What I Know
Ever since the toilet seat fell down on my son a while back, I have been having trouble sleeping. I became suddenly aware of how depraved the universe can be, of to what malicious lengths it will go to derive its entertainment. Think how my son, then just twenty months old, must have felt. He had only recently discovered the wonder of his lower parts; and then, after untold hours of instruction and demonstration, the quiet glory of a manly stance, an upright tinkle. Only to have his victory, as it were, squashed.
Because of this incident, my attitude toward the cosmos changed. I became suspicious and cynical. I favored the Old Testament over the New. I openly defied those black-hearted ride operators of our Pinteresque carnival to ever catch me so unawares.
Unlikely things have been happening to me ever since. Last December, during a solitary stroll through the woods, as I basked in the amity of snowbent grass, of crab apples frozen on bare brittle limbs, an icy stream aglitter with sunlight, I tripped over an artificial leg buried in the snow. It was a right leg, with foot attached, faded pink fiberglass from the knee joint down, a rotting leather harness above the knee. There it lay two miles from the nearest road, six miles from the nearest house. My mind still reels with the implications.
In Brussels I was shat upon four times by the same pigeon, a keen-eyed squab who, balanced on a bookstore ledge, kept apace above me as I moved along the store’s window, reading titles. It was an overcast day and I assumed that heavy drops of rain were plopping on my head. Only with the fourth plop, when the accumulation in my hair drizzled onto an ear, did I reach up to wipe it away, and then discovered the slippery truth.
In Barbados I hacked open a coconut after sipping its water through a straw, and a tiny green frog fell out.
In the Sierra Nevada Mountains I spent seven hours blazing a solitary trail to a precipice with a stunning view of the valley below, more certain with every step that I was treading where no man had trod before. On the summit I stood victorious, gulping sweet air, my soul huge with gaia, the oneness. I chanced then to look down. On the flat rock at my feet, spray-painted in fluorescent orange, was that two-word epigraph that directs the reader to engage in a physically improbable union with himself.
In Tijuana I bit into a piece of marzipan, crunched down hard on something that did not yield to mastication, and spit out a tooth. It was an ugly thing, a molar, as gray as charcoal. Horrified, I drove like a madman to San Diego, convinced that my jaw was falling apart. A kindly dentist identified the molar as but a visitor to my mouth, a restless wanderer in search of its roots. I was treated to a tetanus shot and a bill for eighty dollars. I had stomach cramps for a week.
One sunny April afternoon in Columbus, Ohio, a bat bit me. Earlier I had sneaked out of the haunted attic of the Thurber mansion, where I had been sequestered and charged with the job of inspired composition, and hurried downtown to meet the artistic director of a theater company, a man who claimed to be eager to produce my plays. “They’re so juicy, so full of life,” he had said over the phone. Soon I stood knocking on his door, which, just minutes after our conversation, I found locked.
Suddenly I heard an incongruous noise, a kind of flapping rustle. I felt a presence at my feet. I looked down. A shiny black bat was gnawing on my sneaker. He had sunk his pinlike teeth into the rubber toe of my Keds and was fiercely beating his wings up and down, either trying to extricate himself or to plunge his fangs into something juicier.
I yelped, simultaneously executing a Rockette kick, punting so hard that I pulled a hamstring muscle. The bat was launched up past my face, pink teeth bared as he hissed at me. I jerked away, giving myself a mild whiplash. The bat fell flat on his back at my feet again, wings splayed, fangs chomping air, bright little rodent eyes fiery with lust.
***
What, you must surely wonder, is the lesson to be learned from all this? I wonder too. For forty years now I have been trying to get a handle on the universe and the design or lack of design behind it. Men and women far smarter than me have invested even more time and energy in the same consideration, and a definitive explanation is yet to appear. But I can tell you this much, and with certainty:
1. a city bat, seen too close, is a terrifying thing;
2. a sweet tooth tastes best unshared;
3. no matter where you go in this world, somebody with a can of spray paint has been there before you;
4. pigeons and other animals know what they are doing;
5. you should be careful not to put your best foot too far forward, lest the other foot can’t keep up; and finally,
6. always keep one eye on the toilet seat, boys, and be prepared to jump.
