15
Triumphs, like helium-filled balloons that come with them, never last long. Something, be it another gas or a porous surface, something, always brings the balloons and the triumphant into a shrunken, fallen state. It is the nature of triumph. For J, a weekend of forgetting Matty completely was probably not going to sit well, not since they had been through quite a few rocky patches recently. Arguably her recent rocks had been more like boulders of infidelity, but that wasn’t an argument J was prepared to make.
Nervously, he called her at work. She was too busy to talk, which he had learned in Matty-ease meant that she was too busy to talk. He took that as an encouraging omen. People tend to make times for things like breaking hearts, screaming matches, and even silent treatment. J had only received, “I’m too busy to talk. We’ll talk later.” It wasn’t a warm robe and a cup of Irish Breakfast tea, but under the circumstances he considered it a pretty warm reception. Maybe she hadn’t noticed that he hadn’t noticed, J thought as his optimism grew to unreasonable proportions.
That night when J stopped by Matty’s, she seemed unconcerned about the past weekend. She seemed unconcerned about almost everything. J looked around suspiciously wondering if the government had replaced her with a robot in an effort to destroy him. He saw no evidence to the contrary, save one bottle of Merlot, three-quarters of the way empty. That could explain the dreamy look in her eyes and her stoic calm, but J was unable to immediately abandon his robot assassin conspiracy delusions. Robot assassin conspiracy delusions can be some of the hardest delusions to shake and no one knew that better than J, but sometimes the simplest explanation really is the best one.
“Matty,” J whispered softly.
She smiled placidly. J looked deep into her eyes for any sign of mechanical inner-workings, but the Matty he knew seemed to be intact albeit in a land far far away.
“Matty?” J whispered again.
“Shh,” she said as she moved her index finger to his lips. He puckered slightly and kissed her finger. “Roughday” she slurred as the glaze of her eyes lifted slightly and she smiled. The smile melted J’s heart and his one goal in life became to press his lips against hers. Softly, tenderly, he and Matty kissed. Their lips pressed out all the recent anger and all the recent pain between the muffled smacks of soft moist patches of pink. Murmuring her enjoyment, Matty’s mouth with assistance from her tongue and larynx formed a single word “mmmmmmMarc,” she said softly. J heard and the kissing ceased. He closed his eyes and concentrated. Had he just heard a Marc in that murmur? Or was his imagination acting up? These were important questions he was trying to answer as Matty’s lips were seeking his out, but like a ski rental shop in the summer, J found the answers and closed for business. Uninhibited, drunken Matty had just whispered the name of the cheater while kissing him. He wasn’t sure she even realized it. Anger bubbled inside of him. His plans to attack MegaCorps solidified. His plans to kiss Matty were put on an indefinite hold. She didn’t seem to mind. She was content to curl up next to J and absorb his body heat. He watched her drift off to sleep. Asleep she was so perfect. Her lips were like unsalted gummi worms, the fire in her eyes was masked by her lids, the little freckles on the top of her cheeks like stars in the olive skin tone sky. The problem was never and had never been about J’s attraction to Matty. It was unending, undying, as permanent as the Styrofoam not decomposing in the landfills. Like that Styrofoam, it was surrounded by heaps of garbage that nobody really knew what to do with, so it just piled higher and higher and no matter how biodegradable it was the heaps just seemed to grow more mountainous and more insurmountable.
Matty drifted off into a happy drunken slumber. J unhooked her bra and craftily, but asexually removed it from the armhole of her shirt. It was a skill he had picked up that he occasionally found useful. J dropped the bra and scooped Matty up as tenderly as he could. Carefully and quietly he carried her to her bed. Balancing Matty with one arm and his knee, he pulled down her bedspread and then slowly slid her tiny body under the covers. He pulled the sheets up to her chin and gave her one last pained but longing look as he showed himself out.
Deflated, J walked slowly to Sid’s. His mind was clouded with inner conflict. Good sense debated whatever it was that his heart was crying out. And for once good sense seemed to be winning. If it was in fact good sense who was endorsing a subversive course of action, one which included a demonstration at Ned’s, now Marc’s place of employment MegaCorps LLC inc. J would need the team for this one, but first more research was in order. Tomorrow he’d hit the library, he thought with a yawn. It wouldn’t hurt if he could find someone on the inside either.
MegaCorps was ugly like most big organizations. They were bogged down by bureaucracy, they had some fishy deals, and some fishier leadership, but basically J couldn’t find anything that he could rally around. Well, J could rally around his vengeful agenda against one employee, but he couldn’t find anything that Sid, Sherrie or Ben could rally around. He briefly considered telling them that, but he couldn’t bring himself to admit that he wanted them there for his personal vendetta. J got to Sherri first.
“…I mean, they don’t even recycle,” he told her with disdain. “A huge organization like that just chewing through trees without a care. It’s disgusting.” Then he slipped in “And one of the reasons we should go there and protest.”
Sherri looked a little skeptical. Recycling was one of her pet projects but it was strange that J had come to her job to make such a plea.
J sensed her hesitation.
“I was walking by and just thought you would want to know what I was thinking,” he said with a smile so genuine it nearly made Sherri blush.
She was converted. Now he had to talk Ben into it and find a way to keep the two of them from talking. It would be tricky, but not beyond the manipulative means of J. He waited for evening and caught Ben after a day of work. Work always wore out Ben’s soul and made him a little duller, a little less sharp. Today was no exception.
“Ben. Sherri approached me about a demonstration at MegaCorps. She said you’d be totally down for it, but she didn’t want me telling you it was her idea. Something about being concerned that your relationship would interfere with things. Whatever.” J said, “The deal is, they have immigrant cafeteria workers who we think are being mistreated among other things.”
Nothing teed Ben off more than immigrants being mistreated. He was 1/8 Asian from his father’s side and had seen his grandparents harassed and harangued for everything from buying groceries at the wrong store to walking in the park. The hair on his neck stood straight up and he angrily nodded his approval.
That left only Sid to convince. J had a feeling Sid would be an easy sell. The loyalty he cultivated was about to come in handy. In as many uncertain terms as he could compile he explained to Sid the importance of a MegaCorps demonstration. Sid’s eyebrows were scrunched in confusion through most of J’s speech, but he heard and appreciated the end result. J wanted a demonstration at MegaCorps. He wanted it from somewhere deep inside, Sid could see that. He was more than willing to be a help in any way possible.
Sometimes Sid amazed J.
The demonstration had originally involved a complete office power shutdown, computer viruses, and the destruction of all snack machines. Get them where it hurts, the sweet tooth. J hadn’t been able to find a man on the inside. He’d barely been able to come up with more than a rough sketch of the inside. His original intent had also included a provision to make Marc’s life a little more hellish, he hadn’t decided how yet- red ants, a wire tap, something along those lines; whatever lines it is where red ants and wire taps cross. Before it was too late he realized that the demonstration was becoming too involved and any direct personal attack on Marc would be so easily traced by Matty that it just wasn’t worth it. He couldn’t back out though. Sherri and Ben were fired up and Sid was willing. He had no choice but to revise his plan. That’s when he came up with the elevator sit-in. It was a statement, he’d figure out what statement later. It sounded legitimate and he thought he could convince the others that it was the way to go. When he told them of the plan to have an elevator sit-in, they weren’t the least bit skeptical. They followed their leader from the penthouse to the basement and to all the floors in between. Success was not part of the floor plan.
If time is linear and it’s all about marching along in step down a path to a final destination, passing billboards along the way that say things like, “Adulthood 5 miles” and “Next left for emotional maturity” and “Exit here and you’ll grow out of it.” then this story had been winding around and around a cloverleaf for quite a while. Now it’s time to get on the freeway and drive like mad, less than five miles over the pre-determined speed limit, of course.
If time is not linear and things happen as they happen and then humans plot them on a timeline so that they can be more easily digested by the intellectual stomachs in our noggins, then this story continues as before.
“What do you mean we aren’t distracted enough?” Sid asked skeptically.
Distractedly J answered, “In a minute.”
J thought about his recent setbacks and how more and more they were feeling like failures. His efforts were hollow. He’d just undertaken a half-hearted stab at revenge and he’d roped the people that cared about him and that cared about the state of the world in with him. For the first time in his life he felt like maybe he was holding Sid, Sherri and Ben back, rather than someone holding him back. He didn’t like the feeling at all. It tugged at his insides like his pancreas had been weighted with dumbbells. He had an overwhelming desire to curl up into the fetal position.
Sid sat by waiting for a plan.
It’s not that a plan was not gestating at that very moment, but in his desire to be fetal something had reminded him of his mother. He couldn’t tell what. It may have been a combination of smells- the intermingling of Sid’s dryer sheets with the model glue that was drying on the table. It may have been a sound, or the combination of all his senses landing on something familiar all at once. It could have been that at that moment his mother was thinking so hard about her little Joseph that the universe had no choice but to summon him. It could have been the thought of the fetal position. Whatever it was, J had a powerful longing to contact his mother and by extension his father. They hadn’t spoken in years. He didn’t know what he could possibly say, but the earlier bitterness and resentment had just vanished like a puff of air. It was out there somewhere floating through the atmosphere, but it was no longer attached to J, no longer dragging him or pushing him in any direction. It’s hard to say where and when forgiveness will decide to pop out, like those little arcade weasels, but different than the weasels, forgiveness didn’t require a pounding with an oversized hammer, it only required that J consider it and when he was ready act on it. At the moment he was considering. Action would come later.
Sid was waiting patiently, staring at J like a little child waiting to go to the circus but afraid to be scolded.
J noticed his eager eyes first.
“You’re a good guy, Sid.” He stated “Do you ever wonder if what we’re doing is worth it?”
“No.” Sid replied matter-of-factly.
J was surprised at the speed and brevity of Sid’s answer. His mouth opened to ask a follow up question, but he could only form letters without sound. His lips readied for the H of how and then the w of what, but only silence came out.
Sid could see J struggling and he took some satisfaction in it.
“I only mean that we’re trying. Look at how many people go through their lives meaning to make a difference and then lying on their deathbeds without affecting much of anything. We may not always be successful. We may not always be right, but we’re taking what we believe in and we’re acting on it.” Sid explained.
J contemplated Sid’s speech.
“J,” Sid whispered, “I don’t have a lot, but I have this” he gestured broadly indicating his apartment and his kitchen and J. “even if it doesn’t last. It’s something,” he trailed off.
J looked perplexed. He was searching for the things Sid had indicated in his gesture. He saw them of course, but he didn’t have them, not like he wanted them. And he wasn’t sure Sid did either.
J stood to leave.
“What about the plan?” Sid asked.
“I don’t have it yet. I’ve got to think some more.” J started out the door and then stopped. “While I’m gone think about what you really want, Sid. Will you do that?”
Sid shrugged his shoulders and J gave him a wave as he left.
J needed to talk to somebody and he again thought of his mother. As he walked home under the speckled sky and blue-gray haze of light pollution, the idea of calling seemed logical until he realized that he couldn’t remember the phone number. He stood by a pay phone and stared at the key pad. He stopped and started several times. To call was to dip into his past, to not call was to continue to ignore his family. It seemed that calling would not fill the void he felt, but to not call only pulled at the seams of the void until it ripped wide open.
Settling his nerves, he took a deep breath and let his fingers do the walking. They worked with his brain to conjure up the digits from his childhood. J couldn’t have written the number on paper. He couldn’t have said it out loud. He didn’t know it that well, but to dial the phone, to have the keypad in front of him he was able to place the call.
“The call you have made cannot be completed,” he heard from a digital woman somewhere out there in the digital world. “Please insert seventy five cents to complete your call.”
“Seventy five cents?!” he hollered as he fished in his pockets for some change.
There was J, looking like a late twenty-something hobo with a well trimmed goatee, sans cell, sans steady job, sans family standing on a street in Cincinnati trying to reach out and touch someone, but looking more and more like MC Hammer doing a dance with his hand in his pants, trying to dig up the required change. He managed to scrounge three quarters from the depths of his pockets and he popped them in and dialed again.
The phone rang and rang and rang again. In five rings, J had time to consider the following: his parents could be asleep, they could have moved, they could have died, they could be taking a cruise, they could be out searching for him, they could be playing gin rummy with the neighbors, they could be on their way to the phone and J had no idea what he was going to say if they answered, maybe he didn’t want them to answer, maybe this was a foolish mistake, maybe they no longer wanted to talk to him, it’s not like conversation had ever been that enjoyable for them either. As he started to give up and subsequently hang up, the ringing stopped and was replaced by a tired and shaky, “Hello?”
“Ma?” came his much younger sounding but just as shaky reply.
Silence raced up and down the telephone lines that stretched from the Southern side of Ohio to the Western side of Missouri.
16 could be the best section
Nervously, he called her at work. She was too busy to talk, which he had learned in Matty-ease meant that she was too busy to talk. He took that as an encouraging omen. People tend to make times for things like breaking hearts, screaming matches, and even silent treatment. J had only received, “I’m too busy to talk. We’ll talk later.” It wasn’t a warm robe and a cup of Irish Breakfast tea, but under the circumstances he considered it a pretty warm reception. Maybe she hadn’t noticed that he hadn’t noticed, J thought as his optimism grew to unreasonable proportions.
That night when J stopped by Matty’s, she seemed unconcerned about the past weekend. She seemed unconcerned about almost everything. J looked around suspiciously wondering if the government had replaced her with a robot in an effort to destroy him. He saw no evidence to the contrary, save one bottle of Merlot, three-quarters of the way empty. That could explain the dreamy look in her eyes and her stoic calm, but J was unable to immediately abandon his robot assassin conspiracy delusions. Robot assassin conspiracy delusions can be some of the hardest delusions to shake and no one knew that better than J, but sometimes the simplest explanation really is the best one.
“Matty,” J whispered softly.
She smiled placidly. J looked deep into her eyes for any sign of mechanical inner-workings, but the Matty he knew seemed to be intact albeit in a land far far away.
“Matty?” J whispered again.
“Shh,” she said as she moved her index finger to his lips. He puckered slightly and kissed her finger. “Roughday” she slurred as the glaze of her eyes lifted slightly and she smiled. The smile melted J’s heart and his one goal in life became to press his lips against hers. Softly, tenderly, he and Matty kissed. Their lips pressed out all the recent anger and all the recent pain between the muffled smacks of soft moist patches of pink. Murmuring her enjoyment, Matty’s mouth with assistance from her tongue and larynx formed a single word “mmmmmmMarc,” she said softly. J heard and the kissing ceased. He closed his eyes and concentrated. Had he just heard a Marc in that murmur? Or was his imagination acting up? These were important questions he was trying to answer as Matty’s lips were seeking his out, but like a ski rental shop in the summer, J found the answers and closed for business. Uninhibited, drunken Matty had just whispered the name of the cheater while kissing him. He wasn’t sure she even realized it. Anger bubbled inside of him. His plans to attack MegaCorps solidified. His plans to kiss Matty were put on an indefinite hold. She didn’t seem to mind. She was content to curl up next to J and absorb his body heat. He watched her drift off to sleep. Asleep she was so perfect. Her lips were like unsalted gummi worms, the fire in her eyes was masked by her lids, the little freckles on the top of her cheeks like stars in the olive skin tone sky. The problem was never and had never been about J’s attraction to Matty. It was unending, undying, as permanent as the Styrofoam not decomposing in the landfills. Like that Styrofoam, it was surrounded by heaps of garbage that nobody really knew what to do with, so it just piled higher and higher and no matter how biodegradable it was the heaps just seemed to grow more mountainous and more insurmountable.
Matty drifted off into a happy drunken slumber. J unhooked her bra and craftily, but asexually removed it from the armhole of her shirt. It was a skill he had picked up that he occasionally found useful. J dropped the bra and scooped Matty up as tenderly as he could. Carefully and quietly he carried her to her bed. Balancing Matty with one arm and his knee, he pulled down her bedspread and then slowly slid her tiny body under the covers. He pulled the sheets up to her chin and gave her one last pained but longing look as he showed himself out.
Deflated, J walked slowly to Sid’s. His mind was clouded with inner conflict. Good sense debated whatever it was that his heart was crying out. And for once good sense seemed to be winning. If it was in fact good sense who was endorsing a subversive course of action, one which included a demonstration at Ned’s, now Marc’s place of employment MegaCorps LLC inc. J would need the team for this one, but first more research was in order. Tomorrow he’d hit the library, he thought with a yawn. It wouldn’t hurt if he could find someone on the inside either.
MegaCorps was ugly like most big organizations. They were bogged down by bureaucracy, they had some fishy deals, and some fishier leadership, but basically J couldn’t find anything that he could rally around. Well, J could rally around his vengeful agenda against one employee, but he couldn’t find anything that Sid, Sherrie or Ben could rally around. He briefly considered telling them that, but he couldn’t bring himself to admit that he wanted them there for his personal vendetta. J got to Sherri first.
“…I mean, they don’t even recycle,” he told her with disdain. “A huge organization like that just chewing through trees without a care. It’s disgusting.” Then he slipped in “And one of the reasons we should go there and protest.”
Sherri looked a little skeptical. Recycling was one of her pet projects but it was strange that J had come to her job to make such a plea.
J sensed her hesitation.
“I was walking by and just thought you would want to know what I was thinking,” he said with a smile so genuine it nearly made Sherri blush.
She was converted. Now he had to talk Ben into it and find a way to keep the two of them from talking. It would be tricky, but not beyond the manipulative means of J. He waited for evening and caught Ben after a day of work. Work always wore out Ben’s soul and made him a little duller, a little less sharp. Today was no exception.
“Ben. Sherri approached me about a demonstration at MegaCorps. She said you’d be totally down for it, but she didn’t want me telling you it was her idea. Something about being concerned that your relationship would interfere with things. Whatever.” J said, “The deal is, they have immigrant cafeteria workers who we think are being mistreated among other things.”
Nothing teed Ben off more than immigrants being mistreated. He was 1/8 Asian from his father’s side and had seen his grandparents harassed and harangued for everything from buying groceries at the wrong store to walking in the park. The hair on his neck stood straight up and he angrily nodded his approval.
That left only Sid to convince. J had a feeling Sid would be an easy sell. The loyalty he cultivated was about to come in handy. In as many uncertain terms as he could compile he explained to Sid the importance of a MegaCorps demonstration. Sid’s eyebrows were scrunched in confusion through most of J’s speech, but he heard and appreciated the end result. J wanted a demonstration at MegaCorps. He wanted it from somewhere deep inside, Sid could see that. He was more than willing to be a help in any way possible.
Sometimes Sid amazed J.
The demonstration had originally involved a complete office power shutdown, computer viruses, and the destruction of all snack machines. Get them where it hurts, the sweet tooth. J hadn’t been able to find a man on the inside. He’d barely been able to come up with more than a rough sketch of the inside. His original intent had also included a provision to make Marc’s life a little more hellish, he hadn’t decided how yet- red ants, a wire tap, something along those lines; whatever lines it is where red ants and wire taps cross. Before it was too late he realized that the demonstration was becoming too involved and any direct personal attack on Marc would be so easily traced by Matty that it just wasn’t worth it. He couldn’t back out though. Sherri and Ben were fired up and Sid was willing. He had no choice but to revise his plan. That’s when he came up with the elevator sit-in. It was a statement, he’d figure out what statement later. It sounded legitimate and he thought he could convince the others that it was the way to go. When he told them of the plan to have an elevator sit-in, they weren’t the least bit skeptical. They followed their leader from the penthouse to the basement and to all the floors in between. Success was not part of the floor plan.
If time is linear and it’s all about marching along in step down a path to a final destination, passing billboards along the way that say things like, “Adulthood 5 miles” and “Next left for emotional maturity” and “Exit here and you’ll grow out of it.” then this story had been winding around and around a cloverleaf for quite a while. Now it’s time to get on the freeway and drive like mad, less than five miles over the pre-determined speed limit, of course.
If time is not linear and things happen as they happen and then humans plot them on a timeline so that they can be more easily digested by the intellectual stomachs in our noggins, then this story continues as before.
“What do you mean we aren’t distracted enough?” Sid asked skeptically.
Distractedly J answered, “In a minute.”
J thought about his recent setbacks and how more and more they were feeling like failures. His efforts were hollow. He’d just undertaken a half-hearted stab at revenge and he’d roped the people that cared about him and that cared about the state of the world in with him. For the first time in his life he felt like maybe he was holding Sid, Sherri and Ben back, rather than someone holding him back. He didn’t like the feeling at all. It tugged at his insides like his pancreas had been weighted with dumbbells. He had an overwhelming desire to curl up into the fetal position.
Sid sat by waiting for a plan.
It’s not that a plan was not gestating at that very moment, but in his desire to be fetal something had reminded him of his mother. He couldn’t tell what. It may have been a combination of smells- the intermingling of Sid’s dryer sheets with the model glue that was drying on the table. It may have been a sound, or the combination of all his senses landing on something familiar all at once. It could have been that at that moment his mother was thinking so hard about her little Joseph that the universe had no choice but to summon him. It could have been the thought of the fetal position. Whatever it was, J had a powerful longing to contact his mother and by extension his father. They hadn’t spoken in years. He didn’t know what he could possibly say, but the earlier bitterness and resentment had just vanished like a puff of air. It was out there somewhere floating through the atmosphere, but it was no longer attached to J, no longer dragging him or pushing him in any direction. It’s hard to say where and when forgiveness will decide to pop out, like those little arcade weasels, but different than the weasels, forgiveness didn’t require a pounding with an oversized hammer, it only required that J consider it and when he was ready act on it. At the moment he was considering. Action would come later.
Sid was waiting patiently, staring at J like a little child waiting to go to the circus but afraid to be scolded.
J noticed his eager eyes first.
“You’re a good guy, Sid.” He stated “Do you ever wonder if what we’re doing is worth it?”
“No.” Sid replied matter-of-factly.
J was surprised at the speed and brevity of Sid’s answer. His mouth opened to ask a follow up question, but he could only form letters without sound. His lips readied for the H of how and then the w of what, but only silence came out.
Sid could see J struggling and he took some satisfaction in it.
“I only mean that we’re trying. Look at how many people go through their lives meaning to make a difference and then lying on their deathbeds without affecting much of anything. We may not always be successful. We may not always be right, but we’re taking what we believe in and we’re acting on it.” Sid explained.
J contemplated Sid’s speech.
“J,” Sid whispered, “I don’t have a lot, but I have this” he gestured broadly indicating his apartment and his kitchen and J. “even if it doesn’t last. It’s something,” he trailed off.
J looked perplexed. He was searching for the things Sid had indicated in his gesture. He saw them of course, but he didn’t have them, not like he wanted them. And he wasn’t sure Sid did either.
J stood to leave.
“What about the plan?” Sid asked.
“I don’t have it yet. I’ve got to think some more.” J started out the door and then stopped. “While I’m gone think about what you really want, Sid. Will you do that?”
Sid shrugged his shoulders and J gave him a wave as he left.
J needed to talk to somebody and he again thought of his mother. As he walked home under the speckled sky and blue-gray haze of light pollution, the idea of calling seemed logical until he realized that he couldn’t remember the phone number. He stood by a pay phone and stared at the key pad. He stopped and started several times. To call was to dip into his past, to not call was to continue to ignore his family. It seemed that calling would not fill the void he felt, but to not call only pulled at the seams of the void until it ripped wide open.
Settling his nerves, he took a deep breath and let his fingers do the walking. They worked with his brain to conjure up the digits from his childhood. J couldn’t have written the number on paper. He couldn’t have said it out loud. He didn’t know it that well, but to dial the phone, to have the keypad in front of him he was able to place the call.
“The call you have made cannot be completed,” he heard from a digital woman somewhere out there in the digital world. “Please insert seventy five cents to complete your call.”
“Seventy five cents?!” he hollered as he fished in his pockets for some change.
There was J, looking like a late twenty-something hobo with a well trimmed goatee, sans cell, sans steady job, sans family standing on a street in Cincinnati trying to reach out and touch someone, but looking more and more like MC Hammer doing a dance with his hand in his pants, trying to dig up the required change. He managed to scrounge three quarters from the depths of his pockets and he popped them in and dialed again.
The phone rang and rang and rang again. In five rings, J had time to consider the following: his parents could be asleep, they could have moved, they could have died, they could be taking a cruise, they could be out searching for him, they could be playing gin rummy with the neighbors, they could be on their way to the phone and J had no idea what he was going to say if they answered, maybe he didn’t want them to answer, maybe this was a foolish mistake, maybe they no longer wanted to talk to him, it’s not like conversation had ever been that enjoyable for them either. As he started to give up and subsequently hang up, the ringing stopped and was replaced by a tired and shaky, “Hello?”
“Ma?” came his much younger sounding but just as shaky reply.
Silence raced up and down the telephone lines that stretched from the Southern side of Ohio to the Western side of Missouri.
16 could be the best section
posted by David at 9:57 PM
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