7. THE OTHER SIDE

“That time at my graduation party, with you standing there in your casual clothes, midnight skin, smiling white teeth gleaming, and your soft presence—that still, soft presence almost ghost-like yet grounded in a profound and unguarded silence. Yeah that was you, standing there smiling like always, just looking around, taking it all in. And there I was with my tie on, hair slicked back the way they do it in Wall Street—” 

“Haha. Yes, I know it. Like….”

“Charlie Sheen in Wall Street—”

“Haha. Yep. Charlie Sheen in Wall Street…. Bud Fox! That was you. Mr. Bud Fox. Always with that Bud Fox grin on, man.”

“And you finally snapping your fingers, like hey man, congrats. And then that handshake we had. I could never get it right, though. We’d kind of lay our palms together, our palms touching light, and we’d pull our hands back real slow, and finish with a quick snap … quick snap and fist bump. Fist bump at the end, right?”

“You always messed that end part up, man. How you gonna mess up something that simple? Shoot … I was always having to practice that with you. Yeah, fist bump at the end. Fist. Bump. Then boom!"

“And you shaking your head, still smiling at me as I finished opening my presents outside, family surrounding me, and you there too, the one friend among all the family there, with the June sun bright and hot overhead and that summer breeze all in those trees. You remember?”

“I do. I do. You opened up that one box with the two bookends inside, right? One bookend was a gold bull and the other a gold bear. Haha. Man, Mr. Wall Street through and through. Yeah, that was you. Bud Fox in Wall Street. That was you, alright, with that Bud Fox look in your eye.… Those bookends man, c'mon. You held them up like you just won something—two golden calves raised high up to the heavens—and then you went and put them in your bedroom bookcase, right? The one facing your bed, right? So when you’d wake up in the morning, the yellow sun shining through your window, they’d be the first things you’d see. Probably caught the sun just right every morning, gleaming all shiny in your Bud Fox eyes.… Those bookends, man, I’m telling you. You gotta stop.”  

"Then I got to your present. I got to it last. You remember? You gave me those tickets, right? To the game? Two tickets and you said bring whoever you want, your girlfriend or brother or whoever, but I know you meant you. We were always going to games, you and I. Who else was I going to bring to a game like that? I knew they were expensive and that you must’ve saved up for it expecting that you and I would go because we had talked about it for months and more or less planned on it already.… I looked up and saw you still smiling but showing no teeth, just that big smiling grin you had every once in a while that said things were alright, just like they should be—alright, all good—and that you knew I knew what you were thinking: that both of us would be at that game, because that’s what we did and we had basically planned the whole thing already, you and I. But I told you I couldn’t go, that I was moving up to the city on that exact day and would start a new job the next day. ‘What?’ you said. ‘You sure?’ Looking at me like you knew something I didn’t, with a kind of confused brotherly concern—like I had missed a truth so plain it need not be explained and that the need for an explanation was trouble enough. So I told you I was sure that I was busy, but you meant, you sure about moving at all, about the job. That’s what you meant, right? About going up there at all?”

“I did. I did.”

“Then you had that look like what’s up there that’s not down here? You didn’t ask it, but if you did I would’ve told you, ‘Money and Wall Street’ and that ‘I was stepping into my destiny.’ But I was afraid to tell you because you just stood there like a statue, looking at me as if there was something brooding up there that I couldn’t see.” 

“Not with those Bud Fox eyes, brother. Not with those eyes. But you had to—”

“See it for myself.… I never told you why. Never got a chance to tell you why I was so sure and why I hid the whole move to begin with, but you just put your hands in your pocket after I gave you the tickets back and told you, ‘Raincheck.’ You changed the subject and said, ‘Let’s get a drink.’ So we walked over to the table and got our drinks and sat down on that rickety bench at the end of the deck, with the white sun shining down on us as we looked out onto all those June trees nodding drowsily in the heavy afternoon air, talking about whatever-it-was, and all the time you had that don’t-go look, that we’ll-be-missing-each-other look.”

“I remember sitting there thinking—knowing—things would change but trying to be okay with it all. It was complicated, trying to be happy for you on your big day but already feeling the loss that was to come. Yeah, that loss was hitting me right then. True enough.”

“Well, I didn’t get a chance to but if I did I would’ve told you about the time that I discovered not what I wanted to do but what I had to do and that if I didn’t do it, something in me would die or would never get to live—“

“Something in you would die? C’mon, now. You were always so serious, getting yourself all worked up over—”

“I would’ve lost something of myself if I didn’t do it, is what I’m saying. If I didn’t try at least. But now I know I was wrong or at least I’m open to believing so.”

“Ok.… Ok. Well, then go on brother. Go on.”

“I would have told you about the time I was working in that stockbroker’s office as a college intern, learning the ropes, or trying to. You remember that don’t you? How could you forget, I complained about it all the time. All he had me do was file his damn paperwork as if—”

“That would help you.”

“As if that would help me, yes. As if that would help me … stuck inside his cramped little office with old Wall Street Journals piling up, some of them three-, four-, five-years old, filing my life away for him apparently. Not learning anything useful, really, just filing my life away while I listened to him blabber on the phone trying to pitch stock tips to naive grandmothers and whatnot. Well, every day at lunchtime, without fail, he’d listen to the firm’s research call to get more ideas to sell. ’These analysts know,’ he’d say, turning up the speaker on his phone so loud that his ears and mine would damn near bleed, as if louder would make the words more true. Well, one day as he was scribbling down notes listening to yet another call, I was filing reports some of the firm’s big analysts had just put out and there was this one report I kind of looked at a little longer than the others. I don’t know why, I just kept looking at it. Normally, I’d glance at the name of the company the report was about and put it in one of the files he kept, but this one I stared at for some reason, not reading the words, just looking at it kind of blurry eyed for a while. I don’t know how long, I just keep on looking. And then … at the top right corner of the page where the analyst’s name usually was I … I saw my name.”

“Your name?”

“Well, not my name, but yes, my name. I saw the name of the analyst and the phone number with his 415 area code and then I saw my name appear on top of it, like it was etched there by God’s own hand right before my eyes. It’s tough describing it to you. Sounds ridiculous even saying it now. Maybe it's why I never did tell you, but I saw something there. Maybe it wasn’t actually there but it sure felt like I did or it was. Anyway, that’s when I knew what I had to do, what I had to do to break out of that stifling dead-air coffin—I had to become the person who put his name on the top of that report.  Instead of parroting what other people say, I’d be the one people would listen to, take notes of and repeat.”

“Go on.”

“A couple of days later, my name on the top of that report was still bright in my head, so I told the broker what I was going to do and he says, ‘Wall Street analysts don’t come from San Jose State.’ Then he goes, ‘Are you Ivy League?’ in this sardonic tone. I could’ve killed him. God knows I wanted to. But why bother? A man already in his own grave, why bother arguing with him at all? My only concern was I will never be him and I’ll prove it. So I made a silent vow to myself right then that one day I’d have my name on the top of the report just like I saw it and I’d show it to him. But you never knew this because I hid it from you, I didn’t want to explain it to you because what if it didn’t work out and I had to stay in that same damn office? What would you think of me if I had told you what I was trying to do but it never happened? What would you think of me then? Probably no worse than I would think of myself. I could deal with thinking of myself badly, but not knowing you would too.”

“What did you love about what you saw? I thought we had it pretty good already. We were gonna be alright.”

“I had to grow up didn’t I? Couldn’t be a kid forever, dropping everything to go to a game, could I?…. A life pitching someone else’s stock tips isn’t a life worth living is what I thought. I can’t explain it. I just couldn’t let it go. Or it got a hold of me and ….  it just seemed too real to me to ignore is what I’m saying, seeing my name like that. And when he said those words to me, the way he said them, as if I had no business thinking about a different future at all, as if my fate had already been decided and he knew what it was, well, I just couldn’t let it go I guess. So I did the only thing I could think of—send my resume to Human Resources.”

“Human Resources?  Mixed up with all those Ivy Leaguers? C’mon man—”

“Yes, I sent my resume to Human Resources along with the myriad Ivy Leaguers, expecting they’d somehow single my name out for a job, the chances of which I knew were infinitesimal, but I assumed that if the vow was going to come true, it would only be by way of a miraculous and divine intervention. If God wanted it, and it seemed to me that God did, then somehow, someway it would be so. I was at peace about it, believe it or not, and just let it be. Two, three weeks pass and out of the blue I get a call from a stock analyst up in the big San Francisco office. I recognized his voice as one I’d heard on the lunchtime sales calls. He called right after we finished playing basketball at that playground downtown that has the eight-foot rims we could dunk on, remember that? Those Jordan dunks we’d do out there?—”

“I remember me dunking on you. Yes, I do.” 

“Anyway, he said that he was calling about a job to be his associate. I asked him, ‘Why me?’ and he says, ‘Because Ivy Leaguers are entitled and don’t work hard. I need someone that works hard. Do you?’ And that was it.”     

“You got the job just like that?”

“I did.” 

“I just assumed that maybe someone introduced you to someone or … I knew you got the job somehow, but never thought it happened like that.”

“I didn’t tell you. I was embarrassed, I guess, that it happened so quick and that I never told you what I was up to to begin with.”

“Like I wouldn’t have been happy for you?.… We were in the same classes, read the same books, studied for the same tests, but you always had that gleaming eye, like you wanted something more, more than whatever was in those books or on those tests. I never cared about it as much as you did. Not that I didn’t care at all, just not as much as you.… No you, you saw something else and you got it, I’ll give you that, you got it. Just wish it didn’t mean we’d never see each other again. You know, face to face. You just moved on up outta here like the Jeffersons and that was it … And the gleam in your eye is gone now, man. You’ve got tired eyes now. You tired, man?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.… we did see each other one more time, though.” 

“That’s right, we did. We did.” 

“You remember, right?” 

“I do.” 

“You came up to see me for lunch. I showed you my office up on the 40th floor, looking out over the city—“

“Above the fog.”

“Yep. Above all that gray fog. The office was so high up you could see all the way out to SFO because the fog stopped stretching out that far, kind of let go of its grip on the city. I was showing you around the office and then we went back out to the lobby, waiting for the elevator and when it opened up another brother walked out and you nodded at him. When the door closed, I asked if you knew him and you told me, ‘No, but that’s what we do.' And then you smiled at me like you don’t even know, like there’s things you’ll never understand but it’s alright because we’re still like brothers, you and I. Yeah, you had that brotherly look and that grin again man, I’ll never forget it. I felt like your little brother right then. I knew there was something I was missing but I just let it be. Just let it be and never went back to it … I’m sorry I never asked you what your life was like and whether or not you even had a chance like I did—getting that job—because I naively assumed you walked around the world like me and that people saw you like they saw me. But they don’t. They don’t see us the same. You never told me anything about that, as if you were supposed to, but really it’s that I never asked because I never thought to. I’m sorry about that brother. I never asked you what your life was like. I never asked.”

“You’re human is all.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No, I was wrong. That’s it. That’s all there is to it. I was wrong and … and now I wonder if the life I thought was better up there was because I thought I was better than you. Like there was something up there for me and not for you and I had to leave you because of it, because if I didn’t, you would have just held me back…. I don’t know. I’m confused. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know if that was what I thought. Forgive me if it was. God please forgive me. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“C’mon man, you didn’t think that.”

“You were a better friend to me than I was to you, that’s for damn sure. You were the real brother, not me. This is what I’m coming back to six years later and now being with you here like this—I was wrong. I was wrong about the job, thinking somehow it was a pearl of great price, you give up the world for it and get more than world in return. I was wrong about it, that’s for sure. And what did I give up? What did I give up? And for what? Damn if I didn’t miss that game with you.”

“You did what you needed to brother. I don’t begrudge you that.”

“Life was simpler then, that’s for sure. And now I’m a prisoner to my own dream—you think you know what you want until you get it, then you realize that what you wanted was never worth having at all. So you’re left feeling like a stranger to yourself, and to the earth, because you don’t know where you fit, you can’t think of doing anything else than what got you stuck and confused in the first place…. Something happened to me in that broker’s office and I don’t know what exactly but something happened. Maybe I deceived myself somehow and the dream was always right there, right there in front of me, around me, and I should have just lived the life I already had and not complicated it, just accepted where I was because where I was was where I was supposed to be. Maybe the goddamn broker was right after all is what I’m saying. You hear me?! You hear?!

“The grass is always greener, brother. Look, you wanted something but I was always cool with you man, either way, dream or no dream. Here or there, wherever. We hadn’t laid eyes on each other before that first Econ class we took. You born on one side of the country and me on the other. You to a tidy middle-class family with some kind of funky Cuban/white mix and me to a Black mother who died when I was three and to a Black father I never knew and somehow ended up adopted by a white family on your side of the country. And you with that grunge music of yours—your Nirvana and Pearl Jam. When I introduced you to Mobb Deep, you said, ‘I know about rap,’ and I told you, ‘This is not the Beastie Boys dammit.’ All that distance between us and yet we became like brothers, you and me. Quick too. Brothers. It wasn’t any dream that connected us, though. It was what we already had, already had before we met, what was already beating in our very blood. But you, you saw something out there I didn’t see, some piece of you out there you needed to take hold of. I knew it.  I knew. I always kind of wondered where it might take you or when that gleam would cool down, if it ever would. But I wasn’t going to stop you from getting it, man. Nothing was going to.… Didn’t think it would happen so fast, though. Wasn’t ready for it that day, I have to tell you, wasn’t quite ready. But once it did happen, I figured I would just kind of watch you from afar for a while and that we’d get back together somehow, sooner or later. Because that’s what brothers do. Everything kind of changed when you left, though.”

“If I’m not who I thought I would be when I took the job up there and I’m not who I would have been if I stayed down here, then I don’t know who I am.”

“It’s not that you are not this person or that person. It’s that whoever you think you are, here or there, is not just you. It’s not just you, understand? That part never changes. I saw the not just part of you and that part is beautiful, man. Do you see yourself that way, as beautiful?”

“No.”

“Afraid to say it?”

“I don’t know. I can’t…”

“Go on.”

“Can’t say that I see that side of me, no. Not today. Not ever, I guess. Too much regret now anyway.… I miss you, you hear me? The whole thing’s a goddamn shame. I wasn’t there to say goodbye and now being with you like this…. Did you think of me? When you were about to go? Did you think of me? No, of course you didn’t. Why me of all people? I was too busy running myself into the ground to be with you, why would you think of me. Of course you didn’t. Why would you have thought of me even for a goddamn second? Don’t blame you. Don’t blame you if you didn’t. God knows I don’t…. Rather be good at something than be beautiful, I guess. Maybe that’s all I can say now. Maybe that’s all I’ll ever know—what it takes to be good, or to try to, but nothing about beautiful.” 

“Being good is something you can seek but what is beautiful can only be revealed. One you try to do, the other you are. You see? There’s a strange freedom in not doing and just being. You’ll see about that, brother. Yeah, you’ll see alright.”

It’s quiet out here beneath these trees. The sun falling silently, you’d like it. Yeah, the earth is real quiet out here and cool with this breeze, just like you’d like it. You’re a part of it all now, aren’t you? A part of the great mystery, laughing away like you always did. Because you know now, don’t you? You can see it all, can’t you? 

Yeah, you’re a part of the great mystery now,
Like wind moving through June trees as ghosts, 
Whispering something. 

You’re here, aren’t you?
Playing like a kid in these trees,
Near your grave dappled with afternoon light.

What did you see?
C’mon, tell me.
Who was I? 
Who did you see back then? 

Yeah, I hear you whispering something to me now. 
You’re in these trees whispering something to me, aren’t you?

I feel you here. 
You’re saying something, aren’t you?
And I’m here, too. 
Finally with you.

I’m afraid, can you help me?
What do you see?

Tell me, brother. Whisper to me now.
Who am I? 
Who do you see when you see me?

IN MEMORIAM T. T.

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