I was born 15 minutes late

I was born 15 minutes late

I was born 15 minutes late, and those fifteen minutes would haunt me
for the rest of my life.

It wasn't going according to plan there was a delay and somehow I had
ended up at the back of the queue again which clearly wasn't supposed
to happen.
I could sense that the world outside was starting to loose interest.
The doctors rushed to another patient, my to be dad went outside for a
smoke, mum was complaining to the nurse and everyone started checking
the time. My delivery date had been set for 3:33 pm on April the
seventeenth but now things started to change I was getting into the 4
o'clock slot.
Dad was supposed to meet some mates at the pub to celebrate and watch
the second half of the game and I sensed he was getting restless. He
kept checking his watch while smoking his cigarette nervously.
I am gonna come I thought and wished I could speak up to them, but my
voice even so loud was just making a gurgling noise that couldn't be
heard by anyone but me, that was now anyhow. I was waiting to get out
to speak up and no one out there seemed to care anymore.
My mum briefly considered to give it up and go home without having me
and dad was nervously playing with his phone till he dialled the number
of his mate to tell them that he was to be late. I knew when my time
slot was to be and it was coming up soon but I was getting impatient as
well.
Sometimes I kept thinking it happens like this and there is nothing you
can do about it. Nothing or not much, anyhow it was the first time that
I found myself in a situation like this, but I could tell then that it
wasn't to be the last time.
When I finally got out my mum had me wrapped, dad had a quick look,
they gave me the assigned name and quickly rushed back home. Mum
proceeded to have coffee with her friends Rose and Prism and Dad rushed
of to meet his mates, I was left by myself to grow into a recognisable
shape which took me the best part of twenty eight years after which I
felt ready to speak up and stand by myself.
Seeing Rose and Prism there that first day introduced me to what I
would presume to be the perfect woman. It wasn't either one of them in
particular but an accumulation of the two who had merged into one due
to the fact that nobody had bothered to open my eyes properly.

When I was finally out there twenty-eight and a quarter years old I
knew that I had to find a purpose, one that I had been chasing for the
best part of my childhood but somehow never managed to reach. I
naturally put that down to my late arrival. My life could have been
much different if I had arrived on time but I carried that chip with me
at all times. Now and then people would tell me, as if to remind me of
something that I didn't need reminding about.
The day I went out into the world to fight for myself the world gave me
a brief look before it grinned realizing that I was a late arrival and
quickly decided not to bother with me. I had no problem with that going
undetected was fine by me, after all I had spend most of my life like
that.
Never mind, I had this idea of catching up with time once and for all
perhaps even get on the other side of it. That would be my goal in life
but as yet I had no idea how to go about achieving it.
I set out to see what was out there and there was much I realized that
was screaming to be seen. For the first time I was confronted with a
Television and I spend almost three month in front of it picking up
things that I had never dreamed of. Out there were other people as well
more than I could comprehend and eventually I gave up counting and
cataloguing them there were simply to many and all of them looked
different. There was no norm and after greeting more than 10,000 I
stopped exhausted from the task I had set myself.
I found a room in a quiet corner of the universe in an old house next
to a giant cactus somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Down the road
from me was Monotony Valley a little town with 264 inhabitants just
about as many as I could cope with. I got to know everyone by name in a
matter of month but when I was trying to find out what made each and
everyone tick I was dissuaded quickly. It seemed something people were
afraid to talk about something that was intrinsically personal and
private and after I had my arm broken twice I stopped asking to many
questions instead concentrated on the banalities of existence which was
what people liked to talk of. I spend hours in the local bar which
didn't even have a name.
"Why, I kept asking Snide who's bar it was, have you not come up with a
name for it?'
He shrugged his shoulders. 'It never bothered no one till now, and it's
the only bar around anyhow so everyone knows where you are if you tell
them you are at the bar!.
'There was no arguing with that, I thought and decided to spend even
more time there, cause for one reason or another I thought that this
place may well hold the answer to my predicament. Many late nights
followed and at times I would overhear peoples comments. They were
mostly drunk at the time but it was then that they would let their
guards down and talk freely.
There was Tumbler who drank beer and sat in a corner I never heard him
utter a word till one night way past midnight he banged his empty
bottle on the table, stood up and shouted "Life goes funny after a
while!' That was deep I thought pulled out my notebook and scribbled it
down in a frenzy so not to forget it.
Tumbler left the bar after his outburst and was never seen again as if
he had broken an unwritten code that made his existence in this town
impossible.
Then there was Colvin with whom I had a long conversation that I
couldn't follow. It was intellectual and philosophical he told me and
proceeded to explain why there was a reason for a why in the world. I
could feel myself at the edge of things.
'The why is what drove you out here, he said, now face up to it and
draw your own conclusions.'
I thought about those words for days after and he was right of course,
I hadn't found the reason in the big cities of the east and now I was
out here and everything promised to become real.
There was Tempera a luscious brunette who came as close to being the
perfect woman as anyone had ever come, after a few drinks she confided
that she as well had been late to arrive, later than me it seemed for
no one was there when she did arrive. We bonded that night went back to
my house and made love for a week. After that we decided that although
we were of the same complexion we would hinder each other from reaching
our goal as there was to much that was stacked against us. We proceeded
to have coffee together once a week but we both abstained from touching
on the subject which had driven us to the place we were at, instead we
exchanged existential banalities of an intimate kind, something closer
to the core but miles off any real conclusion.
I finally got around to elaborate on some of my own thoughts, which I
decided to be just as credible as anybody else's, regardless of the
fact that most of them had taken root somewhere under the giant
cactus.
One day at the bar I witnessed a crying woman, she was sat by the door
and her shoulders shook in irregular spasms. Meaningful, I thought, I
could sense the intensity of her emotions which filled most of the bar
with a thick pale blue smoke it was something new to me and I
concentrated hard so not to miss any of it.
It gave the impression of being a pointless exercise, something
designed to waste energy without the benefit of obtaining anything in
return. Years later I realised that it provided great relief from a
burden when done properly.
I had come a long way but didn't feel like I had gotten closer to my
goal it was as if being was a circular mechanism designed to turn you
in circles without the benefit of spiralling uncontrollably into a
different dimension.
There was to be a stage 2 in this game I thought and I closely
inspected every room in my house for hidden clues. I went through the
vast number of notebooks that I had filled in the past years and tried
to summarize it all into a comprehensible form that would illuminate my
tortured self. But it all got too confusing in the end and I wasn't
able to make any more sense of anything all the same.

Tempera and me had been going through the same routine for more than
seven years now, during which the words we exchanged got sparser and
sparser till we barely spoke at all.
Then one day I woke up and knew what I had to do. I got dressed in the
same shiny suit I had worn all my life and wandered down into Monotony
Valley marched straight up to Tempera's house and knocked on the door.
It was still early and the morning mist was in the process of settling.
I had to knock a few times till I heard movement inside and a hardly
awake, luscious brunette, naked to the bone and beautiful to look at
opened the door to let me in. She was as surprised to see me as I was
to find myself in her flat.
'Just love me, I said as I walked past her, sitting myself down on the
chair at the table.'
She smiled, threw a robe over herself and sat down opposite me.
'What is it, she asked.'
'We have been going wrong, there was an error in judgement way back
when we got started that first day we met. We are of the same kind and
if anything it is our combined efforts that can make us reach the
goal.
She nodded and we started packing her things into various boxes and
cases to than proceed taking it to the old pick-up truck which was
parked outside and up the road to my house next to the giant
cactus.

After hours of rearranging my house which made me almost regret having
ever brought her up here we settled on a new room arrangement and
proceeded to empty rearrange undo redo and generally confuse my up till
now perfect system. That night I decided to go into town, hang out at
the bar and drink to much of the cool golden substance most people
commonly refer to as beer. I had to wind down rather than curl up to
the lady that had suddenly become part of my life.
It seemed a lot that I was willing to give away, but I decided after
gently sliding into a corner of the room and moments before I passed
out, there was much to be gained at the same time.

I woke in the early hours of another day my breath stale my head
thumping, briefly contemplated to die going through various scenarios,
most of them involving a bicycle and a car, needless to say I was
riding the bicycle. After suffering for far to long I got myself up and
started to walk home. The sun that day had an eerie effect on my head,
my head had an eerie effect on my stomach and all put together it was
enough to make the strongest man sick.
As I approached the giant cactus it turned a little to get a better
look at me before shaking itself, it wasn't the first time it had seen
me in this state but it had been a while. I sat down looking up at its
spikes of wisdom wondering.
I had never before considered the longevity of cactus memory, but for
as long as I could think the cactus had been here and pretty much the
same. Perhaps the cactus held the answer to it all.
Now on all four, I crossed the distance between myself and the house,
reached Tempera's door which was slightly ajar knocked and scratched
before pushing it open and collapsed on the floor just beyond the
threshold. About an hour later Tempera got up, tripped over me and in
the process managed to give my ribs a good kicking.
It serves you right, she shouts as she straightens up.
I sigh and stay where I am, before slowly raising myself, my face a
contorted grimace of agony and pain, to join Tempera on the porch for
coffee.
I slurp loudly, burning my tongue severely, grunt look across the table
at Tempera and point at the cactus.
What about it?
It thinks you know.
You think?
Well, I thought, yes. It does for sure and we should ask it about
things, its been here far longer than us and must have seen a lot, we
ought to find out what it knows.
There was a tight smile around Tempera's lips right then and I wondered
whether she was doubting my sanity.
How would we go about asking the cactus, she asked glancing over at
it.
We, I hesitated suddenly seeing the lunacy of it all, but then I had
reason to believe that the cactus did indeed hold the answer to our
quest. I don't know, I continued. Perhaps we just have to sit next to
it and talk to each other, that would truly lead the cactus to hear the
whole story and us to go over it all again and any conclusion we may
reach through that process we may well attribute to the cactus.
You mean as if the cactus was to speak through us.
I nodded, that would be it.

You look like shit though, she says looking at me again.
I had to agree, I certainly feel it and regret being such a loser who
can't even get to grips with the little things such as having to share
my castle with Tempera and therefore having to go out, getting totally
wrecked, so wrecked in fact that even twelve hours later I was unable
to function properly.
Are you sure you are up for a head to head with me and the cactus, and
her head twitches in the direction of it.
I keep on replaying that moment and movement and the question she
throws at me, before I answer.
Then I take a deep breath which makes my ribs ache, give me an hour to
lighten up.
Time gets shorter everyday, she says, we are getting slower and more
behind and it will be harder to catch up.
One hour.
She nods, I'll be waiting.
At noon we sat down in the shade of the great cactus with ice tea,
plenty of water and some fruit.
The air was charged with electricity.
It was the moment of truth and we knew it and I guessed that the cactus
knew it as well. The moment before it began as much as the moment it
all ended.

© Marcus Bastel