I came home and
trembling, took out my contact lenses. I opened their case, sought my glasses
for that at-home vision, looked at myself in the mirror. I was that skinny
wordy nerdling again four-eyed skinny wordy nerdling.
Retreating from the
speckless eccentric, who feels the need to be social in a certain scene. Looks
more normal, speaks more plainly, wears blue jeans and smells of
aftershave. I who acted in the affairs
of that cool self recently suffered trauma, real emotional trauma which came by
the hands of tense betrayals in twisted love affairs.
So, so, I’m shaking
now, typing in a cardigan, with my glasses and my head-phones on. Zoe Keating’s Legions
orchestrating endlessly on infinite rotation album all. Frantic at the blasted
keys and trying to make sense out of any of it. Hoping that my cancer crab-like
shell of wordy hurting observations can pierce the strange experiences of my
former falsified social being, these personas I shed when they break down.
These are personalities I adopt to interact with other people. When they mess
it up, they are disbanded and replaced in favor of a newer better adjusted,
heuristically recalculated and truer estimate of a more successful outer-self.
What the fuck
happened? Is it strange shit, naw, just raw in the moment, see like, I met this
girl, Aprile O’Neil, was hanging out with her, just friendly-like, no naughty,
and she started telling me all this shit about her one-time fuck buddy, Chet
Scuffter. It turned more into she’s like obsessed with him, but he don’t pay
her no mind really, and turns out he an outright asshole in the sense that he
got fired from a sweet art museum job for not being able to show up to work on
time on account of the late night drinking. But he did try to do 15 hour days
on no sleep but went off track rather quick. Got fired and avoids his friend
who didn’t fuck it up and he even got a promotion. Also turns out Chet is gonna
get evicted, cause he had a room-mate moved out and now Chet can’t pay his
rent, and Chet doesn’t have a job, but he does help out a kid make music
videos, says it’s his day job. The kid he helps is a fricken hip little shit,
synthing out trance style pretty solid verses of sly menageries, he go by the
stage name East, Fly West. Aprile O’Neil
telling me all this for one reason, probably one reason alone.
She’s making Chet
jealous, I mean come on I’m a decent catch, but the three of us outside his
house talking, brought me there all of a sudden when we were supposed to see a
movie, under the guise that we needed to borrow more Frolf discs. It was true
at the time I had never been Frolfing, but still I played it cool, Chet and I
sitting on his porch, a peace pipe passed, were talking, sharing things we had
in common and we both had understood, just from looking in each others eyes,
that we both were honorable men. For Chet did not know, that Aprile O’Neil had
told me all about his recent failures. Then as we were thus so laughing,
exchanging stories, and very much aware
that the lady was playing us, but still
we were of like mind and didn’t really care.
That was until April
O’Neil blurted out, “So did you get evicted yet?”. Chet immediately
lurched forward from the porch and said, “I’ll see you later” and
stormed off into the house slamming the door, a house which earlier Aprile had commented
‘stunk of mold’.
We, Aprile and I,
walked back to the car and drove off. I was seized with emotional terror. You
see men have all of these built in emotional triggers when it comes to women
and other men. I was tensing muscles in case of confrontation, I was nervous,
anxious, and alert. I was consciously overriding these emotions, knowing that
“There is no need to fight” which is what I decided I would yell if a
skirmish had arisen. Or if forced to defend myself I would at least recall the
soft fleshy areas I would strike, throat, nose, eyes, ears, kidneys, and that
to crush his knee or ankle would assist in my fleeing on foot. Just get the
right leg, because he could still drive after you otherwise.
So we’re driving,
she’s emotional and the car starts swerving, just a little, the machine has a
cracked windshield, no passenger side mirror, and she says the cement pulls the
tires in either direction. She looks at me instead of the road and says, “Let’s
play Frolf.” The car is switching gears at 45 miles and hour, all day
complaining about her blurry contact lens, I’m still scared, stomach turned and
just to make it easy say, “Oh Yeah, Sure.”
Which then I
immediately realize is not what I want to happen at all. I have no intention of
rescuing this girl, I might stand up for one who wasn’t quite so manipulative,
but this tricksy vixen scares me still, I finally speak up.
“Though maybe
its best if we all just go home right now, and you can figure out what you want
to do.”
“It just came
out, I didn’t mean to say it.”
“I thought
maybe you made a mistake. It was on your mind, but you shouldn’t have said it
like that, especially in front of me. That information could be seen as rather
personal.”
“It’s just I’m
still mad at him, he always attacks, me, he blames me for why he can’t get
motivated, I’m sick of it, sometimes when I’m mad I just say mean things. This
is what it’s like when your conscious and your sub-conscious don’t agree.”
“Cognitive
Dissonance?” I ventured.
“Yes, but at
the emotional level.” She made obvious implications that she had read some
psychology and such that she rationalized these be-deviled compulsions with an
amateur prognosis determinism.
“Well, what
ever you decide to do, its probably better if we don’t play Frolf first. It
might be that anything you did after a game of Frolf would appear less genuine
or more insincere”. I was trying to
dodge this game with honest clever wit.
Aprile scrumpled her
face and began to drive me home. I relaxed and sipped from my canteen, there
was mango juice inside it, and I must admit I felt empowered by its sweet
goodness. I was also simultaneously quenching my thirst, and reflecting in the
fact that I would soon escape from this tumult.
Stopped at the
light, a zoo advertisement involving a very large tiger sticker stared at me
with its fierce and magnificent eyes. It’s tiger face, straight whiskers, and proud tooth
showing smirked at me in the sense that I knew what it felt like to be seen as
prey. The tiger face lingered in the longest red light of my human experience,
and I shaped my face quickly matching it’s stance, mirroring the predators
impression. Somewhere my future self was taking notes. Until the cars moved,
and we were driving again.
She missed my turn
twice until I verbatim gave step by step instructions. Which she followed
automatically. As I left the car, making sure to leave nothing, I turned and
spoke.
“Well thanks.
We should probably just take a few day or so, to do what we need to do. So I’ll
talk to you later, if ever, who knows. Bye.”
I walked inside. I
took off my contacts and FUCK.
What if she really
is just a poor girl trying to escape a
bad situation, and she doesn’t know that she subconsciously lured me into the
equation thinking that I was someone who should have recognized the objectively
poor condition of this buffoon Chet, and spoken up explicitly in positive
re-enforcement of her correct judgment that she should leave him entirely.
I had given Chet the
benefit of the doubt, and had looked into his eyes man to man, and determined
that he was somewhat honorable. This man who was so short of character, knowing
what I did about him, its possible I was fooled by a persuasive wretch of a man, its possible,
dare I say it likely that my judge of character was askew.
If we were ancient
stooping men, we would fight, and if he truly were weaker of heart and mind,
I’d defeat him, and Aprile would perhaps begin psychologically weakening me in
ready of when she again sought a newer stronger mate.
These questions
became irrelevant when I heard a strong pounding on the door. I had used
scissors twice that day, once at lunch to cut crab leg shells, and just moments
before to open a bag of dried cranberries. Their sugary resin was on my fingers
as I sent a text to my host, the friend whom I rented a room from, Nelson
Glidden.
The text signified
my agreement to substitutionary play on his fast-pitch hardball baseball team.
I would have to leave immediately, and bike there, then play in a game which I
had hardly practiced in some years. Team sports are their own kind of stressful
excitement in the minds of competitive men.
Now I was in a rushed state of mind to get to one. I could not see
myself as a man, if I could not play through my emotional turmoil with a good
godly game of baseball.
I quickly put on the
uniform, the real major league style uniform. Stirrup pants, cleats, the
uniform tucked in, with a matching elastic belt about my waist. I straightened
my cap, and hiked up my socks. I slipped my glove into the center of my back at
midwaist . I got a text from Aprile.
“Chet said he
was just nauseous. He ate chicken broccoli pasta earlier that sat out for 3
days.”
I replied, “Oh
that’s good.” I filled my canteen with water. Another text.
“We’re gonna
come pick you up for Frolf.”
“I can’t. Made
commitment to Nelson.” Were they both coming over here? This was too
strange, I had no calculation for why they would both want to come over.
Especially so soon, unless he really was just nauseous, and they really did
want to play Frolf.
“We’re already
here let us in.” Aprile texted me again.
Oh shit. They were
there in the drive way, this was too much. I locked the door, I shut two
windows. The only other person home was Nelsons wife, a bookish woman of a
humble nature by the name of Roe.
They started
pounding on the door. Aprile had been with me at the ATM earlier, she had seen
me take out $300.00 it had been my banks only ATM in town, so I had to stock up
on cash in advance. Aprile had been in my room, had seen my laptop, my GPS, my
freaking mp3. Was she robbing me?
Roe started yelling,
“What’s going on?”
Aprile and Chet were
kicking the door in. Chets friend from the band was there, we later found out
that they were all high on methamphetamine. They were definitely trying to rob
the house. Roe was crying and scared. I just stood holding my gear bag.
If you’re like me
and think the story should end here, just quit reading. But if you need to know
how it really ended. The plain facts are here further exposed for you. That is
of course only if you believe that there’s any truth in statistics.
I unlocked the door,
gripped my ball bat, smashed both Chet and his friends in their right knee cap,
and then threw Aprile into their rusted Isuzu. She drove them from the drive
way, I apologized to Roe only once, locked the door and rode to the ball field.
At which I batted 4 for 5 with a triple, a double, 3 RBI’s and 1 hit by pitch.
No one ever spoke a
word about the violence, and today if you asked Roe about it she’ll say she
‘heard a noise’, but it was just the phonebooks getting delivered.
