43. butterflies are free at the zoo
How did I get here? The question crossed Denver’s mind as he walked
down K street. He felt out of place and nothing seemed familiar.
He remembered his mother once telling him that if he stopped his
morbid fascination with questioning things, he would maybe get a
decent job and lead a normal life. The thought had frightened him at
the time, but he had come to believe that maybe there were some
grains of truth sprinkled in with her tainted notions. If he stopped
questioning the hypocrisy and double standards of society and just
accepted them, surely his life would be easier.
As he walked the blocks and alleys of the Grid, the painful moments
of the past year circled in his mind. His health and finances had
suffered, a terrible toothache, a root canal, a crown, bank account
in the red. His love, his job, his parents’ house – all gone. On the
other hand, his career as an artist had survived and even thrived
through this period of bumpy transition.
Who knows what lies beyond the ebb of life, he asked himself while
waiting for the train to pass. He moved within touching distance of
the passing wagons, the sound and feel of rail transport providing
the background beat for his thoughts.
The way I see it, there are two types of people, those who have faith
and believe in one male god, and those who question everything, or
pray to many different deities to get the balance right. I am
definitely in the second category. I don’t understand why
institutionalized religion exists at all. What need is there for man
to organize his family into a mafia, suppress women and control the
future? Who was the spiritual yahoo who started the whole organized
sha-bang that’s now spiraling into its third, forth or fifth
millennium. I’m tired of hearing about the israelis and the
palestinians, the protestants and the catholics or the muslims and
the hindus, capitalists and liberalists. I’m tired of hearing about
these fundamentalists who kill each other over an ideology that only
makes sense to them. I don’t understand, especially when their dogmas
preach love not war. Their ideologies just preach their kind of love,
which excludes homosexuals. Call me a parasite. Call me a disease.
Find dubious ways to shut me out of society, places like asylum or
prisons. If I was truly flamboyant, then I’d be either stoned to
death or sentenced to work in a hair salon. Fuck those yahoo religions.
The last wagon passed and before the signal lights and bells had shut
off, Denver was already on the other side of the tracks. How do the
masses just walk on by, never contemplating the ordinary, only
engulfed by it. A perfect case in point is my dim-witted parental
units, people who search lunch boxes daily for uneaten food,
subjected their kids to Young Opportunist’s of America summer camp to
mold their character, and continued to buy american-made junk at the
mall or on ebay for exorbitant prices.
My mother is a frustrated housewife housed in the cage her oppressor
presented to her as an ideal. My father is another cog in the wheel
of industry spinning in the machine that is a capitalist society.
Both are unable to change their perspective though they’re living in
a land of unlimited possibilities. It‘s no wonder that I turned out
the way I did. But at least their repressive upbringing provided a
catalyst for my creativity.
I want to doubt the need for a generic tomato, to be moved by the
perverse beauty of a scenic polyester shirt, to experience a thrill
if I find a Niel Jung greatest hits record in the neighborhood thrift
store. The world is full of simple pleasures, of watching bums with
shopping carts parade by the window, of reading secondhand Fagman
comic books, of creating paperclip sculptures, and of peeling wax fruit.
He kicked an empty soda can that unexpectedly appeared out of the fog
before him on the sidewalk. The night fog had settled low to the
ground. It had rained earlier in the day and the extra moisture
provided close to one hundred percent humidity. Denver was able to
see no more than a few meters in front of him. It would be easy for
the inexperienced streetwalker to find themselves turned around and
wind up at the almond factory on the other side of the Grid.
Denver made out the flashing 24 hours sign of B.B.’s in the distance.
It was a cheap dive located on the ground floor of the Sutter Bank
building, across the street from Sutter’s Hospital, kitty-corner from
Sutter’s Fort, next to Sutterville Plaza. The cheerful red and blue
neon was a calming reassurance to any social deviant who had nothing
better to do on a cold and damp autumn night.
He pushed open the swinging glass door and saw Icky at the counter
eating a carrot. “Micky!”
Icky spun around, put his carrot down on the counter, got off the
stool and went over to Denver. “Oh holy Oshun, Venus, Aphrodite and
Mother Maria!” Icky grabbed Denver by the coat and fell into him.
“You won’t believe what happened to me,” they managed to say in
unison, slumped into each other. “Why?” They helped each other up.
“What happened?” they pointed at each other. “You know?”
“I know what?” Icky pointed to himself and shrugged his shoulders.
“You know about the house?”
“What house? Something happened to your apartment?”
“No. My parents’ house.”
“What happened?”
“I got a few stories to tell.”
“Denver. Wait a minute. I got something to tell you. Some guy gave me
the code to talk to the aliens.”
They walked over to the counter and took a seat.
“My parents’ house burnt down. They’re homeless.”
Icky grabbed Denver’s head and grabbed his ears. “You won’t believe
this! I got the code to talk to the aliens! It’s in my pocket.”
“What can I get for you?” A thin wisp of a waitress suddenly appeared
at their counter.
“A cup of coffee and two sticky buns, please,” Denver said.
“Refill?” she asked, looking at Icky.
Icky grunted affirmatively.
“Oh,” Denver remembered, and broke away from the ear grip, “can you
do me a favor and put them in the microwave, and put a couple pats of
butter on top, please?”
The wisp of a waitress smiled and nodded to Denver.
“Can you believe it?” Icky said and took a bite of his carrot.
“I believe in the lottery.”
“Egypt.” Icky took another bite.
“Egypt?”
“E. G. Y. P. T. Yeah. Egypt is the code to talk to the aliens. Some
middle-aged state employee gave it to me tonight.”
“What employee?”
“This white-haired dude at the bus stop.” He pointed outside. “The
same guy who gave me my wallet back, you remember. I didn’t realize
it at the time. He said he’d been watchin’ me. It only hit me later
like a hammer when I put two and two together. “
“Ooh. That’s spooky.”
“Yeah. Isn’t it? The same guy then reappears in my life out of the
fog and gives me the code to talk to the aliens and tells me to eat
more carrots.” He took a bite of his carrot. “You should of seen me
try to wrangle a carrot from the waitress. Took me forever.
Apparently fresh vegetables are not on the menu.”
“I got a call from my sister. She was in hysterics. Mom must’ve mixed
some high-powerful chemicals together and started a chain reaction
and blew a hole in the roof, or the aliens came and snatched them up
through the house.”
“Really?”
“No. But something did happen. The house is burnt. There’s a big hole
in the roof, and my parents are missing, or so says my sister.”
“Wow Denver. This is tragic. What’re ya’ parents goin’ to do?”
“Move to Florida. I don’t know. My sister says they’re missing. It’s
all a mystery. I just know that I got to go to Fresno soon.” He
waited for Icky to make an offer. When none arrived, he changed
subjects. “So. You got the code to talk to the aliens. What are you
going to do with it?”
“That’s just it.” He paused to reflect. “I don’t know exactly how I
will use it. It’s kinda spiritual. I have to think about it a little.”
The waitress re-entered the counter area. “Two sticky buns and a cup
of coffee. Anything else?”
“No thanks,” Denver said and asked, “So, where did you see him?”
“I told you. Outside here. Outside at the bus stop. He said he was
feelin’ a lot of energy and then I approached. He was waitin’ for me
to give me the code. I kinda get the heebie-jeebies thinkin’ that
someone might be waitin’ for me at this very moment.” Icky glanced
around to make sure.
“What was he like?”
“You know. He kinda had a real peaceful quality about him when he
was talkin’ to me. You know what he said?”
Denver shook his head.
“He told me that there was a lot of energy out there, don’t ask me
how with all the cloud cover and fog, and that he could feel it. He
said it was the energy of the aliens. They were visitin’.” He spat
out little bits of chewed carrot as he spoke.
“So. What’s up with the carrots?” Denver asked, brushing the chewed
vegetable matter off the counter.
“Oh yeah. Before he started his jibber about the aliens.” He took a
sip of coffee to rinse his mouth. “He took hold of my earlobes and
felt them like I just did with you. As he was squeezin’, kinda
massagin’ them, I got this pain in my right ear that shot down my
spine. It was like he’d stuck a needle into my lobe, man.” He touched
his earlobes and shook his head. “Then he said that I had to eat more
carrots. Don’t ask me why. Probably to get myself balanced. Oh yeah.
He also gave me this. It’s supposed to get me centered.” He held out
his arm to show Denver the string around his wrist. “I’m supposed to
think about where I am when I look at it.”
“Okay, you’re at the Bum ‘n Burn. So, you got to eat more carrots to
get yourself in balance. He sounds like some sort of macrobiotic
freak or a disciple from the sect of the humble carrot.” Denver tore
off a section of his cooled sticky bun and dunked it in his coffee.
“So now you have the code to talk to the aliens.” He took a bite of
soaked dough bum and mumbled, “And Micky Hill is going to save the
planet. Love all, serve all, California über alles! You are the new
age.”
“Dilute man.” He bumped Denver with his shoulder. “ My name is Icky
Ill. You keep on forgettin’.”
“Sorry. Icky Ill is going to save the planet. Sounds even better.”
“That’s bizarre about your parents’ house. I had a dream about burnin’
bread in a toaster, lots of smoke. I couldn’t get it to stop burnin’,
even after I unplugged the toaster and took the bread out.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Yeah. A couple of chapters ago in a former life.”
“So Micky. I mean, Icky, you see that I need to go to Fresno A.S.A.P.
I kinda thought that maybe you can get me to Fresno.”
“Fresno huh?”
“Yeah. I don’t have a lot of options, only you and your alien contacts.”
“Do you know what day is it?”
“I think it’s saturday. Why?”
“Shit. Tomorrow’s sunday. It’s unkoscher to be takin’ trips on
sundays but this is an extreme case. Let me think ’bout it. First. I
want to get stoned. Do you have any pot on you?”
“ I got nothin’ to smoke. Micky. I mean Icky. Sorry. It still hasn’t
connected.”
“What a drag!”
The wispy waitress appeared, “Refill?” poured to the brim without
waiting for a reply, and disappeared into the kitchen.
“She’s afraid that I’ll take her picture again.”
“Maybe I should drop the D and G from my name. How does
Enver Riess sound? I think it sounds cool.”
“It is definitely anti-constructivist.” They both took a sip of their
coffees. “Look. Let’s go see if that José guy is home and get some
pot. I need to calm down before I think about doin’ anythin’.”
“There’s a lot of energy out there, like your alien friend said. I’m
getting a contact high. But, the Griesses are homeless. I wonder what
other cataclysmic events are going to take place in my life. Is it a
full moon tonight? What planets or houses are conjuncting to make my
life uncomfortable? This is definitely not a good year for me. Must
be the year of the lizard.” Denver dunked the last sliver of sticky
bun in the coffee before eating it. “So do you want to take a ride down
the valley?” he asked, and chewed.
“What? This minute?”
“Well. As soon as possible.” He swallowed. “It’s only a four hour
drive. We can make it before sunup.”
“I don’t know if the Galaxy can make it. And besides, there’s
supposed to be a big storm comin’ in from the south. I heard it on
the radio.”
“Of course the Galaxy can make it. It can make it through anything.
I’ll pay for the gas and, besides, you were saying a while back that
you wanted to get out of town for a bit.”
“But not to Fresno.”
“Well, now I got a reason to go to Fresno. Plus we need to talk about
what we’re going to do at Sotodo.”
“I thought we’re doin’ the vibrator thing.”
“Yeah. But still, we need to conceptualize it a little better.”
“Maybe we can use the code somehow.” There was a long pause as Icky stared out the window at the bus stop before he asked, “Okay. When is E.T.D.?”
“Now.”
“You packed?
Denver nodded, and looked at his travel bag slung over the stool.
Icky thought for a moment and smiled. “Okay. I like the idea of
instant travel. I guess I’m as ready as I can get. I live for mobility.”
“Just one more sip of the coffee. I’ll pay. First, I’ll go to the ATM
at the gas station across the street and get my last few coins out of
the machine. Then we’ll go to José’s, scrape together some smoke and
we can hit the road. Where did you park the Galaxy?”
“It’s on the other side of town. We can stop by Jose’s on the way.”
Denver placed money on the counter and winked at the waitress as he
stood up. “You know Icky, I think it’s pretty cool that you got the
code to talk to the aliens.”
“Ah actually Denver. It’s no big deal.”
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