ALEXANDER
WOLFE
Musing The Fourth
What do we do with the boogeyman?
That depends on where we meet him, doesn't it?
When I met the boogeyman, I didn't recognize him. I thought I already knew what the boogeyman was.
I thought I'd caught him staring at me, taking the face of a bully, or my father. Often one and the same. That wasn't the boogeyman. That was a petty power trip perpetrated by those with more testosterone than their tiny minds could handle. Drunk on being awful.
I thought I saw the boogeyman when two people I'd brought into my world, home heart, hid from me in the world, left their only flesh in the care of my house, and broke the only hearts that loved them. That wasn't the boogeyman. That was fear wearing a mask of selfishness and self-centered corruption to make itself look important. It's not. Not in that sense, at least.
I was wrong about the boogeyman in the acid trip, in the graveyard, in the betraying lover's eyes, in the boots of the drifter that made my face swell and my jaw click and pop when I eat. I was wrong about the boogeyman lurking behind those that eventually joined and created the Think Tank.
Goddamn this human brain. It gives us a thousand versions of the boogeyman behind the trees that we've already cut down, in the vain hope that when we meet him for real there might be something we can do. But our boogeyman has grown fat in the shadows. Our boogeyman no longer lurks in the giant cat that searches the cave for our Great (and on and on and on) Grandparents. He isn't the shadowy leader behind our Neanderthal competition, driving them to fight and screw and consume ours and let us wither. He isn't even in the brother with the hand extended and the knife ready for back-burial.
G.I. Jane talks to the boogeyman like it's her brother.
The Homebody doesn't think about the boogeyman, but it thinks of him, and knows what he's done.
The Animalist buried the boogeyman in the side of the mountain, but hasn't lost sight of him.
The Green Thumb swallowed the boogeyman like a tapeworm, and now feeds it on his very life.
At some point in the near future, (and by an eternal clock, it's all the near future), the boogeyman will make a play for us. The great Us-ness that we've achieved. Sentience. Rationality. Deep love. Realization that the internal life you lead is as rich and poignant to you as mine is to me. The boogeyman will come for humanity, not our bodies but our spirits, to use that oft-corrupted word. Whether the desert wars spread to cover the Earth and every land knows similar cruelty, whether a great rock from the depths of space attacks the Earth and gives us tidal waves of rock and fire, whether the Sun is finally eaten by the envious moon eternally, or whether a man in boots of skin and garb of dusty blue traces a path of evil across the globe, the play will be made.
I have been asked by those who know the truth of matter like this if I will stand against it, and there can be no other answer but yes. I will hold our flag aloft against whatever may come, and those who stand by and behind and flash pupils and sweat into their shirts will be given no mercy on our victory, only pity. We will meet the Voices, and their bodies will feed the Earth, for whatever may come.