4.5 Alexander Briefly Visits Alabama (2)

I. WANDERER

I come above ground and hail a cab. The cabbie keeps assuring me I’ll probably be fine until I tell him my actual flight time. Then he keeps apologizing for not running red lights. It becomes embarrassing. I overtip him and miss my flight.

The travel day ends up lasting 12 hours, divided between Boston, DFW, and finally Mobile. I do about 200 mathematical problem solving GMAT questions in a workbook. Completing the math section of standardized tests is what God put me on this earth to do. I use a thick black porous-point pen and score better than the book’s previous owner, God bless her.

My brother picks me up and we drive to a Waffle House. I order a waffle and some hash browns. At one point a young woman sitting at another booth turns around and says something like, “I’m sure everything will all work out.” She is earnest but seems unhinged, which explains her breathless attempt to reach out to us. At any rate, her sentiments are not welcome, and we let her know. This is the first time I’ve been in Alabama in a year and a half.

II. SWEATER PARTY

When I’m meeting old friends I haven’t kept in touch with very well, I always brace myself for the possibility that they despise me now. Partially I worry that in hindsight they will realize how awful I really am. Partially I worry that I might be a hateful reminder of their own fundamental isolation and mortality. Partially I worry that some sort of fox and the hound shit has gone down and we have to hate each other now, and I just haven’t realized it yet. Partially I’m misinterpreting their inevitably diminished interest in me as hostile. Partially I am projecting my own egotistical insecurities, in a warped form, onto those around me. What other reasons can you think of for this reaction? Leave a comment or tweet your responses to @acromp with hashtag #whoevencares. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE >>>

III. SOMETIMES EVEN NOW WHEN I’M FEELING LONELY AND BEAT

Apparently once in biology class I waltzed around with an embalmed cat singing “What’s New, Pussycat.”

IV. AMERICA

I sit on a couch and eat a homemade ice cream cookie. On the television is a game show. Contestants who are unable to provide the correct answer are dropped through a trap door.

V. THE LAST DIVINE PRINCIPLE LESSON: THE STORY OF A LITTLE HALF-ALSATIAN

I swing into the now-vacant lot and get out of the car and walk to a back corner. The ground is weedy and there is no sign of the old buildings, not even the foundation. Just as I remember, the chainlink fence at the back has flimsy pink and white slats threaded through it at the diagonal. It divides the property from the woods. The lot seems small for how large I remember Headquarters being. An abandoned trailer used to be in the woods behind the property. As a child I went one Sunday to explore. The floor of this trailer was covered in cheap broken toys in a way that still makes me think of the doll on the cover of Stephen King’s Desperation. I would go now to see if the trailer is still there, but I don’t have the heart to. I get back into the car and drive as far south as I can go without dropping into the sea.

Literally, to Dauphin Island.

4.4 Alexander Goes Out on Friday Night and Comes Home on Saturday Morning

I.

A woman is fussing with her daughter’s jacket. The daughter is in hysterics because an enormous turkey is menacing her. The turkey is so fat it has a belabored walk. Its feathers are a bright, cool white. It belabors toward her, probably hoping she will feed it. The girl screams, It’s coming to get me. I assume the bird is not a heritage–that is, I assume that though it is allowed to walk free and accept feed from autumn visitors to the farm, and that its fat ass will grow old and die of natural causes, it comes from a stock bred to become unsustainably meaty as quickly as possible before being beheaded. I want to touch it, but it might have turkey fleas or other parasites.

My grandmother used to keep chickens by the garden. She got rid of them a few years ago, after the avian flu scare. It’s just as well. Though I enjoyed feeding them grass, they were malicious, hateful creatures.

II.

The next morning, a woman with her face pressed against a gate of wrought iron bars begins hollering “We Shall Overcome.” She seems to be offering support to the clutch of tents in the middle of Harvard Yard, but they are so far away it is doubtful that any of the students notice. Since the Occupy Harvard students set up shop, the campus has gone into lockdown: every individual entering Harvard’s main campus has to present Harvard ID, no exceptions. All but a handful of entrances are locked, and police officers are stationed at every opening. Apparently fench-jumpers have been arrested. Professors are livid. I assume this woman is not part of the Harvard community, or she probably would have gone into Harvard Yard to talk to protesters herself. But for all I know this undignified spectacle might be the point. Perhaps whether or not the students heard her is incidental.

I am walking to the train station. I have to go home, pick up the jacket I’m mailing back to Sara, and run to the post office before it closes at 1pm. I am wearing a peacoat. Strangers on the street have complimented this peacoat, though I don’t think it’s anything special.

III.

I sit at a small square table and  pick at a coffee cake muffintop. A sad sack walks toward me. It occurs to me that now I’m able to tell at a glance whether a pair of men’s jeans is cheap or expensive. The fit in the thigh, the appearance of the material, and the way the fabric falls at the knee are taken into account.

IV.

In Genesis, which is the first book of the Old Testament, Adam and Eve are driven from the paradisiacal Garden of Eden after a serpent tricks them into eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It’s generally accepted that this lapse, be it metaphorical or historical, was erotic. I personally think such a reading is reductive and, finally, damaging.

V.

There’s a French adjective that means something like “predisposed to secretiveness for its own sake.” The word carries a value judgment: the idea is that the secrets are petty, and the pleasure taken from nursing them is a mean, contemptible one. I came across the word once but can’t remember it.

3.4 Alexander’s life takes an invigorating turn for the dangerous, and thank God

I have been tormented for the past several months by a cloying fear that I will, without warning, pitch over and literally die of ennui. Such a death would not be unprecedented, and I figure that if there is one person in the world it could happen to, it would be me. Imagine my surprise, then, at two recent brushes with death that had nothing to do with ennui whatsoever. (This is my narrative, and I can couch it in whatever terms I want.)

ALEXANDER NEARLY DROWNS, OR MIGHT HAVE CAUGHT A CHILL OR SOMETHING

As I want to have my teeth checked whilst I still have amazing insurance, I was forced to navigate the bureaucratic death-trap that is the French healthcare system. I’ll spare you all the specifcs (though I’ve since resolved to carry an RIB with me at all times, since you can’t so much as use a public restroom in France without presenting one), but I will recount the second time I visited the insurance office.

The office is way, way on the other side of town, in an area I never visit. The first time I went, I caught a ride with a post office van (different story). But I didn’t have my Carnet de Famille or something, so I had to go back again, but this time I had to walk. So I set off one hot sunny morning to trek the several miles to the office. I had to be back at school by 2pm for a class, so I was in a hurry, and grumpy because I had eaten an unsatisfying meal in a rush to give myself enough time to run my goddamn errand. But as I tramped on down the hills in the hot sun, I realized with a mounting dread that, when I arrived, the offices would probably be closed. (1) It was a Monday, and French offices are sometimes closed on Mondays (2) I would arrive 12:30ish, smack-dab in the middle of the excessive French lunch break.

Despite my increasing teleological despair, and the growing certainty that my effort would be futile, I kept schlepping. And as I walked, I was thinking “My life right at this moment is something right out of the type of short story people don’t write anymore.” So I started musing how the story would end if written by writers of different nationalities. Russian: I would arrive at the office, and it would be open, but I would be shot for no good reason. American: I would behold the closed office with my wind-scoured face, battered but not broken (I would always have the land). I think I had an English one too, but I’ve forgotten it now.

Anyway, I take the wrong road and see that the office complex is on the other side of a long field. So I cross the field to discover what I thought was a ditch is actually the Ill River. There are no bridges within sight, and I am literally across the river from the office complex, so I wade across!! How zany, right? Me and my friends have so much random fun! Except that the Ill was colder, faster, deeper, rockier and more slippery than I thought it would be, and I nearly fell over about half a dozen times. Doing so would have ruined all the paperwork in my backpack, thwarting my plans indefinitely, but whatever: live fast, die pretty. It also caused me to hallucinate a long-dead lover, not that that’s any of your business.

Anyway, I wait for my feet to dry, put my shoes back on, and go to the office, and the story ended up having a French ending after all: I was told that I still couldn’t sign up because I hadn’t brought an RIB, even though I had specifically asked if I needed an RIB the last time and I had been assured twice over it was not necessary.

OKAY THAT WASN’T TOO INTERESTING BUT THIS ONE IS ACTUALLY KIND OF FRIGHTENING

Growing up I thought I just didn’t like shrimp, but toward late high school and college I realized the unpleasant sensation I felt in my mouth wasn’t a bad taste but discomfort: my palate started itching, and my throat, while not swelling, became kind of flabby-feeling.

Neither of these are the worst things in the world, and I used to eat shrimp dishes if I thought it would be rude to refuse. (Oh thanks for cooking this wonderful food but I may or may not be kind of allergic to shrimp so why don’t you just throw it all into the trash can.)

The last time that happened was three years ago, and my mouth itched a bit. So a little while ago I was in Mulhouse at an assistant party, and there was shrimp scampi. Boy was I hungry, so I picked out the shrimp and ate the pasta. Aaaaaaaand my throat swoll so much that I had trouble breathing (not major, but still). When I talked I sounded roughly the way people do when they’ve had all four quadrants anesthetized at the dentist’s.

Don’t worry guys though I totally drank some tea and recovered! NICE TRY ANGELS

But Alex we only wanted to show you Heaven

God damn you Angels, I don’t want to see heaven

Oh no, it’s such a beautiful place, we just know you’d love it

What menaces you are, what jackals! Leave me be!

It’s the most beautiful place imaginable. Wouldn’t you like to see it, only for a few seconds? Just a few short seconds, and we’d bring you back, we promise

No Angels, I know your tricks!

You are too precious and too beautiful for this world, Alex. Come with us to heaven. Warm our cold wings with your brisk hands.

Gross, Angels!

EAT THE SCAMPI

[Also I’m from Bayou La Batre, Alabama. From Bayou la Batre and allergic to shrimp. What a world this is, right?]