WHAT HAPPENED
I woke up late and when I got to school third period I didn’t have an excuse, so I got a detention. Really, I guess—if we are being completely honest, I got a detention for asking Mr. Beekman why he was unhappy that I wasn’t on time. He said that I was supposed to be in school. I said, but why are you unhappy about me not being in school. He said because I need to get an education. I said that the whole thing was a farce. Did he believe that the American public was educated? Was that his argument? That he is helping to educate the population of a democracy—and that he wants me to be there at the start of first period so I can do a good job voting some years from now when he is being wheeled around in his old-age home? At this point, he gave me a detention and made me sit down.
That whole business made Stephan want to pass me a note, I guess, since he did. The note said, not-a-democracy-ha. The girl, Stephanie, who passed it to me—yes, that’s right, Stephanie passed me the note from Stephan; I don’t know; people should come up with better names for their fucking children, it’s not my job—anyway, Stephanie tried to look at the note, but the writing was really small so she couldn’t read it.
The point is—and how this lines up with the prediction (1) is that I had detention after school—right at three. So, there was the question, will I go to detention? I wasn’t sure what would happen if I didn’t go. Maybe I would get another detention? If so—that just means I get to schedule when my detention is by going or not. Probably, they give me two. Each one not gone to means two. I bet that’s it.
Well, I didn’t go. Sure enough, three p.m. I got on the bus, number 12—then bus number 8. I had my raincoat—I always wear it when I visit her because I saw a film, Rascal Sven, about an old Swedish man who goes to a mental asylum, or is put there, and someone comes to visit him (his brother) wearing a raincoat. Then that guy—Sven’s brother, who is really kind, evidently they all love each other in Sweden—gives Sven the raincoat, and so Sven leaves in the raincoat and his brother stays at the mental asylum, and when Sven has gotten away, the brother says that he is not Sven and they have to let him go. There is a lot of singing in the movie but it isn’t a musical. Sven just sings these shitty little songs when he does something clever.
So, I figured—maybe I have the raincoat, maybe I’m there, maybe my mom recognizes me, and I can give her the raincoat—then she can get away, go somewhere. I don’t even need to see her. I just don’t like the idea of her sitting by the fish pond.
So, I read my insect book, and this time it was a story about a scientist who alters his DNA to grow a huge fly eye on his forehead. He ends up going insane because he can’t sleep since the eye can’t ever close. In my opinion, a terrible story. I walked up the drive, got my pass from a girl who looked nearly the same age as me. My mom’s room was not what I expected. It had been moved, but she wasn’t there. So, we went down to the fish pond, and there she was, hair in a ponytail. The orderly who escorted me there, a kind of wiry guy in his twenties, asked me about my book so I gave it to him. That’s the kind of thing I like to do sometimes.
I sat with my mom and she did some gurgling. I thought about how it was easy to think it meant something—the gurgling, but it was actually like leaves or gravel or layers of skin. I mean to say—it isn’t meaningful, it isn’t meaningless. Things just don’t really apply to us in particular, even though we want them to.
The orderly came back and he had an applesauce. I think his idea was that I could give it to my mom. It was nice of him—and probably just about the limit of his resources there as an orderly, this applesauce gift, but I wanted nothing to do with it. He could see that, so he didn’t offer it to me. I don’t know, maybe he was just going to eat the applesauce and he forgot I was there at the fish pond. Certainly, my mom wasn’t going to tell on him. Practically anything could happen right in front of her and she wouldn’t notice.
So, I walked back down the drive, took the bus to the bus to the bowling alley. I was wrong before, by the way, about someone talking to me. No one talked to me on the trip there, and no one talked to me on the trip back. At 4QL Helen made me a Manhattan and I was instantly drunk. I sat slumped in one of the pleasantly curved plastic chairs for about two hours watching people bowl until she was finished and then she drove me home.
PREDICTION
So, I made a prediction while I was drunk at the bowling alley. It wasn’t much of a prediction. It was this: I would get home and my aunt would say that the school had called because I didn’t go to detention and then I would say that I had gone to the Home and then she would notice that I was drunk and she would thank Helen for bringing me. What she wouldn’t do is: yell at me for skipping detention, yell at me for being drunk, yell at Helen for giving me alcohol.
My aunt has some rules for the house. They are pretty similar to the rules my dad had when we all lived together. The first rule is, Don’t do things you aren’t proud of. Just don’t do those things. If you end up getting in trouble because of it, then the whole group of us deals with that problem together. But, there is no reason to do things you aren’t proud of. All right, that’s rule one. Rule two is: Don’t believe nonsense, and don’t behave like a robot. It’s much better to get in trouble than it is to be a robot, because the effects of being a robot are difficult to remove.
These rules aren’t ever stated—there isn’t a rule sheet. It’s just the way things are. As long as I am keeping to them, my aunt will stick up for me, I’m sure of it. She isn’t disappointed in me. I really think she thinks I’m doing a good job. I think so too, but probably the two of us are alone in that. Even Helen gives me a sad look when she sees me. Probably she thinks I will become a prostitute. Well, she knows I’m not one yet—because I never have any money to pay her for the drinks she gives me!