It’s late afternoon when the rain starts up, temporarily halting the conversation. I suppose it doesn’t really matter. My companions, the poor bastards, were only discussing the customary nothing – the atmospheric conditions, names of powerful men who have been fucking us all over, etc. I had some things to say, of course – personal things – but I kept them to myself. I keep most things to myself.

There is no room inside the bar, so we are forced to pay up and leave. Dazed and listless, with that kicked-in look day drinkers often have, we float across the plaza. It’s empty, save a few stubborn stragglers skulking about, men truly dedicated to their profession. The group is slightly ahead, onto yet another subject that doesn’t interest me. It seems that nothing interests me nowadays, nothing save the bottomless pit of my navel. Maybe that’s why no one writes me anymore, why no one asks me any questions. You have to be engaged for people to care about you, you have to look and listen to be a part of the human race. There is a give and take to human interaction, and I have not been giving or taking for some time now.

I try to focus on what’s in front of me, to climb up out of myself and be present in the moment. At my feet, two birds have it out for a soggy crust of bread; in my emotionally vulnerable state, it’s like watching a battle between gladiators. A skeletal old woman peers out from her window above the plaza, hypnotized by the downpour, which no one but her realizes is the same downpour that fell on March 29th, 1946, or perhaps April 17th, 1960…glowing, fleshed-out days when she was not yet on the precipice of skeletonhood. And as I fritter away my attention span on these insignificant details, I fall further behind – the group is a block away now, and I’d have to either call to them or break into a run to have any chance of catching up, two things which I don’t intend to do. No, I wasn’t made for that kind of behavior, so without a word, I duck into a side street. Immediately, I feel like a heavy burden has been lifted.

I walk in the direction of my apartment, or rather, what once was my apartment. The white noise of the rain has gently rocked me into a trance; I am no longer walking on this greasy city street that smells of garlic and cumin and wet feathers, but in a small town on the edge of the world, a town rendered in deep greens, dull blues, dead greys. I’ve just emerged from a shack in the forest behind the dairy farm. The birds are whistling, the wet rag we live beneath is feeding our murderous boredom with its steady drip. I am a drunken, blasphemous fifteen-year-old dressed all in black – my hair is dyed black, my fingernails are painted black, my right eye is black from when I was punched outside the convenience store the other night – and I wield a can of black spray paint like a scythe, or perhaps a rubber chicken. Nothing escapes my impotent wrath: cars, mailboxes, fences, trees, the street itself, are all subjected to my sophomoric screams. I don’t write anything in particular, just scribbles, profanities, nonsense, and even if I were to put down the feelings I am thinking, the thoughts I am feeling, they would only appear ludicrous, the speech of a jellyfish.

I reach the main road that flanks the dairy farm. Odors of damp hay, woodsmoke, manure, broken dreams. I look out at the blotchy green fields, the stark grey houses scratched clumsily onto the limited horizon. Cars drift by on waves of space and time, I imagine the people inside are looking at me, thinking, who is that little freak, who does he think he is, and I will thunder at them, I am a jellyfish at bottom of the ocean, I am a somebody in the making, and I will blot out this fucking place so no one will know it ever existed.

In my inebriated state, it takes me about twenty minutes to reach civilization. Civilization, meaning, a gas station and some fast-food franchises. I strut across the parking lot and as I pass the brick and mortar, I mark the outside walls with my insides. BRAINS IN DECLINE, I write. On another wall, SHITHOLE. And so on and so forth. My weapon finally runs out of juice as I’m going to work on the Pentecostal church a block away, two letters into a four-letter swear word. Well, it doesn’t matter – I’ve already said everything I need to say. I toss the empty can into the parking lot, cross the street, and expertly slip under the barbed wire fence.

It’s dead silent in the fields, a kind of vacuum where even the bullfrogs are muted. The ground is marshy and my shoes almost disappear into it. I don’t mind, I like the sense of space, of wide-open darkness. Like I’m not here, like I have no body. I stop for a moment to look up at the sky…it is dark brown and moonless. It has been there for billions of years. I have been here for fifteen.

By the time I reach my father’s house, it’s two decades later and I’m standing in another plaza. I am a drunken, blasphemous thirty-five-year-old. I am a jellyfish at the bottom of the ocean, a successful nobody. My father is sitting there in the plaza, waiting up for me. He’s still in his uniform, eating a can of smoked oysters and drinking a beer. He looks at me and laughs, the tears oozing from his eyes. Or perhaps he’s crying, I am not sure (although that would be pretty out of character for him). He doesn’t look old – on the contrary, he looks quite young, like he did when I was a teenager – but suddenly seems pathetic, meaningless even, as he squats there in his ugly uniform, chewing the smoked oysters. For the first time in my life, I feel pity for him. But it’s a self-serving pity; I am really feeling pity for myself.

The rain picks up again, forcing everyone in the street to stop for a moment and hide themselves inside storefronts, beneath awnings and balconies. Passing by them, their faces sagging into a kind of dreamy melancholy, like zoo animals after closing time, my eyes moisten, and a thought emerges out of the rain – one of those beautiful, ambiguous little things that opens your heart in a way that life often does not. I quickly take out my phone to write it down, to file it away for another grey day when all my passion is depleted. I can see that I haven’t made a note in quite some time; the last one, obviously of a more practical nature, reads ring size: 6.5. In a daze, I repeat it to myself several times, as if it’s written in a language I haven’t spoken in a while. My hand starts to tremble, and I put my phone back in my pocket, having written nothing.

Moving on in a state of mounting agitation, I pass the bakery, the gambling parlor, the wall with last year’s bleeding, indecipherable event posters flaking off it. A mattress in a derelict storefront made up with two pillows and a pallid yellow blanket suddenly arouses my curiosity. I believe that it belongs to a man of the neighborhood I often see outside the supermarket. There are a couple of things about him I find quite perplexing: one, I’ve never seen him beg, and two, while he looks as unkempt as anyone that sleeps outside, he’s never dressed badly. His jeans fit well, his white sneakers, if a little stained, match his white shirt, and I covet his brown leather jacket. It’s as if he’s found out where some young hip person lives and checks their garbage nightly for treasures. He circles the neighborhood, often drunk, talking to himself, scratching his beard, peering into windows, pawing through bins for chic outerwear. Sometimes he tries to strike up a conversation with someone, but he has become so alienated that he no longer understands the give and take of human interaction. Nothing interests him anymore.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the glass door behind the mattress and quickly turn away. I wonder if this man ever lies here looking at himself like this too, and if he does, what does he see – a blasphemous fifteen-year-old, a self-loathing thirty-five-year-old? Feeling dizzy, I sit down on his mattress. It smells musky, animal, or maybe that’s just me…

And then I’m struck by an incredible idea: I’ll wait here for the man and we’ll have a little chat. I’ll ask him where he’s from, why he’s here, if he’d like to unburden himself, see if there’s anything I can do for him, and I will give him the twenty euros that I think I have in my wallet. Maybe I will even tell him something, maybe I will tell him whatever I didn’t tell those people at the bar – or for that matter, the flat, vertical surfaces of my hometown – even if it’s all ludicrous. One jellyfish to another, you know?
In my excitement, I start to remember the beautiful thought that I wanted to write down, the one about the people sheltering themselves from the rain. I quickly take out my phone – if I can just get this down, I tell myself, everything will make sense – and sit here, waiting for my emotional clarity to return. I see the previous note again – ring size: 6.5 – and decide to erase it.

He should be here soon, I mumble to myself. It’s too cold and wet to be roaming about now. It’s much better to be tucked away in some little storefront like this, or underneath a bridge or stairwell. I mean, if you have nowhere else to go.

Suddenly, I feel very tired. I haven’t slept well in weeks. I lean against the wall…within minutes, I’m curled up in the bed with the pallid yellow blanket pulled over me, a beautiful thought on the tip of my tongue…

The rain continues to fall, albeit in a more merciful fashion. It makes me recall a similar day in another city some years back when we were still young and almost innocent. Lying in my bed up in the attic with you, the windows flung open, listening to the soft rhythms being played on the rooftop. It was April, the beginning of spring, the day after your birthday. What did I give you that year? Ah, it doesn’t matter, look what I’ve given you now…

I start to drift off to sleep, and it’s almost as if I’m in your arms, as if none of this happened, as if we are still there in my bedroom in that distant city with the windows flung open to the rose water falling from the sky and all the beautiful possibilities life has to offer those who are fortunate and sensible enough. At the very least, I can say that I have been fortunate.

During the night, I feel like I see a face looming over me, observing my every move. A vain man in a stylish leather jacket, eyes shot through with an animal fear. The face makes no indication that it is going to leave nor do anything to me, so I ignore it and fall back asleep. Having already squandered all my dreams, nothing flickers in my unconsciousness.

When I awake some hours later, the daylight is long gone, and I am completely alone. I roll over and look up at the sky. It is dark brown and moonless. It has been there for billions of years.