sometimes we hear things coming from our basement...

Are You My Dad?

“Off the coast of me lies you."

   

 -  August Darnell

Nocturnal vision -- grainy.  Directly in front of a one level, quaint blue abode. The lawn is visible though the perimeter is obscured by shadows.  Off yonder some sprinkler spurts.  All of the lights in the house are off except one in the lower right window.  Crickets chirp twanging drones.  After a sustained moment the light flashes off.  It flicks on again quickly.  Shuts off.  Sounds of the front door opening as the latch is undone, and then the screen door creaks open and our man emerges. He locks the door but then --

“Ah Fuck”

The screen door closes as he turns around for an instant.  There is a light on somewhere from an unknown source, but our man is still shrouded in black.  He turns back towards the house, unlocks the door and enters again.  The screen door slams this time.  From the street in the night one cannot make out the number on the house, but it is there.  The white light in the right corner blinks on again, remains lit behind opaque curtains, and then dies out.  He comes out, locks the door again, and goes through the necessary leaving-the-property motions as he walks out of the frame. 

Our man walks down this block towards the bus stop on the main road.  Notice the orange glow cast by the streetlight in this lower middle class American neighborhood.  He walks and breathes and takes out a cigarette and smokes it as he walks.  He walks slowly while gazing at homes.  The neighbors inside them watch late evening television and sit focused around dining tables.  By habit he checks his mobile every now and again out of his jacket pocket and then eventually comes to his bus stop.  The lack of traffic on this main road hints towards a late hour.  The scene has a pale, neon amber gleam and the objects within it are tinted by this glare.  As is the overcast sky, though Venus reaches through the orb of hazy light pollution.

A man and woman walk by speaking in French, arms interlocked.  They are both dressed formally in black.  Due to their giggles and lurchy stride, one would assume them to be mildly drunk.  They walk past our man without acknowledging him – he is just now sitting inside the glass encased bus stop on the red steel stools with the uncomfortable ovals the imprint themselves upon the ass.  He sits smoking his fag and it’s like this for a while.  A black Benz with neon baby blue and celestial white lights underneath its frame careens by blasting Genuwine’s “Ride the Pony”, and our man chuckles.  He flicks the fag into the wind, and it lands directly in the sewer grate that flanks the curb. 

{Cough} 

Finally the lights on the top of the bus approach from the south.  The brakes squeak as it draws to the curb.  The automatic doors collapse into themselves as they hiss open.  Our man climbs aboard and nods to the driver. He pays with a bill and many coins.  The bus sighs and heaves onward before he is done paying, and he jolts a bit. 

The driver of the bus is white, 50-ish, and sort of thick but of medium build.  He looks rather like Tom Smykowski from Office Space. 

Our man levels himself and sits in a handicapped seat. A suave faced but thievy looking man is aboard with his knees up in one of the front seats that align parallel to the bus’s motion.  He looks like Christian Slater with a coke habit.  In back there’s a black mother in baby blue cotton garb with a young black boy beside her.  They are having a hushed but audible back & forth.

“Daddy say he get me that.”

“Yeah you get at him then.”

This bus has music playing low, like all but inaudibly low – some oldies – early r&b.  Early popular soul songs about heartbreak. Either the bus driver’s choice or not – rather like taxi rides when the music is so low as to be nearly inaudible and one can’t tell if this is the driver’s choice or if it’s below his awareness or if he’s open to suggestions or what.  The volume is too low and the bus’s poor engine too loud even to make out what the lyrics are even about.  Lost love & personal strife probably, our man suspects. 

The vibe is not so much lonely with these five riders so much as operating in its own sort of temporal & spatial sphere.  Outside but still inside.  A globule conveying down subway tracks. 

“Boy we are getting off soon.  Don’t forget that pick that up now.”

Our man adorns a neutral expression as he rubs his head and looks out the window. The lights illuminating the bus and its ads for personal injury lawyers flash on and off for an instant.  No visible reaction from the driver or anyone else on the bus except for our man who looks back on the woman and her ??? child and then locks eyes with the Slater character for an instant…a creepy grin on his (Slater’s) face in that moment, then he looks back at the window. 

From beyond the reflections outside the bus’s window we see suburbs getting more urban – the fringes of suburbs, gentrification through coffee shops & restaurants that portray themselves as philanthropic despite their impersonality (Dunkin Donuts, Panera Bread, Big Boy (still open)).  The bus grumbles over train tracks.  Homes that need refurbishing with second story porches that have single posts jutting out over the front lawn.  Weathered red brick & peeling white paint.  Stair sets with giant cracks on the top stair which nourish overgrown grass and what in some cases appear to be weeds. 

These can still be seen in the streetlights. 

Flash back onto our man watching his own pale reflection in front of the black & neon maroon beyond.  The streetlight now in the face of the reflection of the Slater man’s face, and here our man holds this image in focus with his own oblique visage in the periphery.

There is a small digital screen in the bus mounted on steel above the bus schedules that tells passengers the weather, time, and stops (along the left side of the screen progressing upwards).  It’s punctuated in exactly 30-second intervals and identifies itself as The Mass Transit Televison Network.  Riders of the bus hear at a very low volume some especially sterile nu-age music.  Occasionally there is trivia and sports updates and quotes where passengers are allowed 10 seconds to guess the correct multiple choice answer as the wrong answers dissolve. 

   Occasionally there is a self referential advertisement like the ones on planes where the passengers all sit passively (most likely not) watching some dolled up, ethnically ambiguous but vaguely attractive woman going through the various safety protocols in a way that seems robotic and as rote as false safety guidelines require, but in this case the forcibly serene and optimistic blonde is talking about TTN in a way that is like a presentation for prospective TTN clients, rather than dialogue at the bus riders. 

One wonders what this girl thinks of herself pimping something like TTN over & over again to middle and lower class Americans all day and night.  Green screened backgrounds that make it seem as if the ad girl herself is walking on air.  From our man’s seated vantage he can just make out the bus driver’s fingerless gloves and light blue PTMC (?) button-up vest.  An Irma Thomas number is playing so low through the bus’s moan it makes one wonder what is even being sung about.

A horizontal rectangle at the front of the bus flicks to red – indicating that a passenger will now be exiting the bus.  Christian Slater gets up, turns around in his seat, grabs the supporting bars above, and stands at the back bus exit door.  Before the bus comes to a complete stop on this corner – an area with houses that need serious renovation, Slater lights up a cigarette.

“HEY CAN’T YOU WAIT UNTIL YOU ARE OUTSIDE THE BUS PPLEASE!”

The tone of voice sounds like a man who’s had a long night driving around poor city neighborhoods.  Or rather like a therapist who snaps at an oblivious client.  As we now grind and groan back into traffic.

“Ah he snapped Momma.”

“No he lit it up on the bus.  Couldn’t wait.  Man ain’t got manners.”

Pause & silence. 

An advertisement on the mounted screen reads:

CELEBRATE DADS WITH THESE GREAT BOOKS

Cover Art fades one after another in front of a depthless violet backdrop.

Her Cowboy Daddy – BJ Daniels

From Daredevil to Devoted Daddy – Katherine Diggins

The Daddy Surprise – Ginny Nugent

Single Dad seeks a Wife – Dale Pueter

Are you my Dad? – Brittain Shorter

Dad’s Night Out – Margy Percocil

Font copyrighted by Harlequin inc. 

ALSO COMING SOON FROM HARLEQUIN

LOVE MATTERS – Delilah

The Duke & the Pirate Queen – Victoria Jahssen

Out of Time – Petra Luna

FIND HARLEQUIN ON FACEBOOK AND READ WRITING SAMPLES OR SUBMIT YOUR OWN MANUSCRIPT!

   The bus driver is the only one on the bus that knows that this last bit is a run on sentence, and that Harlequin publishing is owned by The Torstar Corporation — the Canadian media company that is heavily invested in this very bus’s TTN.  He wonders about the women these advertisements target. Often he looks into his fisheyed mirror to observe the reactions of people – especially women and single middle aged woman who may be allured by such a thing.  He’s made a game of inferring when the ad cycles through based upon the expressions on some of these women’s faces in the bubbled mirror.  It’s sad, he thinks, when young teens make fun of these advertisements and make them stupid - seeming. 

This scene distracts our man – to the point where he almost misses his stop.

“Sorry, thanks.”

The woman and her child get off at the same stop. They have a strange, slow walk & inaudible conversation in front of our man as the bus and its yellowed windows grumble off.  The driver flatulates. Our man walks quicker than this pair though he does not pass them – first out of awkwardness or respect or an unwillingness to deal with the passing.  But ultimately he decides it’s shadier lurking so closely behind them quietly at this slow speed so he creeps by them without a word.  As he passes they go silent and look at the back of his face and then at the side of his head. His pace quickens as he changes his direction ever so slightly to avoid the direct path of the walking, presumed mother & son.

And on, as if he is creeping out of an unseen or unnoticed forest into a fluorescently lit parking lot.  The one-year-old pavement gleams a shallow charcoal colour below the striking shine.  Just to the right, young men balance on rollerboards across parking islands.  This kind of activity is not allowed here, not at this time or ever (eternally).  The man who would otherwise have to kick these kids out of the parking lot is inside this yonder structure defecating, trying desperately to forget that last pornography he’d watched on the Internet, naked, in his bedroom.  Thinking of the ways sleazy male porn directors and seemingly inhuman female starz deliberately fuck with lonely young men’s libidos – twisted perceptions of female sexuality make them lust ever the more even as they hate themselves for doing it. For some reason the difference between A & B maple syrups now comes to the mind of this particular shitter.

   Automatic doors hiss abruptly open.  This small in & out area between the warehouse space & the outside world contains papers & writings most people will never read.  Buyer’s weekly.  _________ County News.  Hometown Heroes.  In the corner of this in & out space is a sterilely psychedelic gumball machine with a swirling plastic slide.  It’s on sale in the classified section of this week’s _________ County News. 

Into the space with its fluorescent lights that cast no shadows.  Daily deals.  The sound of product UPCs being scanned late at night.  Product overload.  Waves of light of all shapes and sizes.  For here is the American grocery chain.  Agriculture at the peak of planetary accomplishment.  Individual wrappings galore.  Notice here all the generic favorites looking lonely on the shelves, vying for visual exuberance.  ‘How much here is wasted?’ our man wonders. The black and white security footage of our man does not pick up on his thought.     

   A frazzle haired man is seen shoveling ice into a garbage bin past the mock town square and next to the cluttered lobster tank in the meat and seafood area of the store.  Wet steel cutting tables clean and sterile beyond him; meat cutters safely put back into their sheaths; cryovac machines off & getting low on latex.  The beverage, meat, and perishable coolers drone in a way that is too imminent and persistent to be noticeable.

“Well if it isn’t Mr. Halo.”

“My Man.  What are you doing here at this hour?  Good old American grocery shopping at this hour?”

“It’s almost as if I am still working here.  I’m just starting my shift, having this conversation with you like no time has passed.  The past is now.”

“Having a better time now then?”

Halo bends down to pick at something in the ice. 

“So um, how is everything?” He asks.

“She still hasn’t talked to me about it.  I’m getting worried.  Like in a place where I know I should support her but also scared as hell.”

“Getting right to it now are we?”

“It seems cliché.  I didn’t expect it to me happen to me and then sure enough.” 

“Ahh -- dealing with these things that we don’t prepare for in life.  A victim of circumstance as they say.  Let me ask you – did it happen the same night as…”

“…”

“I thought so.”

“It seemed to have been building to that.  We know he knew – but up until that night we had never hooked up.  It was becoming apparent that we were growing close to each other.  No one talked about it as such.  It was just sort of like, becoming.”

“How do you mean?”

Halo & our man’s relationship is not one that is even extremely personal or like one chose or sought the other one out, intuiting a potential friendship.  They had similar friends and grew up in the same town, so they eventually just sort of fell in with each other.  Halo once described it as tolerating each other without actually being close.  They also use to work together.

“Prior to that night we had had the conversation with the knowledge that us three were in a sort of love triangle – but there actually did not seem to be much negativity about it.  We actually were sort of joking about the feeling of both being in a relationship and being freshly attracted to people everyday.”

Halo has stopped scooping the ice and is actually intently listening to our man.

“I was already supposed to have cleaned this shit like 20 minutes ago.”

“But of course there is growing up with the person – you can’t replace that so easily.  But aren’t we constantly growing with people anyways? I..”

“Slow down man.”

“I feel perplexed.”

Halo begins scooping again. 

“The baby could be his or mine.  No negativity should be involved.  I love him.  Loved.  She says she does not know whether she is going to have the baby or not.  If she does my life will forever be changed.  If she doesn’t my life will forever be changed.”

The lobster tank’s filter bubbles as the creatures lie on each other in clumps, pincers banded. 

“Well sounds like you are there to support her.  Naturally you are nervous because all of this heavy, real, bonafied life shit seems to be happening all at once and you couldn’t predict any of it.  Certain things were, and still are, out of your control.  What is in your control is the ability to be a man through this.  This is a test for not only you guys, but our whole crew I think.”

Our man gives a solemn nod.  Halo finishes shoveling the ice into his garbage bin.  Our man says, “Anyways, how is everything with you?”

“Rennae and I are getting by and making ends meet.  We are child free, though plans for the future involve a canine.”

Our man gives a chuckle.

“Alright Halo we’ll be in touch.  Thanks man.”

Halo gives a palm out, hand shaking wave as our man moves on with his unconscious stride.  He kind of just walks around the store.  Looks at some bread and sale tubs full of marked down Gogurts and other children’s juice boxes.  There are no other customers in sight besides an elderly man slugging around in an automated wheelchair.  His neck is slightly bent and his sweatpants are faded and stained as he claws through the cooler dedicated entirely to bacon.

The grainy black & white security camera footage is of our man shuffling through the chips & juice aisle.  Opposite the black & white image is another pale colored security image of the next aisle over.  Through these images are the hyperactive colors of the product menagerie under the fluorescents. Less selling items tend to be fronted & faced forwards, label out, with the exception of the occasional sale item.

Our man comes to the front of the store, small candies & pop culture magazines, meant to allure customers as a form of entertainment.  Or rather, an expected ridiculousness that’s compelling regardless of motive.  Images of un-made up celebrities shirtless underneath headlines about their personal lives.  Speculation.  Presumptions about family drama.  Prospective children.  These apparent gifted ones that the nation’s eyes are on are really not so different from you, me, our man. 

These are right near the 99-cent marshmallows.  3 for 3 dollars in reference to the (soon to be traded) non native local baseball hero’s three home run game the previous night.  Though tonight he went 0 for 3 and the team was crushed.

Our man’s shoes do not squeak but sort of grind against the mud caked cement floor.  It hasn’t been cleaned all day and though it isn’t even the weekend, it has been a busy day for this food store.  Out beyond the bacon cooler an older fellow breathes raspily as he tries to figure out the electric, moving washing machine. In his mind he does not note that The Chariot 3000 is an ironic name for this silly machinery.  Rather like a zamboni for the grocery outlet, only slower.

Something about the man’s carless movements about The Chariot indicate that he is drunk on the job, with full intentions of riding this thing around the grocery maze at this late hour.

_________ is standing over a wire basket looking at his reflected face in the plastic packaging of cheap, hyper commodified DVDs. 

“Born to Run”. 

Beyond the reflected image of his gaze he notices the dehydrated piss yellow color of the ceiling.

Faded image of a white male in a baby blue denim collared t shirt – face obscured – looking down.  Cowboy hat on head – white brim black top.  Hands on elbows.  

Malcolm X as Organ Freeman.

A DVD whose case depicts a male (recalls Randy Quaid) riding a small phallic vehicle – it’s pointed at you and has a mushroom top.  The man wears a helmet & bears an expression of insane joy.  Jutting out on all sides is the cast of characters.  Money is flying in the air.

That one Kevin Costner film about horse racing.

You’ve got mail.

Attack of the killer shrews. 

ENTER Jimmy Bergeron.  A young white male probably in his early twenties. 

“You’re in here late.”

“Jimmy B.”

“…”

Is this what your life is like?” He indicates the film by holding it cover side out at Jimmy. 

Jimmy gives a slight tilt of his head, considering the question as he tries to understand it.  Jimmy is autistic.  His speech and gait are especially impaired.  His eyes are an innocent baby blue and are especially round and twinkly.  He has been working in this particular grocery store until late hours for three and a half years now.

“Mostly…no.”

“Yeah.  Tell me about it.”

“Thinking of buying that?”

“It’s all so neatly packaged.”

“…”

“I couldn’t sleep.  Thought I’d take a walk.  So to answer your question yes I am.”

“I thought I’d had it tonight.  One customer…I could be an assistant manager at any other place.  I don’t want people touching me.  This woman touched…my shoulder.”

Not many know, but Jimmy was sexually molested as a child by his step father – after his own father ditched his mother for reasons beyond the financial circumstances of his birth.  The man was unwilling to care for a child, especially an autistic child.  He used the word “retarded” – but talk to Jimmy and you’ll realize that he may be slow as the word suggests, but his speech impediment makes his seem dumber than he really is.  He actually has a penetrating mind, just not the vocabulary or speech stylings to express it well.  But his step father did fondle him, something Jimmy will never discuss with anybody.  Ever again.  But it is discussed – if unconciously to the listener in conversations like this, i.e. how he’s disturbed by customers touching him (even affably or endearingly).

“I need a new job,” he says.  “I’ve been here too long.  I’m thinking Utah.”

“I hear you on that one Jim.”

“…”

“Can I touch you?  Tap your shoulder in a show of camaraderie?  Will you get offended?”

“No…I know you.”

“Let’s just shake.”

Jimmy’s grip is noticeably tighter than our man’s, Uma notices at the register.  Just by their facial expressions and the taut way their bodies appear at this moment.

“Take care Jim.”

“Hey you are at having baby?”

“What?”

“Are you going to watch that movie?”

“What uh no probably not.  I thought you said something else.”

He turns to the front of the store and immediately locks eyes with a young curly blonde cashier with a pale complexion and red, corporate logo collared shirt.  He chooses her passage rather than the self service check out lanes.

“Does this get boring?”  He asks.

“Wicked boring.”

“Besides interaction with late night freaks.”

“I try to achieve a state of elevated consciousness as I robotically scan groceries.  Notice every small thing a person may or may not do.  The way these interactions say things about community relations and or our ability to empathize with strangers.  You can infer things about folks by what they eat, buy.”

On the screen where the items are tallied above the register there is an advertisement for “Take the Bus Day”.

“Hey I took the bus tonight.”

“I noticed a lot of folks tonight drive here alone.  I watch them get out of their cars out there.  I don’t think they realize that so they are being watched.  Perhaps they intuit it but don’t realize where the gaze is exactly coming from.”

“This is why I like you Grace.”

“When I’m interacting with you I don’t feel any desire to be liked.”

“AHHhh I don’t know how I should take that.”

“Maybe you want to be liked.”

“Grace, why do you suppose rejection is so compelling?  Why are we attracted to those who ignore us?”

“It helps if the person is attractive.  Think of the sexy princess ignoring the gruff, um, beggar.  It probably also depends on what you mean or perceive to be rejection.”  She looks up as if in a dream, eyes glazy but focused, gleaming amber in the blaring fluorescent.  “It could be that the person is treating you the same way you treat them.  How many times have you hoped that that good looking somebody would catch your eye and just speak.  People are unlikely to do such things in everyday situations.  It could also be that, at least in some implicit way, or maybe even unconscious way on their part, they are testing for sincerity – some sort of um, implicit filter for seriousness, or gall slash compatibility.  It’s walking the plank across the river without knowing whether or not it will break.”

“Love is like that elevator in Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory that moves in all directions.”

“It also just rests in place.”

“When are you going to get a new job?”

“When are you?”

“…”

“Anyways after I finish school maybe.  I have to look after my little brother for the next few days if you want to hang.  Mom’s out with Ken in Michigan.”

Is it difficult?  Your life?”

“It oscillates between flow and choppiness but then stagnation and deluge. So yes.”

“Rest easy if I’m killed out there tonight.”

“Think as if you will.  Or don’t.”

Our man exits the store, lights a smoke.   

The bright spectrum is colored to black and maroon, bright yellow. 

Every worker in that store would rather be laying on couches or lovers, bathing in aloe. 

“Hey do you have a smoke?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks.  Hey I’m going to get some weed right now if you’re interested.”   

“Do I even know you?  New night shifter?  Stalker in the night?  I may or may not become a father.  Or step father for a widowed child.  And I am beginning to accept this reality more and more.”

“Ah fuck.  Well shit have a good night.  Uhh that weed..”

“Yeah ok let’s go.”


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A musky, finished but weathered attic.  A single lamp shines on a small table covered with a purple patchwork quilt.  The light from the covered lamp is low, and there is an old, knotted & frayed, navy & white carpet covering the wood flooring.  To one side of the room are stairs to the level below.  Seated on pillows on the floor are two young women.  Throughout the scene they are periodically altering their postures and poses of rest to adjust to the minimally furnished attic’s crevices. 

They are up here because this is the one room in the house Liz feels comfortable smoking weed.  It is her (Liz’s) neighbor’s house.  A small wooden drawer of framed & unframed photos also rests on the floor.  Liz is house-sitting this neighbor’s dog while they vacation in New York.  She is just now drying the joint in her hand – turning it over and around above the flame to avoid uneven burning due to excess spittle.  The dog is not in sight.

“I haven’t even smoked a lot of this in one sitting yet.  We are going to get blazed alright.”  She says.

Natasha emits a sound that is a mixture of a sigh and a dazed grunt.

Next to the stairs there is a small television and a Magnavox VCR a top a miniature shelf.  Liz has already cued these absent neighbors’ home movies in the VCR – tapes from the late 1980’s.  Footage of kids older than Natasha & Liz were at the time. 

8/31/1988 the screen indicates.  3:56pm.

“So how you doing Nat?”

“Well…um…how to answer that question?  I am beginning to indentify in deep & mysterious ways to the lyrics of pop radio.”

“This girl is tripping on Rihanna?  T Swift?  J Beebs?”

“The older ones are better.  Shangri Las, Ike & Tina, Little Annie.”

“They would all sing about heartbreak & tragedy and love ending in disaster, but then often times wanting that lost love back more than like, anything.”

“I think what they sing about losing is bigger than just individual lovers.”

“How many of those do you actually think went through shit like that?  Like deaths of close loved ones in tragic car accidents.  Or, shootings.” 

There is a silence here as the two think of the tragic death of their friend David Topper.  Liz looks down and lights the joint, turning it around in her fingers.  Beyond her on the small television screen there are kids playing chicken on an elevated plank on a playground. 

“Christ, look at this…” She goes ahead with the joint, smoking with two fingers touching her lips.  She holds in the hit, and then manages to say with a slight exhale of smoke, “Nat you could write one of those songs.”

“You damn right.”

There is a pause as the smoke billows and twirls in the lamp light.  The girls watch the screen.  A Golden Retriever is seen sniffing at grass in an open field. 

“So you’re…?”

“…”

“And you’re sure it’s…?”

“Weed.”

Liz hands Natasha the joint.  She hesitates, then takes it, and says, “Only one.  For the baby.”

On the screen some kids are now seen in the kitchen of the very home these two girls presently smoke weed in.  The attic is directly above the kitchen.  One man is shown working on what appears to be a crossword puzzle at the kitchen table, looking like a young Allen Ginsburg.

“He said he doesn’t want to ‘start a life’ with me so early, as he put it.  I don’t even think he has told his parents yet is the thing.”  Smoking. “He’s afraid he doesn’t have the money, nor the maturity probably.”

“Yeah.  How is your Dad though?”

“He’ll support me only to an extent.  I think David has to go to him, but it’s hard you know.  To talk about this stuff.”

“So long term is the issue?”

“Yeah. Especially living here and all.  I’ve been wanting to get out for years but it just hasn’t happened yet you know?  Like I see pictures of Carol on Facebook, off seeing the world.”

“Oh who cares about Carol?  She is probably battling her own demons too, you know.  Just in foreign lands.”

Upon the screen now the kitchen scene cuts to a young, curly blonde girl staring at an artificial pond excitedly – looking back at the camera with delight and yelling “Dahhhks!!”

“Too cute,” Liz says.

But then all at once Natasha feels the THC working in her brain and she feels a pang of paranoia thinking about David and her long term, completely unknown future, and the idea of this child in her belly as a grown up, battling his/her own demons.  And then for some reason she thinks of the day her Grandmother died and asks:

“Can we watch something else?”