Dear Anonymous: The Headband That Haunts Me

Dear Anonymous,

Wow. You "hate me?" Remember what Freud says, "Hate and love are twins." If you feel that kind of intensity, I'm guessing there is also an attraction. Trust me friend, Wantu's spirit is working on you.

You want to know why I write this? Well, I guess I'm used to a public search for the truth. AA breeds that into you. They way they make you tell secrets within a room full of strangers. That's what I'm doing, Dear Anonymous, I'm working out my secrets. My friendship with Wantu is my deepest secret. I don't know why, but this blog pulls Wantu out of me so I can see him, see what he's been up to in the back of my head. Doesn't everyone we meet live within us in some way?

Like this morning. I woke up and remembered this terry cloth headband. It was white and said "Atlanta Braves" on the front in blood orange lettering with tiny tomahawks above the ears. It was the kind of thing Bruce Jenner would've worn in 1976. Absolutely ridiculous now. One morning Wantu showed up wearing this headband while the pigeon wore a matching band of elastic string--the kind of string you'd pull from the waistband of your underpants. For weeks he wore that headband and the bird mirrored him. Let me tell you something my Dear Anonymous, I've got a standing inquiry on e-bay and craigslist offering real cash to anyone who has one of those Braves headbands. I don't know why. I think it would give me some sort of peace to have one now.

Incident at TippyCanoe

When Roy and I entered the TippyCanoe with Wantu, and the two men at the bar turned and laughed, and the red nosed man said to Wantu, "Puberty can be hell!" and they both fell into laughter. Well, I remember Wantu staring and smiling, like a true imbecile, enjoying the laughter. But Roy, protective of the little guy, noticed the nametag hanging from the comic's neck and said, "Hey Digby. I don't know if you were notified, but all rights to humor at the expense of others were revoked when you were born. Because your name is Digby. Dig. By. You see? Your mother marked you, so that all would know that you are to be the butt, the brunt, the laughing stock--the Digby that causes women to twitter at the sound of your name and then continue walking."

Then Digby rose from his stool in a threatening manner and the air went stiff and I thought Roy was going to suffer violence, when Wantu suddenly stepped forward and hugged Digby's leg. He hugged and continued hugging until Digby went from shock, to embarrassment, to tears. Roy apologized, careful not to repeat Digby's name, and we took a table and ordered three O'Doul's premium non-alcholic beers while the pigeon stared at us through the streetside window.

An Open Letter to My Anonymous Commentator

Dear Anonymous,

Why do you continue to send comments to me? I admit this blog is futile. I will not defend it or myself. Believe me, "pathetic" is often how I feel, not only about this site but about my life in general. I too often wonder if Wantu is real or a sign of some deeper disturbance within me; and if my experience of Wantu is simply some sort of illusion or psychological break, then how sad that would be, for Wantu is truly a pathetic figure and his bird, even more so. My experience of Wantu was, and continues to be, sadness upon sadness upon sadness. And the pigeon, well he just left me cold. If you have any advice, Anonymous, for how I might attract some other figures to interact with in my life, I would like to hear it. I do continue to attend AA. I do not do drugs. Wantu is as real as any experience I've every encountered (I realize this may not be saying much). The changes in me can only be traced to him. Please don't be angry with me Anonymous, it just makes me envious, envious for a kind of ignorance I can no longer enjoy.

Wantu's First AA Meeting

What I remember from that first meeting is the bird. The bird standing, unaccompanied, in the Christian education wing of First Presbyterian Church. It was a young woman in a baby blue windbreaker who drew our attention. Arriving a good half hour after the meeting had started she gave a series of "Whoos!" in the hallway. Startled, we stood and pushed our way out of the classroom and saw the woman pressed against the nursery room door with the pigeon silhouetted against the green exit light. An old drunk named Wolfgang elbowed forward to get a better look, then stepped back onto my boots at the sight of the two-legged creature. The facilitator, a security guard and recovering crackhead, took charge. After directing a flat-topped woman to crack the basement door, he encouraged us all to make clapping sounds. It was in the midst of this applause that Wantu stepped out from the men's room. Our hands slowed as the little man looked up and down the hallway, strode over to the pigeon, bent down, cupped the bird in both hands, and dropped it down the front of his shirt. The bird sank beneath Wantu's buttoned plaid, then rebounded, his profile emerging at Wantu's nape, the left claw visible above the third button.

The room went still. We stared, releasing a disturbed silence. Like stumbling across a missionary in the bush, we natives of the First Presbyterian AA meeting weren't sure if we should filet the odd stranger or welcome him.

It's not unusual to see a human being with a bird--a pedestrian shouldering a golden Macaw or a colorful neighbor with an African grey parrot, but to hold against one's breast a bird that is commonly seen scrounging in dumpsters, shitting in parking lots, pecking at dried french fries; to have this bird, with a single red-ringed eye staring, as Wolfgang later remarked, "was like finding a man in an alley with his fly down and his one-eyed monster gaping at you." It was Scott, the facilitator, who ended the stand-off. Familiar to the range of human perversities he called to us, "Circle up."

I can't say why Wantu attended the Wednesday night meeting at First Presbyterian Reno; maybe he just needed a restroom. The more time I spent with Wantu, the more I realized his decision making process was unconscious--although that may be overstated. It might be more accurate to say that his thinking wasn't conscious. Wantu seemed to think in instincts: He needed a bathroom so he walked into the nearest building. A man said, "Circle up," and having no other appointments, he joined the circle.

The meeting began with the reading of the creed: a description of human weakness, an invitation to transparency, a dream of restoration. Wantu sat, his feet eighteen inches from the floor, the bird's face pressed against his hairless chest--the red eye watching without expression, just like his companion.

As custom, we began to open and release the carnal desires--wild turkey, Kentucky bourbons, forty ounce malts. We talked until we all smelled of death and tears. When it came Wantu's turn you could taste the curiousity on our lips, voyeurs every one. Wantu began to speak. What he shared at this first meeting and subsequent gatherings was so strikingly plain and domestic that we couldn't help but weight his words with our own burdens. What did Wantu say? I can't quote him directly. Most of it was entirely forgettable. He'd say something like:

"The pond filters in the park turn on at five a.m. The ducks do not mind. A man with a green jacket lays seed at the water's edge. That is how the ducks get food."

We'd nod at one another thinking: He got wasted on Cold Duck and woke up in the park.

Women and Wantu

Women found him endearing--the soft mustache, the fuzzed sideburns--like a boy dressed up in his father's clothes, adorable. It was difficult for a woman not to reach out and pet his black hair, or stroke his tea cup hand, or pinch his rounded shoulder. Wantu permitted it all.

It was the pigeon who gave women pause. Every woman knew this was a bird of the streets, a tramp, a garbage picker. All associations with pigeons were unclean, causing even the maternal to shudder and suspect something tawdry, even sinister, about a small man befriending such a vagrant bird.

Why Wantu and The Pigeon Were Together

To be understood. This was the basis of their relationship. Is there any greater pleasure? Like two dancers who no longer follow the mechanics, who simply intuit--turn and glide as one. This is what the bird and the hafling lived. Complete and constant transparency. Is it any wonder that many of us felt a mixture of awe and envy?

Something Wantu Once Said to Me

We were on the patio drinking Cokes. The neighbor's cat was perched on the fence, following the pigeon, preparing to pounce. "Eye of the Tiger" was playing on the kitchen radio, although it had no significance nor nostalgia for either of us. Wantu was watching the cat, and then, as if he talked like this all the time, he said: "To a predator there is only what is in front. Look, see? Everything is food to him. The pigeon looks in opposite directions, and in his mind they are the same. That is why the pigeon is free."