Once Was
This is not the type of establishment that requires a certain attire, or that you be completely a la mode. My coffee cup is chipped extensively, and the fork given to me by Angela has made its silhouette known to the landscape of my napkin. Landscapes have always peaked my interest: if I could draw freehand, my ideal line of work would be mimicing the idylls of nature onto canvas. Amen.
I have been Marie Curie, and have known intimiately the curves of Marie Antoinette. As a young man, Vivaldi lived above my family, and through depression and angst, I composed Parsival. During the Holocaust, I was a cobbler, and for my sixteenth birthday, yours truly watched men hang and writhe under the flames of another's passion. I have been both killer and killed. I have known and been many women. The word "known" and "been" are of comfort to me when I am alone. To have known breathes of understanding and intimacy, and to have been screams "HERE I AM!" and "I WAS HERE!" This revelation must not be misconstrued: I am not Edgar Cayce, nor do I have the gift of mental projection. I just know I have been many times, and will be many times. It is plausible, and life is plausibility. Sure, we decompose and nourish the earth and are mourned and are perversely remembered, but we must do many things and take many forms because our consciousness is a spark and a spark is energy and energy is neither created nor destroyed. I formulated that opinion, and would later deem it fact.
Frank looked across the table at me. That happens quite often, and he does not mind that I lose myself in myself. His thoughts are limited but constant, and though he does not travel to the same mental recesses I explore, his are no less concerning. He is my co-worker and friend, if friend is a correct word to describe our relationship. A few months ago, a doctor at the hospital for which we work bullied Frank when he brought the wrong patient's file to the diagnostic imaging reading room (that is where radiologists look at patients' current films, compare them to prior films if applicable, and then use this information to make a diagnosis). After the episode, Frank returned to the film file room, walking as straight and as briskly as usual. He is never outwardly daunted, nor emotionally explicit. He is Fr-enigma. After that particular day's lunch break, Frank needed to bring another report to the same doctor who had tried to humiliate him earlier. Voiceless and assured, Frank brought him the printout. Yet, known only to myself, Frank, and soon the doctor, he had sliced open his palm with a knife from the cafeteria, and stamped a crimson handprint on the sheet. The doctor, baffled by this apparently cryptic message, did not report Frank, nor have I seen the good doctor address Frank in public since. The only thing I've observed since is that Frank, who before this only addressed me professionally, decided that we would be "friends." I think he even scared himself with that little stunt, and decided that musing as a reasonably regular person to someone might lessen his fear, of himself.
Sometimes, I wonder if when Frank allows me to creep into his life, gives me the go ahead into his personal affairs, if I shouldn't let him know that he too has been many people. Frank, against his ignorance, once fucked an entire group of nuns, in the blistering cold of Norway, for no reason except for vicious carnal lust. He once killed himself by throwing a half-lit cigarette onto a buried weapons cache in the Congo. My deluded buddy has also shoplifted, won a marathon, and been stillborn. Go Frank! These things would be nice to articulate to Frank, but I'm not sure today or any day since he broke the M.D.'s soul has been of timely fashion.
The waitress decided that my internal musings and Frank's visual curiosity meant we were ready to depart, so along came the check. Underneath the total, per usual, was a crudely drawn smiley-face. Perhaps here is a good place to relay one more interesting angle in Frank's existence: smiling. I have only seen it once, and it accompanied a laugh. I have told Frank many jokes since we became "friends" and only one has ever put him on. During the last hour of a shift a few months ago, I posed an opening question to Francis Ellerd McKean. "How many fags can you fit on one barstool?" I asked. "I don't know," responded Mr. Wonderful, in that monotone virbrato he uses for a voice. "Four," I replied, and continued with my filing. At our work, with our basement solidarity, a dicey quip like that was safe, and I figured would not elicit any feedback. But, to my surprise, I heard a laugh and saw a smile, and was stunned. An hour later, Frank spoke his first complete thought to me, and I felt like a real person. "My brother is gay. He and I were very close when we were younger, but when he came out to my parents, they split. My mom didn't mind he went with boys, but my father told him to find another place to live, and he was not going to raise any assfucking prissy-boy under his roof. Six months later, my parents were divorced and my mom took Paul and left. My dad kept me, as part of their bargain, and I became the woman of the house. He disowned his gay son, who still played sports and gained an education and went to college, yet he kept me home, his hetero-prize, and made me clean and cook and tend to his needs. My brother fucks men and yet he grew up more of a guy than I did. Fuck my father, and you know what, fuck Paul." This is all I know about where Frank has come from and how he was reared, and I don't expect I could find another button to press to get any more. I can deal with that.
We left our payment and tip, and walked across the street to the hospital. Back in the file room, the orders were piled into the printer tray and ready for ascension to the reading room. Ready for ascension. Aren't we all? |
