The way I looked up to Ezra, one might conclude I had an inferiority complex. Of course, I, the old soul, would call that a stretch. There was this other guy, Bob. The way I looked down on Bob, one might conclude I had a superiority complex. That would be less of a stretch, but we old souls were all about climb. The Bobs of the world were all about decline. No, that base Bob of mine was hardly worth mentioning.
Then again, I was a writer. And when it came to the joy of it, there were more kicks in looking down a nose, than there were looking up.
I climbed in my pickup, headed on over to Bob's. This friend I'd had since high school was as good as a guy could get. He still had his original four cylinder engine, his original paint, battleship gray. Though a ride of sorts himself, Bob was no friend, just some bonehead I'd met a year ago in a writing workshop. So much of a bonehead I'd adopted him as my personal fool.
This was something new for me.
We old souls, striving to evolve beyond human, had no use for Bob's kind, hell-bent on devolving into animal. But the day I met Bob, I pulled out my pad and pen, wrote, "Often an old soul will saddle up with a new soul. Why? To lighten the load that comes from having to serve yet another life sentence down here on this nether earth plane."Though Bob and I had little in common, what we had in common--other than age and wild hair--was a passion for writing fiction. Or, was it a passion for living the life of a writer?
Bob had approached the writer role differently than I. My game plan; get mindless jobs so I could work on my writing while I worked. Bob, on the other hand, had majored in Business Administration in college. His plan; put off writing, stalk the big bucks so he could retire at forty and do nothing but write. Well, Bob was retired now, but he didn't write much--his life too full of the arts and crafts of retirement; drinking and chasing women.
Though pleased with the kicks I was getting, sometimes I'd forget Bob was my sidekick. After all, we old souls were down here, largely, to inspire individuals, wherever they were, to take the next higher step. Truth was, Bob was a better writer than I, and, sometimes, fed up with Bob's hedonism, I'd get on my high horse, tell the pig to quit horsing around, open his laptop, contribute to society.
Of course, we literary types must choose words carefully when high on Old Paint. There are, after all, better ways to light a cellar than razing the house. A good way is to open the cellar door, pull down on the string strung from the bare bulb.
"See Bob," I'd say, using the littlest of fingers to rest upon my chest, "writing requires a degree of sacrifice. A writer is he who secedes from life so he can, through the living page, breathe life into the dear readers of the world who--to the avail of the publishing industry--are too afraid to join the living."
"That reminds me," Bob would say, his big finger in my face, "when are you going to get a life?"
"Hey," I'd say, "what I have I'd take any day over what you call a life."
"Ya, well, good luck taking death by the horns; I'll stick to life."
"Which begs the question, Bob: Is it you who's stuck to life, or is it life that's sticking it to you?"
"That reminds me," Bob would say, "there was this chick I stuck it to the other day, who . . ."
Bob's tales of conquest were always captivating, for Bob was very creative when it came to lying his way into a girl's pants. Of course, he had to ruin every tale with his pig ending. "Ka-ching," he'd say, blowing imaginary smoke from his gun finger, "another notch for the old gunstock."
I knew Bob said this to upset me. And it did upset me. No, not the score-keeping part--most men saw women that way; there for the slaying. What upset me was the way his "Ka-ching" spanked me awake, filling me with guilt for having bit so hard on his pig tale.
It was a rare day I took my pickup out on the freeway. Freeways were for rats who had signed up for the race. Though we peace-seeking old souls preferred the slow scenic route, sometimes we took to the freeway just to get a feel for life.
Or, so I took to telling myself when I'd been forced onto the freeway by some fucking asshole in a sixteen wheeler who had refused to yield.
I thought of the fork I took on the gallery patio. I licked my puncture wound. I thought of the "sick," I took in the orchard. I reached for my heart. In the way of my heart were the contents of my breast pocket. Exiting the freeway, I removed my new reading glasses--a level stronger than my old.
At the stop light, I got my face in my review mirror. I never liked my nose; too big for my pinhead. And today, with some trick of light, my nose was the color of the sky. I liked blue, but it was no color for a nose. Then again, when you have a nose the size of a silo, the sky's your friend.
Bob had lost his wheels--cited for drunk driving, so I helped him out on occasion. Today, I was taking him grocery shopping. Or, more accurately, taking him to the grocery store so he could hit on every lipsticked chick under thirty.
No more had Bob climbed in my pickup when he started opening and closing my glove box door. This rapid-fire activity seemed to fuel his favorite topic; the worship of women as objects. After a mile or two of hot-box this, hot-box that, Bob stopped banging, looked at me. "Peculiar," he said. Only he pronounced it, pecooliar. This was what Bob always said when he was about to critique something, or more often, someone.
I, of course, baited him by saying, "What Bob? What's pecooliar?" I knew he was about to lay in to me, but I was an old soul, a master of detachment. Instead of finding criticisms insulting, I found them entertaining.
"Well," Bob said, getting back to his banging, "I try everything to get you to go on about women, but you just sit over there and shake your head like you're not interested. Sometimes, I think you might be going gay on me."
"Ya, right," I said, knowing better than to present a defense.
"And then you go on and on about how you haven't gotten laid in over a year, as if that's some great accomplishment."
"That is a great accomplishment."
"All that accomplishes is making me think you've gone gay on me."
"I'm straight, and you know it. It's just that I respect women."
"I respect women," Bob said. "Every woman I respectively nail."
I looked down my nose at Bob. "Women are more than a place to put it, you know."
Bob looked up my nose. "I'm more than a place to put it, you know."
I pulled up at a stoplight, studied Bob rolling down his window. Why was he being such an ass today? Perhaps he'd gotten a jump on his evening drinking.
Bob stuck his head out his window, yelled at the woman in the car next to us. "My boyfriend here; the most insensitive significant other ever. All I am to him is a place to put it. I hope your boyfriend treats you better. Say, what are you doing tonight? Maybe we should get together, badmouth our men over a glass of wine."
Hand shielding my face, I took an interest in things out my window. Maybe that's why I hated the color red--my face was always turning it. A good way to put the fire out in ones face, is to lose oneself in a cooler color. Say, maybe that's why my favorite color was blue.
"My," she might say, "what bare walls you have."
I might laugh. "That's a monk thing; we have an aversion to clutter."
Of course there was the clutter in the corner where I stood and wrote. Clutter in the nook where I sat and ate. Clutter on the floor where I lay and read. I moved a stack of novels so I could better see what was climbing in the spirals of my notebooks--those precious journals that housed my bare-bones words-to-live-by. Whoa, put that on your list-to-do: Sweep up dust bunnies.
"What's that?" the woman of my certain interest might ask, peering into the corner I never went in, where stood the blue fish chair I never sat in.
"That?" I might say. "Nothing really. Just a bad chair my last girlfriend gave me."
Oh, we writers; some nights we can't get a shower in for the dialogue pouring out.
Undressing, I thought of my last girlfriend, Rachel. She'd come over and say, "How can you live like this?" I'd say, "I'm a monk." She'd say, "You're no monk, monkey boy. Monks are celibate. You have sex with me every blue moon, so climb off your monk high horse already."
Out of the shower I thought of the positives of living alone. OK, so I was getting overrun by dust bunnies, but, for negatives, that was it. No, I'd pretty much cleaned house where negatives were concerned--those burdens that come from having a life.
Out of the shower, I liked to pace along my wall of south windows. No, I'd wax-papered my windows so the neighbors couldn't see me naked--or worse; pacing like an inmate at the zoo. Pacing, I itemized my positives: Nobody knocking on my door. Nobody calling me on the phone. No human contact whatsoever.
Well, other than colleagues at work.
And Bob, my sidekick. And a handful of ex-girlfriends I'd taken measures to stay friends with. Oh, ya, and my movie buddy, Deirdre.
I stopped pacing, looked at my phone. Damn, why doesn't Deirdre call? I sure could go for a movie about now. Let's see, what's playing? Oh, well, Deirdre will know.
I stepped up to my phone. Dialing, I thanked Hollywood. No, nothing I liked more than escaping into the Big Screen.
But wait; Deirdre wasn't home--had moved out of state.
I slammed the phone. "Thanks for the burden, bitch. Now I got to find me a new movie buddy."
For a girl, Deirdre made for a good movie buddy. She didn't go to movies to have a good cry--went home to her live-in boyfriend for that. No, Deirdre, like me, went to the movies to laugh at how love made asses of us idiot humans.
I looked at my door. Now what was there to look forward to? Then again, I was a monk. Monks didn't need anything to look forward to. Well, sure, we looked forward to death, but that was it.
OK, then; I'd give up movies. No, that's how we monks did it; with the wave of the hand we'd give it up. Then again, there was the popcorn. Which reminded me; tonight was pork shoulder stew night. I always looked forward to pork shoulder stew night.
Whistling, I set about doing dishes. Or, more accurately, dish. Fifteen years ago I'd received my divorce settlement; a saucepan. That's all I'd asked for. For fifteen years now I'd eaten cereal out of my pan for breakfast, salad out of my pan for lunch, stew out of my pan for dinner.
Then again, I didn't consume everything out of my saucepan. Take red wine. Occasionally, religion was called for of an evening. Saint-Emilion was my religion. And, oh, what a clean religion mine was. Without as much as dirtying a glass, I'd chug right out of the bottle whatever level of worship was called for of an evening.
Of course, tonight I had no saint--needed no saint.
My stew boiling, I took a seat. The tenant before me must have liked the stage; she'd wallpapered my kitchen nook with depictions of Sarah Bernhardt. I had a TV, but I found conversation with my wall more engaging. There were half a dozen of these Sarah's on my wall, and I'd select a Sarah depending on what kind of energy I had left of an evening.
This evening, I was beat, so I selected Sarah at her most provocative.
By her body language, the actress seemed to be saying: "If you are my waking reality, I'm going to sleep." This was all an act, of course--an act to get me to climb the wall. Which made me feel sorry for the actress. Night after night she'd put on her pathetic play-hard-to-get. And night after night I'd refuse to bite.
Tonight, I leaned back in my chair, said, "Ya, ya, Sarah, you're sexy and all, but where ever has sex gotten a guy of an evening?'"
Sarah didn't say anything.
Sarah was from an era when women had little to no say, so it always took some coaxing to get her to say anything.
Wolfing down my stew, I coaxed. "I know, Sarah; I know you had problems with the men of your era; shoving you onto pedestals, giving you no say, all so they could better worship you as object."
"You're right," I had Sarah say, "men in my day were idiots."
"Not to say men of my era have evolved much. But you're lucky to be hung on the wall of the one who has. No, Sarah, turns out I'm that rare type of guy who actually encourages his pedestaled women to speak."
"You're right," Sarah said, "you are an idiot."
"I'm no idiot."
"I stand corrected; you're an ass."
I didn't say anything.
"What you need, Anton, is a history lesson. Here, let me take you back to my era; show you what say we women had over our men."
Sarah was always doing this; inviting me to revisit history. I liked history, so I often bit. What I didn't like was how the history lesson always ended with her--in her milieu--making an ass of me, out of mine.
Time to talk about me in my time.
Pivoting in my chair, I placed my pan in the sink. "Say," I said to Sarah, "that finger of yours. Ya, the one in your mouth. Reminds me of a finger I saw the other day at Student Orientation. You should have seen it; stirring a stub of a pony tail like there was no tomorrow."
"You don't say," I had Sarah say. "Perhaps this girl--this girl with the finger--is the same girl you talked to around noon today?"
I didn't say.
"Yes, I believe it was--the very girl in the orchard you talked to today like there were more tomorrows."
"Dammit," I said, sitting back, "I'm a working man, at the end of my work-a-day. The last thing I need is some dead actress giving me the third degree."
A good way to regain the upper hand with a depiction of a dead actress, is to switch depictions. So I took my eyes off the most provocative Sarah, planted them on the most innocent. This Sarah had a finger in her mouth as well, but, by her eyes, appeared to be bombed out of her mind. Now, to get the upper hand. But wait; what's up with the innocent's other hand? Why, it's a finger I'd never noticed before.
I couldn't believe it; Sarah the innocent, giving me the finger on the sly.
"Read it," I had Sarah say.
I knew what she was referring to. The code of conduct I'd written on stage the day of Student Orientation. The code I didn't want to recall. For it was the very code I had had the honor and privilege of breaching at first opportunity--breached around noon today.
Seeking escape, I closed my eyes, recalled something I'd observed the day after Orientation. I had looked up from my grounds work, and there she was, The Woman Who Wasn't Trying, passing by with that boy from the wall. Because he was keeping his hands to himself, and she was looking down, talking at him without cheer, I didn't think much of it at the time.
I thought more of it in the days that followed, when every time I looked up, there she was, The Woman Who Wasn't Trying, looking down, walking with that same boy, talking at him without cheer. Sure, I was elated she seemed miserable in his company, yet devastated this boy-always had all the earmarks of a boyfriend.
"Read it," I had Bernhardt say.
I opened my eyes, stared down Sarah's middle finger. "Why?" I said. "I read it, you lay into me. I don't read it, you lay into me."
Thank God we writers had that advantage over non-writers. When it came to the heavy lifting of leveling with ourselves, we delegated that dirty work to peripheral characters.
I panned all my Sarah's; had them speak in unison: "And you call yourself an old soul. An old fool is all you are. The greatest gift an artist can receive was given you. A muse, a well spring of inspiration. And what do you do at first opportunity? You diffuse the muse by talking to the muse. And now that great work will never be created. The novel slated to save the world, never written. Fool; the seeds of Eden were placed in your hand. You ground them into flour."
This nether earth-plane, enough to drive an old soul to . . .
But tonight I had no saint. Needed no saint.
This nether earth-plane, enough to drive an old soul to . . .
But tonight I had no saint. Needed no saint.
****
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