Wrong Turn

“Where do you go when there’s nowhere to go, and the death you might have died belongs to you no longer?”
—Joy Williams, “Breaking and Entering”

Thursday, 4:55. The class pours in, another Greenburg lecture set to commence.

Today, Greenburg’s got a trick up his sleeve.

He wants to mix things up a bit. After everyone’s seated he tells us to change seats. A little experiment in “altering perspectives,” he says. “Seeing things from a different angle, in a different light.”

Another one of his crazy exercises.

Even though there’s no assigned seating, after the first couples classes, everyone more or less fell into a set seating pattern which got carried on for ever class thereafter and which he’s now, apparently, trying to break us out of. Who knows why this is. Maybe because it’s a first year class and everyone is still stuck in old habits, have yet to throw off the old routines, the rigid structures deeply ingrained after the previous twelve, thirteen years of formal education. Maybe. Myself, I’m still enjoying the novelty of hunkering down in the back of class with a wad of Berry Burst Double-Bubble to chew on, pass the time, without Ms. Retzing, that ancient dishcloth of a teacher (“Old rumbled Retzing, none too fetching” went the oft-reprised playground chorus) who’d been put in charge of the music and health departments since the invention of the recorder or the female contraceptive, whatever came first, instructing me to dispose of my load before my chomping further disturbed another one of her endlessly fascinating expositions on the intimate workings of the female reproductive tract.

The class shuffles and re-shuffles again, table and chair legs squeaking along the tiled floor, and then there she is, seated next to me. No not Retzing, God rest her haggard soul, but Wendy Meadows. So far I’ve only admired her from afar, safely across the class, gapping out during heavy periods on those long curly locks that run down her neck, covering over some tattoo she has on the back of her neck. Some words, still not exactly sure what it says, and haven’t got up the gumption to go over and ask.

What can I say, that’s just not what I do. Not one of my talents. Some guys are all skills and chutzpah in that department. Not me. Not so much. But such deficiencies I try not to dwell on. My old man, if he was still around, he’d say it’s that line of deep-black brooding that makes a good man bitter, and a bitter man a damn waste. He said a lot of things I’m still digesting, my guts weakened by the heaps of unprocessed, unsorted, and unverified bulk. My old man. How thoughtless of him, leaving when he did. The fucking nerve. But what did he really know anyway? What had been holding back, keeping secret? Beats me. Must have been a good one. That’s what I tell myself. But then again, who knows. When it’s all on the line, who can we really trust to set us right? To my feckless eyes, truth and lies form the same outline.

I’ve got Wendy in my eye line, and she’s right there, looking back, smiling her smile that sets the world afire. Hold steady, steady. I can feel the blood drain from my face, as if I’m disappearing right in front of her. Going ghost. Turning translucent. The forever fade. If only. Except the gleam of awareness in her true blues says I’m all right there, in the flesh. The edges of her lips curl. Part.

“Hey.”

I wait for the spontaneous charm to kick in, take over, free me from my own mass ineptitude, turn me into something better, but nothing’s coming. Time’s ticking. Something else my old man used to say. No one, he said, who ever uttered the words “no rush” ever said it and meant it, not in full knowledge. The bulk builds.

“Hi…”

The word more a crude imitation of a relaxed, casual greeting: hanging there limply, as it were, with an expectation that instantly turns and eats itself, finding immediate rejection and spat out with final disgust.

The professor begins to address the class. Lecture underway. Next to me, vexed by my feeble one-note performance, Wendy’s reply is all but a short, swift breath, equal parts pity, amusement and utter unconcern. So much for cool under pressure, but at least this reminds me to take a breath before I really do keel over, and then we both turn to the front, note-taking pens at the ready.

The lecture is a short one, and for the second half of the class we’re instructed to group up for a brief discussion of some of points he touched on. Joy. Now usually this means grabbing others in closest proximity, a low-key gesture, a pointed look is all it takes, and we’re on our way. But because of the bit of musical chairs, my group, the usual guys, are all scattered about the class. I start looking over at Wendy, thinking maybe here’ll be my chance to shine, to show off some mad analytic skills, which is about the only time as of late I can seem to get the words to flow, to say what I mean—if indeed there’s any meaning in what I say. How did it get like this?

Well, first there was Mindy, and her decision, the week after graduation, while we were staying at her parents cabin on Diefenbaker, to end things after two-and-three-quarter years because, in her words, she wanted a year to “figure things out” before her future came calling. Right. Real original. I even had the ring and everything. But she said it, and she meant it. Then there was that thing over the summer. I’m still trying to figure out the meaning behind that one. And now here I am into my second year of post-high school studies with so far only one class failed (damned math!). And that’s all the explanation I’ve got. But who’s asking anyhow?

The seat next to me is empty, like the head of the dinner table when I was back home for Christmas, and I catch Wendy, having rounded up her books and things, making a B-line for the exit.

“What’s with her?” I say to the guy next to me, a sad-eyed fellow with soft, lumpy features and a swollen red goatee of acne.

“I heard her talkin’ with Greenburg before class. Something about an appointment she had to get to. I think. I don’t know.”

“Hope it’s nothing serious.” I watch her give a little wave to the professor on her way out the door, which he returns with a nod of acknowledgement without interrupting the set of directions he’s giving to a group at the front in his usual casual yet authoritative manner.

“What?”

My neck snaps back around to him.

“H’uh?”

The discussion is off to a fantabulous start.

And so she’s gone, and another opportunity lost. Opportunity isn’t the right word, but thankfully neither is hopeless nor oblivion, and meanwhile life goes on between the two.

Myself, the pimply guy and a couple others are having our little discussion about one of the discussion questions printed out on the sheet in front of me, but I’m still on Wendy and my lack of extra-curricular female fraternizing and not contributing a lick. Then the professor decides, mercifully, to dismiss us early and all talk cuts off like a terminal patient’s life-support, and everyone’s picking up, clearing out, done for the day.

As I’m bent over putting my books away, others passing by me on their way out the door, I feel a slap on my shoulder, and look up to see one of my old group partners, Mike Rembolt. How I know Mike is we both share this class along with a compulsory Art History course. That was the ice breaker of sorts. “Hey there fellow, gee you look awfully familiar, aren’t you also in…” That started it, and he’s been prodding me to meet up for drinks with him ever since. And I’ve avoided it pretty good, until now.

“So listen. There’s this new place, just opened. It’s where the old burger joint used to be. You know, that fifties throwback place. I’m headed down there now. You should come.”

“I don’t know. I’m pretty loaded down. You know how it is.”

“Aw, come on. Last class of the day over. Time to relax. Chill out a bit.”

“Yeah, it’s an idea. But…”

“But what?”

“But…nothing.”

“Great.”

“Sure.”

So I accept, and we go.

The place is nearby, only a couple blocks from campus—hidden in the corner of a recently expanded strip mall—and real busy when we get there. It being the end of the workday, the loose tie crowd is out in force. He orders us a couple drinks to start. Something hard. I put my book bag down next to my stool. Two glasses of the queer, browny liquid, like mom’s molasses watered down with lemonade, with the same sort of sting, are plunked down on the bar.

“To fire-cooked steaks, fast cars, and sweet-loving ladies,” says my man Mike, holding up a glass. “Not necessarily in that order.”

“Cheers.”

Our glasses smash together and we both down our drinks.

I get up.

“Gotta hit the head.”

“Don’t think you can sneak out that easy. They’ll be another waiting for you when you get back,” my man shouts at me over the noise, and I register it with a thumbs-up as I drop in the door of the john.

When I get back the drink is there but my bag is gone. And so is my man.

I do a quick scan across the bar, side to side, and then over the whole establishment. The place is big, weird, and gaudy, and I don’t know my way around for anything. Mirrors arranged in every corner skew perspectives so, looking up, everything seems a million miles away. Here but over there. Get a few pints in you and stare up at it long enough, there’s a good chance of your face turning into a hamburger submerged in a double side order of greasy-tipped cigarettes. It's true. Up on one wall, images of James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, presumably left over from the previous occupants, coolly watch over the proceedings, and the black-and-white floor tiles makes it so that it’s like you’re walking on a chessboard.

And making my way through the crowded, rowdy bar, manoeuvring between bodies like caught in a well-placed block, I feel like I’m the fucking pawn, though for what, whose game, I’m not sure.

Then I’m at the back of the bar with others milling around. A long, cavernous hallway stretches back into some ill-defined blackness, far off. The action around me makes it hard to gauge what we’ve got going on. But I don’t know where else Mike could be unless he left, and I start out, passing one door and another and another. A whole series of labyrinth-like rooms connect to this never-ending hallway. My path gets blocked by a couple fondling and flirting and generally carrying on in an altogether intimate manner.

“Excuse me. Excuse me.”

No dice. Nothing will break their erotic embrace. I’m wishing I had brought my drink with me form the bar, if only to put out their fire. Fight fire with fire, that is.

Instead, on a whim, for lack of anything else, I grab the nearest doorknob, twist, swing it open.

The pungent scent of lust and stale sweat fills the small room. Movement draws my eye. In one corner two bodies are plunging for each other’s love jewels. As naked as the cracked cement walls, the man and woman flail and jerk on the ragged bed in a violent display of want and release. The draft coming in behind me through the doorframe brings the man out of it, pausing momentarily the battle of the flesh underway to turn to me.

“Hey, buddy! You mind!”

The woman under him covers her mouth with a free hand, giggling like a schoolgirl who’s just been passed a dirty note as I close the door. Following that comes “What you laughing at?” from the man, and the door is shut. More people fill the hall, what suddenly occurs to me, as I look around at them in the dim hall light, are all couple in various stages of making it, have conglomerated, clustered around the hallway, as I weave around them and duck into another room.

This time I slam the door behind me, back leaning against it, and close my eyes. In a second, I feel a pair of hands grasping my arms, cinching on tightly with the cold embrace of a crab, shaking them with great urgency. I open my eyes, and am met with the reflection of a gaunt face bordering on the skeletal, wild-eyed, alert, blinking madly like the wings of a housefly.

“Oh man. Oh man, oh man. You gotta help me, man. You just gotta. I doing know what happened. I mean, I do, but, shit, it happened so fast. She said she liked it rough. Said it was what got her off.”

“What?”

He lets go of me, arms drop, dangle beside him helplessly as he steps aside.

“Oh, man, would you look at her,” he says running a worried hand through a few wisps of hair. “Jesus, just look at her!”

The naked body lays spread across the bed, the head falling over the side, hanging unnaturally, a pale icy blue, staring up at the ceiling, the features frozen in an expression approaching vengeful satisfaction, the eyes bold and determined, inching out of their sockets as if reaching for something they’ll never get to. Or maybe they already did. A purple necklace of bruises wraps around the awkwardly distended throat.

“Goddamn it all. That stupid fucking cunt! It’s all her own fault. We had a safe word! A fucking safe word! She was supposed to say ‘alligator’ if things got to be too much. Alligator! Goddamn bitch!” His weak, shrinking frame trembles in a sore fit of contempt and indignation. He drops to his knees and starts visibly weeping. Like a motherless child, it all comes pouring out, freely, without sense or direction. His words, barely audible, stifled as they are by the tears and sobbing, waver in a high-pitched wail. “Goddamn bitch.”

I look at him on the ground and then at her and then at him. Impossible. I beat it out of there.

I continue down the hallway, which has now extended way past the goings on of the bar into somewhere else entirely. Where, I don’t know. Beyond the atmosphere of jolly frivolity, and into someplace wholly different, unrelated, disconnected, and bleak. My pace quickened, moving faster and faster, almost breaking into a gallop, the dark emptiness ahead becomes a more and more welcoming sight. Then I’m brought to a dead stop, running smack into something, someone. And all at once a pressure comes down hard on my foot, the shock of impact launching me to one side, connecting with the wall with the same hard, unforgiving impact. Momentarily dazed, I collect myself and push off the wall in a quick, pitching motion, which is followed instantly by a pinch, more than a pinch—a stab—on my right side. I struggle to come loose, stunned as I am by the pain—which I don’t feel so much as anticipate like an oncoming swarm of killer bees—shaking my arm frantically, but my jacket is snagged on something, holding me up. I make one all-out gesture, like I’m delivering a right-hook, and then there’s a rip. Only I can’t make out what exactly it is, what caused it—a loose nail, an unfortunately placed rail, who knows. It’s dark, so dark. But I’m freed, and without looking back, push on.

Then it ends. I come up against something that’s again blocking my path. A steel door. An exit. A sense of either great relief or great loss overcomes me as I punch down on the metal handle and step outside.

Past the doorway light, all is dark, as dark as the hallway was. Early December darkness. Under the red buzzing EXIT sign, I look down and discover my left boot is gone, had come off at some point, and, along with my backpack, got left inside. I try the door I just came out of but it’s locked.

I come down on it with all my weight, pounding my shoulder into it, then a couple times with the side of my fist.

“My fucking boot, asshole! I need my fucking boot!”

I rest against the door, and feeling a stinging breeze cut through my exposed side, move a hand over the tear in my jacket, and pulling it out, watch droplets of blood, thick and warm, ooze from my palm to the ground.

Shoeless and bloody, I take a few tentative steps out into the dark night, snow crumpling under my bare feet.

I stop, cold and uncertain. There’s a rattling coming from somewhere ahead of me, and then the sound of footsteps approaching. Nothing, anything or anyone, I can see in front of me. A grim odour seizes my senses. I feel a presence more than see any. Whoever or whatever it is crosses my path, drops something in the snow, and shuffles off, the crunch-crunch trailing into a fade until the only sound is the whistle of the wind. I move in closer to inspect. On the ground, a pair of shoes, wooden and with straps, in a Japanese style.

“Thank you,” I call out to the mysterious delivery man but only the wind answers.

Not my missing boot but I’m not exactly in a bartering position. I try them on. They fit snugly, my heal spilling out, bare and braced, over the back, but I manage to get them on my feet and start off into the snowy night. Slow and cautious, I turn up an alley as narrow and dark and long as the hallway, expect that there’s a light at the end of this tunnel. Coming out onto the street the lights flash all around, from high up above, like wondrous glowing honeycombs. The comfort of the light quickly gives way to the dread of the unfamiliar surroundings. Where I am? The back area of the bar having ran back so far it must have come out on a completely different area of town, far off from where we entered. So I think. But my reason I left behind some time ago. Panic grips my bones like a new skin; that and the coldness.

My attempt at a run through the freshly snowed over streets ends in my taking in a mouthful of the stuff. Damn ill-fitting shoes. I rise with weary resolve. A red blotch in the packed snow made by my outline marks my path and my defeat. So weak and cold now I can’t hardly feel anything, and then less than that, and just as the soft creeping numb feeling starts to take hold I hear music. Far away and muffled, soft and gentle, indistinct and cryptic, like the music you hear in dreams after falling asleep with the stereo on, and all I can think to myself is: I didn’t know death had a soundtrack. Then I recognize the sounds. “Nightmare,” an old-timey Artie Shaw song, made new in this confusion. I look around, searching out the sound. And there parked on the street a block-and-a-half up, a camping trailer sits humming its song to the night. I go over to it, the bleary blast of the music growing louder and louder as I approach. I rap on the door, and when nobody answers I open it and go inside.

The music explodes in my face, the light so bright it takes my eyes a moment to adjust. They come into focus but nothing is set in place. The old furniture is all cloaked in a messy layer of cobwebs, the whole trailer is—entangling and sticking to me as I move in the direction of the stereo on the other side, arms swinging wildly to beat them off.

The stereo is set up high on a shelf and I have to climb up a step ladder to reach it. I brush back the cobwebs, scanning the buttons and dials. I hit the button marked OPEN and a disc pops out.

Still the music keeps playing.

I take the disc out and put it in my pocket. I hit it again and another disc is released.

The music keeps right on playing.

I do this again and again, each time another disc snapping out, which I promptly remove and deposit in my pockets until they are filled with all these discs.

And the music continues to play.

The same Artie Shaw song, over and over, his voice so raw and emotive and true it’s like he’s back from the beyond and right there in the room.

I jump off the ladder, clear away more of the cobwebs and exit the trailer.

On the street again, and I’m off in whatever direction my feet care to take me. Peeling off more invisible cobwebs I round a corner and then another corner and then there’s my school. I let of a deep frosty breath. Back on firm ground. Then I notice there’s some movement over by one of the entrances. I zero in. Hanging out on one of the benches, a couple guys, three guys, yap it up, a paper bag bottle being shared between them.

They see me limp past, trudging along in my pathetic excuse for winter footwear, hand on my side, holding me together, while the clattering discs fall out of my over-stuffed pockets, spilling out around me to form, along with the dripping blood, a path from the trailer. They fall silent and then one of them shouts over to me, “Hey buddy, you look like shit. Where the fuck you just come from?”

Not breaking stride, I say to them, my voice pained but direct, “Took a wrong turn.”

Everyone is Always Leaving All the Time

“I, only I, am the spectator in the orchestra.”
—Kafka, Diaries

He moved over the bedcovers in his graceful, stalking way, pawing at the blankets as he surveyed the soft, lumpy texture in search of the perfect place to lie. Seamus. He was maybe four or five, a long hair, black all over with some puffy white fur around his face that spread down to form a patch over his throat. He was a nice cat, despite his imperfections, because of them. Running a hand over his head and down along the curve where neck meets back, he purred with lazy satisfaction, arching his back and tilting his head, his little legs taut and trembling, before settling into his selected spot.

A dog can only belong to one person, but Seamus was ours. He made me feel good about things like few things did. Laying there listening to his low, mantric purring, his half-open eyes suggesting a contented tiredness, limbs huddled up under his furry round shell of a body, it felt like it would be all right, even with all the shit, some of the time. Like there was a little less hate, conflict and uncertainty in the world. And that was enough.

There wasn’t much else. The afternoon slipped past like a secret that couldn’t be kept. I wanted to hope, I wanted to believe. I really did. But it had been settled. She was leaving the next day.

That night we would sleep together for the last time. Our life together had started over two and a half yeas ago, most of it documented in a blog we kept regularly updated with photos and short entries recounting experiences we had had. Like the trip to Dublin where we had our passports and credit cards stolen and spent the weekend of the annual Bloomsday celebrations camped out in Phoenix Park amid the thousands of sloshed and surly locals. The time we stayed at a cabin on Waterton Lake and I got bit by a snake, an endangered Massasauga Rattler, after a swim, and almost had three toes on my right foot amputated. There were our two cats we rescued, Seamus and Stokes, who no one wanted them on account of one having lost an eye and the other having a stub for a tail.

We had shared a lot, and even the sour times I wouldn’t have given up for anything.

Over that time we had also befriended many new people—more than I had ever known on my own—a lot of them couples like us, and the thought of telling them she was no longer a part of my life, and I a part of hers, seemed unfathomable. I didn’t know how to tell myself.

We slept on separate sides of the bed, our backs to each other for most of the night save for when I woke to the sensation that everything was too real and rolled over on my side, wrapped my arms around her and held her close like I used to, those first couple months we were together, before she moved in permanently and would only stay over and in the morning, with the fresh light trickling through the half-drawn curtains, we would make it until both us didn’t feel anything, eventually getting up to shower, and, one hunger giving way to the next, I would make us three cheese omelets while she read from a piece of writing she was working on.

But before long it got to be too hot and uncomfortable, and we were back in our original positions, together in the same bed but divided by an impossible gulf of bitterness and longing that best intentions could never fill.

A while after that she got up, went to the bathroom and when she came back she was wearing only herself. She crawled across the bed and, her breasts dangling in front of me like ripe pears on the bough, asked me if I wanted to have sex. But I told her there was no point and rolled over on my stomach and swallowed a mouthful of pillow.

In the morning I laid in bed watching her get ready. She packed the rest of her things and then checked herself one last time in the mirror. She started for the door but came back to give me a kiss on the forehead, and was gone.

I continued to stare at the door. One of the cats hopped up on the bed and tried to curl up at my feet but I kicked it off. I smoked a joint she had left on the bedside table and went back to sleep.

It was a Saturday. That night there was a show at the Elks Hall. All of the bands on the bill were of either the screamo or metal persuasion—all of them except my friend’s band, O’Malley’s Alley. They had a sound about as far removed from those types as you could get. I didn’t much care to go but a buddy of mine, Paul, called me up and insisted I get out of the house. What the hell. So we made plans to meet for drinks and then go check it out.

When we got there the first band was already on stage. The music was deafening, the sound of the instruments bleeding together into a raw metallic roar. I hung back with Paul, observing the action. Bodies in the first few rows flailed and shook with abandon. On stage, the singer was possessed, striding back and forth with a snarling expression, occasionally taking up the microphone he clutched, while assuming a fighter-strike pose, and breaking into a hysterical shrieking fit that could have been in Turkish or Swahili. It didn’t matter. Words meant nothing. The expression was all.

Three bands played after them and for most of it the intensity of the crowd didn’t let up. I’ve never been to any live UFC or NWA events, but I get the idea. And this wasn’t much different.

Between bands, while we were outside having a smoke, I told Paul that during the next set I was going to go up front and join in. He said that would be as good as suicide and I said, “Exactly.”

Sure enough, while the next band was on stage, someone got laid out by a forearm shot to the face, but only suffered a broken nose and chipped tooth. Most of the crowd didn’t notice him until the song ended, when some guys working security came over and helped him to his feet. He was good and dazed, eyes glazed over, and he probably couldn’t recite the alphabet to save himself, but as they escorted him out the fucker was grinning like a snared hyena. All the blood made him look like a circus clown with epic snot nose, or a rodeo clown who forgot his armor.

After that the band played one more song and the spilt blood got cleaned up. O’Malley’s Alley was next to go on. While they were getting ready there was a noticeable change in the room’s vibe. It was still a good size crowd; most people remained or were replaced by others who had just showed up. And though there were still lots of long hairs in the crowd, most of them were now female.

The stage darkened. The band was introduced by the single ringing notes of a lone guitar that was soon joined by an acoustic guitar, followed by an electric—the sound building until it was filled out by the rest of the band, and then the gentle wail of the keyboard player on top of it.

I looked around at others in the crowd. Compared to the overt displays of angst and aggression from earlier they were downright calm and attentive, faces peering up at the stage, focused on the intricacies of the music. Without glancing over for acknowledgement, a girl pressed herself close to me. I turned my eyes back to the stage.

It didn’t hit me until a few songs in, during a cover of The Loved Ones’ “Sad Dark Eyes,” that it was at their first show, all those years ago, that I had met Candi.

I went out into the lobby and ran into my sister. She asked me if Candi was with me. I told her she left this morning. She says “Oh, OK” in an affectless tone and goes into the washroom.

I took a seat on a bench. Next to me were two guys and a girl. The girl was standing pacing in little circles in front of them. They were in the middle of a heated discussion, their voices raised above conversational pitch, the girl’s especially, so I couldn’t help but catch certain details. Mostly it had to do with one of the guys’ getting shipped out the next week. The girl made it known how against this she was. But to her opposition the guy would only say in response, “It’s just something I gotta do,” over and over, which only made her more boisterous, more animated. Her wild eyes lit up like hot coals.

“If you don’t come back, if you don’t fucking come back, I swear, I swear, you bastard, I am going to hunt you down and fucking KILL YOU!”

“No choice, something I gotta do.”

“Goddamn you, Markus, goddamn you.”

She collapsed down next to him with her head in her hands and started to sob, in mourning for something that would always elude her. She had a shiny nose ring and her long curly blond hair was showing dark at the roots, in need of a dye job.

So was I.

I got up and went back to watch the rest of the set. But by this time they had finished playing. The show was over.

Over by the stage I caught sight of Bradley’s sister, who played bass in one of the bands, and was packing up her gear. She had long black hair and tattoos for days. I congratulated her on a good performance even though I couldn’t make out any of her playing.

“You still play much?”

“Me? No, not really,” I said. “Maybe should get back into it.”

“You should. Come by the house sometime. I’ll show you a thing or two.”

“Like when?”

“How ‘bout tomorrow?”

“Sundays aren’t good. Sundays are bad.”

“It’s not like it’s a commitment or anything. Just stop in for a couple hours. Learn something new for a change.”

“You’re right. See ya then.”

“Sunday,” she said, lowering her head.

“OK. Sunday.”

She slung a bag over her shoulder, picked up her bass case.

I had had enough, was ready to leave. I was anticipating the ringing in my ears that would keep me up most of the night, among other things.

The crowd had thinned out. I looked around for Paul but couldn’t spot him. Some of the guys from O’Malley’s Alley were hanging out off to one side of the stage, but that wasn’t my scene right now.

I was standing there helplessly, repeating to myself “I got to get out of here,” when Sheila came up to me. I hadn’t seen her all night. The expression she was wearing, she looked about how I felt but not quite. I was starting to say something to her but barely got out two sentences as she took me by the arm and started leading me somewhere. “Come with me,” she was saying, “right now, just the two of us.” I didn’t know where we were going but her boyfriend Dan was nowhere in sight, and next thing I knew we were out the door and down the street.

As we walked along I started to notice that others were following us, had joined us. I didn’t know where they were coming from.

“Where are we going?”

“Never mind that. Keep moving.”

We made the steep climb out of the downtown and I realized we were headed for her house, a new place—she was always moving—I hadn’t been to yet. By now there was a line of people going back almost a block, some of whom I recognized from the show, and even more once we reached the top of the hill. We were surrounded by people, the streets filled with them all drinking and shouting and having a good time with it. Somewhere in the confusion I lost Sheila and was off on my own, another stranger in the crowd.

I was at the center of something I couldn’t name. Something overtook me and I started back in the direction I came, away from everyone.

I didn’t know where I was running to or why but it didn’t matter, and that was the point.

Everything was like in a dream. The song “Where the Streets Have No Name” could be heard playing from somewhere, some invisible stereo, like a movie soundtrack. The downtown businesses passed by on my left and up ahead I could see another person, a girl, coming directly toward me, also running, her long hair flapping behind her like a frayed, cut-off cape. She got closer and closer. She was coming straight on with no sign of let up, her eyes fixed on something beyond me. She kept coming and coming, and I waited until she was within near breathing distance before stepping off the sidewalk onto the street to avoid crashing into her. She flew past and I hopped back up on the sidewalk, narrowly escaping another head-on collision, this with a street cleaner my attention had been drawn from.

The streetlamps beamed down weak light. The night sky was black nothing. There were splotches of pink scattered along the cement, a regular pathway to nowhere. Nothing made sense and everything was as it should be. If life was like one of those mad Joyce novels I read my only year of college, this would be my divine moment.

But then it was over before it happened.

I cut left at the next block and found myself back at the hall where the show had been. In the parking lot, I slowed up, flushed and perspiring, bent forward with my hands on my legs above my shaking knees, trying to find my breath, regain some composure.

A girl I knew from someplace and a friend of hers came up to me.

“Hey, what are you doing? Surprised to see you here. Alone. Where’s Candi?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh. Well what are you doing?”

“I don’t know.”

“We heard there was something going on up at Sheila’s.”

“Yeah. There is. Something.”

“I think that’s where we’re headed now. You want to come with? or you got other plans?”

“No. I’ll go.”

They started walking away and I pulled myself up, straight.

“We can take my car.”

“Are you sure? You alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Let’s go.”

The car was around the other side of the building, in the middle of the lot, the only one there.

“Your car’s not that nice,” said the girl’s friend.

“Wait till you see the inside.”

I took a needless turn on the way and ended up down an unfamiliar side street. I turned into the parking lot of a convenience store, meant to be a shortcut, but a semi appeared out of nowhere, blocking the far exit.

“Watch out for the Handy Van!”

“I see it. I see it.”

I hit the brakes but the downhill slope we were on made them slow to respond and the eighteen-wheeler, seeing this, hooked it and managed an impossibly tight U-turn as we came to a stop barely a couple feet from it.

Coming out of the parking lot I took the next right. I felt lost but knew we were close when I saw stragglers from earlier bumming around, and swung into an intersection.

The first thing I caught side of was its sharp, wicked eyes flashing in the oncoming headlights like two small, concentrated candles burning in the night. Then the rest of its startled figure emerged, a sinister black statue in the street, and I stopped dead and turned my head to the passenger side in time to catch my divine moment shining at me, bright and perfect. And this time it wouldn’t pass me by.

The Patient

We took our seats at the back of the hospital’s lecture hall as they carted it in on a gurney, though what it was was as of yet not completely clear. It was hard to get a good look at it from my vantage point, concealed as it was behind a thin drawn curtain. What I could make out was but a shadowy outline, the general form of what appeared to be a rounded, semi-transparent case, possibly filled with a fluid of some kind, with something moving, that is to say, floating inside it.

A whole slew of wires, presumably attached the case in some fashion, ran out from behind the curtain and connected up to a small machine positioned on a nearby table, resembling a portable radio with an elaborate, glowing interface, the small patch of light shining brilliant and profound in the darkly lit room.

Out of the handful of lab coat-clad doctors and researchers standing before the small assembled crowd, one eager gentleman with a shock of white hair stepped forward.

“Velcome, velcome, everyone. And thank you for joining us today on dis, a very special occasion. My name is Dr. Verloop, and I ‘ave the ‘umble privilege of presenting to you the latest advancement in consciousness preservation. This device behind me vich my colleagues an’ I ‘ave vorked tirelessly on, spending years perfecting, represents nutting less than a revolution in human consciousness as ve ‘ave come to undastand it.”

Dr. Verloop used the platform to explain to those in attendance, many of whose faces were transfixed by the curious curtain behind him, how the mysterious machine functioned.

He explained how it could maintain the brain’s vital functioning without the need of cumbersome flesh-and-blood encasing. Through the use of specially configured sensors that allowed it to receive incoming sound waves, it was able to then transmit those same sound waves back to the bodiless brain bobbing around safely in its new solid shell compartment. Once received—and this was the part he was most excited about, as indicated by his animated face, broad gestures and booming voice—a counter signal, generated from the electro-induced stimuli, would then be sent out, to create a response which the device could then convert into discernable speech, translated into any of hundreds of different languages. Taken together, this new device would in effect act as the free-standing brain’s ears and mouth.

Some time after the presentation drew to a close, to a rousing ovation all round, I found myself seated in the hospital’s waiting room. With me from the event was a friend from school, a fellow Ph.D. candidate, and our Professor, who had brought us along at his urging, and had since spoken with one of the presenters and arranged for us a meeting, a face-to-face of sorts. A nurse soon appeared and escorted the three of us down a long corridor.

Inside the room, a curtain was drawn around the bed, the device from the presentation arranged behind it in some unseen, undisturbed fashion. The only signs of life came from the voice that echoed through a nearby set of speakers. The voice spoke clearly and precisely in perfectly formulated sentences. Refined really. Its nuanced inflections and authorial tone were like that of a television or radio announcer, only without the self-conscious projecting to a large, generalized audience—to entertain, to capture, to draw in others with a conceited display of elevated oratory. It was a cold voice, computerized. But there was also the hint of something else, something that could almost be construed as human.

My professor, a double Ph.D. in the field of philosophy and critical theory, began by conversing with the voice, engaging it in matters related to everything from history to linguistics to psychology to analytic philosophy. The voice never missed a beat, was there to meet all of his points and opinions with a quick, informed response, and, moreover, had its own share of original knowledge and ideas to impart.

A nurse came in. She leaned in behind the curtain, making a few adjustments before sealing the curtains tight with a sharp flick of her wrist. She played around with a few settings on the machine next to the bed, and as quickly as she had appeared, was gone.

Silence.

I looked over at my friend and he looked back at me with an expression hard to read but insistent all the same. It was my turn to speak. Nervousness overtook me. I felt something I to this day cannot fully explain. Was it just nerves, being put on the spot like this, or something else entirely? I wish for the life of me I knew.

Or maybe not. Maybe some things are better left unknown, left to operations beyond our honest comprehension. Cosmic strategies long ago put in place, since time immemorial. Who’s to say? Discretion is a tricky mistress. At the time, all I could do was work at a nonexistent itch behind my right ear.

Sudden movement from behind the curtain. A shadow stretched up along the thin fabric and curved along the ceiling. But it was an empty shadow, indistinct; like it was waiting to be filled with something, given form.

I addressed the voice finally, as best I could, in all my scattered incoherence. And it responded in turn. It responded automatically, without much in the way of forethought, its general language sinking back into the soft seas of complacence, the turtle receding into its shell. I pressed on, trying to coax it out, attempting with everything I had to generate some form of meaningful discourse.

It was no use. The voice continued to respond but its pop was gone; the sense of intellectual curiosity it showed earlier had weakened, grown flat, bored. I kept on talking, trying to fill in the gaps, but it was all for naught. Like trying to resurrect the dead, hold up a crumbling structure, as if my words were the pillars supporting a collapsing expanse of impenetrable silence.

I was growing desperate. My words spilled out carelessly like so many pieces of a jigsaw puzzle tossed out at random in preparation of the tedious task of being fitted together into a connected whole. What could be said to correct this, set things straight? Nothing seemed to make sense. I could feel the heat rise in my cheeks causing them to flush as I became acutely aware of the others, my friend and our Professor, in the room with me, the thoughts and judgements they were forming about my performance. My hurried speech, now verging on hysteria, careened forward, word upon word spit out with reckless abandon, toward some unforeseen end at which point—my hope held out in vain—all would be made clear, lucid.

“But what is thought, insight, all the powers of the intellect at your disposal, what is its worth without, without experience. You are limited to yourself and yourself alone. Don’t you see? Without some connection to the world how can you measure your theories, go about implementing them into concrete reality? How can you even conceive of a concrete reality? How can anybody except to be in it, a part of it? This is the point where theory is put into practice, the theoretical measured against the actual. I ask of you now, how can you speak with such certainties about matters that only ever operate within your own mental self-conception? Every theory seems pure and infallible until it inevitably meets with the chaotic, murky waters of life. Life as it is lived not just imagined.”

I cut myself off. Breathless, spent. It had all tumbled out of me at once, out of my control or reason, as if I had been overtaken by a force outside—or even inside—beyond myself.

The room again fell silent.

I waited for something, anything in the way of a response, from either my Professor or my friend or even the maddening figure behind the curtain. No one spoke. The shadow shrunk down from the ceiling like it had been dropped into a hole, a grave. The light from the machine's interface went off and the room was thrown into darkness.

Renovations

I am woken up by a group of musicians rehearsing in the next room. There are maybe four or five of them and they are jamming out Metallica songs. They are excited because James Hetfield is supposed to come over later. Other than that I don’t know what they are doing here. I am mad they woke me up. Their presence irritates me. I pass by them in a daze and shuffle upstairs. I am shocked to discover that all my stuff, furniture, books, everything, has been removed. The rooms are empty. The floor is covered in dirt and debris. There are extension cords and wires running down the hallway and through all the rooms. I’m confused. I go into the bathroom. While hanging it out I accidently knock a pile of hot wires into the toilet. They hit the water and come alive like pissed off electric eels. I drop the seat but don’t flush. I go back out into the hallway. My landlord is there. He is not happy about the loud music downstairs. Neither am I, I say, and tell him I’ll make sure they leave soon. He informs me he’s going to be doing some renovations. He is a licensed carpenter and plumber. He tells me the renovations will take four or five weeks, working on weekends, if they are diligent.

I leave my apartment. I go to a movie with a friend I’ve known since we were ten. It’s been about six years since I’ve last spoken to this person. Something to do with a girl both of us liked. I was with her and he wanted to be, I guess, but wasn’t. In their MSN conversations he told her what a big loser I was. Later she printed off these conversations and showed them to me and I took them over to him. He denied having said anything despite the evidence to the contrary I held in my hands. This is what happens. The hazards of life. At the concession, instead of giant watered down sodas and buckets of gooey yellow popcorn they hand out cushions and pillows so we’ll be more comfortable. We take a few and go to our seats. The theatre is very small by average theatre standards. Cineplex’s they’re called now. Everything has gotten so big they now must be referred to as “plex.” Imagine going down to the Bowlingplex on a weeknight and tossing rock hard balls down one of the hundred-and-fifty slicked up hardwood lanes all running the length of a football field to a set of itty bitty pins that resemble a row of bleached white front teeth. Even though it’s a small theatre there are two screens playing two different movies at the same time. On one screen a movie is showing that stars Benicio del Toro as a charismatic political radical not Che Guevara. On the other screen is a comedy starring a chuiwawa or maybe Dane Cook, it’s hard to tell the difference. I’m not sure what part of the audience came to see which movie. After the movie we hang out for a while, then go get something to eat. We have a good time and agree to hang out again sometime soon. I am glad we are friends again.

I go back to my apartment. As I approach my street I see that large crowds have gathered and traffic has been blocked off. Police have been brought in to keep things in order. The reason for the excitement is the Cohen Brothers are in town to direct my home renovations. To get in closer I decide to go undercover. I disguise myself as a telephone booth. I make my way through the people undetected. An officer waves me in, and I’m home. Inside, the renovations are complete. I go in and look around. The apartment has been drastically transformed. For one thing, the walls are red. There are more rooms then there used to be, all of them divided into snug little compartments designed in perfect geometrical dimensions. There is one room that is rectangular like a hallway only it doesn’t lead anywhere. A dead end. Also the floors are on a downward slope so that when you stand in the front hallway you have to brace yourself against the wall so you don’t fall forward. At first I am no at all happy with the new design. Then I slowly start to warm to it. It is a unique apartment, I think. Nobody else has one quite like this one. And besides that, I have a newly renovated apartment and am still paying the same rent as I used to, the Scottish part of my brain says. I tell my landlord I am happy with the changes, I will stay here. We shake hands. He leaves and I go upstairs into a large, perfectly squared room. All my furniture is back, including my bed and desk. I plug my phone in to charge it. I never got to meet the Cohen brothers.

I’m in my new house. I have moved from my old apartment. I’m with a girl. She has dark hair and dark skin and blue eyes that are as big and inviting as her smile. I tell her, where I used to live I was close to the ocean and almost always alone. Now you’re in the middle of the city, she says, and surrounded by people. I know, I say. She smiles at me. I laugh for no reason. I look out the window at the rows of houses along the block and recognize some of the people outside. That night we will go inside some of those houses and drink and eat food and laugh for no reason.

This is a Poem, This is a Place

This is the door that opens wide
This is the hall that fills with light
This is the cat that paws the air
This is the child’s toys left strewn

This is how birds announce the day
This is how sun breaks thru the clouds
This is how trees green in the yard
This is how flowers come to bloom

This is the bed that sags and creaks
This is the tap that drips and leaks
This is the lamp that flickers off
This is the fridge door hung open

This is how cracks form on the pane
This is how dust grows on the sill
This is how silence fills the dark
This is how clocks no longer toc

This is a purpose without aim
This is a will without belief
This is a faith without passion
This is a mercy without love

This is the street where blind men meet
This is the bridge where jumpers leap
This is the field where cold wind blows
This is the spot where lovers go

This is a poem that slips from me
This is a heart that breaks for you
This is a day that runs and fades
This is a night I give to you

Winter Poem

I trudge through the snow-packed streets,
grey steam pushing across the sky,
behind me a fresh path of feet.

I open my mouth, try to eat
the flakes that circle like white flies;
I trudge through the snow-packed streets,
grey steam pushing across the sky,
in search of a small room with heat
where I can find a bed to lie
down and dream of the next time we meet;
I trudge through the snow-packed streets,
grey steam pushing across the sky,
behind me a fresh path of feet.

The Fear

What do you say to this face that you meet?
Eased in by simple smile, those dark, searching
eyes: how they pull you in, hypnotize. You
cannot, you must not, you don’t want to look
away…until they become too much, too much
to take; break through like frozen earth by a spade.

Those eyes! Like the piercing laser light that
cuts right to the zero point, locked in, so
precise. Staring into the abyss, even
the abyss would open its darkened fist
and readily step into the warm glow
that shows like bright vapors on thawing snow.

And suddenly it’s there, the moment that
you share. And everything seems so perfect,
so right, like the day’s first dawning light, that
pours through the windowpane and takes away
your sleep. A new day! As if born again.
The freshness is the essence that you crave.

More than anything
More than nothing

But time weighs like a rock, the ticking of
the clock. It can never last, always drifting
into the past. Hurrying to action, the
need for satisfaction, it becomes so
overwhelming! Maybe, just maybe, you’ll
take the leap, maybe something will strike, this

could be the time. But you hold back, why? What
is this fear that you hold so near? Why not
go for it, risk it—the leap—to land on
your feet? But weighing indecision and
there is the fear, threatening an early
night to fall, causing it all to disappear.