The Liberation

Today we have the next chapter in a sequence of stories—what I call ‘story paths’—within my current work-in-progress novel, Teresa’s Backbone. The novel herself is part of a much bigger work called The Secret of Secrets.

If this is your first trip down the Backbone, you may want to have a look at a letter I wrote to new readers back in January. Here it is:

You may also wish to bookmark the novel’s table of contents/index—“The Backbone.” That is right here for you:

And, lastly, for this particular chapter-story we have today, you may wanna read the ones leading up to it. Here they are, in sequence, what I call the “First Cut” path: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

You can, of course, throw caution to the wind and dive right in. Enjoy! Xoxo, T

3102-11-05

I think many of us—perhaps even most of us—tend to conceptualize ourselves as discrete, continuous, conscious entities. This idea perhaps emanates from the notion of the soul or from earlier notions of spirits. We also hold the seemingly contrasting idea that everything is in process and constantly changing, and therefore we cannot be the same as when we started. We all seem to know this and on some level agree to this. The changes are insidious and hence almost imperceptible. But I’ve come to think that there are loose eras or epochs of the self—that phenomenological frame that provides what I sense as continuity—and these folks are often very different.

I haven’t always been a good person. There are periods of my life of which I am not proud. One of my teachers1 once told me that the universe has to allow for some error, some experimentation. It’s a nice sentiment, but I have been many times gripped by fear that this is not so. That there is action and response, however delayed or, if we’re lucky, diminished by distance.

So I’d agree to help spring Roxy. I’m not sure why. I think I was partly sympathetic to her plight. Plus it was Wendy and Mickie doing the job, and I wanted to fit in with those gals.

We were all dressed for school. I almost packed a pistol but thought better of it. The last time I’d schlepped a roscoe around I’d nearly shot someone in the face. So I passed on the gun. And the blade. Again, I’m not sure why.

It wasn’t until we were past the palatial looking steps, wide stone and covered in green with simulacrums of lions attending, though lazily, past the maglocked doors, past the retinal and body scans, passed the metal detectors, that I realized Wendy and Mickie were both wearing masks. They couldn’t be seen—the masks—by any of the scanners; that was the point.

These weren’t the sort of scans that recorded or matched, though they probably should have been. These were just an ‘all clear’ sort of scan, like they used to have at airports way back in the day. The cameras lining the inside of the place, though, were obviously active, and I’m sure were recording. Some time after this fiasco, I’d argue with Mickie about the quality of said recordings and as to whether there was any real cause for alarm. Also, I wasn’t in any networks back then, so I wouldn’t have popped up on any Bubbles or law enforcement searches.

The place was one of those boxes connected to boxes style joints, indeterminably a hospital or a prison. There were windows and cameras everywhere. No bars as such. Once we were in the day room where Roxy was waiting, the masks came out and so did the guns. They were printed, so they didn’t show up on the scans—back when that still worked.

It was about this time that I realized I wasn’t wearing a mask. I started ghosting as best I could, covering my face here and there, but realizing I’d been sitting dead-fucking-center in front of a pin camera for at least five or six minutes while Mickie spun her glorious bullshit story to the tech. All of this was made more confusing to me by the fact that the tech was actually with us, revealing a mask of his own.

He was a crazy motherfucker, too, this Rand asshole. I knew him from a few parties and had been with him a few times. Nothing serious. He’s one of those guys that knows how to talk to you when you first meet him but shit just keeps getting weirder and weirder. After awhile, I’d just had enough of that. Some years later, I reflected back on all those things girls had told me about being too serious and heavy. I guess that’s what that felt like.

So they moved everyone from the day room into a larger common area. And it was fucking family day. So there’s kids and parents and all kinds of shit. It is a fucking mess at this point. One kid runs for the bathroom and I follow him, ostensibly to detain him. When we got to the bathroom, I put my long index finger over my shiny lips and said, “Shhhh …”

He blinked twice at me, looking scared but quiet.

I whispered, “You’re gonna be ok. I’m gonna get you out of this. Just stay here and be quiet, ok?”

He nodded, all right.

I opened the door to see Rand waving around a compact machinegun and talking about executions. Mickie and Wendy were deeper into the room. I couldn’t tell how they were reacting because of the masks. They were both armed and ready, though. I figured they would side with me. Probably. I wasn’t prepared to do either of them any harm, so I knew I’d have to run if they stuck with him.

I brought my knee to the back of his and turned my hips into him, feeling the familiar fit there, and drove my heel into the top of his other foot. My hand’s edge brought him over my thigh, and my other hand contained his gun arm. His weight pressured his wrist, and I twisted the gun away. He fell supine but rolled to his stomach and pushed up. I sent three or four slugs through the base of his skull before he was up.

I felt the twitch of his foot, again familiar, and this time sad. This body that I had clung to, however long ago and however seemingly insignificant now touched my memory in a familiar way, familiar almost like family, like we should not be hurting each other. And we probably should not have been. But I couldn’t let this happen.

Or wait … did I?

The blur of the rest of it subsided when we were outside the facility, no one harmed but Rand—poor stupid fucking Rand. Mickie and Wendy were totally unfazed about the whole thing. Roxy too. They were already talking about what we were going to do that night. I wanted so bad to fit in with these girls, but we’re just different I guess.

We split up for a little while. I really wanted to stay with Mickie. I think I was starting to fall for her. Even years later, I would think about her and wonder what could have been. I guess we all do that.

I remember that time at the lab when she and I were arguing over romance, and she accused me of not being romantic. I contested this and added that not only was I a consummate romantic but that I could indeed woo her into marriage in no time flat. She scoffed at this, and so I immediately dropped to one knee.

“Mickie, I’ve been searching my whole life for someone like you,“ I said. “You make me feel the way I want to feel every day for the rest of my life. There is no one else who will do. Will you marry me?”

And that’s all it took. You have to understand that most of it was in the presence and intensity of the moment. It isn’t much to hear about secondhand. And more importantly, it spoke to her. Tears verged the corner of her eyes, and she was seconds from saying yes, were she not a little speechless, when I said, “That’s how I’d do it.”

She smiled, somewhat bitterly, somewhat fondly, and that’s all we’d ever said.

So after we got Roxy out, they’d gone on their ways, and I’d gone back to my parents’ house. My grandmother had been staying with us and was missing. Not just wandering around without a way to get back, which she had been known to do, but was seriously missing and presumed dead. It’s one of those otherworldly moments to feel something like that about your grandmother. I recalled this happening before, and she’d turned up alive. I felt pretty certain she was gone this time, though. We’d found her license and a couple of photographs. In the process of searching for clues, I’d found some evidence that my sister was falsifying a license, but I decided not to alert anyone to this. I suspected my parents knew also but were letting it pass for their own convenience. Again, not my fight.

I was looking through some stored pictures and realized that these could easily be Bubbled. Some were of Mickie, some of me, some topless, some of other people. I had no sure way of knowing who took these or why they were stored at my number, but I decided I needed to purge them. Before I could though, I Bubbled Mickie and asked her to come over.

While I waited, I watched this movie that reminded me of a trip I’d taken cross-country and encountered a damaged segment of byway. I’d gotten a lift from a Coast Guard, along with my friend Reg. Our other friend, Tobe, had stayed on land and had to walk around. He often felt like life handed him the shit end of the stick, I think.

My movie and memory were interrupted by Mickie’s arrival. We went upstairs to the room where I was staying. It was all white except for a soft red blanket. She lay on the bed and rolled over a bit.

“Wasn’t that the best?” she asked.

“I thought it was terrible,” I said sincerely.

She furrowed her brow at me and said, “Why?”

“First of all, I didn’t want to hurt anyone. Second, you could have told me he was gonna be there and what he was gonna do.”

“How the hell would I have known that?” she asked. “Wendy put the whole thing together.”

“Well you certainly had a mask. And a bullshit story to feed that guy for the cameras. I don’t know why you even bothered, really, since he decided to light the place up after that …”

Mickie drew close to me and said, “You think too much. Thinking’s good … that’s why I thought to bring a mask.” She laughed a little. “But you over do it. Gives you wrinkles and makes you a pain in the ass.”

I leaned back. I wanted to be close to her. Her and Wendy. It was hard, though. “I don’t want to be a pain.”

She crawled close again, pushing me off the bed to standing and then stood in front of me. She’s tall, too. Taller than me, so she was looking down at me a bit as she said, “A little pain isn’t a bad thing.” She pushed me kind of hard, and I bounced against the wall.

She walked past me and said, “Next time bring a gun.”

I talked to Wendy next, this time over Bubble.

“Don’t sweat Mickie,” she said. “She’s cool. You’re fine.”

“I can’t help but worry some, Wendy. I just don’t know what I’m doing.”

“You’re doing fine, sweetie. Just breathe and take a pill. I’ll see you in five at the Corner.”

The Corner was where all these fucking degenerates hung out. I was one of them. My self was one of these despondent romantic types then, who had a fatal fucking attraction to the darker walk of life. Everyone was worried about drugs and music, but what they really should have worried about was romance. There’s more risk in romance for some selves than any fucking gateway drug. And the Corner was crawling with us.

It was sort of an egalitarian scene, really. I knew some of these gals from way back. Some of the dudes I knew, too. It was one of those informal class reunions. For me several different reunions: school, church, psychedelics, walkabouts, jungling. I guess I had already done a lot with my life, even though I was young and had no idea what any of it meant. I had no idea of the cost or value of any of those things I did, even though the elders were trying to tell me about it constantly. Everyone was explaining it all to me. Everything. They had the right vocabulary, the right language. But they had the wrong brains. Their brains did not interface with mine. Maybe they still don’t. But I see their wisdom now. I’ve finally started to finish the translations, and I see what they were saying. Maybe even better than they did.

Another blur. This one along the train tracks. Along the highway at night, cold in the bed of someone’s truck. Danielle is there for a while, under the moonlight, making out with Wendy. I felt some jealousy burn in my breast, but it was fleeting. What did I care? That was pretty much done. She’d had her way with me. We’re cool as friends.

Mickie was there, looking lean and mean, but not really doing much but grinning. It unnerved me a little. Her long face was lit perfectly in the moonlight, dark eyes looking predatory but fun.

Another blur to a party. It’s the same songs. Always the same songs.

We were at this house near where most everyone went to school growing up. It may as well have been on another planet. I went inside and felt the songs meet my bloodstream. In the air, the chemicals flowing through bodies into one another. In and out.

I took a piss, hiking up my flannel in the bathroom, and grabbed an old style book of Freud’s from the back of the head. It was on dreams. I started to feel like it was describing my life as it was actually happening. (This was after the blast but before the turn, and I had never felt so alive. I felt very much like me, and like I was winning. Even though I didn’t fit in with these women, I was still doing it the way I wanted. I was starting to have my own crew, too, with Danielle and a few others.) Like somehow Siggy had dreamed my life and written about it, or at least the dreams. My self then spit it out, though, dropped it on the back of the head and walked out. Out into the same songs playing again. Out into the flow.

Out on the cold of the playground across the street from the house we’d been partying in, I cupped Wendy’s face.

“Are we gonna do this again?” she asked.

I nodded and said, “I want to. Do you?”

She grinned up at me, chubby cheeks and savvy eyes. “Sure.”

I knew this was gonna cause problems for me with Danielle. Probably with Mickie, too. Hell, probably half of the damn people I knew because everyone loved Wendy. But I did it anyway. Why? I’m a motherfucking romantic.