The Hiss Quarterly || Volume II, Edition 2
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None of This Happened
When Matt called, it was weird for at least two reasons. And it felt weird because it was. In the past everything was weird, so normal things felt weird and weird things felt normal. It was a breakthrough that came to us one night as the cops circled the building beneath us looking for the stolen gorilla. "Hey, Mark," he said. "How are you?" "I'm awright. You?" Matt still had Georgia stuck in his throat, and it pulled me right back into the neighborhood. I imagined him sitting at the old kitchen table. A pot of coffee dripped on the counter, and his cigarette turned to ash in the tray. Matt looked like me, but on steroids, and with a hairy neck and muscles, and without a beer gut. Ok, it was weird for three reasons, come to think of it. Where did he get my phone number? "Y'ever become a preacher?" I could hear the chuckle buried in his words. "I didn’t say I wanted to be a preacher. I said I wanted to be like a preacher." "Well?" "I don't want to talk about my neuroses. Where is everyone?" "Everyone's still in Atlanta, but we never see one another. Frank manages a nursery." "For babies? That's weird." "Not babies, plants. Him and Elizabeth got a kid on the way, though." "They made it." "Yup. They made it. Drew's still a librarian. Get this, he's at a Catholic school now." "That's weird." "Yup. I'm gettin' married here in a couple more months." "That's weird, too." "Yup." "Is it that waitress?" "Naw. We stopped see'n each other when the steakhouse closed down." "Thank God." "Yup." "I mean thank God the steakhouse closed down." "I know whutcha meant." We took potshots at conversation until we settled on the story of the weirdest night of my life. I told him my version, and he corrected me when I got something wrong. Then he elaborated on his side of the night, and I would correct him when he got something out of sequence. We talked around the truth enough to get pretty close, I think. Then sometimes we would just agree because neither one of us was sure. I think we understood that the gorilla was not just a gorilla and that the bus stop signs marked the way for things much bigger than commuters. But then, what did that make the house? We kind of thought it might have been a rest stop for ethereal travelers, chaotic saints and righteous fuckups, or at least I did, but it could have just been me. Besides, I'm too afraid of irony these days to point that sort of thing out. "Sometimes I still go by the house," Matt said. "Don't even live over there, but I still go by. Other night I pulled up--nobody's lived there for a while--and there wuz a car out in front. There wuz these two kids in there makin' out. I said, 'Hey kid, whut's your name?' 'Tom,' he said. 'Whut's it to you?' 'Did you know you wuz parked in front on the White Cone of Pleasure?' 'Whut?' I said, 'It points to a nexus point.' 'Whut?' I wondered if he'd known about everything if he still woulda parked there." I didn't know why Matt told me that story, but I guessed he went back to the house for the same reason I wrote this novel. It has to be talked about. Everything was terrible, stupid and meaningful. God was everywhere. There couldn't have been a God. We were obsessed. It was Southern Baptism coming home to roost. When I told him about this book he warned me that we could all be arrested. I promised to change the names and addresses of everyone involved and say up front that none of us had ever stolen anything or killed anyone. We're all normal now, and you must believe me when I tell you that none of this happened.
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