It was a Rare Moment

It was a Rare Moment When I Had Almost Everything I Wanted

A tale by Philip Gaber

It was Thanksgiving morning.

Mid-morning, to be exact.

I remember it just like it was four years ago Thursday.

I awoke, amazingly.

Although, for my life, I couldn't remember what I'd dreamt.

The first thing I did [which I'd always done and continue to do to this day] was drink a shot of Kentucky bourbon.

I've tried North Dakota bourbon, and I'm sorry, it's not the same.

It was so delicious that I had another shot.

Because, quite frankly, what else was there to do?

Oh, sure, I could have read a self-improvement book, enrolled in a continuing education program at the local community college, writing a poem, turned to religion, smoked some opium, got married, laughed at a joke, or wandered through the desert like my ancestors; but Kentucky bourbon just has a way of exerting its ownership over men like me, and I guess there's a part of me that loves how it feels to be dominated.

And thank God for that.

Several minutes later, I got a call from a woman who always smelled of cocoa butter.

Her name was Marjorie, and she claimed to be born under a morning star.

"I'm feeling off-kilter," she said.

"When was the last time you felt on-kilter?" I said.

"April... or May..."

She then let out a primal scream.

"Sorry," she said... "Must have experienced some childhood trauma and repressed it... so how are you, my lust...?"

"Feeling somewhat anachronistic... been sleeping with friends on couches and floors... was arrested for drunkenness and vagrancy... other than that..."

Marjorie laughed like Hades.

She thought I was joking.

I told her it was the truth.

"Jokes are often true," she said...

"So is tragedy..."

"Goodness..."

We talked for three more hours.

We talked about Kafka and Samuel Beckett.

We talked about Karl Marx and Charles Darwin.

We talked about abstract surrealism and cosmology.

We talked about eternalism and nihilism.

And we ended our conversation at quarter to three in the afternoon.

And, although many of our memories were fabricated and our stories appropriated from other sources, we'd never felt more vital or optimistic about our futures.

But then we had to remind ourselves that fantasies can sometimes make you feel that way.

As I hung up the phone, I sighed.

I think because I was tired.

But it also could have been because I hadn't yet come to terms with my bitterness.

Bored, I looked out the window.

A parade passed by;

One of those parades was where a quarter of the kids in the marching bands had forgotten their instruments, and the clowns were all three drinks ahead of me. Two old Marines were riding in wheelchairs pushed by two old Daughters of the American Revolution, and the floats resembled dioramas constructed by pre-schoolers. The spectators fell asleep. The Grand Marshall ordered sushi from his cell phone.

Suddenly, there was a heavy, gloomy feeling in the air, and I didn't quite feel at home or relaxed.

I felt like I was on the edge of something.

Reality, maybe.

Or it was that I was on the verge of something.

A panic attack, perhaps;

Hands numb, arms tingling, heart racing.

I tried some deep-breathing exercises, thinking that might help me regain my equilibrium, but they only made me light-headed and sleepy.

So I took another shot of bourbon and laid down, fell asleep, and had the usual slipstream dream.

Or was it Dadaist...?

It was hard to tell; the images in this dream were filled with stylistic excess and looked like they were directed by an avant-garde poseur.

Whatever it was, it was very post-apocalyptic.

We'd been through some disaster, and the world was in ruins.

By we, I mean us.

Nobody knew for sure what had happened;

There were speculations, of course.

Nuclear war, plague, natural disaster.

Some scientists from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, went on short-wave radio, claiming it was all carefully orchestrated and most likely a collaborative effort between the Bilderberg Group and the John Birch Society.

The fact is, we'd been annihilated by something, some force beyond our human imaginations.

Millions of people just spontaneously combusted.

Others, like me, wandered aimlessly across the wasteland, trying to survive by any means possible.

Representatives from all of the Abrahamic religions met at an I-Hop in Oklahoma City to discuss the next steps.

For some reason, I-Hops were spared.

The only thing anybody could agree on was that the omelets tasted like they were frozen and microwaved.

At one point, the Jewish tailor turned to the Christian Martyr and said, "Do we have a generator and batteries?"

That's when I woke up.

I turned on the TV.

There was a local public affairs show playing;

A squat, fanatical little man was interviewing a stocky, arrogant woman.

Squat, Fanatical Little Man: "So God is a self-caused being..."

Stocky Arrogant Woman: "Of course..."

Squat, Fanatical Little Man: "But he didn't have parents..."

Stocky, Arrogant Woman: "You're missing the point... God isn't under any obligation to reveal anything to us... any of His works... He reveals what he wants to... on His own terms... in His own way... you can't get inside His head like that... you can't define God in human terms... He's like so far beyond our ability to conceptualize anything about Him... He's freakin' God, man!"

Squat, Fanatical Little Man: "But what kind of explanation is that? 'He's freakin' God?...' What does that mean?... that doesn't mean anything to me... it reinforces my belief that you really don't know what you're talking about!"

I turned off the TV, walked to the grocery store, and bought a Swanson Hungry Man Turkey Dinner and a pecan pie.

On the way back, I wondered if I could sustain this cool air of detachment I'd affected over the years.

Because there seemed to be a hell of a lot of time left.

And I laughed at myself as I unlocked the door to my apartment.