ELEPHANT

"Did you ever read the one, Elephant?"

"Is that the one where the guy loans his brother money?"

"Yeah, yeah. I love that story. It's just fucking devastating. Man, he's a fucking genius."

"Yeah he is. I always thought it must be him who's the brother who borrows the money, ya know? When the IRS has a lien on his tax return. That's just gotta be him, like right out of his life."

"Yeah, I never thought of that. Maybe?"

"But then both of them, the man AND the brother. I bet they're both him because he'd been on both sides in his life. He's just able to show you the brutality of every day modern life. I don't know, ya know. I don't see how more people aren't just fucking losing it. Everything's just so fucking fucked up, man. Like how do people just keep going on like everything's normal, like nothing's changed? I can't understand it. I can't understand anything anymore."

"You're right, everything's about as fucked up as can be. You just gotta do the best you can. That's all you can do. Everyone's gotta pay their bills and take care of their family. You can't make sense of any of it."

"Man, did I ever tell you about this guy, Lenny, who I lived with at that flight house in Queens?"

"I don't think so."

"It was like the first day I moved in there. I went into the living room and he was sitting there in front of the tv, watching Gilligan's Island and eating Chinese food. Remember Booger from Revenge Of The Nerds?"

"Yeah."

"Dude, I'm not kidding, that is exactly what this guy looked like. I mean, I'm talking EXACTLY!"

"Holy shit."

"I can still remember the episode he was watching."

"Which one?"

"It was the one where the gorilla finds like some stash of hand grenades and starts throwing hand grenades at everyone. I mean, like why the hell was there a gorilla on an island anyway? Gorillas don't live on islands."

"I don't remember that one. Man, remember the professor?"

"Fuck yeah. That dude was a fuckin' badass! He was a sexy motherfucker!"

"Yeah he was. That was back when men didn't have to be all muscled up and shit. Ya know, I really think I had a crush on the professor!"

"Haha. Yeah, well. Man, I bet he had a huge hog! It's always those subtle good looking guys. He probably had like a 31 inch waist or something... Anyway, you know, he was sitting there..."

"Wait, what was his name again?"

"Lenny. He was sitting there, watching Gilligan's Island, and I said, hey, my name's Phil, and he just kept staring at the tv, slurping up his fuckin' soup. God, I hate hearing people eat soup. Or cereal. It's just fucking disgusting. I just want to bash their fucking faces in!"

"Yeah, that doesn't really bother me."

"No?"

"No, not really."

"Huh. So then, ya know, I asked him how long he had lived there, and he dropped his spoon into the soup and he looked at me and said, I don't feel like talking to you. I don't wanna talk to anyone, okay? I said, sure, man, no problem."

"Damn."

"Yeah. I guess he was all fucked up and was living on disability. They said he went down to Jamaica or something and got all mixed up with the locals and he took something and lost his mind. He was an aircraft controller for Northwest. Is Northwest even still around?"

"I don't think so. I don't know."

"Yeah, I don't think so either. Wait, Delta bought 'em. That's right. Anyway, there were all these incidences with him. I lived there off and on for years and I only saw him a couple of times. He just stayed in his room and ordered Chinese food. That's all he ate. Every now and then, someone in his family would call and you'd go knock on his door and tell him but he never answered. So then I went over to Milan and when I got back I heard that one day out of nowhere the police surrounded the house and closed off the block and evacuated everyone. They sent in a SWAT team and they broke down the door and took him away. He'd been stockpiling weapons and bomb making shit."

"Oh fuck."

"Yeah. It's funny, ya know, more and more I find I can sympathize with almost anyone. I can look back at nearly everyone in my life and I can't blame them or even judge them all that much. As a whole, you know, I can't stand humanity, but as individuals, they're pretty interesting. I wish I could go back and talk to Lenny, ya know. I really feel like I understand him now. I feel like I could've helped him."

"Oh yeah? What would you have said?"

"Shit, I don't know. Something."