The Impulse

Dan’s an odd friend of mine. My only friend, actually. He always shows up when I need him most. Only I can never say exactly what I needed him for nor how he knew to find me. All I know is that grinning face of an old friend and his reassurance that everything will be A-OK. See, Dan takes me away and back again on his old black iron horse. And it costs me nothing. Nothing but my willingness to step up and go.

I was nine years old when I first met Dan. One minute, I’d been tossing in bed, trying to sleep (something that’s never seemed to come naturally to me). The next, I opened my eyes to see that I was no longer in my room. Nope, instead, I was lying down on the cold, cracked floor of a strange train station.

I was lying on the “platform,” which was more or less one individual block of cracked cement. Encasing me was a tall glass box like a telephone booth. And even though it had been a hot summer night when I’d been in my bed, I found myself peering out at what looked like an Arctic tundra in its coldest season.

Just one lonely street lamp stood outside the platform. It cast a puddle of luminescence on the endless white nothing. Wending through those snowy barrens like a steel serpent were the railroad tracks. On and on they went, until they evanesced into a blackness darker than deepest sleep. And stationed outside the platform was a bullet-black steam locomotive, something plucked from the early 20th century, belching black cloud from its blast pipe, steam box staring ahead like an impassive face. But what I remember most is the cold.

I realized the glass box I was lying in had a door; so I opened it… and there was Dan. He came from nowhere. He always does, really. One minute, I was completely alone; and the next, he was ushering me aboard. He wore what he always does: his jet-black blazer, engineer boots, a pair of white gloves and a matching conductor’s hat.

“Somethin’ botherin’ you there, Jack, m’boy?” Dan asked me. His voice was fast and solicitous. He sounded a lot like James Stewart, actually. “You look a little lost. My name’s Dan, Dan the conductor Man, and there’s no reason to be afraid of me. I’m your pal. Climb aboard, see, and I’ll take you anywhere you’d like to go. No cost. You don’t even need a railcard here! Just because I like you. Just because you’re a swell guy.” 

He gave a wink. His eyes were like wet obsidian, the only part of his face that wasn’t vague or indistinct. 

“How did I get here?” I asked.

“Well, you brought yourself here, pal! They all do.” 

“I did?” 

“Of course you did, of course you did! I’m who people come to when they can’t sleep. Or want to get away. Sometimes you need to take a step outside yourself, you know what I mean, Jack, m’boy? Just for a little while of course, of course – can’t run away from real life forever, you know.”

“So I’m not really me? This is like a dream?”

“We’re still 'us' when we travel, wouldn’t you say? We just feel a little funny. After all, you shoot through the sky, land, or sea by way of one vessel or another, and next thing you know, you’re in a different world. But just because you’re traveling and ‘in between’ doesn’t mean you’re dreaming, right? Anyhoo, this is my own sleepin’ car, here, see. Much better than any Polar Express ride, and not anything of Alco make. No, she’s one of a kind, my good old iron horse, here – perfect for an impulsive joy ride!” 

I laughed, perhaps a bit dubiously. 

“Here, you can go aaanywhere you’d like to go, Jack m’boy! And we’ll be there and back again, round the balloon, ’fore the sun is high in the sky. Passenger’s guarantee! Now step on up, step on up, all aboard The Impulse Express, please! Aren’t you cold there, son?”

He was right: I was fucking freezing, and I could feel the warmth coming from the passenger door. So I got on board.

***

The following day, I woke up and vomited. 

Mom asked what I’d eaten. But her concern for me couldn’t last too long; because my little sister – four years old at the time – woke up screaming only a short while later. Her dwarf hamster, Kirby, was missing. It was a little red-eyed devil the size of your palm, and my sister loved it more than fucking life.

I loved Kirby, too; but in a different sense. The compactness of the animal always fascinated me. The size of its brain, the forced enclosure of its guts. A little furred ball of kinetic energy, and I often wondered what made it “go.” I was like that with a lot of things. One Christmas, I’d gotten a Game Boy Color. But rather than catching Pokemon, I’d gotten my dad’s screwdriver and tore the thing apart. I hadn’t names for the things I’d discovered: the motherboard, the audio processor, the buck converter, or any of it. But I’d felt a sort of glitter in my gut and brain at the sight of them. I was only a kid, but honestly it was almost a sexual thing – so perverse it was to see everything that ought to be together taken apart like that. 

Dad found me encircled by the pieces, grabbed my arm, confiscated his screw driver, and made me go sit in my room staring at his red hand-print on my skin. Thinking of why it was that my blood had made a shape like that. Thinking, too, of how bad I felt that my parents were poor and I’d destroyed the gift they’d gotten me.

When I came out of my quarantine for dinner, I apologized, suddenly scared of that “glitter sensation” I had felt; and I slept not a wink that night teaching myself how to reassemble the toy. (After that, I didn’t do anything but play Pokemon with it, like a conventional kid).

Later, I showed Dad the reassembled Game Boy. Told him that I’d only been interested in how it worked. 

I couldn’t tell him, of course, that I wanted to know how living things worked.

Like… what made me guilty?

What made me lonely?

What made me afraid of other people, even my sister?

What made the blood inside me form a shape of Dad’s hand-print?

What made Kirby run on his wheel all night long?

The night after my sister woke up crying, I noticed the smell in my closet when I opened the door to put on my pajamas. Kirby wasn’t lost.

Kirby was in a shoe box behind my slippers.

Kirby had been opened from the center, coin purse-style.

I buried the hamster. Noticed things I pretended not to notice; like Dad’s screwdriver being in the wrong compartment of his tool box. Or the bathroom hand soap being much lower than it was the day before, like someone had washed up maniacally. I was feverish with worry, sick with guilt; but it didn’t stop the rush nor the high I felt when I let my fingers rummage Kirby’s innards before I gave it to the worms.  

Nor the ecstasy I felt in subsequent years. Like when I came across surgical videos on television. Or dead things in the woods. Or when I accidentally cut myself on an upturned razor in the shower. The bright, rich scarlet. The wonderful, iron-raw taste of it. God, I craved escape from myself.

“And that’s just what I’m here for, Jack, m’boy! It’s been a long time, hasn't it? Years, in fact! You’re all grown up now, son,” Dan the Conductor Man said. Arctic wind blew all around me, and I shivered. This time, with more delight than worry. My skin was goose-bumped. And I was hard.

“It’s been too long,” I said.

“Well step on up, step on up, all aboard please!” Dan boomed invitingly. “I get the feeling you need a ride pretty bad this time, huh?”

“You have no idea.”

“Ah, don’t we all at some point?” Dan asked with a hearty laugh. “Well, at least everyone who boards this particular train.”

“Are there really other people?”

“More than you’d think, Jack, m'boy,” Dan said. He lowered his face to peer at my own, conductor’s hat casting shadow over his jewel-bright eyes. “More than you’d think.” 

I woke to find the sun full and high in the sky. Afternoon. I threw off my sheets feeling dazed satisfaction, almost like I’d just come. It was when I was brushing my teeth after breakfast that I noticed the greenish dirt cake under my fingernails. Again, that glittering surge of invigorating, terrible, sickly, almost lascivious excitement. I swallowed, my breathing shallow, my temples throbbing as images shadowed and indistinct as specters came to me: A Game Boy Color bleeding from its half-screwed seams. My Dad grabbing my arm, a hamster in my fist, red eyes popping from the pressure of the squeeze. I washed my hands so I wouldn’t think so hard.

Dad made me mow the lawn that day. I saw it while I was outside: the pile. A clumping of loose dirt near the fringe of the woods, hardly perceivable, yet plain as day to me, and I was soon hot in a way that had nothing to do with the sun. 

I swallowed at the rising heat inside of me, pretended it wasn’t there, but I knew. Funny how we can lie to ourselves in earnest until we believe it. “I don’t know what that clump of dirt is,” I said; and my brain, which knew, first protested until it learned to agree: “No, no you don’t, do you, Jack, m’boy?”

And the mantra continued in that way. But it wasn’t as loud as my neighbors calling for their missing dog. The dozy beagle they let sleep outside so carelessly. The beagle that licked my hand every day with a warm tongue. I’d loved that dog. I’d fed that dog treats, told him he was handsome. And more than that, I’d wondered where those treats went deep down and what muscle moved that tongue to kiss. And I craved to know where that dog kept its big, loving heart.

But, no, no I didn’t think that at all, did I? I didn’t. I don’t. I never have. I never will. I don’t know where that handsome dog went. I was with Dan, I told myself. I was with DanIwaswithDanandmanypeopleridethistraindon’tthey?

“That’s right, Jack, m’boy, you were with me! Where to tonight?”

But that night, I told him, “No.” I said I’d rather stay in my own bed tonight. And he laughed and laughed and laughed at me, his hysterical breath pluming out in front of him in that dead Arctic air. Then he leaned very close to me and whispered,

“You’re only delaying a trip that will inevitably take off, Jack M’Boy.”

But I backed away from him and closed the glass door. 

I told him I thought he was wrong.

I told him I didn’t like the cold, and he told me that’s why he kept it warm on the train. And couldn’t I feel the hot coals burning?

***

High school graduation was a relief. The sooner I met adulthood, the sooner I could be alone. As a grown-up, I could scatter the parts of so many ruined things, surround myself with them, and not have the screwdriver pried from my hand. 

I applied and was accepted into college because that was the proper thing to do, that’s what everyone did, and that’s what made me the same as everybody else. Computer Science, even if Biology called to me. It called to me in Dan’s James Stewart voice. Like a summons from a coffin, the call of an un-dead corpse, pallid lips peeling backwards over rancid black gums.

I knew what I really wanted, but I didn’t acknowledge it, because my brain still played that mantra-esque game with itself; so I went for what was conventional. It frightened me more than anything else, to be a normal guy. Hanging around other people all the time. Talking about work and kids and what was on TV that night… so I made it my goal. I was so sick.

Until she came along. Then I got sicker.

She had auburn hair, crooked teeth, an off-center nose, and constellations of freckles. I thought more about the outside of her than the inside for a while; and if I did think about the inside, I thought about the intangible insides: not the musculature that made her smile, but the brightness of her. Or the glitter in her brown eyes. That came from something Other, something intangible. I still believe that.

She told me her name in our first Gen Ed class together, as if I hadn’t memorized that from the roster already. We walked to the dining hall together that day, and she introduced me to a group of her friends. I only saw her. Only really cared about her. She planned to join the dance team. Full of kinetic energy. And I felt the ghost of a screwdriver in my hand, experienced the surge of lust I felt at the thought of shine-bright organs. But I just asked if she was any good, and she said “Why don’t you come see once I’m on the team?”

“We’re all weird,” she said when I confessed insecurity at a party.

“We’re just worried about being ourselves. That’s why we get drunk.”

“I don’t mind it,” I said.

“That’s right you don’t, Jack, m’boy,” she said. I blanched.

“What did you call me?”

“Huh? Nothing.”

And from there, she talked to me after every class; and from there, she confided that she was “strange” and no one understood her except for me, who listened; and from there, she told me she loved me and wanted to kiss me; and from there and from there and from there…

For a while, I couldn’t see Dan anymore, barely heard his solicitations; they’d become a soft susurration in the loneliest hours of the night. I couldn’t even see me anymore, really. Just her. We’d leave hand prints all over each other and our blood would rush to the site of affection. Yeah, I was all about her. All that convention I had chased felt worth it when someone could love you and choose to do so. When there was warmth coming from someone who offered it up to you.

We went to the movies on weekends and kissed through most of them, neglecting the popcorn and soda. We held hands on campus. My dreams were all of her. I introduced her to my family, and I felt like (sickeningly) like someone who enjoyed convention; because for that illusory period of time, the machinations of life were simple and made sense. I felt present. 

I trusted too much in those machinations; and forgot that most everything breaks beyond repair.

It was only a matter of time for her to realize there were others who could appreciate her “strangeness.” The strangeness, it turned out, was just all that narcissism that lived inside her and glittered her eyes. Something she fed cheap vodka and questions of, “Am I pretty” and constant reaching. Unscrewing me, reassembling me in a way that was more “wrong” than I’d already been. 

I found her with another guy, two years into what I thought was my redemption. That was when I truly did see red. Saw her as red. The world, red. And the inner workings of it didn’t matter so much if it was always this cold on the outside; and if the small, glittery good things were only ephemeral. She had her floral spring dress hiked up around her hips. Her black nails in the guy’s blonde hair. 

I left her dorm room. She chased me, crying. She always cried even if she didn’t have to because she knew it made me hold her. See, she wanted people to see her cry so they could tell her it would all be alright. Just like a hamster runs to feel purposeful. Or a dog licks your hand to feel love. But a hamster bites, and a dog will lap up your blood if you’re shot in front of it, and you can unscrew anything with the right tools. No one is carefully put together. We are unjustly assembled. 

I had appeased this girl for long enough; but she didn’t know I couldn’t relate. Because while I’d been sick with guilt before, I have never cried a day in my life.

Her wet brown eyes turned black. Black and cold. See, it’s always cold when Dan’s around.

“You’ve been waitin’ for this ride since the day you were born, old buddy, old pal, old Jack, m’boy!” He had found me again. I embraced him, a childhood friend. “Real world’s a bit tough there, buddy, but nothing a good old joy ride can’t fix, eh? Now step on up, step on up —”

“Yeah, I’m boarding,” I said. And he clapped me on the back, lent me his hand.

“That’s right, Jack m'boy," he said. "You don’t need nobody but me and my good old iron horse, here. Nobody in the whooooole wide world.”

It was so warm inside. So glitter-bright. And all things made sense. It all worked by way of cog, gear, and the burning of black coal. 

I would wake up later, sure. Into that world that didn’t make sense. I would have a mess to clean up. A situation to repair. But for that moment, we left the station. And Dan’s old sleepin’ car emitted its forever-smoke as we departed, safe and warm together through ice-cold nothing.