A Brief History of Anachronism

Simplicity

Let’s put it out there, first and foremost. I hate this because, it’s, like, Rudyard Kipling bullshit. “The White Man’s Burden” or some such nonsense where I’m supposed to use the words “exotic” and “strange” to describe the place I’m in. No thanks, Joseph Conrad; I’m doing just fine.

Or, maybe I could be a total jackass and misuse native words in between short, curt sentences. Ernest Hemingway all up in this bitch. My alcohol budget is significantly smaller and having neither impotence nor raging, Spanish-virgin fueled nymphomania to intersperse, the narrative might fall short.

But I grew up in a colonialist country that took what they learned about the shit side of imperialism and rebranded it “manifest destiny”, so con permiso. It is strange and exotic, though “savage” never crossed my mind. The mountains are tropical by virtue of their climate. The food is different and authentic and delicious and will wreak havoc on your digestive system in the long run. There is malaria and dysentery and other scary things to keep your mother up at night while your oceans and land masses away.

So, yes, I am an American in El Salvador. And, yes, everything is surreal. I don’t wear a fanny pack and I pronounce words properly in both languages, but I am still the “other”.  I stand on a shallow precipice between total wonder and blasé familiarity. I have been here before. I know what a papusa is and how to eat it. I’ve had nasty little sicknesses and 3^rd degree sunburns and come back here without a good reason. When others have tapped out, I remain. And yet…

We don’t do anything of merit on these trips. The kids we play with, sing with, sponsor even still live in temporary houses with dirt floors and not enough food. These kids still need to work 3 times as hard as any American to finish high school. My spending a week of my time and $350 a year will not even out the distribution of wealth.

I know this, and I feel it acutely on days like today when the ninos of Tacuba have prepared a special celebration just for us gringos. They applaud us as we walk in and sit in plastic chairs in rows of four. It’s like some kind of Heart of Darkness bullshit the way they greet us, something out of a 1940s movie where the indigenous, the aborigines laud their white victors. It’s bullshit that they think we like this imperial/orientalist spectacle. What kind of people do they think we are? My inferiority complex resounds loud and clear.

I hang my head, ashamed that I’m American, white, middle class. I don’t want power or privelege and I especially don’t want their praise. I have done nothing; I am nothing. My career aspirations are not for the common good. I have entirely selfish dreams of a little white family of professionals in New York City. I am lucky enough to pine after graduate schools and sexual gratification, and the blessing disgusts me.  I want everything I am to disappear so that all the money and resources spent, wasted on me can just pass on to these people who deserve it by the transitive property.

The kids dance and sing for us. During a rendition of “Angeles”, a little boy dressed in white with construction paper feathers on his shoulders puts his hand on my head to pray over me. This is the type of shame the worst rapist, thief, serial killer cannot experience. This is the guilt of a youth wasted in suburbia satisfying my own needs. I am shit. No, I want to one day get to the level of shit; shit was at least something useful at one point in time.

And I’ve been here four times; I know something like this is coming. What kind of insecure douchebag am I that I keep coming back for this? Can’t I just send a check and leave these poor people alone? I am a blonde-haired, blue-eyed human rights criminal by birth and I want to evaporate.

And yet, there’s a tiny portion of me, that little chunk of Id that I have left after feeling guilty all week, that finds this beautiful. These incredibly dirty kids are dressed in ancient costumes serenading complete strangers that for one reason or another they believe deserve respect. They think there’s a God up there and they are using up prayers asking for us privileged assholes to be protected and happy on our way back to the land of plenty. The tent we’re in is shoddy and beyond their means and barely covers the 25 of us, let alone the 500+ of them that are standing three looking at us. They’ve decorated the area with fresh fruit and cheap latex balloons that cost these people way more than balloons could ever be worth.  The one microphone cuts in and out due to weather interference miles away. Everyone’s hot and uncomfortable and yet the Salvadorians keep smiling. It’s absurd. If I was another person, I would deem it “quaint as fuck”.

For me, it’s bizarrely beautiful. It’s a kind of humanity that does not exist in mega-malls, in universities, in Cathedrals. It’s a grandeur lacking everything. It’s a bounty of nothing. It is people who are smelly and dirty and who actually care about the people around them-solely because they are people. In more cynical times, I would say this is all pretense, a simple way to placate the overlords and get more money out of them. I would suspect that performance studies is right , that we’re all playing roles to manipulate others.             But I think, maybe, this is real. Maybe it’s just hubris and an over-cognitive nature, but I don’t think this little boy patting my head is bluffing. And maybe I’m ignorant and he’s an unwitting agent of a larger power, but he hugs me like he means it. And maybe all my other experiences of hugging are also colored with false subjectivity, with a desire to believe love exists, but this is a familiar embrace. It is my mom after a long day; it’s Schmitty after a long time apart; it’s Father Bob when he’s proud of me; it’s my beloved when it’s time to part once again. These could all be false emotions I read in others, handicaps given to me because I’m not actually worth anyone’s pride or affection. But those are the times when I feel most sure that I know what’s going on, and a little bit that’s what this is too. I am being held by a four year old from a different culture because I am here and holdable.

Henry, a former “illegal alien” and our liason between the two worlds, tells us to notice the simplicity. After finishing our dish-washing haggling and dealing with drama at home, it’s a shock to the system. We come from a realm in which even our carbohydrates are all complex. Your comprehension of iWhatever denotes youth and status.

I’m dancing precariously close to Thoreau now; hypocritically suggesting a plainer life knowing an elaborate one awaits me after this hiatus. This all sounds fine and well until I get back to my very complicated schedule of nonsense with my very fast very caffeinated friends who will run the worlds of arts and sciences once they manage to make more than minimum wage. This cannot, will not, should not last longer than a moment and I accept that even as I think it.  But Henry speaks, in dulcet tones,

“Do not let small things run your life

Run your life with small things.”

And everything else goes away.

Candela

She has a harelip. The irony is she is always smiling, so the lip is always almost imperceptible. She is missing her front teeth, maybe it’s a clef palate, what the hell do I know, I’m not a dentist. I want to tell her she’s beautiful, but maybe that’s not true. I can’t seem to get rid of her as I run around the schoolyard.

I’m well aware that I’m not beautiful. Years of social psychology has taught me that I’m fatter, shorter, fatter, paler, fatter, and more all around wrong than anything anyone could ever consider touching. Clearly, the men I’ve dated have all been some disturbing brand of fetishist, or hipsters who date ugly chicks ironically. This isn’t a cry for help or a dig for pity/sympathy/false compliments. It’s not a source of despair or self-loathing. It’s simply a statement of fact.

Candela seems unaware of social norms, of how sad-looking her orange gums are against her brown skin. She doesn’t notice that her socks are mismatched and rolled awkwardly at her ankles. Where her Northern counterparts would place makeup, she has strategically applied sidewalk chalk.

She was first enamored with the bubbles, enjoying my high-pitched directions to “speeen” (my voice goes up by octaves and decibels when I don’t know how to translate a word.) The other kids all giggled and went about their soap-based experimentations, but Candela kept grabbing my right hand and yelling “speen!”.

Seeing the bubble situation was firmly under control, I made my way to los Frisbees to keep little boys from decapitating each other. She chases along, trying to understand as I confuse “Tira!” for “Lanza!” and vice versa. Somehow, I make it through just enough “Spanish for the Developmentally Disabled” to explain “Monkey in the Middle” to them. The game is quickly learned and then discarded for the more entertaining “Try to Hit My Friend/ The Gringa Counselor/ A Tree with a Large Circular Spinning Object.” I can’t blame them, nor can I really fight it when the game becomes “Deliberately Throw the Frisbee at the Schoolhouse for an Excuse to Make the Four-Foot Leap off the Ledge Between the Playground and the Floor.” I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t thrilled to join in.

There are giant cement blocks strategically placed to deter such actions, though. Someone (Alda?) almost lands on one and my mommy senses kick back in. Or, at least, what I assume are mommy senses, having never given live or any other kind of birth.  Using the American innovative spirit, I pick Candela up and begin a riveting game of “Scream and Run Away”, which needs no explanation. After screaming and running across the asphalt some 30 times, both myself and my monster alter ego are exhausted. I place Candela on the ground and collapse on the floor, explaining to the children that I was muerto. The boys all laugh and try to resurrect me by poking me with various objects. Candela knelt beside me, attempting a thorough medical examination.

When I finally come back from the dead, she hops on my shoulder for another 10 rounds of “Tickle Everyone in Sight”.  There is sidewalk chalk and checkers and general mass hysteria, most of which I’ve caused.

The basura was really where we run into trouble. We had taught the kids a song in English with vague Spanish subtitles about a shark attack and reincarnation. After, someone in our group got the bright idea to blow up water balloons with his mouth and pass them around. Not only was it painful, it was also super attractive to the choking-prone age group. Kids started snatching the uninflated balloons out of the unnamed culprit’s hands, which we had to then retrieve and, as a sign of appeasement, blow up, saliva-covered and grimy, and return to the screaming child.

That might be the end of the story for Westernized, less resourceful younglings. However, these kids then decided they could pick up broken bits of latex off the floor and out of the garbage to make a patchwork balloon. There exists no discomfort like trying to explain to an underprivileged child why they cannot have the pretty balloon while fishing microscopic bits of rubber out of his or her mouth. Two of the larger chaperones eventually had to play bouncer at the garbage can to prevent further incidents. Despite the requisite strangeness of the day, though, I’ve not worked at a camp on Long Island where kids took joy in what they’re doing at every instant. I can’t remember enjoying myself, either, though the joy and stress of the day were in direct correlation.

So maybe Candela, bedecked in sidewalk chalk and scuffed school shoes, gums ablazing, is beautiful all the same. And if it works for her, who knows…

He is the Loch Ness monster and the Yeti and La Chupacabra all rolled up in a pint-sized brown man. He has silenced entire rooms effortlessly and caused panic attacks in many a teenage girl. He is the kidn of character that should become standard, unnoticed, but somehow constantly elicits awe.

He is the whistle man.

If you’re prone to cynicism or factual analysis, the whistle man is like a Central American neighborhood watch mercenary. He patrols the streets of Santa Ana in a bullet-proof vest and sandals, blowing a whistle and brandishing a machete in an attempt to ward off thieves and vagrants. He’s probably an insomniac with a day job, moon-lighting to feed his nasty living indoors habit. In all likelihood, he was never trained in the military, police force, or toddle Tae Kwon Do. Really, there should be nothing special about him.

Yet, we sit here on smelly, flimsy beds in the middle of the night, listening. I’m a chaperone and a role model; I should be far above this. No, I shouldn’t. The whistle man is mythic in every generation and life stage.  We’re having hushed, flippant conversations, waiting for the screech, waiting to sneak another glance at the legend .

Each year handles him differently.  When no one knew who he was or what he did, we panicked. We tried to call nueve-uno-uno, fueled by 90s horror film anxiety. Ghostface would call your house; Salvadorian serial killers would probably just whistle.

When we learned he was a force of good the next year, some tried to engage him. They would pop their heads between the window bars, offering an over-exuberant “HOLA!”. The white of their skin in the dark made them fantasmic, though, and someone almost lost a limb. A strong lecture followed.

Transitions continued. Some ignored him, some whistled back. An overly ambitious group set a trap for him, only to be thwarted by faulty cameras. Now, we lie in wait just to observe. It’s vigil-like, voyeuristic and enchanted. We sit on the edges of beds in the hot, jonesing to see, to hear, to experience the second coming of the tin whistle savior. Thweet.

Good-

We prance merrily in the courtyard. Well, no, but we understand the irony of that gesture should we chose it. One days, on days, on days we learn. Bright, talented people who are adequately compensated for their labor and know their subject areas taught us in our youth. They are accessible folk with life satisfactions and genuine concern for their students as human beings, both past and present.

Now, we of teenage years, we try things. We see adepts people do things that they want to do, and we help. There are not “majors”, per say, as anyone can always change their minds. But we that sing like larks are not forced to know theoretical algorithms to prove our worth. And architects , with sparks of creation towards the sky, understand the history of structural components, not of battle. In all, we are drawn to look at, to learn more, because it interests and engages us. We rediscover, not regurgitate. We speak many languages and make many things because it is choice, will. We drown and  we flourish as the adults do. We, teachers and students, are all people. We learn and we  retain and we give back.

 

Bad-

Those of years will now take another test. Students 6059-6082 may eat when they have filled out Scantron 10 for today. They need numbers. They must constantly prove that they are worthy. No one owes those cell clumps knowledge. No one promised them gratifying jobs. They exist to make the state look good. The highest aesthetic is the false aesthetic.

They learn best that learn least. And fast. Application is trivial. There is a clear and consistent formula for making a young human into an old, productive human. Those who speak foreign tongues, who don’t move fast enough, who are too good at one thing or too bad at another, are terminated. There is no time for inconsistency, for  abnormality in the fold. When they grow to just the right height, weight, IQ, we will  put them in offices and in offices they will stay. The state stands for all and the state does not change.

 

 

Interesting-

Things stay the same. Some go to good schools. Some go to bad. Some delight in what they do, some only learn to move forward in the system. There are good teachers and bad teachers, good students and bad students. School isn’t always safe, but it isn’t always dangerous either.

People who don’t know how education, how the mind works, keep controlling the money. Hedge fund managers and tyrannical mayors tell people who spend their lives learning how to teach how to teach.

It is strange and a little ass backwards, but some miss the cracks. Some succeed despite ineptitude. Some get teachers who actually want to teach, rather than using the educational system as a backup. And maybe those few who do really well will figure out something better. Or not.

Yes

The game is very simple. You stand in a circle, make eye contact with a person, wait for their “yes”, and take their spot. They, in turn, find another set of eyes to get another “yes”. You cannot say “no”. You cannot look away. You keep moving to the eyes and the “yes”; you offer your eyes and your “yes” to whomever wants them.

It’s an acting game. It’s a game played by people who cannot bear to be themselves for all one thousand, four hundred, and forty minutes of the day. It is a game, because who wants to be you all the time? You are finite.  You are fattallshortthindarklight. You are ignorant of some things and knowledgeable of crap.

This is a game, and you will soon move on to another. You will throw a ball or change some words in a line or use props to make very funny jokes. You will run in circles. You will sing about infant sharks. You will stretch your deltoids. And when all is said and done, everyone will clap masturbatorily.  “Hooray for us”, you shall all think, “for we are clever, talented people.”

In this very moment, though, it is eyes and yeses and intuition. You intimate that these eyes are for you. You presume that they want a “yes”. You give that “yes” because that’s the rules of the game and because you assume the question is “Can I have your spot?”

“Can I have your spot?” is never the question. “Can I have your spot?” is the comfy thought in the front of your mind to get you through this exercise. The question is something so much deeper that it cannot be fully recognized for fear of striking a nerve. The question changes based on the asker, but the answer is consistently, maddeningly the same.

“Can I have your spot?”

“Do you know I’m here?”

“Do you know you’re here?”

“Is this the best I can be right now?”

“Am I hurting? Am I doing this to not think?”

“ Do I think anyway? Do I feel?”

“ Will this lead to disappointment? To despair?”

“Am I capable of loving and of being loved?”

“Will you trust me for a moment?”

“Will you understand for a moment?”

“Is fame fleeting? Will I be forgotten?”

“Will I die one day? Will it hurt?”

“Can I…?”

“Will you…?”

“Do we…?”

And the yeses, the ten thousand million memento moris pound, slamming themselves shamelessly against your eardrums. And the “yes”, the affirmation, the validations would be okay, would be almost comforting if not for the eyes. If only they wouldn’t look away. Or if they averted their eyes to begin with; if they never looked at all.

But you look into eyes for a moment and then they break and look elsewhere. You are given solidarity and abandoned in the same breath. You are the cure and the harm and the circle keeps moving, must keep moving to the beat of the perpetual “yes”. The aye and the eye taketh away.

 

“yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

 

Going Nowhere at a Moderate Pace

 

“Bro, just because I drank poison does not mean I should have to go to the hospital”.

Roberto’s mutterings echoed through the corridors of the apartment complex. His best friend hassled him towards the stairwell in a half dragging, half carrying motion. Roberto’s protest went completely disregarded by all 250 pounds of Damien, who was deafened by the combination of adrenaline and Pimms pumping through his veins. Something about being a motherfucking drama queen escaped from Damien’s lips unconsciously. Tunnel-visioned, he flung his brother in arms down flight after flight of stairs, assured that this was the fastest way to get him medical attention.

Now, to be fair, Roberto was not suicidal. Rather, he was bored. Incredibly, unbearably bored. He had been bored for about six months, and he needed it to end. Please understand that this was not your run of the mill boredom. It was not the ennui of grandmothers who take Tae Kwon Do at the JCC. Nor was it the monotony that pushes girlfriends to utter the phrase “Babe, let’s use the beads tonight”. No, this was the kind of soul crushing boredom that comes only from months upon months of stasis.

It also should be noted that Roberto’s boredom was not for lack of trying. He had, in fact, been engaging in a series of diverting activities. Since graduating with an Associates in “Video Game Design”, he had spent a full four months creating the perfect game only to realize he had programmed it for an Atari. Upon finding himself unemployed with an unusable opus, he sought out various jobs. His brief and tragic stint as the manager of a Toys ‘R Us ended when he stood by watching two teenagers bludgeon each other with light sabers for a half hour, thrashing unsuspecting spectators in the process.

He’d also tried to carry on his relationship of convenience with a programmer from the BA program.  Without the burden of schoolwork and antagonizing professors, however, their conversation eventually fell to daily text messages regarding sleep patterns. Though “got a full six hours” or “pulled an all-nighter” can be stimulating for a while, the two eventually neatly parted ways.

This created no tangible angst that could prompt excitement. Nothing did. He had normally good friends. His socioeconomic status was comfortable; he occupied the stereotypical fully furnished basement flat.  He ate, drank, exercised, and partied temperately. The only thing excessive in his life was moderation.

And so it was that he found himself earlier that evening with a shot glass full of whatever was under the kitchen sink of Sergei’s frat duplex. It hadn’t been a particularly bad party; it just bored him. The beer bored him. The daft punk music bored him. The games bored him. The perky blonde he danced with bored him. The perky blonde’s suggestion to carry on elsewhere bored him. The freckle shaped like Utah on the skin of her left ribcage bored him. Her coercion of a promise to call her later in the week bored him. The high-fives that followed the act bored him.

A vodka-infused roundtable discussion in the kitchen had particularly bored him later in the evening. Damien was musing about Krishnas and communism, his favorite drunken subjects. The blonde from earlier waltzed in and seated herself on one of the antiqued diner stools. “Penny for your thoughts” she offered up to Roberto, finding this quip particularly witty. (Was her name Penny? In the grand scheme of things, would that make it a less pathetic attempt at banter?)

In as grand a manner as he could muster, Roberto replied “As when I’m lying in my bed, I think about life and I think about death. And neither one particularly appeals to me.” He wondered if she thought him deep or if she realized he was openly plagiarizing Morrissey.  She stared at him and growled “That is so sexy”. Whether she was vapid or just a despair fetishist no longer concerned Roberto; he wanted this conversation to end.

Thankfully, Penny’s train of thought derailed (as lightweights’ usually do) and she found herself fascinated by the seemingly limitless possibilities contained in the host’s toaster oven. “I bet”, she posited, “if you put one of those marshmallow chicken things that you get in Easter baskets and, like, stuck it in there, it would be so pretty when it blew up. Or you, you know, you could, you could put a very small animal in there. Not a nice animal, like a bunny. No, but, like, I mean, if you had a really bitchy, I dunno, gerbil? Yeah, gerbil. And then you, if you just didn’t want to stick him up your ass, you could nuke him. I bet it would get everywhere and smell like popcorn.”

As she carried on, Damien waxed philosophic in counterpoint on the merits of wearing orange robes and chanting in the public sphere. He had, at some point, switched from speaking into his beer to singing and keeping time on the tabletop. Combined with Penny’s considerations, an oddly symphonic pandemonium formed. Others wandered in and out in search of trash cans, extra lager, and, once, a roll of duct tape. Watching the scene around him with disinterest, Roberto’s one obsession began to resurface. He had the overpowering desire to feel not bored. He needed something dramatic and dazzling and disturbing to shake him from his manila reverie.

As the young man in search of tape finally gave up his quest and exited the room, he left the cabinet under the kitchen sink ajar. Roberto stared at the opaque liquids sitting stagnant and tragic under the drainpipe. They were experiencing his stasis. They understood his constant, unbearable monotony. His decision to confer with the pink Windex, the yellow ammonia, the milky bleach was only natural. Recall, dear reader, that Roberto still was not intending to kill himself. There was, however, a spectrum of feeling, of being present the emitted from under the kitchen sink. As Damien’s eighth chorus of “Hare, Hare Krishna, Krishna Rama” began, Roberto slipped off his stool and made his way to the cabinet. Taking a shot glass from the counter above him, he sat on the linoleum and began to mix the cocktail. Dish soap, cleaning solvents, and rum mixed together to create a lovely lavender spritzer.  Four ounces of fluid now sat in the cup, contrasting nicely with the logo of “Intercourse, PA” printed on its outside.

He turned to observe the kitchen crowd; seeing Damien softly sleeping in a puddle of beer condensation and Penny gone, he decided.  Not allowing his nose time to pick up the scent, he downed the mixer. It stung his tonsils and uvula; it corroded his esophagus on the way down. He felt the shot burning. He felt it. He was aware of the burning sensation alive in his organs.

And then he felt something else. The mixture of chemicals and whatever he ate earlier in the evening (pizza?) met in his intestines. He rose from the floor just in time to vomit neatly into the sink. The fluids had metamorphosed inside of him, creating the mass in the sink, a brown compote speckled crimson. He checked the clock, now caring for some reason what time it was.  2 AM.  People must have left the frat apartment at the same point; he hadn’t noticed. It was quiet now. Two men (Jack and Reginald, perhaps?) were playing a video game in the next room. This was no longer a space for Roberto to exist in. He tapped Damien on the shoulder, waited, shook the hulking mass until he awoke.

“Hey man. Hey. Hey, everyone’s gone. Hey, I’ll walk you home.” Roberto whispered gently, almost affectionately.

“Bitch, what are you talking about, walking? I’ve got mah car.” Damien answered, rubbing nap from his eyes.

“Dude, you can’t drive. You’re fucking hammered. The walk’ll do you good.” Roberto had, at this point, reverted from his bromantic interlude back to normal speech.

Begrudgingly, Damien got up. The two waved at Jack and Reginald as they walked through the door, stabilizing each other as they moved through the corridor.

“What’d you have anyway, bro? You smell like Lysol.”

“Lysol was in there. And some other shit. I mean, it was an intense drink.” Roberto was giddy confiding his newfound daring with his best friend.

“Stop being an asshole. What’d you have?”

“I told you. I drank some of that, like, drain cleaner and stuff. It gives a nice buzz.”

“ ‘Berto. Tell me you’re lying.”

“ Why would I lie?”

“Is this, like, a cry for help or some shit? Are you threatening to off yourself?”

“Naw. I just drank some stuff under the sink.”

“Dude, we gotta get you an ambulance, like, NOW! You stupid motherfucker!”

“Bro, just because I drank poison does not mean I should have to go to the hospital”.

<>

Three minutes later, the pair was down the stairs and approaching Archer Avenue.

“We gotta fucking call an ambulance or a cab or something. What the hell are you trying to pull, man? Are you sad about Carly or  some stupid shit like that? What?” Damien continued on his previously established theme.

“Let’s walk.” Roberto said, Damien’s commentary unabsorbed.

“What the hell are you smoking? You drank, like, liquid death. We’re getting an ambulance.”

“ We don’t have any money, dude.  It’s not that far and it’s a nice night.  Let’s just walk.”

Damien fumed, but followed Roberto’s lead towards Parsons Boulevard.

“I’m gonna get in so much fucking trouble if you die on me. Couldn’t you have waited until there was a party in, like, Massapequa? We’re walking around Jamaica at 2:30 in the morning half-shitfaced, bait for any punkasses trying to get in a gang, moseying to the fucking hospital because you decided to play poison control at the SJU party. You worthless piece of shit. I should leave you right here. Man, I could be having a burger or getting laid or something, but noooo.  I’m chaperoning wittle Woberto to the doctor’s because he wanted to find out what Clorox tasted like. If you survive, bro, I’m gonna break your fucking face.”

Roberto, too fascinated by his new state of awake to listen to his buddy, was at the present pondering the weather. It was one of those cool, damp mornings in May when the world didn’t quite seem to know what it wanted. Roberto’s Converses were moist, but not enough to ruin the walk. The air was comfortably chilly against his sweatshirted torso. “Hace frio” he thought, pondering the weirdness of the phrase.

He didn’t speak Spanish beyond scholastic childhood phrases. His friends assumed he understood menu items at Pacquitos because his parents’ parents lived somewhere warmer than Forest Hills. What they didn’t understand was that his parents had no interest in retaining heritage. He ate Kraft Mac ‘N Cheese through his childhood and celebrated Purim and St. Patrick’s Day like everyone else at school.

“I should learn Spanish.” he thought, convinced of the need for resolution on this glorious night. “I should go live with my 3^rd cousins in Guatemala or wherever and just immerse myself until I speak like Dora the fucking Explorer. Or French. I could be so classy speaking French like a goddamn Canadian.” The possibilities seemed endless; this new world was filled with potential and grandeur.  He could learn, could achieve anything.

The relative silence only furthered Damien’s fury. Looking beyond his friend’s stupidity, he externalized his rage towards the entire cosmos. A flock of pigeons soon prompted a tirade.

“Would you look at them, ‘Berto? Pigeons. All they do their whole life is shit. Always shitting! Shitting on statues, shitting on people, shitting on me. They’ve had it too good for too long. Once I get you to the hospital, know what I’m gonna do? I am going to shit on one of them. See how they like it.  Hold down one of those sons of bitches and just crap. I mean, yeah, they are kinda fast, but this is a worthwhile endeavor.  I’m gonna need someone to hold it down, though. ‘Berto, after you get out of the hospital, can you hold down the pigeon while I shit?”

Roberto burst into laughter at Damien’s sense of vigilante justice. His diaphragm bounced. The unfamiliar feeling of sincere laughter coupled with the noxious fluids in his system prompted another surge of vomit up his throat. He turned from Damien, spraying a Dunkin Donuts with bile.

“Sorry, bro.” he coughed, spitting the last of the puke onto the curb. The frenzy and randomness of the act somehow soothed Damien and reminded him of his purpose.  He lent an arm to his friend and slowed his pace. He spoke low, saying the first thing that came into his head.

“You know what I miss about Aubrey, man? I mean, besides the food and the sex? Her playlists.”

“You should steal them,” Robby offered.

“No, I’m not messing around. There are, like, certain songs you can only listen to when you’re dating a girl. Like Jason Mraz. I can’t put a Jason Mraz tape in my car by myself. I will get shot. But the second Aubrey’s shotgun, I’m the sensitive, permissive boyfriend who lets the lady pick the music.”

“How would you even get a Jason Mraz tape, Dame? No one uses cassettes. At all. Welcome to, like, 1997.”

“You’re going to bite your tongue when the 8-track makes its comeback, my friend. Just you wait.”

This familiar conversation allowed for a bit of good-natured laughter among the pair, followed by a comfortable silence. They needn’t talk further about the tonalities of various musical devices in comparison to cost and potential; it had all been said before at varying volumes. Damien has never done well with silences, comfortable or otherwise.

“So, like, when they cut the poisons and shit out of you, do you think you’re gonna be awake? Like, are you gonna see the doctor all stabbing in your gut and shit or are they gonna knock you out? Or, like, are they gonna put one of those curtains up around your stomach like they do for pregnant chicks who don’t feel like tearing up their business?”

“Bro, there are so many things wrong with that question.”

“What?”

“Working backwards? Pregnant chicks don’t, like, decide to get the kid chopped out of them, it just happens. And I’m definitely not gonna be awake, dude, I don’t care if I have to count sheep. And you can’t cut poison out of a person. It’s not Indiana Jones, dude. They’re gonna pump my stomach and all and then they’re probably gonna detox me for, like, forever.”

“What do you mean ‘It’s not like Indiana Jones’? When did Harrison Ford ever do a shot of ammonia while fighting Nazis?”

“You know what I mean. Like, when a snake bites that kid or whatever and he sucks the venom out.”

“That’s a good idea”

“What?”

“I can, like, suck that shit out of your bloodstream and then we’ll be good and we can go home. No problemo.

“That, Damien, is the single dumbest thing anyone has ever said.”

Damien fingered the Swiss Army knife in his pocket, considering his options very seriously. It was not dumb to want to save his best friend. It also was not dumb to want to stop walking up Parsons and go home. It could be so simple. He would make a little cut in ‘Berto’s tummy, suck out the bad stuff, spit it out, and be done with it. He probably still had those band-aids in his glove compartment to get ‘Berto to stop bleeding afterwards.  It made a lot of sense. They kept walking.

They had not passed much on their way up the road. A few bars and coffee shops that operated at all hours were lit with crappy fluorescents. Two teenagers (who were apparently very much in love) monopolized the Hillside bus shelter, slamming each other against the various walls of Plexiglas in an attempt to prove their ardor. Roberto’s catcalls and Damien’s conservative throat-clearing did nothing to deter the couple. A few other wearied travelers waited at the next Q25 stop, apparently expatriates from Hillside that could no longer bear the amorous duo.

Damien and Roberto were walking slowly. Each was left to his own musings, with occasional commentary as to the weather or an eatery they had passed.  After a brief encounter with an Asian man walking a Scottish terrier and a Chihuahua, Damien was forced to comment on the allegory.

“ God bless America, man. I mean, seriously. Did you see that? Three different continents on one street corner. The Mexican and Celtic pissing together on a curb. It’s beautiful. It’s like you and me, bro. It’s like you and me.”

Roberto found this bit of sentimentality strange. He may have been numb for the past year or so, but he wasn’t inobservant. Damien had never been one to pontificate grandly, drunk or otherwise. This was not his normal Krishna rant.

“Dame, are you okay?”

“What?”

“Are you okay? Are you feeling alright?”

“Well, I’m coming off a buzz and am walking your sorry ass to the ER because you couldn’t be bothered to pay for a cab. SO, yeah, I’m okay.”

“Are you mad at me?”

“I think you’re a shitty wingman.”

“ No, really, are you mad?”

“Stop being a bitch. It doesn’t matter.”

“But it does matter! How do you feel?”

Damien ignored the question and quickened his strides. Roberto, meanwhile, stared at his feet, aware that he should feel ashamed for creating such a high anxiety scenario for his friend. He sped up to walk abreast to Damien. He threw his arm around Damien’s left shoulder out of both good will and a need to stabilize himself physically.

“Hey. Hey, Damien. Thanks for taking me. You’re a good best friend.”

Damien turned to look at his friend’s face, contorted with pain and effort. He considered his hands inside his jeans. He could reach around Roberto’s back and hold him up. He could remove Roberto’s arm and move on. Damien felt the hard, flat object against his left thigh.

“Rob, you tired, man? There’s a bench on the next block. We’ll sit there for a sec. It’s only a few more blocks after that.”

“Okay.”

They crossed the street and made their way towards the bench. Damien genuflected slightly to place Roberto down on the seat.

“Thanks. It’s nice to sit. It’s nice to feel. I mean, really feel. I dunno, I was, like, dead inside and now I’m awake again. It’s awesome, but it also sucks.”

“That’s some existentialist bullshit, dude.”

“You’re probably right. All the same, it’s something.”

Roberto sighed. Damien took the knife out of his pocket and started flipping through the different tools. He carried the pocketknife everywhere out of some form of misplaced nostalgia. He was not allowed to be a boy scout because his mother did not believe in any form of militarism. The knife, his eleventh birthday present, was a peace offering from his father for years without s’mores and homoerotic camping trips.

The knife had served him well for the past decade. The screwdrivers had popped the back off of many a remote control. The scissors had cut fishing line, loose threads, clothes tags, and, once, a lock of Sharon from math class’s hair. The nail file was useless, but remained there on the off chance that Damien should become involved in hygiene. The magnifying glass had, in olden days, caused the holocaust of entire ant colonies; more recently it allowed Damien to justify his refusal to wear glasses. The tweezers took out splinters and the pliers plied staples and nails. The ballpoint pen, long out of ink, had no real allegorical value of which to speak; it was just a pen.

The blade of the knife proper made a satisfying creak as it was extracted. Despite attempts to clean the residue, it reflected the years and years of incisions.  It smelled faintly of citrus from the hundreds of oranges it had cut at lunchtimes. Any sheen it may have once had dissolved into the faint green hue of overuse. Only the tip of the blade was in mint condition. Damien had religiously sharpened the knife once a week for ten years. The tip had been through kitchen counters, watermelons, animal carcass, and jacket lining. The maintenance it received rendered it virtually indestructible.

Damien tried to catch his own eye in the knife’s surface, refusing to believe its surface was no longer reflective. He flicked his wrist in a horizontal motion, then vertically. Roberto laughed at his friend’s childish antics, assuming it to be the result of his drunkenness. Damien remained austere. In one fluid motion, Damien thrust the tip into the paunch of Roberto’s belly. The blade landed just below his left ribcage.

Roberto breathed deeply. Sucking in his stomach, he felt the blade as an extension of his body rather than a source of pain. A moment later, he realized that he had been stabbed. He took the knife out of his side and stared at the blood on its edge. The same blood flowed through the gash in his stomach, through three layers of clothing, onto Damien and the pavement. He coughed, spitting blood onto the bench next to him. There was, everywhere, blood. There was, everywhere, fear. Roberto panicked as the full impact of what happened landed on him. He dropped the knife and stared in amazement at the fountain of blood pouring out of him. He felt scared and confused.

Damien watched, satisfied with his solution. For sure, the bad stuff was now out of Roberto.  He took a folded band-aid out of his pocket, opened it, and placed it atop Roberto’s hoodie. A black cab turned the corner onto Parsons and honked. Damien waved at him and stuck up his right index finger.

“ You should be okay now, bro. Just let the bad stuff ooze out. The hospital is two blocks that way. You can walk that far, right, buddy?”

Roberto stared, dumbfounded by the sheer oblivion his friend existed in. He clutched the Dora the Explorer band-aid over his ribcage and tried to utter some, any words.

“No.”

“’Berto, man, you’re a big boy. You’ll be fine. You wanted to be alive and awake tonight, bro. I just want to go to sleep. See you soon, buddy.” Damien entered the cab and shut the door. He waggled his fingers at Roberto and laid his head against the window’s glass as the cab sped off.

Roberto watched the waggle and the sun rising behind the bodegas. He felt a sharp pang and then everything went numb.

 

 

“Kid, don’t worry about him. I know his type. He probably cries while he’s jerking it”

This phrase, chaperoned by a one-armed hug and a shrill giggle, begins the best moment of both Karen Lautner and David Jameson’s lives. David will continue of the theme of tragic masturbation for another eight and a half minutes, the highlight of which will be mimicry of an orgasm in the style of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. At some point prior to this moment, the previously downtrodden Karen will hearten enough to laugh sincerely and pick up a handful of small pebbles. Her doe eyes will meet David’s bespectacled, lazy gaze as they both agree subconsciously to pass the afternoon listening to the sound igneous makes sliding across ice and cracking the pond’s shell, occasionally chortling at the air pockets that form and expand like amoeba.

The camera has long since panned off the two, who will wander towards a bad Midwestern pan-Asian restaurant as the cocaine whore and producer’s nephew who play them go to a God-forsaken trailer for New York style bagels from New Jersey. You can pause, rewind, completely ignore this nearly deleted scene in an A-minus list movie that you bought because it was your girlfriend at the time’s favorite movie for a whole two weeks. You might be urinating while the single greatest instant these kids will ever hope to experience is happening, the fragile non-milestone of two otherwise banal, contrived existences.  To be fair, this maudlin bit of platonicism is all you were offered of these foils’ stories. The main characters go on to be smitten with ardor, almost blown to bits, sexually replenished, et al. You’d have no way of knowing that this is as extraordinary as it gets for Karen (male lead’s sister and confidant) and David (male lead’s best friend and academic go-to).

The second best was, of course, the exhibitionist kiss the two shared on the ramshackle stage of Lester (Iowa)’s Senior High School when they played the main roles in a misguided, all-white production of Ragtime. Karen was cast because she almost had a pretty voice and was thin enough to make up for the “almost”. David was cast because he appeared to be both male and breathing. But, still, how the hell are you supposed to know that David marveled at having seen Karen eat a tuna sandwich not two hours before and could only taste yesterday’s mochaccino on her breath. Karen’s fascination with the feeling of stage makeup-ed lips slamming against her overbite is none of your concern.

And, for those keeping score, third best was when they baked pot brownies in Karen’s old EZ Bake oven and spent the night laughing at anthropomorphic Disney characters in rewind on an ancient VCR.

Neither you, voyeur, nor the actors who “play” at David and Karen can possibly know that this scene is, in fact, the closest they will ever get to complacency. His fixation on Karen unfulfilled, David will major in bioengineering for a time at the state university before entering a seminary and getting top marks in God.  Eventually, he will venture East to bring the Gospel to heathens in a small town in Connecticut. The good people of St. Antoinette’s will appreciate Father David’s joviality and attempts at cooking authentic German food. David will, in due course, toy with the idea of molesting a chorus boy or two, not because of a pedophilic tendency or any incident of sexual repression, but just for a change of pace. He will not act upon these thoughts, owing to a combination of morality and the sincerely disgusting nature of the greasy, preppy 6 to 14 year old moles in Mystic Seaport.  When he dies of a brain tumor in his early 70s, the Italian widows will weep over the loss of a good man, while more WASP-ish congregation members will simply remark that he was too young. Perhaps he meets Allah and gets eternal peace but no raisins or virgins because he worshipped Christ a little.

Karen will operate under the misconception that she has talent for acting and thus will move to Cincinnati for a time, bartending and auditioning biannually for U of C’s musical theatre program until she has eventually reached their maximum and her landlady kicks her out for owning a komodo dragon. Relocating in Sioux Falls, she will become a real estate agent for Century 21, specializing in rural duplexes. She will agree to get coffee with one of her clients, a professor of philosophy at the community college down the road and will end up, in accordance with dramatic irony, living in one of the shit boxes she cons people into leasing on a daily basis. The sex with Carl (yes, Carl) will be mediocre and semi-regular, spawning one ill-tempered female offspring with ADHD.

Carolyn (or Caroline, the diphthong will not change the amount of malice this child possesses) will go on to point out her mother’s every flaw on a daily basis, imperceptibly triggering a latent dose of bipolar disorder. As Karen goes further into Sybil mode, she will take on all the personality components expected of a “Real Housewife of El Paso”, embarking on a self-conflagrating crusade against cellulite and crows’ feet. This will start with a binge of organic cooking classes and gym memberships and expand to surgical options, requiring Karen to venture to an “aesthetic consultant” in South Dakota three times a week. Carolyn/line will continue to mock her Dorian Grey complex, while Carl watches the game on their rabbit-eared TV set.

This downward spiral of Vasco De Gama-ism of Karen’s 50s will culminate in actual surgical procedures, paid for by moonlighting at the gym as a receptionist. The nose job, tummy tuck, and Botox injections will all go smoothly. However, after completing a bowl of cereal 23 hours and 58 minutes prior to her thigh-based liposuction, Karen will bleed out on the operating table. Because we know you love nuance and cosmic sardonicism, the cereal was, in fact, Lucky Charms. Due to a bureaucratic error on the afterlife’s side, Karen will probably end up in limbo with all the un-baptized babies.

In case you were wondering, yes, Karen and David do meet again in time and space, and not in the afterlife; it’s not that kind of story. Their high school, like all high schools, will have unmerciful reunions every 5 years that both will feel obligated to attend, resultant of an imagined sense of school spirit and a covetous desire for that moment at the pond. Like all the other yokels they grew up with, they will wear business casual items of green and blue to the events at $20-a-plate restaurants in keeping with the theme of school colors. Some guy that no one really liked will dress up as the school mascot (a puma) and everyone will reminisce about the good old days, which were rarely good.

But this is none of your concern. Wipe the cheese curl dust on your wife beater and fast-forward to the sex scene between the protagonists. But somewhere, dangling in your subconscious, know that this is the best moment in the brief, semi tragic lives of two other beings, and it’s eluding you with each frame that passes.