01-America

I was four beers in, and my smile was so wide it almost hurt my face. This was often the case during the early part of a Friday night on campus.

Well, on the edge of campus, in one of those ramshackle, broken-down party houses we lived in. I was always vaguely afraid the roof might collapse, or that someone would abruptly fall through the floor, perhaps midsentence. And after the ruckus, as the dust settled, there would be a few seconds of silence, then a slow, dawning comprehension, to be followed by, of course, uncontrollable laughter.

The laughter was always uncontrollable. That’s why the place was so great. It wasn’t just the free-flowing alcohol, or all the pretty girls walking around. It’s that everyone was so damn happy.

I stood on the front porch, one of them, reveling in it.

There was something else, too. I could see it in the movements of all the people in the streets, those streets that were teeming with partiers.

No one seemed to have to think more than five seconds into their future. All the college kids, in their own little worlds, had paths that veered and swayed to the environment—and to nothing else. No planning or thought was involved. The guys generally trended toward alcohol and girls, and the girls either trended toward or away from them. It was a fun little dance that went on all night. It was why people often couldn’t predict where they’d end up. The entire night was pure improvisation. It was like jazz.

That reminded me.

“Tunes!” I shouted, assuming at least one of my roommates was inside, and would bother hitting play on the stereo.

One of them did, and the funk sailed promptly out into the warm night air. I loved it. It wasn’t jazz though, not this time. This time it was Bootsy Collins. Specifically, the fine tune entitled “Ahh . . . The Name is Bootsy, Baby.”

I stood high on the front porch, immersed in the music, and buzzed, while looking out over the steady streams of meandering people. With the funk playing, I felt like I was presiding over them. I was a curator of the silliness.

My roommate had parked himself on one of the massive porch couches just behind me. He sat there, his shaggy mop top all wild and crazy, and with this strangely wolfish grin on his face. This dude was never leaving college, I was convinced. I might actually graduate at some point, but this dude, he’d be there forever. I kind of envied him.

“They’re coming,” he said, casually. “They’re on their way.”

“Who?” I asked.

He may have answered, but I didn’t hear, because I’d made the mistake of looking down toward my feet, and noticed there was a puppet clutching at my leg. Its arms and legs were wrapped entirely around my ankle.

It was such a goddamn oddity, and my brow furrowed wildly, trying to comprehend it.

“Hey, they’re here,” my roommate said.

I looked up at the street and saw them coming, the group of girls, each of them wearing the same easy smile I’d been wearing moments ago, the one that came with early Friday night. It was a warm evening and they were dressed to suit. My smile eagerly came back to meet theirs, as I again presided over the night.

But I was derailed once more, unable to stop myself from again looking down at my foot. The puppet, still clutching my ankle, returned my glance—and this time it grinned maniacally.

What were these girls going to think, with this psychotic puppet wrapped around my leg, dragging me down? Where the hell did it even come from? No, this wasn’t going to help my game any. No girl was going to look past it.

I tried to kick it off, furiously, but it looked like I was doing a bizarre, one-legged dance across the porch. The girls looked at me with wide eyes, laughter quickly brewing to the surface within each of them.

And so that was when I fell through the floor, just like I’d always feared might happen.

The boards beneath my feet gave way in a burst of wood splinters and dust, and I landed below in some dark place, unable to see a thing. After a few moments of silence, of slow, dawning comprehension, the uncontrollable laughter started up all around me, just like I knew it would. My roommate was like a howling wolf, and the girls sounded fresh and feminine and lovely, like a gorgeous soundtrack, and it all melded with—

The jarring mechanical hum pervaded through it all, vanquishing it with cold, brutal efficiency.

I opened my eyes slowly. For a moment, they held a firm belief that I was still in college. I still heard a faraway laughter, and traces of that energy clung to me.

It all dissipated rapidly though, like water vanishing down a drain, and then I felt tiredly foolish.

I’d left college more than ten fucking years ago.

My cell phone alarm was going off. I reached for it groggily, almost unable to do so. The screen came alive with a soft glow and I saw it was 5:50 a.m. I shut off the vibration and collapsed back onto the bed, sighing heavily.

But then my eyes snapped open.

I had to get up and go to work. And I should do it quickly, before everyone woke up.

The dream was already gone, forever and ever gone, like it had never been, and suddenly my only concern was making a swift, early departure from my home.

My wife slept soundly beside me. I slipped off the bed quietly, so as to not wake her, and crept toward the bathroom. Once within, I shut the door and then showered.

Afterward, the mirror was entirely fogged up. With my hand I tried to clear a space so I could use it. This didn’t work very well, and I realized a towel or rag would be way more effective, but I didn’t want to invest myself too much here.

My hair was probably messed up, but without caring, I dried myself and threw on some clothes. They weren’t casual enough to annoy anyone, nor were they nice enough to impress any supervisor. They were comfortable enough, and also perfectly unremarkable. I didn’t really plan any of this though. I just wanted this morning process to be done with as quickly as possible.

I crept downstairs slowly, moving like a ninja, so as not to wake the kids, a prospect that put the fear of God in me. I ate some cereal and then darted outside to my car like it was some kind of emergency. It was already nasty-hot and humid outside, like that of a festering swamp, but during my forty-minute commute to work I blasted the AC, and truly it was one of the highlights of my entire day. The other highlight of my day was cranking the music in the car, the funk, extremely and abrasively loud. It was absolute therapy. Recently it was a live Dave Holland recording, something I was just breaking into, just scratching the surface on it, and there was a lot under there, I could tell already.

I hauled ass on the freeway, weaving through the wide, endless river of vehicles drudging their way into the city limits. One guy went slowly in the left lane, and I passed him in the right, driving unnecessarily fast, feeling inexplicably angry. I took my exit and weaved my way through some congestion like I was some kind of conquering warrior.

I sighed as I walked into my office, like always wondering why I had been in such a rush to get there in the first place. All the computers and the walls of the cubicles seemed to mock me, like they scorned me as much as I scorned them. Looking past the cube farm, my eyes fell upon the far wall of glass windows, and beyond them I saw the cityscape of buildings and the constant, bustling traffic, in the form of flowing rivers of people and all manner of vehicles.

I had a very clear vision of a monster—for some reason it was a massive red dragon—descending from the sky, hovering in the air, just outside of the windows, his beastly orange eyes focused on the acres of machines within. It was as though the dragon had heard of such things, computers that is, and he had heard they were becoming significant, perhaps even a force to be reckoned with. The dragon was very much unimpressed, and so here he was going to put things back in their place. He grinned for a second before the flames erupted from his mouth and flooded into the office. The rivers of cleansing fire reduced it all to useless, burned-out husks of machinery. A moment before the dragon departed, he spoke, in a perfectly clear voice. “Try sending an e-mail now, motherfucker.”

I laughed, not so much because of this absurd image, but instead because the dragon’s voice very much sounded like that of some kind of modern gangster, like an inner-city gangbanger.

I passed by the kitchenette, eagerly looking within—after all, I needed coffee like I might die. One of my coworkers was already at the machine getting some. I passed by, moving like a slinking wraith, but he kind of saw me. So I stalled and said, “Good morning.” My voice sounded painful, even to me.

“Hey, good morning,” he said. “How was your weekend?”

I had to stop walking completely. I couldn’t think of anything to say, couldn’t even remember what I did over the weekend. Finally, I pushed out these words: “Oh, it was good. Just kinda . . . hung out, you know? Relaxed.”

That wasn’t true. I’d been dreadfully busy with stuff, and when I wasn’t busy, my kids wore the shit out of me. But what was the proper thing to do? Say that truth, or just spout out amicable vanilla words? Clearly, the latter was generally expected by everyone, and what they preferred to hear. It was why I often spouted bullshit, so as to not upset the status quo.

“I hear that,” he replied, on cue.

“How was yours?” I asked, also on cue.

We played that kind of tennis for a while, both of us too tired to be having the conversation. Then I thought it was cool for me to walk away, so I did.

I reached my desk and logged in to my PC, my fingers banging out a long and complex password effortlessly. I yawned and stretched and my body complained miserably.

While my PC got its shit together, I got some coffee. Then I started working on stuff, most of it real work that I was supposed to do. I did it pretty well, better than most people probably. My finger clicked the mouse rapidly, and from time to time both of my hands tackled the keyboard and played it like it was some kind of instrument. Even while I was doing real, capable work, my mind often drifted, and I did what I often did, which was to ponder whether or not my life sucked.

After an hour or so, the day was in full swing, and the office was a continuous drone of computers humming and people talking awkwardly. I had a meeting coming up, and I could already see some activity in the conference room, the lights and machines coming on, and people bustling in and out. I’d have to join them pretty soon. I sighed just thinking about it.

Finally, I could procrastinate no more, so I switched gears and began preparing my own notes and items that I thought should be on the meeting’s agenda. After all, I was one of the organizers, and I knew I’d serve as the moderator, more or less.

Even though I would be put on the spot in a half hour or so, I had difficulty focusing on the work at hand. Instead, I couldn’t stop thinking about what defense I should start that weekend on my fantasy football team. Well, that and sex, but that should just be accepted. I needn’t mention that time and time again, right?

After a while I got more coffee. By then, the place was bustling, and I was trapped for a good twenty minutes in that fucking kitchenette, talking to people about their weekends, all of which sounded dreadful, including mine. I escaped the kitchenette finally.

I wasn’t sure yet what was wrong with me.

One of those Dave Holland tracks I’d heard in my car that morning was firmly stuck in my head. It started with this bass and drum breakdown that was just about the funkiest thing I’d ever heard. It was still firmly entrenched in my mind when I walked into the conference room.

The meeting started, and it was like I became a different person in there, considering how much I was talking and how loud my voice sounded. I tried to restrain myself, but it wasn’t always possible.

After the meeting finished, I returned to my desk and took a deep breath, calming myself, and it was like I was coming down from the role I’d just played. I wondered earnestly whether or not I’d been a real leader in there, or just a total asshole. There may or may not had been slight lapses into too much sarcasm, when I’d taken the side comments and jokes too far. Did everyone hate me now? I really wasn’t sure. I might have achieved the perfect balance—I might have slayed it in there. People might have a new respect for me, based on the performance. Or I might be a fucking joke to them. I genuinely had no idea—no idea if they liked me, or laughed at me. It was a bit disconcerting, to not have any clue about where you fell between two absolute extremes.

I felt shaky. I told myself not to have any more coffee. I ate lunch. That chilled me out. I was leaning toward starting Baltimore over Kansas City.

When I got home that night, after going through the whole nighttime routine of dinner and then putting the kids down, I finally collapsed onto my bed, exhausted from an entire day of doing . . . nothing, really.

If I were in Afghanistan or Iraq, I might literally have been fighting evil—what a notion that was. I’d be a badass, I decided, and I’d be truly worn-out, in a way that I never, ever was now.

Of course, I might also be dead. So, there was that risk.

It was inexplicable, but I thought again about the red dragon, hovering in the air outside my office. The choice of a pure-red dragon hearkened back to the days of Dungeons and Dragons, which dictated that red dragons breathed fire, and that was what I wanted, not some weird dragon that breathed chlorine gas or something unconventional like that. That kind of thing needn’t be overly complicated.

The dragon’s wings had held him firmly aloft, and his words could bite just as much as his teeth, I’d decided. He had peered into the windows of my office, unimpressed, and at one point he’d even looked right at me. I had been tickled by the juxtaposition of the ancient magical creature sharing the same space as cars, buses, and people on their way to work, holding their cups of Starbucks. He was an intrusion from some fantasy world, coming over to check things out, to see how they had evolved on our side.

I could take a peek over there, too, if I wanted. It would be a bit unorthodox, but why not? The red dragon had come over here, to check things out. So why couldn’t I go over there? Who said I couldn’t?

I could do anything I wanted, really. That’s what was so fucking cool about it. There were no constraints, unlike most of the things you did in life.

I may just do it. I may just go over there. But first, before I embarked, I’d send a few emissaries to check things out. To test the waters, so to speak. It was also a bit risky—invariably the toggling back and forth from first to third person might bother some people. But it was best not to get too bent out of shape about that.

The question was, whom should I send?

I thought very carefully about two great warriors:

One was a conquering hero, returning from an extreme and hazardous land at the end of an epic fight. The story would open with him, and he’d be weary, wanting nothing more than a peaceful return to his homeland, while yearning to see her again.

Both prospects were dubious, however, as his land had become stricken with conflict, and during such troubling times, she had not remained idle. For she was the other warrior, and she had set out on a courageous ride toward the heart of the strife and the worst of the danger, her mission brash and brave, and her return very much in question.

That was it. Those were my two people, my two warriors. I’d start with that premise, and then see where it took me. Likely the red dragon would show up at some point, too. He just had to.

But see, right out of the gate there were already some problems. Their names, for example—how did people come up with the cool names they used for stories? I could never tell the story of Middle-earth—well, for many reasons—but first and foremost was simply that I could never come up with names as good as Frodo and Rivendell and Mordor and so forth. Never mind developing the entire history of their people, their lineage, their language, and even songsfor them to sing—I’d get hung up right away on the names. Frodo wouldn’t be Frodo, instead he’d be Fred, or something like that, something lazy and unremarkable, and he’d probably never even make it out of Bag End.

Well, I was going to try it anyway.

Before anything else, though, I had to set my fantasy football lineup. Not doing so would be an egregious, soul-crushing oversight.

Baltimore was starting, and I activated them with a deep breath, as Kansas City took a seat on the bench.