Am I Okay?

The Longest Day : Part 2

Fri, 24 Nov 2006 23:32:27 GMT

~The Longest Day : Part 2 ~

6:15 P.M. Oct. 31, 2005

“We better break the bank on this motherfucker!”

Stater Bros. Supermarket, Upland California.

We had safely made it into town without hemorrhaging too much time from the now pitifully wounded schedule, and my triumphant (and, yet again, expletive laden) call to action was in reference to a monstrously heavy bag of change that I was hoisting, bound for the Coinstar machine tucked neatly just inside the supermarket’s entrance.

Now it’s important to note that when the average individual takes a bag of change to the local Coinstar machine for more palatable cash redemption they are typically dealing with sums of change ranging in the 20 to 40 dollar range. Please note (yes, I like notes) that I was not, at least in the arena of ‘change acquisition’, an ‘average’ individual by any stretch of the imagination. My bounty of change was, in no small part, legendary amongst friends, ex-girlfriends, siblings and co-workers. Either through sheer laziness or an unconscious desire to collect dirty bits of American coinage I never used change in the purchasing of anything. I handed over a solid bill, the change was pocketed, and sometime, during that following day, the change would be, accidentally and unceremoniously, dumped from my pockets at various intervals of sitting down in various locations. The cushions of my couch, the carpet of my apartment, the corners of my bathroom (from undressing), and the seats and floors of my and other’s automobiles. And this cycle was repeated daily. By the end of a few months I had secretly stowed away coin sums totaling close to one hundred American dollars, in scattered and sparse increments.

If life were an ocean, I’d be a halfwit penny pirate with zero cartographical skills.

And on the evening of October 31^st, 2005, my cohort and I had arrived at the one supermarket unfortunate enough to be within our closest proximity, with what was, quite possibly, over 8 months worth of unconscious plunder.

I had come to break the mother fucking bank

(continued below the following short intermission)

-----------------------COINSTAR: AN ELEMENTARY PRIMER---------------------
Or
‘HELL, HE’S ALREADY WASTED 8 PAGES TALKING ABOUT DABNEY
COLEMAN, WHY NOT WASTE ANOTHER PAGE ON THIS!
(soon to be followed by)
‘WHERE’S THE ‘JAPAN’ IN THIS JAPAN LOG YOU BLEEDING
-------------------FUCKHEAD!??!!’---------------------

Now for all of you deprived individuals who have never had the joy of dumping an obscene amount of change into a large green machine at a local supermarket, the customs surrounding the event are as varied and, often, unappealing as the level of grime on the change in question. The basic set of rites and rituals, though, are as follows:

-Regardless of the fact of the Coinstar machines’ existence within the supermarket in question, all of the employees will gawk at you as if your very inclination to use the machine represents an insidious crime against the very moral fiber of their being. Like an upright piano in a middle-American home, the Coinstar machine is considered an accoutrement to the supermarket’s homey atmosphere, and should in no way be considered a functional piece of equipment.

-The Coinstar machine, through its divinity, will always make approximately 200% more noise than is realistically necessary to count a sum of change as it is dropped into the depths of its belly. The degree of noise, as well, can be manually controlled by the anger of a store employee or the unexpected appearance of an attractive member of the opposite sex, but volume control is limited to a rising of intensity only.

-Regardless of how patient you are with the feeding of the change in question, midway through your progress the Coinstar machine will berate you with an exasperated text message proclaiming, in silly red comic font, “Boy! You sure do have a lot of change!!” This will then be followed by you standing around looking like an even bigger idiot as the machine attempts to ‘catch up’ with the insurmountable flood of coinage you have apparently forced down its gullet. This is always a wonderful moment to recollect on the failures of your life and enjoy the heated stares and snickers of nearby checkers.

-After receiving your voucher you will take your place in the checkout line, which will be proceeded by you receiving the worst service you have ever encountered at a store which usually treats you wonderfully. You are not a customer anymore; you are a lazy jackass who is going to steal money out of their register by using a machine that they never wanted placed in their store in the first place. Also, if the total of your voucher exceeds $100.00 the checker will grudgingly be forced to contact a manager, who will then sigh no less than 3 times as he uses his key to get you your goddamn cash. Jesus, really, why do you even live?

(This concludes our elementary primer. Now stop whining, I’m going back to the story.)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Continued from above)

Shoulder to shoulder we marched beneath the awning of the whining automatic doors, two men with a grocery list of nefarious deeds entering a grocery store that would cater to only one of them. Immediately I caught the eye of no less than 3 female checkers, who first eyed me, then my outrageously large sack *whistle*, and then my madman’s grin of lecherous intent. They immediately realized the business for which I and my lanky companion had ventured to their little portion of the wilderness for, and their expressions promptly soured. They would save their hooker’s grins for paying customers, not for dirty, coin-faring white trash. Undaunted I grinned even wider, and with a deep breath of satisfaction and an audible, chuckled “YEAH!” charged proudly to the unoccupied green shell of a beast to the left of the entrance. This was to be the largest single deposit of coins I had ever enacted upon one location at one time.

We had come to break the mother fucking bank.

6:35 P.M., Oct. 31 2005

…We broke the mother fucking bank.

6:50 P.M, Oct. 31, 2005

The dim white display screen, after approximately 6 different intervals of the infamous “Whoa! TOO MUCH CHANGE!!!” message, was now permanently etched with the much less entertaining “Cannot continue current transaction. Contact store management for assistance”. The counting had ended somewhere past $100.00, nowhere near the bulk of my collection and with a disparagingly weak effort on the part of the machine. I had used many Coinstar machines in the past, and all of them could have beat the snot out of that one.
After a span of time which seemed unbelievably close to forever the collective IQ’s of the entire store’s entry level employees where finally able to summon a manager with the will (and the key) to open up the now irrefutably busted Coinstar machine, still only midway through counting my swashbuckled spoils. The manager’s name was Charles, he was approximately 24 years old, and he had seen a lot of Coinstars in his time….so he stated.

“The one we had before worked a lot better than this,” he exclaimed plaintively, crouching between the machines innards and it’s now outwardly swung façade. He was following a set of onscreen instructions that looked comically similar to a military-grade detonation activation, including a set of keys that had to be inserted and turned at precisely the right moment.

“I’m really sorry about this!” I chimed for the third time. This was both an apology for my having busted the machine, and for merely having the gall to actually want to use the blasted thing in the first place. Charles seemed like an uncharacteristically laid back sort of fellow however, and didn’t really seem to mind the fact that he was now sprawled out on his hands and knees attempting to scrape the stuck bits of my change from a machine that probably wasn’t even listed in his job description. With an air of utter complacency he assured me that it was really no trouble at all.

“This one is a replacement for the last one that we had, and if you ask me it’s been acting funny from day one.”

I nodded as if I had, in fact, asked him. I then noticed, with something akin to a mixture of perplexity and amusement, that nestled into the interior of the out-swung exterior shell was a large, nondescript white phone. There was no number pad, no function keys, just a simple white cradle and a single red button.

A hotline directly to Mr. Coinstar himself.

I silently wondered just how out-of-hand a coin-counting dilemma would have to become to warrant a call to Coinstar HQ. I also wondered if our friend Charles had seen any of that action.

Phil, located on the opposite side of the façade (and thus out of the viewing range of the anomalous telephone), was handling the entire ordeal with an amazing level of grace, but you could see that his internal clock was beginning to enter alarm mode. If there was little to no traffic clogging the arteries of our intended route into Los Angeles we would, in all likelihood, have enough time to grab a bite to eat and still arrive at LAX by 9 P.M.

But fate was playing some interesting tricks on our intended order.

“You just had to say it didn’t you?” Phil smirked, ruefully.

I blanched. I thought momentarily about playing dumb, coyly offering up a ‘Said what?’ as I batted my eyelashes and raced for the automatic doors, but there was little time left for bullshit, and besides, Charles was still freeing up my hard-won change, and dammit I wanted to see him use that phone.

I blushed. “I didn’t really say ‘We better break the bank’, did I?”

“You said, and I quote: ‘We better BREAK this mother fucker’. You said it triumphantly, even.” Phil shook his head. “You just couldn’t leave without courting irony a final time, could you?”

“It was supposed to be a taunt! For good luck, you know? I mean, if you joke about something horrible happening, then the chances of it happening are...you know. I mean, that would just be really…”

“Ironic. Yeah.”

I grinned sheepishly. I wasn’t about to continue a conversation that was inevitably going to cycle back to me and my ‘hex’.

As Charles began an external monologue about a day when he, too, was almost late for an international flight, I tried to scrape a layer of grime from my hands that consisted, in no small part, of an old chocolate silver dollar that had been mistakenly stored in the very same junk drawer from which a sizeable amount of the day’s current bounty had been procured. Over the course of the year the chocolate had dried and crystallized, and its powder had managed to filter through and cover almost every bit of change in the bag. Now it was covering almost every bit of skin on my hands. This was going to make the ease of eating fast food in the car…problematic.

“So when is it time to use the super phone?” I queried hopefully.

Phil scrunched up his face and smiled in that way that parents smile at any confusing string of dialogue that spews forth from their slightly retarded child. “You keep mumbling something about a phone, what are you talking about?”

I pointed down to the working area where Charles was still busy cheerfully unclogging the dirt hatch. “Super phone!” I chirped. “Coinstar HQ. They’ve probably got a profile on me by now!”

Phil cocked his head sharply to the side and twisted his lips; second stage ‘what the fuck?’ face. I pursed my lips and pointed to the inside of the hinged façade. Phil craned his neck over and through the generous hole in the partition. “Holy shit…there really is a phone.”

“Super phone!!” I piped again. My sanity was beginning to dissolve rapidly, and suddenly these two words had become my only mantra for salvation.

“Why in the hell would you need that?” Phil shook his head.

I made a plaintive gesture that clearly stated ‘Well how about for shit like this?’ Phil retorted with a ‘But dude….a phone. Why does it need its own goddamn phone?’

But I would not be undone. Well, at least not any further.

“So can we use it now?”

* * *

Minutes later (including two more failed attempts at further counting and absolutely zero usage of the Super Phone) we salvaged what money we could from the recalcitrant Coinstar machine, and with a cash sum in the ballpark of $200.00 we got our asses the hell out of the vicinity of that big green machine, and left Charles and his Stater Bros. behind. I wouldn’t remember the entire purpose of that ridiculous side-trip — to secure the extra 100 dollars to leave in my friends’ mailbox — until it was far too late.

8:00 P.M., Oct. 31, 2005

For reasons that had long been lost to the gradual whittling away inflicted by time on my memory (ED: that sentence needs a lobotomy) Del Taco was the on-again off-again un-official sponsor of my five year friendship with Phil. During the heyday of our youthful freedom we had spent upwards of 2 or 3 days a week together, doing the types of things that video game and Japanese animation fans are inclined to do, and it was inevitable that during the course of those days we would stake our claim at the far corner booth of our Del Taco of choice: a garishly painted eyesore hanging off the edge of Route 66 in Ontario. These pit-stops were no hit-and-run commando-type endeavors either; our meandering and tireless conversations would burn the better part of two hours on occasion, running the gamut from dissection of our favorite animation directors to angrily decrying the state of the government and our own imprisonment within the much lauded ‘system’. Phil and I would joke, between plans for our eternally-defunct online comic project (written and drawn by me, but inspired by our joint absurdities) that when the inevitable success of ‘our company’ would send us both rocketing into pop-culture stardom that people would look back on our time at Del Taco with a bemused, yet palpable reverence.

“You mean to tell me that the famous writer and anime director R.U.O.K?, a pseudonym (yes, they’d say that part out loud), and Phillip K., world-renowned fashion designer par-excellence (always use French when speaking of fashion), hung out together before they made it big?”

And then the smug bearer of the information, a catty fellow with an eye for trends and behind-the-scenes machinations would counter: “Yes. And it was right here at this very Del Taco, and at this very booth.”, causing his girlfriend or gay lover to become so overwhelmed with fanboy-ish glee that they would toss their burritos and nachos to the floor, and proceed to fuck Information Guy’s smug brains out.

In our tongue-in-cheek musings Phil and I were Kerouac and Ginsberg, all world-weary poetry and sexual thunder, and Del Taco was our subversive beatnik hideaway.

During the year and half preceding my inevitable departure from America we had grown estranged from that place of aggressively salted fries and watered down soda, and like all fads the Del Taco habit had eventually been kicked completely from our wandering rotation. I could have written an entire novella on the rise and fall of the Del Taco Era, as it were, but that was, and still is, another story.

So as we headed down Route 66 towards the connection with I-10, both of us nursing hands now covered in sticky coin dirt, I remarked that a final stop at the place we had once held so dear (or at least convenient and moderately tasty) would be fittingly appropriate.

Phil agreed, and within 15 minutes we had parked, washed our hands, ordered our meals and, spoils procured, rushed back to the waiting sedan. The sun was now nothing more than a smudged memory in the sky. As Phil pulled the car around and began the race to the onramp I gingerly opened the top of the bag, already damp with heat and condensation, and the smell of nostalgia filled the car.

I smiled.

I routed a large bag of fries and passed them sideways. Phil took them sightlessly with the practiced air of a man to whom driving while eating was second nature. I chuckled as he began to devour them with a rabid efficiency, and remarked silently that some things, at least, never changed. Phil would always eat his fries first, and finish them completely before moving on to the main course. There was no longer any need to tease him for this, (if ever there had been), and the familiarity of his actions made the first pangs of loneliness begin to creep into my stomach.

I bit absent mindedly into my Spicy Jack Chicken Quesadilla ™, my ‘last’ Spicy Jack Chicken Quesadilla ( I mused), and we sailed unto Interstate 10.

Less than 1 and 1/2 hours to go.

10.

8:43 P.M., October 31, 2005

“All for one, our burning hearts will live forever
One for all, together standing strong!

HAMMERFALL - we will prevail!
HAMMERFALL - let us hail!”

“I don’t think you could have picked a better soundtrack for this trip,” Phil grinned.

I pushed back into my seat, my feet kicking forward like a little kid, and beamed. The guitars sidled into a wailing solo, and I could feel the car accelerate a hair faster in response.

“Hammerfall has never met a fight they didn’t like, nor a battle ram that didn’t willingly storm the ramparts of tyranny,” I intoned in a mock baritone. “My flaxen brothers shall lead me to the gates of victory!”

Phil laughed heartily. If Del Taco had been a major set-piece in our 5 year dramedy, Hammerfall was a frivolous star on the soundtrack; cheese metal at its operatic finest. We fully believed that no man lacking in a sense of humor could actually enjoy anything that Hammerfall had to offer; it was like a catchy musical pun, the fusion of hard-rock sensibilities and the B-movie Beastmaster. We laughed at Hammerfall, but that didn’t stop us from rocking the hell out to it, either. “Oh they’ll get you there, alright,” he boomed triumphantly. “On a burning sea of steel, no less!”

Through our giddy sonic revelry Pomona had given way to West Covina, which had given way to cities the names of which I had never been arsed to remember, leaving the Los Angeles skyline looming large before us. The traffic had proven to be slight and temporary, and with the tongue-in-cheek rock rumbling from low-priced speakers we had been catapulted across the Valley with almost supernatural efficiency. The bleeding holes in the hourglass had been patched, and the lights of Los Angeles International Airport were now a visible beacon on the horizon.

Mere minutes later, and we had arrived.

It was then that sheer panic began to set in.

For the prior month I had been skating on a layer of desperation and blind dedication, systematically marking off the details on a hastily scrawled to-do list that would see, at its completion, me on a plane leaving for a country I had dreamed about for over ten years. The reality of my life in America, a stunted and diseased stump of wasted time and ineffectual wishing had made the liquidation of most of my assets and an escape to a foreign land seem wholly sane in comparison to even one more month wasted going absolutely nowhere. But the rapid progression of the plan from illegible scribbles on paper mere months prior to my best friend racing through the glowing entryway of LAX-a starkly lit metropolis of search lights and interconnecting ramps-had left me with absolutely zero time to truly ponder the significance of what I was about to attempt.

I had spent my entire life living within a 30 mile radius of my birthplace. I had never truly left the state (a trip to Kentucky when I was barely 5 years old not withstanding), let alone journeyed out of the country, and now there I was, my belongings were stuffed into a trunk, I had purchased an expensive (and non-refundable) ticket, and my best friend was driving me to catch a plane that would lead me to an endless set of unpredictable and uncontrollable days and weeks and months. It had all looked so magical on paper, my leap into the unknown effortless. Now, as if the suspension of disbelief was a rubber band that had reached the end of its elasticity, I was being snapped back into a rush of fear and dread. The concept had become reality, and I was an inescapable handful of minutes from boarding my first real plane, completely alone and equally unprepared.

The road curved up and over a field of loading zones and tarmac, and Phil navigated us effortlessly towards the connection for United departures (as instructed per my ticket). The airport stretched out beneath us, massive; a futuristic envisioning of some cold and sterile society of concrete and halogen. As the low rumbling of jet engines filtered through the air I was overwhelmed by the immediacy of what I was about to do. I could feel my heart beating out of my chest.

I was not ready for this.

I peered out the passenger window, looking to all the world like a Catholic child being dragged to his first communion, and I turned sheepishly to the man who was rushing me speedily out of my American-bred comfort zone.

“Dude….what the hell am I doing?” I intoned breathlessly. “I’m not ready for this. My Japanese is crap, I have no people skills. I hate nature and there’s no way I’m going to survive on a farm.”

I rapid-tapped the volume on the stereo to a muffled whisper, and folded my arms across my chest protectively. The air conditioning in the cabin was suddenly too cold, the music grating and distracting.

“This is absolutely nuts. Why in the hell did you ever let me do this? I want out.”

The ‘United: Departures’ sign swooped down, hung momentarily in the space midway between the windshield and the roof, and then it was gone, we had merged across the divide.

“Jeeeeezus,” I muttered. “I’ve never even seen the inside of an airport. I’m going from almost zero new experiences in 10 years to…I don’t know, but something quite likely completely opposite to that.”

The reflective light from numerous signs and lamp posts flickered and danced across a face already framed by a perfect bright rectangle across the eyes, and Phil smiled pleasantly. He had been expecting this last minute tirade just as surely as I had been completely oblivious to the inevitability of its occurrence. In the face of my fear I was silently impressed by the ingenious level of avoidance I must have engaged in order to get me even that far.

Phil turned to me momentarily, and his eyes were kind. “You’re going to be fine,” he stated simply. “The family is going to love you, you’ll be amazed by how good your Japanese really is, and you’re never going to want to come home.”

And that was that. I sat there in silence for a moment, searching his profile dazedly.

Was it my imagination or did that feel like a stock answer? Was it also my imagination or did he seem to be slightly unsure of all of this himself as well?’

Rather than calm my nerves I felt suddenly more on edge. Irrational fear began to fill the space between my ears. What if I forgot something essential? Did I get the time of the departure correct? Would I be able to book a different flight if need be? Did the family in Japan actually know I was coming? Would they really be waiting for me to call them from that train station? How long would they be willing to let me stay? What if they only wanted me for a few days and I would be left with no place to sleep? Was any of this worth the effort if there was a possibility that I would end up homeless in a foreign country?

…Could I just go back to Paul’s house and, hell, try again some other time?

I looked down at the space by my feet, at the backpack that I had stuffed to near capacity with art supplies, and paper, and toiletries. I grabbed it instinctively and triple-checked that the folder containing my plane tickets hadn’t magically combusted mid-journey. They were still there, nestled safely between a binder of lined paper and a Japanese dictionary. I raised the bag to my lap and laced my arms around it for comfort.

The halo of ever-present light surrounding LAX was snuffed out to a dim glow as we rolled lazily into the multi-story parking structure.

There was no turning back.

11.

9:06 P.M., October 31, 2005

The national security events of the previous 5 years had dealt some serious blows to the romantic notions of tearful pre-flight farewells in the U.S., the most serious hindrance being that non-passengers were no longer even permitted to enter the airport proper. So as I lumbered through the external automated doors into a non-descript and non-official appearing lobby and realized that not only would Phil not be permitted to wait the following hour with me (I still had so much I needed to say to him), but that we would be forced to say goodbye in a mere 30 feet…my heart sank to my knees. One narrow walkway led to a cordoned-off entryway, an aged and cranky looking guard, and a sign that told me, in no uncertain terms, that from here on out I would be on my own. The beginning of my adventure laid beyond that partition, down a narrow flight of stairs, and into a world that I could not yet even possibly imagine.

And I had to say goodbye before my first cue, before my first ticket counter, and an uncomfortable bit sooner than I had hoped for. I suddenly felt desolate, and hollow, and completely and wholly unreal. This would be the second of a thousand instances where I would realize how unprepared I truly was. This was the end of everything that I knew.

I rolled my suitcase (to which my backpack and laptop were affixed, bringing the grand total of its weight to an unmanageable 1 million or so pounds) to the side of the narrow isle, 10 steps from the checkpoint of no return, and I stuffed my hands nervously into the pockets of my German infantry coat. I turned to look up at Phil, the man who had been my only connection to sanity over the past handful of years of my life, and I realized that I would never be able to say everything that needed to be said.

He smiled at me, equally nervously (though for different reasons), and nodded his head slightly.

Nestled in my coat pocket was the Nintendo DS that he had surprised me with just moments before in the airport parking structure, and I touched it absent-mindedly.

“I can’t let you go halfway across the world to some farm where you won’t even have videogames,” he had smiled warmly, and I had felt so small and insignificant in the face of that kindness that I was overwhelmed.

I silently cursed myself for all of the times that I had yelled at him, all of the times I may have taken him for granted. The last year or so of our friendship had been rocky, to be sure, and there had been moments when neither of us had been sure if our future paths would lead us further together or inevitably apart. Due to the intimate nature of my connection to people that I loved (male or female) I knew that my presences was sometimes overbearing, my emotional states cloying or even oppressive. I knew that I was a hard person to be close to, an even harder person to love, and that the circumstances that had drawn me to abandon everything that had gone wrong in favor of possibly starting over where the same factors that drove people away.

I knew this as surely as I knew these very factors had, to some extent, cost me the friend who had inspired the ultimately futile race for the CD and the forgotten cash.

I had spent too many years destroying myself, and eventually destroying the love of others. Even the man who I silently referred to as my brother had not been immune, and my race to leave the country had in many ways mirrored my race against the ticking clock of our friendship.

But Phil had pulled through for me like no one had in a very long time, had rallied around my dreams, and had supported me till the very end. For reasons I did not fully understand he had choosen to understand where so many others had (rightly) chosen to give up. I owed him more than I would ever be able to repay.

The gravity of that moment, standing in front of him, next to a comically over-burdened stack of luggage in a cold and surreally undecorated room was compelling me to give at least a portion of that gratitude back. It would be a futile and underwhelming gesture with even the most sincere and endearing words.

…

In the end what I said amounted to nothing more than my own personal slant on the ‘goodbye’ uttered by thousands of people on that very same day and at that very same location, but in my heart I told him that I loved him, and that I would miss him to death. I would have only made him uncomfortable if I had tried to quantify that.

I turned, my arm already slightly numb from the tug of the luggage, and I walked silently to the checkpoint alone. When I turned back just moments beyond the restricted line Phil was gone.

*End ‘The Longest Day’ part 2*

The Longest Day: Part 1

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:08:38 GMT

Chapter 1: The Longest Day (Part 1)

October 31^st, 2005

The last day I was to touch American soil began unceremoniously on the morning of October 31^st, ‘unceremonious’ in the sense that it was almost an afterthought to the days of stress and panic that had proceeded it. What had desperately needed to be done had been done, completely if not expediently, and with only the trivial details remaining, the vacuum of my departure was threatening to make my final day very short indeed…

9:00 A.M. Oct 31. 2005

With no small amount of sweating and cursing I had cleaned the entirety of my possessions out of the small room that I had occupied for the prior three and half months, a space graciously loaned to me by an outrageously generous uncle. Save for the old bits of furniture that I was unable to dispose of (a halogen lamp, plastic stackable drawers, a computer table from circa 1982 that had been specifically designed to house a (then) blisteringly cutting edge Apple II model), what was left of the items I could count as my own had been either stuffed into my suitcase or boxed up for a last minute trip to my fathers. This had proceeded a bout of pacing around the room for the better part of two hours, desperately racing the clock as I tried in vain to cram my newly acquired (family gifted) Compaq Presario laptop (circa 2000) with my personal digital obsessions.

Now while this act of vanity may sound like a ridiculous proposition in light of a journey to a foreign country where I would quite possibly be in a state of constant over-stimulation, the fact that the laptop was to serve as my radio, television, and companion of assorted varieties (cough) superseded the possibility of its impotence (hack) in comparison to the unknown.

The bastard was obstinate in its old age, however, and steadfastly refused to work properly with any modern method of data transfer. The CD drive would bicker over even the tiniest spot or blemish on the CD’s surface, the wireless connection would never associate properly with the hub, attaching a detachable hard drive would squeeze out data transfer speeds slower than a 56K modem and the serial port connection, the most basic method of large data transfer known to 20-years-ago modern man…was essentially ignored by the networking module. On top of all of this, only certain methods of data compression were even halfway functional for the movies I was trying to salvage; any codec created within the last two years would send the ancient Athlon 350 processor into fits, and motion images would strobe, sputter, and eventually die, regardless of how much RAM I would secure or how bare I stripped the Task Manager. I was eternally grateful for the opportunity of just being able to satisfy my journalistic needs while abroad, but once presented with the possibility of porting entertainment along as well I found myself growing increasingly greedy.

In the end there was simply no helping the situation, however, and futility eventually won out over eagerness. This is not to say I was completely undone, however. In a manly show of dominance over the sullen little plastic bastard I crammed it full of the entire series of Stellvia, a few episodes of the Japanese drama H2, and some assorted pornography of varying degrees of filth. The processor was completely incapable of rendering any of those with any real success, but the treasures would be there, buried within the depths of the beast’s 80 gig hard drive, and with them the possibility, slim though it was, of future salvage.

When the last movie from amateur internet nude model Eva (‘my new carry-on girlfriend’ I chuckled) had finished transferring, I ripped the disk from the drive, set the shut-down command into motion, and with a final salute from my middle finger pulled the life support from the cranky old man’s back and tossed him into the carrying case. I assured myself that I had not forgotten anything essential in the transfer and began packing my PC away.

3:00 P.M. Oct. 31, 2005

My best friend Phil arrived at my front door in high spirits around 3 p.m., dressed in his usual overly-sharp fashion. For Phil, every day was the first day of a respectable, high paying job, and one that he would surely find himself the manager of inside of 4 months. Black slacks (or sometimes jeans), clean pressed dress shirt (top button opened to reveal an equally clean white tee underneath), freshly shaven face, spiky black hair, sunglasses and polished shoes and a smirk that was either deceptively wicked or deceptively kind, depending on how well you knew him. On top of all of this he was exceptionally tall, equally exceptionally thin, and had the slender, delicate hands of a model…or at least, this is what numerous women had told him (and I had born witness to at least two). It would have taken only a marginal push to make Phil the type of man who could sleep his way to the top of a corporate female hierarchy, wives and daughters tossed gingerly aside in his sauntering, finger snapping wake. Phil was too good of a person to realize any of this, however (with the exception of the hands, which had become almost iconic to his nature), and was possibly a better man for it. He might’ve argued that this was more a fault of his insecurities than an actual lack of awareness, but, as my future writings will no doubt attest to, Phil would argue much of what I say.

This was one of the many varied reasons why he was my bitch.

So in the interest of brevity (in a documentation that contains very little of it), I met him at the door, manly (read: geeky) banter ensued, we proclaimed (as we proclaimed every meeting) our eternal love for each other, and after a bout of cynically dissecting the latest crop of movies/videogames/girls we thought were dumb we loaded his car with approximately way too much shit, and left my immodest little hovel behind. Bless you again, Paul, for letting me call it my home.

My plane was scheduled to depart from LAX at 11:10 P.M., and according to advice I had received from both friends and internet sources alike I needed to arrive at the ticket counter no later than 9 o’clock -2 hours of prep- for an international flight. While considering that there were approximately 40 minutes between my home and LAX with minimal traffic, the game plan was as follows:

-Drive to my fathers in Anaheim

-Transfer the hard drive attached to his ancient decrepit Celeron to my still-youthful 2.5 Ghz Pentium box, and let him blaze away at his crossword puzzles at supersonic speeds.

-Store what was left of my belongings at his place

-Retrieve a disk that had mistakenly been stored previously (more on that later)

-Leave my Dads, get the afore-mentioned disk to a friend back near my home

-Stop at a Coinstar machine and dump a wad of change

-Eat…fast (digest later)

-Get the hell out of Dodge

By our arrival at my fathers we would have exactly 4 hours to pull off the entire grocery list of 11^th hour details, a razor thin gambit in any context, and downright ridiculous in light of an expensive international flight. Theoretically the transfer of the hard drive, under the best conditions, would take no longer than 20 minutes from start to finish. This was extraordinarily theoretical in the sense that I was working from a point of almost supernatural disadvantage. To wit: any computer work occurring at my fathers place always resulted in 300% more hassle than the situation should ever call for. For whatever reason, I and my Father’s computer did not get along, period. Now Phil, upon hearing this, would undoubtedly issue a statement to the audience that I was permanently, irrefutably jinxed in regards to electronic devices of any kind, but I would submit that both of Phil’s systems were of the pre-fabricated variety, and he was therefore incapable of fairly determining just how many damaged pieces of equipment would, indeed, warrant a hex of that magnitude.

I don’t believe someone can truly understand the tenuous relationship between man and silicon until he’s set his own motherboard on fire. But maybe that’s just me.

As for the retrieval of the disk and the subsequent dropping-off of same (if this is a story that you are inclined to be curious about), this was an unavoidable byproduct of a falling-out that had occurred between me and an old friend within the prior month, and the disk (and a cash sum of US $100) was to be a settling of a score of sorts. Throughout the duration of a ten year friendship I had borrowed (or simply had in my possession) a handful of this friend’s music CD’s, and when everything came to an ugly end I was issued a demand to return all of the items; items that, over the course of several moves, I simply no longer had.

So…I was to retrieve the previously mentioned OS disk (and a second, somewhat unrelated disk), ferry it back to her house, and without alerting anyone to my presence (she left instructions that seemed to caution against the showing of my face) drop it and the money in her mailbox.

I was to wear all black and I was to do this under the cover of darkness.

My contact was Dabney Coleman, and I was bringing my Atari 5200.

*EDITORS NOTE: If this is in no way a believable example of A) a non-fictional plotline, and/or B) something you would attempt to orchestrate prior to an international flight … you probably live a better life than I do.

Also, if you don’t get the Cloak and Dagger reference…congratulations, you’re probably not old*

3:45 P.M. Oct. 31, 2005

Standing in the enclosed hallway of the prison-like complex where my father lived (a renovated drug-lord dwelling turned critically-overprotective Senior housing), I knocked once on the door, cocked an eyebrow at my decidedly taller friend, and grinned. Dropping my voice to a lower register, I grunted.

“You’re earrrly.”: a slow, methodical drawl. My typical imitation when giving a voice to any dialogue spoken by my father.

Phil grinned broadly, and through the door I could hear a scrape and a rustle: my father repositioning a wooden barstool.

“Just watch!” I giggled.

My father opened the door looking slightly dazed and a bit flustered, although this was not completely out of the ordinary for my sporadic visits. He looked directly at me, almost accusatory, and in a deep, unaffected voice spoke:

“Oh. You’re earrrly.”

I snorted beneath my breath.

We had arrived in Anaheim with 15 minutes of the allocated schedule still in our pockets, which equated to the very same 15 minutes that my father was going to use to put on a shirt and air all of the cigarette smoke out of his apartment. He grunted apologetically about the lack of breathable air, and invited us in.

For my father, every day was the first day of yard-weeding season. Blue corduroy shorts, flip flops, thin white button up short-sleeve shirt which was only buttoned for excursions outside of his home, old fashioned large frame prescription glasses that changed hues in the sun, and that look on his face that said that he may actually like you, but damned if he was going to actually show it. I introduced him to my friend Phil (an introduction that my father handled with his usual air of gentle indifference) and we entered the apartment.

I believe it’s important to note that, as of that day, I had almost no idea how my father actually felt about me, in any context. After a self-imposed exile from his presence for the majority of my 20’s we had just, within the previous couple of years, begun to get to know each other in earnest, but earnestly speaking I didn’t know if I was actually any closer to a point of familial intimacy than I was the day that I ran away. As similar as my father and I were in terms of our cynicism and our rye (rye) wit, I always felt like he viewed me as a bit of an alien, a curiosity of sorts that he never fully comprehended. This was not, I believe, a natural byproduct of the many years of separation, as this was a feeling that had followed me throughout the entirety of my childhood as well. It was, quite possibly, a result of the fact that the majority of my rearing had been at the hands of my mother and sister (two individuals that even my father himself would attest to having little understanding of), but in the simplest terms it was most likely merely a component of the disconnect I tended to feel within the proximity of the majority of my family; it was simply magnified in the presence of the man whose face and disposition I so uncannily bore. Whereas I believed (and so stories had led me to ascertain) that my father had never really had a chance to be a kid, I was, in essence, an overgrown child. Where my father appeared serious and reserved I laughed unreservedly, and frequently (nay, willingly) made an ass of myself.

We both, however, wished that we could work with other people a little better, we were both taken aback by how grossly (and completely) people would misunderstand us, and we were both lonelier in our isolation from the rest of the world than either of us would have cared to admit. My father pretended like nothing really got to him, and I was constantly screaming in rage at the things that hurt me.

Yet still, knowing all of this, I had absolutely no idea how he viewed me or my departure, yet again, from his life. Stonewall or genuine disinterest, the façade of impartiality was in full effect on that day as well.

Introductions out of the way, Phil and I began to work our macho-mojo (moving shit and ripping apart motherboards…we could have wore studded leather and rode Harleys on that day) and in a manner of a scant few minutes we had transferred the majority of my belongings from the trunk of the car to my fathers eclectically decorated living room. During the tactical maneuvering of 10 years of accumulated crap (and well out of the earshot of my father) I asked Phil what he thought of my previous impersonation of the man he just met: he was still so impressed that an asshole like me actually had parents that he was unable to properly answer, the fuck. We returned to the apartment and with a glance at a permanently busted clock (‘why doesn’t he ever take that damn thing down?’) I psychically realized that I had less than 5 hours until my life would possibly, irrevocably change forever. Sweat began to bead up on my forehead. With time at a premium I couldn’t delay the inevitable any longer: the surgery on the ancient CPU had to commence.

5:24 P.M. Oct. 31, 2005

“I just want to get something very clear here. You, as well, have absolutely no idea why that damn thing wouldn’t work either, right?”

The car ride back to Pomona. We were now approximately a half an hour off of our previously intended schedule, and my father, the poor soul, was none the richer for having put up with any of my shit. The miniscule little dust-box of a tower had been spun on its side, had its ancient technological innards exposed for all the world to see (at least all of the world that existed in my father’s living room at that exact moment), it’s tiny little brain was ripped from its rusted and soiled skull and transplanted into a shiny new-ish cradle of 2003 ingenuity, only to have the entire operation rendered impotent by a rejection of hardware that was completely beyond my vulture-level technical skills. About twelve botched attempts and a Bible’s worth of heavy swearing combined, and neither an act of man nor god could get the blessed thing to work. Burnt by my own lack of understanding and the look in my father’s eyes that said ‘This is the last goddamn time I trust my son with anything’, Phil and I had retreated to the car, defeated.

But back to 5:24 P.M.

Phil kept his eyes on the road and shook his head, and without a hint of humor or mockery intoned: “No, I have no clue what was going wrong there. It should have worked.”

“Seriously!” I jumped in my seat, relieved that this time I wasn’t alone in my perplexity. “How fucking hard is it to transfer a goddamn hard drive? That’s one of the first things I ever learned, and hell, with you there I figured there wasn’t a chance in hell that I could screw it up.”

“Yeah, this one’s beyond me. The only thing I can think of is that it’s a power supply issue, but--”

“That hard drive is still new, I bought it for him like 6 months ago, and it’s the same damn brand and size as the number two that I removed this morning…”

“Yeah, seriously, that should have worked.”

“This shit ain’t on me this time. I feel bad that I had to leave it like that, but this wasn’t me this time.”

“No, I’m with you…”

“I’m not cursed dammit!”

This may or may not have been followed by the teensiest little smirk from Phil, but my recollection of the moment isn’t 100%. Humiliation has a way of dimming your attention to details, I find.

I settled down from my ranting and tried to relax. My back and chest had dried considerably from the layer of sweat that had formed during the (to no fault of my own, dammit) botched procedure, during which my father had mocked me no less than 3 times for having worn a long sleeve shirt on a relatively hot day. My logic (which would later prove to be flawed to so many degrees that human instruments could not even hope to measure it) was that I would be arriving at my destination in Japan wearing whatever shirt I had seen fit to throw over my shoulders on the morning of my departure, and I therefore should be inclined to adorn myself with something that was of more concern to fashion, rather than comfort’s sake.

For those keeping track in the audience, this was, in essence, sentencing any article of clothing that I chose to a 30-some-odd hour ordeal of sticking to my body like a festering second skin.

Horribly, criminally flawed.

But more on that later.

For the record, the article I chose was a newly purchased, terribly soft, crew cut gray long sleeve.

-------------------*SOFT GRAY LONG SLEEVE STATUS CHECK*---------------------

I was pleased to silently note (at that moment in the early evening of October 31^st) that my deodorant and cologne were still at the height of their functionality, and that despite my prior ordeal I still smelt fresh and clean. The soft gray long sleeve was fashionable and, computer nightmare aside, quite functional. It was a good choice.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With the traffic before us steadily slowing to a crawl (with constant reassurance from Phil that it was completely normal for that junction in the freeway) I took a moment to recount my mental schedule. If our rate of travel (congestion accounted for) continued unimpeded we would be able to make it to my old friend’s house with just enough time to drop off the…

“JESUS FUCK I FORGOT THE DISK!!”

Phil, completely used to my considerably excited expletive-laden outbursts (a hard-won attribute we could’ve both attested to) twitched only slightly, and shot me a sidelong glance.

“Wait, what?”

“I was supposed to pick up the WinXP disk that I had left at my dad’s, you know, (name of friend)’s lucky O.S., the one that she couldn’t replace, the one that she was nearly in tears at the thought of being without!? FUCK!!!”

“Wait, you never mentioned a disk…”

This was no lie. My mental schedule had never been committed to paper (that would warrant a name change), and, like most things that I sprung on Phil at the last moment, I was springing this one on him at the last moment.

“Yeah, I accidentally packed it away with all of the shit I transferred over on the first trip last month, and now I have to give her that plus the 100 bucks for all of the CD’s that I no longer have...”

“Shit, do we have to—“

“No, no, I just need to toss it all into her mail box, we aren’t even ringing the doorbell,” I countered.

“Okay, good. So we just have to drop off the secret package in a clandestine fashion and -wait…which one of us is Dabney Coleman?”

(This is, of course, a lie. Phil would never ask a question to which he already possessed the answer)

Phil licked his lips and pulled his chin closer to his chest, an unconscious signal that his gears were spinning into motion. He glanced into his rearview and I could see that he was considering what we would need to do to successfully turn our collective asses around, and how much that unexpected little detour would cost us. I had already, by that point however, completely ran my head through the entire arena of possibilities, and the extra 40 or 50 minutes (under ‘best circumstances’ *choke*) were simply non-negotiable.

An $1800 plane ticket versus a bootlegged operating system and 100 USD.

…

I was about to set fire to the ashes of a burnt bridge.

*End 'Part 1'*

Prologue

Sun, 03 Sep 2006 23:49:18 GMT

*
A letter to my future self: ‘Am I still happy’, I began
’Have I grown up pretty? Is daddy still a good man?
Am I still friends with Colleen? I'm sure that I'm still laughing.
Aren't I?
…aren't I...?’

’Hey there to my future self, if you forget how to smile
I have this to tell you, remember it once in a while
Ten years ago your past self prayed for your happiness
Please don't lose hope...’

-Letter from the Lost Days
Hiroyuki Owaku (Translation by Nora Stevens Heath)

*Prologue*

(from a private journal entry written
October 5^th, 2005)

In the absence of all rational options I have left myself with no other choice but radical upheaval.

There is simply no other way.

How long can any human being subsist on the delusion that things are going to spontaneously, magically right themselves? How long can I continue to ignore the absolute wreckage I have made of my life?

‘She’s never going to forgive you. No matter how much you prostrate yourself, no matter how much you bleed grief. You are fighting the ghost of a man you once were, and he’s growing stronger every year.’

For the injustices to which I am guilty there will be no reconciliation, and to the perceived injustices, those imaginary cracks in her pavement to which I had no hand in creating, there is only a rumbling, wailing swell. I will forever be the boogey man of her past. The sins of yesterday will only grow more terrible in her mind, until I am the Alpha and Omega of every ticking, lurching dysfunction.

It is a debt that I have tried so painfully hard to settle, and the interest is being methodically ratcheted to insurmountable proportions.

It is a sum that I can never match.

And as I sit here in this cracked and dingy room, the smell of plaster and dust and dirty clothes and grease on my skin, I realize just how long I’ve been silently, secretly trying to pay this all back with a slow, creeping death. Never achieving beyond the bounds of my own guilt, only taking as much as was absolutely necessary to just survive.

(…)

When they escorted me out of the office on my final day, Carol with that pleading, nervous “please don’t let him go psycho on us” glint in her eyes, I could only smile wanly as I was shuffled out the door. It wasn’t a matter of why they fired me; that was hard-written into my program. It was a question of why it took them so damn long. When she said goodbye to me at the automated doors, her hands clutched almost defensively above her waist, she looked like she was staring at a ghost.

In many ways I think she was.

I look like absolute hell. I’ve grown so unbelievably tired, and fat, and old. I can’t even look in the mirror at myself anymore. I don’t recognize who I’ve become. It frightens me. How many years have I already wasted on all of this? Could I even catalogue it? How many distractions, how much junk food, how many hours killing my desire for companionship with porn and how many days sleeping beyond the point of what was necessary for rest just to avoid doing anything else?

How long have I been alive without lifting a finger to actually live?

It has to end here.

It has to end or I’m as good as dead. I can’t take 7 more years of this. I can’t even take one.

I have concocted a hundred explanations to all of my family and friends as to why I am selling everything that I own and leaving the country for a year. I grin with false pride when I tell them that I have always wanted to see Japan, and that I feel that now--jobless, relationship-less, minor savings in hand--would be the perfect opportunity to live my ‘dream’. I do my damnedest to appear resolute, and in control, and mature.

But the truth of the matter is that I have run myself into a very nasty corner, and I have left myself with absolutely no other choice.

I will never find closure here in America. The life that I had for myself is gone. Shawn, Susan, Michelle, Lacey…the dancing, the partying, the sex. It’s all over. It’s been over for six years. The animation studio: bankrupt. My dreams of making it as an artist: supported by absolutely zero effort. My keyboard sits silent. My songs are unwritten. I haven’t been able to speak to a woman for longer than I care to admit, and the last time I fell ‘in love’ it was with a teenage girl who was smart enough to just use me for my car and my money and toss me aside when I pitifully formulated feelings. I’m so disgusted with myself that I’ve grown numb.

I can’t even remember how I got to this point.

All I know is that something died in me a long time ago, and I have absolutely no clue how to get any of it back. Without the destruction of this pattern I will spend the rest of my days in a room too small for a grownup, playing games intended for children and watching the days of my life unravel into nothing. I will fall in love with people from afar based on nothing more than their looks, and I will grow to hate everything that I’m supposed to care about.

The experiment of my entire life will be rendered an indisputable failure.

So my only option is to run.

I will attempt to lose myself in a country where I only partially speak the language, surrounded by people who couldn’t possibly understand where I’m coming from and will have absolutely no idea of where I’ve been. I will reconstruct myself from the ground up or, at the very least, destroy every last remnant of who I currently am. None of this has amounted to anything worth keeping.

I know that there isn’t a single iota of my plan that isn’t childish, and irresponsible, and absolutely insane. I will almost certainly fail.

And it’s still the absolute best chance I’ve got.

5,000 dollars, a plane ticket, a suitcase, a backpack, a laptop and two dictionaries. And the only thing that scares me more than the prospect of leaving…is the prospect that it’s still three weeks away.

Someone, anyone…give me the strength to hang on till then.

(From a private journal entry written
April 5^th, 2006)

I got out of the shower, fresh and clean but still unbelievably exhausted, to find that the smell of the cigarette smoke had followed me into the bathroom, and was already working its way into my still-damp skin. I knew it was going to be bad here, but I had forgotten how unbelievably stagnant and cloying a smoker’s house could be. The fact that my dad lives in a cramped one bedroom apartment, utterly devoid of natural ventilation, exacerbates this condition to inhuman levels. It’s a wonder his lungs don’t explode upon contact with actual breathable air.

The fact that I don’t think he ever leaves this place, however, probably renders that a moot discussion.

I had one of those moments again where I startled the fuck out of myself looking in the mirror. My dad looked at me as if I was a stranger when I showed up at his door, gawking at the change in my appearance. Some days I’m completely oblivious to how different I look now; other days I get out of the shower, see my naked reflection in the bathroom mirror, and my jaw drops. I honestly didn’t think that someone’s appearance could be altered that drastically by just a handful of months. I really need to buy some new pants.

I’m going to be spending the next few days here on the couch, until I can find someplace more permanent to stay. I’ve been awake for something past 24 hours now, but I don’t think sleep and I will be on speaking terms tonight. My dad has already stumbled off to bed, all slurred speech and belching and feet-fumbling as he told me goodnight. He finished off at least half of that bottle of vodka, I’m sure of it.

Jesus.

Just a little over a day ago I was flirting with a sweet and kind-hearted flight attendant in Narita. Now I’m on the floor of a dingy apartment, my skin is ripe with the smell of cheap cigarettes, and my eyes are burning. My treasured Shibuya scarf, the one Kana teased me about, is now completely fouled with the air of nicotine. I can’t wear it anymore, anyhow. In Mito it was still winter, a brisk 45 degrees.

Here in California its hot and bleak.

I double checked to make sure that I had the DVD’s of the graduation, and I stumbled across the picture of me and Dorothy and Natchi. I was grinning like a loon, my face squeezed up against the two of them. It hurts too much to look at it right now, so I put it away in a separate slot in my suitcase. I’ll go through all of that later.

It’s going to take me some time to come to terms with what happened. Right now I’m still angry at her, and at Natsuko. The more I think about it the more I think Nick and Martin were to blame as well. The whole thing is such a mess in my head, and thinking about it makes a sick knot form in my stomach. Did Dorothy really care about me? Was Natsuko purposely trying to drive us apart? Will Kana forget all about me? Will I ever get to see all of them again?

…I don’t think I can write about this right now. I think I’m going to end this here.

…

I just looked down at my watch and realized I need to change it, probably now. It’s still set to Japan continuity. Dorothy and Shougo, Natchi and Yumina will all be having breakfast. *EDITORS NOTE: I must have been tired indeed; it would have been afternoon in Mito when this was written, not morning* Shougo will be slurping his natto with typical stomach-turning zeal, and Yumina will be a grumpy, squinty eyed zombie. Natchi will be whining about everything, and Dorothy will be distractedly scolding someone for something. Those infernal language tapes will be playing in the background, and all three kids will be doing their best to ignore them.

Jesus I miss them already. It took so long to win their trust, and now…dammit, why did it have to end like that?

…

I won’t be heading out to that field tomorrow. I won’t be attending the tea ceremony on Wednesday. I won’t be going to the high school on Friday night, I won’t get to play with the kids and I won’t flirt with Dorothy’s cute friend whose name I never committed to memory. I won’t be able to pretend that I’m too cool to dance when everyone comes to take my hand.

Happon and Kana are in Saitama right now, just 2 hours from where I was staying, and they don’t even yet know that I’m gone. There will be no Tokyo date.

My god, what am I doing back in America?

Somebody, anybody…please tell me just what in the hell happened?

Introduction

Sun, 03 Sep 2006 23:21:38 GMT

~Introduction~

As far as writing is concerned I cannot think of anything more threatening to personal credibility than trying to quantify emotion. Words are by their very nature rigid and unforgiving, mathematic in precision and coldly efficient. They are an architectural attempt at giving form to thought. Emotions, on the other hand, are essentially liquid, amorphous and unpredictable.

Attempting to reconcile the two is akin to mental alchemy.

Any endeavor to package emotion is prone to obfuscation, because applying the equation of language to a non-linear variable can only, at best, serve to momentarily render the emotion into a digestible form. A percentage of the impact will always be dampened by the cage that has been built to contain it. It is a flawed undertaking even under optimum conditions, and ‘optimum conditions’ change almost as rapidly as the emotions themselves.

So the unlucky soul foolish enough to attempt this bit of literary voodoo places themselves on rather shaky ground. Put too much force behind the words, overstate a sensation and/or browbeat the audience with melodrama, and you have effectively relegated your point (and your effort) to something less than futile. You become heavy-handed and ineffectual, or, even worse, trite.

This is the realm of the teenage poet, sound and fury signaling more sound and fury ad infinitum. The emotions behind the words are genuine, but the vehicle for their presentation is hackneyed and clumsy, defusing any empathy the author hoped to illicit.

This is not intended as an attack on teenagers, nor even a sideways slight at poets for that matter. It is a testimony on the delicate balancing act of words.

‘Transmetropolitan’ writer Garth Ennis’ literary alter-ego Spider Jerusalem noted iconically: “Journalism is a gun. It can only fire one bullet, but if you aim it right you can blow a kneecap off the world.” Substitute ‘journalism’ for ‘creative writing’ (or ‘autobiographical scribbling’) and the point remains the same. When wielded correctly the emotions can be palpable, the circumstances immediate and pressing. Aim it wrong and you’ve wasted both the bullet and your own credibility.

So it follows that even the most powerful emotion in the world is meaningless without a means with which to expound it. The gun, the clumsy dinosaur of structured language, must be fashioned. But never forget this: the ‘bullet’, the idea itself, is inextricably beholden to and, ultimately, altered by the construct of the ‘gun’. Without the mechanism for its dispersal it conveys little meaning; with it, it expels a fraction of its energy just to achieve its effect.

An inescapable trade if ever there was one.

In the interest of sharing a pocketful of sound and fury followed by, hopefully, an actual impact, I am left with little choice but to agree to the terms of the trade. I know that in my naivety I will no doubt fire quite a few shots harmlessly above everyone’s heads, arcing past the horizon and nose diving into an abandoned field. I also know that those shots will never be recovered. But if the act of constructing the equation itself can lead me to a point of comfort and satisfaction, and can possibly lead someone else to a moment of empathy and understanding, than all of the stray bullets in the world won’t mean a thing.

This is about taking what’s mine and, hopefully, making it someone elses’. This is my testimony to half a lifetime of unfired guns.

This is my attempt at mental alchemy.

-R.U.O.K?
September 2, 2006

. . .