Jesse Ball: How to Set a Fire and Why

That whole business made Stephan want to pass me a note, I guess, since he did. The note said, not-a-democracy-ha. The girl, Stephanie, who passed it to me—yes, that’s right, Stephanie passed me the note from Stephan; I don’t know; people should come up with better names for their fucking children, it’s not my job—anyway, Stephanie tried to look at the note, but the writing was really small so she couldn’t read it.

The point is—and how this lines up with the prediction (1) is that I had detention after school—right at three. So, there was the question, will I go to detention? I wasn’t sure what would happen if I didn’t go. Maybe I would get another detention? If so—that just means I get to schedule when my detention is by going or not. Probably, they give me two. Each one not gone to means two. I bet that’s it.

Well, I didn’t go. Sure enough, three p.m. I got on the bus, number 12—then bus number 8. I had my raincoat—I always wear it when I visit her because I saw a film, Rascal Sven , about an old Swedish man who goes to a mental asylum, or is put there, and someone comes to visit him (his brother) wearing a raincoat. Then that guy—Sven’s brother, who is really kind, evidently they all love each other in Sweden—gives Sven the raincoat, and so Sven leaves in the raincoat and his brother stays at the mental asylum, and when Sven has gotten away, the brother says that he is not Sven and they have to let him go. There is a lot of singing in the movie but it isn’t a musical. Sven just sings these shitty little songs when he does something clever.

So, I figured—maybe I have the raincoat, maybe I’m there, maybe my mom recognizes me, and I can give her the raincoat—then she can get away, go somewhere. I don’t even need to see her. I just don’t like the idea of her sitting by the fish pond.

So, I read my insect book, and this time it was a story about a scientist who alters his DNA to grow a huge fly eye on his forehead. He ends up going insane because he can’t sleep since the eye can’t ever close. In my opinion, a terrible story. I walked up the drive, got my pass from a girl who looked nearly the same age as me. My mom’s room was not what I expected. It had been moved, but she wasn’t there. So, we went down to the fish pond, and there she was, hair in a ponytail. The orderly who escorted me there, a kind of wiry guy in his twenties, asked me about my book so I gave it to him. That’s the kind of thing I like to do sometimes.

I sat with my mom and she did some gurgling. I thought about how it was easy to think it meant something—the gurgling, but it was actually like leaves or gravel or layers of skin. I mean to say—it isn’t meaningful, it isn’t meaningless. Things just don’t really apply to us in particular, even though we want them to.

The orderly came back and he had an applesauce. I think his idea was that I could give it to my mom. It was nice of him—and probably just about the limit of his resources there as an orderly, this applesauce gift, but I wanted nothing to do with it. He could see that, so he didn’t offer it to me. I don’t know, maybe he was just going to eat the applesauce and he forgot I was there at the fish pond. Certainly, my mom wasn’t going to tell on him. Practically anything could happen right in front of her and she wouldn’t notice.

So, I walked back down the drive, took the bus to the bus to the bowling alley. I was wrong before, by the way, about someone talking to me. No one talked to me on the trip there, and no one talked to me on the trip back. At 4QL Helen made me a Manhattan and I was instantly drunk. I sat slumped in one of the pleasantly curved plastic chairs for about two hours watching people bowl until she was finished and then she drove me home.

So, I made a prediction while I was drunk at the bowling alley. It wasn’t much of a prediction. It was this: I would get home and my aunt would say that the school had called because I didn’t go to detention and then I would say that I had gone to the Home and then she would notice that I was drunk and she would thank Helen for bringing me. What she wouldn’t do is: yell at me for skipping detention, yell at me for being drunk, yell at Helen for giving me alcohol.

My aunt has some rules for the house. They are pretty similar to the rules my dad had when we all lived together. The first rule is, Don’t do things you aren’t proud of . Just don’t do those things. If you end up getting in trouble because of it, then the whole group of us deals with that problem together. But, there is no reason to do things you aren’t proud of. All right, that’s rule one. Rule two is: Don’t believe nonsense, and don’t behave like a robot . It’s much better to get in trouble than it is to be a robot, because the effects of being a robot are difficult to remove.

These rules aren’t ever stated—there isn’t a rule sheet. It’s just the way things are. As long as I am keeping to them, my aunt will stick up for me, I’m sure of it. She isn’t disappointed in me. I really think she thinks I’m doing a good job. I think so too, but probably the two of us are alone in that. Even Helen gives me a sad look when she sees me. Probably she thinks I will become a prostitute. Well, she knows I’m not one yet—because I never have any money to pay her for the drinks she gives me!

Another rule is: Don’t pay attention to property, but be mindful of people’s investment in things . This one is a little tricky. It’s like—I mean, obviously you can’t own anything. So, there is no stealing. My aunt doesn’t care if I steal from the supermarket or whatnot. She might be mad if I got caught in a stupid way, but that’s just because she has an expectation of my cleverness. Sometimes I can be clever. Anyway—there is no stealing because you can’t own anything, so stealing isn’t stealing, it’s just taking something that you can use. However—if someone puts their life into something, then maybe you shouldn’t take it. They call it sabi in Japanese—it is when a thing shows the use of a hand. If there is a guy who has a guitar and it sits in his house and he never uses it, my aunt would be fine with me showing up at home with the guitar, if I am going to play it. But if not, then I am kind of an asshole for taking the guitar, or at best, neutral and a bit covetous. Now, on the other hand, if a guy has a guitar and he plays it all the time and you can see that his hands have changed the guitar—that it is his guitar, really, then it isn’t right for me to take it. If I really needed a guitar, maybe he would give it to me. That kind of thing happens, but that would be up to him.

There is a rule also about being considerate, which is basically just making sure to have empathy. So, that extends to things like cleaning up after myself, which I am not always good at. This is where I get in trouble. But, getting in trouble isn’t so bad. It just means my aunt glares at me a little.

We got back and the school hadn’t called, so my aunt didn’t tell me that they had. She did notice that I was drunk, because she put on the pot for tea, which is what she does when I am drunk. Otherwise she asks me if I want tea before putting on the pot.

Also, she did ask Helen if she wanted to stay for tea and thanked her for bringing me home. Helen declined and headed out. I think her book about hypnosis is going to be terrible. She has maybe twenty books about hypnosis at her house. I know because I have been there. Her “book” is mostly just parts she likes from the other books that she has copied into a new book. There is nothing wrong with that, but it isn’t really an achievement. I guess if it is a fundamental improvement, it would be. If all the other books were redundant because of her book, then it is a pretty succinct business, so I guess that would be something. But, it’s about hypnosis, which I don’t believe in anyway.