Patrick W. Gallagher's essays and stories have also appeared in the New York Times, PopMatters, Wheelhouse,
Adirondack Review, Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, and elsewhere. Patrick is a former managing editor of Mr. Beller's
Neighborhood, and currently curator and host of the Neighborhood reading series at Happy Ending on the
Lower East Side of NYC. Patrick is also a contributing editor to Open City and is writing his PhD thesis in the
department of Comparative Literature at NYU. http://www.happyendinglounge.com/2005 and
http://www.opencity.org
Adirondack Review, Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, and elsewhere. Patrick is a former managing editor of Mr. Beller's
Neighborhood, and currently curator and host of the Neighborhood reading series at Happy Ending on the
Lower East Side of NYC. Patrick is also a contributing editor to Open City and is writing his PhD thesis in the
department of Comparative Literature at NYU. http://www.happyendinglounge.com/2005 and
http://www.opencity.org
Listening to CDs
At last a step has been taken. There are memories attached to that synthesized piano, I can tell already. It is in a song called
"Baby, Baby, Baby" by a group called TLC. Every time the singer sings the words in the title of the song, the same three notes
of electronic piano intone and bring blurry shapes into view just beyond the outer limit of my consciousness. I have been
trying to keep track of these types of effects — something very similar with the synthesized piano in a song by David Bowie
called "Modern Love", even though, in that song, only two notes are used instead of three. The next step would be to
determine how old I am.
The synthesized piano exploited to such effect by Bowie and TLC seems designed for youngsters inexperienced in and
therefore prone to melodramatic sentimentality about the art of love. If I were a youngster myself, then it would explain the
relatively strong emotional resonance that the sound has for me; and yet if I were already of a certain age, the sound would
do the same by virtue of awakening a longing for earlier years.
Despite the lack of a window, a mirror, or any furniture, the room is filled with stacks and stacks and stacks of CDs. I bet I can
figure out how old I am by looking at which CDs are on top — that way, I will determine which CDs I listened to most recently
before I lost all of my memories. Any CDs that I do not recognize from my vast knowledge of the music industry (little bit of
self-deprecating humor there, tee hee — the one thing that I know about myself instinctively is that I am no musician) I can
listen to on the small boombox in the corner of the room.
I have not counted how many stacks there are. There are so many that it would take more time to count than I am willing to
spend. They are of varying height and packed so closely together that it is easy to imagine tiny cars jetting along between
them. Right on top of one of the tallest stacks I discover a CD with two elaborately dressed black gentlemen on the cover. At
first, I find it hard to read because of the unusual spelling: "2 of AmeriKKKaz Most Wanted". I feel a surge somewhere in my
body and I believe it’s testosterone — 2Pac and Snoop Doggy Dogg immediately distinguish themselves from TLC and Bowie
with their infectiously aggressive posturing. Just touching the case of the CD adds depth to my resolve.
I have to play the song a number of times before I can understand what 2Pac and Dogg are talking about, however. They
speak in a rapid yet halting cadence, full of patois, that reminds me of isolated moments from the TLC album only much denser
and faster. Finally I determine that they are supposed to be dangerous individuals indeed; yet I am no closer to understanding
how old I am than I was before. If I am supposed to take this literally, then I am probably a teenager, but if it is supposed to
be some kind of comedy album then I could be an adult of almost any age at all.
The impasse frustrates me to no end and finally I ask myself whether it wouldn’t be more worthwhile to learn my ethnicity
before I to try to deduce my age.
And when that doesn’t work I play CDs in order to determine my gender, my class background, and my nationality all with the
same total lack of success.
The only way to figure out the answers to all of these questions is to give the CDs a good listen and figure out what I most
enjoy listening to. There is a hearty collection of Classical music, and if I enjoy that the most then I am either of advanced age,
a nerd, or an aficionado with a highly cultivated taste. Since I am not a musician (that is the one thing that I know for sure) it
is unlikely that I will determine my favorite musical selections and recording artists based on a disinterested, scientific, craft-
based assessment.
Or will I? Perhaps it is possible that I am some kind of connoisseur, but the ham-fisted bluntness and technical illiteracy that I
have exhibited in my listenings thus far (that of the synthesized piano, for instance) would make that even more unlikely.
Wait — what if these are not even my CDs? It doesn’t matter, they could still give me a sense of what I am. It’s all a question
of combinations: If indeed Classical proves to be my favorite genre, then it might teach me to be myself if, say, Country, or
Metal, or Hip-Hop should prove to be my second favorite, and Jazz my third, and so on and so forth.
What a task. I wonder if someone is going to come in and give me something to eat at some point. I really need to piss, even
though I can’t remember ever drinking anything at any time in my life, and my throat and mouth feel parched. So I think about
a way to do it without stinking up the locked, concrete enclosure.
It taxes my intellect as well as my musical acumen to think this through while I am going through the CDs and trying to figure
out which ones are my favorites but it is also helpful because it keeps me from falling asleep. At times it feels like
backgrounding the music to my project helps me think of ideas that I would not have otherwise, such as pissing in short
bursts instead of all at once. Also, certain aspects of music really leap out at you from the background in ways that they never
could in the foreground: The asinine stage chatter in Van Halen’s "Dance the Night Away", for instance, or certain phlegmy
gurgling sounds in the Tuva throat singers CD.
My pants are about to be soaked when at last my system is complete. It’s risky, but it has the potential to be highly efficient.
CDs that I don’t like I will remove from their containers and then piss in such short bursts as to fill the CD cases, and no
more; repeat until finished. It may not satisfy me in the short run, but in the long run it will protect me from disease and injury.
I need a way to keep the piss from leaking all over the place; so what I’m going to do is build two outer layers of CD cases
around the CD cases that I plan to use to store my urine — this includes a “bed,” eight CD cases high, five CD cases long and
as many wide, with a recess one CD case in area and four CD cases deep, to contain the stack of liquid-filled CDs. Then, once
the CDs with the urine are safely ensconced within the bed, I will pile up additional CDs around the urinated CDs in order to
stop the smell.
My first observation is that it is hard to piss in the CD cases, close them, and install them in the bed without spilling at least a
little bit of piss. The short burst approach also gives rise to a urinary violence whereby my piss splashes back up at my fingers,
already soaked from pinching the head of my penis to keep the bursts short. After the CDs are in the bed, I can see a sickly
yellow puddle beginning to expand out of the bottom of the bed immediately.
Since there is going to be leakage anyway, I think I am going to just piss straight into the recess of the bed. The hell with the
consequences — I am the King of this room, outside world be damned.
“Shit!” I exclaim. I realize in this moment that I am a man, with a penis and everything.
At last a step has been taken.
I move the boombox, the CDs that I like, and the hundreds, if not thousands of CDs that I have yet to give the nice, long,
careful listen that they deserve over to the opposite side of the room as the bed, which emerges like the skyline of a flooded
city from a fetid, mildly steaming slick of urine that has expanded to cover at least half of the floor. I realize that I am running
out of time before the expanding pool contaminates CDs that are still fresh, so I cease the organized work of methodically
constructing stacks and instead fling the unlistened-to CDs across the room with a cavalier flick of the wrist. Gradually they
accumulate into an enormous, fungal heap that towers over my minuscule listening accomplishments and extends all the way
to the ceiling.
I put on a CD by someone named Lionel Richie that looks like it will improve my mood, which has darkened since the failure of
my men’s lavatory construction project and I consider something. I’m not sure what it is right off the bat — it’s a little nub
bumping somewhere. The excited bassline of Richie’s magnificent pop symphony, "Celebration", for some reason gets my
cerebral cortex pulsating as well as my toe tapping. This is not the first time that the sound of a thumping bass has inspired
me movements in my mind in equal measure to those in my body — "The Chain" by Fleetwood Mac, "Give it to Me, Baby" by
Rick James, "Radio Free Europe" by R.E.M., "Big Pimpin’" by Jay-Z, "Bip Bop" by Wings, "Snow in July" by Chris Gaines,
"Vibeology" by Paula Abdul and "Hard on the Ticker", by Tim McGraw, have also had similarly vituperative effects upon my
thought processes.
By a calculation of the number of times that the stack of the already listened-to CDs could be fit into the height of the
unlistened-to heap, I realize that I am probably much shorter than the average person. Hmmm — maybe the news is that I am
a child, perhaps not much older than ten.
It must be so — either that, or I am a dwarf of some kind. In order to resolve the problem, I need to examine the CDs with
sexual content in order to test my reaction.
After rummaging through the heap, splashing around in its crackling depths like Scrooge McDuck, I find a few CDs clearly
designed to indicate whether or not the listener has been through puberty — to separate “the men from the boys,” as the
popular saying goes. CDs called Erotica, by Madonna, On the 6 by Jennifer Lopez, Garth Brooks In . . . The Life of Chris Gaines
by Garth Brooks (added to the list because of Brooks’s sultry expression on the cover), For the Cool in You by Babyface, Can’
t Take Me Home by Pink, Camille, Lovesexy by Prince, Volume II by Diane Warren, Supersexy Swingin’ Sounds by White
Zombie, and Cherry Pie by Warrant all go into a little ministack beside the boombox, there you go. I remove my pants and
prepare to pleasure myself, using just a few droplets of urine from the vast spreading lake, pinched between my thumb and
forefinger, for lubrication.
I put on Erotica because that seems to be the most erotic, but it almost immediately raises a question — that is, the question
of whether I am a child or simply impotent.
A thought seizes my mind: What difference would it make if I were sexual, what fucking difference indeed? I grip my temples,
gnash my teeth, and march my bare legs splashing through the piss ocean to the bed, where I sit down and squeeze out the
first inches of a bitter shit. My bowels are as tight as fists.
If I were sexual, what good would it do me locked in a room with nothing but CDs and my own excrement? And even if free to
come and go as I please, how many women would want to spend time with me in a cement room with no windows and no
furniture? Women can be such bitches, such terrible, terrible bitches about things like furniture and shitty smells.
Oh, joy of joys — I must be sexual, then, specifically a heterosexual male with at least a little bit of sexual experience but not
enough.
At last a step has been taken. I’m not a child, I’m a dwarf after all — sitting on a stack as modest as the bed (realizing that
there is no toilet paper and I will have to use liner notes) my little feet don’t even touch the floor. This would go a tall way
toward explaining my resentment of the fairer sex, no pun intended.
Listening to all of the CDs takes a long time, perhaps years. How hilarious it would be if my entire life went to waste trying to
figure out who I am by listening to CDs. Once in a while I have the distinct impression that time has passed without my
participation, that is, I think that it is maybe in these gaps that I am being fed and given medical care as I age. It unsettles me
to think that someone is watching and caring for me, but it is also comforting to know that at least one person someone
knows I am here, and could even release me one day.
What is more, according to my favorite CDs I have no race, no age, no nationality, and I could be alive at any time in history
after the invention of CDs. Either I am the most tolerant, liberal, diversified globalist on the planet, listening with equal
enjoyment to rock, folk, rap, funk, Tuva, polka, Classical, techno, reggaeton, big band, blues, and sitcom theme music, or else
musical taste does not provide a reliable indicator of the personality and background of the listener.
And really, why should it? This is an epiphany, this is a thought which I know has never occurred to me, before or after my
amnesia. Why should illiterate Southern rednecks not listen to rap, why should African Americans not be allowed to enjoy a
good, accordion-based polka, and would anyone really care if Mike Post, crafter of theme music for TV dramas such as Law &
Order and Quantum Leap, didn’t enjoy a little TV sitcom theme music from time to time? I’m a misogynist, and I can get down
to Elastica. We allow our identities to enslave us and for some reason music is an area in which this instinct finds particularly
powerful expression.
I have come to a conclusion. I regret that I have wasted so much time on this ridiculous quest, but I do not regret listening to
the music. Even the shitty music that I remanded to the bed has something vitally human about it. Hey, wait — maybe music
does teach us something about ourselves, after all. Maybe it teaches us that we’re human. A simple but profound truth.
A strip of light! Shit! Oh my God! The door . . . It’s OPENING!
A man! A man in some kind of policeman’s uniform! Like, a prison guard — c’mon now, what the fuck did I expect?
“Excellent work, Gary.” I have to crane my neck just to look him in the eye, barely visible under the shadows cast by his officer’
s cap. He has a bright, bushy red moustache and a charged grin.
“I’ve got a surprise for you, Gary,” he says.
I exclaim, “You mean I can go home? Do I have a home? Are you going to tell me who I am?” I’m jumping up and down, but
he is so tall and I am so short that the top of my head does not even pass his knees when I am airborne.
The guard laughs. “No, Gary, you don’t have a home anymore. All of your friends and loved ones have forgotten you, just like
you’ve forgotten them. But we want you to know that we’re proud we finally got through to you with our message about the
common humanity that all of us share.”
“The foundation of all liberalism,” I whisper.
“Indeed,” says the guard. He produces a brown, cylindrical pastry atop a plate, then bends down and sets it on the floor in
front of me. “Just to show you that we’re not inhumane ourselves, we’ve baked you a cake and frosted it so that it looks like a
CD.”
The round side of the cake was brown, chocolate-frosted, but the flat top was frosted with a silver-hued paste. On close
examination the silver substance smelled like an inhabitant of the sea, perhaps herring.
The guard grinned. “You like CDs, right, Gary?” He looked up and sniffed. “Kinda smells funny in here, you know.” He laughs,
shakes his head, and says, “Fuck you.”
He laughs while he turns around and walks out the way he came in. I try to get him in the back with the cake before the door
slams shut but he’s too fast for me. The plate shatters and the frosting leaves a silvery-brown clump on the door before it
crumbles to the floor.
From the other side, the cop calls to me: “Oh yeah, and Gary — that wasn’t chocolate frosting on the cake. That’s shit!”
At last a step has been taken. There are memories attached to that synthesized piano, I can tell already. It is in a song called
"Baby, Baby, Baby" by a group called TLC. Every time the singer sings the words in the title of the song, the same three notes
of electronic piano intone and bring blurry shapes into view just beyond the outer limit of my consciousness. I have been
trying to keep track of these types of effects — something very similar with the synthesized piano in a song by David Bowie
called "Modern Love", even though, in that song, only two notes are used instead of three. The next step would be to
determine how old I am.
The synthesized piano exploited to such effect by Bowie and TLC seems designed for youngsters inexperienced in and
therefore prone to melodramatic sentimentality about the art of love. If I were a youngster myself, then it would explain the
relatively strong emotional resonance that the sound has for me; and yet if I were already of a certain age, the sound would
do the same by virtue of awakening a longing for earlier years.
Despite the lack of a window, a mirror, or any furniture, the room is filled with stacks and stacks and stacks of CDs. I bet I can
figure out how old I am by looking at which CDs are on top — that way, I will determine which CDs I listened to most recently
before I lost all of my memories. Any CDs that I do not recognize from my vast knowledge of the music industry (little bit of
self-deprecating humor there, tee hee — the one thing that I know about myself instinctively is that I am no musician) I can
listen to on the small boombox in the corner of the room.
I have not counted how many stacks there are. There are so many that it would take more time to count than I am willing to
spend. They are of varying height and packed so closely together that it is easy to imagine tiny cars jetting along between
them. Right on top of one of the tallest stacks I discover a CD with two elaborately dressed black gentlemen on the cover. At
first, I find it hard to read because of the unusual spelling: "2 of AmeriKKKaz Most Wanted". I feel a surge somewhere in my
body and I believe it’s testosterone — 2Pac and Snoop Doggy Dogg immediately distinguish themselves from TLC and Bowie
with their infectiously aggressive posturing. Just touching the case of the CD adds depth to my resolve.
I have to play the song a number of times before I can understand what 2Pac and Dogg are talking about, however. They
speak in a rapid yet halting cadence, full of patois, that reminds me of isolated moments from the TLC album only much denser
and faster. Finally I determine that they are supposed to be dangerous individuals indeed; yet I am no closer to understanding
how old I am than I was before. If I am supposed to take this literally, then I am probably a teenager, but if it is supposed to
be some kind of comedy album then I could be an adult of almost any age at all.
The impasse frustrates me to no end and finally I ask myself whether it wouldn’t be more worthwhile to learn my ethnicity
before I to try to deduce my age.
And when that doesn’t work I play CDs in order to determine my gender, my class background, and my nationality all with the
same total lack of success.
The only way to figure out the answers to all of these questions is to give the CDs a good listen and figure out what I most
enjoy listening to. There is a hearty collection of Classical music, and if I enjoy that the most then I am either of advanced age,
a nerd, or an aficionado with a highly cultivated taste. Since I am not a musician (that is the one thing that I know for sure) it
is unlikely that I will determine my favorite musical selections and recording artists based on a disinterested, scientific, craft-
based assessment.
Or will I? Perhaps it is possible that I am some kind of connoisseur, but the ham-fisted bluntness and technical illiteracy that I
have exhibited in my listenings thus far (that of the synthesized piano, for instance) would make that even more unlikely.
Wait — what if these are not even my CDs? It doesn’t matter, they could still give me a sense of what I am. It’s all a question
of combinations: If indeed Classical proves to be my favorite genre, then it might teach me to be myself if, say, Country, or
Metal, or Hip-Hop should prove to be my second favorite, and Jazz my third, and so on and so forth.
What a task. I wonder if someone is going to come in and give me something to eat at some point. I really need to piss, even
though I can’t remember ever drinking anything at any time in my life, and my throat and mouth feel parched. So I think about
a way to do it without stinking up the locked, concrete enclosure.
It taxes my intellect as well as my musical acumen to think this through while I am going through the CDs and trying to figure
out which ones are my favorites but it is also helpful because it keeps me from falling asleep. At times it feels like
backgrounding the music to my project helps me think of ideas that I would not have otherwise, such as pissing in short
bursts instead of all at once. Also, certain aspects of music really leap out at you from the background in ways that they never
could in the foreground: The asinine stage chatter in Van Halen’s "Dance the Night Away", for instance, or certain phlegmy
gurgling sounds in the Tuva throat singers CD.
My pants are about to be soaked when at last my system is complete. It’s risky, but it has the potential to be highly efficient.
CDs that I don’t like I will remove from their containers and then piss in such short bursts as to fill the CD cases, and no
more; repeat until finished. It may not satisfy me in the short run, but in the long run it will protect me from disease and injury.
I need a way to keep the piss from leaking all over the place; so what I’m going to do is build two outer layers of CD cases
around the CD cases that I plan to use to store my urine — this includes a “bed,” eight CD cases high, five CD cases long and
as many wide, with a recess one CD case in area and four CD cases deep, to contain the stack of liquid-filled CDs. Then, once
the CDs with the urine are safely ensconced within the bed, I will pile up additional CDs around the urinated CDs in order to
stop the smell.
My first observation is that it is hard to piss in the CD cases, close them, and install them in the bed without spilling at least a
little bit of piss. The short burst approach also gives rise to a urinary violence whereby my piss splashes back up at my fingers,
already soaked from pinching the head of my penis to keep the bursts short. After the CDs are in the bed, I can see a sickly
yellow puddle beginning to expand out of the bottom of the bed immediately.
Since there is going to be leakage anyway, I think I am going to just piss straight into the recess of the bed. The hell with the
consequences — I am the King of this room, outside world be damned.
“Shit!” I exclaim. I realize in this moment that I am a man, with a penis and everything.
At last a step has been taken.
I move the boombox, the CDs that I like, and the hundreds, if not thousands of CDs that I have yet to give the nice, long,
careful listen that they deserve over to the opposite side of the room as the bed, which emerges like the skyline of a flooded
city from a fetid, mildly steaming slick of urine that has expanded to cover at least half of the floor. I realize that I am running
out of time before the expanding pool contaminates CDs that are still fresh, so I cease the organized work of methodically
constructing stacks and instead fling the unlistened-to CDs across the room with a cavalier flick of the wrist. Gradually they
accumulate into an enormous, fungal heap that towers over my minuscule listening accomplishments and extends all the way
to the ceiling.
I put on a CD by someone named Lionel Richie that looks like it will improve my mood, which has darkened since the failure of
my men’s lavatory construction project and I consider something. I’m not sure what it is right off the bat — it’s a little nub
bumping somewhere. The excited bassline of Richie’s magnificent pop symphony, "Celebration", for some reason gets my
cerebral cortex pulsating as well as my toe tapping. This is not the first time that the sound of a thumping bass has inspired
me movements in my mind in equal measure to those in my body — "The Chain" by Fleetwood Mac, "Give it to Me, Baby" by
Rick James, "Radio Free Europe" by R.E.M., "Big Pimpin’" by Jay-Z, "Bip Bop" by Wings, "Snow in July" by Chris Gaines,
"Vibeology" by Paula Abdul and "Hard on the Ticker", by Tim McGraw, have also had similarly vituperative effects upon my
thought processes.
By a calculation of the number of times that the stack of the already listened-to CDs could be fit into the height of the
unlistened-to heap, I realize that I am probably much shorter than the average person. Hmmm — maybe the news is that I am
a child, perhaps not much older than ten.
It must be so — either that, or I am a dwarf of some kind. In order to resolve the problem, I need to examine the CDs with
sexual content in order to test my reaction.
After rummaging through the heap, splashing around in its crackling depths like Scrooge McDuck, I find a few CDs clearly
designed to indicate whether or not the listener has been through puberty — to separate “the men from the boys,” as the
popular saying goes. CDs called Erotica, by Madonna, On the 6 by Jennifer Lopez, Garth Brooks In . . . The Life of Chris Gaines
by Garth Brooks (added to the list because of Brooks’s sultry expression on the cover), For the Cool in You by Babyface, Can’
t Take Me Home by Pink, Camille, Lovesexy by Prince, Volume II by Diane Warren, Supersexy Swingin’ Sounds by White
Zombie, and Cherry Pie by Warrant all go into a little ministack beside the boombox, there you go. I remove my pants and
prepare to pleasure myself, using just a few droplets of urine from the vast spreading lake, pinched between my thumb and
forefinger, for lubrication.
I put on Erotica because that seems to be the most erotic, but it almost immediately raises a question — that is, the question
of whether I am a child or simply impotent.
A thought seizes my mind: What difference would it make if I were sexual, what fucking difference indeed? I grip my temples,
gnash my teeth, and march my bare legs splashing through the piss ocean to the bed, where I sit down and squeeze out the
first inches of a bitter shit. My bowels are as tight as fists.
If I were sexual, what good would it do me locked in a room with nothing but CDs and my own excrement? And even if free to
come and go as I please, how many women would want to spend time with me in a cement room with no windows and no
furniture? Women can be such bitches, such terrible, terrible bitches about things like furniture and shitty smells.
Oh, joy of joys — I must be sexual, then, specifically a heterosexual male with at least a little bit of sexual experience but not
enough.
At last a step has been taken. I’m not a child, I’m a dwarf after all — sitting on a stack as modest as the bed (realizing that
there is no toilet paper and I will have to use liner notes) my little feet don’t even touch the floor. This would go a tall way
toward explaining my resentment of the fairer sex, no pun intended.
Listening to all of the CDs takes a long time, perhaps years. How hilarious it would be if my entire life went to waste trying to
figure out who I am by listening to CDs. Once in a while I have the distinct impression that time has passed without my
participation, that is, I think that it is maybe in these gaps that I am being fed and given medical care as I age. It unsettles me
to think that someone is watching and caring for me, but it is also comforting to know that at least one person someone
knows I am here, and could even release me one day.
What is more, according to my favorite CDs I have no race, no age, no nationality, and I could be alive at any time in history
after the invention of CDs. Either I am the most tolerant, liberal, diversified globalist on the planet, listening with equal
enjoyment to rock, folk, rap, funk, Tuva, polka, Classical, techno, reggaeton, big band, blues, and sitcom theme music, or else
musical taste does not provide a reliable indicator of the personality and background of the listener.
And really, why should it? This is an epiphany, this is a thought which I know has never occurred to me, before or after my
amnesia. Why should illiterate Southern rednecks not listen to rap, why should African Americans not be allowed to enjoy a
good, accordion-based polka, and would anyone really care if Mike Post, crafter of theme music for TV dramas such as Law &
Order and Quantum Leap, didn’t enjoy a little TV sitcom theme music from time to time? I’m a misogynist, and I can get down
to Elastica. We allow our identities to enslave us and for some reason music is an area in which this instinct finds particularly
powerful expression.
I have come to a conclusion. I regret that I have wasted so much time on this ridiculous quest, but I do not regret listening to
the music. Even the shitty music that I remanded to the bed has something vitally human about it. Hey, wait — maybe music
does teach us something about ourselves, after all. Maybe it teaches us that we’re human. A simple but profound truth.
A strip of light! Shit! Oh my God! The door . . . It’s OPENING!
A man! A man in some kind of policeman’s uniform! Like, a prison guard — c’mon now, what the fuck did I expect?
“Excellent work, Gary.” I have to crane my neck just to look him in the eye, barely visible under the shadows cast by his officer’
s cap. He has a bright, bushy red moustache and a charged grin.
“I’ve got a surprise for you, Gary,” he says.
I exclaim, “You mean I can go home? Do I have a home? Are you going to tell me who I am?” I’m jumping up and down, but
he is so tall and I am so short that the top of my head does not even pass his knees when I am airborne.
The guard laughs. “No, Gary, you don’t have a home anymore. All of your friends and loved ones have forgotten you, just like
you’ve forgotten them. But we want you to know that we’re proud we finally got through to you with our message about the
common humanity that all of us share.”
“The foundation of all liberalism,” I whisper.
“Indeed,” says the guard. He produces a brown, cylindrical pastry atop a plate, then bends down and sets it on the floor in
front of me. “Just to show you that we’re not inhumane ourselves, we’ve baked you a cake and frosted it so that it looks like a
CD.”
The round side of the cake was brown, chocolate-frosted, but the flat top was frosted with a silver-hued paste. On close
examination the silver substance smelled like an inhabitant of the sea, perhaps herring.
The guard grinned. “You like CDs, right, Gary?” He looked up and sniffed. “Kinda smells funny in here, you know.” He laughs,
shakes his head, and says, “Fuck you.”
He laughs while he turns around and walks out the way he came in. I try to get him in the back with the cake before the door
slams shut but he’s too fast for me. The plate shatters and the frosting leaves a silvery-brown clump on the door before it
crumbles to the floor.
From the other side, the cop calls to me: “Oh yeah, and Gary — that wasn’t chocolate frosting on the cake. That’s shit!”
Patrick W. Gallagher
