How Mike Became - Installment 2

Mike was not always like he is now. It's true. We went to high school together. Mrs. Heirs taught us English, and I'll tell you how it all started. I'll tell you about the day he changed. You'll laugh at this. I know you will, but I'll tell you anyway. It makes no difference; you cannot escape the words. Mrs. Heirs tried. She was always trying something. That day she tried oral book reports on a book of our choosing, but chaos cannot be chosen; only patterns can be chosen.

Mrs. Heirs couldn't see this. She desired everyone to think for him or herself. Desire was her undoing. Try it. Think for yourself. Choose what you will. Desire it and it will already be too late. The words will have seeped in, much like in class that day. The day we all felt so small we believed we could crawl into our own hands. You see, heaven lies in the possibilities.

I can still see it all clearly, as clear as my speech was in that moment when I gave my report. Mrs. Heirs had called on me last. I pretended not to hear her. I wanted to test her. I wanted to push her. I wanted to show her how to choose. She called a second time. Her lips turned down at the corners. They did this often. I wondered what she was thinking. I wondered if her glasses felt heavy. I wonder about a lot of things. I asked her about her thinning hair.

“What?” she asked. Her forehead creased in the middle, her eyebrows turning into two inverted Vs. How funny, I thought, or did I say it out loud?

Finally I spoke. “What I said was, the ancients believed the memories of our hopes and dreams are stored in our hair.” The Vs went away. She raised her arm up level, her fingers dangling, halfway pointing at me. She mumbled something. I mean, I think she mumbled. Then she stood. I stood as well. The others simply looked. They looked from her to me, from me to her—and back again. Match point, I thought.

I began my approach to the front. I studied everyone as I passed. Mike, with his circular doodles, directly on my left. His eyes were wide, his doodles narrow. Shauna to the front and left of him, lips tight, makeup heavy, no doodles, only her hands flat with fingers spread, like she was holding her paper down. I thought of stopping. I thought of tracing her hands. There, on the paper, her right ring finger slightly longer than her index finger. She could keep the tracing as a record, but what would it say? What would Mrs. Heirs hand say? She was motioning it in the air again, from behind her desk. Her desk, with the large wooden panels, small legs. It was all body, no support. I wondered how long it had been there. I wondered if it was heavy. I asked her about her hair. She didn't reply.

Then, end of the isle, turn left, approach blackboard. I wish I could say I rehearsed it all. I wish I could say I planned it out, but therein lies my dilemma, my curse. I don't have to plan such things. That's why they have me now. That's why they keep me. Don't bother with trying to understand. Let the words speak for themselves. Its easier that way. Imagine them, the words I mean, like when the sun comes through a slit in the blinds and illuminates a single curl of dust that floats ever so slowly through the stream of light. You can feel, now, how pleasure is just at the tips of our fingers, gliding, curling, gently swaying back and forth.

“Come back!” Mrs. Heirs said. “I want you here, in front of my desk.”

This came as no surprise to me. Neither was I surprised when Donovan, front row, second column, slid down in his seat and muttered something about the painfulness of this ordeal. Then he placed his elbow on the desk and his finger on his cheek, palm under chin, lips pooched, eyes closed, small hands, dirty fingernails, one eyebrow, books closed. He would be the first. I knew this too. The patterns were never wrong.

“I did my book report on The Law of Civil Dawnings” I said. Mrs. Heirs stopped me. Everyone lowered their heads. She didn't understand, she had never heard of the book. Her head twisted to the left, then right, then left, all very quickly, like she was shaking something from her nose.

“'Dawnings is not even a correct usage” she said, louder than usual. “Where did you find the book? Who is the author?”

I explained that the book was out of print. The author was unknown and that anything worth studying was created by an unknown author. I told her I found it in an antique store next to some lamps made from elephant feet. Just the feet I explained, and a little of the leg, only a little. I told her the owner of the store was deaf and his niece was slowly finding her way into the study of oddities from mistaken time periods. Her eyebrows turned back into inverted Vs, and her lips closed tightly together. Then, as I had imagined, she made known the weight of her glasses and relieved herself of their burden.

“As I was saying” I began again. “The Law of Civil Dawnings is …....



“If you don't know how this ended and want to know the rest of their lives there, then listen to the explanation in the next installment.”1

1 Wu Cheng'en, Journey to the West, Trans. W.J.F. Jenner, (China: Foreign Language Press), 69

One Day at a Time - Installment 1

Don’t look to me for solace. Think of all those lost souls meandering about, meeting in dingy, free-rent rooms, pouring their hearts out, begging for someone to help them put the booze/pills down. I attended one the other day—“A.A. Courage Quit Group”, or something to that affect. You'll question my motives for this. You’ll say I’m a troublemaker, but I’m too small for that, too insignificant, I lack the power; I lack the ambition required for such a feat. No. Thelma is who you want. Blame your sins on her. Don't worry; I doubt you know her. I doubt a lot of things, but mostly I doubt Thelma, Thelma the Psychiatrist. She sends people to those meetings, like begging her for help is not enough. They have to pay a penance. They have to gather and suffer. God would have it that way I tell you, but Thelma won't. She won't tell you anything of value.


It's not that she doesn't enjoy her work. I know she does. I can see it all. I can see her lying there at night, relishing all those intimate secrets she’s harvested from her worshippers, plotting ways to get more. I would even say she loves her patients. It’s true. She nourishes them the way a dog nourishes his fleas, and after years of practice, she has quite a collection, like a gourmet brand of “mixed nuts”.

I saw one just the other day. His name is Mike. He was carrying a self-help book, probably from one of his groups. He stopped me as I was making my way to the local convenient store. He was pulling an imaginary hair from his forehead. I remember reading about his condition somewhere. He said he had been going to his meetings. He had his life together now. “Not a single drink in four days,” he said, as he gently pulled, hand over hand, the infinite wild hair from his raw forehead. “I just live one day at a time,” Mike said.

What a shame, I thought, or did I say it out loud? I’m not sure. I couldn’t read his expression. His hair-pulling hands blocked my view. He just stood there, waiting for a response. I wanted to walk away. I did. I was afraid he might know, but how could he? Thelma could have told him. She knows everything. It’s all in her files. She has stacks of them. I know she does. Don’t ask me how I know. I don’t know if I can say. I do know that Mike wasn’t walking away. His worn-out boots seemed rooted to the concrete. His white legs and camouflaged shorts growing out of them. His yellow teethe soaking up the sun. He was still waiting for me to interact, to feed into his illness. I refused.

“What about one day at a time?” he asked. I did say it out loud, but he would get no more out of me, no matter how much he pulled. “What’s a shame about living one day at a time?” he asked again. I stayed strong, though. I wouldn’t fall for his ploy. I knew what he was doing. I knew he wanted to pull it out of me like he pulled his imaginary forehead hair. I could feel it. I could feel the tug. I swear it made by brain itch.

I closed my eyes. I though it might help. I thought it might make the itching go away. I thought it might make him go away. Instead, he just spoke louder, like I couldn’t already hear him. Then he let go of his forehead hair and began to wave his arms about. I turned my back to him, but I could still feel the air from his waving arms. They felt so close. Yes, that was it. He wanted to get close. I could see it all then. He wanted to get close to me like he was with Thelma. He wanted give me his feelings, but I held tight. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. I kept it all for myself. The satisfaction, I mean, the satisfaction of living more than one day at a time.

I wasn’t going to share my secret. I wasn’t going to tell him how I lived all my days at one time, over and over. I wasn’t going to tell him he was cheating himself. I wasn’t going to tell him his girlfriend was cheating as well, or did I? The past doesn’t die. It’s born over and over. Much like Mike’s kicks to my back as I lay on the sidewalk. Where’s your hair now, I thought.