nineteen

I stood up and it felt like I was on a boat. I took a deep breath. My legs felt like they were sinking into thick, sucking mud. I had to take each step with care and precision to avoid falling flat on my face. Walking to the bathroom must have taken me fifteen minutes at the pace I was going. It didn’t really matter at that point; once I confirmed my friend’s death, I was heading to the bridge.

The door to the bathroom was unlocked so I pushed it open. There was a small sink beneath a broken mirror to my left and a low urinal just beyond. At the rear was a single toilet stall, its heavy black door closed. I could see Lou’s boots in the gap between the bottom of the door and the floor. The way the boots were situated made me think he was standing up and facing the rear wall; I took that as a good sign.

I knocked gently and spoke softly: “Hey, Lou, are you okay?”

“Who’s askin’?”

“It’s me. Tim.” I could have easily said my real name but I was afraid of confusing him. It didn’t bother me—him still being alive meant I didn’t have to jump off the bridge. Under the circumstances he could have called me Shirley and I would have been fine with it.

“What can I do for you, Tim?”

“Nothing, I’m just checking on you. You’ve been in here a long time.”

“Have I?”

“Kind of. Your friend left.”

“To which friend do you refer?”

“Mona. She’s gone.”

“That nasty cunt’s no friend of mine. She’s a treacherous leper. Stay clear of trash like that.”

“I will.” There was silence between us for a few beats. I was holding onto the wall to my right to keep myself vertical. It was a struggle. “Are you okay, Lou?” I really wanted to get the hell home but I wouldn’t be able to make it without his help.

“I am outstanding, Tim. Just fantastic. Come on in.”

He opened the door and looked at me with a big stretched-out smile that pulled his eyes toward the sides of his head. The pair seemed to be moving independently of each other as they scanned the corners of the room behind me and then every inch of my person up and down. And all in a fraction of a second. He held a black marker in his hand.

“If I was a scientist, and in many ways I am just that, I would publish it and win the Nobel fucking Prize.”

The wall was covered in black-inked script from about waist level to up above his head. At the very top were the biggest words: DOUBT = FEAR = CANCER = DEATH. It appeared to be the title of a monograph that he had composed on this toilet stall wall. The print of the remaining lines was smaller.

 

Contrary to popular belief, I am no angel of mercy nor am I a mercenary who has battled and slain for the worthless illusions of public recognition and approval. When the tides of popular opinion inevitably turned against me, my detractors began a systematic campaign to debunk, destroy, and persecute. And all this in the name of artistic criterion and aesthetic quantification. I laugh every day at their efforts in futility and the sterile seeds of self-loathing they attempted to plant into the fertile earth that is my mind. Self-hatred turned outward toward an object (me). A projection of their own personal internalized disgust for the limitations of their own minuscule intellect, stunted emotional expression, and defective humanity. I am convinced that the DOUBT of which I speak is the very agent of DEATH and destruction that we call CANCER. They are one and the same. When the jewel that is one’s own unique individuality is stifled, its growth stunted, and its nature ignored, the cellular structure that underlies the entire biological, psychic, and spiritual system has no choice but to turn on itself in fierce rebellion and retaliation, precipitating an unstoppable chain of metastatically catastrophizing events. These calamities are of course not limited to the singular isolated human being. They can of course become pandemic in a home, a state, a nation, and as future generations will undoubtedly witness . . . on a global planetary scale . . . perhaps even beyond the boundaries of our beloved earth. Nothing in the universe is immune.

 

“I’m done. I just have to sign it,” he said as he took the cap off the marker and crouched down. He scribbled his name and jerked upright with shocking speed. Handing the marker over to me, he said: “You sign it too, Tim. After all, you inspired it.” He left me alone in the stall and went back into the bar.

I had no idea what I’d said or done to inspire his theory but I scrawled Tiny Tim in neat print right below his name. Then I copied the whole thing onto some wads of paper towels. I still have them. They live pressed between the pages of the huge Webster’s Dictionary my father bought me when I started the eighth grade.

I did not copy the schematic drawing of a concentration camp that Lou had made on the adjacent wall. This he had titled Eichmannn (sic) Industrial, Inc. Below the illustration was a “qualitative comparison” of Zyklon B and napalm. This segued into a conspiratorial link between Dow Chemicals and the Third Reich, the details of which are now lost to the ages.