A Question for Clark

I met him on the stairs. He said he was on his way to help some people from a collapsing bridge and that he was in a big hurry, no time to talk. He tried to side-step me, turning his body towards the wall, but I saw the brightly-colored blue spandex peeking through the V of two undone buttons at the top of his sensible pinstriped shirt. His thick-frame glasses didn’t fool me for a second. I knew who he was and that he had important work to do, but I couldn’t resist.

I had to talk to him, to ask him the myriad questions that raced through my mind every time I read about him in The Planet. “Wait!” I called to him, and to my surprise he stopped and turned around, enough so that his body still faced away from me, but his head made the rest of the turn so that his strong, dark eyes met my weak, gravity-bound ones.

Hundreds of questions broke some unknown dam in my mind and they flooded to the forefront. In an awkwardly quiet moment, I realized I had enough time to ask him just one of those questions, to pick one fish out of the sea of inquiry and hope he would find it acceptable enough to answer. But there were so many to choose from.

I wanted to ask him about the quality of his sleep. Did his daily charade, masking himself as one of us – not just the working stiffs but one born of this earth – wake him in the middle night? Did his eyes snap open at 4:00am, flinging alien tears across the room, because of the people he didn’t try to save because he didn’t know they needed his help? And what about those who needed a hand, locomotive-strong or otherwise, but never got it? Why is the hungry bum sleeping in a cold alley tonight less important than that brunette reporter who was always getting herself in trouble? What about the hundreds of malnourished children half a world away – half a minute away for those with red capes – who had never seen a bridge nor a car? Why were they not receiving his assistance tonight? Did they haunt his dreams, or were they just television commercials which he paid as much attention to as those for an airline? Did any of this keep him up at night, or was his slumber deep, soothing, and reenergizing?

No, none of those would do. I only had this one chance, so I jumped to another topic.

I wanted to ask him about the solitude that comes from being a foreigner of the highest caliber, one with no passport to speak of and a birth certificate that reads like science fiction. Was there anyone he could relate to, anyone he could see himself in? Did he even have himself for that, or was this pinstriped façade a manner of giving up on his true nature? Was this mild-mannered costume a companion? Was it a desperate attempt to replace the lonely boy possessing bullet-like speed with one that the other kids might push around but at least they’d talk to? Did he save people because that was the only way they could stand being around him, his super-ness making us all feel inferior otherwise? And why did he eschew the glamorous life he could lead for the ho-hum daily grind he perpetuated?

“—Well?” he asked me, impatience carved in chiseled features.

The moment had dragged on. I wasn’t done picking my question, but I panicked at the thought of missing this chance so I blurted out that last question as “Why bother with the geeky getup?” It wasn’t ideal, but it was something.

He looked at me, a smirk slanting above his square jaw. The steel-dense muscles in his shoulders moved up in a shrug, and he simply said, “This city’s too expensive, and it pays the rent.”

Another question dripped in and I started to ask him why he didn’t commute, but he was gone in a gust of wind, which made me want to ask the question all the more.

Glasses and mutton chops? Now your secret is safe!

Why is the day after Thanksgiving called Black Friday? It's a day when companies rake in lots of green while consumers go deeper into the red. Black doesn't seem appropriate. Red and Green Friday would be better, but those colors are already taken by Christmas, a totally different type of day.