Her best
quality? She could make me laugh. People underestimate the importance of a
sense of humor in a girl. I mean, sure her eyes sparkled, her face was cute
like an actress; her hair, gorgeous, thick and black and her ass, the climax in
a symphony of the feminine form. These qualities helped, but what kissed my
quivering heart loudest was her sense of humor, her confidence in conversation,
the way that she could play, the way she saw through the bullshit around her
and understood it was all just a joke. This entrapped me in obsession so deep I
thought the recovery impossible. She was also damned good at the banjo.
I met her at a gay pride parade in San Francisco two months into
my journey. Some gays approached me while spanging in the Castro and after some small
talk they invited me to join them in the bar. Not one to refuse a free drink, I
allowed them to get the wrong idea but it eluded me why they were being so
flirty, strands of an unkempt beard clutched my face like sagebrush in the fall
and a stench indicated I ate garbage for a living. Perhaps they were just
being friendly to a fellow that looked down on his luck. Perhaps they hoped I
was the sort willing to prostitute himself for alcohol. They were not wrong.
Tito, a thicker ex-marine in his late thirties with a gravel beard, seemed
especially interested in pursuing this possibility.
When the time came for sex, shamefully I made the excuse that I
was strictly a pitcher but my dick was too full of whiskey to operate. We
cuddled until morning and as I awoke seized by drinking pains and seized
tighter by some hairy, sweaty, naked dude, I wondered if getting loaded was
worth such a price. But I’d never been one to question temptation. Quietly, I
gathered my clothing and headed for the door, intent on leaving the sleeping
gay as he lie.
“How long are you going to be in the Castro?” he asked before my
fingers found the door handle.
“Not sure,” I answered reluctantly. “My legs are like the breeze,
I can’t predict their movement.”
“A poet,” he acknowledged with a smile, “I never would have
guessed.”
I wrapped my hand around the door handle.
“There’s a parade tomorrow,” he sprung.
“Oh?” I offered casually.
“You want to go?”
“Um… sure,” I forfeited, honesty apparently too tricky a virtue
for my timid personality.
“Great,” the naked beast rose from his bed, “You should shave and
shower, and I’ll show you your costume.”
My self-resentment grew deeper as I stared at my reflection in a
skin-tight sailor’s onesie white knee-high white stockings, navy blue booties
and a little white cap. It grew deeper, still, when Tito approached the mirror
in a matching costume and slapped my ass. Why couldn’t I just come clean? What
in my fortitude lacked to such length I felt so compelled to a cling to a lie?
Was it fear of getting the shit beat out of me by this man-bear, or perhaps
fear of hurting him? Or perhaps both? These thoughts wrestled with me as I
marched among the truly flamboyant covered thickly in glitter and surrounded by
a fog of homoerotic pride so deep I could no longer tell if this was a parade
or an orgy.
I heard her first. That light, tickling rhythm outpouring from her
banjo strings and flooding my soul with something ancient, from my childhood
perhaps, or a past life. Then I saw it. Not her, not yet. Not with my eyes. I
saw it with my lonely, little heart that cried out now in desperate longing,
its voice sewing sunlight itself into a rope. I’ve heard of Destiny Lines before, like in
Donny Darko, but I can’t stand the label. Destiny is the heart killer. It
tempts you into certainty then caves the bridge beneath you. But even so, the
fucking line was there. And I followed it right to her.
A street urchin like me, she picked her banjo on the sidelines of
the parade with a cute, black hat at her side and a nickel sitting in it. The
sailor procession had long since left and an outfit of transvestites now passed
behind us. I took no notice. Dirt smudged her face like street kid makeup, her
hair styled into ratty, brown clumps of luxury. Fabric folded along her torso
from her breasts’ influence on her Raccoon Dog shirt and a flower pattern grew
from the soil covering the dress she wore beneath. A black painted toenail
wriggled out from a hole in her sneakers as she clicked them to the beat she set. It
hypnotized me and I thought it possible I’d never have to leave the dance
between my eyes and that toe. Then Tito squeezed my ass.
“You need to keep up with the group,” he said, “We have a theme
going.”
She looked up, eyes so blue a baby seal would club itself to death
for seeing them. In that moment, my vacant expression finally understood why
monks move into mountain tops, why salmon twist their mouths to skewers and
swim perdition rivers, why penguins waddle marathons in tundra. In that moment,
she smiled… and I smiled back and I knew why Abraham stood before Isaac with a
knife fashioned. I knew why firemen storm burning buildings to witness boiling victims
of God’s wrath. I knew why they built the pyramids. And in that moment, I
thought maybe she knew, too. Then I remembered I was dressed like a gay sailor
and Tito carried no subtlety in his affection for me.
“Give me a minute,” I told him. I reached for my pockets, but my
outfit had none. Thinking quickly, I removed my booties, then the stockings
that wrapped my feet, and dropped them in her little hat.
“Thanks,” she smiled, “But you don’t have to do that.”
“Please, take them.”
She paused, looking at the stockings in her hat, then back to me. “Okay.”
She paused, looking at the stockings in her hat, then back to me. “Okay.”
Our faces grew warmer.
“Alright let’s go,” Tito stammered. I wanted to tell him no, to
throw down the veil and tell him ‘I’m straight dammit now fuck off!’ I wanted
to tell him I planned to marry this girl someday. I wanted to say something,
anything at all.
“What’s your name?” I asked. Matilda, she would say, or Theresa,
some exotic throw-back to when we all ate sheep stomach and played bagpipes.
“Addy,” she answered. Confusion bent my eyebrows.
“Like Adderall?” I asked.
“Yes,” she laughed, “That’s what it’s short for.” I’d never know
if she was serious or not. “What’s your name?” she asked back.
“Kipernicus,” I answered.
“Oh yeah?” she inquired, “Are you an astronomer?”
“No,” I admitted, “But I am a heretic.”
“I can tell,” she laughed. My cheeks went maroon. Not that kind of heretic, I wanted to tell her, I’m a hobo like you, I just wanted a free drink and
shit spiraled from there.
A silent pause consumed us. But she didn’t seem to mind. And
neither did I. I wanted eternity to swallow us up. I pleaded to a God I never
considered real to make us statues in memorial to this introduction. To never
let movement ever happen again.
After the parade, all the gay sailors congregated at the same bar
I met Tito, still donning our skimpy attire. I tapped a bare foot against the
bar, pensive eyes strapped to my whiskey. Boisterously drunk, a man I deemed
Arnold for his celebrity resemblance stumbled a hand to my shoulder.
“Stop talking so much, Kipernicus!” he jostled. The bar roared
with laughter. Saying nothing, I chugged my whiskey and left.
Cast in shadow darker than I’ve ever known before, my bare feet
caught sidewalk step by step to a rhythm echoing in my bowels. The same song that she had played. I was timber now. And her, the vast handfuls of soot that
choked my embers. Occasionally, I would stop. And just stare forward into the
absurd that mocked me. All truth disintegrated. Some relic of my consciousness
hunted for a reason to step forward, to continue walking. Just walking. But I
knew no reason. I had no hope. Failure drained my tank with shame the burning
rag left in the valve. I knew no reason why anyone would ever decide to build pyramid, let alone follow through with the endeavor. I knew no reason why semen chisel open eggs, or why I
was the first to do so. What in me, two and a half decades before, ever knew
the ambition to win that race? I knew no reason why men raise defiant hands
before lines of tanks, though I did still understand the ones that lit
themselves on fire.
To Abraham, grace was God staying his violent hand. Grace to me
was a half burnt cigarette sitting on the ground. For now, my reason to live
was the possibility of finding a fellow outcast with the instrument to light my
new found coffin nail. And so I walked again, clawing at the wonder of the
dream awoken from with a cold wind forming goose bumps on my limbs like sand
dunes. Everything in this world sits within our grasp… if only we weren’t such
worthless creatures, given single, fleeting chances before resigning to
compost.
“Need a light?” a flame flickered before me, grasped by shadows
and emptiness. I reached my half-a-stogue to my mouth and breathed in the last
remainder of a purpose to existence.
“Thanks,” I mumbled into the emptiness before drifting off.
“I like your outfit,” the emptiness called back to me. “Were you in the
parade?”
“Yeah,” I replied, “I’m a faggot or something.”
“Or something,” the emptiness corrected. “What’s your name?”
I sighed, “Kipernicus.”
“Ah,” the emptiness gathered, “so you’re the weirdo claiming we’re
not the center of the universe.”
“That’s me,” I acknowledged sullenly. What enthusiasm I had about
the pseudonym now deserted me. I occupied the definition of egocentrism.
“You seem down.”
“No shit.”
“Are you going to kill yourself?”
The thought never struck me. I certainly wanted to die but the
action just seemed so deliberate. Suicide felt like an act of rebellion. What
could I rebel against but self-pity?
“Probably not,” I answered.
“Then why don’t you come inside and smoke some weed with me?” offered
the emptiness.
His apartment was barren. Two chairs surrounded a plastic lawn
table, a mattress clung to one corner while dirty plates, a microwave, lamp and
mini-fridge littered the only corner with an outlet. Only two of the three
appliances could be plugged in at once. A three foot, glass-on-glass bong with
double and triple perks abound and nearly an ounce of pot beside it crowded the
table.
“Have a seat,” he was leather, sunglasses, dreadlocks and esoteric
tattoos. Ants hounded his creaky floorboards in search of food. They reminded
me of myself, the way they scrounged meaninglessly through existence. Only I
was aware of the absurd. Aware that we are born, we fail, we break and then we
die. They just kept going. No obstacle could pause their next step
forward. I never thought I could be so envious of such a worthless,
ignorant creature. Most of them would never breed, not one would ever
philosophize nor plague itself with hope, at least the way we understood the
word.
“Aren’t they beautiful?” my new friend asked while loading the
bong.
“What?”
“I noticed you admiring my pets.”
“Oh yeah, they’re cool,” I chuckled to myself. “Hm. I never met
anyone that kept free-range ants.”
“Well you have now. My name’s Bud,” he handed me the bong. “You
know the pre-Greeks that conquered the Minoans were named after ants?”
I exhaled the room into a smoke cloud.
“Mycenaeans, they were called,” he continued, taking the bong from
my hand. “Because like ants, they never left their dead to rot on the
battlefield. They carried every body home with them.”
“Well that’s stupid,” I commented as he took a rip. “What’s the
point? They’re just bodies, they’re empty.”
“What do you think the point is?” he asked after further fogging
up the room.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, “Some twisted sense of honor I
guess.”
“Is it so twisted?” he mused.
“Well yeah, how are you supposed to win a battle if you’re busy
collecting all your dead friends?” I argued. “It’s just empty matter.”
“Well I suppose if you believe the matter's empty, then it is,” he
passed me back the bong and I took another rip. “But they didn’t. They believed
every single body had a soul if it didn’t get a proper funeral it’d be trapped
in a tormenting afterlife.”
“So they let some stupid superstition guide their lives?” I
coughed, passing the bong back.
“What’s wrong with that?” he asked, loading up the bong again,
“Because they believed in an afterlife, they had the courage to conquer what
would eventually be considered the birth-place of Western Intellect."
“So they clung to hope based on bullshit,” I countered, “Probably
because some asshole Kings or Priests fooled them into it. Like Ants mindlessly
serving a Queen that gives them nothing in return. It’s just man serving hope
for the sake of it, because some assholes got them scared of the
alternative."
“Yeah,” Bud conceded. “But they also took the bodies back.”
“So?”
“So really they didn’t serve their rulers, they served each other.
Ignorance may have twisted the way they showed their love for each other, but
they loved each other so much they never let one of their own face the
consequences of an improper funeral.” Bud passed me the bong with fresh greens
in it. I thought his argument over while taking another rip.
“Think about it, Kipernicus. All we have is ignorance. Do you
really know anything at all? Name one single thing you know. Just one.”
I knew only one thing. But I couldn't say it. Smoke sputtered from
rebellious lungs.
“I know this is good shit!” I decried. Laughing, Bud reached into
his mini-fridge and grabbed a couple frozen burritos. He stuck them on a dirty
plate and threw them in the microwave, then unplugged the lamp so he could use
it. A street light glazed a fractured square of light through his single
window. My real answer to his question chided me. I knew only one thing. I knew
I wanted her worse than I could survive. And now she was gone and all I wanted
was a proper way to say good bye so I could let her go. And until I got that, the memory would continue to torment me.
