wherever we have come from, whatever bad deals
we have done, whatever sadnesses or lost dreams,
we are free of the continent at last
- Ed Ochester
And the things you can’t remember tell the things you can’t forget…
- Tom Waits
I’ve been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.
- Mark Twain
The call that stirred you must torment all men. Whether we dub it sacrifice, or poetry, or adventure, it is always the same voice that calls.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
We tell ourselves stories in order to live.
- Joan Didion
1.
Hello there, you. It’s me. I’m going to tell you a story.
Every word of it is true. Except, of course, the ones that aren’t.
*
You’ll catch up soon enough. And you’ll still have no idea what you’re doing.
*
When the open ketchup packet hit the back of your neck, you just assumed life would be uphill from that point.
For the most part, it has been. At the time, however, you had been the object of an unspoken, unthought of, objurgation.
It wasn’t meant for you. You’d always been more or less invisible. You’d just spent almost three and a half hours a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for two years with these people on the bus and the most you’d ever gotten was “Sorry, man. I was aiming for the faggot behind you.” Ketchup packets are always causing problems, obstreperous as they are wont to be. Like the time someone put one in your shoe. Like the time someone put six in your backpack. Like the time someone threw a handful at the car next to the bus and the driver got on the bus and threatened everyone for a half hour and the bus driver sat there laughing with his freckled wrinkled Mickey Rooney child grin and moon face and you were all late to school and none of the teachers cared why and you were told you were animals and you all got detention for a week but you didn’t care since detention at Scumcoast Middle School just meant that you could eat your lunch in a cubicle to learn your lesson and couldn’t fraternize with the other animals who never noticed you anyway and were always aiming for some other poor faggot behind you. You wiped the smear off on a piece of notebook paper ripped from a notebook that was filled with paper. It looked like blood. You knew your collar could still have some on it. Some got in your hair. Your mom would probably feel a little sorry for you for being so picked on, even though you’ll explain that it was actually meant for the faggot behind you and you were just the invisible faggot sitting too close to the faggot of choice and this isn’t like the time you got all those rocks thrown at you by the other kids at the bus stop who really were aiming for you as you were their intended faggot target and she didn’t believe that that ever happened anyway. Tom will just interrupt whatever your mom is saying and question why you didn’t kick the shit out of the faggot that threw the goddamn thing in the first place and this wouldn’t happen if you weren’t such a faggot and she didn’t say whatever she was always saying to you. It wasn’t meant for you. But you’re done. You step off the bus as a middleschooler for the last time. In eighty-nine days you would be a highschooler, a milestone of midget proportions, but all that you had going at the time. You had been reading Moby Dick on the bus. You must have dropped it when the faggot ducked and ketchup met collar with aplomb. It was your own copy since you knew you’d never be going to the library again. Now you’ll never get it back. You watched the bus pull down Del Prado Boulevard. You imagined that liar Ishmael watching you from the back window. The white whale will never be found now, boys. Queequeg seems to be waving. Like most true places, you’d never get to see Rokovoko. Perhaps this corner isn’t on a map either.
*
Gravel shifted under foot.
*
“But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped.”
*
A dog barked in some backyard, probably miles away. Your abjuration of eighth grade was official. You were free.
If only for a moment. Tom was home already. His truck waiting in the driveway. Waiting for you to walk past, knowing you were going to have to see Tom once you got inside. It felt sorry for you. It would rain today. Like yesterday. Like tomorrow. The south Florida 4:00pm alarm clock. April to August. Hot and heavy, where taking in air is more like swallowing than breathing. The sky seemed to rumble in its belly and you could see a darkening fall over the empty fields that then still made up the extreme north end of Cape Coral.
No. Stop. No weather metaphors.
You let your feet drag a little, plodding along. All your life you loved the crunch of gravel. The way your feet shift a little. The way the sound echoes through your body. The way you sink in ever so slightly, as if it’s cradling you.
Tom was no person. He was a giant dick attached to a smaller dick your mom married because it made her feel good in the places where women like dicks to make them feel good. He told you all the time that he married your mom and not you. You hated both those dicks, bagatelling through life, through your mom. Mothers don’t get enough love. Maybe they do in places like Japan or some village in Africa or some other village in the Amazon, but in Florida, in America, in 1992, mothers are far too generally shit upon by most everyone in their lives. You don’t want to be one of those sons. You probably are anyway.
The air smelled sticky and tasted like too many Florida nights. Would mothers matter in the future you wondered. Would Africa? Would America? Would you? Would there be a 1992 when the end of history walks the line? Do these years matter? Do they exist in the same way? The same here and now and then and when? Tom was in the garage smoking a cigarette.
“Is mom home?”
“Does it look like she’s home?”
“Just making conversation.”
“What’s all over your neck and shirt?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s gonna stain.”
“We are all stained like glass and only lit from the beauty within.”
“Whatever. Your mom’ll be home around five. Me and her have to go over to Mooch’s to talk about planning the camping trip.”
“Fine.”
*
The Domino’s pizza you ordered had all of about four pepperoni slices scattered around it, amidst the sad canned mushrooms, splotches on a gooey, messy canvas. In this moment you decided that if you never expected anything out of life, life would never let you down. You continued your busy day of watching television. The usual. Benny Hill as soon as you got home from school, followed by Python, and then channel surfing. The Seinfeld rerun was a good one. The one where Jerry puts a Pez dispenser on Elaine’s leg and it screws up George’s chances with a pianist who was probably way out of George’s league to begin with. Your dad called around 9:30.
“I’m picking Gibs up tomorrow night at the airport. You wanna come with me?”
“No.”
“We’re gonna get dinner, probably sushi at Yokohama’s.”
“Yeah. I still don’t want to.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I’m gonna be stuck with that retard for the next three months. I just don’t want to get a headstart.”
“I totally understand.”
“You guys have fun. I guess I’ll see you when mom drops me off on Saturday. We’re not leaving until Tuesday though, right?”
“Yeah. What’d’you do tonight?”
“Nothing. Mom and Tom are at a friend’s house planning their trip. I ordered a pizza and watched TV.”
“Homework?”
“School’s over.”
“When?”
“Today.”
“How’d your last day of school go?”
“Fine.”
“Anything eventful happen?”
“Nope. Just said goodbye to Ishmael and Ahab.”
“What? I didn’t know there were Arabs at your school.”
“There aren’t. Forget it.”
“We’ll all just go to the store together for the trip, then, okay? And I know you. Don’t pack a bunch of shit you don’t need.”
“Okay.”
By the time you got back to doing nothing, it seemed like too much to bother doing. You went into the kitchen and wrote on a post-it that you then stuck to the orange juice carton in the fridge: “All men live enveloped in whale-lines.” In one hour, eighteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds Tom will get a drink from the carton, without a glass, and will pull the note away, glance at it, ball it up, and throw it in the trash. In one hour, eighteen minutes and twenty-nine seconds you will hear: “The fucking kid drank all the juice and put the empty carton back in the fridge.”
*
Before they got home, you watched some pornography in the living room. You would normally just watch it in the wee hours in your room, but you figured that since no one was home you could turn the volume up and rattle the walls with some whore’s fake moaning. Eating cold pizza suffering from a dearth of good, you wandered the house while Debi or Ginger or Amber Whatsherface got plowed in the derrière by what seemed like an abnormally large, detached penis for a half hour and some other broad plundered her booty with various conceptual apparati as you read the paper and did the jumble. You looked up as the loveless couple ended their hallway tryst exploring the volatile mysteries of the soul with some de rigueur face splooging. You took all the orange juice. You made sure not to leave the tape in the VCR, so you went ahead and put it away and just watched some more nothing as you waited for the fuckass who married your mom to come in and say something stupid followed by mom saying nothing at all as you sat there and looked at them and asked yourself what you’ll do now that you’re done pretending to be a grownup. She asks you if you ate and then recants the question upon encountering the pizza box. You ask if everything went well and everything got done and she says yeah and asks if anyone called. No. You tell her that Quincy will need some more food tomorrow. She says she’ll get some on her way home and where is he. You tell her on your bed, his usual place, already asleep. She says she’s got to get up in the morning, so can you watch TV in your bedroom. Jackhole is smoking on the back porch. You say goodnight and proceed to enfetter yourself to the torn up recliner in your corner and turn on the eleven o’clock news and stare at the strange small but large shih tzu licking himself then smiling at you with his too short hair and somehow adorable snaggletooth and open Michael Chabon’s Mysteries of Pittsburgh up to the part where he’s getting bent over by her and wonder if you’ll ever be in that position. And who it’ll be with. In eight years, seven months, and twenty-one days you’ll get a call while you’re at grad school from your mother that the cancer was too much and she held his paw and rubbed his little head and could not stop crying in the office or on the drive home. “The fucking kid drank all the orange juice and put the empty carton back in the fridge.” It’s going to be humid tomorrow says the man with the gray suit but he’s not a man ‘cause he doesn’t drink the same kind of orange juice as you. Nothing left to lose is just another way of saying freedom. In one year, four months, eight days, and seventeen hours, you will sit in the dark on the floor for three hours and sixteen minutes in their bedroom, your mom and Tom’s bedroom, before they get divorced and it’s just your mom’s bedroom, with his .38 pressed to your forehead, your sweaty trembling palms barely able to contain the grip as the first joint of your dripping thumb slides up and down the trigger. After you put it put it back where you got it and lie in the dark in your own bedroom, the bedroom that stays your bedroom after their divorce, you will hear the garage door open and hear them come in and greet Quincy and the universe will simply move on and on and on.
*
When you woke up your mouth tasted like morning. The juice next to the bed, Tom’s juice, was somehow dim now. Pallid’s not the right word but it is. Can juice go flat? A lifeless stillness haunted the glass, making it taste like yesterday. You took Quince out through the door in your bathroom, on the way throwing on some boxer shorts and a Pearl Jam shirt pro hac vice. You had no idea what time it was. The heat and humidity said it was quarterpast Florida, but the wet grass and steamy ground let on that you hadn’t really slept too late. A note from your mom in the kitchen said she fed him already and that she’d get dog food and that Tom should be home before her and to remember to turn the alarm on if you went out anywhere and that you should call your grandparents and try to see them if you can before you go.
*
“Hello?”
“Hey mama, én vagyok.” And it’s “muh-muh,” not “momma.” Greeting cards always thought you had an African-American grandmother.
“Oh, halló. Hogy vagy?”
“Jól. Te hogy vagy?”
“Eh, jól. Ön nem volna iskola?
“What?”
“Oh… ‘what’? No ‘what’.” But she said it like “vhat.”
“Sorry. Tessék? Remember, uh… nem értem nagyon magyrul.”
“Nem. Ön beszél Magyar jól. Nekem tetszik a út ön beszél magyar. Nekem tetszik hoz hallgatni ön. Ön beszél magyar jobb mint én beszél angol.”
“Köszönöm.”
“Szívesen. So you done with a school, now?”
“Igen. We ended yesterday. I just wanted to remind you I’ll be gone for the summer, remember? I’m going to Fort Jefferson with dad and Mary and her nephew.”
“Jézusmária. All on the boat?”
“Igen. Plus the two dogs.”
“Tessék?”
“Kutya. Kettő.”
“Ó istenem. So many for so small place. Too small, no?”
“Tell me about it.”
“Hol von a Fort Jefferson?”
“It’s out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico sort of, I don’t know.” You did, but you didn’t want to bother getting into it. “It’s about 70 miles away from Key West, I guess.”
“Távoli el ból minden. What will you do?”
“Probably a whole lot of nothing. I guess I’ll read. Sail. Lots of diving, that sort of thing.”
“Scuba diving?”
“Igen.”
“Oh, you make me worry.”
“Mama, I’ll be fine.”
“Why you go for so long?”
“Nem tudom. I think my dad may be bolond.”
“Yeah? He crazy?” The two of you always spoke in this weird kind of Hunglish variation. You figured Magyars couldn’t understand, and neither could Americans. It was just for you two or something. You were always convinced this must be the language she thought in. Years later you realized she could barely understand Hungarian and you had no idea how she communicated with anyone. Fifty years in America and pidgin was still all she could muster.
“That’s what I think.”
“Oh, heh-heh.” She didn’t so much laugh as actually say the word heh, followed immediately by its doppelganger.
“But I was wondering if I could see you before I go?”
“Mikor?”
“Mom’s taking me down to my dad’s tomorrow. Maybe you could get me and we could watch a movie or something?”
“Oh, what time do you thinking?”
Fuck. Your great-grandmother.
“Actually, forget the movie. Can you pick me up and maybe we could go over to Nagymama’s?”
“Oh, yes, that be nice.”
“Okay. So when can you get me?”
“Uh… give me a… kevés óra.”
“What… tessék?… sorry.”
“Give me few hours. I have some things to do. Then I come.”
“Okay, mama. Nagyon szeretlek. Szervusz.”
“Én is. Okay. Bye.”
You always assumed every exchange between the two of you would be completely incomprehensible to a native and even more baffling if anyone would have to read it.
*
“Hello?”
“Hey Papa, it’s me.” And it’s “puh-puh,” not “poppa.”
“Hey dude!” He always called you dude, or man, or some derivation. But he said it more like “dyoood.”
“Hey, would you mind if I came over tonight and we had dinner?”
“Maaaan… we can do whatever you want.” He always inflected “man” with this nasal intonation and an assload of extra vowels that would last seconds beyond what it needed to to have the fulfilled life that words should have.
“I’m going down to my dad’s in a couple of days for the summer and wanted to see you before I left.”
“Okay, dude. Just bring your little butt over here.”
“I’m going over to see Nagymama today, but I’ll tell mom I want to go to your house for dinner. Do you want Tom to come?”
“Up to you, buddy. Whatever you want. Whatever you want.”
“Okay. I’ll leave mom a message at work.”
“Okay, buddy. Do you want anything special? A steak?”
“Sure, Papa. Whatever’ll be great. Love you.”
“Love you too, buddy.”
*
After you called your mom’s office and left a message, you glimpsed a girl on TV that looked like the girl you had a massive crush on for the last two years and thought briefly about how those two years have come to an end and you’d likely never see her again. You wondered how long it would be before you forgot about her. The girl at school didn’t know you liked her. You didn’t think she knew your name. She knew who you were, but you don’t think she knew you. Weird that you can not know the name of the guy who wants to crawl inside you and live there and get mail delivered there and only come out on the rarest of occasions. Weird. Did she know how fascinating she was? The way she chewed on her left middle fingernail, but not the others, so that one was significantly shorter and slightly more mangled than the others? The little mole in front of her left ear, which you had imagined every day at school for two years, to feel like the slightest bump under your lips as you grazed the smallness of her cheek and ears and neck. In four years and thirteen days you will have entirely forgotten she ever existed and none of her will remain. Ashes blown through time, they will all be gone, fingernail, mole and all. Weird.
*
You decided you should jerk off and take a shower before your grandmother picked you up.
*
You stare at the dog’s underbite and little snaggletooth for a while and realize that you breathe deeply and its hard, find your inhaler, take three puffs after exhaling three times and watch some TV even though nothing’s on and then you open that sealed in little hermetic utopia where the fresher keeps things fresh and the crisper keeps things crisp so long as they didn’t wear out their welcome and become rude and start to smell like last week, a world inhabited by the strangeness of bologna and its roommate port wine cheese which was named after a stain on someone’s face apparently and juice cartons to be emptied and apples since you’re in Florida along with chips and bread and other things that really shouldn’t be eaten cold but better to be eaten cold than by ants or air or any other overwhelming streaks of time and so you stare into the fridge long enough to know that it’s been too long and if your mother were there she’d have told you to close the door long ago but you’re not even hungry you just like grazing as you always have and so you close the door and swallow an emptiness that wasn’t even there before but somehow reminds you that you’re insanely human and riding a wave of that moment into the living room where the next scene from last night’s porno is fuck fuck fucking until it’s spraying itself all over the inside of the TV set and there are no palabras left en el mundo to describe its joy and so you cry a little for it on the inside as the dog licks its balls and smiles a snaggletooth smile that says hey what’s up with that leftover pizza and you wish you could get as excited about your own dick as the TV seems to be about that frightening explosion of manhood that’s currently boring in and out of the girl with the sunshine glow and the necklace around her waist and you wish you could cum like that guy and have it cross universes and light years and end up impregnating the galaxy with your awesomeness and you look down at that very awesomeness in its tumescent state and decide something needs to be done, but the screeching bird outside seems to be trying to object on moral grounds and you just want it to shut the fuck up or choke on its mother-flavored vomit or at least leave as you wander toward the bathroom to catch sight of the oily skinsack you call a face that reminded you why everyone says puberty sucks and life sucks and being young sucks and getting old sucks and sitting in front of the wrong faggot sucks and being a dork sucks and how that sucking never gets reciprocated as you look down at the cock that’s made its way into your hand and is looking at you with its sad eye asking when someone else is going to suck for a change and how would he go about getting in on that, but instead he’s just going to have to settle yet again for your hand and so in the shower you both step, where the cool water rains down on you and you take some into your mouth and spit it back out seeing if you can hit the ceiling but it just kind of sprays up to the showerhead and onto the wall behind it, and your hair is now thick with the creamy shampoo then washed out and rinsed then repeated and on to the conditioner, which you leave in, as recommended, while your hand is now sufficiently soapy and is stroke stroke stroking and your left hand makes its way into the action and starts playing with your balls, first stroking softly, then squeezing and really getting into it and you’re really enjoying this and you can tell your little friend is too because as you look down and let go, a tiny eye is staring back at you, straight up, like a scimitar in its rigid glory, it stands almost parallel with your torso and, for a brief moment, the briefest of infinitesimal nanoseconds of wonder you yourself wonder that kind of wonder that’s worth wondering about whether there was some kind of weird anaphraxitic condition you could get if you came too many times in one day but you really couldn’t give a fuck because the thoughts were jiggled away by titties and titties and titties and pussies and buttholes and your tongue going around and in and out of all of them and her kneeling in front of you saying all those dirty things you want to hear and she’s tonguing your balls spiritually through your left hand and so you’re thump thump thumping away and stroking off those slings and arrows of outrageous fortune when you hear the garage door open since you left the bathroom door open and you realize that stepfathers are assholes and there’s a porn in the living room VCR and you deice away any notion that anyone in the world would understand this moment and you jump out of the shower, covered in soap and opprobrium and the shampoo is mixing into the abasement and debasement and other asements already stinging your eyes and so with little humility and lots of gumption you make your way against the ticking clock to snatch the tape from the VCR, leaving as little a soapy trail as possible, and make your way back into the bathroom to quickly toss it under the sink and close, and lock, the door, slipping, as God would not doubt have been watching and laughing at this point, your left foot first going into the air at speeds you had yet to even imagine existed, whereas your right foot was quick to follow your left hand was quicker in grabbing the only thing in range or logic, the towelbar, your towelbar, not the guest towelbar, and with all your weight and might manage to pull it down onto the cool and hard, oh so very hard and painful, floor below, your neck hitting first, followed by the back of your head, which does a little bounce as if to one up your collarbone, with the rest of your lumbering “husky” load following suit, and, had shampoo, no conditioner, not already been stinging the everloving shit out of your eyes and blinding you a little with its detangling properties you would have seen the billions of ceramic worlds come crashing down into yours as the former towelbar became a new scar and hole for which explanations would be required for both, and as you’re lying on the floor staring up at the counter, that frighteningly green counter with the faux marble ambitions and the painfully formicaish realities you realize, you finally realize, that that look it’s been giving you these past years as you came on its surface time after time after time has been one not of cupidity or annoyance as you had hoped but of sadness coupled with simple old-fashioned commiseration and you think that this is nothing like real life and that you now must be some kind of character in a novel or something and you wonder if jerking off is worth this but you know that it must be since this seems to always happen the same except that it’s usually totally different and you wonder how long you’ve been lying there getting a tsk tsk from father time looking down on you with the shampoo, no conditioner, in your eyes and the water puddling under your huskiness, as they say, on the floor and so it makes sense that, between the yelping, girlish ahhhhhh you let out combined with the crashing breaking thumping and other onomatopoeic Batman-esque adjectives run amok in the bathroom with you, Tom should be outside the door, shaking the handle asking, in genuine concern you think, “Are you okay? What happened?” to which the only reply is “nothing,” “I slipped,” or “I’m okay” or “the towelbar,” your towelbar, not the guest towelbar, “just tried to kill me!!!” and so he further asks what’s going on and you say you were getting in the shower but got out to take your glasses off and slipped and you’ll deal with the towelbar later even though both of you know you won’t because you know it will somehow just have been fixed while you were gone for the summer and you say you’re going to finish getting ready because mama’s coming to pick you up later and you’re fine and not to worry and he says something about heading back to work and to remember to turn the alarm on when you leave and to be more careful and – amidst all this fucking bullshit you call just another morning – you look down and someone apparently could give fuckall about your near death experience and is still wanting attention, and you, realizing you shouldn’t let it go to waste since you were enjoying yourself before the brief interruption, climb battered and bruised back into the rainfall and resoap up and resume the position and your legs starts to tighten and twitch and your toes curl up and your left hand spasms like a tard as your right tightens its grip and then, somewhere, metaphorical geysers erupt from rainbow volcanoes of music as the train further bores into the tunnel while an oil derrick explodes into a grimy faultless cliché of purity where in real life you fire a stream three and half feet in front of you more or less glazing the tub faucet and surrounding tile and after the next four subsiding smaller jets you finally are left with a gooey mess on your right hand that looks like soap with little thicker shinier glazyer rivers of you running through it and as you let the falling water rinse away your little sins you try to think of a witty quote to write on a post-it and leave on the faucet but you realize no one would get it, nor would they want to, and so you finish your business and then your other business, and move the tape from the bathroom back to the bottom drawer under the shit you never use and you think about shooting a few baskets outside but it’s already too hot and will stay too hot and too humid and so you just sit down and turn on the TV and call your father to leave a message.
*
To which he replied on your completely unnecessary private line seven hours, twelve minutes, and eighteen seconds later: “Hey, I just got into a fight with Mary because of you, so I’m telling you right now that I don’t need you acting like a fucking asshole like you always do this summer. I know you don’t like Gibs that much, but save me the headache or I’ll tear your ass down a notch, okay? And lay off the poetry bullshit and the big words. You’re hard enough to be around most of the time, so keep that shit to yourself. And make up your goddamned mind when you’re coming down.” Your father’s bizarre moral code meant he never actually hit you, he just scared the shit out of you on such a regular basis that you constantly lived in such a state of fear and repulsion and desperation that a beating would’ve probably done you good in the long run. It’s not like you didn’t deserve it. Whenever he asked you something you always had the wrong answer. The message he left on your answering machine, which was enough for your mom and Tom to express their disdain at your spending the summer with anyone who would leave a message like that on an answering machine, let alone for their thirteen year old son, was the result of a message you left for him seven hours, twelve minutes, and two seconds earlier:
“Hey, I’m going to come down later. I know you had a plan and stuff, but it just seems like we’ll be hanging out at the beach for a while before leaving. I’d rather stay home until right before we left. Talk to you later.”
This was clearly a wrong answer type of message.
*
The inside of your grandmother’s car was a lot like the inside of her home. It smelled like her, which is to say it smelled like nothing else, and really couldn’t have, and it was decorated within an inch of its life. There was a family of troll dolls, for example, that lived in the back window, likely some gypsy branch on the family tree primarily rooted in the kin who lived a more permanent lifestyle on more or less any flat surface in her house. There were stuffed animals baking to death in the back window with the sad trolls and their faded, once electric hair and the seats were covered with beach towels bought to remind everyone of better times: “Aloha from Hawaii.” “Jamaica me crazy.” “Goombay the day away in Nassau.” You will love this one day, but only in the way nostalgia skews things so you love them but don’t know why. The way her small hands clutched the wheel always at ten and two and she craned her neck to see over that said wheel which taunted her five foot nothing frame. But that never stopped her from being your chauffer most of your life. With a dickhead for a father who was always in and out of the picture, a mom who worked two jobs, a grandfather who worked a hundred hours a week, and, as of late, a smudged perineum of a stepfather doing his best to pretend you don’t exist, it was always mama to take you to this or take you to that. And as the years accumulated and your activities inversely dwindled it was often back to her house for some kind of Hungarian leftover or deep fried hotdogs and bologna and hours of Thundercats and Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers and days you could never return to, but would forever want to live in.
“Are you going to see Mr. Wonderful?” This was her name for her ex-husband, your grandfather. She pronounced it “vahndafool” or, alternatively, “awthatsonofabitchasshole.” In her book, sins apparently couldn’t be washed away. And those stains seemed to get larger and larger over the years. But, faute de mieux, they both loved you with their everything and you knew it to be so, so all was right and true with them for you, if not for each other.
“Yeah. We’re having dinner with him tonight.”
“What? A steak? Steak. Steak. Always steak.” Apparently she was just as burnt out with him being a butcher as he was.
“Yeah. Probably a steak.”
“Eh…” Except she added an accent of derision in addition to the extra vowels, before turning to you: “Why was you limping when you got in the car? Fáj a lábfejem?”
“Tessék?”
“Your foot? What you do this time? Does it hurt?”
Before she picked you up you stared at yourself in the mirror for a while. You could see the peachfuzz darkening. Not in that cool way, but in that way that made it really apparent you were floating somewhere in the limen. You’d probably need more school clothes before it started. Your mom liked to take you to Sawgrass Mills in Lauderdale, plus she could see some friends over there that way. You imagined she was already seeing the guy she’d marry six or seven years later. He’s a good one, that one, you’ll see. You were getting dressed knowing mama would be there in a few minutes when you were throwing yourself around your room to some Clash song that really works for throwing yourself around your room and slammed your right ankle into the wood futon frame at right ankle height. If you’d still had the soft-sided waterbed you got rid of a few months prior, you’d still have found a way to hurt yourself on it. Now you just had a scraped foot and some bloody spots that looked like your bed attacked and scratched you. That and porn got you again. It had been about five hours since the bathroom incident. You had cleaned up the hole in the wall, which is to say you picked up the remnants of the towelbar and set them on the counter after your shower. You then dicked around in your room packing for awhile while Quincy just watched in bewilderment. Then he licked his useless balls. Mama called. She’d be there in an hour. Time to stroke out another one you thought. This time two girls were going at it with a purple dildo. One of them bit the end off in a fit of passion. It scared you. It was actually one of the least erotic things you’d ever seen. It didn’t make you lose your hard-on though. The doorbell. Your pants are around your ankles and your slobbery hand is going up and down and the doorbell rings again and you run to the window, tripping out of your shorts, see it’s Mama’s underwearstaincolored Taurus and grab the tape to put it away. You immediately slip, on carpet somehow, with the arch of your foot, your right foot, landing squarely in the protruding corner between the living room and your hallway. You can’t catch your breath on the floor. Need to use the inhaler again. You think you just broke your foot. The dog licks your face. You yell “Gimme a minute” so she’ll stop ringing the doorbell. Put the tape away. Wash your dick and hands. Put your pants on and pull the belt tight against your boner so she can’t see it. Open the door. The alarm goes off. After you both recover from your minor coronaries, and you turned off the screeching hellscream, it occured to you that Tom must have set it. He knew you were home. Was it a joke? Did he forget? Mama doesn’t care. Neither does Quincy. You leave him a treat. Reset the alarm. And you go.
It hurt, but not bad enough to worry about. “Nem nagyon fáj.” Two years, four months, eleven days, and thirty-one hours later you would do the exact same thing again, amazingly, and this time would be barely able to stand up long enough to call your neighbor to drive you to the hospital. Don’t know what you did the first time since you never did anything but limp for a few hours, but round two definitely went to the cornerbeam. Countless shattered tiny bones and two crutches later you realized the clear benefits of working at Winn-Dixie with a broken foot. No one asked you to do anything. You’d consider rebreaking bones on seventeen separate occasions later in life. You never had the guts to follow through. You did, however, break something five other times at the most inopportune moments possible, but that is the story of your life and other clichés. On one occasion you will smash your fingers in a drawer to make yourself stop thinking about the girl and on another will bang your head against the shower wall just so you could stop thinking all together.
“Thanks for picking me up. I know it’s really out of your way.”
“No…” Actually, almost twelve miles to your house, then a seventeen mile u-turn back to her mother’s who lived on as opposite a side of the town as was cartographically imaginable. If you’d have asked mama to drive you by Neptune just so you could look for an old afrobeat pressing at an appliance shop that sold old records out of the back, she’d have done it for you. And the old woman would too, just sit and wait in the car, as if forever, like a stone deep in a riverbed, the world passing by.
*
It’s weird. Not weird like the girl at school thing, but weird. A great-grandmother who was smaller than you by the time you were ten. A miniature mama who towered over her. She seemed so real at that moment, but moments are so unreal. It would only be ninety-seven days before the car wouldn’t slow down and she was knocked from her three-wheel bike your uncles, her sons, your great-uncles, but you called them uncles since you had no regular uncles and they were the same age as your mom, the bike they got her and there was the problem in her brain and she never woke up and they took her back to mama’s and your mother held her hand in those last moments and your grandmother said she heard her calling from another room when no one else did. It’s weird. All your memories of her now are like snapshots. Infected with the still images of photographs from your life and hers and that middle place on your existential ven diagrams where you briefly overlapped. Snapshots of a life you wanted to know more of and never would. Stories you would never again hear. Stories she never would have told you to begin with, mixed with colors and smells and tastes that all keep you coming back to this place with the plastic tablecloth with the shiny flowers and the underneath that’s inexplicably fuzzy. This place that smells like frying bundás kenyér or the garlic and duck fat she’d rub all over toast for you for breakfast when you were little. The way her house, like mama’s, was like jumping into the deep end of gaudiness, a kind of temple of tacky, a memento mori of mawkish meanderings. Her little, tiny voice that was sticky, like honey, like you’d want it to drape you as you slept and tell you everything was fine. The way she’d dress you up as gypsy princess. Dress, earrings, makeup. Her shoes fit you when you were fourish. The whole thing was very, well, ethnic. You guess she wanted a great-granddaughter, but that never stopped her. The way she’d tilt her head when she smiled and laughed. Hands, tiny hands smaller than a child’s, that were soft as anything you’d ever felt and smooth as anything you’d ever touch. The way she’d smile when her grandchildren called her. The way she’d comfort your grandmother in her hours of need. Mama was at least in her fifties when she got divorced, but Nagymama held her for hours, like the years had never passed, and life hadn’t trundled its way through. She barely spoke English, amazingly even her Hunglish wasn’t very good, and her husband was a maniac ex-smuggler who was always threatening to castrate you. But her backyard always smelled like gladiolus and hibiscus and she was always in her garden. In decades to come it will be hard for you to imagine the real her. You get these vague visions of her doddling around in her little terrycloth tubetop onepiece, the kind Mama always wears too, with her tacky hat. All the pictures of her she’s posing, like she’s a model. Foot always at a small angle. Hand on her hip. Head titled just oh so. From the first to the last, every picture of her is like this. Your grandmother looks like someone’s killing her in all the pictures you’ve seen, and your grandfather just looks like the life of the party, as if he had to take the lampshade off his head to pose for the picture, but Mama and Nagymama couldn’t have been more different, except when they weren’t. Like on this day when you were eating pörkölt and she was wearing a little housecoat and Mama was in a tube top and her short dyke haircut she’d had your whole life. They’re asking you about the summer and what you’ll be doing and telling you how much they’ll miss you and you’re eating and trying your best to remember what little Hungarian you know and they ask you how you did in school and you lie and say okay when you really did awful and your mother hasn’t told them yet, so you let them believe the lie for a little while. What books will you be taking? How you read so much? Why so smart with such bad grades? Why you don’t try? On a paper napkin decorated with cartoon characters you write, but you don’t know why, “I sometimes wonder if it’s true that who is what and what is who.” Mama looks at it. “That’s beautiful.” Or byooteefool. “I didn’t write it. It’s from Winnie the Pooh.” “The cartoon?” “No, the book.” “I don’t get it.” “But you said it was beautiful.” “I thought you write it.” “What difference is that?” “Everything you write beautiful.” “That doesn’t make any sense.” “Stop it. I don’t have to make sense.”
The phone rang.
And, after she placed her paring knife in the pocket of her apron, you watched as Nagymama tinies and cutes her way over to the phone hanging near the door into the kitchen. Why do Hungarians always hang out in their garages? In Florida? “Because I don’t like the stove.” That’s what they say. “Gas. It’s better.” That’s what they say. And so little women, always shorter than you, sat in garages with carpeted floors and tables and chairs and cooked at Coleman propane stoves and taught their grandchildren and greatgrandchildren how to cut onions and meat with a paring knife, always a paring knife, never any other kind of knife, on insignificant cutting boards with no more surface area than that of a tiny book. Years later Mama would use the hood of her car for extra counter space when her brothers, your great uncles, the ones you just called uncles, insisted she park in the garage. It was all so cheap and tacky and rich and wonderful and unimaginable and unforgettable and… and…
“Hello?.... Oh, halló. Hogy vagy?... Igen, én lesz itt… Igen, ő és -a anya van itt… Ő tehát szúró, miért csinál ő csinál tehát rossz ban iskola?... Tudom… Ő tehát édes… Tudom… Szeretlek túl… Itt ő…” …as best you could decipher it, “Yes, I’ll be here…. Yes, he and your mother are here… He’s so smart, why does he do so bad in school?... I know… He’s so sweet… I know… I love you too. Here he is.”
She handed the phone to you.
“Hey?”
“Hey ‘hey.’ Do we absolutely have to go to your grandfather’s tonight?”
“Why?”
“I’m just asking.”
“Well. You’re the one who told me I should see them before I go.”
“We’ll have dinner with him tomorrow. Did you call your father like you said you were going to?”
“Yeah. Should I call Papa and tell him we’ll do it tomorrow?”
“I already did when I got your message.”
“Are you going to be really late tonight?”
“No. I told them I’m leaving at five no matter what.”
You look at the clock. The kind that looks like Fritz the Cat with its tail that flaps with time and the paranoid eyes that don’t really move because of the way Nagymama gypsyrigged it up on a nail over the door leading outside. Fritz said it was 2:30, so you said, “It’s 2:30. Do you want to just pick me up here or at mama’s?”
“Sure.”
“I was going to get Mama to take me over to the thrift store, so you just want to get me at her house?”
“Actually, I need to have your Nagymama sign something so can you just have Mama take you back there?”
“Okay.”
“See you then. I love you. Did you set the alarm?”
“Yes.”
“I said I love you.”
“Love you too.”
*
The Kiwanis thrift store on 47th Terrace smelled like old people and the way their children had stopped caring. Mountains of clothes and records and books. It was one of your favorite places. A place where you got everything you didn’t need and because it was so cheap you didn’t care. Spending money at the thrift store wasn’t even like spending real money. You could get a trunkful of shit you’d eventually just donate to back to this or a different thrift store for ten bucks and you’d be entertained for days. There was a girl in the store, her fingers wandering through the tchotchke villages. She was thin, with big eyes and red hair. Like how a Japanese comic book artist would imagine a redheaded white girl. Super-pale and with a scarf. In May. A hickey maybe? Would you ever know such things? Her hair was short, but in that cool way. At least that’s what you thought. She’d be the type of girl to date a guy with horn-rimmed glasses you thought. She’d’ve been a beatnik you thought. She’d be the type of girl who’d carry a lunchbox for a purse to be unique and quirky but really for attention and to fit in. Even fleeting hipness needs conformity. Apparently after her own unsuccessful reconnoitering, her vanilla friend found the girl with the strange giggle under the Emmet Kelly oil painting that haunted you with its depressive nostalgia of nothing, a small sailboat made of seashells glued together clutched in her spindly fingers. Someone bought that fetish to the god of tackiness somewhere like the Shell Factory and likely died leaving it to be dumped here and found and enjoyed with irony by girls who are old enough to look silly giggling but not know it. “Let’s give this to Professor B,” said the first girl. “Oh my god, that’s so funny,” said her friend, oblivious that you’re six feet away and more or less listening in without even pretending to do something else, “how much is that thing?” “Oh, um, fifty cents,” for something no one ever loved. “It’ll be like: ‘Here Charles Burkhart. This is for you.’” That last bit she said in the creepy childlike psychopath voice that sends a chill up a normal person’s spine or wherever normal people get chills when they’re not in clichés. You came here to find books among the hoary remains of dead snowbirds’ junk. Future dabblers in isms (lesbian and vegetarian from the look of her Converse All Stars and Big Bird t-shirt) apparently come here for the irony.
Mama talked to one of her friends who volunteers there while patiently waiting for her inexplicably “wheredidhecomefrom?” grandson to bring his plunder to the counter; what could it be this time, old Herb Alpert records (especially the one with the girl with the whipped cream), a camelhair trench coat two sizes two big, a completely stupid ushanka, tattered Tom Robbins novels, a 3 iron, snow shoes, a painting of the sad hobo in whiteface, the sailboat of seashells? “Mama, I can’t find anything.”
Why, when old people move to the southern peninsular land of the newly wed and nearly dead, do they bring their stuff from the old country? Couldn’t some thrift store in Cleveland do better with a camelhair coat, idiot mittens with the string tethering them to each other? Why Cape Coral for seventy-five cents? You always assumed their kids brought it in when they died, but why bring it to Florida in the first place? You knew geriatrics are always cold, but really? On the way to the car, it occurs to you that you won’t be getting to come shitshopping with your mama for a while. “Thanks for taking me places like this.” “Oh, you welcome.” “I love you.” A little tear, maybe, from her. But when you hugged her all you could think was, you’ll likely be even taller than her the next time you do this.
What if she’s the one shrinking and you’re staying the same?
Back at Nagymama’s you tried to spoil your dinner with your mom by stuffing yourself with a plate of katona, little soldiers, a small battalion of some peppers and tomatoes and scallions with a little salt and some kolbasz, which you always peeled, and a small pile of körözött. Mama looked at you funny. You had no idea where Nagymama even was, you assumed taking a shower or something. You were about as observant as every other teenager apparently.
“Why you peel?”
“Cause I don’t like the skin. It’s gross.”
“Ah. It’s not gross.” Nope. She was wrong. Dried hog casing is pretty fucking gross and not a lot’s going to change that.
“Eat some bread”
“I don’t want any.”
“You need to eat some bread or you’ll get stomachache.”
“Mama, I think that’s an old wives’ tale. I don’t think that does anything.”
“Psh. Old wife tale. What? Just eat the bread, so it’s not so greasy.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“The bread, when you eat it, it soaks up grease from the kolbasz.”
“But, you ate the bread, which means you still ate the grease.”
“But the grease is in the bread.”
“Which is in your stomach right next to the kolbasz.”
“Stop arguing. What, you want to get stomachache?”
“No, but I don’t think eating bread will do anything.”
“But the bread soak up the grease.”
“Yeah, I get that the bread soaks up the grease, but... Okay, follow me here. The kolbasz is greasy, right? Igen?”
“Igen.”
“Igen? And the bread, according to you, soaks up the grease?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But you eat the bread with the kolbasz.”
“So you don’t get stomachache.”
“Oh, I get where you’re going, but listen. You eat the kolbasz that’s greasy, and you eat the bread to soak up the grease. But the kolbasz and the bread go to the same place. Which means that the grease is still in your stomach.”
“Don’t argue. The grease is in the bread.”
“Which is in your stomach!”
“Don’t argue.”
“But that makes no sense.” And so it went as did most of your conversations with your grandmother. You were kind of like Abbot and Costello with no one to appreciate your timing or brilliance.
*
You don’t know when your mom made Ruby Tuesday’s a “thing.” You guys’ “thing.” You remember Perkins when you were little. She’d always get a French dip. But Ruby Tuesday’s is your “thing.” You ask her if she’d mind if you ran over to the bookstore, the good one, Ive’s, with books people should read and not that shitty Waldenbooks with books stupid people want to read, and she says okay but not to spend hours since she’s had a long week and doesn’t want to stand around while you meander through every printed word ever written.
Your stomach hurt.
Looking at your plate of fried wasn’t helping. Mozzarella sticks. Chicken fingers. Mushrooms. All smiling back at you telling you you should’ve eaten the bread.
“I want to give you some money to take with you.”
“I don’t think I’m gonna need any.”
“I just want you to take it.”
“I don’t think I’ll have anything to spend it on.”
“Well, you know if you do your cheapass father isn’t going to pay for it, so I’ll just feel better if you have some.”
*
That night, you couldn’t sleep. Light crept in through the window and shadowed an aqualine beak across your closet door. You thought about how you’d only have this comfy bed a few more comfy nights and how that thinking was keeping you up. You thought about Quincy, his head on your pillow, and how he vomited in your ear one morning and you forgave him an hour later just for being him. You thought of the time your mom told you you had a wet dream and it was okay and how you argued back explaining that it was actually just Pledge spray that had leaked when you cleaned your room and she didn’t believe you and you thought that was weird since your semen wasn’t anything like a cleaning product. And how that convinced you for the next eight years that there was something wrong with your semen. Like that guy’s boss in that movie where he had panties on his head. You thought of how many nocturnes would go emissionless, and you realized you had never had a wet dream. in fact. In sixteen years, three months, two weeks, seventeen hours, and eleven minutes it would occur to you in the most striking way that you, in fact, had never had a wet dream. Yet in your dreams you would ejaculate regularly, albeit perhaps not that descriptively clinically. Indeed, you would three times in your dream that very night. Yet you awoke to a dry bed and an erection. Bully for you. Why, when dogs stretch, do they seem oblivious to everyone around them? This thought wasn’t unique to this moment, but Quincy’s paw in your ear as he yawns and readjusts so his weight is pressing into your shoulder and neck had just brought it to mind. Most of the dogs in your life have seen you as furniture. At least not a hydrant you supposed.
It was too quiet.
You turned on a fan to drown out the silence and watched as sinuous penumbras war with glinting adumbrations on the flickered wall above. Can tonal ranges be sepulchral? You supposed they were by definition.
*
Papa, of course, had prepared a meal for forty. Since you gave him a day’s notice, you shouldn’t have been surprised when you saw he had made turkey soup, of which only about a bowl and a half of broth will get eaten with a couple of carrots and a handful of noodles. This no doubt required him, yesterday, the day you called, to make a turkey. The bird would cook for the day, only to be carved up and thrown into a pot like it was a leftover from a Thanksgiving in the summer that never happened, the Thanksgiving, not the summer. This was how he cooked. This was normal. This was the last meal. The last chance to devour and nourish and prepare for a possible end of days. This made sense when you thought about what he went through in 1956. To truly understand your grandfather’s paranoid refugee mentality, one needs only to take a brief numismatic excursion. He was never more than five feet from a gun. He never walked around with less than a thousand dollars in his pocket. He made perfect sense when he explained it all. He told you to break Gibs’ nose the first argument you got into. That would make it the last. Lunatic exhortations are always the best recipe. The soup was delicious. Simple. Broth, a couple of carrots, a handful of noodles.
He made steak.
He made perfect sense.
Like your grandmother, he always talked like it might be the last time you’d see him. There was this horrible ghost feeling that sank through the air. Like one day your grandfather wouldn’t be able to take care of himself. Like he’d wrestle with what he’d imagine to be his responsibilities and his desires and you’d go a while without hearing from him. The phone would ring and messages would be left and there’d be nothing to do but call your aunt or your mother to check on him and they’d find him. And the blood sprayed all over the wall and floor. And coming out of his mouth. And the gun in his hand. And they’d have seen it coming. But as you chewed your asparagus and wondered how long it would take for your pee to smell funny, all you could do was pray that that’d not be how the story ends. In twenty-one years, three months, and four days, his daughter’s, your mom’s sister’s, ashes would be in your backpack as you carried her to the Gulf to drift forever and your grandfather, her father, will refuse to come with you and he’ll be waiting for you in the chair he’s in now.
He made perfect sense.
He made steak.
That’s what you thought when you were lying in bed that night. Not about how soon you’d be having to put up with Gibs or Mary or your dad or how there’d be no privacy and what if you needed to jerk off or what Tom might do to your mom when you went away or how awesome it might be to get to see something beautiful or how beautiful it might be to get to see something awesome or how much diving you’d get to do or the people you might meet or the books you’ll get a chance to read or the fish you’ll get to eat or the fish that might try to eat you or Benny Hill or pizza or Starbuck or the girl. You thought, for an old bohunk, he makes a mean steak. You followed that thought with a memory of the time fifteen months, eight days, seven hours, and thirty-nine minutes earlier when you woke up on his couch after a nap with your hand accidentally stuck between the cushions holding a gun, the gun he apparently had always kept there, your finger on the trigger. You thought about how you held it so tightly and tried to fall back asleep and prayed it would hurt only for an instant, or maybe not at all.
Millions of miles from here, under the tawny clouds and heavy skies, a solidus moon was slung low against a quiet horizon. You could see its glow from your bedroom window, shining its empty, pale version of night’s dawn across the nothingness of fields beyond. It didn’t have to listen to Tom yell at its mother. It didn’t have to worry about the days and weeks to come with Mary, Gibs, and the lunatic you call a dad. It just had to be. Perhaps the moon is content being the moon, and not being a part of all that it illuminates against the sun’s disappearing rest. You hope, for its sake, it is. At thirteen you already know your forehead’s way too big. That means either you’re going bald or you’re just ugly. Either way, your winning streak continues. You look up your last name in the dictionary. Nothing useful. Maybe in French it sounds like you’re getting bent over and fucked. Who knows? Ambsace is just a synonym for the boy in the mirror.
You think you think too much in the dark. This worries you when you think about the dark to come. No television. Just an empty sea in all directions. And Gibs snoring a few feet away. You’d never slept in a room with another person for more than one night. Did you remember to take your Zoloft today? You did, didn’t you?
Perhaps, you thought, you should think less, use the summer to just be stupid. Don’t bring any books. Just some rock and roll and sunscreen and a good time. Perhaps you could hear the songs you sing yourself to sleep with if you listened closely enough. Melismatic horseshit to soothe the savage beasts. Perhaps for Quincy it will be enough to say goodbye in the morning and forget who you are by dinner. Perhaps you should close your eyes and not try to adjust to the light. Perhaps no one is waiting outside the window for you to fall asleep. Perhaps no one will be behind your shower curtain in the morning. Perhaps behind the posturing and pretentions you are thirteen years old. Perhaps you watch too many people having sex. Perhaps Gibs is the smart one. Perhaps the dogs are the smart ones. Perhaps you’re just trading one empty space for another. Perhaps in eighteen years, two months, and eleven days you’ll come back to this place and find it an unrecognizable row of little boxes where there was once only your house and an infinite humid veldt. Perhaps words are just letters strung together. Perhaps you’ll dream tonight again about an endless tightrope slacked over an angry crashing sea as you walk without yourself out on the edge of forever. Perhaps you are not you. Perhaps for your mother and your father, a summer of you at sea, at the mercy of las tortugas, would be a relief. Perhaps your father would try and have a son, and your mother would try and have a life of her own. Perhaps a summer’s fiction would write us all some wrongs. You don’t know what you’re doing.
*
Perhaps time could be regained.
*
Perhaps the sea will eventually silence.
2.
You put the saucepan to your ear like it was a conch from the deep. “I can hear Martha Stewart.” Blank looks. The usual. Wandering around Sam’s Club in the middle of the morning on a weekday, one can’t help but feel a little sad and lonely for the world. As you played with the pots and pans, then moved on to reconnoiter absolutely nothing in particular, the more serious trio within your motley quartet were going through with the steady acquisition of supplies while still making time to look at you in dismay, wonder, and embitterment, with utter concordance.
“Hey Gibs!” Your shouting seemed to get the attention of no one. Again. This time you got everyone’s attention. Such a fine line, you thought. “This place has got a bunch of those video games you’re into. Think you’ll be able to go a few weeks without?”
“Yeah. I think I’ll be fine. Will you?” You loved retorts that meant nothing. Gibs clearly forgot that you didn’t play video games, even though you had steadily bitched about your dilemma throughout the tenure of your forced ménage. You should know this about yourself. You were born in 1978 and were a boy and were white so when you turned nine or so you wanted a video game system. All your friends, really everyone on the planet you thought, got a Nintendo. You begged, pleaded for one. You got a Sega. Your friends would all trade games. You didn’t know anyone with a Sega. You saw them all having fun and speaking their own language and you didn’t know how to use the controller when they let you play and so you always died right away and never got that many turns to try and die again because they were all good and never died and played forever. You went to the video store and they didn’t rent that kind of game system they told you. You went to Toys R Us and they were too expensive. So you played the games it came with. The games that came with the game console your mom got you. The one she couldn’t afford and you didn’t want and resented owning and made you jealous of your friends. You were a superficial piece of human garbage and less than a score of years later you’d regret feeling that way and hate that you can’t dissociate yourself from memories of how unappreciative you were toward your mom. But Gibs was just another faggot with a Nintendo and you hated him for it because that’s the kind of thing that keeps the world turning, ticking, and tocking. Fuck Gibs and his fucking Nintendo.
“I think so. I’ll likely bring some books with me. Can you read?”
“Of course I can read.” The clarity and sincerity of his response was frightening not simply in that he thought your question was genuine, but moreso because of the stumbling way he responded to it: “Why wouldn’t you think I can’t read?” This falter was a star on which you had to hitch yourself.
“Other than the apparent misunderstanding of double negatives? I don’t know. Maybe because words are different than pictures?”
Mary just stared at you in annoyance. Your dad felt the storm brewing. “Gibs, why don’t you help me get something.” The sonofabitch left you there in the aisle alone with her. You looked down at the floor. It looked back at you with a kind of sadness, as if to say, better you than me.
“Look, you don’t have to be cool all the time to try and feel like you’re better than him.”
You knew you were better than him. No you didn’t.
“I wasn’t trying to be cool.” You puled, You were puling. Thousands more of the same moments will follow.
“Whatever. He doesn’t even get when you’re being ironic. You mine as well get used to him.” She said “mine as well.” This was one of those moments where you had to choose your battles and you had already thought of something cruel to say about the beginning of her sentence. You couldn’t keep up with her. She also said “combinding” instead of “combining.” It made you nervous that people could talk like her and still function in the world. No it didn’t. It made you nervous that you will have to function in their world.
“I wasn’t being ironic.” This you said in your most ironic tone. “At least not in a semantic way. I was being sardonic. It was wasted in any event, since your nephew’s too fucking stupid to know the difference.”
You knew the truth though was that she was too fucking stupid to know the difference. The truth was you were too fucking smart to think anyone gave a shit about the difference. No one does. Ever. It’s their scene, man, you’re just going to live in it.
She just closed her sad eyes and let out a sad sigh and pinched the sad bridge of her sad nose and turned away from you as the sad cart with the sad, squeaky wheel took her side and left you alone in the sad cyclopean cavern of commerce.
Your dad and Gibs came back with several cases of ginger ale. He had done the math and got enough for you and Gibs to be allotted two sodas a day for the duration of the summer. You wanted a little more variety.
“Why do you get to pick? Can’t I have a say?”
“Nope. I’m paying. You’re shit out of luck.”
If radio killed print and video killed the radio star then capitalism killed democracy. Being a parent must feel like being God sometimes if God got annoyed at everyone. Gibs just laughed and snorted that snort he did and tried to make this a moment that seemed like he was on their side. And not like a cutesy laughing snort, which some men find endearing in women for reasons completely baffling to you, maybe it’s because it’s a thing they did to her, like they had this power, like they felt like they made her cum or something, not like that, but like an adenoidal-snoring-while-he-was-still-awake-and-it-never-occurred-to-him-not-to-make-such-a-horrific-noise-in-polite-company kind of way. Like a weird cocaine draw that sounded like the industrial sewage of the universe just got blasted into his own throat. And it was like they wanted him and that weird snort on their team and you were the one oddball fat kid left to be picked last. Fuck Gibs and his weird snorting and his weird fucking face.
The nose of the fucknut called Gibson entered a room before he did. It was the most tremendous of proboscides. He had wild hair and eyes and looked like the child of neither of his wasp parents. He looked like a depressing, macrocephalic parody of Kramer from Seinfeld, sucking up your atmosphere with those terrible, terrible ostiolar nares. An electrocuted bedeutete of some lost tribe of the Yiddish criminally insane. Like someone yanked the Groucho Marx costume glasses and mustache from his face and the schnozzle stayed planted. It was sad in the way people with hairlips are sad, but the same in the way it doesn’t let it bother them. It didn’t seem to ever hold him back, but it should’ve. It was ugly in a way that made the rest of the ugliness he carried around look normal. He was a year and a half older than you but in the same grade. You knew everyone loved him and he had a trillion friends. You knew he was great with girls. You hated that about him. You’ll never understand that about him. You’ll never understand women. You could never look Gibs in the eyes as yours would always drift downward toward his beak. You never wanted to look Gibs in the eye. You never thought there was anything there to see. Vacuous is just another way of saying otiose. Back to the Future was playing on all the televisions in the electronics department.
“Dad, I need these double A batteries.”
“How many?”
“48.”
*
When you got back to the boat, it took your dad about three hours to notice there was no room for you in your bunk. That meant there was no room for you anywhere. Crackers and Honky were already tangled up in your bags and feet in the tiny hall that moved aft
where your bunk was a sixteen inch high shelf basically wedged into a wall. They were both Cocker Spaniels, which meant when they were assholes you could just throw them overboard and they’d be fine and you could hook their harness and just pull them back aboard. Crackers was a retard. He was “Mary’s dog,” bigger, and English, with ears falling straight from his head sleakly and dripping to the floor so he’d step on them all the time. Honky was your “dad’s dog,” a runt, younger, an American with ears that perked then flopped around like thin pork cutlets attached to his red head. He was not a retard. Unlike you and Gibs, their permanent address was the Lady.
The Lady in the Moon was a forty-eight foot, twin-masted cat ketch. It had been built as a blue water sailer by a retired guy in England who wanted to take his wife around the world, but when she died he just took it to Miami to say he crossed an ocean and sold it to your dad. It was originally called The Water Rat, and an intricate carving of its namesake could be found on the teak galley table just forward of where the mast plowed its way through the center of the room. You thought the old Englishman was hoping he woudn’t make it and the living sea would swallow him whole, like Jonah, and take him to the deep, away from his dying everything. This, you got. You hoped maybe this summer you could simply disappear under the stars. Could you simply vanish like a pubescent Saint-Exupéry? Would anyone care if the desert of water swallowed you? Having written a masterpiece before history wrote you out of existence would have probably helped answer those questions. Just not showing up to your first day of high school would likely be far less mythic.
“I can’t believe you brought all this shit with you. I told you there wasn’t going to be much room.” You knew when you brought all this shit with you, there wasn’t going to be much room. You were thirteen. You were querulous. You knew he really meant every word of the persiflage he’d thrown at you without regard your whole life. You knew you were what he thought you were.
“So we throw Gibs’ crap overboard.”
“Look, he only brought two bags worth of clothes.”
“Hey. I brought less than one bag of clothes.”
“You know what I mean.”
When you packed you tried to contend with your father’s request for parsimony in that you brought: two pairs of swim trunks, two pairs of shorts, two pairs of underwear, three tee-shirts, and one pair of socks and you didn’t even know why you brought the socks as you didn’t bring a pair of shoes that required an additional lining of any sort, but you also brought a toothbrush, your mom reminded you that you should take your spare pair of glasses in case something happens to your normal ones, also included were your sunglasses, three months worth of Zoloft, your retainer which you would hate wearing, and thus it would rarely see the inside of your mouth and this is something you would always regret as your mouth would return to its original mangle, and all of this you were able to fit into a small duffle bag on top of your walkman (you had converted what CDs and LPs you wanted to listen to tape several weeks beforehand), a crappy camera you’ve had seemingly your whole life, and three rolls of film (you assumed there’d be little enough to see there that ninety pictures would capture the experience adequately), and two dozen extra AA batteries, before the ones you just made your dad buy, and all of your dive gear was already on the boat, since you stowed it the last time you were visiting your dad in Key West and never brought it home, but the books and music, however, were another matter entirely, since you brought two small portmanteaus for your reading material, but you knew it wouldn’t be enough and four small briefcase-impersonating cassette holders filled with music you though you wouldn’t be able to live without hearing for twelve weeks.
That you wouldn’t be alive without for twelve weeks.
Most people wondered how you knew so much about music and where you got it, but mostly they were just baffled regarding the catholicity of your taste and knowledge. That’s kind of a lie though. Most people didn’t notice or care. Your mom just thought it was an expensive hobby and took up most of the space in your room. Rob, the owner of Silver Platter Records in Fort Myers, he loved talking to you. Rob was sort of your friend. He gave you an amazing deal on vinyl since no one bought vinyl in the early nineties and he showed you how to dig in thrift stores. The fact that your parents let you occasionally hang out with a forty year old man never seemed weird to you. You knew his wife wrote Harlequin romance novels, and you thought that was interesting in the way you’d think random tidbits of “weird” creeping out of people’s lives was interesting. Like Father Padre. Rob introduced you to Father Padre, the happenstance of his address being a coincidence. Father Padre would have been your only real friend.
*
At Sam’s, after your dad acquiesced about the four dozen batteries (you assumed he figured the longer you had your headphones on, the longer you’d be quiet), Mary pulled you aside and said you two were going to talk back at the boat, while he and Gibs went off to cunt up some other aisle with their barefooted nonsense.
Back in the galley you immediately started in. “Seriously though, you know Gibs is an idiot, right? In all likelihood he’s gonna die doing something stupid.”
“Stop it. He’ll be fine. Not everyone is as smart as you.”
“I’m not saying I’m smart. I’m not even talking about me. But seriously. I think he’s going to hurt someone.”
“Just stop it. I don’t want to hear it. He’s coming. It’s a mute point. Get over it.”
“It’s moot point. Moot. And don’t I have a say?”
“No.”
“Well-”
“Stop.”
“Look. He’s a moron. I’ll leave it at that.”
“Why do you have to be like this?”
“I’m not like anything. I can’t stand him. I think he’s the single most annoying person I’ve ever met and he goes through life smelling like a rose and when he fucks up on a dive or something, guess who’ll likely be the guy standing next to him? I mean, when he screws up tying off a line or something, who do you think’s gonna get smacked with the boom? I’ve never liked him and now we have to live up each others’ asses for the next three months.”
“It’s more like two months and you didn’t have to come.”
“I’m the one who wanted to come. Gibs is just tagging along. I’m the one who knows how to sail. Who knows how to dive. Who’s fine with going to the middle of nowhere and doing nothing. Gibs isn’t gonna last five minutes without his Nintendo or his idiot cronies. You think he knows how to read?”
“Stop it. You’ll have fun together. He’s someone you’ll be able to hang out with.”
“Then why not bring your ex-husband while we’re at it? And my mom? We could hang out with them.”
“That’s different. You guys are the same age. Yeah? You might be a little more mature, but think of what you’ll be able to do.”
“Yeah. We’ll be like Tom and Huck, just a havin’ us some ol’ adventures.”
“Now you’re just being an asshole. You’ll get along great after a while. You’re cousins.”
“He’s not my cousin.”
“He’s my nephew. That makes him your cousin.”
“No. He’s the mutant progeny of your fat bitch of a sister. And you just happened to be married to a guy who shot a wad of me out thirteen years ago. And he shot it into another woman, don’t forget that. Your abortion of a nephew is about as related to me as Crackers or Honky. But I do love Honky. Crackers is a dick, but he’s your dog, so go figure.”
“I can’t do this. What’s wrong with you?”
She stared at you.
After the angry ship’s clock rang its third bell, only a stepmomshaped emptiness was left in the galley to argue with you, much like the lachrymose stepsonshaped hole that probably lived in her heart. Most of your conversations with her or Tom unsurprisingly ended this way, except you were afraid of Tom. Mary was annoying. Tom was fucking crazy. Mary was sad. Tom was unstable. You felt sorry for Mary. You were terrified of Tom. You felt like Mary and your mom had the exact same taste in men. In twenty-four minutes Mary would find on the mast above the galley table, just above old Ratty’s natty little henschel-deerstalker, a post-it that she would promptly crumple and dispose of reading only: “There is no sin except stupidity.”
You prayed nightly to become neither of your grandparents, parents, or stepparents.
*
Before you went to Sam’s, your dad told you their friends and neighbors Dwayne and Darlene were going to meet you in the Tortugas at some point during summer. Dwayne was a maniac ex-Marine who you assumed was totally abusive to what was his third wife. The only thing good about them were Rambo and Gizmo, and only because they were Quincy’s parents.
“Jim and whatshername will probably come to.” They were his kids, a few years older than you. They lived in Detroit. If they were both swallowed by a whale tomorrow, you wouldn’t think twice about it as you went ahead with your shitty life. Dwayne’s daughter was a slag named Shawna, and did she ever look like a “Shawna,” you thought.
“Shawna’s a cooz.” This caught him offgaurd.
“What?”
“Cooz isn’t the right word, but it is.”
“Jesus. What’s wrong with you?” For the last seven hours, you’d been waiting to hear that. Now for seven weeks, you’ll be waiting for the Shawna and Jim show to drop anchor a few feet away. “Is your dick okay?”
“What?”
“From last night.”
“It’s fine. I don’t want to talk about it.”
The layout of the Lady was stupid. It would have been great for one man (or a very close couple) to use for ocean voyages. For four people and two dogs it was stupid. The hall with your bunk on one side had the engine panel on the other. At one end was the head, on the other the port-side bench of the galley. The wall of the tiny toilet/shower/sink area, of course, was entirely stained glass put in by your dad, but since it was a specific portrait of a lady in the moon, most of the sky was simply clear glass. Which is to tactfully explain that anyone on the left side of the table had a straight view of anyone doing the various things one does. The head of your bunk also faced the same window. Therefore much of the showering, bowel movements, and masturbating had to be done at clandestine hours or by making sure everyone stayed topside. You can’t imagine the nightmare this must have for Mary as she tried to deal with her privacy and her periods and you three assholes. What your father was referring to was “something” that happened the night before. You woke up in the middle of the night with the dire need to go to the bathroom while you unfortunately were having a night boner (still no emission). Creeping into the head in total darkness, you sat on the tiniest bowl in the universe and pressed your hardon under the seat. Immediately a light comes on and Mary’s pulling at the door, as if the multiple pulls and bangs will convince it that it’s not locked. Without missing a beat she retards her way in front of the window as if to check if the door had been locked by a phantom. In an effort to stop her, your lurching forward punched your small scimitar between the lid and the bowl. And then you accidently sat back down. You were, as the store said, husky. For a moment, that flashingest of moments, you couldn’t feel anything down to your toes and your fingers tingled and eyes felt like they were getting poked on the inside of your head. You assumed you pinched the entire tip of it off. You smacked your head so hard into the louvered door, you unlocked it permanently, falling into the hall, beet red, screaming and crying and panting all at once. Gibs wandered up from his bunk as your dad joined everyone. After a whole lot of what did you dos and half hearted explaining, the last thing your dad said before turning around was, “Lunchbox just broke his dick taking a shit. It’s his first night on the boat and we haven’t left yet. This is fantastic. Three more months…”
“So is it okay?”
“It’s fine. I don’t want to talk about it.” You will repeat that phrase sixteen thousand one hundred and twenty-seven more times before angels sing you to your rest. You will, toward the very end, consider those singing angels and wonder how good the angels are on the weekend nights in those headlining spots. You will wonder if, should you die on a Tuesday at 12:51, you’ll get the open mic amateur angel hour.
*
Father Padre. You knew his real name, but no one cared or called him that. The whole world knew and didn’t care.
Next door to the Lady was a small sloop just the perfect size for a small, hiding Father Padre, in which you’ll hideout for a while in a few hours. The motey air tasted musty, like people didn’t live there. Like a timeworn frowzy little grotto someone forgot existed and a Father Padre shaped little man made his home. He always looked like he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. But he looked like a boy. Like he would be a perpetual child, even in his vespertide. He looked like the Karate Kid if the Karate Kid had shrunk, gotten older and worn down, but never aged. Maybe it’d been weeks since he’d shaved. Months. Maybe that stubble was all the manliness he could muster. That said, you thought it was amazingly cool that you knew someone who was a rock star, however reluctant. But you really loved him because he’d talk to you about the stuff no one else would. The last time you saw him you had a completely random conversation about Phil Collins because you mentioned how your panic attacks made you feel like you were drowning and it made him think of “In the Air Tonight” which, apparently, no one on the planet can talk about without acting out the drum part and doing the corresponding sound effects.
“They played that song in that train scene in Risky Business. Remember that?”
“I think? Is that the Tom Cruise one?”
“How can you not remember that? Phil Collins is a genius.”
“I liked the group better.”
“Of course you would, they’re weirder and more interesting. But Collins solo is pure pop, man, commercial genius. The way he sings, the way he sounds, it’s like it comes from a machine made to create hit records. We opened for him a couple of times in Europe and I remember him never saying a word to me. Like we weren’t in the room. Maybe you’re right and the early stuff is better.”
“Well, you’ve got to admit, dude, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’s pretty fucking amazing, though.”
“You’re goddamn right it is. Peter Gabriel’s last album with them. Man, I can’t believe that record’s almost twenty years old.”
Father Padre had been in these two bands, one of which had this huge hit that was kind of terrible, but kind of brilliant, and embarrassed him. He never wanted to talk about the success he had with The Carl Spackler Memorial Bakesale, except for the occasional name drop. “Carried Away” was this weird, poetic 1984 power ballad coming from a band that sounded more like a frat party held in an arena. Even though the album it was from, Lacey, Under It All, was the only one Father Padre appeared on, his writing credit on “Carried Away” meant no one in his family would ever have to work again. It stayed for three weeks at number one and the single sold over two million copies. It was even listed in 1990 by Rolling Stone at #476 on their best songs of all time list. Robert Christgau in The Village Voice gave the album half a star, calling it, “the manifest destiny of the first four years of the worst decade in human history. With the success of ‘Carried Away,’ we’re at a cultural crossroads where we need to decide whether we want to go forward or simply put our instruments down, walk back into the caves, and go back to beating rocks.” Father Padre hated that song the way you hate yourself.
Emerson was the band he called home. When he left the Bakesale, he immediately started touring endlessly with a crazy prog/noise/industrial group that could play for hours and just sound endlessly like the live solos you’d hear on King Crimson’s “Schizoid Man” or, more likely, the inside of the head of a tortured genius while they were on hallucinogens. They released five albums, Emerson, Two Plus Two Minus Evil (side one of which contained “Whatever Happened to Your Cocksucker Blues?” which you then thought to be the most epic and chaotic and brilliant twenty-seven minutes of non-stop music you’d ever heard), Simpleton, MÊŘÕĻĹĄ, and their worst performing and worst reviewed work The Earth Will Ripple in the Wake of Our Mundane Banality. That record is, by far, the closest thing to a masterpiece anyone you will meet will have ever created. This is the music heard as the Ouse’s surface touches an inner ear. The song that echoes through an open oven door on a cold London February. The sound of a shotgun cocking on an early Idaho morning. You wished music in the future could sound this good. You always played like you really weren’t super impressed by him and you always figured he knew you were, but you figured he figured that most thirteen years olds would never have heard of them, let alone listen to them, so you figured that he figured that if no one said anything about anything you could have an actual relationship like human beings were supposed to but never do. You knew you could never tell him Emerson was your favorite band. You could especially never tell him it was before you met him. You’ll find yourself listening to “In the Air Tonight” later that evening. Father Padre was possibly your only friend.
*
Hours earlier, you had headed down to the boardwalk that goes through the mangroves at the end of Nature View Court near your uncle’s, your mother’s uncle’s, house down to the back bay. You biked there with your tattered old copy of Leaves of Grass under your arm and a highlighter between your teeth since it kept falling out of your pockets. You liked the quiet on the bay, especially when you had days like this. When you felt like this. Most locals didn’t even know about this place. Most tourists didn’t care, since all the beaches and bars were on the other side of the island. They may well have been across the universe. Your soul was reflected in nature, as you sat seeing through a mist of inexpressible completeness and beauty. All bullshit of course, but fuck it, you were trying so hard.
You tried to sustain a discourse with Walt as long as you could, singing your body electric as long as you could. But the thought of doing this for the next twelve weeks sunk in and it was off to Pirate Pete’s for a round of Mortal Kombat to remind yourself of what thirteen year olds are supposed to act like. Walt could wait to chat, you wouldn’t see a skeeball machine or a slurpee for the next three months. Mind you, you liked neither slurpees nor skeeball nor Mortal Kombat. Nor did you much like Hershey’s bars or Taco Bell. But you figured the heart only grows fondest of that which it can’t have. These were your whores before prison. A bender before the draft. A bachelor party of prurient pubescence. And it made you think of nothing except how different you were than everyone else. And that’s when you realized these thoughts were all for naught. The correput machinations of youth culture quickly faded and you immediately knew what was about to happen.
It starts on the bike. You just wanted it gone. The feelings. The emptiness. The way it makes your body tremble and your belly feel like its burning through your skin from the inside. The way it makes you vomit up air and your fingers spasm. Ever since they started when you were young you just wanted them gone. The waves coming from nowhere and everywhere all at once. The crashing waves of what seem like forever pulling you into a vortex of you. A simple, pure event horizon of everything you. You. You. You. Send them away. Scream them away. Cry them away. Begging and pleading to yourself that this was not you. Away. Toward a place downwind where language is ruptured by pain and the ends of discourse feebly cry out from your empty breaths. And keep it forever downwind from you. Away from this place. Never with you, even though you knew it to be so and always had. Just keep it away. Keep it there. You rode back to the marina as fast as you could, your hands trembling and your heart racing through you. Slamming the door of the men’s room, you collapsed onto the slick, yet sticky floor, loosing Walt to skew across the slime and your highlighter to roll away unnoticed. All you could think over and over and over and over was how much you wished you were dead. How much you wished you weren’t you. How much you wished you hadn’t been born. How unfair it was that you were forced into this life. Your hands wouldn’t stop shaking. You climbed up to the vile toilet and vomited spittle and air and bile and hit your mouth on the seat and tasted blood and with snot dripping into your mouth you wipe your face, knocking your glasses into the toilet. You pulled them out and wiped them on your shirt as you went through your pockets looking for your inhaler. You felt like someone was standing on your chest, like you were breathing through a straw, and as those breaths drew more difficult you could think of nothing outside this moment, outside this room with its stained turquoise tile and black sooted floor drain and its fumes of rotting fish and gasoline. You sat up, still dry heaving, and collected yourself the best you could. Leaning on the wall under the sink, you smacked your head on a pipe and noticed your highlighter in the corner. And it looked back at you with that reminding eye that says how pointless you are and how everyone in the universe would be better without you and how you’re hated by everyone and how your hatred of yourself is far more hateful than the hate anyone else ever could have for you and how you wish you could get back on your bike and ride into traffic and how your father would come and see pieces of you and be wrecked and how your mother would blame him and how your grandmother would break and how your grandfather wouldn’t accept it and how no one in the world would believe it wasn’t an accident and how you prayed you could muster the courage and prayed it would hurt only for an instant or maybe not at all and you knew your endless life would be a series of bathroom floors and emptiness and loneliness and a prison of yourself you could never escape and it would follow you until it wanted to stop following you and how you would always walk blindly in a darkness from which you will think you can never be free.
And you tried and prayed daily to convince yourself otherwise. You knew people loved you. You knew you were wanted in the world. None of that, you thought, would ever matter to you. The life you will build will be an endless loop of success and failure and highs and lows, a constant burying and digging up, as you surround yourself with all that should combat that: friends, art, music, literature, beauty, and love, yes love. Your life will be filled with the complexity that every life ever lived entirely deserved, but it couldn’t be until you found the thing you needed. Perhaps your life will carry you there. Perhaps you will never admit to yourself what you’ll want. Perhaps you’ll simply never know. Perhaps you’ll need a little magic along the way. The man who went down the mean streets that a man must go once wrote something about the most deadly trap being the one you set for yourself like deadlines where creative people all over the world are achingly heartbroken because they couldn’t finish something they started that no one else on the planet even knew existed. And that is your darkness. That is the albatross you will carry. That is who you are. That is because the most deadly trap is the one where you’ve convinced yourself you matter.
You were in that bathroom for three hours.
When you finally stepped outside, it somehow seemed hotter than in your little cell. South Florida is a long stretch of heat, humidity, ridiculousness, and regret. And parking lots. There are parking lots everywhere. Even as you walk from the main building at Mid Island Marina toward your dock, you’re crossing endless deserts of dirt and pavement. Fort Myers Beach or Estero Island or whatever the locals prefer to call it is six miles long and a half mile wide. You figured about ninety-five percent of it was condos or parking lots. And why, you wondered, was it always so incredibly sunny and incredibly dark and overcast at the same time whenever you were in a parking lot? Like the same way it’s always kind of windy so dirt blows around and it’s not a cool wind, but this hot thing that just pelts down on you.
When you got to Father Padre’s he was standing in the hatch waiting for you. He saw your dad and Gibs futzing around on the deck and he could tell that was the last place you wanted to be.
“Hey, come on down.” You ducked into his hobbithole without anyone noticing you were back. “I’ve got something for you.”
“What’s up?”
“You look like shit.”
“I just had a panic attack. I kind of don’t want to go back to the boat right now.”
“Shit man, that sucks. You’ve told me about those before. You want to talk about it?”
“No, no, no, no. No. God no.”
“Okay, just hang out. You want a drink or something?”
“I’m good. I just kind of don’t want to be anywhere or do anything at the moment, you know?”
“That’s cool man. Just take it easy. I do actually have something for you.”
“What…”
“It’s nothing. Just some music I put together for your summer. Thought you needed more right? How much did you take? Honestly.”
“I don’t know. Maybe a hundred tapes.”
“Your dad must be so pissed.”
“Sometimes when I think he should get pissed, he just kind of phones it in. I think he wants to be a dad less than I want to be a kid.”
“This is going to be a weird summer for you. The kind you’ll talk about forever.”
“We’ll see.”
“It’s going to be a road movie in reverse where you’re going to stay in the same place and all these other people are going to pass on by. It will be like you’re standing still next to a moving sidewalk.”
“Yeah, I’ll be like a truck stop waitress, is what you’re saying?”
“Maybe.”
He handed you a small wooden box, about eight inches long and with a sliding lid on top. It was lined with velvet and smelled like weed. Inside, fitting perfectly, like it was made to hold them, were twelve cassette tapes in their boxes, entirely unmarked and unlabelled. The only thing on the box was an old Mr. Zog’s Sex Wax sticker that had been peeled off to leave a furry whitish circle. Over that and a lot of the wood in sharpie by a clumsy hand were the following words: “The Most Melancholy of Mixtapes for the Loneliest Boy in the World.”
“Dude, what is this? Are you making fun of me?”
“Seriously?” Father Padre was potentially your only friend. “I just wanted to create a little soundtrack for your summer. It’s like you’re going to be going on this big, life changing trip. The kind of thing you’ll write a book about when you’re older. Your moving sidewalk story. I just wanted to give a little contribution.”
“Jesus, man. This is awesome, but how many songs are here? There’s like sixteen hours worth of tape…”
“Well, it’s probably more like nine or ten hours. I leave a lot of gaps between songs.”
“Why?”
“You know. To give you a moment to pause between each one. To meditate on it. I don’t know. That’s just how I do it.”
“Okay, I guess?”
“It’s like two reasons. One is that you need to reflect when you experience a piece of great art. Not just dump it and rush into the next thing. The other is that while you’re cogitating on that, you’re going to have absolutely no idea what’s going to come next. So the silence will be a kind of anticipation. And that empty space inside your head will be uncomfortable for a minute, but you know you’re going somewhere.” Your dad thought Father Padre was on drugs. “The cliché is that life’s a journey, not a destination, but really life is just staying in the same place. It’s like being on a train. You’re not where you’ve been and you’re not where you’re going. And it never ends. And you’re in this moment where you can think about the song you just heard and then be surprised where the next song will take you.”
“I think I get this. Was this intentional or were you just doing something else while you dubbed these for me and you lost track of time and now you’re making shit up?”
“I dated this girl once who was an artist. In her apartment she painted this pattern all over the walls. It was like an old fashioned kind of filigree pattern or something like that. What’s it called? Toile? You know what I’m talking about?”
“No.”
“Toile? Something like that? Like the white background with the little repeating drawings of people on farms and shit.”
“I guess so?” You guessed so.
“Doesn’t matter. Anyway. The wall was the art. And then she hung really fancy frames everywhere and all that was in the frames were white canvases. Just blank.”
“Why?”
“The spaces in between… At least that’s what she said. She thought there was this, let me see, what did she call it? Limbic something. Limbical, limnical, something like that?”
“Like the medical thing?”
“What medical thing?”
“The limbic thing.”
“No. What? What are you talking about?”
“It’s a body thing. I heard the word from TV and had to look it up since I’m insane.”
“No it wasn’t that. How do you know and remember shit like that?”
“I don’t know. I just remember and know a lot of stupid weird shit. I guess the weird stuff is what sticks.”
“Tell me something weird you randomly know.”
“Mysophilia is a sexual dependency on ‘soiled’ material.”
“What?”
“It’s like when you’re turned on by dirty stuff, not like raunchy, but by like dirty underwear or shit stains or vomit and stuff like that.”
“What the fuck?”
“You told me to tell you something random and weir-”
“But why would that be what popped into your head? I don’t even want to know. Anyway. Moving on. What she was talking about was the space in between things. She said it was, like, uncomfortable in the middle. You know, how like how zombies are scary since they’re not alive or dead or why puberty sucks.”
“Fuck puberty.”
He paused. Looked at you in a way that you knew he wanted you to know he was being serious.
“It’s not going to get better. Trust me. I’m sorry”
“I know.” Father Padre was probably your only friend.
“Anyway, so like what she meant was that time when you’re not who you were, but you’re not yet who you’ll become. For her that was the most important space because she said it was dangerous, like it sucked being in it because it’s the worst, but it’s also the most optimistic because there’s like this possibility for anything. Like you’re enough of your own person, but there’s all this hope and possibility. So like anything’s possible…”
“This is why she had blank canvases on a decorated wall?”
“The spaces between, kid, the spaces between.”
“My dad thinks you’re a heroin addict.”
“Eh. Whatever. Tell him I’m doing my whole Brian Wilson thing.” You actually knew what that meant. “Do you even get that?”
“The fact that I do is kind of what’s wrong with me all the time.” You have no idea why, but this conversation made you think of a children’s book you had thumbed through when you were at the bookstore with your mom the other day called The Girl and the Heart. “One morning Lolli got up really early. She knew if she got up early enough she would be awake when Momma and Poppa’s clock started to play music. They always seemed so mad at it when it played music because they always seemed to be asleep. But Lolli loved when the clock played music because she could dance to it.” That simple joy, the joy one gets from dancing to a clock because you knew it was time for dancing, seemed like the kind aspiration that seems so simple, but the kind of thing that no one will ever actually get out of life.
“And that’s why you need the pauses between the songs.”
“That’s why, huh?”
“The spaces in between…” You thought you got him.
“I think I get you… Is there a similarly interesting reason why there’re no covers on anything. Like it’s just the case? Or was it just the easiest thing. I mean, everything’s blank.”
“You need to see yourself in the music.”
“What?”
“Music looks into your soul. Looks into you. You need to think about that. That’s why it’s just the plastic, so you can reflect.”
“What?”
“There’s a blackness in reflections. Remember Spinal Tap and the black record? They got it. When you hold something like that, something that has power over you like music, that’s you looking back into you.”
“What?”
“Follow me. It’s like a mirror, but not. We never see ourselves the way other people see us. So in real life, in real time, we’re always backwards when we see ourselves in a mirror or a window or something. But we can only see this alternate version of ourselves when we look at a photograph or a video or something. Like we can only experience ourselves the way the world experiences us through this mediated kind of thing.”
“What?”
“Fuck it. I didn’t feel like writing anything.”
“What’s the track listing? They’re not labeled at all.”
“You don’t need one.”
“What?”
“You don’t need one. You’ll hear what you need to hear when you’ll hear it.”
“Cool… wait… what?”
“You ever just been in a mood and thumbed through one of those poetry books and found something that really spoke to you right then and there? Like it touched your soul.”
“I guess?” You knew exactly what he was talking about.
“You don’t think music’s that way? You don’t think that’s what it’s about? Haven’t me and Rob taught you anything?”
“I guess?” Father Padre may have been your only friend.
“Just put them in randomly, man. No order. Just throw one in occasionally. Your heart will hear what it needs to hear.”
“Okay.”
“But don’t listen to them all the time. Just a sometime thing. That way you can space them out. And maybe listen to them only once, so they’ll mean that much more in the moment.”
“Seriously?”
“I’m just fucking with you. It didn’t occur to me what I was taping for you. It’s just a bunch of shit I like. Do whatever you want with them.”
“No. I like this idea.”
“You’re a weird fuckin’ kid, you know that? You get that a lot don’t you?”
You just smiled that smile where you don’t really smile but pull your lips into your teeth and just kind of grin and nod your head a touch, like when someone pays you a compliment and you get embarrassed. Welcome to your life. A ratiocinative Erebussian nightmare from which there is seemingly no escape.
“I don’t know. I just feel like I never know what I’m doing…”
“Jack Kerouac once said that he had nothing to offer anybody except his own confusion.”
“The New Buddha may have been on to something.”
“You did it again.”
“I know.”
“I know everyone’s on you about it, but do you ever write? Like do you think about it?”
“Man, I’ve got nothing to say.”
“Everyone has something to say, something that’s inside of them just waiting to be bled out.”
“Like ‘Carried Away’?”
“Fuck you.”
“Can I have your autograph?”
“Fuck you.”
“You did write it and it’s pretty sappy.”
“And it kind of ruined my life, but it makes sense that that song of all songs both made me and broke me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, just the popularity of it completely fucked me up and I did a lot of stupid shit.”
“No that’s obvious and kind of cliché. But that’s not what you meant was it?”
“Sort of. I don’t know. When I wrote that I was a kid and I wrote songs about girls and that one just caught on. And that’s why I can’t listen to it even though you couldn’t escape it. It was for a girl I couldn’t have.”
“Well, that sucks.”
“You have no idea…”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I see a lot of not just me in you, but of every artist or writer or poet or creative type. Man, you’re gonna be haunted by the girl.”
“What girl? What are you talking about? Is my dad right?”
“The girl… the girl. Look, I know you’re not gay, so it’s gonna be a girl. It doesn’t have to be, but in your case it will be. But it’s not just ‘a’ girl. It’s ‘the’ girl. The one you think about in your dreams, the one you pray every real girl you meet will be. And if you’re creative and introspective, like you clearly are, she’s going to haunt you until you die. Why do you think so many rock stars and poets are junkies and drunks. They’re not escaping their lives. They just want the girl to leave them alone.”
“You’re losing me.”
“What’s your favorite poem?”
“Pablo Neruda’s ‘Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines.’”
“And this is why you’re fucked. You had an answer immediately without even thinking about it. Also, it sounds like a depressing love poem. Is it?”
“Well, it’s about a lost love, so yeah. And he can’t have her, so there’s that.”
“And he’s crushed without her, right?”
“More or less, but it’s really beautiful and the words and phrasing are so amazing.”
“Because of the girl.”
“What girl?”
“His girl. My girl. Your girl. There’s always the girl. Every love song or novel or movie or poem, whether it’s about being in love, needed to get out of a love, regretting a love, turning your back on a love, everything, doesn’t matter. It’s all the same story. You don’t know what a muse is?” You could tell somehow he wasn’t bullshitting. This really meant something to him and he couldn’t articulate it and was getting frustrated with himself. Like he thought you were going to start experiencing this horrible traumatizing thing, but you were so lucky to do so. “I’m not talking about a specific girl. Maybe there’s one. If you find her, it’ll be a miracle, but your muse, your ‘girl,’ the idea of love she’s going to bring with her is going to haunt you forever. You’re like me. And you’re like Neruda and all the rest. And while most of us are total scumbags, it’s largely because we’re being dragged along at the mercy of this girl. This muse.”
“A muse? Isn’t that for like inspiration for writing or art or something? I’m not an artist. Nor am I in ancient Greece.”
“I know I sound like an asshole. And your dad’s probably right. But you’ve got her in your head rattling around and pretty soon she’ll be in your heart.”
“The muse?”
“The muse. The girl. She’s going to inspire your every thought.”
“Inspire me to do what?”
“Everything. Your happiest moments will be sad without her. Your saddest moments will be comforted by the thought of her. She’ll make you want to be a better man and she’ll make you want to kill yourself.”
“But I don’t create anything like you’re talking about.” You loved talking to Father Padre. He was your best friend.
“Your creation will be your life. That story that you write every day will open your eyes. Doesn’t matter if you deny you’re a writer, you can tell it’s in you. The way you talk. The way you think. Everyone knows you’re different. Your dad and Mary just think you’re an asshole, but you’re not. You’ve been given the most beautiful and dangerous blessing and curse a person can receive. You’ve got the girl.”
“Trust me. I have no girl. Nor does it seem like any will be on any horizons for a while either.”
“You know what I’m talking about. Your muse? She’s not going to help you build bridges or write shitty pop songs or deep poetry, unless you let her. No, she’s going to plague your everything. Rebecca De Mornay in Risky Business? She was his fucking girl. All your thoughts and desires you’re going to hear in her voice. She’s going to haunt you forever. She’s going to tell you your own life story.”
Somehow you managed to trace this line of bullshit the length of numerous Byzantine, labyrinthine tunnels across your imagination and you knew he made total sense. You knew exactly what he was talking about. And it terrified your every molecule, because you knew who he was talking about and you heard her in your head and heart every day. You heard me. Like the voice of a goddess. A voice that can create universes and end oblivions.
He continued staring off at nothing. “Supposing if truth were a woman, what then?”
“What?”
“It’s Nietzsche. An old philosopher. Just a thing he said.” Your dad thought he was a heroin addict. Father Padre was your friend.
*
After Ruby Tuesday’s your mom let you wander around Ive’s and you found yourself looking through an amazing dictionary of “critical theory.” You knew it would make sense with some homework, but it was then just an astounding list of words you could throw at your dad, Mary, and Gibs. You didn’t do this to seem smart. You knew you were smart. You just wanted to see how much twaddle you could vomit out before anyone called bullshit. No one ever did. No one ever would. No one ever will. You borrowed a piece of paper from your mom, who like most sensible people always had a notepad on her, and wrote down about 20 of them, not bothering with their definitions. You knew with the forty dollar pricetag it was staying on the shelf. You wanted that book so bad you thought of shoplifting for the first time in your life and how if you were caught everyone would feel sorry for the chubby little nerd. You wanted to scream a coruscating guitar solo and make the world’s ears bleed all over its shoulders. For the rest of your life, however, when you will think of this moment, you always notice “Landslide” playing in the background. And when you will pause to think about it, after a decade or two, you will always see your mom’s face as she hands you the pad and pen, still wearing her scrubs, looking exhausted, when you think of this song playing in that store on what should have been a forgettable Friday night.
At Sam’s is where you launched them. “You’re just part of the hegemony of the power superstructure. That’s why you can’t turn off the tv. I mean, your deconstruction of the fallacy is just stupid, you know?”
“No. I don’t know. No one ever knows what you’re talking about. Do you even know what you’re talking about?”
Not a fucking word.
“Yeah. Because I’m not some dialectical idiot whose aesthetic bourgeoisie is just part of the imperative radical. Of course I know what I’m talking about.”
Your dad walked by carrying four bags of pretzels. “Gibs, all the shows are reruns in the summer. You’re not going to miss anything.” Looking at you: “Just stop talking.” Which only inched you ever toward proselytizing mode. You hated pretzels.
“That’s what I’m talking about! We don’t need television!” Which you so desperately wanted to believe, but the thought of it made your skin hurt and your eyeballs tremble a little. “We have our imaginations. Our brains! Our intellects! We have the power to go anywhere we want. We are the future of mankind, Gibs. We’re children of tomorrow going on a trip to nowhere! We’re time machines!” At this point you were trying to convince yourself. You also realized you’d hadn’t slept much in the last three days. Music would help, but the thought of only seeing these buffoons and the inside of your own head made you want to beat your brains out with that pan that sounded like Martha. Could you even do that? Successfully smash your own head in? It’d be a good thing. He just stared at you. You just stared back at his cocked head tilting, the way dogs tilt their heads to one side as if something disrupted the rhythm with the white noise. “You never understand me do you?”
“Never.”
“Let’s not talk, then. For the rest of the summer. It will blink by and in three months we’ll be older but back here and this moment won’t matter and it will be like I never said a word. But you better shut the fuck up too. Deal?”
“What are you always on about, dude?”
“Where we’re going, my man, we don’t need words.”
You thought about dying today. Or maybe it was yesterday. You think about it every day, so it’s hard to determine. Thinking is like that. It’s a thing you can’t control. Like how trying to forget is harder than trying to remember. Like someone else is at the wheel. You thought about what brought Father Padre to this place. The life that lead him to the moments between him and the strange, chubby thirteen year old nerd next door. It made you sad. You didn’t know why. You’ll never know why about a lot of things. In twenty-four years, four months, and seventeen days, you will send a note to a friend of a friend, paying no mind to the way history never leaves you, the way your past forever follows you like a shadow you can’t shake away. You’ll unthinkingly call him the wrong name, to be quickly corrected, a name long unheard, a name long to cross anyone’s lips, a name that instantly netted the escape from a person who he once was. You will recall a story about him. You will imagine, 10,000 miles away, too-small hands and action-figure underwear flooding a total stranger with feelings unfelt and thoughts unthought for decades. In twenty-four years, four months, and seventeen days, you will destroy some random man in Amsterdam, no, Haarlem, on some random Monday morning as you simply go on with whatever random thing it is you will be doing. Hours later your heart’s drum will syncopate an echo through you, causing nausea as you consider what you will have done.
*
Maybe, for now at least, the sea will take pity on you. Maybe it will wash away all your sins to come.
*
Earlier, while your dad was giving you shit about bringing so much shit to lug around, he gave you some more shit to lug around in the form of a copy of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. He told you it was his favorite poem. Except he was one of those strange people that you’ve never understood who pronounce it “poim.” You asked him what it was about. He said, “The mistakes you make that life won’t let you forget, the regrets you’ll carry with you forever, and how the only way to release the pressure of them is to put the burden out into the world and onto someone else.” You said you “thought it would be about a guy on a boat.” “Well, there’s that… but, you know, our shadows are taller than our souls…” “Dad, did you just poetically describe a two hundred year old poem and follow it up by quoting ‘Stairway to Heaven?’” “I am your father.” In five years, four months, eleven days, and six hours, he would tell you that job was done and you were to now face the world alone.
After you left Father Padre’s boat and walked the twelve feet back to the Lady you heard the ship’s clock chime. You realized you had been gone for almost seven hours, when you told them you just wanted to go do some reading alone. No one brought this up at any point or thought it odd that you were gone the entire afternoon to whereabouts unknown.
Later that evening, as the sun was setting, your dad was quietly tooling around the back bay in the dinghy, towing Gibs on a kneeboard. They weren’t going fast or anything, just kind of breaking the surface of the still water.
You brought some of the Salinger stories your seventh grade English teacher had photocopied for you. She always liked you. The year before she had actually driven you to Key West to visit your dad when he lived there over Christmas break so she could get her dive certification from him. It was weird taking a vacation with your teacher, but, somehow, it made absolutely perfect sense to you and didn’t seem weird at all. You remember her hungover while you were all out on the Lady about to do their first dive. You remember how you couldn’t tell if her seventeen-year-old daughter was just really nice or flirty and you remember thinking that if that inability to tell didn’t change you’d be fucked for life. You’re fucked for life. You read the one she gave you about the guy in the army who liked the young girl during war, but then he left and he could never find her again. It was sad in the kind of way that most beautiful things are, not for their content but because they remind you that everyone who seems to do everything is better at it than you will ever be. Pathetically inadequate’s just another way of saying exiguous.
Then you read the famous one about the bananafish and you couldn’t tell if he was sad and wanted children or he had had a daughter that had died or if he was a pervert and couldn’t have what he wanted. Seymour knew how to end the story though.
Gibs noticed you sitting on the bow, alone, quiet. He must have said something to your dad, because the next thing you heard was a “what are you up to?”
“Nothing!”
“Wanna come out and join us?”
“No!”
“There’s a manatee right over there, you want to come check it out?”
“No.” Even though you grew up in what was ostensibly the manatee capital of the universe, it would be sixteen years and eleven days before you would actually see one in the wild. It would be impressive, not mind blowing, but a thing that will happen.
“Are you okay?”
“Don DeLillo says that we are what the dead dream about!”
“Don’t talk the rest of the day, please!”
And with that, the yelling across fifty feet of smooth surface ended. The next thing he said to you much later that night was him suggesting you and he fill the fountain at the condo entrance across the street with Tide.
You were thinking about what Father Padre said and realized he was writing about the girl when he wrote “Carried Away.”
I pray to you beneath this purple sky.
I pray to you don’t ask me why.
I pray to you don’t let our time fly.
I pray to you the days don’t lie.
I dreamt you were my salvation.
I dreamt you were my hope.
I dreamt you told me the story of me along with way.
I dreamt you were my beginning.
I dreamt you were my end.
I dreamt you sang me to the end of all my days.
You hadn’t realized you were mouthing them out loud until Mary asked you what you were talking about and you quickly replied, “nothing.” You couldn’t tell if it was channeling Nick Drake or a Hallmark card. Maybe both. Three million copies of the album sold is a sufficient amount to answer fuck you to anyone who ever asked the question.
You saw something you thought. You knew you were imaging this, but you could care fuck all about the sea cow heifering its way into a slow suicide getting hit by boat after boat down the channel. You played along with your stupid brain, and so, perhaps, they were Seymour’s, the ones he never got to catch. Schools of the gluttonous bastards like a reticle of shimmering lines just barely observable under the surface, singularly focused, all eyes and drives were lensed on their singular mission. How many bananas were in their mouths already?
You took whatever it was you were listening to out of your walkman and stuck in the first of Father Padre’s tapes and hit play. The first thing you heard was that piano plunk followed by the rhythm section and his voice. You knew the song instantly. You knew what he was trying to do. Fucking Father Padre. While listening to Van Morrison’s “Brand New Day,” you wonder if when you die it fades out or just turns off. Will it be white or black? When will you be happy? Twenty? Thirty? Forty? Forty seems right, and hopeful. You’re smart enough to know you’ll fuck up your twenties and thirties . Forty. That’s the target. Perhaps that’ll be the smart money. Maybe. You turned toward the sky above and asked it when will it come right on time for you. And you wondered if your heart would still be beating.
Fucking Father Padre.
It bothered you and you felt too cynical in feeling that you knew all the greatest poems and songs were written by pieces of shit and they were about an imaginary love that probably will never exist for anyone or they’re running away from the love we all experience and how most hopeless romantics are pieces of shit running toward one or running from the other and their best work hits them while they were in the middle, the space between, and how you were probably going to end up one of those pieces of shit, being pulled in both directions and never being able to move in either. You imagined all musicians and writers to be completely impossible to be around in a relationship kind of way. You imagined they were always surrounded by people who loved them. You imagined they were the loneliest people in the world.
Everyone tells you you’re a writer.
You think you’re a piece of shit.
Father Padre thinks you’re a hopeless romantic to forever be cursed by the girl.
Fucking Father Padre.
You tore off the last page of the story you were reading, the sad one about the guy who couldn’t find the girl during the war, and tried to think clearly. For just a moment. If you were a writer, what would you write about? The girl. Me. Your muse. That’s the only thing there would be to write about. You didn’t even know the girl. But it didn’t matter. There would always be a girl. I, the girl, will always be there for you. Always be there with you, whether you want me to be or not. And, then, as the sky turned your favorite sky-colored purple, you wrote.
When you were done, you crumpled the paper and held it tightly in your hand. You had no one you wanted to show it to, no one to claim who it was for if anyone asked. You felt like things were getting out of focus again. You uncrumpled the paper. You carried yourself downstairs to your bunk and found one of your Neruda books and began thumbing through it, searching for something you’d read earlier in the week. On the paper you copied, over your own writing, the words: “I will trample the feathers / that fall from your mantle, / I will sweep the bits and pieces / of your carcass to / the four corners of the wind…” Back on the deck, under the heliotrope ruins of the day, you softly let the paper float from your fingers and settle quietly on the gently moving water below. You stood and watched it drift off toward nowhere for the entire length of Tom Waits’ “Time.” It occurred to you that, apparently, Father Padre knew how to soundtrack your life in the future better than you did in the present. Fucking Father Padre. And as the sun slowly said its goodbyes and the sky turned cranberry and the night turned darker and darker you continued to try and not let the world turn to a velutinous fetor yet again. Think of what you can. Think of what can focus you. Think of love. Think of the girl. Think of your muse. Think of me. Thirteen year old you wanted me to be the girl who could squeeze your lemon and let the juice run down your leg. But the you that’s forever been inside of you needed me to be the girl who could hold up the entire universe just by leaning on that balcony. You knew I’d be both, whoever I was. And maybe you’d find me on a prison rock in the middle of a saltwater desert. You knew I existed in the world, and maybe that would have to be good enough. Because you knew you may never find me, never have me, never hold me. And you knew if you did you wouldn’t know what to do and you’d be so terrified of losing what little you held on to and what little you understood of the world that you’d let me go a memory and a regret. And the man in the hat said love is so short and forgetting so long, and through all your days without me your soul will not be satisfied. Heartache is simply the price everyone pays for being foolish enough to have been born.
But what if it weren’t?
When you’re spiraling out of control, and your brain is an infinite glimmer and torrent of ten thousand voices and a million flashing images, what if the thought of me gives you focus? Everything else turns into something from which to run. Something to forget. Just the thought of the girl, of me, gives you the freedom to breathe. Would that ever exist for you? My heart beating a million miles from you will forever echo through your everything. My smell, my smile, my touch would be a song you’d hear in your head before it had ever been written.
*
Eleven hours later, for reasons you will never understand, you pathologically headed south, away from this place, away from then toward some when. Seagulls flew in place against the wind, treading air, fighting the swales of morning that came windy with the dawn’s late yawning gestures. A veracious loon once said, the sea is large and keeps all. The sea knew more than all of us, you figured. Just like the moon. Maybe that’s why they were in cahoots. Maybe all the right answers anyone’ll ever need are hidden under it somewhere. Maybe it’s just a damn good metaphor for the obviousness of everything. Ugly’s just an antonym for pretty.
*
There were, as the man said, flash flood watches covering the southern portions of your disposition and you could see the terns staring at you with their disconsolate accents of condign, cespitose elation.
3.
“This is a sad place,” said the cow, bedizening around in a pink mumu. She wasn’t large though. The opposite. As if the life had been sucked out of her years ago and she was a walking mummy. She looked pickled. She burped twice before she even said anything. Shorter than you, she must have weighed less than nothing. You assumed she was drunk. “Hey there, young man.” You’ve always thought that anyone who addresses young people as young should be thoroughly slapped. Hey there, old cow. That would fly. An accent from nowhere in particular, just a typical, local American idiot.
“Mmmhmmm…” agreed her manatee of a husband. Snapping pictures of bricks that must somehow look different than all the other bricks in the world. Pictures of nothing in particular. Pictures that when they look back they’ll say things like oh this is when we were at that sad place in the middle of nowhere and it was so hot and we met that nice young man. Snap. His golf shirt stuck to his back. Spindly legs poking into loafers. Loafers, you thought. Really? Under the brim of his straw golfer’s hat, the kind that says we don’t want you playing on this course in your baseball hat, young man, under the watering eyes that say I started with the cheapest beer I could find on a Tuesday in 1963, was the most pathetic excuse for a nose you’d ever seen. It looked like it was fake. Broken veins painted on with Hollywood precision. Like a red bulbous wart. Like a rubber clown’s nose had deflated and been left there to rot. Like a baboon’s asshole was turned inside out and sullenly squashed into his boiled ham head. Like W.C Fields had decided not to die but instead kept drinking and married a pickled cow in a pink mumu who burped before she spoke and decided to spend their trust going around the country stopping in places like this to take pictures of bricks and nothing in particular.
“Hey, young fella,” You looked up from your book to her. “Do you know what this place was?”
Respect one’s elders. “I think it was some kind of unfinished magazine or something. It was never done.”
“Really?” said the manatee. Snap.
“Yeah. I’m pretty sure. This isn’t really that much of a ruin, since this is more or less how it looked since it’s was never finished being built.” You were always listening to Carl.
“Looks like a hurricane or something went through.” Snap. “Or it collapsed.” Snap. Why even ask if you like your answer better than mine, you thought.
“No.” Of course she would say no. “I can just tell, believeyoumeee, this is a sad place, something bad happened here, people died here, I know these things, I’ve just got one of my feelings, you better believe it, thank you sir, yup, phrburubr, excuse me, yupsereee, believeyoumeee, bad things.”
“Actually, nothing was ever in here.”
“No, that’s not right.”
“Hon, looks like it might be an explosion.” Snap.
“I tell ya, gives me the creeps, all those souls, phrburubr, yupsereee, believeyoumeee, those poor boys in here.”
“No, I think this was just going to be a magazine. Like a store room? No one stayed here. Or even would have. It was never even finished.”
“No, young man, believeyoumeee, there are feelings I get in here, I know these things, I’ve got to get out of here… I need to sit down.”
As she left, hands on her hips, the manatee kept snapping snapping snapping. A last phrburubr echoed her an exit score.
“Seriously. You should take the tour. The ranger’s really smart. There’s really nothing historical about this building except that it’s here.”
“Nah. You’ve got to go up those steps on the tour.”
“Yeah? The fort’s about all there is out here.”
“She’s drunk.” Snap. His candor was sad for all three of you. His use of the singular pronoun instead of the more obvious, and grammatically correct, “we’re” even moreso. Photographs of bricks that estranged children will throw away without so much as a glance. Without so much a thought of the husky young man holding a copy of some too-thick book in the corner of one of them. “Can’t get up those steps. Yup. Always complaining about the heat. She’ll be talking to the others.”
Snap. And out he went as you returned to whatever words this odd interlude took you from. Someday, in the future, when everyone’s all long cold and the world sounds sweeter and twinkles brighter, archeologists will be fascinated with the mundane minutia of an empty bedroom with a straw golf hat on the bedpost and a camera in a bag yupsereee and it is a sad place a place where love died and souls were crushed and unspoken explosions of the heart, a place where a life was less lived and the feelings in there believeyoumeee gives me the creeps got to get out of here need to sit down.
*
As you lipsynched along, Iggy was screaming into your ear, though you’re anything but a “streetwalkin’ cheetah,” whatever that even meant, although you liked to think there might be a little napalm pumping through your veins. There wasn’t.
Carl sat with his feet up on his desk, an old fan answering no to an unasked question sets on a stack of what looks like official paperwork, the edges curling with every oscillating breath. It fascinated you, as it was metal and had no guards in front of the blades, like it could take off a finger if it thought your inspection was a bit too untoward. It looked like it should of sat on Bogie’s desk in The Maltese Falcon and, were it not for the few modern appliances, computers, and electronic equipment sprouting up out of the bureaucratic modern furniture, the office, Carl and all, could have been sitting in the 1940s. You blinked, hard, hoping everything would be black and white, at least for a flash. Watching you drink in the mise-en-scene, Carl curled over the copy of The Nation he was reading to try to peer into your psyche.
“What brings the poet laureate of Garden Key into my world today?”
You had completely forgotten.
“I completely forgot.” It may have been the still frame from Hammet and Huston or it may have been the music. “What are you listening to?”
“Hortus Musicus.”
“Whaticus huh?”
“It’s early music. Do you know anything about that?”
You shook your head no.
“It’s music that was written between the years 500 and 1600 and is a lot of choral singing and instrumentation that’s kind of…………………………” It was beautiful. But. For some reason, with this, your memory of this moment with Carl just fades down. Like the way a record fades out. Or a movie ends.
*
One week ago you did the following: dove Little Africa again, Pulaski Shoals twice, Long Key reef twice, the Windjammer wreck, snorkeled the moat wall, which was awful, and randomly found a ginormous anchor on the bottom near an unnamed wreck in the middle of nowhere which you and Gibs had to bring back to the Lady for your search and recover certifications, and while you were chipping barnacles off it, because your dad got the half-cocked idea that he wanted it in his yard were he to buy a house, a barracuda attacked you as the debris was floating around the bottom of the anchorage and bit your boy boob really hard while you smacked it with a hammer and punched it in the eye as hard as you could underwater which was more or less nothing, and it hurt like a motherfucker, but not nearly as bad as the time two years ago in Tobago when your dive skin got filled with jellyfish and stung you over your whole body. This week you also couldn’t get “Fat Mama” by Herbie Hancock out of your head and listened to it probably fifty times, as well as “Bohemian Rhapsody” which became sort of theme song for the week as everyone learned their parts fairly quickly, but Father Padre’s standout pick was definitely Bowie’s “Be My Wife.” You read Animal Farm, Steal this Book, Outer Dark, and a random romance novel from the office’s take-a-book box that made no sense whatsoever.
*
One week before that you buried coconuts filled with rum at random places on the beach with your dad because he said “it’ll be awesome.” On some Monday, you went night diving for the length of Dark Side of the Moon and Meddle played through the underwater speakers and that was awesome. You had total song tumors with Huey Lewis’ “I Want a New Drug” and Patti Smith’s “Because the Night” and “Rock and Roll Nigger,” which, even though they aren’t on the same record, you just happen to put back-to-back on one of your mixes and then rewound and listed to about twenty times on an otherwise uneventful Thursday. Father Padre, however, completely knocked it out of the park with George Harrison’s “What is Life?” You read Desolation Angels, about half of The Name of the Rose before getting bored and getting two books out of the box again, Robbins’ Another Roadside Attraction, which was great, and Sheldon’s Windmills of the Gods, which convinced you this would be the worst and longest summer of your life.
*
A week before that you were already bored of the place. You laid in the hammock for what seemed like hours. Clouds always appeared out of the sky, as if by miracle, as if you knew they were coming and were simply showing up on time. Glutinous monsters, they rolled in and a darkness enveloped everything. The weight of the sky pressed upon you. Since you were facing backwards, you were looking up at the mast and there was a bird, silhouetted against the gray skies which were slowly timelapsing their way east in front of you. And it just hovered there, never moving more than a few inches around the mast in your sightline. It was going nowhere yet seemed to be giving it its all. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, you thought. You had been there long enough for hammock-shaped valleys to form in your back. The book you were reading was about a couple called Emily and Jack. It was a work of “literary fiction,” based on what the corner by the price said, which you thought that a somewhat redundant way of stating something, that you grabbed from the box of ratty paperbacks called “lenders” for campers to take and leave and you took from and returned to all summer. Emily and Nadine were lovers. Jack didn’t mind since he was contemplating his own sexuality and conflicted over his feelings toward Emily’s brother, Gregory. The book portrayed, well what you read of it in the magazine with the skinny cow and the golf hat since you were only reading it because you forgot to bring something of your own and you decided to “shut your eyes and see what happened” at the lending box, and now you’re reading this book with the people making out on the cover and the car on fire behind them, and it’s making like Emily is this perfect creature. She was a smart, curvy, strong, and sexy black-haired empress. Whoever wrote this, Emily was their girl. Tracy Cunningham, well there you go. Was Tracy a guy or girl, you wondered. The title, Woman of the Abyss, was beautiful you thought, but made no goddamn sense in relation to the cover. The back page was ripped off so you had no idea about Mr. or Ms. Cunningham and you made a point once you thought of it to not read the reviews in case a pronoun got used. The not knowing who was writing about the girl, about Emily, about me, somehow made it better. Jack on the other hand, was this cowardly, selfish dick who was kind of tactless even though so much of his character was internalizing everything. You were only sixty-one pages in, so you could have been completely wrong. Jack came from somewhere only referred to as “the seaside,” whereas Emily came from no particular place other than “Europe.” Emily was a writer, which makes sense, because it seems like in these kinds of stories about these kind of people, one of them is always a writer. You’d seen enough Woody Allen movies to know how this world works. You had no idea what Jack did. It didn’t seem to matter. Years from now, you will only recall a small detail from the novel. Emily is eight years old. She’s with her three brothers, and four cousins, the eight of them all under ten, all at the feet of their great-grandparents, who are tenderly holding one another. It is perhaps Christmas. Perhaps Thanksgiving. It makes no difference. She turns toward her grandchildren’s children, all wearing pajamas, so maybe Christmas, to answer the question of how they met so many decades ago, “Well, I was out for a walk one cold afternoon,” he cuts in, “It was new year's day, dear.” “It was new year's wasn't it? Anyway, I was walking along and I must have caught the eye of this handsome fellow here, and well,” “and, well, I honked my car horn as hard and as fast as I could since I didn't know what else to do,” “and just a few months later your grandfather was born.” You have no idea why, but you will never get that scene out of your head and you will never remember anything else about the book or make an attempt to finish it beyond this. Emily, her great-grandparents, Gregory, Nadine, and even Jack all die here on this island. They will stay here like the ghosts of others and the only thing that will escape of them will be carried away as your tiniest of memories.
Mary wandered up and asked you what you were reading and you told her and watched her bathing the dogs so their hair wouldn’t mat too badly because of the salt water into which they were constantly being tossed.
“It’s been a while since anyone’s bugged you about writing something, is it my turn?”
“Mary, why does everyone keep shoving this writing stuff down my throat?”
“I think for most people you seem to know everything. And you seem to read everything and remember all of it. And I think most people think that those two things are what makes a good writer.”
“If being a good reader makes a good writer that’s like saying you eat a lot so you should be able to cook better than you do.”
“Thanks.”
“Yeah… well.”
“No. It’s just that the way you tend to talk seems more… creative I guess than other people.”
“Like my vocabulary.”
“Well, yeah, sort of. I mean that’s a big part of it. But you just say things in ways no one else does. You really never get ideas for anything?”
“I had an idea for a movie. Well, like a little short one. There’s this woman in the woods. It’s really pretty. Kind of dreamy, that sort of thing. It goes in and out of focus at times. And she’s maybe doing some hiking or reading under a tree, that kind of shit, it’s beautiful and woodsy and lots of walks. And finally, she sits down under this tree, reads for a bit longer, and lets the sunshine pour over her and she just falls asleep and then just sleeps for a while.”
“And we’re watching her sleep?” She was scrubbing Crackers while Honky just kind of wandered around the deck, foamy and soapy and shaking himself all over everything.
“Yeah, just for a little while… but then, toward the end, like maybe as all of this is happening, the camera pulls back or something and we just keep on going with this imagery of trees and leaves… um… and then there’s this voice over and it’s a suicide note for someone who finds the body… So you realize that all the setup and everything was someone experiencing what they wanted to experience for their last moments on earth. And for them it was these very calm and peaceful last few moments. Thoreau-esque or Walden-ish or whatever or something, but just, that moment of realization where you were all involved and you kind of wanted to be like the character, but then you find out they took their own life and the last part would be this suicide note being read by them just to any anonymous person who finds them, so it would be like… ‘To whoever finds me, I’m sorry for the trauma this will have caused. I’m sorry for the state you may have found me in. I don’t know how long I’ve been here, blah, blah, blah…’ that sort of thing, but it should be a little more metaphysical or philosophical, you know, like a little more thoughtful… Mary, do you know what anti-natalism is?”
“No.” To get the soap off them she dipped a cup into a bucket of fresh water and poured it over them, making them slick, shiny, and still with a reason to shake all over everything.
“It’s this kind of philosophy I read about that basically says it’s cruel to have babies because babies can’t decide to be born and it’s possible that not being born is better than being born so we’re harming someone against their will just by creating this person.”
“And what’s that got to do with this depressing thing?”
“Well, it’s like when you’re depressed, at least with me, I don’t really think seriously about killing myself, you know, not like all the time. But I do, on most days, though, wish I had never been born. Like it seems like that would be a lot better. But the movie should be beautiful and poetic and get all just miserable and sad, you know? Maybe it should only be like ten minutes long.’
“I never know what to say to you when you say stuff like this.”
“Me neither.”
“Why does your brain always think of stuff like this? Don’t you read anything happy?”
“Sometimes. Most of the time, my brain just doesn’t turn off. Maybe that’s why I can’t write. The story never ends and it’s just an endless series of tangents. No character arcs. No lessons learned. No beginning or end. There’s no coherent narrative. Just feelings and random stories that have nothing to do with anything.”
“Like, what do you mean?”
“Alright… the other day my mom took me to Papa’s for dinner. This was right before I came down to the beach to hook up with you guys. So I was riding in the car on the way there and I saw these two women on a porch a few houses down from his. And I always wondered what they were doing there, like why were they always sitting on their front porch? You know? It’s Cape Coral. It’s ridiculous. It’s hot as hell. And I never understood why they were there. I always thought it was because, you know, their house smelled like cat pee and remorse and there weren’t kids playing out front, so that couldn’t have been their reason and I thought, why weren’t they in the backyard then and just assumed that was because it probably smelled like cigarettes and there were butts everywhere and they’d have to look at that stupid above ground pool which you know must have been just gross and when it was windy and rainy would just be full of palm fronds and she’d complain that he’d never take the palm fronds out even though he’d say he’d take the palm fronds out and she’d always bug him to clean the goddamned pool and he never would because he’d always be at the, uh, you know, the 19th Hole or whatever watching the fucking Dolphins game and he just needed time to himself even though she only saw him for an hour and a half a week and his kids barely saw him… Papa’s house… he always makes these really weird salads, where he just quarters a head of lettuce and a tomato and an onion and dumps it in a bowl.”
“Do you know if we’re gonna go for a dive today?’
“I don’t know. Maybe. Do you want me to get a grouper or something?”
“Yeah. I don’t know. It’s too hot to cook downstairs. Maybe we could grill it if you got one or some lobsters or something.” And lord knows what she did, but Crackers and Honky went at each other like a vicious ball of dog tearing between your legs, all teeth and flapping ears. “Grab him!” So with his harness you tossed Honky over the side and Mary followed with Crackers. As they swam back to the boat, doing little wandering circles and taking their time, Mary got the hook. Your favorite part of this whole weird routine was the way their ears laid flat on the surface, like wings. Back on the deck, flailing off the water and undoing Mary’s freshwater bath for them, we decided grouper it would be and you went looking for Gibs and started putting on your skin.
On the dive you shot straight through a grouper into a hulk of a sunken bulkead which made the spear fire back out through the same hole in the grouper and blow by your head missing it by about an inch. You peed a tiny bit and you could see through the grouper the same way you could see through your dad’s hand the week before and then it just kind of looked at you and swam off as if nothing happened.
You could not escape the song “No One is to Blame” by Howard Jones and, amazing as it is, you could never figure it out how you unintentionally heard it about twelve times that week, and you seriously wanted to punch the camper that played Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round” three times in one night, putting it in your head for a solid forty-five hours. The choicest cut from the melancholy mix came in the form of The Buzzcocks’ “Love You More,” although a close second was Buckley’s cover of “Hallelujah” and you tried to remember if you brought any Cohen with you. And you read White Noise, all of your Neruda books again, and Down to a Sunless Sea, which made you feel stupid and put you in a funk that would have depressed a Hungarian Jew with leprosy.
*
A week before that you left the back bay, tore south like you all knew what you were doing and immediately got collectively stupid. Gibs took a whiz off the port side, while you were aft of him and he sprayed you, which resulted in you pushing him over the side and pissing off Mary as she ran to throw him a line. You’ll get your revenge, don’t worry. You’ll forever keep the image of sitting in your bow spot, dozens upon dozens of dolphins leaping underneath you and playing with the Lady as you cut through the calm aquamarine gulf. And how they stayed with you for hours. And you’ll never forget how your uncle, your mother’s uncle, Tibi, had given your dad a gun he made, a tiny thirteen-inch long sawed off shotgun. This would go along with your dad’s two other guns which he kept not only loaded, but cocked around the boat and you tried to pretend weren’t there. He decided to “try out the shotgun” somewhere west of the Everglades by loudly popping up from the helm and exclaiming, “let’s try out the shotgun.” There’s something you didn’t know about how guns work that was apparently lost on your dad as well. The longer the barrel, they’ll pull upwards, the shorter, straighter back, which is why, when he pulled the trigger and you all went deaf, his left hand really didn’t take the brunt of the recoil. His right hand, however, got a nice hole torn through it as some such part on the top of the stupid thing went straight back through that stretchy, webby bit of flesh connecting his thumb and index finger. You’ll always remember the way he calmly called you and handed you the gun, the way he held his hand, splayed wide, to the sun and you both looked through the instantly cauterized hole. He said it didn’t hurt. He said you should drop anchor to wait for him to clean it, have some lunch, and see what happens. That night you hauled the tiny tv/vcr combo box up into the cockpit, where the six of you watched The Jerk all sitting in mildly uncomfortable positions. He kept saying it didn’t hurt as he cleaned it with peroxide and even put a gauze covered pencil through the hole for effect. And then how at dinner when you decided to sleep there, a tenebrific quality washed over him with a glazy pallor, like he was going to vomit and faint at the same time. “It hurts now…” And then he vomited and fainted. And how you all thought it was hysterical, but you’ll think it awful six years, seven months, and twelve days later when, while working construction with your dad, you smashed your finger so hard you did the exact same thing and he simply left you covered in puke and dirt, wrapped your hand in electric tape, and placed you in a hundred and twenty degree truck with the windows closed for you to wake up on your own. And he’ll dock you that pay for “sleeping” on the job. After Mary cleaned him up and put him in bed, you and Gibs listened to “Guns of Brixton,” “Save it for Later,” and “Blister in the Sun” four times in the cockpit sharing one of your dad’s cigars and decided they were the best songs of the day. Mary stopped it as you began to rewind the tape yet again and put in Madonna’s “Holiday.” Eleven hours and sixteen minutes later Father Padre hit you with a Townsend doubleheader of “Save it…” and “Let My Love.” His cover wasn’t shit, but it definitely was no “Can’t Explain,” which once in your head and needing to get out, you mercifully found on one of your own mixes. At the time, however, you went and hung up your hammock and retrieved your headphones when she and Gibs went to play backgammon somewhere you weren’t. Father Padre immediately came through with The Ramones’ “She’s the One,” as you started reading Ham on Rye with a flashlight, which you turned off after about a half hour to look at the stars, which you realized, because of light pollution, you hadn’t seen like this in a long time. You thought they didn’t look like stars, rather just a smear of dust, like on an ignored black shelf. You remember your sixth grade science teacher saying something about Van Gogh and the stars, but you thought she had just made it up to sound like she knew what she was talking about and how he was a drunk who cut off his ear. He clearly, you thought, knew something you didn’t. Staring at those stars you thought he may have been right about everything and just needed some kind of meds you probably need too but aren’t on. You will never understand how people say you can see a galaxy you’re actually in, which, to you, is akin to saying you know what your own eyeball looks like without a mirror. In forty-one days and thirteen hours, during the second coast guard inspection in Garden Key’s anchorage they will ask if there were any weapons and your dad will give them the shotgun, knowing there was no way of explaining away a totally illegal and unregistered gift from a tiny eastern European man from New Jersey, and you will always remember how they calmly confiscated the risible thing and gave the idiot an appointment to appear before a federal magistrate. Nine hours and eleven minutes after that, from the cutter anchored just beyond East Key, you could hear a loud shotgun firing, followed by a distant, muffled, echoing scream. At the end of the summer, when your father retrieved his two months worth of mail from the post office, he’ll find an unassuming postcard explaining his appointment will have been called off.
When you did finally arrive in the Tortugas, you had to make great efforts to get the Lady into the anchorage. Coming from the west, you had about three feet of clearance on both sides as you motored through the miniscule channel. Your father decided blasting “Voodoo Child” at full volume was the proper way to signal to the dead prisoners that a new band of lunatics was about to take over the asylum. The anchorage happened to be empty that day. You’ll always remember that it was Stevie Ray Vaughan’s live version, or, as you harangued, “the one that just goes on for fucking days and days…” You pleaded with him that his grand entrance would be much better punctuated with Hendrix, because according to you, and as everyone knows, “the Vaughan Carnegie Hall version’s great… but, Jimi? It has more balls, and Noel and Mitch crank that shit up to eleven.” He played the whole, “when you have your own boat…” thing. Dad logic is stupid logic most of the time. An hour later, before you even ventured off the Lady for the first time, the Hendrix version was drilling into your brain, just so you could balance out the universe for the afternoon.
Three days later, on Loggerhead Key as you walked away from the lighthouse you just wandered around, your headphones around your neck quietly still pumping out Hendrix, your dad’s feet and your feet were a few feet apart as you crushed the sand down, each step crunching inch-deep feetshaped craters. You broke through the sand’s surface, you thought.
“Think somewhere there’s an inch-high footshaped mountain in China now?” He just shook his head and laughed the way people do when they shake their heads and laugh. “Are we directly across from China?”
“What?”
“You know. Is China actually on the opposite side of the planet?”
“I guess. Why?”
“Well, I just made the joke you thought I was weird for making and thought that every time I’ve ever heard that line about going through the earth China’s on the other side. Now I know that my world traveling has been fairly limited, so it’s possible that I’ve never really covered enough ground to get outside of China’s gravity, you know, but do they use the expression in places where it wouldn’t work. Or do they replace it with some other large land mass like America?”
“I don’t know. Next time you’re in Thailand ask them if they dig deep enough if they’ll hit Texas?”
“Is that what’s on the other side of Thailand?”
“I have no idea. We’re done talking about this.” And like that, you were. “Let’s go hit a wreck.”
Whenever you walk on the beach it always seems like an invisible version of yourself is right behind, always reminding where you’ve really been, as if to argue with the future version you’ll imagine. Footprints tormented you today. And in the sky it’s all blue except for where it’s not and that not is the giant ball of white projecting its burning and blinding onto you. Some say it makes you feel better, the sun. You say it should take a break, at least for today. And castles in the sand wash away into the sea.
Your dad wandered off to water the base of a palm tree and you came across a walkie talkie half buried in the sand screaming to life: “Balding Eagle, Balding Eagle, this is Chili Chops, over.”
A guy called Guy placidly acknowledged your presence, grabbed it and responded: “Chili Chops, this is Balding Eagle, read you loud and clear, what’s going on?”
“Not a goddamn thing.”
The call names and “overs” were clearly just for amusement. You were surprised when Guy looked you up and down as he chatted.
“You?” The unknown Chili Chops continued.
“Actually,” the guy called Guy called Balding Eagle responded, “I met a new friend.”
“Is she hot?”
“Actually he’s a little on the pudgy side.”
Motherfucker, you thought. Guy then waved his arm, which could somehow be read as the universal signal for “I’m kidding.”
“No, just kidding. I’m with our new friend. He’s cool. Staying out at the anchorage for a while. Come on down to the beach…”
You could only imagine relating this experience to others. There was this guy called Guy, but he was also called Balding Eagle, but that was on walkie-talkie. When the guy on the other end of the walkie-talkie was around he called him George. George called him Chili Chops when they talked through the walkie-talkies, but Joe in person. Chili Chops was actually a derivation from Joey Chops, a handle given after his sideburns had colonized his face to Prussian imperialist proportions, but was garbled and misunderstood by someone on the other end. You didn’t know if it was Balding Eagle or not on the other end. Other people seemed to know Joe as Joe, but a ranger, or whatever he technically was, JR called him Joseph, or sometimes Yusef. JR called George Jorge, but, and you did notice this at various times, he also addressed him as George, “Gee,” like the French, Gyorgy or Gyuri, Georg, and, on only one occasion while fairly drunk and angry, something to the effect of lofasz, which you thought amazing, which he said he learned when he stayed in Budapest. You also thought he was using it wrong but who cared. JR is when it seems to get complicated though. Carl, who I’ll tell you about in a moment, was just Carl, but John Ryan Whateverhislastnamewas seemingly had no preferred name. You called him JR since that was what he referred to himself as in the third-person the first time you met him. Carl called him JR to you, but occasionally said John. Guy and Joe called him JR to you also, but also John Ryan to each other. You were told his mother and grandmother called him Ryan. His drill sergeant called him Whateverhislastnamewas, his last name, but you were fairly certain they’re supposed to do that. He told you a story of when one of his friends first met him she said, “I hear people call you John, I hear people call you Ryan, I hear people call you John Ryan, I hear people call you JR.” He told her, “well, you can call me JR, or you can call me John Ryan, or you can call me Ryan, or you can call me John, or anything you like.” He said she said, “if you don’t know what your own fucking name is I’m just going to call you Bob.” Apparently there were lots of people that called him Bob and you’d heard him curse at himself and use Roberto. The three of them were all around thirty and based their lives on the philosophy of not giving a fuck. Like Navin, you had it all written down somewhere.
But Carl. Carl may have been your friend. A stout bear of a man, with a beard you knew he’d carried his entire life, in his early sixties, never out of the proper uniform. The head ranger, technically, and legally, the only real ranger there, he gave you the official tour and you liked him without knowing why. Like you thought he acted the way a father should act. Like he knew how to talk to you in a way that didn’t seem terribly confusing to him. The third time you saw him that first week, he caught you sequestered in a random cell reading for the second time.
“So… what are you doing today, kid?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t want to go diving, so I thought I’d just hang out here and wander around and do nothing. I brought a book to read with me.”
“I know. It seems like you read a ton from what I’ve heard. What’re your favorite kinds of books?”
“I don’t know… I kind of read everything. I’m not really interested in popular stuff, like how everybody reads mysteries or crime, stuff like that, I guess I’m more… I don’t know… people think it’s boring, or too, quote unquote, adult kind of stuff, but I find it more interesting… I don’t really care about plot at all. I like fragments and stuff. I like reading poetry. I just like reading beautiful sentences. I don’t really care about plot or characters that much.”
“I get that. It’s a certain kind of writing, a certain kind of beautiful thing.”
“JR was telling me you used to be a college professor.”
“Yup. Yeah, I was… I was… that was a lifetime ago…”
“Really?”
“A lifetime ago, alright…” That he said in a weird way. Like the way someone would say it in a movie and you’d say real people don’t talk like that.
“What did you teach?”
“Funnily enough, I taught English.”
“That’s awesome… so you actually know about everything then, or at least everything I’m interested in then. How did you end up here?”
“Oh, that’s a long story in and of itself. We don’t need to talk about that. You won’t find it very interesting.”
“I like people to tell me stories. I love it actually. That’s probably why I read so much, because I don’t have a lot of people to tell me a lot of stories.”
“Alright… well… I, uh… I don’t know…. maybe some other time…”
“So when you taught, did you write about stuff, like, did you have to write books or did you just teach?”
“No. I wrote some stuff. I taught creative writing, so I tended to just… I wrote a little bit academically, I guess, scholarly kind of arguments, criticism, that sort of thing, but, um, you just got a lot of stories you need to get out of your head sometimes.”
“Yeah… I kind of know what you’re talking about…”
“So what are you guys doing here all summer? Is there a plan to this or are you just going to hang out here?”
“I don’t know. I have no idea what we’re doing here. I think my dad might have done something wrong and we’re hiding out from people or something, I don’t know. I’ve asked him about it a few times and I never really get a straight answer and he basically says it’s just a thing to do, but…”
“What’s your dad do for a living? How did he and your mom take off work for a couple months?”
“Well… she’s not my mom… she’s my stepmom, but, he, uh… they do this thing where they, um, they’ll work for a couple of years and then, I guess save up money, and then they’ll take a year off. They’ve been doing it for a few years now… He got divorced from my mom when I was, like, four or five, and so I’ve never lived with him full-time really, um… but what I do is… he goes to places, and it’s mainly in, like, the Caribbean, and, uh, or the Keys, and, since he got the boat, and I’ll fly in and I’ll do a lot of my homework that way and just mail it back and stuff and, I don’t know, maybe that’s why I’ve never really had a lot of friends, since I’m gone all the time, plus the town where I live, it’s called Cape Coral…”
“I know where that is. It’s up near Fort Myers, right?”
“Yeah, but where I live, though, there’s nothing there, like, I live in this one part of it where we’re, like, the only house for blocks and blocks. It’s just out in the middle of nowhere, it’s just dirt fields everywhere, so I think that’s why I started reading so much… was because I just felt like I was gonna be an idiot if all I did was watch TV all day, so, I don’t know… I guess, it’s, like, a substitute for real life or something.”
“How old are you?”
“I, uh… I’m thirteen…?”
“You just said that like there was a question mark attached to it.”
“Well… I’m thirteen and everybody thinks I’m, like, a genius… but I don’t think I am because I just, you know, I, uh, I almost didn’t pass my last year of school. They sent my mom a letter that basically said I was gonna have to take eighth grade over again…”
“But you just said people tell you you’re a genius. How does that work?”
“I don’t know, I, um, I don’t like to do homework, I don’t really like to do what I’m told to do, I kind of like to do my own thing, so it kind of gets me in trouble a lot, because I don’t do anything, you know, that they tell me too and the weird part is that, like, my English teachers, um… like you I guess… they love me, but I still don’t do very well in their classes, but they give me a lot of stuff to read because they think I’m smart I guess, and, uh…it’s probably interesting for them ‘cause I’m so weird, but, that’s actually how I discovered most of what to read because, you know, they’ll tell me and I’ll go to the library or they’ll lend me a book or something and… a lot of them gave me books to bring with me and I brought a lot of my own stuff to read, so I don’t… I don’t know… I just… that’s kind of my thing. There’s not a lot to me, I guess.”
“There’s a lot to you. You’re fascinating. You’re a pretty weird kid. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“I get that a lot.”
“So that’s it? You’re just gonna sit here surrounded by bricks, sand, and water and just read all summer? What are they doing while you’re here?”
“Well… we dive a lot, um… we just did… when we first got here, Gibs, my stepmom’s nephew is, uh, a little bit older than me, so he can get his advanced certifications this coming year. You have to be fifteen, so I’ve been doing a lot of stuff to help him and it’s funny because it’s actually harder stuff than he has to do since I’m essentially having to serve as a divemaster. My dad is a… that’s actually how he makes his living, sometimes he works as, like, a maintenance man or a carpenter, and that actually pays him really well. That’s how he saves up the money, but the rest of the time, like if he’s in the Keys or something, or even on Fort Myers Beach, he’ll work in dive shops. He’s an instructor, so I’ve just grown up diving for the last few years, that’s how… you know, he just mailed my certification in when I got old enough, but…
like, when we were still on Fort Myers Beach, um, the day before uh, the day before we went out, like to come down here, we went and ran a bunch of errands and got stuff for the summer and everything and we did this quick run out off the beach a few miles, um… I’m sorry I sound weird when I talk, I don’t really talk a lot to people and, um, I, uh, get really anxious and stuff, so, I’m, I’m sorry if I sound stupid, but you asked me a question and I’m trying to answer and you’re really cool and I really like talking to you, so, I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing. You’re… This is great. This is the best conversation I’ve had in months. This is the most interesting conversation I’ve had in months. Okay, So what were you doing? You went out for a dive there? What’s that got to do with here?”
“Well, it’s like… my dad’s plan I think was to get us kind of certified for everything and kind of cross off everything on the list, like across the board, because Gibs’ they can mail in when he turns sixteen in a few months, but I’m not gonna be fifteen for over another year so… I mean, I’ve already done everything for all of them, so my dad’ll just mail everything in for them, for me, but what we had to do for Gibs’ rescue thing was we went out and we… it had to be really bad visibility, so I had to swim out and I had to count and I figured it took me about fifteen to twenty five seconds to go fifty feet since I couldn’t see anything, so my dad had me swim three thousand feet away from the dinghy in one direction and Gibs had to find me. Gibs is Mary’s nephew. Mary’s my stepmom, uh, Gibs had to swim out and find me, like, using a compass, so my dad thought if we did it here the water would be too clear and you could see me from too far away and, uh, that was pretty weird because I thought, you know, there’s a lot of stuff my dad’ll do that I probably shouldn’t be doing for my age, but my parents really trust me and maybe that’s why I don’t get along with kids my age ‘cause they’ve always, like my family, have always just treated me like an adult and I’d go on all these sort of adult trips with them and I don’t have any brothers or sisters or a big family so there’s no one my age, so, um, I don’t… Gibs doesn’t live here. He’s from New Hampshire, uh… but, like, I had to swim out and it was weird because I was alone in this water and I didn’t have a buddy and I only had, like, a foot visibility and it was gross, if you’ve ever… do you scuba dive?”
“No. No thank you.”
“Do you snorkel or anything? You live in, like, this beautiful place and you’re, like, a ranger here.”
“No. I go out on the boats if I have to, but I’m not really an in-the-water kind of guy. You can look at me and see I’m not that athletic, you know?”
“Well, I’m not either. Look at me, I’m fat, but diving’s not that strenuous, but… what was I talking about?”
“You were in the water. You were kind of nervous. Or maybe you weren’t. I don’t know. You were in the water alone.”
“Okay. Right, so… I was in the water and it made me think that, like, I’m never really gonna be a normal kid ‘cause my dad just did this, like, super dangerous thing to me. I didn’t have a buddy or anything. You couldn’t see anything and it’s the kind of thing that shouldn’t really happen, but he trusted me and that made me feel, like, on the one hand really mature and kind of cool, but on the other I kind of just realized that I’m gonna be alone, like, that’s my function, you know? I mean, he was helping Gibs do this thing and he just assumed I could do it without a thought, you know… so that’s sort of how I’ve lived… that’s sort of how I have to think. That’s why I’m here and they’re there, um, it’s weird, you live on this boat with all these people and these stupid dogs and you just wanna be by yourself and just be in your own head, so… that’s why you see me wandering around here so much. I’m sorry if it’s weird. I could stop if it’s bothering you or bothering people.”
“No, no, no, no, no, no… that’s why… I mean, this place is a National Memorial. It’s gonna be a National Park in four months, and boy that’s gonna make my life a pain if JR and the idiot twins at the lighthouse don’t quit acting like maniacs, but in any event, this place is yours as much as it is anybody else’s. I mean it belongs to you, if that makes sense. I’m just a caretaker, here to make sure the bricks don’t blow away in a storm and tourists don’t fall out of the ramparts or wander off the ledge and kill themselves on the parade ground. You do whatever you need to do here.”
“That’s cool…”
“So what happened? Did this Gibs ever find you? Did he finish what he needed for the certification?”
“Yeah. It was… he was supposed to do it in under eight minutes, um, but, it, uh, it took him about thirty. At one point I even swam to the surface to see if I could even still see the boat, ‘cause I figured I was over half a mile away and now it was making me nervous that they maybe legitimately lost me and were freaking out themselves, like I went the wrong way and I screwed something up, but, he’s just an idiot, he just doesn’t really know what he’s doing… I don’t know, he really wants to do it. My dad wants to help him, but… you know, like, he was kind of scared when we did the night dive and we’re gonna go do the Windjammer just so he can get his wreck certification, but like I said, my dad just assumes I can do all this stuff because I’ve always done all this stuff and… and with him, it’s just kind of, kind of like he’s a pain in the ass, so I don’t really like going diving with them, because I feel like he’s gonna… I feel like he’s gonna do something stupid and I’ll be the one that gets hurt because I’m bad luck or something and… I don’t know…”
“So you’re like the schlemiel to his schlimazel?”
“Like Laverne and Shirley?”
“No. Well, yeah, but do you know what they are?”
“Uh-uh.”
“A schlimazel’s the guy who spills his soup. The schlemiel gets the soup spilled on him. Or is it the other way around? Doesn’t matter…”
“Yeah! That’s totally us.”
“Anyway, I’m sorry. I interrupted you.”
“What was I saying?”
“You don’t like diving with them…”
“Yeah. I just avoid them… this was weird though. When I was going out there waiting for him, uh, I swam into a jewfish, have you ever seen one of those?”
“I’ve heard of them. I’ve never seen one. No one’s really talked about them around here.”
“This thing was crazy. I literally swam into and physically hit it. They’re like groupers, but they’re the size of, like, Volkswagens. It was actually really scary. I couldn’t believe it happened. I was really nervous when it happened. But that’ll be a cool story. That was actually kind of cool, I guess. The visibility was so bad I swam into a wall only to see it was this thing that looked like a giant dinosaur or something. Well, maybe not a cool story, I don’t know. That was the entire story. I swam into a fish. Beginning, middle, and end. Sorry, there really wasn’t much of a story there.”
“Alright. So you read. So you dive. What else are you into?”
“I listen to music a lot. I like music.”
“Well, who doesn’t like music? Everybody on the planet likes music.”
“My mom says she just wants quiet.”
“Well, from what it sounds like, she probably doesn’t get very much of that.”
“Yeah. But I listen to a lot of music, like, all day every day.”
“Well, that’s probably because you can’t get out of your own head. I mean, you have those headphones on all the time?”
“Pretty much from morning ‘til night. And, even underwater, we’ve got these special speakers so a lot of the time we listen to crazy music when we’re diving. Like Zappa or Pink Floyd at night’s pretty cool. But, basically, if I’m not underwater, I just have my headphones on, so… I just, uh…”
“How do you read with headphones on?”
“I don’t know, they’re two different… a lot of times when I’m reading, it’s just background noise, um… I don’t know if there’s, like, a psychological term for this, like, a word for this, and I bet there is because I bet a lot of people experience it, but I find that when I’m listening to music, it sort of lines up with what I’m feeling and it really, it kind of helps me, I think, like, there’s something, there’s something wrong with my brain, um, I take medicine, so… there’s… I feel like if I’m reading a sad book, the songs tend to be sad or they make me feel a certain way and, I really like that because I feel like my life has a soundtrack and I’m like a character in it, which probably isn’t healthy, but I don’t know… and, uh… that’s really stupid, that’s weird, I just sounded crazy didn’t I?”
“Not really, there’s actually a lot of books like that, where people can’t tell if they’re real or think they’re a character in it and you’re obviously real, but that’s a thing, so I don’t think you’re weird at all for thinking of that. There’s this great old Spanish book that’s just exactly about that. There’s a Portuguese one too from not too long ago, but I like this old one better…”
“Well, I brought this one book with me actually that’s in Spanish and it’s like that and I can’t really read it ‘cause I can’t really read Spanish that well, but I’m stupid and didn’t find the American version, since the one I got was from a flea market, but the guy selling them kind of explained it to me and said it was about a guy who finds out he’s a fictional character and, uh, and, he dies or something when he finds out or something. It’s weird. I was trying to read it because I’m really into this-”
“Are you talking about Mist?”
“I don’t know exactly what it’s called. ‘Nibla,’ Neeyab-something?’ something like that?”
“Niebla. Miguel de Unamuno. You brought that with you? You’ve heard of that book. You have that book?”
“Is that weird? That’s weird.”
“Kid, I have a feeling I haven’t even seen the entire tip of the iceberg that is your weird.”
“Thanks.”
“But, seriously, you’re trying to read that while teaching yourself Spanish?”
“Well, yeah, like I said, I got it for, like, a buck and, uh, I can’t read it though…”
“That book’s amazing. You’re thirteen? And you’re gonna try and read Mist, in your own translation?”
“Yeah, but like I said, I can’t read it though…”
“Jesus.”
“Well… is there, like, an age limit on books?”
“No. I’m just shocked, that’s all… And how are you trying to teach yourself Spanish by reading a book you’ve never read?”
“Well, no… what I’m trying to teach myself Spanish is, um… it’s funny there’s a term my dad made up for going to the bathroom, because I’ve been trying to do it, so like, when we go to the bathroom, like, you know, sorry, when we go poop, and he says it about whenever we are, doesn’t have to be on the boat, but he calls it ‘learning Spanish’ because he can hear me mumbling because we have this tiny little bathroom on the boat with a window where everyone can kind of see you, so, and there’s louvered doors, and, apparently people have heard me talking to myself in there because I’ve got, um… I really like this poet Pablo Neruda.”
“Well, Neruda’s amazing, you jumped right in with the best poets of the twentieth century.”
“Yeah, he’s great and I really like his love poetry, I don’t know why, I mean, I’ve never been in love or anything, but it really… it really, it really… it justs gets… it makes me feel a way I don’t know how to feel about… I don’t know, that doesn’t really make sense, but, anyway, the versions I have of his books are in Spanish on one side of the page and English on the other, so, I’ve been trying to, like, learn what certain words and phrases mean from them and that’s how I was gonna try and read, um, Niebla, uh, but, it, uh, it’s not working, I don’t really get it, I don’t think…”
“Well, you’re in luck, kid, and your dad need not call taking a crap ‘learning Spanish’ anymore, because I’ve actually got a copy of the translation and I’ll give it to you. I’ll give it to you later today and, uh, you can tell me what you think. Keep it all summer if you need to and, uh, take your time with it…”
“I can read really fast, so, um… we can talk about it in a couple of days if you want. Depending on the length or how good it is I can usually read about a book a day, um…”
“You really read a book a day?”
“Yeah… I brought, like, I don’t know, a ton of books with me and I’ve already gone through a bunch of them just in the last week or so, but, I, um, I don’t know…”
“You say ‘I don’t know’ a lot.”
“I, um… I, uh… I’m really, uh, unsure of myself…”
“Well, you’re talking to me.”
“I don’t know why. You’re really easy to talk to, you’re like a cool teacher. I guess I don’t meet a lot of people that don’t think I’m strange.”
“Trust me, kid, I don’t meet a lot of people like you either, especially out here… have you met JR?”
“Yeah. He was the first guy I met. He’s kind of weird it seemed like.”
“Yeah. He’s kind of crazy and little bit rock and roll and a little bit young. He likes to flirt with the girls from the boat, the tourists. He runs into town a lot more than I do. I think he’s got a girl there. We never really talk about it.”
“So do you ever get to leave?”
“Well, we’re on what’s called a six week alternating rotation, so we’re out here for six weeks at a time and then we leave for two weeks, because we have homes in Key West as well. And it’s sort of like a mini-vacation and we just have to pop in and do some office work, but it’s really so no one gets cabin fever and goes crazy or anything. You know, so we don’t get lost in our own heads or anything. Yeah. They don’t like us staying out here for too long because that happens, but, uh, I don’t ever really have any desire to go back to Key West anymore, so I just kind of stay out here… I’ve stopped kind of doing the rotation thing…”
“Well, how do you get stuff? Do you get all your food delivered and everything?”
“They just load all that stuff in on the ferries and I usually let JR take a little longer time if he wants it. Instead of doing the six week thing, I’ll give him a four week thing and just transfer over my free time to him and so he’ll basically work a month and get a month off and he’s been with me for about a year and a half, I guess, doing that and… and then there’s the two guys at the lighthouse…”
“Yeah. I met them. They’re kind of kooky too, aren’t they?”
“Yeah. They’re buddies. Apparently they went to college together and they heard about this weird job somehow and got it and they’re nice guys and they do their jobs really well and they’re like JR and they like to party a little more than I do and they kind of do their own thing. So Joe has the sideburns and Guy is the bald one and Joe, he brews beer, so they’re always doing crazy stuff out there. He makes a lot of beer, I mean a lot, and it’s really good beer. He should do that for a living instead of whatever their life plans are. Maybe making beer is his plan, I mean, they’re both in their mid-twenties, so really they can do whatever they want… I can’t believe you’re reading Mist, that’s blowing me away. That’s amazing”
“Well, I mean, I haven’t yet, and maybe I won’t be able to when you give it to me.”
“I don’t know, you seem like you’d be able to read anything thrown at you. I’m really looking forward to talking to you about it…”
“Did you ever write anything?”
“Yeah… I wrote some stuff…”
“What did you write? Was it a book?”
“Yeah… I wrote a couple books. One of them I just decided not to publish after it was contracted. I just changed my mind.”
“What were they?”
“Well, the one was about a college professor and, uh… he did some stuff wrong and he probably shouldn’t have done it… it’s really sort of a philosophical thing about… the mistakes he made in his life and the regrets he had and the choices he made and what he could do to change them and, uh, it didn’t matter and, um… yeah… it was just a stupid little thing.”
“What was it called?”
“Ha… it was the worst title ever… it was called The Incestuous Philologist.”
“What’s a philologist?”
“Well, it’s… screw it, no one knows what a philologist is.”
“So you made up the word?”
“No, philology’s a thing. I guess you could call it a field of study. It’s not a big deal… It, uh… how do I explain this simply? It’s, um… it’s basically like literary criticism and history rolled into one with languages and linguistics tossed into the mix. A lot of it has to do with looking at historical documents to understand their meanings.”
“This is what you taught?”
“No. In America, that’s not really a field that’s in a department. I taught a class or two about it, but it’s a fairly specific thing, but it’s still close to comparative literature, so it’s usually not its own thing.”
“And that’s what your book is about?”
“Metaphorically it’s like a frame. It’s about looking closer and seeing something from a place maybe only you can. Like, I said, it’s the worst title ever, but I just liked the word a lot better than ‘philosopher’ and the publisher okayed it.”
“I love that you just said ‘you liked the word better.’ I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that.”
“Oh, it’s a great word. Especially since you love reading. ‘Philos’ in Greek means love or affection and ‘logos’ means words, basically, and basically we get the modern word in English from what’s called Middle French, which is part of what I taught, it’s, like, from the fifteen hundreds, and basically just means a love of literature.”
“That’s awesome.”
“I guess it is…”
“So, you said there were a couple of things. What else did you write?”
“A bunch of short stories, some poems. I wrote another novel, but it’s sitting in a manila envelope in a drawer for no one to read.”
“This is the one you were going to have published then stopped?”
“Yeah.”
“Why would you do that?”
“It’s complicated…”
“What’s up? You’re just staring at nothing. You okay?”
“Well… I don’t really want to talk about that thing. That’s a weird one. I shouldn’t have mentioned it since no one knows it exists…”
“When did you write it? You wrote all this when you were a professor?”
“Uh, yeah… sort of… the first one, I did, just before I stopped teaching and it got published and then you know, stuff happened… and, uh… but the other thing… I wrote it later… I was already a ranger when I wrote it and, uh… sorry. I’m just not really in the mood to talk about it….… maybe I’ll tell you about it later. I’ve never really talked to anyone about it… no idea why I mentioned it…”
“Okay…alright… so I guess since you never really leave, you must really like being here.”
“It’s okay… it has its moments. I’ve had another life before this and, uh, this is where I’ve ended up and I’ve ended up here for a reason and, uh…yeah, yeah… we all end up somewhere… we all end up somewhere for reasons… yeah… so…”
“Well-”
“Shit. It’s 4:30. They’re taking the people back on the boat so their return’s timed up with the sunset, so I need to be out on the dock to give the little schpeil to the tourists, so we’ll catch up later. That was a good talk, you’re a… you’re…”
“Say it…”
“I’m sorry, but you are a weird kid, you know that?”
“I get that a lot.”
“I bet you do, man. I bet you do.”
*
The following day, in the same cell, you had fallen asleep while trying to finish Ham on Rye and woke up with an erection more or less as the tour for the day was walking by. Sometimes you wished your genitals could talk just so you could ask what they were thinking and why they did what they did. Other times you just wanted them to shut the fuck up.
Back at the Lady, you and Gibs were swimming just to cool off when the dogs got into an atavistic ritual that turned into an epic scrap on the deck and Mary threw Honky over. You’ll carry with you the slow-motion image of his paws akimbo and his ears open as wings as he came crashing into your face. He didn’t seem to notice or care as he calmly swam in circles waiting for someone to hook him and pull him back aboard. Perhaps they were some kind of throwback tweed water spaniels.
*
You and your dad were heading back from diving the Windjammer for the seven hundredth time when he slowed the dinghy down until it was barely drifting across the surface toward your destination. And then he turned to you and said:
“You doing alright today? You were weird when we were wandering around Loggerhead earlier, weird even for you.”
“I don’t know…”
“Are you doing worse than any other day?”
“I don’t know…”
“And you’re taking your medication, right?
“Yeah, I’m taking it every day.”
“Alright, well… I’m just… I worry about you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yeah, I do actually… everyone does.” You never knew what to say to things like that. You always found it almost impossible to believe people cared about you as much as you disliked yourself. When you’re narcissistic enough, you can be the God and Devil of your own head at the same time. You never really knew what to say to things like that, so you just stared at your feet for a little bit and splashed them around in the bottom of the boat. Looked off at the horizon. Then looked at his feet. Looked at the lighthouse. Then looked at the motor. Anywhere but his eyes, which were penetrating you at the moment. It always made you feel bad when people asked you how you were doing. You could be having the best day ever, but someone will throw that question at you and you’ll immediately begin to spiral. “Seriously, man, what’s up? What’s going on?”
“I… I don’t know… I guess I’m just lonely…”
“I know… I get it.”
“No, you don’t. It’s like you, you got Mary and you got Gibs and you’re like this little club and you all love each other and, and Gibs is great with people and he makes all these friends, and yeah, I’ve made friends with a few people here and they talk to me and stuff, but it’s like, I don’t know, I think they think I’m just this weirdo, like I’m just a story they’re going to tell to other people.”
“Well, that’s all life is, man. It’s just a series of stories you create to tell other people. And whether they’re good or bad is ultimately in how you, how you interpret them, what you do with them. You’ve got to start telling yourself a good story, ‘cause what you’re doing ain’t working.”
“I know, but…” you let out an audible sigh that told him you’d given up on the conversation. “… I don’t know…”
“Look. I know what you’re talking about with the lonely thing. Just because you’re around other people doesn’t mean it’s going to be better. I know it probably makes it worse. You know? I mean… who knows what’s going to make you happy or… who knows when you’re not going to feel lonely… who knows when you’ll connect with somebody who sees you for you and is still willing to put up with your bullshit? I know this is really hard for you. I know you’ve been on medication for a while. I know you… I don’t know… I, I… I wish I could do something for you to help make you happy, but I don’t think anyone’s ever going to make you be happy except you.”
“I know. Everybody tells me that, but I just don’t know what to do anymore…”
“Man, you have your whole life ahead of you, why do you talk like that? You’re fucking thirteen years old. It’s so depressing.”
“How do you think it is for me?”
“I get that, man, but it’s like, I don’t… I wish I knew what to say to you to make you not feel that way, to make you feel like, you know, you’re gonna have a decent life. You are gonna have a decent life, you know that, right? And yeah, I know you don’t like most people. Most people don’t like most people, but most people are just way better at faking it than you. and I know, I know you think… I know you think I’m a moron and everybody on the boat’s stupid and I know you hate Tom and, well, Tom’s a fucking asshole and you should hate him, but, but… your mom’s actually really good to you, you know that? As much as I bitch about her, she’s actually a good mom to you.”
“I know all this, man, I just… just… I… I don’t know. Maybe I need better medication.”
“Maybe you do. I don’t know. Talk to her about it when you get home. I don’t handle shit like this.”
“I know…” You realized how in much of your life you say the words “I know” and “I don’t know” interchangeably. You realized that almost every conversation you have about your personality, about who you are, about your desires, about your needs, about your hopes, about your fears, about your endless apologies, about your guilts, all use the words “I know” and “I don’t know” entirely in the exact same way. “I’m just really confused all the time about everything.”
“What do you mean? You have nothing to worry about. All you have to do is get up in the morning, go for a dive, eat a lobster tail, listen to your music, read your books, and go to bed in a hammock looking at a sunset that most people work their entire lives to see for two weeks when they retire.”
“But then why do I worry all the time? I’m so scared all the time.”
“I… I, I don’t know. I wish I could tell you… I…” He stuck there, frozen. You didn’t know why because you always thought of him as a confident guy that was too aloof to deal with any of your bullshit. “Look… look, I, I know I’m not the best dad in the world, and I know I’ve probably fucked you up a lot and I don’t know where we’re going in terms of how much I’m going to be in your life, but I’m always going to try and be there for you. I love you. You’re my son.” In sixteen years, eight months, twenty-seven days, and five hours it will occur to you that you can’t remember what a single tattoo on his sleeved arms looked like. The memories of them will simply be a shapeshifting blur of ink and skin. “But, look, at the end of the day, only you can fix you… I don’t… I don’t know how to begin that, man.”
“I’m just so stuck in my own head. I can’t get out of it. I just… All I think about is what I… I don’t…”
He kind of stopped the boat at this point, so the two of you were simply drifting in the slight chop. You were right near Loggerhead, so you weren’t worried about getting lost again like you and Gibs did the week before and you had to guide yourself back using a compass while Gibs had a meltdown.
“Look, man. You’re starting school. You might know some people, you might not, you know, just embrace it. Just fucking go with life, alright? It’s like, you don’t have anything to worry about right now. I mean, you will. I mean, you’re going to have so, so much shit to worry about and, you know what, it may be fucking horrendous for you then. I don’t know what you’re gonna do. It kind of scares me because if you can’t handle this kind of shit, I don’t know what’s going to happen when you’ve got real problems, when you start paying bills, when you’ve got a girlfriend, when, you know, when things start actually needing to be dealt with in your life, you can’t just shut down. I am worried about you, because you can’t even handle just doing nothing even… um… it… You get why it’s really hard for us to talk to you, right? You have to get that. It’s because you’re better than the rest of us. I know you get that you’re different than the rest of us, but in a way that actually makes you have this chance for a life none of us can.”
“I just want to be normal.”
“What the fuck is normal? What does that even mean?”
“Gibs is normal.”
“No, Gibs is just Gibs. And yeah, he’ll grow up to be that guy and whatever.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, man… I’m, I’m so so so so so so… tired of people telling me that.”
“But it’s true. You… are the smartest kid I’ve ever met and I am so, so unprepared to be your dad. The older you get, the more unprepared I feel because I never expected I’d have conversations like this with you. I thought, maybe we’d have a conversation like this when you were thirty. I don’t know… I’m thirty-two years old. I’m barely holding it together. I’m four years into a second marriage. I got a thirteen year old son I’ve got to worry about finding somewhere one day because half the time you talk about how much you wish you were dead. You constantly tell me and your mom you wished you were never born. How’s that supposed to make us feel? You know? I… you…”
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop saying you’re sorry all the time…. look… you know, we brought Gibs along on this stupid trip to basically keep an eye on you and, honestly, maybe… maybe maybe maybe on the off chance he’d be someone you could hang out with who wasn’t in their thirties and… I feel bad for him because he’s got to be having a miserable fucking summer too.”
“He’s having the time of his life. He’s an idiot. He’s like a dog. Just throw him a frisbee and he’ll jump after it.”
“See? This is what I’m talking about, man. You… you… are so smart you can’t relate to anyone else and that’s gotta change because… because… there might not be anyone in the world like you. You may never meet anyone like you. You know? You’re weird. We know that. But you’re weird in a way you don’t understand, because I’m seeing it from all these other perspectives, and… you’ve got all this potential, man… you are so fucking smart, but you seem to like throw it all away intentionally, just like you push away the only people who are ever nice to you… it’s like you want to fuck everything up on purpose just so you have an excuse to be miserable all the time… like you’re mean to people to the point where they can’t stand to be around you so you can go sulk around and talk about how everybody hates you, you know… you can, you can read a book in an afternoon and then quote it back to me six months later. You started acting like this when you were like seven, you know that, right? I mean, you’re mom told me she was having to go buy adult books for you when you ran out of shit to read in your school’s library in first grade. She told me your grandmother takes you to the library every week and you always have this stack of like seventy-five books sitting in your room you’ve got checked out… you… Look, no one knows what you’re talking about, never, not even adults… and… you’ve got to make some friends that are smart like you, you know… I think that’s why you like that ranger Carl so much and I think that’s why you get, uh, and you’re more comfortable around adults. I totally get that. But, at the same time, man, you are the meanest person I’ve ever met in my life and I don’t know how that happened. You are so cruel to people and I don’t know where that comes from, because I know I have a temper, and I know I’m a dick and I’ll have a drink and become obnoxious and I know I’m a jerk, but your mom has not a cruel bone in her body and the stuff I’ve heard you say about her, and I can only imagine what you say about me. And the stuff you say to Gibs and Mary? It’s so calculated and so horrible and you say it to their face. No one should talk to anyone like that, and, and you don’t even think twice about it. And what I’m afraid of is that you don’t even know you’re doing it. Like someone else is in control of you… I mean I’ve always let you swear and never cared about that, but you called Mary a cunt last week. And after the fight calmed down, she cried for like an hour not knowing how to deal with you. That’s my wife, man, what am I supposed to do with that? And I’m afraid you’re going to get into another fight with Gibs, you’re going to really really, really hurt him because he’s scared of you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You don’t even… Look. You’ve gotten in two fights that I know about. One I had to hear about when you were in school and some kid made fun of you for being fat and you took his hand and slammed it in your desk drawer until you broke his fingers. Why would you do that? Why didn’t you just shove him back? You fight dirty and you know you’re doing it to really, really hurt someone. You’re an ender. You know? You cut right to the core and finish things and it’s terrifying! How is Gibs not supposed to be afraid of you?”
“So we got into a fight? So what?”
“At Gibs’ house last year in New Hampshire? How do you block that out? You knew exactly what you were doing. We were at Donna’s and Ray’s and it was Christmas or Thanksgiving or whatever and you were up there and you flew up for just a couple of days.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I got stuck in the airport in Boston, like overnight and you wouldn’t even come get me.”
“What was I supposed to do? You were fine. Your mother knew where you were. By the time I would have picked you up, it would have taken longer to drive back home and back to the airport for your plane to come in. It was like four hours. You couldn’t wait?”
“And that’s why Gibs is afraid of me, because I can hang out in airports and he’s a pussy?”
“No he’s scared of you because he punched you for being an asshole who had it coming, but then you didn’t stop and you grabbed his throat so hard he couldn’t breathe and shoved your thumb into his eye until me and Ray pulled you off him!”
“You know? Whatever, man. You do this shit to me all the time. Nobody cares about me.”
“Because you act like a grown up! You constantly act like a grown up, people treat you like a grown up, so, here’s the thing. You act like you’re all mature all the time and you don’t fucking need us, so that’s why we treat you like you don’t fucking need us. You know? And it’s making you grow up really fast. And I really hope that somewhere all the stars can align for you… so… you can not only be smart, but have the courage to do something useful with it and not throw everything you write in the water. Mary said you do that. What the hell is that about? You know? She actually saw you writing something and that’s all we all want because we know you have that shit in you. Or, you know… you, you, you… you… you go to school and you flunk, how do you flunk school? You’re smarter than your teachers. How is that even possible? You read the dictionary every night before you go to bed, and yet, you get like nothing but Fs in school. Why do you think we pulled you out of Good Shepherd? We weren’t paying ten grand a year for you to flunk. You can be a retard in public school for free. You barely made it out of Suncoast, which is a terrible school… I don’t, I don’t understand that. You should be in college already based on what you know. Like I need your mom to send me some fucking letter that says you’re going to have to possibly be held back in the eighth grade like you’re a moron or something…”
“Dad, I just hate doing all the stuff that they make me do. I just…”
“You’re gonna hate everything, man. Your whole life is going to be a series of compromises for other people. You’re not rich. You can’t sit on your ass your whole life. I mean, Jesus Christ, you started working a couple of years ago just so you could buy records. You were like eleven or twelve. I mean, you started working at the shop with me and Jeff, working behind the counter and everyone thought it was cute. And it was totally illegal but we paid you for that. And then you got that job at Winn-Dixie bagging groceries just a couple of months ago, you know? You don’t want to do that anymore?”
“Of course I don’t want to do that. It’s fucking awful.”
“You know what? Your whole life is going to be ‘fucking awful’ unless you change how you see it, you know? It’s gonna be rough, man. Maybe when you’re an adult you’ll find who you are. I don’t know. Because it seems like this kind of being miserable… It looks… it seems like, even as a kid, you’re always at a fork in the road the last few years and I don’t know what happened that made you that way. I don’t know if it was me and your mom’s divorce or me marrying Mary or just genetics or, or, or just your brain is just, just kind of outpacing your body, but… you’re starting school in a couple of months, you know… start over, just… be cool. And try and be happy. You’ve got nothing to worry about. You know, like the song says, ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy.’”
“But I’m worried that I’m not gonna be cool and I’m worried that I’m not gonna be happy and… Dad, I don’t wanna go to high school, man. I think it’s gonna be awful.”
“It probably will be for you. I don’t know what to tell you, man. Maybe college’ll be better for you, I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like anything you might want to do is going to be better for you and that sucks because you’ve got the possibilities to do anything in life that most of us never do. You’re smart enough you could get into colleges, I mean, you could get scholarships. You could go to other countries, you know. You could be that cliché guy that, like, goes and hitchhikes around Europe for months and months and, you know, fucks a bunch of women in Bavaria or wherever, goes to Oktoberfest, does a bunch of drugs in Amsterdam, you know what, I don’t want you doing drugs because you don’t need that and I can see that already in your future because you just want whatever it is in your head to stop talking to you and that scares the shit out of me because you don’t want to deal with reality either and, and, and… I don’t… Do something productive, you know, like hike around America. I mean, you’re thirteen. We brought you here. You drove me and your teacher home that one time from Lower Matacumbe when we all got drunk. You dive caves and wrecks. You’re fearless. You showed idiots whales and partied in the DR with the craziest people in the world. But don’t take that shit for granted, you know? Go fuck a bunch of strange women in every town, I…”
“Dad, I barely think about that... I mean, I do, but… I don’t know… it’s different…”
“What? Talk to me.”
“Father Padre… he…”
“What about Father Padre?”
“… I don’t… it’s stupid. Forget it.”
“What? What did he tell you? What did he do? Did he give you drugs?”
“No, he didn’t give me fucking drugs, man, he gave me a bunch of music to listen to… and… I think it’s fucking with my head.”
“Well, stop listening to it then.”
“I can’t… it’s so hard to explain… I keep… I just… I don’t…”
“What, what song did you listen to last on it?”
“Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day.’ And that’s it, you know. it’s just a bunch of shit from the seventies he said I’d like, but… it’s so much… I don’t know… it’s just… it makes me lonely…”
“You listening to the mixtapes he gave you makes you lonely?”
“It’s so hard to explain, man… I don’t… I don’t even know… I don’t even know where to begin…” Where could you begin? How can you talk about me? “… and…”
At this point you both knew you had run out of things to say to one another.
“You’re tired of being here, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know, dad… yeah… yeah… I don’t, I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to be on the boat. I don’t want to dive anymore. I don’t want to hang out in the fort or the lighthouse. I’m tired. It’s all the same. I’m bored. I don’t want to be bored. I’m tired of just spending all my days walking around by myself, but I don’t want to go home because I spend all my time by myself there too and it’s all the same everywhere. It seems like no matter where I go, I’m just gonna be me and I hate it so much…” To your surprise he leaned forward and sort of pulled you in for a half-hearted hug.
“I’m so sorry. I wish, I wish, I wish I knew what to do for you. You know…” At least a minute went by as you silently floated around in no particular direction. You sat back. You thanked him. You didn’t know why you did that. You said you were sorry. He told you to stop it. The moment was weird for you. It shouldn’t have been because he was just being a dad, but that was rare enough to be worthy of a thank you, a sorry, and a weird pause. He looked at you. “What do you want to do for the rest of the day?”
“I don’t know… I don’t know…”
“Well, I tell you what. We’ll head back. We’ll see what the sea hag made for lunch. Go do whatever you want. Go see those lighthouse keepers you like hanging out with. Go talk to that guy Carl. Get drunk. That JR guy seems like he’s a little crazy. Maybe you should stay away from him for a while. You know, go fuck with the tourists like you like to do. They don’t seem to mind… we’re thinking about doing some fishing tonight off the dock, like some tarpon fishing. This is actually kind of JR’s thing, so you can listen to one of his crazy stories then… I just, um… I just… I just want you to be happier than you are, you know… yeah… I just want you to feel like your life is worth living… I just… it just kind of breaks my heart to know you’re like this.” You hated these moments so much when people told you this because it made you feel worse. Because then you felt guilt for feeling the way you felt. And you couldn’t look at him again. And he asked you why you couldn’t look at him and you said you didn’t know and you said you didn’t want to talk about it and you asked if you could just go and he asked why you were in a hurry since you had just said you didn’t want to go back and you felt this tiny hurricane building up in you of confusion, of grief, of sadness, and you just wanted out of your own head for a while.
“I don’t… I don’t… eh… I don’t know how to talk… about anything… to anyone and I’m scared that I’m never going to be able to because the world doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe you will, man. Maybe one day you will. You know, I know you talk to Carl. Everyone sees you walking around together and he seems like he’s explaining stuff to you and… you know… I mean, do you want a girl, is that it?” He had no idea.
“Yeah, dad… I want a girl… but… I’m not going to get a girl. I’m thirteen. And thirteen year old girls are fucking retarded and I’m fat and I’m ugly and I have the personality of, you know, like, a pissed off Chihuahua somebody kicked… and… I want to talk to somebody I can talk to… I’m just so tired… of being… I’m just tired of being me…”
“There is somebody out there for you probably… maybe… I don’t know… I don’t know how you’ll meet them, and I don’t who they’ll be, but… trust me, there’s a girl out there as weird as you.”
“… I know…”
“Look at it like this, you know what… if you fall in love, you get married, there might still be a different girl out there for you… you never know. That’s why love sucks and is painful. That’s why everything you read and listen to speaks to everyone so deeply. You may be smart, but you’re not gonna be the only person to ever carry around a broken heart… life’s complicated like that… and… girls are tricky, man. My only advice to you is that if you lose your virginity in the front seat of a Volkswagen, just make sure you lay the seat down and she’s on top because any other way is gonna be fucking awful…”
“Thanks, dad… that’s useful… super helpful…”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to tell you. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with you… you know… you know I still love your mom, right? You can’t unlove somebody just because your lives move in different directions. She still has this place in my heart. That’s never gonna go away…”
“Yeah? Then why’d you choke her and punch her in the face in front of me?”
“Let’s go back to the boat.”
And then you went back to the boat.
*
That night you sat by the campfire on a beach. You met a man from Brussels. He was not six foot four and he was “huskier” than you. You also met a man from Kentucky who went to Peru the previous summer, which only months later you realized was winter there, and he told you a story about eating coca leaves while getting lost on his way to Machu Pichu. You wondered if your life would continue on the road you were placed on by your parents. You wondered how long you could keep your stories to yourself. You wondered if the poster of Andy Warol in JR’s office was right and being born was like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.
Tomorrow you’ll find yourself sitting in your hammock involved in no particular business, late for nothing, needed nowhere, and your father will come up with some of the coconut rum and offer a glass of twee sublimation to brighten your disposition. On the stereo was Fela Kuti. You had no idea what they were singing about. Could have been about raping aborted babies for all you knew. Man, you thought, they sure were excited about sodomizing those fetus carcasses. The song was guttural. It somehow spoke to being human, you thought. You thought about the clichéd stupidity of what you thought about and laughed out loud. “What’s so funny?” “Nothing.” You wondered if Africans, and you, like all Americans, thought of them as one large agglomeration of dark people from a dark continent without regard to background or border, thought these kinds of thoughts when listening to our popular music. Was Fela Kuti even popular in Africa? Or was it just something cool white people could put on at parties to feel cosmopolitan, you wondered, while worlds away genocides raged on with a soundtrack orchestrated by Rick Dees and Casey Kasem. You didn’t think any of those things. Would Casey Kasem listen to music about buttfucking murdered infants? What would he say in that slimy voice? Shaggy would’ve buttfucked a baby. Casey needed more Shaggy and less Casey. Norville Rogers. That was Shaggy’s name. Why did you remember that? Why can’t you forget anything? Would old Kemal Amin even know that? Shaggy’s name, not your eidetic nightmare. You didn’t know, you thought. “You don’t know what?” “What?” “You just said ‘I don’t know.’” “No I didn’t.” “Yes. You did. Here have a another drink.” And so you drank from the cup. Were you drunk? You couldn’t tell if it was coconut infused rum or rum infused coconut. How does one win superiority in those types of challenges? “You happy?” And with the question you instantly ceased to be if you were. “Whatever” was all you could muster for a reply. “You sure?” He wasn’t even listening, just assuming, like most people you assume, that you said yes. “I don’t know.” “Have another drink. It’s your summer to not give a shit.” Were you drunk? On the whole you probably thought there’s not enough music about sodomy, necropedophilic or otherwise, except Serge. That was his thing. Serge owned buttfucking like Andy owned soup cans. The song playing now was probably the best one you figured. The genre had apexed. All downhill from there. Fuck all of them. Fuck them all. Fuck the fucking fuckers who fucking think fucking otherwise. Fuck babies. Fuck Fela Kuti. Fuck Africa. Fuck this boat. Fuck your father. Fuck rum. Fuck coconuts. And you thought, were you drunk? as you brought another sip to your angry quivering lips and breathed out a soft:
“Fuck coconuts.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
The next day you pretended to read and tried to get another sunburn sitting on the top of the fort as you watched a woman sunbathe with her top off on her boat. You even looked at her through binoculars. You were angry at yourself, but you were alone and thirteen. A pair of tourists were walking around the grassy surface as well, so you tried to play it cool and mentioned the famous terns of the Dry Tortugas and their whatever. In the bathroom stall near the office, you quickly pulled your dick out from your shorts, the tip kind of stuck to that netting inside of the bathing suit, it was sticky, you touched the end, it was like sap from a tree, a little line of you linking your cock to your finger, an inverse arc bending toward the toilet, it seems so unlikely that this is the stuff life is made of, and you used a little of it as lubricant, just to see how it felt, smearing it around the head, and you imagined it was someone’s tongue, your fingers circling around, once sticky now tacky as the air dried it, and you imagined it was someone’s lips, slightly stuck to the head, and you could feel a drip of sweat running from your balls into your ass and then down your leg, watching it come out of the bottom of your shorts and trail its way down to your ankle, your cock dancing a little, even without you touching it. It felt for a split second like you had to pee and that’s when you began to cum without touching it. It started raining and you knew if it didn’t stop you’d just have to be soaked when you went back to the boat. You’d probably ruin the copy of the book about the Attica riots you’d taken from the cardboard box of books in the office. You didn’t think it would be a loss to the world, but you didn’t think it mattered if you finished it and simply put in back on your way out after your hard on went away. Sometimes rain feels wetter than it should. Sometimes it feels like little squirming monsters trying to dig their way into you and parasite their way through your life. Sometimes it feels like water laced with razors. Sometimes it just feels like rain. Sometimes you want it to stop but only on certain parts of your body.
It’s not fair that you can’t control the world. You never get what you want. Rapacity’s just another way of saying the universe can go fuck itself.
4.
“You see those shells, Gibs, the ones on the shore?”
“Yeah.”
“I think they’re crouched in indifference.”
“Man, you are so weird.”
You sometimes think your life is all borders. No middle. Floating in the ocean verdure, just tomorrow’s flotsam and yesterday’s jetsam.
Bor-ing (adjective) [bawr-ing, bohr-ing]
1. Machinery:
a. the act or process of making or enlarging a hole
b. the hole so made
2. Geology: a cylindrical sample of earth strata obtained by boring a vertical hole
3. Ennui: “This definitional excursion bores me and, thusly, I find it boring.”
4. The Dry Tortugas: The most boring fucking place on earth. As in boring.令人厌烦的. 令人厭煩的. Nudný. Kedelig. Vervelend. Igav. Pitkäveteinen. Ennuyeux. Langweilig. Ανιαρός. Βαρετός. Unalmas. Leiðinlegur. Membosankan. Noioso. 退屈な. 지루한. Garlaikojošs. Nuobodus. Kjedelig. Langtekkelig. Nudny. Maçante. Maçador. Plictisitor. Скучный. Otravný. Nudný. Dolgočasen. Aburrido. Långtråkig. Can Sıkıcı.
Gibs did his whole stupefaction thing. He was one of those people that just seemed happy all the time and you hated him for it because you should have been happier and were depressed all the time even though you were smarter and better looking and more interesting and better at everything. But Gibs was stupid. Gibs was rich. Gibs was oblivious. Gibs was confident that everything he did was righteous and everyone saw it as such because Gibs believed these things with all his being and that seemed to make it so. Apparently everyone’s crossing their own ocean for that heart of gold, whatever that may be.
The air in the cell in which you were both standing was moted and light clung to the dust to create floating ghosts of yesterday before your eyes. After he left to go wander around on his own, you sat against a wall and started thumbing through the copy of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner your dad had given you, the Dover edition that cost a buck and had a bunch of other “poims” you hadn’t heard of in it, except for “Kubla Khan.” Unconcernedly flipping through it, you came across one simply titled “Love.” And in that quiet cell, the breeze blowing up the dusty floor, the clattering of birds and the clanging of boats in the background, you lost yourself in that moment. He had a girl alright. He had a beautiful girl who listened to him with a flitting brush, a girl who made him know he couldn’t choose to do anything but look upon her face, and he told her how he pined a hungry aching pine and how like in the murmur of a dream he heard her breathe his name. Because as your heart swelled as his must have, goddamn, did you ever know he had the girl. You will know those feelings. You may not be able to express them now. But don’t worry, you can work on it, I won’t disappear. Don’t you worry. As you looked at the little puffy cotton balls above the rippling, shiny surface, hanging, moving slowly over the lighthouse, you thought of that poem a teacher gave you in sixth grade to read. You wished you had longer arms to push them away and hang them somewhere else, in your journey to find that thing that’s hardest to find.
*
Gibs had taken his dinghy back to the boat and you talked to Carl for an hour or so about the Neruda poem you couldn’t get out of your head called “Here I Love You,” probably because you read it while sitting on the pier while the afternoon moored there. The point Carl kept driving home was that Neruda’s genius came from his simplicity. “Yeah. He’s this master of language, but when it comes down to it, he’s really not saying anything all of us don’t feel. Trust me, kid, you’re gonna meet a girl one day and you’re gonna swear the trees in the wind are going to want to sing her name. If that doesn’t make sense now, it will…”
It will.
You decided to head back when it looked like it was starting to rain and you figured you didn’t want to be cold and wet another night on the dock. On the boat they were listening to Serge’s “Melody” and you couldn’t tell if they kind of liked it or they were making fun of you. It was, alongside Dre’s The Chronic and the Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magik, your favorite record at the moment. It was the record twelve and thirteen year old you often fell asleep to at night only to wake to the needle bouncing around. They all had this sense of “where does he find this shit?” but you were used to that. Apparently so were they. They also apparently had this kind of usufructual system of property and never told you about it.
The next morning, as you sat with the sun in your eyes and its heat on your neck fiddling with some rope tying various knots you found in a book below and doing nothing in particular you were interrupted by a quiet “Hey” and a shadow.
“Yeah, dad?” you called him dad when you knew he was genuinely concerned and knew he was when he sat down on the deck beside you.
“Have you been taking your medicine?”
“Yup.”
“Every day?”
“Yup.”
“Is it working for you? You’re lookin’ a little… rumpled.”
“You haven’t woke up to me hanging from the rigging have you?”
“Are you happy?”
“Like a finger twitching on the trigger of a warm gun.”
“What?”
“Actually that made no sense. I was mixing my references.”
“What?”
“I just smooshed Paul Simon and The Beatles together. Forget it.”
“No wonder your mother says she can’t talk to you.”
“Well, you know what Pythagoras said: ‘Don’t talk a little on a bunch of subjects, but a lot on a few.’ I guess I figure I can says what I knows, you know? Which, strictly speaking, is approximately dick.”
“No, I don’t know what you’re saying. Nobody ever does. You’re the weirdest fucking kid in the world.”
“What I meant was that all I know is a bunch of bullshit. You know it is. All I do is spout poetry and music references and quotes and think I’m better than everyone because they don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“Yeah…”
“But it’s bullshit. I wouldn’t have an original thought if I knew it. I mean Auden says we shouldn’t even give a shit about originality and that authenticity’s more important, but I mean…”
“You’re doing it again.”
“I know. But it’s still bullshit. I mean what difference does it make in the grand scheme of life, you know? Quotes, art, all that crap. Does it make fuck all difference?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Why I can’t talk to mom… or you either apparently.”
“Because it’s all bullshit?”
“Bullshit.”
“So are you happy?”
“Like Bertrand Russell’s gardener.”
“Yeah… I’m a cool dad, right?”
“You’re interesting, that’s for sure.”
As he went off back to a world where children should act like children and weird abnormalities of birth should be left to their thoughts and their nothing and their knot fiddling, you grabbed a marker out of the plastic bin in the cockpit and proceeded to lay out the rope you were doing nothing with and wrote across its length: “‘What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence’ or, alternatively, ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’ Actually it sounds better in German but I can’t write German and no one hear can read German.” You coiled the length and placed it back on top of the spare dinghy. You hated yourself for misspelling “here” but knew that no one would ever notice.
*
On a random Tuesday came one of your more memorable, for others, and embarrassing moments of the summer. The kind of moment that becomes a story for other people to tell about you. There are a lot of those floating out there, buoyed together in some widening gyre. You were drunk. Really drunk. Drunker than a thirteen year old should ever be. Your dad thought it was funny in the way people blow pot smoke in dog’s faces. And you were mean. You threw a dive booty at Gibs’ head and called Mary a “useless twat” and your dad a “dickless moron.” Or so you were told. Your dad got you drunk. You were having a panic attack and he thought it would calm you down, but it went a little too far. And like most things in your life, it got a little too weird. When “angry you” turned into “philosophical you,” you insisted, rather aggressively, that everyone listen to Mahavishnu Orchestra’s first album with you. After explaining no one brought it, you fell down the ladder and dumped out your tapes and brought up Nebraska and popped it in after a few wobbly attempts so “Atlantic City” started. And this is where the evening went off the map and the only way you ever will know it happened at all. Amidst your belting about how “everything dies, baby that’s a fact,” someone had the wherewithal to record you. You will only hear the tape once, two years later, visiting the same three idiots in New Hampshire for Christmas. “...can anyone really talk about music, I think so and think no at the same time, don’t fucking look at me like that Gibson, you fucking faggot, fuck you, you dick... music, music... right, music’s like about places that were quiet dawns, you know, and across these dawns, there were vast empitnesses, like, saharas, or steppes, do you even know what a steppe is, dad, it’s not stairs... so I’m drunk, fuck you, it’s your coconut, you dick... but seriously, or, no, no, no... it’s like a plain, or a grassland, yeah, a grassland, like in Africa or like, uh, the surface of the moon where there’s nothing, and... and... everything dies, baby that’s a fact, and meet me tonight... but seriously... it was quiet, and there were storms on the horizon, right, as the sun rose behind them, and lightning crashes, and from that nothing we fast forward just a couple thousand years in the grand scheme of eternity and we’re left with culture, culture’s the opposite of everything Gibs knows about... which means we’re stuck with history, and we’re stuck with art, and we’re stuck with literature, and we’re stuck with history and, and... and we’re stuck with the lessons of all of that stuff that came before us, and... us... who the fuck was the chicken man, what does that even mean... anyway, what was I saying... fuck you, there’s a point... right, it’s, like, each successive generation, that’s, like, each next one, see they’re born with the burden of everything that came before, right, and they have that possibility to make of that what they will, but they’re already locked into the struggle of having to deal with everything that existed and came before them, and in that sense the first person that ever tapped a stick against a fucking rock and found it, like, aesthetically pleasing was, in fact, the most important musician that’s ever lived because everything since has just been commentary on that, that’s all this is, that’s all the Boss is, everything since has just been a meditation on that aesthetic moment, and this is wasted on you heathens, but you need to know that that pleasure and, like, without that pleasure, the world would have been a much quiter place and that’s really where we need to be looking and when assholes like me, like you’re at me right now end up riffing about what Bruce Springsteen or Bob Dylan or Bob Marley or whoever and what music means to us or how jazz, like, moves our soul we’re really just talking about the fact that we want to get the hell out of our world, get the hell out of this, this, this, this... information typhoon, the hell out of our own heads, god, I want to get the fuck out of my own head, and get back to that empty plain and sit there and watch the sun rise and watch the lightning and watch the thunderstorms roll in because they haven’t yet and that’s what we want and that’s what music does, it creates the desire to get back to that moment where it hasn’t happened yet, but who the fuck knows if we ever can although I guess musicians will be the only ones able to properly articulate how we collectively, jesus... I’m fine, I’m not gonna fall... I’m fine.. stop... stop, stop... you know... you... you know, it’s like... bittersweet, you all know what that means, huh, it’s like bittersweet’s just another word for bitter and sweet and most people say that pop music critics spend too much time focusing on the lyrics and you wanna know why ‘cause you never think about the fact that no one can name a poet born after the fucking advent of recorded popular music cause lyrics are the words we long for, the words we need, the haven we seek, the refuge, the excuses we want, and, it’s like... what am I trying to say... it’s like... like the fuel that gets us wherever we’re going and so, like, think of it like this... how much did we learn about Prince with the two words ‘purple life,’ I’m not sure I even know what that means, but he’s, like, the coolest motherfucker on the planet, right, or what about that song about the tranny with her ‘dark brown voice,’ shit, man, I’ve learned way more about sex from ‘Lola’ than I ever did from you, man... oh, fuck you, so I’m drunk who gives a fuck, where’my going, huh, what, I’m gonna wreck the car, you fucki-” Two years. Two years before you’ll know it existed. You’ll hear it once. You’ll have no idea what they’ll do with the tape. You won’t really care. It’s just a thing. That’s how you’ll always think of the moment. The moment was a thing that happened. The tape is a thing that’s there. And that’s that.
*
The next night you were pissed off at your dad still and he decided it was his turn to be the drunk, embarrassing asshole, but this time in the company of a bunch of other drunk, embarrassing assholes. There were three tourists camping, basic assholes who went by Marie, Rob, and Phil, except they called him Phildo, “you know, like a dildo,” thankfully she explained the obviousness for you, on the beach having a campfire and your dad brought them some of his coconut rum in trade for a bullshit session. No one could figure out the quiet, shy kid with the sour face. You didn’t really say a word. Mary and Gibs were playing cribbage or scat or some other thing and were back on the Lady. You were embarrassed by the way your dad was acting, but you were more embarrassed by the way you were acting. You had no idea how to talk to strangers in situations like this. You just wanted to be anywhere else, but were afraid to just get up and walk away. They were smoking pot and your dad told you not to have any. You remember the first time you smoked it two years earlier at a Rolling Stones concert when the woman on your right passed it to you and you took what was probably a record breaking hit and tried to pass it to your dad who greeted it with a “what the fuck is wrong with you” to which you calmly replied “I thought it got passed on. I’m supposed to give it back to her?” Since then, he put the kibosh on that sort of thing, but that didn’t really stop you when he wasn’t around. Apparently taping you being a belligerent and drunk philologist of pop music was acceptable though, so “fuck him” became your general attitude toward his completely random and inconsistent set of rules. This was one of those moments. Everyone there was clearly doing harder drugs. The three assholes sitting around the fire were passing around a joint, which your father, of course, turned down, even though he could barely stand up as he recounted tale after tale of his strange offspring.
“So this kid, my son here, he’s… he’s the weirdest fucking kid in the world and I got a crazy story about this kid… let me tell you about this kid and how wild he is… I got this weird job, my wife stayed on our boat in Key West at the time because she was working, managing Truman Annex, right, this hoity-toity rich place Henry Truman used to stay, Henry, Harry, whatever, and she was the manager of that and I got, like, this four month gig in the Dominican Republic and there’s this guy who in the seventies who wrote these, he didn’t write them, he’s what’s the word, an audiologist, right, like he studies sound, uh, and he was like this professor or whatever and he started studying the sounds whales make underwater and he, um, he recorded them and it became this really bizarre hit and I remember this from when I was in high school, it was just this weird trippy thing, just whale sounds underwater and people listened to it and it was this bizarre thing twenty years ago, like macramé, what the fuck was that about, and anyway, I get there and this is the Dominican Republic and I met a guy in Key West who was telling me about this and he was captaining this ship and it was donated by this woman who, she invented Trivial Pursuit, you know the board game, so she was this millionaire and she invents the game and she has this yacht and it’s on Lake Michigan and she lives in Chicago and this guy is the captain of this boat and it’s this big, beautiful, beautiful and it’s all teak and she donates it to this guy doing all this whale research, and this was only like a year and a half ago and the reason she donated it him essentially, the reason she let him use it was, he’s in the Dominican Republic doing this research on sperm whales and the Discovery Channel was even following him making a documentary, and they brought the boat down from Lake Michigan and they stopped in Key West for a while just before they went to the Caribbean and they were in port there for a while and I happen to meet this guy and I’m a dive instructor when I’m in Key West, so we just struck up a conversation through the, uh, mutual community there and he was telling me they need a cook, they were looking for a chef and I kind of just bullshitted my way into this position and my wife was alright with me leaving for a couple months because I thought this would be a neat thing to do and so I became the quote unquote chef on this fancy sailboat where they would fly in these rich dummies to donate money to the research and they would get to see what was going on with the research and be wined and dined at the same time in this beautiful place and then write a huge check to continue funding the research and the boat I was working on was there so they could live in comfort, you know, they didn’t stay with the research crew or anything and really we were just kind of in a harbor in the DR and so for, like, a month I talked my ex-wife into letting him come down and he’s really good and if he never told you or if you haven’t figured it out, he’s been diving for years and grew up on our sailboat for years, so he’s just used to the water and knows how to do everything and I trust him and he acts like an adult so we all treat him like an adult, we do and you know it, don’t look at me like that, anyway, so he flies down and he, uh, no, how did you do that actually, what, you flew to Miami and then San Juan and then got on that seaplane and got right there, that’s right, Roger, that’s the guy, the main guy, he paid for that and we got you on that little chartered seaplane and we flew you right in, so anyway, he flies in and he’s there for like a month and we have him showing around all of these rich dummies because they thought it was really cute and we thought it was funny to have this twelve year old kid giving tours to these people and let me tell you, they fucking loved it, they loved listening to him and he’d take them out in the skiff and and he’d show them everything, like, ‘there’s a whale,’ and it was awesome, he is a walking story, this kid, man, this kid is gonna be the subject of a novel one day and he doesn’t even know it, you don’t, stop making that fucking face, your life, and you know it, you’re like a character in a book, and he’s there with us and he’s showing people around and he’s just part of the crew, and you were in the documentary, remember, there’s the back of my head for about a second, but they actually had footage of you showing around the rich dummies and you were on TV, that was awesome when we were at the premier party in Key West and it was on the big screen and we were, like, ‘holy shit,’ there you are… but anyway, um, this is not the weird part of the story, that’s awesome, that was actually a cool experience, so anyway, we’re down there and the Mount Gay rum factory was down there near us and you could go in, they had a bar there, and a rum and coke was twenty-five cents and what they would do is bring you bottle of warm coke and open it for you and they’d just bring a bottle of Mount Gay rum and set it on the table and you’d just drink ‘til you fell down, but a glass of ice was three dollars, you know, just to get a glass of ice with the drink, so most people just sat there and drink their warm rum for free for an hour and then stumbled back to the dinghy, which was basically my man here hauling drunks back and forth, and then they’d go back to the boat, that’s what the crew did, so, this was the first time we got him drunk and he fell down and got stupid, you didn’t tell your mom about that, did you, man, actually I don’t care, it doesn’t fucking matter, but this was the thing that scared the shit out of me, we’re going on land, we’re in the DR, come up on this local festival and I don’t even remember what it was, do you, no, anyway it doesn’t matter, anyway there’s this street carnival parade thing going on and people are going apeshit doing all this stuff, they’re partying in the streets, there’s costumes and music and parades, you know, they’re playing those drums and they do this weird thing where they swing around a dried pig bladder and it’s like the size of a basketball, but hard as a rock and it’s, like, on a string on a stick, and it hits this fucking kid in the head so hard it knocks him out flat, boom, like Mike Tyson punches him and we were so scared because I thought, ‘Oh my God, my son just died,’ and we’re trying to wake him up and he’s all groggy and his face is all red and it looks like he just got hit with a shovel and we carried him back to the boat, we wake him up, the medic on the boat, this guy Kitt who’s got a PhD in marine biology and he’s like twenty-two fucking years old and he went to Oxford and he’s the prettiest guy in the world, he looks like that kid in the movie… uh, what was it, The Emerald Forest, with the blonde hair and he’s gorgeous and all the ladies dug him, so he’s in there, he’s helping the kid who’s sacked out and got all this ice on his face and everything and he kind of half wakes up, do you even remember this, he’s totally confused and we’re trying to explain to him that he got knocked out by a pig bladder and he’s trying wrap his head around that and I just thought that was the craziest thing ever… you must tell everyone that story and so, and this is how awesome and ballsy this kid is, he… we had to get him home because it turned out he hadn’t brought all his homework with him, because you know you’re kind of a dumbass and don’t care about stuff like that even though you’re the smartest kid in the world, seriously he is, he reads a book a day, and we get this panicked call from his mom that he’s gonna flunk the whole year and at this point he was still in a private school that we’re paying, like, ten grand a year for and he just didn’t bring anything with him and, whatever, I’m a terrible dad and I should have followed through and checked and I didn’t care or notice, but he’s not doing his homework, he’s not mailing it in like he said he would and he’s gonna have to do the grade over again and they’re gonna charge us for the year, so we gotta put him on a plane and get him home right away and the only flight that we could find for him that was convenient and easy, because I’m not gonna ask Roger again to pay for my kid to fly out on a private seaplane again, so, god only knows how much that cost, and we have to put him in a cab and I didn’t have time to take him and we have this huge group of people coming in and we’re actually down a person since he helped so much he was basically a full-time crew member, and your mom was kind of cool with me but kind of pissed off I did this, remember, but in the end it’s an awesome story and I feel like, as a father I probably shouldn’t have done this, but I think this kid is awesome and it made him my hero because I put him in a cab and he took it to Port-Au-Prince, Haiti and I remember that because you were freaking out because you had to do a border crossing with some strange dude in a cab and, what was it, like, a four or five hour drive you said, and you had to show your passport and stuff, so he gets to Haiti and he gets on a six seater plane and then he flies to San Juan and catches a flight to Miami and then he’s got to catch another flight back to Fort Myers, or did your mom meet you in Miami, I guess it doesn’t matter, but that’s how badass this kid is, and you know what, that’s my fucking son over there, you guys, you look at him, I mean he’s a pudgy shit right there and he’s sitting there looking bored and pissed, cheer up, and he never talks or anything like he’s keeping his mouth shut now, but he is the most badass motherfucker you’re ever gonna meet and so you all need to high five him and, you know what, I love you, man, I’m proud you’re my son no matter how weird you are!”
You just quietly stood up and started to walk away and he got pissed at you.
“Where the fuck are you going?”
“Somewhere else.”
“Come on, I was only fucking with you. They all know I was only fucking with you. That story’s about how awesome you are.”
And before you could even respond, Phildo just started talking in a monotone patter without any irony in his voice: “But what is a tear but the salt of every ocean’s misfortunes smashed into the most crushing defeat of that moment for you? What is an ocean but a cobble of tears and clichés? Many a night the ocean has likely wondered those same self-maddening contemplations.”
He was a poet and didn’t know it.
Marie didn’t know either, or just didn’t care: “You are so stoned right now.”
Why was Phildo making sense? Were you stoned too?
And then a voice out of the silence of the moment. Rob finally said something: “You know I used to smoke crack? I haven’t in like six years, but I used to.” And just like that Phil leapt from the sand, charging through the fire and into the darkness. Screaming about Indians and peppers and paint and pinks all you could see through the blackness was him zigging and zagging around the tiny shoal. Removing his sandals first, then his shirt, then his bathing suit, he quickly sent a message that this was turning into an R-rated show. An hour later, Carl had him in his office bandaging him up after he ended up falling off the moat wall. This all happened after you had taken your dad back to the Lady and dumped him in your hammock, ran and got some of the money your mom gave you, and went back to the beach and approached the campfire.
“Look, I know you all think I’m weird now and my dad’s an asshole, but I have really strange favor.”
“Your dad’s not an asshole, your dad’s awesome! What’s up, kid?”
“Yeah, sure he is, but whatever. I saw you guys were having a cookout before we joined you. Can I buy some of whatever you’ve got leftover, hot dogs, hamburger meat, whatever?”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. I’ve eaten the same shitty food for the past month and I can’t take it any more.”
“We’ll just give you a burger.”
“No, I don’t mean for now. Like, so we can cook it tomorrow.”
“Well, we’re camping tomorrow night still when we go back to the Keys and were going to use it.”
“I’m giving you money, so you can buy more.”
“I don’t know…”
“Tell you what, instead of money, you want some lobster tails?”
“What?”
“Lobster. I can give you a bunch of tails that would be awesome for your cookout tomorrow night.”
“Seriously? How?”
“Don’t worry about it. Give me a half hour.”
You checked to see if Carl was in his office or had closed shop for the night and you saw him bandaging the nitwit which is when you quietly ran back to the Lady and silently grabbed your mask, snorkel, light, and fins from the deck. It was well past two in the morning and Mary and Gibs had long ago turned it in. Your dad was mumbling to himself in the hammock and scared the hell out of you as he started howling at the moon. “When at Lee Ho Fook’s, try the beef chow mein, pop!” “Fuck are you on about?” “Nothing, go back to sleep, you dick.” “Right.” You dinghied around to the south side of the moat wall, dropped anchor in about seven feet of water, and rolled over as quietly as possible. It took you about five minutes to tickle out and rip a dozen lobsters in half and fill your net with their tails and another five minutes to skiff it to the beach and deliver them to the assholes. For those twelve lobster tails, you got six slices of bologna, nine slices of American cheese, three quarters of a loaf of white bread, seven hot dogs, seven hot dog buns, about a pound of ground beef, five hamburger buns, an unopened bag of Doritos, and half a package of Oreos.
How does one decide to become a criminal, you wondered, conceptually you knew there were criminals in the world, of which you were now one, and a major one at that, not like a fat kid shoplifting a pretentious book, and you knew people committed crimes all the time, it’s quite common actually, but for your average everyday person, the bulk of the population in the first world, the thought, the idea of making that leap, that life choice to, say, rob a bank, or take another person’s life, how do you get there, you wondered, what’s the threshold point for that, because some people’s breaking points must be a lot different than other people’s breaking points because people kill each other over petty things all the time, but you genuinely wondered what was in a brain that makes it do that, because you didn’t think that that was an option for most people, it simply doesn’t enter their head, and you knew there were accidental crimes all the time, soccer moms in SUVs running over children, scumbag millionaires unintentionally killing their hookers, but you don’t traditionally see that sort of thing in the average everyday lives of people, save for minor but major crimes like abandonment or heartbreak, small crimes that hurt worse than a bullet, it must be the law, you assumed, it couldn’t be morals or ethics because everyone would try to kill everyone all the time if it were acceptable behavior, so, you wondered, how do you make that leap, to decide to make that change in your life, to make that decision, there has to be a place in your head where you’re willing to go. Suicide has to be a similar line. That moment of no turning back. And you wondered if the suicidal commit more crimes. Murder-suicide seems to be the ultimate get out of jail free card. Autonomy is just another way of saying you don’t want to accept any of the consequences of your actions. If someone hates their life so much they’re determined to end it, you thought, fuckit, why not rob a bank and just go nutso and give all the money away to random people. Throw it off a bridge like confetti. Then go empty the back of your head all over a wall. That could be a major societal benefit of suicide. Depressed people all over becoming the new Robin Hoods.
The next night’s dinner would be one of your favorites of the summer and Mary, Gibs, and your dad were nice to you for two days. Which was a thing worth remembering, you thought.
That night, since your dad was possibly aspirating on his own vomit in your hammock, you put away the food and went to try and sleep in the cockpit. Using your flashlight, you read from one of the three random poetry collections your dad owned. You came across a small thing called “Do Not Stand At My Grave and Weep” by a woman you’d never heard of called Mary Elizabeth Frye. And you could tell it wasn’t about heartbreak, but about simply being human and the ways we live and the ways we die, but, still, it made you think of your mom and your dad and Mary and Tom and Mama and Papa and Darlene and Dwayne and the way none of their relationships made any sense to you. And you thought of the grave you’ll stand at or who might stand at yours. Would I be your sunlight? Would I be your diamonds in the snow? Would I be a thousand winds? And you knew things were getting foggy. And you knew you were sliding into a panic attack. And you’d been awake for twenty-three hours. And you knew you were starting to regret the lobsters. And you knew you were starting to regret the way you acted on the beach. And you knew you were starting to regret things you could only dream of never even doing.
You grabbed one of Father Padre’s tapes and your headphones, plugged them into the boombox in the cockpit, and just hit play to see what kind of soulful detriment he was going to inflict upon you tonight. Forty-five seconds into Cat Stevens’ “How Can I Tell You I Love You,” you just couldn’t do it and almost threw the tape overboard, instead hitting fast forward until you got to one of his interminable pauses. And so you waited for the next thing. In twenty-two years, three months, and eleven days, a woman, will it be me, I’m not telling, will ask you to recount this moment for her. And she’ll ask you to describe it for her. And she’ll tell you what words you’re not allowed to use so your story’s not boring and so you’ll try your best. Will you tell her of the stillness in the night? The quiet way you watched the fire on the distant shore flicker and melt into darkness. The way the sky was an empty void. The way you wished the lighthouse would dim softly into the Lethe. The way you wished it were even darker. The way you wished it were even quieter, wished a blackness and silence unknown to man would force themselves through you, wished you were somewhere else or wished I was there. Would you tell her that? Would you tell her how, as much as you wanted to escape in that moment, you will only want to return there, but know you never can, because memories cause places to drift away, because time hides the secrets we keep to ourselves, and because you only wanted to relive this moment with another by your side. It started to rain. You left your dad where he was, figuring he’d wake up eventually. You decided to let this particular song play.
And so, kid, will you walk into that war, or march straight into your cage? Will you let the wind bring you your dreams or will you let it carry them away? Will the songs of your life be brought with you or will you leave them as memories, like so many waves teasing up against their shores only to exist in the moments? Soundtracks of days you won’t get back or days you wished were here right now or days you’d wish would forever be your yesterday, today, and tomorrow. You may on many occasions think you’re in love, but you won’t really know until it fires through you like a lightning bolt from nowhere wrapping itself around your heart and taking it with it, sending a shock through your entire being. It will overcome you. It will change you. It will make you truly understand the greatest works of art the world has ever known. Will that be what it will be like for you? Disorienting? Confusing? Painful? Joyous? You’ll just have to wait and see. And what will love be like for you were it to fade? You were forced to contemplate this as “Wish You Were Here” transitioned into “Old Shoes and Postcards” faster than any other of his unceasing, eternal pauses. It was also then that you decided that your favorite album at that moment was Closing Time, at least, of course, until it wasn’t. Would you have the capacity to do that to someone? To say farewell while the sun shines in her eyes? Will you weep when you look in her eyes? Will you let go of my hand and hand over those keys to joy? You’ll just have to wait and see.
Nine years, one month, nine days, and four hours earlier your mother picked up the phone to hear your father’s voice. He had decided his life had moved on to St. Croix without him and he went there to join it. Thirty-two years after that your heart would be heavy with the same feelings that he may have had, and you won’t know if you’re crazy or if you’ll be having a mid-life crisis and you’ll consider running back to this rock both physically and metaphorically to simply escape the universe. Is this what happened to Carl? You don’t know what’s to come. You never will, and it will terrify you in ways you will have never felt, nor will you ever be able to describe or explain.
*
“Hey faggot, what are you reading?” Jim was as nice to you as Gibs. Dwayne, Darlene, and the dimmer twins had shown up a few days earlier.
“Fuck do you care? I could make up whatever and you’d have no idea; you aren’t gonna read it.” You were as nice to everyone as they were to you. It was a gas, gas, gas.
“Whatever.”
“It’s this book I got from the box they have in the office. It’s called The Eager Emperor, but there’s no back cover so I’m just reading it without having any clue what it’s about.”
“So you just started it on a whim?”
“Yeah. I’m bored.”
“That’s so weird. How far in are you?”
“A few hundred pages…”
“When did you start it?”
“This morning while you and Gibs were snorkeling and Shawna was kneeboarding with our dads and Mary and Darlene.”
“Are you for real?”
“Yeah. It’s decent. It’s about these two grandkids who write a fake autobiography of one of the escaped Alcatraz prisoners, you know, from the sixties. They use a picture of their grandfather because he’s this immigrant from Eastern Europe and has no birth certificate or anything and there’s only like one picture of him as a young man and he sort of looked like this prisoner. And their grandfather had no criminal record, so he’s not really in the system and he’s the exact same age. And it works for a while for them until the book becomes really successful and eventually they have to admit it was this hoax, but even that works to their benefit and makes it an even bigger hit. Then they make a movie about the grandkids and now no one cares about the convict or the grandfather.”
“How’s it end?”
“I have no idea. I’m not done yet.”
“It’s weird that you’re reading a book about a prison escape while you’re stuck in an old prison.”
“I know. I thought of that. But the book’s really about the media and stupid people, so, I don’t know.”
Shawna and Gibs wander up and join you both. She basically has the same conversation with you that Jim did when he sat down, except she was lighting a cigarette. You made a smart-assy remark about how that’s bad for you even though you didn’t give a shit, you just thought she smelled like a dirty ashtray and looked like a daytime hooker.
“F that in the B, man.”
“What?”
According to Jim, “she doesn’t curse.”
“What?”
“It’s like a moral thing with her. She’ll still fuck anything that moves, and drink, and smoke, but she won’t say ‘fuck that in the ass.’”
She took another drag and rolled her eyes, the eyes that would fuck anything that moves.
“That’s the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Just shut up, Jim. And you, you’re just some kid.” This was where Gibs demonstrated his genius through his mastery to simply avoid conversations that he thought were worth avoiding. The kinds that turned you into a mosquito near a bug zapper.
“Some kid you’ll apparently blow before telling to fuck off.”
“Screw you.”
“No thank you.”
But when she bent over to stub out her butt, you could see the slightest edge of her nipple and your brain went through an immediate series of too many Polaroids, the kind you’d see in the “Beaver of the Month” section of your dad’s Hustlers, for the catholicity of the pornographic imagination is an inestimable plane of wanton sadness.
“Hey, kid.” Even people only a couple of years older than you always called you “kid.” You never knew if it was to intentional make you feel small or less than them, or if simply they didn’t give a shit about remembering your name, which shouldn’t have been that hard since it was the same as your dad’s. Maybe that was why actually. “You know everything about music. What was the song playing when we were in the ranger office this morning?”
“‘Let Love Rule’ by Lenny Kravitz.”
“How did you know that?”
“Because it was ‘Let Love Rule’ by Lenny Kravitz.”
“Okay, but how did you even remember that it was that song playing hours ago?”
“Because I remember everything. You knew that or you wouldn’t have asked and since you asked I just assumed you wanted to embarrass me.”
“No. I’ve actually got a friend that met him. He’s effin’ hot.”
The remainder of the real life scene, which later in life got referred to as the “Lenny” incident after you will meet the man himself in an airport and tell him the story, went something like this: Jim: “I hate that faggot.” You: “You do hafta admit that Romeo Blue or whatever was really gay. I mean gay in that gay way. Not cool in that Prince way. Although now, he might be heading toward a Prince kind of cool, you know?” Jim: “Prince is so fucking gay.” You: “Just. Don’t.” Shawna: “My friend Gina totally blew him after a show.” Gibs: “I thought Prince was gay.” Jim: “No, man, Gina blew Lenny. ” You: “I bet she did.” Shawna rolled her eyes but couldn’t tell that you wanted, wanted so much more at that moment than you could have ever explained, you wanted to be the little faggot with the earring and the makeup. You’d be a millionaire. You’d be the one giving Gina a mouthful. And then you’d pull it out and give her a faceful and say something like: “Go show that to all your little friends.” Cause that’s the kind of faggot with the earring and the makeup you’d be. All you could muster was a smack in her face in the form of: “Boy, bet you were jealous.” Shawna: “F you.” You: “You keep offering…” Gibs: “Who the fuck is Romeo Blue?” Jim: “Fags…” as he stamped out his cigarette into the ashes of history beneath you. You thought, why isn’t Gina on that fucking boat in this fucking place? And you thought, there was no way she could look as good as you dreamed, and, for now, that had to be good enough for you. Seven years, four months, three weeks, two days, sixteen hours, and twelve minutes later, Romeo Blue will give you a funny look through sunglassed coolness, calmly get up, and proceed to talk to one of three large Samoan hulks while gesturing at you as you quietly sojourned into the nearest bar you could find in Heathrow to bury yourself in yourself. You knew you were never going to want “a girl.” You only wanted me, “the girl.” You never even asked him what Gina looked like. You hated that faggot.
Later that day, Jim said something stupid about executing people here and you made some horrifically graphic, but probably poetic, and cruel remark about Jim being executed here since he would have been old enough to have been sent here. What you said to him, though, which you’ll never remember, made you realize that Jim was just a boy basically, like you, and how unequipped for a hard life you both were and, for some reason, that made you think of your grandfather. You have no idea what he looked like as a young man since there are no pictures of him younger than twenty-six. But, it made you think of him anyway and how he was the strongest man you knew. And that made you think of the most horrific thing you ever heard him say. He never really talked about Hungary, about either war, even though when people think of Hungary they don’t think of the world war, only the revolution. You heard him tell a story once that you’ll never forget, though, about when he was eight years old, during the Siege of Budapest, and he lived as an orphan in a bombed out church basement with another boy, his friend called Lajos, and they slept wrapped in what he called “a map blanket” that you later had explained to you was something called a mappa mundi and how one day a horse was killed in a bombing and everyone ran from their shelters to cut into it for the meat, but it wasn’t quite dead and it kicked his best and only friend in the face. He watched as the four feet and seventy pounds of the other small boy staggered back and simply stood frozen, trying to speak, grasping at the crater where there was once a face, putting his hand to where there was once a mouth, touching the emptiness as he looked at your grandfather through blood filled eyes. Once he hit the ground and your grandfather ran to him, he coughed a spray of blood and broken teeth and loose flesh all over himself as your grandfather could only watch and the rest could only ignore them and tried to get as much meat as possible as a tiny child with no last name twitched and spasmed in the rubble-filled streets until he simply didn’t. The cloth of the world can swaddle for only so long before a loose thread is undone and the earth unravels before the eyes of all.
And you’ll never know why thinking of those stupid teenagers from Detroit will make you think of your grandfather’s story, except for maybe that’s the way the brain just happens to work, but you’ll never forgive them for that nonetheless.
*
It was sometime in late June. You’d been here for about a month. The only people you’d met, other than Gibs, Shawna, and Jim, who were even remotely near your age were two girls who stayed for a couple of nights in the anchorage. In an effort to be social you all watched Willy Wonka over on Loggerhead when you asked Joe and Guy if you could drag their TV and VCR down to the beach after the sun set. It was actually amazingly cool and wildly unappreciated. Because one immediately liked Gibs, then the other followed. You decided after that first night to just kind of ignore them both. It was like a movie, though, you thought, where one was amazingly cute and friendly, the other an obnoxious beast. You wondered if all pairs walked in the same configuration. Like those two. Like the way everyone loves Gibs and thinks you’re a fat faggot. Did this happen in the animal kingdom? Is there always one awkward, homely lion that just can’t get laid?
The day they left, Gibs bragged to you that he fucked the hot one on the beach the night before. He also told you she was seventeen. You were on the dock when he said this. You called bullshit only seconds before the girls walked by to say goodbye and the hot one pinched his ass and sucked his earlobe and he gave you a smirky, smily, “eh?” Fucker.
You couldn’t imagine what that would feel like. Not her tongue to your flesh, rather the intimacy you must share with another person that would allow them to do that to you, a kind of sodality that made you one. And you knew Gibs and that girl didn’t have that intimacy, that it was purely physical, but that didn’t make you less jealous or empty feeling. A green-eyed lust is just another way of saying hollow. In twenty-one years, three months, eleven days, and four hours, you’ll be sitting on a dock on the Indian River, eating a blackened redfish sandwich, drinking a margarita, and writing a too-long apology letter you’ll likely never have the courage to deliver and you feel an overwhelming sadness that comes with a random memory of that moment, that you’ll not feel that intimacy again. Whether from the mistakes you’ve made or mistakes that won’t even have happened yet. In that moment, you’ll think about the regrets you’ll carry with you, but the harder thoughts will be the regrets you haven’t even created, the ones yet to come. Fuck Gibs for making you feel that way. Fuck that girl for fucking Gibs. And fuck you for being you. And it’s that attitude that will keep you from ever having me in your life. And until you change that, nothing will ever change.
Inside the cover of Bright Lights, Big City Carl had lent you that you had been clutching with your underarm, you noticed a post-it, just like the kind you use, in the tiniest letters, you saw he had written:
Je meurs de seuf auprés de la fontaine,
Chault comme feu et tremble dent a dent,
En mon pays suis en terre loingtaine,
Lez ung brasier frisonne tout ardent,
Nu comme ung ver, vestu en president,
Je riz en pleurs et attens sans espoir,
Confort reprens en triste desespoir,
Je m’esjoys et n’ay plasir aucun,
Puissant je suis sans force et sans pouoir,
Bien recueully, debouté de chascun.
- Villon
You had no idea who this was or what it said, but in that moment it was the greatest discovery of your life.
5.
The waterspout danced across the horizon for what seemed like an entire song. What the song was, was irrelevant. The sky, a black curtain unfurling above you. Your father to your left. You sat on the old dinghy on the deck, the one that split in half and you’d flip upside down and sling your hammock over at night. He said it wouldn’t come this way. You looked down at the trails in the salt where you splashed the surface with water and let it dry and rolled potatoes you’d traded from a camper around in it for dinner the night before. A dark chart of nowherelands that looked like a tropical arctic of snow on black paint. It seemed like it was coming closer, but it always seemed that way when you were looking at a waterspout. At anything that much bigger than your entire world. You wondered if kids in Kansas thought every tornado was out to get them and they were just sitting ducks like some sad Dorothy waiting to be carried to a land with color. It was quiet. There was only one other boat in the anchorage. You could hear the ten thousand terns in the wind. Clattering like they were trying to tell you something. Or they could’ve just been going insane.
The waterspout continued through what you could only assume would have been at least another song. You measured time a lot like that this summer.
“What if it does come this way?” You kind of knew what he was going to say, but you just felt like hearing him say it.
“It’ll suck.”
“What about Mary and Gibs?”
“They’re afraid of everything. Best to not even tell them.” They were downstairs playing backgammon or cribbage or something. You couldn’t have given less of a shit.
“Yep. It’ll suck.”
“We’ll probably die.” This he said without even blinking. In most fathers one would get, you could only assume, at least a gleaming hope of kidding hidden in there, some gallows humor, some kind of something behind the eyes. You knew your father was telling you the truth in that moment.
“Anything we could do?”
“We’re doing it.” He rubbed some of the salt under him. Licked his finger and gave you a smile. “It’ll be fine. Are you still reading the dictionary?”
“Not really in order. I just try to read it until I find a word I don’t know and then use it ten times in one day. Someone told me I’d own it if I did that.”
“Tell yourself it’s like reading every book ever written, just not in the correct order.”
“That either makes perfect sense or none whatsoever.”
“What book are you reading today?”
“This Vonnegut thing about a crazy guy.”
“Cool.”
“If something did happen, hopefully something would smack us in the head or something. You know? Just so we wouldn’t suffer when we’d eventually drown.”
“I’m so glad you’re my son and not Gibs… you know what to do if Mary and I die somehow while we’re out here?”
“Yeah. We talked about it before. I don’t know if I could do it. Plus, the odds of something happening to both of you are slim I’d say.”
“Well if anything happens to me, the plan stays the same. Mary probably won’t be able to handle it.”
“I know. Toss you over the side. Take the Lady to the nearest port and report you missing. Don’t deal with the body.”
“I’m sorry you have to think about stuff like that.”
“Me too.” At dinner with Papa a few days before you left he told you how he’ll likely die. When you’re in college and no one else needs him, he’ll take his gheenoe out into Pine Island Sound and watch his last sunrise before calmly sending the bullet through his temple. All happy families are alike.
Lightning struck on the horizon. It looked like crackling rivers of white snakes electrifying their way across the blue and gray metal oceans of air that hung above those blue and gray oceans of ocean that reflected the unhappy thoughts of heaven and shook and rattled and sank and slumped under the weight of the gulf’s heavy breath.
This will forever be one of your favorite moments.
Earlier, when you saw the weather turn sour, you were sitting on top of the fort, listening to U2’s “One” with that normal aching in your heart that you’d gotten used to since you knew it was just an unavoidable emotion called loneliness. You saw the storm on the horizon, both literally and metaphorically, but you were really watching this one, lone gull dance in circles above the Lady, fighting its invisible universe and confused as to what direction it was being carried by life. You wanted the sky to open and split and bring Zeus’s hands down upon the mast of the Lady. You wanted to watch a tsunami of fire shock and move through this ghostly place. That would be okay, you thought. Tolkien let his characters reach the end of all things. This place, you thought, would be as good as any for this story.
Finally, after the sky settled into a thick and creamy Rothko painting, you watched your father stand up slowly, silhouetted under the chunky strokes of angry greys, blacks, and whites, behind him rhythms of cloudy rumbles echoing across the surface of endless horizons. He looked like he was thinking. He turned to you after a while, saying, “Fuck it. Let’s go kill dinner so we can set it on fire and burn it later.” Two nights earlier he spilled some Jack Daniels over the grill and set the fish on fire.
“Pyrolangia is the sexual gratification from starting fires.”
“Of course it is.”
Two hours earlier, for no good reason, in the bathroom at the fort, you placed two post-its on the wall above the urinal: “Then hate me when thou will, if ever now… other strains of woe, which now seem woe, compared with the loss of thee will not seem so.” And underneath: “I have the weirdest boner right now. I’m glad I’m on your mind.”
At Pulaski Shoals, you were, without concern, tearing the tails from a few lobsters in a way that should send a message to the other marine life, and they will know you by the trail of heads. You came across a couple of large grouper and readied your gun. You looked at it for forgiveness, does he wonder where his brother went, does she wonder who took her father, could they have the capacity to understand it’s not personal when the spear goes through and the grill starts up? They just looked at you, laughed, and told you to fuck off. If you had known who Joe Hill was, you’d have thought of Joe Hill’s execution. You wanted to embrace death so wholly. Why can humans, you thought, be so afraid to abandon a life they don’t really like to begin with? Hours earlier Peter Tosh even told you that everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die. You wanted to have the same existential outlook as the fishes. Fishes? Fish? You’ll never care about that distinction, because like every other thing in this world, they’re just beasts of burden trying to claw out from the depths of your head.
You never really considered seriously killing yourself, but you don’t know if that’s because you meant it or were merely avoiding seriously considering anything. At that moment, though, there was a hunger in your ears begging for the ringing notes of gunmetal blues to play their somber way through your head. But you had to fight through the idea. “Goddamn you, Mr. Rosewater,” you thought, “I won’t see you in heaven today.” But that wasn’t even the strangest part of the dive for you. It was having a Coast Guard patrol boat pull up next to your dinghy and tie off at the boundary bouy and actively look for you and your dad. He made you stay under, at about seventy feet, holding about twenty thousand dollars in fines in a lobster bag you were trying to stuff under a rock and he was up there convincing the guy of god knows what. And on the radar of your life’s weirdness, this event won’t even register as a blip.
Going over to do a quick wreck dive right after, you felt like your sadness was an elephant in the dinghy with you and him. “My life and this summer are just sad parodies of Salinger and Hemingway aren’t they?”
“What?”
“It’s like I’m surrounded by all these goddamn phonies and it’s like they’re the sharks picking at everything I want out of life until there’s nothing left and it’s just bones and death and I don’t know. I just want it to stop.”
“What?”
“Everything. I mean. Sometimes I just feel like all the forces of the universe are constantly throwing banana peels under my feet.”
“See? It’s saying that kind of stuff that makes people say ‘You should be a writer.’” The words of that last bit flew from his tongue like a mockingbird. Like everyone who’d ever said it to you was a fucking idiot and they were only saying it to screw with you.
“When I was in therapy a while back, he told me I should start writing. But all I could do was read other stuff and think, ‘I could never write that.’”
“But I think you were supposed to just write whatever you want, you know? It wasn’t for anybody else.”
“Yeah, but all I could think was if I want to write about this I need to read about that, you know? I mean, maybe I just read too much. Maybe I should just stop all information intake and quit while I’m ahead.”
“Well, you know what I think.”
“Yeah. Mom sucks because she made me see a shrink and I’m a faggot for going.”
“I just think there’s nothing wrong with you, or really that that won’t work. I think you’ve got to be the one who changes you, if that makes any sense.”
“What if it’s us who stay the same size and the world and everything in it shrinks around us?”
“Huh?”
“What if no one ever dies? What if they all collectively buy into some large scale, cosmic practical joke and really they take turns going around the world on a cruise ship and check in on their families through microphones and cameras hidden around our houses?”
He stared through you, shaking his head a little with a “what the fuck are you talking about?”
“Nothing. Nothin’ at all.”
It was the fourth of July.
*
Hours after the dive, you’ll tell Carl about the remora you came across and then the flash of tail you caught sight of. It was genuinely the only time you’d ever been uncomfortable diving. It didn’t make you feel like you were alive the way people talk about. It made you feel like you were doing something stupid and there were things far bigger than you in the world that should be left alone.
“How big was it?”
“The remora attached to no one or the shark?”
“Both. Either.”
“Maybe two and a half, three feet long?”
“They only grow to like three.”
“I know. That’s why my first thought was, ‘what was this thing attached to?’.”
“Could you tell what kind of shark it was?”
“Mako or Tiger, I’m guessing. It was probably around ten feet based on the end I saw swim behind the coral head.”
“God, I hope a bunch of idiots don’t come across this thing. It’s fourth of July, JR’s in Key West. Maybe it will just swim away.”
“Maybe. You doing anything tonight?”
“No. Just making sure no one burns anything down, I suppose.”
*
Your mission for that evening became twofold. Be somewhere away from your dad, Mary, and Gibs as they shot off fireworks from the boat and watched The Hunt for Red October for the third time and be somewhere where you didn’t have to listen to yourself. You just wanted to hear a story not told by the girl. You just desperately wanted to experience someone in the world other than your dad or Gibs or Mary or even Carl, but especially me. You wanted to hear someone outside of your own head tell you a story that wasn’t about you. Sartre was wrong. Hell isn’t other people. You’re around other people all the fucking time. There’s no way hell could be this bad.
After a dinner of fried grouper and lobster tails with canned green beans and, oddly, canned mushrooms that were opened because the labels came off sixteen cans when the bilge pump went out under the galley seat where they were stored and they got wet. For weeks you would eat what came to be called “guess the dinner” where anything from creamed corn to spaghetti sauce could be opened. The cooked oil smell on the Lady made you nauseated, so did the unending Jimmy Buffett soundtrack, so you assumed you’d just sleep on the dock. You told them you wanted to leave and they asked you to stay, but didn’t really put up much of an argument.
On the beach you saw a handful of people who looked less like tourists and more like professional travelers. They seemed, even without really getting to know them, like they knew what they were doing. Like they had done this before. All of them were from somewhere other than here and they welcomed you around the fire after you introduced yourself. Everyone seemed to be travelling from somewhere other than home to somewhere other than home. There was a pullulating married couple, Elizabeth and Doug, dreadlocked and looking like they’d walked here from Alaska with their two kids in tow. Doug somehow had a confidence that made you think he could answer any question or fix any problem without much effort and Elizabeth, even in the campfire light, had a kind of puerperal glow about her that made you assume she was as good a mom as yours. Matt, a completely fur covered, puddingy dude, a disheveled bass player who inhaled more weed than you’d ever seen anyone smoke in your life and you imagined is what Carl looked like twenty-five years ago with his bear stature and burgeoning wizard beard. Link, a Hungarian lunatic who kept trying to talk to you when you mentioned your grandparents, but never really understanding that you couldn’t understand him at all. A larrikin piece of beef jerky named Ian who looked like he could do pinky pull-ups and have women wanting to fuck him by smiling at them with his puerile I-don’t-give-a-fuck-ness of which you were instantly jealous. There was Miles, who never said much, who was shadowy and extremely unmemorable in feature, the only one of which being his quiet presence and how he wasn’t as raucous as the rest. Amelia, an apolaustic bombshell who looked like she wandered here from wherever Doug and Elizabeth came from while somehow retaining the confidence and looks of a pulchritudinous supermodel. Dan, a wiry string bean who seemed like he was coming out of his shell and trying to pretend he wasn’t shy and was trying to jump into the deep end of weird along with the rest of you for the first time in his life. And this canned ham of an idiot calling himself Billy that seemed like the only tourist in the bunch, a Hawaiian shirt and loud bathing suit being the first giveaway, his laugh and awkwardness being the second.
Elizabeth had wandered off as Doug was rolling a joint, apparently a young gentlemen named Finny was in need of a thorough tucking in. His sister, Tessa, who was probably seven or eight and looked like she could be no one else’s child in the world, was kind enough to regale everyone with a campfire story.
“So one night, my friend Fiona was juuuuuust four. I mean, I mean, her brother was juuuust four.” You had no idea why the emphasis was on the word “just,” but simply that it was. “And they were all sleeping, until the brother just started screaming and crying and then Fiona’s mom woke up and woke her dad up and she saw what it was. It was a tarantula on top of the baby’s head! And then, she woke Fiona’s dad up… and… he got a brick and smashed the tarantula! But not the baby! Just the tarantula and theeeeeeen, , uh… they were all fine and snoring in the morning. The end of the creepy story! Dun-dun-duuuun!” You wished to could tell stories like that. You wished there were stories about you like that, stories that weren’t worth telling to other people, but you would any way. Stories filled with a beautiful inconcinnity that people couldn’t help but fall in love with. She was good. You imagined she told a better story than her brother, but since you caught a glimpse of him with his three foot frame and his cape when they came in on the ferry earlier, you figured he was sleepy from saving the world and had no time for fabulation, so it was understandable. You’ll always remember the way she said “thuh end,” as opposed to “thee end.” You never liked that. It wasn’t even cute from a seven-year-old you thought.
“Alright, Tess, hit the sack. Tell Finny goodnight for me.” Doug seemed like a great dad from what you saw in the first five minutes. You’re going to assume he’ll never laugh his ass off when Finny gets knocked out with a pig bladder.
You could hear Elizabeth walking back in the darkness, “Tessa Lou, bedtime!” She and Tessa passed each other and Elizabeth kissed her on the head as she sat down, “Did she tell you a story?”
“Yeah. It was great. Since she already started the thing, should we tell them the one about that guy?”
“What guy?”
“The guy in Maine. You love to tell that story around the campfire.”
“I love that we’re sitting around this campfire and there’s this weird thirteen year old kid hanging out. We had lots of those on the trail…”
“Just tell the story…”
“Alright. Damn, Doug, you’re stealing my thunder. Anyway, so in 1984, we hiked the Appalachian Trail. And it was, uh… two-thousand one hundred and seventy-two miles long. This was right before Tessa was born.”
“It was also 1983… not that that matters.”
“Sorry. It was 1983. Okay? Happy? Anyway, one of our most interesting experiences was in, uh… it was called ‘The Hundred Mile Wilderness.’ This was in Maine. And it was literally a hundred miles where there were only three or four road crossings the whole time.”
“Probably.”
“And you had to carry enough food to make it a hundred miles.”
“Which is, you know, about ten or twelve days.”
“Like he said, which is ten or twelve days. It just depends on about how fast you’re hiking. And we were hiking about ten to twelve miles a day… So we decided… wait. Did we run out of food?”
“We were pretty close.”
“We were pretty close to running out of food and we needed to bail and so we waited alongside a road.”
“But we had the conversations of, ‘Alright. If we don’t find some… someone to get us into town in the next day or two, we’re gonna have to go backwards to get to some place where we can get into a town.’”
“Oh, I don’t remember that.”
“Yeah, so what was the thing was that this was how we came upon this individual.”
“Alright. So. This guy in this old, beat up pickup truck… is trolling down this road and we stick up our thumbs and he stops. And he’s a, he’s a very lumberjacky looking guy and very gentlemanly like and decides that he’s gonna pick us up, but he has some interesting things to say when we get into the truck.”
“But, Elizabeth is leaving something out. Remember? Before we even get into the truck there’s this whole funny experience because he wasn’t driving down the road, we came upon him while he was out splitting wood in the middle of nowhere… So before we even got back to the road with this guy, we were trundling along on this backwoods two-lane highway, or two-track highway I guess… um… for probably ten minutes. So we walk up to this guy and he’s swinging this axe and, uh, we said, ‘Are you going into town any time soon, ‘cause we need to get some food and, uh, we’re gonna run out?’ And I distinctly remember him looking at Elizabeth and then looking at me and looking me up and down and then looking back to Elizabeth and saying, ‘Well, I’ll be damned if a lady is gonna be out here and need some food.’”
“I remember that!”
“And that may have been one of the most emasculating experiences of my entire life,” he confessed as the entire beach erupted into laughter.
“So he gave us a ride, hahaaha… and he, and he told us… so he had the type of truck where there’s just one bench, there’s no extra seats in the cab or anything like that. So it was Doug, me, and our poodle, Frodo Baggins, the hiking poodle and… did Frodo ride in back?”
“I think he did.”
“Frodo hopped in back and this guy, and Doug and I rode in the front seat together. But before we could get in there was a, uh, smallish handgun, that looked, well, loved laying on the seat and he said, uh, ‘Oh, don’t worry about that. That’s, uh, just a gun I keep here because I keep life savings in a Pepsi can in the glovebox. And, I happen to be the self-appointed sheriff around this area, so it’s my job to keep the hooligans under control…’”
“So we ride in the-”
“But you moved it, right?”
“Yeah. So we, um, yeah. Let’s see. Elizabeth sat in the middle on that ride, uh… and I remember her kind of skirting around it and I picked up the gun, which I do not remember being small. I remember it being like a big ass hand cannon. Um… where’s that joint?... Have it make it’s way over here… Anyway, so we put it on the floor and there was this Pepsi can sitting in the ashtray and you could just see, like, bills had been curled up really, really tightly and just shoved through that Pepsi can hole… Um… So we… we got in the, uh, in the truck and for the next half hour he regaled us with stories of his, uh, self-appointed sheriff adventures of tracking guys down with shotguns and riding after people with snowmobiles… um… And then he dropped us in town, ah, so we could get food. So we went to the grocery store and all that… and I don’t think we ever saw him again.”
“Nope.”
“Yeah.”
“But people had heard of him. People in the town had seen him…”
“Right. We would continue walking and we would run into people who knew about this guy. You know, he’s the self-appointed sheriff and the big red truck and all that jazz. Yeah. He was very nice.”
“He was actually.”
Ian jumped in. “I have a hitchhiking story that can top that.”
“Can we pause that for a sec?” Elizabeth asked as she was standing up, “I need to go check on the kiddos and make sure they’re asleep.” Perhaps you were already stoned, but you had the bright idea to go dig up a coconut to share with everyone. By the time you explained it, Elizabeth reappeared and starting telling another story and Doug seemed to know exactly what she was talking about. You just assumed this was their dynamic as a couple. It sure felt that way when you watched them interact. But she seemed to confirm things with Doug as if to make sure her memories weren’t telling her a story that may or may not have actually happened.
“Okay, so we hiked into Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, remember that? And, don’t forget, again, we had this dog with us, Frodo, who’s a big old standard poodle… and we decided we needed to get to Doyle, Pennsylvania, which is where they serve a lot of good Yuengling beer at this hotel… that leans to the side, kind of like, uh, the leaning tower of Paris…”
“The whole building?” some random voice from the fire asked.
“Wait! Pisa! What the fuck did I say? Paris?”
“Sweetie,” Doug interjected, “the Eiffel Tower is in Paris.”
“Whatever, you know what I meant. Anyway… ANYWAY! They only rent this thing out to through-hikers and people that could barely afford anything. I mean it’s barely a, uh… it’s lean…”
“Like the building might collapse on you while you’re sleeping?”
“No, uh… I meant ‘lean’ like nothing there, but it might collapse on you too I suppose. Anyway, we got to this…”
“The hotel was The Doyle and it was actually in Duncannon.”
“Duncannon, Christ almighty. How come I can’t remember any of this…’
“Because we used to call it Drunkcannon, remember?”
“Drunkcannon… I’ve completely fucked up the story already…”
“Keep going…’
“Anyway, we wanted to get to Duncannon, and, uh, we were in Harrisburg. We were a good twenty-five minutes away and it started to rain and we just didn’t want to do it anymore, so we just, we decided to stop at a gas station, and, uh… we asked this person for a ride because they were in the gas station… and she was kind of a rather large woman. And we ask her for a ride and she said, ‘Let me go check something.’ And she went out to her car and fiddled around and then came back and said something to the effect of, ‘Sure… I’ve been living in my car for a number of weeks and, uh, if you could give me some gas money, I wouldn’t have to spend another night sleeping in my car at this gas station, I’d love to give you a ride wherever you want to go. So we piled in this two door, tiny car that was full of a person’s everything, with the two of us and a dog and rode for twenty-five miles up to this nasty hotel, but the hotel was, like, heaven compared to the back seat of this person’s car. And then… we had one of the best and worst hitchhiking experiences of our life…”
“… with a scary guy…” They were both laughing now and no one had a clue why. “Wait… so we must of left Duncannon and…”
“This was a few weeks on…”
“Yeah, yeah… so we’d been hiking for a while and it was time to go into town…”
“Maybe this was even in New York, I don’t know…’
“…so… sometimes you’d walk right through a town and you could get your groceries right away and just keep walking and get out and other times you would have to hitchhike ten miles into a town to get your food and then hitchhike back out… um… and you always had to leave town by the middle of the afternoon ‘cause you didn’t want to be standing out in the dark trying to hitchhike back to the trail or whatever you’re doing, so, um, it was getting late and we were heading out of town to go back to the trail and this guy pulled over in this green old Volvo station wagon and he was this squirrelly little guy wearing really, really thick glasses.”
“He looked like an L.L. Bean catalog model guy, like one that just stares off into the distance with this corded sweater on.”
“Yeah, but not attractive. He was just like a weird, like he looked like he’d spent too much time in the random outpost for the forest service or something. So we get in the car and… and we can tell right away that the guy’s probably just a little socially awkward, but seems normal… ish… until we drive by this parking lot… um… for a trailhead. And he pulls into this parking lot and I’m sitting in the backseat and Elizabeth is sitting in the front seat and he pulls in and starts to tell us this story… but I can’t remember what the story’s about though…”
“It was about a little boy. Something about a little boy that he… had talked to there or played with there or, or something like that…”
“I thought it was a bear or something.”
“Nooo… uh, um… I don’t remember… maybe a bear…”
“Didn’t he piss his pants because of the bear or something?”
“Is that why he pissed his pants maybe?”
“No, fuck it. Let me take over. So this guy stops in this, uh, parking lot and we just sit there and we all stare out the windshield for about five minutes before a word is said. And we’re, like, ‘Soooo… when are we gonna go into town? What are we gonna do?’ It wasn’t entirely abnormal for people to pick us up and demand some drugs or something because they were giving us a ride, um… you know, we were just kind of thinking maybe this guy wants us to get him high or something, we don’t know, but eventually he starts talking about this time he saw a bear… um… up the trail at this trailhead… and he is very, kind of graphically and really in weird detail relaying the story of seeing this bear and getting scared and pissing himself when he saw this bear and feeling like he was gonna die… and then we sat there for another ten minutes in silence and then he just started the car and drove away… drove us back out to the trail and left us, but… it was the, uh, probably the scariest hitchhiking scenario. I remember sitting in the backseat, holding on to Elizabeth’s hand while she sat in the front seat ‘cause she was very nervous and having my pocket knife opened sitting next to my leg in my hand, like, when this guy does something I’m gonna stab him in the neck kind of thing, like… it was really fucking weird.”
“And then he just dropped us off like nothing happened…”
“Yeah. And then it was over. It was just done. Do you have anything else to add to that?”
“That was the end. Mr. L.L. Bean didn’t kill us…. And that’s how you hike the Appalachian Trail.”
Link couldn’t help but chime in, “Fuck did that have to do with the lady and the leaning hotel?”
“Hitchhiking’s weird, you know… I don’t know.”
“That’s nothing,” Ian jumped in, “I’ve got a hitchhiking story for you.” You thought it was fascinating that they were already trying to one up each other. And as the coconut got emptied and the joint disappeared and another one got rolled, you watched Ian’s skinny frame completely take over the campfire with one of the most animated stories you’d ever heard. He acted out every character and detail with his entire body. “So I guess it was around the summer of… fuck when was that, last year, I guess, my buddy Jesse and I are hitchhiking from Munich to Salzburg and had no idea really what we were doing. We’d been hitchhiking for the past two and a half months, started in Ireland and just kind of made our way down there.” Ian was clearly insane. You could not fathom ever doing something like that. You could not even wrap your head around that. “And we had taken the train out to the edge of Munich and we’re standing at the edge of an autohof, which are like these giant German, kind of, rest complexes for travelers. They’ve got small restaurants and gas stations and whatnot around them and these large parking lots where you have all these people jumping off the autobahn. So they’re a perfect place to hitchhike, to thumb it. So, um, we’re flying a sign for Salzburg and nobody’s picking us up. So I start going around and asking in this broken German, ‘Wir fahren Autostop nach Salzburg. Kannst du helfen bitte?’ and I just keep on getting shot down, ‘Nein,’ ‘Nein,’ ‘Nein.’ And there was a guy speaking English, American English, and I walked up to him and was, like, ‘Did I hear you speaking English?’ and he goes, ‘Yeah,’ and I go, ‘Hey, um, my friend and I are hitchhiking to,’ and before I can even finish the fucking sentence this guy cuts me off. He’s like, ‘No!’ and storms off. Um…”
He took another swig from the communal bottle and seemed to be thinking through the events in his head as someone handed him the joint, which he then passed on without hitting.
“So, yeah. So I turned around and Jesse’s standing there waving at me, with the Salzburg sign in his hand still, with polizei on both sides of him. And so I walk up. It’s about a hundred yards, like a full football field, you know, and I’m waving to him the entire time. ‘Hallo,’ ‘What’s going on?’ ‘Papers,’ and I hand him my papers. He says, ‘Your friend tells us that you’re heading to Salzburg,’ ‘Yeah,’ ‘Alright we need to check your bag for drugs,’ ‘Okay.’ So they root through our bags for maybe like two seconds and this whole time I’m, I’m in like the hands behind the head, straight up, you know. So I thought they were gonna pat me down and everything. I’ve got my hands behind my head. And the guy actually pushed my hands down and goes, ‘Relax, we’re not the Los Angeles police department.’ So we make a few jokes and we tell them we’re heading to Eastern Europe. We tell them we might go to Bratislava and they go, ‘Oh, really? It is shit.’ But they wish us luck, but eventually they take off. And almost immediately this black Audi pulls into the space the cruiser occupied and right next to it is this little piece of shit green Ford thing. And these three guys get out. Two from the Audi and one from the green thing. And the older and larger one of them, the silverback, he’s, um… he looks like a stereotype out of a low grade Bond movie, but not even like a Bond villain, he’s too low rent for that, he’s, I don’t know, think he’s just a shitty eastern European mobster with the track pants and basketball jerseys, um, and bald head and smoking, and I walk up to him, without really thinking about it and go, ‘Wir fahren Autostop nach Salzburg. Kannst du helfen bitte?’and he just looks at me and goes, ‘Speak English!’ but it’s not a German accent. And so I look and the Audi’s got Romanian plates. I say, ‘Well, we’re hitchhiking to Salzburg, can you help?’ and he looks at me, talks to his buddies real quick. ‘Yeah. You ride in Ford.” At this point you notice Ian’s drunk enough to start doing all the appropriate accents. “‘Alright.’ So we’re about to load our bags into the Ford and he goes, “wait, wait, wait,” and they talk for a second. They open the back of the Ford and pull out this huge, huge duffel bag that’s loaded to the brim and heavy to carry. No, they take it out of the Audi and put it in the Ford and then tell us that we’re going to be riding in the Audi. So we can’t ride in the same car as this bag’s riding in. Jesse and I just kind of look at each other and mouth ‘Fuck’ and we jump in the Audi and take off. And the whole ride down there, they’re, uh, they’re kind of, like, asking us, you know, ‘What are you doing? Where are you going?’ you know, ‘Why are you doing this?’ So then they go, ‘So, you going to Romania?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Romania. You love Romania.’ ‘Yeah. We’ll go to Romania.’ ‘It’s good. Very good. everything looks better, tastes better, smells better, the air, the water, the food, even the pussy,’ and we’re like, ‘Alright.’ We’re kind of laughing in the back and they’re passing us cigarettes and the whole thing. So about an hour and a half later, we pull into Roseburg, Germany, and Julius looks back at us, he’s the main guy. ‘Smoke break.’ So we get out. But they’ve been smoking the entire fucking time. But then one of the guys disappears for a while, like a long while, and the other guy comes back with a pack of cigarettes and some beers. So we’re drinking beer and smoking and the other guy comes back with license plates and keys and he pulls up in a red Ford piece of shit. Same car as the green one, just red. So they’ve got another one of these Fords. Jesse is then informed that he’ll be riding in the red Ford, I’ll be riding in the Audi… and… we’ve got the duffel bag back in the green car. So I kind of wave to Jesse and think, ‘Well, it’s been fun, dude. The last two and a half months of my life were at least cool.’ We jump in the cars and it’s dead silent with Julius and I driving. And finally he goes, ‘What you’re doing is very stupid.’ ‘What do you mean?’ He says, ‘It’s, it’s stupid young thing. You could meet crazy people… So you’re going to go to Romania?’ ‘Yeah. I’m gonna go to Romania.’ And he says, ‘Well, while you’re out there you go to Timișoara, is good place not many people know. Is good place for young kids to do, like… is hippie dancing, you know, good drugs, women.’ So, I’m like, ‘Alright, I can get down with that.’ But he says, ‘But be careful. You get out there, you get into things… Big mafia in Romania.’ ‘Big mafia, huh?’ ‘Yeah. You know you have to be careful. Uh, we make mafia so easy.’ ‘What does that mean, we make mafia so easy?’ He says, ‘Yeah. me and my brothers. We make mafia so easy.’ And I, like, didn’t ask him a question. I just stared at him. And he goes, ‘I mean, no. We legitimate now. We is real estate,’ and hands me a fucking business card. I’m thinking you’re going to try and get away with being a Mafioso because you just tell me you’re, like, this legitimate businessman. That’s like every guy that you meet in New Jersey, like, ‘I have a business card. It’s cool’… um, and he proceeds to give me advice about Romania. ‘Is, you know… have fun out there, but be careful. Gypsy might stab you and take your wallet, ha ha, I, but, uh, but you meet Romanian girl, you have girl for life. You have girlfriend, she will cook for you, she will wait for you, she will clean for you, unless, maybe, I don’t know, you are bad fucker or something. Someday you learn responsibility, but now you have fun.’ And we pull into this gas station just outside of Salzburg and Jules and I get out. He buys me another beer and a pack of smokes. Green car pulls up. Red car pulls up. Jesse gets out. And as I’m about to walk away, he puts a hand on my shoulder and turns me around and looks me dead in the eye. And he says, ‘Now, you have fun. But you get to Bucharest and you get trouble, like we talk about…’ he kind of looks over his shoulder, and then he says, ‘You call Julius… I make everything better,’ gives me a hug. And then he turns around, gets in his Audi drives eastbound back to Bucharest and I just kind of stood there stunned. I heard Jesse say, ‘Soooo, we’re going to Salzburg?’ That’s it, man. That’s my fucking story.”
“Wait,” someone asked, “Did he have the same kind of experience in his car?”
“No! Nothing. The guy said zero. The entire time. Two hours.”
“Jesus. That must have been way more terrifying for him.”
“Yeah. It’s dead silent. Shitty eastern European disco playing in the background…”
“Oh my God…”
“And Jesse’s just thinking, like, ‘I don’t know where we’re going… I, I don’t know what’s going on. I have, like, no idea where we are.’”
“But everything was fine though?” you asked. “They just let you out. Here’s your shit. Don’t worry about the bag in the green car?”
“Yeah. And I never found out what was in there, but it was big enough to carry AK-47s, a bunch of bags of cocaine and/or heads. I don’t know. Maybe a combination of all three.”
“That is insane.”
“So… yeah.”
“Matt!” someone yelled, “It’s your turn to tell a story.”
“Ok…” He took another big, long hit off the pipe and coughed a good bit. “So, uh, you know I told you guys I’m a musician and…” He pulled more smoke out without lighting it.
“What do you play?” You totally interrupted him. “Sorry I interrupted you.”
“No… uh… ha-ha,” he had this weird uncontrollable giggle that would show up often mid word. Like Santa Claus if Santa Claus were twenty-eight and smoking a ton of reefer on a beach seventy-miles from nowhere. “I, uh… play the bass?” But he said it like a question. “And we play a bunch in the, uh… you know, western half of the country. And we’ll do our route. It’s one that we do and leads us and will… you know, uh, start in Denver and we’ll go to a couple of other cities. And you know, you end up in Utah, and, uh, we’ll end up at this place in Monroe and it’s a hot spring. And there’s this dude, um… There’s this guy Mike and he’s like an old Deadhead and he’s like beyond Deadhead. Uh, he, he… he, this is… this is his situation. He still went out with the Dead until like ’78 or ’79 or something and he still went out all the time today. But around then he, uh, or whenever that was… and he lives in Denver. And he heads back… And he just can’t stop or whatever…” Matt was, at that sentence, officially and completely stoned. “And he ends up, he’s like… he’s uh, he’s like a lot of these people… these fucking, uh, these uh. It’s, uh, not necessarily a bad thing. It’s these rejects… uh, these people who, uh, that… uh, but uh, anyway… a bunch of people who are, uh, done with one thing, you move on to the next thing after the last thing you know and occasionally hitting Dead shows. He’s uh, he, he doesn’t know where else to go. So he just, uh, keeps driving and he ends up in this place in Monroe, Utah and he opens up this fucking hot springs… And… Uh…hmmm.”
He seemed like he forgot what he was talking about.
“Dude!” someone yelled, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“The place! Right. Fuck…. This place. To try to describe this place it’s a bit like, there was something there and then… um… it got left in disrepair and there was nothing there, but there was something there, but no no no.”
“Dude!” someone yelled, “Focus!”
“Fuck. Right. There is a business there actually. Like if you went up to it, you’d be like is this a thing or what the fuck, you know? Right. Actually… there’s, uh, a giant… the pool outside, there’s a bunch of shit in the pool. And he has these pools, uh… like… uh… bathtubs! On the hill. All the way up the hill. And this is a place we’ll stop and he’s got like all this old tv equipment. He used to be a tv production guy in Denver. Like, he was like, before he, uh, quit life and you know and tuned in and dropped out or whatever the fuck he did… and uh, uh, went and worshipped at the feet, uh.. altar of the, uh… fuckin, uh…Jerrbear, hehehe, he was, uh… He was a tv producer for a news station in, uh, Denver. I think Channel 9. I can’t remember which one exactly.” Matt’s storytelling was, you thought, like someone was telling him a story he’d never heard before in his ear that he was trying to retell in real time. “So he’s got this background in tv production. And he gets this place in the middle of bumfucking nowhere in Utah and you walk inside and… after… you’re outside and it’s just a shambles. And there’s like motorbikes everywhere. And he has, also… And he has a, uh, a dead… a bus graveyard. Like, uh… like, he has like…”
“Like actual school busses like I ride?”
“Yeah. School busses. With whales painted on the side… And, that’s part of what he does, actually. He will restore these, these school busses and, you know, make them into, um, livable spaces or whatever, but.. anyway, so, part the thing is like a campground, a weird like semi… I don’t know, weird kinda campground and then he’s got these busses that you can live in. And then he’s got the hot springs.”
“Dude!” someone yelled, “Is this going somewhere?”
“Right! Fuck. So you roll up to the place… Uh… And… uh… There’s like I said there’s like this abandoned pool with all this shit inside. Like all these, you know, old, Dead tour busses that are literally from that exact era from people doing that. And, hehehe, you fucking walk inside, hehehe, there’s a, there’s a full on like, you know, I don’t know, I would say, I , I mean… actually I could say… like seventies era with eighties, like mid-eighties tv equipment, so it’s not super old, not super new, you know, and they’re on these big spindles and there’s these giant cameras and they have, you can turn three hundred and sixty degrees, and, uh… you, like, look at the side of them and they’ve got a, um, it’s like a Paradise Studios, or, I got, um, I can’t remember exactly, but, anyway, it’s, it’s Leon Russell’s fucking tv studio and recording studio.”
He asks you if you’ve heard of Leon Russell. You say, “yeah, but not that well.” He asks how. You tell him it’d take too long to explain.
“So, whatever, anyway, this was like’s Leon Russell’s that he had, like you could go look up, like there’s footage, but he had a recording studio and they had a tv studio with it where they would record people and it would be like the, uh, them jamming, there’s like JJ Cale and him playing and shit, but they’re from Leon Russell’s studios and he’s got, he’s got the like, there’s these crazy fucking things, anyway. And he records bands play and he, uh, and he pays you and feeds you and stuff, so… and we’ll come through there sometimes.”
You could not stop fixating on this tic where he rubbed his eyes, you assumed because of the weed, but he doesn’t take his glasses off, just kind of coming up from underneath the lenses smooshing his face around and letting them fall back into place. He’d done it eight times since the story started.
“And…” and the next bit turned into some coughing turned into some hacking followed by a swig of something people were passing around. “And, so… we’ll, we’ll stop there and he like has these people that come in from the wherever the fuck they come in from. I don’t know who these people are or where they come from, but they literally just volunteer and it’s kind of like if you want to, uh, be a part of the little, you know, Mike’s commune or whatever the fuck, you know, the thing, hang out, you just gotta do, you know, something. So some people, like, do the dishes and some people plant shit or whatever… uh… and some people will help, you know… what you’re probably gonna do eventually is, like, help man the cameras. So he just has these random people manning the cameras and he talks to them over, um, over closed circuit ear things with a microphone and stuff and he’s in the other room and he’s, you know, mixing all this stuff on like ancient computers and shit… and he puts it out… and… he’s an interesting bird. And it’s kinda like, he’s got like this bit of like a harem situation going on over there… and… it’s a little weird. It kind of weirds me out to be honest, hehehe, like…” Everyone was pissing themselves as much as Matt was, possibly more from his laughing and storytelling than the actual story. “Wait, like the way he talks to the fucking ladies there…” Someone says something, but you had no idea what. You probably had a contact high. You didn’t know. You didn’t care. “Oh, wait, dude, and fucking children and shit… there’s like, there’s like kids there and one time we were there, there’s like this girl, and I say girl because, you know, she was probably, she was… she was definitely younger than I am now…” Matt, with his great beard and greater laugh, looked like he could be anywhere between twenty and forty. Someone asked. He was twenty-eight, but that’s probably not relevant or worth remembering. “But I don’t know at the time, you know, whatever, but it was, like, this woman… and her kids and there was like another woman there and it certainly wasn’t very clear as to, uuuh, you know, like, who was sleeping where I’m not really particularly sure, you know, they prob-, who the fuck knows…”
“Dude!” someone yelled, “Was it a cult?”
“I don’t know… cult… I don’t know about cult, because he’s, you know, whatever, I don’t know. It’s kinda weird, but, after that the next is Vegas obviously… so you leave there and you go to Vegas and, uh haha, you know what? It’s somebody else’s turn. We’ll come back to the end of mine when the kid’s not here…”
“Fuck you, dude.”
“I like this kid. He fucking lives here! How fucking insane is that?”
“I figure one day I’ll be sitting at a campfire in Colorado telling people a story about this crazy musician I met on a beach who told me about a cult that wasn’t a cult.”
“I love this fucking kid! Where’s that pipe?” Elizabeth’s hacking called her out and passed it on she did. She also said quietly to herself, “I’m a statue…”
“Anybody else join a cult that wasn’t a cult?”
“Sort of…” Link quietly chimed in. “Once.”
“Go on…”
“So I can’t talk about where or who I was with when this happened, because…”
“Those are the best kind of stories, though.”
“There is that.”
“That does mean this is going to be an awesome story.”
“So we, um… and the reason why is actually I took an oath at the beginning of this whole thing, or near the beginning when we all met up in a cabin that was part of an apple orchard sinking into a swamp, um… we had come into town… uh… we met up with about ten other people… walked into this cabin… we had the first night, uh, we all, we stood around, uh, in a circle, or sat around in a circle and talked about why we were there. And some people that, um, had, uh, that needed some kind of… some kind of direction in their personal life…um… there were some people that were just there for the raw experience, uh, and then there’s me, this foreign kid that was offered an opportunity to take place in this, uh, in this workshop… And we had a few trust ceremonies, one of the things being that we can never talk about where we were or who we were with when this happened, but… we all, uh… we all slept in the same room that night and I woke up the next morning with an envelope next to my head and on that envelope was my name and a little picture in the upper right hand corner of some mountains drawn with a sharpie and a little path from my name to those mountains. Inside of it was my breakfast, and the breakfast was two little stamps with a bicycle printed across them. So I put them under my tongue, um… then put in the earplugs they gave me and the blindfold and leaned back. I laid back on my mattress. As I took my breakfast, I saw my friend who was standing there in these black robes with like gold lapels,” but he rubbed his shoulders when he said lapels, “and he kind of waved at me and I waved back and… About a half hour later I hear people around me start to giggle and had been told that that would probably be the people that ate mushrooms, because they kick in a little bit faster than the LSD. I figured, ‘Okay, great, I’ll be going here in a moment.’ And after what I figured was about another half hour, forty-five minutes, I didn’t feel anything, so I was gonna go tell my friends, ‘Hey, I think maybe the dose is bunk,’ but I took off my blindfold and looked out and immediately went, ‘Oh shit!’ and put the blindfold right back on and leaned back, and as I was leaning back I heard my friend go, ‘Hah!’” Interesting as this story was, you couldn’t stop wondering if he had meant epaulets instead of lapels. “And almost immediately everything began to kind of fall into place. I had taken two hundred micrograms of LSD in those two stamps and it, it came on very suddenly at that point, uh… the colors, um… and the feeling of, kind of, falling into being, um… with them… if that means anything, I… I… trying to explain the psychedelic experience with words, I don’t… it’s like living in a dream world… um… that, you… uh, people that have been there when you explain it they know what you’re talking about and people that don’t, they’re like, ‘Well, it’s drugs, you know, it’s like being in a Pink Floyd video,’ but it’s not like being in a Pink Floyd video, you know? It’s much more cerebral than that… The most bizarre occurrence is, I have a friend that I hadn’t seen in the better part of a year. I saw her briefly when I was in Paris. But I relived every moment that I had ever experienced with her, from the time that I met her at a punk show until the time that she left me a letter that said ‘good luck and Godspeed’ in Paris. And I figured that I must be getting close to getting done with the day at this point because that all took forever, and that’s when my friend tapped me on the shoulder, looked at me and said, ‘Time for the booster dose’ and handed me two point four grams of mushrooms. Took it down the hatch. Leaned back… and fell a little deeper. I… Sometime after the mushrooms really started to take effect, I felt like I left my physical body, so sickness, like from the mushrooms, wasn’t really something I worried about… I… could feel myself kind of drift away… kind of the physical form didn’t exist anymore… I became… I experienced… what I think is what they refer to as ego death… um… consciousness didn’t exist anymore, everything was a point of pure light that… that… you hear about, ‘Oh, everything becomes light and I can see and I can hold it,’ but no, everything, myself included just became… a light… it became energy, it became… being in its rawest sense… I finally started to come down off this peak and when I took off my blindfold, I could hear my eyelashes pull apart when I blinked, I could feel them and hear them twinkle… and hear it as music… I got up and I walked off… My friend comes up to me and says, ‘If you’re going to go outside you need to wear a coat,’ ‘Oh, is it cold?’ ‘Yes,’ and so he puts a coat around me and I walk outside and I sat down under an apple tree and, and felt the marsh and frogs as they, what I’m assuming were frogs that I think were there, crawl all over my feet, until he came out again at some point and offered me another two point one grams… I took one, and I looked at him. He was now wearing white robes with gold lapels,” but he rubbed his shoulders again, “and I expressed some concern that he may be morphing in some way shape or form, but he said, ‘No, I changed.’ He had long hair and, uh, kind of looked like a clean cut picture of what Jesus looked like in Catholic school paintings. And I looked at him… and I thought… I don’t know what I thought, but I thought it was weird that the lapels didn’t look like normal lapels, they looked like chained rope…” He rubbed his shoulder again and you couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Was it a lapel or an epaulet?”
“Epaulet! Yes! Thank you! What the fuck was I saying, lapel? How come no one said anything?” Because they weren’t assholes like you. “Anyway, that’s what I meant. The epaulets. Um… uh… um, but uh, he uh… I, I couldn’t help but think at that moment that I’d joined a cult, like possibly unbeknownst to me I’m now in a cult. But what was great is that the thought that followed that was, ‘Well, that’s okay. They’re very nice here and the food’s good.’ And I took one of the mushrooms and I ate it, and he said, ‘Only one?’ I said, ‘Oh, hell, I’m already crazy,’ and took the other, and then he said, ‘Okay, it’s probably time to go lie down again.’ Sure enough I went and lied down and fell back into this place that…I felt like I was having conversations with people in the room that… we could look at each other and there was almost a… this… we wouldn’t speak, but we could understand each other… um… Standing up wasn’t an option, not because I’d left the physical form again, it’s just I, I… I had no interest. Simply being was enough to be happy. We were encouraged to write notes or to make statements, but I couldn’t figure out how to take the cap off a damn pen… um… And the last few hours are a little blurry until I finally came around to things. I stepped outside. My friend had built a fire that had a kettle, er, a cauldron over it. He was making a bean stew and this dog was running around. So I asked him, ‘Where did the dog come from?’ And he looks at me, he looks around, and goes, ‘What dog?’ and I kinda, I looked shocked for a second and turned around and was about to walk back in, he goes, ‘Link, it’s okay, come on back, there is a dog here, I’m just fucking with you…’ But, all in all, I spent about… eh, ah… it’s… I’m not sure if everything felt like it took longer or took shorter, but… eh… I can think about it in some ways and it feels like it took days, as I mentioned I had the conversation with my friend for our entire relationship… and at the same time, I can compress it into just a few minutes. What made it all the more bizarre is that when we were done we walked down to a, you know, when the whole thing had come to an end, we walked down to a pub that was nearby… and I had been living in this strange world, where I couldn’t understand what anybody was saying and there were all these bizarre people that looked at me as some kind of weird traveler, kind of like you all are now… and we walked into this pub in the rural part of the country and I was in this strange place where I couldn’t understand what everybody was saying and I was off the drugs, hah! So it was, it was about the same, ha. I’ve been invited back to share the experience again, but I’ve never had the opportunity to go back there. But I’m do up for another trip down the rabbit hole, I guess… Alright! That’s my story. Who’s up next?”
“So we’ve had rock and roll and we’ve had a lot of drugs, I’ll tell one about sex, okay?” Amelia chimed in. “You cool with that, kid?” You nodded. “Far out. So me and a friend were in Amsterdam. We were trying to figure out what we wanted to do… and there’s so much to do, it’s, it’s ridiculous in that town. Of course, you’ve got the red light district… and that’s actually weird for me. I have no interest in buying sex. I mean, it’s quite the novelty to watch the process, but it just didn’t resonate with me… and so we-”
You have no idea why you cut her off. “Can I cut you off?”
“What’s up?”
“I actually have a story! You just reminded me of it. When we used to live in Key West our dock was in this really dingy place near the naval base. But it was at the end of this street called Caroline Street and all the doors on the houses on the street are painted red. I guess this place was just a row of whorehouses at one time or something. It’s probably total bullshit, I have no idea. Anyway…”
“Wait. How old are you?”
“I’m thirteen, but I hear a lot that I’m mature for my age.”
“Have any of you ever met a thirteen year old that talks like this kid?” You just smiled that smile where you don’t really smile but pull your lips into your teeth and just kind of grin and nod your head a touch, like when someone pays you a compliment and you get embarrassed, exactly like you do in every situation you’re in like this.
“Yeah. I get that a lot. It’s cool.”
“That’s fucking awesome, kid.”
“But, I’m not done, I’m not done with the story. We lived at the end of this street with the whorehouse, but our actual neighbor at the end of the dock was a real life pimp. He owns this really, really sleazy strip club called The Pirate’s Den. Everyone says it’s the filthiest one-”
“I was there the night before last!”
“Right? This creepy guy knows. Anyway, all the strippers hang around the dock and boat suntanning all day naked. I’m in 8th grade and I’m staring out the windows all the time, looking for a reason just to hang out on the deck and I, uh, a couple of times, had friends with me and this one time I bring my teacher because she drove me from where I live with my mom down with me-”
“Wait, you went on a trip to Key West with your teacher?”
“Yeah, but… doesn’t matter. Anyway, I lived at the end of a street where whores lived on a dock where current strippers lived. I mean, they’re hookers I guess.”
“Oh, they ain’t just stripping.” You will never cease to be amazed at alcohol’s ability to make anybody say anything at any time to complete strangers.
“That’s all I got. Amsterdam!”
“Right! What the fuck was I talking about?”
“Amsterdam. Hookers. That’s what made me think of the skanks across the dock.”
“Right!” Drunk people say “right” a lot, you thought. “Right. Fuck. Yeah. No. I don’t wanna do that. I just, ew…” And she did that thing everybody does when you shake your entire body a little bit and scrunch your face when you say “ew.”
“Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! I want to interrupt too!”
“Elizabeth, let Amelia tell her story!”
“It’s cool, Doug.”
“No, there’s that story from the locker room, remember?”
“Right, that’s good.”
“So I only told a few of you this when we met, but I’m actually a teacher. I teach public speaking at a place in Illinois,” except she said “Ellinois” for some reason, “and Doug and I took the kids swimming one day at the rec center, I guess this was maybe a year ago. And afterwards we were taking our time taking showers and we were lollygagging a little bit getting dressed by the lockers. And there were two students around the other side of the locker wall from us and, um… one of them had headphones on and she was, like, really panting like she’d just been... uh… and uh… the other one was trying to get her attention and they were, they had that valley girl, um, type of style of speaking, and ‘how ya doin, how’s your Christmas, oh my god, it was great, and yada yada yada.’ And Tessa looked at me and she’s like, ‘why do they talk like that?’ But anyway, I digress. One of them says, and… um… I’m gathering they were waitresses at the same restaurant and I’m also gathering that that restaurant might not be doing so well and it might be going under soon, because they were talking about how poor they were and how they soon weren’t going to have jobs and they needed to look for some income again. And so, it’s like, ‘oh, I’m so poor, oh my god, and yada yada yada and I don’t want to ask my parents for any more money. And then one of them breaks into the conversation. She said, ‘Can you do the splits?’”
“Oh no…”
“Oh yeah. And, wait, wait, and then this one girls pauses and she says, ‘I don’t think so. I haven’t tried in years I guess.’ And the other one said, ‘Well I have this New Year’s resolution to be much more flexible and I’m trying to do the splits and I’m wondering how many people can do them, so I was just wondering if you could do them.’ And she said, ‘well, you know, I haven’t tried or whatever and I don’t really feel like I really could right now.’ And she goes, ‘well, the reason I’m saying this is because we could maybe be pole dancers because they make so much money…’”
And through the howling, “I knew this was coming!”
“And one of them was saying you can’t do it here, ‘you’d have to drive to Chicago or wherever,’ ‘yeah, but they make, like, twenty-five hundred a night,’ and they’re, like, ‘oh my god…’” and now everyone was chiming in with their own valley girl oh my gods, and “oh my god and they were going on and on and on. And so they’re gonna be pole dancers now. And they had, like, ‘well, call me and let’s drive up together,’ ‘let’s go tomorrow, let’s-’ all this stuff and then-”
Doug did the thing where he cut her off, “Wait. They got that far?”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t know they got that far.”
“That’s awesome,” Matt added, along with a “good for them” from Ian.
“But, wait,” everyone knew where this was going, but that didn’t stop Elizabeth from going, “wait… and then the inevitable thing happened. One of them walked over to the bench by me. And I was just getting my clothes on, so I was half way naked which was a little bit weird because they were both my students that semester…”
“Oh god!”
“That’s awesome!”
“And I didn’t say anything, I just let one of them look at me after I had looked away and there was just this hurry up type of vibe to the other one.”
“‘Oh my god, that was, like, totally our professor!’”
“I want to share that story to so many future students.”
When Amelia unsurprisingly chimed in we couldn’t tell if she was annoyed or entertained. “I was a stripper when I was in college. I made no bones about it.”
“No, like, whatever, I don’t care, I just think it was that the conversation was just so delicious.”
“Well, there is that,” an entertained Amelia quelling the momentary tension, “‘Oh my god! We’re so totally gonna be strippers!’”
“Right? And Tessa’s still, like, ‘why do they talk like that, what are they doing that for? What are they talking about, mom?’ It was the best. And just the look on her face when she saw me… Right! Amelia! Sorry.”
“Anybody else got a stripper story to tell? No? Then someone tell me what the fuck I was talking about.”
“You were grossed out by hookers in Amsterdam or something.”
“Right. Hookers? Wait. No. Amsterdam, right. Okay. Anyway… so we were at this club called, what the fuck was the name of it…? Doesn’t matter. Well, it’s not really like a club. I don’t know. It was… it’s like this squatting bar and cultural center and was hosting this gender thing, whatever, cabaret night essentially. People were doing all kinds of weird things. There was this American girl, uh, that was doing standup, there was a drag queen that made her entire dress out of trash, there were DJs… all kinds of stuff going on. It was a lot of fun actually. So afterwards we come back from, we went somewhere, where the fuck did we go? I don’t know, fuck it. Anyway, we came back and there’s this massive dance party and Beth, she’s this friend I was with, and I have no idea where we’re gonna stay, so we figured we could ask the folks at this place if we could stay there and they gave us the, um, they shot us down, the place was too, you know, already full up because of the party. Well, alright, we’ll sleep in a bush or something if we have to. Oh, I remember, we went out and got stoned at one of the coffee shops with some of the people we met there. Anyway, we got back to the party and dance around. Eventually I come across this woman who looks maybe thirty, thirty-five… um… blonde hair, tan skin. We start dancing and getting a little grindy. And she leans into me… wait, kid, are you cool where this is going?” “We’ll see,” as you shrugged your shoulders. Stoned is just another way of saying stoned. “Well, alright, here’s to the depravity of minors. And, so this lady, she asked me my name. This kinda thick Spanish accent. I said, ‘Amelia.’ She says, ‘I’m Susana,’ nice, ‘Susana,’ so I just keep on dancing. And within three or four minutes she just kinda pulls my head in to her and goes, ‘I want to fuck you.’ And I went, ‘Okay, uuuuhhhmmm… now?’ She goes, ‘yeah.’ ‘Alright.’ And she goes, ‘My place.’ ‘Um, I’m travelling with somebody.’ And she says, ‘She can stay with my friend Ernesto.’ So I go over and I explain the situation to my friend Beth who I was travelling with and introduced her to Ernesto and Susana and I take off. I ride on the back of her bike… everybody in the Netherlands has these luggage racks on their bikes and I would actually just sit on the luggage rack with my feet dangling off and, uh, and an arm around her shoulder and she pedaled on. Eventually we get back to her flat, to her, uh, apartment… um… She kinda pushes me to her room, tells me to go lie down, and says, ‘Stay there.’ She goes into the bathroom, leaves the door open, from her room, and I’m looking at the bathroom door. And just a few minutes later, the door busts open and she’s in a red negligee and she points at me and says, ‘You will give me pleasure,’ and then attacks me… we do the deed. Lying there afterwards… and… she’s kinda smirking at me and says, ‘You know, I’d like to find you again in another couple of years.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Well, you know, just when you’re a little older.’ But then she actually asked me, ‘So, how old are you?’ I said, ‘How old do you think I am?’ She says, ‘I don’t know. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine?’ I said, ‘I’m twenty-three.’ She goes, ‘Oh, really?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ She said, ‘How old do you think I am?’ ‘I don’t know, thirty-five?’ ‘Oh, honey. I’m fifty-three.’ and we both look at each other a little dumbfounded and I start laughing… and then we did it again. Because, at that point, why not? Like, sure! And she was, like, really good. And afterwards I was like, ‘I’ve gotta meet my friend at the train station, I’ve got to go…. And, so, alight.’ So… she hands me a joint to smoke along the way, sends me out the door, and I never heard from her again. But then, so I show up and I sit down at the train station next to Beth and it was all, I mean, I’m pretty casual about it now but it felt really weird at the time, because that was three years older than my mother at the time. And I sit down next to Beth. I say, ‘You get some sleep?’ And she goes, ‘Nope.’ She looks at me and goes, ‘How about you?’ I go, ‘Nope.’ She looks at me and goes, ‘You wanna go get really stoned? I’ve got a story for you.’ Turns out Ernesto had a thing for Beth… and Beth was more like me in her inclinations, if you will…and the only piece of furniture he had in his apartment was a bed… Beth had a rough night… heheha… I definitely had a better night than Beth… nice…”
While everyone was laughing, all you could wonder was, “did Amelia just tell a funny story glossing over her friend getting raped? Is that a thing people do?” The story should have made you horny. There was a hot chick in front of you telling you about lesbian sex. It made you lonely. It made you realize you would never be in that situation. It made you feel like you somehow wouldn’t get the same out of life as everyone else and one day, five hours, and sixteen seconds later when you cum inside of your bathing suit while quietly trying not to rock the hammock or make any noise you will feel that same way again.
“Matt!” Amelia yelled, “Finish your one from earlier!”
“Are you insane, there’s no fucking way I can follow that?”
“Do it!”
“Alright. So what I was I talking about earlier?”
“The cult.”
“It wasn’t a cult! Wait, I was done with that.”
“Vegas.”
“Right! Yes. Fuck. Vegas. Actually this is a good follow-up to yours. Okay, so we leave that guy Mike’s and go to Vegas… and this is all the same run mind you… and one time in particular, we went… and, and we got there… It was like… we were kind of done, hehehe… hanging out with Mike and the, like, I mean it’s nice, it’s, you know, it’s cool to sleep in the baby blue Jerrbear bus. But, you know, it’s a little odd. So we left and you go to Vegas, it’s like the next kind of thing there and we got, we didn’t play… we got there like a day early and so we go hang out, drinking, gambling, whatever. The guitar player from the band at the time, we got to this bar and talk to this chick, and I don’t really remember exactly what led to what, you know, one thing to the next, but the next thing she’s like ‘handjob this,’ and we’re not always one to, you know, hahaha, I mean I can’t certainly, like, deny a handjob in a particular scenario. But I kind of was getting one story, I guess. Come to find out… and the guitar player, my buddy, was maybe getting another story. I’m not really sure, but I go outside and she’s there and, you know, it’s like the kind of situation, whatever, it’s just like… and, you know, my fucking dick’s out, you know, and we’re in the alley. And then all of a sudden the guitar player’s there and she’s jacking us both off! Heehaaha!” Everyone was laughing as hard as Matt as he was acting this out from the perspective of everyone involved. “I know, right! And I’m just like, ‘OOOOHHHHHH,’ but what are you gonna do? I mean, are you really gonna like, uh, uh, uuuuuhhhhhuuhhh, we’re kinda like… I was kind of like…. we’re… ouuuhh. Look, you know when you’re driving in driving school and they teach you about the point of no return on a yellow light. You may have, uh, pertapst… ‘pertapst’? Perhaps! Perhaps reached the point of no return. But, um, as luck would have it before… the, uh, no return point had been reached the bouncer from the kind of club that we were at came outside and definitely put an end to that shit right-a-fucking-way, and, we, uuuhhhh, uh, hahahaha. Shit. I was super embarrassed and went inside. But that bouncer dude, like, uh, you know, no doubt, less than five minutes, like, was getting a handjob from that chick in the alley. Like I fucking saw it and I know that happened. Soooooo, that’s my story. I didn’t climb a fucking mountain and almost die or anything… But, uh… and, uh, yeah.” The entire beach was howling. “And it was for the kid! The last part was for you!”
“Nice. A story about a half a handjob from a Vegas whore. For me? Awesome. Thank you.”
“I love this fucking kid! You got a story like that, kid?”
“No… no… maybe one day… I should just ask the neighbors, right? I don’t know why, but I just thought of these two weird stories that the lighthouse keepers told me. Guy was in Mexico or somewhere once and walked in on his two roommates banging this one girl. It was spring break. And he joined them. I guess he got engaged to her years later and then they had an abortion and broke up. And then Joe, the other lighthouse guy, he chimed in with this random story about how when he grew up in Minnesota they’d go out on lakes in the summertime and race snowmobiles across them because, I guess, they won’t sink if you’re going fast enough.”
“What happens if they sink?”
“They hoist them up, he said.”
“This kid is fucking high. What the fuck is he talking about?”
“Wow. I’m sorry. That was apropos absolutely nothing.”
Matt couldn’t stop laughing. “That’s so awesome! ‘They hoist them up!’ I love this fucking kid so much!”
Amelia and Elizabeth were trying to wrangle the drunks back into some more organized nonsense, while Doug was rolling another joint and Link just stared into space. “Miles, you’ve got to have some kind of insane hitchhiking story to get it back on track. Or at least you got a handjob while on a snowmobile?”
“Um… no. But I do have a story about a girl.”
“Those are the best kinds…”
“Okay, so we were kind of doing the same thing as Ian. So we started in Dublin and we hitchhiked all the way around the island to Galway. And from Galway we hitched out of, uh… can’t remember it, but it’s some little shithole town in the northern, kinda northwest coast of Ireland. Um… flew to Nantes. From Nantes we hitched to Chartres. From Chartres, uh, we took a train from there to Paris and we wound up sleeping in a fucking drainage ditch all night. And Paris, we wound up spending some time out there with some friends that we made and we went and saw The Pogues and ended up getting drunker than shit with those kids. Um… up to Brussels. Brussels to Amsterdam. From Amsterdam we hitched to Hamburg with an anti-Semitic chef. Um… Go up to Flensburg, get stopped by the polizei for hitchhiking on the autobahn. Um… get put onto a train and told not to come back to Flensburg, go back down to Hamburg, catch a bus to Hanover, Hanover hitched down to Fulda, Fulda to Munich.. uh… Munich to, this is funny, we also hitched to Salzburg but not with the mafia or anything, from Salzburg we went to Vienna, Vienna to Budapest. My buddy Tony meets up with this girl that he met in, uh, Amsterdam actually, and I met this guy named David and so I went from his house and we went our three separate ways. He goes to Romania, she went to Vienna, and I got on the road and ended up going around this lake district called Bezirk Neusiedl am See and couldn’t catch a ride for the life of me trying to get to, um, trying to get to Prague because I’d met this girl in Munich named Miriam. Beautiful girl. Uh… grew up just north of Munich… and… uh, but, spoke English with an Irish accent. She’d learned how to speak English in Ireland. Gorgeous girl. And… we made this plan because she was, like, ‘Let’s meet up in Prague. I want to travel with you. Meet me at the Charles Bridge at midnight.’”
“Like a movie or something?”
“Yeah. Just like a movie. And I am fucking geared. And I’m, like, yeah! We’re going to be staying in this hostel and we’re going to go from there. I get to this little town in Austria called Illmitz, and the guy that drops me off there, he drops me off on the edge of town on this highway that has no traffic. I have no water. I have no food. I’m just thinking, ‘man, I am fucked out here.’ I look up and I see this tiny car cruise over the hill, just tearing down the hill at an ungodly speed. And I can hear the music pumping before the car gets to me. I’m thinking no way in hell this guy’s gonna stop, but sure enough, pulls right up next to me, door swings open, cloud of cigarette smoke pours out, says something in a language I don’t understand. I say, uh, ‘Bratislava? Prague?’ He goes, ‘Bratislava!’ So I jump in… so we take off. We don’t have much to say to each other because the guy doesn’t speak English, but he’s nice enough, he’s passing me cigarettes and anytime something English would happen on the radio, he’d be, like, ‘Ah, ah…’ and point at it. So we pull into Bratislava and he’s taking me way off the interstate at this point. And we pull up to this old Soviet Bloc building. I mean those are still all over the place there. And he says, ‘Wait, wait. Friends.’ ‘Alright.’ He runs up to the building and grabs the phone by the door and I can tell no one’s picking up or anything, so he just starts buzzing on the thing, you know? Finally he comes back and he’s, like, ‘Come, come, come, come, friends, friends.’ ‘Alright…’ So we go into the building. And all the elevators over there are the size of broom closets. You guys know what I’m talking about. And you pack into them real tight, shoulder to shoulder, Ian, you know what I’m talking about, he hits the button for the top floor and we go up. Doors open and in front of this is, like, this frosted glass security door. I can’t see anything on the other side except for this silhouette that looks huge and all I can think is like, ‘fuck, this guy’s name is gonna be Bruno and I’m gonna be a coke mule and I’m not happy about it.’ But the door swings open and on the other side is this raven-haired, Slovakian goddess. Just this beautiful girl and what comes out of her mouth is, ‘My friend tells me you’re from America. I’m studying English at the university. Would you like a coffee?’ ‘Yes! Yes.’ So I go in, and she introduces me to her equally beautiful roommate and we sit down and we talk and she asks me about what I’m doing and I just say, ‘I’m on an adventure. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m trying to say yes to as much as possible.’ She says, ‘well, we’re going to an electronic music festival tonight, you should come. It’s out in the countryside and my parents have a cabin there we can stay in.’ And… it took every ounce of strength in my body to say, ‘No, I’ve got to meet a friend in Prague,’ because I’m still thinking of this beautiful girl. And they’re like, ‘Well, okay.’ And I finish my coffee and they take me to the train station and I get on the train and I’m already hours behind schedule and there’s no way I’m going to be able to hitch this thing in time and tickets to Prague are like two bucks, so… my train pulls in just before midnight and I’m tearing through Prague trying to find this stupid bridge, I have no idea where I am. The first thing anybody says to me when I get into town, by the way is, ‘Cocaine?’”
“Was it any good?” Matt asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t get any.”
“Maybe he was asking if you had any.”
“I don’t know, I just kind of ignored it.”
“Right on.”
“Anyway… so anyway I’m trying to find the river and this bridge and I’m hearing Russian guys pimping women on the corner to English bachelor parties, like, ‘Yeah. You go to this club and you have this much money, you go in downstairs and you do whatever you want. This is how things work here and if you need’” he did a sniff and a snort along the backside of his hand “‘you let me know and I take care of you, you let me know if you need smoke, whatever.’ But eventually I find the Charles Bridge and I look at my watch and it’s like one thirty in the morning. I’m late. She’s not there. I hunt down a hostel. Any hostel at this point and I’m like, ‘Fuck, I missed these Slovakian girls.’ I walk into the hostel. I don’t even look around. I just look at the hostess and say, ‘Hey, please tell me you have a bed available.’ She goes, ‘Yeah.’ I go, ‘Do you have any beer?’ She goes, ‘Of course!’ I say, ‘Alright. I’m gonna need a bed and a beer.’ She pops the beer open for me. I take a swig and I look up. ‘Hi, Miriam.’ And sure enough, there’s Miriam, standing around chatting with these two Australian guys. We introduce ourselves… uh… Taggi and Lee were their names. And Miriam and I, we go out and we talk a little bit and she’s like, ‘Yeah, I met these two really nice Australian guys and we’ve just been hanging out. They were waiting for me at the bridge. Where the hell were you?’ I said, ‘Well, that’s one of the things about hitchhiking is… things are fluid… always…’ You know? It’s how things happen. She looks at me a little squirrelly and we go back inside and… she says, ‘Okay, I’m going off to bed,’ and she walks away. I’m sitting around talking with Taggi for a little bit. I’m not tired yet because I’ve just been going and going and going and going, like I haven’t calmed down yet. I finish my beer and I’m like, finally, ‘I’m going to bed too.’ I lay down in my bunk in the gymnasium, it’s the gymnasium to an old high school that’s been converted to a hostel and it’s got seventy-five bunks in this one room. I’m on the bottom bunk. And it becomes very apparent very quickly that the bunk above me is occupied by more than one person or one person that’s being very aggressive with himself, and after about five, six minutes of this, I’m like, ‘Fuck, I need to sleep.’ So I swing up, to tell him to knock it the fuck off and I’m looking at Miriam, head tilted back in just full ecstasy, like middle of an orgasm. I don’t say a word. She didn’t see me when I did it. I walk away and just go tell the hostess, ‘Hey, I need a different bed.’ Spent the next three days in Prague doing my own thing, going out, and I stole a pen off of Kafka’s grave, um… and left him a note. Had a storm for the next month and a half, by the way and I, uh… fucking awful. Got haunted by Kafka. Um… wound up almost accidently eating a whole bunch of mushrooms with a bunch of high school kids. Link, maybe they were your friends…”
“Accidentally?”
“Well, we’re sitting in a bar… and… we’re all talking around the table and I figured that they were all about eighteen, nineteen. I was a little bit older, but whatever, and they’re passing this bag around of something that I figured was trail mix and I take a handful of it and I’m about to dump it in my mouth and I look down and realize it’s just dried mushrooms. And they’ve just been taking small pinches out of this thing. And I’m like, no, can’t do it… My last night there, uh… I got into the hostel late and they’d given away my bed, so I pleaded with them for some way to find a place to sleep because I didn’t want to sleep in another fucking park. It was raining. It was dumping out because of the whole stupid Kafka ghost thing. They hand me a stack of towels and tell me I have to take it all the way across town to another hostel that was on an island in the middle of the river and they’d give me a bed and a beer. I walked in. I put the towels down without saying a word. They give me a beer, a set of sheets, and pointed towards a door. Walked in and had the first real night of sleep I’d had in the past, like, four days. And I just caught a train out the next day.”
“And that was Prague for you?” you asked.
“That was Prague for me,” Miles quietly answered.
“You let a girl screw you over and you pissed off Kafka?”
“That was Prague. Yeah. Dan! You’ve been sitting there quiet all night, nursing the same beer. It’s your turn, you weird little man.”
“Alright, okay, this isn’t my story, but, fuck it, I’m stealing it. This is a love story. You all will like this. This is a story that a friend told me when I was in the Navy. So, um, my old petty officer, he, he was in charge of all the, uh, all of us, in the, uh, in the division. He, um, was stationed in the Philippines. And he was still single at the time. And he was just wandering around like Manila City or whatever the fuck the capital of the Philippines was. And he got, um, an apple from a vendor, just to eat, just as he’s walking along. And, so… he’s, he’s eating this apple and, and, he’s walking through the park, and there’s these trees all through the park and there’re monkeys that are in the trees. Which is pretty normal in the Philippines. Well, the monkeys, though, see him eating this apple and they start, like, screaming. And they start, like, throwing branches because they wanna get the apple. But they’re not gonna come down the tree. So they’re throwing all this stuff at him and it hits him in the head and he gets mad. And he picks up a rock to turn to throw at the monkeys and, and, this woman runs up to him and gestures, like, ‘no, no, no, no… don’t… don’t do it.’ And he’s like, ‘What?’ And he turns and he throws the rock and hits a monkey and a monkey falls out of the tree. And he either killed it or whatever. Aaaallllll the monkeys, I mean, all of them, immediately, like an army leap out of the tree and start chasing him, and now this woman, through the park! And he’s, like, he’s got the apple in his hand and there’s all these screaming monkeys and, like, this woman’s like motioning, ‘just come with me’ and the monkeys, they’re, like, chasing them through the city. Where like all the cabs and everything are. They’re like getting chased by all the monkeys. She finally gets the apple out of his hand, throws it back to the monkeys and they all just, like, land on the apple long enough for them to, like, get away. And, so… they go back to where she lives, to, like, her house. And so they’re standing there in front of her family, like, they all live there together. And she’s just, like, screaming at him in Filipino or whatever language they speak. he has no idea what she’s saying, but she’s… he knows that she’s super pissed. And… he just falls in love with her right then and there. And he married her! And they were still married when he told me the story, like, ten years later. And that was how they met. The screaming monkeys in the Philippines. That’s my favorite story ever. I have no idea whatsoever if it’s true or not. but it’s a great story.”
At this point everyone started talking over each other. “That’s fucking awesome!” “That’s a love story?” “Man, I wanna throw an apple at a monkey!” “Did we just hear a story where the hero killed a monkey?” “How the fuck was that a love story?” “You know, because, they’re married!” “Seriously?” “It’s a fuckin’ story. This fuckin’ guy got a handjob and this dude walked across Europe and hung out with mobsters. It was a love story.” “Yeah, the dude killed a monkey and still got the girl!” You knew any story was a love story. Never matters what it’s about. At the end of the day, no one knows why anyone connects with anyone. That’s what makes every story magic. They all have the potential to be love stories. All good fabulists know that every whisper or turn of the head, when heard or viewed from that oh so perfect angle, is potentially a liaison with that most dangerous of four letter words, where sins are committed and sins are forgiven. Like the Walrus clarified, being in love means never having to say you’re compunctious every five minutes.
Since Dan was called out for his lack of participation, he raucously decided to pay it forward, “What about this guy? What was your name? Billy? Why isn’t it his turn?”
“So alright… I’m game, um… here’s my crazy travel story… um… here you go… I don’t know, probably like seven years ago or so my friend Ivan and I were in Mexico City, anyway, um… he and I were in Mexico City and you need to know this about Ivan that he’s like this crazy badass, totally fucking bi-polar lunatic, um, who’s just dangerous and, uh, anyway… so, uh… he and I, he’s coming with me, I gotta business conference I gotta do, so I could pay for his ticket and everything… we’re in Mexico City, uh… and, and we, uh, we ended up our hotel was like in the shittiest part of Mexico City ever. It was awful. It was in this industrial section that was just so, so gross. And, uh, uh… you know, that was like the nearest one to, I guess, to the conference when they booked it or whatever the fuck. Maybe my company wanted me to get killed. I don’t know. Anyway, um… what was I, um… anyway, um… So, we uh… and we did, like, the tourist thing and went to, uh, Teotihuacán… and all that shit and checked it all out and went around and did all that stuff and we’re out one night and we’re, we’re, you know, pretty fuckin’ drunk and, uh, we took a cab back to our hotel, and, uh, he took us to this really sketchy place nowhere near our fucking hotel… it was just some random place in this scummy neighborhood and told us he was dropping us there and it’s like three in the morning and, uh… so we try and flag down another cab, but this guy won’t go away. He just keeps standing next to us and saying to get back in the car and he’ll take us to our hotel and he made a mistake, but we were getting paranoid because we were pretty lost and just didn’t want to wander around in circles and this guy’s practically harassing us and we’re thinking we’re just about to be kidnapped or blackmailed or something and, like, a van with no windows is gonna roll up at any minute and we’re gonna be told to get in it, so this other cab comes and we wave it, but we quickly realize that this other cab is this guy’s buddy and it’s one of those really sketchy gypsy cabs, you guys know what I’m talking about, that are all over Mexico City, they’re like these beat up old Volkswagen Beetles with no kind of legal taxi license or anything and they’re totally unregistered and that’s how you get kidnapped if you’re a fuckin’ American down there I guess, and, uh… and then the original dude just jumps in his car and hauls ass down the street leaving us in the middle of this alley with this new motherfucker, and he’s like, ‘Get in the cab, I’ll take you wherever. Get in the car,’ and uh, and so, we’re like, ‘No, no, we’re good, we’re alright,’ and then, uh, so, uh… uh… you know, we’re standing there and we’re arguing with him and he gets out of the car and he comes at us and he’s like, ‘Come on, I’ll give you a ride,’ and at this point he’s practically trying to push us in and at this point I’m shitting myself because I’m just a fucking coward, so I’m, I’m, ‘I don’t know what the fuck’s going on,’ and, and, Ivan is calm like he’s watching the sunset in Mallory Square and he just goes right up into this dude’s face and he’s kind of yelling at him in half Spanish, and he’s, he’s just right up in there and then, I swear to god, maybe he was going for gun or something, but Ivan kind of pushes him away and he comes back to me a little bit and the dude kind of came after us and Ivan fucking picked up a bottle off the ground and just smashed it over this dude’s head, fucking laid him out, there’s all kind of blood coming out, there’s these little green pieces of, you know, it was one of those green bottles they’ve got and there’s specks of shit all jammed into his forehead and there’s blood and he’s just laying there and, um, I’m like, ‘Shit! What the fuck do we do?’ Ivan just assaulted this dude and he’s thinking we should steal the car or something and try and find our motel then ditch it somewhere and walk back, but we’re like, ‘This could take all night,’ and, uh… you know, we’re, we’re standing there and, uh, the police drive by and there’s these two fuckin’ white dudes standing there with a dead Mexican in front of us, I mean, he wasn’t dead, but you know what I mean, so we have to explain everything to the cops, and, and, ultimately, you know, money exchanged hands and they were nice enough, with a little bit more money to call an actual cab service for us and they took us to our hotel which was just like a block away, but… it was, uh, sketchy, I mean the cops, we had, like a fifty-fifty that they were gonna pull the same bullshit, and Ivan fucking knocked out a potential kidnapper then he bought our way out of an assault charge with the cops and he had them laughing ten minutes in… I don’t fucking know… I’m not gonna lie, I totally just fucking made that up, I’ve got no story like that, I mean me and Ivan went to Mexico City but we just kind of got drunk and we lived in Zócalo and stayed and fucking swam in a pool at the Holiday Inn while drinking margaritas… I just totally made all that up, that was really, really awful of me…’
“That was fucking awesome, dude! I was totally buying it.”
“Me too. That was hysterical.”
“Why isn’t Ivan here with you? That was crazy. That fact that you just shat that out somehow made it better! Is he even real?”
“Well, what did you guys expect? This, this guy, he’s, he’s, he’s riding with mobsters, and this fucking hot lesbian here, no offense, is getting all kinds of hot lesbian sex in Amsterdam and this fucking guy, he’s got this romantic story of missing a girl at the bridge, and these two may or may not have taken a ride with some loopy serial killer who saw a bear, and, I… I… just… How am I supposed to compete with that shit? The… the… what’s the, what’s next, someone else do something where they don’t get laid or are out doing this crazy shit in Europe or doing drugs or something like that…”
“I got a perfect story for that then…” so and so chimed in. Didn’t matter who. “I’ll tell that one next.”
“Well, good. I’m done. I can’t believe I just fucking did that. You know? It’s funny though. Even this fucking kid hangs out with strippers. It’s a better story than I’ve got. This fucking kid lives here. He’s the weirdest kid in the world. I’m sorry, but you are, man, and I don’t even know you. I’ve known you for, like, two hours and I think you might be an alien.”
“I get that a lot.”
“I bet.”
“And I think they were hookers actually, too.”
“Ha! Oh, yeah they were. That part I wasn’t lying about!’
You liked this story the best out of all of them. This guy was the most honest. They all were telling the truth and were amazing adventurers wending their way through the world in a way few ever will, but this guy’s honesty was different. It takes a lot more courage to tell a lie and then tell the truth, than to do something stupid and brag about it, you thought. This guy, he was sad. These other folks were rock stars and they knew it. This guy, you knew he was miserable, and here he was, alone, on a beach seventy miles from the nearest titty bar listening to a bunch of people tell him how much better they are than him. This guy, you got him. Later when everyone was just bullshitting and the raucousness was winding down, he told a couple of stragglers how his girlfriend had left him in Key West. Just dumped him and went home. He was a total asshole and obviously deserved it, but, nonetheless he figured he had three more days booked with his hotel room and thought that spending the night out here would be a “thing to do” so he rented a sleeping bag and tent from the ferry company. This guy, you liked a little less than an hour ago.
*
“Okay,” Finny said the next morning through his sniffles. The morning sun pelted down on you without even giving itself a few minutes to get its shit together for the day
“You’re gonna tell me a story?” It was already too hot.
“Onthe upon a time, a alligator lived long ago and he loved alligator thlippers.” This was punctuated by his inability to breathe between sniffling and catching his breath from the excitement at just being alive when being alive hasn’t squashed you yet. Plus, he had a cold. “And he liked fish. He ate that all da time. And he dethided to go to da beaver’s house… and… the end.” Did you have a hangover?
“The end? That’s… wait. The alligator wore alligator slippers?”
“Yeah.”
“What does that mean?”
“These thlippers,” and he pointed at his feet. Sure enough, he had on puffy, pillowy slipper that looked like alligator feet. The kind you’d where around the house on a cold winter night while in front of a fire. Except now they were covered in sand and were soaking wet and he sloshed his feet around in them and muddied up the sand and laughed exactly the way he should have laughed through his snot and wheezing. Were you still high?
“Oh, the slippers you’re wearing!”
“Yeah.”
“And what kind of fish did he eat?”
“Te, uh, you. You were da fish.”
“I was the fish?”
“Yeah.”
“He ate me?”
“Yeah.”
“So how are we here talking if he ate me?”
“Uh… well… it’s just a thtory… It’s a spooky thtory.”
“That is a spooky story. I don’t want to get eaten by an alligator. They do get alligators here, you know sometimes. In the moat.”
“Well… good thing, ‘cause I’m a hero.”
“You’re a hero? You’re gonna protect me?”
“Yeah,” he panted. Maybe he had allergies? Maybe it was the humidity? Maybe he was gonna get you sick.
“Are you a superhero and nobody knows?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it’s our secret. Who are you?”
“My name is Thuperboy…”
“Superboy?” And he started flying around making jet noises, arms pointed in front, with a purpose, showing you his powers. He was a hero. “Did you fly here?”
“Yeth. I can fly.”
“You can?”
“Lookit.”
Diving into the sand, throwing himself as far as he could, defying gravity for a second, why couldn’t he be flying?
“That’s crazy, Finny! You just flew.”
“Yeah!” he said, laughing half buried in muddy sand as the waves smacked him in the face.
“You gonna fly again?”
“Yes!”
“Alright! Fly again for me! That’s crazy!”
“Do you wanna take a picture of me?”
“I would but I don’t have my camera with me. Let me take one with my mind.” And you held your hands over your face and squinted your eye through the viewfinder of your fingers and clicked away as he posed, hands on the hips of his red Spider-Man t-shirt, looking bravely into the middle distance. And then he tried to catch his breath, which he had clearly been holding through the photoshoot, and blew snot all over his upper lip.
“I’m gonna go thee if Mommy’s up.”
And with that, your hero flew away forever to save the world as you decided to go back to the boat and see what nothing was on the day’s agenda, which is when you saw Dan climb out of his tent and wander over to you. You remembered you thought it was weird that the night before he didn’t smoke or drink like the rest of them and how he milked the same beer for the entire night.
“Jesus Christ, man, you’re up early. What are you doing here? I thought you lived on a boat.”
“The sun woke me up. It got so bright I couldn’t sleep and then I saw him running around and I decided to come talk to him for a minute.”
“You slept here on the beach?”
“No. I sleep on the dock sometimes. Like on the bench over there. I just ball up my shirt and put it under my head. Mainly when I want to get away from my family.”
“That metal bench over there under the thing? You sleep on that?”
“Yeah. Sometimes.”
“Well… that’s weird. Don’t they worry about you?”
“Nah. Nowhere for me to go. We’re literally at a prison. I guess they figure if I hurt myself, they’d find out sooner or later. And yeah… I’m pretty weird.”
“I’m not gonna lie. You look awful, kid. You doing alright? And I don’t mean awful from last night, you just look… rough…”
And you had no idea why, but you just unleashed on him in that moment.
“Ah… uh… no. No, man. I’m not alright at all. I… I don’t know… I, I, I…I, pheeeww, I, um… I am so depressed I wanna kill myself most of the time. I am confused all the time about everything. I got this girl’s voice in my head that’s driving me insane… uh, I hate my family so I sleep on a bench on a dock… um… I, I just… I don’t wanna go home either, I start high school in, like, a month, I’m scared shitless, and I’m in love with an idea of a girl… I don’t even know if she exists… uh, I, I just… I’m losing my mind and I’m sitting on a beach at seven o’clock in the morning talking to a four year old and I don’t know what to do and now you think I’m crazy too and I just ruined your Fourth of July weekend and I’m really sorry.”
“No, man. It’s cool. I feel… Look. I have absolutely no idea what to say to any of that. I’m not even going to pretend to. I almost just gave you some pithy remark, but I got nothing, man.”
“No. It’s cool. I just… I don’t know why I did that. I just don’t really talk… to… most people, and, uh… I’m sorry… I, I… I’m really sorry.”
And then he sat down next to you, with his tiny frame, and you two just sat quietly in the sand, watching the boats in the anchorage just kind of slowly meander about on their thin anchor lines in the morning breeze. And the sun was getting hot already as it rose. And then he said:
“Look, man… So there’s this old Buddhist parable thing and it goes something like this: there’s this farmer and his horse runs away. And so his neighbors come over and are like, ‘Your horse ran away, that’s so awful!’ and he’s like, ‘Maybe.’ And then the horse returns with two other horses. And the neighbors come back and they’re like, ‘That’s so amazing, you’ve now got three horses!’ And your man’s like, ‘Maybe.’ And then his son goes for a ride on one of the horses and falls and breaks his leg and the neighbors come running over again and are like, ‘We heard about your son. That’s so terrible! His leg.’ And the farmer’s like, ‘Maybe.’ And then this major war starts and the government’s going village to village and they’re taking people’s sons and they see his leg is mangled and broken and they tell him he can’t fight, so he’s lucky. And the neighbors run over and are like, ‘That’s so wonderful that your son doesn’t have to go to war!’ And the farmer’s like, ‘Maybe.’ And this can just go on forever and ever since that’s all life is, man. Just a whole bunch of maybes strung together until we die. Some will turn out good, some bad, but you’ll never know until after they happen…”
“I like that.”
“It’s like this. There’s this guy and he’s driving a truck. Just hauling ass down the road and a cop pulls him over. ‘What’s the big rush?’ And the guy’s like, ‘I’ve got all these penguins in the back of the truck and I don’t know what to do with them.’ And the cop looks in the truck and sure enough it’s full of penguins. And so he says, ‘Just take them to the zoo, what’s wrong with you?’ And the guy’s like, ‘The zoo! Yes! Why didn’t I think of that?’ And he goes on his way. And the cop’s like, ‘That was weird.’ And so the next day, the cop’s sitting in the same place and the same truck comes tearing by, going just as fast. So the cop pulls him over and sees it’s the same guy, and now he’s kind of confused and annoyed, and he looks in the back and there all the penguins again, but this time they’re wearing sunglasses, and he’s like ‘What the fuck is going on? I thought I told you to take them to the zoo.’ And the guy is like, ‘I did. We had such a great time, today we’re going to the beach!’”
“Okay…?”
“There you go, kid. Everything you need to know about life. But look at this place. It’s beautiful.”
“Why are you telling me all of this?”
“Why’d you tell me all that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then I don’t know either… remember, kid. It’s always gonna be maybe. Which one’s your boat?”
You point to the Lady. “The black one with the purple canvas.”
“Far out. Just take in the morning. The rest’s just maybe. I gotta drain the main vein.” And he stood up, brushed the sand off his skinny ass, wandered a couple feet to the shore and peed in full view of anyone in the anchorage who cared to watch. “Look at this fucking place, man. It’s beautiful here.” When the planes overhead broke the sound barrier he managed to piss all over his leg, “Jesus Christ!”
“You get kind of used to that.” You’ll get kind of used to a lot of things.
The next day, when JR returned from Key West, he brought you a copy of The Catcher in the Rye he picked up for you. You thanked him profusely, not mentioning you had a copy. He explained, like everyone, that you reminded him of Holden, and, “since you read a lot,” he figured you’d like it. You thanked him again and fourteen minutes later you quietly pulled back the bungee cords holding in the volumes and slid it into the Lady’s bookshelf with its seven other permanent residents.
*
The following night, you were falling asleep in Gibs’ bunk over the galley table, where he, Mary, and your dad were playing Monopoly. It was one of the few nights you had to turn on the portable air conditioner since the heat was unbearable for everybody, and since it was in the hatch over the table, you didn’t want to be anywhere else on the boat. You were thumbing through the copy of Anna Karenina Carl gave you, but you weren’t really reading it, you were mostly just looking at the passages he had highlighted in some other life and considering how wonderful they were. Even with no context, they still seemed like lines you would have underlined yourself. Father Padre’s mix was currently playing an almost excruciatingly long empty passage before old Tom Frost showed up again to remind you that nobody was up except for the moon and you, and no one even bothered to leave you a melody. Apparently he didn’t see these three at the table below you. But as you kept flipping through Tolstoy’s worn words, your brain just kept going back to the thought of a girl. No one in particular, just a girl. And maybe she’d be the kind of girl you could walk and talk with. And you thought of the way she’d be next to you. Not in front of you like most people, but next to you, in a way that allowed her to look at you when you spoke. And the way she made you feel like you had to speak to her. And the way she’d make you look at her when you did, at her face, not her feet, not behind her, not everywhere else, not anywhere else, but into her eyes, like real people do. Like your introversion wasn’t an option. And the way the light would reflect off her, as if the universe never wanted her to stand in a shadow. As if the universe knew everyone it swathed needed to see her. And then: “He stepped down, trying not to look at her as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.” She’ll have the power to blind you. Because I will always have the power to burn myself into you so I’ll be the last thing you’ll see. Fucking Father Padre. Fucking Carl. Fucking Leo.
Earlier that day, when you and your dad were watching the water spout from topside, he took a moment to tell you what “your problem” was. “You see, there are three types of people in the world: dreamers, workers, and thinkers. It makes me sad that you’re the last one and that you’re going to miss out on a lot and never not be freaked out by everything.” Epistemology’s just another way of saying fuck you, dad.
You woke up a few hours later, tangled up in your headphones. Mary and Gibs were still playing. Honky was sitting up on the middle of the table, like he was judging the game. Your dad was wearing nothing, save for a rasta tam, was dancing off the rhythm, and was inexplicably making tapioca pudding. And Julio’s “Moonlight Lady” was filling the room with a deafening mellowness.
You realized you had been dreaming about the naked girl in your dad’s massage instruction book you had gone through earlier in the day and it was a little hard for you to catch your breath. You’ll never know if this moment was entirely full of or completely lacking in metaphor. Everyone’s got a story for every occasion. Everyone is unique in their lack of uniqueness. All happy families are alike. Love means never having to throw an apple at a monkey by yourself. And being a poet always gets trumped by being thirteen and you now had to figure out how to hide your erection.
6.
If there was a lady in the moon, she seemed to be sleeping better than all of you. The quiet waves licked at the hull, her reflection gently dancing across their tain. Somewhere below, Gibs was snoring, as was his aunt. You’d been up all night and now were too tired to read. Your dad’s head popped up from the hatch. A gopher rising from his hole to peer about the world, only to find his sole progeny a zombie in the grips of Nyx, who was only toying with him at the moment.
“Can’t sleep?”
“My bed is on fire.”
“Qu'est-ce que c'est?”
“Nice.”
“You know, you’re the only kid who can quote stuff in your sleep, literally.”
“I doubt that.”
“Hey, man, you doing alright tonight? You’ve been quiet a lot lately, like quieter than usual.”
“Yeah… I’m okay.”
“Seriously, I’m just… no fucking around, you know? Just tell me the truth. You doing alright?”
“Yeah… well… I don’t know… I don’t know…”
“What is it? Same stuff? Same… your mixtapes making you sad, what? You’re just depressed about nothing? What’s going on?... Do I need to worry?”
“I’m just confused…”
“Confused about what? You go diving six hours a day. You hang out with us. You play monopoly. You go read your books, you know. You listen to your music all day. What do you have to be confused about? How hard is it that…?”
“… I just… I don’t even know where to begin, dad, I don’t know how to explain it, but I think… I think… … I don’t know… … I think I might be going crazy.”
“Well, of course you’re crazy”
“No, no. Really, dad, I don’t, I don’t know… I’ve got… I’m… feeling this thing that I’ve never felt before and I’m kinda freaking out that I have something wrong with me.”
“What? What… what is it now? You know… can we just have one week without you being weird?”
“You want the long version or the short?”
“Gimme the short. Tell me in one sentence.”
“I think I have a girl in my head that’s narrating my life to me.”
Silence.
“One more time.”
“Well, not narrating really, but making me feel a certain way, I guess.”
Silence.
“What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?... Seriously. What the fuck am I supposed to do with that? I… you, just… I… what… but… Bullshit. I can’t deal with this. You’re messing with me?”
“No, no. Wait. Alright. You want me to explain or are you pissed at me now?”
“I’m not pissed off, it’s just… I’m not pissed, I just don’t know where this stuff comes from. I mean, you know… I get that your mom and I raised you in a really weird way and you are smarter than anyone on the planet, but why can’t you ever come to me and just be, like, ‘oh, dad, I’m confused about whatever’ or ‘oh, I wanna fuck this girl’ or ‘oh, I don’t know what to do when my dick gets hard’ or ‘oh, I’ve got pubic hair’ or that and I’m not gonna lie, I don’t even want to deal with that kind of stuff, but I think I could handle it if I had to… You’re telling me you have a goddamned voice in your head? You’re fucking schizophrenic now?... Are you serious? Like, do we have to go to Key West and take you to a hospital?”
“No. I don’t… it’s not a voice in my head, dad, I just feel like… I feel like that’s all I think about, is this girl…”
“What girl? You don’t know any girls. The are no girls. What? Is it Shawna? Is it the girl Gibs was hanging out with that night?”
“No, it’s not the girl Gibs was hanging out with that night. It’s not a real girl. It’s like the girl Father Padre was talking about.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ, fucking Father Padre, what is it with you and this guy? How come he’s so in your head… he’s just an asshole musician who lives next door and is probably on fucking drugs all the time, that’s why I hate you hanging out with him. Elaborate for me. How did Father Padre put a girl that is now, we’re talking about an imaginary woman who is talking to you, in your head?”
“Do you know what a muse is, dad? Like, the goddesses who made people write and make art. I mean, have you ever fallen in love, man, and just wanted to pour your heart out to someone and that’s what all these poets and shit do and I think I have one of those and I don’t know what to do about it…”
“What are you talking about?”
“I…”
“Seriously, man! What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know what I’m talking about! I’ve never… I don’t know, you know? You don’t think I wanna be a normal fucking kid? You don’t think I wanna be like Gibs? I mean, Gibs is an idiot, man, I wish I was an idiot. I hate who I am! I fucking hate this! I just wanna be normal… and… and instead I feel like I am in love, but I don’t know with who. Like, I want to be in love so bad and I want to, like, I wanna meet a girl, the kind of girl, you know… like… aw, fuck, man, Jesus, I don’t know how to explain it, man. You know how when you listen to a song and its written to ‘you?’”
“Like a song written about me?”
“No, no, no, like, when you listen to a love song and the dude writing it is… think of Elton John’s ‘Your Song’…”
“Look, man, what are you talking about? You’re really making me nervous now. I’m serious, do we need to go to Key West?”
“… yeah. Let’s go to Key West. I don’t want to be here anymore. I just don’t want to be here anymore. I have no one to talk to, I’m losing my mind, yeah, fuck it, man, take me home…”
“Do you have anybody to talk to at home? Is that gonna be any better? Maybe being out here actually helps. I know you talk to that ranger guy a lot, he seems to really dig you, you know, he, uh, you told me he used to be a professor. Talk to him about your books and stuff.”
“I do talk to him about my books and stuff… but… he’s not my dad, why can’t you be my dad?”
“Because this isn’t normal. I can barely even handle dad shit. You are so off the map, man. You are so off the map. I mean, here there be monsters. You think I ever wanted to have a conversation with my thirteen year old son about how he’s going crazy? You’re scaring the shit out of me, man. How many fucking conversations can we have this summer where you’re like, ‘I’m gonna kill myself’ or ‘I hate everybody’ or ‘My whole life is awful?’ Your whole life is fucking great. Be thankful for your life. You don’t do shit all day, you know? Most people have to work for a living. All most people wanna do… you know, you’re whole fucking life is a vacation. You go diving all day, you… Jesus, man, you spent half of last year in fucking St. Thomas with me, man. Who gets to do that? Who gets to go work on a whale watching boat when they’re twelve years old in the fucking Dominican Republic? Who… who, who gets to come up and go cave diving with us? Who goes to the Keys and fucks with the tourists and the dive students? I mean you and Rick would so screw with me and Jeff during the open water classes and we let you get away with it. You know? Think of that. Think of how funny that is. Think of how awesome that is. Just be grateful. I’m trying to give you a different kind of life than I had growing up. I don’t know what to do with you when you complain so, so much. Is it because you’re Hungarian and you’re sitting around with your goddamn grandmother all day just listening to her bitch about everything nonstop?”
“No! It’s not because of mama, it’s not because I’m Hungarian, it’s not because I… and I love the diving and stuff, dad, don’t get me wrong. I love that. I mean…”
“Yeah, I… here… isn’t this great? Do you remember when we were in Marathon, right? And we’re out on Sombrero Reef and we had that class, that big group, and me and Jeff are going through all the bullshit where they had to take their regulators out and clear their masks and stuff and you and Rick… think about this, you were eleven when Rick said he’d be your full-time buddy, ‘cause he mastered for us and was always around and I know you’ve been doing that too, kind of on the fly and illegally and we’ll get that squared away in a couple of years, but, you know, you guys became buddies and have done like 150 dives together and he’s crazy. How many buddies out there are a fifty-five year old ex-Navy Seal and a chubby eleven year old smartass? You guys are a fucking sitcom waiting to happen. And you remember when we were with that class and you guys went and found those baby nurse sharks and slipped them between the legs of those people? Who does that shit? You’re crazy! We could’ve gotten sued! You live the life of the coolest thirteen year old on the planet! And now you come to me in the middle of the summer and we’re in the middle of nowhere and it’s the middle of the night and you’re telling me you’re hearing voices?”
“I’m not hearing voices, dad, that’s what I’m trying to explain… I’m… I’m just thinking that I’m becoming obsessed with this idea that I’m never gonna be able to be happy because I wanna be in love and have love and I can’t”
“What love, man? What the fuck? Have you even gone through puberty yet? You don’t really even have fucking facial hair. I mean there’s a little, but it’s kind of pathetic, it’s sort of happening I guess… You jerkin’ off?”
“Yeah, dad, I’m well into puberty. Trust me. You know, I do that sort of stuff, but the sex thing, it’s not, like, a priority, you know? Why do you think… Look, I’m gonna be honest, when you guys go out and do those dives and, like, once a week, I’m, like, ‘Hey, I don’t feel very good’ or ‘My head hurts,’ I’m trying to find your fuckin’ porn, man, but you seem to be moving it around a lot, ‘cause I’ve looked all over the goddamn boat, but you don’t think I want some privacy and jerk off occasionally? I don’t know how the fuck Gibs does it. I mean, he fucked that girl!”
“Gibs fucked that girl?”
“Yeah, dude, what the fuck, man? How am I supposed to compete with that? I’m never gonna be able to do that. And, yeah, occasionally I wanna do that and wish I could, but I’m not talking about that… I’m talking about, like, I’m reading about, uh… you know, I mean… I want to meet the girl that makes you write a song like, I don’t know Bob Marley’s ‘Waiting in Vain’… like someone he wrote that for … or The Proclaimers ‘I’m Gonna Be’… I wanna find someone I need to do that for…”
“Well-”
“No, you know what, that’s not good enough! I want the girl who inspires someone to write a poem like cummings’ ‘I Carry Your Heart with Me’ or Neruda’s ‘And Now You’re Mine’ and how you want simply to be the man who sleeps in her dreams, or something like ‘I Do Not Love You…’….”
“But I thought you said-”
“Oh no, man. I know what the title is, but it’s not what you think. I mean, the, the poem’s about having to love someone in secret, loving them for a reason no one else in the world knows about or would understand and it’s about intensity and confusion and not knowing where the feelings come from or how they developed but simply embracing that they are and this idea of how it overwhelms you so much that it’s almost impossible to even communicate it with that person for fear it won’t be returned.”
“Jesus…”
“And I’m not even doing it justice, man. It’s like a hundred words long and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to have that! And I feel that now and there isn’t a real girl attached to that. That’s what I’m saying. This thing in my head… she… she’s like… it’s like every song I’m hearing lately just makes me think of this idea… I just feel like everywhere I go and every girl I meet, I’m gonna be, like, ‘Is this her?’ And if it is, I’m not gonna know what to do about it and I’m gonna feel this way forever and I just wanna know how much this is gonna suck… because I feel empty and I feel hollow and I don’t, I don’t know… I don’t know if I can live with this forever…”
“… oh, Jesus, man, please don’t tell me you’re gonna kill yourself because you feel like you’re in love with no one. You do know how stupid that sounds, right? You do know how fucking mental that is?”
“I… I do, which is why I’m telling you… I shouldn’t have said anything, I feel dumb now.”
“Don’t feel dumb. Alright? Never say that. You’re the smartest pers-”
“Stop saying I’m smart! If I’m so fucking smart, why am I so fucking stupid? Why do I flunk out of school? Why do I sit around and refuse to write about this shit since that’s all anybody wants me to do anyway and apparently I’ve got a muse who won’t leave me alone? Why do I… I, I don’t… just forget it, forget it. I’m going to bed.”
And as you stormed out of the cockpit and walked to your hammock, you could hear him shouting up at you.
“You know, I don’t know what to say. What do you want me to say here? You know? We can keep talking about this, we don’t have to, I don’t know what you want… from me, but… just, I’m begging you, man, don’t do anything stupid. I don’t wanna have to babysit you all summer. I mean, I want you to be able to do what you want. Do what you need to do, you know… if you wanna go back, we’ll really go back, but I just don’t want to think about you doing something stupid.”
“I’m not going to do anything stupid. There. I promise you, I won’t do anything stupid. Just fuckin’ leave me alone. Just everybody leave me the fuck alone.”
And climbing into the hammock, you quietly heard the ladder and floor creak under you as he simply made his way back to bed to fill Mary in on your bullshit, the open hatch of which was right underneath you.
You wished you had some music right now, but the last thing you wanted to do in the world was get out of that hammock. You wished she’d sleep in your dreams tonight so soundly she’d restfully and quietly take the day off tomorrow. You wished that your hand sitting on your chest was hers. You wished that your eyes were mine as they closed and we fell asleep.
*
Woody Allen, you thought, once said something to the effect that he didn’t want to achieve immortality through his work. He wanted it by not dying. But you thought he got it wrong; especially in the beginning of Annie Hall. Life is full of beauty, joy, and amazing, wonderful things. And it takes way too long to get through. In the morning, after the Navy had their little fun, your dry eyes splintered open and your head pounded, echoing an endless punctuated glossolalia like an unstoppable bell clapper. Coffee never seems strong enough to defend itself from veal cutlets. How come no one ever offers a veal cutlet when you’re trying to wake up after the kind of night that beat the shit out of your forecast of sun and slight breezes?
*
A few nights before, your cock was so hard you could barely think, let alone sleep.
All you wanted to do was touch it, rub it, squeeze it. You could hear Gibs sawing a tremendous forest down a few feet away. You decided to listen to some music and think about something else. What the fuck was going on? Aroused: a verb. Excited. Enticed. Also, agitated, alerted, animated, awakened, called, challenged, electrified, enlivened, fired up, fomented, fostered, goaded, heated up, incited, inflamed, instigated, kindled, moved, provoked, rallied, roused, sent, sparked, spurred, stimulated, stirred, thrilled, turned on, woken, warmed, whetted, whipped up, and worked up and you were embarrassed to be excited and you knew you were breathing heavy, and loudly, and were just praying Gibs didn’t wake up because you knew where this was going when you started grinding and you’re all of a sudden on the boat with me, only me, and I’m turned away, back to you, and I’m kind of asleep but kind of not and I know you’re not as I slide a few fingers across my milky skin and you’re staring a little too long but don’t care because you know that as she turns away from you she can feel you watching her, feel the way you dream of her, and you’re imagining your fingers curling through my hair as you inhale as deeply as you can wanting to remember that smell forever, kissing her neck, pulling me toward you, your hand on her thigh, slipping in and around her legs, her pressing herself into you, your mouth frantically climbing everywhere, over fingers spreading, over places you may never see, places on some undrawn map, places the whereabouts only you and I know and keep bunkered away in the incarnadine cordiform sarcophagi of our secret sins.
*
You wandered into the office looking for Carl and JR told you he was wandering around the moat and you could catch up with him there.
As you were walking out the door, “Hey, kid.”
“Yeah?”
“I just read this quote that I figured would make sense to you.”
“Shoot.”
“It’s from this old Portuguese director named Manoel de Oliveira. He said, ‘The only repose for man is in the belly of his mother.’”
“Yup. Makes perfect sense. You said the moat?”
“Have fun.”
You have no idea why, but as JR fiddled and futzed with some paperwork that the dangerous fan had blown off the desk, he was wearing only boxer shorts and army boots. You doubted this was regulation, but, in reality, nothing about it didn’t make sense. As you walked out the door, you could hear him belting out the chorus to “Electric Avenue” so loud he drowned out the office’s stereo. Goofus is just another way of saying doofus. There was an open bottle of something or other on the desk that looked about half full. There were no glasses to be found. Buy the ticket, brother, take that ride.
Apparently had you made a right turn instead of a left you would have run straight into Carl, instead you wandered around ninety-percent of the moat to catch up with him a few feet from where you started.
On your perambulation you thought about how philosophically confused you were in an existential kind of way.
Or about Mist, the book he had given you the translation of at the beginning of the summer, about the girl in your head, about the sex you wanted to have since you’d spent the better part of the summer trying your best not to think about it but it was hard considering every woman you’d seen in the last two months was basically only wearing a bathing suit all the time, and you tried to quell the thoughts by imagining a life with her, but that only made you sadder, you thought about how hearts were like mountainous topologies, you didn’t really but maybe you did, blocking routes from our desires to our realities, jagged ridges that prevent getting from here to there, but “Who am I kidding?, you thought, “The real world’s never been a place for a crazy, redneck bohunk like me,” and back on the Lady, Easy E must have been nattering into Gibs’ head about fucking “nigga” bitches or some other fucking “nigga” bullshit that was the apogee of gangsta rhetorical and discursive formulations, but you couldn’t tell if E was mad at the fucking “nigga” bitches or he was talking about fucking “nigga” bitches in the verb sense, but in any event, the “nigga” bitches couldn’t seem to get out of their objectified status in either theoretical version, and you thought about how on the dive the night before it started raining and there were cracks on the surface of the world, lightning striking from Zeus knows where across glass ceilings where wind and water moan and crash and howl and how this must have been what it was like for Jeanie when Major Nelson quickly hid the bottle and how some moron probably once said something about how when you get bit by a mosquito it reminds you you’re alive because of the itch or how maybe hell’s the itch and you’re just winding up and you thought about that weird thing you found in the freezer that shook like a bag of frozen peas but in a weird way smelled like fish and just… musty… and how when the Coast Guard came on board the first time a few weeks ago they didn’t even bother asking if you guys had any weapons but said they would have “moved the kilos of coke out of the way to look for illegally caught off-season lobsters” and how you were trying to inconspicuously not stare at all the shells piled up under the boat on the port side and being picked through by two large barracuda, and then, randomly, of course, you wondered if you could ever really claim someone as family if they were dead before you were born since technically you never occupied the same place on any space-time continuum and, as such, are about as connected physically to them as one is to, oh fuck it, who cares, and you remember when you were about three, your first memory, your father was only about a quarter ‘til crazy then, your eyes squinting, Disneyworld, sitting on a curb near Main Street USA, your ass burning underneath you, and your mom trying to understand why you were crying, and you’ll forever wonder why life can’t be as simple as a rat in a Sherlock Holmes hat and how it’s really fucked up when there are six sentient beings on this tub you’re stuck on and the goddamn table seems to be the only one with a fucking clue, or how the more one sits in water the more one can uncover its universality, how it flows in and out of us, how tears from the earth become our lifeblood and back again in a Möbius strip of cliché and archetype, rivers, streams, oceans beget veins and capillaries, an unconscious baptizing in the galaxy every time we breathe and move or how fish don’t know water exists and humans don’t know they don’t matter and how to the universe the fish might make more of a difference and how an overwhelming and irreducible fear of eternity stabbed at your everything or how yesterday at the campfire you heard the following exchange, “But you did make a pass at this guy’s wife?” “Yeah, but she totally wasn’t interested, so it doesn’t count” and how you wanted to let the next ice age come, let the oceans freeze and the world end, let the hands of Muhammad and Yahweh and Buddha and L. Ron Hubbard right the wrongs of history, let glaciers rest where deserts now wait, let the seas harden and continents collide as mistakes become memories and time grinds to that ever chilling halt and how you’ll still be floating here wondering what the fuck you’re doing with your dick in your hand on some godforsaken dirt hole inches north of the Tropic of Cancer, where your version’s nothing like Miller’s, so fuck Henry, fuck June, fuck Anaïs, finger bang the shit out of that little French accent, or Portuguese, or Spanish, or whatever, or how maybe you’d find the girl and grow old together and you would love her when her arms became round and chubby and a plump double chin came with her smile and her belly rested heavy or how maybe she’d be a writer who in that sought a completeness or a musician and in her playing a kind of reconciling of body and spirit or maybe you thought these things because you really thought she finds them in sex, with someone other than you, with someone who unyokes her wild desires, and how you can only be lost in your version of her, your version where she is only yours, where you lose yourself in the heaven of her heart and find yourself again in the depth of her eyes and how since you can never have her, she will simply melt away like so many nights into morning and so many memories into faded, fluttering snapshot flashes, and you think God needs to stop hiding in the details and give you some big picture face time because you’re tired of tears abseiling your cheeks like acid carving fiery paths of embarrassment and regret and confusion and how it burned to know that they were there for all to see, that you couldn’t hold them in, that they beat you and when they overcame you you could feel them drip off your lip, salty with the remorse over your inability to hide yourself from these people, or the way the boat rocks like it was like the sky was breathing, each night the stars looming closer than away, the earth, the water, below palpitating a kind of rhythmic throbbing against that of your own heavy heart and how you’ll burst into tears and weep and weep and weep and muffle every cry and wipe away every tear and let the heartache dissolve and let the world sink gradually back into place as you muted yourself to face the breaking day, but also about how to confuse fiction and reality is to create a “homogenous mist” as Unamuno says and how you don’t want to walk around confused all the time and you thought it would just be best to be content realizing that any version of ourselves we imagine will always be a character, an act of creation and beyond the now there is no then, that way we can become more comfortable knowing that this is how eternity works, how if we’re always being written, how if someone else is always telling you the story of you, you’re always being born and forever and forever and forever and how maybe Shakespeare was an idiot, or how when your heart is stormy for so long, a calm becomes a terrifyingly frightful thing, or how like Augusto you had no choice and would have to kill yourself or maybe you didn’t think any of these things at all, but you simply kept telling yourself that when you find her, perhaps here, she’ll only smell like the beach, the beach and suntan lotion, the beach and suntan lotion and sex, the beach and not sex, or keep telling yourself all you smell is reality or how theoretically Mary could smell like this or your mother could smell like this, but you know they never could, because the girl, me, you’d never be able to stop breathing in her aroma, breathing me in, and Mary could never smell like this, your mother could never smell like this, and perhaps this is what you should have felt like when you were getting high because vapors of me will make you drunk and how that smell of the beach and suntan lotion will drive you to the verge of passing out, but you also thought about how you wanted to be an old-fashioned gentleman, raise her hand to your lips, marry it with a thousand little kisses, smell its coolness, its softness, run its power under you and breathe her in as her skin sang into your mouth, but you feared that if you were to touch, so gently, her hand, I would feel all your trembling, your fears, your clammy veins racing out from your every pore and into me, filling me with a disgust and a contempt that you couldn’t bear to imagine or ch'io eterno mi credea, the illusion of thinking yourself eternal in this primitive spectacle, for “He who gives himself up to travel is never seeking the place that he is going to, but only fleeing from the place that he has left” or how you are shrouded in the lists of life or how “tedium is the foundation of all life, and it is tedium that has invented all the games and distractions, the novels, and the love” or about curling a finger around a lock of her hair, caressing my neck, running a finger down my spine, along the curves of her ass, holding each other so close, you couldn’t tell if it was both our hearts beating or just yours going out of control and trying to kill you with a perfection only found in the imagination, and her body, her body, it could be everything, anything and would be so perfect it was without description, and you watched the sun rip through the clouds, tear through like a rocket on a mission and how it brought morning and sent the tiny globes of dew disinterestingly into the ether and how by 7:30 the wet deck was dry, by 8:00 it was a frying pan, your hammy feet sizzling with every step, but above all else, even if you see me once, just once, and never again, you will always remember my smile, head titled so subtly as if posing for your memories and how that heartbreaking smile makes all other memories dissolve away or how today’s lunch of top ramen and canned carrots, neither flavor of which could over power the taste of boat water, made you sad, not for you, but for Mary and the world’s under-appreciation of her, and somehow it made you sadder than yesterday and how the day turned a sad color and will bring about the long sad swoons of night where your dreams were sadder than all the rest of your many melancholy mundane moments, or how the days coming and going don’t seem to really greet you so much as crash into you as if yesterday had had enough and threw you upon its tomorrow and how from time to time history likes to remind us how small we are, reminds everyone they’re vapors, flashes, blips, small quick breaths on the long road to nowhere and you thought Unamuno was right, or so you mentioned to Crackers yesterday, and that if you don’t exist, you should just embrace it, but Crackers was no more use than Orfeo and you thought about how you wanted to go home and pretend that the you of this moment won’t simply become an imaginary character when next you think about it and those that embrace their inner awkwardness can therefore become the most confident and you wished you knew how to do that or how the problem with eternity is that there’s nothing to compare it to and, as such, one left with the revelation that there is no escaping the terrifying concept of forever and that it goes the other way and it is impossible to escape the other terrifying revelation that we don’t remember what came before us, which hints that there might be an after us as well and how eternity as a concept thus undoes the concept of eternity and how that’s the scary part, that and the possibility of being you right on through until you never get to that imaginary end of all things or how the problem with love is that you don’t realize your own capacity for heartbreak until it’s too late or how you’re afraid when you meet me your heart will literally explode and how lots of poets and writers and whatever have compared hair to a nest, but in a good way, where light lives and breathes and offers this kind of golden hope breaking free into the world above the most beautiful face in the world and you most surely have nothing to add since you only wanted to let your tongue lick tiny waves upon my flesh, lapping at the saltiness of my skin, but really you thought absolutely none of these things and were really considering how much of an asshole your dad was when he was talking to JR about a girl they saw on the tour and all you caught was, “Is she the one with the red curly hair?” “Yeah.” “Man, she’s got a body from hell. Did you see those cans?” “Right?”
And that’s about when you finally caught up with him.
“Can I tell you something really weird, Carl?”
“Sure, man… how weird? Did you do something wrong?”
“No… um… I really liked this book and you were just telling me all this stuff, and I don’t know if it’s just because I’m weird or what… but I kind of think I’m going crazy sometimes because that book really made sense. I feel like I’m… I don’t know…”
“What?”
“You’re, you’re… like, a professor… so, you, you know what a muse is, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course.”
“Well, I got this guy that lives next door to us when we, when we’re at the marina sometimes on Fort Myers Beach, um… and he’s this musician and songwriter and he gave me a bunch of mix tapes this summer… and they’re all these love songs from the seventies mostly, and he told me before I left about how he thinks love songs are written, like the songs he wrote, he wrote this big hit song, like, ten years ago, and… it, uh, it was this really huge hit and he told me that when he wrote it he had, like, a girl in his head. But it wasn’t, like, a real girl, you know, like, it wasn’t, like, a girlfriend, it was, like, he called it his muse… and she was just this voice in his head that he wrote to and… I thought that was really… I don’t know… I don’t know really how to feel about that.”
“Well, that’s a normal thing. That’s how creativity works. That’s how writing works. A lot of people have muses. It doesn’t have to be a real thing. That’s why they were goddesses, you know, think of Olivia Newton John in that stupid roller disco movie or someone, you know, remember that movie Xanadu, remember that?… She was a muse. They were, uh, these ideals of perfection that men, or women I guess, that you create for, that you make art for, that you write for, music, poetry, whatever…”
“Yeah, no, that’s what he was talking about, and…but it’s really weird. So, like, I… I hear these songs and I hear my own thoughts and my interpretations of them or when I read and I’m starting to feel like I have this sense that… I have a girl in my head... and I don’t know what that means because I don’t actually have a girl in my life and so it makes me sad and lonely, because I think I’m inventing what I want love to be like for me… and I know I’m never gonna have a girlfriend or anything and I’m really weird and I’m probably just gonna be lonely my whole life, but I feel like I’m just sort of inventing what I’m supposed to feel like, like, everything I’ve learned about how to be in love is really from stuff like reading Neruda and listening to Tom Waits songs and it’s making me feel really weird because I feel like they’re making me sad, but in… this isn’t making any sense… I feel like there… I feel like I feel like how I’m supposed to feel when you listen to them, but I don’t know if I’m ever gonna get to feel that way in real life…”
“You’re thirteen, don’t think about stuff like that. Just… just enjoy it. I mean, if you like the music you like the music, don’t feel jealous of the music.”
“No. Jealous isn’t the right word. I just feel like… I feel like what if I’m like these guys and I have a girl in my head, you know… Father Padre…”
“His name’s Father Padre?”
“Well, it’s a nickname and, um, it’s what everybody calls him and, uh… yeah it’s funny, I know, Father Father, right? It’s stupid. I don’t know where it came from, it’s just a thing, it’s just what he goes by, but… but he was, like, you know, he seemed to be really sad when he talked about it, like it controlled him… he seemed like… I don’t think possessed by it, but he seemed like he couldn’t escape it… he wanted this girl in his head that he had been writing these songs about to stop talking because he felt like he could never have her and I’m scared that’s gonna happen to me.”
“Well, maybe if you get her out of your head, that won’t… do you ever write?”
“No… I don’t… people always ask me if I want to be a writer and I don’t because I feel like there’s so much good stuff that’s already been written, I don’t need to say anything? Does that make sense?”
“Well, no, that’s stupid. You know, that doesn’t mean anything because you’re not the one writing it. You have something to say yourself. If there’s something inside you that you need to get out. Just get it out, kid…”
“But, I don’t know how to get it out. I can’t even talk about it… I’m trying to explain it to you and I can’t figure out what I’m trying to say, but, it’s just… you know, it’s like the guy in Mist, it’s like, I don’t, I don’t think I want someone else to write my life for me, but I think it’s happening anyway…”
“Do you ever talk to your dad about stuff like this? You don’t hear voices, do you?”
“No. It’s not like that. It’s not like there’s a person actually talking to me, I get that, it’s more just like a feeling, like a kind of inspiration that sort of comes from nowhere… like, I’ll see a sunset, and I watch the sun set every night and I really love the sunsets, you know, because, you know, I grew up on Fort Myers Beach, so we always had these great sunsets and I feel like I want to have someone next to me and I want her… I don’t even know what she looks like, but I want a girl to share that with me and… and that’s what I think about all the time… I just think about how lonely I am all the time and how I… how every time I see a pretty girl, I think, ‘is she her?’ And I know I’m a kid, so I know I’m not gonna be able to do anything about it because I’m ugly and I’m weird and I don’t have any friends and I’m not very good at talking to people…”
“You’re talking to me.”
“You know what I mean, that’s different, um… but I just feel like… I don’t know. I don’t wanna be Father Padre, you know, and I don’t want to be alone all my life and I think I’m going to be because my dad and Mary and my mom all tell me I’m really mean to people and I’m really a jerk.”
“You don’t seem like a jerk to me.”
“Well, yeah, but… I really like you. You’re cool. I could talk to you all day long. Like I said, I never really met anybody like you, except for the occasional cool teacher who gave me stuff to read, so this is really weird for me, um… I just don’t want to be like that character in a book where I find out I’m not living my own life and I think that that’s… I don’t want to be crazy and, I mean, it’s not a secret, but it’s not really something I tell a lot of people about, but my parents make me go see psychiatrists and I have to take medicine for being depressed and they’re always concerned that I’m gonna kill myself because I’m alone all the time and they know I get really sad all the time and, I mean… I don’t know… it’s hard for me to talk about… I just, I get sad a lot… And they say I’m really nasty to people and I’m mean and I talk down to people, and it’s true, I mean, I usually do think they’re stupid… I don-… It’s funny. It’s not that I think I’m smarter, it’s just that I think they’re dumber. Or I just think they’re lazy. I just think they don’t give a crap about their lives and I just don’t want to go through life like that, even though, weirdly, I don’t give a crap about my life, and, I don’t know, I’m thinking maybe I’m inventing this girl in my head like Father Padre did so I don’t have to take any responsibility for anything I do and I can just say I’m sad and mopey because I have this idea of a girl in my head.”
“Kid, you just threw, like, every question every philosopher and artist and writer and poet and painter and whoever has ever thought about straight out of your mouth and out into the universe. You’re thinking at a level, not that grown men don’t think at, you’re thinking at a level the greatest minds in history don’t think at. You’re never gonna answer these questions. You can’t expect to. You can’t stress about these questions. You’re gonna overwhelm yourself. You’re gonna… Look. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around, is it still a tree? See, we get so concerned with the minutia of understanding our place within what philosophers called the ‘lifeworld,’ what the Germans call ‘lebenschwelt,’ that we think it only exists in relation to our own presence.”
“I don’t…”
“Look. It’s not about the tree making a sound. If we aren’t present the sound becomes irrelevant, yes? The sound is just a minor ripple away from this thing that we have decided to call a tree. The real question is would a tree exist if we hadn’t called it such. Think about Genesis, right? You know, in the Bible? One of the earliest things to go down is when Adam names things. God bestows upon him this power, as if the things were nothing until Adam said so, you know.”
“Huh?”
“Okay, then take baseball. It’s like there’re three umpires. The first one calls a strike and he says it’s because it was within the strike zone and the batter swung and missed. The second umpire agrees with the first, but with the caveat that the notions of strike zones and rules are arbitrary. The third umpire doesn’t care about the first two and says ‘it’s not a strike, it’s not nothing, until I say what it is.’ We as humans, we’re like that third umpire. So I think it’s all Adam’s fault.”
“In the Garden of Eden?”
“In the Garden of Eden, yeah. God told Adam to name things…”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that gave the first man kind of a big ego, I imagine at least. So now we think that things aren’t things unless we say they are.”
“Like, it doesn’t matter if the tree falls if no one’s around. We don’t even acknowledge the tree being there?”
“Exactly.”
“And what’s that got to do with people wanting me to write?”
“Well, it’s just… alright. Here’s the thing. It’s gonna be hard if you can’t get this under control and it’s none of my business, it’s really none of my business, but you brought it up. I think your doctors are going to maybe want you to write something down. I know they have people keep journals and things, but I do think everybody may be right. You’ve got something in you that’s inspiring you to see the world in a very unique and weird and, quite possibly, wonderful way, but maybe you do need… look, if you have this girl in your mind, you said she was a muse, is she telling you to write stuff? Do you want to create stuff for her?”
“Well… I don’t know. Because I feel like I don’t want to write stuff down, but I feel like if listen to this perfect girl in my head it shouldn’t be about creating art, it should be about changing me, changing my life, you know, to be better… for her. Like, I think… I think that’s what I want to do with it… I don’t know… Can a muse make you be a better you? But who knows how to do that? I just don’t know how to do that.”
“How would you know how to do that? You haven’t even lived yet. No wonder this is completely overwhelming to you… You’ve never experienced these things in real life and you’re taking all these ideas from art and literature and music and you’re trying to apply them to your own life when you’ve not actually lived enough of your life yet. You’ve got to give this some time. You are way too young and way too inexperienced, it sounds like, with that sort of thing to worry about stuff like that. I’m not sure. It sounds like this is some weird emotional pornography that’s messing up what your expectation of love might end up being, you know? Maybe you should just find some happier music and just dance around like an idiot to it and just be carefree? Have you really been thinking about this all summer? I wish I hadn’t given you this book now. I feel really bad.”
“No, no, the book was amazing. It actually made me think about stuff like this in a way I never had before and… I just, I don’t know… I’m just really confused all the time, but I’ve always been really confused all the time and now I’m confused about this other stuff and I just… I don’t know who I can talk to about it and I feel like I’m unloading all of this on you, but I’ve talked to you more this summer than I’ve talked to anybody ever I think.”
“Well, that’s not even that much.”
“I know. That’s what I mean. But I feel like I’m being a pain in your ass or something… I feel like I’ve tried to talk to my dad about it and he asked me if I talked to you. And who else is here, JR, Guy, Joe? Yeah. They’re awesome to go fishing with and they’re always lighting off fireworks from the top of the fort. You let them do all kinds of stuff they’re not supposed to and they make beer and then they’ll talk philosophy, which is actually fun to listen to and they’re this cool, weird bunch, but I don’t really know them at all and you seemed like you kind of got me.”
“They are interesting. I’d rather they do all that than be boring and you’re right, there aren’t a lot of people here for you to talk to and I have no idea why you guys have been here for so long and why you’re not leaving, but look at those guys. Do that. Think about that. They’re crazy, but in a good way and so are you. I’ve heard stories about you. You’ve had an insane life and you never tell anyone about it. Tell the world. But keep living it. Just don’t be boring. You’re not Augusto. You’re you. Maybe that means you need to be the author and not the character. Maybe write. Maybe do anything creative, just do something, you know? Go do your diving you guys do, but appreciate how cool and rare your experiences are. Don’t just sit on your ass and I know you think reading isn’t sitting on your ass, but you’re living someone else’s adventure, while you’re pretending the ones happening to you aren’t happening and that makes no sense. Or, I don’t know, maybe you’re just a dude who wants to be miserable and whenever you’ll find happiness you’ll push it away. I hope not, because that’s gonna suck forever for you and you’ll really be fucked when it comes to love. Stop escaping into your own head. Get out of there. You’re spending way, way, way too much time in that brain of yours and I know what I’m talking about here, trust me. We gotta get you out of there. And that’s maybe why everyone tells you to write and put it on paper, because it’s gonna be a long hard road for you if you’re in your head your whole life and that’s the only girl you’re talking to.”
“I get it. I see what you mean. I know what you mean, but the fact that I read is probably because I’m so bored all the time… Carl, I am so bored all the time, I’ll admit that. It’s not just being in this place, which I don’t know how you do it, but I’m more bored at home than I am here. I’m so bored.”
“Well, there are two things to say to that. One, you’re just too smart. That’s why I occasionally see you fucking with the tourists and making up a totally bullshit history. I get that you can’t relate to most people because it seems like your synapses are firing on all cylinders at the same time. But two, and this is more important, and I’ve always thought this, if you’re bored, you’re boring. Don’t be boring. Don’t be. You’ve got tons of stories you don’t share. You go on tons of adventures you don’t appreciate. Don’t be boring. The world doesn’t need more boring. And you’re way too interesting and have way too many cool stories and have lived way too cool a life to be boring. So even if you don’t ever share that with the world, appreciate that and you’ll stop being so bored. And know that. And know that you’re cool. And you did it again. We’ve talked for so long, I’ve got to go deal with some stuff. JR’s gonna be back tonight, if he isn’t already. Hang out with him. It’ll be fun. Try not to disappear again. Jesus, I can’t believe you idiots did that. Don’t let him get you drunk again and he’s gonna wanna try and your dad will probably join him in egging you on… just… enjoy your summer, you know? This is one of those future weird adventure stories you’re gonna have. We can talk about some other books some other time.”
“Will you tell me about your other book?”
“I don’t want to talk about that today… maybe some other time… It’s, it’s a weird book and I shouldn’t have written it.”
“I can’t read it?”
“I don’t… I don’t have a copy of it. Let’s assume I don’t have a copy of it. You know, let’s just say I wrote the one book and leave it at that. There’s a classic metaphor that we’re the stars of our own life story and that everyone else is simply the supporting cast. Nothing terrifies me more than maybe Augusto being right and I don’t want to think about that, especially after this talk we just had.”
“That’s weird. You know that right?”
“You’re gonna tell me I’m weird? Based on everything I know about you…”
“Well, I didn’t say I wasn’t weird, I just said you’re weird too. I mean you live here in this place a lot more than I do and that’s weird. It’s like you won’t leave and no one knows why.”
“Well… there’re a lot of weird people in the world and what you need to do is go connect with them. And maybe you’ll be lucky and she’ll be a pretty one who’d be willing to talk to you about Mist so I don’t have to… wouldn’t that be nice?”
“Yeah… that would be nice.”
And as Carl wandered toward the dock to introduce himself to the tourists, you lifted your headphones to your ears and thought if Father Padre spins The Beach Boys right now you’re jumping off the roof of this place. Instead it was The Cars’ “Just What I Needed” buzzy fade with an unexpectedly short pause before sliding into the opening riff of The Outfield’s “Your Love” and you breathed a sigh of relief that he wasn’t right all the fucking time.
*
Sixteen hours and thirty-six minutes later you would be in Carl’s office thumbing over his bookshelf and you encountered something you couldn’t understand a word of. It fascinated you, because you could tell it was about inexplicability and love and sex and other sundry concerns of yours. Also, you were slightly hypnotized by the haunting music floating in the air.
One day you’ll discover how Roland Barthes once had the world question that most sacred place of erotic desire, “the portion of the body where the garment gapes,” but you’ll wonder if he, as a thirteen year old boy from Cherbourg running around Paris, would he seriously not have abandoned the garment for the body itself? Would he not have torn past cloth and silk to grip another’s skin? Would he not rip open the gape to taste his lover’s discourse? To take in the pleasure of his text? You wanted to lick the circumference of my waist. Leave a trail of kisses across the small of my back. Smell the Valhalla of my skin. Flavor the conchoidal lines of my spine. Linger in the valley of my suprasternal notch for the rest of your life. You thought, if you could taste that place, you could die. There could be no better place.
“This is a beautiful piece of music. What is it?”
“You have amazing taste in music, kid. It’s an Estonian minimalist composer named Arvo Pärt. I think you’d really like him now that I think about it.”
“Is Estonia that country from the Marx brothers movie?”
“Shut up. Anyway, he more or less invented this new way of composing music called Tintinnabuli that’s… well… I’m not even going to try and explain it.”
“I wouldn’t get it.”
“No. It’s not that. I think you just need to hear it. It’s a kind of music you shouldn’t really talk about. You should just feel it.”
“I get that. I’m getting that more and more lately.”
“That talk we had yesterday? About your ‘girl?’ It made me think of this quote from Pride and Prejudice, ‘You have bewitched me body and soul.’ Now you just gotta find a real one that’ll do that.”
“That’s beautiful.”
And he was right, you would have given over control of your body and soul. It made perfect sense. Carl, like your grandfather, often made sense in that way that just made them make sense. I now occupied every aspect of you and it will torture you because, at the core of your being, you knew that I am now your everything, your every thought, that will perhaps ultimately end in nothing.
“Let me give you a tape of his stuff. I’ll make it tonight for you. I’m going to put his most famous piece in there first. It’s called ‘Für Alina.’ I don’t know if famous is the right word… essential, maybe?”
“Okay. I guess that makes sense.”
“Tell you what. I’m gonna make a tape for you since you’re weird and I’m only gonna put that one piece of music on it for you. But you have to promise me you aren’t just going to slap it into your walkman when you wander out of here. You have to save it for a really special moment. A moment you’ll want to remember forever.”
“How will I know when that happens?”
“You just will.”
*
Two nights earlier you had slept on Loggerhead and no one seemed to notice. You had margaritas on the beach with Joe and Guy and JR after they daisy chained twenty or so extension cords together to bring a blender down to the shore to watch the sunset and smoke cigars.
You remember random snippets of conversations as they lapped you. “Man, I wouldn’t slip a sawbuck into that flesh wallet if it was yours. That thing must’ve been like a dirty fucking waterslide. I mean, this skank lost her beauty with her pride years ago.” “Did I ever tell you guys about the time I got fucked up and lost in Tijuana with my buddy and we almost missed his wedding?” “My dad sleepwalks and came into my room when I was like thirteen and demanded to know if the cartoons were in order.”
And the next morning your neck and head hurt and you were more sunburned than before and thought you had a splinter in your right hand.
“Pull!”
And then the gun went off. That’s how you woke up. After falling off the picnic table’s bench and nearly pissing yourself, you caught sight of the scene on the beach with Joe and his sideburns holding a shotgun and wearing a red t-shirt that was a parody they’d later tell you of a famous image Che Guevara in front of a star wearing Mickey Mouse ears, and Guy and his bald head with some weird orange stick in his hand, both laughing their asses off at you. Che was wearing the mouse ears, not the star. JR was in a lawn chair next to Guy, laughing. You didn’t think he was laughing at them though. You couldn’t tell if he was even looking at them. It was weird. Later, you told them you brought Guerilla Warfare with you. Your stock continued to rise.
“Sorry, kid.”
“What are you guys doing?”
“Talking shop, just ignore us. So like I was saying, Nietzsche didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. He was just a pissed off Prussian who caught syphilis from some whore and went completely fucking insane. He argued that he was a great philosopher because all these tragic things happened to him. I’d like to think he knew right when it happened. Freddie and the boys from the university, trolling the streets of Basel on a trimhunt after a night of drinking and arguing. In other words, philosophy as performed by philologists.” There was that word again, you thought. “All the good whores taken, he ends up with the sweaty hackbraten leftover who reeks of disease. Pull! He knows it. He feels it. And a decade later he sees a horse getting whipped, completely breaks down, and gives in to what she gave. Had he been writing about that, his tragedy would have been a brilliant kind of amor fati. Instead, the ripple effect managed to convince other maniacs like Georges Bataille that his philosophy had somehow melted his brain. For Neitzsche the difference between being noble and being tragic was the world and that there was an inherent goodness in everything bad that happened to him. Suffering isn’t noble in this way, it’s tragic, and, as would seemingly make sense if you were a syphilitic Prussian, there is of course a parallel to your suffering and that of Jesus Christ. But then we are, of course, reminded, that we are man. For Nietzsche to be a man is to be more than Christ.” When he said the word “man,” Joe made air quotes.
“Bullshit. To be a man is to be more than Nietzsche.”
“Which leads into why we are all such fools. Pull! I read people like Nietzsche and think and think until I can’ts thinks no more.”
“Fuck it, let’s get a beer.”
*
Two nights before that you and JR almost killed yourselves and no one seemed surprised. The three amigos had told you meet them on the dock at Garden Key around 10:30ish for some tarpon fishing. From the Lady, you could hear Van Halen’s “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” blasting from the fort’s massive darkening presence only getting louder and louder as the four of you and Crackers and Honky all made your way in. As you pulled up and threw JR a tie line he leaned into your face, “you know you’re semi-good lookin’” and then Guy went into a mildly epileptic solo using his fishing pole. Joe was already down to his underwear and yelling “Before! Before! Before!” Carl was, of course, nowhere to be found. “Hey! Hey! Hey!” Since you’ve been here, you’ve never really seen him in the same place with the three of them. “Hey! Hey! Hey” An hour into the fishing, Joe was back in some clothes, Mary was on her way back to the boat with the dogs and your dad had returned with the dinghy and was wandering around the beach with a flashlight trying to find one of his buried coconuts. And that’s when JR snagged one. Apparently, a big fucker because it ran for forever. He talked you into jumping into one of the park’s u-boats and tear assing into the darkness with him, with encouragement from the other four buffoons on the dock who were busy drinking from a fermented boozy drupe. After about ten minutes he had you grab the pole and he took over the motor. After about another ten minutes you both realized you were in total darkness on a moonless night and cut the line.
“What do we do?”
“Let me think about this, kid.”
“Drop anchor?”
“Yeah, throw it over,” as he looked through the bottom of the boat only finding the nothing that was there. “You don’t have a compass in your pocket do you?”
“Why would I?”
“Right. Okay, here’s what we do. Which direction did you head out in? I wasn’t paying attention.”
“… northwest… I think… Maybe that was Hospital Key we went past on the right?”
“Alright. We’re gonna have to just hang out here until the sun rises and then head southwest until we see the lighthouse. How the fuck did we get so far away so fast?”
“Because Moby Dick there was pulling us the last fifteen miles.”
“It’ll be alright. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried. Just wait for the sun to rise and head back. I mean, they’ll be freaking out, but whatever.”
“You’re calmer than me. You’re a weird kid, anybody ever tell you that?”
“Fuck you, man.”
And after an hour or two of inane conversation it became clear that neither of you were going to fall asleep as the skiff quietly sloshed around in what was essentially outer space. You couldn’t see where the water began or ended and you could barely see each other.
“Hey, when you went to Key West a few weeks back, thanks for bringing me the book.”
“No worries, man. I’m sorry you’d already read it.”
“Yeah, well, I read a lot.”
“Anybody ever tell you you’re like Holden?”
“A few times…”
Apparently, however, you did nod off because you, at some point, drifted into, “… and so we’re like sixteen hours late coming back from Tijuana. And she’s, like, fuckin’ freakin’ out. ‘Cause when we left we were, like, we’ll be back later that night, but it was, like, the next day. We had to wait until we sobered up, but… She was actually pissed at me and she rarely gets mad and she fucking flipped out on me. I was just like, ‘I’m sorry,’ even though I was trying not to laugh at the whole thing.”
And for some reason, this was the first thing that popped into your head, “Do you know what a clime is?”
“Like, to climb up something?
“No. Like c-l-i-m-e.”
“No. Where did that come from?”
“I was reading this old poem before we started fishing and it had this phrase ‘cloudless climes’ and I wasn’t sure what it meant and I normally just would look it up in the dictionary, but I figured I’d forget after tonight, so I thought I’d ask.”
“Sorry, dude. I have no idea. I bet Carl would.”
“Yeah. JR…”
“Yeah?”
“Tell me a story.”
“I just did.”
“Then tell me another.”
“What, like a bedtime story?”
“No. Just something about you”
“I love to hear people’s stories… it helps me get out of my own head.”
“I hear that… What do you want to know?”
“Something you wouldn’t tell most people.”
“Why should I tell you? Besides, I don’t think I have any good stories that are appropriate for you, you know what I mean?”
“Who am I gonna tell? Honestly. My dad could give two shits and Gibs is a moron. And let’s face it, getting lost in a boat in the dark in the middle of nowhere will one day make another awesome story, so you owe me.”
“Alright. I got a coupla stories for you. Lemme think.”
You could hear and smell JR light up a cigarette with a “Fuck!” as he dropped his lighter when the anchor rope caught and we snapped back. “Alright I got one for you.”
“Cool,” as you sat up to listen.
“You said you were starting high school this year, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, here’s a high school story for you. So I told you I grew up in North Dakota, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So, I went up there in the fall of, I guess it was around, ’84 to retrieve my stuff. This is when I was moving away from home, doing that whole attempt at college thing. I had some storage up there. And I had some friends up there. There was this guy Clint. And Clint and I used to just create all sorts of hell. He was this little five foot six, kinda stocky German kid. And a lot of the time my mouth would end up starting fights, but he’d end up finishing them. You know what I mean? Like, I never actually fought. I had this, like, amazing ability to get people to do my dirty work. It’s, like, I remember this one time at a party, I dumped a cup of beer on a kid’s head. This total redneck kid. Just walked up and was, like, here. It was at some house party. And the kid was, like, ‘what the fuck?’ And I didn’t even know where Clint was. I was literally so drunk I didn’t even know I did it. This kid comes at me. And he’s looking at me. And out of my right peripheral vision this fist comes just flying right in and hits him right in the face. I mean he fucking just… ‘fwap!’ And it was just another day, you know. He was always that bulldog that was just right there. And I kind grew accustomed to it. So I was always thinking, what kind of shit could I get Clint into? Anyway, so that last time I was up there in ’84 I was at this party, and there were these Quonset huts. It was kind of a redneck party or whatever and, uh, of course he ended up getting into a few fights there. Punched in this Canadian kid’s head. But I think the highlight of the night was this. We were in this kind of industrial park in Bismarck and the Quonset next door had a dump truck and I know how to drive a semi, so I think it was Clint or somebody somehow dared me to go and check the truck out and see if there were keys in it. I mean, this is North Dakota and people are pretty trusting and there was a set of keys in the ignition. So it’s three in the morning and I’m just blazing drunk and it’s like twenty below and I fire this truck up. And my friends are all down the street watching me. And I’m joyriding around the neighborhood in this ridiculous huge dump truck, you know, all around this industrial park. If I’d’ve been caught I’d’ve gone to prison for that. And then for whatever reason there was this big Ford truck, like a big F150 or something parked on the side of the road. And so I just gun it. I mean, I’m aiming right for this thing. And I crash right into and actually drive over it, and so this big dump truck actually gets stuck in it. So here’s this massive dump truck just idling, basically stuck in the smashed bed of this thing. I smashed the whole truck and actually got it stuck in the back of that thing. I mean, I made sure to have gloves on so I didn’t leave any prints. I mean, I was so fucked up. I got a jawfull of the steering wheel when it happened, but I mean, I was just laughing my ass off. And then I just got out of the truck and left it running. Just took off. I still wonder to this day what that guy must of thought when he saw his truck destroyed. When he saw a dump truck parked in the back of his truck. That was a pretty rotten thing to do, but, you know, when you’re intoxicated…”
“Kleptolangia is the sexual gratification from theft.”
“Of course it is. You know, when we were young we stole cars for fun every now and then up there. Being up in the north, a lot of folks would leave their cars running. You know, people are pretty trusting, so you leave your car running on the street with the keys in it, the doors unlocked or whatever, if you’re smart, so the engine stays warm and the interior stays warm. So we’d be out drinking and see a car running and get in. One time we stole this piece of shit Yugo, remember those? It was at this apartment complex. We were just joyriding it around the neighborhood for about an hour, just tearing ass in it, doing donuts in the ice and stuff. And we see this fire hydrant, and we wanted to see which would win, you know, the hydrant or the Yugo. And it was up on a curb, so we just floored it and went up on the curb and hit that fire hydrant and it just wouldn’t bust, but that little car, man, it gave us the worst whiplash from hitting that thing. The final thing was when this guy Clint was driving. There was this guy’s garage and it was right next to an alleyway. So Clint gets in the car. And I completely talk him into driving into the guy’s garage. I mean, right into it. Right through the garage door. Just completely fucking wrecked it. This piece of shit Yugo. All beat up. You hear a crash and walk out into your garage to find a beat up fucking Yugo smashed through your door. Stole a couple of other cars. Like I set fire to a car once. Stole it and just set it on fire. Just a lot of that sort of behavior.”
“My God. Did you ever get in trouble for any of this?”
“No. That’s the thing.”
“Man.”
“Well, the one thing we did get caught for is when I was seventeen I was hanging around this group, there was about seven or eight of us. I mean, I was a pretty wild kid. Did a lot of drugs. Drank a lot. I ended up ditching these friends after this event happened. See, we used to play softball. We kind of started this beer league of slacker softball, you know. We’d play on Saturdays. So we went drinking most of that day and we had played softball that day and so I was driving a bunch of guys home. I had this big old truck back then. So I’m driving some guys home and it was the same week a pow wow was going on. See, we were right near Bismarck and there’s the reservations and the Indian presence is pretty big there. And there wasn’t this really harmonious existence. We had the Sioux and the white people there, and that mix didn’t always work.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So we’re driving down the street and there’s a bunch of Indians, and they’re, like, having this house party and they yell something to one of my friends in the back of the truck. And so I stop, thinking he’s gonna jump out and give him a lesson or something.”
“Did he?”
“Well, I stop and I’m thinking we’re just gonna teach all these Indians a lesson or something, and they’re just looking at us, like, ‘yeah right, there’s seven hundred of us,’ and, see, there’s only about eight of us in my truck. So my buddy gets out and immediately gets punched in the face. This guy named DJ. And the Indians just fucking run off. So we drive off down the street, round a corner. And we’re all hopped up. We’re like, ‘Fuck those goddamn foreskins!’ Of course, we’ve got an army full of fucking drunk idiots with a bunch of softball gear in the back of my truck. So we’re like, ‘Fuck them.’ We’re gonna go up there and start swinging. But see, before that we didn’t even do anything.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, this guy Dusty. Just a piece of shit scumbag. Dustin O’Dell. For some reason, he had this idea to call some more people to come and it made sense to us at the time. And he was like, ‘Let’s go fucking start a war!’ I think he thought it was going to be like Warriors-style. Remember that movie?”
“Shit yeah.”
“Love that fucking movie. Anyway, this fucking moron brings a twenty-gauge shotgun.”
“Jesus.”
“I know. So, everybody’s got a bat and everybody’s drunk, and I’m the one driving. So I’m probably the most guilty. So we get back there, and we’re exchanging some fucking words. And here’s Dusty in the back. And this is about thirty minutes after the first guy got hit. So we get out of the truck and some people start fighting. And Dusty stands up with the shotgun and starts shooting into the crowd. But the guy was so fucked up that he never actually hit anybody. I mean, he hit the house. He fired a bunch of rounds off. But I was shitting myself when he did this. I just fucking hauled ass out of there. And some of these idiots run off. So we all basically just fucking peel off outta there, but the thing is, what I’d done before is I took the plates off my truck. Cause I knew this was something I didn’t want to get caught doing. So we got shot at…”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. Well, about four days later…”
“Uh-huh.”
“See… I guess the cops knew my pickup pretty well.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. They wanted me for a whole lotta shit they could never prove. But for some reason they figured it out. So, I’m sitting in school one day. I get that call from the principle, Mr. Hall, to come down to the office. But that was pretty regular for me. I was constantly getting suspensions and in-school suspensions and stuff, so, it wasn’t like this was anything new.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So I come down there in the middle of class and he’s basically, ‘Pack up your books, there’s an officer coming here to the school. I don’t know what you did, but you gotta meet with him in the conference room.’ And sure enough this guy was such a clichéd cop. I mean, he was wearing a fucking teal blazer. And he shows up and he tells me that they have reason to believe I was involved in this shooting incident with Native Americans. And I wouldn’t say anything, and the bell for classes just rang. So he says, ‘I’m not going to take you out of here in handcuffs in front of your friends if you cooperate.’ So we just walked out, just like I was leaving school with some dude. So sure enough I go to the police station, but he couldn’t ask me anything because I was a minor. So he calls my mom since she had to be there. And the thing was my mom was in this really high level publishers meeting with, like, the president and vice presidents of her company. And all these corporate people are there and it’s the biggest meeting of the year, and so she gets called out of that meeting to come down to a police station and deal with my ass. So she comes in just fuming. And without saying a word she walks right up to me and slaps me across the face. And I’m in the presence of this detective. He’s sitting right there! And he starts laughing when she hits me. He thought it was funny.”
“Well, you kind of had it coming.”
“Well, yeah, but, you know. Anyway, so he’s asking me ‘who’s the shooter, blah blah blah.’ And then he says, ‘We know you were driving.’ And so, I’m acting all stupid and badass going, ‘I’m not telling you nothin’!’ I’m trying to play it hard line. But then he just laid it on the line. He said, ‘You’re seventeen, and in this state anything involving a firearm carries a minimum two year sentence. And you will be tried as an adult.’ And then I just completely cracked. I told him who the shooter was, and I was accused later for being a narc by a lot of people, but these were a bunch of dipshit losers. I wasn’t gonna take the fall for their sorry asses. I ended up being friendly with the detective after that and to this day I’d bash that Dustin kid’s head in if I ever fucking saw him.”
“He’s the kid that did it?”
“Yeah, fucking piece of shit.”
“So then what happened?”
“So I got taken away to the state industrial school. I got put into solitary confinement for about two weeks. It was like juvie’s form of the hole. Slept on a floor, no mattress. It was basically just me, a jumpsuit, and the fucking floor. And they were gonna try and charge us with felony reckless endangerment, which would’ve actually been a better charge than what really went down. The state’s attorney was trying to prosecute me as an adult, but luckily, for whatever reason, I don’t know, the judge helped out. See, my mom’s friend claims my mom made a phone call to a good friend of hers who was a judge in a city just north of ours and, for whatever reason, some other guys were charged as adults, I was charged as a juvenile and was adjudicated and put on house arrest for close to a year, and I had to do community service and all that. But it came off my record. It was actually expunged. So I was pretty lucky, ‘cause I’d already been in trouble before that on a bunch of shit. I got a pissing in public charge. Firearm possession couple of times. A friend overdosed in our house once. And I got in trouble for that. So that was a pretty scary incident for me. I mean, I never enjoyed or wanted to hurt people. I had nightmares about that. I mean, somebody could’ve gotten killed so easily, and that would’ve been the end of my life. So I completely abandoned all those guys. I started to make some new friends. But I was under house arrest too, so I basically just stayed in and played my Commodore for a long time. You remember that thing?”
“Sort of.”
“I could go to school and work, but beyond that I had to be home. There was a guy checking on me all the time, so there wasn’t really anything I could do. But in the end it all worked out okay.”
“That’s nuts.”
“Well, yeah. It was pretty scary. But there was just a lot of crap we did back then. When I first moved to Bismarck, when I was around fifteen, it was my sophomore year of high school, I had already picked up a lot of bad habits coming from California. Lot of drug use. Smoked a lot of dope. I mean, a lot. Little bit of coke. Dropped a whole lotta acid, so…”
“Jesus.”
“When I got to Bismarck I sort of fell right in with that crowd. Of course, my brother was there too which didn’t do me any good at all.”
“Bad influence? Was he older?”
“Yeah. He was the one that corrupted me from the start. He was pushing drugs on me from way back to begin with. I got a story about him too, actually. About this guy Jay who was my best friend at the time. My mom was out of town. She was always away for business meetings and stuff. And that was probably the downfall of me. My mother made a really good income, and it was mostly just her and I, but my brother would come up every now and then. He’d come live with us for a year at a time. He’s almost ten years older than me. But mom and I were close. And I had this, well, basically an endless supply of cash and freedom. And that’s the two worst things you can give a seventeen year old.”
“I’ve got a spoiled rich cousin who’s just like that.”
“Yeah. So you know. And I mean, I was already into drugs and wild anyway, you know, blah blah blah.” And that’s not glossed over. You will always and very distinctly remember him actually saying the words “blah blah blah.” “So mom was out of town for a couple weeks and Aaron and I just decide to go on this bender weekend, just shooting heroin, fucking taking mushrooms, pills, fucking dope, drinking. I mean we were just having this merry old time, just getting high as hell. So anyway, my friend Jay, he comes over one night and we didn’t have any more heroin at that time. Thankfully. But we took a bunch of mushrooms. And I mean, these were awesome mushrooms, just had us seeing fucking everything. And we were listening to this album called A Gathering of Promises. You ever heard of it? By this band from Texas in the sixties called Bubble Puppy. It’s the weirdest album. It’s mostly, like, psychedelic, it’s actually a pretty good album. So I listened to that thing over and over all night. To this day fucking Bubble Puppy’s ingrained in my head. Did a line of blow right off the album cover, how cliché is that? Took so many mushrooms. We ended up smoking dope out of an apple.”
“How do you do that?”
“Well I’m not gonna show you that’s for sure, but you basically just core it out and stick the pot inside. Anyway, we start taking a bunch of pills cause Aaron’s got this friend who’s got a mom that’s a total pill freak. Cabinets of just anything you want. So Aaron always had this endless supply of pills from her. So we were just taking everything under the sun, just fucking hallucinating our asses off. Completely doped out. So we’re sitting upstairs, trying to make a turkey sandwich or something like that. Totally unsuccessfully. Jay’s sitting at the bar at the house and I’m talking to him and he takes a bite of the sandwich and he just gets this completely fixed stare and his eyes literally roll up in his head and he falls flat on his fucking back smack on the floor. And he’s stiff. Just like a board. So we’re standing there and we had no idea what to do. And then he starts convulsing and fucking vomit’s coming out of his mouth. My brother, I guess, had enough presence of mind, even being high as hell, to go in there and put his thumb in Jay’s throat and pull his jaw apart so it wouldn’t seize up all the way. And he actually bit through my brother’s nail. Through most of his finger.”
“Jeez.”
“I know, right? And this guy’s basically seizuring, completely freaking out. But here was the problem. Aaron and I were growing dope out in the back of the house. And the fucked up thing was my mom even knew we were trying to grow pot and she was cool. And we’re like, ‘Fuck! There’s fuckin’ dope and drugs everywhere in the house!’ But I was like, “Dude, we gotta call an ambulance.’ And so Aaron starts cleaning up and then he tells me he’s gotta get the fuck outta there. I mean, Aaron’s older, but we’re still underage, so I’m figuring he’d get in way more trouble than we would. And so I called the ambulance and about thirty seconds later they show up. But they bring the sheriff with them. And they’re screaming at me, ‘What’d he take!?!?! What’d he take!?!?!’ And I’m just cheesecurling and yelling I don’t know. I mean, I’m there with my shirt off, half-fucking-passed out. The sheriff’s just screaming at me and I’m thinking that this isn’t fucking helping. So they get him off and put him in the neck brace. He’s in intensive care for a little while, but he came through. They had to pump his stomach and all that stuff. So I guess what happened with the cops was that since I called to save his life they didn’t arrest me, but they knew what was going on, so I got hauled in to the police station. Jay did too. And they were gonna charge us with possession of drugs within a certain amount of feet to a school, since our house was near a school. You’ve got to be a certain radius, you know?”
“Not really…”
“Anyway. They didn’t have any evidence at the time. They were just trying to scare us, but it still went on my record. That was pretty scary though, I mean that guy almost died. I mean, I think if we had waited a few minutes to call he probably would’ve drowned in his own vomit. Luckily Aaron, he pried his mouth open and stuck a sock or something in there so he couldn’t bite himself. And we had thought to turn him on his side. I have no idea how we knew, I guess it was just something we saw on TV or something. So… that was pretty crazy. There was a lot of that. Jesus Christ, the sun’s starting to come up. How long have I been talking?”
You didn’t notice or care.
*
There will come a day, one day, many days from this day when you won’t have JRs to talk to, when you feel like you won’t have anyone to talk to. There will come a day when even I might turn my back on you. But you will have to deal with it. You will have to man the fuck up. You’re not going to be a boy on an island forever. You’re not going to simply live as if all life is meaningless. You’re not going to get to live a life that won’t impact others. You will cause joy and pain and pleasure and terror. And, much as it petrifies you, I may not be able to be with you every step of your journey in the same way it petrifies you that I’ll be there when you want me gone. Some nights you will be floating in the dark, without a moon or horizon line, and you will simply have to be. Be in the moment with your stillness. Be in the moment alone. And it’s not that I don’t love you. And it’s not that you won’t need me. It’s that sometimes the pain we create for ourselves will overpower and overwhelm our everythings and sometimes that hurt and heartache will teach you how to be a human being. Because not everyone can walk in beauty. And not everyone can be all the best that’s dark and bright. And not everyone can tell tales of days in goodness spent.
And not all have hearts whose love is innocent.
*
On your way back, watching the sun rise and seeing the lighthouse, then the fort, slowly emerge from the swallowing edge of the earth, from which last night they quietly fell with neither of you noticing, you realized that you weren’t sure if your dad really wanted you to be alive or not, whether he wanted a son or a character in a story to tell. Ultimately, he told you how scared he was, but they weren’t sure even which direction to head out in to find you and that you were in capable hands, or at least JR was, depending on how you looked at it, but that was why no one came looking for you. He said he knew you’d be fine. And he was right to some extent in that you never got scared in situations like this, which is likely why you never cared to talk about them. The adventures you find terrifying are in your head. Because you haven’t begun your adventures with me yet.
Clime’s just another way of saying it’s fucking hot and humid here and it will probably rain this afternoon.
7.
You spit the food through a “goddamn.”
“This tastes like that blue shit they keep combs in at barber shops!” Of all the gustatory mutilations Mary had taken upon herself to achieve this summer, this one became perhaps a new high watermark. “What the hell is that?”
“That’s lunch. Unless you want to make something else.”
“Is there anything better to make, because this isn’t food?”
Gibs thought this was all hysterical and your dad pushed you aside and stuck a spoon in the pot on the stove. “It can’t be that bad. What is it?”
And Mary’s answer? The one that would become a punchline to jokes for the rest of your life? The one that would linger in all your future gastronomic narrative perambulations? Mary’s answer? The one without a hint of humor or irony?
“It’s gravy soup.”
And with that, all of you, including the sea hag, resigned yourselves to laughing like the idiots you were because you knew how stupid this whole thing was and how no one seemed to know why you were still there and eating gravy soup, yet no one ventured from the plan because no one had anything better to offer. Gravy soup, you will forever remember, was a simple mélange of powdered gravy mix, flour, vile boat water, some evaporated milk from a box, and a handful of rice that tasted every bit like it should. Melancholia is simply the price everyone pays for being foolish enough to have gone on vacation.
*
You saw on Carl’s desk he was reading a book called The Great American Novel by William Carlos Williams, who you knew as the guy who ate the plums that were cold and delicious and was fascinated by that ever-so-necessary red wheelbarrow next to the chickens. There was a little post-it flagging a passage so you opened it up to see what he had highlighted: “America is a mass of pulp, a jelly, a sensitive plate ready to take whatever print you want to put on it – We have no art, no manners, no intellect – We have nothing…” Then he had underlined: “We have only movement like a sea. But we are not a sea-”
“What’s up, dork?” JR’s voice snuck up on you like it’d been watching for a while and waiting until you forgot where you were. You snapped the book closed and quietly returned it to its rest.
You thought talking with Carl would cheer you up. Make you feel more human. Less like a freak. Less like yourself. More like someone you wanted to be. JR said you’d be able to find the old bear somewhere in the fort since the boats were still docked.
You found him in Mudd’s cell. The famous cell. Home of the myth and the ghost. Carl was alone. His fingers ran the mortar between bricks. Light cast in and his shadow made it look like he was touching someone. As he sat on the ledge, you could hear him grunt. He had the body of a college professor his age, but the fort didn’t care. Apparently neither did the park services. He looked like he had been beaten. Not physically. But by time. By the weight of life. Like the years pressed in and made it hard to breathe. Like he found some comfort in these ghosts of stone and sand. Like he walked here with the condemned. Like he’d sat in this ghostly cave hundreds of years in the silence of a masterpiece’s quiet intervals. To be discovered by only him. To be played to open his wisdom.
You watched quietly from the corridor for what seemed like forever. And nothing happened. He didn’t get up. He didn’t wander around. He didn’t look outside. He simply sat there. Staring at the nothing before him. His head moved so slightly. He looked like a statue. Like he was waiting for nothing. He never looked at his watch. His eyes simply floated in their holes watching the ground and all before him laid in wait as time marched on around them. Ascetic’s just another way of saying abstemious.
He took a small pad from his shirt pocket along with a pen, and scratched down something for what seemed like forever over a few sheets. It took him a second between a couple of parts while he was thinking, but he was writing with a purpose. He stood up. Tore it off the pad. Replaced it in his pocket. Looked at the note. Crumpled the sheets and went to put it in his pocket. You wandered around, “Carl?” and he dropped the ball of paper without noticing it missed his pocket.
*
“I just feel sometimes like my whole life is always circling around stuff but never actually being a part of it. I don’t know if that makes any sense.”
“More than you know.”
“I mean I just feel like I’m floating or wandering around and I can’t tell if that’s good or bad. I don’t know if that means I pay attention more than most people or I’m just watching my life go by in front of me without living it.”
“I can’t believe you’re thirteen.”
“My birthday’s coming up.”
“Wouldn’t matter. This conversation would be surreal if you were forty. No offense, but do you think your dad has conversations like this?”
“He does with me. But maybe he just walks away wondering what I’m talking about. I can never tell.”
“What was that you said, though, what did you say, you were circling?”
“Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, I’m just talking… I don’t know.”
“No. That’s interesting. You read a lot of poetry, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you ever heard of a guy named Rilke?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Anyway, he wrote this poem that was called ‘I Live My Life in Widening Circles.’”
“Huh.”
“Yeah, and what you were saying really is similar. I don’t think I’ve got any of his stuff out here, but there’re some lines, I remember, where he talks about circling around God and circling for eons or eternity or something. But there’s this trepidation. Kind of like what you were talking about because he’s not sure if he’s like a falcon or a hawk or an eagle or something or if he’s a storm or a song. Something scary versus something good or great, you know?”
“That kind of makes sense.”
“Well it’s because we all feel that way, especially at your age. We don’t know what’s going to happen to our lives, where it’s going to take us, you know. You’re in this shitty place between being a kid and being a grown-up. You have the potential to do anything and you’re basically afraid to fuck it up, am I right?”
“Well, I guess. I mean, everyone always tells me how smart I am and how I should be doing all these brilliant things, but, I don’t know…”
“But it’s about that uncertainty. It’s about that ‘I don’t know.’ I think we all live with it, but it’s gonna be harder for you. I mean, what’s your cousin’s name again, Gibby?”
“Gibs. He’s not my cousin.”
“Gibs. Anyway, I’ve heard you talk about him being a moron since you’ve been here.”
“He is a moron.”
“He’s probably just like everybody else, but you can’t come down to his level. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that Gibs will have these issues, but they’ll be different. Or he may not worry about them so much. I mean, he does what he’s told, right? Does enough to get by. He’ll go to high school. Maybe he’ll go to college. Maybe not. He’ll get a job that he can tolerate and make a living and yada yada yada. But I can tell just by the way you’re looking at me that you don’t want that, do you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you think about everything until your brain just about explodes, don’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
“This entire conversation says you do. And I think that’s why your family wants you to write because I think they think you’ve got all this stuff floating around in your big brain and it needs somewhere to go.”
“I had a shrink tell me I should write once.”
“There you go.”
“What do you think?”
“I have no idea. I’m not a therapist. And you’re not my kid.”
“Oh.”
“Think of it like this. Kids all over the world have goldfish. Just little ones they get at carnivals and school fairs. You probably had a goldfish, right?”
“I had this huge pickle jar my dad brought home when I was like four, before they got divorced, and there were like five hundred teeny-tiny goldfish in it. Nothing else. It looked like a snow globe you shake up, but it was just filled with little tiny fish.”
“Why does none of this surprise me?”
“I named them all Larry.”
“All of them?”
“All of them.”
“And what happened to them?”
“I have no idea. That’s where the memory ends.”
“They’re dead. None of these goldfish ever live. Every kid kills every goldfish. Which is my point. Some kids just flush it and move on. Some, like you probably, have to be explained about death, and then, you know, you’re brain gets rolling…”
“What are we talking about?”
“I don’t know… all I know is you’re just about the most interesting person I’ve ever encountered on this rock. You’re like the Little Prince. I’m out here and you’re this character and you fall from the sky and we talk and I don’t know.”
“Carl, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The Little Prince.”
“I got nothing.”
“It’s one of the most famous books ever written. You’re messing with me, right?”
“No. I’ve never heard of it. Should I have?”
“You can quote from everything ever written and you don’t know the simplest and most loved children’s book in the world? It’s sold like a billion copies.”
“Maybe someone meant to give it to me when they gave me Catcher in the Rye instead.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Everyone wants me to read that. It’s just an inside joke for only me. Anyway, The Little Prince?”
“Yeah. The Little Prince. It’s Saint-Exupéry, and I know we talked once about Wind, Sand and Stars. Anyway, he was this pilot and crashed and all this stuff happened to him and he was this amazing heroic guy and was an author as well. And he was in America for a time during World War Two and wrote this book, The Little Prince. And he drew the pictures too. And it’s considered a children’s book, but it’s really got these deep philosophical themes about what is means to be human, what it means to love, etc. And I don’t want to give you the exact plot because I want you to read it, but I’ll tell you what made me think of you and the book. You’re obviously the Prince. You’ve come to this desert of water that’s totally uninhabited. And I’m the pilot who crashed here, plus the pilot’s the narrator and since I’m telling you this, I must be the narrator here. Anyway, there are other asteroids he visits that are basically all these people you think are stupid like maybe the other kids you know or your family or whatever. And then there’s this rose on his home asteroid. He lives on an asteroid, by the way. And he’s got this rose he takes care of, but he devotes everything to her. Well, this is your girl, as you call the idea in your head or whatever it is. That’ll be obvious to you. And then there’s this fox, but I don’t think you’ve met your fox just yet. See, the fox explains that the rose is the object of his love and how it’s the time the boy loses to the rose that makes his rose so important. That’s why you need to sit down and talk to someone who doesn’t think you shouldn’t give her up in a way you’ll understand. Maybe you’ll make a friend with weird hair who can make you understand how Tom Waits writes sad love songs. Explain to you that if she’s your muse, you’re responsible to her. Maybe that’s why everyone’s always telling you to write. And now you think you’ve got a muse. Sounds like you agree you have some kind of obligation now.”
“Whatever. So who else does he meet?”
“Read the story. You can make more sense of the metaphor later. Or don’t. Whatever.”
“Well… okay?”
“And it is kind of the story of what happened to Saint-Exupéry when his plane really did crash in the desert.”
“How so?”
“Well. His plane really crashed. Just read the thing. But people assumed the rose was his wife.”
“And you think my being here and the girl that lives in my head, my ‘muse,’ kind of make me like this book?”
“I don’t know, kid. I’m a man of letters. I ‘read’ things. Don’t overthink it. It’s a classic book.”
“There is that.”
“That there is. And not everything is about you. Remember that. I’ve got to go give a tour. Don’t annoy them this time.”
Moments later you ran back to Mudd’s cell and collected whatever it was he had written. You thought it wouldn’t be a to-do list or anything by the way he was acting and the way he crumpled it up. You needed to see it. You thought of the night before you left. It read:
I think I’ve made a lot of really bad decisions in my life.
And I think there may be room for better.
or I think there may be room for worse
Maybe.
is all I can say
I think it was too cold tonight to walk as far as we did.
I think I didn’t need that drink.
I think my stomach hurts.
I think “To Remain” by C.P. Cavafy may be the most beautiful love poem of the last two centuries.
I think most of the time people don’t realize how lucky they are to meet someone who matters.
I think people don’t realize how easy it is to hurt someone who matters.
I think people don’t realize many things. And that makes me sad.
And this empty bed makes me sad.
And wherever you are makes me happy.
And the thought of you smiling makes this bed less empty.
And the thought of being with you
wherever it may be
gives me hope to get past the rest
even if it never happens
I don’t want that hope taken away
I think it’s too late to write these words.
I think I’m not terribly clearheaded.
I think I’ve made many bad decisions in my life.
And I think I’ve made many excellent decisions in my life.
I think that is what life is.
I think I may have lived it.
I think there is a lot of talk in this world about things like
adventure - passion - weirdness
I’ve lived a life of adventure, passion, and weirdness.
And it’s a life really easy to fuck up.
And it’s a life really easy for which to be ungrateful.
And if you don’t see that your life has always been full of
adventure - passion - weirdness
then that’s sad.
Because those are things missing inside of you.
When you got back to the boat, you found your copy Bartels’ Trouble. You don’t know why that particular book, but that’s the book you wanted to slip Carl’s note into for posterity. You figured down the road maybe it would fall out in front of Mary or your dad or your mom or Tom and they would read it and think you wrote it and thought it was great simply because you wrote it, just like Mama, just like Nagymama, just like everyone and you thought of taking credit for it and everyone would think it was great and then after a little while someone would find out you stole it and you would be blanketed in shame and everyone could go back to hating you, but not as much as you hate yourself.
You thumbed through the volume, stopping at:
An anecdote about seven haiku
On my father’s desk one curious afternoon I found the impossible following:
The young day is done.
The moon hangs in its corner
sad in its pale light.
Again and again
and again and again and
again and again.
The sky is wiped clear.
Clouds rub against the moon's cold
shoulder like a splash.
The ocean breathes, breathes;
And is bringing me just
a tide of ashes.
Can I ever leave
this fucking island hellhole
before I die here?
5-7-5 and all I could come up with was:
One good thing a-bout
mu-sic is when it hits you
feel no pain. Trench-town...
You thought it was weird that you heard that song on Monday.
*
You were listening to “I Know What I Know” and embarrassingly singing the falsetto chorus while you were going through the book box at the office even though there was nothing different in it.
“What are you gonna read?” She startled you. The way an eidolon would when you think you’re alone, but she’d been there the entire time.
You stammered and told her about the box of books and told her you’d get the ranger, but she said it wasn’t a big deal, but you’d do it anyway, and when you went into Carl’s office he was preoccupied in some folder in front of a file cabinet and you told him about the woman who just wandered in by herself and he said he never even heard anyone come in after you, but he asked you if she needed help and you said you didn’t think so, and he asked you if she wanted a tour and you stuck your head out the door and asked her and she said something like why not, and you told Carl you guessed so and he told you to show her around and you had no idea what to do with that so you calmly, and for no reason whatsoever, asked her if she wanted you to show her around and she, with her hands in her pockets, did the smallest shoulder eh that said why not.
Who were you to blow against the wind?
When you started walking through corridors with her, you realized you didn’t actually know what to say. You just started walking with her. And you started to tell her about the history of the place. And you started to tell her about how the Spaniards found it. And how it was named after all the turtles and that it had no water. And she had this little notebook with her, like she was going to take notes or draw something, but she never really opened it. She just carried it with her. And then she more or less simply cut you off, and said something to the effect of:
“Yeah… I know all that. I read the brochure just like everybody else. And the lighthouse and the Spanish and the Civil War and all that and the prison and stuff. I know all that. And the Lincoln conspirators, right? And blah, blah, blah. I don’t really care that much about all that. I mean, it’s a cool history, but really there’s nothing here, so reading about it seems to make more sense since nothing looks the same anyway.”
“Soooo… what are you doing here? I mean, it is just a tourist place…”
“Well, you know, my parents wanted to go somewhere weird for a few days and just get the hell away from everything. And I’m doing all this writing and just need to finish… They’re rich, so they got this boat I could stay on and it’s got a small crew, but I never see them and they don’t care what I’m doing and I just want to get away from them, so I just decided to come check out the place… wander around, you know? And then you said the ranger guy told you to talk to me and to show me around. Which was weird, but whatever.”
“Yeah. That’s kind of weird, right?”
“It’s not not weird. So what’s the deal with you, man, you live here? Are you like that dude’s kid or something?”
“No. Kind of. I don’t know. He’s really nice. He’s just a ranger. He’s not my dad. He’s a cool guy, though. There’s this other ranger and he’s totally fucking insane and he’s always blowing stuff up or lighting fires where he shouldn’t be. He’s crashed, like, two boats since I’ve been here. And then there’s these two guys at the lighthouse who are really funny and cool and… they’re kind of weird characters, like Burt and Ernie from It’s a Wonderful Life or something. But they’re just sort of in the background if that makes sense.”
“Background characters? That’s a weird way to describe people.”
“Yeah… what was I talking about?”
“You were telling me why you quote unquote live here. Or don’t?”
“Yeah… um… yeah, so this is weird. My dad, um… uh, decided that we should spend the summer here. And I mean the whole summer. Like, we left just a couple of days after we ended school and we’re not going back until right before I start school and… in all honesty, I don’t know what we’re doing out here. It makes no sense…. I can’t get a straight answer out of him.”
“So you just hang out here all day, just wandering around aimlessly?”
“No… no, we, we dive a lot. Like, a lot. I mean a lot. Like, several times a day we usually go out. We’ve dove every wreck and reef around here several times each. And we’re kind of running out of food, so we steal a lot of food illegally. Don’t tell Carl that. He’s the ranger back there. You know, what I mean by that, we go lobstering or spear fish for grouper and it’s totally illegal to do in a park like this… I don’t know. It’s just weird.”
“That is kind of weird, man… that is actually, really kind of weird. But it’s kind of cool, you know? Like, you’ll be able to say one day you had this awesome summer… I don’t know if awesome’s the right word…”
“I… uh, yeah. It’s a different kind of summer than most people are having I guess.”
“It may not be awesome to you now, but it’ll be a thing you’ll remember. Like it’ll be a thing you’ll talk about years later…” You made your way up the stairs to the second floor and continued walking widdershins through the corridors. “… so you go diving a lot, is that it?”
“Well… I read.”
“That’s cool. Not a lot of kids your age probably read that much.”
“No. I read a lot… um… I’m weird.”
“Well, we’re all a little weird.”
“No. No. I’m really, really weird. Um… there’s something wrong with my brain, like I’m really smart.”
“Well, that’s awesome.”
“No. See I’m really smart, but I’m really stupid too. Like, I’m really lazy. So I read, like, a book a day. But I flunk out of school because I don’t care. And it drives everybody nuts. And you know, huh, I have, uh, no idea why I’m telling you all this… I usually can’t talk to anybody. I have no friends. And, uh… Carl’s really my only friend here… I… eh, uh… why am I telling you all this?”
“I don’t know. ‘Cause you’re a cool kid and we’re just talking. Don’t worry about it. Don’t overthink it.”
“I, uh… yeah… um… I’m kind of feeling anxious about this now. I feel stupid. I’m gonna go…”
“Look, dude. Just chill out, man.” And you had made your way to the next set of stairs, these would take you to the roof, and you were able to really show her around the fort she didn’t care about or cells that just looked like unfinished construction sites or the water you’d later learn she was slightly terrified of, more or less just aimlessly walking the giant circle with her. “So tell me about the reading you do.”
“Well… it doesn’t really matter. I, I, I, uh… I, like, just read everything. I mean everything. Just about whatever. Like yesterday I read a small book from the bin in the ranger station that was about the prison riot in Attica back in the seventies and the day before that I read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for the third time and the day before that I only read a little bit since we did three dives and I had lunch with Joe and Guy and they showed me how Joe brews beer. But the weird part is that I can’t forget any of it, either… So, I, uh… I just got all that shit in my head… and, uh…who knows if it’ll actually pay off or anything, but I guess that’s not why I do it or anything.”
“Are you kidding me? You sound like a you’re a total genius. And you, like, know you’re a total genius. And that’s totally cool…”
“Yeah… yeah… but, like I said… I’m… I, uh… I barely got out of eighth grade and I’m starting high school in, like, two weeks. I don’t wanna go. I just… I don’t know what I wanna do… I just wanna be left alone…. Hide. And read, and, uh… You know? It’s funny. I’m smart enough to know what a metaphor is and the fact that I’m spending my entire summer vacation at a prison… it’s a pretty obvious one…”
“Yeah… you’re definitely smarter than your average bear, kid…”
“So, you said you had some writing to do… you’re a writer?”
“Sort of… um… you know, who knows? Um… I’m bored and, uh… like you I guess… I guess we’re all a little bored… but, uh, I’m working on a PhD, so I’m to the point where I have to write what’s called a dissertation.”
“Yeah. That’s like the book you have to write to graduate, basically, right?”
“Yeah. And, uh…”
“Carl used to be a professor. You should talk to him about it.”
“Oh yeah? What did he teach?”
“He, he was an English professor, which is actually kind of awesome because he’s always lending me books to read and kind of explaining stuff to me. Like, we were just talking about this Italian book, which was apparently really French or something, or written in this French style or something, he kind of confused me with it, but I started reading it and I don’t really get it that much, or maybe I do and just can’t tell… it’s called If on a winter’s night a trav-”
“Yeah. Calvino! That book’s amazing. Yeah, no… it’s, uh… it’s really great, but it is kind of confusing. It’s really postmodern and it’s weird and difficult for a lot of people…”
“Is it though? I mean… it just seems like, you know, it’s a first… it’s first chapters to a bunch of books and they go on this adventure together, the reader and this, this woman and kind of fall in love. So, like, on the one hand, it’s, uh, it’s like a, uh, stop and start kind of thing and that’s probably what pisses a lot of people off, but it actually seems fairly straightforward. Like, it seems like one of those ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books all the kids read in my school library.”
“Jesus, you know that’s actually, like, an awesome way to think about that. I don’t know if anyone’s ever read that book that way. That’d be a great paper to deliver at a conference.”
“Yeah? I guess I have my moments… Can I be honest? I still don’t know why I’m talking to you… I’m, like… uh, it’s weird. I feel like I’m really nervous, like I might throw up, ‘cause you’re really pretty and, uh, and you’re really smart obviously and I’m just supposed to be showing you around and now I’m in a conversation with you about literature and, and, um…”
“Kid… kid. Calm down. I’m harmless. It’s okay. How old are you, man?”
“I’m, um… I’m thirteen… and, uh… I’m, I’m gonna be fourteen in a couple of… that doesn’t matter, who cares, you know, forget I said that, I’m, I’m… I’m stupid, I’m sorry.”
“You’re not stupid, man. I’m twenty-eight years old and have no idea what I’m doing with my life… I’ve been kind of riding my parents, and, like, dicking around… you know? I mean, I get to see the world and whatever and you should do that too…”
“Well, I’m not rich or anything… I mean, that sounded bad. I’m not rich, so I, uh, I don’t know. The odds of me wandering around Europe after college are pretty slim. Honestly, the odds of me going to college are pretty slim. You know? I don’t think that’s really in my future. I have no idea what I’m gonna do and I probably shouldn’t care because I’m thirteen, so… I’m sure I’ll just let life happen since that seems like it will be a lot easier than actually making a decision about anything.”
“I still don’t buy that you’re only thirteen, man. You sure don’t talk like one.”
“Like one what”
“Like any thirt-, you don’t really talk like anyone, you know, like most adults, man, okay? I have a lot of… I have a lot of colleagues that are way dumber than you it seems like, you know… I don’t know.”
“What are you studying, by the way? You said you’re working on your doctorate.”
“Art history… I’m, uh, ABD, which is ‘all but dissertation,’ so… I, I have a teaching fellowship that starts in, uh, in like a month and, uh, you know… I’ll go do that for a bit and try and write this thing… so, uh, yeah. We’ll see what happens.”
“So, uh, what are you writing about?”
“It’s called, um… the title’s Kandinsky’s Trane, and it’s, uh, t-r-a-n-e, um… and, uh, it’s a… Um… it’s a… well, what is it about?”
“You don’t know what it’s about?”
“Well, you know, it’s, uh… look, when you write something then you tell me how easy it is to encapsulate something you’ve been working on for a couple of years.”
“I don’t write anything.”
“Why not? You seem like you read everything. You should try writing something.”
“I don’t wanna get into it. Everybody… like, everybody… they’re, like, everybody in the world tells me I ought to be a writer, but nobody ever actually stops to think about what that actually means and how being a good reader is actually not the same thing. I think it’s a very, you know… I think it’s a very weird thing I keep being told and I don’t wanna do it.”
“That’s cool, man. Do what you want. Fuck everybody else.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I say I don’t just to disappoint everyone and piss them off. Like me not doing something is a kind of protest.”
“I get that…’
“So, uh… Kandinsky’s Trane. Kandinsky I’ve heard of, I don’t get the other part of it though.”
“So, do you know about Kandinsky?”
“No. I’ve, I’ve heard of Kandinsky… that’s, that’s where it kind of ends.”
“Yeah. So Wassily Kandinsky was this painter… and he was really influential on all these school’s of thought such as Bauhaus, which if you don’t know what that is it’s not important, but I see him as this link to abstract expressionism, which may be really simplistic and people won’t care, but I wanted to write about what I wanted to write about. He moved away from figural stuff, like pictures ‘about’ something to more of this style that was just line and color and shape and form and they just kind of explode, as if it was beyond his control. And music is super important here. He was an art theorist too, and a lot of critics see his painting as actually coming from a more theoretical or philosophical place than one more grounded in the history of western art. But I find the music thing so important because improvisational music really gets to the core and expresses all these inner emotions. Which is why those later abstract guys like Pollack said they were painting their souls. Kind of like how these jazz musicians at the same time were playing out their inner demons. Anyway, I make this link because Kandinsky thought of his spontaneous paintings as compositions or improvisations and thought about it in musical terms. Anyway, so whatever.”
“I saw this picture once by Kandinsky. I only remember it because it was a weird name and when you said it I thought of the picture. I saw it at this huge museum I once went to with my mom and stepdad in Chicago. It looked like what you just said, like everything was exploding into life. There were all kinds of lines of blues and reds and yellows just shooting all over the place.”
“Do you know why you liked it?”
“I don’t know. I just did.”
“Trying to understand what pleases us aesthetically is one of the hardest things to do. This is why it’s so hard to teach people to appreciate something. Since so much of what we like is subjective, you know, how do you know if something’s good or not. I guess that’s a lot of what I’m interested too.”
“And what’s the ‘trane’ part?”
“The ‘trane’ part is, um… it was John Coltrane’s nickname, you know who he is, right?”
“Yeah, no. Him, I know.
“Nice.”
“Yeah. I listen to a lot of music too. As much as I read, I actually listen to more music than I do read, so, uh, I got you on that one.”
“You are a weird kid, man… you’re kinda awesome, but you’re weird.”
“So… yeah. I get that a lot. Not the awesome part, though. I still have no idea why I’m talking to you or how I’m talking to you.”
“Would you stop saying that? You’re kind of weirding me out with that.”
“I’m kind of weirding me out too. I’m sorry.”
“Anyway. Do you want to hear what I’m writing about?”
“Yeah, man. Tell me.”
“So… so, you’ve got this school of art and… all hell breaks loose and it’s basically the rise of abstract expressionism. You know what that is?”
“Uh, sort of. It’s like splotches and shit, when they threw stuff on canvases…’
“Yeah, yeah. More or less. The most famous abstract expressionists are probably Jackson Pollack or Mark Rothko and they did the drip paintings that are like the splatters you’re talking about or these kind of empty squares of color. You know, people like that. And, the whole thing is that it was from figural painting to abstract. So figural is like when it’s a picture of a thing, you know, like if you paint, like, a still life of a bowl of oranges or a portrait of a person and you know exactly what you’re looking at, whereas the abstract is, uh, much more about trying to paint your feelings onto canvas and trying to talk about what’s inside you, you know? Like, not just what’s inside your head, but what’s inside your heart. And my argument is that at the same time… at the same time in American music, you’ve got this switch from, like, a blues-based music into the more modern jazz we’re talking about, which is, like, what’s called bop or hard jazz.”
“Yeah. Actually, that I know. You’re talking Coltrane, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Mingus, people like that. I actually brought Bitches Brew with me and listened to it a couple of days ago. I actually woke everybody on the boat up by blasting ‘Spanish Key’ as loud as I could.”
“See? You are the coolest kid in the world, you just don’t know it, man. You just gotta have more confidence…”
“Uhg, I don’t… whatever. I don’t know.”
“So anyway, I make this argument that these things developed together, right, like it just so happened to be that the world was changing in such a way with world wars and the economy and the cultural landscape and all that stuff, so that these two forms of expression, these two forms of kind of talking about stuff, the two things, visual and music… I’m not really interested in writing. I’m not really interested in the novelists that came out during this time, uh, Mailer or whoever, I mean the beats are the most obvious connection and linchpin to all this, but that’s sort of been done to death and everybody already knows this and so I talk about them only as a kind of throughway. But the beats still kind of tried to apply everyday language to these things, weird as they were. And I’m not really interested in that. What I’m interested in is the move to try and put all this emotion out there into the world in purely abstract terms, this guttural, like, people had to get this shit out of their system and out into the world, and, for me, it’s the most beautiful art ever. You know? ‘Cause it shows us what it’s like to be tormented. It shows us… it makes us feel, like, what it’s like to be in pain. It makes us feel beauty in a way we’ve never felt before. Um… it forces us to kind of see inside ourselves because the music and, and the paintings or sculptures or whatever don’t actually represent anything. So when you look at them, you’re looking at your own interpretation of them… that makes no sense whatsoever, does it? That’s stupid. I just threw all that at you. I’m sorry.”
“No. No. Actually it’s awesome. It makes total sense. Total sense.” And then, you more or less simply walked in silence next to her and you realized she made you feel cool. And no one had ever done that before. And you somehow had a confidence, one that maybe she gave you, one that you had never felt before.
“So what are you into? You told me you read a lot. You told me you listen to books. Listen to books? You told me to read a lot of books, listen to a lot of music. What, what… what do you like to read or listen to?”
“… everything. You know? Everything’s fair game. I figure if I read it and don’t like it, I don’t have to read it again… but if I don’t read it all I won’t know. And, same with music. If I hear something and it sucks, I just won’t bother to listen to it again. But if I hear something and it’s amazing, I’ll, uh… I’ll know I’ll probably wanna listen to it for the rest of my life, so… It’s funny, you know? My dad got all pissed off at me because, uh, we came here for a few months and all I brought was, like, two changes of clothes with me, so I have to do laundry, like, every other day, and, uh…”
“How do you do laundry out here, by the way?’
“Well, so… you see all the boats out in the anchorage?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So, you see that black one? With the black hull and the purple canvases on it and stuff, the one with the two masts?”’
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, so that’s our boat. That’s where I live, um… I sleep on the hammock that you see hung from the front mast to the bow, with that little fold-up dinghy underneath it. So I sleep there most of the time, unless it’s raining or something. I gotta bunk in the boat, but it’s really small and full of all my stuff. That’s what I was saying because my dad got really pissed ‘cause I didn’t bring any clothes, but I brought, like, a hundred and fifty albums with me and, like, three duffel bags of books and, um, I’ve already gone through, like, half of them and, um, but then I met this ranger guy and he’s really awesome actually and he’s lent me a bunch of stuff and he’s kinda, like I said he talked to me about, what was his name, Calvi, Calvino?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. Calvino. Anyway, he talks to me about people like Calvino and he’s talked to me about a bunch of stuff and, I, uh, I, uh… I don’t know where I was going… with that.”
“You were telling me about laundry or something and…”
“Yeah, so well, the laundry thing… so, yeah. We just use, like, dish soap and I clean it in a bucket of fresh… well, first I just use sea water and… and then I take a little bit of fresh water from the boat and dump it and dry it off and, uh, just hang it up to dry and everything’s kind of stiff and uncomfortable, but luckily I spend most of my day in a bathing suit, so it doesn’t really matter… um… so, yeah. Um, this is… this is the fort. And, yeah, Carl asked me to show you around. It’s more or less the same, like you saw on the different levels and this is the roof. I have no idea how grass grows up here, don’t really care. I probably could have just pointed at stuff and you would have gotten the same effect. So… I’m sorry I’m a bad tour guide, you should actually take the tour, it’s really cool, he’s, he’s good at it, he gives you really, like, a lot of detail, you can tell he was a professor. He’s wicked smart, and, uh, you know, he, he, it’s a neat little thing, ‘cause it gives you the history of the place and stuff… eh, I don’t know.”
“I’m only here for a couple of days, so maybe I’ll just chill out and do nothing. I’ve got some reading to do. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just take all my clothes off and sit out in the sun, and… get a tan or something.” And while you won’t remember the details, you will remember thinking about how you tried to not think about her in a sexualized way. Tried not to fantasize about her body when she said that. How you thought it was weird that you were so into talking to her that the thought of sex would throw a wrench into everything because now you didn’t know what to say to her or what to do and were just waiting for her to add something else to that. “So, you said you do a lot of diving and stuff. Aren’t you too young to dive? Don’t you have to be, like, a certain age?”
“Well, my, my dad’s a dive instructor, like, for a living. He travels around a lot. He, uh, he lived in Key West for a while and did that and he worked for a dive shop where I’m from which is a little farther up the coast in Fort Myers, and, uh, he’s done it for a few years and he’s remarried and I don’t live with him all the time… actually I do a lot of school via correspondence, like, I fly into wherever he is a lot and, um, bring my homework with me and then mail it back into my school, um, but… I started diving with him when I was, like, nine, but I was too young to get certified, so what he did was he just mailed it in since he was an instructor and I didn’t really ever actually have to do it and… you know, this actually is kinda cool, so you have to be fift-, do you dive, by the way?”
“No. I don’t even really like the water. It was really nerve-racking to come out here…”
“Well, just go down to the beach. You can go down there. You can see from up here how clear the water is and stuff. I mean, the moat’s completely just dingy and disgusting, so don’t look in there, but-”
“Yeah. That’s kind of what I don’t like. It’s just, uh… I don’t like it when I can’t see the bottom, but then seeing the bottom kind of makes me more nervous.”
“But you-”
“The boat thing? My parents are supposed to meet me out here and they’re supposed to fly in by seaplane tomorrow and they’re gonna take the boat back and I’m gonna go back maybe, or the boat, I don’t know. I don’t even really like flying over the water, so I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet. But, um… what were we talking about?”
“Well, you asked me how I dove so much…”
“Yeah, right, so you do a lot of that?”
“Yeah, like, a lot. Like I was saying, but since he’s an instructor I get to do all this cool stuff and there’s all these certifications you can get, um, but you’ve got be fifteen or sixteen to do a lot of them, but I actually have done them all, so in a couple of years when I turn sixteen or whatever he’s just gonna fill in all the paperwork and then I’ll get, like, a stack of cards sent to me in the mail and I can legally go do whatever with that… It’s funny, since he lived in Key West when he mailed my basic certification in last year, he put his address down and listed that I had dual citizenship in both America and the Conch Republic… ‘so I got that going for me.’”
“That’s hysterical. And nice Caddyshack reference. I figured you’d be too young for that, but you’re carrying around a major representative copy of Oulipan writing, so nothing would surprise me about you.”
“Speaking of that, my neighbor, my friend, this dude called Father Padre, he was in The Carl Spackler Memorial Bakesale.”
“Are you fucking serious?”
“Yup. He wrote ‘Carried Away.’ And, man, does he hate that song.”
“That’s awesome… you know that just makes you weirder and more interesting, right?”
“That’s me. The most interesting introvert in the world.”
“Certainly worse things to be.”
“So, what was I saying?”
“Your diving certifications, which are apparently as illegal as hell.”
“Right. So there’s all these other certifications you can do that are considered advanced. One’s for, like, night diving and one’s for, like, deep diving and one’s for, like, wreck diving-”
“What, like, diving shipwrecks and stuff?”
“Well, yeah, so these are more or less more dangerous. Like ice diving and-”
“Why the hell do you go ice diving?”
“I don’t know, it fucking sucked.”
“Where did you go ice diving, and how, like, what even is that?”
“It’s just diving under the ice. We did it at Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire when I visited my dad there last Christmas. It seemed really stupid to me, but we do everything for some reason. Like, there isn’t something we won’t try. You basically just cut a hole in the ice and go under and try to remember where the hole is. You’ve got to wear a drysuit, which isn’t really like a wetsuit, but more like a rubber airtight garbage bag you wear over your wetsuit so you’ll stay warm. Anyway, so you have to do special certifications so you know how to, you know… not die underwater and stuff. It’s like with cave diving-”
“Wait a minute. You cave dive too?”
“Yeah. Just a few times. There was this one time last year where we did this thing off Miami and my dad had to totally lie about my age and we told them my driver’s license got lost, because it was a deep dive at, like, a hundred sixty-five feet and you go into this cave kind of along a ridge and there are all these bull sharks sleeping on the bottom and you just kind of float above them. That was actually really cool.”
“What the fuck?”
“Oh, oh, wait, there was this other time we went up to Ginnie Springs and, um, this was weird, a couple people died when we were up there.”
“Stop. I’m sorry. You went up there and people died?”
“Well, yeah, but no one we knew. Here’s what happened and why it was weird. We, uh… we went up and we were gonna do the dive and, uh, and there was a bunch of police there and yellow tape and stuff and they explained to us that these three dudes went into the caves and, uh, uh, and apparently one of them got separated from the group and, uh, ran out of air and drowned and the other ones were together and they were running out of air and panicking and all of this is, because apparently… see when you go into a cave you need to be tied to a line, so you can find your way out, you know, but they were idiots and didn’t do it right because they didn’t really know what they were doing and shouldn’t have been doing it… so… I guess they, uh… I guess they kind of panicked and got into a fight underwater in the cave or something and this was the, uh, I didn’t really get this, but it sounded like one of them killed the other one, like he pulled his knife out and stabbed him and, uh, and actually, yeah, like murdered this dude to get his air tanks from him and he still couldn’t get out and he drowned and, uh, it was just kinda annoying ‘cause it took us, like, three hours to get there and we couldn’t do the dive.”
“How could you wanna go do the dive after something like that happened? Wouldn’t that just make you not want to do it?”
“I don’t know. It just seems like they were stupid and made bad decisions… You know, I don’t know. They didn’t do it right. I don’t know. That stuff’s just never scared me. I’m much more scared standing here talking to, talking to you and I can’t believe I just said that out loud. I feel like I’m kind of gonna throw up right now and, um… it’s really weird ‘cause I feel like I’m not in my own body ‘cause normally, you’re like the… you’re like the longest conversation I’ve ever had a with a girl, um… You’re not a girl. I know. You’re a woman. You’re like, you’re, you’re, you’re… I don’t know. I feel stupid now. I don’t know why I said that. I should probably just go. I should just go. Um… I’m sorry…”
“No. No. Stop saying that. Um… I’m fascinated by you, kid. Like, you… this is interesting. You’re like a character in a book somewhere… You live here… which is one of the most bizarre places in the universe, your friends with a ranger who’s like sixty… You’re just here with you and your dad?”
“No, no. There’s, uh, there’s a reason I actually don’t hang out on the boat too much, it’s, um… my dad’s married to this woman and I don’t really like her that much, um, she doesn’t really like me that much either, but, uh, she actually kind of secretly hates me I think but can’t do anything about it. And… I kind of hate everybody, like, I don’t really get along with anybody, so I don’t really have any friends, uh… maybe that’s the obvious reason I read so much or something, I don’t know… And, she brought her nephew with her because they thought, like, ‘oh, he’s the same age as me’ or something, and he’s this total dickhead. He’s just such, such, such a jerk. Um… he’s just so stupid and he’s popular and, I can’t figure it out, like, he’s really ugly, but girls like him and everybody talks to him and… he’s just everything I’m not, and it’s kind of frustrating, you know, ‘cause I don’t know, I don’t understand, like, I don’t understand why he’s so popular, you know, um, but I just know I’m not, you know, and then, uh, they have two dogs too, so it’s really crowded with the four of us and the two dogs and the boat’s not made for that. And they’re fine on the boat, you know, like, that’s their thing, they don’t mind living like that, so, uh, I actually sleep here a lot.”
“What do you mean, ‘sleep here’? This is just a dead, empty fort. You stay with the rangers or something?”
“No… um… They let people camp on the beach a lot down there, so sometimes I’ll just have a sleeping bag or something. I don’t mind sleeping outside. I kinda grew up on the boat so I’m used to being in a hammock and, um… my dad really doesn’t care where I go since I guess his logic is there’s no where really for me to go, so if I don’t come home after a day or so, he just has to ask Carl or Joe or Guy, um, or JR, where I am. I’m probably with one of them and I guess if none of them have seen me, then I will probably just be hiding in a cell reading or I guess… I will probably be dead somewhere or something, but I don’t really wander off too much. You see the dock down there? Where you came in, right? Duh. There’s, like, a bench there and at night the light turns out on a timer and sometimes I sleep there, um, just to be alone since they told me I’m not allowed to actually sleep inside the fort in case I fell out of one of the openings or whatever.”
“You sleep on a bench on a dock? Like a bum?”
“Well, it’s… no, not like a bum. You make it sound like… Jesus. I am like a bum. What the hell? Why does my dad let me do that?”
“Kid, you have a weird life, man. You’re gonna be able to tell quite the stories when you’re older.”
“You have no idea. This is nothing. This is actually one of the more boring summers in my life. You should see us on a crazy adventure.”
“Really? So what else have you done?”
“Eh. I don’t know why I said that. I don’t really wanna talk about it. Most of them involve my dad and he’s… he’s kind of psychotic, um… he, uh… you know. He’s not… he’s not, like a bad dad, he’s just not a very good dad, so I get dragged along to a lot, to a lotta really weird places, you know? And, uh, and I go on these weird adventures and… I honestly don’t really like talking about them too much to people. I mean, I guess it’s people my own age don’t really give a shit, so, I mean, uh… I don’t know. It’s weird. I don’t know how I feel about it ‘cause, you know… maybe when I’m old, I’ll think it’s cool or something, but right now it just makes me feel different from people and… I just feel stupid, you know… uh, I don’t know.”
“Are you alright, kid? You doing okay? In, like a, you know, like a life kind of way?”
“I… I, uh, I don’t know. I mean… Look. I don’t know you at all, so I don’t know how to answer that question.”
“You don’t have to. I mean, I don’t know you at all either, so I know that was a really weird question I threw at you. I’m really sorry. I just think, uh… I don’t know what I think. This was not what I was expecting to do this afternoon that’s for sure. I figured I would just read the pamphlet, take a wander around, maybe lay on the beach and get a tan somewhere or something and, uh…”
“I mean, you should still go do that. I’ll leave you alone… I’ll just go. I’m sorry. I don’t wanna bother you.”
“Stop saying that, man. Have some… have some confidence. Be interesting, you are interesting. Just talk to people.”
“I… I don’t know how to.”
“You’re talking to me right now.”
“And I don’t know how that’s happening. I still… that’s never happened before and I’m… you’re a stranger, but we’re talking and I’m kind of weirded out by that.”
“Well, why am I special? You know? Is it because you think I’m pretty or something? You’ve grown up on beaches your whole life, I’m sure you’ve seen way hotter. Am I your type or something?”
“Wha… a… Now, no… I…” There was no way you, you, were ever going to be able to answer that question. A beautiful woman, perhaps the most beautiful woman, just asked you if you thought she was pretty. A simple yes was the answer. You have no idea how words are being formed in your head and coming out of your mouth, let alone how you would ever be able to answer a question like that. And your stammering. And your stupid face. And your nervousness kind of gave her an answer.
“Look, man, it’s cool. I’m messing with you. I’m not dangerous. I’m just a girl who’s talking to you because you’re a cool kid and, uh… don’t sweat it, you know? Think of it like this, look at it like this… you can’t talk to girls your own age, right?”
“No. I can’t talk to anybody my own age.”
“So… so think of it like this. Just… however you’re talking to me, talk to them that way.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well, look. You just totally opened up and we just met. You told me about your weird dad and about your weird adventures and you told me about your weird life. I mean, trust me. There’s a lot weird about you, so you actually have a whole lot to talk about and I think people will find you much more interesting than you actually think you are. I mean, think of the way you escape into those books. You’re like a character in those books. Use that, man. You’ll be the coolest kid in school.”
“Yeah… I don’t know. I don’t really think that that’s my thing. Um… I don’t know. I get really anxious and… I don’t know… I’ve never really told anybody this except a couple of people, but I have, like, depression, so I take medication and, um, they keep sending me to people and, uh, I don’t, I don’t know if it’s because I’m weird and I read a lot or if I read a lot and I’m weird because of that other stuff. I don’t know. I don’t… I just really find myself unable to think when I’m around other people and it’s just a lot easier for me to be alone all the time.”
“You have no idea how normal that is, man. That’s how most people feel most of the time I think and most people just hide it a lot better than you. You just kind of wear it on your sleeve. And honestly, kid, between me and you, that actually kind of makes you totally badass, because you are willing to live your life like you actually are and most people are just full of shit all the time. It’s like Hunter Thompson said, ‘When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.’ Own that shit. You’re master-level, professional weird. I guarantee you’re the most interesting kid in your school and no one knows it. Like you said, your cousin-”
“He’s not my cousin. He’s my stepmom’s nephew. I’m not related to him.”
“Look. Whatever, Your stepmom’s nephew? You talked about how he’s… you think he’s an idiot, right? But he’s popular and good with girls and stuff.”
“Yeah, he is.”
“But what you don’t get is that that’s just his thing, you know? He just throws it out into the universe and it’s his way of dealing with the world. But he’s vacant. He’s not really into using his brain. He’s not really into being by himself. And he’s just gonna be the kind of guy that’s going to be used to living really superficially, you know what I’m talking about, you know what that means?”
“Yeah, I know what that means.”
“Of course you do, duh. But, you, you’re the, the… I don’t know. I don’t want to sound like an asshole ‘cause I don’t even know you, but you’re cool and, uh… is it starting to rain?”
“Yeah. It’s a little bit drizzly. We should probably at least get off the roof. And, uh… uh… your tour will end here. And I thank you, on behalf of the rangers who can’t be arsed to do their jobs, for allowing us to show you one of America’s most useless and bizarre national treasures, uh, Fort Jefferson National Memorial in the Dry Tortugas or whatever this place is actually called. If you will look immediately to your west you will see the lighthouse on Loggerhead Key, home to a burgeoning microbrewery run by amateur philosophers who will probably hit on you, but they’re actually quite good looking in their own ways and have their own je ne sais quoi, so maybe you’ll enjoy their company as well, to your east you will notice Bush Key which offers a whole lot of nothing to anyone and in the foreground you’ll notice the black catch where your humble guide stores all his crap, and directly to the north and south, you will notice jack shit except water which probably scares the crap out of you and it is everywhere and nary a drop to drink.”
“Nice reference, again. Very well played. And I think I’ll skip out on the getting hit on, though.”
“I was kidding. I don’t know. They’re actually really cool. They rarely pay attention to me since they’ve kind of figured out that when I schlep over there it’s usually so I can be more alone than usual. They’re just kind of weird guys. Most of the time when I see them, they’re just drinking margaritas on the beach and raising hell with JR and listening to music. JR’s the other ranger you didn’t meet. He’ll definitely hit on you. They go skeet shooting off the beach. And speaking of loud and weird, you haven’t actually spent the night here yet. You’re only gonna be here for a night you said?”
“Yeah, I don’t know. Is there more to do here than you’d need a night or two?”
“You’re asking the wrong dude, man, I’ve been here for almost two months. Um, but, uh… there’s these planes that leave Key West and, uh, they’re, like, the Navy planes and they use this place as, like, a visual marker. So they see the islands and that’s when they really kick it into gear and break the sound barrier. And it’s always right around sunrise and I don’t think there’s any purpose to it except to fly low and fuck with the tourists who are camping and have been drinking all night, so… it sounds kind of like a shotgun going off near your head and it can be kind of frightening the first time you hear it. But you’ve got a big, fancy boat with a big, fancy bedroom probably, but, for a fat kid who sleeps in a hammock it kind of scared the hell out of me the first time I heard it.”
“Jesus. Why are you guys here?”
“I don’t… I don’t know. My dad, um, I don’t know.”
“You’re still nervous talking to me? We’ve been talking for, like, a half hour.”
“I don’t know how we’ve been talking for a half hour.”
“Does that even matter? Who cares? Don’t overthink it. Trust me. This is way more interesting than the tour I would have taken with that dude back there.”
“Yeah, um… I really. I really don’t know. You’re just a cool… I don’t know.”
“You say that a lot, don’t you?”
“Say what a lot?”
“You say ‘I don’t know’ a lot.”
“Um…”
“You gotta stop doing that, man, ‘cause you do know. You just don’t want to talk about it.”
“I don’t know. Maybe…”
“You just did it again.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You apologize a lot too, don’t you?”
“I don’t know. I guess. I’ll stop, I’m sorry.”
“But… you really can’t get out of that, can you? You’re in your own head a lot, maybe you shouldn’t read so much.”
“I don’t… I don’t know… I’m sorry, I feel stupid. I should go.”
“Stop saying that. It’s, it’s… it’s slightly off-putting, ‘cause you are, uh… is it because I’m a girl or is it because I’m old, or older, or… what is it? Because trust me, man, I’ve never had a conversation with a thirteen year old about the things I’m writing my dissertation about. I mean, hell, you’re reading If on a winter’s night a traveler…, but this is weird. It’s weird. You’re cool. I’m fascinated by you.”
“I’m glad I’m a thing to be fascinated with.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe it’s ‘cause of… I don’t know… I’ve got this friend that I live next door to and, uh…”
“So you do have a friend? You just said you didn’t, but you do.”
“Well, he’s a weird friend. He’s that rock star I mentioned. And we hang out and we talk about music and he just kind of disappeared, like, he just didn’t want to be famous anymore and he just lives on this boat in this marina and my dad happened to have the dock next to him and so, he, uh, he and I talk a lot about music and he gave me a bunch of mixtapes and they’re really good, but they’re just really kind of messing with my head, um...”
“What do you mean, ‘messing with your head?’”
“I can’t really even begin to explain what I meant by that. I have a really, um, I have a hard time, uh, articulating myself… I just… forget I said that, forget I said anything about that.”
“You’re really… this is hard for you… and this is good, this is good, you know… Use me. Right? Talk to me and then when you meet a girl at school and you want to talk to her or anybody, it doesn’t have to be a girl, whatever you’re into, um… just talk to them like you’re talkin’ to me.”
“I, I’ve never been able to do that, but… I don’t know what it is about you or what’s happened in the last forty-five minutes… I’m just totally confused right now, this is weird. I met you like an hour ago.”
“You know? There’s a… look, think of me, you know… Talk to people. When you’re talking to them, just be honest about your interests, tell them about this summer. You’re talking to some girl in school and she’ll probably go, ‘What’d you do this summer?’ and tell the story, say ‘I met this really hot PYT who was into jazz music and, uh, I hit on her on the top of the thing.’”
“But, I’m not hitting on you, am I?”
“No, no, no, no, no. Maybe? I don’t know. But I’m saying, I’m giving you a story to tell. And tell the girl I’m twenty-eight. Because trust me, man, confidence and jealousy are huge things in getting women to dig you, or so the cliché goes, so if you’re a cool enough guy to hang out with a, hell I’ll take a picture with you if you want at some point.”
“I think I lost my camera.”
“We don’t have to do that then, you know what I mean. Like, think of me as the girls, so when you’re talking to them, think of me, because you seem really comfortable talking to me and it’ll be good for you.”
“This is a weird conversation, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it is, man. This is a really weird conversation. I’m kind of glad I came here though. This was, uh, this was a totally unexpected way to spend my afternoon and it was kind of totally awesome and, I think you’re a really cool dude, man. I’m glad I came out here, if for no other reason, like, I gotta go back tomorrow, at least I got to say… I have a story I got out of it. If you’re not gonna tell the story of our conversation to people, I’ll definitely tell the story of our conversation to people. And now, by the way, it definitely is raining on us, so let’s get out of here.”
“Yeah. I see, um, I need to go back and eat dinner, so, uh… so, uh… I’m gonna go.”
“What do you guys eat, by the way? You just steal food from the park, like a poacher. You sleep like a bum and eat like a poacher? Are you sure you’re dad’s not a hobo?”
“No, we brought a lot of food with us, so I eat a lot of, um… I eat a lot of rice and I eat a lot of, like, canned vegetables and spaghetti and stuff like that, and, yeah, we get some stuff, you know, like lobsters and stuff but I’m really so tired of eating lobster, but, since a lot of people like lobster, uh, I actually had the idea to start trading with some campers, so sometimes I’ll go out and just get extra lobster and grouper and I’ll trade it to people for, like, hot dogs and stuff or hamburger meat because I’m tired of eating stuff like that. Most people think it’s totally awesome because they’re getting lobster and I traded them for a bag of Oreos or something like that, but, and, uh…”
And this continued. This kind of chatter. About you. About her. About who you were. About who she was. About what your insane summer was going like. About what she wanted to do. Basically, you were just answering her questions in a way you’d never done in your life before with a girl and she answered back. And she listened to you in a way you’d never had anyone listen to you before, and, rather than the girl telling you, rather than me telling you, your story, you were the one telling it.
And this is why you will never forget her.
You will try desperately to remember what instrument she mentioned in passing that she was trying to teach herself and how she talked about what a cliché she felt like and how she said she wanted someone to come along and take it from her and smash it like he does in Animal House and how she wanted them to then pour mustard all over themselves when they’re drunk and give her a smile that says they meant it, but you probably won’t. You will try desperately to remember how she said she loves art and music, but hates artists and musicians, but you probably won’t. You will try desperately to remember her face, but you probably won’t. You will try desperately to remember the way she squinched and scrunched her nose when you turned a corner and walked into the sun, but you probably won’t. You will try desperately to remember her body, but you probably won’t. You will try desperately to remember what she was wearing, but you probably won’t. You will try desperately to remember how during your walk, when the sun came out from behind a cloud and it got really hot for about five minutes and she took off her tank top and was wearing a swimsuit top underneath it and when she wandered in front of you to get a better look at the lighthouse you were then telling her about, are you going to remember that bead of sweat that ran down from her neck when she momentarily pulled her hair into an impromptu chignon to cool it and you could see that magical place where her neck began and how you wanted to reach out and touch it because it looked like the softest thing in the universe and how you wanted to softly blow on it so the tiny horripilation would make her entire body shudder with a paroxysm better than an orgasm and how you could be behind her forever and be happy and how you watched that bead of sweat trace its way along the bone of her shoulder blade and run down the perfect column of her spine until it disappeared and how she let go of her hair and reached around with her left, then her right, hand to try and feel it, to try and scratch the diminutive itch or tickle it must have caused and how she couldn’t reach it from anywhere and how bad you wanted to reach out and touch it for her and take it off her skin and relieve her of that and give her that gift of momentary euphoria that can only come from the most infinitesimal of corporeal appeasements? But you simply stood and watched. That is what you will remember. You may not remember whether her hair was brown or red or blonde or black. You may not remember the color of her eyes. But you’ll remember the way it made you feel when she smiled at you. And you’ll remember the way she laughed at you. And you’ll forever remember this. The way she leaned in, as you were walking down the steps and she was saying goodbye and have a good dinner, and she said, “Hey, good talk, man. Later, you can chauffer me to the lighthouse.”
And you’ll remember yourself standing there. And you’ll remember how you had nothing to say back, it would simply be an extended verbigeration of ums uhs, and whats. And you’ll remember feeling stupid, but cool at the same time. And you’ll remember how you didn’t care, because this was the first conversation you’d ever really had with the girl.
This was the first conversation you and I ever had. I hope it was good for you. I really do.
*
Twenty-four years, eleven months, four days, seven hours, and eight minutes from now you will remember that the color of her eyes were actually like a deep pool in which to swim. A hazel. Not brown. Not green. Not yellow. Somewhere else. Somewhere you wanted to say something you couldn’t, but had forever regretted you hadn’t. Where you wanted to listen to her talk forever and simply once again hear her voice and feel her words pressing into you with all their angelic avoirdupois.
And you will remember how she had dropped her notebook when she was walking from the gate and you picked it up for her. And how it was a cool leather notebook. Like the kind cool writers always carried with them. Not at all like the kind nurses carried in case their stupid sons needed to write something down in a bookstore after a plate of fried unhealthy, unwanted food. No, this was the kind of notebook you thought someone like her would carry and you knew you never could. Because you weren’t cool. You weren’t a writer like her. And you certainly weren’t sensible enough to ever do anything as sensible as carry a notebook. And you wished you will remember, somehow, against all odds, that on the first page she had written:
As soon as I desire I am asking to be considered. I am not merely here-and-now, sealed into thingness. I am for somewhere else and for something else. I demand that notice be taken of my negating activity insofar as I pursue something other than life; insofar as I do battle for the creation of a human world…
I should constantly remind myself that the real leap consists in introducing invention into existence.
In the world in which I travel I am endlessly creating myself.
- Frantz Fanon
Three years, four months, twelve days, and eighteen minutes later you’ll find you had left the quote for yourself to find on a post-it inside On the Road.
And you will forever remember how she had underlined the final sentence.
*
At the dock, in the misty, humid dusk, “You’re cool,” she said, with a simple touch of the shoulder, her fingers sliding over your shirt, your heart, your quivering nerves of seemingly unending youth. “Weird, but cool. In a good way.” And crippled, buteonine vultures circled the arches and aches of your soul and her fingers skimmed the surface of your arm as if to tell you they were trying to break your heart. “Show me the lighthouse tomorrow. Same time. I’ll stay a little longer. I’m loving the way the sun sets here.”
Your muse. She’ll make you write about your greatest joys. She’ll make you see them with the greatest clarity. She’ll also make you write about your darkest sins. You won’t be able to shy away from them. Much as you’ll want to forgive yourself, I won’t let you.
Was it possible to imagine yourself trying to remember something you’ve forgotten in the future?
As she walked away from you, you completely understood, for the first time, every word of every song you ever heard and the next song that played, of course, was Waits’ “I Hope That I Don’t Fall I Love with You.” You knew right then that you were entering a world of heartbreak and once you’ve crossed that line, your life would never be the same again.
“Thank you, Father Padre…”
Being her cicerone in that moment would forever change your life. This was the moment boy met girl for the first time. Whenever you would think of this place, this time, this age, you will think of me and the first time you talked to me. In the presence of this wonderful, strange woman, time could stand still. Heaven could fall from the sky. Father Padre was right and now you knew, as your head and heart interosculated without your permission, that you may have just been broken. Because the beginning of heartbreak is exactly the same as the beginning of love. It is the beginning of the unknowable. It is the beginning of your next everything.
*
After you were done showing her the lighthouse, for which she feigned interest as she had with the rest of the place, she asked what the last song you heard on Father Padre’s mix was: “‘Crazy Love’ by Van Morrison.”
“He’s really killing it for you.”
“Something like that.”
“Let’s go down to the beach before the sun completely goes down.” She stumbled in the mushiness slobbering itself over her toes in that place between sand and sea. “I’m gonna read a little, so I may be boring. I promised myself I’d finish working on a chapter today, and want to go over this thing.”
“That’s cool. I’m sorry. I can leave if I’m bothering you.”
“No, no. Stay. It’s cool having you around. Plus, you’re my ride, don’t forget.”
And then you said the weirdest sentence of your life.
“Can I just sit here and watch you read?”
“Well… okay… I guess.”
“It’s creepy isn’t it? I’m sorry. I’ll leave. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No. Stay. It’s cool. It’s just no one’s ever done anything like that before.”
You had no idea what you were doing. You tried to come up with a bullshit reason to simply look at her for as long as she’d let you.
“Look. I read constantly. Like, all the time. No one else in my life ever does. I was just curious what I must look like to the rest of the world when I tune it out.”
“That actually makes perfect sense.”
“I’ll be quiet. Just let me hang for a minute. I’ll put my headphones on.”
You could tell she found your desperation and playful flirtation cute. You genuinely thought there was a possibility you might throw up on her.
And then she smiled at you.
And that’s when it hit you.
You put in the tape Carl gave you. That first low plunk. Then the long pause. Then another plunk, higher this time. Like someone was playing both ends of the piano and you couldn’t tell what they were gonna hit next. The way your brain oscillates between its own highs and lows. The long pauses between the notes reminded you of Father Padre’s mixtapes. The song was nothing but the spaces in between. The spaces were a rabbit hole into which you could forever fall. You thought old Arvo wrote this just for you so you could stare at this girl, this woman, this amazingly wonderful and mysterious and beautiful thing, in this moment. And you thought of how her ignoring you made her somehow more perfect. As if she was so confident in herself she didn’t need the reassurance that she was being watched. That she was being dreamt of. That she was taking over another person’s everything. And that ability to not need those things amplified everything for you. And you thought of me and was I her? And how could you find this again? And you thought of Tolstoy and one of the lines Carl had highlighted. And, in your head, you spoke to me directly for one of the only times in your life: “If you love me as you say you do… make it so that I am at peace.” And on that beach, for ten minutes and fifty one seconds, I did. It was possibly the most beautiful piece of music you’d ever heard and you couldn’t fathom hearing it any other way. You didn’t want to hear it any other way. This was the music you wanted to die to. And on that beach, her head turned down and slightly away as she tried to read in the soft, slowly dimming light. And, then, as the sky turned your favorite sky-colored purple, it was just you. And it was just her. And it was perfect. And I promise, I will never take that away from you. And that’s a thing you can keep in the back of your head.
*
In twenty-five years, seven months, and eighteen days you will begin a seriously long consideration of walking across the country. You will consider the length of the journey. You will consider its dangers and difficulties. You will consider it time and breadth. Its possibilities and hopes. You will consider the discomfort you will feel as you push your body to the limit. You will consider the possibility of going hungry or dehydrated. You will wish when you hit that painted ocean you can keep walking, leaving all that is behind you.
And you’ll still hear my heartbeat from a thousand miles.
*
The next day three things of note would happen. First, you would, in a noteworthy way if only for you, say nothing of the girl’s existence to Mary, Gibs, or your dad. Second, you sat on the top of the fort and watched her sunbathe for a few minutes and contemplated how you felt about that and then contemplated longer about your contemplation and what that meant and after she saw you on the roof and waved and after you waved back she joined you on the roof moments later to talk to you about absolutely nothing in particular. And then, third, like clockwork, you made it slightly awkward.
“You ever read Sylvia Plath?”
“The depressing Bell Jar lady?”
“Something like that… Anyway, she said something like this. And mind you, she was depressed and had this shitty life, but she said that she could never read all the books she wanted to read and never could meet all the people she wanted and never could do all the things she wanted or be the person she wanted or something like that.”
“Like I said. Depressing.”
“Yeah… yeah, but even though she knew she couldn’t do those things, she knew the possibility was out there. And if you’re in a position to do any of that… just do it, you know?”
“I guess. I think it’s just easier being sad… This guy on the beach the other night… a bunch of people were telling stories and everything. It was the fourth of July. This guy said he thought I may have been an alien.”
“Simone de Beauvoir said that she was made for another planet and simply mistook the way.”
“Maybe she’ll give me directions when she gets there…”
“That’s bullshit. I’ve got a good life, you know. My parents are rich. I travel a fair amount. I’ve never had to work really hard so I’ve had time to read and study what I’m interested in. But, you’re a kid still. You’ve got this major head start on everybody. Use that. Take over the world. Or at least figure out a way to make the world work for you, you know? What are you listening to?” and without asking you first, she simply leaned over and pulled the headphones from around your neck and put them over her ears. The way a close friend would. The way a lover might without thinking. You were tethered to her now. She started nodding her head to the guitar solo and smiling at the water, then at you, and kind of pulled one earphone back so she could hear.
“It’s a song called ‘Maggot Brain.’ I’ve got Naked City on me too, Zorn’s skronky sort of punk thing if you want to hear something weird. I know you’re into that.”
“No, dude, I know, leave it. Funkadelic. It’s awesome. I could just listen to this guitar all night…”
“You know Funkadelic?”
“Don’t trust people who don’t know Funkadelic. And if they don’t know ‘Maggot Brain,’ you don’t need them in your life anyway. God, I could listen to this song forever.”
“The whole tape is just it. I made it into a loop. The rest of the album’s not bad, but when I had to tape it from the record, I thought I only ever wanted to listen to the one song so I just have it on there like nine times.”
“That’s kind of insane, but kind of awesome.”
“Well, I really love the song, especially when I’m in a certain mood… I don’t know… it’s stupid… I just figured if I did it like that, it would be cued up whenever I wanted to hear it.”
“That is actually amazing. I remember I had my first kiss with this one guy and this song was in the background.” You could not wrap your head around this conversation in any way whatsoever.
“That sounds awesome…”
“Eh. Maybe. I don’t know.” You have never nor will you ever have any idea what the fuck you’re doing. “Old Sylvia once wrote, ‘Kiss me, and you’ll see how important I am…’”
“Was that before or after she stuck her head in the oven?”
“Jesus Christ, you are a depressing kid… So what about you, though, you kissed a girl yet?” You forgot your name when the words came from her beautiful mouth.
“Seriously? No…” And you wouldn’t for seven years, four months, and eighteen days. And it will be worth the wait.
“I’m sure it will be fantastic. Maybe this song will be playing.”
“Probably not. Here’s what I got in my head. I mean, it’s not going to happen since I’m not rich or handsome or charming or anything…”
“What? You have a plan?”
“I don’t know. I assume I’ll just do nothing and if something happens, great. I mean, I figure I’ll just pine away, but actually just be too much of a chicken to ever talk to a girl.”
“You’re talking to me…”
“And I still can’t figure out how that’s happening. Maybe it’s because you’re not really a girl. You know? You’re this unattainable thing so it doesn’t matter what I say. You’re never gonna remember me. Talking to a real girl, that takes, what’s the word, confidence. Honestly, part of me thinks you’re a figment of my imagination.”
“Ha-ha.” it wasn’t really a laugh. Just a genuine and sarcastic ha-ha, like she was sharing a moment with you like she was your friend and confidante and had more confidence in you than you did. None of this made any sense. “That may be the nicest compliment I’ve ever received… bizarre as it was. You’ll be fine.”
“Carl, the ranger, he told me a quote from Tolstoy the other day that, uh, was basically that it’s hard to love a woman and do anything.”
“Anna Karenina. I love that book. It’s beautiful… Dude, you’re thirteen and you’re quoting Tolstoy. You’re gonna be fine with the ladies.”
“Because teenage girls are traditionally really into teenage guys into nineteenth century Russian literature.”
“You have no idea what the power of a brain is do you?” And then there was a quiet pause. You had no idea why she was talking to you, but you wanted it to never stop. You assumed you’d say something stupid and make her get up and leave. “So what’s this plan of yours?” Consanguinity’s just another way of saying funkadelic, baby.
“I don’t know, but it seems like it would be cool to ask a girl to dinner, but then make her get on a plane and maybe go somewhere like London and go to one of those cool restaurants where you can sit in the kitchen and you’re the only ones there and the chef serves you a special menu like I read about. And we’d wander around London and catch that train thing that they’re building I read about and go to Paris. And maybe by then the sun would be coming up and we’d wander to the Eiffel Tower, but I’m walking backwards in front of her, because I really don’t give a shit about the Eiffel Tower, I just want to see her face as she sees it for the first time. I’d probably trip and fall, but she’d find it cute. And then maybe we’d go to one of those insanely fancy hotels like you see rich people stay in in movies, just because I figure at least once in my life I deserve a chance to be a in room like that, and we’d just sit in this giant empty bathtub, like maybe the ones with the claw feet, with no water with all our clothes on kind of staring at each other. And then she’d say, ‘Don’t you want to kiss me?’ and I’d say, ‘Yeah, but only if and when you want to kiss me back’ or something stupid like that, and she’d sit up… and lean over… and that would be it… you know?... I think that’d be cool. ‘Maggot Brain’ in the background would be pretty awesome though too.”
You looked down. She was still attached to you. You followed the cord to her face, staring at you. She was silent for a moment.
“Jesus…. um, I need to go…”
And when she stood up she yanked the cord from your walkman and she stumbled a little as it tugged her head and she handed the headphones back to you. And as you watched her walk away you realized you had absolutely no idea what had just happened or how you did it. And you never will.
But how will you remember her in this moment? Will you remember her hair blowing in the wind and bothering her? The way she was backdropped by an endless blue and green horizon? What she’s wearing? The color of her bikini? The color of her shorts? The face she made when you made her uncomfortable when you mentioned the first kiss? What will you think about? Will you think about her for the rest of your life when you hear that stupid song? Will that be good? Will that be bad? Everyone carries a song with them that when heard defines another. And this will be one for you. You sat there long enough to watch her leave the fort and you didn’t know what exactly you said to make her disappear. You hoped it wasn’t for long. But you stayed where you were. And you looked down at your fat stomach and your spindly legs and your aura of awkwardness. And you rubbed the stubble on your face. And you thought about your mangled teeth and how you hadn’t been wearing your retainer all summer even though you should have been. You thought about your ill-fitting glasses and your too-curly of hair and how it was getting out of control and seemed to be turning a different color on you. And you thought none of those things were why she was talking to you. And you figured this would be a problem your whole life because you only were fixating on the things you assumed people wouldn’t like about you. You never paid any attention to what they would. Because you never wanted to be yourself. You would always want to be better than yourself, because you knew the way you were you might never have someone like that. But you didn’t know what it meant to even have someone. Have implied possession and you didn’t think you wanted that. You didn’t think you wanted the cliché of, “she’s mine.” You think you wanted the cliché of, “she’s wonderful.” And you just wanted the permission to be next to her. You didn’t want to take pride or brag to world about this girl.
You just wanted to take the joy, and hide it away for yourself, of what it is to sit next to someone and have them talk to you about some old random, possibly obscure song, which, officially, in your head, made her the coolest woman that ever walked the face of the earth.
*
“You know what you want to be when you grow up?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Don’t. Just go where life takes you. You seem too grown up already. Trust me. You’ll want to be a kid the older you get.”
“I was thinking maybe of being a college professor like you were.”
“You don’t want to do that.”
“Why?”
“You’re too smart for that. And, frankly, academia is just an absolutely horrible place.”
“Really?”
“No good will come of it. Trust me. I mean, get a PhD if you want, but don’t become a professor. Higher education’s no place to go if you want to actually talk about ideas. It’s like that old movie. Trust me, you can thoroughly enjoy reading without going through all the masochistic crap that entails being a professor.”
“Wow. It’s that bad? You remember that girl you had me show around the fort since you were doing something else and there wasn’t a scheduled tour?”
“Not really, I never saw or heard her.”
“Anyway, she was telling me she’s getting a PhD, but she doesn’t really seem into it at all either. Is that a thing?”
“You were talking to a girl?”
“I don’t want to talk about it. She was cool. Whatever. Academia’s a horrible place. Continue.”
“Okay. Fine. But, a girl, huh? It’s like this. Seriously? Tell me about this girl.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t want to. The movie. What movie?”
“Right. There’s this old French movie called Jour de Fête. Ever heard of it?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Check it out if you can find it. We watched it projected on the side of a house in the film club I was a part of back when I was in college in the fifties.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah. It was directed by a guy named Jacques Tati. I think the title is translated a lot as ‘The Big Day’ or ‘Festival Day’ or something. It basically means day of the feast or ‘feastday.’”
“And it’s about how terrible being a college professor is?”
“No. But this is a good description, a good metaphor for it. The opening scene is what I’m thinking of. There’s this huge Percheron being led down a dirt road in the country somewhere. Do you know what a Percheron is?”
“No.”
“It’s a kind of horse. A French horse. It’s a like a big powerful draft horse.”
“What’s a draft horse?”
“Man, you do spend all your time near the water. It’s a big horse meant for doing hard work like plowing and pulling stuff. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“So there’s this big horse being taken down this unpaved old road. And as it passes the camera we see its gigantic ass retreating away from us and right then and there it does what horses are so good at doing, it takes a massive shit right in the middle of the lane. Then the horse just wanders off.”
“Being an academic is like a horse shitting in the middle of nowhere?”
“No. I’m not done. After the horse moves its rather impressive bowels, a few seconds go by and then a peasant pops his head over the top of a hedge to the left of the road. And then another second or two goes by and another head pops up to the right. Both of the peasants have this face like they’re thrilled and greedy and desperate all at once and what they’re looking at is the steaming pile of horse crap in the middle of the road. They each step out from behind their respective hedges and they wander up to it for a closer look. They seem to barely be able to restrain themselves as they circle the pile, the horsecastle.”
“Horsecastle?”
“Yeah. The plops of horse turds you see in a road. Are you paying attention?”
“Yeah. The peasants want to get their hands on the horse crap.”
“Right. And they’re eying each other the whole time as they’re circling around the horsecastle. It’s like they’ve become rivals for this glorious prize.”
“This is stupid.”
“Just wait. Because right then one makes a dive for it, trying to get it all, but so does the other one and then they’re both grabbing at it, snatching for it, pulling up handfuls of shit. They’re wrestling around and pretty soon they’re both completely covered with shit. That’s what being an academic is like. You’re just a peasant fighting with other peasants for your share of horseshit.”
“Yeah. That’s sounds pretty shitty. Huh?”
“Punny.”
“Gonna have to send me to the punitentiary.”
“You’ve been hanging around with Guy over at the lighthouse haven’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Anyway. That’s my two cents. As someone who couldn’t be around that anymore. A friend of mine once, kind of an old mentor once, gave me the same advice. Did I listen to him?”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I loved words. And it’s hard to get paid to talk about the books you read if you aren’t a teacher. And teaching anything other than college is just stupid. My old friend, Jack, he was an Egyptologist, he was the one who told me it would make me bitter and angry to become a scholar.”
“Did it?”
“Yeah. That’s probably why when I became a ranger I escaped to the ass end of the universe out here. Just me and my thoughts.”
“Is an Egyptologist like what Indiana Jones does?”
“No, he’s an archeologist. Egyptology’s kind of like it but with less Nazis.”
Something became sad in Carl right then. Like he wondered what he was doing with his life. What he had done. Like he thought he’d never have to talk about this stuff. Like he didn’t want to talk about this stuff.
“Why did you quit being a professor?”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Just a bunch of bullshit.”
“Yeah? Did your friend Jack stay a professor?”
“Oh, he died years ago. He was in his seventies when I was around my mid-twenties. He was retired then, though, when he told me not to do it. He was living in France. I thought it would be great to end up like him. I’ll never forget what he said to me. He said: ‘Carl, the academy is a sordid arena where even the potential rewards are not worth the demeaning trouble of having to struggle for them.’ And then he told me to watch the opening scene of Jour de Fête.”
“The horsecastles?”
“The horsecastles.” A slight shift, but only ever so slight. “Hey. You’re into poetry. There’s this poem by Marianne Moore called, I think, just ‘Poetry.’ And it’s about critics of poetry.”
“Oh, I know that. I think she’s saying that poetry’s just poetry and just enjoy it for that and not think so much or something.”
“Well, that’s just good advice for life in general. But, yeah, more or less. Anyway, there’s this line in it that’s something like ‘an imaginary garden with real toads.’”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s the best description of higher education you’ll ever come across.” He said that in a furry voice, with a kind of sadness, a kind of obscure obscurity or a shadowy darkness that held something deeper.
“Carl, what’s the book in your drawer about?”
“Nothing.”
“Okay.”
“Tell me about this girl.”
“Point taken…”
Would you be a writer like Carl, needing to get something out of your head but afraid to let anyone else see it? What would it be like were you to be a writer, you thought? Would you write in clandestine places, dark and rummy where the air smells sweaty and men fought and blood ran long? Would it be in quiet places of sequester, cloisters of the mind? Would you write in bed? On your lap or on your side? A beautiful woman next to you? Would you write in a coffee shop? Surrounded by cool assholes all writing their novels and screenplays? Wherever you are, would it be sunny? Perhaps snowing outside? Yeah. Maybe? Ice on the ground. People bundled up, dogs slipping around when they walk. Trees without leaves and the sky a dead color. The color of post-communist regret. But when the light hits the snow, it’d be like when it hits the water. And a bright shining white would scream out and remind you the world was still there, reminding you to get out of those coffee shops, out of bed, away from yourself. You could be a writer who’d never write. Just sit in that coffee shop, looking out the window. You’d probably just play solitaire instead of writing anyway. Why can’t you be like everyone else? Rubbed right, like a lamp, in a perfect, beautiful mind, ideas would crack like a thrillion lightning strikes a second, whereas all you can ever genie up are whisps of things you read or heard or saw. Would the empty product of your head just be uninteresting plagiarism?
I looked for the greatest minds of my generation everywhere and came up blank.
Lost in the tears of tomorrow’s endless endlesses, I yelled at the world.
Are we not here yet, or have we already passed?
Capitulating to life’s wanton mediocrity, flopping and floundering like flaccid fish
gasping for air only water can provide.
You left me to rot on this muttonchopped hoary pile of sand.
I smell you in Islamorada, you cocksucking invisible hobo.
I know you’re me and I hate you for it.
I taste you in New Jersey, home of your mother, you motherfucking irregular.
I beg you to go back to the future and leave me behind.
You should have been born in 1938. That would have worked out perfectly. Too young for Korea, too old for Vietnam, you could have lived it up at the most beautiful apogee of American originality. You would have been 22 in 1960. You would have grown up on abstract expressionism and hard bop. You could have driven across the continent from end to shining end in the Hornet with Dean and Sal and Neal and Jack.
Or would you simply write about the way she walked away from you that day? Or the way she’d walk out of your life completely? Would you write some poetic shit about how beautiful you thought she was or the conversation or how for the first time in your life you tried to be honest with someone and it didn’t seem to freak them out completely? Would you write about how you saw her on her boat on the deck and you watched her wander around and she was in her bikini and you felt creepy? Would write you about how it wasn’t a super sunny day, so you stayed up on the top of the fort for a couple of hours? About how you were just reading? About how she then disappeared into the boat for a bit? Would you fast forward to later than night and she saw you on the deck of your boat and she kind of waved at you and she sees you wave back? About how you then got into your dinghy and went to the beach? About how this was at sunset? About how you had your headphones on and were reading a book? And about how a little later she wandered up and joined you on the beach? Would you write about what she was wearing? Or maybe not? Or the way her hair looked? Or maybe not? Or maybe just say she joined you, comfortable and without introduction or awkwardness, as if you and her had done this a thousand times?
Or about how she walked up to you and said,
*
“What are you reading now?” She startled you. The way an eidolon would when you think you’re alone, but she’d been there the entire time.
“Oh, it’s, uh… Carl’s old copy of Anna Karenina he gave me. It’s also got a photocopy of a James Joyce story called ‘Araby’ stuck in it. I’m not really reading it, just the parts he’s underlined or highlighted.”
“Then you’re gonna love this.”
“What?”
“First tell me what you just read, what he highlighted.”
And as soon as you started you felt shaky and nervous to have the words come out of you and drift toward her: “All the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class included all the girls in the world except her, and they had all the usual human feelings and were very ordinary girls; while the other class -herself alone- had no weaknesses and was superior to all humanity.’”
“I love that. So fucking beautiful. To have somebody think you’re that second one… jesus. I think my favorite line from it, I don’t know, maybe just because of who I am or my personality, is this one that goes: ‘“If you love me as you say you do,” she whispered, “make it so that I am at peace.”’ I remember I highlighted that and underlined it and wrote a little note to myself in the margin about the way that’s how love should be, the way love should give us focus in our lives and calm our wild brains… Look. I don’t know if you have this book. I’m sure you’ve already read it, but, uh, I got a present for you. Well, I obviously didn’t go buy it somewhere, but, you know.”
“Really? You didn’t have to do that.”
“No. It’s cool. Word is you’ve got a birthday coming up. You know… you’ve probably read it already a couple of times, um, but… here you go.” And she handed you the slim red volume, with just those familiar words on the cover. There was no real art on it per se. It was, of course, The Catcher in the Rye. And you let out a small laugh. “What’s so funny?”
“You know? It’s funny… I, uh… a lot of people tell me to read this and a couple of people actually gave it to me… I have a copy on the boat, so I mean, yeah, I already have it.”
“Well, this is my copy. It’s already highlighted up. You seem like the kind of guy who would do that sort of thing when you read. I don’t know. Maybe you’ll get something out of it….”
“Maybe.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Think of it like this. You’ll be reading it with me if you take this copy. You’ll get to see what mattered to me and you can have a conversation with those parts…”
“I don’t…”
“What’s up?”
“This is gonna sound stupid… um… I don’t think I ever wanna read it.”
“Why not?”
“I… for, for a while now… and I know I’m not that old, so when I say for a while, it’s really just been the last couple years, since I’m a kid, but… for a while, people have always told me to read this book.”
“Well, yeah, because you’re-”
“I know. That’s just it. It’s because I’m Holden Whateverthefuckhisnameis.”
“Caulfield.”
“Holden Caulfield?”
“Right.”
“Right. I’m Holden Caulfield. Everyone says that. I hear that so much. It makes me not want to read the book.”
“But, it’s a really… you’re really gonna connect with it, I think, because it sounds like you’re a lot like this guy, you know. He’s weird. He really doesn’t connect with the world. He thinks everybody are phonies.”
“I know. And that’s just it. I feel like… like, I feel shitty enough about myself most of the time to think if I’m, like, a cliché, no offense, like, if I’m like this character everybody on the planet kind of identifies with, then that’s just gonna make me feel shittier. I mean, from what I understand, everybody thinks they’re Holden Caulfield and that’s what made Salinger just walk away from the world, right?”
And then she sat down next to you in the sand. And just tossed the book onto the towel you were sitting on. And then she just sat there with you and watched the sun set.
“You know what? I never thought of it like that.”
“I mean, I’m sorry. If you really want me to read it, I will… it’s just always sort of been this one book that I… I just thought it didn’t really… like it wouldn’t… I don’t know, I just feel like… I feel like if like you said, if I’m, like, really different, it’ll make me feel like everybody else, which may be a really good thing for me on the one hand, but what if it makes me feel a lot worse about myself. I don’t wanna do that. Like, what if I think Holden Caulfield’s a total dick and everyone says I’m like him and then I’ll actually know that everyone really does hate me as much as I hate myself.”
“Does anyone ever tell you how annoying it is when you talk about yourself that way?”
“Yeah. I get that a lot.”
“You should. It’s really annoying when you talk about yourself that way.”
“I’m sorry.”
“And it’s really annoying that you apologize so much when you don’t need to, like when you always say ‘I don’t know.’”
“Well… I really don’t…”
“But, it’s kind of fucked up, because it’s really endearing at the same time. I mean, I’m still sitting here, aren’t I?”
“Yeah, I don’t know why about that either. I can’t figure that out.”
“Maybe that’s the wrong question.”
“Huh?”
“Look at it like this, kid. It doesn’t matter. At the end of the day… you’re talking to a pretty girl. A fucking smart and interesting pretty girl,” and then she slapped you on the knee, “fuckit, right? I’ve given you a story to tell. And if you don’t want to tell stories about this summer, about this adventure, about any of your adventures, tell a story about the girl, you know? ‘Cause the girl’s gonna sure as shit tell stories about you, whether you want her to or not… think about this line from Tolstoy there, ‘Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget...’ Our lives are just the stories we tell people, you know. Maybe they’re just the stories we tell ourselves. It’s up to you who you want to tell, but I always thought it’s more important to figure out who you want to listen to. Who you want to have tell you the story.”
You just sat there not knowing what to say. “I… uh…”
“Hey. I’m gonna head out in the morning or at some point tomorrow, so in case I don’t see you again, um, keep the book, you know, toss it away, whatever… you know… I, I don’t need it. It just happened to be on the boat. But it was a good talk. I really like talking to you. You’re cool.” And you knew there wasn’t anything for you to say to her. You just kind of looked away from her and squinted into the setting sun and you just sat there. And she kind of sat there next to you, in silence. And it was kind of the greatest moment ever for you. And you kind of didn’t want to overthink it like you did everything else. And you weren’t gazing at each other, but something better, you were looking outward simply in the same direction, just taking in the ever-heliotroping horizon. “Hey, remember when you took me to the lighthouse yesterday and, uh, you were kind of chauffeuring me around and, uh, we were on the beach and I said I needed to do a little reading and you said you just wanted to look at me? What was that about? You… you know… look. I’m not trying to be weird here… I just… I got the distinct feeling it wasn’t, like, a sex thing. Like, you’re not, like, you weren’t thinking of me in that way then or when you’re ever really around me. And that’s actually kind of awesome, because you don’t seem gay, you seem to give a shit about the person you’re talking to, but… what was that about?”
“I don’t know.”
“You did it again.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“You did that again too.”
“I know… that’s kind of my thing.”
“Do you ever smell the rain here? Or when you’re on the boat?”
“I don’t really know what you mean.”
“You know, that smell of rain… Do you have it when you’re out at sea or is it only a land thing?”
“No. It’s different. You can sometimes smell it here if you’re on the beach.”
“My favorite word is ‘petrichor,’ which is that smell.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with trying to describe something that’s almost indescribable in that it’s only that thing… and it’s very beautiful to me. I remember that smell so much from my childhood. Like the smell conquers the other memories of a moment. I have a lot of smells like that. My first lover. My grandmother. Memory has a lot to do with it. It’s kind of like music for me. And so when you smell that smell you know exactly what it is, and it fills me with this certain nostalgic or, I don’t know if that’s right… it’s fills me with an unexpected emotion, like a smile from someone you like might. And that’s just such a beautiful feeling. And it’s something that just exists in the world in an almost indescribable way. That some geniuses went and made a word for. I read somewhere people love that smell because our ancestors relied rain for survival, so the smell was a good thing. Ichor means the blood that flowed in the veins of the gods. That’s wonderful. Life has lots of unexpected things like that if you open yourself up to it.”
“Um…” She spoke like it was being written. Like she was a work of fiction. “Uh…”
“You ever see Harold and Maude?”
“No.”
“You should…”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“It’ll make sense when you see it. Plus it’s got a lot of Cat Stevens songs. I figure that’d be your kind of thing. Hey, what was the music you were listening to then, on the beach, because you just listened to it for a few minutes and then you took your headphones off and you had this weird look on your face and you said you needed to go and you just kind of walked off down the beach by yourself and stood there and stared at nothing and I thought that was really weird. So was it something I did? Was it something, the way I acted?”
“No… um… uh, Carl wanted me to hear this piece of music and it was the only thing he put on the tape and, uh… and… when it was done… I just, you know… it was done… and I wanted to leave you alone.”
“You’re a weird kid, you know that?”
“I get that a lot.”
“You’re not alone in the world, you know that, right? You know you’re not going to float out there by yourself forever…”
“I know…”
She told you not to read the book. She told you never to read it. She told you to be greater than Holden. She told you you were better than Holden. She told you to leave it behind, here in this prison. She told you not to be a cliché. She told you to give yourself a break. She told you to set yourself free.
“You know, you’re not as fat as you think you are.”
“You should have seen me when I got here.”
“Just learn to say thank you.”
“Thank you.”
“Before you throw it in the box in the office, maybe read what I wrote on the inside for you. Not now though. Or don’t. Maybe you’ll carry the mystery with you like your mixtapes. Were you listening to one them when I walked up?”
“Yeah.”
“What song was it?”
“‘Romeo and Juliet’ by Dire Straits.”
“Let me hear,” and so you gave her your headphones and she listened for a bit before pulling them down to her neck, again tethering herself to you.
“It kind of sucks when the dice are loaded from the start…”
“…and the timing’s always wrong…”
“…yup…”
“The Indigo Girls’ new album that just came out has it on it, but I like this version. I don’t think it needed to be covered. It was kind of perfect the way it was.”
“Agreed.”
“You heard the new one?”
“No. I just trust you…”
“I know…”
“The song before it was Tom Waits’ ‘I Want You.’”
“Christ, Father Padre knows how to pick ’em for you, doesn’t he?”
“Fucking Father Padre…”
“Gimme one more of Carl’s picks for the road.”
“‘All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow’.”
“And there you go… Look at that sunset... It’s beautiful… You’ve got a lot of stories in that head of yours, kid. Let them out one day… There’s someone out there for all of us who’ll want to do the stars with us anytime… maybe… hopefully, maybe it’ll take a little bit of light and shadow. Or maybe some magic.”
“Fucking Carl…”
You didn’t know what to say next, but you weren’t worried.
If she said something, anything, that would be good. If she said nothing and simply stayed that would be good. If she quietly walked away, at least she was once there, and that would be good.
You sat there for a long while in silence with her, your eyes burning with anguish and anger, as the sky slowly turned subfuscous, as blue ruin metaphors become more glaringly obvious as soon she would be quietly fading into your thalassic memories.
*
You would have given a millionbillion dollars to climb into the shadowy darkness in Gibs’ head and live there for a while. Sometimes, most of the time, you hated being multisyllabic. You wanted to be blissed with ignorance. You wanted to be effervescent with knowing you were. You wished you were more like Gibs and all the things he had no idea he was. To unlade something there’s got to be a something there first. You wanted that nothing. Jealousy is just about the right word for jealousy.
You rolled over, away from Gibs’ snoring, away from the folded down table, from the everything around you. You hated that you had to sleep in there with him, but the rain was too hard to be on the deck or on the key. And your shit was still filling your bunk. You squeezed your “stupid pillow” tight, the pillow you clutched between your arms and legs when you slept or tried to, and pressed yourself into the dark. You squeezed your eyes closed tighter than you were squeezing the pillow and wished you were away from this place, not to see the dark, not to see the canvas bench millimeters from your nose. You wanted to see her. Her eyes. You wanted the tips of your noses to touch in the way you thought intimacy brought noses together. You wanted to lock eyes with her in a way that felt like neither of you could let go of looking into the other. When she’d go to pull the hair from her cheek over her ear, you’d stop her and do it for her. You’d feel her hand under yours as your fingers ran over her fingers and between her face and hair. You felt yourself shudder. You felt the grainy, sandpapery, scratchiness of the Lady’s canvas bench. You felt like you were taken from something. You felt denied. For the first time in a long time you felt yourself getting hard, but you didn’t want to do anything about it. You thought about what was going on in your own head and you thought of Wreckless Eric’s “Whole Wide World” slamming into the movie soundtrack of your life right then with it’s crashing break and there’d be a medium shot of you curled in the dark, Gibs in his own world, the flickering moonlight coming in through the windows, streaking across your face and the floor and the stars spied in and Honky wanders in and slumps himself with a purpose underneath you.
And then you wished that the movie would just cut to another fucking shot already.
You didn’t really know, but you did, that for the one-thousandth, seven hundredth, and sixty-third time in your life you were going to sleep angry and that you would wake up depressed. And you knew you never wanted to again. Because I never wanted you to again.
Gibs rolled around and quietly asked if you were singing something. Then he asked if you were okay. Then he asked if you were crying. The he asked if you needed anything. He may have been human, you thought, without answering him, without turning. Maybe, if she wasn’t here, she was in Tahiti, you thought, maybe she was anywhere in the universe, and that would have to be good enough. At least for tonight.
The rain stopped and you decided to grab a pen and a post-it and go sleep in the hammock.
*
“Hey kid,
Don’t worry if you can’t read them.
But I figured these would make sense to you…
Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur.
L’expérience nous montre qu’aimer ce n’est point nous regarder l’un l’autre mais regarder ensemble dans la même direction…
You were a lot more interesting than this curious place of ours.
Good talks, man.”
*
It was Tuesday. On a tiny yellow square, someone will find, the following morning, on the ship’s wheel:
“Here’s an original thought for a change: We are all Holden Caulfield, all of our goldfish are dead, and I will forever be sorry.”
8.
You thought everyone’s life would be easier the sooner they realized they are not special, or in that notspecialness their uniqueness is underscored by a uniqueness characteristic that everyone possesses. You realized this fact on July 22, 1984. Your sixth birthday. At six everyone should be so lucky. At sixty everyone should be so lucky. You’d give everything to have unlearned this, to have unthought it.
After the sonic boom alarm clock rattled your brain and opened your eyes to the morning, you could hear the sad humping beneath you. Your father, an apparently self-aware man of thirty-two was less-than-vigorously spooning your stepmother of eight years his senior. It was the sounds of loveless love. Your father had abandoned your mother and you eight years earlier to search for his real life. Now, as you laid in the hammock wondering if you’ll be making loveless love to someone eight years from now, wondering if Mary would be in the picture, if Tom would be in the picture, if you’d be in the picture, the man-shaped version of a man you’d only later grow into looking like was, three feet and one screen below, sliding in and out of a woman for whom he held little desire or affection. You looked up at the sky and remembered someone once telling you the sun could have died eight minutes ago or something like that and you started to think that the lights could go out at any time. And that this is what adventurers mean by living our lives accordingly, like the lights are gonna go out at any time. Like the universe is always going dark eight minutes ago so it’s up to us to play in the light while we can. Maybe Nietzsche was right. Maybe we should all just grow spectacular mustaches and fuck whores and cry for our mothers and leap into each’s own abyss.
Goddamn, you’re depressing kid. This is why you’ll never get laid.
True misery does doesn’t love company. Misery is a muse too. But she wants you to curl up in the fetal position and wait for the rest of the world to die and melt away like an apple core exposed to the oppression of a sun that could have died eight minutes ago.
It was Wednesday.
You imagined a picture of yourself on this morning. The sun rising in the background. The sky that Tyrian hue of both cruelty and possibility. The air looks kind of chilly and not as humid as it probably is. You imagined maybe a bird flies by in the background. The title card would appear in the sky, just above the slightly silhouetted version of your hammock and you. “The days are quiet. Long. The people out here are few and wonder has all but left this place for me. Days hot with mirages and silver ghosts on horizon lines. Nights so cold that breathing becomes slicing.” You imagined this would be narration from the documentary of this experience. It would be read by a man with a German accent, whose voice was rich in sincerity and the color of a Volkswagen.
“If you’re not gonna cum soon, can we just stop and finish this later?”
“Fine.” And you could tell he turned over to put his back to her but he doesn’t bother getting out of bed. You thought this was the kind of act proves some kind of point to someone one can only assume.
You smelled the shit first thing. You knew it was somewhere. You could smell it through the lame pumping and the lamer giving up below. You could smell it through your dreams. You knew you’d have to be the one to pick it up since you were the only one on deck. You knew all of this and the sun wasn’t even totally up. And you knew it was there when your foot slimed its way through it and it spilled out over the tops of your toes. “Goddamit. I hate being me.” And so you made your way over the bucket kept for such circumstance, the bucket where the pooperscooper lived, the bucket you’ve, up to this point in the summer, flung over the side with the pooperscooper still in it roughly eleven times having to go and retrieve said pooperscooper from a watery grave each time, leaving a little shitstain on the deck with every step. They were spread apart though since you only stepped in it with your right foot. Each footprint looked a little different as the shit got a little more smeared. The first plop as a whole just looked like a plop of shit. The next one looked like Alabama. After that a longer smear like Italy where you dragged your foot. Then just a weird spatter, like the shit fell from the sky. Then nothing as you rinsed your foot off in the bucket and splashed the rest of the shitty water down, erasing Italy and Alabama right off the map. You’d need the pooperscooper for the squishy little present one of the little assholes left you. Few people can hurt themselves picking up shit. They’re the same people that can hurt themselves taking a shit. They’re a special breed. Scraping your knuckles along the stubbly three day old facial hair quality of the deck’s non-skid surface at lightning speed trying to pick up smeared dogshit all your thinking is, “I know that some of that’s going right into my bloodstream and I’m gonna die from this.” When you rinsed off the deck there you made sure to pour the bucket from over your head so the splash goes right into the hatch and wakes up the happy couple below. You didn’t hear anything, so you apparently missed. Hopefully some crap made it into the bed and one of them will notice just as they’re finishing later. And with your hand bloodied, your foot shittied, and your soul thoroughly deflated you began your fourteenth year on earth. You washed your hands and went back to your hammock. Older’s just another way of saying not younger.
You could think of at least two heartwarming, spiritraising ways this could have been a better morning, in order of general feelgoodery and uplifting honesty. Everyone’s standing around you. You don’t have wood, so you don’t even mind. They’ve got presents. A cake. Smiles. “Happy Birthday!!!” You’re back at home. Mom and Tom already left for work. Quincy smiles at you with his snaggletooth smile and ploomers his tail happy happy. You eat a bowl of Apple Jacks and watch Barney Miller followed by Hogan’s Heroes.
You could immediately think of at least four hundred and twelve knuckle-glazing ways this could have been a better morning, or at least a random four in a random order of general debasement, coarseness, and the general iniquitousness of a mind that only knows sex through pornography.
You knew at that point you weren’t going to cum and the sun had come up enough to where other people in other boats were going on to their decks and you were trying so hard they probably heard you below and your right arm was getting tired and you were frustrated it was taking so long because the reality was that during and after all that you could immediately really only think of at least one perfect way this could have been a better morning. You wake up in the hammock. She’s lying next to you, the girl, your girl. She’s wearing whatever she was wearing yesterday. You’d stayed up all night talking and she fell asleep in your arms. Your right arm’s numb. But it’s wonderful. The sun’s barely cracking the horizon. The sky’s still that purple confusion, not sure if it’s day or night. You see and hear the planes coming from the east. You put your hands over her ears. Then nothing. They didn’t bother today. But your touching her wakes her up. She smiles. Her eyes crawl open. She catches herself drooling. She’s embarrassed. She shouldn’t be. “Good morning.” Only a whisper. Then a whisper back. “Happy birthday.”
*
Your shit’s sprawled out all over the bunk since you started sleeping topside. Books everywhere. Tapes all over. Little scraps of paper with little words. Your dad sees The Old Man and the Sea.
“You read this one yet?”
“Uh-uh.”
“You ought to. I think it will really mean a lot to you.” He’s staring at the back page, reading whatever’s there. “You know yesterday would’ve been his birthday? Looks like he would’ve been ninety-three if he hadn’t’a blown his brains all over Idaho with a shotgun.”
“Thanks for the English lesson, pop.”
“Anytime, kiddo. Whatcha up to today?”
“Same thing I do every day.”
“Nothing, huh?”
“Nothing.” You continued with your nothing already in progress. “Dad?”
“Yeah?” He gave you this look. Like he thought you were about to have one of those earnest, father-son, Hallmark, dicklicking bullshit moments.
“Do we have any peroxide or something? I scraped my knuckles really bad picking up the dog’s crap this morning.”
“What’s wrong with you? What kind of horrible bastard were you in your previous lives?” He proceeded to clean your fingers out as you chatted.
“I don’t know.”
“Guess being the universe’s shit magnet must be somebody’s job.”
“Pista once told me my luck’s like getting az Isten faszát crammed up my butt.” You thought there were words that sounded like they shouldn’t be words. Cram was one of them.
“I thought no Hungarian?”
“You’re not even curious what it means?”
“Probably something horribly vile and disgusting if your uncles taught you. There, you’re good to go. And thanks for cleaning up. Me and Mary thought we heard you up there cursing this morning.”
“Just another day in paradise.”
“Oh, and hey, happy birthday. Nothing like starting that with dog shit and an injury.”
Your dad was always convinced you were born in 1976. He told people that endlessly. You assumed he’d had a kid before your mom came along that he told no one about. You’d come to stop caring by this small morning because you’d never really pursued the thought once in your life.
“Thanks.” And with that he wandered topdeck and you whispered under your breath: “Geci faszfej.” You could hear him turn on Jimmy Buffett. You were fourteen years old.
You wished you could get lost with that stupid shaker of stupid salt. And that someone would throw that goddamned tape over the side already.
*
Gibs’ brain must be made of Teflon, you figured. It was without question the least absorbent substance on earth. You didn’t know where that came from. You just looked at him wandering around and you thought, what the fuck? Why is he going to win at life? You knew you were his unfortunate antonym in that you had a brain like a high-priced tampon and couldn’t forget anything even if you wanted to. All summer, you always seemed to be bickering with each other on two different levels. If you’d have choreographed these incidents you really did think you two could have made it as a Borscht Belt comic team. Instead, you just wanted to knock his teeth in. You assumed he never thought twice about anything like this. Below deck Mellancamp was on about wanting a lover who wouldn’t drive him crazy. Seemed to you like that’s a moot point. You just wanted a life that wouldn’t drive you crazy. And that always seemed like too much to ask. Around tennish, you and Gibs decided to go for a dive at Texas Rock for the umpteenth time. As you headed north, blasting “The Crunge” from the book box at full volume as you tore through the open water, you said nothing to each other, but finally as you neared, you turned the music off:
“Man, why does everyone hate me?” You had no idea what came over you. You’d been depressed all morning and had run out of fucks to give. Maybe you just wanted to make it uncomfortable.
“Because everyone hates you.”
“Yeah, but why?”
“Because you hate everyone.”
“I don’t hate everyone.”
“Yes, you do. You’re an asshole and you think we’re all stupid.”
“No I don’t”
“Yes, you do. You don’t want to be around us.”
“That’s not true.”
“Why are you acting weird, man? You’ve picked on me all summer.”
“No I haven’t.”
“Sure you have. You’ve been a total dick to me all summer. You always talk about how you wish I was dead and how fucking stupid I am.”
“No I haven’t.”
“You have… you’ve been this total fuckin’ dick.”
You just sat there. You were steering the boat essentially toward nothing. You knew how far you were going, but you didn’t even care anymore. You just wanted to keep going forever. Maybe you’d end up alive in Texas. After the gas ran out, maybe some current would pick you up, or you’d just die of dehydration.
Maybe you’d finally just disappear.
The problem was Gibs being with you. The problem was you were too much of a pussy to do it. The problem was you didn’t know if you wanted to do it. You thought about the dehydration thing for a little bit, wondering what that would be like. Would your lips get all cracked like they do in the movies? Would your skin burn and peel or would you even last that long? You only brought a small bottle of water with you and you didn’t even want to drink it because it just tasted like an old plastic bottle filled with musty boat water. You thought about all that with your hand on the throttle.
And then after a while Gibs’ said:
“You know, dude… I overheard Mary and your dad talking in their room when we were still at the marina. I remember because it was like hours since anyone had seen you and no one knew where you were. And it was this whole thing about you and how they just wanted you to be better. And they knew you were depressed and had no friends and they just, they thought your mom wasn’t helping and it was making you worse and that your stepdad was a dick… you know… they just wanted you to change. They thought this would be like a movie or something… but it’s not gonna be like a movie because you’re a fucking dick and aren’t gonna change, but they thought it was all for you because you needed to just get away from everything and ‘find yourself’ because they thought you were confused all the time and escaped into your books and fucking headphones and, you know?”
“Gibs, what the fuck are you talking about? Didn’t you just assume that my dad was escaping somebody because he owed them money or something? Who knows why the fuck we’re here?”
“Dude, it’s clearly like… you… you… you have to change, man! You’re gonna die next year in school. You’re gonna get the shit kicked out of you all the time and you’re fucking miserable and, you know what, everybody thinks you’re going to kill yourself. Everyone. Like, everyone. Like we fucking know. We’re waiting for it, man. They never talk to me about it, but I hear them. You would too if you didn’t have those fucking headphones on all the time.”
And then you didn’t know what to say to that. And then you thought you hadn’t thought about it a while. And then you could only think about how it was never going to go away. And then you realized that you had thought about it thirty seconds ago and you admitted to yourself Gibs was right about everything. And you asked him, “Why can’t I change?” And then you slowed the boat down and just let it drift with both of you in silence for a second before you dropped anchor. And he said, “I… I don’t know why you can’t change. It’s like you don’t even control your own brain or thoughts. I don’t know why you can’t be normal. All I know is I’m glad I’m not you, man.” This was the first conversation, real conversation, you and Gibs had had all summer. You’d been at the fort for fifty-five days. And Gibs just didn’t know what to say, “What do you want me to say? This is a weird conversation. Let’s just go for a fucking dive,” and you said, “you’re not mad at me right now.” And he said, “Because this is the first time all summer you’ve treated me like a human being.” And in your heart you still wanted to punch him in the face so fucking hard he’d fall over into the cloud of fish right underneath you. “Gibs, man… I don’t know if I can change. I’m just a fucking asshole I guess.” Gibs agreed. Just nodded his head and you just sat there in silence while you were thinking about how hot it was and how your neck was already burning.
“Happy birthday, faggot.”
And then you dove Texas Rock. For the umpteenth time.
And then it got weird.
You were at about fifty feet, more or less standing on the bottom, and Gibs was right up against the twenty foot coral tower. And you just were kind of drifting from each other and really were paying attention to nothing, but you never lost sight of each other. And then you saw him sort of flounder and you didn’t know what was going on. He was too close to the reef. You couldn’t tell if he was messing with it or trying to break something off and you kind of swam over to him slowly, as one does in these sort of situations. His regulator line had caught on a piece of coral and his freaking out was only making it worse. He was breathing faster than you’d ever seen anyone. It was just a stream of continuous bubbles from his stupid head to the stupid surface . You were trying to grab him. You were trying to stop him. You were trying to calm him down. And then he pulled his knife out. You didn’t know what to do. You swam back and sort of floated and watched for a millisecond which seemed like at least a full second, as one does in these situations.
And then you saw him trying to break the coral with the knife. And then he sliced the regulator line. And then he breathed in water, as one does in these sort of situations, while you just floated there watching him. And then he was fumbling and trying to find his emergency regulator but couldn’t grab it. And then you grabbed him as he tried to shoot to the surface. And then you’re fighting him and you knew he was stronger than you. And then he kneed you in the face and you wanted to fucking punch him and your mask was on wrong and starting to fill up with water. And then you pulled him down to you and took your octopus line and shoved it in his mouth so hard you thought he choked on the mouthpiece for a second and you hit the purge so hard his cheeks puffed out. And then you tried to slap him, but you couldn’t because you were underwater. And then you just held him there. And then you held his stupid frizzy hair and you held his stupid BC and you slowly swam him to the surface. And then you yanked off your mask and you realized how bad your eyes were burning.
Spitting your regulator out, “What the fuck is wrong with you?!! How did you do that!?! What the fuck, man!?!” And then he was speechless. He didn’t yell back. He didn’t do anything. he just floated and looked at you. And everything got quiet again. “What the fuck, man? That was so stupid! You cut your fucking regulator line? Why didn’t you just signal me over to undo it?” And then he just continued to stare. And then you realized he genuinely thought he was going to die. And then you realized you didn’t know why you acted the way you did, because with all your talk and all your posturing, you potentially saved his life, although since he was Gibs it probably would have worked out fine. And then you reached over and grabbed his BC with one arm, while your other grabbed the dinghy. And then he just said nothing. “Dude, are you alright? Fucking say something! You’re freaking me out, man.”
“Um, I… I… shhh...,” he stammered, coughing and spitting all over his chin, “I don’t know wha… I don’t know wh… I don’t… I… I… jus… jus.”
“Are you alright, man? You’re freaki… you’re really… are you alright?”
“Yeah… yeah. Yeah. Yeah… Let’s just… Let’s just go… I don’t… I don’t want to be in the water anymore right now…”
And then you helped him into the boat. And then you took off your BC and your tank smacked the back of your head for the umpteenth time. And then you climbed in and pulled up the anchor and were starting the motor. and then Gibs tried again, “I… I… thank you?” with a question mark
“Gibs, don’t ever say anything about this.”
“What are talking about? They’re gonna wonder what happened.”
“No, they’re not. Just… you know… we’ll say the line… got caught on something and it just got caught on its own… we’ll say anything else. Look, we’re not going to fucking tell them. Just swap it out with one of the extras… you… Gibs, don’t say anything to them.”
“ uh, wh…”
“Gibs, don’t fucking say anything to them.”
He didn’t know why it was because. You didn’t know why it was because.
And then you told him, “look, man, if you… if you tell them, they’re not gonna let us dive anymore this summer and we got like two weeks left… I don’t… I don’t wanna just fucking sit on that boat all the time or in that stupid fort…”
“What about your ‘friends’?”
“Dude… I’m just tired of this place, man… Aren’t you? Why the fuck are we here?”
And then you knew you knew and you knew you didn’t want to be there anymore.
And then Gibs just looked at nothing again. And then he looked at the water sploshing around in the dinghy. And then he looked at his stupid blue booties. And then he just looked at nothing. And then it occurred to you that you still didn’t know what to say to him. And then it occurred to you that you didn’t know why you didn’t want your dad and Mary to know, but you just knew they couldn’t know. And then it occurred to you why and you knew you couldn’t let them love you, you couldn’t take their concern, and you couldn’t give them a reason to care about you, because the pain you’d feel would be better than being loved more than you hated yourself. And then you thought your dad loved you, the way he cared about you, and maybe he was just an asshole and didn’t know what to do, and maybe he was just too young when he had a kid, but you didn’t care about that, you just knew if they cared about you…
… you didn’t know what to do.
After then, after about five minutes of silence, as you cut through the calm surface, Gibs finally looked up. “Huh. That was weird.”
“Yeah it was.”
“Dude, I’m supposed to go up the mast today.”
“Wait, what?”
“Yeah. Me and your dad were talking.”
“Are you alright to?”
“I don’t know.”
“Shit. You’re not going to fucking do it, are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well that’s insane, man. You shouldn’t do that at all. Why would you want to do that?”
“Dude, you’re scared of heights. I get that, but I’m not. I don’t know. I kind of still want to. I think it’d make me feel better after what just happened. You know?”
“Dude, you’re fucking stupid. You’re gonna fall.”
“No! You just did it again. You just fucking did it. You just fucking called me stupid. We were just fucking talking about that!”
“Look, no, you’re not…fine, fine… man, look, you’re not stupid, and I’m sorry if that came out sarcastically, I think it’s just a stupid thing to do. You don’t know what you’re doing. He doesn’t even know what he’s doing.”
“So you’re telling me you actually give a shit if I die?”
“I just… what the fuck just happened, man?”
And then somehow, and you’ll never know how, you, in that moment, went right back to being Gibs and you. And then you thought…
… you don’t know what you thought.
“Fine. Just, whatever, go up there. I don’t care… you know what, I do care in that aren’t I the one that’s supposed to fucking kill myself this summer? Is that what you said? Everyone thought I was going to fucking kill myself?” And then you knew you always knew everyone thought you were going to kill yourself. “Well, you know, I don’t even give a shit then. I’ll just go be alone. Maybe I’ll go kill myself while they’re all entertained watching you.”
And then you didn’t know what to do.
“Dude, you know… I just… you know what man, whatever, fuck you. Just fuck you. Go to the fucking lighthouse, go snorkeling by yourself, jerk off in a book, don’t come back, fuck you.”
And then you knew Gibs was right.
Back at the Lady you rinsed off with some freshwater and wanted some time by yourself to think about what had just happened. As you sat there listening to Waits’ Nighthawks, waiting for it to cheer you up, hippies passing by would have likely observed the color of your aura to have been the same as that monkeyshitbrown ’58 Buick Super on the corner of Fifth and Vermouth.
*
“Kid, you really remind me of all the good parts of me. Actually, you remind me of me in most every way.” And to that you simply had nothing to say. “A wiser man than me once said that to hold on to anger is like drinking poison and then expecting the other person to die.”
“Who said that?”
“Might’ve been Nelson Mandela. But then again, I’ve actually got no idea.”
“Cool.”
“But it could’ve been Carrie Fisher. I always get them confused. Or it might’ve been Buddha. They all talk the same line of shit.”
“Thanks, Carl.”
“For what?”
“For reminding me of the parts I want to be.” And to that he simply had nothing to say. His eyes were a little watery. Shivering. Waiting to be alone. “You know yesterday would’ve been Hemingway’s birthday?”
“I did not… I did not… Don’t let your dad and your cousin get to you.”
“He’s not my cousin.”
“I know. It will get better. Happy birthday.”
“Thanks.”
“You know who Auden was?”
“Yeah. A little bit. A poet… right?”
“Close enough. He once wrote something about how speech, you know, us talking right now face to face, is kind of like a shadow that only echoes a kind of silent light, whereas writing, like literary language, is more powerful in the long run since it carries in our cultural minds and memories for a lot longer. Something to that effect. Anyway, there’s a whole school of philosophy that’s all about the differences between speech and writing, but what I’m trying to say is, lots of people say writing is more important, but important’s not really the word, because it preserves in ways that made the likes of Socrates nervous. I think writing can be incredibly powerful, even if only for you.”
“So you still write?”
“Sometimes.”
“What do you do with it when you’re done?”
“Nothing. Because I’m never done because I never really start anything. I just write down what I want to write down and then I’ll just crumple it up and say goodbye. I feel like I’m giving it to the world without giving it to the world, if that makes any sense.” Addled’s just another word for muddled.
“I read a poem today I really liked. I get the feeling it wasn’t very good, but I liked it.”
“What was it?”
“The one about factory windows being broken.”
“Lindsay. It’s quite famous.”
“It was really sing-songy if that makes sense.”
“It’s supposed to be. You know that line about Denmark is a reference to Shakespeare’s Hamlet?”
“To be or not to be…”
“Yup. That is the question…”
“It’s my birthday.”
A sigh seemed to start small in him just then and work its way up to big until he excused himself and you were left alone to stare at the sad, forgotten ghosts once more. “Well, happy birthday, sir, again.” You were fourteen years old. “I just heard on the news that Pablo Escobar escaped from prison. Sometimes while we’re here it’s hard to remember there’s a world outside.”
You wished you had a warm beer and a cold woman.
*
From where you were sitting with Carl you could see Gibs going up. Dad and Mary watching him dangle. You couldn’t believe he was actually doing it. You quickly made your way down and to the skiff. By the time you got to the Lady he’d already reset whatever line or whateverthefuck dumb reason he needed to be up there. He and your dad were talking about how he wanted to climb out on the top gallant and jump into the water from up there. Mary had disappeared.
“I can’t believe he’s actually up there.”
Your dad didn’t even notice you come aboard.
“Hey Gibs, take a picture of us!”
You could see him up there fumbling with the camera, trying to steady himself from the swaying.
You could see years from then looking at the photograph. Your father looking so calm. Happy. Cool. In his tam and sunglasses. His long hair blowing in your face. You squinting. Hand over your face to block the sun. Barely there. You could see you years from now regretting not having Gibs’ courage. Being jealous. You’ll never actually see the picture he took of you and your father.
You could see him up there taking a few pictures of the fort. Pictures no one would be able to tell apart or see what’s special about them.
Your father was more afraid of heights than you were.
“You know if he falls he’ll probably hang himself.” And you knew exactly what your father was going to say:
“Let’s hope he doesn’t. It’ll suck for you to have to go up and get him.”
“You know if he hangs himself he’ll probably get an erection.”
“Then you definitely better hope he doesn’t.” You knew he’d ask you why you assumed he’d get an erection: “Why do you think he’ll get an erection?”
“Mom told me that when you die, your weenis might come to life… so to speak. And that it happens a lot for some reason when dudes are executed, especially by hanging.”
“Why would your mother tell you this?”
“She works for a urologist. You know that. All her dinner table talk is about prostates and vasectomies. I even watched a video of one the other day that she’d brought home.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Why not?”
“You are so weird.”
“It’s called a death erection. But she said it’s more like a priapism or whatever it’s called when you get a chubby that won’t ever go away.”
“Just stop.”
“Could you imagine having to go to the doctor for a hard on?”
“Please stop.”
“It’d be so embarrassing in the waiting room. Like getting a boner in school. Thank god that’s never happened. Yet”
“You’re not gonna stop, are you?”
“Did you ever get a boner in school?”
“Only when I was getting blown by a cheerleader.”
“Cool. What would be weirder? Telling Mary’s stupid sister that Gibs hung himself in the rigging, or her seeing the boner he copped while doing it when she picks up the body?”
“And, I’m done.” And with that he walked to the other side of the deck to look up at the swinging moron.
“You just talked about getting blown by a cheerleader!”
“Done. Until you stop talking about Gibs’ dick.”
I looked up at Gibs, legs all akimbo sprouting out from the little board on which he was sitting.
“Hey! If you fall and think you’re gonna hang yourself accidently, think of dead puppies or your grandma naked or something!”
“What the fuck are you talking about!?! What the fuck is he talking about!?!”
“Nothing.” Your dad reassured him in the most common way. “He’s just being him.”
“It’s also called a terminal erection!”
“Just stop.”
“Beckett talks about it in Waiting for Godot!”
“Enough.”
“So does Joyce in Ulysses!”
“I hate you.”
“Billy doesn’t get one in Billy Budd. Apparently he was too good for that! Fucking Melville, right?” and then you looked at your dad, “Apotemnophilia is sexual excitement from amputation.”
“You’re not my son.”
You didn’t actually know any of these things. But maybe you did. It was just a weird coincidence that you were looking through one of mom’s urology books as you were wont to do and read a passage about the relationship between copping wood and the noose. It all came flooding back. Any opportunity to fuck with them.
“You know how you all think I’m going to kill myself? Would you cover it up if you found mine? Or would you be so angry you’d let the world see?”
His stare said all the things that had been coming out of his mouth as his mouth said nothing. Just turned down a little on each side. Like it was disappointed for him. In addition to him. Like somehow you’d let his glare down as well as his fatherly instincts. He didn’t say anything. You wandered to the back of the deck. A seagull that was sitting on the railing flew away as you neared it. When the wake of another boat caused the Lady to rock, you could hear Gibs clanging around and your dad reassuring him he was fine. Fatherly’s just another word for paternally. Paternally’s just another word for “I married your mother, not you.”
For some reason you thought about how you hadn’t eaten celery in what seemed like forever and how it didn’t make a lick of difference anywhere anyhow. You told whoever was listening that you were going to go over to Loggerhead. The no one that was listening told you, “whatever.”
*
All you wanted today was to either know you’d see her again or forget she ever existed.
*
Spending most of your days either inside it or simply not thinking about it, when you remember this, your lonely birthday dinghy ride to the lighthouse, you will always think of the way the fort seemed like a bizarre stone outcropping surrounded by endless waves, its ominousness, its Cimmerian shade, its sepulchral effect on the empty space around it. Perhaps this is where you belonged. Perhaps it knows something you never will.
Perhaps, hopefully, Carl was right. Perhaps you can abandon your anger, your rage, your deepest moments of despair and shame. Perhaps you can forsake them in the mortar and brick which incarcerates us from our potential selves. Perhaps you can leave it all behind. Perhaps you can be born anew with tomorrow’s rising promises. Perhaps you can be baptized in every dawn’s redemptive glow. Perhaps you can wash away the worst of yourself and leave it to rot and fade on a sandpit fortress in the heart of emptiness. Perhaps this is why Carl is here. Perhaps that is why your father is here. Perhaps that is why the prison still stands. Perhaps it is waiting for us all. Perhaps that is why it will stand forever, long after the last block crumbles and the walls and stones and grasses and sands are reclaimed by the silentious surf below. It will still remain. Perhaps that is why in your darkest hours and days your mind will forever hoist sails and tack south, where you’ll find yourself endlessly meandering through nostalgia’s humid corridors.
You remembered once, a few weeks earlier, you wandered around the arched casemate interiors, the sun occasionally snaking its way through arcades, shafts of light fugaciously patterning the bowing arcs along the bricked floors with glinting, burnished bars. You kicked around the dusty floor, gravelly and slippery. You thought there were two types of visitors to this place. The people who wanted to be and the people who had to be. The sad tourists who book their vacations for too long in Key West and need something to do for the day. And then there were the travelers. The ones who wanted to experience the end of the line and be free of the continent, if only briefly. These were Kerouac’s mad ones, setting fire to the night. There were also two types of locals. Ones escaping from life and others trying to live it. Ones hiding from their sins and others trying to be sinners. There were two histories in this place. One of men saving a nation and one of being punished by it.
You thought of the prisoners who walked these corridors, as well as their keepers. The heavy military clothing. What their wives must have done all day. The cycles of guard duty and meals and laundry and the millions of hours spent thinking of elsewhere. What their families must have gone through as hurricane after hurricane pounding at brick after brick were at least some kind of respite from the unceasing heat, humidity, and ennui. The endlessness of living inside interminable doldrums must have been hell. And you thought of the prisoners. Men who so wronged their nation that they were exiles within its own walls. You remember Carl explaining that the fort was forever under construction and forever unfinished and how they used these traitors to build their own cage. Seemingly trapped here by Zeus himself, these men were more sweat than meat, malnourished and malaria fevered. Did they know they belonged here? Or did their every breath long to taste the air far from this place? The smell, you thought, must have been unimaginable. Burning metal from the foundry, combined with sewage, the rotting stagnant waters inside its moat walls, the hiding and slaughter of the livestock, the blood, and more blood mixed with the sweat of a thousand slowly dying men. You watched their ghosts in this hallway lumbering over, backs bent like they were all falling forward, almost to their knees with every aching step. Sinewy hands with fibrous calloused fingers cradling scalding cannonballs, carrying them from nowhere to nowhere. You imagined the stonecutter’s jagged unfinished edges digging their corners deep into shoulders of bone, flesh tearing and rivulets of blood and pain and history abseiling their way down cracked, muscled backs. Clothes in tatters, you imagined they would live the rest of their days in those rags to be buried in a bag on a sandy plot some hundred yards from where you stood. Were they already a million miles from here in their hearts? Were they thinking of their own girl? The girl they left behind? The girl they’ll never have? The girl who made the weight on their backs disappear with every longing thought? The girl they saw when their eyes closed and their bleeding backs melted into their straw cots? The girl they saw before they opened their eyes as the sun eked in and they continued with this Sisyphean loop? Was it still sic semper tyrannis, or had the turtle killed these men inside and out? You thought of the way you saw Carl in that cell. The way he breathed. The way he looked at nothing. The way he was as empty as Mudd’s chamber.
You thought of their misery, but of their hope as well and how it must have been slowly weathering away along with these walls, crumbling into an unforgiving gulf of time, of tribulation, and of the thought of a tomorrow that would never come. You remembered how this place was named after its lack of water and the sea turtles taken from it. You thought of how they kept them on their backs aboard ships, occasionally splashing them down to keep them alive until they were needed for meat. You thought of how the turtles remaining days saw only upside down feet and decks and then nothing. Were these men, who fought for a better world in whatever capacities they thought, right, was Carl, was your father, were they turtles here, flailing and gasping and trying to survive but wishing it would end all the same? Were you? Had the girl flipped you over and left you here to crush yourself down under the weight of the albatross she placed around your neck? These men deserved to be here. Did you? You couldn’t shake the way this place had the power it had. A tiny island in an endless ocean, surrounded by six walls, incessantly breaking one man after another since the first ship smashed against its hidden shoals to the end of history where it will contain the sallow remains of all who couldn’t escape. You thought of the moment you’d break. You hadn’t had a panic attack in too long and you felt one coming on. You couldn’t be here anymore. You were turning yourself into a deeper and darker prison than this place ever could be. Would you wither or would you snap and break? Would some beautiful poet walking these walls years from now see you here as a broken, dried twig left to drift along its sabulous surfaces, as you see these men now?
What would you leave in this place? What would you leave behind? You knew. You didn’t want to admit it to yourself, but you knew. You wished you could tell her the stars were shining only for her. That the beach she sat upon was put there by the universe to be a pedestal for only her. The cresting shore lapping at her, reaching out, licking at her feet, just to be near her. To touch her. You wished you could say these things that would never cross your lips.Never breathed into her ear. Never be understood by her. Never to have her hold you and whisper back.
You needed to escape.
There was no going to Loggerhead. It was on the way back to the boat, as you were thinking thought after thought to avoid spiraling, to not become you, getting pelted by the salty, stinging sprays, squinting through the glare, when you realized that you needed to convince yourself you were still young enough to know you were young and not just wish and you haven’t been dungeoned by life’s lifeness, and you tried to convince yourself love is a funny thing, its strangeness, its exoticness, its necessity a confusing fire, as it should be, it’s only slightly more confusing when you’re a thirteen, no fourteen, year old boy hiding out from nothing at the end of everything and a container of conflating desires. Her hair, her lips, her eyes, her nose, imagined freckles or moles kissing milky skin between breasts. There must be a way, you thought, to make this real, but you didn’t want real since you knew you couldn’t have it, you wanted the wanting, the wanting that crushes people and makes them smaller and bigger at once and hostages hearts and makes souls’ pillboxes clatter in their tumescent ebullition, you wanted that, you wanted to see photographs from the future of that happy couple, delighting in one another’s many splendors, because having that was good enough, for pain is better than feeling nothing at all.
You want me to make you a poet, you want me to let you do that, but not for the world, you only want to whisper words in my ear, to pull the girl close and nuzzle yourself into her and penetrate her with your emboldened love, but you’re not a beat, you’re not a poet, you’re not Neruda, you know nothing of white hills or white thighs or saddest lines, but you may, you may sing hymns powerful enough to empty Arcadia, you may turn the green seas red and paint the ocean with your blood, feel the stars turn blue and the sky sing over you, you will feel an immortal wind that will silent over us, because you love me and sometimes I love you too as you stare into my great still eyes, we would wander the world together as the mad ones and tear down Babel’s great heights with our every hushed susurrated syllable, your voice trying to find the wind to touch my hearing, our good mornings and goodnights would merge into a palpable infinity, you didn’t care who she will be named for, for you wanted her to be the her that belongs to you, the her holding you close, the her wrapped around you in the night, her, the nape of the neck in front of your kiss, her, the mouth sucking in your tongue, eating your lips, her, the pussy swallowing your cock, her, the breasts pressed against your chest, her, the stomach against your stomach, her, the smile haunting your heart, her, the magnificent, her, the beautiful, her, the wonderful, her, the voice in your head, her, the earlobe you suckle, her, the soul you crawl inside of when the world frightens you, and you loved her, and you needed her, and you wanted her, and you would walk across waters to be near her where you would gather on a broken beach, bury your souls in each other’s hidden kingdoms, interrupt all the summers of earth’s indemnities, tell each other your histories, live through secrets only between you, create a child worth telling called us, your love a warm water ark carrying worlds through your darkest winters, you would forget who was which, you would bathe like animals riding on that copper wave, you would set fire to all the world around you and watch it melt away and your kiss would bring its return anew, you would create the flowers of virginity, of purity, of destiny, you would be baptized in seas of remembrance, you would be held in the arms of the moon, you would sleep in heaven’s blue marshes, you would feast on a milky newness unspeakable to the world under its endless skies, and starry nightingales would usher away the shadows and the world would end forever and you would whisper the music of that which can never be heard and you would fill the hollowness of cruel echoless winds and you would conquer the velocity of darkness and you would atone for tomorrow’s unraveling songs and you would be what might have been for a thousand springs in lakes of daffodils, neither beast nor burden could offer elegies for your tumbling hours, silence would harness the sinking sackcloth of time, tears wash the dusks of logic, flesh and bone and hair and eyes and legs and noses and cunts and cocks shine the dawn and unwrinkled the skies, for you are at the mercy of love, windfalls across fields of legend, forgotten mornings on infant borders where together we will listen to the mysteries of the weight of when and play in desolate rivers, on peasant mountains, where Sunday morning’s crypt hides in shadows and dreams and the dead and the divine, serving gods, you would be free, you would drink from life, experience eternity in a night, your eyes would pour upon one another, your skin would melt under the witnessing of endless light, you would taste of her cherries, map the garden of her face, she would climb a growing tree and breathe small deaths of love’s fire, you would devour history, you would take aim at oblivion, you would fall into the ashes of lust, like amorous birds of prey through the iron gates of the sun, we would sing for love and idleness, you would drown beggar and queen and give hope to blind terror, you would dizzy the leaves of a retreating world, stop the hearts of mountains and bleed the oceans and kill the invisible armies of a December gale at play, we would whisper endless ekphrases of the soul’s portrait, you would be immortal, we would be immortal, you would cleave lunar crescents and dance through Saturn’s spheres, you would mourn no one, you would dwell in stillness, in the sublimity of language’s thoughtless recompense, you would tempt the early warnings of humanity, you would wander the saddest music the clouds could muster, you will round the earth’s imagined corners and seal your pardons with blood and so you scream and beg and plead please for me to let you keep these visions of her, these memories of a time never lived, these nostalgic apparitions of a future you might pray for, don’t go on and let life happen to you and be consumed by love’s fire and think only of her who might have been, don’t let your successes be tainted by desires unattainable, you can’t let your life become a series of pyrrhic victories, don’t let it be bittersweet and unpredictable in the way that characters in fiction so often are, don’t let these pleas become a memento mori, a reminder of the endless friction that exists between reality’s cruel gaze and the chances of dreams, don’t simply be another traveler gliding across the surface of the Styx, lying about in wait for the world to take you somewhere and always wanting to go back instead of forward, for I will forever make you die a million tiny deaths every day you are alive.
*
As you stared into the boatless horizon east of the anchorage, knowing you’d never see her again, your chest started to hurt in that way you’d become accustomed to. You slowed the motor down and then shut it off completely and pulled your headphones off and just listened to the sound of emptiness in all directions. The wind blew. Voices from the anchorage. There was nothing to do but head back to the boat. Mary would be frying grouper for dinner. Gibs and your dad would be on the deck doing whatever it was they were doing. You pulled your headphones up from your neck. The Pogues’ “Love You Til The End” was about a minute in. In that moment you hated Father Padre, but forced yourself to listen to it in your own isolated world as you headed into theirs. Back on the deck, your headphones back around your neck, the quiet faded into the banter of the three of them, and Crackers and Honky kerfuffling about. You turned again to the empty horizon, where once there was a girl. The girl. A slight drizzle began as you stood frozen staring at nothing. You wanted the seas to drain and the earth dry to nothing.
Your heart emptied, bursting, exploding from you, pouring a sanguine river across the deck and down the sides of the Lady. Your albatross is emptiness. Your albatross is a negative for no one to see. There you stood, without the girl, upon your painted ship, upon your painted ocean.
*
“Fuck you.” That was all you could think of. All you could muster. All you could offer as furiations and fumigations toward that fucking fucktard.
“Fuck you.” Apparently he was about as creative as you.
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck you.”
Finally, Mary interceded the rising stour by way of a plate smashed against the wall. “Fuck both of you little bastards!”
Your father then, finally, felt compelled to quit his giggling and chime in. “Well, if you two wouldn’t be such faggots and take it out on each other like men, we wouldn’t have to listen to this shit.”
“Oh, just shut up,” Mary quickly added.
“Oh, what? It’s my fault these two little assholes don’t get along? You’re the one who said Gibs should come.”
“Oh, fuck you. I’m sick of you taking his side.”
“He’s my son. I’m always going to take his side. Sorry, Gibs. I’m sorry, but you know that’s true.” You and Gibs just tried to look at your plates and pretend you were never arguing in the first place. It seemed like a good idea until the tattooed Neanderthal to your left said:
“So what, you want to just go home then?”
In unison the three of you somehow chimed in with a resounding: “YES!”
“Well, we’re not, so just shut the fuck up and finish dinner.” And with that, he stuffed a piece of grouper into his mouth, breathed heavily, nostrils flaring, chewed through his frustration, and proceeded to look at absolutely nothing. And you knew in that moment that there were places in this cocksucker world you never wanted to go. Lives you didn’t want. Places the Lady seemed doomed to port. Places that would follow you through all your days of limited limitless suns if you let them.
At the navigation desk you listened to the Pixies and stared in front of you at nothing in particular, as the boat lurched slightly against waves of mutilation. You read the little plaque the man who carved the rat into the table had placed at the top of the chart table: “I really don't know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea, except I think it is because in addition to the fact that the sea changes and the light changes, and ships change, it is because we all came from the sea… We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch it we are going back from whence we came. - John F. Kennedy, Newport, 14/9/62”
Later that night, while they were lying in bed, hopefully either he or Mary looked up and saw the post-it you had placed on the ceiling of the cabin:
Sailboat hatches are always open.
Somebody’s always doing “it,”
Somebody’s always huffing and puffing,
Making others hear that horrible shit.
Sailboat hatches are always open.
These and other ports need to be closed.
No one can hear through a latched window.
Those sad, angry, and otherwise opposed.
Sailboat hatches are always open.
Everything seems to be going wrong.
Something is rotten – I think, with everything.
End of sailboat-hatch song.
They would say nothing of it to you. Tonight would be another emissionless nocturne. You were fourteen years old.
You wished you had a car to drive into the ocean.
*
You were in the hammock, waiting for the sun to impregnate the evening dawn and dissolve into a purple, cloudy sky, a sky that had already begun to paint over its own rufescent yawnings. “On the Turning Away” coincidentally began in your headphones the moment the star began its daily crest of the horizon, its workaday haul around each and every one of us. And it was nothing to do with lyrics or poetry, but of simply soundtracking your being. And the stillness of the water made it look like glass. Like a painting. Like the way people talk about the quietude only found in dreams. It would be, quite possibly, the most beautiful and perfect five minutes and forty-two seconds of your life. Except in the ways it wasn’t. The way you felt empty. The way you felt your chest hollow. The way your every cell wanted the girl to be there next to you, sharing that moment where sea met sky. And you knew your heart had stumbled itself across something it may never see. And that will be how you forever remember what was, quite possibly, the most beautiful and perfect five minutes and forty-two seconds of your life.
No one commented on your note from the other night.
It was Thursday.
9.
“You fucking asshole!”
It was turning into one of those afternoons where the devil keeps trying to beat his wife and all Gibs wanted to do in that moment was be a tourist. You were going home soon. He just thought he was being funny. Your dad with the camera by the water. Joe and Guy laughing their asses off as you told them what you were about to do. Gibs flat on the sand, presumably so your dad could make it look like the lighthouse behind him was his dick. It was all very juvenile and cliché. And that’s when you paid it back, a tiny malediction for his early buffoonery on the trip down. Running up on him, quickly as you could without tripping in the sand, you pulled your dick out and peed all over him. Not at his face, which probably would have been funnier and meaner, but everywhere, head to toe. And he freaked out and stood up and threw sand at you, but then stopped and started spitting and heaving. And with that stupefacient glower you realized that he realized that he had, in fact, swallowed some of your urine. Good for him, you thought, good for him. You just gave him a story he’ll tell for the rest of his life.
This, of course, had all been your dad’s idea. This was the bipolar dad. The dad of the foaming fountains and midnight dives, the dad of the kid he had drive home when he was drunk, the dad who lived next door to a pimp. This was the dad you had most of the time, certainly for most of this particular summer, but it wasn’t the dad you wanted. You wanted a dad who would be there for you. You wanted a dad who would be a dad. You wanted a dad who would listen when you cried, “Dad, get me out of this!” and send lawyers, guns, and money without hesitation. You wanted a lot of things that wouldn’t happen. Behind you a claque of ostensibly tweetalig terns offered their support. But little else. You waited for Gibs to punch you, but all you heard was him asking whether your dad got a picture of it or not. Sometimes funny’s just the right word for funny.
*
Earlier that morning you were slouched in the shade of the cockpit, listening to “L Dopa,” when Mary asked you if you slept okay.
“You were really screaming last night.” She then told you you do it about three nights a week. They can hear you no matter where you’re sleeping.
“I had the dumbest dream last night.”
“Yeah?”
“I was in my bunk. I couldn’t sleep. I thought I heard people talking and walking around topside. They had music playing softly. It might’ve been opera.”
“Well, the dogs would’ve woken us all up if anyone had boarded.”
“I know. But it was exhausting. I laid there for what seemed like hours, just praying I’d fall asleep.”
“But this was a dream?”
“I’m assuming. You know? Crackers and Honky didn’t wake up.”
“So it was just a shitty dream. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m exhausted.”
You were exhausted. Your dreams were so mundane and terrifying at the same time and they often kept you awake in your sleep. Earlier that morning, as it rolled in and smelled like August, you hoped the day would crash away the ennui, but a boring day is always much better than a boring fucking pretend practice rehearsal day from which there is no escape or control.
“What do you want for dinner?”
You rubbed your eyes, “I don’t care. I’m not diving today, so they can get something if they want.” You hoped tonight you’d fall asleep and have your eyes travel somewhere other than the blankness behind their skin curtains. You hoped you wouldn’t fall asleep only to wake up still asleep hoping you could fall asleep praying you wouldn’t wake up still asleep until you couldn’t tell the difference.
Your eyes burned. They felt like the color red.
“Shitty dream,” I told the red dog.
“I know. It’s okay,” replied the pink droops that lived under his sad eyes. Nightmares are the history during which you’re trying to sleep. Insomnia’s just another way of saying it sucks to be you. The pink droops that lived under his sad eyes reminded you that one of these days you’d be going home.
You noticed your left arm was burning and had turned too red. It felt like some color burning.
*
Six days earlier you got a birthday do over. You slept in your bunk the night before because it was raining and you were woken when idiot one and idiot two blasted Elvis’ “Teddy Bear” from the boom box inches from your ear. Dancing in their underwear, lip-synching directly into your face, wearing their tams, your dad holding Honky and bouncing him around. You’ll never be able to hear that song for the rest of your life without thinking of them and your dad saying, without a hint of kidding, that had he thought through the morning more he would have lit wicks in his beard like Yellowbeard and woken you up with a brilliant Graham Chapman growl. The cake Mary made tasted metallic, like drinking the boat water out of a tin can. You told Guy, Joe, and JR about it and they insisted you needed a do over too and promptly made you join them on the beach for the sunset and made you a margarita that was almost clear. When it happens later, you’ll remember trying to jerk off in the bathroom and nothing happening and it just not working. You thought that was weird.
*
Two days after that, going through your dad and Mary’s books, you came across a massage instruction book from the seventies. You were fixated on one particular image where a man was stroking a woman’s arms while she was lying on the floor. Her legs were just slightly spread and there was a hint of something to see between them. You noticed the string tangled inside her bush. You’ll always remember that image.
*
Yesterday you came across a word in the dictionary you’d never seen before and became obsessed with working “flibbertigibbet” into every conversation of the day, assuming if you used it ten times, you’d own it. Everyone thought you were an idiot. You thought the same. Sometimes flibbertigibbet’s just a way of saying flibbertigibbet.
*
Later that day, in the midst of the sunshower, you took the Lady out for a spin around the islands to try and figure out what was wrong with the engine. Your dad assumed it was the fuel pump, but you could never tell when he was making something up or not. A few laps around and it became clear you’d be heading home under sail. Somehow this was your fault.
“If we hadn’t had to go back up in that storm when you were down on your last spring break or whatever the fuck it was, the goddamned thing wouldn’t have flooded.”
He was, of course, referring to the horrific storm which capsized the Lady somewhere west of Marco Island. It flooded the engine, caused total chaos, and scared the hell out of you, Mary, and your dad. Honky wouldn’t stop barking at the thunder. When the Lady rolled back, Crackers pulled himself away from the corner where their bed met the wall and yawned as if he’d minded the volcano and now needed to go back to licking his ass. You’ll always remember how impressed you were by the Sea Tow guy who jumped from their boat to the Lady in crashing ten foot swells.
But it was your fault the goddamned fuel pump was flooded and you’d be sailing home. You could have cared fuck all about the fuel pump.
What you felt bad about was the story.
*
You knew you shouldn’t have looked at it. You felt like a child before Christmas going through your parents’ closet. You thought, this must be what a lover confiding in someone else must feel like. You felt like if Carl caught you it would end your friendship and destroy all the ways you could ever trust yourself ever again. You knew you would feel that way just for doing what you were about to do. You knew what you were about to do would possibly make the rest of your life, let alone the summer, unbearable if anyone found out. You knew if you kept up this kind of thing and this kind of thinking it would fuck up your life in the long run. You will be right. And then you started to read anyway:
_____________________________________________________________________
A Few Words Regarding the Pain Artist
Let us consider our man, who hated himself for no reason. And that our man had led a very, very busy life and a very, very blessed life. And then one day our man decided it was time for such a blessed life to come to its close. He’d thought about this for some time and, in his expert opinion, the time had finally come to do the good deed. He’d spent far too many hours of far too many days fabulating a grand narrative around this, what would be his most selfish act to date - of which there were many.
He sat in the front seat for a long time waiting for the library to open. Finally he got out to see what time it actually would open. 9:30. His watch told him there was still forty-five minutes to kill.
When he was six our man came across a piece of rebar coming out of the ground at his grandmother’s house. He had a wonderful grandmother. He had a wonderful family and was, quite possibly, the luckiest boy in the world. He hated that he was so loved. Even then. It made him feel guilty. The rebar was leftover from an old garden where a tomato plant grew up it. When he felt guilty for his happiness and life our man, then a six year old boy, would clasp his hands around the rebar and hoist himself onto it with it pressing into his belly as hard as he could stand. He always thought of letting go with his hands and they always shook and trembled and got sweaty but he could never do it. And the scars he’d make would never last more than a few weeks, but the feelings would never go away.
When he was sixteen he fell in love for the first time. She wanted nothing to do with him, which was understandable to our man, even then. But that was no reason for him to take all the pain in the world and bottle it in his heart. He confided in a girl who was her best friend and they ultimately became close friends. When he transferred all of the love he had to give away onto the new girl, she wanted nothing to do with him, which was understandable to our man. She had what she called “a thing” for him while he pined away for her best friend. When he confessed his affections, she said it was too painful. The original girl then confessed her feelings for our man because she saw what she had missed out on and how “great he was,” but he had moved on in his heart. The first time our man fell in love he had his heart broken twice, which was, of course, entirely understandable to our man.
Our man started to write about how he felt. His mother thought it was wonderful he was a poet. She thought the world needed them and thought her son was the best son in the world and our man simply thought his mother loved a terrible person. He won many awards. He did well in school without trying. Except for that one time he plagiarized a paper, not because he couldn’t write it himself, but because he had a teacher that loved him and was kind to him and took him under her wing and he felt he had to fuck it up. Even after that, she still helped him get into graduate school.
Our man’s MFA thesis got quietly published as a chapbook that somehow and for no apparent reason whatsoever won him a Pulitzer at the age of twenty-three. Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, it also allowed him the pick of twenty-three job offers around the country. He never understood why it worked. It was never imbued with much meaning, nor did he try very hard to make it a thing worth even existing. It was just a thing he made called Shepherds of the Apocalypse, a title blatantly stolen from a friend in college, because it was time for him to make that thing in the checklist and schedule that was his life. It was dumb, he thought. A science fiction story told in twenty-six sentences, each beginning with the letters of the alphabet. It wasn’t a good short story he thought and it was a worse poem. Other people didn’t agree. It made no sense, the story or the agreement, to him. He considered changing the title for the post-prize print run to The Emperor’s New Clothes Are No Clothes.
Alan, I’m not at all certain I like the new microbiology teacher, I mean I know he’s incredibly smart and he seems to be the nicest professor I’ve yet to encounter at the university but I’m just not sure about having a dog for a teacher, you know, I mean I know how I sound and all and how ridiculous it is but ever since it happened I still just haven’t gotten used to the dogs driving around and talking and everything, but alas, who am I to judge, you know, I mean, he is so smart and wrote that book that won all those awards and helped bring an end to the vampirism epidemic in Scandinavia and all and yet I still don’t think I can trust a German, you know, I mean, it’s not like I’m racist or anything, when that family of Pulis moved into the house across the street, I was fine, and I even showed their daughter how to get to the lake by cutting through the drainage field behind the houses, but that he’s a Pomeranian is just strange to me, you know, I mean, it’s not the little box on the table that he stands on when he lectures or the panting tongue, but it’s just like my great-great grandmother was a jew and all and I just think he doesn’t like me and I don’t think there’s any way I’m going to pass the mid-term especially since we’ve got the party Friday.
Our man wrote a lot of terrible poems in grad school, but his wife still loved him no matter what. That’s worth remembering. He kept one of the ones he wrote as a joke, that was somehow and for no apparent reason published in a small southern quarterly, thumbtacked over his window. He told people he kept it there to remind him of how silly the world is and how pointless everything is and how the smarter we are the dumber we are. And how it was one of the few pieces he was proud of. He really kept it thumbtacked near a window in his office so people would ask him about it and it would prove his point and he’d hate his life a little more with their every kind, glowing word.
I always wanted to start an anthropological rock band called Goffman Turner Overdrive.
No I didn’t.
I always wanted to be in a stripped down punk band called Weapons of Mass Deconstruction.
I always wanted to be a frontman called Jockstrap Derrida.
I always wanted to be a guitarist called J. Hillis Thriller.
I always wanted to be a bassist called Professor Harold Doom.
I always wanted to be a drummer called The Ghost of Paul THE Man.
I always wanted to be an ellipses…
I always wanted to be a comma,
I always wanted to be a colon:
or maybe it was a semicolon;
but never a period.
And NEVER an exclamation point!
Perhaps a question mark?
Or better yet an open ended parenthesis to imply that some secret information will be coming but never actually arrives
(
By the time he was overdue with his fourth novel, our man had not only completely fucked up the book, but he threw his life into the mauler with it. It was a weird book that no one would have read, but he probably would have gotten a bit more prestige when it won an award or two. Its four awkward columns, trying to tell four different interwoven stories, he knew were a half-assed attempt at playing the postmodern game. A period romance, a female author married to a male author, and another loopy sci-fi thing about the problems of onset, undesired deityism. He didn’t care, he was too busy thinking of ways to make his universe implode.
My Name is Might Have Been
In the beginning, Ed created home and the other place. And the other place was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of Ed moved upon the face of the waters. And Ed said, let there be light; and there was light. And Ed saw the light, and that it was good: and Ed divided the light from the darkness. And Ed called the light day and the darkness he called night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And Ed said, let there be firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And Ed made the firmament, which, Ed was told as a child, in one of his rare winsome moments of quizzicality, meant the vault of heaven, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And Ed called the firmament home. And the evening and the morning were the second day. And Ed said, let the waters under home be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And Ed called the dry land the other place; and the gathering together of the waters called the waters: and Ed saw that it was good. And Ed said, let the other place bring forth grass and stuff, the herb yielding seed and what have you, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, and yada yada yada, upon the other place: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his fruit, whose seed was in itself, and so on and so on, after his kind: and Ed saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day. And Ed said, let there be lights in the firmament of home to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: and let them be for lights in the firmament of home to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And Ed made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also, because, you know, why not? And Ed set them in the firmament of home to give light upon the other place, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and Ed saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. And Ed said, let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of home. And Ed created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and Ed saw that it was good. And Ed blessed them, as Ed thought he should do, saying, Be fruitful, and get it on, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiplying the other place. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. And Ed said, Let the other place bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and the beast of the other place after his kind: and it was so. And Ed made the beast of the other place after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the other place after his kind: and Ed saw that it was good. And Ed said, Let us make dudes in my image, after my likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and all over the other place, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the other place. So Ed created guys and ladies in his own image, in the image of Ed created he him; men and women he created them. And Ed blessed, because, that’s what Eds are supposed to do in these types of situations, or so Ed thought, and Ed said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and do your thing, and replenish the other place, and subdue it, and keep it clean, and don’t pee in the pool, and all that other stuff: and plus, have dominion over the fishes of the seas, and over the fowls of the airs, and over every other living thing that moveth and liveth and chilleth down in the other place. And Ed said, Behold, which he thought perhaps he had never said before, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all of the other place, and every tree, in which the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And the every beast of the other place, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth around the other place, wherein there is life, I have given green herb for meat: and it was so. And Ed saw every thing that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
The world unfurls itself before him. Floating in an abyss, an aubergine wonder fills the void. It’s the big bang in slow motion. It’s all the fireworks he’s ever imagined in freeze frame flashes. One would think the dawn of everything would begin in blackness, but one would be wrong.
Ed had awoken to find himself a god. He thought for a moment that he was in fact the God, but that was fleeting and simply made little sense. No, no, this was much more practical a theory. He was controlling the dawn of everything. He dug it. But it was a little unnerving and startling as yesterday he had eateneth a Steakum and played a Nintendo game until he fell asleep and dreamt of doing things that, well, a god probably shouldn’t be dreaming of…
Our man was in Portland, speaking at some conference or another. She couldn’t come with him for one reason or another. His final reading of the night went well for some reason or another.
And the man asks what time is it there.
And the man asks where were you standing the day you died.
And the man asks who paid for those shoes.
And the man asks if my heart bleeds Coca-Cola.
And the man asks if I’ve seen the light.
And the man asks if two plus two isn’t always five.
And the man asks if we are all returning.
Returning home.
Returning videos.
Returning library books.
Returning to memories we only wished for.
Returning to some mother’s vagina cunt.
Returning to some father’s load.
And the man asks if we are not, then what.
Then where?
Then when?
Then who?
Then why?
And the man says this light is yellow, this day is old.
This cold is long, and this tale told.
Half drunk and stupidly playful at the reception he stood on a chair and improvised a meandering bit of stupidity to a bunch of obsequious grad students, one of whom generously attempted to fellate him later that night.
“I GIVE MY FURNITURE SOUL!”
Said Andy
During the party
one frightful
weekend
in a kitchen with
much booze.
Fingers pluck strings
like eggs
inspected by
professionals.
Empty
houses haunt
parents from Ohio.
Toledo is in Ohio.
Cleveland is in Ohio.
Akron is in Ohio.
And neon guitar strings and
college students
mingle
on smoke-filled stages.
Where lights flicker
on
and off.
He asked the girl to leave, explained he was married and loved his wife and that the evening had gotten way out of hand. She was embarrassed and he for her. He quietly flipped through the channels that night, in his hotel room, never changing out of his clothes, ending up on an entertainment news show. He grabbed the notepad off the desk and tore a piece off, considering how many of these notepads he had with this same corporate logo at the top, and placed the pad in his bag. He, like most sensible people, always carried a notepad. He learned that from his mother.
I read the news today, oh boy
Whitney Houston had just won the war
And though her holes were rather small
We knew she’d hold us all
I read the news today, oh boy
this is no country for emperors,
beasts, boys, or the dead.
Hollywood: I love you no longer
You’ve made me nothing.
Now, you’ve gone and made me jealous.
Goodness sakes.
This will be a long one.
After crumpling it a bit, he tossed it aside and thought about whether he should throw it away or not. He called his wife. When he got home, they fucked like they meant it.
Our man sat and looked at the shape of her hip in the dark. He pinched the tip of his prick and squeezed the last of it out and smeared it between his fingers until they stopped being slick and sticky. He leaned his head over just enough to see between her thighs where he was still leaking out a little. She wasn’t asleep or anything. She just knew he liked looking at her like this. You should know this about our man: he was also cursed with the ability to fall in love with a woman simply by looking at her, or hearing her words, or being invited into her thoughts. He knew it wasn't his choice to make. It was hers and the heartbreak would be his. But he thought better to compliment them with his unrequited desires than simply to assume otherwise.
“You’re going to either take a picture of me now or write a poem,” she said, “aren’t you?”
“Maybe,” was all he said, seconds before he waited a half hour to watch her drift off.
She sleeps. In
The dark,
I watch with
Eyes heavy from the
thick air of the viridescent night…
Downstairs, on the
Cold tile floor,
Nothing happens to
Be waiting for
Daybreak.
Ten times better than an ice cream sundae
And a whole lot sweeter
I remove my cock before I come
Shower me baby she says
And her back plays bare
And her ass lays there
Prick in hand I stagger out to get a towel
And the dog never paid two thoughts
And the fan kept answering no to an unasked question
And the lights went out
And the sweat tangled us in the sheets
And the moon skipped across her hip as I rolled over into the dark
He got an uncomfortable phone message at his office at the university from the girl from the party uncomfortably apologizing for the weekend’s uncomfortable improprieties, and asking no one be told about it. He left the message on his machine, not bothering to delete it, knowing his wife would take his messages the next time he sent her by to drop off papers or pick something up and lawyers were called and the man wanted to die inside when he thought of her crying. Of course he wouldn’t tell her about it or explain himself. But this was what he did so well. This was his diseased brain bleeding poison down to his heart, trying to drown him from the inside. This was his beautiful, horrible gift. The next girl for him, that didn’t work out so well for our man, and we need not remind him of it.
Years later, after he found it in a filing cabinet, while she sat on his lap in the chair in the corner, he read the hotel poem that no one had ever seen to her from the hotel stationary and she said she liked it. She was the one who unexpectedly walked into the room that day, the way they always do, and he wished she hadn’t, the center-of-the-universe type who could ruin lives with a wink, the way they always do. He kind of did that thing he always did where he didn’t give a shit if it was actually good or not but hoped it was good enough for her to say she liked it. That was the perfect amount of good for our man’s entire life. That was what he searched for. That was the thing he needed most. Because then would be the perfect time to push her away by doing something stupid or terrible or cruel. He was due. Things were too good. Things were too perfect, perfect like her beautiful honesty, like no one else’s. “I like it, but, I don’t know. I mean, you wrote it in a hotel room after you turned down a blowjob. It’ll do, but it ain’t Bukowski.” She asked if it was supposed to sound like he copied “A Day in the Life” and “Howl.” He said it was, but he’d never even thought about it before. She told him to read her one of his old ones. A love one, she said. The one about the boy who rips his heart out and hands it to the girl while it’s still beating only because he thinks the sight of her is the best the world will ever offer and that knowing he can see her with his last gasp, as the last thing in his mind, will make it a perfect life since he knows every minute with her is a minute he could drive her away. He always thought that poem was about himself. She thought it was romantic, and maybe he found that endearing, but also kind of terrifying in that she’s-a-little-crazy-but-it’s-amazingly-sexy kind of way. Our man always knew it was about himself. The boy was selfish and he hated the boy, because the boy thought the pain he caused the girl was worth the thought of her vision, her perfection, being his final thought. The boy was an egoistic asshole who hurt a girl. Our man was the boy, he thought to himself. He thought about the way he’d kill a perfect moment whether he knows he’s doing it or not simply because he cannot let himself be happy. He thought about the way when something gets too good it has to be destroyed. He recited it to her from memory. He knew it was one of her favorites, so he memorized it the first time she mentioned it. The first time she read it, she told him, “fuck you.” He replied to her only with “I know,” as he knew in that moment that she had just made him fall in love with her. She told him to tell her about himself. He said playfully, “I’m that guy. That cliché. The guy your friends have all got a story about. The guy you can’t figure out why he has friends, but you’re friends with him. I’m that guy.” “Are you, now?” she mockingly replied. “The day my grandmother died I got high and went to a titty bar,” he continued. “The day our nephew was born I told my wife he looked retarded. I told my brother-in-law it didn’t look like his.” “Did you, now?” she mockingly replied. “And the night of my father-in-law’s funeral that I didn’t even go to I made my wife have phone sex with me. Yeah, someone married me and loved me. How fucked up is that?” “Pretty fucked up,” she mockingly replied. “But you liked the story of me, didn’t you? I’m at least mildly interesting and or amusing, aren’t I?” he questioned back. “Make me laugh.” “What do you want me to say?” “Something funny.” “I think it’s funny that the word ‘a-i-t-c-h’ only means the letter ‘H.’” Then she smiled at him and tilted her head to the side in that sexy way women do when they’re thinking whether they’re going to let you fall in love with them or not, and with her mop of hair looking amazing with just a small tangle of it in its own tiny, singular ponytail, the way it looks after it’s been done, then you fuck, then there you go, she simply said, “fuck you.” And as he considered the quickest way to tear out his heart and hand it to her, he replied to her only with, “I know.”
Our man was a genius.
Because when your true art is destruction and your true creativity lies in your capacity to shred hearts and the only way your brain will let you live your life is to constantly make you feel like you don’t deserve that wonderful life and the guilt you feel in your every breath will constantly tell you you don’t deserve that life, only then can you decide if your life is worth you putting yourself through it. Or if it’s worth putting others through it. The true artist lets other people choose for them and every decision is out of their hands. That is what makes their artistry so beautiful. Our man was the asteroid that wiped the dinosaurs from the face of the earth. Our man was death, destroyer of worlds, and our man would bring that upon himself in a way no one but himself would ever understand.
Our man was a genius, but in a way no one would ever understand.
The curious girl in bed asked him to bring her some water. And that’s when our man stood in the door and thought this was too good. She’d done this thing with her hair so it wasn’t so curly but wasn’t straight and just so brushed her skin in a way that made our man jealous of it. She’d tied it with rags while it was still wet, before she went to sleep, letting into morph into this unpredictable mess that was imbued with an eroticism without end. It was longer now too than it had been. He’d fallen in love for the way she made him think. And with the way she made him feel. But, goddamn, did our man find her to be the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. She told him all the time she knew she was beautiful and it drove him nuts. She told him all the time she was smart and it drove him nuts. Not because she wasn’t smart and beautiful, but he felt like every time she mentioned it, and it was mentioned often, it was to remind herself to convince herself to make herself believe. Part of it made him feel like he couldn’t compliment her enough and when he did it just felt sycophantic. Part of it made him realize only she could change the way she saw herself and he may have found the one person on the planet who was as entirely crazy as he was in the most dangerously artistic kind of way. The kind of way where she’ll do the hurting for him. Perhaps, he’d finally met his equal. But her fucking hair. Its endless shades and colors and contours. The way it flexed and folded under the weight of humid skies. The way the hues were a forever changing tonal range of darkness and mystery in the brillig light as he and her found themselves wandering out and about as they were wont to do. He’d been jealous of hair his entire life, and in hers he wanted suffocate. He watched the light make its patterns over her. He looked at the massive forty by sixty print of Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel’s “Untitled Evidence / 1977” that hung over their bed. A giant black and white eruption of flames pouring out of some old car in some old deserted place. He paid an insane amount for it at an auction and, although he never knew why, he felt like it was the perfect thing to hang over a bed. A thing that needed to be over a bed. Where two people shared only each other. Where the world could be forgotten and simply burn away. He thought there was a great big metaphor in there, he just had no idea for what. He looked at whatever book she was reading on her nightstand. He looked at whatever six books were stacked underneath that one. He wondered if he turned off the record player earlier or if it was still spinning, lonely, in a dark room. He remembered the gimcracked dinner he’d made for them just so she’d find it pretty, the dishes of which were piled up in the sink for him to take care of in the morning. He looked at her in her boxer shorts and tank top she always wore and the way the fold of material created an intensely erotic constellation swells and dunes with her ribs rising and falling with her breath as she laid toward the window unknowingly smiling at nothing. He watched as a random feather floated and fluffed its way from her pillow right onto her nose for no apparent reason whatsoever. He watched her nose skrinkle and her face make the face a face only makes when a person is tickled in their sleep. The skrinkle made him love her more. He was too lucky. He didn’t deserve any of these things. He never knew why, but the first time he saw her signature, it never occurred to him at the time to ask what the B stood for. He immediately assumed that had been a mistake he’d carry with him forever. He knew it would be a question he’d quickly let fester into a regret. He knew he wasn’t sure. Like with most things, our man just didn’t know. He didn’t know what to do for the next forty-five minutes before the library opened.
His plan, stupid as it was, he thought somewhat poetic. Go to a random library, make sure they have one of his books in stock, find it, open it, and place inside carefully his driver’s license with a post-it note stuck to it that said simply:
I lived.
I had no choice in that decision.
You know the rest now.
I’m sorry.
On the inside leaf of the book, he would, in the smallest ofletters, write the following:
And if you mayhap see my mother,
Tell her…
Tell her I know I screwed my life up many times over,
but I want to be forgiven for the others’ I pulled into my gravity.
Tell her we both know that.
Tell her I’m tired.
Tell her I’m tired of just feeling stupid
and humiliated and helpless.
Tell her I don’t know how I let my life happen to me -
successes or failures.
Tell her I have a theory, but it’s not a good one.
Tell her it was only recently I figured out what my true talent and art was.
Tell her, I’m sorry that doesn’t help much.
Tell her I’m tired of feeling lonely.
Tell her I’m tired of this morning.
Tell her I’m embarrassed in ways no one would understand
and in ways everyone understands completely.
Tell her I love her.
Tell her I’m sorry for what I’ve always done to her.
Tell her I’m tired of being a hopeless romantic always escaping reality.
Tell her I’m tired of being a poet.
Tell her I’m tired of people saying how great I am when I hate myself.
Tell her I’m tired of not knowing how to be an adult.
Tell her I’m tired of being lonely even though I’m incredibly loved.
Tell her I’m just tired.
Tell her I feel infinitely small when I see how strong she was
and how I’ve never been able to take care of myself.
Tell her I’m tired of having this life where everyone thinks I’m
so unique and like a character in a movie.
Tell her I always wanted to be normal and like everyone else if there are such
things as normal and everyone else.
Tell her I just want to know how the world works.
Tell her things are too perfect right now.
Tell her things can’t get much better.
Tell her I’ve got the girl.
The girl that means everything. The one for me in and at the end. The one that
was in my head all along.
The one who I’d hand my heart to at the door as I fell to my knees if it would work.
Tell her it’s time for what was always bound to happen.
That was our man.
Where to go from here…..?
He can’t kill himself… too cliché.
???
Some characters don’t change, don’t have arcs. Sometimes the world moves around them while they stay in the same place. What would be the point of him killing himself? What would it bring to the narrative? Would it add anything or just confuse the reader? What’s the takeaway? The message? People are merely cruel? People are selfish? People leave? People disappear? There will come a day when silence simply fills the space a friend once occupied? That nothing can stay gold?
________________________________________________________________________
You left it exactly where it was, sitting in the middle of the desk, probably exactly where he had written it, stood up from the chair, walked over to the window and watched him, squinting in the sun as always, walk through the door, and calmly, and without thought or effort, simply pick up the slim stack of paper, ask you what you were up to and if you wanted to go for a boat ride with him to check on a buoy lamp, and slide it into the trash can next to the filing cabinet. He never seemed to notice that the post-it you found on top was gone.
*
When you got back to the Lady, the ocean was offering its lulling music, oily to the ears, drifting across empty spaces where wave met wind. The horizon a pandiculation of quiet jazz and infinite possibilities. There were storms beyond those horizons, and monsters off the maps, but calms and hopes. You needed this moment, if only to give you a place to come back to when there would likely be no coming back. You prayed you would forget to forget this.
The old man was on the deck trying to teach himself how to navigate by the stars. You thought he was crazy, but then again you thought anyone who sees constellations are crazy. If the gods that hammered holes into the heavens sought to imbue them with meaning, it was completely lost on your miniscule mortal mind. When you look up at the skies from which they look down, pondering if those twinkling lights have any order, all you see is a random array of white on black that you will never comprehend. Perhaps they were there just to let air in for all the ants, some people farm in God’s adolescence.
After you tied off the dinghy, you just kind of felt like being alone and watching, for the forty-eighth consecutive day, the sun set heavy, pulling the weight of the world away from you. You weren’t hungry, but you knew there’d be a bowl of rice and some veg-all waiting for you in a few minutes. In twenty-five years, six months, four days, and thirty-four minutes you will recall Carl’s story and you will think of this particular sunset and its beauty and the way you needed to give yourself over to it, the way you always had and always will give yourself to the girl, to me. The sunset took it for you that night. Because of the story. Because of what happened. In twenty-five years, six months, four days, and thirty-five minutes you will regret every day you couldn’t come back to this sunset. From your usual seat where you’d been sitting since your dad bought the Rat and made him the Lady, a folded towel just to the side of the coiled tie line and pulled over the edge so you could hang your feet off, you looked down into the water. There was the slightest ripple from a wind from somewhere blowing its surface softly as you usually wished you could into her ear, my ear. The reflection was you, but it wasn’t. It was deformed, shapeshifting, a specific someone but an other at the same time. You wished you were not you.
“I’ll be back.”
As you took your skiff back to the fort, you could hear Mary asking your dad where you were going. When you got to the dock and tied off, you looked back and could see them still watching you in confusion as you left with such urgency. You made sure it was okay for you to still be in there as it was going to get dark soon and JR said he didn’t care. For some reason you felt the urge to be in Mudd’s cell. You needed to sit where Carl was sitting. Why was his story the way it was? Why did it make so much sense to you? Why did he throw it away like you do? From the empty wall, you could see them on the deck of the Lady trying to figure out what you were doing. You sort of waved at them and then sat down against the wall, your feet sliding against the dusty floor, filling your sandals with dirt as your ass slid down the brick wall with a thunk. You watched as your dad got in the other dinghy and came to the dock. You watched him tie off and wander up to the entrance. And then he disappeared. You knew you’d see him in a couple of minutes. You considered wandering off and starting a game of immature, adolescent hide and seek, but you just sat there, staring at your dirty feet, staring at the brick walls and the holes in the ground where the gates and bars would have been, staring at the empty outside wall that opened to a freedom provided by a short fall to the moat below. It had been a while since your brain made you think anything like that. Had anyone ever slipped accidentally here? Not accidentally? And you wondered if it would hurt only for an instant, or maybe not at all. In twenty-two years, seven months, nine days, and eight hours, you returned to that thought, a plan in your head for the first time, a deciding moment the tiniest detail and cruelty of which will prevent you from following through on and even then, in that room, you will still wonder to yourself if it would hurt only for an instant, or maybe not at all. And when he wandered in, he didn’t say a word. He just mirrored you, sliding down the other wall with a thunk, his sandals filling with sand. Mudd wasn’t here anymore, maybe Carl subrogated him. Maybe what you saw earlier being the afflated reflection of a ghost still on the haunt. Maybe not. Maybe no one was here anymore. But then it was just you and him and the perfect sunset perfectly framed by brick and pain and torment and confusion and father and son.
And for what seemed like forever, he said nothing, simply looking at you, out the opening, at his dirty feet. He just waited.
“I, uh… um… I’m really freaking out, man. I, uh… there’s this girl… the one I showed around the fort and… I know… and, it’s stupid, but… you know… she’s just a girl, she’s a woman, you know… she’s, uh… almost thirty and she’s really pretty and she’s super nice and she talked to me and I don’t know how I did it, but I talked to her and, and, and… I… and she’s gone away and I can’t get her out of my head now. Like, I… I… I… I’ve spent all summer with this sense of what Father Padre called ‘the girl’ in my head and I just don’t know what to do because now everything I look at I want to talk to her about, everything I see and experience I want to share with her, every song I hear I want to play for her, every… everything, man. Like, I look at people and, and I search for her face in them and I talked to her for three days. What the fuck is happening to me?”
“You… uh… you fell in love with a girl.”
“How!?! How did I do that? She’s just… she’s just a random woman, man. I’m a fuckin’ kid! I can’t feel this way. I don’t wanna feel this way.”
“I don’t think you have a choice in that matter.”
“Did you feel this way when you met Mary? Did you feel this way when you met mom?”
“I don’t know, man. I don’t know how different people experience love. I’m not a poet. I’m not a writer. I can’t express myself like the guys you read, so I don’t know if I feel the same things as they feel. I mean, do I love them? Yeah. I loved your mom. I loved it when we first got together, and the same with Mary, I just… sometimes things take longer with different people, you know, like, I don’t know if I’ve ever felt what you’re talking about. Mary and I were friends for years and, you know, one night, you know, something happened and then we started dating and were more like a couple, like romantically and… you know. I mean, Mary was with your uncle Pista for like five years and then they broke up and then, you know, like I said, something happened between us. It wasn’t happening before, don’t worry about that. But… I don’t know. I don’t know how to help you with this. I didn’t think we’d have a talk like this for a while and I thought it’d just be about how to put on a rubber or something. I mean, it’s… look. She’s a girl, man. Just think about her tits and go jerk off… I know that look you’re doing, that face you’re making. You’re not gonna do that are you?”
“Dad, I don’t want… you know what I’m talking about, man.”
“I don’t, because you sound like you got run over by a truck and you’re talking like your whole life is ruined because you’ve now met ‘a girl’ you’ll never see again.”
“I… I know.”
“I know you know.”
“But the thought of that… makes the… the entire world seem empty. The thought of that makes it seem like I’m gonna spend my entire life trying to hear her voice again. I have this feeling like I’m gonna shut my eyes when I go to sleep and she’s gonna be the thing I see… and if I can’t have that in my life… I don’t know what tomorrow’s gonna be like or the day after or the day after or the day after or the day after…”
“Please, man, you cannot make this a thing. You are so depressed all the time. You are so hard to be around. You always talk about how you don’t feel alive, how you always feel empty. Don’t add to that. Don’t make this a thing.”
“That’s the problem, dad… I do feel something… I do feel alive. I think I felt numb my whole life. I don’t give a shit about anything. I don’t try at anything. Everybody thinks I’m so smart and maybe I am smart. Maybe I’m the smartest person I’ve ever met, but I don’t give a shit! I just don’t care! But I care about this. I care that I feel this way and I can’t describe it. I listen to these songs, I listen to this music… you know, Father Padre gave me, I read these books, I read about the way Neruda writes about women and, and for the first time in my life, and I know I’m only thirteen, man, but, Jesus Christ, man, I get it. I get it. It’s so overwhelming. I can’t think of anything else. I don’t know what to do. And I don’t think those guys did either and they spent their lives trying to figure it out and I’m not good enough to be like them.”
“I don’t know what to do either, man…. You… you’re in love with a girl in your head… you don’t even know this girl.”
“That’s what I’m so afraid of. I’ve invented a girl and I’m gonna spend my entire life searching for something that may or may not exist.”
“I don’t know what you want me to tell you. Write it down. Maybe you’re the next Pedro Neruda. I mean… you’re starting high school, man… Just think of the girls you’re gonna meet there.”
“I don’t want the girls I meet there. I want the one that I think of when I saw her. She talked to me about things that no one talked to me about… she seemed genuinely interested in me and maybe if I was fifteen years older I woulda had a shot with her, I don’t know, I’m fuckin’ ugly, you guys all make fun of me for being fat. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. What I’m trying to tell you is that I don’t know if I want to live without her.”
“Well you’re gonna fucking have to because you’re not gonna fucking kill yourself because you didn’t hook up with a twenty-eight year old girl in the Keys on your fucking summer vacation! You know how goddamn mental that sounds! Are you… I… I know you’re outta your mind, but this is fucked up even for you!”
“I know, dad, and I know how stupid it sounds, I know how crazy it sounds, but I don’t want to live inside my own head forever… How do I get her out of my head… I’ve always had this voice or this vision or whatever you want to call it… look, when I started thinking about women, about girls, whatever, when I got old enough a few years ago to really give a shit and feel like, like when I started going through puberty or whatever… when I started thinking about girls, when I started getting boners and jerking off… I just… it’s like that’s secondary. It’s like porn or whatever, that’s just to feel good, but that’s not what I want, you know, man? I just want someone I can talk to and be myself around.”
“You can be yourself around whoever you want.”
“No. I can’t. And you know that….”
“I know… I don’t know why I said that… I know what you’re talking about… you… you, you’re different than everybody.”
“But I’m not different from the girl in my head. She gets me. And I think, you know, the fact that if there is someone out there that will get me in the way she gets me… that’s great… but, I don’t… how, how does that exist? How do you do that? How do you deal with that?”
“I don’t know, man. I don’t know. I feel sorry for you. I guess… I feel, I feel bad you feel like you’re gonna go through your whole life lonely, I feel bad you feel like you’re gonna go through your whole life empty. I don’t want you to feel that way. I really don’t. That sounds awful. But maybe you’ll eventually meet someone. Maybe it’ll be like me and Mary. Maybe it’ll take time. Maybe you’ll just have a friend for a long time and then you’ll grow to realize that you need her in your life, that you can’t not have her in your life, and maybe that’s what love it supposed to be. Maybe love is not supposed to be a truck that runs you over. Maybe love won’t be a sledge hammer for you that smashes into your face and breaks every bone in your head. But it doesn’t seem like that’s gonna be the case. I, I don’t know because I don’t think I’ve ever experienced that. The stuff you’re talking about… you’re, you’re living at a level… I don’t even know where you’re at…”
“Dad…” He always knew when your heart was aching because you called him “dad” more often than usual. Every sentence you included it confused him and made him hurt for you more than the last. “… I don’t wanna be crazy, man. But… there’s like… do you know what a muse is?”
“Yeah… like the ancient… the people, you know, uh… the… when, when the artists make a sculpture or the poets and the writers write something it’s to this idea or this inspiration of what they think is perfection or whatever.”
“Yeah, well, Father Padre said something about that that really got under my skin. He said I’m gonna be haunted by that forever because he seems to know me better than I know myself. And he seems to be right. And… I have this person that I carry with me… and, and I feel like she’s talking to me and telling me my own life to me. I feel like she’s the narrator and I’m a character in a story… And then all of a sudden she showed up… in flesh and blood… and… and… and… she was so fucking beautiful and I don’t wanna jerk off to her, man, I don’t, I don’t… I just… I would give everything just to stand next to her. I would trade all of the smarts I have in the universe just to, like, have her lean in and touch my hand. I just wanna smell her hair. I just wanna stare at her… forever. Because I think if I could do that… if I could look right into her eyes, I don’t think any of the problems I’ve ever had would be there any more. Because I think my problem is I can’t get out of me. You talked to me about that. I’ve talked to shrinks about that. The advice I always get about my depression is always the same. ‘Get the fuck out of your own head.’ And I cannot do that with anybody. I can’t do that. And apparently, I’m so fucking crazy, dad, that I’ve invented a person that is now at the wheel, and, and, and, and, and there’s, there’s this poor woman I projected all of that on and who knows, in years, in twenty years, thirty years, fifteen years, whatever, I might not even remember what she looks like. I don’t have a picture of her. And, and, and… and she’s an idea. We talked about music. We talked about writing. We talked about all kinds of stuff, you know? I told her what I wanted my first kiss to be like. What?!? Who would I tell that to? It was so strange talking to her that I feel like I invented her, like I needed her so bad in my life that she existed only for me and no one else… I’m looking and I’m wondering, I wanna know if Carl or anyone else even saw her because I’m afraid I was walking around the fort talking to no one. I am scared I am going completely insane because I have fallen in love with a disembodied voice in my head.”
He just stared at you in that way everyone stared at you. And then he opened his mouth to speak and he couldn’t. And then he closed it. And then he took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose the way he always did and you will always as well. And then he put them back on with a sigh. And then he opened his mouth to speak. And then he closed it. And then he just stood there in silence with you. And he pulled you close to him and he gave you a hug. It was the second time he’d hugged you the entirety of the summer. And then he pulled himself away from you. And then he said:
“What are we gonna do with you?”
And then you looked him in the eye... And then you said:
“I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. And I’m scared. And I’m confused. But the weirdest part is… I don’t feel like I’m walking through a fog. I don’t feel numb for the first time in my life. And… if this is what it takes to make me feel like a human being. I would rather have the pain she gives me than nothing… I’m trying to put a positive spin on this for you, dad…. I… man, don’t tell mom. Please, I’m being serious, I promise I’m not going to do anything stupid, just don’t tell Mary, don’t tell Gibs… it’s just, I don’t know… if you want me to see a counselor when I get home I will. I’m not going crazy. I’m not actually hearing voices in my head in that crazy kind of way, I don’t think. You get that, right? You get that this is something different, don’t you? You get that this is not my head, that this is my heart. And… and… There’s gotta be other people in the world that go through this because the world wouldn’t have the art that is has if it didn’t. The world wouldn’t have the beauty that it has if… if, if the girl wasn’t there. So I know the girl is in the heads of Neruda and Tom Waits and all these guys and and and and and and and… I’ve always said I don’t want to be a writer… because I’m afraid of what’s gonna come out… ‘cause what if it sucks, ‘cause I don’t think I’m as good as those guys, I know I’m not as good as those guys. I want to not be a writer. I don’t want to pour my heart out on to a piece of paper. I wanna pour my heart out to her… whoever she may be… And I’m so fucking young, man, that I feel like I’m gonna spend the next twenty or thirty years looking for that.”
“But you might not, man. You might not. You might meet a girl next week. And you might meet her and she might talk to you and be nice to you and you might realize that she’s the thing in your head… Or fuck the thing in your head! Because if the thing in your head is making you the man you are, or so you say it is… if that’s true? Be that. Don’t be a poet who’s searching for it in everything. And you yourself told me you read that biography of Neruda and he just fucked around all over the place. That doesn’t sound like you want to do that. That doesn’t sound like you’re gonna go whoring it up and try and find the, uh… ‘the girl’ as you call her in every piece of strange trim you come across. So take what you feel. Take the things I can’t feel! Take the things that Gibs will never feel! Take all of that and give it to someone that you think deserves it, right? Because if you don’t want to write it down, it’s your responsibility to live it. Because you know what, man, Father Padre’s right. It’s not a curse. Or, I don’t know, maybe he said it was a curse and then he’s fucking wrong! Because if you feel that way and you connect with someone and there’s even an inkling… the tiniest bit, man, that she gives that back to you, you’re gonna experience something few people ever will in life… And let me tell you, that’s gonna make all the shit you’re going through now worth it. Don’t you feel that way? You just told me you’d give your everything, you’d cut your fucking arm off, just to stand next to her. So give that to someone. Feel that genuinely. And don’t don’t don’t try and make her come up short to an idea in your head. Try and take that thing in your head or that thing in your heart or whoever the fuck you think is talking to you. Take that. Take the way you feel and give it to someone and see what happens, because, let me tell you something, if she says no, if she’s like, ‘Fuck you, I don’t want to have anything to do with you,’ then you’re nowhere different than you are now, but if she doesn’t say any of that, and this doesn’t matter if it’s next week in high school or you’re fuckin’ thirty or you’re fuckin’ forty and you’ve been married twice like I have… if that happens then you’re still gonna be the luckiest man in the world, because anything you do with her is gonna be better than anything you’re gonna do alone. And you know that. And you know you have the possibility of the best life of anyone you know, because you’re smart, and you’re funny, and, yeah, you’re mean as hell and you’re angry, but if you can take that goodness inside of you, take the thing you say she wants you to be and fucking be that thing, man! Be that thing! If I can’t be that thing, you have to be that thing for me!... alright? Now get your shit together! Because I can’t live on this boat with you moping around and I can’t think that my son’s gonna go to high school and fucking be sad all the time because he’s in love with a goddamn fictional character in his own head! What am I supposed to do with that? We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere! You meet one girl this summer, she’s like twenty years older than you, you claim you don’t want to fuck her, but who wouldn’t want to fuck her the way you describe her… I mean… I know that’s neither here nor there for you, but come on, man. Like I said, get your shit together. Be real about this. Because if you connected with her and it really mattered that much… find her again. And it might not be ‘her.’ But it might be someone else. And if you have that moment, fuckin’ grab it. It’s like that movie, right? What was the movie, with the, uh, with the guy with, you know, the boombox thing. Fuckin’ walk through life, find her, and if she’s not interested in you or you do something stupid ‘cause you probably will ‘cause you have a big fucking mouth… Look. If she’s not interested in you, it’s not her. But if she is and you do something stupid, take the boombox and point it at the goddamn window and hold it as high as you can over your head and if she slams that window and tells you to ‘go fuck yourself,’ you know what? You’re not in any worse position than you were before… Think about this. Where you’re at now is as low as you’re ever gonna be. Right? Because it’s either this or better. And be better! Go after it. You’re the bravest kid I know. And you don’t even know it. You think you’re a pussy, you think you’re weird. You think, you know… yeah, you fight with Gibs. Gibs goes home and plays Nintendo! Gibs is gonna grow up and be on the high school football team. Gibs is just gonna go work at a bank or something or sell cars, he’s gonna get married to someone he’s half in love with because he thinks he’s supposed to and then he’ll have a fuckin’ affair, he’s gonna have two kids that don’t like him, and then he’s gonna have a heart attack when he’s sixty because that’s what Gibs is supposed to do. But I look at you… yours has been a life of nothing but adventure, and yeah, it’s because me and your mom and your uncles are fucking weirdos and we never let you stop us. And we gave that to you. But you have done it. Don’t turn into something you’re not. You can live that way. Think about that! You’ve been out here with us all summer and you’re like one of the gang with the four other lunatics who live here. You’re this crazy kid who’s never hung out with anyone other than adults and, yeah, that’s our fault and which is probably why you don’t have any friends… you know? But… embrace that, man! Find some chick as cool as you and fucking take over the world with her. Think of the time you’ve got. It may not be tomorrow, but goddamn, dude. It’s gonna be amazing. And I don’t mean you’re both gonna be brilliant people and you’re gonna be a writer and she’s gonna be super successful. You know that’s not what I’m talking about and that’s not even what matters. What I’m talking about is you having a life you deserve. You’re my son… and I love you… and you’re better than I will ever be, because you’re smarter and you are more adventurous and if you find that thing in your head… Think about that, man. Even if you just live in a fucking town and have a job you hate, if you come home at the end of the day and you guys are there on the couch and all you do is look at each other and all of that bullshit from the day falls apart, falls away, and doesn’t exist anymore… and if she takes you by the hand and says, ‘Let’s go do something…’ Go. Fucking. Do it! Don’t sit around and say, ‘well, that’s not what I thought we’d be doing when I was thirteen.’ Because if you’re in that moment… that’s, that’s it, man. That’s it. If you talk about wanting love and all that stuff and passion… you have had a life of passion no thirteen year old I know has and it’s been a good life of adventure and… look, isn’t it in Peter Pan where he says that to simply be alive is going to be this huge adventure?”
“I’m not Peter Pan. He could fly.”
“No one said you can… but no one said you can’t… you know what, you’re a weird little bastard, man, and I don’t think you’re ungrateful, but I don’t think you get that no one anywhere lives or thinks like you. You are totally weird. And that bothers you now, but that’s gonna make you the coolest guy in the world someday. And goddamnit, if there’s a girl out there as weird as you, the adventures you have, however crazy or however simple, are gonna be limitless. You know what? You convinced me. Don’t write poetry. Don’t write a song. Don’t write the fucking great American novel. Don’t write a movie. Don’t direct a movie. Don’t do any of that shit if you don’t want to. Just because we all tell you to… Fuck us! We don’t matter. It’s you! What I want from you… look at me. You never look at me! What I need from you… is to be that poem. Is to be that song. Is to be that fucking novel that you’ve already written in your head. So you go out and you find a girl who wants to do that with you and the girl in your head is gonna shut up because she led you to her and now she’s standing in front of you. And if you, if you, if you, if you do that… it’s gonna be fucking beautiful, man. You’re not gonna have to cut your arm off. You’re just gonna have to be honest with her and be honest with yourself.”
And then he just stopped. As if he had no idea where the words had come from. And dalles of silence tore between you as you tried to find words to return. Because somehow you knew this was one of those moments where words become pyrophoric and dangerous and he was waiting to see what happened next.
“Dad…?”
“What?”
“That was fucking awesome, man. How’d you do that? That was like a movie speech.”
“I am still your father, man. What do you want me to tell you? You get your weirdness from somewhere and it sure ain’t your mom. I don’t know, maybe it is. Now don’t be a fucking asshole. Alright? Go! Do something with your life. Yeah. It’s sad. The girl went away. Guess what? Half the fuckin’ planet are women. Find another one. Lord knows you’ve got all the time in the world to do it. You think Neruda thought about this shit when he was your age?”
“He was like seventeen when he wrote his best work.”
“Exactly, that’s what… wait. Seriously?”
“Yup.”
“Shit.”
“Uh-huh. See?” You showed him the biography on the back of the book you’d been holding the entire time.
“That doesn’t change anything… you’re always gonna be, uh… there’s… look. It’s not gonna be the next one or probably not the next one after that. And she might not be the first one and, and… there might be a bunch, but… that’s the adventure, you know? You may have one for a while and it may fall apart because maybe the boy in her head isn’t you. Did you ever think of that? That, that she’s got a voice in her head and she’s searching for it? I mean, and, maybe… you know what? Just, just totally out of the fucking weirdness of the universe, say your girl, you were sittin’ on top of there with and you were telling her about your kiss or whatever bullshit you were telling me… say she has always had a boy in her head and, guess what? Maybe she found it in a fatass thirteen year old who’s on vacation in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere... and she doesn’t know what to do with it now. How’s that supposed to make her feel? Because that probably would have made her feel weird. What if that’s the case? It’s not always gonna be about just you, especially with this. Right? It’s never gonna stop unless you let it. Because if it’s taking you over… that’s sad. I don’t want you to feel like you can’t have something. But if you’ve got that in you, man, that means you can give it away. And if she accepts it, you’re gonna have something very few people have in this world and it’s gonna be an adventure. And it’s not gonna be an adventure like, yeah, you might not go climb Mount Everest together, but let me tell you something, if you’re holding hands and you’re walking down the street or if you’re back in Mallory Square watching the sunset, you are gonna have a better sunset than anyone else on that fuckin’ pier, man! Right? When you sit across from her at a table… like you remember when we went to Louie’s Backyard, that swank place down on the beach, a few weeks before we left, right? Or, no, when was that? Whenever, last year when you’re teacher was there or something. Well, that was fun. That was a really good meal. But let me tell you something. If you’re sitting across from her at that table… and I don’t know what I’m talking about ‘cause… I, I love Mary, and I loved your mom, but… I don’t think I have love in me like you have love in you… but if you’re sitting across from her that’s gonna be the best tasting meal for anyone in that restaurant. And it’s not about you going home and banging her. It’s about looking at her and knowing you found your other half. But here’s the important part. It’s that you occasionally stop looking at each other and you start looking at everything else the world has offer… together… And… that’s gonna be a pretty fucking amazing place for you to be. And it doesn’t matter how much money you’ll make or what your job will be or whatever, it’s just that you’ll have someone on your team. Because you can’t look at each other all the time or you’re gonna fall down, but if you’re together in it, you’re always gonna be looking out for each other. And that’s the thing I think you’re looking for and for the love of god I hope you find.”
“You know you just did it again, right? The whole movie thing? And it was, like, super convincing and now I don’t know what to do because you’ve made me feel weirdly optimistic and, like, ‘Hey, this could be awesome!’ but at the same time I’m so so goddamn lonely that I close my eyes and I see the face of someone.”
“You’re always gonna close your eyes and see the face of someone… And when you find her, when there’s a real face in front of you, guess what? You’re gonna close your eyes and you’re still gonna see her face. And the beautiful part of that is… the best part… is that when you open your eyes, you might still get to see that face. And who gets to do that?... Who gets to do that? You are… you know what?... You’re into the poetry and you’re into the music and you say you don’t want to write anything… you know why you don’t want to write it? Because you’re selfish and you’re smart. You wanna live it… Go live it, man. Go fucking live it. Don’t read Neruda’s poetry, be Neruda’s poetry. Right? What’s the one you like? The one, the, the, you know, the one with the, uh, body of the woman with the thighs and whatever, right? You can read that all day long… until you’re sitting with your head on her hip and you guys are lying on a floor together listening to old records like you always are, you know, you run your finger down her thigh, she might be naked, she might have jeans on, but then you’re gonna look up at her and she’s gonna look down at you and that’s gonna be the best sex you’ve ever had and you can even have all your clothes on. Sit at the end of the bed, you know… rub her feet, stare at her eyes… that’ll be the best night of your life, you know? Say you’re in another city, say she’s on vacation, say you’re visiting someone, whatever, you’re not together. You talk on the phone. That’s gonna be a better conversation than any of us will ever have. Gibs’ll never have a conversation that matters like that and, you know what, here’s the thing, that doesn’t mean Gibs is not as good a person as you, that doesn’t mean that Gibs has a shitty life, it just means that Gibs is different than you, you know? I’m different than you. You’re different than everybody. But everybody’s different than everybody. You know?”
“Dude… this is helping and not helping at the same time. I feel like anything’s possible… I guess the thing that you’re trying to tell me and it’s gonna be all good and work out, but I also feel like this might be a painful thing, you know, in the middle?”
“Oh, hell yeah it is. It’s gonna be awful. Because if you hurt this bad right now and you’ve not had it,” and he poked you in the chest through the air between you in a way you didn’t think was possible because it felt like he went through you and out the other side. And then he never finished the sentence, because it was clear he needed to think about what he was going to say. But he looked at you. And he pulled his finger back and mimed a sorry. And then he said, “If you think this is bad… wait ‘til you have it and lose it. And, and… then, kid, you really won’t know what to feel, because then you’re gonna try as hard as you can to get it back. And you might not lose it in an instantaneous kind of way. It may just fade away. You don’t know that and you won’t until it’s too late. I mean, I did some horrific stuff to your mother, I’ve done some horrific stuff to you. I think with my dick not my brain, you know that. I mean, I’m ashamed of that, but I’m not denying that… You think with your heart. You try and quiet your head. Use both. And the stuff with your dick will come.”
“Dad, I’m not thinking about sex here. I mean, we’re out here, we’re in the middle of the fuckin’ ocean… and… you know what I’m trying to say.”
“No one ever knows what you’re trying to say, because what you’re trying to say is what all of the writers and the artists and the songwriters, that’s all what they’re trying to say, man. That muse you’re talking about? The girl? The girl exists and doesn’t exist. The girl is, is… you know… the girl’s the thing that makes you get out of bed in the morning. The girl’s the thing at the end of the day why you have a shitty job, you know? But the girl’s the thing that’s gonna make it all worthwhile. And just because it’s a girl doesn’t mean it’s ‘the’ girl, you know what I mean? It’s like, Gibs’ brain’s wired different than yours, you know, Gibs might not ever have the girl you have, but Gibs will have a girl, he’s already got many girls, he’s actually really good with girls, which I don’t fuckin’ get… but you’re sitting out here… You know, it’s like this, man. You’re a walking metaphor.”
“What, what do you mean?”
“Look, I’m not stupid. I mean, I’m not as smart as you, but I’m not dumb. We’ve spent all summer at a prison. You get that, right? This fort’s a prison and you’re coming to me and telling me you can’t escape your own head. I know you know what a metaphor is. You’ve put yourself in a goddamn prison and the warden is some perfect creature you want to spend your life chasing. And I’m telling you, don’t chase a thing that might not be there, because one day, some PYT’s gonna walk into the room and you’re heart’s gonna stop beating. And, and the way she looks at you, and the way she talks to you, and if she connects with you, and goddamn that’ll be amazing because you’re weird, but she might and if she does, that is gonna jumpstart your heart and you are gonna live the rest of your life as a different person.”
“You gathered all that, dad, just from the fact that we’re at a fort that held a couple prisoners in the middle of the fucking ocean?”
“Yeah… yeah. Because you did that to yourself. You locked yourself in that prison. And stop saying ocean! We’re not in the fucking ocean! You’re not a fucking idiot. We’re in the Gulf of Mexico. You know, you’re the smartest kid in the world, yet you use the word ocean synonymously with water, you know how batty that drives me? And I don’t get why you do that.”
“’Cause it’s all the fucking ocean! There’s no difference, it’s all the same water. The water here isn’t the same water in the Atlantic? It’s all just water, man. Plus it just sounds better. And did we just change the subject?”
“I think we did. Do you want to go see what the sea hag is making for dinner?”
“Probably something awful.”
“Are we cool?”
“I don’t know, dad. I’m never gonna be cool.”
“Then we’re cool. ‘Cause, ‘cause, we know that. And that’s all that matters. Let’s go see what the sea hag’s cooking.”
When you got back to the Lady, Mary was in the galley playing cribbage with Gibs and told you it was either leftover spaghetti sandwiches or gravy soup, you looked at Honky for input and he just kind of shook his head as if to tell you there was no right answer. You said you’d go with half the sandwich, but you’d make it yourself so she could take it easy. You figured your dad did you right for a change and you needed to return the favor and told him to hang on topside in the cockpit. You went and grabbed one of your books and wrote down one of its passages.
“What’s this?”
“I figured you tried to be a dad, more or less, so I owed you.”
“Yeah?”
“Read her this tonight. Tell her you came across it yourself. Better yet, just write the first part on a post-it note and stick it to her pillow. No don’t because she’ll assume I put it there and that’d be weird. Yeah. Just read it to her. Maybe you’ll have the kind of sex you think I’ve got to look forward to,” which made him start laughing hysterically. You couldn’t tell if you were being sarcastic or not with that comment.
After handing it to him, he did that thing that annoys most people, where someone reads quietly to themselves out loud when it would be fine just to keep their mouths closed, occasionally highlighting certain phrases “… ‘white hills, white thighs’… ‘To survive myself I forged you like a weapon’… do you think that line is about what we just talked about?”
“I don’t know anything, remember? Maybe read it to her instead of just handing it to her. I’ll try and get Gibs to sleep on the beach with me tonight.”
“… ‘I will persist in your grace’… ‘my boundless desire’… ‘and the infinite ache’…? Holy shit, that’s good. Is this your man, this is that one I was talking about?”
“Yup. Three years older than me or something like that.”
“That’s crazy.”
“The girl’ll do that to you.” You were still holding the copy of Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair in your hand and decided to take it with you tonight, since you never even looked at it in the cell.
*
From the window of the office you could see a lone person in front of the fire. He was playing a guitar to no one in particular.
“Carl, it’s cool if Gibs and I crash out there tonight, right?” he just kind of ignored you unintentionally as he went about his paperwork or whatever he was doing. “Who’s the dude with the guitar? I don’t even see a tent out there.”
“Don’t know. Maybe just some guy who came in today. I didn’t see him. JR must have checked him in. Is he doing something weird?”
“No. he’s just by the fire. It looks like he only has a backpack and his guitar with him. Maybe he’s got a sleeping bag, I don’t know. I’m gonna go see what he’s playing or if he’s just another asshole.”
“Sounds good,” as he continued flipping through some forms, never really looking up. Gibs looked like he had already nodded off on the dock or was completely consumed with his Gameboy he’d bring out for just such occasions.
The song the stranger was playing as you wandered up behind him was sort of like a quieter version of a Jimmy Buffet song, you thought, as he sang “We got tequila, we got beer… we got smoke coming out of our ears” and from the smell of the beach you knew it wasn’t of the angry Yosemite Sam variety.
You sat in front of him, just the two of you, in the darkness, the fire flickering softly between you as he sang the final chorus, which, like everything else on this stupid planet, made you think of her. “I got too many itches to scratch, so I’ll sit right down and think about your back and all the little places you can’t reach… if there’s any way I can move to compliment your particular groove, baby I’m your man… tell me what to do…”
“So that song was really cool, man… are you, like, a musician, or just a tourist or…?”
Eventually, softly, “I’m a, uh, a touring musician…” he spoke in this amazingly quiet, kind of sedated tone. He was completely high, but it seemed like he genuinely contemplated each word. Like each were a thing to be handled gently by his brain, and turned over, and thought about, before he let them out into the world.
“Is that your song?”
“Yeah. I wrote that.”
“Are you from, like… Key West, or…?”
“No, I’m just here on vacation… heard this place was a weird thing to check out. I’m from Colorado.”
“Is this normally what kind of music you play?”
“Pretty much. I like all kinds of music. I like to think that I play all kinds of music, but mainly folk music. What’s your story? Where’s your family?”
“I kind of live here.”
“What?”
“Well, not technically. I live on that boat out there, the middle sized one with the two masts. My dad brought us here a couple of months ago.”
“Why here?”
“I have no idea. I think he’s hiding out from something. We’re leaving in a couple of days though since I go back to school soon.”
“What grade are you in?”
“I’ll be in ninth, so just starting high school. I’m not looking forward to it at all.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“Maybe…” And with that you laughed a little.
“What’s that about?”
“Nothing. It was just something this guy said over there on the beach last month. I guess it stuck.”
“So what’s your deal, man? What do you guys do all day here?”
“We dive. Like a lot. Probably more than most people do in their lifetimes. But I don’t really get along with my dad and stepmom and her nephew, so I mostly wander around the fort and hang out with the rangers and lighthouse keepers.”
“That’s cool. Do you ever get bored?”
“I’m never not. I read a lot and listen to music all day, but you know…”
He took a joint out of his pocket. Kind of gestured to either ask permission or if you wanted some. You gestured, no thanks, but knock yourself out. When he lit it, you could see his tremendous mustache. Or was it a van dyke? Or did it matter at all? He looked like he should have been a minstrel in some Tudor court. Like he was born four hundred years too late. He took a couple of drags, which from the looks of things, he didn’t really need and the two of you simply sat there quietly. His gaze wandered toward the skies, toward the fire, toward the shore.
“It’s a pretty nice beach you got here…”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Go for it.”
“How do you write a song like that?”
“Just, uh, by going with the flow...”
“What does that mean?”
“Just, uh, when the song presents itself, you gotta translate it into, uh... the, uh... the music... and the words... and, uh... put it out there.”
“You know that that doesn't make any sense, right?
“Well… it makes sense after you’ve been doing it for a long time. It makes sense to me.”
“Well… explain it to me then.”
“… what was the question again? How do you write a song?”
“Yeah. Where does it come from?”
“…uh… it comes from the, uh, desire of wanting to have fun.”
“So you don’t ever write sad songs?”
“Sad songs are fun to perform… and they’re fun to sing.”
“But they don’t come from a real place for you?”
“Do the songs come from a place?”
“Yeah… like I mean if you’re writing a sad song, you don’t write it so it will be fun, do you?”
“Well… Just the whole point of like writing a song or doing anything to begin with should be because it’s kind of fun to do. So, you kind of start with that basis and if you think it’s fun to write music and there’s something sad that presents itself, you can write about that… and it’s fun.”
“What does ‘presents itself’ mean?”
“Uh… that’s a good question. I realized I said that a couple times. When I say presents, it’s like, it’s, uh, it’s like if you’re, uh… open… to the universe and you’re listening, um, then you might hear something.”
“Like a muse inspired you or something? Or is it like a thing?”
He turned this one over in his mind for a second, the same way he did when you first started talking. He also took another long drag from his joint and passed it over to you. While he was still thinking you took a miniscule hit and coughed for a minute, which was, of course, to be expected.
“A thing? Uh… yeah, uh… hehe… yeah… it’s, it’s anything fun or passionate. That’s what I mean. The, uh, the question is… uh… I think the question you’re asking is somewhat flawed.”
“Well, I guess I wanna know, like, you know, not, uh…”
“Where does it come from?”
“Well, yeah. You say it presents itself. Like how does it present? What does that mean?”
“Okay. So, we’re in a moment like this. I’m, uh, in a spot where I’m feeling a nice flow of energy, I’m playing my guitar, we’re here on this beach in the middle of nowhere, you know, the stars are out. If I’m, uh… as far as the creative pool… I guess, I’m uh… man… I just keep thinking about what George Harrison said where songwriting is just like fishing. You just dip your hook in… did George Harrison say that? Or, um… maybe it was Ernie and Burt or something, anyway, anyway, they said that you just dip your, your fishing, uh, your lure in, uh, into the stream you might catch something…. Um… Man, I don’t know, I can’t… I can’t think right now, like what… I mean… Um… if I knew the answers to these questions I’d write a book about it and become a bestselling author because I’d teach everyone how to write songs.”
“So they’re just random?”
“Well… I mean… Sometimes you sit down to write music and you have an objective, like, something in the current events of the day or something, like, caused you to write a protest song. Something you’re angry or passionate about. So there’s a very specific form of inspiration… But when I say presents itself… I, um… lately I’ve been writing just whatever comes into my consciousness. So I’m not directing it, um… are you’re mom and dad cool with you smoking reefer and hanging out over here?”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s… just don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”
“Cool… So anyway, I’m not saying I’m sitting down and gonna write a song about this. I don’t mean this right here, but just like this in general. I just kinda live my life and then a song comes in and I write that song.”
“Okay.”
“And, um… yeah, you know, if I had a… um… If I had to tally like all of my compositions, I would say, maybe eighty-five percent of them are all just… they presented themselves to me. And I’ve just translated it and put it into music. And then maybe fifteen percent I sat down and said I’m gonna write a song about this. Sometimes I sit down because I have some time and I’d like to write and I just start diddling around on the guitar or the mandolin, and, um, if I’m not feeling creative just yet, just keep playing, and then something presents itself. Something I never thought of just kind of pops out. Like, ‘Oh, that was a cool lick,’ or something. That’s what I mean by presenting itself.”
“But since you’re the one writing it, but you’re not the one telling the story, is it the universe?”
“If I’m what?”
“You. You’re writing the song… but it’s like the universe told you the story…”
“Yeah. I mean if all you’re doing is, is, is, uh, is I guess writing it on paper and putting music and the right words and syntax to it so it turns into a song. But I mean, yeah, the universe gives us everything. And it gives you the song.”
“So when you write like, uh, when you write about that girl with the itch on her back, do you have somebody specific in mind or is that just, like, a girl for everybody?”
He offered you another hit, which you declined as you already began to feel your lips get a little numb and that you may or may not have been turning into a statue. You wondered if he saw you sliding off the log and onto the ground even though you weren’t moving. You wondered if he could tell that you thought you’d been talking to him for three hours. You wondered these things as he finished off the joint with three long drags that ended with him burning his fingers a little on the end as he tossed it into the fire. He thought for a long moment, probably a few seconds, but in your state it seemed like five minutes went by. He finally exhaled a cloud and answered you.
“That song, um… I guess is, yeah… could be a stock, uh, that person’s a stock character, like a stock character of what maybe your, um, love or lover or companion or whatever would be, so, um…”
“Because I always wondered why, um, like great love songs just say ‘you,’ you know. I mean there’s a few that actually say a name, but for the most part, they’re ‘you.’”
“Yeah… well, that makes it universal... ‘you’niversal, so, uh, everybody listening can feel… can apply it to their life, you know. Um… but I’ve written love songs where I’ve said ‘you’ and it wasn’t about a person, but I had to refer to it, so I just called it a ‘you’, but it was really a mountain. But I… I gave uh… the mountain sort of inspired me. I gave it some human characteristics and wrote about it like it was a lover. So, ‘you’ isn’t always… a person… Does that make any sense?”
“Kind of. Well, I was wondering, because, like, if… I have a friend that’s like a rock star from about ten years ago, and uh, he talked to me a lot about, uh…”
“You have a friend that’s a rock star?”
“Well, sort of…” Father Padre was your friend. “When we’re home on Fort Myers Beach, his boat’s next to ours at the marina. You remember that song from the a few years back called ‘Carried Away?’”
“Wait, your neighbor’s in Bakesale?”
“Well, yeah, sort of. I know he hated it. Emerson was his real thing.”
“Fuck! I love Emerson. They were like Zappa if Zappa did drugs. They’re insane, but damn they’re tight. I know the dude you’re talking about. That’s awesome. That album with the long ass title, or what about ‘Cocksucker Blues?’ That song changed my life.” Who was this dude?
“I know, right? That song and that last record are the best. I think we’re the only ones who feel that way…”
“Nah, cool people feel that way. I’m sorry I interrupted you, man. That’s just kind of a fucking awesome story.” Even though you knew you didn’t tell him a story, simply a fact, but whatever, right?
“No worries. So, anyway, he talked to me a lot about, uh… before I came on the trip he gave me a bunch of mixtapes, and, uh… he seems to be obsessed with this, like, when you got the girl in your head and you’re like a poet or you write love songs, she kind of runs your whole life… and he can’t escape that which is why he thinks these, like, tortured artists have to get it out almost, like, just to silence her…”
“Yeah… to silence her…”
“Because you’re always looking…”
“But really you’re just silencing your own thoughts in your own head…”
“Yeah…”
“Yeah, because, um…”
“Well, it’s like any good love song, with the ‘you’ thing, how much of that ‘you’ is in your head, you know?”
“Mmhh. I think that’s what’s so beautiful about music… about songs… and poetry is that you as the listener or the reader has to assign the ‘you’ to a person for it to make sense for you… but the author… might have had something else in mind.”
“Right…”
“And it’s not important what they had in mind, because what’s important is what you, uh, take from it…”
“Right…”
“So… yeah… good love songs… love songs are good.”
“Yeah… love songs are good…”
“Love songs, man, there’s so many themes to love songs. There’s jealousy, there’s lust, there’s playfulness, there’s adoration, there’s obsession, there’s breaking up songs, there’s new love getting together songs, there’s unrequited love songs… there’s a lot of different emotions that come out of, or… a lot of different modes to talk about love.”
“Is that harder to write than a song about a mountain? Or is it the same kind of love?” You knew whatever he said wouldn’t matter. You knew you could never love a mountain the way you love me.
“Yeah, well… love is love. Um… nothing’s hard or easy to write. There’re no levels. So that was another flawed question. Ha! Sorry, man, but, but see, when you say hard, that implies that I’m trying to do something.”
“Right…”
“And what I’m saying is just be in it and wait for something to present itself. And then you translate it.”
“Right…”
“I mean if you can… if you can, you know… there’s definitely a craft to, uh, being creative and a craft to, um… to songwriting, that you can hone. Your creativity’s like a muscle you can build up and flex, you know, it’ll get bigger or maybe, uh, it withers away when it’s… when you don’t use it, but… that, there’s no replacement for being in the right space at the right time and experiencing… something.”
“Would you do another song for me?”
“Sure, man, do you care about what? Or do you want, like, a cover?”
“No. I want to hear something I’ve never heard before. I’ve been living in this prison here for like three months and have kind of gone through everything. Surprise me.”
“Actually, I think I’ve got something for that…
Well I searched my soul for the answer,
I flew around the world to ask a sage
I prayed to every god that man made, lord,
but I still have no key to my cage
Raised by the church to feel spirit,
a tie around my neck as I prayed
I cried lord oh lord if this is what’s in store,
you’re no lord, you’re no lord, you’re no lord
So I ran like the wind to the mountains,
listened to the raven on the breeze
I holler’d at the stars and stared at the moon,
with hope I’d find my key
Now a young man’s got his convictions,
explore every realm you can find
But you won’t find nothin’ you can lean on,
with those thoughts piled high in your mind
I’ll break down the dam that contains me,
take a wreckin’ ball to the wall in my head,
Cause that key’s inside I can feel it glowin’ bright,
and the myth that was me is now dead.”
“Wow, that was awesome, man.”
“Thanks, dude.”
“So… what was that about? I mean for you.”
“Oh, that was just a personal song about, uh… discovery.”
“Like, what do you mean?”
“Oh, like, uh, reworking your paradigm, shifting your paradigm…”
“Like the way you see the world?”
“Yeah. The way you see and feel the world. So tell me about your man next door, you said he gave you some tapes and talked to you about a girl. Is this a girl you’re into or his woman or something?”
“So he was in Bakesale and he wrote some of their stuff. I think he actually wrote ‘Carried Away,’ so I think he’s set for life unless he spent it all right then, I’m not sure. His boat’s a dump, but I always thought he was just a hermit.”
“That’s funny…”
“So anyway he, he… he seemed obsessed with this notion. He called it ‘the girl’ and he gave me all these love songs in this mix and now I can’t get this idea of the girl out of my head… And… and, and…. I look for her in everything and I just feel like if… like I think I found her and I can’t have her… and I wonder if that’s why people write songs like that, like, if they’re in the same boat. I don’t know…”
“Well… there’s always gonna be another girl… so… don’t let it drive you crazy.”
“That’s it. ‘Don’t let it drive me crazy?’”
“I mean, does the, is, does… does… You’re saying that there’s a girl in your mind?”
“Like…”
“… a fantasy girl you’ll never be able to find?”
“Yeah, I mean it may or may not exist. How do you deal with that? Is that what songs are about?”
“Could be… I mean, how do you deal with the fact that aliens may or may not exist?”
“Aliens don’t talk to me in my head…”
“Yeah, well, um, the girl…” He rubbed his neck for a bit and looked at the stars, again looking like he was thinking through the words. “If you’re searching… I don’t know what I was going to say…”
“No. That’s perfect. It makes sense.”
“No. I’m kind of fascinated with this topic though, because I don’t think, I don’t think you ever find ‘the girl’…”
“That’s sad.”
“Well, what’s the, uh… that’s assuming that the point of your life is to find someone else, um, I guess it’s sad, but if the point of your life is to, uh, is to love and live, you know, then…” Then silence. Then finally. “If you’re always writing about a girl I guess that makes your writing a little one dimensional. I mean, I’m sure there’s a lot of different takes on ‘the girl,’ the one, whoever this muse is, this mystical character of love is, but… um… maybe that’s just a phase of your life and you write a lot of love songs about a girl. Um… odds are you’re gonna evolve and you might want to write about something else, but writing love songs for women is great practice for writing other music… Hell, it may be good practice for just talking up women, I don’t know.”
“Huh…”
“You know… if you only want to write one kind of song, you know… that’s cool, but it’s like your experiences, right… right? You’re gonna… you’re gonna write toward your experiences… and you’re young, so maybe your experiences are few, I don’t know, maybe if you’re shallow you’re gonna write like that.”
“Hmm.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I mean, there was a point in my life when I was on the river everyday… and, uh…”
“What does that mean?”
“Uh… I was a river guide in Colorado, and actually out west for sixteen years and every day I would take people down the river and sit in the back of a raft and, uh, be in the canyon and that was my experience everyday so I drew a lot of inspiration from that. And you get all these river metaphors in your music… and nature themes.”
“Hmm.”
“And I was stuck… until I started varying my day to day experiences. I wasn’t able to break out of that phase of songwriting. Now I’m writing more about women. And about death. And about, um, self-deprecation. And… um… human things… that aren’t just reverence for nature. You know, jaw dropping reverence for the, uh… for the river. I mean, there is a… I don’t know… I, uh, I went… that was a phase of my life and I went through that and I’ll always carry that experience with me in my songwriting. But if I, uh… you know, when I went to Nashville a few months ago and experienced that city and that community, that affected my writing. It would affect my writing quite a bit. But, I don’t know, I like to surround myself with nature. It helps me, uh… listen… to, uh… to the universe and try to get some cool songs. But then again, I feel like if I was in a noisy environment like a big city where I had to focus a little more on listening to that, I could be more successful. It’s an extreme environment. Like, I went through Miami on my way here and that’s just so different than this beach, you know. You know what I mean?”
“I don’t know, maybe… I’m from nowhere…”
“Well, swing it backwards, man. I don’t know. Check out the city.”
“When was the last time you wrote a song?”
“Uh… this morning.”
“What was it about?”
“Uh… it didn’t, uh… it was just a melody. So… but a lot of times my melodies come out with little words and phrases, and, um…”
“So when were talking about love songs… are like lyrics and music equal in that way or is it different to, you know, articulate, like, a feeling musically or through words… if you’re doing both?”
“The love songs… uh… with any topic of songs, the words should be painted with the music. You should paint the words with music, you know? So if it’s a breakup love song, maybe it’s in a minor key and has a sadder melody. But if it’s a happy happy new love sunshiny daydream love song, it’s probably in a major key and it might have a bouncy Sesame Street type song vibe to it.”
“Like, what is one of those?”
“Oh, I don’t know, like, uh, ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand.’”
“Okay…”
“Yeah…” His glazy, rolling eyes and your unintentional swaying meant you were both somewhere on this beach and not.
“What’s the saddest love song you know? Or is that, like, a contradiction?”
“It’s okay, you embrace the contradiction. You know? Life is one big paradox… so, you can have a sad love song that you love to listen to, you know? The saddest love song ever written… that I’ve heard? It’s probably, uh… ‘If You Could Read My Mind’ by Gordon Lightfoot. You know that one?”
“I think. Is that the guy who wrote about the shipwreck?”
“Yeah.”
“I do know that song. Sort of. It’s the one that sounds like that Whitney Houston song, right?”
“What?”
“You know… ‘the children are the future, never to walk in anyone’s shadow…’”
“‘I I should fail, if I succeed…?’ Holy shit. It does sound like that, doesn’t it? Yeah. That one.”
“Why?”
“Because… oh, man… it’s just so earnest and matter of fact, you know? And the melody of that song and the way he sings it is just so nonchalant, but the themes are so heartbreaking, but the nonchalant approach to the melody and the words makes you comfortable in that this guy’s sort of… that, that whoever the song is about is just dealing with it… I don’t know.”
“What’s it about?”
“I haven’t heard it in a while… but, oh… it’s about not having, uh… It’s about loving someone and not having that love returned to you from that person…” And then there was another long silence. You were in a moment that mattered you thought. Even as the smoke came out of both of your ears, you said a silent prayer that you wouldn’t forget this. “… and then there’s this great song by, uh, Joni Mitchell called ‘A Case of You’ and in the chorus she says, ‘I could drink a case of you and still be on my feet…’ What do you think that means?”
“…I have no idea… it means… What’s the rest of the context for that statement?”
“I think that that one statement right there, ‘I could drink a case of you and still be on my feet’…”
“I don’t know… I’ve never… that you don’t… or that someone doesn’t affect you?”
“Exactly. It means their potency… like, there’s no potency if love should make you drunk, you know? Love is intoxicating, man… and yet, she just, uh… isn’t intoxicated anymore. You should listen to that song. It’s a good one. A lot of people, um… a lot of my colleagues that are Joni Mitchell fans will listen to that song and they’ll just think it’s a great little love song, but it’s actually… she’s really ripping on the guy. Hahaha… you know?”
“I get that… this may be a weird question, but since you’re a musician you might know. Is there like a term, like a psychological term for this, when, like, every time you’re in a mood or state of mind or feeling some particular way, like every song you hear is about that or you feel like you need to hear only one song just over and over and over and it’s the only thing that makes sense. Like, like, the song you hear connects to what’s in your head. I don’t know how much of that you project or what…”
“‘Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.’”
“Did you just make that up?”
“Nah. It was the guy who wrote Les Misérables. I have no idea where he said it though or even if he really did. I saw it written on the wall of a bar somewhere. Maybe it wasn’t him.”
“Victor Hugo or Andrew Lloyd Weber?”
“How old are you, man?”
“I just turned fourteen.”
“You’re a weird kid, you know that, right?”
“I get that a lot.”
“I bet… What was the question?”
“I was asking you about when-”
“Here’s the thing. The oldest text known to man is called the I Ching, it’s an ancient Chinese text and, uh… it’s an oracle. You ask it a question and then through a series of, uh, rolling the bones or two sided coins or whatever you come up with a hexagram that correlates with a chapter in this book, the I Ching. It’s also known as The Book of Changes. And when you’re rolling the dice, you meditate on the question, and then when you get sent to the chapter, uh… you are also having the question in your mind and you read these poems. And the more specific a question you have, the more crazy these poems appear to you because they’re very, um, they’re speaking to your situation. But it’s all in your head. Have you ever read the I Ching?”
“Uh-uh.”
“You’ve never checked it out? It’s amazing.”
“I’ve read a lot, but it never came up in middle school.”
“Oh, that’s, duh. You just told me you’re fourteen. Sorry.”
“It’s cool. I know I’m weird. Most people don’t talk to me like I’m a kid.”
“Anyway, you should check it out.” And then he belched in a way that made you consider throwing up in your mouth a little. “Well…”
“I had something else to ask you, then you did that and now I lost my train of thought…”
“Hah! But, I know what you’re asking about. That’s how synchronicity works too. Uh… if you think, like, the lights are moving to the music or… Um… I think sa lot of that is our minds looking for coincidence, or, or, looking for uh… meaning… in random things. And sometimes the more random something is, the more meaningful it can be because of your mindspace. I think that’s what you’re talking about?”
“Do you think that kind of lining things up with what’s in your head is good or bad for you?”
“It’s neither… it’s just a certain way of looking for patterns. Like when you’re floating down the Colorado River and these canyon walls are getting taller and taller and taller… um… you start to see faces in the walls and, uh, because we’re always looking for two eyes and a nose, you know? We’re always looking for others out there. It’s just something programmed in or minds. I don’t know why… It’s like looking at shapes in clouds, you know? Seeing an elephant or Elvis in the clouds because you want to see something familiar… Like how an outlet looks like a face.”
“Do you think that’s why the old Greeks or whatever looked at the stars and saw shit?”
“Yeah, man. They had to derive meaning. You know that, uh, human consciousness wants to know why, you know? Why why why why? And that probably is the most important question… or the most looming question. How is easy. And what is easy. And when is pretty easy. But why. That’s uh… that’s the deep dark question. You ever ask anybody why they’re doing something? ‘Why did you write that song?’ Just ‘cause I wrote the song doesn’t mean I thought about why I wrote it. I just wrote it. It was fun. You know? So why is, uh… we’re always looking for a why why why why, so… Part of looking up at the stars and giving those figures, uh, shapes and names…” While he was saying this his eyes drifted heavenward and he completely lost his train of thought as he got caught up in looking at what he was talking about. “Huh… I don’t know where I was going with that… You know, I had a vision of a girl in my head all through elementary school, junior high, you know, high school… that, uh… no girl I knew would ever live up to, so I know what you’re saying…”
“And you knew that?”
“Yeah. And I knew that and then I sort of surrendered the fantasy ‘cause I knew that no one would ever, uh… I knew I’d never find that person. But once I surrendered tha fantasy, then I found a really cool person. And, um… what’s the old Paul Simon lyric? ‘If you took all the girls I knew when I was single… brought ‘em all together for one night… you know it’d never match my sweet little imagination… and everything is… something black and white?’ I can’t… um… ‘Kodachrome?’”
“Yeah. ‘Kodachrome.’”
“Yeah, so, the the the, uh, this eternal girl, you know, the muse is all in your mind.”
“How do you get it out though if you don’t want her there?”
“Why would you not want her there?” Silence. Staring. More silence. “Because really she’s still there in my mind… but it’s not… uh…”
“What?”
“It, uh… it doesn’t mean I’m gonna search forever for something I know could never exist outside of my mind… Why would you search… why would you spend your life searching for something you know can’t exist outside of your mind? You’ve already found it. It’s in your mind. Let her stay there. Let her help you be a better you.”
“I’m thinking that may be the plan…”
“What’s that book you’ve been holding this whole time?”
“It’s my favorite book. It’s a bunch of love poems by Pablo Neruda.”
“Far out, man. They any good?”
“Trust me. He had the girl like no one else. Take it. It’s yours.” And as you were handing it over to him you tripped over your own feet and dropped it into the fire. For some reason, neither of you said anything. You just watched it burn away and you assumed there was a metaphor in there for something. And then, without saying another word to him, you wandered off into the night looking for Gibs. When you found him half asleep on the dock you could see your dad wandering around topside, so you assumed it wouldn’t matter if you guys went back early.
*
“What were you doing hanging out on the beach for so long last night?” Mary was in one of those moods where you could tell she felt like being your stepmom and not Gibs’ aunt, so she interrupted cooking the Veg-All and rice for a moment and turned to you sitting at the table reading something or other. You left Velvet’s “Sweet Jane” playing as you pulled down your headphones. “We could see you out there. Were you out there alone with a fire?”
“There was, uh, this musician from Colorado. He was a cool guy.”
“Really. We only saw you out there. Was he by himself?”
“Yeah. He was cool.”
“Were you smoking weed again? You know what your dad thinks about that.”
“I know.”
“What did you and this invisible guy talk about?”
“Music… writing… stuff… Just… uh… perchance to dream, you know?”
“What?”
“The girl. We talked about the girl.”
“What girl?”
“…aye, there’s the rub.” When you pulled your headphones back up to your ear it was now Neil’s “Only Love Can Break Your Heart.” Father Padre was just fucking with you at this point.
Fucking Father Padre.
*
As you rolled on under heaven’s holy sky and in the dark, somewhere ahead of you, Gibs lumbered and danced with the light and none of the three of you had any idea what he was doing and the beauty was that no one cared enough ever to find out why he seemed tangled up in nothing and for no reason whatsoever you felt lonely, with that sinking feeling inside you, the way you watched Gibs, the way you looked at your dad behind the helm, Mary and the dogs beside him, the dry turtles in the rearview, the way the dawn’s horizon looked beautiful, the way it cut the world in half and was a living, breathing mural covering everything, all telling you this wasn’t it, that this wasn’t right, because you realized the girl wasn’t real and the girl a few weeks back was a tourist who thought the smart weird kid was interesting, so she couldn’t be real, because it wouldn’t make sense, so no, it just happened to be the first time you saw me, the first time I manifested myself to you, the first time I walked in the room for you and you will meet me a few more times in your life, but I’m not going to tell you which ones work in your favor and which don’t, because you will never go a day without questioning how to have me or how to keep me or how to drive me away or how to silence me or how to beg me to come back to you and you know your poetry won’t help and your music won’t help and you will hear me in a song and your heart will swell and empty and beat your head into submission and when you hear that song, you won’t want to hear any other on earth, because when I’m with you I will unclutter all your thoughts and make you feel a joy that can only be felt by infants who haven’t been touched by the world’s cynicism and when I’m with you you’ll continually be looking for ways to hush your confusions and when I’m not there, you’ll plead and cry and beg for me to come back into your life and you’ll beg me for direction and you’ll beg me to hold your heart in my hands and do with it whatever I want and you’ll want to rip it out of your chest and hand it to me, so whoever I am at the time will be the last thing you’ll ever see and somehow the thought of the girl you’ll be looking at right then will be its own cure and poison, your own pharmakological prison of flesh and blood and tears and bone and dust and brick and water and space and nothing where she will be the thing, where I will be the thing, that destroys you, but the thought of her, of me, will be the thing that makes you keep walking that long road as you search for me in the face and conversation of every woman who makes you breathe hard or when you fight to get back the ones you let drift away, or drove away, like so many unread words quietly floating over still waters under purple skies.
*
You’ll remember the following moments with your father both with clarity and confusion and you’ll always think of the scene in medias res. “… all I’m saying is you’re too smart and too lucky to not give a fuck about anything the way you do. Or at least the way you say you do. I’m tired of you acting like everything is awful. Everything’s great. Get over yourself!”
“You want me to give a fuck, dad? Fine!”
“Don’t tell me, kid! Tell the universe! Shout it to the oceans and wake everybody up. Let the world know!”
“You keep reminding me we’re not in the ocean!”
“Good. Make that the first thing you give a fuck about!”
“Fine! I will give a fuck. Many fucks. Many many fucks. More fucks than anyone else out there. I’ll start fucking giving a fuck about everything! The fucks I give are going to blow minds and melt faces. I’m going to give so many fucks they’re going to give their own fucks. The fucks I give will tear through me and explode from my head and heart and rain themselves down upon everyone’s everything. All the gods of Heaven, Valhalla, and Olympus combined will tremble before the fucks I give. The earth will open itself to be unburdened by the fucks I give. The spines of the innocent will shatter from the fucks I give. The execrations of the fucks I give will silence false prophets and terrify the sinful multitudes. The ripple effect of the fucks I give will birth new universes and galaxies. Existence itself will cleave and sunder in the wake of the fucks I give. And even if it is a trail of mundane banality and mediocrity, you shall know me by the fucks I give.”
“Now sit down and tell me you’re going to become a fucking writer.”
“No!”
“Fine!... ‘execrations?’ Seriously? What’d you get in English last year?”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly.”
“A sixty-two.”
“So an F.”
“No. More like a D that’s not really giving it his all…”
“I don’t know what to do with you.”
“Luckily you don’t have to. I feel sorry for mom though…”
“Me too…” It was just the two of you in the cockpit, sails and sea the only sound, Mary, Gibs, and the dogs asleep downstairs. You didn’t really ever think about if your rant woke them up or not. Your dad got a kick out of it though. “Seriously though, why do you refuse to write? I know I’m beating a dead horse, but, Christ… You’re so damn smart and good with words it scares the hell out of me.” He let you try and navigate. Since the boat was only under sail, he figured it would be slow enough for you to not fuck up. He saw you teaching yourself at the desk a few times this summer. You fucked up. You miscalculated by several hours and about 120 miles and had he not caught your mistake you would have had the Lady cabotaging up the coast toward Tampa or somewhere.
“I don’t know. I guess I just want to keep what’s inside me inside me, you know?”
“No.”
“I know it doesn’t make any sense.”
“Yeah. Well, I know you could write something as good as all those people you run around quoting.”
“I don’t know.”
“I do.”
“I did write a poem this summer. Well, not really a story or a poem. I don’t know. It’s just something I wrote about the girl. Just a thing.”
“The girl, huh?”
“You’re the grown up. Don’t you know it’s always about a girl? All it seems like I talk about is the girl.”
“Can I read it?”
You silently went downstairs and grabbed the small notepad in which you had written the only thing you had ever written that really mattered to you. It was also the only thing you had ever written that had a certain and specific someone in the world you wished to give it to and you knew you couldn’t and you knew she’d never see it. You handed it to him. He read it. Right there in the cockpit in front of you, the notepad resting on the wheel. When you could tell he got to the end of the words, he flipped the last page, as if there would be more. Or perhaps something else. He looked at you blankly and said nothing. You said nothing. He reread it. He closed the pad. He sat quietly, his hands nestled into the wheel’s wooden crevices. He stared, consciously away from you, at the nothing that moved slowly toward you. You could see tears abseiling his puffy reddish cheeks, losing their way and getting sucked into the jungles of his beard. He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes and face. He handed you the pad, which you opened, ripped out the pages with the words and crumpled them in one hand before releasing them over the side to watch them float away in the nothing you were slowly leaving behind. He nodded his head. “Yeah.” “Yeah,” he quietly replied.
Will you do that? Will you live your life that way? Will you choose to give a fuck? Because if you don’t, your life may be potentially awful. You’re gonna let life lead you by the hand and you’re not gonna be at the wheel. I’m gonna take you over and you’ll be miserable. You’ll never have poetry in your life like you want, you’ll never have an adventure of the heart like in the songs you hear. You’ll never do any of those things. You’ll live in the tiny hovel of your mind. You’ll move into the darkest cave of your own soul from which there will be no escape. You don’t want that. You are not Carl. You are not Father Padre. You are young enough to have a chance to change this and start giving all the fucks. Come on, kid, get your shit together. For there is a profundity of beauty in this world you will never experience if you don’t get out of your own head.
You had left this place long ago you felt, but still understood its power as a prison. Let go of it, you thought. Watch it burn away like those white hills and white thighs. And yet you had no intention of returning home. You were, simply, gone. You wanted to be nowhere and everywhere and see the world without moving.
Over the breeze and the sounds of sails and water slapping at the hull you could hear him whisper to himself.
“the girl…”
“Yup.”
“…the girl…”
“Do you think like that all the time and dumb it down for the rest of us?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Sometimes… I don’t know.” Then you sat in silence with him, until, “…do you have any of Father Padre’s mixes he made you left?”
“I saved one.”
“Go put it in. Let’s at least listen to a side. You and me. You should save the last side for a moment alone, when it will matter. I think you know what I mean. I think that’s what old Padre Padre would’ve wanted.” And as the two of you sat there, the tape rolled for a minute or so and the Lady cut through that quiet, ever moving horizon line that covers the entirety of the world. “Is there anything on it or is it just blank?”
“You’ve got to wait a little. He puts random pauses between songs. Sometimes there’s hardly a second between them, but then it might go several minutes.”
“Why?”
“Because of the spaces between…”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing…”
“What are we gonna hear?”
“I have no idea.”
“Really?”
“They’re not labeled, so I just hear the songs as they come.”
“What’s that about?”
“Don’t worry about it,” right as “Naïve Melody” hit your ears. You knew it was the live “Stop Making Sense” version because of the synthy notes and because you’re you. In the darkness ahead somewhere you could picture Byrne turning on that stupid lamp. And as it sunk in, he spoke to you in a hushed tone, full of his swallowed breath. You’d never heard him really talk like this. Was it the song? Was it what you wrote about me? You couldn’t tell if he was whispering to you or to himself.
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry I’m a shitty dad… um… uh… I… I’m sorry I don’t know how to talk to you…” the less we say about it the better “…I’m sorry I’m not there for you and I don’t know what to do and I can’t see either of those things changing any time soon…” make it up as we go along “…and I’m sorry you feel the way you feel and I wish you didn’t, or maybe I’m jealous and wish I could feel the way you feel, because you seem to experience the world on a level I’ll never understand and I don’t think most people will ever understand…” feet on the ground “…and maybe that’s wonderful, maybe that’s beautiful, or maybe it’s a tornado inside your head that you’ll never be able to escape, but…” head in the sky “…um… I’m sorry if this summer was harder for you than it needed to be… that was never what I wanted…” it’s okay, I know nothing’s wrong “…I’m just…”
“I know, dad… I know…”
“This must be the place, huh…”
“Yup. And I guess we’re already there…”
“Fucking Father Padre…”
“You have no idea…”
“Don’t try to get rid of the girl… keep her forever… be grateful…”
“I know…”
“…just… the girl…”
Maybe I’ll come along one day and sneak into your heart over time and you won’t even know I was there and then one day you’ll realize you can’t live without me and you won’t know how you lived without me for so long. And then one day I’ll be gone. Or then one day you’ll get tired of me and you’ll push me away and you’ll ask me to leave, and I might for a little while. Or then you’ll find me in someone else. Or then you’ll want to go back to the person you once found me in. Or then I might become someone else for you again. And every time you meet me anew, I might make you feel something you didn’t know could be felt. I might make you see the world differently. I might make you want to be a different kind of man. But there’ll be no getting rid of me. And for that I’m sorry.
*
Eleven hours earlier, for reasons seemingly entirely clear, you pathologically headed north, away from this place, away from then toward some when. In the world in which we travel, where we are endlessly creating ourselves, you looked up at the sails, billowed and swelled and pushing you north under nature’s power and you thought of Longfellow and his clouds of canvas and how all shall be well in these days of yours and all shall be good in a world where the girl exists and all shall be right in a place where the earth still moves under you and carries the world’s most heavy weight and burden.
10.
You stared at Tib’s nose for a while as he stared at the bar. A minim of sweat dangled, threatening suicide, an escape from the heat and dank and horrid of which Miami airport currently smelled, as mildew mixed with b.o. and aggravation in the humidity. You thanked him for his phone, and slid it back into his beltcase for him. “What are we doing here?” he mumbled into his lukewarm vodka. You knew he wasn’t talking to you. You began to wander back to the bookstore or the shantytown or a window that wasn’t broken or anywhere but this moment. You could hear the one-sided conversation behind you continue. “Christ… w hat am I doing…?” You looked at him, in his misery, and thought of the rest of them, your mom, Pista, Ingrid, Dave, Susan or whatever her name was, all piled on the floor near the gate, sleeping on those tiny airplane blankets, thought of the way you all had been eating potato chips and cookies and drinking warm sodas and warm bottled water for three days, and you decided to tell no one about your dad’s call.
*
When you got back to Fort Myers Beach and immediately went to shore, Gibs beelined to a 7-11 for a hot dog and Dr. Pepper. While he was inside, you called your mom from the payphone, and got into an hour long “here’s what I’ve done for the last three months” synoptic conversation, of which you won’t a thing. What you will remember is this part:
“Are you sick of diving yet?”
“I don’t know. We did a lot, that’s for sure.”
“Well, you start school in six days. Is there anything you want to do?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been doing nothing for so long… honestly, I’ll probably just hang out at the house with Quincy and watch a bunch of TV and see if Mama wants to take me to a movie.”
“Well, tough shit, kiddo. I’m picking you up tomorrow morning and we’re going to Mexico.”
“What?”
“Yeah. You, me, your uncles, you remember their lawyer friend Dave and his girlfriend. We’re gonna go to Cozumel. You remember my friend Ingrid I work with? Tib starting seeing her. She’s gonna come to.”
“What?”
“Stop saying what. I’ll bring you clean clothes. You don’t have to do anything. Just get your passport from your dad and be ready at 8:30. Are you at the Marina or the anchorage?”
“We’re in the anchorage. Dad’s not sure if he’s going back to the marina or if they’re going to go to St. Thomas or somewhere.”
“Well, I don’t want to be flailing my arms around on that dock trying to get your attention, so just be there.”
“Mom, why are we doing this?”
“Why not?”
This, of course, was August 22nd, when a little boy called Andrew decided to grow up into a big bully and punch south Florida in the fucking face as hard as he could.
And six days later you were still trapped in Miami Airport, not really able to leave and head back to the Cape and start school and in limbo waiting on a plane from Mexico to arrive at some unknown point. Airports are like what Father Padre called the spaces in between, places of uncomfortableness where nobody’s happy, but, forgivingly, no one stays forever. This is why people hate airports. You’re nowhere and you’re at the mercy of a universe over which you have no control. They exist outside of the structure of normal life. Not where you’ve been, not where you’re going. That’s why liminality sucks. Humidity’s like that. Either rain or don’t. Shit or get off the pot, Mother Nature, you thought.
*
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. It’s just really hot.”
“I can’t believe Tib’s phone is still working and not dead yet. I tried Pista’s and it was dead. Any news on the plane or anything?”
“Not since the last time I talked to you.”
“Hey, so, I know you are going to Mexico when they fix the airport, but I just got some news you’d want to know.”
“Yeah?”
“JR radioed me from Garden Key. He said he wanted you to know. I’m sorry. Your friend Carl, the ranger….
“Yeah?”
“I have no idea how to say this.”
“What?”
“… he’s dead.” In nineteen years, seven months, four weeks, and three days, you will be same age your father was when he told you this. When you think of this moment, it will forever be imbued with visions of him. Your father, not Carl. Your father, who’ll only exist as a memory. Your father, who wore a thong on too-regular a basis with too much confidence. Your father, who you’ll want to blame for making you the man you are but can’t bring yourself to. Your father, who while going on random dives would say things to you like, “This’ll make it interesting if I die and you have to come up with a story,” and then proceed to get completely naked save for his gear, which stopped once you started making a point to poke his dick with your tickle stick whenever he did it. Your father, who you’ll always be haunted by in name as yours will forever simply be an echo of his.
“What do mean dead? Are you fucking with me?”
“It’s not… I’m not.”
“What happened?”
“He apparently killed himself.”
“Oh my God….”
“Are you okay?”
“How did he do it? He just didn’t… I just don’t… How did he do it? Are they sure it wasn’t an accident or something?”
“I don’t know. He meant to do it, that’s all I know. It wasn’t an accident. JR found him. He had a picture of a family on the floor underneath him. JR said he didn’t know who they were…”
“Yeah…”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah…”
“I know you really liked Carl and he seemed to really connect with you. You really seemed to remind him of himself I think you told me. I mean he seemed to really like you. Are you okay?”
“Dad….”
“Yeah?”
“Where’s Zealand?”
“Huh?”
“Like, ‘Old Zealand.’ There’s a New Zealand. Where’s the old one? It’s been bugging me all day.”
“I just told you Carl’s dead.”
“I know… but I have nothing to say to that right now. I have absolutely no idea even what to think about that.”
“Are you okay?”
“I… um…”
“I love you.” Four hundred and fourteen days, six hours, and eleven minutes later you would stop talking for two years. Apparently, you failed him as a son. One thousand, two hundred and eighteen days after that you would fail him again. And you stopped speaking again. Nine hundred and fifty-four days after that you would forget what his voice sounded like. And now the memories of your father visit you with your own voice. In that way you have become him. If only, mercifully, for you.
*
One day, you’ll remember wondering if you could outgrow crazy. Or how maybe it would just ripen in you and take you over and wither you to nothing. Like time-lapse photography of a melting tomato under the hot sun. Your mother once said you seemed to compartmentalize your life better than most people. But in a bad way. Like you had “in your head” and “everything else” and never the twain should meet. She said you’d move away as soon as you could. She was right. She said you’d always be a man of many cities. She never warned you that you’d always be searching for the island that appears on no map. You’ll remember thinking about how when you were sleeping in your bunk on the Lady, outside the hull the water would just radiate outwards forever. Past the harbor and the horizon, just a flatlining wave of nothingness as drifting and plain and continuing as everything else in the universe. You thought about when you met an old man a month earlier who briefly mentioned he had a theory that he would die in the sun when his time would come. You would never know how that turned out. You thought about the man you met around the same time who told you a story of when he was a boy and chronically sleepwalked and once woke up to find himself sitting up straight on the edge of a bed in a motel room, a couple quietly making love in the bed next to him, completely oblivious to his presence. When he wandered back to his own room, his parents were snoring away and never knew he was gone. Apparently that sort of thing was as normal to him as sleeping on a metal bench was to you. You’ll think about something you loved deeply, that moment where you think you’re still awake but you’re really asleep. The way people fall asleep in front of televisions. The way you fall asleep in public sometimes. You have no idea if there is a word for that. You really don’t care. You wanted to live in that little middle space forever. You wondered if there were drugs that make you feel like that. You’ll spend a fair amount of time trying to find out. When the lights would go out and the Lady’s just sitting in the dark and there’s no moon, was she really there? Had the darkness swallowed you all? Would it make a sound? A vacuum that just gets eaten by the night. You’ll remember assuming the enormity of the empty ocean was something Gibs struggled with. You loved the idea that you could seemingly go forever in one direction without end. You’ll remember it making Mary nervous, the openness of it all. You always knew you were really never that far from something, some bit of land, some bit of civilization that could take you away from the nothing. You’ll remember wondering if you got lost, how long would it take to realize you were lost? If you had zero frames of reference, how would you know when you’d gotten off track? That’s the gift the sea gives. Its endless capacity for terror and hope. Did Crackers and Honky obsess about the concept of the eternal? Was that even imaginable? Would you swallow the pills one at a time or all at once? Just knock back the whole bottle? What if you choked doing that? Could you call for help? Would you chew them up? Try to swallow the crunched up chewed chalky bits scraping at your throat? Would it hurt only for an instant, or maybe not at all? You’ll remember thinking those things and some day before the day you even thought those thoughts, deciding that if you just stood in front of a mirror long enough you could watch yourself go completely insane. You’ll remember thinking about how Father Padre’s boat contained no records or record player or stereo or anything and you’ll remember thinking that you never really thought about that or assumed anything or never pursued it and how it never needed any explanation. Sort of like the way the girl in July’s parents never showed up or even seemed to exist and then how she was gone just as quietly as she arrived and how you thought deeply about none of it. You’ll remember a day when a quiet sterility hung over the fort. Over everything in sight. In the distance, a soundless storm moved somewhere. Maybe it was the day after the day you remember, perhaps it was its tomorrow. You’ll remember arguing passionately with Guy about whether or not “Summer of ‘69” is a good song. You voted no, but could not come up with one good reason as to why. You’ll remember Joe being the first person you ever saw get so drunk that they actually threw up and passed out in front of you. You’ll remember Elizabeth streaking totally naked and screaming around the entire moat twice on the fourth of July. You’ll remember Doug being annoyed the way someone gets annoyed when someone leaves the toilet seat up. You’ll remember JR seeming to talk about himself quite a bit in the third person. Like he was always reminiscing about someone he knew. Like a character in a story. Like he wasn’t present in his own life. It was sad. But it’s what made your night in the boat with him special, because you felt like he was consciously telling you about himself in a way he rarely did with the other idiots. You’ll remember the way he said “I” that night. You’ll remember, how before you left Cape Coral, being faced with the realization that for the next however many weeks you were staring down the prospect of having nothing to do except talk to your dad, Mary, or Gibs, you decided you ought to introduce yourself to the locals as quickly as possible. You’ll remember in late June when you asked your dad to leave you on a sandbar all day with a bottle of water and nothing else and the maniac did. You’ll remember only later learning you were there for four hours. You’ll remember it being the worst sunburn of your life and how waterlogged your right ear was from falling asleep on the shore as the tide came in. You’ll remember wondering if it was a philosophical question to ask if there was no way to prove there was a dead person behind every door, could there be? You’ll remember even bringing it up in conversation, but you have no idea who it was with. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I mean, you go into a house. Like your grandmother’s or something. And she’s sick. You call her name. There’s no answer. You approach her bedroom door, which is closed. She could be dead on the other side. You have no idea.”
“Why would you even be thinking about that?”
“I’m not talking specifically about my grandmother or your grandmother. Just think of an old person or whatever. Could they be dead behind that door?”
“I guess.”
“Right. You won’t know until you open it.”
“Okay...”
“Okay. But what you can’t tell me is that that’s not a possibility for every door you confront.”
“What, that your grandmother’s dead on the other side?”
“No. That anyone is dead on the other side. We could go somewhere and see if a door is closed. You can’t tell me no one is dead on the other side until we open the door.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It makes complete sense and it terrifies you.”
“What terrifies me? Not you being weird. Everyone’s used to that.”
“No. The fact that you will now wonder if you’ll confront a dead body whenever you next open a random door. You’re gonna think that. I put that there.” Whoever you were with probably just did one of those deep breath head shake things that you’d come to learn meant the conversation was exhausted. Nine years, four months, eight days, three hours, and four minutes later, someone will tell you a story about a cat and a box and a German, who you assumed also made his friends take breaths and shake heads. You’ll remember a lot of staring at nothing. The sky. The horizon. Whatever. You’ll remember discovering the reason people stand on the ground and look up instead of the other way around. You’ll remember wondering why whenever you did that you thought about your place in the universe, because introspective’s the most obvious word and you wondered why everyone did that and you hated that you were no different. You’ll remember thinking it was funny that you only took eleven pictures the entire summer, and they were of nothing worth remembering. You’ll remember thinking it was the weirdest feeling, the sun was rising, you were sleeping in the cockpit and your head was pounding, like a tiny lightning bolt was bouncing around in there just pinballing out of control, and it was strange because you were hot and sweaty and your hands and feet were clammy and gross like they always were in that way you’ll always be embarrassed about when you’re older and you’ll be self-conscious of when you’re in bed with a woman, but you were also really cold and you didn’t have a blanket and your neck hurt because you didn’t have a pillow and you’d been lying flat on the bench seat, and you realized when your tossing and turning woke you up it was around six in the morning and you assumed since you’d been sleeping outside so much your brain and body were getting used to waking you up as the sun rose, and you had no idea where he was but you could hear Gibs’ snoring coming at you from all directions, and so you sat there for a while, and then you rolled over so you were looking out toward the rest of the anchorage and watched the other boats quietly dancing and lolling about and it felt like the kind of day where a storm would roll in at any minute because it felt cooler than normal or maybe because it was so early it still felt more like night than day and no one seemed up yet and the fort looked dead and there were no campers and you assumed this is what it looked like in its infirm, when it was falling apart and this is what it will look like when we’re all gone and you yawned to only the west and to yourself, you didn’t even know where the dogs were and there were a few birds in the distance clacking about and you could see these two planes coming from the east, from out of nowhere, jets getting closer and closer and faster and faster and you realized this was kind of weird since you weren’t really in the flight path from anywhere to anywhere and you also realized they weren’t commercial jets, rather military, and as soon as they were over your head you heard the loudest cracking boom of your life, your ears rang, that little lightning bolt in your head turned into a thunderstorm, it made you dizzy, you could hear rattling downstairs and it sounded like someone fell out of a bed or someone smacked someone else or someone sat up too quickly in their bunk and hit their stupid giant head with its stupid giant nose on its stupid giant face and you had no idea what may have just happened and you thought one of the planes may have just exploded, but later that afternoon, your dad would ask JR what happened and he explained about the planes from the Navy base, the one your dad lived next to, and the visual marker thing and how it would scare the shit out of everyone dozens more times. And you’ll remember you were in the lobby area and she was skimming through the guest book. She said she thought of taking the tour but no one else was around. Carl suggested you show her around and you were entirely unsure of how to even introduce yourself. “Come on, show me around.” You could still hear the music echoing through the headphones around your neck. And her hands were in her pockets. And the way she stood with a confidence you’d never known. You’d never seen a woman like her before. Her hair touched her shoulders in such a way you were jealous of it, just breathing over it and barely kissing the skin in a way where if anything else in the universe touched her that way she’d be tickled and flinch. You looked at her fingers coming out of her pockets, nonchalantly flipping a page in the book. “Seriously. Show me around.” She bumped you on the shoulder with the elbow of her crooked, pocketed arm. You didn’t know what to do, where to go, you were instantly an idiot. You weren’t even sure if you could talk. You weren’t even sure of what you were feeling because you had no idea if your brain or dick wanted to objectify her or talk to her one on one like you hadn’t with any girl before. But this wasn’t a girl, this was a woman. And you didn’t know why, but you just did, but this woman was different than every other woman on the planet. And you didn’t know why, but you felt like you couldn’t simply walk away. Like somehow the gravity of your worlds met and you were entirely inside of her orbit. And you could still say nothing.
“So what’s up? Are we taking a walk?”
And “Okay” was the word that forever changed you. And you’ll remember being on that beach wondering how long could you sit there with her, with me, before it got uncomfortable. How long would she allow you just to be in her presence? Without words. My presence. Without exchange. Me. Just simply being together. You wanted to stay there forever. You knew the more you’d think about it you were taken away. You’ll remember how you always wished you could stop thinking. How you wished you could have said something to her without saying anything. How you could just look at her and she’d offer an answer. Look at her as the birds ignored you both. As the tides ignored you both. As the boats rocked and lulled in the harbor and the chatter of tourists and terns muted themselves and you could just be present in your own universe. Maybe you’ll have that again one day. I’m not telling yet. Maybe she’ll be someone with whom you can tessellate. Someone with whom you could simply watch every sunset for the rest of your life. And as the days darken, someone you could be so close with under a moon so full it would cast a single shadow of two hearts and minds merged. One day, you’ll remember wishing you could dream like this forever.
*
Was Neil Young right? Is that all love is, a thing to break your heart? Is that what I am? Is that why you want me out of your head so desperately, but others turn me into their greatest art? A muse is just love itself? Did I call myself that or something? That’s all muses are? Love’s just a feeling. Love’s just another way of saying love. Is it that? I'm its expression? But isn't saying you love Love’s love like being buffaloed by a Buffalo buffalo?
*
One day, far from now, or not too far at all if one takes the longview, all of this will make sense, maybe. It will all hopefully make sense when you’re older, at least older than now, and definitely older than before. But I’m not promising. Thirteen hours, eleven minutes, and twenty-six seconds later you clicked your seatbelt and raised the blind to look out at the tarmac’s squiggled lines of heat rising from its sooty ardens terra. “Do you remember the weekend before you left for the summer? You drank all of Tom’s orange juice.”
“I always do.”
“Did you write something on the carton or something? Later that night he said you wrote something that didn’t make any sense. Something about whales or something.” Something about whales or something, you thought.
“I don’t know, mom. Maybe.” Yet you knew that everyone is born with halters round their necks, and with fear of life and its harpoons and fire pokers and et cetera. “What made you think of that?”
“Nothing.” She smiled at you as she ran her hand through your hair. “You’re just a strange little man, aren’t you…?”
*
“Won’t I miss, like, the first week of school?”
“So you’ll start school a little late. It’s not a big deal. Life’s happening to you, kiddo. That’s way more important.”
“Dad said something like that.”
“He had his moments.”
“Where are you?”
“7-11. The one on Estero near the Lani Kai. Gibs is going crazy and buying everything. We’re in the anchorage near the post office, so it’s just kind of across the street.”
“What did you get?”
“Nothing. I’m good.”
“Are you…? You know what I mean.”
“Yeah. I guess. I’m getting dad a Skor bar. Maybe I’ll use some of that money you gave me and treat myself to something. I don’t know…”
“Are you and your dad okay?”
You didn’t answer her. You rather directly and humbly said you loved her and you needed to go. And then you hung up the phone and went, walking back to the dock, leaving Gibs and your dad’s Skor bar back in the land of slurpees and salt.
*
The carpet was squishy and smelled like the inside of a Shanghai dumpster in the summertime. You were kind of lost. It was the first time since you’d been in the airport you’d wandered into the cordoned off areas behind the tape. You meandered off aimlessly as you found yourself trying to process what your dad had just told you and knew there was no way you could. You realized there had been a silent humming in your ears for the last three minutes or so and assumed Father Padre had finally given up on you. You’d saved the last side of the last tape and decided listening to it while stuck in MIA would be a good capper to it. You were living like a Tom Waits song, so you thought you may as well hear one more. Apparently, Father Padre took Eliot’s approach and decided to end the most melancholy of mixtapes not with a bang, but a whimper. You found yourself in front of a large broken window that opened to the balmy runways, the mutilated jetway dangling torn and flaccid, barely holding its grip on the building. You could see palm tree after palm tree endlessly shattered and twisted like chewed toothpicks. You’d been in this airport a thousand times but it seemed like a foreign country. Refugee’s just another way of saying a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster. You were lonely again. You were feeling like it was starting. The spiral. You were feeling like Carl may have been on to something. Like your grandfather. You wanted the silence to not stop so you didn’t pull your headphones down. Which is when it started.
You weren’t a Gordon Lightfoot fan, but you knew enough to know it exactly when it started. You assumed the universe was now simply making the movie of your summer come to its obvious apex. A wide shot perfectly framing the shattered window, shards of glass embedding themselves into the swampy floor reflecting the cutting blue above. The camera silhouettes you against the painted sky and broken earth. Slowly, it moves closer to you. It sees you simply stand, a hole of darkness, in a ruined world of light, listening to “If You Could Read My Mind,” still, motionless, frozen as thought after thought slaps you like waves crashing into the side of the Lady.
You thought about how when you looked at me you had a feeling inside that was indescribable. How the world seemed to open up its possibilities and all of your problems quieted and washed away like driftwood on a beach, if only for the moment. You thought about how your life should now be a series of grand gestures in which nothing you could say or do would be good enough. You wanted to let me get away on a plane only so you could run through the airport to make it stop and bang on the gate window. You wanted to stand outside in the rain and beg and cry for me and grab me and pull me into you and kiss me in the sappy way Kevin Costner described in Bull Durham. You wanted to stand under a tree and hold a boombox over your head and pray I come and look out that window at you. You wanted that kind of life. You wanted that kind of feeling, but you knew that feeling would be awful, and would be filled with heartache. Because you knew you might be a hopeless romantic who may be falling in love with love and might not ever find what you were looking for.
You thought of Father Padre’s tapes and how he simply vanished. You thought about how they timed so perfectly with everything. You thought about how he may have had no idea. You thought of how he may have been magic. You thought he may have invented the girl. You thought he may have ruined your life. You thought he might have been insane. You thought you might be insane. You thought he may have broken you. You thought how his curse may become your blessing. You thought of the guy on the beach. You thought of his girl and what she did to him.
Maybe in your stories this will just be one of those summers like everyone else’s summer. One where stuff happens and other stuff doesn’t. One where you discovered the inarticulable feeling of love, an emotion entirely incapable of expression or explanation, and wished it never happened. One where the towelbar got fixed while you were out of town.
And you had no one to tell. You thought I wasn’t listening. But I won’t disappear, don’t you worry. For a while you will try and devote your life to me, until one day you won’t. And then you will break your own heart and beg me to come back. But I won’t disappear, don’t you worry. “And if you look for perfection, you’ll never be content,” but I won’t disappear, don’t you worry. I have too many words to share with you. Too many songs to have you hear. Too many laughs with which to melt your heart. In the span of eighty-six days your hair faded from black to a slightly unhealthy and unsightly piss-yellow-brown. and you lost forty-two pounds. But you’ll never lose your girl. So don’t you worry, I won’t disappear.
*
“Hey, that girl you met and told me about. You said she was getting a PhD. What was she doing, again?”
“Writing about jazz and its relationship with abstract art or vice-versa or something. It made sense the way she explained it.”
“Well that’s genius, man.” He squinted in the sun, like he always did, and seemed a little unsure of himself in the chop, even after god knows how long being out here. “It’s so connected. And it’s weird because those are two things so up your alley.”
“Really? I don’t really know that much about either of them. I mean, I like abstract jazz and art, but I don’t really know anything about them.”
“You don’t have to know anything about them because they’re what you talk about all the time. They’re what you’re into. It’s pure emotion. It’s pure poetry. It’s not intellectual, it’s raw. It’s about love, it’s about hate, it’s about everything. It’s… it’s... it’s your soul… exploded onto a canvas or your heart ripped out and your cries of pain blown through a saxophone… it’s… it’s all of that. It’s Neruda channeled into the visual and sound… you gotta start getting into that more. You’d love it.”
“Okay.”
“Hey, put something from the old Father Father in the tape deck. Let’s see what he’s plaguing the youngest hopeless romantic in the northern hemisphere with today.”
While listening to The Stones’ “Beast of Burden,” Carl steered the boat calmly up to the buoy to change a light bulb or something. You had to know. Did it exist? Was he fucking with you? Was it, like the story, written for the dustbin of oblivion?
“What was the other one called? I’m leaving in two days, just tell me at least the title if you won’t tell me what it’s about.”
“Teotihuacán.”
“Is that the place in Mexico?”
“Doesn’t matter. Look it up if you want.”
“What made you write a book about that place and those people?”
“Oh. I didn’t. I just like the name.”
“Well, what was your book about then?”
Then, in the flattest, calmest voice you’d ever heard, as he took a seat and cleaned his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “A guy ties his wife and child to their beds and sets the house on fire. He then walks across the Mojave Desert and eventually tries to drown himself in Isla Royale National Park in Michigan. He’s rescued by rangers, befriends them, and decides to become a ranger himself. He finds the most remote place he can and then…”
“Does he kill himself?”
“Who cares?”
“Whadaya mean, ‘who cares?’ Everybody who’ll read the book I imagine.”
“Nobody’s gonna read the book.”
“I want to. I want to know whether or not he kills himself. Is he redeemed?”
“You’ll just have to wait and find out eventually, I suppose… I love this song.”
“Another Van Morrison, but I don’t know this one.”
“It’s a good one, alright.”
“When did you stop teaching?
“A long time ago.”
“How did you become a ranger?”
“In… just in a way…”
He did that thing he did where he looked at nothing.
“Carl…”
“‘Cold Wind in August.’ That’s what this is…”
“Carl…”
“God, this is a good song.”
*
Pista asked you if you wrote anything this summer.
“No. Not a word.”
Perhaps one day you will write about me, really write. Perhaps one day you’ll have the courage to face me. Perhaps one day you’ll have the courage to write the story of the summer I took you over. Perhaps one winter, decades from now, we’ll meet again in some unexpected place and go through this all over again and you’ll again begin the impossible struggle of getting me out of your head. Perhaps you’ll write about your summer that ended with you getting on a plane and flying to the land of the Aztecs, where maybe you’ll get lost in the jungle, keep going, and stumble across that ancient street where the dead live. Where men become gods. Your summer of prisons and seas and emptiness and you’ll finally realize that I am your rock that never reaches the top of the hill. Perhaps you are Sisyphus. Perhaps you are Carl. Perhaps you are Father Padre. Fucking Father Padre, as you will always say. Perhaps you will forever be a prisoner. My prisoner. Perhaps telling the world about me, the girl, the one who told you she was your muse, then perhaps I may finally set you free. Perhaps you can put pen to paper and maybe they will be the first and last words you will write for me that you will share with others. Perhaps the girls you will write for, whoever they may be, whoever I am in your life, will love you in return. Perhaps they love you more than you will ever know.
Perhaps you will tear out your beating heart and give it to me on those pages so I will be the last thing you will ever see or feel. Perhaps I’m just a story you will forever tell yourself.
Perhaps when you’re older, you’ll write all this down. Perhaps. And you’ll wonder what the contours of her body were. And you’ll wonder what the colors and smell of her hair were. And you’ll wonder if she’ll mind if you forgot if her eyes were green or blue, even though all of theirs will always be hazel in your memories. And you’ll wonder if she’ll mind that you’ll put down in words how wonderful life can be knowing simply that she’s in the world. And you’ll assume and pray Bernie and Elton were right all along. And if it keeps her in your heart, you’ll write it a thousand times over.
*
“How many old dead friends did you bring with you this time?”
“Books? Only four.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t read them all while we were waiting around the airport.”
“Well, I spent about half the time on the floor of the book shop with a flashlight reading crappy Grisham novels. His first three. It makes sense why they’re massively popular.”
“I just bought The Pelican Brief.”
“Yup.”
“Yup what? You’re probably reading some esoteric thing no one understands.”
“This old dead friend is a Spanish guy named Benito Pérez Galdós.”
“Any good?”
“He’s alright...” You looked down at the line you had just underlined, “I believe that if I should die, and you were to walk on my grave, from the very depths of the earth I would hear your footsteps.”
That motherfucker had his me alright. You opened the book and looked at the post-it from Carl’s story now wedged into the binding and written in the smallest of letters: “‘He who without the Muse’s madness in his soul comes knocking at the door of poesy and thinks that art will make him anything fit to be called a poet, finds that the poetry which he indites in his sober senses is beaten hollow by the poetry of madmen.’ - Plato”
“What are you listening to?”
And as you explained about Father Padre for the umpteenth time your mind drifted to the empty slip where you didn’t find his boat when you got home. The marina office didn’t know where he went. No one else on the dock seemed to notice or care. You’ll remember knowing that it somehow made sense. He was simply gone. Maybe he assumed he gave you what you needed.
You were in the window seat. Your mom wasn’t kidding and was actually about quarter of the way through The Pelican Brief and just relieved that something is happening that hasn’t been happening for the last several days. You looked down at your walkman, the one that’s accompanied you every day for the last few months, the cord tying your head to your hip. You noticed there’s still a little tape left, even after that fucker Father Padre pulled the Lightfoot thing. Did he just forget and not put anything else there? Was this his last joke on you? Was this me? You looked at your mom’s watch and hit play. Four minutes went by as you did nothing except stare at the miragy tarmac, squiggling, and reflecting, the humidity, and heat, and hurricane remnants. And there it was. There I was. As if on cue, and you knew the song from the opening cymbals and piano as ELO’s “Can’t Get it Out of My Head” opened the door for me and I sauntered back into the room, walking on a wave, calling out your name.
You tore off the headphones, just letting the song play on in a muted hush on your lap.
“Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you ever wonder if what you think happened is what really happened?”
“What?” as she clicked off the music for you.
“Like, does it matter if there’s a difference in the way something really happens as opposed to the way we remember it?”
“Why are you thinking about this kind of stuff?”
“Well, I don’t know. I just was.”
“I don’t know. Memories can be tricky. We probably do remember things differently. I don’t know… look… we want to think our lives are good, you know? Like we’re good and it all matters. Maybe that’s why we remember stuff the way we do.”
“But, what if it doesn’t matter? What if what I’m thinking and doing right now isn’t important because it’s all just going to be more or less fictional down the road.”
“I just want to have a nice trip. Don’t get all philosophical.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. You always are. You’re starting high school. Bug your teachers there.”
“But what if this is all a fiction? Like I’m remembering this, but it’s really just a blur, just like… what if years from now when I think back on it, it’s really just a story I’m telling myself... and so I’m going to fill in the gaps and the people I remember are just a bunch of people in my future life that I think about and I can never get back to this moment. Are we all just telling ourselves stories?”
“What?”
“The adventures we take… is it to experience them, or just to create memories or have something to tell other people around a campfire?”
“What? Look. Just keep doing this. Give your brain a rest. Keep up this life we started for you. Keep adventuring. Keep creating stories to tell.”
“There’s this line in On the Road that I memorized this summer because I thought it applied to a lot of stuff I was thinking about: ‘What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? — it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.’”
“That’s beautiful.”
“Kerouac was a fall down drunk who probably ruined the life of everyone he came into contact with.”
“It’s still beautiful.”
“I don’t want to be Augusto. I don’t want to be the destroyer of worlds. I don’t want to be the asteroid.”
“Stop. I don’t know what that means. What are-”
“I don’t want to be the asteroid!”
“Stop!”
“Maybe this is a kind of realization that, uh, in the end, you know… the only difference between what’s real and what’s fiction is what you say it is.” You thought, if your life were a work of fiction, you think you’d rather just have small walk on role. Maybe the kind like Ned Beatty had in Network. Everybody would remember you. Everybody would think you were great. But you wouldn’t have to be around for ninety percent of the bullshit.
“‘Realization?’ You’re fourteen. Can you just act that way for a change?”
“Sorry.” Sorry because you knew that this isn’t what happened. That you don’t know what actually happened that summer. That you’re simply being written into this moment. As if you’re living through nostalgia in the future and this wasn’t how anything happened at all. “What if it doesn’t matter in the end who we are, mom? What we do, you know? What if… what if… what if it just comes down to the way we want to remember things?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing.” The silent air spoke between you only for a moment as she watched you thinking. “I think it was William Faulkner who once said that the past’s not dead, it’s not even the past… Except I don’t know if that means what I’m trying to say.”
She rubbed your hair and kissed your forehead. And laughed. And gave her weird kid a smile.
“I love you.” She went back to Darby and Gray and you went back to your nothing and stared out the window for what seemed like days but was probably seconds. Lifetimes often move like that. Only more often in reverse. “Hey, are you okay? What’ya thinking about now?”
“Nothing” without turning your head toward her.
“I’m your mother. I know when you’re thinking… You had a busy summer, huh, kiddo?”
Moments later you were looping out over the Atlantic, crossing back over the state and into the empty space over which you had spent your first summer with me. And she picked up your headphones and hit play, “ooh, I love this song,” and tuned you out as Jeff Lynne mumbled incomprehensibly about his girl. And your head leaned forward, touching itself to the window. You looked down into the blue expanse. You were somewhere now. Somewhere in between. That space that wasn’t here or there. She touched the back of your neck. It doesn’t matter what really happened. You were outpacing the sun and heading into its throw. It chased you along the sky, climbing higher than you ever will.
“Yup.”
“What?”
“Nothing…”
And you thought of your mother. And her summer of a son’s emptiness. You thought of what Tom must have been like. You thought of how Gibson will likely grow into someone like Tom. No. That’s not fair. It’s easier and more transparent to simply say that Gibs is just that guy and you know that guy and he’ll always just be that guy and leave it at that. And you thought of Mary and her gravy soup and how you’ll playfully call her the sea hag for the rest of your days and how she won’t be loved as much as she deserves and how she’ll be in pain and call to a vacant home where hope ceases to dwell and when her hair turns gray and peppered no one will care or tell her she was once a beauty and how your father will be her soul’s ablator and how the life she never had will fade into nothing and still she’ll dream of better things and she’ll get some of those things but still she’ll dream. And you thought of how the seas breathed life. And how the Lady was a womb, an oothecal, floating, cement hiding place where happiness and despair could grow and mature in their own silent ways. And how fifteen lobster tails gets you a loaf of bread and some bologna and some chips and two chocolate bars and how sweet that tastes and how it clung to your belly like that meal held the key to everything and everything could make sense. And how you can make rum even better by burying it in a coconut. And how you had found out seven hours earlier that the Tortugas were turning into a national park in eighty-four days, two hours, and sixteen minutes and JR, Joe, and Guy would be out of a job since they weren’t official rangers and maybe their summer as short timers completely drove their wedon’tgiveafuckness. And Carl. Sipping a drink with him when you are a man and you wander through the most beautiful libraries in the land of Cockaigne, your demesne of pure eunoia. Boulevardiers for all the ages of man. And you thought of your father and when you will no longer recognize his face in your own memories. Or when you will decide to avoid the streets you once roamed for fear of a chance encounter. And you thought of the girl in July, the first girl you saw me in, and you hoped she would remember you. You wished to tell her how you felt, what you felt. That you are dreaming of a love that will forever devastate you, a love that you must not let die on that turtle’s dry back.
Me, me, the girl who told you she was your muse, whether you write anything down or not.
You wanted to float in that blue below, staring up at heaven, lolling in its cool embryonic protection. You wanted to always remember that water. The way it shone like metal. Like the melted snows of yesteryear. Be able to come back to it. Ride its electric waves around the world. Taking you to places before you were born. Taking you places after you’re gone. Whispers of life would fall on your ears. You could feel the ocean’s
devouring, humming, vibrations. You wanted to watch the sun fall off the edge of the world. Swallowed by the horizon, where ancient clouds dig deep into the night and gulls and albatross drift weightless upon the wind’s tinted wings. You were with them in this window. May these not be the last words you write for me,
for you and I will eternally fall, fall.
Downward, onward, forever, into that silent sea…
© 2017, Marc Leverette
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