Part 1c. Birthday License.
The weather changed slowly outside the building on Ocean Parkway. George would probably be back soon.
I put the rest of the supplies for the day in our kitchen area cabinet and poured Herman's can of soup into the metal pan.
I cleared the table of Herman's notes into the folder and sat it gently next to the doorway which ran through his room.
The soup started to sizzle against the edges of the pan so I turned off the flame and told Herman lunch was ready.
He pulled the shade down over the window. "I have to go have lunch... Ok. See you tomorrow." He picked up his folder I placed in the doorway on the way into the kitchen area thumbing through it as if inventorying its contents.
"Birthday license" Herman seemed to have switched out of talking in made up catch phrases like in the beginning of this story, and degenerated instead into blurting out pairs of words that have an indirect link with each other.
"Steamroller basketball!"
I asked Herman to grab a lunch set. He went over to the corner cabinet and pulled out a presorted green cellophane wrapped paper bowl containing a plastic spoon, a packet of mustard, 3 sugar/salt packets and a wad of napkins. "Green for lunch, blue for breakfast and red for lunch, I mean red for dinner. And yellow for when George comes over."
He placed the lunch set face down on the table and peeled off the stickum that held the cellophane together. It squeaked as he unfolded and crinkled it flat.
With the exaggerated mannerisms of a circus magician Herman lifted the bowl spinning it upright between his fingers. Then picked it up off the floor and handed it to me.
I stirred the soup and ladled it into the bowl. "Ok bub, go sit down, I'll bring it over." I got the foil wrapped container of crunchy fried onions from the box on the counter.
Herman sat down in his lunch chair, an oversized custom mail order pinewood 2x4 ricket we had to assemble at home. He neatly arranged the napkins, spoon and condiment packets into a square with an empty space in the middle for the bowl to be placed. "Don't forget the crunchy onions." He was wearing a Boston lobster bib I fitted with Velcro for easy removal.
I shook a small mound of crunchy onions out, stirred them into the soup bowl and sat down next to Herman at the table.
I wiped the bottom of the spoon against the bowl and tipped the chunky white soup into Herman's mouth. "I'm glad you're not still hiding that smelly egg," I told him "you know I'll make you a new egg whenever you want one, right?" Herman nodded and showed me his napkin before using it to wipe dripping soup from the front of his red overalls under the bib. "I was banished."
I asked Herman if he wanted any more crunchy onions. I could hear my own exhaustion in the response because I wasn't sure how to answer Herman's lucid statements about the subject of his isolation. Even if these statements were blurted out randomly, I knew they were just the few words that made it through the filter, runoff from his internal rumination.
What would I say anyway? Would I confirm it bluntly? Make eggshell caveats? Or maybe try to explain the mounds of safety mechanisms that brought Herman to this point of isolation; try to untangle the knots of obsessive self abusive logic that brought Herman to this point in his life.
And even if I were to try and untangle Herman, I was hardly in a condition to make a judgement regarding anyone else's anything.
Fixing my friend wasn't something I was able to do, however taking care of him is something that I was able to do, so I did that.
The breaker snapped with a loud sparking pop, turning both our heads and making Herman jump out from his lunch chair. "If anyone knew me better they wouldn't be surprised by the kind of hat I'm wearing tomorrow." Herman was acting normal.
"Herman normal." He pulled the cork out from his first ear and placed it back in the other one.
It wasn't unusual lately for Herman to say things relevant to what I was thinking at a given moment.
I asked him why he was wearing a cork in his ear. "I'm hearing in two dimensional."
Herman was finished eating soup. I looked over at the timer and realized my drink would be ready in the next 5 seconds.
I got up to move quickly across the room because the homunculus has me trained to turn off the machine before it starts beeping.
The machine started to beep anyway, but that was ok because I also had a safety mechanism. Which was if I could reach it, open the door, and touch the cup before the third beep, any pending consequences would be avoided.
Stopping the machine before the beeping starts is optimal, but touching the cup before the 3rd beep is acceptable.
There's a soft and slippery moment in some of us where falling into a warm psychosis is as natural as the condition of realizing a dream is really a dream and the consequences of any actions would be wiped clean.
A circumstance relates to a miscalculation of intuition or desire, just enough to sync up like two dusty repellant magnets with that little back and forth magnet swinging dance they always do before smacking together sideways.
And when you pull them apart the mingled magnet dust reaches out, wanting to stay with its original magnet, until laying down residedly to accept its new position.
Then the faulty intuition makes the leap to validate the action into the role of presupposed control over the prevention, or creation, of the circumstance, until the habit created becomes more amplified than the circumstance itself and the habit itself is adopted as 'just something I do', or whatever it is the person says to justify the little homunculus in the head making him perform nonsensical behaviors slowly turning him into a lunatic.
Slight interest in some action or avoidable circumstance turns to focus, then focus to rumination, and eventually the original circumstance fades down the spiral of what's become a series of crucial actions which need to be performed to effect the imaginary outcome controlled by the homunculus.
I was concerned Herman might absorb the homunculus. Possibly even obsessed, I'm pretty sure this is the third time I've said something similar to that last sentence.
And a homunculus infecting someone like Herman without a George to balance it would have him completely immobilized.
Almost just as bad was simply in evidence of my participation in this world created by Herman at all, I perpetuated the made up lunacy and so was at least somehow responsible Herman was like this. But where else would he go? It's not like people make up elaborate alternatives to reality because they have rich and flourishing social lives filled with opportunity and happiness.
George, if I haven't mentioned yet, is my own imaginary friend who extends in his presence to Herman once removed.
George had no problem walking in and out of all manner of establishments, acting as if everyone weren't already briefed with a made up backstory about him, that was compiled conveniently over the years by people with a similar agendas which required his redefinition by rumor.
Nope, it wasn't like that for him at all.
George was pure, he made his own 'you leave me alone and I'll refuse to believe in you' deal with the homunculus a long time ago. And so he remained uninfected by my abnormalities.
I gave Herman another egg and then put an extra one on the table. I made sure Herman knew he didn't have to worry about disappearing eggs or open windows so he wouldn't have to become like me.