Between Worlds (Xe)
from the series “Less Than Three”
Xe is standing before the door of a church. He hasn’t opened it.
Maybe, where he’s standing it looks like he’s about to smoke a cigarette. Maybe it looks like he’s just looking for a place in the shade. It’s hot. There are wavy lines between him and the houses across the street. It looks like things are bending together. It looks like a world without straight lines. He wonders what it would be like to always be seeing the world through heat waves. He thinks it would be trippy. Where he’s standing, it looks like he could be waiting for someone to come out of the church. Maybe he is. He tosses a half-smoked cigarette to the ground and goes inside.
The nicotine is making him shiver. That, or, he’s nervous. He doesn’t touch the holy water, he just goes to the second set of doors and opens them and looks at nothing and sits in the first pew he can find. People don’t disturb someone sitting in a pew. It looks like they’re praying or else — mourning.
Why is Xe here? The part of his mind that asked this is overruled. It’s not always necessary to know the why. Why did he just smoke half a cigarette? He doesn’t know. He thinks it’s stupid. He thinks he reeks now. He thinks his hand passed by his face and it smelled like tarry fumes. He knows his mouth doesn’t have enough spit in it and he keeps shivering and his legs are shaking but if he concentrates on them he can make them stop. He readjusts himself and indulges his lungs with a long slow breath. It smells of — church. Of wood and paint and hot — something. Bodies maybe? It’s cooler than outside but still not cool. He doesn’t know if there’s anyone here. He hasn’t looked at anything but the red pillow on the kneeling bench. It’s already folded out. That’s sloppy. You should be courteous and fold it back when you leave. Xe would. When he left he would fold the bench back. He would wait here until his shivers stopped and then he’d fold the bench back and leave. A part of him wanted to fold it right now. But he didn’t. Instead he got on it. With his knees. And put his hands together. He imagined his friends seeing him. He imagined the priest seeing him and saying, “He’s found his way.” But he hadn’t. He hadn’t found anything. This position wasn’t magical to him, it held no meaning whatsoever, it was just, how you were supposed to kneel on the bench. It balanced the body to have hands together, your elbows could rest semi-comfortably on the back of the bench in front of you. He imagined trying to explain this to his friends. It would be too late. They would think he was a fake. A lapsed atheist. Which he wasn’t. He didn’t think any of this was magical. He just didn’t know what to do. He did not know what the fuck to do, so he smoked a cigarette and came to church. And smoked another cigarette and came inside. Not whole cigarettes. He felt a bit lame littering a whole cigarette like that. He smoked until the nausea made him gag, then threw it down. There was no sense of why. He liked being asked for his ID and giving it. He half expected his mother to walk in and attempt to shove the pack down his throat, but nothing happened. He walked out with it concealed in his shirt. He was careful to wait until there was no one at the cash. He imagined someone he knew tweeting, “Just saw @something’s brother buying a pack of cigarettes #signofthetimes.” So far he hadn’t seen anyone. He’d walked away and then realized he didn’t have a lighter and spent some time in the street thinking about using his glasses and the sunlight to light an end. Finally he went back and bought a little green one. The lady asked him which one he wanted and he took the green one, being so flustered by her French that there was a painful delay while he translated what she said and then translated his answer before speaking it. The lady thought he was an idiot, no question. Her eyelids were half-closed for the duration of his second purchase. He was an idiot, he bought a green lighter, he hates green. Also he was an idiot for buying cigarettes. He left the store and walked down the nearest neighborhood street and smoked two puffs before losing his nerve and throwing it down. He didn’t stamp it. He threw it in the grass. It could start a fire he thought. He remembered a movie where a cigar started a fire that almost killed a puppy. Implication, cigars were evil and so were the people who smoked them. Same went for cigarettes. Smoking killed. It was filthy. It gave him a headache. He walked as far as the church and then, sat on the curb. Then he got up. He walked to the door and stood there for a while. Wondering what he was going to do next. He found himself involuntarily opening the pack and lighting the end of a white cylinder, just to have something to suck on. The smoke went right into his throat and he coughed and then tried a second time to bring it into his mouth and let it out. He found he could do that without pain. He wondered if it was getting into his lungs anyway or if he would be able to finish all of it like this. He didn’t know how it worked, how the drug was getting into his system. He knew that cigarettes were supposed to be relaxing. And that you had to be 18 to buy them. He was eighteen, with room to spare. So he bought a pack. He pointed to a box. A white box. He just wanted something to suck on.
Xe is kneeling in a church. That’s what this position is called kneeling. Because you’re on your knees. If you were on your shins it would be called shinling. The point of being on the knees and not the shins is that it’s more uncomfortable. Also because being on your knees is a symbol of supplication. In the sense that you’re begging. Or you’re overcome by woe so heavy it makes you fall but you get up without the balance to reach your feet. You’ve been brought to your knees. That moment could have been brought to you by, your knees, in the sense that your knees were the sponsor of your increasing pain. Because it wasn’t comfortable, usually, to be on your knees on a hard surface. But that was the point. You weren’t supposed to be comfortable you were begging. The red cushion and specially designed kneeling bench is pretty unchristian in his mind. You were begging. On your knees. Literally, with your hands together. It wasn’t any coincidence you were perfectly positioned to give someone a blowjob, perhaps against your will. Theoretically you could also be forced to eat a girl out if your hands were tied and she grabbed your head and forced it in there. The point was, you were vulnerable, on your knees. You can’t fight from your knees. You have to surrender. Put your hands together and surrender. Was Xe going to do that?
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No. If what he’s asking himself is, is he going to believe in God. No. He is not. It’s simply a ridiculous story. There is no god of the ants, there is no god of the humans. There are just ants and humans. Consciousness is not a divine gift it’s just good brain function. That was obvious to him. He was not surrendering his reason. He would not. He refused to. His eyes are closed but he is very aware of the surrounding building. The air feels cool and echoy. He knows there are many straight wooden benches in front of him. He knows there is a sculpture of a dude hanging from a sculpture of a piece of wood and he knows the dude looks stoically in pain. Like, he looks in pain, but it looks like there’s a lot more pain than he’s letting show. It looks like he’s dealing with a lot of pain, but only showing a small part of the total. You were supposed to see his face and wonder how much it hurt to be strung up like that. You were supposed to imagine how much pain he was hiding under that handsome bearded white guy face. 50%? 80%? Was he hiding like 99.99% of the total pain he was feeling? That made you feel like the guy was just, so tough. Like what a badass to feel all that pain and only by sadly smirking. Xe wonders if he thought it wasn’t his fault. Xe wonders if he thought, this happened to me because I spoke out against the powers that be or if he thought, this happened to me because I insulted people’s religious sensitivity or, this happened to me because it was the divine will of an omnipotent god. Xe hopes to God he wasn’t thinking, this is happening to me to pay for the sins of all mankind because then he would be kind of an egomaniac. Like, that part had to be added afterward, that people figured out afterward, ohh, that’s what he died for. It wasn’t possible that he was thinking about it while he was hanging there in the sun, drying out.
Xe learned about crucifixion in his Medieval English class. It was an insanely brilliant sadistic invention and the fact that it ever existed is proof enough that human beings should probably go extinct. It wasn’t just one famous person either, it happened to hundreds of thousands of people over history, probably. It’s not like there was a ton of records. Xe learned that in real life they nailed through the wrists because the hands didn’t have the strength to hold up a body. The point was to put the person in a position where they had to hurt themselves. By nailing the wrists and feet and holding them vertical the person has to either pull with their arms or push with their legs, or both, to breathe. That was the purpose of crucifixion. To make the person torture themselves just to breathe, until they died. And people didn’t just see this stuff happen, they watched. People watched and gathered in crowds to spectate. They enjoyed watching. They wanted to see suffering. Maybe they were bored. Maybe they were sadistic heartless scum. And there were so few people in the world then that you have to think, like 20% of the world’s ancestors must have watched a crucifixion. What percentage enjoyed it? What if people weren’t honest in surveys?
Hey man. Uh. I just want to say. You didn’t have to do that. You could have told her. You know who I mean and you know who you are. You could have told her. Whatever you were going through man, you really could have gone through it together. I know you thought that would have made it harder but you’re wrong. You were so wrong. Maybe you were really used to being right, and to people telling you you were right that you thought you were right about this. But you fucked up man. You fucked up so so hard.
This negates everything you did in your life. And that’s saying a lot. You were a freak. I can’t put myself in your head man, but I can tell you, you seriously fucked up. How could you — I mean — Look I know people say you’re smart, and I know that me and you were never really friends, but can I just say as a fellow Dota player. You were not infallible. You fucked up. You missed plenty of CS you shouldn’t have. Your positioning was shaky and you hesitated too much before going offensive early game. I never told you that, because I didn’t want you to not like me. Now I wish I’d told you. I wish I’d insulted you more man. Brought you down to earth. I tiptoed around you, I thought you had everything figured out. I’ll never assume that about anyone again. I won’t ever be able to trust anyone man. You ruined my ability to trust people. How could you have been dead for hours and I didn’t even know it. Wasn’t I supposed to feel something? Wasn’t there like, like a fucking uh — like a disturbance in the force? Why didn’t I feel that? I feel like nothing changed when you died. Like the world was the same before and after man. Like. You were dead and nobody knew or cared. You’re dead right now man. That’s all you’ll ever be now. You’ll be dead forever man. That was going to happen anyway. You didn’t have to do anything, that was going to happen. That was guaranteed.
You hated making mistakes. I remember it. That was a character flaw. You shouldn’t hate mistakes. But, knowing that you hated them, I try to imagine you alive and reacting to the mistake you just made. I imagine you a ghost walking down the street to Alanna’s house and trying to touch her and your hand passing through her skin. I imagine you shouting at people and realizing, you never made a bigger mistake than this one. How much would you have hated yourself for this, if you were alive to regret it? Probably a lot. Maybe it’s a good thing you’re dead, you would have beat yourself up over this, your grandest fuck up.
Are you proud of yourself? Do you feel smart? It is like, mission accomplished, death achieved, three cheers, now on to the next thing. But there is no next thing is there? You’re done. I know you’re not getting punished. There is no justice for your crime. You’re a murderer. There’s a murderer in you. If I could get him out of you, I’d shoot him and then it’d be you and Alanna. You’d hold her and see me ride off into the sunset with your murderer rolled up in a blanket on the back of my horse. And things would be as they should be. Now things are all fucked up. You fucked them up everything’s different. Everyone’s different. The whole school can’t think. It’s dead quiet in the halls. People feel bad for laughing. This is not a normal tragedy. This is not the vengeful hand of God. This is just you, fucking up! YOU FUCKED UP BARNEY, YOU FUCKED UP SO HARD. All of these people. All of these people we know. You know. Who could have helped you. Literally anyone. Everyone liked you. Everyone knew who you were, you could have stopped anyone and said something and they would have given the shirt off their back bro. You had everything. You had the girl. You had the car. You had the marks. You had the brains. You had the looks. You had the athletics. You had the public speaking. You had the drawing. You had the guitar. You had cooking. You had the brains. You had everything a person could want. You had all the things people lay up at night dreaming about having. What the fuck was so hard about your life? You just had to live. You just had to enjoy the things nobody else gets to have. That was your play. Your duty. Just stay the fuck alive. Those were your orders.
Were you not thinking of Alanna at all? Were you just, not thinking of her? Were you that selfish that you didn’t think, I’m going to destroy this girl who I love. Did you not love her man? Were you faking? What weren’t you faking? You know it’s hard for me to ask that question but I have to ask it. What was real? Was our friendship real? I don’t have any proof you know. I don’t have any proof you existed. I don’t have any pictures. You aren’t in any. I can’t find a single picture of you. All I have is our Dota games. Sometimes I replay them from your perspective to try to see what you were thinking. Your skill builds were not great, I didn’t notice when we were playing together. Not that I would have said anything. This was back when I still respected you.
Oh yeah by the way, I don’t respect you anymore. Yeah. You’re a murderer in my mind. And you killed one of the best people I knew, and you hurt my friend, she’s never going to be the same. I know how a thing like this changes a person and she’s going to be changed. And she didn’t deserve this. You didn’t know her. You really didn’t. If you thought you needed to do this, you didn’t. You are so much lower in my esteem now. I can’t think of you without being angry. You’re a monster. You lied to everyone. You made us think you were alright. That it was all good, that it was going to be all good. And you lied. Because you needed things and you weren’t telling people. What did you need? What did you see? How did this make sense to you? The thing that kills me is I don’t know how this made sense, in your mind. I didn’t understand how this was the thing you thought you had to do. Are you happy now? Are you satisfied? Who were you trying to speak to? Canada? The world? God? Did you have something in mind?
