F) Fructuous Feuilletons

Time warps in odd shapes in this house. Upstairs the clock says its 6:21. My watch says it’s 6:08. My phone says it's six.

In the kitchen it’s February already. But the fridge is still showing November of 2008. One wall of my room says its January, but the other proudly displays December. In my car its 6:30.

So this was maybe February. It was sometime at night. The sun was setting. The sun is always setting. My phone, telling me it was a minute after six, did not ring. I had started feeling like everyone in the world was out to get me. Or, more accurately, every one was out to forget me. Can you consciously go about trying to forget something, or someone? I don’t know. It doesn’t seem right. But it also seemed like something I could do something about so I puttered around, getting ready to go out.

Outside, the mail had come. There was mail for my roommates and a package for me.

Honey,

the note read,

here are some things you left and I thought you might need.

:)

Love Mom

How is it that I know what Clark Gable looks like? When I see a photo, and know, "Hey, that's Clark Gable," how much useful information is not getting through to my brain so I can carry around a useless tidbit of recognition like that?

There was a poster of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard in the package from my mother. It wasn’t mine, but I recognized it. Underneath that there were clothes that weren't mine either. I held up a red shirt, two breast pockets, freshly pressed. A pair of shorts. A school sweater. Clothes belonging to my brother. And a book. After I showered I put on the shorts and the sweater and headed out.

The night drive felt like a repeated experience. I was alone, for a time, with the wind. I tried to lose the wind by veering right, onto a frontage road, but it stayed with me. Crowing. No, not crowing. What was the wind saying as I drove? Not much. I wasn’t really listening. But it felt like a repeat experience. I turned on some music and a man sang about surrender. The streets were lonely. The clock said it was 6:45. In my backseat was the book I had brought from home. The book my mother sent me. Wealth of Nations. Who knows where a party will lead, I had thought without thinking. Perhaps it would come in handy.

I picked up the girl. Waiting outside her studio I turned off the car and a whole world of sound emerged from the underlying emptiness of night. Perfect fifths from the freeway, low skids from the overpass, a siren faraway and closing steadily. The girl got in the car. "You're late" she thought but didn't. I imagine she thought this but do not know. She had that 'you're late' look in her eye. What should I say about this girl?

She’s fun. She’s different. I’ve got a big crush on her. This was to be our first date.

There is a panel in the dashboard of my car which I never use and have rarely even noticed, so integral is it in the landscape of my days. At first I must have decided it served no function, I think, but maybe not. Perhaps I had never noticed it before. It was right in front of me, and it was hidden, and when she first got into my car it was the first thing her hands reached for. A secret! Touch it, open it, let us see what is inside.

There was nothing inside, of course. She took the sunglasses from my sunvisor and put them in there. It felt like a gift, even though they were my sunglasses. We had a long drive ahead of us to the party. Soon I was seeing nothing except that panel in my dashboard.

She’s a city girl. "Where are we going," she asks me. I had not told her about the party. Well, I had, but I had not told her where it was.

"This way," I say.

"You don't have any idea, do you?"

"Sure I do. We're going this way. This is the way we are going."

Where she sees the city as a network of roads that lead to specific places, more specific places dotted along the very specific way, I see it as a grid of cardinal direction. I’ll head towards the bridge. Head towards the water. I don't know the streets. I don't know the names. I just know which way I am going. And I will get us there. I do not like to turn around.

"I'm thirsty, let's get a drink before we get there," she says, and so we stop and get a drink. Because who can imagine a world where there is not a drink ready to be purchased and consumed wherever your car may chance to stop?

I can.

Our warmup drinks were cold. While we drank she started talking about children and her voice made my heart recoil. Suddenly I became very aware that I was in a room where I'd never been before. The lighting was low and red. I felt a certain terror, that there was only one way out of this room. I began nervously scanning for other exits. A man needs to have at least two ways out at any given time. I cursed myself for not remembering this sooner.

Then she put her hand on my leg and when I looked at her she was smiling. She had stopped talking. Her smile was meant to make me smile too so I smiled. I thought of happiness. I thought of telepathy. She began talking about work and I thought about what a dick I was to call girls by their cities. By their countries, at my worst. Girls have names too, you know? They are not merely the names of places where they are from. Like trophies and conquests, its denigrating to call them by their cities and not their names. I felt bad that I had done this, and resolved to stop doing it in the future. She asked if I would like another drink and I said I would. The party could wait. I was feeling less trapped in this room with this girl. I was feeling more trapped in these clothes which were not mine. I felt like a poser, dressed in my brothers' clothes.

The bartender had a long two-pronged beard. We ordered more drinks. As he poured them, two frizzy women in black dresses came in, each carrying an handful of balloons tied to strings. Their hands were full of the strings, not the balloons. The balloons were black and blue. One gave her handful of balloonstrings to the bartender. The other released them into the air and they dispersed along the ceiling, and began to disseminate throughout the bar.

"Does this mean we get free beer?" one of the women asked. I could not distinguish her from the other. They looked like the same woman. "We have just come from our friend's birthday party," the other woman said to me, smiling. She had a large nose. Perhaps this is what distinguished her from her friend, I thought, but later when I got a closer look at her friend I saw that it was not. Although, maybe I saw the same woman twice and mistook her for multiple women. "The party is over and no one knew what to do with one-hundred and fifty birthday balloons so we all took them with us!" She seemed quite pleased with herself. My date was flirting with the bartender. Leaning across the bar to tie a balloonstring to each prong of his beard. I looked away. Looking around I saw how much joy had come into the place by the very existence of these black and blue balloons. All the mournful red people were now looking up, white teeth smiling. All except the man sitting next to us.

He has a look which I take to express loneliness. He is slouched against the bar in a bout of voluntary isolation. There is a girl beside him. She is doubtless lonely also. The possibility of talking with this guy haunts her, she's aware of his presence, she fantasizes of his embrace, of holding him close and keeping him secure. He is absorbed in fantasies of his own, two girls who cannot satisfy him because he cannot satisfy himself. But he requires their counsel, their admiration, the comfort they can give him, which he denies tonight because he cannot comfort either of them. Sleepless nights give way without differentiation to sleepless days, all of time but a hopeless setting on love’s humiliating stage. He cannot talk to the girl, because he is imagining another far away. But he could enter her, if only he would turn and talk. And he tells himself he would walk on his hands and knees, across a frozen thousand miles, to be with the other. Once there she would care for his wounds harshly, and he would wish that he were home with another. As it is, he sits alone.

When we arrive at the party David is midstory bragging "…so I beat the snot out of him," he says. "Once he was on the floor I started kicking him. It took me a while to get him down, so I wanted to do as much damage as possible."

I flinched. The room was full of people, spreading out into the yard. The whole room felt like a projection of my brain, the one true home, the only shelter, unfamiliar and teaming with unknown elements, each mingling body a neuron, fusing, stumbling, disappearing, reemerging. Setting, rising.

"I don't know how long I kicked him once he had fallen. There was blood all over his face. His nose was fucked up! Just a bloody pulp!” There was a glaze in his eyes. The circle of revelers were sniggering and dazed. Heartless, all, I thought. Pride.

I snapped out of it. Went outside for a smoke and to look at the stars. One of the girls followed me out. Pen.

"I've been at the full brunt of the force. I've been the devil of darkness' horse."

"Blake?"

"Maybe. How are you?"

"He is watchful while they are at peace."

"Protect me. He is here."

We started drinking. The conversation lapsed into watchful staring, the girl claimed she needed protection. I was getting drunk. I would close my eyes and listen for threats, and strange broken sounds scuffled around us. Who knows where a party will lead? I heard without hearing. There were voices talking about children, a problem child, a baby, voices, and faces flickering with smokey dots through two windows. She read me monologues about the roundness of the earth, and the protection inherent in fathers' voices. I wasn't following. My mind was elsewhere. Relenting to the standard arsenals of distraction, searching for exits. Trying to think about the things I'm trying to forget. Trying to find a use for the word unctuous. Fructuous. Feuilletons. Write that down. I reached for a pen in my pocket, the pocket of my brother's shorts. They were lined with sand, white sand from a beach halfway around the world. All the way around the world, depending on your means and methods of travel. Across the dateline, where it is tomorrow already. Soon it will be tomorrow here. Then it will be two days from now there. 12:07, according to my watch. 12:01 according to my phone. Two months from now. Three years ago.

Fate is a blanket. My date was gone. All the girls were gone and alone I drove home. Fuck this, I thought. Write that down. The dashboard taunts me with what is hidden. 1:23. My watch chimes the hour. I opened the door and took off my brother's clothes. Day began to dawn somewhere. Somewhere else the sun was setting. In my mind they are the same place. I was going to make a call, but there was no point. It didn’t seem right. Or, it seemed like something I could do nothing about. I decided to join the human race in their mass attempt to forget me. I took a shower, and went to bed. I wasn't going anywhere anymore. I was going everywhere. Which is another way of saying, I was going nowhere.