You Can't Shave

“If this story is a parable, perhaps everyone takes his own meaning from it and reads his own life into it.”- John Steinbeck: The Pearl.

Text, via iPhone: William Potenza to Billy Potenza.

WP: He left me a letter on my lawn last night.

BP: And?

WP: You have no idea how out of hand this has gotten.

BP: What? What is happening?

WP: I’m going to send you a picture. Hold on, unloading groceries.

Photo of a letter in wet grass:

Some nights I sit with my journal, and to my surprise, write questions that I have no idea how they arrived at the end of my pen. Are they even questions?

Yet, there is a question mark, but the candlelight reveals no obvious answers to my query. Has the question revealed my answer? The very fact that I think of it is the answer?

Captain Nas

The Nas is illegible in the rain, but they know him enough. They have known him a long time, and dream of speaking at his funeral if he does not do something to correct himself. However, once another letter arrives in Billy’s yard, dated 125 years previously, do they tell anyone?

Photo of a letter in wet grass:

October 14th, 1899

It is judgment that defeats us. We must be ruthless. There are 85 operating mines around Transvaal. I, having arrived in 1885, have just secured my right to vote, which was hastily taken from me by these Dutch monkeys that call themselves Boers. Afrikaneers are nothing but a plague that must be eliminated. They have disconnected themselves from the continent and claim to be white. Germans have done nothing but applaud the suppression of British migrant workers. The Kaiser, Wilhien II, had to write a rather embarrassing letter to his grandmother, Queen Victoria, and long may she reign. She is the empress of India. She is the empress over the entirety of the British Empire, and it is lucky she sleeps, since the sun never sets where we have stepped.

Captain Nas

The Potenzas decide to involve X’s family. Lil Nas X has refused help when spoken to in person. They reach out to his siblings, but it furthers his resolve that everything is ok. Billy Potenza writes Lil Nas an email:

I love you. For your own sake, please, do not refrain from getting all the help you deserve. We will be by your side, as always, but we will not watch you die.

Billy

Lil Nas X boards a train to Oklahoma. He requests mosquito nets, though there is no reason other than he has just read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad for the first time, and then watched Heart of Darkness, the documentary about filming Apocalypse Now!, which he watched last, on the train. He continues to write letters like a Conservative British politician in 1899, and an older Ranger at the height of the Vietnam War in 1969. He demands the A/C be turned off so he can toss, turn, and shout, “What year does it matter?” The staff assigned to him must, according to the year of his journal, also be dressed, with the cadence and mannerisms matching the time period. Lil Nas X looks out the window, across America, shirtless and sweating. He searches for madness and eventually finds it, with a young attendant turned actor named Stuart who proclaims to be something bigger than this train, bigger than Lil Nas X. This skinny, black kid sits across from him, and sponges his shaved head.

“Captain X, if I tell you everything, can you promise me you will go to my home on the outskirts of Cleveland in Shaker Heights and tell my son everything you saw?”

Lil Nas eats from a small bowl of rice and nods.

“Are you sure, Lil Nas?” asks Kurtz. “You will do this for me? They won’t understand my talking to such a famous country and pop music star as yourself.”

Lil Nas X does not like this and throws the rice at the window.

“I am none of that! What are you?”

“Certainly not a star. I’m the only person who was willing to be in this train car with you. My name is.”

“Shut up! Continue, Col. Kurtz. Why is it that only you will be in this train car?”

The sun has given her its last light. The train car is dark until a light above is turned on. All they both know is that it is sways.

“Because I want to be?”

“CCaptainNas.”

“Captain Nas,” repeated Col. Kurtz.

There is a white mouse on the ground that is easy to catch, and Kurtz has it in his hands. He holds it up to the light, as if he means to lick it.

“What do you think of life, Captain Nas?”

The star’s chest decreases by two inches during his exhale.

“What do you want?” he asks.

“That’s the problem with me, Captain Nas. It’s either classified or delusional. Do you hear the train outside?”

Lil Nas X had eaten a bad shrimp cocktail before deciding he interacted at different times. He lunged forward and released what he could into the toilet close to Col. Kurtz’s head. There was a knock on the cabin door, but Captain Nas demanded that everyone dress as Indian Warriors before they dared enter, lest they be chopped from the payroll. Though some tried to enter in a cloth, it wasn’t until they stopped in Phoenix and picked up a couple of AN/VRC-46 FM radios that he forbade everyone but Col. Kurtz from his cabin. If they needed to reach him, there was the radio.

“PBR street gang, over? This is almighty, over? This is almighty, how do you copy?”

Lil Nas unplugged the radio.

“They want me,” he said. “They’re coming to get me. Got too big too fast, but maybe I’m wrong. I’m from Atlanta. Where are you from?”

Kurtz never stopped sponging his shaved head.

“Have you been out of the country?”

“I’ve toured the world.”

“Mhm. I’m from a place called Evansville, Indiana. Ever heard of it?”

“I’ve been there, shit. Indiana is a strange state. A Democratic governor for 20 years dwindled to a single congressman and mayor after Obama. Tell me about that? Voted for Obama too, in ‘08.”

“That it did,” said Kurtz. “Do you have a moment to hear about where I grew up?”

Lil Nas X got on his elbows.

“That I do.”

“Where I’m from no longer exists. You can think about it any which way you like, but it is simply not there.”

Kurtz paused, sponging his head. He looked up at Captain Nas with golden eyes and wounds across each eyelid. He continues, “I cannot see it.”

Lil Nas sat up and then slowly lay back down.

“Tell it to me.”

Kurtz did not breathe. There was no sigh or inhale. He looked into a corner of nothing and said, “We were farmers. We did not own the land, but we worked it, and you?”

“Housing complex. Bankhead Courts in Atlanta, and then I went to live with my father, a gospel singer, up in Austell.”

The sponging continued.

“Your mother?”

“She struggles with addiction, and yours?”

“Dead.”

Lil Nas stared.

“Did your mother stand outside a McDonald’s asking for money?”

“No,” said Kurtz. “The opposite.”

Lil Nas rose and laughed.

“So we are the opposite?”

“I hear you, too, struggle with addiction. That you are on your way, right now, to rehab.”

“Fuck that shit! Who do you take your orders from?”

He had him there. He worked for the railroad and hoped to break into the movie industry. He was playing a character. Col. Kurtz’s name was Jesse.

“You,” he said.

“That’s right! Now, put that sponge on your head and be Col. Kurtz!”

Jesse tried, but he couldn’t. He cried. Said it was wrong.

“Fuck you! What’s wrong?”

“The way you’re acting,” said Jessie. “This isn’t right. You need to go to rehab.”

“Oh, do I?”

And that thought came with the cloud that covered the sun. He held up his hand.

“I’m a water buffalo, Jessie, you must understand this.”

“What?”

From behind Lil Nas’s X back, he retrieved a bamboo-mounted blade.

“I need you to slaughter me while The Doors play.”

Jessie was wide-eyed and did not mince words.

“You’re insane. You need to go to rehab.”

He tried leaving the room, but Captain Nas slammed the door with his foot and demanded that everyone on the other side lock it with bags of rice. Jessie looked at him and asked, “What do you want?”

Lil Nas X was surprised. No one had ever asked him that except drug dealers and those who hung on. He thought about it as the clouds parted and the sun found his beautiful face. He knew everyone wanted him to go to rehab. His eyes were dry, and when he closed them, tears fell from each. His skin was the envy of the countryside, but what he felt, he could not see in others’ eyes. Jessie looked at him, covered in mock-war paint, and asked again, “What do you want?” Lil Nas crossed his arms and sighed. Hearing it a second time was reassuring, and a realization of what he could do to put those he loved at ease. He would never go for himself. Life was good, but the thought of the pain and suffering he had caused and inflicted on others he loved made him decide to change course. The rehab was in Oklahoma City, but he got off in Flagstaff, determined to find his own.

I woke up right about then. It was a dream, and I was under the covers.

No one else is in the room with me, but I have an appointment I will miss.

It’s cold. It’s always really cold here. You can't shave.