Austin Nights

by Herocious

compound. Our 523 square feet of apartment space in a schizophrenic corner of Austin pales in comparison to his completely remodeled single-family home in an East Dallas country-club neighborhood.

  “Can we live in a house like this someday?” asks Bridget, as she’s about to get ready for our first night of sleeping Mediterranean style.

  I smile and say, “Yes.”

  “Okay,” she says, and she shuts the bathroom door and brushes her teeth.

  Both Cody and Carla have built careers over the past decade. They are, and I’m not saying this lightly, productive members of society with a marketable skill set. This beautiful home is one of the things being productive and marketable has gotten them. They weren’t rewarded with this home. They earned this home, and they will earn many other things over the course of their lives together. It has to do with their willingness to work and their mindset. They have clearly defined priorities, and they are focused, and they are positive. Theirs is a balanced life. They are not afflicted with the insecurities I sometimes let depress me. Neither is Bridget, though. She, too, has a clear path and will not let a damn thing get in her way, not even herself.

  That’s what has happened to me. I’ve let myself get in the way. Headiness can make a person inert. Writing doesn’t necessarily make matters any better, especially when it’s the case that my writing isn’t marketable. But I haven’t always been heady. There are times when I had a plan and got close to carrying it out. Even recently, in Miami Beach, I was a white-collar professional with a better than average shot at securing a line of work that would always provide a middle-class life, maybe even upper class if I played my cards right.

  In Miami Beach, I was a residential appraiser, and I was good at what I did. In fact, I’d say that everything was peachy. But then the regulations within the industry got so freakishly controlling after the economic meltdown ~2008 that many appraisers had to start pursuing new careers. I stayed in the field until the end. It was all I knew how to do. I had no other ideas when it came to making myself marketable. But I’m still young, and there’s much life to live yet. I have to make myself marketable. It isn’t a choice, but an imperative, that is, unless I don’t care about being destitute, and not only financially destitute, but also socially. I have to be strong. I have to use my time wisely. I have to prove myself.

  Am I resilient? Resiliency isn’t only an admirable trait, it’s requisite for the good life. You have to be able to bounce back. You can’t let anything keep you down. You have to regroup and retrench. You have to hold your head high, push out your chest. You have to smother insecurity and be confident, unstoppable, if you want something in life. You have to find a job and work at it and be loyal to it until that job pays you and makes you independent.

  Like Cody says, There’s nothing wrong with a little autonomy.

  I nod in agreement.

  You’re right, Bum, I think, there’s nothing wrong with a little autonomy. But you have to be fair to yourself. You have to be ethical to the man you see in the mirror. The generations that came before us, the pioneers that built their own shade so later generations could be artistic and redemptive, didn’t these distant relatives already demean themselves enough for one family line? Shouldn’t we have the choice to shape our lives according to our heart? As long as we’re willing to work hard at whatever our hearts want, shouldn’t independence, by now, come with that?

  1

  Michael called. He’s on his way back from getting our car registered with the state of Texas. I’m still at the library. It’s crazy how much work I’m already doing for my psychology lab. Classes haven’t even started yet and my mentor wants me to put in ten hours a week. These would be unpaid.

  I’m shaking my head at this, even though I’m the grad student. It wouldn’t be too bad if I weren’t already going to Round Rock every day to work at the Autism Center. The thing is, I need the money right now. My bank account is running low.

  I’ll have to tell my mentor I can’t put in so many hours in the lab this summer. Once classes start, I’ll be in the lab all the time. But for now, I think one day a week is good. I’m willing to put in one day a week and keep up on readings, period.

  By the way, the tall guy’s under his blanket again with his mean laptop. I hear the fan whirring. He must be typing another password. I wonder what he’d do if I ripped that blanket off him. Would he yelp like a little girl? Or would he roar out like a wild animal in an Aphex Twin video? I don’t really care to find out.

  What I’m more curious about is why the old man reading a reference book keeps on mumbling to himself. Maybe mumbling isn’t the right word. I don’t know. He sounds like he’s making sentences, but his mouth is closed. His mumbling is singsong. I can tell he’s holding a conversation with multiple speakers. He sports a beard shaped like Ernest Hemingway’s. He has a blue cap low over his eyes as he mumbles. He’s not even looking at the reference book. He’s sitting in his chair, his legs crossed at the knees, and he’s staring at his hands, which are folded in his lap. Sometimes he pauses, twiddles his thumbs, and picks up where he left off.

  The mumbling is incessant and quite loud for the library. I’m certain everyone hears him, definitely, because eventually some guy in a muscle shirt with tater tots all over his pasty legs and arms smacks the spine of his fishing magazine against the table and forcefully says, “Hey man, can you shut up!”

  The mumbling ends on an offended note. The old man looks at the bully with the bill of his blue cap, but he gets no thank you. The bully flips through his fishing magazine again. Everyone else in the library acts like they didn’t hear a thing.

  I can’t help myself. I wait to see if anything else is going to happen, but the mumbler is able to be quiet for a very long time. Not a peep comes out of his throat. The conversation has officially ended in the name of upholding peace.

  About 20 minutes later, the guy in the muscle shirt closes his fishing magazine. He rubs his chin with his index finger, as if cleaning his chops, and he zips his backpack and stands, not forgetting to tuck in his chair underneath the table. As he makes for the library door, he looks earnestly at the Hemingway lookalike and says, “Sorry, man.”

  At this, the singsong mumbling resumes right where it left off. The old man is in his element again. When I try to count, I come up with no less than four distinct voices.

  This takes me back to my question:

  What is it about Austin that makes it a wasteland for the mentally ill?

  Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are rampant here, not exclusively on our corner. All you have to do is walk on Congress, stop momentarily at bus stops, and visit public libraries to understand how successful Austin is at keeping weird.

  Is there something in the tap water?

  I sure hope not because Michael has me drinking the stuff!

  But seriously, what is it about Austin? Are they running low on Seroquel? That’s how they treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Or maybe Austin hospitals don’t have enough psychiatric beds? Maybe all these unstable minds on every street corner are literally dying to be committed and helped, but the healthcare infrastructure simply doesn’t support them? So they end up living on the street, keeping the city weird, at least until they hang themselves in a stairwell.

  There’s nothing weird about that, Austin.

  1

  Bridget remarks, “The moon already looks smaller, doesn’t it?”

  Minutes after being a big and brown open eyeball on the eastern horizon, the moon is small and white, but it’s still full.

  “You’re right. It is smaller,” I say. “I think it’s biggest when it rises.”

  We reach the beer-and-wine mart, where, once upon a time, Bridget bent over a rose bush and smelt the biggest rose while I experimented with shutter speeds. The moon was waxing then. I don’t have the camera with us tonight. There’s always the appeal of traveling light. I’m a big fan of traveling light. The less stuff in my pockets and around my shoulders the better off I am.
All I have on me is my debit card, keys, and temporary driver’s license. I wear no watch, no jewelry, no hat, just shorts, cotton tee, socks, and tennis shoes.

  I had to surrender my Florida driver’s license at the Texas DMV. The lady who was in charge of getting me a new license allowed me to take several photos of my Florida driver’s license for posterity, before I surrendered it to her, before she tossed it in the wastebasket. I used Bridget’s iPhone to capture the way I looked after arriving fresh from Chicago to Miami. The importance of this photo documented only in my Florida license is apparent to me and no one else. I had spent a year writing Ernest Pipe short stories and, eventually, an Ernest Pipe manuscript. This photo ID was the only record of how I looked after being a writer.

  Q: What would I become in Miami?

  A: A Residential Trainee Appraiser.

  “I forgot,” I say. “How much is your Steel Reserve?”

  “1.94 after tax,” says the man with pockmarks.

  He doesn’t have white earphones dangling on his designer cotton tee tonight, but I suspect they’re nearby. Truth is, I’m still not too pleased with the price. I think a dollar is more appropriate. 100 cents for 24 ounces. Oh well. Bridget returns from her forage in the back coolers with a big bottle of her preferred IPA. The green ribbon keeps her reddish gold hair