Jay Fox - THE WALLS

“Apparently.”

“Shit is life.”

“There's certainly some truth to that.” He takes a long drag. “And it's better than the reverse.”

“Life is shit.”

“Meaningless, but not shitty.”

“Meaninglessness does not entail shittiness.”

“And shittiness does not entail meaninglessness — just look at Job.” He takes another drag. “Where did they find his clothes?”

“In a trash can on Wooster, I think.”

“Wooster and what?”

“Prince or Spring. Whichever one is two blocks south of Houston.”

“Spring.” He pauses. “So he ran through just about all of SoHo stark naked,” laughing. “That's wild.”

“I know. But what bothers me is that this happened almost five years ago. If Bates is really Coprolalia, there hasn't been a genuine article since he was institutionalized.”

“Oh two, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You do know I believe that to be the year Coprolalia retired.”

“It's a coincidence.”

“Calling something a coincidence is just a form of denial.”

“And linking coincidences is a habit of the schizophrenic.”

“Touché.” He takes a long drag. “Did he ever claim to be Coprolalia?”

“From what I can tell, no. A lot of people just assume that there’s a correlation between the two because they both have left their marks on public toilets — in a manner of speaking.”

“And he's still in Bellevue?”

“That's what I've heard from the majority of people, but some say he's upstate somewhere. Regardless, I don't even want to entertain the idea that he's Coprolalia. I mean, he, Bates, had friends; it's not like he was some loner who just happened to snap one fine day.”

“So you've researched him?”

“Not extensively. I know that every deposition on his character paints him as a quiet, abstemious—”

“—Abstemious?”

“Moderate in drinking and eating practices. If you were to make a scale with an ascetic as your one and a glutton as your ten, then an abstemious person would fall between two and three…three and a half tops.”

“Thank you, Mr. Wallace.”

“Shut up, man. Look, all I'm saying is this: he didn't go out to the bars that often, he wasn't a loner, and, what's more, Bates didn't even move to the city until ninety-six. This precludes him from being the creator of, among other things, the Bay Ridge Collection.”

“I guess I wouldn't follow up on that lead, either.”

“I'm not going to. But it's kind of a shame that it's a dead-end. At this point I just want something to go on. I mean, I initially thought something would just kind of call out to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought there would be a…I guess a tell. You know, like in poker. I thought there would be some clue that others have missed.”

“There isn't one. I'll be frank: Coprolalia doesn't want to be found. He has gone to great lengths to not be discovered.” He notices a look. “I know I'm just restating the obvious, but it's not as though you were blind to the difficulties facing you when you started up with all of this.”

“I know. I just don't like being constantly reminded of my shortcomings.”

“Well, it's not like you've failed. At least not yet,” he says with a sardonic smile. I know that he can be an asshole. He's not a malicious asshole. He's not a passive-aggressive one, either. He is simply candid enough to not especially care whether or not he flirts with the possibility of being incendiary. It's an intractable trait, perhaps an atavistic one, too. His father, a rather famous artist in the West Coast circuit, is renown for his…well, let's call it wit. “You shouldn't let it get under your skin,” he says as his finger wags like the tail of a small, hairless dog. “It's only been, what, like a week?”

“Nine days.”

“That's not even a third of the time you've set aside to accomplish this. Don't be so hard on yourself. At least we've seen some great pieces of his. I really liked that one on Fifth Avenue.”

“Where?”

“I don't know. By the little park.”

“The one about the Roman emperor?”

“Yeah. That one. I just wish I knew what it meant.”

The late-afternoon heat has passed its peak by this point. A breeze from the harbor lazily floats down Atlantic with just enough force to move some of the hairs on Aberdeen's head. The smell of baked concrete and car exhaust fills the air. Atlantic is so many shades of gray. A woman in a burka walks in the direction of the river with her groceries and a dreamy-eyed boy in a stroller. Aberdeen and I wince in her direction. Her steps pick up pace.

“It's hard to find the…I don't know…it seems like determination, I guess, to continue with all of this.”

“To be willing is to be able.”

“Thanks.”

“I think you need to be less goal oriented.”

“You sound like Tomas.”

“Seriously, though, you need to appreciate the experience, not only the…well…goal.”

“I'm not exactly in the mood to hear this right now. I've spent the whole day walking around these random fucking parts of Brooklyn where everybody hates me because I'm not one of them. I'm sweaty, I smell, and all of the muscles in my legs feel like they're smoldering. I'm fucking exhausted, man. At this point, I just want to find something, anything, that could at the very least lead me to someone who knows something about Coprolalia.”

“We got a lead the other day, didn't we?”

“A dominatrix, who goes by the name Coprophagous Coprophile, isn't a lead, James.”

“Did you check out her band?”

“Los Paranoias?”

“And then, in parentheses, 'C'mon and Join Us'. You can't forget that — that's what makes the name.”

“Isn't that a Beatles reference?”

“I think so.” He takes a long drag from his cigarette. “What did she say her name meant again?”

“Which one?” I ask.

“The copro- one.”

“Shit-eating shit-lover.” He smiles. “She was certainly amusing,” I concede.

“Especially when she starting telling those stories. I still can't believe the one about that one guy in Oyster Bay who asked her to bring a strap-on and a goat.” He laughs. “The aristocracy has some bizarre fetishes.”

“It was a shame to hear about the goat, though.”

“And you certainly had to feel for the man's wife.”

“I guess the same dangers apply when women come home from work early.”

“It really was a shame to hear about that goat,” he echoes as he flicks his cigarette to the street.

I follow suit, and then walk into the bar behind him. The bartender cards us once again and assures us that he's too laid back to be the type to go on a power trip. We tell him that we've already purchased beers. He doesn't seem convinced, and makes sure to mention the word “precaution” several times as he tells a story that expounds upon his reasons for not taking people at their word. It's not that he doesn't trust us ; it's that he doesn't trust us — others, particulates who have not been converted into persons or personages or even personalities.

While there is an absence of cruelty in his eyes, he does exhibit a mild derivative of megalomania, a quiet belligerence most commonly seen in the eyes of animals and small children. It's a recalcitrance without passion or a specific goal in mind, something of the subject rather than a mere part of it. His eyes intimate a brilliant older sibling and a coddled younger one, a home not broken, but seriously stressed and splintering like a brittle tightrope supporting a shaky funambulist bearing the weight of one too many confessions given without either request or recourse to privacy, but rather at the Thanksgiving table with the alcoholic of the family laughing hysterically as the fireworks begin to shroud the dinner in blizzards of rage and wrath and tears and the eventual calls to the girlfriends or boyfriends to collect solace as though it flows freely from a faucet, though this, too, ends in further complications as there's that reluctance to impart anything more than commiseration because we all have to deal with this type of thing, don't we? and it's selfish to think that you're the only one going through something like this. But that's like you, isn't it? That's so fucking like you.