How I would do this is keep my eyes shut and be still for a few minutes and then I would twitch once or twice. Mother would usually get up and leave after the first twitch but sometimes it took two twitches for her to go. The summer we had the dog I'd wait until everyone was asleep and then I'd go into the living room to bring the dog into bed with me. Mother wouldn't have liked it had she known I was sleeping with the dog but who brought him home in the first place.
I don't know whatever happened to the dog. When the summer was over he was gone and I knew better than to ask Mother about it.
Should the phone ring I will not pretend to be Charlie. I never pretend to be Charlie. Charlie wouldn't like it and I would never do that to Charlie.
Whoever it was that called last night and confused me with Charlie didn't apologize for intruding either. This caller was either confused or mistaken or was playing a game with me. Sometimes people like to play games with me to see how I am doing. There are all kinds of games to play to see how I am doing. Sometimes after the game they will tell me I am doing fine. This is when I say I am fine I have a headache I didn't sleep last night. I almost never admit to anything else with these people.
MPs and security guards almost never admit to anything which is why I don't like to either.
I don't mind playing games because Charlie and I would play games together when we were kids. As long as I couldn't get hurt Mother liked it when we played games together. Mother would be in the kitchen cooking us dinner and Charlie and I would be in the living room playing some game or another. We would play board games and card games mostly but I forget which ones. The dog was always trying to horn in on the game but Charlie would smack him across the nose and curse him. There was nothing I could do to stop Charlie from doing this. This is one of the reasons Charlie was such a good boxer because Charlie himself was heartless.
Charlie never let me win because I was the younger brother which was supposed to make me tough. He told me no one in the real world was going to let me win because I was Charlie's younger brother so why should he.
No one ever plays a game where they get to call me Charlie though. This is why I think it was a wrong number or the caller was mistaken.
This is why it is better to say nothing so that when someone calls you Charlie you say nothing back to them. Instead of asking who is Charlie or if they are Charlie themselves you say nothing instead. This will make the caller uneasy and will make the caller want to hang up the phone in their own faces.
I could say to them that I am not Charlie and have not heard from Charlie since he quit boxing but why bother.
Should the phone ring I will say nothing and listen to that nothing coming back through the telephone. It is always better to say nothing and listen to that nothing coming back through the telephone than it is to talk to morons on the other end who mistake you for Charlie.
I have many times held the phone to my ear and listened to the nothing coming through. The nothing coming through the telephone is the best nothing there is. It is almost the epitome of nothing almost the point of absolute nothing. The nothing coming through the telephone is better than the nothing one often finds oneself doing at any particular time and this is always the case.
Someone asks you what are you doing and you say nothing.
I am almost always doing nothing it seems. It hasn't always been like this but it has been like this for as long as I can remember.
Charlie is always doing nothing whenever I talk to him on the telephone. I will call him up and ask what are you doing Charlie and he will say nothing like that. This is not another reason I feel sorry for Charlie because Charlie has always liked doing nothing.
But doing nothing is nothing at all like the nothing coming through the telephone. The nothing through the telephone is ripe it is pregnant it is nuanced. I can listen to this nothing all day long. Anyone can do this but only MPs and security guards can do this for hours on end without getting bored. This is why I think I may've once been an MP or security guard. Boxing trainers could never do this. They are always jumping up and down outside the ropes in their corners and yelling and screaming at both Charlie and the referee.
Charlie could listen to the nothing for hours too. Two whole summers we sat in the living room and listened to the nothing. We'd get up while it was still dark out and go into the living room without eating breakfast or brushing our teeth. We'd sit on opposite ends of the sofa and listen to the nothing until we were finished. I knew we were finished when Charlie got up to go to the bathroom. Then we could have our breakfast and do what we'd want as long as I couldn't get hurt from it.
Charlie called listening to the nothing meditating. I didn't know that was what we were doing together in the living room. Before we meditated together in the living room Charlie would go off into this room to meditate by himself. He would say this he would say I am going to my room to meditate. We would be in the living room watching television when he would all of a sudden say this. This is when he would get up and walk to his room closing the door behind him. He would be in there for up to half an hour sometimes.
I would go to the door and listen. I would press a glass to the door and stick my great ear inside the glass because I saw someone do this in a movie once. It never worked for me though. I could never hear Charlie meditating there in his room.
At the time I thought meditating was the same as masturbating.
I thought it was another word for masturbating.
Why I thought it was another word was Charlie taught me the word masturbating the summer we had the dog.
The dog would try to hump the two of us and when Mother saw the dog doing this she would get angry and curse him. She would say stop it you goddamned dog and then Charlie would smack it across the nose and the dog would stop.
I asked Charlie why the dog did this to us and this is when he taught me the word masturbating.
Charlie said the dog humping us was how he masturbated. He said the dog couldn't masturbate otherwise so he humps his owners instead. I asked Charlie why a dog would want to masturbate in the first place and he said it was human nature. This is when I asked him if he masturbated himself and what Charlie did was smack me across the nose.
I said what did you do that for Charlie.
Charlie said you don't ask someone if they masturbate themselves.
I said why not.
Charlie said that masturbation is private and you only do it in your room by yourself.
I said like you do all the time.
Charlie said I am in my room meditating all the time.
I said how do you do it then.
Charlie said how do you meditate.
I said no masturbate.
He said you go into your room and then do what feels good.
He said boxers when they are training aren't supposed to masturbate anyway and that he would never do such a thing.
Then I asked him if masturbating had anything to do with meditating.
Charlie said no they have nothing to do with each other.
I asked him why do people meditate then.
Charlie said people meditate to be at one with themselves. He said the best boxers in the world meditate because it helps them with their boxing. This is why we have to meditate every day is how Charlie finished the conversation.
There is no one way to listen to the nothing. It is only important that you too say nothing this way the nothing goes uninterrupted. To interrupt the nothing is a bad idea.