The Egotist Read online

  “These are our parents.”

  I look at her and she smiles like a gargoyle.

  “I’m your sister.”

  She laughs again and I do what I only threatened to earlier. I jump up from the table and begin to run.

  Editor’s Note

  This chapter ends a period of time covered in the collected writings of W. Buhner. The entries to follow were all dated at least three years later and give a perspective from a different time in the writer’s life.

  The previous essays lend representation of the writer as a young essayist. Based upon the date of his death, I surmise that he was between the ages of twenty and twenty-five when he wrote them.

  The entries that follow take place, including the three-year gap, over the next five-to-ten years of his life, after which, to any public knowledge, he never wrote again.

  There is no known explanation for this mysterious interval in literary time.

  BOOK FIVE

  INTERLUDES

  Black Days and Bright Nights

  It feels good to be alone. When I’m forced to work, I’m surrounded constantly by people. Touching me, patting me, talking to me. It’s disgusting. It’s these times I enjoy the best, these times when I’m secluded from the outside world. My curtains are drawn, the lights are dim, and it’s so very quiet. I have central air in my new place, and it’s great. It’s always nice and cool in here. I don’t have to open the windows or turn on any fans. I just flip a switch and sit comfortably while the engines purr inside my walls, excreting the chilled breeze through my vents into my rooms. It’s a wonderful feeling.

  I feel that way now, just relaxed and happy. It’s calm. I wish I could get paid to be calm, to sit and do nothing. To sit at my table with my pencils and write in these cheap notebooks every thought that comes into my head. Then, I wouldn’t have to go to work at the market. Stocking and shelving and pricing and putting and dusting and cleaning and mopping and helping and asking and telling. No good, I tell you. It tears me apart. To need to work is a horrible thing. To need to comply to the standards of the black bubble which is society is a horrible thing.

  Admittedly, I enjoy stealing from my place of business. And, as I sit in my air-conditioning sipping stolen Scotch on the rocks, I have to wonder: am I the chicken or the egg? Am I happy because I have these things and, therefore, am I willing to continue this work so that I may continue to have these things? Or are these things a product of the work? In other words, are these things, like air-conditioning and stolen Scotch, simply tiny traps which are clasping upon my wrists and ankles, making me want more, making me come back? Would I miss these things if I never had them?

  They say the rich are never happy and the richest of men want only to be richer. Is money like a giant brain-sucking nicotine patch? Something to subdue the urges to rob and kill? I wouldn’t doubt it. It’s my belief that society has to be addicted to something to survive. If it’s not money, it’s murder. If it’s not cigarettes, it’s rape. If it’s not sugar, it’s caffeine. Society is one giant addiction, and I feel that somewhere along the way I’ve stepped right into it. I’ve swallowed the great pill and taken the big dive. Don’t know how, don’t know when . . . but I’ve been sucked in, man!

  Sure, I could give up the air-conditioning, but then I’d become a serial killer or something. It’s too late, I’ve tasted the honey, and it is so sweet.

  You may be reading this and thinking me dramatic. Well, take a look around yourself. Ask yourself two questions:

  1. What do I have now that I didn’t have before I started working?

  2. What am I willing to give up?

  This ain’t the liquor talking, either. We’re all mice in a cage, rats in a maze, dogs in a kennel, etc. It’s stupid, I know, and stupid ain’t my thing. I’m the last dweller of the planet earth, and I vow to make naked everywhere I go, and the party will always be at my house, and there’ll be no such thing as money. Eat the vegetables out of your garden, for God’s sake, because you are not going to the market, you are not going to buy new shoes, or a new hat, or a new bowling ball or CD or book or computer or couch or table or knickknacks to put above your fireplace. None of this will be yours. What will be yours will be what you harvest from the earth you’ve been given.

  The Chinese know what they’re doing, they’ve just got too many damn people.

  I have to stop drinking or stop writing, the combination doesn’t mix. I can feel the walls rushing in and you’re getting inside me. I will not allow that, so please back away.

  Somebody drive me to my car.

  Acting Fresh

  The woman who lays in the bed next to me is a clerk at the store where I shelve peas. I’d throw her out but it’s the middle of the night and I don’t want her making a scene. I happen to respect my neighbors, and I don’t need any cheap dimestore whore (no pun intended) waking them all up.

  Personally, I can’t sleep to save my life. I don’t think I’ve had a proper night’s sleep in over a week, and I can’t figure out exactly why. The job sucks, but that’s nothing new. It may be because I haven’t been drinking as much, but there’s nothing I can do about that. If they catch me stealing again I’m back on the street. The thought of paying for alcohol now seems ridiculous. It’s definitely something that should be taken illegally; otherwise, what’s the point? If I pay for it, I’m just another drunk.

  Oh, hmmm . . . I’ve woken her. I think it might have been the bedside light that did it, either that or the jagged little curse words that emit from my mouth on a rising tangent whenever I write.

  I tell her to go back to sleep, I don’t want to have any conversation in the middle of the night. She doesn’t listen to me, and she gets out of my bed. She’s putting her clothes on, most likely she’s leaving. On a good night, she’d be going to make me some breakfast. I bounce the idea off her and get rejected. Pisser.

  “Julienne, why are you leaving?” I say. “It’s the middle of the night.”

  “I’m tired, I want to go home and get some sleep.”

  “Why don’t you sleep here?”

  “Because I can’t sleep with that light on!” she snips, pointing at my lamp accusingly.

  “But I can’t write with the light off.”

  “Right, which is why I’m going home to sleep. Look W., I’m leaving. Thanks for everything, I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”

  She begins to go for the door and I panic, I don’t know why. I’m not through with her yet.

  “Wait Julienne!” I leap out of bed and go to the door, stopping her. “What if I put out the light? Or, what if I write out here and you can go sleep in the bed.”

  “Why? Why don’t I just go home and sleep?”

  “Well, for one, you’re tired and I shouldn’t be letting you drive,” I lie. “And two, I don’t want to be alone tonight. It’s a weird sort of anniversary, and I’ll be sick if I have to be alone to think about it.”

  I intrigue her.

  “What anniversary?”

  “Well,” I pause reflectively, thinking of the time way back when. I was a different person in a different place then, and why I think of it at all now bothers me very much. I suddenly feel distracted by the presence of this other woman, this intruder. I walk away from her, clearing my head out through my mouth as I do so. “It was exactly three years ago today that I met my sister for the first time.”

  “What?”

  “I had never known her as a child,” I continue. “My father and mother were divorced, and my mom took her and my dad took me. I never saw my mother, so I never knew I had a sister. It’s a puzzle, really . . . a game. So, one day, a few years back, she calls me and wants to meet me. So, I go to the coffee shop . . .”

  “Listen, W.,“ she interrupts, “I really want to hear all this, but I’m too tired, and I want to go home.”

  Bitch. “I understand. But I really think you should stay here. It’s not safe for you to drive.” I don’t care whether she stays or goes, but I begin to feel the
mad impulses again and my frustration has made me a little horny.

  She looks at me in a funny way. I realize that she’s trying to figure out what my angle is. Why do I really want her to stay, she thinks. That’s the beautiful part of being a little sociopathic, you do things for no reason. There is nothing to figure out. There is no rhyme or rhythm to my steps - they are all diabolically independent of anything else. It’s such freedom, and so much fun. Julienne doesn’t think so, of course, but what do little dumb blondes know about anything?

  She gives me a look I don’t like. A look that tries to say she’s figured me out. And, although I know it’s impossible, it frightens me just a bit. I wasn’t lying about the anniversary thing, and I really would rather she didn’t leave. I’d very much enjoy taking her to bed one last time for the evening, maybe it will help put me to sleep as well.

  “Please?” I say, really pushing my own limits.

  She blows a sigh at the door, and begins to take her clothes off once more.

  “All right, W., but that light goes off.”

  “Yes, Julienne, I had that in mind anyway.”

  In the morning, we both oversleep. She’s cussing because she is late for work, and I simply tell her I am going to call in sick, and to please not tell on me. She gets even more annoyed at that, and it doesn’t help matters when I ask her to whip me up some quick breakfast before she leaves.

  The door slams harder than I would want it to this early in the morning. I have neighbors after all.

  The Law is on My Side

  I met John Liggins just over a year ago in a bar downtown. I took a liking to him immediately and coaxed him into buying me five or seven drinks. Throughout the course of the evening I found out he was a lawyer, and I set out to make him my best friend.

  I have never had a best friend, and I doubt I ever really will, but if I’m going to make that call in the middle of the night when I’ve run over some little kid after having one too many at the local watering hole, I definitely want to be calling my best friend, the lawyer. I don’t know how much good it’s going to do me to call dear old dad when I’m facing ten-to-twenty.

  So me and John spent some quality time together, going out, getting rowdy. We celebrated the night he threw some poor slob into the clincher for three consecutive life sentences and sank our sorrows in microbrews (the drink of all elite attorney-types) the night he lost while defending a girl who had been kidnapped, raped, and forced to clean the same bastard’s bathroom with her mouth. It sounds horrible, I know, which is why we drank the whole night through.

  I once asked John if he’s ever afraid of “the one who gets away” coming after him for trying to throw him in the slammer. John just looked at me, real serious. He plopped his briefcase up onto the bar where we were sitting, and with no discretion whatsoever, opened it up to reveal what looked to be a really powerful gun. Then he just smiled and said, “I hope so, W., I really do.”

  I had a whole new respect for John after that night, and it made me question whether we were really friends. I began to lose confidence in myself as I got to know him better and better. Here was a guy taller than I was (and I’m pretty tall), almost as good-looking and definitely much smarter - in the scholarly sense, of course. After all, I’m facing my second term at the always-intriguing grocery store, and he’s putting away hardened criminals in our courts of law.

  Maybe he likes my free-wheeling attitude, who knows? Maybe he likes me because I enjoy hearing about all the really bad stuff that he has to deal with, the stuff he can’t tell his proverbial wife (God forbid he ever marry!). Either way, it’s definitely good to have a friend like John. A lawyer who packs - that’s a pal!

  For many a night it had been John who had driven me home after buying me drinks for most of an evening. In a way, I’d come to depend on him. Attorneys, I think, are overall pretty stable fellows with a bad rap. Of course, I do recall the time that Hunter S. Thompson’s attorney requested that Hunter throw a plugged-in radio into his full bath while it crescendoed in the midst of the song “White Rabbit.” I certainly wouldn’t want that to ever happen. But I don’t think it would; John is definitely the more level-headed of the two of us.

  I bring him up here mainly because I had my first run-in with the law tonight, and for a moment I was thinking I was actually going to partake of his services.

  See, I always carry one of his cards in my wallet. In fact, I carry about ten of them or so, and I enjoy handing them out to girls I meet in bars or whatever and say things like, “Here ya go, sweetie. If you ever get in a pinch, you just give me a call.”

  “You don’t look like a lawyer,” tonight’s girl says.

  “Oh, and just what do lawyers look like?”

  To my dismay, she turns and surveys the entire bar, looking from face to face. Finally, she sees someone she likes.

  “There! He looks like a lawyer.”

  I turn in the direction she is pointing to see a child - an absolute orphan! He can’t be twenty years old - all well-groomed and snappily dressed. He looks like a busboy in an upper-class restaurant, not a lawyer! John Liggins is a lawyer, and tonight he is me, and I am he.

  “Him?” I exclaim, directing my voice toward the subject in question. “He’s too young to be a lawyer. He’s like . . . fifteen!”

  “Are you nuts? That kid’s gotta be twenty-seven . . . twenty-eight, maybe.”

  “Oh, you’re high. He’s half my age.”

  She smiles at me smugly, then gets up and walks away from me, dropping John’s card on the bar. “Like I said, sweetie, twenty-seven, twenty-eight.”

  As she walks away I sit there totally befuddled. I look at myself in the mirror behind the bar, and see sort of what she means. I haven’t had a hair cut in a while, but instead of making me look young and radical, it makes me appear more like an aging caveman. But this isn’t a problem - I just need to shave! Maybe lose a couple pounds.

  Depressed, I stand up and walk to the back of the bar. I call John at home.

  “John, come to the bar.”

  “What bar?”

  I tell him.

  “Mmm, I don’t know, I’ve got to work in the morning.”

  “John,” I say, my tone menacing.

  He just laughs. “Okay, okay. I’ll be there in thirty minutes. But I’m not buying this time.”

  He hangs up, and I snicker wickedly. He says that every time.

  I see the kid hitting on the girl I had been making time with at the bar and I find myself enraged. Maybe it’s the liquor, but I really want to pound that kid just now. Preppy little twerp. I can almost see the faded insignia of some fratboy symbol combination on the crest of his Izod sweater. I want to vomit, and I want to pound him.

  I bum a quarter off the person using the phone next to me and call John back.

  “John, it’s me again.”

  “I’m coming!”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Listen, there’s this punk kid here hitting on my girl. I don’t know whether to pound him or puke.”

  There is a moment of silence on the other end. My attorney is thinking, I know. “Well,“ he says finally, “don’t puke.”

  “Right,” I say, and hang up the phone.

  I immediately walk up to the kid and the two-timing whore he’s gallivanting with.

  “This is my girl,” I say, looking as mean as I can.

  He is much shorter than I am, but he looks like he might have wrestled or something in high school, so I keep my immediate distance.

  “Oh yeah?” he says blithely, not really showing interest or disinterest.

  “That’s right. She’s only going to sleep with you because she thinks you’re a lawyer.”

  “Really?” he says, looking at the girl. She looks kind of amazed by the whole thing . . . I can’t even remember her name. She might not have told me.

  “Really,” I finish. “I don’t want you doing time with her, see?”

  He looks like he is actually going to back away from the whole thin
g, and a small smile creeps onto my face. Another battle won, I think.

  “Well, I don’t want any trouble,” he says, lifting his beer slightly in salute to my victory.

  I think for a second, really wanting to seal the deal. “Good move,” I say. “I mean, as you can see, she ain’t getting any younger.”

  I’ve probably taken something too far, because I hear a snarl and in the next moment she attacks me from my blind-side!

  A ghoulish scream comes from her little blue-eyed face as she comes at me, claws raised. I realize quickly that I don’t want to be here as I move to defend myself.

  Without really thinking, I grab her on both sides of the waist and toss her to the ground. She looks okay, but I’m a bit shaken by the whole thing.

  My next thought is a blinding white flash as something slams into the side of my head, knocking me head-long into the bar stools. I shake it off poorly and look up at the crowd which has separated for the fight, and I see Johnny Young Lawyer Guy standing over me, holding his hand. He gives me a disgusted look, and helps the girl up off of the floor. She gives him a doting glance and my vision turns red. I stand up and bull-rush the guy, knocking him and the girl asunder. I throw two or three punches to his gut before I’m pulled off by numerous hands.

  Before I can figure out my next move, I’m being tossed harshly out onto the sidewalk. The night air feels good, and I don’t hear any sirens. I don’t even bother looking behind me to see if anyone’s followed me out of the bar, I could really care less.

  I slip my feet into the street, feeling the side of my aching head with my fingers. I pull them back to see a little blood on my fingertips.

  Some minutes later, I’m still sitting there when John walks up and sits down next to me. I don’t realize until that moment that I’m crying.