A Fool On Saturday

By Isaac Mahsai

Our days and moments are riddled with the ordinary and the nonsense. They are the parts of our lives that we will mostly find ourselves in. They are the strings that hold together the times that the floodlights were shining on the defining moments that will probably be the only ones we will remember. The ordinary and the nonsense will not hold much weight. They will always be the floating embers that will never matter. They often do not shine with purpose because the habit of brushing our teeth and taking a bath do not hold meaning that changes lives. They are sudden gusts of wind that whisper, but then come nothing. But what if we were told that their echoes are barely heard not because we don't know how to listen, but because we thought that they are not meant to be heard? Will we allow ourselves to at least stop and listen? Even for a while? Even if it would not matter?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Isaac Mahsai
• Release date: Apr 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386035084

Book preview

Foreword

(Isaac invited me and my husband to a Korean BBQ restaurant for dinner.)

I don’t care what happens. I never do this foreword kind of stuff anyway.

Isaac is a willful sociopath with 94.3% Obsessive Compulsive Disorder tendencies and a severe absence of both short and long-term memories. His memory capacity is basically like a drywall panel at the bottom of a pool. It is utterly useless. If you know you are versed in English grammar and promised to abide by its supreme nature which molded this great nation, then please pause for a moment. Get up and get some face tissue, like a lot of it. Your nose will bleed.

This book is drowning in numerous grammatical errors that border between utter disregard and sheer disrespect that I had to borrow my grandmother’s portable oxygen due to the severe shortness of breath this book has brought on me. Phrases are sentences. Subjects, modifiers, verbs and predicates are pretty much complete strangers in one boat. Adjectives are hanging upside down at the rear of the same boat. Participles don’t even know why they bothered showing up. Periods and commas are as confused. Pretty much the whole thing is a riot. Exclamation point.

That last phrase barely made sense.

Well, that is what you will be dealing with here, either barely making sense or altogether nonsense. It is basically a loss for you. You have paid money to buy this piece of nonsense and there is no refund button for you anywhere when you get lost in too much nonsense. This foreword is going downhill which is pretty much where the whole book goes, downhill. Please do not expect this book to be in any place going uphill. Back to my foreword.

This book is an expression as much as a dose of projecting how random thoughts look like. Take a minute to understand that because it took me a minute too. Isaac insisted that he never intended to rub English grammar the wrong way because he insisted again that rubbing it the wrong way was just a collateral damage of how his thoughts come. I pretty much called bull on that insistence over a bunch of bulgogi, briskets and some marinated whatever.

He insisted I be nice and tell everyone that he is a different writer. He is different alright. If you are a practicing grammar tightwad or a grammar anarchist, then I am praying for you. This book has so much downhill going on that it has redefined the depth of whatever bottom that our standard downhill will end at.

I am done with this foreword. I really couldn’t care less.

My parting words are that if, by some weird alignment of stars, you gave this book a chance to redeem itself, then loosen your buckle a little bit. It is like being the last person to drink at a garden hose on a hot summer day. You found relief that it was the first person who drank from the hose who burned his throat, and not you. Find that relief. It doesn’t matter what for or what about. You need something to fall back into when you get lost in nonsense.

I waited for the beef briskets to cook.

After an hour, my husband and I decided to leave him at the restaurant while he was chewing on some burnt Cajun calamari as he continued reading a book he brought with him to the restaurant about being an outlier. My last glance of him was when he paired the calamari with a brisket cooked almost rare and ate them together. His chair cracked from the weight of such savagery. - EC

(Foreword written by debt of gratitude from E.C., with her husband, whom the author paid for with a dinner at an Eat-All-You-Can Korean BBQ restaurant that cost $12.99 for each person, with her in turn blaming the author that the dinner made her fat.)

Counter-Foreword

That Foreword Lady is an ungrateful-Korean-BBQ-eating lady.

Hello everyone. My name is Isaac.

I hope you are all doing well, like grateful and debt-free hippies sunbathing on the beaches of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

Or you wish.

In the Beginning

I GOT UP from my work desk to go home. I opened the office building door for someone. She said thank you as I said hello. I then drove home. But getting home would take a while because Los Angeles traffic makes everything a while. A car in front of me was very slow. Old lady. I got frustrated and honked. A very long honk. Like, really really long honk. She then moved a lane to the right. I glanced at her and said a bad word. Maybe five bad words. I continued driving. All was well. I looked on my left and on my right. No cars. I picked my nose. Thirty seconds passed, nothing. I aborted the mission. Too deep. I arrived home at 6:28 PM. I removed my socks. A little damp. I smelled a fart from somewhere. Smelled different. Some sort of nasty, some sort of horror. It was not mine. I know mine. I swear it was not mine. Maybe the socks. Opinion. I didn’t have time to confirm if the opinion had some truth in it. Midnight came. I needed sleep. Maybe one more glass of wine, I thought to myself. Maybe not.

Did you experience the beauty of kindness when I opened the door for someone?

You have to learn to see virtues when they come.

The Other Beginning

THE NEXT DAY, I found myself inside the work restroom suffering from a phantom urinary tract infection. I was not supposed to be sick. All I had was coffee.

Whenever I have a cup of coffee, or three cups, my urgency to urinate goes haywire. Coffee always pushes my urinary output into overdrive. I stood in front of the urinal for the sixth time in 40 minutes with a burning sensation that spiked my brain neurons to conclude that I was dying. I finished my drama, zipped my pants, looped my belt, and walked to the sink to wash my hands.

Then my brain registered an overwhelming panic when my logical hemisphere calculated and deduced to a settlement that the restroom had a horrible smell. I saw my reflection in the twenty by five foot mirror that covered the whole top half of one side of the bathroom. Tears flowed from my eyes. In front of the mirror was myself reflecting a deep kind of shame. The restroom had a piercing pungent smell of a cemetery, rotten taco, and chlorine. I knew from the horrific smell that a 20-man poopathon had just occurred prior to my sixth visit. But I could not really complain. Most of the time, the restroom was like a church. People were nice and they smiled a lot. There is something in restrooms that dissolves pride.

Whenever I came across someone inside our restroom, either that person asked how I was doing or he gave me a half-decent smile. Many would come in a hurry or in a panic, but 99% left with a tremendous sense of peace and calm. The camaraderie of people who came and went in that restroom somehow mirrored world peace.

The restroom had four urinals and four enclosed stalls to unload heavy artillery. The huge mirror still amazes me stupid. Each stall had a one-foot gap at the bottom so people could peek in to check if it was occupied. Eighty percent of the time, the stalls were occupied. And of course, the restroom followed the universal rule of all restrooms in the world that one stall was permanently out of order. The times that the stalls were occupied were the times of beautiful acts of diplomacy. The restroom became a monastery. If dead quiet is a virtue, then that restroom was the embodiment of it. Not even the faintest fart could be heard when people used those stalls. Much less a whisper fart. I once came into the restroom one morning and cranked the volume of my phone playing a meditation track just to mess around. I was met with tears of joy. Okay, I might have gone overboard there. But I ask, is our silence in the restroom an act of shame or diplomacy? But you wouldn’t find me conducting a survey anytime soon inside a restroom just to find out.

But the smell. Darn the smell. It was always horrific enough that it has affected the way I eat tacos nowadays. Whenever I shared my work bathroom story with my friends, they would ask where the odor of our restroom would fall on a scale of 1 to 10. I would usually ask back which bad hour of the day.

One of the unwritten rules of engagement I learned inside that restroom was to never come out of your closed stall when the coast was not clear, especially after you did number two. Don’t. Come. Out. Ever. From the time of Mayans until today, it was always not cool. But people did it all the time in that restroom. Whenever I went and knew that someone was inside of one of the stalls depositing in the bank, I would usually make unnecessary noises like a forced cough to make my presence known. It was my form of warning so people could avoid shame. But still, it never failed for people to come out of those stalls with heads held high, loud and proud. Many of those people I knew. Three of those people even extended their hands to shake mine. What in the world, I cursed.

There were two people who worked in the building who I always came across doing number two. Yes, everyday. Let me be very diamond and pearl and crystal clear. Doing number two in closed stalls in men’s restrooms are for emergencies only. It is not part of your morning regimen. That time for unloading heavy artillery to the docks is done at home. So, other than that conclusion and the emergency call of nature, you guys are just plain disgusting.

I looked at the wall clock while dazed half asleep. That work restroom thing happened 6 days ago.

1:48 AM.

My eyes were about 86.2% closed. I discharged the last contents of my bladder that was about to burst, by which I was warned through a nightmare five minutes earlier, when I was drowning in a pool of yellow mustard. I concluded my drama, washed my hands, half-crawled down the stairs, and went back to bed.

I tried to go back to sleep, but sleep wouldn’t let me go back to it.

So I got up from the bed and called it a day. I mean, an ungodly very early morning.

Leave Us Be

I SAT AT my desk, opened my notebook, and started writing. I stared at the flickering bulb of my night stand and wondered about the life I have chosen. I pulled open the blinds of my glass window and gazed outside. The darkness still held the stillness of quiet.

Line after line, the blank pages were filled. It was anger. Sadness seemed constant. I felt alone but pretended to be strong. I cried. Many times in my every day I do not choose to write, I just find myself in it. It has never been a task, it is just a place I always go to. I opened the glass window a few inches and the familiar cold of autumn morning entered my room. I felt the room being engulfed in what seemed to be of grace I have not felt and will never understand. The purity of the cold was dark, and empty. I went back to writing knowing that I was safe with the familiar emptiness. This emptiness, this nothingness, many of us belong. This is not misery. For us who have always known, this has always been our shelter.

Many times, the creative life is here because there is nowhere else to go but to be here. Oftentimes the pains of life many people had to endure led them to this kind of life because it was the only place they felt safe. We all have our own reasons. But many of the broken ones have found their pieces in this life.

I wish I was more unconstrained or friendly, I could have had more friends. I wish I knew to be socially eloquent, at least I would feel safe and be accepted easily. I wish I was comfortable being with people. I wish I was different from who I am now. I wish I knew I was meant to belong. But I am here. Alone. Because being alone brings me joy. Sitting alone in the dark with no one else but me is where I have always returned to. This is not loneliness. This is where I find many choices to live. And if my task in this world is to remain hidden in its shadow, then I would live well in the dark.

Many of us have chosen to remain in our dark rooms not because we are cowards. Many of us have chosen to remain inside not because we are afraid to leave. We remain where we are because it is the only place we have a chance to shine. In the dark. Our shelter. Many will call it a place for the vagrant and the shunned. But that has never been our place. We have always called it home. Many of us will never be understood. When we do not show up when people gather, it is not because we are hurting. Sometimes we just do not know how to belong with those who gather. Sometimes we are just afraid to leave our shelter. Sometimes, sitting alone in the dark is us giving ourselves a beautiful life.

I beg of you.

In one moment or another someday, you might need us. Many of us will create beautiful art, and some will write books that will help many or even change you. Some will build on ideas that will transform your life and those you gather with. Some will be useless, and you will be reassured of what you have always tried to prove to yourself, that we are useless. But some will make you smile and allow you to be thankful that we are here.

Be patient with us.

When you gather, do not worry if we do not show up. Most of us are not hurting, even though some are. Like you sometimes. Like all of us. Do not make fun or bully us because we mostly do not do that to you. Do not harm us, because many of us are already broken and on the edge of giving up. Do not tell your friends how pitiful we are, because we have nowhere else to go but here. Be good to us because many of us are not what you think we are, even though you believe we will be hard to understand. Most of us are just misunderstood by many of you. Do not tell us we are indifferent. We are just different. If we show up when you gather, please be nice to us so that we may know there is a safe place other than our shelter. In times when you are in need, you are welcome to come into ours. We will keep you safe. We may not belong with you, but we belong around you. Show us the beautiful person that you are because all of us have hoped that you do. Assure us your welcome because we know that love lives inside of you. Do not worry if you do not see us, worry that you see yourself creating a better world. We thrive in the shadows, but we look up for what is of light. And we know you belong there. Thrive in the light, we beg of you. Do it for yourself and for your loved ones. Maybe for us, too. We will know because we always notice the bright ones from these dark rooms. Live beautifully. We are here when you need us. We will cry out when we need you. But we are safe here. This is our home. Our shelter. I beg of you to leave us be.

I am Isaac. I speak for the outcasts and the misfits.

PART ONE

GET UP

THE ALARM CLOCK howled and shrieked