Memoir of a Pseudo-Amnesiac: 2

Within my first year, I had been to nearly every place there was to go within a three mile horizontal radius of my dormitory. The lone exception was the picturesque white chapel where the locals went to worship, marry, baptize, and bury. I was curious, but refrained from visiting as even God-fearing students kept away from Christ’s Church of the Fields (which was situated, eponymously, in cornfields). Fear of judgment from the flock there was not the cause. They were far too meek to ever rebuke strangers. The prospect of instantly becoming One of Them and never being able to leave without crippling guilt/remorse was ample disincentive. The congregation made an annual pilgrimage to our college to spread the Good News via smiles and pocket-sized green New Testaments. If you made eye contact, you invited a sales-pitch more forceful and cheery than any telemarketer’s script, which included an inquiry into contact information, and precipitated a Campus Mailbox stuffed with handwritten notes every Monday, from the third week in August to the second week in May until graduation, cursively stating, “Sorry we missed you.” Niceness can be frightening, especially to cynics. The ferocity of their tuistic sentiments was suspicious. We students surmised (wrongly in hindsight) either they (1) had ulterior motives beyond our personal salvation or (2) their motives were based on some vague idea of us and therefore without merit because they didn’t know us from Adam. A classmate of mine with a soft spot for Star Trek remarked the flock was like a nicer sect of the Borg. The analogy was not without merit (both came off as selfless, artificial, and quickly confused if sequestered individually), although the townies got a lot more sun for obvious reasons.

All this is to say I had been to the produce shanty before. (It was less than three miles away by foot.) On those visits I bought my weight in blackberries. Where I come from never had access to berries beyond the usual berry suspects (i.e., straw, blue, and rasp). A calloused (in both senses of the word) middle aged man with needles of blond hair stiffly distending from under his John Deere cap kept to the shadows like a brown recluse. His stubble was so thick you could have struck a match on his chin. He did not look like a man who would risk his goods to the honor’s system of many roadside stands. It was a cash-only sort of place with a squeaky tin box once forged to hold military wares standing in for a vault. He never gave me exact change. He capriciously over-or-undercharged me to the nearest dollar as though he was unwilling to trifle with coins. I resolved to not inquire into this practice out of an unconfirmed (but not unfounded) suspicion there was a shotgun on the premises. Later I learned this man was her father. He sired four children and hailed from one of those identical exurban towns, neither small nor large, a traveler drives through fifty times while sojourning across the American Middle West. While on tour with the Army, he was bitten by the gambling bug. After inheriting a forlorn family farm by casting lots with his two brothers, this troubled man kept himself honest by only chancing the coins he acquired through the farm’s revenue. (He drove into the City to get his fix, the cost of gas alone typically necessitating a net loss for the night prior to any lever-pulling or drink specials.)

It was about the time the sugar snap peas started sprouting fast and furious that I definitely recall getting to know her specifically. On approach, I was shocked to see a young woman my approximate age standing in for the mulish older man. She was not dressed in flannel and her shirt was not tied above the navel. She was wearing the townie’s well-practiced look suggestive of either vacancy or concentration. (Statues commonly have the same ambivalent stare.) Her closely cropped hair made me think I had seen her before, but I doubt I could have placed when or where. 

Having spied her at thirty paces, I had time to compose myself. I believed composure was the gateway to sexiness, a principle I’d likely gleaned from girl’s middle school locker posters of James Dean or Johnny Depp scowling. (Sex appeal could also have been the effect of black and white photography, an effect which I could not achieve in living color.) I tried to look through everything I saw as though nothing could really hold my interest. I blinked a few times at the bushel of russet potatoes. I was trying to push mystery out of my pores. (It had not yet occurred to me this ‘putting on’ forbade women from taking a genuine interest in me.) I went back and forth about whether or not I should even buy anything. Would it betray my disaffection? Would it be insulting not to? All the while I felt her eyes on me. I do this often, feel like I’m the center of everyone’s attention. This is not unusual among humans. My high school psychology textbook detailed how paranoid symptomatology included thinking that any laughter within earshot was at one’s expense. As I never entertained other, more outlandish propositions (i.e., people following me) I never qualified for a medical diagnosis of paranoia. Still, this perspective is consistent and not without side-effects. I call it the evil twin of narcissism because I have not found a name for it other than despair, which is entirely too dramatic most of the time. 

Because I did not have access to a kitchen or cooking apparatuses, I was limited to fruits and vegetables requiring no more preparation than cutting and/or the application of dips/dressings. (I did have a Swiss Army Knife courtesy of an uncle and two complete place settings courtesy of the cafeteria.) I decided the best course to take was a modest purchase, which seemed to split the difference between apathy and intrigue. I placed my choice of Cameo apples and broccoli onto the wooden crates that doubled as counter space. She weighed them. I did not make eye contact. I paid attention to her hands. She had a few wisps of bleached hair on skin between her knuckles. Her fingernails were trimmed and unpainted. There were no freckles. I could not find a scar on either. I remember this because I assumed living her sort of life must have involved cuts, breaks, and/or other miscellaneous mangling. I concluded she must have keen control of her body. There was daydreaming. While I surveyed the countertop and what was on it, she multiplied the weights by their corresponding prices and added the two. I was staring into the stippled green surface of the broccoli when she told me the total ($4.50). It occurred to me this was an excellent opportunity. I wanted her to take a shine to me and thought flattery would make inroads to that end. (Had I the presence of mind to think reflexively and reverse the roles, I would have discerned the malignancy of cash.) After less than a moment’s consideration, I slid a $10 bill across the surface that was not conducive to sliding. I gathered my purchases and rotated away from her. (Offering women money is an ice-breaker, but after it’s been broken by that device you realize the ice kept you from drifting further away rather than being apart.) 

Instead of thinking me gallant, she thought me hard of hearing. She called—not hollered—after me and clarified the price. My next move could either have been feigning miscommunication or trying to explain the balance of the payment was for her benefit. Our eyes met and it frightened me. I felt shackled. “Four-fifty” does not sound like “ten.” Knowing that “Keep the change,” was entirely too cliché for our situation, I simply said, “Keep it.” She looked bewildered. (Note: there are no tip jars in produce stands.) I left. Gravel undeniably scattered behind me at the rate of a moderate pace. I didn’t stop. My forehead was starting to glisten with liquefied anxiety. She did not command me to stop; she gripped my shoulder. It could not be ignored. I made an about-face.

“My name is Allison.”

Those were the first words she said to me outside of a transactional context. They were disarming and snapped me out of the trance I was in. It was her first act of mercy. She was not interested in getting to the bottom of what had transpired. She wanted me to know who she was (or at least start to). As someone who was generally backwards, I appreciated her forwardness. Interactions are not games and I wish I hadn’t spent so much of my youth thinking they were. She took my hand, turned it palm up, and deposited a $5 bill and two quarters. I am certain I apologized without saying “sorry.” She smiled and I stared into the distance to the side of her face. The landscape presented like a solidified ocean. There were no impediments to the horizon. Nubby rows of soybeans converged at a vanishing point in the cloudless bleached blue sky. We stood there for less than thirty seconds in relative quiet. Crickets and grasshoppers provided the soundtrack. I don’t know what she was thinking. I didn’t ask any questions. Despite appearances, I am not loquacious in person. I probably nodded and turned away again.

Solitary: 7

Observations and analysis, like those concerning humor, were not formed and polished on the first pass. Instead, Josh felt flickers of emotion and thought in incomplete sentences. These accrued over indeterminate spans and were ripe to be gleaned in the refrains of his day. The beds of sediment left by the days as they cut through him were rife with tiny nuggets he used to enrich his life. The banal was transfigured through the process of abstraction. His life could be connected to something grandiose like philosophy and removed from the fourteenth floor. He thought for the same reason a child made believe: to take him away. Abstraction was a means of pain management. 

Focus was useful, too. A CT’s goal was speed and accuracy, not comprehension. It was best, from an output standpoint, to terminate curiosity or sympathy. Optimally, few specifics from these letters registered in the front of his mind while on the clock. This would affect the same end as abstraction: distance from awareness of the present moment and its concreteness. Josh oscillated between these two approaches.

Eventually, fatigue set in and neither could protect him. The concrete burst through. Data accumulated on a discomfiting scale, restricting the flow of energy with emotional sediment. After another hour and no less than three responses to facial tissue chaffing complaints, he could go no further. His hands went still and he stared through the screen. He dragged his index finger across the space between the function and number keys. He rolled the dust into a wad between his thumb and pointer. He flicked it in the general area of his trash can. He craned his neck backwards and closed his eyes. He let his chin rest on his chest. You can’t get to the end unless you go through the middle. What’s the middle? What is my middle? It is so arid and pointless. Not mindless. If only it were mindless, then I could use my imagination. It takes up just enough of my thoughts…The end, though, what’s the end? Not appreciation or respect. Not success worth talking about with others. No accolades. Not even an attaboy. Just a pittance automatically deposited biweekly. Just going home Monday through Friday to listen yourself chew your food and hear footsteps squeaking above you. The whir of an oscillating fan in the summer and the pings of a radiator in the winter. Over and over again, and that’s what I’m working for? 

Thanks to Camus, Sisyphus has become a cliché mascot for the team of modern individuals. The repetition of the tasks, the lack of an identifiable purpose commensurate with the effort exerted, the impersonal cruelty of the medium and the surface (i.e., how easy for the rock to roll downhill and how hard for the rock to roll uphill) all summated into the absurdity of human life as most Joe Six-Packs and Jane Does lived it. But this story of a big stone and big muscles did not describe Josh’s life. His charge and his abilities were divested of any of the legend’s silver lining of significance. Sisyphus shoved boulders up a mountain. Josh flicked pebbles into a pond. Sisyphus was a clever king who had crossed the gods. Josh was a feckless plebian who would not dare take on middle management. He occupationally expended himself creating items that, in all likelihood, went straight into the trash can (real or electronic) upon receipt after a glance at the first few sentences. He was manning a station that could, would, and (from a stockholder’s perspective) likely should be automated. What use is there anymore for a typist? Am I really fighting for that anyhow? Labor, generally, was passé. Software was vogue. It was a tantalizing prospect from ownership’s perspective: more manhours a day, less men. At other firms, Josh’s ‘job’ was performed in large part without so much as a push of a button, where customized programs pulled from relevant fields and patched together vacuous, vague e-mail responses indistinguishable from his own. The only reason his position existed was it excused First’s shameless profiteering in a niche market. Customers F1rst charged its clients a handsome fee for its “human-centered” approach. Whereas similar corporations lowered overhead and raised productivity through heavily integrating technology, First prided itself on its “living, breathing compassion.” This approach was bankable, PR-wise, and attracted companies concerned with an image of personableness (a concern usually taking root after bad press). The people who worked to create the image of personableness did not feel like a valued commodity, though. The affects of employment in the CT position were (at least for Josh) a vertiginous cocktail of guilt (for being paid to do a job so obsolete), spite (for being paid to do a job so meaningless), and dependence (for the aforementioned pay). 

Josh slumped forward and rested his elbows on his desk like a man under duress. He slowly pushed his hands over the sides of his head and ears. He linked his hands over his crown. He was not disappointed. Disappointment was a child learning clouds were not fluffy solids after all and, therefore, could not hold your weight should you somehow get yourself up there. He was inconsolable. He fumed uncontrollably like an overheated nuclear reactor. His life’s overarching dream was not dying. It was dead. It was now shriveled and rotting into a furry, ugly mound in his core. Like psychic arthritis, the semi-conscious memory of what he aspired to ached constantly. He had wanted to be great, but did not have a clear concept of what greatness was. The superlative functioned like an intangible, publicly verified quality. For many years, Josh ran on the fuel of favorable assessments (gold stars, report cards, trophies, etc.). Now, there was no feedback—at least not from anyone Josh thought qualified. There was only cold silence like something lunar.

What was so terrible about the Real World adults had referenced with so much foreboding was not the responsibilities (i.e., overwhelming demands or long hours). University involved its own taxing duties, all of which could be as cumbersome or as easily shirked as their Real counterparts depending on the student/adult. What was so terrible was how alien it was. The Real World, made up of a haphazard array of systems and conglomerated governing bodies, did not care. It was bereft of concern. College would be the last time people are paid to take an interest in another person and his development, doctors and therapists notwithstanding. The encouragement and support ceased. Adults were on their own and known to be readily replaceable. You had your chance, fair and square, and this is what you grew in to. Be it or go away. 

Adding insult to injury, his undoing was not the consequence of his choices. He had no more chosen them than a sponge chooses the dishwater. He was immersed in them from youth. His was instructed in the principles behind discontent. “You are special.” He was a good boy and, when his father left randomly, he filled the vacuum in his mother’s heart. He had taken to saying “yes ma’am,” making meals of cereal for two, and always putting his tennis shoes in his closet every night by his own initiative. His specialness went unquestioned. It seemed like a given, his unique mode of being, an ontological attribute. “You can do anything.” In his room underneath fire truck emblazoned jersey sheets, the fading and pilling of which gave the tableau an impressionist aesthetic, he listened to the story of the light blue train fueled by the Power of Positive Thinking. “You get what you deserve.” “You are what you do.” At school behind diminutive desks, the underbellies of which overlaid with archaic mucous like brail to searching fingers, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed children were spooned egalitarian, meritocratic, and carcinogenic principles. 

All of this well-intentioned encouragement and idealistic teaching had an ugly shadow which was visible in silence. What’s that make me? If you don’t do something (something really special) then you aren’t anything. This was the quintessence of cruelty: he could not properly be blamed, and yet he was punished. It was not his fault. It was merely his. 

Josh drummed his fingers. There is a line beyond which thought, the interior counselor, should not go. Knowing himself, or at least his tendency to overthink, Josh knew he ought to cut this line of thought. The last of the cold, bitter liquid sloshed in his mouth and down his throat. More coffee.

Memoir of a Pseudo-Amnesiac: 1

My memory is not the greatest. I thoroughly fail personal history. I am essentially anachronistic, although not by choice. I am tangential. If I had to guess, I’d blame the lines between distinct times for my confusion. I am a cartographer of ideas [although this (pre)occupation paradoxically disorients me]. I think in associations. One idea leads to another of itself. For instance, I confound Mays for Septembers (they’re both tepid) and 1999 with 2003 (they’re both distant). This trait, a thematic bend of mind, is advantageous for writing term papers and undertaking endless conversations at coffee shops, but it does nothing for a sense of self. It scatters you. 

I am an alumnus of a self-contained-and-sustaining college on the perimeter of a town (you won’t recognize the name, so I’ll spare you) so small the mayor doubled as the lone medical doctor and had ample time to wear both hats. There was one grocer, one gas station, two functioning restaurants (one of which was an annex to the gas station and specialized in apathetically prepared 6” and 12” long sandwiches), and zero movie theaters, video rental kiosks, or over-the-air television signals. Parents (mine included) liked to deposit their young-and-impressionable freshmen-to-be in this monasterial enclave with its exhaustive rules and regulations as a way to mitigate coed temptation. The college, which liberally embellished all of its pamphlets and promotional material with the term ‘Judeo-Christian values’ and glossy spreads of students supine against pin oak trees, cracked books in laps, capitalized on parental paranoia. [Psychological foresight on the part of parents would have predicted the futility of this move. The cautiously overseen matriculations’ macroeffect was the conglomeration of three hundred repressed-and-antsy young men and women into close quarters with nothing better to do (besides homework) than devise means of infiltrating forbidden places, fornicating, and otherwise carousing. It turns out debauchery finds a way.] I met her down the road from this place.

Our first encounter was at the grocery store [the ‘Midtowne IGA’ I think (although it would have passed for up-or-downtown(e?) as well, given the town’s size)]. I know when we first met because she told on me on a few separate occasions once we were considered an item. The topic of first meetings is in the ice-breaking top five and I, as her eventual long-term beau, could not afford to stutter or mumble through an unprepared spiel in a town like that without igniting rumors this College Boy thing was no good. Without her assistance, I would likely have thought our third or fourth meeting was actually our first since they were more substantial.

I was buying something healthy and boring like plain yogurt or a pound of walnuts, which in the land of red meat and things fried was the nutritional apex of stocked items. She told me later she had made mental note of my purchase (“What college kid buys that?”) and how attractive I was in my tight T-shirt and long hair. (I had no muscles, mind you, beyond what is physiologically necessary to carry, lift, pull, and push my own weight.) She was behind me in line at the checkout. I gave her one of those over the shoulder glances that surveys a person’s upper torso in maybe half a second. (I’m being honest here. Please forgive my ogling. I was callow.) I don’t remember the specifics of the sight other than she was “in shape,” had short hair for a woman, and, judging from the pale band of skin wrapping slightly below her deltoids, tanned in the old-fashioned way. I found her, then, triply intimidating. I wouldn’t have said anything to her. I probably smirked in her direction as I brought the look to a close. Smirks were the deepest mode of communication I felt comfortable offering unknown and/or attractive women at the time. [Although I was a habitual looker, I knew women didn’t appreciate the looking, generally—and nearby men, who could very well be with those looked at women, really don’t appreciate the looking either, generally—so I tried to keep everything respectful beyond the impulsive looking itself. I kept my face vacant and innocent. I refrained from lip-licking, winking, or anything else I thought could be construed as a come-on, lewd, or otherwise aggressive. I tried to give this all a casual air, as though what I was (mildly) interested in was some other proximal object on a display.] I doubt I even gave her the opportunity to smile back. Whatever she bought, it wasn’t much either. Her arms were at her sides. In that town, you spread your trips to the grocery store out because it was something to do. Groceries were an event. I paid and gently exited, trying not to overly disturb the cowbell tethered to the crossbar of the entrance/exit door (which, when disturbed, made both a dreadfully clatter and me nervous). 

By that account, our relationship had the unassuming origin story most real relationships have. There were no butterflies or alluring one-liners, just her wondering about my health-conscious food choice and me giving her a once-over and leaving it at that. I don’t even remember it well. Like so much of what shapes us, it attains the quality of importance only in hindsight.

Since I am committed to a great deal of candor here, I will not pretend to know the dates of our second or third meeting either. I do know the locations of those meetings, however. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she managed a faded produce shanty (a word which I hope conjures images of dried and crackling planks of wood, wind-tattered tablecloths, and prices on torn pieces of cardboard scribbled with a thick black marker) conveniently located at the crux of the town’s main drag and highway exit. (My course load was more manageable the second semester of my sophomore year. I could afford the luxury of adventure on Tuesdays and Thursdays.) It was at this shanty I learned her name was Allison. She was a local (a.k.a., townie), which would explain why I had never noticed her on campus or in one of the forbidden places mentioned above. 

Before I get too far, our story was not some sort of City Boy meets Country Girl tale. She did not wrap her arms around me and teach me how to milk a cow and I did not teach her about motorized carriages and the wonders of adding machines. I lack the heart and the stomach to be on such intimate terms with a lactating bovine. And, although she was sheltered twice over—being both from a rural area and being lackadaisically home-schooled—she was an autodidact. Her family’s library was not anemic thanks to her grandfather. Pappy, as he was honestly referred to, was swindled into a subscription throughout the 1970s for hardback Classics from a traveling salesman (who must have been lost or in a bad, bad way). Plus, her family paid out the nose to receive the internet via satellite since 1999, a godsend for those drab winter evenings that otherwise were filled with bickering and making jam to pass the time. I can only assume they knew about the existence of the internet from an encounter with her brazen uncle who liked to flaunt his relative wealth via telephone bimonthly. He ‘got out of Dodge’ on a wrestling scholarship in ’82 and landed a job lifting heavy things for a truck parts distributor in a city famous for its truck parts.