Frank Black

The box popped up on my screen and I screamed out loud because I didn’t want to talk. I cursed AOL under my breath then cursed them out loud. They weren’t listening anyway. This is strange, I thought. I thought that a lot of the time because a lot of the thoughts I have are strange. In fact, if there were some sort of place where all of the people that have strange thoughts go, I might be first in line. Once I had this thought about what would happen if I spent the whole day screaming about how much I enjoy the company of the Mexican dog known as the Chihuahua.

Before I finish digressing and get back to the matter at hand, which I probably won’t be able to remember anyway, I was thinking the other day about how when New Year’s 1996 came, the fine folks at Subway had an unadvertised special. If you wanted a 6-inch meatball sub, it only cost 96 cents. I lived down the street from a Subway and went there for at least one meal every day for the 3 months that the promotion lasted and you know something? I never got sick of Subway meatball subs. Not once. I probably would have continued to eat them also, if I didn’t develop colitis and didn’t have to stop eating red meat altogether. The doctor never came out and told me but I suspect eating nothing but tomato sauce soaked Subway sandwiches had something to do with it.

So the box popped up on to my screen and it was strange. It was strange because my IM didn’t recognize the person. A gray box popped up and asked me if I wanted to accept a message from “FrankBlack.” I don’t know anyone named Frank Black. The only Frank Black I knew of was the lead singer of the Pixies. He changed his name from Black Francis years ago and why would he be contacting me anyway. I didn’t even know him. Unless you counted the time that I went to Tower records and had him sign my copy of Trompe Le Monde. Why would you count that?

I am an adventurous soul. My initial anger at the thought of being contacted by someone on this early Monday morning faded and was replaced with a sense of curiosity. It was a sense of curiosity I had not felt since I saw the guy who wears the sandwich board for Subway naked as a jaybird beneath the wooden boards. It was quite cold that day. Quite cold, indeed.

I hit “yes.” Yes I would like to accept a message from this Frank Black. If it was Frank Black the rock and roll guy, then bonus. If not, well, then fuck whoever it is. It’s way too early on Monday morning to be playing guessing games with someone who gets his rocks off by posing as washed up industrial rock stars.

FrankBlack: hey
CommieBstard: who the hell is this?
FrankBlack: just listen, don’t say anything
CommieBstard: who are you?
FrankBlack: it doesn’t matter, just remember that i’m the only one telling the truth
CommieBstard: shut the fuck up
FrankBlack: later
FrankBlack signed off at 08:01:35 AM

I didn’t like this Frank Black, not one bit. So I blocked his cryptic ass.

---

I spent the rest of the day at work thinking about Mr. Black, thinking about who that dumbass could possibly be. I’m not what you’d call tremendously social. I don’t have a hell of a lot of friends. I feel like I’m misunderstood, most true geniuses are. When I was a kid, I tried to write my manifesto to make my mark. I worked tirelessly on it, so that future generations could benefit from the genius that I possess. I’m putting it down here:


MON MANIFESTE
by Cameron Gordon

Life, as we know it, seeks a simple resolution.


That was as far as I got, but I am an artist. You cannot force the creative process. Nonetheless, my words are simple and chillingly prophetic. I do not seek to offer and explanation of my spooky insight. It is a gift and a burden, yes, but one I’m willing to live with.

Anyway, this Frank Black bastard was beginning to get on my nerves. What the hell was the point of his post and who the hell did he think he was. He’s the one telling the truth? I don’t know him from a hole in the wall and he’s telling the truth? Quite frankly, I wanted to find this guy more than ever now. I wanted to find out where he lived so I could give him a shot square in the nuts.

And as I sat at my desk, ignoring the work that I was supposed to get done, the anger inside of me grew. I didn’t like being made a fool out of, not one bit. And this Frank Black was making a fool out of me. He was making me look like a damn fool. Cam Gordon is no one’s chump. No one but the electric company and the dry cleaners could make a fool out of Cam Gordon. Cam Gordon was really fucking PISSED!!!

I’m not pleased with what I did and if I could have it to do over again, I probably wouldn’t do it but you see as I sat there at my desk and felt the anger overwhelm me, I needed to do something about it. I needed to take charge of the whole thing and figure something, anything out because I couldn’t sit here and have this one miserable IM, this one piddling, stupid, mean nothing, know nothing IM bother me for the rest of my days walking around this Earth. I know myself too well, far too well to be able to sit around and just ignore this. I couldn’t just ignore this I had to do something, something you hear me? I HAD TO DO SOMETHING!!

So I did.

I went on to the web and I did a little research on Frank Black.

Oh and I unblocked his IM. I want to talk to this fucker.

---

Frank Black
Born: 1965 in Long Beach, CA

There was all kinds of information on him. Discography, where are they now, lyrics, etc. Nothing really piqued my interest. I searched through website after website, looking for some telling sign, something that would tip me off. What reason would Frank Black have to contact me? What reason did he have to be so cryptic? Why was the crotch of my pants so wet? Had I soiled myself while in a frenzy? Did I have another clean pair of pants at the office or did I have to wait until these dried to get up from my desk?

I looked at my desk and found a bottle of Snapple Lemon iced tea and been tipped in my rage. I found some napkins in my drawer and cleaned off the top of my desk, which would no doubt be sticky when the whole thing dried. Incidentally, I still like the Lemon iced tea best of all of the Snapple flavors that they offer. The rest of them are just too sweet. What’s the deal with that Kiwi Strawberry crap? For starters, I doubt that either kiwis or strawberries taste even a little like what they’ve concocted in this “beverage.” Secondly, I don’t think having a drink should accelerate the onset of pancreatic failure.

For all of the questions that I had, I didn’t have any answers. I did know one thing. Somehow I knew that it was Frank Black. Frank Black was trying to get in touch with me; he was trying to help me. Somewhere, in the vast wasteland that is the information superhighway was the answer to my questions and I’d spend all night searching if I had to. It would give my pants time to dry.

I continued to scan the websites that my exhaustive Yahoo! Search had provided me. Many of the sites were German, which was strange to me because television had told me that Germans love David Hasselhoff. I hadn’t heard anything about Germans loving Frank Black. I did some rough translating. My high school German proved inadequate however. There are like 37 words for “pain.”

Something at the bottom of one of the pages caught my eye. My German was rusty but this was pretty clear. “Kontakt-Frank!” had to mean “Contact Frank!” I mean, what else could it mean? “Frank!” was a link and had an e-mail address behind it. I clicked on the link and up popped a new mail window. I composed the following e-mail to Mr. Frank Black:

-----Original Message------
From: CommieBstard@aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, November 5, 2002 1:43 PM
To: frankblack@frankblack.com
Subject: READ ME

Mr. Black,

Forgive me if my words in this e-mail begin to sound harsh. I assure you I am neither a stalker nor a lunatic. Sometimes, I just get a little emotional.

I received an Instant Message from someone using the screen name Frank Black. This person left me a rather cryptic message and then signed off. I do not know if it is or is not you. If it is not, please respond to me and indicate such.

If it is you, I would like to ask you to please stop. I have neither the time nor the inclination to engage in childish games with an over the hill rock star that never really hit the big time anyway. Leave me the fuck alone or so help me god, I will find you. You will wish that you hadn’t fucked with me when you see what kind of psychopath you’ve engaged in your ridiculous game.

Bring it on, Francis.

Good day to you, sir.

Cam Gordon

That ought to do the trick. The fact that I wasn’t serious about most of it didn’t really register with me. In fact, the only two parts of that e-mail that were serious were the IM and the fact that I’m a psychopath. It’s a fact that I had trouble getting my head around until my parents enticed a group of people from the happy home to take me away for a bit. I didn’t think it was abnormal to have spastic bursts of blinding rage. I’d always had them. Now I just take medicine that makes them a lot less severe and therefore a lot less fun.

The people at the loony bin were nice, way nicer than any of the people that I went to high school with. My time there was pleasant. I went from a high school environment where I was the most fucked up person around to a crazy hospital environment where I was the least nuts of all of them. I wasn’t even the craziest person who lived in my room at the hospital. That distinction belonged to Danny Colluci, who was so crazy that he used to fling his shit at the wall like a monkey. Imagine waking up to that in the middle of the night. He wasn’t my roommate for long.

When the anger starts to well up inside me now, the pill that I take stops it. All I have to do is breathe once, just breathe out once, and I can feel the anger drain out of me, the way the air leaves a tire that has a slow leak. You can just see the tire get lower and lower until finally it’s flat.

And now my anger is gone, and I miss it. I miss my anger because it’s the only thing that I every truly owned. I owned my anger, it defined me somewhat. All the counselors told that was bad, that my anger shouldn’t define me. My anger shouldn’t make me who I am. I need to control my anger, not the other way around.

“Cam?”

“Hmm?” I looked up.

“Cam, it’s your turn.”

“What’s that?”

“Cam, it’s your turn to share. Tell us what’s going on and try to use feeling words.” The counselors always wanted feeling words. Tell us how you FEEL, Cameron. How did that FEEL, Cam? Cam, do you FEEL all right?

It’s all about FEELINGS. Do I FEEL all right? Yes, I FEEL fine. I’d FEEL much better if I didn’t have to constantly field FEELING questions from you people. All you people do is smile. You just smile at me and ask for FEELING words. All you want is FEELING words. Do I FEEL fine? NO! NO! No, I don’t FEEL fine. I FEEL angry. Is angry enough of a FEELING word for you? I FEEL angry about having to constantly check in with you about what’s going on in my head. You don’t want to know what’s going on inside my head and I couldn’t begin to describe what’s in there. Even if you put a gun to my temple and asked me to tell you about what’s going on, about how I’m FEELING, I’d have to tell you to pull the trigger because there are no words, no FEEELING words that could possibly describe the constant motion of my head and my brain and my mind and it’s moving always moving. Just moving until I scream out loud and say stop, just stop, PLEASE STOP!

I don’t have that anymore.

The little yellow pill in the little burnt orange bottle took all of that from me. Was it always fun? No. Was it the greatest feeling in the world? Certainly not. Do I miss it? Very much so. It was the only thing that I had that was real.

Unfortunately, reality is a little hard to come by in real life.

Now it’s a waiting game for me. I have no fucking clue how often Frank Black checks his e-mail. I also have no idea how old this site is or even whether frankblack@frankblack.com is even a real e-mail address. Why the fuck would someone use their name as the name and the domain of their e-mail address. As the day went on I was beginning to like this Frank Black jerk off less and less.

The workday was coming to an end and I had been royally unproductive, as I had been the last two to three days. I was coming hard on a deadline and would need to make some headway tomorrow, if I was at all going to make the deadline. If it slipped, it meant my job. So with all of the Frank Black shit going on, I had the added pressure of having my job in the balance over the next couple of days.

So what did I do? I went home and I got drunk.

---

The room was filling with light and I didn’t really have the energy to figure out what the hell had happened to me last night, other than my methodical ingestion then subsequent regurgitation of about 500 milliliters of Jack Daniels. Everything else was fuzzy. What I did have, however, was a really dry mouth, a pounding headache and about 15 minutes to get myself together so I could get to work.

Oh no.

The bathroom. I need to be in the bathroom. Right now, I need to be in the bathroom. Over there, it’s over there. Just move your legs. No, dammit, one at a time. That’s it, nice and easy but a little bit faster, there’s not much time. Just get to the bathroom because it’s coming. Holy shit. Here it comes. HERE IT COMES!

I grabbed the sides of the bowl and put my head down. A wave of nausea ran over my head and my temples throbbed and all I had to do was wait 3-5 seconds and it would come. Just countdown. 5 … and my stomach churned. 4 … my throat tried to clear itself. 3 … I gagged. 2 … again. 1 … oh god this is agony.

I lurched forward and poured the contents of my largely empty stomach into the receptacle in front of me. There was nothing there. I hadn’t eaten dinner. It was just liquid. Liquid that even my liver turned back and said “Sorry, but we’re closed. You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.” Apparently last night’s similar episode hadn’t fully cleaned me out.

I picked up the phone and started to dial the numbers to call my boss to tell him that the events of last night had not only cause me to rethink my entire value system but that I wasn’t going to be able to make it into the office this morning. And as I was about to hit the 7th digit, I stopped and it hit me. Frank! That motherfucker Frank Black was going to get in touch with me this morning.

I looked at my watch. It was already ten minutes to eight. I could make it to the office by eight, but I’d really have to haul ass. In and out of the shower, dried off, brushed the teeth. I think these are clothes from two days ago, but fuck it. I didn’t have time. I threw them on. Hair? Fuck it. I’ll comb it in the office. I grabbed my bag and ran out the door.

When I got to the office, I looked at the clock. Two minutes to eight. God, I love living only a few blocks from here. I’ve gotten here quickly before but eight minutes had to be a goddamn land speed record. I’d have to write that down.

Incidentally, my record for getting to and from college was 2 hours, 9 minutes. I lived approximately 170 miles away. That was one of the best days of my life. I mean, I knew I had been going fast. I was flying, but my car wasn’t really in such good shape. It usually gave me the shimmy at high speeds (high speeds being about 70 miles per hour in this case). When I pulled into the parking lot and looked at my watch, I figured it had stopped. It hadn’t. 2 hours, 9 minutes. It’s one of those mythic figures to me. For Wayne Gretzky, it’s 894-1963-2857. For Wilt Chamberlain, it was the number 20,000. For me, 2 hours, 9 minutes. I leave it to you to judge the more impressive feat.

I flipped on my computer and logged onto my IM account. It was 7:59. And as soon as my username and password had been verified, an IM box popped up on my screen.

FrankBlack: you there?
CommieBstard: yes
FrankBlack: good, are you ready to listen?
CommieBstard: shut the fuck up
You’ve been warned by FrankBlack. Your warning level has increased from 0% to 20%.
CommieBstard: you warned me?
FrankBlack: yes, you need to listen.
CommieBstard: you want me to listen, tell me who the fuck you are. otherwise, go mess with someone else.
FrankBlack: i’m frank black
CommieBstard: no, you aren’t
FrankBlack: yes, i am and you need to stop drinking so much
FrankBlack: gotta go
FrankBlack signed off at 08:01:27 AM

SHIT!

---

Don’t flip out. Don’t. Keep control. Frank Black isn’t stalking you. Plenty of people get really drunk on a Tuesday night. He was probably just guessing. You use a lot of profanity, he probably thought you were cranky and inferred that you were hungover. That has to be it. He couldn’t possible have know that you were drunk last night.

Unless he was watching you.

Oh my god, what if he was watching me? What if he’s watching me right now? I do sit by this window. Look at all the people walking by down there. This is an extremely busy street. Do they know that Frank Black is keeping tabs on them? Do they know that Frank Black is watching? How could they know that?

I know I went to the bar last night. I sat at the bar, like I always do. I talked with Pete the bartender like I always do. Pete’s a really fucking cool guy. Pete had a wife and a family in California. About ten years ago, Pete’s wife left the house to drive Pete’s children to school. They never made it. Pete’s wife and kids were killed in a vicious 4-car accident. They were dead when the ambulance got there. Pete decided that he didn’t want to be there anymore, so he packed a bag on his back and started walking. He left Los Angeles and started walking then hitchhiking north. When he got to somewhere he liked, he stopped and camped and got a job. When he decided he didn’t like it any more, he packed up and got going.

He’d hang out at bars a lot. The one thing that Pete always tells me is that his kind of people are the kind that hang in bars. They are the kind of people that are willing to talk and to listen. Pete just loved to listen and when he stopped in a town, he’d get a job at a local bar. He’d stand behind the bar and wait for people to tell him their stories. And they did. They always did. They’d tell him everything they could. Then they’d drop a couple of bucks on the bar, shake his hand and walk out.

“The main thing about people,” Pete told me once, “is that they mostly have their heads up their ass.”

Pete is a wise man.

I told Pete about Frank Black last night. I told him about the IM. I told him about the internet research I’d done and about the e-mail that I’d written. I asked him what the hell he thought about all this nonsense.

“You know what your problem is Cam,” Pete told me, “You fuckin’ think too much.” And Pete walked away.

Pete is a wise man.

I do think too much. Way too much. I think way too much and way too often. All I want to do sometimes is shut my brain off. Just shut the whole thing down. Give the brain a night off, but it doesn’t ever want to rest. The fucking thing works overtime. If I worked at my job as long and hard as my stupid brain worked, I’d have finished this project that’s sitting over my head weeks ago. Instead, I’m sitting on a deadline, I have no idea who this Frank Black asshole is and this headache seems to be getting worse and worse with each click-click-click of my keyboard.

And Frank Black is stalking me. Could he have been at the bar last night? I suppose he could have been at the bar last night. A lot of things could have happened at the bar last night. Frank Black is just a normal looking guy. He’s balding slightly and he’s kind of short. Essentially, he looks like 75% of the males in this stupid city. He could have easily been sitting at the corner, sipping his club soda or whatever, with a notebook sitting in front of him pretending to write song lyrics, all the while focusing on the guy at the bar, shooting Jack Daniels in a vain effort to clear his mind while at the same time come up with a remarkable epiphany for a project that has a deadline of fucking Friday.

When I was in college I used to joke about having a stalker. I thought it would be cool to have one. Not like a violent stalker or anything, just someone who kind of follows you around. It seemed like it’d be a pretty cool ego boost. I mean, you leave to go somewhere, you come home there’s 6 messages for you. Everyone likes to get messages. Maybe you go out with some friends and she’s sitting at the bar watching you. And you wave over, just to add a little fuel to the fire.

Now I have a stalker. And it sucks.

Worse yet, it’s a dude.

Why me? Why fucking me?

---

It was Wednesday now, Wednesday afternoon to be exact, and I sat at my desk staring at a blank sheet of paper. The only thought that was running through my head now was an image of my boss sprouting horns and cloven hoofs as I tried to formulate an explanation for the absence of the work that I needed to submit. My dog ate it just didn’t seem like it would suffice anymore.

FrankBlack: hey
CommieBstard: not now, frank. i don’t have the time for this
FrankBlack: deadline coming at you pretty hard?
CommieBstard: what?
FrankBlack: for work, your deadline
CommieBstard: goddammit, piss off
FrankBlack: for now
FrankBlack signed off at 03:37:58 PM

I closed my eyes and pressed my forefinger and middle finger to my temples. I could feel the tide of anger coming in again, and I didn’t want to be angry. I didn’t have time to be angry. I didn’t have time to be anything but focused solely on the project that I need to complete in the next 50 hours. Dive into that; focus on the page in front of you. Turn the computer off. Forget about it for a minute. Just one goddamn minute of peace today.

It was no use. There was no forgetting about it. There was no cleansing it from my brain. It was there and it was going to be there until I did something to calm myself down a little bit. Can you imagine? All riled up, wound up so tightly about a stupid IM. God, I hate this stupid computer. This stupid machine that keeps me chained to this desk all day long, like some slave to a galley. Just rowing and rowing until your arms feel like they are going to fall off and then rowing some more.

And here I am, in front of this computer, just pounding away at the keys until my fingers hurt and then pounding away some more. Just pounding out the letters until they form words, sentences, paragraphs or whatever. So long and so often that even the letters stop making sense and the words no longer form a pattern. The paragraphs that I string together make no sense to me, they are formations on a page and they all blend together, the black of the letters just melting together until they begin to dance on the page.

I rub my eyes to make sure that I’m seeing what I’m seeing and that I’m just not incredibly exhausted and burnt out. I just sit there hoping that I haven’t fallen asleep and in my haze am constructing some sort of oddly formed dream where letters dance and melt away leaving rivers of black on the screen. I’m running out of time, so I just keep going and going and typing and typing and pounding and pounding until finally I stop and look. What have I produced? What have I written? What have I done?

And then I bolt upright in my chair and look around.

The office is dark. The page is orderly. Line and margins are neat and clean. I looked around the office to see what’s going on and I got a glance at the clock. It was after 8:00 PM. Too late to still be at the office, so I quickly read what I’d written to confirm that it was total gibberish, which of course it was, leaving me no closer to project’s end than I was 12 hours ago. I logged off for the day and power down my computer.

And as I walked down the mostly dark hallway, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror. I stopped for a bit to take a good look at myself. My cheek had creases in it from where I fell asleep on the side of a stack of paper and I put my hand to my face and rub the area. My face was stubbled from not shaving that morning and my clothes were wrinkled from having worn them two days prior.

I started to straighten myself out but realized that it didn’t matter. Who the hell is looking at me anyway?

Except Frank Black.

---

The walk home was intolerable. I felt like I hadn’t slept in days, which wasn’t true because I’d slept for hours last night, not to mention god knows how long in the office just now. I felt like I hadn’t done anything in days, also not true. I’d done plenty, just nothing productive.

And as I was walking down the street, dragging myself the 10 blocks necessary to get from my office to my home, I stopped momentarily. I walked over to the corner and leaned against a mailbox. It wasn’t actually a mailbox; it was one of those green ones where the mailpeople leave the mail when they have too much mail to carry. I always wondered if there were two kinds of mailpeople in the city. I feel like both delivering the mail and picking it up from the outdoor boxes is two full time jobs. I mean, think about it. There’s like a mailbox on almost every corner and in the city there are a lot of blocks. I think there has to be one guy for picking up and one guy for delivering.

I was going to need dinner. I didn’t really recall eating anything today, although I’m sure that I had something along the line. I took a deep breath in and manufactured a gargantuan belch that shook my teeth. Tuna, I remarked to myself, I had a tuna sandwich for lunch. That was almost 8 hours ago though. I was going to need to scrape together some dinner.

I walked over to the Chinese place to pick up some soup and some noodles, which I prayed would finish off the last of the throbbing in my head and pangs in my stomach. There was a homeless guy standing in front of the door of the Chinese place, asking every passerby for nickel. I like that he’s not asking for a huge amount of money, but why specifically ask for a nickel? Why not ask for spare change and hope that the person giving to you would shoot a little higher?

The homeless guy looked at me and smiled through his saliva soaked beard. His eyes were open wide but his pupils were the size of pinheads. And he just kept looking at me through his filthy long hair and his filthy beard. He took two staggered steps toward me and then lurched forward before regaining his balance and standing still.

“Spare a nickel, Cam?”

I froze in my tracks. He didn’t just say. He couldn’t have. Did he just say? Impossible. Impossible. He just asked me, Cam, if I could spare a nickel. He couldn’t have. You’re tire, hungry, haven’t eaten a thing since lunch. Your head is still pounding. You heard him wrong. He couldn’t possibly know your name.

“What’s that?”

I almost didn’t want to ask him to repeat what he said because I was afraid that he was going to say what I thought he said again. That was the last thing that I wanted to hear. And I said those words without even recognizing that I said them. They just came out. They are a knee jerk reaction, what I say when I’m not quite sure that I heard someone correctly or didn’t quite hear them at all. What’s that, I said, as if I were talking to a co-worker or someone standing a few feet away from me in a crowded bar.

“Spare a nickel, Cam?”

He said it again and this time he wasn’t smiling. Now he was just standing about 6 feet in front of me and he was breathing though his nose, because I can see his nostrils flare in and out. I can see them from here. He’s breathing so heavily. He asked for nickel. No, he didn’t ask for a nickel. He fucking asked me for a nickel. He asked Cam for a nickel.

“How do you know my name?”

That came out weak. It came out so fucking weak. I feel weak. All I can feel now is this wave of nausea floating over me. All I want to do now is be able to stay on my feet. Just stay on your feet, Cam. There’s nothing going on here, Cam, nothing at all. This guy didn’t say your name. He didn’t say your name. He said “man,” or “ma’am.” Maybe he thinks you’re a chick, who knows? Look at him. He probably doesn’t even know his own fucking name. What’s your name, pal? Huh? What’s your fucking name?

The world was starting to blur at the edges. I’m looking right at this guy and he’s clear as day. There’s a crumb in his beard about an inch to the left of his mouth. I can see that goddamn crumb just sitting there waiting for someone to get so fed up with it that they run up and grab it out of his beard. Don’t you even know there’s a goddamn crumb in your beard? Can’t you fucking see that? Not to mention the mat of saliva soaking the entire three square inches of beard beneath your face. Doesn’t that bother you? I’m standing 6 feet away and it bothers me. It more than bothers me. It’s driving me crazy. I’m standing here, seeing it and it’s driving me FUCKING CRAZY!

And now I’m looking up at a circle of faces standing around me.

Voices are buzzing and I can’t quite make them out. I could catch clips and phrases. “…passed right out …,” “…something about a nickel …,” “…breathe all right?” That was all I could catch. I was on my back, so I sat up and looked around quickly. There were no homeless people here. There was no one asking for nickels in sight. I put my hands on the sidewalk and leaned back on them for a second.

“We called an ambulance. Are you all right, son?”

Do you mean how am I FEELING? I FEEL fine.

---

The sidewalk was cold on my ass. As I looked around me at the faces of a handful of concerned citizens who hung on until the ambulance arrived, as well as a number of anonymous strangers craning their heads to get a glimpse at what all the commotion was about, I crossed my arms to shield off some of the cold. It had gotten cold. Or maybe I was just cold because my ass was cold. Maybe it was time to stand up.

The ambulance came around the corner, so I just stayed put. They weren’t even flashing the lights or sounding the goddamn sirens. Thanks for rushing, guys. I’ll be fine sitting here on the fucking sidewalk after god knows what that homeless guy did to me. He still wasn’t anywhere to be found.

They parked not too far away and I wondered what it was like to drive an ambulance. That has to be near one of the most powerful feelings on the road. Just flip on the sirens and flash the lights and the streets begin to empty. Out of my way, for I am the ambulance and I am on my way to help the sick and the injured. Make way for the ambulance. The ambulance stops for no one.

Well, they stopped for me because right now I was the sick and/or injured party. The guys in the dark blue uniforms came over to check my vital signs and I tried cracking jokes but I was just all of the sudden aware of how dry my mouth was. Everything that I tried to say just got stuck in my throat. It got stuck in the cottony, cracked feeling in the back of my throat that would have screamed for water had it not been so dry.

One of the EMS guys caught a glimpse of my medic alert bracelet. He flipped it over to read the back and then looked at me, this time with an almost undetectable smirk. He turned to his friend, the other medic and said something but I couldn’t quite hear what he said. What is it, blue? What did you just say to him? Did you say something about my medicine?

“Looks like you are OK, son. Just a little shock, that’s all.”

A little shock? A LITTLE SHOCK? I’m a lot shocked, pal. I’m a lot shocked about a whole lot of fucking things. Number one on the list being that Frank Black is stalking me. Frank Black, former lead singer of the goddamn Pixies is following me around. He’s here right now. I don’t know where. Over there, maybe. Or maybe in that store over there. Or maybe he’s sitting and enjoying a bowl of wonton soup, which was all I wanted to do until shocking moment number 674 happened in the form of a homeless guy asking me, Cam Gordon, not “buddy” or “sir”, for a nickel.

I’m shocked that ever since I got that stupid IM, weird shit seems to be happening. My life wasn’t exactly a haven of normalcy prior to yesterday morning, but it wasn’t like German art film weird. I wasn’t passing out on street corners.

Yeah, I take medicine to balance me. Yeah, I do. What the fuck? You are supposed to be a medic. You are supposed to be decent and kind and caring and not look at people funny when you find out intimate details about their medical history. You aren’t supposed to make people feel self-conscious about their medical problems. You aren’t supposed make people feel weird about who they are and why they need to take little yellow pills from burnt orange bottles once each morning so they don’t get so angry that they punch out lockers in school hallways until their knuckles bleed.

A little shock? I’m a whole lot fucking shocked that they let you put on that uniform and drive that ambulance.

“Hey, what’s it like to drive that ambulance?”

---

I stared straight up at the ceiling. The white ceiling of my largely white room and I tried to think of nothing. Just stare at the ceiling and maybe sleep will wash over my body and let my mind rest and my body rest and I’ll wake up tomorrow replenished. I’ll wake up ready to pay attention to nothing but work for the next 32 hours.

But I couldn’t sleep. I turned over in bed and sat up on the edge, letting my legs hang down and dangle. I stared at my feet swing gently back and forth for a little while and then at the floor beneath them. The floor was wood, tan and it was made up of small pieces each about 6 inches long and a half an inch wide. The pattern was simple, 6 lengthwise, then 6 widthwise, laid out next to each other for the expanse of the apartment.

I got out of bed and the floor was cold. The bottoms of my feet clenched and I started walking along the wood following each small piece, tracing my big toe along the edge, each piece connecting with the one next to it in some sort of cosmic pattern. The design of the floor became more and more intricate and each piece weaved its way in to the fabric of the whole.

As I watched each piece, it began to fit. The pattern presented itself to me and the whole thing began to make sense. And the pattern flushed itself out and made itself known. I could see it now. It was all right in front of me, right there on the floor. All these years of living in this apartment and I couldn’t see it before. It had never made sense before but now it did. The movement and the form and each piece seamlessly fitting into the piece next to it. The one there was in its space and it wouldn’t ever belong anywhere else.

Then I stopped and stared.

One was missing.

There was a piece missing. There was a space, a brown space where there should be a tile. Where was the tile? Where was the missing piece? It was going to break the chain. It was breaking the chain. The whole pattern, the pattern that made sense, it was all falling apart. And there I was in the middle of my living room, searching frantically for the small 6”x1/2” piece of wood that would fill the empty space in the middle of my living room floor. Where the hell was it? Was it under the couch? Not under the couch.

I was immediately aware that I hadn’t turned the light on but it made no difference, I kept feeling around the floor, just feeling around and looking for the piece, the piece that would complete the perfect pattern that made up the living room floor and now what? Now what? What was I going to do?

I was flushed and I was sweating and I took off my t-shirt because I was hot, so terribly hot and I couldn’t find the piece. I needed the piece; the one piece and that would be all. Just please find the fucking piece and go back to bed and get some sleep. God, I needed to sleep.

It was hopeless. It was gone. The model of the universe, Danny, the longest distance between two points is a straight line in the opposite direction. It was gone. I sat down on the floor, extending my legs in front of me and leaning back against the wall, just staring at the empty space in my floor. The empty space that I had never so much as noticed even once and that now was the end of perfection.

God, I needed to sleep. Just go to sleep, even for a couple of hours. Just close your eyes. Close your eyes. And when I opened them up again, I was back in my bed, staring at the white ceiling, in the largely white room, trying to think of nothing. Nothing at all.

---

I woke up, I guess. I don’t really remember waking up. I just sort of regained consciousness all at once and realized that it was almost time to go to work again but I didn’t care. I was going to take my sweet ass time now. Frank Black can go fuck himself. You think I drink too much? Do you, Francis? Well, fuck you.

I walked slowly to work and stopped off in the diner to have a cup of coffee on my way there. I sat down at the counter because I think that the counter is today’s least used, most under appreciated form of dining experience out there. The counter is one long table and we all share in the dining experience whether we know each other or not.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t talk to anyone at the counter at the diner. I wouldn’t even think about it. I just like the idea of being able to share a meal with someone, many people actually, without specifically sharing a meal with them. There’s something to be said for that. I guess I just did.

I stopped at the diner and I talked a little with Maggie. Maggie is one of the saddest creatures I’ve ever met in my entire life. She lives in a sad little studio apartment that has only one window, and that window faces a brick wall, so the sad little plant that she keeps in the corner gets no light at all. All the light it gets is from the sad little lamp that Maggie turns on at night when she gets home,

How do I know all of this? Maggie invited me over to her place one time and she seemed so lonely that I just didn’t have the heart to say no. I couldn’t possibly say no after I saw her eyes light up at the prospect that someone was considering coming over to her little apartment. There was no way the I could tell this poor, lonely soul that she was going to be deprived the company of another human being for another lonely night.

I went to Maggie’s apartment and she welcomed me in and I saw it all. The sad little plant sitting on the sad little table in the dim light of the sad little lamp. There I was standing in the middle of her sad little apartment and I just wanted to get out of there. All that I wanted was to leave her apartment and run as fast as I could in the other direction, just get out of that place.

“You want cream and sugar with that?”

There she was behind the counter, still sad and lonely. She wasn’t an unattractive woman. She wasn’t old either. She was just lonely. She was just looking for human companionship anywhere she could find it. And if she could find it from the patrons of the job at which she worked from six in the morning until six at night then that was where she was going to find it.

And she did, at least for one night anyway.

“Yes, please.”

I got my cream and sugar and I lingered for a second, time enough to see Maggie slip out from behind the counter and move to the tables to give them refills on their coffee, decaf or regular. Decaf is in the green one. Her uniform was slightly frayed at the hem. I could see some threads hanging from the bottom of that black skirt that came down to just above her knee. She looked up at me and I managed a smile, though I didn’t really feel like it.

“Thanks, Maggie.”

She smiled back, although it seemed as managed and forced as mine. She started to walk away to get to the rest of the tables around the bend. I turned away as well, to make my way over to the office. There was really no use to sit at the counter right now. I was down to my last 32 hours and I was probably going to need every minute.

“No problem, Cam.”

---

-----Original Message------
From: Frank Black [frankblack@frankblack.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 6, 2002 11:28 PM
To: CommieBstard@aol.com
Subject: Re: READ ME

Mr. Gordon,

I feel like saying that I was the person doing this would help you more than the truth, which is that I am by no means attempting to contact you via AOL Instant Messenger. I am not trying to contact you by any means at all. In fact, your somewhat strange and vaguely threatening e-mail was the first knowledge that I’ve had of even your existence on this planet.

While I’m not directly threatened and certainly wish you good luck with your crusade to find this elusive person, I must ask that future communication take on a considerably more pleasant tone.

Please call me Frank. I changed my name years ago.

Thank you,

Frank Black

At least I had something to go on when I thought that it was the actual Frank Black that was behind all of this. Now I have nothing to go on and this ersatz Frank Black was going to be virtually impossible to find. All I knew about him was his IM name. That was all.

“How’s it coming, Cam?”

My boss. I was wondering when he was going to surface to gnaw on another round of human flesh. I hadn’t heard from him all week and usually he’s over my shoulder on a project like this with a deadline that’s about as hard as they come. What can you say about a stand up guy like this? This is the kind of guy that wouldn’t piss down your throat if your stomach were on fire.

And I’m looking at him now, with those sunken eyes, those beady little sunken eyes that make him look like a rodent who did too much cocaine the night before. He’s standing there in that suit that he doesn’t even have to wear because we don’t need to wear suits in our department. He’s just looking at me, waiting for the answer that I don’t really want to give him but he so desperately wants to hear. He desperately wants to hear that what I’m doing not only won’t be ready but what I have will be so bad that he might actually get to flex a little muscle.

My eyes are on my computer now, staring that the e-mail that I got from Frank Black and then I turn to him and back to the e-mail then to him and back to the e-mail. For just one second, I think maybe it could be him. Maybe my boss is Frank Black. He’s the kind of douchebag that would do it. He knows I have this deadline bearing down on me. He’s the asshole that gave it to me. There’s no way he couldn’t know that I had a hangover that could have killed a small Portuguese family yesterday.

“You.”

I squinted my eyes a little when I said it, so I could be as accusatory as I possibly could but I think I came off looking like I needed to go to the bathroom. It was all coming together now. He had to be the motherfucker that was doing this to me. He probably saw me passed out last night and laughed his ass off before he got on his 5:30 train to Connecticut and have dinner with all the other rich fuckers that live up there. I can’t believe I didn’t see this before. It was right fucking in front of me. It’s him. It has to be him. My asshole boss looking push me over the edge. There’s no way that it couldn’t be him.

“Cameron? Are you OK? What about me?”

I hate your guts. I can’t believe that you would do something like this to me. After all of the hard work that I put in for you. Late nights, short deadlines, hard work all of it, all of it for you, you disgusting piece of shit. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe that you would do this to me you degenerate.

“You’re Frank Black.”

There was no movement in his face, just a blank expression and utter and total confusion. He was totally confused. He didn’t even flinch when I said it. Not a muscle on his face moved even slightly. He just looked weirded out and slightly pissed off. And now he’s sitting down in the guest chair in my cube just looking at me. He’s just looking at me oh god please stop looking at me.

“Who’s Frank Black? Are you all right?”

Ohmygod. It’s not him.

“I’m sorry, boss. It’s just the deadline has me a little nuts, that’s all”

I squeezed out a meek smile and a chortle of laughter that sounded like I just had a seizure. It’s not him. Something would have happened. Something would have betrayed him, given him away. After I said “Frank Black,” he should have gotten nervous, sweaty, upset, defensive, something, anything.

But he didn’t. Not even a little bit.

He only really walked away confused, but he thinks I’m weird anyway, so I guess this wouldn’t seem totally out of the ordinary for me. After all, accusing someone of being an old grunge rock star who’s stalking you is hardly the worst thing you can do to someone. It’s not like I gave him a shot in the pills or anything. Although we could probably put that the “Things To Do” list for sometime in the relatively near future. I mean I’m not going to work here forever.

---

30 hours.

Tunes. I need music. I looked at the clock radio on my desk and played with the dial until I found a station that I liked. The radio in this city sucks. The station that used to played good contemporary music ten years ago played shitty contemporary music now. The station that used to play solid classic rock was now all talk. The station that used to play good alternative music is now a salsa station.

This isn’t necessarily a comment on the music. It’s a comment on the lack of variety in music, where I feel like there is a market. Anyone one my age would gladly tune into a music station that played the music that we listened to in high school. We listened when that music was contemporary. Why wouldn’t we listen now? It sucks.

I have to listen to this station. This station that sometimes plays the music I want to hear, but most of the time plays the music that I wouldn’t listen to with two earplugs and a shot of NyQuil to clog my head a little more. They have asinine personalities and crappy music, but you have to listen to something. Otherwise, I might be forced to socialize with my co-workers.

“… and all I’m looking for is the first caller at (800) 367-9909 who can answer the following question. Is Cam Gordon wearing cargo pants? Remember, I’m looking for the first caller. Good luck.”

What?

Is Cam Gordon wearing cargo pants? Did he just ask the population of metropolitan New York if Cam Gordon is wearing cargo pants? I looked at my pants. I am indeed wearing cargo pants. I find them comfortable. They have lots of pockets to keep my shit in. I carry a lot of stuff with me so I need a lot of pockets. Is that the right answer? There’s only one way to find out.

Shit. Busy. Redial. Shit. Busy. Redial. Shit. Busy. Redial.

Ring.

I wasn’t expecting that. I’ve been calling these contests for years. I’ve never gotten through. Once I sat by the radio for 48 hours with the phone trying to win tickets to a Loverboy concert. Nice, Loverboy. Anyway, I kept dialing and dialing, over and over again. Every time they said they were taking the 21st caller, I would jump on the phone and hit redial over and over again. I never got through. I never got to see Loverboy either. Now their lead singer is dead. I consider it a lost opportunity.

Ring.

I wonder what’s going to happen. I’ve never gotten through before. Does it ring like 10 times before they pick up? I feel like they have someone working the phones that would pick up immediately. The picture that I have in my head is one of those telemarketing commercials. You know, like Linda from Time Life books talking about the Astonishing Tales of the Sea. They all have the headsets on in front of the computers, pretending to talk to customers. That has to be what’s going on back there.

Ring.

OK, I feel like someone should have picked up already. Is there even anyone there? Or is this a big joke? Did I dial the right number? Of course, you dialed the right number. You’ve been hitting redial. Just wait, someone is going to pick up. They are going to pick up. They have to pick up. That’s their job. They answer phones.

Ring.

It’s not too hard. The phone rings, you answer it. Just pick it up. The phone wants you to pick it up. That’s why it’s ringing. It’s ringing because it’s saying, “Pick me up. I’m a phone and I want to be picked up. Why won’t you pick me up?” Pick up the phone. Pick up the phone. PICK UP THE FUCKING PHONE!!

Ring.

OK, that’s 5 rings. Doesn’t 5 rings mean that the person isn’t home? How could no one be home? It’s a radio station. You are listening to the fucking broadcast. Someone is there. At the very least, that moron DJ with the obnoxious schtick and horribly nasal voice is there. He’s the one playing the music. He’s the one who put on this song, this terrible song with this shrill horrible voice screaming about how some guy stepped on her and now she’s an affront to all women who have been steeped on by some guy. Why is she screaming so loud and why won’t they pick up the phone? Pick up the damn phone.

“All right, we’re here with our caller. Caller, what’s your name?”

What’s my name? What’s your name, asshole? And why have I been sitting here listening to the phone ring? What the hell took you so long to pick up? I know your job is really hard. Tape ends; put a new one in the machine. Really fucking challenging. With a task like that in front of you, I could see how it would be difficult to multitask by picking up the fucking phone that was probably ringing right next to your hand, you stupid prick.

“Uh, Cam. Cam Gordon.”

Is it Frank Black? Is your name Frank Black? Are you fucking Frank Black? Holy shit. YOU are Frank Black. You live in the city, so you could have been at that bar. You could have seen me slurping back shots the other night. You overheard me talking to Pete about my deadline. You know all of that. You are tormenting me with needless IMs. It’s you, you nasal voiced freak.

“OK, Cam Gordon. Are you ready to answer the question? Here goes. In 1982, who recorded the song ‘The Safety Dance’?”

Am I ready to answer? I think I’m ready to come down there and kick the crap out of you for stealing my sanity and my sleep and my ability to conduct any type of rational thought over the last 2 days.

“Frank Black.”

Click.

“I’m sorry, Cam Gordon. Frank Black is incorrect. That means that our prize is still up for grabs. That number again is (800) 367-9909. I’m taking the first caller to answer today’s trivia question right.”

GODDAMMIT! The fucker hung up on me.

He wasn’t Frank Black. He was just what I thought he was, an idiot behind a microphone who plays tapes for a living. He wasn’t stalking me. He wasn’t sitting in the dark booth in the back of the bar, smoking a cigarette, taking each inhale as if it were going to be his last. He was at the radio station, meeting rock stars who had an album to plug and blowing smoke up their ass about how great their new album was and asking them when and where they were going to be on tour.

I probably just screwed myself out of a decent prize too. Everyone knows that Men Without Hats recorded that song.

---

I got up and walked over to the far end of the office to get to the water cooler. I had to get away from my desk for a second a refocus. The blank page staring back at me was beginning to lose shape to me and needed to get away from my desk to make sure that it stayed eight by eleven.

I walked by my boss’s office and caught a glimpse of him with binoculars, staring out the window. Figures. That jerkoff has nothing to do all day but sit by the window and check out god knows what going on across the street and he didn’t even seem like he was making an attempt to disguise what he was doing. I’m not the world’s most conscientious worker or anything, but make an effort to at least look like you are doing something productive. Look at porno, watch a DVD, anything.

I passed a couple of people in the hall but I didn’t say hello. Any one of them could be fucking with me and I wasn’t in the mood to socialize. I’m not looking forward to my weekend and I certainly don’t need Missy from Financial Services telling me all about what she and Tim will be doing with their weekend and how she and Tim are so happy that they are going to get to see his parents and that Tim is really doing well at his new job. Tim just loves his new job and you have to come over and see the new place that Tim and I got. It’s got two bedrooms, so people can stay over when they visit us now. Isn’t that wonderful?

Yes, great. I can’t think of anything more wonderful. Here I am, 28 hours and 30 minutes away from the biggest deadline of my life and you want to tell me all about your boyfriend’s goddamn parents and their stupid son. Tim is a moron, Missy. And if that weren’t bad enough, he made two very overt and, might I add, very clumsy passes at the two waitresses that worked the company picnic this summer. Chew on that for a little bit in your new two-bedroom apartment.

“Hi, Cam. How are you?”

I vomited up an extremely tight-lipped smile just for her and kept walking on because I was afraid even the slightest comment would inspire a lengthy painful conversation in the vain of the one I fabricated in my head. I had no time for Missy right now. What I had time for is water and then getting back to my desk. That’s what I had time for.

I kept walking past all of the other folks working away in their little offices. All of these folks weren’t having any trouble doing their work, no trouble hitting their deadlines. Look at all of them. They are working away. No worries, no problems. No short, bald, former lead singers stalking them via the computer.

I got some water and drank a cup in front of the cooler, before refilling it and heading back to my desk. Look at this shitty little breakroom. Every time I look at this breakroom, I think about elementary school and that teachers lounge that they got. It was always like the coolest thing. The teachers lounge, where all the teachers went when they had a period off. What was it? It was a crappy little room with a soda machine and six tables. It had windows. That’s the only difference between this crappy little room and that crappy little room.

I walked back to my desk. Looky here, an IM from Mr. Frank Black.

FrankBlack: you there?
CommieBstard: yeah, frank, i’m here
FrankBlack: heard you on the radio
CommieBstard: what?
FrankBlack: you don’t really think i made that album do you?
CommieBstard: what the hell do you want from me?
FrankBlack: nothing more right now
FrankBlack signed off at 11:45:09 AM

I didn’t know what to do now and I know this is going to sound weird, like I wasn’t there already but this was starting to really freak me. Now there are three clues. This is someone who knows I drink a lot, knows I’m pushing hard on a deadline and knows that I was just on the radio accusing the DJ of being a man who is stalking me. Oh and it’s not my boss.

My head was beginning to pound again. This was no dull throb either. This was Animal from the Muppet Show working the drum set. My ears hurt. It was time to try something I hadn’t tried in a very long time. I learned it at the hospital. I don’t do it often because it doesn’t always work. But I was desperate now and desperate times called for desperate measures. When things started to get crazy and your mind just started to race and you felt yourself just getting out of control like nothing would ever make sense again the idea was to focus on your breathing. Just focus on your breathing.

Take a deep breath in and focus on that breath. Let everything disappear. Let your mind go clear. Just let your mind go and visualize nothingness. That was the whole idea. So I did it at my desk. I closed my eyes and I tried to let go of everything. Embrace the emptiness was what they always used to say. Let go of your thoughts.

And with my eyes closed, I just looked straight ahead at nothing and waited for something to happen. Just waited for the darkness of the back of my lids to show me something that I hadn’t seen before.

And then the darkness started to brighten just a little bit. Black became light, almost orange. Orange stayed for a little while before it began to move and it started to swirl like a pinwheel just around and around and I tired to start to follow with my eyeballs but I realized that I didn’t need to. All I had to do was look straight ahead, just look straight ahead at the orange that was beginning to move faster and faster, around and around and then FLASH!

It was bright then not so bright then both like a checkerboard. And the light and the dark of the checkerboard began to change places. Flashing like the street light in front of the fire station only not yellow, just light and dark. Light and dark. Light and dark. Back and forth. Back and forth.

---

When I opened my eyes, I took a deep breath and looked at the blank sheet of paper that had sat in front of me for days. It didn’t sing to me, not quite yet, but we were getting closer. We were definitely creeping closer. We had better be creeping closer. Friday at 5:00 PM was right around the fucking corner.

I opened up my e-mail and pulled up a new message.

-----Original Message------
From: CommieBstard@aol.com
Sent: Thursday, November 7, 2002 12:11 PM
To: Frank Black [frankblack@frankblack.com]
Subject: HELP

Mr. Black,

I apologize for the tone of my last e-mail. As you can imagine, these bizarre messages that I have been receiving have thrown me a bit off balance. It doesn’t help that I really have no idea where or from whom these messages are coming.

Along those lines, I was wondering if you could do me a favor.

As you know, I have been receiving mysterious IMs from someone who’s using your identity to mask who they really are. I was wondering if you had any police reports, private investigator files, fingerprints and/or telephone numbers of people in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area that I could perhaps have a look at. You would be doing me a great service.

Thank you for your help.

Cam Gordon.

It was a stupid e-mail. I sent it off anyway. It was worth a shot, I guess. I needed to find out who Frank Black was. For some reason, I felt like the only person who could help me figure it out was Frank Black. I don’t know if people stalk Frank Black. If they do, he’s got to have some information on them. It happens all the time I’d imagine. Adoring fan gets a little too excited, sends a couple of e-mails, and accuses him of something. Next thing you know, she’s in the kitchen naked cooking Hot Pockets and talking about when the kids are going to get home from school.

All I was asking for was a favor. Just a simple, stupid favor from him. All I wanted was a couple of the names of people he knew that might be pirating his identity for entertainment purposes. He had to know of some people in the area. The guy has toured the whole damn world. He must’ve played New York a hundred times over the last twenty years. He had to know something.

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was in cahoots with this guy. Frank Black and Frank Black, teaming up together to torment me. One Frank Black denying any knowledge of the other’s existence while the other writes incessant and cryptic instant messages under the assumed identity of Frank Black. Fuck, how did I miss that?

Frank Black writes an e-mail saying he doesn’t even know who I am. He was probably laughing the whole time that he wrote it. He was probably laughing his ass off at me, an unsuspecting moron with a rapidly approaching deadline. He probably talked to one of his fans in the area, gave him his IM password and now all they are doing is just checking me out. They drop a strategic IM here and there, enough to totally blow me out of the water. It was all so clear, so very fucking clear.

Frank Black sits in Los Angeles and talks to Frank Black here in New York. Frank Black in New York is probably watching me right now. God where the hell could he be? He’s not under my desk. Dammit, why couldn’t he be under my desk watching me? Easy to find and easy to get rid of. Frank Black, where the fuck are you? Show yourself to me you fucking coward. Come out from wherever you are so I can beat the every loving shit out of you. Where the fuck are you?

I was so sick Frank Black. I was so fucking sick of Frank Black. I was sick of his e-mails and I was sick of his IMs and I just wanted to be rid of him already. I just wanted him to leave me the fuck alone. Is that possible, Frank Black? Could you just leave me the fuck alone for two minutes? Just get off of my computer screen and get out of my head and give me two minutes of fucking peace. That’s all I want, just two minutes of fucking peace. Is that too much to ask, Frank Black? Is that too much to ask from you, you aging, balding short motherfucker? Is it?

And I looked up and it was dark again. And I looked at my clock and it was after 5:00 PM again. And I wondered if Frank would respond to me. I wondered if he was going to give me any information to help me find out who was driving me further and further from my life and my mind. I wondered if he’d have anything for me to go on, anything at all to help me stop this thinking. I wanted desperately to be finished with all of this thinking.

Just stop thinking.

Stop.

---

I finally made a little headway into my project and I worked until about 11:00 PM. Everyone else had left for the day hours ago, but I was still there plugging away. The work I was doing was shit, utter shit. I needed to get something down on paper to get me started, just a little something so that when I came in tomorrow, I wouldn’t be facing the prospect of finishing everything at once. I wouldn’t have to finish an entire project in 9 hours, although I would have to finish 95% of it in that time.

I turned off my computer and stretched the inactivity out of my muscles and they rewarded me with a knot in my calf that took me 5 minutes to work out. I limped toward the door and contemplated taking a cab the 10 blocks back to my apartment but the idea of going to sleep now seemed wrong, so I limped to the bar instead. Maybe Pete would have something nice to say.

“You look like shit, Cam.”

Maybe not.

Pete drew a beer from the tap and left it with me as he went to wait on some other folks. I sat in my usual seat at the end of the bar against the wall. With my hand in the crook of the handle of my beer, I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes. The bar was crowded tonight, like it always was on a Thursday night. I was just happy my stool was open. If my stool hadn’t been open, I might have just thrown it through the plate glass window that the front of the bar and walked home.

I opened my eyes and scanned the crowd. It was regular Thursday night happy hour fare. The folks that were left here this late were the folks that drank too much when the drink special was on and now were drunk and singing 80s one hit wonder music from the jukebox that hasn’t seen a new CD in 13 years. I watched them, laughing and screaming the wrong words to a song that shouldn’t have ever been popular. I wondered if they knew that Frank Black was here watching them butcher this music.

“How’s it look tonight, Pete?”

Pete had a free minute so he came over to have a word with me. He leaned his forearm against the bar and leaned in toward me. His nose was crooked. He’d broken it breaking up a fight in a bar in southern British Columbia. I asked him what the hell he was doing in British Columbia in the first place. He just shrugged.

He always shrugged. When I shrug, it doesn’t say shit about anything. When Pete shrugs, it’s like quoting Shakespeare. When he shrugged off my request about his whereabouts that time, he was saying to me that he’d gone to the woods to live deliberately, to suck the marrow out of life. He didn’t shrug in any special way but somehow everyone just knew what he was talking about.

“It looks like there’s a few more assholes in here than normal, Cam.”

Pete is a wise man.

I took the last sip of my beer and Pete refilled it before walking off to take care of a couple of the aforementioned assholes. I examine the bowl of pretzels on the bar and got to wondering how long they’d been sitting there. Better judgment prevailed and I pushed the bowl aside. Once in college, we paid a guy ten bucks to eat all of the salt that was in the shaker on the diner table. He ended up being hospitalized for dehydration and they even had him on suicide watch for a little while. They were that incredulous that he would ingest that much salt. We gave him the ten bucks though. A well-earned ten bucks, I might add.

Pete was at the far side of the bar, filling a shot glass with some abhorrent looking liquor for a guy wearing a fedora. The guy took the shot and held it up, looking at it through the dull light fixture that hung on the side of the bar. I don’t know what he saw that pleased him, because I almost threw up looking at whatever that swill was. He put one hand on his head to keep his hat on and kicked back the shot, calling Pete over to refill his glass.

He was an older guy, out of place in a bar that featured primarily twentysomethings. He watched Pete refill his empty glass with an odd curiosity and then repeated his exercise, holding the glass up to the light and then kicking the shot back, making sure to hold onto his hat while doing so. As he put the glass down, he caught me staring at him. He smiled widely, exposing teeth that looked like they hadn’t been brushed in years, but judging his age, I’d imagine that they weren’t his original teeth anyway. And then he winked.

Wait a minute. Did he just wink at me? Why would he wink at me? Is there something that I should know that I don’t? Do I have something on my face? Why the fuck would he wink at me? He’s trying to tell me something. Maybe he knows something that he wants me to know. Do you think he knows something about Frank Black?

Maybe he knows who Frank Black is. Oh my god, do you think he knows who Frank Black is? Could this decrepit old man with a slightly dirty white moustache above his lip know who Frank Black is? If he knows who Frank Black is, I’ll finally know who that bastard is. Maybe I’ll be able to find him and tell him to stop working me over. I could tell him to lose my IM. I could beat the ever-loving shit out of him. Maybe that’s why he’s winking at me.

Holy shit. Maybe not.

It’s him.

The old man is Frank Black. He has to be Frank Black. Why else would he be here, sitting at the opposite end of the bar as me? Why would he smile like that? Why the fuck would he wink at me? Now it’s clear as fucking day.

“Hey Pete”

Pete turned away from the old man and walked over to my end of the bar. He walked slowly, like he always does. Each slow step he took now was agonizing. I needed him to get across the bar and get to me so I could ask him who the creepy old guy was at the other end of the bar. Pete, do you know his name? Pete, who the hell is he? Pete, is that guy Frank fucking Black?

“What?”

What? That’s it? Just what? Don’t you know who that is at the other end of the bar? Don’t you know what he’s been doing to me for the last few days? IM’ing me? Following me around? Do you realize the kind of hell that that jerkoff sitting at the other end of the bar has wrought on my life over the course of the last 72 hours? Do you Pete? Do you have any fucking idea at all? No, you don’t. Because if you did, you wouldn’t be asking me what.

“What’s that guy’s story?”

That guy. You know, the old one at the end of the bar that’s drinking some sort of liquor from a bottle that looks like it’s been on your shelf since 1895. What the hell is his story? What’s his name? What’s he doing here? Why has he been following me and IM’ing me and keeping me from getting my work done? Tell me Pete; tell me what you know about him. Tell me what the fuck you know about him before I go over there and rip that fucking hat off of his fucking head.

“Who, Frank? Nothing really. Wife’s dead. He comes here to drink to forget about it.”

FRANK?!? Did you say that his name is fucking Frank? The old guy at the end of the bar is named Frank? I don’t believe it. I don’t fucking believe it. It’s him. It’s Frank Black. What the fuck does he want from me? Why doesn’t he come over here and tell me what the fuck he wants from me? Why does he sit over there and just wink at me and torment me? Why? Why? WHY?

“Really? Frank what?”

Frank Black? Is it Frank Black? Is his name fucking Frank Black?

“Cam, you think too fuckin’ much. Too fuckin’ much.”

And then he walked away to help a woman with a lot of cleavage.

Pete is a wise man.

---

I was drunk again. It wasn’t that sweet syrupy drunk that makes your toes warm and lets you lie down and have sleep envelope you. I was a bitter and cool drunk. I was sitting talking to Frank the old guy at 1:30 AM in a mostly empty and mostly quiet bar. The jukebox seemed content to rest, though I wasn’t entirely convinced that the group of karaoke folks weren’t going to arouse it from its blissful slumber in the back corner of the bar.

Frank wasn’t drunk. And if he was drunk, he wasn’t ready to let me know. I didn’t know how I felt about his sobriety and/or undisclosed drunkenness but in another beer or so, I didn’t really think I’d care. Frank and I were talking, well frankly, about nothing in particular. We moved briskly from subject to subject, trying to get to know each other and feel each other out. He was a nice guy.

Frank moved to the city when he was 16 years old with no money and no job. When he first got here, he’d do anything for money. He washed dishes and sold newspapers on the street. He was a janitor at a school. When he was a short order cook at a little diner, he met a waitress named Lisa, who didn’t want anything to do with him. The way he described her, she could have been Aphrodite herself. Every day, he’d ask her out. Every day, she’d say I’m busy. Until one day, she didn’t. They were married three weeks later. And now, 54 years later, he was sitting here, talking to me.

“Now she’s gone.”

The way he said it, I thought he was going to die himself, right there in front of me. But he didn’t. He signaled for Pete to refill his glass, which Pete did, in addition to drawing me another beer from the tap. Frank drew in a deep breath and went through his shot ritual, which I was beginning to eye with reverence instead of suspicion.

“What was it about her?”

I said it expecting the stock answers, expecting that he’d say everything. Everything about her was what it was. It was the way she made an egg salad sandwich. It was the way she kissed him lightly on the forehead when he left for work every morning. It was the way that she would smile and stick her tongue out at him from across the room when she knew he was stuck in a conversation that he didn’t want to be in. It was all of those things as much as anything is what he would say because he’d already told me about all of them. I was ready to be disappointed with his answer.

“It was that she didn’t know how beautiful she was to me.”

I wasn’t expecting that and I didn’t understand it. How could she not know? I’d been talking to him for 45 minutes and I knew. It wasn’t only from what he said or how he said it. It was from him. He just exuded it. I knew exactly how beautiful she was to him. Very.

“I’m not following”

And I wasn’t following him, not at all. What did he mean? How could she not know? What planet did this woman live on to not recognize the fact that this man thought that she was the most beautiful creature on Earth? It would have been impossible for this woman not to know how beautiful she was to her husband, a man who so easily and so elegantly explained it.

“She didn’t think she was beautiful and that made her more beautiful. Cam, I’ve met a thousand woman that were better looking than my wife but I never met one more beautiful.”

And with that he got up off of the barstool. He looked at me and smiled that wide grin. He took my hand and shook it with a firmness that I wasn’t expecting. He nodded and waved to Pete, who winked at him and went back to rinsing out the dirty glasses that had gathered during the bar’s busier time. Frank walked slowly, using his cane for support, and made his way to the front door. I heard the bells above the door jingle for the first time tonight and like that he was gone.

I glanced around the bar and noted that it was nearly empty. My watch told me that it was nearly 2:00 AM. I was considering what Frank had said when the jukebox clicked on again and I snapped out of my thoughts. I started to get up until the opening notes of the song caught my ear.

“ … In the sleepy west of the wooded East lies a valley full, full of pioneers. We’re not just kids, to say the least. We’ve got ideas. To us, that’s dear.”

The Pixies. Someone put on the fucking Pixies. My eyes scanned the bar desperately for the guilty party. Who the fuck would put on the Pixies? Who would put them on with me sitting at the bar? Don’t they know who Frank Black is? Don’t they know what Frank Black is? He’s a lunatic who gets his rocks off by harassing unsuspecting New York residents. That’s what he is. And now they are playing his music.

They are playing his goddamn music. I have this album at home. I used to play it all the time. The damn thing is signed by Frank Black himself. Now it makes me nauseous to look at it. I can’t even look at the fucking thing. Every time I see it sitting on top of my stack of CDs, I just want to take it and stomp on it. I want to smash the whole thing to bits so maybe Frank Black will see and just leave me alone already. If he sees me smash that CD, maybe he’ll back the fuck off. Maybe he’ll stop this and forget about me and move on to some other person. He’ll start talking some other person, someone who’s not being pushed by a deadline that’s hanging over him like the Sword of fucking Damocles.

Maybe I should smash the jukebox. I mean, if he was sitting here watching me, wincing over my beer, in pain at the very notes of this goddamn song and he saw me crush the jukebox. I could walk over there and just beat the shit out of the fucking thing. Smash the glass, break the CDs, just work the like over like Rocky would a side of beef, he’ll fucking stop. I could take this barstool that I’m sitting on and knock the damn thing off the wall and stomp on it until my fucking feet bled.

What about it, Frank Black? Would that be enough to keep you away? Would that be enough to get your voice out of my head and your presence out of my life? Would it be enough to keep you away forever? How about it, Francis? Would it be enough for you to just get the fuck out of my head and never come back? Would it? Goddammit, answer me! Would it be enough? Would it fucking be enough?

“You OK, Cam?”

I looked up at Pete. Behind him there was a sign that said, “If assholes were airplanes, this place would be an airport.” Good point. The song was mercifully ending now. The guitar chords repeated and the song faded. I turned around to see the jukebox go dark.

“Yeah, I’m fine, Pete. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

---

With the music of the Pixies ringing in my ears, I was no longer tired or drunk. I started to walk toward my apartment with the hope that I would know what I wanted to do when I got there, but I didn’t, so I turned around and started walking the other way. The air had gotten cold and I wasn’t bright enough to have worn a jacket this morning, so I just crossed my arms hoping that would be enough to keep out the cold.

The streets were virtually empty now, which was fine because I wasn’t really interested in any kind of interpersonal contact right now. I just kept walking. It was coming down to crunch time now and I really needed to clean all of the other nonsense out of my head and figure something out. This project needed to be done and I needed to get it done. If I didn’t think of something, I was going to be royally screwed.

I saw that there was a supermarket open on the next block, so I walked over there. I don’t know why. I don’t buy groceries and I certainly don’t cook. I peered into the window to see if anyone was there, but no one was shopping that I could see. All I could see was the cashier reading a magazine. Seventeen, I think. The magazine, although that could have been her age also.

She wore these large hoop earrings. They were gold colored, somehow I doubted they were real gold, and huge. Their diameter was probably 4 inches across. In fact, when she tilted her head one way or the other, the hoop would rest on her shoulder just so. The hoop would just touch her shoulder, causing it to slant as if it were resting between her ear and shoulder and not hooked into her ear.

She must have sensed someone looking at her because she turned in my direction and saw me looking at her. We made eye contact for a second before I felt myself getting uncomfortable and looked down at my feet for a second before looking back up at her. By the time I looked again, she was back to the magazine. I was more comfortable being the unnoticed voyeur though. Now that she knew that I was there, it kind of took some of the fun out of watching her.

There’s something very special about being witness to events and episodes that people think that no one is watching. Seeing people as they truly are is something that you don’t see often. There’s something very remarkable about watching someone when they think that no one is watching. I don’t know what this girl would have done differently, if anything if I hadn’t been watching, but I felt good knowing that I had been a part of a moment with her.

Take my boss. I gave him a hard time about it but truth be told, I have no problem with the guy looking out the window with binoculars. He just wanted to be in on the moment, whatever it was. Two people having sex, a woman talking on the phone, a few guys watching the game, whatever. Their behavior would have been different if they’d known that he was watching or if he’d been in the room. They would have acted differently, less comfortably, with him around.

Just like Frank Black and me.

Why did he have to let me know that he’s here, that he’s watching? I’m OK with him watching me. I just didn’t want him to tell me. Why couldn’t he have just not told me? Then I wouldn’t have known. Now, he’s thrown me off. He’s making me act differently. He’s taken away my private moments. Nothing is private anymore. It’s all public. It’s not mine. It’s his and mine. Why did you take it from me Frank Black? I want it back, you sick fuck.

I backed away from the window. I needed to keep track of him. I needed a pen and book and I needed to keep track of him. I’ll write down when he contacted me, when I e-mailed him, his responses, everything. I’m going to get it all down on paper. That way, when I finally find this crazy freak, I’ll be able to show him all of the shit that he did. He won’t be able to tell me it wasn’t him or anything. I’ll have it all on paper.

Where the hell can I get a notebook at 3:00 AM?

---

Where the hell can I get a notebook at 3:00 AM? I thought that would be a tough question but then I remember where I was. There had to be a hundred places that I could go that were open for 24 hours. Well, maybe not a hundred in my immediate area but certainly one or two. I sat down on a bench in front of the supermarket and thought about where I could go.

Dumbass. The supermarket behind you is not only open, it’s behind you. And it’s open. And behind you. I got up and walked to the door, which slid open to accommodate me when I stepped in front of it. The light in the store was bright and harsh, which I hadn’t realized when I was standing outside. The girl at the register barely even took notice of my presence and I walked to the back of the store.

Aisle 1: Fruits and Vegetables. Condiments. – How do you tell if a melon is ripe or not?

Aisle 2: Juices, Soda and Bottled Water. – Can every fruit produce a juice or is that limited to just some of them? And I think they are starting to make up berries. I’ve never heard of any aronia berries. That’s not a real berry. Also, I think that ginger ale is the most underrated soda of them all. It’s delicious.

Aisle 3: Rice, Pasta and Canned Goods. – Why are there so many different kinds of pasta? It all tastes exactly the same when you cook it. Think about it. There’s the flat noodles, the spaghetti, the penne, the shells, the big shells, the fettucine, the spirals. How many different shapes do you need? I have no ability to make that kind of decision.

Aisle 4: Cereal. – For the love of god, how many different kinds of cereal could you possibly have? All of these boxes lined up along the aisle. It looks like no one has bought a box of cereal here in years. There isn’t a box missing from the shelves. It’s smooth along the front the whole way down. Man, that’s fucking cool. The cereal aisle might be my favorite aisle.

Aisle 5: Pet Food and Supplies. – How specialized has pet food gotten? There are some dogs that are eating pretty well these days. Better than some humans, I’d imagine.

Aisle 6: Orange Juice, Eggs and Dairy. – I’ll have to stop at the diner after I’m finished making my Frank Black logbook. I would love to have a Spanish omelet.

Aisle 7: Office Supplies and Greeting Cards.

Finally, I found what I was looking for. The supermarket had a fairly extensive selection of notebooks. On the college ruled paper, I’d be able to get more on a page. On the wide ruled, I’d be able to write larger and see it better. I went with the wide ruled. While I was there, I picked up a nice pen also.

I brought it all up to the girl at the register, who viewed the whole procedure with utter disdain. I know that I’m interrupting your date with the “100 Ways To Paint Your Nails” column and I’m sorry but at least feign interest in helping me. What the hell is your deal sweetheart? You want to know why I’m buying a notebook and a pen at 3:00 AM? Is that it? You want to know what the guy without the jacket in the dark of night is doing in a supermarket purchasing school supplies at this late hour? None of your goddamn business. That’s what I’m doing here. Ring me up and ease off the twenty questions.

“Four sixty-five.”

Four sixty-five? That’s all you have to say to me? Four fucking sixty-five? Look at me, honey. I don’t answer to you. If I want to be out here at three in the morning, searching for a writing implement and something with which to use said implement, then that’s my goddamn business and none of yours. Do you read me honey? Just put those things in a bag and stay the hell out of my life. I don’t need you telling me I’m weird. I don’t need you looking at me like there’s something wrong with me. If anything, there’s something wrong with you. Look at you, working in a supermarket at three in the morning, reading stupid Seventeen magazine. What the hell is that about?

“Thank you.”

I took my stuff and got out of there. Who the hell did she think she was, questioning my motives? Yes, OK, I’m making a logbook. I’m tracking the activity of the person who’s stalking me, the aging not-very-popular rock star that is keeping track of my every action. I want to keep track of his contact with me. There. Are you satisfied now? Are you happy? Now you know, you stupid bitch. Now you know everything.

And now it was time to get home and keep track of Mr. Frank Black.

---

I walked into my apartment and banged my knee on the table that I kept by the door for the keys, just like I always did. I made a mental note to move the table, but the desk in my head is so cluttered, I was sure the note would get lost just like it always does. When I leave a note in the middle of a stack of papers detailing communication with Frank Black and a computer that has a blank document on it waiting to be filled with the information for my project due thirteen hours and thirty minutes from now, it would be easy to gloss over that small note saying, “Move the table” in my head.

I dropped my workbag under the table and, after banging my knee again when I realized that I left my keys in the door, walked to the back corner of the apartment where I kept my desk. It was a small desk, no drawer in the front to keep my pens and pencils and various papers, so I had a coffee cup with my pens and pencils and the papers were spread all over the top of the desk. I cleared some papers off to make space for my notebook and closed the top of my laptop and pushed off to the corner.

I switched on the lamp that sat on the desk and opened the notebook to the first page. The ink from the lines of the page had dried to the cover of the notebook and it cracked when I turned the cover open. I closed the book again and tried to get it to make that sound again but it didn’t and I was disappointed. I closed the cover and took a Sharpie out of the coffee cup. I wrote this on the front cover:

GIORNALE DI FRANCO NERO
by Cameron R. Gordon

After I wrote it, I was a little upset that I’d put my middle initial there, but it was too late to turn back now. I waved the book in the air to make sure that the Sharpie ink dried, so it wouldn’t smudge on the cover. I opened the notebook again and began to write with the pen I’d bought. It was a pen called “Dr. Click.” It was kind of fat and had a little rubber part to ease the strain on the thumb, index and middle finger while writing. The plastic was blue.

The first page of the log looked like this:

Tuesday, November 5, 2002

0759 hours – received Instant Message from “FrankBlack”. Held a brief conversation before asking him to “shut the fuck up”

1343 hours – sent e-mail to Frank Black at frankblack@frankblack.com. Requested response as to whether he was the person who instant messaged me earlier.

I stopped and held the notebook out in front of me to examine what I’d done. It wasn’t bad but it needed something more. This told the story but not the whole story. These messages received and sent were far more complicated, far more inspired. After all, this wasn’t just a recounting of various communications between two people. This was a recording of all the trouble that Frank Black has caused me. All the sludge from the bottom of my mind that he’s stirred up, it all needed to be here. This was the definitive chronicle, the retelling of everything that Frank Black has done to me. That fucker needed to pay.

The first page of the log now looked like this:

Tuesday, November 5, 2002

0759 hours – received Instant Message from “FrankBlack”. Held a brief conversation before asking him to “shut the fuck up”

Notes: Frank Black mentioned he was the only one telling the truth. What does that mean? What is the truth? Who would be lying to me? What would they be lying about? What would be their motive to lie? If he was the only one telling the truth, does that mean that EVERYONE else is lying? My boss? Maggie? Pete? Everyone? What if everyone is lying to me? What if everything that I have heard over the last however long is all lies? Who could I trust? Who could I go and talk to? There would be no one. No one at all. I was the only one that I could trust. But what if Frank Black is lying? Why the fuck should I trust that guy? I don’t know anything about him. He could be lying. But what if he wasn’t? What if he wasn’t lying?

1343 hours – sent e-mail to Frank Black at frankblack@frankblack.com. Requested response as to whether he was the person who instant messaged me earlier.

Notes: Frank Black’s name and domain in his e-mail are the same. That is stupid. I made a vague threat to Frank Black and asked him to “Bring it on, Francis.” I also bid him good day. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t want him to have a good day. I wanted him to have a shitty day. And not just one, several. I wanted him to have several shitty days, just like I did. Several shitty and meaningless days, filled with torment and anguish. I wanted him to have the same as I did. Not good.

The addition of a “Notes” column was a stroke of brilliance but it still seemed a little light to me. What I had written barely filled half of a page across. It needed something more, something slightly more analytical. Think, Cam, think. What could you add to the “Giornale di Franco Nero” to make it just right? Maybe an “Analysis” column? No, that was what you are doing in the “Notes” column. I got it.

The first page of the log, readjusted, contained a new column entitled “Who I Suspect.” Essentially, it is a list of just that: who at the time I suspected was Frank Black. For the both of these initial entries, it contained simply one name. Frank Black, former lead singer of the Pixies.

---

I went into the bathroom to splash some water on my face so that I could keep writing. My eyes were red and cracked and they hurt. God, it hurt so much to even look at stuff. It hurt to look at the image of myself in the bathroom mirror. The ugly image of myself in wrinkled clothing that I’d been wearing for nearly two days. My distorted countenance, twisted with the restless sleep that I’d had over the last week, looked wrong and unfamiliar staring back at me as it was.

I needed a shave badly. I hardly recognized myself with all of this facial hair. I needed a haircut too. My hair was wild and out of control. I ran my hand through it to try to mat it down a little but it was no use. It hadn’t been washed in two days and the natural oil mixed with the dirt made it stand on end. I had the urge to just get in the shower and wash all of the dirt away. Get it off my skin and out of my hair and be fresh and clean again.

I got undressed and turned on the shower water. I put my hand under the running shower water but it was hot, scalding and I jerked my hand away reflexively. After adjusting the dials slightly, I stepped under the water and let it fall all over me. The water bounced off of my skin and then soaked it. It soaked my hair and I ran my hand through it again to keep it out of my eyes.

The water was soft against my skin and I leaned against the tile wall to let the water run down my back. The tile was cool and the difference in temperature made me shudder. When I looked up at the tile little black dots lined the white grout. They started to move, through the little tunnels of white grout, moving on pulse. My heart pulsed and the black dots pulsed and they moved around the wall. Why were they moving? I turned away from the wall, disturbed, unhappy, unwilling to watch the army of mildew stains move through the pattern of the wall.

I got out of the shower and dried myself off. I wiped the steam off of the mirror with the back of my palm. I didn’t feel any cleaner, just wetter and I was still as heavy with thought as I was when I got into the shower. I still didn’t recognize my reflection and now my longer than normal hair hung loosely in clumps across my forehead and below my eyes.

I wanted to break the mirror. Who are you in the mirror? Where are you? Are you hiding on the other side of this wall to mess with me and my mind? My poor sleep deprived mind that is looking for something to hold on to, anything to hold onto. Looking for the one thing that is generally familiar, the one thing it could always hang its hat on, the face of the head that it’s kept in.

Why do you look back at me like that? Why do you stare at me? What do you want? Do you want to know who Frank Black is? Do you want to find him and make sure that he never bothers you again? Is that what you want? That’s what I want also. But it’s just not that fucking easy. He’s not going to come up here and ring the doorbell and ask to use the phone. His car isn’t going to break down outside. Like he’s going to appear at the door and need to call the mechanic. If he does, you could offer him a glass of lemonade and then offer to break the glass over his head for what he’s doing to you, if he were that easy to find.

STOP FUCKING LOOKING AT ME! Just stop it. I can’t stand you looking at me like that anymore. I have nothing else to say, nothing else to tell you. I have nothing else to admit to you. You have everything I know. You know everything I have. I can’t take you looking at me anymore. I have a logbook to write. I have a goddamn project at work to finish. Leave me alone.

Why can’t you just leave me alone?