Felt so bad so long

I sure am glad I was drunk when it happened. My memories are all so soft and blurry, merciful. It's funny because the day it happened I felt so bad about being drunk. I felt bad about it for months after it happened. For a couple years actually. But I don't feel bad now. I'm just glad.

The reason I was drunk was that I'd been up till 5 AM drinking because I'd just gotten fired. I wasn't working in the Towers--that would have been too weird. And I wasn't drinking alone. We had a party. I'd known for a long time they were probably going to fire me because I was barely showing up anymore, and I kept saying we'd have a party when they finally fired me. Me and my friends, I mean. So I came in that Monday morning and they fired me, and by suppertime I'd already been to the gym, gone to see a movie, changed the sheets on my bed, and been to the liquor store and bought three twelve-packs and eight bottles of vodka.

People started showing up around 8 and I remember we had music on incredibly loud and there were women I didn't know, because I told people to bring women, and my friends are amazing, even though almost everybody had to work on Tuesday. I got drunk so fast. I was drunk maybe by 9 PM and I stayed drunk until Tuesday afternoon. At 5 AM there were just three of us left, me the only one still drunk, there was silly string all over the apartment, and a hundred Solo cups, and I was so happy because I had such great friends. I went to bed happy as it was just starting to begin to get light outside.

I guess I woke up at about 9 because that's what time it would have been. I only know my phone had been ringing for five minutes because that's what Jess told me later.

"Ricky, are you okay?"

"I was until you woke me up!"

"Are you still drunk? Are you okay?"

"Yes, why?"

She tried to tell me but she didn't make any sense, and then she told me to go up on the roof. I went up on the roof and saw the smoke in the west, and it looked just like a nature show I saw about a forest fire once, and I guess that's why I just knew there was a forest fire. In downtown Manhattan. Until Jess finally got through to me.

"Ricky, I'm freaking out. Nobody knows what's going on. They think maybe all of New York is going to be bombed. Jackie said people are trying to get out on the bridges and they can't, everyone is trapped in the city."

I couldn't focus myself to save my life. Everything was funny, like amusing funny, even though I knew in the back of my mind it was deadly serious. I heard myself talking more than I actively talked. I heard my voice coming out and hoped I didn't sound too stupid. "It's all right, Jess. Just stay calm. You're not in any immediate danger. Right?" My head was floating about five feet above my body all day as I talked to Jess, and Jackie, and Brian, and Rachel, who said that one of her cousins worked in the Towers and wasn't answering. She was freaking out, she was crying. Everyone wanted to know if I could see anything from my place. I spent all day out in the sun on the roof. Somehow I had to be there for all these people and as the day went on I began to understand that there was no way to do it, there was no way to make anything okay, and I was completely and totally inadequate and I never should have gotten drunk the night before. And I felt like shit about that for a long time.

Rachel moved out of the city a couple years ago because she still couldn't sleep. Brian is in Afghanistan. And I'm fine, I still live here, that whole day is now like a tape of a cartoon to me, barely real. It's funny I felt so bad so long about something that was really just a big blessing.

Note: Googled "I sure was glad I was drunk when it happened," went off this picture.

The five things

There are five things that need to be done today.

One is that I have to get all of the robots working. I have thirteen robots and three of them are broken. I need all of them to be working because we are having a robot soccer game on Saturday and Josh Michael Henry Tommy and Jake are coming over and there needs to be enough robots for all of us. Ben probably isn't coming but he might come.

Two is that I have to make the invitations for the robot soccer game. They have to have a picture of a robot that I have to draw and they have to have the time the date my address and RSVP on them. I already told everybody about the robot soccer game but I want to have invitations because this isn't like a normal everyday party. This is a big deal and there needs to be invitations. I will give them out when people get here.

Three is that I have to clean my room. There are way too many clothes in here it's like crazy! There are so many clothes that it would be like the robots were climbing over mountains, and they couldn't get the soccer ball. We are just doing soccer this Saturday. On another day we could have war with soldiers and robots.

Four is that I have to be nice to my sister. No hitting yelling pushing or shutting her fingers in the door. I didn't shut her fingers in the door on purpose but she was trying to get in when I was doing explosions and I had already told her no girls were allowed but she wouldn't listen.

Five is that I have to call Josh on the phone because he needs to bring the soccer goals we made because they are at his house. I was supposed to bring them home when I was over there but I rode my bike and I forgot. Also you can't carry them and ride your bike at the same time. Josh is very absent-minded and so he might forget to bring the boxes on Saturday. I am worried, but he will probably bring them. Josh isn't allowed to use the raptor robot because he broke it one time.

Note: Googled "There are five things that need to be done today" and went off this picture.

Post-Improvement

I wanted to be told what to do. I wanted this, suddenly and profoundly, more than I had wanted anything lately beside a piece of chocolate pie. Bones were scattered around me, all over the floor, I had put the other astragalus somewhere unknown when I stopped to take the phone call because I always do that, my hands move completely independently of my consciousness when I'm on the phone. Trying to break up over the phone. Saying, "No, I know, I know that," my hands picking up astragalus and ulna and metacarpal and hiding them on me while my mind was twenty miles away. My body misbehaves.

It is impossible to work when one is ending a love affair. It is especially impossible to do creative work. Moreso when one has been hired, one suspects, on the strength of one's resume and not on one's knowledge, the resume having been concocted from scratch while drunk at the behest of this man. When I got the call for this particular installation I was dead sleepy, which is almost as good as being drunk, which explains why I wasn't too startled and frightened to say yes.

I was surrounded by the bones of one medium-sized Deinonychus, plus one replica of the Arc of the Covenant, one mounted oryx head, and one life-sized wax figure of Buffalo Bill Cody. My instructions were to create a Post-Ironic display for my employer's gigantic foyer using these four objects as motifs. I didn't know what Post-Irony was. I'd meant to Google it before I left that morning but once again I'd set my alarm for 7 p.m. instead of 7 a.m. and woke up at 8 and so there was no Googling.

I did know how the bones of a dinosaur go together. But I had never worked in a museum--as my resume averred--because museums don't hire people who don't have degrees. I learned how the bones go together from him, the way I learned how a lasagna goes together, the way I learned how a resume goes together. He was very interested in improving me.

It was impossible. I attached the skull of the Deinonychus over the skull of the oryx that night, in the silent cathedral-like place, and slid one of the long femurs into Buffalo Bill's hands in place of the rifle, which implement of destruction would then make up one of the legs of the dinosaur. The Arc I draped with Bill's fringed calfskin coat for an altar cloth. I found the lost astragalus on a windowsill, and eventually placed it back there in a hopefully Post-Ironic way. I picked up my phone and put it down again ten times. I didn't know how to break up with a man who had made me his life's work any more than I knew how to put together a proper art installation. I was without a prayer. I was Post-Improvement.

Somehow during the night one of the little foot-bones made it into my pocket. I didn't find it till I got home, but you know that of course I kept it. I love the shape of metatarsals, like distended drums, lithe and instantly recognizable. It was a message. It said, "What you take without thinking is more important than what you are willingly given."

Note: I googled "I wanted to be told what to do," and this image came up, is where this odd little story came from.