Completing the Equation

for Paul

This much is true. Someone decided to make a comedy series pilot from the Geico insurance ads, featuring the cavemen. Follow me now. The response is the same inclination that I had as an adolescent, reading a story or a book and, having internalized the characters and the related concepts of the fictional representation, I wanted that world and its personas to persist. Follow me now. Whole series of books are published based on the continuing adventures of a character. Whole series of movies are made and released, based on a set of reworked premises. What prevents me from making a monument from the momentary pleasures of my sandbox, the block castles and glory of pillow forts? It is a joke for a conversation with friends and not a tome on which to base a civilization. Follow me.

There is a saying in Arabic: Your story has no bottom and no top. A story has to have a basis in truth which makes the other parts resonate. The parts themselves must be tuned to the truth. There is a saying in French: The empty barrel makes the most noise. If you do not know the difference between the resonating story and the noisy empty barrel, I can try to tell you, but it may kill you.

If I am not happy in a place in myself, I am not happy wearing leather. I ride a motorcycle in order to cover my feeling of inadequacy. I did not move to Paris to be a product of my environment but, seeking camouflage, chose to associate my inadequate self with something someone told me somewhere was adequate and, by association, hoped no one would notice at this time what was missing in my skin, once the leather was laid away.

I am a billionaire now with a beautiful boyfriend. What my mother thinks hardly matters when there is champagne. What my father thinks hardly matters when statues that resemble what someone else says he thinks of me make it clear what I am here. I have a mirror that shows me who I am. A plastic surgeon gave it to me. I have people around me who tell me who I am. I try to hear that voice all the time but an opposite and equal voice grows louder with every laudatory roar. The Ides of March approaches.

In the quiet hallway at night every night I hear my mother’s footsteps in a house that is not this house but every house. There is a light under the door. It opens just a crack, letting light into my room not where I am but where I will always be in that space. She whispers, “This is who you are. The mirror lies.” I hear my father’s snoring, or is it my boyfriend, who also resembles my wife?

Am I happy, am I gay? Whose bed did I make? Whose memories are these? Whose leather jackets have I worn? Where the hell is my windbreaker? Follow me now.

An idea occurs to me and from it I make a prayer wheel for a rivulet of water, running down the street in a town I lived in as a child. I place the wheel in the water with its dowel firmly fixed on either side of the flowing water and the wheel begins to turn in the flowing water. I go about my business, feeding goats and braving traffic jams on freeways. There are no goats but as I do various urban things, I might as well be doing chores on a farm. I have never lived on a farm. Perhaps I do not know what I’m talking about. There is an equivalence of what I do here and now and what all of my species has done.

The comedy of the cavemen appeals to me as I peel an apple, not much longer. Adam Sandler’s limited short-duration skit talent does not appeal to me, being suitable for adolescent boys. I know all about Eve but could never accept an award for information like that. I was in the garden when God spoke to me. I was in the shower when God spoke to me. I was stuck in traffic when God spoke to me. I was naked before God and could not hear my own voice. I waited a moment. Then I heard it again and made coffee. I was drinking coffee when God took up the previous sentence and made me laugh. Someone else may have been there or not. We shared the voice of God with the coffee.

Why would I refrain from making a monument from my imagination, when the world rewards the false prophets? Get yourself to a radio station, the high mountain. Read the news and spin the discs. All the power and the glory of these kingdoms can be yours. Then, in a moment of vast syndication, declare the truth, “God speaks to me!” The engineer shakes his head. My producer rolls her eyes toward heaven. “God speaks to everyone.” Whose voice is that?

I am on the freeway without my leather jacket in a Honda. I never had a leather jacket. I have never fired a handgun. I do not own a man who owns one and therefore have no one to ask. My barber knows nothing for sure but he has prayed for flutes and received them, and plays the trumpet fairly well. He plays sax and guitar. No one really cares about my barber, but I tell people anyway, as I am telling you now. Follow me here. I grew up in one place and have lived in other places, all of them equally interesting to me because I happened to be there. I went other places, all equally interesting to me because I happened to be there. I find myself periodically, repeatedly, all variously interesting to me because I happen to be there, where I am, naked under whatever clothes cover my body, irrespective of whatever food keeps me alive, my body more than clothes, my life more than food.

It occurs to me to pull over and get the other drivers’ attention. I should let someone know God talks to me. I am not on the freeway. I am in front of a keyboard and a flat panel display. I am awake and the door to my room opens. My father says, “God talks to everyone.”

David Geffen behaves like a junior high school girl. His values are those of an adolescent. His emotional stagnation is that of an adolescent. “There are no higher values than that of a spoiled high school girl,” says some feminine-sounding man on the radio, on the TV, in the latest book by a Ph.D. In the background, Oprah is nodding and no one hears the voice of the man’s parents, except in his own head because it is the voice of everyone’s parents whom everyone chooses to ignore, having been promised a spot on American Idol and a chance to win a BMW Z3, a gay car if ever there was one according to my girlfriend – no, wait: lesbians like them too. “Hey, Mikey: She likes it. Guess no one is really gay after all.” No one is happy. This is all there is for them: “I used to enjoy it, but the reason I did it seems to have gone away, now that everyone thinks I am Van Gogh.”

Rock star, rock star, what you gonna do? What are you going to do, when they come for you? “Kill me! Kill me!” That is all there is for them.

No, there is more. Follow me. This is more. The inversion of the equation is the correct direction. Why would I tell anyone I hear the voice of God, unless he also hears it? If you do not hear it, you will not believe it is the voice of God. We can talk about goats, if goats is what you know, if we have goats in common. If you do not like coffee, why would I offer you coffee?