The Future Won't Be Long by Jarett Kobek

Author:Jarett Kobek
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2017-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

MAY 1992

Baby Goes to Erik’s Hometown

Erik asked me to visit his hometown. I wanted to shout, No, absolutely not, not now, not ever!

—Honey, said Erik, you can meet my mother.

My beau begged. I resisted. He demanded. I refused. The barometric pressure dropped. A storm grew on the horizon. So I agreed. I said we’d do it. I’d acquiesce. I’d visit Narberth, Pennsylvania.

We picked a weekend in mid-May, after semester’s end. Which was also the end of my time at New York University. Graduation loomed.

I kept this momentous event on the sly, avoiding conversations about its possible meaning, adamant in my refusal to attend the ceremony. I had no taste for the flavor of tiny American piety of the commencement address.

And mine was to be no typical ceremony.

Three weeks prior to graduation, a septuagenarian resident of Yonkers named Stella G. Maychick lost control of her Oldsmobile Delta 88 and crashed through the western entrance of Washington Square Park. Mrs. Maychick injured twenty-seven and killed five. One of the deceased was a sophomore at NYU, his bleeding body crushed atop the graves of twenty thousand.

The university always scheduled its commencements in Washington Square. There was no time to find a new location. Hallowed ground newly made, the site of a student’s tragic demise.

I imagined Dr. L. Jay Oliva, our university president, offering a speech rife with the stupidities and reassurances that make unwelcome appearances at every funeral, any tragedy, all unexpected deaths. Always remember. Better place. Never forget. Honored friends. Trusted memories. Carry on.

Complete and total horseshit. Only time salves the wounds of loss. Year after year until failing synapses dull away the pain.

My last few nights as a student were spent writing a paper on Don Quixote and another examining Etruscan images of Lucretia. With these minor works completed, a sense of finality washed over my frame. I’d spent four years in the womb of NYU. There was no going back. Time to be reborn.

That Friday, Erik and I navigated the labyrinth of the Port Authority, climbing aboard a dingy Greyhound bus on the lower level. I hadn’t been on a bus since my arrival in New York. I hadn’t been outside of the boroughs in almost four years.

I’d decided to embrace the trip and the suburban weekend. Our relationship needed the time. Neutral space away from New York was an absolute requirement. It had become clear that I’d have to level with Erik about my literary output.

He knew nothing of the stories, of the publication credits, nothing about the endless span of effort.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell him, but I was embarrassed that there was a thing in my life that mattered. I was ashamed that I’d done anything. Faced with the flaws in my writing, and the atrocious aesthetics of science fiction digests, I’d never mentioned my relative achievements.

By the fifth published story, it was easier to pretend as if it was happening to another person.

The pretense was now impossible. I’d met with Parker Brickley, the

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