Christopher Prato - Little Boy or, Enola Gay

I’ve never tried to explain my life to anyone before tonight. Nobody, not even Kyle, knows about the real me. I’ve never told you about what happened between me and Maria. Not while it was happening, for sure… not until now. I didn’t want to make you guys cry. And I didn’t want to hear you say “I told you so.” I didn’t even tell Kyle, Rick, Paul, or Mike any of the details about our break-up. I simply told them all that Maria and I had broken up, too ashamed to admit the truth.

I sometimes think about that Italian phrase Maria taught me— Amici con tutti, confidenza con nessuno— and how I should put it on my tombstone. There is no confidant beside Maria. Her imperfections made her perfect. She was comfortable with herself. She knew she wasn’t flawless, only she didn’t let the world know it. And she could have been mine had I just offered myself to her as she offered herself to me. If I had the chance to do it all over again—from our very first date in Central Park—no, from the moment we first spoke at that goddamn high school dance—I would reveal my true essence to her.

I ponder how Maria and I would’ve turned out had I been true to her. And I don’t mean faithful in the sexual sense of the word. I mean truly devoted to her as a lover and friend, as someone to grow old with. I lay on my bed a lot, mulling it over. All of those wonderful moments we shared could have been certified by truth and love. I believe that had I chosen to be my true self, Maria and I would be in love and married at this moment.

But what is love? Is it a blessing from the heavens, a state of unanimity that may be experienced by only two people on Earth who may or may not find one another? Or is it the Devil’s hex, a wicked prank that brings people together under some evil guise for the sole purpose of procreating more pawns to play the joke on?

I doubt very much that either of these postulations is true. What’s more likely is that there’s no distinctive God or Devil, but rather a singular creator and destroyer who laughs as humans run around the planet like chickens without heads, not knowing what the fuck to make of all that happens around them. No good. No evil. Just a spectrum of emotions and sensations that drive even the tamest people to do the most insane things, some too good, some too bad.

I’m the proof. I know that I’m not a bad person. But I feel no good within me. I feel nothing. I am the creator’s lost son, discharged to Earth to endure every unit of the spectrum, good and bad alike, finally settling on my mean. I’ve always considered myself an atheist, but I think I’m more spiritual now than ever before.

I still remember learning about a chemical called Argon in Mr. Dick’s Physics class. It is an inert chemical, meaning it does not react with anything else. It’s just there, in the air—

—and I’m just there, too. I move, and yet I am immobile; I hear and yet I am deaf; I speak and yet I am mute. For this reason, since I can’t possibly interact with anyone even if I wanted to.

I am always alone. People speak to me, but—I swear to God—I don’t hear them. Their voices are just resonations, echoes. I don’t know whether they notice or not, but I do. I say something—I feel my mouth move—but I barely know exactly what will come out next. And I don’t care. It’s like being constantly drunk, only with no side effects other than that the intoxication never ends. I’ve been drunk. Usually, I enjoy being drunk. But nobody wants to be drunk each second of every goddamn day. For once I’d just like to be sober, both in thought and in mood.

I like to lay down a lot more than I used to. I feel more comfortable lying on my bed, for example, where my body’s movement equals my mind’s. With all of these memories sweeping in and out of my head each minute, you’d think I’d be jittery, like a person who’s had too much coffee. But I’m not.

As in a trance, I commence movement physically feeling as if I’ve already reached my destination before I’ve departed, as if gravity has pushed me down before I begin to jump. They were frightening at first, these feelings; but now I’m used to them.

Early in my relationship with Maria I began to get the impression that I was losing knowledge. That feeling has been facilitated by our breakup. In fact, I feel as if now I know nothing other than my own emotions. So many people go to school or work in order to gain a special skill or expertise in some field. Some become architects, some doctors, some electricians. But I have no special skill. A new born baby just one year ago, this affliction has swiftly grown me into a frail old man. And a frail old man whose life has meant nothing, whose labor has been fruitless, whose talents are few—that’s a very sad person indeed.

Only recently did I discover the nature of my problem of losing knowledge. It’s not that information has been swept out of my brain, leaving a vacuum in its place. Far from it. I now understand that knowledge has been eliminated only to have thoughts of one person take its place. I’m permeated by memories of Maria. I know nothing of the world around me beyond that of which I discovered with Maria. She is in the forefront of my mind whenever I attempt any task at all, no matter how trivial or minuscule it may be.

I have shaved with Maria, showered with her, eaten dinner with her, studied with her, watched TV with her, slept with her, cried with her, walked with her, sung with her, and scratched my head with her. And not just once or twice each time. Each one, all of the time.

Who am I? I don’t know.

Each morning, when I wake up, I must literally tear myself from the bed to begin the day. It’s troublesome having to face others when I have no face to show. I don’t know what I look like, only what I feel like. I am my emotions. I’m not myself, whatever that is, unless I’ve thought of Maria, and what I did to her, and what I should have done instead, and felt her presence rattle my soul. And then I enter my trance, my mean. I’m not gratified until I’ve reached that mean. And only then have I sedated myself to the point that keeps me from drifting from bliss to sadness and back again, the two states that would affirm my humanity. Only then can I rise from bed and light my first cigarette of the morning. Or afternoon.

Focusing on whatever it is I am is a task in and of itself. I’ve attempted time and again to classify myself as something, some type of being, or another. Mirrors mock me, for they only reflect a shadow of emptiness. Although what I am is an enigma, I need only glance at my World War II poster each morning to realize what I could have been. That is enough for me.

I am not what I could have been. That is my existence. I am not .

Only recently did I learn exactly what that World War II V-J Day poster portrayed. A short while ago I was reading a book that my dad had given me when I was younger: Great Events of the Twentieth Century . He said it had vivid accounts of all the major wars of the century, and he was right.

I was especially interested in the World War II chapter of the book, which had photographs of about a dozen military aircraft flown by the Allies during the war. There was the B-17F Flying Fortress, a seventy-foot long plane with a six-thousand pound bomb load. There was the B-29 Superfortress, which could fly at a top speed of four-hundred miles per hour; it was such an effective plane that over four-thousand were built. There was the Chance-Vought F4U-1D Corsair. A naval attack plane, and one of World War II’s most effective dive-bombers, it was called Whistling Death because of the whistling sound it created as it swooped through the sky. There was the British Spitfire, a Royal Air Force combat plane, which was responsible for thwarting the German air attack during the Battle of Britain in 1940.