Deconstructo

The window-blind filtered sunlight tracks arrested their creeping advance on his closeted corneas. The warmth on his face and the brightness of the room launched him upright – an act in tandem with knowing he was late, impossibly late – and hopelessly, he fell back and rubbed his eye sockets with the heels of his palms. Screw this, he thought, rotating his hands counter and clockwise. Screw this, I will be late, I’m not really late, I’ve already put in enough hours, I know there’s just a few things that need to be taken care of at the office, the only way I can keep myself from hating this job is if right now, I remove the sense of urgency and just take my own sweet time getting in. It is the only way. He enjoyed being salaried – it offered a lot of freedom – but he did not enjoy the ridiculous hours required of him.

He told himself this is only the short term: this has been a bad week, next week there is next to nothing to do. He could get back to having a social life again. He could get back to feeling normal again. Monday hadn’t been too bad - Tuesday hadn’t been too bad, either. Wednesday night however, his sleep became interrupted with dreams that the cell was vibrating next to him; dreams that he was at his computer and on the phone and the person on the other end was asking him to do all these complex operations that he either could not remember or had never been told how to do. The odd-hour, late work shifts from early in the week were catching up to him – he was catching naps at every possible opportunity, but never resting. He would always awake with a start, his heart and pulse pounding, a dry and cracked throat – wondering where he needed to be, what he may have forgotten or missed.

Weighing himself corrects his mood. One Hundred Seventy Eight pounds; the light dinner has paid off, and so has the online work between 1 and 4 A.M. He woke to the alarm, lifted weights to keep himself alert, and brewed a little tea. The home office is a blessing and a curse. He can’t imagine what it would be like to drive into work to do what he has to do in the wee hours – on the other hand, he never feels completely detached from work either. Acknowledging this invasion into his home becomes one more chip on the scale that he uses to justify going into work slowly. The scale inspires him to dress up today, make a little extra effort – pop in his contacts, shave, dress in slacks and look professional; things he usually foregoes because he has interred the notion that he is too busy, too rushed.

At the coffee shop, he checks the schedule for what live music is scheduled this weekend. Bands always summarize in twenty words or less what the audience is in for, because if you aren’t a relative you aren’t going to know the band by name. “Metal protest folk with a shot of humor.” “Flute-driven pastoral rock to entertain the serfs.” “Established classical guitarist and instructor.” Nothing grabs his attention, and he notes the first band for the use of the word folk: this is always a default, a warning sign that novices were at a loss of vision. He inhales the murky steam of his Americano and smiles because this is the first jolt, the first external impetus that is going to keep him moving forward through the day.

He ambles to the bus stop. It is a beautiful morning – the sun is bright – but the cold is biting. These are the transitional days where you go to work overdressed then sweat your way through the commute home. As he approaches the bus stop, he sees the girl, the girl he was ambivalent about in some ways and attracted to in others. She stops him short when she smiles and says ‘Hey Steinbeck’ – probably because she doesn’t read a lot – no, her being well-read is something he projected on her – and that is one of a few authors she knows by name. But she does remind him that he’s been doing a lot of writing lately, and the horror is now upon him.

He is figuring dates. They had a nice little talk, it lasted no more than five minutes, and that was weeks ago. Did he mention he had started writing? It was about that time he had started; he may have been excited about it and mentioned it. He can remember everything she said, perhaps because he had to process it…but he can’t remember what he said to her; he can only deduce he said something about it because there really isn’t that much else interesting about him to share. And he didn’t see her after that, she was just an attractive gal he didn’t anticipate getting to know any better - he writes a 3500 word story where they meet on a bus, where he fucks her - twice no less, and goes on this obsessive, creepy rant throughout the rest of the story. He is feeling sick. He does not know what she knows. Whether she read it, whether she figured out it was her or not. He wants to turn and run, but instinct is the most self-incriminating of all options: he decides to meet this facing forward.

“So you’re sticking with the straightened hair. You know my ex did that; she would tie up the bathroom for an extra hour and take all the life out of her locks. The bathroom would reek of hot, cooked hair. Or did you do something different? Something surgical?” Please let this be a red herring from whatever she was going to talk about, if she read it and wants to talk about it. He could feel a hotness creeping up his neck and his collar itched and his ears were on fire. “As a matter of fact,” she laughed – “I do have to get up earlier and it does takes forever. I keep telling myself I’ll give up on it tomorrow, but it’s becoming a habit. You aren’t the first person to comment on it. You get people saying nice things to you and that makes it hard to stop. It is a pain though.” She stops. What else is there to talk about? He could say it is cold. No, don’t do that. Wait; she’s tossing a compliment back to you: “The orange is working for you today. It works with your skin color. You don’t see that a lot, guys who aren’t afraid to wear bright colors.” “Thanks; I don’t know what got me started on it. I like something bold” No – steer away from your boldness – “Anything that isn’t the usual black or grey or blue jean or just, you know, faded. I think it’s because I work at a clothing place. Everywhere it is black, black, black. When I’m in the hallways, I’m walking among anorexic menopausal women who make me think of a murder of crows or abandoned, busted umbrellas.” “Busted umbrellas, that’s a keeper. You should include that sometime.” Shit. Is it going to keep coming back to that? “Oh, I haven’t done a lot of writing lately. And I meant that about the black clothing - present company excepted. You look good in black. I tend to put my foot in my mouth a lot, describing something that could be offensive to the person I’m talking to at the same time. It’s just – the black is everywhere, it’s my own little hang-up.” “No, you can’t offend me. And I see where you’re coming from; you see it all over downtown.”

What all did he write? This is how it happens: you work in the wee hours of the morning, cut off from the world. You can’t just call someone or text someone because they are asleep; you are alone, and you get that “Notes from the Underground” vibe - you are cut off from life as the rest of the world knows it. There’s you, and then there’s the rest of the world. If someone wanted to make a support group for people like you, they would make bank. But since you don’t participate in any of that, you create your own rules, your own idea for what is permissible or not – what’s right and what’s wrong – and you do weird things like this. You think it is okay to write a fictional – well, mostly fictional – story about someone completely tangential in you life. What could be the harm? He is too tired to delineate the potential ramifications of his actions; he is too tired to calculate what possibilities may or may not have occurred or the chances that one occurred over the other. If she read it - he will just have to deal with it. If she figured out it was about her – there’s still a possibility she didn’t quite get that – he will deal with that too. And the bus arrives, the merciful bus - and he politely nods to her as he ascends the steps.

He performs a quick inventory. The person in the story had long, natural curly hair…he remembers ‘tiny frame’; and that’s all he can remember. That’s not a lot for her to go on, though he feels like he is missing a crucial detail in the description here. What about differences? If he recalls correctly, she works in web design – she is not a clothes buyer. He never asks her how many bags she owns; in reality he’s only ever seen her with that one that got stuck in his head because it said ‘L.A.M.B.’ and he just figured it smacked of novelty and trash fashion – you would assume it was one of many, but still – the only one he’s seen. This is a struggle because he remembers very little about the conversation they had and he’s reread the conversation they didn’t have about ten times over, and he cannot separate the two. When he does write, it just comes in from everywhere: a line from a song he’s listening to, a trait or detail borrowed from a person who was just at his desk, or a distant memory that seeps in as he types away. It’s all him, his experience, the loam he sponges from the world’s dynamic phenomena. Something cannot come from nothing. He can synthesize the bits of information, perform some psychological alchemy and fool the world into thinking he’s created something new – a fiction – but it’s all learned technique and known mechanisms and repeatable process.

She sits opposite him, across the aisle – where they usually settle in and he would occasionally glance in her direction because she is very pretty. She has an alluring, classical look about her. Now she is fiddling with her iPod again – another detail, but not the one that is a blue dot getting larger and larger in the back of his mind - but today she is not settling in, she just plays with it and looks a little exasperated with all of it. She fidgets, starts, finally speaks: “Can I talk to you about something that’s been bothering me? I need to air something out. It isn’t a big deal.” “Sure.” He places his book into his bag and slides across the seat and sits next to her, wishing he had pretended a contact popped out on the way. But this is it, he’s here now and his stomach and his intestines feel like they are full of broken glass.

“Ok. I did read your writing, and it’s been bothering me…is that one story about me? Is this how you get a person’s attention? Because you got it now. I don’t want you to freak out, I’m sure this is embarrassing for you. I guess I just needed to know for sure. I see you around a lot, and I don’t want it to be uncomfortable or awkward when I do. I thought if we just got it out in the open, the sooner we’ll be laughing at it. I can see where it might be natural to you…I guess in a way it is natural to have thoughts like that…oh, you say something. Just give me an answer.” “Ok. It is you. But I just borrowed a very small part of you – I liked the setting, and you are often a part of this setting. I liked that it was awkward, then a hot tryst, then spiraled into a complicated mess. And when I write, I’m unforgiving about taking all these various bits of real that are around me and incorporating them or, I guess you would say, using or taking advantage of them. So yeah, it’s you, I hope you are more flattered than offended.” “You did say I was older than you, and I don’t think so.” This was the blue dot, the thing he forgot: “Of course not! I had a conversation with a woman on the bus the previous day, she was an older woman but you could tell she was really hip – and it stuck with me that I could say you were older.” “Is the character some mix?” “No, just that one little adjective, that was it. At least not with her. I guess I had you in mind; I just obliterated your personality to fit what I was writing. I removed most all the words that we shared, except I think – we did talk about the population growth, right? That I kept. It just seems like something everyone talks about around here, like the weather – its grounding.” She is silent for a few moments before speaking again: “It’s still an objectification, right? You made me out to be some kind of whore, and it’s hard to get past you thinking all these things as you are writing them…” In a quieter voice – “especially the sex. That’s a strange way to think about women, like they’re just waiting for it like that. I can sort of see what you’re saying, but I’d like to think there’s a voice in your head telling you something isn’t a good idea.” “No, I haven’t had that moment yet. Maybe this is it? Right now, I’m mostly hating how I mismanaged all of this – my telling you that I wrote and where I publish in the first place! Phenomenally stupid. I must have gotten all mixed up; you should have never read those things. Just being honest: that’s where I feel like I messed up. I wouldn’t take back the words.” “Then I’d hate being in your head…you would be the only person who knows what the story means, where it came from, and anytime you saw me you would think of these things. You would just continue to accumulate all these secrets – as you write more and more stories - and create all these fears of being found out. I’m glad I called you out on it, too. Once I saw myself in there, I started seeing myself everywhere you had this ‘she’ with no name. I started obsessing over it.” “Then I really do apologize. I know what that is like, I do it too: I read into things, I think the stars are talking to me; I pull concise pictures out of hypnagogic images and especially – see myself as the character in other people’s stories. Mostly when they read like accusations or self-realization or cries for help. There was a girl I liked who told me ‘its all fiction’ – flatly, that was it - when I asked her about her writing. But it didn’t stop me from seeing myself as the pervasive ‘him’ in her stories. It was maddening – because she is inscrutably vague and practices the same obscurantism I do – and in the long run I ended up making an ass of myself. It was never me at all; it was other men, other interests, and I misjudged my importance, misreading all the signs.” “So are you going to take the story down?” “Do you want me to? I would if you liked…but really, it is just a fiction.” “Okay. Okay. I guess having talked, I’m alright with it. I might even point it out to other people at the office and have a laugh over it. But really, do a better job of hiding it in the future! You write some weird stuff, and it would be bad if someone were coming after you to cause you harm for something silly like this.” “Point well taken. I guess even the most benign things can turn dangerous. And I’m glad you did say something. You’re right – when I saw you this morning I was immediately nauseous. I think you’re on to something, and there are some boundaries I need to get familiar with.”

She nudged into him playfully with her shoulder – “Here’s where I get off. We’ll talk more later, I’m sure.” He twisted away to let her through to the aisle, but the brushing against each other brought a clumsy discomfort. New signs, he thought: more things to read into. A playful nudge, and now I won’t stop from thinking about everything that is behind it. “Yeah, I’m sure we will. Hopefully about something else?” “That would be nice,” smiling. And he felt a little closer to her than he felt to the image he created of her, though he cursed creating this ghost that would never die completely. Something positive could have come from this – she seems like she could really like him – but he has already forged this barrier. He had not only called her out, but he had pigeonholed himself, too. Suppose they date: how long before he would do something that recalls the obsessive rant that completes the story. Suppose they fuck: what happens when he grabs her ankle? He knows he can go nowhere with this; the reality would always refer to his bastardized annotation.

He knew he would go into work and feel cloistered again, that he would only get little signs and messages and texts from the people he wanted to be closer to but never can find the time for, and he would over-think them, misinterpret them, and do the only thing he could think to gain some certainty in his solitude: reinterpret them and make them new. He would imagine possibilities, even the impossible ones: he would create scenarios and stories and see all the bitter endings unfold in an applied logic. He would hope for happy endings and anticipate the tragedies. And he would write, he would write it all down, more as an instinct or just to see the final product looking back at him as reward for his effort. But it was an exhausting process, so time-consuming, one that took him through various emotions and distractions. He never put a value on it, but he knew he had these moments of weakness: he would leave bread crumbs, clues and code all along the way. And these cries for help were ineffective, unanswered – he was beginning to see they were doing more harm than good. There is a real world, in the real daylight, and he didn’t need to be a victimized agent of it. And there is this imaginary world at night, where he has dwelled for too long – where he was playing the saboteur.