Two Goners - Th. Metzger (Rundelania)

1- Wes Kobylak (and Lulu, nude)


I made myself a White Russian (Kahlua, vodka, Splenda and cream) and there appeared before me the ghost of Vaclav Kobylak. I don’t care much for girlie mixed drinks.  But I was alone, far from home, and the ingredients were there for the taking and using.

Wes (as I knew him) wasn’t Russian.  He was Czech.  Nonetheless, this drink, his favorite, conjured him from the land of the dead.

We’d met a quarter century before, in a claustrophobic office: six badly-paid community college teachers, three desks, no windows, no future.  Wes read a couple of my early novels and said, with no irony, that they were “worse than obscene.”  After a few semesters he moved on to a job that provided health benefits (and some modicum of dignity) and we lost all contact.

One year before his heart and lungs shut down, Wes got drunk and e-mailed a dozen people from his old teaching days.  “Sure. Let’s get together,” I replied, “but why does your message read like it was written by a brain-damaged thirteen year old?”

On the phone, Wes’s words were a raspy whispery remnant of his classroom voice. “You’re the only one who responded,” he said.  “What’s wrong with you?”...Rundelania