A Man and a Man/A Man and a Woman
Corey Mesler
A man approaches another man on the street. This is how a story begins. What does one man say to another man? Why is he approaching him, a complete stranger? He is a complete stranger because I say that he is. Why are these men on the street in the middle of a work day? What do these men do for a living? Why is one man (the man approached) dressed in an expensive suit and the other man in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt? What is the first word spoken between them? The man who approaches the other man speaks first. He says, “What is wrong with me?”
A man approaches a woman on the street. This is how a story begins. Why is this man approaching this woman, a stranger? Is it because she is physically attractive? No, she is only middling attractive because she has put on weight over the years and her once sylph-like figure is clustered with shapeless bulges. The woman is still attractive, though, because I say that she is. Is this man nice, friendly, safe? Does the woman see him approach and immediately grow apprehensive? What is she thinking? Is she suddenly thrust into a fugue based on the fact that she used to be more attractive? Was she once accustomed to men approaching her and had once been secretly bemused by the attention? Does the man, a stranger, see the woman this woman once was? Has he formulated what he wants to say to her beforehand or is this a sudden impulse? What is this man’s name? What does he do for a living? Why is he dressed in a suit that has seen better days? And the woman, what is her name? Why is she dressed in clothing that should belong to a younger woman? And, listen, why are there more questions about the man/woman scenario than the man/man? What is the man thinking? What are his first words to the woman? The woman now stands squinting in the sun. There is something familiar about the man perhaps. He reminds her of an ex-lover. A man who was initially kind and warm but who turned taciturn then violent and abusive. The woman instinctively raises an arm slightly, the beginning of a defensive posture. The man closes in on her. He speaks. He says, “I am as lonely as a ghost.” And the woman answers him, “Put your head here, on my shoulder.”
I wrote that book
Corey Mesler
I wrote the book they were all carrying around. In large crowds, in crowded rooms, there were at least a handful of readers and in those readers’ hands, as like as not, could be found a copy of my book, the only book I ever wrote. How did this happen? How did someone so simple-minded, so lazy and recalcitrant, someone so ignorant and loopy, write the book that they were all carrying around? I started out like you, friend, that is, if you started out with a mother born of the four winds and a father who was a rolling stone. I started out as a child too untamed for school, too timorous for group activity, too wide-eyed for the outer shores. I grew like a hothouse flower underneath the glowering scrutiny of a prison-full of helpmates. I grew tough on the outside and then tough on the inside and vulnerable and fragile on the outside. Somewhere in my late 30s I developed a mania for sitting still for hours, days, weeks. I developed an ability to turn the simplest thoughts into computer Jabberwocky. And, somewhere along the line, during the eleventh hour of the last day, I picked up a pen, a quill made from the feather of an extinct bird. And I wrote page after page, blindly, hitting out at invisible foes, spitting so vehemently at times I washed the very words from the page, the words I meant most to preserve. But, in the end, it became that book, the one that everyone was carrying around. I know better than to write another. My name is established, my crimes delineated and expunged. You think you know me. You do not know me. My book is a lie, the big lie, the one that limns a real person’s life as if there were truths to be mined there. It is my biggest lie and the one I will carry silently to my grave. They will line up for miles along the thoroughfare, my mourners, to watch my cortege go by. They will be waving with one hand and tearing pages from my book with the other. The air will be fairly alive with the floating words from my book, as if a great flock of peacocks were passing o’er, a flock of peacocks or vultures.