill and he and the other went out to the ambulance carrying a box and some tubes; H. saw slow-motion tubes.

H. made out the face of the clump person: mouth agape and head tilted back as if he were trying to check the clock on the wall directly behind him. As H. was staring at his face, at the smeared blood and grease around his lips, he noticed the Adam’s Apple, and he heard something between a gurgle and an orgasmic moan. The inputs triggered a self-consciousness in H.

Bill told H. to take the rest of the day off, to which H. replied, “I can’t work here anymore.”

He left and went to the statue of the fisherman at the end of Ballard Avenue and sat in the circular area underneath it. It didn’t help much. H. needed a drink, so he had to force the issue: he went to the 4-B’s Bar and Grill.

 

4-B’s Bar and Grill

 

It took H. half an hour to walk from the Fisherman statue 4-B’s. He walked down past the scrap yard, under 15th, then down and around Leary Way. He came to 4-B’s just as it began to rain. He would be there for a while.

Upon entry, H. checked his pockets for money.

“20, 5. . . I’m good,” he thought to himself, planning on beers and some food, maybe a game of pool. Only one pool table was being used.

H. looked around but didn’t recognize anyone, placing his coat on the nearest table before going to the bar to order.

“How can I help you?” intoned the bartender, a Hessian in denial about the progressive effect of time. A black apron partially obscured his Steel Wheels tour shirt.

“Uh, African Amber.”

“You just want one?”

“Better make it a pitcher,” said H, reflecting on the bartender’s opening line: “How can I help you.” “Well,” thought H, “you can help me get drunk. You can help my by pouring me a truly full pitcher of African Amber. By keeping them coming.” Then the sardonic afterthought, “By solving this differential equation.”

Meanwhile the pitcher was filling and H’s mind drifted back to clump person, where he entered briefly into a state of comparative existential inquisition. “I wonder if we started our days the same way, with coffee? Difference being, I headed out the door and fate had me scheduled to drink. He was scheduled to be crushed by a van.”

Poured pitcher and single glass from the freezer, its cooling air tumbling downwards onto the bar, were taken up by H. and carried back to the table. He sat down facing the big screen and poured the first glass, which was gulped from several times, finally being put back down half-full. No, half-full wouldn’t come for another three beers. Half-empty, the foam which had formerly been the head having slid slowly down, the beer was finished before it could become settle from those initial gulps. H. belched quietly, warming his loosely contracted fist, the one reserved especially for belches. He poured his second beer and sat back, concentrating on the subtle differences of temperature at play in his stomach: the cold of the beer’s liquid, the warmth of it’s 5.5% ethyl. The warmer temperature slowly worked its way up to his head, numbing his cheeks and giving a special strength to his masticatory muscles, which would enable him to talk and smile indefatigably. 

Up on the big screen, the Knicks were at Indiana in a classic, but H. thought slow moving, rivalry. He watched nevertheless, aware of the promised land promised by the African Amber. At the same time, the bathroom door adjacent the tables swung open and “Mullet Boy,” walked out.

“Hey, Luke,” H. blurted out without hesitation.

“Oh, hey man, wassup? What’re you doin’ here?”

“Just stopped in for a pitcher, you know. What about you?”

“Aw man, I’m supposed to meet my friend here. This girl Kally, I don’t know if you know her. She’s from San Diego. Kally from Cali. He he.”

“Well, are you up for pool in the meantime?”

“Sure man. Just lemme get my beer. You got quarters.”

He did. H. inserted the quarters and racked the balls. Then they played pool, during the course of which H. recognized that 1) Mullet Boy was a better player, and 2) the African Amber was gone. It was time for another pitcher.

 Obese girl walks in, stops just beyond the threshold and raises her arms, “Kally is in the house! Yeah! Let the par-tay begin.”

            Walks up to the table, apparently the friend Luke was talking about, and says, “Wassup?” H. and Luke reply “not much” practically in stereo. Luke introduces, “Kally, this is a friend of mine from school.”

            “Hi,” she says, smiling. “Mmm, beer. I gots to get some. One sec.” She stood so abruptly the chair seemed to shoot from beneath her, almost tipping over as it fought friction on the carpet.

            Luke went to take his turn at the table, “I’m little one’s, right?”

            “Right,” H. replied, noticing Kally waddle back to the table with a full pitcher of her own of Heffeweizen. “Heffer weizen,” thought H. to himself, sensing a potentially unpleasant conversation that could not be kept at bay. A bit tipsy, and feeling that fate had dealt him a relatively good hand, H. decided to put on his most sociable face and to listen more as Otto had suggested.

            “So Kally, what do you do here in Seattle?” 

“I’m a writer,” Kally said, getting straight to it. “I called The Stranger, and told them to hire me, ‘cause I’m fucking brilliant.”

She said “brilliant” and it conjured for H. an image of her licking frosting off her obese fingers after destroying (possibly single-handedly) some fine cake: the “n” in her “brilliant” being akin phonically to the “mmm” that would follow her caked-finger licking session.

“I’m a sunshine girl. Florida native, you know. Then Cali[3]. LA? Venice Beach? I miss the sea. My apartment was right across from the beach”

“I’m not a heavy drinker,” said the 300lb extrovert.

“I have this thing for attracting gay men. I don’t know what it is. I’ll tell you what, I need to meet a straight guy who’s available” she said. “There’s so much PDA here, though. I’m not used to it. Once, some bitch was looking at my man – well, my ex – and I had to mack on him right there to mark my territory. But it was good, ya know? I let her know she needed to look elsewhere, and of course my man enjoyed that, too. But yeah, I write. How many times can they use saturnine in the New Yorker, anyway? What is that, like word of the month?”

So, there will be a parallel between the dreams and reality, blurring them together in the most mysterious way. The recurrent themes of time and feminine betrayal will culminate when, dreaming of entering the bowels of a giant clock (black and glowing red, blast furnaces, hydraulic and pneumatic pistons and rods, and stairs, weights, gears, and bells) and making way up to its various faces, the subject spies scenes, rendered in various artistic mediums, the images which, in real life, showed some relevance to the passing of time or the betrayal by women. A crystal and coal reconstruction, for instance, of the Ballard Shipyard. Or a sepia photo of Otto, staring back, with the words La Scene on the awning above his head.

What will be the point of the clock analogy, has to be something to do with: 1)recognition; 2)time; 3)betrayal; 4)love… The only mystery that combines all of these, makes them acceptable, though ineffable. Some mystery has to be solved. Maybe the clock is real, has been built and is a metaphor for life lived, like the chains Marley’s ghost was dragging as he chastised Scrooge. Like electro-magnetism, life’s passions, ranging from physical to spiritual, are all variants of the same force operating on different levels, (the analogy is 4 physical force-carriers). However the human force is ineffable and can only be recognized, not defined. “What’s life?” “I know it when I see it.” “Is watching TV life?” “Sometimes.” “In general?” “Probably not. Not much is life, when it’s in general.” “What is in general life.” “Doing what you don’t want to.” “I don’t want to kill myself. So if I do it, that’ll be a life?” “That’s different because it’s an extreme. If you want to operate your arguments at the pole, I suggest you live there as well. You said what is in general life. Well, it’s not too general at the pole, is it?” “No.” “What don’t you want to do right now, for example?” “I don’t know what I don’t want to do.” “Maybe you don’t want to know then, eh? Just for the sake of argument, why don’t you go home and mope around unentertained until you know what you don’t want.” “Well, I don’t want to, so I guess I have to.” “Let me know how it turns out.” “Ok. Thanks.”

  At one point, H. got so bored with trying to guess what people were going to do, he took to agitating: he made them do things.

H. thought to himself, “Each time I see a mother with a crying baby, I’m going to walk past her. When I do, I’m going to say – audibly but under my breath – ‘what terrible parenting.’”

 

Written by Erik Gimness

 


[1] “Who was that?” It could be interpreted as jealousy or curiousity. In both cases, H. had misjudged that time had stopped, and that Mary hadn’t noticed.

[2] “Listen to the inner news.” Maybe Zell could be introduced at morning glory too. A foil to Otto, who advocates acting on all feelings, from the “what does it matter” school.

[3] Sounds like Kali. Have H. make a connection between Kali’s ability to destroy the universe, and Kally’s ability to eat it.