TBT #57: Half Way Undone

The air is thickest on Wednesday morning. The 11 p.m. newscasts from Japan mingle with morning stock traders in New York, shouting about search engines and biotech. California still sleeps — their spaced out surf reports and energy advisories start up around lunch time –, but Europe picks up the slack, as the glam noir artists in Paris and Prague crawl out of bed and beat a bass-and-cymbal tribute to their own hangovers. It’s been punctuated lately by some Seattle kid spamming his poetry over a live-to-air graffiti wall of audio. “Screw these days of love; expunge!” he screams, “Clear the way for the return of Grunge!” Sometimes on my morning walk I’ll catch a feed out of Saskatchewan: a lone woman harping endlessly about the federal government, the dogs she breeds and how terrible urban living is. At first her ranting annoys — a city dweller like me has little patience for such ignorance — but eventually her sheer determination grows on me. She won’t stop, no matter what happens. I love that I catch only bits and pieces of her between the overwhelming Love Connection broadcast that starts out of Chicago around 10:30, but despite missing almost all of her words, I can still follow her thoughts. It’s simple, what’s she saying, so simple that even the peppy girl describing her desire for “closeness but security” can’t obscure her single, repeated, drumbeat of a thesis. I live the only good life there is, she’s saying. It’s much better than yours.

I like that. It’s a good thing in my book, that sort of determination.

I visit her on Wednesdays. Winding my way through the people standing on the side of the street, all waiting for something. It’s the worst day for me. I always end up fiddling with my right-ear, trying to block out the broadcasts as they flash through the air and into the implant. I don’t really understand why it still bothers me. Everyone else has one and they’ve all managed to adjust. I was told it would be easy, even for an old guy like me. “You’ll get used to it,” the technician said, holding the tiny silver device in front of my face. “Eventually you learn to block out what you don’t want to hear. So all you get is what you want.”

It’s still itchy, underneath my skin. And it gets worse as the voices converge. A 42-year-old programmer from Florida won’t stop talking about his new computer. He’s joined by a glee club out of Alabama: the only do covers of Meatloaf tracks. Their thick accents mangle the words. I try to focus, block out the noise. Think about her and what we’ll do for the rest of the morning. A woman in Maine is reading all her recipes. She reads all of the same ones every day, for new listeners. Up ahead I watch a video billboard explode forward in an amazing 3D effect, shattering holographic pieces of rubble and glass all over the people and the ground below. Nobody really notices. I think it’s selling chips.

Maine woman is making me wish I had Banana Bread as Saskatchewan girl chimes in with her belief that Saskatoon has too many street gangs. I close my eyes for a second, trying to block the noise. I think about Annabelle, who is only 21. I tell myself to think about gorgeous she is. How much fun I have with her. How much I can’t wait to hold her and kiss her and run my hands down the small of her back. Pulling the top blanket off a hotel bed and falling into it with her, letting her hair spill over my face as she lies on top of me. Feeling myself rise to meet her.

“She’s young enough to be your daughter!”

Daytime soap operas out of the mid-west. She’s caught her husband with another girl. Organ music blares and joins hands, appropriately, with the Love Connection feed. “I’m thirtysomething, sensitive and in need of companionship,” says a quiet male voice. “If you’re just looking for someone to stop the loneliness, I’m your man.” And he coughs, and talks quickly about his love of chess. It’s so sad when they’re reduced to honesty.

My wife’s at home still asleep. She’s been sick for three years now, on-and-off (but mostly on). I tried to be a good husband. I went to the doctor with her, called on the specialists, held her hand when they put the oxygen mask over her lips. I kissed her tear-stained cheeks and told her I would never leave her. She spends her days in bed, sitting up when she feels her best, coughing into her hand, constantly telling the nurse not to bother herself. She can make do on her own.

I didn’t know it was soccer season again but two Portugese Men screaming “GOAAALLL!” seem to indicate that it’s exactly that. They scream as I start to pick-up a freestyle rap battle between two kids in Detroit. Annabelle’s meeting me at the hotel downtown. They know me there now, at the front desk. I worry but then I’m distracted by the sound of an elderly voice giving advice on manners and I decide not to care. I take the key and listen to today’s Ugundan weather. It’s going to be hot. Watch for Mosquitos. Zero per cent chance of rain.

Stepping into the elevator and everything suddenly goes quiet. I’m cut off. And it feels weird. I start to miss it. I try to think about Annabelle but keep flashing back to my wife in bed, holding the phone meekly against her ear, telling our son he doesn’t need to come home. They have the same conversation every week. I can’t decide if it’s because he’s persistent or because she doesn’t remember so well anymore. But it doesn’t matter, does it? All that matters is that Annabelle is on floor 22 and the elevator is creeping upwards, each advancing light bringing me closer and closer.

It is really quiet. I get to thinking about my recurring dream. Where I go to the doctor in pain. I tell him about my bad back, my chest pains, my knees that barely let me walk the 4 blocks to this hotel in under two hours. I tell him about my blurring vision and the vertigo that strikes me late in the evening. I tell him that it hurts sometimes to breathe. And he looks at me, shakes his head. But then he smiles, looks down at his clipboard, scribbles on a piece of paper and hands it to me. “You’ll be fine,” he tells me. “Just take a couple of these every day, and you’ll live another 60 years.”

The elevator doors slide open and immediately a thousand voices hit my implant. I’m stunned for a second. My hand lunges towards my ear, moving to silence this tidal wave of sound that’s crashing over my brain. The door almost closes on me — and I consider letting it — but think better of myself. Annabelle, I think, and catch it with my foot. The voices still roar. Nothing is clear now. I close my eyes again, try to focus, but there’s too much. Too many. I can only hear bits of words, only think hints of thoughts. Annabelle. My wife. My son. And me, only halfway done.

It sounds like something, all of this noise. I can’t figure out what.

Annabelle greets me before I open the door, bursting up from the bed in a little see-through neglige. She’s got so much energy, flinging the door open. Jumping into my arms, pressing her lips, her breasts, her body against mine. She smells so good. She’s like an elevator, taking me above, away from all the noise. Giving me peace. I kiss her back and I don’t even feel like me.

We make love for an hour. It’s slow and sweet. I manage to block out most of the noise in my head, hearing only broken bits of a quiz show about reptiles and a bunch of Spanish phrases repeated over and over again. Only briefly do I hear music.

I hold her afterwards, nestling against her. We’re like two spoons. She murmurs and chirps happily about her upcoming graduate work and how much of an influence she’s going to have on this world. I make agreeable noises and hold back on coughs and feel everything good float away as the sounds come back. A jackass prankcalls a cracker company in Tampa while an Australian man rambles on about Leopards. Seattle kid reads poems about morning rain and my Saskatchewan girl shows up only briefly to talk about the pond near her house. A New Jersey housewife is explaining the meaning behind Springsteen songs while a London politician explains new surveillance laws. Somewhere there’s a piano, being played badly, but passionately, only a few chords standing in for all the others.

Annabelle’s stopped talking. I have my hand on her stomach and I can feel her breathe. “How do you young people do it?” I ask softly into her ear. “How do these sounds in your head not drive you crazy?”

“I don’t really hear them,” she mumbles, almost asleep.

“I know. I’m supposed to block it out.” I use my other hand to stroke her dark hair. “I can’t, though. There’s too much. Sometimes it’s overwhelming and it all sort of comes together to sound like something.”

She sort of laughs. “It sounds like something?” she questions. “What does it sound like?”

A man in Phoenix laments a lost love. I suddenly hear nothing but Russian voices. They linger for a second, as I kiss the back of her neck, and are replaced by a Memphis Elvis Impersonator. He’s singing Love Me Tender. It’s good.

“When they all come together,” I explain. “All the sounds — they sound like violins.”

She’s laughing. She rolls over. Bowling out of Winnipeg. A parade in Berlin. They’re seeing Jesus in Mexico City. They’re playing sad music in Rome. I watch her eyes search mine.

“Violins,” she says quietly. “What do they sound like?”