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Monday, October 5, 2015
=The Horsemen=
Two men came to my door on horseback this morning. I can't remember the last time even one man came to my door on horseback.
This must be my lucky day, I thought.
The first horseman came with a gift—one of those tchotchkes you put on a shelf and then forget about until you have to dust it. The second horseman came with a great sense of urgency but with no clear object to his urgency. He was just urgent, like a man responding to a false alarm.
He left me with a chaotic, unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach, as if there were somewhere I had to go, some appointment I had to keep, but as far as I could tell, there wasn't.
Later on, toward evening, a couple of girlfriends stopped over and we drank warm cider on the porch. It was autumn and the vines on the back fence were squeezing out the very last of their fruits, like paint from drying tubes.
The night was chilly, things were dying, and soon we'd be flying in silhouette across the moon.
We raised our glasses, toasting ourselves, and celebrating our greatest success. We've cast the entire world under a spell. No one believes in us anymore.
When we catch the scent of bonfires in the crisp air, we feel no more than a bittersweet nostalgia, a delicious coziness. We hunker down and gather our hand-knit ruanas about us like wings. There's no fear anymore.
All considered, our lives could not have worked out better.
This must be my lucky day, I thought.
The first horseman came with a gift—one of those tchotchkes you put on a shelf and then forget about until you have to dust it. The second horseman came with a great sense of urgency but with no clear object to his urgency. He was just urgent, like a man responding to a false alarm.
He left me with a chaotic, unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach, as if there were somewhere I had to go, some appointment I had to keep, but as far as I could tell, there wasn't.
Later on, toward evening, a couple of girlfriends stopped over and we drank warm cider on the porch. It was autumn and the vines on the back fence were squeezing out the very last of their fruits, like paint from drying tubes.
The night was chilly, things were dying, and soon we'd be flying in silhouette across the moon.
We raised our glasses, toasting ourselves, and celebrating our greatest success. We've cast the entire world under a spell. No one believes in us anymore.
When we catch the scent of bonfires in the crisp air, we feel no more than a bittersweet nostalgia, a delicious coziness. We hunker down and gather our hand-knit ruanas about us like wings. There's no fear anymore.
All considered, our lives could not have worked out better.
Sunday, October 4, 2015
=Hotline=
"Don't take it personally," they advised her. "It's not your fault. You followed the protocol. It's devastating, but these things happen. Try to remember the people you've helped."
They advised her to see the shrink they'd retained as a consultant. The one they referred callers to if they didn't have a psychiatrist of their own.
"What you're feeling now is guilt," she was told. "Even though it may feel like a half-dozen other things. You're feeling guilt. And grief. What you are now is a suicide survivor."
They made it sound like a Girl Scout merit badge.
* * *
She was on the phone with him for almost forty-five minutes. She thought she'd talked him passed the crisis. He seemed so calm, so reasonable.
"So you aren't going to hurt yourself now, right?"
"That's right."
"Promise?
"Promise."
"And tomorrow you'll call the number I gave you and talk to Dr. Morgan?"
"…"
"John? Are you still there?
"I asked you if you're going to call Dr. Morgan like we agreed. If you need the number again….
"Talk to me John."
For a moment she thought he had hung up and she just hadn't noticed.
Then he answered her in a voice that sounded strangely far away and in a language it took a while for her to understand.
What he'd done was put the barrel of the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
* * *
"Lady, you've got to choose a stop this time and get off at one of them. I'm taking this bus offline and back to the depot. I can't take you with it."
The driver stood over her, hands on hips, looking annoyed and worried. He didn't want any complications. It had been a long day.
"Lady? Do you hear me?"
"Okay," she said. It was another voice she didn't recognize. "No problem."
The driver shook his head and headed back to the front of the empty bus.
She didn't take her eyes from the window. The rain was spidering down the glass. She looked out the window mesmerized. How could you choose? Every stop looked the same.
* * *
She took the rest of the week off from work. Death in the family, she told her supervisor. It wasn't really a lie. That's what it felt like to her.
It was surprising how well you can get to know a person in less than forty-five minutes. When you strip away all the bullshit and nonsense that fills most of our communication with others.
She felt like she'd gotten to know John better than she knew friends she'd had for years. Better than she knew her own family.
And, still, in the end, she hadn't known him at all.
She spent the long weekend in bed, watching sitcom reruns, game shows and old movies. Anything canned, prepackaged, filmed in the past. Nothing new, nothing unpredictable, no surprises.
She lay in bed all day and flipped through old magazines she'd never a chance to read. She'd brought along a scissors into bed, planning to make collages, but she lost the desire.
She dozed a lot, ate chocolates, ignored the phone. The director of the suicide hotline called several times. He left messages.
Was she okay?
Please call.
They were concerned.
Was she planning to return?
She sent a brief text back.
I'm okay.
I'm taking a break.
Will contact when ready.
Thumbing those terse lines took everything out of her.
She opened the scissors and imagined severing the knot of veins in her wrist, like cutting the strings of a balloon.
Letting her life float away.
Of course, she knew she could never do such a thing.
It was just drama.
She felt guilty, operatic.
She pointed the scissors scoldingly at her reflection in the mirror above the chest of drawers. "This isn't about you," she reminded herself
If she ever did it, it would have to be with pills.
* * *
What was she doing here? She felt like an impostor. A spy. A ghoul.
She felt dirty.
She felt guilty, like a killer returning to the scene of a crime.
If they knew, would they blame her?
The casket was closed, of course. There was a picture by the coffin.
So now she could put a face to the name. Was that a good idea or not?
He hadn't mentioned he'd been in the military. The photograph showed a young man in uniform. He was good-looking in that stripped-down, buzz-cut, all-purpose way all young men in uniform had. A man determined to be of use in this world.
The priest never mentioned it was a suicide. Neither did any of the eulogists. She overheard two mourners whispering out in the vestibule by the coatroom. They were dry-eyed and moralistic. Distant family members. Cousins once-removed. In-laws, maybe.
They moved on to the topic of vacations.
She had prepared a lie in case someone asked who she was.
No one did.
She was like an observer at an aquarium living on the other side of the glass.
* * *
What were his reasons for wanting to die? What reasons had she used to counter them. She couldn't recall them now in any detail. And what did it matter?
It was like a game of chess, it only counted in the playing. Once begun, the game took on a life of its own, a pattern of inevitability.
That's how her brother once described the game, anyway. He was the chess player in the family.
She could never think more than one move at a time. "You'll never be a good player that way," her brother explained to her. "That's not the way masters play. They can look a dozen moves ahead."
How many moves ahead could John see? Maybe it wasn't such a good thing to see too far ahead.
And what was her move now?
* * *
She went to the beach, to the ocean as depleted of symbolism as it was of flounder. She toed his name in the sand with her sneaker and waited for the tide to come in and erase it.
The day was cold, blustery, gray and because there was no god she imagined herself in a movie instead, and where god would have been, she imagined the eye of a camera looking down on the scene.
She was wrong earlier on the bed.
The movie was all about her after all.
John had left the story, wrote himself out on his own.
The camera was following her now.
The imaginary camera.
The imaginary movie.
As a plot point, it made sense, John's suicide.
As a plot point, she could live with it.
It would determine what she would do now.
What would she do?
Go home, she thought.
From high above, panning left to right, the imaginary camera followed.
They advised her to see the shrink they'd retained as a consultant. The one they referred callers to if they didn't have a psychiatrist of their own.
"What you're feeling now is guilt," she was told. "Even though it may feel like a half-dozen other things. You're feeling guilt. And grief. What you are now is a suicide survivor."
They made it sound like a Girl Scout merit badge.
* * *
She was on the phone with him for almost forty-five minutes. She thought she'd talked him passed the crisis. He seemed so calm, so reasonable.
"So you aren't going to hurt yourself now, right?"
"That's right."
"Promise?
"Promise."
"And tomorrow you'll call the number I gave you and talk to Dr. Morgan?"
"…"
"John? Are you still there?
"I asked you if you're going to call Dr. Morgan like we agreed. If you need the number again….
"Talk to me John."
For a moment she thought he had hung up and she just hadn't noticed.
Then he answered her in a voice that sounded strangely far away and in a language it took a while for her to understand.
What he'd done was put the barrel of the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
* * *
"Lady, you've got to choose a stop this time and get off at one of them. I'm taking this bus offline and back to the depot. I can't take you with it."
The driver stood over her, hands on hips, looking annoyed and worried. He didn't want any complications. It had been a long day.
"Lady? Do you hear me?"
"Okay," she said. It was another voice she didn't recognize. "No problem."
The driver shook his head and headed back to the front of the empty bus.
She didn't take her eyes from the window. The rain was spidering down the glass. She looked out the window mesmerized. How could you choose? Every stop looked the same.
* * *
She took the rest of the week off from work. Death in the family, she told her supervisor. It wasn't really a lie. That's what it felt like to her.
It was surprising how well you can get to know a person in less than forty-five minutes. When you strip away all the bullshit and nonsense that fills most of our communication with others.
She felt like she'd gotten to know John better than she knew friends she'd had for years. Better than she knew her own family.
And, still, in the end, she hadn't known him at all.
She spent the long weekend in bed, watching sitcom reruns, game shows and old movies. Anything canned, prepackaged, filmed in the past. Nothing new, nothing unpredictable, no surprises.
She lay in bed all day and flipped through old magazines she'd never a chance to read. She'd brought along a scissors into bed, planning to make collages, but she lost the desire.
She dozed a lot, ate chocolates, ignored the phone. The director of the suicide hotline called several times. He left messages.
Was she okay?
Please call.
They were concerned.
Was she planning to return?
She sent a brief text back.
I'm okay.
I'm taking a break.
Will contact when ready.
Thumbing those terse lines took everything out of her.
She opened the scissors and imagined severing the knot of veins in her wrist, like cutting the strings of a balloon.
Letting her life float away.
Of course, she knew she could never do such a thing.
It was just drama.
She felt guilty, operatic.
She pointed the scissors scoldingly at her reflection in the mirror above the chest of drawers. "This isn't about you," she reminded herself
If she ever did it, it would have to be with pills.
* * *
What was she doing here? She felt like an impostor. A spy. A ghoul.
She felt dirty.
She felt guilty, like a killer returning to the scene of a crime.
If they knew, would they blame her?
The casket was closed, of course. There was a picture by the coffin.
So now she could put a face to the name. Was that a good idea or not?
He hadn't mentioned he'd been in the military. The photograph showed a young man in uniform. He was good-looking in that stripped-down, buzz-cut, all-purpose way all young men in uniform had. A man determined to be of use in this world.
The priest never mentioned it was a suicide. Neither did any of the eulogists. She overheard two mourners whispering out in the vestibule by the coatroom. They were dry-eyed and moralistic. Distant family members. Cousins once-removed. In-laws, maybe.
They moved on to the topic of vacations.
She had prepared a lie in case someone asked who she was.
No one did.
She was like an observer at an aquarium living on the other side of the glass.
* * *
What were his reasons for wanting to die? What reasons had she used to counter them. She couldn't recall them now in any detail. And what did it matter?
It was like a game of chess, it only counted in the playing. Once begun, the game took on a life of its own, a pattern of inevitability.
That's how her brother once described the game, anyway. He was the chess player in the family.
She could never think more than one move at a time. "You'll never be a good player that way," her brother explained to her. "That's not the way masters play. They can look a dozen moves ahead."
How many moves ahead could John see? Maybe it wasn't such a good thing to see too far ahead.
And what was her move now?
* * *
She went to the beach, to the ocean as depleted of symbolism as it was of flounder. She toed his name in the sand with her sneaker and waited for the tide to come in and erase it.
The day was cold, blustery, gray and because there was no god she imagined herself in a movie instead, and where god would have been, she imagined the eye of a camera looking down on the scene.
She was wrong earlier on the bed.
The movie was all about her after all.
John had left the story, wrote himself out on his own.
The camera was following her now.
The imaginary camera.
The imaginary movie.
As a plot point, it made sense, John's suicide.
As a plot point, she could live with it.
It would determine what she would do now.
What would she do?
Go home, she thought.
From high above, panning left to right, the imaginary camera followed.
Saturday, October 3, 2015
=The Gospel According to Gary=
Jesus was getting reckless. As if hanging out with whores, homosexuals, alcoholics, crack addicts, fist-fuckers, coprophiliacs, vomerophiliacs, and meth dealers wasn't already troublesome enough for us, His chosen image handlers.
It got Him bad press from the official organs, and plenty of it, but at least He had plausible deniability. He was ministering.
At least, that's what we called it.
The problem was that His propensity for the low-life progressed. It got worse, harder to whitewash in any honest, unexpurgated gospel, such as the one I was determined to write.
First it was the Nazi tattoos and then it was the kiddie thing.
I tried to warn Him that He was pushing the envelope of this "nothing human is alien to me" thing too far. That it was going to come round and bite Him on His holy ass.
I argued that some sins were best left to the imagination, that some transgressions were bad enough when entertained in theory, that there was no good theological reason to act them out.
But, no, Jesus argued, that was the whole point of the incarnation experience. To experience this shit in the flesh.
He was quite the zealot on this particular point.
So He got Himself inked with two full sleeves of swastikas and flaming skulls and "Kill the Jew" slogans. He suffered the little children to come unto Him and then they suffered Him coming on to them.
Later on, sifting through the papers that survived, Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John were grimly determined to put a positive spin on anything He did and redact the rest. The effort drove at least one of them certifiably insane.
Me, I had to write my conscience, it's always been that way, which is why you've never heard of me or my gospel, which contains the only good news almost nobody wants to hear.
But I was there, remember. They weren't.
The spree killings across the Levant over those three years—I don't even want to go there.
Towards the end, Jesus was hardly making even a minimal effort to cover His bloody tracks in spite of all our desperate pleading. It seemed as if He'd gone completely off His nut, like His old man before Him in certain of the grimmer passages in the Old Testament.
We trembled in fear. Our bowels did loosen, as we put it back then. Maybe it was hereditary. If the Father could work Himself into a cosmic psychopathic homicidal rage over trifles, wipe out entire settlements for being "unclean," men, women, children, all the livestock, every chicken, etc. why not the Son? Maybe the forbidden fruit didn't roll far from the tree, after all.
We hardly dared to voice the suggestion out loud. None of us wanted to believe it.
But instead of toning it down as we gently suggested, as if out of sheer spite and contrariness, with each murder Jesus just grew more and more outrageous. Think Jack-the-Ripper, the Boston Strangler, Hannibal Lecter, and John Wayne Gacey all rolled into one and then dialed up to eleven.
Think that and you still have no idea how bad it got.
He was the Son of God, don't forget. He could do anything a man could do but He could do it better. He could do it infinitely, divinely better and everyone likes to dwell on that. What they don't want to consider is that He could also do it infinitely, infernally worse.
And He did.
"Lord," we begged, "show some care."
Jesus went right on, scattering clues behind Him like mustard seeds, all but writing His ineffable signature on each murder scene, taunting the authorities, rubbing their noses in their human fallibility.
I simply couldn't understand it at the time. It was almost as if He were trying to get caught I remember thinking, and, of course, it becomes quite clear in hindsight that's just exactly what He was trying to do.
But why?
"I have to know in My flesh, in My bones, what it is to be a human being," He once said to me. "The entire rainbow, every shade, the whole enchilada. It's easy just to be the best. But if I'm not also the worst of the worst how can I forgive the worst? You tell them the truth, Gary, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I'm depending on you."
This was before the others threw me out of the inner circle, afraid my conscience would get the better of me and I'd snitch. I was forced to follow from a distance, the thirteenth apostle like the fifth forgotten Beatle, reporting on the aftermath of Christ's grisly rampage of redemption, filing my reports in wax-sealed amphoras and leaving them with the Gnostics who in turn buried them deep below the desert sands.
I kept His secret. It weighed heavily on my soul. But I would never betray Him, I swear to you. I had faith, for what that's worth.
It was, as is commonly known, Judas who ratted him out. The cops had dirt on Judas, some unsavory misdeeds from his past, and were tightening the screws. What's more, they knew he was Christ's number one accomplice, his right hand man.
And it's true. Judas was no saint.
He was right there with the Savior, luring victims, disposing of bodies, aiding and abetting the raping and the butchering. He was Christ's tattoo artist, his partner-in-crime.
But the authorities had a hard-on for Jesus and they were willing to let Judas walk to get to Him—walk right into a noose as it happened. That "suicide" always seemed suspicious to me, but that's another story.
This gospel is about Jesus and how He loves you even if you're a serial-killing nazi child molester.
He loves you because he's been one, too.
He's been where you've been, walked a mile in your shoes. Jesus has been you, whoever you are.
He loves you because He loves Himself and there is literally nothing you could possibly have done that He hasn't done and done a helluva lot more horrifically.
He forgives you because He knows, He really knows what it's like to be human.
He gets it.
He got over it.
He rose from the dead.
And He's here to tell you: You will, too.
It got Him bad press from the official organs, and plenty of it, but at least He had plausible deniability. He was ministering.
At least, that's what we called it.
The problem was that His propensity for the low-life progressed. It got worse, harder to whitewash in any honest, unexpurgated gospel, such as the one I was determined to write.
First it was the Nazi tattoos and then it was the kiddie thing.
I tried to warn Him that He was pushing the envelope of this "nothing human is alien to me" thing too far. That it was going to come round and bite Him on His holy ass.
I argued that some sins were best left to the imagination, that some transgressions were bad enough when entertained in theory, that there was no good theological reason to act them out.
But, no, Jesus argued, that was the whole point of the incarnation experience. To experience this shit in the flesh.
He was quite the zealot on this particular point.
So He got Himself inked with two full sleeves of swastikas and flaming skulls and "Kill the Jew" slogans. He suffered the little children to come unto Him and then they suffered Him coming on to them.
Later on, sifting through the papers that survived, Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John were grimly determined to put a positive spin on anything He did and redact the rest. The effort drove at least one of them certifiably insane.
Me, I had to write my conscience, it's always been that way, which is why you've never heard of me or my gospel, which contains the only good news almost nobody wants to hear.
But I was there, remember. They weren't.
The spree killings across the Levant over those three years—I don't even want to go there.
Towards the end, Jesus was hardly making even a minimal effort to cover His bloody tracks in spite of all our desperate pleading. It seemed as if He'd gone completely off His nut, like His old man before Him in certain of the grimmer passages in the Old Testament.
We trembled in fear. Our bowels did loosen, as we put it back then. Maybe it was hereditary. If the Father could work Himself into a cosmic psychopathic homicidal rage over trifles, wipe out entire settlements for being "unclean," men, women, children, all the livestock, every chicken, etc. why not the Son? Maybe the forbidden fruit didn't roll far from the tree, after all.
We hardly dared to voice the suggestion out loud. None of us wanted to believe it.
But instead of toning it down as we gently suggested, as if out of sheer spite and contrariness, with each murder Jesus just grew more and more outrageous. Think Jack-the-Ripper, the Boston Strangler, Hannibal Lecter, and John Wayne Gacey all rolled into one and then dialed up to eleven.
Think that and you still have no idea how bad it got.
He was the Son of God, don't forget. He could do anything a man could do but He could do it better. He could do it infinitely, divinely better and everyone likes to dwell on that. What they don't want to consider is that He could also do it infinitely, infernally worse.
And He did.
"Lord," we begged, "show some care."
Jesus went right on, scattering clues behind Him like mustard seeds, all but writing His ineffable signature on each murder scene, taunting the authorities, rubbing their noses in their human fallibility.
I simply couldn't understand it at the time. It was almost as if He were trying to get caught I remember thinking, and, of course, it becomes quite clear in hindsight that's just exactly what He was trying to do.
But why?
"I have to know in My flesh, in My bones, what it is to be a human being," He once said to me. "The entire rainbow, every shade, the whole enchilada. It's easy just to be the best. But if I'm not also the worst of the worst how can I forgive the worst? You tell them the truth, Gary, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I'm depending on you."
This was before the others threw me out of the inner circle, afraid my conscience would get the better of me and I'd snitch. I was forced to follow from a distance, the thirteenth apostle like the fifth forgotten Beatle, reporting on the aftermath of Christ's grisly rampage of redemption, filing my reports in wax-sealed amphoras and leaving them with the Gnostics who in turn buried them deep below the desert sands.
I kept His secret. It weighed heavily on my soul. But I would never betray Him, I swear to you. I had faith, for what that's worth.
It was, as is commonly known, Judas who ratted him out. The cops had dirt on Judas, some unsavory misdeeds from his past, and were tightening the screws. What's more, they knew he was Christ's number one accomplice, his right hand man.
And it's true. Judas was no saint.
He was right there with the Savior, luring victims, disposing of bodies, aiding and abetting the raping and the butchering. He was Christ's tattoo artist, his partner-in-crime.
But the authorities had a hard-on for Jesus and they were willing to let Judas walk to get to Him—walk right into a noose as it happened. That "suicide" always seemed suspicious to me, but that's another story.
This gospel is about Jesus and how He loves you even if you're a serial-killing nazi child molester.
He loves you because he's been one, too.
He's been where you've been, walked a mile in your shoes. Jesus has been you, whoever you are.
He loves you because He loves Himself and there is literally nothing you could possibly have done that He hasn't done and done a helluva lot more horrifically.
He forgives you because He knows, He really knows what it's like to be human.
He gets it.
He got over it.
He rose from the dead.
And He's here to tell you: You will, too.
Friday, October 2, 2015
Thursday, October 1, 2015
=Suzanne Mayes=
If I survived, it was not through any reserve of strength, faith, or
determination, not through force of will or love or passion for life, but
through laziness and incompetence and sheer ennui. I survived because I didn’t
care enough. I missed my opportunity. I survived because I failed to kill
myself just as I’d failed at everything else and for all the same reasons. It’s
as simple as that.
=Matrimony: A Puzzle=
"You know what this marriage is like," Jeannie said, breaking the smothering silence that had been brooding over the kitchen like a giant hen's ass squatting above a stone egg. "It's like a relay race in which I can never hand off the baton."
Peter looked up from his bowl of cornflakes.
He thought carefully for a moment before delivering himself of his own metaphor for their not-always-excruciating eleven-year union.
"For me, it's like trying and not being able to come up with a six-letter word for Arab Spring." He was still thinking of the online crossword puzzle he'd been trying work that morning.
Jeannie crunched another wad of cereal and low-fat milk lodged in her cheek. She thought that if she could only come up with an answer to Peter's puzzle she could shut him up, if not for good, at least for a good long time. She could have gotten in the last word at long last.
Not that it would solve her own problem. No, not by a long shot. Nothing would really be solved. There would just be another baton in her fist and another long lap ahead of her.
Peter looked up from his bowl of cornflakes.
He thought carefully for a moment before delivering himself of his own metaphor for their not-always-excruciating eleven-year union.
"For me, it's like trying and not being able to come up with a six-letter word for Arab Spring." He was still thinking of the online crossword puzzle he'd been trying work that morning.
Jeannie crunched another wad of cereal and low-fat milk lodged in her cheek. She thought that if she could only come up with an answer to Peter's puzzle she could shut him up, if not for good, at least for a good long time. She could have gotten in the last word at long last.
Not that it would solve her own problem. No, not by a long shot. Nothing would really be solved. There would just be another baton in her fist and another long lap ahead of her.
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