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It’s All About Impact

T. A. Young

    The plan suddenly made sense.
    No, not the one where I jump off the Brooklyn Bridge or the GWB. That plan came and went years ago, when I gave much more of a damn than I do now, when it would have mattered enough for me to take that leap into that black water, maybe bank off of a pylon before going under. No, with my luck, I’d go in clean and take a long, long time to get the job done, which is why I changed my mind a couple of thousand times.
    It’s all about the impact.
    I was standing under the lamppost a few car-lengths from the stoop of my building. It offered no light, at least none that reached me; my cigarette lit up more than the lamppost. I didn’t even need that much. What was there to see?
    The post was bent like those old men who can only see their feet when they walk, so stooped and petrified that they can never raise their heads to meet anything coming their way. Bent and weak, short of light and short of time, sustained - that is to say, held up - by a skinny stick that almost miraculously keeps them from stumbling into oblivion. It doesn’t really matter if I’m describing lampposts or those old men.
    They don’t know they’re extinct. Maybe it’s better that way.
    When I see these bent, wheezing geezers, I wonder how they’ll be made to fit in their coffins. They’re me - not now, but soon. That’s the curse of vision. You’re not supposed to imagine your own old age. Your own decrepitude. If you could see it - really see it - you’d head straight for one of those bridges, so god makes us blind. That’s called good planning, especially if you want to see your creations go forth and multiply.
    I flicked the butt against the lamppost, playing a character in my own story. I say to myself, “Then he flicked the butt against the lamp post...” I should be wearing a fedora instead of a baseball cap - I mean, in the story.
    I had a big decision to make: Do I light up another and keep standing here or do I sit myself down on the stoop, light up, and watch nothing happen? I’ve seen it happen before, lots of times, and I can tell you, word to god, it really lives up to its reputation.
    I opted for the stoop, but when I sat down on the fourth step from the bottom and let my elbows rest on my legs, don’t you know I felt my back curve, so I made myself sit up straight. That’s called futility.
    I used to be pretty stupid, even stupider than I am now, which is saying something. When I was twenty-five, my father died. I didn’t know he could die. No idea. That was a tough time because it was like whatever rules I thought existed, whatever laws of fairness or justice or reason were wiped out. The message was: Believe in what? Trust in what? That last night, the doctors told me to go home and get some rest. If I had done that, he would have died alone. That’s called luck.
    Anyway, suddenly the plan made sense. I’d make peace with the son of a bitch. I’d visit him. His wife had left him. His sons - my brothers - had ditched him. I’d visit him and tell him something to make him feel better. I tried that in the hospital while he was dying, but it wasn’t easy to come up with anything: he was a gem of a guy. I came up with a couple of things, memories, that he would have gotten a kick out of, but I don’t know if he heard me. They had him all doped up. According to my plan, it’ll be easier to get through to him now, never mind that he’s six feet under.
    Tomorrow will be the meeting of the two loneliest, pathetic bastards on the planet, one dead, one missing-in-action; and tomorrow we’ll talk.
    I’ll visit the crosses and saints and beloveds and months and years etched into granite for a fool’s eternity, and tufts of grass praying for a break, and bouquets of exhausted flowers painted to resemble something from nature but falling so short they’re abominations, like sad old whores wearing too much make-up, drunk and crusted and ignored unto death. I’ll look at an untended grave and curse the family that abandoned him, and curse the solace they find in their justification, and I’ll beat back any solace that tries to creep up on me because I know solace is for cowards and hypocrites. I’ll take my crucifixion straight, thank you, and my plans, Divine: it’s worked like a gem, so far.

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