by M. B. Julien
I arrived at the home of Joe's mom, Kathleen, still wondering why she could have possibly wanted me to visit her. By the end of the night I realize that she has been alone since her husband died.
All the relationships she had in the past ended in bitterness because of the sins of her son or ended because the other person had passed away. It's funny how once someone reveals that they are a homosexual, they immediately become a different person. The friends they had and the people they knew, some of them disappear. However, that's not to say that some of them don't stay. There are always people who will accept you for who you really are, or even who you really aren't.
Like so many other people, Kathleen, Joe's mom, suffers from isolation within. Like so many people she is surrounded by billions of lifeforms, yet manages to feel alone, and so now in her times of desperation she reaches out. She seeks forgiveness not from me, not from Joe, not even from God, but from herself because self-acceptance is the beginning of the end. Accepting that she was not strong enough to say no to her husband and the others who condemned her son. She tells me that when Joe wakes up she wants to be next to his side, she wants to move on with the little time she has left, and she wants to die satisfied. Not in those words.
She asks me if I understand these words that she is saying, but I can't possibly comprehend them the way she does, the way she wants me to, simply because I don't have children. Because I've never had a wife or a husband. Because I'm not so old that I think time is running out for me to fix the messes that reach out from the past and into the present and await the future. I can't possibly understand because for the most part, my heart is filled with more hate than it is love. This misanthropic life.
As I'm returning back to my home, I decide to instead spend the night at my parents' house because in my apartment building there are fools and intruders. People like Lynne who ask you to garden with them. People like Joe who put your name on a form. People like Jamal who seek refuge, and when you show them kindness they lie to you. People like Mary who at the very sight of them makes you feel sick.
Even my home is a place where I don't belong. I sit here and even the home I grew up in, my parents' home, I don't feel I belong. I feel as if there is no place for me in a world with so many people I can't call my own, but as I'm beginning to fall asleep, perhaps to dream of a paradise where I do belong, a utopia where I can find people who are like me, all I can think about is Lynne and the time she said that your home is your home.
Chapter 28:
BLACK AND WHITE
I wake up and for a second I don't know where I am, but the painting of Jesus Christ on the wall reminds me that I spent the night at my parents' home. It also reminds me of the dream I just had, but I can only remember bits, pieces and parts. In one part of the dream, Joe's mom, Kathleen, and I are at the hospital visiting a sleeping Joe. She offers me a piece of gum and I take it, but I don't really like gum so I put it in my coat pocket.
The next thing I remember is that I'm leaning over Joe's body trying to read what's on the dog tags that are around his neck. Either I can't remember what I read or they were just blank.
Now I'm awake and back at my apartment building and standing in front of my door, trying to look in through the peephole from the outside, but of course that doesn't work; all I can see is black. This is a one way street, one way view, and you can't just expect everyone to see things the way you do. Sometimes you just have to look at something at a different perspective, through the eyes of someone else, but if all you can see is black, then you may have to trust that person to guide you through the darkness.
As I'm trying to look into my own apartment I hear someone coming up the stairs. I take out my keys and pretend to go through them. It's Boris. I'm pretty sure he's Russian but that's about all I know about him. He looks at me, nods, and I nod back, and he goes up the next flight of stairs.
Once he's gone I start to look through the peephole again but still all I can see is black. I don't know why but I just keep trying to see at least something, just a little color, just something other than black, and that's when I hear a familiar voice. "What are you doing?"
It's Lynne, holding a basket of laundry. She's so small I didn't hear her coming up the stairs. I tell her that I reversed the peephole so I could see inside my apartment when I'm coming home, just in case there is someone inside ready to attack me. She starts to laugh and that makes me laugh. I'm getting better at this.
She asks me what made me think of doing that, and I tell her that it was actually from an old television show and that my peephole wasn't actually reversed. She laughs again.
She walks by me and she says that she has something she wants to show me. I follow her into her apartment. Then through the living room. Then into her bedroom. I see her bed and I can't help but think of the dream I had with the prostitute. She points to her left and I come closer to see what it is. It's a painting of a white rose with a Sun behind it, giving it life.
I remember that she told me that a white rose meant innocence and purity, silence and secrecy, but I know that the feelings I have for her are anything but passionate. This feeling that I think might be love is simply obsession in disguise.
I've seen so many famous paintings by artists considered the greatest, but I've never felt anything from them like other people do. I think the thing is you have to see one of these paintings at the right time in the right place under the right circumstances, and that's when you will truly understand what appears before you.
For a second everything makes sense, and the painting stares back at you and you understand it. That's how I feel looking at Lynne's painting, because this white rose and this Sun have so many meanings to me.
I ask her if she painted it herself, and she says yes. She tells me that she has been painting since she was a little girl. She starts to tell me she paints because it's like gardening. You have an idea for a painting, and you plant that seed. Once you start painting you are creating a universe of your own and there are no boundaries.
Eventually your universe starts to grow and you paint what your heart tells you to. It's just like writing or playing an instrument. She continues but I lose focus of what she's saying when I hear the news on the television. I tell her to wait, and I walk into her living room, she follows.
Police have discovered thirteen bodies in a small abandoned apartment building. They say the bodies are, just like the other deaths, related to drugs. I can't help but wonder if this is actually the work of a serial killer instead.
Lynne and I talk about it for a while, and then I go home to find that Jamal has left. However Derek is still here, and he is of course reading one of the composition notebooks. I ask Derek where his brother went and he said he left. He tells me that Jamal made a phone call early in the morning and then just left, and that he told him to stay here. I then ask him what he's reading and he tells me he's reading about the short story where the main character realizes that their dreams were actually altered memories of horrible things they had done in the past.
How the main character talks about how dreams are so similar to memories. How when the main character had a dream of his parents dying in a house fire that he or she barely escaped, it was actually him or her who set the fire in the first place in the true reality. That was so along ago I didn't even remember writing it down.
I ask Derek if he wants anything to eat and we end up ordering pizza. While we are waiting, Derek tells me something I already knew. That Jamal lied to me. That he didn't really owe anyone money, he was just trying to get himself and Derek out of what was happening in the southern side of the city. All the killing, all the drugs.
He starts to tell me about how there is a huge drug war going on. He tells me that it started because one of the dealers from one of the organizations started selling drugs to a family member of one of the top guys in the other organization.
Someone said the best way to eliminate your competition or to win a war is by having your enemy destroy
itself. Start shipping drugs to your enemies country and soon they will have a domestic problem. The people will get addicted and start acting like addicts and that's the only seed you need to plant. The rest will follow.
Then he tells me that one of the top guys tells one of his own guys to murder the punk who sold drugs to his younger sister, and the next day that guy is found dead lying on the ground for everyone to see. That must have been the man who was intoxicated at the time of his death. The one that the police officer asked Lynne and I about. Then he tells me that the guy who did the killing got caught and was ready to bring the whole crew down. I was right. Now I stop him and ask him how he knows all of this, because he couldn't have been a major player at his age.
He tells me that his brother is the one who is the major player. That his brother has murdered people, and now both the police and the friends of the people he has murdered are looking for him. Jamal, that shithead. He brings his problems here and endangers my life.
I ask Derek if he knows anything about a building full of dead bodies but he says no. I'm guessing that Jamal called someone this morning and got the news that they found thirteen bodies in a building, so he went back out there. For what reason, I can't figure that out. The building full of bodies reminds me of a dream I had a long time ago.
I'm in the military walking along a dirt path with other soldiers, and eventually our journey is halted by a house on the road. It starts to stink, and one of the officers sends me and another man to check what's in there. Right before we kick down the door I glance at the man's dog tags, and they read "Max Harvey."
What we see before us is piles and piles of dead bodies left behind by a war that will probably end all of mankind, or at the very least destroy this part of the world. Murder contracts. The smell becomes so strong that it wakes me up. The dream makes me wonder if the world we live in is as bad as some of us think it is. After all, the decisions made before our time could have left behind a world far worse.
The good book says that the first murder was by Cain, done to his younger brother, Abel. Cain, who is portrayed as a sinful man, murders his brother after God rejects his offerings but accepts Abel's offerings. What was probably the cause and effect of a jealousy or anger gene cost a man his life, and I could only hope that one of Jamal's negative genes didn't turn on and in turn will cost him his own life.
I can only hope that his anger gene is still switched off, but who am I kidding. In order for certain species to survive in a certain environment, sometimes a certain switch has to always be on.
There is a knock at my door, but it's not the pizza-man, it's Joe's mom, Kathleen. I want to tell her that it's not such a good idea for her to drop by unexpectedly, but how can I, the more I see her the more senile she appears. Derek retreats back to his room, so I am left alone with her, and this time the theme isn't forgiveness, it's salvation.
I'm not a people person, I am exactly the wrong person to talk to about these things, yet she confides in me. Thank you Joe for sucking me into a world that I do not belong in. Her problem now is how can Joe get into the kingdom of Heaven if he doesn't change his sinful ways. How can he be saved if he dwells with a lifestyle which is not right.
Eventually the pizza gets here and I offer her some, but she doesn't understand how someone can eat pizza so early in the day, so Derek finally comes out and he and I end up eating all of it. Derek and Kathleen, Joe's mom, greet each other but I can tell they both feel weird about it. I guess it's because they are the exact opposites of each other. Young, old, black, white.
They both come from two very different lifestyles, but I bet if you put them both in a room together long enough, they will both tell each other their life stories, and what was so black before starts to get a little color.
There is a story of a woman who forgot the English language after being hit by a car, and the only words she knew were the words she heard. She wouldn't remember the word "hypnosis" until you said it to her, and only then would it be part of her vocabulary again. The philosophical concept of the story is that we only know and understand what we have experienced.
Chapter 29:
RAINING IN NEW YORK
She looks at him and he can see the sparkle in her beautiful blue eyes. "I will never forget this night," she says to him. "I am so glad we found each other," he replies. They continue to dance slowly to the mellow music being played in the background, as do all the others who were invited to this victorious celebration party.
There is a smell of expensive perfume in the air, and any other type of smell would simply be unacceptable. In the middle of the large extravagant room there is an elegant piece of marble, a statue carved to depict a man holding the hand of a child. The people dance around the piece of marble, and those who aren't dancing mingle with the others who aren't dancing.
One says to another, "we are doing God's work." In the corner of the room there are bottles of wine and other types of fine drinks, but these drinks are overshadowed by the seemingly endless amount of food ready to be eaten. This is a party for the celebration of a charity organization that had just reached a remarkable goal.
Even though the party in this dream seems as if it had been going on for a long time, the night was still young.
My partner and I walk through a parking lot filled with cars that could only be owned by individuals with a high standard of living. The high class. We put on our theater masks and get through all of their poor attempts at security, and then we knock down the doors and interrupt the most beautiful party you have ever seen.
My partner fires a round into the ceiling of the room and everyone stops dancing. Everyone stops talking. Soon after the music stops, and that's when we know we have the floor. The owner of this charity foundation, who is standing on the stage waiting for our demands, he's a thief. Not a thief like me or my partner, but a thief who hides behind the persona of a decent and honest human being.
He wears this mask that is his actual face, hiding in plain sight. He steals from his donators and with this money he provides for himself a lifestyle that people can't even dream of. Well, most people.
There was a man who said that all warfare is based on deception. To seem as if you are attacking when you are actually resting, and to seem as if you are resting when you are actually attacking. Of course, this doesn't just apply to warfare, as this owner has figured out.
My partner and I drop the two dead bodies we are carrying on our shoulders. These black bodies that are losing flesh, and we explain to them how their boss was the one who caused this. How people like him are causing problems around the world because of their greed and selfishness.
We tell them how this boy and this girl, who were extremely close friends, could have had a life together. How they could have danced in the rain, how they could have held each other, how they could have gotten married, how they could have had kids. But instead, the only good thing they had in their life was the fact that they died together, of starvation.
By the end of the night we have killed the owner and destroyed the statue of deceit. Before we killed him, before he starts begging for his life, he tells us that it's the mayor's fault. That he himself had nothing to do with the stealing of funds from the charity, but everyone here and everyone like this owner lies. My partner asks him, "what about her life, what about his?" He has no answer. After he's dead I think to myself how many people we will have to kill before everything is right, how many people will have to die, and then I wake up.
My father always told me that if you can think of something, and comprehend it, then it is possible. That the only things that are impossible are the things we don't even have the capacity to conceive. The owner thinks of starting a charity company out of goodwill, but along the path he loses his way and thinks about stealing from the people who want to help; then he makes it happen.
What he failed to comprehend is that you can fall when you are up and you can rise when you are down. Memento mori. Philosophically, metaphoricall
y and literally. Robin Hood would agree.
Some people think that it's money that can make the world a better place, that it's money that can change the world, but even if a person who was determined to make a difference had an endless supply of every type of currency in the world, the person wouldn't be able to change much. There's a chance that they could make the world worse.
The person starts giving out all the money to all of the poor people in the world and then no one is working. The system that was so similar to the system of our bodies shuts down because red blood cells no longer need to work. They can stay at home in their large mansion and let the brain cells experience cell death.
Some people think a better way to change the world is to take from the rich and give to the poor and balance everything out. That everyone should be financially equal in every way. The word "communism" may come to mind, and there are those who dread this idea. Those who will do anything to stop the idea from spreading.
