The Element of Surprise
The element of surprise—the sharpest weapon in war.
War. Sport. Life.
Dare we distinguish?
✦✦✦
That poor man never stood a chance.
Me—too cute. Too unassuming.
✦✦✦
Twenty years later,
a woman backed up a quarter mile along Route 90,
her car hugging the shoulder,
answering the wish of my outstretched thumb.
“I don’t stop for hitchhikers,” she said.
“But I realized you were harmless.”
She didn’t know how much work that had taken.
Or how much remained.
Appearances deceive.
I hadn’t yet learned
to take what she said as an insult—
or that safety doesn’t exist
without danger.
✦✦✦
That poor man wasn’t poor.
He was a target. A screen.
Me—
all instinct,
a honed bullet of assassination efficiency,
trained in our familial school of sniper sarcasm.
Plus, I was a prankster.
The pump of my mischief primed
by Dad,
the drunks,
and their practical jokes.
Was the spectacle I spearheaded just to get Dad’s attention?
✦✦✦
That poor man
wasn’t wealthy either.
Now I know that above-ground pools are pseudo-success.
Still, he—the Fat Man—was grand.
A pristine Panama Hat at the peak.
Below, a mountain of shimmering white suit.
He loomed above the crowd—
taller than all,
wider too.
The sickly cigar.
I smelled him before I saw him.
Mid-summer. Baking sun.
The promises of a pool party—
luxury, richness, relief—
sweet succor amidst the swelter.
✦✦✦
Back then, Dad still met people.
His decline not yet defined.
The ruts of his unraveling not yet deep.
He was ascending,
rising,
fluid.
No longer the vapor of
“he could really be something.”
But not frozen either.
His eyes,
his face—
they shone.
The alcohol not yet perforating him,
making others uncomfortable,
unavoidably present to his poison.
Sure, the divorce had knocked him down.
Living in a mobile home wasn’t good.
But everyone knew it was temporary.
He wasn’t out.
I loved the place—
the blueberry bushes,
the rectangular yard
where Dad would sometimes play catch with me.
We went to bars.
But not yet the bar.
He was still flowing.
Unpredictable.
There were chances for him—
for things to turn out differently.
✦✦✦
I don’t remember who Dad knew at the pool party—
who had invited the divorced man with the son on weekends.
It wasn’t the Fat Man.
He was a stranger to Dad.
And he wasn’t—nor would he ever be—one of Dad’s cronies.
Speculation still simmers.
That day, I sparked a concoction of curiosity,
amusement,
surprise—
and assuredly,
scorn from some.
It could have gone badly.
So all credit to the Fat Man and his good nature.
Good-natured—
and a poser.
If not poor,
certainly nowhere near the American posh he presented.
But the murky mix that made that moment
contained more than money misdirection.
We, the overweight, develop another kind of deception.
Layers of clothes covered him—top to toe.
Even in that heat,
he was vested
and tied.
Wrapped like a gift,
no one would dare—
or desire—
to uncover.
When excess fat piles on flesh and bone,
we don’t want you to see it.
We go to great swathes to dress deceivingly—
as much to fool ourselves as you.
His particular covering also offered the pretense of wealth.
It worked on me.
When I climbed the stairs and saw him—
a glimmering icon of affluence,
the sun’s reflection off those yards of white—
I was stunned.
Stunned into motion.
Attack.
One of the primeval laws of our primitive species:
we tend to castigate, berate, or beat
what we do not understand.
I’d never done anything like it.
✦✦✦
Dad’s foray into trailer park living was brief,
and while his hands were never manicured,
he was also no pugilist—
at least not in the years I knew him.
Our weapons were words.
✦✦✦
That said, the giant girth of the man standing before me
as I stepped onto the deck
provoked something more primal in me.
The closest I’d come to seeing something like him
was on The Beverly Hillbillies.
I misread the rules of the game—
this game,
on this turf,
on that feverish day.
Everywhere else I went with Dad,
I could do no wrong.
My imitations…
of the guys,
the gambling boozers,
my father’s friends,
their razzing,
roasting,
teasing—
it was in fun, right?
Friends—not foes, right?
My mimicking of their mutual mockery,
always aroused amusement
got me
attention
admiration
inclusion—
a seat at the table, at the bar.
✦✦✦
On that flaming day,
I don’t know what possessed me.
Not a religious gathering,
Nary a guest would have pondered
the possibility of that kind of possession,
Though certainly
many spoke the tongues of:
“what got into that boy?”
A better question:
what was coming out of that kid?
I hadn’t yet learned the practices of numbing.
Food was still fun,
and I was decades away from drugs.
✦✦✦
As soon as my first foot landed
on that six-feet-above-the-earth decking,
I was horizontal.
✦✦✦
My family was ferocious
in our ability to assuage personal pain vertically—
put it in the mouth:
ice cream
or vodka—
and something like soothing followed.
The other direction worked too—
it was acceptable to feel a pang,
the hurt of home,
and project it like vomit,
so long as it was packaged as humor.
Eventually I would get so good at that,
I would need sarcasm rehab.
One day, I’d become a harmless hitchhiker—
or seem like one.
✦✦✦
A kaleidoscope produces
infinite constellations of balanced beauty.
The universe we inhabit and are creating
is always even, symmetrical.
✦✦✦
The collision of my hands
with the squish of that man’s belly
could have doubled him over—
folded him in upon himself
like what I learned to do thousands of times in yoga,
the forward bend that lengthens the back.
Or my hands could have simply disappeared,
been absorbed into the fleshy rolls,
invisibly obvious below the screaming white cloth.
Perhaps priests wear black
to repel the projections of the parishioners—
to isolate their holiness from the mundane.
What possessed that kid?
✦✦✦
No warning—
I didn’t get any either.
One minute: wide-eyed wonder…
—After all, it was my first time seeing a pool in person,
even a pauper’s pool.
There was so much to take in—
The next moment: devilish drive.
✦✦✦
I puzzle on it too.
What did get into me?
Beyond that—
why did he comply?
He must have been at least five times my weight.
And yet—
he didn’t double over,
nor did my digits disappear
into the marshmallow of his midsection.
He could have been immovable.
All in an instant that tower toppled—
Like a tree chopped at its base.
And with not enough time for anyone to yell “Timber,”
what had stood tall
traced a tremendous arc
until horizontal and saturated became one.
All eyes were on him
as he found his footing—
chest, shoulders and head soggily visible
above the wet blue horizon.
Time and space resumed around us,
the air singing with the varied vibrations of:
“Oh my God.”
“Are you okay?”
“What happened?”
Some laughs. Some gasps.
The spell was broken.
Krishna started time again
and Arjuna knew he would have to live out his duty.
Likewise, I would fulfill mine.
I would learn to overfill my own skin-bag too.
I would learn to live in the prison of appropriate.
But not yet.
✦✦✦
Even now, it shocks me that I got no punishment.
That’s the parents’ job.
The partygoers were not responsible.
Neither was Dad.
He spoke no praise,
though the corners of his lips conveyed pride.
Only Mom offered reprimand—and even hers lacked conviction.
The party had gone on, after all.
Eventually, discomfort disappeared—
drowned in the spirits.
✦✦✦
The element of surprise
may indeed be the most successful stratagem.
All’s fair in war.
Sport and life too?
Surprises are quick lived.
The results ratify the road taken to get them.
Splashes subside
while waves go on forever.
✦✦✦
The pool’s skin still pulsed,
the mass of the man
churning the chlorinated tide.
For another moment,
I looked down at the Fat Man
whose cigar was gone.
The Panama hat,
once white,
now grey,
lurching against the edge of the pool below my feet,
vainly struggling to still itself
as the sea around it still surged.
