Architects of Feeling
by Joel Van Noord
He never got to kill anyone and maybe that makes him the way he is. If he’d had some combat perhaps he’d have mellowed out, gained a perspective to remove this passive-aggressive façade.
He kills me. I suppose he’s my best friend, but I don’t really fret about that kind of thing.
Inches from my face, he’s like a tank, his grip on my mellow arm and his voice, “BADGES!” as in, ‘we don’t need no stinking badges’. I’ve never even seen that movie.
Between the wars - The father’s responsibility cinched with a date and the son, governor perhaps, or maybe still drinking, who knows? Setting the sails for the drug that continues… it’d be better with the bottle, hard to be worse.
He was out there on the tarmac in a suit. Saluting pilots, refueling in the desert. The war never stops. It only goes passive. F-18’s continue their assuaging process. Small mushrooms arise. Planes land. He’d fill them up. Deal with hazardous material. He wants to be an architect. Calls me college boy. Pulls a knife and pretends to slice my neck. Holds the door and calls me lady. We stand in front of the open passages for minutes. He’d never walk in first.
“Are we still friends, guy? Hey buddy. Hey buddy.. Hey Steve. Steve? Are we still friends, can we hang out?” He’ll say and my name’s not Steve. He never got to kill anyone and perhaps it would be different. I hope to be gone as soon as I save enough. Two days ago we moved unstable isotopes, radioactive material, wasted molecules unhappy with themselves. 125I, 32P, 35S. Carbon 14 everyone recognizes for its role in dating..
The marine doesn’t work and he follows me around and tugs on my arm and says, “Hey Steve” in his mock-retarded voice. Finally I answer and he’ll say “BADGES!” and the job is less than menial and it all puts me on edge. Soon he’ll start with the surf lingo, “Brah, eh, Brah, brah? What’s wrong? Brah?”
Stop man. He’ll pull a marker from a table and perhaps it’s been contaminated and I’ll walk the abandoned biotech searching for another 55-gallon hazardous waste drum and he’ll sneak up and yell “BADGES” as he draws the thick ink across my neck. “Ever play Marker Assassin?” No. “Going to go fucking hug some trees?” No. “Hey pig, pig? Hey pig? PIG?”
Why Pig? “Is it because I’m a capitalist?”
“No. It’s because you’re a pole smoker, fag.” He’ll say with a practiced lisp and a fox’s smile.
“You have two sisters?” I’ll turn as I push the cart with black line on neck.
“Yep.” It’s his normal voice, which is rare.
“What’d you’re dad do?”
“Ha. What dad?”
“You don’t have a dad?”
“Jail. Fuck hell if I know what he does in there, gets raped, tattoos… he does what prison people do.”
I ask him and he answers, “He killed somebody.” I believe him.
Small windows open and close and he’s on a subtle prowl; maybe mad at me; maybe dialed with something hidden under overgrowth. I duck and squirm and I’m a scrawny guy and soon the day’s over and he hasn’t slit my neck and I’m in the water as he’s out in the smoggy desert.
The clouds hide the sun and the cluster of black suits is kept at bay. The waves have a chop and ‘Turtle’ has rated this ‘poor +’ but there are 4 footers in the slush. With the tumbling whitewash, work is an effort to remember.
The old sage is out and he’s somewhere in the mix around 50. His arms are strong tendons and his balance is top. His speech is a mechanism to get high from and he stands and walks and holds his hands out.
He’ll talk about force and power and he’ll never say ‘Jesus’ or ‘Buddha’ or anything like that. The words ‘religion’ and ’spirituality’ will never come up. Some say science is a way to think about things. I was once a scientist. I once did research but So-And-So had to downsize because shareholders rightfully demand accountability and million dollar machines were scrapped and R&D was dismissed and only pills were made and eventually that stopped and someone else bought the intellectual property and another the structure.
Severance and I left and stayed gone for a bit and now it’s this waste work and an ironically equal pay. There is a search and a desire to stay away.
The water is ink and the hair on the rocks underneath tickles. I tumble and the line is somewhere around my chest. I reach to the leg and pull and grab. A wave comes and I lean the head and pop up and paddle. The sun is below the water but hints with a glow. The moon is full but well behind a fragile veil. The wind has stopped and the ink is gloss. The old man’s walking. On the beach he’ll say, “Everything is just a translation of something else.” And what is that ‘else’?
His speech is nothing specific to remember. It is only a mechanism. It is a flow that cleans between the ears and it’s a feeling. The truth is insignificant. Is what I’m learning.
He’s so quietly confident that I’ll take a chance to believe him. His aura gets me high and he’s the only one I’d use that word for. An evangelical atheism has turned into a bored search, a desire even. The professed rubbish wears at the preemptive judgment.
He’s gifted with the ambiguous. Things glide. The image drags my mind, I follow and plunge from the lip, ride the shoulder, the water is cold; I want it to be true.
I paddle and sit and it’s dark and the face rises from the sea, there is a white crust building. It’s a time where only extremes can be seen. I watch and turn and wait and it spits and I drop and stand and turn. The bottom is dark with darker circles. I turn and the lip is between my legs. It closes and I fall. Like a buoy I bob until another wave comes and then the rocks end and the fins bite the sand. The sand is gravel and I walk away. To the south the peninsula ends and on the other side bright lights climb a stout hill. One day the old sage will die and, hopefully, the ocean will consume his body and he’ll become part of everything else. The cycle is endless and contains the possibility and eventuality of everything else.
Who cares?
Thirty is close and there’s a shrug and a change in activity before the sigh. We’ll all be everything else? This is something I thought when the brain had exotic chemicals to battle and the center was content to sniff and plunge everything it wanted. The thought drifts back.. Women are distant to me.
At home the couple is doing their thing. She bounces and chases and he’s stoic and enters my room and she wants a cookie and I answer, ‘word processing’ and there’s an open browser with Eufrat spread and cupping with the pout in full. I have desire and check the online dating world. He leaves the door ajar and only the emphasis can be heard. Couples are so weird. The pocket they ride is so terribly blurred. Sex is a dog runaway. “I heart you.” He says after she storms to the bathroom and skips back.
The marine wants to give me high fives and knock knuckles. I oblige and one out of five it’s a punch against my fist or the smack from the empty palm with echo in the empty lab. “You’re getting violent.” He’ll say when I start to ignore him. I’ll steal a glance at my fist and it slowly turns a jaundiced color then bruises at night. He’ll get out his iPod and find his drill songs and he’ll get close like he’s going to nibble on my ear and he’ll stick the plug in there and the cadence is perfect for running to. He wants to be an architect and I ask him about Ayn Rand.
Soon he’s plumbing the abyss again and I push back and he’s got that knife in his pocket and the biotech is empty for us and the English-less peasants. We’re trashing everything and there are strange, exotic chemicals floating about and hidden like phantoms. Hydrofluoric acid seeks calcium. It’s here. It goes to the bone and turns you to mush like Ebola. We make things we can’t control. The long-run is beyond our threshold. It doesn’t make sense. Things could kill us and he’s opening and sniffing.
There are names for me and I ignore him and eventually it’s taught and he’s 6 foot something with rings of mass around his military years. Fuck it, though. ‘Chill the fuck out.’ He extends the thumb and pinky and wiggles it and that’s supposed to be me.
“Brah. Come on Brah.” He ridicules and I ridicule and we take a break and drop quarters into a machine and down coffee and it’s ok. We’re all we have. Then it’s back and he’s aggressive-aggressive.
He pushes me around and calls me skinny and fag and pig and tree-hugger and lady and, where is it from? Stand-down soldier I respond to his college-boy bore. College is the new high school and I’m a janitor and maybe I will mix chemicals together again.
He pulls his knife and snaps it and stabs it into the elevator and I surf and the old man is someone I want to believe.
He’s got me on edge. Always watching from the corner of the eye like it’s high school. But I stumble into the wall and pounce. He pushed me, rambling in his retarded lisp speech and my hand goes around his neck and he’s into the wall and I like this kid but it’s too much and the only thing I have is this modest surprise so I give him a few things to respect before I’m tossed to the ground and easily subdued with a hand bent up and quick moans of agony for him to stop. Only fire when fired upon. Green lights are everywhere.
The next day at work my face is still at the apex of swell and I went out that morning and it was big and my mind went numb and the waves were functions of something I shared with them. Energy connected and saltwater reminisced. Everything is swollen with emptiness. Proximity is all we’ll understand.
The money market has a 5% interest rate and there’s a large sum in there and I fully appreciate this. I am disciplined. I take the interest from the top and shift it into another account and tuck a few thousand into a Chinese index fund and it’s diversified. It’s casual and conservative. It’s enough. I call Laurent.
“What’s happening?”
“I think I’m quitting.”
There is a pause and he says. “You think so?”
“Yeah.”
“Hm. Is it Liotex?”
“No…” My speech is slow and it trails as my mind flutters wordlessly.
He speaks and I say, “No, no, it’s not anyone. It’s no one. I want to take six months off… go to Latin America. I may be back after that. I plan to… I’d like to… if you’re still interested. But that’s far from where I am now… but… you never know, you know?”
“I see, I see. Hum. Ok. Well… what about 8 more a year?”
“8 more a year?”
“I could swing 9, but that’s it.”
“9? Wow…”
“Think about it for a week. Maybe 9 and a half… We’d like to keep you. We’re getting big now. I want to go public soon. It’s a good time to stay, ok? There will be profit sharing. It’s gonna be big. We can move you into more auditing and document preparation.”
“Document preparation?”
A week later I have a raise and an even greater desire to leave. Only now, the 6 months are easily 12, they want me to train. Instead of now it’s THEN.
Surprisingly, the marine respects the raise and two weeks later we double. His wife has a friend and we’re on a different project, checking for radiation in navy dirt. A week after that we’re solo and he gets some digits and why not? We end that night by rolling some poor computer geek for 200. It was the first time I’d ever attempted, let alone thought, about that sporting violence.
As if feelings are waves, I crouch in anticipation of a way to feel about it, about things. I put my hand out and flick my tongue to catch the air, waiting to sense something about it from someplace hidden. Nothing is strong and if there are subtleties, I miss them.
I rise and look about, what will it take to quit for good? I wait and he’s my friend. Things are simple. The old man is a wink and a nod. I am a shrug and a stare. The soldier is a salute and a punch.