The Sign of Satan
When I was in second grade I drew a pentagram on the chalkboard during indoor recess and told my friend to check it out. What is it? he said. And I said, I don’t know, but if you turn it upside down, it’s the sign of the devil — at least that’s what my brother told me. The next day an angry parent showed up to confront me, and I got pulled out into the hall to explain myself. My teacher said: Troy, Troy, Troy… Where on earth did you learn about this stuff? I started crying. It was a joke, I told them. I don’t know what the sign of Satan looks like. I just made it up. I thought I could get away with it. But I didn’t. They took me back into the classroom and made me draw the symbol for them. I did. I should have made something up. I always had a problem with telling the truth. I always told the truth, even if a lie could get me out of trouble, which was not very bright on my end of things. Well, my teacher told me, for making up a symbol you did a pretty accurate job. I didn’t get in any trouble, but I was never allowed to hang out with my friend again. And a few months later, he started calling me names and shaming other kids into not liking me. He told people that I worshiped the devil, did human sacrifices, and drank goat’s blood. I didn’t worship the devil. I didn’t worship anything. I just wanted to be a kid who wasn’t alone in the world. But that day I learned an important lesson. Sharing: it’s the fastest assurer for your future loneliness.
Death is a Tractor
Impermanence is a fact. Nothing lasts forever exactly as it is. Take my great-uncle. He’s ninety-four years old. He’s in great shape, he just keeps going. But recently he fell ill with pneumonia and was hospitalized for a couple weeks, and my mother flew into Wichita thinking this would be the final goodbye. It wasn’t, but still, things change, always. Nothing is ever the same. We all know it’s only a matter of time, for all of us, and everything — and I mean everything. Doesn’t mean time stops. In fact, that’s the issue. I always hear people complaining about death. I don’t want to die, I just couldn’t handle it. Thing is, though, you can’t experience your own death, you can only imagine it, and in my mind, that is the greatest fiction of all. Death is a fiction you edit and rewrite a million times in your mind, something you take home and sleep on — and then one day it happens to you, the manuscript is finished. But the beauty is, when it happens you won’t even know the difference. When my great-uncle dies, which will hopefully be in the distant future, I will always remember the time he let me ride on the tractor with him when I was seven years old. He was drinking a Coors, the breeze was cool, and we were one and alive in a world that is relentlessly spinning, a world whose memory can only be written. Like that, for instance — the tractor, the illness, the eventual death — and just knowing that it’s all a lie.
Collapsible Lungs
Christmas day, the annual call to my parents in Arizona, and it doesn’t feel the same. It isn’t joyful. There’s dread in their voices. And soon enough I find out, the dread I’m hearing is the dread of held secrets, a secret they know isn’t timed right but must come out because they know I would want it that way.
We start off with pleasantries. Merry Christmas, I miss you, and, What are your plans for dinner this evening? Have anything special planned? This goes on as long as you’d expect and then it staggers beyond. My dad asks about the weather. I tell him it’s cold, as it always is in Kansas in December. Finally there is silence — tension thick as gristle and bone — and then, finally, they come out with it.
Your brother’s in the hospital.
My chest feels like it’s been battered with a jackhammer. I can’t get any air into my lungs. By the time I catch my breath, I hear myself saying the words what happened even though I already know the answer.
He was out in the yard. Three guys jumped him. Beat him nearly to death.
Is he okay?
He’ll live, but one of his lungs collapsed and his face is so bad you wouldn’t even recognize him.
Just got in with the wrong crowd, is all.
How do you get in with the right crowd, when you’re in prison?
This is true.
Jeez.
We’re sorry to drop this on you on Christmas but we thought you’d like to know, you know. You get mad at us when we don’t tell you things. Anyway, don’t let it ruin your day. We love you. Can’t wait to see you next time we’re in town.
Love you. Bye.
I hang up the phone. All I can do is think about my brother spending Christmas in the hospital, all hooked up to machines, hoses and wires coming out of him, helping him breathe, monitoring his heart, all alone. I feel like crying, but usually don’t cry when it comes to him, so instead of being a normal human being, I sit in front of the computer and type out a small series of words.
I
Love
You,
You
Fucker
And right then, my eyelids well. I close my eyes, open them, see the words on the computer screen, glowing there, and wait the necessary amount of time to feel assured that they are etched onto my heart and had always been there. Then I left-click and hold on the mouse, scrolling upward over the words, making the background blue instead of white, doing over and over again until I feel sufficiently filled, like I don’t need to look at the words to make it any more real than it already is. I reach my pinky a full inch up and to the left and firmly press DELETE. The screen goes white. What’s next?
This is the only way I know how to love.
Girlfriend Jr
A few months back I was visiting a website of obituaries for the Wichita area because my uncle had recently passed and I needed something to concrete the reality for me, to help get me past an uncertain stage of mourning. But I got a lot more than I bargained for. In fact, I didn’t even make it to his obituary until a few days later, because I discovered the name of one of my adolescent love interest’s husband among the names of the recently departed. It really hit me. He was my age. He couldn’t have died of natural causes. Of course, he could have, but upon further reading it was quite clear that it was anything but natural — or maybe more natural than I’d like to admit. He’d served a tour or two or three in Afghanistan or Iraq, or both, and apparently, once he was back and safe at home, he still heard the screams and the bombs — saw the tracers zooming past his ears while watching TV at night. I stopped reading when I felt the smooth rounded edges of my heart become hard angles. I got onto Facebook and looked up my dear friend from the past. They had a child together. I skimmed through her photo albums — I’m going to ballpark the age of their son at around five years old. I found out that they had actually been separated or divorced for about a year, maybe it was someone who had told me that, or maybe I gathered it from the pictures and newsfeeds as I traced them back through time. Anyway, I don’t know why people do the things they do, but however horrific, selfish, and tragic they may be, nobody has any kind of right to judge them, because they know depths you have never even come close to feeling. You’re still alive, aren’t you?