The Bull Years

by Phil Stern

  SOPHIA DANTON

  Was kissing Brooke the right thing to do? I don’t know. I just wanted to connect, to let her know how much I cared. And for a moment it was all right. Relaxing, she leaned into me. As if from a distance I felt a bunch of people gawking at us, but didn’t care.

  “Hey, Brooke, it’s me,” I whispered in her ear. “Nobody’s over for anybody…”

  “But you love Steve!” Brooke replied, bursting into tears. It was like that first day we’d met, when she was sobbing on the bench about the dead racoons. “And I love you so much! How can you be with him?”

  I’ve thought a lot about what I said next. Was it the absolutely wrong thing to say, or did Brooke just overreact? If I hadn’t said it, might things have turned out differently, or was it already too late? I’m really not sure.

  “Oh Brooke, don’t worry,” I cooed, holding her body close. “It’s all right. I have enough love for both of you.”

  STEVE LEVINE

  Well, the lovefest didn’t last very long. After a few seconds of Sapphic bliss, Brooke rears back and smashes Sophia in the face. Dropping like a sack of beans, Brooke then begins pummeling her.

  “You bitch!” Brooke screamed, even as the cops were hauling her off of Sophia. “You miserable, fucking bitch!”

  Now everyone else began crying and screaming again, running around in circles. The police rushed over to intervene. One girl ran out of the yard, tripping down on the sidewalk.

  “You fucking storm trooper!” Rearing back, Brooke gave one of the officers a gash across the cheek. “Get off me!”

  But now both cops pushed her down to the grass, face first, slapping on the handcuffs. The one who’d been clocked wiped away the blood from his face, glowering down at Brooke.

  So now Sophia gets up, crying and sobbing. For a moment she just watched the cops haul a nearly naked Brooke up and toward the squad car, still screaming and cursing. Then, stamping her foot in frustration, she began purposefully striding toward the curb and the police cruiser.

  In a flash I was down the porch steps and across the lawn, intercepting her before she reached the sidewalk.

  “Sophia, no!” I commanded. I must have been quite a sight right then, with a puke-covered shirt and a bloody gash on my forehead. “You’ll get arrested too.”

  Hesitating only a moment, Sophia then socks me on the jaw, nearly knocking me out for the second time that night.

  DAVE MILLER

  So I come out of the house to find Steve on his hands and knees near the top of our short yard, Sophia merrily beating on his back and head.

  “You prick!” Sophia was screaming. “I fucking hate you, Steve! I never want to see you again. Ever!”

  Now, underneath swirling emergency lights I noticed Brooke, still topless, in the back of a police car, yelling her head off. One of the officers now came jogging over to Sophia, threw her down and roughly handcuffed her. Stunned, I just sat down on the steps, taking it all in. A second cop car pulled up. Sophia, crying her eyes out, was thrown in the back.

  Shocked, drunk, trembling, and nearly terrified, I walked over to Steve, who was slowly getting to his feet.

  STEVE LEVINE

  So here I am, my head pounding, bruised and beat up, everyone being arrested, and you know what fucking Dave does? Walking over, without any hurry or anything, he just stands there like an asshole. “Hey, Steve,” he says, tapping me on the shoulder like some retarded clown. “Hey, Steve, I got a problem.”

  “Yeah, you and me both, buddy.” If I could climb to my feet, I intended to beat the shit out of him, cops or no. “What is it?”

  “I think I got Rachel pregnant.” It being a warm night, his voice carried over half the fucking neighborhood. “I mean, what am I going to do? I just married Jen. I mean, what the fuck, Steve?”

  And now it dawned on me that, after egging on Sophia and Brooke and sucker punching me upstairs, my best friend had been fucking a girl he knew I liked. And all this during the party given in honor of his wedding, which he was so proud of because that meant he was such a good fucking guy.

  So yeah, at that point it all might have boiled over.

  DAVE MILLER

  So there I am, trying to help Steve up, and he just freaks the fuck out. He punches me, I might have punched him, and the next thing I know we’re both in the back of police cars, heading off into the Buffalo night.

  The last time I saw any of them was in the police station. After giving my statement, I was told that since Steve had started the fight (the one they saw, anyway), no charges would be filed. I was free to leave.

  Walking out of the station in the early morning light I passed by Steve, sitting at a detective’s desk, bruised and bloody. He looked away, not saying a thing. I stopped for a moment…and then just moved on myself. We could sort everything out later. But of course, we never did.

  So I caught a cab back to our house, hopped in the moving van, and headed down to my new life with Jen.

  And the rest, as they say, is history.

  SOPHIA DANTON

  A week after our disastrous party, I went to visit Brooke in the rehab center.

  After our arrest and court-ordered drug tests, Brooke had tested positive for a half-dozen illegal substances. Since I was clean, the charges were just dropped. The same was true for Steve, I think. Actually, I’m not really sure.

  But Brooke had been incarcerated in a foreboding stone structure on the edge of town. The massive building was an old school, lacking any outward signs of its new role as a drug rehabilitation center.

  Walking into the lobby, I went purposefully up to the far door, intending to just stroll in and find Brooke. Instead, a security guard materialized out of the shadows, directing me to another guard, this one an older woman sitting in a booth installed in one wall. There was a heavy layer of glass between us.

  “Can I help you?” the woman asked. Her tone was anything but helpful.

  So I explained that I was Brooke’s sister from back home, and our mother was terrified, etc. The guard let me get it all out, but obviously wasn’t fooled. Picking up Brooke’s file, I saw my own picture paper clipped to the manila tab.

  “You’re Sophia Danton, aren’t you?” The security guard smiled, letting the file drop to her desk. “You were picked up with Ms. Smith on the night of her arrest, weren’t you?”

  Taking a deep breath, I tried to hold my ground. “Yes, but…”

  “Listen, honey, Brooke is a very sick girl.”

  “Yes, I know. But if you’d let me…”

  “The last thing she needs is people like you,” the guard intoned, giving me a hard stare. “Brooke needs a break from all her known associates. And that begins with you.”

  A break from all her known associates? Like I was some kind of criminal myself. In the ancient, musty school, I felt my throat beginning to constrict. “No, you don’t understand. I’m not an…uh, associate of Brooke’s. In that way, I mean…”

  “Uh huh.” There was a note of absolute finality in the guard’s tone. Somehow I passed the drug tests myself, but I certainly wasn’t fooling her. “Ms. Danton, you’re not allowed here. If you don’t leave immediately I’ll have you arrested.”

  I just stood there, beginning to feel numb.

  “Ms. Danton!” the woman barked. Behind me, I could hear the other guard advance a step. “Please leave. And never contact Ms. Smith again! If you really care about her, that would be the biggest favor you could do.”

  Outside, staring back at the facility, I just stood there and cried. Who knows? Maybe the guard was right. I wasn’t good for Brooke, or Steve, or Dave, or any of them. Everything just seemed so terribly screwed up.

  Thinking about it that night, I decided not to see or even contact any of them. Especially Steve. I just needed to get away, to gather myself.

  The next day I caught a flight to Las Vegas.

  STEVE LEVINE

  Two weeks ago I received the final entries for this Life Project from Sophia, Da
ve, and Hayley. I put them all together, in order, without reading most. After getting emotionally slammed by their first efforts, I was afraid to go on.

  I then called the professor who’d commissioned the Life Project in the first place. He promptly informed me his funding had been cancelled months before, then hung up. So whatever professional or financial pretext for doing all this, if there ever really was any, is now completely gone.

  So what do I do with our Life Project? Pages and pages of our hopes and fears, regrets and triumphs…what? If I had any balls I’d edit it together in book form and send it out to the old gang, but I don’t know. I can’t bear to imagine what they’d think of me today. I’m sure they’ve all gone on to have perfect lives, with perfect people.

  I’m just a memory, but at least I’m not a pathetic memory. Sending them all this would destroy what little respect they might still have for me. And that I just can’t get myself to do.

  So I threw it all in the car and on a whim headed up into Georgia. The countryside is beautiful, the weather warm and clear. I just heard two of my favorite all-time rock songs back-to-back, Nickelback’s Savin’ Me, followed by Evanescence’s Bring Me To Life. They really seem to epitomize the age in which we live.

  So I stopped to go rollerblading at one of those wonderful paved paths through the forest you occasionally find throughout the south. It kind of reminded me of college, racing through the woods past startled turtles and squirrels. Occasionally, joggers and rollerbladers get attacked on these trails by cougars all jazzed up at the sight of fleeing prey. Well, at least it would be exciting.

  But it wasn’t a cougar that changed my life. Sitting at a picnic table a few miles down the path, resting for a few minutes before heading back, a young black cat raced over from the direction of a farm house several hundred yards away. It was about six months old, just on the verge of full adulthood.

  Without stopping, this cat leapt up onto the picnic table and, purring up a storm, lavished me with attention. He rubbed my cheek, climbed on my shoulders, lounged in my lap…all as if we’d been friends for years. Nothing was held back. It was as if I was the only person he’d seen in months, though I suspect he waylaid every passerby sitting on the only human structure in miles. It was just kind of his thing.

  But it was beautiful. This wonderful creature, full of life and promise, was sharing everything of himself with me. It reminded me of the manatees so many years before.

  And then, just as quickly, he was gone. With a final cheek rub the cat dashed back toward the farm house, soon disappearing in the trees. It was almost surreal. But that cat, and that Moment, changed my life.

  So now I sit at a picnic table back by the car, penning this Project’s final entry. I’ve decided to call it The Bull Years, in honor of my 20's and 30's. Previous generations called those decades the “bull years” because they were supposed to be the most productive time in your life. For me, and I suspect for many of my contemporaries, the title remains apt for a very different reason. In any event I like The Bull Years, and that’s what it will be.

  Next week I turn 40. It’s time to move on. Memories are one thing, but the future has yet to be written. Sophia, Dave, Brooke, and the rest are part of the past. Our resistance cell will remain scattered forever, never to be reconstituted. It was a time that has come, and is now gone. And while that’s very sad, and my regrets will linger on forever, it’s time to move on.

  So I’m going to wrap The Bull Years in plastic and bury it about half-a-mile off the trail in a solid metal container laying here by the trash. Why, I don’t know. That sounds like the kind of thing crazy people do.

  But I want to live the rest of my life knowing it’s out there, somewhere. It exists, the previous me exists…but there’s so much more yet to be written.

  Normally when people die their bodies are buried to rot away into nothing, but The Bull Years might remain, intact, for a long time. That’s kind of cool. I can think about me, and Sophia and Dave and Brooke, and even Hayley, frozen in time underneath the earth. A final epitaph for what we were. And a beacon, perhaps, for what we’ll become.

  And by the way guys, if I hadn’t mentioned it before, thank you for being my closest friends in the world. I don’t know where I’d be without you, I really don’t.

  All the best, and all my love,

  Steve

  HISTORICAL NOTE:

  It’s been twelve years since the foregoing narrative was unearthed by a construction crew in the Georgian forest, a find rightfully ranked as one of the greatest historical, sociological, and literary discoveries of all time. Since its general publication a decade ago, the so-called “Life Project” of Steve Levine, Sophia Danton, Dave Miller, and Hayley Sykes has captivated the solar system’s imagination, illuminating a particularly shadowy period from which very few contemporaneous accounts exist.

  The term “Bull Years,” of course, is not without some controversy. Many have embraced the title conferred by Steve Levine himself. Others have quite convincingly posited, most notably Professor Utley and his colleagues at the University of Luna City, the countervailing view that Levine bestowed The Bull Years designation during a “transitory emotional state,” thus lacking academic or historical validity.

  Thus, writes Professor Utley, had Levine ever published his seminal work during his own lifetime, or appreciated the renown it would ultimately achieve, he would never have consented to it being titled “in the common vernacular.”

  However, with all deference to Professor Utley, whose insights into late 20th and early 21st century culture have proved invaluable to this Researcher, I will bow to convention and utilize the more common title. In light of both the protagonists’ personal lives and the historical milieu in which they found themselves immersed, The Bull Years seems particularly apt.

  Scientific analysis of the paper and other materials reveal The Bull Years to have been buried by Levine some ten years before the onset of the Cyber War of the early 21st century, circa 2012. Some have challenged this view, theorizing Levine actually buried the materials much later on, perhaps even shortly before his own death, in a cynical bid for everlasting fame.

  There remains, however, no factual basis for this claim. And since Levine actually did achieve a fair degree of renown in his post-Bull Years life, this line of inquiry is clearly specious.

  Other so-called “Bull Myths” have been similarly debunked, chief among them the contention that Steve Levine and Dave Miller were actually the same person. Critic Zact Blaint, in Not So Good To Go, The Life And Lies Of Steve Levine, makes this claim, along with the bizarre assertion that Hayley Sykes was actually an illegitimate child of Steve Levine and Brooke Smith. Thankfully, Mr. Blaint has already been revealed as a fraud, with little regard to truth or legitimate research.

  No, the appearance of the “Lost Photograph,” showing a young Levine and Miller sitting on the porch of their Buffalo apartment home, should end all such speculation. And though the evidence on this score remains somewhat less definitive, the young blonde woman sitting between the two men, her face tantalizing obscured, could well be Sophia Danton herself. (Though many have assumed the black cat shown in the Photograph to be the fabled Marauder, no independent confirmation of the feline’s identity has been made to this Researcher.)

  The Lost Photograph was found tucked within a history textbook stamped “SUNY Buffalo” in the ruins of a Western New York home once owned by the parents of Brooke Smith. Exhaustive testing, conducted by a half-dozen laboratories, have conclusively authenticated the Lost Photograph as a genuine artifact from the late 20th century. Those continuing to cast doubt on the Photograph’s validity are thus contravening the combined expert opinions of several dozen established scientific and historical authorities, this Researcher among them.

  No less than three copies of Sophia Danton’s Mistress articles have been discovered. One of Levine’s unsuccessful submissions to a literary agency has also come to light, along with what is believed to be Ma
ndy Miller’s birth certificate. Employment records for both Levine and Miller, closing matching the foregoing narrative, have been recovered. Fragmentary academic records (from the Spring of 1992) recovered from the SUNY Buffalo ruins make reference to all of the Bull Personalities believed to have attended college during that time period.

  These facts, among many others, have convinced serious scholars, including this Researcher, that the foregoing material is a genuine recounting of historical people and incidents.

  So why is The Bull Years so important? Of course, it would be impossible to deny the power of the narrative itself, which has become a cultural phenomenon of almost unparalleled proportions.

  Yet from a historical perspective, the book also helps answer the most baffling mystery of modern times. Why didn’t they do something before it was too late? To us, over two centuries later, the looming disasters seem obvious and immediate. Yet the so-called “Blind Generation” was seemingly oblivious to the forces threatening mankind’s very survival. How can that be?

  Late 20th and early 21st century society was obviously a titanic clash of fading, yet potent dynamics (organized religion, mysticism, sexual prejudice, etc.), and a new world based on personal freedom, almost unlimited mobility, and technological upheaval. The staid, traditional expectations of the past were clearly outdated, yet firm, new paths had yet to fully form.

  This paradigm is particularly relevant within Sophia Danton’s personal relationships, both with her family and others. It also goes far in explaining Steve Levine’s professional frustrations, or a convention allowing uninhibited sexual intercourse between college students to result in bonding legal ties following accidental pregnancy. Many of Hayley Sykes’ observations speak to this theme. There are countless other examples chronicled within The Bull Years, fascinating modern readers unfamiliar with the rampant estrangement, and resultant personality disorders, commonly exhibited during this period.