Frank
Frank lost his position as a consultant with one of Toronto's most prominent engineering firms. An alcohol-induced blunder on the job nearly cost the life of a co-worker, a hardhat having his lunch. Frank was supervising the site. When the heavy piece of un-harnessed machinery came crashing down, inches from the man, Frank was fingered for blame. The ensuing investigation opened questions about Frank's alcoholic tendencies. Shortly thereafter, he was out of a job. Soon no one would hire him. His infrequent wife beatings became regular fare. Soon she left. Then their three children, who were already grown up and out of the house, stopped calling. They all lived very far away.
Frank lives in Montreal. He moved there when his life disappeared into oblivion. He took a tiny apartment on the Plateau, by St. Laurent St., where students and rejects live. His place is a hollowed-out cavern, with white walls and barely sufficient working parts. It has three rooms, one a bathroom where Frank likes to analyze his drunken complexion.
Fifteen years after losing everything, his life these days goes like this:
Thoughts of improbable miracles and lonely holidays are all that remain for Frank, a chronic alcoholic who looks terribly depressed. He has a bad liver and heart and respiratory problems, diagnosed by a doctor. Frank doesn't notice, and doesn't care.
Frank looks like a spry prune. Awkward. He's mournfully flushed pink, and revels in his meatless and ever-decaying facial features. With dim brown eyes and pale crunchy skin and lips, topped with thread-like brown hair, Frank is profoundly groomed, like a strawman. He looks stupid; laughable.
He walks through town day after day, wearing several uncomfortable-looking layers of tattered old clothes, even in temperate weather, never without at least a warm sweater. A smelly rag one, thrown over his crippled-looking body, not matching his deathly red cheeks. Frank especially likes to walk in the rain, even though he doesn't own an umbrella. As he walks, the rain stalks him, dripping sloppily down the polyester outer layer, always landing in the cuff of Frank's pileless corduroy pants.
He stops to stare at fancy configurations in art shop windows and is mesmerized by loaves of bread shaped like pigs and mice in the window of the local boulangerie. Most of all, he likes the electronically-operated Christmas display in the front window of 'The Bay'. Every December, Frank stands for many minutes and ogles at the way the toy animals scamper through the fake snow and how the wooden elves hammer diligently on the fascinating new toys they are busily constructing. He walks east down St. Catherine St., past St. Laurent St., to the place where the ladies of the evening flaunt themselves, and Frank glares open-mouthed at their tits and asses. Sooner or later, he always comes back anxiously to his favourite window. Like a pre-occupied puppie dog.
In his apartment, on the bare old-wood floor in the largest room, he plays with bottles of various shapes and sizes. He makes himself believe that the bottles are tall beautiful buildings whose construction he masterminded. And this one shall be called my masterpiece, Frank thinks, as he places the finishing touches --the last bottle in the glued-together bottle building-- on the piece of crap.
Everything seems normal to Frank. Falling down without being pushed, where an icy sidewalk ceases to be an excuse for walking clumsily, is usual fare. As is strolling through the mall, searching for the perfect cologne sample that would camouflage six straight days without a shower.
Frank never stoops to panhandling. He suffers, days on end without food, never asking for a handout. Not even another bum's sloppy leftovers. He remembers how proud he used to be, a good husband and a playful father, who taught his children the value of hard work. This is advice he used to follow. Now he sleeps a lot. He drinks when he awakes. His bottle is his only friend.
Most people passing him on the street would consider Frank to be a happy meandering drunk, if they considered him at all. Frank certainly doesn't live on the edge. Usually, he can't find the edge. His edge is in a bottle of whisky. The whisky has the edge over Frank.
In recent days, the accomplishment Frank has been the most proud of is his new-found ability to hold his right leg up with his left hand, creating a loop, and jumping through the loop with his left leg. Somehow, he maintains the level of awareness required for proficiency in this trick. He practises it regularly and uses it as a means to prove his virility to himself. But he fails to reason that virile men don't amuse so easily. Men like Frank amuse easily.
One day, home from meandering in the heavy rain and having already sufficiently practised his trick, Frank wonders what to do next. This is one of those times when lost lonely souls undergo an inescapable frustration of having nothing constructive to do. No grown-up men’s toys to play with; no furniture to sit on or television to watch. Not even arm pit farting noises could amuse at a time like this. Frank looks at his mantlepiece, where a photo of his children stands, the last picture he has of them together. How long ago was this picture taken, he wonders? A couple of years back at least. More like five. Frank can't bear to think back any further. He begins to weep. It is evening time; a time when mature adult people long for the comfort of family and friends. But he has no family --none to look at, talk to, or touch-- and friends are only where there's free booze. It's interesting to watch Frank cry. As tears stream forlornly down his cheeks, he pushes his plump behind into a wall, and slowly slides down onto the dusty bare wood floor in his largest room. Cradling his head in his crossed arms, he begins to sob freely, filling the room with the taste of pitiful tears. Suddenly, he stops crying. He starts picking his nose, ignorant of the tears he has shed and the reason he shed them. In the blink of an eye, the urge to peel away hardened mucus from inside his nose has overtaken the urge to weep that had only seconds before overwhelmed him.
Three weeks ago, Frank had a visitor. The visitor talked to him and Frank listened intently. As Frank had no furniture for the visitor to sit upon, he and the visitor talked in the corridor of Frank's apartment. The visitor told Frank of the end of the world and described in detail the last three days of existence of the planet Earth. The visitor had with him books to sell and told Frank of a club he could join, where humans gather to sip tea, burn incense, and discuss with one another their past, future, and alternate lives. Frank was amused by the story and smiled politely. He was shit-faced. He liked having a visitor, and he wanted the visitor to stay. The visitor left. Since the end of existence was near, there were plenty more people to visit and not much time to do it. No longer having a visitor made Frank sad.
Frank ponders the last days of existence. When will they be upon us? What should we do while we wait for them to come? Is there any way to stop it from happening? With these thoughts, it is clear that Frank has not lost his ability to think abstractly. He could probably still perform all the sedentary duties of an engineer. These thoughts last for as long as it takes Frank to walk from his flat to the depanneur for booze, and back.
Frank has managed, through months of empty-headed soul-searching, to piece together one constructive thought. He could get a job. For three months straight he thought this. One day he seriously considered it. In the next two months, he seriously considered it three more times. Throughout the bitterly cold winter that followed, he considered it twice more. Each time, he drank to celebrate; to celebrate that he could still have a constructive thought. When he contemplates a job search, something holds Frank back: He doesn't enjoy moving much anymore. Most companies don't prefer this trait in an employee. Neither do they want employees with drunken and accident-prone backgrounds. The companies with which he considers employment are mostly in the cleaning and maintenance field; cleaning toilets and maintaining a paper towel supply. Frank takes for granted these are the only positions he'd any longer qualify for. It's as if he knows how fucked up he really is.
Frank has dreams about failing a company's competence test for its employees. Subsequently, he would fail the physical examination and the eyesight test. When he dreams intently, he fails the urine examination. Worse yet, Frank makes a total ass of himself in front of his prospective employer. He sits in the prospective employee's interview chair and say nothing. Even when asked simple questions, like "What's your name?", Frank pauses long enough to cause any other man considerable embarrassment, then he burps, "F...r...aaank." For this, he'd hear an abrupt, "Thank you, we'll be in touch."
On his way to an interview one day, Frank stops and sits. Anywhere he can stop and sit is fine with Frank. He stops anywhere. In a parkette just off the main street. He spots a young couple necking, about fifteen feet away, close enough so that he Frank can see their lips colliding and their tongues swirling. As the man's hand reaches for the girl's left breast, Frank recalls sharing a similar escapade with his ex-wife, long before they married. Her breasts were smaller than this girls', he thinks, and watches the girl's hand slide discreetly between her lover's legs, in full view of Frank and probably no one else. A tear drips down Frank's face and onto the grass as he reminisces about days when his hands could grasp a breast firmly and his heart could love sweetly. He thinks about how beautiful his wife looked on their wedding day, and how he couldn't wait to take her, naked, and make her pregnant. As he looks away from the young couple, he thinks about his children, all grown up, independent. He wishes to hug them, any one of them. It doesn't matter which one; he can't recall their names. He weeps, his tears filling his drunken eyes. He cries silently, as he has no audience to cry to. He gets up, still crying, and starts walking.
Too depressed to make any sense of his day, Frank begins to wander aimlessly, having squandered one more in a long line of squandered job opportunities. Finding himself too tired to walk anymore, he stops to look at a t.v. in a shop window. There are rich and famous people expounding on how much money they have and how hard they worked to earn this money, to a famous interviewer who also is familiar with fame and fortune. They look lovely, he thinks, and soon plods wearily home.
The next morning, Frank begins to drink. He continues drinking all day. Two more days pass without event. Frank drinks endlessly.
The next morning
Last night Frank drank Scotch. He drank more scotch than ever before. He fell down and hit his head. No more tears. No more burps. No more farts. Frank was dead.
Now Frank's children visit him regularly.
Frank lives in Montreal. He moved there when his life disappeared into oblivion. He took a tiny apartment on the Plateau, by St. Laurent St., where students and rejects live. His place is a hollowed-out cavern, with white walls and barely sufficient working parts. It has three rooms, one a bathroom where Frank likes to analyze his drunken complexion.
Fifteen years after losing everything, his life these days goes like this:
Thoughts of improbable miracles and lonely holidays are all that remain for Frank, a chronic alcoholic who looks terribly depressed. He has a bad liver and heart and respiratory problems, diagnosed by a doctor. Frank doesn't notice, and doesn't care.
Frank looks like a spry prune. Awkward. He's mournfully flushed pink, and revels in his meatless and ever-decaying facial features. With dim brown eyes and pale crunchy skin and lips, topped with thread-like brown hair, Frank is profoundly groomed, like a strawman. He looks stupid; laughable.
He walks through town day after day, wearing several uncomfortable-looking layers of tattered old clothes, even in temperate weather, never without at least a warm sweater. A smelly rag one, thrown over his crippled-looking body, not matching his deathly red cheeks. Frank especially likes to walk in the rain, even though he doesn't own an umbrella. As he walks, the rain stalks him, dripping sloppily down the polyester outer layer, always landing in the cuff of Frank's pileless corduroy pants.
He stops to stare at fancy configurations in art shop windows and is mesmerized by loaves of bread shaped like pigs and mice in the window of the local boulangerie. Most of all, he likes the electronically-operated Christmas display in the front window of 'The Bay'. Every December, Frank stands for many minutes and ogles at the way the toy animals scamper through the fake snow and how the wooden elves hammer diligently on the fascinating new toys they are busily constructing. He walks east down St. Catherine St., past St. Laurent St., to the place where the ladies of the evening flaunt themselves, and Frank glares open-mouthed at their tits and asses. Sooner or later, he always comes back anxiously to his favourite window. Like a pre-occupied puppie dog.
In his apartment, on the bare old-wood floor in the largest room, he plays with bottles of various shapes and sizes. He makes himself believe that the bottles are tall beautiful buildings whose construction he masterminded. And this one shall be called my masterpiece, Frank thinks, as he places the finishing touches --the last bottle in the glued-together bottle building-- on the piece of crap.
Everything seems normal to Frank. Falling down without being pushed, where an icy sidewalk ceases to be an excuse for walking clumsily, is usual fare. As is strolling through the mall, searching for the perfect cologne sample that would camouflage six straight days without a shower.
Frank never stoops to panhandling. He suffers, days on end without food, never asking for a handout. Not even another bum's sloppy leftovers. He remembers how proud he used to be, a good husband and a playful father, who taught his children the value of hard work. This is advice he used to follow. Now he sleeps a lot. He drinks when he awakes. His bottle is his only friend.
Most people passing him on the street would consider Frank to be a happy meandering drunk, if they considered him at all. Frank certainly doesn't live on the edge. Usually, he can't find the edge. His edge is in a bottle of whisky. The whisky has the edge over Frank.
In recent days, the accomplishment Frank has been the most proud of is his new-found ability to hold his right leg up with his left hand, creating a loop, and jumping through the loop with his left leg. Somehow, he maintains the level of awareness required for proficiency in this trick. He practises it regularly and uses it as a means to prove his virility to himself. But he fails to reason that virile men don't amuse so easily. Men like Frank amuse easily.
One day, home from meandering in the heavy rain and having already sufficiently practised his trick, Frank wonders what to do next. This is one of those times when lost lonely souls undergo an inescapable frustration of having nothing constructive to do. No grown-up men’s toys to play with; no furniture to sit on or television to watch. Not even arm pit farting noises could amuse at a time like this. Frank looks at his mantlepiece, where a photo of his children stands, the last picture he has of them together. How long ago was this picture taken, he wonders? A couple of years back at least. More like five. Frank can't bear to think back any further. He begins to weep. It is evening time; a time when mature adult people long for the comfort of family and friends. But he has no family --none to look at, talk to, or touch-- and friends are only where there's free booze. It's interesting to watch Frank cry. As tears stream forlornly down his cheeks, he pushes his plump behind into a wall, and slowly slides down onto the dusty bare wood floor in his largest room. Cradling his head in his crossed arms, he begins to sob freely, filling the room with the taste of pitiful tears. Suddenly, he stops crying. He starts picking his nose, ignorant of the tears he has shed and the reason he shed them. In the blink of an eye, the urge to peel away hardened mucus from inside his nose has overtaken the urge to weep that had only seconds before overwhelmed him.
Three weeks ago, Frank had a visitor. The visitor talked to him and Frank listened intently. As Frank had no furniture for the visitor to sit upon, he and the visitor talked in the corridor of Frank's apartment. The visitor told Frank of the end of the world and described in detail the last three days of existence of the planet Earth. The visitor had with him books to sell and told Frank of a club he could join, where humans gather to sip tea, burn incense, and discuss with one another their past, future, and alternate lives. Frank was amused by the story and smiled politely. He was shit-faced. He liked having a visitor, and he wanted the visitor to stay. The visitor left. Since the end of existence was near, there were plenty more people to visit and not much time to do it. No longer having a visitor made Frank sad.
Frank ponders the last days of existence. When will they be upon us? What should we do while we wait for them to come? Is there any way to stop it from happening? With these thoughts, it is clear that Frank has not lost his ability to think abstractly. He could probably still perform all the sedentary duties of an engineer. These thoughts last for as long as it takes Frank to walk from his flat to the depanneur for booze, and back.
Frank has managed, through months of empty-headed soul-searching, to piece together one constructive thought. He could get a job. For three months straight he thought this. One day he seriously considered it. In the next two months, he seriously considered it three more times. Throughout the bitterly cold winter that followed, he considered it twice more. Each time, he drank to celebrate; to celebrate that he could still have a constructive thought. When he contemplates a job search, something holds Frank back: He doesn't enjoy moving much anymore. Most companies don't prefer this trait in an employee. Neither do they want employees with drunken and accident-prone backgrounds. The companies with which he considers employment are mostly in the cleaning and maintenance field; cleaning toilets and maintaining a paper towel supply. Frank takes for granted these are the only positions he'd any longer qualify for. It's as if he knows how fucked up he really is.
Frank has dreams about failing a company's competence test for its employees. Subsequently, he would fail the physical examination and the eyesight test. When he dreams intently, he fails the urine examination. Worse yet, Frank makes a total ass of himself in front of his prospective employer. He sits in the prospective employee's interview chair and say nothing. Even when asked simple questions, like "What's your name?", Frank pauses long enough to cause any other man considerable embarrassment, then he burps, "F...r...aaank." For this, he'd hear an abrupt, "Thank you, we'll be in touch."
On his way to an interview one day, Frank stops and sits. Anywhere he can stop and sit is fine with Frank. He stops anywhere. In a parkette just off the main street. He spots a young couple necking, about fifteen feet away, close enough so that he Frank can see their lips colliding and their tongues swirling. As the man's hand reaches for the girl's left breast, Frank recalls sharing a similar escapade with his ex-wife, long before they married. Her breasts were smaller than this girls', he thinks, and watches the girl's hand slide discreetly between her lover's legs, in full view of Frank and probably no one else. A tear drips down Frank's face and onto the grass as he reminisces about days when his hands could grasp a breast firmly and his heart could love sweetly. He thinks about how beautiful his wife looked on their wedding day, and how he couldn't wait to take her, naked, and make her pregnant. As he looks away from the young couple, he thinks about his children, all grown up, independent. He wishes to hug them, any one of them. It doesn't matter which one; he can't recall their names. He weeps, his tears filling his drunken eyes. He cries silently, as he has no audience to cry to. He gets up, still crying, and starts walking.
Too depressed to make any sense of his day, Frank begins to wander aimlessly, having squandered one more in a long line of squandered job opportunities. Finding himself too tired to walk anymore, he stops to look at a t.v. in a shop window. There are rich and famous people expounding on how much money they have and how hard they worked to earn this money, to a famous interviewer who also is familiar with fame and fortune. They look lovely, he thinks, and soon plods wearily home.
The next morning, Frank begins to drink. He continues drinking all day. Two more days pass without event. Frank drinks endlessly.
The next morning
Last night Frank drank Scotch. He drank more scotch than ever before. He fell down and hit his head. No more tears. No more burps. No more farts. Frank was dead.
Now Frank's children visit him regularly.
posted by Erich Schmidt | 11:08 AM
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