Thirty-Minute Epic

Sing, Muses, O excesses of adolescence--sing of the high school cafeteria, the systematic dispensation of food; hot lunches and cold lunches, fried chicken and grilled cheese and warmed-over filled lasagna, heaped in misshapen lumps onto plates onto trays onto tables; the kitchen billowing with smoke rising from industrial-sized cauldrons filled to the brim with marinara sauces and ketchup--these condiments then liberally applied to said plates, bathing stacks of food in a sea of oozing salt and sugar; and ten feet away, the salad bar--students standing shoulder to shoulder all the way down its long, metallic progression--an Odyssean trail marked by encounters with iceberg lettuce, canned olives, and croutons, croutons, croutons, doused generously in one of six dressing options, ranging in color from deep orange to a light, almost translucent pink vinaigrette.

Sing of the rush to consumption--a mad race--the way all things are done here, as if each moment is significant only for being the moment before something more significant, something looming in the distance and dangerous in a way that is vaguely exciting, but the anticipation of which cannot be admitted, for these people now eating are they who are doomed to the numb existence of a self-reflective postmodern suburban landscape, painted with a photographic realism marked by occasional shifts into absurdity.

Sing now of Nicky--his black hair gently gelled, spearing one chickpea on each prong of his fork, engaging in a discussion of early nineties sitcoms conducted in academic terms and seeping with irony. He smiles as he dives into the conversation, which currently rests on an episode of Saved by the Bell in which the nerdy Screech is rebuked by the fashion-obsessed Lisa Turtle for his repeated attempts to corner her while she sits in various booths in the Bayside High hangout, The Max. Nicky's best friend, a girl named Sara, sits across from him, wearing a tight green ribbed sweater, her long hair bright red from a recent dyeing, talking about the hamartia of Screech, and the way in which this episode's screenwriters caused it to conform to the coercive system of tragedy Aristotle sets forth in his Poetics. Nicky half-smiles at this assertion and asks what Screech's hamartia is, what his tragic flaw is, and Sara brushes a strand of red hair away from her left eye, reaches onto Nicky's plate for a slice of cucumber, bites into it, and replies: "His hamartia is his Screech-ness--he is an impostor in The Max as long as he remains himself, and still more of an impostor if he tries to elevate himself to Lisa's level. He doesn't talk the right way, doesn't have the right interests, doesn't look the right way. . . ." Now she's fired up, and he loves this, and she starts in: "That's how it's coercive--the message is: pay attention to the commercial breaks, buy, buy, buy these things so that you won't be like Screech! Look the right way! Talk the right way! Buy!" Sara leaps further into this speech, her lips moving wildly, and he focuses in on her face, then looks beyond it, through the cafeteria's giant picture window, to see over the entire city of Elmwood.

Sing now of Nicky's thoughts, as he imagines the in-studio audiences from these early nineties shows, imagines them as now being old men and women (Ridiculous!--only ten years later and old men and women already?--but this is the way he imagines it), men and women who must be called back to supply the laugh tracks for the now long-canceled programs as they go through the slow, downward spiral of syndication. How exhausting it must be to have to laugh again each afternoon at 5:30 pm, at the same jokes, the same shows, replayed by a television station scheduling manager for the lack of anything else--one program, any program picked from thousands of boxes of tapes of programs in syndication. The in-studio audiences, he imagines, now old and languishing in nursing homes can't stand to laugh anymore, rush to sign do not resuscitate forms, develop cardiac maladies, pretend to be asleep, pretend even to be dead--but television! O, television!--the television scheduling manager wakes them from this pathetic state, wipes the drool from the corners of their lips, yanks out their catheters, sweeps institutional lunches from the tray tables of their wheelchairs--applesauce and tuna salad sandwiches and cartons of milk, all flying--then sends them on their way, leaping through the air, out, out, across the town, over the birch trees and three-story houses with satellite dishes perched atop their newly shingled roofs and over the movie theaters where 13-year-olds go on their first awkward, wonderful, awful dates--outside of which teenagers three years their senior sell pot as inconspicuously as possible and watch the younger boys and girls enter the theater and remember their first dates and wish they could get more dates now, wish they could find someone honest and gentle and soft; over all of this, the in-studio audiences fly, prepared now to laugh their hearts out, and over the school cafeteria as well, winking appreciatively, perhaps, at their programs' critics as they zap into satellite dishes and cable boxes and other mechanisms of entertainment delivery all across the city, and their laughter fills rooms that have been, until this moment, set on mute.

Zoom in now, Muses, on Nicky: showered, hair wet, sitting in the front passenger seat of Sara's two-door car. SAT 9:30 PM is spelled out in neon green digital numbers and letters on the dashboard as they pull up to a convenience store on the outskirts of Elmwood. "When's Roger supposed to get here?" Nicky asks, leaning against his window and turning his head so he can look at Sara.

Sing of Sara and Nicky in the darkened car in the empty parking lot, occasional stripes of white light crossing first Sara's face then Nicky's as cars pass on the road next to them. "He should be here now. He's always late." Sara smiles at him and pushes a strand of red hair away from her right eye. She begins to play with the radio, changing the station every second, hardly listening to one pop song before switching to the next, songs about love and death and break-ups and hook-ups melding into one great sequence of explosive music. At the far end of the parking lot, the headlights of Roger's car appear, then disappear, and then are replaced by Roger's face at Sara's window.

Remember now, Muses, the life of Roger--the first boy in his school to openly acknowledge being gay, at a school assembly. He had told the person running the assembly that he was going to make an announcement inviting students to a pep rally for the football team, and then ascended the stage--shaking, one step and then another and then the third. From the podium, he couldn't believe how small all of the teachers and students were, like a sea of little pixels--red shirts and blue shirts and gray shirts--failing to converge in any recognizable image. For a moment, he was silent--and then he said it: "I'm gay." Every moment of every day he hears, somewhere in the depths of his mind, what followed: the waves of applause and hatred that spread over the seated students, the chanting of Roger Fag--he hears all of this even now, even as he approaches this car. "Hi, guys," Roger says as Sara and Nicky step out of the car. Roger's father and Sara's father have worked in the same law firm for 15 years, and Roger and Sara have known each other since they were toddlers: bright-eyed, gripping juice boxes, always covered in sand.

Sing of the trip to Disneyworld, the trip Roger and Sara's families went on together when both children were six and during which Roger and Sara had endless pictures taken with cartoon characters come to life. Thrilled, the children would leap into the fuzzy, cloth arms of these three-dimensional perpetually smiling manifestations of their cathode-ray-tube dreams. A picture of Roger and Sara standing on either side of Mickey Mouse still sits on Sara's nightstand, and sometimes she'll pick it up and look at it closely--Roger and Sara and Mickey standing in front of a great, vaulting pure white medieval castle, all shot in a bright light, washed-out and dreamlike.

Sing now of the present, the trio traversing the darkened parking lot, walking into the convenience store, beyond the whoosh of the automatic sliding doors, the mild shock of being suddenly submerged in a world of muted white halogen lighting, walking all the way to the very back of the store, to the alcohol section. Here they examine the assembled catalysts of disorientation: beer and wine and vodka and rum, eyeing bottles and their costs and slowly but surely filling a shopping basket. Roger has heard a rumor to the effect that this particular convenience store is run by a Pakistani family who does not understand the age limitations on the purchase of alcohol, and therefore never requests IDs. Sara and Nicky think this is extremely dubious, but worth a shot.

Sing now of the shop's proprietor, wearing a plain white shirt, top two buttons undone, punching their purchases into the cash register, glancing over at the assembled trio for a moment, then returning to punching. He finishes calculating the cost; begins to place the bottle and cans in a plastic bag; Roger pays. Then, as an afterthought, while placing the last bottle into the plastic bag, his hands aching from lifting and bagging all the bottles of alcohol he's sold tonight, the man asks: "Can I see an ID?" He asks casually, but with his words he ends this little adventure. Roger looks through his wallet, going through the routine he has used at times like this in the past: "Left it at home." He glances back at the other two, both of whom respond with the same, a phrase which the store's proprietor himself repeats disbelievingly, turning the phrase into a kind of mantra, a prayer before the altar of the convenience store counter. The man slides back Roger's money and says, "Get out."

Tell, Muses, tell of Nicky and Sara and Roger, again outside, in the empty parking lot, now sitting on the curb, a telephone line stretching above them, cars sweeping by in front of them. They begin to talk, their words seeming small and warm in the night. Sara and Roger light up cigarettes, blowing gentle puffs against the night sky, which has now turned a rich, dark purple. "How's Jared?" Sara asks Roger, resting her left arm on Nicky's shoulder.

Sing of the cars passing by them, the momentary light on Roger's face, as he says: "Not with him anymore." Sara responds with a quick apology and then, silence. Roger runs his hand through his bright yellow hair and takes a long drag on his cigarette. "I've actually met this other guy. Things have been happening quickly. Which has been a little weird in some ways."

"What's he like?" she asks, turning her head toward his, leaning more weight on Nicky's shoulder.

"Nice. But it's been so fast, it's been a little strange." Roger tells them more: the guy's name is John, and he's 25 and dresses preppy and has a slight lisp, which Roger says is sweet. Thinking of this, he smiles and a small cloud of smoke escapes from his lips and drifts into the night. Then Roger lets out a noise somewhere between a laugh and a whimper, and says: "But." Roger's trying to say something more and he begins almost to get upset. This scares Nicky--this seems like too much for a night on which they were supposed to meet and drink and let go. "Do you want to hear all this?" Roger asks--and then he gives them no choice, because he is crying.

Sing, Muses, sing the tears he sheds on the dirt of the curb, as he tells them the entire story--John, the man he'd met at a Gay Awareness function, whose age difference had scared him at first but who had kissed him and held him so gently, a man who was beautiful and kind, but sometimes very strange, a man who turns on and off like a light switch. "He won't tell me some things--like where he works. If I want to call him during the day I have to call him on his cell phone. He tries to be mysterious I think, or I thought, but I began to get afraid that he was trying to keep me away from a part of his life. Yesterday, I called him on his cell phone. I was talking to him, really affectionately and his voice was just cold--you know?--like I was a telemarketer or something." Roger pauses, laughs to himself for a second, and Sara and Nicky laugh too, imagining Roger as a telemarketer--sitting in a chair in one of a thousand of rows of telemarketers, all wearing ear-pieces and staring into computer monitors displaying thousands of names and phone numbers to call, names without faces--just distant and irritated voices. "He was being just . . . cold. It was like he was around people and he was embarrassed by having me on the other line. I hung up on him." After this, Roger shifts to a different face, the kind of face people make when they want to look away during a movie, but find their eyes transfixed to the screen. "Then I began thinking, thinking this was unfair. I felt stupid, because it sounds crazy--who would go out with someone who won't tell you where they work?" He grunts to himself, bitterly, pathetically: "But it's hard to find people. So I went over to his apartment this afternoon--and when I came in, he was angry, furious." Another pause, and it begins to drizzle, and Sara puts her arm around Roger, stroking his head. "He hit me--I left."

Muses, let forth the raindrops--not a great triumphant rain but a pathetic drizzle, over the store, over the three sitting on the curb, over all of Elmwood. Nicky says, "Let's get inside the car; it's raining," and Sara helps Roger up, and Nicky sits in the back and lets Roger sit in the front. Roger cries and the rain pelts the roof of the car, beating out a strange rhythm in the darkness. Holding Roger's head to her shoulder, small tears in her eyes, Sara whispers to Nicky: "What should we do?"

Tell, Muses, of Roger hearing this, raising his head, stating clearly: "I want to get really drunk tonight."

Sing, O excesses of adolescence, piled high in the back seat of the car next to Nicky, purchased with the trio's collected funds (ten dollars of which had gone to the homeless woman they had found in the city to buy the alcohol for them). Roger's parents aren't in town and they decide to go to his house. Sara speeds on the deserted streets of Elmwood, and Roger desperately drinks from a bottle of vodka in the front seat "take it easy, Roger!" Sara and Nicky both admonish. Birch and elm trees race by them faster and faster as they pass houses and houses, houses with two and three cars parked out front, houses with basketball hoops in the driveway, houses with flags, houses with porches, houses where parents are telling their young children, five- and six- and seven- and eight-year-olds to go to bed, children who will later go on rides like this one, sad and fearful.

Sing of the sound that pierces the night, pierces this ride--the sound of a siren, a siren from behind, and then the siren becoming a cop car, and the cop car pulling Sara over. Sara pulls over (she knows she was speeding--how stupid, she thinks) and they hide the alcohol as best they can before the policeman arrives at the window. He's a young man with piercing blue eyes. He's writing on a piece of paper and asks for her license and car's registration, and Sara produces these. He begins to walk away, then sees the bottle of vodka, stowed poorly beneath Roger's seat. "Get out of the car, all of you," he says suddenly, loud and powerful and furious as if inspired by a new, forceful, angry spirit. Roger, getting out of the car, falls over. The cop races over to him, shouting, as if victorious: "What's the matter, son? What the hell's the matter, some kinda fucking cripple--or have we had a drink or two, son?" He takes a flashlight from his pocket and shines it in Roger's face, and freezes.

Sing of the cop's eyes as he sees Roger, of Roger's eyes as he sees the cop, of the cop picking Roger up by his elbow, leaning him against the car, saying in a small, horrified voice: "It's you." Sara and Nicky become tense, and Roger says, slurring his words, confused and sick and drunk, but terrified now, too: "Get the fuck away from me."

Sing of Roger's vomit as it spews out, flying through the air, hitting the policeman's uniform, unexpected and violent, Roger's body recoiling, shifting forwards and backwards. The cop changes now, grabbing Roger's hair, his eyes like the very bottom of a flame and his arms slamming Roger's head against the side of the car, again and again and again, screaming now: "You little fag, you want me to hit you more? Like the other day--when you ran away? Fuck you. You stay away from me you little fuckup faggot!" First Sara and then Nicky grab his arms, but he's strong and he won't let go, and he won't listen to them, even as they shout stop, stop, stop! He keeps slamming Roger's head into the car, seems furious at everything, himself almost crying, then shifting back into the comfort of distant authority. "You hear me, son?"

Sing of John, finally stopping, his arms falling at his sides, defeated, now very clearly crying. He goes back to the cop car and drives away, and Roger falls to the ground and loses consciousness, and Nicky and Sara try to wake him up and brush the dirt off his face. Sing of the arrival of an ambulance, of Roger's departure in it, coughing and spitting and bleeding. Sing then, at last, of Sara and Nicky sitting in the back of the ambulance with Roger, the EMTs saying that he'll be fine--but why, the EMTs ask, did the police officer leave after calling the ambulance? Sara and Nicky tell them the story and they don't really believe it, but the man sitting in the driver's seat says he'll give the police station a call as he turns on the ignition and starts driving.

Sing of Sara and Nicky on the way to the hospital, where they will be made to call home and tell their parents the whole story. Sing of the drive to the hospital, the long drive through the town's suburban streets, Sara and Nicky both shaken and each inching toward the other, scared and shivering, and Nicky looking out on the night sky, Sara's head on his shoulder. Nicky looking out on the night sky and imagining that at this very moment, some sitcom is playing in syndication, some in-studio audience being resurrected, being forced to laugh once again, torn from their wheelchairs, given wings, and set to fly over the city like sad, benevolent angels of protection.