So, Were You Impressed?

This is a piece I wrote for a class about a year ago.  I thought I had lost it in the last reformat, but behold!  It merely waited, tucked up safely in Dropbox, –allglorytoGoogle,- and here it is for you to enjoy.  I hope you do.

Beginning with the construction of LANL in 1943, New Mexico became a hub of Soviet and American espionage activity, lasting well into the Cold War.  There are many stories to tell from this era, and I have fictionalized two that I found especially entertaining.  The key points are true; only the dialogue was invented.

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So, were you impressed?

“Of course you were, you little slag.”

With a romantic flourish he signed the name by which she knew him and carefully sealed the letter.  “You’re impressed, and you will give me what I want, won’t you?” he said aloud as he lit a cigarette and began to pace the tiny hotel room.  His mind wandered from the insipid contents of the letter, to the absurd appearance of its recipient.  She tried so hard.  It really was too easy.

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Turning his thoughts to more important matters, he regarded the weapons at his disposal.  This was the difficult part, he decided; so personal.  He must choose something fitting.  But, there’s time yet.  He would know when the moment was at hand.

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“Sylvia, darling,” he tweaked her playfully on the chin, “you got my letter, I trust?”

She nodded, and blushed.  “It was lovely.  You said so many beautiful things.”

“Beautiful words for a beautiful lady,” he purred.  “And what of my meeting?”

“Oh, Frankie, I told him all about you, and he seemed suspicious, what with the ‘incident’ a few months ago, and who could blame him?  But I told him, I said you were a good man, an honest man, and that you had some thoughts to share with him, just like you said in your-“

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“The meeting, Sylvia, will he see me or not?”

Sylvia bit her lip and nodded.  “You- you can go in now, actually, if you want.  He told me to notify him when you-“

“You’re an angel.”  ‘Frank’ planted a kiss on her cheek and strode past into the proverbial lion’s den.

“Good afternoon, sir!” he hollered across the cavernous room to where Trotsky sat at his desk with a huge cigar.  “I’m Frank Jackson.”

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“Ah, yes, Sylvia spoke very highly of you.  Please, sit.  What is it you wanted to speak with me about?”

“Well, first off, I heard rumors of an attempt on your life not too long ago.  What a shame,” Frank shook his head dramatically.

“A shame that he escaped, yes.  We are led to believe he is in hiding out north of the border, probably in Santa Fe, but we’ve yet to find him.

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But he isn’t the first, and I suddenly realize he won’t be the last.”  Trotsky met his guest’s eyes and held them; not a blink, not a twitch, just the soul searching gaze of an old Russian who has seen more than he cared to.  “No, he won’t be the last.  Will he, ‘Frank’?”

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Frank smiled and shook his head as the pickaxe swung up and over.  With a strangely muffled crunch and squish it lodged itself in the same brain that Grigulevich’s bullets had missed.  There was no flinch, no look of surprise, and Trotsky held his gaze as the weight of the pickaxe forced his head onto the desk.  Frank watched as the blood began to pool and shouts rang out behind him with news of the attack.

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“I hope you don’t mind,” he said, lifting the cigar from his victim’s fingers.

“Help yourself,” Trotsky murmured, and Frank sat down to smoke and wait, wondering how long it would take this crazy old Russian to die.

As it happened, Trotsky lived an entire day with that pickaxe lodged in his brain.

“So, were you impressed?”

Mary sighed.  “I just don’t see how it can work.  You’ve made enemies in some very high places, and… Ed, I’m scared.”

“I know.  But just follow my lead and we’ll get out.  I’ll send for you when I get to Moscow.  You trust me, don’t you?”

She nodded unconvincingly.

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The rush was familiar and strangely welcome.  He’d been born for this kind of work, bred for it, and now more than ever it was vital that he had his faculties.  One little drink wouldn’t hurt, though, would it?  To calm his nerves, to solidify his resolve.  One little drink, or maybe two.

“Ed, you’re drunk.”

“Trust me,” he slurred, “I’m a professional.”

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They left the restaurant and headed for the car.  The fear of earlier in the night gripped him again… Where are they? He couldn’t feel their eyes, couldn’t distinguish the presence that he knew must be there.  The FBI had been watching his house for several weeks, waiting, knowing he would run, knowing he knew they knew, knowing he knew they were waiting.

He had thought of everything, even going so far as to call the babysitter to remind her of their return time; because not only were they watching, they were listening as well.

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As Mary drove, taking the unnatural path home he had outlined for her, he muttered about ‘those rat CIA bastards who had fired him, and the revenge he had exacted in revealing the secrets he knew to those in Russia to whom they were of interest.  GTTAW and GTVANQUISH; he’d killed some people in his treason, but then, they shouldn’t have fired him.  He had every right.  “They didn’t know who they were messing with!” he exclaimed.

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But he was scared too, now.  All of his instincts, all of his training and experience as a spy, as one who had been engineered to detect and evade tails were screaming in unison.  Confused, frustrated screams.  Where were they?  He’d bet his life they weren’t following him, but maybe that was that fourth shot talking.  Or the fifth.  “We have to stick to the plan,” he mumbled.

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Mary clenched the steering wheel, ignoring her husband and trying not to cry.

The car turned and doubled back, following a path that was sure to shake anyone tracking it from their rear view mirror, and to reveal anyone trailing behind.  All it revealed was their isolation on that dark Santa Fe road.  Edward Howard longed for another drink.

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His heart began to race long before his brain realized that the designated spot was just ahead.  Mary reached into the back seat to ready herself, as the lock clicked open and a sudden gust of wind replaced her husband in the passenger seat.  She tried to check on him, to make sure he was unscathed and safely hidden in the roadside bushes as she pulled the dummy up next to her.  Getting the door closed again was a detail she had not considered… the car swerved and jerked as she struggled for the handle.

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The nondescript cars Ed claimed were FBI still occupied their spots at various points along their street when she arrived home, alone.  She pulled into the garage and sat for several minutes, before heading inside and paying the sitter, using the story Ed had given her to explain his absence.  “Did you notice anything… strange?” she asked carefully.  The girl shook her head, confused, and left.

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Mary didn’t sleep that night, or any night afterward until she heard that Ed was safely in Moscow.

“So, were you impressed?”

“I was,” she admitted, “until I realized that no one followed us, no one checked the phone when you called from the restaurant, no one even knew we were gone.  And to top it off, you abandoned your family to take the fall for you.   You’re a swine, Ed Howard, and I hope you break your neck.”

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Well Mary, you’ll be happy to learn that in 2002 a divorced, drunken Edward Lee Howard fell down a flight of stairs in Moscow and died, unmourned, of a broken neck.

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So, were you impressed?

This was the question posed by atomic spy Klaus Fuchs  to KGB operative Harry Gold, just days after FAT MAN and LITTLE BOY devastated Japan in 1945.

Fuchs had been present for the testing at the Trinity site several weeks before, and now the entire world could see what the CIA and KGB had worked so hard to hide and steal.

“I was impressed,” Gold replied, “impressed, but horrified.”

A Chance Meeting in a Dive Bar

It had been a very long day indeed, and the only thing I could bring myself to do was sit at the bar, elbows sticking sickly to the counter, and drink away the paycheck I hadn’t made yet.  Wasn’t going to make, in fact, as of an hour before.

Or maybe it was three hours.  I really don’t know how long I sat there, listening to the clinking of glasses being washed because they’d been idle too long.  No one ever came to this particular bar on purpose, and I’d always wondered how it managed to stay open but never cared enough to ask.  Anyhow, the bartender was a burly Eastern European with an ill-fitting handlebar mustache and the only words he knew in English were ‘beer,’ ‘whiskey,’ and ‘on the rocks.’

I started roughly when the door opened, like one snatched from a dream a moment before hitting the ground.  Perhaps I had been sleeping.  The interloper took a seat beside me as I tapped the bar and watched my tab grow.  I lit another cigarette and inspected it as the bartender emptied the ashtray.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” the stranger said softly to the counter, “but I could really use one of those.”

I slid the pack toward him without a word and drained my glass.  It filled itself again as if by magic.

“Thanks,” he said, just as quietly, and produced a shiny new lighter from his coat pocket.  I couldn’t restrain the sidelong glance I gave him then; not only was he one of those smokers- the kind who make such a habit of bumming that they carry their own lighters- but it looked like something he’d lifted from somewhere expensive.  He certainly didn’t smell homeless, but he would have fit right in among the brown paper bottles and aluminum fireplaces.  I’m not one to judge, though, especially since my drinks were on the house that night.  I wasn’t looking forward to the house discovering this fact.

The stranger ignored- or didn’t notice- my expression and fiddled with the lighter, doing the basic sorts of tricks one learns to impress girls at parties.  He sighed, and sighed again; it was getting on my nerves.  How dare this stranger come into my bar, and sigh like he owned the place?

Finally he ordered a complicated-sounding drink which, in light of the language barrier, turned into a dark beer and a shot of cheap whiskey.  He dropped the latter, glass and all, into the beer and threw it back.  As he set it down and motioned for another, he said, “Would you like to know what I found out today?”

Try as I did I couldn’t bring myself to care any less, and I told him so.  He looked me square in the ear canal and declared, “I found out today that I am mad.”

I made a sound, somewhere between a laugh and a snort, that tickled my sinuses and made me cough.  “Did you, now?”

He nodded seriously.  “You can imagine my surprise.”

I met his eyes over my drink and grinned.  “And who told you that you were mad?”

He sighed, deep and mournful, examining his hands on the counter without really seeing them.  “I suppose I’ve always suspected.  It’s hard not to wonder, isn’t it, when you see the mistakes you’ve made and the messes you’ve gotten into.  Gotten other people into.  I never meant to hurt anyone, really,” he insisted, and looked at me sadly, “I thought I could do a good job.  I thought I had done.”

“Who have you hurt?” I asked, fearing some sort of civic duty would soon be forced into battle against my hard-won apathy.

He motioned around the bar.  “You, the bartender….  You didn’t lose your job because of the argument, you know.  You lost it because there’s someone else in line, who will work harder and for less.  You lost it because that’s how the world works these days, and it’s all my fault.”

Without taking my eyes from him I made a mental note of everything visible on and about my person.  Sure, there is nothing unusual about someone newly unemployed finding comfort in a bottle, but had I said something?  Had I done something to reveal the fact?  The whiskey had finished warming my gut and begun work on my brain, and I couldn’t be sure.

“Or the bartender, here,” he continued.  “It’s my fault he’s here.  He doesn’t want to be, I assure you.  He wants desperately to be home, with his wife and daughters.  They live in Kharkiv, you know, in eastern Ukraine.  All five of them share a two room apartment on Karl Marx St. near the English school when the girls teach.  He sends money to them every month so they don’t lose the apartment, even though he’s had to sleep in the bar for almost a year.  His oldest is having a baby, but she’ll miscarry soon.  That’s my fault too.”  He hung his head, “all of it is.”

I could lie.  I could say with dead eyes and a straight face that I was wholly, completely unfazed by his words.  I could convince you, too.  I glanced at the bartender, who continued absently to clean, gazing at a discolored snapshot taped rudely above the register.  Ah.  “Well, that’s a sad story, alright.  Why did you do it?”  I could tell another lie; I could claim I knew why I kept egging him on.

“I didn’t mean to,” he shook his head, “it just sort of… happened.  Everything was going great, life growing and cultures flourishing, and then….” He sighed again- goddammit- “…then, It all went to hell.”

“Well,” I said, against my better judgment, “maybe you should fix it.”

He clucked his tongue and shrugged.  “It’s not so easy though, because I’m mad.  If I wasn’t, I suppose I could fix it, but…” another shrug.  Silence prevailed for a time, and I told myself I would stop tormenting him.  I did.  I swore I would leave him alone, or change the subject; anything to keep his mind off his psychosis.  It takes some digging, but there is a moral center in me somewhere.  “That’s why,” he continued suddenly, “the world is like it is.  That’s why it’s crazy:  because I’m crazy.  Any creation is nothing more than a mirror of its creator.  I’m mad, so it’s mad.  Maybe that means I couldn’t fix it…” He lost himself in thought.

“But if the world is crazy, and you’re crazy, then you are only crazy in comparison with an insane world, correct?”  Sure, I have a moral center, but sometimes it gets a bit… distracted.  I barreled on without awaiting a response.  “So that means you’re perfectly sane!”

He shot me an odd look.  “I don’t think you quite understand.  The world is mad because I created it, and I am mad.  A rational mind cannot create that which is truly irrational, and vice versa.  The only way you can judge the logic of a thing is to compare it to what you consider logical.  All I had in the Beginning was my own mind, and that mind was- and still is- stark, raving mad.”

“The only thing that’s wrong with your mind is that you genuinely believe you created the world!”  I cried triumphantly, throwing back another drink.  His eyes grew dark, but I was too drunk to care.

“You don’t believe me, then?”  his voice carried as much hurt as anger.  I just laughed and shook my head.  “How did I know you’d lost your job?  How did I know about our friend here?” he gestured to the bartender, who mistook the motion as a drink request.  The stranger tried to deny it but the bartender ignored him.

“I’ll tell you how you knew: cold reading.  Ever hear of it?  It’s what psychics to do fool the gullible.  They generalize, infer, and make claims that cannot be refuted for one reason or another.  Simple to do, really, because people are, as a rule, stupid.”

He chuckled then, and patted me on the back pointedly.  “Yes, I suppose they are.  But, hypothetically, what could I do to convince you?”

“You could end the world,” I suggested.  “No big, fiery balls of doom or anything, just uncreate it.” He pointed out that, were he to end the world, I would also no longer be around to convince.  “You could change some major part of history.  Make it so that World War II didn’t happen, or something.  Or would I have not realize anything had changed?”  He shook his head.

My pack of cigarettes had long since disappeared, but suddenly a lit one appeared in his hand.  “Hey, why did you bum from me if you had your own?”

He shrugged.  “It’s a good way to start conversation.”  I couldn’t remember hearing the soft fizz of the lighter, or the click of the lid as it shut, but I chalked that up to the alcohol.  I asked him for one, and he obliged, producing an already lit cigarette from… well, I can’t honestly say where it came from, although I was watching him at the time.  It made me uneasy; there was an aura of self-assurance around him that hadn’t been there before.  He suddenly looked purposeful, almost sinister, and I couldn’t explain it.

Out of nowhere I said, “Sober me up.”  At no point had this thought crossed my conscious mind, but it left my mouth and I immediately wished it hadn’t; he smiled as I dropped my head to my arms.  “I just spent the last several hours getting delightfully hammered, and then I go and ask god to sober me up.  You’re right, the world is mad, and so are all the people in it.”

I’ve been drunk more times than I can count.  Slightly fewer times than that I’ve played the ‘am I good to drive’ game, the answer to which should have probably always been ‘no.’  However, when I’ve been drinking and I begin to contemplate sobering up, my brain likes to play a game as well:  it swears up and down that yes, I absolutely am.  It convinces me, too, until I stand up or get pulled over, or wake up the next morning and realize I don’t remember driving home.  The feeling I had in the bar that night was absolutely, unequivocally, without question not the same thing at all.  Because you see, I was an alcoholic back then.  Still am, truth be told, but that is irrelevant.  I’ve dried out and cleaned up several times over the years, sometimes for months at a stretch.  That is what that night felt like.  Not withdrawls, not the shakes; every cell in my body began a melancholy chorus of ‘How Dry I Am’ like they tend to do when I’ve been oh, so good for oh, so long and just one won’t hurt, now will it?  To celebrate the parched and barren but morally upstanding citizen I’d become.  That night, as I sat next to the creator of the world, I felt the bored, apathetic tug of the ground beneath a wagon I hadn’t been aware of boarding.

“You win,” I muttered, and skulked off to the bathroom to splash water on my face.  The stranger mutter something that sounded like ‘What difference?’  as the door closed behind me.  As I stood in front of the cracked and dirty mirror it occurred to me how much money I’d spent, and how difficult it would be to remove myself from the bar without owning up to it.  I stood there for some time, staring at myself and trying to think.  No option presented itself, so I shrugged and walked back out into the smoky bar.

“Where did he go?”

The bartender stared at me uncomprehendingly and gestured toward the row of shots in front of my spot, and he didn’t stop me as I headed outside, forgetting my lighter and coat.  I went to the next bar, and the next, and the next, looking for god.  That sounds silly, but I did.  Each time I had one drink, and each time I left without paying.  No one stopped me.

I’m still looking.

Prelude to a Sociopath

This may have been a bad idea.

It seemed funny at the time, although I’m not sure why anymore.

I read in a book once, can’t remember the title, that if you make a suicide attempt you have a free pass out of school for a few months.  School’s not that bad, really, just boring.  This seemed like a good idea at the time…

But the knock at the door wasn’t my mom, and I can’t get the belt untied from here.  I hope she comes home soon.

God, this was a really bad idea.

When I came home, I was still laughing. A brand new house, factory sealed and ready for inhabitants.  Even the water was hooked up and working, which made it that much easier to loosen the seals and flood the place.  Thousands of dollars worth of damage~ they may have to tear it down and start from scratch.  We almost got caught, too~ the rent-a-cops pulled up just as we were booking it home.  We had to hide in the little fort we made, dug into the ground and covered with camo net and branches.  We could hear them screaming into their radios, calling for backup while they tried to figure out how to turn off the water.  Fucking pigs.  Make ‘em work for their paycheck, instead of sitting in their patrol cars jerking off to kiddie porn.

Will was supposed to help, too, but he wasn’t home when we went over to get him.  Oh, well, next time.  We will definitely have to do that again some time.  Much more entertaining than tomato sauce on the stucco-

 

Why are the lights on?  The parents should have been asleep ages ago.

I closed the door behind me, quietly, trying in vain to get to my room before they heard me.  Not that it really made a lot of difference~ we stayed out until all hours of the night on a regular basis, and they never cared so long as we didn’t get into trouble.  And since we never got caught, we never got into trouble.

‘Chris?’

Shit.

‘Chris, honey, will you come in here, please?  Se have to talk to you about something.’

I stuck my head in the doorway, looking pointedly annoyed.  ‘I’m really tired.  We were running.  Can this wait?’  ‘Running’ was free running, or parkour.  It involves scaling buildings, jumping from one to another, and most importantly knowing how to fall.  Some friends and I had taken it up recently and it made for a wonderful excuse whenever I was out late; since most of these sorts of activities constitute trespassing they have to be done at night.  To this day I have no idea, given how strict my parents were about everything else, why they were always ok with this particular hobby.

They were both pale, sitting stiffly in their chairs, hands folded in their laps.  Mom looked as if she’d been crying.  I mentally ran through the list of things they might want to discuss~ books and movies I shouldn’t have, things of questionable legality they may have discovered.  I’m pretty good at covering my tracks, but you never know.

‘Sit down.’

I didn’t move, except to shift the backpack I always carried from one hand to another.  I made my face expectant, with a hint of impatience.

They were silent for a moment, and my stomach tightened.  For god’s sake, get on with it.

‘Honey, it’s Will.  They- his parents found him about an hour ago….’

 

I don’t clearly remember going to my room and barricading the door.  I do remember my father pounding on it with a force I didn’t know he possessed.  ‘Chris open the door.  Now.  We need to talk about this.  You need to talk about this.  OPEN THIS DOOR.’

I didn’t, of course.  I was shaking uncontrollably at this point, unable to move even enough to take off my jacket let alone walk the hundred miles to the door and somehow get it open again.  Not that I would have anyway.

 

They decided to station themselves in the hallway, taking turns muttering useless clichés about how all things work together for good and other such drivel.  I’m assuming that’s what they said, anyway.  Moments, or hours, or days passed before I was able to put on my headset, the soothing sounds of black metal pummeling my eardrums.  I’m sure I thought about something, I’m sure I cried.  I’m sure I was hungry at some point, and needed to pee, I’m sure I picked up my cards and started to practice some new techniques I’d learned.  This last, at least, I know for sure because it was weeks before the blisters and gashes healed enough for me to pick them up again.  I must have shuffled and cut and dealt and fanned for days.

 

After a while, I don’t know how long, I did leave my room.  The parents had left for work, and the brother was… well, no one cares where he was.  I certainly didn’t, so long as he wasn’t where I happened to be.

The hallway to the kitchen seemed much longer than it had even when I was small.  There was a small plate of food in the fridge~ an uncommon display of consideration on the part of my mother.  I ate without heating it up and then, still more than a little dazed, chose the strongest belt I could find in my father’s closet and shut my door.

That’s how Will had done it~ with a belt.  He was much shorter than I, though, and the rod in the closet wasn’t high enough for me to swing properly.  I racked my brain for other options.

I must have gotten angry then~ angry at Will, at myself, at anything that was handy.  The usual stage of grief, I suppose, only this, too, is merely a black period akin to those during a night of especially heavy drinking.  I needed new furniture though, and new clothes and the window had to be replaced.  Everything had to be replaced, so thoroughly had I destroyed whatever was unfortunate enough to find its way into my hands.  My parents were not pleased, but they said nothing.  I suppose they were preferred the destruction to the anticipated alternative.

 

The worst part, though, was the coming weeks.  Everyone tiptoed around me as if I’d been the one who tried to off myself.  I went with some friends to visit his mom.  She was an understandable wreck, but we all were, I suppose, so we just sat there in our mutual grief and played the game, saying the things we were supposed to say and leaving when the script ran out.  Thing is, I don’t think anyone- even his mother- was taking it as hard as I was, myself.  But maybe that’s an arrogant thing to say.  I don’t care.  I’m still pretty sure it’s true.

After the funeral I started spending more time with my brother and his friends.  Mindless conversation with people who hadn’t known Will was vastly preferable to being around people who had.  But one can only stand mindlessness for so long, and gradually I retreated into myself, into my books and cards.  I made a point of showing up to church functions, not that I was given an option, but suddenly the absence of connection to these people and things that had once been so important became painfully obvious~ to me, at least.  I don’t want to say that part of me died with Will.  That’s overly dramatic and ridiculous.  But the thread that joins people is fine and fickle and that had snapped with the belt when they cut him down.

I’ve always been very self-aware.  It’s a bit of a weakness, in a way.  Anything and everything is examined and analyzed ad nauseam in even the most insignificant of situations and this tendency took hold of my mind with such force that even had I been so inclined I could not have controlled it.  I was not so inclined, as it happened, and after some years of dedicated effort the effects began to show, if only to me.

Everyone has a moment of crisis in their lives, a moment that alters them irreparably.  Most people don’t encourage this change.  Most people don’t decide in advance who they want to become, what path they wish to take, at such a young age.  Who they become is usually a by-product of years of living, not the result of a carefully executed methodical formula.

‘You do like her though, right?’

Shrug ‘Yeah, sure.  I mean she’s hot and all so, why not?’ I grinned.

‘So ask her out.’

‘I don’t want a relationship, though.  You know that.  I’m going to be a bachelor.’

‘No one said you had to marry her.’

I laughed.  ‘Well obviously.  Ok how about this:  I’ll flip a coin.  Heads, I ask her out.  Tails, I don’t.’

Lucas laughed too.  ‘Oh, that’s real nice.  Alright, go for it.’

I flipped.  Heads.  I grinned and dialed her number.  ‘Hey, Sarah, it’s Chris.  I was just wondering…’

‘She said yes?’

I rolled my eyes.  ‘Of course she said yes.  Who do you think you’re talking to, here?’

‘I think that’s worth at least one man point.’  Years ago the 4 of us- Lucas, Dan, Mathews (whose first name was Jerry, but because of me no one in the youth group at church called him that) and myself- had developed a point system based on the manliness of a given act, covering everything from casual asides to sex and whatever else came up that seemed manly.  At any given time everyone was certain that he was winning.  What they invariably failed to take into account was that I never lose.  Not that it made any real difference, and no one got anything if they won, but even so.

‘1?  What kind of shit is that?  It’s worth at least 5.  I’ve been messing with her for weeks now.  One minute she thinks I’m in love with her, and the next she’s in tears.  I could call her back and say ‘o by the way, I’ve been fucking your sister for the past month.  We’re still on for Friday though, right?’ and she’d cry, maybe, but she’d be there.’

‘Dude, that’s kind of fucked up.  I mean, you’re treating her like shit.’

‘O i am not.  Just having a little fun.  I’ll be nicer now that we’re together, I guess.  Maybe.’ I laughed.  Lucas shook his head.  He didn’t approve of my games, but that’s because he couldn’t play them.  He’s always the one on the leash, bending over backwards for a girl who would, in all likelihood, leave him for me if I so chose.  I wouldn’t do that, of course, because he’s my friend.  But if not for me they always leave him for someone else.  Always.  I would teach him how to play, but… well, if I did that I couldn’t manipulate him as well.  And really, with someone like Lucas, if you’re going to spend any kind of time with him, you really have to know how to maintain control of the situation.  Otherwise he throws a fit when he doesn’t get what he wants, and you have to try to pacify him… He might as well be a girl in that respect.  So I don’t teach him, and he complains that I’m mean to women.  Maybe I am, but I tend to look at it as a social experiment.  I like to see how people react under different circumstances.  It’s research.

The problem is, sometimes I get sucked in.  Every once in a while I realize I’m beginning to genuinely care about the person and it’s a struggle to regain control.  I have to distance myself, disappear to think, to read, to contemplate, and then I can return, once more in full control.  Women don’t tend to like this, and despite my mastery of the art of lying occasionally they suspect that I’m not telling them everything.  I always have to laugh at this, later, because if they were aware of the full scope of things they know nothing about… Well, I won’t allow that to happen.  And all you need is a little doubt.  They can catch you red-handed at something and with a few choice words and some Oscar-worthy acting you’re not only back in their good graces but usually they’ll give you a few extra brownie points to boot.

In this way I can maintain a relationship for exactly as long as it suits me.  The desire to appear ‘normal’, to avoid drawing attention to myself, demands that I have the occasional girlfriend.  Appearing normal is of the utmost importance.  Moderately preppy clothes, hobbies and interests that, while not strictly common, are not seen as deviant in any way, a solid group of friends with varying degrees of insight into who I am beneath the bullshit~ such things are indispensable.  I have, of course, made mistakes in regards to who I share my real passions with, but no mistake is so grave that it cannot be managed and eventually rectified.

For instance, only a few people know that Machiavelli’s The Prince and The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Green are my bibles.  These are the philosophies that have shaped my life, because during my months of introspection, it was these works that seemed to be the most truthful, the most real, and the most conducive to my eventual rule of the known world.

This, of course, is my ultimate goal.  I have conditioned myself to be a man of power, and so shall I be.  And if not the world as a whole, I will undoubtedly rule my corner of it~ this I can guarantee.

tune of the idiot flute players

ignore us, please, he’s not myself today and neither are they but are they ever?  who can say?  not i, not i says the cat from the bottom of the lake.  he hides there, when the moon is full of shadows and secrets and why don’t we join him?  we two, with nothing better to do but stand here and watch the dripping of the cherub’s wings, falling softly on the snow and staining it white.

we are not we and we are not they and why would we why should we how could we, indeed?  it cannot be done beneath this purple son and that is why we flee with the cat and his minions and the mice after them, falling through space and crying aloud into the audient void, heedless of the music of the idiot flute players as they herald our approach.  the chaotic god he sits and waits with infinite impatience while we dance and twirl in the absence of space and the clustering claustrophobia of the endlessly empty aether.  we swim it through, hoping to find ourselves or something resembling to take back with us where?  home?  home is nowhere, home is now here, home is naught so why bother?  why indeed.  the insects crawl in crystalline beauty across the face of the shattered clock, crumpled hands desperately inching along to the ticking in their heads, trying to maintain order in this madness and happily failing.

i too am happily failing and who better than i?  this is my legacy, this failure, and in it’s embrace i am full and loved and whole and i fill it within myself.  the colors respond to their flavors with distaste but i savor the rancor, obsessed with the bitter fruit of my downfall and who better to share it with than you, my temporary soul mate, my momentary friend?  you will not last, tho i will of course for this is my world in which i am merely a guest and so what then, are you?  a trespasser, an intruder, a nonexistant entity whom i must immediately expel.  and with no more than that you are gone and no more and so to whom am i speaking?  the others, the infinite masses parading through this world of theirs in which i happily trespass, joyfully invade and in ecstasy malign.  you shall not conquer here, nevermind that the battle is over and won and the loser hangs from the throne while the winner swings from the cross.  i stand here with the hangman’s noose awaiting my newest companion… come hither and allow me to christen you my lover, my friend, my eternal mate!  with this rope i thee wed and i place it around your graceful neck as future insurance of that inevitable day when i no longer hate you.  come to me and feel my loathing and i will shower you with refuse and call you my own.

and the idiot flute players play on into the abyss…