A Good Life

Scraped Knuckles

He sat quietly, robed in white, amongst his classmates dressed the same. One by one they were called to the center of the room and offered up a one-inch thick piece of wood to break either with their fists or with a well-placed kick. He was the youngest student by at least a year and he was nervous. His instructor had started this portion of the test by announcing to the audience of parents and relatives that he had been unable to procure three-quarter inch boards and the test would therefore demand much more from each of the students. By merit of his last name, he was one of the final students to be called to the center. He bowed, he got into proper stance, and he struck. His fist met the board and bounced back stinging and swollen. His instructor raised the board up and said, "Try again." He brought down his fist again and was again unable to break the board.

"Try a kick this time." 

He took a new stance and, lifting his leg up, his knee almost to his chest, kicked his foot straight out into the center of the board. The force of the kick went into the board and was dealt back to him sending him toppling over onto the linoleum. His instructor extended a hand and said, "That's alright, next time." And he returned to his plastic chair, humiliated.

Months later, as he sat in the passenger seat of his mother's truck he saw the building where the test had taken place being lifted off of the ground and set on the backs of immense trailers. He was at first awestruck and then immediately dejected. The building uprooted; there would be no next time.

Sidewalks

And with apprehension he thrust himself out the door and into the city night. It was approaching two in the morning and the streets were crowded with the drunk, the drugged, and the delirious headed from one door closing towards another soon to open. Those women still sober enough to manage perched high atop shoes too impractical for the sidewalks strewn with trash, glass, beer, urine, and vomit. Others splashed through the filth, their feet bare, shoes already forgotten in the basement of some frat or clutched dangling from one hand. The men listed from one side of the walk to the other; all confrontational and at one moment sincere and defensive, at the next leering, aggresive, and sarcastic; all drunk. He walked quickly, his eyes fixed on the space immediately before his feet. He judged them all as they passed, eyes sort of perpetually, mentally rolling as each group walked by.

It was convenient for his walk towards the campus to take him through these throngs of the stupid, indulgent, and drunk. It distracted him from what, upon even momentary reflection, he would consider a lapse into indulgence and weakness that was disturbing and inexcusable. He walked among these sinners en route to a girl who he hardly knew and liked less. A girl he would fuck noiselessly over the headboard of her dorm bed as her room-mate lay passed out mere feet away in an inebriated coma. Whom, after he had finished would stand up and say, "Alright, get the fuck out." And he would head back out into the night, the streets now emptied, and make his way home.

The young man kneels naked on the tile, head bowed  low. She stands over him at his back, scissors held in one hand, a toroiseshell patterned comb in the other. She laughs nervously into his ear as she makes deliberate, slow cuts. A cut quicker than the rest is followed by, "uh... oooh. Oh."

He glances up into the mirror, trying not to seem alarmed. Reflected back he sees only the top of his head and her behind, calm, confident. From her fingers drops a sheaf of fresh-cut hair.

He is transformed, for better or for worse.

"If I were given a match that could burn it all, I would strike it without a second thought."

Darkness and Friendship

Every window a frame, the world outside a picture. In Texas, strip malls and water towers sprung up from the earth like weeds on a patio. Simon and Garfunkel came on the radio and for a minute, just one minute, he was back in his dorm in 2005 with the lights of sirens flashing across the walls.

Sunday

"And it's all so much bullshit, Thomas, I really believe that," Warren said, smiling.
Thomas stared, unblinking, out the window and across the parking lot through steam rising hot off the tarmac at two girls entering the Rite-Aid. Both wore black hooded sweatshirts despite the heat and humidity that had settled over the town earlier that week. He could feel his forehead slicked with sweat. As he reached up his arm to wipe the sweat away, he could feel his skin sticking to the cheap vinyl upholstery of Warren's sedan.
"Jesus Warren, can't you turn the A/C on? It's 90 fucking degrees, man."
Warren tilted his head out the window and spit with a cautious, methodical movement of his lips that Thomas could not help but interpret as condescension before replying slowly, "Shit Tom, it's a beautiful fucking day."
And as he looked down the length of the bench seat at Thomas, his eyes earnest and honest, the sky darkened suddenly and rain began to fall, gradually at first and then with increasing intensity. Warren smiled as he pulled out a cigarette from his breast pocket and stuck it ceremoniously in his mouth.
Thomas rolled his eyes, sighed, and looked back out the window to see the two girls standing in the middle of the lot, their hooded figures partially obscured by rainfall, with arms outstretched and faces pointed skyward; praying for rain.