Did you Know that I loved You Part 3
Before meeting his wife, the catalyst in which his life finally found its proper fairway, Sean drove a garbage truck. When he began, twenty-one years old with an unblemished bachelors of science in philosophy, his arms were not those of a man. And it was often this smaller stature that was the center of conversation amongst his coworkers. Riding along the crisp streets at five in the morning, stopping every hundred feet to load overfilled garbage bags that stank of human essence, they would ridicule him. They deftly left the heaviest bags for Sean, patting his shoulder with a stained glove, saying that a real garbage man tossed the sacks of junk into the crushing machine rather than carry them for even the shortest distances. Struggling to lift some of those black bags, bags that in truth the others would have carried with no less than two men, Sean was appropriately unable to make any reasonable pitch towards the back of the truck. And when the bag, filled with used diapers, full bottles of aged milk, bacon grease, inexplicable ziplock bags filled with dirty water or sewage, used yet empty condoms, fell to his feet, the others would chuckle forcibly and offer Sean assistance,
“Maybe it’d be easier if you didn’t try to take it all at once bud.” Grabbing the bag by its collar, the charitable man would drag it swiftly across the pavement, causing its variably disastrous contents in an arched line in front of the perspiring and embarrassed Sean. Most often food and food containers but sometimes used syringes and on one occasion a decomposing cat would expose themselves.
But as Sean cleaned the debris, watched calmly by the fat, hungry, tired, heavily dressed, seemingly always cold despite the exaggerated insulation, smoking cigarettes, one gloved hand holding its partner glove so that the burning cigarette could be gripped more intimately, yet sated, Sean was able to see the people who had hidden such debris. He realized that a person’s garbage revealed not who they were, but who they wished to be, something far more personal and telling. It was the rotten fruit in sealed plastic grocery bags, the unopened and expired weight-loss solutions, weights or textbooks, or the unopened box of expired condoms, half withered flowers, a big book, torn credit card bills, most of them torn while still inside their envelopes, the unused pregnancy tests (more common than Sean could have predicted), CDs that were useless in the modern era of digital music but had evidently remained untouched in their useful years, ingredients, milk, opened and used once but since gone bad, and the childhood toys that represented the honest and unadulterated self-dishonesty that had pervaded some visits to the grocery store, or some new year’s resolutions, or promises to loved ones or hated ones, or gods. Sean had found one item, however, that he was unable to return to the refuse, that he instantly realized belonged to someone in a sense that went well beyond the definitions of property rights or lack thereof according to Locke and Hobbes and Rousseau. It was something that Sean had to right to handle or take as his own, and he hunched down, fingering his shoe laces with one hand while discreetly tucking it under his sock with the other.
At home, in his kitchen, which was only a kitchen because of the small fridge and not because it actually contained any semblance of food or cookware, Sean dumped his bagged treasure onto a small wooden table that was a kitchen table only because it sat close to the fridge, a handful of alcoholics anonymous chips fell almost silently, their plastic tapping the wood lightly as they spread out before him, revealing a green three months, a golden year, a golden two years. Sean picked up the heaviest one, made of what appeared to be bronze adorned with a roman numeral ten in the middle of a heavy triangle. Holding it firmly, Sean wanted to know not who this person was, and not who this person had once wanted to be, but as if he were holding a child, wanted to know who this person had been and no longer was.
Sean saw a man standing before a lectern, reaching out, handing that bronze coin to an older man, one who had seen much worse than Dante could have envisioned and had awoken, not dazed nor blinded as Plato would have insisted, but rather humbled, sympathetic, serene but still encouraged, complacent yet driven. The older man accepted the coin and the two embraced briefly. And the youth faded so that the accomplished, or simply aged, could address those seated before him, applauding the transference of a piece of metal. And because Sean was envisioning these people in the will of his own mind, he could see something in the man’s eyes that no other guest had been privy to. He saw a subtle sense of earthly wisdom, of human wisdom, not that of god’s, or poets, or those who had seen much yet become unaware of how much remained to be seen. It was the extent of maturity, the upper limit to experience. No longer was there the look of a child, no awe, wonder, curiosity, or excitement. The mysteries of sobriety and the forces of potential had withered into less than traces and the realities of both lives were finally combined into the man’s first true connection with the universe. And the man hadn’t even thanked the crowd, but rather he turned abruptly and departed, trying his best to circumvent the false hope that was emanating so loudly, so disastrously from the eyes of those children, all because of what he had done. And holding the coin that seemed to cool in his grip rather than warm, Sean suddenly understood the blank stare that was so characteristic of the recently deceased. It was not the emptiness of temple that often caused a witness to shiver in a new kind of discomfort, not the lack of soul because in those moments the spirit very much remained. But rather, it was the final step of growth, the same place that man had discovered behind a lectern in front of a crowd of celebrated ignorance, that which surpasses the mortal maturity and experience, finally quelling the wonder, fear, and amazement of all the possibilities one could imagine. All of those dreams fenced from us only by life and its chains to reality. Because, like the sober man, they had realized all possible lives, and in their realization they discovered that the goal was no place, it was simply the end of ground, when the path stopped leading someplace but rather ceased its function, and like Ponce De Leon, they had discovered that the fountain of youth was simply a lake unlike no other, and had drowned themselves in it, the emptiness that followed the disruption of wonder to be far too much weight to swim with.
Sean dropped Greg off. Rolling slowly, he scanned the opposite side of the divider, not actually interested in finding another fare but rather watching out of habit while hoping that there would be no fare. Because after their conversation, Sean looked forward to a simple drive, the window cracked to allow a slightly cool sensation to float along the tip of his head, returning to his usual post-marriage, stably loveless streets, corners, and lights where, rather than doubt the sanity of an organ that perpetually beats, and beats, and beats, from its moment of theoretical birth to the moment it begins its decay, he could focus more on the comparisons between fashion and superficial catastrophe.
Had there been a fare, however, he would have taken it further, or closer, or neither, to his familiar destination because an overlooked opportunity tended to haunt him while no opportunity at all left him in peace. As his chest filled with what was soon intended to be a sigh of relief, a palm smacked his trunk several times.
Sean glanced into his mirror, seeing a thinly bearded man in his late thirties, donning an ironed black suit and colorful tie that was unparalleled by anything in Sean’s closet. For a moment, Sean’s foot rested on the gas pedal, asking his frontal lobe permission to accelerate, to leave this place of zero sum, equal gratitude, regrets, gifts, and losses and to escape the fact that not only was he going to have to once again carry someone else, but that person came equipped with a style that surpassed his own. The man was holding a briefcase, resting it on the trunk, pointing into the empty back seat, muttering somewhat of a question, but not really inquiring just simply stating because even Sean knew that this man’s status clearly demonstrated that he deserved what he felt the need to take.
Sean stopped and the man entered the backseat, hugging his briefcase to his chest. Sean pressed the red button atop his meter and a barely audible whining began.
“Where to?” Sean asked. Not until the man had adjusted himself in the seat, calmly and carefully placing his briefcase between his feet and stripped off both black leather gloves did he reply,
“Sends-Brown Auditorium please.”
