Chapter 2: The Tragedy of Man

CHAPTER 2

The Tragedy of Man

Buffalo was the faded queen of old New York, the leftovers of an industrial era ground to shit. It had once been a showpiece of culture and success, industry and shipping, where the working slobs could pull down beer money and the educated snobs could twitter their noses at a host of artistic feasts. It wasn’t fully gone, but the city was quickly fading into a new Detroit or Baltimore—hubs of corruption and squalor. As opportunity slowly leaked away, so did Buffalo’s best and brightest. More and more vanished each year, leaving behind only those who were too lazy or stupid to get the hell out. Nowadays, all the city had to boast about was a chronically losing football team and the invention of Buffalo wings.

If the city proper was that bad, Jon’s home of Black Rock, the area he now pedaled through, was its retarded cousin. Once the berg had been a commercial rival for its dominant sister and had nearly been the chosen terminus of the Erie Canal. The War of 1812 changed everything. While it was raging on, Buffalo got the nod for the canal exit, as it was further away from the enemy’s forts. This turned out to be good planning as the township of Black Rock was razed and raped twice by blood hungry Canuck marauders.

The township took its name from an outcropping of black limestone along a nearby river that was blown up by engineers in the building of said Erie Canal, adding insult to injury in the minds of its low-wage residents. Nowadays the typical Black Rockian barely sported a high school diploma and lived paycheck-to-paycheck from an ever-shifting menagerie of minimum-wage jobs. Their dreams of bettering themselves revolved solely around hitting it big on the lottery, rather than actually working toward a goal.

Their dwellings reflected their poor life planning. Cardboard squares duct-taped in place of broken windows. Screen doors with the mesh half hanging out. Red brick stoops that were missing a few bricks. Old paint jobs with flaked-out gray splotches like leper spots. These were common sights. Last decade’s broken down Chevys and germ-ridden public transportation were the rides of choice. Dented corner bars. Cheap wing shacks. Gas stations with rusted nozzles. All of this was Jon’s world.

Which begged the question as to why his parents insisted on staying in the area, despite the fact that they could easily afford something ten times as luxurious. Well, it was the land, the family land that anchored them all to this dead spot. Father had an uncharacteristic soft spot for his heredity, so everyone else had to suffer because of it.

Jon pulled up at Michael Dutch’s house. It was a crumbling brick affair, a thrown together cheap structure, shoved at the very back of a dead end street. The cement stairs to the front door were bare. The iron railings, embedded in the stone, had been twisted off years ago. A barebones carport, just a roof and poles to hold it up, lay to the right, with a beat up truck missing the front tires underneath. The truck’s forward plate dangled by a single stripped-out bolt.

Jon tapped on the front door. Mrs. Dutch answered and, without acknowledging Jon’s presence, yelled for Michael. He came to the door quickly, a backpack slung over his shoulder. Jon was glad of that. He didn’t want to linger inside. It seemed like the Dutch family never cleaned their carpets and the house constantly stunk of cheap cigars and fried bologna. That night was no exception.

He peeked inside as Michael laced up his sneakers. A three legged dog gnawed a rawhide bone. The youngest child rattled the bars of his playpen with savage determination. Mrs. Dutch went back to singing unharmoniously along with the radio. Michael’s dad sat in his boxer shorts and hole-ridden undershirt, swearing at the game on TV. A slab of greasy pizza oozed over his leg.

“God damn losers. Get the ball!”

Michael slapped on a ball cap similar to Jon’s and said, “Let’s go.”

You didn’t have to tell Jon twice. He had plenty of bad memories of the place, and he didn’t even live there. Who knew what barnacles Michael had sticking to the bottom of his soul. They got Michael’s bike out of the back, negotiating through a clump of dropouts sniffing gasoline from an aluminum container. Shaggy hair and shaggy brains, they were friends of Michael’s older brother, an eternal doper who was finally kicked out of the ninth grade at the age of twenty. Michael shouted into the house that he was leaving and didn’t even receive a grunt in reply.

It was a miracle he still even bothered. Michael was shooting for the moon if he thought his parents were going to change. Neither of them had progressed beyond the idiot high schooler’s need to appear tough. They took every new idea as a challenge against them personally, as an attack on their ego, and the easiest way for them to deal with something and still “look cool” was to shit all over it. As if anyone was paying attention.

Jon remembered in the fifth grade they had to do a diorama for their science class. The projects had been all laid out in the school atrium and parents, teachers, and the principal sauntered by and judged them. Michael had worked for days on his, adding all sorts of glitter and streamers, the accoutrements that make an elementary school project pop. He won first place and got a little ribbon to go along with the honor. He was so proud and raced home to show off his achievement. Jon followed him along.

“Look, Daddy,” he had said, heart pounding with pride, “I won this.”

The elder Dutch had half-glanced at the award and snorted, “What the fuck you want me to do?”

The light had switched off in Michael’s eyes. Downtrodden, he slumped out of the house, the project dragging on the ground behind. He had lugged it with a limp hand, glitter sparked up over every bump, like the dying gasps of a fairy. Michael had tossed the whole thing into the trashcan and sat down by it, staring at ants making their rounds.

Jon had tried to cheer him up by buying him an ice cream, the one true cure all for an eight year old’s ills, but nothing could shake him from this slump.

This was just one of many soul-crushing incidents. Michael never spoke about his parents after that, just focused on his studies, hoping that school was his ticket away. To deal with stress, he composed limericks. No, really. Actual limericks. The dirtier the better. It was a side of him that you might not have otherwise known existed.

“There was a young fellow named Simon,

Who tried to discover a hymen,

But he found every girl,

Had given up her pearl,

In exchange for a single fake diamond.”

“Sounds about right for Black Rock,” Jon sneered. “Heard they’re adding a maternity ward to the middle school.”

“Yeah,” Michael laughed. “The girls around here are all dumb sluts. They spread for anyone.”

Except me! They both lamented silently.

Dusk was rapidly running at them. A crisp autumn wind shot down the street. They pedaled through old roads designed for horses and buggies, half the streetlights were out. The pair stopped at an unassuming house surrounded by a tired chain link fence. A figure detached from a porch swing and leapt onto the small patch of lawn.

“Thought y’all might not be comin’,” the figure drawled.

“Well, we’re here.”

“Yep, ya’ll here,” the boy said and picked up a bike.

It was his granddaddy’s Schwinn from the 1950s. Not something he was proud of. Even with the basket ripped off, it was an embarrassment. Old and clunky. A “hand-me down” his parents had called it, but it was more of a castaway. Mostly it was their way of avoiding having to admit they couldn’t afford a new one.

“Everything alright at yer home?” the boy asked Jon.

“Why?”

“Yer daddy called up here lookin’ fer you.”

“He did?”

“Yep. Didn’t think he knew who I was.”

“Me neither.”

The boy, Louis Norton, had a muscular frame and straddled the bike like a pro. He was a transplant from North Carolina. The family had drifted northwards to take advantage of the very generous welfare system New York State had to offer. Like all who migrated to the city from the Bible Belt, Louis was mocked constantly due to his thick corn whiskey accent. Nothing would stop that. No matter how many teeth he knocked out, it never ended. The fact that he had a starting position on the school football team, something that would’ve stilled tongues in the small towns of the Carolinas, meant nothing. The collective Irish, Italian, Polish, and Black communities still ganged up to poke fun at the hick, which was why the jock preferred to hang out with the fringe elements of the school.

Not that they didn’t give him some friendly ribbing.

“There was a girl out of Carolina,

Who had an erratic vagina,

To the surprise of the fucker,

It would suddenly pucker,

And whistle a song made in China.”

“Yeah, y’all are real fucking funny.”

“Just kidding.”

“Uh huh, let’s get out of here.”

They zipped out into the night. How did Father know about Louis? He never seemed to pay attention to Jon’s coming and goings, or never commented on it, except to dole out punishment. What else did he know? Had he been reading Jon’s journal? After a moment’s thought, he rejected the idea. There was nothing in there about the guys. It was all filled with the fallout of his venting against the family. Still . . .

They came up canal-side by that great trench of Victorian-Era engineering, the Erie Canal, then followed it up near to the end where the great grain elevators, a marvel of Edwardian era engineering, punched the sky. One-hundred-and-twenty-feet tall, made from steel and cement, this once magnificent structure was designed to hold, weigh, and dispense grain being shipped all across the country.

The place had seen better days. The main building—called the head house—rose five-stories and was about as gutted a wreck as you can imagine. Next to the head house were eight storage silos with “Agway” written down the side in three-foot long letters. Various spindly support towers arched up next to the silos, none of which had any floors left in them. The entire structure half slumped over the water. An old marine leg, which used to scoop grain out of passing ships, had long rotted away, leaving only a damaged hump over the tops of the buildings.

In past days, two-thousand men would have been working this area. Pulling up, weighing, and dropping off grain sacks. Now, the only ones who used it were teenagers having illicit rendezvous. Waiting for them just outside was a portly girl in a jean jacket also slinging a backpack. She waved when they rode up.

“You guys are late,” she chided.

“But we’re here now,” Michael said flatly and walked past her.

“Hi, Jon,” she said, a touch of mousiness creeping around the edges of her voice. He smiled in reply, and she blushed.

“Hey, Kathy. Any trouble sneaking out?”

“No. The parents are at some exhibit opening at the museum.”

They pulled their bikes into the head house and hid them behind a half-collapsed wall. It was unlikely anyone would want them, but better safe than sorry. More sinister people than they lurked there sometimes. All the old machinery had long been removed, leaving giant holes descending through the floors, and the left-behind parts always felt shaky. No glass remained in the windows, and most of the staircases were missing stairs, but somehow they traversed all the obstacles until they reached a small claustrophobic room with a low ceiling on the fifth floor. They called it the midget room. It was their broken playroom.

Once in and the door safely sealed with a beam, Kathy took out a pack of red candles and laid them all about the room, while Louis lit them. Michael took several old tomes from his pack and settled in cross-legged. The others soon followed suit, each presenting their own books. Michael then opened a trapper keeper and took out several sheets of loose leaf paper tucked away in a folder. Jon took out his own paper. All looked at Michael with intense concentration.

“When last we met,” Michael began in an ominous tone, “you had recovered the Sunsword from the disused chapel and fought off some ghouls. You are currently back in the grand foyer.”

“After we just knock’d off that wax dummy that look’d like the vampire Strahd, hiding behind the mirror,” Louis added. “Which ah still call bullshit on. My guy woulda taken his head off. Bait and switch.”

“It’s in the module,” Michael yelled, holding up a thin blue book. “The guy there was a fake out. A dummy to trick you.”

“But ah rolled a natural twenty!”

“It doesn’t matter. Now, focus,” Michael commanded, producing a handful of glittering dice from his pack. “You’re being attacked by a gang of zombies. Your move, Louis.”

“I hit one, ah reckon,” Louis stared down at his own blue-colored dice, confused by their complex shapes. “Christ, which one do I roll again?”

“The twenty sided,” Kathy offered. “You just said it.”

“I can’t keep track of all these gawd-damned rules.”

As Louis fumbled with his dice, Jon consulted his character. Crixen Runeburner, elf mage, tall and proud. He was from a noble line of adventurers and princes. Magical rings glistened on his fingers. Multi-colored robes flowed about his willowy frame. They mystically staved off attacks and turned back spells. Around his feet flowed silken boots that allowed him to run with the speed of a pony. His right hand held a mighty heft of oak, an enchanted quarterstaff of kicking-your-fucking-ass.

Jon looked at this character sheet, thin in some places due to erasures, with pride. He had worked and sweated and rolled long and hard to raise this character with sub-standard statistics up into the powerhouse he was now. He had become a mighty hero who had conquered many a fearsome foe.

He had to admit, it wasn’t just him. The group had all built great characters with Michael running the game. They had campaigned against the giants, discovered the sinister secret of Saltmarsh, survived the Isle of Dread, unraveled the Assassin’s Knot, nearly died in the depths of Dungeonland, and now they were storming Castle Ravenloft to destroy an ancient evil that had been fouling the land for centuries.

The group had been meeting three times a week for over a year now and Jon wished they could play more. When the game was on and the die rolled, he could completely lose himself. He could see the mystic world where Crixen Runeburner strode, hear his character’s breath, and feel the power that crackled in his veins. Better than a book. Better than a movie. It was a tale they all told together. One where they were the heroes, great deeds were accomplished, and even death itself was negotiable. Quite frankly, it was better than life itself.

They played on into the night. Fighting, making discoveries, gathering treasure, uncovering secrets. All in all, having a blast. Each successful roll of the dice was a badge of honor. Every failure, a slap of shame. For Jon, this was all about the triumph, about his character becoming the best. When his guy was doing well, it made him feel good, as if he was doing good in life as well. Perhaps it was a poor substitute for actual achievement, but Jon didn’t care.

With the others, things were slightly different. Michael enjoyed controlling the world, being the man in charge. Louis . . . well he just liked to hit things. The idea of his over-muscled warrior decapitating some monster thrilled him. And Kathy— he didn’t know exactly why she played, but considering how violent her character, Black Leaf, acted, she must be burning off some sort of frustration.

“Why the hell is there an Iron Golem down here?”

“Two of them,” Michael corrected.

“Two, Christ. And we got this here gas comin’ out of the treasure chest . . . ”

“Maybe we should run?” offered Kathy.

Louis lifted his character sheet and said with utter seriousness, “Big Jim Umbrage, he don’t run from nobody, no how.” He nudged Jon, “You ready to rock?”

“Fuck yeah!”

“Cast giant form on me.”

They played up in the midget room for the atmosphere mostly. The place had a sense of complete isolation, a leftover box of a dead generation. The walls and ceiling were well over a hundred years old and in that ruined building it seemed easier for them to slip into their mythological fantasy realm.

Michael had found it after the group was run out of Louis’s place by his strict and loud Anabaptist parents. They had listened to some half-baked tele-preacher rattle on about the evils of D&D and were convinced it was a tool of the devil. Of course, they also believed that about most music, TV, films, toys—He-Man in particular for some reason—and popular video games, like Pac Man and Donkey Kong. Hell, even Root Beer Tapper gave them pause.

For obvious reasons, Jon and Michael’s homes were out. Kathy gave only vague reasons, but they got the impression she was ashamed of her parents. So they used the midget room, which turned out to be an ideal place. There they didn’t need to be polite or watch their language.

“Goddamn son of a bitch, hit that fucker with a fucking lightnin’ bolt before he knocks the shit out of us.”

Or clean up after themselves. The room was littered with crushed cola cans and candy bar wrappers. Or respect the property. The building was practically a ghost in any case.

They gamed on and on, well past the witching hour, until their first yawns indicated that they might have to stop. It was easy to lose track of time while in the game.

“Alright, I guess we better pack it in,” Michael concluded. “We all got school tomorrow.”

“You mean today.”

He laughed, “Yeah.”

“And ah got practice.”

“Have fun with that.”

“Whatever. Just ‘cause you all couldn’t make the cut—”

They carefully exited the head house. Michael almost slipped on some rickety stairs, but he grabbed the holes in the wall and steadied himself. Jon felt joy slip away. Back to the grind of life. Back to the family bullshit. Every time the group started up, he wished they would keep going until they all passed out, then wake up and start over.

Once out, Kathy tugged Jon’s sleeve. “Can you ride with me home? It’s later than usual.”

“Sure.”

“Oooh-la-la,” joked Michael and rode off. Louis followed, pulling huge yawns that stretched out his face.

“Oh, whatever,” she called after Michael. “It’s not even like that.”

Of course not. Not even the rotund girls with pizza faces, like Kathy, wanted Jon. And forget about the ones he actually lusted after, the Playboy bunnies and Sears underwear models. They haunted his dreams and stoked his loins, leading to many a sticky night. Jon had spent too much time watching the idiot box and believing that the big lie would come true. That just around the corner the magical supermodel would beckon towards him, lusting for his body. All he wanted was one incredibly hot woman to have sex with all the time. Him and the rest of the male population. He despaired of ever getting sexual pleasure from anything other than his right hand.

Jon had run across some abstinence literature once that described his virginity as a “noble choice” and one of the “greatest gifts he had to give.” What a load of horseshit. It was a millstone. A giant obstacle he needed to knock over if he was really going to start living his life. At that moment, he would happily let some toothless crack-whore gum his cock into an explosion just to get it all over with. So he could finally feel like a man and stop lying about being a virgin.

They rode on through the chilly streets. An occasional neighborhood bar would flash by, the local drunks all clustered together yelling about the game or whatever, but otherwise the roads were dead. Everyone was tucked away somewhere warm, away from the night air, where Jon should have been.

It took a while to get to her house and Jon was near exhausted when they finally zipped up to a two-story townhouse done in a neo-colonial style. It was on the cusp of a much more affluent neighborhood, where the houses were wider, the bars almost nonexistent, and the corner groceries didn’t universally proclaim, “We Accept Food Stamps.” It was the sort of neighborhood Jon felt he belonged in.

“What do your parents do again?”

“My dad’s the director of the Museum of History and mom teaches archeology at Buff State.”

“Nice place.”

“Yeah, it’s okay,” she replied and walked over to him, eyes nervously looking at her fingers. “Thanks for the escort.”

“Oh, no problem.”

She gave him a quick peck on the cheek and walked away. That caught him off guard, even though it shouldn’t have. The signs had been there. He had just missed them. There was his opportunity for sexual exploration, but Jon shrugged it off. He was getting too tired to care about anything. Jon watched her walk down the path to her house and enter. Then he cycled away into the night, yawning all the while.