by Phil Stern
Presumably the adult racoon had been struck first, with the two confused babies staying by their lifeless mother in the road until getting hit themselves. By the time Brooke and company arrived on the scene they were all long dead.
“But I told Brian to stop!” Brooke yelled, crying inconsolably. “I wanted to…to help them! Those babies…all alone…my God!” Smashing her fists onto the bench in helpless rage, she was the very essence of naked, raw emotion. “But he wouldn’t. That fucker! He laughed at me, said it was too dangerous, that I’d get hit too. They all laughed! But still…those sweet baby racoons…they…they didn’t deserve…” Bursting with grief Brooke collapsed against me, a complete stranger, wracked by desperate sobs.
And that was Brooke. She felt things more keenly than any other human being I’ve ever met. The only person who ever came close was Steve Levine. Dave Miller was up there too. But those guys choked it off, thinking it was weak to show what was really inside. With Brooke it was all on the surface, her very soul exposed and raw, alienating her from the vast bulk of humanity who’d already learned to live behind impenetrable walls.
Of course, her boyfriend Brian had been right. Stopping in the dead of night to let Brooke cry over dead racoons in the middle of the road was a decidedly bad idea. But Brooke didn’t care about that. She never saw him again.
In so many ways Brooke and I were complete opposites. I was very Catholic, she an avowed atheist. I’d remained chaste and cloistered throughout high school, while she’d been an absolute wild child, hanging out with older guys, taking off on wild trips, dropping in and out of school…the whole deal, as Steve would say. The summer she’d turned fifteen Brooke had even run away from home completely, hitchhiking up through Canada into the wilds of Alaska.
“There’s nothing more beautiful than the northern sky at night. Sophia, you have to see it!” Intent and raw, Brooke would take my hands, staring deep into my eyes. “There was one night we were camping out in the woods…the sun sank almost below the horizon and just hung there. It was mostly twilight but…the stars were so clear! And the woods were so clean and real! Not like here, with all the pollution and garbage! Soph, we all just sat there and drank it in, like the most beautiful wine in the world! Like the best, most intimate sex ever! Soph, we just have to go there!”
I never questioned the ubiquitous “we” in all of these stories. Clearly Brooke had taken up with innumerable fellow travelers throughout her wild forays, accessories to her libertine lifestyle easily discarded at the end of each adventure. Apparently, no matter how good the times were, these temporary friends were always deemed unworthy of long-term intimacy.
Brooke even had a term for this process, referring to past acquaintances as being “over” for her. There was a stunning finality when passing this irrevocable sentence, the condemned clearly not qualifying for even the most cursory of appeals. They became Orwellian unpersons, enemies of the state whose only crime was challenging, however mildly, the status quo. Instantly their official histories were rewritten, true accomplishments incinerated within the nearest memory hole.
And just as in the world of 1984, unpersons were to be avoided at all costs. Once Brooke stalked from a restaurant, her food half-eaten. Concerned, I followed her outside, where she impatiently stood at the car.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Moodily, Brooke stared off. “There are some people in there I don’t want to see.”
“Oh.” I waited a moment. “Did you have a bad experience or something with them?”
“Kind of.” She now shrugged, her face a mask of heartless indifference. “They’re just over for me, that’s all.”
Who knows what crime they’d committed, or how close Brooke had once felt to them? Maybe they’d even shared her marvelous Alaskan experience? It didn’t matter. On the mildest of pretexts, perhaps even a simple misunderstanding, Brooke Smith would never again associate with them.
Obviously this was everyone’s eventual fate within Brooke’s broiling, tumultuous emotional world. Which, of course, was the truly terrifying thing about being her friend. Because in the end we didn’t matter, not really. Brooke’s restless, urgent searching for some kind of mental composure, her longing for even a vague semblance of equanimity, was never to be ignored. We were all failures waiting to happen, collateral damage-in-waiting within a totalitarian state sustained by constant tension and war.
At times Brooke was the most decadent person I’d ever known. For example, she often liked to tell of celebrating New Year’s Eve one year by traveling into Buffalo, finding some strangers in the bus station, and having a wild orgy with them. They spent the entire night drinking, drugging, and fucking the night away. Apparently one of her new friends was some kind of criminal, running out the next morning when the cops came looking for him. For some inexplicable reason, Brooke convinced the police he’d never been there.
She’d tell that story, and others like it, without a hint of embarrassment. There were other tales of screwing the friends of guys she’d broken up with, cruelty to girls she’d crossed in high school, even giving her mother’s boyfriend a blow job for the sole purpose of causing her parent pain. All of these tales were related without even the mildest hint of remorse.
But at the same time, Brooke would put in long hours at the local food pantries and animal shelters. While other kids talked a good game about saving the world and helping one’s fellow man, Brooke was the one getting up early on Saturday mornings to plant trees or help raise money for cancer research.
And now, Brooke Smith is no more. Why on earth didn’t we patch things up? Why didn’t I call, or write? Was I such a coward that I couldn’t face her again, take her hand and tell Brooke how much I loved her, how much we all did?
What a tragedy, that she should have died so young, and without closure from us. But was that even important? In the end, were Dave, Steve, and I just three more unpersons, unlamented and largely forgotten? I guess I’ll never know.
But one thing I’m sure of. When things were right, Brooke could love more easily, and completely, than anyone I’ve ever known. So if anyone deserves to spend eternity in God’s Heaven, Brooke certainly does. I’ll pray for her tonight, and every night for the rest of my time here on earth.
Brooke, I love you. The world was a better place for your short time here. Rest in peace.
And I’m sorry, I really am. We all make mistakes, but that night was maybe the worst of my life. And that’s saying a lot, believe me.
STEVE LEVINE
If there is any true meaning to one’s life, it has to come from within.
This, I think, may be the key to modern existence, and the great dissatisfaction many people feel. It’s why they turn to drugs, or gambling, or perhaps cheat on their spouses. It explains the man who punches his wife for burning dinner, or the woman who screams all day because the garbage wasn’t taken out. It’s why people buy houses they can’t afford, or lavish clothes they’ll rarely wear. These are simply manifestations of the empty space inside one’s own soul, and the even more frightening void stretching out into eternity.
Because only we, each individual, can truly define our own being and what we seek in this world. Only we can identify the beauty from which we’re inspired, our true goals and ultimate satisfaction. Without that self-centering we’re just drifting, helpless and confused.
Just yesterday I spoke with a friend whom I’d lost touch with about a decade ago, another Facebook hookup. Having met as camp counselors over twenty years before, Wes and I had simply matured at different rates, my relatively staid professional career greatly at odds with his late-20's bohemian booze/drugs/and bimbo lifestyle.
So we caught up. Like so many of our generation Wes had gotten married four years ago, only to get divorced eighteen months later.
“We both started drinking,” he explained. “I mean, dude, I had stopped, you know, but she got me back into it. And she loved coke, man. I mean, we had more white lines running aroun
d our pad than a fucking football field! Look, dude, you know I was doing a ton of pot, but she was out of control! She lost her job, I nearly lost mine. We fought like cats and dogs. I mean, like, really fucked up cats and dogs, you know what I’m saying? It was crazy.”
Ironically, Wes now also has a sales job, flying around the country selling high priced, custom-made furniture. He hates it, though, and can’t wait to finish his education degree and become a teacher. Wes is also engaged again and wants a family.
When I questioned this seemingly ill-advised re-entry into matrimonial hell, he firmly disagreed.
“No, dude, listen, you need things in your life. Family, man, family’s what it’s all about! I’m almost forty, you know, and I want kids. And a house in the suburbs. Yeah, I want to sit around the dinner table, like a real family and stuff.”
I can tell you, with a surety grounded in life itself, that Wes would not be happy as a family patriarch. Unless, of course, his wife and kids wanted to listen to rock music all day in a drunken, pot-induced haze.
But Wes can hold it together when he needs to, in his self-absorbed, narcissistic kind of way. He just doesn’t understand that what he seeks doesn’t lie in the next party, or tonight’s buzz, or even the traditional default setting of some mystical family. So at our age he’s still lurching about, looking outside of himself for the meaning he needs to discover within.
Ask yourself a question. Can you imagine getting up tomorrow, going out to your favorite place, the location where you feel yourself most vividly, and just reveling in your own being? It might be a beach, a trail in the woods, perhaps even just a stroll around your own neighborhood in the early morning hours. That place where your self, the actual you, becomes almost a tangible force, where the river of time is halted and you can lift your soul, however fleetingly, from the daily crush of life. Can you imagine that?
Because if you can’t commune with your inner, true self, then you’re like a ship lost in a storm, blundering about for any harbor you can find. And even upon locating some temporary shelter you’ll soon be blown out to sea again, inevitably to wreck on a distant shore. But by the time that happens, you’ll have long forgotten where you were trying to go in the first place.
That’s what most people seem to do for their entire lives. And sometimes it frightens me very much.
There’s a purity I seek in life, a fusion of my inner soul and outer surroundings. It’s a state where I never have to feel afraid, or wonder if I’ll ever be all alone. Where a few close friends see me for who I truly am, and feel lucky to have me in their life. I would be with a woman who is completely satisfied with me, and loves my inner soul without reservation, yet is strong and sure in her own right. Together we would create a haven not only for the “me,” but for the “us.”
At the moment I’m far from that state, sometimes overwhelmed by a distinct disconnect from my surroundings. It’s often bewildering. But I haven’t lost hope.
Because there must be others out there, like me, feeling relatively secure within themselves, yet utterly ungrounded within the larger world. It’s like we’re a secret society, carefully navigating our way within the milling masses, hoping not to be recognized for the outcasts we really are.
Sure, we want to find others like ourselves, but at this point the disguises are too well honed. So we study faces, eagerly scan the internet for co-conspirators, but who can tell? Revealing oneself is never wise. With all our cleverness and comforting isolation, our cabal never came up with a secret recognition signal. And if there is a safe house where the Society Of The Isolated meets from time to time, no one ever gave me the address.
But perhaps that’s just as well. Our secret would have inevitably gotten out, SOTI’s members rounded up and exposed for who we truly were. Clearly, a conspiracy of the soul could never be tolerated, especially one as wide ranging as SOTI must be.
I think there’s just one point in life when our members can live out in the open, free of hostility and persecution. Just last week I saw a young couple on the beach, around 20 or so, reveling in each other’s being. Sitting hand in hand, they watched the water roll up the sand, their frisky yellow lab barking at the waves. Both were utterly beautiful, full of health and life, confident in their “us” and the bright, beckoning future as palpable as the rising sun. They were paragons of modern virtue, free of the nagging worry, frustration, and fear inevitably driving us all into dreary isolation.
I hope that young couple makes it, I really do. Of course they can’t live as openly as they do now, but they’ll learn that soon enough. The essential thing is to keep their private enclave pristine for as long as possible, before outer-world contamination inevitably drives them underground.
Actually, now that I think about it, I can finger some of my fellow conspirators. Sophia, Dave, and Brooke are out there, somewhere, probably existing much as I do.
For a brief time Sophia and I lived as that young couple, too naive to recognize our blessed state. But after that horrible night Dave came back to Buffalo after his marriage…well, our SOTI cell disintegrated, everyone going their separate ways.
Look, we were all grievously wounded to begin with, lashing out in every direction. That night proved it. So rationally I know our movement inevitably would have failed. At least, that’s how I console myself.
But that was a long time ago. Right now I want to remember what we all had, even if it wasn’t perfect, and only lasted for a very short while. In many ways it was the best time of my life.
You know what? Sometimes I fantasize it’s not too late for that safe house after all. Assuming, obviously, the secret police haven’t already caught my youthful resistance cell, using insidious machines to eradicate their inner souls. That would be something too horrible to contemplate.
DAVE MILLER
I guess you’re wondering about The Night My Marriage Finally Blew Up. Like everything else with Jen, it was a doozie.
By this point we had zoomed well beyond the phase where we were sleeping apart, but still climbing into one another’s beds once in a while for a quick lay. In fact, by the time of Great Concert Fuck-Up, I hadn’t given my wife a good hard Dave-Bone for several months.
Actually, we didn’t even talk much anymore. So it was with some surprise one Thursday morning that, while grabbing a cup of coffee before dashing off to work, Jen stalked into the kitchen, planting herself in my path.
“We’re going to a concert tonight,” she announced.
“Oh,” I mumbled, trying to smile placatingly. “Is Def Leppard in town?”
“There’s a performance at our daughter’s school tonight, and we’re going.”
“Mandy is four, Jen.” I was genuinely confused. I swear I was. “She doesn’t have a school.”
I was immediately inflicted with a patented Jen eye roll. “Yes she does, you idiot! She just doesn’t go there yet!”
In short, Jen wanted to attend a concert at Oak Lane Elementary, which Mandy would be entering in two years. After trying to object that normal, sane people didn’t typically “pre-concert” their daughter’s prospective elementary school, Jen began screaming.
“Dave, listen to me! We need to make a good impression! These people have our daughter’s future in their hands!” With a look of infinite disgust, Jen shook her head. “Don’t you ever think about anybody but yourself?”
A few uncomfortable moments went by. “Maybe we could work the room?” I finally replied. A concept from one of Jen’s self-help books, she often spoke of “working the room.” I had absolutely no idea what it meant. “You know, before the concert starts?”
“Exactly!” Letting out a huge sigh, Jen threw out her hands. “Now you’re finally getting it!” She then flounced off, leaving me with a cold cup of coffee.
Somehow I begged off work early that day, raced home, promised a babysitter $30 I didn’t really have to watch Mandy, then left with Jen to attend a children’s concert in which no one I even vaguely knew was performing.
Comically overdressed, Jen wore an expensive, low-cut red gown, her hair done to the nines. An obviously fake, sparkly necklace hung around her neck. “Where’d you get the dress?” I asked.
“A store.” Stoically staring straight ahead in the passenger seat, Jen didn’t even deign to look my way. She had objected bitterly to my more appropriate slacks and sports coat, but I refused to be cowed. “Like I said, this is a dressy occasion.”
Dressy occasion. She looked like some deranged former child star looking for the faux-Oscar party at the local mental institution. “Did you put the dress on a credit card?”
“Yes
“But honey…”
“Don’t worry, dear!” she snarled. “I’ll return it tomorrow. Because unlike other husbands in the community, you don’t make enough money to properly support your family!”
Of course, all the other parents were attired as I was, the men in slacks or
even jeans, the women in skirts or tasteful suits. Jen stood out like an infected pimple.
After a delusory twenty minutes watching her engage tired strangers in inane small talk, when all they really wanted to do was applaud politely for their kids at the appropriate moment and then get the fuck out of there, we settled down to watch the show.
And what a show it was. First the chorus performed, cute little well-kempt kids bawling merrily away before a smoking hot young blonde music teacher. She was maybe 23 or 24, and could easily have been in the middle of a magazine or something. I mean, she was that hot. A half-hour passed quickly amid the continuous undulations of the blonde’s perfect ass beneath a tight black skirt. I even caught a father’s eye across the aisle, exchanging an illicit guy-grin before our wives could notice.
But then the centerfold led her little darlings off into the night, and the “orchestra” took the stage.
