“Well what the fuck did you think was going to happen??” I was laughing just as much as I was annoyed and about half as much as I was shaking, nearly watching my life pass before my eyes.
“What? I heard that it would work! Excuuuuse me for trusting the internet.” Jen blurted out as she stuck out her tongue mockingly, tasting her own tears through convulsions of laughter. I was hoping she actually knew how rediculous that sounded; at least as the words came out of her mouth, if not before.
I slowly stood up, lifting my self off of the kitchen floor, using the washroom door handle as support. I kept my self from glancing around at the chaos that I knew must surely suround me as I kinda hopped a bit over to the corner that Jen had dove into between the wall and the refridgerator, tucking her head between her knees after the explosion.
She grabbed my hand and locked her dark brown eyes with mine, with what I could only describe as a sort of apologetic smirk if there can be such a thing, and let me help her get pulled up onto her feet. I instinctively brushed some of the glass off of my shirt as we faced each other, both of our eyes straining to look around the room, while our heads refused to take the responsibility of taking in the situation. Finally, we looked at each other, she took a deep breath and rolled her eyes upwards, and then we turned towards the microwave.
It wasn’t actually as bad as I had expected it to be when I saw that the little brown box was only half mangled. The glass wasn’t shattered or nothing, but the door was swung open, cocked at some funky angle and lined with cigarette-stain yellow char marks along the edges. Funny, I wouldn’t have expected the door latch to be weaker than the glass itself, but it made sense now that I saw it in action. The plastic on the inside of the microwave was a little worse for wear, some large cracks around the fan holes in the top, let alone the mess of a heap of water, metal, glass and soot that was thrown around on the inside.
“Man…So, uh…well… So, ‘that’ happened.” Jen smiled and gave me a sheepish grin as she flicked her head to toss her russled brown hair back behind her shoulders.
I laughed. “Yep! There she is, there she is… Where do you think we went wrong?”
“I dunno! Maybe the salt in the tap water was too much? We shoulda tried distilled.”
“Bah, but water isn’t conductive! You need some good minerals in there to get a charge flowin’, I swear.” It’s true, too. It was one of the few things I learned in high school chemistry class.
Jen smiled again. We both knew what the real problem was. “Well…I guess you were right. We should have actually gone and gotten a real incandescent light bulb instead of the natural full-spectro-whatever thing that I found in your closet.”
I sighed, “I told you it wasn’t the same thing. But NooooOOo. You said,” I put on my high pitched Jenn-imitation-voice, “‘No. It said it works for any light producing bulb. All light bulbs light up when microwaved in a glass of water.’ Bah! I should’a smelled the bull-shit from a mile away! When will I ever learn that you have no freaking idea what the hell you’re ever talking about? Augh!”
Jen put on her face that said “but come onnn, aren’t I cute?” and placed her hand on her hip. “I do too know what I’m talking about! You’re just too secure in your own cluelessness, which is exactly why you always give in to me. C’mon Andy, you know that my ideas will inevitably lead to adventure. Admit it! You’d be lost in a world where microwaves just sat on their counters heating food a few times a week, without ever exploding. Or where hamsters didn’t get drunk, or beer was drank out of glasses instead of aquarium cleaning tubes.
“Admit it! You’d have no adventure in your life…” she cocked her head and took a step forward to where our bodies were almost touching, “without…” She leaned in and brought her lips close to mine to where I could feel the warmth of her breath, leaned in and kissed me deeply as she softly whispered “…Me.”
Without even a thought in my mind, I gave in to her, reaching my arms to embrace her fragile body, all of my attention on her tenderness and warmth. Fuck, this always happens, and she knows it. My mind has a shutoff valve she holds the key to. A flash of lucidity came to me, I lingered for one extra second on her kiss, grinned, and pushed her away.
I winked at her, “Yeah, sure. You got me.” I turned around to walk into the living room. As I slowly walked out, I gestered to the counter and the microwave, said “You’re still cleaning it all up. We’ll get a new microwave tomorrow, fuck it.” And went to check my e-mail as she mockingly glared at me, hand on her hip, weight on her left foot with her hips tilted and squinted eyes. When she knew I wasn’t going to look back, she simply turned around and grabbed the broom out of the laundry closet.
This had basically been my life for the past two years or so. Not always as…dangerous, I guess, but fairly typically just as exciting, I suppose. We were both part of the young upper-middleclass that could only exist in this recent age of technology: two party kids, ass-deep in corporate America, with way more disposable income than our tastes call for; too smart to be anything less, too lazy to be much more.
Jen and I had met at a friend of mine’s house-party a year ago. We didn’t have any mutual friends or acquaintances or anything like that, she had just been driving by, saw a party going on and decided to crash it. That’s the way it was with Jen, she barely even knew what the heck she was going to do from moment to moment. Actually, that was something I had always admired in her, and even took it upon my self as a skill to be cultivated. The taoists and buddhists and such always talked about the impulsive self, the self you are without thinking about it, being closer to the “real” you than much else in daily life and all that. Sometimes though, I thought she was still tryin’ a bit too hard not to try, throwing her slef into situations that she knew it would never get in on it’s own; kinda misses the point, I figure.
“Hey! Andy.” My thoughts stop drifting back from the past, and my attention shifts back into the moment. As my vision comes into conscious focus, I see the big “0” next to the inbox on my screen.
“Yeah?” I spin my office chair around to face the door to see her leaning against the jam; left arm creeping up the side like a green snake up a sugar cane, with her left leg bend, foot resting on her right.
Her legs spring
her into a short sort of hop and she take a small leap, landing in my
lap, arms around my neck. She stares into my eyes in a deliberate way,
and suddenly blurts out of nowhere “Andy, I want to know you.”
I gave her the standard puzzling look that I use in these situations. Funny thing, is that I probably actually knew what she was talking about, or could have guessed at least, but sometimes if I’m not sure what to say back to somebody, I just try to get them to give up more information before my response comes. She knew this, rolled her eyes, and kept talking.
“C’mon, I was just
thinking while I was cleaning up after our little experiment about how
weird it is that you can never really ever know any body, know what I
mean? Like, truly, truly know them. There’s always a barrier between
the actual person, and your interaction with them. We have to rely on
vibrations of air, or these weird funky symbol things that we make on a
page with a mixture of water and plants or soot or whatever the hell
ink’s made out of nowadays. And not even that, but think about how
freaky language is, in it’s self!”
“Uh-oh, Andy,” I thought to my self, “Don’t get her started on language…”
“Don’t even get me started about language! It’s all just layers and layers of bull shit between us, and I want to get past it. I don’t even want to know who you think you are, or who you try to be, or who you are when you’re around me; I want to know the real you, the real Andy! Who you are when nobody else is around, who you are that keeps your self company.”
“Okay, yeah I get what you’re saying. Basically, there’s some sort of ‘you’ that is the one that reaches out into the world with whatever way it can, but it’s so limited in expression or whatever, that there’s naturally parts of it that you’re missing out on?” I wasn’t really in the mood to have a discussion like this at the moment, but she seemed like she was on a roll, and moods of her’s like these were something that didn’t come around often, so I was trying to humor her.
“Yes! It’s like this book I read once was saying. It was the four doors or something like that…four gates…Um…” She persed her lips and looked to the right corner in the ceiling trying to remember. “Umm…four doorways? Anyway, it was like, the first door that was, uh…something…and the second door, that was the you that opened up, and, uh…then the final door!” She giggled to herself, “no, really, though maaan! It Totally made sense, and it’s totally what I want from our relationship.” She stopped laughing, and fixed her eyes in a rediculously half-serious comedic fashion.
“Hey, wait a minute…” I squinted as I leaned in for a close inspection of her eyes, “You’re high, aren’t you!!
Her jaw slid a bit to the left and her lower lip folded in, delicately chewing on it. She looked up, “Um, no?” I knew better.
“Are too!” I started squirming around underneath her, freeing my arms to attack her soft flanks with a finger-wiggling, tickling frenzy.
“No! No, donnnnn’t you dar-, ahh!!” She busted into a giggling frenzy, writhing around, frantically trying to brush my arms aside.
“No wonder you’re all deep and shit! Joke’s on you, you done got your self too high to even voice what the heck you’re talking about.”
She started to calm
down a little, fast shallow heaves of her chest as she caught her
breath again. She put on her pouty face. “Yeah…don’t think the irony’s
lost on me…stupid gates.”
“Doors?”
She stuck he tongue out. “Whatever…” Then she hopped up off of my lap, hopped a spin into the air and headed towards the door. She stuck her nose into the air, “I know where I’m not appreciated. I am going to go take a hot bath, sir.” She turned around, and smacked herself on the ass she strutted out the door.
“Yep,” I thought to my self, “Just another day…” I grinned and turned back to my monitor to peruse my desolate inbox. I grinned though, and realized that sometimes? Sometimes, I love my life.
There was a knock at the door. I sat up and glanced over at the clock on the cable box. 9 o’clock? On a weeknight? That hadn’t happened in a while. This small, two bedroom house of mine in the suburbs used to see a constant flow of people back in the day. It was pretty much in the middle grounds of all of my crew’s apartments and parent’s basements and what not, and close enough to the city that everyone just sort of gravitated towards it. The perfect location to swing by and have a beer or whatever else was around while they were on their way to wherever else they were heading to or from. But like I said, it hadn’t been that way in quite a while.
I could hear the sound of Jen’s bath being run through the place’s dilapidated pipes as I went to the front door and saw that she’d closed the bedroom door. I got to the door and stood up on my toes to see out of the installed-too-tall peep hole. The fish-eye view that greeted me wasn’t of anybody familiar. Looked like somebody that woulda been in our old crowd though, so I opened the door a couple of inches and poked my head through. “Hello?”
The guy looked a little mexican with some asian cheekbones and other odd features. He shifted his backwards baseball cap a little and pulled up his sagging pants.
“Uh, yeah, hey man. Jimmy around?”
I shook my head, “Naw, man. Jimmy ain’t lived here for a few months now.” He rocked back and forth a bit,
“Oh, righton, man, sorry. Um, hey, I told Jimmy I’d do some stuff with him a while back but didn’t get to it. Um, it cool if I tap at your pad quick?”
“Tap? Haha, yeah, uh, sure man. I hear that’s some weird shit. Yeah, “ I opened the door the rest of the way, glancing back to the bedroom to make sure the door was still shut. “Yeah, come in, man.”
“Cool, bro, righton, thanks, it’ll just take a sec.” He walked inside, and sat down on a cleared area on the floor, pulling out a small cloth bag from his kakhi cargo pants.
“So,” I stood over him watching what him empty a little old school 35mm film canister and this metal ratchet looking gadget. “So, this is the shit that’s supposed to be like tripping on acid or something, but for like 30 seconds or whatever?”
He didn’t look up, just nodded his head and mumbled “yeah, kinda.”
I didn’t want to be nosy, but I’ve always been fascinated with drugs and all the weird, complicated, ingenious and detailed little methods that the human race has come up with to get off on. I watched as he took the neon green cap off of the black cylinder, dipped some sort of metal needle into it, then screwed that into the end of the ratchet looking device. He pushed a button on the back, and a metal cylinder popped up around the needle with a psssshhhh… Huh, musta been pneumatic some how.
He looked around, and found an empty corner in our living room. He scooted across the dark brown rough-pile carpet, then leaned up against the wall. He didn’t even look at me one last time, probably out of fear that I’d change my mind, and without hesitation, he cracked the ratchet thing into the side of his head.
The thing hit his temple with a dull thwack! As the air pressure absorbed most of the impact. I saw the slightest drop of blood as his hand dropped the gadget onto the carpet. I thought to my self, this is freaking fascinating. I wondered what would happen next.
His eyes glossed over, as he got this look of staring far off into space; through my walls, through the city, through the whole damn atmosphere, it was such a far off gaze. Maybe that’s just me being dramatic, but it was definitely not your normal dazed look. Then, out of nowhere, he started moving.
He didn’t stand up or anything, his body just began rolling around on my living room floor! His arms were held up close to his chest, and he was just sort of rolling back and forth, his legs kicking up into the air a little as he moaned “unnnh….unnh…unhhh….”
Now, I’d been around a lot of people on a lot of different things in the past, but this shit was straight up the weirdest thing I’d ever been witness to. I didn’t know what to expect; was he okay? Is this normal? I heard people do some weird things tapping, but…Was it normally this weird?
He stopped rolling back and forth on the floor, and then just lay there for a second. I looked around, then leaned in a bit towards his direction to look for any signs of status. Okay, good, his chest was moving, so he was still breathing. Good sign, good sign. I timidly began to take a small step towards him when all of a sudden, he just stood up onto his feet. It was like nothing weird had happened at all, though his eyes were open a little wider than before. He started gathering up his gear back into the small cloth bag, then stood up, walking towards the door.
I tried not to let my jaw drop as I watched him reach out for the tarnished brass door knob. He turned around, looked at my feet a bit and mumbled a “Cool, thanks man.” And opened the door.
“Uh, yeah, righton bro. Take it easy.” He stepped back out into the night, and as suddenly as he had come, he left, fighting with the door a little to get it to click shut.
I shook my head with
wrinkled brows as I went to bolt the door shut. Man, that was wild! Did
that just really happen? Jenn opened the bedroom door and poked her
towl-tried but still soaked-looking hair of a head out the door, water
slowly dripping onto the carpet.
“I hear somebody else here?” She asked with a puzzled look.
“Uh, haha, yeah, sort of. Man you are not going to believe what just happened here!”
She looked around one last time to make sure nobody else was there before opening the door and stepping out into the living room with only a pink, wet towel wrapped around her body. The worried look on her face shook me to bring the tone of my voice down to a reassuring, calm, tone.
“No, everything’s cool, but one of Jim’s friends or something just stopped by. I said that Jim hadn’t been around in a while, but then he asked if he could tap in our living room.”
“No shit!” She laughed, “You tell him to fuck off?”
“No! I figured you’d be in the bath for a while, so, “ I shrugged my shoulders, “so I said sure.”
Jen looked around the room once more, “And? He left? Or did he..?”
I threw up my arms. “Dude, that’s what the craziest thing was! He came in, got out his little tapper tool whatevermajig thing, and did it!”
“...and? What happened?”
“Seriously, he freaking rolled around on the ground for a few minutes, moaned a little, then got up, and left. I swear, just like nothing happened at all.”
Her face lit up, “Get out!! He seriously just rolled around, got up, and left?”
“Well, he said thanks on his way out, too.”
“That’s insane! I can’t believe I missed out.” She raised her eyebrows in my direction, “I totally would’a tried it with him.”
“Yeah? Haha, I dunno…he
didn’t offer or nothing, but he did say he was planning on doing it
with Jim, so he probably had enough. You ever done it before?”
“Nah,” Jenn shook her head, “I just heard a lot about it from these
guys I used to hang out at Denny’s with. Crazy shit, though, they used
to make their own tappers out of like sharpened sewing needle heads and
clicky pen caps and stuff. Always sounded a little too weird for me.
But man, did they have the wildest stories about that shit!”
“Yeah? Like what?” I was definitely interested in hearing about this. What would be going through somebody’s head while they’re rolling around on somebody’s carpet, moaning?
“Yeah, man. Like way out weeeiiird stories. Nothing I’d ever heard no druggy talk about. They talked about like talking to aliens, or being objects and shit, like staplers, or a plate in the dishwasher and just way out things. I never paid much attention, just figured it was the typical stoner teenagers trying to show off, outdoing each other with stupid stories. But that is too funny! I never heard about rolling around on the carpet!”
“Yeah, haha. Maybe he thought he was a vacuum or something. That is just wild.”
“Yep, I’d have to agree with you there, Ands.” She looked off
thoughtfully into space for a bit, imagining the scene she narrowly
missed, then bent herself over in exclamation. “Oagh! I can’t believe I
missed that. I am so jealous.”
I smiled,
“Well, believe me. You really didn’t miss that much.” I looked at the
ground, going over it again in my own mind. Jenn broke the silence
after a second.
“So, uh…Where
you think we could get some?” She glanced over with that mischievous
twinkle in her eyes. I glanced back at her with a raised eyebrow. It
really did sound appealing in the completely lunacy of the whole deal.
“Dunno! I’ll do some research on the internet, see what the ‘experts’ are sayin’ about the thing. Man, that was really somethin’.”
Jenn saw my
attention wander off again, but she was done thinking about the whole
thing. Her towel made a dull thump onto the floor as she beckoned to me
with her index finger.
The sound of the towel snapped me out of my daydream, and I she winked at me, biting her lower lip. “I got another thing for you that’s ‘really somethin’, cowboy” She turned around and slowly sauntered back into the bedroom, leaving the door open.
“She always knows just
how to get me…” I thought as I the excitement rose. It took all my
restraint to keep my cool and not just bound right in after her.
Chapter 3: Character Development
"Arrrghh...it's
that time of year, again." I said to me as I was stepping off of the
bus into the bitter cold, frigid autumn air.
Yeah, I mutter
to my self way more than I figure's healthy. Whatever, though,
I've already reasoned it in my head enough so that I don't question my
sanity. I figure, what's the difference between talking to your
self and talking to anybody else? When you're having a
conversation with other people, it's just sendin' out into the
environment with some sort of auditory expression of whatever, and then
if there's somebody else there, you get some sort of echo-response
kinda thing. Well, I figure what's the big deal about where the
echo comes from? Other people, your own head, it's all the
same. I tried explaining this to my parents once, though,
and they just looked at me funny. My dad's cool i think, but my
mom might actually be worried about me.
I stopped for a
second to rub my hands together as I looked up into the sky and around,
taking in the surroundings that I found myself a part of. It was
a clear night, actually, way too clear to be so damn cold. The
yellow sodium lights painted my little sliver of the world with a
plastic filter. I sighed, watching my breath waft and dance
through the air in front of me. Man, I hate this time of year.
Winter's always
pretty depressing for me. I thought I was a night owl for most of
my life, mainly because that's when all of my friends would be up and
around. I dunno, it seemed cool to hate the day back then, when all it
meant to be the day is that we had to be in school. I look back
and realize how stupid it was, but it realy seemed like we were all bad
ass and vampiric-like to say things like "augh, that big bright thing
in the sky, ahhhhh". Eh, stupid dramatic kids.
Turns
out, though? I actually really freaking like the sun. I
always forget about when it's the summer time, and I actually get to
enjoy 12 hours or so of daylight. Then autumn comes along,
followed by it's punk ass buddy "Winter", and that's when everything
goes sucky. It's cold, it's dark, everyone's inside, have to
worry about carrying a jacket, everyone drives like a jackass when the
roads have even the slightest powdering of dust.
"Okay Andy,
wait, hold on... You know better." I caught my self in the
negative frame of mind. I ended up going through this phase where
I read all these self-help books for whatever reason. I gotta
say, they actually got a lot of cool stuff in them, but fuck... Now, I
have all these ideas in my head about how I should act for maximum
happiness and whatever. "What to say to yourself when blahblah,"
"The blahdy blah Prophecy" "Habits of Highly Effective blah blah
blah..." yeah, they were all the same, and turns out after reading a
few of them, I was so sick of hearing about that crap that I didn't
even feel like putting any of it into practice.
But damn...now I had the thought, and I'd be dumb not to do something about catching my self.
"Okay,
okay...take a deep breath...try to think of something positive about
winter, man... What's cool...what's cool..." I looked around me
some more, all of the office buildings towered above me; I could see
all the little busy workers typing.. "Well, guess that's kinda
cool and all. How often do you get to spy on business
freaks? And...wel...the smell of fireplaces, that's cool...
umm... freshly laid snow..." I smiled to my self at how stupid
this was.
"Children in
snowball fights, building snowmen with beerbottles for noses, peeing
your name in the snow, puppies on christmas morning..." i was making my
self sick, just hearing me.
"Fuck this. We're going to the bar." Yes, sometimes I talk to my self in the plural. Yeah, I know.
Hell yeah,
luckily there's a bar right by my house. Well, probably not so
luckily, actually. Eh, fuck the long story about the bar, or why
i go there or all the stupid ass things I don't remember doing at
it. I'm there, I'm already sitting down, and Jerry's already
walkin' back with my pitcher. Okay, Jerry gets an intro: he's the
night manager. We talk sometimes.
Jerry thumped the
pitcher that he knew I was about to order, which kinda made me feel bad
about my self sometimes, down on the table, and in the same motion he
slid his burly lumberjack frame into the seat accross from me.
"Heya,
Andy. How are'ya?" He began the slow headless pour of an
experienced drunkard into the glass he'd tapped down in front of
me. I watched it as the golden level slowly rose.
"Good, Jerry. How are you?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah... That sure is a lot of pressure to put on a hole-in-the-wall-bar patron of yours, Jerry. You know that, right?"
Jerry smiled. "Yep, reckon it is, but, s'how it goes some times, eh? Ever'one's lot in life, and all."
I took another drink of my beer. "Hey, Jerry?"
"Yeah, Mr. Andy?"
"Well, I'd love to have this deep culture-intunement conversation of
yours and all, but right now? I gotta say, man, I'm just not
really feelin' it." Jerry nodded his head again in that
deliberate manner of his, grabbed the pitcher and filled my beer back
up.
"Good go, Andy. I reckon that's the most honest thing somebody's told me all day."
Now I was the one nodding. "You got it. You can always count on me, Sir."
The walk home wasn't much better. At least I had a buzz on, as I
made my way through the
trailer-park-juxtaposed-suburban-landscape streets on my way back
home. Leave it to Jerry, now my mind was racing even more. What
the heck was I doing? Is the local dive bar really the place that
I wanted to spend my days on this big hunk of rock? All the
ancient wisdom, bubblegum philosophy, whiny "know-thyself" praddle that
I had spent the last few years filling my head with was swirling around
in a dark haze inside my mind as I saw my house slide into view at the
top of the autum leaf cluttered cluttered street making my way up the
hill.