Corridoring
I can’t say exactly what I was doing the first time I heard the hallway in my head. Maybe I sat slouched in an ergonomic chair answering emails when the sound of a narrow, still space opened in my left ear with painless but persistent pressure. Or maybe driving home, and I turned some earnest public radio conversation up a couple notches louder to reassert where I sat physically over this other, sudden place I eavesdropped on against my will.
I can tell you it isn’t easy, two places at the same time.
Have you ever woken up and before opening your eyes the sound of the house tells whether it’s a new day or only the middle of a night? That’s how it was. As soon as I heard it: a hallway. And I do see it too, in that only half-there way the mind renders from sound. Two walls running to a far-off vanishing point, close enough to brush both with outstretched arms, painted the vaguely institutional mint green of a bygone era. Matching doorways on each side every ten feet or so. No numbers, no signs.
I likely tried to remove it. Q-tips. Peroxide. Creating a vacuum with my palm, I imagine. It’s possible an urgent care nurse grew visibly annoyed when I refused to accept nothing was there. No, I feel it, a fullness that every other sound has to squeeze past. There’s somewhere in there. Maybe her irritation shifted to something else entirely then, and, to justify my choice of words, I calmly clarified my rational conclusion that the constant pressure proved the hallway wasn’t some purely imaginal space. The hallway is as real as the residue of the room we’re in right now painted on the back of your eyelids each time you blink. Go on, close your eyes. You’re still there, aren’t you? But she wouldn’t blink.
Maybe I was jogging my favorite three-mile marshland loop when the first echoed thumps indicated movement on the other side of those walls. When I realized the hallway isn’t empty. Unseen bodies shifted there, perhaps stretching out their dormancy. That’s the word that feels right.
This must be when my attitude changed; instead of asking why I asked, why me? Why am I out in the hall while they’re all shut in?
Maybe I was pushing the mower to appease scowling neighbors or tilting a palm of adobo into a simmering family dinner or, if the kids were well asleep and dinner wasn’t too heavy, maybe fucking farewell to a Thursday evening when the first voice murmured at the seam of its door. The salient point is that anywhere I am, the hallway is with me: in every room, for every conversation, part of me is paying attention to that other place.
I’ve never truly had a moment to myself since the occupants started speaking, and I’ve learned those rooms are crowded. The walls absorb just enough to leave me guessing. Only murmured rhythms to work with, but I do try. I listen closer than ever.
It’s vital to be clear about what I don’t know. Any play at certainty would be untrue, and I try for honesty despite my confusion, or because of it. Possibly this is something I learned in the hallway. That place is a bore tide scouring the particulars from my moments here, in this body. Whatever memories remain are a scattered archipelago compared to the me that listens. Ask me what I said, or where we were when, or how I found out about, or how many times, or why, or why not. I probably can’t say.
The hallway though, I can tell you all about that. How it’s not a single endless hall but one long enough for the walk to feel significant, and how, eventually, it’s intersected by another, though I’ve yet to ever reach that corner. How something in the smooth of the walls suggests a hidden curve, that if I could only travel in the right way those walls would curl tight around me like a Eustachian tube. It’s an impression I have.
At some point, the voices turned. Their steadiness slid, went snarling. Whatever they’re saying, always saying, they started scraping it up from the back of their bellies to howl it out in hiss tones, teeth tones, low grating growl tones. Voices we’re left with after vomiting, shouting, wailing for hours. Humans performing animal speech, pushing past vocal cords for something shapeless. Or animals performing human speech, seeking language for a terrible hunger, or anger, or pain. And can you imagine never not hearing this? Can you? Waking up and playing partner, employee, good goddamn citizen all day while this horde calls to you every single second? Imagine it and you might understand what I did with the meat thermometer.
Left eardrum or no, that’s when they started rattling their doorknobs. Pounding their fists. Tearing at their walls.
They don’t want out if that’s what you’re thinking. I can’t say how long it took to finally understand, but I do. I know the hallway isn’t telling me anything. No, it’s asking. The difference is subtle, you have to listen carefully: Aren’t you lonely out there? That’s all it wants, only a simple answer.
And I’ve been at it for hours now, going down every hall I can find. I’ve been calling in their language, rawing my throat searching out the place I’m meant to be. And I’ve had help, I’ve convinced others to strengthen the call. Maybe you’ve heard. I’m getting inventive at coaxing out just the right sounds, playing people like an orchestra to get the shrieking harmonies that say: yes, let me in. I can’t tell you how to use the dozen budding tongues thrashing in that soft wet potential beneath the old one, but I’ll clear the way for them to speak.
Doorway by doorway, my answer grows.