Recently in really? Category

"I'm waiting again," I said.

"The hell you are," said Victor, "your beer's right in front of you."

"You know what I mean," I said. I leaned back in to the booth, at the same time extending my arm, far, far out form my shoulder, stretching my reach much farther than it should have gone, to grasp the handle of my stein, and bring my beer back to my lips.

"I've found my way back into my rut," I said. "I thought I was done with ruts."

"You'll never be done with ruts," said Victor. "Ruts are what define you."

"I suppose that's true," I said.

"You don't need to suppose it," said Victor, "I'm telling you."

"Yeah, you're telling me. I get into ruts so I can regulate and dispense with the day-to-day crap of getting by. So I can ignore the sleeping, and the eating, and the working, and get on with the living. Focus on the stuff that really matters in the long term."

"Matters?" said Victor. "What do you mean matters?"

'You know," I said. "Matters."

"You mean the stuff that will make your life worthwhile?"

"Yeah," I said. "The stuff that matters."

"I've been wondering," said Victor. "I've been wondering about the stuff that matters. What if the sleeping, the eating, and the working is the stuff that matters?"

I took another sip of my beer and said nothing. I'd been wondering the same thing, myself. Well, maybe not in those terms. No, as a matter of fact, not at all in those terms. Victor had suggested a possibility of meaning -- he'd identified something that mattered, whereas I... me, I'd come up with nothing. I didn't wonder whether the quotidian stuff was what mattered, I worried instead that nothing mattered.

I'd consumed a little too much nihilist art, I think. Seen one too many nihilist movies, read one too many nihilist screeds. In the end, nothing matters, and since the now is just a step on the road to the end, nothing mattered now, either. And if it didn't matter, whether it was the product of the rut, or the rut itself, what purpose was there in doing it?

"Have you ever seen Solaris?" I asked.

"Yeah," said Victor.

"The Russian one?" I asked.

"No," said Victor. "The Clooney one."

"Yeah, they're both good," I said, "but the Russian one troubled me more. At the end of it, I thought that the hero had decided that a fantasy life -- a life separate and distinct from the utterly real -- was preferable to real life. In his real life, he didn't love his wife. It was only when she was a facsimile that he began to love her."

Victor said nothing, but stared back into me. I continued.

"The movie ended without answering any questions, without happiness or peace of mind or even continuity for the characters. And it made me wonder: what's the point of it all?"

"The movie?" asked Victor.

"Yeah, the movie, and life itself -- as it's portrayed in the movie. So pointless, and unmoving, and seemingly endless. And we travel through it without knowing what we want until it's gone."

"Or you do, at least."

"Yeah, maybe it's just me. Just me and Tartovsky."

"Or just you. Just because Tartovsky filmed it doesn't mean he felt it."

"But that's my point, see," I said. "What's the point of a film like that? Or a nihilist screed? Art is supposed to take me someplace, to transport me to another man's reality. I'm supposed to visit a foreign mindscape. Why must it be one that is devoid of meaning, lacking any comforting illusion of order and purpose? Don't I get enough of that in my own reality?"

"Maybe," said Victor, "such art is calibrated for people who don't get so much of it in reality."

"Maybe," I said. "But it's so self-reinforcing! Nihilist art only reinforces itself. Unless I can refute it -- that is to say, unless it has been a total failure in exposing reality -- all it can do is serve as a downer. As a downer, it makes me reflect more on the pointlessness of life, and the more I reflect on that, the less likely I am to make any positive changes, or bother to try to change the world -- and the more nihilistic life itself becomes."

"That's like... uh... cosmic, man," said Victor.

"Don't I know it," I said. "And that's why I'm still waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

"I don't know," I said. "But it's coming. And it's big. And I can't do anything until it arrives. I have to hold perfectly still, to prepare, or things won't be right and it won't arrive."

"I know exactly what you mean," said Victor.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," he said. "My beer's totally empty, and I've been waiting this whole time for a refill."

"Listen up," I said to Victor, slamming my pint glass down upon the dented, dusty table. "What I'm about to tell you is the most important thing you'll ever hear."

"All right," said Victor.

"And you already know it," I said, "but you don't know you know it."

"Okay," said Victor.

"But I know it, and I know you know it," I said. "You're waiting for me to tell you. Or someone else, maybe. But it's there, in you. You just haven't seen it for yourself and I'm tired of looking at it. So I'm going to tell you."

"All right," said Victor.

"Look around you," I said. "What do you see?"

Victor looked around. I looked around. It wasn't anything new for either of us, just another Monday night at Chancellor's. Sure, it's been a long time since our last visit. Things have changed, we've changed, our lives have moved on. But Chancellor's... well, Chancellor's is like a diamond, or what the diamonders want us to think of diamonds: Chancellor's is forever. Mick, the bartender, he's new. And Chloe's new, too. But they're not new, as I liked to tell Victor. Sure, they didn't work here six months ago. But they fill a role that never changes; they embody archetypes that are always a part of Chancellor's.

"I see a guy throwing up all over the jukebox," said Victor. He pointed. Sure enough, a fat man was doubled over near the jukebox, with sweaty, scraggly hair cascading down the sides of his head and chunky yellow vomit gushing forth from his mouth, which opened and closed like an automatic garage door whose opener serves as a dance floor for the cat, splattering in viscous puddles around the base of the jukebox.

"Hm," I said.

I'd been bringing Victor to Chancellor's for nearly eight years now. We kept on coming back, ostensibly because we enjoyed each other's company, but lately, I'd begun to suspect there were other reasons. By now Victor and I were so familiar with each other that we did not really require the presence of the other to be together. That is, our actions, reactions, and interactions were so known to each other, that we could invoke the presence of the other simply through thought.

It was a preparation for death, I suppose. If fate decides that we should die apart, the one who passes shall live a little longer in the memory of the one who remains, as he sits, alone in the eyes of those who do not know him, in the company of the one who has passed. Reliving an old conversation, perhaps, filled with laughter and frivolity; or perhaps living in a new conversation, anticipating and filling in the reactions of his companion.

Our friendship had burst the chains of life, and reforged itself, tempered against the flame of death. Neither of us would ultimately survive, but in memory, in vivid re-enactment, lucid re-imagining, one of us would cheat death.

"He's dying," said Victor.

"What?" I said.

"The chucker," said Victor. "The chucker by the jukebox."

"Yes," I said. "We all are."

"Yeah," said Victor, "but he's dying faster."

"What do you mean?" I said.

"Well, look at him, man," said Victor. "He's less than he could be. I mean, you know why we're here, but what's he doing here? He's not any older than us. He isn't a cripple, or a tard or anything. There's nothing wrong with that guy. But here is is, wasted to the point of hurling, and for what? He's all by himself, he is. There's nobody here for him, even to drive him home."

"How do you know?" I said.

"I know things," said Victor. "I notice things. Look, he doesn't even know Mick. Who's gonna call him a cab? I mean, Mick will eventually, but if that was you or me, Mick would take care of it."

"So he's not just a drunk," I said, "but he's got no friends, either?"

"It's worse than that," said Victor. "You and I don't have any friends in here."

"What?" I said. "Mick's our friend. So is Erwin."

"Nah," said Victor. "Just 'cause they know our names doesn't mean they're our friends."

"What more does it take?" I asked.

"Willingness."

"Willingness?"

"Willingness."

"Look," I said. "I'm the enigmatic one. You don't get to speak in riddles. Out with it, yo."

"That's right," said Victor. "Okay, there's a willingness that defines friendship. A willingness to sacrifice, a willingness to put oneself out to convenience another. Mick might call us a cab, but he wouldn't pay for it, see?"

"How do you know?" I asked.

"I know," said Victor.

"You notice things," I said.

"That's right," said Victor. "A friend is willing, as needed, to put his friend above himself."

"That may be true," I said, "but there's more shades of friendship than you're letting on about."

"Of course," said Victor. "There's an important shade I haven't mentioned. That's what we have here."

"What's that?" I said.

"I'll tell you in a minute," said Victor. He slid himself out of the booth, and ambled over to the jukebox. Victor put his hand on the back of the vomiting man, and handed him a napkin, one of Chancellor's white cloth napkins, the good ones that only the regulars get. He motioned to Chloe, and asked her to bring a glass of water. He took the water, and the vomiting man into the men's room.

I sat for a while, by myself, and smiled. I do that, when I'm alone. I smile. I have a lot to smile about, I suppose. Life's been pretty good to me, if we're to list the things it hasn't done to me. It hasn't killed me, or maimed me, or given me a truly debilitating chronic illness. It hasn't taken my good friends away, it hasn't robbed me of family, it hasn't left me to struggle through life with an inferior intellect.

I try not to dwell on what it has done to me, on what good things it's withheld, on the times it's led me down paths which went nowhere, but took from me precious moments; seconds and minutes and years which will never be mine again. No, to think too long on what I've missed, by fate's hand or mine, would lead me to a place I know all too well. My regrets would lead me not far from where I sit and smile, just a couple dozen paces over there, by the wall, to a jukebox caked in another's vomit, where I could stand and drink and try not to remember why it is that I'm standing by a jukebox, drinking.

Victor emerged from the men's room, alone, and came back to our booth, where he slid into his seat.

"Where's what'sisface?" I asked.

"He's finishing up in there," said Victor. "I did what I could. I did what was needed."

"For friendship?" I asked.

"No," said Victor. "For community."

I laid my pen down, between my notepad and my glass of whiskey, turned my eyes up, toward the ceiling, and smiled. Cobwebs laced the air above, spanning the distance from the walls to the ceiling fans. The blades of the fans had long since deteriorated into nothing, leaving behind a skeletal frame, an echo of a once useful thing. It sat now, unmoving, casting shadows and outlines upon the floor and tables of Chancellor's, reminding us of its glorious, useful, notable past. A past filled with action, and memories, and utility. And now: hollow, empty, uselessness.

I stared across the table at the worn, torn, dusty cracked leather of the booth. Victor was sitting in it, still, I saw him. "Community," he said. More than community, though, was presence; the one sustaining the other, propping one up when the other stumbled, ensuring a future for each other.

"Community," I said, quietly, breaking my smile to utter the word, "presence, and place."

"Community," said Victor, picking my smile up from where I had left it, "presence, and place."

"So she reduced the input capacitance by 40%, thinking that would displace the compression wave enough to rectify the vaporator outputs!"

We all had a good laugh at that, even Victor, who often found himself bemused, but rarely amused, by the stupidity of others.

"Ridiculous," I said. "How could anyone think that would displace the compression wave?"

To my surprise, Victor came to the defense of the unnamed woman. "It's simple," he said. "It's because she didn't understand how the vaporator worked. For her it was a black box."

"Yeah," I said, "but still, the idea is preposterous!"

"Only because you know how it's put together," said Victor. "Think back to before you knew what you know. Would you have come up with a better idea?"

I thought back to before I knew what I know. I thought back to before I knew how to think back to before I knew what I know. I thought back to when I was a youngster of limited imagination.

No, I thought, as I explored the inner space of my youthful mind. Not a limited imagination, a different one. An imagination more occupied with what would be than with what has been, or could have been. An imagination of more narrow focus.

I looked out through my younger eyes, and saw a castle, far off in the distance. Between me and the castle stretched a deep valley, filled with mist and fog and the sounds of industry. The castle was miles and miles away, more distant than I could calculate or estimate, yet perched upon that hill above the misty valley, imposing on the blackness of night sky that encased it, it loomed distinct and clear. I saw a path at my feet, and it led down into the misty valley, and off in the distance I saw it again, leading out of the valley and into the courtyard of the castle.

This was the clarity of imagination of my youth, longing and planning and setting sights on distant greatness. I thought of all the obstacles I might encounter along the path through the misty valley, but always I walked upon the path. Beset upon from the four corners of the earth, I strayed not once from my imagined path, as I walked across it in the eyes of my young imaginings.

Focus. That was what I knew before I knew what I know. Later, I would learn to lose my focus, and let my imagination roam far from the narrow path, and in so doing, I would lose sight of the road. Lost in the misty valley with no notion of "out".

Looking down into the mists, hearing again the sounds of industriousness that floated above them, I recalled, like a dream of the future, that I had a task. A purpose, a reason for being here, on this path, looking out across my lonesome valley, pondering the distance and perplexing clarity of the castle amidst the blackness. I was to imagine, to ponder. I was to think and discover... something.

How to rectify vaporator outputs without reducing the input capacitance.

But I had no idea what a vaporator was, much less how to reduce its input capacitance. Why should I ever think such a thing, I wondered. How could a thought so foreign come to find a place of rest in my mind?

That's how it happens, sometimes, I guess. A thought from nowhere alights upon the mind, conscious or not, and if I'm lucky, an interesting thought will bloom and draw the attention of my senses.

Then, as if on cue, as if it had come into being directly from my thoughts, a fragrance of roses drifted past my place, and I turned my back on the castle and its valley, I turned back to face my origin, to see what flower had enticed my notice.

...

I looked up and saw... wood. And faces. The faces had shapes I did not recognize. There were faces I did not know, and faces that I did know but were different than I remembered. The mouths and eyes were not in their usual shapes.

They were speaking but they were speaking too fast, and I could not follow. So I looked at the wood, instead. It was big. It was dark. It had metal bolts and it was far away. A moment ago it had been much too close.

I closed my eyes.

...

Different. Overload. Too much. Fear. Light. Pain. Sting. I scream. I close.

...

Oblivion abides.

...

When it became apparent that I wasn't coming back, Victor picked up his take-out box, and left.

Arjuna, having had plenty of time to ruminate upon the mouth-droppings of the Disenlightened One, replied, "Pray tell, Master, are you telling me that I should not look with wistful sadness to the roles that the shortness of life prevents me from ever playing, because, in my great fortune, I am better off than some for whom life provides few opportunties?"

The Master smiled, and said, "You are a fast student, quick of mind and sharp of insight."

"Well fuck that," said Arjuna. "That's a fat steaming load, right there."

The master blinked, and a strange look came over his face, a crooked mask of midlife horror with blank eyes staring at a million invisible, rotting opportunities missed in a life too short to ever live fully; eyes wide with regret, staring at the never-lived other halves of a lifetime's collection of decisions and choices.

"Quick of mind," the master whispered, "and sharp of insight."

"In the end," said the anti-buddha, "all we have is a pile of corpses, slung about our necks."

"But Master," said Arjuna, "do we not also have the One That Got Away?"

The Master stroked his beard, closed his eyes, and considered his student's query. As he pondered, Battle raged from all around, and the screams of warm corpses filled the air. Beyond the closed sight of the Master and his fondled whiskers, worlds were born and devoured, lives were ignited and extinguished, ages and aeons were shaken, stirred, and dislodged from the very heavens. At last, the anti-buddha saw fit to open his eyes and speak.

"It is not the lot of honest men to ever know even a single answer," spoke the Disenlightened One, "and yet, is it not seemly to believe that You are privileged to be afforded so many corpses of your very own, when so few of these --", here the Master gestured at the bloodied fields surrounding, "depart with any but their own?"

"I could have done a lot of things differently with my life," I said.

"What are you, dying?" said Victor. "Your life's not over."

"In a lot of ways, it is, yeah," I said. "That's what I've been trying to say."

I turned my gaze to the heavens and closed my eyes. Through the skin of my closed eyelids I felt the flash and tremble of the fireworks as they blossomed against the ashen backdrop of a cloudy night sky. I inhaled the heavy air of celebration and held it in my lungs as I considered my words.

When I opened my eyes, Victor was gone. Or, he wasn't. The actual, physical Victor, was gone, and in his place was a stack of grinning corpses. They stared at me with the lifeless eyes that I had tried, moments ago, to imitate. The Victorcorpses managed a much better job of it than I had been able to muster. As they stared at me with a silence more solemn than any silence the real Victor could affect, they multiplied. Dozens and dozens of new Victorcorpses appeared and crammed themselves into a finite space, as they multiplied into infinity, all within the span of a few breaths.

They stared at me, each one of them, and as I watched them, they opened their mouths to speak.

"We might have been," they said in mournful unison.

"You might have been," I said, "but you are."

The corpses had nothing further to say. I did.

"You might have been," I repeated, "but you are. I know Victor can see you just as plainly as I can see my own dragging corpses. I'm stuck with a room full of corpses wherever I go -- the rotting reminders of my lives that might have been."

Still, the corpses stared at me, multiplying again and again without comment.

"I used to feel like I was 'faking it', pretending to be, for instance, a software engineer," I said. "I felt like I was just aping what I figured a software engineer ought to do. I was pretending to fill a role."

"We are roles," said the corpses. Simultaneously, the all of them looked down at the green grass, shuffled their feet a little, and seated themselves. I think they figured I'd be a while.

"Yep," I said. "You are roles that Victor never got to play at. You are the roles that Victor never even realized he could play at. It took me a long time but I eventually figured something out: if you play a role long enough, a number of interesting things can happen. You can become that role, or you can realize that it's just a role -- as easy to shrug off and replace as a dusty jacket."

"We are dusty," said the corpses, "but we are not jackets."

"Oh, but you are," I said. "You are the jackets that Victor chose never to wear, every time he opened his mouth to speak a thought, every time he chose to drive left instead of right, every time he made a commitment of any sort. You are the remains of a mass-murder of Victor's future."

"We like murder," the corpses said. "It keeps us from being lonely."

"How can you be lonely," I asked, "when you outnumber us infinitely?"

"We miss him," said the corpses, "the one who got away."

"Ah," I said. "The real Victor. The one that keeps on going while all the others get sloughed off, eh?"

"Yes, that one."

"That's how it goes," I said, and then I thought about what I'd said. That's how it goes is really all that can ever be said, about anything at all. That's how it goes, or as the blessed Mister Vonnegut said more succinctly, so it goes.

"We are the tragedy of the living," said the corpses. "Our laughter is the birthplace of gods."

"And your visage is maddening sorrow," I said, "and with all Man's power, nothing can ever be done to be rid of you."

"We persist," said the corpses. In unison, the infinite span of corpses, sitting hipbone to hipbone, an infinity ranks deep, snapped their heads back and "ooohed" as a fantastic explosion of pyrotechnics illuminated the crowd on the grass.

"You've just got to stop worrying," said Victor, "and get on with things. You only get one chance to live life."

"No," I said, "sometimes you get a second chance."

"I might have been a painter," I said. "Or a guitarist, or an astronaut, or a cowboy."

"I might have been a porn star," said Victor.

We stared for a while at our beers.

"No," said Victor, "probably not."

Victor and I shared a nod.

"I might have been," I said.

"Oh hell," said Victor, losing his affect of nonchalance, "you're not going to give it up, are you?"

"Of course not," I said, grinning.

"And you're not going to come right out and say it plainly, are you?"

"Wow," I said, "it's almost as if you know me."

"We're dragging around corpses," I said.

Victor blinked, catlike, his entire body immobile except for the movement of his eyelids. By now I knew I wasn't going to get much more of a reaction out of him. I continued.

"We aren't corpses ourselves, like I said a minute ago, we're simply dragging around old corpses. Our very own collection of our very own dead bodies," I said.

"A metaphor," said Victor, "is like an unbearable stench."

"No," I said, "that's a simile."

"No," said Victor, "that's your BO."

"We," I said, pausing dramatically for effect, allowing the chattering non-silence of our environs to envelop us as I waited for the moment of resumption to descend upon me, "are the walking dead."

As evidence for my assertion, I presented Victor with a cold, even stare, unblinking in the smoky haze -- a feat of unusual difficulty for me, since my eyes water easily and abundantly when exposed to smoke.

With his usual indifference, Victor endured my corpse-like stare. The moment of dramatic punctuation arrived and left, unmourned. I frowned at Victor.

"Dude," I said.

"Wha?"

"You fucked it up, you peckerhead."

"Fucked what up?" said Victor.

"I had this totally cool thing to talk about and I set it all up dramatically and whatnot, and then you went and ignored it, you bastige."

Victor shrugged.