juxtaposition, ıı

Lis­ten, of­fi­cer … I didn’t see shit.

I did­n’t see the shoot­er, or the guy out­side he sup­pos­ed­ly shot, or the girl stand­ing near­by who said he was hit. I did­n’t see how that street light got on top of that car. To be hon­est with you, I’m not even sure how she man­aged it.

Flomm en­ter­tain­ment, meet Flomm writer. It’s our first night out. Last Fri­day.

Al­ley says she’s here from Chica­go, plans to get into ar­chi­tec­ture. Men­tions the im­por­tance of de­sign­ing a space for its real world use. I think about that time I vis­it­ed a Chipo­tle in the north­east, and rant­ed, over my bur­ri­to, about what seemed like com­mon sense to me – the condi­ment counter should be fac­ing the oth­er di­rec­tion and the front door should be a few more feet to the right. It was the mo­ment when I first con­sid­ered get­ting into UI de­sign. I won­der if she’d had a sim­i­lar mo­ment, ex­cept with a con­clu­sion about architecture.

Own­er wel­comes, gets me a drink. There’s new peo­ple in here, but that’s to be ex­pect­ed on the week­end. Friend who works here says there’s al­ready been five fights tonight. Mu­sic sucks. This same guy has been try­ing to play just one song all evening, and some­one keeps chang­ing it part­way through. Same with any­thing I try to put on. One of the own­ers is in and out, look­ing af­ter a friend of his who has clear­ly had enough to drink. Dance floor keeps go­ing silent. We’re lean­ing in close to talk over the mu­sic, but every time it stops we’re still shout­ing and it’s kind of awkward-funny.

I come back from the re­stroom, the mu­sic has stopped again. There’s a sound. Loud.

Gun­shots – a lot of them –  and the first thought on my mind is the thing that hap­pened in Paris ear­li­er the same day. I won­der whether or not the per­son fir­ing is a civil­ian or if the whole world is just burn­ing right now, and if it’s some­body we can col­lec­tive­ly take down. Or if we’re just fucked.

Per­haps a tes­ta­ment to my whiteness.

I heard gun­fire around my neigh­bor­hood grow­ing up, but it was nev­er this close. And I was too young to re­al­ly con­ceive of the dan­ger. There were only a cou­ple of times I re­mem­ber be­ing told to get in the back of the house and stay away from the win­dows, and as kids we were more amused than we were fright­ened by the ex­cite­ment. We asked our­selves what our fa­vorite TV badass­es would do.

But Xena the War­rior Princess prob­a­bly nev­er had a 9mm fired at her. I re­al­ize that I am not about to be a hero.

My fel­low flom­mist and I just watched as all the hard­est look­ing men in this room com­plete­ly booked it out the side and back doors. The whole place cleared out in sec­onds. We’re pressed up against a wall wait­ing for our ride to pull around and res­cue us. A mys­te­ri­ous pud­dle near the door­way seems to cap­ture our at­ten­tion.

Work­er friend steps back in with a quick­ened stride, turns just long enough for me to catch a glance at his face. He looks like he’s cry­ing, but I can’t tell if he’s sad or just in­cred­i­bly an­gry. He yells some curse phrase not un­like the ones I’ve been whis­per­ing to my­self this whole time, em­phat­i­cal­ly kicks over a barstool then walks back out. One mo­ment lat­er, a girl walks in, on her phone, fran­tic. “What’s the ad­dress of this place? Can some­one please tell me the ad­dress? I need an am­bu­lance. Please, can some­one please give me the ad­dress?!” I start to pull it up on my phone but she’s al­ready run back outside.

It wasn’t ter­ror­ists or cops or mind-con­trolled gov­ern­ment agents sent to de­stroy us. No one seemed to even know who he was. It was Aaron Mc­Grud­er might have called a nig­ga mo­ment. Some­one was just in the wrong place, said the wrong thing, looked at the wrong woman, and that was it.

Lead sal­ad.

 
 

We’re speed­ing away, and all I can think about is how pan­icked I am not, right now. Sure, I’m shak­ing and I feel a bit like we all just nar­row­ly es­caped death, but to be hon­est, I was just a lit­tle more ner­vous about the state of the re­stroom a mo­ment ago. My fight-or-flight re­sponse seems to be wired wrong. My re­ac­tion to mild dis­com­fort is so ex­treme, that there’s no phys­i­cal way I could ex­pe­ri­ence the same emo­tion pro­por­tion­al­ly to an ac­tu­al cri­sis. Be­ing able to tell my­self that this is an ap­pro­pri­ate time to freak out most­ly just comes as an im­mense re­lief. How can I be just slight­ly less afraid of bul­lets than pub­lic speak­ing? And how can I live in such fear of to­tal­ly harm­less things, know­ing that any mo­ment, some­thing sud­den and ridicu­lous, like some ran­dom ass­hole with a gun, could take me out?

I’m still de­bat­ing what all of this means, when we pass some­thing strange. A car and a light post have con­nect­ed in a most im­pos­si­ble way. Not just bent but, re­moved from its orig­i­nal place in the ground – now com­plete­ly hor­i­zon­tal on top of the ve­hi­cle. “We have to turn around. We have to make sure they’re okay.”

Our dri­ver tells us to wait in the car. We watch in­tent­ly as he walks up to the wreck, pro­ceeds to pull out an en­tire fam­i­ly: A moth­er and three small boys. Un­in­jured, but clear­ly shak­en. He takes off his jack­et and puts it around the baby, and I can’t think of a mo­ment when I’ve ever been more at­tract­ed to some­one. Al­ley calls 911, gives mom a hug. I take off my hood­ie and wrap it around the four year old. He’s bare­foot and in his PJs. The kids were in bed when dad got ar­rest­ed and mom de­cid­ed to take a dri­ve down to So­Cal at two in the morn­ing. An am­bu­lance pass­es by, head­ed for the bar down the street.

 
 

The cops are tak­ing for­ev­er to show up, so we load all the ba­bies into our car with the heat run­ning for the length of the wait. I sit with them and ask the two old­er ones about their fa­vorite su­per­heroes – a sub­ject they seem pret­ty ex­cit­ed to talk with me about. I ask the boy if he likes my hood­ie. He says the arms are too big, but yes. I say, “You can to­tal­ly keep it, but here’s the deal – I’m a su­per­hero, and I get all my pow­ers from this hood­ie, so if you keep it, you have to agree to fight crime.” At first, we’re un­clear about the mean­ing of the word crime. I rephrase, “You got­ta fight bad guys. Do you think you can han­dle that?”

“I fight bad guys” he says, “I cut their penis­es off! I punch their balls and cut their faces!!!”
“Whoa. A lit­tle vi­o­lent there.”
The el­dest one shrugs, “Yeah. He’s like that.”

Mom thanks us for stop­ping, says she’s glad there’s still good peo­ple. I wish there was more I could do. I tell her my fam­i­ly has been through things like this and I’m so sor­ry it’s happening.

On the dri­ve home, Al­ley wax­es po­et­ic about how we es­caped the pre­vi­ous sce­nario with our lives, and were able to pay it for­ward by help­ing some­one else in need. The way she phras­es it makes our night sound so much more serendip­i­tous than ter­ri­fy­ing, and I don’t know if I ex­act­ly agree – but I’ll ad­mit there was some­thing kind of tac­it­ly beau­ti­ful mixed up in it somewhere.

—bwargh von modnar

Flom­mist Bwargh von Mod­nar is. Copy­right © 2015 Bwargh von Mod­nar. Pic­tured: Two in­ter­pre­ta­tions of Mar­cel­la by Max Pech­stein and Ernst Lud­wig Kirch­n­er, 1910.

read alley’s version —

          juxtaposition, okay  • • •

 

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