I don't know why this com to mind, but I feel compelled to tell you now. He hasn't crossed my mind in years. I don't particularly like to think about him. The man almost got me killed.
His name was Aaron and he lived in the apartment about me. This was maybe ten or fifteen years ago, back when I used to live Pennsylvania. We didn't live in the best part of town. In fact, we were the only two white people on the block. That didn't matter though, people are all just people when you get to know them.
Aaron was a middle-aged man that bummed around in jeans, t-shirts from various colleges, and flip-flops. He had a full head of dark brown hair and only a few lines, so that put him in his early to mid thirties. The guy was pretty quiet. Every once in a while there would be some strange noises coming from the apartment above, but never anything out of control. It was kind of eery how silent he could be.
Only once was I ever obliged to call the super. There was stomping and screaming and crashing and noises that no human could or should ever make. When we got upstairs, it was that creepy silence again. All Aaron said when questioned was "I'm sorry. I let my imagination get the better of me." before closing the door again.
But I was telling you about Aaron, not his apartment. Like I said, he had brown hair and quiet as a churchmouse. That really sums up the rest too. Nondescript to a tee. He didn't speak unless spoken to. Wouldn't even say hello when you passed him on the stairs, but to say that he was unfriendly would be unfair. If you could catch his attention, he would chat with you about anything from music to metaphysics and beyond. Most of the time he was just stuck in his own little world.
The first time I met Aaron was the day I moved into those apartments on the south-side. I think it was sometime in May. It was one of the first really hot days of the year so everybody was outside. I'd seen a band of children chasing after something as I carried in a load of clothing up the five flights to the newest in a long line of homes. It wasn't until I was extricating my television from the depths of the trunk that the kiddies' quarry ran right into me. He knocked the tv out of my hands and into a thousand pieces.
Aaron helped me up and apologized profusely. He couldn't have been sorrier if he tried, of this he assured me. He went on to explain that he was being chased by a pack of rabid goblins and that he would repair or replace the television as I saw fit. The children had scattered, not a ponytail or scuffed knee in sight. Almost as though they had never been there to start.
I went months without more than a passing glimpse of Aaron and nary a word. Every time a did see him, he was acting oddly. One time he was sitting on the roof with his hands straight out in front of him. He looked for all the world like he was DRIVING the world. Another time he was in the midst of a vicious sword fight with an invincible foe, wielding an unseen sword. At one point his foe, for surely there was a foe, landed a glancing blow on Aaron's arm. I was positive that I saw his shirt cut and a bead of blood draw across his bicep, but I couldn't explain it.
The next time I actually talked to Aaron was at my local watering hole. It was a dingey place that went by the name of Happy Tap. It wasn't the kind of place that you'd go to meet women or even people really. It was more the kind of place you'd go to drown your sorrows from them. There was nothing fancy about the Tap, just a long much patched wooden bar with old cracked leather stools and a moldering dartboard. It was a dive bar that you'd only go to for cheap beer and quiet company.
Which is why I was so surprised to see Aaron sitting at the end of the bar nursing a long warm beer. I'd always pictured him as the member of a lively pub. It seemed like he'd fit into some incomprehensible British drinking game like a peg in an appropriately shaped hole. He shouldn't be sitting in some rundown hole in the wall, but there he was, bold as brass, sipping a lukewarm beer.
I sat down next to him and asked "What are you doing here? This doesn't seem like your usual vista for refreshments."
"Drinking," he replies like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Drinking because I can and I choose to exercise that ability, as we as my arm. Is that a problem?"
"Not at all! Not at all. I was merely curious as to why the Happy Tap."
"And why not some posh social club with cravats and the like? I like the atmosphere."
"You like dirty, seedy, dives with bad beer and worse service. You enjoy being leered at by scruffy folk who probably rather rifle through your pockets than ask you the time of day." I said incredulously, if not politely.
"Yes," and a large smile were his only reply.
"Well if that's the case, welcome to it. I'll buy the next round." And I did buy the next round, as well as the one after that and several more.
We talked for a while. Small talk. Names, occupations, hobbies. Turns out Aaron was once a metaphysics professor at some big league university and that he was currently on sabbatical. Paid sabbatical!! He also knew more than seemed reasonable about the X-men. The crackpot even started to draw me a diagram of each and every character with lines denoting kinship, friendships, and mortal enemies. By the time I stopped him he'd gotten into third generations and fifth cousins. There were at least six different color inks, though I never saw him switch pens. I'd learned that everybody and their rivals were connected in what had to be obscene ways. Confusing isn't a strong enough word for this map, but when I looked at his exquisitely drawn characters I swear I saw Magneto flitting around the napkin.
Some time, and several more drinks later, I started to wondering what a metaphysics professor actually taught. What could his lesson plans be. Maybe something along the lines of discussing the thermodynamic properties of Hell. Exothermic versus endothermic? We can assume that souls do exist and have mass. We will also assume that all souls go to Hell because of the number of religions that claim anyone that doesn't believe their religion will go to Hell and that nobody belongs to more than one religion. If all souls are going to Hell, will all Hell break loose or will Hell freeze over?
Probably not something the students would be tested on. Maybe a bonus question.
When asked, he said he was more on the research end of things. Philosophy didn't pay terribly well so students were hard to come by. Those that hung around tended to be slightly off somehow. At least one had gone off to become a cult leader. Too bad that he drank the kool-aid first. A few more met with accidents that just didn't make sense. After Aaron got wind of a few of these incidents he gave up on classes and focused on publishing his theories.
His ideas started out pretty tame: reconciling religious/scientific tensions, reasons and vague ways to get humanity of this rock, and why love plays such a big role in the human psyche. He was given middling reviews by his peers. He wasn't lauded as another Socrates, but neither was he scoffed at and drummed out of the field.
Eventually Aaron tired of what he came to call his cracker-jack philosophies. Everything he'd written had been neat and nice, but they didn't really matter. They were all cute, but they had no oomph. They didn't stand up to the daunting specter of reality.
So he traveled the world, searching the dark forgotten places for lost knowledge and lore time passed over.
He went down to Haiti to find a voodoo witch doctor. Once turned up after weeks of fruitless searching and, if Aaron is to be believed, he wore an old worn tophat and had a chicken bone deviating his septum. The man was old, black, and craggy. He reminded Aaron of Norway's fjords at midnight in the middle of winter.
They talked over coffee spiked with rum. Aaron asked why bossale prayed to the Loa, the lower gods, instead of Bondye, the creator. In response, the venerable witchdoctor cackled, choked for a second and pulled out a long hand rolled cigar. After toying with it, smelling it, stared longingly at it, he expertly bit off the end and lit the cheroot with a flick of his fingers.
"Ja know, Ai used too wonda da berry same ting. Ai tink it's because Bondye too bizzee. He too bizzee gettin drunk. Eets a serious bizness gettin drunk!" the old man said through a haze of rancid smoke.
Intrigued, Aaron inquired further. "So why bother with a deity, a god, that doesn't give two shits about you? Why care about something that doesn't know or care about your health or happiness or even your existence? He sounds like a kid that got bored of a toy, only that toy is us. Sounds like the same bullshit the Christians put so much faith into, only you've got another layer stuck in there."
"Wee houngans an' mambos like ou' lies jus' da same as you whitees like you's. Eet don't matta dat we beleeve somting dats not real, eet's da beleef itself that mattas, dat gives us 'ope."
"What do you mean by our lies?"
"Ai assume you ar' an atee-est. Won uv dem peepole dat don't beleeve in no'ting."
"I suppose that's close enough." Aaron had said as his head began to nod. He claimed that the rum had started to have an effect at this point."What's that got to do with anything?"
"Crayzee fucka," he chuckled. "You prefa to beleeve in tings like trute and justeece, right? Well what Ai want you to do ees take da universe and grind eet all up. Den I want you to seeft troo eet and find me won speck o' trute or an ounce of justeece. Show me dat an' Ai'll stop calling dem lies."
With that, the old houngan got up and left as suddenly as he'd shown up. The effect was heightened by him disappearing into a cloud of his own wretched smoke.
Aaron slammed his empty glass on the bar and said that he couldn't spend implied anywhore, so we went outside and walked around for a while. The sidewalks were uneven. Roots had gotten under blocks and turned what was supposed to be a safe haven for pedestrians into a malevolent funhouse designed by Escher.
We were stumbling across the pebbled pavement quite successfully until that same twisted sidewalk architect placed a mini-van in our path. We had been so focused on keeping ourselves upright and in motion that we'd completely forgotten to care about where we were headed.
We were sitting on the curb, me rubbing my head and Aaron his shoulder. The kiddie conveyance vehicle had proven to great a foe for us to handle in our intoxicated state. He took a hand rolled cigarette out of his pocket and lit it with a flick. The thing was piddly but it stank like a skunk as soon as it was lit.
Aaron took a long drag from his cancer stick and held it.
And held it.
And held it.
He held the smoke for so long that I started counting.
Ten seconds.
Twenty.
Forty five seconds.
A minute thirty. I must admit i was impressed.
Eventually, somewhere after the two minute mark, Aaron let out his breath and started chuckling. There wasn't a trace of smoke; the fucker had ghosted it. His laughter was odd though. It sounded like it should have come from a small child. It had that innocence only found in children and there was no trace of embarrassment or humility. The laugh was infectious too. Before long I joined in and we were both chuckling and then laughing and finally rolling on the ground holding our sides. We weren't even laughing at anything in particular. It just felt good.
We didn't get up when we were through laughing either. We just lay there on our backs and stared into the night sky. It was almost perfectly clear. A few high wispy clouds out to the west were all that could be seen.
Except for the stars! The stars were more brilliant than I had ever seen. Diamonds! They looked like diamonds and I thought that if i really wanted to, I could reach up and pluck one right out of the sky.
The scene before my eyes captivated my entire attention. I hadn't gazed at the sky like that since I was a kid. My dad had shown me all the different constellations when we went camping. I even learned some of them. Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Cassiopia, Draco. I remember all of them to this day, but they'd never seemed so brilliant before.
Aaron had been talking while I was engrossed in the night time jewelry. He was just finishing up the story of Draco, or Ladon as he kept drunkenly slurring. He didn't seem to care if I was listening or not. There was no doubt that this guy had once been a teacher, even if he looked like a marginally employed hippy at the moment.
"It wasn't until much later that I realized what the witch dotctor had been hinting at." Aaron had turned his head to make sure I was now listening. "He wasn't poking fun at western ideology. He wasn't even trying to make a social commentary!"
"Well what was he hinting at?"
"Indeed not. he was trying to let me in on a secret. Maybe one of the big secrets, even. But that all depends on your definition of big, I guess."
"Semantics. So what is this big secret?" My interest was terribly piqued and Aaron's meandering mind was starting to push my buttons.
"I didn't figure that out until I had a conversation with a New Jersey buddha. You see, he was all about his jagerbombs and absolutely loved" but I never did find out what the Atlantic City Gautama loved.
I was drunk, intrigued, and rude so I interrupted Aaron. "Listen. Buddy. Pal! Please just tell me what that secret is. You tell me one more story about a teenage wizard or a steppes shaman with a lisp and I will either fall asleep or slap you vigorously. I don't mean to be rude and pry, but you've been trying to tell me this thing all night. I've listened to a story about a witch doctor, a few about stars, several very bad jokes, and a single half-decent one. I don't know how much more I can take. So if you'd please get to the point, I would be much obliged." I had the common decency to feel bad about my small tirade, so I gave him a sheepish grin.
"My apologies. You're right. I have been putting it off. I only hesitate because there have been problems in the past. Not with the logic, no. With the implications. The secret is quite simple. You're using it right now actually." Aaron took of his glasses and started cleaning them with his shirt. He was getting into full teacher mode. "You see, seeing is not believing. Believing is seeing. No matter what I've tried to do, to teach people, they only see what they want to see. You can't teach somebody something that they think they already know. It used to be that people saw dragons and manticores and unicorns. Not all the time of course, but they knew the monsters were out there. Waiting to strike. Lurking in the dark. They knew these things existed. They believed in them. Now days we know that such childish ideas aren't real and never were. We no longer believe in dragons so there aren't any. Belief begets reality."
This was remarkable. Incredible! Too good to be true, and generally if something is too good to be true, then it is. You've got to test the truth, bend it twist it turn it, and if it breaks then it wasn't the truth to begin with.
Then again, I am a skeptical kind of guy.
"So if I understand what you're saying, as long as I believe something is true, then it is?"
"Correct."
"So if I believed that those stars in that sky were actually diamonds on a velvet pad, I could reach out and touch them. Pick them from the sky."
"I suppose you could, but I don't see why you'd want to. They're much prettier where they are."
"Bullshit. Not about them being pretty, they are. But I dare you to pluck a star from the sky. I simply have to see that."
So he did.
He reached out and pinched a star between thumb and forefinger and plucked it like a cherry. In his grasp was a glimmering, sparkling, flawless diamond.
Or was it a star? I guess they were the same thing at that point.
Aaron stared at the star for a bit. Turned it over and rolled it around his palm. Eventually, finally, he handed it to me.
"Put it back when you're done." Aaron said and then got up and walked away.
So I did.
-
I made a b-line to my apartment, giddy with possibilities. My place would be filled with gold and playboy bunnies. A huge bed made of all the comfiest things. The biggest of big scree tv's hooked up to the surroundiest of surround sounds. Speakers so powerful they'd blow the clothes right off you. Beer so fresh and cold that even the most devout of AA members would burn their chit. Suffice it to say, I'd be walking into the most glorious, sumptuous, luxurious man caves in existence.
The first thing I was going to do when I got home was pour me one of those exquisite beers, and put on the Two Towers. Skip right to Helm's Deep. I wanted to see the army of uruk hai standing before the gates, banging on their shields. I wanted to see them climb those huge ladders and assault the walls and die in droves. I wanted to see Gandalf, the greatest wizard of all time, lead the Rohirrim, the greatest cavalry, against one of the largest armies Middle Earth has ever seen.
I was reminiscing on the blood and action and unrivaled joy that I felt the first time I saw the movie in theaters. It captivated me the same way the stars had. I almost believed that I was being rushed by a horde of blood-thirsty orcs.
A clatter of armor stopped me in my tracks. I already knew what was behind me, but I had to check anyway. Just had to be sure it was a mob of orcs in heavy plate with a variety of vicious, deadly weapons.
You're never really sure how fast you can run until something, or a horde of somethings, are trying to messily dismember you. I, for one, made Roger Bannister look like a lame slug. My legs were moving so fast that I couldn't feel them. The individual sounds of my feet hitting the pavement had become a continuous slap. Not that you could hear it over the crashing of the army chasing me.
I ran up streets and over avenues. I dashed down alleys and through yards. Ferris Beuller couldn't have done better. I had to get somewhere safe. I needed a huge wall to hide behind, but one of those wasn't likely to spring up out of nowhere. So one didn't.
I was nearing mach five as I rounded the corner to may apartment building. If I could just make it through those doors I knew I would be safe. No orc, goblin, uruk hai, or mogg would ever be able to get into my bastion.
The mob was only a few paces behind me. Not enough room to shake them, but I needed more room or else they'd just pile in behind me. I needed more speed. I needed to be Sonic the Hedgehog, The Flash, and Roadrunner all rolled into one.
The slavering horde started to fall back. Not much mind you, but enough. Across the grass and down the sidewalk, running hell for leather the whole time. Sweat covered my body and stung my eyes. My chest was heaving, trying to suck enough oxygen from the air for my tired, overworked, and underpaid body.
The doors were mere feet away. I could feel the warm welcoming light of safety on my face. I could almost reach the handle when I tripped.
That was it. I was done for. The orcs would be on me any second. If I was lucky, they'd kill me before eating me.
I thought I could feel drool dripping onto my legs when a remarkable strong, if skinny hand, grabbed my wrist and dragged me inside to safety. I looked up to find nerdy teacher Aaron silently questioning me, trying to figure out what had me so out of breath and scared.
My only answer was "Sorry. My imagination got the better of me."
