Post by Fuckin' A on Jul 30, 2019 22:39:42 GMT -5
I: Dead Man Living
Elvis looks on solemnly at the whole sad display.
He's looking down on a bar in the middle of nowhere, though not at a time you've seen one before. There's golden light coming in through the boarded up windows and the jukebox has long fallen into a fitful rest. The floor, the walls, the turned-over tables, they're littered with bodies. They're breathing. Just drunk. Off in their own little heavens. In a world of bliss.
There's a man leaning against the bar. He's wearing too-tight jeans and a leather jacket that's had more miles put on it than Highway 66. He's hunched over like a fifth grader, afraid someone might cheat off his homework. His arm is working at something. There's a sound like wood splintering.
What strikes him the most is the silence of this place. Quiet as the grave. Or perhaps some ancient tomb. It's almost like a place for reverence. Church-like. And then one of the fat fucks sleeping in his own puke belches and ruins the moment.
The man doesn't look, though. He's too busy working at something on the bar.
“You're still up,” the words float out from behind the bar. They sound more like an accusation.
He nods his head.
A woman stumbles out. She used to be young. Used to be pretty. Hard-living and harder men put more miles on her face than the man's leather jacket. Her mascara is running, though not from the tears.
She stumbles out to the bar and grabs hold of it like a seaman caught in choppy waters. She's licking her lips. He can practically feel the cottonmouth. Hear her tongue scrape against the roof of her mouth, itching for a drop of moisture.
“I need a drink,” she says languidly. “Do you need a drink?”
He says nothing.
She fumbles around. Noisily, she pulls two highballs out from below, blows dust out of them, and grabs a bottle of Jamison. She uncorks it with her teeth, spitting the cap somewhere around a man with his ass hanging out of his jeans buried inside a woman with her daisy-dukes half around her thighs. Like the rest of this place, the cap settles in and falls quiet.
She pours. Once for her. Once for him. She pushes the highball toward him. It's almost full to the brim.
“Go on,” she says, grinning. “You did me a good turn, after all.”
He takes the glass and raises it. They drink to her health. Then to his. Then to the poor bastard that needs to clean up Miss Kitty's Bang-Bang Bar before it opens again tonight.
She watches him the entire time. Her eyes flick between the mess he had made and the man himself, just standing there, whittling away at her bar. She should be furious, but she isn't. Something about this stranger has put her at ease. It's not love. Not even the budding of a romance. But it's something else. She feels like a tremendous pressure has just been released. Like this man has come along when she needed him most and popped her cork. In more ways than one.
“What are you carving into my bar?” she asks.
His eyes flick toward her. They're icy blue. It's strange. She remembers they were green.
He almost doesn't answer. His lips move, but there's no sound coming. He pauses, hitches, then lets out a shrug.
“No grand design, then? Just chaos?” she asks.
“Have you ever wondered why people carve shit into wood?” he says suddenly. His voice is like a warm blanket on a cold night.
She considers the question, the sudden change of topic. She realizes that he'd done that a few times last night. Somewhere in the fog of her memory, in between sweet nothings and sloppy necking, she'd tried to ask him where he'd been. Maybe where he was going. Always he'd change the topic.
She shrugs.
“It's a desire,” he says. “A kind of welling. Like this burning sensation you get in the pit of your stomach. You just feel so overcome with emotion. With love. Or hate. Or panic. Like when you realize for the first time that you're going to die. Eventually. Not today or tomorrow. It's some far-off thing for now. But you're going to meet the grave. Because you're not special. You're no different than any ghost whose footsteps you're walking in.
“But you will get there, eventually. And so what's a man to do after an epiphany like that? What are they supposed to do but... take inventory? And most of us do. Some don't. But most do. They do their sums and they add up all their experience, all the love, the hate, the passion in their lives and they add it all up and usually it amounts to a big fat diddly-fuckin'-squat. And it sends them panicking. They need to do something. Feel driven to do something. They need to make a mark of some kind. To leave something behind so that they can go to their grave knowing they changed the world in some way. Even if it's so small that no-one but you will ever notice it. People need that. Sometimes I think they need it more than air.
“So they carve. Some carve bears. Others carve L + R Forever. Some people just leave a little figurine that nobody but them will ever know the meaning of. Like a man's own private joke between him and God. But all of them do it for the same reason, even if they don't know it. Can't articulate it. They're all carving their own headstones in a way. Leaving their own mark on the world before it's made for them.”
“Are you trying to tell me,” she says, “that you're carving your headstone on my bar?”
The man grins. It's shark-like. Unsettling in how white his teeth are, how wide his lips part.
How dead his eyes are.
“Not mine,” he says softly.
She feels a chill rush through her. She holds herself close.
He finishes carving and stabs the bar with the knife. It sticks in place, wobbling like a drunk. He slides off of the bar stool and reaches into his jacket. He puts on a pair of aviators. She can see her reflection in them.
“I take it you're going,” she says.
“I am.”
“Should I bother asking for a number?”
He shakes his head.
“Are you coming back this way? Ever?”
“Not for a long time.”
“So this is goodbye.”
He tilts his head to one side. Blonde curls fall over his eyes. He leans over the bar and tousles her hair. She can feel him staring, though all she can see is her own tired, sad expression. “We had fun.” He says so simply, like a statement of fact.
She wonders how true it is.
He turns to leave. She wants to call after him, but no voice is given to the words. He steps over bodies on his way out the door. He tosses the door open, and brilliant white light falls through.
Outside, the blistering heat doesn't bother him. Never has. His eyes take a second to adjust even behind the aviators, and he can see the desert stretched out before him, endless. He feels a vibration in his pocket.
He grabs his phone and checks the notification.
It's from them.
Two more men want to carve their names into history, it seems.
He grins that shark-like grin. After a moment, he puts his phone away, paws at a wrinkled pack of Marlboros, lights one and inhales deep the grey plumes that fill his lungs with a sweet, burning heat. He gazes to the clear blue sky and wonders if the weather will hold.
He walks to the road, gravel crunching underfoot. It stretches on in both directions. An blacktop that stretches on forever. He wonders which way will take him to Fort Worth, Texas. He picks a direction and starts walking.
He begins whistling. A familiar melody.
It's the Rolling Stones.
Sympathy for the Devil.
Were you expecting something else?
I know, I have that effect on people. They think because I earned the name “Fuckin' A” that I must be some kind of All-American horror story. That I'm some light-tube smashing, pill-popping, beer-swilling, rat-fucking loser from the gutter that's here to kiss your daughters and blow your sons.
Well, that's true. That's all true. But that's not all there is. That can't be it. How one-dimensional would that be? A party-boy that doesn't want to grow up, that wants to live forever, and doesn't bother to note the lines in his face as he gets a little older, year by year? That'd be pretty goddamn boring by my estimation.
That's the funny thing about expectations. You get complacent, even comfortable with viewing the world one way, and then the bitch slaps you in the face with reality.
Take the Good Christian Boy for example. Goody-two-shoes himself decides to become a pro-wrestler despite never wanting it. Never needing it. Instead finding strength and meaning in military service. Far as I can tell, he made himself a career out of playing soldier-boy. So what made him change career paths? What could convince a no-nonsense man in uniform like that to run away from boot camp and join the circus with the rest of us?
Turns out his brother died. Turns out he got the twenty-one gun salute and they lowered poor Guillermo into the dirt so the maggots could eat him from the inside out. I don't know if the Good Christian Boy got his brother killed, but it wouldn't surprise me. Nobody stops their own life to live another unless there are two things in play: guilt or shame.
So which is it, Christian? Are you guilty, or ashamed?
Because I have to wonder what kind of man decides to stop living just because someone he loved got a brand new hole in the head. I have to wonder what makes a man give up on everything he's ever wanted in life, just to live another man's fantasy. And don't lie to yourself, Christian, that's exactly what you've done.
Oh, don't act surprised. Your brother may have bitten the bullet, literally, but you're the one who died, aren't you? You're the one who killed himself. You're the one who left the military, the only thing you've ever loved, ever wanted, and decided to, what, live on in his stead? Live out his dream? Live for him? Let him live through you? Some new-age healing crystal shit like that.
But what have you really done? You don't love wrestling, and far-be-it for me to criticize, but I've found that the men and women who can't love wrestling don't last very long. If anything, they're the first to burn out.
So I have to wonder, Christian, how soon before you break? How many nights are you going to kill yourself in the ring for the sake of some dead guy's memory? How many years are you going to spend travelling up and down lonely roads with nothing but country music on the radio and a picture on the dash of the man you used to be? How long are you willing to spend carving out a name for yourself, all the while hiding how ashamed you are of the fact that no matter how many championships you win, how many matches you dedicate to your poor dead Guillermo, that you're never going to fill the hole that's eating you alive, inch by inch?
And that hole is there. I can see it in your eyes. You think you're doing the right thing by living your brother's life, but it's not all that satisfying, is it? How many times have you turned out the light in some hotel room and stared at the ceiling, trying to fight the urge to run back to the military, to run back home and go back to being the Good Christian Boy you killed in the sandbox?
Oh, I've seen you before. Not Christian Guillen, but your story. I've seen men who dedicate their lives to the pursuit of a dead loved one's art. They've been terrible painters and terrible policemen and terrible firefighters and terrible teachers. For some reason, the guiltiest among us think it's better that they die in their loved one's stead. They get this shameful idea that, if they just sacrifice everything they are, if they burn themselves to cinders, if they just tear off the skin of that dead man and wear it like a ghoulish mask, they can convince themselves that the dead really live when they look in the mirror.
Except they don't. And they can't. And you're just some poor schmuck wearing a dead man's skin. Living a dead man's life. Dreaming a dead man's dream.
Do you want to hurt me yet? You shouldn't. I'm just trying to save your life. To dig through the dirt of your grave and pull a living man out before it's too late.
You might be wondering, “why? Why Fuckin' A? Why would you do something like that?” And you might be right to. The truth is, I only want the men who deserve this. The men who wanted this. The men who earned this. You, Christian? You didn't earn it. You didn't want it. You're just a confused boy who's pining for a dead brother who can't come home again.
I pity you for that.
That's why I'm giving you one chance, Christian. One chance to turn tail and go home. There's no shame in it. There's no dishonour in it. There's just the terrible truth, and the reality that at the end of the day you are not the man your brother was. You do not have his resolve. You do not have his cunning. You do not have his ambition. And you do not have his skill. You've gotten this far based on pure grit, and you know what? That's good enough.
There ain't a soul alive that would blame you for going home. For having had enough of living a dead man's life. So I ask, no, I beg you: go home. Go home and marry a good Christian girl and raise good Christian children. Go home before you come to Fort Worth on Monday, and find something worse than the first time you died.
Because believe me when I tell you, Christian, that what waits for you and Smith Jones in the middle of that ring ain't like nothing else you've ever met before. I'm not out there to win. I don't give a fuck about winning. What I care about is something more... primal. You could say it's just a mite more primitive. What I care about, Christian, is the look in a man's eye when he realizes that there's a man in that ring that might not be a man at all. The moment when they realize that every choice they've ever made has led them to me. To the end of their road.
I like the moment when they realize that their entire life has been building to this, and that it was me, and it was only ever going to be me, who drew the final curtain on their sad little stories.
So please, listen to me: take a bow, and exit stage left. Because on Monday, if you're still treading those boards, screaming out MacBeth, just to see how much bad luck you really get?
You're going to wish you buried your brother instead of yourself. Because when you wake up from this dead man's dream, you're going to find yourself six feet under, with nothing but worms and dirt filling your lungs as you claw and scream, wondering madly just what the fuck you've done.
And I suppose Smith Jones will be there, too.
Back in the bar, time passes. The other patrons begin to stir. She wonders briefly how she's going to corral all these poor souls, but then the carving catches her eye. She tilts her head to get a better look.
GUILLERMO GUILLEN
DIED AUGUST 5, 2019
Should Have Died Long Ago
DIED AUGUST 5, 2019
Should Have Died Long Ago
She wonders who that is. Then a cough and a wheeze catches her attention, and life begins again.
