Diez Anos con Jim Thomson (Chapter 6)

Chapter (6) Truth Lasers

The witch may have turned Jim. As to how or what he was turned into, I’m not sure. But he definitely regarded women with a different attitude thereafter. And he hated love. He wouldn’t say that, but I do. Jim kept very courteous to those he was honest with, his friends, but he treated others with an apathetic coldness. It’s passive, and could be called ‘passive aggressive’ by those who can’t appreciate our TV training. And it’s also a Western U.S. thing. We want our fun and social time, but we want our space and privacy, even from our neighbors and roommates. This is one of those sticky points, if this were an essay, worth some examination and discussion.
Often, others, were women Jim became involved with, none of whom he really cared for, but all of whom he enjoyed using. He was a creative soul, thus his cruelty was also creative. He and his latest girl were in the midst of intimacy.
“Oh, yeah,” Jim said, “Oh Jim. Give it to me Jim.”
She made an inquisitive face, and then she played along, Jim told me. It went on and on, Jim yelling out his own name, in the throws of passion with an insignificant woman. He loved himself as only Narcissus could, and he was just as disappointed. She didn’t give him the response Jim wanted, so he tried again.
The next time the couple met for fun, Jim had been watching and sleeping to a lot of Star Trek and Star Wars.
“Bew! Bew! Bew!,” Jim called out in a high-pitch fake voice, as he was going at her, imitating a laser gun from the movies.
“What are you doing?” She said.
He didn’t say a thing. But he grew louder and louder and more animated, as he shot his fake weapons into her. She let him finish with a final loud explosion, the kind you might hear from boys playing with G.I. Joes in the sand. She was irritated, but continued to see him for a time. He never explained himself to her or me. He just said he was bored with her, and he wanted to mix things up a little.
There is no explanation for any of this or any of us, there’s just enough blame and guilt to fill the oceans. Separateness. That’s our unsaid feeling. We want what one man hasn’t said yet. We want to do that one thing left to do. We want that one thought left that leads to something I might call ultimate enlightenment. It’s just out of reach. I know it’s there. The smell too often rides the wind. Beauty. We’re striving through individual channels to get there. And everything else here is god-awful, ridiculous, waste of time, reality TV, which matters less than day dreaming. If I could only daydream as I did when I was a child, where moments felt like years and time was less important. And I was content to soak in a washtub under the sun with my mind. The plan was the plan and that was that. I knew what to know; (now I struggle with what to know). In those trances, I understood gravity without reality.
I’m beginning to show you that truth travels naturally from beginning to end, like all things. Don’t forget to brush your teeth before you go to bed. This is expected.
Thee and me. Peaceful moments saved me and led me here with you.

Tavern Smoke

neighborhood
bar, pool tables filled
eight guys down

balls click under low
hanging beer lights, over
pitchers poured, solid mugs

wife beater
shirt, tatoos gang chain
lock on chest

he talks, shouts, gets loud
“Fuck. We’ll clear the house -- You and
Me -- Nobody left.”

dark hair shaved close
impossible to grab, struts
just out of jail freedom

his gang in corner
back you up, words loud enough,
heard, not acknowledged

Dale’s & my table
next to theirs, the dog example --
clear out before . . .

“knock heads, pool cues. Bash!
Shit, pick your table” threatening,
joking, serious.

unsteady
beer in my hand, vein
in my neck

white cue ball
solids or stripes, think
concentrate

blue pock marks
chalked tips “I’ll fist fight
anyone.”

strolls, jacks off
his cue between his
legs, struts, waits

no response, bar un-
easily ignoring the open
threat, his gang

sharing one
table, wanting
territory

flexed, asks me,
directly, “You guys
having fun?”

(muic stops
vision narrows, balls
skid on felt)

“Yeah, we are.
Are you having fun?”
“Yeah we are.”

laughs. posed, “We
aren’t distracting you
guys, are we?”

“No.” I walk straight to
him, poised, about to break,
dragging my stick in hand.
.
I ask, “Are
we distracting you?”
“No.” He says.

“Are you sure?”
“No,” he says again,
“you’re not.” breaks.

hear his boy to another
shit, i never
Dale & I last ones out

Diez Anos con Jim Thomson (Chapter 5)

Chapter (5) Damaged

The band rented a storage unit for practice every Thursday night. Sometimes I showed up just to listen for a while. When music is overwhelming, as it usually is live and loud, you listen with your ears and your eyes and more. The band becomes divided and each member is on their own island, yet part of a common world. The audience is divided from and included in the experience. I love music and it’s always been a part of my life. But that’s insignificant now.
One of the practices began strangely. Jim was quiet and abrupt as he set up his drums. He was pale and did not look well.
“What’s wrong?” Bobby said.
“Well,” Jim said. “I have a story for you guys.”
We all sat on the floor in front of the drum set, and Jim told us about a girl. It was a girl Jim met on the internet from another town who claimed to be a witch. She walked with a limp but was otherwise cute and attractive. He told us that she liked to bite and she was rough from the beginning. She pulled his hair—hard, and jerked him around confrontationally, and screamed at him. He played back, but he was a little freaked out. It escalated to fight sex and masochism.
“Choke me,” she said.
Jim choked her with one hand as he lay over her.
“No,” she said. “Choke me hard—try to cut off my air.”
Jim didn’t feel right, but he choked her harder and harder with both hands. And she loved it. She loved to die during sex. There’s something like death in all sex. Sex and Death are in bed together. But to love is to be vulnerable to the worst punishment.

Eventually Jim had to ask the witch-girl to leave. He didn’t like her. She was hurt and he didn’t care. How commonplace.

Between Halloween and Thanksgiving that year, Jim had a strange couple of days. He’d gone to Denver to see a metal band that he and a friend liked. They had good seats and all was normal at the concert, except that Jim saw the witch-girl, and he was still a little uneasy about that whole occurrence. He told me at one point she turned from her seat several rows up, looked at Jim in the eyes, and mouthed something. And Jim could not read lips well enough to know what she said through the music.

When Jim got home that Sunday night, he was tired. The neighbors’ dogs barked and barked and kept Jim from deep rest. He said, he thought the dogs were in his room and in his dreams pestering him.
The next morning, Jim’s grandmother had him doing yard work, because their houses sat on the same property. Jim quickly noticed a large pile of dirt out of place. It was next to an old bathtub converted into a large flower pot, between to small pine trees. The wilted flowers lay scattered around the front of the porcelain base, the dirt piled near an end, and a dead white rabbit lightly buried in the tub.

Diez Anos con Jim Thomson (Chapter 4)

Chapter (4) Inverted

One morning, when Jim and Bobby lived together, Bobby rounded the corner to the bathroom and found Jim already there. Bobby was surprised and confused at the image of Jim, upside down, on one hand, with his feet leaning high against the wall, aiming his stream and enjoying an inverted urination.

Diez Anos con Jim Thomson (Chapter 3)

Chapter (3) Gay and Proud

My father is a good man. And that realization was not one I came to easily. But now I know that in his simple nature, there is much wisdom. He was and is consistently good. He never failed me, although I know I let him think he did. But in my father’s love of the higher One, I felt love, and placed it in a bowl that often tips and spills its goods. I am loved and I’m learning to love. I love my wife. By now, you’re beginning to think my title of this chapter is off, maybe you’re not.
Jim was a rock star, and he new it. He actually changed his name for a while to Jimmy Rock-n-roll. After the band heard nothing for months about their demo CDs scattered around Los Angeles, Jim still knew he was a rock star. He didn’t just say it, he lived it, and part of this effort I’ve undertaken has everything to do with my observation and hate for my own hypocrisies and doubt, and my admiration for a man like Jim, who was dedicated.
I’m going to fail you. What I said I would tell you I can’t. I’m not good enough. That’s how I doubt. Truth is, I’ll give you everything and then cast parts of me in your dreams. But this isn’t about me, yet it is—about us. I sometimes feel like all of me is caught in a net against the ceiling, stuffed in there with all my things and my crosses, and we’re all in there cramped, struggling and hovering.
Yes this is minimalism. Look closely.
One night, Jim was so dedicated to drinking before a concert that he passed out from twelve beers on a stack of Styrofoam panels, because the concert was set in a stucco company’s warehouse. A friend of some of the band members parked his vintage muscle car in the building, where the front bumper was inches from Jim’s sleeping head.
Jim was not disturbed, even as the driver revved the strong, low growling engine—a sound that pierced the ears. A little later, people and pre-party chatter filled the room. All at once, Bobby later recalled, Jim was on his feet. He walked with a hand near his groin and his eyes closed. He went strait to the driver’s door of that black muscle car. He pulled open the door and then fumbled with his zipper. Bobby mostly saved the car and pushed Jim outside to tinkle.
Jim was revived for the show and played an enthusiastic concert. But for the after-party, Jim didn’t last long. He went back to the bottle and it led him to sleep.
Bobby used a fat felt-tip permanent black marker to write on Jim’s shoulders and back, “Gay and Proud.” And an artist in the crowd drew a large phallus with gonads. Jim told me the ink stayed a week, and that his mother had revealed it to him the next morning as he was rummaging for food.

toy tractor

Sometimes I feel like I hardly know where I’ve been raised. Like for a while I forget myself & feel like I was raised with all the world. And I have a difficult time finding the way back to my boy self, in our hallway, sitting on my legs outside the bathroom door, running a toy car over the carpet harder & harder, thinking and saying the word crucify, crucify, crucify! racing the car back and forth trying to remember what was around that word. I remembered the people seemed mad. Crucify him! I pressed the wheels of the car deeper & faster over the carpet, crucify him! crucify him! It felt good to say it, to be apart of the chant. Crucify him. Crucify him. Crucify. then I stopped. Dad was the only one home. I knocked on the bathroom door. “Dad? What does crucify mean?” There was a long pause, like he didn’t want to be interupted from the paper. “It means to kill,” he said. I went back to playing with the car, crucify him, crucify him, crucify. I said it slower & softer until I only whispered it.

Diez Anos con Jim Thomson (Chapter 2)

Chapter (2) Wine and Cheese

I didn’t care about anything, but I wanted to. I smoked a lot of tea and that didn’t help. I was married but didn’t want be. I was all wrong. I wanted to be wrong. Sometimes we go through those periods, when we don’t choose to be right or good or consistent. I strayed from truth. But truth stayed, as much as I wanted it to leave.

Jim loved wine and cheese. And sometimes he mixed them before he went to work as a professional driver. One gallon of wine plus a one pound block of cheddar.
“Don’t go to work Jim,” I said, “you can hardly stand.”
“I’m fine,” Jim said.
We’d spent the day being most of worthless, with Mario golf, the video game. I was truant from work as most days, from my job as an outside sales rep for an advertising agency. Mike and Jim both worked for tips as delivery drivers in the evening.
On a normal day I’d show up to Mike’s trailer at around ten in the morning, after I checked in at my job. Then, Jim would come over not long after I showed. We’d smoke and play a while, until hunger took over. I’d take us all to lunch on company money, and later we dedicated hours to burning days.
This day Jim brought a gallon of Carlo Rossi Sangria and an orange brick-sized block of extra sharp cheddar. He only ate free chips and salsa, while Mike and I mowed large plates of Mexican food for lunch at Tierra Blanca restaurant. Jim never stopped working on that gallon of Sangria. He snuck a plastic coke bottle in his pocket full of wine and drank between scoops of tomato salsa.
After lunch Jim was peeking. He was loud and proud and in your face. He was up and down but mostly up with his hands shaking toward the sky like a revival dancer.
“Don’t you love cheese?” Jim said.
“Not like that,” I said.
Jim used a kitchen knife to peel thick cords of extra sharp. I wouldn’t say he ate quickly, but he ate steadily, with a purpose. At around four that afternoon, I noticed Jim was holding a remnant of the former orange brick, a mere third of the block.
“This is the best way to eat it. The best.”

Although Jim went to work, he wasn’t gone for long. He came back to Mike’s after his first delivery and stayed for more than an hour. He was determined. He bit large hunks of the cheese right off the block and tipped the whole gallon of wine in his curled right arm, no class and no glass. He was completely out of it, but still going, stumbling and finding humor in every direction. Mike and I tried to help.
“Hey Jim,” I said, “You want a hit?” as I handed him the apparatus.
“Oh yeah,” Jim said.
I had loaded a big lidded pipe with cannabis seeds and nothing else. Jim took big meaningful lung pulls through the cracks and snaps of dozens of beans popping. He tried passing it to Mike, but Mike explained that we had just smoked before he had arrived, and that we packed that one just for him. So Jim smoked on and on, toke after toke of crackling, nutty smelling, seeds. And we let him do it, and didn’t tell him till days later.

I'll be out walking the fence line

I’m a new man; again. I’m waking up, working to understand how my predecessor lived. I ache and feel weak from birth. I could sleep for a month, if I wasn’t so anxious to get out and stretch my legs. I’m hopeful and a little hungry. I feel fresh, like a snake must feel after it sheds skin; sun warming guts through newly dried skin, crisp, tight and fresh. I wonder if an old giant of a bear remembers his summers or if he just comes out of the cave from his slumber with the whole world feeling warmly familiar and coolly new at the same time. I imagine his first deep lung filling breaths as he scans the trees and sloping ground outside his cave. His ears prick up at the sound of water and his mouth waters as he can almost taste the twisting flesh of a big fish pulled from the rushing water, ice cold. Is he the same bear as the year before or has he changed somehow during all the stillness and solitude of his winter cave? Does he remember the year before or does he just begin again, starting over with vigor, running down the slope he knows so well and cares not how. I’m still stiff with sleep, lingering in joints as a need to stretch, and in the connection of my thoughts as a need to walk the edge of my map; tasting big ideas again.

Diez anos con Jim Thomson (chapter 1)

Chapter (1) Punch in the Lunch

Sometimes the people around us are everyone and no one. They’re the same and unclean. If you look at those who know you best and reflect you like a mirror as good friends do, you’ll see what they see, which is an unclear representation of truth and light mixed with dark blankness. I stopped trying to change everything at about twenty five. I stopped being afraid of the unknown—and I stopped fearing altogether, or at least that’s what I told myself. I learned to tolerate and understand others, rather than oppose them. And my opposition is unexplained, however, there might be, hidden among the characters herein some punchy, unreliable explanation for one man, and maybe a generation. To come to that age-old realization that things are what they are, and that there is a plan interdependent on man, is more real than real—too real. It was this time when I receded back to beliefs that more closely resembled those of my childhood. Securely available for discussion of any matter. Jim wasn’t important to me at the time—a young punk who could play the drums.
This is how I heard it. Greg and Jim were screwing around, fake punching and fighting as boys do. They stood close. Jim stole a squeeze of Greg’s balls, and Greg threw a hook swing at Jim’s head. Jim reacted to block with his hands all at once, in an explosion of extension from shoulder to fingertip. One of Jim’s fingertips landed in Greg’s right eye. Greg wailed, infuriated. His eye was injured, and hung blood blue sore and bruised.
“I’m gonna get you Jim,” Greg said, “when you’re not expecting it. I’m gonna get you good.”
“I’m sorry Greg. It was an accident.” Jim said.
“You grabbing my balls wasn’t an accident,” Greg said.
“I know, but—.”
“If you hadn’t squeezed my balls, none of this would have happened.”
From there they went to the same social gathering, where they both drank and danced with Dionysus in a bottle. Jim was found on a sofa on his side asleep in a room full of loud drunk idiots. Greg saw him and hadn’t forgotten his vow of revenge.
Greg found Mike.
“Do you have your video camera?” Greg said.
“Yes,” Mike said.
“You might want to videotape what I’m going to do to Jim.”
Mike laughed, “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to punch him in the stomach while he’s sleeping.”
I’ve seen the tape and the anticipation is agonizing. Greg lurks over him with a heavy right fist and a sway of gratitude. He didn’t hit him as hard as he could, but every time I see it, it makes me wrench. Jim was so completely numb, that he did not react harshly. He simply curled and moaned for a moment and then rolled to his other side.