All posts by Matthew Callan

Stories

Maspeth Avenue, 6:05pm

A mom and grandmother push an angry infant in a stroller. A two-year-old girl with dirty blonde curls flails at her restraints. She arches her back trying to snap herself loose and expels primal howls of want.  If you had no visual and only heard her screams you would think the girl was either being murdered or was committing a murder. She doesn’t care that she looks and sounds crazy. Kids have to learn how to be sane.

I am a half a block away from the trio when the screams first catch my attention. I am walking the opposite direction. We will soon overtake each other. Once I spot them I feel my steps quicken. The little girl is a magnet of anger and id.

I have been where they are many times. Every parent thinks s/he can win a battle of wills with a two-year-old and every parent is proven wrong. You want to demonstrate you will not give a child what she wants just because she wants it. You want to instill some idea of patience and propriety. And then one day you’re out in public with your kid and she loses her mind over something trivial and suddenly your larger point is subsumed by the need for a few precious moments of peace.

The grandmother silently acquiesces to the little girl’s shrieking pleas. She reaches into a bag slung over the back of the stroller to produce the prize that will restore order to her universe.  What the girl wants is a tiny toy gun. Assembled in garish plastic of purple and yellow and green. Shaped like a 1950s idea of a Martian weapon. It is a gun all the same.

The moment the little girl has the gun in her hands she points it at the only living thing in her line of sight. That thing is me. I am five or six feet away when she aims the gun at me and looks down the barrel and jabs it in my general direction. She doesn’t say bang bang but the motion has the same effect. After each “shot” she jerks the gun back and sets it up again as if reacting to recoil.

She adjusts her aim as I get closer and continues to “fire” at me even as I draw parallel to her stroller. The mom and grandmother are relieved the scene she caused is over and say nothing.

I pass them by and continue on my way. The little girl continues on hers being chauffeured toward new targets.

Boob Tubery

This Season on “Complicated Antihero”

HBO’s critically acclaimed series COMPLICATED ANTIHERO returns for another season of gritty, uncompromising drama.

COMPLICATED ANTIHERO wakes up in a seedy motel room next to a stripper who is totally naked and nude but still asleep. The end table is strewn with empty fifths of Jack and overturned pill bottles. He sits up in bed and places his weary head in his heads while we hear Metallica’s cover of “Turn the Page.”

COMPLICATED ANTIHERO

You try to be a good man. But what is a good man? What is good? What is right and what is wrong? What is “is”? Does anything mean something anymore? Not from where I’m sitting.

CUT TO: COMPLICATED ANTIHERO pouring wet concrete down a snitch’s throat.

* * *

COMPLICATED ANTIHERO is at his EX-WIFE’s house. She smokes and looks on disapprovingly while he watches his  SON play with blocks. He has a look of paternal pride mixed with an immutable element of sadness and also wears a badass leather jacket.

EX-WIFE

You wanna be a father to him now, after all this time? You’re gonna teach him right from wrong? (sardonic laughter) You ain’t no father.

COMPLICATED ANTI-HERO

You think you know what a father is? You think anybody knows what a father is? You think anybody knows anything?

CUT TO: COMPLICATED ANTIHERO running over the mayor with a tank.

* * *

Police interrogation room. COMPLICATED ANTIHERO sits handcuffed to a desk and his face is a little beat up but not so much we can’t see his eyes still burn with righteous indignation over all the world’s injustice. His nemesis, DETECTIVE WISNIEWSKI, gets right in his face.

DETECTIVE WISNIEWSKI

You might beat this rap, scumbag, but mark my words, I will take you down if I have to do it all by myself. Because YOU represent everything that’s wrong with this world. We used to have RULES. We used to have RIGHT and WRONG. We used to have CLEARLY DEFINED BORDERS BETWEEN THINGS.

COMPLICATED ANTIHERO lets out a wan laugh.

COMPLICATED ANTIHERO

Did we?

CUT TO: COMPLICATED ANTIHERO whipping everyone in a subway car with a bike chain lit on fire.

* * *

COMPLICATED ANTIHERO sits in a confessional, his hands clasped in prayer and clutching a rosary.

COMPLICATED ANTIHERO

I used to have faith, Father. I used to believe in things like right and wrong. But I don’t see them in this world no more.

PRIEST

I wish I could tell you otherwise, my son. But I’m afraid I don’t see them in this world either.

A single tear runs down COMPLICATED ANTIHERO’s cheek, lit by the slightest hint of moonlight creeping through a latticed window. It also lights up his stubble and makes it look great.

CUT TO: COMPLICATED ANTIHERO forcing some dude to eat an anvil.

* * *

COMPLICATED ANTIHERO genuflects at his FATHER’s hospital bed. There’s tubes up his father’s nose  because he’s gonna die of some cancer thing.  COMPLICATED ANTIHERO grasps his father’s wizened hands in his own and chokes back the tears welling in his throat.

COMPLICATED ANTI-HERO

You never cared for me, Pop! You never taught me right from wrong! You never taught me nothin’!

DYING FATHER

I taught you the most important lesson of all, son. There ain’t no right and wrong in this world.

DOCTOR

So, let’s see how our patient is doing…

COMPLICATED ANTIHERO pistol-whips DOCTOR with crash cart.

* * *

 A dream sequence. COMPLICATED ANTIHERO watches helplessly as a bird pecks away at his hands, eating the flesh all the way to the bone. The bird flies away.

COMPLICATED ANTIHERO wakes up, in a different motel room next to a different totally naked nude stripper. He sits at the edge of the bed and rests his head in his hands.

COMPLICATED ANTIHERO

What does it mean? What does anything mean?

CUT TO: COMPLICATED ANTIHERO throwing a flaming school bus at an orphanage.

Stories

F train, 4:55pm

It is near-rush hour on the F train which is to say it is crowded but not packed. A pair of drag queens crack each other in a nook by a shut door. One baby wails in each half of the car. The one attacking my left ear is a little more persistent than the one attacking my right. A panhandler says “Excuse me” in a clear smooth voice so he can move past other riders before adopting a pitted groan to give his  SPARE CHANGE pitch.

I’m attempting to read Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb which is a long and heavy book and not conducive to standing-up-on-the-subway reading but I’m reading it anyway. I’ve read this book before but I recently felt compelled to reread it.  I’m not sure why.

We are stalled at the Queensbridge stop when a yell asserts itself above the din. I look down at the far end of the car and see a man in gray packed against a closed door. His brow is knotted as he unsheathes his shaved dome from his headphones.

IT’S CROWDED BUT IT AIN’T THAT CROWDED! he shouts. WHY YOU GOTTA BE ON TOP OF ME?! From where I stand no one appears to be on top of him. I can’t see the target of his yells. I can only see the other riders craning their necks to get a look at the noise.

MOTHERFUCKER YOU THINK THIS IS A GAME? he yells. These words are a signal that tell every pair of eyes to avert its gaze and every head to pivot away. Nothing good has ever happened after these words are spoken. No one ever says YOU THINK THIS IS A GAME?! before handing out freshly baked cookies.

YOU GIVE ME AN ATTITUDE?! YOU TRY THIS CONDESCENDING BULLSHIT WITH ME?! The man was obviously convinced that he of all people should not have to stand for whatever transgression was just visited upon him. The world should have known that he was a man not to be trifled with or a man with a reputation or a man at the end of a long bad day or a man at the end of his rope.

The doors won’t close to move on to the next station. This gives the drag queens enough time to give each other a knowing look and run out onto the platform to find another car to ride in. I contemplate doing the same until a conductor squawks over the PA. For a moment me and all the other riders in the car believe someone will do something about the man’s escalating anger.

The conductor has other fish to fry. I told you you can’t hold the train doors to panhandle, he bleats in exasperated pixilation to some other miscreant. Let go of the doors so the train can move. You do that again and I’m callin the cops. The doors stutter back and forth for a few seconds to chase away this unseen annoyance.

Then the doors shut and we continue on out way but the yelling man is still yelling. YOU DO THIS TO ME?! he spits. Everyone else’s head is cast down. The F is an express once it leaves Manhattan. A long ride lies between Queensbridge and Roosevelt Avenue. It will be an even longer ride with this man screaming and everyone silently begging the train to move faster toward its next stop.

The car takes on the feel of a hospital waiting room. No one can stand to look at anyone else. Everyone expects bad news and they prefer it come sooner than later. The bad news will be nothing compared to the torture of waiting for the bad news.

I try to distract myself with my book. The Making of the Atomic Bomb starts with the amazing discoveries of physics in the early 1900s and how these advances laid the groundwork for the weapon to come. I’ve reached the point in the book where scientists first ponder the possibility of fission: Is it possible? Can a reaction be contained? Would this unleash more power than the world can handle? It’s also the point at which the rise of Hitler in Germany sends many of the world’s best physicists to America. At least the ones perceptive enough to recognize the approaching danger. Even some of the smartest people who ever lived had trouble believing the Nazis were going to do exactly what they said they’d do. It was all too monstrous to be real until it was monstrously real.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb is about as accessible as a book mostly about physics can be. Rhodes’ prose alternates between breezy comparisons and touching profundity. But the finer details can be rough to negotiate even without a crazy person threatening to explode in your subway car. Someone who is wailing at a foe who I can’t see and who may have a weapon and may just be hunting in his overcharged brain for an excuse to produce it.

I kept my eyes on the exploits of Niels Bohr and Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard because they were all past. We all know how that story ended. The one in my car had a more doubtful outcome.

Bohr did not think his compound model of the nucleus boded well for harnessing nuclear energy….THIS AIN’T NO GAME…Einstein had compared it to shooting in the dark at scarce birds…I AIN’T PLAYIN…the efficiency of slow neutrons “might never have been discovered if Italy were not rich in marble”…YOU GONNA DO THAT TO ME?!…The truth was, uranium was a confusion, and no one yet knew…THIS WHOLE CAR MAN THIS WHOLE CAR…Szilard saw beyond “energy for industrial purposes” to the possibility of weapons of war…

The book slowly overtakes the voice. The yelling stops completely as light pierces the car and we approach Roosevelt. Whoever this man felt the need to yell at refused all that time to yell back—assuming he existed at all. Without someone to react with his anger burned up all its fuel and died off.

I dare to look in the yeller’s general direction as I depart for the local. I do not see him. He produced only fright before dispersing into the ether. If only every outburst failed to spark a chain reaction.