Life Is A Temporary Position - Chapter 1: Introduction
by Ross W. Allaire

There's no right place or way to begin this whole thing, not anymore. I've been daring myself to write something about my life for at least the last few centuries, aching and dying to set words down about how weird it is to be able set these words down, and not die, and I just get lost in the whole process. I lose momentum. Then somewhere in the middle of it, tragedy strikes or whatever, and I usually have to move, and/or lose or shed all my possessions, and I put it off for another few more decades.

Back in the 1980s I had hoped the advent of digital media would aid in the process of keeping shit from one life to the next, but no. This is my 8th fucking try with this thing...

There's no right way to begin... there's no right way.

One time I was at this bar in Detroit, and a man in a blue jumpsuit with leather hands and a bald head said something like: "Y'see, there are shitty jobs and shitty lives, and they're both the same way: you either quit and hope there's another one, or you stick it out and chance getting fired anyway."

Life is a temporary position.

For a while, I made a good living as a temp at this pharmaceutical research firm a few miles from Princeton University. $13.75 an hour to stare into a light bar all day, "blinding & labeling" x-rays for eventual perusal by their vampiric diagnostic team, in a darkened room with walls full of lightboards. By the time the x-rays got to that end of the system I'd have already blotted out the patient's names except the first letters with a paint marker that got me high after an hour straight. 'Breathing breaks' were pretty much mandatory, and I'd smoke cigarettes out back (with their IT team) for irony's sake.

I did this for a year.

For a week, as a member of a temp work crew, I built metal supply shelves in a startup mechanic shop in the worst neighborhood in the city. I forget what city. Some of the other men on the crew were ex-cons, most if not all had been arrested and been through the system at least once. I was the only Caucasian among them - long, straight black hair and a short goatee, nosering, black eyeliner. I wore black metal rings on every other finger. We all had a great time on that job... cleaning up the joint, building those stupid shelves, just us guys grunting and cursing our way through the task, a cooler full of waters and sodas (replaced by a smaller one of beers later), and all of us cracking jokes and coughing. Latino thug, old black guy, young black kid, Mexican middle-aged dude with a scar and missing finger.

Old black guys asks me, "You married?" over a cigarette

"Nah..."

"Don't get married."

I laugh. "You got it."

So many are born on this earth an then die without so much as a half century between the two events; even less in which to be a "productive" member of society, if that opportunity even be available. I'm amazed that any impact is even made by one person or another, save for procreation (of course) and self-destruction. Whole armies' worth of slaves/workers toil for years to erect a building or a bridge or a statue that can outlive them tenfold, but it only takes one person one second to destroy it with enough premeditation.

'If time is evanescent, than I alone seem solid.'

That statement didn't make much sense when I said it to a physicist, either, but I just like the sound of it.

But it went over real well at beat jams in Greenwich Village.

Over the years... I just forget most of this stuff, anyway.

I mean, would you really believe me if I stated under oath or whatever that not one, nor a few, but several full centuries have passed since my birth? I shouldn't think so.

If our places were exchanged, and I were reading a manuscript such as this, with a declaration such as that, I would not necessarily think, but really know that it was a work of fiction. 'That kinda thing doesn't happen.' But factual it is, that I have outlived all others in this world, so far as I've known.

I especially revel in my outliving of beings who thought they were of high purpose: despots with wrathful fists, wizards and warriors whose strengths proved weak, prophets of apocalypses which never materialized, and lovers who could never glean what wisdom I had to offer - if there indeed be any...

* * * * *

The place of my birth is a mystery. I don't even know who or what I really am. My true age is a mystery, as with most truths. As far as I know, I have always been the way I am. I grew up, was a child, became a man, and then reached an age that I never surpassed. The psychological damage has been pretty severe, I guess. My dreams are still often of meeting my real parents somehow, even though it's ridiculous; or just seeing them, from outside a window of their house, watching them. As a child, with this dream, I prayed the fates grant me that Almost moment, the temptation of barging in suddenly giving way to that iconic and stereotypical sentimentality for familial imagery. I would gaze in, swoon, "They look so happy," and go home in tears. But it never happened in real life. Now sometimes I dream of cross-examining them, treating them as hostile witnesses, shouting, releasing vitriolic witticisms at lightning-fast speeds, imprisoning and torturing them using cruel and highly unusual punishments, in addition to the usual cruel methods... I dream of biting their faces off, leaving only ears and the mouth to take my questions and give me some fucking answers, if only to save themselves.

A French couple raised me as their own, and I looked nothing like them. At the time, my own complexion was fair, a nice strawberry blonde and blue-eyed cutie. (Eventually my hair turned dirty blonde and my eyes faded to grey. None of that matters now, anyway. Only I know.)

When I was 7 years old, they told me I was not their own because I had started asking questions naturally, why did I look different than them, and all others, it seemed? And they told me the story, my story:

They were walking along a protected beach, and heard a crying sound, unlike anything they had ever heard. It came from the ocean. My dad, Jean-Luc, ran and dove toward it, with his wife Marie at the very edge of the shore clasping the seams of her dress. He found a baby gurgling in the water, held partially afloat by a large batch of seaweed and driftwood. The newborn baby boy had pneumonia, and "was paler than chalk, but had wide-open and bright blue eyes, and a healthy tongue!"

Marie and Jean-Luc never conceived a child of their own, but not for lack of trying. As best I can judge, this was sometime in the 12th Century AD.

* * * * *

I'm not crazy.

Ok, I'm probably half-crazy; two-thirds, tops...

I'm thinking I should have tried to write this as fiction or something, change all the names and places, and place names... get myself into some character... pour myself into that mold, like, and make he and I just that much different. It would be a young Thelonious Ashcroft Wannamaker that turned up on that beach, instead of me, with some sexy scar on my hand or forehead and a birthright to claim or something... something to prove to somebody, some higher purpose or series of revelations about something... but I've had none of that for almost a thousand years - no one remotely akin to me.

So I guess it makes no difference really, if this were fact or fiction, if I added or subtracted to the story itself, my story, and whether my name was Noah or Mohinder or John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt, it's still up to you to believe it.

...let alone fucking buy it, right?

My name is Mud.

If the, uh, book or whatever (because books are dying) was successful, even moderately, then at least I could live that reclusive writer life and none might be the wiser. And if it never sold a single fucking copy, then who the fuck really cares? I've survived much worse. I mean, which is more plausible, a recovering paranoid schizophrenic agoraphobic eccentric virtuoso savant, or an immortal being? Right?

No interviews, scant new material, rumoured substance abuse. Fake the death, and move on.

I've done it sooooooooooo many times... ...even in the medieval days there were artists dropping dead at 27.

The same ritual, with all the details changed... all the interrogatives that place CSIU stereotypes on the scene - dark age counterparts included - looking and feeling and speaking in low tones with clenched jaws about what they must be missing, here... there have probably been enough close calls I've imagined, but none have sniffed me out. Besides, I sleep soundly thinking that if someone were to suspect me of... well, of immortality, my myriad connections would see to it that he or she was silenced, even without me knowing.

Shit, that's probably happened already.

I'm a Grand High Eye Ruler Mason, for fuck's sake.

I'm a Grand Royal Saintly Knight of over a hundred different saintly orders.

I've been knighted 6 times by four different royal houses on two continents.

I received several chests-worth of medals from a nation on every continent (except the obvious), and have been personally pardoned by the rulers of 12 different countries. Three of them were from two separate governments of the same country - for helping overthrow the previous one, of course, and then again some years later. I've been thinking of overturning it again...

I'm a Supreme Seat Kiwanis Double-Honoree.

I'm a High Grand Old Royal Bearded Elk.

I'm a Grand Falloon.

I'm a Vigil in the Order of the Arrow. My Native American name means Bottomless Waterfall.

I'm Marine Special Forces.

I'm an Army Ranger.

I'm a Navy Seal.

I'm a Coast Guard.

I'm Cinco, a pilot shot down over Italy in WWII.

I'm a New Jersey State Trooper.

I'm a Beefeater.

I'm an astronaut.

I'm an ordained 'something' in 23 religions.

I technically hold honorary doctorates of 18 sciences, and a real one of 5. But all of the diplomas have been lost, and they were all under different names anyway...

I really enjoy being that older guy with his own room in your college dorm. The 'chicks' may stay the same age, but so do I.

I helped found Skull and Bones.

I founded a Dead Poets Society. I doubt they kept it up very long after I pretended to kill myself. (I had facial reconstructive surgery and moved to NJ again, this time as an oncologist.)

I'm in KKK and the Klu Klux Klan and Al-fucking-Qaeda and PETA and MoveOn.org and the NRA.

If I'm not crazy, I probably should be.

Numbers are ugly. Naked numbers are revolting.

My numbers:

I have $17 trillion spread out over 4 continents. I've caused runs on banks, and governments to collapse (or nearly do so). I have 77 bank accounts and safe-deposit boxes, 53 houses, and 16 apartments. I own one castle, and it's actually pretty small.

I can convincingly speak over 30 languages in multiple dialects. Two of my doctorates are in linguistics, after all. My "natural" accent is completely obliterated, just a matter of academics. It's X, and I've probably imitated it at some point unknowingly.

I've met 4 werewolves, 23 little people, 5 dwarfs, 22 hermaphrodites, an elf, an alien, and 16 people over 8 feet tall.

I met a person that was 157 years old in the pre-Revolutionary period. She was still beautiful.

I have never met a vampire (and therefore do not think they exist, which sucks - I'd love to try it), and I have never met another person with my "ability," but that's not surprising. I've fooled about 30 billion people over the course of it, right? - I could be fooled just the same.

But my counterpart may yet be out there.

My family may be out there.

A nemesis may be out there.

Highly more likely:

My next ex-girlfriend or ex-wife may be out there.

I have ultimately lost count of how many girlfriends, lovers, wives, mistresses, concubines and love-or-sex-slaves I've had. I'd estimate that I've used prophylactics 0.0001% of the time. But I have never been party to a conception. Apparently it's part of my ability, because if it were a medical problem it would heal, like everything else, over time. I consider it a gift in this way. I wouldn't want my precious international nest eggs to be nibbled away by international child support payments. The paper trail alone would eventually doom me, and eventually they'd unwittingly inbreed or something... not pretty. Thank you, Fate.

* * * * *

I've done and quit pretty much every addictive and/or mind-altering substance known to science thru the ages.

I don't really recommend any of it.

They're making these cigarettes that you can start out with as regular, then click it and it becomes menthol... and that may just cause me to reverse 3 years of non-smoking. Good job, R & D.

Twice now, I've had tracheotomy status, then healed, and then started smoking again. I healed slowly, like any otherwise healthy 27-year-old might with the best healthcare money can buy. I have the same healthcare plan as The Pope, technically - just flat out having enough fucking money to throw at the hospital to make something like a bill or a fee a moot point, all their eyes fill with dollar signs and you somehow automatically get the best free shit gold standard no pain no worries healthcare that Hippocrates himself wished he had.

The American system is fair, all right... You got cash?

I've kicked heroin in Baghdad, Amsterdam, Dublin, Ontario, Venezuela, Algiers, and San Francisco. I OD'd in New Amsterdam and Constantinople.

I got hooked on and then kicked cocaine in Cuba in the months before the Revolution. On a binge, I apparently shot 43 people on a yacht, tried to perform a Communist Manifesto musical, and then ran the boat aground and set it on fire. Of course, I was a CIA agent at the time... really shouldn't have blown that life, it was the perfect cover. All I'd to do was keep two informants within reach, one of which I slept with (I mean that's pretty much agency regulation), and semi-annually write a summary thesis for a draft of a National Intelligence Estimate, the credit for which goes to some Cuba Bureau lackey from the FBI to pass on to Navy captains holding training exercises in the Caribbean. Piece of fucking cake.

But instead I snorted about nine hundred large of taxpayer dollars up my nose and my informant's noses; and some of it was snorted off of the one informant's thighs and breasts.

Thanks for that.

Crack never really interested me, but I did it anyway. My heart rate is either too slow or too sensitive for it, and I had a sudden heart attack, or an overdose. My poor pump whelped and bucked like a bulldog in cat fight, and all the cups of coffee I had drank emptied into my pants all at once as I keeled over to one side.

The girl sitting across the mattress from me took the rest of the shit and ran for her life. This was in a second-floor motel room in Erie, Indiana. I didn't think I would make it either, the way my heart hurt. But a few seconds went by in numb silence as I lay dead, awake to everything. I found I could still see about the room, and into the hall. I could hear the girl practicing her lines if anyone asked if she'd seen me, standing before the front door.

Then what felt like a belch crept up from my gut.

My diaphragm seemed to slap the rest of my organs, and the wave of fluids sent my heart into some standby mode, just enough power to run some deep subsystem in the brain. I was sucked back from the hall, and my eyes flickered without movement as my drug friend made her discreet exit. When I finally was able to twitch half of my iris, (I saw) a bolt of lightning (which) came out of the ceiling and went straight into my chest. The girl was reaching for the doorknob, frozen in time, as a little spark of static electricity licked her finger. My old, dead heart jiggled and danced on fire until it found the beat of the song and slowed to a walking march. The door ajar, the girl shortcutting through forest to get to a bar across town. My heart kept time with her booted footfalls.

And I was out of that town like yesterday's fucking news.

The girl was questioned, and her story was straight. But it wasn't police, it was inquiries of friends and lovers, as she told parts of the story one night or another. There was no body, no crime, no evidence except for my leftover urine, which was cleaned by a team of sisters from what was then Yugoslavia. I had nothing there of any consequence, at the time (or ever, I guess), and so I flew to Moscow with a different identity. The girl's story was so straight she often wondered if that's not what actually happened (attempted rape, and she ran away), instead of a junkie buddy crashing and going out of it hardcore right there. Who's to say?

This contradiction of memories and emotions (as well as prior sexual abuse, of course) created a secondary personality shortly after my third-anniversary junkie memorial at her 12-step group. It was me, talking about race cars and Rush. With some familial intervention and low-wattage ECT she was cured (and away went 'Rex'), and she wrote a book about her road to recovery, which was actually considered for inclusion of Oprah's list.

The book includes the story of me, but I beg to differ, madam: the description and mannerisms are all wrong. I should know, I was the one pretending to be one of them for six months, born and raised a Hoosier, and lovin' it.

To them, I completed the cycle - dyin' a Hoosier.

The new identity I assumed after that was, and always is, prepared for me by the black market. Mafioso, Mafia, Yakuza, Reds, the Black Hand, Latin Kings, Crips, Bloods, Bulldogs, Pikers, Psychos, Nazis, the Irish, the Rastas... they've always been there for me. Even Mossad came thru once. They didn't know I was as "high-level" in The Agency as I really was... am. (I mean, shit... I've hazed a few Directors in college. But I'm always some nobody in the background of these places, showin' the kids how it's done.) None of the men I usually meet to exchange money for fresh papers are ever the same, and none of them know me; but a small, select few know of me. I place a call to the right number, ask for the right name, talk to the right head man with the right accent and birthright, and quote a few lines of a secret message that his father taught to him as a boy: a three-syllable riddle, in a dead language, which he answers in three syllables. I've forgiven people for fucking it up a little over the years. I really should come up with a new thing...

Anyway, with that message, they'll do things for me that no man should think another could do, just at the flip of a finger, the raise of an eyebrow. It's like I'm god to these people. After these exchanges, if all goes well I'm gone, and I leave them more money than they've ever seen in their lives.

Usually I just feel like puking.

By the time I write again, I will probably be a different person, with a different name and face and accent, in a different part of the world. I hope the computer I'm using can read this file. I hope this thing stays with me, this time. I hope this is the last try.

But I doubt it.

[More to come, if you want it. +RA]