The Flood & The Ark
All right, is this thing on? Okay.
Well, I've been compelled—stop beeping at me!—I've been compelled, sort of, by powers greater and more mighty than my own, to give an accounting of myself. An accounting. That’s perhaps the best way to put it. An accounting of myself.
So, who is “myself”?
That's a good question. No. The best question. The greatest question. And probably the best way to start.
“Myself” is Virgil Walter Nevins.
“Walter” Nevins. No relation.
Well, if tradition is to be believed—and why not?—if tradition is to be believed, I am Virgil Walter Nevins the Eleventh. X. I. Eleven.
Okay, that is anecdotal at best. Not that I've ever really endeavored to do this, but there may have been those who have been interested or curious to separate out the truth from the fiction, or the truth from the friction, and sought verification of far reaching family records confirming exactly that.
Exactly what?
To see if there's a way to verify whether or not there's a distinct family record confirming exactly that—that there are, well, now with me, “have been” eleven Virgil Walter Nevinses.
“Walter” Nevins. No relation.
Well, as far as I’m aware, all such genealogical endeavors have been, from what I can gather, fruitless.
Fruitless; yet, the fruit never falls far from the tree… Eleven times, in fact.
Nonetheless. It’s unconfirmed. And yet, it is a fact that it has been said. That I’m the eleventh. And of course, it had to be the eleventh, right?
I couldn’t have been the twelfth. That’d be too, what’s the word? “Good.”
But still, it's what Father told me. So, for all intents and purposes, it may as well be fact. Especially since it cannot be expressly disproven.
I mean, when you think about it, whether or not there were exactly eleven prior Virgil Walter Nevinses in history, up to present day, doesn’t mitigate the fact that I had to have at least ten ancestors.
Probably more! You can imagine perhaps quite a few more!
That’s a frightening thought…
What their names were, if not Virgil Walter Nevins, ceases to be the point.
Do you know what your tenth great-great-great-great-grandfather’s name was?
Perhaps not. You may! You may… but even so, at a certain point in your past, you’re going to encounter a family member you cannot positively identify.
So, then, what’s the difference between knowing what their quote-unquote “real” name was, and just making one up?
And if you’re making one up, why not just make it your own name?
Hell, it’s your family! Who has more right to make up distant relations’ names than you, their progeny? You’re ultimately what their fucking led to, anyway!
So: Virgil Walter Nevins. The Eleventh. “Walter” Nevins. No relation.
I don’t know the exact day I was born. Though it had been told to me that I am somewhere in spitting distance of forty. Would be forty, by now, surely, given everything that has happened between now and then. Now and again. By and by.
And, well, that’s just about as accurate as I can figure it. But I can invent a little superfluous accuracy if more is needed.
And as with most things, there’s a lot of speculation involved. Speculation and guessing.
And, you know, the breaks in the DNA are filled up with pig DNA. Or frog DNA if you’re a dinosaur. Mr. DNA taught me that.
So, when there are breaks in the genetic code, or when there’s blank spots in the story, you just fill that shit in. You throw in some pig DNA, or just make some shit up that sounds right.
It’s gotta sound right, right? You can’t just make up parts of your story that have no earthly business being in there. It’s gotta withstand rudimentary-level scrutiny. It’s gotta be a complete genetic sequence by the end of the telling, anyway, so, bear that in mind.
And if you’re making up enough stuff, you know, to fill in the gaps of your memory, in order to be able to tell your own story, you know, to be able to even just be capable of telling yourself where you came from, to give your own life some feeling of meaning and purpose, and you’re making up enough stuff to fit in-between all the stuff that you actually know occurred, eventually, if you’re doing your job as a good storyteller, eventually, you just cease to be able to tell the difference between the things that were “real,” and the things that you fabricated to be able to tell the story.
Even just to yourself.
In fact, that’s actually when you know your own story has truly gotten good. Great, even. When what’s real, and what’s imagined, blend indistinguishably.
You see, there are the kinds of things you have to do when you aren’t really given an official record of how things went down, for you. Right? Because in the beginning, you weren’t even really there for your own story.
I mean, you were there, but you weren’t all there, you know what I mean?
So, you have to rely on others who were there. You have to trust that they’re going to tell you the unvarnished truth. Or at least in their ability to make up something good. Either way, the official record you get, when you’re old enough to know such things, is incomplete. Full of its own speculation, errors, inconsistencies, and oftentimes unforgivably boring.
So, you’ve gotta do the best with what you’ve got. When your life story gives you shit, make shitaide.
And that covers my name. More or less. Glad to know we’ve been able to establish at least that much, so far.
Who is what I am.
And that hints a little bit toward something of an unofficial, and at times incomprehensible, family history stretching back at least eleven times into the past.
So, at this point, I guess it might be worth mentioning that my father, if all accounts are to be believed, was Virgil Walter Nevins the tenth.
V.W.N. X. That’s pretty good.
Anyway, that’s who he claimed to be. I was certainly not in a position to question his authority on the matter. More on that later.
And anyways now I’m in charge of the family name, so, I make the rules.
But according to him, and the surrounding details I’ve gathered, I was born in and or around Milwaukee, Wisconsin, within spitting distance of about forty years ago.
And, I mean; childhood: am I right?
Childhood, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s hear it for childhood.
Childhood was great.
Now, I didn’t realize this at the time, but a lot of people don’t have the kind of upbringing that I had.
And it’s one of those things that, having undergone it myself, personally, in the flesh, you kind of take it for granted.
And, hey, you know, I turned out OK. Just look at me!
You just can’t argue with the results.
So, when you’re considering whether or not the ends justified the means, let’s bear in mind what my upbringing has allowed me to achieve, in life, thus far:
A contributing member to an elite force of cosmic storytellers.
A surviving guide through the nine circles of Hell.
A formidable adversary of one of the most evil multinational conglomerations on the Earth today.
A rehabilitated victim of brainwashing.
A living survivor of a lengthy, insanity-inducing coma.
And! A biological creature who has successfully passed on this incredible genetic material on for another generation.
How’s that for a fuckin’ resume? You know what that is a resume for?
Success!
So, before you get all bent out of shape over the kind of alleged ‘traumatic’ childhood I endured, just remember what all of this was for.
Success.
Because the thing is, when you go into subjects like these, talking about things like your childhood, and how atypical your upbringing may have been, there’s an inherently ‘loaded’ assumption on the part of the listener to say things like,
“Oh! Oh! What an unfortunate childhood you must have had! It explains so much!”
And, you know, just—hold your fucking horses, okay? I know you’re always looking for ways to exercise your overworked capacity to dispense unearned compassion, but just hold your fucking horses, okay?
I don’t really think of my childhood in quite those same terms.
Today there seems to be this tendency, I think, for people to feel like they’ve endured some unfathomable personal trauma.
And it's easy to forget:
Life. Is. Trauma.
It is. From start to finish.
And you make it sound like the worst tragedies in the world are the only things that are traumatic.
And they are.
But even the best things can be traumatic.
Look. Let’s face it. The worst thing about the good things in life is that the good things make you crave more of the good things and less of the worst things.
That can be a tremendous detriment to your becoming the strongest version of yourself you can be, if after one taste of the quote-unquote “good life,” you abandon all adversity that has even the slightest whiff of trauma so that you can blindly pursue more of the good things in life.
Which, by the way, are the empty calories of life. By the way.
Having any degree of happiness in your life can lead you to the erroneous conclusion that life deserves happiness! It doesn’t! You can go your whole life without happiness. Some people do!
It can also lead you to the erroneous conclusion that life should have as little unhappiness as possible. But remember: you are at your most alive when you are struggling against adversity. You are no closer to living your best life when you are actively fighting off death.
In fact, in the pursuit of happiness, your purposeful and deliberate manipulation of events to contrive more unearned joy for yourself can, and often does, lead to ruin! Despair and depression! That is how joy turns to ashes in your mouth.
And nothing tastes worse than joy-ash. Blech.
So, if something good happens to you, be wary: the worst thing in your life may have just happened to you.
And, sometimes, if a bad thing happens to you, be glad: the best thing in your life may have just fallen into your lap.
And consider yourself lucky! The more bad things happen to you, the more capable you will become at withstanding future bad things!
Think about the people in history who have endured unbelievable hardship.
They almost always seem infinitely more capable of handling a little more, don’t they?
You never really hear the opposite being true.
You don’t look at some undeserving schlub and think, ‘boy, a lot of really lucky and fortunate things have happened to him! And yet, he always somehow seems capable of handling more good things. No amount of opportunity that comes his way ever go unseized!”
No!
First of all, you fucking hate that guy, because of your own twisted jealousy at seeing his undeserved good fortune.
But if you’re really getting contorted into knots over some idiot Forrest Gumping his way through life’s obstacles, take comfort.
If you watch long enough, and observe someone who has had a disproportionate number of good things happen to them in life, eventually, they collapse to the floor like a turd stuck on the ceiling.
Splat!
They are completely incapable of handling hardship when it finally arrives.
And here’s the thing.
The biggest thing you can take from my story:
You know the flood? The ark?
People kept asking, “Where’s this flood you keep preparing for?” “Seems like a waste of time!” “Hey, beardy, what’s with the ark, idiot?”
Then what happens?
The flood comes.
People hear that story today and ask the same dumb question, completely missing the point:
“Where’s the evidence that a flood like that actually occurred?” “How could all the animals get on a boat that size?” “Where are the historical artifacts of a ship that big, if it really existed?”
They’re stupid questions. They’re the wrong questions.
The story isn’t about the historicity of a flood. Or a boat. The story is about the appropriateness of preparation.
If you took it seriously, you’d realize:
In life, the flood always comes.
The flood. Always. Comes.
And when it does, you sure as fuck better have built a fucking ark.
And you know what builds arks?
Trauma.
All kinds of trauma. But it starts with childhood trauma.
Nothing in life will prepare you to build arks better, or faster, or more capable of withstanding a flood quite like childhood trauma does.
So, when I say things about my childhood, and you find yourself feeling sorry for me. Do me a favor and kindly: don’t.
I regret nothing.
Because look at my resume. Success.
Look at my ark. Success.
Fuck floods. Bring ‘em on.
Anyway.
Milwaukee. Wisconsin. Had to have been, what, mid-1980s or something like that?
Again, there’s no paperwork. There’s no birth certificate. Not even a hospital visit.
All I know is:
In the beginning, there was nothing.
Then, God created Virgil. And God saw what he had made, and Virgil was very good.
And I’m not “there” for the earliest parts. So, I don’t know.
Like, sure, I assume I was a baby, at some point. As hard as that is to believe. Consider: I have spent very little of my life being a fucking baby. I don’t consider myself one, given the relative amount of time I spent as one compared to the rest of the time I’ve spent not being one. So, I don’t focus a lot of my mental resources considering what that may have been like.
If you want to know more, go outside and look at a baby. There. That’s me.
Eventually, though, I came online.
And, for me, the earliest experiences I ever had was just darkness.
Though, at the time, I didn’t know what a dark place was. I had no clear concept of light versus dark. But for the purpose of telling the story I’ll make it explicit and say it simply:
My apartment, growing up, on some city block of Milwaukee—I don't even know precisely where, and I’ve given up all hope of ever find it again, because I wouldn’t even know what it looked like—there I was: a little kid, in the dark.
Day. Night. I had no idea what those things were, because my life was an eternal dark apartment.
And how did I spend my days?
Hunting.
That’s right. That was a natural development, by the way.
Without being taught to do it. Without being told to do it. There, with nothing else to do, the thing I taught myself to do all on my own was: hunt.
You see, old apartment complexes like that, in Milwaukee, or anywhere in the world, really, are breeding grounds for vermin. Countless little creatures eating and shitting and fucking and fighting and dying, generation after generation, over and over again, without worrying one wit about ‘happiness’ or ‘trauma’.
There was no end to the vermin scuttling around inside my apartment, and I came to be a skilled hunter of each of them, in the fullness of time.
Oh yeah.
Really, the only limiting factor for them not coming in even greater droves into the apartment was the lack of food we had in the apartment.
Little did they know, being the stupid prey that they were, that they were the food!
Well, perhaps on an instinctual level, perhaps they did have a vague understanding of that.
After all, they did try to not be hunted.
All creatures have a self-preservation streak in them.
Especially once they realize that they are being pursued. And that it might not be a sure thing, one way or the other, if they’ve eaten their last meal; shat their last shit; fucked their last fuck; fought their last fight; or that they are going to die their final death.
Not that you would know, necessarily, but it is pretty remarkable; the degree to which each different creature will come to that realization.
For instance, mice:
Very keen. They get it. And why not. They are mammals, after all! They are omnivorous. It isn’t beneath their station in life to eat, say, a cricket, if occasion demands it. They can do their own low form of hunting, in-between the gathering they do.
They understand the relation between predator and prey, somewhat from the perspective of the predator, but predominantly from the perspective of the prey.
Humans understood that, too, once upon a time.
At a certain point, you can even unlock that understanding again; the prey mentality, if conditions are right.
And though they are comparatively simple, compared to us, though less than you might think, there is a shared shorthand understanding between our two peoples: of mice and men, given our shared interest in predator-prey dynamism.
Even when we are enemies, we are of the same mind.
I see. I hunt. I catch. I play. I eat.
And not all hunts are successful. Not all escapes are successful.
You know what they say: sometimes you eat the mouse, sometimes she eats you.
And for one: it’s a good day. For the other: it’s one bad day.
Catching a mouse when you’re hungry is great.
I remember, as a kid, some of the first real sensations around the hunt that I came to understand wasn’t the pain of a failed hunt.
That was the norm.
What really stood out was the glee that came upon eventual, hard-earned success.
Fucking glee.
I’ve never experienced it anywhere else in life, except perhaps in postcoital euphoria, the glee of hearing the tiny little squeak of a mouse in your teeth getting snapped out of life’s journey.
Squeak! Snap! Done.
It isn’t fear, exactly.
It’s a kind of squeak that’s a sudden, resigned prayer offered at the end of life.
As if to say:
“My days of toil, my tireless evasion of pain, and fleeting moments of pleasure, have finally come to an end! Farewell!”
Squeak! Snap! Done.
This is fitting, perhaps, that it should suffer the most pain it should ever suffer while another creature experiences that momentary feeling of glee as they enjoy the success of their hunt, by crunching that life in its teeth and consuming it.
One story ends. Another gets to go on for at least one more day.
So, then you eat the mouse. Eat the fucking mouse.
It’s soft. Fluffy. Furry. Crunchy, brittle bones. A little gristly inside, like the knob at the end of a chicken bone, but smaller, and a gush of sudden goo, and…
Look. People with their domesticated cats. Quote-unquote “domesticated” cats.
People are embarrassed for their felines whenever the cat successfully manages to catch a mouse, or lizard, or grasshopper, and proceeds to just fuck around with it for a little while before the deathstrike.
You always hear one of these cat owners mewing:
“Oh, I hate it when he does that! Just kill it, Bartholomew! The poor mouse…”
No.
Fuck you, no.
You cannot separate play from predation.
Play is predation.
In your presumed and unsupported sense of superiority, you think you’ve managed to separate play and predation.
And it wasn’t you, by the way, it was your ancient prehistoric ancestors who mastered play and hunt like no other creature on Earth. By the way. Don’t pat yourself on the back too hard.
But in your foolishness you believe play and predation are two distinct experiences.
They are not.
They are fundamentally connected.
Biologically. Psychologically. Connected.
Next time you’re enjoying yourself. Hopefully not too much. Just enough. Next time you’re enjoying yourself just enough, let’s say, playing a game, something people like to do, understand: the play you are in, even though it may be simulated, is triggering the same parts of your brain that fire when you are a predator. Seeking. Hunting. Conquering. Killing. Devouring. Satiating.
They are all linked.
It’s all tied up inside the body, don’t ya find?
You have to gamify survival in nature.
Survival has to be gamified.
If survival wasn’t enjoyable, life wouldn’t do it.
So you’ve got to tell these fucking cat owners, when they’re being ignorantly condescending to their cats that just fucking accomplished something they couldn’t do if their lives depended on it, to go fuck themselves, because they have no idea what the fuck they are talking about.
They have been too divorced from their natural instincts for too long to even recognize their own animal instincts reflected back at them in the playful celebration of their cat at the completion of a successful hunt before the final act.
Feast.
No wonder cats have to bring these half-dead mice and lizards and grasshoppers to these cat owners.
“You are a mammal. Stop embarrassing me and act like one.”
And, I get it, I know we tend to personify animals a little too much in today’s society, but just imagine the absolute bewilderment masked behind your cat’s expressionless face when they watch you dive into a hamburger without fucking with it first.
And why do you think parents have to constantly remind their children, “Don’t play with your food”?
Because kids know! They inherently understand it! You have to fucking play with your food. You have to gamify life. You have to take pleasure in the small victories of survival.
That is joy. Glee, even.
And if you just let them fuck around with it for a while, throw it around, chase after it across the kitchen floor, they’d be happier for it. And eat more!
Now, to be clear, catching a mouse was a relatively rare occasion.
They are wily.
Far more common was winning a cockroach.
And, if I’m being completely honest, as much as I would relish the celebration of catching and eating a mouse, I don’t know, I’m a simple guy, you give me a room full of cockroaches, and I’m good.
I can eat about fifty of those fuckers.
Now, there I was.
In the dark. The only light came in from the little edge around the wood board nailed in front of our windows, and the light that illuminated around the edge of the apartment door. It isn’t a lot of light, but, if that’s all the light you’re accustomed to, that’s all the light you need.
It’s more than enough.
In fact, any more light than that, and it would change the nature of the game.
They don’t like things too bright. And you don’t hunt cockroaches by sight, anyways.
That’s an auditory hunt.
And you may not realize that if you are quiet enough, you can hear a cockroach.
Equalize your noise with your environment. And if you can, and be still enough to listen, and know what you’re listening for, you can deduce little sounds that aren’t ambient. Aren’t you.
That aren’t even their scuttling little hooked feet on the linoleum, either.
I mean their language. Not exactly communication. I wouldn’t call it that. Faint. High, digital, rattling, chirping.
And they’re stupid.
I mean, compared to the mice, they’re regular old nincompoops.
You know, a lot of people I hear talking about cockroaches and give them way too much credit.
Way too much fucking credit, based on what I have seen.
Cockroaches: tasty, but otherwise I am not very much impressed.
People love to throw these extravagant claims out there, “Oh, cockroaches are going to outlive us all!” they say. “They’re going to thrive in a nuclear apocalypse after all humanity has crumbled!
Okay. Yeah. Sure. I mean, not by any virtue of their own! You know?
It’s not like they’re using their wits to jockey into a better geopolitical position so that they can come out victorious once the radioactive dust of a nuclear arms race settles into a low planetary-plutonium hum.
No!
Cockroaches are passengers on the highway of evolution.
They are passive players with no conscious sense of how to play the game.
And if you counter by saying: “Well, a mouse doesn’t either,” I would dare you to try and hunt a mouse.
Then hunt a cockroach.
Not with traps or bait or poison or sprays or any of that shit.
With your bare hands and your wiles.
Then tell me which one you think knows what’s up.
Anyway.
My main fare was cockroaches.
And yes, there is that same gleeful thrill of crunching a large roach you’ve been pursuing all of fifteen minutes.
That rush of goo that squeezes between your teeth.
Especially if you’re really hungry. Ah, just… immaculate.
And this was my life.
That was my life.
Day in, day out. Perpetually hunting cockroaches and mice, and any other vermin, too. I mean, we had it all. Rats. Less common than mice, but fun. Feisty. Fought back. That introduces a new dynamic. They’ll run, but when the chips are down, they’ll twist and bite and writhe and wriggle all over to try and get you before you get them.
Rats. Respect.
And bats!
Bats are great because they take the hunt into an entirely new dimension.
Bats will fly wherever the fuck they want. And some places they don’t want! So, credit where credit is due. They don’t give a fuck about walls.
And they can crawl on the floor and hang around on ceilings, too. As a little hunting boy, there’s not much you can do but just plant yourself beneath them and wait, and listen.
All the wit of a mouse, in three dimensions. It’s great. Hell. So, there’s the bat.
And the centipede. Spiders. Worms. But, they are more incidental, and, honestly, not as good to eat. But, that was my life.
I’d heard other people out there. But I didn't recognize them as "people" the way you might. They were abstract. Remote. Etherial and a little mystical. They never approached. They never came this close to invading my country.
This one was coming for me and all I could do was stare.
The bolt withdrew from the lock. The handle turned. The moment collapsed from something about to happen, into something that was fucking happening.
A huge man stood there, silhouetted by the light my Father usually occupied. This anti-Father had usurped him.
He saw me, and I saw him, and there was an eternal stillness. I sometimes wonder how I must have looked to him, whoever the fuck he was.
To me, he was an alien from outer-fucking-space. A demon from the pits of Hell. An embodiment of unconscious chaos, taking shape out of the void.
I mean, how would you look at me under those conditions?
The stairs at the end of the hallway. The sounds of the city coming in from the open window in the stairwell. How the wooden steps creaked as the anti-Father marched me down them.
I could almost see how my Father might have looked walking up these stairs. In my imagination, he was featureless, like a shadow, silhouetted against light.
The flood was really rising up to the prow of my ark, now. It might have seemed like my ark was about to break open against the crashing waves and capsize before sinking into the abyss below.
But it held fast. Just barely.
What was my ark? What had I built it out of?
Instinct. Instinct honed over the course of all my life. In darkness. In silence. In solitude. And on the occasions where my Father would visit me, and sit with me, and share his manner with me.
That manner of being in a space. Making the space my own. Taking it in, and mastering my environment.
The anti-Father led me into this room, like an office or work closet or something, and shut the door behind him when he left, locking me in, mercifully, by myself.
He shut the door and left me in there by myself, and when the shock of what had happened finally subsided, faster than you might think, I was able to look around and saw what I was looking for.
The room had a window.
What an idiot.
What a fucking idiot.
There was a fucking window in this room.
Fucking asshole.
The room has a fucking window in it, you fucking asshole!
I mean, I don’t imagine a guy like him, as big and fat and slow as he was, could have ever imagined anybody could’ve fit out of that tiny fucking window hardly bigger than a mail slot halfway up the wall behind the desk.
Probably nearly nobody could have imagined someone could fit through it. But I had imagination. Or I just didn’t know well enough not to try.
This is the ark that I’m talking about. The wiles you need to survive. In the wild, or in civilization. It hardly matters which.
I don’t even know who that fucking guy was, you know what I mean?
Was he a landlord? A superintendent? Or just some fucking janitor? Another person who just lived there?
I had no boundaries. No understanding. Everything was mine. So, obviously, I irritated a lot of passengers, but, the more secure I felt in the compromise, the more I experimented with sitting in the front passenger seat. Beside Otto.
And then business began to boom.
By then, Otto was pretty happy about how the arrangement worked out. His language was still pretty colorful, but, the manner was different. Colorful language, but a pleasant manner.
And if there was conflict, you know, between he and I, he'd open the door, and point.
“You wanna go, kid? You wanna be free? Go ahead! Go, go…”
But I wouldn’t. Then, if we fought again over something trivial, I’d imitate him. In my broken, but improving language.
And slowly he and I became...
I had a Father somewhere. And I didn’t know how to reconcile that.
Otto, though. He wasn’t a Father. That wasn’t his manner.
An uncle, though, maybe. Yeah. Maybe that.
He was friendly, in a combative way. Constant. Reliable. He was my entry point into the world.
But he wasn’t my Father.
Eventually, you know, we’d become partners. Time of night when things got slow. City was slow.
“Alright, kid,” he’d say. “Jump behind the wheel. Let me take a snooze. Cruise around til you find a fare.”
We’d switch spots and he’d sleep, and I’d just cruise around. Sometimes, I’d let fares go by without picking them up, just so I could drive around for a bit longer.
But then I’d find a girl and want to pick her up. I was fascinated by girls. Even if they were with a guy, I just wanted to learn what they were. We’d pull over, switch spots, and she’d get in and we’d be on our way.
And I’d watch her in the back. No self awareness at all.
As long as the rent was paid, on time, every month, that kept the landlord from asking questions about who might be living in Apartment C-11.
Father would check in on me whenever he was making the rounds. You know? And it made sense.
I accepted it. I needed to hear something that could account for what I experienced.
And then, after however many years of paying the month’s rent on time, every single month, year after year, eventually, something happens.
The flood comes.
The flood always comes.
He broke his leg.
How? Bum luck, he says. What does it matter, anyway? Probably while doing some dangerous and reckless hobo trick.
All that mattered was: you break your leg, you're not moving as much.
Could I have lied to him?
Yes. I could have.
And he said, alright, you can come by here, at this time of day, at this time of the month, and on those times, you’ll probably see me. And we can catch up again.
But, he did say that he was…
What did he say?
He said that he was impressed.
Before my Father was able to complete the DNA code of my story, I had to fill in the gaps with pig DNA to make it work.
That purpose fueled the drive to survive. Gave motivation for building the ark. To endure the flood.
But what I didn’t have was quote-unquote, “Why?”
Why survive? Why build the ark? Why did the flood need to be withstood?
You throw whatever shit you can come up with into that DNA sequence to make it work, to find whatever meaning you need to find to live another day. And hope maybe someday have access to the true story.
But what I craved was a legacy to live up to. A quest to take up. A story that made the brutality of life worth resisting. Was it going to be cigarettes and cab fares and corn dogs forever?
Or would there be tradition? A girl in my life? Responsibility, and a Virgil Walter Nevins XII to see to?
These were things that Otto couldn’t supply.
He was full of life, and language, and could talk and joke and philosophize with any cab fare that stepped into that back seat.
But Otto couldn’t provide me with a purpose. Not one that would reconcile where I had been, what I had become, and where I was going.
Otto didn't even have a family. A woman. A life that extended beyond his lifetime.
Fucking scientists. Arrogant know-it-alls.
No, he couldn’t quote-unquote "prove it," and I wasn’t so shallow as to ask for anything as trite or narrow-minded as “proof” that he and I were the same person.
You either recognize it when someone says it to you, or you don't.
The Nevins tradition was a challenge I had been preparing for my entire life.
I was my Father, and he was me. The same person.
Anyway. That’s how we see it. Nobody has to agree. It’s our manner. But consider what that allows us to do. What benefit that affords us.
We can assert, with confidence and authority, how an entire ancestral branch of human life would respond to any given situation.
What I posit has the backing of a percentage of human existence. When I speak, it’s not just ‘me’ talking.
This is the Nevins’ philosophy. This is the Nevins’ power.
This is what Father was preparing me for. And, eventually, it became clear why he needed to find me when he had.
As it happens, Father began to recognize a shift occurring, and—well, we needed to prepare.
He can’t make these kind of preparations alone. Not if things are to be done in the Nevins way.
It was a good thing we found each other when we did!
Today's culture blurs the edges on quote-unquote “tragedies”.
You know, there are other ways of living than the way this culture tells you to live.
Your concept of dignity doesn’t always map onto the way life has been for hundreds, no, hundreds of thousands of years before you arrived on the scene.
And how life is likely to be, again, hundreds of thousands of years from now.
Some rites around growing up, and taking your place in the world, being a man and then dying a good death are timeless, even if modern sensibilities have weakened.
Okay?
Some people have another perspective that might seem completely foreign, or downright alien, to the likes of you.
And they don’t require your understanding.
Hell, life and death alone don’t require anyone’s understanding. They happen anyways. Whether you want them to or not.
Eventually one young hippo will see an opening. He may believe himself ready to ascend to the throne.
But he’ll have to take it.
And if you go for the king, you better not miss.
Because the risk you hazard should you lose is brutal.
But the reward if you succeed is immense.
Otto wasn’t a Nevins, so. He didn’t see things the same way.
And, so, yeah. He didn’t see eye-to-eye on how things with my Father played out.
"You try that shit out on me, you try and kill me when I’m old and dyin’, I’ll fucking kill you, kid," he said.
Otto, you’re missing the whole fucking point. If you kill me, you're not ready to go, are you?
"I don’t give a shit!" He says. "I don’t give a shit! You strangle me and I’m fucking killing your ass," he says.
But. You know. To his credit, he disagreed with me.
We just didn’t talk about it anymore. Not that. Anything else, though, as always. Fair game.
"That’s okay," he says. "That’s right. People do shit every day of their lives," he says.
"Yes, I washed my hands," he said, seeing my look. He could be real defensive.
This isn’t about money. That’s not what this is about.
I didn’t keep what I had earned. And Otto, he didn’t have anybody else. So, he could only just give me one thing at the end. When he was ready.
He gave me his cab. When he was done with it.
At the end, you know, when he had the cataracts and was pulling out these shoeboxes full of money that he’d saved up that would get him into this retirement community he was so fucking crazy about, he told me I’d earned it.
I’d worked up enough fares that I’d bought it without realizing that’s what I had been doing.
He was my first fare. In a way. I drove him to the nursing home.
Well, I've been compelled—stop beeping at me!—I've been compelled, sort of, by powers greater and more mighty than my own, to give an accounting of myself. An accounting. That’s perhaps the best way to put it. An accounting of myself.
So, who is “myself”?
That's a good question. No. The best question. The greatest question. And probably the best way to start.
“Myself” is Virgil Walter Nevins.
“Walter” Nevins. No relation.
Well, if tradition is to be believed—and why not?—if tradition is to be believed, I am Virgil Walter Nevins the Eleventh. X. I. Eleven.
Okay, that is anecdotal at best. Not that I've ever really endeavored to do this, but there may have been those who have been interested or curious to separate out the truth from the fiction, or the truth from the friction, and sought verification of far reaching family records confirming exactly that.
Exactly what?
To see if there's a way to verify whether or not there's a distinct family record confirming exactly that—that there are, well, now with me, “have been” eleven Virgil Walter Nevinses.
“Walter” Nevins. No relation.
Well, as far as I’m aware, all such genealogical endeavors have been, from what I can gather, fruitless.
Fruitless; yet, the fruit never falls far from the tree… Eleven times, in fact.
Nonetheless. It’s unconfirmed. And yet, it is a fact that it has been said. That I’m the eleventh. And of course, it had to be the eleventh, right?
I couldn’t have been the twelfth. That’d be too, what’s the word? “Good.”
But still, it's what Father told me. So, for all intents and purposes, it may as well be fact. Especially since it cannot be expressly disproven.
I mean, when you think about it, whether or not there were exactly eleven prior Virgil Walter Nevinses in history, up to present day, doesn’t mitigate the fact that I had to have at least ten ancestors.
Probably more! You can imagine perhaps quite a few more!
That’s a frightening thought…
What their names were, if not Virgil Walter Nevins, ceases to be the point.
Do you know what your tenth great-great-great-great-grandfather’s name was?
Perhaps not. You may! You may… but even so, at a certain point in your past, you’re going to encounter a family member you cannot positively identify.
So, then, what’s the difference between knowing what their quote-unquote “real” name was, and just making one up?
And if you’re making one up, why not just make it your own name?
Hell, it’s your family! Who has more right to make up distant relations’ names than you, their progeny? You’re ultimately what their fucking led to, anyway!
So: Virgil Walter Nevins. The Eleventh. “Walter” Nevins. No relation.
I don’t know the exact day I was born. Though it had been told to me that I am somewhere in spitting distance of forty. Would be forty, by now, surely, given everything that has happened between now and then. Now and again. By and by.
And, well, that’s just about as accurate as I can figure it. But I can invent a little superfluous accuracy if more is needed.
And as with most things, there’s a lot of speculation involved. Speculation and guessing.
And, you know, the breaks in the DNA are filled up with pig DNA. Or frog DNA if you’re a dinosaur. Mr. DNA taught me that.
So, when there are breaks in the genetic code, or when there’s blank spots in the story, you just fill that shit in. You throw in some pig DNA, or just make some shit up that sounds right.
It’s gotta sound right, right? You can’t just make up parts of your story that have no earthly business being in there. It’s gotta withstand rudimentary-level scrutiny. It’s gotta be a complete genetic sequence by the end of the telling, anyway, so, bear that in mind.
And if you’re making up enough stuff, you know, to fill in the gaps of your memory, in order to be able to tell your own story, you know, to be able to even just be capable of telling yourself where you came from, to give your own life some feeling of meaning and purpose, and you’re making up enough stuff to fit in-between all the stuff that you actually know occurred, eventually, if you’re doing your job as a good storyteller, eventually, you just cease to be able to tell the difference between the things that were “real,” and the things that you fabricated to be able to tell the story.
Even just to yourself.
In fact, that’s actually when you know your own story has truly gotten good. Great, even. When what’s real, and what’s imagined, blend indistinguishably.
You see, there are the kinds of things you have to do when you aren’t really given an official record of how things went down, for you. Right? Because in the beginning, you weren’t even really there for your own story.
I mean, you were there, but you weren’t all there, you know what I mean?
So, you have to rely on others who were there. You have to trust that they’re going to tell you the unvarnished truth. Or at least in their ability to make up something good. Either way, the official record you get, when you’re old enough to know such things, is incomplete. Full of its own speculation, errors, inconsistencies, and oftentimes unforgivably boring.
So, you’ve gotta do the best with what you’ve got. When your life story gives you shit, make shitaide.
And that covers my name. More or less. Glad to know we’ve been able to establish at least that much, so far.
Who is what I am.
And that hints a little bit toward something of an unofficial, and at times incomprehensible, family history stretching back at least eleven times into the past.
So, at this point, I guess it might be worth mentioning that my father, if all accounts are to be believed, was Virgil Walter Nevins the tenth.
V.W.N. X. That’s pretty good.
Anyway, that’s who he claimed to be. I was certainly not in a position to question his authority on the matter. More on that later.
And anyways now I’m in charge of the family name, so, I make the rules.
But according to him, and the surrounding details I’ve gathered, I was born in and or around Milwaukee, Wisconsin, within spitting distance of about forty years ago.
And, I mean; childhood: am I right?
Childhood, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s hear it for childhood.
Childhood was great.
Now, I didn’t realize this at the time, but a lot of people don’t have the kind of upbringing that I had.
And it’s one of those things that, having undergone it myself, personally, in the flesh, you kind of take it for granted.
And, hey, you know, I turned out OK. Just look at me!
You just can’t argue with the results.
So, when you’re considering whether or not the ends justified the means, let’s bear in mind what my upbringing has allowed me to achieve, in life, thus far:
A contributing member to an elite force of cosmic storytellers.
A surviving guide through the nine circles of Hell.
A formidable adversary of one of the most evil multinational conglomerations on the Earth today.
A rehabilitated victim of brainwashing.
A living survivor of a lengthy, insanity-inducing coma.
And! A biological creature who has successfully passed on this incredible genetic material on for another generation.
How’s that for a fuckin’ resume? You know what that is a resume for?
Success!
So, before you get all bent out of shape over the kind of alleged ‘traumatic’ childhood I endured, just remember what all of this was for.
Success.
Because the thing is, when you go into subjects like these, talking about things like your childhood, and how atypical your upbringing may have been, there’s an inherently ‘loaded’ assumption on the part of the listener to say things like,
“Oh! Oh! What an unfortunate childhood you must have had! It explains so much!”
And, you know, just—hold your fucking horses, okay? I know you’re always looking for ways to exercise your overworked capacity to dispense unearned compassion, but just hold your fucking horses, okay?
I don’t really think of my childhood in quite those same terms.
Today there seems to be this tendency, I think, for people to feel like they’ve endured some unfathomable personal trauma.
And it's easy to forget:
Life. Is. Trauma.
It is. From start to finish.
And you make it sound like the worst tragedies in the world are the only things that are traumatic.
And they are.
But even the best things can be traumatic.
Look. Let’s face it. The worst thing about the good things in life is that the good things make you crave more of the good things and less of the worst things.
That can be a tremendous detriment to your becoming the strongest version of yourself you can be, if after one taste of the quote-unquote “good life,” you abandon all adversity that has even the slightest whiff of trauma so that you can blindly pursue more of the good things in life.
Which, by the way, are the empty calories of life. By the way.
Having any degree of happiness in your life can lead you to the erroneous conclusion that life deserves happiness! It doesn’t! You can go your whole life without happiness. Some people do!
It can also lead you to the erroneous conclusion that life should have as little unhappiness as possible. But remember: you are at your most alive when you are struggling against adversity. You are no closer to living your best life when you are actively fighting off death.
In fact, in the pursuit of happiness, your purposeful and deliberate manipulation of events to contrive more unearned joy for yourself can, and often does, lead to ruin! Despair and depression! That is how joy turns to ashes in your mouth.
And nothing tastes worse than joy-ash. Blech.
So, if something good happens to you, be wary: the worst thing in your life may have just happened to you.
And, sometimes, if a bad thing happens to you, be glad: the best thing in your life may have just fallen into your lap.
And consider yourself lucky! The more bad things happen to you, the more capable you will become at withstanding future bad things!
Think about the people in history who have endured unbelievable hardship.
They almost always seem infinitely more capable of handling a little more, don’t they?
You never really hear the opposite being true.
You don’t look at some undeserving schlub and think, ‘boy, a lot of really lucky and fortunate things have happened to him! And yet, he always somehow seems capable of handling more good things. No amount of opportunity that comes his way ever go unseized!”
No!
First of all, you fucking hate that guy, because of your own twisted jealousy at seeing his undeserved good fortune.
But if you’re really getting contorted into knots over some idiot Forrest Gumping his way through life’s obstacles, take comfort.
If you watch long enough, and observe someone who has had a disproportionate number of good things happen to them in life, eventually, they collapse to the floor like a turd stuck on the ceiling.
Splat!
They are completely incapable of handling hardship when it finally arrives.
And here’s the thing.
The biggest thing you can take from my story:
You know the flood? The ark?
People kept asking, “Where’s this flood you keep preparing for?” “Seems like a waste of time!” “Hey, beardy, what’s with the ark, idiot?”
Then what happens?
The flood comes.
People hear that story today and ask the same dumb question, completely missing the point:
“Where’s the evidence that a flood like that actually occurred?” “How could all the animals get on a boat that size?” “Where are the historical artifacts of a ship that big, if it really existed?”
They’re stupid questions. They’re the wrong questions.
The story isn’t about the historicity of a flood. Or a boat. The story is about the appropriateness of preparation.
If you took it seriously, you’d realize:
In life, the flood always comes.
The flood. Always. Comes.
And when it does, you sure as fuck better have built a fucking ark.
And you know what builds arks?
Trauma.
All kinds of trauma. But it starts with childhood trauma.
Nothing in life will prepare you to build arks better, or faster, or more capable of withstanding a flood quite like childhood trauma does.
So, when I say things about my childhood, and you find yourself feeling sorry for me. Do me a favor and kindly: don’t.
I regret nothing.
Because look at my resume. Success.
Look at my ark. Success.
Fuck floods. Bring ‘em on.
Anyway.
Milwaukee. Wisconsin. Had to have been, what, mid-1980s or something like that?
Again, there’s no paperwork. There’s no birth certificate. Not even a hospital visit.
All I know is:
In the beginning, there was nothing.
Then, God created Virgil. And God saw what he had made, and Virgil was very good.
And I’m not “there” for the earliest parts. So, I don’t know.
Like, sure, I assume I was a baby, at some point. As hard as that is to believe. Consider: I have spent very little of my life being a fucking baby. I don’t consider myself one, given the relative amount of time I spent as one compared to the rest of the time I’ve spent not being one. So, I don’t focus a lot of my mental resources considering what that may have been like.
If you want to know more, go outside and look at a baby. There. That’s me.
Eventually, though, I came online.
And, for me, the earliest experiences I ever had was just darkness.
Though, at the time, I didn’t know what a dark place was. I had no clear concept of light versus dark. But for the purpose of telling the story I’ll make it explicit and say it simply:
My apartment, growing up, on some city block of Milwaukee—I don't even know precisely where, and I’ve given up all hope of ever find it again, because I wouldn’t even know what it looked like—there I was: a little kid, in the dark.
Day. Night. I had no idea what those things were, because my life was an eternal dark apartment.
And how did I spend my days?
Hunting.
That’s right. That was a natural development, by the way.
Without being taught to do it. Without being told to do it. There, with nothing else to do, the thing I taught myself to do all on my own was: hunt.
You see, old apartment complexes like that, in Milwaukee, or anywhere in the world, really, are breeding grounds for vermin. Countless little creatures eating and shitting and fucking and fighting and dying, generation after generation, over and over again, without worrying one wit about ‘happiness’ or ‘trauma’.
There was no end to the vermin scuttling around inside my apartment, and I came to be a skilled hunter of each of them, in the fullness of time.
Oh yeah.
Really, the only limiting factor for them not coming in even greater droves into the apartment was the lack of food we had in the apartment.
Little did they know, being the stupid prey that they were, that they were the food!
Well, perhaps on an instinctual level, perhaps they did have a vague understanding of that.
After all, they did try to not be hunted.
All creatures have a self-preservation streak in them.
Especially once they realize that they are being pursued. And that it might not be a sure thing, one way or the other, if they’ve eaten their last meal; shat their last shit; fucked their last fuck; fought their last fight; or that they are going to die their final death.
Not that you would know, necessarily, but it is pretty remarkable; the degree to which each different creature will come to that realization.
For instance, mice:
Very keen. They get it. And why not. They are mammals, after all! They are omnivorous. It isn’t beneath their station in life to eat, say, a cricket, if occasion demands it. They can do their own low form of hunting, in-between the gathering they do.
They understand the relation between predator and prey, somewhat from the perspective of the predator, but predominantly from the perspective of the prey.
Humans understood that, too, once upon a time.
At a certain point, you can even unlock that understanding again; the prey mentality, if conditions are right.
And though they are comparatively simple, compared to us, though less than you might think, there is a shared shorthand understanding between our two peoples: of mice and men, given our shared interest in predator-prey dynamism.
Even when we are enemies, we are of the same mind.
I see. I hunt. I catch. I play. I eat.
And not all hunts are successful. Not all escapes are successful.
You know what they say: sometimes you eat the mouse, sometimes she eats you.
And for one: it’s a good day. For the other: it’s one bad day.
Catching a mouse when you’re hungry is great.
I remember, as a kid, some of the first real sensations around the hunt that I came to understand wasn’t the pain of a failed hunt.
That was the norm.
What really stood out was the glee that came upon eventual, hard-earned success.
Fucking glee.
I’ve never experienced it anywhere else in life, except perhaps in postcoital euphoria, the glee of hearing the tiny little squeak of a mouse in your teeth getting snapped out of life’s journey.
Squeak! Snap! Done.
It isn’t fear, exactly.
It’s a kind of squeak that’s a sudden, resigned prayer offered at the end of life.
As if to say:
“My days of toil, my tireless evasion of pain, and fleeting moments of pleasure, have finally come to an end! Farewell!”
Squeak! Snap! Done.
This is fitting, perhaps, that it should suffer the most pain it should ever suffer while another creature experiences that momentary feeling of glee as they enjoy the success of their hunt, by crunching that life in its teeth and consuming it.
One story ends. Another gets to go on for at least one more day.
So, then you eat the mouse. Eat the fucking mouse.
It’s soft. Fluffy. Furry. Crunchy, brittle bones. A little gristly inside, like the knob at the end of a chicken bone, but smaller, and a gush of sudden goo, and…
Look. People with their domesticated cats. Quote-unquote “domesticated” cats.
People are embarrassed for their felines whenever the cat successfully manages to catch a mouse, or lizard, or grasshopper, and proceeds to just fuck around with it for a little while before the deathstrike.
You always hear one of these cat owners mewing:
“Oh, I hate it when he does that! Just kill it, Bartholomew! The poor mouse…”
No.
Fuck you, no.
You cannot separate play from predation.
Play is predation.
In your presumed and unsupported sense of superiority, you think you’ve managed to separate play and predation.
And it wasn’t you, by the way, it was your ancient prehistoric ancestors who mastered play and hunt like no other creature on Earth. By the way. Don’t pat yourself on the back too hard.
But in your foolishness you believe play and predation are two distinct experiences.
They are not.
They are fundamentally connected.
Biologically. Psychologically. Connected.
Next time you’re enjoying yourself. Hopefully not too much. Just enough. Next time you’re enjoying yourself just enough, let’s say, playing a game, something people like to do, understand: the play you are in, even though it may be simulated, is triggering the same parts of your brain that fire when you are a predator. Seeking. Hunting. Conquering. Killing. Devouring. Satiating.
They are all linked.
It’s all tied up inside the body, don’t ya find?
You have to gamify survival in nature.
Survival has to be gamified.
If survival wasn’t enjoyable, life wouldn’t do it.
So you’ve got to tell these fucking cat owners, when they’re being ignorantly condescending to their cats that just fucking accomplished something they couldn’t do if their lives depended on it, to go fuck themselves, because they have no idea what the fuck they are talking about.
They have been too divorced from their natural instincts for too long to even recognize their own animal instincts reflected back at them in the playful celebration of their cat at the completion of a successful hunt before the final act.
Feast.
No wonder cats have to bring these half-dead mice and lizards and grasshoppers to these cat owners.
Because the cat has mastered the great secret:
“You are a mammal. Stop embarrassing me and act like one.”
And, I get it, I know we tend to personify animals a little too much in today’s society, but just imagine the absolute bewilderment masked behind your cat’s expressionless face when they watch you dive into a hamburger without fucking with it first.
And why do you think parents have to constantly remind their children, “Don’t play with your food”?
Because kids know! They inherently understand it! You have to fucking play with your food. You have to gamify life. You have to take pleasure in the small victories of survival.
That is joy. Glee, even.
And if you just let them fuck around with it for a while, throw it around, chase after it across the kitchen floor, they’d be happier for it. And eat more!
Now, to be clear, catching a mouse was a relatively rare occasion.
They are wily.
Far more common was winning a cockroach.
And, if I’m being completely honest, as much as I would relish the celebration of catching and eating a mouse, I don’t know, I’m a simple guy, you give me a room full of cockroaches, and I’m good.
I can eat about fifty of those fuckers.
Now, there I was.
In the dark. The only light came in from the little edge around the wood board nailed in front of our windows, and the light that illuminated around the edge of the apartment door. It isn’t a lot of light, but, if that’s all the light you’re accustomed to, that’s all the light you need.
It’s more than enough.
In fact, any more light than that, and it would change the nature of the game.
They don’t like things too bright. And you don’t hunt cockroaches by sight, anyways.
That’s an auditory hunt.
And you may not realize that if you are quiet enough, you can hear a cockroach.
Equalize your noise with your environment. And if you can, and be still enough to listen, and know what you’re listening for, you can deduce little sounds that aren’t ambient. Aren’t you.
That aren’t even their scuttling little hooked feet on the linoleum, either.
I mean their language. Not exactly communication. I wouldn’t call it that. Faint. High, digital, rattling, chirping.
And they’re stupid.
I mean, compared to the mice, they’re regular old nincompoops.
You know, a lot of people I hear talking about cockroaches and give them way too much credit.
Way too much fucking credit, based on what I have seen.
Cockroaches: tasty, but otherwise I am not very much impressed.
People love to throw these extravagant claims out there, “Oh, cockroaches are going to outlive us all!” they say. “They’re going to thrive in a nuclear apocalypse after all humanity has crumbled!
Okay. Yeah. Sure. I mean, not by any virtue of their own! You know?
It’s not like they’re using their wits to jockey into a better geopolitical position so that they can come out victorious once the radioactive dust of a nuclear arms race settles into a low planetary-plutonium hum.
No!
Cockroaches are passengers on the highway of evolution.
They are passive players with no conscious sense of how to play the game.
And if you counter by saying: “Well, a mouse doesn’t either,” I would dare you to try and hunt a mouse.
Then hunt a cockroach.
Not with traps or bait or poison or sprays or any of that shit.
With your bare hands and your wiles.
Then tell me which one you think knows what’s up.
Anyway.
My main fare was cockroaches.
And yes, there is that same gleeful thrill of crunching a large roach you’ve been pursuing all of fifteen minutes.
That rush of goo that squeezes between your teeth.
Especially if you’re really hungry. Ah, just… immaculate.
And this was my life.
That was my life.
Day in, day out. Perpetually hunting cockroaches and mice, and any other vermin, too. I mean, we had it all. Rats. Less common than mice, but fun. Feisty. Fought back. That introduces a new dynamic. They’ll run, but when the chips are down, they’ll twist and bite and writhe and wriggle all over to try and get you before you get them.
Rats. Respect.
And bats!
Bats are great because they take the hunt into an entirely new dimension.
Bats will fly wherever the fuck they want. And some places they don’t want! So, credit where credit is due. They don’t give a fuck about walls.
And they can crawl on the floor and hang around on ceilings, too. As a little hunting boy, there’s not much you can do but just plant yourself beneath them and wait, and listen.
All the wit of a mouse, in three dimensions. It’s great. Hell. So, there’s the bat.
And the centipede. Spiders. Worms. But, they are more incidental, and, honestly, not as good to eat. But, that was my life.
And I just know that I must have been just shitting and pissing all over the place, in there. Not that it was something I was cognizant of. I had no regard for it.
I mean, it was such a natural function that I didn’t even consider it as distinct from the rest of existence. I didn’t even notice it, you know? No. Pissing and shitting was utterly off of my existential radar.
Food was the sole focus of my being. It predominated my thoughts, if you could really call it quote-unquote “thinking.” Everything orbited food. The hunt. And at a certain point that just becomes, you know, the knife in your arsenal that is sharpened to the finest point.
Anyways.
Sometimes, the door would open and my Father would appear.
I have no idea exactly how long in-between stretches of time would elapse.
Time. There was no time. Not like how I think about it now. All there was was just an endless tyranny of night. Cockroaches. Mice.
But then he would appear. And I always knew when he was coming.
I would hear him from the hall. I didn’t know it was a hall. But the sound of his arrival would emanate toward me from the direction of the hall, outside the door I'd never been through.
I knew his footsteps.
They sounded a certain kind of way, a way that belonged only to him.
I heard the jangle of the key.
I’d be there at the door.
It would open. He would just be eclipsed by light, just a nameless phenomenon that was associated only with him.
And he would scoop me up, right up off of the floor. And he would be my Father.
I’d bury my face in his jacket, and just take as deep an inhalation as I was capable of breathing in. The unbelievable odor of the city, outside.
I don’t know. Maybe people like you, you know, you might think a smell like that was rancid.
But as a little boy, inside that dark apartment, living my life, smelling his jacket was like a vision.
A grand, sprawling vision of the world he had conquered outside that door.
It was always a little different, but always the same. The city changed with the seasons, and so did her scent.
I mean, it was such a natural function that I didn’t even consider it as distinct from the rest of existence. I didn’t even notice it, you know? No. Pissing and shitting was utterly off of my existential radar.
Food was the sole focus of my being. It predominated my thoughts, if you could really call it quote-unquote “thinking.” Everything orbited food. The hunt. And at a certain point that just becomes, you know, the knife in your arsenal that is sharpened to the finest point.
Anyways.
Sometimes, the door would open and my Father would appear.
I have no idea exactly how long in-between stretches of time would elapse.
Time. There was no time. Not like how I think about it now. All there was was just an endless tyranny of night. Cockroaches. Mice.
But then he would appear. And I always knew when he was coming.
I would hear him from the hall. I didn’t know it was a hall. But the sound of his arrival would emanate toward me from the direction of the hall, outside the door I'd never been through.
I knew his footsteps.
They sounded a certain kind of way, a way that belonged only to him.
I heard the jangle of the key.
I’d be there at the door.
It would open. He would just be eclipsed by light, just a nameless phenomenon that was associated only with him.
And he would scoop me up, right up off of the floor. And he would be my Father.
I’d bury my face in his jacket, and just take as deep an inhalation as I was capable of breathing in. The unbelievable odor of the city, outside.
I don’t know. Maybe people like you, you know, you might think a smell like that was rancid.
But as a little boy, inside that dark apartment, living my life, smelling his jacket was like a vision.
A grand, sprawling vision of the world he had conquered outside that door.
It was always a little different, but always the same. The city changed with the seasons, and so did her scent.
And it always had a smell that was unmistakably him. And even a little of me, too.
Smells are a funny thing.
So.
He would arrive. And he would spend this brief moment with me.
Smells are a funny thing.
So.
He would arrive. And he would spend this brief moment with me.
Moment. An hour? A day? A week? I had no concept of time. There was only here with me, or not.
No. He did not speak. And I couldn't speak, so neither of us would speak.
But there was communication.
Kind of my first language. Just a reading of his manner.
A way of being. His way of existing, silently. Taking in a space and existing within it. Making it his, or becoming a product of that space.
His presence was his speech.
And I would imitate him. Without even really wanting to or intending to. Just because he was the only other thing in my life. And a kind of natural instinct in me to emulate him. Because, to me, the little boy in that infinite darkness, he was without equal. Impressive is too small a word to describe my regard for him.
No. He did not speak. And I couldn't speak, so neither of us would speak.
But there was communication.
Kind of my first language. Just a reading of his manner.
A way of being. His way of existing, silently. Taking in a space and existing within it. Making it his, or becoming a product of that space.
His presence was his speech.
And I would imitate him. Without even really wanting to or intending to. Just because he was the only other thing in my life. And a kind of natural instinct in me to emulate him. Because, to me, the little boy in that infinite darkness, he was without equal. Impressive is too small a word to describe my regard for him.
He was without equal in my little world.
And that would be how we would spend our time together.
How did I know he was my Father?
I don’t know. How could you know? How does anyone know?
How do you know who your daddy is? Because your momma says so.
And I had no momma. So.
But there is something instinctive at play, I don’t know. A smell that was his, and also mine, in a way that is so basic that it just is.
And he kept coming back. I don’t know how long in-between. I couldn’t imagine who else it would be but my Father.
And that would be how we would spend our time together.
How did I know he was my Father?
I don’t know. How could you know? How does anyone know?
How do you know who your daddy is? Because your momma says so.
And I had no momma. So.
But there is something instinctive at play, I don’t know. A smell that was his, and also mine, in a way that is so basic that it just is.
And he kept coming back. I don’t know how long in-between. I couldn’t imagine who else it would be but my Father.
Who else might have cared to keep coming back if not a Father?
He would be with me for an uncertain period of time, until I’d fall unconscious.
I wasn’t aware of sleep as distinct from waking life, I don't think. My dreams were like my life. Darkness, hunting, eating, the Father standing in an illuminated doorway of fire, and then the smell of the city’s incense, beyond.
He would be with me for an uncertain period of time, until I’d fall unconscious.
I wasn’t aware of sleep as distinct from waking life, I don't think. My dreams were like my life. Darkness, hunting, eating, the Father standing in an illuminated doorway of fire, and then the smell of the city’s incense, beyond.
When I woke up, he would be gone.
I don’t know how old I was. I don’t know how long I had been there. Later, maybe, it was suggested that I could have been around eleven or so, but, there’s no way to know.
But I remember the day.
It was the day that was the end of the world. The day of the apocalypse. The flood. Because the flood always comes.
It was the first day of the rest of my life.
I don’t know how old I was. I don’t know how long I had been there. Later, maybe, it was suggested that I could have been around eleven or so, but, there’s no way to know.
But I remember the day.
It was the day that was the end of the world. The day of the apocalypse. The flood. Because the flood always comes.
It was the first day of the rest of my life.
Because, without even knowing I had done it, I had been building an ark.
I heard him come down the hall.
But it was not the Father.
The footsteps were all wrong.
The keys were all wrong.
It was a quote-unquote "anti-Father". The same procedure. An entirely different persona.
He came to a stop, right in front of the door. I could see the shadow underneath the edge of the door.
A wholly different manner of being was on the other side of that door. Utterly beyond my imaginings. I couldn’t have guessed in a million years of darkness that something like this ever could have happened.
I guess, maybe, poetically, perhaps, you could say that this was where I became me.
I heard him come down the hall.
But it was not the Father.
The footsteps were all wrong.
The keys were all wrong.
It was a quote-unquote "anti-Father". The same procedure. An entirely different persona.
He came to a stop, right in front of the door. I could see the shadow underneath the edge of the door.
A wholly different manner of being was on the other side of that door. Utterly beyond my imaginings. I couldn’t have guessed in a million years of darkness that something like this ever could have happened.
I guess, maybe, poetically, perhaps, you could say that this was where I became me.
Conflict begets transformation and that whole song-and-dance.
This was where I became separate from the darkness and the life I had come up and existed in, up until that point, in my natural state.
I stared at the door. Frozen. A deepening malaise, a descending doom. You could hear the mechanism of the lock begin to turn.
This was where I became separate from the darkness and the life I had come up and existed in, up until that point, in my natural state.
I stared at the door. Frozen. A deepening malaise, a descending doom. You could hear the mechanism of the lock begin to turn.
I’d heard other people out there. But I didn't recognize them as "people" the way you might. They were abstract. Remote. Etherial and a little mystical. They never approached. They never came this close to invading my country.
This one was coming for me and all I could do was stare.
The bolt withdrew from the lock. The handle turned. The moment collapsed from something about to happen, into something that was fucking happening.
A huge man stood there, silhouetted by the light my Father usually occupied. This anti-Father had usurped him.
He saw me, and I saw him, and there was an eternal stillness. I sometimes wonder how I must have looked to him, whoever the fuck he was.
To me, he was an alien from outer-fucking-space. A demon from the pits of Hell. An embodiment of unconscious chaos, taking shape out of the void.
He was probably just some fucking guy. With pizza stains on his shirt and a mustache and bad eyes and hairy ears and a Capricorn or something fucking stupid like that.
To me, he came to proclaim the end of the world.
I wonder if he had expected to find me there. Did they know there was going to be a kid in there? Some feral child, hunting and eating and getting bigger, in the dark?
Did he guess what condition the room would be in, or the smell that would assault him when he opened that door? A smell they would be unprepared for, but that had been my entire existence?
Did he have any idea how good I had gotten at hunting cockroaches and the occasional mouse inside that apartment of darkness? Could he have even guessed how reasonably hardened by protein I was, and how every muscle in my body was crafted, from the moment I could crawl, to lunge and dive around this room in complete and total silence?
What he knew, or thought, is unknowable. But even if he suspected, he underestimated the chase I was capable of on the day of the Apocalypse.
He lunged for me, tried to put his hands on me to grab me, stomped and lumbered stupidly all over the room, chasing where I had just been instead of where I was going.
It was easy.
It was fucking easy.
To me, he came to proclaim the end of the world.
I wonder if he had expected to find me there. Did they know there was going to be a kid in there? Some feral child, hunting and eating and getting bigger, in the dark?
Did he guess what condition the room would be in, or the smell that would assault him when he opened that door? A smell they would be unprepared for, but that had been my entire existence?
Did he have any idea how good I had gotten at hunting cockroaches and the occasional mouse inside that apartment of darkness? Could he have even guessed how reasonably hardened by protein I was, and how every muscle in my body was crafted, from the moment I could crawl, to lunge and dive around this room in complete and total silence?
What he knew, or thought, is unknowable. But even if he suspected, he underestimated the chase I was capable of on the day of the Apocalypse.
He lunged for me, tried to put his hands on me to grab me, stomped and lumbered stupidly all over the room, chasing where I had just been instead of where I was going.
It was easy.
It was fucking easy.
He was no mouse. He wasn't even a cockroach.
If I had been bigger this guy would've been fucking toast.
But my movement was thoughtless. Instinctual. Running, jumping, dashing up walls and kicking off, landing in the middle of the room and twisting sideways to keep the horrific, stupid man who was not my Father from even setting a finger on me.
I hooted, screeched and barked. I was afraid, but I do not recall feeling as if I was in trouble. It was clear I could do this and he could not.
Finally, mercilessly, he left. He slammed the door, and I was returned to darkness, my lungs drinking hot sweaty air, my heart hammering against my ribs, eyes like ping pong balls, staring at that door, waiting.
I felt it. The adrenaline of the prey. I thought of every cockroach, every mouse, every rat and bat and worm and spider and centipede I ever hunted. Had this been how they had felt before I got them?
He was coming back.
I could hear him outside, a little faster; the footsteps even sounded more confident.
But my movement was thoughtless. Instinctual. Running, jumping, dashing up walls and kicking off, landing in the middle of the room and twisting sideways to keep the horrific, stupid man who was not my Father from even setting a finger on me.
I hooted, screeched and barked. I was afraid, but I do not recall feeling as if I was in trouble. It was clear I could do this and he could not.
Finally, mercilessly, he left. He slammed the door, and I was returned to darkness, my lungs drinking hot sweaty air, my heart hammering against my ribs, eyes like ping pong balls, staring at that door, waiting.
I felt it. The adrenaline of the prey. I thought of every cockroach, every mouse, every rat and bat and worm and spider and centipede I ever hunted. Had this been how they had felt before I got them?
He was coming back.
I could hear him outside, a little faster; the footsteps even sounded more confident.
The tiny fuzz on my arms and neck stood up.
Where was my Father? Where was my Father? Where was my Father?
Not those words. I didn't have words. But the idea. The question:
Where was my Father?
The first time the anti-Father opened the apartment door, he was surprised.
This time, when he opened the door, I was surprised.
You know what a flashlight is. What it does.
To me, the flashlight was even more alien than the anti-Father was.
I could have imagined a Father who was not my father. Maybe. I at least had a father-like reference when I saw him in the doorway.
I could never have imagined light as a rod. As a bullet. As a fist.
When he shined the flashlight in my face, it blinded me. I shrieked in pain and anger. But the real blow had been to my mind. The shock, and surprise, of a weapon like that was nearly enough to end the battle there, all at once.
He changed the nature of the game.
Luckily for me, I didn’t need my eyes to navigate my apartment. Even as my mind choked on the beam of light that had hammered my brain, my instincts could act independent of my thought. I could still evade him whenever I felt his large, rough hands try to lay hold on me.
I knew exactly how many steps it would take to get to the end of the room.
How many lunges wide the room was.
Where I would land if I were to roll, here.
What I couldn’t account for, exactly, was how much space the anti-Father would take up, physically, in the room. My eyes did help with that, and the flashes of light stung them horribly.
Where was my Father? Where was my Father? Where was my Father?
Not those words. I didn't have words. But the idea. The question:
Where was my Father?
The first time the anti-Father opened the apartment door, he was surprised.
This time, when he opened the door, I was surprised.
You know what a flashlight is. What it does.
To me, the flashlight was even more alien than the anti-Father was.
I could have imagined a Father who was not my father. Maybe. I at least had a father-like reference when I saw him in the doorway.
I could never have imagined light as a rod. As a bullet. As a fist.
When he shined the flashlight in my face, it blinded me. I shrieked in pain and anger. But the real blow had been to my mind. The shock, and surprise, of a weapon like that was nearly enough to end the battle there, all at once.
He changed the nature of the game.
Luckily for me, I didn’t need my eyes to navigate my apartment. Even as my mind choked on the beam of light that had hammered my brain, my instincts could act independent of my thought. I could still evade him whenever I felt his large, rough hands try to lay hold on me.
I knew exactly how many steps it would take to get to the end of the room.
How many lunges wide the room was.
Where I would land if I were to roll, here.
What I couldn’t account for, exactly, was how much space the anti-Father would take up, physically, in the room. My eyes did help with that, and the flashes of light stung them horribly.
That proved to be the deciding factor.
That fucking flashlight. How arrogant. Wielding light in that way. Does your hubris know no bounds? Content yourself to operate with the light and dark to the degree that nature decides is proper.
That fucking flashlight. How arrogant. Wielding light in that way. Does your hubris know no bounds? Content yourself to operate with the light and dark to the degree that nature decides is proper.
Even fire smacks of pretension.
When it wasn't blinding me, it still somehow felt disgusting on my skin. I fucking hated it. I hated that fucking flashlight.
It wasn’t even just that he was shining it at me. He was shining it all over the apartment. Seeing flashes of the room I grew up in, for years, like that. For the first time.
I saw it that way in my dreams for a long time, after that.
Well. I was sorry that I was captured. Captured by the anti-Father. I hated that he got me, and I let him know I hated it. I bit him, and it worked a few times, buying me another second or two. But after a few hard bites, he started striking me, now that he was getting close enough, and hurt enough, to resort to hitting a child.
It wasn’t even just that he was shining it at me. He was shining it all over the apartment. Seeing flashes of the room I grew up in, for years, like that. For the first time.
I saw it that way in my dreams for a long time, after that.
Well. I was sorry that I was captured. Captured by the anti-Father. I hated that he got me, and I let him know I hated it. I bit him, and it worked a few times, buying me another second or two. But after a few hard bites, he started striking me, now that he was getting close enough, and hurt enough, to resort to hitting a child.
It shouldn't hurt to hit a child, you know?
And I hadn’t really accounted for that, somehow. It seems obvious, right? You're gonna get smacked! But, between the flashlight and the idea that you could even use your fists on someone. I don’t know. It surprised me.
When I stopped biting, he stopped hitting. Things were looking up for me.
Then he got me around the neck, and that was really the end of it. He had these big, fat, hairy arms and he could really cut off my windpipe, after he had gotten the right hold on me, and that was the end for sure.
Fuck. It still makes me mad. It still makes me fucking mad. It still makes me so fucking mad it feels like my eyes start shaking inside my head when I really think about it. I’ll stop.
I’ll stop because it really doesn’t matter since because he captured me, all the rest of what happened was allowed to happen.
He took me out of there. Out of the apartment. For the first time, ever. He took me out. And I cannot explain to you just how absolutely fucking mind-blowing the next couple of hours for me were.
Like, the only thing that ever came close was that sequence in that fucking movie. About 2001, when the astronaut gets absolutely fucking mind-fucked in space, because it defies everything his human brain had evolved to comprehend.
That was me. Getting walked out of that apartment, and into the wider and wider and wider world beyond. It was my quote-unquote "stargate sequence".
Boom. Get fucked, kid.
Just an unending parade of stimuli.
And I hadn’t really accounted for that, somehow. It seems obvious, right? You're gonna get smacked! But, between the flashlight and the idea that you could even use your fists on someone. I don’t know. It surprised me.
When I stopped biting, he stopped hitting. Things were looking up for me.
Then he got me around the neck, and that was really the end of it. He had these big, fat, hairy arms and he could really cut off my windpipe, after he had gotten the right hold on me, and that was the end for sure.
Fuck. It still makes me mad. It still makes me fucking mad. It still makes me so fucking mad it feels like my eyes start shaking inside my head when I really think about it. I’ll stop.
I’ll stop because it really doesn’t matter since because he captured me, all the rest of what happened was allowed to happen.
He took me out of there. Out of the apartment. For the first time, ever. He took me out. And I cannot explain to you just how absolutely fucking mind-blowing the next couple of hours for me were.
Like, the only thing that ever came close was that sequence in that fucking movie. About 2001, when the astronaut gets absolutely fucking mind-fucked in space, because it defies everything his human brain had evolved to comprehend.
That was me. Getting walked out of that apartment, and into the wider and wider and wider world beyond. It was my quote-unquote "stargate sequence".
Boom. Get fucked, kid.
Just an unending parade of stimuli.
He walked me down the hallway that I had known only through hearing my father walk down it. Here I was.
When I had pictured it, it was only just a kind of infinite tunnel of light. The light that would always surround Father when he opened the door. But now that anti-Father was walking me down it, I could see it for what it apparently seemed to be:
Colors. Smells. Lights. Textures. Sounds. Fucking vibrations. Everything was moving. Everything was unique. Everything was distinct from everything else.
Just endless sensation in three dimensions. Maybe more!
He walked me down that hallway. I could look inside another apartment as we passed by an open door.
An apartment just like mine, but like, a whole separate world in there. Full of stuff! And color and light and sound. With faces of people inside of that place, looking back at me. More faces than I’d ever seen in my life, all in one place. I’d never even clearly seen facial expressions before; I was entirely out of my depth trying to discern what they could possibly have been thinking as they saw a half naked little feral piss-kid being dragged down the hall, screeching horribly, after overhearing an absolute barnburner of a brawl take place behind our shared wall. The climax over a decade in the making, ending countless days of pondering unidentifiable sounds and smells emanating from their neighbor's apartment down the hall.
When I had pictured it, it was only just a kind of infinite tunnel of light. The light that would always surround Father when he opened the door. But now that anti-Father was walking me down it, I could see it for what it apparently seemed to be:
Colors. Smells. Lights. Textures. Sounds. Fucking vibrations. Everything was moving. Everything was unique. Everything was distinct from everything else.
Just endless sensation in three dimensions. Maybe more!
He walked me down that hallway. I could look inside another apartment as we passed by an open door.
An apartment just like mine, but like, a whole separate world in there. Full of stuff! And color and light and sound. With faces of people inside of that place, looking back at me. More faces than I’d ever seen in my life, all in one place. I’d never even clearly seen facial expressions before; I was entirely out of my depth trying to discern what they could possibly have been thinking as they saw a half naked little feral piss-kid being dragged down the hall, screeching horribly, after overhearing an absolute barnburner of a brawl take place behind our shared wall. The climax over a decade in the making, ending countless days of pondering unidentifiable sounds and smells emanating from their neighbor's apartment down the hall.
I mean, how would you look at me under those conditions?
The stairs at the end of the hallway. The sounds of the city coming in from the open window in the stairwell. How the wooden steps creaked as the anti-Father marched me down them.
I could almost see how my Father might have looked walking up these stairs. In my imagination, he was featureless, like a shadow, silhouetted against light.
The flood was really rising up to the prow of my ark, now. It might have seemed like my ark was about to break open against the crashing waves and capsize before sinking into the abyss below.
But it held fast. Just barely.
What was my ark? What had I built it out of?
Instinct. Instinct honed over the course of all my life. In darkness. In silence. In solitude. And on the occasions where my Father would visit me, and sit with me, and share his manner with me.
That manner of being in a space. Making the space my own. Taking it in, and mastering my environment.
The anti-Father led me into this room, like an office or work closet or something, and shut the door behind him when he left, locking me in, mercifully, by myself.
He shut the door and left me in there by myself, and when the shock of what had happened finally subsided, faster than you might think, I was able to look around and saw what I was looking for.
The room had a window.
What an idiot.
What a fucking idiot.
There was a fucking window in this room.
Fucking asshole.
The room has a fucking window in it, you fucking asshole!
I mean, I don’t imagine a guy like him, as big and fat and slow as he was, could have ever imagined anybody could’ve fit out of that tiny fucking window hardly bigger than a mail slot halfway up the wall behind the desk.
Probably nearly nobody could have imagined someone could fit through it. But I had imagination. Or I just didn’t know well enough not to try.
This is the ark that I’m talking about. The wiles you need to survive. In the wild, or in civilization. It hardly matters which.
He had thrown me in there and closed the door, like an idiot, probably to go call the police or the orphanage or child traffickers or the Green Bay Packers defensive coach. Who knows?
I don’t even know who that fucking guy was, you know what I mean?
Was he a landlord? A superintendent? Or just some fucking janitor? Another person who just lived there?
The defensive coach of the Green Bay Packers?
Who cares? Fuck him. Still makes me mad thinking about him.
I don’t know. I don’t know anything about him. Because I never saw him again.
He didn’t tie me down. Maybe he was afraid I’d bite him again.
Fuck him. That’s his misfortune.
But I saw the window.
It was one of those kind of little narrow windows that open forward, with a little crank? The little arm? It angles out, and, well, the biggest part about me was my head. At the time.
So, if I could get my head through, then, maybe.
Yeah, I probably could have just hanged myself to death, right there, in some defensive coach's office window, kind of like as a little final farewell after he had to go clean up a decade’s worth of my piss and shit off the apartment floor upstairs. Boy. Bad day at work, coach?
But, frankly, I obviously didn’t know any better.
I didn’t know well enough not to try.
I climbed up the wall, grabbed onto the window ledge, and managed to slip my head out, where I could just drink in the open Milwaukee air.
Wow! Talk about a culture shock!
I slipped through and slid my body through. I heard a voice behind me yell something as my feet slipped away from the window, and I fell.
It was a far enough fall that I actually had time, in the middle of falling, to clearly think the wordless equivalent of:
“Oh fuck, this ain't good,”
Before I hit some rubbish that helped to break my fall.
And I was free. I was out. The only place I’d ever known. Maybe half an hour earlier, maybe less, it had been the only existence I’d ever known my entire life. Then, in less than an hour, boom, mother fucker.
Punched in the face. Stargate sequence. Mind fucked.
But, ark: intact. Flood: drifting over top of.
I emerged from the rubble and ran, in awe- filled terror of everything. I heard voices yelling at me through that tiny window. I looked back, briefly, and saw, from the outside, the apartment building, but it looked like everything else. That was the only time I ever saw it. It was indistinguishable from the rest of Milwaukee, to me.
I probably went on to drive past that place who knows how many hundreds of times? I may have driven by it a thousand times.
I never would recognize it. Maybe sometimes I'd see one and think, maybe, but then see something else and not know. Even if I could find it, I’d never be able to find it and go back to my room again.
Who cares? Fuck him. Still makes me mad thinking about him.
I don’t know. I don’t know anything about him. Because I never saw him again.
He didn’t tie me down. Maybe he was afraid I’d bite him again.
Fuck him. That’s his misfortune.
But I saw the window.
It was one of those kind of little narrow windows that open forward, with a little crank? The little arm? It angles out, and, well, the biggest part about me was my head. At the time.
So, if I could get my head through, then, maybe.
Yeah, I probably could have just hanged myself to death, right there, in some defensive coach's office window, kind of like as a little final farewell after he had to go clean up a decade’s worth of my piss and shit off the apartment floor upstairs. Boy. Bad day at work, coach?
But, frankly, I obviously didn’t know any better.
I didn’t know well enough not to try.
I climbed up the wall, grabbed onto the window ledge, and managed to slip my head out, where I could just drink in the open Milwaukee air.
Wow! Talk about a culture shock!
I slipped through and slid my body through. I heard a voice behind me yell something as my feet slipped away from the window, and I fell.
It was a far enough fall that I actually had time, in the middle of falling, to clearly think the wordless equivalent of:
“Oh fuck, this ain't good,”
Before I hit some rubbish that helped to break my fall.
And I was free. I was out. The only place I’d ever known. Maybe half an hour earlier, maybe less, it had been the only existence I’d ever known my entire life. Then, in less than an hour, boom, mother fucker.
Punched in the face. Stargate sequence. Mind fucked.
But, ark: intact. Flood: drifting over top of.
I emerged from the rubble and ran, in awe- filled terror of everything. I heard voices yelling at me through that tiny window. I looked back, briefly, and saw, from the outside, the apartment building, but it looked like everything else. That was the only time I ever saw it. It was indistinguishable from the rest of Milwaukee, to me.
I probably went on to drive past that place who knows how many hundreds of times? I may have driven by it a thousand times.
I never would recognize it. Maybe sometimes I'd see one and think, maybe, but then see something else and not know. Even if I could find it, I’d never be able to find it and go back to my room again.
Maybe.
Anyway, when they say you can never go home again, I know what they mean.
You can’t. You can never go back. Even if you wanted to. Even if you tried. Even if you managed to stand in your old home. What was your home is gone from you, forever.
When it leaves, the past becomes totally inaccessible to you.
I mean, a kind of nostalgic curiosity takes possession of me, from time to time. And I want to see it again. I want to smell how it smelled, I want to see what it might have looked like with adult eyes.
Might be nice. Might be terrible. Worse; it might feel like nothing. But it doesn’t matter, because you can never go back.
They yelled and I ran. Ran through the alley toward the street. The only thing that guided me was a trail of stimulation. Just following color and noise and smell and the direction the wind was blowing until I saw it.
Out of the frying pan and into city traffic.
I stumbled nakedly out of the alley and came upon the sidewalk. The city sidewalk. And if I had been thrown through a loop just coming out of my apartment, I was absolutely hogwhalloped in the face again with an explosion of new information, staring at the city street for the first time.
What was most astounding to me, I think, was the relationship between the people walking up and down the sidewalk, and the cars that dominated the street in the center.
Anyway, when they say you can never go home again, I know what they mean.
You can’t. You can never go back. Even if you wanted to. Even if you tried. Even if you managed to stand in your old home. What was your home is gone from you, forever.
When it leaves, the past becomes totally inaccessible to you.
I mean, a kind of nostalgic curiosity takes possession of me, from time to time. And I want to see it again. I want to smell how it smelled, I want to see what it might have looked like with adult eyes.
Might be nice. Might be terrible. Worse; it might feel like nothing. But it doesn’t matter, because you can never go back.
They yelled and I ran. Ran through the alley toward the street. The only thing that guided me was a trail of stimulation. Just following color and noise and smell and the direction the wind was blowing until I saw it.
Out of the frying pan and into city traffic.
I stumbled nakedly out of the alley and came upon the sidewalk. The city sidewalk. And if I had been thrown through a loop just coming out of my apartment, I was absolutely hogwhalloped in the face again with an explosion of new information, staring at the city street for the first time.
What was most astounding to me, I think, was the relationship between the people walking up and down the sidewalk, and the cars that dominated the street in the center.
What I came to know as, quote-unquote, "the road".
Those cars. They seemed to have enormous power, and nobody seemed to respect it properly.
People got into them.
People got out of them.
People walked along side of them.
People passed by in front of them.
The cars honked at the people.
The cars honked at each other.
The people inside the cars stuck their arms out and yelled at, who? Anybody? Everybody? Nobody?
Those cars. They seemed to have enormous power, and nobody seemed to respect it properly.
People got into them.
People got out of them.
People walked along side of them.
People passed by in front of them.
The cars honked at the people.
The cars honked at each other.
The people inside the cars stuck their arms out and yelled at, who? Anybody? Everybody? Nobody?
And no matter how close everything got, sometimes so close that you were sure they'd crash into everything and it would all come to a screeching halt...
Somehow, it never did. It just glided by. Like a river carrying spawning salmon.
It was a grotesque ballet.
I fucking loved it.
The enormity of life unfolded in front of me, right there, on the streets, in an instant.
It was a grotesque ballet.
I fucking loved it.
The enormity of life unfolded in front of me, right there, on the streets, in an instant.
It felt like I was seeing into my future. Not in any trite, specific kind of way.
Broadly. I was peering into everything that life still had in store for me, from as wide a perspective as I could take in. Wow.
It feels like an eternal moment I can still go back to, if I think about it. An eternal second of my past.
You can’t go home again, but I can always go find a busy city street to gawk at in awe.
Steam and smoke and hot dogs and garbage and the rats and people and buildings and gasoline and rain puddles, and the clouds reflecting in the glass of all the windows on either side.
It was all too much. It had all just been one shock after another. On and on and on. When would the enormity of life stop?
It hasn’t yet. Even today.
And I had managed to escape it all. I escaped it because I had been raised in darkness, and, like a bullet from a gun, the second I saw light and my instincts were struck, I escaped from that barrel as fast as I could go.
It feels like an eternal moment I can still go back to, if I think about it. An eternal second of my past.
You can’t go home again, but I can always go find a busy city street to gawk at in awe.
Steam and smoke and hot dogs and garbage and the rats and people and buildings and gasoline and rain puddles, and the clouds reflecting in the glass of all the windows on either side.
It was all too much. It had all just been one shock after another. On and on and on. When would the enormity of life stop?
It hasn’t yet. Even today.
And I had managed to escape it all. I escaped it because I had been raised in darkness, and, like a bullet from a gun, the second I saw light and my instincts were struck, I escaped from that barrel as fast as I could go.
Like the cockroaches I hunted. When you turn the lights on, what do the cockroaches do? They run for cover as fast as they possibly can.
My instincts saved me. The instincts that had been left to develop in secret, right in the center of the city, until the Apocalypse came and I was let loose.
A car door opened. Someone got out. The door hung open long enough to allow me to just slip in.
I got in.
Apparently, he hadn’t even realized I had done it. I was in for another surprise, in a parade of surprises in a very surprising day. The thing I had escaped into began to move.
I mean, I had seen them move, but from the outside!
It’s an entirely different experience being on the inside of a car and seeing the entire world, as infinite as it seemed, move by itself outside your window.
Holy shit. The world is going away?
The world can do that?
Something shifted. I heard a sudden exclamation. I looked up and saw a very angry face staring at me from the driver’s seat, looking back at me where I was on the rear seat floorboards.
And the sounds that issued out of this creature, frowning at me, were similar to the ones the anti-Father had issued when trying to capture me back in the apartment.
But different. These were more colorful. A kind of poetry.
It was the kind of exclamation from a voice I would come to know quite well. His name was Otto.
Otto was a cab driver around Milwaukee back then.
Yeah, he had his own cab. He didn’t work for an actual cab farm, but he had a used cab that he bought second hand from one of 'em.
It had everything you needed. The meter. The sliding glass dividing front and back seats. The little arm you put down to start the meter. The little frame behind the driver's seat where you put your license. Except Otto's slot was empty. He operated without a license. He wasn't a by-the-book kinda cabbie. But he did have the clipboard, the log sheet, the golf pencil. Otto had it all!
Look, full disclosure, a lot of what I remember during this stretch of life is supplemented significantly by Otto’s own remembrances of what happened. He’d sometimes reminisce about finding me, and how I came to hitch my wagon onto his rising star.
So, you know, from his perspective, he looks back there and sees this little half-naked child, covered in shit, like I’d been pulled from a basket floating amid the reeds of the Nile River.
And he told me his reaction was something like, “What the fuck? Why the fuck is there a half-naked child covered in shit in my fucking cab? The fuck did you doin' in here, kid?”
And I couldn’t have made my situation any better by my reaction, which couldn’t have been anything more articulate than hissing at him and urinating to try and assert dominance.
“No, no, no, what the fuck?! What the fuck you doin’ in my cab, kid? You're pissing everywhere! Shit! What the hell is going on with today?”
So, you know, he’s driving. So, he’s got to pull over and figure out what’s going on in the back, there, with this city kid. And that’s what he does.
He pulls over.
But he’s not expecting the kind of fight a little half-naked boy, hopped up on cockroaches and adrenaline, is actually capable of.
You’d think that there’s really only so much room in the back of a cab that a little boy could use in order to evade a fully grown and enraged adult man, but. He couldn't have realized.
My instincts saved me. The instincts that had been left to develop in secret, right in the center of the city, until the Apocalypse came and I was let loose.
A car door opened. Someone got out. The door hung open long enough to allow me to just slip in.
I got in.
Apparently, he hadn’t even realized I had done it. I was in for another surprise, in a parade of surprises in a very surprising day. The thing I had escaped into began to move.
I mean, I had seen them move, but from the outside!
It’s an entirely different experience being on the inside of a car and seeing the entire world, as infinite as it seemed, move by itself outside your window.
Holy shit. The world is going away?
The world can do that?
Something shifted. I heard a sudden exclamation. I looked up and saw a very angry face staring at me from the driver’s seat, looking back at me where I was on the rear seat floorboards.
And the sounds that issued out of this creature, frowning at me, were similar to the ones the anti-Father had issued when trying to capture me back in the apartment.
But different. These were more colorful. A kind of poetry.
It was the kind of exclamation from a voice I would come to know quite well. His name was Otto.
Otto was a cab driver around Milwaukee back then.
Yeah, he had his own cab. He didn’t work for an actual cab farm, but he had a used cab that he bought second hand from one of 'em.
It had everything you needed. The meter. The sliding glass dividing front and back seats. The little arm you put down to start the meter. The little frame behind the driver's seat where you put your license. Except Otto's slot was empty. He operated without a license. He wasn't a by-the-book kinda cabbie. But he did have the clipboard, the log sheet, the golf pencil. Otto had it all!
Look, full disclosure, a lot of what I remember during this stretch of life is supplemented significantly by Otto’s own remembrances of what happened. He’d sometimes reminisce about finding me, and how I came to hitch my wagon onto his rising star.
So, you know, from his perspective, he looks back there and sees this little half-naked child, covered in shit, like I’d been pulled from a basket floating amid the reeds of the Nile River.
And he told me his reaction was something like, “What the fuck? Why the fuck is there a half-naked child covered in shit in my fucking cab? The fuck did you doin' in here, kid?”
And I couldn’t have made my situation any better by my reaction, which couldn’t have been anything more articulate than hissing at him and urinating to try and assert dominance.
“No, no, no, what the fuck?! What the fuck you doin’ in my cab, kid? You're pissing everywhere! Shit! What the hell is going on with today?”
So, you know, he’s driving. So, he’s got to pull over and figure out what’s going on in the back, there, with this city kid. And that’s what he does.
He pulls over.
But he’s not expecting the kind of fight a little half-naked boy, hopped up on cockroaches and adrenaline, is actually capable of.
You’d think that there’s really only so much room in the back of a cab that a little boy could use in order to evade a fully grown and enraged adult man, but. He couldn't have realized.
I mean, unless Otto had a fucking flashlight he was gonna shine in my face, which he didn’t, this just not a fight I was going to lose.
I'd already suffered one painful defeat today. I was not losing again.
So, Otto is there, cursing and yelling beautifully at me as I’m growling and pissing and biting like mad, until he realizes that our back-seat wrestling match is happening in full public view.
A fully grown man trying to throttle a half naked child in the back of a taxi cab.
People walking by. Taking notice. Whispering to each other as they walk by a little faster. Looking back over their shoulders.
Some people across the street. Taking notice. Looking over to try and catch a glimpse of the kid in the back of that car.
I can practically hear Otto now:
“God-damnit, kid! What’s your goddamn problem?!”
Hiss. Marking my territory, aggressively.
Otto was not getting me out of that cab.
He slams the door. Gets back in the driver’s seat. Takes off.
When I was older, Otto walked me through his dilemma. We’re talking about a guy who spent his life avoiding trouble. Doing everything he could to operate his own cab, under the radar, making as much money as he could and answering to no one.
Otto’s operation wasn’t entirely legal. You need certain licenses. Apparently. Certain credentials. Unionized. You gotta pay an annual fee. Regulation. That kind of shit.
He couldn’t take me to the police, and he wasn’t thrilled with the idea of having another public fight with a child in front of a police station to get me inside, anyway.
Otto decided, better or worse, the best thing to do was to drive home, call it an early night, and park his cab in front of his place.
He took the keys out of the ignition. He rolled down the windows.
Looking at him out of the open windows in the back seat, he turns to me and says, “Have a good life, kid. You're free.”
He went inside. Cab unlocked, windows open, out on the curb. In Milwaukee. In the 1980s.
A few hooligans did walk by, but, they wanted nothing to do with me.
Anyway. As soon as Otto was gone, I was finally at peace. After a long day.
This was now my cab.
Nobody was getting me out of this fucker. Not after the day I had. No fucking way. Not even the anti-Father. I'd like to see him try.
Besides, looking outside, out those open windows, listening to the sounds of the night all around me, I wouldn’t have known where to begin.
Otto couldn't have known how peaceful and serene his cab seemed to me, after living my entire life inside of my dark apartment, and being from my Father’s womb untimely ripped.
Nope. I was not very much inclined to leave that back seat.
So. The next morning, Otto came back, walked right up to the window, looking in, nervously, afraid at what he might see.
So, Otto is there, cursing and yelling beautifully at me as I’m growling and pissing and biting like mad, until he realizes that our back-seat wrestling match is happening in full public view.
A fully grown man trying to throttle a half naked child in the back of a taxi cab.
People walking by. Taking notice. Whispering to each other as they walk by a little faster. Looking back over their shoulders.
Some people across the street. Taking notice. Looking over to try and catch a glimpse of the kid in the back of that car.
I can practically hear Otto now:
“God-damnit, kid! What’s your goddamn problem?!”
Hiss. Marking my territory, aggressively.
Otto was not getting me out of that cab.
He slams the door. Gets back in the driver’s seat. Takes off.
When I was older, Otto walked me through his dilemma. We’re talking about a guy who spent his life avoiding trouble. Doing everything he could to operate his own cab, under the radar, making as much money as he could and answering to no one.
Otto’s operation wasn’t entirely legal. You need certain licenses. Apparently. Certain credentials. Unionized. You gotta pay an annual fee. Regulation. That kind of shit.
He couldn’t take me to the police, and he wasn’t thrilled with the idea of having another public fight with a child in front of a police station to get me inside, anyway.
Otto decided, better or worse, the best thing to do was to drive home, call it an early night, and park his cab in front of his place.
He took the keys out of the ignition. He rolled down the windows.
Looking at him out of the open windows in the back seat, he turns to me and says, “Have a good life, kid. You're free.”
He went inside. Cab unlocked, windows open, out on the curb. In Milwaukee. In the 1980s.
A few hooligans did walk by, but, they wanted nothing to do with me.
Anyway. As soon as Otto was gone, I was finally at peace. After a long day.
This was now my cab.
Nobody was getting me out of this fucker. Not after the day I had. No fucking way. Not even the anti-Father. I'd like to see him try.
Besides, looking outside, out those open windows, listening to the sounds of the night all around me, I wouldn’t have known where to begin.
Otto couldn't have known how peaceful and serene his cab seemed to me, after living my entire life inside of my dark apartment, and being from my Father’s womb untimely ripped.
Nope. I was not very much inclined to leave that back seat.
So. The next morning, Otto came back, walked right up to the window, looking in, nervously, afraid at what he might see.
Schrödinger's Virgil.
For a brief moment, I occupied a superposition between being in the cab, and out of the cab, until Otto came up and looked inside, forcing my quantum state to become fixed.
For a brief moment, I occupied a superposition between being in the cab, and out of the cab, until Otto came up and looked inside, forcing my quantum state to become fixed.
There I was. In the back. Eating something I'd managed to catch. Amid lots more shit and piss all over the seat and floor.
The language that burst out of him at that moment would’ve surely been a delight to hear, if I knew what he was saying.
I just watched. Whatever he was saying, it looked good.
Otto uses this cab for his livelihood. It’s how he earned his fucking living.
And here I was, you know. Making myself right at home.
But he recognized that I wasn’t leaving. So, you know, he had to compromise.
The great compromise.
You know. When nobody gets everything they want, but everybody gets a little of what they want?
Otto didn’t want me in his cab. He wanted his cab clean of shit and piss.
I didn’t want to leave his cab. I wanted to cover the back seat with my shit and piss.
We compromised. That’s fucking diplomacy.
He tried to push me through the little hatch and into the front seat so that he could properly clean the back seats.
But I wouldn’t go. I was skeptical of him, and, this was my spot, now.
So, begrugdingly, he had to clean around me.
Not reaching for me. Not trying to grab me, or fight me, but just moving his arms and hands and maneuvering close to me, wiping and cleaning, without making any sudden moves for me.
And then, when he was done and had cleaned as much as he could, he left me alone. He went back to the front seat, started her up, and off we went.
The language that burst out of him at that moment would’ve surely been a delight to hear, if I knew what he was saying.
I just watched. Whatever he was saying, it looked good.
Otto uses this cab for his livelihood. It’s how he earned his fucking living.
And here I was, you know. Making myself right at home.
But he recognized that I wasn’t leaving. So, you know, he had to compromise.
The great compromise.
You know. When nobody gets everything they want, but everybody gets a little of what they want?
Otto didn’t want me in his cab. He wanted his cab clean of shit and piss.
I didn’t want to leave his cab. I wanted to cover the back seat with my shit and piss.
We compromised. That’s fucking diplomacy.
He tried to push me through the little hatch and into the front seat so that he could properly clean the back seats.
But I wouldn’t go. I was skeptical of him, and, this was my spot, now.
So, begrugdingly, he had to clean around me.
Not reaching for me. Not trying to grab me, or fight me, but just moving his arms and hands and maneuvering close to me, wiping and cleaning, without making any sudden moves for me.
And then, when he was done and had cleaned as much as he could, he left me alone. He went back to the front seat, started her up, and off we went.
A new status quo. Symbiosis. The great compromise, right?
We started picking up fares.
Me along for the ride.
Business wasn’t so good. Not at first.
People would open the cab door and take one fucking look at me and fuck right the fuck off.
But some got in. Some. I got to smell them. Look at them. Tried to figure out what I could figure out about them.
Exuding my manner. I learned from my Father.
Sometimes they’d be these bleeding hearts, you know? Thinking I was his poor, shit-covered child that he was busting his ass trying to raise in this shit-covered world of ours.
And all the sudden Otto would get these occasional big tips he wouldn’t otherwise get.
It didn’t completely make up for all the fares he might have missed out on. But. It was close. And getting closer, as time went on and I started to look less Charles Dickensish.
So, as they say, it was the beginning of a be-au-ti-ful friendship.
It was a rare win-win, seldom observed in nature. Otto still got to make his living, and I was treated to an endless buffet of language, smells, sounds, sights, objects, and, well, earthly knowledge. Every new fare came with new discoveries.
We started picking up fares.
Me along for the ride.
Business wasn’t so good. Not at first.
People would open the cab door and take one fucking look at me and fuck right the fuck off.
But some got in. Some. I got to smell them. Look at them. Tried to figure out what I could figure out about them.
Exuding my manner. I learned from my Father.
Sometimes they’d be these bleeding hearts, you know? Thinking I was his poor, shit-covered child that he was busting his ass trying to raise in this shit-covered world of ours.
And all the sudden Otto would get these occasional big tips he wouldn’t otherwise get.
It didn’t completely make up for all the fares he might have missed out on. But. It was close. And getting closer, as time went on and I started to look less Charles Dickensish.
So, as they say, it was the beginning of a be-au-ti-ful friendship.
It was a rare win-win, seldom observed in nature. Otto still got to make his living, and I was treated to an endless buffet of language, smells, sounds, sights, objects, and, well, earthly knowledge. Every new fare came with new discoveries.
I had no boundaries. No understanding. Everything was mine. So, obviously, I irritated a lot of passengers, but, the more secure I felt in the compromise, the more I experimented with sitting in the front passenger seat. Beside Otto.
And then business began to boom.
By then, Otto was pretty happy about how the arrangement worked out. His language was still pretty colorful, but, the manner was different. Colorful language, but a pleasant manner.
And if there was conflict, you know, between he and I, he'd open the door, and point.
“You wanna go, kid? You wanna be free? Go ahead! Go, go…”
But I wouldn’t. Then, if we fought again over something trivial, I’d imitate him. In my broken, but improving language.
"You anna gokid? Be fee?!" I'd open his door and point. "Go ahed. Go! Go!"
He hated that.
“This is my fucking cab, kid. I was drivin' these streets before you were even born. I ain’t leaving nothing.”
But then he’d park in front of his place and get out and leave me there for hours and hours and, I mean, to me, it felt like a concession.
“This is my fucking cab, kid. I was drivin' these streets before you were even born. I ain’t leaving nothing.”
But then he’d park in front of his place and get out and leave me there for hours and hours and, I mean, to me, it felt like a concession.
It was more like my cab than his.
I had stayed in the same apartment for, what, maybe eleven years without leaving.
I could easily stay in that cab for another eleven without setting a fucking foot outside.
Besides, our conflicts were fewer and farther between the more I started picking things up.
Like a fucking sponge, you know? I just soaked up everything that I’d witnessed sitting in the cab.
I had stayed in the same apartment for, what, maybe eleven years without leaving.
I could easily stay in that cab for another eleven without setting a fucking foot outside.
Besides, our conflicts were fewer and farther between the more I started picking things up.
Like a fucking sponge, you know? I just soaked up everything that I’d witnessed sitting in the cab.
Eventually Otto noticed I could hear where the fare wanted to go, and if we'd been there before, I could point the way.
Eventually, I could pick up the conversation and add a well-timed word or two. For laughs, you know?
After a fare I could climb through the slat and wipe the seats down before the next fare.
And I'd learn things. Things people wanted to talk about. And I'd learn things that Otto wanted to talk about. And outside the cab windows, life was a non-stop information explosion, and I was blasted with knowledge like buckshot every single day.
I picked up some words. More like sounds of words. The kind of things you hear other people say, regularly, that seem to get a response from the people who hear it.
It would make him laugh. There I was. Like a parrot on a pirate’s shoulder.
“Get outta the fuckin' way! Get outta the fuckin' way!"
Ha-ha-ha, that’s right, kid. Here’s a cracker.
And he’d teach me shit. What he knew.
And I'd learn things. Things people wanted to talk about. And I'd learn things that Otto wanted to talk about. And outside the cab windows, life was a non-stop information explosion, and I was blasted with knowledge like buckshot every single day.
I picked up some words. More like sounds of words. The kind of things you hear other people say, regularly, that seem to get a response from the people who hear it.
It would make him laugh. There I was. Like a parrot on a pirate’s shoulder.
“Get outta the fuckin' way! Get outta the fuckin' way!"
Ha-ha-ha, that’s right, kid. Here’s a cracker.
And he’d teach me shit. What he knew.
Kind of a wisdom of the world. An openness to the world, but, kind of an open interrogation of the world.
He wouldn't argue with the fares. But, he'd kind of assume a contrarian tone with whatever they were saying. Whatever they thought about things.
Sometimes not even as him, you know. Just, like, assuming what people who don't know shit about the subject might say by way of objection, just to keep the conversation flowing.
Setting up a series of straw men for the fares to blow down. Make them all feel like intellectual heavyweights. They'd tip better if they got out feeling like philosopher kings.
Then the next fare came in and they felt the complete opposite, and Otto would set them up with a bunch of flawed logic to flatten all over again.
I listened to it all. It fascinated me.
And slowly he and I became...
I had a Father somewhere. And I didn’t know how to reconcile that.
Otto, though. He wasn’t a Father. That wasn’t his manner.
An uncle, though, maybe. Yeah. Maybe that.
He was friendly, in a combative way. Constant. Reliable. He was my entry point into the world.
But he wasn’t my Father.
Eventually, you know, we’d become partners. Time of night when things got slow. City was slow.
“Alright, kid,” he’d say. “Jump behind the wheel. Let me take a snooze. Cruise around til you find a fare.”
We’d switch spots and he’d sleep, and I’d just cruise around. Sometimes, I’d let fares go by without picking them up, just so I could drive around for a bit longer.
But then I’d find a girl and want to pick her up. I was fascinated by girls. Even if they were with a guy, I just wanted to learn what they were. We’d pull over, switch spots, and she’d get in and we’d be on our way.
And I’d watch her in the back. No self awareness at all.
Some didn't like that. Some didn't notice. Still others recognize my curiosity and, in an encouraging way, would just talk to me. Like they knew they were helping me, you know, how to talk to girls. And I'd try. I had confidence.
But, you can imagine what kind of things I had to talk about. With where I'd been in life. But some were nice and just... let me try, you know?
I mean. Before the cab, there hadn’t ever been a girl in my life. Ever.
And after talking with one out of every eleven that came into the cab, I couldn’t in a million years imagine how I ever could get one in my life.
I mean. Before the cab, there hadn’t ever been a girl in my life. Ever.
And after talking with one out of every eleven that came into the cab, I couldn’t in a million years imagine how I ever could get one in my life.
That was all a dim, impossible mystery to me. I couldn’t understand what series of circumstances would have to unfold to make that sort of thing happen. I didn’t even know, then, what men and women even did together. I had a feeling they did something together, but what it was, or why, was profoundly unknowable.
And what was worse than not knowing how to get a girl into my life was not knowing why I even wanted one.
But. Anyways.
And what was worse than not knowing how to get a girl into my life was not knowing why I even wanted one.
But. Anyways.
That became a way of existing, then. Like the endless days of the dark apartment, hunting cockroaches, had.
Just an endless parade of days, driving in the cab, with Otto, picking up fares and learning everything that every cab fare had to say about anything. And then comparing that to whatever the next fare had to say. And the next, and the next, and the next.
Some patterns emerge. Some inconsistencies emerge. And then, every once in a while, you hear something completely new that nobody has ever said before.
It’s hard to take it all in, sometimes. Make it all fit together. Sometimes it seemed to, other times all of existence seemed... random.
Otto and I, we’d patrol the city. The whole time, him teaching me how to drive a cab, whether he intended to or not, because I watched everything he did.
Just an endless parade of days, driving in the cab, with Otto, picking up fares and learning everything that every cab fare had to say about anything. And then comparing that to whatever the next fare had to say. And the next, and the next, and the next.
Some patterns emerge. Some inconsistencies emerge. And then, every once in a while, you hear something completely new that nobody has ever said before.
It’s hard to take it all in, sometimes. Make it all fit together. Sometimes it seemed to, other times all of existence seemed... random.
Otto and I, we’d patrol the city. The whole time, him teaching me how to drive a cab, whether he intended to or not, because I watched everything he did.
Every gesture, every word, every motion, I studied him because he was the first person, well, the I guess third person I’d ever met in my life.
Me and the cab. Like a duck to water. Time passed.
How much? A few.
You know, time. Time didn’t really exist, for me, for years.
Me and the cab. Like a duck to water. Time passed.
How much? A few.
You know, time. Time didn’t really exist, for me, for years.
Until all the sudden I saw the sun and the moon and day and night and weeks, and months, and seasons, and years.
All the sudden time went from nonexistent to, well, each day was a new day.
That fucked me up a bit, I think.
Everything was that way. Everything just brand new. Even if I'd encountered before, it still felt new.
To a certain extent, things are still brand new to me. All the time.
You know, I don’t think that I was ever able really to shed this feeling that life is still a constant discovery of how things are.
People talk about life like it's some burdensome monotony. And I mean. I guess. Patterns are a thing.
But even within the pattern, that life can fall within a groove, a rut, is itself kind of fascinating, isn’t it?
It still amazes me that there’s so much life out here. Not just life but just, fucking stuff everywhere.
People are everywhere, and they’re all doing stuff.
I can see how it doesn’t need to be this way. How it might not be if things were different. And yet, it is this way. Stuff and people everywhere.
Everything was that way. Everything just brand new. Even if I'd encountered before, it still felt new.
To a certain extent, things are still brand new to me. All the time.
You know, I don’t think that I was ever able really to shed this feeling that life is still a constant discovery of how things are.
People talk about life like it's some burdensome monotony. And I mean. I guess. Patterns are a thing.
But even within the pattern, that life can fall within a groove, a rut, is itself kind of fascinating, isn’t it?
It still amazes me that there’s so much life out here. Not just life but just, fucking stuff everywhere.
People are everywhere, and they’re all doing stuff.
I can see how it doesn’t need to be this way. How it might not be if things were different. And yet, it is this way. Stuff and people everywhere.
So. That’s kind of worth investigating, right?
One day you're driving around, investigating the infinite sprawling chaotic beauty of life, and then you look at someone standing on the sidewalk.
One day you're driving around, investigating the infinite sprawling chaotic beauty of life, and then you look at someone standing on the sidewalk.
Holy shit. There he fucking was.
Just standing out on the fucking sidewalk.
Just standing out on the fucking sidewalk.
Like he was waiting for me to just randomly drive by and spot him.
I drove by and was like, holy shit. That’s him. That’s fucking him.
I never got a real good look at him. You know. Those days. In the darkness, or silhouetted by the light from the hallway and shit.
But I fucking knew it as soon as I saw him. Immediately.
We made eye contact. It was him! A kind of unspoken familiarity passed between us.
Like magnets pulled together.
My Father.
I stopped and climbed out of the window. I hadn’t even parked, so Otto was yelling at me and cursing and shit, because he was the passenger and we were just rolling forward.
But eventually I got out and ran up to him and we stared at each other.
That regard. That manner. That silent contest of will; combative, but, rooted in play.
I embraced him. I buried my face in his jacket, and I just inhaled the city off of him.
I drove by and was like, holy shit. That’s him. That’s fucking him.
I never got a real good look at him. You know. Those days. In the darkness, or silhouetted by the light from the hallway and shit.
But I fucking knew it as soon as I saw him. Immediately.
We made eye contact. It was him! A kind of unspoken familiarity passed between us.
Like magnets pulled together.
My Father.
I stopped and climbed out of the window. I hadn’t even parked, so Otto was yelling at me and cursing and shit, because he was the passenger and we were just rolling forward.
But eventually I got out and ran up to him and we stared at each other.
That regard. That manner. That silent contest of will; combative, but, rooted in play.
I embraced him. I buried my face in his jacket, and I just inhaled the city off of him.
The city. Him, and, a little bit of me.
The nostalgia was like a high. I was a feral kid again, wordless, mouth full of cockroach, waiting for him to come home again.
We looked at each other and he knew who I was. Knew who he was. He called me by my name.
“Virgil.”
Virgil Walter Nevins. “Walter” Nevins.
No relation.
The eleventh.
X. I.
If tradition is to be believed.
Otto knew something came up. He ran some fares while my Father and I got reacquainted.
The nostalgia was like a high. I was a feral kid again, wordless, mouth full of cockroach, waiting for him to come home again.
We looked at each other and he knew who I was. Knew who he was. He called me by my name.
“Virgil.”
Virgil Walter Nevins. “Walter” Nevins.
No relation.
The eleventh.
X. I.
If tradition is to be believed.
Otto knew something came up. He ran some fares while my Father and I got reacquainted.
We talked. We walked.
You know, I had sometimes thought to myself:
What the fuck ever happened to that guy?
By then, you know, the childhood memories of him had begun to recede. Diminish. And I would think, who the fuck was that guy?
As a child I had known that was my Father.
But years later, deprived of him, after his mysterious inability to return, the anti-Father and all that shit, you can’t help but wonder:
What the fuck ever happened to that guy?
By then, you know, the childhood memories of him had begun to recede. Diminish. And I would think, who the fuck was that guy?
As a child I had known that was my Father.
But years later, deprived of him, after his mysterious inability to return, the anti-Father and all that shit, you can’t help but wonder:
What had happened?
Some nights, you might even offer a quiet, hurt “fuck you” to a Father who could just disappear that way, whether he had meant to or not.
Because fuck him. Arrange your fatherhood in a manner that might make disappearing impossible.
Some nights, you might even offer a quiet, hurt “fuck you” to a Father who could just disappear that way, whether he had meant to or not.
Because fuck him. Arrange your fatherhood in a manner that might make disappearing impossible.
Anything short of that is worth at least one, quiet, hurt “fuck you," occasionally.
But, there, you know, faced with him again, with a kind of childlike eagerness to forgive it all and start anew, you hear it all out and say, okay. That makes sense.
Turns out, my Father was a professional. A professional hobo. Transient. Bum. Beggar. But not just a professional.
But, there, you know, faced with him again, with a kind of childlike eagerness to forgive it all and start anew, you hear it all out and say, okay. That makes sense.
Turns out, my Father was a professional. A professional hobo. Transient. Bum. Beggar. But not just a professional.
He ran the union.
For the whole Milwaukee area.
He ran the hobo Teamsters.
Kind of a hobo collective. All pooling their resources together, that could be scrimped and scratched and scraped and saved and then collated.
For the whole Milwaukee area.
He ran the hobo Teamsters.
Kind of a hobo collective. All pooling their resources together, that could be scrimped and scratched and scraped and saved and then collated.
Coins, and bills and lots of soup cans and razor blades and shoelaces and warm coats and socks and yes, maybe a can of beer or two, all together across the entire city.
That turns out to be quite a lot.
That turns out to be quite a lot.
You know, my Father, he said the miracle of the fish and the loaves. What did they start off with?
Five fish and three loaves? Something like that?
Maybe it wasn't a miraculous multiplication so everyone could have one whole fish and loaf, each.
Maybe the miracle was convincing a thousand people to each take such a small bite of the little they had so that everybody could get at least a tiny bite.
So, they collect their resources. And the one who oversees it all, maybe he can afford a studio apartment downtown where a little boy can stay.
So, they collect their resources. And the one who oversees it all, maybe he can afford a studio apartment downtown where a little boy can stay.
It would be dark. And he might be alone. And nobody can know about it.
But that may be a sanctuary. A place to build an ark.
As long as the rent was paid, on time, every month, that kept the landlord from asking questions about who might be living in Apartment C-11.
Father would check in on me whenever he was making the rounds. You know? And it made sense.
I accepted it. I needed to hear something that could account for what I experienced.
And then, after however many years of paying the month’s rent on time, every single month, year after year, eventually, something happens.
The flood comes.
The flood always comes.
He broke his leg.
How? Bum luck, he says. What does it matter, anyway? Probably while doing some dangerous and reckless hobo trick.
All that mattered was: you break your leg, you're not moving as much.
All the sudden, you're not making your regular rounds.
Can’t quite get the right amount of rent to the right place, at the right time.
Can’t quite get the right amount of rent to the right place, at the right time.
Maybe by then, they’d been getting too anxious for too long over what has been going on in that apartment.
Maybe by then that they’re looking for any reason to open that door and see.
That’s the apocalypse. That’s the end of the world.
My Father's flood was my ark.
By the time he got there, it was too late. I had already been gone a long time.
I had either adapted, and survived; or failed, captured or dead or worse.
You continue along your way, in life, with your eyes open and your ear to the ground. And maybe, someday, if you’re lucky, you may get an answer as to what happened.
Could he have lied to me?
Yes. He could have.
I told him what had happened. As best I could remember, what I could actually remember, subsidized by how Otto likes to tell the story about how I showed up in his cab that day.
I told him what my life had become. Living in the cab. Learning. Picking things up.
That’s the apocalypse. That’s the end of the world.
My Father's flood was my ark.
By the time he got there, it was too late. I had already been gone a long time.
I had either adapted, and survived; or failed, captured or dead or worse.
You continue along your way, in life, with your eyes open and your ear to the ground. And maybe, someday, if you’re lucky, you may get an answer as to what happened.
Could he have lied to me?
Yes. He could have.
I told him what had happened. As best I could remember, what I could actually remember, subsidized by how Otto likes to tell the story about how I showed up in his cab that day.
I told him what my life had become. Living in the cab. Learning. Picking things up.
Eating corn dogs and smoking cigarettes and looking at the girls who sit in the back of the cab and wondering about them.
Trying to read bits of newspaper or books that fares leave behind, but sometimes just looking at the shapes of letters and words and wondering about them.
Could I have lied to him?
Yes. I could have.
And he said, alright, you can come by here, at this time of day, at this time of the month, and on those times, you’ll probably see me. And we can catch up again.
But, he did say that he was…
What did he say?
He said that he was impressed.
Impressed that I had managed how I had managed. How I had gotten here, this far, from how I had started out from that apartment.
“You survived,” he said.
That’s what you have to do.
But some people are better survivors than others.
You see, I was a Nevins. I survived. He had survived. His father had survived, and because they had survived, he knew that I could survive, too.
It isn't always pretty.
“You survived,” he said.
That’s what you have to do.
But some people are better survivors than others.
You see, I was a Nevins. I survived. He had survived. His father had survived, and because they had survived, he knew that I could survive, too.
It isn't always pretty.
Sometimes you're a lion.
Sometimes you're a mouse.
But survival is survival. That’s what we do.
You know, that. The family history and lineage stuff. That was all an inaccessible part of me I couldn't know, on my own.
You know, that. The family history and lineage stuff. That was all an inaccessible part of me I couldn't know, on my own.
My Father had to unlock that knowledge for me. That's what inheritance is all about.
Before my Father was able to complete the DNA code of my story, I had to fill in the gaps with pig DNA to make it work.
To give me meaning, right? To give myself purpose. For going on.
That purpose fueled the drive to survive. Gave motivation for building the ark. To endure the flood.
But what I didn’t have was quote-unquote, “Why?”
Why survive? Why build the ark? Why did the flood need to be withstood?
You throw whatever shit you can come up with into that DNA sequence to make it work, to find whatever meaning you need to find to live another day. And hope maybe someday have access to the true story.
But what I craved was a legacy to live up to. A quest to take up. A story that made the brutality of life worth resisting. Was it going to be cigarettes and cab fares and corn dogs forever?
Or would there be tradition? A girl in my life? Responsibility, and a Virgil Walter Nevins XII to see to?
These were things that Otto couldn’t supply.
He was full of life, and language, and could talk and joke and philosophize with any cab fare that stepped into that back seat.
But Otto couldn’t provide me with a purpose. Not one that would reconcile where I had been, what I had become, and where I was going.
Otto didn't even have a family. A woman. A life that extended beyond his lifetime.
Otto had his cab and an uncertain future. That was all.
In comparison, there was a whole tapestry of Nevins family tradition that I came to learn, at that time.
Knowing who Father was.
Where he came from.
What event he had survived, what flood he had endured, what made him the hobo Jimmy Hoffa of Milwaukee.
And he was able to tell me, as my Father, who his father was, from the perspective of being his son, telling me about my Grandfather. Virgil Walter Nevins Nine. I. X.
And as far back as family memory can reach, and know with certainty, or invent with conviction.
It was encouraging to learn about my family history.
Knowing who Father was.
Where he came from.
What event he had survived, what flood he had endured, what made him the hobo Jimmy Hoffa of Milwaukee.
And he was able to tell me, as my Father, who his father was, from the perspective of being his son, telling me about my Grandfather. Virgil Walter Nevins Nine. I. X.
And as far back as family memory can reach, and know with certainty, or invent with conviction.
It was encouraging to learn about my family history.
It felt as though I wasn't alone in my suffering.
It felt as though my uniqueness, my struggles, were all preordained, and would earn me great victories, someday.
Some already had.
It was comforting hearing about my ancestors. But I did ask how he knew so much about them all.
Father could tell me, with complete confidence, exactly what my Great-Grandfather would think of me, or what my Grandfather might think.
Because, as Nevinses, we don’t conceive of ourselves as distinct, or separate, father and son.
Between grandfather and grandson.
We don’t regard the Virgil Walter Nevinses of history to be different from one another.
Literally.
My Father, Virgil Walter Nevins X, thought of me, Virgil Walter Nevins XI, as himself.
Vice versa. As far as he was concerned. He thought of himself as the same person as me.
The only difference was we were separated by our individual lives.
Between grandfather and grandson.
We don’t regard the Virgil Walter Nevinses of history to be different from one another.
Literally.
My Father, Virgil Walter Nevins X, thought of me, Virgil Walter Nevins XI, as himself.
Vice versa. As far as he was concerned. He thought of himself as the same person as me.
The only difference was we were separated by our individual lives.
Same person. Same exact person. Two different lives.
The continuity went all the way back to Virgil Walter Nevins I.
Thing was, I could remember burying my face in his jacket when I was a boy, and breathing in his air and smelling the rancid stench of the city off of him, but also smelling something abidingly familiar about him. Something wholly him, but also, something entirely of me, as well.
How did I know he was my Father?
How do you know who your daddy is? Because your momma tells you so.
But I didn’t have a momma.
But some things you just know.
Now, saying:
“You and I are the same person in different lives,”
That’s not just some fucking fact you can verify, scientifically.
That kind of a statement isn’t going to be something that leaves a trace, or can be logged as evidence or proven in a courtroom.
If you’re looking for proof the same way you prove that protons scramble electrons’ eggs, or that viruses fuck cells from behind because that’s their preference, or distant stars in space prefer prunes over plums, then you will be disappointed.
Because there was no proof.
There was no evidence.
But some things ring true that defy scientific measure.
Some things ring true that are contrary to what science might suggest.
When you tell somebody that you are both the same person living different lives, that isn’t a fundamentally scientific claim.
It’s deeper than science. It’s deeper than bones in flesh.
The continuity went all the way back to Virgil Walter Nevins I.
Thing was, I could remember burying my face in his jacket when I was a boy, and breathing in his air and smelling the rancid stench of the city off of him, but also smelling something abidingly familiar about him. Something wholly him, but also, something entirely of me, as well.
How did I know he was my Father?
How do you know who your daddy is? Because your momma tells you so.
But I didn’t have a momma.
But some things you just know.
Now, saying:
“You and I are the same person in different lives,”
That’s not just some fucking fact you can verify, scientifically.
That kind of a statement isn’t going to be something that leaves a trace, or can be logged as evidence or proven in a courtroom.
If you’re looking for proof the same way you prove that protons scramble electrons’ eggs, or that viruses fuck cells from behind because that’s their preference, or distant stars in space prefer prunes over plums, then you will be disappointed.
Because there was no proof.
There was no evidence.
But some things ring true that defy scientific measure.
Some things ring true that are contrary to what science might suggest.
When you tell somebody that you are both the same person living different lives, that isn’t a fundamentally scientific claim.
It’s deeper than science. It’s deeper than bones in flesh.
It isn't said to stir your pride in science. It's fucking evoked to motivate your deepest desire for the grand fucking adventure of life!
Fucking scientists. Arrogant know-it-alls.
No, he couldn’t quote-unquote "prove it," and I wasn’t so shallow as to ask for anything as trite or narrow-minded as “proof” that he and I were the same person.
You either recognize it when someone says it to you, or you don't.
The Nevins tradition was a challenge I had been preparing for my entire life.
I was my Father, and he was me. The same person.
Anyway. That’s how we see it. Nobody has to agree. It’s our manner. But consider what that allows us to do. What benefit that affords us.
We can assert, with confidence and authority, how an entire ancestral branch of human life would respond to any given situation.
What I posit has the backing of a percentage of human existence. When I speak, it’s not just ‘me’ talking.
It’s an entire family among the human fucking race.
Think of the uncertainty we have in our lives, without that kind of ancestral endorsement. You can encounter things like credit card transactions, or the nuclear bomb, or pasteurized milk, and wonder:
“Holy shit, I wonder what the fuck great-great-great grandfather Alabaster Wartdick would have thought about that bullshit,” and never reach a satisfying conclusion.
Never be able to make any kind of definitive judgement over pasteurized milk.
Maybe force yourself to accept pasteurization because you have no authority to consider what ol’ Ebeneezer Blistercock might have objected to.
Meanwhile, Virgil Walter Nevins arrives on the scene and dumps entire vats of pasteurized milk out onto the floor, recognizing it for the evil that it is.
“Fuck pasteurization and fuck the factories that produce it! Let the raw milk flow free!” says I.
And the factory floor manager rushes in, slipping and sliding across the slick floor rushing with warm milk with all its nutrition and probiotics boiled out of it, sputtering stupidly and asking who spilled the milk, and on whose authority.
I can step forward, with unwavering confidence, look that fatherless bastard dead in the eye and say,
Think of the uncertainty we have in our lives, without that kind of ancestral endorsement. You can encounter things like credit card transactions, or the nuclear bomb, or pasteurized milk, and wonder:
“Holy shit, I wonder what the fuck great-great-great grandfather Alabaster Wartdick would have thought about that bullshit,” and never reach a satisfying conclusion.
Never be able to make any kind of definitive judgement over pasteurized milk.
Maybe force yourself to accept pasteurization because you have no authority to consider what ol’ Ebeneezer Blistercock might have objected to.
Meanwhile, Virgil Walter Nevins arrives on the scene and dumps entire vats of pasteurized milk out onto the floor, recognizing it for the evil that it is.
“Fuck pasteurization and fuck the factories that produce it! Let the raw milk flow free!” says I.
And the factory floor manager rushes in, slipping and sliding across the slick floor rushing with warm milk with all its nutrition and probiotics boiled out of it, sputtering stupidly and asking who spilled the milk, and on whose authority.
I can step forward, with unwavering confidence, look that fatherless bastard dead in the eye and say,
“I did. Virgil Walter Nevins the Eleventh. And my great-great-great-great grandfather told me to do it because I made up that he was a dairy cow herder and this factory is a sacrilege to everything he and we Nevins stand for in this crazy milk-drinking world!”
And fuck that milk factory floor manager.
And fuck that milk factory floor manager.
I hope he slips and cracks his skull open on all that tragically wasted milk.
Me and my forefathers won’t lose a lick of sleep over it.
This is the Nevins’ philosophy. This is the Nevins’ power.
This is what Father was preparing me for. And, eventually, it became clear why he needed to find me when he had.
As it happens, Father began to recognize a shift occurring, and—well, we needed to prepare.
He can’t make these kind of preparations alone. Not if things are to be done in the Nevins way.
There’s ways around it, you know, but, to be fully in accordance. To be up to code.
He needed to pass on the family tradition to me before it was too late.
Because there’s an obligation the younger Virgils need to perform for the older Virgils.
He needed to pass on the family tradition to me before it was too late.
Because there’s an obligation the younger Virgils need to perform for the older Virgils.
We think of it as a kindness, but, you know, modern culture. Modern society has touchy feelings about these sorts of traditions.
These sorts of family values and, yeah, okay, I’ll say wisdom.
It’s something that needs to be carried out. If it isn’t, you know, you wander out into the forest and find a bear that will do it, but, that’s a wasted opportunity.
Because there’s another lesson in life that… well, maybe you hope you don’t have to know, can maybe hope to get by without needing to know, but…
Some floods come that demand: be or be killed.
Some floods are murderous. And if you don’t know how to defend yourself properly...
These sorts of family values and, yeah, okay, I’ll say wisdom.
It’s something that needs to be carried out. If it isn’t, you know, you wander out into the forest and find a bear that will do it, but, that’s a wasted opportunity.
Because there’s another lesson in life that… well, maybe you hope you don’t have to know, can maybe hope to get by without needing to know, but…
Some floods come that demand: be or be killed.
Some floods are murderous. And if you don’t know how to defend yourself properly...
If you don’t know how to get your killer before he gets you…
Well, then, if you haven't produced an heir, yet, that then becomes the end of the Nevins.
And not only that! But, there’s some fates worse than death, you know.
And not only that! But, there’s some fates worse than death, you know.
Sometimes, a violent end can be a real gift to someone who doesn’t have much to look forward to beyond hopeless decrepitude without end.
So, you can do a service to your sire, helping spare him years of diminishment....
So, you can do a service to your sire, helping spare him years of diminishment....
And simultaneously, learn how to fight to the death, and how to take a life.
Or, you know, you can abdicate your responsibility to your father and abandon them to disease, senility and a slow wasting away, while remaining ignorant to the strength of will you might need in order to take another man's life.
Or, you know, you can abdicate your responsibility to your father and abandon them to disease, senility and a slow wasting away, while remaining ignorant to the strength of will you might need in order to take another man's life.
Your choice.
The Nevins have maintained this tradition for generations, except, I gather, in a few rare iterations for extenuating reasons.
The Nevins have maintained this tradition for generations, except, I gather, in a few rare iterations for extenuating reasons.
My Father had done it for his. And now, it was my turn.
It was a good thing we found each other when we did!
Today's culture blurs the edges on quote-unquote “tragedies”.
You know, there are other ways of living than the way this culture tells you to live.
Your concept of dignity doesn’t always map onto the way life has been for hundreds, no, hundreds of thousands of years before you arrived on the scene.
And how life is likely to be, again, hundreds of thousands of years from now.
Some rites around growing up, and taking your place in the world, being a man and then dying a good death are timeless, even if modern sensibilities have weakened.
Okay?
Some people have another perspective that might seem completely foreign, or downright alien, to the likes of you.
And they don’t require your understanding.
Hell, life and death alone don’t require anyone’s understanding. They happen anyways. Whether you want them to or not.
Despite whatever conditions you may think are dignified.
You know, predation in nature is often thought of in aggressive terms. But it is also loving.
As a lioness sinks its jaws into the water buffalo, in that moment, she loves her kill.
Its destruction is her survival! It sacrifices itself utterly for her.
Who can say that they have loved as much?
Right? Okay. Another example. This one gets closer to my Father and I. The Nevins way.
Hippopotamus. Right? Some of the most territorial and aggressive animals in nature.
You know, predation in nature is often thought of in aggressive terms. But it is also loving.
As a lioness sinks its jaws into the water buffalo, in that moment, she loves her kill.
Its destruction is her survival! It sacrifices itself utterly for her.
Who can say that they have loved as much?
Right? Okay. Another example. This one gets closer to my Father and I. The Nevins way.
Hippopotamus. Right? Some of the most territorial and aggressive animals in nature.
A tribe of hippos are ruled over by a patriarch who has seniority over many of the fertile females.
He is the king, essentially. King Hippo. Got a big band-aid “X” over his belly button and a tiny little crown and everything.
He will tolerate a certain amount of males in the tribe, okay? For genetic variance?
He is the king, essentially. King Hippo. Got a big band-aid “X” over his belly button and a tiny little crown and everything.
He will tolerate a certain amount of males in the tribe, okay? For genetic variance?
That’s not a carefully-calibrated number. He doesn’t put on a lab coat and perform scientific tests to determine precisely how much genetic variability is needed for the tribe to be successful.
That is a gut instinct. That’s something you feel out.
That is a gut instinct. That’s something you feel out.
That’s a right you earn by virtue of being the fucking hippo king.
And the subservient young males, many of whom are the hippo king’s direct offspring by virtue of his unmitigated access to the hippo queens under his protection.
And the subservient young males, many of whom are the hippo king’s direct offspring by virtue of his unmitigated access to the hippo queens under his protection.
Those males just have to take what they can get.
But all the while, they are looking for their opportunity.
They compete with one another, to build their strength, to develop the skills necessary to be a good hippo king.
But all the while, they are looking for their opportunity.
They compete with one another, to build their strength, to develop the skills necessary to be a good hippo king.
That existence rewards tyrannical territorialism and ruthless aggression against any young hippo that challenges power.
Eventually one young hippo will see an opening. He may believe himself ready to ascend to the throne.
But he’ll have to take it.
And if you go for the king, you better not miss.
Because the risk you hazard should you lose is brutal.
But the reward if you succeed is immense.
Complete primacy for as long as you can maintain it. For as long as you can defend it.
So, when the king is at his weakest, when he is most vulnerable, the young hippo princeling mounts a campaign and fights the king, to the death, to usurp his throne.
He risks it all. Okay?
But one day… when the king is too old to defend it…
And only just barely not strong enough to keep it…
Finally, his reign is over.
The king has one bad day, and he is done.
Defeated. Supplanted. By a new, younger, more virile and aggressive and territorial young king assumes primacy over the hippo queens.
And what does the old hippo king do?
Does he swim to the edges of the hippo kingdom and retire?
So, when the king is at his weakest, when he is most vulnerable, the young hippo princeling mounts a campaign and fights the king, to the death, to usurp his throne.
He risks it all. Okay?
But one day… when the king is too old to defend it…
And only just barely not strong enough to keep it…
Finally, his reign is over.
The king has one bad day, and he is done.
Defeated. Supplanted. By a new, younger, more virile and aggressive and territorial young king assumes primacy over the hippo queens.
And what does the old hippo king do?
Does he swim to the edges of the hippo kingdom and retire?
Does he slowly go senile, cash a monthly social security check, fill cupboards full of prescriptions to treat his growing ailments until he’s dependent on a system of welfare that puts him on unceasing medical care to the point that he cannot even discard his own waste?
Does he wither away, increasing in age and feebleness into his 80s, 90s, hundreds?
Does he wither away, increasing in age and feebleness into his 80s, 90s, hundreds?
Does he fall from paragon of the untrammeled heights of hippo might, into a shadow of his former self, demonstrating in his own frailty how helpless and weak and diminished a hippo can become against the unbeatable march of time?
No!
He departs from the tribe and dies from wounds incurred from a battle to the death for his kingdom.
The king hippo has one bad day. Not decades of decrepitude.
He lived a good life.
No!
He departs from the tribe and dies from wounds incurred from a battle to the death for his kingdom.
The king hippo has one bad day. Not decades of decrepitude.
He lived a good life.
He upheld hippo virtues.
He quelled undeserving rebellion.
Until, finally, when administering one final test to the new king who earns his place through vicious combat, he forces that ascendant hippo to prove how worthy he is to wear the hippo crown.
That tiny, bejeweled hippo crown, and band-aid "X", and boxing gloves.
That tiny, bejeweled hippo crown, and band-aid "X", and boxing gloves.
The old hippo dies a good death.
One. Bad. Day. After a life of all the fucking and eating and fighting a king could want.
He didn’t become addled with dementia and forgotten about by his great-grandhippos, left to wither away like a husk on dialysis, being cleaned up after by the same hippo nurses who would have been his hippo queens in a different age.
No. He was taken out, only just, by the skin of his tusks. And only when he had only just barely gotten weak enough for it to be managed.
Not like our culture today.
And have you been to a nursing home lately?
Have you seen any of these once mighty men, once capable women, reduced to the absolute limits of human suffering and endurance on a bed that’s specifically designed by a multibillion dollar medical industry to undulate underneath their mottled skin so that the sores on their body don’t rupture from the unending pressure of lying there day after day, week after week, month after month.
Long past when they were ready to die, while still understanding the significance and what a proper death might purchase, if done well?
Is this compassion? Is this dignity?
Is it better than dying king hippo, fighting to your last breath and dying to ensure the next king knows the cost?
Or is it better to wear adult sized diapers because you can no longer control your bowels, and changed by someone a fifth your age? Who wasn’t even a twinkle in her mother's eye when you were at the height of your strength?
Is it better than one bad day?
Is it better than dying while you’re still strong enough for it to be a near thing?
If you were going to be taken out by anyone, wouldn’t you want it to be somebody who you would like to see grow into a strong, resilient survivor, just like you had always been?
Wouldn’t you want to be put away with the least amount of undue pain and suffering as possible?
One. Bad. Day. After a life of all the fucking and eating and fighting a king could want.
He didn’t become addled with dementia and forgotten about by his great-grandhippos, left to wither away like a husk on dialysis, being cleaned up after by the same hippo nurses who would have been his hippo queens in a different age.
No. He was taken out, only just, by the skin of his tusks. And only when he had only just barely gotten weak enough for it to be managed.
Not like our culture today.
And have you been to a nursing home lately?
Have you seen any of these once mighty men, once capable women, reduced to the absolute limits of human suffering and endurance on a bed that’s specifically designed by a multibillion dollar medical industry to undulate underneath their mottled skin so that the sores on their body don’t rupture from the unending pressure of lying there day after day, week after week, month after month.
Long past when they were ready to die, while still understanding the significance and what a proper death might purchase, if done well?
Is this compassion? Is this dignity?
Is it better than dying king hippo, fighting to your last breath and dying to ensure the next king knows the cost?
Or is it better to wear adult sized diapers because you can no longer control your bowels, and changed by someone a fifth your age? Who wasn’t even a twinkle in her mother's eye when you were at the height of your strength?
Is it better than one bad day?
Is it better than dying while you’re still strong enough for it to be a near thing?
If you were going to be taken out by anyone, wouldn’t you want it to be somebody who you would like to see grow into a strong, resilient survivor, just like you had always been?
Wouldn’t you want to be put away with the least amount of undue pain and suffering as possible?
All at once?
While still feeling the rush of adrenaline and making it close enough that the one who bested you will never forget how close it really came?
Look. It’s brutal.
Life is fucking brutal.
But that's respect.
Look. It’s brutal.
Life is fucking brutal.
But that's respect.
And just because it’s brutal doesn’t mean it doesn’t contain some wisdom.
Maybe nature knows a little brutality can spare outright disaster. Maybe a little brutality can reduce generational malaise and catastrophe.
An ounce of brutality is worth a pound of suffering.
My Father tells me this deal.
A tradition in our family. The son undertakes in collaboration with the father.
Maybe nature knows a little brutality can spare outright disaster. Maybe a little brutality can reduce generational malaise and catastrophe.
An ounce of brutality is worth a pound of suffering.
My Father tells me this deal.
A tradition in our family. The son undertakes in collaboration with the father.
He had done it for his father. His father had done it for his.
And, someday, if I was lucky, I’d have a little Virgil Walter Nevins the Twelfth who would be able to do it for me, too, when he finally got bigger and stronger than me.
It was his duty to prepare me for a brutal life, just like it would be my duty to prepare the one that comes after me for a brutal life.
Amazingly, you might even see that there can be tremendous love and tenderness, kindness and affection hidden inside brutality.
My Father had seen the writing on the wall, and he knew that a flood was coming for him that he couldn’t build an ark to drift over top of.
And if I couldn’t stomach a minute of brutality to spare him years of agony, then he’d take the only other choice available to him.
You go out in the forest, you poke the bushes until you find a bear, and you fight that bear with all of your might.
Hell. You might just feel the thrill of killing a few bears before one finally gets you.
It was his duty to prepare me for a brutal life, just like it would be my duty to prepare the one that comes after me for a brutal life.
Amazingly, you might even see that there can be tremendous love and tenderness, kindness and affection hidden inside brutality.
My Father had seen the writing on the wall, and he knew that a flood was coming for him that he couldn’t build an ark to drift over top of.
And if I couldn’t stomach a minute of brutality to spare him years of agony, then he’d take the only other choice available to him.
You go out in the forest, you poke the bushes until you find a bear, and you fight that bear with all of your might.
Hell. You might just feel the thrill of killing a few bears before one finally gets you.
And what else is left for you to do, if not that? Perpetual decline? On the streets?
Or worse. You’re captured, put in a home, and administered to. For who knows how long?
So. So…
He taught me how to use my hands.
How to grapple against someone who was trying to kill you back.
How to fight dirty, when your life is on the line, so that someone filled with thoughts of murder can’t, as much as they may want to.
He taught me how he did it. For his Father.
Where you put your hands, on a neck, and how long you have to hold them there for to be sure.
How to not stop, even when you feel the strength fading from their grip on your arms, even when you see the little candles in their eyes start to dim.
You hang on. Finish the job.
He taught me how to take a life. What it takes to take a life. The kind of resolve you need to see that through.
I was able to learn that lesson from someone who was willing to teach it to me, under conditions that suited us both.
How rare is that? That someone can end on their own terms, and someone else can learn something that could save their lives, all while preserving the natural order?
So. So…
He taught me how to use my hands.
How to grapple against someone who was trying to kill you back.
How to fight dirty, when your life is on the line, so that someone filled with thoughts of murder can’t, as much as they may want to.
He taught me how he did it. For his Father.
Where you put your hands, on a neck, and how long you have to hold them there for to be sure.
How to not stop, even when you feel the strength fading from their grip on your arms, even when you see the little candles in their eyes start to dim.
You hang on. Finish the job.
He taught me how to take a life. What it takes to take a life. The kind of resolve you need to see that through.
I was able to learn that lesson from someone who was willing to teach it to me, under conditions that suited us both.
How rare is that? That someone can end on their own terms, and someone else can learn something that could save their lives, all while preserving the natural order?
Ensuring that the strongest and most capable carry on.
It was a near thing.
You know. He was a tough old bastard. He wouldn’t let me have it.
I had to take it. That was built into the lesson.
And then it was over. And when it was over, I didn’t feel any shame or regret.
He and I were the same person.
It was a near thing.
You know. He was a tough old bastard. He wouldn’t let me have it.
I had to take it. That was built into the lesson.
And then it was over. And when it was over, I didn’t feel any shame or regret.
He and I were the same person.
This was our choice.
We were never different. Only lived different lives, which in the end, become one through the act of taking and giving.
So. If there’s a twelfth out there. You know. I’ll get to experience it again, from his point of view.
I wonder how that may change things. If at all.
But that was—that was my Father.
And then there was Otto.
You know. Otto. In a lot of ways Otto is a survivor. Just like how everyone has to be a survivor.
His instinct was just built a different way, is all. Angled to seek out a certain reward structure.
Otto was operating within the system of society.
So. If there’s a twelfth out there. You know. I’ll get to experience it again, from his point of view.
I wonder how that may change things. If at all.
But that was—that was my Father.
And then there was Otto.
You know. Otto. In a lot of ways Otto is a survivor. Just like how everyone has to be a survivor.
His instinct was just built a different way, is all. Angled to seek out a certain reward structure.
Otto was operating within the system of society.
He resisted it. He worked against it. You know, he didn’t have a licence to operate a cab in the city.
He didn’t even live solely off of what he made from the cab, you know.
People got in, they exchanged some goods—money moved from one hand to another—and they both went on their merry way.
Trade. It’s almost as old as prostitution.
Otto was the product of someone who operated within the system of society.
Otto was the product of someone who operated within the system of society.
Father, the Nevins way, we saw ourselves as separate from society. Not a part of it.
Kind of a different current running alongside society.
Observing it from a distance and, yes, maneuvering around where society was aiming, but never operating within it.
Never guiding it directly. Responding to it, though.
Otto had a lot of attitudes, biases, a psychological predisposition to see things from a way that was rooted in how society sees them.
Never guiding it directly. Responding to it, though.
Otto had a lot of attitudes, biases, a psychological predisposition to see things from a way that was rooted in how society sees them.
Otto wasn’t a Nevins, so. He didn’t see things the same way.
Death, I mean.
The lineage of father and son. The mercy hidden in the brutality of nature. It made him uncomfortable.
No, Otto didn’t afford a lot of sympathy toward this activity.
No, Otto didn’t afford a lot of sympathy toward this activity.
I guess Otto never had a son, so.
Some people are just not going to understand nature. They want to keep it at a distance.
Some people are just not going to understand nature. They want to keep it at a distance.
They want to forget that they’re a part of it.
Even as nature itself is finding ways to kill you. Waiting for you to die so it can use and transform your body into something for itself.
And, so, yeah. He didn’t see eye-to-eye on how things with my Father played out.
"You try that shit out on me, you try and kill me when I’m old and dyin’, I’ll fucking kill you, kid," he said.
Otto, you’re missing the whole fucking point. If you kill me, you're not ready to go, are you?
"I don’t give a shit!" He says. "I don’t give a shit! You strangle me and I’m fucking killing your ass," he says.
But. You know. To his credit, he disagreed with me.
He really heard me out and took it all in.
In his eyes, I was a murderer.
That's what he called me. Even after explaining it all very carefully, to him, it was just murder.
You know Eskimos have 600 words for snow or some shit?
And to Otto, what my Father and I did was "murder."
Still. He didn’t kick me out of his cab or anything.
Some people might’ve, if they think you’re a fucking murderer. The most uncharitable interpretation possible of what took place.
Some people might’ve, if they think you’re a fucking murderer. The most uncharitable interpretation possible of what took place.
Kind of a stubborn refusal to see it any other way, actually.
But even still. He kept me around.
We just didn’t talk about it anymore. Not that. Anything else, though, as always. Fair game.
"That’s okay," he says. "That’s right. People do shit every day of their lives," he says.
"Sometimes you gotta reach your hand into the toilet to unclog it, and the next day, you’re eating popcorn in a movie theater, licking the butter off your fingers. You gotta forget that shit or you’ll never eat popcorn again," he said.
"Yes, I washed my hands," he said, seeing my look. He could be real defensive.
You see Otto had a completely different plan for what was going to happen to him.
I mean. He—he actually wanted that nursing home.
Well, he didn’t say that. He wanted the retirement home.
I mean. He—he actually wanted that nursing home.
Well, he didn’t say that. He wanted the retirement home.
I told him, Otto, that’s just another word for the nursing home.
That’s the nursing home that gets you ready for the nursing home.
I told him that was the first step toward the oxygen tubes and bedpans and catheters and rectal pills. But he didn’t see that.
He saw bingo nights, and little cups with your pills in ‘em, and mashed potatoes and gravy, and nights watching TV in your room and somebody else to come empty out all the garbage pails for you.
I told him that was the first step toward the oxygen tubes and bedpans and catheters and rectal pills. But he didn’t see that.
He saw bingo nights, and little cups with your pills in ‘em, and mashed potatoes and gravy, and nights watching TV in your room and somebody else to come empty out all the garbage pails for you.
That’s what he wanted!
He said he’d worked so hard his whole life, he wanted to take things easy at the end of things.
Work on the jigsaw puzzles. Watch the grandkids come in and visit their grandparents and have a chocolate chip cookie.
I mean. Just incomprehensible, really.
I tried to warn him. But that conversation always drifted back to...
I mean. Just incomprehensible, really.
I tried to warn him. But that conversation always drifted back to...
"Don't you fucking murder me, kid! I'll kick your fucking ass, hand to God! I'm old and blind but you'll be bleeding out your hair if you come after me! I'll beat the fuck out you with this newspaper after I read the box scores."
He didn’t want to talk about it.
Like, almost for my sake. My sake? You don’t need to not talk about that for my sake! It’s for your sake we’re not talking about it.
I knew what his future was going to be like in a place like that. Maybe it would only be a few years. Maybe a decade. Maybe longer!
Getting older, and older, and older, and older… fading father, and farther, and farther, and farther away…
Not that I would have, anyways.
Like, almost for my sake. My sake? You don’t need to not talk about that for my sake! It’s for your sake we’re not talking about it.
I knew what his future was going to be like in a place like that. Maybe it would only be a few years. Maybe a decade. Maybe longer!
Getting older, and older, and older, and older… fading father, and farther, and farther, and farther away…
Not that I would have, anyways.
I couldn’t have done that to Otto.
We weren’t the same person, and it wasn’t like he was going to try killing me back.
I just thought. You know. Go find your bear. Out in the fucking woods somewhere.
I just thought. You know. Go find your bear. Out in the fucking woods somewhere.
Poke some bushes. See what comes out of them.
Maybe you take your cab and drive it somewhere where you won’t come back.
Maybe you take your cab and drive it somewhere where you won’t come back.
I don’t know. It’s his life, he could come up with a million ways to avoid a senseless, undignified death.
But no. He wanted craft night. Thanksgiving turkey and cranberry sauce. A sock drawer. Pigeons on the windowsill. Oxygen tanks.
And then by the time he was completely blind and couldn’t drive anymore, you know, it’s like—
And then by the time he was completely blind and couldn’t drive anymore, you know, it’s like—
"This is it for me," he says.
"The end of the road, kid."
"The end of the road, kid."
His apocalypse. His version of the anti-Father. His flood.
And yet, he didn't struggle against it. At all.
He just went along with it. Accepted it.
It hadn't been long after I dispatched my Father. Within the same year.
You know, Otto'd been saving up his money for a long time, that old fucker.
Every dime. Every buck. He was cheap, you know. Not that I cared. I didn't need it.
It hadn't been long after I dispatched my Father. Within the same year.
You know, Otto'd been saving up his money for a long time, that old fucker.
Every dime. Every buck. He was cheap, you know. Not that I cared. I didn't need it.
But I daresay he did pretty good off of the work I put into that cab, while he was sleeping and reading that paper and going blind in the passenger seat next to me.
You know, that was his money I was making. Right?
You know, that was his money I was making. Right?
What I earned driving fares while he ate corn dogs and french fries and drank uncaffeinated iced tea. I earned his money.
I didn’t go hungry. He always got me mine, and, I could still hunt. A little.
I didn’t go hungry. He always got me mine, and, I could still hunt. A little.
I don't know, hunting is a kid's game. And after Father, I just couldn't quite get exactly the same glee out of a mouse, or a cockroach, that I used to.
Not because of guilt. Just. You kind of become accustomed, in a way. It's a manner.
And at the end of the day I put the seat back, put my feet up on the steering wheel, and I’d have a place to sleep.
Or I could drive around on my own, you know, seeing what I could figure out about the world on my own. As long as the car was back by morning.
This isn’t about money. That’s not what this is about.
I didn’t keep what I had earned. And Otto, he didn’t have anybody else. So, he could only just give me one thing at the end. When he was ready.
He gave me his cab. When he was done with it.
At the end, you know, when he had the cataracts and was pulling out these shoeboxes full of money that he’d saved up that would get him into this retirement community he was so fucking crazy about, he told me I’d earned it.
I’d worked up enough fares that I’d bought it without realizing that’s what I had been doing.
This was all a surprise to me, you know. Honestly, I think he just kind of decided, there, near the end, that’s what he would do.
He made it sound like it was some extravagant plan but there’s no fucking way.
He made it sound like it was some extravagant plan but there’s no fucking way.
He wasn’t that good of a planner. And he couldn’t keep a fucking secret. He told me everything he had on his mind the second it entered into his thoughts for fuck’s sake.
So. I think he figured it out once he knew it was time for him to get into that rest home.
Didn't matter to me. Seemed a little ridiculous, actually.
So. I think he figured it out once he knew it was time for him to get into that rest home.
Didn't matter to me. Seemed a little ridiculous, actually.
I'd always considered it my cab, anyways.
Sure, you can give it to me. But it was always mine.
He was my first fare. In a way. I drove him to the nursing home.
Helped bring all his dumb shit from his house I had never been inside of because I just slept in the cab.
Little porcelain gnomes and black and white photos of cows and shit like that. A picture of Dante being rebuffed by Beatrice. Records. VHS tapes.
Stuff the nurses would all have to just throw away someday.
I don’t even remember what we talked about. I don’t even remember that we had anything to say.
I was just so perturbed that, for the first time, he seemed tongue tied.
I don’t even remember what we talked about. I don’t even remember that we had anything to say.
I was just so perturbed that, for the first time, he seemed tongue tied.
Guy could talk his way out of a paper bag. And now, at the apocalypse. All words fail.
It was the only time I had no idea what was on his mind, or how he was feeling about. Anything.
I knew what my Father was thinking. Every second. It was my thought, too, after all.
But with Otto, there, at the end, when neither of us knew what to say, I couldn’t quite work out what the feeling was there.
A little sad, maybe? A little regret? A little anger and frustration and irritation, a little bittersweet joy, and gratitude?
Just an absolute mess of emotion. All mixed.
I knew what my Father was thinking. Every second. It was my thought, too, after all.
But with Otto, there, at the end, when neither of us knew what to say, I couldn’t quite work out what the feeling was there.
A little sad, maybe? A little regret? A little anger and frustration and irritation, a little bittersweet joy, and gratitude?
Just an absolute mess of emotion. All mixed.
You know what all colors make when mixed together? Brown. The color of shit.
Everything you eat, after digested in your stomach, comes out the end one uniform color.
I said goodbye. He said goodbye.
I said goodbye. He said goodbye.
I hated leaving him there. I don’t even know if he’s still alive.
If he is, what does his life look like, now?
Oh well. He made his choice.
He wants to waste away? I may never understand it. I may want better for him. But he wrote his own end.
Oh well. He made his choice.
He wants to waste away? I may never understand it. I may want better for him. But he wrote his own end.
Or is writing it, if he’s still around.
So.
He gave me his cab. I bought it. In a way.
And I just fucking drove.
I didn’t have my Father.
Otto was where he chose to be.
I couldn’t find the apartment, even if I wanted to.
I could never find the anti-Father. I've accepted that I'll be forever robbed of my revenge.
I got in my cab. I drove fares further and further out of town.
Picking up new fares further and further away.
So.
He gave me his cab. I bought it. In a way.
And I just fucking drove.
I didn’t have my Father.
Otto was where he chose to be.
I couldn’t find the apartment, even if I wanted to.
I could never find the anti-Father. I've accepted that I'll be forever robbed of my revenge.
I got in my cab. I drove fares further and further out of town.
Picking up new fares further and further away.
If anybody said they were going to Milwaukee, I'd let 'em out. Not my territory.
I worked and slept and ate and drove without a direction, other than, maybe, that I should aim broadly westward.
The closer I got, the more I thought I was going to California.
Just so I could take a look at that fucking ocean. Right?
That was it, right? Where the last big flood stopped?
But. I stopped before I got all the way.
Who knows. Maybe I’ll still end up there. Someday.
I arrived in Arizona. Got nearly to the heart of it.
I worked and slept and ate and drove without a direction, other than, maybe, that I should aim broadly westward.
The closer I got, the more I thought I was going to California.
Just so I could take a look at that fucking ocean. Right?
That was it, right? Where the last big flood stopped?
But. I stopped before I got all the way.
Who knows. Maybe I’ll still end up there. Someday.
I arrived in Arizona. Got nearly to the heart of it.
I got a text, on these little fucking pay-as-you-go phones so I could give a number out to people.
They don't even make 'em like that anymore. This was, what, over twenty years ago, now.
I got a text.
Smoki Museum.
I went. No one came out. You wait. You honk.
I got a text.
Smoki Museum.
I went. No one came out. You wait. You honk.
So I went in to see who the fuck calls a cab but doesn’t come outside?
Turns out they were performing a play in there. Fucking Shakespeare.
Turns out they were performing a play in there. Fucking Shakespeare.
Shakespeare in a museum for Native American heritage.
I don't really understand "art".
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