Everything We Don't Know

by Aaron Gilbreath

  “Will you watch my bag while I use the bathroom?”

  “Tell me a good book for a ten-year-old who hates reading but loves army guys but isn’t too violent?”

  “What’s the name of that one with the two brothers from Kentucky who embark on that adventure looking for their lost dog and meet that Indian shaman?”

  “I’ll just park my stroller here behind your chair.”

  “You’re telling me you can’t find the copy of My Dog Skip that your website says you have?”

  Customers in the art department were some of the most challenging. Haughty, gruff, and demanding, they and their oversized rock-star sunglasses reinforced my feeling that the visual arts in Portland were too often a fashion accessory for people whose greatest talent was creatively dressing themselves. Take the dude wearing the brown derby, railroad suspenders, Ray-Ban Wayfarers and shiny slacks. He asked me to locate books about an artist named Tanahashi. “What’s his first name?” I said.

  Brown Derby said, “Could there be more than one?”

  “We have an enormous database,” I explained. “Over two million books in stock.” Then I listed the first hits to illustrate the daunting scale of our search.

  “Don’t be so condescending,” he said, turning sideways to face away from me. “Supercilious.”

  “Score,” said Chad. I looked up from my book. A chipped, five-foot-tall particleboard shelf rested on one of Chad’s shoulders and a full gallon water jug hung from a rope on his other. He set the shelf by the door and walked over to the bench. “Look what else I got.” He pulled a copper gecko from his pocket and flipped a back panel, revealing a smudged inner chamber. It was an ashtray.

  “Cool stuff,” I said, wanting but resisting the rude urge to return my attention to my book. Judging from the deep lines incising his cheeks, he must’ve been nearly forty. He kept his thick auburn hair messy, cut to different lengths like fronds on a palm. I had to give him credit, though: he had more hair than I. I was twenty-nine and balding. And with all the digging and hauling involved in dumpster diving, at least he got exercise. All I did was sell books then sit on my butt reading all night.

  He normally arrived clutching the night’s score: a couple of unpainted wooden boards; a Mini Etch A Sketch which, for weeks after, hung on a rope from his doorknob, displaying the little pictures he’d drawn. “Aren’t these crazy,” he said once, holding a pair of antlers to his head.

  The randomness of his commentary eventually became routine. “I just saw this guy,” he said, holding two Trader Joes bags. “He makes his way through the neighborhood sometimes. I think he’s crazy.” Another time, carrying a halogen lamp: “You ever hear those animals out back? Once I looked out the window, and there was a raccoon staring me face-to-face.” Portland was once a city filled with actual and phony freaks. Talented artists lived beside transparent posers, and the latter—immersed as they were in a legitimately thriving artist’s community whose members included countless authors, zine-makers, and bands all living in Elliot Smith and Dead Moon’s long shadows—refuse to be ignored. So they manufacture oddity. They dress loudly. Sport peculiar facial hair, glasses and hats. Where Tom/Tim/Todd and Dave were marked by the kind of charming natural oddity all of us imperfect humans could relate to, Chad’s was the kind you painted on your face before a Swedish death metal concert, the kind teens in coffee shops tried to impart by reading The Anarchist Cookbook while wearing a top hat and cape. Which might have been the saddest part: he exhibited no evidence of intoxication. He seemed straight, and when the only influence you’re under is what laymen call “an annoying personality,” you can’t just quit consuming the culpable agent.

  “Hey,” he said, coming off the street holding a scuffed record player. “You ever think about what it’d be like if this place had ten more floors and a rooftop thing you could look off of?”

  That night I tipped over the gecko. The next morning, it was gone.

  If you can accept the broadest definition and admirable lunacy of performance art, then you can accept what I came to call “display art.” Display art—i.e., inanimate objects set alone or in seemingly random arrangements in ordinary, unlikely places like car hoods, welcome mats, and the tops of walls in grocery store parking lots—occupies the same creative genus as a Degas or hand-stitched sock-monkey.

  Like Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America and Ornette Coleman’s music, this initially sounded nuts. But the chance to open an increasingly calcified mind to new ideas was one of Portland’s most endearing qualities. It was one of the reasons I moved there from my then-heartless and artless suburban hometown of Phoenix in the first place. Despite my initial resistance, I couldn’t undo the impact: if stuff in a dumpster was just ordinary trash, then stuff placed in select locations was neither trash nor ordinary. The mere selection of it—narrowing a bin full of options, recasting its fate—made it if not pretty, then at least special. It ceased being garbage when it resumed being wanted, which by extension made it meaningful. Then, when deposited somewhere glaringly bland, that stuff came to suggest just enough buried meaning to spark debate among viewers.

  That could be the thing: if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and art welcomes infinite interpretation, maybe the beguiling nature of Chad’s items were their most affecting quality. They made visitors say “What the hell is this crap?” or text a photo to friends with the caption “WTF.” Those who didn’t conclude “random BS” searched for meaning in the mess. While I couldn’t admit it then, I frequently found myself processing books at work or lying in bed wondering if I’d been fooled by the exhibit’s simplicity. Was I too focused on the accidental appearance? The seeming randomness? Was this like tasting mediocre sashimi at a hyped sushi restaurant and wondering if your taste buds were the problem, not the food? If someone else had made these displays, I might have been more open to them, but their maker annoyed me too much to give them a chance. The problem wasn’t him as much as it was me, the closed-minded viewer.

  Of course I’d long considered reading somewhere else. Because I smoked, I used the porch. It offered greater comfort than reading while leaning out my high shower window, and dodging the rising plume while angling the pages to catch the dim bathroom light. But on nights when my need for solitude outweighed my tolerance for interruption, I experimented with alternatives: the spacious lawn of a nearby nonprofit; the picnic tables in Couch Park, the tiny, tucked away garden of an expensive condominium. An adjacent complex’s front staircase proved the most practical. Sandwiched between handrails and a jungle of landscaped greenery, the narrow staircase was cozy. I’d plant myself on a step, throw my legs out, then lean against the iron railing. Unlike my bench, though, this spot sat directly in the path of incoming traffic. Every time a tenant went in or out, I had to scoot to the side to make room, which made me, despite all attempted courtesy, a pain in the ass. Confrontation was immediate.

  On my first visit, a man stepped past me on his way to the door. The key clicked in the lock, the bolt disengaged. Instead of stepping inside, he turned around and said, “Excuse me, do you live here?”

  “Uh, no,” I said, exhibiting the sort of shame I wished my ferret exhibited when he missed his mark. “I live around the corner and needed a change of scenery. I can leave if you need me to.” He arched his brows, studied my book, and said I could stay if I didn’t make it a habit. I said, “Absolutely.”

  Turns out, I didn’t make a habit of it, but only because I favored my bench. That was my porch, I figured. I paid to use it. I was comfortable there and refused to let one odiferous loudmouth run me off. In a building full of Flannery O’Conner characters, somehow only one posed a problem.

  There was Richard the horny Hennesey-toting DJ who rolled a milk crate full of LPs into a cab a few times a week and wore so much cologne that if you didn’t wrap your hand in something when touching the front door, you’d taste Richard in your food that night. There was Rey from level one, the mopey, unemployed clove-smoker permanently
decked in black who spoke of Borges in a barely audible, undeniably depressed whisper. He’d pssst pssst about Argentina and Ficciones a while, then quit talking mid-sentence and slip back inside. Elliot darted by, head down, avoiding even the chance of accidental eye-contact. My exchanges with Dave consisted of me saying “Hey man” and him muttering “He-hello.” Richard rarely stopped. He just rolled past with a “What up.” Then there was Terry.

  Terry lived on the second floor at the top of the stairs. Though only in his late-twenties, he wandered Irving and 21st streets and the building’s halls with a profound sluggishness that suggested medication, and if he spotted you anywhere, even at the grocer, he stopped, stood directly in front of you as if to block escape. Seemingly oblivious to time, he talked about his bleak temp jobs and politics and tax laws. He’d lecture and leave no room for responses because he barely drew a breath. I watched his mouth closely but couldn’t determine how or when he took in air. There was no huff, no quick nasal drag. I just had to assume that, like Mick Jagger running around clapping on stage, there was some system there. He never ended a conversation. You had to disengage by excusing yourself, but even then he’d follow you. For fear of getting drowned by his conversation, I ran inside and hid in the laundry room whenever I heard him approaching.

  Chad walked too fast. By the time you heard footsteps, he was standing beside you.

  “Oh, well,” he says, “today I found a perfectly fine red bird cage next to two petit pan rolls in the trash by Ken’s Artisan Bakery. I’m going to eat one roll buttered, make little bird legs out of bent paperclips for the other roll, and set it on the swing in the cage. I’ll call it, ‘Bun on a Wire.’”

  DJ Richard stumbled onto the porch holding a beer. A woman wearing a red Chinese silk dress emerged behind him, four mini-chopsticks stuck in her bun. “What up,” he said, checking the street for approaching headlights. “Waiting for a friend.” Like me, Richard grew up in Phoenix, in a part of the city I knew intimately through parties and college. He’d even moved to Portland in August 2001, exactly one year after me. He held up three Pabst tallboys dangling from a plastic six-pack ring. “Wanna beer?”

  “Ah, no thanks,” I said. “I appreciate it though.”

  He patted his back pocket. “How ’bout a sip of some Hennesey?” As much as I once liked cognac, at the time, I rarely drank. I was trying to enjoy life clear-headed, and I no longer enjoyed a buzz. In college, booze had started turning my attention inward, pulling me out of the conversation and away from the socializing. At least it had when I’d quit eight or nine years before. Politely, I declined.

  Richard said, “Suit yourself.”

  He and his friend lingered beside the bench, giggling and tickling and sipping their beers. I couldn’t concentrate, and not solely due to envy. My attention kept drifting from the page to the details of their chatter. What were they saying? Something about a party, the names of people attending? It was New Year’s Eve. I had laundry in the machine. Over the drunken lovers’ flirting, I kept hearing the sound of my own voice saying, “Ah, no thanks.” The somber weight of my resistance, that dedication to solitude, control, finishing books in silence—the very definition of “no fun.” The phrase “no thanks” echoed in my mind.

  “Hey Richard,” I said, “I’ll take you up on that beer.”

  He handed me one. “It’s New Year’s, bro. What the hell.”

  The can chilled my palm and fizzed when it opened. Then we raised our beers in unison and howled, “Happy New Year.”

  The woman offered her hand and slurred, “I’m Michelle.” They’d been drinking since 3:00 p.m.

  Once they sped off in their friend’s car, I resumed reading. My beer rested beside the bench, only a few sips lighter.

  After a few more sips I poured the beer in the planter.

  There’s this character Leon in Brock Clarke’s short story “Accidents.” He’s a reporter. He drinks in the mornings and lies to his wife at night. He tells his editor boss “I need to be some kind of new man,” then with one drunken slip up he gets the whole town gossiping about how the boss might be gay. When presented with opportunities for self-improvement, Leon routinely chooses the losing path: parking his car under a KFC exhaust fan which slicks it in grease; publishing unnecessary photos of a man’s dead father; breaking simple promises; lying to his wife. He calls them all “accidents.” I’ve read this story multiple times, and each time makes it harder to find legitimate accidents in the world around me.

  A photocopy of four pieces of toast arranged in a grid hung from Chad’s door. When I stopped to have a look, I noticed the door was open.

  Cautiously, I listened, my ear to the crack for signs of activity. Once assured the place was empty, I eased the door open and peered inside. Junk coated the studio: stray notebook pages littered the floor. Fabric and paper banners sporting slogans like “Happy Birthday Carol!” and something about dentistry hung across the corners. Nails affixed other banners to the roof, and they all sagged in large arcs. Plastic milk crates sat wedged under the edges of everything and in between things, part structural supports, part storage spaces. A flattened futon mattress stretched atop cinder blocks and boards by the window, a window whose sill was covered with rugs. A pyramid of mismatched pillows towered atop blankets of competing colors and patterns. That free scuffed record player balanced atop a sleek modern CD player and stereo receiver. By the bed stood a beige eighties-era television with hand dials and a wire antennae. This was an empire of clutter, an amazing feat of urban recycling and domestic engineering, ugly but impressive.

  Not long after, on my way to work, I left an empty tin of oolong tea on Chad’s mat. Ti Kuan Yin, specifically. It looked ridiculous there: a purple and black label, a tiny metal square. It sat like dirty plates awaiting collection by room service. Or maybe it looked pretty, like tulip bulbs not yet buried in rich soil, like taped-up running shoes left on a curb after a marathon, or all possible future conditions of a growing baby boy.

  The tin was gone that night after work, replaced by something else. I don’t recall what.

  IT’S REALLY SOMETHING YOU SHOULD HAVE EXAMINED

  It came to me one morning while racing to the train: Wiggy and I should ride the subway together all over New York City. It would be fun, sharing that singular New York experience with my favorite pet, the ferret who used to pee on my carpet and who, according to NYC Health Code Section 161.01, was a “dangerous wild animal” and “naturally inclined to do harm,” too dangerous to enter the five boroughs. Clearly lawmakers had never met the guy.

  Wiggy was a domestic loafer. The only thing he was naturally inclined to do was coil up in warm laundry and eat anything left within reach. Contrary to the Health Code description, I had so thoroughly cuddled the ferocity out of him that the only resemblance he bore to the wild members of his genera was in appearance. When my girlfriend Abby and I moved from Oregon to New York together, Wiggy flew from Portland to Cincinnati to Philly as a carry-on, overnighted in a Hampton’s Inn, then drove with us up the Garden State Parkway in a rental car to our new apartment. While racing to the subway I pictured him—the lone weasel on the A Train. He would poke his snout out from my unzipped backpack to gaze at morning commuters, and passengers would ignore him the way they ignore everything but the overhead station signs.

  When I told her about the plan, Abby said, “That would be hilarious.” And it would have been.

  We’d moved to New York to continue our relationship while she finished her final undergrad year. She was a bright, talented musician who loved to read and dance, I an aging bookstore clerk. She came into my bookstore one day, dressed in a black peacoat, a fragrant, delicately freckled beauty bearing a thick head of black lustrous hair. After a year together—a year of travel and romance and intense intellectual conversation—I thought, “She could be the one.” Maybe what people said was true: that if you waited patiently enough, love would find you. A few months in, something told me we weren’t a match. I also doubt
ed myself. I’d been wrong many times before, but she was too brilliant and passionate to let her get away. So I left my job and followed her east. There, at a incomprehensibly elite school, she felt like the lone Mississippian with student loans and parents who couldn’t afford to pay her way. I was the thirty-one-year-old balding guy in skate shoes and flannels who used the school library computers for email. Wiggy was our mascot.

  “I’ll take photos of him and me posing in places we’re not allowed to be,” I told Abby. “It’ll be a series: Wiggy and me in Times Square; Wiggy and me sharing red bean buns on Canal Street; Wiggy staring down a Central Park carriage horse.” The photos as I imagined them would provide the images for that year’s Christmas cards. “Wiggy salutes you!” the caption would read, above a picture of him peeing in a fancy Park Avenue residential planter.

  “Just you?” Abby said. “Can’t I go?”

  “Of course. I didn’t mean just me and him.” And I hadn’t. I was only thinking out loud.

  Instead of pursuing the absurd “Project Ferret in the City,” both Abby and I got swept away in the current of our new hectic lives. Fall’s chill overtook our summer heat. Before we knew it, the maples’ green leaves fell crisp and orange. Black squirrels raced across overhead power lines, crashing through treetops to stash nuts in limbs. This was my first East Coast winter. Already, the cold felt intense, and I could tell we had a dark long winter ahead.

  “Aaron!” Abby howled. “Wiggy peed again. This has to stop.”

  “I know,” I said, rushing into the kitchen where a yellow puddle spread from behind the radiator. I said, “I’m sorry,” upset but not enough to prove I was a good disciplinarian. During the first few weeks of our residence, this became our routine. Wiggy would pee on the tile. Abby would find it. I’d race in holding paper towels and cleaning solution.