“Or maybe,” Frank said as he left a wad of grubby bills on the table under the sugar shaker, “just blue-skying here, but maybe you’re too hard on yourself? Maybe you found your dream honestly and you’re just beating yourself up because life didn’t go how you imagined and yeah, The Curse didn’t help any, but maybe you and some better-thought-through version of your dream deserve a second chance, you melodramatic idiot.” And then Frank winked performatively, like a rock-star.
“Funny,” I smiled, “I was gonna say the same to you. I was just gonna use more SAT words and more swears. Good luck in the High Desert, man,” “Good luck wherever the hell Little Falls is.”
Never saw Frank in the flesh, well, the fur anyway, again. But I still follow news web-sites from Mojave, from Bishop, from California City, and I look for any stories that might hint toward the yetis being sighted in Kern County? In the arid frantic oblivion between Los Angeles and Vegas.
I hold to my commission. I hope Frank finds his answer. Maybe I can even find some of my own.
But maybe he had a point about me too. Maybe only part of my dream was neediness and hubris.
The part from Internet message boards and a nearly-all-consuming desire to be validated. Maybe part of what brought me out there was going to see science-fiction movies with my dad at Valley Cinemas. My Mom rented me Charlie Brown and Muppet movies at Victory Video. Cousin Alan helped build antennas to try and pick up the Albany and Syracuse TV stations our Paragon Cable didn’t carry. That larger world outside the littlest city on Earth my family gifted unto me, maybe.
Maybe the born-rich can poison dreams, add weird bullshit onto them to make us easier to profit off, maybe they can grind us into the pavement of self-doubt and befuddle us with glamor magic to shave off a couple extra dollars. But maybe that dream of trying to connect with others, telling them their fears and sorrows and trauma and crazy thoughts aren’t just their own, and other folks feel just like they do? Stories to remind people they are not alone, that we’re all in this together?
Maybe we can redeem those yet. Stitch them up like my dad fixed my childhood Mickey Mouse doll, like my mom cleaned his fur when I spilled milk on him. Maybe we could learn from those let-downs and failures, learn how to teach each other about this confusing thing called living yet.
Step back, clear-eyed with no delusions, and say it’s okay that we were stupid and that we’re still stupid but let’s try again and do it right this time. Smarter, kinder. Not through a television screen dimly, but rather from face to face? Maybe I should sit down in the evenings, after shifts working at the front desk of my childhood’s library, try and write a book about it. Maybe? Maybe. Maybe.
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