Lee Klein: Jrzdvlz

Other worries arose during my weird extended adolescence: the air felt different. It seemed less capable of sustaining my flight, as though changes had occurred at the molecular level. The ultrasensitive undersides of my wings noticed minute fluctuations that neither eased my flight nor encouraged the gulping of streaming air as I glided. Areas northeast of the pines released the foulest muck imaginable—perhaps this caused what I had sensed. I could neither say for sure nor share my perception with others. I never discussed the matter with vultures who had also noticed a change.

In most parts of the pines, it was the same inane bird chatter and insectile chirps, the same fluctuation of sunlight and susurration of wind, the same projection of clouds across the earth in the form of shadows. Newborns arrived as cute and cuddly as ever, seedlings transformed into mischievous saplings that solidified into elms and oaks before they lost their leaves and fell, along the way experiencing every pleasure, every stress. Life hadn’t changed too much because work now required a computer instead of a shovel. For the most part, day after night and day again, year after year, was marked by an inability to understand the nature of humility, the foremost human virtue, according to the country’s most creative founder. What would Jesus do? Socrates? Franklin would have rendered in memorable language what he ought to do and then commit to the opposite: he achieved humility by discerning how far he had fallen from approaching an imitation of those he admired. To always try as hard as you can and always fall short, what better goal can there be? I tried to be human, I entered the fray, I fell short of immersion and realized it wasn’t for me, yet neither was isolation nor a ricocheting position between extremes.

If I could find a nice blind girl whose hands had no sense of touch, who heard my voice and loved its tones and the eloquent flow of my speech and the significance of cooing words relayed, perhaps we would do well together? A blind girl with no family or friends might never discover my commitment to a certain gown. The first thing we’d do when a child emerged would be to put it in a cage so preternatural aggression did not cost mother and obstetrician their lives. Home schooling would follow, and then what? How would we explain when our child saw others playing ball or doing anything normal kids might do? We would need to take care that inherent belligerence did not emerge—or channel it into athletics. We’d work with the kid on the books. Committed parents we’d be. Everything that comes with raising such a child. Or maybe my oddities might soften thanks to the traditional shape of another.

At mid-century, I had heard a call to engage with the world but how could I submit to regimentation, and how explain the dress to a drill sergeant? I could have acted as my own secret weapon. Had things gone otherwise and Axis outposts were established in North America, I would have undermined their efforts. But I only knew obliquely at the time what had been at stake, sensing it along my underbelly and beneath the wings, some trouble, some disturbance that agitated the stream of cognition. On still days, when not wearing the dress, I had been like a radio receiver, tuning into hundreds of thousands of broadcast thoughts. It was something I’d become better able to do—something that was easier as people seemed to have more time for thinking, time in their cars, thoughts streaming perhaps from their radio antennae, the cars themselves conveying thought into the air where it mixed with radar, television, and then cellular waves. Endless streams of unseen chatter actively transmitted by those ever-clever humans.

Through the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s, even the ’50s and early 1960s, I imagined visiting far-flung cities and wildernesses but never roamed far from home. In the late 1970s, when the weather was warm, I sometimes considered spending days in the dress rollerskating around Washington Square in New York City’s Greenwich Village, around the fountain, through the arch there, skating in circles, slapping hands with happy strangers, moving in perfect rhythmic sync with everyone else. It would be like the best days in the pines when the oscillation of birds, weasels, insects, and the elements seemed to elevate into a well-tempered music. Washington Square would seem conducted, a music to which my movements would be sensitive, the beast in me most definitely soothed. I wondered what it would be like to become a downtown fixture, a man in a wedding dress and sparkly blue roller boots, dancing and twirling and grinning to whatever music I heard. Tourists would photograph me, journalists would interview me (I’d never give a straight answer, if only for my own amusement, though once I’d tell the truth, knowing of course the journalist would think I’m nuts), but mostly I’d celebrate what had taken me so long to achieve. But it could never last forever, of course. Whenever something essential seems grasped, you wake the next morning to empty hands. And, hence, humility.

And then one fine day in my natural form, obeying the command of instinct, I left the pines for a paradise of graceful boredoms, somewhere I might live in peace, make some friends, get to know some people, blend in among the populace, and like Christ and Socrates, release myself into legend.

A wondrous invention appeared around this time. Velcro let me evenly strap down the dress so I could wear light khaki pants and a button-down shirt and not seem out of place among shoppers at the grocery store where I worked. Bagging groceries was my first job. It was an excellent if admittedly inauspicious start, with room to grow.

Thanks to steady employment, I saved money, worked well with a positive attitude, and achieved inconspicuousness. The trouble I faced was how to meet people, make friends, and do more than absorb music, movies, books. Every day, stabilized by work, seemed mature, purposeful. Each bag was a puzzle of shape and weight, adjusted for perceived customer strength. In place of Larner or Wharton, an old man named Buxton paid me in cash at the end of every week, and otherwise left me alone if I gave him no reason to know anything more about me than my name.

I am not sure what accounted for it, whether it was nature or nurture, but something within me started to change around this time. Triggered by daily industriousness or some insidious stirring in the environment, I was afflicted in such a way that, whenever I removed the dress beneath my grocery clerk getup, I seemed to have noticeably aged. Out for an evening soar, remaining airborne seemed more difficult, as though my natural buoyancy suffered from some idiopathic weakness. I could not visit a physician and explain the problem, or consult a friendly veterinarian I’d gotten to know in the checkout aisle, or complain when talking with friends over a beer: yeah, I hear you about getting older—by the way, a weird thing, but lately I’ve had some difficulty flying—ever get that? Flying used to be easier than walking, but now every takeoff feels like it could be my last.

If ever I were to divulge this newfound ability to age, my friend Riv would be the most sympathetic and intense listener, never questioning my sanity as I revealed the particular peculiarities of my life. His eyes would brighten as he slapped the table and said I knew it, I knew it, I knew it all along! Such was Riv’s way. Short for Rivkin. We referred to our friends by their surnames, like professional athletes or Army grunts. My surname they sometimes shortened to Merry, though they never called me Adam, which I went by at the supermarket.

Not very long ago I obtained a cheap digital camera and began one of those photograph experiments every precocious student undertakes at one point, taking a selfie every morning for a year. I wanted to create an online slideshow and send the link to the Environmental Protection Agency. If I were a rare American beast, I needed to be declared an endangered species. The photos would provide undeniable evidence of an accelerating aging rate.