Salutations and I must admit it’s rather disturbing to meet you. Though, I would advise against assuming any such sentiment because history has determined, fairly rigidly, that it is not your doing, but instead my own complications. In searching for an overture, I discovered somewhat counter intuitively that I have known only my own flaws for such a time, that they have become my only muse and rendered my positing fairly monotonous and whiny. Even at this juncture I feel I must acknowledge that I have surely burdened you with tribulations entirely of my own, and though you may construe this as an apology, it is not, for I am rather inclined to do so as a matter of conflict diffusion that I am doubtful you could understand, unless of course this is not the first such occasion I have employed this stratagem around you, which is practically equally as likely as the converse.
You may, therefore, be inherently astonished to learn that this is not a story of my own, nor is it one I am in any way qualified to tell. More or less the encumbrance of the endeavor has fallen to me through a series of illogical and improbable means that could really only occur in the cataclysmic hurricane of my existence. In any case, I have strived and failed to concoct an acceptable excuse for avoiding this project, but I could not sufficiently convince my relatives of my untimely death, and more often than not the doctors I visited were unwilling to comply with my admittedly bizarre and marginally illicit requests. Thusly, I have concluded that I must in fact begin, and with optimistic fortuity, the struggle that is to ensue will provide a fractional distraction from the misery of my life and an insight into that of Jefferson Fink’s.
I suppose you will be expecting me to begin with the circumstances that arrived him at this juncture or at the very least a list of reasons for his ineptitude predicated on the failures of slimy cohorts, but that is not my prerogative, although, he did have a thorough compilation of enemies whom he intended to absolve himself of, albeit, probably within the constraints of metafiction. The trouble in dealing with your problems as they arrive is that it makes a man awfully weary and it makes the days awfully long and everyone is privy to the fact that you can allow your worries to mount and punch a hole in the wall at your discretion and get by for the most part. That may be why he had pattern of yielding to boredom. He was not a boring person, a starter on the JV basketball team (very important), but he felt as though he was waiting for the disappointment of his various colleagues to confront and decimate him, which he was thoroughly excited for because it would, perhaps provide him with something to do before he died. He had been bored for a fair time now, though, something about the world that was inclined to inevitable repetition had coerced him to stagnation. He could see it in his misfortune as an educated derelict that had gone only as far as his superior perceptions of an aloof world would allow him, that is, never to attain any permanent happiness because that would, of course, be the result of flawed logical reasoning, which would violate the maxims of his realistic impression, or depression rather.
Even Fink, though, the Patron Saint of Reality, had a lust for the fancies of the Poseurs, who had the gall to rationalize and infer what is innately irrational. He really did despise them, especially The Man. The Man is the leader of the Poseurs and he is out to get you so long as you are not a Poseur yourself, in which case he has already gotten you. Fink had a math professor who was really The Man, although, she was, in fact, a woman, but she had all the other attributes of The Man, and was therefore qualified. She wanted him to fail and he did. He did not really have a choice though, clever as she was she knew that if he passed her class he would be resigned to asking for her guidance and the life of a Poseur, so he had to fail, otherwise, she would have won. In any case, forming his principles did little to increase his sociability, rather, he had been ensnared by loneliness since, but that is nature, some graduate and become Poseurs, others are born Poseurs, but Fink, he was determined never to become one, and so there he was, relegated to the vacant back row of Mrs. Li’s trigonometry class, still clinging to the belief that he might somehow win.
“And that, class, is why you will need trigonometry outside of my classroom, and every day for the rest of your lives.”
There probably was something of value in there. Fink glanced at his notebook; a few sputtering pencil marks and a crude sketch of a dragon were his benefit of the lesson. Furtively, he tilted his head back and glanced at the clock to determine just how much longer he would have to endure, but even that was enough to attract the bile of Mrs. Li, who had an obnoxious habit of intentionally calling on students she knew were oblivious. The general consensus was that there was some sadistic joy in it for her, but it remained mildly perplexing as to how someone could be so disturbed as to impede their own teachings to humiliate a child.
“Jefferson, perhaps you know the answer,” she said. “If I were attempting to cross the Congo River in my boat beginning at point A and running to point B with point C being my destination, how many feet would I travel per my diagram above?” After posing the question she gave a faint smirk and rested her back against the whiteboard awaiting a response.
“Two answers,” he said raising a titular number of fingers, “First, and irrevocably most importantly, were you to cross the Congo River in a time of tribal conflict, as is currently the case; you would find that, regardless of the distance there would be a ravenous pack of cannibals eagerly anticipating your arrival. At which point, I suppose, you could create an algorithm for just how quickly one mathematically inclined Asian women can be digested because of her lack of worldly knowledge. And second: I have absolutely no idea.”
A brief pause ensued following his tangent, as it often did after Fink spoke, but Mrs. Li recovered her acrimony in impressive time,
“Class, another example of a student destined for nothing who knows he is destined for nothing. I would say that your classmates’ answer was a disappointment, but I have come to have such low expectations from him and his kind, that there pretentious answers are meaningless. Ronny what’s the answer?”
What did she mean his kind? He knew with ample certainty that there were no other Jefferson Fink’s. If she was looking for a kind, how about Ronny Green, a boy who came to school and folded his hands neatly in his lap and answered all the questions politely and correctly, probably including the current one, until Saturday night came around, at which point he would likely be too drunk to remember Pythagoras and throw up all over his mother’s welcome mat and have to rush it into the washer and fabricate some story for how it got there. He had a kind and they were called Poseurs.
And then there was that banal pretentious comment. For far too many it becomes inexorable after a spell. When you are a child demonstrating excellence and speaking articulately they call you precocious. When a teenager does the same, label them pretentious; it is practically the cycle of a genius to, at some point, alter from precocious to pretentious. The only understanding Fink had of it was that everyone loves a clever child because they pose potential, but no one loves a clever teenager because they pose a sincere threat to the precious status quo. He could not find the value in avoiding pretentiousness either, what point was there in surpassing the intellect of the world if you had to retard everything for them anyway.
The calling of the student alarm droned out his thoughts momentarily, and the hallways were swarming instantly with raucous exchanges of debate urged on by the professors, who lined the corridors with a healthy dose of discomfort. If there was a manner in which notes could be crumpled and stuffed gracefully into a pack, then Fink certainly achieved it as he exited the room, which was, customarily, still filled with observant eyes fixed on an indifferent Mrs. Li who continued her lesson with no regard for the orders of bells.
He preferred to walk along the fringe of the grey lit corridors, preemptively dodging the stop and go conversation of the flocks of day time friends, who were all well occupied lying about their whereabouts to conceal their secret distaste for one another. In addition, he favored the companionship of a wall, for he had an inebriated saunter about him that caused onlookers to often misjudge his own clumsiness, though he was never drunk and he had never fallen. A wall, though, was a good friend because he was particularly attentive and rarely had a reason to lie about his whereabouts and in any case you always knew where to find him.
That walk of his, though, had been with him ever since he was born, well not born exactly. As far as he could remember he was never born. His earliest recollection began with Once upon a time, and sad as it was, it was indeed a time, and concluded with his emergence from a hedgerow during the May clean with a caul on his head and a stumbling bit about his walk. Evidently, he proved more indelible than the other ephemeral traces of spring and so he was retained by the Summer Queen and consequentially matured. It was also during that period that he caught his first glimpse of himself in the looking glass and recognized what a strange creature he was.
This nostalgia was all the result of a brooding mob of relatively equal gender pruning around one of the corridors long, pretty mirrors. They were swishing their hair to one side or another and smiling to check the quality of their teeth and they all knew, probably, that it was done in vain. Fink had never known a man of decent attributes, or a woman for that matter, to spend time before a mirror. They had no use for a mirror, the eyes of the world were their mirrors and they speculated positively incessantly on them with envious attention. After all, that really was the purpose of a mirror. Artificial admiration, the prospect of having someone yearn for you as much as you yearned for the beautiful people who were more than likely gossiping well and crude about you as you passed them in the hallways or streets. Sure there were a few who misused the mirrors, some who only wanted to take reflective photographs of themselves because no one else offered and those who would spend a few hours blinking in hopes that at some point there features would be miraculously enhanced, but those were not the specified purposes. Naturally, then, Fink also strode to the mirror to gander at himself for a time, for he was no remarkable man.
Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, the mirror depicted what it had before, a short boy of dark features with a white t-shirt that had scribbled across it in Sharpie, “I Hate New York.” That manner of shrewd ambiguity was what really irritated people. The shirt could mean anything, and verily it did. In October it was an obvious criticism of the best team money could buy, during poor economic times it was a social commentary on capitalist greed, and on September eleventh he had made a habit of adorning himself with it and intentionally parading by the memorial picnics throughout the various parks just to glean what reaction he could.
He had other means of attaining this perverse satisfaction as well though. In his back left pocket, always, he kept a tattered copy of The Communist Manifesto, which he would intentionally raise just peering beyond the title line, so as to elicit as many harrowing responses as possible, which was presumably his goal. That may be why it was so incredibly queer that it routinely cajoled the public to jingoistic fury, majorly contributing to Fink’s veneration of it, a book, that well over a century after its publication, could still inspire the most genuine abhorrence. The abhorrence that he reveled in and thrived on, perhaps they could not understand or perhaps they were too proud to defer, but inevitably the men who cursed and insulted him did little more than fuel the ironic passion of Jefferson Fink. He refused to define himself as a communist, though, stating often that no man ought to be so alike as to ascribe perfectly to another man’s musings. Nobody ever heard that segment of his adages, though, because they were too preoccupied with shouting insults and shaking their heads.
As he continued to pursue the exit with his pack slumped heavily over his right shoulder he came to a corridor that was beaming with illumination. So much so that it furnishings twinkled and its laminate floor absorbed and then reciprocated the bright spectrum forming a relative cell block with infused pillars of light. Here the doors were all swung wide on their hinges covering the spectacle of the walls and each sweeping forum emitted a particularly pleasant song that converged into a tantalizing melody about midway down the hall. How he despised that hall. All the little children were coerced to it and its Siren song and its banner attitude, but if a hall could be a Poseur, than there was to be no debate.
The Sirens sang sweetly to anyone so inclined to listen and that was by default of nature, practically everyone. Their refrains were of salad days in mythological lands of white fences and two car garages and they played pipes while on knitted carpets children gathered to listen. And the gregarious singers and their convivial offices bred dragons from mere snakes and the ears clung with anticipation. And I suppose you could brand them as alchemists too, for their inflections turned coal into gold and their touch, tears into pride, and an exaggerated sense of permanent victory. And when they had garnered attention enough, they unveiled great maps with dense legends and keys and sang tunes for the various sojourns, but were rather neglectful of a few here or there, but to virgin eyed captives, that was simply refined taste.
They had regularly established meetings with each student and convinced most based on hearsay alone, but Fink had been difficult and they had been exasperated by his retorts and his blatant refusal to hear but one story of fairies as simply an effort. Therefore, in his later years his conferences were quite short and would end rather abruptly and each time they would tell him, “Take the wax out of your ears.” That; however, was a request with which he would not comply. And so, no longer would they sing for him and as he passed they would dim the corridor and pull shut all the doors and he would carry along singing his own song, and nearly be on his way home.
Nearly because, of all clever placements, there was by the exit a well maintained vending machine, and there were days when his hands would quiver and he would require a supplement from it. As it were on this day there was an orderly line of four or five boys, each waiting impatiently and each crisply snapping a fresh dollar bill in his hand. As fortune would have it the first boy in line had entered his dollar and pressed a neat little button expecting a Kit-Kat to fall from the shelves, but the duplex, in error, instead sent both his and the last candy bar tumbling into the drop box, a stroke of luck to be sure. However, a closer examination of this fortuity revealed that it was not so partisan, as the second boy in line crumpled his dollar bill and shoved it into his pocket. In fact, it would be fair to assume that the lamentations of the second boy were even in unequal displacement to the joy of the first because the former had suffered the unfortunate premature delight of assuming he would withdraw from the drop box, the final Kit-Kat. That ought to put a depressing spin on things. But, then again there was the third boy, who redistributed the effectuality in his resultant glee at the plight of the second boy, whom he had watched gloat about his plundering and was clearly quite jealous of. As for the fourth boy, Lord only knows why he was still lingering about, but it would be safe to wager that he was not in search of a Kit-Kat because not even divine providence can bring one of two Kit-Kats to the fourth boy in line.
In any case, Fink found that today, in particular, was one of those days in which he was in imminent need of a Kit-Kat, and watching as the boy walked down a connecting hallway he noticed that Mr. Gilligan, a tech teacher of sorts, was coming the opposite direction. He rushed to the boy’s side and furrowed his brow with an outstretched hand and a feigned air of panic.
“Principal said no candy in school, mate.”
The boy glanced immediately at Mr. Gilligan and then quickly back at his hands to assure himself that he was in fact holding two Kit-Kats. His eyes spun in confliction, but finally he relinquished the candy with his teeth grinding in haste.
Fink saluted him wantonly and then placed the Kit-Kats with The Communist Manifesto and evaded the boy as he vied steps with Mr. Gilligan. Something about standing beside a teacher though caused him to harken back to the glowing hallway, and he recalled that his own concert with the Sirens, the all-important college conference, had been scheduled for about a month ago, coincidentally in conflict with a mandatory school assembly. He registered it, though, as nothing more than the world picking on him. “The world picks on everyone,” he figured, “but not in equilibrium because the world dislikes certain people significantly more than others and that’s why it made Iran.” So that was that and he continued, undeterred, to sleaze around with a false indifference he found so desirable while he shrugged the disillusion off his shoulders in rolling cascades. Still, he found it rather disconcerting that in a world of fairytales and Sirens, no one believed in him.
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