The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 64. George's Way

I don't know why I'm struggling to write about George.  It should be easy.  He's a complex and fascinating individual: a tinkerer, a thinker, a strategist, an entrepreneur, and a guarded risk-taker.  He's creative, yet analytical;  he's scientific, yet open to mysticism.  

Perhaps that is the problem.  George defies all labels.  Writing, by its nature, communicates through stereotypes.  Even the most realistic novel is based on typecasts.  It's how the writer gets the reader to fill in the iceberg below the surface, to feel the unwritten story.  Writing uses shorthand to quickly connect experiences between the writer and the reader, to draw "Yes, I know that, I've felt that too" by compartmentalizing and condensing experience into archetypes.

Thus the problem:  George is like few others.  There are no short-cuts to developing his character.  No matter what I write here, I will fail to capture who he really is.  And unlike when I was writing about my friend Michi, there is no magic moment when I realized I was standing in front of greatness when I was around him, although I was.  Sometimes, I thought him a damn fool, and I know he thought the same about me.  We spent many nights drinking and arguing over politics.  Some nights these debates became quite heated, but usually they ended with us understanding each other better.  Often, we were driven by the same gnawing void.  One night we strapped little pieces of paper with notes to God to rockets and fired them towards Him to get his attention.  I wanted Him to assist with my love life.  George just wanted some solid answers to his usual question, "What in the hell is going on here?"  Actually, we never fired the rockets, but as we sat at his table drinking and discussing the plan, the vision became so real that even now I have to remind myself that our juvenile outburst towards God never actually occurred.  

However, I do remember us laughing hysterically:  God, you don't hear us, well how about this?  We'll shoot our prayers right up your almighty nostrils!  The God I believe in was probably laughing also, in an empathetic, enlightened sort of way--slightly-hurt, but also understanding the need for His spirit children to challenge authority, the way a father laughs when his teenager is making fun of his dad's age, belly size, receding hairline, taste in music, or inability to use technology effectively.  At least I hope that's what God was doing.  If not, I'm going to have some hard explaining when I get to the other side.

Quickly, here are a few things I remember about George.  I'll just rattle them off, in present-tense, for whenever I think back, I'm there: 

• A girl in our writing class makes a comment about how she thinks God is a woman.  George leans over to me, "I think God is a trucker from Milwaukee."  That's a great title.  I decide to go home and write the poem.
• I'm arguing with a customer at Jiffy Copies and George walks in, quietly listening to the two of us escalate.  After the customer leaves, George says, "You know, if I were your boss, I'd fire your ass right now."  I'm furious.  The woman was trying to get us to pay for her mistake.  She was lying.  I let George know this, my volume quickly rising again.  George calmly says, "It's better to lose money over one job, no matter how much, than to send her out into the world angry the way you just did.  You might as well try to collect your wages from every other copy store in town because she will spend the rest of her life sending business their way, so yeah, I'd fire your ass in a heartbeat."  As he is a successful entrepreneur with ten or twelve employees  at the age most people are finishing up college, I grudgingly accept his authority.   It just makes me want to slug him, although I know I'd lose the fist fight that would ensue.  
• George calls me up, says, "Hey, the magazines are all bound.  We don't have to do that now.  I just got El Paso Independent School District to bind them for free.  I was delivering a job to their print shop at closing and asked if they'd mind staying after hours to do a job for us if I supplied the beer.  It's done."  The magazine he's talking about is the second edition of our magazine, Sell-Outs Literary Magazine, which we started together,  on one of his whims. The first edition sucked--mainly because of my lack of editing skills--but the second one, in my opinion, holds up.  And El Paso Independent School District bound it, without their knowledge, for free!   I feel slightly guilty; yet, his subversive tactic makes me smile.  I also know, that although not legal, strictly speaking, he was fair.  There was a reason those employees were willing to stay after hours. Although George said it was for beer, I know it was because of much more.  I know he got them out of some bind, probably multiple times, that made them want to return a favor.  George used good deeds as currency.  No need to worry about taxes that way. 

Although I remember many specific moments with George, there are many more moments that I don't remember.  I spent far too many late nights over at his house drinking and talking about God and life to remember the specifics.  Sometimes it was just George and I.  Sometimes my brother Lloyd was there.  Sometimes George's best friend Mike was there also.  We never came to any conclusions or solved any problems, either for us individually or for society, but we sure had a hell of a good time trying.

Sometimes it was more than fun.  Sometimes it was an unspoken lifeline.  When either of our worlds were unravelling, we'd just show up in front of the other.  It was usually over our mutual inability to date women successfully, but not always.  Often George just wanted to play hooky from work.  That amused me, since he was his own boss.  He'd say things like, "I just need to get on a plane and fly to New York?"  I'd ask why New York.  "Because it's as far as I can get away from this damn place (meaning his company) without leaving the United States."   Not willing to go through the hassle of catching a flight, we'd head out into the desert instead.  Although George often had to drive into Juarez for business, he was opposed to leaving the country.  The world outside the United States was a scary place to him.  The world inside the United States was scary enough.  The world outside his home, period, was a bit frightening.  He hated going in stores, restaurants, gas stations--pretty much anyplace with people.  So, we drank at his house.  His world was his mind and his living room floor.  He'd sit on the carpet, his back resting against the couch, a can of Skoal by his side, a glass of Bacardi and Coke in hand.  He'd drink, dip, spit, and say, "You know, I don't think anyone knows what the hell's going on here."

In fact, he was going to write a book.  The title was to be: "What the F___ is Going On?"  He was going to interview people from all walks of life, simply ask them that question, and let them respond.  He'd ask entrepreneurs, philosophers, theologians, writers, scientists, gas station attendants, waitresses, and so forth, and simply record their answers.  Had he went through with it, it probably would have been a national best seller.  However, fame is not what he was looking for.  He truly wanted an answer to that question.  Looking back, I realize many of my poems were inspired by George's search for the answer "I why? / Why I?" as my one professor, Dr. Emory Estes, phrased it.

George didn't directly trigger all those poems.  But that's what drew us together.  We were both searching for some explanation for existence, some sort of meaningful answer to, "Why are we here to experience so much beauty and pain, sometimes simultaneously?" 

God

Just a memo:
we don’t sleep.
John’s on the front step again,
2 a.m.,
Reading Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,
Pepto Bismol in hand.
Last night it was 1919.
Alice is in the living room,
fat foot on the coffee table
next to a bowl of popcorn and salsa.
She has nightmares about worms,
says she feels their warm, slimy softness
climb between her legs and nest.
She’s staying up to watch old war movies.
I go to bed and wire myself to John Lennon:
“God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
I’ll say it again
God is a concept by which we measure our pain.”
Anna stumbles in at 10 a.m.,
Says she feels like she’s tied
to the bumper of her jeep,
wine glass in hand,
headed for the wall along Canal Street.
“They’ll sift through the broken bottles,
spilled ash trays and piles of beer cans,
find me down there somewhere
below some boy
trying to get to God
the fast way.”

I no longer write memos to God.  Our relationship is a bit more personal now.  These days I pray.  Occasionally,  I even find myself open enough to hear a reply.   For better or worse, I no longer feel pain as deeply as I once did.  I'm not sure about George.  I do know this: the neighborhood children frequently knock on his door and ask his wife, Gabby, "Can George come out to play?"  And when they do, George drops whatever electrical experiment he's doing in his living room (to Gabby's relief), and goes out to play with kids who are not his own because life is simply too daunting to face alone.  Who knows, maybe he's even strapped prayers to a rocket for some kid who lost his mom at far too young of an age.  "How about we fire these prayers up in her direction, Billy?"  I don't know if this has actually ever happened.  However, I do know it's George's way.

References

Lennon, John. "God." John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band. By John Lennon. 1970.