Searching
for Normalcy
Peter
Tieryas Liu
Dedicated to
Neej Gore
I.
My obsession
was listening to other people’s
phone calls. A single voice dwelling in a park on a swing, an auburn
morning
fading into the purple oblivion of pollution. I peeled away my
sensations,
musing about the way skin withered off, silicon plastics embedded in my
forehead like nails torn through my brows in a painful masquerade. I
spent my
mornings thinking about all the things that would never be, life being
that
series of conversations over coffee and coke and phone booths. Past
subway
rails and empty picnic tables and torn school books. All the other
stuff was
filler, never the fulfillment of one’s ravenous lust that consumed like
a
Neanderthal run amok. I stood and listened to people screaming into
their cell
phones, lonely whispers outside phone booths, pressing my ear against a
glass
box or waiting in line for unwanted calls. I didn’t try to remember
names, a
john or a jake or a jenny or a jane. Heard a girlfriend asking a
boyfriend why
he no longer loved her and a boyfriend asking a girlfriend why she no
longer
loved him. I traveled from street to street, waiting next to
obsolescent phone
booths, collecting what people said like a connoisseur of eclectic
conversations.
It all began
with moments. There was a day I
woke up late cause I’d received a phone call telling me an old friend
had
passed away. My wife of four years was sleeping in a separate room. In
the
morning, I slept through the alarm, eventually got up and showered. The
living
room sofa had been neatly set up. Even though my wife had been out of a
job for
a year, she was gone. There was a phone call. I picked up expecting my
boss.
Someone asked for my wife.
“She’s not
here. Who’s this?”
He remained
silent. Then hung up.
Later, during
dinner, I remembered a time as a
teenager when I’d gone to a friend’s house. As her parents ate, they
didn’t say
a single word. The mother served the food, the father read the
newspaper. It
was an act that played out every night, same time, same place without
variance.
I swore I would never be like them. But here I was, my wife reading
some
obscure cookbook, me, mute. When we’d met, we were like two sailboats
in a
fleet of ocean liners, our sails torn asunder, anchored together by the
stratifying mishaps of ritualized tedium. Routine was the breeze that
drove us
forward, cynicism tethering our hulls together. Even after thousands of
conversations, I was struck by how little we actually knew each other.
The
poverty of dialogue and the inability of our words to sate either of
our
appetites for companionship left us famished and lonely. It was hard
for me to
filter through the present coldness to one that had once smiled, lit up
at the
sight of me. Her expression when we made love or chatted about ancient
history
and music till four in the morning, damning fatigue and exhaustion.
The following
day, I went on a business trip for
three days. When I came home, there was a note that read ‘good
bye.’ I never spoke to her again.
I tried to
lose myself in work. As a marketing
guy, I dealt with people everyday, selling them things they didn’t want
or
need. I’d tell them the exact same lines in the exact same way with the
exact
same pose and the exact same smile. People would lie to me and we both
knew
they were lying but it was okay. It was all within the rules, the
boundaries of
pleasant deception.
One day,
while wandering through the city, a
phone began ringing. I blinked, saw it was a payphone. Not sure who it
was for,
I picked up.
“I’m gonna
rape your fucking ass and cut off
your legs and tie you up and bitch fuck you all day,” a coarse female
voice
said to me.
I stared
blankly, shifting awkwardly. “Excuse
me... Do you know, this is a public payphone?”
“Of course I
do you fuck. You think I don’t know
that?”
“But-but-you
don’t know me...”
“I’m watching
you right now.”
I hung up and
immediately left. For two days, I
gave into all my conspiratorial paranoia and isolated myself, refusing
to pick
up the phone or step outside. Only when it was over did I realize
something- I
felt alive.
And it began.
I noticed there were moments when
a person thought nobody else was around and they were completely alone
on the
phone- a few minutes, thirty seconds, an hour- I heard something in
their
voice. Honey, I’m going to be home a little later- no, don’t wait for
me. The
inflection, the subtle drop, the quivering in the throat, the
unconscious hair
sweep. Meaning under meaning, watching from afar, confirming something
even if
it was a vulgar reality, bare and viciously raw, unpolished,
unprepared,
unpresuming. It was pure in an adulterated way. I began with small
steps.
Sometimes, people would dial the wrong number and reach me at home.
Instead of
hanging up, I asked questions, encouraged them to talk. And they would
start
telling me things about their life. Others would hang up. But many
wouldn’t,
instead, doing something I’d never understood. Like an age of
confession. Obsessed
with one’s own drama. Describing things miniscule as grand. One’s
self-absorbed
pain being the most traumatic, a stranger to another. They never asked
me any
questions. It was almost like I wasn’t there, just a broken mirror
hanging
invisibly in front of them.
Watching
people, trying to partake in their
phonecalls. I wanted to know if they knew what I did. I wanted to hear
the
truth in their voices. At work, I couldn’t focus anymore. I’d be given
assignments to contact this person or that, and then I’d hear them talk
in the
same jovial bonhomie that meant nothing. What was the point of talking
if
everyone said the same thing but knew it meant nothing? So, I stopped
speaking.
People would talk to me and I wouldn’t answer them. They’d be confused,
upset.
They’d ask if I was sick, ask me to respond, a desperation in their
tone.
Sometimes, I could hear a residue of truth, a trace that reminded me
they were
real. But most times, it was only frustration and false morality. It
wasn’t
long before I left my job. Left my home. Left my career. My family. I
grew
tired of not hearing them.
II.
I was on a
long street with cars, some with
headlights on even though it was day. Business suits and suitcases
blended into
the massive billboards selling trends and beliefs, acolytes and
disciples of
the corporate church that gave you something to live and die for.
Standing next
to the phone booth, I was eating a
piece of a bagel someone threw away. A man in a blue business suit
furtively
entered the booth. He had half a mustache, curled oily hair, a suave
veneer in
his aquiline face that meandered between confidence and fear. He didn’t
close
the door, just took out a bunch of quarters and dialed random numbers.
I could
hear voices on the other side asking, hello?
Hello? HELLO???? He didn’t answer, just stood there, listening. He
repeated
this about forty times. Men, women, children. I could hear them
quizzically
wondering who it was. Some cursed. Others hung up, terrified by the
silence.
When he used up all his coins, he came out, ready to leave.
I approached.
“What do you
want?” he demanded.
“What were
you just doing?” I demanded back.
“What is it
to you?”
“I just saw
what you did.”
“And?” he
asks.
I stared at
him without saying anything.
He laughed
amusedly. “Walk with me through the
park.”
III.
“It’s silence
I want to hear,” he suddenly said.
“That single instance where a person is bare and pure and doesn’t know
how to
feel. The silence that follows. That’s all.”
IV.
“What do you
get out of this?” he wondered.
“What do you
mean?” I asked.
“I can tell
that wasn’t the first time you’ve
listened in on a conversation.”
“I don’t
really want to talk about it,” I
replied.
“Why not?”
“Words can
cheapen an experience,” I said,
“misrepresent a truth, especially when you try to describe it exactly.”
He laughed.
As we walked
along, I asked him about himself-
why he started doing what he did.
He answered,
“I got tired of losing things
because I wanted them so badly.”
“I don’t
understand.”
“You’ve never
lost anything?”
“What’d you
lose?”
He hardened
his eyes. Then said, “They say that
people only have a few motivations for anything they do. You think
people ever
do anything without any reason?”
“Love, hate,
jealousy, what real reason is there
for any of it?”
“The disease
is existence,” he said.
“What?”
He grinned.
“I’ve never thought nature
beautiful. I always thought people made up the word beautiful just so
they can
look at something forever. What if they discarded the words beautiful
and ugly?
Would any concept of physical judgment disappear?”
“No,” I
answered.
“Then words
don’t really mean anything.”
“Why?”
“Because
they’re just symbols for what we really
mean,” he said.
“Symbols are
important because they give things
meaning when they normally wouldn’t have sense of anything,” I said.
“Maybe,” he
replied. “Let me tell you a story. I
once met this woman by random chance. We were both looking for
champagne in the
supermarket. She’d just finished graduate school and wanted to
celebrate. We
exchanged awkward laughter, and I asked her with who she was
celebrating. She
frowned. No one. I remember she was wearing a black frock and a pair of
jeans.
Her hair was short, cut off right above her shoulders- and her eyes-
they were
like embers doused in a field of honey. Her skin was really pale and
touching
her was like running my fingers through a burning desert. You know in
Morocco
during WWII, the soldiers would heat up eggs on their tanks cause the
armor
plates got so hot. They’d sizzle sunny side up or scramble it with a
canteen
but you never used your gun cause you didn’t want gunpowder mixed in
with your
eggs. A little spark and everything would go boom. That was her. I
wanted that
moment so badly. She was sad to be alone. I insisted I would do
something for
her if no one else would. She pretended to be shy, refused initially,
but I
broke through all the barriers. Back at her apartment, she told me how
she’d
been studying hard for the last few years. After a few drinks, we made
love on
her bed. I know most people like to sleep right after sex, but I can’t.
I have
a hard time with anyone next to me. She was happy cause she thought I
wanted to
talk. This was her most intimate of moments. She told me about her
ex-husband,
how they’d been together for three years. One night, she came home and
found
him with another woman. He didn’t apologize even though she would have
forgiven
him. Instead, he cut off contact and refused to speak to her again.
“It was dark
but I could feel her. I could feel
all those lost moments, regret, pain, innocence shattered. She’d lost
something
pure. And I don’t mean her virginity. A man can fall in love just as
easily in
the span of a second as he can in ten years. She continued talking
about her ex,
describing what a scumbag he was, how he went from girl to girl. All I
could
think about was her wasted love. She’d be suspicious, reluctant of me
after a
while. We’d probably have a scene a few weeks into the relationship,
she’d ask
for space and time, demand that I prove myself trustworthy. It was
already
written. I didn’t want to play my part. So when she fell asleep, I left
and
never looked back. Truth is, if she had shut up, I would have loved
her. But in
this case, as in most cases, the truth wasn’t worth knowing.”
“But the
truth is what makes her interesting.”
“What do you
mean?”
“I love
people for their scars,” I replied. “No
scars and they’re a bore.”
“Self-induced
scars are signs of stupidity.”
“Then I’d be
the stupidest man alive.”
He laughed.
“It’s curious how normalcy seems so
abnormal when surrounded by abnormalities.”
“Then it’s
normalcy you’re searching for?”
“Or the lack
thereof,” he replied.
We conversed
for a few more minutes. He excused
himself to go use the restroom. An hour later, I realized he wasn’t
returning
and was filled with a pang of regret. I wished I could have at least
said
farewell.
V.
As a
nine-year old boy infatuated with imagined
histories and treasure coves of lost fortunes, there was no moment more
exciting
than when my mother brought home twelve boxes filled with old
telephones. Her
younger brother, my uncle, died in a motorcycle accident and left them
to her
in his will. We set them up all over the apartment, oblong ones, and
coldly
metallic ones. There were phones I thought carved from dead dinosaur
bones,
others from ancient Egyptian ceramics buried with resurrected pharaohs.
There
were cords made from the leather of old British armor sets and hides
from
sharks that struggled violently with fishermen for weeks. Many of the
cases had
been constructed from frozen plastic secretly harvested from the moon.
It was a
laboratory for the senses, all the phones hooked up so that one ring
would
result in a chaotic opera of discordant ringtones vying for domination.
I’d run
to pick up, curious who it was. I’d hope for a sword swallower, a piano
virtuoso with cerebral palsy playing with her tongue, an eco-terrorist
that
poured strawberry ice cream inside fuselages. Instead, it was almost
always,
“Is your mom home dear? This is JC Penny,” or some anti-climactic bore
of a
voice wanting to talk about bills and ‘special offers.’
My adulthood
would be different. I’d meet a
million different people, holding conversation parties with the entire
world.
My ear would be a permeable vessel for the turbulence of their
thoughts, a
balloon brimming with the hydrogen of inspiration and the volatility of
revolutionary musings. We’d chat about a world without smell or a
metropolis
where people only spoke in musical chords. We could plan a city made
entirely
of vegetables, Carrot Lake, the Celery Towers, Radish Hall. Ardor had a
thousand permutations and we’d discuss the ramifications of dissecting
each.
But to my disappointment, no one ever really wanted to talk about
anything
except their problems. That’s when they wanted to talk. At the end of
our
relationship, I couldn’t get my wife to say anything no matter how hard
I
tried. I called her from all over the world and all that ensued was a
rote,
automated conversation that could have lasted one minute as easily as
three
thousand. I wondered how many passionless ‘I love you’s,’ had been
carried
across the transatlantic cables, how much lusterless joy and rueless
savagery
that blended apathy with hatred and bliss. My words felt like a dulled
rifle
blowing holes into my kidney until my spleen was overfilled with the
gangrene
of suppressed bitterness and verbal martyrdom. Even my hatred felt
obtuse over
the phone.
Many had
their destiny invisibly carved by
phones, ones with the musty smell of disuse and dirt, or the lean
fragrance of
congealed honey and ketchup stains. I knew a man who killed himself
cause his
girlfriend left him, not realizing she would call him eight minutes
after his
suicide, confessing her mistake and expressing her desire to return.
One woman
stopped to take a wrong phone call for 12.33 seconds. On her way to
work, the
delay caused her to run a yellow light as it turned red, resulting in
the car
on the other side ramming her from the left. I knew of an uncle who
could never
forgive himself for missing his wife’s phone calls as she lay dying in
a
hospital because he’d turned the ringer off to take a nap.
I grew up
surrounded by his phones.
VI.
I often
strolled through the park alone. This
particular morning, I noticed a young woman playing chess by herself.
She had
light blonde hair that undulated into a field of cherry freckles
scattered
across her dapper cheeks. Thick glasses launched daintily in front of
her small
nose and she had wispy lips to offset her vanishing chin. She possessed
an airy
posture as though she were floating, continually swaying her body from
side to
side, gripping her seat so that she wouldn’t fly off. I sat across from
her and
asked if I could join her.
She nodded
her head without expression.
I noticed she
was several moves into her game,
playing herself.
“Who’s
winning?”
She didn’t
answer, absorbed into making her
moves.
I stared as
she moved her pieces, retreating or
defending appropriately. The rook took bishop; pawn, the knight. After
a few
moves, the game was over. She set up and started again.
Some time
passed before a man came by.
“Excuse me,
what are you doing?” he asked.
“I was hoping
to get a game of chess.”
“And?”
“She hasn’t
really said anything to me.. I’m
sorry- is she your-” I hung on the ‘your.’
He dutifully
completed it for me. “My patient.
She’s deaf and mute… I think it’d be best if you leave now,” he said.
“Does she
come here every day to play chess?”
“Sir.”
“Maybe she
wants some competition.”
“She’s been
doing this every day of her life for
the last ten years. I don’t think she wants any company.”
I looked at
her. Then got up. She was still
absorbed into her chess game. As far as she was concerned, I was never
even
there.
VII.
But I
couldn’t just walk away.
VIII.
She wasn’t
there the next day, or the one after.
But she was there on the third day. No one was around and I sat across
from
her. She said nothing, kept on playing. I thought about the
conversations I’d
heard earlier that day. A couple of guys asked some friends out to play
croquet
on donkeys. A young lady dressed in expensive clothes called in sick as
her
male friend waited outside the booth. A teenager was telling someone
about a
problem.
“I’m
obsessed. I can’t stop drinking shampoo and
cologne. I get so caught up with the idea of violating and destroying
all the
disgusting smells inside me. It’s like taking my hand, sticking it down
my
throat and ripping out my larynx and splattering it all over the floor
cause my
shoes and shirts stink so bad. It runs through my head a million times.
You’re
at work typing fifty billion words about nothing and giving people
change and
you’re thinking about your bad breath and everyone else too, especially
your
five-hundred bosses who have no clue what they’re doing. You try to
think about
this lady’s nice Tiffany necklace and how much her husband spent
getting it for
her and there’s all the beautiful people in the world and all of them
stink to
hell when they die or take a shit or wake up in the morning. All I’m
thinking
is, when is work over so I can go and chew on soap. I can’t stop
myself. I know
it’s going to screw me badly but even then, I just think, one more
time, one
more time. It can’t hurt. I need relief. I’m so tired of bad smells.
Everyone
else gets the real deal, real happiness, the hot wife with the nice car
just
cause they sold a ton of fungus. All I want is to swallow perfume. One
more
bottle, one more can.”
The chess
player waved her hands at me. I
startled, looking up. She was making a writing gesture with her
fingers. I
checked my pockets, found a pen. She ripped out a piece of paper from
her
notepad and wrote, “am i here?”
I stared at
her. “Uhh. I-” But she shook her
hand and gestured that I write it out for her.
“Yes,” I
wrote.
“how can you
tell?” She had very pretty writing.
“Because you
are sitting across from me.”
“how do you
know im not just part of
imagination.”
“You’re
playing chess.”
“touch my
face.”
She grabbed
my hand, and then directed it to her
face. When my palm pressed against her cheek, she closed her eyes and
held it.
Abruptly, she
let go and wrote furiously on the
paper. When she finished, she pushed the paper across to me.
It read, “i
am disappearing everyday. no one
wants to talk to me. my parents stopped coming long ago. eventually, i
will be
gone. i cant speak or hear anything. nothing exists for me, just like
this
chess game. i play and play everyday but no one remembers, no one can
tell you
who died on the battlefield and who sacrificed their life for victory.
i
collected feathers to try to see, marbles and crayons from countries
you’ve
never heard of and colors that no longer exist. but none of them
convinced me i
was real. even you dont exist. i cant tell that you do. i feel your
touch but i
could be imagining it. sometimes, i pretend i can hear people but i
know i
cant. if you cant hear people and they cant hear you, you dont exist.”
“I don’t
exist either,” I wrote back. “No one hears
me and I don’t hear anyone else.”
“symbolic
deafness and muteness dont count.”
“How do you
know I’m not really mute or deaf?” I
wrote. “You can’t hear me and you can never tell if I’ve heard anything
you
said.” I wondered if that last line would provoke her but I decided to
give it
to her anyway.
She laughed.
“thats true... why are you here?”
I thought
about it, thought about it for a good
long time.
“i’m here
because i can no longer hear myself, i
cant hear anything- everything’s so distant and alien... but i’m hoping
i can
remember my voice by listening to others.”
“any luck so
far?”
I sighed and
shook my head. “all i hear are
echoes that faded long time ago.”
She held my
hand again. “at least you can hear
the echoes,” she wrote with her other hand.
I gripped her
fingers. Then in a moment of
inspiration, reached across and kissed her softly. Her lips felt like
dead
peaches. She was shocked, her eyes dilated wide. She broke out into an
awkward
giggle, her fingers nervously tap-dancing across my face. A few minutes
later,
her guardian arrived.
“Tomorrow?” I
wrote.
She nodded.
When I
returned the next day, she wasn’t there.
I searched several more days for her. But she was nowhere in sight.
Maybe like
she said, she’d finally vanished.
IX.
Unfortunately,
my essence too was just a shard,
a sublimation of everything I’d wanted.
It was evening and
I found a hidden area in a park where I could sleep. I guess it was
possible
for me to find a home again, possible for me to try to get a job- try
to live a
‘worthy’ life. I remembered one night shortly after my wife left me, I
was
sitting in front of my computer surfing the web. There was a mosquito
flying
around which I tried to crush with my hands. I walked to my bathroom
and on the
way back, noticed a dead butterfly on the floor. I picked it up and
realized it
was actually just a leaf cut into pieces. For no explicable reason, I
smashed
the wall and threw my CD’s and DVD’s and flung plates at the glass
table my
ex-wife had purchased. Death was the normal end for everyone- there and
only
there, would my search for normalcy end. With the slither of a warm
liquid down
my numbed forehead as I felt nothing other than the voice of someone
yelling in
misguided desire that would eventually climax in another false set of
emotions
that really were a facade for pure bestiality.
Peter Tieryas
Liu has
recently had short stories accepted for publication in the Binnacle,
Prism Review, Quiddity
International Literary Journal, Yomimono,
and ZYZZYVA. He’s worked as a
technical writer for Lucasfilm and is currently a character technical
director
for Sony Pictures on Tim Burton’s, Alice
in Wonderland.