“I had a dream you tried to kiss me while I was pretending
to be asleep. You didn’t seem like your old self at all.”
The
alcoves bottom-lit over the lancet windows of the church’s façade; something to
see as you go by on the bus before the AA meetings got fully going, before you
knew there really was enough time for slunk-and-smoke loitering around in your
days. Fill up your Styrofoam cup with coffee from that big old silver urn. Take
your time. Sit down and cross your legs, tip your make-believe hat to folks milling around
the fold-up chairs. Run your fingers through your hair and sigh. That stuff.
There’ll be time for it all. Mess around with ogling the ceiling; the cheap
gaudy folds of plaster and bland, strobe flicker of bad lighting; the stained
and scuffed-thin, gray-and-pink-dotted carpet; the whole multipurpose-room stink
of it all. Something that reminds you of grade school assemblies, the stifling
brunt of forced attendance weighing you down with girded ennui and dullness.
But you’re here by choice, at least in the willingness to try to lure the
unwilling sides of you into a trap, or perhaps that’s just a ruse you’re unable
to convince yourself is actually not one, or something like that. But, goodbye to all that,
you’re here, and that’s at least more than you’ve been able to do thus far in
the folds of your attic-scrounging lifestyle. The PA sounds like a principal’s
morning announcements. There’s static roaming staid in your amygdalae. Nobody’s
playing it dangerous. Sprained ankles be damned, you’re in it for the short
haul. Choking the wildness propagating in your nights, the rococo patterns of
wishful forgetfulness, this all pleads no-contest to what’s been getting you by
this far. When every day seems like just another laundry day, and your most
common saying gets to be, “Just what was it I was going to say?” It’s
move-over-or-be-done-with-it time.
You
need a cigarette. Go outside. Stand around and lean against the Masonite sign
reading: “God Is Love.” Think about Columbo’s wife. Make small talk with the
hands-stuffed-in-jacket-pockets crowd. There will be much dirt and pebbles to
kick around uncomfortably with your shoes. Go ahead. Make a difference. It’ll
have to do until the crows get back in town.
The
backs of people’s heads, that unaware clump of blank surrender, is what you
focus on. You sit in your metal fold-up chair, your hands folded together on
your lap in a limp praying-type position; but you are not-- praying, that is.
You are about a quarter listening to people who are taking turns standing in
front of the podium up front and who are saying things like, “Hello, I’m
Raheem, and I’m an alcoholic,” and then go on to tell semi-twisted and surreal
and somewhat ordinary and boring stories about their lives: the things that
have happened to them while under the influence of a combination of alcohol
and/or drugs. You try not to tap your shoes in the linoleum floor too loudly.
It is all that you can do.
A
splurge of hope idles in your thoughts for a second. You scoop it up and toss it
around, and then place it carefully in your jacket pocket, like a piece of
candy you’re saving for later.
You
think you hear someone saying, “Let us build our own caskets, and then borrow
the remainder of our time from those who would’ve wasted it anyway.” But you
look up and there’s nobody left in the room except you and some sidewinder of a
janitor in ripped jeans who’s sweeping around the edges of things with a sickly
looking broom. You look at your hands; they’re alabaster and shaking. You get
up, walk slowly towards the exit, nod to
the janitor who doesn’t pay you any mind, and you continue on, going out of the
room, and you are not thinking about making movies or sense-- not at all.
You
keep walking, heading in the direction of fancier parties, somewhere glitzy and
Corybantic; somewhere where you can feel a bit more free and unlike your usual
self; and you start telling yourself another story. Something more rainy and
hardboiled. The cars of Ares are honking their brains out. Go with it.
Look.
Just up ahead. That’s the signpost you’ve been waiting for. A dimension of
silence, blindness, and corporeality. Shadows flustered to grainy substance
without things, without ideas. Cross over. Go ahead. That door ain’t going to
just open itself.
So,
tell yourself this:
People
and their damn dogs. You check your valuables at the door and fumble around
with a bottle of Chimay, spill your worst-kept secrets on the carpet, and laugh
at the doorman’s white sneakers. It’s chess time in Dourville. You’re ready for
none of it. There are probably people to be seeing, making the rounds, but
you’re not seeing anything except cigarette butts and xylophones. Trumped-up
Chinatown blues getting grilled to mincemeat pie on the floor, your better
bet’s off. Country last; supper first. Treated to strange business-suit
expectations and cold coffee. There’s no fortune in those pants, kid. Hi to bye
in a matter of seconds that never help. So you find yourself running uphill
screaming, “I’ve been poisoned!” Everyone’s got their own alibi, and you’ll be
around, here or there, for as long as it takes, hiding out and growing dust
like hair in some dark bar somewhere. There are no rewards for suckers like
you, no reasoning with or without whatever’s left scrambling around in the dregs
of your bottomless-mimosa soul. Hide and sneak; it is all you’ve got. So, go
ahead and pound out your sorrows on the hood of a Lincoln Town Car. It’s worth
less than you’d figure, like an empty racing form or a lost dog sniffing at
your heels. Make it all up and wish it all home. You are in keeping with what
you’ll never be. It isn’t necessary, but it’ll do. You sing when you make your
exit, like you’re Kate Smith or something. It’s over. It’s all over. And you
find yourself somewhere where you can’t possibly be, but it’s all a lullaby of
coins never picked up, dice never thrown, and a god whom you wouldn’t mind
sitting down and having a beer with. Yep. People and their damn dogs. It’ll
always just be that way. You’ve got Fritos in your back pocket, a cigarette in
your shoe, and a grumble in your voice like Jack Webb on a bad day. Nothing’s
showing. Nothing’s for sure. Lost a grip. Prance out of it. You will not be the
laugh of the party. Not for anybody who’s left to care. A book of stamps for
your worst nightmares; that’s about it. Take it on the chin, kid. You’ll get
lucky enough before it’s too late to matter, probably. Because eventually
you’ll be old enough that you won’t be able to listen to certain songs anymore,
or look at certain pictures, and you’ll get sad and ornery and inept at
everything you used to ace. Well, it sounds like rain; your best ideas come to
you on the shitter, and there’s everywhere left to run. You’re biding your time
in the bar car of your life’s train. Be for and against all of it. You will
always matter to yourself, at least.
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