"The Jungle"

Study of a common room with ten boys in it // In my headphones: Guns N' Roses—Welcome to the Jungle (1987)

The boxcar suite was black, completely. But you couldn’t tell for certain because the overhead lights were always off. A spiderweb of white light drip-dripping from the ceiling lit the room from above. An oval orange light in the corner kept the boys from falling into depression. Otherwise, they were kept entertained by haphazard booby traps placed unstrategically around the floor: pleather sofas and mismatched lawn chairs crept along the walls, tripping any unsuspecting visitors. An unseemly furry ball of a dirtily patchy disposition lay plunked in the center of the room, beckoning the innocent to sit and play a while. The floor was constructed from an unremarkable substance, but it crunched as the boys walked on it, so most kept their shoes on at all costs. They only took them off to lounge in the ominously titled Cuddle Corner, lying in wait with blood-red mats lining its walls and pillows blanketing its bottom. It was more of a nook than a corner. But if the dark suck of the room was meant to disorient, the debris tacked to the walls was intended to inspire.

The suite played host to ten boys, and its inhabitants were changing all the time. Every year, they dutifully climbed through the broken-down, boarded-up windows down the road and fought no one to retrieve the choicest spoils. The cricket bat planks marked with the name of voracious graduates past were the crusaders’ most prized relics. Only by pinning them to the walls of their crenellated boxcar could they access the Sharpie-codified divine. Only by gingerly retrieving the planks from their nails on the wall and swinging them like bats hitting an imaginary ball could they feel the surge of devotion and faith required for their saintly calling.

Back in their dimly lit castle keep, the valiants rejoiced. They flicked their lighters on and off. They played video games in the haze of the television set. They stretched and sucked their thumbs. They winked at non-believers in the bathroom. When night fell, they prepared to cross continents, summit mountains, forge rivers, smell the flowers, scratch the vandals. They doused themselves with beer in absolution. They donned faded vessels and bore the jungle as their standard after trying and failing to tie their chainmail armor. They took a shot off the flat edge of their swords and crossed themselves on the cinder block threshold. Now they had enough confidence to bore and ring, and they ventured out under cover of a star-flecked sky.

To see them serve king and country would make anyone proud, most especially those who would succeed them.  In the summer they’ve got other things going on, but in the winter most things are covered in ice, so why wouldn’t they pillage and cower and capture? If it’s not shag carpet, it’s incense. If it isn’t a couch, it’s a mattress on the floor.

All the furniture is inherited, of course. That’s what makes it hallowed. They’ll never have it again, and neither will you. Do you wish you could find a monk to color your exploits biblical? If you’re tired of seeing the palm fronds waving, just hold on tight to your gold-leaf engraving; one day you may go out crusading, and with your bat in hand a-blazing, “The Jungle” here will still be waiting, and you will stand there oddly gaping with your tongue reflecting the television glow.

~

📍Boston, Massachusetts

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Ring pops from a convenience store in Paris.