Co-creating real fictional characters: Virtual ethnofabulation

Where do characters come from?

And where do characters go?

And why are they here?

So, there's like this art gallery? You know? And like a person who like…goes? To the gallery? You know?

Yes, I do know. The person drives there from their two bedroom bungalow in a 2015 Toyota Camry.

The car needed a jump this morning and their neighbor was happy to oblige; the driver was only slightly embarrassed by the Tim Horton's graveyard in the footwell of the front seat.

The person jumping the car (the “neighbor”) didn't really know which terminals on the batteries to place the cables' alligator mouths, but it worked out.

The person's name is Nicholas (not the neighbor, her name is Gertie), and they quite enjoyed their morning drive.

Nicholas was giving Gertie a ride to the town's only art museum. Gertie was an amateur needleworker and wanted to see some of the textiles. The museum wasn't much, but proportionally to the size of the town, it was quite an institution.

The oak trees lining the gallery's driveway loomed large and sentinel-esque over the Toyota as it rolled toward the golden art deco front double-doors. Gertie's leg was bouncing in anticipation, and Nicholas felt only a fart bubbling in his stomach.

Nicholas said, “Art to me always just looks like an accident, like stained linen.”

Gertie, sensing Nicholas' attitude, stopped him in the main foyer and said: “Two rules of galleries: only go where your interest takes you, and don't force anything.” Gertie gestured to the open gallery. “Take your time, or let your time take you, babe,” she laughed. Nicholas sighed.

Nick liked Gertie. They had been friends since college when they met in Chess Club. Nick didn't especially like chess either, but he knew that clubs were a good way to make friends. He didn't feel attracted to Gertie, in like a sexual way, but when he saw her doing things she liked or that she was interested in—like her needlework or taming the wild rose bushes in her house's front yard with the semi-dull clippers she had borrowed from him years ago and had never bothered to return or that he had never bothered to ask for back—in those moments, he felt a strong desire to have his attention on her.

Gertie was similarly sexually dis-attracted to Nicholas, but unlike herself, Nicholas had no real spark moments, no moments of sublime attention or losing himself in a project. Like once she had taken a first-year college class on Religion and Art, and when the professor was lecturing on the ecstasy exhibited in Bernini's The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, she couldn't pay attention to the words he was saying but only to how his face and upturned body seemed to mirror Saint Teresa's blissed-out look. Gertie studied people for those echoes. But Nicholas was, for the most part (to Gertie's eyes, at least), rather dull. Dull wasn't bad, and Gertie felt safe alongside dull, but where Gertie shined occasionally, Nicholas had only moments of retraction. These did not endear Gertie any further to him but the opposite. Perhaps today, she wondered, perhaps today he might see something.

Like he had many times before while taking Gertie to the gallery, Nick lay semi-supine on the lone stone gallery bench, as the light filtered onto him from the smudged skylight.

The acoustics in the gallery were interesting; from where Nick sat, he was able to hear steady yet hushed footfalls, which seemed to bounce up his body and into his ears. He was basking in the normalcy of sitting there, of trees, of quiet gallery sounds, of waiting. He felt another sigh building when something pierced his veil.

“So, like,” Nick said. “How did you learn to do stuff?” Nick nudged his shoulder toward the gallery room before them.

Gertie had her hobbies; what she called her interests. Nick didn't have things he was interested in per se, but he did like to sit and feel a distributed sense of himself in all of the things around him. This was a kind of interest too.

Sometimes Nick wondered if he was just out of tune. Were his ear canals properly connected to his brain? Was his tongue fixed appropriately to his language center? Did his nerves work? He was imagining chewing on the dongle of one of Gertie's hoodies when his voice caught him off guard. I didn't say anything, he thought, while perking his head up. Yes, I must have. Floating from deep in the gallery, he heard his own trademark explication: fuckin goose balls.

Hearing fuckin goose balls was especially perplexing to him, because it seemed to be emanating from between the threads of the tapestry that Gertie seemed to spend the most time wondering over in the gallery. The tapestry was made by—oh, what did he care. He stood up and walked over to it. He could feel Gertie moving about the gallery space like a Roomba behind him.

Nicholas experienced something for the first time, then. He didn't just let his eyes hover over the thing before him; he let them drink. He waited; he shifted internally at the discomfort of this new feeling. Was this what people meant by inspiration? By fixation? He had no referent and needed none. He felt uncomfortable yet at peace; the need to look away was hot and the desire to keep looking was chilly. Something inside him stirred.

“‘Melting Tear’ (oil on canvas) represents the limits of multi-medium textile art and the intricacies of human frailty.”

Nick's discomfort with art was that he felt like he had to know a lot to enjoy it. There were those stupid cards of typed words on the wall. They said a lot, he knew; Gertie liked to read them. She seemed, to Nick, to spend more time reading the cards than studying the stitch-work she so often lauded over her morning coffee on her lawn when Nick went out to get the morning paper.

“Why is the car on fire, mommy?” A tot beside Nick asked its mother, tiny neck craning to see the entirety of the tapestry. Nick liked this question. Why is the car on fire? He let his eyes sink a little deeper into the fabric. He saw stitches; he saw the illusion of chrome; he saw green, black, red, purple. He saw flames. What if the fire isn't actually fire?

“The car is on fire, sweetheart, because the artist is trying to—” Nick stopped listening. Without actually touching the threads of the tapestry he could feel the fire, like a carpet burn.

Nick let his eyes dance with the stitched flames before dropping them, trailing to the bottom of the tapestry. Along the lowermost edge, running from left to right, he followed the succession of broken glass and heard it tinkling. Shards cartwheeled in glittering thread below the scene of rubbery-smelling immolation. He stopped his hand before it brushed the spun glass. He held his left hand with his right and looked to Gertie to make sure she hadn't seen him.

When he looked at a thing he liked to imagine how Gertie might look at the same thing. Like, there is this tree in his backyard that he would look at for the time it would take his now-dead spaniel to poo. He thought Gertie might examine the texture, how the elevation lines of the bark rose and fell like mountains with rivers cut between them. He never brought Gertie to his backyard; too much dog poo that he never bothered to pick up.

He imagined Gertie's gaze now: she sees patterns repeated fractally in delicate stitches; she sees the flames from the centrally framed car wreck made of exactly three colors; she sees the saturation of the tapestry ebb as it reaches the edge, the glass the least colorful aspect, yet the overall framing device. He thought that Gertie might feel a stir of jealousy: am I good enough to make this? He thought that Gertie might dislike it: it's a little heavy handed, no? He thought that Gertie might bend over to recite the details on the small artist statement card, pinned beneath the right-hand side of the tapestry.

“Do you think the car killed the person, or the other way around?” Gertie whispered softly into his ears. With a start, Nick realized he missed the broken body lying beside the burning car. He felt slow. How dare Gertie jump the gun like that, for all she knew he was still taking it all in. And on the heels of that, he now felt distrustful of the artist. How schlocky; a dead body beside a burning car? The humiliation cut deeper into him; the glass no longer pricked him. Nick got hotter.

Nick grunted at Gertie's question. She often asked questions she wouldn't expect him to answer. Gertie had curly hair. He thought it was funny how perfectly her hair was curled each time he saw her, as if her interest in woven fabric was somehow connected to the way her hair fell.

“Are you ready to go?” She asked the wall.

“Only if you're ready to test out this scene,” Nick replied to the wall. He elbowed Gertie and mimed a car crash. He forgot that both of her parents had died in a car wreck.

She gave Nick the look she gave him when he said things like that.

Nick pulled out his car keys and leaned toward the wall. Gertie moved to touch his shoulder and withdrew. Nick could feel the air from her move around his back. With a glance, he ensured no eyes were on them. He reached to the bottom of the tapestry and, using the sharpest key on his ring, pulled one thread loose. Something unclenched inside him.

If Gertie had seen the act of vandalism, she didn't say.

He could hear Gertie walking toward the exit. He stood up, took one last look at the little thread he had coaxed from the others, and followed her out.

He thumbed the keys. In the parking lot, his Toyota barked to life. The ACDC CD perpetually stuck in the car's CD player spun to life, and as they drove, they were serenaded by “Back in Black.” Gertie waited to hear “Highway to Hell.”

LOCAL NEWSPAPER: BELOVED TOWN MINER FOUND DEAD AT SHAFT BOTTOM; GRANDSON TO INHERIT KARMINE FARMHOUSE

He stained my pants. The pants I bought at the vintage shop near the park I walk around to take breaks from working. The fly is broken, so I hold it up with an old paperclip, my favorite paperclip, patinated and sharp. I found it at the bottom of his tote. Today, he won't look at me, those eyes behind the coffee's steam. I take two steps toward him. In my ambulance, I spill a little coffee on the web between my fore knuckle and thumb. I bend down to look but forget to tell my feet to stop, and when we collide I'm relieved. He smells like my father. He smells like hollyhocks and the dust of a boarded-up house. When I was traveling across the province, I noticed how houses left to time cut neat squares from the surrounding waves of sky and I imagined the lap of his blond curls against the stubbled shore of my jaw.

My pants are wet. Oh, shit. He′s been talking to me.

“Don't worry.”

I think I should laugh; I've been told I come across as distant.

“I know this is new for you. I know this can't be easy.”

I inhale deeply and say, “You stained my pants.”

“You stained my pants,” he says.

Should I invite him in now? Do we sit on the porch and watch the sun roll past noon together? Grandpa would be so ashamed of me, letting the big rooms of his house be forgotten. “Would you like to come in? I have something of yours,” I say.

“Something of mine?”

We cross the threshold of the house that now belongs to me (can that even be right?). I slip the paperclip out of the buttonhole of my pants. I don't know why, but as we walk past the living room's doorway—grandpa's furniture covered with drop cloths—I pin the paperclip into the door frame where Grandpa would record my growth on Christmas Day. Just another memory to cover with fresh paint when I sell this place.

He watches me. I feel his eyes on the side of my face. He doesn't ask any questions, and I'm relieved. He turns me to face him and reaches down to unbutton his own stained jeans. “I never got a chance to tell you, I'm…”.

I avoid his gaze. Light filters into the hallway through the curtains.

I resist turning toward him and guide him inside me. I feel the doorframe's height marks on my palms. He breathes “going away” into my ear as he comes. I think: I don't care. I can't live without you.

I think: Good.

As I stroke his curls I wonder if he can only stay with me when he feels like he has an out. Maybe in another life we would talk, maybe I would call him my Houdini, something to bring us together.

We forgot to close the front door, and the fall breeze cools the warmth between my legs.

I feel the words “I'm sorry” on my neck. Too soft to hear but hard enough to move me. I know he needs to get out. Will I remember how I felt in his arms on the hill beyond the field and rusted-out tractor?

I work hard for the words to come as if I'm Grandpa mining ore. My semen drops to the puddled pants at my feet.

“You need to buy a belt.” He reaches in front of me and pulls the paperclip from the wall.

“Okay,” falls from my mouth like a stone.

I need his face to be smiling, so I keep it there, in my mind.

“Do you want me to reheat your coffee?”

I hear him. I can't reply.

Ok, so I met him in the field…

And I've met someone like him before…

Arnoldo is the place between them….

Arnoldo would never call any time he ate a picnic. And yet to onlookers, this was exactly how it seemed—a man, a tinfoiled sandwich, a sweater underneath his bottom. The cars zooming by may have been startling to many, given the proximity to the road of where Arnoldo sat, but Arnoldo was too invested in unwrapping and then getting distracted by WhatsApp notifications that were dinging in to notice.

It went like this for a good 5 minutes: unfold tinfoil corner, crinkle crinkle, WhatsApp notification, ding ding, Arnoldo puts down sandwich, picks up phone, becomes absorbed, picks up sandwich, and before he gets purchase on a corner, ding ding.

Arnoldo didn't mind: he was just along for the ride. The crew had taken a van from the city. Eight people in all, Arnoldo got along well with most of them. Although at times people seemed to shy away from his more mercurial moments, to Arnoldo this didn't make much sense, but he wasn't one to chase after someone.

For example, one time he was rolling cigarettes and a stranger came up to him:

“Hey bud. Can I bum some tobacco?”

“Buddy! ‘Course, don't you want a hand-rolled instead?”

“No, man. I can do it, just give me some tobacco—”.

“Arnoldo! Would you stop dicking around. We're ready to go.”

As Arnoldo stood up to leave, figuring he'd finish his sandwich in the van, the Mediterranean breeze blew a mixture of gasoline, salt, and coppery dust his way—to Arnoldo, the smell of cocaine on the wind was overpowering. A small sort of flashback hit him.

Hands and a bag, a bag upside down. Lines on a table and then music, music loud as thunderclaps. Arnoldo opens the patio door, steps out, fresh night air. Taste smoke, nightbird song, a shout. A crash. Lines on a table, the song changes.

In the back of the van, the others leaned away from Arnoldo. Arnoldo Arnoldo Arnoldo! Arnoldo thought, unwrapping his sandwich completely.

He nibbled only at the corner. He wasn't eating much these days. Ever since his wife had begun chemo he'd lost his appetite, too. He wondered what she was doing at home, how she was feeling, if she was eating.

“Arnoldo,” José said from the front of the van. Arnoldo could see José's face in the rearview mirror. “Now when we get there, you'll have to put that snack away so we can get done quick this time.” The rest of the men in the van chuckled. Arnoldo laughed, a little after the men.

The van pulled into the build site, and Arnoldo re-wrapped the uneaten half of his sandwich, brushing crumbs from his shirt but missing most of them. He looked around jovially, energized by the bustle of men standing, stretching, filing out of the dusty van.

As one bent slightly to stretch his back, another said, “Back sore from hauling your wife to bed last night?” More communal laughter.

After a beat, and once most of the men had filed out, Arnoldo offered, “Your wife, she'd be doing all the work. Marta makes good chili.” Arnoldo laughed and looked around; the few men who heard him chuckled softly but with furrowed brows.

José interjected “Okay, guys, let's get going. Sun's up soon. This site's been clear since August, but maybe the owner hasn't gone on holiday and could be checking in or who knows what, so let's just get this done and hit the road.”

“My wife says I'm fast but I'm no builder!” Arnoldo winked and studied the way the men reacted. More chuckling, a couple of genuine laughs.

From the trunk, the men began pulling out crowbars and hammers, iron ringing. Arnoldo handed the largest crowbar to José and took worn leather gloves for himself.

Arnoldo loved ripping things apart. He loved cracking boards, loved the creaking tension and the snap of wood giving in.

The first orange of morning shone through the buildings' frames. The men filled the trunk with boards. They carried back the tools on their laps.

Arnoldo's stomach growled. He held a hand just above his waistline and rubbed, smiling. It's okay, it'll be okay, we're okay.

As the men worked, Arnoldo sat in the van, nibbling, instructing the men who rolled their eyes.

Arnoldo watched them roll their eyes. He practiced it himself. He couldn't get the motion fluid enough. He may have looked bizarre. But to Arnoldo, it just felt good to try.