Second Guessing (329 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryLabels: Untruth
Rating: 2 on 2 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Snark << snarkk.at.gmail.com (View user info) at 2005-07-31 06:11:58 EDT
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
He doesn't look like much of anything other than forgotten.
His hair is Jesus long, and laced with grey. His face is hawkish and a thick layer of white peppered stubble fills out his drug sunken cheeks.
He has the history of a lifetime of second guesses etched into the lines around his mouth and the kind of laid-back canter that only someone who has lost everything, and stopped caring about it, can have.
I decide he looks like Crack Jesus but then I notice his frantic piercing eyes and decide to label him Charlie Manson instead.
He has the atypical hippy fanny pack and a backpack with a sleeping bag hanging from it thrown over his shoulder. His feet are in sandals and his pants are black where they aren't stained brown from the grime of a thousand sins in as many back alleys. His shirt is Shaolin-Style red silk and it drapes off his bones beneath an unbuttoned grey wool shirt sweater, as if he and Moriarty just got back from a Tibetan refuge; the last of the broken down Dharma Bums.
It's hot as hell outside and I'm sweating without the wool but he doesn't seem to feel the heat at all.
He's a fucking ghost. I've seen his kind in every city I've ever lived in; aging hippies who dropped out and never found their way back, malnourished idealists who left society to find something better, but forgot who they were shortly after they lost track of who they wanted to become.
He's the kind of guy you don't see when he's standing next to you. If a couple of cops were to walk into the Skytrain terminal they probably wouldn't give him a second look, and I would typically give him even less, but we're the only two here and he's in my face.
"The sign switches man, and I was all like 'I have to get to Braid station' and she was all like 'It's ok, it's digital. Just wait for the Millennium Line', and she was right..."
I glance up at the glowing red readout on the sign hanging above my head and then give him a half-interested nod that is both a cold acknowledgement that he exists, and a clear sign that I wish he did not. I like the separation between our worlds, and I don't like the smell of his, it reeks of dirty things done in dark places, and the wicked promises of old men, and I'm hoping he'll move on because I have enough crazy in my head without him adding to it.
He catches my look and backs off a bit, then starts rummaging in his fanny pack. After a moment, he pulls out a tin crammed full of tobacco followed by a small clay pipe that's not meant for what he's about to use it for, and stuffs it full.
"I put lavender in my tobacco. I like to add something natural to the addiction you know? The lavender helps clear the lungs and makes it go down so smooooth."
Something about the way he says smooth is uncomfortably feminine and I give him a frown then look away.
"So I was into the metaphysical thing you know, but I learned you have to be in the pain if you're going to heal... You know...with the drug addicts and the thieves and shit. So I got this..."
He pulls the shiny red shirt away from his ribcage by-way-of-example then continues.
"...so I've been trying to sell myself but no one wants to pay me".
His lighter bursts into life and he holds it up to the pipe and pulls a chemical and lavender cocktail into his lungs through cracked lips.
"Like coke man... crack cocaine. It's a euphoric expectorant. It clears you up when you take the smoke deep, gets rid of the phlegm and scabs."
I shake my head in disgust. I don't want to know why he would have scabs in his lungs. I'm hot and hung-over and hoping he'll go away before asking me for money I don't have. It's unusual for guys like this to talk to me so long before asking for something. They usually look at my business casual pretension and automatically decide I'm the enemy. They still ask for a hand out all the same, they just do it as fast as they can so they can break contact with "The Man"
There's a hum to my left as the next train enters the tunnel. I look at the sign in time for it to change and display "Millennium Line to Commercial Drive" in glowing red letters, and it dawns on me that Manson and I are heading in the same direction.
"Yep it changed see? Oh, man this is my ride. I gotta take this to Braid then catch a bus to Maple Ridge, then hitchhike to Nelson."
I give him a quick nod then say "There ya go." and then I'm stepping ahead of him onto the nearest car and looking for a seat that has no room for him.
The train is almost empty because it's 11 AM and everyone is already at work or somewhere better. I find a pair of seats half way down one isle and take the closest one, in an effort to block him from sitting beside me. The hairs standing stiff on the back of my neck relax a bit when he does not.
He walks past me then grabs hold of the pole near the next pair of doors, turns, and says, "It's like all natural man and it still has its qualities when you put it into you. Count the worst nine drugs and what do you got? Cigarettes, Caffeine, Alcohol..."
The guy is gone, that's obvious, but there isn't a trace of bad intention in his fevered eyes so I let my guard down a bit and take my place in his bullshit philosophy.
"Depends on what you mean by worse."
"You know worst drugs man" He makes a twisting motion, with one hand in front of his face that I suppose should mean something and continues "... worst for you and shit."
"Number one would have to be Heroin wouldn't it?"
"Coca leaves! You chew them and they're a natural expectorant."
The train hits a corner and we come out of the tunnel. Sunlight bursts into the cabin. It lights him up like a scarecrow angel and I put my sunglasses on, partially to keep my migraine at bay, and partly to put him back into perspective. I look down at my lap, straighten my laptop bag, and answer.
"Maybe it's all natural when you have the leaf in your mouth, but the shit you shoot into your veins isn't gonna cure what ails you."
He looks at me and smiles like one would at an ignorant child, then says, "Cuz they lace it with rat poison and stuff, it's not the drug man it's the stuff that comes with it... hold on... I got this rat."
He starts rooting around in his fanny pack and I glance over to the old woman in the isle across from me in time to see her stifle a look of fear.
"Little black rat... I better not of lost it... Ratsy Ratsy in my pack.... Ah here you are."
He pulls something with a tail out of his fanny pack and holds it towards me. The old woman lets out a screech and I almost bat it out of his hand before I realize it is plastic.
"See it's got little red eyes."
I nod and smile as I silently chastise myself for being a pussy.
Manson pets it as if it is alive, then stuffs it back into the pack, and zips it up. He takes a step towards me but the train hits another curve, throwing him off balance. He reels backwards, Kramer-Style, and almost loses his footing but then gets it again and goes into a martial arts stance, as if the lurch was a precursor to an attack of some kind.
He stays that way for a minute or two, his head darting from one entrance to another, until he's sure he is safe, and I decide Manson isn't an entirely appropriate name for him so I change it to Kung Fu Manson.
"Where was I? Crack? Smack? Yeah Smack.... No..." He raises his eyes to the ceiling as if looking to God for an answer and apparently finds it.
"Crack, yeah... all natural man."
"You really think so?" I ask ruefully.
"Yeah, except for the evil... W Bush sucks you know. He's stealing the drugs from the Rocket Brothers and selling it for himself. They're people like me man, you know, the 40 to 60 year olds."
I've never heard of the Rocket Brother's and I'm thinking there's got to be a good story there but he speaks before I can ask.
"You know you gotta take a little evil sometimes. I take a little evil... you know... inside me... down my throat as far as it will go, or in my ass."
The old woman gets up with a grunt and awkwardly shuffles her way to the other end of the car.
"Just a little though." He finishes proudly.
I can't help but laugh, and he joins me. He has no idea I am laughing at him. I think he thinks we're sharing a joke at Evil's expense.
"Everything in moderation." I reply.
He looks at me and shakes his head as if I have just spouted the most insane piece of nonsense he has ever heard.
"So if I took like a little bit of the nine worst drugs all at once that would be ok?"
"That's not entirely what I meant."
"I'm going on a trip man, to Nelson. You could come too."
There's something oddly compelling about his offer. The laptop on my knees is five hundred pounds of corporate responsibility and I relish the thought of shedding it for a new skin. There's a long suppressed corner of my soul that wants to set out, with nothing but the clothes on my back and a plastic rat. A road trip with this guy would be something akin to hitchhiking with Sal Paradise and Hunter S at the same time. I seriously consider his offer for a moment but as tempting as it is, the adventure of it is paled by the vision of waking up to Kung Fu Manson injecting me with his peculiar version of natures bounty, or worse, filling some part of my body with a little bit of evil.
"No thanks."
He either does not hear me or does not remember making the offer. He's rubbing his stubble with the long bony fingers of his dirty right hand. He's lost in whatever inane shits storm of thought that is raging in his head, and all of the sudden the crazy in mine doesn't seem so bad.
"I got some stuff to do. It's metaphysical man."
I nod and the car lurches again as it squeals to a stop. The doors slide open and he looks out then back at me.
"This my stop? Is this my Braid station?"
A quick glance out the window and the bright yellow sign tells me it is and I nod. I'm strangely sad to see him go. In a way, it feels as if he's taking something with him, as if he's the only thing holding the monotony of the day at bay. As if, freedom itself is exiting the train.
"Yep, this is yours."
He moves to the opening between the car and the rest of his downward spiral, and then turns and bows with a flourish like a magician after his final performance. He straightens proudly then barely steps out before the doors close on him.
A second later, I'm speeding away and Kung Fu Manson is fading into the distance, his hand held high in a royal wave. I don't wave back but I do smile. He's gone but not completely. There's an aura of something left on the train, as if he left a residue of crazy behind.
I glance behind me at the old woman. She shivers suddenly as if someone just walked over her grave and I wonder if she can feel it too.
There's a young woman I hadn't noticed before, sitting on the other side of the train. She's blonde, thin, business formal and she slaps herself twice in the face, hard enough to leave a red shadow of her hand on her cheek. She glances at me in shocked confusion then holds delicate palms out before her and looks at them as if for the first time.
The old woman's voice crackles its way into my ear like rustling paper. She's mumbling something that sounds like "Crack? Smack? Yeah Smack.... No..."
The train lurches again as it comes to another stop and there's a heavyset woman pushing a baby carriage towards it. She starts to wheel it into my car but then stops and looks around. She glances from the old woman to me and then the blonde, before stepping back and shaking her head at some wrongness she can sense but not see, and a moment later I'm gliding away from her paling face.
And it strikes me friend, that maybe Kung Fu did leave a part of himself here.
Maybe the crazy in him is like a mist, or a smell of sorts. Maybe what I feel around me is the residue of a mind torn apart by a life time of second guesses. That special kind of insanity that drives school teachers and lawyers to give up what they know is right, to drink poisoned cool-aid because Reverend Jones says so, or lay down to die under a purple scarf to reach the mother ship. Maybe the shit in his head is like a spark that ignites the shit in everyone else's.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
All I know is the next stop is mine and I have to get to the office.
I'm late and I have a road trip to plan.
User Reviews
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-11-20 12:02:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
i remember reading this
Submitted by electrictoothsyndrome (user info) at 2005-10-27 10:35:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Horray for the elite 8!
(At least I lost to the eventual winner.)