More Happy Than Not: Part 1

Every single news station was interviewing different representatives of the Leteo Institute to find out more about the “revolutionary science of memory alteration and suppression.”

Skinny-Dave and Fat-Dave—who are unrelated, just both named Dave—come out of our local bodega, Good Food’s Store, where I’ve been working part-time for the past couple of months.

No matter what drove my dad to kill himself—his tough upbringing in a home with eight older brothers, or his job at the infamous post office up the block, or any one of a million reasons—I have to push ahead with the people who don’t take the easy way out, who love me enough to stay alive even when life sucks.

While his monogamous relationship with that particular phone booth outside the Daily Planet never made much sense to me, I’m as close to super as I’ve felt in awhile.

...Eric is busy online right now building a free website for his video game clan, The Alpha God Kings.

The smell of dead cow is way more pungent than the flowers this evening.

His match ends and I stop acting like I’m reading Scorpius Hawthorne and the Crypt of Lies and sit up from my bed.

Maybe I’m playing it cool by just walking there, not too eager, not thinking too highly of this completely monumental rite of passage to manhood.

I see the two candles sitting on top of her bureau, the only source of light in a room dark with unfinished paintings and two sixteen-year-olds about to grow up.

When my friends begin asking probing questions about how good I was, she and I ditch them for an unoccupied bench.

But there’s one woman I sort of, kind of, definitely recognize, something to do with her piercing green eyes and tousled mass of red-orange hair.

She messes with my hair and looks me in the eyes. “So this is little Aaron Soto nine years later. You’re so handsome. I’m sure you have plenty of gorgeous suitors fighting over you, yes?”

“I was studying philosophy at King’s College. Though if I could rewind time I would happily trade in courses about pre-Socratic ideologies in favor of playing race cars with you.”

“I would gouge out my eyes and give them to you if it meant you could see the magic that is Jaws. Spielberg does this awesome thing at the end where—actually, I won’t spoil it for you. You’ll have to come over and watch it sometime.”

She gets obsessive when she discovers new artists and is always sending me rambling emails about her favorites and why they should be more famous.

An ominous-sounding female voice says, “Welcome to the known universe.”

I would’ve shut up anyway after seeing the planets fall into the distance so we can admire constellations, like the twins for Gemini (which she whoops at), the Pisces fish, the Aries ram, and the rest of the zodiac family.

He sounds kind of ashamed and dodgy...

“The energy always surprises me. No one on my block would ever dress up on a day that’s not Halloween because they’re not comfortable in their own skin. But for the midnight showing of Scorpius Hawthorne, so many people who I wish I’d made friends with were dressed up as demonic wizards and specters.”

He tells me about other midnight showings too, where he had people sign the video game cases and comic book anthologies that inspired them all.

“Have you started painting yet or is there some lame orientation?”
“The lame orientation was yesterday. We’re taking a quick break before doing some still life on trees and...”

It’s just that we’re exposed to more grown-up shit versus those in the safer boroughs and white-picket-fence neighborhoods.

I check out the shirts. Most are too baggy, too tight, too childish, too geriatric...

“That’s what I’ve been working on the past couple of days,” Thomas says, changing into his Snoopy pajamas and a tank top. “I decided I would direct myself on the course of life I want to take. You know, like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, except not something that will make me so obsessed to figure out every last detail.”

It sucks paying for a home you don’t love living in, but it beats the alternative. See? Silver linings.

“A girl has gone brain dead because of Leteo,” the woman answers. Her voice is grave, and her eyes look vacant. “She’s the fourth this week. We’re rallying to shut this place down.”

It’s still strange to me how hospitals never incite this sort of reaction when they’re guiltier of more cases of malpractice.

It’s still strange to me how hospitals never incite this sort of reaction when they’re guiltier of more cases of malpractice.

“A few months ago some yahoo crashed his car and killed his four-year-old son and wife. For some bizarre reason, the hellions at Leteo agreed to wipe the memory of his wife’s and son’s existences after he tried to kill himself in jail.”

I turn one last time, bumping shoulders with a couple people, and I see a child on a man’s shoulders waving a sign that reads NO TO TABULA RASA.

We all leave the staircase and a security guard sees us with Brendan’s Ziploc bag. He calls us delinquents but carries on.

Worse, it was some smug kid who proudly rinsed a razor as Thomas was being turned away.

Thomas thought it could be a nice meditative place to work, but the florist worried about Thomas’s flighty résumé.

Thomas thought it could be a nice meditative place to work, but the florist worried about Thomas’s flighty résumé.

“The water was really cold and I thought I would throw myself into the deep end instead of slowly torturing myself by starting at the shallow end,” I say, the panic of that day carrying me away, like an undertow, before I laugh a little.