Nine Kinds of Naked (18 page)

“Probably because you associate the gas can and its contents with my presence, and you can't handle the cognitive dissonance.”

“Your presence?” Diablo snorted. “Please. Gimme a break. You're a hallucination. You've already admitted as much.”

“No,” Billy corrected. “I am a hallucination of a hallucination, a meta-hallucination. But I am the dreamer, or at least I represent the dreamer. You are the dream.”

Diablo was silent for a long while. “That doesn't make any sense,” he said at last.

“Sure it does. Whoever it is that you think you are,
that's
the illusion.”

“And what does that make you?”

“I am the eternal impulse that animates your transitory incarnation.”

“And what does that make me?”

“You are a reflection of the expectations of other lost souls like yourself. You are the sum of every frustrated impulse and
vanquished inclination, the rage resultant from the theft of your innocence, and you have no idea how tightly you cram your spirit into your life. You're all barricades and boundaries, ramparts and fortifications, a fortress for your own throttled liberty.”

“A fortress for my own throttled liberty,” Diablo repeated, pissed at this assessment. “Thanks, man. That's cool.” He drove on in silence, looking to his left as a Cadillac passed and making glancing eye contact with the driver, a bedraggled bulldog jowling back at him like too clear a mirror. “Fuck,” Diablo muttered. “Let me ask you this, Billy Pronto, or whoever it is that you think you are—”

“Billy Pronto is who
you
think I am,” Billy interrupted. “In fact, I don't care what you call me. I am what I am, and nothing but.”

“Whoever
you
think you are,” Diablo continued firmly, “let me ask you this. What if I swerve this car off the road and into that wall?” He pointed toward the rock face on their right where the road had been blasted from the hillside. “What happens then?”

“You are incapable.”

“And why is that?”

“Such an act requires an impulse,” Billy Pronto replied. “And I tell you,
I
am the impulse.”

 

52
“I
DON'T LIKE THIS
dynamic,” Diablo announced, gesturing between them. “Why do you get to be all laid-back? Why do I have to be uptight?”

“You tighten your own ass,” Billy Pronto replied. “You are your own jailer.”

“You used to be my jailer,” Diablo sassed.

“I am the perfect opposite of imprisonment,” Billy explained. “And do not confuse my presence with the persona you project upon me. A hallucination, remember, is a reflection of your own subconscious.”

Diablo shook his head, beginning to feel like he was stuttering at a strobe light party. “Try to understand my dilemma. I'm bickering with someone who admits to me that he's a hallucination, but then tries to convince me that I'm the hallucination.” Diablo grew indignant. “I mean, what kind of a person goes around pulling horseshit like that out of his hat? Who do you think you are?”

“Who do I think I am?” Billy paused before answering. “Interesting question. You request a statement of my identity?”

Diablo, growing impatient with this waggish repartee, raised his voice. “Just tell me who you think you are!”

“First of all,” Billy chuckled. “I do not think. I
know.
Thinking is hesitating, and I am incapable of hesitation. I am the impulse, the unmediated moment, the unmitigated instant.”

“Oh fer chrissakes,” Diablo groaned.

“Hear this now,” Billy continued, ignoring him. “I do not pretend to know who I am. I am a fool and I do not care. I am, in fact, that which cannot possibly care less. I am the unregulated mind, unbound by any rule, naked, out of control, and as free as the air in a cage. I am, in fact, the freedom from which you flee and the hope from which you hide. I am unceasing self-sovereignty. I am the audacity to create my own existence.
I am the undaunted understanding that this and that and here and there are all unfair and yet as fair as dawn who knows her doom yet shines her day as one who cheers the breeze in passing.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Diablo interrupted.

“I am the walrus,” Billy Pronto proceeded. “I am the rust on your iron cage. I am the unstuttered song that sings behind the razor wire of your timidity.”

“I'm not timid,” Diablo interrupted.

“You are tremendously timid,” Billy retorted. “You and everyone else in your god-forgotten realm. You can't accept your own finitude. You cling to your minuscule identity like a dust mite clings to an insecurity blanket.” Despite the flint in his words, Billy's jaunty perma-grin was unwavering. “And yet . . . ”

“And yet what?” Diablo demanded.

“And yet,” Billy pronounced. “You are the envy of entities everywhere.”

 

53
A
PPROXIMATELY
10 percent of the weight of a decade-old pillow is dust mite feces. Owing to his time with the FDA, Diablo happened to know this for a fact. As he drove on in silence, reflecting upon the peculiarity of his sudden situation, he couldn't help but think of his old couch. Unless you were fond of caressing your kneecaps, it was an entirely useless place to sit. Diablo referred to it as a slouch, and, mainly, it filled the middle-class mandate that there be a sofa in the living room. Doreen had contributed the slouch to their condominium, a hand-me-down from her parents. It was at least
fifteen years old, and it was upon this slouch of mite shit that Doreen had been gallivanting with another lover when Diablo happened to walk in the door.

Doreen had complained of a headache that morning and called off of work, and Diablo decided at lunch to blow off the rest of his day. He had taken lunch at one of his favorite spots, the Great Hall of the Library of Congress, the celebrated cathedral to the highest ideals remarkably unrealized by Western Civilization. It so inspired him that he decided he would go by the condo and see if Doreen was feeling any better. If she was, maybe they could go do something . . . sudden. As he walked up to the door, however, he was greeted with the sounds of some unmistakably carnal commotion from within. Opening the door, he saw Doreen and some lanky bastard going at it right there on the slouch like a couple of goblins in heat.

Diablo furrowed his brow. He actually couldn't remember what he said or what they did next. He remembered peeling the truck out of the parking lot, feeling enthused and all that, but surely there was more to his reaction to that. He glanced suspiciously at Billy Pronto. As usual, Billy looked as if he were sledding down a fifty-yard hillside. He was motionless save for a gentle rhythmic tap in his left foot. Diablo noted with significant irritation that his own left foot was tapping itself to the same unheard beat.

“Why are you here?” Diablo asked.

“Because it is possible.”

Diablo should have seen that one coming. “I mean, why are you
right
here? What's your purpose in hassling me?”

“Spontaneity is my purpose,” Billy Pronto replied. “But I don't think it's a hassle.”

“Spontaneity? That's why you're here?”

“No, I am here because it is possible. Spontaneity is my purpose.”

Diablo sighed impatiently. “Okay, but what were you doing
before
this?”

“
Before
this?” Billy Pronto repeated. “Don't be absurd. How can anything possibly precede eternity?”

“Fill in the blank,” Diablo commanded. “Before I got into this car, I was ———.” Diablo looked at Billy triumphantly.

Billy Pronto's grin grew still wider. “The utterance of a word is no proof of its existence.”

Diablo stared in aggravation. “What does that mean?”

“Just because you can refer to the past or the future does not prove they are separate from the present. You think of time as a succession of discrete moments, half past now and a quarter till then, but I tell you, before the fall and after all, there is only one moment, one brief shining moment, and that moment is
right now.
”

“That's fine,” Diablo retorted. “But you seem to be able to understand the past tense well enough. Can't you just-fay ‘was' or ‘were' or ‘will be' ?”

Billy Pronto's smile grew dim for the first time since he'd introduced himself. His eyes grew shadows, his cheeks grew gaunt. “Do not try to trick me into profaning the present,” he warned, turning away.

“Why not?” Diablo demanded, unsympathetic. “What would happen?”

Billy Pronto's smile had instantly returned to its satorian splendor. He did not answer Diablo's impertinence directly, probably because to do so would have required a future conditional tense. Instead, he merely insisted, placidly, that “There is only one moment.”

“Hold on a second,” Diablo pursued his point. “You just said, ‘profaning the present.' That's not present tense. Isn't that present progressive or something?”

“Nope,” Billy Pronto replied. “Gerund. Go ahead and look it up.”

Diablo gave up, mostly because he didn't really remember what the heck a gerund was.

 

54
D
IABLO DROVE IN
silence for a while, trying to remember how he'd reacted to Doreen's infidelity. At last, he turned to Billy Pronto, and asked him directly, “Why can't I remember what happened after I walked in on Doreen?”

“Because,” Billy Pronto replied. “I am the impulse.”

“So?”

“So, since you dichotomize yourself and project your own forgotten freedom onto my presence, you cannot access memories of your own impulsivity. This is all very obvious.”

“Dichotomized.” Diablo shook his head. “I can't believe this.”

“Believe what?”

“That I have a split personality.”

“That's absurd,” Billy Pronto cajoled. “You don't have a split personality.”

“Umm, I'm using your words, man. That's what
you
said, just before I dropped you off the last time. Plus you just said I was dichotomized. Now you're telling me that was bullshit?”

“First of all, why do you permit others to describe your reality?”

“I'm sorry,” Diablo cut him off loudly. “I've left my English-Bullshit, Bullshit-English Dictionary at home. I can't understand a word you're saying.” Diablo looked at him, pointedly pronouncing, “
No habla
Bullshit,
comprende
?”

“And second,” Billy continued unabated. ‘“Split personality' is a convenient label, a category you can relate to, but this is really very different from that.”

“Mr. Pronto, I honestly don't care to listen to the gurgles and blurts of whatever bullshit it is that you're gargling over there.”

Billy laughed unoffended. “Surely you realize that everything is bullshit. You people lose yourselves in your own words so easily. You invent paper bags just so you can put them over your own head. But I assure you, this is no more a split personality than anything else in the universe.”

“Well christ, what the hell is going on then?”

“Don't you get it?” Billy Pronto replied. “
I am the impulse.
Your personality is the filter of my potential. Even the word
personality
derives from the Greek word
persona
, for mask. Your language signifies more than you realize. Your personality is the mask of your impulse, and
I am the impulse.
”

Diablo was silent for a few moments. “You have a God complex, do you know that?”

Billy shrugged. “If you wish to reduce the ecstasy of existence through that corroded valve, that's your prerogative.”

“You really do think you're God, don't you?”

“Don't you? No more than anything else in the universe, but how could anything be anything but? Omnipresence, after all. ‘Subjectivities of the divine objectivity,' to quote your ungainly platitude. That's your ‘Mickey Mouse mysticism,' is it not? ‘Everybody understands that,' except you, it appears.”

“Can you just tell me what happened with Doreen?” Diablo moaned, miffed at the mockery.

Billy considered. “It requires the past tense, and I am incapable of such nonsense.”

Diablo shook his head. “Right.” After a moment, he had a thought. “Do you think I would remember if I dropped you off?”

Billy shrugged. “That certainly is an interesting idea.”

Diablo nodded and pulled the truck onto the berm, slowing it to a stop. “Well, here we are,” he said as he shifted into neutral.

“Yes indeed,” Billy agreed as he opened the door. “Here we are, here and now. Thanks for the ride.”

“Don't mention it.”

Billy waved in the rearview mirror, and Diablo noticed that Billy had forgotten the gas can, which was sitting on the floor in front of the passenger seat. Fair enough, Diablo thought. He said it was mine, anyway. Diablo had entirely forgotten that its earlier absence had been a de-hallucination, but there was a lot for him to keep track of.

And ah yes, he suddenly remembered why he had decided
to blow off the rest of the day in the first place. It was the Tennyson quotation inscribed above the
History
statue in the Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress. It read:

 

One God, one law, one element
,

And one far-off divine event

To which the whole Creation moves.

 

Diablo scarcely had time to puzzle over the spatio-temporal contradiction internal to this phrase when a cascade of recollections dawned upon him like yesterday's sunrise.

“Whoa,” he chuckled, squinting into the tardy morning of his memory as he sighted Billy Pronto ambling yet again up ahead. “That's fucking nuts.”