Middleground

Overheard:

It’s funny how time passes when one has been knocked unconscious. I mean, if a guy were to get in a bed and sleep for three/four hours, there’d be dreams probably. Also, maybe the guy gets up once or twice to pee or whatever. There’s a sense of time passing, and that passing allows for rest, revitalization. On the other hand, if somebody punches your lights out, totally different scenario. First off, there’s no dreaming, none at all. The parts of you that make dreams have also been beaten to a pulp just like the rest of you. Also, people who get knocked out don’t get up and then get back to bed for a snooze. You get your bell rung, you get up and you stay up because you have to address the salt-dry pain in your eyes. You have to get up to breathe correctly. Getting knocked out brings no rest, only drowsy, painful exhaustion. The guy hits you, you go to sleep, and then you travel through time to a later date and wake up, usually in a bed. The whole process is unnerving. I actively seek to avoid it.

But shit happens. We‘re not always given choices…

I’d been cheating on my wife for a LONG time. Having learned, and practiced, the craft of deception at a tender age, I never really learned how to stop. Now, at least a few weeks ago, I’d become a rich man. Even so, I never really stopped being the deceptive little shit I’ve always been. I blame my parents. Two weeks ago, I was downtown right about this time. Same day, Tuesday afternoon. I had a plan to meet this girl. Jamie, her name was. I met her at a bar one night, we were with friends. She had some blow and one thing led to another and I ended up fucking her in the bathroom of that bar, and the next one we all went to. All that night…I mean, this girl was a pioneer, she was like, state of the art in dirty fuckin' sluts. I saw her every day, and we went on vacations and shit. Spendin’ money ya know?

So last Thursday, I’m waiting for her at the bar, I’m drinkin’. Had a few. Then into the bar walks these guys. Two fuckin’ Guineas wearing matching fuckin’ track suits. Right? That’s what you see sometimes in Manhattan and the boroughs. Like a sandwich board that says: “I’m mobbed up”. Fuckin’ ridiculous. So these guys come troopin’ in. They sit, and keep in mind it’s me and the bartender, right? Fuckin’ 2:30 on Wednesday it’s a crypt. The track suits sit. One on this side, the other on this side. I’m between ’em, right? Get this: The one guy, on this side says:

Hey Marc

An’ee sticks out his hand like to shake. I do not know this fuckin’ guy I say:

Hey, what’s up dude

Just like that right? An’eye stick out my hand. Shake his fuckin’ hand. He’s smiling at me while we shake. A stupid, annoying grin that I wanna smack off his face. But I just shake. Smile back at him. Now from behind me there’s that same fucked up little fuckin’ laughing. An’eye know that now the other guy is now in on this. He’s laughing too. We continue like that: Me shaking with the one guy, them giggling. Then my lady-friend walks in. My whole thing with the dudes stops. There’s hugs. The sweat suit guys order drinks, stop giggling. Me and the girl split.

We walk across the street and head for the Sheraton Times Square, cause when I fuck this girl I feel like I wanna be upstairs in like a penthouse, or some kind of important suite. I feel like a criminal mastermind, somethin’. So we go in, I get the room, penthouse, elevator direct, and we go up and get it on for the rest of the day. She brings coke and we’re getting room service. I taught her how to do the Split-Lip Jesus. Things were good. We’re drinkin’. The cocaine. Everything. Then, just as I’m about to doze off, I hear somebody knockin’ at the door. Now, I didn’t hear anybody say “room service,” but I’m half inna bag and I ordered room service so, for me, that’s room service knockin’. I’m fallin’ asleep, so the girl gets up, goes for the door.

But she comes back not with a room service tray, but with one of the sweat suit guys! What the fuck is going on I’m thinkin’. I’m combing my memory for why. How the fuck do I know this guy and what does he want from me. Also, I notice, the guy is unarmed. I see no gun. I know how to spot concealment too and believe me: No concealment. He’s just him. Why did she open the door, right? Right away I’m thinking robbery. I’m figgerin’, the girl's been workin’ me. She’s a pro. So of course I’m upset at this. And to let her know I get the mind to cuff her inna face with the back of my hand. I go to do it though, and it’s as if my hand doesn’t want to hear it. I’m trying to swing my fist in anger, but my arm is not moving. Now, I’m a little worried. Am I having a stroke? Massive coronary?

Well, no sense going through the whole dance, but suffice it to say: The track suit was in control. He was doing that thing that hack hypnotists do in comedy clubs right? The power of suggestion or whatever-the-fuck. For like two hours he made the two of us dance like puppets. It wasn’t the greatest afternoon of my life. Then his brother showed up drinking the martinis I ordered from room service. The first guy hands the girl a hammer and I remember the feeling when she put it through my skull into my brain. I got a taste in my mouth like black licorice.

***

Then it was dark for a while. I could hear stuff, but it was far off, like if you’re out on the water and it’s foggy. Everything sort of distant, jumbled. I didn’t try to move or speak or anything. Basically, I guess, I was just waiting. After a while I came to and this is where it starts getting weird.

When I woke up, it was the kind of waking that you do after you’ve tied on a nasty, blackout drunk. You know how everything looks like something else for a while? It takes the mind a few tics to make sense of the surroundings. Also, I had the feeling that you get, right? The feeling that I don’t know what happened, but I feel like whatever happened was bad. Awful maybe.

Anyway, I finally cleared away the cobwebs, find myself sitting on one of the stone benches in Washington Square. But Washington Square was not normal. First of all it’s summer, right? It’s fuckin’ June so it’s fuckin’ hot, right? No. I’m dressed head to toe. Even got my 360 ear muffs on, right? Even with all this layering I realize I’m shivering. It’s freezing cold. Then I’m looking around and…No people. Again, it’s summer in Washington Square. There should be people teaming all through the park. Playing Frisbee, buying weed, just sitting. No. No fuckin’ people not a goddamn one. The sky is the color of a gigantic snowstorm or a hurricane, so grey it’s almost green.

Now I’m freaking out a little. I remember the girl, the hotel, those two wops in the track-suits. I remember that bitch goin’ to work on my face with the hammer. I remember all that. And I remember the pain. There is nobody around. It’s freezing, biting cold. Like blow smoke rings with your own breath cold. I’m dressed, but it’s not doing any good. The wind is cutting through me. It’s way below freezing and it’s gonna’ snow. What’s a guy to do? I got up and walked. Started down Sixth heading for a place I know on Avenue A.

Now I’m troopin’ through the city and still nobody. My head hurts. I walk by the big plate-glass display windows where the Virgin Mega Store used to be and I catch a view of myself in the windows. My head is all fucked up. The top is flat and my hair is matted with what looks like a slab of mud. My face, wow what she did to my fuckin’ face. My eyes, you could see most of them. Like ping pong balls and not in normal eye position on my face. Instead, further down, flanking the spot where I used to have a nose. I feel around up there. There’s all sorts of holes and tissues and shit. Fuck. Also I noticed I’m only wearing a shirt and tie. I do not remember taking off the jacket or the coat. Freezing.

So I get back to it. I’m humpin down lower Broadway. Freezin’ cause of the jacket fuck up and because of the snow. It’s a blizzard. It’s shitting snow on me in fuckin’ wet globs. There’s ice in there too, and cold rain. After a few more blocks I’m soaked, as if I jumped in the East River. The wind is blowing the snow sideways and now I’m trying doors. Frantic. I can feel snow and rain dripping into my head wounds and freezing the stuff in there. About this time I see I’ve got no shoes on. I don’t recall taking them off. My socks are super thin silk and they soak and rip and start riding up my ankles. By the time I get to 11^th St, I’m barefoot. It’s snowing harder than I’ve ever seen. Air is saturated with frozen water and getting clogged up in my face, my mouth. The buildings along Avenue A are as dark as all the rest and in the end I don’t even try the door of the place I’d been heading. Instead I walk to the Manhattan Bridge.

It took a long time to get to Brooklyn. When I finally touched down on the other side of the bridge I had dropped my shirt and tie. I didn’t recall taking them off. The windows and streets of Brooklyn are empty of anything resembling life. It’s all frozen concrete and steel, and the sound of wind driving ice and snow into soaking infrastructure. I lost my pants on the way to 95 South. Just looked down and fuck: pants gone. By the time I reached the Saw Mill Parkway I was down to skin. Barefoot.

The weather didn’t let up. I walked as long as I could but it was no use. I’m like…It’s fuckin’ over. Laid down in the street. Just let it come. I waited and waited there on the frozen fuckin’ road, looking forward for the shock and the unconsciousness. Remembering stories about people freezing, how they get warm just before the end.

But no. I waited there and got nothing but more soaked. My body was spent past the point where it should have shocked out, shut down. Something was preventing that, because I felt every bit of the weather and never so much as fuckin’ coughed.

And it went on like that. I stumble and ramble and drop on the ground, waiting for the sweet pardon of a death that just would not fuckin’ come. I lay down. The snow and ice cover me as my balls froze to the pavement. I’d stay put and try to will my body to shut off. Then, after I’d been encased in a shell of pure winter, I’d face the fact of my not being fuckin’ dead and walk a bit, and try to die again. After a week or so of this I began to see goddamn lights in the windows.

***

The first time, I’d been lying still under the falling fuckin’ snow for like days. It never got dark and the sun never rose so it was hard to tell but it felt like a long time. My walks between death-attempts were getting shorter because my muscles stiffened up and ached to fuckin’ hell. I got up, I looked up the road. I was still up on the highway and I didn‘t know the area well but I could see a familiar structure rising behind the next overpass. It was a hotel, the rooms all blacked out, offering nothing but the now familiar sense of hopelessness. Then a light went on.

It was in a room near the top of the place. I could see the light and then it blinked on and off a few times, as if somebody were walking in front of a lamp. I got up. I ran my naked, freezing balls off and pitched myself over the guard rail and into the snow covered overpass embankment. The hotel, with a big sign going up the side saying: HOTEL, loomed directly across the street. I looked up again and saw the light in the window. Saw movement as well, a person up there, maybe more than one. I rushed the door and discovered it was locked.

I spent the next twenty-four odd hours at that shit-hole, trying to get whoever was up there to come down and be a good sam. Nothin’ doin’. The light stayed on, the door stayed locked, and I stayed naked and freezing and, by this time, going a little crazy. I ran the fuck away like a fuckin’ nutball. Then I fell like on my face and my whole shit was all scraped up. I was bleeding! What fuckin’ bleeds that does not die? And fuckin’ hurts! What?

Now here’s where I make a long story a little less long. I remained in this condition, in this…This realm, or whatever it was, for what had to be a thousand fuckin’ years. I’m not exaggerating. Again, the sun never rose or set so it was difficult to tell, but it was a long haul. Hell, I fucking walked to the west coast and back like a hundred times fer chrissakes. Same game too, the whole way. I’d lie down in agony and then spot a light in the distance. I’d run for the light and then I couldn‘t get the fuckin’ thing. Lather, rinse, repeat, my friend, over and over again. At one point I think I lay still for a year straight. I let the snow bury me and cut my oxygen supply. I let the rain drench and soak me to my core and just lie there, too spent to even muster cries of pain. Shivering and twitching like a fish in a boat.

***

The agony was constant and seemed to increase in intensity every minute, and still my body never gave in. In fact, aside from the hammer-holes in my skull and face, I seemed to be functioning normally, even better maybe. Even with being naked and exposed, frostbite never set in and the open wounds in my skull and face were never infected.

But the pain was always there. Someday, if you get a moment and have the means, try this: Wait till like, the dead of winter. January. February. Then wait for one of those two-day New England snow blasts that close down municipalities and leave people stranded in their cars on the highway. Wait until just that set of circumstances and then take all your clothes off, step outside, and see how long you can wander around like that. The goddamn fuckin‘ pain. My whole, like body and soul felt like it was bein’ whipped back and forth over a cheese grater. My joints stung like fire, and stiff. My face, ventilated as it was, felt like a pink-raw, exposed. Any contact with the ground - inna’ forest, pavement, wherever, brought new definitions of frozen agony. My nails and hair grew ‘cause I couldn‘t cut ‘em, but the hair was thin and useless. No protection from the elements. The nails twisted and broke and stung where they were attached. Thanks to that slut I had no teeth left to bite the fucks off.

　

Then, one day, it was over. That was yesterday. Finally, and I was in that, that place forever. Finally, and believe me I gave up all hope hundreds of years ago, I woke up in a bed that’s not mine, in an apartment that’s not mine. It was like heaven, or an awesome dream, but it wasn’t. I was back in the fuckin’ world.

I was next to a woman who’s definitely not my woman, and in walks a kid who’s not mine and he says, “Daddy Daddy, Today’s the day you promised me we go to the zoo!” The wife, lookin’ real good by the way, confirms this. I know people, and I know when I’m being put on, right? This girl, she was not fucking around. I was - I am - her husband Marc Brooks. I am no longer Marc Lloyd who was fucking around on his wife and whose college age daughter won’t speak to him. In fact, that guy doesn’t exist now, if he ever fuckin’ did. I checked the yellow pages: no Marc Lloyd and my apartment building is a office tower. Non-res.