When the doorbell rang he was watching a repeat of MASH. At the door was a DHL driver and he carried a small parcel which Edgar signed for. The sender was J.C. Chase Hobby Shops. It was the plane.
He’d been anticipating this moment and precisely how he would feel since he placed his order. For eleven days he’d played through in his head how good the moment that would launch his grand new hobby would be. In fact, he’d imagined a scenario almost exactly like this.
After the driver had left and he stood there with the package in his hand, Edgar had a feeling that he found similar to déjà vu, though decidedly melancholy. He decided it was similar to the way outdated 70’s pastels on a modern façade can make one feel vaguely depressed and out of place.
Edgar realized he’d had this feeling before in his life, including when he upgraded to high-definition television, shot a sub-80 round in golf, and rearranged the tools on his workbench. It’s how he felt lying in bed next to his wife after he made love to her while thinking about pretty young girls.

Edgar set the package down on the coffee table and resumed watching television. He couldn’t focus on the program anymore. His attention kept wandering to the box. He desperately wanted to open it up and have a look, maybe even begin building.
“Better to start in on it tomorrow,” he thought. “Just carry on as normal for the rest of the day.”
But even as he thought this another idea was there. He pictured himself working feverishly through the night on the model, staying up perhaps a day or two until it was completed. But the moment he thought this he pushed it out of his mind. It was out of the question. He would start to work on it tomorrow. He’d rearranged his whole schedule to work on the model from eight to ten every morning, right before his daily exercise routine.

After MASH was finished he proceeded on with the next phase of his day, which was walking in the park with his miniature schnauzer Pete. Edgar hooked him up to the leash, laced his waterproof hiking boots, put on his overcoat, and went outside.
During the walk Edgar was uncharacteristically thoughtful. He was so caught up in his thoughts that he walked a full hour longer than usual. This was partly because he sat and watched a group of children playing. One toddler would make a roaring sound and put up his hands in a marching-zombie pose and start off after the other two, who would shriek and run off. The pursuer would give chase for a bit then fall back, as if no longer interested until the other two got closer, at which point it would all begin again. Edgar liked sitting and watching them play. Every so often he looked down at his watch and realized he really ought to be going, but couldn’t tear himself away.

When he got home his wife was near frantic.
“Where have you been!” she demanded.
“I just felt like taking my time is all,” said Edgar.
“But you’re never late!” she shrieked.
Out of the blue, he found his wife to be extremely unattractive. She was wearing a red and white apron with years of spills down the front, her hair pulled back in a pony-tail.
“Maybe it’s the way that one stray hair is dangling down between her eyes-its framing her face in a strange way-or the little globs of white stuff in the corners of her mouth,” he thought.
He couldn’t figure it out, but he found her utterly revolting. All he could focus on was her mouth with those hunks of crud in the corners. He was standing there, stupidly staring at her, as she carried on.
“Well, is that all you have to say? At least a call would have been nice.”
He suddenly saw her not as his wife, but as this odd little red-haired woman in an apron who happened to be his wife, as if he suffered from amnesia and had no historical context in which to place her. He stood there fixed, observing her as this totally new, foreign object.
“This woman is my wife,” he thought. “My God, she’s just a silly little woman!”
“Jesus Edgar! Are you alright?”
“Yes, I’m fine honey,” he said. “I’m sorry. I just lost track of time.”

But at dinner Edgar wasn’t sure if he was fine. The surreal exchange with his wife had carried over and he found himself thinking things like, “My God, this woman has prepared for me a pork roast, carrots and rice pilaf.”
He couldn’t quite believe this stout little homemaker would do such a thing for him, or indeed that these things could just be procured, seemingly out of nowhere, laid out on imported china, eaten with shiny silver forks off an oak table. He was equally amazed that such things could exist and that he could somehow be entitled to them.
Edgar and his wife usually didn’t talk much at dinner which allowed him to stay suspended in the feeling. It was up and down throughout the meal and fizzled out for good at right around the time he sat down for the post-prandial newscast. Suddenly he was back in the world of the familiar, one where he knew exactly how the TV and the chair and the things which adorned the room had come to be there. When the 6:30 news was over he switched to the History Channel and watched a show about how cigars are made. From eight to nine it was CSI and from nine to ten a repeat of Law & Order. At ten o’clock he fixed himself a bowl of ice cream and ate it at the dining room table while thumbing through Newsweek, then it was up to brush and floss, read in bed until precisely eleven, and lights out.
As he was about to switch off the reading lamp he looked over his wife, hoping she would turn into that unfamiliar character from earlier, but to no avail. She was wholly her familiar self, sleeping as she always did on her side, propped up by two pillows. Edgar noticed the flecks of white in the corners of her mouth were still there. He resisted the urge to wipe them off and settled under the covers on his side, facing away from her, leaving a chasm down the middle of the bed more than big enough for Pete who let out one of those long dog-sighs and joined his masters in slumber.

Edgar awoke and through sleepy, squinted eyes managed to read the clock radio’s time. 2:18. He listened to the rhythmic, half-snoring sounds of his wife and the short, even breaths of Pete. He laid there slightly panicked, as one might after a nightmare, only he had no recollection of one. He rolled back over on his side and attempted to fall asleep, but was unable to.
At 2:27 Edgar felt that if he had to lie and listen to restful noises a second longer he would go mad. He got out of bed, put on his robe and slippers, and made his way down the hall and into the kitchen.
Edgar thought the house held an eerie silence. He liked that familiar items were dark and lumpy, almost unrecognizable. The only light was the faint green of the microwave clock. He felt his way to a chair at the kitchen table and sat down. Going back to bed seemed out of the question, but he had no idea what to do with himself. Part of him wanted to just remain sitting in the near-dark and silence. It was as if they were a great equalizer, making everything he saw with his daytime eyes totally subjective.
Edgar thought, “What is real? This same room which by daylight is so familiar, or this ‘new’ darkened version?”
This was followed by: “Is my wife the pleasant woman who caters to my needs or the ridiculous little lady shouting at me in the hallway?”
After thinking this he felt uneasy. A scene started to play in his head. Edgar had no idea where it came from and he wanted it to stop but it also excited him tremendously. This is what he imagined:
He goes to the safe in his bedroom and takes out the revolver. Next, he goes down to his study in the basement, puts the gun to his head and pulls the trigger. Now, he’s dead but he can see everything. He can see the blood dripping down the wall. He can see the fallen gun. He can even see the model plane box on his desk and there’s blood on that too. In the morning his wife comes down to look for him and when she opens up the door and sees the blood and the gun and Edgar’s limp body she begins to scream.
After he’s done thinking this Edgar begins to laugh. He’s not sure why, but it what he’s pictured is perhaps the funniest thing he’s ever thought of. As a result, all by himself at 2:35 on a Thursday morning at his kitchen table, Edgar buried his face in his arm and laughed harder than he could ever remember doing.

At 6:30 Edgar’s wife awoke and noticed he wasn’t in bed. She was startled but too sleepy to think much of it. She slipped on her robe and shuffled out to the kitchen where she could smell coffee. This surprised her even more, as she was always the one to start it.
“What the hell’s gotten into that man,” she mumbled, heading downstairs to look for him. The door to his study was open a crack, and she could detect a strong smell in the air. She rapped lightly on the door then pushed it open. Edgar sat at his desk, focusing intently on a small, gray piece of plastic he held in his hand. She saw the lid of a box with the picture of a plane. Next to it sat a revolver.
“Edgar, what the hell are you doing with that thing out?” she said.
“It’s a model plane, an F-16 Tomcat to be exact.”
“No, no, that!” she said in a high-pitched voice, pointing at the gun.
Ignoring her he said, “Oh, is the coffee done…and by the way, I’ve been meaning to tell you, there’s some white stuff in the corners of your mouth.”

Pofadder is a well-known town in arid, sparsely populated NW South Africa. However, its particular distinction is not one that draws many visitors.   To South Africans, Pofadder is the local equivalent of Timbuktu or Kalamazoo.  That is, it represents a place that is remote and out of touch with the civilized world.  The place is in fact so desolate that I drive through without realizing it.

The only signs of a town are a reduction in speed for about 1000 meters, a few shacks and a petrol station. In this part of the world, though, a petrol station is as good as a town.

As the speed limit returns to 120 I’m so puzzled by the almost complete lack of anything that I decide to go back to make sure it was actually Pofadder.

I drive past the filling station, slowing to a crawl in order to see if I can make out the name of the town anywhere. The group of people waiting for a ride start moving excitedly toward the car, thinking I’ve come back for them. I don’t see anything so I turn around to make another pass. The hitchhikers arrange themselves on my side of the road, jockeying for position. I see something written on a rock. Barely standing out in the glare of the midday African sun are black letters that read Pofadder.

I continue driving and the hitchhikers wave frantically at me. I gun the engine and check my mirrors to make sure no particularly desperate Pofadderian has attached themselves to the vehicle. As I do one man stands out. His face isn’t pleading or angry or excited. It is so barren of expression it’s as if he isn’t there at all. Perhaps living in a town that barely exists makes one’s existence particularly ethereal. I turn back to the highway, shift into fifth gear and carry on headlong into the sun.

I’m still a few hours from my destination, Springbok. I’ve come this way to see the spring wildflower bloom of Namaqualand. Being from New England, I’m especially curious to see one of the southern hemisphere’s best displays of color. Here and there I pass clusters of orange, yellow and purple flowers. Vibrant patches aside, the only similarity I can see thus far is that the two natural spectacles arouse in Caucasians the desire to drive long distances in immense vehicles to see them.

Every so often I’m passed by a truck with a trailer which likely represents more wealth than the entire town of Pofadder. They are driven by men who take pride in their ability to meet any conceivable modern comfort while camping, men who have paunches and wives who are not allowed to drive the truck but are excellent at making salads.

In my puny Toyota Corolla, bearing only basic camping supplies, I feel decidedly inept. But I’m sure to any of the poor, brown-skinned people walking on the side of the road I’m just another of the rich, white people who flock here in September and don’t stop to give them a ride.

I pull into a caravan park and proceed to the office. The man at the desk greets me with a wearily courteous smile.
“Hello sir. You want to camp?”
“Yes. Tell me, how are the flowers?”
“Good. You must go to Nababeep. There the flowers are very good.”
“You’ve seen them?”
“No, I haven’t seen them.”
“How do you know then?”
“Because it’s my job to know these things. When people come and ask about the flowers I must tell them.”

I pull around back to my assigned site of B2. I’m between two older couples. The ones to my left have a set-up that’s more elaborate than what I enjoy at home, including a full kitchen, dining area and satellite television. The site to my right hosts a couple who have just arrived in a fully stuffed Land Rover with a trailer. The men have found each other and are talkin’ trucks.

“Yeah, for me you can’t beat a Rover. I know, I know, their reputation for reliability is shaky, but this model here, would you believe it, an 81, never gives me more than minor trouble, though I must admit I’m not such a bad mechanic either.”
“It’s all about diff lock. If you haven’t got diff lock, don’t bother leaving home. You know, the other thing is most guys think they can drive but they can’t. I can drive out of mud up to the windshield if you give me a truck with diff lock.”

They look over to me, my invitation to chime in. I don’t know what diff lock is, but I’m quite certain the Corolla doesn’t have it. I nod in greeting then begin to set up camp. After I’m finished I go for a stroll around the premises. Bunches of mostly orange and yellow flowers dot the caravan park and off in the distance I can see bigger patches. Flower bloom peaks at four o’clock and by now, at five, most of them are only about half open. Despite that, they display one of their most endearing and tireless quirks: to face the sun at all times.

Dusk breaks and my neighbors begin roaring fires to make coals for a braai, which per South African standard requires massive cuts of meat. The men lay out thick steaks while the women are busy chopping and slicing for salads. I heat a can of beans over a burner then retire to the backseat of the Corolla to drink beer and consider the relationship between wealth and nature as leisure.

When I emerge an hour later I’m nowhere near a conclusion. I chuck the empty bottles next to the rubbish bin. The man from reception shuffles by in the dark and collects them for deposit money before entering the small caravan which serves as his home. I feel certain the answer to my question is contained in the fact that he wouldn’t think of what he’s doing as camping.

The next morning I’m up quite early and eager to see flowers. I wander through the park and watch their folded faces align with the rising sun like one groggy with sleep begrudgingly getting up for work.

The back road to Nababeep is bumpy and dusty. I’m not sure if it will help, but I find myself longing for diff lock.

After about twenty minutes the flowers start to appear in heavy patches. At the first of these I stop and get out of the car to have a closer look. I joyfully prance through the bushes then flop down in a bed of flowers that by now are fully awake and assiduously keeping their faces turned towards their provider. I lay with my own aligned with theirs under the blue sky.

From there it’s another thirty minutes to Nababeep. Even from a distance the orange carpets of Namaqua daisies are distinct. I drive into town, find a shady spot to park under and set out on foot with my camera slung over my shoulder. I come upon a particularly thick patch of daisies with a perfect low, crumbling Northern Cape mountain in the background. A group of men are working in the field in front of me, making it difficult to frame the shot. I look through the viewfinder and shuffle along the ground on my knees. The men look at me curiously. I zoom in and depress the shutter button.

After that I stroll lazily through town, observing how the flowers turn the ordinary into the divine. The simplest scene of laundry hanging on a line, a dilapidated car on blocks, is picturesque. But while I scuttle around with my camera trying to document the perfect beauty, life here in Nababeep moves on: in the fields, in the homes, in the yards. In the streets.

“Sir, some small change please.”

I pretend to be busy with photography and not hear him. As I get closer to the center of town there are more tourists and more men asking the same question.

“Please sir. Please madam. Some change, please. Just for bread. I’m very hungry.”

Their expressions are sheer humility. There is not a trace of self-confidence. This, contrasted with the satisfied grins of the tourists who lean up against their vehicles, joke, pose with big smiles in front of patches of flowers. Worlds are colliding in Nababeep all because the seeds of colorful plants happened to settle here. On the one side are people struggling to eat; on the other side those struggling to know what to do with themselves once they’ve eaten.

I arrive back at the caravan park a little past four. My neighbors are sitting in the shade of a tree, the men with cans of beer, the women with glasses of wine. They take an obvious interest in me as I get out of the car. The owner of the massive camper waves and I nod in return. I sit down to read a bit in the day’s remaining light and he calls me over. I’d rather not but I’m sure I can score some free beer so I oblige.

“Have a seat,” he says. “Care for a beer?”
“Please.”
“Where did you go today?” he asks.
“Nababeep.”
“Ah, we went there yesterday. Pretty, but nothing compared to what we saw today.”
“And where is that?”
“Skilpadvlei.”
“If you want to see some flowers, that’s where you go,” adds the man with the Land Rover. The women give warm sighs of agreement.

I pray the conversation doesn’t turn to four wheel drive or internal combustion engines. It doesn’t, though stories about how the couples met are scarcely better.

Darkness sets in and I’m invited for dinner. It’s a hard offer to pass up but I manage to, excusing myself to my site to read. The truth is I can’t listen to them for another minute. No amount of free beer could make stories about their children, who in all likelihood are also dullards, interesting.

Sitting in the tent I look back through my photos from the day. In general I’m quite pleased but one of the best shots is ruined by a worker in the field. I zoom in to see if I can edit him out and something about his face captivates me. I magnify the image further and see that he’s looking into the camera, giving the appearance that now that he’s staring straight at me. It’s unnerving. There’s something else, though. I see in his expression that same modesty I saw in the beggar’s earlier. They wear the faces of people brought down to size.

On the way to Skilpadvlei the next morning I consider that I’ve driven 1000 kilometers to see a bunch of weeds that happen to make pretty colors. Nature doesn’t intend to be beautiful. The wonder of the spectacle is made possible by something inside me, but it’s hard to say what subjective impulse is satisfied by the flowers.

The view at Skilpadvlei is as advertised. The flowers form a cover that is only interrupted by the gravel road that winds through the meadows. Everywhere is a mass of orange softened by streaks of purple, yellow and white. It is, to be sure, the pinnacle of flower-viewing. This is the postcard moment.

I take a few photos but quickly lose the desire. It feels disingenuous to try and capture the scope of the display. Even driving through it doesn’t feel right. I want to walk.

I leave the car at the park entrance and set out. My feet can barely keep up with my desire to put one in front of the other. I have, to be sure, what an old bluesman would call ‘them walkin’ blues’.

I walk down highways and gravel roads, over trails and fields. I feel not so much the need for movement but the need to feel the size of the earth.

There are flowers everywhere: in small patches, in large patches, in patches too big and full to be believed. Some stand alone, looking sad but proud without any companions. But all have their colorful faces trained on the sun, somehow knowing everything depends on this one simple fact.

After untold hours of walking my feet ache and I stop for a rest in a meadow. As I’m sitting there in the grass, surrounded by wildflowers and sounds of life, the reason for coming to Namaqualand becomes apparent. I’ve driven all this way not for beauty, but to be brought down to size. Nature on a grand scale tends to make one feel as if they barely exist. This is a good thing, as it reduces the burdens of existence.

I set back the way I came, not sure how far it is but knowing I need to make haste if I’m to be back by nightfall. After a couple of hours the sun is low in the sky and its light begins to withdraw from the land. I make an arc eastward, trying to stay in the rays as long as they last. Like the flowers, I too am trying to keep my face to the light. In the end, all anything is doing is following the sun.

The first time I spotted him I was lounging on the lawn, writing in my journal.  He wore the same clothes as the plumbers who worked for my girlfriend’s parents, so I assumed he was one.  I walked up to him and introduced myself.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“James” he replied in a thick accent.
“My hot water isn’t working,” I said.  “Can you take a look?”
He gazed at me for a moment then said “Alright.”
I assumed this meant: “Alright, I’ll take a look.”
A couple of days passed and my hot water remained out of order so I again approached him.
“Come on, have a look.” I said.
I led him into the kitchen and showed him under the sink.
“I don’t know what the problem is.  I’m sure you do, though, right?”
“Alright,” he said, followed by something in Afrikaans.
“Sorry, I don’t speak Afrikaans.” I said.  “Only English.  I’m American.”
His eyes registered slight amazement.
“America?” he said.
I briefly explained who I was and why I was staying on the plot.  He repeated certain words back to me with slight bewilderment.  I wasn’t sure if he really understood what I was telling him so I said it all again, very slowly.  He appraised me carefully, as if trying to confirm the veracity of my story.  After that he left, I assumed to get the materials for the job.  He didn’t return.

I first came to South Africa to travel for a few months with my girlfriend. We’d laid down plans to tour her home country for a month or so then expand outwards to see Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique…maybe even go as far Tanzania or Madagascar… perhaps beyond…
The African continent appeared in my mind as on old, faded map of the land which had inspired some of Hemingway’s best work, opened up a new songwriting catalog to Paul Simon and prompted Kurtz to face the horror of mankind’s darkness. My ambition was to let myself loose upon the sprawling landmass and bridge the narrow chasm between inspiration and insanity. If not, at least I’d get to see Africa.
All of that changed when my girlfriend’s father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. We were camping somewhere outside of Cape Town when she got the phone call. My sympathy was matched by selfishness. I saw a map of Africa, my map of Africa, with crisscrossing lines marking my travels, with a match put to it, bursting into flames and blowing away as a piece of ash. Goodbye, Green Hills of Africa. So long, wistful dreaming Under African Skies. Not meant to be, confrontation with madness. Hello cruel, untimely fate.
When we arrived back in Pretoria it was decided I would stay at the family plot. My girlfriend grew up there but the family has since subdivided the house into apartments and relocated. There was an unoccupied unit at the back of the property which used to be a horse stable but has been renovated to suit human needs. With one glance at its faded brickwork, cobweb-infested corners and lizard-strewn walls, all nestled on the edge of an expansive piece of bushveld, I fell in love. Jesus was born in a stable. Surely if the savior of mankind came from such humble beginnings I could at least find personal salvation. It was the perfect place to work on my writing. If I couldn’t be Hemingway, perhaps then Thoreau. My fantasy began to rewrite itself. Goodbye, macabre tragedy. Hello, my own, personal Africa.
My days of simple bliss were a stark contrast to the sorrow at my girlfriend’s house. I lived in willful ignorance, arising to multiple, leisurely cups of coffee, almost daily sunny skies, completely new flora and fauna to explore and the mental and physical space needed to put thought into print. I decided to grow a beard. It would symbolize my shirking of the world at large.

A few more days passed without repairs or in fact without even a glimpse of the little black man in blue fatigues. The following Monday I spotted him doing some landscaping. I asked him why a plumber was doing this kind of work.
“I am the gardener,” he said, almost defensively.
It at once dawned on me that he wore the plumber’s uniform only for practical reasons. I felt stupid for going on about the hot water. Wanting to make small talk I turned to that old standby, weather.
“At my home in America it’s cold now, lot’s of snow, like this.” I held my hand up to about waist-level. He let out a sound of shock.
“It’s too much, too much,” he said.
“Here there’s never snow, right?”
“No no, never snow.”
After that we fell into awkward silence so I left him to his work and returned to the stable to do my own.

I made it a goal to get comfortable with James. I figured that if we were the only two people on the property during the day we should at least be on good enough terms to exchange pleasantries. It was with this end in mind that I invited James in for a tea one afternoon. He approached tentatively and when I handed him a cup of green tea he drank it quickly, seeming eager to get the affair over with. I took out a map of America, pointing to my home state. I also showed him some of the places I’ve traveled to on the world map.
“You lucky man” he said. “You see many place.”
I opened up my laptop to show him some photos of my travels and a website I was working on. His faced registered disbelief.
“How can you do this thing?” he said. “Is magic.”
I assured him using a computer was simple and anyone could learn. His wide eyes indicated he didn’t agree.
I couldn’t help but note the disparity of our circumstances. I was living off of my savings, scribbling in a notebook, trying to do what? Write stories? Discover meaning? Such pursuits seemed superfluous at best when I thought of James toiling all day in the yard only to earn just enough money to survive. To me, it was obvious why our lives were so different. I was from a good family, educated and well-traveled. In short, I’d been given all the opportunities in the world to find out what it is I wanted to do with my life and the means to pursue those goals. But what reasons, I wondered, would James cite? Was he aware of the sort of things which separate the haves from the have-nots, or was the world simply divided among magical lines where some men were wizards, free to grow beards and push the keys on a little machine while others were condemned to don a uniform and dig in the soil all day?

Later that week I went to my girlfriend’s house for dinner. I’d adopted the position of, while not purposefully ignoring her ailing father, avoiding direct confrontation. Looking at him was peering into the face of death. It instantly plucked me out of my private world of contentment and transplanted me into a gloomy realm where living and dying were divided by an uncomfortably thin margin.
While we ate I mentioned my encounters with James. I found out that he earns a little less than 400 Rand per week, the equivalent of about fifty dollars. I did a quick calculation and worked out that it equaled scarcely more than $2500 a year. While such an amount was enough to survive on in South Africa, it barely covered the essentials. James was, by any reasonable standard, a poor man. I also recounted anecdotally his description of my computer work as “magic” and was told it used to be common in South Africa for blacks to refer to technology as “the white man’s magic” and the reason why they were able to control society.

Throughout history technologically superior cultures have been able to exploit less advanced ones. Racial explanations have been dispelled, most notably in Jared Diamond’s, “Guns, Germs & Steel” in which the author explains how environmental advantages allowed certain peoples to progress, culturally and materially, at a greater pace than others. The result was that people from some places were able to dominate others through their superior advancements.
I entertained the mind state of those exploited by non-natives. I imagined myself as a hunter-gatherer suddenly confronted by Europeans arriving on ships, bearing guns, navigational equipment and other modern technology. The only logical explanation for somebody who knows nothing of science is that such devices are the product of a supernatural force…of magic.
I wasn’t so naïve to think that in modern time many people still put forward arguments of magic to explain such differences. James didn’t actually think I was casting spells in the stable. However, his choice of words was telling. It would be like me encountering an alien from an unimaginably advanced culture. Their possessions, while certainly not magic, would at least seem like science fiction. Magic in this context represents a world that, while commonplace to some, others are not a part of. It is a symbol of alienation and ignorance.

The following day James came around again.
“Today good. Sun shine very much.” he said.
“Too hot for me,” I said.
“May I have some China tea?” he asked.
I obliged and after serving him a steaming cup he promptly walked away.
This pattern continued. Having labored for several years of my life I knew a simple pleasure like a cup of tea could make the day infinitely more tolerable. However, he soon began to ask for tea every day. Without fail he’d come by and strike up a conversation that was only a lead-in to his real prerogative. I kept telling myself it was only a cup of tea but it still bothered me. While I’d wanted James to be a friend, an equal, his daily request rendered this impossible. By asking for tea everyday he was subjecting himself to my will. Our relationship was one of command.

One of the benefits of a reclusive lifestyle was that I was spared the disparaging sights of urban South Africa. Once a week I borrowed the car and went to the supermarket, at which point all illusions of paradise were shattered. Alongside every road were scores of men who waved at passing cars, hoping to be picked up for work. At stoplights beggars approached the car asking for money, some of them dragging children in tow to soften up potential givers. When looking for parking men whistled loudly and directed me into spots, then assured me they’d look after my car while I was shopping. Many of these self-purported ‘car guards’ were just unemployed men looking for handouts, and even after insisting I didn’t need my vehicle washed I’d come back to find them buffing it and expecting money. On the streets and even inside the stores people would start conversations that, while posing as friendly chit chat, always ended in panhandling. Some, while not begging, would want me to buy shoddy hand made goods.
It was impossible to leave the house without being pestered by one or all of these types and it resulted in sympathetic futility. It was impossible to not feel bad for people who had to stoop to such lows. At the same time, how should one react when they are harassed from all angles by outstretched palms? The dilemma boils down to the following: Should those who have a good life feel bad about it when confronted by those who don’t?

My girlfriend’s father’s condition rapidly deteriorated. It was now at the point where he couldn’t walk on his own and he mostly remained in bed. It was because of this that a Sunday brunch was arranged at the plot. I’d come to understand the place was a great source of pride and happiness for him and it was with great regret that he’d moved away. Still, much of his life had been invested in the property and the family wanted to take him there while he still had enough strength and mind to appreciate it.
We cooked over a gas stove on the lawn while my girlfriend and her family recalled memories from their former home. It felt a bit strange having my world penetrated by them. The notion was undeniably selfish and yet I couldn’t help but acknowledge it.
At one point they went for a walk to look at something on the property and left me to keep an eye on the father. His eyes darted around with a clarity I’d not seen in weeks. Something caught his attention and he pointed at it while trying to rise to his feet. I had no choice but to assist him. He staggered onwards under my support. I was dancing with the dying man.

All at once he stopped, grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me towards him with surprising strength. His eyes locked onto mine and we stared at each other like slow dance partners sharing a tender moment there on the lawn. Then, as abruptly as it had come back, the life was gone again from his eyes and I was forced to stare straight at death. I couldn’t turn away. I couldn’t hide.
My girlfriend walked up and asked if I needed help. I let her take over and I went back to the stable. I closed the door and sat down with tears welling up. As I let them flow I was accepting the sadness as my own. By avoiding him I’d been avoiding the unavoidable: Death. It had found me in my sanctuary. I cried not so much for him or this particular sadness but because I knew I couldn’t hide from the tragedy around me. Even if a man tries to it will eventually find him, and then not on his own terms. This place was never my own personal Africa. There is no personal anything. Only things, personalized.

Just as one can’t hide from problems in their life, so it is with the problems of the world. This became clear the next morning as James came around with his usual prelude to a panhandle.
“Is good today. Not so cold.”
“It’s never cold here, man. You don’t know what cold is until you’ve been to my home.”
When we talk about the weather we’re really trying to set the stage for those deeper things which penetrate our lives but are difficult to broach. It is a reach for that which is unspeakably true.
I knew my choices were to give James the tea and send him on his way or not. A cup of tea or no cup of tea changed nothing. But at the same time a cup of tea meant everything. It meant ships full of Europeans with beards and compasses touching down on African soil. It meant subjugation and intellectual hostage-taking. He was taking not a cup of tea, but a coin pulled out from behind the ear of a magician. Because as long as some people can use magic and others can’t, equality is a fantasy.

“Come in for a cup of tea, James.” I said. “I’m going to show you how to use a computer.”
As I prepared the tea I recalled my first meeting with him.
“Remember, I thought you were a plumber. Those guys never did fix my hot water.”
James stood up and stepped around the corner to where the circuit breaker box was.
He opened it and said “Sir, is because the switch is off.”

I was aboard a bullet train to Kyoto when he lurched down the aisle and temporarily into my life.  ‘The Eye’ was the first thing I noticed about him.  His left one was rolled back in his head to the extent that only a fraction of the iris was visible. He took his seat next to me and inquired about my nationality and purpose in Japan.  I explained I was an American tourist fulfilling a lifetime ambition to see the country.
“I see, I see,” he replied.
He sat to my right, meaning ‘The Eye’ was the one closest to me.  To take my mind off of it I asked him where he learned English.
“Ah, yes.  I lived in Los Angeles for five years.  I worked for a software company.”
“Oh, OK, interesting,” I replied, though the only thing I found truly interesting was the improbability of ending up on a Shinkansen with a deformed Japanese man who happened to speak near-perfect English.
I retraced my journey from Fukuoka to Tswano, then on to Hiroshima and presently proceeding to Kyoto.
“I see, I see.”
“And where are you from?” I asked.
“Kofu,” he said.  “It is the capital city of Yagoshima Prefecture.”  He showed me in my guide book’s map.
“Are you close to Mt. Fuji?” I asked.  I had aspirations to visit the picture-perfect mountain and was hoping he could give me some advice.  Instead he proposed something even more helpful.
“You can come visit me in my hometown,” he said.  “I will take you to Mt. Fuji.”
Hoping to extract more local knowledge from him I asked if he knew how one might go about catching an NFL game on Japanese television.  My beloved New England Patriots were in a playoff game the coming weekend.  Through a further statistical miracle he just so happened to be a Patriots fan as well.
“Ah, yes,” he explained.  “They were champions while I lived in California.  They are a very good team.  Tom Brady is very handsome.  I will record the game and we can watch it at my home.”
I ignored the latent homosexual comment and rejoiced at my dually good fortune, promising to meet him at the train station in Kofu later that week.

Five days later I was on a train heading into the heart of Yagoshima.  It is a sparsely populated, mountainous province, and the ride promised to be very scenic.  From Kyoto I took a bullet-train to Osaka, then changed to a much smaller, slower-moving train.  As it wound through the countryside I reflected upon my situation.  There I was, far from home, embarking on a mission to meet a man I barely knew.  The situation was like spontaneous verse.  Everything I experienced wrote itself into a poem reflecting the pure essence of being.
The train stopped to pick up passengers at a small station.  As it lurched back into motion I watched a railway worker fade from view.  He was not a man but a written line.

I phoned A.G. from the station and met him in the parking lot.
“As I told you, Kofu is famous for having many hot springs.  In Japanese we say ‘onsen’.  I would like to take you to one now.” he said.
Sure, I was hungry and wanted to get settled a bit, but who was I to dictate our course?  I wanted to give myself up to chance; be the tip of a poet’s pen madly writing the next stanza.
“Yes man!” I exclaimed.  “Wherever you want!  Anywhere!”
“So, hot springs are acceptable?”
“More than acceptable, A.G.  Now that you mention it, I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

A Japanese onsen has specific rules and A.G. carefully guided me through the procedure.  After paying for a ticket to use the baths we put our shoes in a locker outside of the men’s quarters.  Inside, we placed the rest of our possessions inside a larger locker.
“Are you shy about nudity?” he asked.
“No, no,” I assured him.
Although I didn’t mention it to him, modesty has never been one of my defining characteristics.  Then especially, I found nudity to be a great equalizer.  Side by side with my Japanese friend I hit the showers, the final requisite before entering the baths.
At last we were ready to get in the water.  There were several baths of varying temperatures.  We opted for a collection on an outdoor patio.  The view overlooked the city of Kofu and beyond it snowcapped mountains.  Mt. Fuji lied somewhere in the distance.
“This is my favorite hot spring in Kofu,” said A.G.
It was obvious why.  The sun had just set and yellow and pink tones highlighted the western sky, accented by ivory peaks.  I sank down into the hot water.  The steam rose into the cooling air, suspending us in mist.  It was, a cold beer aside, perfection.   I knew that, in the distant shadow of Mt. Fuji, naked with a stranger in warm spring water and dusk phosphorescence, this moment was beautiful.  I felt the way I’d felt earlier on the train. Somehow, the fact that all of this was totally unplanned is what made it beautiful, but I was unable to explain why.

When we finished at the onsen A.G. drove me to a youth hostel outside of town and helped me check in.
In the morning I was downstairs for my complimentary breakfast by seven-thirty.  It was a delightful spread of sausage, eggs, fresh bread and fruit.  The owner spoke a few words of English and we tried our best to learn something of the other.  In practice it was a failure but as a gesture of human good will it was a grand success.  The sun rising over the mountains needed only be translated by a flourish of the arms and a grin.  His son, perhaps seven years old, entered the room with the disappointed face universal to schoolchildren.  I pressed a dollar bill into his hand, knowing that I was buying a lifetime memory for both of us.
A.G. arrived promptly by eight.  He spoke briefly to the hostel owner while I snapped some photos outside.  The rising sun colored in the mountains as it moved towards its apex.  Far in the distance I could make out what I thought might be Mt. Fuji.  It was bathed in light for a moment before disappearing behind heavy clouds.
We drove forty minutes back to A.G.’s place.  Once there we walked to a Seven Eleven to stock up on rations.  I bought a six pack of beer, chips and dip, and a large bag of beef jerky.  A.G. carefully observed my selections then made his own.  His choice of flavored water and rice crisps showed he hadn’t really been paying attention.
“No man,” I said.  “You need beer and chips and meat.  This is football.”
“I see, I see,” he said.  “But I shall be the designated driver so no alcohol for me.”
“Alright then, at least buy something unhealthy,” I said.  As the cashier rung up his gummy bears and Seven-Up I realized some things just don’t translate.

I didn’t bother to briefly steep him in the common behavior of an American male watching football.  I figured that if he lived in the States for five years he was used to the unique brand of atavism.  In fact, I found it uninhibiting.
“Goddamn it!” I screamed and slammed the table as the Patriots committed a turnover.  A.G. looked slightly frightened as he glanced at me out of the corner of his good eye.  “Are you displeased with the outcome?” he asked.
“Of course I’m displeased!” I shouted.  “My mother could have made a better throw.”
“I see, I see.  She is a skilled football player then?”
“No man!  It’s just an expression!”
“I see, I see.”
I considered curbing my outbursts in the interest of cultural unity but after my third beer it became nearly impossible.
“You douche bag!”
“Douche bag.  I am not familiar with this term.”
“It’s meant to insult somebody.”
“I see, I see.  Is it customary in America to yell ‘Douche bag’ at people on the television?”
“It is, especially when they make a bad play like Brady just did.”
“Tom Brady is very handsome.”
“Yes he is, but right now he’s a douche bag.”
“I see, I see.”
The Patriots failed to convert a third and short.
“Douche bag!” A.G. yelled and slammed his fist down on the table.  However, he used the hand on his bad side and missed the target, sending his printer and a bunch of books and magazines crashing to the floor.

Fortunately my team won and A.G. was spared the ritual destruction by an American male in defeat.  It was approaching noon and I was a six-pack deep.  We stopped at a liquor store and I bought more beer.  Getting so drunk this early left only one logical course of action: more drinking.  I knew that if I stopped then I would plunge into despair.   But it was in search of beauty that I turned myself into a beast.  I wanted the journey to Fuji to be unforgettable.
I suddenly realized what beauty is: the raw experience of the moment.  It is something that comes into being by the slightest of chances but still asserts itself as the truth.  It’s fragileness makes it beautiful.
The ugliest thing in the world is commonness.  Nobody wants to be ordinary because they don’t want to be ugly.  They want to be what nobody else can forget.  In seeking beauty one is really seeking to become beautiful.
Sitting passenger in A.G.’s car, each successive uphill and twist in the road contained the infinitely unknown and within the possibilities I remade myself as I wished to be.  I entered a realm of pure imagination.  To my right was a storybook freak-somewhere ahead a mountain too perfect to be real.  They combined to weave a tale not of this world.
We rounded a corner and there it was.  Mt. Fuji.  It was not a mountain.  It was a ghost.  A.G. stopped the car.  I got out and stared at the giant phantom.  It was too delicate to be a mountain.  It was made of air; the stuff of dreams.  It was beautiful.

We pulled over at a lookout point where a busload of tourists snapped photos, eager to add to the mythology of their lives.  I took some as well.   It was an admission of commonness.
As we kept going I became desperate to take the perfect photo.  I ordered A.G. to stop over and over.  I demanded that he turn around.  I missed my shot.  It was back there.
What had happened was Fuji became a mountain again.  I was just a man taking a picture of a mountain.  I was just a man being driven around by a stranger taking a picture of a mountain.  Fuji was no longer a ghost.  It was just a man, like me, which is to say, nothing special.    The fleeting beauty of the moment had been replaced by ugliness.

Wending back down the mountain toward town I was met by the world of man.  I missed the majesty of the mountain.  After it every shop and restaurant I saw looked sad, like things that wanted to be beautiful but weren’t.
Nature is the standard of beauty because it finds its form without seeking it.  A mountain is the spontaneous verse of the universe.  It is a poem that writes itself.  I looked back through the photos of Mt. Fuji and tears ran down my cheek.

Despite being the dominant species on the planet, it takes a long time before a person is able to do much of anything.  Deer and horse can run an hour after birth.  Crocodiles and sharks are left to fend for themselves immediately.  Sea turtles must run a gauntlet of predators and battle pounding surf as soon as they take their first breath.  Human offspring, however, are utterly helpless the first few years of life.  Perhaps this is the reason a child’s scream is so earsplitting.  The inability to do anything for themselves is made up for by a voice that leaves no doubt something is needed.

“Reina, use your words.  Tell me what you want.  How about Elton?”  The mention of her favorite singer soothes her a little.  I hold up the Elton John’s Greatest Hits CD jacket.  It doesn’t suit her highness and the screams resume.  She tries to say something between hysterical sobs.
“What?  Christmas music?”  At this point I’m willing to listen to anything except the sounds coming from her mouth.  Driving with one knee, I flip through the CD book until I find the on labeled ‘X-Mas.’  I slide it into the player and Bobby Helms’ crooning blares through the two Rockford Fosgate 12” subwoofers in the trunk.  I feel confident I’m the first person ever to play this song with so much bass.  The screams subside.  I pull up at a stoplight and check out the girls in the car next to me before remembering I’m bumping ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ in May.  Caring for a child is perhaps the best birth control.

There’s no parking available in front of the aquarium so I circle around the block to look for a spot.  It seems the short-term solution provided by the CD labeled, “X-Mas” is beginning to wear thin on the emperor in the car seat behind me.
“Where’s momma?”
“Momma is at home, remember?  The new baby in her tummy is making her feel sick.  Momma needs to sleep.”
“I want momma.”
“Soon, OK?  First we’re gong to see fishies.  Doesn’t that sound like fun?”  She doesn’t respond, but at least she’s not crying.

I see a spot and parallel park.   We get out of the car and I shoulder the bag that contains the rations for our two hour sojourn: diapers, snacks, bottles, sunscreen, a change of clothes, toys.  It must weigh twenty pounds.  A very merry Christmas, indeed.

I pay the woman at the counter $17.50 for one adult and one child.  As she glances down at my niece her face softens.  As much as having the kid around makes me feel sexless, I can’t help but notice the effect she has on women.  They presume she’s mine and take me for a caring, sensitive guy who is self-assured enough to stay home with his little girl.  As far as a chick magnet goes, the kid is far superior to even the cutest puppy.

“I have to go potty.”
Do I take her into the women’s room and risk being seen as a pervert or to the men’s room where there might be a pervert who gets off on the sound of a two year old making pee-pee?  I opt for the men’s room.  At least there I’m in my element.  The women’s room has always seemed to me almost mystical, a urinal-less ladies-only club where complex behavior I would never understand takes place.
I sit her on the bowl.  After a few seconds the expected tinkling sounds don’t come.  I ask what’s wrong.  I can’t quite make out her response but it seems as though she wants me to go first.  I explain I don’t have to go right now.  Upon hearing the news she lets out a little sob which usually precludes crying.  I’ll shit on the floor if it means avoiding a tantrum.  I get her off the pot and we go over to a urinal.  I’m trying to force a stream that isn’t there and it’s especially difficult with my niece approximately eye level with my wee-wee, watching.  Another guy comes in.  He seems unfazed by her and starts an impressive sounding stream.  She shifts her attention to his unit.
“Whoa,” she says, clearly impressed.  Finally I start a small stream which earns less-enthused clapping from her.  I make eye contact with the guy, as if to say, “Hah…kids,” but he gives me a look like, “You call that a piss, man?”

We’re walking through a tunnel that shows in 3-D how the oceans formed.  It’s dark and mock thunder and lightening flash and boom.  She’s scared so I take her hand and we hurry through.  As we emerge there is a room surrounded on all sides except the bottom by a wrap-around tank.  Dozens of fish, turtles, and small sharks glide effortlessly by, oblivious to the gawking Homo sapiens.  There are some benches, a good place to sit down for a snack.  I give the kid some Cheeze-its and a tippy-cup of apple juice.  Without meaning to, I devour all of the cheese crackers.
“More crackers, please.”
“All gone.  You ate them.  How about some nana?  Sandwich?”
“Crackers!”
If I’ve got my cues right, we’re definitely in pre-tantrum mode.
“I want momma!”
This could be the beginning of the end.  Usually, once she’s got mommy on her mind my ridiculous attempts at care only become more inadequate.  It would be a long ride home.
“Hey baby, how about some of these crackers?”
She sweeps in, seraphic, with a hand full of cheese crackers, giving me a smile as if to say she knows exactly what’s at stake.
“Say thank you, Reina. Wow, you saved me there.”
“Oh, don’t mention it.  I know that tantrum face when I see it.”
”Yeah, let’s not even go there.”
The toddlers have noticed each other and are sizing one another up in the manner of animals: curious yet cautious.
“She’s so cute.”
“Oh, thanks.  Deceiving though….she can go from angel to demon in a second flat.”
“Oh, don’t I know.  This one’s not as sweet as he looks either.”
She’s maybe thirty, blonde, attractive.  The kid has her hair but clearly the father’s face.  I check her hand.  There’s a ring.
“Yah, she’s a really good kid for the most part, but still a little unstable since Mom passed away…”  I let the weight of the words hang in the air.
“Oh my God…do you mind if I ask what happened?”
“Boating accident.  We were water skiing.  I was driving, she was up on the skis, doing her thing.  I looked back to check on her and she was just…gone.  Never found a trace.”
“Oh no!”
“After a week I told them to stop searching for the body.  I mean, what does it matter, right?  Once you’re gone, you’re gone.  I guess coming to the aquarium is a way to try and make peace with the water.  I want her to see its life-giving potential as well.  It’s not easy, but it’s helping, slowly, I think.”
Reina slaps the boy in the head.  I give her the thumbs-up.
“Actually, I think we’ve done enough healing for one day.  Would you care to join us for a picnic in the park?”

Outside the sun is warm and bright.  The aquarium is right next to a good-sized park.  It’s the middle of the week, so hardly anyone is here; mostly retired people and mothers with kids.  I lay down a blanket from the car and we sit while the kids run around.  She hasn’t mentioned her old man once, which is a good sign.  I explain that I support us by working as a day-trader, which is supplemented by life insurance payments.  When she asks me for stock tips I tell her those don’t come for free.  She places her hand on my arm in a cut-it-out kind of way, but lets it linger for a moment.  You can tell the kids don’t really like each other.  Hers keeps hogging all of the toys and Reina smacks him again.  When he comes over to tattle I explain that we’ve been having rage issues since…well, you know what.

It’s getting close to naptime.  I say I’d love to have her over for coffee but the house is being fumigated.  She suggests her place instead.  Before we leave I tell her I must quickly make a phone call in regards to something in the Asian markets…peripheral dividend moderators…very technical stuff.  I dial my sister and assure her that Reina is sleeping peacefully in the shade in the park, looking completely angelic, so much so that I wouldn’t feel right waking her.  With the promise to get some nice photos of the cherub at rest I hang up and put on my game face.

During the ride the kid falls asleep.  Now, the key is to keep her that way, so she has no memory of this detour.  In the driveway of the two story ranch with stonework exterior I creep around like a burglar trying not to wake the beast.  I lift her up out of the seat and her head flops around like she might wake, but doesn’t.  A couple of Mexican guys are working in the yard, obviously taking an interest in the unfamiliar guests.  I imagine one sneaking out back on his cell phone and dialing the Mr. up at work.
“Señor, you’d better come home quick.  There’s a joven here with a niña in a black car, señor, playing Feliz Navidad… sí, es muy extraño.”

Inside, the place is spotless.  It’s always easy to tell the work of a maid because they do things like clean behind the TV, inside burners and the microwave, vacuum the curtains, and they use something with a citrus smell that all maids seem to possess in bulk.  Family photographs dominate the living room.  They vacantly smile and stare out, seeming to confirm to any doubters that this is indeed a happy family.  I can see he has a strong chin, low cheek bones, intense green eyes-not a bad looking guy.  There’s a photo of him in his fraternity days, grinning with youthful smugness, a face that cold not possibly have sensed the delusion of upwardly mobile aspirations that would one day leave him estranged from the very life and family he’d hope to build, that being a parent and husband would be little more than a hobby he practiced in his free time.  I almost feel sorry for him.

I lay the kid down on a bed in the extra room.  Hers is down for the count too.  Feeling I need to do something to get things back on track, I ask her if she smokes dope.  She hasn’t in years.  I assure her of the high-quality, low-paranoia strain I have in the car.  She seems indecisive.  I pull it out and let her have a look.
It’s loneliness that makes her willing to take a chance with a stranger.
I pack the one-hitter and we step out on the patio.  I take my drags and exhale the bluish smoke up into the midday sun.
“Señor, they’re smoking hierba…sí…you’d better come home muy rápido.”
I pack and pass it to her.  She holds it awkwardly, like a young girl trying to look capable in from of a cool, older guy.  Peer pressure is a bitch.
The deviance makes her feel young, like she’s living her own life again.
We go back in the house and she starts the coffee.  I don’t want any but I want her to feel like we’re still just having coffee.  As she’s rinsing some things in the sink I come up behind her, put my hands on her waist.  This is the test.  If she freaks out and sends me home, I’ve lost nothing.  It’s not like she can tell her husband about it.
“Señor, come muy, muy rápido…”
She tenses for a moment but does nothing.  She’s shaking a little.  I pull her hair to the side and kiss the back of her neck, slowly slide one hand over her breasts.  Her eyes flutter shut.  I spin her around, kiss her on the mouth.  We stumble over to the couch, not letting go of each other.  I remove her top to reveal tits just barely beginning to sag.  As she begins to go down on me I step on a toy truck and almost lose my balance.  Her soft lips pass over me.  I look at her husband in the photo, thinking that in some way, he probably deserves this.  I don’t feel bad for him anymore.
“Sí, senor, doggystyle, over the couch…you fucking cabrón.”

“The drugs! Ditch the drugs! He’s coming!”
I chuck cans of beer into the brackish water, seize Pete’s bag and prepare to throw it as well.
“What are you doing man? Take it easy!”
“You goddamn hippy! This is your fault!”
Hunter has no reaction. He expressionlessly pilots the boat via his position in the back next to the outboard motor. We’re in the middle of a small lake that the river we navigated down empties into.
“Head for that bank captain, it’s our only hope! No, fuck that, let’s swim for it!”
I’m about ready to plunge into the bayou water when all I can see are alligators, snakes and snapping turtles writhing just below the surface.
“Ahhh! Look at them all!”
I snatch the bag again and rear back, ready to fling it, but Pete grabs my arm. I stumble and the boat tips dangerously. In the distance the other craft is steadily closing in. I’m not sure if a lake of vicious reptiles or a backwoods marine patrolman is a worse fate. I imagine him docked beside us, a toothpick hanging out of his mouth, an unblinking stare hidden behind insect-like reflective shades. He spits a big wad of tobacco and slurps up the spittle from his lips, drawling, “Let me see some ID boys.” As I hand him my New Hampshire driver’s license he says, “So, a Yankee hmm? We don’t much care for your kind round here.” He tilts his shades down and his gaze sizes up the unregistered boat littered with beer cans. “Well, looks like we’ve got ourselves a little party here.” He then proceeds to search Pete’s bag and as he pulls out the weed, mushrooms and prescription opiates he shakes his head and makes a sort of clicking sound with his mouth. The next image is vague but I can make out Mr. John Q here with a Confederate flag draped around his naked body while indistinct banjo music plays in the background. He directs a collection of potbellied, gap-toothed men lined up behind me, preparing to deliver a proper Southern welcome. Pete slowly rotates over a spit with an apple in his mouth and a cucumber hanging out of his ass. Hunter sits off to the side staring at us with the same blank look.
Seized by terror I abandon all hope, slump down to a sitting position and cover my eyes, thinking if I don’t look at the boat creeping ever closer that this nightmare will somehow end.

“Hah ha! Man, you’re a riot!”
You fat buffoon. I wasn’t trying to be funny.
I close my eyes and pretend to sleep but he keeps right on. “I think I’m most excited to see the Boss. I tell you man, wait until you see him live.”
My first mistake was establishing a common bond with this man. I should have told him I’m a traveling abortionist who specializes in extreme late-term procedures en route to Baton Rouge, that I first found my calling in baby-killing after tagging along with my father to a neo-Nazi rally at the age of seven. But even that probably would have earned a slap on the back and a hearty guffaw. Instead, I admitted that, like him, I was bound for Jazz Festival in New Orleans and for the past three hours he hasn’t shut up. He hits the call button and when the stewardess comes over he orders two Jack Daniels. She comes back with the small bottles and he offers one to me. “Cheers, brother. Here’s to Jazz Fest.”
Damn you and your meaty calves. Only one and a half more hours.
At half past two the planes’ wheels skip and squeal as they rejoin with the ground in New Orleans. “Yeah buddy, we made it!” he says.
No, you made it without me fashioning a shank out of airline cutlery and plunging it into your folded neck.
As I exit the plane I bolt down the corridor. “Hey buddy, wait up,” he shouts.
“Got to piss bad, man, I’ve got gonorrhea!” I yell over my shoulder.
At the baggage carousel I pray my suitcase appears quickly. While I’m waiting I call Hunter and tell him to pick me up at Terminal B. I see my suitcase drop onto the conveyer and at the same moment feel a familiar meaty paw on my back. “Have a good piss buddy? How about swapping numbers? Maybe we can meet up this weekend.”
“Well, I don’t have a phone. It’s forbidden by my church. I’m a sect of Amish.”
Hunter’s truck lurches to a stop outside. My bag is within reach. In one movement I grab it and sprint towards the door.
“Buddy, hey buddy!” he calls and starts chasing after me. I run through the automatic doors and try the truck’s handle. “Open it damn you!” I scream. Hunter reaches over and lifts the lock. As I open the door a mass of empty beer bottles spills out onto the curb. I look over my shoulder. He’s coming. “Hey pal, at least take my number!”
“Drive man! Drive!”
As we squeal away Hunter asks, “Who the hell was that?”
“A true psychopath…a Nazi abortionist of some kind. Never mind him, though, how the hell are you?”

Inside the apartment I drop my suitcase on the floor and survey my home for the next few days. The only things in the living room are a weight bench and boxes stacked up against the wall.
“Home sweet home,” says Hunter, extending his arm like a game show hostess presenting a prize. He walks through the kitchen and into this bedroom where the décor is much the same as the living room except there’s a mattress on the floor with a bag of moldy shredded cheese on it. He kicks it to the side and flops down.
“You call this a home?” I say. “I’d be better off sleeping at the bus station. There at least better be some drugs in this den of squalor.”
Hunter pulls out a cloth bag from under the mattress and takes out bottles of oxycontin, percocet and adderol. He taps out one of each into his hand and swallows them. I do the same. “How did you get these?” I ask him. “What sort of scheme do you have going you degenerate?”
“I have a passport to an unlimited cocktail of prescription delights.” he says.
He digs through the cloth bag but comes up empty handed. “What the fuck? Where is it?”
“Where’s what?”
“IT man, the holy grail! He frantically searches under the mattress. “This is bad. Look for a little yellow notepad!” He jumps up and starts rifling through boxes, throwing things around the room. I hear him cursing as he opens up drawers in the kitchen then moves into the living room and goes through the boxes in there.
Thirty minutes later it looks like a small tornado touched down inside the apartment. Hunter sits on the edge of the weight bench with a serious look. “Luckily I have a backup plan. I hate to drag you into this but it will make things easier.”
“What? Talk sense man.”
“I’ll explain on the way over. Mount up!”

The composition of the neighborhoods slowly changes from run-down government housing to family homes until we’re on a street with tall, Victorian style houses. We pull up outside of a particularly well-maintained white one.
“Now remember, my grandparents are respectable folks, real southern gentry. None of your Yankee candor.” Hunter says.
As we approach the gate an older woman emerges wearing dirt stained pants and a broad rimmed hat. Hunter’s demeanor changes to that of a charming grandson and he greets her with a big smile and a hug. He introduces me and I try my best to look god-fearing.
“To what do we owe the occasion of this unexpected visit?”
“Well, we were in the neighborhood and I thought we could borrow your air mattress for my friend here.”
“Of course. Come inside, I’ll put some water on for tea.”
We follow her into the kitchen. She puts the kettle on and leaves the room.
Hunter hisses at me: “I’ve got to get up there alone. Keep them talking so I have time to look.” He runs up the stairs. His grandmother comes back in the room leading her frail looking husband. She speaks slowly and loudly to him. “Richard, Hunter’s brought a friend. Say hello.” I smile and he gives me a curious look. The men sit while she arranges a platter with cups, saucers and biscuits. The old man is staring at me. “You have a beautiful home,” I say.
“Look at all this celebration,” he says. “Just say yes yes.”
“Yes yes,” I reply with some hesitation.
There is a photo of him on the wall as a younger man dressed in physician robes. The grandmother sits and I pour both of them a cup of tea. The old man places a hand on my arm. “I’ve got it,” he says.
“Yes, you do.” I say. “I can see that. So, New Orleans is lovely.”
“We’ve lived here our entire lives,” his grandmother says. “Though after this last storm I have to confess we’re a little spooked. Richard, will you pass the milk please?” “What?” he says turning his gaze to me. “It was him? He did it?”
“Sorry dear,” she says. “I’m afraid he’s quite confused these days.” The old man is eyeing me.
“That’s quite a garden you’ve got out there,” I say.
“Thank you,” she says. “It’s my pride and joy.”
“Niggers,” the old man says.
“Richard, please don’t use that kind of language.”
“Goddamn spooks!”
“Richard, stop it! I’m terribly sorry. How long will you be staying in New Orleans?”
“About four days.”
“Bastards!” He grabs my hand. He may look frail but his grip is strong. “It’s them you know.” he says. “They’ve done it.”
“Yes, probably,” I say.
“I wonder what’s taking Hunter so long? Maybe I should go give him a hand.”
“I was actually hoping we could take a walk in the garden. I’d love to see it.”
“Yes, of course. Some fresh air might be good for Richard.”
We take our cups of tea and step out into the warm afternoon sunshine. She leads her husband by the arm and he eyes things suspiciously. He picks up a trowel and says, “They’ve done it. Did you know that?” I nod my head in agreement. As we’re inspecting a bed of marigolds the old man trips and lands face first in the soil. He kicks his legs and yells, “Look what they did!” His wife attempts to calm him but he’s thrashing and yelling racial obscenities. I try to help him up and he screams at me, “You! You’re one!” We manage to get him back on his feet and inside the house but he’s still wound up. Amidst the chaos Hunter comes down the stairs with a blue folded air mattress asking, “What happened?” His grandmother explains and they take him into the next room. After the confusion has settled she apologizes profusely. Hunter explains we should go so that the old man can calm down.
“Son of a bitch!” he yells from the other room.
We say goodbye and as we pull away Hunter says, “Good work sir, that was perfect,” and slaps a fresh prescription pad onto my crotch.

An hour later we’re back at his place with a small arsenal of pills. We ingest a mouthful of various painkillers and I begin inflating my bed.
“So, when is this buddy of yours arriving?” says Hunter.
“He’s supposed to be here about 5:30,” I say.
“And he’s bringing the stuff right?”
“Don’t worry. He’ll come through.”
The previous week I’d finished work at a seasonal job and decided on Jazz Festival as a reward for myself. A guy I’d worked with was driving from Colorado to Austin, Texas where after briefly visiting his family and securing a bounty of psychedelics he would proceed on to New Orleans. It’s Friday. The plan is to check the music out for two days. Hunter has prepared something special for Monday, something he’s still keeping a secret. He changes into work clothes and goes outside to do a few things. With my bed blown up I sink down into it with the beginning of a buzz creeping over my body. I bask in the perfection of the next few days until sleep vaults me into a realm of opium dreams.

I awake about two hours later to Hunter poking me with a pair of long garden shears. “Up, you lazy bastard,” he says. I rub the sleep out of my eyes and sit up. Hunter is wearing a t-shirt that reads, ‘Somebody Should Have Aborted Pat Robertson’ “What time is it?” I say.
“Five o’clock. I took the liberty of answering your phone. This Pete will be here soon. We’ve got to go meet him.”
I stand up and work my way back into reality. Hunter is in the kitchen grinding up pills. “This ought to wake you up,” he says and whiffs a thick line. Almost immediately he doubles over in pain screaming. He staggers into his bedroom and collapses on the mattress holding his head. “Are you alright?” I ask over and over but no answer. Finally he sits up and shakes his head. “Your turn,” he says. “The hell with that,” I say. “Just grind it up a bit more. It’s too thick.” he says. I follow his instructions and snort a line. Right away I too am in agony. I curl up on the floor and all I can see is a red blur. As I’m laying there I think that my entire life thus far has lead up to this moment. The sum total of my choices has gotten me here, writhing in pain on a filthy carpet after snorting an unknown powder. I’m convinced I will die. I can see a newspaper headline reading: “Yankee tourist found dead from drug overdose; Locals rejoice.” Hunter is patting me on the back, shouting “Arms up!” I blow my nose on my shirt and a clot of powder and blood comes out. As the pain at last recedes I stagger to my feet like a fighter trying to beat a standing ten count.
“Ah ha,” says Hunter. “We didn’t remove the time release plastic coating.” This explains why it felt like broken glass had shot into my brain stem. He peels the covering off of fresh pills and we repeat the procedure only this time instead of pain there’s an instant rush of pleasure and a bitter post-nasal drip. Sufficiently medicated, we set off to meet Pete.

“Where the fuck is this guy,” shouts Hunter, digging at his skin. After the initial euphoria of oxycontin wears off it is occasionally followed by extreme itchiness and irritability. Hunter is in the grips of a powerful fit. I phone Pete and get the intersection where he’s parked. What kind of idiot waits there?” screams Hunter and he snatches the phone out of my hand. “Listen up. Where you’re at, that’s bullshit. Drive up until you see Church Street and meet us on the corner of Fourth.” He hangs up and throws the phone back at me. “Relax man,” I say. “Remember your manners or he might just take his drugs and bail.”
“Yes, the drugs” he hisses, whipping down a side street and nearly running down a pedestrian.
Up ahead is Pete’s green truck and we pull along side it. When I introduce Hunter he mumbles something and scratches at his skin like a flea-bitten dog. In mid conversation he starts revving the engine loudly then pulls away, not even waiting to see if Pete is following.
Back at his place Hunter gives the grand tour by saying, “Shitter’s in there and here’s where you sleep,” pointing at the floor. “We can take turns with the air mattress,” I say, trying to assure him a little. Surely he didn’t anticipate a madman twitching and scratching himself raw at the end of his thousand mile journey. I see doubt in his eyes as he looks around the disheveled apartment, at the blood and mucus stained t-shirt and the remains of powder next to a rolled up bill. Hunter disappears into his room and locks the door. Creedence’s ‘Born in the Bayou’ begins blaring. “Only one thing left to do,” says Pete, and he quickly spins up a massive cone joint. After taking a hit I walk over to Hunter’s door and knock. It opens a crack. “Hit this man,” I whisper. “Take it easy. You’re scaring this good-natured oaf. He’s not like us. He’s happy. He doesn’t appreciate the finer points of an anti-social rage. Straighten yourself out!” The joint disappears into the crack for a moment then he hands it back and shuts the door.

The next morning we’re up by seven and hard into the rum by eight. Pete has a couple of drinks but seems content to sit back quietly and puff away at the incredibly large bag of dope while Hunter and I jabber in the kitchen, every once in a while one of us reaching down to pour a stiff drink or grind up a pill, take a line, and pass the sniffing straw to the other.
“Nothing has changed. Human history is just the continual reorganization of the power structure but the general format remains the same. As far back as the first civilizations there were slaves and people are still slaves.”
“But people today earn a salary and enjoy personal freedoms. How do you account for that?”
“As I said, it’s merely a different form of slavery. What man actually has any freedom? He is owned by the necessity of work. Men are helpless without society. Those who own the means of production know people must work in order to afford a life of comfort. If one wishes to avoid complete alienation from society he must trade his free time for wages.”
“But shouldn’t all people contribute something to a society if they wish to reap its benefits?”
“Yes, but how many are contributing anything but keeping the system in motion? Progress, men call it, but it’s really more of the same: a few with the power, the rest struggling to just maintain a lifestyle that keeps them above the level of an animal.”
And so on.
We arrive at the grounds by eleven, swallow a brave amount of cubensis, and head inside.
Our first stop is the Jazz Tent where Herbie Hancock has just begun his set. Hunter shoves to the front of the crowd while Pete and I hang to the back. About halfway through “Cantaloupe Island” the trip hits me hard. I think something like: I’m the funniest man in the crowd. My talent is going grossly underappreciated. “Not a morsel of humor among them,” I declare to Pete. “We’re wasting our time.” I make a move towards the exit and he follows. As we wander through the grounds and pass different stages I can feel the different music like one would temperature. An acoustic blues band feels too cold. I don’t like the feel of a Zydeco ensemble either. We pass an instrumental jam band playing a cover of, “When the Levee Breaks,” which feels perfectly temperate and I flop down on the grass among the crowd.
While I’m sitting there enjoying the tunes a drunk stumbles and nearly lands in my lap. “Whooo!” he yells. I’m paralyzed. It never occurred to me that I’d have to protect this plot. “No trespassers,” I say firmly. I look around, suddenly aware of all the rival males. “Of course,” I think. “This is prime territory. Resource competition is the key issue of the twenty first century.” A man dances with his shirt off, coming dangerously close to the square I’ve carved into the dirt around us. I growl and bare my teeth. “Come on man,” I say to Pete. “You’ve got to help. There’s too many of them for me to take alone.” He laughs uneasily and turns back to the stage. “He’s too far left,” I think. “An idealist. He couldn’t appreciate a real world problem such as resource scarcity.”
Luckily, before I have to prove my worth in physical combat, Pete suggests we go check out Bob Dylan. I follow him and we squeeze to the front of the crowd. Up on stage Dylan looks old and skeletal. An aging hippy in front of me wears a shirt with a young Dylan, bright-eyed and curly haired, who rode to fame a wave that change was in the air, a time when it looked like maybe, just maybe, people could change the world. But then, one by one they awoke to the bleak realization that beyond their indulgent circles the world was carrying on as it always had. Those with power were doing as they pleased, waging wars and creating misery while the rest tried to hang on to a scrap of human dignity.
That same hope is a marketing tactic now. It’s used to sell t-shirts and concert tickets but nobody actually believes it anymore. Hope and change are retro hip. I’m standing in post-Katrina New Orleans, a city in ruins which seems to foreshadow the future of the entire planet. A lost city one day. A lost world another. “Oh my god,” I think. “We are Atlantis. The lost world is our own.” I grab Pete’s arm and say to him, “It’s a symbol. Atlantis is Earth. That fabled lost place is our planet!” He can’t hear me and nods his head to the tunes and as I look around almost every head is bobbing up and down as if in agreement that yes, the world is well on its way to obliteration. I think of Charlton Heston in “Planet of the Apes” pounding the sand shouting, “Damn you all to hell!” and as I look over the crowd nodding mindlessly the phrase plays over and over again in my head.

It’s now around 3:00 and we head over to check out Springsteen on the East stage. During the walk Hunter explains the singer’s appeal.
“Springsteen is just a blue collar guy from Jersey. He puts in a day of song writing or performs a concert in the same way a factory worker punches a clock. Good old-fashioned hard work. His music is written for the average person, weaving tales of everyday life. The people in his songs have common names, Mary, for instance, someone just like us, struggling just like us.”
Even from a hundred meters away I can feel the energy pouring out of him as he runs across the stage dripping sweat. The musicians are an extension of him, playing tubas, trombones, accordions, working the burdensome instruments, earning every bit of sound that comes out. They begin to play a cover of the old song, “Oh Mary Don’t You Weep.” “This is for you, New Orleans,” the Boss announces before launching into the ballad. “Pharaoh’s army got drowned, oh Mary don’t you weep.” he sings. The song’s message is clear. A trademark of humankind is degradation at the hands of their fellow man. The only consolation may be the fact that it is universally true.
Roaming down Bourbon Street later that night reveals that it is compensated for in another way. I realize it as we pass in and out of the neon-splattered haunts, bar to bar, band to band, new friend to new friend. The hum on Bourbon Street at night, of a festival, of clinking glasses and guitar riffs, raunchy rock music and greasy food stands, dank alleyways, the smell of sex and cigarettes and shit, is catharsis.
I’m sitting at a bar, stooped over a glass of whisky. I feel a hand on my back. It’s the man from the plane. Now, I accept him with a grin and a toast. We are brothers taking up arms in the dark, sad night.
The next morning Hunter and I are in no mood to return to the concert grounds. We stayed up until well after the sun had risen trying to gain release from the futility of being a man. The dawn of a new day holds no promise of reconciliation with our frustrations, only a grim stubbornness to not die this day.
Pete goes alone to the festival. Hunter and I go for what he calls, ‘The Armageddon Tour’, a drive through the areas hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina. We drive through block after block of abandoned houses. On the front lawn of each are piles of destroyed goods. The front doors are spray-painted with a mark that labels them condemned. It is haunting to drive through once-bustling neighborhoods that now lie in ruin. The silence holds phantom sounds of human activity.
One of the houses bears an uncanny resemblance to a fraternity house from my university. On Sunday mornings it displayed the signs of a weekend of reckless abandonment. Broken furniture littered the front lawn. Beer cans and other garbage lay in piles. A person or two wandered wraith-like over the grounds, as if in disbelief of the wreckage. That same incredulity is expressed on Hunter and my faces. Here, it looks like the aftermath of the most outrageous bender of all time, of a mad pursuit for pleasure turned to hopeless destruction.

Pete returns from the show all smiles. We ignore him, staying in Hunter’s room, lamenting the fatalistic doom of mankind. We stay up all night, tearing through pill after pill, bottle after bottle. At one point I raid Pete’s bag for shrooms and pot. I creep up next to his sleeping body and grab for the goods. As I do he wakes up. We make eye contact and hold it as if in a duel. He gives in, rolling onto his side wordlessly.
In the morning Hunter reveals his surprise. He’s taking us boating. While he picks up the craft I cut Pete’s hair in the parking lot. He sits in a chair and I run the clippers over his head. Blonde hair comes off in chunks like a lamb’s fleece. Doing my best to ensure he’s perfectly streamlined is the closest I come to apologizing.
Hunter returns with a 15 foot flat-bottomed boat with an outboard motor. We drive southeast, leaving the New Orleans city limits and entering the bayou. We stop for gas in a small town. A group of men drink coffee and exchange gossip around their trucks. It is a snapshot of mankind’s stubborn march to death.
After about an hour we arrive at the boat launch. The prospect of a trip down the river eases the tension between us. The launch into the water unites our life in a purpose.
To aid in our effort we take a heroic dose of mushrooms
We’re three men making one more desperate push towards an existential reprieve.
We’re three men leaving our happiness to the mere chance of a chemical reaction.
The first wave of the journey is chummy and amiable. We laugh over the weekend’s exploits. Unspoken forgiveness hangs in the air. Birds swoop all around the boat. Fish leap out of the water. Turtles and alligators drop from their rocky perches into the river. Nature, while brutish, at least leaves a man with his dignity in tact.
We’re safe for now.
The temporary peace comes crashing down as we drift through a river shantytown. People flying confederate flags stare at us from their docks. I’m certain they can spot us as outsiders. It’s only a matter of time before an angry flotilla is giving chase. Then, we pass him. He’s docked in front of a house talking to someone. As we pass by he has more than ample time to appraise the unregistered boat and its nervous, googly-eyed passengers.
The psychedelic dark side is the event horizon of a black hole. The terror that seizes my heart is too powerful to pull back from. Hunter refuses to speak, ignoring my pleading to turn around, speed up; anything.
We’re sitting ducks.
We’re men seeking pleasure while being pursued by forces that seek to oppress them.
But then, something happens, or rather, doesn’t happen. The patrolman, about fifty meters away, turns his boat around and heads back up the river. We’ve been spared. However, the terror does not go away. The resin of fear lingers long after its source is removed. Pete and I join Hunter in silence on the return voyage, indeed, all the way back to the apartment. Once home Hunter retires to his room and I go for a walk around the block to try and clear my head. When I return Pete’s truck is gone. Inside, I find his bag missing. The only trace of him is a tuft of yellow hair blowing across the parking lot like straw-spun tumbleweed. I never hear from him again.

I

I step into the lobby, squinting at the sudden abundance of florescence. It seems hideously bright, like those lights they throw on the accused in a cop drama. I half expect a balding man in a suit to take off his coat, roll up his sleeves and tell me,
“If you tell the truth now, things will be easier…”
“Yes, fine, I did it, but I didn’t plan to, you see…it was a crime of passion. I know from watching Law and Order this type of offense is less serious. What man hasn’t, at some point, acted impulsively? I’m just like you, see…it could easily be me loosening my tie, asking the questions. Come on man, give a guy a break…”
“Sir? May I help you?”
The voice comes from behind a desk, produced by one of those blond, round, low-income American women whose age is nearly impossible to determine.
“Sir, breakfast doesn’t’ start til’ 8 a.m.
I’ve been standing in the dining area, idly handling a miniature box of cereal. I haven’t spoken in nearly a day and when I reply, “Yes, of course…” it sounds like I’m shouting at her. I see fear in her eyes, the perception of danger at this swarthy out-of-stater gripping Frosted Flakes, yelling at her from across the lobby.
I set the high-sugar enriched corn product down and stride cautiously to the desk. She hides behind one of those tight-lipped smiles that only narrowly masks discomfort.
“I need a room…one suitable for sleeping.”
I try to discern if I’m still yelling.
She smiles awkwardly.
“Is it just you tonight, sir?”
Sensing that my NE twang might frighten her, I merely nod.
Speech is not an ally tonight.
“Sir, it’s $39.99 per night.”
I grunt, reach for my wallet and remember it’s in the car. I point to the parking lot and turn out my pockets, hoping she’ll understand. As I step outside I take inventory of the out-of-state plates. On the interstate cars past east and west, motoring to some destination, setting a course towards the satiation of some need, all of us sharing Davenport, Iowa at 3 a.m…never to know each other, never to know the outcome of even a chance meeting…all ghosts, floating across the phantasmal plains, acting on the perception that something must be done to gain peace, that we’re somehow doing the right thing.
The cool prairie air is refreshing. I gaze out across the dark flatness, picturing myself as just a small dot on the surface of this vast landscape, the view panning out to all of the contiguous United States, then North America, the Western hemisphere, the globe, the planet suspended amongst a backdrop of infinite blackness. Some find the idea of feeling so small to be overwhelming, even depressing, that for all the self-importance of their actions, they barely even register on the grand scale of the universe. Myself, I always found the feeling to be liberating. All pressure was off.
I stand in the parking lot, eyes closed, basking in my insignificance, feeling the unbroken winds sweep across me, across us, knowing that if I share anything with the people lying vertical on starched, earth-toned motel bedding and sitting at 90 degree angles, foot depressing the accelerator, it’s that the importance of what we’re doing is greatly imagined.

The room has the same crass, homogenous attempt at charm as the lobby, a bland sterility that always struck me as uniquely American. It has likely been cleaned by another tick-like woman. The sheets have no doubt absorbed the semen of a traveling water-filtration salesman on his way to Wichita. I choose the bed with a slightly skewed angle of the television, thinking it’s less likely he wanked it here.
It’s nearly 3:30. I’m on the brink of dead-tired and lucid a point where it’s either sleep or smoke dope and navigate the doldrums of near-dawn Iowan basic cable. The latter strikes me as so depressing that sleep becomes the easy choice.
I’ve done over 1000 miles today. The desperation to put distance between myself and home had seemed to manifest itself as a tangible creature that was pursing me west. When stopping for gas or to rest I kept checking over my shoulder as if IT were lurking on the horizon. The miles had passed in a string of flashing white lines and gradually flattening landscape that didn’t seem to have a definitive beginning or end. Images from the drive were burned into my head, but they might as well have been gotten from a book.
I wonder why things that should be memorable aren’t and why the memories I do have don’t seem real.
It’s possible I don’t exist at all.
Flashes of the kids song, “..merrily merrily merrily merrily life is but a dream…” float through my head, sung hauntingly by children who don’t grasp the truth of what they’re saying, who may not until, years later, they find themselves in the midst of a vast plain, potentially lying in another man’s semen, knowing how they got there only theoretically.

II

I call depression the black hole.
It’s not that you feel like dying, more like you don’t particularly feel like living. The strange part is that, however unpleasant, its sort of hard being sure that you are depressed, like that joke with the fish, the punch line: “what’s water?” and its kind of like, “what’s depression?” because its not some noticeable thing-it is reality-a flat toneless alternate reality, an old black and white movie. And it’s not like depression is a childhood rash that is caught once and that’s it. Depressed people get depressed. Depressed people are depressed.

In a way it’s sort of a relief finding out you’re depressed, realizing there’s a reason why you never really laughed that hard or smiled too much or loved anyone as much as you thought you probably should, why you thought the world was generally kind of shit and in a way never really cared about anything, because it was a bit like nothing was ever real, it all felt like anesthetized skin. It’s why everything is just a little sad, not in a sob and get it out kind of way, but in a that’s just the fucking way life is, man, way. When something sad actually happens the world feels heavy, pushes you down and you just want to sleep, because you don’t quite want to die but you don’t quite want to be awake.

I don’t want to be awake now, Saturday night, sitting in my room, thinking that I used to have a girlfriend and a job while now I just have a dull emptiness that sits slightly above my stomach. I’m breaking up weed on my old Star Wars plate. I take a Rizla out of the blue pack, fold it into a canoe shape, and place the herb inside. Next I pinch in the ends a little bit and in one motion roll it up, lick the gum, and seal it shut. Finally I twist one end to make a sort of fuse for lighting and place a little piece of cardboard in the mouth end to make a filter.

“Come on in my office,” he’d said to me. The boss’s office is like a Don’s office in a mobster flick. You always go in there to get good news or bad news. The boss man always delivers good news or bad news, like God in scripture. It seems what isn’t good or bad isn’t much worth talking about.
He said to have a seat and the he told me that he didn’t need me anymore. Of course, it hadn’t come out in exactly those words. There’d been the usual assurances that, “It’s not that I want to get rid of you, but right now I just can’t keep you on…unfortunately your position is expendable.” My position, not me, is what he said, but it feels as though the latter is true. It was pretty much the same as what she said. “We’ll let you know if anything opens up again” meaning the same as, “Let’s still be friends.”

It’s a little past eleven o’clock. I flick the lighter’s igniter, hold the end of the joint over the flame and take a couple of small puffs to get it going. I hold the J in one hand and the remote in the other, flicking through the channels to find some proper stoned fodder. I flip to PBS, hoping to find something. I’m in luck: NOVA is on. A scientist with a pretty serious beard and aviator-type frames is talking about the scientific implications of something vs. nothing. All scientists seem to have horrendous taste in glasses. Dr. Spencer Smith, Physicist, M.I.T., is in the tail-end of his explanation of why it’s easier for something to exist than nothing. According to him, it’s physically unnatural for nothing to exist. Dr. Smith is trying to put into simple terms what probably looks more like a math equation in his head. He summarizes by saying that something is more plausible than nothing because nothing is unstable. “The closest physical phenomenon we have to nothing is the black hole, which eats up everything around it. But even a black hole, which is a sort of growing, swirling nothingness, will eventually grow so big that it becomes unstable. The universe is essentially seeking stability, which it attains in the form of matter. Therefore, you could say it’s in the universe’s interest to produce something.”
Math is one of the languages of the universe. When I’m feeling down it helps to think in detached mathematical terms. I want to ask Dr. Smith about the black hole inside of me. I feel certain he could write up an equation to explain depression, that scientifically it isn’t evil or sinister, it’s just one phenomenon among many. The universe doesn’t have a conscience. God doesn’t even have a conscience. Only people. I imagine Dr. Smith would tell me something like, “Son, life is simply inertia. People get up each day and carry on, hoping for something to alter their path and put them on course to a future which is better than the present. You simply need a force to redirect you in the frictionless void of depression.”

I  take a drag off of the joint and blow smoke out of the window next to my bed.   Once you’re stoned it’s hard to say exactly how it is you feel better, or if you do at all.  The best time is right before you get high because you think once you do, you’ll feel better.  I get high because if I don’t, I’m left with the reality that I’d rather not feel the way I feel.
I pay fifteen dollars a gram to not feel how I feel.

NOVA is over.   A big ash has fallen on my crotch because I was so absorbed in the program. Smoke hangs in the air, looking like clouds in places where the light hits it at a certain angle. I flip next to the Discovery Channel which is airing a BBC nature documentary. I like these shows because they remind me of the savage realities of nature, that while the universe seeks balance, it does through upheaval. Change is the way stability is ironically reached. The universe is a fractal and I am just a self-similar piece of the irregular whole struggling to create something out of nothing. But to due so I must change…I need a personal supernova…a metaphysical big bang…
The narration of David Attenborough sounds like a voice-over of the non-conscience of the universe, of God, explaining the brutal struggles of nature in a neutral tone.
“After separating a young impala from the pack, the lead lion closes in. The impala has speed, the lion endurance. If it slips up, the pride will feast.”
I try to discern if the impala looks scared but I can’t tell. I’m sure even if it is, it doesn’t perceive fear in the same way that I do. It probably only knows that it needs to run fast.
Just as it seems the prey has opened up a safe lead it stumbles and within seconds the lion has sunk long claws into its hindquarters and closed jaws around its neck. The tragedy of the event is something I project. There is nothing inherently sad about it. The lion must eat so the impala must die. Not even it feels sad over its demise. I yearn for the young buck’s outlook on life. I pray for its blind, unthinking acceptance. I’d rather suffer the merciless fate of a beast a million times over rather than the self-conscious, self-pity of a man.

I take the last few drags of the joint and snuff it out in a candle.  The house feels like a tomb. I can’t get the image of the lion’s face covered with impala blood out of my head. Outside something crashes in the bushes, reminding me that here, now, in the darkness of the night the unmerciful rhythm of nature moves on. Undoubtedly at this moment, right outside my window, dozens of creatures are locked into a life and death struggle. It makes me feel a little better that I don’t have to live in constant fear of getting eaten, but I fear that I am ultimately as important as some creature whose biomass is recycled as energy just so the universe can go on existing .  I’m scared that the black hole inside me is the black hole of existence.   I fear that  Dr. Smith has it all wrong, nothing is the natural state and everything that exists is a cosmic aberration, and if that’s true then I might as well get lost in the nothing of joints and depression and self-pity and paralysis.  I have the suspicion that the nothing of not me is no more important than the something of me.

III

“I think you’re, like, depressed. Seriously. It’s like, you’re really negative about everything.” She pulls the crust off of her garlic bread and dips it into her pasta’s sauce.
“You’re paying, right? Remember you promised to take me out the other weekend, but we didn’t go so this can be to, like, make up for it.” I resist the urge to slap her and call her a cheap bitch. She takes the piece of garlic bread she’s de-crusted and squeezes it a little. The oils run together and dribble onto her fingers.
The waitress drops the bill on the table, smiles and goes back through the swinging doors into the kitchen.
“You were totally checking her ass out.”
It doesn’t seem worth denying.
“So you know that internship I applied for in New York, at the advertising firm? Well, I got it.”
I take what is left of my potatoes and flatten them out on the rim of the plate. I want her to acknowledge how smooth I’ve gotten them.
I smirk.
The silence is not a tactic.
“Well, I accepted it. I’ve always wanted to live in New York, and it’s a really good agency. It’s such an opportunity for me.”
The power in the relationship had long ago shifted to her, meaning she had less to lose were it to end. To me, being in a relationship makes it feel like I somewhat have my shit together. At least I’m a capable enough male to attract a mate.
I look at the bill and try to calculate the total in my head.
”Seriously, are you even like, listening? Do you have anything to say about what I just told you?”
I can’t be sure if I do or not. The emptiness I feel seems to be aware only of itself.
“I was also thinking it’d be best if I do this on my own. I don’t want to be tied down to anything. It wouldn’t be fair to me or you. I mean, maybe you can come visit me. It’s not like I want to stop talking. Let’s just see how we both feel when I get home.”
I carve a geometric pattern into the potatoes. It looks a bit like ancient Sumerian runes.
“I leave for New York in two weeks. I don’t want to not see you, but it may be harder, you know? I mean, it’s not like we can pretend I’m not going away, that things are normal.”
She hasn’t used the words ‘breaking up.’
I think about what the waitress with the nice ass is doing and realize how a restaurant is all these different worlds depending on one’s role: patron, wait staff, cook, dishwasher, manager, hostess, but nobody ever really considers another’s because they’re wrapped up in their personal universe. Nobody’s reality can be felt by anybody else, which goes a long way towards explaining human relations. I have all of these ideas in my head, but to somebody else I’m just a body. A lump of flesh. Not them.
“I don’t know what else to say right now. I should probably go. Just think about things, OK? Let’s talk in a couple of days.” She stands up and puts on her coat. As she walks by she puts her hand on my cheek and looks at me sadly, then leans in and kisses me not quite passionately, but more than a peck. “I’m really going to miss you.”
It’s not until I get home later and lay down on my bed that I start to cry, and even then it feels like my body is doing it on its own, as if I have no say in the matter.

IV

I’ve just arrived in Denver. It’s eleven p.m. I’m sitting in my sister’s basement trying to get my head around the fact that I’ve just seemingly teleported across two time zones and 2000 miles. I am cognizant of the vast distance that passed beneath me but it doesn’t feel like I’ve actually traveled it. I know that I departed from New Hampshire nearly forty hours ago, pulled away from one mountain range, plunged down through an immense, flat valley, and stopped in the shadow of another mountain range. Everything else seems uncertain; it may or may not have happened. I’m here, now, is the only thing I’ sure of, but even that has a dreamlike quality.
I arrived to the usual fanfare of hugs and smiles and, “how was your trip?” to which everybody always replies, “good” or “fine” when they’re actually thinking, “I don’t have a fucking clue, now that you mention it.”
I feel like a wild animal brought in off the streets. I creep cautiously around, sniffing at things, deciding if they’re safe. I fight the urge to urinate in the corner of the room and mark it as mine. Either way, this place is my home now. I’m not sure if I like it, but at least there’s free HBO.
Logically, sleep makes sense, but I know it’s not possible right now. The belongings which stuffed my trunk and were piled up in the backseat, nearly cutting off all visibility, are scattered around me, half-unpacked. I decide to start putting everything away and hope sleep overtakes me before too long. Whenever I feel lost I make things neat and tidy so that it seems like I have control at least over my own little corner.
Wherever I live I essentially recreate the same space with a collection of items which follows me around. My room is pre-fabricated, able to be disassembled, packed up, shipped out, and put back together again in a new locale. I’m not sure if the same can be said for me. I am Humpty Dumpty: prodigal son, vagabond, wanderer, lost soul.

This long, flat, plastic bin has been holding my dress slacks for the past six years. Once I pulled it out to get ready for a job interview and as I snapped open the seal the sour smell of puke hit me in the face. There was vomit all over my pants; quite old, by the looks of it. I never found out who puked on my pants.
I begin to unpack t-shirts that are balled up in my duffel bag and put them in the dresser. My favorite is an old Coca-Cola T from circa 1975. It’s white with a blue-ribbed collar and sleeve ends and in the center is the swirling Coke logo, proclaiming itself the official soft-drink of the U.S. Olympic team. As if athletes drink this stuff. The shirt is so old and frayed it looks cream colored when I put it on. It was pilfered from my friend’s grandparents’ basement. They have a condo up North in the mountains that we went to on winter breaks while the old folks were down in Florida. One New Year’s Eve we stumbled upon a stock of prescription pain killers needed for recovery from open heart surgery. We went through about three bottles in two hours, popping them like candy, tossing the into each others’ mouths like trained animals, chasing them with, “you’ve got to be shitting me” amounts of booze. We were out of our minds, and as so often happens in that state, decided a change of clothes was necessary. We went rifling through the drawers downstairs and found matching shirts. The next morning we woke up in positions one only wakes up in after massive substance intake. One had his head cradled in his arms on the rim of the toilet, another sitting up straight at the kitchen table still clutching his hand from a game of poker, another one of us vertical on the couch, a massive sandwich with one bite missing on his chest, myself face down on the bed, fully clothed in that classic drunken just-barely-made-it-to-bed pose, all of us wearing identical Coca-Cola t-shirts, all of us asking, “What the fuck happened last night?”
I take my old pocket knife out of a side pouch of the duffel bag. My dad bought it for me at a yard sale when I was a kid. We were on our way back from an errand and we stopped in, “Just to have a look, m’boy.” I knew that he’d let me have one thing, even if it took some cajoling. There were tables and crates filled with relics of the homeowner’s life. I sifted through until I came upon the black handled knife with a price tag of $50. I picked it up, ran my fingers over the grooved handle. The old man saw me, came over and said,
“Now that’s a good knife.”
He held out his hand. “May I?” he asked.
I placed it in his palm and he flicked it open with an ease that showed it had been his blade.
“This is an antique, you know…still razor sharp though,” he said.
He picked it up a section of the paper he’d been reading and sliced it clean in half.
“That’s how you can tell a knife’s sharp,” he said.
He held onto the knife as if reconsidering whether or not to part with it.
“You have good taste,” he said. “How bout I let you have it for a buck?”
Just then my Dad walked over. “Find anything good?” he asked.
The old man showed him the knife. “I think he had his eye on this,” he said.
“How much?” my dad said.
“Got a dollar?” the man said.
My dad dug in his pocket and produced a paper square bearing Washington’s head. “Hey, the price is right,” he said. “Does it even work?”
“Oh, it works all right,” the old man said, pressing the knife into my hand and giving a wink only I could see.
In the dim basement I flick it open, grab a piece of paper off my sister’s computer table and slice it clean in half.
I pull out a folder that contains papers, photos, and cut-outs from old magazines.  There are many photos of myself and as I look over them they seem like hard proof I’ve compiled over the years to reconcile the feeling that so many moments from my life seem like they are just snippets of a forgotten dream. There’s the one of me and the boys with the massive beer can pyramid we constructed in the spring of freshman year…of me and my sister standing on her front lawn, the sun glaring off of her husbands shiny, black, IROC-Z…of Lisa and me, her in a blue dress and me a shirt and tie, having dinner in front of the harbor, the one of me and my buddy after a camping trip where I’m holding up a poison ivy covered arm…a solemn-faced younger version of myself wearing a red sweatshirt and a scowl whose cause has long ago been forgotten.
All these photos I carry around, pin up on the wall like a psychotic mural of self-obsession, bring to mind the philosophical fragment, “if we lose self-awareness, we have no guarantee that we exist at all.”
I am aware of my awareness of a past I’m semi-aware of, that at times I’m linked to only by these photos.
Also in the folder are old tickets, most of them from baseball games I’ve attended. There’s the one from the Sox Game at Fenway where Roger Clemens threw a no-hitter, the game when a rookie Nomahh Garciaparra hit the game winner off the Monstah in the bottom of the ninth. There are several tickets from Mets games at Shea, the oldest from an age where I sat in the backseat and didn’t get the things my dad and uncles were laughing at, up until last summer, when, fully anointed as a man, I’d joined in the commentary. A single ticket from Yankee Stadium, from the day Mickey Mantle died unexpectedly overnight, turning the not particularly important match-up with the Cleveland Indians into a mad rush to get to the Bronx and pay homage to the Mick. Right before we left the house to catch a train, my uncle instructed me. “Now, if some guy on the subway is staring at you, what you’ve got to do is, you say, “What the fuck are you looking at you banjo-eyed cocksucker?” At fourteen years old I wasn’t sure if I had the gumption, but I remember on the train looking around for any pair of eyes that was lingering too long, ready to prove myself as a man to any banjo-eyed SOB.

I plug in the old clock radio my grandfather bought for me. Back then it was top of the line with its removable flashlight and night-light, but now the flashlight is long gone, the night light dead. A lot of the buttons don’t work so in order to set the time I have to go in reverse, minute by minute. It feels like time is moving backwards as the minutes tick away one by one, and in my head is a timeline, creeping steadily back through the years, to the moment when my grandpa put the box in my hand and I felt overjoyed at being the owner of this machine. But now my grandfather is dead and this hunk of plastic and wires is realer than him. I can’t help but think someday, somebody might pull it down off an old dusty shelf from an attic or antique shop and I’ll be long dead but the clock radio will still be around.
I open the brown journal with different leaves pressed under a coat of plastic. The inside of the back cover reads:

Happy Birthday
Love always,
Lisa

I begin to write:

Have unpacked all of my things and now am just sitting here, as if waiting for something to happen. It’s weird being in this unfamiliar place surrounded by familiar items. Why do I insist on keeping all of these things from my past? I’m a spiritual packrat, hording reminders and memories. I suppose it’s comforting to hold onto them. If I had no link to the past, it might feel as if I was floating, lost, through the ether of time, a spaceman who’s become detached from the confines of his ship and is drifting through the enormity, certain only of death. If I threw all of my worldly possessions away, would I feel different? Would I be different? Maybe it’s necessary to get rid of reminders of the past in order to make a new future. These things are just placeholders. By themselves they mean nothing.
Maybe people need physical things because our existence is primarily physical. Ideas can feel aloof and not real. People want something they can hold on to, wrap their fingers around and press into their bosom. Humans are only gifted enough to begin to conceive of a world beyond the physical. It is but a glimpse in the corner of our eyes. We are primarily creatures of substance. Everything in our world, even the most deeply spiritual, is symbolic. In things are rooted deeper ideas we just aren’t capable of explaining. We cling to objects because the ideas they represent are the only proof we have that there’s something beyond the flotsam of this physical realm.

I put the journal down, this thing that represented her love for me, love that has died, even though she wrote, “Love always.”
All of these things I’ve brought with me are tombstones, marking the place where something once lived, but now is gone, things which at the time seem like, “Love always,” but nonetheless fade away until they’re no realer than a dead person under a stone which reads, “In loving memory of…”
It’s late. I’m beyond feeling beyond tired and sleep is now plausible. I turn the lights out, strip down to my underwear and get in under the covers.   Again, the words,”Merrily merrily merrily merrily life is but a dream.” float through my head, sung in the same voice. This time though, the song is oddly comforting and I fall to sleep quickly.

I measure from the top to the bottom of the stairwell and scribble something in my notepad. “Just a moment, please,” I tell the homeowner, “just gonna run out to the car and make the final calculations.”
Outside in my black sedan I fire up a joint. After a little more sketching I come up with a price of $3,269. I’m confident the figure doesn’t sound like it was just pulled out of thin air.
Back inside I shoot the number at him. He mulls it over, but I know he doesn’t have a clue about painting or whether or not this is a reasonable price.
“When could you start?” he asks.
“Soon as possible, if that’s alright.” I say. “Tomorrow works for me.”
“Well, let’s do it,” he says, extending his hand to seal the deal. I accept, and thus I am to spend the next few weeks of my life in this house, earning $3,269. I make another mark in the margin. The only things written on the pad are a grocery list and a poorly-done sketch of a rhinoceros.

It’s amazing how people trust me in their home. This same couple who has a top of the line ADT system, security bars on their steering wheels, who instruct their children not to talk to strangers, they open their home to me in my paint-splattered fatigues and leave me there unattended. It’s a great act of faith in an age when faith is on the decline: in god, government, big business, progress, each other. But while people may not need a holy savior anymore, they sure as hell still need a repairman. The more technologically advanced society becomes, the more dependent people are upon it. Nowadays, the average person has no idea how to build a house or maintain anything in it. This is especially true for people who earn a lot of money. There is a direct correlation between income and mechanical ability. Professionals can’t be bothered with fixing up their house. That is work for uneducated and/or darker skinned people. Enter the working man with his lunch pail, Dickies pants, and slight motor-oil scent.

This guy clearly makes good money. He’s some kind of corporate accountant. Usually, the better educated a person is the more uncomfortable they are talking to a working grunt. Based on this guy’s sorry effort he must be an Ivy Leaguer. High standardized test scores are useless when trying to make small talk with average folks.
“So,” he says, “before applying the initial layer of latex based covering I assume one must…what I mean is, there is a degree of labor which must be performed before one can commence painting…that is, uh…” I let him fumble before translating. “Yes, I’m going to first fill all the holes and seal the cracks. Then I’ll sand everything down, apply a primer, sand again, and finally I’ll paint.” “So, did you catch the Rockies game last night?” he asks, searching for common ground. “They didn’t play last night,” I tell him. He laughs uncomfortably. “Anyways, I’m not much into sports. I actually stayed up reading about how the principles of enlightenment and the desire to dominate nature are inevitably leading to our alienation from the world and each other.” It’s my way of telling him, “I may look like one of them, but I’m actually one of you.” I consider engaging him in a conversation about the factors leading to Japan’s Environmental Miracle or demonstrating my mastery of the Socratic Method, in case he has any doubts, but my comment seems to work. His furrowed brow relaxes. “Well, fine then, I’ll leave you alone. I’m off to work. Here’s my card. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you need anything.”
His wife comes down a few minutes after he’s left. She’s much younger, only about my age. She’s a doll from some southern state that actually produces honest-to-goodness prom-queen sweethearts. “Hun, I’ve put on a pot of coffee for you, please help yourself to anything.” Anything? Does that include putting on a pair of your panties and swishing around the house all day?

Being in this upper middle-class home is like glimpsing an alternate future I never pursued. It has all the markings of a successful couple, including stainless steel appliances, designer furniture, and imported, shiny sedans parked outside. In our society the logic goes that the more money one makes, the more comfortable they will be. But it seems that the more comfortable people are materially, the fewer places they actually feel at ease in. They shuffle between yuppie safe havens where the service and ambience are up to their standard, remaining sheltered from the poor, nasty, gritty places of the world, which is to say, most of the world. They float through life in a bubble of material comfort, completely alienated from places that aren’t air conditioned, leather-trimmed, and serve double iced-mocha lattes.

A job like this is perfect because the owners aren’t home, making it easier to create an atmosphere of blue-collar perfection with the tunes going, a bottomless cup of joe and regular trips to the car for hits of high-resin dope. In addition, it allows me to work more openly as what I refer to as a, “Present-day urban archaeologist.” Not that I go snooping. I’m a professional, after all. But that’s not to say I can control my curiosity completely. My intentions are pure. I merely wish to understand my fellow man better. It’s fascinating to discover that, for example, pretty much every kitchen has a drawer devoted to odds and ends that don’t categorically belong alongside other household items. The junk drawer: something I feel is a powerful commentary on mankind, though I can never quite put it into words. Or, take the collection of plastic bags under the sink. What possible social condition produces the mass urge to hoard old plastic bags alongside cleaners and disinfectants? Surely there is an underlying factor that causes most people to place the kitchen’s rubbish bin out in the open while a certain minority prefers it inside a knee-high cabinet. What is the significance of men turning their basement into a den of retreat? Why do people have a set of fine silver that often doesn’t get taken out at all? Why are women obsessed with keeping a guest room that often doesn’t even see any visitors? Why is this same room almost always decorated with old photos?
Refrigerators are veritable personality tests. Lots of sweets reveal an indulgent side. People who have the low-fat version of everything tend to be a little uptight. Whole milk drinkers are usually a bit older or consider low-fat food to be for faggots. Skim-milk drinkers are almost always health conscious and/or extremely organized. Lots of beer and wine or a good liquor supply doesn’t necessarily denote an alcoholic. It’s possible they entertain often. A good indication of a drinker in the house is the presence of large quantities of cheap alcohol. The Ol’ Uncle Tom’s Vodka is not for guests. It is for the after work swan song that doubles as a remedy for sadness and a form of entitlement.
She said to help myself to anything, which I take as an invitation to taste the various meats and cheeses in the fridge. A knife isn’t handy so I just bite small pieces right off. Hmmm…what’s this, last night’s dinner? They’ll never notice if I take a bite…chances are they’d be offended if I don’t. What’s this strange, Italian-sounding dish from the deli? Mmmmm…scrumptious…I’ll have to remember it. It’s simply divine with the dry sauvignon.

Painting is something I picked up in college. I worked for my school’s maintenance department during summers. The patriarch of the crew was an old-timer we called Pops. He was the spitting image of Santa Claus with his pure, white hair and beard, paunch, and twinkling eyes. Pops became as much a staple of my summers as the work itself with his tales of shit, sex, or often, both. He explained, for example, what a blibbit is: ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag. While he never specified its use it was implied to be a sort of projectile. He had a certain acquaintance who used to shit in his hand and throw it at elderly people as they drove through town.  Pops once hung out with some Hell’s Angels who laced his drink with LSD, handcuffed him to a post and had a line-up of women suck him off.
He also would impart wisdom from time to time in a grandfatherly manner. “Now what you do is just pretend to drink when you’re at a party. That way, when everybody is snookered at the end of the night you’ll still have your wits and you can nail any broad you want.” He also encouraged monogamy by explaining, “…you’re better off with one pussy you know is clean.”
But while his stories made me laugh there was also something sad about them. It was as if he was trying to validate his life. He seemed almost desperate to prove he wasn’t just an old guy who ran the painting crew. Listening to his tales I realized a story is more than just an attempt to entertain. It is an effort to form cohesion between the present and the past. People are never quite sure how they got from a younger version of themselves to the one that stares back at them in the mirror. Sometimes, a story is the only link between the scattered pieces of a life.

I’m cutting in around the medicine cabinet in the master bathroom. One can never really know a person until seeing what medications they’re on. At first glance nothing shocking jumps out, but then a small bottle in the back prescribed to the man of the house catches my attention. Valtrex…what’s that? I search my memory’s database for the appropriate inadequacy. Erectile dysfunction? High blood pressure? Anxiety? Heart-burn? Loose stool? Excessive mucus? Insufficient mucus? A pill for every symptom of this disease called postmodern America. I have a flashback to an advertisement with some little white monsters being pelted with green dots. After a few moments I remember what the cute little scene actually represents: genital herpes.
I drop the bottle, pick it up with a rag and put it back in the cabinet the way I’d found it. I don’t feel bad for him. I just think of that sweet little wife of his taking time out of her mornings to fix me a pot of coffee. She couldn’t possibly deserve a lifetime of oozing, cankerous sores. I think of Pops, throwing a blibbit defiantly into the face of life. I think of myself as an old man, retelling this story, trying to make sense of a life that seems impossibly long ago.