Michael Thomas - Man Gone Down

The television, the radio, the newspaper — I heard and read that there were no words to describe what had happened. It was said that it was tragic. It was said that the people who had died were heroes. And I heard some try to evoke the spirit of the heroes by speaking their names, as though their evocation would, in turn, make them heroic, too. I don’t know what happened on that day, at his desk. I don’t know if he was buying or selling puts or calls. I don’t know who he saved or who he may have abandoned before he was crushed or burned. I do know that if I call his name into the air, it does not imbue me with his spirit, nor absolve me of the guilt I feel: Ass and fool that he was, I didn’t mourn my old friend. I know that when I heard the corporate-speak, the market-speak, the military-speak, the politico-speak — I know that when I heard all the speak and watched the markets tank while people spoke of patriotism and unity, it made me lonely. It made me sad. It made me seethe.

Beyond my arm extended is a mass grave. Why is it that those least equipped to speak, speak — the most, the loudest, in sound-bite, reductive, in attempts to name and dichotomize, to clarify with words that are general and misused, with phrases that are hackneyed? With anthemic statements that do little to cloak the next agenda — more death. Why more death? I don’t recall any symbols or ideas buried under the debris — just people. Mothers and fathers, siblings and friends, lovers and beloved, who were caught in the whirl of the bartering and the bloodshed of nations — the ill will of men. Men who have claimed the position of God, to deal death with impunity: their people, asleep or tranquil and full of their opiates. Yes, in some way complicit in their own slaughter, but how could they have known? How could anyone have known that one morning they’d awake to be ripped by fire?

And the leaders call to the dead. They call on the dead, and then say the dead call out for retribution. It all seems too convenient — that the chorus from a mass grave would rise up and sing for another and another and another. Genocide wrapped in some rationalization that someone is owed something. The continued body count, millennia old and miles long. My old friend Brian is ash. Fuck you.

And then it was time to get past it — move on. I hadn’t gotten past the last slaughter or the one before it. And I knew I was wrong, because I crashed around, ranting and angry when I knew I was just sad, just a sad coward. Too scared to mourn, to deal with grief, so I took it out on my children. I made sure that they were okay. I made sure that they were healing, all the while knowing that my motives were flawed. Premeditated acts of heroism usually are.

I turned off the radio and the television for a long time. I stopped reading the newspaper. I missed the war. When I thought it was safe to tune back in — back to those who’d moved on — I found that it wasn’t. It was back to the same old shit — bulldozers and human bombs, corporate scandals — people advancing what they thought they deserved. Racial ideology. One day I heard a man posit the same tired argument promoting black entrepreneurship: Money. Power. It’s always struck me as odd — turning one’s back on resistance. If you and yours have been exploited for capital, then why, in turn, would you covet that capital?

I used to sit on the curb on hot summer days, music on the transistor radio hung on the cyclone fence. The singers would preach the gospel of love and redemption — like a sermon on the slab. Even the teenagers, the junior pimps and loan sharks, would stop and listen. And when the cops would cruise up looking for someone’s brother or someone’s daddy, or the owner of the fence, and would threaten to “smash that damn thing” if we didn’t shut it off and move, we’d all quietly stand and stare and turn off the radio and take it off the fence. I don’t know, but to me, even as a small boy, I thought we’d done something. I thought we’d won. And some of those boys are dead now, some are locked up and some made money and bought houses with fences to remind a new generation about property. But the caller on the radio, a doctor, successful, he claimed, was angry — his Hippocratic oath lost in some cellar box. He shouted that the last thing we needed to be was spiritual. Would that be changing the system from within — buying your freedom? As though freedom had a price that could be expressed monetarily. The man gives you a dollar and a title and everything’s cool, or on the way to being cool, or cool enough for you. But what would I know? My father is toothless and impotent. My mother died broke and alone, listening to yet another soul single. Looks like I will, too.

There’s a noise on the bridge. There’s something up here with me and for an instant I let myself think it’s something evil, something after me. I jump and I run. I’m gone, downhill — as though Mrs. McDougal’s sicced her Doberman on me and I’m just trying to make it to my door, but I’m running the wrong way, into Manhattan and I don’t know what’s behind: dog, dog pack, bike gang. All I can hear is my breathing, my feet on the planks. There’s no cover downtown, nothing until Tribeca or Chinatown. I’m on the concrete. The descent flattens. I tear through the turn at the bottom and try to sneak a look. There’s something behind me, just far enough away to be a blob, but still menacing. The whole bridge seems to move. The air around it, the glossy, blue starless night separates from itself: great blue body, great blue sea. I search for another gear as I zig off Centre to Duane — it’s not there.

I turn up Church. My spit tastes bitter and I’m beginning to feel my body, its limits. My legs will cover only so much ground. My feet will turn over only so fast and it doesn’t seem fast enough. Gavin’s father had always drilled us never to look back, that looking back robs you of your inertia. “Be like Lot.” I start seeing colors in the periphery at Spring Street. The streetlights blur and form permanent dots in the air. I’m going catabolic. Protein is shitty fuel but I suck on my bleeding lip anyway, trying to recycle something.

It’s a strange thing to go through life as a social experiment. Mama never told me there’d be days like this, that the God she’d evoked would be gone, his disciples dead, mad, vanished, or corrupted, that those who were left would be running for their lives. I wonder if God stayed my mother’s hand above the toilet bowl. I see me swirling down. A sheet of lightning blows up Sixth Avenue. It’s outflanked me. I turn east on Houston. Two women at the corner clap as I go by. The blocks seem to elongate and then suddenly I’m at the end of them. More lightning over the river. I run south down Lafayette. There’s still a chance. Somewhere on a side street a truck runs over a steel plate. The thunder responds. Then the sky explodes with noise and light and water. The rain on my face mixes with my sweat and I taste brine and blood on my lips. The wind throws garbage at me. My heart thumps like a manic donkey’s hoof against my chest. It too will explode soon. I’m still three miles away from Marco’s.

I make the bridge. I watch it rise, long and steadily and I realize I’ve been running downhill for the last mile. I make it halfway up the wood and the bile comes — an olive green blast that cuts through the wind. I stumble forward, still puking, and then I go down. My gagging is so loud and so external I can’t believe it’s me.

Finally I stop. The rain may have stopped before, I don’t know. I’m on my knees, the last wave of heaves gone. The bridge cables rise and seem to bend over me like ribs. I’m inside a mile of skeleton. Inside. I’ve been inside all along. Swallowed long ago. I never knew. I never wanted to know. I’ve been dumb and wanting inside a giant sea belly. The sky is calm. The world has cooled because I’m inside — no weather. The city sprawls endlessly in every direction.