Henry Darger is from Brazil!

You from time to time shouting at David.

David Berglund.

The pudgy hippie art student who lived in the apartment down the hall at our boardinghouse with his rumpled wife, Betsy, and her green tree-frog spectacles.

He rarely needs to bathe!

HE RARELY NEEDS TO BATHE!

You thrashing in the tub in our communal bathroom beneath his insistence, Lava soap pang all over the place, Betsy averting her gaze in the doorway, trying, trying and failing, to deflect your indignation with small talk about the Civil War.

Ah, the good old days.

I have never been tempted to say.

David agreeing amicably, oblivious, scouring away at your back with his scrubber brush, which I believe leads me to the crux of the matter: Dunkin’ Donuts, followed by Kentucky Fried Chicken and Waffle House, and then, only then, McDonald’s.

Monies permitting.

Tempting Cheeseburger: 19¢.

Crisp Gold French Fries: 10¢.

Delightful Root Beer: ditto.

Tender mercies.

More proof God loves us, if we ever needed it, because He gave us His only begotten celestial arches along with atheism, selfishness, arrogance, deception, dishonesty, envy, greed, cruelty, squirrels banging around in the attic, jealousy, impatience, backbiting, bedbugs, pride, prophets, plagues, and the ability to kid ourselves about the nature of breakfast cereals.

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Do you every now and then get the feeling even you don’t know what you’re talking about?

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Because: I hate flowers, Georgia O’Keeffe once saying. I paint them because they’re cheaper than models and they don’t move.

Just the same, sitting here in this lobby fragrant with antiseptics and piss, some of the latter almost surely associated with my own seepages, five and a half blocks from my room, praise be to Joe Namath in the highest, thirteen seasons, two-time MVP, twice leading the league in passing yards—

And those eyes.

Wait.

Me—

Me—

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Never mind.

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Oh, right—barely able to stand, is where I was going with this, barely able to shuffle without pitching forward, like some clown in oversized shoes, last phase, terminal havoc, recollections shedding, like dandruff off my nearly bald head, though a few wisps remain to this day, let us not be too hasty, appearances to the contrary, presumably, appearances presumably to the contrary, for Jesus had twelve friends by his mid-thirties, the social glutton, maybe that’s the real miracle, twelve, eleven, no fewer than nine, surely, eight or nine, for sitting here in St. Augustine’s Home for the Aged, the very institution from which my papa graduated some fifty odd years ago, 1908, how many is that, years, yes, I’m no accountant, it was the birthday of the Model T and that earthquake in southern Italy that killed one hundred thousand innocents, blessed be the something or other for His felonies, me sixteen at the time, he sixty-nine, my dad, not Christ, Christ only thirty-three, thirty-four at the outside, well past his prime by the standards of the day, cirrhosis, nephritis, my dad, not Jesus, pauper’s grave, Mount Carmel Cemetery, Hillside, I recall none of it.

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Hold on, I—

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There we go.

There we go.

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I just remembered to breathe.

A definite improvement.

With few exceptions.

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Do you ever ask yourself how many times with each breath the end of the world comes to us?

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Still, I have to admit it’s not all bad—my apartness, my inability to join in, my ceaseless self-loathing and hiding in closets for extended periods.

Over the long term, those demons have proved my angels.

That and Full-Flavored Orange Drink—10¢ and 15¢.

When extravagance knew no bounds.

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Waif being another interesting word.

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Pennies taste like blood and hotdogs kerosene.

Is a sentence I suddenly feel so much better for having uttered.

Even if it’s not true, not quite me, I never equaling I, but look here: any way you cut it, don’t take me to the vet, that’s all I’m asking, though for now let it be known that, in addition to casting my balls of twine at the Queen of Everything All at Once, I chose several holy pictures from my closet every week or two and devotedly burned them up with matches on my dinner plate, struck the renderings of His Only Begotten Son in the face with the flat of my palm beforehand as warmup supplication, practices that led me to yet more frequent attendance at St. Vincent’s Church and the divine leisure of being taken by the throat.

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On the way home from my stint mopping floors at the hospital in fine weather, what hospital, doesn’t matter, I regularly stopped for intermission at the playground down the block to revel in the children childrening there because it’s always easiest to love people you don’t actually know—know them and everything goes to hell in a handbasket.

Me waving at them, the kids, ceaselessly, until they broke down and waved back with their lopsided smiles from the seesaws and swings, their teachers keeping a watchful eye on that shady guy in fisherman’s cap with ear flaps hovering on the far side of the wrought iron fence.

The older boys mocked me behind my back as I shambled away, snickering as they imitated my gimp, though it was simple enough to ignore their malice and revel in my own childhood debris within them, the scumbags.

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Have I by any chance already brought up how, when I was a boy their age, I used to steal things—a small bottle of metallic red model paint, penny candy, the odd comic book, baseball cards, key chains, wax lips, matches, rabbits’ feet, tram rides, my papa’s attentions?

I didn’t want any of it, except the sneaky parts, the tingle.

Many decades later, I reported each and every theft to the walleyed priest with the dead mouth on the far side of his mesh screen.

In detail.

Theft, me explaining, being another form of prayer.

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That notwithstanding, nothing, truly nothing, compares in value and taste to a can of cold Campbell’s Condensed Tomato Soup, three Tootsie Rolls, and a Coca-Cola, or the one million Union soldiers who contracted malaria—this latter information you taking it upon yourself to share with Betsy amid your tub splashing while David worked his affectionate abuse.

Except what I’m really—

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More on that later.

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No, wait: What I’m really getting at is Willie Schloeder and I managed with what we had, a point that seems important to emphasize for some reason, our limited hours, our limited love, the gist of which remains to be calculated, together once or twice a month at best, when our work schedules permitted, convincing ourselves distance could be a blessing in disguise, how many lives two people can live if they only put their minds to it, our friendship unlike anything either of us had ever encountered before, it astonished me, unnerved us, as we lounged half-drunk on a park bench beneath the full moon, trees hissing in the wind around us, which park I don’t remember, one good as another, how lucky we were, in a manner of speaking, to some extent, after a fashion, despite the obstacles, my stuffed room and lumpy bed, his elegant three-story home on Garfield, Willie’s gone father once the owner and president of a lumber company, I may have already said this, so what, some things you can’t repeat enough, a house so cramped with mother and sisters you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting one of them, sometimes Willie trying to rescue me, sometimes me trying to rescue him, sometimes our companionship trying to become something else, and sometimes our something else trying to become companionship, or that petty act of trying to be whatever the other one didn’t want simply out of curiosity, call it that, some odd fascination with what might come to pass if I did this, he that, experiments in devotion, call them, taking turns breaking up, certain we couldn’t last, terrified we could, that sense of having been over before we began, trick of the light driving us in different directions for months on end, pretending such behavior meant independence, me now and then going so far as to follow him home at night just to make sure, urgently wanting things to be what they seemed.

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Do you know that feeling of meeting someone and knowing instantly you want to spend the rest of your life without them?

Only you’re lying to yourself?

But not really?

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That one.

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Let the record show I am by no means a nice man, in case you were considering otherwise, not even close, I’d be the first to admit, busy as I am being out of step with the times, out of tune with people, even though I would under no circumstances turn down an Apple ’n Spice donut if a good Samaritan was to offer me one right now, is all I’m really saying.

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The sweet startle of every bite.

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Nor should anyone contemplate belittling lemon pineapple filling.

For that, I would fight you.

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Rain or shine, I sent Willie a weekly letter asking after his welfare, one letter or a dozen, who can dredge up such specifics at this late date, though he never responded, not once, that polar night, only to bump into him at coffee hour after Mass and pitch again into the verge-of-bankruptcy we called ourselves.

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Although there had been others.

Of course there’d been others.

Hadn’t there?

I want to say three.

Three or five.

Certainly no more than seventeen.

Redhead, blond, Irish, Irish or Swedish, Austrian another option, Hungarian, too, in spite of the fact every so often it could have been Italian, sure, why not, Italian or Polish, Polish or Lithuanian, maybe one or two women from Bronzeville, you would guess I could recall such niceties, but you would be mistaken—not  Japanese, at any rate, I can assure you of that, to the best of my knowledge, from what I can gather, for Japanese was a different neighborhood altogether, no, mostly bearded, brash, Brylcreem fumes and sweat stink—all named John Manley, incidentally, strange coincidence, even the women, if there were any women, which I doubt, goodness knows, rough hands, soft groans, Ferris wheel, carousel, those stars strung out above us, like buckshot sprayed across the sky, or presumably I’m simply recalling the boys who attacked me in the middle of the night at the Illinois Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children downstate in Lincoln, pinning me with their body weight, washcloth between my teeth.

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Keep it light.

Keep it light.

That’s what they counsel.

Because, rumor has it, nobody ever died from happiness.

Unless, of course, struck down by a heart attack in the middle of a tasty meal.

Shot while laughing.

Hit by lightning mid-donut.

By way of illustration.

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Just the same, I think about my right hand more than perhaps completely healthy.

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For all that, did I happen to share I’m on Social Security?

I’m on Social Security.

To answer the question that may have at this very instant popped into your head.

The doctor examining my legs ten years back advising me to retire right away. This was November 19, 1963. Slight snow of short duration toward dark, I seem to recall, white flower petals sifting down around me as I shuffled home from the hospital, what hospital, doesn’t matter, noon 35 degrees, 5 p.m. 30, 27 degrees by 8 p.m.

I took his suggestion.

I didn’t like it one bit.

A lazy person might enjoy retirement more, if there could be a person lazier than me.

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At any rate, the most painful human condition, I’m coming around to believe, might be imagining a future you’ll never be a part of.

Or the past you were a part of.

For in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and then the killings began.

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My weapon of choice, not to put too fine a point on it, after my stick and knife, being the brick, the half brick, aimed at the knees.

You might be floored how quickly one of those can change a person’s opinion of you.

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Isn’t it funny how we can always call to mind the faces of the children who hated us most?

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Willie and I managed with what we had, is all I’m saying, those limited hours, that limited love, but each of our togethers was over fast as the skid of the heart and then there I was, raising my head from my desk at three in the morning, 64 degrees, mysterious haze across the summer sky, humidity intolerable, asking myself who owns time, not me, not any more, never did, no argument there, the realization flapping in at me that Willie and I hadn’t seen each other for, what, two months, eight, occasionally thirteen, fourteen, hope springs infernal, Henry having dropped off Willie’s radar for the sole reason that—

Can’t help you there.

Except one could guess it had something to do with how people yo-yo interminably, or, more terrible still, remain the same, what a goddamn nightmare, since it had without warning turned into a bad case of 1941, me without warning into a bad case of forty-nine, Willie sixty-two, those scaldings, like the day I received a postcard from him after a wide gap of punishing expectation saying he and his remaining sister, Katherine (all the others having returned to Sender), she of the bustle and bully essence, makeup somebody’s bloody dream—he and his remaining sister had sold their house on Garfield, packed up their clothing, a few pieces of furniture, this lamp, that rug, the other boast of chairs and side tables, and moved to Wilmette, a smaller, easier-to-maintain residence in a peaceful, well-off, less-Henry-fied northern suburb.

All I received after that was the rush of rides and transfers separating us, a chain of uninhabited months, jittery silences, the echoes of our intensities growing larger than the intensities themselves, single-word responses, bored looks, that awful feeling I had begun to bother him, the outcome being I set about composing a new story about us—how contentment could also look like this, sure, no problem, why not, it’s not nothing, not something, either, naturally, not anything meaningful, the sadness of feeling every single thing that has been lost, you keeping close the common past you’d shared, all the almosts, the nearlies, asking yourself every hour: What in the world have I let myself become?

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Have you ever wondered what the evolutionary purpose is of humans’ ability to deny their own lives?

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Really?

So, floundering in the tub, Henry told Betsy about how men drafted by the Union during the Civil War were able to hire a substitute for $300 and how once at my window, 3:00 a.m., 23 above, Friday, November 17, 1972, I cried when the snow stopped falling.

I can’t tell you why.

Later that morning, my landlord’s wife, Kiyoko, with too many teeth and a nearly complete absence of shoulders bundled me against the cold and guided me by the elbow over icy sidewalks and through gasoline air the five and a half blocks to the doorstep of this loss of days, our breaths white-ing up around us, weightless spilled paint, my cane useless against the glaze, and, before I knew it, it was the fucking nuns again, this stench of lobby, where I sit glaring into space, waiting for your return, while other inmates huddle over there watching The Beverly Hillbillies, murdering the minutes till the minutes murder them, around noon each day a tall, bored, bony, racially vague attendant with rat’s tail roping down his back, Perry, Carey, Cheri, your guess as good as mine, wheeling me across the black-and-white linoleum floor into the dining room where I’m forced to eat in a mizzle of brainless chatter broken by fake laughter, even if I do refuse to let the knuckleheads at my table extract one word from me, uh-uh, strain as they might, let them put me to the test, I have nothing more to say to anyone, except you, maybe, maybe you, I can tell you’re a good listener, fingers crossed, after which it is back here again, alone a few more hours looking at my life spread out behind me, like some natural disaster until dinnertime, then the long voyage to my cell upstairs, metal table and chair, lockless door, gray paint, mouse shit in drawers, crucifix on the wall above my bed heckling me as I attempt without success to force myself into blackout.

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Ah-bah-suh-duh.

Ah-bah-suh-duh.

Ah-bah-suh-duh.

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Lord have pity.

Is another expression that strikes me as open to debate.

Regardless, our intensities together, Willie’s and mine, our intensities apart, searching for what one human being can mean to another, do to another, adding to our calendar of regrets one misdemeanor after another, he somehow lacking the capacity to become an us in spite of everything I did, we did, we didn’t do, the Lord’s will baffling as tomorrow’s weather, you know how it is, my hypothesis proven beyond the shadow of a doubt by my daily log of His atmospheric funny bone over the course of ten years.

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Speaking of which, have you ever noticed how walking down the street in a snowstorm people approaching you appear to be a few black atoms scattered in roiling white?

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Which provides at least a minimum of evidence the sky talks to me on and off.

I just can’t hear what it’s saying.

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And somewhere in the middle of that sentence it strikes me it’s five years later and there you are again, I am, locked in the beat-up truck of my body, standing in front of my mailbox on some maliciously sunny spring afternoon, breeze alert with forsythia and diesel fumes, pinching another postcard between thumb and forefinger, this one’s carefully assembled block letters announcing Whillie and his sister Katharine have moved once again, now to San Antonio, of all places—for the warmth, the card says, the dryness, the not-Mexico-but-close-enough, a living death two hundred barren miles west of faithless Glandelinia, one hundred forty north of the Abbieannia’s promise, and in that violent heatflash there is only me unable to get out of bed for six days straight, bayonets stabbing Henry’s belly, a reminder if ever there was one that six hundred twenty-five thousand men died between 1861 and 1865, more Americans than in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War combined, because: Why did you let go of my damn hand? Why her and not us? Did you really believe the prank of your life was going to be that much better without me in it?

Really?

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REALLY?

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Let us pray.

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Just kidding.

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No, I’m not.

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Yes, I am.

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No, I’m not.

(Image by Andi Olsen.)