Getting Out
An auto-analysis of escape
Donald MossOf course, the class map is vertical. To sense yourself as a member of a class, you must feel that verticality. You must realize a higher and a lower, a better and a worse. Our minds are always at work, responding to demands, from inside and out. The highs of pleasure, the lows of pain—these mark the poles of the vertical axis, up and down, up and down.
We likewise live in time—now, before, and later—what we have and have had, what we do and have done, what we want and have wanted, who we are and have been. We measure this moment now in relation to ones we remember and ones we sense will come. The vertical axis is our measurement axis, marking possibility, outlining a range: what I can do, be, feel, expect.
But the class map must also be horizontal—a side-to-side, a here and an elsewhere—a here where I have mine, a there where they have theirs. Scanning the lateral horizon: this is a person, this a thing, this a mother, this a meal, this an absence of a meal. This is pain. This is hunger. This is being. This is alone. This is company. This is my body. This is funny, that is sad. This tension, that relief. This is tired, that sleep. The horizontal axis situates all of that, all of your private ups and downs, and gives them a place, a location—placing them, and you, in the world.
Private ups and downs turn public. Added to what you have is what they have; to what you want is what they want; to what you cannot have, what they cannot have. Your gaze turns sideways, you here, the others there. This is still your body, your food, your tension, your relief, yes, but now, you wonder, you ask, what about theirs: their bodies, their food, their tensions, their relief. And they, too, are wondering, asking, what about all of yours. Once the horizontal axis clicks in, you are not only looking up and down. Now you are also looking to the side, being looked at from the side. The horizontal axis provides the skeleton for all of this looking, this watching, this being watched.
What you do, what you have, what you wish for, how you are satisfied, the ways you work, the ways you play, the times you can rest, the feel of your body, the texture of your mind—all of it now has a place, next to, above, below, to the side. The horizontal axis marks that place—in fact, marks your place.
The work of the class map is apparently simple. The class map fixes your place on the grid, the place where horizontal and vertical axes intersect, and declares that place permanent and legitimate, fixed and irreducible. It turns all of your vertical and horizontal circumstances into an essence, or at least the appearances of one, by making your contingencies and conditionals into lawful truths, and the accidents of birth into facts of nature.
The smells again, the surround, the big men, the laughter, the food.
I remember the start of myself. I am surrounded, never alone. There is always the smell of food and bodies. Hard candy in a glass jar, a stove and a meat grinder, an oven. There are aprons, blood on the aprons. Hands all over me. Yiddish. A back yard, a birdbath, a porch, steep stairs. Tattoos. Big men. Laughing. Being bounced, being thrown, flying. Climbing, touching. The house. No car. No stroller. Nowhere. People come into the house. They smell. I don’t like the smells. I stiffen. Immediacies. Never another house.
Then we move. Gaps appear. No smells. No aprons. A new backyard. A telephone pole. A field. A friend, Jimmy. Grasshoppers in a jar. A muffin man. A TV; its test patterns, its warm frame. Howdy Doody. Buffalo Bob. Going back to the old house. The smells again, the surround, the big men, the laughter, the food. Arithmetic now, reading. I laugh. I am a little boy. Smart. The rub of a beard. Calloused hands. Hiding upstairs. Running. But still, only immediacies.
Two houses now: the old one, the new one. Something, nothing. Surrounded there, alone here. Two places. Here is worse, there is better. Here is close, there is far.
Stretched by time, the horizontal and vertical axes conjoin.
*
Jimmy lived down the street. His house was small, made of wood. He had no father. No basement. No TV. His mother sat in a big chair, still and indifferent. There were bad smells, dirt, flies. No food. No drink.
Ours is better. I am better. More food, more books, a father, a piano. I have what Jimmy wants. Mine, not his. I am low, Jimmy is lower. I am alone. He is more alone.
My class map begins with Jimmy.
We move again. Cars, clothes, girls. Fancy, beautiful, unavailable. Money. We have no money. I have no money. Money. I get fat, I get mean. I smoke, I threaten, I fail, I sneer. I am helpless. I can’t get mean enough, tough enough, violent enough, indifferent enough. I don’t have enough. I can’t get enough. I am always wanting. Always. It’s not love, it’s not desire, it’s greed. I want to take, not kiss. I want to own you, have you, be you. I want out. I smoke, I steal, I cheat. I hate all laws.
Each morning before school we gather at Bobby’s house to play cards, smoke, drink coffee. We are eleven years old. We all have knives. His parents are there. They make the coffee, make sure we are OK, have a fresh deck of cards.
What we have to know: girls, cards, cars, the size of your dick, who can take whom in a fight.
I meet regularly with my institute’s liaison operative—an impeccably dressed man: bespoke suits and snakeskin boots. His hushed voice demands a little extra, a bending toward.
This time he has a question: “Dr. Moss, do you have, uh, well, I mean, do you have financial problems?”
His hesitation, his hemming and hawing, his embarrassment and distaste—the message is clear: my financial problem is, for this impeccably dressed man, a problem of hygiene, the kind we should never have.
Do I leak, am I leaking? Do I befoul, am I befouling?
“Of course not,” I say to my handsome liaison operative, “there is no financial problem at all, really. Just forgetfulness. I’m working on it in analysis.”
“Very good,” he smiles, “very good.”
I hate my liaison operative. My flesh and my shoes are wrong. My adjectives. My nouns. My verbs. Too much action. Too much movement. I think too much. Read too much. Why so much, Moss, why? What’s wrong with you? Can’t you be quiet? Lean back? Lean on what came before?
*
I am here with him. No elsewhere. A beginning. Just here. Me and my brother. His smile. His laugh. I can start over.
David says: I saw it coming on my dog tags. The Jew was going to have a shower because they had never seen a circumcised penis and they all wanted to see what happens to a Jew with a circumcised penis. But then I began to enjoy the army, thinking, Jesus, Donald, sometime maybe I can really do this: kill people with my hands, or using things like a broomstick, or a piece of rope or piano wire.
This was when your mother came down to Florida. I stamped on the glass. I was married to your mother. Afterward, she’s waiting for me at the end of the bridge. I run out. I hold her in my arms. That’s where that picture was taken of us standing under that palm tree. Where evidently she became pregnant with you.
Then it’s “say goodbye to your wives.” They could have been kinder, but nothing, nothing.
I was prepared. If things had happened the way we had trained for, we had total preparedness. But nothing worked. Nothing. Nothing worked that way. Nothing. At the beach, I’m watching and it’s beautiful and I’m paddling like a sonofabitch. But where’s the human line of all these guys and where’s all the orderly stuff and where’s the guy with the flags waving us in?
No one ever waved him in. No one. Ever.
*
Then my baby brother is born. He changes everything. He looks at me, laughs with me. It’s OK. We’re fine. We’re good. I’m good. I’m tender. It works. It’s small. It’s a small place. But it holds me. I can rest in it. His smells. His bouncing. His pain. His pleasure.
I am here with him. No elsewhere. A beginning. Just here. Me and my brother. His smile. His laugh. I can start over.
So I start. I look upward. Away. Out. I join. A big guy, I insult and mock. I target and laugh. I perform and swagger. I own and become. I feign and pass. I betray. I am ashamed. I am rising. My friends, my only friends, Bobby, and Gary and Dougy and Tommy and Ricky, they fade away. They take wood shop and typing, accounting and business math. Tommy beats people up. Animal, they say. We, I say it, too. I loved Tommy. I loved Ricky. I loved Bobby, and Gary and Dougy. Did I, though. My love fades. They fade. Doesn’t matter. Don’t want them anymore. It’s stuff I want now. Insignia. Oxford cloth. Loafers. Sweaters. Calculus. Physics. I am corrupt. Treacherous. Funny. Smart. Top of the class. Daring. Incisive.
And then Miss Young appears. Old, beautiful, soft, kind, wise, Catholic, loving. We encircle her. Barbara and Michael and Fern. She is so good. Goodness. Astonishing. Poems. Stories. Writing. She takes me in. Almost, I think. I’m almost in. But I can’t, Miss Young. I need stuff. I can’t be good. I know I can’t. Miss Young doesn’t know. I’m sorry, Miss Young. I’m still sorry. How she looked at me. Seeing me. Seeing what. Imagining what. If only, but I can’t. I can’t be kind. Miss Young dies, and I can’t be kind. She goes to a nun’s place. We visit. Spare, clean, a Bible, five books. And then she dies.
*
I see him smashing his thumb with a hammer while outside on an eight-foot ladder, no gloves, in the Michigan winter, temperature in the teens, pulling wire for three bucks an hour and a pack of Chesterfields jammed into his shirt pocket. Selling his Rh blood for $25 every Christmas morning, and telling us all about the size of the needle, while we spend that money on our once-a-year restaurant meal.
*
I bowl. I gamble. I lose. I always lose. One guy, Arthur Solomon, has the most beautiful hook. Soft, swerving, easy. Swerving like a girl’s hip. Scatters the pins like dynamite. The pins explode. He always wins. Strike after strike. I bowl dumb. Straight. Fast. Dumb. I always lose. Arthur always wins. He carries stacks of bills in a money clip. A money clip! He walks like a cat. Oh, Arthur. I am trying. I walk like a tractor. I always lose.
You want money in the bank, sure, but what you can never really have is history in the bank.
College. Detroit. Black kids. Southern kids. SNCC kids. The long legs. The grace. The histories. The quiet. The listening. The meaning it. The pride. The street gangs. The Temptations. My god. I’m in. I’m not in. Welcome, they say. But I still can’t say yes. Not really. Not there. They can be poor. I can’t. I can’t be poor. I need money. I need stuff. Go somewhere else. Doctor. Yes. Doctor. Breathe easy. Radical doctor. Antiwar doctor. Memphis. Organizing. Beat the draft. San Francisco. Golden Gate. Acid. Really? Drop out? Stay in? Find a spine, Donald. Find a goddamn spine. Bookstores. New Directions. Beckett. Jazz. Cecil Taylor. Lie. Marry. Divorce. Lie more. Dogs. Cars. A red MG. Wanting, wanting, wanting, wanting. Have a good day. Have a good life. Have sex. Lie. Tell the truth. Blur the difference.
New York. Scurry. Every morning cry. Every morning talk and cry. Talk and cry. Ten years of it. Get better. Celebrate. Move up. A loft. A lover. The art world. AIDS. And finally I can write. Finally, I can mean it. I can do it. I can go to Senegal, to India, to China. I can see. I can take in. I am here. I am present. Fragile, though. I still stare, still look at that. And that. What I don’t have. Whom I’m not. What I wish for, what I need. More, always more. I want more. I want further.
Here, I say. Stop. It’s far enough, cool enough, smart enough, grave enough. Be still here. Work here. Be kind here. Teach. Lose. Greet. Lose again. All of it here. All of it far enough. Say hello here. Be a doctor here. Win. Lose. Establish. Yes, establish here.
Find a woman. Hold her baby. Have a baby. Have another. Marry. Become a part. One of five. Little crawling people. Crawling on my body. Our little people. Our people; my body. Begin here. Begin with them. Begin again. Love. Love again. Look. Look again. Say goodbye again.
Goodbye again. Hello again. Run again. Run again, again.
*
A financial problem is the kind where you’re always overspending, where you never catch up, where you can’t get traction, credit, where there’s nothing saved, where there’s been foreclosures, evictions, boards up instead of doors, where you’ve got nothing to lean on, you’re barely getting out, you never breathe easy, where the bad stuff can always happen, where you try to leave things behind that can’t be left behind, the things that got you there, the things that kept you there; where you want things that can’t be had, where you finally and really want only one thing, one thing that can’t be had. You want money in the bank, sure, but what you can never really have is history in the bank, the kind of history you can always draw on, the kind you’ll be grateful for, a history that endows you, gives you, provides you, imagines you, works for you. So, yes, Mr. Liaison Advisor, I do have, will have, and have always had a financial problem.
*
Those drives we took. The lawns we saw, the cars they drove. Their hills, their space. Our itchy wool, their luscious leather. Their quiet women, our brackish ones. Their slate-gray jackets, their straight blond hair. Their teeth, their fingernails. Their clean, our dirt.
Look at that, my mother would say. Donald, she’d say, will you just look at that? And that and that. And so, I would look at it, look at all of it, and then we’d go home. Where we lived, where they lived. The radio was always on. The TV was always on.
Work. Stop. Work. Stop.
We are dispensable. They are not. We can be replaced. They cannot. We want. They have. Who, then, is in the right, who has been wronged?
Get the fuck out of my face. The money’s mine. Come and get it. Just try, why don’t you.
*
Everything I do shames me.
Dream: September 2, 2019 (Labor Day)—I am involved in a civil suit. I win it: $750K in damages. I am given the money in cash. As I leave the courtroom, the sheriff and deputies say to me, with hatred in their voices, “Don’t spend a penny of that money; we will have you back here. That money is ours. We’ve been wronged, not you. You owe us. We will not forget. We will get you.” I leave with the money, uncertain who deserves it, who is in the right, who has been wronged.
*
There’s a guy sitting on the sidewalk near my office, begging. I know the guy. His kids and mine played baseball together. He was a dad in affluent Brooklyn. And now he’s begging. I ask him what happened. He tells me something about his wife, and alimony, and losing a job, and his kids won’t talk to him, and well… he offers an account.
Ivan, right, he says to me, your kid’s name was Ivan, the pitcher. Mine was Tyler. Remember? And then, right when I remember, he says, each time, can you help me out?
He’s a decent-looking guy. His face is vacant. He wears a baseball cap, sits on the sidewalk, his back against a wall, there very early, 6:30, 6:45.
He doesn’t smell. He doesn’t carry his stuff with him. He has a place to go to at night. I don’t want to see him. He’s there every day. Bobby, Dougy, Gary, Tommy. Those guys. He’s one of those guys now. I avoid him. I approach from the other direction. He’s terminal. He will not recover.
Seeing him shames me. Avoiding him shames me. Giving, withholding, no matter. Everything I do shames me.
*
I am sitting in a chair, staring out a large, curved window onto a sun-drenched garden. First, then, comes the garden—lush, well tended and formal—a document of social class. The garden is confident, aspiring, achieving. I see its achievement more than I see its particulars. I read the garden instead of seeing it. I don’t know the difference between reading and seeing. I don’t want to care about that difference. I want stillness. I do not want difficult questions. I feel confused. I try to block out the question. Shrubs line a stone wall. Cypress trees mark the garden’s edge. The cypress trees look like sentinels. I know nothing about cypress trees. I turn them into sentinels. My metaphor is lazy. It makes me unhappy. My unhappiness demands attention. My unhappiness persists. Attention is the cause of my unhappiness. I want my attention stopped. I briefly close my eyes. I open them. The garden swamps me with meanings, more than I can manage, way too many. It has stopped being a garden. That cannot be. What is a garden, anyway? Of course, a garden has meanings. What am I doing here? We never had a garden. I remember rhubarb growing wild in the alley behind the house. I would eat it raw, like celery. This rhubarb tells a class story, like the garden does. Instead of looking at the garden, I am looking at a story. The garden fades; the story dominates. This seems wrong and also right. The story is what counts. I want to write the story of the garden. This wanting disturbs my stillness. I want to look at the garden. I want to stay still. Too much meaning. Too much story. Too much class. Meanings disturb my stillness. I stop. I close my eyes again. Try to get to nothing. Just my body, my breath, away from meaning and story, away from rhubarb.