Hypochondriac: Chapter 1, Part 1
A Eulogy at Mr. Toad’s
He was raised Catholic, had the work ethic of a Protestant, and depending on who you asked; the hate of a Pagan. His days were long. The years were short. Pride in a hard day’s work was all he had. The one thing no one could take from him. He wasn’t sure why he cared so much, but it probably had something to do with feeling valued. Work didn’t make him happy, it made him content, which was better than being miserable. A people pleaser that bordered on a Yes-Man. If following orders counted as a talent, Adrian was a savant. He enjoyed being told what to do and when to do it, and was certain that if something were asked of him, it would get done, no matter the cost to his health or sanity. When his work gloves had been torn and the rubber had completely flaked off, he wore them like a worn out championship belt. His gloves were missing almost all of the fingers, besides his left-hand pinky finger. The holes were so large his palms showed entirely. The gloves were useless, but to him they were a symbol of struggle and perseverance. Work for work’s sake was the most important thing to him. He picked up overtime hours week after week, for a paycheck that was less than impressive. He rose at 5, slow to get up, needing two hours to feel ready for the day. He considered his morning’s sacred, and ritualistically dressed himself for the day in a neurotic fashion. Employees of Alderbern Demo. Co were allowed to clock in 15 minutes early, so he did, every day. The first thing after punching his time card was to ask his supervisors what needed to be done.
“Asbestos scout.” The Supervisor says. His yellow vest with little reflector strips on it has last year’s smudges on it. A man with a severe case of Napoleon Syndrome. He stands with his arms crossed, chatting up the workmen he likes. Wasting time he could be barking orders. Adrian never bothered to get into his good graces. They couldn’t see eye to eye, literally. He wouldn’t even know what to say to him, or how to make the man laugh. All he could think to do was work hard to impress him. It never worked. He was a born hard-ass. The company got new hard hats. They don’t fit right. Not like the old ones. These ones scratch the tops of my ears and make me itchy. He takes it off when no one is paying attention or too tired to care. He’s supposed to be looking for asbestos, or mold if he comes across it. It’s hard to pay attention to that kind of thing. All he can think about is if he’ll be stuck doing this another ten years. Rubble and boulders of broken concrete twist loose underneath his boots. His boots are old. His father bought them for himself. They’re probably older than he is. Steel toed. Above is the humid heat and purple clouds that flash pink when the heat lighting strikes the sky. The afternoon sighs, groans and drags. The foremen take turns wiping sweat from their cheeks, streaking mud and soot under their eyes. The air above the fresh black street-tar trembles. The smell of burning plywood crossed his nostrils. There’s a newbie roaming around. The Kid. He doesn’t look right. He laughs too much. Says sorry when he’s not supposed to. Always nervous, overly cautious. The type of kid who won’t get anything done in fear of screwing up. Trying to look busy. I used to be just like him. Adrian wanted to find him, grab him by the shoulders all dramatic and shake him. Shake some sense into him. Get out of here. Run. If you care about your future leave while you can and never come back. He didn’t do that. From across the rubble yard he looks up on occasion, away from the asbestos and chances on the eyes of The Kid. Someone coughs, then spits. A much older man. He’s thin with mutton chops and a defeated hairline. A beard gone gray and only getting grayer. Blood-phlegm tinged with Copenhagen saliva stains down his chin. He smells like stomach acid and Budweiser vomit and half digested benzodiazepines. The kind of guy an old folk song pays tribute to. Folk singers don’t know what they’re talking about. Working class hero my ass! he thought. Again, he spots The Kid. They look at each other for a moment. Adrian Salutes him with a downward nod and a thumbs up. He’s never making it out of here. Proletarian stomping grounds are hope-graveyards teaming with convicted felons, drug addicts and alcoholics, divorced fathers who always circle the conversation back to prison. What am I doing here? I deserve to be here. Should’ve finished college. The sun’s fiery rays escape the overcast anvil clouds, falling to earth like angels cast out of God’s Kingdom, down to earth, down to Hell. A sliver of shadow appears at the edge of the old office building. Adrian seeks refuge from the cruel heat in the shade which itself appears to flee the sun. The Kid is resting on a jagged piece of debris, though to Adrian it looked as if he were about to pass out, and had let his legs give out so that he might catch his breath again. The Kid looked into the mess of rubble, without any expression whatsoever. Neither a frown and certainly not a smile, but an empty sort of fear was visible across his face. As if to mope at his condition were too costly an expenditure of needed energy. He knew The Kid’s sigh carried with it that first dilution of hope, and one day he would sigh away the last of his ambitions. He too would one day turn gray and become one of the Dreamless Ones. Adrian smiled in a way that might be mistaken for maliciousness. He felt the same exhaustion, the same empty feeling, the fear of having to do this another day. He felt the aches in his legs and the soreness in his back, the fresh bruises he could never recall where they came from, he felt it all in his body and soul alike. In a way, he had learned to almost love misery. Misery was his most faithful mistress. She followed him wherever he went, and with Misery he was never alone. He knew that he had withstood things that most men could not have, and it was this confusing sense of pride in his masochism that made him smile. He liked that someone else might fall in love with Misery and steal her away from him. Hairs start to turn gray when men stop dreaming, he thought. Adrian fell deeper into daydreams. He never even heard the countdown start.
“5!”
He knew that the men he worked with once had dreams. Their hair had turned gray as the excitement of tomorrow faded. Behind them was every good thing, the wrinkles below their eyes and on their brow told tales of disappointment. Fate was now taking them to their graves, and they had ceased putting up a fight with fate. How much longer, he thought, until I become like them? When will I stop dreaming?
“4!”
When did they stop dreaming? He knew it must’ve happened slowly. There was no day on the calendar where their hopes shriveled up, but instead a long series of X’s marking the days gone by, until a mountain of monotonous schedules lay in a trash heap; and that was life - a long, drawn out thing to be endured. Life is something that must be tolerated.
“3!”
He stood at a precipice; the vitality of youth had nearly left him, and he sensed that the years in front of him would soon be behind him. 27 going on 50, he thought. That vial of adolescent hope would not dry out, he felt it, a giddy sense of rebellion. It spoke to him, it told him to fight even if it was hopeless, because it was human to do so, and if he chose not to fight he was no better than an insect. But he knew even insects struggle while the spider spins them up in silk. All he needed was opportunity, and he would be like a venomous snake sinking its teeth into a great beast right as its jaws clamp down a final time.
“2!”
Another life wasted. Another dime-a-dozen disappointment. Like everybody else. I’m not special after all. And yet there was something in him no one could ever understand. Neither the swinging of sledges or the rumbling of jackhammers, or the carrying of boulders and pushing of wheelbarrows until the sun set and rose again - there was a secret in him that was infinitely more unbearable than all the toil and labor of the world’s worker ants. In this, he was alone.
“1!”
Shit. Six thuds erupted in rapid succession. The shock waves rattled his brain. His hard hat fell to the ground. Glass from the windows shattered and pierced the air around him. The building collapsed in on itself. He crouched for cover, waiting for the ringing in his ears to cease, but before his hearing returned, a small rugged hand gripped him by the collar and dragged him away.
“You’re nothin’ but in the way!” The voice pierced through the terrible ringing. The shouting grew louder,
“Useless! You’re useless!” The small man yelled. His chest and stomach grew and shrunk as he belted out insults.
“Get the hell off the site if you’re gonna be in the way!” He points to the street beyond the overgrown dense thistle and untrimmed, weedy lot.
“I apologize, that was my fault.” Adrian said, crossing his arms like a tough-guy, and looking down at his muddy boots, betraying his own confidence. He hadn’t noticed it at first, but blood was beginning to drip from his head.
“In the way, you’re always just in the way.” the man said all over, and walked off without saying anything more. Adrian continued working for the rest of his shift, doing his best to avoid his supervisor, and when he had no choice but to interact with him, he did so in a timid, deferential, and off-putting manner that was like a dog who is frequently beaten by his owner. He ripped his shirt sleeve and tied it around his head. In no time at all, the sweaty white T-shirt was soaked with blood. Adrian covered it with his itchy hard hat, hoping no one would make him go to the hospital.
“Lucky Bastard.” Says the old man with the gray beard and mutton chops.
“If I were really lucky, Travis, I’d have been blown to Kingdom Come.” Adrian said. Travis laughed and spit into an old soda can.
“I ain’t gonna tell nobody you’re bleedin’ Adrian. If you don’t wanna get fixed up, that's yer business!”
“Thanks, Travis.”
“How come you ne’er say hi to me?” Travis asked.
“I don’t say hi to anyone.”
“I thought I saw youz in that gas station by the gyro join.”
“Yeah, you did. I waved at you but I don’t think you saw me.”
“Why din’t you yell my name?”
“I did. But you didn’t hear me. So I just kept walking.”
“Aghh, if I seen me out late at night, I’d juss keep walkin’ too.” Travis said. Adrian did not say anything else. He turned away, pretending to discover a patch of asbestos and patting his makeshift bandage to check if the blood had dried. It had not.
“I got this new bitch. She’s great.”
“Shut up Travis.”
“She ne’er bitches. I don’ bitch at her. She does whate’er she wants, I do whate’er I want. Been on and off for like 5 years now. She relaps’d again though. The other day, she says to me ‘I had you beat for so long, bein’ sober. Now you got 5 days on me.’ I gotta get off the stuff. I’m getting too old to fuck around with this shit. I took my retirement early, you know what I’m sayin? I been retired the first 40 years of my life.” He laughed.
“Did I tell you I smoked again for the first time in 10 years?”
“Shut the fuck up Travis.”
“This new weed’ll take you places you ain’ ne’er been before. You get caught in stupid. It took me 20 minutes to get out my car. Finally got out, put my hood up cause I din’t want my kids to see me fucked up. My girl was bitchin’ at me, had to undress me and put me to bed. Tell’n me she don’ want me coming home strung out. I tried telling her it was juss weed, she called bullshit on that!” Adrian walked away from Travis without saying anything.
“I thought I done everything so what’s a little THC gonna do? I’ ain’t ne’er been high like that before. Hey, where you goin’?”
“To clock out. I’m going home.”
“Is it 4 already? Damn. Wait up, I'll clock out behin’ you. My life’s no good, Adrian. It’s fun though. Sometimes. Every once and awhile iss good. Sometimes you gotta get back on track, but iss nice to live a little too.” Adrian punched his time card and Travis followed.
“It’s nice to live a little.” Adrian repeated the phrase back to him.
“Yeah. Doncha agree?”
“I agree.” He found the easiest way out of a conversation was to simply agree with whatever was being said to him in the moment.
“So you want to live a little tonight then?” Travis asked.
“Lessgo to Toad’s. What better way to start the weekend?”
“I’m too tired tonight. Go without me.” He was an expert at excuse-making, and like all experts who inevitably begin to loathe the thing they know so much about, he dreaded coming up with new ways to brush people off. He was a bandit-boy with excuses chambered in a six-shooter, holstered at his hip, always ready to draw it and fire off a fury of reasons why he was so distant. I’m supposed to hang out with so-and-so tonight. Maybe next weekend? Next weekends came and went.
“Are you free for Memorial Day?”
“I’m picking up overtime.”
Holidays came and went. By the time he was 21, the people around him had stopped trying to get to know him. I’m tired of getting to know people, he would say. I’ve met enough people. Most people aren’t worth getting to know.
“I guess I’ll see you on Monday.”
“Take care, Travis.”
“I know what you been thinkin’ bout, too.” Said Travis.
“Life goes fast. Real fast. If you ain’t careful, it’ll be too late.” He nodded and Adrian walked off. Plumes of pulverized plaster and smokey gray concrete dust wisped about the air as Adrian left behind his world of sealants, tars, adhesives, and sheetrock. Copper piping and PVC burrowed its way into the dirt, like factory-made earthworms. With Cinder Block obelisks and imposing towers of left-over bricks behind him, the clouds were hot on his tail, covering the permanent shrines to abandoned construction projects and the bankrupt companies that funded them in rainy shadows. The first drops of rain evaporated on the hot, hazy streets leaving behind a cool fog at his feet, until polluted rain filled the cavities in the busted asphalt sidewalk. His ears had stopped ringing, and the low splashing of the rain was drown out by The Hum, that's what everyone called it, a forever-droning rumble of a bygone civilization, a long and drawn out sigh whirring for as long as ears were keen to listen for yesteryear’s industrial plants fade into a murmur. It was the kind of easy-to-ignore noise that fell into the backdrop of city life. But when the evening hours struck, when the city nodded off, The Hum hissed and cried as if Alderbern itself groaned, settling into a smoker’s cough.
When Adrian’s catalytic converter was stolen, he was told it would cost $1000 for a new one. The mechanic may as well have said it would cost a million, because either way, Adrian would never have the money. He’d have felt like a millionaire if he could afford groceries without getting overdrafted. You used to work your ass off to get into the upper class, now you work your ass off just to barely escape homelessness, Adrian thought to himself as he began his journey to Toad’s. He would rather walk and avoid the tent-city dwellers than be stuck with those who had made a day-job out of harassing people on public transportation. Leisure time for Adrian consisted of ignoring the homeless as they cluttered highway underpasses, road medians, and dimly lit corners of subway terminals. Don’t look them in the eyes, he thought. Alderbern was a melting pot long past the boiling point. The streets shouted in English, in Spanish, in Portuguese, in Nepalese, in Honduran, Bosnian, Arabic, Somali. The most common dialect in Alderbern was crack-tongue. It was a devilish language, with almost-words from every country, slurred and mispronounced without any sense of accuracy, inflections used at all the wrong places, ungraceful, and most importantly loud when it did not need to be, and quiet when at its most nonsensical. Speakers of crack-tongue were violent, unpredictable, grossly disfigured, as if their form was a reflection of the mysterious, foreboding language they codeveloped with the magical narco-elixirs on sale at every pothole in Alderbern. Dialects, such as meth-tongue and acid-tongue and downer-tongue spread far and wide. He was on his way to Toad’s when he tried to forget what was said to him,
“You’re in the way.” He would repeat that phrase in his head so often that he began to look like a zombie, shuffling aimlessly through the Once and Formerly. Even the incoherent meth-mumblers and filthy, out of work and out of tune sidewalk buskers ignored him. It didn’t help that his head had begun to leak blood from behind the little bandage.
“You’re nothing but in the way!” Adrian bumped into an elderly looking woman. Her jaw was small and recessed. Confused, she screamed something and pointed to her carton of cigarettes. He kept walking and kept thinking,
“You’re useless!” He thought about how many times he had been told that, and how he was not yet numb to what those words did to him. The phrase bounced around inside of his head for days, or weeks, or even months. He wasn’t sure if it was true, if he really was useless and in the way. It didn’t matter if it was true. It mattered that someone, anyone, thought that about him. It bothered him. It made Adrian feel inferior, lesser, inadequate, and something less than human. He had been feeling this way for so long that it was normal to think of himself as a gnat to be swatted out of the air. He touched his wound, and seeing the blood pour though he thought I probably need stitches. Adrian heard screams from around the not-so-distant corner of the The Rough Creek General Store. He moved along with his head down and fists clenched tightly in his pockets. He gritted his teeth, wanting nothing more than to be unmolested by the marionettes which dangled in front of him, and to curse the wicked hands that caused them to dance ballets of misery in front of him.
“I’ll get it back soon!” A man shouted as he followed a woman who stormed off in Adrian’s direction.
“It’s only money, It won’t set us back so bad!” He said. Her arms were folded and she itched her neck and shoulders as she rushed past. She did not look back at the man following her. Suddenly, the man began to sprint toward her, and Adrian watched as he gripped her arms,
“Don’t walk away from me!” he shouted. The woman closed her eyes but kept walking. He pushed her to the ground, stood her up, and shoved her against a window of the storefront whose only product was “for lease” real estate placards. Adrian turned around to see that the woman was crying.
“Don’t be such a bitch! I love you.” She began to call out for help, opened her eyes and looked at Adrian. He treated her petition like he would any other; as a throwaway leaflet handed out by street preachers. Adrian turned back to face Toad’s, which he could now see from a few blocks away. He thought for a moment, but only a moment, and arrived at the conclusion that he did not care what happened to her. His heart was impenetrable. He began to walk away, and her screams grew louder as the distance between them widened. Although he did not know the woman, he could discern the type of person she was and found that she was among the guilty, who so often become victims. In a way, he felt that justice had been served, given that she was of the type he hated most - the ones who shed tears for criminals, who are soft and merciful, believers-in-second-chances. Based on how she looked at him like prey about to be devoured by beast, he determined that the meek will choose to be consumed if left to their own devices, and that he should not interfere in nature’s game of cat and mouse. This is what she wanted. This is what she chose. He sighed and at last thought, I am useless. Scenes like this were not uncommon for Adrian. Crackhead lullabies cradled him to sleep, and the screams of decade-long custody battles were a natural part of life in Alderbern. Adrian recalled how when he was much younger, he would think about calling the police on the noisy neighborhood quarrels. Other nights he would just listen to the neighborhood scream out in anguish. Multiple shouting matches occurred at the same time, and if the police showed up, they had trouble tracking down which feud was which. He cared less and less about the well being of others as he aged. He came to believe that people get what comes to them, and that there was nothing he, or the police could do to ever make it end. It was just something that happened when the world was ending. On at least two occasions, shouting brought on gunshots followed by body bags. Still, Adrian did not care, and was only disappointed that the night-violence was drawing back, that the narrators of his apocalyptic bedtime tales had softened their voices, and said The End. If the police questioned Adrian as to what he heard, he would say nothing.
He needed a place, and a person, in whom he could feel useless without any guilt. He arrived at the stoop of Mr. Toad’s Bar and Grill. The dangy little hideaway was buried beneath an overpass in the lower east side of Alderbern. It was both hard to miss and completely unextraordinary. Hard to miss in the sense that it radiated an aura of danger - nothing good could happen there, but unextraordinary in that all of Alderburn radiated the very same aura of danger. Toad’s aura was just a little stronger, perhaps a central pillar of the dread they all felt - in short, Toad’s was draped in metaphysical caution tape. The street lights never quite reached it, but they tried, at least it seemed so. New lights were always installed nearby, neon signs tried to illuminate the building, but Toad’s always refused. Even when the sun fell, when shadows disappeared, Toad’s remained in the same darkness which the bridge above provided. It had one entrance, and above it sat a little old decorative frog, dressed in a tuxedo, tipping his top hat to all who were invited. The frog carried a black cane with a little white tip, and he appeared to be dancing. It used to glow, at least people said it did. It was grimy and the colors were all washed out. Adrian pushed the door to Toad’s open.
“Adrian! I thought you said you weren’ comin!” Yelled Travis as soon as the door swung open.
“Travis! Shut the fuck up! Leave me alone. I lied to you so you’d stop talking!” The bar went silent.
“Fuck you, Adrian. You is useless!” Travis sat back down. He was bound to forget about it tomorrow morning. Adrian found his seat across from Silus.
“What was that about? Jesus Adrian your head!’ Said Silus.
“Forget it, Silus. I ain’t gettin stitches.”
“Yeah, but…”
“I’m not going to the Hospital! I’ll douse it in rubbing alcohol and put some ice on it.”
“What the hell happened?”
“That moron got too close to the blast!” Shouted Travis. Adrian looked straight ahead.
“I’ll be fine. I’m alright. Besides, I don’t have healthcare.”
“You’re a tough son-of-bitch.”
“Yeah?” Said Adrian, as he wiped away the blood trickling from his forehead.
“Well I’m gettin’ real tired of havin’ to be so tough all the time.” he said looking not so tough at all. Adrian ordered a drink and Silus had a lot on his mind. Silus was Alderbern’s very own Prophet of Pessimism. His cane rested on the table of the darkest booth, tucked away in the corner of Toad’s, where lowlifes wagered sob stories in exchange for the deed to the table.
…