After that it rained for years

 
It was a year of conversation, a year of dragged-out lousy days, afternoon suns and bad coffee. I felt bad all the time, I felt bad about feeling so bad around her, I felt bad like it was the answer to something. I guess it was.

We talked about things that didn’t matter, just to talk I guess, like at what point do you call a thing a tragedy. She wanted the word to have a concrete scope that suggested profound human loss. She said losing a thumb doesn’t count as tragic, for instance, and I said she only thought that because girls didn’t really need thumbs to explore their bodies. She worried the word would lose meaning, and I reminded her that insurance companies had itemized the term awhile ago already. We were complicit in all things, a crime spree of language left in our wake.

Every once in awhile some staggering truth would come out, like what happened to her in that bathroom or the circumstances of why I stopped sleeping at night. We said these things casually, just dropped in real quick when no one was looking. We had grown up great victims, and we found small pleasure in shocking each other here and there, which these things were multi-purposed and nuanced hand grenades of love and trust.

The thing about a conversation that lasts all year is that it’s dangerous, like how sometimes you start thinking about your breathing and then you have to keep thinking about your breathing until you become sufficiently distracted by a television set or another semi-autonomous process. What I’m saying is it becomes the focus of your existence, and then one day it’s gone, leaving you oxygen-deprived and wondering. The whole thing is a tragedy.
 

When we are young we have a clarity of purpose and vision that is startling. Slowly, through disappointment, heartache, revelation, success, reflection, self-awareness, shame, and the everydays that stack unending, we become complex, grown, muddled. Understanding is a burden only.

Look at it this way: heliocentrism feels good. It was a silly deceit, sure, built on bad science, but we felt close to the center of something. We felt important through the transitive property. Then we learned about our galaxy, other galaxies, the whole muted enormity of a universe and maybe other universes. What else is there to feel but marginalized and awed at once?

I find myself at twenty-seven years old in an office, unshowered, lights off, having been punched repeatedly in the mouth by beers. From the idylls of youth I have emerged bitter and shaken. I am sitting here waiting on some revelation about some proper course of action, and I am realizing that of course that’s another myth. There’s no such thing as a proper course; we are reactive and feeble-brained. We stumble in to everything, and then if we’re lucky we maybe stumble out again. Stimulus response.

We built this society up and we decided that we were too busy to survive, that we could get other people to do it for us. We learned things, we became sophisticated, and all this sophistication, this great gift of Western civilization, has given us the free will of a slime mold.

So. I sit. And I wait.

This one is an allegory

This is the kind of guy I am: shot three times through the vitals and I’m checking for a wedding ring as she strips the sanitary wrapper off the hypodermic needle and jams it into my arm, which by the way I don’t feel that. She’s got one strand of hair in her face and her pursed lips tell a story about what’s happening to me for real, and it’s not like how the story went when I felt the first electric pain exploding through me and thought that people are gonna ask me what it felt like.

The rest of the world was red and blue and red but that was just the edges. I was with her, and she kneeled over me like she really meant it, like it wasn’t just a job. I felt this whomp in my head over and over, which I guess that was blood pumping or something. 

What I wanted more than anything was for her to stop and see me, but she didn’t. She saw parts of me, sure, where the needle goes in and where the bullets went in and my mouth where blood was collecting and kind of choking me some. But she didn’t see me. I was just another story she wouldn’t have the heart to tell.

We all have to do this alone is something I knew already, but I never really believed it. There were systems in place to prevent it, families and love and such. Medical professionals, they counted too. So I thought. But there it was, she working on me, an angel, sure, and a hero, sure, but she wasn’t here with me after all, she was in her own moment, and that’s what made getting shot today bittersweet.

Below are the things I wrote down on the trip:

3/10/09

What does it feel like?  It feels like if you focus hard enough on the horizon you'll just be gone, lifted out of the scene like you were never there in the first place.  It feels like you're an electron, motion only, like the hero of your life isn't you but where sun meets sky meets earth.  And you're headed there.

It feels good is what I'm saying.

Woodlands to Roswell today.  There were wind farms, a buffalo, a whole host of trees worth mentioning.  I felt like I could see the curvature of the Earth, which was probably not true but still.  I ate lunch at some crap place, one of those newspaper-clipping-on-the-wall places in a football town called Post, TX, which there's a town full of moustaches for you.

It's lonely in the hotel room, but out on the road I feel so free, and I wonder if it's the act itself, or if it's the land, or if it's something else, something I shouldn't pry too hard at, for fear of my everyday life crumbling.

Getting good writing done, I think.  The Royal, which I've named Gerald, is sticking a lot, and the ribbon doesn't stay tight all the time, but I can deal with it.

I played guitar at a dinky rest stop for awhile, which was awesome because of the silence of the place.  It felt good to play again, but I felt so rusty and useless at the end of it.  At any rate, another car came up ad seemed to contain a pretty skeezy dude, so I left.

Maybe more later?

3/11/09

I drove from Roswell, NM to Santa Fe, NM today via Socorro, NM.  I ate lunch at a place in Socorro that served either "steak" or "the children's menu."  I got steak.  After that I got in a fight with a Taco Bell delivery driver who had blocked me in.  When I told him he'd blocked me in he said "Are you a Taco Bell customer?" and I said "Are you telling me you don't care?"  It went like that, basically, until he finally moved his truck, which I don't know what kind of monster I must have been to have parked in the Taco Bell parking lot and then decided on a better restaurant to eat at without moving my car.

From there I drove to the Very Large Array, which was really cool.  It's on a fairly empty stretch of highway, out where you're close to the sky, and there was no one there, and it was snowing a little bit.  I guess I am a fan of science.

Santa Fe at sunset is a nice place to be driving into, but once the sun is fully down and you’ve got a hotel room across the street from Cheeks and the adult video store the magic wears off. “Come to Santa Fe, we’ve got neon butts.” That’s my experience in this town.

3/12/09

Today I did Santa Fe, NM to Window Rock, AZ, then from there to Tuba City, AZ, then down to Cameron, AZ. Window Rock is the seat of the Navajo nation, and I got a distinct “go away whitey” vibe from the place. It was intensely depressing for me, since I tend to associate with that small genetic sliver of me that is Native American much more than with the Dutch label I’ve been given, and the casinos and the trading posts and the over-exposed charade of it all just hurts.

The drive to Tuba City was fascinating, probably the most interesting part of the whole trip. Every twenty minutes the land is different, from thick forests to rolling hills, to turning a corner and being swallowed by a deep scar in the earth. I drove through a lightning storm and saw a brush fire start because of it. It was really just an amazing part of the country. I was in no mood for it, though.

I knew on this trip I was probably going to have some kind of thing happen, and this is when it did. You see, Imaginary Audience, I’ve been trying to not admit to myself that I’m clinically depressed, probably for years but seriously so in the last 4 months, and I guess I sort of snapped right here after driving 1400 miles. I had a real crummy evening in Cameron, just out and out bawling riding into town, which I’m doing this thing where I’m painfully honest with myself, so I have to tell you that and I’m not ashamed to do it. Add to that the fact that Cameron, AZ is literally a motel and a gas station. Add to that the worst enchiladas I’ve ever had in my life. Add to that some serious time zone confusion (why don’t you celebrate daylight savings with the rest of us, Arizona, you asshole?) and some rocks blocking the sunset. Well, it wasn’t the best time for me is what I’m saying.

3/13/09

Today I saw the Grand Canyon, then I drove to Flagstaff, then I saw the painted desert, then I drove into Albuquerque in the middle of a damned blizzard (or some snow, whatever). At some point on the way to the Grand Canyon, I decided that life was awesome, I was awesome, and everything was awesome, and I rode that shit all the way through the day. It was awesome!

Have you ever driven out of Flagstaff on I-20, turned up the Blood Brothers’ “Young Machetes” to the point that you blow out a speaker, and just rocked the hell out going 90 miles an hour? I have. Out where the sky is huge and the shadows play on the hills like children. Out where the land is all there is, and there aren’t any bullshit suburbs to drive through. And there you are, and then you’re not, and you just go all passive and let the experience wash over you. 

The Grand Canyon was cool, exactly as I expected. There were too many tourists, but what can you do? I really liked the drive into Flagstaff because it had snowed, and I’m from Houston so snow will always be God’s own magic trick, the equivalent of pulling a quarter from my ear when I’m 8 years old at a birthday party. I got out of my car and hung out for awhile. Then I went to the Painted Desert, which was a cool place to be at sundown, because it was very much abandoned and beautiful. 

I’m stuck in a smoking room tonight, so I look forward to smelling awful tomorrow, when I’ll be pulling a 14 hour drive to get home again.

3/14/09

And I did.
__________________________

So that’s the trip. If you want to see photos or listen to the songs I played on the side of the road, I’ve put them on my Facebook page. You’ve got Facebook, right? Well, why not?  We could be FRIEEEEEEEENDS
__________________________

Oh and just for the hell of it, here’s a vignette I wrote while I was in a motel room:

These things they don’t happen

She was one of those girls everybody fell in love with, with one of those faces that months, years later I’d be on again, just laying in bed heartsick for not saying hello marry me already. Even better was everybody knew this but her, which wasn’t about being coy or something but was honest belief. What I’m saying is once I saw her I was doomed one way or another.

But that’s a cute barista for you. Add some sleeve tattoos and a nose ring, not one of those studs but a ring, honest-to-God I would have been just a zombie with a perpetual erection.

How we got here on the back stoop smoking with her head on my shoulder is anybody’s guess. My apron was always splashed with milk and coffee at the end of the day, but hers was all like it was right out of the bin. I was gonna ask her how she did that, probably get teased or be a teaser, when I realized that she wasn’t just tired but crying on top it.

This was the kind of gift I’m too nice to work with. Somebody else would be spinning this into penetration already, but me I sat there and let her go for a few minutes, which I put my arm around her but didn’t try to pull her in or anything. I wanted to say, but I didn’t, because her problem was temporary, and if I said what I wanted to say it would still be there the next shift and the next, and I’d never be on this stoop smoking with her again. But I thought it, I thought you know I never want to stop holding you.

Tomorrow morning, I'm heading out to the wastes of New Mexico and Arizona to see what's what.  I plan to be gone pretty much from now until Sunday.  I'm going to be spending a lot of time in my car, and I got to thinking that might get kind of lonely.  Here's where you come in:

Call me!  Send me a text message!  I'll talk to you about whatever!  I can't promise I'm good at talking on the phone, because I'm not, but I'll do my best.  I think this is either one of the best ideas I've ever had, or one of the worst, and there's only one way to find out.

Here are some conversation starters:
-Which poets have the best beards?
-What the hell have you done with your life?
-Did you see any interesting dead dogs?

The number: 2816868574

Please don't be an asshole about this!

_______________________________

For those of you who maybe share genetic material with me or otherwise have reason to want to know my agenda in case I die cold and alone in the wilderness:

Tuesday is a killer.  I'm getting up early and driving to Roswell, NM, which is about 12 hours total.

Wednesday I'm going to the Trinity bomb testing site, then driving to Santa Feand seeing what that's all about.  Total driving time ~6 hours.

Thursday I'm getting up early, heading to Window Rock, then taking a long, slow drive to Tuba City, AZ, and ending in Cameron, AZ.  Total driving time ~7 hours.

Friday is the Grand Canyon in the morning and then writing all day.  At that point I will either start heading back or stay another night to watch the sunsetand keep writing, depending on how it's going.

Saturday I will either be starting back or already about a third of the way back.  The plan is to stop in Amarillo, but I'm just going to drive until my face hurts.

Sunday I will end up back home.

Total driving distance: ~2400 miles.  It's ambitious, but I've done similar things before.

I gave a reading tonight of this new novel I’m working on. Well, it’s not really a novel so much as a loosely connected collection of vignettes that sprawls out towards infinity. I’ve posted a few of them on livejournal (or facebook, depending on where you’re reading this) here and there; “The Daydream Girl” was one, as was “Things that can’t be taken back.” That’s not the point.

I guess it went okay, but when the thing was over I felt hollow and like my mouth was full of ashes and wet newspaper. I don’t understand this about myself. I feel fraudulent all the time except maybe when I’m sitting at the typewriter I bought. There’s something thrilling about the physicality of a blank page in a typewriter, which incidentally is what’s motivated me to write these vignettes. I think to myself, “Here’s a concrete space, and you can fill it up, and that’s something.” With a computer there’s too much possibility, sometimes, either because of peripheral noise or because look, there’s a new page when you’ve filled this one, and that goes on forever.

I’m back off topic again, which isn’t surprising, because I keep distracting myself from how I feel in my real life, too. I’m not really writing this for you guys, the Imaginary Audience; mostly I’m writing it so I can admit it to myself. I only post it to the internet as reflex, I can’t fucking stop, I’m like the puny inexhaustible voice that Faulkner talked about when he won the Nobel prize.  I’m in my own red and dying evening, but I feel more and more like I’m not going to prevail like he said I would, and that the best I can hope for is to endure.

I need to learn to exercise some message discipline. 

_________________________________

Anyway, may as well show you one of the dozen vignettes I wrote this week:

A second date that never ended until it did

She was wearing one of those floppy knit hats and a scarf, both baby blue but the scarf was yellowed a little like she used to smoke in it all the time. She leaned in real close, fogged up the driver-side window, and wrote “Hi.” I smiled, that real kind of smile that movie stars work on.

It started snowing while we drove. A little bit of dark hair poked out from behind her ear, and I looked over at it and tried to memorize how her neck looked at that angle. It’s the kind of thing I’m not in on that often, but she saw me and smiled and pushed my face back to facing the road with her finger. It smelled like coconut. Her finger I mean.

The snow caught on the windshield and melted. We talked about a lot of things, I can’t remember. She pronounced awry wrong, like aw-ree, and then we talked about words you only really see in crossword puzzles. Oner. Aver. Stuff like that. 

Her laugh was a little hoarse, and I wanted to hear it until it hurt her throat and she had to gasp at me to stop, it’s not funny being funny. Just a car ride turned gold by the light of sodium vapor lamps on a wet road, somewhere downtown where the old houses met the newer buildings, and the bars on the windows faded away forever.

I instantly felt sorry, and then my hand started bleeding. She had kind of a shocked look on her face that managed to retain the rage from the now unknowable time before I put my clenched fist through the window pane between us. Seriously it felt like that glass breaking marked two different eras of history. My hand bled more.

Now that I could hear her clearly, she didn’t have anything to say. Neither did I. We just looked at each other, and I finally felt relief that I hated her. I pictured an ambulance ride with a police officer next to me, a long weekend standing on concrete floors and smoking cigarettes, dirty cots and stuff. I was going to miss two shifts at work. 

Shelly came downstairs, and I could see her down the hall, her little face just kind of a blank. She had a painting in her hand for the fridge and she stopped to watch us. God, I wanted to see that painting up close. Her mother saw me looking over her shoulder and turned around. All of this happened soundless, or maybe the sound would come rushing up in a few seconds and all go at once, glass breaking and her breath catching in her throat and clomping on the stairs and birds and the mailman’s truck and the freeway hum all one noise together, harmonics of an ending.

I sat down where I was and waited for the sound to find me.

I went up to work today. I’m not entirely sure why I did it except that I can’t stand being home three days a week anymore. My office is not much better; it used to be the ladies’ restroom and has a frosted window facing out into the street that is to my back. Every time someone walks by it casts an eerie shadow on the wall I’m facing, and I think I’m about to get murdered, like someone is going to put their fists through my window and strangle me. That’s what happens in first floor offices.

The walls are bare, too. I’m only going to be here a few months, but maybe I should put up a poster or something. Maybe a kitten on a telephone wire. A smiling orangutan. That kind of thing.

I feel unsettled all the time. I can’t process what it is, so I just try to ignore it. I can’t be alone in this, I think, it must be the kind of thing everybody starts to feel when they’re over half-done with their twenties. If not, I’m in trouble.

What I want out of life is a chilly day at the beach where nobody else is there, just me and birds and that mucky feeling of too-cold sand sucking at my toes. I’ve never had a day like that. I have fat guy days.

It used to be I couldn’t leave the house without someone asking me if I’d been born again. People thought I needed saving, but I was doing just fine. Later I became a cynic, a scowler, a headphones and sunglasses isolationist. I crossed streets because of pamphleteers is what I’m saying. 

Trace this one, Charles Darwin. I got some degrees. I earned little chunks of respect here and there. I stole a few of them, too. But they stopped asking about me and my soul. I don’t have to duck them anymore. It hurts a little. Maybe that’s the great gulf they’ve been telling me about, the one I’ve been living with all my life. Probably not.

________________________

So I’ve got this thing I’m trying where I’m cutting back the snark in my interpersonal relations. I’m also trying to go out of my way to say the kinds of things I wish people would say to me along with how I honestly feel about people in my life. Mostly I’ve come off sounding weird, I think. But I’m sleeping better at night. I’m feeling wistful instead of angry. I’m writing better, too. It's comforting, that kind of transparency.  I just want to scoop up the people around me and set them apart from the meanness and the hate that they've grown up with and put inside themselves. We could have a party out in the sun, and everybody gets a hug.  Ah shit, I think to myself, I’ve gone soft.

________________________

You guys can all go to hell.  Imaginary Audience disbanded. 

1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?
I was named after my great uncle, Fritz, who was on the USS Indianapolis when it sank after delivering the bomb that dropped on Hiroshima. Thanks to Commander Mochitsura Hashimoto, he watched his friends get eaten by sharks for four days. He died in a hospital a few weeks later, but he punched a shark in the nose and got to touch Little Boy before he was 22, which is more than I can say for myself. Of course, I go by my middle name, Kelly, which I’m embarassed to admit was his wife’s name. She lost the tip of her finger on a belt sander.

2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?
It hasn’t been in the last three weeks, I can tell you that, Kaitlyn. Maybe you should ask Wade if he has any interesting stories linked to his name, but then I bet you can’t talk right now with your whore mouth so full.

 
3. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING?
Small, considerate lettering. Honest, expressive, nothing to hide in that alphabet. Yeah, I’m a fan.

4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT?
I’ve always been partial to a really well-aged proscuitto. Kaitlyn likes salami.

5. DO YOU HAVE KIDS?
No, but I’ve been told that I’m good at acting like a child. Personally, I would find that charming.

 
6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON, WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU?
If I were another person, I would be too far away from this town to be friends with me. I like to think I’d write.

7. DO YOU USE SARCASM?
Never.

 
8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS?
No, but I know somebody who did, and sometimes there would be a buildup of bacteria in them, and she’d stick her finger back in there and then ask me to smell it.

 
9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP?
I would. I would jump off whatever.

10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL?
Boo Berry

11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF?
No. Right now there are two pair by the door, my ratty old Chuck Taylors and my work shoes, although I need to put those away. They’re pushed against the wall neatly so no one trips over them.

12. SOMEWHERE YOU'D LIKE TO GO ON VACATION
This isn’t even a question. I hate so much when the rules just change without warning. When precedent is set, you follow through on precedent. You don’t just do a mental end-run around expectations. It’s rude and it’s hurtful.

 
13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM?
Chocolate gelatto. I’m eating it right now. I can have it in the house again even though you don’t like it.

 
14. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE?
I notice whether or not they’re liars.

15. RED OR PINK?
I threw away all the tampons under my sink today.

16. WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF?
That I’m myself.

17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST?
Pass. Fuck you. I don’t miss anybody.

18. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO COMPLETE THIS LIST?
 No.

19. WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING?

My pants are blue pajama pants with polar bears on them. I’m not wearing shoes.
 
21. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW?
The Mountain Goats – Woke Up New.

 
22. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE?
I bet you think I’m going to say black or blue or whatever, but I’m going to say gold. It looks nice in its little slot but goes on paper all wrong, unpretty and artless, clashing with every other crayon no matter how big the box. A promise that comes out all wrong.

 
23. FAVORITE SMELLS?
I don’t know why, but I’m going to say crayons.

 
24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE?
Edward, my boss. He was calling to follow up on something, a thing I have to do for the next twelve weeks. It’s a training thing, something about interpersonal skills.

 
25. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU?
I guess. He sure looked like he didn’t like me at work last Tuesday. I told him I’d buy him new tires and that it wasn’t anything against him. I pointed out that everybody was in the same boat, and that I’d already tried to apologize and given over my knife. I even told him that he could do what he wanted to my car or even slug me in the face one, but he kind of just shook his head and walked off mumbling.

26. FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH
Sports are a gigantic waste of time and so is this question, which isn’t even a question, by the way, you stupid prick.

27. HAIR COLOR?
Whose, mine? 

 
28. EYE COLOR?
Again, this is barely a sentence, let alone a question.

29. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS?
No, but I squirted a whole bottle of contact solution into my sink two nights ago, and then I took a pair of scissors to the bottle, made myself a bunch of little bracelets.

 
30. FAVORITE FOOD
I tried to make a chicken pot pie last night. It’s one of those things that everybody does differently, like spaghetti, so it’s one of those things that no matter what it’s not as good as whoever’s you had first. Mine was awful. I thought it would all cook in the pie, but the carrots were raw and it was too runny. The crust was all gummy. I ate it all anyway. 

 
31. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS?
Taxi Driver

32. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED?
Taxi Driver

33. WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING?
Lime green. I got it from a fun run, a 5k. I finished third, which isn’t anything to scoff at.  Maybe it’s gotten a little ratty with a hole in the armpit, but it’s comfortable.

34. Summer or winter?
Again, you’re changing the rules without context or reason. 

35. HUGS OR KISSES?

37. MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND?
People who really care about me.

 
38. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND?
Kaitlyn

 
39. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW?
That’s right, I read books. I don’t sit around on the couch watching reality television. I don’t have trashy magazines in my bathroom. I don’t put more care and thought into my American Idol vote than my Presidential vote. I am an adult, no matter how many videogames I played, no matter how much I didn’t feel like doing the dishes, no matter what. I’m allowed to say “because I feel Easter bunny hollow inside” and that’s a good enough excuse for me filling my time how I want. 

40. WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD?
I don’t have one, I’m not an old lady.

41. WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON TV LAST NIGHT?
American Idol. Sue me.

42. FAVORITE SOUND(S).
I like the absolute stillness of right now, feeling terrified and wonderful and cast off and spinning out, but there’s nothing to show for it except the hum of my laptop fan.

43. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES?
Taxi Driver

 
44. WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME?
I’ve never been home.

45. DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT?
I can slash a lot of tires and not lose my job. If that’s not talent then what’s the point of talent?

 
46. WHERE WERE U BORN?
Now this is just sad. I’ve been giving you great stuff, really introspective and bone-cutting honesty, and you throw a U at me?

47. WHOSE ANSWERS ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO GETTING BACK?
Kaitlyn’s

48. HOW DID YOU MEET YOUR SPOUSE/SIGNIFICANT OTHER?

Every time I get caught up in job stuff I want to gouge my eyes out with a grapefruit spoon. Trust me, this is the best spoon for the job. The feeling of near-irrelevance is tough, and I have to keep reminding myself that I got into this pool on purpose and when I get out of it again I won’t be a pruny, useless man. The solution I’ve found is to write a lot more in my spare time, but even that generally leaves me feeling spent and shabbily pieced together from old vacuum cleaners.

I wonder if my life is always going to be like this. I think one of the things we forget the fastest is how we felt on a day-to-day basis, so I don’t have a frame of reference for if this is just who I am or what. If I look back at the trajectory, what I see is a kid who felt like he didn’t deserve any measure of success and only found it through blind luck or someone else pushing him down a path. A kid who built a wall, every brick an instance of failure, and called it something to push against. I don’t know really if I want to be that kid anymore, but it’s too late to stop.

Vinyl Seats

            When I left the house back then I had to take the bus. I spent a lot of time not leaving the house. These busses I had to take, they’d seen a lot use, as all busses tend to have. They were dirty brown affairs with old-bus seats and old-bus windows that didn’t quite work properly. The plastic tabs on the windows didn’t push in, they sat crooked, they didn’t go all the way up. Bus windows have been this way since busses.

            But this story is about me, not some fucking bus window. I’m the hero, the wayfarer, and this was my bright shining star of a conveyance. I couldn’t bear to look at myself. It was the late nineties, and I was trying to figure out how to best be a nobody even though I was a National Merit Scholar. I was young and vital, depressed as all hell, totally unaware of my own innate hypocrisies, living in a college town that allowed me to remain a misfit deliberately. I had a letter in my bag about scholastic probation. It accompanied two books: one of them I don’t read because it’s about computer programming, and the other one is Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. 

            And a lot of the time I hated the bus. It was always there, circling, running the same routes, and I was always lying in bed thinking “Why fucking bother?” You know? For real, fuck the bus.

            If you hadn’t already guessed, the story goes like this: I was sitting on the bus with self-diagnosed, unmedicated social anxiety disorder that was both more and less serious than I make it out to be. I was looking out the window running through little snippets of theoretical computer code in my head, which I still enjoyed outside of the classroom. When I sat down at the computer to do it, my internal logic didn’t come out at all right. I knew exactly what I was doing, but I still got an unknown parameter value, which meant fuck nothing to me in figuring out what I’d done wrong. Here on the bus, I wrote eloquent little programs that would unfold into constellations and organic patterns that hint at the ways chaos and order really are the same thing at different perspectives, which was a nice little way for me to be okay with not having a handle on anything. This was the only time I could really get still and think, here on the bus. 

            I was nineteen. I’d just learned how to use fuck really well in a sentence, and I was abusing the fuck out of it. I’d just dyed my hair again, bright green this time, but it didn’t turn out, just like it never did. I had been staying up until four and five in the morning drinking tequila from a plastic jug, asking myself questions I couldn’t bear. And now I was on the bus.

            In a minute or two, someone would come sit with me, maybe a little too close. Maybe our shoulders would touch. My throat would start to close up, and I would feel that old friend panic settle in. It feels, if you want to know, kind of like preparing to be attacked, but without any kind of physical implication. Like everyone is going to suddenly turn and gape at you, and you will shrivel to nothing or be destroyed. Like the world was not made for you. It also feels warm, and completely justified.

            In order to get prepared for this, I got my book out. If I tried hard, I could sit perfectly still and submerge myself. Words weave into sentences weave into a security blanket. I used to try to write on the bus, but then one day I thought someone was reading over my shoulder. That was that. I couldn’t read yet. Instead, I kept tabs on everyone that boarded as the bus filled up. Each person was a game of chance I played in my head.

            This one girl, her hips bones jutted out from the top of her jeans like fingers pointing silent accusations at my own lonely brand of hypocrisy, made in America. Her hair was shortish and blonde and looked like Ramen noodles would look if they were shiny and full of expensive product, and yeah, she was probably wearing too much makeup, but it came with a certain earnestness that was difficult to pin down. There was some kind of raw kineticism in her step, and I may have made that word up, but it works better than a real one. She sat down in a half-full seat two rows in front of me, and as she did this she glanced back, and I caught her eye, and she smiled, and I immediately looked out the window.

            It was at this moment that someone sat down next to me, someone I hadn’t seen approach. I won’t bother describing them to you, because they might as well have been a wall or an electric fence to me. I leaned hard into the textured metal hull of the bus. The girl with the Ramen hair struck up a conversation in joyful loudness with her seat-mate.

            I tried to read, but my brain wasn’t in it. Major Major Major Major was signing the name Irving Washington to documents, and I heard her laughter, and then I started listening for that laughter. Her laugh, it was pretty regular—bright, short exhalations in quick succession that cut through the white noise of engines and wind and talking. It had an easy charm, and I don’t think she knew the person she was talking to. She was the kind of girl who flirts like it’s breathing.

            I just kind of watched the back of her head for awhile, occasionally seeing her in profile. I leaned my head against the window and she looked back at me for a split second longer than an accident would have taken. It’s one of those connections that makes me embarrassed, so I looked out at the water fountain in front of the bus stop. Someone had put soap in it again, and a carpet of bubbles rolled along on the surface. The larger ones popped. After a moment, the bus started moving, and before long I was watching trees go by. I picked one out and followed it with my eyes until it was out of view, and then I picked out another one. They seemed to go still against the world when I did this.

            In the first few stops the bus emptied out, and there were maybe a dozen people left. She had the seat two rows in front of me to herself, and she reached up to open the window but couldn’t. She stood up with one knee in the seat to get some leverage, but it still didn’t move. Maybe this story is about a bus window. I was watching her when she let out a grunt and flopped herself into the seat-back so that she was facing me with her arms crossed. She carried herself as if oblivious to her own adulthood, as if she didn’t know that we’re not supposed to sit like that anymore.

            She smiled at me and asked, “Can you help me?”

            I wanted to say no, because I was being noticed and I didn’t really like being noticed, but that would just have made me the more noticeable. I started to get up, but she saw that the window between us was open.

            “You know what? It’s not worth the trouble.” She grabbed her bag and slid into the seat. The springs squealed as she turned to face me. “What are you reading?”

            I showed her the front cover of my used copy of Catch-22. 

            “Ah. What’s it about?”

            “I dunno. A guy in the military who wants out.” I didn’t tell her that it’s hilarious and wonderful, that it hits my guts just right, the kind of sledgehammer surgery that all good satire should be.

            “Sounds better than what I’ve got.”

            “What’s that?”

            She held up one of those pocket dictionaries that responsible students carry around. “I’m halfway through the Cs, but it’s slow going.”

            “Ah.”

            “Lots of big words.”

            “Well, I’m sure you do fine.” I wanted to say something else, something smart or witty, but I didn’t.

            She smiled and turned back around, her hair whirling after her and bouncing. But just as it settled she turned back around and said, “I like your hair.”

            “Oh, thanks.”

            “Are you a punk?”

            “Yeah, I guess so.”

            “Rad. I love punk.”

            “Oh yeah? Who do you like?”

            “Lots of bands. Blink 182. MxPx.” This told me that she either listened to too much radio or went to church camp, but I tried to let it slide. Somehow, though, through a slight shift of an eyebrow or a twitch at the corner of my mouth, she saw right through me.

            “I know. I know. Lame.”

            “No no.”

            “See, I was going to say that I know you too well to fool me, but then I don’t even know your name.”

            “Brendan.”

            “I’m Tally. Actually, Natalia, but that sounds like the kind of girl who knows somebody who knows somebody who would cut off your toe and mail it to your family. So Tally.”

            I smiled.

            “So what bands should I be listening to?” she asked.

            “No, I’m not saying.”

            “What? Why not?”

            “Because then if you don’t like them then it’s going to be a whole thing.”

            “Well I showed you the book I was reading.”

            “And see, I tried reading it once and I didn’t care for it. So now I’m judging you.”

            “What’s wrong with the dictionary?”

            “It’s a circular argument. It inoculates language against change. Everything’s taken out of context. Take your pick.”

            “Oh, I get it. You think you’re smart.”

            “I do.”

            “Well, if I were reading it, don’t you think you just ruined it for me? What if I said I thought Yossarian was a self-involved asshole?”

            She turned around and flopped into the seat, and I thought I could see her smug smile from the back of her head. 

            “You’ve read it, then.”

            “No, I saw the movie. You see Alan Arkin’s dong.” She was talking forward into the wind, so I had to lean in.

            “Yeah, I guess you would if they were true to the book.”

            “That’s always so surprising in movies, don’t you think? Like, a girl takes her top off, big deal, but you never see a wiener coming.”

            “I remember I was home sick one day and my mom had rented The Piano.”

            “And?”

            “Little Harvey Kietel.”

            “You’re picturing it now, aren’t you?” She laughed.

            “Maybe.”

            It was right here where we both happened to look out the window and see the plume of smoke a little ways off, a stark omen that stood thick, black, and massive against the day. The origin of it was hidden by trees, but I knew that it was on our route and that our day had just become one worth remembering.

            “What apartment complex do you live in?” I asked.

            “Why?”

            I pointed out the window at the smoke.

            She reached over and slapped the top of my head. “It’s the firefighters’ school, dummy. They’ve got their training grounds over there by the Wal-Mart.”

            “Oh.”

            “But I appreciate your concern just the same.”

            “I guess I’ve never seen it.”

            “Oh, it’s great. They’ve got this three story building that they burn all afternoon every other Wednesday. How could you not have seen it?”

            I shrugged. “I guess I’m not one for going to class.”

            I looked back out the window, awed by the world I was missing out on. The bus was slowing.

            “This is my stop,” I said, and I didn’t know what I was doing.

            “Oh.” She kind of frowned in her eyes, but the rest of her was still smiling. “Well, um, can I give you my number? You seem cool, and I don’t know anybody cool. All my friends are engineers.”

            “Okay.”

            She pulled a pen out of the front of her bag. The bus had fully stopped and thrown open its doors. A few kids had stood up, and I stood with them. Jesus, what was the matter with me? I felt all floaty and cheated.

            “I don’t have paper. Can I see Catch-22?”

            I looked down at her. I’m sure my face gave away everything I ever was or would be.

            She stuck out her hand. “Hand it over. I know you’re probably the kind who doesn’t like stuff written in his books, but you’re going to have to let it go for once.”

            I did, and she scrawled a hurried little message on the inside front cover. When she handed it back to me our hands touched a little bit and she tipped her head in the direction of the door and smiled. I smiled too and walked off bus.

            The heat outside was bad, fucking bouncing off the concrete. I watched the bus go. This wasn’t my stop. I started walking toward the smoke, and I don’t know when I started crying, but I did. Just fucking balling walking down the road, poor fucking sad sack me. Didn’t know the world out there waiting this whole time. Still wouldn’t. I walked and dared myself: just look at the fucking note she put. Just look at it. But I never did. I felt more worthless than ever.

I spent the afternoon at a chain link fence, my fingers sticking through, watching them running into that burning building and pulling out dummies while an instructor timed them and nodded. Even from that distance, the force of the heat made me want to cover my face. I watched and waited, and I imagined that every dummy was me.