The Motions; An Echelon of Beauty Part 1
**Note: I worked on this project throughout college and, at the time, I really dug it. But, I dunno, I’m really trying to salvage this thing but I’m rapidly concluding that this is beyond repair. I mean, is it possible to “repair” something that didn’t work in the first place? But fuck it I tried.
Chapter 1:
This place is exhausted. It’s tired and in fact even a school bus couldn’t wake the dreaming son as his skull is crushed beneath. I know that I dream of things like avoiding potholes and mowing the lawn without missing any patches of grass. And every single day a billion alarm clocks sell another lie that today might be brighter than the one before. What can be said for a narcoleptic other than the fact that he might be on to something that the rest of us are too intoxicated to see.
Something like three million years ago some jester enhanced a seed with a mutation that delivered a novel chemical to its progeny and it thrived because the first animal to ingest its leaves and spread its seed enjoyed the first stimulant-enhanced rush of consciousness and agility. The new plant thrived and seemed to bring morning to the earth. As man conquered earth and the jester’s leaves were consumed rapidly, bringing the species to feats unimaginable both before and after. But it was only then that the jester laughed because as the exhausted population strove to live in a world of least control, ignoring the world of most control, his joke had finally come to fruition.
As I drove to work at 8:30 in the morning, shifting into fifth, I spilled some steaming, shit-flavored liquid that the gas station booth had labeled coffee onto my wrist. I didn’t feel a thing. I continued holding onto the steering wheel’s twelve o’clock, and leaned forward, nearly touching the chilled windshield with my forehead. Ten cars formed an unbroken funeral procession line in front of me but they had all forgotten to engage their headlights. The trailing car, which had found its way directly in front of my view, reflected a blinding yellow ray of sunlight and I squinted, annoyed. I, like everyone else, had grown tired of the sun centuries ago. As the road veered left, the reflections shifted and I could finally read the black bumper sticker three feet in front of my hood, floating above the street, but not floating so much as being dragged by a giant toy of steel.
The letters were small and white and for twenty minutes I tried intensely to read the words, causing me to miss the exit that would have carried me to work, and the two following. I didn’t know where I was, only that I had crossed into a neighboring city, but the beautiful bumper sticker reading, “Jesus evolved from a fish,” was finally singing its song. I realized that it was God’s funeral that they were headed to on that Monday morning and I decided to join them.
I licked the drying coffee off my fingers, smiling as I realized it tasted more like actual coffee after it had been spilt. It reminded me of a friend I had growing up. He didn’t quite live with a white trash cunt who must have thought he looked an awful lot like her ex-husband since she would fuck all four of him when her stock of vodka was full enough. I knew him from grade school up and we were friends up until high school graduation, when he split a bottle cap in two with a triangular rock and used its edge to slit not his wrists but his ankles. I didn’t care to remember his name, since doing so would undoubtedly ruin the pleasant taste of coffee that still lingered on the roof of my mouth. Mother and son; lover and victim, lived in the best trailer that she could afford. It consisted of four rooms, a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and a room in the back she used to store her empty bottles. I met my friend on the day their trailer broke down It broke next to a patch of woods a few streets from my house. They were headed west, looking for a man that had left them alone, yet together, which really amounted to being alone but not left alone, and I had watched, in the pure wonder of a five year old, as a few men from the neighborhood, including my father, helped her drag it into a park, where it’s been ever since, the flat tires left to rot, and the front hitch buried in weeds.
My friend came to mind only because he developed a habit after his mother had slept with him the first time during high school. He would come over my house, usually in the evening, but sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes crying, but mostly laughing at the sun or the moon, whichever happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and always carrying with him ten or so bottles, filled with fluids of ranging color, never anything he refused to identify or explain. The bottles, however, were always used liquor or beer bottles, and it was obvious where they had originated.
I grew to look forward to the days he came over, always unannounced, with a bag of filled bottles, as I was able to watch something I knew wasn’t meant for this world, and certainly not meant for me. We would go down to the dried out swimming pool where no one came anymore because a little girl had been dumped there after god-knows-what and ever since a sort of fog forever hung in the air. It seemed to infiltrate your lungs, producing almost immediate exhaustion.
He’d jump down into the cement base of the pool, catching himself with a palm while holding the bag of curious bottles high above his head so that they wouldn’t accidentally hit the cement and shatter. A couple times he’d slip, and the bag would land a foot in front of him, the liquid seeping out of some holes, disappearing into the pool’s drain. On those nights, he’d howl in pain, and I’d hold him tight in my arms, glimpsing a void in his eyes that threatened to engulf me. I learned to hold his arms back on those nights after he had thrusted the nearest shard of glass into his wrists, working it back and forth, making ribbons of beautiful god-given flesh. I’d cry with him on those nights and I have never found the need to cry since.
Most of the time, he caught himself with a purpose, and held a hand up to help me into the pool. He always helped me down carefully, yet he never seemed to see me. I know that everything physical had become invisible, and everything abstract such as our friendship served as his contours of space during our special nights. With care and precision unknown to most, he would remove each bottle, one by one, and line them up in a specific order, as was evident by the thirty minutes of arrangement that ensued after the bag had been emptied. I never could find a pattern to the line of bottles, but my friend saw something that kept his vision and body rigidly working until he could finally sigh in satisfaction. Immediately after finding their correct order, he’d picked the bottle back up, one at time, and smashed them with all his strength onto the cement. Glass would fly and the liquid would splash us both. The one time I was brave enough and curious enough to taste a drop on my ankle I felt a burning sensation so excruciating that I was careful to avoid ever tasting anything that spilt onto me. When all the bottles had been broken, he’d turn to me, beaming with joy, tears streaming down his face, laughing, hugging me, thanking me, cursing his hands, and then he’d twirl, dance, and sing. Sometimes, he’d grab my hands in his, and we’d spin in a dance that our bodies controlled, while we screamed in ecstasy, laughing at how stupid everything was. Not even God could make something so beautiful out of something so ugly. And for that, I loved my friend.
