From: blewis@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (benn bet nun nun lewis)
Newsgroups: alt.prose
Subject: _The Fax Girl_, my latest peice...
Date: 5 Nov 92 05:24:02 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

COMMENTS WELCOME!!!!!!

                          The Fax Girl
by Benn Lewis
October 16, 1992

     It is fall and I've just begun a small train trip, traveling
to New York in about two hours.  I've had reservations about
similar voyages before, however it's been quite some time since
I've had to deal with the empty interval that so often
accompanies these extended periods of restricted physical
movement.
     A steward stands in the doorway as light streams in from
behind him producing a dark shadow around his profile and against
the white light.  It reminds me of that famous picture, the one
where there is a face in the foreground and a vase in the
background.  It's like two pictures in one.
     My eyes survey the train.  They wander from one passenger to
the next, but continue to settle on one particular person.  He
sits quietly and still, probably contemplating the consistent
mysteries of life.
     What would trouble such a young man?  Would he be traveling
to go home?  Going to work?  Perhaps he is running away from his
girlfriend?  Is he just running?  I can't help but investigate. 
Time serves to project my thoughts upon his composure.
     He stares out the window sometimes, as if to get hold of
some landmark to give his life stability.
     Every so often his face winces as if some terrible thought
crossed his soul.  Then it changes to a stoic look and his eyes
drift back into space.  Yes, something is happening in his life. 
Something seemingly very big.  Perhaps a big decision, choosing
between two jobs.  Will he be a mathematician and solve the
questions of the infinite universe?  Or will he be a biologist
dissecting until he finds the tiny pieces of our beings that give
us life?  He looks older than twenty, sex drive legally over and
now new endeavors compete and cloud this once active confine.
     Together we both travel to New York.
     He sits, feet stuck in the crack of the seat in front of him
wearing a comfortable sweat suit.  He lounges, trying to make do
with the tiny place he would call home for the next few hours.
     He is struggling, questioning, and contemplating.
     I can imagine him trying to talk it out:  In conversations
he watches the leader and files the actions away in his brain to
be used later.  He listens for the objects of his desire, that
bring with them unity, and he stores them as well.
     Questions.
     I imagine his past.  What single point in his life triggered
this conflict?  Was it the first time he met her?  The last time
he left her?  No, it must be deeper for his confusion has much
more buried roots.  He is learning an inherency.  A debate on the
importance of the lessons told to one before they are
experienced.  He straddles a dangerous fence in life:  To find
out for yourself or to fall prey to suggestion.
     The train moves while trees, buildings, smokestacks pass in
behind the sound proof windows.  A cool breeze is blowing the
first leaves off their trees.
     In here, nothing penetrates.  The sounds, smells, and sights
are self contained within the boundary that consciously extrudes
the outside world with the hope that a controlled experience is a
profitable one.  When I got on, there were some leaves in the
aisle but they were quickly swept away by the steward as soon as
we got moving.  I could stay in this train and never leave. 
They've got food, a bar, bathrooms, even a rail-phone for
communication with the outside world.  It is complacent.
     It makes me tired.

     I see him fax this:  "i'm taking the 4:30 which means i'll
be at penn station at sixish and will take a train to great neck
around then.  will call when i come in.  see you soon-for
real!!!"
     A fermented weekend awaits him as he figures out the time in
his head, one year, two years, three years, three and a half.  He
calls her his "fax girl" and he's excited with the idea of seeing
her in the flesh after so long.  While technology may make it
simpler for two to communicate often, it hasn't increased the
compassion.  What could he do but continue brewing that which
exists between him and C-?
     She was from Nicaragua.  Originally from Panama.  Now her
family lives in India.  When she was still in school in Kansas
she had a fax machine at her disposal at her place of work.  He
had one in his computer.  They met a long time ago and this was
how they kept up communication.
     He never kissed her goodbye.
     Their similarities raised the relationship's fitness via the
facsimili machine.  But he worries now.  How good has the copy of
him been?  How good and real has her's been?  Of course he
exaggerated in some of the letters about the mediocre events in
his life, but no more than any one else would have.  He assumed
she did the same but a lot could have happened in the years that
passed.  Of course he withheld the details of his encounters with
some women and revealed others.  But, he can't help wonder what
she looks like, personalities aside, after all this time.  He has
faith that little has changed -evolved perhaps, matured perhaps,
mutated perhaps, but he hopes that none of her deltas are any
greater than his.
     She could have gained weight.  That he could never tell from
the color pictures, the only reason classical mail was ever used.
     Now C- was finished with school.  She bought an apartment on
Long Island and the short distance from him made it an easy trip. 
She was the record holder for his long distance friends after the
umbilical cord was cut and bodies separated and now it would all
end.

     Shall I continue or heed the advice of Fitzgerald.  To
experience the death of one soul and rebirth of another?  Is this
the child that awaits us all?
     Where is he really headed?  Maybe he's going home now, maybe
he's leaving.
     Does it matter?  The seats are nice, and even if it was
raining outside it wouldn't matter.  The temperature is constant. 
I am safe here in the belly of the great whale.  It is internal. 
I can barely imagine taking this trip hundreds of years ago when
soot and heat would fly into the cabin, drenching the passengers. 
It's no inconvenience to me, less strain on my body but oh the
mind.
     The train continues with its modern grace.  There is no
bobbing up and down and the chugga chugga choo choo is gone. 
Nothing remains to remind me of where I'm headed.  Am I really
going north?  The sun is gone and nothing remains to remind me of
the direction.  There is no moss growing slowly, hiding from the
light.
     He's waited years, can't I even wait another hour or two? 
It's so comfortable in here.  Some can't tolerate trains because
they are so slow.  I think the time does us all some good.
     I could run a business from here with a cellular fax and
notebook computer and stay in here for years.  I'd receive faxes
with orders, fax them back out to suppliers.  Who would know?  I
could sell cardiology equipment or be a sales representative for
a drug company.  There are lots of jobs I would never need to
show my face for.
     No, I would rather use the quiet hiss as a driving force for
sciences of the mind.  I could teach myself number theory and
just develop equations and theorems all day long, then fax them
to journals.  Or better yet, electronic mail them and there
wouldn't even be paper involved.  There would be no physical
interaction between myself and the final product.
     Would my fax business be a fools paradise three hundred by
two hundred and forty pixels?  There would be no time to let it
soak in.  In times of old there was lag time.  Time to absorb and
think things over before replying.  Time for him to let her life
soak into his own.  His response time is only the period needed
to read her and her messages.
     I would not be opposed to getting some food right now.
     I get up and stuff my bag in the overhead ledge and put a
newspaper on my seat so no one mistakes it for empty.
     I walk down the aisle and I don't feel any acceleration.  I
always found that interesting that the mind can't feel velocity. 
I look out the window and see cars traveling beside the train. 
It is as if I am walking faster than the cars.  They are along
side and I'm effortlessly keeping up with the faster ones,
passing the slow ones.  Everything zips by so quickly and if it
wasn't for the window I wouldn't even know.
     Right before I get to the door between cars, I see a body
trying to escape from a seat just ahead of me.  I let her
through.  She gets stuck trying to figure out the door.  It's a
little jammed so I give it a good shove and it opens up.
     We enter passageway that connects the cars and it's the
first time I can hear the noise of the train.  The cracks in the
door to the outside and the crack in the floor let the clinkity-
clink through.
     The woman turns around to thank me for opening the door
after we enter the middle.  She is very beautiful.  I ask her if
this is the way to the snack bar.
     She says that she hopes it is the right way.
     "Well, let's explore it together then?"
     "Sure!"
     She stands steady in between the two cars, one of the few
places in the train that wobbles slightly.  If only to stay in
her presence in this noisy antithetical place on the train.  But
the weather is average for fall.  There hasn't been a
professional or college sports game for a few days and there
aren't any good movies out.  Such is life I think.  I've learned
this lesson before.
     What a nice girl though.  This time she manages to ever so
gracefully open the door.  I follow her quietly through the next
cabin until we reach the food area.  But by then, the magic is
gone.
     I bring a beer back to my seat.  I'm not the only one
nursing a beer in my car.
     I see him drink a beer as well.  Slowly sipping.  Trying to
forget?  Unlikely, for I think he wants to remember even more. 
He wonders, did she wear perfume and will she still?  Would her
hair be permed?  Was she still very tanned?  Would she still be
tanned after all this time?  But these thoughts quickly disappear
for he realizes that only his imagination can come up with the
answers.
     She was talkative when they first met.  It was summer and
they sat on a roof of a building making conversation under a warm
breeze and open sky.  It was in a city in the late afternoon. 
They saw the sun dip behind a tall old building far in the
distance.  The structure had giant gargoyles on it's penthouse
and they saw the sun produce even bigger gargoyle shadows on the
grassy park below them.  The shadow became more and more focused
until it spanned the entire quadrangle of grass, a block long.
     He mentioned the awesomeness of it and she too enjoyed this
strange occurrence.  He wondered if this was the only day that
the sun would be in just the right position, like an eclipse. 
They sat on this roof many times afterward waiting, smoking
cigarettes.
     She would tell him exotic stories of about the foreign
places she's lived.  He would tell her about home, the stability,
the boredom.  She would tell him about the sudden moves, the
excitement, the disconcertation.
     He wonders if he was the only person she faxed.

     Where am I now?
     I wonder how close we are to the destination.  It looks like
New Jersey still.  The factories and industrial cities vividly
jut out from the consistent landscape.  For a split second, one
of the factory's smoke blew in the train's direction.  My
imagination could almost smell it.  Thank god for climate
control.
     The trees here have fewer leaves.  I wonder if it is because
of the pollution or because we are further north than before.  A
leaf in the air smacks into the window close to my head and
clings to the glass.  Is it trying to enter?  Trying to escape?
     The train keeps moving.  One of these days they'll have a
magnetic levitating train and the trip will be under an hour. 
But until then, I'll have to suffer the wait and weight.  I guess
that there is under an hour left, so this is what the future
would feel like.

     He thinks how convincing he must have been.  Sometimes he
would spend close to an hour designing his faxes, offering
advice, asking for some.  How creative.  How realistic.  How
prophetic and how touching.  And if he wasn't happy with it, he
could always rewrite it.
     But he still wonders why.
     The first fax was because she was his only friend that had
one too.  Her fax to him was since she had only faxed her parents
previously and wanted to reach someone new.  But why the second? 
The third?  Was it that he enjoyed an island in the sea of change
in his life?  Or perhaps it was the honesty that precedes the
idea that they wouldn't meet in the flesh for a long time.
     He could have been anyone.  He could have become a genius or
a parent.  He could have metamorphosized into her ideal.  He
could have metamorphosized into his ideal.  Perhaps he did.

     We're going to pull in soon.  The city of New York lies way
off in the distance in the east, looking very small.  No shadows
from sunset of the great buildings will ever reach this train.
     The train bounces through the last of the swamp.  I see the
tunnel approaching.  The lights dim.  It is a sign for everyone
on the train to get antsy and ready to be thrown back out into
the world.  I feel that my time was well spent, but I can't see
any reason to get up quite yet.  The station is a few minutes
away, and I would much rather stay seated than have to stand up,
ducking my head from the ceiling as everyone else leaves.  There
is no rush.

     He remains too.  But as the momentum of the train decreases,
his gains ever so slightly.  He laughs and thinks that now that
C- has a real job, she'll have access to an even better fax
machine.
     People begin to move off the train.  The window reflects the
interior and he can't make out the faces outside.  Is she there? 
More lights are turned on and the train's shadow returns, making
it more difficult to see.
Newsgroups: alt.prose