Metanoia!

The space between my left and right ear rings when nothing’s ringing. In dead silence, white noise. Static is my internal soundtrack. Elevator music for my internal monologues. The plural is intentional. Self-talk, the multitudes, the voices, consciousness, whatever you want to call it. I listen to too-loud music, in oversize or undersize headphones. A Kaiser chat bot told me in-ear headphones might make the ringing worse. I’m over-ear right now to drown out the ring. 

This song is playing: Metanoia

It’s dark outside and inside. My eyes hurt. I shut them for a moment. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the MFA program, it’s that people seem to enjoy reading about pain. My leg hurts too, and when I shut my leg, the nebulous pain only increases. The Kaiser people always comment on my use of the word nebulous, like it doesn’t make sense. I’m including the bit about my pain to engage the reader. My dad always used to say you have to give the people what they want. People like a good laugh. Catharsis. But I don’t feel very funny today.

The upstairs neighbors are getting ready for work. I know this because the walls in our building are thin. I use a white noise machine to go to sleep.  I often overhear their phone calls, their arguments, their laughter. Bits and pieces, here and there. They are solid neighbors, considerate and kind. We smile in the hallway. We help each other out. I wonder how many of my phone calls they can hear, how many of my arguments, how much of my laughter. I live alone. I’m mostly quiet now, but I wonder how they would have felt about me ten years ago. 

I’m editing a fiction section that I brought to a recent workshop. That’s a lie; I’m actually revising. I didn’t understand the difference until I joined the MFA program. 

Editing is local. Grammar, shifting syntax, word choice, punctuation, cutting/adding lines. When I edit pages, I strike through lines, write notes in the margins. Like this sentence on my computer screen: In a paranoid fever dream, I delete everything. 

The comment in the margin reads: cliché?

Revision is global. Re-visioning the piece as a whole, changing elements of the narrative, adding/removing characters, modifying a character’s identity, moving events around in the timeline. When I revise a chapter, I destroy pages, create new scenes.

So, I’m revising more than I’m editing the document on my laptop screen. Revision is a bit like lying.

 

[On the screen: That night, Everett, slurring words, and stumbling, had me help him take apart all of the electronics, phones, answering machines, lights, look, he had me take apart the house printer with a hammer and a screwdriver, looking for bugs.]

 

This happened to me, not my character, Craig. Craig is writing a techie-tell-all for validation. I’m writing a novel, and a character inside my novel is writing a nonfiction account of a year in his life. I’m writing inside Craig. Pieces of me brush off inside his story, and as I revise, I pick up the pieces. Some pieces I want to inspect. Hit ‘em with forensics, I tell myself. Pull out the bright lights, bro. I’ll wait until I can see them in the sun. Some I trash. Delete. Many others go back where they belong, underneath blockers and boundaries. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s to compartmentalize the things that hurt me. But some little pieces of me I revise to suit the needs of the stories I manufacture. If the product is pain, we’re selling pain. If the product is paranoia—this bit about Everett is my memory, not Craig’s. Everett’s not my dad though. I revised my memory. 

I’m on the page, I’m on the screen, I’m in my memory. 

I’m getting water from the sink. It’s annoying to maneuver the Friends-Don’t-Let-Friends-Go-To-Starbucks mug around the web of rotting food securing the leaning tower of plates. The center cannot hold: a wok tilts, glasses clash, plates fall apart. I slide backwards in a puddle of sitting water on the faux-tile floor. There’s no mop and the towels are piled down the hall. Twenty or thirty of them, bleach-white stock, stained now. Towels are “borrowed” from the Harbor Bay Club— my dad doesn’t have a membership, but we have the code to the gate. The code changes and we always seem to know its newest incarnation. He “represents” the manager, or is sleeping with the accountant, or something. Hard to keep the stories straight. We only clean at the last minute, when he has people coming over, a new woman or some member of his family. I would say our family, but they aren’t mine. We won’t speak in the future. Maybe I know that, maybe I don’t know anything. I’m in between ten and twelve.

Probably I’m just thirsty because it’s late and I ate the whole Totino’s Combination Party Pizza fresh out of the 450° oven and the skin on the roof of my mouth likely looks like the inside of the sink.

My siblings are here, or they aren’t; either way, they’re not downstairs. 

The kitchen table is covered in electronic devices: two cordless phones, their docks, stand-alone answering machine, fax machine, printer, bulky IBM desktop, mouse, keyboard, wires, multiple fire alarms, my YakBak watch, and a couple different voice memo recorders. Maybe other things. This array sits atop the usual stacks of unpaid bills, the divorce subpoenas, restraining orders, his clients’ files, and pages of the Wall Street Journal. Fast food coupons, all the good ones gone. A couple of screwdrivers, a duct-taped-together hammer, wire cutters. Assorted chunks of shriveled, rock-solid food. Spilled coffee and beer. Stains on the documents. 

“You want to see what this is really all about? Bring me that stack of papers,” he says. He’s sitting in the middle of the living room, on the floor, wearing some comedian’s tour shirt. Carlin or Pryor or Murphy or Kinison or any one of those guys. That era of stand-up. He was a comedian, his friends are comedians, he writes their jokes or says he does. Years later I will be on the empty stage of the Hilton in Las Vegas with Mark Curry, my dad nowhere to be found. I will be drunk; my dad will be drunk. Curry will offer me ten minutes on a Thursday night. My dad will talk me down, telling me I don’t have the right jokes for that size crowd. 

He’ll be right. Broken clocks and all that. 

I wonder what else he was right about?

The TV is on the floor, the VCR is on the floor, already malfunctioning remote controls are on the floor. The coffee table is like the kitchen table, or the drink-holder area of his car, visibly sticky, and covered in loose change. Pint glasses and coffee mugs filled with old liquid and trash. The room smells like a stale cigar inside a pizza box. It smells like a bar.

He’s taking the front and back panels off of the TV. With a knife? I ask him which stack of papers and he motions with the knife. “Grab the subpoena— I want to show you, you’re old enough to know the truth— no, actually, grab the rental agreement for the office. Fuck it, anything with PooPoo or your mother’s name on it. You’re a smart kid— figure it out. Wait! Wait, wait, wait a goddamn second. Come over here and take a look at this. Get your butt over here and come look at this and you tell me they’re not bugging this place.” 

A day before, he taught us what bugging was. It must have only been a day before; we were never there more than a couple days. As a demonstration, we watched Enemy of The State. We ran it back enough times that the imagery, the tone, flash through my mind whenever I find myself in a grimy room. Trash, slight film of dust and slime, alcohol, stale smoke, unrefrigerated day-old delivery— with these elements combined, I become: Captain Paranoid. 

He told us that he was like Will Smith’s character Bobby, and we kids had to help him out, like Gene Hackman’s character Brill. And I believed him, I thought he was some kind of down-on-his-luck hero. I love a good story. I would often insert myself into the plots of movies, shows, and books. Acting them out in real time, taking on the attributes of my favorite characters. It didn’t matter if they were good or bad, I wore pieces of them like armor. I mimicked their cadence, I wore a version of their clothes, I practiced their facial movements. I expanded their stories past the page and off the screen. If he wanted me to play the role of Brill, I was in. I already never slept, so the paranoia came naturally. My glasses were likely taped together. The only difference I could see between me and Brill was that Gene Hackman was really old. 

 

[On the screen: It was an unconscious method, but a method all the same: he sold himself on the idea that the old dirty déjà vu, that nagging itch, it wasn’t real, that the event never happened, it wasn’t a memory at all, it was an old dream, something he saw in a magazine, his mind playing tricks on him— one lie would stick, then he repeated, repeated, repeated.]

 

I’m standing in the living room, feeling alive. I’m a character in a movie. 

My dad looks nothing like Will Smith. Early 30s, hair more grey than black, he has a swollen red and pock-marked face with scraggly facial hair. We are not built the same. He is stocky. He wears glasses, too. His hands are swollen and sweaty. A worn out Band-Aid on his palm. He has a visible metal tooth like Joe Pesci in Home Alone. They have the same first name. Their first name is my middle name. He’s wearing sweatpants and smells like his bar. 

We left The Whole Shebang around midnight. His current girlfriend, Stormy, is closing right now. I wonder what she will think about the electronics everywhere. She likes to play along, too. She encourages him. The two of them are codependent. I don’t really know what that means, but my mom learned about it in college. She tells me they’re codependent and that he’s got borderline personality disorder. He calls my mom a greedy cunt and tells me that me and my siblings will be living with him and Stormy soon. Full-time. My dad wants custody, but my mom doesn’t want us to see him. Or so he says. My mom doesn’t seem greedy, she’s warm and overwhelmed, but she does have more nice things than my dad. That’s what this is all about— the wires, the bugs, the private detectives watching him— it’s about the money. And it’s maybe about the threats, the broken windows, the broken doors, the broken hearts, the screaming. Other things. But I block all that out. He’s got me convinced people are watching him. They follow my dad’s car around Alameda, the private detectives. One of them is sitting out on the street right now in a brown Buick with tinted windows. My dad pointed him out on our way into the housing complex. The man looked like he was sleeping. My dad called misdirection. 

I have a pile of papers under my left arm and the mug of water in my right hand. I’m still wearing my clothes, or an oversized shirt, or a blanket. The light from the back porch falls through the plastic blinds. He’s kneeling down and messing with the back of the TV. The knife falls to the ground and the light bounces off of the blade. He smiles, he’s figured it all out.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here buddy-boy?” 

He holds a small piece of foam covered plastic with a cut wire in front of me. He wags it back and forth like a caught animal. Like a rat. He smells like Heineken and piss. His plump, reddened orange fingers inches from my face.

 

[On the screen: Cry me a fucking river, said Shells, hitting the pipe. So, so, so, so, so, what now, buddy boy?]

 

He clears a spot on the table for the knife and the bug. I’m enthralled, I’m a character in a movie. I’m Tom Cruise in The Firm. My dad hates lawyers. Which is funny because we watch a ton of movies and shows featuring lawyers with questionable moral values. My dad loves Wall Street. He idolizes Gordon Gecko. 

A framed print of Houdini trapped in a water tank watches down over us. 

“They’re trying to pull one over on your old man. You can see it right in front of your face. You can’t tell me this isn’t a wire, you’re a smart kid, you see more than you say. Look, everyone tells me how smart you are. They’ve got eyes, well I’ve got eyes too, and if I can only see you once a month, just know that I’ve got people out there watching. Looking out for you. They won’t let me show up to your events, do you know that? It’s not that I don’t want to be around. I can’t. I would love to be there! No BS. If I show my face, they might throw your old man in jail. But I’ve got people too. You think I don’t know every teacher at that school of yours? You think I don’t know your little friend’s parents? You think I don’t play poker with those guys? That they don’t come in and get a coffee in the morning, that they don’t come in for beers after work? They tell me everything. They tell me all about you. I’ve got eyes everywhere too.”

I say nothing. He usually keeps going when I start talking, or when I don’t, and like clockwork: “Here’s what we’re going to do. There are boxes, boxes in the office full of my things, and boxes full of case files. Whatever cards they’ve got we’re gonna trump. What do you know about counting cards? Don’t answer that. The point is, the point is, the house always wins, you remember that. So, if you’re smart, you play the house against itself. There’s only so many cards. Only so many combinations. You’re a smart kid, you count. You weigh the odds. It’s like Big Jim always says, what’s the square root of x? What’s the equation for a straight line? You’re going to help me on this. This son of a bitch Lance thinks he can scam me, but I’ve been a hustler my whole life, do you honestly think I can’t see a trick from a mile away?”

He pulls a piece of paper off the table and tears it in half. He tells me to watch closely. He rolls the piece of paper into a ball. It’s compact. He passes it around his cracking knuckles before displaying it. I nod my understanding. It’s a crumpled up ball, yes, I see it. It’s in that particular hand. He takes three empty containers— mugs or pints or whatever is on the table— and places them in a row. I push the other junk on the table around, making room. 

The trick is a trope. This is the scene in the movie where he does the magic trick. This is the chapter in the book where he self-validates through a display of skill. I don’t interrupt. I watch. I’m learning how patterns work.

“Watch this,” he says, “Eyes on the ball. They’ll try to get you to watch the other hand. PooPoo, Gallagher and Lindsay, the chamber of commerce, they think they can misdirect a master magician, but let me tell you something, I wasn’t born yesterday, I can see a shell game from a mile away.”

He places the ball under one of the containers.

The shells, the containers— he moves them around. They go up and over each other, they slide underneath each other, they move forward and backward, in sloppy, predictable patterns. I’m dizzy, it’s late, I have a headache. The containers stop moving. He holds his hands up in the air like goalposts. I point to the middle cup. He picks up the cup. It’s the “bug”, not the crumpled ball. He smiles like he’s showing me the secret to life.

Stormy comes home. “You didn’t lock the door,” she says, “And that guy is still out there in the Buick, Joe. He’s not fooling anyone with that sleeping bag. What are you two still doing up?”

 She scratches my head with her fake fingernails. She grabs the knife and a few of the cups from the table. She does the server trick where she holds three glasses in one hand. My dad stumbles to his feet, picking at something in his teeth with the piece of wire. He tears the foam covered plastic off and throws it to the ground. I wonder how we’ll get the recordings from the bug now?

They go upstairs. I don’t sleep on the couch. After a period of time, I drag the TV close to an outlet. I plug the TV in, attaching the VCR, finding the correct input. Whatever he cut out of the TV doesn’t stop it from working. It’s maybe four or five in the morning when I start watching The Mask. 

I’m still up with the sunrise. Jim Carrey slides on to the screen, big green face, says, “Somebody stop me!” 

I practice saying the line over and over until I’m pleased with my mimicry.

 

Shit, I guess I better stop myself. That’s enough memory, enough unpacking.

The Kaiser people are obligated to ask me about the pain in my leg. The pain is the point of the appointments. They always ask me to place the pain on a scale of one to ten. The pain associated with this memory of my dad and his delusions is less than one, more than zero. You won’t catch me sharing anything over a one on the pain scale with people I don’t know. I don’t trust many of the people I do know. The memory is “interesting” in terms of my character development. My dad’s behaviors have affected the themes in my writing, the themes in my life. I cut them out where I’m able.

 

[On the screen: Plus, it’s damn near impossible to plan when your sights blurred the fuck out, full of David-Fincher-splice-style nightmare imagery, and oh the distorted audio clips, oh, oh, oh, paranoia, paranoia, everybody’s coming to get me!]

 

The light of the morning seeps through the edges of my curtained windows. Metanoia is playing. How many times has it looped? I take off my headphones. There is no noise coming from upstairs, they’re gone. I didn’t hear anyone walk out the main door, or the gate shut— both are ten feet from where I lay in bed. The walls are thin. Reality is thinner.

 

[On the screen: The veil between what actually happened that morning and what he remembers happening is thick and ever shifting. It wasn’t new to him. The traces and trails that remained as he shut his eyes, attempting to manifest a great big nothing. Tiny noises turned all the way up, the soundtrack to anticipation. The waiting.]

 

The written word is always manufactured. A word is a symbol for a thing and not the thing itself. I write. I manufacture reality. Memory is imperfect, biased. If I write my childhood memory, the simple act of writing it down is revision, especially if I intend to share it with an audience. The moment I consider an audience, even if the audience is whichever current version of me, the words I write are affected. Writing is symbolic. Any truth we find in writing is referential.

 

[On the screen: Though when he’s being honest with himself, there are flashes of lucidity, there are whole weeks remembered in chronological order from Monday morning to Sunday night. This happened, then that, then this, then that—all in a manageable line, everything in its right place. His memory, the story that he tells himself.]

 

Staring at the screen, sleep mixed with wetness has formed a leaking gunk. I wipe the slime from my tear ducts. I shut the computer. In silence, the ringing is always there. Like a piano player pressing a key in a parallel universe. Holding it. Or the bell that starts a meditation session.

 I need to move on from this; there are so many things to do today. 

Attempting a mindfulness exercise, I focus on a lamp sitting on a table in the middle of my visual field. I keep my gaze wide. The space between my body in the bed and the lamp on the table is shimmering. It’s not nothing, the space. Though it does appear flimsy. 

In the time it would take to hear the sound of a single note, I look for the me that is seeing. I look for the me that remembers, the me that takes memories and revises. I look for the me that forgets. I search for the me inside this entropic body. I only find the ringing. The infinite key-note from a parallel universe. 

I look again at the lamp. I look again for the me that is seeing, but it’s not there. 

I’m not there. 

I often fear I’m creating myself.