Investation

Sol fell back into some time-warp trust-fall waking –up-just-before-you-hit-the-ground drifting off at his desk mess. Some redeemed Judas veteran of, oh so many bullshit campaigns and vindictive… not even machismo but just the worst part of growing up and now that’s all forgiven. Glided into the room. There’s Brird too young to look the same but he was always one of those poor bastards who looks ready to check out or at least retire by the first time an “uncle” or some other ersatz easy-come-easy-go father figure taught him to ride a bike, pushing pushing pushing and then letting go and who’s there to pick him up off the ground? Yeah that’s what Sol got the first time they even met, and all that happened since was just the outside catching up to what you’d pick up in the first ten minutes (OVER & OVER) if you ever had the misfortune of getting the guy drunk. And now, thirteen years later (earlier) here he is all stripped down and playing some off-Broadway Dante, or. It all hangs on who Sol is supposed to be here, Virgil or Scrooge or, what, an origin story? But he’s getting ahead here, there’s the full crew. Vinnie “Scorch” Jinkins, with absolutely no story worth telling behind his nickname, not even a pyro which probably sets him apart from the great bulk of his hereditary neighborhood, but a good guy to have around when you need some Big Talking, hyperbolizing and the like. Jinkins unlike so many others never made the transition from Adolescent Liar to Successful Businessman, and only exists now to Sol for the purposes of this experience, being the kind of guy you lose touch with once and can’t even recognize his face aged beyond all recognition half a year later. Donny comes in, pure theater, all flash and unnecessary singing with that damn tenor-y vibrato that Sol can’t, never could, stand, but Donny (and he’s definitely the “once a Donny, always a Donny” type) was always bearable in small doses as long as you didn’t aspire to His aspirations. Sol almost recognizes the song even but realizes it doesn’t matter, and Donny is flanked by three Chris’s. Two would’ve been enough really number three wasn’t even around what, more than a summer and change? and for an instant in the peripheral they were almost keeping up to the rhythm, snapping, maybe wearing some kind of matching hats and get-ups, but no, that’s just Donny not even content to have his own Production going on here in Sol’s mind but simply MUST get the whole crew involved. And that’s when in a flash of consciousness Sol finds the whole thing a little skeleton, even in the little mental room engineered specifically for these Ghosts of the Past we’re talking some kind of medieval Great Hall but none of the guests, Viking warriors with the whole horned helm and blood-crusted axe deal, Saxon princes and wine that wouldn’t even pass for spoiled by modern standards but got the job done for Priest and Pagan alike, even made it to the place just a ragged bunch of younger by the minute – what – former ACQUINTANCES? Sol isn’t even asleep anymore and the whole thing crashes onto him and he’s got no one to go to, and he just thinks to himself (out loud, but in a drooling mumble) well if this isn’t human I don’t know what is.
“Eeh thee ivn’t hoo men ah dunft no wuv if,” more or less. None of this even seemed like a contemporary problem, as troubling as it instantly was. Maybe some kind of deep seated emotional issues, in fact, sure, sure. But really at the core of it was that Sol was the most normal person he knew. He was completely regular and kept his meltdowns regular and decent and civil and really who has any friends at his age? A center would be nice but that isn’t even what friends were for, and at the same time a Different Sol – an alter-ego that shared conscience and body and split only in Key Moments when the True Sol lost himself in – “thought”?? – and panicked and got some crazy regular ideas and instead had his own personal moments but in a completely optimistic (and, therefore, quite suspect) key – turned on the television, a barely color TV set lingering in the back of True Sol’s and Different Sol’s collective mind that occasionally found its way dangerously forward, and reminded the both that all this talk of friendship and center was almost entirely plagiarized from a handful of early 80’s situation-comedies and some accompanying advertising spots. Well anyway, the whole Viking Hall fantasy was done now, not even drifted away. Not even something obvious like television snow or “Th-th-that’s all, folks!” just gone and more-or-less forgotten and Sol realized he had the first five or six notes of some song he couldn’t even recognize in his head.
“La, la-la, mah mahhhwww,” and so on.
By now the sun was on its way up. One of these nights. Again, can’t be a good sign, but what would be… eight hours of sleep? Probably a bit defensive, Sol found the whole business just too routine. He slept when he was tired, which once again came around when he should’ve probably been waking up – should in this case not entirely objective, but there were health and social concerns at play, even if we were to write off (as Sol was almost too consciously in his head, lying on the couch and hadn’t even bothered to take his shoes off) career concerns as, what, hegemonic, unnatural? This wasn’t really his line, but once in a while – not often – Sol would become downright angry about the whole capitalist nine-to-five conspiracy dragging us all down into some kind of routine clockwork sun worship ordeal which left little for the nocturnal members of society. Not even Under, just perpetually some kind of Inverted class, Those Who Dwell in the Incorrect Timezone. Why is that even, he finally came back to. Some kind of curse? Bad karma? Please just no more of the pop psychology tonight, especially when Sol found insomnia so easy to rationalize. It was around this point, skirting the edges of possible psychological issues and the Death of the Day that he without warning drifted off.