fiction:: DEAR JACK

Dear Jack,

Yes, I am alive. I'm sure you've heard a lot about me from Rip and Steve and the other guys. Probably some pretty awful story about how I did too much drugs, broke down . . . and how they finally found me wandering around Jefferson Park one day with nothing on but a cardigan sweater and a pair of boxer shorts. Well, rest assured, it's all lies and well-intended assumptions -- except for the part about me wandering around Jefferson Park half-naked. But really, I'm OK and I think we've known each other long enough for you to hear the real story from your buddy. The whole truth this time. I have to tell somebody who will believe me -- so tired of the scared looks I've been getting from everybody.

I've learned to just keep my mouth shut and smile. Above all: ACT NORMAL, KEEP BUSY. I've been helping dad with small chores around the house (he's going blind so I guess that means we're all supposed to feel sorry for him) and running errands for Mom (good excuse to get the car). This seems to please everyone, or at least make them less nervous around me. But I can tell they're still nervous. Like they expect me to start ramming my head against the refrigerator any second. Hey, a person can only do so much, you know?

Jack, I'm getting really tired of this "acting normal" bullshit. I'm afraid of forgetting, but even more afraid of talking about it lest I get sent back to the Clinic. (That place was bogus . . . I won't even go into it.) You're like the only person I can talk to -- and you're all the way over in another time zone. I don't care what anybody says. It's not the drugs, I swear, and if all that pot we smoked in Steve's car last summer has anything to do with it, then I want to know why those guys haven't been locked up by now.

By the way, I don't even talk to them much anymore. We all started drifting apart only a few months after you left. Most of them ended up getting jobs, girlfriends, whatever. Jeff finally married his girlfriend Kelly and my mom informs me, constantly, that they are doing well and are looking to buy a small house in Justice Falls. Pretty perfect, huh? I was invited to the wedding but couldn't make it because I was in the clinic at the time.

Like I said, we all sort of drifted our separate ways. Me, I just started hanging out by myself mostly. Went through a lot of jobs -- ditchdigging, part-time construction, graveyard shift at the White Hen Pantry, clerk at Butera Supermarket, you name it. I even drove an ice cream truck for a while, if you can imagine. Actually, it was a lot of fun. Too bad it didn't pay anything. Basically, I was pretty happy. After I was finished with school, the parents left me alone. It was like I finally had the license to do whatever I wanted. Came and went as I pleased. (As you probably remember, last summer I was hardly ever home and I spent a lot of nights sleeping on the couch at Rip and Steve's. You know, the more I think about it, that was a pretty cool summer -- we sure put a lot of mileage on that car, driving around.) I think the best part of all of this was that I almost had enough time to do all the things I ever wanted to do.

At night I'd climb the water tower with my guitar strapped over my shoulder and just sit up there and play for hours. When it started getting light out I'd walk over to the tracks and hop on a freight train. I'd ride that car for about 30, 40 minutes and then jump off and walk the whole way home. That took about two hours -- barefoot. I had a wicked tan. I didn't care about anything.

Once, I fell asleep on the train and didn't wake up for a couple hours. I looked out the open portway and it was all a blur of unfamiliar scenery. Then I realized my guitar was gone. That really pissed me off. There were three or four Mexicans hiding away in the same car when I first got on and I was sure they took it while I was sleeping. It was kind of sad, really. They seemed so friendly, their surprised, tired, black eyes just blinking at me, none of them saying a word. They were all sitting against the same wall, passing around a carton of orange juice. They even offered me some.

Oh well, I thought, it was a cheap old thing anyway, just another material possession. I ended up jumping out and tumbling into a golden field of soft, warm grass. I remember I was wearing nothing but an old shirt (the one with most of the buttons missing) and a pair of worn jeans. The wind was crisp and cool and cut through me like blades.

I didn't even mind so much when you left or when everyone went off to do their own thing. I mean, whether I was digging ditches or handing snowcones to cute little black kids over in Carson City, it didn't matter -- I was happy. I had no idea that within only a few months I'd be betrayed by my closest friends and relatives, tricked into entering a clinic. As though any revelation on my part was any of their business. As though what I'm about to tell you was bad or wrong or in need of correction. As though I ever hurt anyone.

At first it was like a catch-up game with the corners of my eyes -- too much around me, too much to devour and digest. I'd sense my breathing getting deeper and deeper, my lungs not quite sure how to handle the 100% pure virgin oxygen it was receiving nearly every second. I'd be sitting in a chair watching my mother slice some vegetables on the kitchen counter and I'd be thinking, Ok, slow down. You are here, existing in this moment, this is not a memory. But it was like that reality existed on the other side of the glass, just outside my reach. The air around me, going inside me, was getting bigger and bigger until I knew it wasn't just my lungs anymore, but my brain that was floating and expanding while I sat there, in my chair, watching my mother cut vegetables, the present becoming the past like a conveyer belt tide.

She'd turn around and ask me if I wanted a glass of milk and my reply would hover the room and somehow reach back to me through the holes in the side of my head. A "yes" descending. Yes, yes, yes. Meanwhile, I'm trying to control all that helium that's blowing around and making my wheels go faster and faster, the frenzy that's building somewhere in the center of my brain, that refuses to come out. Gradually, I would feel it subside, an ambulance siren fading off into the distance, gas dissipating into the atmosphere, the dying merry-go-round. I'd look down at the table and see my hand curved around a cold, moist glass of milk.

It wasn't scary -- at least no more scary than when you're driving and have to merge into a freeway. You're just going to have to go a little faster for a while. You have no choice in the matter, but it's not unpleasant either. You just go with it.

And that's just what I did. For a while anyway. I began to watch a lot of television really late at night. I found this helped some, helped stop some of that hyperventilating in my skull. I think it was the regularity of the programs, the 30-second commercial spots, and the voice of Maury Povitch that did it. There's no mistaking a voice like his. It's sharp and grating, splices through all the chaos of time and space, keeps you still. He's the only neutral party and therefore the only one I can listen to with a trusting ear. Not that he ever told me anything. It's all anti-knowledge, clutter. I'd barely waste my time if it wasn't for the need to regulate and keep the frantic sirens at bay.

But those others, you have to listen to them with cynical eyes and crossed arms: tricksters, messengers of disinformation, teasers of the collective unconscious. Humorously, they were always giving things away. For example, they let it slip out months ago that the U.S. would invade Cuba. And you know how I picked this up? From CNN! There was a fifteen second soundbite of the President visiting that singer -- can't remember the name, the one who's always wearing those rhinestone bustiers. You know who I'm talking about. Anyway, he was visiting her in the hospital after her stage collapsed in Toronto and they thought she's never walk again.

Now, why else would the leader of the most powerful nation state that ever existed bother to visit some second-rate talent reject like her? It was a perfect example of public relations foreplay.


God, listen to me, I'm starting to sound like Rip. Angry at the world, I'm not. What they did to me, what they think they did to me, it's all slowly falling behind me now. Let them think what they want -- I know what happened and I won't forget. That's the important thing. Maybe someday I'll get it all back. Channel it into some place they won't know about. In the meantime, I just go through the motions, remember bits and pieces here and there, and smile softly to myself.

Your buddy,
Patric

P.S. -- I'm catching a cold. It's kind of fun.

P.P.S. -- I was cleaning out my closet the other day and found an old AC/DC pin. I think it belongs to my brother because he stayed in this room when he was in high school. I'll have to show it to him next time he drops by. He'll get a kick out of it.

Above image by photographer William Gedney whose work can be seen at http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/gedney/.