There was a time when I was away from her due to stress or morbid fear and stayed with my Mom across the city. I cooked food for her children once she moved closer to me with her entire family. She wasn't trying to get closer to me, however. There were a few people I visited with during this time and a couple of men I even invited into my Mom’s house on the weekends which she was gone. The first man was Jerry, the captain. He was from California and had AIDS. He knew all about weed. Unfortunately I must report that he was not on the proper medicine and treatment for his disease. It wasn't irresponsible as far as anyone else is concerned. I would have hated to see his life shortened on account of a homegrown remedy.
The other two were black men who I felt needed respite from the cold and danger. I supplied it to them by allowing them to nap on the couch where I had spent my high school years sleeping after class. The couch now had been utilized as a detox center for Chem 1. I knew they wouldn't steal anything, and even let them stay there unattended while I busied myself with Macy's chores. I did try to watch some television with them but Mika seemed to have a problem with them and arrived in his huge black truck to demand money. Macy told us they were very shallow for not paying him earlier, and in order to get the cash I drove them to an abandoned apartment complex to steal the heating elements off air conditioners for scrap metal. I was listening to The Pens in my car. I didn't have a problem with it, because I felt so useless it was a service I was glad to get credit from Macy for doing. The music and the colder atmosphere were exceptionally depressing. Now, the smell of cigarettes reminds me of this time when I was forcing my limbs to move the heating elements into my trunk despite being stiff. I am reminded of the fear. I was afraid of Mika. I thought he might shoot me.
I was trying to figure out how much the men owed him. "Do you owe him for meth?" I asked.
The bigger man, curiously named Brown, responded patronizingly. "You think all we do is do meth, don't you?"
"I can't think of anything you would owe Mika for." Mika had a codename I couldn’t remember. My imagination swelled at the idea they might have some other kind of trade going on.
"It's for tweak, what the hell do you think it was for?"
I shrugged though I couldn't be satisfied by that explanation. Being Macy's boyfriend I didn't have to pay for any drugs, although I did have my own weed which had lasted the entire time I had known her. I was pretty sure there was something else going on with the handling of the drugs.
The real story was much more fantastic than I even could have thought. The captain for the other team, Jerry, had a deal with Mika. He was telling me about it when I visited to see his weed, or kind bud. His friends in California were artists. Their company and time was their product, besides the Chem 2, or marijuana. They were "large-scale" media entrepreneurs. Any Internet video with them in it was guaranteed to get tons of hits, and you could pay a price to get into the films and market your own services. The videos were hypnotic, the captain was explaining. His friends were highly influential.
They knew how to control people’s perception.
He began to get a little suspicious of me I thought. I was chain-smoking in the trashy fashion which I handled such magnanimous company and that's probably what started the questions.
"I heard that Macy thinks you've got the potential to be her Iris archetype. Don't you know what that means?" He asked.
I stumbled over the word archetype when I said I wasn't all that interested in it.
He explained that Macy herself was highly influential as well. “The archetype can be thought of like mental software. The ego is programmed and then downloaded to the collective unconscious, where others live and think as the archetype does.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.
The captain told me I was worse than he had suspected. "The archetypes serve special purposes. The role they play is specified by the individuals who play those roles. You program yourself. The story is written by their character and personality. Do you know who you are? You're going to shape what her archetype for Iris means so you better get ready, and you better not be stupid when shit gets heavy. I'm telling you this as your bro. Right? The archetypes are based on the theory of the Tree of Life. The angels live at the topmost part of the Tree of Life, and archetypes below them, and regular people near the bottom. Inside each of us is the potential to be the archetype for the angels. Anyone could be an archetype," he said, then smiled. "But it's very expensive to get the attention a true archetype deserves. Macy has competitors on her own team. She needs you to be the strongest version of Iris out there. You can't choke at the last moment and rat her out." He blew into his pipe to clear an airway through the resin. "That's really what's trashy."
I didn't know what to say. These weird stories I had only pretended to believe up to this point, out of fear of rejection or insecurity.
"Your name, Adam, means something too. It means you’re the archetypal ‘man.’ It’s truly perfect. You’re like a light saber, Adam."
I lost my speech. I went for another cigarette but dropped it and apologized and thought, ‘this could get me killed.’ I could get killed trying to make my girlfriend's insane plan happen, this nonsense about archetypes and angels, and whatever the Tree of Life could be. How complicated it all felt. She wouldn't tell me about anything, yet I didn't want her to anyway. The idea made me anxious. How much had I invested of myself into this relationship? I couldn't even fuck her. I thought I was losing it, and wanted to leave the captain there in his pad but knew that would be rude. He was a socialite and would have been offended and not invited me over again if I left then. I lifted myself with my legs to a halfway point and realized this at the last second and collapsed back onto the floor with crossed legs.
So why hadn't I kept my job and gotten the duplex? He was loading his weed pipe with kind. She was still doing Chem 1 and I wondered, Jesus, could I really help her? I could stand there with my conviction of my love for her and this other person would tell me things she had never even mentioned and I couldn't understand it anyway. I had been devoted before but now I felt like a harsh schism had bent itself between us. It was overwhelming and the room seemed to shrink from the contact high I was getting off the smoke he was trying to blow in my face. “Stop it,” I said.
"My apologies," he said. "I'm here for you, if you ever have questions. Part of being the archetype fortunately is that you mustn't try too hard."
Jerry was my friend, where Macy was my girlfriend and nothing else. I felt like such a bitch. I finally asked, "so she wants me to be famous?" It seemed like a good question although I was barely paying attention to his company at this point. He laughed loudly.
"You're already famous. You're dating Macy."
“Famous how?”
"That's what you'll have to figure out for yourself."
“Oh.”
I took some kind with me and ran a stoplight. The speeding traffic crashed headlong into my vehicle. The first car that was ever mine had been crushed from the driver's side. I regained consciousness at my Mom’s after two days' hospitalization. The concussion was serious.