God's Gym by John Edgar Wideman Page B

of me. In my defense I'll say it's too easy to feel what the players feel. Been there, done that. Too easy, too predictable. Of course not all players alike. Each one different from the other as each is different from the driver. But crammed in the Studebaker with someone not one of them at the wheel, players share a kind of culture, cause when you get right down to it, the shit's out of your hands, anybody's hands, ain't nowhere to go but where you're going so kick back and enjoy the ride. Or ignore the ride. Hibernate in your body, your good, strong, hungry player's body. Eat yourself during the long ride. Nourish your muscle
with muscle, fat with fat, cannibalizing yourself to survive. Cause when the cargo door bangs open you better be ready to explode out the door. Save yourself. Hunker down. Body a chain and comfort. Body can be hurt, broken, disappear as smoke up a chimney, but because we're in this together, there's a temporary sense of belonging, of solidarity and weight while we anticipate the action we know is coming. Huge white flakes tumbling down outside, but you crouch warm inside your body's den, inside this cave of others like you who dream of winning or losing, of being a star or a chump, inventing futures that drift through your mind, changing your weatherscape, tossing and turning you in the busy land of an exile's sleep. If it ain't one thing it's another, raging outside the window, my brothers. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
    Whatever I pretend to be, I'm also one of them. One of us riding in our ancient, portable villages. Who's afraid of insane traffic, of howling plains, howling savages.
Howling. Savages.
Whoa. Where did those words come from. Who invented them. Treacherously, the enemy's narrative insinuates itself. Takes over before you realize what's going on. Howling savages. It's easy to stray. Backslide. Recycle incriminating words as if you believe the charges they contain. Found again. Lost again.
Howling savages.
Once you learn a language, do you speak it or does it speak you. Who comes out of your mouth when you use another's tongue. As I pleaded above, the mystery, the temptation to be other than I am disciplines me. Playing the role of a character I am not, and in most circumstances would not wish to be, renders me hyperalert. Pumps me up, and maybe I'm most myself not playing myself.
    Please. If you believe nothing else about me, please believe I'm struggling for other words, my own words, even if they seem to spiral out of a mind, a mouth, like the driver's, my words, words I'm trying to earn, words I'm bound to fall on like a sword if they fail me. In other words I understand what it's
like to be a dark passenger and can't help passing on when I speak the truth of that truth. What I haven't done, and never will, is be him, a small, pale, scared hairy mammal surrounded by giant carnivores whose dark bodies are hidden by darkness my eyes can't penetrate, fierce predators asleep or maybe prowling just inches away and any move I make, the slightest twitch, shiver, sneeze,
fluup
it's my nature to produce, risks awakening them.
    Imagine a person in the car that snowy night, someone at least as wired as the driver, someone as helplessly alert, eyes hooded, stocking-capped hair hidden by a stingy brim, someone who has watched night fall blackly and falling snow mound in drifts taller than the Studebaker along fences bordering the highway, imagine this someone watching the driver, trying to piece together from the driver's movements and noises a picture of what the man at the wheel is thinking. Maybe the watcher's me, fresh from the Minneapolis conference, attempting to paint a picture of another's invisible thoughts. Or perhaps I'm still in my lime chair inventing a car-chase scene. You can't tell much by studying my face. A player's face disciplined to disguise my next move. Player or not, how can you be sure what someone else is thinking. Or seeing. Or saying. A different world inside