Hey, Aqualung

HEY AQUALUNG By Christopher Horton “Aqualung”, the song, is by Jethro Tull To hear the recorded version, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF0WdIbt0-s It was 7:30 on a Saturday night. Fred Barnstable sat slumped in a crappy, worn out recliner, staring at an equally downscale television. Fred was supposed to go a party but he didn’t know if he had the will. A party. . .that would be weird. With strangers. . .that, at least, would be for better and worse. Feeling alone -- the army's up the road, salvation a la mode and a cup of tea. The sound on the TV was muted but Dick Cheney’s face leered out of the set. Fred was in that kind of slack jawed staring mode, a mode often affected by middle aged men And Fred felt very middle aged, as forty seven as one could feel. He calculated that he was in better shape than Cheney. Of course, Cheney was a hundred and twelve. “I wonder why nobody has ever mentioned that Cheney looks like an over fed Himmler? Probably because no one knows any history. . ..it’s not cuz no one would stoop to it, that’s for sure.” Fred knew some history. When he was in a bad mood, Fred figured it hadn’t done him much good. When he was feeling cockier in general, that knowledge fed his smugness and made him feel smarter than the average bear. But even in a bad mood, Fred reckoned that talking to himself was getting to be a tic he should nip in the bud. Even if he lately found it more satisfactory than most of the conversations he had with others. He did have more hair than Cheney, too. Not that his hair had ever been very nice, it had been both too limp and too nondescript a brown. That was kind of a hurdle in the days of his youth, when long, lush hair got a guy somewhere. Despite that bitterly resented disadvantage, Fred had managed to marry and procreate. A fat lot of good that had done him too. And you couldn’t reverse the procreating. . .unlike the marriage. Technically, he was still married. Maybe that was why he didn’t miss the marriage. Nah, that wasn’t it at all. He missed his boys. A lot. He’d never, ever wanted to reverse the procreating. Sometimes he wanted to smack the smug attitude of righteousness off Jill’s face. . .no, that’s not true either. He’d never wanted to hit her, even when he felt he should want to---during the times when she was goading him with a cruelty that her blondness belied. He couldn’t comprehend her seemingly abiding hatred suffused with equal parts contempt and resentment that flowed from her soul as milk once had from her breasts. Once, when she was in the middle of some tedious but uninspired monologue of recriminations, he’d stopped listening and spent the time watching her face. Her sounds washed over him. He wondered how she could have her hate that smelled like the rage of the oppressed simultaneously with her contempt that oozed such absolute disregard. It seemed contradictory to Fred. How did she do it?, he wondered. Probably because she has her

head up her ass, he decided. He had been so caught up in his reflections that he missed his moment to contribute to the so called conversation. Her silence clued him in. All he felt was a terrible sadness that their future was a desert. The collapsing of his subconscious assumptions about the infinity of their time together left him with an ache in his guts. A terrible pain. And an overwhelming emptiness. No anger, just a hopeless wish that it could all magically be different. So he didn’t know what to say to her expectant, intimate, and terribly steely face. So he just said “fuck off.” Quietly. It seemed to take her by surprise. It stopped her in her tracks. Maybe it’s an inspiration he should have had months sooner, when it would’ve done some good. Fred reckoned that moment was the actual end, although it took a couple more weeks for them to finish serving each other shit burgers and pouring salt on each others flayed emotional wounds before he ended up in a cheap one bedroom apartment on a crappy recliner from his brother’s basement. “Feeling like a dead duck, spitting out pieces of his broken luck. Hey Aqualung!” The next time Fred noticed the time it was eight o’clock. . .on a Saturday evening. He reckoned that sooner or later he’d have to take a shower if he was going to go to this damn party. It hung over his head. A woman that used to work for his firm was throwing it. Fred supervised a bunch of clerks who recorded transactions for a brokerage house. The kind of almost comfortable and utterly banal, life destroying kind of management position that a BA in history, not too much self confidence, and crappy hair will get you. He had run into her in a bar a week or so ago. A dive bar that he’d taken to whiling away a couple of hours in a couple of nights a week. Hours that used to be filled with domestic chores and childrearing, and, eventually, the endless bickering that perfectly complemented the ennui of his working day. “Do you still remember December's foggy freeze - when the ice that clings on to your beard is screaming agony?”. Obviously, Fred remembered only too well, if he was still feeling that way. Fred didn’t like feeling like his life was that of an unappreciated rat on a dull tread mill. Although his feelings didn’t seem very relevant to the course of events. Now he was just tired. And he wasn’t really enough of a drinker not to be bored with that too. So he’d been happy to talk to Heather when she and a friend had wandered into the dive bar one night last week. Heather was probably a few years younger than Fred, but he still couldn’t help feeling that Heather became a sillier and sillier name as a woman aged. That probably was a flaw in him but Fred was having a lot of trouble caring about his flaws these days too. They joked and talked for a bit, as much as they ever had at the office, and she’d invited him to this birthday party for herself. He didn’t know why she’d invited him. He was pretty sure it wasn’t sexual, although maybe he was so far out of the loop that he couldn’t tell. Nah. He certainly wasn’t sure he wanted to go. Even if it had been sexual, he wasn’t sure he wanted to go---not that Heather was hideous. Really, she was pretty fine for a woman of her age. Fred, smiled because he was pretty sure that phrase would piss off any woman to whom it was applied. It would Jill, for sure. He’d have to remember that. . .in case he got a sudden urge to be a bitch about the whole thing. More of a bitch? Fred let that one go and turned back to the party issue. He felt himself

shrinking from the prospect of seeing people. Fred reckoned the problem was that he was old and fucked up. So he should go, instead of curdling. Right? Maybe. Fred flipped the channel over to the Dodger game. He stared at it but didn’t really watch it. Eight o’clock in the evening sure felt different these days. At 8:30, Fred got up and walked into his bathroom without enthusiasm. The Dodgers were losing in what seemed like an incredibly dull fashion to Fred. They were playing as lifelessly as he felt. The bathroom was no better or worse than the rest of the apartment and certainly a far cry from the best that $40,000 worth of home equity could buy. That was his old bathroom. . .really, Jill’s bathroom that he had previously been allowed to use. The aesthetic quality of his bathroom was something else Fred couldn’t take an interest in. Neither the old one nor the new one. Naked, he looked at himself in the mirror. The aesthetic quality of Fred still could draw some of his attention. Not a pretty sight. He hadn’t gone to fat, really. Just to seed. What once had been muscle was now soft. At least his man tits were still under control. He sighed, “Jesus.”. The hot spray of the shower soothed the places where his muscles used to be and the vain part of his stress swirled down the drain with the steaming water---at least this cheap apartment had better hot water than his house had. And free, too, sort of. “There”, he thought, “now I’m looking at the bright side.” He laughed, but it was short and sad. “At least Jill wasn’t fucking anyone else either. . .yet.” Another bright side. “Yeah, at least there was no other guy”. On the other hand, he was talking to himself out loud again. Fred also thought it was pretty ironic that it made him happy to know that Jill had ended their marriage solely because of acquired dislike for him. Up is down. The big explosion---well, not the real catalyst, but a bigger catalyst than “Fuck off”---was pretty ironic too. Jill worked at an advertising house and had gone to the annual convention in Vegas. She had even invited him to come but he had a terrible cold and really just wanted to stay home and coddle his snotty self. So he had. And he hadn’t had a cheap hook up that ruined things, although these days he often wished it had been that. Maybe. Not really. No. Anyway, that Saturday afternoon was pretty nice and Fred was beginning to feel better after the second decongestant kicked in. So, he went outside. His front yard was not notable in any way, a gravel walk, thin grass already burning from sun and drought, and a border of mangy hedges. The hedges could be saved if they were replanted and properly irrigated. Jill always complained about them, at least, they gave her something to complain about when her inspiration to rhapsodize and improvise on his alleged faults flagged. Mr. Nasty, where did you come from? Fred shook off the dark cloud that line of thought had brought, sniffled, and decided to do something to make Jill happy. Why not? Change in self equals change in others. So they say.

By nightfall, the job was half done. Fred felt like he’d watered those hedges with his last reserve of wellbeing. When Jill called that night, he didn’t tell her. He wanted it to be a surprise. He tried not to complain about his worsening cold---Jill had no tolerance for whining from him. He’d always wanted that kind of sympathy from her but felt that giving up on that expectation was one of the unappreciated compromises he’d made. The next morning, he felt a lot worse. In fact, he felt like shit. Snot running down his nose, greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes. Hey Aqualung! But now the front yard was a half done mess---maybe he should just put up a sign: “Verdun Trench Warfare Cinerama”. Instead, he sucked it up. When Jill called that night, he was battered but triumphant. But the call wasn’t going well---she seemed to think that his horrible coughs and snotty voice were a show for her. Fred swallowed his bile at her irritated tone along with another gob of mucus. So, he decided the hell with surprise and proudly announced his accomplishment. “You spent the whole weekend replanting hedges?” “I did, honey”, he said, although his stuffed sinuses smothered the consonants pretty completely. And he felt the sinking effect of a developing low grade fever. So he was ready for at least a small balm of appreciation that had to follow this silence. But for seconds the only sound was his stifled coughing and wheezing. And thus the best laid plans of mice and men---which must cover Fred---often go astray. The silence exploded. Jill’s voice rose to a crescendo like a mineshaft explosion, only higher pitched. “What do you mean you replanted hedges? You were too sick to come with me but NOT TO SICK TO REPLANT HEDGES?” “An’ den, de chocolat’ milk exploded.” That was Fred’s first thought. It was the end of an allegedly true, possibly racist story he’d been told in college by a rich kid from Florida he’d never liked much. Supposedly, a punk pulled a gun on the cashier in a 7/11. An old black man in the back of the store paused and waited, holding a carton of chocolate milk he’d just taken from the refrigerator. Later, on the witness stand, the old man was asked what happened after the cops burst in with guns drawn. “An’ den, de chocolat’ milk exploded.” Fred felt like the old man. More angry words rained down on Fred like the dust and stones that followed a blast. The sick ache of his sinuses competed for his attention against the sicker nausea in his heart. “I’ll see you tomorrow night.” If you hear a click, don’t think I’m hanging up on you. Isn’t that how that joke went? He almost laughed because he was too physically miserable for anger and didn’t want to cry. All he kept thinking was that no man living or dead could have ever seen it coming.

Maybe some women could, but not a solitary man. Well, at Verdun, they said it was the one you don’t hear that gets ya. Of course, they said it in French and German. Fred had never served in the military, so he figured it must have been the fever that inspired that stream of consciousness. Right, the fever. Fred decided to focus on how sick he felt because it was more appealing than thinking about what had just happened. He slumped in his chair in front of the TV, just like he had done tonight. Except, of course, it was a nicer chair in front of a nicer TV in a nice house. Good times. Nothing like a shower and a dump to make ya nostalgic, Fred thought. He was very pleased that it was a silent instead of spoken thought. Well, if he was going to this party, he’d best stop living in the past. And shave. After completing a long, graceful stoke of the razor, he eyed himself in the mirror, and admired his left cheekbone, which now gleamed fresh. The right side of his face was still covered in lather. “Look great, feel great.” He gave himself as dapper a grin as he could manage. Then he cut himself. Right on the underneath of his left nostril. It bled pretty good for a little cut. He opened the medicine cabinet and saw one band aid. “And I wanted to save that for a sucking chest wound. . .and I wanted to stop talking to myself out loud.” Fred didn’t really mind the sight of his own blood. He’d seen enough of it. He’d seen a sucking chest wound too. When he was nineteen, he’d been riding in the death seat of an old Corvair with one his old high school dudes. A gorgeous college spring break night in his old home town, racin’ on the county line. A drug addled Florida biker bar would’ve been the safer choice. Jack, his friend, hit the rise of an unguarded railway crossing way too fast and they became air cav for a few fleeting seconds. Fred could remember the feeling of flying as he was ejected from the car and seeing the blurry night whizzing by. He smashed into the only stretch of thicket for miles that bordered the asphalt and the rocky clay earth. That thicket probably saved his life but he impaled himself on one of the sturdier branches. “And you snatch your rattling last breaths with deep-sea-diver sounds, and the flowers bloom like madness in the spring.” He was half conscious, conscious enough to feel the wetness in his gut and know that he was hurt bad. Only conscious enough to see the tendrils of flame soaring skyward from the overturned Corvair as a light show. Not really conscious by the time help arrived, drawn by the signal fire that the car had become. When he really became conscious, in a hospital in the nearest big city a couple of days later, Jack was already in the ground. Jack had hung on to the wheel and stayed in the car. They kept saying it was the impact that killed him, not the fire. Fred always hoped it was true. Even von Richtofen had been afraid of burning. It was a long time before Fred could put on a seat belt without weighing the odds. When Fred came to, he discovered that he had a surgical wound from his sternum to his pelvis.

It hurt. A lot. But then the nurse would come by and give him a shot of morphine. Twenty minutes later, he would feel much better and would go for a walk around the hospital halls, gown flapping and dragging his IV stand behind him. After about four hours, he would sink. And then the nurse would come around again. It was the best drug he ever did. . .and it appealed to his sense of history. Talk about Sister Morphine, although what he remembered hearing on the bedside radio during one of the first, tougher, nights was “Dream Weaver”. He was nineteen and strong, and he healed quickly. After ten days, he wanted to be released and that’s what he told the two cocky young residents that looked in on him every morning for two minutes. The shorter one sniffed at Fred. “You can’t be released until your stitches are removed.” “Then remove ‘em.” “If that’s the way you want it.” As an adult, sometimes Fred wondered why those snippy little bastards had called his bluff. He was nineteen. Wasn’t that malpractice? He supposed he must have been close to healed. But the first couple of days out of the hospital were real hard. There’s a reason there aren’t a lot of aspirin junkies---it’s not as good as morphine. “Dream Weaver” didn’t sound as good either. Fred winced at the memory of that step down. What was up with that? Maybe they didn’t have vikes back then. And apartments, unlike hospitals, weren’t really designed for sick people. Especially the bathrooms, if you have a sucking chest wound. Actually, at that point, it was a seeping chest wound. It really wasn’t completely closed and would leak a little here and there, like the proverbial Dutch dam. Fred saw that image as he dabbed at the bleeding from his nostril. I can’t believe they let me out of the hospital that way. Finally, the current bleeding stopped and Fred straightened his back as he moved farther from the mirror. The other problem with the incision was that it was so fresh that it hadn’t stretched. When Fred left the hospital, it prevented him from standing completely upright. The first night, around dusk, he went down the street to a liquor store, figuring that maybe a drink would boost the aspirin a little . . .it was just before the end of the lower drinking age. Fred half smirked at his now mostly shaven face. Now, there was an idea that had come and gone. Speaking of liquor, he guessed that he should take a bottle of wine to the damnable party. Unless he blew it off. But maybe he should go. Call it a reward for keeping his thoughts internalized for a good twenty minutes now instead of talking to himself. Half an hour later, Fred was driving down the street in a relatively new red Mustang. Fred liked it all right. It wasn’t as nice as a BMW, but he couldn’t afford to drive a BMW. . .partly because but Jill drove one. “Never mind that shit.” Damn it, a good streak shot to hell. But it was true, even out loud: this was the start of his new life. Yippee! “Without you is better than what was. And what coulda been isn’t relevant because it wasn’t.” At least he wouldn’t talk to himself aloud at a party.

Fred got out of his car at the liquor store and saw himself in the glass front. Well, there were two ways to look at it. Ya could say, “ You aging sack of shit, give it up”---but that seemed kinda harsh. . .and depressing. On the other hand, you could say, “halfway presentable”---a dress shirt whose tails covered the top of his jeans camouflaged a lot of his flaws. And who doesn’t look halfway decent in a leather jacket? Maybe Himmler. Or Cheney. That restored his good mood and chased the former possibility from his mind. As he approached the door, it swung open and a hot young woman popped out. Her glance encompassed him and she moved on without registering anything at all. He watched her hips swivel. Would you settle for you look ordinary. . .and old? Sitting on a park bench, eyeing little girls with bad intent. Fred only held on to that thought for a second. As he stopped the liquor store door with his shoulder, an older memory and the memories of older feelings knocked it aside in their rush from some internment camp synapses in Fred’s cortex to the forefront of his conscious mind. Powerful because it was a sense memory. He’d stopped a liquor store door with the back of his shoulder once before. That first dusk out of the hospital. That evening back east, the temperature was plunging as a late winter chill set in. Young Fred carefully shuffled down the block, even though there was no ice, with the small tentative steps of the hurt and hurting. Unshaven and bent over by the taut grip of his incision, he wore an old overcoat against the cold. Underneath, the baggiest things he owned, as his wound was sore to the touch, too. As he came up to the door of the store, it swung open. And that made him ecstatic, because he’d dreaded having to flex the muscles in his gut to open it. Involuntarily, he smiled. A hot girl about his age popped through it. She took him in at a glance and her face became a billboard advertising the mix of revulsion and pity in her breast. His smile washed away. He stopped the door with the back of his shoulder and watched her hurry away from him. Drying in the cold sun, watching as the frilly panties run. Hey Aqualung! At that moment, young Fred heard those lyrics---he knew the song because it had been one of his older brother’s favorites. He must have been only seven or eight when those chords imbedded themselves in his consciousness. At nineteen, Fred felt like he’d become Aqualung. In the waning grip of adolescence, it was the feeling of repulsiveness that weighed him down in the face of the girl’s visceral reaction. But, although he didn’t know it at the time, he didn’t really feel like Aqualung at all that night. He was too young, too vital, no possibility of looking back in regret. Now, this night, this night nearly thirty years later---Jesus! Tonight, well, he’d learned how to be spit out and to look back in regret. Tonight, he felt that he really knew how it really felt to be Aqualung---felt it like it was his life’s work.. On this night, in the wake of this girl’s indifference, both his age and his seeming lack of appeal pulled down hard on his spirits. Unbidden but clear as a bell, a verse pealed in his skull as if he’d last listened to it this afternoon instead of twenty-five years ago. Sun streaking cold, an old man wandering lonely, taking time the only way he knows.

Hey Aqualung. Fuck the party. No, the alternative was worse. He impelled himself into the liquor store with vehemence. Then what the hell kind of wine should he get? He felt like his thoughts couldn’t navigate a clear course in the riptides and eddies of his emotions. He felt like he could barely breathe. He couldn’t remember anything he knew about wine, not that he was some kind of connoisseur. Wait, he could remember something. “I won’t drink any fucking Merlot.” He knew that was pretty pointless. But he went with it. Almost blindly he grabbed a Pinot Noir and lurched toward the counter. Outside, he felt more in control again. It seemed like his life paused, like he was in the eye of a hurricane. But that didn’t make him a happy camper. What had he become? What would become of him? What had he gathered and what was left for him? Hey Aqualung! But then there’s Jack. Poor Jack. He hadn’t had a chance to gather anything. Of course, he’d suffered no losses either. Hmmm. Maybe the better question was, what would he choose to become? Now that he’d mastered keeping his thoughts silent---hey, he was on a good streak at least---maybe he was ready for another challenge. Well, maybe he’d become the kind of guy that went to a party and checked out this new life thing. He grimaced at his uninspiring silhouette, which was adorned by the outline of a wine bottle in a paper bag in one hand. Hey Aqualung. He made a point of standing up straight, pushing his chest out and challenging his scar to crimp him. .It didn’t. He got in the Mustang and started the car. Aqualung my friend, don't you start away uneasy, you poor old sod, you see, it's only me.