Culmination Rounds

(Part: 1 2 3 4 5)

Reached under the wobbly barstool and pulled the postcard out of my bag, reading aloud:

      "November the third, 2008.  How Do! my Syrian brother!"

      "Syrian?" the Cyclops burped, "I didn't know you were Syrian."

            "Damascus," I sang, drunkenly.  My eyes hazed over.  Nigel's tunneled inksprawl came back to me and I continued, "Dark days digging up Juneauean dirt.  Traded numbers for a gig with the big time, you might have heard of him, the Jr. Senator from Illinois.  Not easy staying on the DL in a bloody city this small, lucky I learned from the best on how to conceal my identity.  You're right, chicks do dig the guy in the mask.  If all goes well I'll be working for you next year!  Let that get to your head?  Don't! Forget to vote!  -N"

            My new friend the Iowan Cyclops falters, raising his hand to order another drink then freezing midgesture and meeting me eye to eyes.

            "You said yer brother was a womanizer right?"

            "Categorical."

            "Fuck me.  I could be sittin' next to… next to Bristol Palin's baby's uncle!"  I ordered a double.  Outside, rusty eremitic cars chewed their way through the year's last new snowfall, and red cheeked parties made their way inside in twos and threes.  New Years Eve in Ames Iowa.  "Stew!  Stewart! Come look at this! Yer buddy in the mask here is a blood relative of the newest member of the Sarah Palin clan!"  Stewart mock-gagged and cocked an eyebrow at me.  "It makes sense," the Cyclops formulated, "You said yourself you don't think he's still there.  He probably left this postcard on the poor girl's bed stand and she, knocked up and alone, didn't know whether to mail it or burn it, but then Christmas comes around and she feels sorry for the poor guy's brother…"

            "Since her own brother is fighting in Iraq I heard,"

            "Yes! Right! Exactly! And so she mails it to you now!"

            "May be.  And here I am."

            "And we're glad to have ya buddy," said Stewart casting a fat arm around my shoulders.  "You tell that girl she doesn't know what she's missin', passing up New Years Eve with you."

            "She said she had a date."

            "The guy's a pussy!"

            "I told her I loved her."

            "And she chose this other guy over you?"

            "Said she doesn't believe in love, and to call her in the morning.  I've burned too many other bridges this year to scrounge up another New Years Date last minute so it's the bottom of the heap.  No offense."

            "None taken.  Whatcha gunna do?"

            "Call her in the morning, I guess."

            "Fuck that.  Let's get wasted!" Beamed the Cyclops. 

And so we did. 

 

            Drinks on top of drinks on top of drinks.  Enough to take the edge off, and blur the edge, and throw you over the edge.  Drank a toast to Innocence and drank a toast to Now and Dan Fogelberg and John McCain and Stewart, my old college buddy proposed a Jaeger toast to 2009.  The Cyclops toasted Schnapps to 'Getting More than Meets the Eye', and then he grabbed his crotch and started pulsating it against some little Mexican girl in a fishnet halter by the bathroom.  As soon as I proposed my own toast, to 'The Impingencies of Reality and the Impending Annihilation that Awaits us All!" I felt a sudden lurching in my gut making its way up for air, and hastily excused myself out into the cathedral of night.

 

 

            Around the block I stumbled, my cell clutched in hand.  Still waiting for a call.  Still waiting— perhaps a pretty girl would be just around the golden corner, waiting to offer me a smoke— perhaps some guy is going to meet her, my competition, coming up right behind me— got to stay ahead of that guy right behind me— every rear streetlamp shadow of myself catching up with the fore streetlamp shadows and scaring the shit out of me, running now, surrounded by the shallow rushing opacities other Me's running from Me and catching up with Me and — out of breath.  I stopped, my distorted reflection in a frosted car window glowered back at me like a brute Neanderthal.  I walked on.

            Feeling miserable.   Jealous at some guy I'd never met, stealing the one thing I dared unmask— my heart.  Miserable at the phantasm of my smirking brother right around every corner and untouchably pompous while he undoubtedly steals some poor loving girl's every conceivable ounce of value and moves on into the night to Change into some other girl's smiling bright-eyed knight in sliming armour.  Change you can believe in. 

Went down on my knees in queasy shame, leaned into a brick wall and vomited green.  The dark wind at my back and perfectly still I felt all the thrumming of the world condense into cold sweat all over my body.  I stood.  Sad, disgusted, and disgusting I felt almost admirable in my misery.  Courageous, even.  The wind so deliciously cool and low, clouds flushing eagerly overhead I felt ready to move on.  Ready to give up on all these torturous obsessions and start to find myself again.  Ready to have another drink.

 

            But coming back into the imbued red light of the bar I was keenly aware that something was different.  The room reeked, an ambient sentiment of conceit and—

            "Hello brother."

     "Wha."

     "Join us for another pint?  If you're tummy's up for it that is…"

     "Wha?"

     "Now then, that doesn't sound like you, the striving tortured blogger, or blogecist isn't it?  Always keenly aware of a startling new pronoun or luxurious adjective to—"

     "I thought it smelled funny in here.  I've been looking for you Nigel."

     "I know."

     "Of course you do.  You look good.  Missed a spot though," I said, licking my palm and buffing it against the receded hairline of his high and lonesome upper brow.

            "Whatever man," he tore away, "your hair's so Emo it probably cuts itself."

            "Ha! That's a good one!  Learn that while you were stealing a teenager's inheritance, or are you onto candy from babies now?"

            His pale eyes flashed for a heightened instant then softened.  "My my, hadn't you heard? It's Republicans who steal candy from babies.  I work for Obama now."

            "OBAMA!" the mindless crowd echoed from the recesses of the bar.

            "Cut the crap Dickweed, what are you doing here?"

     "It's New Years.  We've got lots of friends here from the primaries and since the big guy is off on extended Obama Ohana vacation we came here to celebrate.  I could ask you the same question but you don't look so good so how about we sit down and I buy you a drink."

     "I don't need your charity!"  We sat down.

 

            Nigel ordered two dark beers and I took a few deep breaths and looked at him.  A pretty good looking cat for such an ugly fucker.  He looked extremely tired more than anything, with dark bags set deep under his eyes.  But you wouldn't notice if you didn't know him, since he never stopped smiling for a second.  Exquisite suit, tie loosened, fashionably unshaven, he looked like a man immaculately sure of himself, and after regarding me for a moment as well he took a yawning gulp of his beer and wiped his dirty chin with a hand that looked uncannily similar to my own, save the dirty fingernails.

            "So where are you living now?"

     "Still in California."

     "I'm surprised.  I'd thought that either that Dude you live with would have shot you by now or the ATF would've done it when they came in to raid the damn place.  Missed him and got you."

     "Ya, not yet.  I've thought about that…"

     "Now that I'm in the Administration I could probably orchestrate a raid if you…"

     "Thanks, but no thanks."  I tried some of the beer.  Tasted terrible.  I drank it away.   "What's the deal with all the hopping around Nigel?  I feel like I've been at your heels wherever I go in this country.  Milwaukee, Chicago, San Francisco, Houston…"

"Don't forget about Ohio and Pennsylvania…" his smile beamed.  I wanted to punch him. He must have seen the impulse because he swiveled his seat away from me and pretended to type something into his iPhone.  "I don't know," he said, "I guess I just don't believe in things I can't see and so I try to see as much as I can."

"And what about the girls?  Don't think I don't know what you're up to, leaving a trail of shattered lives wherever you go?  You may have figured out how not to get caught but you can't fool your own brother!  I know you better than –"

            He interrupted "we are here to do things!  Who cares what, just so long as we are acting!  Verbs, you writer!  In my case its seeing things.  Beauty lies only in what cannot be completely seen, like a misty mountain valley in the Himalayas where anything could be waiting for you when the winds change."

"Or like a new girl in every town every night?"

"What are you, jealous?  Because I've always been able to get some and you can only imagine what its like?  Squirreling away in your room and making up comics and stories all day?  Its guys like you who believe that heaven lies on that mountain valley, guys like You who think of heaven as beautiful because you can never see it, but I don't.  I don't believe in heaven.

     "You said so yourself, I heard you when I came in, some girl is out there seeing other guys, expecting you to call her in the morning anyway and has told you repeatedly she doesn't believe in love! And yet you do?

     Years from now you'll walk past precocious school kids with your cane in hand and they'll yell: 'There goes The Masked Man, he believed in things he couldn't see.'"

     "Well it's better than wasting everything you can!  They said they saw you, in California, my friends they saw you treating some girl like shit!"

            Nigel laughed.  "You don't have any idea what you're talking about brother."

     "I do! They said it was you! Said you looked and sounded just like me!  And what about Christine?  The girl from your trip last winter, where'd she disappear to huh?  D'ja drug her in her sleep all at once or do it gradually so she thought she was going mad?"

            He stood up and peered across the heads of the crowd.  The place, it seemed, was now packed.  Bearded guys in ISU sweaters and red ballcaps. Girls in bluejeans, knit scarves and glasses.  Nigel gestured for someone to come over and sat back down.

            "I was in Frisco with Christine.  She's the reason I'm here, she started campaigning way back a year ago and got me in this summer.  And the only reason I treat the little bitch like shit is because I have to defend myself when she beats me up and treats me like garbage.  Isn't that right sweetie?"

            A small brick-figured woman with short black hair and defiant blue eyes stepped up on Nigel's feet and sat on his lap.  "You got it jerk."

            "Christine, meet my weird brother."

            "Oo!  Is he the one who wears masks" she asked.

            "No," I groaned, adjusting my mask.

            Someone started yelling and my eyes hazed over and a vision of Stewart trying to stop a fight between his friend the Cyclops and a runt baldheaded biker materialized before me and I realized it was everyone who was yelling and I looked to the TV and the ball was dropping and I joined in at "Seven! Six! Five! Four! Three! Two!..."

 

     "Happy New Year brother."

     "And to you," I said.  His eyes flickered and he cocked a wicked grin before falling into the waiting kiss of that perky little female concoction on his lap who promptly hopped up and pulled him away into the yield of the singing and dancing throng, careful to avoid the flailing fisted arms of the biker who was beating up on the Cyclops who was laughing, laughing, laughing, with Stewart passed out with a black eye in a droolish pool in his arms.

 

            My cell buzzed incoming and I saw that it was her,