The Laws of Average (12 page)

Jack had seen his reflection plenty of times before. The first time was when he was barely a week old, sleeping on his back in a hand-me-down wicker bassinet that had been refreshed with a new coat of pearlwhite spraypaint in honor of his arrival. Jack's older brother Will snapped their mother's makeup mirror
open-closed-open
a few millimeters above his nose. And while it's true Jack's virginal eyes at the time could, at best, only relay scattered blobs of light to the little cerebral cortex in his still sponge-soft skull—thus rendering his first live encounter with his own visage as a spectacular non-event of the highest order—as it was something he simply could not see despite the fact it was right before his eyes, it's still none the less true that his reflection was quite indeed there to be seen, irregardless of his young eyes' complete inability to bring that image into focus. And it's even more true that even if his eyes were somehow (undoubtedly by a truly freakish physiological accident…) capable of transcoding said blobs into said reflection, it is almost certainly impossible to imagine that week-old Jack's week-old brain would be able to comprehend that week-old Jack was looking directly back
into himself
.

It's been theorized by more philosophical pediatricians than the ones Jack and Will had that during infancy, the human brain intentionally dulls its sensory faculties to help the new being acclimate to its post-utero existence. Sounds, smells, touches, tastes and sights are experienced as if filtered through cheesecloth. The underlying assumption is that without such filtering, the barrage of sensory stimuli outside the womb would cripple the infant's ability to discern perceived threats from real ones. This is why the best method of putting a fussy baby to sleep is to wrap a receiving blanket so tightly around its body that the arms and legs are literally pinned against the torso. If the child is particularly irritated, blocking out all light and eliminating oscillating noise is usually necessary; in the most extreme cases, providing a loud, monotone audio source can help pacify the infant.

No.

Pacify
is the wrong word.

The correct word is
Immobilize
.

The method assumes that an infant whose arms and legs are not secured will kick and punch at the grey blobs and noises from distant planets. The method further assumes that sleep is the infant's desired state of consciousness, where it assumedly dreams of smirking cartoon farm animals in gender-neutral greens despite the fact that it can neither see nor comprehend such things.

In other words, if not immobilized, secured and/or tranquilized by its own brain, the child will fight back.

When Jack was six months old, his mother asked the latest philosopher-pediatrician in charge of him why the infant would cry for four or five hours on end.

“There is no reason for this,” she said, eyes sunk deep into their sockets. “He's always full and changed when it starts. There is simply
no reason.”

“There usually isn't,” the philosopher-pediatrician responded. “Don't take his crying personal. It's not about you.”

The philosopher-pediatrician smiled and patted Jack's mother on the shoulder as she sat slumped on the courtesy bench in the exam room. The smile did not budge. She could only look down at the floor and grimace.

Later that day, when Jack's grandmother came over to pay her regular visit, Jack's mother stole the philosopher-pediatrician's word.

“They call it ‘colic'. It's a pretty common condition I guess.” Jack's mother stole the philosopher-pediatrician's smile, too.

The grandmother scowled and stood. She walked towards Jack's mother.

“That…”

Jack's grandmother leaned forward.

“…is
bullshit.”

The scowl did not budge; Jack's mother could only look down at the floor and grimace.

At the next check-up several weeks later, Jack's mother paraphrased what the grandmother had said. The philosopher-pediatrician provided lots of smiles and shoulder pats, as well as a cheerful suggestion for Jack's mother to turn on her vacuum cleaner and leave it in the room while Jack slept, so as to provide a constant monotone that would drown out all other auditory stimuli. Jack's mother was skeptical but did her best to keep her grimacing in check.

“What about a clock radio?” she asked. “I could tune it to a dead spot and let the static play. All night if that's what it takes. The vacuum seems
so…extreme.”

The philosopher-pediatrician smiled.

“Let me ask you something.” The philosopher-pediatrician patted Jack's mother on the shoulder before sitting next to her on the newly-reupholstered courtesy bench. Thick, diamond-tucked leather. “Have you ever listened to your clock radio at night?”

“Yes, of course.”

“No, I mean really
listened?
And I mean
all
night?”

James' mother shifted her weight on the bench, using her left palm to lean slightly away from the philosopher-pediatrician. Before she could pull her hand back into her lap and neatly interlace her ten fingers again, the meat of her palm untethered from the black leather. A loud ripping sound erupted in the little exam room.

“I'm not sure what you mean,” she replied.

The philosopher-pediatrician continued smiling.

“Ever notice how you can pick up stations that are sometimes hundreds of miles away, especially in the wee hours of the morning? Say, 1 or 2 o'clock?”

Jack's mother simply stared back into the smile. Blank.

“See, radio waves travel farther and in greater intensity at night because the air is cooler and there tends to be less interference. If you tune the dial to a patch of static in the afternoon, by midnight it's entirely likely that your radio will pick up a programmed frequency at that same point on the dial that it couldn't decode before.”

Blank.

The philosopher-pediatrician returned Jack's mother's stare. The smile silently spilled onto the floor.

“You've
really
never noticed that?”

Blank.

And so later that evening, after wrapping Jack into his makeshift straitjacket and laying him down to sleep and praying The Lord his soul to keep, his mother kicked on her Kirby upright and clicked the door shut. She shuffled down the stairs, leaving her faithful machine to drown every note that dared make a sound, draining the trace of every kiss from his dreams.

Brandon hates his name because no one in the Professional Football Hall of Fame is named Brandon.

No one of consequence anyway.

Brandon realizes he's living before the internet in an apartment that will be wired for cable modem service in approximately thirteen years.

The phone jacks in Brandon's apartment are yellow; there are two of them; both are disconnected because Gena still hasn't paid the phone bill since she moved out.

Paying phone bills isn't Brandon's thang.

Gena moved out because Brandon occasionally likes to fuck Terry.

Sharing Brandon isn't Gena's thang.

Brandon's job is okay for now but will get worse faster than he thinks.

Terry comes over to Brandon's apartment because Gena still hasn't paid the phone bill since she moved out.

It's easier that way.

Brandon isn't sure if he should like football; all he knows is he does.

Terry doesn't like to wear shoes; Brandon, on the other hand, does.

This is part of the reason why he fucks Terry only occasionally.

Brandon has exactly $335.86 in the bank right now.

Gena used to drive a Ford Escort.

Black with red pinstriping under the door handles.

No air conditioning.

She carries a business card from a Van Nuys locksmith in her purse.

Brandon always accuses Terry of not listening to him.

This is part of the reason why he fucks Terry only occasionally.

Brandon doesn't know that Terry suffered from
otitis media
as a child because Terry doesn't think his childhood influences anything he is/does as an adult.

Brandon doesn't know that Terry suffered from being a little girl trapped inside a little girl's body; given what you know about Terry already, this shouldn't be surprising.

Gena doesn't want to know anything about Terry, not one goddamn thing.

Gena doesn't like surprises.

Nobody who has to drive to work in Inglewood does.

Terry grew up in Ontario, OR, in love with KMart.

She liked the shiny floors there because her mother would take her there every Saturday and let her try on shoes in the dressing room and open the big bags of socks and snap purple barrettes in her hair and her mother would tell Terry she was a princess and that someday Terry would Be Loved By Someone Really Special.

KMart is now “Big K.”

Gena's father used to wear nice ties and went to a nice job and came home to a nice wife and nice children and always shopped at Woolworth's and Osco Drug and Food King.

In that exact order.

Now Gena's father wears old ties to funerals and only shops at Big K.

Gena had breast reduction surgery when she was 15.

They were Soleil Moon-Frye big.

She was the first 16 Or Below girl to go under the knife in her area code.

Before her surgery Gena's mother used to mail order Gena's bras.

Now Gena's mother uses the internet to order Gena's mother's bras.

Brandon used to have a crush on Soleil Moon-Frye when she was Penelope Brewster.

“Punky.”

NBC.

Sunday nights.

Dan Rather served as anchor and managing editor of the
CBS Evening News
from March 9, 1981 to March 9, 2005.

Terry's father liked Dan's hair before CBS started combing it the opposite way to boost their Evening News' ratings.

Shallow ploy.

It worked.

After Gena's surgery, boys stopped calling her.

Dan also anchored and reported for
48 Hours
when it premiered on January 19, 1988.

On November 22, 1963, Dan broke the news of the death of President John F. Kennedy while calling collect from area code 214.

Brandon actually prefers Playboy over Hustler but doesn't know Larry Flynt called Gena personally before she went under the knife.

Terry finds sex confusing and generally painful but the only way he can maintain a relationship.

Brandon's mother remembers exactly where she was November 22, 1963: doing her first three way with the television on, Brandon's grandparent's bedroom, cousin Kirk and his friend K.C., strange yellow stains scrubbed and bleached by Brandon's grandmother as she watched the funeral procession and listened to Cronkite's voice crack.

Terry's mother hid a bottle of peppermint schnapps under the passenger seat, right under Terry's dangling feet.

Brandon has made a lifetime pledge never to drink anything clear and will be really pissed off when all he sees in the stores is Crystal Pepsi.

Lucky for him, it won't last long.

Lucky for him, most things don't.

Gena can have pretty much anyone she wants.

Gena is frickin gorgeous.

The locksmith drives all the way from Van Nuys for free.

Never charges her.

24/7.

Gena is infected sore inside, cold cream outside.

Brandon fucks the shit out of cold cream outsides.

This is part of the reason why he fucks Terry only occasionally.

Sheila is 36.

36 year olds can't be gorgeous unless they're on TV and made to look much much younger.

Dan was born October 31, 1931 in Wharton, TX.

Devil's Night.

When people still believed in The Devil.

Dan doesn't look a day over 1945.

Wouldn't you say?

It's beyond time we clear the air, sir.

But first some history. And not history in the sense of some story. I'm talking about the real deal truth here, things that have really happened and the whole whatnottery to go along with that.

Back in 1999 I was living in an apartment complex in Boise, ID. I had just figured out how to rip CDs to my computer's hard drive, and I thought Yahoo! Messenger was the shizznit. Apparently your mother did, too, because she IMed one afternoon. She didn't believe me when I told her I was really living in Boise, ripping CDs. She believed that I was living in an apartment complex, though. At least I think she bought that part of it. At any rate, we had a short but pleasant conversation, and I was ultimately able to convince her that Boise was in fact a very nice city to live.

The following year, you attended Clackamas Community College and set a bunch of track and field records. I Yahoo!-searched you and everything on this. There's that guy whose mom I talked to a few months back, I was thinking at the time. How about that, I was also thinking.

The following year, I moved to the Portland area. By the following year, I was teaching at four different colleges in the area. Clackamas CC was not one of them.

By the following year, I was still teaching at four different colleges in the area. Clackamas CC was still not one of them.