“There is no future. This is not pessimism but the borderland of science, where time is only the present tense. Even that word is not sufficient. It confuses me.”
 
That is the voice of Quentin Foster traversing the airwaves at the dead of night, subversive and soothing, edgy and plain-speaking, beloved of insomniacs, or just those who find themselves awake and wondering about things.
 
He has a mellifluous voice, confident and unaffected. It draws you in. You can only hear him on Tuesday nights into Wednesday mornings. I have become an avid listener. I don’t watch television anymore and don’t listen to the radio either, beyond my stint with QF, as I call him. His late night show has come to calibrate my week.
 
I am waiting for dawn with my feet on the table. He seems to be speaking a blend of poetry and science. I don’t think he means what he says. That is not a bad thing. He is just telling a story, but he does not conform to literary expectations. His story has no plot and no resolution. It is not fiction but it is not fact. It is not false either. He has a peculiar rhythm, more to do with the juxtaposition of meanings than the sound of his words or their metre.
 
“Ganglions extend then retract in the constant search for food. Each one would look to the other like a different individual, though they all share the same body—the plasmodium, the paragon of shape-shifting. It is intelligent but has no brain.”
 
He is not proselytizing or trying to sell any particular idea or creed, but his purpose must be more than entertainment. It carries you along like the current in a river. You just have to jump in.
 
I’ve been standing there on the bank of his river, desiring to jump but hesitant, waiting to make up my mind. I have trouble in that regard, due to a lack of sleep. Three hours a night has put me on the road to perdition as far as medical opinion goes. My risks of accident, stroke and heart disease have increased by shocking percentage values but I don’t feel bad. I have become acclimated to fatigue. I don’t notice it anymore. I’m not like one of those businessmen who brag about how little sleep they get—all in the name of work, as if that was something to be proud of. I’m not a tortured insomniac either. I get tired in the evening and sleep for a couple of hours. I usually wake up about the same time as QF’s show, then later I nap for an hour. I like to be up before dawn, because that is the cleanest time of day. There is something about the night that filters out pollution, both chemical and psychological. If you walk through a city before dawn you can appreciate sublime mysteries until the sufferings of daytime come and chase them away. Drudgery usually occurs during daylight hours. QF offers hope. It just seems absurd to put too much trust in the radio. So I stand on the bank.
 
“I am staring at a glassy lake. The surface is calm, with barely a ripple and I am examining the reflected clouds, in ever more detail, trying to classify them. Along the shoreline I see trees and their reflections joined by the roots. My concentration has almost caused me to forget that I am gazing at a lake, when a cormorant suddenly plummets into the water and the clouds and trees instantly disappear. Reality is shattered.”
 
He lulls and then he jolts, often making a statement with a contradiction. It’s a simple technique, but effective when used in conjunction with his other talents—the quality of his voice, his choice of words and his delivery, which ranges from mildly combative to hypnotic. I heard he used to be a priest or a monk. Whether he was defrocked or left of his own free will, I’m not sure. Perhaps he had been a student studying to be a priest in a seminary school. I don’t know much about him but I realise that I am attracted to apostasy. There is something appealing about abandoning a firmly held belief.
 
“There’s an invisible foundation, probably pertaining to cohesion. If you believe that, you’ll believe anything.”
 
Most people despise and mistrust an apostate, especially those whose fold has been left. I suppose a group of people, or a tribe defines itself through its shared beliefs. When a member reneges, not only is he a traitor but his act is perceived as threatening the very nature of his group’s survival. So an apostate gains power, more perhaps than if he were just a follower. That might explain my attraction. But what about an apostate who already has power? The only one I can think of is the erudite emperor Julian, who was honoured by having ‘the Apostate’ written after his name. That was about sixteen hundred years ago. Of course if you adhere to the opinions that QF professes to have about time, where past and future are different geographical locations on the infinite plain that is the present, Julian is probably still alive somewhere, as is QF himself, who died about five years ago—probably killed by his cat. Who knows?
 
When Julian was dying, aged about thirty-one, he was purported to have said that the Galilean had won. The irony of his apostasy is that he tried to restore paganism but he made it into an organized religion, which paganism never was. In that respect it was more akin to the Christianity in which he had been raised. So in the end he was right. The Galilean did win. It raises the question as to how possible it is to escape from the inculcations received in youth—a bleak question.
 
“There’s no point in separating the internal from the external. Better to take the roof off your house.”
 
My unorthodox sleeping practices have led me to take my three hours in different places—sometimes on the floor, or on a table, in a chair perhaps. I don’t want to be limited to a bedroom. Each different locale provides a subtly different experience, confirmed by the various aches that move from limb to limb when I wake up. I shake them out on my early morning walk.
 
One morning it was raining and instead of walking, I decided to take my bike. Rain ceases to be an annoyance when you resign yourself to getting wet. But still, I probably chose to ride because I believed I would spend less time in the deluge. That kind of hypocrisy is perfectly acceptable in oneself, just not in others.
 
I headed west through the empty streets of Soho, skidding across cobblestones and getting soaked.
 
As I passed the intersection of Spring and Thompson streets I suddenly saw a man sitting on one of the concrete benches by the chess tables. He was wearing a suit and tie and sat upright and motionless as the rain cascaded off his body. His face was impassive—completely expressionless. Such an incongruity was a shocking sight. Barely had I noticed him than I had already passed him by. I wanted to go back for another look but did not. To go back and gape, as if he were an exhibit, would be a theft of his solitude.
 
The image stayed in my mind and disturbed me. I felt my feet push harder on the pedals.
 
This man looked unnaturally real in a false kind of way, like an effigy in a wax museum. That was what troubled me, I realised—he was alive but had become an effigy of himself. Death in life. He may have just been enjoying the pre-dawn hours as I liked to do but I assumed he was suffering—from a tragic event, or abject depression perhaps. His utter lack of concern for the elements suggested that.
 
“The ‘Human Condition’ is a term much bandied about, especially in relation to writing. It has become inherently hackneyed and has lost its value. After all, anything a human does, thinks or feels, is part of the human condition. That’s obvious. It’s a wide open field. So wide you can’t see it. The term would be put to better use to describe the condition of humanity, and that, simply put, is that humans believe they are more real than they actually are.”
 
One thing I believe I’ve learned from QF is that the only things worth looking for are those which cannot be found. He spoke about that once and had some reasoning to go with it. His explanation escapes me, but the statement still resonates. If I was to look for something that couldn’t be found, where would I turn? That’s when I began to think I could compile a miniature philosophy inspired by the sayings of Quentin Foster. He was dead but still managed to speak. That was enigma enough. QF was not someone who could be found. It would have been convenient if he was the effigy I had just seen on Spring street but then he wouldn’t be worth looking for.
 
I turned back east on Prince Street and headed over to an after hours bar on Avenue B. I chained my bike to a railing and went inside, downing four glasses of bad wine in quick succession. Seeing that man in the rain still disturbed me. Drinking the wine was a way to relax and I sat at the bar, looking at the other night creatures but not bothering to talk to them.
 
“Are you gay?”
 
A man had taken the barstool next to me and was trying to engage me in conversation, which was the last thing I wanted.
 
“No.”
 
“I think you are. You just don’t know it.”
 
I didn’t answer. I felt a kind of claustrophobia. I had come to this place to experience privacy among strangers and now the opposite was being foisted upon me.
 
“You’re gay. I can tell.”
 
Was I going to have to produce a wedding ring I did not own? A rage came upon me. I wanted to get off my bar stool and smash it over this idiot’s head. Instead I swivelled the seat and turned away from him. I could understand how women must feel so much of the time, warding off men who would accept no refusal.
 
I tried to take refuge in the sayings of Quentin Foster and searched for a way I could weave them into a philosophy someone could live by. QF often mentioned ganglions, as if implying that all beings were the ever changing limbs of one individual, like some giant slime mould. The Plasmodium.
 
If that was the case, this buffoon who was still talking to the back of my head was a part of me, and I of him. Not a pretty idea. For some reason I thought of Averroes. There was a connection. I wasn’t imagining that he had stumbled across the plain of time, leaving Moorish, mediaeval Spain to reappear in the 1980’s with a radio show in New York. It was more a connection of ideas, specifically Averroes’ idea of intellectual unity, Islamic jurisprudence aside. QF took it a step further, including physical unity.
 
All of a sudden I felt a terrible nausea, perhaps an emotional reaction to the predator sitting next to me, or more likely due to the rotgut wine. I ran to the bathroom and threw myself to my knees before the rancid toilet bowl that had no seat. Even despite the nausea—a feeling that takes top rank among all hierarchies, I was able to fleetingly see myself as supplicant in some perverse religious ritual. I looked haggard in the mirror. The tap didn’t work, so I couldn’t clean up.
 
When I stepped back into the bar, feeling shaken but a little relieved, the taste of vomit still in my mouth, a woman who was standing in the corridor outside the bathroom took me in her arms and kissed me deeply. I was embarrassed about my condition but it was too late to do anything and she didn’t seem to notice or mind. I had a drink with her. The man who had been harassing me was no longer there.
 
She told me she was with the Hells Angels, which was potentially problematic but she came home with me anyway. When we left I discovered that my bike had been stolen. All that remained was the cut chain on the ground. We walked back. It had stopped raining.
 
It’s a good thing I didn’t work as I felt terrible the next day. I looked after the building in which I lived for it’s mostly absent owner, Fenton, who I suspected, without any evidence, was a big time drug dealer. He payed me a modest stipend and allowed me to live there for free. He always treated me with respect, and whenever he was in town he would bring me back food from the restaurants he dined in. I was never able to read him. He was completely inscrutable and gave nothing away. One thing I was able to learn about him was that he had absolutely no concern for the law. He was always friendly but sometimes I thought I detected a deep anger within him. He kept the lid firmly on but I would find myself wondering if he would kill me one day.
 
On one of his infrequent visits we discovered some shady people hanging around, obviously casing the joint. We stood together on the front steps, silently facing them down. A wistful look came into his eyes. He quietly said to me “I wish I had my daddy’s shotgun.”
 
Aside from looking after his building, I did a few odd jobs to earn some extra cash. I had little desire for status or material possessions but I valued the few things I owned. The theft of my bike was a big loss. One of my prized possessions was a radio cassette recorder I had bought on Canal Street for twenty five dollars. I used it conscientiously to record every QF show. I kept the cassettes in an old shoe box.
 
I had a routine. When I got back from my early morning peregrinations, I would brew up some Bustelo coffee in my hexagonal stovetop espresso pot, that was only ever rinsed in cold water and never washed. Bustelo has a distinctive flavour and I found that it had an instant effect on the digestive system. After coffee I would lie on my bed and read for three or four hours. I read novels, history books, philosophy, books on science or geography—anything that caught my interest. If I had a purpose in life, it was to follow ideas. I would ride them, dart after them or crawl behind them. The reading and the coffee would leave me in a drugged state. I would then attend to the business of earning my keep for an hour or so, taking frequent breaks to smoke cigarettes and to think about what I had been reading. After that I would see about getting something to eat and sooner or later it would be time for a nap. Then I would listen to QF, on the radio or on cassette and go out. And so the cycle would continue. Life for me seemed mostly like an extended holiday, which was exactly what I thought it should be.
 
The day after I met the Hells Angels woman, I felt so bad I was unable to read, so I lay on my bed and listened to QF all day, rummaging through the shoe box and pulling out tapes at random.
 
He seemed to be talking about reality a lot. On one tape he described it as an average of everything that was taken for granted. But then he went on to say that there were many realities, each one being like conversations in different rooms of a house. If you were in one room, you couldn’t hear what was being said in another. His statement about humans believing they were more real than they actually were, caused me to switch off the tape, lie back, close my eyes and ruminate. This was classic QF. The word that everything hinged on was ‘actually’. There was a redundancy to its usage. What he was in effect saying was that in reality humans were less real than they believed themselves to be. I wondered what he was getting at, putting it that way. He didn’t need to use the word ‘actually’. Maybe he was hinting at a different meaning than the one that was apparent. In that case he was talking in code for some reason. It made me question everything he said and I listened to the tapes all over again.
 
In the evening I heard keys rattling in the lock. I got up off my bed and came out of my room, which was on the ground floor, to see Fenton coming through the door with a suitcase.
 
“Hey. What’s happening?”
 
“Not much. How are you?”
 
“Bitch of a flight man. And I gotta go to LA tomorrow.”
 
“Where’ve you been?”
 
“Haiti.”
 
“Haiti? What were you doing there?”
 
“I was paying a visit on Baby Doc, man”
 
He put down his case and grinned.
 
I was aware that Fenton knew a lot of people. There was a large Rolodex file on the centre of his desk upstairs. It was packed with names. I’d looked through it. But Baby Doc Chevalier... no one would visit him unless there was something nefarious going on. It confirmed my suspicions.
 
“What’s that shit you listening to?”
 
“That’s Quentin Foster. You know him?”
 
“Know him? He from Queens like me, 'cept he ain’t one guy and his name not Quentin Foster.”
 
“What do you mean?”
 
“He called Nate Silverstein, man. Always want to be an actor. Just got no talent. And he’s a ugly mother fucker, but he got the voice. He speak that shit this science fiction dude and that producer cat Bruce wassisname come up with, see? They gotta have something to put on the radio at night when there ain’t nobody listenin'. It's a big joke, man. The way Nate talk on the radio, that ain’t him. He couldn’t even think that shit up.”
 
“So he’s not dead and he was never a priest?”
 
“You can’t be dead when you never been alive. Like I said, it’s three guys man. And that priest shit? They just put that out there for laughs.”
 
He picked up his case again and started up the stairs.
 
“It's bullshit, what it is... You want me to pick you up some food when I go out man?”
 
I knew then that the holiday was over. So much for the Codex Plasmodium.
 
 
© Tom Newton 2019