alL tHe siGHtS wEreN't iN tHE pAraDe

“Men have never been good, they are not good, they never will be good.”
-- Karl Barth, 1954

What follows was written in the late nineties. The [Bracketed] asides were written this morning.

Cabin Days

Phil liked to sleep in the basement. The fact that the broken water pipes had flooded it to the point that the legs were encased in 6 inches of ice never seemed to bother him. At the time, his psychosis was perceived as a kind of cool iconoclasm rather than small tragedy. Only later, when his return to town coincided with a series of unsolved rapes, did I suspect an awful truth about him.

That affectations of character are less markers of identity than masks that obscure an honest glimpse of the self seems obvious in retrospect. We couldn’t know at the time that out convictions and prejudices had less to do with the times we grew up in than who, or better perhaps, when, we were. In short, our youthful naivete had more to do with moral shortsightedness than politics. The notion that difference is always good is as historically intractable as its counter myth [This is questionable, hasn’t ‘difference’ always been a source of suspicion?], that deference to the collective is the most sublime expression of ethical awareness. But what person ever reveled in their anonymity?

So Phil’s madness was cool. Now he was back, surrounded by chaos and hounded by insanity. I was Phil’s best friend in those days of icy dreams. We would hitchhike to the city and steal albums. Upon returning to Marquette, we would sell them to our friends. Our method of subsistence, petty crime, was nothing new; but it was peculiar to the Sixties [No it wasn’t, many so-called hippies were self-styled rip-offs]. We foraged in the early morning. Following the milk truck on its appointed rounds we would steal [stole] cottage cheese and juice; thus sustaining the delusion we were modern day vagabond Robin Hoods.

I can’t speak for Phil, but I fancied myself a provider; but of what, and for whom? Well, for Bruce and Kim, and John and Natalie, and Cathy and Sandy. You see, they were occupants, or better, denizens, of the cabin, dwellers rather than inhabitants. Seeing that their minds and bodies were fed was as noble a purpose as I could muster at 17. Trouble was, like all defenders of the faith, I confused protection with direction, and tolerance with prescription.

Projecting one’s values onto others is, after all, the first step in applying what Buber describes as an I – it relationship to what should be an I and Thou world. Too philosophical? To be sure. But remember, dear reader, my limited experience as a writer precludes that style of savviness that expresses itself in the wizened bard as the capacity to imagine a world apart from their prejudices. One might suspend their disbelief, but never their values [Bullshit]. But what are the dangers of prescription? Consider this story.

Three years after those cabin days, sitting at the bar in the Sportsman Tavern, I overheard a stranger to my left remark that his cousin, Charlie Potatoes, had been picked up for questioning in connection with a series of unsolved rapes in the Marquette area. As he tipped the shell, I noticed the middle fingers of his right hand were missing. Suddenly that sensation of hyper-awareness that accompanies the realization of our worst fears, a feeling that now overwhelmed me, brought forth a memory of our last meeting.

The cabin was nestled amid the stumps at the end of a cul-de-sac on the Dead River basin. It was down this lonely lane that Bruce and Joe came, staggering drunk and with a case of Pabst. Notwithstanding the fact that our grinding poverty was self-imposed, we viewed their arrival as a windfall, a stroke of good fortune. After thanking Joe, we proceeded to get pie-eyed. As I got drunker, my self-appointed stewardship, no doubt some inherent, and insidious, male trait, a masculine quality of character essential to the curse of patriarchy, perceived Joe’s generosity as a threat rather than boon.

Suddenly, my egalitarian ideals, like inclusiveness and tolerance, were displaced by a rush of reptilian superiority. I began to notice a certain affection between Bruce and Joe. Such are the sins of pseudo-enlightenment. Now witness how cruel irony ensues when the homophobic beast rears its ugly head.

Under the influence, my revolutionary ethic was no match for a lifetime of learned prejudices. “You can’t see God with a dick in your mouth,” I snarled. The room froze. Think tableau. Uh-oh? Joe began to mutter softly: “So what, I’m and Indian! So what!” As his voice got louder, it took on a tone menace, of threat. Having far more integrity than I, Joe grabbed the remaining beer and got up to leave. Slamming my foot down on the case, I coldly told him that the beverage would stay. While feinting a move that said, “I’m leaving,” he grabbed an empty jumbo and smashed it against the wall. With the crown of glassy shards firmly in hand, Joe was now a wrathful Jeremiah wreaking havoc on the scourge of the Ojibway.

How quickly I recognized the menacing perfection of this chingichcookian throat cutter! Mayhem commenced, and panic ensued. But not in Joe’s mind. With graceful precision, he wheeled and grabbed Bruce, pinning his neck against the wall between his pinkie and index finger. Joe’s angry mutilator now hovered over Bruce’s tender white face. I shrank, my diminution swift and inexorable. On an epic scale, in terms of Twentieth century pop-culture, I felt like Mick Jagger at Altamont. I looked at Joe, he looked at me, and I was afraid, very afraid. We scattered.

That is to say, we quickly exhausted the possibilities of where one might scatter in a one-room shack. I immediately barricaded myself in the closet-like cubicle that passed for a kitchen. The rest, John, Natalie, Cathy, and Kim, locked themselves in the bathroom; the site of an ungodly stench so overwhelming as to instantly cause an uncontrollable fit of gagging. This undoubtedly had to do with our decision to drop the lid and close the door once we discovered the toilet no longer worked. At some point in the chaos, Bruce broke free and ran out the door. As he disappeared into a heavy northern squall, I cautiously peered out through the yellowed blinds, squinting with a kind of cowardly hesitation born of willful ignorance.

At that time, I heard Phil was in town, staying at either the Brunswick or Jansen hotels. He had san-paku eyes: dark and round, mesmerizing and penetrating, sometimes menacing. A composite Marilyn Manson, Rasputin visage might aptly describe him. His hair was black, and he wore it in the fashion of Einstein, or Dylan. His lips were small and tightly, perpetually pursed. His every word was uttered in such a way that it took the form of an unanswerable question; of a profound uncertainty that doubted not the intent, or better, content, of language, but its very relevance as a concept—as a practical form of communication.

It was as if Phil was always trying out the words for the first time; doubting not so much what they meant as what they were; as if skeptical of their very existence as he spoke them! I suppose this is typical of psychosis; the afflicted constructs, and hence lives, in a world at odds with some assumed objective reality. But what do we say in those cases where there is a void rather than imaginary world?