Happiness and the Curse

All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.

 (Samuel Beckett)

It is August hot here already, too hot, too early.  My summer nerves are already frayed.  There is a madness to southern summer heat that emerges in the works of southern writers, Faulkner and his progeny.  Southern madness and meanness were not just myths but actualities born out of the cruelness of the environment.  The world gets smaller, closing in with vegetation, a green wall and ceiling that shrinks horizons, cuts off the sky.  Without air conditioning, we would still be disposing of bodies in the swamps.  The AC in my car no longer works.  The rear window will not go all the way up.  I stick with the car.  It reminds me of something I might otherwise forget.  

The old catatonia creeps back in, a rigor mortis of body and soul.  Life becomes a novel by Beckett.  

* * * * *

Joe was so startling to look at that in a normal crowd, eyes couldn't help but turn to him.  He had a slender frame, and that is probably why he looked so big.  I mean he was piled with muscles, but he there was something else about him as well.  You could see what he should look like by his skinny legs.  

One thing about hanging out with Joe was the plethora of girls.  You had to get used to being second fiddle around him, but that seemed a promotion to me.  I just enjoyed watching it all.  

One night, I joined him and two girls at his place.  They were younger than he but older than I, better socialized, turning bohemian.  I was nervous around girls having been exiled so long, and I enjoyed watching Joe's casual attitude and naturalness around them.  He didn't really look at them very much, then he would turn his gaze upon them with a hint of surprise as if he hadn't realized they were still there.  

We listened to music and Joe rolled up a joint.  The culling of the pot, taking out the seeds and the stems, then the process of rolling a tight, artistic looking number was the best part of it all for me.  After that came the smoking.  It was all new to most people now.  I'd gotten over it a long time ago.  Smoking made me tired and stupid.  It made me want to sleep.  So I had learned to take the joint, take what seemed to be a hit, hold a little bit of the smoke in my mouth for about thirty seconds, then explosively exhale with squinty, smiley eyes.  That seemed to make people happier than taking a pass.  Nobody paid any attention this way.  

Everything was getting cozy and Joe decided to put on a new album he had just gotten, a comedy record by Cheech and Chong.  He poured everyone some cheap wine--Mateus, a Portuguese rose that was a college staple--and we sat back to listen and chuckle in the muzzy closeness of the little living room.  

It seemed to me that both of the girls liked Joe, and I was already feeling like Gabby Hayes when things went bad.  As the night wore on, I had been feeling a tightness and tingling growing on my chin.  I was still prone to getting pimples, especially at the wrong times.  And so I had already been thinking about going to the bathroom to check out this growing annoyance when suddenly I heard one of the voices on the album saying, "Hey man, is that a zit?  That's big, man.  It looks like another nose."  

Now everyone, drunk and stoned, was looking at me and laughing.  "Hey, man," Joe said, "Is that a zit?"  

There is nothing ever to do when something like this occurs but take the beating.  There is no snappy comeback, nothing.  Don't even bother to hunker down, cause it won't help.  I'd learned this already.  

"Yea," I said, "I think it is."  

Everyone laughed, of course.  This was hilarious.  

As I say, there was nothing to do now.  I would hang around a little while longer though I knew my staying was useless.  I wondered what Joe would do with the two girls when I left.  I wasn't sophisticated enough yet nor imaginative enough to figure that out.  

And so, when the album was over, I got up from the floor and told everyone that I should go.  I had an early morning, I said to the eyes grinning up at me through the dim lights and the smoke.  I would see them all later.  

Back in my car, driving alone through the cooling autumn air, driving back to my father's house, back to the little cracker box to sleep on the couch, I thought about things.  Was I happy?  Was I cursed?  

Yes, I thought.  Yes.