The first thing you all need to know is that I look sick, and that’s a good thing. I mean really sick, terminally ill-looking, all skinny and pale, sunken cheeks and dark eye bags.
What I do is I go to a bar I’ve never been to, in a part of town I’ve never been to. I go there and I buy everyone a round, the fastest way to make a room full of people love you. You small talk, drink for that and toast for this, and ask a lot of questions, acting as if you care about the answers.
After a few drinks in there’s always a guy with slurred words, talking too close to your face. He says something about being sorry, but he’s not really, and he just has to ask, but of course he doesn’t have to, he just wants to.
“You sick or something?” the last guy in the last bar asked me, looking at my mouth ‘cos he couldn’t keep eye contact.
Then I told the guy I have cancer.
I tell the askers I have pancreatic cancer. “But, hey, don’t make a big deal out of it, okay?” And of course they tell all their friends and friend’s friends, and I can see my pancreatic cancer spreading all over the bar like a metastatic rumor.
“Yeah, pancreatic,” I tell them. “Pancreatic adenocarcinoma, stage four,” I say like I know what it means.
I tell them I had chemo and surgery, and I tell them that it didn’t work. I tell them I’m dying.
The thing is, I don’t have cancer. I just look really sick, and that’s a good thing. First I make them like me, and then I make them feel sorry for me. That first round in the bar is an investment, money I’m 100% guaranteed to get back.
People give me drinks and food and a place to stay every night. I haven’t had an apartment in months, not since I started couch-crashing with drunk Samaritans. People give me gifts and clothes and money, asking me if I need anything. Even if I say no they always hand me some money or put it in my pocket. People give me everything, even pussy. Pity pussy, but it’s still pussy. I think some women get off on the idea of being someone’s last.
I keep coming back to the same bar for a few weeks, and then I just stop. I go to a new bar, in a new part of town, and leave the old one and its patrons wondering what ever happened to that cancer guy, and if he’s dead yet.
But then it happened. The thing that made me stop. The thing that I have to tell someone about. And that I definitely should get checked out.
I don’t know how I ended up in that alley. I mean, I know how, I walked, drunkenly, but I don’t know why. Suddenly I was just standing there in Cliché Alley; eye to eye with the bum, surrounded by graffiti brick walls and brim-full dumpsters smelling like wet paper and leftover food. The bum even had fingerless gloves, on hands he was warming by a burning barrel, looking like a set piece from a 90’s rap video.
“Welcome,” the bum said, and that was a weird opening.
“Was I expected?”
“Come, come.” He showed his palm, pointing to the other side of the barrel. “Come see.”
My gut feeling told me to leave. My gut feeling remembered reading about someone getting stabbed 22 times in his guts just the other night, but my curiosity told me to stay.
“Welcome,” the bum said again when I came closer.
“Thanks.” I held my hands near the fire, waiting for something to happen, for the bum to say something more. But he just stared at me.
“Did you want anything?” I asked when I couldn’t take it any longer.
“Me? You came here, to me.”
I laughed, rolling my eyes, but the bum continued.
“You came here, I was just waiting.”
“Waiting for me?”
“I didn’t say that.” The bum smiled and showed more gaps than teeth, black holes in a yellow space. “Did you want anything?” He laughed, mocking me with my own words.
I exhaled through my nose and put my hands back in my pockets. When I turned and started leaving the bum yelled.
“Jack!”
I stopped, chills dancing around my shoulder blades.
“How do know my name?” I asked, turning around.
“I know stuff. Maybe I know you, Jack.”
I went back to the barrel, too intrigued to leave, my gut feeling suffocating under a stomach-clenching mix of fear and wonder.
“Maybe I know this and that and all and nothing,” he continued, scratching his beard. “Maybe I know all about you, Jackie.”
“It’s Jack. How do you know my name?”
“The great thing about looking like a hobo is that people leave you alone. But to act like one I have to live the part, freezing my ass off out here. The question is, am I a hobo or am I just acting like one? Can you act like something without being it? Fake it till you make it, if you will?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I was getting tired and thirsty, my throat crawling, wanting more liquor.
The bum handed me a shiny flask, and I didn’t reflect on how he knew I needed a drink. I just took it and drank, pouring fire down my throat.
“Come see,” he said, pointing to the barrel flames.
And I saw myself in the fire, partying with buddies, taking drinks with soon-to-be exes, sharing a bottle of whiskey with dad. And then I had no one to share the bottle with. No woman needed a drink, and I partied alone.
I tried looking away from the flames, but I was stuck, eyes forced open. I saw me drinking myself to loneliness, abrading person after person. Interventions and treatments only made me drink more, twelve-stepping away from responsibilities on the road to solitude.
I snapped out of it, blinked, and was back in Cliché Alley. It had felt as if I’d been there, as if I’d relived memories and felt what I’d felt back then.
“What was that?”
“The fire showed you something that happened, right?” The bum nodded to his own question. “What was it, Jack?”
“Okay, ghost of Christmas past, what do you want from me?”
“What do you want from me?”
The bum bounced my question right back at me, and I had no answer.
“You can leave whenever you want,” he continued. “And no one made you come here in the first place.”
“Whatever.”
“Look again,” the bum said and pointed to the flames.
I was back at the bar. At all the bars, at the same time, hovering around me and my cancer lie, watching and feeling what I saw and felt. The recurring beg-pardon to my own conscience re-emerged in my head when I stared at the dancing fire, the false idea that my selfish lying and scamming somehow was a good thing for the ones I tricked. I had made up that I helped them in some ways, so I could fall asleep at night, on a couch or in a random pity pussy’s bed. I told myself I made them appreciate life with my fake cancer reminding them of death.
The flames kind of stopped for a second, or moved slower, and I was back in the alley.
“What did the fire show you?” the bum asked, fingers playing air piano near the barrel.
“You know what I saw,” I told him through my teeth, wanting to leave but knowing I wouldn’t. “So what? I don’t care if they treat my dick like a charity cause. It’s still pussy.”
“Have you ever loved?” His question hurt my insides, a truth lodged between ribs, stabbing at my heart.
“Ever been loved?” he continued, breaking the short silence left after his first question.
I couldn’t tell if the bum’s eyes reflected the fire or if they were burning themselves, glowing orange in the dark, surrounded by his weather-beaten face. The light coming from below gave his already worn-out features something that reminded me of a kid making a monster face with a flashlight, telling stories by a campfire.
“When I go to a new bar I feel some people getting tired of me, real quick,” I said, realizing I’m saying things I wanted to keep to myself. “When I’ve slept with a few women and some guys have told me their not-so-unique life stories, there’s always someone getting sick and tired of the cancer guy disrupting the order. They don’t say anything, of course, but I feel it. I feel their eyes burning my back, urging the fake cancer to finish the job.”
I spilled my guts, barbecuing them over the fire, and it felt good. Emptying myself, like trying to get it all out so you can stop the room from spinning and fall asleep, vomiting truths as if they were the closing tequilas you really don’t need.
“So, you gonna save me or something?” I asked, equally afraid of yes’s and no’s.
“Nope, can’t do that.”
“I’m gonna have to help myself?”
“Didn’t say that.”
“So…?” I waited for the bum to continue.
“So, I can’t help you. I’m just a hobo with cold hands. What are you?”
I laughed. “Actually, I don’t know.”
“Okay, fuck it,” the bum said, turning his fire eyes to me. “Tired of playing games. What if I made you come here? What if I wanted you here, telling me all this shit? What if I feed on it, eating your bad decisions and drinking all those feelings you got bottled up in there?”
He fingerless-glove-pointed to my heavy-breathing chest and looked at me, the orange fire in his eyes looking warmer.
“W-what are you talking about?” My voice cracked, and I tried swallowing but my mouth was too dry.
“What if there are beings older than time, beings born of rock and sand and dirt and wood? What if they like to hide among humans, and sow these bad feelings, filling them with stresses and guilts and worries? What if they do all that because they like the taste of it, and enjoy the human emotion smorgasbord? Maybe they don’t even need it to survive; maybe it’s just a snack for them, something in between meals.”
The bum looked at me, his orange fire eyes searing my thoughts. I felt drops of sweat on my temples when I realized I couldn’t move. I couldn’t before and I couldn’t now. The bum had lied from the start.
“What if we hide in human form,” he said, and somehow seemed bigger without growing, hovering over me and standing in front of me at the same time. “We wake up, born from the earth, and we shed our soil bodies, leaving hollow trunks or dirt mounds. We vomit up our inner organs and hang them from the trees so snakes and mice won’t eat them. When we don’t make it back in time to swallow our organs, they dry and become hanging moss. And we are stuck in human form.”
I tried moving again, but it felt like I was in a giant’s grip, invisible fingers around my body, pressing my arms to my sides.
“When we’ve left our bodies and thrown up our organs we look like you. Like this.” He patted his chest. “And then we eat. My favorite taste is worries, the ‘what if?’ of fears. You ooze of it. I taste little worries seeping from every pore of your body. You know what I’m talking about, Jackie the cancer guy. Your big, big worry. What if…”
The bum was gone. The barrel was still there, but there was no fire and the metal was cold to the touch. I could move again, felt like waking from a bad dream I thought was real, the fear disappearing and turning into shame. Of course I could move.
I left the alley, trying to suppress the thought I knew was coming. My big worry, the ‘what if?’
“Jackie,” I heard the bum’s voice in my head, scorching my brain with orange eyes. “What if that lump in the back of your throat isn’t anxiety? Of course the truth is hard to swallow with that thing in your throat.” He laughed. “What if the lump isn’t angst? What if it isn’t the ones you lost, drinking to forget and struggling to remember at the same time? What if it isn’t the loathing you wake up with every morning, showering you like hangover sweat?”
I swallowed, and felt the lump move.
“What if the lump in your throat is cancer?”
I needed a drink. I’m still drinking. It’s been weeks. I’ve made doctor’s appointments more than four times, but I always cancel them. I’m too scared of what might be the truth. Is it better not knowing?