V – very much the thing I most want to do
U – ultimately satisfying
L – like nothing else in exposing my soul
N – never want to go there
E – everything I need to do
R – really mystifying why it is so exposing
A – are you kidding me?
B – be vulnerable?
L – Leave it out!
E – everything else is easy
Vaulting into the unknown, hoping to be
Understood, wondering if anyone is
Laughing at me
New people and places, feeling the need to
Entertain someone,
Remembering all the notes
Allowing people to know things about me,
Believing I can
Letting go of
Expectations
There’s all sorts of good that can come out of bringing others into something – personal trainers, and executive coaches, high school teachers and parents of toddlers. Sometimes you just need someone else to set the boundaries, show you the way, remind you that your best is better than what you settle for.
That’s what I thought I was getting into when I hired Zach. Really I was. The idea of a private investigator gets all tied up in shady deals and cheating and snooping where your nose doesn’t belong. But I thought that by having an outsider take a look at things and bring me real data, a reality test really, that I could take this thing to a higher plane.
The problem was not just that I was deluding myself. Yes, I was looking for an excuse, a substantiated reason to turn this thing on its head. But even so, cooler heads may have prevailed and all that if Zach hadn’t been who he was. If he hadn’t been the kind of person who, having witnessed a wrong, or at least something that looked like a wrong given the info he had access to, couldn’t rest until it was made right. Probably being a PI wasn’t a very good career choice for him, but the roads he did and didn’t take are a different story. I got the Zach I got, and that has made all the difference.
It was a cold February day when I first went to his office. It felt so scripted, the damsel in distress on one side of a cheap metal desk, the gumshoe on the other. Except Zach was no Humphrey Bogart, although he did have the looks. He couldn’t have been more than 30, with a thin sheen of cool barely masking an almost painful eagerness to be helpful. He was the nephew of a neighbor, the kind of person you hire when being a good member of the community is more important than getting the job done.
I didn’t have much to tell him. Looking back on it, that’s probably why I didn’t try to find someone with more experience; it would have been embarrassing to admit how little I knew to someone who was asking all the right questions. I knew instinctively that Zach would take the crumbs that were all I had to offer and act as if my job were done – he’d have it covered from here. I needed that sense of reassurance, no matter how falsely it rang. That was it really – the thing that led to all the bad decisions I made from there. Having asked him from the start to shoulder far more than was his to bear, I felt responsible to make it up to him somehow. When he started to care, more than just caring on principle because he felt it was the thing to do, but really care, as if his understanding of the world and good and evil and the meaning of life all depended on this, I was already beholden to him in a currency I had never intended to spend.
I’ll admit it: I’m choosing a safe vulnerability to write about. It’s a real one – and maybe one of my deepest ones. But, still, it’s safer than some things I could write about, and that’s the point about vulnerability, right? It’s not about avoiding it or not; it’s about the fact that some things just are vulnerable, they just are, and you’ve got to take life on its terms. And that includes getting to say, no, you don’t get to see that place.
The vulnerability for which I am issuing limited admission is the subject of music. Singing, drumming, whistling (actually, I can’t whistle), humming, even listening to music – it’s an arena that I can barely go into alone, and it takes every once of grit I have to share it with others. I can’t explain it, it makes no sense, it just is. And here’s what I’ve learned from it.
Vulnerability is like density: the mass per unit volume of a chemical element. The more vulnerable an arena of life experience is, the more it means that energy is packed into a small space, just waiting to be liberated. Going into those places of vulnerability can be like liberating the masses from a despot king. If you do it right, that is. Done wrongly, you can just make it all worse, increasing the king’s power, making the prisoners more hungry and despairing than they already were.
Ah, there’s a bit of drama. Drama and vulnerability go hand in hand, you know, the one a smokescreen that makes escape from the other possible. If I talk enough about vulnerability, I won’t have to feel it, won’t have to wonder how different my life would be if I just had a little more courage, won’t have to admit how hard I work to avoid the vulnerability, justifying my neglect with any convenient reason that comes along.
Like checking my email. That’s always a good one.
All right, all right. Music. What feels vulnerable is the fear of all the ways I’ll fuck it up. Sour notes, lost beats, my lack of skill and familiarity butchering something intended to be pure and unfettered from human error. But really that’s just another smokescreen, a reason not to go there. It’s what justifies my absence from the spaces of vulnerability, as if there’s just too much risk to the universe itself for me to go there.
But what is true vulnerability? What music does is brings out something in me that is less masked than I’m used to being. It’s the sounds I long to make just because – not because they are needed by someone else, but just because they make me happy. It’s the rawness of my desire to learn and excel, finding the beat and surrendering to it fully, letting it use me as raw material only, no name, no identity, just raw power energy poured into the creation of something new, something momentary, something with no justification at all.
Just when I thought it safe,
A growl rumbled behind my
Volkswagen: A beast! A gasp
Escaped my trembling
Lips – what fresh horror! Was
I to be tonight’s dessert?
No, thank heavens – it
Ambled off for a tastier treat.
Caressing the inside of your lip
All energy is focused only on this taste and the
Knowledge that the first bite is always the best, and
Everything that follows is disappointment
Five speeding tickets in one week. Okay – gotta slow down. Cruise control only. It’s weeks later. K and I are just coming out of Payson… dark beautiful night. The moon rising over mysterious Ponderosa Pines on the mogollon ridge. Damn! Distracting… K talking. My brain tracking parallels’ – the ways that I can relate to her experience of meeting a man in Senegal… barely speaking the same language… he French… little English… she English… no French. He tiny, compact, wiry. She large, adventurous, curious. She went for the energetic of it… the rightness of it… the hugeness of it. they marry. Move to Canada. He’s muslim… she comes from a huge family of Mormon’s… okay… pay attention… We’re coming up to Star Valley now… that’s where I got photographed speeding last time… it was in rain… they change the speed so abrubtly at the bottom of a hill! Damn! Shouldn’t have paid it! photo wasn’t clear. I could’ve denied it I found out $265 dollars and 3 points later. I told myself it was good to pay it to not be at the effect of others. To not hurry. My pace. My way.
K carrying on… stories… real… live… not coming from my CD…we make it through the town of Star Valley. It’s dark and beautiful again… we’re getting closer to our destination…. About to take the turn off… I know it’s coming up soon.
What are those pretty blue and red lights… oh No! A cop car. I pull over right away. Damn! No way to get out of this one. To not pay the lousy picture. I’m done for… I could lose more points or even my license. Stay calm. Stay calm.
Did you know you where going 65 in a 45?
How to answer that? Well, no, I lamely reply. The dark is all around us. Night full and crisp.
He asks to see registration, driver’s license and insurance. K digs in the glove box and I’m praying they are there and up to date. Ah yes, relief… we find them. I am so grateful for the part of me that pays the bills and files things in their place.
He takes the papers and walks away. Dread. Silence.
I lament to K how I really can’t afford a ticket in any way shape or form.
Miraculously, the nice, kind, polite man says “I’m just going to give you a warning”. He shatters my image of cops making their quotas. My image of the country cop catching the city slicker. “out here we go 45 he says”,,, “you need to slow down:”.
I am stunned. A warning! It’s at least 3 points!
I smile, thank him, and my silent hybrid creeps forward into the night.
Sing. Call my brothers – maybe – or just send love. Go outside and simply look at things. Things like the cactus, the trees, the sky, the clouds, the lizards and rabbits. While singing.
(Listen to an audio version)
As if it’s the only time. Right. Well, it was – the time I’m going to tell you about was, that is – back quite some long time ago, when I was still wearing those big black boots. You probly don’t remember when they was in style, as you is still rather young. But they was quite high, above the knees, and all leather, so they were. Quite very sexy, especially when worn as they often were without nothing else. Not that I’m saying as I ever did that myself. Nor that I’m saying as I didn’t. I’m just not saying either way, and you can just think what you will, as you will anyhow, being a young person and rather headstrong.
So, as I was saying. It was rather some long time ago, and I had this idea – notwit’standing that it was not such a good idea, as I can see now – that it would be rather funny to steal a police officer’s hat. I had the very officer in mind, too, and I don’t mind saying that I had my reasons for it. Oh, yes, indeed, I had my reasons for it. A very fine officer, too, what was often on duty near where I was living at the time. I used to keep an eye on that officer from my bedroom window many days, and especially when I was getting on those boots what I mentioned earlier.
Yes, well.
So one day, or one evening, as it was, I had this idea, and I had a goodly laugh thinking about it and I therefore made up my mind to do it. I dressed myself up all in black, including those black boots what I told you of, and I went out onto the very darkening street to see where I could find this officer. As it happened, she was just patrolling the next block so I found her quite easy. The tricky thing was sneaking up on her without her noticing, as stealing the hat would be very much the easier if she wasn’t keeping that eye on me already, if you know how I mean. So I observed that she was moving in a casual sort of way down the block southerly, not so very fast, but steady, good and steady; and I decided that I would just hide myself behind the big black street bin that stood between Oldham’s and Rootersham’s, and pop out behind her when she went past. It seemed a good plan. How was I to know?
I easily gained my position, by moving briskly roundabout the house of Rootersham and through the garden patch, carefully avoiding the puddles and piles of animal deposits, on account of the boots, which I did not want to stink. And I hid myself behind the big black bin, crouching down, waiting, waiting.
I heard her footsteps approaching, the tapping and clapping of her own boots on the pavement; and I admit I was very looking forward to doing the deed. I poised myself at the corner of the big black bin, and I breathed in little gasps with the very pleasure of the thing. Soon enough, though, soon enough the steps came round the corner, and I, all poised, all ready, leapt out and dashed toward the figure coming around the corner, with the desired pointy hat now clearly in view. I thought how well it would look with the black boots.
And then boom! Bang! Blam! I found myself sprawled on top of some goodness-awful bloke in denim, of all things, squirming and grunting. I punched the measly fellow in disgust. And then I felt a hand on the back of my collar, pulling me up quite very easy.
“Thanks, chum.” She had her very large, blue-barrelled firearm drawn and pointed, two hands and all, very so at the bloke, eyeing him right powerfully. “Been trying to catch this one for some time. Often making problems, around the turn of the night, as it is even now.”
I looked longingly at the hat – so close, but now clearly vastly untouchable. “It was quite nothing,” I said. “Then, can I have your hat?”
You’re right – I didn’t really truly ask that question.
If twelve minutes were all I had left, what would I do?
I’d like to think I’d do something crazy and wild, something involving shouting and truth-telling and letting go of all my hang-ups. But I think the truth is this: I’d gather those I loved around me (whomever I could reach in 12 minutes, that is). I’d tell them all I loved them, and I’d cry and then I would hold them, and they would hold me, and we’d be still, crying or sniffling maybe, but perfectly still.
We’d feel each other’s breath go in and out, and I might even get a little sleepy, and then I’d be gone.
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