Tumescent Guise
by Uzodinma Okehi
BT by the
microwave, laughing; some unlikely bit about
Haitian dictators, or ancient Rome. Or lecturing
me about my sweat glands. But laughing, always
with that all-over, itchy laugh, so whimsical,
and the worst part was I could see him in his own
mind like some great raconteur. BT was one of
those minefield guys, another one I had to tip-toe
around in the warehouse to keep from going into a
blinding rage. Not that I’d win a fight with
that guy. He was maybe six-four, ugly, big too,
missing teeth, and worse, one of those guys,
he’d read a few books, and now, mid-life,
he’d decided to become poetic. This of
course made him a compulsive liar, he was always
boring into me with some keenly pitched piece of
nonsense, and always topped with some detail that
would have me shrieking inside—for instance,
the day he met the president, long before the
election, before everything. Just two epic men,
equal footing, sharing a laugh, having a smoke
outside a Chicago office building one afternoon.
Who would have thought, yet even then he could
feel a kind of, magnetism—And not even the
story itself! He’d say this while staring
off out the window, into the distance, as if,
what? Then right away he’d rush to the
fountain, you’d have to watch him stand
there gulping water in long, theatrical pulls . .
.
What else?!
Each morning, tying on his little filthy Jamaican
do-rag, as if anointing himself with sacred oil .
. . This in light of the fact we were all
becoming caricatures, half-idiot men toiling year
after year in that warehouse. I say this because
of my own history of compulsive lying, which no
doubt I’ve mentioned elsewhere. Because
it’s hard to hate people, that’s the
thing. I had a girlfriend in college, Elise, and
for no real reason, with her I’d lie about
everything. My exploits, or whatever, and not
even believeable lies, just on and on, while
she’d be getting pissed, nearly choking on
her food, and I’d be sitting across from her
at the kitchen table in her dorm, grinding away,
and she’d never say much, barely a word,
which is I guess is the way to handle it, to
think about that feeling on the inside, reaching
and rotting away, and I remember her giving me
that withering smile.
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