In the Tent
by Jimmy Zenisek

 

  

I was already feeling it as I sat in the passenger seat of my friend’s car, watching the trees and road and sky rush by.  It was a week after the attacks, fall, 2001.  Death, violence, friends, enemies and life were swirling around inside my brain.  The leaves were halfway between their normal and fall colors.  The air was cool and crisp. 

A dozen or so of us were driving from our dorm in St. Paul to a party at Jenny’s parents’ house in the woods near Stillwater.  I was having a hard time sorting out my feelings as the world whipped by in the setting sunlight outside of the car.  I rested my head against the window.  I was caught in the cycle now.  I saw the gaping jaw of the world, just waiting to swallow me whole.

When the car stopped in front of the house, I stepped out onto the gravel driveway and took a deep breath.  I followed everyone inside and down into the basement.  The main lights in the basement were off, creating heavy shadows on the fake wood-paneled walls.  I dropped my backpack on the carpet and sat next to it.  I was the only one sitting on the floor.  There were sofas and chairs that the other people were sitting on, some people were standing.  I took out a bottle of Coke and a bottle of vodka and drank down the Coke a little past the label.  Then I filled in the empty space with vodka and started drinking.

 

In those first years of college I spent my time not thinking at all.  It was a refuge from something I still can’t define.  I was an English Major and liked to read literature, but mostly I liked to drink.  All of the people I met, I met drunk.  All of the nights I spent, I spent drunk.  It was a comfortable reality where food and shelter and friends and booze and drugs were given and taken with no thoughts of consequences.  I used to sit in Introduction to Philosophy, with the teacher talking about something like Locke’s explanation of indirect realism, drinking Sprite mixed half and half with vodka.  I’d finish the bottle with a friend of mine and go to the rest of my classes drunk.

 

            After a half hour of drinking, my head was starting to buzz.  I went out to the front of the house to have a cigarette alone.  The sun had set completely and there was no moon.  The front yard was an expanse of empty green grass that led out to a solid line of trees.  There were probably more houses behind the trees, but I couldn’t tell.  All I could see was darkness, thick foliage and shadows.  My world was contained by a bright yellow floodlight with a motion sensor.  It made the front of the house and the yard as bright as day, but it couldn’t reach beyond the border of trees.  I exhaled a smooth stream of smoke and stared.  I felt alone and disconnected from the world.  It felt like me and the front porch and the cars and the asphalt and the cigarette were all that existed.

I watched the cigarette burn slowly, focusing on the red ember.  Then I took some more drags of the cigarette and looked at the wooden step that my feet were resting on.  The step was stained a dark color, but I could still see the natural pattern of swirls in the wood.  I followed the swirls with my eyes for a while and took another drag.  I picked up a piece of gravel.  It was hard and left a gray powder on my fingers.  I tossed it back onto the driveway.  I took another drag and then a sip of my drink.  It was strong.  I could feel the alcohol on my lips and inside my cheeks as I swallowed it.  I took another drag.  The cigarette was almost gone.  I looked up and back out to the forest line even though I didn’t want to.  I took another drink. 

The pine trees looked like tall shadows.  The crowded tops of the trees looked like teeth.  Above the trees, the sky was an empty black.  I felt something near my stomach, paranoia, slow panic, quiet fear, claustrophobia.  I had been having panic attacks recently, but it didn’t feel quite the same.  I was sitting in an island of bright yellow light, full of nothing, surrounded by a vast dark everything.  I threw the cigarette onto the grass and went back inside.  I was tired of the feeling.  I thought I might have been taking the scene too seriously.  I wanted to escape, that’s why we went there anyway, to drink and get away.

            Inside the house, everything seemed normal.  There were people laughing and talking and smiling and listening to music.  The main level of the house was filled with soft lighting and soft furniture.  I walked past the living room and kitchen and into the dining room.   The dining room had a large sliding glass door that gave a good view of the backyard.  It also had a floodlight and looked the same as the front yard.  Five people were playing cards at the dining room table, which was right in front of the big door.

I sat down at the dining room table with my back to the patio door and joined into the card game.  Jason started dealing out the cards.

            “This place is weird man.” I said.

            “What do you mean?”  One of my friends said.

            “Well does anyone else feel like the world is gonna end?”  I said and looked down at my cards in a pile on the glossy brown table.

            “Ha,” someone else said, and there were some chuckles as people sorted out their hands by suit.

  “Like we’re out here in the middle of the woods and what if the end of the world comes and we’re just out here in the woods cut off from everyone, stuck here in this little area with just your yard and the house?”  Or like this area is going to collapse on itself, like the trees will swallow us whole and this little area of drinking can’t stay oblivious forever?, like I was really thinking.

“Well Jimmy,” Jenny said, looking right at me, “Stillwater isn’t that far away.  Plus there are other houses on the other side of the trees like a few minutes away.  We’re not in the middle of nowhere you know.”

“It sure feels like it man.”  I said.  There was so much more I wanted to say and feel, but I let it go and concentrated on my cards and playing the game.  It was easier that way.

 

I’ve always been a little neurotic, some would say more than a little neurotic, but I also have the capacity to put things out of my mind.  I keep going back and forth between being laid back and really caring.  When there’s nothing to care about, it is relatively easy.  I never really had to care about school.  Ever since elementary school I was smarter than most of the people my class.  School didn’t require any real effort.  I spent a lot of time thinking about school though, because there wasn’t anything else to think about. 

 

We played cards for a while, maybe a few hours.  I didn’t do so well and ended up drinking a lot, but I still had a good time, all I did was keep my head in the game.  I could feel the blood rushing behind my cheeks heavily now.  My mind swelled and sloshed around.  I set down my cards to go to the bathroom.  I said I’d be right back, but I took my drink with me.  I walked from the dining room into and through the living room, past gray leather sofas and over beige carpet into the hallway.  The halls swayed as I walked through them.  The pictures of Jenny and her family that hung on the walls moved back and forth gently as I made my way towards the bathroom.  As I stood in the bathroom, leaning against the wall for balance, things seemed to be going good.

 

            School is made to seem like the goal of life up to a certain age.  It is the one thing I was required to do, and it was the one thing I was expected to accomplish, other than keeping my room clean.  Every thing else was taken care of.  I worked, but only for money to eat out, buy CDs, go to movies, and buy alcohol.  I was smart though, so I could not pay attention to the one thing I was expected to do and still do above average work.  I focused my attention on other things, all of them useless.  I watched TV, movies, listened to music, drank, and did drugs; I consumed culture and killed off my mind because I could and because there was nothing else to do.  But I know there’s something else out there that I never thought of, something I should have been paying attention to, I just don’t know what to do about it now.

 

I came back out of the bathroom looking for a place to be besides the card game.  I could tell if I drank too much more I would wake up on the floor, face down, sick and thirsty with an empty mind.  Then, over breakfast or lunch or dinner people would talk about the crazy things I did, and I would force a smile and laugh because I couldn’t remember.  There were some things I still thought I wanted to think about though, important issues going on inside my head, but life, the drinking and the partying, made it hard to concentrate sometimes.  It’s easy for me to get lost.

            I walked back through the tilting hallway and living room, but there was nobody around.  The card game was still going on in the dining room, but I moved past, pushed open the oversize glass door and walked out into the cool, dark air.  Outside, conversation buzzed around my head, with sounds from different groups in different areas all melting together.  I was standing on a deck with high wooden rails.  On one side of the deck there was a glass table with four or five chairs, and at the other end there was plenty of standing room.  Three of my friends were at the table looking solemn, and two of my other friends were standing farther off.  They looked mostly jolly, so I joined them.  Alison and Ben were talking politics and drinking slowly as I walked up to them.

            For a split second the emptiness feeling startled me as I looked out at the tree line.  It was like the jolt you get when you think you are alone and see someone watching you.  I shook it off though and tried to concentrate on the conversation.  Alison and Ben both had unruly curly hair.  Ben was holding a beer and Alison a bottle of vodka and a bottle of Mountain Dew.  Ben stood maybe six inches shorter than me and when his face was solemn he looked like a skinny, curly-haired Jesus. 

            The three of us were standing there on the edge of the deck in the bright glow of the floodlight with the green yard and the tall trees and the darkness in the background.  The conversation was typical and drunk. 

            “Well what have we been doing though?  People hate us because we’re doing a lot of horrible things all over the world.”  Alison said. 

            “What about the people who have starved, or are sick, or poor.  I mean probably over 10,000 people die every day all over the world and nobody cares, nobody.  Why should this be any different?”  Ben said.

            “Yeah, I see what you mean, but it was pretty bad.  You’re not saying you don’t care about those people though, are you?”

            “Well, think about it, why should you care more about them than anyone else, and if I don’t feel anything for the other non-American people dying every day, or even the non-publicized American people dying every day, then why should I care about them?  I mean, if this seriously makes you care about all of those people who died, then it should wake you up and make you aware of all the other people who are dying even here in the US.  Otherwise, it’s just a hypocritical caring for human life.  If we don’t value killing all over the world, why should we value the killing anywhere?”

            “Well it’s different ‘cause it happened here.   I don’t think you really feel that way.”  Alison said, giving an understanding smile like he had just made a small joke, and took a shot of vodka.

            “Whatever, we can talk about something else.”  Ben said.

            “I think I know what you’re saying though man.”  I said.  “It’s like you get told to care about other people after hurricanes and floods and disasters and not when people starve and have to live on the street and freeze to death…”  I stopped to take a drink.

            “Yeah.”  Ben said.

            “…and all of a sudden something like this happens and we’re one big happy family.”

So maybe it wasn’t exactly typical, but it was typical for us.  Politics were always more fun to talk about when we were drunk anyways, because the reality of the way the world works doesn’t affect you as much.

 

Different things impact people in different ways.  I was hung over when I woke up on September 11, 2001.  I opened my eyes and saw the first plane hit the World Trade Center in a replay that my roommate was watching.  The first words out of my mouth were “Wow, that’s really bad ass…”  I felt bad about that later when I realized what was really happening.  I’ll tell you the truth though; I didn’t feel as much for the people who died that day as I was made to think that I should have.  It’s just not in me.  Maybe it’s from years of hardening myself against the Christian Children’s Fund commercials or reading about wars and hearing about all the people who die daily on the news, but somewhere along the way I lost the ability to care for abstract people.  So many of them live and die everyday, maybe I don’t have the capacity to mourn for all of them so I don’t mourn any of them, but then, I don’t really know how it all works.  Something was starting to affect me though.  It was the realization of the world, the realization that I wasn’t looking past the trees and that there was something out there.

 

            I was holding a drink and talking with Alison and Ben when three guys came from out of the darkness on the side of the house, into the light-flooded backyard and up the stairs onto the deck.  When their boots first made hard sounds on the porch, we all stood quiet for a moment and I felt the dark air freeze around us.  Strangers.  I lightened up a little when I realized they were punks, but it was a lightening up in an uneasy way.  We were punks because we listened to punk music, Rage, Propaghandi, Operation Ivy.  After a while, music like that makes you think you care about large social issues, but really we just wanted to drink in a nice place.  They were punks with the whole shaved head, high boots, short pants, suspenders, skinny with big shoulders look, or at least that’s the impression they gave.  But then, it’s what’s on the inside that counts.  It was just their skin, their appearance that made me uneasy.

            “Hey, how’s it goin?”  Ben said.

            “Alright,” the tallest one said.  The other two didn’t say anything.  They all pulled out cans of Miller Lite from inside their jackets, red and blue letters on a white can. 

            “So, do you guys know Jenny?”  I asked.

            “We went to the same high school,” the shorter one said.  I had just taken the last sip of my drink.

            “Nice shirt.”  The third, stockier one said to Ben in an odd way.

            “Do you listen to Rage?”  Ben replied and smiled hopefully.  He was wearing a Rage Against the Machine shirt, one of the shirts with the clever, anti-American graphics.

            “No, I don’t listen to them, have you ever heard of Skrewdriver?”

            “No, never heard of them, Are they any good?”  Ben said.

            “Oh yeah, they’re hardcore, but their style is a little different.  Kinda like Brutal Attack, Dark Army, you know.”  He said and smiled without showing any teeth.  I didn’t know what he meant.  The conversation started to pick up steam a little, small introductions and such, but it all faded behind me as I walked back inside to get another drink.

            “You gotta be kidding me,” Jenny said when I walked in the patio door.  She was looking at the tall and short punks who were standing next to Ben and Alison and the short, stocky punk who was a few feet away, sitting on the rail of the deck.  “Brian must’ve have told them about the party.  I hate those guys.”

            “Yeah?”  I said.

            She told me their names, but I forgot them.  They knew Jenny through a few people from high school, and the way she explained things they were just losers, country hicks dressed up as punks.

            “They seemed alright.” I said.

            “They’re just dumb.”  Jenny said.

            I went back downstairs, sat down on one of the sofas and mixed another drink out of my backpack.  The basement lights were off, and the entire basement was quiet except for a few footsteps and muffled music and conversation coming through the floor from upstairs.  The isolated, end of the world feeling was still there, I think, but it was no longer palpable, definable, or understandable.  The feeling, like most thoughts, was separated from my mind by a cloud of alcohol, fluffy and soft like the sofa.  I laid my head back and closed my eyes.  I started to slump, to let consciousness slip away.  It was easy to just close my eyes and lay my head back on the soft leather sofa in the basement with the lights off.

 

I never used to like the dark.  When I was young I would always sleep with my blanket over my head, and when I would have to go into my basement, I would run through the dark hallways to turn on the lights as fast as I could.  I was camping with my parents one time when I was seven years old and woke up in the middle of the night.  I got out of the tent and went into the woods by our campsite.  As I leaned against a tree and went to the bathroom, I realized that I was really out there in the forest.  My eyes started to adjust just enough so I could see the shadows in the dark.  My ears started to pick out wind moving through the branches in the trees.  I could hear soft whooshes, clicks of wood, and rustles on the ground.  I could feel the cold night air coming straight at me.  Anything could have jumped out of the woods at me as far as I was concerned, wolves, ghosts, kidnappers, even the devil himself.  The shadows took the shape of a dozen different middle-of-the-night fears.  I ran back to our tent as fast as I could, my feet thrashing through fallen leaves and twigs.  I got inside of the tent, kicked off my shoes, and leapt into my sleeping bag.  I calmed down when I was zipped up inside of the soft plaid material, warm and safe by my parents’ side.  The tent separated me on all fronts from the natural world outside. 

 

            “Oh my god!” I heard someone yell from upstairs.  There were a lot of heavy footsteps, and I opened up my eyes.  All of a sudden the light turned on in the basement and I stood up fast.  Jesus Christ I thought, still half passed out, is this it?  I looked out one of the front basement windows and saw the three punks walking quickly but controlled towards the edge of the floodlight.   All three of them had their hands in their jacket pockets as they kept walking fast, fading into the darkness past the trees.  Then people started to come downstairs.

            First, Jenny came barreling down the stairs, turning on the hallway and bathroom lights.  She yanked open a closet door and started digging around furiously pulling out towels and small bottles and boxes.  Then Alison came down the stairs in front of Ben, who was holding his head and being led by Jason and another girl.  Blood?  It sure looked like blood on his face and shirt and coming down from the top of his head.

            They all went straight into the small basement bathroom.  Then, two more girls ran down the stairs and straight into the bathroom as well.  I adjusted my eyes and walked over as fast as my legs would let me move, which was still slow and wobbly.  The bathroom was chaos.  There were a dozen small, round lights around the mirror, all on, that burned my eyes and made the whole room look hazy before I could adjust.  There were seven drunken people, all in the bathroom, and me standing just outside the door, looking in.  Everyone was talking, saying different things, but it was all jumbled and I couldn’t distinguish one voice from the next.

            I came up behind Kristen, one of the girls closest to me, tapped her on the shoulder and asked her what was going on.  Ben had been punched.  The tall punk had gotten pissed and brought his fist down hard on the top of Ben’s head; he was probably wearing a ring or something.

            “I’m alright” Ben said.  “It’s just bleeding a lot.”

            “They had been making fun of his Rage Against the Machine shirt all night and arguing with us about politics.  They just kept saying all these things that were pretty offensive, trying to pick a fight.  I think then Ben said something about America being evil and something about not caring about people dying and the guy flipped out.”  Kristen said, turning back to watch everyone help Ben.  

            Later on we would all talk about it and decide that the three punks were a rare breed, or at least a rare breed to us.  We all knew punks, some of us thought we were punks, but these were nationalist punks.  A strange mix of a human being, one part angry rebelliousness, one part angry reactionary, raised in the wooded country and turned violent no doubt by some unknown childhood trauma.  They were torn between the disobedience of youth and their fierce loyalty to the flag, the president, and the long proud American tradition.  These were the punks that form gangs, beat on minorities, shave their heads and sleep on swastika pillows and imperial eagle sheets.  We just didn’t see it coming, but we knew now that there were some people that were irreconcilably different from us.

            I stepped back and watched as seven extremely drunk people all tried to take care of a head wound.  I caught a glimpse of the cut, it looked pretty bad, but everyone decided he wouldn’t need to go to the hospital.  I went upstairs to get a glass of water.

 

            The cycle just keeps going and it wraps you up with it and carries you away.  The sun moves around the earth and the seasons change and some people die and some people live.  Upstairs, everything was silent, and I could hear the quiet sounds that the tap made when I turned on the sink.  I let it run for a minute so the water could get cold.  I grabbed a plastic cup from a cabinet above the sink and filled it up.  I could just barely make out the muffled noises of commotion coming from the basement, and, when I stood completely still, I could hear the very faint sounds of birds waking up and chirping outside in the forest.  I took a sip, but the water from the faucet didn’t taste quite right so I poured it into the sink and got some filtered water out of the fridge.  As I leaned against the counter, slowly drinking, I could see the sun coming up and around in the distance.

 

 

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