The More You Ignore Me

by Travis Nichols

  It is torture, but I admit it is a kind of exquisite torture for I know I am in the right.

  I am like Buster Keaton beset by distracting morons in The Passionate Plumber.

  I must remain true and keep my eyes closed to the temptations of defeat and appeasement.

  He has offered, I admit, appeasement.

  Chris has offered to “talk things through” over the phone, but what could he possibly say to me?

  That he is sorry?

  He could only bewitch me with his sophistry as he has bewitched all the rest.

  I refuse.

  You see, the real tragedy of my banishment is not personal, but that we were on the cusp of exposing the secret cabal hiding in plain sight, the gentlemen’s agreement between powers that, through miraculous circumstances, can be revealed on an admittedly humble wedding blog.

  Yes, I’m aware Chris implemented this wedding blog simply out of obligation to follow the fashion, to, in what has become commonplace, coopt an authentic community like the one we had for a time over at BlissfulBasket.com, YoungUns.com, or even AdamsFuneralHome.net.

  I don’t blame him or any of the other mindless followers!

  For what courage would have had to be on display for a man to stand up in his soulless office building, in some gray meeting room, and say, “No! This, at long last, is finally something that is not ours to take!”

  Oh, it surely would have caused heads to burst open in wonder, fetid juices splattering over dull paperwork just to have someone acknowledge the unchecked greed underlying all the actions of these organizations; but not just this organization—each and every organization involved, wittingly or no, in this cabal!

  They are all in it together!

  American capitalism knows how to profit off of a perpetual war machine funded by the state, so instead of cranking up production to meet the war needs, the state cranks up war to meet the production needs!

  All throughout the empire, citizens trade their time and energy with the “machine” in exchange for comfort, and so comfort keeps the wars going.

  And you all, if you won’t stand with me, continue to aid and abet this comfort by colluding in the conspiracy to silence the comfortless!

  But, you see, I am standing up where you would not, and, dear me, most likely could not.

  You have much to lose—or so you think, though in fact I hope you can see that you couldn’t be more wrong—whereas I, lonely, bereft, cut asunder by the world, have nothing to lose.

  I am offering you my undying loyalty in exchange for what?

  Nothing!

  A mere acknowledgment that, yes, I exist, that you do in fact hear me, that this isn’t all in my mind, that I need not be RESTRICTED IN THIS MANNER!

  As you may know, I offered the same to this know-nothing underthing Chris, but he refused me.

  In fact, I suspect he hired a vandal to deface my (rented) property in an act of hateful defiance to my overture, for the day I posted a few revelations on the blog, I came home from my grocer rounds to find a fresh egg cracked on the door to my residence.

  Can you believe it?

  I am still almost unable to type it without flying into a destructive rage—and, in fact, the only thing that keeps me from dashing my brains against the wall is that the vandal wasn’t able to penetrate the outer ramparts of the building to defile my actual door, only the front door of the building itself.

  To be honest, it was more of the sidewall to the east of the door, but his point was made, the motherless scum!

  How could such a lunatic even be allowed near Charli?

  It pains me generally but also specifically in my heart’s leftmost chamber to know he could succeed in his campaign to destroy what could conceivably be a fruitful union.

  What concerns me terribly is that Charli has become so acclimated to corruption through our “society” that she would allow Chris to ravish her under the guise of some sort of “open marriage” while Nico fiddles unaware.

  The whole thing must be stopped, but I can see that we will allow this “best man” into the wedding, that no one will stop him.

  And, most importantly, I will remain excluded, so the event will proceed.

  Is it difficult to continue to imagine what might happen even though we have been banned?

  No.

  We need merely apply the force of our imaginations to the information already gained from Charlico.com/blog.

  We know there will be a “family luncheon” and a “bachelor/ette party” at the Inn, so we know the best man will stroll into what the Inn calls its “open-air ballroom” at the tail end of this very luncheon.

  We know from viewing the online floor plan that this room at the Clark House Inn is more of a functional storage space than a “ballroom,” but why quibble with novice architectural terms?

  The space has the requisite ten thousand square feet of hardwood to hold the bar carts, the sushi “stations,” and the 107 guests in town for the free drinks, the louche party, the chance to spy some young bridesmaid in a drunken sprawl.

  And, of course, the wedding itself.

  What a disaster!

  When I take time to breathe, to practice my ritual cleansing (I imagine my inhalation bringing the good forces of the outside world into my body through my nostrils, and then I imagine the good forces of my interior world exiting my body through my nostrils upon exhale), I can vividly see in my mind’s eye how the wedding will proceed, how Chris will slither his way through the family, partaking in the occasional frottage until he is there by the bride’s side as some sort of dance circle forms.

  Music from Pink, Beck, Sting, or some other one-named hack will blare. You can hear it, I’m sure.

  But can we imagine a proper ending to this scene? Can we imagine one where a certain friend of your narrator finally delivers on a long-ago debt? Let’s call him HORACE, and let’s open our minds to the possibilities.

  EXT. CLARK HOUSE INN. NIGHT.

  [HORACE, in a trench coat, stands in the shadows at the edge of the ballroom. In a flash, HORACE raises a rifle from inside his coat and aims first at NICO, then at CHARLI. No one notices. The blissful couple remains unaware, watching in wonder as SOME CHUBBY KID dances in abandon to a gay torch song. The rifle’s site first frames CHARLI. Beautiful, she casts her gorgeous hair first in one direction, then the other. The site moves on to NICO—nervous, breathing through his mouth, balling his hands into fists. Then, finally, CHRIS, in contrapposto pose, his arm secretly sneaking around CHARLI’S waist, his mouth twisted into a smirk. HORACE steadies the barrel with his left hand. HORACE breathes in.]

  HORACE

  (quietly to himself)

  This one is for you, friend.

  [HORACE fires. Outside of the Inn, crows alight from the trees at the sound, which echoes across the valley. CHARLI sees the flash first in her peripheral vision before she feels CHRIS’s grip on her waist tighten. His greasy fingers slowly release (though not without a final, fleeting brush across her buttocks!). She looks back and sees the cretin crumpling onto the ballroom floor, his face splattered with what looks to her like clumps of mud. Blood begins to seep from the clumps. CLOSE-UP on CHARLI as she realizes, slowly, that someone has shot CHRIS in his stupid face! She inhales to scream, but before her diaphragm can squeeze out a sound . . .]

  HORACE

  No time to play nurse!

  [HORACE has bounded over from the party’s edge to grip her by the hair (Brutal, but what can we do? The same nature that will allow HORACE to shoot CHRIS is the same that causes him to roughhouse). CHARLI’S scalp burns in pinpricked points at first, then all over her head. HORACE pulls her by her hair away from NICO and the rest of the party, and as she stumbles along with him she finds herself concentrating on the RC Cola machine flickering near the main entrance, wondering what will become of her life now that she is free of CHRIS and NICO. HORACE pulls her into the darkness.]

  [FADE TO BLACK]

  Grim, I admit. In fact, it’s a movi
e not unlike those I suffered through a decade ago when I spent so many nights at the cinematheque, standing sentinel for another young beauty beset by deluded aggressors.

  But let’s not digress.

  I know I sound tough, strident, at peace with my convictions, but it does wear on me, I admit it. It is the most tiresome cliché, but it is nonetheless true in this case: no one understands me.

  Even as an ungainly youth I was perplexed at how my teachers and “betters” made connections with so many of my peers, and yet all of these elders steadfastly refused to “get” me or acknowledge my exceptionality. But what is there to “get”? Who am I? Am I so special? Should I have, in the end, changed who “I” was just to be “got” by the knuckleheaded throng surrounding me?

  I’m sure your superficial answer is a resounding “no,” as it has been from the mouths of whomever I’ve asked. But of course you are a hypocrite!

  When pressed to the point, you all ask me to change, to conform, to give up my essential self to fit in with the lumpen bureaucratariot! Once again, I refuse!

  This must make me unhappy, yes?

  Of course this is the conclusion most people draw when they dimly perceive the outlines of my existence, but here is the strange thing: I am happy! Joyous, even!

  It is the conformist, the socialite, the wedding attendee, the one who goes along only to sacrifice everything worth going along for, who is unhappy!

  I have no burdens on my conscience.

  I enjoy my meager meals.

  I sleep soundly, when I choose to sleep.

  I read.

  I listen to Archie Shepp.

  It is, as a matter of fact, a quite lonely existence, except for these facts:

  1. I have been wronged.

  2. I am right.

  So, yes, I am frustrated.

  I am bewildered.

  I am angry.

  But I am not unhappy.

  I have my integrity, and I have my grievances.

  But I require no pity from you.

  I merely require justice!

  And it is this requirement that prods me to go deeper, faster, to push on into the untamed wilds of my gift, to breach the next layer of consciousness in this charade, and to do so without the inhibitions I have heretofore indulged—off with this constricting shirt!

  Let the sweat roll down my sides unimpeded!!!

  Isn’t it natural?

  Why, I’ll go barefoot!

  Yes!

  Let’s not be afraid of the truth, my dears!

  Let’s let our primal instincts take over!

  True, we have seen that Chris’s physical threat to Charli will be nullified by my proxy at the event itself, and so, you may ask, “Why continue writing when you have a plan of action?”

  Because, don’t you see, the existential danger still looms!

  For Nico.

  For Charli.

  For us.

  The mentality Chris engenders has already begun to corrupt us from inside, to hem us in, to cause us to censor ourselves.

  Oh, it burns!

  How could we have allowed him to affect us so?

  Make no mistake: he has affected us.

  We are not clean.

  We are cramped and filthy still.

  Off with the pants!

  We are, in some ways, behaving worse than Chris!

  And is that not his ultimate victory?

  Here I feel the guilt, and, yes, shame come creeping, and so I must keep typing in order to evacuate the demons from my soul!

  It is of the utmost importance that we battle the forces of oppression with our conjoined imaginations in whatever form the muse allows, but I sense that we won’t be able to fully appreciate this oppression without first digging into that loamy humus where we might begin separating the tangled roots of love, desire, loathing, and, I admit it, self-delusion that make up my formative years.

  MFL.

  Again, MFL!

  This was well before the advent of blogs, dear readers, and before I had truly accepted my role as an outsider, so it was a different world, one in which I had to employ a very different set of skills to keep track of my interests.

  Let me explain, and in explaining, let me pull you back to another world, another place, and another time: 1989.

  Yes, in 1989 I was enrolled in a “work-study” scholarship program with the food services department of the state school all the spoiled children of engorged magnates continue to use as a fallback when their plans for received aristocracy fall through.

  There, in Creosotte Dining Hall, surrounded by imbecilic frat boys and airheaded candy stripers, I ran the soft serve stand on weekday mornings.

  As per the instructions delivered to me by a hirsute woman of dubious extraction, I kept the cafeteria’s cabinets full of sprinkles, and I kept the whirring soft serve machine’s various parts in working order using a certain jellied lubricant and scrub brush.

  This was no small feat when every young coed desperately and continually needed “a chocolate one, pleeeze,” though I was (and am!) an efficient enough worker to make enough time for supra–soft serve observations of my peers.

  Yes, I had to wear a silly paper hat, but more to the point: I first observed MFL (whom I will now, in this public space, for legal reasons, call “Rachil”), the inaugural morning of the school year in that Indian summer of 1989, a time when the “punks” all still wore leather, and the cars were all still Japanese made.

  And a beauty like Rachil did not go in for “Prince.”

  At least not when I first met her.

  No, she looked like a young Ally Sheedy, an untouched Ally, an Ally waiting for initiation into the older Ally world.

  She liked her soft serve extra soft.

  MFL. Immediately, it was so.

  I soon learned that “Rachil” worked as a ticket seller at the newly opened University Cinematheque on East campus, and, it happened that I received a school employee discount at this very same University Cinematheque.

  I quickly became the Cinematheque’s most loyal patron, suffering through all the films twenty-year-olds now consider “cult classics” simply so I could have a brief minute of face-to-face interaction with MFL.

  I might have been her MFL, if only I had been given the proper chance.

  Who can say? The past is passed.

  What we can say is that our eyes often met during the ticket transaction, and one time she did indeed touch the side of my hand with her ring finger.

  I felt a spark.

  But, we’ll never know what could have been, because mine enemy (whom I will call from here on out for the very same legal reasons “Corn”) also worked there at the Cinematheque, running the projector from a little dank hovel.

  Even from where I sat in the front row, I could often hear him guffawing his way through the films at the back of the cinema.

  The soul may indeed grow in darkness, but one must consider which particular soul this is before one registers the fact as a positive or negative occurrence!

  Worse still, Corn could often be found hovering outside the ticket booth, practically licking the glass that protected poor Rachil from just such “flirtations.”

  He would stand idly by while she attempted to do her job, horning in on the time that was by rights the customers’ in order to continue some fatuous discussion of Jay McInerney or Norman Mailer (Corn fancied himself an “intellectual”).

  Isn’t it ironical that the cinema was the smithy of their base ingratitude and that my secret screenplay forecasts their future manifestations’ eventual downfall?

  Yes.

  It is.

  Let’s enjoy the irony for a moment.

  Perhaps in due time I will post the entirety of my as-yet-unproduced screenplay for your enjoyment, dear readers, but until then let’s acknowledge that the screenplay form, glorious as it is in my hands, has its limits.

  It cannot encompass all of experience.

  If we are to fully understand these
types of relationships, which we are indeed to do if we are to proceed, then we need to push beyond all “genre” limitations.

  Yes, it is obvious that the past requires a novelist’s touch, that majestic sentences must stream from the pinpricks of facts to adequately capture the time and place of my (or any!) sentimental education, for the novelist takes a true story and lies about it, or takes a lie and tells a true story about it. Either way, to the reader it all appears at the same time to be gospel and supreme artifice.

  Shall we begin?

  CHAPTER 1

  Rachil sold tickets in a brightly lit glass-enclosed booth that sat in front of the shabby University cinema, which itself fit snugly inside a student union, a campus hub at the center of a tawdry rural town made nationally prominent only by this second-rate educational institution’s rah-rah football team.

  Seen from above, the campus looked like a metastasizing cancer growth in an otherwise robust body of farmland.

  A boy named Corn ran the cinema’s projector in a dark concrete room that smelled like wet Band-Aids and trench foot.

  It was 1989.

  Night after night, Corn would curl his lithe body around the film splicer, snipping out the stills of titillating scenes for his “private collection,” sweat pouring from his greasy scalp as his wormy fingers did their wormy work.