As I Was Saying…

I’m not going to lie to you: I lie to you all the time. Seriously, all the time. There’s absolutely no me here. Whoever or whatever Brad Zellar is, it isn’t this.

I have never, for instance, owned either a Plymouth Duster or a Scamp, let alone done any of the things I might have claimed to have done in the backseat of such a vehicle. I never attempted to roller-skate to Duluth with a giant cross strapped to my back. The things I claimed to have done with Boxcar Willie would almost certainly qualify as libel (not to mention obscenity) under virtually any strict interpretation of the law.

This is not my life. Honest to God, you can’t even begin to imagine, and neither can I.

You know how really lonely people will buy those shrink-wrapped picture frames that have the idyllic demonstration photos of beautiful men, women, and children already in them and then they’ll just hang those complete strangers up on their walls because they don’t have anybody in their own life who’s nearly as happy or beautiful as these pretend family members and friends?

I don’t know; maybe it’s just me, but I have these photos all over my house, and it’s somehow comforting to me. I’ve given the smiling people in these pictures names and histories, of course, and it’s gotten to the point where I can sometimes actually convince myself of their reality. This is my family, I’ll think to myself. This is my life. I’ve done pretty damn well for myself.

Seriously: I don’t think there’s a phrase in the world I love more than make believe.

That said, I’d like to be honest with you for a moment. I want to be clear on this: I prefer a lot of things to a lot of other things; a lot of things that are not right here and right now to a lot of other things that are, unfortunately, right here and right now. Just so you know.

I suppose this is just a phase, or maybe it’s the time of year, but I spent the last several days trapped in ice, flat on my back and bloated, staring up through the gray crust at the bright and blurry world above, where I saw greasy splashes of color that I supposed might have been balloons. Volkswagens seemed less probable, as I had no idea how they would have gotten into the sky above the river. The muffled and badly fractured sound I heard could have been the plaints of lonesome dogs, church bells, cries for help, or something else altogether. I didn’t know and frankly didn’t much care.

Somewhere close by, I knew, my old heart was lying in a dark field in a patch of purple velvet, listening with longing to the sound of geese winging their way free of here.