Editing Malady (section)

==Decay==
If you think that it's implausible that guy like Aristotle could end
up on the streets, you're wrong. Plenty of the sad, addled bums that
you pass on your way to work have degrees just like you. It's just that
something snapped, or something went wrong, or somewhere,
someone, somehow was sucked into one of these slithering riptides of
fate that you can't see coming, but lurk behind lynchpins and labels a
triggers and trapdoors. Don't believe for a second that it couldn't
happen to you.


It happened to Aristotle. Suddenly, and with seemingly no
explanation, Ari was gone. He had been replaced with a walking
shadow, devoid of will and wisdom and joy, devoid of life, except in
name. Ari was gone. To himself, and to those that had known him, he
was no more. He walked out of that hotel broken, and stumbled into
the street, where he stayed a long time. At first he was motionless, but
then he began to move - uptown he moved, for no particular reason,
but it was a direction, and his feet carried him. That first day was the
strangest. The autumn wind was full of scent and light. It was a
beautiful day, and Aristotle felt alarmingly free. He went uptown for a
whisk and then for want of a reason not to, he went back down. Cars
and suits and tourists and police, he passed them all, and they passed
him, and no one had any cause for alarm. Gusts and bursts and trees
and youth - a handsome man walked free in the city. No baggage, no
briefcase, no history but his story, which changed with the minute.


He stopped a while in a Downtown park. He would not return to
life as he had known it. His former life was too empty now, too full of
spaces that ached for impossible repairs. Mother was gone, Father was
gone, Lucy was gone, and so he would go too. You can image him as an
American sadhu, if you like. A nomad caked in human ash. I suppose
you could say he was making a choice, but I don’t think he saw it that
way. There was no going back – he did not have in him the will to
endure that suffering. Of course, memory followed him in a swarm of
flies, buzzing always, and occasionally eliciting an involuntary slap to
the ear. But it was easier out here, in the wilderness of the disinherited,
it was easier to bear the pain, and the buzzing was softer. he had won
his freedom, even if the victory had come through a measure of
cowardice.


Let them have it all, he thought, the data centers and soft drinks
and highways and Christmas lights. Let them have it and let them
enjoy it, and I will be here, sitting on this bench and watching the
children play under this arch.


Let them have it, because I sure as shit don’t want it any more –
the dependence and the comfort, the newness and the fame. I need
the flame, I need the storm and noise, the redemption of song, my
bare feet on the concrete of a hard street where the people meet. I
need my hands and my liver. I need a notion of slight serenity, but I
have that here, in the pocket of my trousers, where there are seventy-
seven cents.


Let them have it, and I will not weep for them, nor they for me,
because one is not better than the other, but all is decay, and we are
but meat for worms, and good night sweet ghost of my former self. Let
them have it, the sweet rot of slow decay, and I will be here rotting
each day in my own way.


Then he got up. He was hungry already, before the continental
breakfast he had so thoughtlessly devoured was even gone from his
body. He asked a man for money. He was ignored. He asked another
and another, until he had one dollar and eighty-five cents. He bought a
double cheeseburger, and sat back down on the bench. It was heavy in
his stomach, and he continued to rant.


Let them have it, he thought, the books and the cooks, and the
crooked double looks. He even said it a few times. “You can have it,”
he had yelped at one man who was on the phone. “They can have it,”
he had mumbled to an orthodox Jew, who paused for a moment, but
then went back to Brooklyn. It didn’t even cross Aristotle’s mind that
he had gone insane, but he hadn’t. He just didn’t want it any more. The
it being this glorious pretense, our spiraling edifice of civilization. Isn’t
that any person’s prerogative? To stop pretending like he knows what’s
going on? Aristotle had stopped pretending, and now was simply living
– tasting each moment. Whether it tasted like shit or macaroons
depended on the wind, but he was quite alright with that.


He slept that night on the hard, curved bench in the park, and was
only disturbed by the itching feeling of eyes at night. Cars drove past,
and lovers walked hand in hand, and the sky was glowing, but Aristotle
slept. He slept soundly, and dreamed fearlessly, and in the morning, he
was renewed. He stood, and stretched, and walked away. The bench
was nothing to him, only a place where he had slept, and where his life
had begun again.


He walked a great deal in the weeks that followed, across parks and
lawns, and bridges. Walked on his feet, walked upright. He walked, and
sometimes he sat, and sometimes birds shot out of the sky, and stole
him from his revelry. He walked and sat and stood and slept, and saw
with his eyes – the decay and the nothing. He smelled it with his nose
– the sweet rot of humanity, consumed and consuming, always hungry,
always new. He leapt and crouched and looked. Nobody bothered him,
and he bothered no one, except to beg for money and to tell them it
was all theirs, and he didn’t want any. He was smelly, and the
September air was smelly around him, and that was that. It went on
like this for along time – the sky grew dark, and then grew light, and
then grew dark again. It rained and it did not rain, he got wet and he
got dry. He did not go hungry, but he was never full, and that was that.
No more glorious pretending, and no more data centers and much less
pain. He did not think of Lucy so much, and thought of his parents
only when confronted with trees or water, which was often, but not so
often as all of the time.


He was happy in those days, September and early October, perhaps
as happy as he had ever been. But his body grew tired and the wind
grew cold. I’ll go south, he thought at first, but he had no money for
that. I’ll be fine, he thought, but he knew it was a lie, and that he
would die on the streets in the furious, biting cold of winter. Going
back was not an option, but he had to move forward. He still didn’t
want it, but he had begun to want. He needed some bread and a bed,
but he also wanted to keep his head. Then he met a man named
giggles, on that same bench where he had first become free.


Giggles was the only man he ever met who thanked the heavens
every day that he’d been hit by a bus. It had happened twelve years
earlier, in India, and that’s when giggles had gotten free. He talked
about his freedom as a tremendous light, which poured in through the
top of his head, and out through his eyes. Matted grey dreadlocks, and
only six teeth – he drank his own urine, and chanted softly as he went.
Surely, he was insane, but he had joy, and he was willing to share. The
answer was in waste, he supposed. Not his own, but he really did drink
the stuff, even if it tasted so acrid and made him choke. But the answer
was in waste, and he could not tell Aristotle, but he could show him.


They walked all day to the industrial outskirts of that beating heart
of a city, New York, New York. Across razor wire fences and body
shops and smokestacks, they walked against and ashen sky. Giggles
stopped.


“Here,” he said, and fixed his gaze. They were standing in front of a
boarded up brownstone in the borough of Queens. They could squat
until the cops came, he told Ari, and then they could find another and
another. There were thousands just like it, he said, and who did it harm
if they had a home amongst the squalor and filth. In through the
window, they found cinder blocks and aluminum cans. They made beds
and lit candles, sang to each other, and delighted in the company of a
kindred spirit. Neither of them wanted it, but they wanted each other,
and were unafraid, not least because they had nothing.


They slept that night in the warm glow of a new home. They spoke
of joy, of how they got their freedom, of the new now, no now, which
consumed them and made them whole. They were brothers, and they
would help each other, because it’s so much harder when you’re on
your own. That’s what had really made Ari so tired – the feeling that he
was the only one. But now he had giggles, and walls to stop the wind.


Now he had giggles, and giggles had so much to give. The waste
was the answer – because people want it, but only if it’s perfect, and
only if it’s new. Look around you, he told Aristotle, and you’ll see that
there’s plenty, in dustbins and dumpsters, on curbs and in alleys.
There’s enough for us here, and nobody will mind us amongst the filth
and the squalor, taking what’s unwanted and living in the now. So go
look, my brother, baiah baiah, and together we can make a life. Take
what they don’t want, and we will have enough.


That’s exactly what Ari did. He went out each morning and came
back with sometimes nothing, but sometimes more than enough. From
dumpsters and dustbins, he took food and furniture and friendship.
Warm winter jackets, and day old bread, a mattress, a microwave, and
half-used crayons. They made art on the ceilings and lived in the dust.
They never went hungry, and they were not so alone. The world went
on as ever, and the bitter, biting cold of winter was kept at bay.
Aristotle’s beard grew long, and his hair was a matted nest as it had
been for so long. He was alive now, for the first time, perhaps, but at
least since his parents had gone. He was alive, and by any metric that,
he was well. He told his brother Iggy so, and hoped that he would let
the others know. They had not known what to make of his sudden
silence, but only hoped that he was still alright. Aristotle still loved
them, and still dreamt sometimes of stir-fry, but was only doing what
he had to do to ease the pain. Iggy understood and he said the others
would, too, even if he didn’t really believe it. Aristotle said he was alive,
and the line went dead. He had to get to the back of the bakery, to
meet Steven, who saved Tuesday’s loaves just for him.


Soon there were others in dusty dark, and the chorus of song grew
louder. It was not unpleasant, their way of life, not at all how you
might think. It was like and unburdened, and full of the best sort of
confraternity. It was past and future tied neatly in one – hunter-
gatherers of the new millennium, living off of excess and this shining,
unbounded, now. There were students in rebellion, and old me in
decline, women and men and transgendered bodies of the new
humanity. Black and white and no color at all, except for what you
wanted to be. No e-mail and no google news, no network to contain
them, finally unwet from the digital deluge.


From time to time, the cops came, but it was only like a bee sting.
A sharp wave of terror, and perhaps the thwack of a hard baton, but no
arrest, and no lasting damage. They had only to move their camp to
one of the other dusty, dim, dilapidated buildings. Each time they
moved, they would lose a few friends, gain new ones, say goodbye and
hello, and Namaste, Namaste, I see god in you. They cooked over fires,
and the taste of their labor was sweet. So hungry after a long day of
gathering, they sat around, and at night the joy came. Always slightly
different, and always a little unnerving, each day the joy would come,
and sit in their hair, and join them in song. How they sang – songs of
redemption, and soul songs, and the rhythmic chants of distant and
forgotten tribes. They were their own tribe – giggles and Aristotle like
the Romulus and Remus of this ne w Rome. But it wa s not a
civilization they had started, but an uncivilization, a backwardness that
they felt was right, their right. Aristotle and giggles and niradhara and
T, their cast of roving bandits, wanting nothing but the now. For some
time it went on like this, and they could all sit back and watch the
decay. Decaying teeth, decaying spirits, decaying humanities – worn
down by the diamond-grind of society and industry and technology
and civilization, they had all sought a way to end the decay. Into the
spring, they went on watching, and the verdure once again returned.
It had been more than a year since the accident, and Aristotle was no
longer a ghost of himself. He was a spirited incarnation, a spectral
specter that had found a new and enchanting way of life. Still, there
was one thing that began to weigh more and more on his mind – sex.


Aristotle had not taken a lover since Lucy, and he had begun to
wonder if he ever would. He craved sex wildly at times, but found
himself stuck. The figures of beauty haunted him, and the new spring
warmth brought the constant temptation of unbounded bodies. He
didn’t know what to do He needed the warm, wet release of
intercourse, but none of his compatriots were interested in the same.


One day, then, Aristotle shaved his beard. He washed himself and
combed his hair; he smiled at himself in the mirror, and remembered
that he was handsome, that he had what had been called a smoldering
gaze. He stepped lively into the night, determined to sell his body, so
that he could buy bodies, and find release.


Does it come as a surprise? That a man so handsome and so smart
would want to sell himself ? The reasons are clear. He did not wish to
return to the world of desks and elevators, which he had left to save his
sanity. But he still was oppressed by those figures of beauty. Despite all
the freedom he had gained, he could not rid himself of his desire for
wide hips and a thin waist, big titties and a symmetrical face. He could
not find those things, in his detachment of the dispossessed, but he
was sure he could not find them by leaving, either. So, he chose a path
in the middle ground. He would sell himself on the street, and then he
would use his winnings to solicit the same. He had no qualms about
this, not since he had left it all, and abandoned the teeming wreckage
of modernity, and morality. He smiled at himself in a mirror, and knew
that he would meet with success.


On the very first night, he had sex with two women and three men.
The men were painful at first, but he eventually grew accustomed to
the pounding sensation of penetration. Each time he asked for more,
until he was fetching more money in a single hour than he had seen in
all of the last long months He fucked in cars and hotel rooms,
apartments and office buildings, so empty at night. He was surprised at
how easy it felt, how his jerking and humping felt no more or less
moral than his walking down the street.


There was a justice to it, he thought. He would have sex with those
who wanted him, and then he would have sex with those that he
wanted, and at the end of it all he would come home, no richer and no
poorer, but much less horny. In the back of a Mercury Mountaineer a
man told him that he could take him away from all this, but Aristotle
only laughed, took his payment, and hopped out of the car.


There was symmetry in his actions, but there was irony, too. At the
end of a week, he would take his winnings, and book a room at some
expensive hotel. Perhaps even the same one where he had spent that
last night in civilization. He would solicit some prostitutes, beautiful
by the standards of Vogue or American Apparel, and take them up and
up, to that well furnished room. What’s the irony, you ask? It’s that the
girls had no idea. They had no idea that the stranger who payed to
climb inside of them knew exactly what he was doing. They had no
idea how he had gotten the money, and they didn’t care. They weren’t
surprised that he was handsome, or that he had sex so tenderly. They
only fucked him, and took his money, and went out through the lobby,
and back uptown.


He never spent the night in the giant, soft bed for which he had
actually paid, but was gone by morning, and the sheets were all
unfurled. He would return to his squat, and make his bed next to
giggles and the rest. He told himself, he needed to tell himself, that he
still didn’t want it. It was no less foul, he thought, and the images on
TV were still so full of blood and fear. He just wanted the sex, he said
to himself - that wet, warm release, and that handful of tit.


But Aristotle was either wrong, or he was lying to himself. It was
creeping back in, rubbing off on him from the money that he touched
each day. Soon, before the summer was out, he began to buy things
besides sex. The first time it was a cab ride uptown, but soon it was a
coffee and cigarettes and some of the other comforts of civilization.
What he had begun to miss. Slowly, the it crept back into Aristotle’s
life. It happened when he passed the harbor or the arbor, when he
heard the name Lucy, when he logged back on.


After eleven months of radio silence, Aristotle checked his e-mail.
It was all still there. In all that time outside of the spiraling vapor of
technology and information, Ari had thought that he was truly gone.
But it was not so – it can no longer be so. Almost a year’s worth of e-
mails had gone unanswered. He went each day, and read them all. First
they were from siblings and friends, asking where he had gone, or if
they had done something wrong. Then they grew increasingly urgent,
increasingly scared. People wondered if he was alive or dead. Then the
tone changed – that must have been when he called Ignatius. No
longer full of worry, the letters had an angrier, more resentful tone.
Nobody understood why he had done what he did, despite Iggy’s
promise.


Two or so months after he had gone underground, the mail mostly
trailed off. Of course, he still received the advertising and offers – they
don’t care if you’re alive or dead. Still, two sorts of e-mails kept
coming. One was from the occasional, erstwhile friend, who didn’t
even realize that Ari had gone. Some people we see so seldom. It
dawned on Ari that even to that day, there were people who thought
he was sitting behind a desk, checking his e-mail every so often, and
going about his routine life. In a sense it made him think that he really
was, and that no matter how much he didn’t want it, it was his by
birth, and he couldn’t give it away.


The second type of e-mail was from Iggy, who every month for the
past nine months had sent Ari an e-mail containing news from the
family, and a plea to come back. Ari read these with a supreme
intensity, clinging to every word, thanking the stars for a brother like
that. He had missed so much in just a year. All three of his siblings
were married now, and there were six nieces and nephews between
them. Careers were blooming, and life was happening at breakneck
pace. For the first time, Ari realized that he missed it – the bourgeois
life that had once been his destiny. It was not regret he felt, but a
readiness. He was ready to come back up - if not to the surface, then at
least part of the way. First, though, he had some things to take care of.


The squat was as lively as ever – giggles and niradhara were cooking
a stew. Ari walked in and was greeted with usual chorus of namaste,
namaste. He sat on the floor next to T, wondered if he was really ready
to leave this life, live this life, lead this life. The stew was made with
old cabbage and a clear broth, and it did not taste so good to him. It
was not full of his toil and hunger. He told the gang that he would be
leaving soon, and he said that he loved them, each and all.


They bemoaned his leaving, especially some of the newer ones,
who looked on giggles and Aristotle as a sort of myth. Still, his resolve
was clear, and one by one they wished him luck and health and
happiness. Ari started to cry when he said goodbye to T, who had
become his closest friend, and whose shining black hair was often the
first thing he saw when he opened his eyes.


Late that night, giggles and Aristotle sat on the roof, stoking one
last fire, though they had no need for it in the August heat.


“I knew this day would come,” said giggles, bearing his six teeth in a
knowingest grin.


“I think I did, too.”


“Just try not to get too attached is all, and you’ll be fine.”


“You’re too wise.”


“Well, it’s not my wisdom, but it works.”


“I’m just glad I met you. I would have frozen to death if you hadn’t
come along.”


“Me too.” The words lingered in the air, and Aristotle didn’t
understand them, but he was sure that he knew what they meant. They
smiled and sang, and let the joy come one last time. In the morning it
was over, and Aristotle was again on his way, on his own, wiser for the
year he had spent in the dust and the dark, but ready to return.
He logged on straight away, and he sent a message to Iggy.


Subject: Namaste


Iggy,


I’m so sorry if I’ve caused you any pain. I’ve spent the last week
reading the e-mails you sent. I’ve missed so much. Thank you, thank
you, a thousand times, thank you for holding on to me. I know that it
must have been hard, to write to a brother was gone from the world.
But I’m back now, and I have so much to tell. Maybe I can make my
way to Phoenix, and tell you in person.


It’s been a long, strange year, but I’ve been really well. I’ve changed
so much. I wonder if the world has changed, too. It is still very strange
to me that I’m writing this, using a computer again, but it also feels
just the same.


Do let me know if I should make my way down.


Abiding Love,


Ari


Ari proceeded to respond to a great many of the people who had
tried to reach him. First to his two older siblings, he sent messages that
asked for forgiveness. Then, to former friends and colleagues, he sent
messages saying that he had been at a monastery. In a way, that was the
truth, as far as he could figure. The squat had been some sort of
monastic order. he even sent a message to Lucy, who he was sure was
happy b now with some other man. He only wanted to apologize for
what happened, to tell her that he understood. In a matter of two long
days, he had reconnected with everyone. Ignatius said that he should
definitely come. All was forgiven, and he just couldn’t wait to see his
brother again. Ari said that he would set out the next day.


Now, I wish that I could tell you that that’s how it played out. I
want very badly for Aristotle to make it down to Phoenix. But
reentering the world is more complicated than that. Ari learned a lot in
his battle with decay, but he also unlearned a lot. In the shadows,
things seemed a bit more straightforward. If someone was going to rob
you, they were going to rob you, If they were going to help you out,
they helped you out. Aristotle had forgotten that the world is full of
deception, and sadly, he’s not going to make it to Phoenix. At least, he’s
not going to make it straight away, and not without a good deal of
intervening chaos.


Part of me wishes that Ari could have just stayed at the squat. But
that’s not how it happened – there are bigger things in store. Like all
experience, though, the year of decay has helped shape our hero, or
anti-hero, or whatever Aristotle turns out to be. He’s softer now, I
think, but also full of a much greater confidence than he had had
before. He was one of the leaders, after all, and he found that he could
make a life for himself and others out of nothing. He was proud of
what he and giggles had done, and I think he had every right to be.


As for me, in case you were wondering, I think it’s getting easier as
I go along. I started out with a relatively vague idea of who Aristotle
was, but he is becoming very real to me now. I am still drawing from
my own life in certain ways, and Ari and I are still certainly similar, but
it is different now. Ari’s story is taking on a life of its own. I write
furiously, when I write, and the words seem to spill from my pencil
quite of their own accord. I am pleased that I have gotten this far, and
have no doubt now that I will see this through to the end. Marcus even
started writing his own story tonight, about Detroit. I think in part it’s
because he saw how much I’m enjoying this, but mostly because we all
have something to say – you too.


I do worry about you from time to time, wonder if you’ll be
enjoying this, or maybe not enjoying, but at least interested. I wonder
how the prostitution part made you feel. I didn’t exactly enjoy writing
it, but I do think that it’s real. I’ve never done it, on either side, and I
guess I just worry that I wasn’t very accurate. Then again, you’ve
probably never done it either, and won’t exactly be in a position to
judge. If you are, though, if you have done it, I want to know what it
was like, and how close I came. I know you’re not Ari (nobody is) and
that he might see it differently, but do let me know.


It’s ten ‘til four in the morning now, but I don’t think I’m done for
the night. I am going to take a break through, if only because my hand
could use it. Talk to you in the next chapter, I guess, in no time at all.