So as the title to this blog suggests, it is not funny. After writing however many of these posts that I have, I've realized that I kind of enjoy writing. My mom tells me that I'm good at it, so I must be because she never lies, but writing funny stuff really isn't that hard for me. Honestly, everything that I've written so far has basically been transcribed by the tiny dwarf that lives inside my brain and then typed out verbatim. If you're curious, his name is Trevor, and yes, he's available for parties.
Anyway.
A couple of weekends ago, I had the privelage of being flown to Vegas by a drug company who, for some reason, had decided that if they spent lots of money on me, I would return to Atlanta and furiously campaign for their groundbreaking new cancer treatment. Which I would totally do, except that I'm not nearly far enough up in the oncology chain of command to do anything remotely like that. I mean, it's a good treatment, and I think we should start doing it, but I have a degree in history, what the fuck do I know? So the weekend ended up being an awesome mix of meetings, drinking, and gambling, not neccessarily in that order or exclusive to just one at a time.
While there, I started thinking about writing, and how I really had no idea if I was capable of expressing anything besides my mocking disdain for celebrities or my paradoxical love for the guy with the Emo haircut on Heroes. I was bored on the plane ride back, and since Noel and I had already proved our superior intelligence to the uninterested guy sitting next to us by finishing the crossword puzzle in the back of the SkyMall catalogue, I wrote a story. I've never really written anything like this before (except for that one time in fifth grade when I won a Rotary Club contest with a two page essay on the majesty of banannas or something), so if it sucks balls, please tell me.
This is a story about the power of a gesture. You know what a gesture is, don't you? The pointing of a finger, a wave of the hand; a twitch, a flutter, a shrug. But How, I hear you thinking, Can a gesture have any kind of power? A gesture is nothing, an involuntary firing of neural pathways resulting in a barely noticeable movement. You are thinking this, and people who know about these things are looking at you with scorn, because you are wrong, as wrong as wrong can be.
There was a time when everyone knew and feared and respected the power in a gesture. Back when the world was new, the right person in the right place at the right time could summon a God or banish a Devil with nothing more than a flick of their fingers; and there were men who walked the Earth who could wave their hands and part the mightiest of seas. But soon people began to forget, as people do, and the power of gestures gradually faded away. They retained their symbolic authority, of course; such as when men who wore laurels of ivy like crowns upon their heads decided if someone lived or died by motioning with their thumbs, or when religious fanatics used an outstretched finger to indicate which of the towns women would be burned alive for witchcraft.
But where did this power go? It is an inherent rule of the universe we live in that energy can be neither created nor destroyed, but merely transferred from one place to another. This means that it is still there; we have just forgotten how to see it. Would you like to learn how? It's easy, you just have to know when and where to look.
There is a city in the middle of a desert, a city more or less the color of electricity, which blinks and glitters and pulses amidst the red waste of the barren land around it. It resembles a beautiful plastic rose in the lapel of a dead man's jacket; pleasing to the eye but ultimately false and smelling vaguely of decay, and there is no better place in the entire world to witness the power of a gesture. The particular place that we are going to observe is off the beaten path, you could say; in a room far away from the hustle and bustle and bright lights of the games of chance offered to the general public. You must know people who know other people to play the game offered in this room, as the game is simple but the stakes are high; they are as high as the person playing wants them to be.
The room is completely empty except for a small horseshoe-shaped table directly in the center, with a high silver chair sitting in front of it. There is a woman standing behind the table; her white tuxedo shirt is starched and immaculate, and the cone of harsh light that frames her makes it glow. Her face is beautiful but cold, like an ancient statue carved from marble or granite. Her fingers are quick and deft, and if she wanted to, she could rearrange a randomly shuffled deck of cards by number or suit in four seconds without looking. She doesn't want to at this moment, but the knowledge that she could is still impressive. She has been staring at the man sitting across from her since he sat down, and she hasn't blinked her eyes once. The effect is supposed to be unnerving, and it might be. Her hand has moved like a liquid snake four times to send cards spinning across the table with unerring precision, and when she does this, her arm is the only part of her entire body that moves.
So now there are two cards in front of the man, and these cards are decorated with cryptic numbers and symbols. If one were to combine these numbers and symbols, the result would be a different, higher number, for this is the nature of addition. Because she doesn't want to feel left out, there are also two cards in front of the woman, but only one of her cards is visible.
The man's hand is resting on the edge of the table, with his first two fingers poised and ready to tap. If he does, the woman's arm will move faster than thought and another card will appear before him, to be added to the value of his current cards. If this number is greater than another particular number, he will automatically lose and she will win. There is a number that describes the probability that this will happen. If the mans number does not exceed that other particular number, or if he had initially laid those two fingers down flat on the table instead of tapping them, the woman will flip over her unrevealed card and other options will present themselves. If the value of her two cards together is greater than the value of his two cards, she will win and he will lose. There is yet another number that describes the probability that this will happen. If the value of her two cards is less than the value of his two cards, she will make more cards dance in front of her until her collection of numbers and symbols is greater than his. But wait! If this value exceeds that other particular number, she will lose and he will win. There is still yet another number that describes the probability that this will happen.
As you can see, there are a great deal of numbers involved in this game, and as they float and zoom through the realms of probability, their powers (for everyone knows that numbers are powerful and terrifying things) grow and become chained to the raised fingers of the man at the table. So in this potential gesture already is the chaotic essence of chance itself, building in pressure and rage for the mans fingers to move, to release it, to freeze the burning flux of uncertainty that is so hated by the cold finality of logical numbers.
That's some powerful stuff.
And this isn't even the half of it.
There is still this mans personal power; the power of his history, of the situation, of cause. Of why he's here in this dark room at this specific time and what it will mean to him if he wins or loses. There is the power of the other people who will be affected when his fingers make their tiny gesture and the woman's slender hand gently slams her face-down card over with a noise like a silent thunderclap.
For example:
Maybe he is a meek and unattractive man, who is married to a woman so beautiful that on their wedding day, even his own mother had to question why the woman was marrying him. The man has made a large amount of money by successfully manipulating the nebulous world of international finance, but is convinced that his wife loves him for more than the material things he is able to provide for her. But maybe today he found out that she had been having an affair with the man he was always afraid she would have an affair with, that handsome man she works with who makes her laugh but who she always insisted was just a friend. He had to go back home that morning because he forgot his briefcase, and when he got there he went upstairs because he heard strange noises, and his feet are moving him towards their bedroom and he wants to stop because he knows what he's going to see but he can't and then he watches them but they don't see him and then he goes back downstairs and he gets in his car and he leaves. And the man doesn't know where he's driving to or what he's doing until he's somehow arrived at a city in the middle of the desert. And he meets someone who sees the look in his eyes and takes him to that room to play a game and as his fingers are poised to tap or lay down flat he realizes he's decided that if he loses, he's going to go back and talk to his wife, and tell her that he forgives her, and that he's loved her since before he even knew what the word love meant. And then he realizes he's decided that if he wins, he's going to take the money the woman across the table will give him, and he's going to spend it all on a gun, and then he's going to go back to his house and after screaming and howling out all of his pain and rage and jealousy, he's going to shoot his wife five times before putting the barrel in his mouth and pulling the trigger. And his palm is dry and his fingers are steady and he is about to gesture.
Or:
Maybe he is a confidence man, a man who is able to ease his way through life like a snake through an oily tube by using the trust and gullibility of others for his own benefit. This man is likeable, and friendly, and has a smile that could power the electrical grid of a small town. If you met him, you wouldn't think twice about buying him lunch and lending him your car (he said he'd be right back), and you won't even realize that your girlfriend was still sitting in the passenger seat as he peels away laughing. The city in the middle of the desert is a Mecca for someone like him; there are people here with money who have no business having money, and are only too glad to part with it. And although the man has had no formal schooling and couldn't tell you, for example, the average rainfall in the Amazon basin, he can do things with cards that make him seem like he's made of magic. This particular time, he had chosen to tell everyone that he was a visiting prince from a faraway land who of course had no experience in these types of card games but would be more than happy to be taught how. He had only a small amount of money on his person, as there had been a mix-up with his bank statements and passports and other things that he as a prince did not have the time to worry about, but his title and reputation and charm were enough to get him into one of the richest of games with the most important of people. As he kept winning, and winning, and winning some more, one of the other men at the table became angrier and more suspicious, and when the prince who wasn't really a prince stated that he had to take his winnings and leave to go attend to princely matters (you know how these things are, affairs of state, don't hold up the game on account of my leaving, etc.), the angry man grabbed him and searched him, finding a number of other cards that if added to the ones already in play would make the total number in the deck significantly higher than 36. Normally in a situation like this, the angry man would have taken the prince who was not really a prince into a dark room with very good insulation and plastic tarps on the floor, as he was the brother of one of the men who ran the games and considered a very dangerous individual by those people who knew about these sorts of things. He had eyes that were bright and sharp and cocaine crazy, and he had done things to those who had similarly cheated his brother that would impress even the most hardened of criminals with their creativity. But such was the eloquence and charm of the prince who was not really a prince that the angry man found himself seeing his point of view, and how it really would be much more dramatic if he were given the chance to play the ultimate game, with the prince who wasn't really a prince's life as the wager. So now the confidence man sits at the table across from the woman, and he is confident, man, that as soon as his fingers move, his life will change forever. If he wins and is allowed to live, he thinks he'll go back West, and find the girl that he left all those years ago before she found out who he really was, and who he couldn't bring himself to swindle back then and who he can't stop thinking about now. Of course, if he loses, the angry man is standing outside of the room with murder in his heart and a gun in his hands, and will take him away to make sure that he suffers horrifically before he dies. And his palm is dry and his fingers are steady and he is about to gesture.
Or:
Maybe he is a man who is really more of a father, with a daughter who was born six years ago last month and who is, as the saying goes, the apple of her fathers eye. He doesn't make much money working in the warehouse, but he dotes on her, and tries to give her everything she's ever wanted, and is so full of pride and love for her that it's a wonder he doesn't pop like a cork every time he looks at her. But two months ago she began to get sick, with a cough that sounded like it belonged in the lungs of an old man who had smoked three packs of unfiltered cigarettes every day since he was twelve. He took her to their family doctor, and that doctor did not know what to do, so the man took her to other doctors, who wrote notes and ran tests and shook their heads and looked down at their white coats when they told him that she was going to die. Despairing, he read as much as he could about her condition, and began to look overseas for any conceivable way to save her. And then he found one doctor in France, who was the worlds leading expert on this particular disease, and had written a great many important papers that had been very well received by those few smart enough to know what he was talking about. He was offering a highly controversial but so far effective treatment regiment at his clinic in Paris, and the man who was really more of a father was overjoyed. He called this doctor on the telephone, and after trying to make himself understood to a receptionist who only spoke very fast French and very poor English, he managed to get the doctor and tell him what was wrong with his daughter. The doctor listened sympathetically, and told the man that he of course was very sorry about his daughter's condition, but that he could not accept his American health insurance, and that this treatment was incredibly expensive as well as time consuming. The man despaired, because even if he sold everything he owned, he could not afford to continue paying for the treatment if he was not able to work, which he of course couldn't do if he was in Paris. He confided in one of his coworkers at the warehouse, a man that some said had dealings with people who were less than reputable. His coworker told him that if the man who was really more of a father was willing, he could talk to an acquaintance that had a contemporary who could get the man into a particular game of chance in a city that was in the middle of the desert. The man agreed, and sold his house and his car and the ring he had given to his wife before she died and now as he's sitting there at the table across from the woman, the fact that he could lose everything doesn't even cross his mind, because he knows, deep down in his heart (or maybe it's in his soul) that he's going to win and take his daughter to Paris and she'll be cured and they'll spend the rest of their days in the sun on the west bank of the Seine. But then there's that other little voice, the one that lives even deeper down in a tiny crack and that everyone has no matter how much hope is in them, and it's saying that when he finally decides to move his fingers, he's going to lose and the only thing in his life that he's going to be left with is the prospect of watching his daughter die slowly and painfully in a dirty hospital bed. And his palm is dry and his fingers are steady and he is about to gesture.
None of these stories are true. Wait, the first one is. Or maybe it's the third. No, was it the second? It doesn't matter; it is irrelevant, inconsequential, immaterial. All that matters is that in this room in a city in the middle of the desert, there is so much energy collected from the emotions of the man involved and harnessed together by the chains of probability and the furious desire of numbers to once again be ordered as they were meant to be that the very air feels like it's crackling with what could well be pure nuclear fission.
The man does not feel it; or if he does, he simply does not care. But in some primal way he must know that when he makes his gesture, this power is going to come hurtling down like a comet made of dynamite thrown from the arm of a particularly vengeful and very angry god.
But his palm is dry and his fingers are steady, and the man at the table smiles like a knife and his fingers move in the tiniest of ways and in that room in a city in the middle of the desert everything comes rushing together and the power explodes with a fury beyond description and in that one moment everything in the entire world has changed but if you look around you realize that nothing has really changed at all.
And that is the power of a gesture.
No comments:
Post a Comment