This Man is Not Himself

OCTOBER 12, 2008:

River woke up to the sound of his alarm. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, cleaned himself up, and put on his uniform for waiting tables at Joe's Diner. When he pulled up his moldy blinds, the Oklahoma City sun stang his eyes and woke him up like the hair of the dog. He went into his car after he briskly picked up a Snicker's bar to tide him over on the way there.

Two minutes into his drive to work, he felt a large thud under the front driver-side wheel of his blue 1985 Volvo station-wagon. He saw a little boy walking and playing at the corner whose expression turned from one of juvenile indifference to an expression full of crying and wailing. River had no idea what would have bothered the boy so much so instantaneously, especially since the thought of being charged with a hit-and-run was a more startling and pressing matter to him.

He got out of the car to see who or what was underneath it and to ask the child if he was alright. He felt relieved that he didn't see anyone under his vehicle. Very abruptly, he asked the loitering boy, "How's it going? You didn't get hit, did you?"

"You killed Snoopy!" He considered that Snoopy might have been an imaginary friend of the boy's. (This was despite the fact that 10 years of age might be a little too old to have an imaginary friend. River was a 30-year-old single man without any degrees or qualifications. Since he was neither a father nor a therapist, how would he know after all?)

A moment later he realized that what he had run over was not a trash-bag, as he first thought when he looked under his car, but an enormous rottweiler.

Suddenly, his heart was racing.

"Where's your mom and dad?" he asked.

The boy told him that he was an orphan and he had none, so River decided to drive him and the dog to the nearby vet. They drove around for 20 minutes trying to find one.

River was starting to get nervous about driving around a boy who wasn't even his after 10:00 a.m. on a Tuesday. He would prefer going without some of today's pay rather than the comedy of errors he woke up to.

After 35 minutes of driving, they got to a vet in the middle of a hill that was off of the freeway.

River ran out of the car holding the dog on its side in his arms. The boy followed.

He arrived at the receptionist's desk to give his information.

"What's your name?" she asked. He told her that his name was Dean Moriarty and pulled out his false ID that identified him as that individual. He pulled out his fraudulent credit card in order to process a necessary deposit that was able to run through (mostly for the purpose of verifying the pet-owner or other individual).

When they asked him about the incident, he was completely honest in his summary of events.

He paid them with the counterfeit bills in his wallet that were saved from the bundle he made two months earlier.

River emphasized to the veterinary staff that he had to work when he asked them if they could watch the boy until someone could pick him up. They agreed to do so.

He drove to work and checked in to his boss's office. He entered the room just as she removed her ruby-red lips from the half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels that would get her through the day. She set it down by the left side of her chair as she sensed someone coming in.

"Why are you two hours late??"

"Um... I ran over a dog. I'm sorry."

"And you didn't even bother to call me??"

His chest tightened with anxiety. "Sorry. I'm really, really sorry. Um, the dog belonged to a homeless child who was very upset by what I did and I didn't want to leave it (the dog, I mean) to die. I'm sorry I'm sorry."

"If I said that I was late because I was in an accident that was my fault and you were my boss would you still hire me?"

"Uumm, no."

"Okay, great answer. Well, I think you've learned your lesson. You can get to work now."

Angel came in to get something to eat. She was an 18-year-old african-american girl who was a regular from the nearby college campus.

She gave him a big, fat hug over the coffee-bar of the cafe before she ordered. The young woman flirted with him, as usual.

She'd been going there since she moved to the neighborhood with her parents from California. She relocated during her senior year of high-school, one year earlier.

She lived with her family five minutes away from both the community college and diner.

She ordered some coffee and cherry pie.

"So, how's school?" he asked her.

"It's fine."

"Hey, I saw you at the Fugazi concert last night," she mentioned to him.

"Oh, yeah..." He lied to her about his reasons (or lack of them) for going to the show alone.

"There was someone who said that they were going to go out with me there and do some stuff that night. Anyway, she said that she caught a bug, but I decided to go anyway even if I wasn't with a date."

"I'm sorry. You know there is something going around. I thought that I caught something recently. My throat's been kind of scratchy."

He served her cherry-pie and coffee. The rush had slowed down to a halt in 15 minutes. He was happy that he had an opportunity to play a game of cards with her. He liked playing war over all card-games because of its duration and the fact that it was less of a game of chance. (He didn't like gambling because he didn't find it so challenging. "Because they're such games of chance, you either win or you lose and there are no actual skills or analyses involved," he thought.)

At the point when he won half of the deck, she interrupted the game. "Oh. What time is it??"

"Two O'Clock."

"Damn. I just remembered..." She pasted her lips with a pink tube of chap-stick and subtly tousled her hair... "I have a class at 2:30."

"Okay. Well, have a good day." He smiled sincerely.

"Bye Dean." She grinned and hugged him again in hopes that it would be the least that she could do to comfort the visible loneliness that he was so horrible at hiding.

***

The minutes and the seconds went by so slowly. River was cleaning out the coffee pot.

As he was rinsing and drying it out, there was talk on the radio about a Bjork concert. His mind started to wander. He began to remember what things used to be like for him as his former self.

***

OCTOBER 7, 2001:

River had arrived in San Diego in order to go to college there. He was frequently turned down by numerous flippant managers who interviewed him. That didn't make a difference to him anyway, because each of them felt from the start that he was a waste of space.

Fortunately for him, the promoter who had reached out to him admired his charisma and effeminate boyish glee that attracted all of the strangers who were River's peers like each of them were moths drawn to a flame.

Joey had asked River before if he wanted to help with website promotion for Joey's goth-clubs, but River turned it down. If everyone else in the community believed he was pathetic why should this be a change of pace?

Joey later asked River if he would prefer to help hand out some tickets. He was offering more pay than he initially offered River for the web-design job. River's tuition was almost due so he decided to take the offer.

River went out of his way to sell the tickets. He ventured so broadly that he eventually

promoted in elitist and wealthy neighborhoods such as UCSD, SDSU, and the neighborhoods of Del Mar, La Jolla, Point Loma, Pacific Beach, and Downtown.

This started to make Joey nervous. Then again, he believed his own stereotype that people with a lot of money to burn habitually waste it or throw it away.

Saturday October 20 came around. Joey had no idea that so many people would line up to see a Bjork show at a second-rate gay dive-bar. Thirty people were lined up.

Many were coming inside and waiting for the show to start. Thirty minutes to an hour lasted until complaints started coming in.

Joey's co-workers were running out of excuses for Bjork not arriving. Joey would never have expected this. If only River had stayed to the typical areas that were promoted to.

Joey frequently talked or posted about meeting Chris Cornell, David Bowie, Peter Murphy, and Trent Reznor but everyone wrote it off as him being high on methamphetamine. (The best example was when he said Maynard's and Trent Reznor's side-project, Tapeworm, was playing despite the fact that it never got off the ground except for some studio demos.)

When he said that The Cure was playing a $10 show at another even seedier venue a

few years beforehand nobody asked for their money back or gave any complaints??

Maybe that's because almost all of the people who came were people who Joey either bought crystal from or people who he sold it to.

"Goddammit! I knew that it was that one guy! You know, River!! He ripped off everyone!"

That claim became an entire fiasco. Reporters came to interview Joey and asked him what had happened.

"I even corresponded with Bjork for chrissakes!" Joey said.

"Uumm, that correspondence came from your IP address" the reporter said.

Joey came up with another alibi. "Oh! I let him use my computer!"

River skipped town.

OCTOBER 12, 2008 (EVENING):

River left with somebody. He didn't know that the other person was an undercover cop.

The charge River put on the card was discovered by the original card-owner.

River went to a strip-club where he passed around a bill that he didn't realize was from a batch of bills he stole from Joey before he skipped town.

The next day a blonde called his name. He knew she was in for him. She flashed her badge and his life was over.