"I'm sorry," I said as I sat in a heap of weakness and vulnerability. Joe looked at me dazed and somewhat vulnerable himself. I got up to get a bowl and rag from the kitchen area as Joe lifted himself to the bed and wiped his face with his hands in an attempt to bring himself more fully into the reality around him. I knelt down beside the bed to clean the mess I'd made, leaning my cheek into Joe's knee as I came to that area of the bed. As loud as the sickness-ruckus had been, there wasn't much to clean.
I rinsed out the bowl and threw the rag into the garbage, and then refilled the bowl with soapy hot water to soak. The smell of Palmolive dish soap calmed me, and the bubbles were almost cartoon-like in how perfect and curved they were. "I need to shower and brush my teeth," I spoke to Joe, but he seemed to be having a hard time grasping the words with his ears so he just let me know with his eyes that he was not quite here yet.
The water from the shower was strong with the scent and light taste of chlorine as I brushed my teeth and rinsed my mouth over and over again, filling it with the spray of water from the shower-head and then spitting it onto the drain. I was somewhat thankful for the chemical taste as it took away the vomit residue a lot quicker than just the toothpaste would have. I blew my nose to get rid of the rest of the sickness odor that kept replaying itself each time I breathed in a breath of air through my nostrils. I'd learned this trick when I was a kid; as soon as you are done puking, blow your nose and brush your teeth and you'll feel better a lot sooner.
When I came out of the bathroom, Joe was still sitting on the edge of the bed, so I sat beside him. Without leaning into him, I put my side of my head on his upper arm, just to let him know I was there. His hand reached over and pulled me in closer, letting me know he was back enough to feel me.
"A long time ago a man told me some things that stuck with me. I'm not sure who told him these things, or if he'd read them, or if he was just some kind of genius, but his words helped me get through the hardest times in my life," Joe began. I said nothing, I knew as soon as Joe started talking to just shut up and listen.
"Of course it may seem with finding me under the bed that maybe I still need help, and maybe I do, maybe that's true, but I think I'll be alright. Sometimes it feels almost as if I have to remember some things a dozen times before I can fully accept what they meant and how they effected me."
He brought his hand to my knee and rubbed it there as he continued speaking.
"His name was Egg, and those really were his initials, E.G.G., and we always got stuck together doing things over in Vietnam. He was older than me, which made me feel safer and I think made him feel more loaded with responsibility. But he seemed to like that position. An older brother, a father. A good man can take on those kinds of places in life and feel honored, not burdened."
"War is like falling. Fighting in war, that is. Or fighting for a war. Or even against it I suppose, but I'm getting ahead of myself here. Fighting in war in the constant level of fear until you get to a point where you just allow yourself to fall into routine, fall into patterns, fall into just functioning on a daily basis and demanding of yourself to make it through another day. A to B. Get from point A to point B without getting killed. And Egg knew this. He said to me 'Falling from a 5 story building isn't the problem, it's the landing that is the problem, the falling won't hurt a bit, only the landing. All you have to do is allow the fall to occur. You can let yourself land back over in the US, years from now if you have to.' And I came to find that it worked. I let myself fall and never landed fully over in Vietnam. I fell and fell, until it became clear to me that I'd fallen from at least a thousand story building and I had a minor breakdown over there, where I ran out into a field naked covered in mud and yelled at the top of my lungs 'DEAD DEAD DEAD'. I never figured out if I was talking about the deaths I'd seen or created or if I was talking about how I felt about myself. Egg had run out and tackled me to the ground and laid low with me there and just waited for me to get calm and quiet and then he crawled me back underneath him to our safe spot."
"See, you don't cause death, you create it. Because death lives on inside you if you are the one that causes it. And falling and falling without landing works for a long while if you're in the type of situation that requires you to be a part of creating that much death while at the same time trying to stop everybody else from causing your own."
Tears ran down my face. I knew what he meant by that, on other levels, different from war but the same as war mentality. I took my hand and held his to let him knew I understood as he squeezed my hand to let me know he figured I would.
"So Egg says to me that night as we're eating, 'So, Joe, you had yourself a little land and you bounced, which is good. What do you do in a catch-twenty-two, Joe, is to create more options... even if they are imaginary. Whatever it takes to keep that landing away. That is what kills you, not the fall.' Egg and I were incredible pot-heads back then, in case you can't tell," Joe said and looked over at me with a smirkish grin.
Posted by nft at September 14, 2004 10:23 AM