What She Said

In college, posted almost randomly throughout the hallways, they have these bulletin boards. Little boards of cork keeping the public up-to-date on the goings on of everyone else. Our own little Page Six. Our gossip column of the not-so rich and famous. Here is a notice for a fashion club meeting, almost covering a bulletin for a rally against animal cruelty that was held three weeks ago.

Weddings and new class openings mingle in a montage of nothingness. It’s here that I find, written on a scrap of paper  in a hand I don’t know as if an unimportant post-script to life, this message:

‘A memorial service will be held for Nicole Bethany Jackson at 6 o’clock in the main lecture hall.’ The service is slated to happen on the twenty-seventh. Yesterday.

This is how I find out my best friend has died.

An unimportant post-script to a life.

‘Our condolences go out to her family and friends. All who wish to pay their respects are invited to attend.’

Were invited to attend. Her fifteen minutes of fame had run out. The same way painters are only recognized after they die. Nicole was the center of attention for a day.

And just like any other rise to fame, it must have gotten lonely up there; in front of the public mourners, laying in her gold-inlay box.

Maybe fame is just an early look at your death. Each movie premiere and photo-op a snapshot of your funeral. Everyone coming out to weep and love and quietly, in their minds, sigh in relief. One less competitor. One last moment in the spotlight before your taken out of the running. A void quickly filled.

Sorry, but your fifteen minutes are up.

I almost envy her release. I could just see her looking down on the whole spectacle and thinking boy, I’m glad that’s over.

Suddenly there is a void that needs filling and it won’t get filled just standing here. I head out to my car, past the blocks of people looking for fame and fortune in all the wong ways, all the wrong places. Not knowing that they will never be ahead. Going out will be their high note. I’m thinking of this liquor store in a big way.

Nicole and I used to drink together. We used to do everything together but drinking was high on the list. We’d stop at this liquor store with no sign, only a neon LIQUOR glowing outside, and drink before we went out to the bars. We would line the bottles up, proving we achieved something great that night. Proving that we mattered in some way. Our conversations would drift in and out of focus, so that by the next day I could remember nothing but the warm glow of booze and camaraderie. We would jokingly refer to ourselves as the functioning alcoholics, claiming a social status in this whole wide world. Pegs wanting so badly to fit into holes. We would joke about ending up dead at an early age. A morbid way of confronting our mortality. A way to ignore that our fifteen minutes would be just that and nothing more. The conversations got fuzzy right about there. I’d wake up, eternally wondering what did she say?

I’m heading to the liquor store now, ready to hoist a couple in memory of her. In memory of us, and in memory of nothing, I hope.

The engineers of liquor bottles are wonderful geniuses. The way the label lines up to the bottle like traffic lights at a busy intersection. The top line is like a flashing yellow light: proceed slowly, and with caution. I do what everyone does at the yellows: I ignore it, and speed up. Three quarters of a bottle later and the bottom line, the red light, shines bloody and dangerous. It promises penalties and hazards and death. I blast through and horns blare, tires squeal, and I close my eyes as I punch through the glass wall, the bottom of the bottle and I’m thinking I live to fight another day.  By now I’ve forgotten what I’m fighting. I’ve forgotten, by now, what I’m living for. Have I missed my high note?

This is all a test though.

Test of endurance, test of recklessness. What are these tests preparing me for? All just unimportant post-scripts. Just fluff, filling up the blank space the writer left in his rush to get to print. In the end, though, these tests don’t matter. Nothing really does except looking good for your public, one last time. Looking healthy, life-like. The final intrusion on your privacy, and then no more.

You look at anything as a metaphor for life too long and it loses its meaning, its potency. Longer still, and life follows suit. Slowly and surely going the way of the buffalo. The way of the Native American. The Trail of Tears, ninety proof and hard to swallow.

I go through many red lights before the night is over.

By about the third bottle I hear her.

Coming from somewhere behind me. Nicole is telling me how bad a driver I am.

“Come on alkie, you can do better than that. I could drive better from back here.” Being dead heasn’t dulled her tongue, it seems.

“You think so, maybe I should let you” I mumble, but she hears me anyhow.

“I don’t think so Greg. Where kinda past the point where I can be designated driver- like that was ever an issue.” I mumble something, I’m not even sure what, but Nicole replies anyway. “What do you mean? We always said we were gonna die at a young age.”

“I thought we were joking around. I didn’t know that was your plan!” I shout, getting looks from people in the next lane.

“I wasn’t joking, and that wasn’t the plan. Sometimes you just can’t help but fold. But don’t worry, I’ll be looking for you.”

“Looking for me? You’ve found me! Wait! That’s what you said! That’s what you always said! You think that makes up for=” but she was already gone. So in response I uncapped another bottle. More traffic lights ignored.

This drunk, and parking can only be accomplished in Braille. Struck blind, and feeling with heavily gloved hands toward the curb, toward the cars fore and aft. A new struggle every time. You’ve been bad, and someone has rearranged the furniture to punish you.

Tsk, tsk.

Tap, taop tap, like echo-location, like a second sight you have to acquire.

You wonder if the blind sometimes get that way by stabbing out their eyes, trying to get someone’s attention.

Healthy, seeing people, going to extremes just to get someone to notice. To care.

Self-destruction as a viable means to an end. Romeo’s sacrifice for Juliet. To Juliet. Your own personal hemlock.

Drink deep, and all will be well. My sentiments exactly.

My own claim to fame, my personal bid for power.

My chance at fifteen minutes.

In this way I have a pretty fair chance at getting it, too. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allen Poe. A long line of fame, a long line of men blinded and groping their way through life. Great men. Visionaries. Maybe you need to be blind to see anything at all. If in death we see the Big Picture, maybe being blind is like looking through a keyhole. Maybe Heaven is just knowing the score.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.  I don’t want to waste your time on something you already know.

‘A man walks into a bar…’ Beginning of a joke, but not the story. Why did he walk into the bar, and that particular bar.? For fun? For profit? For a quick pint of amnesia? Maybe it should go ‘A man had to walk into this bar.’ Nothing is predestined, but life can sure give you one hell of a nudge in one direction.

A man walked into a bar trying to walk out of the world.

Maybe I’m just looking for someone to notice me. Someone who was just recently on the receiving end of the Big Picture. It’s really quite a Large Picture, when you think about it, and to get noticed you have to stand out. Saint or Sinner you gotta have flair. The world as a Where’s Waldo book. Me, jumping up and down, waving my hands, reeking of vodka. Me, stumbling around, wasted in all senses, flailing about and screaming.

Stop me if you’ve heard it all before.

I’m shouting “Find me Nicole!” Lights are blaring, blinding, obstructing my view, her view maybe, too. “Don’t lose sight of me!” Horns all around me drown my please. Tires squeal and with a disappointing thump and roll I fall. My life is spreading out around me and I get it.