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{black out} jonathan bitz My friend believes that he has a doppelganger and it is roaming around this town. My friend says that this doppelganger is wild and has a temper. My friend says that he has, as of late, the repeated experience of walking into restaurants and bars and having people tell him, you need to leave. You cannot come back. We kicked you out last week. My friend says that he keeps looking around and saying, I have never even been here before. My friend says his doppelganger is driving him out of this town like an omen. + I remember reading about a laughing epidemic in Tanzania, in the 1960's. The story goes, three schoolgirls started it. They started laughing and their school closed down within the week because most of the student body began laughing hysterically. The laughter, however, did not stop at the doors. As you can imagine, laughter does not have boundaries. It does not have hands that succumb to handcuffs or barbed-wire. In the end, this epidemic of laughter did not die for over two years. Thousands of people in the region were afflicted. + I will make-up my friend's name here. It's suitable considering the fact that he isn't even sure what his name is most of the time. My friend's name, here, shall be Z. Afterall he is somewhere at the end of it all. Be it an alphabet. Be it a rope. Be it, a bottle. + Z has an infectious laugh. Z is the funniest man I have ever known. Z is also the saddest man I have ever known. Once, Z was driving down the highway, moving from one home to another. He had his mattress in the back of the truck. He was cruising. His dog in the passenger seat. Summer outside. Z was smoking a cigarette. He was listening to music. Z was flying through the plains, with the sky pinching down on the green grass of the earth, miles and miles ahead like it was the door he was headed for. Z's dog was asleep on the passenger seat. Z flipped his smoke out the window. A couple minutes later, and at 75 miles per hour, another car flew up beside Z. The people in the car were waving at Z. Z smiled and waved back. Hello said his big hand. Thanks for waving. But the people waved again. And again. Then, the waving turned awkward. Then, the waving wasn't waving any longer. The people started pointing. At Z's truck. Z looked into his mirrors. Then back at the people. In the back of the truck, Z's mattress was on fire. Z is a circus stunt truck on fire, waving and smiling and driving for the big door in the floor. + I have never known anyone that was capable of swinging from pole to pole like Z. Fear. Laughter. Sadness. Joy. Production. Alcohol. Alive. Blacked-out. Awake. Dead-asleep. I have never seen anybody - anybody, throttle at such high revolutions for hours and hours. Then, when nobody is looking - he is concrete asleep. Sitting, standing. Fallen. Just like that: silence and only a memory of the night. As if Z was only always just a breeze. + I think that my friend Z has some of that laughing contagion. And its complete opposite. Often, we talk about people like we talk about events. We talk about them as wrecks: Car wrecks, train wrecks. We talk about people as we talk about the weather: A storm, a tornado, a hurricane. A disaster. We are now talking about Z as all of those things; tied together with a bottle in the shape of a noose. Z is like a cancer patient; tired of fighting. Z thinks that "death" is a synonym for "rest". Z is drinking himself to death. And while this process typically takes years and lots of liquid, it also comes on suddenly. It can happen overnight. In sleep. None of us know whether or not we will get to say goodbye to Z. And at the pace he is running, nobody, not even Z, will have a chance to say goodbye. Sprinting toward that black gate Z is, with legs like boundaries and hands and cuffs and laughter and supreme sadness. + We head home after a night out. Z is with us. We have all been drinking. Laughing. Crying invisible tears. We heard music and nodded at one another. We looked at girls and laughed and licked our lips. Contagious. Laughed. We looked each other in the eyes. Then we got in the car. We pulled-up to a traffic light and Z quietly opened-up his door. Before any of us can look at one another, there is Z, racing away from the car... Z is like a cancer patient running from the hospital, toward that black gate, with legs wobbly and uncertain. And he has no idea where the hell he is. Tubes trailing behind him as lifelines. For several minutes we drive around and around. But we can't find him. In the morning we get a call from Z. He spent the night in Detox. The Drunk Tank picked him up in the middle of the night. I picture Z's legs in a woven string tangled down the middle lines of Broadway. In-between home and comfort and out in the middle of nowhere. + Z is always coming, or going. Trains are parking, reversing, pulling out of town always. When I look at Z I see cartoon steam and a blackened dream that sat out on the rails too long. Z writes letters. Prolific. One paragraph. Upper case nothing. Top shelf everything. Z writes this time to say I am leaving. Again? I have no chance to ask anything. Z says, I am headed south. Train leaves next week. I'll see you next year. Z's letter says, casually: I'm also in love and considering Jesus. Christ. Z's letter says there was a girl that came to his door months ago, distributing pamphlets. Z says, that he shook his hand at her and told her what everybody knows: that he is a sinner. The words, "no, no" were right there... The girl left material for him to read. Z smiled at her and shut the door. Well, Almost two months later, The girl came back. With her mother. Inside Z's house, out in the woods, they spoke of revelations and The End and everything near and far and written and never spoken. And then Z and the girl met eyes. And Z thinks she wiggled into his soul, and he into hers. And they think that they have known each other from somewhere else not around here and not written on paper. She brushed his arm with her Bible. Z said he is leaving. The train is pulling-away. But he will return. Soon. She smiled at him. Soon, Z said: I will return. And I will find you. But for now, the Carolinas are calling. And the train is backing-out of the station. Because trains do that, you know - they cannot turn around. Z says nobody will know when I go. Gradually, then suddenly... there will be silence and only a memory. + Z is passed-out in the front seat of our friend's car. He will not be woken up. Hands over his chest and in front of his breathing hole to make sure. Z cannot drive home. Not tonight. Our friend pulls Z out of the car and drops him on the summer lawn because he cannot carry him any further. A blanket is thrown over his silent frame. Hours later and there is a great and quick melee of sound in the house. My friend stumbles from his bed. Z is in the den, standing in front of a floor-to-ceiling bookcase. Z has his hands wedged between the wall and the bookcase. He is trying to pull the whole thing down. No, Z is opening the bookcase like a door that leads somewhere. Several minutes, and a tremendous and sloppy fight later, and Z slumps down to the floor. Asleep. Cold. Out. Gradually, then suddenly... silence and only a memory. Z. This is, The End. Stop. |
