Teeth Pt. III

I recline, eyes closed, and pretend to be asleep. I pretend to dream, and in that non-dream I pretend to be a Builder, constructing the world around me.

Some electronic device is beeping softly in the next room. If I am in control of my world, then I ought to be able to make those beeps last longer.

I concentrate on slowing down the world around me. I picture a peach-pit, for some reason. I probe its texture with my pretend-self, and it seems that each beep from the other room describes another furrow on its surface. Long beep, deep ravine. Short beep, shallow.

I try to concentrate, but something prevents me. It’s hard to explain.

I feel like raw skin, cicatrized. They took the sutures out too soon; I’m in danger of splitting along the seams. Any sudden movement could unpeel me.

Once on a boat off California’s coast, she and I watched off the starboard bow as the captain told us,

“What you don’t want to do is dart your eyes all over the place. You’ll never spot one if you do that. You’ve got to relax your vision. Look out into the horizon. Your eyes will automatically focus on it if a plume goes up. Just relax your vision.”

There’s a new tone, very faint---coming from the hallway. I know that pitch. I know what it means.

They don’t like to tell the patients, but I figured it out.

I understand why they don’t want me to know. The imminence of death is a difficult thing to accept. Not for me. I’m more afraid of my past than my future.

I wish I could put a frame around it. I wish I could tend and prune it like a bonsai. I want to place it upon my mantle, I want to look at my past with a snifter of brandy in hand and think, that was that.

Instead I’m stuck without a conclusion, an impassioned speech (full of sound and fury) but no end-piece. Life is a candle melting into a pool wax, but the wax will stay there a very long time, pooled at the bottom, the wick submerged or burnt completely---useless.

The lights come up but the credits continue to scroll up the screen.

“So, what’d you think?”

Well, to be honest I’m stuck between “Fuck everybody” and “Please love me.”

I was born in agony and I am slowly dying in agony, and I bore the pain myself both times, naked, alone, unknowing. I spent my whole life learning, being taught: how to read, how to speak, how to use the toilet. And now I can’t do any of those things properly, so what do I have to show for it? I read the story of my life, then promptly forgot it as I lived it, and now I realize the whole time I was burning fuel, and I’m just about on empty. So fuck everybody.

On the other hand I feel like a hot air balloon whose mooring has been severed, and now I’m drifting upwards and it’s marvelous but the further I ascend, the smaller everything gets, until I can’t even remember what I’ve forgotten, and it’s becoming cold and I’m, I’m scared. So please love me.

Teeth, Pt. 2

There’s a story in my head of a man---I think the man was me---who got sick of making his own decisions. He was sulking at home contemplating his worries one day and his Scottish sheepdog came to bother him for a walk.

At that very moment he made a bold---some would say rash---decision. He deputized all his decision-making to his dog, Melba.

He set out across the Nebraskan countryside, the dog’s thick leather leash wrapped around his arm. Nicked and peeling, but still a strong leash, working its way deeper into the skin of his arm with each tug of his guide.

For two months he continued.  He ate what it ate, slept where it slept, shat where it shat. It was a lot of fun actually. Of course Scottish sheepdogs are well known for their herding abilities, and Melba was a credit to her lineage.

He had a purpose out there, sleeping in cornfields and railyards. He was trying to blow off his destiny. He was trying to trick his own fate by pitting it against pure instinct.

Needless to say, it didn’t work out for him. He knew it wouldn’t, but he had to try. The dog ate some mushrooms at the base of an old oak tree. The man knew the mushrooms were poisonous and he couldn’t bring himself to eat the deadly amanitas, which he knew from his youth to never touch.

A fire built near the site of the dog’s death. Shoveling like a beast with his fingers, a shallow pit dug into the moist post-rain soil. The dog buried under the forgetting earth, tears shed into my bread as I ate.

What do I care about memories, anyway? I think as I wipe my ass. Memories are vestigial. I’ve got no need for them. They’re an appendix and better to get rid of them than wait around until they get infected and do some damage.

Teeth, Pt. 1

Just the teeth and eyes are all that’s left. The rest of me evaporated to the surface of the sun.

When I was born they wrote a book about my life, and every day I’ve had to tear out one of the pages, wad it up and stuff it down my throat.

Now just a few pages and the index remain. If I concentrate, I can recall a few things. Like,

Army, see Military Service.
Military Service,
World War I, 33-76, 37m
National Reserves, 88-100

Also:

DePaul University,
        Undergraduate, 78-95
        Professor of Literature, 226-300

And:

Homosexuality,
        Discovery of, 11-12, 14
        Repression of, 22-32, 74, 90, 103-109, 155, 176, 200-202, 228, 235
        Public revelation of, 289-295

I sit on the edge of my hospital bed holding an old photograph, yellowed around the edges. A sharp-framed army cadet standing there, squinting into the sun. I’m able to conjure a character, like a cartoon, and I try to tell myself That’s you, that’s who you are.

There has been no grace in my aging. I am falling apart, piece by piece. Grace was just one of the first things to go. All I have left now are teeth and eyes.

The cartoon climbs out of the photograph and starts marching around my bedspread, big grin. Learned professor, decorated veteran. Decorated for what? I have no medals or diplomas now. They evaporated along with everything else useful.

I have only moments left.

But the greatest moments of my life may have been the greatest moments of any one’s. I’m sure there are many people who have had greater.

But still, I had a few.

I wish I could continue to live and grow like a tree, not bothering anybody, not needing anybody just living and pulling water from the ground and my food from the sun.

As I get up to use the toilet I pass Cherie, lying in the other bed. She’s nothing more than a puddle in that bed now. Soon she’ll be completely dried up, she’ll be just a stain on those sheets. And then they’ll wash the sheets.

I have only moments left, but moments are elastic. I can twist moments around my fingers like a rubber band. Stretch them until they snap. But what happens then?

As I sit on the toilet contemplating my incontinence, it occurs to me that if I were to have a stroke at this very moment and die, it would be convenient for the cleaning crew. When I inevitably shit myself, it’ll go straight in the bowl.

How many people in history have died sitting on the crapper? How many of them dreamed of dying that way? When they imagined their personal destinies, did any of them think they would expire on a toilet-paper-lined greasy plastic toilet lid?

Did any of them think how convenient that would be for the cleaning crews?

IV

(The end to this story took a long time to figure out. I have serious misgivings. Any suggestions are appreciated.)

The sugar in my çay had settled and turned to sludge at the bottom of the cup. I was aware of several things without knowing why: the cry of a corn vendor in the distance, the sweat on my forehead, the wires above me humming with energy...

“And that’s it. They never caught him. What do you think of that?”

Music from a passing car radio, the film developing inside...cuts on his fingers...

I thought for a long minute. Then for a longer minute I thought nothing. Then I spoke.

“Well, I think your story isn’t finished.”

“No?”

“No. A story is an answer. An unfinished story is a question, and a question is an unfinished story. What you’ve just done is ask me a question.”

“And what question is that?”

A tram ringing its bell the next street over. A rat scurrying down the gutter.

“The answer is No, Emre, in spite of everything you’ve said and done, I do not have it within me to hate you.”

Emre Çağan fished the lemon slice out of his cup of çay with his thick fingers. He put it to his mouth and loudly sucked the flesh from the rind. Tossing the cup behind him he walked toward me, then past me, and into the slow-moving crowd along the Sandemir marina.

III

“Now, up until this point the story I’ve told you is hardly remarkable. Bored rich man murders hapless poor man. Happens every day, believe me. What’s interesting comes next.”

Emre ran to the police station and on the way he purposely tore his clothes and scuffed his shoes. He showed up in front of the captain, who was startled from his nap to see the young man standing in his office, panting.

Emre explained he was nearly stabbed and had to defend himself from the booze-frenzied Kurd. Sobbing, he collapsed in a folding chair and covered his face with his hands.

Due process took its course. Emre showed up in court and put on a similiar performance, with Mr. Çağan showing up to testify, tearfully, to his son’s love of peace. Every man, woman and child in the room was wrapped around his finger. The evidence the prosecutor produced, solid though it was, might as well have been made of fairy dust as far as the jury was concerned.

So of course Emre wasn’t convicted. Actually he came out of it a hero.

But whatever Emre was trying to release by murdering that drunk didn’t make it out. It seemed like it would, but really it just poked out its slimy little head, looked around a bit, then receded back into Emre, digging itself in deeper.

I guess when you set out to do something, and you pull it off on the first try, it’s hard to stop there. For men with brains hard-wired for success like Mr. Emre Çağan Jr., it’s impossible.

So he goes out one night and he picks off a drifter sleeping on the beach. The cops had to have found the body eventually, but no one ever heard of it.

A month later it’s a beggar who hangs out by the exit to the old castle and bugs the tourists for their lira.

And so on.

Emre never changes his methods. You’d think a smart guy like that wouldn’t leave such an obvious clue, but then again maybe that’s how he thinks. Chokes them with a wire every time.

And he never takes a hit. Sure, he gets arrested. Guy’s been arrested dozens of times. They put him through the whole rigmarole and every time the whole town flocks to his side like gulls to a dead fish.

Find something that works, then stick with it. Choke a vagrant to death, get yourself scuffed up, play the victim. I don’t know whether he just thought his reputation was that good, or he thought his dad could buy him out of any trouble, or maybe he was just losing it.

But I’ll tell you what, it did work. Not for the reason Emre thought it would. The public let him off because he had become their representative. Their savior. Their strike back against all the Untouchables who spoil the views from their terraces, stink up their bus stations. The good hardworking citizens of Anamur hate those people, and simultaneously they hate themselves for hating them.

So when they acquit Emre they acquit themselves. And there’s one less flaw in their crystal lives.

II

In the south, on the Mediterranean coast, there’s a small fishing town, Anamur. In the summers it’s a hot spot for vacationing businessmen and their families. There are a handful of luxury hotels and gourmet restaurants, and a ferry that runs daily to Cyprus. All of these are owned by one very wealthy man, Emre Çağan.

Mr. Çağan had a son, named after himself. Young Emre led a very comfortable life, as you might imagine, growing up in a resort. Never wanting for anything, a new car each year, single but many girlfriends---you get the picture.

Tourism money doesn’t get to everybody in Anamur; some of the population still scrapes out a living on 30-year-old fishing trawlers. Those without boats work in the fields growing strawberries and taro, and those who can’t work in the fields, beg.

Sometimes when Emre emerged from his palatial home he had to step over a sleeping bum to get to his Porsche. Like young Siddhartha, the contrast disturbed him.

There was an old Kurd who used to wait by the bus station to panhandle tourists when they arrived. Everyone knew he was an alcoholic, but he had been loitering at that same station for so many years that he was considered a fixture of the neighborhood.

One night in June, not unlike any other except for an unseasonably chill sea breeze, the Kurd was sitting and rolling a cigarette. The last bus from Antalya had already arrived and departed to Adana. He thought to turn and ask the man behind him for a light, and as he did he felt a thin cord pulled around his neck with sudden violence.

After a brief, languid struggle the Kurd expired there on the cold concrete platform.

I

Annoyed with the slow-moving crowd of gawking shoppers on Sandemir marina, I stepped off the curb and nearly collided with another pedestrian.

Where I had bounced off my left foot and put my right forward, he had advanced his left, pushing off with his right. We were both momentarily startled, and I took the opportunity to raise the camera hanging around my neck and take the man’s picture.

He was squat, or squashed---he looked like he was under a lot of pressure. Thick Turkish eyebrows, nostril hairs protruding. Sweat on his neck, cuts on his fingers.

“Hey, did I give you permission to shoot my picture pal?”

“No. This is a public place, you have no reasonable expectation to privacy.”

“Well fine then, how about I take your picture?”

I couldn’t think of a reason why he shouldn’t. I handed him the Canon and watched him adjust the focus. It occurred to me that maybe I should smile, but I didn’t.

“Alright,” he said. “Let’s take a look.”

“We can’t. It’s film. I need to get it developed.”

“Yeah, I know. There’s a photolab just over here, let’s go now.”

There was a one-hour wait, and they wouldn’t let us smoke cigarettes inside, so we leaned against a brick wall in the alley behind the place. I bought us plastic cups of cherry-colored çay from a street vendor, and we stood and smoked and sipped uneasily.

I looked up at a grey and stolid sky through electrical wires hanging in the alley and thought I saw the lines of a musical staff imposed on the clouds. A single gull flew in a diagonal and played a whole octave from low to high.

“So we might as well get to know one another,” he said, withdrawing another Camel from a pocket inside his jacket.

“I’m curious to know where you were headed in such a hurry.”

“I’ve got a letter to mail.”

I glanced at my watch. Only just after noon.

“The post office will be open for another four hours. What’s the rush?”

“That’s just how I walk. What’s your rush?”

“I was wandering.”

“Just a fast walker like me, huh?”

“On the contrary. I intend to spend all afternoon wandering, and I have no time to waste.”

The man snorted loudly and looked like he was about to spit but didn’t. Cigarette smoke curled around his knuckles.

We stood for some time, silently sipping and smoking.

“I am curious,” I said. “What would you have done had I not allowed you to take my picture?”

“Son, I would have knocked you silly.”

I almost laughed aloud and had to take a big gulp of tea to hide it.

“It’s not that I minded having my picture taken,” he continued. “You’re right; it’s a public place and in these times you can’t go anywhere public without getting on camera. But it’s the fact that you bumped into me, and then didn’t apologize.”

“It wasn’t my fault. Or yours. It was just an accident.”

“Yeah, I know that. But a man can’t go around letting people bump into him, even if it’s no one’s fault.”

“Why not?” I knew I was infuriating him.

“I bet you’re the kind of guy---” he took a slow drag of his cigarette--- “who prances around all day, taking pictures of pretty birds and sunsets and doesn’t really give two shits about the human beings around him.”

“Well yes, I do like pretty birds, and sunsets always send a chill down my spine, but it’s not true that I don’t care about people. On the contrary, I love almost everyone I see.”

He snorted again and looked at his wristwatch. “Alright, kid. Looks like we’ve got another 40 minutes, so I’m going to tell you a story. If you’re smart, it’ll really help you a lot. If you’re not smart, or you’re not paying attention, then my breath is wasted and no one can say I didn’t give you a fair chance.”