Burn My Shadow

by Tyler Knight

  “So, one night at this dinner party Morphy saw a painting hanging on the host’s wall. It was a picture of a kid playing the Devil in a game of chess. Ostensibly for possession of his soul. The kid in the painting is playing white and the Devil playing black, of course. The host of the party sidled up to Morphy. He recounted to Morphy the legend of the picture: That not only is it possible for white to escape certain checkmate, but there is a way for white’s position to actually win the game in a handful of moves.

  “He told Morphy that many chess masters came through his house over the years and studied the position of the pieces on the board in the painting. Not a single one of them found a solution, and for years it was accepted that it’s impossible for white to win.

  “Morphy, possessed by hubris, took that as a challenge. He just couldn’t let it go. While everybody else at the party was having a good time, he camped out in front of the painting working out solutions in his head. Late into the evening, he called everybody in the room and announced to all the guests that he had found a solution. He, then, walked them through his solution, move by move. He did it! He beat the Devil at his own game!

  “Before Morphy could publicize his solution he went home, drew himself a bath, and he got in the tub. The temperature difference between the bathwater and his body was so great that when he lowered himself into the tub, it shut down the world’s greatest brain before yours can process this sentence. Death by stroke. Just like that.”

  Tiberius punctuated the point by snapping his fingers. He smiled, pat me on the head, and walked toward the trading floor doors.

  • • •

  Instead of going home I decided to walk along Hollywood Boulevard to clear my head. Above the retail stores on Hollywood and Highland, a text crawls across a horizontal LCD screen for the Hollywood Stock Exchange that tracks the buying and selling of shares in celebrities whose values are reduced to box office and Q scores while the hoi polloi beneath in sweat-sodden T-shirts clinging to greasy skin jostle against me from all directions, chortling as they recede into the night. I slip into the current of the crowd, streaming all directions and going nowhere. A grandmother standing on stack of pamphlets advertising LIVE NUDE GIRLS! acts as a breakwater for the flow of humanity flowing around either side of her. She asks passers-by, “What happened to time?” A young gee with neon lights glinting off his grill and shrouded in a hoodie hiding his eyes twists through the crowd and slaps a pamphlet into my chest that says, “WHEN YOU DIE…” and on its reverse, “YOU WILL MEET GOD!” What’s happening with my life? I’m not a young man anymore. Every decision I make affects the lives of other people. Shit, I’m fucking trying… Not good enough. Am I’m worthless? Taking up space? Why do I keep fighting? Maybe the best thing to do is just… It would have to look like an accident, and let Amanda get the insurance money… I’m so tired. I’m so tired…

  So very tired…

  In front of the Chinese Theater, Billy Jean blasts from a street dancer’s boom box with LEDs flashing all colors of the rainbow fire in synch with the beat. The one-gloved street dancer pops and locks and children play and husbands spin and twirl their wives. Another street performer wearing a tuxedo covered in mirrored shards of glass dances in a circle of spectators and I see my face in a thousand fractured fractals, distorted and warped as he grooves to the beat. Passing cars’ headlamps throw the light into my eyes. Sounds comes to me, muffled and distorted. There is a pressing and throbbing around my skull as though it’s submerged under water at a depth of ten atmospheres and pressures of water assault and press against my skull from all sides. The light around me magnifies until all edges, all of sight blurs…and everything. Goes. White.

  Ringing!

  When my vision restores itself I’m stumbling around a few blocks away on Hollywood Boulevard and La Brea, where I turn south toward Sunset. I make it to a 7-Eleven and pull the door shut behind me.

  Silence. I hide my shaking hands in my pockets and head for the refrigerator where I stand with my back to the store, facing the glass doors but avoiding my reflection while pretending to examine my choices for bottled water—

  “Tyler!”

  A fan, probably. Not now! Can’t ignore him. That never works and I’ll come off like an asshole… Smile. Be kind…

  I turn around. Nobody is there. The store is empty.

  Can’t be. Where is he… He was close enough for me to feel breath blowing hot in my ear as he spoke!

  I stumble from the store and dash across traffic and into the backseat of a taxi parked outside of the Comfort Inn.

  He pulls away from the curb and asks where I’m going… Where am I going? When I don’t answer he pulls over to the curb and turns in his seat to face me. I fold my hands together to hide the shakes, and whisper my address. I look out the window as neon lights and distorted pictures pass over it.

  The driver steals glances at me in the rear view mirror. As the taxi glides along the street and passing under the street lights, my head goes from being shrouded in shadows to lights of Sunset strip splashed across my profile and I shut my eyes but colors paint the insides of my eyelids.

  Light, dark…light, dark behind my eyelids…as we creep. There’s a screaming in my skull and bile forces its way up and sears my throat but stops there. Horns blast and the cab jolts to a stop and lurches me forward, tipping bile upward that’s bitter and stings on my tongue like mouthwash.

  I open my eyes. Sunset and Vermont. Close enough. I glance at the meter and jam bills in a slot of the Plexiglas partition bisecting the cab and open the cab door to a cacophony of traffic and slouch my way toward Sunset Junction and home in Silver Lake.

  • • •

  I close my bedroom door with care and leave the lights off. I kick off my shoes and lay in bed on my belly with a pillow over my head, waiting for the screaming in my head to stop. As the pain in my head fades, memories of today’s humiliations push their way into the foreground and slash at me like razors whipping around in a maelstrom. I try to bring to focus hazy memories of good times with Amanda instead… The imagery flickers behind my eyes like a zoetrope projecting stop-motion images on muslin before they fade because there’s nothing for them to latch onto. Even though we live together, I’ve left Amanda out of my life and kept her at arm’s distance for the better part of a decade…

  I hear the door click open and click shut. Amanda pats me on the foot. I sit up.

  “Que fue, Papito?”

  My life in isolation ends right now. I say, “I’m starting to hear things that aren’t there…I’m not sure I can tell what’s real and what’s not anymore.”

  She sits on the bed and takes my foot in her hand. “You’re having another nervous breakdown.”

  “Yeah…probably.”

  “You’ve got to quit this job. I want you to quit.”

  “Okay.”

  “I mean it. You’re not going back to that place.”

  “Okay, but what else am I supposed to do, huh? Go back to fucking?”

  “I don’t know… We’ll figure it out later, but now you’re getting in my car.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “There’s a free health clinic across from the school down the street. It’s on Sunset. They offer mental health services.”

  “But, what if they decide to hold me? Can’t they, like, keep me there for seventy-two hours?”

  “Then you stay a few days. If you don’t get in my car, I’m going to leave you.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “So am I. But I’m here.”

  “Heh…”

  “What’s funny?”

  “So much for, ‘I’m saving myself for a man I don’t have to save.’”

  “Come on, Erik. Let’s go.”

  • • •

  “I’m sorry, Miss, but he needs a referral from his primary care physician.”

&nb
sp; “This is a free clinic.”

  “Again, I’m sorry, that doesn’t matter. Those are the rules.”

  “But, he doesn’t have a referral. This is a free walk-in clinic. Walk-in. That’s why I came here.”

  “Yes, this is a walk-in clinic, except mental health services at this facility are not walk-in. We have counselors and therapists, but those services require a referral and a scheduled appointment.”

  “I’m making an appointment for right now.”

  “And a referral… He needs a referral for an appointment.”

  “Look at him. Escúchame! He doesn’t need help someday next week. He needs help right now! I don’t think he’s going to make it!”

  “Then I strongly suggest you take him to County USC. They’re equipped to handle emergency services.”

  “What if he walked in from the street and he didn’t have me to take him there, huh? Then what?”

  “I’m sorry. Those are the rules.”

  We leave the clinic and walk the block up the cross street and past the school towards Amanda’s car.

  “Where is County USC? Is it by USC?”

  “No. Farther. Other side of Downtown.”

  We reach her car. We get in.

  “Look up the directions on your phone.”

  “It’s okay. Just take me home, baby… I’m tired.”

  Ne Plus Ultra

  *ne plus ultra nā-pləs-əl-trə noun. [Latin] Literally “not further beyond”

  1: the highest possible level of achievement or perfection

  2: the absolute limit of which one can go

  3: a warning to ships inscribed upon the Pillars of Hercules demarcating the end of the known world; the point crossed by Ulysses in Dante’s Inferno before he encounters Purgatory.

  My hands brace against the fiberglass walls as I retch into the space between my knees and down the cesspit. Somewhere outside the port-a-john, Pharrell croons “Happy” from a boom box. Astringent disinfectant tears my eyes and seizes at my throat, which makes puking while standing upright inside a box the dimensions of a garment bag a joy. Stomach acids fizz up my throat and burn sour on the back of my tongue.

  The action I’m tasked with is running a footrace the equivalent length of 1,760 football fields—four back-to-back marathons—in a single push. During my run, I’ll feel the warmth of dawn break upon my face and then watch the ocean extinguish the sun as the terminator, the shadowy line which separates day from night, sweep west across the globe to reclaim the ground I run upon into darkness. Then I’ll continue through the night and emerge on the other side of the penumbra burnt away by a second sunrise.

  I wipe my mouth on the hem of my T-shirt and exit the port-a-john and into the fog. It’s dark and the scent of Pacific brine hangs in the still air. A volunteer jogs up to me exclaiming the race is about to start. The race director finishes his pre-race address to the gathering pack of runners. He warns us to stay on top of our nutrition, the possibility of hallucinations due to sleep deprivation, and that headlamps are mandatory on the course between twilight and dawn. The runners flick on their headlamps and line up between two orange cones straddling the bike path. The course is an out-and-back along the eight-mile-long concrete bike path traced along the shoreline. Twelve and a half laps from now the race staff will stretch the finish line tape across the path. The farthest I’ve ever run up to this point is a 50k race (about thirty-two miles) which took everything I had to finish within the eight-hour cutoff time…so, naturally, I signed up for a race three times that distance. The race director reminds us of the strict thirty-hour cutoff time: finish 30:00:01 and you get a DNF (Did Not Finish) for your efforts, and all those miles were for naught. I power up my headlamp and toe the line among the other ultrarunners right as the race director counts down from ten to zero. It’s on, time to get down! I press “Record Activity” on my GPS watch and run into the gloom.

  • • •

  O-six hundred.

  Headlamps strapped to athletes’ heads wash over concrete sprinkled with sand as waves slap against the shore. Sneakers slap against cement and crunch atop granules of sand. The field of runners thins. A glance at my watch shows my running pace within the lead pack is faster than I what trained for. The excitement of the race can make you run outside of your abilities, which you’ll pay for later on. I temper my excitement and allow my natural pace to slip me into the rear of the pack. An ocean breeze blows away the fog and moonlight illuminates the path as a line of silver. The remaining back of the pack runners blow past me, and now I’m DFL. Dead Fucking Last.

  I run alone, chasing headlamps in front of me that wink as the runners turn their heads to the side to chat with the person next to them. I ignore them and maintain my gaze a few paces ahead. While running by headlamp (as opposed to a flashlight) keeps your hands free, it poses a unique challenge. It distorts your depth perception rendering the world around you flat and two-dimensional like a cheap cartoon. If your attention lapses and you look away from where you’re going, when you return your gaze forward, objects spring to life before you as you approach like cardboard cut-outs in a life sized pop-up book. Those roots across the trail you judged to be a few strides away are already grabbing at your feet.

  I glide along the bike path landing on my toe shoes. My forefeet land in hushed taps in quick succession. Unencumbered by thick cushioning underfoot, I am one with the concrete.

  • • •

  fifteen-o-four.

  Forty-three miles

  What the fuck was I thinking? This is stupid! Am I out of my goddamn mind? What kind of idiot signs up to run a hundred miles on fucking cement in toe shoes with no cushioning? FUCK!

  The soles of my feet make scraping sounds as I shuffle my feet along the bike path. Lifting my legs takes too much effort, and the impact of even a single step sends pain knifing up my legs and through my body. It’s as though someone took a meat tenderizer to my soles for nine hours.

  Back when my GPS watch chirped signifying that I’ve passed the fifty-kilometer distance and the farthest I have run in my entire life, a wave of euphoria washed over me. That feels like a lifetime ago. Since then, the concrete has exacted its toll, and the enormity of the task ahead of me, repeating what I’ve just done twice more on legs half as fresh, is mind-fucking me.

  I’m sitting on jennifer dragon’s sofa after wrapping a nuru massage scene for Barney Blaze, my first scene after a three-year break from the business.

  Barney, Erin Masters, and I are discussing the bombing that just happened at the Boston Marathon today. My twitter feed is full of imagery of blood and suffering. I feel helpless. On the way home from set, I stop by a discount store to buy some running shoes. The only athletic shoes I have are some wrestling shoes and a dry rotted pair of Mark Gonzales skateboarding sneakers. This will be my first pair of running shoes since back when the Berlin Wall still stood.

  Scanning the rack, I pick up the first pair of name brand shoes I find in my size and try them on… Not sure what I’m looking for, but they’re cheap, so what the hell. As I’m leaving, I spot a shoe on the rack with individual compartments for each toe. What sport is that for? I pick it up and read its brand…then I Google it on my phone…

  Right on the first page of hits are all kinds of websites with running gurus both damning the shoe or extoling its virtues in a minimalist running revolution. Heh. Running shoes?

  A forum discussing the merits of minimalist running for ultramarathons…

  What the fuck is an “ultramarathon”?

  I Wikipedia it:

  “An ultramarathon, also called ultra distance, is any footrace longer than the traditional marathon length of 42.195 kilometers (26.219 mi). There are two types of ultramarathon events: those that cover a specified distance, and events that take place during specified time (with the winner covering the most distance in that time). The mo
st common distances are 50 kilometres (31.069 mi), 100 kilometres (62.137 mi), 50 miles (80.4672 km), and 100 miles—”

  I stop reading. Holy. Shit! One hundred miles! This is for real? People do this? I’ve never run farther than five miles at a time in my life, and even that sucked. What would running that distance do to the human body? How have I never heard of this madness until now?

  I drop the name brand shoes and, clutching the one toe shoe, I scour the racks for its mate. I find it.

  Back to my phone…blogs with post-race reports from emaciated yet grinning men and women showing belt buckles won as prizes for finishing a hundred miles in one day. Those smiles…

  I bookmark a few blogs, and before I leave the store I’m on Ultrasignup.com signing up for a 50k in the fall with my eyes on a hundred miler in January.

  I call Amanda and mouth-diarrhea into the phone about what I’ve discovered, and I read some of the race reports aloud to her.

  “…and the suffering these runners go through. Doesn’t matter if you’re first to finish or last, they all suffer… And this common experience bonds them! The races are usually in the mountains where the air is thin, or…dude, there’s this race, Badwater one hundred thirty-five, in the desert that goes through Death fucking Valley? In July! They cross the desert and then they climb some fucking mountain before they finish. You believe that shit?”

  “Erik—”

  “There’s this dude named Dean Karnazes who ran that race, and then he ran this race called Western States… I’m gonna buy his book…

  “Erik, cálmese! Tell me about the people.”

  “Sorry… It’s tradition for the first place winner to wait until the last runner crosses the finish line, even if it’s a half a day later. It’s a community of runners, really small, and runners who volunteer whenever they’re not racing to put on races. No real big corporate sponsors, everybody is fucking broke. But everybody looks so happy!”