Untitled, chapter three

Dre, bleary-eyed and grinning, 0pened the door with a joint in hand.

"Happy birthday," he slurred. He handed Clark the j as a birthday offering.

"Maybe later," Clark replied.

He had known Andre since the first grade and was his best friend since the fourth. Although they lived different lives and had polar opposite opinions on many issues, they always managed to be the older versions of their fourth grade selves when they got together.

Fourth grade also laid claim to one of Clark's favorite birthdays. He had turned nine that year. It was at his house and his mom let him grow out an undercut instead of a regular boy's haircut at the Vietnamese hair salon. When he came home that day, Ivan called him mushroom head Everyone he wanted to invite had arrived. There was no distinct recollection of what music was being played, nor where there any whizbang memorable presents that he received, let alone what thoughts ran through his mind for the entirety of that day. Sandra once suggested this was a reason why it was one of his favorite days, because of its breeziness.

Dre, then skinny and awkwardly tall, had snuck one of his dad's dirty magazines (Cheri, Mar. 1986 -- one of the footnotes he definitely couldn't forget) and all the boys took turns taking looks at the side of the house. It was then he realized that the woman's vagina was not underneath the belly button as he suspected. This revelation had always been the rebuttal to Sandra's theory and she could not argue against it.

Fifteen years later, Dre had a lean, muscular build he sculpted out of an addiction to the gym, a managerial position at the GNC and actively pursuing his dream of becoming a professional mixed martial artist (He was 2-1 at the regional level). He sold pot as supplemental income, something Clark didn't necessarily approve of but at least appreciated the ethics in slanging the most common form of illegal substances. That, and he didn't mind the occasional session free of charge.


Dre's apartment was cleaner than he recalled. Magazines (various fitness, health and pg-13 girlie mags) stacked in order, the carpet immaculate, dishes in the cupboard and ants out of sight. The presumed reason for this was on Andre's couch; his girlfriend Hannah. She had just moved in with him about a week ago. It was a major leap in their five-month relationship.

"Happy birthday Clark," Hannah exclaimed.

She jumped off the couch to give him a hug. "Are you ready to proceed with Operation: Fuck Shit Up?"

Clark laughed while Hannah reached for the joint in Dre's hand. Hannah coined this birthday week as O:FSU three weeks ago. She enjoyed giving things titles and names. Dre's apartment, for example, had been dubbed "Casa De Dipshit". She liked cursewords in her title; the only hint of a peculiar naughtiness for someone otherwise regarded as cherubic.

Operation: Fuck Shit Up spanned six days. It started with brunch at his parents that morning, bar hopping this evening, three days of of work and quality time with his family, camping at his roommate Carly's family's ranch in Willits, then driving out to Napa Saturday night to cap off OFSU with wine tasting on Sunday. Hannah had originally named this week as "Fuck the Dumb Shit, Darling" but "FTDSD" didn't roll of the tongue as well as O:FSU. She liked acronyms.

Clark had known Hannah for seven years as an acquaintance. He trained her at Blockbuster Video on his last day working there and ran into her at various parties, coffee houses and parking lots before she left for UC-San Diego. As small a world as the tri-city area can be, she met Dre and Clark at a billiards place the week after she got back from graduating.

The doorbell had rung, it was Greg and his roomates Elden and Carly (who were an item). Not long after, zig zags were burned, pizzas eaten and mouths moved in consistency and rapidity, but not necessarily saying anything of true importance. This delighted Clark who for the most part took on the role of observer.

Their first stop was Mojo's, a little dive next to Dre's place. Greg was designated driver, a duty that fit him by design. He didn't drink, but he liked being around people who do.

"I enjoy watching you enjoy yourself," Greg said. He spoke slow and loud, as if choosing each word carefully and then claiming the confidence of his vocabulary decisions by raising his volume.

A very timid but meathead looking punk band were performing at the bar. He knew the bassist from high school. He didn't know him that well, but was aware that he had two kids from two different women and also had blown $7,000 in Vegas last year. Clark didn't know why he knew this information as it was knowledge never sought. It kind of disgusted him.

"What are we toasting to," Hannah asked.

"Acquired knowledge," Clark said. "To acquiring more."

They raised their shot glasses. The Jack Daniels burned his throat and with that the night started.

As it went on, they went to four other bars. Each place blurrier than the next. A cacophony of gibberish bounced into his ears, statements declared that Clark would forget later. Each bar, no matter its local or or ambience or level of attractiveness that surrounded them were all colored the same way. Soul patches, backwards hats, Uggs boots. Dre and Hannah were playing darts, Greg was hitting on a girl at the bar while Carly and Elden were having a cigarette outside. Clark realized he was by himself, eating salty popcorn out of a small wooden bow. He had seen a girl put some money into the jukebox. She had brown hair up to her shoulders and Betty Page ban. She looked like an "Amy". Her shirt was tight fitted and black, exposing a level of perkiness in her breasts. This sight was all he needed to stand up and walk up to "Amy" and the jukebox.

"What songs are you choosing," Clark asked.

"Um, Johnny Cash, Bob Marley and Maroon 5."

She looked uninterested at his query, with understandable caution. His eyes were glossy.

"You know there's art to the song selection in a jukebox," Clark slurred. "It's like making a mini-mix."

"That's cool, I just choose songs though," she said with a shrug. "I don't see anything more to it."

"Well, it depends on your goal. Are you choosing strictly for yourself or are you interested in changing the atmosphere of the bar, impressing someone you're with. All these questions should be taken into account, but never consciously because you overthink."

"That's nice," she said. "Enjoy your strategy."

"Amy" walked away.

"Thanks," he said to the back of her shoulders.

Clark fumbled through his wallet for a bill and straightened it out at the edge of the jukebox. Eventually he slid the dollar into the jukebox.

To him, there really was an art to song selection. If you pick a banger first, you ask yourself if you follow it up with some more heat or to let it chill out. With all the forks in the road, consistency was key. You're not DJ'ing a whole set, but it's more like maximizing your money's worth in the most enjoyable manner . He wasn't a fan of three straight rock-out songs or like three straight Eminem songs (just one would be one too many, he thought). There was also the awareness of how the rest of the bar would react, but that isn't the most important factor. The most important is choosing what you like. However, you essentially play a minor role in the difference between getting someone laid or or getting their ass beat. You are responsible for ten minutes of the soundtrack of youself, let alone the entire bar.

E7208 - "Sweet Caroline" by Neil Diamond

It was a fun song and most people know the cheesy sing-along to the chorus. It was a mood lightener and he wanted to hear it.

L6603 - "Today Was A Good Day" by Ice Cube

Continuing along the path of feel-goodery, this was perfect and it was his birthday so damn right it was good day, he thought.

To finish this sequence, he felt something uptempo and corny was in order. He thought "Whoomp! There It Is" would be perfect. Flipping through the song selection, he saw "At Your Best" by Aaliyah which held sentimental value. He mumbled to himself that he would regret choosin the song. Tag Team, for Christ's sake, was only a couple pages away. He flipped to Tag Team and punched the numbers: H5406.

Greg walked up to him, with two ladies in tow.

"Hey bro," Greg said. "this is Emily and Janet. Janet and Emily, this is the birthday boy"

They both wished him a happy birthday and he smiled back and said thank you. Greg put his arm around Clark's shoulder.

"What songs did you choose," asked one of the girls.

"I uh, I forgot."

They sat down with the girls at their table.

"So how old are you now," the same girl asked

"Sixty-seven," he said.

"Wow you've aged terribly," she joked.

He didn't know if this girl was Janet or Emily. It was Emily.

"Yeah, I'm 24."

"Oh, me too."

She was to his right. To his left, the couples were discussing their future children's first names. Andre was trying to change the subject, but to no avail.

Emily told Clark that he looked familiar.

"Really," Clark said. "It's a small town. We've probably ran into each other."

"Fremont's the third-largest city in Northern California," Emily answered, kind of embarrased she knew that information. "The city's not small, it's the world that's small."

"What do you mean," he asked.

She laughed.

"I don't know really but I do know, you know. I've lived in Dublin, Chicago and I'm here now and it's just that you're always going to run into people anywhere."

"You've got a point," he replied. He didn't understand what she meant. He was focused on staying upright.

He looked at her to see if she looked familiar. His world was spinning. He was three sheets in the wind.

Clark excused himself to the restroom. He stumbled passed the table and dragged his feet towards the toilet. In the stall, he bent over and vomited. When he left the restroom, he saw the table with his friends to his left. On the opposite side was the exit. He proceeded to go in that direction.

Ten minutes had passed and Dre went to check on him. Clark was nowhere to be found. They tried calling him, but there was no reply. At that moment, "At Your Best" came up on the bar's sound system.

Dre groaned, aware of what was going on.

"I think I know where he is," Dre said. He looked at Greg and asked if they could drive to Hayward.

In a cab going down Mission Blvd, Clark was belching his way into sobriety. His initial plan was to sneak into the cemetery, visit Sandra and return to the bar with nary a commotion. Now he figured he can just get as close as he can to her on his birthday, call up his friends and tell them to meet up at Denny's or something.

He checked his phone. It verified him that he missed 7 calls. He mass-texted everyone "meet me at denny's hayward i'll explain"

As he sat there, sitting in absolute silence with a stranger driving, he was realizing the stupidity of this folly. He was doing so well, he thought. He hadn't cried in at least three weeks. He was starting to eat regularly, was going back to the gym. He thought maybe his therapist was right, maybe he needed to take something chemically in a non-recreational manner.

The phone rang. It was Hannah.

"Clark, where are you buddy? You got us scared over here."

"Listen Hannah, I understand if you guys are mad at me. I don't blame you one bit, I don't even know why I did that back there."

"We'll meet you at Denny's then. We'll talk there."

"Thanks."

A different voice came on the phone. This time, it was deeper, louder and agitated. It was Dre's.

"You're lucky it's your birthday man. I need you to stay awake. Stay awake on the phone with me. Go to Denny's right now."

Clark sprawled himself across the whole backseat of the cab.

"It's you're birthday man, we're here for you. Don't ever think we're not."

He told the cab driver, a middle-aged foreigner who seemed to be to have an ethnicity with an "-ian" suffix, to just go straight to Denny's off of Industrial Blvd.

"Hey Dre," Clark said.

"What's up?"

"Ours was Josephine and Nino."

"Excuse me?"

"Our baby names. We had decided on Josephine and Nino."

There was some silence.

"Cool, man. Why'd you guys choose those names?

"We just liked them and found a million reasons after," Clark said. "That's always what it was with us. Initially there is no reason. We just found a spot we liked on the ground with their names on it and dug deeper to validate."

He was about five minutes away from Denny's and told Dre the E.T.A. and that the phone battery was dying and that he was ok and they can get off the phone. Dre relented, but was assured by Clark again.

When he hung up the phone, the cab driver looked up at him through the rear-view mirror.

"You okay, buddy," the man asked

"I'm alright man, thanks."

"That's good buddy," the man spoke in a thick Russian accent. "That's good. I am not fully understanding of your problem It is special to you of course. I get it, but I want to tell you it is none of my business but I hope you hope and think. I hope you hope you know that you are not the first to experience what it is you experience. I do not know what it is, your problem. But great men have had an experience as unoriginal as yours."

"Yeah," Clark interrupted, a bit agitated. "I know, thanks."

"Great men, lesser men," he continued without missing a beat. "I am taking you to this restaurant. Look around you when you are eating. Everyone will have a penis or a vagina. Everyone will be owner of a heart. I do not know of your dilemmas. You are young, you are strong, you will have many more stories for your organs. You are in America. I am older. I was young in Estonia. Let stories be stories. Let living be living. You will be fine, buddy. Just remember that."

"Ok, chief," Clark said in a patronizing manner. "I appreciate it."

Clark was somewhat insulted at the assumption of a lack of severity of his predicament, but the cab driver was right and any type of insecurity of justifying the amount pain he was feeling would have just been vanity. And although he wasn't fine, it can be said he felt a little better. He checked the name of the cab driver off of his license plate. It was Rein Oras.

"I hope I am not making big problem small," Rein said apologetically. "We know nothing of each other and I give you advice. I apologize. I am all ears if you want."

"I wouldn't know where to start," Clark said.

"Start where you feel," Rein interrupted.

There was a pregnant pause. Clark's face scrunched up as if trying to force all the parts of his face into the center, towards his nose.

"I don't know, I don't feel sorry myself if that's what people think. I don't feel sorry for myself. It's like trying to find a line between accepting the world as it is, being genuinely content with what I have and at the same time knowing that shit happens and sometimes that it is heavy and making sure it is heavy without sugar-coating it. Once in awhile I get close enough to someone that I want to bring it up but when I do I am expecting either someone treating it like information that they are burdened with or someone compelled to try to cheer me up when I all needed was to let it out before it festered into my soul. I guess I loss that outlet and that's why I got in this cab. I guess I'm chasing ghosts."

Rein nodded.

"My parents, my adopted parents have Huntington's disease in their genes. It's this stupid disease where basically as you get older you have a higher possibility of your brain turning on you, incapable of rational thought and eventually you start twitching and and can't swallow I mean it's way more complicated than that, but basically when I was younger I saw my grandparents on both sides who had it. You stop becoming human. When they passed away it was like watching die a second time. They adopted me because it is a dominant trait, that they didn't want to bring another person into the world with what they feel, so they adopted me from a small different part of the world and sometimes I feel ungrateful thinking how it would've turned out if they just didn't care, if I just didn't have to worry about that. I am saying that without seeking sympathy, without looking for an answer. I just want to say that because it is a fact, but people expect themselves to try to sugar coat it as if I would love them more if I just look away and think happy thoughts. Do you understand that?

I just feel that I should be with my friends right now. It's like, what 1:30am. And I let them down, chasing ghosts."

The car pulled up into Denny's.

"We're here my friend," said. "By the way my name is Rein."

He extended his arm out for a handshake.

"My name is Clark, and thanks for the ride among other things."

Clark gave him a twenty dollar tip and he smiled.

"I will pray for you, if you would like," Rein said.

"Thanks, buddy."

He left the cab, wishing he told Rain it was not necessary and a waste of time to pray for him but he wanted to be polite. It was queer, he thought, how he can easily open to a fleeting stranger more easily than to his closest friends. On the way to the door, he counted how many people were arriving, told the hostess accordingly and took a seat for himself.

He imagined Rein's conception between a man who loved his wife, and a wife who couldn't let go of another man.

Greg's silver Vanagon arrived shortly thereafter. When they entered, Clark sheepishly put his arms out palms upward on the table and apologized.

"We were worried about you," Carly said. "Everyone chimed in, pretty much making it a consensus opinion.

"I'm sorry guys, I guess I just really wanted a meat lover's skillet."

Clark was joking, but no one reacted accordingly. Hannah gave him a hug.

"You definitely fucked up Operation: Fuck Shit Up, Clarky," she joked. Clark smiled back.

"I guess I uh misinterpreted this mission title," he replied.

Dre looked at him, smiling, obviously drunk.

"Let's get that meat lover's skillet, Superman."

He reconnected to his thought process from before he left the bar. He told them about Rein and his advice. Hannah took a liking to his story.

Waiting for a check, there was a collective silence around the table that lasted for a couple of seconds until Elden interrupted.

"They say that when there is a random silence like that, an angel's passing by."

The silence returned until the check arrived.

It was almost three o'clock and everyone had work within six hours at the earliest. lark insisted he pay for his own meal, but majority ruled and the bill was finally paid.

Elden, Carly and Greg were smoking outside. The others stood with them, watching as cars would slip in and out of their peripheral vision.

Elden put his arm around Clark. Clark looked at Elden. Elden was looking at the floor. There were tears in his eyes.

"It's been seven months now, and I don't know if you want to hear this but it's like we're mourning two deaths here. We care for you Clark, and we care for Sandra still. People say time heals all wounds. We just got to stop peelings the scabs."

"Thanks, true," Clark answered. "I'm sorry you're right."

"You know I'm not saying to forget he," Elden continued. "There's just a way to remember without torturing yourself about it."

Clark laughed. Elden laughed and eventually everyone started laughing for no reason. They piled into the van and made their way home. Greg dropped of Dre and Hannah first. When they reached Clark's, Elden and Carly's place Greg asked to use the restroom. Elden and Carly went straight to their room, while Clark waited for Greg in the living room. When Greg came out, he pulled his keys out of his pocket and looked right at Greg.

"What time does the funeral place close," he asked.

"Why?"

"To visit your Sandra."

"We got work tommorow man, we need to get some sleep."

"Oh c'mon my nigger," Greg said in the most awkward way imaginable. "We got work at 12 and our job is to punch numbers. I can be a mummy and still accomplish my job. I'll pick you up at 10, pare."

Clark offered the couch instead, giving him a set of pillows and blanket. It was almost 4 o'clock.

Lying in his bed, he stared at the ceiling humming a song he made up.

"I'm sorry for the ghosts
the ghosts in the house tonight
don't mean to be a bitch
and i promise i'll make it right."

He waited for a reaction from the ghosts he knew where there. When there was enough time to receive one, he closed his eyes instantly and went to sleep.

He didn't hear me, but I told him he didn't need to apologize.