s
- a Full House tale -
s
V1.52
UNSTOPPOLIS
- CHAPTER THE FIRST -
in which,
John Stamos Awakens as Jesse Katsopolis to an Image of the Beach Boys Above Him and Thinks Warmly and Fondly of Them, Before Going Downstairs to Breakfast.
or,
Awakening and a Quickening.
John Stamos awoke as Uncle Jesse one morning. He laid there, as Uncle Jesse, in his bed half awake and really, half still in dreamful sleep. He laid there looking straight up, directly above him at the ceiling. He laid there looking straight up, starring at the striking Beach Boys poster that he had affixed to it. Now, few people, if anyone but Uncle Jesse, ever saw or even looked at that poster. It could not be said one way or the other if anyone but John Stamos knew it was there. No matter, the beloved guests (You) or unwanted intruders (them?), none of them were ever inclined or intrigued to look at it. And You, from all of the views presented of the room, not one ever panned out or up so that you could see it. The poster was just for Uncle Jesse.
But, though no one could ever see it, John Stamos laid under that Beach Boys poster, each morning and evening, as he woke or feel asleep, eyeing it intently. The poster was old. The Beach Boys faces on it were even older. They looked like leather, ruined by water-all clumpy and puffed out. Uncle Jesse scanned over each homely wrinkled face and felt little tinges as he ran his eyes across their doughy bodies. Though he resisted it, he felt a growing warmth in his loins that bordered on arousal.
Uncle Jesse, in his bed: a lavender, billowy combination of plush and down, turned over and faced the wall. He turned over onto his back again. Fuzzy images and scenes still lingered in his mind, leftover from the dream world. As dreams do, most of it fizzled away before long, but some acute details remained: a large endless stone wall; a face in the clouds with an ominous warning; a dog who could talk but saying something he could not understand. But back to looking at his Beach Boys poster.
He knew it was creepy and weird to just love the Beach Boys so much, that just looking at a poster of them -or even affixing a poster of them (so that they were the first thing he saw in the morning and the last thing he saw before falling asleep at night) would fill him with such feelings. So, Uncle Jesse quickly rolled onto his side, again. He force-jammed his mind blank immediately into other thoughts as best he could, but stimulating images of the Boys still lingered. He pressed his thoughts, and molded them into fantastically erotic images of one, Rebecca Donaldson.
Whenever he was having increasingly titillating thoughts of the Beach Boys, or of Elvis, or of Steve, he would always try to replace them with way-more-normal thoughts of Becky. And normal people would concur, knowing that a "80s/90s-ish" hot girl like Rebecca Donaldson (with her Vegeta-esque shoulder pads and hip-less, shapeless overly-wide pantsuits) was a way more normal kind of thing to be turned on about. Especially in real life, and especially on T. V.
He sat up. He got out of bed and looked around the room. He looked over at his phony plastic jukebox. It was really stupid. He looked down at his bed. It was stupid: with it's naturally pushy and sexually assertive-yet still, desperate-leopard print sheets and mountains of black and lavender. Those don't really work, do they? Nobody really likes those. He knew this was all made up. But of course it was! Still, he felt down inside, that the story was still pretty good. "It is as good as needed to be for what it's trying to be." He always said, at least to himself
He panned around the room again like a zooed panda bear, with an expression just as content and simultaneously dismayed. Everything he saw was just so-Jesse Katsopolis! It wasn't even funny. Maybe he liked it this way. Full House certainly liked Uncle Jesse. Really, it was all a testament to his delusional, faux/ failed egos. Just thin, plastic imitations-broken pieces-examples of what could've been or once was, or never would have been in a thousand years. An adorable pink bunny, framed and set apart clearly from all the other bric-a-brac, stood out. It was the sole survivor of an earlier time, when its kind surrounded the room and declared it's pureness and sanctimony. The cutesy bunny was by far the least cornball thing on the walls, and John Stamos could barely look at it. Instead, he looked over at his cheap Squire guitars at either side of the now brilliantly shinning window. They weren't even good guitars, they were crap that he could barely afford. His gaze moved. There was that cheap neon saxophone sign, that framed picture of himself, a lingering yet gradually diminishing sense that there was something to him, if he could get to it before time ran out.
He left the room. He went into the hallway and then he went downstairs. He was in the kitchen of Full House. At the center of it, he saw the island-actually, slightly off center (as all kitchen islands always are) and standing over it, Danny was making breakfast. He had two frying pans going, one on low-heat with beaten, yellow eggs surely forming into curds, and another on high-heat that crackled loudly, with rapidly darkening and curling bacon. Jesse could smell it. He smelled the bacon. It was hickory bacon. The hickory flavor was in the air, and Jesse wanted to eat that bacon.
" 'Morning, Jess," said Danny. He was in a good mood today.
"Good morning, Danny,"
"Yes," Bob Saget said, as he folded the forming eggs in the pan with his supple wrist.
At this time, Comet entered.
- CHAPTER THE SECOND -
in which,
The Family Dog Commandeers the Narrative and We Get a Brief-albeit a peek- Look Into a Dog's Mind.
or,
Barking Me In Rap City
"I'm Comet, the rockin' dog!
"Yo!
"The name's Comet D and I'm the fam' dog telly!
"I'm half Ol' Yeller!
"And a third 'Old Nelly!'
"Got to get hip!
"With my man, Uncle Jesse!
"Joey's not funny!
"He's the fool I pity!
"Give it!
"Give, give it to me!
"Give it!
"Give, give it to me!
"Yeah!
"Give it to me!
"Give, give it!
"Give it to me!
"Give, give it!
"Yeah!
\"Give it to me!
"Give give it it! Give it to me!
"Give it! Give it!
"Give, give it!
"Yeah!"
That happened in Comet, the dog's, mind as he entered the room-just as the case with nearly all dogs. There will be no further mention on the inner-thoughts of Comet in this story.
- CHAPTER THE THIRD -
in which,
Two Men Eat Breakfast Together and One Wonders About the Other and the Other Knows It.
or,
A Breakfast Hunch
At the start of Chapter Three, Danny Tanner finished cooking breakfast, taking the last strip of crackling crinkling bacon from the sizzling pan and draping it across the paper-towel clad dinner plate off to the side. Uncle Jesse, his supposed beloved brother-in-law, sat in one of the bar stools at the end of the island and looked ponderously at Danny. Did he kill my sister? John Stamos had long suspected Bob Saget of being a serial killer, and thus, the murderer of his sister, Pam. His first inkling of this had been in the way that Danny obsessively cleaned. Serial killers are often, if not always, obsessive about cleaning. They would almost have to be, right? At least, that's what John Stamos thought, or maybe someone had once told him, or maybe he had just read it somewhere. Maybe it wasn't true. But Danny Tanner-the Dad on Full House-was a dangerous person one way or another, Jesse Katsopolis was sure about that.
"Do you want some bacon, Jess?"
Jesse continued to look at Danny and tried to keep his face neutral, as he knew it needed to be and, although he knew inside himself that he felt otherwise, he heard himself say out loud, "no, just coffee for me. I've got to get downstairs. Into the studio."
"Another session with the Rippers today?"
"Everyday, Danny. Everyday."
Danny grinned wide. He nodded with his eyes closed, the way he always does when he knows that you know he is working his way in, or at least trying to.
Jesse nodded too. He smiled back at Danny. His parallel grin signaled, as needed, that he meant no challenge. He did strain, a bit, to force at first and hold the reciprocating muscular action. In the end, his smile barely formed. But, it was there for Danny to positively react to. Mostly though, he pondered deeply the secrets that Bob Saget kept tucked away, that he covered-up under that small layer of superficial, endlessly congenial, facade.
"Even if he did kill my sister," Jesse Katsopolis thought, "he is still letting me live in this nice full house. He's still letting me live-rent free-in this multi-million dollar quasi-modern Victorian sub-mansion."
Since the dawn of the 1980s, the cost of living in megalopolises coast-to-coast had ballooned to, what seemed at the time, nigh untenable levels. This was especially true in California. San Francisco, due presumably to a series of economic and political factors and failures, was among, if not, the worst of them all-and this was back then! Housing in San Francisco had become so inaccessibly expensive, that the unobtainable homes outnumbered the ever growing destitute, but those numbers where close and shrinking fast. Costs were so high that people often made jokes like, "soon nobody will be able to afford anything in this town," and everyone agreed. Whatever the reason, Jesse Katsopolis-a low-talent, pretty boy, hack musician, who only sang lame Beach Boys covers-could never, even in a million-and-one years of looking like John Stamos, afford to live on his own, like a man, in San Francisco or, really, anywhere else. No way. Of course, it would have been easy enough to just allow himself to become one of the few billion homeless wandering around out there, but John Stamos knew that nothing easy was ever worth doing. So he was doing this instead.
In loud glugs, Jesse gulped down the last of his bitter black coffee, finishing off an entire mugs-worth in three deep pulls.
"Easy, Jess," cautioned the watching Danny, his thin voice only slightly deceptively domineering. "Not so fast. Don't choke. The basement's not going anywhere."
"Gotta get down there," Jesse replied, used to Danny's ways and gaze. He looked down, into his now empty coffee mug, "I've got so many ideas for what I want to do next! The music I want to create!"
"Another Beach Boys cover?"
"Yes!" Jesse snapped back, getting carried away, as if the question was dumb and obvious and a little insulting and also as if he had a sudden, reoccurring realization that he needed to resist the assertive one, and reassert his will. "The music I will create! My ideas! Re-recordings of all the old Beach Boys songs! My music!"
Danny grinned even deeper, almost inhumanly, and nodded. Equally unsettling and disorientating, his eyes closed slowly but he was not enraging but, perhaps, forgiving of Uncle Jesse's burst of flippantness. "Just keep it up, Jess," he said. "You just keep going on that path. Follow your dreams. It's bound to make sense, someday."
Four eyes-two sets of two-stared into each other, acknowledging the tension and the unacceptable struggle for independence. But all in due-time.
Finished now with his breakfast of one cup of coffee, Jesse got up and exchanged a few more la-dee-dee, la-dee-da pleasantries with Danny, who responded in kind. We can play these little games. Jesse then turned to face the basement stairs and, at last began to move towards them. The crest of the subterranean suburban submerged stairwell was only perceptible in a limited value-just the peak of the steps and the highest ends of the slanted banisters. The hidden steps plunged down, into blank nothingness and Jesse always noticed that each time he went down. When he got to the top of the basement stairs, he didn't go down right away. He looked back, for just a moment at Danny's creepy, grinning, nodding face. Yeah, yeah. I'm going, he thought and pantomimed with his eyes, as Bob Saget gazed back, and mouthed eerily, "get. Get, get down there. Yeah. Go on. Oh yeah, you get down there. Get down."
- CHAPTER THE FOURTH-
in which,
The Creature Joey Gladstone is Introduced in His Lair Below the House. Also, He and Jesse Katsopolis Write a Song Together For a Client.
or,
The Jingle-Jangle of Joey and Jesse
Down in the basement, there was a little hatch in the middle of the floor that could be locked shut but almost never was. Beneath that hatch, lived the creature Joey Gladstone. Joey had lived down in the darkness for so long that his eyes had adapted to seeing in the dark perfectly. This transformation happened gradually over time, but quicker than you might think for such a radical metamorphosis: a few weeks. Now, whenever he opened his eyes in the darkness, a bright yellow beam of light projected from each eyeball. This of course made no sense at all, since he went upstairs and interacted normally with everyone else in the daylight all the time. Still, when he was down here, in the cellar-really, his lair-his eyes beamed out into the black and murk like two floodlights.
Long ago, Joey Gladstone had tunneled out the cellar from its original dimensions and turned the whole space into a slight labyrinth. Joey Gladstone knew it though like the back-of-his-hand. He could, almost without thinking, navigate the bizarre and seemingly random, jutting passageways and dead-ends with animalistic ease. Yes, with his glowing eyes, but even if he were suddenly stricken blind and enveloped in ubiquitous dark, it would still be no problem. Everyone else inevitably and invariably found themselves hopelessly, and terrifyingly, lost when unescorted down there. Once, little Michelle had wandered into the abyss and she did not return to them for more than two days-enough time for everyone, including Uncle Jesse, to wonder the unthinkable. It was thereafter universally known to all concerned, that one must always use the Buddy System down there or, barring that, at least bring with them a blazing torch or, as was much more common, a flashlight (which is ironically what the British call a torch) or else, merely hope to wander and wonder. And in all this Joey Gladstone couldn't be more at home.
Jesse Katsopolis opened the hatch and a subsequent brilliant beam of bright upstairs light broke the darkness, just as the Big Bang at the dawn of time. At first, he did not descend the fraying Indiana Jones-esque rope ladder and he lit neither torch, nor flashlight. He merely ducked his mullet-ed head down into the brilliant blaze of invading incandescence and stared out into the opaque, abysmal black hole, made even more black by the awesome light around it. This all may sound rather scary, but he had done this so many times before, he felt far more confident than your average layman.
With a booming voice that echoed in the spacious catacombs, Jesse called for Joey.
There was a small lake that Joey Gladstone had discovered, embedded in the underground, that he had dug out to surprising dimensions before he found that he could dig no more. Actually, Joey lived on a small craggy island in the middle of that underground lake. This was a unique and totally original living situation that Joey Gladstone enjoyed. Nothing else was like this in any other story.
The creature Joey Gladstone was on his island now, laying on his back, nearly naked. Only a tattered Red Wings sweater, that was tied backward by its tattered arms, adorned his flabby body and only barely covered his loins. When Joey heard Jesse calling out for him in the dark, it made him smile.
"Yo! Jess!" Joey echoed back, "good morning!"
Jesse called out something else, but Joey was already shouting, "Hold on! I'll come over there!" He then crawled across the jagged rock like an oversized, overweight waterdog and slinked onto the small raft that was resting at the shore on the black water. Taking hold of the raft like someone would take hold of you when you don't want them to, he laid across it, belly down, straddling it with his enwrapping limps. He held the raft like this for such a moment, that the inanimate object seemed to spontaneously (as if by necessity) begin to produce a primitive feeling of awareness, that was limited to the very real feeling of being violated, and somehow-infinitesimally, however undeniably-the collected pieces of resisting wood squirmed in repulsiveness-even inching itself out into the water, just a little bit by this miraculous action.. Joey restrained and effectively raped the small wooden raft and gained full control over it. With one long, apish arm he paddled himself across the oil colored water. Soon, he reached the other side. His long skinny purple arms grabbed hold of the base of the ladder underneath Jesse's face. The outline of Jesse's mullet was really all that was perceptible, and it was casting a gigantic silhouette upon the cavern floor and wall-like one that might be on the wall of a child's bedroom while doing shadow puppets.
The creature, Joey, climbed up the ladder and he emerged in the regular basement fully clothed and combed and standing with his hands on his hips smiling and nodding at Uncle Jesse.
"Should we get started?"
For the last year or so, Joey Gladstone had collaborated with Jesse Katsopolis on writing advertising jingles. Joey Gladstone, as it turned out, was a surprisingly cromulent lyricist, and just the kind of nominal poet that Jesse Katsopolis needed for doing this kind of secular work. This afternoon, Uncle Jesse would work on new material (various Beach Boys covers i.e. "I Get Around", "Good Vibrations", "Little Deuce Coup", etc.) with the Rippers, but the mornings were always reserved for Joey.
"Yes!." Uncle Jesse responded.
"Let's get to work then!"
Within less than a half-hour, they had their latest masterpiece complete and on paper.
When your goose is loose
And you don't know what to do
You've tried every goose trap
And set every geese clamp
And those goosesteps don't step on to you
Don't you wonder
What gets your gander
What makes him wander
What's a goose guy to do?
\
Just get a 'Goose Grab'
(The 'Goose Grab')
And go ahead and put 'em
In the 'Goose Bag'
(Yeah, the 'Goose Bag')
Get the 'Goose Grab'
With the 'Goose Bag'
'Goose Grab & Bag'!
When it was finished, the two men sat there huddled around the small Toys 'R' Us bought Casio keyboard and just sang their jingle a few times together, harmonizing imperfectly. The jingle was good, Uncle Jesse thought. It was perhaps the best work they had ever written. Goose Gates, Gadgets, and More…, would surely have no problem moving the Goose Grab 'N' Bag, once it was backed by this ditty. Still, as John Stamos sat there singing the expertly emotive words and banging out what he knew were the right chords, it didn't feel right. He knew the song was as good as it possibly could be, and that it was better than any other work he had ever done before. Yet, he remained unsatisfied. He was unfulfilled within. John Stamos knew he would not find satisfaction and fulfillment down in the basement, writing stupid jingles with Joey Gladstone about things that don't make any sense like the Goose Grab 'N' Bag. No. That would not do for any longer. Instead, he would find "it" in the basement, alone. Without Joey. Without anyone else. He, John Stamos, would find it, or his name was not Jesse Katsopolis.
- CHAPTER THE FIFTH -
in which,
Danny's Daughters Arise and Join the Rest of the Family for Breakfast.
or,
The Sisters Tanner
Around this time, the girls upstairs began to rise. The Tanner sisters: three blondes, not non-fond of resolute truth. The three of them looked similar enough for You to believe they were actually sisters. Of course, they were not. They were just three or four blond girls that they found for this purpose. The two older girls-who shared a room-usually woke around the same time, except Stephanie (the middle child) sometimes rose slightly earlier, almost always, except for today. On this day, D. J.-Donna Jo-woke up first, and looked across the room and was surprised to see Stephanie still sleeping.
"Steph! Wake up, it's nearly noon!"
Stephanie grumbled, rolling to-and-fro. Then, she turned from her stomach to laying supine and, while twisting her small fists in her eye sockets, she yawned very deeply.
"Stephanie!" D. J. shouted again, "Come on! We overslept!"
"Stop shouting!" Stephanie growled back. Then, after a few seconds of incoherent moaning and grumbling, she said, "it's Saturday, you idiot!"
"It don't matter none!" fired back D. J., but in a calm and mature, assertive voice, "Saturday or not, we can't just sleep the day away. Dad'll be yelling for us soon anyway. Then, he'll be the one shouting!"
I'm getting up! I'm getting up!" Stephanie snarled back.
"Girls!" their father hollered up the stairs. He was shouting.
Stephanie, dismayed when she heard the shouting, exclaimed, "How rude!", uttering the only catchphrase in the work.
D. J: blonde and pretty-ish, but too wide and too tall to do her angles any justice, got up out of bed. She stood there for just a moment, thinking. She thought, "I am myself and yet, all the others around me are somehow me too. All the others cannot be themselves and I cannot be me, except that each is willing to do the opposite. Still, I become myself and never them, and they have never once been myself at all." She thought all of this, repeating the soliloquy loudly over and over again in her head. Only a mere several seconds in total, but becoming more frantic as the phrased crescendoed, and then repeating again within her this time softly, like a religious mantra. Then she thought, "I will go downstairs now, to breakfast with my father."
Across the hall and kitty-corner to the elder sisters' room, was Michelle's room, which, as indicated, Michelle had all to herself. Actually, there were two Michelles. You always saw one, and one was the both of them, and no one could tell, except for America.
Michelle was Uncle Jesse's favorite, and no one-not even her two older sisters- seemed to mind. The affection Uncle Jesse and Michelle had for each other was universally seen as endlessly endearing. No one was jealous, or intimidated by it. Everyone couldn't get enough of the sweetness.
Back-years ago-when all this started, the girls all had separate rooms. When the time came that Uncle Jesse was going to move in and needed a room of his own, Michelle's original room was ceded to him. Yet, it was D. J. who really sacrificed. For it was determined that Michelle, still an infant, needed a room all to her own. So, alas, D. J.'s personal space was thus compromised, as Stephanie was brought into what was once, her once something she had all to her own. This situation for the girls had-despite occasional great protest from D. J-remained like this, to this very day. Nevertheless, and despite maintaining her own room (albeit moving to the considerably smaller quarters, so that Uncle Jesse could have the somewhat larger living-space) Michelle was a ham, at first, at the change. When the day came to make the transition, the near-toddler Michelle played the part of the displaced expatriate well. She sat for hours in her new room silent and facing the wall, her small arms crossed in protest. These feeling soon subsided however and things neutralized soon enough. Eventually, everything seemed regular and almost as if this was the way things had always been. To help matters-at least for Michelle-Uncle Jesse preserved and framed a lasting relic of the room's former nursery glory: a single, cutesy pink bunny rabbit, the last of its kind that once circled in formation around the walls.
Michelle rose, twisted her little body to the side and dangled her tiny legs off the edge of the bed. Then, with one scoot, she slid down to the floor-the blonde spiral of her ribboned back hair springing to-and-fro the entire time. She had gone to sleep last night still in her regular clothes and with ribbons and barrettes still in her hair. Automatically she performed a deep pandicuation. Then, she headed downstairs, and soon she was among them.
"Did you sleep like that again Michelle?" her father interrogated at the breakfast counter.
Little Michelle glared over at her father. "Why even ask me that, isn't me being her enough?"
Danny glared back, but said nothing.
D. J., sitting beside Michelle and eating toast, said next, "One more day-one more hour-one and only one lifetime."
"That's right," her father said, "and one lifetime can be…determined-cut short even by so many, even a singular, thing."
Danny Tanner was still staring at the impudent D. J., when Michelle said...
"Why would anyone say anything so weird? Why would you not just say normal things, and think normal thoughts? What advantage does anyone gain from being so..." she searched her words carefully, "cryptic," she said, at last.
"Cryptic?" Danny questioned, with a laugh, " No," he specified, "I know exactly what she means," still smiling, still staring and smiling at D. J.
They finished their breakfast together, all daughters and their father-except Stephanie. Stephanie did not come downstairs that morning. Where does Stephanie go when no one is watching?
"Today, I will be me and no one else-myself," D. J. said, finally, "there is no one inside of me but me and me only."
Bob Saget smiled and nodded, "Yes. Yes Deej, that's right., and today you will find exactly what you go out looking for."
- CHAPTER THE SIXTH -
in which,
John Stamos Laments, and Internalizes His Situation and Remembers His and Danny's Past, Does it Do Any Good? Who Knows...
or,
Tomorrow Never Grows, Tomorrow Never Shows, Tomorrow
Downstairs, Uncle Jesse could hear and was-as usual-disrupted by all this foolishness. It was dumb. What the heck were they even talking about? They were destroying his concentration. John Stamos is easily distracted. Oh! And now they're all just coming down here. This is great! There's Danny. He's a total fricking weirdo. Fifteen years ago he meets my sister, Pam, at Gudger College and, the next thing I know, he was just everywhere, just ruining every event with his outbursts of Tourette's level profanity. He thought he was funny and some people told him he was funny, but only to see what insane thing he would do next. Danny was totally off the wall in those days. I didn't like him. Not many people back then actually did like him, and Pam hated him. Every other word out of his mouth was either the F word, or the N word, or "your mother _", or something like that. The sound of his voice too, and the way he looks-especially the way he looked back then. He's got one of those faces, you know? Like, 'this guy's not a serial killer but-this guy could totally be a serial killer, for sure-faces.' With those little beady, creepy eyes of his, that Satan's own crooked nose that seems to have literally given birth to every nasty, wart-covered, jagged hook nose throughout human history and that ominous, almost demonic, Caligulan smile. He was hiding something. It was hardly not concealed at all. Just under the surface. It was easy to see.
Still somehow, despite all this, despite all the warning signs and obvious red flags- before I knew it-Danny had conned his way into a date with Pam. Girls often date guys that they hate, especially if the guy is conning them and it is really obvious. I didn't like it, but I thought that it would just go away on its own, like you always hope stupid things like that do. By the time I realized that there was a very real chance that Danny Tanner could become a permanent presence and influence in Pam and subsequently my own life, it was too late Despite my best efforts-and I made many, desperate and boisterous efforts on this subject in those days-soon, they were, in fact, dating regularly. I kept on telling Pam, "Hey! This guy's a weirdo! You do not want to be involved with this guy! You need to get away!" It was true, but, of course, it just rolled off her back like water beads off a duck's pelt. She kept on telling me, "'s all right, s' all right, It'll be alright. I'll be alright. Hush now. I know what I'm doing."
Now here's D. J., full-toothed, grinning at me with her serving plate sized moon face. Yes, okay, I see you. I see you. I hear you, D. J.. And Stephanie, stage-right, droning right into my ear.
Uncle Jesse's eyes rolled to each of them: Danny-D. J.-Michelle-Stephanie-Michelle. "Get out of here!" he groaned to himself, "P-lease!"
However, in that moment of frustration and angst, little Michelle, in all her preciousness and sweetness, climbed up in her Uncle Jesse's lap. "Alright, alright," he capitulated, letting the child on his knee and holding her little hips.
"Jess we're just so darn happy to see you and see and be around you every single day." Danny said, and his words could be heard, but hardly accepted with their mixture of erratic tone, exaggerated grinning and inconsistent body language.
"Yes, but...," Jesse began to say, but Danny interrupted.
"Hey!" Bob Saget barked, instantly silencing John Stamos.
Danny was staring right at Jesse, the corners of his mouth were pulled back, showing his many sharp teeth. He had big teeth. The teeth seemed like they were too big for his big tiny face. "Hey!" He barked again. Leaning in. His gigantic toothed bill just inches away for Jesse's big nose.
"What? Alright!" Jesse finally snapped back.
"That rhymes!: Danny chortled, nearly choking himself with satisfaction.
"Rh-?"
"Jesse and just! Jesse and just!" Then, Danny suddenly started to sing:
Jesse and just!
Jesse and just!
Whoa, ohh ohh
Jesse and just...
"Just like a song, huh, Jess? You like writing songs, don't you Jess? Write that song! 'Jesse and Just', yeah!" Danny belted, his Cheshire grin never ceasing as he stared, his eyes looking like empty glass bottles into Jesse's, but not really into them, more like: Danny stared in and past Jesse's eyes.
Jesse and just? That doesn't even make sense! That doesn't even mean anything! That doesn't even rhyme really at all!
When I was a little boy growing up in Greece, I used to have a friend named Niklos. Niklos lived a few hectares down the road and was always scrapped across the knees, bloody, yet fearless and ready for tomorrow. This was the old country and that was usually how it was, it wasn't like next-door neighbors here in America. One top of each other. People were spread out by vast farmland and nothingness.
Every chance I could, I would get on my zyrlecycle and pump on down the dirt road with my little weak arms to meet Niklos on the foot of the hill. Niko would usually already be there standing there, waiting for me. "Niklos! Niklos!" I would yell and he would run to me, and although he was only running and I was riding, pumping and huffing as fast and hard as I could, he would always run like the whistling wind and catch up to me long before I would ever reach his yard.
"Don't worry, Jesse. Don't try so hard. Stop yourself now and then and enjoy," he would say. I would always just laugh as I flicked another domino down on the table, or flung another stick onto the campfire, or pulled myself to another, higher tree branch. Niklos always put me at ease with how easy it all seemed to him.
Years later, we came to America together. Pam had come over two years earlier with our parents and she met Niklos and I at the airport when we first arrived in our new country. Pam was a pretty successful marketing agent in those days and she helped me get my very first job in advertising here in San Francisco. It was a great time: those old days. I had hoped that Pam would marry Niko. But, Niklos turned out not to be real. He was just someone I had been imagining this whole time. This was all really random and confusing and really hard to follow. What to remember is, Niklos was not real. He was all in my head. When Pam found out that I had been making up a whole other person my whole life and not realizing it until now, she really freaked out. For a little while we didn't even talk. She and Danny started having kids and I started getting used to Niklos not being real. We saw each other sparingly in those days, and it was really painful for me. I suppose it would've gotten better on it's own, with time but one day suddenly, Danny killed Pam and hid her body-or so John Stamos thought. Either way, Pam was dead-Niklos was not real-and Pam is dead. Danny Tanner is real.
"Uncle Jesse! Uncle Jesse!" Stephanie blared, as she yanked on his shirt sleeve.
"What? Uncle Jesse, exasperated, pushing her small arms down.
"Quit pulling on my shirt! 'Stretch out the neck!"
D. J. was standing a little bit behind Stephanie and postured herself in the most volitional way-bracing her big feet shoulder length apart and her intensified voice sounding like the police through a megaphone. Her hands speaking like dicing knives. "Steph, please!" she shouted. "Uncle Jesse! I need you drove me to the library, to study with Kimmy, p-lease! And, I need to be there before two. There's a presentation, or a class, or a something going on then and no one will be able to use the computers by then."
"Noo Uncle Jesse!" Stephanie yelled, "I need you to help me collect leaves at the park for my school project! You promised!" her abjective shrill voice all but seizing the attention. Achieving its objective.
"Girls, girls!" their father piped in. Then, with an incredible look of darkness and malevolent intensity, his black and white eyes skewered into Jesse, beaming lasers of checkmate. "You'll take these girls around town today, won't you Jess?"
Jesse swallowed hard, like a cartoon character, he responded softly, "yes Danny."
Danny just starred back. he never broke his gaze, like a viper-his unblinking eyes, black like street tar. Jesse could feel his unexplained and inconsistent dark power. He felt like a charmed cobra, entranced by a daring magician.
I once walked along a beach at sunset. The sky was like a rare collectable marble with an unusual pattern of crisscrossing oranges and swirling reds and a splash of white. The air was clear and clean, like primordial water, and breathing tasted so good you gulped it down like coconut milk. I walked along for a little bit, feeling like it was as close to Heaven as I could ever get. Then I sat down, Indian-style, in the warm cushion of golden sand and closed my eyes.
There was a group of teenagers some distance away on some rocks, out in the water. Some were sitting. One was hopping, mostly on one leg, and jumping from rock to rock. Another was standing, his two feet firmly planted on two partially submerged boulders. They were talking, but I couldn't really hear what they were saying. But, I could tell the majority was mocking one of them. When they were shouting loud enough, I could make out certain words. Horrible words. Those words would echo louder than the ever calling gulls forever near and in the distance. The kids were far away, but I could make out the tormenting laughs and the repeated cries of "faggot" and "fat ass" being shouted into the peaceful ocean breeze.
The sun was setting quickly. There was no white left now. The whole sky had turned to oranges and reds and the sun was a heavy maroon disk that hung low in the far sky and it did not hurt to look at. The waves petted the beach sands gently, like how a child pets a baby animal, and the soothing roar it made sounded like a dotting mother hushing her child back to sleep.
Glittering streaks of purple, amber and yellow drifted across the beach, linked with the gradually imposing evening sea breeze. The distant sound of the cutting words shattered the serenity and my attention was drawn back to the far off teenage group. I tried to tune them out, and focus on the beautiful place where I was and the marvelous sunset, but those kids ruined it. It's not so much people that ruin everything as much as it's young people that do. It was a beautiful moment, in the natural world for me and everyone-but they ruined it, as stupid young people almost always do.
"Sing a song with me, Uncle Jesse," Michelle said, looking up up with her overcoming blue eyes.
Uncle Jesse was immediately responseless, apart from a slight, genial smile that he let up turn his cracked, saddened lips. Then he reached out with his creamsicle soft fingertips and began to play some gentle chords on the keyboard. Then he started to sing, and soon, Michelle was singing along to most of the words. Together they sang. Her sisters looked on with somewhat oblivious, feigned admiration, but seemed instantly bored with the song, as they had heard it many times.
Woke up today
Feeling a certain way
What a different feeling
Feeling happy
Walking out the door
Who could ask for more
And all the people all around can tell
That I'm happy.
Their voices leaked down beneath them and Joey lifted his slimy head up in the dark and tilted it toward the trickling sound, while flaring his large, bestial nostrils, taking in the palpable dank sent. He stayed there, for a little while after the the singing had finished, listening all the while, hearing the charm of the straining adult/ child harmony and taking in the lingering sent of each of them and it made him very hungry.
-CHAPTER THE SEVENTH-
in which,
The Girls Are Dropped Off at the Surreal San Francisco Public Library, and Nothing is Ever Really the Same Again After That.
or,
An Interesting Escapade of Intellectual Endurance
The San Francisco Public Library was a new building that had only existed for a few months at the near non-existent intersection of Walnut Cherry and Elmer Grand Ave. The old library seemed fine. It was really only that, old. Its location alone was just so sensible, right at the crest of downtown. They destroyed it, and in its place-except miles away, tucked into a near inaccessible portion of uptown they built this, the new library. It overwhelmed and overflowed into the street. Ringling Brothers could perform on the roof and it wouldn't be half the spectacle as the building itself. Such a behemoth, crammed into a tiny spic of a corner on the crisscrossing roads, like an oversized X etched beside a slight cross-hair on a lens. Just imagine that.
Often, those approaching form either direction on either intersecting road, would gird up in apprehension at the mere sight of the sudden, massive, other-worldly structure that seemed to just come out of nowhere and spill out into the street. Nothing was sensible and everything seemed awkward, either oversized or over-saturated, and almost all of it in the wrong place. So, in other words, a perfect example of modern architecture and sentiment.
Even John Stamos, who had been here several times, had to suppress the rush unpleasant apprehension as he squeezed into the entrance of the parking lot. The ramp was was too narrow, and it seemed like it would only be for entering or egressing, yet it was used for both-coming and going-and, invariably, there was always another car going the opposite way whenever you or anyone came to the ramp. It would be, your car, their car, his car, her car-time and time again, all straddling the ramp nearly motionless, twitching at each other, locked and lost in a seemingly endless and tormenting unendurable agony that could and should go on forever, but surely only ever ends do to a Grand Rule of the Universe, that supersedes all situations and predicaments. Specifically there to correct uncorrectable stupid things, such as this. The rule that: Eventually-One-Thing-Or-The-Other-Gives-And-We-All-Must-Someday-Move-Passed, if we can.
This afternoon for Jesse Katsopolis, in Danny Tanner's burgundy Astro van, was no different. A white Honda Accord-perhaps sensing it could sneak through because of it's minute size compared to the elongated van-turned onto the ramp and attempted to maneuver its way out, just as Uncle Jesse was attempting to maneuver his was in. The two vehicles equally tried, in vain, to hug the edge and give the opposer ample room to get by, but since they were brought together in such limited space-like sand fighting to get through an hourglass neck-the outcome seemed in that singular, seemingly everlasting moment, impossible to achieve. They nearly collided. Both drivers leaned into their horns and together produced a jarring, mechanical wailing that sounded like a ship coming too quickly into harbor.
"Look out, Uncle Jesse!" D. J. cried.
John Stamos turned to her briefly and rolled his eyes, and D. J. understood and felt silly. Then somehow, as if from a source Divine (it would have to be), the congested ramp parted, and the two cars sailed on their own separate ways and the driver of each exhaled, exuberantly in relief. The exiting Honda was free. The carefree open roads of San Francisco awaited them at their driving pleasure.
For Uncle Jesse, the challenge of the San Francisco Public Library parking-lot was just beginning. John Stamos was as well prepared for this as he could be. Before he began, he looked out over the nonsense that was this parking-lot. It made him shudder. He strained his mental and physical grip. Another car was now trying to come in, behind him blaring on their horn in a primal, animalistic form of desperation, the only act any organism could muster under the infuriating circumstances. Uncle Jesse kept moving forward. Like some medieval carnival gauntlet from the movies, the parking-lot in front of him was laid out in series of hazards and obstacles. Haphazardly arranged pylons scattered throughout the lot and had to be wrestled with. Sudden, unseen dips into chasms always filled with rainwater where all around, jumping out after every turn. And the turns. You had to keep turning. You couldn't just drive up to the library entrance. A specified rout was set up (like traffic cones are during a driving test), you had to navigating through bizarre twists and turns, leading one on a safari tour of the entire parking-lot, while the actual building stood and mocked mere yards away the entire time.
Finally, John Stamos made it through and was at the library entrance. The giant van door slid open and the girls got out.
"You're going to get a ride home with the Gibblers later, right?" he attempted to clarify, but their backs were already turned to him and they were quickly moving away. "Hey!" he shouted.
They stopped. Stephanie turned around and D. J. looked over her shoulder.
"You're going to get a ride home from Kimmy's mom, right?"
"Yes," D. J. answered.
"Okay. Good. Bye."
Uncle Jesse stuck his arm out and lifted his hand to form a wave. The girls reciprocated, but limply. Backing out of here was always a nightmare. You had to literally back out. You couldn't just drive straight through. Can you believe that? The partitions and cones were set up in just the right, obnoxious way, were you never could position yourself to turn around. You'd be practically thrown out into the road in reverse, drastically increasing the ever present havoc of the San Francisco streets. This happened to every single car that tried to get out of this postmodern nightmare. As John Stamos struggled backward through all this, the Tanner girls (sans Michelle, neither one was with them) walked forward and the doors to the stupid San Francisco Public Library slid open.
Once inside, the girls' most immediate senses were bombarded by a plethora of stimulation-except sound. It was almost completely silent (as a library should be), except for the ever present distant unanswered library phone and the whispered chatter and thumping of stamps at the checkout counter. The walls were adorned with vibrant, esoteric frescoes, not one of which was of an objectively clear theme. Gigantic, mind-bending mobiles hung and slowly oscillated from the ceiling, each seeming as if they had sprung forth from the minds of Escher or Vasarely. The carpet itself was long and thick, like overdue backyard grass, and when you stepped and walked on it, your feet sunk in and bounded a little bit, a sensation like one might imagine if they were walking on the surface of the Moon. Long isolated lights hung down from the ceiling like teardrop. In the daylight, the amber light coming from them was dim and seemed only meant for aesthetics. Instead, the main floor of the thirteen tier library was lit by six massive rectangular windows-three on each side-and the glass of each was tinted its own delicate color: pinkish, yellowish, baby blueish, teal-ish, purplish, and magenta, all gently painting the room like it had been arranged by Crayola. Off to the far corner, there was a staircase that seemed to float on air.
The library smelt of a mixture of artificial floral scents and old paper. The fact that there was practically no sound was juxtaposed dramatically from one coming in from the bustling San Francisco streets outside that would briefly interrupt the quiet of inside, every time the doors slid open..
"Where's Kimmy, is she even here yet?" D. J. wondered out-loud.
"Shhh!" Stephanie chastised. "Be quiet!"
"Shhhh!" the librarian threatened from behind the front counter.
Both D. J, and Stephanie's faces squinched in embarrassment, and D. J. pantomimed, "sor-ry!"
The librarian nodded with a stern, unblinking eye.
"Come on," D. J. whispered to her sister.
"You go ahead," a whispering Stephanie responded. "I-I need to just...you go ahead." She began to wander off and D.J. just shrugged her shoulders and headed over to the floating staircase.
Kimmy Gibbler was upstairs and her homely face was buried in a large, ominous book that's cover was black like outer space with sparse lettering on it crimson, like dried blood.
"Kimmy!" D. J.'s bellow was a failed attempted at sotto voce.
Another librarian, desked at the center of the room, responded in kind, "Shhhh!" the old bird squawked.
D. J. responded with that familiar, crooked look.
The old bird bent down her stern, serious stare.
D. J. stomped a bit closer the the Reading Table. "Kimmy..." D. J. whispered.
"Deej?" Kimmy responded-without looking up, still reading-engrossed. "This...," her speech, like eyes struggling to adjust to waking light, "it's...," she looked up, and her face met D. J.'s, epiphanously. "D. J.", she paused and closed her eyes; then she turned her face away from D. J.-still with eyes closed-and slowly, a half-smile formed on her oblong face. She opened her eyes and gazed out the window. She then looked back at D. J., but past D. J., into the distance beyond her, into nothing. Then, after a moment's longer hesitation-a final moment of thinking before she spoke-she asked D. J., "do you fight?"
"What?"
Kimmy snapped her obtuse face into D. J.'s like an alarmed meerkat. "He who would live, D. J., must fight." She spoke, attacking and impassioned but was still quiet. The old bird did not squawk. Kimmy swallowed hard and started again: "For those who do not wish to fight in this world," she took a deep, self-confirming breath, "has no right to exist."
D. J. looked down, low and off to the side, and said after thinking, "yeah..." and then again, after a moment more, "yeah!"
"Shhhhh!" the old bird condemned, and everyone looked up.
Kimmy Gibbler smiled a disturbing grin and motioned over to D. J., "come here."
D. J. sat down, across from her at the table. She was smiling too.
Kimmy was smiling, but it was inauthentic, creepy, and weird. But of course, D. J. didn't notice anything more than her friend's familiar, Frankensteinian face smiling at her. She just smiled and nodded.
"Deej," Kimmy strained, her voice already annoying and sounding like she was about to give last words. "Deej," she said again, just a pitch louder.
It wasn't loud enough. 'You-know-who' didn't say anything. But the old bird did look up, and shot Kimmy and D. J. a look that in another realm, would mean death.
Kimmy didn't look over at the mean old cuss. But D. J. did for just a moment and she shrugged, trying to seem innocent.
"D. J.!" Kimmy exclaimed. This time it was enough.
"Shhhhh!" the old bird bleated, rousing the whole room again.
Kimmy then whispered in a much lower tone, only D. J. could hear her now. "Obstacles do not exist to be surrendered to. Obstacles are to be broken."
"Right," D. J. responded slowly, while nodding.
Kimmy continued, her voice rolling with passion. "Become woke and," she paused, gathering her thoughts, "gird yourself in the strength of our great race and wrap yourself in the security of nationalism."
D. J. just starred back.
"Least we fall victim to the plots and ploys by the Jewish people, as expressed in the Protocols of Zion!"
"I'll not tell either of you again!"
Both girls looked over and sneered at the squawking bird.
"What are you talking about Kimmy?"
"The extent of the fall of a body is always measured by the distance between its momentary position and the one it originally occupied." Kimmy cleared her throat. "The same, D. J., is true of nations and states-like California, that is a state. That's the state we live in. And in California, a decisive significance must be ascribed to our previous positions, or rather, elevation. Only what is accustomed to rise above the common limit can fall and crash to a manifest low. This is what makes the collapse of the Reich so hard and terrible for every thinking and feeling man, since it brought a crash from heights which today, D. J, today, in view of the depths of our present derogation, are scarcely conceivable."
"Is that in the book you're reading, Kimmy?"
Gibbler slid over the tome.
D. J, picked it up. She looked at it. It was thick and heavy. She couldn't read the title. It was two words in German that might as well have been Greek, but the author's name, printed underneath the title, was recognized immediately: ADOLF HITLER.
D.J. looked around The Room: Tommy Wiseau. "Kimmy, you've been reading this?"
"This makes sense, D.J."
"It does?"
"Be quiet. Or leave!"
D. J. stood up while turning, facing the bird. Here, if looks could wound, the librarian would have been in agony. Instead, the old bird just stared back, answering with an equally savage look.
D. J. put the stupid book down-never breaking eye contact with the old bird. With purpose, she started walking over to the booth.
Kimmy called out-this time she raised her voice-but the old bird said nothing and just stared hateful darts at the approaching D. J.. "Deej! One blood demands one nation! Never will a nation possess the moral right to engage in colonial politics until, at last, it embraces its own sons within a single state! Only when the Reich-" she stopped. There was no shushes from anyone. In fact, all the other patrons met Kimmy's loud declarations with reverence and silence-perhaps respect-or was it...fear?
Back at the house, Uncle Jesse labored over a straining chord progression at his synthesizer. It didn't sound good. He didn't really know how to play-at least, not very well. Truth is, John Stamos really isn't that good at anything, really. He is not a good musician. He knows a few chords-C, G, D-that's about it. You can't do much with just those (or can you?). Still, he tried his best, playing those awkward chords and singing out his latest:
I am slowly leaving
Goodbye kitty evening
I don't know where to go
I know you are waiting
For me, so relating
I'll know you and you'll show.
And then we'll grow.
D. J. stood defiantly before the old bird.
"Listen! If you can't keep your voices down!" the librarian-who actually was a literal bird-squawked at D. J., from her perch,
D. J. just rolled her eyes and sighed.
The bird glared with a scorching squint.
"Just tell me where the Y. A. section is." D. J. demanded.
"SQUAWK! It's right over there! It's right over there!" the old bird hopped up and down rapidly upon her perch and her feathered wings gestured to the west.
The west wing of the San Francisco Public Library was gained down a long book-less hallway adorned on both sides with recreations of mediocre twentieth-century art. After several paces, the passage opened into a small enclave of books upon books, selves covering every available space. When she saw the books, D. J. stopped. She looked around. There was no one else there. She was totally alone. She took a few steps forward and turned to the first aisle, but did not walk down it, she just peered for a few moments and then turned back and faced forward, but more precipitously, as if drawn by some great external force. She turned down the third bookshelf encased corridor to her left, intently facing the columns of books before her. She did not know why. She did not know why she stopped and turned and faced that specific row of books. She only knew it seemed like she should, and so she did.
Outside the lone window on the far wall-in a vacant lot adjacent to the San Francisco Public Library-you could see little Stephanie standing there, in the middle of the otherwise empty field, her arms raised to the sky. What does Stephanie do when no one is watching?
Scanning the volumes before her, D. J. reached out and pulled down a white jacketed, bleakly adorned book from the shelf: UNSTOPPOLIS, the title read on its spine and face. The author was identified as anonymous. A strange trepidation shot through her, from her fingers that held UNSTOPPOLIS, to her thumping chest. She opened the book and read.
JOHN STAMOS AWOKE as Uncle Jesse nearly immediately as the first peach light of new morning eked through. Flanked on either side of the room's only window: two real (yet un-played) electric guitars-squires-hung, like intended parenthesis. The window was now becoming fully lit, and it gently, yet increasingly, glowed. The two flanking guitars seemed to be suspended as if they were being heled up by a heavenly host or, but could only be perceived by mortals as entering morning light.
Uncle Jesse lain there on his back in his bed: a lavender, billowy combination of plush and down. He stirred, half awake, yet a third still in dreamy sleep. Fuzzy images lingered before his mind of night's imaginations. All quickly fizzled, but some acute details still remained: a large, endless stone wall; a face in the clouds with an ominous warning; a dog who could talk but saying something he could not understand; slowly, he opened his red parched eyes and blinked twice in quick secession and the dream world seemed so absurd, and it simultaneously evaporated. Except, for those eternal pieces of dreams that ultimately mean nothing but never leave us, that we all know and have.
Then, looking straight up directly above him: the Beach Boys. Their image: a poster affixed upon the ceiling above the bed.
Uncle Jesse laid under that poster. Staring up at it. Eyeing it, intently for a while, without moving and hardly breathing. Gazing up at the five ageing Boys: their faces like wetted leather. Their cheeks and necks clumpy and puffed out. And you know what? John Stamos liked that. Looking at those sagging men, John Stamos felt a peculiar percolating excitement, a warm spreading in his loins, that one might argue bordered on arousal.
He knew it was creepy, and way weird, to just love the Beach Boys so much that just looking at a poster of them (or even affixing one directly above his bed so that they were the first thing he saw in the morning and the last thing he saw before falling asleep every night) would stir such feelings, so Uncle Jesse rolled over to his side and made sure that he was no longer looking up at it. Starring now at his jukebox, he could think of nothing but the Beach Boys songs that were in there. That was no good right now. So, with all his might, he force-jammed his mind into thoughts of other things-like chips or various breakfast cereals or seldom used but oft had seasonings (like cumin and thyme) and ointments. But still, stimulating thoughts of the Beach Boys remained. Then, as he used his utmost willpower to do so, he morphed those unacceptable thoughts into fantastically erotic images of one, Rebecca Donaldson. In fact, whenever he was having increasingly titillating thoughts of the Beach Boys, or of Elvis, or of Steve, or of anyone or anything else for that matter, he would always try to replace them with way-more-normal thoughts of Becky-and normal people would concur, knowing that an "90s-ish hot girl" Rebecca Donaldson (with her Vegeta-esque shoulder pads and hipless, shapeless overly-wide pantsuits) was a far-more-normal kind of thing to be turned on about, especially in real life and especially on television.
As she read, D. J. felt as if a million unseen eyes were watching her, like she was being broadcast and observed. She didn't like it. She felt the eyes were watching, and laughing and waiting callously for her next move. She read, and she knew what she was reading was impossible. Uncle Jesse? No. It couldn't be. Yet, she knew it was. She read on, and knew as she did that she was reading and creating her own reality.
He sat up. He stretched out his arms: fully and upwards with his head slanted back and slightly sideways-inadvertently imitating a crucifix-and inhaled deeply through his nostrils. He then recoiled every stretched ligament to a relaxed, loosely dangling state, and sighed with the deep satisfaction. He turned ninety-degrees leftward and sat with his hands on his knees and his bare feet flat on the carpeted floor. He looked around the room a bit more. Looking over at his phony plastic jukebox again. It was really stupid. He looked down at his bed. It was stupid, with it's naturally pushy and sexually assertive-yet still, desperate-leopard print sheets and mountains and valleys of black and lavender. Those don't really work, do they? Nobody really likes those. He knew it was all made up. But of course it was! He felt though still, deep down inside, that the story was still good. "It is as good as needs to be, for what it is trying to be." He always said, at least to himself.
Looking around the room some more: his head movements like a zooed panda bear, with an expression just as content, and simultaneously dismayed. Everything he saw was so Jesse Katsopolis it wasn't even funny. Really, it was all a testament to his delusional, faux/ failed egos. Just thin, plastic imitations-broken pieces-examples of what could've been-or once was. An adorable pink bunny, framed and set apart clearly from all the other bric-a-brac, stood out. It was the sole survivor of an earlier time when its kind surrounded the room. The cutesy bunny was by far the least cornball thing on the walls. And John Stamos could barely look at it. Instead, he looked up at his cheap Squire guitars at either side of the now brilliantly alit window. They weren't even good guitars. They were crap that he could barely afford. It was such a beautiful day outside.
At last, his eyes found the black-and-white portrait of himself. Jesse Katsopolis, in all his moussed up, primmed, John Stamos glory, and compacity, however limited or not so. Standing, and without looking, he shuffled into his shippers and left the room. He went downstairs. Soon he was in the kitchen, on the show-the kitchen on Full House. He looked over at the island. It was slightly off center (as nearly all kitchen islands are) and standing over it adjacent, Danny was making breakfast. He had two frying pans going, one on low-heat with beaten, yellow eggs surely forming into fluffy curds, and one high-heat one that crackled loudly with rapidly darkening and curling bacon. He could smell it too. He smelled the bacon. It was hickory bacon. The hickory flavor was in the air, and Jesse wanted to eat that bacon.
She quickly closed the book. Her body shook. With deep, long breaths and her eyes closed up tight, she tilted her head back and this twisted image became D. J.'s form. She was trying with all her might to wipe what she had just experienced from her mind. It wasn't real. It couldn't be. No. This is real-what is happening now.
Her spiderweb eyes strained open and darted frantically around-like as if she could see it, could find it. The book was talking about her Uncle Jesse, but how could that be? Suddenly, she couldn't stay back here any longer. She quickly tucked the book under her arm and briskly walked back down the corridor.
- CHAPTER THE EIGHTH -
in which,
Jesse and His Band, the Rippers, Rehearse Together and Jesse Grows Frustrated By What Can Only Be Described As a Lack of Fulfillment.
or,
"Am I to Become Like A Clockwork Orange?"
"Nooo!" lamented Uncle Jesse, "that's-that's not it! Not how I want it!"
"Okay, okay," Alvin-the Ripper-his guitar slung down to his waist, said.
Band practice with the Rippers.
"Jess, we're trying, here," said Hyrum on drums.
John Stamos took a deep, concerted breath. "I know, I know. It's just. Let's try again."
"A-one, two, three, four!" Hyrum counted off, with clacking sticks.
Jesse and the Rippers started playing again. Their sound was neither generic, nor could it be said that it was unique. They sounded as crickets-so in sync it seemed natural and talentless, yet to a listener it was a drone of the same thing. They blared on for a few more bland moments, and then-without cue-they came to a stop, right at the same time. After a little while longer of no one talking, someone spoke.
"Fellas," said Ephraim, as he re-tuned his guitar. "We just need to play it straight up."
"You always say things like that," snapped Jesse Katsopolis. "In fact, you wanted to name the band 'Straight Up' and I had to tell you, and keep telling you, it doesn't mean anything!"
"Jesse..." Sammy-on piano accordion-chimed in, trying to pacify everyone with his silken voice and demeanour, only he couldn't think of anything else to say.
"Yeah," said Don Carlos, letting his bass guitar hang, "Eph is just trying to keep it positive. We all are"
"*Eph is just tryin' to keep it positive, we all are*," John Stamos mocked.
"Dude, come on!" retorted Don Carlos.
".I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's just, when we play, what we play, what we don't play, it's just..."
"Just, what?" Alvin snapped.
"No. Nothing. Let's just go again."
An uneasy silence became the room. Then, Hyrum counted off again. The music started. Only, it was just a charade of engagement and feel. Nobody felt anything. John Stamos sang:
If every word I said
Could make you laugh
I'd talk forever...
They played the song, "Forever." But it didn't last forever-and thank God for that. Their rendition was dull. John Stamos sang it weakly, like he couldn't get past his hairspray and make-up. The Rippers tried their best, but struggled at the 'my my my my's' and the ' na na na nana's'-sounding not at all like the classic Sunflower cut. Perhaps it was because they had sung it so many times before. Perhaps it was because it was a cover and so it was harder to feel a connection to it. Probably a bit of both. The song finished, and Uncle Jesse took another deep, huffing breath. The Rippers looked at him, like desperate dogs. There was another Ripper-Billy, who also played guitar (lead guitar actually) but this one never said anything.
"This,' he began, but he got no further.
Down the basement stairs came the girls, thundering like even worse Sirens than mythology. Their voices, a ceaseless, shrill choruses of, "Uncle Jesse! Uncle Jesse!" Soon, they were right on him, all three of them, but it might as well have been three-hundred of them. Their grabbing and tugging hands touching and pulling at him all over-and mostly, his face-seemed to multiply, like cell meiosis spreading all over his body and face. He didn't much like it. But what could he do? Danny would pounce upon any protest or suggestion of complaint because that was exactly what he was waiting for. Danny would love nothing more than for Jesse to resist or protest. Although he knew that Jesse knew better by now, and that such an act was almost never to occur, he not-so secretly setup nearly all of these invasions of Jesse's privacy, as an obvious, blatant flex of his ability to do so and his admiration of the clearly mutual, unspoken acknowledgement that the submissive one would remain in his place. Danny emerged at the crest of the steps and stood like an old-fashioned dictator, as if posed for portrait, gripping the banister powerfully with one hand. Jesse just sat there, clenched up, allowing, and Danny stood watching, adamantly and contently just a few steps below the top of the stairs. Particles and attitude seemed to multiply and maximize all around him, and the observable universe.
"Jess," he exclaimed, and gestured to his daughters with his free hand, "they have come to greet you. We have come. Now honor us."
"Danny," Jesse returned, " don't you think this is all kind of dumb?"
"Why is it dumb?"
Jesse looked incredulous. His eyes widowed and his brow sharpened as he looked around the basement with arms held out, acute at the elbows, with desperate palms facing up, as if they wanted to grasp something-maybe sanity-but remained empty. All around him the room dissolved into a mélange of blonde pigtails, yelling, touching, declarations, and demanding (Uncle Jesse Uncle Jesse, Uncle Jesse Uncle Jesse! Uncle Jesse Uncle Jesse...woah Uncle Jesse-Uncle Jesse! Uncle Jesse!). His band slowly disappeared, and his mind gradually augmented, and he began to believe there had never been a band at all. One by one, they vanished all around him, until only the Tanner sisters and Danny where there. The Rippers would never return. There never was a Jesse and the Rippers.
"How 'bout me?" cried John Stamos. "Where do I come into all this? Am I like just some animal or dog? Am I just to be like a clockwork orange-?"
The girls stopped spinning all around him. Bob Saget was silent and still for a moment. Then, he guffawed up at the ceiling and returned his look to Jesse with an insidious smile. He took a few slow, Machiavellian steps towards Jesse and then alighted his hand, surreptitiously upon Jesse's shoulder.
"Jesse," his voice was calm and monitorial. "What is it? Is there something you want from us? Something else I can give you?"
A sesame seed of sweat formed and slid down the Cliffs of Moher forehead of John Stamos. He did not blink or look away, despite the stinging it made in his eyes. He did not want to. He kept looking forward. He trepidated under the dark power of Bob Saget's serpentine gaze. But from within him, he could only make himself respond with an unblinking stare back, and the truth.
"I," he began, "am an artist. I am a musician. The way it's going-the way things are? It's only a matter of time. You only have so much time. I-I need more time. This isn't it, Danny."
"Are you not getting enough time? Do you need us to give you more time? What do you mean by, 'this isn't it, Danny?'" The last question, he greatly emphasized, especially the last word.
"Yes Danny, yes," Jesse answered, his stupid voice now gaining a degree of strength. "All of that! That's exactly what I'm saying! I need time! I need undisrupted time! I need more time down here, in the basement! In my studio! To work on my art-my music! What do I mean by, 'This is not it?' Exactly that! It's what I mean! This. Is. Not. It! I'm not doing it! I don't have a chance to do it because every other moment of every other day, someone's coming down here! What do I mean by, ' you only have so much time?'" He proceeded to answer that question, even though it hadn't been asked, "I mean, you only have so much time until you're dead. An artist only has so many moments to draw up something beautiful. I'm losing that time. Right now, I'm having those moments taken from me."
The three girls looked around the room, examining faces. They only met one another's with what should have been universal shock and dread, at Uncle Jesse's tirade. They were taken aback, but their father-the real danger-seemed unphased; no, even more than that, he seemed understanding.
Nodding, Danny Tanner replied, "alright Jesse, alright. I hear you. I get you. You want your space. You want your peace, You want your time. What are you going to do with it? What are you going to do with all your new time?"
The question was so direct it hit Jesse Katsopolis hard like one of Danny Tanner's left hooks. Jesse's face briefly twisted in unsure ponderance. Then, his face took on a new look. That that certain look of purpose-absolute satisfaction in determination of mind. He said proudly: "I'm going to make the greatest album ever made."
Everyone else in the room said nothing in response, but each gave that sideways look of perked interest.
"And not just any album," Uncle Jesse proclaimed, "an utterly unstoppable album. Unstoppable Jesse Katsopolis…Jess Katsopolis…is…unstoppable…"
- CHAPTER THE NINTH -
in which,
John Stamos Installs a Red Light Over the Basement Stairwell as an Indicator of When He Is Working Hard Creatively Down the Stairs, and Cannot be Disturbed.
or,
The Red Light
"The red light," Uncle Jesse spoke, with his extended hands bracketing the glowing, red-alert bulb. "When the red light is on, it means I'm working on Unstoppolis. Believe it."
"Because your name is Katsopolis, and that rhymes with Unstoppolis,and you're supposed to be unstoppable?"
"Unstoppolis?" someone asked.
"Yes," Uncle Jesse replied.
"Because your name is Katsopolis and that rhymes with Unstoppolis and you're supposed to be unstoppable?"
"Jesse Katsopolis presents Unstoppolis, the greatest album ever made." "The greatest album ever made? That's what you think you're going to make? That's what you think you are going to make? Who do you think you are, Jimmy Buffet?"
John Stamos had long felt within him that something was trying to get out, a certain stewing that was now beginning to boil over. He wasn't really sure what it was, or what he was supposed to do with it, but now, as his passions were full steam and all his ideas were coming to a head, he at last had clarity, even though he did not have words, or a name for what was happening. John Stamos had always been clear with himself that he was going to accomplish his mission. What was happening now was just finally knowing what it really was he was trying to do, and what to call it.
In his handmade studio, Jesse Katsopolis had made several homemade albums with the Rippers. He and them had mutually invested in top-notch equipment. Joey had even pitched in building a soundproof booth with near perfect acoustics. There they had recorded Beach Boys song after Beach Boys song, and sometimes, they even sounded a little bit like them...or so they told themselves. But with each cool little sea of tunes they made, John Stamos had always felt within him that there were bigger things waiting for him just under the surface. And now it was here. He wanted the Rippers with him, but he knew that if they couldn't get with it or couldn't keep up, he would do it on his own. With just under an hour of thinking and sketching, Uncle Jesse had come up with his master plan: He would make an album-a song cycle-a record of twelve tracks, each one thematically linked and musically related yet also, each song would be just that-a song-a piece that could stand interdependently and independently on its own. It would be an album that told the story of his life-that told the story of America. It would be a record that explored the history of this continent and the music if this century. He would call it Unstoppolis. It made sense to him.
Standing there, in the dinning nook beside the kitchen, Uncle Jesse turned the last screw in to secure the Red Light. Now it was installed. He turned to them and he expected them to look at it, at the very least. Instead, he found them looking at him sternly. He was surprised, and he let them know that he didn't really understand by the pronounced furrow in his brow.
They just smiled back at him, coolly, and he was a bit subdued in his enthusiasm, by witnessing the expression of blase in his counterpart.
"I know I've got this album inside of me." he declared. "These songs. These sounds. The need that I have to nurture it and them. I need to take care of them. Like pets. It's," he paused for a moment, searching for the right words, "and in that way, it's a responsibility."
"You have a responsibility to this family too. And to me." Jesse turned around and looked at them. He nodded and spoke in one of those strenuous whispers that really conveys energy, "I know, and I know that you-that all of you-will understand and be a system of support for me while I do this."
Just silence while everybody thought, they where all still so unsure as to what to think, but it was clear that what he wanted he wanted so baldly.
"Jesse Katsopolis presents Unstoppolis?' Just Jess Katsopolis? No Rippers? What about the Rippers?"
"The Rippers…" Uncle Jesse turned his back and walked a few steps away, "the Rippers stuff is old! It's really just the Beach Boys! What I want to do. The music I've got in my head. It isn't going to sound anything like the Beach Boys at all. It's going to be a whole new kind of music."
"They aren't going to like that."
"They will when they hear the tracks. Everyone is going to love it when they hear Unstoppolis."
"You're serious?"
Uncle Jesse turned and faced them with a crooked Smile. "It's the album I was meant to make. The album everyone was meant to hear."
Their face, full of love and nodding. "Okay."
Jesse gave a full-toothed grin.
"Okay," smiling back and walking forward. Then, reaching out and gently kissing the side of John Stamos' face with their brushing fingertips.
The look of love.
All you need is love.
"You can do this," they said, "but I expect you to understand, you start all this up, string me and this family along-and fail? No. You will get nothing."
"I won't fail you," Jesse said confidently, but quietly.
Just then, Comet the dog entered. He pressed his furry golden body up against Uncle Jesse's leg, and then the moved to the other. They bent down and ruffled the dog's ears and kissed all over his soft yellow face, which was returned eagerly by sloppy laps of a long wet pink tongue. Two faces pressed together: one long and hairy and rhythmically emitting hot breath; the other, dove-like-silky and smooth like crushed velvet. John Stamos petted the dog. He was a good boy. And all the while as they smiled and nuzzled and kissed the beloved animal, their eyes stared back as piercing darts into his own-a look that was both a promise and a warning.
- CHAPTER THE TENTH -
in which,
John Stamos Starts to Compose, but is Prevented by an Interruption by the Others-Or Does He? Or Do They? Or Are They?
or,
Does This Make Any Sense to Anyone?
That night, as the family ate dinner, the sound of Uncle Jesse's Casio keyboard rang out through the warped floorboards beneath them. Though largely imperceptible, Uncle Jesse sang out passionately with the chords. They could make out no particular words or familiar phrases, except an occasional "ahh" or "ooh". Other words were there, but listening like this provoked a feeling not dissimilar to that you get when hearing Adriano Celentano's, Prisenclinensinainciusco, all right?
Danny sat at the head of the table like always, surrounded by various prepared meats and assorted sides. Joey sat to his immediate right, then D. J. and Stephanie with Michelle to his left. They noshed on corn-nibblets and instant mashed potatoes, and made unsubtle, awkward glances at each other as they could hear, muffled and distant, but distinct, the sound of Uncle Jesse's song-the cycling chords calling controlled chaos from below. The rhythms weren't complex, but grandiose. The melodies weren't inventive, but teetering on that thinning hairline of brilliance and contrived. The lyrics did have certain "Asher"-like quality, simple and deeply emotional, but the wonky delivery and the presentation never really seemed spot on, no matter if you were barely listening to it upstairs at dinner, or if you were desperately playing and singing it, trying to convince yourself that it was everything you hoped to achieve. If he could pull it off, it might be something like a real masterpiece. But if it was stupid, then it would just be something stupid.
Danny-as he ate, resembling The Private Life of Henry VIII-could literally hear no music at all. His mind was a fusion of fortress and deep-freeze. He sat and officiated the dinner with his family like a barn owl officiates the scurrying of mice across the dirt floor.
Was it the same song, on and on below that that Uncle Jesse played? Was he changing the tune and playing another? They could not see, but his hands blitzed across the keys, from octave to octave, leaping and dancing from tip to tip to make a music that was more than sound-a sound that was more than music. It was at least clever, he thought-or at least, he hoped. He knew deep down, within himself that he was either losing his mind, or he was discovering the most progressive sound ever-that this music would tell, and he would be the last to know. He knew it, very deeply and almost not at all. But he knew it.
Taking in the world around him, with his head spinning inside an internal symphony of clanking forks and cool chatter above, he conjured and from the inside out, formed images of parties and suppers: butlers escorting trays of hors d'oeuvres wrapped in paper cut meat and held together by a toothpick adorned with a green olive. Suddenly, inspiration overcame him and without even thinking about it, he composed a new song on the spot His dripping lips sang out, and the words he was singing created all this around him and would do so for anyone else forever who heard the song:
Eat'm up, eat, eat 'em up
Eat 'em up up!
Hors d'oeuvres
Desserts deserved
Reversed, err…
My, I'm sorry
Dried berries and yogurt
Up, up, up, up, up, up, ohh..
Eat 'em up, eat, eat 'em up
Eat 'em up up!
The best things in life
They are free
So you can go ahead
And serve it to me
There's nothing good to eat
Now,
Didn't your mother or
Didn't your father
Ever once bother
To tell you
The secret in life
Is pay two less than twice, ohh..
Eat 'em up, eat, eat 'em up
Eat 'em up up!
His voice broke with emotion, and he was barely able to continue on-so, overcome with feeling. But he did not cry. Instead, he sang out another verse in a cracking voice:
I saw cheese sliced with turkey
Now those foods just work me
Right into a sweat
'Cause you know they're the best
They're served on a salt cracker
And nothing else matters
To me...
When I'm eating for free
As happy as can be, ohh..
Eat 'em up, eat, eat 'em up
Eat 'em up up!
John Stamos filled and expelled his lungs, and sucked in more great gulps of air. He was unnaturally starved for oxygen. He was out of breath. He could barely breathe. He had stopped singing and playing, but his hands were still shaking. His eyes were still shut from all the emotional singing, and his quivering hands held each other. It was totally silent. And then-!
"Uncle Jesse!"
The pounding. The cascading of children's feet thudding down the stairs. He didn't have to look up. He knew who it was. It had happened so many times now. The girls, always the girls. And almost always followed by the thumping Clydesdale clops of two lumbering grown men.
"Jesse!" Joey boomed, his arms flailing like an old-fashioned cartoon, "I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it, Jess! Jess, I got it! Jesse! Jesse! Jesse! Jess! Jesse! Jess! I know how we can make copies of that video so we can give them to Chuck. Now, I don't think it's the way they want you to do it. It might not be the way they want us to do it, but basically, we're going to need another VCR and a lot of tape, masking-no, Scotch tape-We're going to need…"
But it wasn't really them. No one had really come down the stairs. It was just in John Stamos' mind. Perhaps it was insanity, or maybe it was, at least, a partially reasonable hallucination brought on by the fear of them interrupting him and his work-which they had done again and again. This time though, they weren't in the basement with him. He was actually all alone. But he could clearly see them and hear them interrupting him, even when they weren't. He never knew when the next factual invasion would commence, so he imagined it all the time.
Yes, even with the Red Light on, Uncle Jesse had been bombarded with heinous interruptions since the new project began-mostly by Michelle. Uncle Jesse loved Michelle, probably more than he loved anyone else in the whole world. But even with that abundance of love and spiritual innocence, he still groaned and tensed-up each time the preschooler waddled down the stairs.
And Joey too, who was in more ways than he should be like a preschooler, was always violating the sentinel of the Red Light. Each time he did, he was caught and each time he was caught he would hang his large misshapen head down low, like a dog. He wasn't there now, though. No one was down there with Jesse right now. He saw and heard them all. But it was all in his head. He was going crazy, maybe. And maybe You were watching and you thought so too.
It was always the same, since it started a few days ago. They would make up some deal with Liz at the yogurt shoppe, or Chuck at the hardware store. They would get about halfway through a jingle of whatever it was and John Stamos-eager like a beaver-would make one of the usual excuses and shoo Joey away while flicking on his very serious Red Light-to limited avail.
But his mind was wrong. They had not come-at least, not this time. John Stamos was still alone in the basement with his keyboards and four-track. And above him, a conservation about him prattled on that he could not and did not care to hear.
Dinner was over and Danny was on his back, half submerged under the kitchen sink. His lanky hind limbs lain sprawled out across the floor. Standing above him, Joey Gladstone, complete with curly misshapen mullet, rattled on about some stupid thing. It wasn't funny.
"I told Jess we need another VCR. We need another VCR to make a copy of that tape and give it to Chuck. But he's all like, 'No, uhh I gotta work on Unstoppolis, uhh.''
Bob Saget replied, "Another VCR?"
"Yes man, we need another VCR, so we can make another copy of that videotape of our 'Crispy Cringle Shingles' jingle, so we can them give that to Chuck to-"
"A new VCR costs hundreds of dollars, Joe. No one just goes off and buys another VCR. It's too expensive."
"Well, somebody's going to have to do something. We're going to have to do something. We haven't sold a jingle in months, and we're-I know I'm-running out of money. So let's do what we can do and get another VCR so we can make some more copies."
"Joe, we're not millionaires. We can't just buy another VCR."
"Well I can't, Danny! I don't have $750! I don't have $25! I'm a terrible stand-up comedian, who's not funny at all-at all! I'm frickin' terrible! Nobody's hiring me!"
"Listen to me! Listen to me!" Bob Saget grabbed Joey's shoulders, his eyes like two heart attacks. He spoke slowly now. "Nobody. Nobody, just has VCRs. Rich people like me," he paused and focused closer into Joey Gladstone's small pebble eyes, "because I do Wake Up San Francisco, have one VCR, because they cost $750. You don't just get VCRs! You get that from being funny and/or being on TV. You don't get that from Mr. Woodchuck."
A halt, that seemed almost for Shakespearean effect, where Joey bowed his head like he was praying, "I know Mr. Woodchuck's not funny," he said.
" is not funny. No, he is not. You don't have a million dollars. You don't have one hundred dollars, you don't have one dollar. You don't have any money because you and Mr. Woodchuck are both not funny. That's why you don't have $750 to buy another VCR. Get real!"
Defeated and dejected, Joey groaned out, "I don't have $750..."
Jesse Katsopolis heard none of this stupid conversation above him, and even if he had been there in the same room to hear it, he would still not have been able to really hear it. His mind was indefinitely elsewhere, always firmly on Unstoppolis and its songs now. Below the talk of VCRs and money and Mr. Woodchuck, Uncle Jesse played and sang this song:
But now that time is over
And I just got to know her
Some say she's been gone all along
But I swear I just now saw her
I called she came on over
But when she got here, she was gone
And like the world is turning 'round
Everywhere I turn this girl is found
But some say she is just illusion
Got me right now in confusion
It's allusion
Can I just hold on longer
To a love I know is stronger
To love her now even though she's not
Still I can feel her arms around me
Just the way I know they ought be
This I still love for I have fought
He sang out! Loud, but no one could hear him. Really, no one was even listening. Still…
And like the world is turning 'round
Everywhere I turn this girl is found
But some say she is just illusion
Got me right now in confusion
It's allusions.
- CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH -
I called out to the bearded gentlemen fishing with their nets on the other side of the river.
They rose their heads in response, looking at me from the across the water.
I raised my arms and frantically waved them above my head and called out to them saying, "I say, ah-hoy there!"
They nodded. Then, in flowing robes, they glided over and into a small wooden canoe beside them. The vessel and the men started moving towards me, though with no aide of oar nor tide or wave or wind. The men simply stood, one at bow, one at stern, and looked out over the glimmering water at me-who stood panting, heavily on the shore at the opposite side of the river.
"I -" I began and stopped, thinking and starting again, "I know not why I've come, for you see, I have merely just awakened."
The canoe reached the beach and I saw the lead man smiling, though he did not speak at all, even when he reached out his hand to me and silently invited me onboard.
When I stepped into the canoe, it bobbed with my added weight, but righted itself. Soon it was the most serene and peaceful I had ever been in my entire life. The sky was afire with purple and amber and the water was colored like marmalade. The sun was setting far away.
"You are the one called Katsopolis?" he at last asked.
"I am." I replied, "I am Jesse, son of Iorgos ."
"You know why you have come."
"I have only just now awakened. I know not why I come."
"You, Jesse Katsopolis, do know why you've come. You seek to become that which
is unstoppable."
"All I wanna do is be true to your school. To dance, dance, dance. Please, let me wonder you still believe in me."
"Those are Beach Boys songs. You wish to do and become that which is your own pet sounds. That which is unstoppable"
"Unstoppable," I repeated in affirmative awe.
A sly, nodding smile was retorted., "and in order to become unstoppable, you must become Unstoppolis. Jesse Unstoppolis. Jesse, the Unstoppable."
I looked around me. We were slipping into a chasm now, rowed on either side by tall cliffs. Atop the unsettling crags were grouped several many people, each one irate and screaming down at the canoe. There were so many and they were all screaming and cursing so loud that at first, I could make out no specific swear or insult and I did assume that the mob was addressing every occupant. However, after a moment of carefully focusing my attention, I became aware that their hatred was directed solely at me, and the stones and jagged pieces of wood and metal that they were casting were really just meant for me and I, unlike my ever stoic comrades who remained like statues despite the residual strikes and the kerplunking into the ginger-ale colored water, winced and cowered with each direct hit.
"They hate you," the one who had been doing all the talking then said.
"I know." I said, echoing in a near yell.
From the cliffs above, I could make out barely a complete sentence, but the shouts and jeers were peppered with "Hate you!" "Loser!" "Stamos!" "Sucks!" all raining down on me with sticks and rocks, and each one hurt.
What seemed like a small eternity of drifting and enduring was finally supplemented as the unflinching sage standing before me spoke.
"The farther you go down the river, the more progress you make. Those who think less of you, those who imagine themselves as above you, will caste stones. They will curse you and damn you. But he who wishes to be unstoppable must never cease. For when you cease your striving, when you give up under the burden of the task and their insults, the vessel stops and just wades. You make no more progress down the river."
And just then, we stopped. The canoe came to a halt right there in the middle of the river. More and more the rocks and the sticks and the slander and hatred fell-striking me, cutting me, my bloodied face and my bloodied heart.
"I cannot take it! I would if I could not be on this river! Take me from this place, oh Fates, and let me be free of this terrible plight!"
The older sage, the one who had not yet spoken, looked right at me and said in a resonate, intelligent voice, sounding not unlike Leonard Nimoy: "You wish to leave this river, to be free from the torment?"
"Yes!" I cried, "oh yes, I want no more part of it! I want to be free of this inquisition!"
And suddenly, it was so. No sooner had those words had left my mouth, did I find myself no longer in a canoe with two bearded old men on a river, with terrifying cliffs towering on either side, upon which throngs of terrorizing villains pummeled me with sticks, rocks and hate. I was now totally alone, surrounded by endless gray desert and shivering cold. The sky was utter blackness and I stood under it for what seemed like forever-even more so in this new realm, where time seemed to stop.
But at some point I started walking, which I wasn't sure I could even still do until I started lifting my legs and moving forward. I took a few labored steps forward. The struggle was real. For some reason, my legs felt turgid and heavy. I stumbled up and down crumbling dunes and soon I was crawling and pawing around on my hands and knees like a newborn puppy. The desert sand was thick like chalk and rose up to my elbows and soon I had a chocking mouthful-for desert sand is not like coarse beach sand and has more of the consistency of talcum powder.
I was afraid, but I was driven on by some unknown force from within or, at least, the want to understand and know what exactly was going on. I dug my arms and knees into the sand and began to rise up the side of the slope a massive dune. I made it up over halfway, but then I lost my foundation and tumbled down-falling shoulder over shoulder, my eyes burning from the sting of invading desert dust. Even the gravity of this place seemed off. I knew I was not that high up, nor was I on even that steep of a rise, yet the fall was slow and seemed to hold me a half second longer and harder on each and every bump and skid. I finally landed, and around me had formed a crater-like I had been a crashing meteor. I laid there, gasping for a moment. The air was so thin. It was so cold. I reached out some fingertips. The powered walls of the crater tumbled as easily as I touched them. I, for air or anything to breathe other than sand, flung my arms and legs, casting off as much blue sand as I could and turned over and rolled under one of the palm trees that lined the background.
It was then, when all around me was dust and gray and cold and hurting and pain and wandering and wondering; and all about me was blackness and bleakness and dark, and empty, and pale, I heard a voice. There was no one there that I could see and I was still alone in the billowing pits of sand and nothing, above me still but the splash of black across the sky. But I had heard the voice, and I could feel the presence of accompaniment all around me. I was comforted. Then, I heard it again:
"John Stamos, son of Bill, walker in the night, searcher in the sands, take the defeat of the dunes and the empty cold no longer and arise. Hear my words."
Rising up, weakly, I pressed the strength into my wobbling knees. As I did so, I answered in a graveled stammer, "I-I hear you and I rise! But, p-pray tell, w-where are you? I see no one."
"Rest assured, I am here with you."
"Who are you?"
"I am the one who perceives and conceives."
"Oh? You talk in riddles?"
A disembodied chuckle, "no, I speak as only I could speak and tell what could only be the truth. I am the creator. I am the Great Executive. The Show Runner. The One who Writes and Directs."
"...You?"
"I am Jeff Franklin and it is I who placed you, Jesse Katsopolis, there together with those others in that house of comics. That passed you forward. That took you past the fourth world, toward tomorrow. To more than pain and sorrow."
"My past is always passed. My future, always towards where I am going."
"And where are you going, John? Why can't you find what you are looking for?"
John Stamos lapsed in reply and the unbroken chain of response was suddenly broken. For a moment all was silent again and since John Stamos was talking to somebody that has no body, all instantly again became an lair of lonesomeness and nothing, but nothing and nothing and the mind-all cold, black and feeling. In that dreadful moment of blank thought, Jesse Katsopolis analyzed, gathering his trembling thoughts and at last, responded.
"I knew that once, or I thought I did. Now, it's everything. Joey is a creature that lives under the basement. He's not funny. We write jingles. He's great. It's crazy. Danny is crazy. The cleaning and cleaning, and the eyes-where is my sister? Becky is the love of my life, but I have to think twice or at least, be nice. None of this makes any sense to us! There are two Michelles! D. J. is reading some book about all that is happening and everything, that we are all trapped in. I must become myself to become out of the Fourth World. Where does Stephanie go when no one is watching? Steve!?
"And what of Kimmy Gibbler? And the things she does and the things she reads? And we've never even met Steve."
"I know Steve and I know you, John Stamos. Your mind is one great vision, unstoppable-unstoppolis."
"Unstoppolis. That is all I want. All I need. If I could just get one quantum of my ideas into Unstoppolis..."
"You can. But, you have to do what you know and know that you can."
"I want too, but the others..."
"The others are essential. It's about the others. The others are your life. You are just you. UNSTOPPOLISis your life."
"Unstoppolis is my life."
"UNSTOPPOLIS is your life."
"But I can't work if I can't think. The interruptions-the stairs."
"You have the Red Light."
"The red light."
"The Red Light."
"But will they respect it?"
"Let them. Let them do it. That is the only way they will know how, if you let them, that is the only way they will."
"Let them, then they will show me."
"If you let them, others will always be exactly what you need them to be."
John Stamos smiled, and though it was still cold and totally dark, he felt warmth and light on the inside.
"Now," Jeff Franklin boomed, "go ye past the last gray dune to the east. There you will find my associates, Miller and Boyett. Go with them. Follow them, and they will lead you down the river."
John Stamos looked and off, barely visible in the thick darkness, he thought he saw a form in the distance standing and then quickly darting away. The voice continued a bit more, but gradually faded out like rolling thunder. He was alone again, in the dark and cold. He was alone again with the bite and the wind , but now, unlike before, he had conception. He felt certain. And he felt certified, like crystal. He was confident in where he was going, refined and reinforced exquisitely by the laser words of Jeff Franklin. Inside and out, and endowed with great purpose and direction, John Stamos-more Uncle Jesse than he had ever been-looked to the east and headed to the somewhat distant sandy knoll.
When he got there he looked down and I saw that the curtain of sand descended sharply both on my side and opposite. It formed a wedge in the middle that ran along the expanse, enveloping a slender river at the center. On the near bank, there was a long wooden canoe. I could see beside it, two bearded fishermen in long robes,
- CHAPTER THE TWELFTH -
in which,
A Tale Is Told, But What Really Happened? The Power Goes Out in San Francisco and Uncle Jesse Wanders the Night's Streets and Watches the Sun Rise, Where He Then Has a Pivotal Moment.
or,
The Unstoppable Night, The Impossible Soul - The Last Songs/ Spring Cleaning
There is truth in all warnings
Madness and nonsense enter in
Yet never enough to render full Judgement
The serpent walks upon the desert floor
The eagle swims deep beneath the blue sea
Triumphant truths correct the error
And the dolphins pardon the violation
While falcons hem and haw
Over infractions of what is'
To be expected
Sometimes the things that should not be are
And sometimes the things that are are
Not to be
To be or not
You'll see, that is
Not another line of word
Is heard until I have
The proper introduction.
Danny Tanner parceled off his beloved household chores one by one. Unknown to all others, for they did not want to do any of it, Danny kept "the best" chores for himself. Danny coveted and retained the right and the ability to clean the toilets, the sinks, the bathtubs and suck the drains. To Joey he assigned the kitchen floor, he would have to scrub and grind it down to the purest and simplest linoleum. Stephanie was given the dishes-though Danny was fully knowing that they would not be fully cleaned to his satisfaction, no matter how long she labored, or how long it took. Michelle, being the weakest yet most sincere, was put to work in the living room: meticulously restoring configurations of pillows on the sofa that were long since memorized in her five years-hammered in by her father's teachings.
Michelle was right now evening a row of magazines on the wiped and shined coffee table. D. J. was upstairs, reading and it was blowing her mind. Danny crouched like a harpy by the Porcelain Bowl, his hands as machines, pressing and spinning over every inch of the commode.
It was not only Danny Tanner's love of cleaning-and especially, cleaning toilets-that urged him on and wound his enthusiasm. He also wanted to finish very quickly in order to move onto those…holes in the backyard. He had left a few open from the night before and they needed to be closed up. No one had seen, and that was good. What does Stephanie do when no one is watching?
Jesse Katsopolis, however, took no part in the daily spring-cleaning. He had spent the better part of the last few weeks sequestered in his subterranean subpar homesick studio, hammering piano chords and singing new and different songs than before. At this moment, he eased into his best applied Bon Jovian voice, and solemnly yet astoundingly sang a new, carefully crafted song.
If we were just children
We'd probably fall in love
If we were a bit younger
And had nothing to fear
If our hearts were pilgrims or pioneers
Just fearless, still tear-less
The words came to him, in a flurry of images and rhyme reflecting and injecting re-images of his childhood in Greece, and his falling in love with Becky Donaldson, as if the two things had happened together at the same time. Peanut butter and bacon lingered on his breath as he sang out. He could smell it. He could also hear the words emitted with the hot stinky breath from his mouth, and issuing fast and concrete, spontaneous in reality, but seemingly pontificated on and labored about for hour upon hour. Still, without effort, he played and he sang:
If we were still innocent
We'd probably soar above
If only we weren't so afraid
With so much left to know
Just lay back and watch the flowers grow
Pretending, then ending.
The false memories and sensations of he and Becky running hand-in-hand through the open, green fields poured all over his mind. He smiled, but he knew it was not true. Really, he believed that it was probably not totally true for anyone. No one, come on, found love like that. Life is never a real fairy-tale. He thought, and he sang:
If we were just children
We'd probably hie above
All I can see over my shoulder
T-
The power went out. The keys on the synth stopped producing any sound, save for the manual bap of dead plastic. And now it was total darkness. Uncle Jesse found that he was unexpectedly a little afraid at the abrupt advance of oblivion, never mind the interruption to his work. The blackness of the basement-always the most terrifying room in a house-was now the same as the cold and dark of outer space.
The door high above shouted open with a beam of piercing white light that blitzed through and destroyed all the darkness around the staircase and left a tangible, lighted tunnel descending into the void. Above a cute little Michelle stood, one tiny hand on her cocked hip and the other gripping an enormous, blazing flashlight the shape of a car battery. Her little face peered down. Her tiny nose squinting as she searched for something she recognized in the dark. "Uncle Jesse!" she ventured.
John Stamos made his way into the light. Michelle saw him, and her face gleamed with happiness and John Stamos could see it in the light and that made him happy. They made each other happy. "The power went off, huh?"
"Uh-huh," she answered as her clog-like feet thumped down a few steps.
"Stay right there. I'll come to you."
She stopped and held the beam of light right under her chin as if she were telling ghost stories.
"Woouuuhhh...," Uncle Jesse feigned as he neared through the shadows, his fingers extended and wriggling like playful ghost tentacles to her belly. Michelle responded in a delighted squeal, illuminated in the campfire-esque flashlight glow.
"Another-oh!"
The power fluttered back on. A cascade of light and sound and the whole full house was on again. Uncle Jesse's recording equipment whirled back into action with a jarring, monotonous Ohmmmm...…
"The power's back on!" exclaimed Michelle, her gleeful face arching around the room.
"Power surge," Uncle Jesse said.
It was very bright in there now, much brighter than it was before, or much brighter than normal. The fluorescent tubes that lit the basement and stairs pulsated with varying intensity and hummed sternly in the brief surge of power-and then went out again. Another brownout.
In the summertime in sunny San Francisco, so many businesses and people and others were running air-conditioners all day by the millions, consuming giga-joules of energy and rolling blackouts were becoming more and more frequent-especially so in the like 80s (which is when all this is taking place of course).
The lights soon went back on and stayed calm and it seemed like everything was back to normal again.
"Were you working on Unstoppolis?," Michelle asked.
"Yes," replied Uncle Jesse, "of course."
For a moment, Michelle's little face seemed poised to respond with an explosion of enthusiasm and curiosity. Then she remembered that she was never supposed to bother Uncle Jesse while he was working, and she was never supposed to come down here when the red light was on. But the red light hadn't been on, because the power had gone out. Still, she began to feel bad. "I'm sorry Uncle Jesse," said Michelle, "I know you don't want us to bother when you're working down here."
John Stamos just smiled. "Come and hear the new song I've just written." He bent down and scooped her up. He then carried her the rest of the way down the stairs, her seated on his arm, into the basement-into the studio- into another realm of just the music of Jesse Katsopolis. "Let me play for you something I wrote this morning." He placed her beside him on the bench at the keyboard, and she sat sideways to face him as he played. "Here," he prefaced, "tell me what you think." He played….
Coffee for breakfast ev'ry mornin'
And with a bit I sip a thought of you
Cigarette smoke out of my balcony
With a morning puff
Blow another kiss to you
Ooo everything I do
I do a little thing for you
Yes I do
Stop in for luncheon in the city
And munchin' on the thought of you
You know you can always count on me
With the daily rough
My number's always there for you
Ooo everything I do
I do a little thing for you
Yes it's true
And I, ooo, everything I do
When I have been away for hours
What you need to do
Ooo, When I don't come and bring you flowers
Ooo, everything I do
If I am still stayin' true
Then everything I do
I do a little thing for yo-
"Michelle."
The voice, like a lance of instant rebuke, came from the center of the stairs. Danny Tanner stood there. In their merriment, they did not hear him start to come down. He glared down at them. His mummied eyes like vast, empty sockets. His flexing nostrils and clenched mouth were hardly visible in the flickering spear of blue florescent light. He attacked again, this time without even speaking. His black eyes staring without abatement, seeking without saying a word.
"Daddy..."
He started to descend the rest of the way. His steadily approaching footsteps, though nothing more than gradual, metamorphosed in Michelle and Uncle Jesse's minds, and each step that dropped Danny lower, filled them with a radiation of apprehension, as he drew nearer and nearer.
Soon, he was out of steps and now he was right in front of them-draining them, with all his said but unspoken disdain and judgement, so much so that they had to look away from him, as if he were the Sun. "You know you're not supposed to come down here, especially when Uncle Jesse is working on his Unstoppolis."
"Daddy..."
"You know when the red light is on-"
"The power went out! The Red Light wasn't on!" Michelle screamed.
Danny grinned like a rat about to steal food, and took a few more steps forward, nodding. Both Jesse and Michelle recoiled and inhaled, sharply. "You wanna make excuses?" Danny challenged, bearing down on little Michelle.
"Danny," Jesse timidly interceded, "she is fine. She and I were only singing."
Danny's head slowly clicked over, until his phosphorus eyes met Jesse's and transferred their choking toxicity. Jesse gulped. He wanted to lick his lips, they were as dry as poorly kept leather, but he was too terrified to move at all. Danny's stare had dis-empowered him, and he just stared back, but it wasn't the same. Danny spoke. "Michelle. Go."
Immediately the tyke sped across the basement floor and whipped up the staircase, not saying a word and, actually, not even breathing. In an instant she was gone. The very different faces of John Stamos and Bob Saget were all that remained.
It seemed like a century before one of them spoke again. Throughout that same silent moment, there were unblinking eyes and closed mouths that actually said so much.
"Jesse," Danny finally whispered, slowly.
Jesse did not respond back with words, his throat could not find any, but his glassed eyes reacted with a meager, but yet growing self assurance, which the imposing Danny met very readily and confidently with a sinister smile and nod.
"Jesse, Jesse, Jesse, Jesse..."
"Danny," Jesse choked out.
Danny, wanting to impart as much intimidation, trepidation and malignance as possible, curled back his lips, showing his teeth like a chimpanzee and snaked his head forward until his and Jesse's noses were almost touching. Through clenched teeth he then said, "You've been working on Unstoppolis, Jesse?"
"Yes, I have," said Jesse back, but so quietly he barely said anything at all.
"Play me a song. Sing me a song."
In the moment that followed, Jesse said nothing. He looked, flickering down into Danny's still, stale eyes. He swallowed hard and then, at last he said, "okay." Trembling slightly, he merely stared back at Danny for a moment longer. Then, without further words he slid over to the piano bench. He sat down. With one trepidatious look back at Danny, he began to play and sing:
Nine A. M.
Awaken eyelids
Accept the hours ahead
Done for them
Your wife and your kids
Do it until you're dead
Five o'clock
Look out the window
See the homeward caravan
Close up shop
See you tomorrow
Don't you be late, understand?
His voice sounded strong. His voice sounded good. His words were sung clear-just the way that they should. And though Danny was there, his face a burning scathe, Jesse found courage to bare. In such a heart there could not be a slave.
I walk down Cobble Street
Greet the people that I meet
I smile, they wave
It's all the same
He took a breath.
We all just pretend
We're not just waiting for the end
They smile, I wave
It's all the same
Anyway.
The final word of the song, Jesse repeated again and again, letting the word resound and carry were, had You not been there with them in that basement, You would have felt like he was singing out into vast, echoing canyons. Danny laughed. He stood there and he laughed. Danny laughed and Jesse just sang and as he laughed, his laughing grew until the tiny, annoyed chuckle became a hard, mocking guffaw. Jesse stopped the song. It was done anyhow.
"Tell me, you think that's good? Do you think Unstoppolis is actually any good?!"
Jesse stammered, but the weak muttering wasn't even words.
Danny scorned, imitating the pathetic whimper, "bh,ph..bh bh..pi,"
Jesse hung his head.
"Unstoppolis. Get real. You're just sitting in my basement with your writings in your K-Mart notebook, playing on your Toys 'R Us keyboard. Yelling out your little songs at night."
Jesse sunk low under the combined incredible weight of insult and truth. He felt the burning of shame and self-loathing, but as Danny began another round of put-downs at Jesse and his Unstoppolis, John Stamos felt anger and looked up and locked eyes once again with Danny. His brow furrowed in another defiance. It was strong. It was brave. It was long overdueand apt, but Danny was hardy phased.
After a brief look of surprise, Danny sneered back and quickly regained the edge. He said, "right, you don't like that. Well, go and write another song about it Jes-"
The power went out again.
In the dark, Danny spoke again, and with such satisfaction, "yeah, now you know the night, Jess-the dark."
Having heard enough and not having anymore, Jesse turned and, knowing the way automatically, he started up the darkened staircase. Danny, of course, could no longer see him, but he heard Jesse's stomping advance up the stairs and continued his sideways verbal onslaught. "Yeah, maybe you should just go. Go out there and really know the night." He could hear that Jesse had stopped in the middle of the stairs and he could sense that he was facing down at him. Danny then sang. He sang a song so haunting and with such depth, You could hardly believe that previously he has only offered up the likes of "Jess and Just". Here, he sang to Jesse Katsopolis to "Know the Night":
When you don't want to go
But you just somehow know
That you can't stay tonight
That's when you know the night
No one say 'goodnight'
When you're kicking out the door
Don't you say a word no more
When you just can't see the light
That's when you know the night
Just can't get it right
And I think that I could get it soon
If I just find out what's in this room
Someone turned out the light
Don't you know the night?
So when you're walking down the street
Don't know a soul to meet
Something just ain't right
So know the night
And I think that I can get it still
Even though you can't see no more than you can kill
When you can't tell your left from right
That's when you know the night
Know the night. That's when you know the night. Danny repeated the phrase again and again, losing it's form and becoming just a drone in the black as Jesse crossed the threshold at the top of the stairs and closed the basement door behind him.
Outside it was San Francisco nighttime, balmy and crisp, but a darker nighttime, a night as God intended it, for all the curved and Suessian San Francisco houses were completely darkened by the most recent attack of power outages, and appeared on the horizon just as unnerving as an outline of shadowed mountains in the distance. Of course all the streetlights and everything else were out too. Even the Moon hung new in the night sky.
Danny had followed Jesse outside. Neither man spoke. Then Danny did, "Jesse, I-I'm sorry," he was speaking tenderly now, it is confusing, "I'm sorry, I-"
"I know Danny," Jesse said back and, as if just sensing-since he could not see-reassuringly and affectionately reached back and touched Danny's arm.
"I just get so..."
"I know," Jesse reassured, patting Danny's arm again.
There was then another moment where neither of them said anything. It only lasted a short while but, like nearly all short silent moments between two who should and really do have so much to say but can't, it seemed to last nearly forever.
"Well, come inside will you? I can't see a thing out here."
"No."
"No?"
"No."
"Jess..."
"I'm going to walk around for a while."
"Walk around? It's the middle of the night!"
"I know. I just need to clear my head."
"Jesse, come on! Now I said I was sorry! Come back inside and-"
"I'll be back later."
Jesse was already walking away as he said those last words. Danny could only slightly tell he was moving away from him, by the change in the sound of his voice. Jesse wasn't coming back inside. He was walking away. Jesse wasn't listening to Danny. Danny didn't like it.
"Jesse! Jesse!"
There was no response.
Out here in the night air I breathe deeply and taste the evening air as hibiscus and marigold on the tips of my tongue and nose. Looking above me, the stars are as tiny cameras in ultraviolet scanning the topography, scattered and watching all around the world. Lowering my head, I know that I cannot escape them.
Blackest night will come within my sight. Will you blight or will you bright? I'll find you within mine tonight. A layer of prayer and I share. Nothing really compares to the dares of the midnight fair. Where? Where am I? As the lights come back on, rolling over the San Francisco hills. Not one-by-one, but as massive clumps of tumorous spheres: oblong orbs of blue and pale yellow light, grouped together in increasingly larger and larger formations of luminescence. And just like that, the whole neighborhood is lit up again, fully. Along the road I can see rows of glowing lampposts that cause the tiny crystals embedded in the pavement to sparkle in the indigo of the night's air, looking like a whole other set of stars upon the earth.
The streetlights, at first, don't seem to be placed conscientiously. But as I walk among them, a pattern does emerge: syncopated groupings, two-by-two, and then four-by-four on each side of the road. I look and can see that this layout continues all the way down the road, off into the oblivion.
The night was bliss with all the streetlights now on. Then, they went off again. The void-like darkness was complete and total in just mere seconds. Then, the streetlights behind me began to beam on and off. Soon, a chaotic web of light surged all over the streets, keeping no set shape or intensity for even the briefest moment. At it's brightest and briefest, the light seemed to reach out and grab me and, no, I did not like it. I turned around and the idiocentric, yet homogeneous, succession of San Francisco row-houses (misshapen, with erratic bulges of lopsided bay windows and partial terraces) so unlike human dwellings anywhere else in the world, while still-paradoxically-looked so much like the other, flash and black and back again like breathing. In some of their obtusely shaped windows, I thought I could maybe see with one flash of light or another, families gathered and sharing, even though I knew that that was impossible. I began to sing…
My home, what happened to my home
That home of mine
Alone, I feel so alone
With empty time
But I know I can go on longer
And my heart will become stronger
In times like these
I go, I go alone along
Too long, I think
And I feel so tired
Thirst love-no drink!
But each night the winds come colder
And my wisdom becomes bolder
In times like these
In times like these!
Li ah ah ah ah oh ohh!
In times like these
Li ah ah ah ah oh ohh
Oh!
So, I think that, with Danny at least, it can't be stopped. It can't be helped. It only does so if he kills me. Which he won't do (because of Michelle, if for nothing else) and, even if he does, that means that I would win the most ultimate victory. You can't stop Unstoppolis. That's the whole point. You can only kill it. Which would make it an immortal martyr and an automatic masterpiece. What artist could ask for more than that?
When I return and I will, I will look Bob Saget in the eye again and Bob Saget will look back at me, and we will both smile-most likely him just sardonically, but I will mean it. I am an artist who lives and breathes on a plane that is perpetually above the ever present opposition, or the misguided jealous, which ever qualifier best suits, if there is even a difference.
Into a tiny park, I make my way and sit down on a bench. My eyes closed. I was still awake. It was just before sunrise and the sky is that certain wash between deep black and subtle indigo, before the light. Total peace. Total understanding all around me and within me. In my wonderful mind, I get an image and a sound of words always heard and never sung. A song that I know has always been there and been a part of me since everything here got started. Words, that without knowing and always knowing, I realize and I repeat again and again, without speaking and with seeking and singing and staying silent:
Everywhere you look
Everywhere you look...
There's a heart
There's a heart...
A hand to hold onto
Getting up and going forward, as the newly glistening orange dawn comes over me and San Francisco, I see the Full House ahead of me. Though distant, through the overlapping hills, it seems like it is getting nearer and nearer. It doesn't worry me, though. I know I must return for syndication. A man is chasing a waterfowl. With one hand, he holds out an empty palm, his five digits fully extended each and curling in an invisible ball. The person's right hand, engaged the Goose Grab and swiftly gripped the goose and gathered the gander into the Goose Bag. And when I see such a thing, I can only Smile. I think that, 'yes I can.' It is going to be alright. I head home.
- EPILOGUE -
D. J. read the words again. Maybe this was the third or fourth time that see had read it, she wasn't sure. Each time she restarted, a part of her consciousnesses told her it was the first time, though she knew it was not and she had to snap out of it. She read it again. Last time, she was sure the text had said she was confused and looking around, and biting her bottom lip. She was sure of it. Now it read differently, that she had shifted her weight to center and she was shaking now with an incomprehensible confusion that was quickly morphing into great fear. She read the passage out of the book again, one more time.
D. J. read the words again. Maybe this was the third of fourth time that see
had read it, she wasn't sure. Each time she restarted, a part of her conscience
told her it was the first time, though she knew it was not. Last time, she was
sure the text said she was confused and looking around, and biting her bot-
tom lip. She was sure of it. Now it read accurately, that she had shifted her
weight to center, and she was shaking now with an incomprehensible confu-
sion that was quickly morphing into great fear. And she let the book drop
from her hand, and it thudded loudly on the floor, shattering the dead sil-
lence of the room.
She dropped the book, and the thud upon the hard wooden floor echoed from wall to wall. And just before it snapped shut and lay still, she clearly (though very much did not want to believe so) saw the words "dropped" and "D. J." flash briefly and she thought, "what the…" She trembled a bit as she reached down and picked the book back up. It couldn't be real! She held the small book in her hands. She ran her fingers across the page.
"What the…?" thought D. J.
She snapped bolt upright and began to walk away, unable to do anything else. With the book still open in her hand she read and did
Standing bolt upright, she carried the book up with her from the floor.
Then, suddenly standing in shock and refusal, she read the words
As it all happened.
Reading and walking at the same time, she dropped the book again, and just like she had read a moment before she bent down for it again, only this time she flung it away in fear. She started to move again, nearly running away now, back down the west wing of the San Francisco Public Library. Her flip-flops whopping like swamp sounds as she shuffled nervously and for no other reason than Unstoppolis said she would. And yes, just like the book said, as she passed the small hallway window-there was Stephanie with her rigid arms and contorted face tilted up to the sky. What does Stephanie do when no one is watching?
THE END
.