Magnificent Vibration Page 2

  The dial tone sounds strange and hollow. There’s a click on the other end; a pause, then a derisive, schoolmarm voice informs me that “The toll-free number you have dialed is not available from your calling area. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again.” Figures. I hit “end call,” but before I do, does the voice really add “asshole” at the close of the message?

  I know it’s late, but I’m going out to a bar. That serves food.

  Horatio

  I’m seven years old. I have largish ears. Some of my more aggressive schoolmates have taken to calling me “Alfred,” after the Mad magazine kid Alfred E. Neuman, who has ears like teacup handles protruding from his befreckled dome; and his prodigious auditory equipment is, if I’m honest with myself, fairly close proportionately to my own bat-ears. Damnit. Like Alfred E., I have freckles that won’t quit until I’m in my twenties, teeth too big for my mouth, mouth too big for my face, a penchant for the upper-grade girls, and a persistent little boner that will not stay down no matter how much I play with my toy robots or think about baseball. My mother is driving the family to church, as is her wont every Sunday morning come rain, shine, bingo, flu, crying fits, or my father’s infidelity.

  Church is a cold, sleep-inducing, anxiety-producing, wood-and-stone edifice that smells like old ladies and is, to my seven-years-young mind, filled with losers, desperation, and people nearing death. And nothing like the super-cool church of my toddler imagination.

  Mom has slicked my reluctant hair down to my little noggin (so I can make more of a statement with my ears vis-à-vis their extraordinary three-dimensional properties, I assume) and dressed me up in my good suit of clothes. The suit is stiff and unyielding (like my ever-present woody), and I will forever equate good clothes with the unpleasant experience of forced attendance at an antiquated church ceremony that was born in the middle ages when my great-great-to-the-tenth-power grandfather was probably struggling to hack a living for himself, his toothless bride, and their twelve lice-ridden children out of the frozen, harsh, and brutal sod of an English moor. And consequently I will dress like an ardent sports fan for much of the following years, once I am on my own and free of my mother’s sartorial stipulations. At seven, I still love her implicitly, even though I have a sneaking suspicion that were she playing outfield for the Yankees and there was a choice between catching a fly ball or saving me from the path of a speeding train, before she chose saving me, she’d first check to see if there was a man on base. She hasn’t lost her mind, divorced my father, tried to commit my beloved but damaged older sister to the state mental institution, or given my dog Bob (in whose honor I later rename myself) away to the local Vietnamese family because he barks too much for her liking, so everything is still fairly copacetic. I never see my furry best friend again after he mysteriously disappears, and I’m pretty sure his new owners barbecue him one Sunday while I am blissfully unaware and in church (of course) professing faith in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen. Really, no wonder we’re all so fucked up.

  To make matters worse, I am in love. Her name is Angela. She is a twelve-year-old goddess, forever maddeningly beyond my reach, and I begin my twisted hot-religious-girl complex right here, right now, at the tender age of seven, in this bastion of righteousness and morality. There is no mix of emotions more exhilarating, convoluted, and bewildering to my little mind than getting a stiffy as I stare at the stunning back of this angel with a ponytail while she kneels and prays, accompanied by the ancient melody of the wrinkly old vicar who drones on and on about God the Father and recites centuries-old, incomprehensible text without a hint of emotion to the faithful as I shove my hand in the pocket of my good pants to squeeze Woody Woodpecker because I inherently intuit that Angela and Woody are somehow connected. Simultaneously I am picturing in my mind, through a gauzy, sun-splashed filter, Angela turning around in her pew and seeing the love light in my eyes, stepping into the aisle of the boxy little church (which has now transformed itself into a majestic cathedral attended by kick-ass knights in gleaming battle armor), running to me while pushing past the astonished yet wildly applauding crowd of absolute-believers, picking me up (I am a smallish child), and spinning me round in slo-mo while professing her undying love as Woody and I rub ourselves against her crinoline dress and pledge allegiance to her forever. Whoohooo!! It is the upside of forced religion. The downside being that I am wracked with guilt at the same time. I instinctively know that what I am envisioning is very wrong. Horribly wrong. Completely against everything I am being taught that God wants and expects of me, frail and pathetic human being that I am. My mother would be horrified. How dare I defile God’s house of worship with my stinky-boy carnal longings? It is an awesome amalgam! And mixed all together, the hot, intoxicating brew of these conflicting and uncompromisingly charged emotions is delicious and staggeringly mind-blowing. I am effing hooked.

  Bobby

  The bar is surprisingly crowded at this hour. I wonder if any of these people think they’ve ever had a conversation with the Creator. Probably not. Everyone looks pretty content and oblivious to the worries of the wicked world. Fairly well adjusted, I’d say. But then they’ve probably all been drinking half the night. That’s what I need. A little attitude adjustment. And a snack. At this hour pizza would indeed work.

  I maneuver my way up to the crowded bar past some fairly stunning women and, sadly, equally stunning men who have their undivided attention. I try to catch the closest bartender’s eye, but he’s having none of it. Must be related to the stunning women. I glimpse my reflection in the mirror behind the bar and am shocked out of my self-pity by what I see. My dark hair is now long enough so the old ear issue isn’t as noticeable. And my head has expanded a few sizes since childhood, too, thus tilting the proportions in my favor, cosmetically speaking. But as I look at my mirror image, I am more than puzzled. Is that an actual gray streak in my hair? As if a skunk has positioned himself like an ass-hat on the top of my head? A thick white stripe, an inch wide, weaves its way from the center of my hairline until I lose sight of it back beyond my crown. WTF? Despite all my stress, real and self-generated, I’ve never ever seen a single silver hair on my head. I don’t think I’m overly vain regarding my appearance (obsession with the bat-ears aside), and I usually only look in the mirror to adjust the coif now and then or to check and see if I have a “bat in the cave” (visible nasal mucus), but I do not remember seeing a hint of this frigging gray hair coming. I am actually more than mortified to be discovering this drastic change while in a public place. It reminds me of the anxiety-ridden nightmares of my teenage years in which I’d dream I’ve shown up at my high school dressed only in my underpants or even worse, completely naked, displaying a very mortified Woody—small, limp, and not at his best—as all the cute girls from school walk by gawking and giggling.

  Lost in thought, mesmerized, I am staring at my likeness when I hear a voice. “You want somethin’, man?”

  The Zen masters have been trying to drill it into our thick Western skulls for centuries—that which you seek will be irresistibly drawn to you once you cease the seeking of it. Case in point: the bartender I’d been trying to flag down is now parked in front of me asking what I want to drink. Okay, maybe not as much of a spiritual example as I would have liked but you get my drift.

  “A beer, please. IPA if you have a good one.”

  “I get to choose for you? Lucky me,” he tosses out and then disappears, along with his attitude, free to interpret my request as he pleases, charge me exorbitantly for it, and expect a healthy tip for being a putz. He is gone so fast that I don’t even have time to get in the vital pizza order. I’m too distracted by my new Bride of Frankenstein dye job to chase after him.

  I feel a sudden touch of vertigo. The room starts to spin and I am desperate to get to the restroom to check this gray striation thingee out. I decide to wait for the beer. At t
his point it couldn’t hurt. The bartender returns and petulantly slams the drink down in front of me before vanishing faster than you can say, “I’d like a pizza with that, jerky-boy!” I take a large swig and check my reflection again. The white stripe glares back at me insolently and with attitude from the center of my head. What is going on? An image of Charlton Heston from The Ten Commandments flashes unbidden into my mind. He’s coming down from the Mount (Olympus? St. Helens? Fuji? My theological knowledge is sadly lacking) with the stone tablets into which God has just blasted his ten rules for living and, yes, his hair has turned white, and his beard, and I am assuming his pubes as well. Is that what’s happened to me? Do we instantly get a silvering of the follicles when we talk (or think we talk) to God? The beer’s not having the desired calming effect so I chug the rest of it, push my way past the apparently carefree crowd, and head for the men’s room. On the way I silently assure all the hot girls watching me that I am only going to the loo to check out this wacky new design in my hair. None of them notice or give a shit. They’re all busy meeting and greeting guys their kids will eventually have to spend the weekend with.

  Right now I’m thankful for the distraction they cause, as my mind races, trying to hold onto some sense of normalcy. The female of our species occupies my mind twenty-four hours a day, but my actual hands-on, in-the-field experience is sadly and embarrassingly minimal. And my choices, when those succubi have allowed me to choose, have not been stellar. I wish there was a litmus test for future possible mates. Way back in the Dark Ages of Jolly Olde England they used to toss women into the local river as a way of divining the good from the bad. If they were buoyant and floated, they were branded as witches, summarily hauled out and cooked to a crisp at the stake in the town square while everyone cheered. If they sank (and presumably drowned), they were deemed innocent and God-fearing folk—although, tragically, quite dead. Hell of a litmus test. But medieval England was so stunningly black-and-white in its ways and customs. You could even poop on the sidewalk, right in front of the local butcher’s shop if the mood caught you. And there were rules of etiquette regarding the correct conduct one should employ upon meeting a friend as he’s taking a very public crap in the local High Street. Whether one should acknowledge him or not, and possibly what to say. For the life of me I can’t imagine what those appropriate greetings might have been—“Hail, Cedric, well met. All right, nice shape, good texture. See you at the next public hanging.” Possibly uncomfortable, but refreshingly honest. Wait . . . where was I? Trying to grab onto some semblance of normalcy, obviously. And heading for the head past throngs of sublime but occupied women.

  The bathrooms in these bars always smell like fat, hairy, naked men have been wrestling in them for a couple of hours without a break. I go to the mirror, where other male club patrons are washing their hands, faces, heads (the drunk ones always think water on their heads will sober them up—it doesn’t), and I move in to get a closer look at my new ’do. Jeez. It’s really there. I am staring at myself a little too long and hard, and it’s making some of the guys around me uncomfortable. A couple of them back away with creeped-out sideways glances in my direction and head out to the bar before they’re fully washed and styled, and I sense they think I have a look about me that says “Warning!!! I am about to go postal on this whole fucking place in about three seconds.” I will, however, not. I feel lost, separate, marked, favored, cursed, but definitely un-postal. This can’t be real. I separate my hair with my fingers to get a better look at where this hoary stripe begins and ends. It grows from the very roots of my head, and there is a firm line between the definite white and the dark brown. I’m having serious trouble processing this when my groin buzzes. It does it again. And again. It takes me a couple of seconds to realize it’s my cell phone on vibrate in the front pocket of my jeans. I glance down at my glowing crotch and move to a corner of the now fairly empty, slightly anxious and on-edge restroom to retrieve the intrusive thing. I look at the screen to check the caller ID. At this late hour it’s probably Doug. It’s not Doug. The caller ID reads: “Big ‘G,’ little ‘o,’ ‘d.’ ” That’s when I lose it.

  Ronan

  Ronan Young has been fishing the dark waters of Loch Ness for forty years. A native son of the craggy Scottish highlands, he has neither travelled nor been inclined to travel farther afield than his cozy home in Inverness. He lives for the stark beauty of this land, and he is fairly sure the land reciprocates. The pale-yellow winter sun hangs in a pewter sky ending its westward journey beyond the ragged peaks as though snuggling into the mountains for warmth. Ronan regards the day’s catch with a schooled eye. Sea trout, char, a clutch of eels. A good haul for him and Evelyn. He turns his small fishing boat, the Bonnie Bradana, toward the Loch Ness inlet that feeds the much smaller Loch Dochfour before he will take the twenty-minute trip along the canal to the Caley Cruisers boat dock where he houses his girl between fishing trips. This morning a couple of visiting fishermen have cancelled their day trip on the great Loch, so Ronan has taken this opportunity to go solo. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does he is nurtured by the rhythm of the deep water, the mighty crags that surround the lake, the spirit of this land, and his soul soars. It’s just Ronan and his Bonnie Bradana alone on Loch Ness. Once a fiercely defiant single entrepreneur, he has, through financial necessity and the changing face of the tourist industry, been absorbed into the larger Caley Cruisers with its twenty-odd fishing boats. And three or four days a week he takes a brace of fishermen out onto the Loch. He has a few good fishing spots to which he guides those travelers who are courteous and respectful, and a few not-so-good ones where he takes the paying passengers who treat him like a ghillie. He is no man’s servant. The great spots he reserves for himself and his few local friends. It is from one of these, near the far end of the Loch, that Ronan has just come. On his mind the thought of a pint or two at the Steading Inn before heading home for Inverness to Evelyn and their two Cairn terriers, Toby and Jacoby. This time of year most of the tourists have returned to the ball-and-chain embrace of their workaday world and the cities that spawned them, leaving the great Loch relatively empty once more. As it was almost year round when Ronan was a small boy and he would visit these same fishing spots with his father, learning the angling craft that he now plies so well. A single osprey circles overhead, scanning the gunmetal-gray water for a meal. The flat calm that is the Loch’s surface this late winter evening encourages the bird in her hunt as the Bonnie Bradana cuts smoothly across the Loch’s surface. Ronan knows this lake and knows her moods, her sullen turns of personality. She is old and she has survived for eons. The weekend revelers who take to her with their rented boats and pleasure craft know nothing of the depths of her soul. But Ronan does. He feels her essence, knows her true self and loves her for it. And he somehow feels that love is returned. Or at least an abiding affection born of mutual respect. His Bonnie coasts along the smooth, cold surface. “It is indeed a flat calm, Mister Murdoch,” dialog from a movie he’d seen years ago, surfaces in his consciousness. He wonders at that. It always held great portent for him, those words that were spoken on the bridge of the Titanic before she struck an iceberg and became legend. Were they inviting something in? Suddenly, the Bonnie Bradana rocks slightly, as though riding the wake of another boat. Ronan Young scans Loch Ness, but he is alone. Again the boat pitches. He is puzzled, but only fleetingly. Something in his fisherman’s soul knows there is a natural rhythm to this movement and there is very probable cause for his frail craft to seesaw like this on the unruffled lake. He has heard the stories since he was a child, though he’s believed none of them. He has been asked the question a thousand times by wide-eyed travelers and visiting fellow fishermen. He has shaken his head in incredulity as expedition after expedition has come up empty-handed, with nothing on their expensive sonar and video monitors but fish fins and sunken logs. He knows that what they are seeking is not down there. Until this moment he has believed that with all his heart. Then, alongsid
e the Bonnie Bradana, while the dying sun is sending out her final fading rays of warmth and light, the skin of the dark water peels open and an arched and ancient wet, black back the size of a semi breaks the surface of the Loch as a creature of legend breaches.

  Horatio

  I love monsters. I always have and always will. But at twelve years old, the whole boy/monster thing is at its zenith. It’s huge. I believe everything I read and I read everything I can. Frankenstein’s Monster was almost definitely, for sure real! Possibly the Mummy too—jury’s still out. The Loch Ness Monster has in particular caught my attention mainly because there is actual photographic proof that this amazing creature exists . . . and confirmed sightings . . . by church guys . . . and official Government Monster Specialists from the USA . . . everything. It’s been sanctioned. The very first sighting was by a saint, for crying out loud. In 565 AD, Saint Columba was recorded as having seen this staggeringly awe-inspiring beast. And I’m pretty sure that was before TV and newspapers and stuff, so it wasn’t like he was looking for his fifteen minutes of fame. That firmly slams the lid on all the naysayers, I think. I have, scotch-taped to my bedroom wall, the classic “Nessie” photo—the long serpentine neck and snakelike head poking up out of the lake in silhouette like a defiant middle finger, flipping off all the doubting Thomases and nonbelievers. “Hah!! Fuck you!!” it seems to be saying. This grainy shot of the creature is the centerpiece of my whole monster collection. Proof that my mother can make fun of me all she wants but smarter people than she are certain that the Loch Ness Monster is as real as roosters’ balls. Regrettably, years later the photo will be revealed as a complete and utter fake, apparently made from a toy submarine, some wire, and a bunch of moldable plastic wood. But for now it’s all good! Incontrovertible proof!