Inside 421, a cigarette butt fumes to death in the overflowing tray. A man with 'John' sewn in blue script above his left breast pocket flips a page with a broad-knuckled thumb. The nail is split with a violet blotch at the base. Inside the pocket are a black and red pen, a clip-on screwdriver, and a voltage detector. He blows a stream of smoke upwards out of his field of vision. A cloud gathers, rolls briefly under his hat’s bill, and dissipates.
A young man with 'David Pendrick' printed
above 'TEMPORARY' on an ID badge that hangs limply from a belt loop sits in the
bucket seat next to John. David stares placidly out of the obscured windshield.
He wags a boot, feeling it shift around his foot. He's unable to complete a
thought without drifting into another. His heart rate is decreasing.
It’s summer in the Midwest, where the
slightest waft of cool air tears open a hole in the blanket of humidity and out
spill raindrops like golf balls. The drumming of the storm drowns out all other
noises inside the cab.
David’s damp hair contracts into waves as
it dries. Enough strands kink and swirl to make his mane look fuzzy. Sweat
striations on John’s hat resemble patterns commonly seen on shorelines. The
helix of John's ear is red with meandering purple capillaries. David’s sopping
shirt clings to his chest, making it look especially sunken. From the side,
John fills most of the space between the seat and dash. While David is lost
inside his Adult M t-shirt, John’s stomach pushes the sides of his Adult XXL
over the distinctive waistline of overalls.
John peruses the March edition of
Lowrider. David wrestles with drowsiness.
***
John was a photographer out of high
school. Nothing big. Glamour Shots in the South County Mall. Back then it was
all mounds of blonde hair teased to dizzying heights. The trick to it was
keeping the lens just the slightest bit out of focus. With the lighting just
so, she practically glowed. Times were good. The paycheck covered his bills
with enough to spare for buying film for his own stuff or a mail order kit
for powder coating engine parts. Before that, he was a swimmer and a damn
good one at that. Two consecutive top ten finishes at State, thank you. He's
got the medals somewhere. His name was still on a plaque in North High’s trophy
case last time he went through there. He swam the breaststroke, which is the
hardest stroke—not to brag. Ask anyone who swims. They’ll tell you the same.
Now, he works HVAC.
Between then and now: a shredded rotator
cuff, the sudden, freakish death of both his parents, and 173 extra pounds as
of last month’s mandatory physical. He more or less gave up for a while in his
twenties, didn’t stop eating like an athlete, and didn’t start to care about
his ballooning weight until he met Staci. By then it was too late. Losing 50
pounds was hard. Gaining 123 proved much easier. If he could do it over again,
he’d have found a way to hop in the pool, you know, for the exercise. But his
shoulder was so tight and just doggy-paddling for five minutes would swell like
a balloon. As it is, he stays away from pools or large bodies of water all
together. He’s pre-diabetic and looks like a pale, tuskless walrus in swim
trunks. The prick middle-schoolers make jokes. They point and he pretends to
not notice. He does. His weight pretty much defines him. It's there all the
time, drooping or jiggling, stretching whatever fabric it can. It's what he
leads with. The fat makes his first impressions.
Staci said she didn't think a thing of it,
though, back in 1984. She wasn’t so trim herself, after all. It’s all about
what you do with it, John. That’s what she said. Mix together a little hair
spray, lipstick, and the right shade of eye shadow and she was just as
photogenic as Bo Derek. John had shown her that the first time they met, when
she blushed her way through a Beauty Queen Session courtesy of her concerned
mother. The framed proof of her allure gathered dust over her and John’s mantle
for a decade. Your face is what counts and John had a handsome face. So what if
it was filled out? He had nice teeth and hair that could put Bon Jovi to shame.
So John should go easier on himself and remember beauty was in the eye of the
beholder. Staci told John that when they were in love.
They aren’t anymore. John can hardly
remember those times. He can remember certain events—long kisses in his
Mustang, a fancy meal at Cyrano’s, a weekend trip to the farm. But he can’t for
the life of him remember what it was like in between the memories. The happy
nothings. The shared warmth. It’s not like they actively hate one another. They
don’t do much yelling. It was worse. All the words they exchanged sounded
hollow. Their kisses were fewer and further between, short, dry, and
off-center. It felt like the two of them were roommates with their thirteen
year-old daughter, only there was no splitting the rent. The pantry and fridge
were practically divided into His and Hers. Hers was really Theirs, though,
since Staci would at least make Olivia’s lunches. John fended for himself. He
ate mostly off-brand Ruffles, iffy back-of-the-fridge leftovers, and
microwavable burgers in those little white boxes when he was home. There was
always enough to fill him up, don’t get him wrong. It's just that he'd pictured
a finer menu when he thought about the dinner table he’d come home to after a
long day of bacon-bringing. As it way, he drank more Old Milwaukee than water,
usually to the soundtrack of Van Halen, in the florescent-lit basement. Most of
John’s and Staci’s communication was one way and came in the form of Post-its.
She left him notes on the bathroom mirror or door knob to the garage door
asking, demanding really, for blank checks. John held nothing but the purse
strings, so he held them white-knuckle tight.
Don't get the wrong idea, it wasn't always
so bad. John wasn’t a fool for marrying her. They were happy at first, even
after the wedding. Staci baked the best lasagna let him tell you. She made her
own tomato sauce from scratch. Garlic piled this high. You’d need a bib for the
smell alone. Olivia was a good kid, too. Real low maintenance. Give her a
couple dolls and like a change of doll clothes and you didn't even need to
watch her. She'd just mumble back and forth with the two of them, mommy to baby
or big sis to little sis. John and Staci could sneak off and have a good time
of their own, if you catch his drift. Staci could fill out a pair of acid
washed jeans like nobody's business. She didn't fret about the outdoors,
either. She could float on a raft all day, pounding Stags with the best of
them, and Olivia'd play nice in the cabin all the while. Olivia wouldn’t get
into a single thing. Back then, you could trust her.
John couldn't tell which of the three of
them had changed first, but they all had. It's getting hard to tell whether
Olivia was still any good. She was a C student and wore more makeup than her
mother. Her eye lids practically glow neon pink. Who thinks that looks good?
She says it’s a trend and he throws up his hands. The problem as far as John
saw it was she’s so damned impressionable. She went too long before hearing the
word No. The neighbor's kid is a bad apple with her daisy dukes and low cut
tops. Some of the tops don’t have straps for shit’s sake! They just cling
there, up top, threatening to slide down at like the slightest movement. He
doesn't even get why a sixteen year old would want to hang out with an eighth
grader. It’s bad news, but Staci will hearing nothing of it. Olivia’s always
pushing boundaries and breaking curfew, but her mother won't put her foot down.
Whenever John says she's grounded, Staci butts in, says he's being too harsh,
and retraces the family tree for him. So, he stomps off to the basement.
Staci hasn't been the same since her mom
went into that nursing home. That home was to blame for at least part of their
undoing. For a couple years now, Staci didn’t look at John like she used to.
She looked at him like a thing, like a broken hammer, like it was his fault
Mrs. Liggione was is in that godforsaken Medicare wing. But what
could he do? He wasn't made of money. So he looked at women in magazines,
high-heeled and bent over emerald green and gold Chevelles. He looked at women
as they walked by, too, but he waited until they passed by. That was the great
thing about pictures. They can’t look at you and roll their eyes or twist their
faces. You’re unseen. The women still had eyes so of course they look like they’re looking at you, but
when you look into theirs, you can tell they’re seeing something else. Something
better, something they like looking at. When John closed his eyes at home in
the basement to indulge in one of the few pleasures life afforded him, he
pretended he was what the women were seeing when they stared into the lens with
such longing.
***
David was no insomniac. The span between
head-on-pillow to deep space void was a meager few minutes. His persistent
grogginess was a consequence of David’s fastidious time management. He simply
had too much to do to waste eight hours a night in unconsciousness. Life was
indisputably short and he resolved to draw it out as long as possible through
concentration and commitment. Released from the pressure chamber of college,
David expanded into the open spaces of vacation. His personal assignments were
no less ambitious than those of his Advanced Metaethical Theory seminar. There
were the top three of five different Top 50 Lists of fiction. There was his own
handwritten list of must-read authors whose names were the subject of
shame-inducing textbook allusions or classroom name drops. There was the stack
of voluntary summer reading he brought home to stay sharp over the break, to
maintain his mental-aerobics regime. There were the grave, confusing art house
films Dr. Inglesby lent him to be savored as brain candy. There were the term
papers he needed to rewrite and more heavily annotate because grad school
loomed like an offshore tsunami. And so, there were at most six nightly hours
to spare on a task as useless and empty as sleep.
The cadence of summers was the same as
falls, winters, and springs except eight and a half instead of four or five
hours were sacrificed as unavoidable non-study time. Work and class were the
two privileged duties David allowed to trump study time. As soon as possible,
though, he fled to his books. A particular carrel at his school’s library had
David’s name on it, albeit in pencil. He spent much of his collegiate career holed
up within the mustard yellow cell, reading, typing, re-reading, pausing,
typing, turning pages, rubbing his cheeks, and sighing. Outside the window was
the changing world, the sun or moon trekking across the sky, birds and
squirrels foraging; inside the window was David, the fixed point, Archimedes’
fulcrum. Physical stillness was inversely correlated to mental activity, but
the emotions were an independent variable. Psychic pain moved along a bell
curve. The first half an hour was almost pleasant. He reveled in his
purposiveness. Slowly, the pleasure of accomplishment gave way to tedium. He
trudged through paragraph after paragraph of convoluted sentences and chapter
after chapter of scholarly tangents. He tugged his hair and squirmed forlornly. By
hour three: boredom with a hammer to smash his resolve, dreariness with teeth
to tear through his spirit, a leaden wad of ennui to weigh on his heart. The
mind, like the body, revolts after the concentrated exertion. But if your will
is powerful enough, you can quell the resistance. Thereafter: a sort of high, a
liberation from the limitations of subjectivity, a union with the task at hand,
becoming a medium of Western Philosophy or British Literature.
His classmates assumed David was always
like that, a bookworm from day one. But that wasn’t true. When David was Dave,
he and a 13” television propped atop his particle board dresser were best
friends. Like a best friend, the Trinitron screen could be counted on to lift his
mood. Whenever his parents fought, his mom cried in her room, there was a
worksheet to complete, or Betsy, the Pendrick’s incontinent spaniel, relieved
herself on the living room carpet before him, David went running for the
remote. His favorite book was the TV Guide. Like all good reads, the Guide
leant itself to practical application. By its counsel, Dave never missed an
unseen syndicated episode. He set his alarm ten minutes before absolutely
necessary to see all of a cartoon. He microwaved dinner and ate during the
local news dominated 5:00-5:30p time slot, when dividing attention to stab and
chew was least costly. He watched shows he didn’t understand, sitcoms about
football coaches with doltish assistants, dramas about rule-bending LAPD
detectives who shot first and asked no questions ex post facto. He was
more enrapt by the routine, of the placidity of the TV’s shade-drawn venue, of
his channel-surfing lordship television involved than the jokes or plotlines it
displayed.
Life was idyllic. Of whom little is
expected, still much can be given. Just listen to our complaints about each
other was all mom and dad asked. Just sit still and keep your head up was all
his teachers asked. His parents never chided him for unwashed dishes or loud
music. Mom bought him a 20” flat screen and Dad a programmable VCR. His
teachers never questioned his 0s for homework. They gave him 100s for
attendance and open-eyed participation.
Fast-forward to freshman year at MU.
You’ll read something on the order of 40 pages of Plato for instance a night,
you must, and if you don’t, I’ll know, and I’ll fail you was how Dr. Munch
introduced the first week of Ancient Philosophy. Their eyes met during her
introductory remarks. For all of his drifting and sloth, David had never failed
a class. Few prospects, death included, were more frightful to him than
failure. Death was nothingness; failure was a prolonged state of ignobility, an
indictment of character, personal invalidation. To fail was to be relegated to fate
of loneliness and squalor. In Room 301, he was placed at the trailhead of diverging
paths. Reflecting on it later, David conceded to himself the eye contact was
fluky. His accidental choosing of desk intersecting with Munch’s scan of the
room was entirely random. But if a thing so banal as a face can start a war,
then a passing glance can light a fuse. He was launched. The look from Dr.
Munch did to David’s life what Christ’s birth did to world history: divided
time into two clearly delineated periods. His life was dramatically altered by
a peripheral character, an old woman who he was too intimidated to disappoint.
The letter A became an intoxicant. Moreover, it was addictive. After Ancient
Philosophy, there would be no more half-assing. All assignments would be
completed to their utmost. All suggested readings would be read. Extra-credit
would be construed as mandatory. All 10-12 page papers were 14 in single-spaced,
10 point font. Meanwhile, the remote accumulated dust.
Ever since, David had been inadvertently
disproving the hypothesis You Can’t Have Too Much Of A Good Thing. He pursued
good ends to excess. He took discipline well-past constructive limits, past the
samurai’s focus, past the ladder-climber’s zeal, and into the realm of the
obsessive compulsive’s fixation. David wielded a pair of blow torches to not
only burn the candle at all possible ends, but to incinerate it with
record-breaking, breakdown beckoning speed.
Like a rhinovirus snuffed into a nostril,
David’s self-discipline infected the rest of him. Ashamed of his wastoid youth,
of his poor impulse control, he recruited an exacting commander to steer his
ship. A very small man holding a very long whip cajoled the legions of selves
within his one big self. And whip he did. Mortality required all of life to be
triaged. The brevity of life allowed for only the superlative. Be the best. Do
the best. Read the best. Even eat the best. David read somewhere that mice on
restricted calorie diets lived longer than those who ate to satiation.
Digestion was destructive and aged a body on a cellular level. Cancer-causing free
radicals were the byproducts of molecular power plants. Thus, David
micromanaged his diet. A man of his age, height, and weight, needed 2,200
calories per day. David cut it to 1,600. But not just any 1,600 calories; only
the most nutritive, vitamin-rich and mineral-abundant of calories. His plate only
had room for superfoods, a designation reserved to fruits and vegetables whose
contents broke the Daily Requirement scales. Meals consisted of mostly
cantaloupe in the mornings, spinach midday, and broccoli at night. Quinoa and
sweet potatoes were mixed in where possible. To round it out, he took a daily
multivitamin. His urine was phosphorescent. The healthier he ate, the more he
wasted away. But in the mirror, emaciation appeared to be progress.
No comments:
Post a Comment