The Tar Pit (5 of 9)
By Thomas Frye
- 152 reads
Now, it might be that I’m the eight ball in some cosmic game of pool, where good and evil are perched over the playing table, rolling obstacles and distractions at me to knock me off my path… or maybe it’s the action of moving toward a goal itself that attracts the obstacles. It sure seemed like it the day I rubber-banded my fifth hundred-dollar-bundle together and dropped it in the shoebox. Almost as if it was set up to happen if I ever got that far. Miss Steele would be sent rolling on into the picture as the cosmos watches on, holding its breath from the celestial window where the universe places its bets. A cosmic cue ball hitting high-right English toward that deadly black eight-ball that’s already teetering on the edge of the corner pocket. I almost met her steel, the night I met Miss Steele. And the cosmos threw down whole star-clusters on the betting line, whether or not I’d be able to resist her, the heroine of the night, Miss Steele. She rolled into my life on a Tuesday, the day of least expectance, at the Wanderer Inn, a few years before the bar met the business end of a bulldozer.
The Wanderer Inn. Wander in… Stumble out, was a slogan I remember seeing on a keychain or a tee-shirt or something. I made that a regular ritual, years back, as me and Shoestring Johnny invited the remainder of the bar up for afterhours most weekend nights. When I got to the Wanderer Inn that Tuesday, afternoon had already turned to evening.
The place was empty except for a stout, stalky man in a sensible black shirt and new jeans, standing behind the horseshoe-shaped bar. He was working on a stack of polished rocks glasses. A shaggy-haired regular that I went to high school with but never knew, named Eric, sat at the far end of the bar, next to the jukebox. And my old friend Benzo sat with his back to the pool table, his beefy slumped shoulders lumped over the drink in front of him. After Shoestring Johnny, and Morphine Johnny, the man behind the bar was the third Johnny I knew… Johnny the bartender at the Wanderer Inn. He had wiry black hair and a constant smile and was generous to his friends and lenient with the tabs in his log book. He was quick with his lip and always good for a few sips. Johnny the bartender at the Wanderer Inn.
“Basil Hayden, Johnny. Straight up,” I said, bellying to the bar and nodding a greeting to Eric. I slapped Benzo on his meaty back and sat on a stool, leaving one open stool between us. “It’s nice out. Shirt sleeve weather. I love it,” I said, raising my glass to the place.
“To summer,” Johnny toasted us with a can of Red Bull.
“To a healthy shoebox,” said Benzo with his drink tipped to me.
“Just hit five-hundred today,” I said, my voice hushed to keep the comment between the two of us.
All glasses were raised, and we drank. Then all of our attentions diverted. Eric went back to playing whatever touch-screen bar-game was at the end of the bar. Johnny stacked another rocks glass and slapped the same dry bar-rag he’d been using to buff the glasses over his shoulder; then walked into a back room to get a few more bottles of liquor. Benzo spun around once on his barstool, then paused, then spun around once more. I drew back on the bourbon in my glass.
“I’m bored.” Benzo looked up from his drink. “I want to do something that matters. Let’s start a religion or something.”
“I wish I had time to be bored.” I wiped my mouth with the side of my thumb. “I got four fucking jobs right now.”
“Alright, let’s start a business then.” Benzo spun around on his stool.
“Yeah, ‘cause that won’t take up much time.”
“You got four jobs? You’re not walking through houses anymore?”
“Had to… take a break. Copped a habit last Fall. Got pretty bad. I have a professional reputation to protect.”
“What… strung out and squatting in abandoned buildings? Showering in truck stops and covering your track marks with a suit jacket? How can you possibly damage that reputation?”
“That’s not me anymore. I haven’t worn a suit to work since my birthday last year.”
“Since your birthday suit… what was that, some kind of monster costume… clown outfit? Weren’t you born on Halloween?”
“Day after… All Saint’s Day.”
“All Saint’s Day… did you just make that up?”
“No, it’s a thing. Look it up. I’m a saint. Bona fide.”
“Well then shit, man. Let’s start a religion then. We’ve already got a saint, we’re like… halfway there. What should we call it? First, we figure out what to call it, then we decide what to believe… right? Isn’t that how they do it?
“They might as well do it that way. It would be just as ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous how?” Benzo spun around on his stool.
“Well, I mean… nobody’s got it right.”
“You don’t think the Mormons kind of nailed it?”
“Pshh, our three-dimensional minds can’t even conceptualize what four-dimensional space even looks like… let alone five dimensions… let alone infinite dimensions.”
“So?”
“So, it’s impossible to see how big the picture is when you’re down in it. Humans can’t even come close to grasping the enormity of the apparatus of our reality… because… we’re… in… it. Maybe once we evolve and we can use more of our DNA we’d be able to see it, but for now our whole concept of ‘free will’ is dependent on the fact that we can’t see the big picture. So, all we can do is try and put it into some kind of human-terms… something we can understand… give it a human name, ‘God.’ Give it a body and anger problems and… jealousy issues… human issues… please. We don’t know… What do we know?”
I spread my hands into question marks and shook my head. My glass was half-empty. I made it half-again less with another sip, then blotted the bourbon from my upper lip with the corner of my sleeve.
“What don’t we know?” Benzo looked at me over his glass of cheap, clear whiskey.
“We don’t know what we don’t know… and there’s so much out there that we don’t know. Shit that affects us in ways that we can’t even begin to comprehend… not yet anyway.”
“Example,” said Benzo, his finger outlining the top of his rocks glass. “What don’t we know?”
“Um, well… alright… let’s say, just for example’s sake, that our DNA has two extra chromosomes that we don't know about. Just as a hypothetical, so I can make my point. Let’s say they exist on some quantum level that we just can’t see yet… we don’t even know they’re there… alright… and… since they’re quantum, they affect us in very relevant and… profound ways that we don’t even have the capacity to visualize yet… but still… we react instinctively to what’s going on in those chromosomes, obviously, because they’re part of us, but we don’t… even… know they’re there. So, if we don’t know that, then we don’t know that those quantum chromosomes are actually communicating with all of humanity at a cellular level… we have no idea. So, we definitely don’t know that those chromosomes have the potential to communicate at a quantum level to the entire universe in the same way… like that movie, Contact. See? We don’t know what we don’t know… you know? So, the best we can do is…”
“What’s quantum?” asked Benzo, his big head tilted to one side.
“Sub atomic, multi-dimensional.” I pinched my finger-tips to my eye to indicate something tiny. “Sub atomic particles behave in really strange ways. Like, electrons don’t ‘orbit’ the neutron, they exist in an orbit-shaped ‘haze’, where they’re kind of everywhere and nowhere all at once… more of a probability then an actuality, and… like… in quantum field theory, which I know absolutely nothing about, communication takes place all-at-once throughout the field, using a process of inductance, which, I guess, we use in cellphones and computer chips to pass information through magnetic fields. The kids call it Near Field Communication. Well, our body uses inductance to communicate with itself at a chromosomal level through its own electromagnetic fields. Like how a person can be in a quadriplegic state and all of their organs still function together. The information is being conducted through a bio-magnetic field.”
I lifted my hand to pause for a breath, then let it drop back slowly to the bar as I continued. “So, in our little example, where we don’t know our hypothetical chromosomes use that same type of quantum inductance to communicate with everyone else’s quantum DNA, we would have no way of knowing that we’re all part of the same ‘overall quantum human-field,' and we'd have no reson not to be convinced that we are billions of separate creatures running around individually, instead of one overall ‘human entity’ with billions of working parts that can synch together ... Now ... " I raised my finger and held it there for a monent.
"I say all that to say this ... If that’s all hypothetically the case, then when it comes to laying out a religion, where you’re straight up ‘telling’ people what to believe about human reality, it’s kind of a big deal… I mean, a rather… large omission not to consider our hidden chromosomes if they quantumly connect us to all things at once. But hey, what are we going to do? We don’t know what we don’t know, it’s not our fault. Still, our best mental image we can come up with to call ‘God’ is not only very limited by its capital G, but inherently wrong… you understand?”
“Not at all… but go on.” Benzo nodded ‘yes’ and shook his head ‘no’ at the same time.
“My point is, the best we can do… the best we can do, when it comes to religion, is to come up with a metaphor that represents what we think is going on. A metaphor… that’s it. That’s the closest we can get to understanding the system we’re all a part of. So, why not make our metaphors human, with names and arms and legs, and then kill each other for thousands of years over who’s got the better metaphor? … and … you know, spoiler alert, but … they’re all obsolete. Maybe they were appropriate for the time they were in, but we’re in a new energy today then we were back then. Once the metaphor is lost and people start taking the words too literally, you get a meaningless Dogma that people just follow… mindless… sheep… or what is it? The lamb of God?... Well, I’ll play the Shepard. ‘Blind man swinging his arms in the dark searching for a light switch.’ That’s us, looking for something to call god. There’s your metaphor. Way better than an old man sitting in the clouds, casting judgment on the mice in the maze for not knowing about the existence of cheese. Way better than telling us we come into this world dirty and profane just by being born … anyone who tells you that deserves a kick in the nuts.”
“I’m not starting a religion with you if you’re not going to be any fun.” Benzo flattened his lips.
“I am… great fun. Loads… of fun.”
“No, I can already tell.” Benzo shook his head. “You’re gonna take over.” He waved his hand, dismissing me and the idea altogether. “You’re gonna … you’re gonna try and… take over as God, and … I’m going to end up having to worship you… fuck that… be the church of Jacob… I gotta pay you ten percent of everything I make. No, uh uh. I’m not doing it.”
“Are you kidding me? I would hate to be God. I hate to have to get up and shave in the morning. I couldn't imagine having to get up and run the universe? I have a hard enough trying to keep my shoes tied. I’m fine where I’m at.” I looked around at the empty bar. “I’d make everyone be their own god, so they’d just leave me alone.”
“Nope, I can already see it,” said Benzo. “You’re gonna take over as top profit then.” He shook his squat, melon head and smiled. Benzo was always smiling, always laughing. “I want to be profit. This is my thing. My idea, my religion, that’s the rules. Otherwise, this is… this is a not-for-profit type of thing.”
“No profits. I can get behind that.”
“No, you’re out,” said Benzo. Waving his big puffy hand again. “Doesn’t matter what you can get behind… you’re out. We haven’t even come up with a name yet… the first step of starting any religion, and you’re already trying to take it over.”
“You want a name for a religion?” I smacked my open palm on the bar. “Call it Delusionism. It’s the most fitting ‘ism’ for humanity… Delusionism. First off, because we purposely put ourselves into a state of delusion by coming into this life to begin with … It’s the only way free-will is even possible. We have to forget everything on coming in, otherwise the game of trying to remember it doesn’t work. But Delusionism … shit … it’s an acknowledgment that whatever comic-book-version of reality our religions have sold us for thousands of years is not really the way it is. It’s a reminder that to subscribe to any outdated dogma is to put yourself into a state of delusion. And really, dude, if your profits are human, they don’t truly know what the fuck’s going on either.”
“Well, hell … Then, Jacob, I take it back… you’re back in. You truly don’t know what the fuck’s going on. You can be Delusionism’s number one profit. The most deluded on High,” Benzo said, straightening his spine.
He tilted his whiskey to me and drank it.
“We’re all profits of Delusionism,” I said, drinking the rest of mine.
“Yeah, but didn’t you say you kept ten percent of your reality undefined, so it can mean what it needs to mean to you at the right time?”
“Ten percent’s a little high, but… yeah.”
“Well, what if that ten percent of you walks out in front of a milk truck? Are you going to believe it’s there?”
“I don’t know, is the milk truck moving, or is it parked on the curb?”
“It’s moving,” said Benzo. “…very fast.”
“Well then, yes. I believe it will hit me. If it doesn’t hit me, I probably won’t believe that happened either, if it’s moving as fast as you say it is.”
“Well what if…”
The door blew open with hurricane strength, strong enough to suck all the money out of the shoebox. A tall woman in a tight black dress was a gunslinger, perched in the doorway of a saloon with the blinding light of the outside world behind her. A terrible wind came rushing in as she stood there, the sunlight lashing into the darkened barroom like a dominatrix’s whip. At first, she was all silhouette as everyone in the bar turned around at the sound. She stood with her darkness being swallowed up by the light pouring in behind her.
Her powerful wind might have done us in if we weren’t firmly planted on the barstool. It came on like a whore, giving everything. A pair of open legs, welcoming it all. A bed of dreams on a narcotropic pillow. It came on like a temptress, impossible to resist, inviting without restraint, submissive and begging to be overpowered. It was the kind of wind that blows in from somewhere else, introducing foreign things into familiar environments.
As the door closed, and the light died behind her, our eyes readjusted to the darkened bar. She came on in and she was all leg, with round hips, thick painted lips, and carrying a large black gym-bag with an orange stripe around it that almost looked like a reflective warning-strip. She looked like the kind of girl you don’t introduce to your mother, the kind you take home thinking you’re in control, only to find out she’s got a bigger dick than you, and she fucks you in the ass with it over, and over and over again, but when you catch yourself in the mirror, you clearly see that you’re only fucking yourself.
This is just the type of girl that did it to me. Terrifying and irresistible.
We were all turned around, staring as if some Greek Goddess had just descended onto the bar with the winds of destruction circling in behind her. It was Johnny the bartender, returning from the back with both fists full of liquor bottles that broke our hypnotized gaze.
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