back and forth, forever

Typically idyllic: that’s what anyone would say. Nobody had left, and nobody had much thought to. Don’t worry, this won’t be the story of the one who did—that tale has run its course, and in any case, it’s not appropriate here because there is nowhere to go; not entrapment—that would imply a psychological state of desperation; what I’m telling you is that none have ever thought to leave!

Let me start over. Because none of that is true. See: everyone has dreamt of leaving, and indeed they do it cyclically: what looses its head each morning and gains it again every night.

Our setting: some place lush, not quite jungle, but some dewy hills canopied in dark green.

Our protagonist: Jungle boy from jungle book. Tarzan. But, he’s all grown up and cleaned out. He’s wearing a suit and tie, and he’s carrying a briefcase, and he hasn’t been Tarzan for hundreds of years. He’s looking out the window of an Airbus-747 onto the dark green canopied hills of a country called Serbia; a sliver of which is called Kosovo, but this is not as political story, we won’t comment on that.

Actually, there’s no briefcase. No suit. No tie. And Tarzan is named Taylor. He’s still on a plane, a 747, I didn’t lie about that—but do your best to keep up, because who knows when I’ll do it again. Lie, I mean.

But, don’t look down on this habit—the greatest lie I ever told saved my life. You’ll see, more on that later.

I had a video of Taylor on an old Hi8 camera. He was swimming in a pool, the image is hazy, pixels getting lost and confused by the rippling rainbow water: he’s wearing floaties, and his grandmother is exclaiming Taylor! Taylor! like he’s a wet poodle waiting for a soggy dog-treat. It’s in this Spanish mission style courtyard and in the background, Yo La Tengo is playing. What the gathering was all about, I can’t remember, but judging by the time stamp on the tape, I must’ve been about sixteen.

A role reversal: pool-boys are supposed to be the young ones. I’m supposed to be the bikini-brief twink lazily collecting leaves. But, no—I’m the thirty-something not-yet-Daddy on a sunrise flight over the Atlantic: in hot pursuit of Tarzan-Taylor, another ant crawling at the same speed over the globe.

Let’s get one anxiety out of the way: I may be a creep, but I’m not a pedophile. Taylor hasn’t been a baby for a long time. And, in any case, you’ll soon learn a lot about time; how it bends and collapses, ages and rejuvenates. Your honor, let the record show: in the timeline, maybe I did fuck Taylor when he was a toddler—I’ve fucked him before he was born, after he died.

Ah, yes! I remember now—what that pool party was all about. She had said it so callously—that I would die of AIDS. She said she knew because she’d been a nurse and watched them all die. Those were the words she used—those people. “You know their assholes bleed, don’t you? When they have sex, they bleed!” It was a birthday party—Taylor’s second—but there was all this talk of dying. Elizabeth Richards—that’s the cunt’s real name, no need to change it when it goes to print; she’ll be proud to repeat that she hated the faggots she shepherded to death.

This was the cheapest flight I could find. I had received Taylor’s message just a few days ago, and it took a while to piece it all together with his cryptic clues. I didn’t know I had to pay extra before our departure just to be acknowledged by the flight crew. I pressed the call-button over and over; finally, all dry-mouthed and desperate, I walked to the back lavatories and asked for a cup of water. The shrew in orange stilettos wouldn’t even make eye-contact. Economy on Russian Air: I hadn’t felt this plebeian for over a millennium, somewhere in the outskirts of Mongolia, that dirt path where Taylor and I were begging. We’d barely worked out the kinks—of the machine and our intentions, that is. We’d explored many other kinks. Now: spot the lie.

I thought about doing it there in the turbulent lavatory of Russian Air: Flight 621. But, would I take them all with me? All 280 passengers—over a hundred of which were hassidic Jews from Brooklyn making their way to Mecca. Ah, being ignored reached new heights at 10,000 feet. I was curious, but I hesitated to imagine further: the wreckage of steel, orange stilettos, the black top-hats and all those synthetic wigs. I went back to my seat, and put on my headphones. I wondered what Taylor was listening to on his flight. I wondered if he’d just pissed in the lavatory. One mystery I hadn’t worked out yet: how he’d afforded the Qatar Airways fare—where, even in economy, you get a choice of meal. Well, it’s Qatar: he couldn’t get a cocktail, and God knows he’s suffering, the lush. But, then, so was I: I really missed the little fucker, and I couldn’t even order a cheap vodka to get my mind numb about it.

mood music

We'd learned a few things about the machine. First and foremost: what happens to your body and mind in any era stays with you—this thing didn't come with a refresh button, or infinite lives like in some video game. We'd come back with scars after Taylor was side speared in the Crusades, my little heathen. So naturally, we were cautious about a few things: like not wanting to bring back the bubonic plague. But such fears got us to thinking: what time was worth saving? Why were we the chosen people, like some Christian millenarians; how could we lose grasp of our prejudices, namely that we were special? Should the present—whatever that even is—be exactly as it is? Should we bump into someone or something ages ago and make everything different, would we be culpable? Would we feel guilty? All the world passed by us: presidents decreed genocides, and tyrants made us pay rent without our consent, and still we questioned our ethics. 

So, we quelled any would-be lust for power by remaining mostly by ourselves—cinéma vérité anthropologists, taking it all in like framed landscape paintings in the academic departments of art museums. How wrong those moralists had it, how embarrassingly of their times! We made a game of it, actually: going to the museums after our excursions, and laughing at the historical record.