The Cost (part 2)

Not far inland from the sad serendipity of onlookers, some held hands, embraced, prayed, but not many. Most rioted. Looted. They never heard the phrase, "You can't take it with you." They were all dead to begin with. They were part of the problem.

Farther inland, the roads, all the roads, were jammed with those who fled. Where they would flea to? They knew not. Escape to them was an impulse. Jumping ship in premature surrender to the seas however unforgiving. They would die as they lived; preoccupied and in denial of what was to pass.

Before long, the air would thicken like fog and become charged with electrical current. St Elmo's fire. Enough to start a car. The wind and sky were to descend at sea level and the laws which previously governed the clouds would wreak havoc on all terrestrial life below 3,000 feet above the original shoreline. When all is said and done, the ocean would find its peace at that height for a few short centuries. The whole of which then becoming private bathing quarters for them two who I saw fit to spare.

There they would live unbothered by the litany of turmoil and scrutiny the human world has to offer those in pursuit of fulfilment from this thing, human condition we have lbeled as 'life'. On a high desert mountain top they will exist, oblivious to the chain of events that ran course below.

The Cost (part 1)

The clouds were ominous in the most literal sense as they rolled in a solid line from ocean to shoreline. The water had become air, and the air became water. Along the cost, the masses waited. They would all be dead in a matter of minutes. They knew this without the aid of public advisories, or sensationalist rhetoric. The Mother Earth spake for itself. The floating womb circling her celestial patriarch source of light and the other half of life.

Mother Earth spoke with wind and water, enunciating through seismic vibration as she cleared her volcanic throat and resonated throughout the sky. She said not to worry. That she would be fine. Finally, that she could not say the same for us. These were not the time of the Nephilim. This was not the time of legends and great men. Nor was it the end. It was the cost.

Escalator to Nowhere

           

            Where we are is somewhere and where we’re going, I can't say.  Everything from far off looks like a dot and every dot looks to me like the place we’re headed until we come right up close to it and it passes us by.  Then it becomes the place where we were.  I’m on an escalator.  We’re on an escalator.  It feels like we’re standing still at times but we’re actually moving along gradually and quite steadily.  Then it feels like we’re racing forward at times but we’re still just moving along, gradually and steadily.

            I lean against the parallel moving hand rail with my arms crossed and the seat of my pants gently dragging across the inner panel, the only thing that stays still.  It’s my only constant reminder that I’m moving.  I can etch marks onto it and see how quickly they move away from me.  It’s terrifying and comforting all at the same time, being taken on this ride, this automated conveyor belt of bodies and souls.  It’ll all be over one day.  That haunts me.  But we’re all here right now.  I like that.  We are all in this thing together and we are all on a streamlined scenic route to the same place.

            I hear stories about the place we’re going.  They say it’s great.  They say it’s better than we can imagine.  But that’s all we can do is imagine.  No one person has ever returned from there to tell about it.  They say things like, “Don’t make love because we’ll all be made love to when we get there.”  They say, “Don’t enjoy the ride too much or they won’t let you in.”  Nobody can describe the place they’re talking about, but the only thing I can say with conviction is, expectations are high.  Somehow they think we’re going to different places.  But we’re all on the same ride.

            The people here are good company.  For the most part at least.  Some are better off than others but we all have something contribute.  Some play music, some tell stories, some people build things and still others fix things. When it’s cold, we all huddle closely, when times are lean, we pull together, and when things are abundant, we celebrate.  Of course there are those who think they do better to keep to themselves and it’s all the same.  We feel sorry for them and they feel sorry for us.

            As time goes, we continue our ascent into the great open sky and the majesty of clouds that are painted with warm colors and give the illusion of monumental pillows swathed in cotton candy, by contrast are cold and unwelcoming.  The air is harder to breathe and I notice the strain the journey has taken on people.  They are tired and the weathering of many storms has dried the faces and cracked the skin on what has come to be the company I keep. 

You're a Good Man, Roy Jefferson

                    

            Another night draws itself to a close and Roy Jefferson finds himself alone, standing outside a chic Los Angeles dining establishment and with another in a series of attempts made on his life.  Dressed for the occasion and with twin stab wounds still relinquishing fresh droplets of blood

, Roy brings a hand to his forehead as the wetness begins to tickle the top of the bridge of his nose.  He is getting used to these aggravated assaults on his personal well-being and is quick with deflecting the brunt of the danger.  Roy just knows exactly what to say to get under a person’s skin.  Things like,

            “You ever pop out any kids?”  He asked this of his dinner companion earlier in the evening and with an air of calm that was well suited to the elegance provided by their immediate surroundings.

            “Pop out?” she said.  “No.  I’m afraid I haven’t.”

            “Don’t be afraid.  It’s good to nip those things in the bud when they come along.”

            “Nip in the bud,” she repeated blankly.

            “I nipped it in the bud too.  You know, took care of it.”

            “You’re serious.” 

            But he wasn’t serious.  He wasn’t serious about any of it.  Roy didn’t care one way or the other about whether the girl sitting across the table had children or abortions or ringworm for that matter.  All he cared about was the envelope and how far he could push it. 

            “Sure I’m serious.  Three times now.  You can’t let a situation like that go unattended.”

            “No.  I wouldn’t even if I–”

            “Come on now.  You’re a young pretty girl.  Every pretty girl’s had a spill or two that needed a little cleaning up.”

            The subject of Roy’s entertainment for the evening was Roberta Watson.  A friend of a friend of a friend.  She was prim.  She was proper.  She enjoyed a weekly tennis lesson and liked to date men with alligators on their sweaters.  Skinny and supple, she already had it in her head that she’d augment her breast line no sooner than the strain of motherhood will have taken its toll on her fragile figure.  A nip here and a tuck there is just what the doctor orders after a woman hits 35.  It’s so skanky when girls do it before then, and so pretentious when they do it after.

            “Are you saying you’ve condoned three abortions?  That’s not being responsible; that’s not what being a man is all about.”

            “First of all, of course I was responsible.  I paid for it.  And secondly, being a man is all about having a penis and the coinciding scrotum and testicles.”

            “That’s not what I mean.  Don’t you believe in a soul?”

            “Soul rhymes with butthole.”  Roy threw back the rest of his whiskey and soda and gestured the waiter to bring him another.

            “What?!”

            “What about in extreme cases?”

            They were both very drunk at this point and Roy had been egging her on from the moment he heard her say “moral values.”  These two words in succession, isolated and extrapolated from the middle of a sentence, the rest of which, he had failed to discern the contents of.  They were on a blind date, you understand.  And they weren’t exactly hitting it off.

            Roy stopped her mid-monologue when he heard it, moral values and asked her what it meant.  Argued that it was like saying “wet water.”

            “Something can be wet without having water on it.  But anything wet more than likely has water in it.  And anytime you run into the liquid form, water is invariably wet.”  That was the first time she called him stupid. 

            Roy didn’t have to order his first double-tall stiff drink before he knew that Roberta was not going to be the one for him.  It wasn’t anything she said at first.  Something more in the way she moved.  Like she was made out of fine crystal that was ready to crack at any moment and stab at you with the chards of her own broken self.  Rather than let the night go to waste, Roy decided to make the best of things.  That’s what Roy does.  He makes the best of things.

            “Life is a gift.”  Roberta finished her brightly hued, fruit-flavored cocktail and also signaled the waiter for another.

            “I won’t argue that,” Roy said.  “Let me give you an extreme case.  Wanna hear a story?”

            “No.”

            “A girl; a friend of mine, we’ll call her Lucy.  A girlfriend invites her out, says she’s going to be designated driver.  Disappears halfway through the night.  Lucy’s stuck at a party, drunk as could be.”

            “That’s hardly an extreme case.”

            “Let me finish.”  Roy puts a hand up as in a stop signal.  “She’s drunk as drunk could be; she just wants to lay her head down.  The guys at the place are all being nice, good hosts, all very gentlemanly.  They show her to a room she can pass out in.”

            “This isn’t an extreme case.”  Roy puts his hand up again to shush the interruption.

            “She’s passed out cold.  At some hour of the morning, early enough for it to still be dark out, three or four guys show up to the room with a bottle of lube and rail her in the ass.  She’s face-down, passed out; nothing in the world can wake her.  After it’s all over, the cum starts leaking out of her ass and a few of the little swimmers make in and swim all the way upstream.  All she knows is she woke up hung over with a bruised, greasy ass and a month later, she’s… well um… late.  To put it delicately.”  Roberta, sickened beyond the ability to speak, struggled for words.  “I mean, technically speaking, Lucy could still be a virgin.”

            “That’s so stupid,” the words errupted.  “Why would you say something like that?”

            “Only because things are stupid doesn’t make them not true,” Roy replied in angst.

“Is it true?”

“No.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“But things like that happen.  Lots of things are true and stupid.”

            “Like you?!” Roberta said.  Childish as it sounded, she meant what she said with every fiber of her being.  “A girl who passes out drunk at a party with people she doesn’t trust deserves what she gets,” Roberta shouted over the white noise of people talking and glasses clinking.

            “So you’re saying that life in forms can be a curse, even when it’s a blessed curse.  And furthermore that carelessness of any kind is deserving of such a life-long curse.”

            “I didn’t say that.”  Had she telekinetic abilities, Roy would have already been dead from a dropped ceiling fan or an exploded head.

            “You know you’re pretty when you’re angry.”  Roy dropped his tone and smiled as if he believed himself to be the most charming man on Earth.

            “Fuck you,” she snarled, snatching up her purse as she stood up to leave.

            “Is this our first fight?  Every good couple fights, darlin’.”

            “This was a mistake,” Roberta said to herself, taking a deep, calming breath.  Right then, Roy looked her in the eye with that same self-satisfied grin and told her, “I think I love you.”  Roberta fidgeted awkwardly.  “You see, I’m not what you would call superficial,” he continued.  Poor Roberta was lost now.  “Looks don’t matter to me.”

            That’s when she lunged at him with an appetizer fork.  Having grazed the tip of his forehead, her efforts were otherwise benign.  And Roy Jefferson, poised out front of the trendy, upscale Los Angeles restaurant, touches an index finger to the front of his head, brings it back down to see the blood and smiles.

            “You still got it, Roy boy.  You’re a good man.

My name isn't a thing that I've taken lightly in my life.  It's something I felt like I had to earn.  This I did by learning my lessons at great cost.  Nonetheless, I learned them.  Because of this, I can say without hesitation that, everything I know, I learned the hard way.  That, if my head is round, it's to the credit that I've bumped it on all sides for it to retain that shape.

It's true I found many a lesson, but also the humor in life.  That's what I'm here to share.  This is my blog.  This is the reason behind the madness and the madness behind these calm, sleepy eyes.  This is where I share with you what it took for me to become this person and the stream of consciousness that it inspires.

Please enjoy.

And tell me what you think.