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What Was Not There
By
Joshua Citrak
I was walking home from work saying, "no. No. Sorry, no."
No to the United Negro Cheeseburger Fund. No to the ragged sock puppeteer with his smashed Starbucks cup. No to the five sack. Sorry, no,
"pick your ass up and sit in the fuckin' chair!"
Dulled by my mindless street banter, I turned to see where that outburst had come from.
A dirty man turned and glared at me through the holes in his beard as if I had just burst into an occupied stall in the bathroom. I walked past him and his friend, who was lying on the sidewalk, and stood at the corner waiting for the proper signal. Behind me, the man was steadying a wheelchair, or maybe it was steadying him. He gripped the place where there used to be a plastic piece for the shape of fingers and rammed the chair into the back of the man on the ground. In his other hand he held a small paper bag shaped like a cylinder and kept bringing it up to his bloated lips. His friend, whom he wished would sit, was crumpled on the sidewalk in some sort of cadaver-like stupor. He made no sounds or motion to indicate whether or not he would get up.
The wheelchair itself was a true vehicle of incompetence. Besides missing the left front wheel, it had no back cushion, or any place to lean into while one sat. The plastic armrests had been ripped off, exposing metal screws that were jagged and rusty. The whole thing was dirty, but that was to be expected. There were years of piss and blood and booze ingrained into its every surface.
Both men were like the wheel chair, brokedown, filthy and tired. The only thing that the wheelchair did not share with its current users was, it was not drunk. Both men wore heavy winter coats even though it was nearly eighty degrees out, a real scorcher in San Francisco. The pockets of these jackets were swollen like sores, some of them busted out from years of digging for what was not there. The chair, the men, however incohesive, belonged where they were. A beetle on its back, a cat with one hind leg.
The man standing behind the chair continued cursing at the man on the ground, but made no move to help him up. There was a dead horse between them, the injuns were burning the wagons and screaming... the screaming making it impossible to die in peace.
I crossed the street making my way through khakied throngs of grunt Marines. They were kids, really, somebody's baby, now members of an emblemized platoon enacting a thirty-six hour invasion of my city.
They were here to get all of us in San Francisco psyched up for some war we might have, or for all I knew, some war that was still going on. I had the feeling that there was going to be a parade down Market Street, or some kind of militaristic display down in the Marina, where the destroyers and carriers were lined valet style in the Bay. Something would have to happen somewhere so that we could all stand as Americans and be real glad we had all these weapons and willing participants and plenty of people around the world to use them on.
There were warplanes flying overhead. You could hear the jets long before you could see them. They were terrifying. I felt as if I were a VC and my village was about to be napalmed. These loud, blue killing machines were about smiles and salutes and pride, to most. To me, they were just about evil, no matter whose flag was pasted to the tail.
Sailors stood in line at the Crazy Horse, a place where Nina Hartley claims to take all her friends whenever she's in town. It didn't disgust me the way it might a normal American, our warriors waiting to get into a strip joint. What disgusted me was the way that they come to my city every year for Fleet Week and dismember it the way they might an Arab or a Croat in somebody else's city.
I was aware that this country has a navy. I just didn't like to see any of its members. I couldn't stop thinking, once I caught a glimpse of those stupid bellbottoms, that the sailors looked so ridiculous. They looked so ridiculous and they will be going to other countries and cities looking ridiculous, some places to kill, others to stand in line at a strip club.
What that says about our country, that we let our warriors look like fools, I don't know. Nothing we ever do says very much about any of us because no one is paying attention.
I always had to pay attention. I always had to overhear the conversations. I always had to notice things that most people would just step over, instinctively.
I walked off Market Street towards my house. I decided to go to a deli nearby for a turkey sandwich. On the way to the deli, which is at the end of my block, I ran into Jim, the owner of a print shop across the way from my place. He is a collector of old Fords and any man who is a collector of anything be it stamps or spoons or baseball cards or Grand Funk Railroad albums is a very lonely, bored soul.
I first met him one day when I was out in the street replacing the rear breaks on my car. I was being somewhat careless about bleeding them and some fluids ran out onto the street. I noticed him watching me for awhile muttering to himself and shaking his head in disgust over something I presumed I was doing wrong.
"Don't you have any kitty litter?" he asked me.
"You need to borrow some?"
"No. For the street. You got break fluid all over the street. You should clean it up."
"I don't own a cat," I told him cleaning up my tools. "Why would I have kitty litter if I don't have a cat?"
"Any good mechanic has kitty litter laying around."
"I'm not a good mechanic," I told him.
He clenched his jaw and began twitching his fingers looking at the rust colored rivulets meandering down the street. "It really needs to be cleaned up," he said trying to restrain his compulsion.
"Yeah?" I said.
He went into his shop and brought out some sawdust.
Today, when I saw him, I was really looking to not see him, ya know? I was just kind of hoping to walk by him, I was hoping for that courtesy from him. It is not necessary that we have a conversation right now, I whispered to him subconsciously the second I saw him. You will just walk by me. You will not notice me. You have nothing to say to me.
He looked to be in a hurry, so I pretended that I was too. I got that far away look in my eye, yes, I am thinking... oh, so busy, so anxious.
He saw me see him and crossed the street holding his left hand to his neck.
"How ya' doin'?" he asked me.
"Good. I was just on my way to get some lunch..." I said.
"Yeah. At the deli? Good meatloaf sandwiches," he said still covering up the left side of his neck.
We stared at each other in silence for a minute and I noticed trickles of red oozing from between his fingers. He noticed me notice him obviously bleeding, but said nothing about it. What a jerk! I thought. Can't he just explain to me why it is that he's bleeding profusely from his neck?
Instead, he went on to tell me the proper way to make a genuine Croque Monsieur. "it's in the oil. The way you toast the bread. Always use a really good extra virgin oil. But don't cut the meatloaf too thick. Don't get greedy, it won't cook properly. Like a pizza with too many toppings, the middle gets soggy."
I forced a smile to my face, a toothy, Sears holiday portrait smile. You're bleeding, I kept thinking. If you don't want to tell me about what happened, don't you at least have the decency to quit bleeding all over the street and me and my shoes and find a bandage for that thing?
"Use a nice smoked mozzarella. It rounds out the flavors, but doesn't take away from the meatloaf... homemade aioli, not mayonnaise... do you know the difference?"
I nodded. Now, the blood was running down his arm and he began wiping it up with his other hand. His right hand was not a very good sponge, the blood was sticking to his arm hairs. He was smearing it everywhere.
Just look away, ignore this jackass, I told myself, but I could not. His blood and his nonchalance were so repulsive I had to stare. I swore that I could smell the stench of his blood, iodine and salty air.
"OK then," he said turning to walk to his place. "Enjoy your lunch!"
You motherfucker! I wanted to scream at him. Enjoy my fucking lunch? After you just bled all over my appetite without the decency to even explain why?
And another thing! You have no clue about meatloaf sandwiches! The deli down the street makes a terrible meatloaf sandwich! Goddamn! They use too much pepper! In fact, that's all you can taste, pepper! Their meatloaf sandwiches would give even an Ironman an upset stomach! I would starve before I ate one of their meatloaf sandwiches! I cursed while I walked away from him.
The neck is a very odd place to be bleeding from, I thought as I continued to my place. Who injures themselves in the neck? I conjectured scenarios in which one would accidentally gouge themselves in the neck. Falling on a very short screwdriver. Fishing. Shaving horizontally... none making any real sense. Man, was that dude ever bleeding, though!
To satisfy my curiosity, I walked back to the spot where Jim accosted me with his gore and inane conversation. I got down on my hands and knees to examine the sidewalk. Sure enough, there were tiny smatters of blood right where he had been standing.
I could track him, I thought. Like a wolf, or a tiger. He'd be dead meat for sure, assuming that I was a hungry predator and we were out in the wild of Africa.
Of course, I knew that neither wolves nor tigers lived in Africa. Lions, leopards, and cheetahs being their big cats. And I also knew that a wolf was not a big cat, or even a cat for that matter. But that didn't make one bit of difference to me while I was tracking Jim's blood trail down the sidewalk on my hands and knees.
"Where are you going?" I said aloud to myself. "When I find you, I'll make you lay down a good half inch of kitty litter to sop this shit up..."
There is nothing in the world that will make you feel as completely stupid as the apathetic gaze of a beautiful woman. I mean, I've seen women who've made feel like I didn't even deserve to be alive.
After watching me for what I assumed was a couple of minutes crawling about down the sidewalk, my own sharpened tracking skills noticed her curvy legs five feet in front of me. Well manicured feet were slipped into five inch leather sandals that had straps that ran like snakes up her thin ankles. Pink nail polish and a tan that wasn't natural in Northern California told me the was no need to go any further than the hemline of her skirt.
"Meow," I said to her and grinned because there was nothing else I could do.
She shot a disgusted look right through me with an elephant gun and then I was just some stupid head on somebody's wall. There was such a gap between beauty and civilization and she was on the wrong side. I was too. I kept trying to murder beauty by putting my notions of it to work instead of letting it come to me.
She walked away from me, click, click, down the street towards the courthouse. Mmm, yeah, I thought. She could be real bad for me. I need a woman like that.
"Get your ass up and sit in the fuckin' chair," I said aloud to myself. There was meaning in that somewhere. It was a rally cry for the world. Get your ass up, world! Sit in the fuckin' chair. Sit comfortably and gaze over the grandeur that we've created.
I repeated the phrase over and over again silently to myself until the words started taking on a different meaning than what I had originally given them.
Instead of a chant of actuation equal to Jesus addressing the cripple at a pool in Galilee, 'get off your mat and walk', I couldn't help thinking of every man as the crucifixion Christ, robes torn and bleeding, being led through the dusty streets of life filled with jeering, greedy mobs by uniformed boys with eyes like wine goblets filled to the brim with another man's courage. And after our personal Pilate, instead of a cross there is an electric chair where we will sit and pay for heinous sins we are all guilty
of "get your ass up and sit in the fucking chair," the executioner will say.
Because we shall never overcome. There will always be a chair. Why the hell should we stand and march if we can sit and casually observe?
The chair is comfortable. It is red, like you like it. Italian crushed velvet dyed in India. It smells of a great cedar forest. It is overstuffed, handmade black ivory buttons and silken purple rope form diamond shaped patterns through the seat and back. The armrests are not wooden, this chair was made by someone who knew something about making chairs, rather plush and comfortable. The back is at an eighty degree angle to the seat, letting you recline slightly and slouch. It is higher on the corners and gently curves in from each side enveloping you, but without making you feel overwhelmed. The feet of the chair are made of aged cherry and hand carved in the shape of talons. There are no sharp angles on this chair. It says, I am soft and you may wish to never get up once you sit in me. I am a good chair, I am yours. So sit, friend. Sit.
Copyright ©
2003 Joshua Citrak
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