LETTERS FROM HELL
TIME DIVING, BOOK 1
by Craig Robertson
Be Careful What You Wish For …
Imagine-It Publishing
El Dorado Hills, CA
Copyright 2022 Craig Robertson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without written permission from the author.
ISBN: 979-8-9860769-6-6 (E-Book)
Cover design by Alexandre
http://www.designbookcover.pt/en/
Editors: Michael R. Blanche
Beth Lynne
Forest Olivier
Formatting services by Drew Avera
First Edition 2022
(Time Diving first appeared as a solo in 2013. That novel has been deleted)
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to Jonathan Ryan Davis, my grandson.You are a natural wonder of God and a joy to behold, Jonathan! Stay always humble, curious, and loving.
.
PRELUDE
I have seen all the works that are done under the sun;
and, behold all is vanity and a striving after wind.
Ecclesiastes 1:14
I look out at you through the Gates of Hell.
Hi.
Oh, and a strong piece of advice, word to the wise and all that. Don’t join me on this side of the fence. Seriously. This is not a nice place. Me, I am fully lost. I belong here. Hey, I’m probably the only one who freely admits that much. You should hear some of the whines circulating down here. But I reside forever in Hell of my own accord, my sentence well-deserved because of my consuming vanity, pure and simple. I purchased my fate with fierce acts of arrogant folly. I suggest, however, that you not repeat my errors, my absolute commitment to self-eradication. If my warnings save you from the state I find myself captured in, well, then perhaps I might be a little less miserable. I will most assuredly not be happy. No, none of the permanent guests round these parts can ever claim that lofty state. But, if I can spare one soul this suffocating pall of misery, then I might perhaps suffer less completely.
What massive offense do I so freely admit to having committed? What act do I suggest you never touch with a ten-foot pole so you can avoid my fate? To be honest, it was really a simple thing, and a common enough emotion to be certain. Regret. That was my downfall, believe it or don’t. I tell you plainly, do not let regret cut you down as fully as it did me. Funny, regret isn’t even labeled as a sin by western religions. Even now, as I dryly mouth the word, regret, it sounds so innocuous, so utterly forgivable, so blandly routine. But surely it’s the Eighth Deadly Sin.
How, you ask, could a commonplace feeling like regret be so inalterably damning? How did it become the cancer which rotted me away from the inside? Is it even credible to state that regret drove me to take actions that earned me this lightless, hopeless eternity? Therein lies the rub, right? That man over there ‘regrets’ not calling his mother. This woman ‘regrets’ purchasing such an expensive handbag. The child sulking on her bed ‘regrets’ losing a favorite toy. How is it conceivable that these insipid feelings could have heaved me into the Abyss? Of course, under their own power, those feelings can’t. Regret is a natural, reactive byproduct of choice, of God’s gift of free will. In any typical life, you don’t have to choose too many times before you come to wish that an option you selected could have been different. You picked (A), when hindsight suggests (B) would have pleased you more. You choose Door Number One, when Door Number Two turned out to conceal a better prize. What could be more normal than retaining some kernel of remorse concerning the occasional suboptimal decision made in your past? If you didn’t regret your bonehead decisions, then, come on, you’re only kidding yourself.
Sin, entrapping, corrupting, devouring Sin, is at its best, I think, when it disguises itself with such innocence. Milton depicts Sin as a hideous monster in Paradise Lost. He was wrong, the naïve fool. A savage wolf in sheep’s clothing has a better chance to pounce upon a hapless sheep. A beautiful succubus definitely stands a better chance of ensnaring a man’s eternal spirit than an ugly one. The word ‘regret’ sounds so mundane, so natural. But don’t you ever forget it’s a demon that can rip open your body and tear out your soul. Regret can destroy all of you. Please, please believe me here. Because if you do heed my words and avoid my monstrous vanity, then perhaps you can be spared the failure that ended in my damnation.
In my life, I naturally made millions of choices. Some were good, some poor, some were excellent, some idiotic. That I would occasionally, in retrospect, decide that I would’ve liked a few do-overs is extremely understandable. Regret, you see, destroys you not in its exi-stence, but by its per-sistence. Unless you’re able to let all of your past decisions go, they can begin to haunt you, and then, ultimately, they become you. That’s the secret of the poison of regret. You drink it and it does not kill you; it replaces you. Regret will bring you down like a pack of pursuing hounds if you allow it to dog your thoughts.
We all understand intuitively that excessive rumination over past events is unhealthy. You can second guess yourself to death, right? Fear of having made a poor choice can prevent you from being able to take any action at all. But that doesn’t explain, in my case, how it destroyed me so completely. No, you see, I, the greatest practical joke the universe has ever played on itself, didn’t just hold on to and obsess over my regrets. No, I did something about them. I tried to eradicate them from history, to correct them away. The dark joke is that I was actually able to change some of my past regrets. And, like you can’t eat just one potato chip, I just had to keep expunging my regrets, time and again. Wash-rinse-repeat. After a while, whoever I was to start with, that man was gone, checked out, stepped out the back, Jack. In my wake followed confusion, insanity, and—here’s the funny part—guess what? More regret.
And he just keeps sinking deeper into Shit Creek, ladies and gentlemen.
Am I mad? Fair question. No, at least not at the beginning. Now, of course I’m irreconcilably insane and well past any possibility of treatment or cure. But, I discovered a painful truth along the way. What I changed were the decisions that I thought had made me a lesser man. I wanted to be a greater man. Pure and simple vanity, my friends. But I learned a little too late that our choices make us who we are. Change the choices and you change the person. Scramble the choices and you scramble the person.
Please, people, love who you are, cherish the decisions that have made you. This house is as good for you as that one. Medium rare is just as good as medium well done. Marry that girl, not the girl you hope to be both slightly prettier and standing just around that next corner. Have no remorse for even a single choice you’ve ever made. Because if you regret your past mistakes as much as I did mine, you too might be driven to discover the method I used that allowed me to change what should never have been changed. And if you do, you’ll find there’s plenty of room for you to join me on this side of these gates. You will discover, as I have, that Hell is a bad place to spend eternity. It’s more miserable here than you can even imagine. Trust me on this.
How? You’re wondering how did I earn my horrible fate? Ah, well, there’s a story that takes some telling …
ONE
I loved a Love once, fairest among women:
Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her –
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
The Old Familiar Faces,
Charles Lamb, 1775-1834.
“I would never do that, man. It’s not my thing. I gotta do what I wanna do, and screw the money and shit. You can work your little job and have your little house just like your parents. Me, I’m not into that bullshit.”
Robbie was a dick. But, realistically, what was Matt to do? His parents had moved to the way-out suburbs. So he was relegated to the way-out burbs. In the boonies, there were only so many kids his same sex and approximate age who were geographically close enough that he was able to travel the distance it takes to get together on foot or by bike. Once he, or any of his close buddies, were old enough to drive, his friend-options would increase exponentially. But, for his foreseeable future, Matt was confined only to the candidates near his house.
Summers were almost three months long and there was nothing on TV worth watching until at least 8:00 pm, maybe 7:30 pm on Wednesdays and Thursdays when Batman was on. Only a pathetic loser would even consider checking out those books the teachers placed on the stupid reading list. So hanging out was what he did. As the pickings in his area were particularly slim, Robbie was pretty much his only option. Matt was a victim of the mid-twentieth century values and demographic trends his elders embraced.
With impoverished bravado, Matt attempted to establish firmly, yet again, that he wasn’t planning on being anyone’s clone. “I’m gonna play baseball, man. It doesn’t matter where; even Cleveland’s cool. Don’t even think I want to end up in this hellhole. No way my kids are going to suffer like we do. Screw that shit.”
A more perceptive individual might have resented the implied slight, but Robbie was fortunately immune to nuance. Instead, Robbie launched into a new tirade. “It’s like you’re brainwashed or something! Kids! Really, dude? Why do you have to do what your parents tell you to do? Me, I gotta do my own thing. In eighteen short years, it will be 1984. You know, Big Brother! I’m not marching like they make you do in that book. And I’m not moving to France, you can forget about that bullshit! Kids, jobs, rules. No way! You can kiss the crap out of ‘em, but not me.” Clearly, Robbie was as ill-informed about the contents of 1984 as he was about just about everything else. But that never stopped the boy. He wasn’t so much bulletproof as he was information-proof.
The entire time he lectured, Robbie stared at the street in front of his feet and never at Matt. A frenetic anger choked his voice and spittle launched like droplets from a tropical waterfall. Robbie didn’t speak with just passion. He spoke with a frantic energy suggesting he was presently sinking in boiling lava.
Matt didn’t honestly recall wanting kids, or rules for that matter. Why had he mentioned his theoretical offspring? Because he was an idiot, that’s why. He knew better than to provide Robbie with any extra ammunition for his machine-gun brain. Matt was stating his intention to be in no way like his parental units. Hadn’t he clearly articulated that point? Matt chafed at how completely Rob had mistaken his desire for individuality as yet another sign of his moral ineptitude. But to mention such a point of order to Rob wouldn’t be helpful. He was, as usual, on a roll with his monologue and it was best policy to just let him rant. Robbie never intended for his words to constitute engaging conversation or thoughtful debate. No, Robbie’s goal was to let the world know unequivocally his opinion of its limitless failures. Matt was just the lone representative of society in general at that particular moment.
Matt retreated to his usual one-size-fits-Robbie response. “I know what you mean, man.”
“I just gotta do my music, man. It’s the only thing that’s real. It’s the only thing that matters, at least to me. You know what I mean? It’s like I got something to say, it’s in my head, and it has to be free, dude.” Pointing an accusatory finger sideways, uncomfortably close to Matt, Robbie howled, “They can’t stop me from playin’ my guitar.” He paused to draw in an inspired breath and roll his shoulders as he stared into his future. “I’m gonna hit the road any day now. I’m so fed up with this shit.” Then, with theatrical finality, he proclaimed, “My music’s calling me.”
Since Robbie’s father beat him mercilessly most every day, whether Pops was drunk or not, his plan to get out of town soon had to sound awfully good. He had drawn a remarkably short straw with regard to parental selection. Not only was he cursed with an abusive father, he was also saddled with an alcoholic, drug-addicted mother. She was nothing but happy that it was Robbie absorbing today’s beating and not her. Though he did technically own a guitar, Matt had never seen or heard Robbie actually play the thing. But it was best not to mention that potential wrinkle in Robbie’s vision. When your reality was as bleak as Robbie’s, half-baked dreams were the best you could hope for and were slightly better than none at all. Plus, Rob had, not unexpectedly, a notoriously short fuse. Orienting him to reality, as well-intentioned as your attempt might be, was always to tempt fate.
Talking, or more precisely, listening to Robbie was getting on Matt’s last nerve. He knew from bitter experience that Robbie could drone on a very long time. “Hey, I’ll race you around the cul-du-sac,” Matt abruptly challenged. At least Robbie couldn’t talk as much if they were racing their bikes.
“You not tired of me whoopin’ your ass every time we race yet?”
“Not if I whoop your ass this time, Big Man Talking.”
They were in their usual spot, sitting on the curb two houses down the hill from Matt’s house, facing the outlet of a court. Rob extended a fraternal left arm around Matt’s shoulders and entreated, “Well then, we better do this thing, shouldn’t we, Loser Boy?”
After they lined up facing one side of the cul-de-sac, Robbie energetically raised, then dropped his right arm, yelled go, and they were off. Out of the gate, elbows were ceremoniously jostled, but then the competitors separated and focused on the task at hand. Matt tried to maintain a line that would keep him in the street, as he was positioned to Robbie’s right and vulnerable. Rob skillfully angled Matt up onto the curb, causing him to bounce up to the sidewalk, losing precious seconds in the process. But it wasn’t like tactics mattered in the least. Robbie was much more athletic and aggressive than Matt, so the contest would end as predictably as it always did. One advantage to having to trade blows with his father on a daily basis was that it helped hone Robbie’s competitive edge. Matt never envied Robbie in that regard, even if it might have benefited Matt in their sparring.
As they got to the end of the street and began their counterclockwise turns, they were still nearly even. Matt cautiously attempted to get off the sidewalk and dropped down the rounded curb. Robbie allowed him the maneuver, but then rapidly inched closer, to keep him off balance. Whether it was his paying too much attention to Rob or simple bad luck, Matt underestimated the traction he could maintain in the wet gutter as he was forced to remount the curb. His wheels started to slip out from under him. He tried mightily to stay upright, and didn’t actually fall until he shot across the cement and clipped the adjacent lawn’s edge. This forced him to careen off his bike onto the lawn. Fortunately, he slid across the wet grass, so the crash wasn’t all that bad. By the time he came to rest, Robbie had locked his brakes, spun in a one-hundred-eighty-degree loop, and rode over to compliment him.
“Dude, that was so cool! You looked like a stunt man or something.”
Still a bit shaken, all Matt could do was smile bravely and nod. Robbie extended an arm over his handlebars to help him up. Once upright, Matt was about to say something redemptive when he noticed he was not alone on the lawn. A few yards ahead, and closer to the house, Stacy Kaufman sat on a beach blanket, in a sun dress, staring at them over her giant-sized sunglasses. She blinked a few times. “Are you okay, Matthew?” she asked with serious concern.
Matt stood straight up and replied as confidently as he could, “Yeah, sure. I’m fine.” Then he pointed to the place he’d fallen. “I planned it that way,” he inanely declared.
Stacy scanned him a moment. “Didn’t look like it to me,” she opined. Barely turning her head, she added curtly, “Hello, Robert.”
Rob cracked his neck side-to-side inattentively. “Hey, Stacy. ‘Sup?” he said with disinterest.
“Not much. Summer’s just starting and I’m already a little bored.” Glancing skyward, she mused, “This weather is a poor excuse for summer if you ask me.”
“Yeah, it’s too cold and windy to qualify as a summer, man. It’s a drag living around here,” Matt shared scornfully.
“This whole place sucks,” growled Robbie. “The weather sucks and the people suck. I cannot wait to escape.”
Matt flashed back for some reason to the reports he’d written in fourth grade about the region. ‘Blessed with a temperate climate,’ was how the county Chamber of Commerce canonized the area. The influx of people from the rest of the country might suggest something was actually value-worthy to the locale, but for the life of him, Matt couldn’t determine what that could be.
Robbie abruptly flipped his bike around. “See you guys later. I’m gonna go home and grab some dinner before my old man gets home,” he announced while pumping powerfully on the pedals.
As he sped off, Matt waved to Robbie’s distant back. “Later, man.”
They watched him vault off the curb, fly recklessly around the corner, and careen out of sight. Matt then turned back to Stacy. He regarded her contemplatively. They’d been neighbors for years and used to play together in grade school. But he rarely talked with her anymore. Puberty, along with differing interests, had naturally set them off along different paths. She was kind of nice, sort of pretty, and had bigger-than-average breasts for a girl her age, so it wasn’t like she was a pariah. They did not, however, hang out anymore. Even at his young age, Matt had formed the distinct impression that she was a bit … odd. Then again, who wasn’t? Stacy and her mom lived alone. The man of the house split quietly years ago. Matt rarely saw Stacy’s mother, Mercy. She was a nurse at the local community hospital, working nights and supplementing the family income with a lot of double shifts. So Stacy was stuck raising herself. That accounted for why she was pretty much a loner. She was forced to become a self-contained unit.
Stacy stared at him inscrutably for a moment, then patted the blanket next to her. “Want to sit and talk a while?” she invited.
That was weird. Reflexively, he drew a deep breath through his nostrils and exhaled. Did he want to sit there on that stupid towel and talk with her, risk being seen with her? Well, yeah, why not? It wasn’t like there was much else to do, and she was inoffensive, if not cool. He sat down as far away from her on the blanket as he could without being too obvious in his intent.
“So you’re okay? You know, you’re not hurt from that fall?” she inquired more maternally than he could easily ignore.
“Nah,” he reassured her, which serendipitously happened also to be the truth. “I’m fine. Your grass is real soft.” He smirked and poked at the lawn with a finger to demonstrate the ground’s compliance.
Of the myriad of off-the-wall things she could do to make him incredibly uncomfortable, she did the one which he least anticipated. Stacy lay back down. He actually started to blush. She then dispassionately concurred with his last remark. “Yes, it is soft, isn’t it?”
Matt had never been that close to a recumbent girl before. He hoped he did not faint, vomit, or do something equally dorky. Most of all, he really, really hoped he did not get an erection. If he did and she noticed, well, then he would have to kill himself, barring the good fortune of dying spontaneously on the spot of mortification. He urged himself to think of something awful, his grandmother—who bore an uncanny resemblance to a walrus—in a bikini. In desperation, he even tried to picture his parents having naked sex. Anything grotesque or macabre might do the trick and hopefully deflect his hormonal surge.
Mercifully, she sat back up rather quickly, so an anatomical crisis on his part was averted. “So, are you reading any of the books Mrs. Chalmers recommended for the summer?”
“No, not me,” Matt rejected absolutely, shaking his head. Realizing that proper manners most likely required him to reciprocate, he stammered, “Y… you?”
Visibly pleased to be asked, her shoulders relaxed perceptibly. “Yes, well, a few. I’ve already read the Little Women series, but I did enjoy the Agatha Christie books the teacher suggested. They’re entertaining and they take you to faraway, romantic places.” She trailed off toward the end. “So, if you’re not reading, what have you done so far this summer?”
Curling up his nose as he began to think, he considered his best response. “I don’t know, hanging out mostly, I guess,” he proclaimed. It came out much more lamely than it sounded in his head.
“With that Robbie Smith?” she veritably hissed, with more than a hint of judgment in her tone.
“Yeah… sometimes,” he retorted, straightening his back defensively. Matt contorted his face. “Robbie’s okay,” he stated. He found it required some force of effort to even half-convincingly say those words.
She pursed her lips tightly. “If you say so,” she conceded dubiously. But then Stacy softened her expression to a surprisingly understanding one. “I know Robert has had a devil of a time with his parents. An abusive drunkard for a father and absentee druggy mother don’t make for a walk in the park. Still, I think he is not good for you,” she added definitively after the briefest pause.
Excuse me, Matt stammered internally, not good for me? Who was she to judge that? “It’s not like Robbie and I are friends. We … we just hang out sometimes. Plus, if the kids at school think I’m in tight with him, no one will mess with me. Sure as Hell’s a bad place to spend forever, nobody wants trouble with Robbie.” He tossed his palms downward and to the side. “He’s way too psycho to screw around with.”
Wait a second; it struck him again. Why was Stacy so worried about his wellbeing in the first place? Why should she care? Why, more importantly, should he stress about her unsolicited negative opinions regarding his choice of friends? It was not like Stacy and he were a couple, or anything even remotely similar. Where was this chick coming from?
“Do you have your classes picked out for next year yet?” she asked, abruptly changing the topic.
“Yeah, mostly I think. It’s not like us froshes get much choice, though,” he remarked, relieved to be back on neutral conversational turf. “I asked for science and picked architectural drawing over shop classes, so hopefully, the year won’t be too bad. How about you?”
“You’re right, they don’t give us much leeway, do they? I really just want drama and yoga, so I don’t think there’ll be a problem. Even if I don’t get the drama class, there’s the after-school program, so I’ll be happy either way.” She turned her torso toward him rapidly. “Maybe I can do both. Do you think they’d let me do both the drama class andafter school, Matt?”
Matt had never known there was a drama footprint at the high school. He most assuredly didn’t know the rules governing its participants. He was able to reply truthfully that he did not know. He was, however, dumbfounded by the other course offering. Matt squished his face up. “There’s a yoga class at Center High?” he asked with more incredulity than he probably intended.
She was not at all certain how to respond to his implied disdain. “Yes, there is. Quite a good one, I hear. Why? Does that strike you as odd?” she inquired with metered cadence, a bit imperious with the word odd.
Shaking his head and wishing that conversations could have a reverse gear, he backtracked. “I don’t know, it’s just yoga’s kinda touchy-feely. It’s not, you know, like field hockey or softball. That’s what the girls do for PE, right?”
Stacy spoke with equal measure, now with a slight tinge of haughtiness mixed in. “And that presents a problem for you, Matthew?”
Gushing placation, he attempted extrication. “No, no, Stace. It’s not a problem. I’m just … surprised. Hey, to each his own, that’s my motto.”
“Oh.” Stacy’s expression suddenly eased. “I always liked it when you called me ‘Stace,’” she added wistfully.
He actually gulped, nearly swallowing his tongue, in fact, upon hearing that remark. It had never occurred to Matt that he had referred to her as Stace to begin with. Had he called her Stace in the past? Well, he probably had, long ago, when they were children. He couldn’t recall specifically what he might have called her, but even if he had used Stace, he certainly had not said that word in years. He felt it incumbent upon himself to make an instant verification to himself as to where he stood regarding this issue. Yes, indeed, he did think of her as Stacy. The Stace must have just popped out of its own accord from way in the back of his head due to nerves on his part. Wait a second. How was it possible that a contraction of her first name could be a thing she cherished? For some reason completely unknowable to him, it seemed powerfully important to the girl.
She switched the subject so rapidly, it gave him vertigo. “So have you done any yoga?”
This inquiry could be fielded tactfully even by the acutely befuddled Matt. “Me, no. Can’t say I have.” Squinting the eye closest to her, he added tentatively, “I think I saw someone doing it on Merv Griffin once.”
She turned to face him fully, leaned forward, resting on her palms on the blanket. “You should come by later,” she invited with a curious grin. “My mom will be home for dinner in a couple hours. After that, she has to work all night. After she’s left, I was planning on practicing some yoga in my room. You should come by and watch.” She giggled with great zest. “Maybe you can try some too, if you feel like it,” she added with a silly giggle. Stacy then nodded reassuringly. “But whatever you’re comfortable doing is fine with me. I’ll leave my sliding door open, so just come on in. You don’t need to knock or anything. We’ll have a ball.”
Matt froze instantly, and he couldn’t readily confirm if his body was still connected to his brain. It crossed his mind that he may have just disintegrated and, in reality, now existed only as a cloud of amorphous particles drifting in the breeze. There was zero doubt what he’d just heard and approximately zero doubt what Stacy was getting at.
Breath became difficult to draw. Matt’s eyes lost their ability to focus. A girl—a fairly cute girl—a fairly cute lonely girl, was asking him to come to her house that night, after her mother had, with absolute certainty, vacated the premises. He was invited to watch said pretty, young, lonely girl twist and gyrate in her bedroom when her mother was going to be absent for hours. Heart, he beseeched, please don’t seize up or burst. Brain, he pleaded, please do not explode like a ripe watermelon stuffed full of dynamite. What she proposed to him was not too good to be true. It wastrue.
The only thing he knew for absolute certain then and there was that he had to say something and split fast. If he lingered a few moments longer, the erection thing was going to become a real and present danger.
“Ah-sure-yeah-see-you-later-then.” Oh crap, should he give her a kiss or something? A handshake would be too lame, too stupid, even for him. But if he did lean over and try to kiss her, and he had, in fact, misinterpreted her intent, then he’d be one of the top ten idiots of all time. Maybe among the top five.
No time to plan. Nature was stirring. Just split. Smile and split. He jumped off the beach towel, waved in her general direction, and picked up his bike. He elected to walk home, as bending at the waist to ride his bike would be disastrously revealing as well as quite possibly anatomically undoable. He walked as rapidly as decorum would allow. With what little remained of his composure, he forced himself not to bolt and run like the scared little child he had just proven himself to be.
After he arrived home, he flew down the hall, into the safety of his room, and shut the door. He wasn’t certain why, but he wished he had a lock on the door. Since children’s rooms didn’t have locks, he would have to be content with shutting it firmly. He spent the next half hour staring at the clock on his nightstand. Matt might have been called to dinner sometime later, may have eaten something, or spoken with the parental units. He could not later recall. At the table, if he had been asked about his day, he couldn’t remember answering. Maybe … yes, his mom had asked him if he was feeling alright. No, Mom, he could have reported to her factually, he was not alright. How exceedingly excellent he felt ranged around ten million times better than the mundane alright. Hopefully, he hadn’t said that. Oh well, who cared? He was in like Flynn and could care less about the older generation’s glum standards.
Independent of what interactions might have taken place at dinner, his only focus was that he was back in his room, staring once more at the clock. Thank God the timepiece had a sweep-second hand, so he could confirm second-by-second that it hadn’t stopped. Time advanced, however, at such a preternaturally slow manner, he was compelled several times to strike the damn clock to make it move forward at the normal pace.
A worrisome consideration crept into his mind as he lay on his bed, staring at the recalcitrant clock. Stacy clearly intended that he should arrive after her mother had left. But how would he know for certain when that would be? If he arrived too early and Mercy caught him in Stacy’s room, he’d be a dead man. Probably a dead man many times over. Matt would consider himself lucky if Mercy only pummeled, castrated, and disemboweled him by way of retribution. Worst of all, if he was caught, his plan to become a man that very night would be canceled.
So, how was he to be certain when the magical moment was at hand? Mercy probably parked out front, so her car could be an indicator of when the coast would be clear. But he did not know if Mercy occasionally made use of the garage, even just for lunch breaks. It wasn’t like he lived across the street and would know her parking habits. His blood pressure plummeted dangerously as he realized he couldn’t accurately answer that question. He could stand no more. He realized he must go down the street now and watch for Mercy to leave. That way, he’d know with absolute certainty the facts concerning this critical operation. Matt literally jumped off the bed and ran to the head of the cul-de-sac, where Robbie and he sat earlier in the day. From that position, he had a clear view of Stacy’s house, without being suspiciously close to or too obviously reconnoitering it. Come to think of it, Mercy did usually wave to him if he was around when she drove by. If he was sitting there as she departed, visibly and objectively as innocent as imaginable, Mercy could only conclude that everything was boringly normal. Brilliant!
As he took up his vantage point on the curb, he could confirm that Mercy’s car was in fact parked out front. Perfect. Perhaps forty-five minutes later, the car containing The Maternal Barrier turned left out of the court. The unsuspecting Mercy in fact waved to him as he sat there looking positively unintentional. He started to stand up as soon as the car was gone, but plopped back down when it occurred to him that he’d better give Mom a chance to be good and gone. She was still close enough that she could potentially circle back to get something she might have forgotten, like her lunch or a book. Maybe she had, in fact, noticed something suspicious radiating off of him in spite of his best efforts to project innocuousness. If so, she might just have to pop back and see what wool he thought he could pull over her eyes.
Matt nodded silently in confirmation that he was indeed an excellent field general, taking care in both the planning and execution of his conquest. He was not paranoid or chickenhearted. No, he was masterful and restrained. And, at the end of the day, that was all that really mattered. No expenditure of caution or application of chicanery could be dismissed as excessive. The stakes could not be higher and the end justified, indeed sanctified, the means. Period. Be cool and not a fool, he repeatedly reminded himself.
After fifteen or twenty minutes, he was confident with some degree of certainty that Mercy wasn’t coming back. Again, he started to rise, but plopped back gracelessly once again. Was it the designated moment to head on over to paradise? Just because the coast was clear didn’t, in and of itself, mean his time had come. He didn’t want to test Stacy’s resolve by being late. But, equally, he didn’t want to rush over and appear too needy, you know, like he actually was.
Why didn’t she just come out and signal him to approach? Maybe she didn’t want nosy neighbors reporting strange comings and goings to Mercy, that was why. A busybody snooping neighbor could wreck everything. Plus, Stacy waving him in like an A-7 Corsair onto an aircraft carrier might be to act in a less ladylike manner than she cared to display. Above all, that wasn’t the plan she’d articulated. She clearly and specifically instructed him to come to her room around back. Therefore, that was what he needed to do. But when?
After another half hour, he was still sitting there, trapped by indecision, as if steel rivets were affixing his butt to the curb. Around the corner, way down the street, he saw Robbie come into view. Robbie was walking slowly up the street, noncommittally bouncing a basketball.
Crap! If Robbie arrived before he got up the nerve to go to Stacy’s, he’d be stuck. He couldn’t very well tell Robbie what he was planning. For one thing, he wasn’t one-hundred-percent certain the plan he fantasized about was in reality the same plan Stacy had in mind. Plus, either way, Robbie would reliably blab the juicy gossip all over school. Oh, Lord, he thought with abject horror, he wouldn’t put it past Robbie to announce that he too would like to see Stacy do yoga, and that Robbie was coming along, uninvited though he was. No, if Robbie knew of his scheme, the potential disastrous outcomes were as manifold as they were unthinkable.
Get up NOW, he shouted in his head. But still, he worried that he was about to make a total fool of himself. What if he entered her room and she called the cops? Things could get ugly real fast. He could end up in juvenile hall, labeled as a sex offender for the rest of his life. Very uncool.
Robbie was over halfway up the street and had probably already seen him.
Get up NOW! NOW! NOW! Don’t get up now, get up ten minutes ago, you frigging idiot! His feet seemed to have fused with the concrete by some occult process. Get up now, he urged himself, shouting it over and over in his head. He came actually quite close to vocalizing the command out loud, hoping that might inspire him to move. Go! He needed to leave immediately …
A resolution to his torment then released him. A new and superior plan coalesced in his mind, solidifying spontaneously in his consciousness. What was so special about that particular night? He had all summer to hook up with Stacy. She wasn’t going anywhere and he sure as heck wasn’t going anywhere either. There would be plenty of time for romance later. Mercy was still going to be working five nights a week, so what was the all-consuming rush?
As he relaxed back and propped with his arms behind him on the sidewalk, Robbie sidled up. “‘Sup, dude?”
Yeah, no rush. Stay cool, Matthew. He could cook up some plausible excuse for her tomorrow. Taking such a prudent and mature course would afford him a chance to firm up the facts. Stacy and he could hatch a more workable plan of action, one with less ambiguity and uncertainty. Yes, that way, it would be win-win, logic triumphant over hormones, and the rational mind conquering primitive instincts. He actually felt a wry smile crease his lips. What a supreme relief.
Still focusing on the bouncing ball, Robbie queried, “Wanna go shoot some hoops?”
“Yeah, sure, man. That sounds good,” Matt chirped after the briefest of pauses.
Only then did Matt look up at Robbie and notice the two areas of red swelling on his face and crusted blood in one nostril. Half of Robbie’s lower lip was massively swollen. Not two hours earlier, he’d appeared perfectly normal. On the plus side, not only was he ambulatory, but there were scrapes on the back of his fists. Apparently, Robbie’d given to his father as well as he had received.
**********
The next day, Matt didn’t manage to run into Stacy. He thought about walking directly up to her front door and knocking. Then Matt could talk with Stacy directly and straighten things out. But he determined, in the end, that would be too formal and way too fussy. Not at all in keeping with his style. Instead, he walked back and forth in front of her house as often as his nerves would allow. He didn’t happen to catch sight of her or apparently attract her attention. Matt decided he would convince her that Robbie’s dad had really laid into him last evening. Robbie was so shaken up and emotionally unhinged that Matt had to stay with Robbie to make certain medical attention wasn’t needed.
That was why he had been a no-show. As a matter of fact, he didn’t even have a chance to call her on the phone, the situation being so touch-and-go there for several tense hours. That story would certainly do the trick. It would resonate with Stacy’s nurturing instincts and highlight Matt in a highly favorable fashion. He was a self-sacrificing hero, given to providing succor to his brother man in spite of the potential cost to his own best interests. Yes, that was a very nice cover story indeed.
Despite his best efforts, he did not get to talk to her even once that week. In fact, he was unable to chance upon any encounter with Stacy that entire summer. Against all odds, he could only catch glimpses of her here and there. Even when he did catch sight of her, she always seemed to be accompanied by her mother. What, realistically, could he say to her when Mercy was standing right there? He certainly couldn’t pitch his excuse for standing her up with Mom present to hear it too and then box his ears. He never could come up with a good enough excuse to go over to her house and square things directly.
After school started, he ran into her with a surprisingly low frequency, probably because of their widely differing classes.
Matt never spoke to Stacy again after that Christmas break…
TWO
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,
Dylan Thomas, 1945
“Matt, dinner’s ready! Can you break away and join me?”
I looked up from my computer screen. Dinner. Yeah, that did sound good. “I just have to finish recording these grades online,” I called back downstairs. “Then I’ll be there with bells on. No more than two minutes. I just want to put this school term to rest before I do anything else.” True to my words, I was down in a jiffy. “Now I can close the book on the spring semester. Let the summer begin!” I announced triumphantly as I entered the kitchen.
“That’s wonderful, dear.” Shannon raised her wine glass and we toasted. “To another great year of the books inthe books.” We clinked glasses and I took a sip. But, because I just knew it was coming, I watched with mild bemusement as Shannon—for the one-millionth time—set her glass down without taking a sip.
“Honey,” I said, pointing to her glass, “the toast only works if you drink some afterwards. Otherwise, there’s no need to make a toast. In that case, we call what you said a wish or a salutation. To constitute a toast, all parties must partake.” I assholishly held up my glass to demonstrate a wine-filled receptacle.
And, for the one-millionth time, Shannon placed her hand in front of her mouth, giggled ever so endearingly, and took a sip. “Sorry. Now it’s official.” She set her glass down and began to eat. “Summers sure are different now that the last of the kids aren’t cycling back on break,” she remarked after a few minutes.
“Or on break-up,” I sniped. “We no longer seem to be the resort of last resort either.”
She smiled warmly and agreed. “Yes, free food and Mom doing your laundry did bring them all back more than a few times, didn’t it?” Setting her fork down, she looked up at me. There was longing in that gaze of hers. “Still, I do miss them, especially Little Matt. The house is too quiet with the lot of them gone.”
“Hey,” I chided, “don’t bail on the empty-nest thing so fast. You’ll get used to it quick as a wink. You’ll see.” Matty had only gotten a place of his own two or three years back, so we were both still rookies at being alone together again.
“We’ll see, I guess. I won’t miss the trips to Disney World or SeaWorld or any other World for that matter. We can travel where we wish and eat scary food without fear of a scene in the restaurant,” she asserted with forced bravado.
“I’ll toast to that,” I said and raised my glass heartily. “Speaking of which, where do you want to go this summer? You mentioned Hawaii, but we never firmed anything up, did we?”
She looked absently at her food, mixing it around with her fork. “Well, I guess I’m still not sure quite yet,” she finally admitted. “I guess I was hoping that, with some luck, one of the kids would come here on their vacation and give us a chance to see some of our precious grandchildren.”
I set down my utensils. “If you want to see them that badly, why don’t we rent an RV and do the grand tour? See ‘em all.” I raised my arms like a magician after a pretty good illusion.
“I guess we could,” she responded unconvincingly.
“But? I’ve known you long enough to know there’s a ‘but’ in there somewhere.”
“But I don’t want to be a bother.” She looked up apologetically. “If we announce this grand tour thing, the kids will have to agree to it. We might be imposing ourselves on them. Maybe we would force them into altering their real plans.” Resolutely, sounding all the world like a young Shirley Temple, Shannon spied up at me, and concluded, “That just wouldn’t be fair of us now, would it?”
“But,” I completed her thought process, “if they come here voluntarily, it proves they weren’t forced into it, right? If we as much as mention in passing a visit, they would have to agree, however unwillingly, which would ruin their summer as well as ours, since we had just ruined theirs.”
“Exactly!” she cheerily squeaked.
I pondered this diminutive dilemma a moment. “If we do go there and later learn we ruined their summers,” I offered, “hey, we can just go back in time and tell ourselves not to go. We will thus correct our error.”
Shannon was a wonderful person, and nobody’s fool. But I should’ve known better after all our years together than to go and say something like that. “Are you kidding, Matt?” Mirthlessly, she flipped a hand at me. “Of course you’re kidding. What am I saying?” Shannon looked out the window into whatever far, distant source gave her strength. “You’re so funny, Matt,” she concluded, devoid of emotion.
Yes, I was kidding, unfortunately. I couldn’t grasp why she had to transform such a simple process as planning a summer vacation into such a heartrendingly complicated chess match. But that seemed to be her nature. I hadn’t changed it in the slightest during our forty-plus years of marriage, so I wasn’t going to alter her at that point. Well, I was off for the summer, and if she wanted to go somewhere, she would just have to let me know. Otherwise, I hadplenty to do on my own, way too much in fact. I could entertain myself for several months without needing to leave town, thank you very much.
**********
Halfway through my second week out of school, I was so profoundly bored, I began to fear I might actually die due to the severity of my boredom. I’d heard the expression ‘bored to death’ all my life, but had never contemplated its deeper meaning more so than any other stupid idiom. But, as I sat in my study staring at the computer screen, praying for some inspiration or new link, I began to believe I was destined to die in the doldrums. Moreover, if I did so expire, the coroner would determine mine was a mercy killing.
This boded poorly, I had to admit, for a quality summer break experience. Shannon worked part time at a retail outlet, so between that and her fundamentally positive, energetic outlook, she was immune to my painful affliction. Turns out I didn’t actually die. It took Shannon a few more weeks to recognize my premorbid condition. Then she tried to help as well as she could. She involved me in her outings (yucky shopping for the most part), and home projects (yuckier decorating/cleaning), and her network of friends (catty, aging housewives; triple yuck). Those interventions went as poorly as I would have predicted they would.
Shannon’s best efforts weren’t helping. She then encouraged me to be more proactive, to engage in some of my hobbies. The problem was, as I reminded her, I didn’t have any hobbies. I was dutiful to not one pet interest. Shannon, out of frustration, as well as well-intentioned pity, therefore enjoined me to develop some hobbies. Golf, fishing, Indian casino gambling, cage fighting, or anything that would force me to not sulk aimlessly about the house. Nothing clicked. By the way, she didn’t actually suggest cage fighting. I kind of threw that one in.
By the end of my first month off, I think Shannon had grown genuinely concerned for my wellbeing. Maybe I’m cut from boring, and therefore not-introspective cloth, but I wasn’t all that worried. Hell, I was too bored to be worried. Boredom had become in my body an all-pervasive sinew-hardening glue, virtually disallowing any action or thought. I would have welcomed being worried about myself. It would, after all, have given me something to act upon. Preoccupied might perhaps have broken at least some small fraction of the funk that held me captive.
“Why don’t you try doing that transcendental meditation you used to like in college?” Shannon asked me at dinner one night, out of the blue.
I looked up from my soufflé, confused. “I don’t recall liking meditation in college.” I dropped my head again and mumbled, “I don’t recall ever liking meditation, truth be told.”
With peppy confidence, she corrected me. “Sure you did. You took that class with me and everything.”
Setting my fork down, resting my elbows on the table, and lacing my fingers together under my chin, I reminded her, “I took that class because we’d just met. You signed up for it, so I signed up for it.” I picked up the fork again. “I rather wanted to see you twisting and bending on the floor in tights.”
Puzzled, she arched an eyebrow. “That’s yoga, honey, not meditation,” she corrected.
“So, to my profound disappointment, I discovered,” I sighed to my plate. “By the time I realized what a complete waste of time that class was, I didn’t have the heart to say anything. You seemed to like the class, so I kept my trap shut.” Looking up and resting my chin on my knuckles, I mused, “What was that jackass teacher’s name?”
“You mean Madame Simone?” Bristling slightly, Shannon defended, “She was a sweetheart, Matt, not a jackass.” Then she waggled a finger in my general direction. “Oh wait, she did give you a C-minus for a grade, didn’t she?” she recalled.
“Yes,” I confirmed, “and I thus became the only person in scholastic history to receive a C-minus in meditation, before or since. Madame Simone, indeed! Maybe she was born in Paris, Texas, but never Paris, France. Her accent kept slipping back and forth to a drawl. It was embarrassing.” I demonstrably shuddered to further manifest disdain.
“Come to think of it, you were kind of grumpy toward her, weren’t you?”
“And was rewarded with a C-minus for my best efforts. There’s no justice in the universe, Shannon, none whatsoever,” I declared, shaking my jowls vigorously.
“I wonder what ever happened to Madame Simone?” she pondered out loud.
“I’d make up something sarcastic to say in response to your question, but I really don’t care enough about that old bag to expend the energy.”
“Well, that’s a fine attitude,” she bristled back. “I liked her. I hope she opened a studio, or had some other successful venture.”
“Yeah,” I reflected aloud. “A massage parlor would be about Sim’s speed.”
Flaring in disapproval, she shot back, “What a horrible thing to say! Why would you say such vile things about such a sweet, sweet person, Matt?”
I never told Shannon about the actual problem, the one that got me the lowest possible grade that would not lead to me filing a formal complaint. I never told her about the night I went to class when Shannon couldn’t because of a bad cold. Madame was about ten to fifteen years older than us and attractive enough for her age, I suppose. A little too burned-out-hippie-chick for my taste, but not a coyote woman by anyone’s standards. Well, after the class, she asked me to stay and help clean up. I did and we set to work. Somehow she just happened to wind up sitting on the last mat as I tried to roll it up. When I was close enough, she reached over, put a hand on my shoulder, and said my muscles felt tight. She patted the mat and invited me to lie down so she could massage my back.
Maybe my muscles were tight, I don’t know. But a rub down sounded pretty darn good. I lay down with my arms above my head. She reached under my shirt, which struck me as kind of weird, and started rubbing my shoulders. Slowly, she worked her way down to the small of my back. Then, quick as a cobra, the woman slipped her hand down the front of my pants. Caught completely off guard, I jumped up, nearly pulling Madame’s wrists off in the process.
I stammered that I was seeing Shannon, I was flattered that Simone cared, something to that effect, and then fled like a bat out of hell. I didn’t tell Shannon because I didn’t want to upset our budding relationship. And I got a C-minus for my apparently unwelcome chivalry.
After Shannon brought it up, I forgot about meditation for a few days. Then one day as I sat in front of my computer searching for something to search for, I remembered our discussion. I Googled the old witch’s name, adding ‘meditation’ to the search parameters. I found a few dated articles, but nothing too specific for quite some time. Ultimately, I was able to establish that Madame Simone had died on 1/1/2000, driving home from a New Year’s Eve party. Ironic end for the new-age kook that she was. New year, new decade, new millennium, and a newly dead duck. I didn’t harbor her much resentment, but I must confess I had a hard time getting upset over her karma.
In retrospect, though, honestly, she wasn’t going to hurt me or anything. Shannon and I weren’t an official couple yet, so come to think of it, why did I bolt? Because I was a scared little kid, that’s why. Maybe I wouldn’t make that same mistake again, but back then, I wasn’t an aging old fart bored stiff in front of his computer screen. In point of fact, if I were currently dating Madame Simone, people would accuse me of robbing the cradle. Back then, I was young, life was full of promise and, if I must be the one to say it, I was the virile stud. Well, at least I was fairly buff and potentially a virile love machine. I guess I couldn’t boast the full title of stud, since technically, I was yet to be with a woman. I could have held my own, though, you can bet on that. The intervening years with Shannon can attest robustly to my studliness.
Anyway, as I was daydreaming about Madame Simone and the old days, I noticed a few hits about meditation, more generally. Keeping in mind just how bored I was, not unexpectedly, I checked a few links out. After an hour or so, I had located some fairly interesting stuff touting the benefits of meditation. Improved sleep, health, sex, happier mood, all kinds of positives. They claimed one could actually enlarge some parts of their brain and recruit different areas to help perform various tasks. Maybe skilled practitioners could even expand their brain’s capabilities globally, therein tapping into more of the mind’s potential. Some of the articles I read were in Psychology Today and other quasi-respectable sources. I studied a few in detail. By midafternoon, I was sold. I signed up for a meditation class at a local community center, three days a week. Hey, in my case, even if it was a waste of time, I’d be wasting time better than I had been wasting it for the previous weeks.
The first day of class, I even arrived early. There were maybe ten to twelve people milling about, waiting for the teacher. All of us exhibited the same kind of nervous fidgeting one does in an unfamiliar social setting. A couple of people must have come together, because they were talking quietly, but most of us stood around trying not to be noticed. About the time the class was slated to begin, this huge guy, and I mean huge, strode in silently. He walked directly to the center of the group. He was wearing—lightning strike me dead if I’m lying—a cape. Plus, he had on a goofy hat, like Cyrano De Bergerac’s, minus the feather.
With ridiculous fanfare, the man waved his right arm flamboyantly in the air. “Welcome, to one and all!” then thundered in a thick French accent. “I am Maurice Augustin, your instructor and guide to the fantastical world of transcendental meditation. It holds for you the secrets of untold benefits and wonders. Without unwanted delay, let us begin immediately.” As God is my witness, that’s what he said. The amazing part was that nobody laughed. I almost lost it for sure, but everyone else was so funereal, I was compelled to bite my tongue.
He organized us into an irregular half-circle, and he began again more conversationally. “As we begin, keep in mind your goal, the reason you seek meditation. You can only achieve your goal if you know what that goal is, unless it’s by the blindest of luck. And luck, my friends,” he lowered his head and looked up at us in a manner he must have imagined conveyed gravitas, “is something one cannot control.”
He had us relax, breathe, and focus, the typical maneuvers I remembered from college. The session proceeded pretty much as I anticipated. By the end of class, I did actually feel more relaxed than I had in a fairly long time. He instructed us to repeat the number one over and over, as our mantra. We were also encouraged to see ourselves walking along a peaceful beach. I could tell my classmates were getting into it too. When the session ended, he whipped on his cape with a flurry and pranced out the door without as much as a goodbye. What a piece of work!
The next few classes went quite well. The group was getting into a comfortable and enjoyable routine. Maurice worked with us to improve our skills in different aspects of meditation, mind/body interactions, and feedback loops, in addition to helping us center. As a result of the class, I could feel that I was noticeably happier. And Shannon was as least as happy since I no longer moped around the house like a zombie. It was all good. After a few more classes, Maurice pulled me aside. Not unheard of, but unexpected. He told me glowingly that I was an excellent student. He was most pleased with my attitude and swore piously that I was coming along marvelously. He said he could feel me centering, which seemed batty, but it was Maurice talking.
I must confess that I received this news report with mixed feelings. I wasn’t sure if he was straightforward and sincere, or if he was angling to get either into my wallet or my pants. I did, however, accept the compliment graciously, if not ebulliently. Then, a few classes later, before the class began, he pulled me aside again. Now he informed me that he was worried about me. This took me by surprise on several levels. First, how could anyone worry about anything even remotely connected to meditation? Second, I was amazed he had mistakenly thought I would care about the fact that he worried about me in the first place. Thirdly, if he discouraged me, I might bail on his class and he’d be out whatever profit he was hauling in.
Finally, as the group was breaking up that day, Maurice gently grabbed my elbow, led me over to a couple of folding chairs in the corner, and sat me down.
“Matthew, I have the most odd and growing concern surrounding your aura.” Okay, I thought, that was unexpected. “Has anyone ever commented on your aura to you before this time?”
“No,” I told him. “Not that I know of or can recall.”
He glowered at me in a manner meant to convey that the matters he spoke about were not appropriate fodder for sarcasm. When contented that his disapproval had registered with me, he continued. “We are all bestowed with a force of nature, a spirit, a soul if you will, of variable power. With the art of meditation, one directly connects to that spirit and helps remodel it. The good student comes to redirect his or her aura. Are you with me at this juncture so far, Matthew?”
I indicated that I was. Of course I wasn’t, because he was fucking nuts. But I didn’t want to open myself up to listening to his mind-numbing babble one second longer than necessary, so I nodded like a bobble-head doll. Normally, enduring Maurice’s clucking would be an annoying waste of time, but just then, I was hungry. I had a hot date with a deli sandwich and that windbag stood between me and a happy tummy.
Oblivious to my apathy, he plowed ahead. “Good, that will help make this easier. I’m certain you will sympathize that some regard meditative focusing as an insignificant pleasantry at best. This is unfortunate. It is neither insignificant nor a mere pleasantry. Oh,” he swirled his arms about his head, “to most persons, it is a diversion, helpful, but amounting to very little else. Better sleep, the cessation of smoking, trivial things such as these.” Dismissively, he revealed, “This is good and well. And, this is also the sum total many people take away from the art. Most people are not capable of deeper control. In all but the rarest of cases, the true power of meditation is not available to most individuals.” He peered at me conspiratorially from the corner of one eye. “I’m certain you understand that there is much more to it.”
Why the hell Maurice thought I understood such a thing was beyond me, but I was reticent to press him for an explanation. As I said before, I was hungry, he was a nutcase, and the fool could ramble endlessly.
He laughed, more of a silly giggle actually. “I amuse myself when I think of the saying you Americans use. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. As you know, it is quite the opposite really in the present case. The level of most of my pupils’ interaction with our art is trivial, and this is for the best, I assure you.”
No idea, really! I had no idea where the loon was going. He might just as well been addressing me in whale-speak. Was he actually speaking to the dancing unicorns he was seeing in the room? I was beginning to fear my caped crusader’s medication levels had dropped to dangerously low levels and that I might have to call the paramedics.
“My concern with you, Mr. Dunsratty, is the level of your aura, its raw power. The changes I have sensed in you, why, they are truly remarkable.” He studied the back of his gloved hand as casually as you please, and said, “So, you must quit.”
Huh? Of course I should have spoken up at that point, asked for some clarification, but Maurice was a teacher. I hated being rude to a teacher since I was one also.
“Yes, I know,” he mused, addressing an indeterminate point to my left. “A different time, perhaps a different place of life, it might all be different. Primal talent like yours could be molded and honed.” He then glanced casually at his ornate fob watch before dismissively snapping it shut. “But this is now and we are who we are in these particular versions of our lives.” He popped out of his chair, actually rotating his body in midair like an acrobat so he could address me face-to-face. He held out four fingers arched slightly downward and in my direction. “So I must and I will bid you adieu.”
It took me a moment, but I realized the fingers were his version of a handshake, intended to signal the end of our relationship. I was not, to my great relief, supposed to kiss the back of his hand. I gingerly angled my hand to enter his grip. He squeezed my digits perfunctorily once.
“Alas, at this late stage of the course, as I am confident you will understand,” he mused while studying the floor, “I will not be able to refund your tuition. For your understanding, I am forever in your debt.”
I understood what he’d just spat out just as well as I comprehended everything else he’d said, which was not one single word of it. He pivoted like a ballerina then Nazi-marched out the door and out of my life.
I sat there for almost twenty minutes after the circus left town, wondering what in the world just happened. I finally left, but I must admit, I was dazed. It was not like my doctor told me I had a horrible cancer and only two weeks to live, but I was definitely weirded out. I ended up in a local coffee shop, sipping on a latte and replaying the bizarre scene over and over. I concluded he must have been trying, in a very roundabout, insane person’s manner, to relay to me that I was not suitable for meditation. He seemed to suggest that this was due to the fact that my powers of it were too strong. Criminy sakes, he made it sound like I was like that young version of Darth Vader and I was heading down the same dark path. My powers of what? Certainly not of concentration, I could have told him that. Shannon used to say my mind wandered like a herd of gazelles on LSD. So I wasn’t suitable to be in his class because I did the thing the class was supposed to help us do, but I did it too frighteningly well? That made no sense. If I was gifted, shouldn’t I pursue rather than eschew the field? Crazy talk, that was all that spewed from Maurice.
Like I said, I was sort of getting into the meditation. I’m not a hook-line-and-sinker kind of guy, but I was enjoying it in my own grouchy way. Now I had to give it up? Why? Great as my powers might have been, they were, in the end, powers of meditation. What was I going to do, think real hard for the president to go jump in a lake and he would? Plop down next to a pretty girl at the beach and will her string bikini to march into the sea?
Wait. That … if I could do that … No. Stop. That was just testosterone trying to formulate a cohesive thought. Good luck with that one, ya moron.
Those eventualities were certainly outside of my life experience. You didn’t see what was basically magic on a routine basis. Could Maurice possibly be afraid I would focus on something and really understand it? Wow, wouldn’t that be a tragedy! He was such a nut that I marveled at the fact that he had not been attacked and eaten by the neighborhood squirrels.
At dinner, I related the craziness to Shannon. I was curious to get her take on my wacky interaction.
“Well, I don’t know,” she speculated, “but it does seem a bit odd, doesn’t it? That Maurice fellow kind of blew you off, didn’t he?” She directed a puzzled look toward her stuffed cabbage. “I cannot imagine why, though.” She squinted one eye and wrinkled her forehead. “He didn’t say anything more?” she queried.
“No,” I shook my head with a knowing grin on my mug, “that was it.”
“Maybe you should call Professor Maurice and press him for more details?”
“Nah, I don’t think that would help. Plus I don’t want to talk to him, the big pufta. Hey,” I reassured her, “it’s not that big a deal. School starts back in about a month, so I can afford to drop the stupid class. It sure was strange as a mouse marrying a cat, though. Can you explain to me why someone very talented at a thing should be told by someone presumably a master of that thing to drop it like a radioactive marshmallow? What the hell kind of reasoning is that?” Flippantly, I added, “Heck, I’m probably a once in a lifetime find for a meditation instructor. A mammoth diamond in the rough. He should be so lucky as to have me to sculpt into the greatest meditator the world has ever known.”
“I can’t help you comprehend your nutty professor, Matt,” she concurred as she shifted in her chair. “It’s completely counterintuitive that a promising student should be turned away, thrown away in your case.” She shook her head. “Pooh, and you were doing so well with the meditation. It really did help perk up your mood, you know. I just hate that you have to drop it. Now you might just slip back into that blue funk you were stuck in for so long.”
I flipped both palms up. “I don’t have to quit meditating, dear. I just have to quit doing it in Maurice’s dumb class,” I proclaimed joyously.
“Well, honey,” she admonished in her typical overreacting approach to life, “Professor Augustin did say you must quit. That’s what you told me he said, isn’t it?”
I shrugged like a guilty yet evasive child.
“I presume Professor Augustin meant meditation in general,” she elucidated, slipping seamlessly into her concerned-mother tone, “not just his course. Otherwise, what he said wouldn’t be particularly useful advice. Forcing you to proceed without the benefit of any direction makes even less sense than giving you the boot because you’re too good.”
“Yes,” I began as I circled my wagons in defense of my perilously weak position, “that is what Augustin said, and probably what he meant too. But,” I held up a sequence of didactic digits for emphasis, “number one, he not a professor, he’s an instructor. Number two, Maurice wears a cape. Number three, he’s a blithering idiot. Actually, I guess number two and three go hand in hand, so number three defaults to his being a complete flake. There are enough things wrong with that weirdo to invalidate any potential credibility he might be presumed a priori to have possessed.”
“But still …” she warned with childlike foreboding.
“Shannon, but nothing,” I half-yelled at her. “I promise I won’t be like that girl in the movie Carrie, who kills everyone then burns down the gym, or like the guys in Scanners, who blew up people’s heads by concentrating real hard.” I then got that cat-eating-shit grin on my face, the one I always got when I was being a real prick. With my right hand over my heart, I promised her, “I will control my powers, and only use them for the good of humankind.”
“I guess you know best,” she seemed to question more than state.
I absolutely could not see the danger of me meditating on my own. Millions of people did each and every day with undeniable safety. It’s not like we’re talking home nuclear fission here, or DIY brain surgery. So the next day, after Little Miss Worry Wart was at work, I threw caution to the wind. I put on some mood music, tossed my mat on the floor, and I meditated. In fact, I spent the next week quietly relaxing when she was not around. I felt pretty good too. I planned on staying with it, possibly for good. I even thought about joining some other group or class, but in the end, I figured it was really just as good to meditate on my own. Plus, I could safely avoid caped kooks if I did my meditation in private.
Looking back on it now, of course I wish I had listened to Augustin and Shannon. Back then, I was arrogant and brash. Hell, I was a flaming asshole. It was easy to be that way, before my spirit had been broken. After I was crushed, ripped apart, and the pieces incinerated in Hell, only then did I wish I had some modicum of retroactive humility.
We humans can be such a useless species, so futile and so perfectly bereft of any redeeming worth. We are cursed to destroy ourselves by our own hand time and again. Some of us, me right there at the head of the class, never learn.
Rudyard Kipling romantically hustled his seventeen-year-old only son off to presumed glory in World War I. The boy was killed almost immediately. After the War, Kipling wrote his Epitaphs of the War. In them, he declared, “If any question why we died; tell them, because our fathers lied.” Rudyard understood well, through his grief and his pain, the hopelessness that can be our nature.
THREE
Folly is an endless maze;
Tangled roots perplex her ways;
How many have fallen there!
They stumble all night over bones of the dead;
From The Voice of the Ancient Bard,
William Blake, 1794.
“You can’t tell me that’s not the best guitar riff that’s ever been played, man. Jimmy Page is the name we should give to the instrument he graces,” Nick shouted in slurred revelry. Then he stood unsteadily, like a newborn fawn during a powerful earthquake. “To Sir James Page’s lead page solo on Tinker, Tailor, wherein he defines musical immortality.”
Matt and Nick were good friends, the best of friends. They partied often, and generally, it was just the two of them. During their brain-cell-genocide sessions, they did two things with a red passion. They listened to loud rock and roll and they argued about what they listened to. Both were very opinionated and prone to stubborn hyperbole. The two of them were very drunk and very stoned whenever they hung out. That added to both the volume and the conviction with which they debated. For them, it was a large slice of Heaven, making their stressful passages from adolescence to adulthood a little brighter.
Matt, who was at least as wasted as Nick, felt the need to delineate his considered opinion. He in turn stood, raising a wavering finger. “Page is great,” garbled from his mouth. “No ra … rational human would argue that point, good sir. However, one cannot overlook the prowess of Hendrix, Clapton, Santana, and a veritable host of A-list rock and roller strummers. And, we’re not presently even considering in our exchange the masters of the acoustic guitar. Names such as Stills, Young, and folk’s McGuinn must be spoken right alongside that of Page’s. No, one must leave room on top of the pantheon for many a gifted virtuoso when guitar deity is being ordained.” Matt flopped ungraciously back into his torn lounge chair.
Nick glared at him intensely. His eyes were red, mostly from all the toxins he’d put away, but Nick’s ire with the obscenities Matt had just spewed also added to their intensity. Nick wasn’t aware of it, but he looked uncomfortably like he was possessed by a demon. As his head bobbled slowly and his ability to focus his eyes faltered, Nick was deciding whether to respond verbally or physically to Matt’s insulting stupidity. A vault across the coffee table, which would then afford him an opportunity to throttle his alleged friend, seemed, even to his addled brain, to be an off-the-table option. So he launched an assault of words. “All of those people are adequate players of the page, yes. But none are, however, worthy enough, in any way, shape, or form, to hold Jimmy’s stinky, sticky jock strap.”
Matt considered criticizing the gross visual, but wisely elected to stick to the central issues. He polished off the last half of his current beer. “We will likely not … not settle these heady issues here and now,” he posited. “I will state, for the record, that I enjoy all of their styles.” Matt was having difficulty operating his nervous system as well. He snapped his head back and forth while staring in front of his nose more than directing his comments toward Nick. “Well, maybe not McGuinn’s,” he corrected. “Folk music is for the musically retarded, so please cross McGuinn off everyone’s list.” He swayed dangerously. “What I must do now is to rise,” he stood briefly, collapsed back in his chair, and then stood uncertainly yet again, “to rise and get another beverage for us both from the cooler. That way, we can properly toast to the continued artistic successes of all of these giants.”
Matt took a step in one direction and then one in another. He halted and decided unwisely to flop back into his chair. Even though he’d moved very little, it was enough to cause him to miss the large recliner. He ended up sitting on the floor. He looked around, hoping to gain some bearings. It took a second, then he was able to lean on the table and his chair so he could stand. “First things first, however. I must answer nature’s call.” Finger pointing skyward in emphasis, he then staggered off to the open window that substituted for an actual bathroom.
When Matt returned with two cool beers, Nick accepted his cheerfully, having forgotten he was still supposed to be angry. That was not surprising, given the heroic levels of mood-altering chemicals coursing through his head. Matt had, in a complementary fashion, lost his prior train of thought. Teetering in his chair like the drunken parrot shouldered atop the proverbial drunken sailor on stormy seas, he brought to the fore a new topic of discussion. “So, what is on our entertainment schedule this coming weekend? A concert?”
Nick and Matt went to as many shows as they could afford to and, with a good size city nearby, there was no shortage of excellent groups to pick from. “Or, shall we throw a grand ball instead?”
Nick’s parties were infamous. He resided in his parents’ guest house so large numbers of underage revelers could discharge a lot of pent-up tension until quite literally dawn with no chance of parental intrusion. If half of them crashed on the floor or in the yard, no one seemed to mind or probably even knew about the tawdry scene. A double blessing was the secluded, lush garden pathway leading up to the mother-in-law quarters. It was able to conceal a limitless quantity of vomit, so cleanup was never an issue. Plus the dense shrubbery provided excellent cover for the very large number of debauched trysts. That the love-making venue and the vomiting venues were one-and-the-same was either never pieced together by the impaired partygoers, or it was accepted as a necessary evil.
Nick rubbed his stubbled chin, considering carefully his response to Matt’s query as to their coming weekend plans. “I’m not certain. Jeff Beck is in town with his new group. They may be worth seeing. Still, since Jeff’s unfortunate car accident a few years ago, I’m not convinced he’s up to his old form. No one else of consequence is around, so a party may be the ticket. What do you think, my fine compatriot?”
Sitting up straight uncertainly, Matt voiced his preference. “Concerts are nice. But with the parties come the lovely babes, so for me, the choice makes itself. As for Beck? We can always catch them the next time they’re in town.” As soon as he said it, Matt was both aghast and mortified. He looked up furtively, hoping—praying—to see that Nick hadn’t caught his remark, or better yet, that he had already blacked out. There would be no such kismet or guardian-angel intervention for Matt. Not with a remark of that magnitude.
“I guess that settles it. We’re going to the concert!” Nick spewed with more venom than a hundred-foot long cobra could spit.
Then Nick flopped back in his chair, sullen, mute, and fuming. He crossed his arms and turned forcibly as far away from Matt as possible. At that late point in the evening, sitting still for even a short period was a sure ticket for a ride on the Sleep Train. His head bobbed up and down only once or twice before he began to snore loudly. Matt envied Nick. He lusted for respite. But he wouldn’t lose consciousness for almost a half hour longer. Matt was too upset to pass out. How could he have said such a thing? He could have said party or concert, it didn’t actually matter and Nick would have gone along with either agreeably. But of all the stupid things to say, of all the stupid things to even think, that one was the stupidest by the length of several universes set end to end.
Macbeth could never wash the imaginary blood off his hands. Pilate could never wash the guilt from his. Matt’s curse was that he would never expunge the shame those words had so deservedly brought down upon him forever. No confession to a priest, no labors of penance, and no amount of self-flagellation would ever lessen the indelible stain on his soul. In fact, Matt was fairly certain that if he tried to sell his soul to the Devil himself, to make amends, the offer would be rejected out of hand. Even Satan has some standards. Evil incarnate would not want to sully his Hell with the purchase of a spirit as repugnant as his.
He did lapse into unconsciousness, but even as he did, he knew both of them, impaired as they were, would most definitely recall his offense in the morning. You see, no one could or should forgive what Matt had said, because he’d said those words once before. On August 26, 1966, this same Nick asked this same Matt if he wanted to jump on a bus and see The Beatles concert in San Francisco. Matt’s response consisted of the same accursed eleven words and they would haunt them both forever. We can always catch them the next time they’re in town, Matt remarked offhandedly to Nick that day.
Ironically, pitifully, Matt really did want to see The Beatles, very badly in fact. But he was afraid to go. What exactly he feared was not clear to even Matt himself. But, in the end, he couldn’t bring himself to agree to go. So, the two of them passed on the chance to attend the last concert of the last public tour The Beatles would ever play, at Candlestick Park on August 29, 1966.