Noah Cicero: Best Behavior

“How does one start a violent fight about a dog,” I said in amazement.

“With great skill and determination.” He continued, “We were fighting on the couch, she kept hitting me,” he makes punching motions with his hands. “So I held her hands down and she said, 'Do you want to marry me?' I responded, 'Maybe someday.' “Then she got really mad and started kicking me, but it was funny because I was holding her arms and we were on a couch. I didn't laugh out loud or anything, but I was laughing in my head. So I wrestled her down to the floor and sat on her chest and called her a stupid bitch. That didn't help the situation at all. So I got off her and went to the kitchen and got a small but sharp knife from the kitchen.”

“You were going to kill her?”

“That occurred to me, but I felt guilt from my father and The Holy Roman Catholic Church and discarded that idea. Instead of killing her I angrily sat on the couch and stabbed the knife into my calf.” He pulled up his pant leg to show me the scar.

“That sounds dramatic.”

“It was. It stopped the fight though.”

Most people have secret me’s. Jealousy got hold of him. He was a control freak. People who get master’s degrees with honors are usually control freaks. People who control their lives are control freaks. You have to be. Capitalism demands responsibility, and responsibility demands that the human who wants a stable, well-ordered life take control of their emotions and behaviors to achieve their goals in life. He ended with school loans and a job working for the state in a library. I don't know if that constitutes as the making of one's destiny. He has a place to live, food on the table, a car, the bills are paid on time, and he can meet women easily. I admire the man. He came from good Rust Belt stock, divorced parents, a marine father who works at the Post Office and a mother who worked through college, and became an engineer, but got laid off because the Chevy wasn't selling cars anymore.

Things had changed since I saw Tony in the summer. Gas prices were over four dollars then. Now they are below two. The economy had collapsed. A lot of people were getting laid off and if you weren't personally, you knew somebody that was. A lot of people had foreclosed on their house, and if you didn't, you knew somebody that did. There was fear everywhere. We had voted in Barack Obama, the Bush years were soon to be over. Something strange started happening.

Tony got a text message from his male roommate, “Text Ashley, she's wondering what you're doing.”

Tony went to the bathroom and texted her.

While he was gone I looked around.

There was a man in his thirties so drunk at the counter he could barely move. An overweight woman sat next to him propping him up. He looked like he wanted to go to sleep.

Everyone else in the section was black and talking on their cell phones instead of to each other.

Tony returned and said, “I called her. But I bet she's fucking my other roommate right now. They only did that to convince me they aren't fucking.”

“One should always assume a conspiracy.”

“I'm sure of it.”

“Guilty before proven innocent.”

Tony smiled.

We laughed.

Told Tony about going back to college. I went when I was younger. I stopped going after four semesters because I didn't want to make my parents happy. I didn't believe them. I didn’t think that college mattered. I didn't believe them because none of the things they told me made sense, so why should that? But time passed. Worked one sad job after another. Not hard jobs. Usually cook or pizza boy. The cooking made me sweat in the summer but it doesn't hurt to sweat every once and awhile. But there was never any money. I was 28, and I had never made more than 10 dollars an hour. I hadn't had a real bank account in years. I made 2,000 writing the year before. There didn't seem a reason for me to make money. I had never gotten married nor had children. There was no one to support. No one looked up to me. No one needed me. So I decided, on a Thursday while washing my hair, that I should need myself. It was a struggle to return to a place of motivation. I had defaulted on my loans and had to pay them perfectly for nine months in a row. After that was accomplished I was allowed to return to the academic arena with help from the Pell Grant. I was so poor the government was paying almost all of it. I was going back with 10,000 dollars in student loans. That was the song of life: loans, money, and trying to get things done.

Tony drove me home in his mom's beautiful new Chevy. The interior lights were amazing. It was the only thing amazing about the car. The rest of it was normal. There were seats, a steering wheel, and a cup holder. Tony's mom got a DUI in that car last year.

Tony said, “I almost joined the Marines earlier this year.”

I laughed.

“I went to the recruiter like five times.”

“But why the Marines? You seem like an air-force guy.”

“Why do you think?”

“Oh… Your father.”

He didn't respond immediately. “The Marines are easier to get to fly jets with.”

“I didn't know you wanted to fight terrorists.”

“I didn't want to fight terrorists. It's okay now. My dad and I got drunk last night with my mom. He said to me, 'You're a good boy.' I'm okay now.”

“Our fathers. They are like a shadow that hangs over us boys.”

“I have his nose.”

“Romulus and Remus, Buddha, and Jesus didn't have fathers. There was no shadow cast on them. They looked into the mirror and saw no nose of a father.”

“My father tried to touch my mother and she started yelling at him, 'if you keep touching me, you'll have to leave.'”

“That's funny.”

He didn't respond, so I said, “My father always wanted to be free of narcissistic women. He wanted to be a cowboy. He wanted to be free. To live the way he wanted. I always felt that his life was showing me that he wanted to live a different life. He didn't want to be a simple Sicilian from Warren, but a man with his own rules and logic. But he never escaped. Never could throw it down and have faith in his secret choices. I became that dream, but he could not accept that.”

“My father didn't want to have a kid while in high school, and I'm 25 without child. He wanted to be educated and I have become those things. He accepted it, but while being very drunk he told me that him and my mother decided to help me get through school because I had to learn what it meant to be an adult, it means bills, and struggle.”

“Our fathers will never leave us.”

“No they won't.”

We ended up in my driveway eventually.

We gave each other strong manly hugs. He said, “See ya, Merry Christmas.”

I left the car remembering when he left to New Mexico. It was a sunny day in the August. He came over for a little bit. We sat on my porch and had a final conversation. I cried a little bit seeing him go. Then he drove away like he did that night. It was December. It was cold; we were wearing winter coats and rubbing our hands together.

He was gone again.

All my friends had gone.

My best friend from high school, Sidney, had gone to Columbus. My first love married with a kid in Warren and she never speaks to me. Saw her once and she ran from me. My favorite family member, my brother, gone, dead. Walked in the house. Took off my coat and hung it on a hanger. Sat at the kitchen table and took my boats off and placed them neatly where the shoes go. The heat kicked on. The house would be warm and comfortable soon. My roommate Amanda wasn't home. She was gone. Somewhere in Cleveland listening to her Jewish friend sing Christmas songs with a man named Joseph. I walked to the computer and checked my email.