Peter Anderson
I’ve been thinking about faking my own death, lately.
Actually, I don’t know why I clarified that it was my own death. No one ever tries to fake someone else’s death, do they? Has that ever happened, even once? I don’t think it has.
It all started when I saw a homeless man smoking a cigarette outside of a grocery store about two weeks ago. He had roughly my build and although he was approximately forty, I imagined that if he was burned beyond recognition that his charred corpse might be made to pass for mine. Of course, I suppose that goes with being burned beyond recognition. Why did I add that? I need to stop digressing on my digression.
He coughed a lot and kept moving around in ways to both make himself warmer and draw attention to his change dish without much luck. I didn’t have any change to give him, so I pretended not to see him standing there, and walked to the car and hated myself.
Pretty much what I do on a daily basis, in other words.
But as I climbed into the car, I thought: “I wonder if that homeless man has cancer and doesn’t even know it?”
I fantasized about following him to whatever Mission takes him in at night, because it’s too cold in Idaho to stay out on the streets. I thought about tapping his shoulder from out of the shadows and proposing an arrangement. I’d be wearing my knit wool winter cap when I did this, of course. You have to wear that kind of hat when you have a clandestine meeting.
I’d be wearing a black pea coat and my breath would fog the air when I speak. We’d be speaking at the edge of a street light’s illuminated cone. On the boundary of light and dark. Not quite wrong, but definitely not right.
“I’ll give you one hundred dollars every week and set you up in an apartment if you’ll let me have your body when you die.”
Of course, in my mind he does have cancer and he is going to be dead in six months. And of course, this modest sum seems princely to him. So he agrees, and our little partnership begins. His name is Jerry. He used to sell cars. And then five years ago, for no particular reason at all, his life fell apart.
I meet with him three times a week for dinner. We’d be friends if he weren’t dying. He almost seems happy I’ve given his life a purpose. He’s got two kids he hasn’t spoken to in forever. He says his son wouldn’t be that much younger than me. I say, “that’s nice Jerry, finish your ravioli.”
Jerry says he hasn’t had a hot meal and a home like this in forever.
I think about this when I pretend it’s okay that I’m not getting Jerry treatment for his cancer. I think I realized how stupid these internal fantasies are long enough to roll my eyes at myself here, but other than that I was pretty into it.
I’ve got good credit, so I open several new accounts and max them out with cash advances. I find the gravestone for an infant who died at approximately the same time I was born. I request his birth certificate and begin to build up a new identity. A new social security number. A new bank account. A new life.
Irony of ironies, this poor dead baby’s name was Peter Anderson. Ain’t that just a kick in the pants? I don’t let it worry me overmuch. I’ve already gone into a sort of emotional chrysalis, preparing for a change.
Peter Anderson has approximately $25,000 when Jerry dies. Dies on the shitter too weak to even wipe. Andrew Peterson cleans him up even though he’s about to defile his corpse, because he figures Jerry deserves at least that much. Peter Anderson doesn’t care though. Peter Anderson has no attachment to anyone else on this earth when Andrew Peterson drags Jerry’s corpse into the driver’s side seat of the car. Peter Anderson doesn’t even flinch when Jerry and Andrew go up in flames. A one in a billion explosion of a propane tank he’d gone out to get for the barbecue.
Andrew Peterson had stupidly left the old tank on and it had run empty. There was a big fight with the whole family before Andrew left to get it refilled. Now everyone regrets that this is the last conversation Andrew Peterson ever had. But Peter Anderson doesn’t care about this when he rents a car and drives far away. He never even stops to think about it.
Where will he end up? Who knows? It could be anywhere, really. But probably Brazil.
Peter Anderson could move to South America because that’s where Brazil is. He could keep losing weight like Andrew Peterson had been losing weight at the gym for the past two months. He could be unrecognizably thin and shapely inside of a year. Peter Anderson could dye his skin brown with silver nitrate and learn to speak Portuguese like a native. Peter Anderson is a genius and would never have to hide it because his competency embarrasses him.
Peter Anderson could be happy.
Because Peter Anderson doesn’t have a little brother and sister who always have to come first. Because Peter Anderson doesn’t have to stop writing to go downstairs and mediate an almost psychotically violent discussion about where the label on a ham is usually placed. Peter Anderson would be horrified at the notion of spending his whole life to make up for other people’s mistakes. Peter Anderson doesn’t HAVE to do anything.
Peter Anderson’s parents did him a favor and died shortly after he was born. Peter Anderson has no family. No humorous or horrific past at all. He was raised in an orphanage by some nuns who will corroborate any story if he just keeps sending them enough money.
Peter Anderson makes love to a waitress he met on the beach a year after he’s been in Brazil. Her name is Laurissa and she works at one of the resorts. She’s young, sweet, beautiful and innocent and Peter Anderson never once thinks that he doesn’t deserve her as he bangs her with such passion as poets aspire to even fathom. Or that love is just something meat does when it wants to forget it’s meat.
I think I stopped at a traffic light or something and came out of my fugue state. That’s what tends to happen when I fall into these fantasies.
So, instead of doing any of that, I drove home some groceries I paid for myself, bagged myself, and which I then unloaded myself. Almost three-hundred dollars worth. I bought some gifts for friends and forgave the children for being rude and withdrawn lately, because they’re teenagers after all and it won’t last forever. I mediated some disputes my mother had with my step-father, because it’s not like they’re doing it on purpose. They’re just that dumb and incapable of knowing better.
I decided it would be okay to keep doing this until the children are old enough to look after themselves, because I could always imagine little escape scenarios for my own amusement. And if people come up to me and say idiotic things like “those aren’t your kids” or “you don’t have any responsibility” I don’t have to be upset, because I get to make my own choices and they are no one’s business but mine.
I guess it comes down to my fundamental life philosophy:
What do you if you wake up one day and see the Devil snarling in your face?
Do you spit? Shout defiance? Make a thousand threats and die courageously?
Or do you cower and beg for mercy? Offer a bargain in exchange for your life? Give up every last ounce of your dignity for another moment of life.
No, I think not. Making binary choices is doing business on the Devil’s terms.
If you ever do wake up one day and see the Devil snarling in your face, you reach out with one hand, put your thumb between your first and middle fingers, and laugh: “I’ve got your nose! I’ve got your nose! I’ve got your goddamn nose, you stupid metaphor for all human evil!”
Then do an armpit fart.
If there really is such a thing as the Devil, it stands to reason those would be the kinds of things he is afraid of. All the things that take away the power that we’re accustomed to giving him. Or rather the metaphysical dread that he anthropomorphically embodies.
If sometimes the Devil is a less than ideal living situation, and grabbing his nose is imagining inventive ways to fake your death, so be it. Because occasionally grabbing the devil’s nose when someone is yelling very loudly is also you getting to reach out and give them a purple nurple, and the expression on their face is worth the world.
I think that was both more silly and poetic than I intended.
Did you know that cats can get AIDS?
It is true.
A Fancy Swewish Sweater
Someone I’m distantly related to prepares rooms for Boeing Executives. Or something. I don’t know. I’m not sure who they are, exactly.
Anyhow, my aunt and uncle came over two weeks ago.
Shamed by their incredible level of what I can only call functionalness, I decided to get brave and cooked them some eggs and bacon for breakfast. My mother also pretended that we were a regular family. Yada yada yada. Blah blah blah. Please don’t scratch the nickel coating on this lottery ticket because I’m afraid it’s a dud and I’d be very ashamed if you knew that.
That sort of thing.
Because I have this weird combination of egomania and self-loathing, I always use people’s accomplishments as a mirror in which to examine my own inadequacies. But who cares, I was cooking them breakfast, okay?
So, because they’re the kind of people who think about these things, they at their breakfast and then brought a Fancy Swewish Sweater out of their luggage. They said, and I misquote:
“Andrew, we do not like to waste things because we are conscientious people who are concerned about the environment. We do not ever find good things and just abandon them because of the existential dread that happiness would bring. One of our relatives was given this sweater by a Boeing Executive whom it did not fit. It also did not fit our relative and thus it was passed on down the line. You are a big person. Here is this big sweater. We thought of you the moment we found it.”
I put it on. It fit nice. No. Let’s not lie. It fit like getting a hug from God.
Then we went to visit my cousin at college. He’s going to become a dentist. He and his beautiful lawyer wife are also super functional people who never just stare off into the distance and imagine how awesome it would be to fake their own death. And then blog about it. Or whatever.
I walked around the college campus with everyone, thinking about how I only really need another year to get an engineering job I don’t want. And also about how nice the sweater was and how I had a hole in the crotch of my pants, but a very small one that was unnoticeable so long as I didn’t sit down with my legs spread.
We dropped my aunt and uncle off with some friends.
Then about a week later I thought, “this sweater sure is swell, I would like another as it makes me feel like maybe I’m not a piece of human garbage.” I looked up the manufacturer online.
That fancy Swewish sweater is worth over $500.
Jaysus.
My Brother Bryan is Married
Bryan is married, and I fear he is also becoming a super functional normal person. I went to his wedding reception last week. I gave him a big dirty wad of cash without a card, because I’m classy like that. He showed me around his house. That he owns. With his wife.
I asked him if he remembered when he was the weird one.
He says he still feels weird sometimes, but that he doesn’t masturbate like a paranoid wife trying to prevent her husband from physically being able to have an affair so it was easy to grow out of it. Or not really. But that’s what he would have said if he were me, and I’m the one with the blog.
But he is married to a nice young lady and I am very happy for the both of them.
I also saw my dad for the first time in four or five’ish years while I was there. He needed Bryan and I to go get some propane for a barbecue. It was very prophetic.
The Glass Tongue
Still working away at it, but progress has been a bit slow. I’m going to try to redouble my efforts. It would probably be helpful if I didn’t think about faking my own death so much. Or had a job.
