Remembrance of Things I Forgot: A Novel

by Bob Smith

  “In the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded Kuwait and Bush senior went to war to preserve the principle that you can’t attack a neighboring country just because it has abundant natural resources and a small population. Which—come to think of it—is probably why Canada was our ally in that war. The Iraq War followed the path of most wars in history: a group of leaders invent some reasons to lead a nation to war, and the nation follows to its lasting regret.”

  Of course Taylor pressed me for more details on the Iraq War.

  “Bush Junior might have been attempting to prove to his father that he could accomplish what his father wouldn’t even attempt— overthrowing Saddam Hussein. But most Americans in my time think it’s beyond fucked up that Bush Junior is working out his father issues with other men’s sons.”

  “Haven’t you just described all of human history?” Taylor asked. “Men working out their father issues with other men’s sons.”

  Junior stopped whipping the eggs and added salt and pepper. “Two Bushes and two Iraq wars? Are you making this up?”

  “I wish I was.”

  He poured the whipped eggs into the frying pan. “Does that mean we only have Republican presidents for the next twenty years?”

  “No. President Clinton serves two terms between them.”

  “Who the fuck is he?” Taylor asked.

  “Right now, he’s the governor of Arkansas.”

  Junior carefully turned the eggs with a spatula to keep them from browning. “Some fucking redneck, I bet.”

  “Actually, he’s not.”

  “Well,” Junior said, “if he’s a Democrat, he must have done some good.”

  “He did, but people liked him because the economy boomed and we were at peace. He tried to reform health care and failed. He couldn’t get gays into the military. He didn’t really accomplish as much as he should have, because in his second term he was impeached due to a sex scandal.”

  “They impeached the president for fucking someone?” Taylor asked.

  “A White House intern. Actually, he didn’t fuck Monica Lewinsky. She blew him and he stuck a cigar in her vagina.”

  “Wow. Sounds like the White House of Ill Repute,” Junior said.

  “You’re making this up,” Taylor said. “It sounds like a sleazy Mexican porn movie.”

  Junior laughed. “Imagine the dialogue: ‘Yeah, baby, put that cigar in my oval orifice!’”

  It actually made me feel nostalgic recalling that our country once had so much leisure time that our nation’s leaders and our entire media could waste a year on the president’s blow jobs. I preferred having a president who would rather spill his splooge than other men’s blood.

  Junior and I both simultaneously reached for the bottle of ketchup on the counter.

  He stared at me in astonishment. “I was just going to do that.”

  “See?” It was another confirmation that I was telling the truth.

  Taylor’s eyebrows did the puzzled dance. “We both like ketchup on our eggs,” I explained.

  “How did the president’s sex life become public knowledge?” Junior asked as he poured himself the last of the coffee.

  “Monica was forced to testify and she backed up her story with a jizz-spotted blue dress.”

  “She didn’t clean it?” Junior winced.

  “A nasty so-called friend encouraged her to save the evidence,” I said. “Someday that dress will be in the Smithsonian or sold on eBay.”

  “What’s eBay?” Junior asked. I explained to them how we could all become billionaires by starting a business devoted to online auctions.

  Then Junior asked, “What’s online?”

  My elaborate explanation of the nature of our online world years before it happened should be cited in history books as an early instance of virtual reality.

  When Junior asked Taylor to get plates and silverware, he noticed all the boxes stacked against a wall, labeled with comic book titles.

  “You collect comic books?”

  “Yeah.” Junior’s expression turned steely, braced for a belittling or dismissive remark. If you openly admit to loving comic books as an adult, then the one superpower you need is to be invulnerable to ridicule.

  “So do I.” They both smiled, relieved not to be the only geek in the room. Taylor and I had first met at the Comic Con in New York, when Taylor came to my booth looking for issue #114 of Adventure Comics.

  Taylor reached out to lift the lid of a box labeled “The Incredible Hulk,” but his hand froze in midair. “Is it all right if I look?”

  “Um, sure. But please be very careful.”

  “I will.”

  Taylor gently removed an issue of the Incredible Hulk, sealed in a glassine envelope, from the carton.

  My transition from comic book collector to dealer required me to cash in my painstakingly acquired collection, a series of transactions that made me feel I was selling my soul piecemeal. Parting with my hoard made me aware of a paradoxical aspect of capitalism—at least among art and antiques dealers—you sell what you love to gain what you desire: money. It would be an exaggeration to say selling my beloved collection made me nonmaterialistic, but there was a hazy approximation of a Zen-like letting go—in exchange for the full retail price— every time I sold a gem mint X-Men #14. The exchange was more than fair though, as it allowed me to make a living doing something I didn’t hate.

  Taylor riffled through the contents of the carton until Junior shouted, “Breakfast is ready!” Then Taylor returned the issue to its place and carefully closed the carton.

  It was warm in the apartment and Junior suggested eating out back. I argued it might be unsafe, but Junior said, “We’ll only be out there a half hour,” and I acquiesced. It was disconcerting to actually hear myself being talked out of doing something sensible for a moment of pleasure.

  Behind the brownstone was a small yard fringed with a strip of garden running along a chain-link fence. On one side of our building was an abandoned brownstone boarded up with plywood, and on the other side was Milton’s backyard. He was the old queen who lived next door—that’s how I always thought of him back then—and it was a shock to realize he was probably close to my present age. Beyond our fence was an overgrown no-man’s-land of ailanthus trees and blue morning glories gone feral. Junior had planted the morning glories the previous year, and like invasive weeds, they had escaped from our yard and overrun the surrounding area, shimmying up telephone poles, braiding trees, threading a derelict shopping cart, and garlanding a deserted brownstone half a block away. We assembled our plates in the kitchen and carried them outside along with our juice glasses and coffee cups. The sun was out, but the humidity from the day before had disappeared. It was idyllic June weather, where you’re tempted to turn your head to look behind you, since it seems impossible that anything could cast a shadow on such a glorious day.

  “How are we driving out to California?” Junior asked.

  “I thought we’d go through New York. And we have to leave today.”

  I explained that if Taylor found us, then Cheney could also. “We’re sitting ducks.”

  “I can’t just walk out on Sylvia.” Junior slowly shook his head. “She’s been really nice to me. It’s not right, not to give notice.”

  I sympathized with Junior’s distress. Sylvia was the best boss I would ever work for, and while she might be upset about the inconvenience of finding someone to fill in for Junior, I trusted she wouldn’t make him feel guilt-ridden.

  “Tell her the truth. Tell her that it’s a family emergency. Your sister suffers from depression and you’re worried she might commit suicide. She’ll understand. She’s not going to be angry with you.”

  Junior expressed his fear that he’d have no income when he returned. “I worked really hard not to worry about that.” I recalled how I’d lived luxuriously on a pauper’s budget, a way of life only possible in New York during the ’80s. My cushion of savings was never more than two thousand dollars, but I nev
er felt poor. I supplemented my income by working catering jobs where I’d eat filet of beef with a morel sauce and, what at that time was a new and exciting dessert, tiramisu, the same dinner I’d just served to Jackie Onassis, in sight of a Picasso, a Rothko, or a Julian Schnabel. I opened one of my suitcases of cash and gave Junior enough money to cover his rent for a year. (His rent was four hundred dollars a month. It furthered my case for being him that I knew how much he paid.)

  “Can we stop in Buffalo?” he asked.

  “Cheney could find out where Mom and Dad lived in 1986,” I said. “We’d be targets there too.”

  We’d stop long enough to disillusion our father about his retirement and make him so depressed he’d start immediately drinking heavily. We were the cross-country bearers of unbearable news. Cheney really knew what he was doing. If you really want to torture someone, send him back in time just far enough to make him feel compelled to change his life.

  Junior considered being bumped off in Buffalo, before expressing a more pressing concern.

  “Mom’s worried no one’s coming home this summer to go out on the boat.”

  My father had bought a small outboard boat, which was kept docked in a shabby marina on the nearby Niagara River. Soon after the purchase, “the river” became more prevalent in my parents’ vocabularies than it was in Huckleberry Finn’s. Every summer my mother expected her children to make a pilgrimage to Buffalo to go out on the boat.

  “We’ll go to Buffalo,” I said, “but only stay a day and one night.” Somehow I’d manage to get my father alone and give him the heads-up that he’d soon drink himself to death—yeah, that sounded like a pleasant chat—and Junior wouldn’t have to know about it. Then I advised Taylor that he should accompany us. “Cheney knows you know I’m from the future. He’s probably afraid I’ll talk you out of inventing the time machine. I don’t know what he’d do to you, but I can guarantee it won’t be painless.”

  “If I refuse to invent the time machine,” Taylor said, “he can’t threaten me.”

  “But you must invent it because I’m talking to you.”

  “That’s true.”

  Taylor pondered this conundrum while Junior goo-goo eyed him, daydreaming about the sleeping arrangements on our trip.

  “Who is this Cheney?” Taylor asked.

  Junior spoke before I could respond.

  “Supposedly the vice president of the United States.”

  Taylor’s lips pulled back into a doubtful sneer.

  “And he’s traveling back in time to kill American citizens?”

  “I know it sounds crazy,” I said, “but no one in my time would find that hard to believe.”

  “You make him sound psychotic.”

  “He advocates torturing prisoners and locking people up for years without trials. He and Bush established a concentration camp in Cuba on Guantanamo Bay. He lied to start the war in Iraq. He’s ruthless. I don’t trust him and you shouldn’t either; you have to come with us.”

  “Bumping me off would change history,” said Taylor.

  His welfare wasn’t my only concern.

  “You know where we’re going and Cheney could get that out of you.”

  I couldn’t risk Taylor inadvertently stopping us from saving Carol.

  “I won’t tell him.”

  “He tortures people to make them to talk.”

  “I’ve made plans to go out to Fire Island for the next two weeks. I’ll hang out there. We’ll see him coming.”

  “He’ll track you down, because you invent the time machine.”

  “I still can’t believe I invent a time machine.” Taylor was jubilant and asked me half a dozen scientific questions that I couldn’t answer. He took my ignorance in stride—he always did—and merely said, “Well, I guess I’ll figure it out later.”

  Junior was moon-eyed with newfound admiration. “That’s really cool,” he said.

  “I’m supposed to start in Los Alamos in two weeks,” Taylor said. “I’d have to tell my mom something about leaving early.”

  In college, Taylor worked part of every summer at various high-profile research labs. I rolled my eyes, knowing how Taylor’s mother questioned everything he did or said, except when it related to science or his scientific career. “She’ll believe you,” I said. “If you told her the world was flat, she’d throw out her globe.”

  Taylor pursed his lips but didn’t dispute my statement.

  “What do you do?” Junior asked.

  Taylor explained he was getting his doctorate in physics.

  “What’s your field of interest?”

  “Time travel.”

  “I should have guessed,” Junior replied before asking him how he became interested in physics.

  “You don’t have to be polite,” Taylor said. “Whenever anyone talks about physics, it’s like a neutrino passing through your body. I could scientifically prove it happened, but it never has any impact.”

  “I wasn’t being polite,” Junior said. “I’m interested.”

  His declaration sounded suspiciously sexual to my ears, but Taylor didn’t react and I couldn’t tell if he even picked up on it. Taylor always thought talking about physics was dull, even though I explained to him my belief that people are at their most interesting when they talk about what they truly love—with the notorious exceptions of actors and Scientologists.

  “So what do you think?” Junior asked Taylor. “Are we changing history?”

  “Yes. But from what he—or, I guess, you—said, it sounds like the future should be changed.”

  “How much worse could it be?” I asked.

  “A lot worse,” Taylor warned. “No one alive now can predict all the changes over the next twenty years. So the adverse effects could be major or minor.”

  Junior piped in. “So the cum-stained dress becomes cum-stained culottes.”

  I looked at Taylor. “You told me that history might not significantly change even though the past might be altered. You used the example that six plus three or two plus seven both equal nine.”

  “I said that? When?”

  “You will.”

  Taylor pondered the idea before asking, “Did I just get that idea from you? Or did I give it to you? Or both?”

  “I have no idea,” I said, thinking, Was that possible? I asked Taylor and he grinned.

  “I think for the first time in history we just pinned down the position of an electron,” he responded.

  When we finished eating, I suggested going back inside. I didn’t like us sitting outdoors. For all I knew, Cheney could be watching us by satellite, although I wondered if the optical technology was that far advanced in 1986.

  The dishes were left in the sink for washing later, and Junior and Taylor sat on the bed. I ended up on the futon, which smelled doggy and slightly moldy.

  “Tell us about the future,” Junior said. “What’s the biggest change we’ll see in twenty years?”

  His question made me smirk, since I was looking directly at a gay porn video, The Pizza Boy: He Delivers, sitting on top of Junior’s VCR.“I can’t. It could influence the future of your orgasms.”

  “Just tell us,” Taylor said.

  “We’ll all have multiple personalities in twenty years.”

  They stared at me as if I’d just spoken in Mandarin.

  “Everyone will have a name, a screen name, and a secret screen name.”

  Personal computers were still expensive and uncommon in 1986, and I explained how everyone would own one or even two computers in twenty years, and then I had to elaborate on the pervasive world of the Internet and the concept of being online. I said that someone named Joe Blow might have a public screen name such as JBlow237@aol.com that he used for business and his family and friends, but in addition, he might have a secret screen name for going online for sex: JoeBlowme@yahoo.com. Then I regaled them with stories about the dawning of the age of online hookups, cybersex, porn websites, and webcams, making it sound like computers were just
sex toys with keyboards.

  “What’s your secret screen name?” Junior asked.

  “If I told you, it wouldn’t be secret.” I wasn’t sure if I wanted them to know every detail of my life; but I went on to explain to them the irony of the idea of “privacy” in the Internet age. “You see, in my time, millions of strangers will be able to read online about my most intimate sexual fantasies, but I maintain a delusional sense of privacy by not discussing them with the people who know me best.”

  “Bossygaymanwhowantshisownwayoneverything,” Junior suggested. “All one word.”

  “Too long and too revealing. You sell your physical attributes and conceal your emotional characteristics. ‘Hotneurotic’ is not a good screen name.”

  “Middleagedstud?” Taylor offered.

  “Too dowdy. You’re trying to come up with a sexy name that will intrigue other hot guys. ‘Middle-aged’ is only a turn-on if your screen name is ‘Geezer488.’ Secret screen names take one kinky aspect of a person or a sexual fetish and make it emblematic of his entire identity,” I explained. Then I recalled my own screen name history. “Unless you’re looking to hook up right away—then you might go for something vulgar like ‘FuckmeASAP.’ You see, Americans are lazy and hate to type, so every abbreviation and shortcut will flourish. The word ‘for’— F-O-R—will always be written with the number 4. And T-O will always be the number 2.”

  “Prince does that in his song titles,” Taylor said.

  I admitted that I’d forgotten about that but pressed on with my history of cybersex: “If you type something funny in an instant message, you’d never write, ‘laugh out loud,’ you’d type LOL and everyone will understand.” I had to pause to explain instant messaging and gave a few other examples of online abbreviations, the slacker’s Esperanto. I didn’t discuss emoticons. They made the future sound more pitifully childish than I was willing to admit. “For example,” I said, “if Ravi was a gay man and had a secret screen name, he would be ‘Asscurious398’ or ‘BigWoof996.’”

  Junior looked down at Ravi and petted his head. “Hello, Asscurious398!”