Desire.
Dear Neil,
Throughout my junior and
senior years in high school, I was obsessed by a creature of my own fanciful
imaginings, the FunkBot. The FunkBot is a robot of tragically singular intent:
it just wants to dance as funkily as possible. Where is the tragedy of funky
dancin’? The tragedy is born of the FunkBot’s self-awareness and persistance.
The FunkBot’s sole measure of utility is funk, but the robot also understands
its Sisyphean plight. It knows that it must be prepared to fix broken gears and
circuits to continue funkin’ around for fun. It understands the necessity of
securing a renewable source of energy, so that it can continue funking into the
future. Because audience reaction is a part of its funk-measuring algorithm,
the FunkBot prefers to funk alone, so there isn’t a crowd to become bored, but
in order to make the money it needs to survive, the FunkBot works all night at
sweaty clubs and socks its money away. The FunkBot understands the instability
of the human race and so learns how to do it all itself, from mining for the
various alloys it will need to turning the ores into the spare parts and
installing them, all whilst doing a funky box step. The FunkBot knows about the
impeding death of the sun and makes plans to avoid it in an intergalactic space
pod of some sort. The FunkBot knows about the eventual heat death of the
universe, and though he shudders at the thought of it, he will still work to
gather the last droplets of energy from a universe gone dark. And during its
whole funk-centric existence, as the FunkBot utilizes larger and larger
apparatuses to sustain his original dancing shell of a self, the returns on his
funky foot work increasingly diminish as the novel move counter triggers less
and less frequently. Truly, the FunkBot’s plight is tragic in its single
mindedness and ambition. The FunkBot is the worst kind of clear-headed junkie,
and I mourn for it preemptively.
Cut to a recent
Saturday, I’m flying down I-385 (the Blue Star Memorial Highway!) towards Columbia. Before that I was waking up in
order to go to my one o’clock job, and on my computer screen was an instant
message asking if I could come to Columbia. I left a note on my friends’ door
and my lab keys with my work partner. My head was still fuzzy with alcohol and
insomniac dreams. I kept rearranging the events of the previous night in my
head but made no progress. Driving past the Wal*Mart distribution center on
385, I shake my fist. I stay in the left lane going between 75 and 100 miles
per hour. There’s something magical and hypnotic about the interstate flowing
under your feet. I was trying to think about Columbia but failing. Seagull
Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her and Ladytron sang to me until the player’s
batteries died. I was alone with my thoughts and the rhythmic hum of the
asphalt and engine. When activated, the radio played songs that seemed to be
suddenly, inappropriately sexual. I arranged and rearranged. Thoughts, words,
images of the night before. One thousand embarrassments and ten times as much
regret. I tried to think of a more effective way to apologize, but all I
realized was the truth of “The Way of the Gun”’s quip,
“Your prayers are always answered---
in the order they’re received.”
Threed was a town full of
zombies. How Threed became full of zombies is a long, earthbound story that
involves Belch and Giygas and probably Pokey and the Mani Mani statue. At any
rate, I use these zombies to illustrate a point about human nature. Zombies, as
we all know, are undead and thus incapable of dying, and yet, they are
insatiably hungry for live human brains. No matter how imposing any foe is,
zombies will walk slowly and awkwardly toward it, if they believe that as a
result of the encounter they can soon be dining on the brains of the living.
Really, it’s their brain hunger that usually ends up getting them killed. They
charge the wrong guy and get hacked apart by a chainsaw or dismembered by a
point blank shotgun blast. Goodnight zombie. It would be almost sorrowful if
zombies weren’t creepy and evil.
You know, 3-liter Cokes are
really inconvenient. Sure, they’re cheaper on a per unit volume basis, but who
could possibly drink one before it becomes hot, flat, and disgusting? Such a
person would have to be a real glutton. I am that person, several times over.
It began my junior year of high school at Wal*Mart, where I noticed the
comparative value of the 3 liter bottle and purchased it. I left it in my
Mormon friend’s fridge, confident that no one would think to ask him for soda.
I drank a little bit over a day or two, but then one night, I proceeded to
drink the remaining 2.75 liters. By the end, it was a bitter fight between my
desire to finish and my desire to not throw up. But, I did finish. And piss a
lot. And I believe throw up a little. But I may be confusing that time with the
second time I bought a 3 liter Coke, again noting its per unit volume value.
The results were similar, though more deliberate. Then one final Saturday, my
senior year, I went out and bought a 3-liter from the convenience store just
for fun. It was extra-especially sickening, and it gave me the runs. Damn
value.
My theory is that we are
all composed of many zombies and FunkBots, vying for control of actions, so as
to maximize their particular kind of brains or funk. Our zombies demand food and
shelter and love and happiness and fun and sex and right religion and any
number of things. Perhaps as much as one can hope from a romantic relationship
is that it keeps one zombie fed, one robot dancing, so that you can devote the
remainder of your time to silencing the others. But it doesn’t work that well.
The zombies want new brains. The old brains grow cold. The novel move counter
isn’t being incremented; the dance is becoming lame. All these monsters and
robots inside of me and I never know which to feed at the expense of the
others. Or perhaps, I do, but fear the clamoring the other non-living beings
will make for being ignored. The alcohol zombie has been known to temporarily
silence the others, but the following morning, they only increase their clatter.
I’ve been told God’s FunkBot knows some highly jive-tastic moves, but He can’t
seem to make the bass loud enough to drown out the other rhythms. Or maybe it’s
my fault, I’m not sure.
Back in high school, there
was this joke for me and my friend, Shige, “If only you could deal with hunger
the way one deals with sexual longing.”
*rubs stomach in the
“good meal” motion*
If only it were that
simple, eh?
The following Sunday, I was
still sleeping off getting in at 3AM the night before. Church was a remote
possibility. And yet, my roommate while getting dressed asked if I wanted to
participate in a devotional around noon. Why not, I told him. His request was
probably in response to my loudly proclaiming on my hall the Friday night prior
that I would go to Hell for my actions. My friend, let’s throw out the name
Marcellus Wallace, and I were both quite drunk and ashamed of ourselves.
Unsurprisingly, given the circumstances. That afternoon, the instrument of my
shaming myself came by the hall, let’s call her, Sommerset O’Neal. She was
completely non-reactive about the whole affair, and in spite of my intentions
to have some sort of definitive discussion of the matter, she made no allusions
to any of it. Marcellus and I ended up just sitting around her dorm room later.
Nothing much happened. Too much nothing happened. And that’s pretty much how
it’s been every time I’ve run into her since then: Normal. Which is
disconcerting to me. At the devotional with my roommate, I proved myself
capable of keeping up with his response to my depravity. Actually, I think it
was a good thing, I need to play more beats for that ‘Bot anyway, but the whole
thing seemed somewhat set up on his part. There were too many verses about
grace for being a slap dash operation. I chipped in some of my own stuff out of
Romans as needed, and did the closing prayer, which he complemented. Well,
there you go.
I need to stop hating
roommates for being nice to me.
The prior Saturday
afternoon, I showed up at Shige’s house. We were waiting for the rest of the
posse to arrive from Charleston, so I played Earthbound, as he once more
challenged Super Metroid. We got the call and drive over. In the Wal*Mart
parking lot, Kate sat alone in her car as we drove up. We were hoping Erin
would come too, but she stayed behind for one poor excuse or another. Shige
showed us pictures from his trip to England, and we watched the original
Japanese version of Power Rangers, a tape left over from Shige’s childhood.
Strangely, the lips didn’t synchronize in Japanese either. A trip was organized
to Manifest Records, where I picked up Cornelius’ latest album, “Point.” The
conversation revolved around what makes something cool and the various merits
of different kinds of music. Back to Shige’s house. We talked about Shige’s
rising interest in fashion and went to go retrieve Angelface and his friend
from Cool Beans. There, breezes were shot, and the subtleties of Paper, Rock,
Scissors discussed. Nothing beats Rock. Angelface revealed to some
girly-friends there that he was going to live with Shige at Oberlin in Ohio for
the indefinite future. They took the news well. I am envious of Angelface’s
nomadic lifestyle. We all read The State’s
comic section and discussed. What is up with B. C. these days? Back at Shige’s
house, we watched “Totoro,” and Angelface tried to cuddle with me on the futon,
in that mock gay way that makes him seem more straight, somehow. I briefly
thought about Friday evening, then tried to focus on the movie. “Totoro” is
interesting in that it dispenses with many aspects of the traditional
children’s movie. 1) The dad is not only non-clueless, he believes in magic
more than the children. B) The romantic interest is left unresolved. III)
Nothing bad happens to the mom. And last) There is no plot to speak of: No
rising or falling action, just fun things that happen. It was very anti-Disney.
After that, the Gschoolers went to Shige’s folks’ restaurant, wherein we were
joined by another alumnus, Saswat. The meal was crazy cool, and Shige joshed
around with our waiter, his friend, Jason, whilst his sister waited the table
behind him. When we were all stuffed on rice and raw fish and conversation, the
evening began winding down. In the end, it was just me and Shige in the Waffle
House by his house, drinking coffee. That coffee is dangerous stuff. I was
increasingly distracted as the prospect of driving back loomed larger. I wrote
stuff on a napkin and shoved it in my pocket. In the end, it was 1AM and Shige
offered me a place to stay for the night, but I decided I needed to drive back,
for myself, if no other reason.
Look Neil, after this, it
gets a little graphic. If you want to skip to the end, well, I won’t blame you.
You know the general stuff already: a girl, alcohol, regrets. I’ll go ahead and
blow some dramatic tension, and let you know that nothing that I did could even
remotely get a girl pregnant, but still it's very personal and embarrassing.
The specifics are here mostly for my own recollection. So, stick around for the
anti-climax or go on to the denouement, it’s up to you, but don’t say you
haven’t been warned.
