“THE LONG GOODBYE, PART THREE: OHM COMES TO THE SAE HOUSE”

            It took only that marvelous laugh- that deep rumble that started in his stomach and made its way all the way up to his bright eyes- and the hand that had been squeezing my heart for a year unclenched.

            And for one brief, shining moment, my friend was back.

            I was telling the Alligator Story -for perhaps the three thousandth time in my life- when it started. It was like the sound of thunder in the distance at first, but when it found his full throat, his laughter seemed to begin a miraculous process of reanimation: his eyes bright, his face no longer slack, and his posture upright.

            And he looked at me in the eyes and laughed in recognition.

            He was laughing at something he remembered.

I swear, I half expected him to say, “Let’s blow this pop-stand and get a cocktail, T.C.”

It was almost as if he simply reappeared from one of his infamous walkabouts in college, which could last anywhere between two hours and three weeks, depending on the severity of whatever existential freak-out he was undergoing at the time.

He would re-materialize, no worse for wear, bum a cigarette, and regale me with tales of his sojourn. In those absences, time did not so much stand still as it seemed to just good-naturedly wait on him, like a limo driver with the car door open for a favored but absentminded celebrity.

For the record, the Alligator Story goes something like this:

In the late 1970s, the SAE Jungle Party at the University of Texas was the Met Gala, the Academy Awards, and Caligula combined, seven days of round-the-clock work by forty pledges turning the E-Hut into, well, a jungle. There were thatched- roof huts, a flowing river, and a series of interconnected elevated bridges leading to the most potent trash- can punch in the history of trash -can punch, a patented concoction which once sent my pledge brother- thereinafter nicknamed “Chilly Billy”- to Seton Hospital for hypothermia.

Sorority girls would miss their grandmother’s funeral to go to the SAE Jungle Party.

But before the actual bacchanal, there was the nightly stealing of bamboo, whose purpose was not so much aesthetic but practical, as it formed something of a battlement around the entire perimeter of the SAE house, blocking from view the more major perversities and allowing for about fifteen feet’s worth of plausible deniability.  

Now on one such night, I returned to the fraternity house from my bible study around 2:30 a.m., utterly exhausted from my almost monastic academic and religious regimen, and fell heavily into sleep, as only the truly just can.

In a fog, I awoke to hear slight giggles and became vaguely aware of an alien presence in the room.

I rolled over and found myself eye -to -eye with Charlie the Alligator from the Holiday House on Barton Springs Road.

The consequence of this would not hit me for a few more seconds, when I saw Charlie’s tail wagging a good two feet beyond the end of my bed. My best friend was slouching up against the wall behind him, a malicious grin on his face.

It was then that the consequence hit me.

I am told that, in on one smooth motion, I bounded from my bed toward the bathroom door, which was a good two feet past Charlie’s still-wagging tail. While still in the air, I opened the bathroom door, grabbed the inside door handle, pulled the door to behind me, and locked it, after which I did a full-on Mark Spitz racing dive out the tiny bathroom window, through the huge bush just outside the window- losing my boxer shorts in the process- and headed east on 25^th Street, buck naked and bleeding, whereupon I apparently ran smack -dab over some hippie, neither stopping nor slowing down in the process.

They caught me somewhere near the corner of 25^th and Rio Grande.

Apparently, I had lost my habitual nonchalance along with my boxer shorts.

I screamed at my best friend like a banshee: “You know, Duke, I don’t mind when you come in late and wake me up, I don’t mind when you steal my cigarettes, I don’t even mind when you drink my booze, but YOU PUT A FUCKING REPTILE IN MY BED!”

It was at that point in the story that he laughed, as if he remembered it all. Actually, I think he may have used the word “naked” at some point, confirming for me that he was, in fact, present. Several other times throughout the hour he was totally engaged, even asking about my brother by using his nickname, without prompting.

It was a day worth remembering.

At best, our life is an interconnected and overlapping collection of stories- sometimes sequential, sometimes utterly random- but uniquely and steadfastly ours. The importance of our stories is not just in the telling, but with whom we share them.

Our lives are shared with those whose stories intersect or border our own, like some mildly perverse LinkedIn. Our stories reaffirm that we were here because others remember we were here.

I have been terrified for over a year that since he didn’t remember these stories, they might cease to exist or, worse yet, may not ever have happened at all.

I feared that since he would not be there to remember us, to hear our story, then we would cease to exist, and, as he is a large part of my own story, then I cease to exist.

In yoga, we often end classes with a breath together or a series of ohms, a thunderous sound which begins in deep in the belly by inhaling deeply, then constricting the throat and pushing all the air out of your lungs.

The class takes a breath together and we chant Ohm. In fact, it sounds much less like a chant than a growl, giving me a rare leg up on my classmates.You cannot hear the individual voices around you, but you hear and feel the collective sound rise up into a crescendo and then fade into the distance.

Like thunder.

It is a reminder that the light in each of us acknowledges and respects the light in those around us. We recognize not only the space that separates us but also that which connects us.

It is more than metaphor- it is an existential act, a sharing of our humanity even if only for one shining moment.

As we get older, the space between my friend and I grows wider. It is harder for me to get there to see him and it is harder for him to recognize me.

Our life together seems destined to end sooner rather than later.

And yet at the end of class last night, I heard the rumble of his laughter in an ohm- right at the end, just as it drifted away. A massive tear rolled down my cheek, off my chin and onto my shirt, but a wave of contentment overcame me as I remembered the Alligator Story. 

            So here I am, existing again.

(ATTENTION: No animals were harmed in the making of this story.)

© Thomas C. Barron 2019