Oliver Benjamin
heads to stuff his own flimsy overcoat.”
He stood up. “Jake, I’m a fraud, I know that. But I can’t let this
go, I can’t let the first real appreciation of my being slip through my
fingers. And I can’t be so cruel as admit to these kids that they were
tricked. It would be like pulling the mat out from under them. I now
know that I have to find a way to make this whole mess legitimate—
to offer them the happiness they think they’ve found while
eliminating the idiotic vehicle I’ve arbitrarily chosen. I don’t want to
play with their minds any more, I want to reallyteach them to save
themselves. First, though, I guess I have to start with myself.” He
stopped to think for a second. “God, Jake, what have I done?”
“But Oscar, man, now you’re in a position to try to make
bolognaiseout of baloney.”
“Yeah, I know. But what am I supposed to do? Out in the real
world I’m a loser. I can’t seem to get any authentic respect from
people, and my friends always end up turning on me. I was with a
lovely girl once but she dumped me immediately. This is the only
avenue I have left for the attention I so desperately need, unless I
want to wither up like a flower pot in a closet.”
“You’re no loser. And Ihaven’t turned on you Oscar.”
He let out a friendly laugh and said, “Not yet.”
I tried to reassure him. “To make me turn against you, mighty
Ozzy Lama, you’d have to do nothing less than kill me.” That was
impossible, of course, because someone else had already done that.
“I’ll only kill you if you tell anyone anything I’ve told you
tonight, Jake.”
“Our secret,” I said solemnly.
I smiled and embraced my friend who at that moment I
empathized with immensely. I had assumed he was merely a
confident eccentric, when in reality he had been as mixed-up,
broken-hearted and unfulfilled as I was. It was interesting how much
we had in common, the two of us, more than I had realized.
How was it that here, out in the world, in a strange nexus of
outcast individuals I had managed to find so many kindred spirits?
Oscar. Tree. I supposed it made sense that the tragic exiled of the
world would eventually find each other and coalesce under their own
homely psychedelic flag. It may not have been Utopia, but it was in
the neighborhood.
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