Collusion: Part XXXV

The room stunk. It smelled like years and years worth of male sex hormones, plus no ones mom doing laundry for them.  There was something else though too… cumin? Coriander? Egg rolls?.... Perplexing.  That was the first thing I noticed. And then, Eric. He turned his thin vaguely Asian face away from the origami cranes he was hanging around the room. Hanging them here and there… wherever I suppose he thought one might walk into them.

“Hello.” He said.

“Hi.” I was dragging a duffle and shouldering a pile of clothes on hangers. It never crossed my mind back in those days to throw away clothes that didn’t fit properly or looked jarring. Consequently I nearly always dressed like I was going to clown school… For all intents and purposes… I suppose I was.

“Hi, “ I heard as well. This time from the chair by the desk. Justin was reading something… a small paper back. He had a round face and tightly curled blond/brown hair. You know, the kind that sometimes bi-racial children have.  Or baby Jews.

“How’s it going?” I grunted. I’d take the top of the double I guessed. There were no paper cranes there. 

I dragged my things in. Sweating. The room was stuffy. I would have suggested opening a window. But it was hot outside too. “Jesus, God,” I thought… “Why is it 1,002 degrees?… it’s May.”

I had signed on for a work stay over the summer. Mostly cause I was a stupid a-hole, who believed that there was such a thing as true love… and it could last through college and beyond. Even college at “Praise Yaweh University.”

I smirk as I write. Because 1. Nobody should be that stupid…. And 2…. Just see #1.

And also because I knew things had happened over the semester that I was ashamed of. I was… a kind of *gross* now. And I didn’t want to have to hide that from my family. I knew that they would be able to smell it on me… That going back would be crazy talk and that no amount restitutionary painting for 7 hours in the blazing sunlight would hide those facts from those people. My people. All the residents of crazy town.

I chatted with Eric and Justin. “Oh… yeah, looks like we’re going to be rooming together over the summer… oh… and looks like we’re chatting about it… “ Yawn.

I’d been fighting with X again. Yet another facet of my fantastical stupidity was that I had assumed that staying in Greenville over the summer would be seen as a kind of romantic gesture and that X would be shocked, amazed, and appreciative. Erp. NO! ROFL ROFL! No fucking way!

Another thing that I was stupid about in those days… Having tense conversations via SMS.

DON’T DO THAT IDIOTS! PICK UP THE PHONE AND HAVE AN ACTUAL CONVERSATION LIKE YOU’RE A GROWN UP!!

Sorry. Just… needed to yell.

I wish present me could flash back in time and just sort of float over ‘past me’s head in a small cloud with a gavel. I would plunk past me on the head and yell. “Gotcha Bitch!”

On second thought… Past me would have just gone in for psychiatric testing.

“Where are you working?” Eric had asked… I looked up from my phone, from yet another disappointing text message from X.

“Uh… Museum & Gallery”… I said vacantly. 

Eric glided over to one of his drawers. One that had been meticulously arranged and was filled with folding papers, saved discarded trinkets from Christ knows where… and I think cumin. At least that’s where it smelled like it was coming from.

Eric Inafuku is such a curious little man. He is so thin to the point that we must assume he has only ever eaten three grains of rice at each meal and he has a willowy tendency to move about a room with an uncommon fluidity.  I would learn later that this was due in part to his belief that he was in fact, a geisha… and partly because that’s just how Asians are.

“And you’re working….? Where?” I asked… for a moment distracted by his stealthy movement…

“At the press. I read things… Edit things…” I was mystified. And presently distracted from my worries over X.

“Things like?”

“Oh you know… Just things… This and that. Books. Text books.” He replied with a raised eyebrow as if to suggest that he could possibly be editing anything though…. Like perhaps even more risqué books… novels perhaps... or picture books perhaps…

I would grow to find that Eric was like this about a lot of things. Elusive. Evasive. It was going to be an interesting summer.

I was distracted again by my phone…

X: “All of this is just making me crazy…”

X: “I just don’t  think we should be together anymore.”

ME: “Are you joking? I mean I know maybe we’ve been spending too much time together… don’t you think that could be it?”

X: “Yeah I dunno I’m just tired of fighting.”

“Soooo… didn’t wanna go home over the summer?” The curly haired one asked. There was a lump in my throat.

“Yeah… I mean. No.” My voice was thick and wet and I was walking out of the room. I walked down the hall heading to the back of the building. Johnson was the largest of the dormitory buildings and two of it’s four story wings stretched backwards towards parking lots and the field house. There was a loading dock back there that I just sat down on the dock. I was dripping with sweat and I felt… so so empty.

Apparently I had just given up the next three months to live in a stinky box with Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and Curly Fries.

My phone was ringing… It was Dad.

D: “Hey my little fat buddy!”

Dad always called me this. I attribute two years of anorexia to it.

ME: “Hey…” My voice was flat and wet sounding.

D: “How ya doing?!”

ME: “Oh… well…. I’m alright….”

D: “What’s wrong bud?”

ME:  “Oh… I just have this feeling that I may be here for the wrong reasons… Can I just…. (Swallow) Call you back?”

D: “Yeah sure ok…”

I hung up and stared out at the heat waves rising up out of the asphalt parking lot. Cocked my head to the side as water slid out of my eyes and splashed onto the loading dock. I was quiet out there. I stayed there for an hour.

FACTion

Ok readers. You've heard great big gobs of what I've had to say for months and months. It's been my pleasure to invite you into my story and with any luck, you guys have been able to take away some laughs and some lessons.
We here at Salt, are excited to introduce another source of inspiration with a series we like to call... "FACTion."
Plenty of you have already heard about some of the things that I had to hide at school, what they costed me and why I did them... But lets be honest... I'm not alone. Truth is, if you've enjoyed reading about Collusion, it's probably because you have something to hide yourself.
That's the beauty of the new set of articles. "FACTion" sets out to demonstrate that there's a big difference from what's supposed to happen at school, and what actually does. Think of FACTion as a sort of Post Secret for BJU students. Only... cooler.

Hopefully some of you are already getting ideas :}

So here's how it works readers... I wanna hear from you. I want to interview you. Anonymously of course. The identities of all the applicants will be sworn to secrecy... names and places will be changed to protect the innocent... but all the same, your story gets told. I wanna hear about the things you've given up that you believed in. Lies you've told to protect your hard earned investment in your education...and of course which faculty members are closet alcoholics, and who's seducing who.

Gotya! You're smiling now! And you should be. This is gonna be fun.

If you or someone you know would like to be a part of FACTion, you can contact me...
at jmedl600@gmail.com Again, your privacy is of extreme importance to us, and you stories can make a difference. Catch me on twitter @SaltNSmoke #FACTion

Collusion: Part XXXIII

It was raining. Those slow... ridiculously mournful rains. The kinds in films about suicide, or genocide. Some sort of 'icide.' I had taken to being the consummate recluse. I had completely devoted myself to my studies, and piano. And to be honest, I was convinced that any day I was going to be called into the Dean of Men's office at school and explain to a perfectly awful stranger, how I wasn't a homosexual.

There was an alcove at the back of the museum that I was fond of. A wooden statue of the virgin Mary stood at the end of a very long very dark hall way. Rooms twisted and split off from it here and there. Here a place to sit... there an ancient set of panels from a church long sunken beneath the grass in eastern Germany. Rooms on and on forever. All half lit, and bruised with the deep reds and purples of thick thick carpet that ate up all the stray sound. I loved this place. I got paid to sit and study note cards for hours. Days on end. There were quite a bit of really great art too. There had already been that falling out with the rest of the members of the Senate, and as a result I had pulled back and cut off all contact with these malicious people. I reasoned that if I had been their friend for this long... and now they were after me... what next? Would they slap a jew? Would they eat their young? I couldnt tell.
So... I stayed away. I read things. I journaled ferociously. In various colors of metallic inks. Angry words. Bitter words. Wounded words. I should have felt sorry for Hannibal. Pressing and jabbing into his spine everything that made me uncomfortable. It wasn't a fair fight that's for sure.

I was terrified. What if... the worst came to the worst? What if... I was expelled? I'd be out a job. Out of an education... and ya know, with the gun slingers in my family ... out in the street.

There was a window that ran from floor to ceiling behind Mary. Double pained plate glass. The rain had caused most of the window to fog. The window was dressed in lengths of wine colored satin that dropped from the ceiling on either sides of the glass. The whole bit was impressive. Serene, I thought.  I stood there staring up at Mary. She'd been cut from wood some time ago, and was beginning to split down the back. No doubt the temperature and humidity had been something of a challenge throughout her life. A fight she wasn't really winning. She was painted. In dark night-black blues. Her face a pearl and varnish color. She looked so very removed. I wished I could have followed her down whatever paths she had taken...

I stood there for some minutes. My expression blank as I thought about all the things that had come to, in the past few weeks. How X and I needed back up plans. And plans to back up those back up plans... Weighing my options with numerous outcomes. At each turn of an idea, there would be another possibility that I hadn't thought of. A new piece of data to add to the algorithm. All of it... had left me... blank. I looked out at all of the limitations of my abilities. My finances and my emotional fortuity. Against it all I felt so very much like a sand castle. No one is just sure when it's going to get swept out. But... It's going to either way.

"Medhead."

I breathed in quick and deep as I heard her voice.

"What are you looking at?"

I didn't reply for a moment. "I was watching the water. It's beading up.... on the window..." I said. Still very much inundated with my own thoughts.

"I haven't heard much from you for a little bit... tell me. How have you been?"

I turned around to face her. Tall. Thin to distraction. Large oval eyes, with heavy lashes... doe-like and inquisitive. A pert face with perfect ivory skin and a tiny little mouth. She was beautiful. Everyone said so. Everyone. And no one could argue. It's just what she was. She always kept a ratty little hair cut that you couldnt decide was more mod, or more lesbian. And she dressed like a gypsy.
Today though she was all in black as dress code required. Her name is Louretta.

"I've... just." I was terrified of this girl. This girl with her mind and her wit. He attention to detail and the sorts of questions she asked. In truth there was a time when I had felt such a kind-ship with her. I loved how painstakingly intelligent she was... How actively her mind begged her to create and how easily she slid from one social group to the next. But as I would learn later, that is precisely what a moth feels before it scuffs a flame and becomes a cinder.

"I've been trying to keep up with my practice regiment." I pushed out. Putting all of my secret thoughts away... far far back on the shelves in case she could read minds as well as she could read a face.

Louretta reminded me of the girl that I had seen in my dreams the other night. They were both thin with razor sharp chin bones.

There were many afternoons since she and I had the fortune to become gallery guards here in meandering halls of the museum, that we would chat pleasantries. We had made a game of things. Surrounded by so much opulence, we had imagined ourselves to be courtesans. The gentility of our conversation was as tedious and as thick as the tapestries that hung mute from the walls and passed silent judgment over the modern era.

We talked about poetry. About what she was working on in her creative writing classes. About her boyfriend Ronny. About whatever. But not so today. Today words had reached her. Today the pleasantries had a different bent. And… what was that new scent that she was wearing? It smelled like…. Malice.

“You’ve seemed different lately…” She said. Leaning gracefully on a door jam. The cocked her head a bit to the side and pouted a little bit. “You’ve been quiet. It’s not like you.”

Louretta had grown up in Britain. A missionaries child, and every now and then to add salt to her conversation, she allowed a bit of this accent to peak out from behind her vowels. She thought, I believed that it added an aristocratic edge to her presence. And you know, at the time it was a bit intimidating. Whenever she was around I felt too small for my clothes. And I fidgeted ever so slightly with my hair.

“I’ve been thinking about things. Ya know, and practicing an awful lot. I have deadlines… and I’m worried about not meeting them.” I offered fingering the flash cards that I had brought along. 

“Well that’s a very wise of you to devote so much time to your studies. I wish I could boast such fortitude.” She said. She always spoke this way. As if an encyclopedia had slipped on ballet flats and started menstruating.

“Don’t you think you should be investing in a small group of friends? You know, people that you may stay in touch with after school is over?” She asked as she began walking heel-to-toe in a pattern on the thick carpet. She had let those British vowel sounds peek out when she said “you know…” I sighed.

“I would if I found there was anyone worth putting any time into. I would if I felt… certain liberties that do not exist in this… penitentiary.” I offered back to this bleak little fish… swimming in circles in the hall.

“Ah…” “Oh I see,” She said. She stopped her walking for a moment and raised one eye and looked at me. Then she went back to walking.

I had no idea who she’d been speaking to. And like I said. The Senate had wasted no time in speaking their minds about my relationships. Why is everyone so interested in penetration? Who’s getting it. Who’s doing it. So very carnal. People are crass. Especially college kids. Especially college kids who haven’t gotten any in a while.

“Something just seems changed in you… Something’s different.” She continued. Half to herself. I was begging to be a bit tried of her. “Something’s gone.” And with this she looked dead at me. Oh Louretta. Always with the flair for drama.

I have to say, If it was anyone else with these vague concerns. These ominous observances that seem like the types of things  you might say to a stranger after you had tossed a bunch of chicken bones and read their fortune, I wouldn’t have minded. Mostly I wouldn’t have listened. But this was someone different. Someone I felt I could… trust.  

“It’s your eyes.”

“What?” I asked…

“You’re eyes.” She said. “They’re all black now… They used to be green…. There used to be light in them, and now… there’s nothing.”

“Oh…” I guess I hadn’t noticed.

There was a sound of a group coming in the hall. We moved back into the positions we were expected to hold. Statues in black suit coats. Arms folded behind our backs.

I was boiling with mute anger. Someone had spoken to her.

Black eyes. What did she know. There was nothing wrong with me. Nothing.

And if there was… I didn’t want to fix it.

 


 

March 13. 2007

Six black crosses all in a row.
Steal two glances, I can feel my skin glow.
All those promises that we made to the moon,
My heart got caught in my chest.
A kiss is loves most ancient rune.
Those eyes were true... black blue in blue.

All those locks broke inside.
My seconds ticked past. Mute in passing.
I send Hannibal drunken telegraphs.
The walker chooses the path. 

Collusion: Part XXXII

She was trying to stay calm I think. To slip past them... That's what she had been trained for... But in the deadness and the silence... in that black tension, now we would see what would come of the training. She was hiding in the thick evergreens. The trees had begun to clear as she had made her way out of the deeper woods... I felt the fear with her. I sensed instinctively she was being followed.
The moonlight was weak. The clouds above, skeletal and fickle. I had no idea how long she had been running, but she wasn't breathing very hard. I caught a little glimpse at her, pale and thin in the blue light from the sky. She had a decidedly angular face. A thin nose that turned up ever so little at the end... and her eyes were a kind of black that ate in all the light around them.
Black hair hung to her shoulders and she was dressed for running and hiding.
Then before I knew what to think about it... they were around her. The smallest of rustlings back towards the woods and my glance darted towards it with her. Then two of them shot across the clearing towards her.
Dogs... no wolves. They bolted forward. Quick and silent like fish. The woman made no sound herself but dashed from her hiding place and began running. I followed them... Trying to hide myself... I was terrified of the wolves. I had to help this girl though. I ran after the group.
We ran for some minutes... the trees got more and more sparse... And then I stopped quickly, noticing that they had as well. Because there was no longer any land to run on. We had come to the edge of a cliff.
The woman was being yanked around by the two hounds. It was no where as clear an image as I would have liked. The shapes became vague in the half light. They were as big as I was and bent with all sorta of blood lust on killing this girl. I looked on horrified... I looked around for some way to help her. A stick. A stone. Something. But I was forced to look back as I heard a scream. From her. This girl. She had pulled out a little short knife from a boot and stuck one of the dogs in the neck. And kicked the other off of her. But there were more of them... I felt the breath of one of them on the back of my neck and yelled out as it brushed past me into the clearing towards the girl. It didn't hear me. It didn't stop. It made no sign it had noticed me at all.  Now it was five of them darting her way. Swift and silent as shadows across the white sand of the clearing. This time I ran out with them. There were too many. She couldn't get them all.

As I looked on though she had kicked the first two approaching in the face. Kicked them down flat. They struggled to get up. But then as if frightened... the others began to back away from her.
They whimpered and growled and backed away back towards the woods.

I stopped running towards them... and watched the cowering back, wondering at this odd and fortunate chain of events. The growled low... and sat down on their haunches menacing. The stricken ones staggered to their feet and joined the others in a wide circle around the girl... Who... oddly was smiling.

Ha ha ha! She laughed a laugh that sounded as careless as a teenagers. "I saw you running with them... Always sending out the boys after me... How many of them have I killed?'
Her smile was galvanized by the blue black moonlight.

I couldn't see who she was talking to until a moment later. A small thin man... barely as tall as me and much thinner stepped out of the shadow of the woods. He could have been a child for all that I knew... but he was dressed so perfectly as to be unrealistic of his jaunt through the woods just now. A tiny black suit. White french cuffs and a stiff white collar.

"Well this time you took it... Congratulations..." The man said. His voice was cracked and deep and completely disturbing for such a small child like person. "We'll have it back now though, thankyou."
He said this with absolutely no emotion. No inflection. And his voice sounded so familiar. Like someones that I had always known.

The woman did not respond to this except to spit on the ground in contempt. "Ill do what I came here for she said... and with that she flung her little boot knife at the boy... flink. As it nearly struck him in the face he flicked it to the ground....
The wolves grew vocal and angry at this... As if it were an affront to the entirety of their religion and made for the girl once again... And this time they were not alone. The little man rushed the distance between him and the cliff and quickly caught the girls neck making it there before the dogs. Jumping up on her knees to make the distance and then pulling her down with him to accommodate his shortness at the ground.

"What now girl?" Impish boy called to her sweetly as he was crushing her neck... "Give me back what's mine? Ill let you go?" The intensity with which the boy was crushing her neck was devastating to watch... The once gloating smile and taunting look dropped from her face leaving a blank white knowledge in her eye. She had chanced too much. She hadn't run fast enough.
Then there was something else. Something foreign that I'd never seen a human express.
A fastness. A calmness.
A quick snatch and now she had him by his throat as well... She pounced and pushed him onto his back using her height as an advantage. The wolves stood around taught as a drawn bow, but would not apparently challenge the contestants...
"And what of your family? You sister? What of them?" The little man asked his face rigid with the struggle...
The girl pulled out of his grasp and looked down on his as struggled wildly. "I know where they've gone."
"Then you must arrange to see them again! You must arrange freedom for them!" The little squealed at her.
The girl smiled at this, to my surprise, and said..." I'd much rather you visit them for me."
Little man snapped his finger and the wolves shot forward. Just then, though, my mouth fell open as slick black wings opened from the girls back and beat down once and quickly, just diving over the heads of the charging dogs, and over to her little knife in the sand...
She quickly pulled little man by the hair of his head and beat those wings three or so times more to hover over the dogs who were below her now yapping and whining for the leader to be returned.
"Remember this!" She screamed at the dogs. "Remember how there was nothing you could do!" Remember ... remember when you begin to feel safe again!" She laughed a little... I couldn't tell who was evil any more... I couldn't tell who I should help.
She fingered the tiny knife in her right hand and then quickly pulled it across little mans throat...
He en-hailed with a slight chug as she dropped him to the ground and made the smallest of thuds in the dusty sand.
The wolves looked up angrily and she flew off.

I bolted up sweating as my alarm rolled pleated out its tell tale fog horn sound.
Blink. Blink.

"DAMMIT!" Churned through my head like a track on a CD skipping as I jumped down from my top bunk to look for clothing and shoes. It can not be 7:50... It just can NOT BE! Kakis. Check. Ok. Teeth... NO! no. You have 10 minutes! It takes you 6 to make it across from your room! Shirt. Books. .... Tie.
Grrraaaaah! I was mad as hell. How could I have hit snooze that many times! I was stepping out of the room as I noticed and odd sensation... "The carpet is very short here... i thought." Gah! Shoes... I slipped some on and snatched at a very large, very ugly scarf on my way out the door.
:slam!: I passed boys in various stages of un-dress through the hall as I dashed madly for the side door of the dormatory.
"Hi josh!" My hall leader called out brightly. He'd obviously been slowly sipping Turkish coffee for hours.
"GrumN pEeh. Rah." I said as I zipped past him. Tucking my shirt in in the mean time.
I skipped down the stairs to the first floor exit two at a time glancing at my MOTOrazor the whole While. 7:54.
"OK. Alright Mr. Medlin. You're gonne be just fine.... just fine!" I heard in my head.

I shot out of the building forgetting all social graces and a bumped past two senior 'handsome soccer players.'
"Sorry! Sorry!" I offered as they shot me looks of disgust.
"Late... I'm Sorry!"

And then as the fates must have decided. There was Amanda. Even now as I type the name, it brings an utter revolt. So much so that I was required to look away from my typing and stare at a dark corner of the room.
Amanda Huss. Be mindful reader, it was not so then. 'Then' it hardly made a difference when I saw her. But.... the time would come... let it be known.
She wandered past with a group of acads.
"Josh!" She called out from the fray of them.... "Josh! Hi!"
I turned and greeted her happily.
"Hey Manda! Hey nice to see you." I said... Walking backwards away from her towards my classroom.
"Hey... you commin to church tonight?" She asked smiling at me all red haired and jolly.
"Yeah!... yeah... Ill see ya. I've gotta run. Late for Doctrines..." I turned and jogged towards lecture B.

I made it at the sound of the bell. The kids in the seats next to me all seemed rather perturbed at the size of my book bag; but it couldnt be helped. I didn't have time to stroll back to my room to change and fraternize with my friends on the hall between classes. I would be going till 1PM. And then work. So I squeezed in between peoples twice my size. I must have looked like a pack mule.

"Alright students" said the withered old man at the head of gray room.. "Would you please all take out a pencil and some notebook paper... and write for me todays quiz. Word perfect... John 4:24. You will have ten minutes to complete this....

Ok. Ok. I don't have to worry about this... but I did. Amongst all the things that Id gathered from my room on the way out, none of them were either pencil, nor paper. I whispered and annoyingly borrowed them from other students in my row... and began to write.


"John 4:24" 
"God is spirit, and they that worship him should worship him in spirit and in truth." 

I signed my name, and passed my paper to the end of the row for grading and then promptly fell asleep. I wandered if I could find out where that girl had flown off to... I wondered if I should follow her.

Delete

Then as now we are surrounded by waste. How often do people eat off of porcelain anymore. Paper. Plastic. Cheap and irrelevant. And so is our communication. A swipe or a button gets rid of days worth of conversation with your closest friend... Traceless. Painless. There are so very few rituals anymore.

I've kept letters from those first 6 months with X. God but weren't we ridiculous. I remember glass eyed, how little scraps of paper became offerings. Sacrifices... to each other. It was something arcane, and X felt as well as I that whatever we had thought about the world had been wrong. That nothing before that other simpler minds had thought true, necessarily was. That this was true. And that should we forget... should we grow old or be forced back from one another... we would have these artifacts. We would have bits and pieces of the way that were and that those ruins would lead us back to our own Mesopotamia.

I have all of those things. And even in the fall out of it all I couldn't throw them out. Something about the way each piece of paper and little bit of stolen stationary.... notebook pages, there was a translucent smoke that slowly seeped out of them. It was the very smell of justice. Of wholesome and honest affection... I know you're judging me for these remembrances. And you're more than welcome. But mark me this one thing... I still won't throw those letters away.
I can't imagine a time in my life were I will not want to remember the grit and the sweat and the reckless self abandon that came with first love. How the presence of that person. How holding those simplest of gift in my hands even to this day makes me feel like I alone watched creation. Like I, a dark specter... know the secrets of life.

I hate this fickle devotion to speed in our culture. There's nothing wrong with sitting down and having a conversation with someone without checking your phone every eight seconds. We are intended to interface and build memories of real breathing flesh and blood.

I'm not the best at it for sure. Lets be honest, sometimes it's easier to play angry birds or pay attention to who's checking in where on foursquare than it is to deal with that annoyingly nasal consonance of our acquaintances. Brothers I understand apathy. But we are the ones who miss out. We don't get to see life as nature gave it to us... We're watching the special on a flatscreen as Oprah narrates.

This was made all to painfully clear to me on the way home from Alabama. I had been out of contact with nearly every one for a week and sort of missed sharing pictures and video. Why not? I mean I missed the emoticons and the comradeship of sorts. But our electronic personalities are oh so very different than our real ones. Our real breathing persons.

I was Texting:

Gary> So how was the trip? Did you have fun?
ME< It was super fun! I'm so relaxed! If I was any more relaxed I would shit myself!
Gary> Mmmm. Mature.
ME<Shut up. How's your week going?
Gary> It's ok. Hey. So. Have you heard anything from David?
ME<Which one... Skinny tweeker David? Fat Dave Who Smells Like A Bird Cage?
Gary> Skinny tweeker one... He used to work with me...
ME<Oh no... I mean I saw him around before Mexico. He looks aweful.
Gary> Yeah. I was... he's not...
ME< He's dead?

:Minutes Pass:

Gary>Yeah.
Me<OD?
Gary> Suicide. I think. The obituary wasn't all that specific. I didn't want to be the one to tell you... I thought you might have known already.
Me<It's not exactly un-expected.He kept wanting to hang out and stuff... I just didn't have the time. I told him he needed to go to rehab.
Gary>Yeah. Well...
Me<Hey can we talk later?
Gary>Yeah cool.

I fiddled with the phone for a moment thinking it over. David. Wow. I felt guilty. I hadn't done anything. I rationalized.
The I flicked back to the conversation thread... and slid my thumb left to right across the polished glass surface.
I clicked delete.

Not Collusion. Really. Not at all.

How shall I speak of vacation? Where shall I begin? Exhaustion. Completion. Insight. Confirmation. Delight. Speculation. Excess Excess Excess. Sun of the kind that you can be certain will turn you a brown had only in the Mayan Riviera. I mean… Ive been wearing 45 since the beginning, and am now the color of some old grand-mamma biddy’s piano. We’ve spent 5 days on a ship called elation. It’s inexorably efficient. In a way that makes analogue time pieces other than Tag Hauer look shoddy. Two days ago I hadn’t touched my lunch. Got up for a moment to find a fork. When I returned my place setting completely evaporated… leaving me with  a surprised look staring at two forlorn little blond children eating jelly. Not Jello. Jelly. Oh… I don’t know what special amalgam of happy pills they have these little brown worker bees on… but it’s working. And I’m envious. I think it’s a combination of a work ethic that has been imprinted on them by their society, and the knowledge that they will be able to by each of their 12 children a new iPad 2 for Christmas.   

I started running 5 miles a day in preparation for what I knew was going to an influx of caloric in-take. Sad, I thought that the first taste of the road my new addidas FORMOTIONs would get would be the treadmill of a c-list hotel. Oh well. I broke ‘em the fuck in. I realized then after that first five miles, that I wasn’t quite sure at all how far I had been running every day. I mean during the usual run, I have a start point and an end point, and I just sort of vacillate between them. But now I was working with a machine that was made how far I went rather painfully obvious. Delighted. Absolutely delighted. For the following days on the ship, regardless of land excursions, I consistently ran 5 miles. If not all at once, a 5k, and then after the pool 2 more miles. The culmination of this was yesterday, when after completing my first 5k in the morning before breakfast and Calica, I returned to the ship for another somewhat surprising 5k… that I strongly believe was brought on by a 30 minute stint in the sauna and lots and lots of water. As you can imagine, I’m a bit pleased with myself. Not the kind of pleased with myself that turns you into a douchebag. The kind the lets you sit down quietly to a nice hot mug of green tea and smile complacently at strangers.

The brings up another fascinating aspect of the trip. A cruise is nearly exactly the opposite of how real life works. In life we have an un-known number of boarders and also and un-known number of people on the way out at any give time. It is without confinement and a bit bewildering. The ship on the other hand has a precisely controlled number of occupants. The same number is allowed on as is allowed off. In that sense it’s even more regulated than the heaven told about in fables about mystic Hebrew god. I can not impress upon a reader the import of this knowledge, and how this confinement forces the occupant into a sort of complacency so much like prison that the occupant is left with two options. Better yourself, or allow yourself to drift into atrophy. I chose… of course, the former. To a degree that surprised me. And I think the other members of my party.

Cozumel happened on Tuesday. Just like all the other port cities in the country that have frequent visitors from the U.S. there are ridiculously underpriced luxury liquors and antibiotics, mood-altering drugs, handbags and watches for the taking duty and tax free. Be advised Ive brought all of my friends back at least a box full of name brand Zanax. You’re going to want to chew half of one of these before having a conversation with me if your going to be closing with me at Starbucks. I promise to preface every conversation with…. ‘When I went snorkeling in Cozumel…’ or… ‘When I was in Mexico….’ And Im sure for the listener thats going to get old real quick. The boat quickly became navigate-able simply by noticing the types of herding that was happening. It can be broken down into a few archetypes. Affluence is a given. Either direct ownership or nearly immediate blood relation. Types include. ‘JCrew models. Male. Late teen and early 20’s’ Pack was nearly always 5 or 6 in number and nearly always only wearing kaki shorts with critter belts. Rainbow sandals and RayBans. Yawn. In passing them you can expect them only to be talking of the doings and thoughts of other facsimiles of themselves. There’s the ‘Nearly almost but not quite dead, and still drinking’ Those had constant froufrou drinks in their claws and many of them traveled in ones and twos being dragged around or pushed ever forward in a wheel chair provided by Carnival. Other types may include ‘Family with 3 smallish children.’ Alpha male nearly always had a Bud-light in his hands, and Alpha female paid little if no mind to the offspring, but fumbled through the spa catalogue and planned her next procedure with a glint of malice in her eyes. Mostly blond women. I hope that gives some insight into the types that I would inevitably bump into on the stair cases. I did not take elevators. Both because they were never faster than just walking where you needed to go, and because everyone else on them was either too stupid or intoxicated to realize how rude they were being in those confined spaces. Also I’d recently watched ‘Devil.’

In Cozumel, beneath the waters of one of the beaches reserved for snorkelers someone had the artistic planning to sink a 25 foot tall statue in the cove. I was surprised to find it. It was sort of a bent shape. Humanoid and unrealistically thin for a person of that height. It’s arms were outstretched and I decided that it must be a dancer. It’s not so well articulated face was turned chin-up towards the skin of the water… like it was trying to feel again what it was like to breathe and to feel the sun on its face. Some said the statue was Jesus. Some said it was Mary. I dunno. It didn’t look like either… and didn’t have any visible sex indicators. I decided it was a dancer. And so to me it will stay. It was 18 feet down to reach it to touch its long undulating arms… I managed to make the distance. Although I believe my lungs were much beleaguered at my rambling attempts. Like all real statues it was meant to be touched. And so in compliance with that compulsion… I did.

Calica was a bit different… And some in the party made note of that, complaining a bit more about it’s heat and boringness. I found it the farthest thing from boring. We made our way to one of the resorts along the beach a few short miles by buss from the port. Abject poverty hid slyly behind the glitz and glamour of architectural investment. After the buss ride, the tour guide ‘Saul’… pronounced ‘SA ooh el’ happily ushered us to a place to store our crap and then where we should begin an underground river swim. 1 mile about. Enjoy-able only for the shocking coldness of the water… I wont speak much of the other occupants of the river. Suffice it to say that it was much like riding the elevators in the boat. Perhaps a little more irritating. There were more people vacationing from France and other places around Mexico. South America even… than I had run into in Cozumel. This park had a re-creation of an Aztec village. Complete with temple and tiny industrial shacks. Most of the workers at the resort found my knowledge of Spanish a surprise and a charm. I made a point to talk to as many people as was comfortable and was interested to learn that many of them lead lives like my own. Complacent. Content. Education levels seemed rather lacking. Mostly because some of the food vendors in the little stands around the coves had a confusing time calculating the exchange rate… I suppose I can hardly blame them for the exchange rate being in the flux that it’s in… or the availability of high quality marijuana to speed their days along and make sure they don’t become overly irritated with the tourists.

Here’s the thing you should know about cruise lines. Most of them limit the amount of personal alcohol you can bring aboard. Mostly because just like prison, they would like to be the sole providers of any luxury. Also the wifi is locked and… should you decided to subscribe to the service they are going to make you mortgage your first born to pay for it. I realized I didn’t much need the internet as it could be a way to force creativity. And trust me there are ways around paying for liquor on the boat. Here are a few handy trips for getting around the cruise employees from snatching your duty/tax free alcohol and locking it up until you’re back state-side. Set up a small trafficking staff. Two will do for most trips. Buyer and Mule. Buyer needs access to a decent amount of cash, depending of course on the amount of alcohol required. Some notes on the mule… They need to be one of two things. And they should always have a large beach bag with two or three clearish plastic containers that are clearly meant for water of soft-drinks.

1.     Complicit, Intelligent, and more than a little self assured of success. Bilingual is a plus. Being disarmingly good looking, and smiling easily are not necessary but sure as hell help.

2.     Blithely un aware of what’s happening but being a close friend of the Provider. Provider must have constant access to Mules beach bag… also Provider needs to fill a role of leadership and companionship.

I was the former. My success rate is 100% both at American and Mexican borders. Most of you have my contact information if you would like more personal advice and attention. All told we cheated Carnival out of about 400$ in alcohol sales by my rough estimate.

A few more tips on successful for the successful mule:

1.     Do not allow confidence to flag. You’ve got this, and probably in the bag. Remember the worst that can happen with legal substances is that it can be acquired by security and held. Such a situation is an acknowledged loss… but lets remember it’s not a gamble if there isn’t a possibility of loss.

2.     Don’t allow Purveyor to make transfers too and from clear containers. You’re better off doing it yourself. You know your beach bag better than they do. Also… you’re responsible for convincing the guards that nothing fishy is going on. The best way to do that is to know exactly where everything is.

3.     Always choose a public restroom to make transfers. Preferably during a rush of patrons. This was not a problem in a busy port and should not be for you, reader.

4.     Move with purpose and think of other things as you make your way to a private restroom stall. Make the transfer and remember to flush the toilet.

5.     Lastly… discard the liquor bottle packaging and shopping bag precisely as they were purchased. Optionally you can put all of that in another bag without indication of purchased product. Deposit in a waste receptacle without much concern on your face. You’re good to board. Smile.   

Collusion: Part XXXI

What is the thing that hurt you first… and hurt you the deepest? I know right? Why the hell would I ask that? It’s none of my business really. But that’s the thing that I wanted to know. I was thinking the other day… how profoundly the things that had hurt me had changed me. Changed me for the better. And that should be the most powerful arbiter of change.

I was so hot you could taste it all the way back in your soft pallet. We had finished building the new place. Rough sawn cedar all the way around. We did it ourselves. As I think back on it… we almost always were building something. Repairing something. I know how to used just about everything in Home Depot. Neumatic nail gun. Roofing nailer. Hammer. Chop saw. A lot of people from where Im from are that way though. We build. We are the dreamers of dreams.

18 feet sheets of corrugated rust resistant aluminized tin. If you can shoot through that stuff, then you deserve to get where your’e going. My brother was helping too. He and I have about the same amount of differences as a seal and a sealion. The frame and the wall were in place on the building. Ever so slight breezes were making eddys and playing games with the saw dust that we hadn’t managed to sweep up. 

The screw gun made the most determined noises as it pushed the angry little screws through the metal and into the heavy beams. Ererererer. Eeeeek. Ap ap. Repeat. We’d gotten through with the side closest to the pine trees, and the sun was making it’s way down the sky. It was cooling a bit. Two more to go. Almost done. And good too. Im getting hungry. The next sheet of metal slipped a hair while I was putting it in position. Oww. Way oww!

I had to get down of off that roof quick. I’d cut a fleshy smile on the finger print area of my ring finger. I filled a towel up with blood and taped it up. Such a curious little scar it is. And so odd that it should be right there. I took it as a karmic message. If I ever slide a ring on the finger… it’s going to have to be fore someone who Im sure can hurt me exponentially more than a piece of corrugated tin.

Interested? I’m interesting.

Collusion: Part XXX

Circle. Moon. Earth. Symbolic of an extraterrestrial sort of intelligence. Thought patters run in them. All sustainable systems burn in cycles. Perhaps the incidents that come to have the most meaning in our lives are those moments when a tangent forces the end of a cycle… and then enacts permanently bonded change. A mother gives birth. Your dog gets hit by a truck as you look on. You remember exactly the moment when… she broke your heart.

But which patterns are healthy ones? It’s hard to tell sometimes.

I have to share reader, that I find writing be a little tangent for me. I can almost hear a bottle cap pop when I begin. Though really Im never precisely certain what Ill be pouring one day to the next. Water? Or Sweet Tea? Blackberry wine? Or Jack? Or Pepsi? To some degree or another. Who cares? I’m dumping shit out.

As I have to some degree waxed nostalgic of a late… I’ll follow this path for a time. As I have mentioned before I was quite a voracious reader as a child. The tiny dusty white library was in St. Matthews. A short drive into town would bring me within reach of the thing that I craved most. Knowledge. It felt more intimate than the sort of statistics that you rattle off when you’re trying to be impressive though. It felt like I could leave the dirt roads and wet heat and soy bean fields beneath me and I could float up and up… To every which way but back down. 

The librarians were a mysterious thing to me. Most of the were nearly fallen into their tombs with age, and their accents were all something Mayberry. I had heard their names many times, but that always slipped my mind when Mom would take us by the place. I was rather a shy child. And you know, there’s nothing at all wrong with that. I suppose at the time I was uncomfortably aware of it though. I always wondered what others thought of me.

My Mother was very scrupulous of what she allowed me to check out from the library. She understood that books are just as dangerous as a loaded gun in the night stand. Perhaps more so. Books are tangents also. The books that we had laying around the house had been read and re read and I arrived at the feeling of curiosity about what other books might have to say. I had first thought that all the reading in our little white library might be only more of the same as what we had at home. Or that the books in the little white library would be a reflection of the building itself. That they would be sinless… sturdy… dusty. This was not so. I’d sooner vote republican.

I chose the books that I brought up to the counter judiciously. Weighing carefully the likely hood that Mom would read the spine, or not be over fond of the cover… and tell me to put it back. I didn’t really understand why should would find some in poorer taste than others… but who can say why, at that age mothers do what they do. Mothers are arbitrary.

Along and Along as we made more trips to and from the little white library I noticed that mom was paying less attention to the books I picked out. She would perhaps be using the computers, or talking with a librarian. And then of course there was John and Beth to be concerned about. I saw an opportunity to use less discretion in my selections… and so I decided to do just that. It was as much fun as throwing glitter.

I was a stealthy thing though. Hmmmm yes. I would pick two or so boring books that I knew Mom would find appropriate… and then slide something in between them. Whichever one I found most intriguing. The one that I would read thirstily and blithely ignore the others. Once I found a treasure trove of a read in Anne Rice’s ‘The Witching Hour.’ So adeptly sensuous. So filled with over wrought emotion. Fantastical tales about witchcraft. And… And women. And shockingly vivid vampires… and sex. There were so many things I thought I understood about the story when I read them. Rice painted. She worked for those words and that story. This little boy thought she was some sort of genius of the criminal mastermind variety.

There were other books too. There was one titled ‘speak.’ It was by some somebody that I cant remember. In it I was introduced to a 9^th grade girl. Something was very wrong with her… but I couldn’t tell what. This girl didn’t pray or go to church or anything. She cried often, and hardly spoke to anyone at school. She cut herself sometimes. Turns out though it made sense by the end of the book. She had been raped by one of her peers in a broom closet at school. The closing scenes were fantastic! She fought the boy, with his wanton and filthy desires… he was chocking her… and he pushed her head hard into a mirror. It broke. As the fight moved to the floor she snatched a shard of the thing and stabbed that horrible boy in the neck. And ya know? Good for her! I wanted to give her a hug…

I drank up Tolkien. All the way to the Silmarillion. Which didn’t make a lick of sense until I read it again. It was an intoxicating story of … well a sort of retelling of the Greek myths with name changes.

Dickenson. Shakespeare. Blake. Emmerson. Shelly. Some Bible.

I replicated this process innumerable times. I longed to feel… beyond. And so I did. Each new story began something. The marks that those books left on me are permanent.

I wonder if I still have anything that’s due.

Collusion: Part XXIX

We all have those memories that stand out. The ones that stand up to the challenges of a regenerating cerebral cortex. And as time goes on they tend to melt into a rosy softness. Like watching old movies. And each time we replay them they confirm to us that we are... self. The same self that we remember. If we're lucky enough sometimes... those memories enact physical change upon us.

I was running. I was were those hand-me-down clothes that 5 year olds get from church friends. We were laughing. In the simple and pure way that only 5 year olds can laugh. It was effervescent. And the sound of it glinted of the wooden vaulted ceiling of the sanctuary. I was dashing around on my nimble little legs and darting through clusters of worshipers who were milling about the auditorium chatting about this or that. Middle aged guys who had married too early because they got somebody pregnant. Old couples who like stones... never aged past antique. Frilly fabrics covered in 90's floral patters. Lots of of blues. Kaki pants all over. A suit here and there. And in the center aisle... A missionary was setting up a slide projector. I have no memory of what the missionary looked like. But I do remember dim flashes of Africa and in the half light.

We were always there early. Dad's office was usually a bustle with people who just wanted to chat. To get advice about their lives... or gossip about other peoples life. Either way. I darted in and around the aisles... I was trying to catch up with Gary.... who was way ahead and Dustin was chasing him. Dustin was probably my best friend at the time. And we used to build make believe houses and go hunting for make believe tigers in the woods behind his house.

Then... I tripped I guess.


Something like 48 seconds passing. And I got up. Ouch, I thought. But oddly... it didn't hurt at all. I looked around for where the other boys had gotten off to... But I didn't see them. Maybe they had headed out and into the vestibule? Running had made me hot, so I hardly noticed the my face was wet... for a few moments. Though I was soon away that it was much more wet than usual... a hot stream ran down the bridge of my nose and skipped sticky and salty over my lips. I kept walking and put my hand up to my face. I pulled it away and it was shining and red.


Oh... I thought.


I was aware of people and movement around me... But one in particular caught my attention. Dustin's mom was in the hall. She was my kindergarten teacher. She had taught me how to tie shoes... and she had taught me numbers. And words like 'cat.' She screamed. It scared me... She never screams....

She yelled for my mom. "Laurie! Laurie! Josh is hurt.... Come here!" Things started happening. Everyone had sad faces now. They were shocked at how much blood I was losing. Dustin's mom found something to press against my head. But it didn't seem to help much. It was a dish towel. Dustin's mom is named Mrs. Bates. Darleen I believe.
Mom was here now. I hadn't cried yet... but when I saw her cry, I started crying too. Moms are not supposed to cry... Especially not my mom. Not Laurie.

My mom picked me up. I remember to this day that they chose an obvious option. The hospital. Darleen would drive. Momma carried me out... down the sidewalk. I remember the exact cut and color of the dress she was wearing. A silky looking thing. Mostly blue and floral. We got in Darleen's Jeep. I had always wanted to ride in that Jeep... And I was thinking how lucky I was to finally be getting to do that. I sat on mom's lap on the drive. She held me close to her like I was a baby again. I was still bleeding hard... and as we shifted positions... some blood skirted out from under the towel and rolled beaded down the shoulder of her dress.
"Oh... I'm sorry. I've got blood on you." I told her around the towel.
"It's fine sweetie. I can wash it out." Mom said.
"I hope it does." I said.

Darleen provided much needed distraction.
"Don't you worry about that dress honey! You just stay awake! The dress don't matter a bit!" She said sounding like Scarlett O'Harah. She was waving her arms.

We waited at the hospital for a long... long time. I had stopped bleeding so much. I was playing with toy cars in the waiting room.... Dad was there now. John and Beth were elsewhere. No doubt sleeping over at the Bates'. Lucky ducks.

The nurse took me back to the OR. I could see my mom through the plate glass window... watching. worried. I screamed at them to let her in. I wanted her in there with me. Finally they let her. She had to help them hold me down as they push needles into my head.

When I woke up there were 40 stitches in my forehead. I had cut it to the bone on the corner of a pew.
Ya know all that has cause me to think about pain differently. I mean sure it hurts. But you just might get to ride in that Jeep you've been wanting to...

One Two Buckle My Shoe

One.
Two.
Nothings provably true.

Three.
Four.
Let yourself j'adore.

Five.
Six.
Learn some better tricks.

Seven.
Eight.
No one's playing straight.

Nine.
Ten.
Regret's the only sin. 

Collsion: Part XXVIII

The sickness. It had started I suppose. It was sickness in the sense that I hadn't necessarily brought it on myself. Atleast... I hadn't developed and immunity to the contagion that I had run into. Just like when you get a blood transfusion... you know because you are a kind of sick of a different sort. But then antigens in the new blood give you yet another illness.
This one had a three month incubation period, and started evidencing symptoms immediately. But honestly, I loved the fever and the chills. I loved it all. Every tiny molecular construction. I breathed it in. And it became compulsion. So much more than the addiction brought to you in part by Phillip Morris and the lust for the American dollar. Hard core. Leather-headed, furious, blundering... enigma.

I can't just blither on in that direction for the entirety of this post though. Suffice it to say that X had become the whole of my thought life. I no longer gave even feigned interest in any other sort of religion. It had grown and wormed its way snake like up and around in behind the back alleys of my heart. And in the truest sense became the botany of my desire.

We traded texts about minutia. It was perfect and it felt like absolution. Texts during class. Text during chapel. Texts that kept you from sleeping and then made sure that you had happy dreams when you finally did. Texts that said 'good morning' and 'goodnight' and 'i miss you.' I never even bothered turning my phone off silent. The repetitive motion of flipping open my motorazer became so familiar that even now I instinctively check my phone 289 times a day. Thank gaga that I didn't have to pay my phone bill back in those times. And that there was an infinite sms allotment. All the same I utterly destroyed more than 4 motorazers... entirely though the pursuits for which the device was intended.
Thanks also be... for the fact that my parents never had the gumption to order transcripts of those conversations over that 3 month incubation period. They would have been shocked into their graves.

I wasn't even planning on going. Between the two off campus jobs that I had and the fast approaching piano examinations towards the end of the school year, sitting in a crowded stuffy room and listening to some old wheezer explain the changes that I needed to make to my personal life wasn't precisely the first thing on my list of afternoon delights. But that's what Bible Conference was really.
In the place of the typical collegiate experience of Spring Break, which as I've come to understand it should be filled with dry mouthed sandy covered scantily clad frat girls and boys challenging each other to drink themselves blind; we had something else entirely. A week of church.
Kind reader, and pray understand... Church 4 times a day. Follow the link if you'd like to have it make a little more delusion.

Forms had to be filled out and filed with the Deans Offices for all of the services that I would be missing due to work obligations. But that was the best that I could do. I was still ending up enduring 5 or 6 before the week was out. Friends and co-workers out and about are still surprised and sometimes a little confused when I relate this past requirement. I get "But... so you don't get a Spring Break?" or "Why... didn't you just skip..." alot.

One memory of these times stands out above the rest. I had managed to make nice with the members of the senate. I tagged along forgetting my Bible on most occasions. I just reasoned that if the entire audience brought theirs, they would be able to fact check the things that the lector said... Who was I to doubt the cross referencing of 6,439 fellow Christians. This was an error on my part. I had taken a seat high up in the balcony of the exhaustive and cavernous building. I did in fact bring along my rather large sketch book and a sharp pointed black sharpie. I knew there must be some value in the story telling and didactic eclecticism I was being bludgeoned with and thus decided to take note. Pictorially.

The preacher started talking about the old ways and customs of the times before internet and cell phones. I immediately began sketching a puritan who I named Gilgoroth. Gilgoroth was a good man. A hard working German immigrant who had sailed to America to grow potatoes, impregnate his smallish wife Olga and practice religion freely. Happy with the way this looked I flipped the page and began listening to what Preachy Face was saying again. hmmmm.

"Our highest moral obligation is in the service of Christ the King! The inspiration for the fabled ASLAN THE LION AND THE KING OF THE TRIBE OF JUDAH!"

Bit much I think Preachy. Never the less I began sketching again. A sort of end-times lioness/siren creature who began stalking Olga from the previous page and luring her away from Golgoroth with the intention of luring and subsequently murdering Olga and her unborn daughter. I named the lioness Aaaslana. Go Aaaslana! Go!

Alright I thought! This is more like it. Make entertainment of you entertainment! I was soon to be noticed by a peevish little blond man with a Bible he had borrowed from some library in Carthage. Massive table sized thing. His quick little eyes shot over to me two rows in front of him. During a standing spell while the crowd was being required to say some chant about how they loved school and hoped that it would live forever, he weaseled his way into the aisle and poked me on the shoulder.
"Where is your Bible?!" He demanded pensively. Face in an angry glare.
"I think your Bible ate it..." I responded listlessly. The people talking around us and I don't think he got it.
"You should be taking notes." He got louder.
"Oh... I am!" I showed him the pages of the sketchbook explaining how the drawings were representative of the Preachers stories.
I don't think he got the creative import of the finely reproduced image of Aaaslana dripping in black human blood... but he got the drift.
"Huff! Well.... Bring your Bible next time!"
Sure... I thought. "You're exactly who I want to be like."

 

Collusion: Part XXVII

When in Rome, do as the Romans do. What a curious phrase. Are we to suspect that all Romans behave in roughly the same manner? Are we to emulate these toga wearing hive- minds only when we can amass the small fortune which it now requires to make the pilgrimage to Rome? Is it meant to suggest that what happens in Rome, like things that happen in Las Vegas, stay in Rome? I can't be certain. I do not know the origin of the phrase. But like most things that become cliche phraseology, I am certain that there is some sliver of wisdom down deep in its origins... and that should we wander down the old paths to Rome, we would surely find the thing that inspired such a phrase and we would doubtless agree with the wisdom at its root.

And why do I mention? Well you see. In a sense, Bob Jones is... as I had come to see it, Rome. With architecture no less idiomatic and a populace no less united. I came to see as well that I, like Caesar... in forging a relationship with X, had made new and dangerous enemies in the Senate... and soon by degrees they would join and make a calculated effort to end me. The floor of the Senate however would look remarkably like the Dean of Men's office, and the little daggers that my former friends the Senate would make use of... were short but no less quick little tongues. Sharp. Wet with truth... with one simple desire. My blood. Et tu Jesus? Et tu? 

As that small little coven of my friends washed frenetically through their own irrelevant schedules summer was at the front of everyone's mind. Expulsion was happening at a rate that might have alarmed me had I not experienced it's reality in the years past. Like pop corn that you cook on the stove... one might draw a correlation between the ambient heat of the burning season change and a witless students demise.
I couldn't make it to a recital. I didn't really have time to meet them for lunch. I couldn't have been less interested in their final project for Interior Design 101... Congratulations, you have successfully furnished a dolls house. Certainly this means you were born to win? I could feel it in the looks that I got. Those friends that I was unwittingly making into the ghouls from an espionage film. As I think on it though, I wasn't making them into anything at all. My decisions were simply the catalyst... the one true chemical, the acid that would burn away the charming tarnish of their exteriors and leave them bright and shining... and... a vulgar sort of ugly.

Melodie was taking a class with me called "Story Telling," the main goal of which I think was for her to eventually ensnare me firmly in the vice like grip of the lips of her vagina. A concept which had all the appeal of being thrown down a flight of steps. We spent hours non the less, in a large conference room high up on the third floor of the Gustafson Fine Arts Center. The room looked like the kind of place where you might be called in to do a presentation on global warming or some other mind numbing pig shit.

MC: "I know, but do you think my interpretation of the witches voice might be a little too... scratchy?"
ME: ... I was responding to a text from X and could hardly remember what story she was referencing. Oh.. right Hansel and Gretel. "Uh... well. I thought it was fairly accurate. I mean... I was really convinced that you sounded like a witch." M took this as a compliment, and I'm afraid did not get the sense that I could have been remotely back handed.
MC: "The only thing is... I don't want to go hoarse. If I talk like that for too long.... Maybe I just need to bring a bottle of water to class." She chewed the end of a ball point... distressed.
I've been rather straight forward in my descriptions of Melodie, in the interest of honesty. To be fair, she was unflappably kind to me and I had begun to think about our little practice times as sort of vacation. Up here in the conference room I was mercifully free from prying questions and suspicious member of the Senate. Namely, Ami Jasperson, Eric Inafuku, Christine Dodd, Raymond Swope, Louretta and David Landon... and arguably Tim Johnson. These people are as real as oxygen, and at the time seemed just as dangerous as trying to live without it.

MC: "Joshie! Im just nervous about all of this! I mean, I can talk... you know that! (laughing) But I want to really move people... ya know?"
ME: "You are moving though... Like, I think in a sense.... the goal should be to disappear... and let the story tell itself... right?"
MC: She gave momentary thought to this and then gushed... "You're so right Joshie. I hadn't even thought about it like that."

The conversation bore on... and I was looking forward to getting back to my room and jogging to the Field House for a run on the rubber track up stairs there. Mel started putting away her note books and binders into her big snake skin bag. I noticed she wasn't chitting away like she usually was. I asked her what was on her mind...
She pranced on those ubiquitous black stilettos of hers over to the head of the long dark wood table at the center of the room and firmly gripped the edge of the table as if to brace herself.
She ran her nails through her shiny long hair and tossed it back looking me dead in the eye.
MC: "Well, you know joshie... how you're really my best friend in the whole world. I mean we spend pretty much a lot of time together every day. There's no one that I've been quite so fond of in a while."
ME: "Well I feel the same about you Melly..." I hadn't a clue where she was going...
MC: "Well... seeing that you're not dating anymore... ya know and Im glad about that. That silly Christine was just no good for you..." She was smiling with just a hint of malice...
ME: "Well... that's true..."
MC: "I was just.... I think that there's something between us... Ya know?"
ME: ".... .... (blink) like... the table?"
She laughed at this. Rather cloyingly.
ME: "I guess I don't really see what you mean..."
MC: "There's something really sweet about you! And you're so clever and funny... I've started to have a crush on you... (hair toss) and... I just know you feel it to!"
ME: "I... I. (I was at a loss) I really guess I don't feel the same way. I am... Flattered, that you could feel that way about me, and honored even... but I don't think I can return the sentiment."

There was a silence, and I felt intuitively that I had somehow wounded her. errrrr. uh.

MC: "You're sure... there's like... nothing there? Nothing at all?"
ME: "Yeah... Im sorry... but yeah."

I left the room without ceremony. Congratulations Medlin. Look what you've done. Yet another log on the fire. Yet another sharp knife. At least, I thought as I started my run, when you're on the floor bleeding out... you'll simply have to roll your head to the side to see your own blood pooling ironically around the heels of her gorgeous shoes. 

Collusion: Part XXVI

Every single experience of our lives in a new layer of paint. Some clear like varnish. Some opaque. Some black. Some layers should be chipped off, and some of them should be painted over. All the same they are what makes us individuals. They are what give us color.

But you knew this already. We don't wander around stagnant... forced to stumble into what and who will be our next mistake.

The sun beat down relentless. Kids from the south develop a certain tolerance to heat. Not just heat like a sunny 78 with light breezes. Heat like a fever in the Sahara. South Carolina cares for no one. She believes firmly that it is her job to prepare all the baptists that live within her confines for the strong likelihood that they will at some point forget a prayer before bedtime and thus be sentenced to a little swim in the lake of fire. Oh yeah,  and the humidity cranks up the heat index so that being outside almost always feels like a sweat lodge.

I was one of those children who was almost always out in this heat, and as such was most nearly always sweating and playing happily. It was that part of the late spring just before the first days of true summer where all the wild vines that plundered their ways across ditches along the sides of the roads were gushing blackberries. Big fat, thumb sized remnants of their more gentrified bacchanal cousins, they gushed with a tangy syrupy sweetness. They tempted simple country children to cheat their sharp thorns and if they were so brave, to claim the high prize of their fruit.

My sister and I left the house yelling out to mom that we were going to pick berries and taking with us big squeaky Styrofoam cups from the pantry. We had made plans to pilfer and pluck only the best from this rush of berries and bring them back home... We had planned to make them into pies or tarts. Silly children we were then so easily amused.

The torrential heat and blinding sun were no match for out bright laughter and determined delusions of culinary mastery. We tripped and tumbled and frolicked down the side of the highway looking for the best vines with the biggest berries. Only the best would do for our tarts. Our big yellow dog, Minnie followed along behind us. She kept up well, never mind that she was nearly 12 years old. I think she felt like we were her responsibility and that there would be no berry picking without her.

ME: "Did you buy anything when you went shopping with Ashley the other day?"
BETH: "We got some pizza and road the carousel in the mall... it was really big! It was fun..."
ME: "and you didn't bring me back anything! haha. How dare you!?" I replied impishly...

My sister was eight and I twelve. She's one of the most beautiful people I know... and at that age had flawless sheets of shiny honey brown hair that ran down her back. Bangs that stuck to the sides of her forehead in the heat, and big doey brown eyes that were so brown that sometimes they looked black. We picked through the brambles in our ill fitting pre-adolescent clothing that had been handed down and handed down again. Happy as puppies.

We worked our way from thorn to thorn, and vine to vine. Following the line of ditches that lead from our house over to the church where dad was working.

BETH: "Stop eatin all of em! We're not gonna have enough!"
ME: "Oh whatever... there's plenty... look at all of them!
BETH: "I know but we aint gonna have enough if we keep eatin em all."
ME: "Ha ha.... stop bein a lil mama!"

We made it all the way over to the church and decided to go in and wash the berries and see what dad was up to. He was most days bunkered inside his office. Books spread all over the place and pages of scribble falling off the sides of the desk as he stacked things in piles that only made sense to him.

BETH: "Daddy! look at! Look at all the berries!"
DAD: "I see that. Were ya'll get those?"
BETH: "They're all along the sides of the road!"
DAD: "You're momma know ya'll walked down along the side of the road?"
ME: "I told her where we were going."

Dad got up from his desk and walked us down the long main hall of the church building. Back towards the kitchen. The lights were kept off in the hall during the day to save money... so it was all dim and gray. We walked slowly. I could tell dad was upset. But we were just having fun.

DAD: "I told yall about leavin the house and not tellin momma where you're goin. I don't want you kids gettin hit by a car. You ain't got enough brain between you to look up."
BETH: "We didn't stay by the road very long..." She started cryin a little. That made me angry. Me and my short fuse. Being twelve is sort of a curse.
ME: "It was my idea in the first place... "
DAD: "That's even worse... you should know better."
ME: "Know better than walking into traffic? Well... I do..."

That was just about enough snark from me apparently. Dad turn quick on his left heel as he was walking in front of us slapped me hard across the face. Thwap!
I wasn't quite expecting that... I was walking and trying to make sure not to spill the berries we were going to wash. Slapped or no, I fell down hard on the gray floor.... I tossed the berries and they scattered across the floor...

I didn't say anything. I just bobbled back up and started crying too. I hated when I let myself cry. But I wasn't expecting him to be that angry....

DAD: "Clean those up. I'm calling your mom to come get you."

quixotic

My blood pressure had been spiking for most of the late afternoon. Cause I knew it was time. I knew I had to make a move, or no one was going to.
I was scared though. It would either work or it wouldn't. And to tell you flatly reader... I'd never been kissed.

I'd known 'X' for about three months... Christine was way...way over by then. And Melodie.... I don't think Im gonna get into that right this second. X and I had been playing a delicate little game of 'hint and lie' for something that was starting to seem like the better part of a decade. X is a bit of a wall flower. X had drawn me in with a surprising complexity and the promise of something I'd never felt before. Connection.

Not like 'networking' or 'friendship' or... anything quite so trite as those things. It felt like that rush you feel when you're on the highway and you're dead sure you're gonna tail end somebody because they stopped and you didn't notice. It felt like what a shark feels when there's blood in the water. It felt like enough static to raise every hair on your head and then make all the little blond hairs on your arms stand and point.

We were driving around in the car and it was turning dusk. We were talking about things that didn't matter. And i was rummaging for every hook I could think of to turn the conversation in the direction I wanted with out being blunt and plain and..... childish. I kept rubbing my hands on my khakis... cause my palms were sweating. I felt like I was being hunted. But that was irrational. Of course I wasn't.

"Nothing has to happen at all!" I kept reminding myself. A little mantra I was chanting in my head. "Everythings going to be fine.... you'll see." Maybe that little voice wasn't mine. Maybe it was Satan. Maybe it was worse. Maybe it was lust. Either way it calmed me down and set me just like steel to my purpose.

I don't know how I had let all this come to have such intense meaning. This wasn't skydiving. But just at that second... I would have been less nervous about jumping out of a plane.
I was trying... but you know, honestly there was no way to flip the conversation from "but of course, that was before Bach's wife died...." to... "I want to stick my tongue down your throat."


I took the best route that I knew. I let the conversation die off for a minute.
ME: "So.... I have a confession."
X:.......
ME: " I kinda.... uh. wanna.... kiss you."
X: (laughs nervously)
ME: "I mean.... you know.... just.... if that's ok with you and all..." I had never felt this exact mix of emotions before. It was like tight rope walking 50 ft over a snake pit. Each contraction of my heart was clearly audible.
X: "Um....."
ME: "I mean.... if you don't want to.... " (Stupid! Just stop talking!) I thought.
X: "OK." "Sure."

Well. I guess that was supposed to make me feel better. At least X wasn't opposed to the idea.
X knew an out of the way place. Up a winding road. Up and up the side of Paris mountain. The charcoal silhouettes of live oaks and maples twisted and arched their backs across the sky. They laughed at us and fought back some of the starlight. They must have snickered about how absurd humans must be.

We weren't really talking.
ME: "Where are we going?"
X: "You'll see. I know a place."

Oh X.... you charmer you.

We parked along side the tiny off road leaving just enough space for passing traffic to squeeze around. It didn't matter. There weren't any cars that far up the mountain. Not tonight. Mercifully.
We stumbled like children down the embankment. Tiny souls blind to the bitter broken change. Blind to the way they would soon be broken together.  Down the hill they stumbled through the dead hill grasses that came up to their knees all white and gray in the light of the moon and stars.

It was a little flat space. Maybe at one time someone had intended to build a house there, on the side of the mountain. Maybe they had gone bankrupt. Now it was a dump site for extra cement and building materials no longer needed. If you looked carefully the clearing was dotted with crush beer cans... Evidence of low living and bad decision making. I didn't notice though... I was staring out over the edge of the cliff. All of Greenville was stretched out in front of me. I could see for miles and miles and the landscape mirrored the cold diamond sky, with it's tiny lights from all the houses and street bulbs.

Reader... come with me. Follow me to the most beautiful place on earth. X and I were both shaking by now. Inching closer in the grassy desolation. Laughing nervously.

As the breeze swilled around that blue lit perch on the mountain... we kissed. My blood turned to liquid fire as dark methamphetamine scorched its way into my heart.

I laughed...
Me: "That wasn't so bad was it?"
X: (still shaking) "No. No it wasn't."

The deed was done. And we like successful thieves laughed our way back down the sober mountain. I won't ever forget that place or those moments. Come death or starvation. Come the spite of the rest of humanity. I'm sorry it didn't last X. I'm sorry it wasn't forever. I'm sorry that some things that should never have been forgotten... were lost.

I was a changed man after though. I no longer had the fear of god in me. I would trick hell and swim the river Stix if i must. This was what I was born to be. This was the closest I had ever been to perfect.  

Collusion: Part XXV

I hadn't planned on it happening that way. There's just no good way to do some things though.

Classes were over for the day. A day that had been heavy with the gray brooding weather that drifts across the state in the spring and fall. Rain that rolls down from the mountains and makes the rivers swell and makes everyone change their routes to and from classes. Christine and I had made dinner plans. Or I should say that she had briskly informed me that she didn't want anyone else coming with us to dinner.
"Ok,... that's fine. I only wanted to spend time with you... anyways." I had thought morosely, but didn't say anything.

Something was wrong I could tell. We wandered through the cavernous dinning common, and everyone else in the room seemed like extras on the set of a sitcom pilot that no network would ever pick up. I just got peas. I wasn't hungry and wanted to drag them around the plate while listening to Christine unload. 

ME: "You seem really down today babe... What's going on?"
CD: "Oh, it's nothing.... It's just been a really.... really long week." She said, as if that was all she was really intending room. But we both knew better.
ME: "You know... I can tell somethings on your mind... you've been so so dark lately." The concerned look I was giving her was one I had seen I had seen on the faces of the doctors of ER. It was working like a dream.
CD: "Well... (it's at this point her blue eyes turned all slate and glassed over.) You know how I told you my dad was crazy?"
ME: "Yeah I remember us talking about it."
CD: "Well I don't think I ever said just how crazy.... I mean. Two years ago he converted to Judaism and tried to get my mom and I to stop eating ham. He went on these crazy pilgrimages to imaginary places. He barely spoke to me or mom." I could see it. I could see all the tiny little lacerations in her soul... and you know. I didnt have to look. She was just showing them to me on her own. "He's never told me that he loved me." She said staring me straight in the eye. Metalic.
ME: "Well... damn. Im... I hardly know what to say. You know you mean alot to me. You do. Maybe he's just got a very odd way of showing you that he cares about you?" I searched piteously for things to offer.
CD: "For the Feast of Tents.... he didn't have a ten... So he went out into the yard and lived in a cardboard box for a week."
ME: "See...." I said amused and smirking. "That's starting to sound like a personality disorder."
CD: "Yeah..." She replied. Her voice had turned to gravel and tears slid down her face. Now I felt like a complete shit head. No more smirks. Nothing funny. Lock it up.
For a few minutes nobody said anything. Mostly because i couldnt think of anything to follow up that beautiful little chasm that I had dinted the conversation with... and because whenever Christine is that up set... She just gives up talking. Her voice turns rusty. It's pitiful.
It was in those moments I saw through the layers of collegiate snip that she had developed. She wasn't snarky now. She wasn't dangerous. She was just a little girl. She couldn't be more than seven.

ME: "Babe, you know you're not going to have to put up with that forever... I mean why haven't you and your mom ever moved out?"
CD: "We did for a while.... "
ME: "That sounds like the way it should be always."
CD: "I know I talk about this stuff too much. I let it affect me too much. I let it affect you. Im sorry."
ME: "If it's something you wanna talk about, then we talk about it. It's no big deal.
CD: "I'm just.... so worried about my platform on Tuesday. I still have three pages to memorize. I have to go sign papers with financial aid. Oh and my dorm sup. wants to meet with me and talk about my 'christlike attitude.'"
ME: "Don't even worry about it." I offered with a slow smile. "Ill dress like you and go meet your dorm sup."

That got a little chuckle out of her. But didn't break the mood. I didn't have to think about it too long to come to the conclusion that I just couldn't support the both us. I'm a reasonable guy. But... this was no way to go about a romantic relationship.
It wasn't that I minded her crying in public and getting everyone else to think I had just said something wicked about the way she was dressed. I saw myself more as a care taker. Where's the challenge in that? I didn't say the right things at the right times. We could have a perfectly good date, and at the end of the night, she seemed.... melancholy. Just seemed like she was made out of porcelain, and it was my job to follow her around and pick up pieces that had broken off on her travels... and glue them back on the best I could.

One week later I broke up with her.

I walked her back to her room after another one of those sparkling dinner conversations. We were standing there on the corner in the lamp light.
ME: "I think we need to take some time off, you and me." I said flatly.
CD: "You........ do.........?" She said after a really long pause.
ME: "Yeah. I think it's a good idea."
CD: "So, that's it? walk me home and break up with me?" There was just black anger in her eyes. It sorta cut me.
ME: "Yeah... that's all I got."

I shrugged and without anything more, walked to my room in the dark.

Collusion: Part XXIV

And so it continued. Same old paths that I had cut through this new forest. Though a forest not quite so new to me any more I suppose I should say. Some dark trails that I knew well, for they offered a soft quiet green darkness for me to steal away to. There were tall trees and a thick dense canopy that filtered away most of the light from the outside and tinted everything a light watercolor green. It was so much unlike the places of my childhood. So unlike the broad sandy Piedmont. The Piedmont was all broad sandy grass planes, without so much wild life as little white cattle birds and stray dogs... small kittens that had wandered away from their mothers to find the same kind simple people three miles away at the next farm house. It wasn't like that here. There were secrets in this wood. And no simple domesticated animals.... There were monsters. Black faceless spirits that had taken human form. Convinced of god that they should bend you to their will and slowly bleach out your soul.

I dropped into the Sargent Art Building and tripped down the stairs to the computer labs to check my email. Totally exhausted from the beige drone of class and the repetitive motion that I had been forcing in practice. I would conquer McDowell. I would.

I had two or so hours to waste here, surfing the portions of the internet that hadn't been blocked by that clever VPN that everyone had to use on campus. I was looking forward to something like peace and quiet, and the white noise that the ever so economical and tasteless looking gray wall hugging a/c unites made.

Of course looking for this little bit of solace, I was bound to run into both of the problem women in my life. Christine was typing away, working on some composition project, trying no doubt to reproduce the work of Hayden. Meh. She wrinkled her nose a bit and smiled as i shluffed in and tossed my bag on the floor beside a work station. "Hey!" I exclaimed loudly in her direction... much to the annoyance of the other people in the lab who no doubt had real work to do there. Deadlines and all that business.
I had noticed that I had a tendency to think of this lab area as my personal home. As such I would spread out all my personal effects across two or so work stations. Slide a cd of banned pop music into the drive and blast pop synth beats through the headphones, and flip through three or so of my messy looking notebooks to give the appearance of performing some intelligent work. I doubt seriously looking back on those times that I was convincing anyone of anything.
"What are you workin on sugar pop?" I leaned over and asked Christine, two work stations to my left.
"Oh... I can't get Finale to use the score format I want.... I think I'm going to have to get Dr. Wilson to help me out. The Finale handbook is 7,892 pages long." She sighed with a sort of washed out look on her face that can only be the result of working for more than 3 hours in a fixed position in from of a computer screen.
Christine and I had a very similar sense of humor. We could spend hours being heinously vapid and making fun of whomever walked past us in social situations. For example:
ME: "I wonder if she knows how thick that panty-line is?"
CD: "Or.... that no one really wears panties anymore."

Enter Melodie. The lab was instantly flooded with a cloud of Bath and Body Work's 'Japanese Cherry Blossom'. Within seconds my eyes started to water, and twitch ever so slightly. Aaaaah. Melodie. I turned to watch her stomp into the room. Typical gushy floral dress. Typical stiletto sling backs. Boobs Boobs Boobs.
"Hi Joshy!.... Oh! Hi Christine!" She blithered and sat down at the work station in between us. I was always impressed with how very graceful she managed to be... her girth not withstanding. It mystified me.
At her effusive greeting I glanced over to notice how Christine did not reply, or offer any sign of recognition. I thought I noticed little ice crystals forming in the corner of her eyes.
"What are yooooou guys working on?" Melodie tossed her hair back and batted a lb of eyelash in my direction.
uhn. Why does she do this, I thought. She's a machine.
"Oh.... well. Sort of just vegging I guess. Not much of anything." I shrugged. Didn't she know we couldn't act friendly in front of Christine? Im sure C already thought we were screwing around in the practice rooms. Woof. I just honestly doubted that anyone would be able to maintain an erection when confronted with that much perfume.
"Do you know how to do a key change in one clef mid system?" Christine asked across Melodie, giving me a black look.
"I.... maybe?" I would have given anything to have an excuse to leave... I was just worried that blood would be spilled if I left.
I waddled past all of Melodies things to maneuver over to Christine's computer.
"Can't you just.... do this?" I made a few stabs at the mouse with my finger. Hmmmm. click. click. click....
A message popped up on the screen... (Click OK to delete project.)
"AAAAAAh! Stop! (gasp) Stop what you're doing right now!" Christine exclaimed. "Do not press another button!"
"Gaaaah!..... Im sorry!..." I said laughing a little. "I thought I knew how to do that...." Truth be told, the error message had just sounded so dire, that I was having a hard time taking the thing seriously.
"Just back you butt over into your seat!" Christine swatted me away...
At this point apparently Melodies military training kicked in.
"Oh! I can fix it!" She smiled with pleasure and rolled her chair over to Christines.... Grabbed the mouse and turned the computer screen towards herself. Oooh God. This is going to be bad, I thought.
Christine bristled, but didn't object.
"All... you... need to do..... is...... " (Pause.) BOOP! "And done!" Melodie looked as satisfied as if she had ended world hunger. "There ya go!... You might wanna make a few copies of the file and save them somewhere where Joshy cant get to them! haha!"
Silence blanketed the room.
Christine blinked for a few seconds, coming to grips with what was occurring here.
"Well, thanks.... Melodie..." She finally said. "Well.... guess I should run. I've got practice in ten. Bye Josh."
"Bye lovie...." I offered a consoling smile. "Sorry for almost ruining your life."
"(Giggle!) See ya Christine! Lemme know if you need any more help!" Melodie offered with a healthy smile and hair toss.
Christine did not reply to this offer... but quickly gather her things and left the room....

Moments after she left my phone buzzed with an incoming text message.
Christine Dodd: (She MUST be stopped.)