SINGLE FANTASY

New York City�11:30 P.M., December 8th, 1980. The Lennons had just left their limousine on the street and were walking into the Dakota apartment building on Central Park West when a voice called, �Mr. Lennon�. Maybe when John Lennon looked back, he recognized the young man who had asked for his autograph earlier in the day�maybe not. Mark David Chapman fired four shots from a .38 into Lennon�s back. Chapman did not try to escape. He was arrested standing next to the gun he had dropped, reading a copy of J.D. Salinger�s �Catcher In The Rye�.

When I first heard that John Lennon was dead, before any of the details were known publicly, my mind jumped back to late 1969. That�s when a story began to circulate all over the world that Paul McCartney had been killed three years earlier in a car crash, and had somehow been replaced by a double. The remaining Beatles in their recordings allegedly hid �Clues� that could be decoded by enterprising fans. A grand hoax that has since become a part of Rock & Roll folklore.

But, as we all know, this time it was not a joke or a publicity stunt, and the world went into shock. Twenty-seven years or so later, John Lennon is still ashes, and the sad, inconsequential Chapman spends his days in Attica Prison. This time, playing Beatle songs backward would offer no hopeful messages that John Lennon might still be alive and well, �in hiding�, somewhere in the jungles of South America. Hell, there have never even been any �Elvis-like� sightings to make you smile. Reality is a bonified bitch.

But I don�t deal in reality. I deal in fiction, the imaginary world. A place where I can have it my way�

Imagine (based on one of my poems - �all the lonely people�)

1.

He lies face-up on the floor of a hotel room he cannot afford. His eyes are closed. On his chest, a tattered paperback moves slowly up and down�marking time.

The plan is clear. Everything he wants to say reduced to a single, blinding point�a warning message to false prophets�a Technicolor caution sign to purveyors of empty noise and meaningless bullshit�a .38 special delivery from a real nowhere-man to a used-up hero who haunts fancy Dakota halls, and hides behind elegant walls that cannot save him. A phantom, lost to himself, hopelessly slipping into some half-assed parody of what he once was.

Feeling slightly numb, he slides his right hand along the carpet where it grazes the cool metal of a waiting .38. He feels as if he is spinning on a wheel of non-being�waiting in this room with windows closed and doors bolted. Enfolded in the early morning half-light while scattered thoughts sift through his brain like loose bits of sand�the harder he tries to hold them, the faster they slip away.

Up until now, all of his obsessive actions had turned out to be pointless, a succession of winding roads that always ended at the same vanishing point. All of the beautiful liars he once needed to feel sure turned out to be con men pitching the perfect spin at the crucial time, flim-flam artists that kept him scrambling after certainty, searching for something as pure as a black hole in space. A lost idealist, always looking for the imagined self he wanted to become.

Now the days of blindly following phonies are over. No more plastic demigods who eventually sell out and fold back into their own comfortable isolation. Today he will make an authentic statement, take matters into his own hands. He will shake up the world�begin their essential education.

He opens his eyes. Staring at the ceiling, he reaches along his right thigh, grips the handle of the pistol, and lifts it slightly off the floor. He is reassured by the weight. �Yes, this feels like the real thing.�

He raises his left hand to eye level and checks his watch. It�s almost time to rock and roll, lock and load�take a walk over to Central Park West, one more shadow, lost in the faceless New York hum.

Softly and off-key, he sings to himself, �All the lonely people, where do they all come from?�

2.

�Any of you people know this man?� asks the policeman, addressing a curious crowd gathered on the sidewalk. No one speaks up.

�I�m telling you, the guy just stepped right off the curb in front of me�like he was in a daze or something.� says the bus driver. �No way I could stop!�

�Anybody else here see the accident?� asks the policeman, gazing around the group of onlookers.

A young black man, standing off to the side answers up.

�Wasn�t no accident.�

�What�s that?� asks the cop.

�He was pushed.�

�Yeah, who pushed him?�

�Some greaser in a black-leather jacket with �Angel� on the back. Then he bent over the guy, pretending to help, while he lifted his wallet.�

The eyewitness paused for a second then added. �He also hooked a piece the dude was carrying in his coat pocket. And when he had what he wanted, no more Good Samaritan. He was a gone motherfucker.�

_____

He cannot move or talk, but his other senses seem to be magnified. Lying on his stomach, head to the side, he can see and smell the trash in the gutter. Up close he can almost read the labels on trampled cigarette butts, see the scrape marks on a lottery scratch ticket, smell the dog piss soaked into the concrete. Then he notices where someone has spray-painted, in red letters, �FUCK YOU� on the curb, the epitaph on the gray slab that will shortly become his tombstone.

He hears the EMS sirens in the distance, and knows they�ll never arrive in time to do him any good.

Then he notices the music. It seems to be coming from somewhere high up and far away. He attempts a painful smile when he recognizes the song�John Lennon�s �Imagine�.

�No hell below us, above us only sky��

Suddenly he recalls a Holden Caulfield line from one of his favorite sections of the book, Chapter 25:

�He always felt as if he were disappearing when he crossed the street.�

Tears slide along the bridge of his nose, and drop into the gutter where they join his life, his blood, and his cause, all, leaking away into a shit-city storm drain.

DB Cox is a blues musician/writer from South Carolina. He was born in Laurens and raised in Greenwood at Connie Maxwell Children�s Home. He graduated from high school in 1966, and joined the Marines in 1968. After being discharged in 1972, he spent several years playing guitar in bars, juke joints, and honky tonks all over the South. In 1977, he moved to Boston, Massachusetts to attend the Berklee School Of Music where he discovered a thriving blues scene. After twenty-eight years of playing the music he loves with some great bands, he moved back to Laurens, South Carolina where he writes and plays in a blues-rock band called �Nobody�s Nothing�. His poems and short stories have been published extensively in the small press in the US and abroad. To read a selection of Donnie's writing on the showcase section of this site, click here.

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.