You wake up because there’s no sun. You sleep without dreams while the day burns holes in your self-esteem. Closets cultivating mold. Mildew becoming the smell of home. I am coming to terms with the possibility that I am less super than I have previously led people to believe.
Of course, I have my bitterness to keep me company. Unlike most disgraced former heroes, I know with utmost certainty who to blame for the troubles of my present. Just look around. How many phone booths do you see on the streets? I’d bet my cape you can’t find one within a long jog of anywhere in the city. This is a dastardly fact of life I’ve had to face, and now, well, I am wilting away here in this one-room walkup overlooking a dodgy alley lined with dumpsters and frequented by the sort of folks who used to scram when they saw the old blue & red diving towards them from the sky. Now I’m the one cringing and looking the other way as I hurry by hoping not to be noticed, sneaking my way to the liquor store for another pack of Luckies and a bottle of Colt 45. Appearing disheveled becomes easier every day; I don’t even have to try at it anymore. I don misery like an old suit, one that fits so well that I don’t even notice it’s there. Something to slide into like skin, like the memory of somebody in need yodeling my name through the thick bleats of car horns, the shrill shrieks of breaks, over trafficy roars and the distemper of a thousand pedestrians choking the sidewalks, buying newspapers and eating grilled corn on the go. And now? Well, there used to be a place for me in all of this, but now I slink away from trouble. I hide from the faces that used to meet the sight of my airborne silhouette with a jubilant glee that bordered on hysterical, almost god-like worship. Slower than a sleeping drunkard, more wimpy than a small boy with pneumonia, and unable to walk up the stairs without stopping to catch my breath. This is what’s become of what’s left of me. A sulking, mild-mannered putz who spends most of his time worrying about where the next rent check’s going to come from, maybe praying, “It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No. It’s a fifty caught in an updraft. Grab it!”
I could still see through walls if I wanted. It’s just that there’s nothing worth seeing anymore. Sludging through my days without the warmth of good tidings, without a leap or a bound go I.
Jimmy came by the other day. He was cheery, as usual, but it somehow felt forced, as if he were putting on an act to raise my spirits some. I appreciate such effort. It must take a tremendous amount of willpower to refrain from chastising me, from daring to bring up taboo subjects, or even accidentally uttering something like, “AT&T,” or, “Sprint,” or, “Verizon,” under his breath. He’s still at the Daily Planet, though he doesn’t go on about it much anymore. I’m sure he’s still harried by Perry as much as ever; the sweat stains on his shirts and white strands streaking through what’s left of his rusty hair speak enough of it. He still wears his signal watch, dear guy, even though it’s about as useless as a tomato dropped in ketchup. I take up a lot of space on my couch and sip supermarket bourbon from a paper cup while Jimmy talks. He’s shifty but composed. I know the reek of my dank sty of an apartment makes him sad. He’s jittery, swiping and scratching around a lot, and mumbling on about some trivial trifle or another. I remember when he was the fair-haired boy of bow ties and aw-shucks temperament. Nervous, yet always filled with a happy exuberance of some kind, and you couldn’t help but let some of his naïve elation rub off on you, now and again; but it seems that this here now, at least, is not like any again I’ve ever known. So, here we are: me bored and a bit tipsy on a wrecked couch, Jimmy talking a good game until he can muster the gumption to make an exit. I tell him, “Don’t worry. I don’t need to cry.” Our disappointment sits between us like a deaf camel abandoned in the middle of the arctic wilderness. I thank him for the kind words, the card he sent me on my birthday, and-- to what I sense is his relief-- usher him towards the door.
I guess I should look at the reality of my situation and be glad for these small things I still have. The roaches take care of the floor’s mess. Moths, scared of the sun, flutter and dart all through the night around my one remaining bulb, which dangles down naked from a molting wire in my kitchen: a musical patter that keeps me air headed and glum instead of outright gloomy. I don’t jog; I take out the trash. Instead of soaring through the sky I smoke cigarettes on the couch. But I’ve still got a good head of hair on me-- maybe the last remaining relic of my Kryptonian heritage. Flab replaces muscle. Tattered hoodies replace capes. I am free to be whatever I want. I am stuck being me. There’s not even enough coffee in my mug to keep a fly afloat.
Skyscrapers cage me. Really, nowhere to go. Get a job? I had a job. Saving the world. Didn’t work out so well. Now? Well, I spend my time sweeping yesterday under the rug. I only miss it all every night, and most of every day too.
There’s a place down the street that’s got a small deli counter. It’s really not much more than a glorified liquor store. They know me--the way I am now, not the man of yesterday’s steel--and so are used to me stumbling in confused, squinting through bleary eyes to try to scope out what it is I came in for. My will is disbelief. The guy behind the counter grins at me, gentle and kind, and reaches for my Luckies, setting them down on the counter next to what’s apparently either a fifth of Old Crow, Evan Williams, or Wild Turkey. It varies. I like to be kept guessing a bit still. It’s not that my vices have overpowered me; I just don’t put up a good fight anymore. It seems unnecessary.
This tree outside my window speckles my moods towards orange and black with a tinge of gold. And yes, my thoughts still dwell on Lois from time to time. Two sides of myself no longer at war, I guess. Talk radio garbles away the afternoons. I’ve stopped reading the paper.
Old flea-bitten loves ply a lonesome trade, sacked and crumpled to a carpet strewn with empty beer bottles and dead cigarettes. As the poets say, the ashtrays have all retired. I am ushering in new ways of loneliness. Memories of Lois are loaded on a steam engine murmuring in the distance, going farther than away, but always faintly on the horizon of my nights. Nothing screams to lose like I now do. Niagara’s just a flimsy dream, something that floats and drifts instead of roaring. Nobody’s screaming to be saved-- not even me.
In the subway station I crawl under turnstiles instead of leaping over them. It’s a sign of my decline. I am wintering out of style. The girls go around carrying their umbrellas, and it never rains. A row of phone-less payphone stalls against the wall’s chipped red and blue tiles. I am not going mad. I swear. It’s not the same, things like this. It’s not.
The big-old full moon silvers the city tonight. I find myself ducking the law, scowling, hands shoved deep in peacoat pockets, aimlessly wandering the grid of the streets, mumbling to myself under the streetlights. I cannot even fight my own battles anymore.
In dreams my mother comes by and visits me sometimes. I tell her that it’s alright here, really. I get by better than you’d think. Starched white linens are not the worst that could happen to a man. I believe in the loneliness of material things. The corpuscle, a discrete particle, powers the softest of touches. We’d be overwhelmed by the ways in which we are touched if not for distractions. I hear car alarms blaring while I sleep. I used to lift cars right up over my head. Now I plug my ears and snore through it all, willfully out of touch. I salute the snooze button, though it’s stopped working, and kid myself a little with what style I still possess. I sleep, I sleep, I leisurely sleep through what’s left of my days to the sound of the make-believe rain.
There is this dream I have. My legs are tied together with a thick chain, but I can still fly. Soon my legs vanish, and I am flying with just my torso intact. Clouds begin to change shape; they grow dark and surround me. Everything smells like cigars. I feel a weight in my arms; it is Lois’s weight, and it is so dear to me, this shape I grope for in the darkness. I cannot see her, but she is there just the same, in that place where she always once was, softly sleeping in my arms as I plant tulips in the rain.
I wear sweaters and go to bed early. I suffer the barking of dogs. Flies plague my situation. I find their gluey bodies in the bottom of wine glasses.
“You’re getting too stuffy, suffocating what used to be the plain magic of being you.”
“Songs on the radio. One after the next.”
“I don’t miss the same things that you miss.”
“Only here is where the laughs last, and last until I don’t remember what it’s like to only smile.”
I have these conversations with ghosts in the lamplight as I keep a pressed rose in my heart just for her.
I stay in neutral so I won’t drive myself crazy.
I forgot about it being Friday. I’d already dreamed myself into the weekend. It’s all very meticulous, this way of behaving. Everything so well planned out but never acted upon. I used to spend quality time shining my boots. It seems like such a delirious waste of effort now, as I walk the streets with scuffed and holy footwear, shielding my eyes from the sights, hunching my shoulders and trying to go unnoticed. I walk the streets, hobbled by my own stubbornness, steadfast in my bitter resentment of these phone booth-less shores. I walk the streets like a cripple, almost limping with some obscure selfishness into the mud puddle of my future. I walk the streets. I walk the streets. Skyscraper shadows grow long, and I am no longer fearless in these thin lanes of one-ways, the city’s arteries clogged with mobs of rushing bodies, my voice drowned out in all the other voices, my face lost in all the other faces. No longer to be singled out in the struggle against the mechanics of it all, I am rushing slowly towards nowhere up ahead. The honking of taxis keeps me alive, if not alert, and I cross against the light as much as I can, perhaps wishing for a quick end to it all. My wimpy strivings never cease to amaze me.
I am my own fortress of solitude. It doesn’t get any icier or more alone than this. Take my cape, please. I have strayed far from my course, and I cannot make it back. The steel diary of my existence lies crumbled in ruins. Nobody could’ve dreamt up a more fitting end to the world’s greatest crime fighter. The crime of being me has finally done me in. I sing, “O’ father, o’ father, where you been? I’ve been all alone in this world since I was only ten.” And, yes, now, the worms of worry always win, too, and they eat away at what I thought was the ground below me-- unsteady as ever now, shouldering the shaky futility of being alive in this particular way that I am. The world has no bottom. Nothing will hold me. Not now. I sink trembling into the wet concrete, a far away place where I will forever reside. Nobody will hear my pleas for help. Nobody will care. There is no home to go back to. I will die all alone in the cold, cold rain.
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