Don't Tread on Me

Don't tread on me me me me me me me.

Imperative sentence: to whom is the imperative addressed? Anyone who opposes me me me me me? Duly appointed or elected leaders? Fellow solipsists? "They they they them them them"?

(N.B.: Gadsden owned slaves.)

"Don't tread on me" means me over us.

Says me over you.

Declares me over we.

Asserts unbridled rage.

Shows dick-swinging anger.

Brandishes stupidity.

Heralds anarchy.

Celebrates hypocrisy.

Rejects discourse.

Rationalizes hate.

Waves intolerance.

Radiates racism.

Betrays patriotism.

Hides cowardice.

Invites insurrection.

Waltzes with strongmen.

Subverts democracy.

Abuses free speech.

Wallows in rancor.

Swims in solipsism.

Treads with jackboots.

Corrupts civility.

Drowns in delirium.

Founders in furor.

Withers in wantonness.

who holds the keys

Chain-link fence outside the power plant. Padlocked. A padlock one could buy at the hardware store. Cabinet for the electrical service into the building, protected by bollards. Padlocked. Switchbox out on Route 41, middle of nowhere. Same. Electrical panel in the subway. Padlocked. Gate at the stadium entrance. Iron railing around the government offices. Same. Same. The briefcase with the codes. The restaurant closed for nonpayment of taxes. Padlocked. Padlocked. Her jewelry box, his gun cabinet, their storage locker. Same. Same. Same. Her secret, his secret, their secret. Who has the key. Keys. The missile silo. The hidden tabernacle. Silent shelter. Cave. Padlocked. Shackled. Handcuffed. Locked. The safe deposit. The vault. Who the keys, who the will. Where the keys. How. When.

missing

I got off the bus at West Genesee and West Fayette. A young mother with a toddler and an infant in a stroller struggled to navigate the steps down onto the sidewalk. I let them go and did my best neither to feel nor exude impatience. I stepped onto the sidewalk buffeted by a blast of December wind. Something on the ancient, rutted utility pole caught my eye. What? A Missing Persons poster was stapled on two sides of the pole. I moved closer. There, to my shock and horror, was an unmistakable image of me, under large block letters spelling MISSING with an exclamation point (fortunately, only one instead of the customary three). Below that was a photo of me in my Icelandic sweater, bought in Reykjavik in January 2016. It happens to be one of my favorite self images. My older glasses are bolder, my hair is longer and less gray, and I sport a sexy smirk, or so I've been told. So thanks for that. Anchoring the bottom of the poster "$5,000 Reward" is offered. How is that amount calculated? Is it based on the poster's (as in "one who posts") resources or my putative value? My name is provided. It is spelled correctly, with no middle initial. No information regarding age, reason for missinghood, potential danger to self or others is offered. The only other data provided is that I was last seen at the Solvay Post Office. Last seen, wait for it, today. Today? Is somebody trying to tell me something and what is it? I shook this off, having lingered for who knows how long at the corner absorbing all this. I proceeded west on Fayette toward home. Every utility pole, all eight, had two missing posters stapled onto it. Just me. Nobody else. I kept walking. Evening was descending, as it does so early in December. I quickened my pace. I keenly looked left and right, searching for something or someone, I didn't know what. At the end of the block, I paused and looked in back of me, where I had just traversed. Nothing. I turned left onto Williams Street, toward my apartment building. I decided I would not enter by the main door, at the lobby with the mailboxes. I somehow felt safer entering by the seldom-used back door. As I walked down the six steps to the door, key fob in hand, i halted. Another one on the door. I could have turned away. Turned away to go where? I summoned either courage or foolhardiness, waved the fob, and entered. now my heart was racing. I was sweating. I walked up the stairs to the third floor. I gingerly, and as quietly as I could, strode to apartment 312. Another poster.

cold hard cash

The twenty they gave me had writing on it. The bank gave it to me. I didn't notice until an hour later, about to buy coffee.  You've seen this sort of thing. A phone number or a website. This had both. Normally I pay it no mind and use the bill as I would any other. Not this time. I transferred the twenty to my right pocket, the pocket reserved, superstitiously, for savings or safekeeping or temporary non-use. Later on, in the late afternoon, I texted the number on the bill, not knowing if it was a landline or a cell. I texted, "Hey there." I got no answer. I got no answer for weeks. In fact, I said what the hell and forgot about the whole thing. Out of the blue, I get a "hey there." I don't respond to numbers I don't know. Who was this? I soon realized it was a reply to my original message of same. Part of the same thread. 

Can I help you?
I don't need any help. Who are you?
Who are you?
Au contraire. 
Exactly.
What do you want?
Same as you.
Are you male or female?
What's it to you?
Where are you?
Same.
What does that mean?
How 'bout you?
Same.
Want to meet? Someplace neutral.
Beige.
Why should we?
I'm afraid.
Why did you do that?
Do what?
Write your number on the twenty.
What are you talking about? I didn't leave no number.
Any.
What?
Never mind.
Meet?
You crazy?
Course not. And if I am, what's that make you?
Crazier.
Right.
Left.
Don't text me again.
Me neither.
Same.
Same.

fridge

I opened the door. The light came on, porcelain bright. I blinked. Blinked again. Bare shelves. Naked racks. Nothing on the door. Nothing in the crisper or plastic sliding bins on the bottom. A minimalist's dream. How about the freezer? Same. Not even ice. Yesterday was different. Milk, butter, deli sliced roast beef and turkey, mayo, ketchup, mustard, apple juice, lettuce, string beans, cherries, rice pudding, whipped cream in a can (expired), skyr yogurt (raspberry, strawberry, mixed berries with acai, vanilla), half and half, fresh gazpacho given to me as leftovers from the party, thawing chicken cutlets, carrots, Pepsi (the small cans), Pellegrino carbonated water. That's all I can remember. It was only yesterday, but that's the best I can do. The freezer? French vanilla ice cream (mostly gone; freezer burn crystals), marinated chicken cutlets, chicken wings, ice packs, ice cubes, soup, mixed vegetables, Indian food for one, hamburger patties, buttered corn. All frozen solid.

That's the best I can recall. It wasn't much, I admit. But gone. Disappeared.

All of it.

Where'd it all go?

Who took it and what did they do with it, and why?

Things just don't disappear, don't flee to another dimension, despite the standard jokes about socks missing from the dryer. That's funny. This isn't.

I feel violated.

No one has a key, as far as I can tell. She gave me her keys back. Finally. I made her. I have them on my bureau. She too. I made her return them. They're in the drawer. Maintenance? I asked. The office downstairs? They said no, of course not, clearly insulted. 

Could she, or her, have secretly made duplicate keys? Easily. I could have done the same. That's too easy a plot line. Too facile. Obvious. I don't buy it. Not because of intuition or intentional blindness, but because a) they would be easy targets as suspects b) the cameras; the cameras would show them (more on that later c) why now? why now after all these years? d) we were on such good terms, unless it was a charade, a facade e) if she, or her, were to stealthily intrude now, to what good? Cui bono, as they say in Latin

If it was her, or her, what was the trigger? And why this and not the money in the envelope for all the world to see, left untouched because I had it boobytrapped?

Someone, singular or plural, did this. I don't mean aliens. Someone.

Not as a joke. Some joke, eh? No, as a subtle and sophisticated mindfuck. I take that back, not so subtle. No note. No message smeared in lipstick on a mirror. No fingerprints, I suppose. What's the difference? You think the police are going to dust my fucking refrigerator for prints? Really. Because my fridge is empty? Emptiness was my default until a few weeks ago. (There's an aphorism for you.) I'd resolved to eat better, cook for myself, be healthier, save money.

Him? Him, you say? I can't see it. Talk about a flash from the past, the past before the past. He was a bully then, and might be now, but what would be the point? What would be the gain? If anything, it should be reversed. I should be stalking him and performing some intricate, elaborate indecipherable mindfuck scheme.

Here's what bothers me. There's nothing on the cameras, nothing in the lobby or in the hallway or by my door. Nothing. I sat in the office for 4 hours, winding, rewinding, stopping, freezing, and slo-moing. Nothing. Explain that.

Them. Them, you say? Impossible. They were only in my class for one semester, and then they went their separate ways, as disparate as dandelion seeds parachuted from seedheads into the whipping wind in a dozen directions.  

You. You. I thought of you first. You knew I would. That's pretty clever, if it was you. I could almost laugh. Almost. If it was you, I'm dying to know how you tricked the cameras. Hack the system and photoshop the footage? Not you, unless you got some professional help. From him.

Don't worry.

I have your keys.

Keep an eye on your toothbrush.
 

quote unquote exciting

I strolled into my bank. "My" is undeserving of this application of a personal pronoun. The article "the" is apt in this context that is being built one verbal brick at a time. When this institution was a credit union, when I joined it in 1990, "my" would be literally and figuratively correct. But that was then. (I don't have to tell you we live in radically different times. Even if you hear someone lament the externals of these times, you can't commonsensically conclude whose side they are on: the uncivil, invidious xenophobes or the unmoored, vexed communitarians [moi].) 

Back to my bank stroll. 

I glide through the lobby, a boulevardier without portfolio, a citizen of the commonwealth (as if our wealth were common!). Absent any forethought, I ease into one of the cozy faux-leather chairs arranged away from the tellers, a distance from the glassed, venetian-blinded offices of "associates." The armed chairs (meaning they had armrests not weaponry) were in a tight circle around a nonexistent bonfire, adjacent to a Keurig with coffee pods, creamer, sugar, stirrers, all of this free stuff intended to enhance the customer experience, to welcome bank customers and prospects, or bank customers' or prospects' friends or relatives awaiting the financial-task-performer's task completion. Granted, the chairs might potentially host a waiting retinue attending to latter-day Bonnies and Clydes or Jesse Jameses, their thumbs gliding on "devices" in order to share strategic get-away info. (But why would they be so foolish or risky? Today's thieves silently hack, 24/7, invisible even to the rest of the household above the Mountain Dew-empties-littered room in the basement illuminated only by a nest of computer screens.) Do not so breezily dismiss this heist theory: at the entrance, the bank warns entrants against wearing hats or sunglasses for this very reason. Really? How retro!

As I said, I plop down on the tawny-cream vinyl waiting-room-decor chair. I figure I'd complete a text or two before entering the line (no waiting line evident, actually) to "do my business." Being old, I am an agonizingly slow texter, using my (not "the") index finger, not my thumbs, which anyone under 40 does, which is agonizing for millennials et al. to observe. Drives them nuts.

No hurry.

A flaneur not in France. 

An associate pops out of her office, her face barely disguising worry and urgency.

"Can I help you, sir?" she asks in the international language of officialese.

Insouciantly (to continue the français theme), I reply, "No, I'm fine."

If I could've, comfortably attired in my paisley smoking jacket, sans chapeau, I'd've lit a cigar, tossed the wooden match, and asked her for an espresso.

I continue my dilatory digital dalliance on my device.

Within minutes, another associate pops out of her office, next-door to the office of the aforementioned associate.

"May I help you, sir?"

Your poseur-narrator, a former English teacher and retired editor, appreciates her understanding of the distinction between "can" and "may."

However, for this gadabout, the word "sir" in her query is jarring, off-putting. Why? Three, maybe many more, times this associate and I have interacted professionally at the (not "my") bank. She has answered my queries, helped me perform the proper paperwork, seen my signature affixed, and secured a financial instrument or two for me.

Sir?

You don't remember my name, or if not my name my visage, or if not my name or face my signature if I show it to you?

Without hard evidence and with a dollop of imagination, I conclude the two bank associates see me as a threat, an indolent idler casing the joint. A would-be John Dillinger or "Pretty Boy" Floyd in-waiting. (Pawlie Kokonuts does have a certain criminal panache, don't you agree?) 

Some welcome, Keurig and all.

This institution boasts the slogan "America's Most Exciting Bank," a curious tagline given that a tsunami is at least as exciting as a wedding; given that a once-in-a-lifetime stock market plunge is at least as exciting as a World Cup victory.

Despite my insouciance, was I too exciting with regard to Financial Institution Security Heistiness (FISH)?

May I help you, sir?

"No, I'm fine. Thank you," I replied avec un sourire anglais.

trench warfare

They've been out there day and night. Bright lights run by portable generators keep the operation going in the dark hours. The backhoe burrows its way up the street, or down or around, carving a narrow path parallel to the sidewalk. The trench is no wider than the backhoe's digging bucket. A trench box sits idly by; no one is ever in the trench when I stroll nearby. From the look of it, they dig, fool around down in the dirt, add or take out pipes or cables or who-knows-what, and then cover it up with dirt and zip it up with some asphalt. It looks shitty afterward, bumpy and lumpy; unfinished.

You can hear them when you try to sleep.

They say you get used to it, in the way that people who live near train tracks do. 

What are they digging? Why? What is taking so long? What are they putting in? Or taking out? When will it stop?

UTILITY WORK AHEAD announce signs on every corner from every direction in the neighborhood of a dozen or so streets.

At first, the backhoe (always just one, on its solitary mission and journey) was accompanied by two or three vans from the local power utility with its crew of hard-hatted men smoking cigarettes, lolling, laughing, and pretending to play their roles as Official Construction Voyeurs (OCVs).

Then, on the same streets, rectangular tree-lined city blocks, east and west, north and south, hill and dale, flat and sloped, a new squad of support trucks arrived. The same trenches were dug again, in exactly the same manner, sequence, and pattern. Only now, the vans and hard hats were ostensibly with the phone company, if that's what they still call purveyors and providers of phone service, be it cellular, land line, or any other kind of phone service, such as it is.

In a span of fourteen days (I started counting by making daily notes on my wall calendar, opposite the window looking down onto the street they always start and end with), day and night, night and day, the trenches are dug, inserted or lifted or subtracted or added, bright lights illuminating, generators gurgling, chewing up and chugging the recently excavated miniature dirt-filled canals.

Fiber optics?

Then the water company came in. How did I know it was the water company? The blue vans displayed the logo of the water company, as did the hard hats, the jackets, and the vehicular warning signs.

I wanted to talk to the OCVs or a foreman (no women ever join the crew, not yet).

'What's going on?" I shouted.

They looked at me blankly amidst the din, as if my vernacular is foreign and unintelligible, as if they couldn't read my lips.

During the next fourteen-day cycle, the yellow backhoe was accompanied by white panel trucks with no identifying name or signage or license plates. The six-man crew wore white work pants, white vests, white hard hats, white boots, and white gloves. Three of the six wore white balaclavas.

During the most recent fourteen-day cycle, the yellow backhoe was accompanied by black panel trucks with no license plates and no identifying name or signage. The six-man crew wore black work pants, black vests, black hard hats, black boots, black gloves, and black balaclavas.

Then the streets went dark, no power on any street light or in any house. 

No car driving by shone its lights.

The only light shone from the pole-mounted surveillance cameras on the two corners, their iridescent blue eyes blinking silently.

And the UTILITY WORK AHEAD signs are gone.

digitalitis

Returning from the bathroom at 3:08 a.m., you check the iPad by your bed, more out of daytime habit than need or expectation. No emails, no notifications. Same with your pre-smartphone "device." No messages or calls silently announced (because you purposely dictate silence in the night hours, though that carries a risk of not learning of a dire need or catastrophe, personal or global). Arousing from a slumber, late, just before 8:30, you check again while lounging in bed, warmly enveloped under layers of flannel sheet, comforter, and thin quilt. Again, nothing. No white numeral embedded in the red alert circle in the upper right of the tablet's mail app; no announcement bars of missed calls or messages on the outdated unsmartphone that people mistakenly think is a Blackberry. You have your standard breakfast: Heidelberg Cracked Wheat toasted; three slices, all with Earth Balance Original spread, one with Welch's grape jelly; Simply Balanced organic black tea; a dash of whole milk; grapes. As is your custom, while you eat you partake of a digital fast, ignoring blips or pops or other notifications, which you make aurally available now that you are mobile and inching toward awakeness. After breakfast, you check again. Nothing. No emails, alerts, notifications. You attribute this to a legion of logical explanations (others' busyness, server issues, expirations, wifi seizures, unpaid subscriber services, spam, memory lapse, lack of directness or clarity toward the outside world), but after only the third day of this white space, this barren digital plain -- three infinitely long days, mind you! -- you begin to wonder who you were, or are, as you take a tissue and wipe the Richard-Nixon-like sweat that has begun to bead on your upper lip.