Carolyn, or, How to Disappear Completely

I.

The thing that frightened Carolyn most about moving home was the possibility of running into people she used to know, and for the first several months after she returned she lived in an almost constant state of nervousness over just such an encounter.

Carolyn had changed in the ten years since leaving town, to the point where the old Carolyn – the person she once was – had more or less ceased to exist; Carolyn was sure the people she used to know had also changed, and that she would not recognize them as the people she had once known, because those people had also ceased to exist.

But the fact that the people Carolyn used to know no longer existed was the crux of the problem, because Carolyn suspected that the people she used to know were not aware of this change: they would demand that Carolyn treat them as if they were the same person they had always been, despite the fact that they had become someone else entirely.

Of course, there were some people who would feel the same way Carolyn did, but this, too, was disconcerting to Carolyn; part of Carolyn’s fear of running into the people she used to know was the possibility of causing psychic pain to those who had long ago relegated the old Carolyn to a forgotten corner of their consciousness, and who would not want to be reminded of this fact by the new Carolyn, with whom they had very little in common.

But more frightening to Carolyn than causing psychic pain to those who had given up on Carolyn’s existence was the thought of running into those people who had not given up, who had, in fact, been waiting for Carolyn to return to the city for years now.

Such a person might have a great deal at stake in the idea that Carolyn was still Carolyn, regardless of Carolyn’s belief that she herself had become a completely different Carolyn entirely, and Carolyn could imagine the effect of such interactions, day after day, to the point where all of the progress Carolyn had made towards becoming a new and more evolved Carolyn would be destroyed by the unceasing demands that she return to being the Carolyn from before, the Carolyn who no longer existed.

So Carolyn developed a plan: she would keep a watchful eye out for the people she used to know, especially those awaiting the return of Carolyn, so that if she were to run into such a person she could find some means of escape from the situation before the person waiting for Carolyn could recognize her.

II.

There was one gap in Carolyn’s plan: she assumed that the people who were waiting for Carolyn would be easily identifiable, when in fact the people who were waiting for Carolyn might have undergone great changes since Carolyn last saw them – similar to the changes Carolyn herself had undergone – and therefore might be unrecognizable to Carolyn as the people they once were.

Once Carolyn realized that the people who were waiting for Carolyn might no longer resemble their former selves, the possibility of running into such people only increased, to the point where anyone in the city, no matter how unfamiliar, might be waiting for Carolyn without her knowing it, and Carolyn’s nervousness, which had only just begun to subside, returned twofold.

It occurred to Carolyn that the people who had changed the most from their former selves might also be the ones who most eagerly awaited the return of the old Carolyn, an idea that frightened Carolyn more than any other: that someone might have spent the ten years of Carolyn’s absence fixating on the old Carolyn as an emblem of their past, a sort of Carolyn-shaped substitute for lost things.

Carolyn did not know what she would do, exactly, to avoid such a person, so she developed a much different plan: she would become as little like the old Carolyn as possible, dress differently, down to socks and the accessories, and start purposefully doing things that she felt Carolyn would not normally do, such as eating alone, going to the cinema in the daytime, and riding in taxicabs.

By cultivating distinctly non-Carolyn habits, Carolyn had a twofold hope: firstly, that she would avoid the parts of the city that a person seeking Carolyn would habitually frequent, and secondly, in the unlikely event that she ran into someone seeking Carolyn in a non-Carolyn part of town, that her behavior and appearance would have grown so far removed from what was normally considered Carolyn-esque that she would be unrecognizable to the people who were waiting for Carolyn to return.

In this way the new Carolyn would diverge so far from the old Carolyn that Carolyn would no longer have to worry about being mistaken for a Carolyn that didn’t exist, and could go on being Carolyn without fear.

III.

As the months went on, Carolyn found that she genuinely enjoyed engaging in non-Carolyn habits; perhaps this shouldn’t have surprised her, considering that it was a need to try new things and new experiences that had forced Carolyn to grow and change in the first place, to the point where the old Carolyn no longer existed.

The only thing that worried Carolyn from time to time was the ratio of Carolyn-like behavior to un-Carolyn-like behavior, and whether it might be possible to cultivate so many non-Carolyn habits that Carolyn would cease to be Carolyn at all, and would become unrecognizable to herself; the more she thought about this possibility the more Carolyn began to become nervous, to the point where Carolyn’s nervousness over whether she was still Carolyn in any meaningful sense of the term was equal to – if not greater than – her earlier fears.

The only way Carolyn had of soothing this fear was to assure herself that no behavior could be truly un-Carolyn if Carolyn herself engaged in it, and that by taking on more and more non-Carolyn habits Carolyn was only expanding the definition of Carolyn; she was relieved to discover that the idea of Carolyn was large enough to encompass whatever Carolyn wanted to become.

IV.

Little did Carolyn know that she was fast approaching a larger and more complex problem: the idea of Carolyn was expanding at such a rapid rate that it was quickly becoming difficult for Carolyn do anything un-Carolyn, and this made it easier and easier for the people who were waiting for Carolyn to recognize her as Carolyn, no matter how had she tried to convince them otherwise.

That was the great flaw in all her plans: in trying to be as non-Carolyn as possible, she assumed the people who were waiting for Carolyn were expecting a particular kind of Carolyn, that is to say, the same Carolyn they had always known, the old Carolyn, the Carolyn who no longer existed.

What if, in fact, the opposite was true, and the people who were waiting for Carolyn had already begun to imagine a Carolyn who was quite different from the Carolyn they had once known, a Carolyn that changed with the passing of time; such a Carolyn might be comforting, insofar as it would reassure the people who were waiting for Carolyn that no matter how much Carolyn changed she would still be Carolyn.

What if the idea of Carolyn – an ever-changing Carolyn, forever evolving, but keeping at the core a sort of super-Carolyn, recognizable to the people who had once known her – was growing at such a rapid rate that there was no way Carolyn herself could ever hope to keep up?

The people who were waiting for Carolyn were forever dreaming of things Carolyn might be doing as they waited for her to arrive, so that no matter what non-Carolyn behaviors Carolyn tried to employ, in the end all Carolyn was doing was fulfilling their expectations of her, broadening the idea of Carolyn until it seemed to encompass an entire world of possibilities.

Carolyn tried the most un-Carolyn behaviors and non-Carolyn habits imaginable; she went to parts of the city where no one had ever heard of Carolyn before and gave a non-Carolyn name, just to be safe; she committed crimes for which no one would ever dream Carolyn was responsible; she even began to speak of Carolyn in the third person, as if by creating the character of Carolyn she could at last be free to be Carolyn again.

But it was all no use; each attempt to avoid being Carolyn folded effortlessly into the idea of Carolyn, and the idea of Carolyn grew so large that there was no way that Carolyn could escape.

In the end Carolyn was swallowed by Carolyn, and disappeared completely.

The Chinese Method

My boss is interested in the Chinese method. All day long, instead of making repairs, he walks around the shop and examines the guitars for signs of the Chinese method in manufacturing.

“China,” he says, ticking them off: “Korea: worthless. China.”

Guitars built in the Chinese method are his main moneymaker, because they are both playable and affordable. The Chinese method of guitar manufacture is rapidly cornering the market.

Our boss is convinced that the Chinese method is superior to our method in most areas, and that soon, whether we want to our not, we will be forced to adopt the Chinese method because of its overwhelming power and subtlety.

Yesterday a customer complained about the drought, and the boss informed him that the Chinese method of cloud-seeding, whereby rockets containing oxidizers are shot into the middle of clouds, creating precipitation, is catching on in many countries around the world.

I can see why the boss would be excited about the Chinese method. He is interested in efficiency, and everybody agrees that the Chinese method is very efficient. Recently he turned of the hot water heater in the bathroom, and when Wilson, the bass teacher, who drinks too much and is sometimes absent from lessons, complained, the boss told him that the Chinese method of heating discourages waste and that nobody needs hot water to wash their hands. He says that soon energy shortages will force us all to adopt the Chinese method.

I wish there was a Chinese method for the production of whiskey, Wilson says, maybe that way it would be cheaper, and I could use it keep warm. Wilson is open about his drinking in a way that dares the boss to fire him, but the boss is so timid in an argument that all he can do is wait until Wilson is gone and complain that under the Chinese method of labor management it would be easy for him to fire Wilson, because there would be ten people without alcohol problems waiting to take his place.

I feel the boss’ obsession with the Chinese method is distracting him from work, because the repair orders and the bills are terribly backed up.

I work all day, planing the necks of guitars and setting the action against the fretboard so that all the notes go down the scale in perfect harmony, and when I wince from what I’m sure is carpal tunnel my boss suggests that I should try the Chinese method of medicine, which involves cupping and tui na massage. I do not remind him that I am not paid enough to afford such treatments because I remember his rant about the Chinese method of labor management.

Many people are concerned that the Chinese method of economics. People suggest that there are parts of the Chinese method we might learn and apply to our own economic system, before it’s too late.

Recently the boss developed a plan, which he learned from a book on the Chinese method of agriculture, in which all of the teachers who work above the store would be asked to rent their rooms by the day, regardless of whether they had any actual students to teach, under the theory that they can find other uses for the rooms when the students are not there. The teachers, who do not share the bosses attitude towards the infallibility of the Chinese method, were not interested, and the boss, who is full of schemes but lacks the courage to put them into practice, was forced to relinquish his dream.

In the aftermath of this conflict, the guitar teacher, Andrew, placed a book on the boss’ desk, the Tao Te Ching, in the hopes that he might in the future employ the Chinese method of philosophical relaxation. Andrew is the best off of all of us, because he has his degree in music from a reputable institution, and is a specialist in all styles, including the Chinese method of music, which he claims is so pure and simple it only requires five notes to approximate the sound of water falling on mossy stone.

The teachers and I worry that the store is losing money, because we see the boss is only eating rice and vegetables at his work bench, and that he never eats out anymore, but soon enough he explains that he is only adopting the Chinese method towards nutrition, in which grains, beans, and vegetables strengthen the mind and the body. We wonder if he is being intentionally opaque; we have heard that the Chinese method of management does not encourage communication towards the laboring class.

Customers sometime lambast the boss for his seemingly nonsensical pricing structure concerning repairs, but Andrew, who is smarter than the rest of us, has suggested that the boss is adopting the Chinese method towards economic policy, in which figures are intentionally inflated by the central bureaucracy in service of fiscal necessity. Wilson, whose drinking has worsened noticeably, suggests that the boss study the Chinese method of learning how to do his damn job.

Edwin, the drum teacher, who is younger than the rest of us, has been studying the Chinese method towards the teaching of English, in the hopes that he might find a job abroad in case he is fired by the boss or our labor situation becomes untenable.

Recently the boss’ reactions to the Chinese method have become increasingly paranoid. He watches replays of the Beijing Olympics, and comments on the Chinese method of organization in awed and frightened tones.

The boss shared with me recently information he gleaned from a friend about the Chinese method towards arms manufacturing. His friend, who is a policeman and therefore susceptible to paranoid delusions, claims that the Chinese method of military export involves implanting all of their armaments with tiny chips, so that in the event of a war between China and another country all weapons made in China would either fail to work or turn against their users. The boss is very concerned that this subtle Chinese method of defense has completely turned the tables in the geopolitical arena.

Edwin came downstairs recently with a small black camera that he discovered in the corner of his lesson room, and although the boss insisted he knew nothing about it the rest of us took it as evidence that the boss has begun adopting the Chinese method of personal surveillance, to an unknown end.

Wilson, who no longer even bothers to hide the whiskey bottle clanking in his Jansport backpack, has taken to claiming that he knows more about the Chinese method than the boss does. For instance, he claims to know a great deal about the Chinese method of self-defense, or kung fu. He claims that if the boss ever tries anything he will apply his knowledge of the Chinese method of self-defense to the boss personally. There is some sort of conflict brewing between the boss and Wilson, but in accordance with the Chinese method of strategic military planning each of them has been strengthening their position without making their intentions known.

The teachers have fewer students than they used to, owing at least in part to the boss’ expansion of the Chinese method of heating to include the upper levels of the store, so that the lesson rooms are not entirely comfortable. It is only November, but Andrew, who views everything quite calmly, is already claiming to be employing the Chinese method of meditation in which you lower your body temperature to adapt to sub-optimal atmospheric conditions. I am fairly certain that the students are not familiar with this Chinese method of personal comfort.

Yesterday the boss refused to pay Wilson for one of his lessons, claiming he had taken a packet of bass strings from the counter without paying for it, and that he was getting off light, because if he were following the Chinese method of justice he would have cut off Wilson’s hand. Wilson, who speaks remarkably well even under the influence, remarked that the boss was mistaking the Chinese method for some other method, perhaps the fundamentalist Islamic method or the Texas method. He also threatened, calmly, to use the Chinese method of martial arts with which he was more than a little familiar on the boss if he didn’t pay him the money he was owed. In deference to the Chinese method of communal decision-making, the boss asked the rest of us if we thought it was fair for Wilson to take bass strings from the counter, and when none of us spoke up he paid Wilson the little money he was owed and told him never to come back.

There are now more fewer instruments than ever in the repair queue, and the boss is convinced that this shortfall is a result of Wilson’s engagement in the Chinese method of slander, waging a whisper campaign against him in the local musical community. Edwin has been put to work warding off creditors, but mostly he stands at the front desk, studying the Chinese method of English instruction and trying to avoid looking at the phone. Andrew is ensconced in the upstairs room, where he claims to be working on a particularly advanced form of the Chinese method in music whereby the precise location of two notes in a time-space continuum vibrate together and manifest in a chi-construction of luminous joy.

Me, I work my fingers to the bone while the boss neglects the more difficult repairs in favor of concocting some sort of Chinese method to murder Wilson in which the poisons used would be virtually undetectable. I am aware that I am being exploited, but due to the failure of our economic method in the face of the Chinese method there are few other jobs available.

Finally, the boss’ use of the Chinese method of personal surveillance has borne fruit. He claims that he has video evidence of Wilson breaking into the store at night, using some sort of Chinese method of martial arts to break the padlock on the door with his foot. All of us feel skeptical about this, especially because the boss told us about it while wearing a peaked military cap made in the Chinese method. By now the store is so empty that it would be easy to practice the Chinese method of tai-chi in the middle of the front room, because the boss no longer has the money with which to buy new stock. The boss claims this is because Wilson has stolen most of the instruments made in the Chinese method, which are his biggest sellers, and that without the revenue these instruments bring he cannot buy anything else, but we are no longer convinced by his excuses. We say we are tired of his obsessions with the Chinese method, and that we are all quitting.

This is when the boss, in a very unsubtle maneuver that belies his stated interest in the Chinese method, closes the grate of the store behind us, locks it, and forces us against the wall. He says that we are to engage immediately in the Chinese method of self-criticism, and explain how it was that we aided Wilson in his cowardly and undeserved attacks on the store which had for so long provided him his livelihood.

Andrew, who thinks he is very smart, says that he is sorry, that he lent Wilson a book on the Chinese method of breaking and entering, but that he never thought it would end like this, and the boss, sensing this is a lie, knocks him out with the butt of the rifle.

Edwin, who is less smart than Andrew but smarter than me, takes the Chinese method of self-criticism at face value and begins outlining all of the things that are wrong with him, through his tears, including his poor posture and his inability to correctly identify a gerund, and the boss, sensing futility, knocks him out with the butt of the rifle.

I am not knowledgeable in the Chinese method, so I say nothing.

Since I am the only one remaining who the boss feels might have information about Wilson, he locks me in the basement and subjects me to series of interrogations based on the Chinese method: “Medium-Starvation,” “Filthy, Infested Surroundings,” and “Exploitation of Physical Weakness.”

This is where I have been for several days now, and I wonder where the boss is; whether he is working on new Chinese methods by which to retrieve information I most certainly do not possess, or if he has met his own end aboveground. Perhaps the financial authorities, who are increasingly familiar with the Chinese method of fraud, have caught up to him. Maybe the police, who are now encouraged to use the Chinese method in apprehending suspects, have made short work of him.

In my time down here I have come to regret my lack of knowledge of the Chinese method, and if I ever get back aboveground I have made a promise to myself that I will devote my life to study, in the hopes that I might better myself and make a place for myself in the new world order. For now, I mainly concentrate on a Chinese method – or so I think, unless it is Indian, or even Indonesian – which I read of once as a child, in which a prisoner sings a song and charms his ropes into rising so far into the air that the rope forms a bridge into another, brighter world. I maintain some hope that by utilizing this Chinese method of rope climbing, this particular prisoner can at last find peace.