Tim Dopkowski
There are seven drops of blood on my new sock. On Amber's new sock. Either way, I have the last of Dan Dopkowski.
***
Tim Dopkowski sat down at his seat in the front row of Mr. Pendrick's homeroom. The morning was the first of the school year neccessitating gloves, and his fingers were stiff from the cold; he had no gloves. Tim's hair was hanging down over his eyes the way he liked it. His father was out of town this week, so he could sneak off to school without the requisite hair gel. Outside the first floor window, he watched Amber Back smoke a cigarette.
***
I've always liked to count words. Rather, I have always counted words. Any enjoyment stems more from the having managed not to not do it, if you can follow that logic. I don't follow it so well, but they want to try to explain these things that make me tick. Whatever. How do you explain yourself like that, how you work?
And that's exactly the kind of thing they always want to know. They will ask very pointed questions about great masses of abstract thought, and they are supposed to be the experts who can say what the deal is with me. Screw them, man. Except I don't. I try to answer them, instead. But how do you represent the universe, the great and vast and many-dimensional universe with a paper and pencil? How can I try to extract myself out one thin, linear sentence at a time? I know, logically and intuitively, that it's impossible. Of course it is; a real no-brainer. But they think it is not only possible, but that me thinking otherwise is "resistance." Read a heavy sigh here, because that is what I'm doing. I would cry or scream from the frustrated mess of it, but I have an anti-depressant in my system that reduces all to just a sigh.
Granted, a heavy one.
Let me tell you a story.
I am twelve years old, sitting inside a Kmart on New Year's eve. I am in the kitchen appliances aisle, and there are pots to my left and pans to my right, and I am Indian style on the bottom shelf, just looking out over the dish towels across from me. Nobody is around. Kmart is open all night, and I don't know if this is a special occasion on account of New Year's eve, or if this particular Kmart is always open 24 hours. Maybe they all are all the time, like Meijers, but I really don't think so. But I am in Albequerque, New Mexico, so who knows. Everything around here is pretty weird.
So I'm sitting there, and I decide I should try to get drunk. Why not? I say to myself. But I say it outloud to myself, and I get an answer.
"Because it's illegal."
I look around, but see no person to claim the voice.
"So what?" I answer. Maybe it is God here to converse with me. Except God sounds very young, I have to admit to myself.
"Why would you do something ignorant like get drunk just because you're bored?
"Why not? I ask. It seems like an even better idea to me now that I'm in the business of defending it. "Better than being bored."
"Not it's not," the voice says. "Bored, you are opened to limitless possibilities. You are yourself and all that is part of that, good and bad. Drunk, you are whittled down to a soggy oatmeal consisting largely of only your worst parts." A sigh, and I hear a shift in the aisle behind me. The trash cans are over there, and brooms and stuff. "Plus, there are the health aspects to consider. Say just maybe you make it out of this hellish reality and into one where you have the keys to the cockpit and can take it where you want to go. But when you get there, all excited finally to have made it out, you find that you are half dead in your brain and your body and no good to yourself."
This is something I had not considered; the voice is right. But I am not prepared to give up my stance; it's all I have right now.
"So what?" I say for the second time today. Why be more miserable now than you have to, all for some stupid pie-eyed hope that will never come true, anyway?"
There is silence from the trash can aisle. Then, "Did you say 'pie-eyed'?"
Alarmed, I realize I had. "Yes."
More silence, and then some clanging. "I'm coming over there," the voice says.
***
Tim Dopkowski sat down at his seat in the front row of Mr. Pendrick's homeroom. The morning was the first of the school year neccessitating gloves, and his fingers were stiff from the cold; he had no gloves. Tim's hair was hanging down over his eyes the way he liked it. His father was out of town this week, so he could sneak off to school without the requisite hair gel. Outside the first floor window, he watched Amber Back smoke a cigarette.
***
I've always liked to count words. Rather, I have always counted words. Any enjoyment stems more from the having managed not to not do it, if you can follow that logic. I don't follow it so well, but they want to try to explain these things that make me tick. Whatever. How do you explain yourself like that, how you work?
And that's exactly the kind of thing they always want to know. They will ask very pointed questions about great masses of abstract thought, and they are supposed to be the experts who can say what the deal is with me. Screw them, man. Except I don't. I try to answer them, instead. But how do you represent the universe, the great and vast and many-dimensional universe with a paper and pencil? How can I try to extract myself out one thin, linear sentence at a time? I know, logically and intuitively, that it's impossible. Of course it is; a real no-brainer. But they think it is not only possible, but that me thinking otherwise is "resistance." Read a heavy sigh here, because that is what I'm doing. I would cry or scream from the frustrated mess of it, but I have an anti-depressant in my system that reduces all to just a sigh.
Granted, a heavy one.
Let me tell you a story.
I am twelve years old, sitting inside a Kmart on New Year's eve. I am in the kitchen appliances aisle, and there are pots to my left and pans to my right, and I am Indian style on the bottom shelf, just looking out over the dish towels across from me. Nobody is around. Kmart is open all night, and I don't know if this is a special occasion on account of New Year's eve, or if this particular Kmart is always open 24 hours. Maybe they all are all the time, like Meijers, but I really don't think so. But I am in Albequerque, New Mexico, so who knows. Everything around here is pretty weird.
So I'm sitting there, and I decide I should try to get drunk. Why not? I say to myself. But I say it outloud to myself, and I get an answer.
"Because it's illegal."
I look around, but see no person to claim the voice.
"So what?" I answer. Maybe it is God here to converse with me. Except God sounds very young, I have to admit to myself.
"Why would you do something ignorant like get drunk just because you're bored?
"Why not? I ask. It seems like an even better idea to me now that I'm in the business of defending it. "Better than being bored."
"Not it's not," the voice says. "Bored, you are opened to limitless possibilities. You are yourself and all that is part of that, good and bad. Drunk, you are whittled down to a soggy oatmeal consisting largely of only your worst parts." A sigh, and I hear a shift in the aisle behind me. The trash cans are over there, and brooms and stuff. "Plus, there are the health aspects to consider. Say just maybe you make it out of this hellish reality and into one where you have the keys to the cockpit and can take it where you want to go. But when you get there, all excited finally to have made it out, you find that you are half dead in your brain and your body and no good to yourself."
This is something I had not considered; the voice is right. But I am not prepared to give up my stance; it's all I have right now.
"So what?" I say for the second time today. Why be more miserable now than you have to, all for some stupid pie-eyed hope that will never come true, anyway?"
There is silence from the trash can aisle. Then, "Did you say 'pie-eyed'?"
Alarmed, I realize I had. "Yes."
More silence, and then some clanging. "I'm coming over there," the voice says.
<< Home