Bright copper shades of morning sidles
underground into the perched eyebrows of the basement window coating the sub-ground
crypt with hard prisms of morning light. By glancing at my watch I can tell
that it’s eight-thirty. I stay nestled on the makeshift bed, the sheets
half-way over my head. I wonder if Megan will come and wake me up, descend down
into the basement level of the house she has known all of her life in the
fashion of Mary Magdalene and co. approaching a vacant tomb. I am attired in
just my jeans, having doffed my shirt shortly after Megan and I embraced nine
hours earlier. I wait, cradling my hands behind my head in the universal slogan
for surrender, my eyes stapled shut in anticipation that the twin-pink caves of my vision will
blur open into a pond of light and find Megan’s head above my chest, her hair
slightly brushed back, wishing me a good morning, perhaps even ferrying me a
cup of coffee.
The hard plastic VHS containers of DEAD POETS SOCIETY and
THE NUTTY PROFESSOR remained half-open as if lock-jawed on top of the
television. Above there is a tumbling associated with the ceremonial spilling
of day light across the planet. The sounds of socks toppling over the linoleum
rink of the kitchen. The domestic intermittent purr of the coffee pot. The
jangling of utensils and gradual overweight hush and slosh of the dish washer
beginning to rattle and stir. The copper light continues to seep into the
basement as if squinting and the boy without a face, tucks his eyes deep into
the sail of a blanket, wondering what is transpiring down in P-town. Thinking
about Kyle and Hale and White trash Pat. Thinking about Lums. Wondering how
second city was last night. Hoping that Megan’s parents did not smell the rough
odor of tobacco on their clothes last night when they arrived home, when he
held her briefly, his eyes, scaling the topography of her chin and lips and eyes
as he read the poems. The last poem he started to write for her begins, “Now we
are one.”
There is more overhead clank and jostle. Nine o’clock. If he
waits down here long enough surely she will arrive, beckoning him into the
sunshine of what will indubitably be the best day of his life.
He looks at the copy of Leaves of Grass, face up, a
condiment on the bag of clothes and manuscripts. More noises are audibly
registered overhead scraping upstairs. The jangling of shuffling, as if life is
somehow waiting to arise and hatch and sprout out of the middle of a cutlery
section at the Dayton's department store where Megan applied for the job with
the woman with the doughy countenance last night.
I look at Uncle Walt on top
of my red duffel bag. It feels like it should be somewhere around nine am.
There is something cryptic and Christ waiting to arise from the tomb on Easter
sundayish about being lodged down in a basement and yearning to see the light.
I weld hush the lids of my eyes again, pecking my face in almost ornitholigcal
fashion into my shoulder trying to sniff every remnant of Megan's body, closing
my eyes again, wondering if she is upstairs, if she is somehow waiting for me,
if she is brewing coffee and making eggs and waiting to come downstairs again
so that the first creature I see as I crack up my eyes back into this puddle of
autumnal reality would be her visage
A stipple
of sunlight shaped like a pole in a strip club seems to sprinkle what appears
to be miniature geometrical shapes on the edge of the bed I recently slept. I
close my eyes again and wonder if she is coming. Thinking that when I open them
again her face will be the first thing I see.
Upstairs
there are more clangs. The scent of coffee is heavy and seems to float down the
stairs in one thick aromatic beckoning waft.
I open my
eyes again and note that the person I was expecting somehow to see is nowhere
near.
With light
still forming what appears to be translucent wind chime es I go to the closet
bathroom and splash cold water on my face, plop my contacts into the lid of my
eyes blinking several times, before going upstairs.
I try not
to look at myself in the mirror. Somehow if I look at myself long enough
Megan's visage appears. She is still nowhere in sight.
It is time to get coffee.
***
“Good marnin’.” I say to Mr. Snow,
seated on the counter in the kitchen, pawning off the Irish rhetoric I
purloined from Kyle Dooyle three weeks earlier, sounding as if I have woken up
in the midst of the Irish potato famine. It is nine-thirty. A golden tear drop
of sunshine seems to have spilled and suspended itself in prismatic animation
inside the enveloping whiteness and domestic sheen gloss purity of the kitchen.
Mr. Snow is attired in his Saturday
morning weekend garb sweat-pants and t-shirt, his face half-shielded by the
Appleton Post. A cup of coffee seated like an errant grail next to his wrist.
He is wearing glasses and looks rather stern as I wish him top of the morning
in my most authentic Irish accent I could muster.
“You guys saw a pretty good game
last night.” He mentions, ruffling the newspaper out in front of his
spectacles.
“Uh, yeah.” I say, nonplussed,
having no clue what exactly he is talking about.
Mr. Snow continues to look me into
the brow, but not in a way that is stern but somehow now I know what your
uninhibited intentions are by traveling up here and visiting my daughter stern.
From the angle in which he is holding the paper up under his chin it could
serve as a sun shield.
“Mind if I
have some coffee.” I inquire.
“Help
yourself.” He says. The coffee pot looks like it was devised by NASA in a
chrome vessel to keep the temperature of the java lukewarm in the unfortunate
instance of a Nuclear meltdown throughout the contiguous United States and Guam
should fancy to transpire over breakfast.
Dotted beneath the heater is a bead of light that appears to be winking.
I grope the coffee pot by the plastic lobe of the handle but it remains
adamantly stalled in its position. I can sense Mr. Snow assaying my every
calculated gauche gesticulation behind me. I try not to visualize him snorting
at my incompetence but perhaps he is thinking that if douchebag can’t even help
himself to a cup of coffee, how does he plan on opening up a box of Trojans.
“It appears
to be stuck.” I say, my fingers knuckled around the handle, my body
petrified. Mr. Snow alights from his
posture.
“Here,” he
says, releasing a switch saluting on the side, talking to me as if conferring
over which tackle bait to use, stating that these things differ from house to
house.
I am waiting for Megan to descend the stairs.
Mr. Snow seems grunt and
seems to solidly nod at me. For some reason I embellish the college where I
attend trying to make the acronym sound more prestigious, telling him that I go
to the U of I.C.C (I neglect to tell him that the see-see stands for community
college.) Mr. Snow continues to nod and asks me what I am studying. I tell him
that I am a writer and that I am studying English. He volleys back a look at
which seems to say I'll make sure I'd don't inadvertently split my infinitives
around you. I take copious slurps and
tell Mr. Snow thanks for the coffee. I address him as Mister Snow. Some adults
when you meet them assist you address them by their first name. Mr. Snow, with
his facial slope that resembles his daughters and his slight wisp of gray hair
combed in such a manner it looks dignified could be lawyer with his stern glasses
seems to garner and almost military rank defense as I address him as the later.
My cup of
coffee has almost been reduced to sugary dregs. I want to pour myself another
cup yet don't want to appear inept not being able to properly remove the carafe
from the percolator, imagining only what Mr. Snow what must think as he
imagines this young lad who sounds like an illegitimate spawn from Webster's
Thesaurus trying to unhook the back of his daughter's bra in the car with the
spare tire.
I take my final caffeinated
swig. I then ask, so Mr. Snow, what do you do?
He replies
by telling me he works for AAL. Aid Association for Lutherans. I tell him that
my parents are members as I eye the handle of the coffee pot vying for seconds.
As if scrutinizing my blood line he asks me what my parents do. I tell them
they're teachers. Without me asking he alights stem of the coffee pot, pours
himself anther splash before inquires if I would like a warm up, to which I
nod.
He tells me
Megan's mom is also somewhat of a writer, in fact she is em-ceeing the
anniversary event scheduled to be at her church the following day.
“You should
like it, We're actually bringing a professor writer in.” He then proceeds to
ask me what I write. If I were to lift up my shirt he could still see where I
vertically carved the word poet in my chest from six month ago. I tell him I
write poems and short-stories. He asks me if there is any money in that. I tell
him no, not really.
“I'm
actually taking some really cool classes in college this semester. I'm taken
this one that's intrinsically just a 'novel-to-film' class , basically we read
novels that have been transitioned into film and we read the book and then talk
about the differences in each. So far we have done of Mice and Men, Like Water
for Chocolate, the Color Purple and Little Big Man. We still have Heart of
Darkness (viewed as Apocalypse Now) and One flew Over's the Cuckoos Nest.”
“I never
realized that Little Big Man was a novel first,” He notes.
“Yes,” I
add. “By Thomas Berger.”
Mr. Snow notes profoundly suggests that, isn't I
ironic, that you always hear of good novel being transitioned into academy
award winning films but you never hear of films being transitioned into
National Book award winning novels? I look at his profound social mantra and
have almost nothing to say. Instead I bring up my latest fetish.
The movie I
can't get enough of is Trainspotting. It's based off the novel by Irvine
Welsch. I've done six papers and a speech so far on it this semester of
college. I can't get enough of it.”
Mr. Snow inquires that isn’t
that the movie about that's all about Heroin? I respond back by saying its all
about Heroin and AIDS...I then pause and say:
“And the
narrative pangs of the repressed sociological pulse that is the human
condition.” I say, only in a Scottish accent.
Mr. Snow looks at me kinda
funny. He then says he will go upstairs and wake his daughter because on
Saturday since there is not a cross country meet she will sleep the whole day away.
The moment I hear him ascending up the stairs in little staccato thumps I again
yank at the stationary coffee pot, still to no avail.
Megan's house is commodious
and seems to include a den where her parents’ played bridge last night and a
living room with a piano both on the first floor separated by a wall.
I walk into
what I can only perceive to be the den and begin to optically rape the contents
of the bookshelf. It appears to be taking Mr. Snow longer than normal to head
back down the stairs. Part of me wonders if he is having a rhetorical
conversation with his daughter inquiring where she found this freak. Part of me
is thinking that, per the heroin reference, perhaps he is contacting the authorities
right now and soon a SWAT team will crash through every window of his house via
rappels and search both the crevices of my duffel bag as well as the crevices
of my body for smack and syringes.
He comes
down five minutes later. When he tells me that Megan is pretty tuckered out for
some reason my parental alert boundary crossing line audibly intuits it as,
“Boy, my daughters really tired. What on earth did you kids do last night.”
Fifteen minutes later Megan enters the kitchen fully
clothed, her lips seem to slightly push up into the amphitheater of her
cheekbones. She smells like she has just gotten out of the shower. I wish her
good morning. She says the word “morning” very quickly, sans looking in my
direction.
She heads in the direction of the coffee pot,
releasing the carafe with no problem whatsoever.
Megan’s hair is still. Apparently she caught a quick shower.
She doesn’t seem happy to see me in the slightest.
“I was just
talking about literature with the Master of the House.” I say referring to Mr.
Snow as the being the patriarchal Master in whose Kingdom I momentarily crashing,
a tattered-serf, poetic peasant lolling like a vagabond minstrel on a boll of
hay in the Kingdom that is Snow.
“Yeah, we
were talking about Siddhartha. And about Little Big man. And about Trainspotting.”
Megan gives
me an insinuating look and then says that she has never read any of those books
yet. Megan is wearing a green sweater. When she pours more coffee for herself
her left bra strap becomes visible.
I hold out my coffee cup in her direction as if soliciting
for alms. Megan ignores me and places the carafe back on.
As we leave the house I set my
coffee cup down near the sink, rustle Pico’s fur and wish her father a great
day. Megan is especially reticent this morning as we dip into the golden
sunlight of autumn. The temperature is mid-50ish, cool, streaks of the sun
continue to dapple the earth in refulgent array of blinding tears. I make it a
point to stand on the side closest to the traffic. When Megan looks at me and
asks me why I keep sidestepping in front of her every time we turn a corner I
employ my romantic blather, telling her that, in the rare case that a car would
bump over the curb, it would hit me first and spare her. Megan seems
semi-frustrated.
“Like I
told you last night David. This is Apt-pull-ton. Nothing like that even
remotely ever happens here. It’s just a boring little town in the middle of
defined nowhere.”
Megan then
tells me that if I wanted excitement I should have traveled somewhere else.
I make a
reference to the flat tire last night. I tell her that in my town there is no
way you could ever be able to knock on some strangers’ door and ask for
assistance. It just doesn’t happen.
“That’s
what I like about this town. Everything is so serene. Such a bucolic hamlet.
The people are so convivial. It’s like living in a Thomas Kinkade calendar
without the annoying little italicized passages of scripture tattooed at the
bottom.”
Megan is completely silent. She has not voluntarily looked
in my direction once the entire morning.
A large emerald green truck with what appears to have a
snout lumbers past us on the side of the street in little mechanical groans. I
tell Megan that it was really a pleasure talking to her old man this morning. I
use the word pleasure as if Mr. Snow is
some sort of global dignitary cosigning kow-towing universal deference.
“It was fun bartering bon mots in the kitchen this morning.
That’s basically what we did while sleeping beauty was asleep up stairs. Just
bartered good ol’ fashioned bon mots like we were going fishing or something.
That and I had a hard time getting the coffee pot to release itself from the
titanium percolator thingy.”
Megan says the words Baunn and what a perplexed look on her face. Megan tells
me to speak English. She then for no reason says she sorry if she is still only
in high school and doesn’t know half the words I appear to be using.
Somewhere
on the stitched topographical curvatures of the softball of the planet a portly
umpire denizened in samarai-suitable funeral-seasoned garb is saying the words
strike and two.
I wonder
what I did. Mentally I debate making an uncouth joke and saying that perhaps we
should stop by Bath and Body works cause you seem to be on the rag. Instead I
desist with the ill-mannered puns I remain quiet as we turn the corner. Megan bums a cigarette and I light hers the
way she fired mine up last night.
In P-town we call it “monkey-fucking,” lighting her
cigarette from the nearly extinguished butt of the previous smoke.
The giant brontosaurus truck sweeps up the leaves that are
raked to the curb. Walking with Megan, every one in Appleton is outside,
shoveling leaves to the curb, waiting for these motorized, lubed dinosaurs to
lumber down the crisply arranged manors and subdivisions. I have never seen
these creatures before. An elongated snout swaying from both sides, snorting up
golden autumnal remnants the color of a northern sunset.
“That’s crazy how all these machines pick up leaves at the
curbs with little snouts.”
“That’s
what everyone does here David. They rake their leaves into the curb then the
city picks them up.”
I tell Megan I’ve never seen anything like it before. She
inquires very innocently what we do with the leaves in P-town.
“We rake
them into a pyre then we burn them like an offering to the deity of the
season.”
Megan tells me that burning leaves in her town is like
illegal and bad for the environment. She is making me feel like everything I
have ever yearned for in life has some how been sociologically illicit. She
makes me feel that my pulse is illegal. Like I should be ticketed and sentenced
for something unspeakably vile every time my lips ache into a smile.
I tell her again that
this is like the prefect little town. She looks dismayed.
She tells me the coffee shop where we are dining is a little
ways a way but she figured I just might enjoy a walk since I seem to like
walking. Several bicyclists pass us on the side wearing helmets. Judging by the
political signs in front yards the majority of this vector of Appleton seems to
be set on vesting their vote for the blue sign reading DOLE-KEMP come two weeks
time. I turned 19 over the summer. This is the first election I’ll be able to
vote.
“I’m really looking forward to it. You know, hushing myself
behind the little shower curtain thingy and plugging my vote into the ballot. I
really can’t wait. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do on my own.”
Megan informs me that she is just not really into politics.
She then says the word sorry. I ask her who her parents’ are voting for. Megan tells me that she doesn’t know.
Probably Clinton. I make an observation that it’s kinda weird since her
parents’ are Lutherans from the devout Lutheran church where I attend they
pretty much coerce you into espousing enervated virtues of the Grand Old Party.
“It’s a free country David. They have a right to vote for
anyone they want to.” Megan asks me who I anticipate casting my ballot for. I
tell her I’m not sure.
“My parents’ just can’t stand Bill
Clinton. They pretty much think he’s the anti-christ. My mom despises Hillary
as well. Just thinks she’s a bitch. That she has her husband by the balls.
“So you are voting for Dole because your parents’ are
Republicans and expect you to vote for Dole or they will like disown you or
something?”
“I don’t know. I really liked Perot a couple of years ago. I
think he would’ve won if he wouldn’t have dropped out and then dropped back in
at the last second. His reform rhetoric really cracked me up.”
I begin talking in a high-pitched annoyingly nasal nuanced
Perot mock monotone pointing at Megan before telling her she needs to reform.
Megan lips offers what looks like a deflated whimper indicating that she is not
amused or just doesn’t get my addled impersonation.
I hope we are close.
“Hokay, here’s my favorite political joke.” I look at my
Beechwood bride not realizing what I did wrong, “Bob Dole—Boxers or briefs?”
Megan looks at me. I tell her it’s a question. She says she
doesn’t know. I say just answer it. She tells me she has better things to do
with her time then envision presidential candidates in their
undergarments. I tell her it’s a joke.
Just answer the question. I say the name of the republican nominee again and
then I say boxers or briefs. Megan says ok and then says Boxers.
“No,” I say, “Depends.”
I start to laugh. Megan tells me that she doesn’t get it.
Somewhere on the planet an umpire is saying the words strike
three. Megan points at what I metaphysically mistake to be the visiting teams
dugout—the losers locker room.
“It’s right up ahead. The place where we are going.”
***
The coffee shop where we are to dine is planted on the
corner and is called the Golden Basket and is located at the intersection of
Richmond where heavy traffic brushes against the arboretum of suburbia.
I’m
starved. It’ll be good to eat.” I add. Megan remains quiet and continues to
walk faster, into the coffee shop, irked when I try to open the door for her.
The coffee cups are already
stationed upside down on the table as if petrified and stuck while trying to do
a somersault. We request to be seated in the smoking section, next to the
window, near the hustle of traffic. We are seated on the western slant of the establishment,
stippled diffractions of morning light seem to stretch as if in tines across
the taupe interior of the restaurant. Emulating Megan again from last night I take
out two cigarettes at time and place them in my mouth like a dual-dactyled
peace sign before firing them up in the fashion of a Greaser at a fifties
diner. I amicably puff, remove the stem of the cigarette from the right side of
my mouth, hand it to the girl of my dreams who is giving me a look
The
waitresses come over, tilts our coffee cups a full 180 degrees before
respectively filling fluid in each of them. Menus are slapped down in front of
us. I want meat. I want sausage and bacon. I want hash browns. I want eggs
sunny side. I want them all lathered in thick vats of gravy doused with hot
sauce and sprinkled with copious amounts of pepper.
I am male
watch me eat.
Megan holds
the menu up in front of her visage as if slightly fanning herself european tea
room style. She blinks twice at the menu before ordering an omlette. Everything
Megan orders seems to excessively groomed with layers of cheese. When her
entree arrives I make a joke about Lutheranism and lactose intolerance that
makes Megan scowl back at me before taking a swig of coffee. I hold up my knife
and fork as if I am ready to chisel and dissect something in a junior high science
fair experiment when Megan simply looks at me and says, listen, I need to tell you
I wrote you that in the letter, I told you that I am already involved with some
one, if you wanted to come up here just to date me I'm sorry but its just not
going to happen. I'm really sorry David. Truly. I am.
I try not to think about the
picture of the blonde fuck I saw in her wallet in the restaurant the other
night.
***
“I just think that we are really different people, that’s
all.” Megan notes again. We are sitting
on the same sides of the table where we sat last night in the pizza parlor.
Megan continues to drop the bomb. She continues to tell me
how excited she is to see me but how she is already involved with someone else.
“I did
write you a letter,” Megan says. I avert my attention from my hashbrowns and
eggs and look at the abandoned Lutheran day care center across the street.
“But that
hug last night.” I say, before we went to bed. “That hug last night seemed so…”
“It was
just a hug, David.” Megan adds, saying it again, “ It was no big deal. It was
just a normal hug.”
I pour myself more coffee. I chain
smoke. I light the end of a new cigarette from the end of the last one. I
inhale, I stamp out the lit cork. I look into Megan’s eyes. She is not looking
directly at me. I slide even further down in the booth, wondering inside when
any or all of this is ever going to end.
Across the street there is a
Lutheran day care school that looks abandon. Cars spill past with a slight
rumple reminiscent of post-chili supper flatulence. I have already had coffee
this morning, in Megan’s kitchen, listening to her father grunt and nod at
everything I have to say. Now, here I am, smoking, looking at Megan, her face
curved and crinkled like an autumn leaf, wind hitting the side as it rakes down
the street, preparing for the December deluge of coldness invariably that is to
come.
“I just really think that we’re are
really different people. I just think
that. I’m sorry. It’s just the way I feel.”
Megan is telling me again that she’s sorry, that’s its
nothing I’ve done, that I’m really a cool guy and all, that she enjoys writing
letters and laughing on the phone and everything, she is saying that she is
sorry that this is just the way it is, the way it for some reason has been
ordained, in this time and space, and that I have to accept the fact that I
will not be with her because she is involved with someone else.
***
“I just
think we are really different people.” Megan says again. In slow motion. Aimed
straight for the chest.
***
Fifteen years later I harbor no sporadic recollection of the
mile long trek from breakfast back to Megan's house, as if trying to squint
through a translucent tub of overstuffed legos underwater trying to make out the shape of something
invariably cubist and lost. I remember probably slapping down a five spot for a
tip even though Megan is adamant that she has money to at least pay for the
omelette the center of her face just ingested. I remember the sun bleeding
perfectly over head, the perfect lucidity of the perfect autumnal day. I more
than likely chained smoke the first few blocks, toddling, lost, wondering just
what I am doing here with a woman to whom I have thrown the leftover platter of
my heart. Perhaps I was witty or nonchalant. Perhaps I said my intention all
along was not to come up here to date Megan. Perhaps I used the words foster
our friendship or just kick it to hang out. I try not to break down. I try not
to think that this is divine vindication for
running around on Kitty last summer. I can't believe that I am right
next to the girl of my dreams on the most picture-perfect apical autumnal day
and I feel all alone in side the husk of my nineteen year old flesh.
I take a serious drag off my Marlboro light as if in snorkel
fashion.
“I wrote you the letter and told
you that I had a boyfriend.” Megan says, “Why can’t you respect that that I’m
involved with someone else.”
I think of
Kitty Pekowski. I try to convey to her how I was involved with someone else to
but then I realized….
“Realized
what, David! That you were in love with me after reading a few letters? You
hardly know me.”
Megan
always says my first name in twin –syllables, chomping into each sound with
equal vocal accent so that it sounds like
this: DAY-VID. She is enunciating my name the same fashion in which I
stress the addled-entendre of the deli store in the mall where she will work
come less than one weeks time. She is saying my name in the same
gaveling-pummeled verdict declaring way in which I pronounce the name of the
town she has lived in her entire life.
She is not
screaming but the elevated assonance ascribed in her voice has reached the
caliber of admonishing middle school grammarian.
“I mean,
you’ve been promising all summer to come up and visit me. And when you come…”
Megan pauses. She says my first name again, heavily accenting both syllables.
Slowly it feels like my heart is being employed as a tournament dart board and
that Megan is nailing Bullseye upon
every swift barstool throw.
“I’m sorry
David,” Megan says, very firmly, adding that she has no plans to be in a
long-distant relationship with me right now or in the foreseeable future. ‘
“Sorry David,”
She says, before adding that, besides, she is still in high school.
Eventually I try to barter with her.
I ask her if she could ever perceive dating me, hypothetically speaking.
“Hypothetically speaking aye, I'm
involved with someone.” She says, as we amble down towards Beechwood.
“I mean but if you weren't involved, don't you think we have
some sort of rapport. Some sort of almost mystical union?”
“Hypothetically
speaking, bee, I think we're just really different people.
I try to be
poetic. I tell Megan that her smile is the valve that releases every aesthetic
yearning through the faucet of my chest.
“I just think we’re both really different people.” Megan
says again. A thick slab of light shedding its golden hue next to her body. We
are walking past a little park. We trot past a playground where kids dressed in
overalls and delicate attire are screaming, scurrying around in circles,
pushing a spherical merry-go-round into a swift vortex. Climbing up the silver
tongue of the slide while hydrant-sized peers scuttle down, tentatively from
the other end. They are yelling, screaming. From near by, outside the sand
puddles and the wood ships and the gravel, expectant mother coddle their
younger siblings, dandling them, holding them up, pointing to their peers.
There is laughter and there is frolicking and it is October, 1996, Bill Clinton
is once again proclaiming his front name on neatly chopped and weeded lawns,
advertising his campaign.
“I just
think that we’re really different people.” Megan says, once again. I nod my
head in the manner of a half-deflated birthday balloon as it to capitulate
defeat. Exactly one autumn from now I shall be ensconced in my literary bedroom
in the west bluff reading David Foster Wallace and William James and
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus-Logicus Philosophicus, looking down into the
snow-print like alphabetical inky-footprints scattered on the page as the
Austrian philosopher postulates that whereas one cannot speak, therefore one must
remain silent.
what a pleasure to read my friend!
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