Nine Kinds of Naked

by Tony Vigorito

  Billy Pronto nodded enthusiastic and opened the door. “Think of it this way,” he suggested. “Perhaps I am an imaginary friend. This is not to admit that I don’t exist, but only to indicate that I am a creation of the imagination. Of course, this is all perfectly obvious, isn’t it? After all, it is not so much the case that God creates man in his image as it is the case that God creates man in his imagination. Don’t you think?”

  Exasperated, Diablo waved him off. Billy thanked him for the ride nonetheless and departed. Driving away, Diablo watched Billy recede in the rearview mirror, ambling down the highway, swinging his gas can at his side, shrinking into the distance exactly like a personified memory properly ought. Once he disappeared around a bend, Diablo turned his attention ahead, where he immediately spied another pedestrian a ways up the road.

  As he drew nearer, Diablo tried to ignore the peculiarity that the pedestrian was wearing what looked like a correctional officer’s uniform. But in the next moment, he swerved like a breakneck dragster when it became undeniable that this correctional officer was also carrying a five-gallon plastic gas can at his side.

  50 DIABLO LOST TRACK of where he was going, and he had forgotten how he had arrived where he was. Aside from the seams in the road echoing his own thunderstruck heartbeat, the only constant was this perpetual pedestrian every mile or so, jaunting down the highway like Johnny Potseed, wearing a jailer’s uniform, swinging a five-gallon gas can at his side like a comma in a run-on sentence, there receding in the rearview mirror, here appearing just up ahead like some preposterous patrol of mile-marker guards. Diablo considered his options. He could try running over one of these nagging Billy Pronto clones, but he wasn’t willing to risk clipping an innocent bystander at the caprice of an apparent delusion. He could pull off at the next exit, but then what? Hang out at the Waffle House for the rest of his life comparing the depths of his own cowardice to their bottomless cup of rancid coffee?

  Forty-five Billy Prontos later, Diablo accepted that these apparitions weren’t going to disappear any time soon. He would confront this prankish hallucination, come what may. At the next version of Billy Pronto, he veered off the road, blaring his horn but taking care to not actually run him down. He swerved, missed the gas can this time, and roused an impressive cloud of dust as he skidded to a halt ahead of Billy. Diablo had hoped this would unsettle Billy, but it was just as before. Billy was as unflinching as the horizon, as relentless as the ocean, as cool as the breeze, and as cheerful as the sunrise.

  “Synchronicity on the sultry soothe of your day!” Billy Pronto greeted him again at the open passenger window, shining like a Cheshire moon over Eden.

  “Where you headed?” Diablo tried to act as if nothing were out of the ordinary, still hoping to buck this phantom off his pink elephant.

  Billy cocked his head. “My only destination is here and now.”

  “Ah.” Diablo nodded, rolling his eyes. “Where exactly would that be?”

  “That?” Billy asked. “That is there and then. This is here and now.”

  Diablo, baffled beyond upside-out and inside-down, gave up trying to outwit this triptasm. “Well, do you want a ride?”

  “I want for nothing,” Billy began. “Desire is the root—”

  “Yeah, I got that,” Diablo interrupted. After formulating for a moment, he pronounced, “If it pleases you, a ride is hereupon available.”

  “A ride into the here and now?”

  “That’s right.” Diablo nodded, confident despite the absurdity of the question posed. “A ride into the here and now.”

  Billy bowed and opened the door. “This is very generous of you. How far do you plan on going?”

  “How far?” Diablo puffed his cheeks full of air, bobbing his head to an unheard beat. After several moments, he shrugged.

  “All the way, I suppose.”

  51 “SO LET’S DEFINE some parameters,” Diablo began once he and Billy Pronto were again on their way. “You’re an illusion—”

  “Actually, you’re the illusion,” Billy interrupted.

  “Impossible,” Diablo stated flatly. “I’m driving, hence I must be real.”

  “Don’t be such a materialist. Clearly, I do not sit in this car, nor do I walk along this highway. If you insist on your own primacy, I am a figment of your imagination. But that is mistaken. At the end of the day, it is you who are a figment of my imagination.”

  “What’s this then?” Diablo demanded, knocking on the side of the plastic gas can. “Another figment of my imagination?”

  “No, that’s your gas can. And technically, it’s another figment of my imagination.”

  “My gas can? I suppose that’s my money as well?”

  “I am incapable of roulette. I have no physical existence.”

  “Then where did this gas can come from?”

  Billy shrugged. “The question is not where it comes from. The question is where it goes. If you can hallucinate me, it appears you can de-hallucinate a gas can as well.”

  “Fine. So how can I be certain of anything? How do I know this money isn’t a hallucination?”

  “You can’t be certain of anything, of course. But if it makes you relax, in terms of the assumptions of the reality you take as given, then yes, the money is real. I am the only aberration in your experience. You de-hallucinate the money when you de-hallucinate me, it seems.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Probably because you associate the gas can and its contents with my presence, and you can’t handle the cognitive dissonance.”

  “Your presence?” Diablo snorted. “Please. Gimme a break. You’re a hallucination. You’ve already admitted as much.”

  “No,” Billy corrected. “I am a hallucination of a hallucination, a meta-hallucination. But I am the dreamer, or at least I represent the dreamer. You are the dream.”

  Diablo was silent for a long while. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he said at last.

  “Sure it does. Whoever it is that you think you are, that’s the illusion.”

  “And what does that make you?”

  “I am the eternal impulse that animates your transitory incarnation.”

  “And what does that make me?”

  “You are a reflection of the expectations of other lost souls like yourself. You are the sum of every frustrated impulse and vanquished inclination, the rage resultant from the theft of your innocence, and you have no idea how tightly you cram your spirit into your life. You’re all barricades and boundaries, ramparts and fortifications, a fortress for your own throttled liberty.”

  “A fortress for my own throttled liberty,” Diablo repeated, pissed at this assessment. “Thanks, man. That’s cool.” He drove on in silence, looking to his left as a Cadillac passed and making glancing eye contact with the driver, a bedraggled bulldog jowling back at him like too clear a mirror. “Fuck,” Diablo muttered. “Let me ask you this, Billy Pronto, or whoever it is that you think you are—”

  “Billy Pronto is who you think I am,” Billy interrupted. “In fact, I don’t care what you call me. I am what I am, and nothing but.”

  “Whoever you think you are,” Diablo continued firmly, “let me ask you this. What if I swerve this car off the road and into that wall?” He pointed toward the rock face on their right where the road had been blasted from the hillside. “What happens then?”

  “You are incapable.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Such an act requires an impulse,” Billy Pronto replied. “And I tell you, I am the impulse.”

  52 “I DON’T LIKE THIS dynamic,” Diablo announced, gesturing between them. “Why do you get to be all laid-back? Why do I have to be uptight?”

  “You tighten your own ass,” Billy Pronto replied. “You are your own jailer.”

  “You used to be my jailer,” Diablo sassed.

  “I am the perfect opposite of imprisonment,” Billy explained. “And do not confuse my presence with the persona you project upon me. A hallu
cination, remember, is a reflection of your own subconscious.”

  Diablo shook his head, beginning to feel like he was stuttering at a strobe light party. “Try to understand my dilemma. I’m bickering with someone who admits to me that he’s a hallucination, but then tries to convince me that I’m the hallucination.” Diablo grew indignant. “I mean, what kind of a person goes around pulling horseshit like that out of his hat? Who do you think you are?”

  “Who do I think I am?” Billy paused before answering. “Interesting question. You request a statement of my identity?”

  Diablo, growing impatient with this waggish repartee, raised his voice. “Just tell me who you think you are!”

  “First of all,” Billy chuckled. “I do not think. I know. Thinking is hesitating, and I am incapable of hesitation. I am the impulse, the unmediated moment, the unmitigated instant.”

  “Oh fer chrissakes,” Diablo groaned.

  “Hear this now,” Billy continued, ignoring him. “I do not pretend to know who I am. I am a fool and I do not care. I am, in fact, that which cannot possibly care less. I am the unregulated mind, unbound by any rule, naked, out of control, and as free as the air in a cage. I am, in fact, the freedom from which you flee and the hope from which you hide. I am unceasing self-sovereignty. I am the audacity to create my own existence. I am the undaunted understanding that this and that and here and there are all unfair and yet as fair as dawn who knows her doom yet shines her day as one who cheers the breeze in passing.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Diablo interrupted.

  “I am the walrus,” Billy Pronto proceeded. “I am the rust on your iron cage. I am the unstuttered song that sings behind the razor wire of your timidity.”

  “I’m not timid,” Diablo interrupted.

  “You are tremendously timid,” Billy retorted. “You and everyone else in your god-forgotten realm. You can’t accept your own finitude. You cling to your minuscule identity like a dust mite clings to an insecurity blanket.” Despite the flint in his words, Billy’s jaunty perma-grin was unwavering. “And yet . . . ”

  “And yet what?” Diablo demanded.

  “And yet,” Billy pronounced. “You are the envy of entities everywhere.”

  53 APPROXIMATELY 10 percent of the weight of a decade-old pillow is dust mite feces. Owing to his time with the FDA, Diablo happened to know this for a fact. As he drove on in silence, reflecting upon the peculiarity of his sudden situation, he couldn’t help but think of his old couch. Unless you were fond of caressing your kneecaps, it was an entirely useless place to sit. Diablo referred to it as a slouch, and, mainly, it filled the middle-class mandate that there be a sofa in the living room. Doreen had contributed the slouch to their condominium, a hand-me-down from her parents. It was at least fifteen years old, and it was upon this slouch of mite shit that Doreen had been gallivanting with another lover when Diablo happened to walk in the door.

  Doreen had complained of a headache that morning and called off of work, and Diablo decided at lunch to blow off the rest of his day. He had taken lunch at one of his favorite spots, the Great Hall of the Library of Congress, the celebrated cathedral to the highest ideals remarkably unrealized by Western Civilization. It so inspired him that he decided he would go by the condo and see if Doreen was feeling any better. If she was, maybe they could go do something . . . sudden. As he walked up to the door, however, he was greeted with the sounds of some unmistakably carnal commotion from within. Opening the door, he saw Doreen and some lanky bastard going at it right there on the slouch like a couple of goblins in heat.

  Diablo furrowed his brow. He actually couldn’t remember what he said or what they did next. He remembered peeling the truck out of the parking lot, feeling enthused and all that, but surely there was more to his reaction to that. He glanced suspiciously at Billy Pronto. As usual, Billy looked as if he were sledding down a fifty-yard hillside. He was motionless save for a gentle rhythmic tap in his left foot. Diablo noted with significant irritation that his own left foot was tapping itself to the same unheard beat.

  “Why are you here?” Diablo asked.

  “Because it is possible.”

  Diablo should have seen that one coming. “I mean, why are you right here? What’s your purpose in hassling me?”

  “Spontaneity is my purpose,” Billy Pronto replied. “But I don’t think it’s a hassle.”

  “Spontaneity? That’s why you’re here?”

  “No, I am here because it is possible. Spontaneity is my purpose.”

  Diablo sighed impatiently. “Okay, but what were you doing before this?”

  “Before this?” Billy Pronto repeated. “Don’t be absurd. How can anything possibly precede eternity?”

  “Fill in the blank,” Diablo commanded. “Before I got into this car, I was ———.” Diablo looked at Billy triumphantly.

  Billy Pronto’s grin grew still wider. “The utterance of a word is no proof of its existence.”

  Diablo stared in aggravation. “What does that mean?”

  “Just because you can refer to the past or the future does not prove they are separate from the present. You think of time as a succession of discrete moments, half past now and a quarter till then, but I tell you, before the fall and after all, there is only one moment, one brief shining moment, and that moment is right now.”

  “That’s fine,” Diablo retorted. “But you seem to be able to understand the past tense well enough. Can’t you just-fay ‘was’ or ‘were’ or ‘will be’ ?”

  Billy Pronto’s smile grew dim for the first time since he’d introduced himself. His eyes grew shadows, his cheeks grew gaunt. “Do not try to trick me into profaning the present,” he warned, turning away.

  “Why not?” Diablo demanded, unsympathetic. “What would happen?”

  Billy Pronto’s smile had instantly returned to its satorian splendor. He did not answer Diablo’s impertinence directly, probably because to do so would have required a future conditional tense. Instead, he merely insisted, placidly, that “There is only one moment.”

  “Hold on a second,” Diablo pursued his point. “You just said, ‘profaning the present.’ That’s not present tense. Isn’t that present progressive or something?”

  “Nope,” Billy Pronto replied. “Gerund. Go ahead and look it up.”

  Diablo gave up, mostly because he didn’t really remember what the heck a gerund was.

  54 DIABLO DROVE IN silence for a while, trying to remember how he’d reacted to Doreen’s infidelity. At last, he turned to Billy Pronto, and asked him directly, “Why can’t I remember what happened after I walked in on Doreen?”

  “Because,” Billy Pronto replied. “I am the impulse.”

  “So?”

  “So, since you dichotomize yourself and project your own forgotten freedom onto my presence, you cannot access memories of your own impulsivity. This is all very obvious.”

  “Dichotomized.” Diablo shook his head. “I can’t believe this.”

  “Believe what?”

  “That I have a split personality.”

  “That’s absurd,” Billy Pronto cajoled. “You don’t have a split personality.”

  “Umm, I’m using your words, man. That’s what you said, just before I dropped you off the last time. Plus you just said I was dichotomized. Now you’re telling me that was bullshit?”

  “First of all, why do you permit others to describe your reality?”

  “I’m sorry,” Diablo cut him off loudly. “I’ve left my English-Bullshit, Bullshit-English Dictionary at home. I can’t understand a word you’re saying.” Diablo looked at him, pointedly pronouncing, “No habla Bullshit, comprende?”

  “And second,” Billy continued unabated. ‘“Split personality’ is a convenient label, a category you can relate to, but this is really very different from that.”

  “Mr. Pronto, I honestly don’t care to listen to the gurgles and blurts of whatever bullshit it is that you’re gargling over there.”

&nb
sp; Billy laughed unoffended. “Surely you realize that everything is bullshit. You people lose yourselves in your own words so easily. You invent paper bags just so you can put them over your own head. But I assure you, this is no more a split personality than anything else in the universe.”

  “Well christ, what the hell is going on then?”

  “Don’t you get it?” Billy Pronto replied. “I am the impulse. Your personality is the filter of my potential. Even the word personality derives from the Greek word persona, for mask. Your language signifies more than you realize. Your personality is the mask of your impulse, and I am the impulse.”

  Diablo was silent for a few moments. “You have a God complex, do you know that?”

  Billy shrugged. “If you wish to reduce the ecstasy of existence through that corroded valve, that’s your prerogative.”

  “You really do think you’re God, don’t you?”

  “Don’t you? No more than anything else in the universe, but how could anything be anything but? Omnipresence, after all. ‘Subjectivities of the divine objectivity,’ to quote your ungainly platitude. That’s your ‘Mickey Mouse mysticism,’ is it not? ‘Everybody understands that,’ except you, it appears.”

  “Can you just tell me what happened with Doreen?” Diablo moaned, miffed at the mockery.

  Billy considered. “It requires the past tense, and I am incapable of such nonsense.”

  Diablo shook his head. “Right.” After a moment, he had a thought. “Do you think I would remember if I dropped you off?”

  Billy shrugged. “That certainly is an interesting idea.”

  Diablo nodded and pulled the truck onto the berm, slowing it to a stop. “Well, here we are,” he said as he shifted into neutral.

  “Yes indeed,” Billy agreed as he opened the door. “Here we are, here and now. Thanks for the ride.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Billy waved in the rearview mirror, and Diablo noticed that Billy had forgotten the gas can, which was sitting on the floor in front of the passenger seat. Fair enough, Diablo thought. He said it was mine, anyway. Diablo had entirely forgotten that its earlier absence had been a de-hallucination, but there was a lot for him to keep track of.