’ve Got It All Here
It’ll happen suddenly and completely by surprise to both of us. We’ll be sitting around, chit-chatting like we normally do, and then I will slip up and tell you my darkest secret.
Maybe I’ll have had too much to drink. Maybe telling it to you is making you feel better after you’ve done something really dumb. Maybe, after fifteen years of friendship, I was comfortable enough to tell you about the horrible, wretched things I’m forced to do night after night, some part of me deep down thinking you might understand and tell me it’s cool.
But you won’t understand. In fact, at first, you’ll think I’m joking. There will be this weird silence and you’ll laugh like it was what was expected of you, like maybe I’d laugh at the same time you did and everything would be cleared up. I won’t laugh, though. Not right away. I’ll see that you’re laughing and then, realizing what I’ve done, I’ll burst into some ear-piercing horse whinny in an attempt to overcompensate. You’ll say something like, “Boy, you’re quite the jokester,” and I’ll tell you, “Yep, I guess I am,” and we will never speak of it again until the trial.
You won’t be able to stop thinking that maybe I wasn’t kidding. You lie awake at night for hours wondering if what I’ve told you was true. You’ll miss your stop at the train station pondering how I could even be capable of such a thing, how you never in all this time suspected I could have so much darkness in my heart. This will go on for weeks. It will affect your job, your marriage, your social life. Every time I call, you’ll make up some silly excuse to keep from hanging out with me as if somehow I won’t know the real reason.
And yet, there will still be a lingering doubt in your heart, a small glimmer of hope that believes that I don’t do the terrible things I’ve told you about. In fact, you’ll prove it to yourself. You go out and buy a refurbished Pure Digital Flip SlideHD 16GB Video Camera that records in 720p HD, has a 3” widescreen, and stores up to 12 hours of video. You will tell your wife you’re “going out” that same evening, then go rent a car, something plain and inconspicuous. When it gets late enough, you will park this car right outside my apartment, and you will wait.
I will leave my apartment just as you’re thinking about how silly you’ve been to do all this. Quickly, you’ll put the Flip video camera into “silent mode” and record me carrying a large leather bag down the stairs and toward my car. You’ll almost lose me twice trying to follow me without my noticing and record at the same time, but eventually you’ll see the place I told you about, the overpass with the robot graffiti, and you’ll immediately turn off the road.
You will think long and hard about what you will do next.
Finally, you will leave your car, Pure Digital Flip SlideHD 16GB Video Camera recording every step you make in the streetlight. When you see my car, you’ll see the entrance I use to descend into the sewer tunnels below and, as you get closer, you’ll see what you think is me sobbing. I will most certainly not be sobbing. And even though the moment you see the light of my lantern down there in the tunnels you think ‘This isn’t worth the risk,’ you won’t turn back. You will climb down quietly, follow the sound of my muffled laughter, and then, peeking around the corner like a child hoping to see Santa, you will catch me doing my once private business in 16:9 widescreen at 30 frames per second.
It’s okay, buddy. I won’t hold it against you. In the end, I probably only told you because I wanted to be caught.
