Story Fragments

At dinner tonight there was a passing reference to Sam. It was a moment that became awkward, not because I cared, but because the other person felt like it was rude to mention some previous moment in my life.

It’s been four years since we broke up.

It’s strange. It’s normal. It’s human. It’s painful.

To say that I have moved on is a complete lie. To say that I am holding on is untrue.

It’s the funny thing that happens when you are being honest with yourself about history. Nothing can be forgotten, nothing can be undone. I’m not sure when I started being honest about this. A week ago? A month ago? Am I even being honest? I think so. I want to think so. 

The thing is, you want to put it behind you. “Move on,” is the thing that is universally said. Every fucking person who ever gives relationship advice says the same god damned thing. “Oh, my god, you are just way too good for him anyway. It’s time to move on.” 

Why does everyone take that approach? Like the only way in which you can let go of a situation is by being dishonest about it?

Did I try to tell myself I was too good for him for a while? Yes. Do I actually believe that to be true? No. Is it because I have a self deprecating outlook on myself and a negative self image? No. I just think it didn’t work.

I think it’s become a cliche to say something like “if only things were different— things might have worked out differently.” Of course they would have. That is what you call a tautology. It is obvious. But to think that things weren’t necessarily destined to fail, that maybe there was a chance that things could have worked out, but for some reason something happened that was out of our control, maybe a freak accident or a butterfly flapping it’s wings in the Cashmir region of india, that this is the reason things somehow left our control? I would much rather believe this. That it wasn’t our fault at all. That love escaped us completely out of either of our control. Not destiny, just outside forces.

Why is that such anathema?

Why is it better to look back and say, “I thought I was madly in love with him, but it must have been something I ate, because he was a disgusting excuse for a man.” Why is it better to think that you lost all faculties of judgement for two years than to think that a circumstance arose that was strong enough force to tear two people apart?

You don’t have to hold out hope that he is going to come back. I know he is not going to come back. I know I’m not going to go back to him. But I’m willing to put myself out there on a limb and to say that when I was with him I was truly in love. And In the same breath, I’m willing to say that it is over.

I am going to be 33 next week. I recently read an article online that said that I can look forward to my 80s with a reasonable certainty but that anything longer than that will be a genetic anomaly. That means that I have another 50 or so years to live. What is wrong with saying I gave two of those to him? That leaves me with another 80 to dole out to whomever I chose.  I think I can handle saying that I truly loved someone for two years and then it ended? Yes. I can handle that.

I’m fairly certain that there will be fleeting moments in almost every week for the rest of my 50 years that vividly flash memories of his chest as the morning light splashes through the window in his bedroom, or vague stroboscopic pictures of us tumbling around in a laughter that would not abate until muscular pain gripped the back of my head as the facial muscles around my skull began to cramp.

I like that. It is my history. There is no changing it. The reel of time doesn’t stop for a cut and splice. And so I will enjoy the flashes of him in the moments when some association brings him rushing back. I will soak in the joy his face brings as it skitters past my minds eye, and I will relish in the sorrow his absence brings, like a muscle soreness the day after a very long run. The ache is ever present, but you know it’s a pain carried by growth. And so you grimace, you wince a bit, but you smile too. And that’s nice.

The idea was that by taking the pill the world would make more sense. Eyes opened to the way in which the opposite sex thinks, you’d rid yourself of silly problems and pointless fights about why one “couldn’t possibly understand” where their significant other was coming from. 

So simple. Take the pill, and for the proceeding 48 hours your body and brain would effectively chemically operate like you’d been born with the inverse naughty-bits. Penises for vaginas. Vaginas for penises. It wasn’t rocket science. People bought in to it.

And the reviews of the trials were unanimously great. People slipped the small green pill under their tongues and waited for it to dissolve. Within minutes they would start to feel differently. The world was the same, but also absolutely nothing like it’d alway been. And then all of your past transgressions would begin to flood back. The time you’d made a girlfriend cry. The time they’d made you cry. The confusion was gone. So many of your biggest questions in life would be resolved in 20/20. That was why they were upset.

Clarity.

Perspective

People were euphoric.

The bigger changes didn’t start for a few months. Not until the buzz had worn off.

Maybe someone had been looking for love? They’d assumed the pill could change things. Things didn’t make sense before, but things would make sense now. They would understand where dates were coming from. Pick up on the nonverbal cues. They’d be able to relate. People would go out after taking the pill, after “realizing”, emboldened with a new found surplus of confidence. They were no longer in the dark.

This worked for a few weeks— the drunkenness that came with the honeymoon period— But it didn’t last. People who had taken the pill couldn’t stay with people who hadn’t. For the first few weeks everything was great because the pill takers were like seers, able to properly navigate every situation. Amazing lovers, even better listeners. But the people who hadn’t taken the pill, who lacked the insight, inevitably disappointed. They couldn’t satisfy the pill takers. They hadn’t been enlightened. 

The pill takers began to find each other. There was something one could sense when looking at another, and they began to pair off. These unions were able to accomplish infinitely more than non pill taking unions. Their new ability to understand one another completely came with advantages. “Dynamic Duos” was the half joking name that non-pilltakers coined for them— a name given half in jealous anger, half in fearful inadequacy.

These perfectly united couples began to band together into networks of binary nodes.

Their influence was unavoidable on a societal level. They were operating as individuals who were capable of understanding each other completely. When you understand a collaborator’s idea fully, there is never a debate about the merits of one or the other, there is only the better idea and the worse.

Couples without the pills began to feel pressure. They weren’t able to makes sense of things. Fights about money. Sex. Work. Their problems no longer the universal encumbrances of love but instead distractions and impediments that were holding them back.

The decision to take the pill or not became a choice that every person faced on their 17th birthday. The pill would never be denied anyone, but taking it before the age of 17 had some strange effects on children— sexual aversions created from understanding before you are ready. People who chose not to take the pill found a life of passion and dysfunction in a world that had suddenly began making sense, at least to everyone but themselves. 

The non pill takers created art and culture for those that removed the fire from their personalities. Art it seemed was the product of dysfunction. Joy, it seemed, was still easily derived from the creations of the dysfunctional by those who had taken the pill, but it’s creation was no longer possible. In fact their ability to solve original problems had all but abated. 

Life, then, became a gamble. Would you willing risk not knowing a pure love in the hopes of truly impacting and improving the world? Or would you settle deeply in to the comfort of knowing and being known? Become a force for good or an effective wheel in the cog? 

And so the world divided.

This piece was submitted to the Studio 360 found objects competition. This, and all the pieces on this site, are fiction. 

I started collecting Marlboro Miles when I was 8. It seemed the most effective means to get what I wanted – stuff. Everyone I knew had stuff, stuff they’d got for their birthdays or Christmas, gifts and surprises, even stuff they’d got because they’re old stuff had gotten worn out enough to warrant new stuff. I however didn’t have stuff. And I wanted it badly.

My father smoked like a chimney. Truly. In the evening when he drank there was what seemed like a perpetually lit cigarette in his hand, a Lilliputian smokestack of American grown tobacco streaming from his body. I always blamed him for my lack of stuff, and it wasn’t a wholly inaccurate accusal, but I thought I didn’t have anything because he spent all of his money on cigarettes. It was actually because he spent it all on Michelob. 

When I first saw the Marlboro catalog at a neighbor’s house, I didn’t understand it. Why would a company just give you free stuff?  

“No, you collect Marlboro Miles, stupid. These things. They’re in every pack. Like saving up from cereal boxes for the special toys,” my neighbor told me. “My sister got a pair of sandals from it.”

I wasn’t sure what cereal he was eating, because the white and brown boxes of government cereal we got didn’t have any prizes. What I did know, though, was that my father had a giant pile of discarded cigarette boxes in between his recliner and the magazine rack I wasn’t supposed to look at. A treasure trove if my neighbor was right. I decided I was going to take these miles from him, however curious this currency sounded, and get some stuff of my own. I stole the catalog that night, but promised myself I’d return it. I didn’t like taking things.

That first time I gathered the Miles from next to my father’s unconscious body, strewn akimbo on the worn velvet of the Lay-z-boy. I wasn’t sure what I thought was going to happen. I treated it like the infiltration of a heavily guarded bank vault or the compound of some cartel. I silently snatched them and hurried up to my room. 159 Miles, a number I was sure to count 3 times, stacking the papers in 15 piles of 10 across the wood floor of my bedroom and one pile of 9. Once I was sure I’d counted right, I began to finger through the catalog.

It felt like I’d stumbled upon some great scheme. I ordered a thermos, a portable radio, a towel and a pair of sunglasses, all emblazoned with the logo of the company that was foolish enough to send me all of this stuff for free.

By the time my first package arrived, I’d become quite enterprising in my acquisition of Marlboro Miles. I’d begun sneaking into the teachers lounge at school and found discarded boxes in the trash. I even began going through teachers’ pockets, but never taking anything more than the Miles inside the cellophane wrapped boxes. 

I brought my new stuff out to the woods where I’d stashed an additional 200 Miles in plastic bags inside an old tree. I’d begun to create a camp around the tree, a clandestine compound in the woods to keep and display all of my new stuff, stuff generously bestowed upon me by a cowboy from the west. My life hadn’t exactly accelerated into prosperity, but cold Kool-Aid from a thermos under the shade of a big tree was a welcome hideaway from the disappointment of reality. It’s amazing what an infusion of pride can do for a lonely little boy. 

My father died last week. He never stopped smoking. The irony is not lost on me that the only thing he’d ever given me was part of what ended up killing him. I guess I can’t say that. The act of being artful in getting what you want is not a skill I’d have gained if it weren’t for his negligence as a parent. 

There wasn’t a service. I put his ashes into the old thermos. I made a small stand for it next to my diplomas.  The diplomas as proof of how far I’d come and the thermos as a reminder of how I’d learned to get there.

Flying at night, looking out the window at those ripples and pin pricks of light clustered in oddly organic arteries across the blackness makes my heart hurt. I’m alone. Most days I’m alright with it. It’s grown to be a part of me, the nothingness grew in to somethingness, the void took on it’s own substance. I am it and it is me, and it’s ok. But looking out a plane window, knowing that each tiny pixelette of light is in someway representative of a persons soul, down on the ground maybe in their bed, or maybe up late, it makes me ache so deeply that my body begins to bend in my middle. I’m up here flying over all of these people, all these souls, alone, and I cant touch them.

Once, before, before the aloneness I had togetherness, I had that feeling of being with, or next to, or touching, or union, I guess. Not separateness. I’d never known that before. I believe I’d known love, both filial and romantic, I believe that’s what it was. It was happy, and filling, and warm in a place that you have perceptions but the sensations don’t come from the world. The place where things are generated and destroyed without a sense of compliance with or for or respect in keeping with anything Newton or Einstein ever posited. In that place. I think I had love.

But then there was something else. And these lights from outside the window are raking across the rough and raw edges of where it was, the pink spots in that inside place and thats why it hurts so much. I can see that all these people are out there. And I’m alone.

That place held a love that possessed no control. No me-ness or you-ness, it was a black hole that pulled us in together and tore at our sense of identity with such immense gravitational force that what we had been existed no more than a planet or a star or a particle of light exists as a unique object after it’s been absorbed by the unending hunger and draw and consumption of that black hole. It was all that there was, it wasn’t a question of right or wrong, because those ideas didn’t even exist any longer, it was all there was.

I suppose even black holes don’t last forever. There comes a point when they spew all of their consumption into space in the most violent fashion. When that spot inside was torn out, thats how it felt, nothing less dramatic than a quasar of my soul, violently spewing everything that I was out into nothingness. There was nothing left when it was torn away. A simulacrum of what once was. Identical in structure, but missing the spark. I guess death is not restricted to the confines of body that ceases to be.

I suppose it all sounds a bit dramatic, doesn’t it? I guess. But flying over the eastern seaboard, the golden tracks of lanes and avenues, I feel alone in a crowded room.

Everybody thinks they know what’s best for me. Right. Because I have so many role models. How is my Mama supposed to give me advice about what boys I should be dating when when she wound up with Papi? “What about Jose? Que guapo, eh?” Jose is literally retarded. I seen him trying to light a lighter on fire while he was holding it in his hand. Really great pick Mama.  

And how is Papi supposed to give me advice about how much I should be reading or studying? What I should be doin’ with my life. “Ay, Leti, why you read so much? Vayase fuera!” You go outside! He can’t even hold down a job? I’m trying to do something with my life, why you gotta mess with that?

I don’t even care. Whatever. I’m gonna do me. I don’t need boys in my life cause all boys want is new shoes and booty up in they faces. I ain’t tryin’ to get pregnant. All these girls, they think that finding a boy is their only way out, but they’re only dating boys who are still here. 

But see, I seen through it, excuse me, I saw through it. There aren’t a lot of opportunities to get out, but everyone lets that keep them down. Colleges are looking for pretty young latina girls from the ‘hood that have read a few books, they gotta meet some quotas. So guess what? I’ll let some school pay me to get out, I ain’t got no problem helping them check a box. I have no problem helping them. I can play the game. If it means I don’t have to wind up with someone like Jose, I can play any game they want. So I’ve been reading every book I can get my hands on, teaching myself what I need to know. I even learned a word for it, autodidactic, it means I’m teaching myself. I got two more years, and I’m out. I’ll go fuck with the white kids in the woods somewhere for four years. Doesn’t sound so bad.

Plus, all those cute doctors have to start out in college, right? I’ll get me a doctor Mami, and you know what, I hope his name is Jose, too.  

“I think, maybe, it’s a product of boredom. I think that’s what it is.”

“Boredom? Really? That’s what you think it is? I think you might be kind of fucked up.”

She sat and considered this. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. But she had assumed everyone had morbid thoughts of one sort or another. It’s not as though she was particularly special.

“I think you might be missing my point here. I don’t actually want to get very ill. I don’t want to die. It’s just that every time I get sick I think about what it would be like if I were actually coming down with something exotic and rare and unique. Something that would test the limits of my constitution. What I’m capable of, what I could endure.” She paused. “Don’t you ever wonder about that? If you are one of the strong people? I want to be a strong person, someone who could make it out the other side with a glimpse of something. God maybe? Is that what people see when they come close?”

“I don’t think I do, no. I like that I haven’t ever come down with Yellow Fever or Pertusus or, shit, I don’t know? Malaria. Why would you want to be sick?”

“I don’t want to be sick, are you even listening? I want to see something. I want to be tested. I want to be great.” 

She stopped talking, the conversation clearly wasn’t getting her anywhere. She sipped on her orange juice and starred out the window. She knew she wasn’t wrong to wonder this. You can’t know if you are great if you are never tested. If she had to explore this idea on her own, internally, then that’s what she would do.

Across the otherwise empty cafe the two employees stared at her.

“Do you think she is crazy? She doesn’t look crazy. Who is she talking to?” 

“She looks sick. Her cheeks are flushed like she has a fever.” The worker shrugged. “But the two glasses of juice is a little weird, to be sure.”

I lost my left testicle in a not so tragic bike riding accident when I was thirteen. It was really quite uneventful. I crashed into my friend James because I was looking at a girl while we rode past the park. I popped off my seat and landed on the crossbar. It wasn’t comfortable, but it also wasn’t that painful either, neither of us had a scratch. We rode home, red faced because the pretty girl saw us fumbling over our bikes like total dorks. 

The ache came on slowly, but unrelenting. By the time I got up— excuse the pun— by the time I got up the balls to tell my mother I was in pain. I could barely walk. We made it to the hospital sometime around 9pm that night, but it was apparently too late. The doctor explained that I had a ‘testicular torsion’ which meant the blood vessel had been twisted and pinched off blood flow. I was sent in to surgery, but I when I woke I was around 1 oz lighter. 

I really can’t reiterate enough how much it didn’t matter when I was a kid. My doctor explained that this really shouldn’t change anything. I would still be able to have children, hormonally I shouldn’t see any problems. The only thing to worry about was aesthetics, but my mom being the loving mother she was told me “girls don’t like balls anyways, honey. They’re gross. If anything when you find someone, she’ll probably be happy about it.” 

I took this to heart.

I made it through my twenties and clumsy late night sex without it ever really being a problem. One night stands presented no issue. If a woman spoke about it the next day to her friends, who cares? She had a story to tell friends and I had sex. Everybody wins!  But most of the time it just went unnoticed. The rare occasions when I dated someone for any prolonged period of time weren’t much more difficult. We had a conversation and I either pretended to be sad or cavalier about it, whichever seemed like it would result in some sort of sexual engagement at the end of the conversation. Usually sad. Women like wounded.

But as 30 came, and then 35, and next week I turn 40, I’ve grown progressively more and more conscious of it. Within the past year it has become borderline debilitating. Not because my singular testicle hurts— it’s not more annoying than any pair of testicles— but because I’ve grown increasingly worried about losing that one. I’ve never settled down and got married, or even close really, nor have I had any fruitful accidents. Hence, I’ve never put my sperm to good use. What happens now if I have an accident? 

I’d stopped riding bikes a long time ago, but now I’ve stopped playing racquetball, intense running, and soccer. I have completely overhauled my underwear drawer three times in the past seven or eight months. Boxers are more likely to allow for an accidental impact. Briefs hold the testicle close, but potentially keeps it too warm for proper health. 

It’s begun to consumer me, and I’m making terrible decisions because of it. Awful, wrong, un-like-me decisions. I’m not sure whether I am acting out of some innate self preservation drive, or I am actually losing my mind. Last night I took out a young woman from my office. Off the bat this is wrong because I’m a partner and she is a junior, and I’ve never done anything to compromise my career in the past, but this is what I’m talking about. 

I decided to take her out because I had concluded that she was an ideal candidate for a mate. Young enough to easily bear a child, smart enough to work at my firm, beautiful enough to grab my eye, and with a lean build an healthy look. We got very drunk and I took her back to my apartment. I didn’t use a condom. I invited her back tonight. 

What the fuck am I doing? 

So, have you ever heard of Pascal’s Wager? Pascal was this crazy smart dude, a polymath if you look on wikipedia, and he decided that it was a better bet to believe in god. He thought that if God was was some sort of mass hallucination on the part of man kind, no real bad would come of believing. But if God truly were real, the consequence of not believing would be eternal damnation. In his mind a simple logical conclusion could be reached.

I don’t believe in god, right, but Pascal’s Wager still rules my life. Just substitute God with almost any wives tale or superstition you’ve ever heard.

You might be asking what that might look like? Well I’ve gotten quite good at keeping it somewhat under the radar. I’m assuming I occasionally look funny when walking down the street, but I would rather not step on a crack if the outcome is keeping my mother out of a wheel chair.

I try to catch a falling leaf on the first day of fall so I won’t catch a cold. I throw salt over my shoulder and, to be honest, I don’t even know what I am helping or hurting by doing it. All I know is that people say to do it. I run from black cats.

I’ve often considered not doing these things, but the idea of it makes me queazy. My friend John freaked out on me last week, it was mostly cause he was mad about work, but threw salt everywhere and stormed out of my apartment. The next day he had the worst diarrhea of his entire life.

He said “it was like I was peeing out of my butt.”

I said, “told you so.”

Image by Max from http://vectordisasters.tumblr.com

Dreams are a great thing to have. They keep you alive.  They give you what you need every morning to wake from your bed and begin. I know this to be true.

Dreams, though, are living things. They are not to be ignored or unattended. This I have learned the hard way. Dreams are dynamic and prey to the forces of the universe, weighed on by gravity and carried by inertia.

I always had the same dream of my future. It was not so specific as to posses fine details of faces or patterns, but from the time I was a young girl it had been the same. Some green garden, a home, a rich family life and many grand children warm food and cold drinks. So much of what I dreamt of in this idyllic little life of mine drove my everyday. And the dream never changed, it never grew or became more contemporary. I didn’t think this was the stuff of dreams, to be updated, I thought dreams were a special type of stuff, a stuff that never changed. And in this I created something entirely different, some other kind of mental stuff, a solid object existing inside my mind that all others swirled around. This gave all other things meaning.

But I now know better. All things change. My childhood dream could not have included smart phones or the internet— this was not the reality of the ’50s. It never included finances or culture, personal development or growth, so these were things I had no time for. I wanted only what was in my dream, and in that way all other things passed me by. I didn’t have time for anything else. I was blind.

And then one morning I opened my eyes and realized that I didn’t have anything to rise for. I became aware of the impossibility of my corrupted visions of the future. They had never included a failed marriage or infertility, situations avoided and opportunities missed because of their incongruity with my hopes for a future that would never be. 

I began trying to build a new dream, a new guide for my future, but it’s so much harder than I’d imagined. I thought I would construct a new edifice of hope, but nothing can be built until I tear down that monument to my youthful idealism that exists directly in the middle of my mind. Ripping apart my geocentric outlook in place of more Copernican view, a vision that allows for change. But each piece I rip from the dream hurts deeply, so very deeply, that the demolition threatens to ruin me. Who am I without it?

Does the world need another woman, later in her day than early, passed by in the traditional order of things, to hang around and play out her twilight? I am struggling with this question. I’ve heard said “it’s always darkest before the dawn,” but I’ve believed in so many false hopes, I don’t know that hope has any place left to latch on.

There are certain things you have to consider about having red hair— being a ginger if you’d prefer. It’s really not as tough as people make it out to be or sometimes imagine it would be, it’s just a different process than non-gingers go through. The net net is the same, the curve just looks different.

A first blush gingers are striking, the rarity. You have your select few, your 9s and 10s who immediately set off your attraction sensors— “WAH! WAH! WAH! Hottie alert!” But the rest of us set off different sensors. I’d say I’m about a— 7 maybe? I suppose that means I’m actually a 6, but that is a different idea all together. As a red headed 7, or a 6,  the first thing people notice are your flaws. The reason for this is because they stand out like sore thumbs on your porcelain skin. A very slight overbite on a red headed person looks like a slack jawed Cletis. A pimple? More like a flashing beacon in the night. Soft facial features? More likely this translates to featureless in an initial encounter. 

But here is the beauty of it all— it doesn’t last. I can walk in to a room filled with gorgeous women and know, unless they have some fetish or something, that none of them find me attractive. 

“Ew, did you see him? He’s so pale, is he sick?”

“I don’t know, but did he have eye lashes?”

“I was wondering that too.”

This is what I imagine they think. So I just do my thing. Act like myself. There is no point in acting otherwise, tonight is not the night for us. However, by the second encounter, or even third, all of the sudden my glaring “flaws” become endearing. I’m very far from “exotic”, but that is how they treat me. I’m like an egg with two yolks or a blue lobster, something you don’t come across everyday. I guess that is appealing. And so I move from hideous on day one to sexy on day three.

By the time that we end up sleeping together. I’ve been almost mystified. 

“I’ve never slept with someone with red hair before. Is there anything I need to know?”

What do they expect me to say?

“Actually, I have 6 balls and my penis has barbs on it, so no sudden movements, OK?Don’t worry though, I haven’t hurt anyone with it in years.” As I point to a sign on my bedroom wall with flip over numbers that says ‘749 Days Without An Accident.’