He reset it back a level. He got Yoko off (it was easy now) and laced his shoes. He’d forgotten to put on pants and Yoko laughed. “Let’s just stay here!” Jason said.
“No,” she insisted, “we have to go to the studio!”
It always went like that. If he dawdled too long the game would freeze and he would have to shut it off and reset it.
Jason paced in the small room. There were loads of Beatles records, but no way to play them. Who was this asshole? Even in this tense situation, Jason marveled at the Xperience. There were cat scratches on the bedposts and real wood grain on the floor. Jason walked up to the desk, but all his fingers could do was pull a trigger. If he held the gun he could walk out the door, but once he got to the hallway, he felt nervous and walked back into the room. He fired the gun and it went off, shot a bullet in the wall and he watched the huge puff of plaster. He tried to shoot his foot, but it would only shoot the floor around his foot.
He shot up the roof, but there was no sky. He shot the records and the pillow. The gun was unlimited. Eventually, a nondescript woman opened the door. “Are you missing your map?” she asked mechanically. Time hadn’t been spent on her face. Her eyes were dots. Her mouth, a slot. “It’s right here,” she said, picking a paper from the floor and handing it to him. “Here,” she said and left.
Jason looked at the map. He could not stop this. He walked into the hallway and out the door. He had never played a more twisted game. There was a yellow line he followed. Why couldn’t he stay as Jon? He’d rather get shot then shoot. He’d definitely rather that. He considered quitting. He was at the very end, and the end was so fucked up, it wasn’t like being a soundman for one level, for a concert level, this was chilly and dark. He thought about Jessica and all the other warm-blooded girls, the people on the street hearing Yoko’s orgasms. He followed the yellow line.
It was so unrealistic, the gun in clear sight. This wasn’t how it had been. He wanted a cigarette, in the game, but he wasn’t Jon. He was some freak who only had one control. He considered stopping the game to get an actual cigarette. Nonsense. He approached Central Park. He followed the line. He got to the point. He waited. He shot at cars and trees and no one did anything. An unlimited gun! Glass broke like how glass did, car tires ran flat when he hit them. A tree just took the bullets, absorbed them, did nothing.
Jon and Yoko got out of a limo and Jason put the gun on them. The gun traced them shakily. A vibration in his gloves made him twitch, the wall brightened white and he shot Yoko, it was a mistake! the whole thing was wrong! but the bullet ran through her not touching. Jon was stalled in place and Jason’s face got hot, why was this his responsibility, this stupid world! The glove shook, the wall went white. He shot Lennin and he fell. There was blood and Yoko screamed and Jason pressed select select select and switched to Yoko whose view was dripping tears, and select into Jon whose view was pavement, and the medley started up again, the view soared away, he felt such disappointment, he was being forced out of the experience! But the medley continued, and won him over. Screen shots from the game flashed on the wall, and it was nice sort of, it was sad, and then there were all the names of strangers who had made the game, loads and loads of Asian people, a few Americans too, the meaningless names of animators, assistants, advisors, interns, actors, researchers, archivists, singers, fabricators, programmers, designers, musicians, producers, lawyers. It kept going. It reached the end. It was around 9:00.
THE TOTEMS ARE GRAND
Afternoons find me slow in the bedroom, stiff listening to a woman working towards orgasm. The sounds are pretty animal ones. I don’t put music on. I’m always rooting for the woman, any woman. Hers takes her to a place she wants to explain.
Grandma was on her way dying, there was nothing to do. I poked around my room. Tried to invent new kinds of praying. Got naked. Did jumping jacks. I found an ant. Wondered, should I put it outside or in the garbage? The garbage is easier, but the ant dies. Not today, today it eats garbage. But when the garbage gets put in bigger garbage, the ant will get claustrophobic, die. Outside, the ant might get cold. My cell phone rang; the family had found something to make for Grandma. In the cousins’ yard, a bunch of trees just sitting there, doing nothing.
* * *
They’d already started when I got there. Hack-saws and chain-saws, milk paint. My parents, cousins, aunts, and uncles. Frankie explained as I got out. The dogs wove excitedly around us, dragging sticks. Little Freezy Jane took the knives from the drawer. Bananas wasn’t allowed any sharp object, so dug with a spoon in the dirt.
The trees had been gnawed like pencils. I picked up a gouge and mallet and peeled off the price-tags. I didn’t immediately carve a face in. A tree is best as is, to brand it—aesthetically questionable, but this tree was a telephone pole without electricity. It was skeleton and bare. Whatever relationship the other trees had with this one was gone; it needed decoration as a role, to keep it upright, how it preferred. I thought of Grandma and hammered the gouge into the bark, carving a big Jewish star. Fresh wood fell to my shirt, to the grass. And then a five-pointed star, which means Good! or Good Job! I looked at the other tree carvers. My parents were sharpening the chisels. My brother was hauling away the scraps so Frankie could cut the grass. I liked seeing us on the front lawn together. Like we had made the world small on purpose. I looked at them teary-eyed, but a family you can’t see all at once. A family runs at different intervals, though a family tree would have you believe everyone stays, waiting the whole thing out.
“Get some saw dust in those tears!” My uncle said, wailing his chainsaw through a tree branch. Cousin Milt poured beer over his carving. Usually we worked apart in businesses and schools, towards our own popularity and successes. If we ever made a great feast, we ate it immediately. We’d never left anything behind besides pictures, but now how the trees stood, noble and armless!
Delirious from teamwork, we built fires with the extra wood, pitched tents among the totems. Eyes closed pretending sleep, we imagined we were a tribe. These were skinny totems, sure, but in modern times one must comply. It was okay to cut up trees. We recycled. Dying gets everyone feeling alive. If you don’t distribute the energies right, a family loses money to gambling, affection to television, togetherness to private mulling.
The totems came along quickly. We used ladders and neighbors’ ladders, platforms built between two ladders. Spotters and runners. Milt hit his mouth like an Indian and we laughed. We carved smiley faces, an octopus, fish shapes, a gorilla signing sign language, a man, a woman, a baby/zombie, jack-o-lantern faces, plus numerous ballpoint pen drawings: the twin towers falling, ice cream sundaes, ships with cargo, peace signs, Mercedes signs, and Pearl Jam lyrics.
In the night, dogs barked to other dogs. Tough cars made fast noises. In the morning, Bananas held Freezy’s ponytail to her mouth, “Can you hear what I am saying? I am saying ‘I am saying.’” I put off going back to work. We gave this event a capital letter. Every Grandma-thought we coupled with this new thought: the Event! the Monument! Our thoughts left us at a happy dead end, the inevitable celebration of Woman and Monument. Feelings finally turned three-dimensional! We only discussed this at night, with the totems a safe distance back, glowing from the fire. Was it wrong to burn a tree’s arms in front of an armless tree? We laughed at Bananas’ question, but it troubled us. What about the flipside? There was always the flipside. You had to remind yourself. Oh yeah, the dying, we’d remember. Wood cut into a box. But how great the totems looked sticking up from the lawn!