The Twins on Common Street

There were once two neighbors who didn’t like each other. And you know how it is with two neighbors who don’t like each other–they didn’t have much of a real reason for it. The one neighbor, Sam, liked to play the piano late at night, communing with the artistic spirit, and the other, Ronald, appreciated silence (except when he was watching Fox News and war movies) more than most people and hated the sound of the piano. Things like that set them both off. Sam hated the way Ronald walked. That stupid, ambling gait. Where was he going so slowly? Wasn’t there any urgency about him at all? Ronald hated the way Sam read poetry aloud on the front porch. That melodramatic fool! Always pontificating and communing with the artist within. What nonsense:

Oh my quivering body,

Neath the touch of love!

How coarse, how soft.

How you!

I don’t need to go on and bore you. A million little things irritated the heck out of these two respectable gentlemen, and not a week went by when they argued with each other from their share of sidewalk.

“Polar bears are inferior to chipmunks! Cuteness beats brute strength every time!” Sam wailed.

“Polar bears embody everything this country is about!” Ronald replied. “Power, competition, strength, individualism!”

“You lie! All you do is lie! What about rabbits? Mice? Puppies? Kittens? Does God not love the weak and despised as well?”

“He helps those who help themselves. Why don’t you help me by throwing your piano out the window of your second floor!”

Goodness gracious. They didn’t like each other very much at all, now did they? Seems pretty unanimous that they were sworn enemies. Whatever one enjoyed, the other despised. Whatever one claimed as gospel truth, the other mocked as a lie from hell (or from the White House).

They lived on opposite sides of Common Street. Sam lived in a two story blue house while Ronald lived in a two story red one. They actually looked pretty similar apart from the color. Perhaps at one time they had been painted the same color? I don’t know. I do know they had a next-door neighbor who lived in a much smaller house the color of honey mustard. The man who lived there was named Pepe and he worked all the time at a gas station. He was a nice guy so far as Ronald and Sam could tell. They didn’t know too much about him, honestly, and neither took much time to talk to him. Pepe left early in the morning and didn’t come back until late at night. On the weekends he was working in his garden, tending to his geraniums, herbs, and tomatoes. He apparently made a killer salsa. His niece would come over sometimes and have dinner with him. They laughed together on Pepe’s little back patio. Ronald and Sam could hear them clearly. Sam would hear the laughter and muse on the beauty of the collective human spirit. Ronald would stuff his pillow over his head and groan, “Why can’t everyone just leave me the heck alone!”

Sam sometimes had friends over. He was president of a regionally syndicated book club called “The Liberal Mind is a Literary One” and he praised it for being inclusive to everyone, except those who were, of course, not liberal OR literary, or those who thought inclusivity was itself a meaningless, and therefore liberal, term, like Ronald did. They didn’t read the classics in this book club. They mainly read poetry that averaged about four lines long and had no punctuation. These poems mainly talked about people having vague epiphanies about the divinity within them, and the vague oppressions of a religious, traditional culture that kept them from actualizing such divinity, so by the time a session was over, Sam and his elite members would just be nodding to each other, mumbling “hmm” under their breath, and slowly getting into meditative yoga positions. “In this space,” Sam whispered. “Let us love humanity with our meditation. Let us empathize. Hmm. Wow. I just love humanity so much.” Why they read such things or practiced such weird rituals I may never know.

 Ronald, meanwhile, had a small men’s Bible study at the same time each week, and they recited TULIP to each other before every meeting like Catholics crossing themselves before entering Holy Communion.

“How are you doing with the struggle?” Ronald asked them.

“I messed up seven times this week with pornography.”

“Shoot, Donny. That’s bad.”

“I know.”

“That’s terrible. You gotta try harder. God helps those who help themselves. It’s what made America great. God bless America!”

“Yeah. For sure. I know I’m gross, disgusting, a maggot destined to hell. So that will motivate me to do better.”

“How many times did you mess up last time?”

“Eight times.”

“Eight times. Once a day for six days and twice on another day. Well, your numbers are going down. That’s good news.”

“Yeah. Some day I’ll have a clean week and I’ll be all good. Although I’ll always be gross, disgusting, a maggot destined for hell. So glad to have this time of confession! Keeps me in line.”

“Yeah. Now let’s be sure we all adhere to the doctrines this week and hypothetically cut off our arms and hands and legs if we’re tempted to sin. Better to walk in here a mutilated stump than come in a whole man full of depravity.”

“Amen.”

“All right. Don’t look at the lingerie ad on Highway 7, exit 30. And if you don’t read Scripture every single morning for an hour straight, then be prepared to confess it next week. If that doesn’t motivate you to read God’s word, I don’t know what will.”

Besides that, Sam operated mainly on social media, posting grievances from around the world and how he was accepting donations to send to the earthquake relief efforts in Uzbekistan. He also was calling for equal citizenship for kittens, puppies, and all other small animals which achieved an appropriate cuteness level. “Species-ism is an absolute travesty,” he Tweeted. “Get on board with puppy citizenship or unfriend me and never speak to me again. Boom. That’s inclusivity my friends. Or my enemies, if you’re not for puppy citizenship.”

Ronald shared articles of doctrinal importance and remarked daily that the liberals were to blame for the earthquake in Uzbekistan. The real thing that needed to be funded was the American Institute for Doing Things Only Concerned with America and No One or Nothing Else. He also hated veganism and thought cute animals were pointless.

So maybe they didn’t have only tiny disagreements. Although they lived on Common Street, right across from each other, and although their houses looked the same except for the color, they pretty much lived in opposing universes. And all the while Pepe woke up early, smiled at the sun, smiled at his niece, and went to work at the gas station where he filled people’s tanks and sold Dorito’s over the counter. Pepe went to the little church at the end of the avenue, a place Sam and Ronald had never been to before, and could sometimes be seen mowing his front lawn or feeding his cat, Mutton Chop. It was the house on the corner you just sort of took for granted. It was always there, and assumedly always would be.

But one day, as Ronald and Sam were leaving their houses to go to work, they both looked up as they were fumbling with their car keys to find Pepe’s house reduced to a heap of smoldering ash. The whole house, except for a spindly corner, was gone, along with the garden and the back patio. It was as if a storm had taken it and folded it up without a second thought. Ronald blinked, and Sam put a hand to his mouth.

“Oh my goodness,” he whispered.

Ronald glanced up at him with a scowl, which Sam readily returned.

“He lives right next to you,” Sam said, putting his hands on his hips. “Now how do you suppose that happened?”

“How should I know?” Ronald shrugged. “I must have slept through the whole thing.”

“Hmph. I can’t believe you would sleep through your own neighbor’s demise. All that religious talk but you can’t even roll over in the middle of the night to help a fellow out.”

“You’re one to talk! Where were you, planning your memoir titled My Valid Experience: a Narcissist Reflects on His Own Story and No One Else’s?” 

“I was out last night, if you must know,” Sam scoffed. “I was meeting with the great art director Muskov Pluderhonks, who wants to feature the abstract human experience of longing and spiritual equilibrium in his next studio event, where everyone is invited except the people who don’t have an exquisite appreciation for abstract art. Clearly you won’t be invited!”

“I wouldn’t attend that event for all the money in the world. Abstract art? And besides, I’ll probably have Bible study that night, where only those who believe in limited atonement are allowed, so clearly you won’t be invited to that! Anyway, the point is that you must have noticed the house burning when you came home, correct? And if it wasn’t burning when you came home, then you slept through it too. Fool! Hypocrite!”

“Let’s consider another alternative,” said Sam, now crossing his arms and looking smug. “I happen to know for a fact that the law enforcement in this rotten town is corrupt and evil to the core and is making it its primary goal to ruin the lives of the impoverished. It’s a certainty to me now that I think about it. They were the ones who burnt down…what was his name? Padre? Pablo? Poder? Anyway, they were the ones who burnt down this house. They must have schemed in the night and came in a mob to take it out.”

“That’s absurd!” Ronald crossed his arms too, and if you had driven through Common Street that moment, you would have almost thought you were looking at a mirror image of the same man, locked in an eternal debate with himself and obviously getting nowhere. “I happen to know the enforcement in this town is honorable and wondrous in every regard. I happen to know that Pepe has a smoking problem. And the gasoline that he sometimes carelessly leaves out by the garage…”

“You’re not suggesting that this was Pepe’s fault?” Sam said, aghast.

“I think we need to seriously entertain the possibility. God and government helps those who help themselves.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means that if Pepe had been following God’s will for his life, then I bet this wouldn’t have ever happened.” Ronald looked at the ground, pursing his lips and shaking his head. “A shame. A real crying shame.” He didn’t seem to realize that his hypothesis was little different from his raging antithesis, mirror images as they were. Some menacing Other had come in the night and done this–one out of unjust cruelty, the other out of providential recompense. Both hypotheses were well packaged, controlled, without mystery, no room for questions. They came easy, like water from a gushing waterfall.

As they continued to bicker, this time about whether or not Pepe was an illegal immigrant, and whether or not America was comparable to Hitler’s Germany (Sam’s opinion) or the dominant and illustrious Roman Empire (Ronald’s opinion) an ambulance sped down Common Street, whining and flashing. It was headed for Pepe’s house. It sped past the two men as they argued, although they barely noticed it go by, and skidded to a halt by the sidewalk. Pepe’s niece, who must have been a nurse, jumped out of the back of the ambulance and knelt by a crumpled figure just outside the ruin. The figure was in plain sight, unconscious and wounded, and anyone walking through Common Street would’ve noticed him.

“He’s alive,” she called out as a couple of men brought over the gurney. “Uncle Pepe, can you hear me?”

Pepe rolled over on his back, looking up into his niece’s face, and smiled, nodding. “Let’s take him to the emergency room right away.”

…

“And to think that I live next to someone who thinks that every single burnt down house amounts to the responsibility of the owner!”

“And to think that I live next to someone who wants to blame every single burnt down house on the ‘system’! Oh that those so called ‘corrupt authorities’ would do us all a favor and burn down your abode!”

“No one is responsible for anything! We’re all just the products of culture, political structures, racial, sexual, and class forces! He can’t be blamed!”

“Everything happens for a reason! And he must have brought it all on himself, as harsh as that sounds!”

“I wish the whole world knew how far off the map of intelligence and progress you are!”

“I wish the whole world knew how far off the map of righteousness and conservative values you are!”

“I hope someday you realize how opposed to inclusivity you are!”

“I hope someday you realize how opposed to truth you are!”

“I hope someday you realize how opposed to love you are!”

“I hope someday you realize how opposed to law and order you are!”

“Grrr!!!”

“GRRR!!”

“ARRRRRRR!!”

“YAHHHHHHH!”

Ronald went back inside, too flustered to go to work, and sat down on his computer, ready to post something from impulse in the name of truth. Sam went back inside, too flustered to go to work, and sat down on his computer, ready to post something from impulse in the name of love.

The ambulance sped back down Common Street along with many other cars and bikers and runners and walkers, but the two neighbors who didn’t like each other stayed siloed in their houses typing away, until their next fateful meeting!