The Conductor.Nostalgia Sake

NOSTALGIA SAKE

“...And with the end of one chapter, another begins anew.” Jimmy Yashi’s voice boomed through the PA as a cold wind blew in from the north.

The sky was threatening a June gloom storm, dark clouds gathering overhead. The event staff appeared slightly distressed, but paid little more than a worried eye skyward.

Atop a semi-rickety scaffold stage that was banged and bunted in the school colors of red and white, Jimmy Yashi stood at a wood-colored vinyl podium. Stanford, Pacific High’s bulldog mascot, crouched beside the podium, looking like a goofy caricature of an angry pug in a football jersey. Behind them was a short view panel of the academics squad and administration. Before them, sat in smart rows on the lush green turf of the football field, the graduating class of Pacific High, 1996.

I stood in the far rear of a crowd of family and student attending, blinking languidly at the display of pomp and circumstance playing out, admiring the man that nerdy little Jimmy had become.

Having achieved class valedictorian, dressed immaculately in a pin-striped black Armani suit, Jimmy was giving his commencement speech to the graduating class. He was impressive in his manifestation. The nerdy, spotty, awkward appearance just a memory, he stood a handsome sound man, articulate and confident. His gorgeous almond eyes clear now, unhampered by the old Coke-bottle lens glasses since he‘d switched to contact lenses. He made the honor roll all four years in a row straight, top of the class. Top of the entire school, actually. Maybe even the whole district itself. With excellent extra curricular activities, he was going to Harvard next year, and then on to MIT. He had become the pride of Pacific High.

Good for him, I thought. At least someone would escape this black hole of a city near unscathed.

“My brothers and sisters,” he continued, voice warm but edged with a kind of odd anticipation, “we’ve had hardships and we’ve had triumphs. We’ve seen history and we’ve witnessed great and terrible change alike. But we have overcome.”

Death, eye sockets smoking in the cold damp air, gave me as much of a scrupulous look as a skull could give. His jaw creaked open like a rusty gate. “You’re serious about this, kid.” Above the scene, standing at the very top of the bleachers, Death’s robes flapped in the wind.

I didn’t look at Death. Instead I basked in the warmth of honor I felt for Jimmy. Coming from a similar background as I--broken home, poor educational structure, abuse--the boy had made good. Little geeky bootlick Jimmy Yashi would become a great among greats. One of a paltry few who’d make something of themselves out of our graduating class.

Death scoffed a little at my sanguinity. I paid no mind and proudly smiled, as if Jimmy were truly a brother of mine.

A shard of sunlight pierced through the heavy cloud cover above and made me wince. It’d been a while since I’d seen daylight, I guess. The weather was absolutely frigid for this time of year. I scanned the clouds, adjusted my sunglasses and pulled my coat a little tighter around me to cut the chill from the breeze.

“I believe our generation will make a difference in this world,” said Jimmy.

This time it was my turn to scoff. Admittedly I was giving benefit of doubt for him, but the rest of our age bracket? Jimmy seriously couldn’t have believed that any of them would amount to anything. I suspected it was just a way to deal with the fact that his generation, our generation, would sum up to just about nil. Save him, of course. And myself…?

“Well, you’ve already made your rose bed in that sense. Haven‘t you.” Death smirked.

Thankfully, no one could hear Death’s atom bomb blast growls, nor my jeering. Jimmy went forth with his line of optimism while I took the moment to survey the gathering.

Before the stage on the manicured grid iron, some couple hundred of those old wooden folding chairs were lined up in rows, twenty chairs to a row, two columns of rows and about fifty rows to a column. Parents, family and friends speckled the bleachers and a collection of the lot stood at either goal. I inspected those seated from where I stood in the back, indifferently.

The cheerleaders, wrapped in their sleek and unreal designer dresses, sat checking there hair and makeup in their compacts, giggling to each other about the boys in their basic street clothes beneath the red silk gowns. They looked as they always did, popular spirit bunnies in their prime with dreams of modeling and acting. Just unaware that they’re heading towards Hooters or The Piper’s Den--a sleazy stripper bar on the trucker route. Their bodies ruined beyond acceptable repair by an angry alcoholic ex-jock husband and two point three screaming spoilt children. But for now, their dreams unquenched and unsquelched, they are beautiful, snobbish and ignorantly blissful.

The jocks sat in their letterman jackets, uncomfortable in their “gay gowns” and desperate to get to their beer kegs and bongs. Checking out their hottie cheerleader girlfriends with the perfect tits. Oblivious of the La-Z-boy beer gut and unfulfilled life that awaits them with the bitch wife and unruly children of accident, when they fail the Pro draft during their short stint at the local heavy colleges. Sports their life, no real educational skill, they’re destined to meet armchair quarterback and maybe a sudden and violent end after a major drinking binge and a deep depression. Al Bundy times eleven. Others will be destroyed by drugs; either speed, steroids, or bad pot farming in a closet coupled with a sizable debt to a South American drug cartel that had put out a price on their head.

The hippies also giggled, altered, making queer comments about their classmates. In their finest hand-me-downs, maybe even washed this time, tripped on mushrooms from Thailand or the mountains of Brazil and watching a show which is at once both unreal and terrifyingly realistic. They too destined to end up like the jocks, but more loser and drug addled than them. Their life span would be far shorter.

Goths and Metalheads sat curiously close together, both checking eyeliner in compacts of silver dragons and black skulls bought from Hot Topic. White faced and dressed in black and dark purple or jean, with heavy silver crosses and chains, they scouted out their fellow outcast friends for their following evening of drinking and deep poetry. Similar ends met, maybe a few would scout out some kind of victory in the world.

The rappers and hip-hoppers, in their velveteen track suits sat coolly, customarily unaffected by the ceremony. They seemed more interested in deals and reminiscing about old days before and after the riots. I found them, despite disliking their music to a point, the least obnoxious of the lot. However their ends would be far more tragic, I suspected.

Nerds and geeks and the general misfits sat nervous, ready to get their papers and run to the hills, back to writing their code programs for their website, roll-playing-game and/or online pornography. Still geeky and not changing much in four years. Most of them would live out dull, uneventful lives.

“So much fodder. So many to toll.” Death was murmuring to himself.

In all, everyone looked bored and anxious with the ceremony‘s length, which estimated about three hours with all the speeches and the handing out of the diplomas. The lot of them were ready to get their asses out of there to get to their “end-of-school” parties wherein some booze, drugs and sex flowed so freely, it might as well have been the Red-Light District of Amsterdam. I felt a deep disgust here. “Waste of time.” I echoed Death’s sentiment.

A breathy growling infiltrated my mind then. Guess how many will be mine tonight? The vitiated and cruelly cool voice felt like amused fire in my head. I blinked slowly with respect.

Upon further scrutiny of the crowds, to my vague surprise, I found Caleb Fellows among them, alone and small. The former Bulldogs star tackle, fallen, shamed and kicked off the team, was sitting near the back sadly in an old jersey, away from the rest of the Bulldog Varsity Football team. Even his boys who’d not so long ago wanted to tear me in half in more ways than one for messing with the man‘s car, wouldn’t dare to look at him. To look upon him was to admit you even knew the ‘scumbag’ and thereby admitting your own weakness and shame. (Curiously, I felt a mixture of superiority and regret for him.) The once large and thick Caleb was now small, thin, weak and tired. A very pale and meek version of his former self. I suppose after nine months in some low class rehab somewhere in the Valley, I‘d be a zombie mess as well. His hair was shaggy and frail, hanging like a ragged curtain before his gaunt face. His head hung low, a brief glimpse of his sunken eyes displayed humiliation. It was palpable; it enveloped him as a straight-jacket.

Hmm. Interesting… the growl sounded buoyant. I couldn’t help but smile.

On the stage, behind Yashi and Stanford, sat the big wigs like a firing squad: Professor Minerva Montessori, the willowy wisp of a woman with her cold pale blue eyes and thin 2% milk skin, sat smiling a lie back at the class. She wore black and red, fitted and long with the shoes of a witch. She sat in the middle of a small panel of the main faculty--both too educated and too unrealistic--Vice Principal Edgar Collins now a wuss, Montessori‘s lapdog, pussy-whipped like she was giving it to him on the side. Coach Simmons, who was clearly ashamed of the losing year the Bulldogs had suffered on all fronts (9th in the city,) crossed his arms over his chest and huffed, as anxious to be gone as the rest of the student body. The nurse, Neisse Toby, a middle-aged White-Out addict, short, squat and nodding out. And two of the schools main security, Deon and Luca, both large men, one of them who’d been the one to find me flat out stinking drunk on the lunch table in the canteen. Think it was Luca, the half Slovenian with a severe authority problem.

Principal Minerva’s head was turning in tight half circles, scanning her ‘work,’ the ‘leaders of tomorrow.’ As if anything she’d done, which had been nothing but talk like a superfluous parrot unwilling to shut it’s freakin’ trap, spewing a menagerie of psychobabble, as if any of it had gotten through to any of us. I wondered if she really saw the damage that was staring back at her. If she even realized the devastation laid like a war zone before her.

Death smiled at me. “Piece of work, your Minerva there.” He moved his glinting but rusty scythe and the wind blew his black cloak gently.

“Not mine.” I gritted through clenched teeth in reply.

I adjusted my stance on the edge of the football field, out of line of sight of all but for maybe Jimmy. Standing there, I tried to understand why exactly I was there now. It’s not like I would be recognized now. It wasn’t even like I missed any of this. But I felt a deep desire to be there. Maybe I wanted to hear them say my name. Or maybe I just wanted to see what had become of--and what would become of--my fellow classmates.

Yes, why?

I looked at myself a moment, curious of how I was presenting to the world. Dressed in my signature black, I felt I looked better than the whole of the gathering put together, better than I‘d ever looked. Fitted silk shirt, a thin blood red silk tie, perfect peg-leg jeans, vicious glinting Doc Marten boots, sterling silver bracelets and a pendant of pure cobalt. My hands were loose in the pockets of my fitted black trench coat, a silver ring with black and red stones set in them on the ring finger of my left hand, permanently branding me taken and a reminder to me of who exactly did care. A pair of perfectly sleek black sunglasses concealing my eyes. My skin had become a semi-unhealthy pale but only because my work kept me in the depths of night mainly.

My work, my new life was incredible although unnerving and a little bit frightening. I felt…outside of normality and above life. But still aware, wondrous, kept, strong and deeply omniscient. My new life was perfect.

I smiled a little at myself before planting my gaze back on Jimmy.

Yashi was smiling too, his teeth straight and white as he displayed his best smile. “My eyes today see the faces of my peers. Expressions of joy, of uncertainty, of elation, of excitement, of--” He stopped short.

His great brown eyes had finally become aware of my likeness far in the back of the crowds. It gave him a pause with a mixture of shock and respite, tripping him up nervously in his speech.

“--And, and of fear.” If I hadn’t known any better, his ‘fear’ was said because of me. However he quickly regained composure yet kept his eyes firmly on me. “But, as a great philosopher once said, the bird flies where it pleases.”

I gave him a reassuring smile, trying to convey to him that I was not there to disturb him.

This smacks of despair. The growl was growing impatient. Death’s skull smirked.

Death had become a curious confidant since the fall. He stood with me today, surveying the composition before him as I surveyed potentials. He seemed to relish the idea of having someone to talk to more than anything, and I didn’t mind hearing the horrors that some of these people were about to meet head on.

“This sea of the graduating class in cap and gown, tassels white, all sitting in hard chairs set up on a football field. Fidgeting, murmuring, mocking. Your preppies, your nerds, your jocks, the rest of your Sweet Valley High negative having no clue of their futures and it’s hardships of finances, jobs, relationships, education, children and eventually, inevitable demise. It’s actually quite astounding to think. This ailing herd will be their own downfall.” Death sighed, poetically.

I nodded silently in agreement. Death was beside me then, the musk of decrepitude itself permeating the air. I didn’t look at him, reverential of his place in the order of things. Strangely enough, he displayed an empathy quite possibly unlike him.

“Kid, the probabilities in life are endless, as you well know now. But it is the path chosen that surmises the fate. Truth is the constant in life. And there’s only three; you’re born, you live and you expire.

“Everyone dies.” He stated with compassion. “You know this. So you too one day will pass. But that is out of my hands; something I have no control over, for obvious reasons. I do want to tell you, kid, it won’t be for quite some time.” He paused, growing strangely somber.

“Your mother,” he said gravely. “I am sorry.”

I winced at the mere mention, steeling as if he‘d touched me with his decayed hand. An instant of dreadful memory and knowledge swept through me.

My mother was dead.

When I ‘disappeared,’ my mom was devastated. It was as if she just gave up. In my own heart I felt a tremendous guilt for leaving her behind. But I could no longer stay where I was, my life was far beyond destroyed I felt. I felt my family would never forgive me. And I was right. She didn’t forgive me. My grandmother, well, she was as cold to me as the ice in Antarctica. And my father wouldn’t speak to me. Mom died in February of a massive coronary episode nearly echoing Grandma‘s death only a month earlier. I went to her funeral and wake, incognito, and prayed she’d not blamed or hated me. But I never knew. I still felt though that her suffering and demise had been my fault, regardless.

Death laid his bony hand on my shoulder, it‘s feeling less cold than I expected but just as spiky. “She went very peacefully. So did your grandparents. This is more than I can afford for half this assemblage of your generation. Kid, I will say this. Despite this road you’ve decided to follow, you’re better off where you are than where you were.”

Although I did appreciate his candor and attempt at compassion, I couldn’t do anything but nod, stilted. I sighed, remorseful and lonesome, trying to will the tears in my eyes back.

With the breeze then, he came. Tall, magnificent and dire, dressed in a black coat and carrying a black cane with a sterling silver wolf’s head, Damian appeared out of thin air. Death jerked his skeleton hand away from me and clutched his scythe, his coal eyes flaring. Damian stared Death down with a dark brow, his mouth turned down, walking with a swagger around my back and up to Death.  

“Oh bitter tears. Must we revisit this?” Damian growled at Death.

Death hissed quietly and backed away from us, quickly dissipating into mist and reappearing perched atop the bleachers behind the stage again. Clearly, Death had overstepped a line with me and Damian wouldn’t accept it. Truthfully, I didn’t want to care and tried harder to shove the emotions as far into the pit of my stomach as possible.

Damian sneered. “Impudent minion,” he spat and Death’s head bowed.

I looked up at Damian and sniffed back my sorrow. Damian’s eyes clicked to me and he approached me solemnly, a leather gloved hand lifting to touch my cheek.

“I didn’t think you’d come, Damian.” I chewed my words apprehensively.

Damian breathed slowly and deeply, coming close. “Where you are concerned, my bright star,” he purred, “I will always come.” I smiled a little as he bent down and softly pressed his lips to mine.

A sigh shivered through my body and I felt perfect again. The base of my skull warmed and the feeling of absolute completion filled me. He snaked an arm around me and held tight.

When he pulled back, I gazed at him, admiring his superb appearance. He was dressed smartly; a black coat of wool with articulate round sterling buttons, perfect tailored jeans, a fitted dark grey silken shirt and his Black Mamba boots. All tailored without a flaw to his perfect physique. His black hair was still long and wild, framing his long irreverent face. He planted the point of his long black lacquered cane into the thick grassy ground before him and rested both leather palms on the wolfs head, facing the crowd of people paying inadvertent attention to the stage. He looked so noble and omniscient. Transcendent. The composer of life, my heart sang.

He sighed deeply, disinterested in the happenings before us. “Jess, my darling. This seems somehow redundant and callous. Even hollow.” Damian surveyed the souls before us like unruly subjects; the feeling of antipathy thick in his visage. But he softened addressing me, “is this your nostalgia, my child?”

His head turned to the crowd but his crystalline grey eyes held me. Possessively and indulgently, they admired me from their corners, the ends of his mouth opening a little in his fondness.

I smiled, please with his approval of me as well as his mere presence beside me. His hand lifted to the nape of my neck, possessively.

Reveling, I returned my sight to Yashi reluctantly. There he was still, unending in his bright speech. I watched his mouth move but hardly heard his voice for the time being. Damian easily overwhelmed my senses when he so wanted.

“Why are you here, standing at the rear of these half-witted apes and preening petty fowl, allowing Death to disturb you and listening so intently to such tripe?” Damian leaned in close to me, a twinge of jealousy in his words. “They don’t even recollect you, girl.” He growled, the same vitiated growl.

“I just want to hear them say my name. Just once.” I sighed distantly, knowing this was probably a long shot.

As if I’d scorned him, Damian tensed. Clutching my neck, he put his mouth to my ear and spoke in a quick cold hush, “they’ll say that reprobate of a teachers name and the starting line of the 2010 Raiders before they call your name, precious! These… scoundrels are at the most unworthy of your superiority, and blind to it too!”

I didn’t respond, partly hurt that I was maybe just a pothole in this graduating class, and tried to concentrate on Yashi’s speech.

Damian slipped the cold metal wolfs head beneath my chin and demanded my attention. His eyes were deep and severe. He drew closer, face to face with me and composed himself. “Jess,” he purred. “I am your devotee, your utter slave, your undivided worshipper. I am yours, and you are mine. Do you really desire anything more?”

I blinked at him and shook my head, gently pushing the wolf‘s head away. “Indulge me, my Master. The sound of my name on the tongue of Jimmy Yashi does not even compare with the sound of my name from your lips. But this is something that I crave to hear. Please? Damian?” I smiled slyly at him.

Damian grimaced, his eyes burning with hunger as his leather-gloved hand cupped my cheek possessively. “My precious thing, my darling… how can I deny your whims when you grin like that?”

I smiled again favorably and looked back to the podium. Damian caressed my neck and watched me.

Jimmy was rustling his papers, somehow loosing his place and pace in his speech. He looked flustered. I felt for him, for his nervousness. Public speaking was always nerve-wracking to me. Finally, he composed himself and breathed deeply.  

Damian seemed to sigh in unison with Jimmy. “I do not understand this incessant need to revisit trials and tribulations, but,” he stepped behind me, pressing the length of his cane to my chest to hold me against his body, wrapping his other arm tightly around my waist. He nuzzled eagerly against my neck. “As you wish, my dearest. Listen to your pure Mr. Yashi.”

In his strong lean arms, his lips nibbling my flesh, I felt perfect and safe, wanted, like I belonged finally. His hot breath in my ear made me feel impervious to the world and sent chills through my body. He took my left hand in his, pulled it up and back, admiring his ring on my finger before kissing my knuckles.

“Please, Damian?” I asked again, giggling uncontrollably as he licked at my throat.

Finally, he paused, holding me tightly, and allowed me to hear Yashi speak again.

“…And that being said, we must remember our forgotten, our fallen, and our lost.” Jimmy, virtuous, read off a short list that did not include Mahler, Caleb, or the 2010 Raiders.

Apparently, Pacific High had lost at least a dozen students that year, not including me, to car accidents, drugs, gang violence and disease.

Then, unexpectedly, Jimmy grew soft-voiced and somber. He paused looking down in thought. He reached inside his jacket and spoke again with note of personal sadness. “And Jessica Shastid, a wonderful soul with the fight of a noble tiger. This,” from the inside pocket of his suit jacket he pulled out a small bottle of Poplov vodka. The crowd gasped, giggled and cheered. “This, Jessica, because you knew, like I knew. This is for you.”

Jimmy stepped from behind the podium to the edge of the stage where he poured the whole bottle out onto the grass. Dropping the bottle once empty, he left the stage without another word.

The graduating class cheered at this bold display from the soft-spoken nerdy Jimmy Yashi and gave him a standing ovation. The faculty was dumb-founded, in a state of panic and unable to get their shit together enough to even calm the crowd, let alone go after the kid. Jimmy left the field and the school immediately. Even Minerva, couldn’t scold him for his display now. He was free. He was righteous. He was right. He was gone.

Yes, I knew as he had; Mahler’s abuse, Caleb’s relentless torment, the staffs total ineptitude. With that wild gesture of pouring alcohol onto a sacred--though losing--football field, Jimmy had venerated both me and himself from the hell that was high school.

Yashi never saw me again, for the benefit of his well-being. I made sure of it.

“How interesting.” Damian commented lightly. “What a show of spite and rebelliousness from such a small man. That was impressive.”

“That was camaraderie.” I smiled to myself. “That was vindication.”

Damian snorted in amusement and squeezed me in his arms. “Mortal solidarity is such an entertaining thing. Was this what you were looking for.”

I laughed. “I guess it was.”

He turned me to face him, holding my shoulders in his hands tightly and admired my face with daunting adulation. He took my jaw in his palms and brushed his thin lips harshly against mine before dragging them over my cheek to my ear.

“My desirous thing, now that we’ve heard your prized name over the saintly chords of James Kenneth Yashi and warmed your, hmm, cockles,” he sighed with a seductive growl into my ear, “we have business to attend to, my infinite delight.”

“Of course.” I nestled against his soft hair and warm skin like a kitten and acquiesced. He held me a moment longer before stepping back and caressing my jaw line with the sterling wolf head of his cane.

“There’s my good girl.” He cooed with a portentous expression on his smiling lips.

Damian strutted away slowly, looking furtively over his shoulder at me as he disappeared into the dispersing crowd.

I took a deep breath, straightened my back and began scanning the group of young adults beginning to walk around me for my target.