Wonder and Joy
by Joel Van Noord
Two months ago I was pushing eighty-pound boxes onto a fast moving conveyor belt. Today, I’m baiting hooks and jumping off this skiff into brown water pulling fish from nets and driving north to sell them to SB buyers. In two more months perhaps I’ll be a cook in a line, throwing burgers and fries.
It’s hard not to feel but it’s worth the effort.
Three years hence maybe I’ll be in Iraq or Malawi. I feel weak, often awkward. However, joy is often coupled with contentment.
Everything is always present and it’s a job to elucidate and dampen; reason is a vehicle. Emotions are what I’m talking about.
I lie. But please continue. People are only memories in my head. I can’t be positive of their existence. They only matter in the ways I use them to effect myself. So, I have this friend and I knew him in New York, we lived near Morningside Heights, just close enough to Harlem.
He was born in the city and lived there until one day his girlfriend started dropping his things from windows. The dress shirts opened and fluttered down; it was comical until his clarinet bounced off the concrete and shattered.
Then he left. Three bags and his guitar and he was gone and screaming, “FUCK YOU!” to the girl he’d shared a bed with for over three years. He got off the concrete island and in Pennsylvania it slowed as he rose over the western edge of the state. It snowed and the trucks were dense. There was an ocean of salt on the road and his washer fluid froze and broke. He streaked the salt and it was like being drunk.
So he turned his eyes to the rear-view mirror and drove from there. Keeping the vehicle within the lines, after the fact, adjusting and nearly bouncing off the massive wheels of FedEx rigs.
Things were fine until he heard the gnash of angry metal. Sparks erupted in the mirror and he saw a truck lose its cargo. The end of the trailer bit into the highway and tore its way to a crumbled mess in the wet snow between the dirty highways.
He put the pedal down and watched the scene disappear over a guardrail as he curved a ravine.
In that first day he leaped across the Mississippi and forgot about the east. He stopped in St Louis and got out of his car. Unfolded himself and took his guitar to bum a few dollars on the street. Under the arch he passed and looked at the river. He walked a block and looked for people. The lights grew brighter and he saw a sign. Went in and it was quiet.
No one barred his way and when he pressed down on the keys no one thought to stop him. With his left hand he laid out the spacious gangster line of 50 Cent’s In Da Club, higher on the ivory he tickled a fast percussion. The crowd was piqued and they smiled and rose their glasses. There was a mic in front of his face and he spoke into it. There was a cup on top of the long black piano and a woman walked forward and put a dollar in it, attached to the dollar was the name of a song.
His voice started in classical hip-hop, with little variance but soon he was raising it exaggeratingly and keeping it higher than usual, then curling the rhymes together. The crowd liked it and as soon as a collective chorus of, “I’m inda havin’ sex I ain’ inda makin’ luv,” could be heard he moved his hands to collapse the group.
The people were strung out on the edge of abandon and he left them there. Then he reached a hand into his throat to torture his vocals before he stared with a Tom Waits pirate-song. He forgot the words so he sang about drinking a beer full of rusty nails and eating packs of cigarettes.
More dollars and more scraps of paper came in and he played what they wanted: Neil Diamond; and he held their chorus out with his hand out and flexed to the crowd. They strained with him: DEH DEH DEH! Then a fat man with ‘College’ written on his shirt walked up and my friend, Laurence, moved; collected his singles and shuffled along as Billy Joel opened the night again.
Laurence put his elbow on the bar and an older woman bought him a drink and talked about the piano. He drank it and he bought her one and after three more he left, curled up into his car and tried not to think.
He woke and pushed it. Dipped into Oklahoma and through the Texas pan-handle and began to rise into New Mexico. Night fell in Albuquerque and rare alpine snow came down. He pushed on and the wind howled as his steering wheel shivered at 80 miles an hour.
Like the red pulsating treasure between glossy fresh legs, he chased the western sun and when he got here, I shook my head. I didn’t want him to come and I didn’t ask him to.
“Is this a vacation? What’s your deal?” I said.
“This place is tinier than I thought it’d be.” He said.
“What’s going on?” I said.
“Did you know Alex got married and bought a house?”
“Of course not.”
“What do you wanna do?”
“I don’t know, I don’t think Becky’s going to like you here.”
“She’ll get over it.”
He went on about old friends and I didn’t want to hear about it. I told him to not speak about that but he continued.
It was a friend’s birthday that night and we went to an over-priced bar with a dress code near the promenade. He mingled and danced wildly and I watched girls drop their jaws at him and shuffle away as he sidled around their curves.
At about four that night I woke and he was in our room. Becky was toward the wall and he said, “I’m lonely.”
“What?”
“I’m lonely.”
“So.”
He looked down and backtracked. I’m almost positive this was not a dream.
I went surfing the next day and he wanted to come.
“You shouldn’t come.”
“Why not?”
“Why would you?”
He didn’t answer and followed me.
I used to like talking to him. That has changed. But, I decided to say something as we walked; he was wearing my summer suit and had my 6-10 board. He could hardly carry the thing. It would be stupid to watch him out there falling off it.
“I try to look for excitement.” I said without looking at him.
“Sure, why not? Is it hard?” He answered.
“No, it’s not hard. I guess I didn’t mean excitement, I sort of meant fulfillment.”
“Sure, sure. Is that hard?”
“It’s very difficult for me right now.”
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t know Laurence. I have no stability and no faith.”
“Huh. Do you need faith?”
“You should go home.”
“It’s a far drive. I doubt my car could make it. It barely made it here.”
“You check your oil?”
“Yeah I should do that.
“Don’t get run over by anyone.”
I said and we stepped down onto the sand. He watched me and I strapped on the leash and stretched. He mimicked and the water was cold on my feet. The waves were small and it was crowded.
People define themselves by the activities they do without salary. But when you’re unemployed, it all seems silly. A basic need of survival is not met and to ignore that for another pursuit seems unreasonable.
So we were out there and easily paddled through the white. Then, for some primal, emotional reason I kept going. He was following me and I just kept paddling, further and further; he had his head up and was paddling hard to keep up. I kept going and started along parallel to the beach. He did the same and soon we passed the pier. Long fishing poles stretched out and boats were just a touch outside of us. Kite-surfers were tracing the surf and moving in and out. I kept paddling and he kept following.
We left my beach and entered the stretch to the south. This too we passed and my arms grew tired but I kept going and he did too. This was how people drifted out and died. Insane things compound and precipitate tragedy. It was calm this day, though, and we simply paddled to the point and then in. Boaters bobbed out and in and looked at us like the idiots we were. The tide was coming in and that was lucky. If it wasn’t we wouldn’t have been able to enter the inlet. But we did and paddled slow and stupid. Just inside the rocks I headed in and got out. It was almost dark and I hadn’t had a wave. He followed me and we didn’t say a word as we went back along the boardwalk.
I changed and showered and Becky was there with her textbooks out, concentrating hard with her face pinched in reason. She feigned a greeting and I don’t think she’d said one word yet to Laurence.
The bathroom faces the Pacific and the sun comes in and the high window, where the soap shimmers, is foggy. There is beauty in this bathroom and usually I am feeling good, showering after a session, feeling a movement through what is stationary; but that afternoon was so absurd. As the water stopped hissing I could hear his sluggish guitar chords, his unusual tunings and his sad, sad, and ironic voice.
We dressed that night and Pete is out with his orthodontist girlfriend as well as Mick. Laurence introduces himself and I often tell myself, ‘find that wonder, find that joy; keep that wonder, keep that joy.’ It is my mantra, so to speak. It’s new and I am forcing desires on myself. Emotion is the devil and it twists and I can’t remember even though I mouth the words. I drink and my mind is empty save for two large metal balls that roll around and bump into each other.
The bartender is not skinny. She has a thickness and she won’t serve me as I lean over the bar with my 20-dollar bill folded lengthwise between my fingers. She fixes fluorescent drinks and scoops ice and wont look at me. Every guy is an example of another guy. There is a dress code and everyone wears a white button up of the same cut.
The dj is in a glass booth behind us and he looks 40. There are two other people in there with him and they are smiling out at us. A screen in the front of the room flashes psychedelic displays of the name of the club. I look to Laurence as ‘Like a Virgin’ is mixed into techno.
“Alright, Laurence? You ready?” I ask him and he just looks at me. Then shrugs.
“You ready?” I ask again.
“Sure buddy.” He says and I like him in this moment. So I reach out and he takes my hand. I give him a meaningless look, curling the right side of my mouth and widening my eyes.
“Let’s do it.” I say and I pull him as I start off in a run, somehow he understands this absurdity and we bowl into the crowd and people don’t fall like pins. We bumble into three as they adjust and bend and turn with confusion and hatred. I run into the back of a chubby Asian girl with a sagging chest and a low cut shirt. She gasps and Laurence has hit some linebacker who turns and hits me, for some other reason. I start laughing and crying and I’m still holding onto Laurence’s hand.
I let go and walk away before the bouncer in the red shirt approaches. I was close to understanding; the shadow of Laurence does not help.
Becky gives me a hug and this feels good. We leave and Laurence is mixed up in there somewhere. He comes to knock on the door that night but I don’t let him in. It’s late and in the morning he’s sitting against the wall under the window, I walk past and drop a quarter in front of him. He gets up and follows me and I shop for groceries. I don’t look at him and eventually he gets the point after I feed him for a few more days.
I forgot about him. I didn’t see his car around much anymore. But then, I saw him along the promenade with his guitar, singing. I dropped in a quarter and had a hat on low. I looked like everyone else in a tee shirt, reefers and jeans. I walked across the street and stood by a table and watched him. I haven’t seen him after that.