Jorge: The Bears

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Part 1.

The bears would indeed sometimes pray but others thought this was a hilarious stunt -- you bears are just around the bend. You bears. You bears. Always cutting up. Never really serious.

They would splash in the swimming pool, not caring how fat they were. Caring but not caring. The blubber -- or whatever it was -- would bob like a trash bag full of water and there they were half-immersed in water to start with. Bears. Heavy hairy pink. Laughable to be sure. Nacho brooding by the side of the pool.

The bears would get into a line and waddle into town. Buy beer, waddle home. Barefoot, grotesque. They acted past caring. As if past caring. Bravura.

People think the male of any species is unable to care, as if bred to be absolutely hard -- indifferent to all other creatures. But in fact the scandal was that there were these bears who cared about each other, at least gave signs of doing so -- that was bad enough. As though they nurtured each other, it was hard to believe. Also hard to watch. But apparently once you put on your bear mask you could do this, sort of be tender, under the mask, or as part of the mask -- although the mask, if it was a mask, did not very easily come off -- it was a piece of flesh attached to flesh -- nor at some point was a bear any longer able to be anything but a bear.

The official word was how great it was to be a bear. And bears spent all their discretionary time, their "real" time, with other bears, as though the slim young folks that filled the spa looking like TV stars either didn't exist or didn't matter -- weren't big enough to make a blip on the radar. Boys or girls, it didn't seem to matter. Like fading wallpaper on the farthest wall. They were there but they didn't speak, their presence didn't speak. They didn't knock you out the way they were supposed to.

Bears -- how silly they were! They would smoke as though the surgeon general were only the figment of a dream. They pooled their money in restaurants. They were even almost courteous to the server!

You can't break my heart, darling.

So these silly creatures made a splash in that desert town. The word was that in real life (what was that???) some of them were cutthroat corporate honchos (???) -- or crochety reference librarians -- or car mechanics -- and definitely some construction there in the mix. All that "role playing" was carefully put away as the irrelevant detail that it was. We're just who we are.

Everybody's in the same army. Everybody dies.

Let's just stick together and love each other. Drive each other crazy the way a family does.

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The motel clerk would line them up -- mentally -- and give them their names. Gluttony and Sloth were easy to spot: one was always at the buffet, the other never moved from his deck chair. Lust was easy to spot and Anger wasn't far away. Envy and Covetousness were names nobody wanted but this was America where "you can run not hide" and people judged themselves by the size of their car and you just wanted the other person's car sort of like protection. So you couldn't deny the 2 were there, even if more brooding than socializing. But where was Pride? You looked around and you couldn't find Pride anywhere. Bears were a bashful group, to be sure, and the truth was that they didn't think much of themselves. Pride was missing therefore. Pride had gone to some other party. Nobody here felt Pride or was Pride or could even summon the memory of what Pride exactly was. The bliss of feeling proud, that was for other beings to know. These had not been given their share.

Indeed bears thought very little of themselves and were right to do so.

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Part 2.

Let's focus on Tony for a moment.

Do you love me? Tony would ask. Or do you only like and admire me?

Generally no one bothered to answer his silly questions. He was like the baby Mozart asking countesses m'aimez-vous? before playing.

In the changing room by the shower he leaned over and felt something leaning over him. It was a weight at least as considerable as his own. It squeezed down on his heart.

He should have called 911 at that moment. Instead he grabbed the motel clerk's shoulder and tried to speak.

Do you love me?

The clerk took one look at his face and went for the keys of his car. Alas, a dilapidated Pinto, one of the last on earth (let's hope). And Tony barely fit into the car. The seatbelt a frill to be swept away. The heat was just impossible.

Let's not forget Nacho, he groaned as the car pulled out. That was his friend on what they called suicide watch. The clerk said nothing but pulled into the road.

There was a brief swooshy sound and of a sudden green brake fluid covered his foot. A U-turn, the furious honking of cars going 90. He ignored them, the brakes still worked.

Awful. I feel awful. Spotted for the world's heaviest weight and then my spotter walked away and here I am. Pretty sure I'm dying.

Tony managed to say all of this in a single grunt.

On the bare part of the highway the wind was so strong that it would push the car halfway into the side lane. Passing a truck was ghastly but had to be done. Then the turnoff and the little pokey road to the hospital. The pickup in front of him was going 18 miles an hour but when he moved to the left to pass, it accelerated. So the clerk ended up continually feigning to pass just to keep the speed up. His foot was oozy and sticky.

Don't die on me, guy, the clerk said.

He parked illegally because walking through such heat would have killed a well person, not to mention an obese dying bear in a turquoise bathing suit and flip flops.

There was a man sitting bleeding from a knife wound. To the clerk's shock, they came up to Tony first. He looked that bad.

The nurse turned to the clerk for a moment and said, you may have killed him, you know. You're supposed to call 911.

In the hospital, all of one's sweat begins to "change its mind" and start to freeze precisely at the point where the t-shirt latches onto the iced-up air. Simple comfort becomes unimaginable.

The proof that bears have lives outside of being bears was that one of them came into the room and turned into a nurse. Gluttony was one of the worst and messiest of them all but now it turned out that he was a most competent nurse. Go home, he told the clerk. You saved his life. So: two conflicting judgments, both true.

When the clerk got back there was a woman fuming in the so-called lobby waiting for him. She had lots of luggage and was dressed up to look like Scarlett Johansson trying to look like Grace Kelly. And she did. She was even smoking correctly. And her foot made a little dent in the floor where she tapped.

I'm sorry, there was an emergency, he said. Then he got back to work. By the end of the week they had saved Tony. But they lost Nacho.

Do you love me? Really love me?

When you get asked that question, it's not enough to say "what's love got to do with it?" like Tina Turner. Because that's not an answer but the same question asked a second time.

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