King of the Neuro Verse, page 1
To the listeners
ONE
If you’re wondering about the echo
it’s because I am in a bathroom stall
the one near the maintenance room
at the end of the hall everyone avoids
because of the flickering lights
Only Brookes uses it, he’s our special education bus driver
who only comes Tuesdays and Thursdays
something about state budget cuts
Otherwise it may as well not even be here
but thank God it’s here,
not that I use it like Brookes uses it
But it’s where I go when I need to…
when things start to… I don’t know how to describe it
My father calls it going Full Bonaly
he’s talking about Surya Bonaly
this French ice skater
she’s my dad’s favorite
she spins and twirls and flips
And he made that comparison, between her moves
and what was happening between my ears,
when I was about maybe eleven or twelve,
when everything inside me seemed to be falling apart
and melting into puddles
and my head felt like it was Fourth of July after dark
Recognize the Three Stages of Bonaly
he would say, I didn’t really understand it then
but today, right now, I do
sort of
I think I’m in stage three, Full Bonaly
backflipping, breaking the rules in the face of the judges
yeah, that’s it
why else would I be in this stall right now
talking to the future?
This won’t take long
I know you’re busy—whoever you are from the future
I’m assuming you’ve found this device, holding my voice
trapped in amber like a Jurassic Park mosquito
Jurassic Park is a movie from when I was ten
saw it that summer and it blew my mind
I’m almost seventeen now and I’ve worn out the videotapes
We have it on DVD too, but I’m still a VCR guy
DVDs scratch so easily, and there’s something about
that sturdy plastic tape
feels more like a cherished book in your hands
I also realize Jurassic Park was a book before it was a movie
Anyway, when you see Jurassic Park, you’ll laugh
when you make the connection
this recording, that mosquito
If you’re hearing this, I assume all the radiation has cleared away
and the robots have found a way to jump-start humanity
so you’re gonna want to know about the 1.0 version of us
It’s so hot in here—
the AC is always out at this piece of crap
I know this building, if you can’t tell
I know it too damn well
I call it clown college
even though it’s summer school for high schoolers
inside an abandoned middle school
Hopefully in the future, these words summer school
sound strange
It’s a drop zone for those of us who’ve already been labeled
unfocused, poor students,
the forty-year-old cashiers of tomorrow
Meanwhile, the customers are off tanning
with the sunroofs open on their
Escalades, 4Runners, Outbacks, Malibus
crisp, warm surround sound
rapping out the window
before they pull away to whatever
extracurricular crosstown young leaders symposium
to address the future of anything they want
They love street music, by the way
every prom king and queen
dreams in gold chains and do-rags
I can’t judge
I love it too
That’s where the similarities end
None of them are here right now
I don’t mean in this bathroom stall
that’d be super weird
What I’m saying is
I saw no cars, heard no bumping jams enter the parking lot
as I stepped out of my used booger-brown Jeep Cherokee
with the torn soft top
to file into clown college with the others
filing in with big red D+’s on our chests
a buncha 1990s Hester Prynnes
For the record
don’t ask me what story Hester Prynne comes from
Oh, right, summer school
I call it clown college
because it’s funny in a sad way
like Charlie Brown missing that stupid football
over and over, why do you keep trusting that girl?!
Pathetic
It’s not so-so bad, though
I saw Electra on the way in
she was with me here too last summer
that’s when I met her
She’s not a student here
her mother works here but not year-round
her regular job is as an accountant
but she takes on extra work in the summers,
supporting the summer school staff
Electra comes with her because her mom doesn’t trust her
to be home all day
that’s what Electra says, at least
She was kinda sad when I saw her this morning, which I get
Who’s excited to come here? It’s June, for cryin’ out loud
(which I know I did, that summer after my freshman year)
Electra is a year up, just graduated
and thought she was gonna get this great internship this summer
in the city, at the Odd Pod, this cool new record label
they put out music by power-punk bands
I don’t know what power-punk bands are
but that just sounds awesome, doesn’t it?
Not just punk, power punk!
Working at Odd Pod was gonna be Electra’s “dream-tern-ship”
Electra loves mics and recording equipment,
specially if they’re old
like big ole cassette recorders and amps and stuff
everything’s starting to get even more digital now
but Electra says nothing beats the crackle and pop
I thought she was talking about cereal
but she was talking about records on the record player
and the Odd Pod is totally anti MP3,
they only put out records on vinyl
twelve inches, they call them,
and they actually make them in their offices
with these machines
she would have been able to press up cool power-punk twelve inches
I think it was paid too.
Can you imagine? Getting paid
to do what you love?
That ain’t an internship, that’s a job, my dad says
He says, When I was coming up, interns got paid in experience
and lots of exercise running and back and forth to the coffee machine
Why was everything harder in the past?
Hopefully you’re hearing this and are completely shocked
at how crappy things were
It’s actually thanks to Electra that you’re hearing this
even though she’s all things yester-tech
she loves the new portable digital recorders,
like this one, all ones and zeros,
that’s digital code, the base—
if you zoom in on a digital file
with a supervillain-size magnifying glass,
it’s all just a bunch of ones and zeros
But you all probably know that already,
since you had to rebuild everything, right?
It’s all because of a one and a zero, right?
Everybody—well, a lot of people—say
When that clock strikes 12:00 a.m., January 1, 2000
it’s all over!
Electra played me this song
written in the ’80s by Prince
that predicts what’s gonna happen
Y2K
That’s what they’re calling it, Y2K—Year Two Thousand
a big crash, because of how we count time.
Back when they were first programming computers, they only used
a two-digit code for the year: 77, not 1977; 99, not 1999
so when it rolls to 00, the system is bound to freak out
My parents think this is absurd, that of course they saw this coming
but if you look through history,
common sense wasn’t always so common
I mean back when I was real little, like three,
there was this space shuttle that blew up
while the whole world was watching
mistakes happen all the time
But as far as the ones and zeros you’re hearing
the ones representing my voice
I’m grateful for them
they’re holding up nicely—
a bunch of hares bouncing to the rhythm
they’re the only thing that can keep up
pens and paper can’t
even the keys on the keyboard can’t
Hell—I don’t know if anything ever truly will
keep up with the speed of thought
specially mine
There’s this disconnect
The invisible black curtain
My mother talks about this invisible black curtain
that falls across my eyes when I’m not listening
and not only not listening—just not focusing,
not even in the room
It’s not my fault that most people don’t keep my interest
Electra always does
The best used to be on Mondays
when she’d show me pictures of all the old junk
she got at estate and yard sales,
CD players and random cords and speakers
Are you building a giant monster made of yester-tech
to take over the city?
Why would I wanna take over this crappy town? she said
I spit my drink out
Just a little.
The invisible black curtain never falls when Electra and I hang out
not like we hang that much
summer school feels like forever but goes by fast
Last day last year, she brought me this recorder I’m speaking into
yeah, this one
Last week of summer school, she walked up to me,
it was all balled up in an old newspaper,
with tape in every direction
It’s for you, she said. A present
Inside was this little black pen recorder
she said she got it at a yard sale, but it looked new to me,
with the biggest Post-it note wrapped around it
that just said Keep talking —e
TWO
My parents do understand
My mother has always been my hype man
well, hype lady, so supportive, so positive,
makes a criticism sound like an ode
I know you’re capable of greatness, I’ve seen it
And then she’ll rattle off accomplishments
very, very specific, things I did six months earlier
or more
which feels good, ya know, like she sees me watching
But lately her praise hurts
like it’s drenched, logged with tear water
behind closed doors
It’s hype, which is positive energy, sure
but it’s the words I have trouble with
I love her
my mom, I mean
but I have this technique of ninja escaping
when I feel the hype coming
She’ll say special
which is a loaded .38, right?
One chamber, it’s you as a supernova
next chamber, you special
So I was beginning to wonder
if I used supernova in the right way
ever do that?
Talking about the apex when you mean the nexus
But I was thinking more like a comet, not a star
a supernova is actually more like a star that gets too big,
too bright and hot for itself, and blows up like a raisin in the sun
Oh wait, I only gave you two chambers, didn’t I?
When someone, my mom in this case, calls you special
it’s like a loaded gun
Chamber 1 Special is explosive
Chamber 2 Special is a pat on the head
Chamber 3 Special is a two-headed calf
Chamber 4 Special is the head of the table, tiara and all
Chamber 5 Special means your favorite athlete
just brought a signed ball to your hospital bedside
Chamber 6 Special is like calling a bald guy Curly
or a Black guy Whitey
or an ant a bear
Special is being in summer school for the third summer in a row
The three summers
Summer after freshman year
summer after sophomore year
and now summer after junior year
And every summer, at home there’s a different
someone I just want you to talk to
Mom’s medical-world friends
She’s not a doctor, but she is in the world of hospitals and stuff,
more on the business side
but she knows all these people I should talk to
They all have these super-specific specialties, ya know
not just like surgeon or dentist
they have titles like
pediatric therapist behavioral neuro something something
And they’re all nice enough
but one conversation at the kitchen island
over snacks on a Sunday afternoon won’t stop Ms. Bonaly
from gliding and twirling circles around my skull
They called it hyperactivity
Then they thought I had dyslexia
trouble with letters and words
reading is challenging but only because I get bored
actually, no, it’s the opposite,
I am too interested in too many other things at the same time
The book I’m trying to read, the book I read a year ago,
a movie I wanna see, what I want to eat now,
what I want to eat later
I forgot to make my bed again,
fourteen different ideas I will never do anything with
and so on and so on
The challenge is with English, which I am sure is a surprise
as you can hear I speak English fine
I mean English classes involving language, papers
reciting back the right words,
making a thesis and arguing it
Intro, Body Paragraph One through Three, and Conclusion
Proving I understand and can draw lines
between Grapes of Wrath and Fahrenheit something or other
All the titles on the reading list
I know them, the familiar big names
like Chuck E. Cheese and Advil
but I know more about Chuck E. Cheese and Advil
than I do about what’s on the reading list
The rest of school, I skated by
English Composition, C+
Mom and Dad tried to get me a tutor that summer
but then I broke my arm at the skate park—
the ice skate park, let’s be clear,
not the cool, bad-boy kind of skating but ice skating
where even as a child I knew I didn’t belong
Like I was saying,
literally a week before the last day of school
I broke my arm
Rest of the summer was Disney movies
and Popsicles after every lunch
But it’s been a concern
my grades and my learning of English
I don’t know, I think my English is okay
But it’s hard to focus on the Scopes Monkey Trial when your teacher is a bully
Harding, she’s the czar of all things literature and composition
at the school
Imagine a stormtrooper mixed with a wicked stepmother
mixed with your parents’ least-favorite politician
sprinkled with dry cement mix
I came from my kind and gentle and super-supportive
elementary and middle schools in a different city
to this big brick high school
where I got drenched in reality from a different bucket
Since then, three straight years, it’s been like bumper cars
freshman year was okay, things went faster than me,
but I could keep up
which was easy because I didn’t have any friends
everybody came in knowing one another from middle school
and I was new,
spinning in circles trying to navigate
without a kiosk that says YOU ARE HERE
Sophomore year is when things got really shaky
that’s when I first met Harding
Inherit the Wind is an exceptional courtroom drama.
She tried to make some connection
to the Law & Order shows on TV
teachers always try to make old stuff seem cool
by comparing it to new stuff
but Law & Order is also old stuff
I liked when we read it out loud, made the words come to life
and the argument, this thing around evolution
I came home charged up, convinced that everything was a sham
Unfortunately, all roads led back to the page
I’m so glad you “enjoy” this, but this isn’t about your pleasure
this is a work of literature and I need to know that you know
why it’s stood the test of time
I was lost, staring at encyclopedias
A thesis? My thesis was that it was a cool play
but it was a cool play was not thesis enough
She gave me a D+ and told me
and that’s being merciful
