THE LABYRINTH
Reportedly Michael’s head was misshapen at birth, and his fraternal grandmother massaged it into an agreeable shape with patient care. He was a crying baby his first year, and disliked the touch of skin. He would not be held as an infant unless he was allowed to chew buttons on dresses, or was cradled in a pillow over a lap. As a toddler, he was known to eat dirt from the yard, and as a young boy he struggled with left/right hand orientations, tying his shoes, telling time, and carsickness. He was also prone to bedwetting during these years, though, in defiance of a fragrance allergy, was always an immaculate, soap-scrubbed child.
Michael referred to his closest cousins as the “Kichaels” and played with them as siblings from birth; yet what he most preferred was his own company. Even though he was born into a blue-collar southern family, he lost his southern accent while still young, and later acquired a formal, idiosyncratic way of speaking that could only be attributed to public television and spotty reading. He drew cartoons from boyhood, built pretend spaceships out of wooden soft drink crates, and entertained cousins with puppet shows. He discovered early on he could lie on his dark bed and conjure vivid biomorphic patterns to mind, though never told anyone about it. Growing more aloof as a teenager, he taught himself how to play piano and guitar by ear and retreated further into a hermitic, self-sustained world.
His self-reliance and abilities notwithstanding, Michael was a lackluster student at the beginning, especially in math and grammar, and was placed in the “second reading group” until the sixth grade. He was easily confounded by verbal instructions of any detail, yet possessed an encyclopedic memory for trivia, as well as a gift for geography that left his teachers speechless.
Perhaps his most striking contradiction was, in spite of having a large vocabulary, he could barely write before entering college. There was a phonetics problem, particularly in confusing homonyms and similar sounding words while speaking or spelling. Similarly, he sometimes jumbled anagrammatical words, as in writing dose for does. When reading aloud, he often substituted a synonym for a word, though when talking, it would be an antonym. He frequently dropped words out while writing, and erroneously read them back in when proofing. Some of these “word-blinded” mistakes he caught immediately, and others, months later. Despite these difficulties, he had an aptitude for wordplay, puns, coinages, and metaphors; and whether in speech or composition, creative or logical thought, he was never at a loss to express his ideas.
As with music, and so many interests in his life, there was no true attraction in what Michael chose to pursue prior to it becoming an all-consuming priority. He initially entered junior college at the urging of his mother, and, on finally committing to the scheme of higher education, transferred to a four-year school. There he made marked improvement in all subjects rapidly, including math, and found he possessed a talent for syllogistic logic. Yet despite making the dean’s list his last three years as an undergraduate, his intellectual temperament was better geared to the banker’s hours of dabblers than to the rigors of scholars.
Michael was an autodidact, and viewed college more or less as a way to validate what he taught himself. His personal projects ran on a different track from his studies, and this was nowhere truer than during his time as a music composition major. He composed two types of music: ensemble pieces for his teachers, and miscellaneous piano pieces he compiled in books with illustrations for his own amusement. He jumped from music composition to graphic art to fine art over a ten-year period, and on exiting the world of the university he reinvented himself as an alternative cartoonist. Comics was the one art form where he could apply his assortment of talents without sanction, and where he earned his bona fides. This late metamorphosis naturally led to him becoming a writer, although he read little for an aspiring author. He was a dull and impatient reader, and preferred reference books, historical and scientific summaries, technical manuals, and atlases. He also collected comic books, but preferred making up his own stories to the pictures.
Michael was an overachiever when it came to his personal goals, but an underachiever in all else. In sum, the breadth of his ability was as much a cause for distraction and defeatism as it was a virtue. He could only be fanatical about one discipline at a time, and so complete was his immersion in what he pursued he unintentionally subjected himself to malnutrition or induced illness because he would not be interrupted. This maniacal compulsion partly explained why he never sought a career in anything he did, though it was also true that he took criticism poorly and showed little enthusiasm in sharing his accomplishments with others. By necessity he made his living in a long string of low-paying jobs, and saw his meager existence as the price to be paid for preserving his creative independence. Outside of art and related areas, there was little in the way of recreation, hobbies, or social interaction with others.
A brief flowering in graduate school brought him out of his shell, though the artist could never completely escape his acute anxieties, particularly in the social arena. Once he moved away from home, he taught himself how to cut his own hair to forgo the need of a barber. He wanted to believe his many phobias were cultivated for artistic effect, yet the real and incapacitating consequences of them greatly limited his choices in life. He was afraid of (among other things) heights, water, public gatherings, authority figures, strangers, travel, loud machinery, pressurized tanks of gas, unfamiliar locations, insects, small spaces, large animals, and attractive women. He was not completely immobilized by his fears, but a life of avoidance was easier than a life of confrontation. Regardless, being reclusive gave him only minimal protection from his demons. At night he was frequently afflicted by hypnagogic hallucinations, insomnia, and, in recent years, sleepwalking.
Michael’s fortunes began to turn after receiving a peculiar phone call in early September. He was fishing in his sofa for quarters to take to the laundromat when the call came. He was tempted not to answer, but some fateful instinct overrode the urge. At first he heard silence on the other end, and then what sounded like a pencil rolling off a desk. This was followed by a little grunt and the squeaking of a chair. (Perhaps someone retrieved the pencil.) A loud voice started up, already in the middle of a conversation.
“I have good news for you, Mr. West,” the man declared. “Is this Mr. Michael Louden-West to whom I am speaking?”
It was an elderly-sounding gentleman with an Eastern European accent and clicking ceramic teeth. A little confused, Michael went along. “Yes it is.”
“Very good. Glad to hear it. Mr. West, my name is Bedrich Reznicek, attorney at law, and I…” Just then another pencil (maybe the same one) was heard rolling off the desk, followed by another grunt and more squeaking. The man cleared his throat close to the receiver. “Mr. West, are you still there?”
“Yes I am.”
“Very good. Glad to hear it. I am in position to tell you, Mr. West, being the attorney for a particular estate of a particular individual who has recently passed on, and whose name I cannot divulge as a legal matter, that you—Mr. West—have been named as a beneficiary in this individual’s will. Is this not good news?”
“A beneficiary?”
“It was someone who collected your art.”
Michael never exhibited much as a painter, and never bothered to collect the names of those few individuals who purchased his work.
Mr. Reznicek continued, “The estate has left you a rent-free studio, as well as a monthly stipend. This, of course, will require you relocating in order to take advantage of the situation.”
“Relocate?” This last part was slow to sink in. “Where to?”
“It is a place called Stonesthrow, and is not too far from Chicago. Have you heard of it?”
“I think so.”
The lawyer added a few details. “The house is quite a curiosity, as you will find. The builder made his name designing miniature golf courses in the Fifties and Sixties, and in its original construction the residence had no electricity. But it has every amenity now. The property nearly burned down several decades ago and was subsequently rebuilt and wired to code.”
This information went no ways toward clearing up the recipient’’s befuddlement, and as quickly as the strange conversation started, it finished. The lawyer gave the painter his phone number and left him to think about it; Michael called back within the hour to accept.
Stonesthrow was about an hour away, and considered a distant suburb of Chicago. It was not so remote as all that, and it might be exactly what the artist needed to jumpstart his “career” as a painter. It was change—and any change was good. The stipend included an advance that allowed him to buy much-needed art supplies. He could not take possession of the property until late October, so used the interval to finish one or two unfinished canvases that were collecting dust in his small apartment.
Chapter Two, Section Two/ Back/Contents Page
Copyright © 2007 Michael Teague. All rights reserved.