Live From the Marathon

Years ago, Oscar was browsing a bookstore in Richland, Washington and noticed a drawing of a man who had quit his job, or retired--he forgets which--to play the guitar full time. The artist drew the man on a stage strumming a guitar looking sad, old, broken. At the bottom of the drawing there was a caption. It said the man was a bad guitarist.

He was thinking about that picture as he stared out the window of his kitchen at the empty lot next door, a cold beer in his hand.

Nobody wanted to be an artist where he came from. Well, at least not until rappers started making music videos and made it look easy to be the next Master P. A lot of kids wanted to be rappers after that. Even Oscar caught the bug, walking home from school freestyling to his friends every now and then.

Most kids that looked like him coveted jobs at Idaho Beef or ConAgra Foods. Others got hired to help clean up at Hanford. The bold ones moved to Seattle. The few guys he was close to that stuck around, got married, had kids, started small businesses, and some of them became successful drug addicts.

The alarm started going off. He found a glass to pour the beer in and watched the foam settle. It was a false alarm anyway. Something he had going on last Sunday. Then he picked up the glass but not without spilling some beer on the counter. He ignored it and walked out of the kitchen to reset the alarm.

Two years ago, when he lost his job at the senior center and ended up living out of his car. Oscar saw it as his very own “phoenix rising from the ashes” moment. He imagined a well-stocked pantry of ideas and creativity opening up for him to write about. Of course, people would rush to buy his stories. Of course, praise and money would follow.

Installed again on the living room couch, he grabbed the notebook and pen resting on the wooden coffee table and wrote, “Some of the greatest works of art were created while the artist was going through a particularly dark period. It’s true. J Dilla crafted Donuts from a hospital bed. MF DOOM lost his brother and made Operation Doomsday. God created earth when he was in a Chinese work camp.”

He put the pen down.

He  was thinking about the last two years. It didn’t feel like anything beautiful was growing. The soil felt more like a trail mix of weeds, thorns, rocks, wet dirt, blunt roaches and ants marching out of an empty faded Capri Sun, with the straw still in it.

He saw himself as a failed immigrant, a failed artist. He believed failure was the appropriate adjective to describe himself because no Mexican ever risked their life crossing the border with an endgame of being unemployed and overcome with anxiety and depression at thirty. The American Dream is to work hard and earn one hundred thousand dollars a year in spite of your poor mental health.

He took inventory. He’d been overeating from the ashes, self-medicating from the ashes, waking up in the middle of the night to cry from the ashes. Everything from the ashes, it seemed, except rising.

“An amputated limb has more going for it than I do. You would miss a limb,” he said out loud.

He couldn’t remember where he’d heard that before. He was back at the kitchen window. His prayer plant needed water. That’s what he was thinking when he opened another beer.

He wondered when he got to believing that this life had more to offer him than a twelve-hour shift and a case of beer on the weekends.

The man he went on a date with last Sunday was telling Oscar about his goals. He was studying to be a forensic scientist. Oscar said he didn’t know what he wanted to be yet.

His date laughed. “Life isn’t a race, it’s a marathon,” he said.

He didn’t laugh when Oscar asked him why it had to be a sporting event.

“All the world's a stage.” Oscar wrote in his notebook. He was back on the couch with a fresh beer.

He took a drink and wrote. “You can’t get in a theater without a ticket.”

Earlier, he’d gotten? an email from another publisher rejecting another piece.

He took inventory. Rejection was his genesis in this art form. In the fourth grade he entered a writing contest. Nobody told him to, he just did it. The contest was called Young Authors. Oscar’s story was about a cop and the book was shaped like a badge.

He had to admit that it didn’t feel any better losing then, than it does now.

The metal Darth Vader coin bank made a dull crashing sound as it fell off the tower of paperbacks on the green office chair in his living room. He got the chair for free off Craigslist. The coins spilled on the carpet forming a collage of quarters, dimes, and nickels.

He spent a summer hanging out,loitering at an arcade across the street from MacArthur Park. He was ten and sucked at all the games except for Mario Bros. Another boy showed him how to get quarters. They would stand on the corner begging for them.

Oscar was surprised how easy it was for him to walk up to strangers and ask for money. One of those nights saw his dad crossing the busy intersection. Stumbling. He was visibly drunk. He began to worry his dad had seen him ask somebody for money.

He didn’t. Instead, he smiled and lit up when he saw Oscar.

The man that ran the arcade was a Cuban refugee. Gus saw a drunk man approach a young boy and instinctively checked in.

“That’s my dad,” he told Gus.

Oscar would never forget Gus’ reaction. He studied the man slurring his words,barely standing up and felt sorry for the boy.

There was a taco truck parked in front of the arcade.

“Let’s get some tacos!” his dad said.

They finished their tacos and then Oscar and his dad walked home. Oscar was carrying a can of soda. His father never asked him what he was doing outside the arcade so far from home on a Friday night.

Oscar was still on the couch. His beer was empty. He reached for the open laptop and reread the email.