The wasp in the jar

My little candlelight glow

He is still singing

The soft machines

They were stainless, people

With the eyes and lips of my family

He stands strait

A little dark, but peaceful

He always looks you in the eye

His eyes are blue

His hair is blonde

Though strangely never wind-swept

Everything about him is still

Not perfect

Stagnant.

You don’t quite fit him

You grey eyed outcast

Here’s another,

Relaxed and witty

Scruffy beard and English cap

He always wears that cocky grin

Like a scarf, to keep out the cold

But he never laughs

Stagnant.

You don’t quite fit him

Stupid boy

Here’s another,

He’s a romantic

She’s always holding his hand

Smiling at him

Like he’s perfect

But we know that he’s not

He’s stagnant.

They’re all stagnant.

And you’ll never be him either

(Thank God)

Here’s another,

Look at me

Another persona

Attention seeking missile

And who are you,

Oh target?

Another missile?

Fired by a man in a magazine

Or a trimmed suit.

But we never move

Stagnant.

Justin C. Trauger

In Pennsylvania there are two large clean fields of corn. Cutting through them like a scar is a dull scratchy patch of tall grasses and shrubs interrupted by the occasional small tree, its branches stretched wide in the open air, a challenge to the cruel summer heat which seems to constantly beset the place. Aside from a careless spattering of wildflowers there is nothing immediately wonderful about this wild garden but when one takes the time to wander in, explore the littered ground with his bare feet and perhaps find a clear place to sit among the grasshoppers and discrete orange butterflies he would find piles of broken cement and blacktop with protruding, hostile pieces of steel; the unpleasant memories of Wal-Mart’s construction.

 Twenty yards away the awful giant stares thoughtlessly in the other direction as if it is waiting to devour lost travelers on 248. The wonder, I suggest, comes when one looks through the eyes of the field at the brutish blot on the horizon. The field, “The White Trash Temple” we call it (the perfect band name), has such wildly relative beauty like muddy water in a desert. Who owns it we may never know but we like to think that such an idea can never really be owned unless it is in the soul of every rejected son or daughter. At least, this is our response to the arrogant “No Trespassing” signs.

        This is where I find myself as a soft breeze of earthy lavender kisses my naked chest, it carries a blue smell. Not a glum blue like the faces of the shoppers in Wal-Mart but a soft patient blue, like the space between the clouds, some of the stitches on my ripped jeans or the face of my dear friend Genevieve. Well… more than dear perhaps, and more than a friend but that is how we described our relationship. She prefers Jen, but this is a disservice to the goddess sitting beside me. Jen would smile when I glanced at her, she would laugh at my mediocre jokes or tighten her face in what she imagined was a discerning way when I tried to drag her into another hopeless piece of philosophy. Genevieve is different; she doesn’t smile with her lips until her whole body is caught up in it. Scarcity creates value and sometimes things are more meaningful in their absence.

            Today her outspokenly red hair spills halfway down the back of the white sundress that stretches effortlessly around her small body. She is tall and elegant though without the drastic curves which most women covet. It gives a refreshing illusion of childhood which is somewhat defeated in her posture and face. This may be what draws us together the most, in this constantly moving world where the biggest fish dominate the food-chain and the most colorful bird finds a mate. I am more moved by the subtle things. I may act arrogant and crass but Genevieve saw me miss a heartbeat when God ordered the man to crush the serpent under his heel.

            Risk has a hook in me too; just like her. We got “reckless” tattooed on our backs and swore to live every day until we died. For months we were reeling from the freedom. The summer nights adopted the stars in our eyes and we roamed every day, far from Olympus. That fire is cooling now and we warm our hands on the embers.

            Genevieve’s slight figure shivers. “We haven’t jumped off a cliff in a while. Why don’t we do that stuff anymore?”

            Her delicate face moves in the right way when she speaks, like a song. Her green eyes become more prominent while her crisp jaw and shallow cheeks take turn dancing with her pale pink lips. She doesn’t wear makeup, of any kind, ever. I wear makeup, sometimes, when I’m around my family or my peers, but not her. She’s better than me, but who’s judging?

            Her voice is crystal clear though not intrusive or authoritative. Like a small mountain stream. We’ve been sitting a while in silence so, like a tired through-hiker, I take my fill.

            “Because we suck.”  Couldn’t I have said something more open-ended, and why do I have to be so dry? I do suck.

            “True story.”  She looks back up at the clouds and nods her head. The pattern of fine muscles in her long thin neck ripples. I’m staring but she doesn’t mind. She just doesn’t understand why. Well, maybe Genevieve does, but Jen certainly doesn’t. Maybe I don’t either.

            A slight flex of her tricep and a clench of her jaw telegraph the attack. She’s a dancer and in that grace she throws one leg over the other and twists her core to direct her weight over me in a side-mount. I’m a fighter and my instincts go for a loose arm bar as I drop my back onto the thorny plants and gravel but her hands are already on my shoulders. Her magnificent eyes are two inches from mine now and they laugh as I slowly come out of my jujitsu guard. Her soft warm body is pressed hard against my ribcage and chest. Our hearts beat together far beyond the blue breeze and the moment.

            “Or…we could just do this.” I speak softly, hoping my breath is ok. Hers I can’t identify. I guess it smells like alcohol… but she doesn’t drink. My body goes rigid with anticipation as our mouths glide closer together. Finally my lips make contact, but it’s not electrifying like it should be. I feel something cold, hard and lifeless.

                                                    ***

            I fall into reality like icy water. My heart is the only one beating. This is why I don’t care for cliff jumping anymore, this is why I drink, and the rich numbing smell isn’t coming from her lips but the lip of my glass, recently full of dark lager. The last of it slides down my throat. I feel it but it doesn’t matter. I can’t feel her body anymore or recall anything that matters.

            I’m in a sad, stale bar. I feel the unforgiving scratched wood chair beneath me. I’m sitting too close to the edge and the pressure on my legs makes my feet numb. Fuck it. That’s the message of the grey cement walls, the small, dark puddle watching the leaky ceiling and the old TV in one corner as it vomits out a reruns of pointless shows. I can’t hear the dialogue over the rain and the traffic outside, only the scratchy wiz of the electronics that keep it alive.

            I look at the empty glass and remember the dive. One cliff I didn’t want to jump. I always swore I’d stare death in his black eyes, laughing but if we’re being honest all I did was cry. I was pushed from the edge and either the tears or the saturation of color has dropped a little every day since. She was driving too fast. He was too drunk. Fate was just a bit too inexorable. I know “shit happens” and I wouldn’t mind except that sometimes wonderful things happen too and then they’re gone before you figure out why you couldn’t stop staring.

            Since the winter, the news and the funeral (which came first I don’t remember) life had been going on, I suppose, but I wouldn’t know firsthand. I’ve been here. For three months on this bar chair. I lack the motivation to contemplate suicide. I go every day from work to the bar but the only place I ever show up is the bar, about four drinks in. There are smiles but no faces, people but no names. “Sometimes things are more meaningful in their absence.” what a load of bullshit! In their absences, things simply are not. It is inherent in the idea of absence. There was and now there is not. To the few left in my life I may seem just fine but Genevieve would have known better.

            I need a smoke. Not like a nicotine addict, not a cool chemical rush. I need to feel something in my lungs. I used to love the air, you can taste it if you concentrate hard enough, but now the only time I recognize that I am inhaling is if the back of my throat burns.

            I stumble out the dark green door. The hydraulics slam it behind me with a sound like the clip of a hoof the way the echo of the swinging neon sign catches up. I am aware of my undershirt getting wet but I can’t feel the chilled spring rain. I am similarly ignorant of the scratch of my lighter’s flint on my thumb and the burning of the palm I raise deftly to keep the water off my small, sweet, cigarette. I do feel, with some pain, the way the white paper snuggles the tobacco, the way Genevieve would wear her white sundress.

             I drag in a lung-full of the poison. This, I imagined, is how Socrates felt, sipping his hemlock. Knowing this life he tried to romance had turned on him and it was building a Wal-Mart on his noble dreams. The difference, I see, is Crito cannot mend my debts. While Socrates joined the dead with a small debt to the living I am left alone amidst the mocking sound of beating hearts and it strikes me, I may owe a rooster to Genevieve.

***

  I am leaning on the bitter glass window of my car. The heavy breezes of fall carry the crisp scent of dying leaves mixed with Wal-Mart’s pungent breath of fried food and plastic. The end of my long wool scarf bats playfully at the arm of my black leather jacket. I am facing the beast, Wal-Mart that is. People crawl ceaselessly in and out of the holes in its ugly face though the parking lot in which I stand seems to be thinning out. An assortment of similar metallic colors murmur as the cars they are trapped on move in and out. A white sedan slips into the space behind me. My attention is on Wal-Mart so the first I see of it is the somber shadow cast by the dull traffic light behind us.

I hear the door hiss open then slam shut followed by Genevieve’s annoyed voice, “Fuck my life.”

            I turn around and see her wearing a short black trench coat over navy blue jeans and a yellow turtle-neck sweater. She pulls a cigarette pack from her pocket, fumbles it open and lifts one to her mouth. I don’t immediately place it in the dim light but there’s something horribly off-putting about her face tonight.

            “Genevieve, you’re wearing makeup?”

            Her voice is burnt with exasperation and, dare I imagine, a whisper of scorn, “Why the hell can’t you call me Jen like everyone else?”

            “I’m sorry I can’t just conform like some people seem to be doing.”

            “Fuck the machine.” She says this with little conviction but she does come over and give me a quick hug. I try for what I hope to be a “cute” smile.

            “I love you.”

            “I just need to get high.”

            I open my cluttered trunk and dig in a pocket of my old Alice frame pack for a four ounce bag of purple Kush. The familiar sour, meaty smell drifts out as I unseal it and pull out a large colorful bud.

            “We going back to the field to do this right?”

            “I’d rather just sit in my car.”

            “Lame.”

            We take our seats and I break the bud thoughtlessly onto a crisp little sheet of white rolling paper. I bend over slightly to lick the end and roll it tightly between my thumb and fingers.

            “Got a light?’

            “Sure. Is that nice and tight?”

            “That’s what she said.”

            Her obligatory laughter is refreshing if unwarranted. It’s interesting to me how little we appreciate laughter. I am convinced; man cannot find a warmth like this by a campfire on a cold night in the woods. The sensation is not an egotistical rush at the success of our turned phrase or even a selfless enjoyment of the others satisfaction. There is something in the music.

            I spark the joint and as we commence, calm light slowly rises in the car. Everything is notably more wonderful. Not because anything was added to it but more like some sinister veil was lifted away. A piece of the equation for nihilism has been burnt in the fires of our reckless disregard for the number or quality of our brain-cells.  What are brain cells anyway? Science can theorize and draw out equations but at the end of the day, when we all take that final breath, all it comes to is a fraction less weight for my pole bearers and smile on my pasty dead lips. This is the smile of a man who has been utterly amazed by the complexion of his own toes or horrified beyond rational fear by blue flashing lights.

            Genevieve’s voice cracks through the wonderful silence; “Sorry I’m being a bitch, it’s just…I don’t know…”

            In response I lean over the cup holders to kiss her on the forehead. The relieved smile that spills across her face almost overwhelmingly infectious. A moment later she continues; “If it weren’t for this stupid tattoo I’d have a better job.”

            “If it weren’t for my better job I’d have a soul.” I respond jokingly.

            “I know money will never make me happy but it’s pretty damn convenient.”

            “Nothing easy is worthwhile.”

            She laughs again, “I think you said that wrong”

            “I think everyone else says that wrong.”

            “Oh, shut up.”

…silence…

            Minutes later I can no longer deny a burning concern so I turn to Genevieve, her eyes glassed over and frail body sprawled on the reclined passenger seat, “Genevieve, do you still love your life or do you just love your life when combined with THC?”

            She doesn’t answer so I continue, “I just don’t want you to form an emotional dependency because I for one love your life in any state of mind.”

            “If you love me so much then why don’t we see each other more? Why don’t you still write poems about me? Your poems are all so dark…”

            After a moment of failed thought I answer, “Your life is the greatest poem ever written and you know I’m busy with my new job…”

            “Excuses and hallmark bullshit.” She immediately identifies.

***

She was right of course. Something was missing. I was failing her every minute. She was drowning while I stood by, just dreaming philosophizing. I see it all too clearly now. Out on the rain-soaked street in front of the bar I probably couldn’t walk a straight line but my hindsight is twenty-twenty.

            The idea caught me so entirely that I could barely move. Something must be done, and now, to atone for my sins. I watch hopelessly from the grip of this suffocating desire as my drunk body stumbles into my car. It is a moment of brief terror and a wave of wrongness as my engine grunts to life. As my car slips out into the wet street my radio comes to life with the warm, wise voice of Leonard Cohen. It didn’t matter where I’d been in life or what was happening, Cohen always knew my name. Every song seemed to be infinitely relevant to every situation. The wonderfully dreadful chorus of Hallelujah now fills the close space of my car. I am on the edge of something, something black, and Cohen is here with me singing on the reflection of a tear in worship of his cruel God.

            The wet pavement slides beneath me while the colored lights of town and traffic paint a horribly cool drama out on the fine sheen of water. I imagine as I pass a side road that I saw a police car but this knowledge comes without the fear it typically would. Let them try to stop me. I will fight the fuckers and maybe die trying. Die on my feet like I promised Genevieve. I used to disagree with The Man, rebuke his stifling structures and markets in the temple, but now I hate Him. The level of passion is almost beautiful. My blood boils and turns black when I think about the gears turning slowly in our machine, wet with Genevieve’s blood. 

            I call for the pigs but nothing happens. Cohen and I tunnel, alone, through the night until I see a beacon on the horizon. The insultingly blue sign for Wal-Mart. my car slips unnoticed into a space toward the back of the parking lot and I fall out. A lump gathers in my throat when the music stops. It is an injustice how suddenly after I remove the key.

            I stumble in silence toward the beast. His eyes menace me so I hold up my chin in the rain and imagine a sword in my hand. I can almost feel the weight of the leather-bound hilt resting comfortably on my palm until I come to the slippery crosswalk. I am in its reach now a definitely unarmed. I honestly expect at any moment to be snatched or thrown by some abusive, unseen claw, but, again, nothing happens. It is in a state of utter disbelief that I walk with clenched fists through the glass doors into its brightly lit belly.

            “Welcome to Wal-Mart.” Says the human reincarnation of Cerberus from her chains of a chair.

            I move through and among the soulless faces and bloody walls and I see something I may never forget. Stretched out on a black plastic hanger like a crucifix is Genevieve’s white sundress.

“During the first period of a man’s life the greatest danger is not to take the risk.”

-Søren Kierkegaard

            “How far is this?” Selena’s voice came from surprisingly close behind me. The girls must be nervous if they’re keeping this close.

            Jay is nervous too, “Shut the fuck up!” He whispers loudly through a mouth of smoke from his Dutch Master cigar. Being very proud of his physique and the cracked skull tattoo on his shoulder he struts with his shirt off. He is wiry with rather large muscles for a 16 year old boy and has enough charisma and angst to be alpha-dog in our little gang. He is also familiar with the quarry we are making our way into.  It is foggy and fairly cold for this late in Spring but we’re too cool to care.

            There are six of us teenage rebels creeping through the fog along a train track in Bangor, Pennsylvania, the youngest is Tim who walks beside Jay with another cigar. He just turned 15 the day before and is ready to prove his age through a misguided attempt at maturity, which includes excessive swearing and coughing his lungs out over cheap tobacco.

             Next in line are Rob and me. Rob is awkward in his speech and manners. He is trying to grow a patchy beard that only hangs under his chin. He’s not “fat” per se, but he definitely has love handles, which is enough to make him the butt of many of our cruel jokes. He is 17 and two years older than me but I still feel like his superior.

 I won’t pretend that I am above the poisonous influence that Bangor has over growing boys. Like the cheap cigars we buy at the gas station in town, we put up with the bitter taste for the illusion masculinity and maturity while the think chemical infused smoke burns our throats and blackens our teeth. I’m not from the city but I’m here all too often, smoking the cigar.

            The last two are the girls, Sarah and Selena. Only recently has it become necessary for “cool” kids to hang out with girls. Our hormones are crazy but we don’t yet understand romance. Jay has a girlfriend and, almost, a car but I bested him in the frantic race to lose our virginity a month ago in the downstairs bathrooms at Crock Rock; same night I tried whiskey for the first time. I don’t know if I will ever see that girl again, I know I couldn’t talk to her but in spite of all that I wouldn’t have changed the moment just for the unsettling chill it gave me in church on Sundays. These girls are friends from before Bangor taught us to objectify women. Jay would try to get with Sarah from time to time but I couldn’t think of either of them in a sexual way.

            Sarah is Rob’s sister. She’s Bangor born and raised but she’s still a virgin for all we know and has only smoked pot once. Selena was my friend first. She isn’t from anywhere near Bangor and this is her first time in the town. She isn’t “cool” and had no apparent desire to be but she is tall and attractive so Jay let that slide. She reads philosophy and is kind and loving to everyone. As much as I was drawn to Bangor’s trashy ways, the long hours I spent alone in earnest conversation with her were more freeing.

            “Relax. We’re not even in the quarry yet,” says Sarah in her nasally voice.

            “You fucking relax. I don’t want to go to jail,” Jay quips back.

            Selena taps my shoulder “Do you know who Kierkegaard is?”

            “I don’t think so…” I whisper back.

            “He’s this really great mystic philosopher who says that to believe in Jesus we need to first accept him out of desperation because human understanding has its limits and to us, the truest things seem utterly absurd, like the idea of an entity being both fully God and fully man. He calls it a ‘leap of faith’ we take one in every idea we come to believe.”

            Tim chimes in, “God is just a fucking myth made up to control people.”

            “No,” she replies “God is everyone and everything that is good.”

            “What if God is bad?” I wonder aloud.

            “Then Bangor is heaven.” Jay laughed, suddenly unconcerned by our trespassing.

            “Bangor kinda sucks,” murmurs Rob.

            “Your mom sucks…my dick,” Is his quick comeback. In Bangor this is not entirely unlikely.

            Tim, Sarah and I laugh just a hair harder than is necessary while Selena shakes her head. We’ve finally come to the little deer path between the thorns so we start climbing the steep slope of loose shale.  The splintering edges of the rocks are slippery, which makes going slow. By the time we climb about 80 feet to the top we are all out of breath. Our legs are sore and hands are cut. Jay has blood trickling from long scratches on his back where the playful thorns had caressed him.

            The sun is going down and it paints an eerie aura on the fog over the giant quarry. It was countless years ago that the mountain had been violated and broken and it had regained some of its dignity with a small forest surrounding the deep lake in the middle. We don’t notice much of the majesty of it. All we see is the narrow deer path in front of us and the signs that say “KEEP OUT 500$ fine.”

            “Let’s go see Jesus,” Tim says eagerly.

            “Umm…not tonight. thanks,” Selena jokes

            “Where the fuck did you think we were going?” asks jay sarcastically.

            Selena has to ask, “When you say ‘see Jesus’ does that mean you want to kill yourself?”

            “Sometimes,” says Tim.

            Jay solves the mystery by saying in an admiring voice, “Jesus it a huge cliff. It’s like a hundred feet high.”

            “120,” Tim responds, “and I fucking jumped it before.”

            “No you didn’t,” says Selena, “At that height you would hit the water like concrete.”

            “People jump all the time,” says Jay.

            “They don’t always make it…” Rob adds. “My cousin..”

            “Shut up fatty! It’s fine,” says Jay reassuringly

            Selena gives Rob a concerned look. “If it’s really 120 they should all be dead.”

            “They should, but they’re not. That’s why we call it Jesus,” brags Jay.

            We follow the path a little further now cut off into the forest. We slide through wet branches until we arrive at the edge of the forest. There is a long flat cliff of dark grey stone in front of us and, beyond that and far below, the water. I am surprised at how big the water is, One could imagine majestic ships floating in it, hidden from the city just over the cliff. We stroll out to the edge of the cliff and look down. It is tall, at least a 120 feet down. Night and day the water always looks pitch black. There is no reflection of the dimming sunset on it. I feel a chill not unlike the aftertaste of my sin looking down the strait cut of the cliff.
            “Don’t get too close,” Selena warns us.
            “It’s not a big fucking deal,” says Tim, but he stands a foot or so back. We know of people who died in the quarry and their dead bloated faces seem to stare back up at us.
            “Anyone can make it; see!” Jay judges Rob playfully toward the brink.
            “stop it!” Sarah screams and pulls her brother back to safety, clinging to his arm tightly.
            I’m paying little attention as I stand in horrified fascination at the edge of things. Something Selena had said is nagging at me. In the moment I make little distinction between my whiskey soaked night in Crock Rock, the black water and Kierkegaard’s God. One has simply to take the leap to discover the truth. I want to be a rebel and my survival instincts were the last rules I have to break.
            “So you jumped this before Tim?” I ask him earnestly.
            “Well sort of. I jumped that one a little lower down…but I saw a guy do it…”
            “I kinda want to jump,” I say.
            “Are you crazy?” Selena asks.
            “Nah. It’s like it’s challenging me.”
            “It’s a Darwin Award man,” says Rob from back with the girls.
            Jay looks me in the eye and says, “Fuck’n do it!” with a big smile on his hard face.
            “I want to but… you go first.”
            He looks down at the surface of the water, “I don’t know dude, it’s probably mad cold.”
            “How about you Tim? Want to show me how safe this is?”
            “I never said it was safe.”
            Selena is holding Sarah’s arm and they’re further back now, “You guys are being retarded. Let’s go back please.”
            “How do you get back up from down there?” I ask Tim.
            “There’s a little ledge when you swim around to the left then just take the little path up to the top of the ridge…if the path is still there.”
            I look back at the drop. It looks like death. I am no stranger to death. Just this year I have buried two of my grandparents and one of my best friends. I see their twisted corpses stretched all the way down the smooth drop. It seems to descend forever because one can’t actually see the point at which it meets the water. I’m now thoroughly dedicated to the idea. My body is numb and taught with adrenaline.
            “You only live once,” says Jay’s encouraging voice.
            “That’s a very good reason to be more careful with your life,” admonishes Selena
            “Everybody dies but not everybody lives,” he responds.
            “Fuck it. This one’s for Kierkegaard,” I say. I hear Jay laugh and Selena scream as I fall from the edge still biting my cigar.

***

            This all happened around five years ago and I’d like to end it all by saying how much I’ve changed. I’d like to say that I’m a man now and that the reckless, impressionable boy who jumped Jesus is a thing of the past. But in all honesty, I’m still that boy smoking that cheap, retail cigar and in a way I’m still falling. My own copy of The Collected Works of Søren Kierkegaard is frayed at the edges from repeated heavy use and the pages are covered in notes and coffee stains. I’ve found a great admiration for the man and I must agree with him that faith is the highest human passion; to know that we cannot know with any certainty and to act anyway. I will not live my life in fear of the consequences of foolish action because in my mind, the worst consequences arise from inaction, from a failure to take your own life in your free, if uncertain, hands. Don’t let your life shape you through rational fear. To quote an old friend, “Everybody dies but not everybody lives.”