It was quiet out on Nacho Mama’s patio. There were a few couples trying to give each other artificial respiration, which would stop as soon as Nacho came through again and tossed a cup of ice on them, grumbling, “Get a room. This is a cafe, not a drive-in.” There were a couple of nodders, hoping that a bit of fresh air, if that is what the gooey, still warm, summer night could claim to provide, might clear their minds enough to go home, dance some more, or pound back another one or five. And there were a couple of folks like me, just trying to get a little quiet time away from the crush inside. It was pleasant out here on a summer Sunday evening. There were a few strings of Christmas lights around the edges of the patio and the glow and smells from the kitchen, where Nacho was probably stirring a pot of something wonderful, provided a comfortable beacon to a happy place in my mind, where all was well and safe and I neither cared nor worried about tomorrow. It was dark enough to see some stars twinkling through the humid Indiana night. Leaning back in my chair, I looked up and a visceral feeling of acceptance and contentment welled inside me. The music was muted from inside Hoosier Daddy, but I knew that just past those curtains were some of my very good friends with whom I had spent many a golden afternoons full leisurely a glide. I knew that the chances any of us would get our fifteen minutes of fame was small. I also knew that it made no difference at all—that our lives would not be less full from the lack of that ‘I coulda been a contender’ moment. The quest for fame rarely leads to more than a few guest spots on daytime talk shows, featuring an unending stream of extremely over and underweight genitalia perched atop legs parading their lust for love, sex, pain, forgiveness, attention, and/or punishment for all to see, so the audience can feel that as fucked-up as they may be, there are still others just that little bit more pathetic. It led to children emulating virginal prostitutes with fluff and sheen and talent for stimulating senses while leaving the mind untouched. A quest for fame led to the continual feeding of a gnawing feeling of discontent with the richness that lay right before each one of us, right within reach and the tragic belief that we are not happy or fulfilled, but everything would be better if only . . . If only I had the car, the girl, the boy, the job, the money, the tits, the . . .
It had been a long evening, but at this moment, near the end of no particular summer Sunday evening, leaning back and looking at the sky above Nacho Mama’s Patio Cafe, I knew, not thought, not felt, but knew as certainly as any being can know a truth, that everything was all right. If there was never another moment like this in my life, in this moment, this one, not so special, but very sweet moment, I had it all. And it was a pleasant feeling. I smiled.
It occurred to me that this was a sacred place for us—this patio cafe in Hoosier Daddy. We came here on a regular basis and performed rituals that fed our minds and our spirits. We considered important issues and we told stories—as Henry said, remembering with advantages what feats we did that day. We created our histories in Nacho Mama’s Patio Cafe. It made me feel better, more whole to come here and worship with the others. I liked the idea. I like the idea of people creating their own sacred spaces.
I think we too often ask others to declare which places are sacred and to tell us what to do in those spaces. However, asking another to tell us is the Way of the Lazy Weenie. It seems to me that it is our personal responsibility to create the sacred within our own lives and to create it from our own image and need. Otherwise, how can we take our own journey? If I follow your path and aim toward your place, I will either spend my life examining your ass in front of me or we will walk together, each tripping over the other and paying more attention to the walk than the journey. At the end of it all, neither one can teach the other anything new and different, and both will have learned and experienced less. Discussing and comparing notes on our individual journeys is a delight. However, asking you to make decisions about my path, my goal, my direction for me is just lazy—an attempt to abdicate responsibility and it has always seemed to me that there is nothing so intensely personal as that moment of connection with . . . well, whatever you want to call it. The trouble with missionary types, to my way of thinking, is that they want to talk about their path, which is actually someone else’s path and to convince you to walk it with them. I have come to look at interaction with the divine in the same category as large bowel movements—very pleasurable, very personal, incredibly necessary to a good life, something that I sincerely hope all can experience, but something that I have no desire to observe or discuss with someone else. I must explain this to the next white-shirted pair who comes to my door, just to see how they react.
Beau came out, saw me leaning back, ruminating, and came over to sit beside me. “What are you smiling about, BB? Tonight is the end of an era. We may never see Tia again. I hate this kind of thing. It makes me think of death.”
I looked over at Beau, my good friend Beauregard, who had bitched and moaned with me and had lent a sympathetic ear when it was my turn to pop a boil and smiled. “Honey, who knows what is going to happen to Tia, or to any of us?” I realized at that moment that I didn’t care what happened to Tia. I cared for TiaRa deeply but was absolutely without judgment or expectation about the end result of this particular escapade. “What is the worst that can happen?”
I had been thinking about this view of life lately and the events of the night, plus just enough of Beau’s perfect summer drink still circulating around my brain helped me decide to try an explanation. I didn’t know if it would make sense to him or to me. I didn’t know if he would laugh or reply with some dismissive quip, but I wanted to give it a shot. After all, it was only Beau. You’re allowed to make a fool of yourself in front of friends.
I held up my hand and looked at my palm. “I’ve been thinking about life, shnoockums. Somehow, it seems to me that each one of us is more than this one particular meat-covered bag of water. It makes more sense to me that we are like a big hand. Each finger is a different lifetime, all going on at once, joined at the base, and that base and all the fingers are what make up the real person. I guess entity is a better word since there are so many lives. So many people for each one.”
Beau looked at me, a bit worse for the wear of the evening. “That’s not so many people—just four or five, if you count the thumb . . . I wonder if all the short, fat people are thumb people?”
I smiled and shook my head. “Too literal, Beau. I think there are a near infinite number of fingers, not just four. I’m just using my hand as a prop. So don’t start thinking about where the knuckle comes in your life and what happens to the double-jointed.”
Beau grinned. “I know I can dig a pun out of that, BB, I’ll have to work on it when I’m a little more awake. Remind me, will you?”
“Sure thing,” I blatantly lied. I’d remind Beau to work on a pun about the same time I decided to get into piercing and self-mutilation as a hobby. “But, let me return to this idea of our big self as a bunch of fingers. If every life is really no more than a finger on a hand, then that means that the end of a life is just reaching the fingernail. The big hand is still there, where ever there is. That means that looking at BB, or Beau, or Tia, the person we know here and now, is only focusing on one of the fingers of their hands. So can’t we just as easily focus on one of the other fingers? We happen to focus on one in particular because it’s the closest, but that doesn’t mean the others aren’t there.”
I looked over to see if Beau was taking any of this in. He hadn’t fallen asleep. I didn’t know if he’d remember it tomorrow but trying to put it into words was making it more clear for me, so I continued, “And if each finger is a small part of the whole hand and following the finger to the nail doesn’t mean the finger disappears, then we can’t say that leaving—either like Tia is leaving or even leaving more emphatically by dying—really matters that much. It is reaching the tip of a single finger. It does not mean the end of the hand.”
The feeling of contentment welled up again and I smiled up at Beau. “Sweet cheeks, when the ride is over, that means we have to get off and go on another ride. It doesn’t mean the ride is no longer there. If we want to, we can go back and ride that same ride again. We may have to poke around a bit to find it and wait on line for a while, but the ride is still there.”
Beau had been through so much this evening, he just stared at me. He had no desire to argue. “So, what’s the purpose, BB? Why go through life at all?”
I grinned. Here I was on familiar ground. “That’s easy, Punkin. All any living thing wants to do is experience and learn. That is all that drives our bliss. We experience, we learn. That’s all we really need. So, if Tia gets to learn during her experience, then the result is immaterial. What’s the worst that could happen?”
I looked at him with deep affection. We had been through so many Sundays together. “And there’s one more thing that adds to life. Friends matter. They matter a great deal. They are the other hands in the blackness . . . and everyone knows it is a joy to hold hands and to touch hands and to rub hands together if the night is cold.”
Beau nodded, satisfied, and I continued, “When I was an undergrad, my roommate was this weird stoner. He collected stupid jokes. We usually could stop him before he got started, but every so often, he’d catch someone unaware and launch in. One of his favorites was short, which was a rarity. He’d wait for a lull in the conversation when a bunch of us were particularly bombed on some substance or another and he’d stick out his hand, with a shit- eating grin on his face. He would start waving his hand back and forth like a stage magician and demand in what he thought was a mysterious voice, ‘Pick a finger. Pick any finger at all.’ Of course, he wouldn’t stop until you pointed to a finger. I had learned that it was best to get it over with, so I would pick a finger. You know, it’s surprising how many people pick the middle finger, but that’s another conversation. He’d hold the finger you had chosen up to your face, showing you both sides. ‘Look closely at the finger,’ he’d say. ‘Look very closely so you can recognize it later. Are you sure you can recognize it?’ So, of course the victim would roll his eyes and nod that the finger was memorized. Grinning, my roomie would wiggle his fingers madly and say, ‘Now watch closely, I’ll mix up the fingers. I’ll mix em all up.’ Then delighted, he would hold up the original finger that had been selected. ‘And there’s your finger!’ he would announce triumphantly. ‘Think I’m cheating, here’s a whole new hand.’ And he would start to wave his other hand in front of his target. ‘Go ahead. Pick a finger . . . pick any finger!’ At that point, it was best just to throw things at him to get him to stop, and he would. He had gotten his fix and would laugh and laugh.
“And you know, Beau, honey, as the years have gone by, I think about him and his trick a lot. I have come to believe that the best guide for thinking about life and friends and death and that other crap, is his grinning exhortation—‘Pick a finger . . . pick any finger.’
“Tia will go and we’ll miss her. If she gets stuck, we will do what we can to help rescue her. If either of us sees her again, we’ll be glad. If I die, or you die, or she dies, or any of us wanders into a different path of life and never sees the others again, is it really any more than just picking another finger? I’m glad for my choices. I would rather have had the opportunity to wiggle next to her and miss her when she’s gone than to not have picked that finger. Same thing with life . . . we go from here to there and the best anyone can hope for is to learn a bit, experience a bit, and maybe spend a few pleasant times in the company of other good fingers. Then it’s time to pick another finger.”
Beau cocked his head and looked at me with a smile soaked in this evening’s events and liquids. “You know, BB, at times like these, I can’t decide if you are a Buddha or a butthead. But I think . . . .”
I never learned what Beau thought, because at that moment, Nacho walked by and hooked a thumb toward the bar. “BB, Beau, stop playing kissy face and waddle on inside. Tia’s about to introduce Suave and if you aren’t there to see and be seen, Foxy will never forgive you.”
So we did as we were told. We got up and went back inside to see the end of an era.