BEAUTY AND THE EGG
Dewey beat me into this world by sixty-three minutes. I tried to follow in his wake, but I just wasn’t strong enough. In 1979 they still used forceps on babies like me. See that spider-shaped dent guarding my left temple? That’s what Cerebral Palsy looks like on the outside. Dewey grew up and won a gymnastics scholarship to UCLA. I grew up with regrets that come and go like full-moon tides.
I’ve always lived here at the beach with Mom. Dad died just last year while on a business trip to Stockholm. He kissed my forehead before he left---like he always did---and I would have gurgled something more poignant if I’d have known he wasn’t coming back. Our tears eventually quit because that’s what tears always do. After that, Mom and I spent infinite hours just sitting and starring into the cold Pacific, neither of us caring to speak. Dewey, who lived hundreds of miles away during those hard days, said he’d often start thinking about waves and sharks and sand, right in the middle of his workday. We all agreed he was probably there ‘with us’, even though he wasn’t. We come from the same egg, Dewey and I.
The last time Dewey came home he brought his fiancé, Candice. To say she was beautiful is like saying the Grand Canyon is “grand.” Hardly anybody looks at me for the first time and hides their shock completely, but she did.
“Hello Dylan, Dewey’s told me so much about you…It’s good to finally meet the other half.”
Her smile was so damn gorgeous and perfect it nearly killed me on the spot, and when she bent down and gave me a big hug, the whole room smelled just like the outdoors does after a good rain. I fell instantly in love, and later when I told Dewey, he didn’t seem mad or jealous at all.
“That, my young friend, is what separates us from the apes.”
Dewey ‘gets’ me you see, always has.
That night, after Mom had gone to bed, we drank a bottle of merlot and smoked a few bowls. I’m a great storyteller, especially when I’m stoned, and if you can understand me, I’m actually quite funny. Dewey filled in the gaps for Candice, translating as needed while I made my way through our childhood. A delicious euphoria colored the evening.
“Once, when we were twelve”---jeez, I’m really slobbering tonight---“I tried to wiggle my way into the surf. Dewey made me one of those stretcher-things like the Indians used to pull stuff with, and he’d tow me down by the water so I could watch him surf. The waves were pretty big that day and I actually made it into the beach break…ended up almost drowning, but our neighbor Carl came running from his house and pulled me out. Dewey saw me crawling into the water and started paddling toward shore like mad to stop me.”
“You looked like a sea turtle returning to the ocean after laying her eggs, or maybe a wounded walrus.”
We all laugh at these images, and then it gets quiet like it sometimes does when everybody’s wasted.
Then Candice jumps up and does a ballerina slide toward the kitchen. “Anybody hungry?” she coos.
Dewey grins at me and says, “Corn nuts are so good when you’re stoned!”
“No dude,” I argue, “anything made by Little Debbie is the stuff when you have serious munchies.”
Candice emerges from the kitchen just then carrying an ancient tin I recognize because it’s been in our cupboard for as long as I can remember. She holds it out and says in her best hillbilly accent,
“I’d kill for a Spam sandwich right now, but I guess caviar will have to do.”
We erupt in a spontaneous laughter that only the stoned and insane understand. Drool spills from my mouth in glistening, unbroken strands. But in the midst of these shenanigans, Mom appears from the back of the house, sneaking up behind Candice like some damn Ninja. She doesn’t say a word, but her look demands quiet. It’s like, all of a sudden, there’s an elephant in the room, and it smells like ganja.
I watch Mom’s silent retreat with dismay, my bubble sorely burst. Such sparkling ‘magic’ is a rare thing in my world. Candice walks over, looking radiantly mischievous, and uses her sleeve to wipe away my drool. She smiles “Sorry” at me, and my love blooms anew. Dewey helps me into the bathroom and then to bed.
“We’re triplets Dewey…Candice gets me, she REALLY gets me!”
Dewey leans over and looks right into me like he always has, and says just what I need to hear,
“Besides you Dylan, she’s the best thing in my life.”
He kisses my forehead and starts to leave, but I need to say one more thing.
“Dewey, I’m glad you’re my twin, you know…so I’m never really alone.”
“Same egg dude, nothing will ever change that …Anyway, we’re up and out early, long drive to ‘Frisco tomorrow…we’ll be home for Christmas though. Take good care of Mom…sleep well younger brother.”
I will, I think. Dewey has Candice, and I have them both.
That night, I’m assaulted by dreams I can’t recall. I awaken horribly hung over and filled with foreboding. It’s already eleven a.m. when then phone rings. The specter of some ugly menace flashes within my being. By the second ring I know what awaits Mom as she answers…The part of me that will always share the egg was there, with them…I feel the collapse of her spirit cascading down the hall as I hear the receiver drop…They’re gone, just like that, my forever-twin and his soul mate…I already know.
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It’s late February and our tears have finally stopped. I want to tell her the wrong son died, that it should have been me…but I don’t. Instead we sit side by side, day by day, quietly starring into our own private abyss…both of us slightly more than half-dead.
Saturday, February 02, 2008
DREAM TIME
Mike’s presence in this place was either a sparkling miracle, or just another sad consequence of genocide. He was part orphan, part refugee, and a world class loner. The locals all said Wichita was the center of America’s “heartland,” though he found scant evidence of any such implied empathy. Around here there wasn’t anyone who looked like him, and as far as he knew, there wasn’t another Aborigine for hundreds and hundreds of miles.
By day he earned his living as a roofer and rarely spoke unless forced by circumstance to do so. His nights were reruns unto themselves, a sad requiem of television, fast food, and the cold embrace of dreamless sleep. For Mike, the last twenty-five years had been one long, weary catastrophe.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Her name tag said “Grace,” and her mug was his mug, the same mangled nose squished into the raw putty of a wide, brown face. His eyes searched hers for clues, and it burned his soul to hold back the ‘asking’ of just how she’d made it to Kansas and this moment…instead, he simply placed his usual stale order---Whopper with cheese, large fry, medium lemonade.
Grace had taken his money with a knowing smile, and upon returning his change, their hands had lingered briefly, like almost-lovers, yet somehow he’d escaped with his hard-won façade intact. As a measure of self-defense, he found another Burger King to patronize the next day. The dreams had begun that very night.
------------------------------------------------------------
Tonight, Mike falls quickly asleep and into the dream. From some unnoticed vantage, he watches as a young boy sits in the cool shade of a tree polishing a crescent of gleaming wood…Do I know this child? Nearby an old man speaks in reverent tones. The boy rises with obvious respect, and offers the object to his elder. The old man takes this offering and begins to chant as he lifts it high over his head, the sinew of his ancient arms trembling in anticipation.
Suddenly, the old man shouts “Amaroo” as he points purposefully into the great distance. Without hesitation, the boy grabs the crescent from the old man’s grasp, takes a few quick steps, and flings it across the small arc of his body and the vast expanse of this dream. The old man turns slowly, his smile radiant and warm, and says, “The Dreamtime comes.”
------------------------------------------------------------
As Mike awakens, he’s startled to find a smooth, gleaming boomerang lying across his chest. It seems to vibrate beneath his fingers. His eyes cross for just a moment as he attempts to read the single word etched into the right tip, and he’s mildly surprised by the odd vigor in his voice as he speaks it:
“Amaroo…Amaroo…AMAROO!”
------------------------------------------------------------
Mike, fairly bursting with primordial memories, pilots his battered pickup along still sleeping streets in search of breakfast, but mostly Grace. And the boomerang rides shotgun, rattling happily against the floorboard as its magic seeps into the world.
Mike’s presence in this place was either a sparkling miracle, or just another sad consequence of genocide. He was part orphan, part refugee, and a world class loner. The locals all said Wichita was the center of America’s “heartland,” though he found scant evidence of any such implied empathy. Around here there wasn’t anyone who looked like him, and as far as he knew, there wasn’t another Aborigine for hundreds and hundreds of miles.
By day he earned his living as a roofer and rarely spoke unless forced by circumstance to do so. His nights were reruns unto themselves, a sad requiem of television, fast food, and the cold embrace of dreamless sleep. For Mike, the last twenty-five years had been one long, weary catastrophe.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Her name tag said “Grace,” and her mug was his mug, the same mangled nose squished into the raw putty of a wide, brown face. His eyes searched hers for clues, and it burned his soul to hold back the ‘asking’ of just how she’d made it to Kansas and this moment…instead, he simply placed his usual stale order---Whopper with cheese, large fry, medium lemonade.
Grace had taken his money with a knowing smile, and upon returning his change, their hands had lingered briefly, like almost-lovers, yet somehow he’d escaped with his hard-won façade intact. As a measure of self-defense, he found another Burger King to patronize the next day. The dreams had begun that very night.
------------------------------------------------------------
Tonight, Mike falls quickly asleep and into the dream. From some unnoticed vantage, he watches as a young boy sits in the cool shade of a tree polishing a crescent of gleaming wood…Do I know this child? Nearby an old man speaks in reverent tones. The boy rises with obvious respect, and offers the object to his elder. The old man takes this offering and begins to chant as he lifts it high over his head, the sinew of his ancient arms trembling in anticipation.
Suddenly, the old man shouts “Amaroo” as he points purposefully into the great distance. Without hesitation, the boy grabs the crescent from the old man’s grasp, takes a few quick steps, and flings it across the small arc of his body and the vast expanse of this dream. The old man turns slowly, his smile radiant and warm, and says, “The Dreamtime comes.”
------------------------------------------------------------
As Mike awakens, he’s startled to find a smooth, gleaming boomerang lying across his chest. It seems to vibrate beneath his fingers. His eyes cross for just a moment as he attempts to read the single word etched into the right tip, and he’s mildly surprised by the odd vigor in his voice as he speaks it:
“Amaroo…Amaroo…AMAROO!”
------------------------------------------------------------
Mike, fairly bursting with primordial memories, pilots his battered pickup along still sleeping streets in search of breakfast, but mostly Grace. And the boomerang rides shotgun, rattling happily against the floorboard as its magic seeps into the world.
LITTLE JESUS
Little Jesus counts exactly seven steps back from the microphone as he pulls a small beige cloth from his waistband. The usual suspects are out in full force tonight; assorted bar girls clandestinely awaiting their personal salvation, drunken sailors still wobbly from long weeks at sea, and semper-fried marines hell-bent on proving that they are indeed as tough as their reputation.
This wonderfully strange conglomeration of humanity erupts as Little Jesus waves this cloth in a salute of genuine gratitude before draping it over his face. He tips his head back and stares into the vague glow sneaking through from the overhead spotlights, then slowly raises his arms until his diminutive body forms a cross. And as he stands so blissfully crucified, he remembers reading a National Geographic article about the Shroud of Turin. The thin fabric swaddling his own face pulsates with each exhale, and he believes.
All that remains to be done here in these wee hours is the finale, his signature song. The stage lights shift to a soft red glow as the bass player, who also doubles as his older half-brother Carlito, reignites the crowd with the first deep throngs of Running With The Devil, by Van Halen. In sheer defiance of the odds, Little Jesus leaves his trance and runs atop five-inch platform shoes across the stage, this miracle culminating with a flying front snap-kick that lands him squarely in front of his pulpit. He rips the microphone from its perch and throws a moist, beige cloth into the swirl of alcohol, shrieks, and hormones. Shroud of Olongapo, he thinks.
It’s just past two a.m. when Little Jesus finishes this night’s sermon, and as he always does after the last set, he descends into his ever-changing congregation for the laying on of hands and random offers of free beer. The Americans tower over this pocket-sized messiah as they reach out to him, and one brazen marine momentarily lifts Little Jesus from his feet with a bear hug of drunken adulation. The marine screams in his ear,
“You’re fuckin’ righteous little dude, WHOAAA! You fuckin’ rock!”
Little Jesus doesn’t mind. In fact, it’s the very reason he comes back night after night and week after week, month after month and year after year. It’s a pure and divine addiction, he thinks, and one he gave up trying to escape years ago.
In 1970, at the too-late age of fourteen, his mother sent him to live with his father in California, a merchant mariner whom everyone called “Popeye.” Though only five feet tall himself, “Popeye” was the biggest asshole he’d ever met, and Little Jesus soon found himself back in the Philippines running the streets of Olongapo City, just another miniature denizen caught up in the collision between third-world survival and American foreign policy. Little Jesus thought it was a magical place. He also knew that it couldn’t last forever.
After several beers, Little Jesus offers his goodbyes and leaves the club, all alone, but certainly not lonesome. He concentrates mightily through his fatigue as he navigates the same seventeen steps he must manage every night on his way from one reality to another, and he waits for it to happen. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…he feels it welling up inside him…sixteen, seventeen…he reaches street level…ahhh, there it is! Tonight “Little Jesus” is letting him go without a struggle. And quite thankfully he mutters,
“Goodnight little brother, sweet dreams.”
Out on Magsaysay boulevard, the not-so-mythical street of a sailor’s best tales, the street of a thousand bars and ten-thousand hookers, the same street whose gutters run thick with puke and bacteria and venereal disease, the very epicenter in fact of sin in all its glory, he finds himself engulfed by delicious solitude and the purplish hues of early morning. The relative cool tames a plethora of pungent fragrances, and street vendors somehow slumber fitfully at their stations while a solitary trike rumbles its one-hundred cc’s of power in the near-distance. The few remaining perpetrators of this evening’s shenanigans stumble along like dutiful children toward their secret and separate destinations.
As Augusto DeLeon turns and walks toward the corner, he passes two old women huddled beside a greasy barrel spilling its trash into his path. One smokes a thin brown cigarette while the other offers up a toothless grin from the creased brown-leather of her face. And it occurs to him that they might be angels, sent here for just this moment, their sole purpose to greet him on his way home. He reaches into his pocket and retrieves a twenty-peso note, lays it at their feet, and with his own warm smile leading the way, continues on his journey. He feels refreshed, as if he’s suddenly in the midst of something all at once intangible and eternal.
He turns the corner, and rather than hop into a trike, decides to walk the four blocks home. His mother will already be awake, drinking instant coffee overly sweetened with condensed milk. He’ll kiss her forehead on his way to bed, and hopefully he’ll sleep until the tropical sun becomes so unrelentingly torrid that even the righteous must arise and greet yet another sweltering day.
As a rooster announces the near-dawn, Augusto slows his pace, barely moving now as he tries to take it all in, this wonderful cacophony of poverty and affluence, of all the saints and sinners constantly changing roles, every one of them equally tasked with creating the coming epilogue. It makes no sense, this crazy, crazy life makes no sense at all. Augusto catches himself laughing out loud as he ponders his thoughts and breaks into a trot, still encumbered by his five-inch platform shoes, but it feels like he’s floating. Running with the devil, or running with the angels… Augusto can never tell which path he’s on, and for tonight at least, it just doesn’t seem to matter.
Little Jesus counts exactly seven steps back from the microphone as he pulls a small beige cloth from his waistband. The usual suspects are out in full force tonight; assorted bar girls clandestinely awaiting their personal salvation, drunken sailors still wobbly from long weeks at sea, and semper-fried marines hell-bent on proving that they are indeed as tough as their reputation.
This wonderfully strange conglomeration of humanity erupts as Little Jesus waves this cloth in a salute of genuine gratitude before draping it over his face. He tips his head back and stares into the vague glow sneaking through from the overhead spotlights, then slowly raises his arms until his diminutive body forms a cross. And as he stands so blissfully crucified, he remembers reading a National Geographic article about the Shroud of Turin. The thin fabric swaddling his own face pulsates with each exhale, and he believes.
All that remains to be done here in these wee hours is the finale, his signature song. The stage lights shift to a soft red glow as the bass player, who also doubles as his older half-brother Carlito, reignites the crowd with the first deep throngs of Running With The Devil, by Van Halen. In sheer defiance of the odds, Little Jesus leaves his trance and runs atop five-inch platform shoes across the stage, this miracle culminating with a flying front snap-kick that lands him squarely in front of his pulpit. He rips the microphone from its perch and throws a moist, beige cloth into the swirl of alcohol, shrieks, and hormones. Shroud of Olongapo, he thinks.
It’s just past two a.m. when Little Jesus finishes this night’s sermon, and as he always does after the last set, he descends into his ever-changing congregation for the laying on of hands and random offers of free beer. The Americans tower over this pocket-sized messiah as they reach out to him, and one brazen marine momentarily lifts Little Jesus from his feet with a bear hug of drunken adulation. The marine screams in his ear,
“You’re fuckin’ righteous little dude, WHOAAA! You fuckin’ rock!”
Little Jesus doesn’t mind. In fact, it’s the very reason he comes back night after night and week after week, month after month and year after year. It’s a pure and divine addiction, he thinks, and one he gave up trying to escape years ago.
In 1970, at the too-late age of fourteen, his mother sent him to live with his father in California, a merchant mariner whom everyone called “Popeye.” Though only five feet tall himself, “Popeye” was the biggest asshole he’d ever met, and Little Jesus soon found himself back in the Philippines running the streets of Olongapo City, just another miniature denizen caught up in the collision between third-world survival and American foreign policy. Little Jesus thought it was a magical place. He also knew that it couldn’t last forever.
After several beers, Little Jesus offers his goodbyes and leaves the club, all alone, but certainly not lonesome. He concentrates mightily through his fatigue as he navigates the same seventeen steps he must manage every night on his way from one reality to another, and he waits for it to happen. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…he feels it welling up inside him…sixteen, seventeen…he reaches street level…ahhh, there it is! Tonight “Little Jesus” is letting him go without a struggle. And quite thankfully he mutters,
“Goodnight little brother, sweet dreams.”
Out on Magsaysay boulevard, the not-so-mythical street of a sailor’s best tales, the street of a thousand bars and ten-thousand hookers, the same street whose gutters run thick with puke and bacteria and venereal disease, the very epicenter in fact of sin in all its glory, he finds himself engulfed by delicious solitude and the purplish hues of early morning. The relative cool tames a plethora of pungent fragrances, and street vendors somehow slumber fitfully at their stations while a solitary trike rumbles its one-hundred cc’s of power in the near-distance. The few remaining perpetrators of this evening’s shenanigans stumble along like dutiful children toward their secret and separate destinations.
As Augusto DeLeon turns and walks toward the corner, he passes two old women huddled beside a greasy barrel spilling its trash into his path. One smokes a thin brown cigarette while the other offers up a toothless grin from the creased brown-leather of her face. And it occurs to him that they might be angels, sent here for just this moment, their sole purpose to greet him on his way home. He reaches into his pocket and retrieves a twenty-peso note, lays it at their feet, and with his own warm smile leading the way, continues on his journey. He feels refreshed, as if he’s suddenly in the midst of something all at once intangible and eternal.
He turns the corner, and rather than hop into a trike, decides to walk the four blocks home. His mother will already be awake, drinking instant coffee overly sweetened with condensed milk. He’ll kiss her forehead on his way to bed, and hopefully he’ll sleep until the tropical sun becomes so unrelentingly torrid that even the righteous must arise and greet yet another sweltering day.
As a rooster announces the near-dawn, Augusto slows his pace, barely moving now as he tries to take it all in, this wonderful cacophony of poverty and affluence, of all the saints and sinners constantly changing roles, every one of them equally tasked with creating the coming epilogue. It makes no sense, this crazy, crazy life makes no sense at all. Augusto catches himself laughing out loud as he ponders his thoughts and breaks into a trot, still encumbered by his five-inch platform shoes, but it feels like he’s floating. Running with the devil, or running with the angels… Augusto can never tell which path he’s on, and for tonight at least, it just doesn’t seem to matter.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
LAIRD’S NEW TOY
My best friend Laird lost his younger brother just over a month ago, dropped instantly dead at his workstation in a sheet-metal factory buried in South Carolina. Just forty-six, but grossly over-weight and hopelessly mired in a life stalled by narrow-minded tedium. I don’t know, but maybe Laird’s brother longed for something new, something beyond his control that would appear unexpectedly and rescue him from life’s onslaught of stale routine. Well, death is certainly something new, if not wholly unexpected.
Laird shares his anger and sadness with me via the miracle of my cell phone as I sit imprisoned on Los Angeles’ most notorious freeway, the 405. Hideously large jets packed with perpetual strangers choke the sky above me on their way to controlled crashes. I realize I’m preoccupied with my current situation and wish I had a hands-free headset as Laird grills me about my own views of life and death and how I think we travel our individual paths. I try to listen better, but the curiously attractive older woman in the car on my left is using one of those little pink disposable razors to shave a bare leg with long, sensuous strokes, her right heel solidly indented into the dashboard of her decrepit Toyota.
“I’m telling ya, it doesn’t make one god damn bit of sense anymore! What the fuck does it all lead to anyway Wayne, all this shit of living and always…ALWAYS dying?”
I’m inching forward in a sea of slow-motion lemmings, doing my darnedest not to run into the Jaguar in front of me while I practice a little shaving voyeurism, but more than its content, the tone of Laird’s question calls my attention back. The crackling of static in my ear gives me the feeling I don’t have to rush my answer.
“I don’t know Laird.”
After careful consideration, these are the only words of comfort I can produce, and the hot verdict of Laird’s silence shames me into stammering rhetorical platitudes of withering emptiness.
“Maybe it was simply his time Laird, you know, like we all must have a destiny, right? I mean, like, hey, I don’t even know if I’ll make it home today with all these Mario Andretti wanta-be’s fuckin’ with me out here”
I notice the speedometer indicates a little over fifteen miles-per-hour as I finish talking, and I begin to drift away once more, enraptured with the idea of what death would look like at fifteen miles-per-hour. Slow, simmering agony as my body…
“Fuck destiny Wayne…And fuck you and me and everyone else! We’re all gonna die, and it don’t matter when it happens or how. If there is a higher power, it should show its hand and quit messing with our heads. I’m just too tired of all the shit life offers up to go on believing in something nice and shiny waiting for me just around the bend. And I’m done with believing I can make it better somehow just by believing it will be!”
Deep silence penetrates the vacuity of my car, and I feel like getting out and running away from whatever it is that Laird and I have unearthed. I pull the phone away from my ear and see that the battery is running low, and I use the break in our conversation to look around for the woman with the wonderfully bare leg and pink plastic razor…I could introduce myself, I think, and get in with her and her smooth legs, and we could drive away and be happy somewhere out beyond the horizons that form my life’s borders. But she’s vanished, and I wonder if she ever really existed at all, the impression of smooth flesh against my brain the only evidence of her passing. And in the near distance, Laird’s voice sounds like a tiny, tin music box as he calls out to me from the phone now cradled in the hand tensed between my thighs.
“Wayne, where’d you go? Come on bro, I can hear the traffic…”
My body feels rigid and heavy, especially the arm attached to the hand that cradles the phone. Raising the phone to my ear takes considerable effort, and I realize that the herd of autos is loosening up a bit as my speedometer passes forty-five in a slow arc of hope. Finally I answer;
“I’m still here Laird. Battery’s running low though…might get cut off.”
“Okay man, I gotta get going anyway, but I wanta tell ya about my new toy. Just got it last week.”
And suddenly I can hear the stain upon his voice left by tears already fallen, and the future echoes of those still to come. This makes me feel softer, sadder and lonelier than I’ve felt in a long, long time. I don’t really care to hear about this “toy,” but I ask anyway, knowing he longs to break free from something hard and all too real. In complete jest I ask,
“What did you get Laird, a sports car or something?”
“Oh man,” his voice chirps, “How’d you know? I found a sweet little 1999 BMW Z3, like the one that Pierce Brosnan drove in that James Bond movie a few years back, remember that one? Mine’s charcoal-gray though, with a black convertible roof and gray interior. Only 60,000 miles and super clean. Ya gotta come down soon and check it out dude!”
I find myself amazed by this revelation, not only because I guessed correctly about his new toy, but more so because of the change in his demeanor as he talked about it.
“That’s awesome Laird! Sounds like good medicine to boot. I’ll see about coming down next weekend…Ya gonna let me drive it?”
“Ya, ya, of course bro. It’s just a thing anyway…Hey Wayne?”
“Still here dude, what’s up?”
“You know I love you man.”
“I know ya do buddy…and right back at ya.”
My phone goes dead as I offer this last sentiment, and though I’m not even sure if Laird heard me or not, I know he already knows. I’ll call him back when I get home anyway, and besides, the traffic is really starting to move and I feel the need to concentrate more than I usually do. All around me is the burgeoning rush of cars and more cars carrying their drivers and passengers toward the infinite mystery of their separate destinies, too fast perhaps, to allow time for the remembering of where they’ve been.
My best friend Laird lost his younger brother just over a month ago, dropped instantly dead at his workstation in a sheet-metal factory buried in South Carolina. Just forty-six, but grossly over-weight and hopelessly mired in a life stalled by narrow-minded tedium. I don’t know, but maybe Laird’s brother longed for something new, something beyond his control that would appear unexpectedly and rescue him from life’s onslaught of stale routine. Well, death is certainly something new, if not wholly unexpected.
Laird shares his anger and sadness with me via the miracle of my cell phone as I sit imprisoned on Los Angeles’ most notorious freeway, the 405. Hideously large jets packed with perpetual strangers choke the sky above me on their way to controlled crashes. I realize I’m preoccupied with my current situation and wish I had a hands-free headset as Laird grills me about my own views of life and death and how I think we travel our individual paths. I try to listen better, but the curiously attractive older woman in the car on my left is using one of those little pink disposable razors to shave a bare leg with long, sensuous strokes, her right heel solidly indented into the dashboard of her decrepit Toyota.
“I’m telling ya, it doesn’t make one god damn bit of sense anymore! What the fuck does it all lead to anyway Wayne, all this shit of living and always…ALWAYS dying?”
I’m inching forward in a sea of slow-motion lemmings, doing my darnedest not to run into the Jaguar in front of me while I practice a little shaving voyeurism, but more than its content, the tone of Laird’s question calls my attention back. The crackling of static in my ear gives me the feeling I don’t have to rush my answer.
“I don’t know Laird.”
After careful consideration, these are the only words of comfort I can produce, and the hot verdict of Laird’s silence shames me into stammering rhetorical platitudes of withering emptiness.
“Maybe it was simply his time Laird, you know, like we all must have a destiny, right? I mean, like, hey, I don’t even know if I’ll make it home today with all these Mario Andretti wanta-be’s fuckin’ with me out here”
I notice the speedometer indicates a little over fifteen miles-per-hour as I finish talking, and I begin to drift away once more, enraptured with the idea of what death would look like at fifteen miles-per-hour. Slow, simmering agony as my body…
“Fuck destiny Wayne…And fuck you and me and everyone else! We’re all gonna die, and it don’t matter when it happens or how. If there is a higher power, it should show its hand and quit messing with our heads. I’m just too tired of all the shit life offers up to go on believing in something nice and shiny waiting for me just around the bend. And I’m done with believing I can make it better somehow just by believing it will be!”
Deep silence penetrates the vacuity of my car, and I feel like getting out and running away from whatever it is that Laird and I have unearthed. I pull the phone away from my ear and see that the battery is running low, and I use the break in our conversation to look around for the woman with the wonderfully bare leg and pink plastic razor…I could introduce myself, I think, and get in with her and her smooth legs, and we could drive away and be happy somewhere out beyond the horizons that form my life’s borders. But she’s vanished, and I wonder if she ever really existed at all, the impression of smooth flesh against my brain the only evidence of her passing. And in the near distance, Laird’s voice sounds like a tiny, tin music box as he calls out to me from the phone now cradled in the hand tensed between my thighs.
“Wayne, where’d you go? Come on bro, I can hear the traffic…”
My body feels rigid and heavy, especially the arm attached to the hand that cradles the phone. Raising the phone to my ear takes considerable effort, and I realize that the herd of autos is loosening up a bit as my speedometer passes forty-five in a slow arc of hope. Finally I answer;
“I’m still here Laird. Battery’s running low though…might get cut off.”
“Okay man, I gotta get going anyway, but I wanta tell ya about my new toy. Just got it last week.”
And suddenly I can hear the stain upon his voice left by tears already fallen, and the future echoes of those still to come. This makes me feel softer, sadder and lonelier than I’ve felt in a long, long time. I don’t really care to hear about this “toy,” but I ask anyway, knowing he longs to break free from something hard and all too real. In complete jest I ask,
“What did you get Laird, a sports car or something?”
“Oh man,” his voice chirps, “How’d you know? I found a sweet little 1999 BMW Z3, like the one that Pierce Brosnan drove in that James Bond movie a few years back, remember that one? Mine’s charcoal-gray though, with a black convertible roof and gray interior. Only 60,000 miles and super clean. Ya gotta come down soon and check it out dude!”
I find myself amazed by this revelation, not only because I guessed correctly about his new toy, but more so because of the change in his demeanor as he talked about it.
“That’s awesome Laird! Sounds like good medicine to boot. I’ll see about coming down next weekend…Ya gonna let me drive it?”
“Ya, ya, of course bro. It’s just a thing anyway…Hey Wayne?”
“Still here dude, what’s up?”
“You know I love you man.”
“I know ya do buddy…and right back at ya.”
My phone goes dead as I offer this last sentiment, and though I’m not even sure if Laird heard me or not, I know he already knows. I’ll call him back when I get home anyway, and besides, the traffic is really starting to move and I feel the need to concentrate more than I usually do. All around me is the burgeoning rush of cars and more cars carrying their drivers and passengers toward the infinite mystery of their separate destinies, too fast perhaps, to allow time for the remembering of where they’ve been.
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