Jorge: Betrayal

*

Jorge's relation to his Lord was subtle and complicated, a thing to be described in many words, too many words, alas infinite words. But the main word was: betrayal. J proved himself to be a treacherous friend to have and this was his humanity.

His Lord was not the handsomest or best dressed man at a given party. He was not the one paid attention to. J generally felt him rather than noticed him. His presence in a given room might be called delicate, and almost intangible.

I knew you were next to me without looking up at you. I smelled you, I felt you, oh Lord.

But the other friends were louder and claimed more attention.

Have you ever had a friend like this? One that you could rely on and who for that very reason interested you less than the fashionable, attractive one, the "role model" that most advisedly ignored you -- or scorned you -- hardly needing you, after all, being one that drew attention without ever doing or needing to do much of anything. That aloof one you pursued as meanwhile the perhaps truer friend, the drab one, stood in the background, gathering as it were the dust of your disrespect.

And he put up with this because he was a true friend, after all.

He put up with it for a time perhaps. There was as it were a time of grace.

There was a time in which you were free, there was. The briefest time. You felt it like a point between two gears -- a locus where judgments floated suspended. Temporarily the still point held. But in your ignorance you thought of this suspension as freedom not as grace. A place you could choose to be. A door with a handle under your hand.

Joyful, virtual place! A roomful of college students inside it. When you danced your foot hardly touched the dance floor. The sweat on your body burst like little stars in formation. You were free to love anyone on the planet. There were no consequences. Life was virtual and your brow always came clean.

No no, there is no such place, the clocks all said. The clocks that "coughed when you would kiss". Your friend is very sick, Myra said. I don't think anyone knows what's wrong.

I don't care about him at all, she said. But I thought you might still care.

Well, of course I care, Jorge said. His heart was as if thudding from the room next door. His heart wasn't in his body but someplace distant. Next door. Where the air is heavy with obligation. Of course I care. I had better get over there.

But one thing happened, then another. It was several days before he found himself sufficiently organized to make the visit. The infirmary was so out of the way somehow. And the receptionist was like a dragon with long beautiful brown hair that crackled as she neatened it, staring through him. Through him.

It seemed that just by looking at him she could tell what a bad friend he was. And a bad friend was a bad everything.

So you want to see him -- does he want to see you? she asked. I don't know, the boy replied.

Maybe he just wants to sleep and be alone.

No, people here do like company. Certain kinds of company. Still you would be vastly surprised to know how many never receive visits at all -- as though it were only the old who were neglected -- the world is so upside down, we're only a short walk from the center of the campus as the crow flies but really no one comes by. I do all the visiting myself most days but clearly that's not what the patients really want.

What a place! All too much like an undesirable motel, one of those with a number in its name. The receptionist shook her hair. Even in fluorescent light it glistened and gave off nylon sparks and her smile was the opposite of welcoming. One fixated on her so as not to think of the illness behind her. But really she seemed to see herself as a kind of prison guard. Was she guarding the patients' health or their sickness?

A doctor slid by in the distant background like an upright white mollusc. I'll just go right in, the boy said, if you'll tell me the room number.

Well that's the thing, the woman said. Your friend checked out yesterday.

He's long gone. But we do have a bed open, which you could use. You look like you very much need it. Those deep engraved rings under the eyes. Why don't you come back here and get some rest?

*

J's search for his friend, his Lord -- what in metaphor was no ordinary person but the person whose presence made "person" itself possible -- this search so off track and not like a crow flying -- grew long and digressive, like one of those roads you follow on a hot day without being absolutely sure you are pointed the right direction. It's the right road but what about you? Are you going the way you should? (If not, how much further and further away with every step!). Is this road the right way? And the answer to that question is just what you are on the road to find. Unfortunately the you, the person finding, is itself lost now or in danger.

J seemed to sleep all day. In classes, at gatherings. He went to his friend's room but no one was there. The old haunts were empty now (and the creatures of fashion who did congregate there were now like those old angels on a weightless pin -- they took up so little space, they didn't seem to be where they were). The boy discovered how easy it is to disappear these days, even on a closed campus -- you just avoid all the places that you used to go. No one can guess where you might be going instead. There were wanted posters for Cupid posted all over campus but no one seemed to be searching for his friend. J felt lost and dissatisfied, a very deep and well-founded and intimate feeling. Now nothing seemed to matter but the friendship that he himself had abandoned.

In the chapel they talked about him and as it were groped for him without quite finding the words for what they were doing. The women were faithful but the faith made a circle. People like Myra went from cult to asylum to cult to asylum. Where was the actual path?

In the middle of the night J would wake up and, Thank God, I'm not in school anymore. That epoch is over. But then the shadows would move around slowly like dancers -- he would wake a little more -- and once again he remembered his loss and his sorrow. They were his road and he needed to continue walking down it. That is, down or up, as if searching for which direction to search. So the next day he would spend roving the library and the student center. He even checked the infirmary over and over and even made friends with -- but no, there was no feeling left over in him for that.

The campus parties became repetitions of parties. Machines, iterations -- they lost their flavor. There was no reason to go and little not to either. All the fashionable were stuck, their faces didn't move, their hips no longer cut the air with a slash.

But sitting alone in the library, that was no fun either. The sound a page made in turning would rasp like a branch against the window. The sky outside would hang slack under its clouds, sagging with age -- and "parfonds regrets" played over and over on the iPhone.

Finally -- at a Shakespeare play, it felt like decades later -- at one of those ceremonial hieratic performances that were so popular now, that seemed to fill an unspecified void -- J saw his friend or an older version of his friend. Of course he himself was older, too, although unchanged at the same time. The friend was on a balcony, surrounded by strangers. They all seemed rather sober, a bit flayed, filled to the brim with "life experience", which tended to be mostly pain these days. They would only reluctantly part to let Jorge get closer. In fact, they were a bit like guards.

"Absent thee from felicity awhile." Why have I spent so many unhappy years?

Why are so many of us so unhappy? The drug users are not chasing pleasure but fleeing pain. They are basically medicating themselves. So many of us are so stuck in our wrongness -- much too miserable to think of changing.

I would like to change, J thought. But moved with that dreamlike slowness through the milling crowd. Seemed to be moved backward against his will. And there of a sudden was his friend leaning against the wall, in the line to the restroom.

Do you remember me? Jorge asked. Do you remember me?

What I remember, the friend said, is that you didn't like me very much. Now tell me: are you different now?

Are you different now?

*

Poem: Parfonds regrets

*

We line-danced
to "Parfonds regrets"
and leaned against
the wall's own sway

then applied our hopes and blunders
to a second wall,
bougainvillea over the doors,
black cat on the sill,

strangers sudden friends,
our hips almost linked
but our hands
in shells and distinct,

with all of us looking
the same way saying nothing.

*