by Roman McClay
She didn’t know much about machines at all. But it was all flat-black and mean looking; and it was long and lacking in anything soft or round or feminine. It was 90-degree angles and matte metal unpainted and nothing that shined at all. It was so fast that she felt like she would slide off the little pillion pad he had stuck on the back fender, so she grasped at him with her hands and body, as the soul to her stomach was left a mile or so back.
He smelled like a beast; like sweat and fuel, and his pistol chaffed her arm a bit if she rested her arm too low on his waist.
She didn’t know why anyone carried a gun, but after he explained that he was in charge of her safety and sense of wellbeing, she cottoned to the idea more and more. He was like her father in some ways, although she didn’t really like to even think like that. Her father was way older, well older, like 49 or 50 she thought. And plus, he didn’t look or act anything like Lyndon, and she wondered how he spelled his name. She had known a Lincoln once, and that was the capital of Nebraska too. But as she thought of this an antelope appeared to her eye just ahead to the side of the road. He was white and black and brown and had sharp black horns on his head as he looked straight across their path up ahead.
She asked him if the deer was going to cross and he said he didn’t know. He hadn’t corrected her on the species, but later she figured it out when they stopped to get gas and another lady had mentioned the antelope on the road.
They rode up to the mountains and stopped as her butt was finally getting sore too, and they walked to the edge and looked out over the city that they had just come from as he pointed and said, “there,” as she cuddled up under his outstretched arm and ribs.
He laughed and held her and kissed her head and told her he thought she was an angel. She felt safe, and she liked it up here as really she had not seen much of the mountains at all.
He thought of each time he had taken some girl under his wing, how each girl had failed him, and he upbraided himself for being negative and banished the thoughts of each of them -each female- as they appeared, almost in sequence, with each offending remark as title or banner to their second or two that they were allowed in -had forced their way into- his mind.
Females always find a way to insult you, he thought, it’s just in their core . They have to take digs, just like weak men, or the jealous of every kind, he surmised as she wiggled under his flank so as to encourage him to place his arm around her and cuddle her in the chilly air. This one was an angel, he thought, but he knew he would find fault soon enough. He knew the wax and wane of love, of the male-female thing, and he had not yet learned how to stave it off, how to keep it at bay. He knew only how to succumb.
They seemed so sweet at first, so grateful to him for his ways. But eventually they all found him abrading in some manner, too arrogant maybe, likely, he thought, too controlling and autocratic and set in his ways. They were not wrong, he thought, but, why not be controlled, by a competent man who knew what was best after all? He thought he took orders from anyone smarter than him, anyone with knowledge or wisdom he lacked. He took note of men above him that he admired.
But, for him, that category did not include the whole world like it did for a young woman, and so he could take orders from the few -the 1-10% of- people above him and not feel it abrade. But to never be the smartest or most powerful or wisest in any room ever, that must chafe at a person, he admitted, even a girl. And girls often think relationships should be equal, they’ve been brainwashed to think that from day one . And he thought of this as the city spread out like a hazy rash around a scar full of buckshot, or gravel and asphalt in roadrash, or sand and bone fragments in a GSW. He thought that they had seen their own fathers be incompetent and losers and so why would they ever again trust a man?
Fathers had failed little girls, this was the loci of all modern relationships, and he knew that as long as he was fighting that phenomenon he’d always be fighting up hill. Getting a woman to trust you, trust that you’ll stick around and not abandon them, is impossible, because their fathers left and once that happens nothing you do can make up for it. It’s subconscious, it’s not on purpose that girls are permanently unwilling to hand over any authority to a man ever again, he surmised. But, when dealing with the subconscious, all one can do is use the subcortical regions themselves to dissuade them, to fight on the same level as it. Fight their Pacific Ocean with his own Artic Sea , he thought. She’d be his Tethys and he Oceanus .
But he didn’t have the first fucking clue on how to do that; he was rational and used rational arguments with women; and had his whole life. He laughed as she snuggled in more, and she assumed it was because of her. But, he was laughing at himself, for this obsession with the rational even in the face of all the evidence that rationality had almost nothing to do with anything in the real world, the real world outside of things .
Yeah, science and math can work on buildings and bridges but not on people at all , he thought. Look at Saddam, the guy had whatever he wanted as long as he didn’t invade Kuwait, and the first thing he does is invade Kuwait . That is not the act of a rational man, it’s the act of a man who cannot stand for anyone to tell him what to do. Modern liberals would never get that; they’d never get that a man will do anything, no matter how insane and terrible just to exercise some semblance of free will. Even the illusion of free will, he added.
Women can’t get this either, but not because they don’t feel it, it’s just that they don’t feel it in the same way or in the same places as men. And they cannot extrapolate, they lack the metaphorized space in their conception of life to think that a man might not like it when anyone pushes them around and that men, being taller and having a higher -and more unstable- center of gravity might feel the pressure of force earlier and more sensitively than women who are lighter and closer to the ground.
Men are more sensitive in general, he thought, and alphas especially . We have to be , he said to himself. Alpha’s are in danger of usurpation and cuckolding and must remain vigilant to a degree a woman or child or beta male with nothing to guard or protect never feel is necessary . He could understand them, and how they abraded at being talked down to or swaddled too closely or left with nothing important to do; why couldn’t they see the pressure the alpha male was under, to protect and defend, to keep the whole tribe happy, to set a direction and make it all happen?
It was alphas that worked 12-16 hours a day, it was alphas who had to detect any note of ennui or anomie in all members of the tribe, his harem and children alike. The alpha could not let anyone else handle it, whatever it was, he had to carry the whole tribe on his back. It had been this way since they were all Chimpanzees, he thought.
And a woman could make her man happy by just being loyal and that is it; she was never held liable or responsible for entertaining him or making him laugh or making money or seeing what went bump in the night. She never need figure out a plan for anything, she was allowed to just go along for the ride. And yet all that responsibility the alpha male took on was ignored, dismissed and unrecognized. All that anyone ever saw was the money and things and girls that he had; never the work done to gain it and the vigilance to protect it, as it sprawled and aggregated and differentiated out beyond his control.
Nobody ever thought of how it wounded the alpha to be made fun of or maligned behind his back, how often he was robbed of little things that disrupted his sleep. The betas who scooped up his crumbs and undermined his kingdom with little surreptitious insults and thefts never thought of how it all added up to erode his confidence and in such a large and fragmented tribe led to reinforcing loops; led to more and more attempts on his reign. All they ever mentioned was when he lost his cool, never all the times he let shit go that everyone took as weakness even as they pretended to think it was perfectly fine.
He stood there and looked out over the city and knew that his reign, over whatever little fiefdom he had would never hold, the backbiting and usurpers and jealous little worms would never allow it. And
he knew, somewhere in there, that the way he chose women who could never be what he wanted or needed just left them in ruins and himself worse off each time. But he managed to not blame himself just yet, as there were so many others to blame first. He had not seen the core of his power yet, the thing that fueled all that he had.
He mistook the temporary and material power of money and girls and style for the real, and the fundamental; and what life was about. He thought literature and poetry and art were grains harvested from the rational application of the technology of reason and that love was the flower that came from common cause and agreements and blood-pacts organized by men and women who saw the world through one set of eyes. He thought the smarter he got, the more erudite, the closer he’d be to the truth. He gathered experience and other people’s words and the wisdom of crowds and the exiled general both; he took in data from all sources, all in an attempt to get his arms around life, so that he too may live it with harmony and joy.
He thought if he treated others as he’d want to be treated that this would in fact be appreciated and returned. He thought his own hypocrisies would be forgiven, his own slights ignored as unbraiding, his own corruption unnoticed and his own lack of loyalty waived as meaningless in the grand scheme of things. He thought his honesty would be welcome, his self-awareness rewarded, his general pride in his manhood respected at home and abroad. He thought people saw him the way he saw himself: as a flawed and hypocritical man of high aim, as a principled warrior who failed uphill, a man who was genuinely trying to get it right for all concerned.
But, the closer he got to his true self, the closer he in fact got to God, he saw that neither he nor they saw him that way at all; because it was likely that he wasn’t that way. It was likely that he was corrupt and evil and out for blood from the start; it was likely that he hurt people just to prove that he could. Not that he believed that, and not that there wasn’t evidence that he in fact was generous and magnanimous and less full-of-shit than most. But, if he insisted on comparing himself to the average person, then he couldn’t blame them for heaping him in with the dross.
He felt himself exceptional, and this demanded something more than what came easy to him. It was easy for him to not study and in fact get drunk the night before the SAT and get a 1550; finish the ASVAB first in a room full of 18 years-olds and get a 97, the highest score anyone at MEPS had seen in 20 years. It was easy for him to pick up girls and make them love him, easy to rise to the top of any job, easy for him to charm his way through life, easy to lie and seem honest, even if he was being 50% more honest than most.
The point was his potential was so much greater than he came close to. The fact that he could land in places with insouciance and no effort -places that normal people had to try their hardest to reach half way to- was irrelevant. He was able to be 100% honest if he tried his hardest, he could get a 1600 SAT if he just laid off the booze and then studied a bit, he could have been a great leader with his looks and charm if he didn’t throw it away with all those alienating tattoos and unfriendly clothes; his refusal to use his charm for good, instead being prickly just because he could. He could have gone the extra mile, for any number of causes and people that needed his leadership, but he refused on principle, because it was phony or square or beneath his contempt.
He thought of Marlon Brando, and how the greatest actor of all time was contemptuous of acting and had said all people do it , and that it was really no big deal; and that to do it -acting- as a grown man was unseemly and sillyass , and contemptible too. Daniel Day Lewis thought the same thing, and he was the only one even close to Brando in terms of talent , Lyndon thought. Maybe there was a lesson there that escaped him. Because Lyndon thought that being the best at something made you contemptuous of it, as if greatness immolated whatever was great; as if excellence undermined whatever one grandly built .
Like a consummatory reward versus an incentive reward , he thought. Life seemed to be made up of consummatory rewards mostly, and even the ones that were ostensibly incentive, like love and friendship and creative exploits were -at some base level- just things to be consumed by the maw of greedy and self-aggrandizing man; and the shallow never saw this and could therefore appear deep.
But the truly deep saw through it all and found it unsatisfying to continue the farce. This was the lesson he took from Brando and Lewis, who quit acting to go make shoes like that one character in a Tale of Two Cities, he thought. It never occurred to him, not until much, much later, that the lesson was that just because a man can see the shallow in what he does perfectly doesn’t meant that is all that there is; that maybe a man must make himself see something else, something that doesn’t come easily to his eyes, to his mind, something that is harder to find.
Maybe a great man must look harder beyond his ennui and cynicism and see what more he could do, what else he could accomplish if he had to work as hard as the stupid and ugly and incompetent had to work just to fucking survive. Maybe if the gifted and grand worked 1,000% harder they could see the grandeur in what it is that they can in fact do; maybe if they lived on the edge of what was beyond their ken and their competence they would not see through this life as easily as they seem to do.
Maybe he should have thought this earlier, before he was wrought up and in pain, in so much pain, that he couldn’t be happy with any girl who wasn’t a virgin and could never be in the city with other men around at all. Maybe he should have forsaken the cheap pleasures of dozens of beautiful and young girls who could never give him what he needed and forsaken the expensive bullshit that impressed only those eager to be jealous no matter what, providing them with more and more fuel for their hot angst against him. Maybe he ought to have been honest with himself and honest with what he needed; and maybe he ought to have seen the pain he caused not just the pain he received.
31. Aqua Regia
Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man,
That slaves your ordinance, that will not see
Because he doth not feel
King Lear [Shakespeare, William]
Silent, slow, and solemn; bowing over still further his chronically broken back, he toiled away, as if toil were life itself, and the heavy beating of his hammer the heavy beating of his heart
The Whale [The Author]
Woe to the fool and aesthete who only ask how and not why
Darkness at Noon [Koeslter, Arthur]
I. 2036 e.v.
“Sit him down there,” the physician said to the guard and looked over the chart that came with the inmate from ADX.
The inmate was placed in the brown and chrome chair and remained silent. You learn in custody not to speak until spoken to; if for no other reason than it makes them listen to you when you finally do speak. Maybe that is why the Spartans were so Laconic, he thought, they knew their economy of words elevated its value to the impoverished -desperate- ears of those they spoke to. He was not normally that way, he liked to go on and on; prolix he was, verbose they had said, loquacious had been used a time or two in reference to the man as he now recalled.
“So, you want a second opinion?” the doctor, 50s, Caucasian, left-handed, asked.
“I would,” the inmate said as he watched each thing to be observed.
“Ok, so what’s the complaint?” the physician asked.
“Pain; level 5-7 untreated. Radiating nerve pain to extremities including numbness and tingling. Sequela of muscle cramps and spasms in neck, upper and lower back. All symptoms verified via 3rd party medical analysis including EEG, MRI and X-Ray data which if not in the file are available through my attorney. I had sent a pre-transfer request that those files be sent here last week; did they arrive?” the inmate asked.
“Mr. MacLeod, they did, and I’ve reviewed your chart and first of all, Dr. Ben Mechanic is a dubious character; and the MRI was inconclusive in my opinion. However, the X-ray was in agreement with the diagnosis by Dr. Hahn; you -in fact- have a C5,” he paused as he scanned the file for the details.
; “And six,” the inmate added .
“Right, C5 and C6 compression fracture with bone spur encroachment; nerve impingement is likely; and discomfort is all but assured. But, pain at level five?”
“Five to seven; depending on how I sleep on it. I wake up most nights at 0200 in pain. Look, I am a mass murderer, ok? I deserve my lot in life; my pain, if it be the sanction of God, I accept it. However, ontological arguments aside, the courts via Leatherman 507 US 168, Estelle 429 US 104; and Jones v. Simek 193, all state that chronic and or acute pain shall be treated under the 8th amendment of the constitution based upon reasonable -if subjective- criteria of pain in excess of that which is tolerable. The courts used that word: subjective ,” the inmate said.
“Is that right?” the doctor said as he looked up from the paperwork.
“Yes. Cooper v. Casey . And they found that the department of corrections, and their medical personnel -under threat of personal liability- must alleviate the inmate’s pain or be in breach of the 8th amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Ralston 167. I cite the court’s precedent including Walker v. Benjamin in 2002, so you can feel unencumbered by the BOP’s and Sheriff’s directive to avoid narcotic analgesic prescriptions. I cite case law so you may feel free to be a doctor again, however briefly, and not a mere functionary of the prison system.
“You can -on good evidence- now tell the sheriff to pound sand, that you are not going to incur legal judgements and personal liability just so the BOP and DOC can make inmates contort in pain out of some puritanical need to see people suffer; like Tertullian watching those of us in Hell writhe.
