It's my turn.
This week, I'm pulling an Emily.
Fuck, that sounds like an insult. It's really not.
It's one of the most sincere comments I think I've ever thought.
Certainly tons moreso than the last one I gave to her, at least,
which was "I'd hit it."
I've been
struggling lately with the desire to write something big, like
novel big, but I currently lack a big enough idea. Pointing my
ego-stroking ray gun elsewhere, the thought hadn't even occurred
to me that I could do something like that until a few years ago,
when I saw that the guy from Whatever-Dude had written
a book. And it wasn't some book
about remembering Full House & Nintendo games. Sure, Full House
& Nintendo games were mentioned in there briefly, but it was
a real, actual story, with real, actual characters. Ok, I might
have wanted to be an author for a brief moment when I was a lot
younger, but B helped bring it into my conscious. I wanted to write
like this. Not exactly like B does. But I wanted to write with the same
amount of passion... & rapid-fire
in-jokes.
So I'm the latest in the list of P-boi staff members
who claims to be working on a book but really just has a mess
of things I want to include in a book, but lacks the "big idea"
to string them altogether. All I have are individual beads. The
string will come to me in time — I'm confident of this — but
in the meantime, here are a few beads I've been sitting on. Because
after a while, it starts to get really uncomfortable & make my
butt hurt.
"Lovely
night, isn't it, milady?" inquired the number Four, who smoothly made
his way to the corner of the ballroom without the damsel. He took
her by surprise.
"Oh… er,
indeed it is," replied the Nine, as coolly as she could manage, fixating
her eyes out the window. "Never do I recall the moon being so
bright."
"It's
the lights in here that do it, I think. They're dimmed just so… say,
may I have this dance?"
That's
when she turned, blushing. His gaze was hauntingly passionate. How
could she possibly resist? "Why, I… I'd be delighted," she
said with a tremble. And the Nine curtsied as it took the outstretched
hand of the Four as they joined the others.
At
approximately one-twenty-five, I had caught myself staring, fixated
for what could have very well been a good five minutes at the numbers. They
seemed to jump out at me, interrupting my train of thought and causing
a brief spell of away message writer's block. I had detected a
pattern, an order to them that was familiar but blurry, like a classmate
from kindergarten who passes by you on the escalator. I had to
crack the code; I couldn't finish my typed declaration of the end of
my day until I did so. The digits began to dance along the screen
as my eyelids slowly donned cast iron suits of armor. My stare
focused in on two doing the tango in the corner. Four… nine… forty-nine? No,
that couldn't be it, for just then a friendly inclined bar excused himself
and requested to cut in. The four politely stood behind them,
watching amusedly.
An
inclined bar… slash… a fraction. Four-ninths? Point-four-repeating? That
didn't make sense. What would be broken up into ninths to begin
with?
Ninths… ninth. The
ninth.
At
approximately one-twenty-seven, I had deciphered the first part of the
code. It was a date. April the ninth. Something was
supposed to happen on April the ninth. The last thing I'd expect
to come to my mind was immediately moved to the front of the line as
I remembered Nicole Scapelli's birthday. Why
I continue to remember that joyous occasion, I'll never know. I
hadn't seen her since sixth grade, maybe seventh. It was too long
ago to remember, but that was nothing compared to the fact that the
subject of her birthday hadn't even come up since second grade when,
after inquiring about the occasion, she yelled the date in my face. I
don't even remember why I asked. It was June. It shouldn't
have mattered. Nicole Scapelli
didn't matter. What did matter was April the ninth. Tomorrow. Or,
more accurately, later that day.
Something
was supposed to happen on April the ninth. I reached into the
folder of my notebook for the answer.
What
was my notebook doing out?
At
approximately one-twenty-nine, my Adam's apple decided to take a trip
to the scenic shores of my small intestine, while an unfriendly lump
stayed behind to housesit my throat.
What
my notebook was doing out was being ignored, as was both the math test
I had just confirmed was to take place on April the ninth… and
math class, itself. I couldn't even remember the date of the
last time I bothered to attend since the class began in February, but
my trusty brain wouldn't let me forget to associate the test that morning
with the birthday of a girl I hadn't so much as thought about in eight
years. My memory worked like a fine wine. Hopefully when
I'm sixty-four I'll remember the dates on which my math class was scheduled
and have a good laugh about it. For now, it was one-thirty. The
test was in eight and a half hours. I couldn't study now. My
eyelids were just about suited up and ready to guard my precious pupils
for dear life. If I got a good six hours' worth of sleep, I would
still have plenty of time to find someone in the hallway who will have
been waiting all morning to share her homemade study sheet with a panic-stricken
peer. I set my alarm for seven-thirty.
P.M. I
cursed as I realized my mistake at nine-fifty that morning. No
sooner did I wake up in a pond of cold sweat than I threw on the clothes
I wore yesterday and were still conveniently thrown on the floor next
to my bed. As I ran out the door without caring whether it had
closed all the way or not, I briefly glanced up at the sky. It
was a weird color, but I didn't have the time to think too long of the
name Crayola printed on its crayon. I simply tipped my imaginary hat
to God for actually ensuring that my biological clock was set for the
correct meridian and began to race down the hill.
Why
was I signed up for this math class? I grimaced at the inconvenience
of not having the school catalog with me, so that I could see if it
was a required course. I smiled and nodded to acknowledge the
existence of any familiar faces I whizzed passed as I silently interrogated
myself. How many classes had I cut? Did I miss any other
important test? What chapter were we on? What language is
this thing written in? Could I pull off a D for the semester at
this point? Who are you?
The professor possibly stared at me through the threshold of the classroom
door. She was a woman of no more than thirty-five, and that may
well have been rudely stretching it. Her hair, cut above the shoulders,
was dark brown, as were here eyes, which stared at or more like through me
as her question rang in my ear, sending a chill down my spine. Grasping
my upper arms in a shiver, I noticed they were not only bare, but soaking
wet, having lain in a pond of cold sweat for several hours.
At approximately one-forty-two I sat up with a start, or at least
did the best I could, having been wrapped up in bed sheets like
a cocoon. The
clearer the details of my interrupted dream became, the
more bizarre I realized the mental scenario was. There was no
test. There was no class. The sky was a weird color. The
building wasn't shaped like that. I think I even passed a neon
purple tree. I had finished all my math credits. In fact,
I had finished all my everything credits and been out of college
for two and half years. Yet the nightmare of forgetting about
a class until more than halfway through a semester kept sporadically
returning. Every
once in a while, it'd even be replaced by running through the
halls of my high school, taking odd and probably impossible in
real life shortcuts in attempt to not being caught late for a class.
I didn't understand. With every other job I had, I'd have nightmares
of having impossibly busy days at work. When I was a life guard,
I'd dream of having to save drowning children just out of reach and
catch people being pushed down the waterslide rapid fire. When
I was a waiter, I'd dream about having eighty-seven impatient tables. Now
that I have a real job in the real world, I'm dreaming I'm failing school. It's
not a constantly reoccurring nightmare, but it's happened more than
once. And the only thing that makes sense about the whole thing
is that, even in my dreams, I have no fucking idea why I always seem
to remember Nicole Scapelli's birthday.
I've never
experienced personal tragedy. My parents never got into a fight big enough
to result in divorce. There have been a few deaths of friends and loved
ones, some tragic, others naturally timed… but none of them caused me
to grieve for very long. I've never tried to kill myself. I was
too afraid, really. There were a few times, when I was really young – I'm
talking single-digit young – when I literally asked God to kill me, because
the whole pain thing that comes with trying to do it yourself turned me off
to the whole process. I've never had the desire to put a finger down my
throat. Except for that one time when I got a popcorn kernel stuck in
the back of my mouth. It was there for about a week before it finally
hitched a ride with an ice cube or something. I tried to get it out manually,
but not only were my fingers just too short, but my gag reflex also objected
to their trespassing back there. It was not a comfortable argument between
the two to be caught in the middle of. I don't know how you bulimics do
it. Never mind the whole part where I also don't know how anyone over
the age of twelve could set a two-digit number as their ideal weight. This
might be the Y-chromosome talking, but the day I stepped on the scale in my
parents' bathroom and discovered that I had passed the hundred-pound mark was
a triumphant moment in my early adolescent life. I definitely recall fists
being pumped into the air in celebration. Too bad the chest hair wouldn't
show up until quite a few years later.
One morning, at around 6:50, while looking at the sunrise out my office window,
or more accurately the reflection of it off the windows of a
building a few blocks away, I looked down to see him crossing the street. He looked up
at me, smirked, arched his back a little, and gave me the gun point hand gesture. I
lost it. So as not to leave the poor kid hanging, I responded with a
two-fingered tip of my imaginary cowboy hat. He flashed a squinty-eyed
smile and continued crossing the otherwise barren street and into work. From
then on, it became our little ritual. At 6:51, I'd stand by the window,
and there he'd be, as sure as death and taxes. Or at least as sure as
the local transit system. He didn't own a car, and it had to have been
an hour-long trip on his bicycle. He'd only make that trek on certain
summer mornings when he happened to get up on the exceptional side of the bed. But,
unless he called beforehand, he'd always be there and on the draw. I never
told him so, but it always made my morning. I could've woken up on the
horrendous side of the bed, but I could always count on him and his stupid guns
to make me laugh, at least for a minute. Well, on those days, the laugh
was replaced with the sniffle.
It's amazing how many little habits we form and have no explanation for stick
with us from day one, and we often don't even realize it until much later in life.
Such was my reaction to reading one of my mother's earliest observations of me,
written in that book that every mother keeps of all the statistics surrounding my
birth and infancy. "Likes to stare at the sky," it read in her excited
yet elegant cursive, the initial L having been traced over a few times before
the last drop of blue ink gave up the struggle to remain in its ball point sanctuary. I
didn't know I didn't know it was written there until I needed the book for more
important information when I was expecting my own son, so I laughed to myself the
first time I read it. Or rather, I made that quick, sharp sniffling sound
out of my nose that one makes in mild amusement to myself the first time I read
it. It was the first time I ever realized how often I just stand and stare
at the sky.
It's not really a fascination. I don't know any of the science behind it. I
couldn't tell you what to look for when you expect rain or snow, or what time
the sun will rise or set, or what phase of the moon it's going to be. Really,
I just like looking up and watching whatever's up there do its thing. I can
remember vivid details about the days and nights surrounding certain superlatives,
like the night I saw the biggest moon. I was walking the girl I dated in high
school home from dinner and a movie, and we took a stroll around a lake near
the theater. Or the day I saw the brightest silver lining. That was
my twenty-second day as senior vice president. It poured that morning and
I had just stepped in a giant puddle. Then there's the day when the sky was
bluest I've ever seen it. Strangely enough, that day also happened to be
the last time I saw (I don't have a name for him yet).
It was five years ago. I want to say I remember it like it was yesterday,
but I'm pretty sure that's just something people say when they're feeling nostalgic. I
couldn't tell you the exact date. I don't even remember whether it was May
or June. Does that make me a bad person? It was most certainly five
years ago; that much was carved quite clearly in stone. And it was definitely
late spring, because I distinctly recall enjoying a perfect blend of the cool breeze
and the warm sunshine flirtatiously chasing each other around my shoulders and back. Then
I looked up and saw it. The most vivid shade of blue my eyes have ever been
treated to. The few clouds that happened to be scattered along it seemed keen
on avoiding blocking the sun as it shone down on a field with grass greener and
more alive than all your neighbors' front lawns combined. I was standing in
the field in an all too familiar scene. Not that I've had the misfortune of
being a guest at many of those sort of occasions, but it was laid out the way I've
always seen it so in the movies. Two holes have been dug side by side in the
middle of a field greener than all your neighbors' front lawns combined. Funny
how the grass rarely looks more alive than in scenes like that.
Next to the holes sat two wooden boxes, surrounded by a group of several dozen
dressed in black and staring down at them. The scene was mostly silent, save
for the occasional sniffle coming from various sections of the huddle, the distant
whizzing by of cars on a nearby road, and a sermon being recited by a man of the
cloth. He spoke softly and loudly at the same time, his voice both reassuringly
gentle and confidently firm. It was third time that month that he's spoken
those same words, filling in the blank lines scattered throughout his mental transcript
with the proper names.
Actually, it wasn't quite the ideal movie scene. The holes in the ground
were not in the very center of the field. They were among a neat row of headstones,
as opposed to being separated from a series of nameless markings in the background. No
director or cinematographer is there to stand behind a camera and assure a perfect
view of the steeple rising up in the distance, or the steady traffic on the nearby
road. None of the sniffles grew into sobs that drowned out the minister's
voice. But, if nothing else, at least the sky was picture perfect. My
neck hurt from trying not to tilt my head too far upward as I let my mind get lost
in the clouds rolling as slowly and steadily by as the cars sending faint whizzing
noises through my left ear.
IF YOU READ YOU'LL JUDGoh wait that's supposed to go at the top, isn't it?
Shit. |
