Hey, what’s up, it’s me, just chillin’ in the city of my dreams. I’ve been here, what, a little under three years now? It’s not what I expected before I got here. Not what I dreamed about, I guess you could say. It’s a lot emptier, quieter, and strangely haunting. I don’t know if it’s me or my dreams or the city that’s out of whack, but something is definitely ... off.
But it’s OK. I’ve been keeping busy. I explore abandoned houses, make mental maps of all the vacant neighborhoods, walk, think, whatever. All the time I’m keeping my eyes out for the others, the people I was expecting to meet here, in the interim. This is after all Npydyuan, the city of my dreams, the in-between, the place of the way, the time and space between the lives. The old life is over, the new life hasn’t started yet. So where is everyone? We were supposed to meet here, in the in-between, kick back in someone’s decrepit living room, boots up on the battle-scarred coffee table, and work out who’s gonna be who the next time around. Who’s gonna be in love with whom, who was a boy last time and gets to be a girl this time, you know, all that stuff. While we play a few hands of rummy and shoot the shit, chop it up, laugh about how things went. Just like every time. This is always how it is.
So ... where is everyone?
Well anyway, there’s no shortage of pigeons. They ... visit me? Or else I just randomly encounter them. Can I admit that I’ve started seeking them out? Each one holds a memory of how I got here. Each one drops a single message in my hand — a shard of sea glass, a pebble, a cork from a wine bottle long since emptied and forgotten, a thumbtack, a scrap of lace, the white gold ring I lost, a dime, page 192 from an unread book.
I don’t know if I would say they keep me company, exactly, but they do give me something to daydream about, to pass the time. And after all, I’ve got nothin’ but time.
Tonight it’s warmer than usual so I’m down by the lakefront. There’s four gulls milling around this empty parking lot, picking seeds or something out of the cracks in the asphalt. They squeal and squall at each other. That squeaky faucet noise they make! The gulls potentially have something to tell me too, but I haven’t figured out what it is yet. One of them eyeballs me sideways, hops over closer to me; then it sees I haven’t got any food to share and immediately forgets I exist. Goes back to the others. One of them spreads its wings and makes a momentary show of bigness while the other two continue arguing between themselves. Life goes on.
It’s not until after I’ve strolled past the (now closed) beer garden by the marina and found a bench to sit on to watch the mishmash of yachts and fishing boats bobbing gently in the harbor that the pigeon appears. Its mercurial eye locks onto me like a zoom lens, only for an instant, but it’s enough. I’m there.
The first time I ever had a male teacher. What did we say back then? “Man teacher”? “A man for a teacher”? He was the only one in my whole elementary school. In that particular life, I was already a writer by the time I got to sixth grade, so he didn’t — couldn’t — teach me that, but he taught me something better; namely, that a teacher, a man teacher could say something crazy, something absolutely are-you-fucking-kidding-me insane, like “You’re all going to write a story every day.”
Many (most?) of my classmates were like, whaaaaaat? No way!! Nooo!!! Oh my gawd, no! That’s impossible! But I was like, cool.
But it didn’t end there. Here’s the secret ingredient: four out of the five stories from the week basically didn’t really matter. As long as you did them, and turned them in, you were good. But then at the end of the week, you had to choose one — your favorite story from the week, and that would be the one you would get graded on.
And do you know, I believe that crazy motherfucker actually read all (or at least close enough to all to pass a random audit) of those stories!? Because he handed back one of mine on some random Tuesday — it was an episode of a little thing I had going at the time called “The Hairy Elbow Show,” and it was basically pure nonsense held together by fart jokes. At the bottom of the page I had written, echoing diction gleaned from my cousin’s old Mad Magazines, “Favorite story? Natch!!” And my teacher, let’s be lazy and call him Mr. Croc, handed that story back with a note that said, “Please don’t pick this one for your favorite this week.”
I’m calling him Croc because he almost always wore high-quality cotton piqué knit polo shirts, often in pastel or bold bright colors, always with a little crocodile logo sewn on the left side of the chest.
Guess what kind of shirts became my favorite, absolute must-have? Yep, paired with clean, dark blue Levis and probably loafers of some kind, maybe Hush Puppies. Just like Mr. Croc.
I did pick that story as my favorite that week, by the way. He didn’t like it but he didn’t hold a grudge. He gave it back to me with a felt-tip comment on the most egregious fart joke: “Crude.” One word, actually non-judgmental when you think about it; helpful, like a dictionary providing nuance.
Mr. Croc was young (old at the time, of course, but looking back, young, so very young) and fit. Dark hair, fair skin. Looked a little like Christopher Reeve in Superman in 1978. Anyway, that’s how I remember him. Mild mannered, but strong. As a matter of fact that crocodile had quite the pectoral substrate to stand proud on. What made Mr. Croc want to be a “man teacher” in an elementary school (which is what 6th grade was still a part of for us, then/there) otherwise completely staffed, except for the principal and some of the custodians, by women? I didn’t have a keenly developed gaydar at the time, so I’m not sure if I think he might have been gay, but it’s definitely a possibility.
If I ever learned his first name, I’ve since forgotten. Fuuuuuuuuck, I just realized something. Somewhere between a few and several years after he was our teacher, Elzo told me, hey, did you know Mr. Croc died of cancer? And maybe that’s true, but on the other hand, given the timing and lack of detailed information, it may have been AIDS. I guess I’ll never know, unless & until he shows up here in the city of my dreams and decides he wants to tell me.
We teach what we were taught, or so I’ve heard. Write a story every day? Yeah, I think it’s fair to say I’ve tried to teach that, to myself and others.
The pigeon flaps away, headed for some unknown underpass or hideout for the night. I’m about to do the same. If a cat bus darts up out of the evening shadows maybe I’ll go for a ride. Otherwise I guess I’m hoofin’ it. Where shall I sleep tonight? There’s a gorgeous yellow and brown and green Victorian I’ve been camping out in lately. Only a hilltop or two away from here. That’ll do for a destination. Idle thoughts while I walk. Pick your favorite story. Pick your favorite house. Pick your favorite life. Who would grade you on a life? What would the comments in the margins be?
Just then I pass this unsubtle memento mori in the boarded up loading dock of an empty warehouse: Scrawled in black paint it says, YOU WILL DIE. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t already know that. We’ve all done it I don’t how many times already after all, right? But yeah, thanks? I guess?
It’s kind of funny actually. Yes, you can laugh off death because the next life is always around the corner. And when you feel it starting up again, it feels good, you feel — alive, naturally! But also there is the one thing you never know, and that’s how long it’s going to last, this time. The new life feels indomitable, it stretches out beyond the harbor, over the horizon, that’s what makes it pulse, that heartbeat of boundless possibility. Go with it! Explore! Have fun! But all you really know is that it’s gonna be somewhere between zero and forever, that’s how long it’s going to last. Somewhere in there. And then it’ll fade, recede, retreat, and beat no more. You’ll find yourself working your way back to the city of your dreams. Again. And if you’re the first to arrive, what will you do while you wait for the others? Walk. Watch the birds. Remember things. Write a story every day. Throw most of them away. Be kind, gentle, and strong, show up, be good with kids, and look sharp while doing it? There’s definitely worse lessons one could learn.
