The Unwelcome Guest Plus Nin and Nan

by Eckhard Gerdes

  I’ll visit my friend Anselm, a photographer who used to teach in Illinois. He’ll sympathize with me now that I’ve stepped out of the system.

  "There you go again, fool." He’s called me that ever since we were classmates in high school. "Don’t you know you can only effect change from within the system? That’s why I’ve never stepped out of it. If you hadn’t been afraid of the water in the first place..."

  He was referring to the fact that I spent ten years out of school working in retail management before I decided to finish my degree and enter the professional world of academe.

  I wondered then why I’d gone to visit him. He and his other friends, I suddenly remembered, had always had a habit of making themselves feel better in comparison by insulting anyone unlike themselves. Their derision of me— one idiot even suggested that for me writing wasn’t an end in itself but merely a means to an end (what end? poverty? isolation? depression? What a fucking idiot!)— was plainly little more than the by-product of their own insecurities and narcissism.

  Anselm was the only one of that bunch I respected, for he actually did his work. His triptychs were masterful examples of abstract narrative photography.

  The other clowns? One joined the navy—I think he liked being rear-admiraled. He was the idiot who derided me about ends. Interesting. The other’s a fat loudmouthed piano instructor teaching little kids their Brimhall and Guy Duckworth. I’m sure he steers clear of the Bartok Mikrokosmos. Fats Loudmouth put out an album of modern classical music featuring Steerhorn 25 years earlier. It was an excellent and innovative piece of work, but he apparently had nothing else to say beyond that.

  The three of them—Fats, Butt Boy, and Anselm, Anselm the least of them—had rolled their eyes at each other over my writing. Their monologues at me invariably began, "You know what your problem is?" or "You know why no one’ll ever read your novels?" or "You wanna know what’s wrong with your writing?"

  They were all about talk... If the allegation is true that only two types of artist exist—artists who are busy doing their work and artists who are too busy "being artists," Fats and Butt Boy were the latter. Anselm was the former, but an observer would be hard-pressed to think so if watching Anselm around Fats and Butt Boy. Anselm would adapt, like a chameleon, to his environment, and in a crowd of loud-mouthed blowhards, he could keep his own and do a convincing impersonation of an artist too busy "being an artist."

  His advice wasn’t very helpful just then, but despite his pile-on tendencies in the company of thugs who were incapable of construction and who thus only committed destruction, I liked him. One-to-one Anselm could be a profoundly likeable observer of the world around him. Only this particular visit, though, he chose not to be.

  So I made an excuse and left. Onwards to California! I barely made it to Chattanooga—the Georgia Mountains test my weariness—but with several emergency-caffeine rest stops, I made it. I just had to be out of Georgia before I could stop. The manhunters there couldn’t follow me across state lines. They could stand there drooling of stupidity until their faces needed shaving—just long enough for me to make my getaway.

  No—I lost them. Where to? Up to Illinois to see Anselm.

  Anselm answered the door in a smoking jacket and silk slippers. He was gracious, but a bit aloof. He was perhaps as surprised as Fats and Butt Boy undoubtedly must have been that I’d achieved some modicum of success with my work. No doubt they believe I don’t deserve it. I quickly felt uncomfortable and made my excuses.

  Back on the road I couldn’t get caught up in human foibles and soap opera relationships. "Hello" was superfluous when not followed by "good bye," and here one had no time for "good bye." The road-weary are a sullen, quiet group. If one encounters someone who is exuberant, that someone invariably turns out to be a local.

  The exuberance of the driver is private, reserved as spare energy when all other energy is exhausted. Exuberance burns fast, though, and is normally one of the first energy sources to burn out. Ask any trucker.

  energy sources to burn out. Ask any trucker.

  wheeler. I had to tank up at this gas station I knew of at the intersection of two alleys in the warehouse district. I’d been drinking, so I wasn’t at my best, and I pulled up short at the pump—the nozzle reached to a foot away from my gas cap. I had to get back in the cab and pull forward some more, which was a little embarrassing. I pushed past a couple of smoking busybodies by the pump. Right as I was about to reach for the cap to open it again, the rig started moving. Oh, shit, I thought. I’d forgotten to apply the brake. The rig rolled ahead and then made a sharp turn, barely missing the building across the alley. It swung around and then barreled into one of the warehouses. I heard an explosion and figured I was in serious trouble. I was facing negligence and DUI, for sure. The owner of the gas station, though, was a friend—a gray-haired fatherly fellow. He called the police and told them someone had stolen the rig from the pump and had smashed it during the getaway. I figured he was being nice to cover for me like that. I excused myself and went to the bathroom, which was an enormous locker room. My pants were soaked with beer from my open can that had spilled on me during the drive. I figured if I didn’t get out of those pants, I’d be arrested. I pulled my shirttails down as far as they’d go and hoped for the best. I shoved my pants into a locker. When the police came, the officer, the owner and I stood together to discuss what had happened. When the officer looked down at her pad, the owner, under the guise of straightening my glasses, slipped a palmed breath mint into my mouth. I figured I must reek of booze. The officer and the owner seemed to be friends, though, so when the owner explained the truck-jacking, the officer told him that it probably had something to do with the disturbance at the parade over the weekend—that this had been orchestrated by the same people who’d orchestrated that disturbance. What disturbance or what parade I had no idea, but the two of them sure did. The owner nodded in agreement. After the officer had taken our statements, I walked to the elevated train. The officer followed me. She sat opposite me and started talking about how she had to ride the train to and from the police station because her car had been wrecked during the parade riots.

  I got off the train at Central, the next-to-last stop. The officer must have been continuing on to Linden, the end station. I went into the station bathroom—also a locker room—and on a hunch opened a locker and found a pair of pants that fit. The station contained a coffee shop, which was run by a young 20-something couple who were very much in love. I had some coffee and shot the breeze with them, teasing them a little for their young love.

  I left the coffee shop and stood outside by the bus stop. No bus was in sight. I realized I’d left my cigarettes and my Arno Schmidt book that I always carried with me in the coffee shop. I went back in and for the first time noticed a display of t-shirts for sale inside the station. The shirts were a motley collection of sports teams, rock bands, and glib sayings. I went back into the coffee shop, commented sarcastically on the t-shirts, and picked up my cigarettes and book. The coffee shop guy tried to crack a joke about Schmidt, but it wasn’t funny. I left.

  Outside I saw an old man had come to wait for the bus as well. Then I realized that in my offense I’d forgotten my book and cigarettes again. I went back to the coffee shop again and picked up the Schmidt book but couldn’t see the cigarettes. I’d assumed the coffee shop guy had taken them, but before I accused him, I checked my pockets and found I had them in my shirt breast pocket.

  Outside again, the old man and I talked about weather and the disintegration of the moral fiber of our nation. The bus came. Once seated aboard, I fell asleep.

  The old man shook me awake. He told me we’d come to the next-to-last stop and that he had to get off. He told me he lived in a building down an alley a few blocks away. I was unfamiliar with it, but he said the people who lived there always complained. The owner was a slumlord, he said. He left. The next stop was mine, so there I got off.

  Now I remember what the police office
r had told me: they suspected that the man behind the parade bombings was one Edwin L. Thoth. Small world.

  I, years earlier, had written a small volume on Thoth. I had written it in a pre-bound blank book and had intended to photocopy it for someone. I tried to tear the pages out of the book, but accidentally tore an enormous chunk out of the center of that group of pages. The chunk fell, flaked apart, and flew away into the river, so much of the text of the piece disappeared. I was unable to reconstruct what the text had once been.

  I remember the previous year’s downtown parade. Christmas shopping season afflicted the city. I was working part-time in the largest multi-story bookstore in the city. We were fending for and fending off dozens of customers simultaneously, all of whom were demanding and laborintensive. When my hour lunch break arrived, I went outside to meet a buddy, a co-worker whom I was going to have lunch with—or "drunch," as we called it. I couldn’t find him in the crowd outside, so I walked down to the south Loop bar by myself. Or I was going to. I was stopped by a parade a block away between me and my destination. I could see the enormous balloons and papier-mâché constructs going by—skyscrapers the size of skyscrapers and busses the size of office buildings were moving along the street. I realized I’d never get to the bar and back with time left over for sufficient drinking, so I instead went to one of the more expensive bars on State Street. Fortunately, happy hour had hit, and the drinks came with all-youcan-eat hot wings. I don’t remember ever going back to the store.

  Maybe Edwin was there, selling balloons. He’d done that for a while, working for the over-inflated balloon lady. I have a photo of him somewhere, caught with dentures between flaps—he’d flap them around in his mouth— Snap! Dangle! Snap!—because he was too cheap to buy adhesive. He sold balloons until he slept with the balloon lady and her husband found out. You could say her husband popped that balloon. Her name was Armenia and her husband was a turkey. Neither of them gave Edwin a second thought. Until they disappeared underground. Literally. That was when I discovered that Edwin was a master of disguise and was also known by the name "Lubjec," which might be what the "L" stood for. "Lawrence" might have been a fabrication.

  Cities

  At 3:10, I intended to leave for a trip to the city. A church there had a position for an organist, and, well, the bank I was in wasn’t making it. I’d had to play part-time at a mock-Christian bar, and I’d fake it so well some folks thought I could pass for the real thing. So they asked me to guest-play as one of three finalists for the job.

  I was waiting for the bus with a box of jelly doughnuts on my lap when I remembered my dry cleaning. I ran to get it. I couldn’t afford to miss the bus because the President would be speaking at noon.

  I’d forgotten about the doughnuts, which smashed all over me in vibrant colors.

  The dry cleaners had lost the top front button to my suit, a detail I did not notice until the most embarrassing possible moment later. But I did make the bus. For a few blocks.

  Then the bus broke down. And I hadn’t had time even to change my clothes.

  "What’s the big idea?" you may be thinking.

  Precisely! No big idea. Build gradually. See how the building wants to be built.

  I walked back to the bus stop. That had been the last bus for the day, she said. Then she laughed at my clothes.

  "It’s not funny," I said.

  "It sure is!" she laughed.

  "Ha ha," I said, and then I started laughing too. Then I stopped. "The bad thing is I’m going to have to miss the President’s speech."

  "Nah. You can watch it on C-Span. Come on—my shift is over anyway." Out of the shadows stepped her replacement—a fifty-year-old Chinese man.

  As we left, she asked me what I did for a living. I couldn’t answer "church organist," so I told her the name of the band I’d been in.

  "Hey," she said. "Do you mind my asking if you have a girlfriend?"

  At that moment I knew she liked me.

  We went to a bar, and she sang Matchbox Twenty while we shot some 9-ball. I knew then that I liked her, too.

  We started dating. Oh, the best dating I’ve ever known. She was fun, intelligent, beautiful...all I could ask for in someone. She was fantastic!

  And then she went away.

  But she came back! So I won’t dwell on going away. The coming back is so much more important.

  It glows. Warming us, illuminating us. Our burdens have become light. We lift off and hang-glide alongside each other. We dip, falling into the water and rising back out into the sky again. We can fly through the mouths of volcanoes into the heart of magma, through the core and out the other side of the earth. We fly the spool between north and south poles.

  We are bathed in aqua vitae.

  She says we don’t live in a democracy—we live in a representative republic.

  She’s right.

  But most activists are hedge trimmers. Most real writers are root-killers.

  Ah, off to Hasty Generalization land again, I see. You always go there.

  "As do you."

  "Nurse, he’s talking to himself again."

  "Okay—here. Give him this lozenge."

  I try to unwrap it, but it’s melted to the wrapper. I

  can’t pull the lint off it. The lint’s not even mine. I remember—it was the third Sunday before lint..."

  "No! Don’t do that! For once?"

  "And the band played on..."

  "Not at the price of clichés, it doesn’t. Groundrules: no clichés, no fuzzy animals, no soap operas..."

  "No whoppers, no tall tales..."

  "No redundancy or repeating oneself."

  "Nice sarcasm!"

  "No invective, asshole!"

  "No bombast, you pusillanimous fool!"

  "Less negativity. Bummer."

  "What? It can’t be a tragedy? Then how will it ever be taken seriously?"

  "Ah..."

  And we agree. So we’re asking you—an’ you take the wheel for a while. I’m too out of it to keep driving. Thanks. It’s been a long day.

  How’s your day been? Hopefully okay.

  If not, well, hey—I understand.

  I’m actually doing well right now. I have an amazing fiancée. My writing and publishing are blossoming. My teaching is dying. There’s the tragedy.

  "I mean bigger."

  Okay okay. It’s a big deal to me. Sorry. So let me tell you this story.

  Sure.

  A fish was swimming in the sunstreams. He’d surface in the epicenter of splashes. He sewed the ocean shut.

  The birds cried out, "Oh, tailors of fish, come to us so we might save our friends the fish from suffocation."

  The tailors honored the request and opened the ocean. The birds began to dive and catch the fish. Coleridge betrayed the albatross.

  If fifteen men ate eggs for breakfast, not one would have praised the albatross. Thanks to Coleridge. What was he? High?

  Oh, yeah. I guess he was. Now I would never do anything like that, mind you.

  Quiet, you back there. I’m trying to sink.

  Better let it out, then.

  We need more colors down here. We’re tired of it always being blue.

  That’s the request?

  Sure.

  Cool. Thanks.

  People need this stuff flung at them in big chunks. Just to awaken them.

  Uh...

  "Sorry. Just thinking out loud."

  Happens to us all.

  Not all. There you go again.

  Sorry. I’ll try to notice from now on. Old habits, eh? Are like old houses? Yeah, I’ve heard that. No clichés! Sorry, boss.

  Cut it out.

  Hey, what’d be cool is if we went somewhere. Together.

  Yeah, all of us [gesturing towards us].

  Where’d you have in mind?

  My upcoming marriage.

  Congratulations, man.

  Thanks. I’m lucky.

  Beware of clichés!

  Okay. She is ubiqui
tous in my future. Her presence will bless every day.

  Time for a change?

  Mr. President, anything except blue, please. We’re way tired of yellow. Black and white invite race comparisons. Red is dead.

  Green is ambiguous enough, perhaps.

  So what do you say, Mr. President?

  I once wrote a letter to the Mayor of Macon and another to the Superintendent of the Bibb County School Board. A friend of mine wrote the latter a letter as well. We never received replies. My conclusion is that these individuals must be illiterate. I see no evidence of any literary life. Those with no literary life are illiterate.

  Of course, the President on TV did not respond to my question. My love didn’t know why I kept talking to the TV. This was the question I’d saved up for him. Logic, compassion, entreaty, fair-mindedness had been proven beyond his abilities. I thought color might work. One of the President’s friends (a televangelist, incredibly) never grew past purple. People get hung up on colors. Funny, eh?

  A pure obelisk beckoned mauve magpies to drop aquamarine presents onto it. I walk past it every day on the way to work. What do I do? I edit a magazine; Your Expansive Future. Don’t ask. It’s a living. I’ll tell you about it later.

  My advice: when people tell you how to write, smile and nod and then let your eyes glaze over, yawn, and turn to talk to someone interesting.

  She calls me from the kitchen: "Can I get you anything?"

  "A beer would be nice," I reply.

  "All I have is Pajama Brew."

  "It’ll do. Thanks." Fermented pajama squeezin’s. Oh well. If it’s cold enough. "Is it cold?"

  "Ice cold."

  "Perfect. Thanks."

  "Want it on ice?"

  "No, no. You don’t do that with beer."

  "Really? I do."

  "Well, you’re an oddball. That’s probably why I love you."

  "Really? I love you too, for many reasons. Metaphysical and emotional."

  "And physical?"

  "Of course. You know that."

  "I suppose I do."

  I’m at her house right now. It’s 2:30, and I have to be in at 9:00. I can’t sleep, though. We were in the middle of making love when her nine-year-old son walked in. He was sleepy, but it freaked her out. We didn’t get back to making love, so I’m sitting here writing. I love her.