I sometimes called him Normal Norbert because he was anything but. He was Mark Norbert and he was my best friend from about age five through high school. Calling him Normal was always meant to be ironic which is to say that I understood irony from an early age much as I did satire, puns and sarcasm. When it came to comedy, I was especially precocious. All my life people have told me that I should be or should have been a comedian. I never really thought to pursue a career in comedy and I can’t tell you why. I can’t tell you why I left journalism a career in which I’d gotten off to a promising start. I can’t tell you why I wasted so many years not working at my writing. I can’t tell you why I did or did not do many many things. I can’t tell. You. Or me. Why. Dunno. Mystery. But most of those topics are for another time. I can tell you that Normal Norbert was as funny as I was and we laughed and giggled and chortled and guffawed our way through childhood.
I’m on a train. Only passenger. Dead of night. Scenery is shrouded in a low dark fog that neither moon nor stars can penetrate. The train seems to be going way too fast and way too slow at the same time. Clearly, my senses are all out of alignment. I’ve got a book in my lap that I can’t seem to make any progress on despite the fact that I’m enjoying it. It may be Moby Dick but it may also be A Farewell to Arms or Sentimental Education by Flaubert. I’ve had too much coffee and I’m a little bit hungry and a little bit thirsty and I need to pee but not so much that I’m ready to get up and look for the toilet. The train at times seems to be going up a very steep hill and at other times down a sharp incline. I want to cry out of fear but I’m oddly content with my circumstances too. I have a strong feeling of invulnerability and believe I’ll live forever but also worry that the train will plummet into an abyss, or worse, just go on into eternity with me just sitting here. I am glad to be alone but wish for company, someone to talk to. I have a notion that this odd journey would make a great novel but have no desire to be its author. I guess this sums up the vague vulnerability of my life and the state of confusion I often find myself in and why. Why. Why so often do I find solace in humor? It takes me out of that desperate sense of unease and lightens my load. I get a rush from the laughter or the attention my humor gets. I get to feel unabashedly good.
There is more sense to the nonsense and more truth forsooth from a good giggle than all the philosophy you’ll ever read.
A shambling man and not content to stifle myself or the truth behind what others say. I push on always, looking for another way of expressing an intense desire to understand the better self that lied within. Perplexed I laugh and joke and poke and people often flinch. Reflexively I point to the madness of daily life. Strife. And.
Norbert was quirky before it was hip. A natural. We often separated ourselves from boringly conventional friends and shared wry observations on the human condition. Even when we were still just eight years old.
Norbert and I trooping home from school:
“What if you pooped cookies? Would you eat them?” he asked as if it were an important point.
“Eeew, eating poop! That’s disgusting...”
“But,” he insisted, “they would taste like cookies, not like poop. Then you could poop ‘em again and eat again.”
“But eating something that came out of your butt!” I had logic on my side.
“If it tastes good what difference does it make where it came from?”
This conversation seemed as deeply philosophical as any I’d ever had. But it was interrupted when we saw a couple of girls from our class at school on the other side of the street and stuck our tongues out at them.
They responded by shouting something about icky boys. (If they’d only known the nature of the conversation we’d just been engaging in.)
“You’re so smelly we can smell you over here!” Norbert shouted. Not his best line.
A passing car obscured their response and then they disappeared down a side street and we were rid of the sight of “dames” as we called them. Girls were another species to us, a strange one, all the more so because their bodies resembled ours and they spoke the same language. Yet the differences were unmistakeable. I still did not believe they ever had use for bathrooms. Such frilly creatures surely could not engage in the disgusting activities males used toilets for. I could’t imagine what became of their waste, so avoided thinking of it. Girls did not share the same passion we did for sports, instead playing with, of all things, dolls. They also wore dresses and skirts in soft colors like pink and spoke with high voices.
The train is slowing down and is finally pulling into a station. I don’t recognize the name of the stop and wonder if I’ve boarded the wrong train. There’s a map on the wall of the train. It’s all gibberish to me, especially as I don’t recognize any of the names. I reason that if I stay on the train I’ll eventually get somewhere. Somewhere seems a good destination. The train pulls out of the station and I already can’t remember if I had noted any people boarding or getting off. My car is still empty.
Humor is the best medicine and I’ve taken it regularly in large doses. It doesn’t always keep the depression at bay but it can surely mute it, allowing me to survive, at least.
Normal Norbert and I discovered The Beatles the night they appeared on Ed Sullivan. We instantly became devotees. And we’d never even been music fans before. Now we had to grow our hair, buy their albums, employ their lingo and pay attention to how we dressed. It wasn’t long before there was a sudden transformation in the way we viewed girls. Suddenly some of them….attracted us. We noted that there was something alluring about how soft their faces were. How long and silky their hair was. The skin of their legs was enticing. We imagined kissing them. This filled us with equal measures of joy and trepidation. A whole new world had opened up for us but to fully take advantage of it would require going into territory we were wholly unfamiliar with. We were going to have to talk to them. Even before that it was necessary to approach them. How all this could be accomplished seemed a total mystery. We put this aside for awhile and focused on music.
Soon there were others in addition to the Beatles who we listened to, though none could ever supplant them. The radio became a constant companion. We were buying .45s every week — records with two songs on them. There was music aplenty and we reveled in it. Much of it was about love, which got us thinking again about girls. There was no escaping females now. And the time would come to make that first approach. To talk. To maybe become friends. From there kisses would be possible. What would that be like?
The train careens around some corners. Too fast for my liking but I’m getting used to it. I’m still alone although I sense there are people in other cars. The lights flicker making it hard to read, not that I’m trying. I’m suddenly fatigued and realize that this train ride is enervating. I wonder what time it is but can’t be bothered to look at my watch. Another corner taken too fast. I can’t understand why but it seems that we’re always in a tunnel.
Norbert and I took up soccer. I was a natural. He was too — as a goalkeeper. I started to feel cool. I approached girls. Went to a movie with one. Was complimented on my looks. My hair was longer. I was an athlete. Norbert started taking drugs. I wasn’t ready for that. I was more serious about soccer than Norbert. He started listening to different kinds of music that I wasn’t into. We weren’t together constantly anymore. In fact, besides soccer practices and matches, hardly at all. When together we still mase jokes, wry observations, sarcastic comments. Humor kept us connected. Norbert eventually convinced me to try drugs. That brought us together again. Getting high. Then I got a girlfriend and the Normal One, as I call him, and I drifted apart again. He quit soccer. Preferred drugs. I almost never saw him. I heard about him. Hooked on drugs. Kicked out of his parent’s home. Dropped out of school. Arrested. It was hard to tell which stories were true and which weren’t.
The train stops again. As if by magic it’s my stop. I get off, run out of the station into the pouring rain. I feel good and am suddenly full of energy. I only worry about my book getting wet. There’s a rabbit looking at me. Should have been a clue.
I went to college and never saw Normal Norbert again. He moved out of town. The rumors about him stopped. The last one was that he was a heroin addict. I don’t even think of him anymore. In college I make new friends. I also fall in love, several times. Normal Norbert is a memory.
Today I think of him again — I sure miss that guy. I wonder if he’s the rabbit.
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