Echolocation: My Journey with Batman

After Bruce Wayne’s parents are shot in an alley, he falls into a hole somewhere on the property of Wayne Manor, plummeting into what will someday be the Batcave.  The startled residents flap, screech, and swarm past a terrified young Bruce and spiral into the sky.  In other versions of the story, the fall happens while his parents are still alive. Sometimes it’s an assassination of the wealthy, influential couple, and sometimes it’s just a mugger.  Usually, his name is Joe Chill.  In the Tim Burton classic, the killer is a young Joker.  Sometimes they are leaving The Mark of Zorro.  Sometimes it’s an opera.  Either way, they walk out into an alley, and a menacing figure appears from the shadows with a gun.  The deaths inspire Bruce to follow his path to being Batman.  No matter the details and detours of the journey, it’s two gunshots, a splash of pearls from his mother’s neck, an epiphany or two, some world travels, and Bruce Wayne becomes the Caped Crusader, the World’s Greatest Detective, the Dark Knight.

He disappears from Gotham as a young man, and in universities across Europe, he studies psychology, criminology, and chemistry, but never finishes a degree.  He takes the knowledge he needs and moves on.  He practices meditation with monks atop monolithic monasteries.  He dukes it out with scroungy lowlifes in stale, concrete boxing gyms.  He masters ninjutsu from the greatest sensei of Japan.   Once a skillset has been attained, he finds the next one.  In the pages of the comic books, these scenes appear in a quick panel or two, always in flashbacks, often in grayscale. Bruce Wayne’s journey is a fragmented mystery.  The bat symbol is only the punctuation of this journey.  

In Batman: Year One by Frank Miller, an adult Bruce is bleeding to death in his study after a failed battle in the streets with a pimp and a gang of prostitutes, one of them being the future Catwoman.  A bell sits next to him to summon Alfred, his loyal butler, and the man who raised him.  He decides he would rather die than know for sure how to carry out his plan to eradicate crime from Gotham, to never let what happened to his parents happen to anyone else again.  He asks the memory of this father what is missing from his mission.  A bat crashes through the window, shards of glass splashing to the floor.  The bat lands on a stone bust of his father and stares him in the eyes.

“Yes, father,” he says.  “I shall become a bat.”  

This version was always a little much for me.

Sometimes a bat would swoop in front of our house on the Alaskan tundra, swallowing unsuspecting mosquitoes, whitesocks, and no-see-ums.  Bats were quick and mysterious, their darkness blending into the night.  They were shadows, and shadows didn’t crash into windows.  This was an act of the bright, beautiful birds found dead on the porch.  

The TV screen was always more interesting than the window anyway.  Anything could happen on the other side.  For instance, after Get Smart on Nick at Night, the introduction to the next classic program would begin in a black and white blur of stars and planets, a shooting star crashing into center screen, transforming into the title.     

“Look!  Up in the sky!” the TV said.  “It’s a bird!  It’s a plane!”

My red and blue pajamas had an ‘S’ insignia on the chest just like George Reeves.  I never wore the pajamas to bed.  The world needed saving, and I didn’t sleep on the job.  I ran down the hallway from my bedroom, leaping into the sky for flight, landing safely on the couch, maybe bouncing a time or two before running back down the hallway to do it again.  I used to climb over the railings on the porch and jumped down, anding in the grass, cape floating in the breeze behind me.  The crotch in the pajamas wore out by the time I was six, and I wondered if Superman wore underwear over his tights for the same reason.  

When my cape disappeared, the world was in peril.  No one was there to save it.  Maybe a tree branch pulled against the velcro, or maybe it got caught on the metal slide next to the monkey bars at Martin Monsen Park.  Part of me still thinks it entered the Phantom Zone through the washing machine, and is still there, floating among lost underwear and unmatched socks.  Then Santa Claus replaced it. This was a cape more crimson than red.  It was a sturdier material, was trimmed with black, and was complete with a black ‘K’ sewn to the back of it.  It fastened securely around my neck with metal snaps, and I never lost it.  The world could be saved again.  

Even as I got older, if I could have just one wish, it would be to have all Superman’s powers.  I wrote it in my third grade journal.  It was less boring than other writing prompts we had like What famous person would you want to meet? or What is the American Dream?  Wishes had endless possibility, but other kids didn’t seem to realize it.  They wished for money, a pony, a mansion, or a fast car.  The cool kids wished for world peace.   I would have written something similar had I known we had to read it aloud.    

But I wanted to have powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.  I wanted to change the course of mighty rivers, and bend steel in my bare hands.  I wanted to be faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and leap tall buildings in a single bound.  Superman could see through walls, lift mountains, and fly without an airplane.  In the movie, Christopher Reeve could fly around the planet at superspeed and turn back time itself.  Superman used his powers with world peace as the motivation.  My wish was bulletproof.

But the cool kids laughed at me.  It was the same year we learned about Martin Luther King Jr and how he was shot for having a dream.  Then I learned George Reeves had shot himself in the head.  He was gone with the wind more than 30 years before we were born. In the recent continuity of the comics, Superman had been killed off.  Of course they did bring him back, this time with a mullet and a black costume without a cape.    

Then on the last day of school in fifth grade, Christopher Reeve was thrown off a horse and paralyzed from the neck down.  It was the same year OJ Simpson was found not guilty.  Mrs. Gasca had wheeled in a TV and we watched it live from the classroom. The cool kids whispered a collective “Yessss…”  A professional athlete was a hero and could do no wrong.      

Mom took me, my sister, and brother to Los Angeles that summer to visit family, despite our crying and begging.  Earlier in the week, from a trailer somewhere in Montana, Ted Kaczynski had threatened flights into LAX.  My brother was a baby, but my sister was old enough to know what was going on.  Of course he wasn’t Ted Kaczynski then.  He was a sketch of a pair of aviators and a mustache under a wad of curly hair and a hoodie.  The image was all over the news, but his true identity was a secret.  His alias was the Unabomber .  He was a real supervillain, and there was no real Superman to stop him.  

Our plane made it in one piece, and Uncle Ed took me and my sister to Universal Studios.  It was a land of sunny skies, theatric streets, and beautiful people.  This was the world on the other side of the TV screen.  A mechanical Jaws jumped from the water, and a robot King Kong grabbed our tram, rocking us side to side.  We met Kevin Bacon and Zsa Zsa Gabor.  I had no idea who these people were and was more excited when Uncle Ed took me to see Batman Forever.  Val Kilmer portrays a Batman who is haunted by nightmares of an animatronic bat flapping its wings a little too much like a robot.  It was the last summer I didn’t work as a commercial fisherman with Dad.     

Any time I left Naknek was an opportunity to see a movie in a theater.  Trips to Anchorage always meant the Dimond Center Mall, Taco Bell, and a Barnes and Noble with a comic book section, but the best part about visiting Anchorage was seeing a movie on the big screen. What movies I watched in a theater are reference points to times in my childhood.  Mom taught me how to plex.  We saw the Nutty Professor and then watched most of Black Sheep without buying a ticket.  When I was nervous, she said, “What are they going to do?  Call our moms?”  I was by myself when I ran into another Naknek family after Titanic.  I swear I didn’t cry, but almost did when our whole family almost missed our flight because we couldn’t get a cab to the airport after A Bug’s Life.       

Armageddon was the first movie that made me cry.  Bruce Willis sacrifices himself so save the planet from annihilation.  It allows Ben Affleck to marry Liv Tyler and they live happily ever after.  When the movie cut to credits, I heard the Aerosmith song for the first time.  It was at every middle school dance afterwards.  It was my own soundtrack to girls saying no.  The word yes was reserved for cool kids.  It wasn’t a good feeling, but it wasn’t the end of the world.  The end of Batman on film was Batman & Robin, but movies could be worse.    

My brother and I were in Anchorage for a dentist appointment, and we went to see Daredevil.  Ben Affleck was the lead role.  Being buddy buddy with Kevin Smith, I thought he would bring justice to a movie based on a comic book superhero, but a blind man could tell you how awful that movie was.  Maybe these characters should just stay in the funny pages, I had decided, flipping through a book about superheroes at the Barnes and Noble.  Then I stopped. There was a quote centered in the middle of one of the opening pages.

“Superman is the American Dream.  Batman is the American Truth.”  

It was from a comic book author named Bryan Edward Hill.  Of course.  Who wouldn’t want to be Superman?  Superman is a flawless, indestructible ideal parading in primary colors.  After being raise on a humble farm in Smallville, Kansas, he goes on to make himself an icon of truth, justice, and the American way — with the incredible abilities he has been given by his — it turns out —  alien origins.  

Batman is born into privilege, but falls into tragedy and employs his strengths and resources to fight crime in a city where criminals sprout like weeds.  He sacrifices everything for the mission, including love.  He loses girlfriends and a fiancé or two.  Allies like Harvey Dent become enemies.  Robin abandons him, another Robin dies, another Robin abandons him, and another Robin dies.  Alfred stands by him through the years, but reluctantly.  Gotham is a city of corrupt cops and organized crime, and the more he fights, the more he inspires psychotic criminals with theatrical tendencies.  His mission is doomed to failure, but he aspires to it anyway. He believes it’s the right thing to do, but it will never succeed.  Aspiring to a dream is always weighed down by the truth.    

At school, there was a lot of talk about aspiring to dreams, but going to college was just my excuse for getting the hell out of Naknek. There was no tragedy and no bats.  There was just a village kid ready to leave the village.  The first time I enrolled at Northern Michigan University, I graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Secondary Education and English, but didn’t go after a job right away.  I stomped around Europe instead.  I slept in train stations, hostels, and other holes in the wall with holes in the wall.  Once, I snuck into the closet underneath the staircase of a garage and woke up with my back still leaning against my pack.  I imagined a nomadic, pre-Batman Bruce Wayne living the same way, even before I was attacked in Barcelona by a gang of prostitutes.  At least he had a vision of what he wanted to do with his life.

Afterwards, I lived in my parents basement until I accepted a job teaching in small-town Kansas.  It was like Smallville, but Superman wasn’t there.  Neither was much of anything.   I wasn’t much for bingo night at the senior citizens center.   When the school shut down due to budget cuts, I stomped around Peru and Central America.  Some of the time was spent in a TEFL certification program.  Other time was spent volunteering.  Most of it was wandering without aim, in the mountains, through the jungle, down the streets of cities, modern and ancient.  Some of it was spent with a Peruvian girl who taught me Spanish.  That didn’t end well.  Then I enrolled at Northern a second time to pursue a new degree, but soon dropped out to take a job in Montana.  

During all this time, a trilogy of Batman movies was released.  Batman Begins told the origin story.  The Dark Knight was Batman being Batman.  Commissioner Gordon calls on Batman to take down the Joker.  Classic Batman.  The Dark Knight Rises was the movie to end the trilogy.  Each film was released in the summer, and every summer I was back in Alaska for the commercial fishing season.  I had to see each movie upon my  annual return to the world.  

At a premier screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado, a psychopath claiming to be the Joker opened fire, killing 12 people and wounding 70.  There was no real Batman to stop him.  I still went to see the movie in Anchorage.  It ends with Bruce Wayne hanging up his cape for good.  Batman was no more.  My own cape still hangs on a wall in my parents’ house in Naknek.    

With the trilogy over, I would have to settle for Superman.  When Man of Steel hit theaters, he no longer wore underwear over his tights, and my question about the crotch was answered at last.  Superman and I had nothing in common.  

Then Ben Affleck was cast as the next on-film incarnation of Batman in the sequel.  The two heroes were going to fight — black and blue, day versus night, Son of Krypton versus Bat of Gotham.  Geeks in basements everywhere wiped Chee-toh residue off their greasy fingers, put down their joysticks, and reached for their keyboards. A digital storm raged all over online forums.  Daredevil was enough to know this was a mistake.  He had too much of  a high profile and now Batman had been afflicted with it.  Was he going to start Chasing Amy around Gotham?  This movie was going to suck, so how do you like them apples?  When am I going to kiss a girl, lord?  When’s it gonna be my time?

I wasn’t as upset, because Daredevil was a decade ago, Argo was good, and I had dated women, even though my long-distance relationship from Michigan had come to a screeching halt.  I didn’t live in a basement anymore either.  I was in a trailer in Montana.      

When it was released, I saw Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice at a theater in Boise.  By then, I was living and working in Oregon, but I was with my girlfriend visiting her family in Idaho.  

The movie starts with Superman crashing into a building Bruce Wayne owns, killing dozens of people.  It’s from his final battle with Zod from Man of Steel, where they spend about 20 minutes crashing into everything.  The crash into window after window after window.  Cars are crushed.  Buildings are destroyed.  Superman breaks Zod’s neck, a controversial scene on director Zack Snyder’s part.  As Batman v Superman opens, Bruce decides Superman is a threat and needs to take him out.  

The movie wasn’t what it could have been, but it wasn’t as bad as critics had said either.  Superman dies in the end, but not by Batman’s hand.  He sacrifices himself to save the world from Doomsday, just like the comics.  This part wasn’t as good as the comics.  The story was underdeveloped, but I empathize with that, and Ben Affleck brought justice to the character.

In the spring, my girlfriend and I had other callings outside of our current workplace.  It’s where we met.  I would speak the lyrics to cheesy love songs as casual conversation and wait for her to catch on.  I made fun of her for it, and she made fun of me for my horrible sense of direction.  I had gotten lost on the way to Crater Lake, the Grand Canyon, and the gas station down the street.    

After two years, we both left.  She went to Sun Valley, and I enrolled at Northern for the third time in my life.  Aside from a couple weeks here and there, we would be apart, but we would make the relationship work.  Sun Valley was the longest stop of my trip across the country.  Our last night together, I could stay awake just to hear her heart beating. Watch her smile while she was sleeping. While she’s far away and dreaming.  But those aren’t my words.  That’s the Aerosmith song.  

We kissed goodbye at four in the morning, and I drove away into the sunrise with my bikes, my skis, my clothes, and a blu-ray copy of the extended version of Batman v. Superman I had yet to watch.  It was the only movie in the car.  

Heat waves slithered off the pavement and I questioned what was real.  The last time I had been on this road, sunrise was in my rearview mirror.  As the sun ascended over the mountains in front of me, I crossed the Idaho-Montana border, and traveled back in time.  

I thought about the places I’d lived, the things I’d done, and the loves gained and lost ― and wondered if it had at least been as cool as it sounded.  Did it at least make a neat story or two?  With most my belongings in storage and my girlfriend in Idaho, was I making the right choice now?  Maybe if I actually told those stories in their entirety instead of giving brief glimpses, I could make something of it.  Maybe not.  Most of it was failure to stick to any one thing, but at least I’d done some neat things by accident.  What was missing?  My journey remains a fragmented mystery.  

At the moment, my search was for the Thai place the GPS map on my phone had suggested.  Two years in Montana and I’d never visited Big Sky.  The town was nearly abandoned on this hot August day, but a man, woman, and two young girls were on my right, walking in the same direction. The man was tall and built, wearing a white plaid shirt.  He moved slowly down the street, looking in different directions. There was no spring in his step like the woman and two girls who practically skipped down the street.  The poor guy looked tired and worn out.  My face was down in my phone, following the little blue arrow to delicious curry, when I heard the question.

“Do you know where the Blue Moon Bakery is?”

I looked up to see Ben Affleck waiting for an answer, the gray streaks in his hair shining in the sun.  Jennifer Garner was wandering forward with their two daughters.  Ben’s six-foot-plus frame towered over me on this empty street, heat waves obscuring anything in the distance.  Somewhere far away, a bat crashed through a window.