Gary was so little he could barely walk and he hated being wet and cold and he hated being dry and hot and he hated being on the beach and he was expressing all of this very loudly when his feet encountered the worst thing yet, so horrible that he swallowed his screaming with a sharp HUHP, like a stray bug.
“What’s that?” asked his father, a tiny bit of relief seeping in when he didn’t see blood. He was holding Gary upright in the water with his giant hairy hands, and his head must have been ringing by then. “Oh I see – no, that’s okay little guy. That’s just seaweed. It’s harmless.”
Gary shrank backwards from the harmlessness. The squishy soft wet sand of the lakebed was the one soothing texture he had, but now it was gone and being replaced by plants that looked like spiders. A floating strand – snapped free by his father’s giant stomping feet – drifted by in front of his stomach and almost touched him, making him hiccup in horror.
“It’s not gonna hurt you,” said his father, and to Gary’s horror he proved it, he picked him up and proved it by moving him forwards into the deeper water, up to Gary’s armpits and with the seaweed around him and underfoot and everywhere.
“See?” his father said, as he stood there in the water, scratchy scrapy slimy weedy tendrils brushing against his feet. “It’s not so bad, not so bad, not so bad at all.”
“Okay,” said Gary. He tried to wiggle his toes, then tried to never do that again. “Okay.”
***
Gary had too many pimples and not enough money and no clue whatsoever, and the deep fryer had taken offense at his deep frying fries and had spat upon him very vigorously. He swore and wailed all at once and dropped things and waved his arms around and didn’t know where to put his face.
“What was that?” asked the manager, who’d been doing something involving an unpleasant device and the plumbing, and then “oh fuck me, that’s a bad one. Christ kid, what’d you DO never mind, never mind, come with me right now.” She grabbed Gary in one hand and the kitchen sink’s taps in the other and pulled them together despite everything he could do and she turned them both into position.
“There, see?” the manager said as the cold, cold water poured over his crispy arm hair and turned to liquid nitrogen over the burn welts. “That’s not so bad. Probably won’t even scar.”
“Okay,” said Gary. He watched skin turn red and white and white and red and blotch in and out, like a heartbeat. “Okay.”
***
Gary had no time left and an endless amount of questions and he was sitting at a table in his parent’s old house looking at the schools, at the brochures and the websites and the brochures and the websites and the brochures and the websites and inside his head was nothing and he was screaming at the nothing but invisibly, because if he made a real noise it would come out very horribly.
“Just pick something,” someone had told him – everyone was awfully smeared together right now, it was difficult to sort out which someone this had been or who it was or if it had been himself. “It’s okay as long as you pick something.”
He’d been picking something for years. And now it was finishing.
So Gary picked one and felt terrible, and then put it back. And then he picked one and felt terrible, and he put it back. And he did that for two hours until he picked one up and felt a sort of exhausted relief and he didn’t put it back.
“Okay,” said Gary. And he meant it, maybe? It felt alright. “Okay.”
***
Gary was finished.
He hadn’t failed. He’d taken too long and hadn’t felt the passion, but he’d had a little fun and he hadn’t failed and his teachers had encouraged him and told him he had a future and he’d worn a stupid hat and gotten a stupid paper and he’d said something stupid to the person who shook his hand and now he was going to a restaurant with the pieces of his family that lived near him and they were happy, and he was happy, and he started the right turn off the overpass just as there was a ten-year-old in front of him and he slammed on the brakes like they were red-hot-scorpions underneath steeltoed shoes.
The kid stared and then scampered, frightened.
Gary waited a long half-moment before he finished the turn, too filled with icy terror to even be nervous about making the people behind him wait.
“Okay,” he said to himself, dry and squeaky through his throat. He swallowed and tasted everything. He hadn’t hit anyone. He had NEARLY hit someone, but he hadn’t. And that wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad. Everything was fine. Nothing had been ruined.
“Okay.”
***
Gary was still moving, but he was standing still. Maybe everything else was moving.
He wasn’t sure how he’d gotten his job, but he worked at it. He wasn’t sure if his schooling helped with it, but he didn’t think about it. He wasn’t sure if he knew how to do it, but he did it. He wasn’t sure if it was enough, but he didn’t look because the idea of an answer was frightening. He wasn’t sure if there was something else he’d missed and it was too late or if he was being nervous. He didn’t like being nervous or unsure, and that meant he didn’t like a lot of things and mostly those things were pieces of himself which he was suspecting might actually be the foundations of his entire being.
So he worked, and then he went home and didn’t move. He put words in front of himself on screens and papers and when those ran out he used videos and when those ran out he looked for more and then he went to bed and did them all over again and it was fine. It was acceptable and sustainable.
The days off were harder because he wasn’t still moving on those days and he spent more of it painstakingly aware of his immobility. He should try things, probably. He should’ve tried things already, maybe. He knew he’d regret it if he didn’t. But he regretted the things he’d done as much as the things he hadn’t done, and if he was very very careful not to do anything in the correct way maybe he wouldn’t think about any of that and would simply feel fine instead. Which would be alright.
“Okay,” he said to himself. A lot of the things he said he had to say to himself. “Okay.”
***
Gary was much older than he thought he’d be, and not nearly as old as he’d hoped he’d be, and exactly as old as he’d always feared. Everything surrounding him was years out of date but still terribly, terribly, terribly expensive and delicate, and he had no idea how he’d replace any of it if he sneezed or coughed or curled up in a tiny ball the wrong way, so he lay recumbent not just because he couldn’t do anything else but because he was very frightened of making something happen.
His cousin, who was somewhat younger than Gary (the last person Gary knew, but not all that well), was there with him. This was a relief.
“It’s okay, Gary,” said his cousin. “It’s okay.”
At this, Gary’s brain and eyes blinked three times very quickly. He opened his mouth.
He was sure there was something he’d just realized, something else that he was sure he should’ve been doing, something that wasn’t quite what he’d always had, but he was just a little bit la