DON’T RUSH into a war, they say. Study the enemy. Chinese style. Learn all their ways and means. Know all their structures, their technology, all their plans. Know all their fundamental chains of activities and the weakest links in those chains. Know it all before engaging.
But is it possible to know it all? Is it really possible? Who can know everything? We don’t even have a good list of all the things we need to know to get to within a light year of all we need to know.
We will never know everything. We just know some things. That’s all. That’s all anybody will ever know. Just some. But we still act. We still do things. We act on what we know.
I would do the same. I would act on what I knew.
I knew The Idiot’s habits. I knew its dreams. I knew its prayers. I knew that until recently, it had driven a delivery cargo van for a living, but it was just fired. I knew that when it got fired last time, bad ideas invaded its brain.
I also knew that The Idiot was systematic. All those stops at gas stations on trip number 29, when the gas tank needed no gas, all those run-throughs through rest stops, scanning the parked cars … all the time that it was taking away from doing its job, while on the job … it was looking for that menacing red Dodge Charger. It was doggedly, systematically looking for revenge. Of a petty kind. So much energy and so many heart beats spent on such a petty mission.
***
THE IDIOT was sleep-talking. Mumbling. Moving its head from side to side.
I went in to see what was happening.
The former president, the orange-faced creep, was in a cage. Big metal cage, six by six, ten feet high. Shiny bars of stainless steel reflecting the spotlights. The cage was on a stage, set in the center of a giant open-air stadium. Seventy thousand in attendance.
Comedians were roasting the former president. Live video feeds of the show projected on mega-giant screens.
A Black comedian was having at it. Huge waves of laughter rolling through the crowd.
Former president was naked except for baby diapers covering his privates. He was pink and obese all over. Furious. Holding onto the bars and shaking them. The cage was solid, would not shake. He was shaking himself into a frenzy. His face a deep red. All blood. No tears. A giant wide-open mouth, contorting in wild shapes. Rage. All rage.
The next comedian came on. The crowd was in stitches by the third jab at the former president; too cheap to pay for a tall white Russian he had ordered at the bar.
The former president’s head blew up.
Brain tissues, facial muscles, skin tissues, eyeballs, ear parts, orange colored hair, a detached but still wagging tongue was jumping around in the cage, gallons of blood splashed all over and started dripping onto the stage.
The comedian stopped. The giant speakers announced a pause in the show.
An eight-man crew in hazmat suits rushed to the stage and cleaned the blood that had spilled onto the stage. They didn’t enter the cage.
The former president’s headless body was lying on the floor of the cage. It kept bleeding from the neck. The blood stayed inside the shining steel bars. It started rising, did not spill through the bars, kept rising higher and higher.
At four feet high, the body was completely submerged. When the blood reached six feet high, it stopped. Through the thickness of the blood, the contours of the body and the white diaper were visible, but in a blur.
The comedian cracked one last joke, and the crowd went into a frenzy, lap slapping, high fiving, holding onto their stomachs as they fell to the floor, in stitches.
Then everybody dispersed; in a split second the stadium was empty.
The body of former president remained submerged in blood, the blood holding still inside the cage.
***
I JUMPED out. It was disturbing. Very disturbing.
I was thinking, “If it’s having these kinds of horrible dreams at night, what about its wake state during the day? Was that a wish-fulfillment dream, or a random imagery the brain concocted for fun?”
Brains don’t do things just for fun when we’re sleeping.
When we’re sleeping, brains are doing housekeeping. Going through all the new information, new knowledge, new judgments, new ideas, concerns, fears, joys, doubts, inquiries, lusts, hungers, cravings, everything that went through our mind during the day. Or the last few days. While we sleep, our brain is sorting things, sorting things, sorting, sorting, filing things, filing things, filing, filing, shredding, shredding, trashing, trashing.
So, what assholish thoughts was The Idiot having the last few days that conjured up the fantasy of the former president, held in a cage placed on a stage, being ridiculed by comedians to his face, his head literally exploding, with all the blood rising in the cage, in the middle of a stadium with seventy thousand laughing their asses off?
What was it thinking in there?
***
CONTRADICTIONS WERE head-butting contradictions.
“What to do?” The Idiot was saying under its breath.
“Just fucking live!” I said. “Just live, man! Like everybody else does. OK, well … not everybody ... but, you know, just like MOST people. OK? Just live!”
The Idiot’s frown went from mild to insane.
It looked at me and said, “Just LIVE? What are you, some moron? Who the hell do you think can ‘JUST live’ anymore? We’re run by a bunch of fucking assholes bent on destroying all we need to survive, and they think they can just shoot off to a colony on the Moon or Mars or something. Don’t you see the news? They’re blowing things up left and right. They’re fucking up everything. Just LIVE? You wanna “just live”? Go find somebody less jacked up!”
I was startled. I had no words. It was talking to me in an extended string of statements. It was a debate utterance. The ultimate recognition.
The Idiot … it had done nothing like that since I couldn’t remember when. It was like it was talking to sister, or father or mother. Not just a side nod here and there, mumbled half phrases, or yelling at me to shut up or stay out of it. For years at the beginning, we hung out together like we couldn’t ever be separated, played together every hour of every day, talking, joking, making up stories about people. A long string of sentences addressing me had not happened in a long, long time.
I was happy, giddy even. But angry and confused at the same time.
***
SOMETIMES YOU hit what feels like the bottom and you stop. Other times you hit the bottom, and it doesn’t register.
There it was. The Idiot and its new
ritual.
Two in the morning. Sitting in the middle of the living room on a large saffron-colored pillow. In lotus pose; cross-legged, lower legs tucked over thighs, middle fingers and thumbs joined in virtuous circles resting on the knees, back straight.
Three candles burning. Three sandalwood incense sticks sending up gray smoke in three unbroken straight lines, the incense holders gathering the ashes.
It was breathing in through the nose while counting to four, holding the breath for five counts, breathing out through the mouth for six counts.
The Idiot was meditating.
After the breathing routine, it was repeating what sounded like a prayer line, with deep low voice, over and over again:
“I wish extreme pain upon all Republicans and the two Senate Democrats. I wish extreme pain upon all Republicans and the two Senate Democrats. I wish extreme pain upon all Republicans and the two Senate Democrats. I wish extreme pain...”
I was shocked.
“What the hell are you doing?” I said out loud.
“I am praying,” it said calmly. “I’m praying for extreme pain for people who cause too much misery.
“Why aren’t you praying for their deaths, then?”
“Oh, no. No way. I don’t want them to die. I want them to suffer extreme pain for every day of their living.”
“What the …”
“That’s right. Extreme pain causes them to reflect. It causes them to think about what it was they did. About the people they harmed. That’s the point. I want them to go into a crisis of morality.”
“Crisis of morality? Really? You think these people have morality?”
“Oh, yes, I do! Everybody has morality. We all have a system that directs our actions. Everybody has morality. It may be fucked up, and you may not like their morality, but they have morality. They BELIEVE they are moral. I’m crashing their morality.”
“Are you fucking crazy? You are praying at two in the morning for people to have extreme pain? What are you, some nutcase? What the fuck!”
“Why are you so alarmed, so scared? You’re scared of me wishing for some scumbags to have pain? What’s it to you anyway? What the …! You know what? Go on, man, go … Go talk to the trees!”
I didn’t say anything.
“Let’s say some asshole experiences pain, or even dies, and I happened to be praying for their death even. So what?” The Idiot said. “They destroy lives every day. Whole communities get wiped out because of nothing they did. Why? Because these assholes were enough to pass laws benefiting their friends and fucking everybody else. They’re so miserly they can’t even raise the miserable minimum wage. It’d be like crumbs for them. Minimum wage buys you less food now than it did when we were kids! Did you know that? I’d pray for every one of them to die even! But I just want them to suffer. The least I can do. Supreme Court’s next. Federal judges gumming up things for people to get their rights, they’re next. Governors are next. State legislatures in slave states, next. Right-wing media hacks, next. Got a long list!”
The Idiot took a long deep breath, held it for five counts, exhaled slowly through the mouth, counting down from six. Did this three times. Felt good. Smiled as it bent its head toward the floor, eyes closed, still in perfect meditative posture with back straight, lower legs tucked over thighs, fingers forming virtuous circles resting on the knees.
***
FINALLY. MY biggest fear. The Idiot had turned political. An idiot with newly awakened political views, filled with rage, with only preliminary understanding of the world, little knowledge of politics, in late midlife, almost old age. Most people don’t become political at that age. It’s not normal.
Could it be ...
It couldn’t be ...
Could it?
Maybe … maybe?
At the time I thought it was impossible. It seemed definitely impossible at the time.
When I thought about it, and I thought about it, well … it was like … it could be, it was probable … a probability.
I had to revisit some basic facts. Real evidence. I had to look through the empirical evidence.
The fact was that … well, I never saw Missy kill herself. I never saw it with my own mind’s eyes.
I never saw the body. She was just gone one day. A week after turning sixteen. I just believed what The Idiot told me; that she had committed suicide.
For all I knew … for all anybody knew … she could have made it look like it was a suicide.
But in reality?
In reality, Missy could be alive, living in a studio apartment, in some back alley in the deepest depths of The Idiot’s unconscious, sipping on her favorite iced coffee drink with heavy cream and lots of sugar. Right now, she could be singing out loud her favorite song, the Ramones’ version, in terrible pitch, mangling the lyrics:
[D] While I’m lying in my bed at night,
[A] I don’t wanna [D] grow up
[D] Nothing ever seems to turn out right,
[A] I just wanna [D] throw up.
[B] How do you move in a [F#] world of fog that’s,
[G] Always changing [A] things,
[B] Makes me wish that [F#] I could be a,
[G] Doooooooo [A] oog.
[D] When I see my parents fight,
[A] I just wanna throw [D] up!
[D] They all go out and fucking all [A] night,
[A] I will never grow [D] up.
[B] I’d rather stay here
[F#] in my room,
[B] Nothin’ out there but
[F#] doom and gloom,
[B] Don’t wanna be some
[F#] silver broom,
[G] Livin’ on Graaaaaaand [A] Street!
Missy may have found a way to send subliminal or even overt messages ... or through some intermediary, sublimated and well-mediated but clear enough to be received.
She could be communicating with The Idiot in a way I could not sense. Maybe she was even directing the actions of The Idiot. What if The Idiot had been in communication with her all this time? Like, it had known that Missy never killed herself. Could they have been in it together?
What if ...
What if she had been hiding from ME?
Was I crazy thinking that?
***
“SO, WHY just Republicans? And only the two Democrats? What’s up with that? They’re all corrupt as hell, man!” I said, sounding sympathetic but critical. “You’re a Democrat now? Why not go with the Greens? Why not socialists? Why not …”
“It’s the only thing holding back the fascists. Right now, that’s all we got. That’s it. It’s the only thing with resources and the organization that can stop the fascists. That’s a shit choice, but it’s the only choice we have.”
“People in the streets can stop them. You think of that? Why this …”
“People in the streets? Always good. If they’re not fascist mobs. But … look … right now, they’ve got the Supreme Court, lots of federal courts, lots of appeals courts. Congress is not passing anything. Supreme Court writes the laws. Just five people. People in the street disappear from the streets at some point. They get beat down. They’ve got to make a living. They don’t have infinite resources. The fascists have resources. If police chiefs take their orders from outright fascists, we’re done. And … here’s the thing. The socialists and leftists are doing shit. Stuck behind screens, writing papers, attending conferences. They’ll be wiped out overnight. But, if the liberals take this round, the left may live to fight another day.”
It all sounded reasonable.
The Idiot’s method of addressing the situation was still delusional. Elimination by prayers? Invading dreams? Really?! Whatever!
It can pray all it wants. Let it escape reality. Better to escape. Better than engaging reality. Every time it engages, it ends up vandalizing. Just as long as it doesn’t do anything political outside the house.
Still in meditative pose, slowly in a base monotone, like a Buddhist chant, it kept repeating, “I wish extreme pain on all Republicans and the two Senate Democrats!” ... pause, breathe in, breathe out ... “I wish extreme pain on all Republicans and the two Senate Democrats!” ... pause ... breathe in, breathe out, “I wish extreme pain on all Republicans and the two Senate Democrats!”
I left the room.
***
“SO, WHAT are your living conditions like?” The Idiot was asking a homeless man in a small encampment of a dozen tents, under the pier in Huntington Beach.
It was a Friday afternoon, late October. The Idiot had just given the homeless man a twenty for an interview, plus a promise of more. A few hundred feet away, some beach-goers had towels spread on the sand, with picnic baskets. One couple was reading paperbacks. Their two kids, looking like five- and seven-year-olds, were gearing up to build a sandcastle, piling sand into their small green buckets with tiny red shovels.
“What living conditions? You some kinda joker? We’re HOMELESS, man, homeless! What the fuck’s your problem? You got eyes?”
The Idiot smiled, inhaled and exhaled. “I know. That’s why I’m asking. You live, right? I mean, you’re alive. You’re living. So, what are your living conditions like? Like, are people around here good tippers? Do you have access to toilets, showers?”
“Good tippers? Tippers? What’s your crack, man?”
“Look, sorry … I don’t know the right words. I just mean, like, say you have your sign at an intersection, how much do people hand out? And, like, which intersection is better? Main and Walnut? Main and Olive? Lights at the offramp off of Highway 1? Like, in a day, how much can you get … like, for food? And other things.”
“You some journalist or something? LIKE! What the fuck you up to, man?”
“Look … OK, look, if I become homeless, and I could soon, is this a good location to move to? Look, I lost my job. OK? I lost my job. I’m two months behind on rent. Got my eviction notice; I must be out by the end of the month. That good for you?”
The homeless man, in his late sixties, maybe early seventies, maybe a Vietnam vet, with long matted gray and white beard and mustache, long greasy-stringy gray hair, leathery, reddish brown wrinkled face from the sun, looked sadly at The Idiot for a few seconds. He sighed calmly, blinking a few times, looked down at the sand, sighed a big one, slowly shook his head from side to side.
“Jesus Christ, man, you’re some loser!” homeless man chuckled sadly, shaking his head. Looking at the sand, squinted as if remembering something.
“Look, man. People ‘round here?” He raised his right hand, clenched into a fist, “They’re tight. Republicans mostly. Most times you get insults when they’re nice. Best have a dog in case they get nasty. Tourists give you something. But the locals suck. But lots of restaurants around here, fast food places, some fancy ones. They throw out a lot of good food. I don’t shower, just take a dip in the ocean. Salt’s good for you. I shit right on the beach, right there,” he said, pointing to the where the children were building their sandcastle, now about half built. “Tide washes it out. I piss where I can. There! You happy? Now, get stepping. You’re disrupting my living conditions!”
“Well … Thank you Sir. Here’s something to brighten up your day.” The Idiot gave the homeless man another twenty, two fresh packs of full-strength filtered Camel cigarettes, a sealed 750 ml. bottle of JD, said, “Bless you man!” and walked away.
This story originally appeared in Locust Review 9 print edition. Social media image by Anupam Roy. Locust Review 9 cover by Adam Ray Adkins.
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