7
“My Gawd,” Sherri gasped as she saw the wreck J was in. It’s very hard to look presentable after almost freezing to death, spending the night in a homeless shelter, and then catching your girlfriend, ex-girlfriend; catching that bitch with some strange bloke, it was enough to make him so tense that he’d nearly turned British. He recounted the evening in fits and starts, Sid and Sherri hanging on every word, while Ben pretended to be preoccupied with anything in reach. He wasn’t really interested in J’s sob story. He was friends with J, but not the kind of friends where emotion was expressed, or whenever possible even admitted. He just wasn’t into this level of sharing. Sid and Sherrie, however, fed off it like rabid dogs, chiming in with “That whore.” and “I’m aghast.” wherever appropriate. Ben had muttered, “Who says ‘I’m aghast?’ geez.” But everyone had ignored him.
As J regained his strength and his indignation, his sputters turned to complete sentences and his gestures took on a more fluid and dramatic range. On his third retelling of the incident, he waved his arms wildly and shook his fists as he said, “...And she just stood there wearing my shirt and smiling at me as if we’d passed on the street and she found me marginally cute. This woman, this wench..” J’s sweeping backhand across the table sent dishes spinning onto the floor with a crash that startled even Ben who had become enraptured by the can opener under Sid’s cabinets.
Everything stood still for a moment. A revitalized and animated J froze in surprise and watched as the bowl bounced off the floor before cracking into pieces. The four shocked friends cracked up soon after.
“I’m sorry,” J said, “There are better outlets for this energy. Let’s get back to work.” Sid went to work cleaning up the mess, but all three smiled in relief. They weren’t use to so much social interaction with each other, or much of anybody for that matter.
Ben saw his opportunity to get things back on track and far away from all of this wishy-washy stuff. “Sherrie has done a great job with the Reading Rocks campaign. It’s been successful and exciting and we should be able to wrap it up nicely soon,” he flashed Sherrie his big white teeth and she could no longer doubt his sincerity, or feel her knees for that matter. “If it’s all right with everyone I have a proposal for our next project. It’ll mean getting our hands a little dirty again, but I think it could be very effective.”
J may have focused their energies again, but in the back of his own mind he couldn’t escape the guy who’d been in his girlfriend’s house, worse the guy who had probably been in his girlfriend. He wondered what revenge would feel like. He wondered what torture would feel like. He wondered, but he waited. There were more pressing issues. The slow sort of agony J wanted to inflict could wait. They had a “Reading Rocks” campaign to wrap up and Christmas to deal with. What a month, thought J.
When no one registered any opposition Ben strode over to the wall. He’d obviously given this moment some thought. “Now, our hit on Crazy Ralph was well executed, clever, and very successful.” J was impressed, he’d had no idea that Ben harbored any leadership ability. He knew he was useful, but he’d never considered Ben to be an idea man. This month was looking to be educational for more than just the school kids. “I think if we work more patiently this time, we can wreak havoc on the retailers during the post-holiday rush. I propose we all take retail jobs, and then after earning the trust of our coworkers, we start to siphon off a portion of each day’s till into a fund which we can then donate to the Democratic party.”
Sid, Sherrie, and J stood dumbfounded. J then realized the difference between good introductions and good leadership. Ben was proposing not only retail work, which in and of itself was J’s personal hell, but then ourright stealing to support a party that had moved so far to the middle that J could barely stomach them anymore. It was enough to make J’s head fly right off. Sid obviously felt the same way because he chimed in, “Um. Ben.” he said as he tugged on his earlobe. “That’s illegal.” he muttered as he looked straight down at Ben’s shoes.
Ben’s chest puffed up and his momentary show of diplomacy and class left him as fast as the redness in his flustered face arrived. He stepped in Sid’s direction challenging him directly. “We do illegal stuff,” Ben whined, his earlier compsure melting away to reveal a bullied 11-year old boy.
Rather than watch Ben and Sid end up in some poor excuse of fist-a-cuffs probably involving a lot of slapping and squealing, J slid between them and announced, “Ben’s right. Our next project should be a patient one. His approach is very thoughtful, but if I may just offer a slightly different take on where we should target our energies,” as J said “our energies” he leaned in and lowered his voice conspiratorially, successfully pulling the group together as if he were a puppeteer and they marionettes. “It’s not really retail that drives this mad consumerism of this season, it’s money,” he explained like a wizened sociology professor lecturing a freshman class. “And where can we make a statement about money?” he asked feigning bewilderment.
“Banks,” Ben exclaimed as if he’d hatched the whole plan himself, “We’ll hit the banks.”
“Excellent,” said J, “and we’ll do it without going to jail. We’re going to need some supplies and one of us will need to find an in at a local bank.”
They sat down at the table to plan the attack on consumerism like one big happy family settling down for Christmas dinner. For J, this was better than Christmas could ever be again. This was his family these days, and the fight against injustice had become his celebration of a birth, the birth just happened to be his own.
The planning for “Operation: The Color of Money” took longer than anyone had anticipated. It was slowed by a number of factors. “Reading Rocks” had wrapped up as a huge success just before Winter break. The local talent Ben had found had the students and teachers rollicking in the aisles of every auditorium. Central High had come out on top, chewing through 30 pages per student per day. The PTAs of every school arranged for district-wide celebrations in honor of everyone’s success. In terms of good will and the use of entirely legal means it was a success like J had never seen. He was used to a more subversive style, but he wasn’t one to complain, especially not with the glow that it created in Sherrie. He’d never seen her so confident. She was considering a return to graduate school.
Despite the successes and his already nasty frozen tumble into that less-than-pleasant place in his mind, Christmas still managed to dampen his spirits. Sid went home to Nebraska to be with his family. Ben headed up to Cleveland to be with his older brother. Sherrie offered to take J to Ann Arbor to be with her and her parents, but J politely declined. He didn’t even have Matty to commiserate with this year.
Ah Matty, even the thought of her made J wince in pain. He knew it wasn’t fair to feel so betrayed, that he’d probably deserved it long ago, but it still ate him up inside. He’d spent the better part of Christmas eve eve balled up on the floor in tears. The weight of everything had become too much. He hadn’t had temp work in a few weeks. The group was out of town. He had no one during the worst holiday of the year, save the absolutely asinine Arbor Day. J was all for trees, but wood and holidays just don’t mix. Don’t get him started, anyone who did got a full twenty minute lecture on the absurdity of it all. Plus J hated John Denver. He’d like to shove a Rocky Top right up that man’s anus. His anger was really just a distraction from the abject loneliness he felt as he lay curled in the fetal position on his floor, a thermos of chicken soup near his head and a space heater keeping the room basked in a cozy orange glow.
A man of action like J can only spend so long in the fetal position, with tears in his eyes and pain on his mind. A good night’s rest brought him to the realization that he should spend Christmas at the McCormick house. That morning he made a quick stop at the Quik-stop, picking up every last stick of jerky, gum, and anything else he could find for cheap. He piled it all in a bag as he silently waved good-bye to all but the very last of his savings. January and temp work would need to be synonymous if J was to avoid making McCormick’s his permanent residence. He loved the place, it was where he planned to spend this Christmas after all, but he always had the worst dreams there.
As he walked along toward McCormick’s a smile spread across his face as he realized that on Christmas he was most at home with the homeless. The bag full of junk food lifted his spirits as if a sugar high could be culled through osmosis. It wasn’t a sugar high that put the spring in his step; it was knowing that he was a low-rent Santa Claus. A low-rent Santa Claus with just enough money to make it through New Year’s Day, so long as he passed on the champagne and sipped from the glass of charity and good luck.
It was something about the naked trees, stiffly blowing in the breeze that reminded J of Matty. Surprisingly it wasn’t the nakedness that got him thinking. It was the limited range of motion. J remembered when Matty had first moved back to Cincinnati from that year in Washington D.C. He remembered how stiff and cold he felt then even though the weather was nowhere near stiff or cold. It was almost like she had taken away his ability to function. He solderied on in D.C. for another month. He attended rallies, but he found himself devoid of passion. No one around was a close enough friend to say anything. Protestors aren’t likely to question motives as long as they’ve got the numbers on their side. J became a number. He didn’t realize it at first. He was convinced that what he’d shared with Matty had just been a fling, and not of much consequence. One day, in the midst of a march around the Capitol, J listened to the impassioned pleas around him. He looked at the man next to him, with his full beard and long hair, he was screaming at the top of his lungs that Congress was stealing his rights. He could see passion in the man’s eyes. Every movement, every quiver of the man’s larynx seemed to have more feeling than J had in his whole body. The man’s desire to end the worthless bureacracy of Congress was this man’s being. J wasn’t sure he had any being at that moment. He looked to the other side. He saw an older woman, not his mom’s age even, who was banging a drum in time with the chants of those around her. She looked fierce, almost tribal. Everywhere he looked, he saw people who seemed to know what mattered, they seemed to know it deep down in their cores, but the only thing J could think of that mattered that day was not the bureacracy of Congress; it wasn’t losing his rights, or free speech, or illegal presidential actions. It wasn’t anything at all. Nothing mattered to J. As the march carried on, J slipped away to his crack house in Eastern Market, the chants pushing him along. As soon as he got in the door, he had telephoned Matty. He’d told her that nothing mattered to him. And if nothing mattered, he might as well be with her. Matty hadn’t been terribly impressed, but J moved back to Cincnnati the next week anyway. For a while after his move he’d joined what his parents might have called “responsible society”. He worked construction for a local outfit that sometimes paid its workers in cash. “Responsible society” could be a very gray area. It was a nice set-up for him, because even when nothing mattered, he prefered to stick it to the man if possible.
He lived with Matty briefly during those times he recalled as his walk brought him to McCormick’s door.
Christmas went as smooth as it could go considering that J had no family except by a stretch of the imagination McCormick; considering that Christmas brought haunting memories, and considering that it often brought out society’s worst even as it promoted its best. J’s version of Santa Claus had gone over well with the homeless crowd. McCormick seemed especially pleased when he found a travel-sized bottle of whiskey in his stocking. At first he was displeased, hollering, “Who the hell put a bottle in my sock?” He came around though, and even gave J a little side hug. It was as awkward as it was nice. J was sorry that Jimmie hadn’t made a Christmas appearance, but he took the bad with the good. His ghosts of Christmas past didn’t make much of an appearance either, thankfully. He survived mainly by thinking of the coming ne year. He couldn’t wait for another year. New years always meant new starts, new possibilities, and best of all new calendars. He was sick and tired of “poodles from around the world”. With gifts like that he sometimes wondered if he was better off without Matty, anyway.
8 is so yours
As J regained his strength and his indignation, his sputters turned to complete sentences and his gestures took on a more fluid and dramatic range. On his third retelling of the incident, he waved his arms wildly and shook his fists as he said, “...And she just stood there wearing my shirt and smiling at me as if we’d passed on the street and she found me marginally cute. This woman, this wench..” J’s sweeping backhand across the table sent dishes spinning onto the floor with a crash that startled even Ben who had become enraptured by the can opener under Sid’s cabinets.
Everything stood still for a moment. A revitalized and animated J froze in surprise and watched as the bowl bounced off the floor before cracking into pieces. The four shocked friends cracked up soon after.
“I’m sorry,” J said, “There are better outlets for this energy. Let’s get back to work.” Sid went to work cleaning up the mess, but all three smiled in relief. They weren’t use to so much social interaction with each other, or much of anybody for that matter.
Ben saw his opportunity to get things back on track and far away from all of this wishy-washy stuff. “Sherrie has done a great job with the Reading Rocks campaign. It’s been successful and exciting and we should be able to wrap it up nicely soon,” he flashed Sherrie his big white teeth and she could no longer doubt his sincerity, or feel her knees for that matter. “If it’s all right with everyone I have a proposal for our next project. It’ll mean getting our hands a little dirty again, but I think it could be very effective.”
J may have focused their energies again, but in the back of his own mind he couldn’t escape the guy who’d been in his girlfriend’s house, worse the guy who had probably been in his girlfriend. He wondered what revenge would feel like. He wondered what torture would feel like. He wondered, but he waited. There were more pressing issues. The slow sort of agony J wanted to inflict could wait. They had a “Reading Rocks” campaign to wrap up and Christmas to deal with. What a month, thought J.
When no one registered any opposition Ben strode over to the wall. He’d obviously given this moment some thought. “Now, our hit on Crazy Ralph was well executed, clever, and very successful.” J was impressed, he’d had no idea that Ben harbored any leadership ability. He knew he was useful, but he’d never considered Ben to be an idea man. This month was looking to be educational for more than just the school kids. “I think if we work more patiently this time, we can wreak havoc on the retailers during the post-holiday rush. I propose we all take retail jobs, and then after earning the trust of our coworkers, we start to siphon off a portion of each day’s till into a fund which we can then donate to the Democratic party.”
Sid, Sherrie, and J stood dumbfounded. J then realized the difference between good introductions and good leadership. Ben was proposing not only retail work, which in and of itself was J’s personal hell, but then ourright stealing to support a party that had moved so far to the middle that J could barely stomach them anymore. It was enough to make J’s head fly right off. Sid obviously felt the same way because he chimed in, “Um. Ben.” he said as he tugged on his earlobe. “That’s illegal.” he muttered as he looked straight down at Ben’s shoes.
Ben’s chest puffed up and his momentary show of diplomacy and class left him as fast as the redness in his flustered face arrived. He stepped in Sid’s direction challenging him directly. “We do illegal stuff,” Ben whined, his earlier compsure melting away to reveal a bullied 11-year old boy.
Rather than watch Ben and Sid end up in some poor excuse of fist-a-cuffs probably involving a lot of slapping and squealing, J slid between them and announced, “Ben’s right. Our next project should be a patient one. His approach is very thoughtful, but if I may just offer a slightly different take on where we should target our energies,” as J said “our energies” he leaned in and lowered his voice conspiratorially, successfully pulling the group together as if he were a puppeteer and they marionettes. “It’s not really retail that drives this mad consumerism of this season, it’s money,” he explained like a wizened sociology professor lecturing a freshman class. “And where can we make a statement about money?” he asked feigning bewilderment.
“Banks,” Ben exclaimed as if he’d hatched the whole plan himself, “We’ll hit the banks.”
“Excellent,” said J, “and we’ll do it without going to jail. We’re going to need some supplies and one of us will need to find an in at a local bank.”
They sat down at the table to plan the attack on consumerism like one big happy family settling down for Christmas dinner. For J, this was better than Christmas could ever be again. This was his family these days, and the fight against injustice had become his celebration of a birth, the birth just happened to be his own.
The planning for “Operation: The Color of Money” took longer than anyone had anticipated. It was slowed by a number of factors. “Reading Rocks” had wrapped up as a huge success just before Winter break. The local talent Ben had found had the students and teachers rollicking in the aisles of every auditorium. Central High had come out on top, chewing through 30 pages per student per day. The PTAs of every school arranged for district-wide celebrations in honor of everyone’s success. In terms of good will and the use of entirely legal means it was a success like J had never seen. He was used to a more subversive style, but he wasn’t one to complain, especially not with the glow that it created in Sherrie. He’d never seen her so confident. She was considering a return to graduate school.
Despite the successes and his already nasty frozen tumble into that less-than-pleasant place in his mind, Christmas still managed to dampen his spirits. Sid went home to Nebraska to be with his family. Ben headed up to Cleveland to be with his older brother. Sherrie offered to take J to Ann Arbor to be with her and her parents, but J politely declined. He didn’t even have Matty to commiserate with this year.
Ah Matty, even the thought of her made J wince in pain. He knew it wasn’t fair to feel so betrayed, that he’d probably deserved it long ago, but it still ate him up inside. He’d spent the better part of Christmas eve eve balled up on the floor in tears. The weight of everything had become too much. He hadn’t had temp work in a few weeks. The group was out of town. He had no one during the worst holiday of the year, save the absolutely asinine Arbor Day. J was all for trees, but wood and holidays just don’t mix. Don’t get him started, anyone who did got a full twenty minute lecture on the absurdity of it all. Plus J hated John Denver. He’d like to shove a Rocky Top right up that man’s anus. His anger was really just a distraction from the abject loneliness he felt as he lay curled in the fetal position on his floor, a thermos of chicken soup near his head and a space heater keeping the room basked in a cozy orange glow.
A man of action like J can only spend so long in the fetal position, with tears in his eyes and pain on his mind. A good night’s rest brought him to the realization that he should spend Christmas at the McCormick house. That morning he made a quick stop at the Quik-stop, picking up every last stick of jerky, gum, and anything else he could find for cheap. He piled it all in a bag as he silently waved good-bye to all but the very last of his savings. January and temp work would need to be synonymous if J was to avoid making McCormick’s his permanent residence. He loved the place, it was where he planned to spend this Christmas after all, but he always had the worst dreams there.
As he walked along toward McCormick’s a smile spread across his face as he realized that on Christmas he was most at home with the homeless. The bag full of junk food lifted his spirits as if a sugar high could be culled through osmosis. It wasn’t a sugar high that put the spring in his step; it was knowing that he was a low-rent Santa Claus. A low-rent Santa Claus with just enough money to make it through New Year’s Day, so long as he passed on the champagne and sipped from the glass of charity and good luck.
It was something about the naked trees, stiffly blowing in the breeze that reminded J of Matty. Surprisingly it wasn’t the nakedness that got him thinking. It was the limited range of motion. J remembered when Matty had first moved back to Cincinnati from that year in Washington D.C. He remembered how stiff and cold he felt then even though the weather was nowhere near stiff or cold. It was almost like she had taken away his ability to function. He solderied on in D.C. for another month. He attended rallies, but he found himself devoid of passion. No one around was a close enough friend to say anything. Protestors aren’t likely to question motives as long as they’ve got the numbers on their side. J became a number. He didn’t realize it at first. He was convinced that what he’d shared with Matty had just been a fling, and not of much consequence. One day, in the midst of a march around the Capitol, J listened to the impassioned pleas around him. He looked at the man next to him, with his full beard and long hair, he was screaming at the top of his lungs that Congress was stealing his rights. He could see passion in the man’s eyes. Every movement, every quiver of the man’s larynx seemed to have more feeling than J had in his whole body. The man’s desire to end the worthless bureacracy of Congress was this man’s being. J wasn’t sure he had any being at that moment. He looked to the other side. He saw an older woman, not his mom’s age even, who was banging a drum in time with the chants of those around her. She looked fierce, almost tribal. Everywhere he looked, he saw people who seemed to know what mattered, they seemed to know it deep down in their cores, but the only thing J could think of that mattered that day was not the bureacracy of Congress; it wasn’t losing his rights, or free speech, or illegal presidential actions. It wasn’t anything at all. Nothing mattered to J. As the march carried on, J slipped away to his crack house in Eastern Market, the chants pushing him along. As soon as he got in the door, he had telephoned Matty. He’d told her that nothing mattered to him. And if nothing mattered, he might as well be with her. Matty hadn’t been terribly impressed, but J moved back to Cincnnati the next week anyway. For a while after his move he’d joined what his parents might have called “responsible society”. He worked construction for a local outfit that sometimes paid its workers in cash. “Responsible society” could be a very gray area. It was a nice set-up for him, because even when nothing mattered, he prefered to stick it to the man if possible.
He lived with Matty briefly during those times he recalled as his walk brought him to McCormick’s door.
Christmas went as smooth as it could go considering that J had no family except by a stretch of the imagination McCormick; considering that Christmas brought haunting memories, and considering that it often brought out society’s worst even as it promoted its best. J’s version of Santa Claus had gone over well with the homeless crowd. McCormick seemed especially pleased when he found a travel-sized bottle of whiskey in his stocking. At first he was displeased, hollering, “Who the hell put a bottle in my sock?” He came around though, and even gave J a little side hug. It was as awkward as it was nice. J was sorry that Jimmie hadn’t made a Christmas appearance, but he took the bad with the good. His ghosts of Christmas past didn’t make much of an appearance either, thankfully. He survived mainly by thinking of the coming ne year. He couldn’t wait for another year. New years always meant new starts, new possibilities, and best of all new calendars. He was sick and tired of “poodles from around the world”. With gifts like that he sometimes wondered if he was better off without Matty, anyway.
8 is so yours
posted by David at 8:33 PM
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