The History of Writing (Part Three) A Couple Days Before....

Randal woke up the following morning in the motelroom he'd rented from Carmel, New York, in all his streetclothes except one of his shoes, having rolled around in the bed & bedclothes during the night and currently facedown but beginning to shift and his breath was just slightly yucky and the familiar exhaustion of an hours' long binge of beer & booze & marijuana and a pack of cigarettes he and Baxter had split after Baxter insisted on paying for it seemed to ebb & wobble in Randal's porous, pleasurably delirious skull. Jut after 9 AM, judging by the light. He'd come to know things like the cycles of the day after being released from a ten-year stint in a medium-security prison for his part in a semi-armed robbery (the gun wasn't loaded)  and he took a certain pleasure in knowing these things...or as much pleasure as Randal took in knowing anything as his lifepath seemed to bait-and-switch his very heart with promise & delay at every turn.  

It was good to be in a new room. It was about as clean as his own in Carmel and the shower had a respectable showercurtain and the handles & faucet on the bathroom's sink had something of their original luster if one accounted kindly for the sores of people who'd surely washed their hands & clothes in that sink over the years. And the carpet on the floor produced a coarse, equine sensation in Randal's feet that he was at odds to explain the deep pleasure of as often as he seemed to linger when going from one side of the room to the other for one thing or another. And there was a t.v. and a remote with two working batteries and the t.v. worked although he scarcely watched it except for the morning-news out of habit. 

He thought of the previous evening. Baxter was just a shade younger than him: 32-years-old. He'd been born in Louisiana, but moved with his parents and older sister (by a couple years) when he was 4 because his father had grown a little tired of the bar-scene as he began to near middleage and his mother supported every choice Eric Johnson made since they were barely out of high school... Baxter grew up fast & smart in the Five Burroughs. He knew his way around. He asked questions. He learned to tell the storytellers from the incorrigible (and usually boring) liars. He'd lost some friends to heroin in the 2020s. There was violence and danger and suspicion and cause for it and Baxter wasn't about to let any of that shit get in his way of a good time. He'd been seeing a girl named Rachel, on and off but mostly on, for close to a year and neither of them really liked the friends she brought around from work but sometimes they were okay and the two newest ones, Tabby and Cindy, intellectual 20-somethings were actually a cut above the rest. 

Randal thought on most of this as he rinsed the soap from his hair and toweled off and got dressed as the hour turned 10 AM. 

He didn't really know what he wanted to do. He wanted to do something. He could watch t.v. and that would be interesting no matter what was on because he could make a psycho/anthropological study of just about anything from shoe-commercials to independently-produced biographies of old pop-singers and rock-musicians but the idea fell short after he'd stood in front of the t.v. with the remote in his hand for a couple minutes, looking at his severe reflection on the t.v.-glass and decided no matter what he found, it'd end up making him feel restless.

As soon as the idea was ruled out, he figured why not call Baxter? Baxter's number was written on a scrap of menu-paper he put in his wallet the night before when their city-crawl brought them to a chain-diner/restaurant (again on Baxter's dollar) and Baxter was sure he didn't want Randal pulling an Irish Goodbye or slipping off into the night the way people like Randal sometimes do. 

He called  him. 

Baxter answered on the second ring. 

"Speak up." 

"It's Randal." 

"Randal! What's up, man? I guess you made it home, alright?" 

"Well...I'm in a motel. But it's pretty good." 

"You got any plans?" 

"I was actually wondering what you were doing." 

"I got a little shift for some of the afternoon at my tech job..." Suddenly a little bummed about that. "But it's basically just number-counting stuff. A monkey could do my job. You wanna hangout? I could call-in sick." 

Randal hadn't been asked to hangout with anybody in a long, long time. He felt something. It made him feel a little greedy. "Yeah. I'd really like that. Maybe we could get some weed and coffee or something." 

"There's this new record store in my neighborhood. Or at least it's kinda new. They sell all kinds of old records and shit. And there's a weed store right next to it. You wanna do that?" 

Randal asked for the store's address and they met in front of it about thirty minutes later. 

The weed store was slightly more crowded than it usually was for a weekend--plausibly because the Five Burroughs were becoming inundated to their metropolitan gills with the rumor/news of the reincarnated Troy Thompson (although virtually no one would say that) so Randal & Baxter had to wait in the line and the store's air-conditioner was temporarily on the fritz as they did a kind of bodycount on the drinks & what else consumed from the night before and they got to know each other the way Randal remembered it from his teens and early-twenties and when it was their turn Randal asked the guy at the counter what they had for $20 eighths and the guy told him three times and Randal kept forgetting the names of the ones he thought sounded a little better than the others until he finally just said to give him any two of them and surprise him and soon after paid with his bank card. 

He hadn't enjoyed spending money in a very, very long time. It was kind of a by-product of his years of institutionalization. In Carmel, especially through the latter half of the 2020s, whatever you bought, however much you thought about it and it was something you wanted or needed, it felt like you could've spent the money better in some other way, even though you had no idea on what, and by 2033 he wanted less and less of anything, content to simply avoid as many bummers & hassles in a day as possible. 

Going through the record store, that was also a little more crowded than usual, the names of bands and solo acts and rappers and rap-groups re-entered the 43-year-old's consciousness with extraordinary delight. He remembered more names than he would've ever guessed he'd forgotten. He was very good with names: it was something almost since puberty tha the could do with the easy grace of a middle school student reciting the alphabet of the Pledge of Allegiance. It came back to him now with the slow, confident push of poetry.... 

When they finally left the place, it was just a quarter after One and Baxter was still thirsty* for Randal's company(*we know that's not how it got started: it's slang, fuckhead. Use it how you want.) And so they dipped into a grocery near Baxter's apartment and got osme fresh coffee and something to eat and when they got up the elevator and into Baxter's room, Baxter told Randal he could do whatever he needed in the bathroom while Baxter made some phone calls and the afternoon became the later-afternoon and somewhere way out there the moon was hiding like a scary hot-air balloon and still, of course, no God nor Universal Creator. 

****

After both apologized for their atrophied social skills, Randal and Baxter got into talking about the various things about people that annoyed them. Back then, you couldn't really expect a lot of transparency from people. It was, after all, still the recently Post-Trump Years, and that Chief Ambassador of Fuckheads Worldwide had only been replaced with some Ivy League University Hispanic-American plenty eager to be culled from a lame assortment of Republicans and Democrats that no one, we, the creators of this document, could really tell you any strength of valor or sense of direction to distinguish them from their competition. (And that's how President ____ came into office.) No one wanted to talk about wage-theft. No one wanted to talk about dreams. In deeply/profoundly close-knit social circles, it was sometimes referred to as the Intimacy Crisis. It were as though with Trump's exit, he brought all the grief and embarrassment and massive internecine contempt of being an American with him. But of course history never works like that. History is a matter of sustained consensus. We can turn back the pages to George Bush the Second & Richard Cheney (if not far, far before even that) and we will find that the Deliberate Ignorance of the Majority has reliably undermined the Nobility and Generosity of the Few. (Hate to say John Figler was wrong, but his careful optimism has yet to enjoy its Day of Honor.) 

At any rate, Randal and Baxter eventually got to talking about girls & girlfriends and Baxter was telling Randal about his girlfriend, Rachel. 

"I mean, she works in a kitchen. She's a junior supervisor, or some such thing. It's busy, but it covers the rent. There's always a lot of new kids coming and going and I think she likes that. She used to want to be a school teacher, but she won't even talk about that anymore. There's no money in schools. And she won't be bitter. She can't just say something disgusts her..." 

"I think people get that from their parents," Randal said. "They say you adopt your parents' values if you recognize it or not. Either that, or you openly hold them in contempt and take your chances living against whatever society you think--whatever society they represent." 

"Is that what happened to you?' 

"I never really knew my mother after I was 14. She divorced my dad almost on a whim. They never really yelled or hit each other, but they never really talked to each other, or me either for that matter, either. It was after she left, he got really withdrawn from things--or that was when I noticed how withdrawn he'd probably always been...and...I went to college to study psychology and we grew further and further away from each other after that." 

"How'd you end up in jail again though?" 

"That was so fucking stupid. I was being a fucking idiot. I had friends in college and stuff, but by some year it was like every conversation turned into an argument and somehow I was always in the wrong. I left Valhalla after I did some Google searches for homeless shelters  and since I dind't want to go all the way to the city--since I didn't want to come down here; that's funny--I went to this other place...Poughkeepsie. I hated it the first night and then I hated it more and more for a week until I just said fuck-it and started sleeping in the woods. I'd sleep there and drink and smoke weed for most of the day since I really couldn't focus on anything else that felt like worth the struggle. After a month or two, I think, is when I met these guys I thought were my friends when I ate lunch in a soup-kitchen sort of place when I was chasing this girl that didn't really want anything to do with me. One of them, this... I actually forget his name, now. I think I tried to forget his name because it didn't really matter that I got caught and none of them did. I mean...fuck: the gun wasn't even loaded." 

"Damn," said Baxter. "You've had a crazy life." 

"It doesn't always feel as exciting as when I say it. Most of the time I'm just glad to get out of work and go home and lay down and not have to deal with anybody." 

They went on talking like that and the afternoon became the evening outside of Baxter's window. Rachel, Baxter's girlfriend, called from her job around Seven. She said that Cindy and Tabby were working and they wanted to do something special. "Okay. I met this dude at a bar last night that I been hanging out with all day. We'll see you when you get here." 

**** 

The expression on Rachel's face was nothing less than effusive and giddy. She and two other girls, maybe about 25- 26-years-old, a little shy, a little cautious. "Long time, no see," she said. Baxter with the healthy suspicion of something too good to be true. (But what?) 

It was close to 8 o'clock and the night was all over the Lower East Side like the immortally temporary banner it is, not quite hopeful but utterly untouched with fear. 

"This is Cindy, and this is Tabatha, but she likes people to call her Tabby as long as they're not being jerks about it," she said as she indicated a girl with neck-length auburn hair and a somewhat athletic face with freckles and containing darkish brown eyes, and a girl with recently-dyed black hair held back in a ponytail who could've passed for Amy Adams if you just walked past her in a line of people only she only weighed about 5 or 10 more pounds. "We brought vodka!" 

"I'll have to clean some glasses," said Baxter, stepping aside to let the trio into the apartment with their 2 liters of Harmonie Spirits, moving graceful as bully swans toward the sink-counter in Baxter's cozy-but-reasonable kitchen. 

Randal was a little nervous. The blood-energy that manifests out of spending a whole day with a stranger was suddenly challenged by the addition of more strangers. He wanted to make a good impression. He stood up from the comfort of the recliner and went into the kitchen. 

"This is Randal," Baxter said. "He's from... Where was it again?" 

"Carmel, lately. But a lot of places before that." 

"Right. He's down here on like, business-like reasons." 

"That's..." said Randal. "That's not exactly it." A handful of thoughts oscillated in his thoughts. "I'm here because... Do people still say 'fool's errand'?" 

"I haven't heard that one in Forever! I know what a fool's errand is." 

"It's when you just waste time in some organized way," said Rachel. "I don't know if anyone says it anymore. I can't remember the last time I heard someone say it." 

"It sounds like most of the crap we have to do at the restaurant," said Cindy. 

"I hate all the extra stuff they make us do," said Tabby. "It's not like it accomplishes anything or makes anything work any faster." 

"That's micromanagement," said Randal. "A fool's errand is like...like an atavistic endeavor." 

"Whoa," said Rachel, "check out Dino-thesaurus. Is your fool's errand applying for a job at NYU?" 

Not realizing she was teasing him: "I gave that shit up lifetimes ago." 

Not missing a beat: "Join the club, Randal. I'm just messing with you. I know what an atavistic endeavor is." 

Tabby asked: "What's an atavistic endeavor?" 

"Yeah, what is an atavistic endeavor," said Baxter. 

"It's like, trying to save as many babies from a burning building as you can even though you don't have to. Or like building something really high just to see how high it can go." 

"Or like trying to make your rent in the LES and have a good time and not get killed in the process." 

"Is it really that expensive around here?" said Randal. "I've heard of that but I always thought it was kind of exaggerated." 

"It's fucking ridiculous," said Baxter. "Even with your UBI you have to have 7 or 9 side-hustles on top of whatever 30 to 40 hours you can get washing dishes if you can't get a decent job in a smartphone factory or one of your parents is someone in Gollander Industries." 

"Speaking of which," said Rachel, "what's up with those glasses?" 

"Coming right up, babe," said Baxter. He went into one of the cabinets at the far-end of the sink-counter and pulled down five glasses setting them on the discount marble put in by the previous tenant/s  and he told Randal to open the freezer-door of the refrigerator and pull out some ice and Randal did so with great yet subtle purpose, twist-cracking the tray before moving it to where Baxter took it and started filling the glasses. 

"What do you do in Carmel?" Tabby asked Randal. 

"Not much," he said. "I work in a supermarket and have to go to these absurd rehabilitation programs when they tell me to." 

"Does everyone in Carmel have to do that?" 

'They might as well.' "No. Just us idiots who've fucked up their lives as bad as mine." 

"How did you Fuck your life up?" 

"Getting caught doing what anyone woulda done," said Baxter, passing his new friend the first glass. 

"And what would that be?" 

Sipping the vodka, not usually a fan but relishing this one with robust gratitude, "Me and some guys, when we were basically kids, robbed a grocery store. They ran faster than I did." 

"That sucks," said Cindy. "You musta had to go to jail, right?" 

"Originally, about ten years. Then, when I got out, they put me in a shelter where I was supposed to prove I could earn an apartment, and when I was in there I started muling amphetamines for someone and got caught doing that and I had to go back to prison for another 5 years, except things were getting more crowded with Trump in office and since I never caused any problems they had to figure I was just a dumbass who wasn't any good at making friends and they let me go in three." He sipped his drink. 

"Did--" 

He raised an index-finger. "I went back to the shelter; this time got caught with someone else's  narcotics and did another two years--it was only two years because my public defender knew his shit--for once--and since my fingerprints weren't on the dope they arrested me for, it was technically circumstantial and if the judge wasn't such a fuckhead of a hardass I wouldn't've got any time at all." 

"Is my man the Gonzo Investigator, or what?" 

"You should teach a class on How to Not Go to Jail," said Cindy. 

"No one listens to me." 

"I'm listening," said Tabby, having gone to the fridge to look inside while everyone was talking and now moving a little closer to him, her sex undeniable and pure. 

He was nervous, but in a good way. He hadn't slept with anyone since the first time he got out of prison. He didn't know what to say. 

"Well, what'd you guys do all day?" said Rachel. 

"Mostly just sat around here smoking herb and talking about random stuff." 

"Random Randal," said Tabby, sliding a little closer to him by the counter, her perky breasts looking good beneath her server-outfit. 

Rachel and Cindy liked him, too; only Cindy had just got off a string of bad dates and Rachel was obviously with Baxter, again. 

"I try to not say more than I have to anymore. It always causes headaches when I talk for more than 2 minutes at work: either for me or somebody else." 

"I wouldn't mind listening to you talk," said Tabby. She downed her drink and held out the water-slivers to Baxter. 

"Everybody?" he said, downing his own before setting the empties beside the bottle of HS on the counter. 

The other girls drank their drinks but seemed less eager to continue. Rachel had an idea. She had a pretty strong impression about why Tabby wanted to come and now her notion had been confirmed. "Hey, Bax?" 

"Yeah?" 

"Let me talk to you in the livingroom for a second?" 

The two girls and Randal stayed in the kitchen, Randal and Tabby sipping the vodka and Cindy going over to look at the remaining bottle, lifting it up from the counter and holding it up to where it'd catch the light from the ceiling-light, as if to discern some secret it possessed. None of them, of us, was quite sure how to proceed. 

When Rachel and Baxter returned, Rachel said, "Hey, Cindy, didn't you want to pick-up some dry-cleaning before you forgot again?" 

It was a code. She was trying to give Randal and Tabby some space so Tabby could fuck him in private. You needed privacy for something like that. 

Not missing a beat: "I think they're open all night." 

"So, let's go." 

"How far is it?" said Randal, because sometimes he could be a real putz. 

But Tabby had caught him. She wasn't letting him go anywhere. Once it was all cleared up, Baxter led the girls out the door and told Randal not to make too much of a mess of things and open a window afterwards. 

He was as nervous as if he'd lived two lifetimes as a virgin, even though he didn't even get to his 21st birthday as one. 

After Tabby had gotten what she wanted out of him, she'd call Rachel and they'd finish drinking the the vodka. 

****