I.
Take a guy:
Let’s say he’s about my age, old enough to own his own condo and pay almost all his bills sometimes, who is young enough to be unmarried but old enough to understand he is not getting any younger. Add a dose of fresh alienation—not enough to be unhealthy, of course, but enough to enable him to function in a world full of imbecility, indifference and all those happily-ever-afters awaiting him on the other side of his flat screen TV. Take this guy and give him just enough stability so that he has no excuses, but plenty of alibis. Maybe he’s estranged from too many old friends, or aggrieved about his absent parents, or perhaps he is just emerging from the wreckage of a ruined relationship or, probably, he is utterly average in every regard, except for the uncomfortable fact that, unlike almost everyone else he knows, he is aware of it.
I am not alone. I have a best friend, who happens to be a dog. He is really good for me, reminding me to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom and generally making sure that I get out a few times a day. He walks me whenever he gets the chance. Our favorite time is after work, when we reenter the building and the walls and halls come alive, warm with the savory smells of home-made meals (you can never smell fast food, although that scent lingers in the elevator, as if ashamed to be associated with the honesty, the effort and industry of these prepared productions).
No one sits down to dinner anymore, but all around me, people are sitting down, eating meat loaf, or some sort of roast that has simmered on low heat all afternoon. Maybe there is even a pie prepared for dessert. Maybe, inside someone’s kitchen, it’s still the 1950’s.
And I remind myself that someday, if my cards play me right, I will enjoy a real meal around a table, and experience all that I’ve been missing during these efficient years of isolation. I will clear the table and clean the dishes, I will sit on the couch and take a crack at the crossword, or catch a made-for-TV movie, or go run errands or consult a book of baby names for the offspring on the way, and eventually I will work on improving my bad habits and attempt to overlook my wife’s inadequacies (the quirks that were so endearing in those early days). I will, at last, learn to communicate openly and as an adult. Mostly, I will not be alone.
II.
There is a man who sits near the pumps at the gas station I drive by each day. The man is very obviously from somewhere else and has about him the certain look—the meek, awestruck eyes, the apprehensive gestures that indict him as someone who speaks little if any English—a stranger.
He remains respectfully distant from the customers—who incessantly fill their tanks, like bees returning to the nest before heeding the urgency of their instinctual obligations—but near enough to the action to remain in plain view. He sells flowers. Actually, he doesn’t seem to sell anything, he pretty much sits there, on an upturned milk crate, often from early morning until well in the evening, after the rest of the weary warriors have commuted past him, home from work and their worries of the wicked world. He silently, stoically, plies his wares, content to play his part in the charade: he is not accomplishing much, he is begging, and the milk crate and collection of fading flowers at his feet communicate his inexpressible anguish. Please help me, his unscrubbed face, his unlaced sneakers, his oversized slacks, his filthy, fidgeting fingers—everything but his voice—all ask, saying what he cannot, and will not, say for himself.
III.
Hard to get over lonely people.
This is from a song, although those aren’t the real words; those are the words you heard—which sounded and seemed real enough—until your adult ears eventually understood that you had actually been making a great song even better. In your mind anyway.
Ah, look at all the lonely people, you sing, to yourself.
Midnight is the cruelest hour, causing saints to sin and sinners to sing, shrieking when, besotted with spirits and spirits spiraling, impaired and incoherent, they realize they are lost with no safe way home.
The bar beckons. Bars, if they are good for nothing else, are good for that: bars beckon. Watering holes for weary warriors who want what they got and get nothing they ask for (they could pray but they know better). Swinging down accustomed streets, a humid mist sweats under the streetlights and clings to the faces of these silent, suffering souls. Someone wades through the haze of colorless ties and colorful perfumes. Familiar sights and sounds: laughter, screams, secrets and seductions, spilling out of mouths that come to places like this, killing themselves slowly in order to live.
So what happens? What doesn’t happen. The same old story: You don’t go looking for trouble, but trouble has no qualms finding you. And it finds you, as always. Trouble is so reliable that way. You work toward being a lover and not a fighter. The only problem is, it is usually the loving that leads to the fighting.
Not working, but there is a lot of work to do. You go above and beyond the call of duty. And the harder you work, the more you seem to pay. Only in America could you do so little and get paid so much, then work so hard and pay so much. Someone makes the rules, and it’s not you.
All the lonely people, where do they all come from?
All the lonely people, where do they all belong?
Alone again, or: driving home with the devil riding shotgun. There’s nowhere good this can go and everybody knows that driving blind with deafened senses is dumb. Shifting and stuttering but smart enough not to pray (you know better). Avoiding eye contact, the street refuses to speak—it will not willingly partner this perpetration in progress. Overhead, the fully dressed, deep green oak trees on either side lean down low, eager to eavesdrop. Here’s what they hear:
Please help me.
IV.
I’m listening to the old woman again.
This is another part of my daily routine: every time I enter the building after walking my dog, or if I’m stopping to get the mail, or anytime I am anywhere between my front door and the main entrance, this woman (I have no other option but to say she is an old woman) whose name I of course cannot remember, appears like a mosquito at a campsite.
She is there every time—every time—if I’m walking out (I’ve learned not to step out of my door in only my boxer shorts) to throw my trash down the chute, she’s there; if I am coming or going to work, she’s there; if I open my door (I’ve learned not to open my door without my boxer shorts on) to get the newspaper, she’s there; and especially if I’m returning with rapidly cooling carry-out food, she’s there.
I had half-seriously begun to consider whether or not she had rigged my door to some sort of honing device, and then I slowly started to notice, over time, it isn’t just me (of course it isn’t just me)—it’s even worse than that. It’s everyone, it’s anyone: anyone she can see or talk to, anyone she can make that human touch with, however fleetingly, any excuse she can find to escape the oppression of her immaculate isolation.
V.
When the train left the station, it had two lights on behind,
Well, the blue light was my baby and the red light was my mind.
I didn’t say that.
A daydream:
Every so often I can’t help hoping that there will be a knock on my door and when I open it, who is there but my sexy soul mate, a beautiful woman who heard the blues music every time she walked by, and wondered if, according to her own fantasy, a sensitive, erudite dude had been right there all along, waiting for her, waiting for happily ever after. And after a while, she could no longer ignore the siren song escaping under the small space under the front door and came knocking.
Of course, this illusion presupposes three things, in descending order of unlikelihood: one, that there are such things as soul mates; two, that my soul mate happens to live in my building; and three, that anyone actually listens to—much less enjoys—blues music.
All my love’s in vain.
What he said.
VI.
I see the woman, sitting silent, alone, waiting for the bus that may or may not decide to pick her up today.
I think: same woman, same bus stop, same book in her hands: Where is she going? What is she doing? What is she reading?
The woman is a nun, as her quaint costume makes abundantly clear. She sits alone, silent, a human statue: perfect posture now habitual from years of training, browbeating and, ultimately, ardent emulation. Her attention to the small book she holds is entire, unyielding, austere.
And it takes several seconds for the understanding to occur: this is a cliché. Of course. But like any cliché worth its stench, there is a twist, a discernible fork in the future, a possibility.
Either: this woman—this quiet, meekly loyal, unreservedly religious woman—is, of course, reading the bible. For the thousandth time, the millionth? In her unremarkable way fortifying one of the increasingly intractable truths: there still exists the possibility that custom and tradition count for something, are still worth attaining. And this woman, this archetype, beautifies what should not change, an innocence somehow not contaminated by our co-opted culture.
Or: it brings into sharp relief the pitiful, ceaseless certainty that our capacity for wonderment, our curiosity and confusion, are not strong enough to escape superstitions and easy answers: that anyone could find comfort, or meaning, in a ritualized routine, reading the same spurious words endlessly, unfolding their anti-mysteries into eternity.
VII.
Cats are everywhere.
How did this happen? When did that slippery slope of sentimental turn from simple companionship to disconcerting, then beyond even that? It’s not your fault: you could see the other cats coming, waiting out there in the evening; and yourself, inside, able at any time to make it all better. All of these overlooked lives, are they the symptom or the antidote for that feeling you cannot constrain? Are they serving a separate purpose, a preemptive action against isolation? An excuse to keep connected, in some small way? A strategy to keep from slipping, to stave off starvation? Or the streets, which are always hungry, always eager to be kept company when nights bring the cold comfort of winter?
Yes, you think (to yourself again): it could be all of those things, eventually. Inevitably. But mostly (you know), any effort you might someday make would be driven by the fear of becoming that person. The person who everyone knew, the one who had patrolled the same city corner for as long as anyone was able—or wanted—to remember. The man with his hand-scribbled signs, capital letter screeds against the machine, words that sought to explain who he was and why he was here. His message, excusing himself from any culpability, of course, and allowing everyone who took the time to try and make sense of it all that they were either with him or against him; if they did nothing to intervene, they were abetting the not-so-secret society that could snap a finger and take everything you owned, including your identity. He stood at the intersection for years, outlasting several politicians who recycled themselves in public office, sworn to uphold the status quo and ensure that the have-nots would not, and keep everyone else safe from the crimes committed by people who could not close their eyes.
And then, one day, he was no longer there. He had just disappeared.
How does this happen?
You’ve seen some things, of course. You have heard them, read about them. The things people talked about when they talked about crazy people. The sort of people who, after numerous squabbles with long-suffering neighbors, finally had to have it out with Johnny Law over the piles of junk spewing out from their cellars, piling out from inside, forming extensions of the hand-me-down universe they’d created (in their own image?)—misguided gods of an always-imperfect world. These people who would holler and curse, and show up in court, when convicted, to protest that there was a method to their madness (they wouldn’t call it madness at all), a purpose to their paranoia, that it was no one else’s business if they found some sort of salvation in other folks’ debris, redeemable lives otherwise left for dead. Exasperated landlords, forced to take pictures in order to appeal to the proper authorities, having to prove that they weren’t capable of fabricating this sort of insanity: carpets pulled up from the floors, the linoleum in the kitchen removed, presumably by hand, the stacks of unread newspapers, the insects. And the pictures, of course, only half told the story, since pictures don’t move, pictures don’t stink, pictures only imitate what they are programmed to report. The stories that go far beyond the obligatory shit-smeared-on-the-walls sort of psychosis that always seems so overdone in bad movies (because the movies are bad; because truth always outpaces our best efforts to expose it).
Then what happens?
You are (of course) left asking questions that always better unaddressed. Who could explain the motivation behind behavior like that? Who would want to? Who could comprehend where a mind has been, or is going, to find sense or security in this imitation of living?
VIII.
I think the same question each time I see him (every day: the same man in the same spot, holding the same sign that tells everyone who he is, now—begging the question: who did he used to be, at some point in the past?) at the intersection he has stood at for several years now: the cardboard sign he holds both question and answer: Homeless veteran (the explanation), can you put some pocket change in this plastic cup (the question). The sign says he is a veteran. Okay. And even if he isn’t actually a veteran, he has been homeless long enough to be a veteran; or if he is not actually homeless, he has been acting the part long enough—as long as most people cruising past him have held jobs—to earn the title. Either way, it is time for a promotion.
And so, I think, this is the problem with the homeless problem: it wasn’t (some of us learned—too late) the ones who hustled or even approached you who were down and out; they were the ardent ones, half the time they weren’t even homeless; it is the ones you never even saw, even when they sprawled on the concrete right beside you, the ones who were down, the ones who were out, the ones who had nothing to ask for, nothing to say, nothing to do except wait, sit it out until time or the whiter man’s burden delivered them that eventual, inevitable verdict. It was the ones you could afford not to be afraid of, the ones who could not even hurt themselves, because they’d already dug as deep inside as their ashen fingers could reach, the ones too dead to tear out their hearts, but not dead enough to unloose their souls, the ones who learned (too late) that death was only impatient for the fools who feared it, it had all the time in the world for those who the world owed nothing except the decency of an overdue death.
Could that be me?
The ultimate fear, the oldest worry. Who knew how it happened, who could make sense of it? And yet. These people do not wake up one random morning, on the streets and out of their minds. Or do they? If you believed the signs the man on the corner held, the government did this to him—and could do it to anyone else: that was his message, his mission. How different were those handwritten signs from my aunt’s scribbled revisions? Was one merely an extension of the other?
The problem with the homeless problem is that these people who don’t see you and can’t see themselves are all chasing something they can no longer name: memories. Or, even worse, it is the memories that are chasing them, speaking in tongues they long ago ceased to understand.
IX.
Myself when I am real:
Real old, that is. At least forty. Maybe fifty, sixty even—it’s almost inevitable, if you believe some of what you see and half of what you read that humans live that long these days.
You are looking in the mirror, standing over the sink. We’ve been here before, recently. And, of course, the sluggish maestro in your mind reminds you that this is approximately the sixty-thousandth time you’ve brushed your teeth (but now, with age and experience, more than slightly appreciative that these are your teeth you are cleaning, not dentures—not yet). But you are distracted by a difference, a new presence you have added to your arsenal of afflictions. There is a growth on your back. And apparently it’s been there for a while, because it has already misshapen your shoulders, making you half-whale and half-fairytale caricature. It is obvious that the bones have shifted ever so slightly from this new burden, the way a bank account accrues interest, over time.
This is not cancer, it can be claimed with some confidence. You are so certain cancer is at some stage of development inside you that you’ll suffer those semi-annual exams, just to keep his fears simmering on the back burner. There is no mystery—this, after all, is not a dream—it is obvious how this accessory was earned. Overlooked, or ignored, while attention focused on other things, like freedom, a life apart, independent, answering to no one else, et cetera.
This is how it happens: you find ways to displace the pains, internalize the trepidation, ingest the indignity, hang on to the hang-ups. You disregard what remains always on the inside, and it takes root, takes hold and takes on a life of its own. Everyone else might see it, and they may even talk about it, but unless you notice it, until you see it for yourself, it never exists. It is simply not there until you finally feel it: eventually, inevitably you feel the pain.
It is loneliness.
X.
If I had lived in the ‘50’s, I would have taken a real job right out of college, or I may not have gone to college. I would have had to start earning a living to support my family: married at twenty-two, a father within the year. That’s just the way it would have been.
Maybe I’d like my job; maybe I would be content. Maybe I would consume so many steaks and cigarettes and whiskey sours that nothing could touch me—I would be obese, an impenetrable fortress of flesh, and no pain could get past me.
Or maybe I would work and eat and smoke myself into a muddled mess and punch the clock prematurely—another casualty of the Cold War. Maybe I would be smart enough to have left my family something, and maybe my wife would remarry and live off the fat of my labor and I wouldn’t begrudge her because I was in a better place, drinking Bloody Marys on the great golf course in the sky.
Or maybe my wife, being of her time, would not wish to remarry and instead focus her energies on the grandchildren and church functions and the increasingly mundane exigencies of old age. Maybe she’d wish to meet another man but her prospects would be poor—after all, she was married to a big slob who she somehow stayed devoted to and still mourned. Plus, there were always the kids to contend with. Used goods are used goods, whether you’re talking cars, real estate or relationships.
Maybe she would solider on, alone, oblivious to the insanity of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, indifferent to the surreal psychosis of the ‘80’s and ‘90’s, and grow into her shrinking body the way a spider’s web settles into a windowsill.
Maybe she would eventually understand that the family home—the house in which she lost her virginity, raised her children, cleaned a thousand rooms, cooked a million meals—had outlasted her, and embrace the inevitable.
Maybe, in the end, she would be a lot like the woman across the hall. She’s had a good life (please allow her to have been happy: in my mind if not in actual fact). She, at least, once had a husband, and maybe a son and daughter whom she dotes on and who love her dearly, but they live so far away and are so busy with work and kids and life and time just slips away and so it goes.
Or maybe it is even worse than that: maybe she was never married, never found exactly what she was looking for, or the right ones overlooked her until it was too late. Maybe she was cursed with the blessing of being always apart, in all the important ways, from the utterly average, anonymous faces she came into contact with day in and day out, and like almost no one else she knew, she was unaware of it.
I want to walk out my door, but I can’t.
And this time, for once, it’s not because I don’t want to, it’s because I’m desperately certain that she won’t be outside waiting for me.
