There are moments, breathless and terrifying moments, when I realize that both I am mortal and that nothing I have done thus far matters. I have made no difference. I have made no change. No one will remember me. In these moments, my pulse speeds and I stare, my face flushed, my hands clammy. An anxious feeling swells and tightens in my chest. I must act. I have to. Time is running out. I will do something. Be something. Say something.
And as quickly as this activist feeling peaks, this "nothing-can-stop-me" feeling, this longing-for-change feeling, the moment passes. My pulse slows, the anxiousness loosens and I reside, again, to the lull until there is another wave of mortality that slaps me in the face, wakes me up, and begs me to be anything more than I am. A suggestion inside myself to notice that something is not right; some direction to be better. An order given that I am not sure I will ever follow, lest it stop my beating heart.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
An attempt at sketching perfection.
I was down in the basement looking for a human pile of shit to show Tim. Goddamnit! everything of mine that I haven't sold to The Exchange for a quick couple of bucks for a warm meal has been ruined anyway by cat litter or flood. But then I found you. All four of you. Down south in the early summer's sun with blonde hair - ah! I never knew you with such golden features - doing some sort of cheer. In the first frame your forearms mirror your white v-neck shirt as your breasts are pushed together and your countenance seems to say: 'WHA!' in a coquettish, peppy sort of way. The second frame shows a similar position with the arms, but composure is lost somewhat in the countenance: the brow is focused, the face is in a delightful sneer. I struggle to write this now as I am transfixed on the third frame. This was the frame that brought the first tear from my eye. Your teeth are hidden behind your pinched face, but I don't mind because you look so goddamn happy; and the sun is shining brighter in this frame than any of the other three - so much, in fact, that it burns out the focus a little, makes your black capris seem dark grey and lined with light pink lines. I cannot even begin to accurately describe the fourth frame. To look at it hurts. You're radiant. You're perfection. And what is this? Just a quick sketch; a way to get over the little heart break it caused me when I found it amongst my dusty, old death metal records.
Monday, December 7, 2009
A scene from Trash Night as told by a young woman who witnessed the event.
Check label before reading. Scroll down, you'll see what I mean.
"Oh my god! You guys will never believe what just happened at the bar!" a young woman says as she slams the door of her studio apartment shut and throws her purse and then herself onto the bed where two cats - one slender and all black; the other - some kind of Siamese breed - mostly white with a little grey on its chest - are asleep in yin-yang formation. They awake on impact and start crawling all over her and each other, purring and crying with rapt elation. "Frankie, it was perfect! I wish you guys could've been there to see it.
"It was so perfect! My song - 'Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man' - had just started playing on the iBox an like the moment it kicked in the door of the bar like flung open and in walked these two mean lookin' guys, dressed in black suits and wearing sunglasses (despite it being, like, midnight at the time). At first it looked like one of them was carrying this crazy, giant snake, but after looking a little harder, I could see that it was actually just a crazy, giant chain and the flashing hot lights of the bar were making it look like a writhing neon-blooded snake. He said something to Bull the Bouncer as they walked in and Bull the Bouncer stood up and said: 'Hey, what do you two think you're - '; but just then the chain guy did this quick like spinning-swinging move - and seriously, it looked like a firework had gone off in in the air between them with that metal chain whirling around and reflecting all the flashing lights of the bar - and then it wrapped around Bull's neck like three times and the guy jerked his arm toward himself and pulled Bull the Bouncer's stupefied, red face towards his own, like got real close and said, real viciously: 'Didn't I say "don't mind me?" ' Bull just stood there, grabbing at the chain that was asphyxiating him and gasping for air. The guy let the snake uncoil a little from around his wrist and just as Bull was backing away, starting to regain composure and breathe again, the chain guy cocked back and cracked him with his free hand. Ha! I remember Gene used to fall asleep standing up in the shower and I'd come in and he would be just standing there, swaying a little to each side, completely unconscious; and that's exactly how Bull the Bouncer looked (only not naked and hot, more like gross and sweaty and hairy), but just like that: standing on his feet, swaying a little to this way and a little that way, eyes closed, knocked out cold. 'Well, that was certainly demonstrative,' said the other guy - who was a little taller than the chain guy, and up until that moment had not said a single word, had not even moved except to light a cigarette - as he walked past Bull the Bouncer, saying 'pardon me, sir' and brushing up against Bull just enough to knock his massive body off-axis so that it fell with a huge crash that like jingled all the empty glasses and made amber ripples in the others. Which - I should add - was also perfectly timed to my song - the crash happening just as the verse kicks back in after the prog. medley.
"After that everyone was just kind of stunned, but the two mean lookin' guys seemed totally unaffected. They just - what's that, Sake? Oh, yes! that was one of the best parts actually: they were both terribly handsome, and pretty young, too. About my age, I'd say. Well, I'll tell you: they were both wearing sun glasses and black suits, like I said already, with white shirts and black ties and nice, shiny black shoes. The chain guy was pretty tall and he had short dark brown hair and a heavy five o'clock shadow; the other guy - the one who smoked and pronounced demonstrative correctly (which is rare!) - was a few inches taller than him and had a light brown mustache with slicked back light brown hair. He was the one who did most of the talking. I remember he was like standing in the middle of the bar with a cigarette in his mouth, he touched delicately at his hair, and said: 'Allow me to apologize for my friend, Mr. Haymaker. He might still be a little too sober to deal with the public.' Then, turning to Erika, the new girl they've got tending bar down there, he said: 'Miss, please get Mr. Haymaker a double Jack.' And as she was quickly acquiescing, he added: 'And a pack of ice for your bouncer.'
"The chain guy - Haymaker, I guess - was struggling to unwrap his chain from around Bull the Unconscious Bouncer's fat neck when Erika shakingly placed the glass of whiskey on the bar before him. Then he like nodded in gratitude to her and took the entire drink in one gulp and slammed the glass back down onto the bar just as the song ended. 'Feeling better?' the smoking guy asked him, but he didn't answer. He just yanked up the rest of his chain and kicked Bull hard in the ribs after Bull's unconscious body released - what I imagine was an involuntary - groan, or like a sigh of relief after the chain was removed.
"The smoking guy turned again to face his still-stunned audience and said: 'My friend and I are looking for someone; and we were told we'd find him in this shithole.' The chain guy hung his weapon on his shoulder and produced a silver cigarette case from his inside breast pocket; and, without interrupting his speech, without even looking back to see that the chain guy had put a cigarette to his mouth, the smoking guy - the taller of the men, I mean - flicked open a lighter - where it came from, I have no idea - and lit his friend's cigarette; and kept right on talking: 'So I'm going to ask this once - and only once - and if I get the right answer, my friend and I will walk right back out that front door and you'll never see us again. But if we don't get the answer we're looking for - and really, folks, all we're looking for is an honest answer, that's all. But if we don't get an honest answer my friend here is going to tie his little pet chain around these door handles and not one of you - I promise - not one of you lousy pieces of shit will get out of here alive.'
"I was so scared, Frankie! I seriously thought they were gonna rob and rape every one of us. But - if I can't tell my cats this, who can I tell? - I'd be lying if I said I wasn't pretty excited by everything, too. The smoking guy just had this towering presence, ya know? It's one thing to control a party or something with dance moves or a nice outfit, but to control a dozen or so lives with just your words . . . That's something. And, yeah, the chain thing helped a lot. I mean, Bull is a huge guy - that's why he's called Bull. But even before the violence they had the entire room's attention. The violence was exactly what the smoking guy had called it: 'demonstrative.'
"I see that now. But at the time I didn't. At the time I did something very stupid: I got out my phone and started to call the cops. Intuitively, the smoking guy saw this or sensed it or something and walked up to me and grabbed my phone out of my hand and hung it up and handed it back to me and said, in a very calm and measured voice: 'Miss, you're very pretty. So pretty in fact, that if, by some miracle, you happen to survive the next five minutes I'd like to take you out some time. However, if you fucking try to call the pigs again, you will not - I swear to you on my grandmother's dead, blue eyes - live to see your sweet cats again.' No, Sake, I am not lying! He said that, I promise! Well, he must've seen the picture I have set as my background. What do you think I did, Frankie? I said I was sorry and he started to soften up a little, acted like maybe he wasn't going to definitely kill me; but the chain guy was like: 'Pretty Boy, what the fuck are you doing? Haven't your philandering ways gotten us into enough trouble already? Don't get distracted by the scent apple pie now; we've still got a rat to kill tonight.' 'You just mind your whiskey, Haymaker,' the smoking guy said over his shoulder, 'I'm taking care of a situation here.' 'I doubt that little Jewess knows where - ' 'She squealed for the pigs, Haymaker,' the smoking guy said, standing up and facing his friend. I'm not sure if Pretty Boy was like his pseudonym or if it was a popular invective Chain Guy used to belittle him. I didn't have much time to dwell on it at the moment as the next thing to come out of the chain guy's mouth was: 'Then fucking kill her and stop wasting my time.' I almost started crying when he said that, but the smoking guy seemed to ignore him - thank god - and went back to addressing the bar: 'My friend - though quite coarse and very rude - is right. I'm wasting his time and I'm wasting your time. So here's what we we would like to know, here's the million dollar question, the one that everything's riding on. Answer this question honestly and go home to your beds tonight. Tell us: Where is Ron Domino?' "
"Oh my god! You guys will never believe what just happened at the bar!" a young woman says as she slams the door of her studio apartment shut and throws her purse and then herself onto the bed where two cats - one slender and all black; the other - some kind of Siamese breed - mostly white with a little grey on its chest - are asleep in yin-yang formation. They awake on impact and start crawling all over her and each other, purring and crying with rapt elation. "Frankie, it was perfect! I wish you guys could've been there to see it.
"It was so perfect! My song - 'Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man' - had just started playing on the iBox an like the moment it kicked in the door of the bar like flung open and in walked these two mean lookin' guys, dressed in black suits and wearing sunglasses (despite it being, like, midnight at the time). At first it looked like one of them was carrying this crazy, giant snake, but after looking a little harder, I could see that it was actually just a crazy, giant chain and the flashing hot lights of the bar were making it look like a writhing neon-blooded snake. He said something to Bull the Bouncer as they walked in and Bull the Bouncer stood up and said: 'Hey, what do you two think you're - '; but just then the chain guy did this quick like spinning-swinging move - and seriously, it looked like a firework had gone off in in the air between them with that metal chain whirling around and reflecting all the flashing lights of the bar - and then it wrapped around Bull's neck like three times and the guy jerked his arm toward himself and pulled Bull the Bouncer's stupefied, red face towards his own, like got real close and said, real viciously: 'Didn't I say "don't mind me?" ' Bull just stood there, grabbing at the chain that was asphyxiating him and gasping for air. The guy let the snake uncoil a little from around his wrist and just as Bull was backing away, starting to regain composure and breathe again, the chain guy cocked back and cracked him with his free hand. Ha! I remember Gene used to fall asleep standing up in the shower and I'd come in and he would be just standing there, swaying a little to each side, completely unconscious; and that's exactly how Bull the Bouncer looked (only not naked and hot, more like gross and sweaty and hairy), but just like that: standing on his feet, swaying a little to this way and a little that way, eyes closed, knocked out cold. 'Well, that was certainly demonstrative,' said the other guy - who was a little taller than the chain guy, and up until that moment had not said a single word, had not even moved except to light a cigarette - as he walked past Bull the Bouncer, saying 'pardon me, sir' and brushing up against Bull just enough to knock his massive body off-axis so that it fell with a huge crash that like jingled all the empty glasses and made amber ripples in the others. Which - I should add - was also perfectly timed to my song - the crash happening just as the verse kicks back in after the prog. medley.
"After that everyone was just kind of stunned, but the two mean lookin' guys seemed totally unaffected. They just - what's that, Sake? Oh, yes! that was one of the best parts actually: they were both terribly handsome, and pretty young, too. About my age, I'd say. Well, I'll tell you: they were both wearing sun glasses and black suits, like I said already, with white shirts and black ties and nice, shiny black shoes. The chain guy was pretty tall and he had short dark brown hair and a heavy five o'clock shadow; the other guy - the one who smoked and pronounced demonstrative correctly (which is rare!) - was a few inches taller than him and had a light brown mustache with slicked back light brown hair. He was the one who did most of the talking. I remember he was like standing in the middle of the bar with a cigarette in his mouth, he touched delicately at his hair, and said: 'Allow me to apologize for my friend, Mr. Haymaker. He might still be a little too sober to deal with the public.' Then, turning to Erika, the new girl they've got tending bar down there, he said: 'Miss, please get Mr. Haymaker a double Jack.' And as she was quickly acquiescing, he added: 'And a pack of ice for your bouncer.'
"The chain guy - Haymaker, I guess - was struggling to unwrap his chain from around Bull the Unconscious Bouncer's fat neck when Erika shakingly placed the glass of whiskey on the bar before him. Then he like nodded in gratitude to her and took the entire drink in one gulp and slammed the glass back down onto the bar just as the song ended. 'Feeling better?' the smoking guy asked him, but he didn't answer. He just yanked up the rest of his chain and kicked Bull hard in the ribs after Bull's unconscious body released - what I imagine was an involuntary - groan, or like a sigh of relief after the chain was removed.
"The smoking guy turned again to face his still-stunned audience and said: 'My friend and I are looking for someone; and we were told we'd find him in this shithole.' The chain guy hung his weapon on his shoulder and produced a silver cigarette case from his inside breast pocket; and, without interrupting his speech, without even looking back to see that the chain guy had put a cigarette to his mouth, the smoking guy - the taller of the men, I mean - flicked open a lighter - where it came from, I have no idea - and lit his friend's cigarette; and kept right on talking: 'So I'm going to ask this once - and only once - and if I get the right answer, my friend and I will walk right back out that front door and you'll never see us again. But if we don't get the answer we're looking for - and really, folks, all we're looking for is an honest answer, that's all. But if we don't get an honest answer my friend here is going to tie his little pet chain around these door handles and not one of you - I promise - not one of you lousy pieces of shit will get out of here alive.'
"I was so scared, Frankie! I seriously thought they were gonna rob and rape every one of us. But - if I can't tell my cats this, who can I tell? - I'd be lying if I said I wasn't pretty excited by everything, too. The smoking guy just had this towering presence, ya know? It's one thing to control a party or something with dance moves or a nice outfit, but to control a dozen or so lives with just your words . . . That's something. And, yeah, the chain thing helped a lot. I mean, Bull is a huge guy - that's why he's called Bull. But even before the violence they had the entire room's attention. The violence was exactly what the smoking guy had called it: 'demonstrative.'
"I see that now. But at the time I didn't. At the time I did something very stupid: I got out my phone and started to call the cops. Intuitively, the smoking guy saw this or sensed it or something and walked up to me and grabbed my phone out of my hand and hung it up and handed it back to me and said, in a very calm and measured voice: 'Miss, you're very pretty. So pretty in fact, that if, by some miracle, you happen to survive the next five minutes I'd like to take you out some time. However, if you fucking try to call the pigs again, you will not - I swear to you on my grandmother's dead, blue eyes - live to see your sweet cats again.' No, Sake, I am not lying! He said that, I promise! Well, he must've seen the picture I have set as my background. What do you think I did, Frankie? I said I was sorry and he started to soften up a little, acted like maybe he wasn't going to definitely kill me; but the chain guy was like: 'Pretty Boy, what the fuck are you doing? Haven't your philandering ways gotten us into enough trouble already? Don't get distracted by the scent apple pie now; we've still got a rat to kill tonight.' 'You just mind your whiskey, Haymaker,' the smoking guy said over his shoulder, 'I'm taking care of a situation here.' 'I doubt that little Jewess knows where - ' 'She squealed for the pigs, Haymaker,' the smoking guy said, standing up and facing his friend. I'm not sure if Pretty Boy was like his pseudonym or if it was a popular invective Chain Guy used to belittle him. I didn't have much time to dwell on it at the moment as the next thing to come out of the chain guy's mouth was: 'Then fucking kill her and stop wasting my time.' I almost started crying when he said that, but the smoking guy seemed to ignore him - thank god - and went back to addressing the bar: 'My friend - though quite coarse and very rude - is right. I'm wasting his time and I'm wasting your time. So here's what we we would like to know, here's the million dollar question, the one that everything's riding on. Answer this question honestly and go home to your beds tonight. Tell us: Where is Ron Domino?' "
Sunday, December 6, 2009
he rememebered something
My neck hurts. He has forgotten about me already.
I can feel this in the rest of the bones I have left.
I've wrung all of the old cloths dry, and yes, it is my fault.
I will see it Sunday in the Christmas lights on the houses
I will watch it fall down to the ground with the snow. And yes, It does have a sound.
Don't ever tell me again. Please keep all tiny and true noises behind your teeth.
I've fallen open, in the middle of many fields, I spun around in the woods,
trying to, trying to. Wearing dresses I thought you'd like, like a silly woman with
her man's heart lost, and her own entirely out of sight.
Your eyes were on me, and I felt you feeling nothing.
I can feel this in the rest of the bones I have left.
I've wrung all of the old cloths dry, and yes, it is my fault.
I will see it Sunday in the Christmas lights on the houses
I will watch it fall down to the ground with the snow. And yes, It does have a sound.
Don't ever tell me again. Please keep all tiny and true noises behind your teeth.
I've fallen open, in the middle of many fields, I spun around in the woods,
trying to, trying to. Wearing dresses I thought you'd like, like a silly woman with
her man's heart lost, and her own entirely out of sight.
Your eyes were on me, and I felt you feeling nothing.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
I got it.
He was standing at the top of the stairs smoking a cigarette when I pulled up. Behind him, the house was dark and quiet, but his face was lit up with a triumphant, evil grin; and immediately I knew what had happened. With his head cocked a little to the right, he stood looking down at me as I climbed the stairs towards him; all the while, he was beaming that peculiar smile of his. It was not even a smile per se. With his lips curled downwards, almost as if he was frowning, and his slightly crooked teeth bared, and with that pale incendiary ardor burning behind his eyes, it was a much more complex expression than the word 'smile' can express. Thinking back on it now, I'm reminded of Spike, a cat I had growing up on my parents' farm, and how he would come stalking into my room with his proud, long-grey-legged gait and jump on my chest while I was trying to read and ram my face and chin with his face and chin until I followed him outside to see the little, brownish and white corpses he'd left in a pile at the front stoop. That's what I was reminded of. During my climb, I said nothing, trying my best to seem unimpressed, taking my brother's advice. When I reached the summit the wind picked up and he stepped back a little, taking shelter behind one of three red brick pillars that stand like sentinels on the front porch of his and my brother's house. I stood, arms akimbo, looking at him, my nostrils tingling with the piquant scent of his cigarette.
"Well?" I said, giving him the bait I knew he wanted.
"Well what?" he feigned.
"You know what."
He took a drag, fished through the grey stream for a loose piece of tobacco, and said: "I got it."
"Ha! I knew it!" I couldn't believe it. Yes, I could. Why lie? I knew he would. I knew he couldn't resist that challenge. "I knew that's why you were standin' up here grinnin' like a retarded kid who just got a kiss from the school nurse, or something!"
"Marty," he said, grabbing my right arm and putting his head down in mirthful shame, "you - no offense - don't know shit."
"Then what do you mean: 'You got it.'?" I said, somewhat violently jerking my arm from his genial grip.
"Well . . . I'll give you the ending first, then I'll lay out the story for you. First of all," he stopped to ponder something only he could see hanging in front of his face, "or would it be 'Last of all?" He considered this for a few moments before I reminded him with a shove that he was telling me a story. Coming to he said: "Anyway, I got your tea."
"Yeah," I said, a little agitated, "You told me that on the phone."
"Yeah," he said, "but that's the ending. I told you I was gonna tell you the ending first. The ending is: 'I got your tea.' Now I'm gonna tell you the rest of the story, picking up where I left off, which is the beginning.
"So Elle didn't get out of work 'til like nine thirty, and Tommy was out doing whatever 'til like quarter past, so it was, like, one of those instances when too much shit needs done all at once, and instead of just setting out and doing it, I decided to put the kettle on and do some serious thinking about it first. Like, I knew I had to go get your tea from Tommy before you got here at - what time is it? - ten, but I also had to pick up Elle from work, but she said she wouldn't be done 'til like ten after nine or later possibly, and I needed to make it to the bank in time to get out money for the transaction. (You know ever since that dude tried to rob the ATM with a sledgehammer, my life has been seriously inconvenienced.) So, like I said, I just sat here 'til, like, ten after nine, watching Ren & Stimpy with the cats before realizing: 'Holy shit! I have a lot of shit to do!' Not only was I beyond, I was late. And there was no way I was gonna have the money to get your tea; I just plumb forgot to hit up the bank. Figured I could probably bum some money off Elle, but I've been figurin' on that a lot lately. She doesn't seem to mind, but it sure makes me feel like an asshole. So that's where your money's goin', pal: straight back to my wetnurse."
I broke his oration with a startled, repulsed look at "wetnurse."
"Ha! I get ya with that one? Sorry, brother. Anyway, I picked up Elle and bummed twenty bucks off of her and then broke the news that it was for tea and that we'd have to head out to Tommy's before we could do anything else. Did she want me to drop her at home while I went out there and then swing back around and pick her up on my way back into town? No, she didn't mind going out there. 'Well, are you sure? It's kinda weird. I mean, he's kinda weird.' That was fine, she dealt with weird people all day. 'Maybe a little racist, too.' 'Well, that's kinda fucked up,' she said. What did I mean by "a little racist?", she wanted to know. And she's right: tt's fucked up for sure. I agree completely. You know what it's like, Marty, when he goes on one of his tirades. It's like a huge, belligerent elephant in the room when we watch Steelers games. I confessed this all to her, too. Then, like, lowering her brow and kind of like glowering" - (this word was mispronounced, but I knew what he meant when he said "glow-ring") - "at me she said: 'Do you think it's cool to buy -' 'Hey, babe,' I said to her, kind of, like, putting my hand over her mouth, ya know? I said: 'No, I don't think it's cool necessarily, but it's kind of one of those weird, personal type things, ya know?' And people always get silent when I talk about this, but - well, first let me tell you this: I didn't even encounter racism - honest to god - until I moved to the city. Sure there were no black people back home to be racist against, or whatever, but when we saw them fumble a football or sell something on TV we never used The N Word, or anything like that. I told her all that at one point, too, I think. But she was right, and I told her that, too. I said: 'You know you're right. It's totally fucked up; and I vacillate so much on the issue. But I already told Marty I'd do this for him, so I gotta see it through. If that's a lame excuse, that's fine, I'll take it, but I gotta go.' She just turned in her seat to face the road rather than me, and said: 'Okay, I understand. I know the meaning of the word forbearance.' And then she looked back at me, kind of sideways, but with this little twinkle in her eye.'
"Dude, she did not say that."
"Yes she did, I swear to god!"
"Whatever, get on with your story. This better be leading up to something."
"Don't worry, my friend. You know it is."
He pulled out his pouch of tobacco and orated the next chapter while he rolled himself another cigarette. An ambulance sped past, its sirens blaring, just as he started to continue.
"What?" I shouted with freezing hands over my ears.
"What!" he shouted back with his red coarse tongue against the cigarette paper.
"I couldn't hear what you were saying with the ambulance going past," I said at a steadying volume after the siren had faded.
"Oh," he said, "you said: 'what' huh?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I'll tell you what: fuckin' pigs, man. Fuckin' pigs on my ass constantly these days. I thought that was a pig scream at first. I was 'bout ready to jump in this house and run out the back door and up through the landslide. Ha ha!" He punched me in the arm; it still fucking hurts.
Not letting him see me even wince, I said: "Did you get pulled over again?"
He was pacing and smoking now . . .
"Say: 'Possessed of inebriated inspiration and dispossessed of all good will and judgement.' Type that dude! Seriously, just keep it. Fuck the fourth wall. Fuck final edits. New chapter."
"I just had this feeling the whole time we were at Tommy's, right? Like, I could just tell that existence was bored and wanted to fuck with me. 'The shadows of things enter our lives before they do.' I think maybe Capote said that. I'm not sure though. But that's what I mean, you know what I mean? I could tell something was coming. Sitting there, with Mollie drooling on my lap, staring at me vacantly, blinking, staring more, panting in short, snotty heaves, growling for my attention, and Elle at my side, nervously fingering one of the belt loops on my jeans and kicking her leg to some frantic cadence only she could hear, and Tommy in one of his light afternoon comas with a cigarette burning away in his limp fingers while the giant high definition television - 'mos def out' according to Tommy - flashed and blared Rock of Love season 3 with absolutely terrifying intervals of barely subliminal - in fact, downright fucking obvious - messaging via McDonald's and Target and SUV and cell phone commercials, I felt awkward as fuck. But not awkward enough to leave. Something was keeping me there. Not the tea either. Though, it probably did stimulate my already frayed apprehension, I will not - especially in hindsight - give much credit to the tea. Seriously, though, it's good shit, and doesn't 'noid you out. If anything it facilitated me divining what I did. But right after I had the premonition I had the realization: there's no getting around it. The hand is dealt. And yeah, that's how I think the universe works. Or at least that's how I see it as working. There's probably more up ahead, maybe millions of years worth, but my headlights only let me see so far ahead into the darkness. They're brighter than most, though. I'll swear that 'til my grave. I knew it was coming. I knew I had to leave at some point, and when I did I'd get pulled over by a pig. I couldn't see what would happen. That'd be like asking me to see leaves on a tree on top a mountain. I just see the green shape the leaves make. I can't see each leaf for itself. Such was this, ya know? I knew I'd get pulled over, but I had no idea how it would turn out. So I spent the last ten minutes we were at Tommy's exploring and digging around in the various nooks and orifices of my outfit and person, in search of the very best spot to conceal your bag of tea. I settled, finally, on this pocket here," - he opened his grey pea coat and removed the bag from the inside breast pocket - "And when the rear view mirror of my car suddenly lit up with red and blue flashes, I gotta say: I was a little worried.
"It wasn't easy leaving Tommy's either. And, I don't know, maybe I could've avoided it by hanging around for a little bit longer. He'd just gotten a peach blunt and really wanted to enjoy it with some other people. As nervous as I was about my premonition, I knew Elle didn't wanna hang around my gardener's all day, smoking peach blunts and tolerating racism disguised as politically incorrect sarcasm. You know what I mean?"
"Definitely. You're right: that shit is weird."
"Don't I know it. But as I was leaving he was like: 'Well, I got two, so at least take one and try it out,' and tossed a flesh-colored plastic tube across the room. I caught it and laughed, remarking that it looked like a cock, and Elle blushed and rolled her eyes."
"What a prude!" I had to interject. In his defense, I've seen those peach blunt tubes and they do look like male genitalia. Clearly a plastic one, a replica, but the resemblance is obvious. "But how would she know anyway, right?"
"Dude," he said, "she's seen one before. She told me she's had sexual -"
"I know, I know. You've told me this a millions times. I was just kidding anyway. What happened after you got pulled over? I'm still confused how this all adds up. How this has anything to do with how you 'got it' as you so eloquently put it."
"I'm gettin' to that, man. If you'd just let me tell my story, you'll see how it all adds up. Alright? Be patient, man. Anyway, for about a minute, while the pig was running my plate or something, I stared into my rear view mirror, transfixed by the flashing red and blue lights, with this clamorous fugue in my skull. The whole council was in an uproar! One voice was shouting: 'Gun it! You can outrun this pig if you take 'im by surprise! Trust me, you gotta better chance outrunnin' him than you do a shower full of hungry, soapy animals!' Another guy suggested I force Elle to stash it in her purse, and then if it's found there to plead total ignorance. But the most sensible voice of all, which at first seemed the craziest, wasn't really a voice at all. It was more like an echo, but an echo of an image. Like, this one time when I was pretty young, I was helping my mom can some homemade spaghetti sauce. I was rinsing out the Mason jars and handing them to her. I guess the jars were a little wet 'cause she was fumbling around with the lid on one of the jars she'd just filled and it slipped out of her hand. It was bad. You couldn't tell the blood from the spaghetti sauce. For weeks after that, I had this, like, video clip that played over and over again in my head, coming on sporadically, like when I'd close my eyes or something, of my mom looking down at her gashed-open toe, looking up at me, looking back down at her toe, then looking above me and screaming bloody unintentional matricide! It was like that. But the image this time was of that plastic cock floating in slow motion through the air with the heavy toms in that Strauss song from 2001 thundering away: the dawning of an epiphany. But I had to act quickly, casually, and the hardest part wouldn't be quickly and clandestinely concealing your bag of tea inside the plastic cock, but convincing Elle to deflower herself with it in order to preserve my own precious chastity."
"Oh. My. God."
"So when I say: 'I got it,' you - "
"Oh," I said, putting my hand up, "I get it."
"Well?" I said, giving him the bait I knew he wanted.
"Well what?" he feigned.
"You know what."
He took a drag, fished through the grey stream for a loose piece of tobacco, and said: "I got it."
"Ha! I knew it!" I couldn't believe it. Yes, I could. Why lie? I knew he would. I knew he couldn't resist that challenge. "I knew that's why you were standin' up here grinnin' like a retarded kid who just got a kiss from the school nurse, or something!"
"Marty," he said, grabbing my right arm and putting his head down in mirthful shame, "you - no offense - don't know shit."
"Then what do you mean: 'You got it.'?" I said, somewhat violently jerking my arm from his genial grip.
"Well . . . I'll give you the ending first, then I'll lay out the story for you. First of all," he stopped to ponder something only he could see hanging in front of his face, "or would it be 'Last of all?" He considered this for a few moments before I reminded him with a shove that he was telling me a story. Coming to he said: "Anyway, I got your tea."
"Yeah," I said, a little agitated, "You told me that on the phone."
"Yeah," he said, "but that's the ending. I told you I was gonna tell you the ending first. The ending is: 'I got your tea.' Now I'm gonna tell you the rest of the story, picking up where I left off, which is the beginning.
"So Elle didn't get out of work 'til like nine thirty, and Tommy was out doing whatever 'til like quarter past, so it was, like, one of those instances when too much shit needs done all at once, and instead of just setting out and doing it, I decided to put the kettle on and do some serious thinking about it first. Like, I knew I had to go get your tea from Tommy before you got here at - what time is it? - ten, but I also had to pick up Elle from work, but she said she wouldn't be done 'til like ten after nine or later possibly, and I needed to make it to the bank in time to get out money for the transaction. (You know ever since that dude tried to rob the ATM with a sledgehammer, my life has been seriously inconvenienced.) So, like I said, I just sat here 'til, like, ten after nine, watching Ren & Stimpy with the cats before realizing: 'Holy shit! I have a lot of shit to do!' Not only was I beyond, I was late. And there was no way I was gonna have the money to get your tea; I just plumb forgot to hit up the bank. Figured I could probably bum some money off Elle, but I've been figurin' on that a lot lately. She doesn't seem to mind, but it sure makes me feel like an asshole. So that's where your money's goin', pal: straight back to my wetnurse."
I broke his oration with a startled, repulsed look at "wetnurse."
"Ha! I get ya with that one? Sorry, brother. Anyway, I picked up Elle and bummed twenty bucks off of her and then broke the news that it was for tea and that we'd have to head out to Tommy's before we could do anything else. Did she want me to drop her at home while I went out there and then swing back around and pick her up on my way back into town? No, she didn't mind going out there. 'Well, are you sure? It's kinda weird. I mean, he's kinda weird.' That was fine, she dealt with weird people all day. 'Maybe a little racist, too.' 'Well, that's kinda fucked up,' she said. What did I mean by "a little racist?", she wanted to know. And she's right: tt's fucked up for sure. I agree completely. You know what it's like, Marty, when he goes on one of his tirades. It's like a huge, belligerent elephant in the room when we watch Steelers games. I confessed this all to her, too. Then, like, lowering her brow and kind of like glowering" - (this word was mispronounced, but I knew what he meant when he said "glow-ring") - "at me she said: 'Do you think it's cool to buy -' 'Hey, babe,' I said to her, kind of, like, putting my hand over her mouth, ya know? I said: 'No, I don't think it's cool necessarily, but it's kind of one of those weird, personal type things, ya know?' And people always get silent when I talk about this, but - well, first let me tell you this: I didn't even encounter racism - honest to god - until I moved to the city. Sure there were no black people back home to be racist against, or whatever, but when we saw them fumble a football or sell something on TV we never used The N Word, or anything like that. I told her all that at one point, too, I think. But she was right, and I told her that, too. I said: 'You know you're right. It's totally fucked up; and I vacillate so much on the issue. But I already told Marty I'd do this for him, so I gotta see it through. If that's a lame excuse, that's fine, I'll take it, but I gotta go.' She just turned in her seat to face the road rather than me, and said: 'Okay, I understand. I know the meaning of the word forbearance.' And then she looked back at me, kind of sideways, but with this little twinkle in her eye.'
"Dude, she did not say that."
"Yes she did, I swear to god!"
"Whatever, get on with your story. This better be leading up to something."
"Don't worry, my friend. You know it is."
He pulled out his pouch of tobacco and orated the next chapter while he rolled himself another cigarette. An ambulance sped past, its sirens blaring, just as he started to continue.
"What?" I shouted with freezing hands over my ears.
"What!" he shouted back with his red coarse tongue against the cigarette paper.
"I couldn't hear what you were saying with the ambulance going past," I said at a steadying volume after the siren had faded.
"Oh," he said, "you said: 'what' huh?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I'll tell you what: fuckin' pigs, man. Fuckin' pigs on my ass constantly these days. I thought that was a pig scream at first. I was 'bout ready to jump in this house and run out the back door and up through the landslide. Ha ha!" He punched me in the arm; it still fucking hurts.
Not letting him see me even wince, I said: "Did you get pulled over again?"
He was pacing and smoking now . . .
"Say: 'Possessed of inebriated inspiration and dispossessed of all good will and judgement.' Type that dude! Seriously, just keep it. Fuck the fourth wall. Fuck final edits. New chapter."
"I just had this feeling the whole time we were at Tommy's, right? Like, I could just tell that existence was bored and wanted to fuck with me. 'The shadows of things enter our lives before they do.' I think maybe Capote said that. I'm not sure though. But that's what I mean, you know what I mean? I could tell something was coming. Sitting there, with Mollie drooling on my lap, staring at me vacantly, blinking, staring more, panting in short, snotty heaves, growling for my attention, and Elle at my side, nervously fingering one of the belt loops on my jeans and kicking her leg to some frantic cadence only she could hear, and Tommy in one of his light afternoon comas with a cigarette burning away in his limp fingers while the giant high definition television - 'mos def out' according to Tommy - flashed and blared Rock of Love season 3 with absolutely terrifying intervals of barely subliminal - in fact, downright fucking obvious - messaging via McDonald's and Target and SUV and cell phone commercials, I felt awkward as fuck. But not awkward enough to leave. Something was keeping me there. Not the tea either. Though, it probably did stimulate my already frayed apprehension, I will not - especially in hindsight - give much credit to the tea. Seriously, though, it's good shit, and doesn't 'noid you out. If anything it facilitated me divining what I did. But right after I had the premonition I had the realization: there's no getting around it. The hand is dealt. And yeah, that's how I think the universe works. Or at least that's how I see it as working. There's probably more up ahead, maybe millions of years worth, but my headlights only let me see so far ahead into the darkness. They're brighter than most, though. I'll swear that 'til my grave. I knew it was coming. I knew I had to leave at some point, and when I did I'd get pulled over by a pig. I couldn't see what would happen. That'd be like asking me to see leaves on a tree on top a mountain. I just see the green shape the leaves make. I can't see each leaf for itself. Such was this, ya know? I knew I'd get pulled over, but I had no idea how it would turn out. So I spent the last ten minutes we were at Tommy's exploring and digging around in the various nooks and orifices of my outfit and person, in search of the very best spot to conceal your bag of tea. I settled, finally, on this pocket here," - he opened his grey pea coat and removed the bag from the inside breast pocket - "And when the rear view mirror of my car suddenly lit up with red and blue flashes, I gotta say: I was a little worried.
"It wasn't easy leaving Tommy's either. And, I don't know, maybe I could've avoided it by hanging around for a little bit longer. He'd just gotten a peach blunt and really wanted to enjoy it with some other people. As nervous as I was about my premonition, I knew Elle didn't wanna hang around my gardener's all day, smoking peach blunts and tolerating racism disguised as politically incorrect sarcasm. You know what I mean?"
"Definitely. You're right: that shit is weird."
"Don't I know it. But as I was leaving he was like: 'Well, I got two, so at least take one and try it out,' and tossed a flesh-colored plastic tube across the room. I caught it and laughed, remarking that it looked like a cock, and Elle blushed and rolled her eyes."
"What a prude!" I had to interject. In his defense, I've seen those peach blunt tubes and they do look like male genitalia. Clearly a plastic one, a replica, but the resemblance is obvious. "But how would she know anyway, right?"
"Dude," he said, "she's seen one before. She told me she's had sexual -"
"I know, I know. You've told me this a millions times. I was just kidding anyway. What happened after you got pulled over? I'm still confused how this all adds up. How this has anything to do with how you 'got it' as you so eloquently put it."
"I'm gettin' to that, man. If you'd just let me tell my story, you'll see how it all adds up. Alright? Be patient, man. Anyway, for about a minute, while the pig was running my plate or something, I stared into my rear view mirror, transfixed by the flashing red and blue lights, with this clamorous fugue in my skull. The whole council was in an uproar! One voice was shouting: 'Gun it! You can outrun this pig if you take 'im by surprise! Trust me, you gotta better chance outrunnin' him than you do a shower full of hungry, soapy animals!' Another guy suggested I force Elle to stash it in her purse, and then if it's found there to plead total ignorance. But the most sensible voice of all, which at first seemed the craziest, wasn't really a voice at all. It was more like an echo, but an echo of an image. Like, this one time when I was pretty young, I was helping my mom can some homemade spaghetti sauce. I was rinsing out the Mason jars and handing them to her. I guess the jars were a little wet 'cause she was fumbling around with the lid on one of the jars she'd just filled and it slipped out of her hand. It was bad. You couldn't tell the blood from the spaghetti sauce. For weeks after that, I had this, like, video clip that played over and over again in my head, coming on sporadically, like when I'd close my eyes or something, of my mom looking down at her gashed-open toe, looking up at me, looking back down at her toe, then looking above me and screaming bloody unintentional matricide! It was like that. But the image this time was of that plastic cock floating in slow motion through the air with the heavy toms in that Strauss song from 2001 thundering away: the dawning of an epiphany. But I had to act quickly, casually, and the hardest part wouldn't be quickly and clandestinely concealing your bag of tea inside the plastic cock, but convincing Elle to deflower herself with it in order to preserve my own precious chastity."
"Oh. My. God."
"So when I say: 'I got it,' you - "
"Oh," I said, putting my hand up, "I get it."
The man across the road; arms crossed,
with his mind occupying nothing.
The snow starts. Last evening it was there,
but you were not awake to look out the
front window.
You saw him, though, last year. Waiting.
You thought of your own lost ones,
always lost. It was never there.
You walk to the front door, forgetting your hat and mittens.
It's cold. You walk toward the man, and stop
at your side of the street.
"Hello young man."
"Hello."
"It took you a long time."
"Only a year."
"You forgot."
"I did not."
That's right. You never forgot.
You held yourself at night and kept away.
Cause why would you ever want it blown open?
Cross winds occur nightly now, and the snow
tells you so.
You still don't know which way to go.
You see their smiles in your sleep
and try to dream of other things
but the warming keeps you paralyzed
there is nothing you can do,
you already let it go.
Next winter the man will be there, too. Waiting.
with his mind occupying nothing.
The snow starts. Last evening it was there,
but you were not awake to look out the
front window.
You saw him, though, last year. Waiting.
You thought of your own lost ones,
always lost. It was never there.
You walk to the front door, forgetting your hat and mittens.
It's cold. You walk toward the man, and stop
at your side of the street.
"Hello young man."
"Hello."
"It took you a long time."
"Only a year."
"You forgot."
"I did not."
That's right. You never forgot.
You held yourself at night and kept away.
Cause why would you ever want it blown open?
Cross winds occur nightly now, and the snow
tells you so.
You still don't know which way to go.
You see their smiles in your sleep
and try to dream of other things
but the warming keeps you paralyzed
there is nothing you can do,
you already let it go.
Next winter the man will be there, too. Waiting.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Things I Don't Remember
Looking at that photo, I can't remember who I was. The unshapely, unkempt facial hair... the daze in my eyes, and the overgrown rim of black surrounding a miniscule hue of deep brown in my cornias; these things all were a mystery to the man now looking back at the mad eyed, half smiling, half exploding lunatic that I saw in that picture. I can't recall what he did on that particular weekend, or what was so fantastic about it. I can recall constantly shouting "DR. SCOTT!" at the stage, as some mindlessly bantering jam band emulated. It made a friend laugh, and at that point, I lived to make friends laugh.
Rewind two years to a photo my me smiling blindly, still at that time unkempt and wild looking, no more than 2 feet away from the camera. A friend is there with me. We look happier than I've felt since all of these things turned to memories. What were we feeling that night? Why do both of our smiles show such absolute purity in this one brief moment, and why do I not have the ability to reconnect?
I'll never forget travelling across the country in a van communicating with a stranger whom I had kissed once at that point, and would not see again for a month. Never again have I so interested another human being. Never again have I both been so encapsulated, and felt so adored by another person.
What's changed? Was it the drugs? Am I ill? Is this what growing up's supposed to be? It feels more like growing backwards. Communication is not so easy as it was once. I think I was outgoing once. For the life of me, I can't remember why.
Rewind two years to a photo my me smiling blindly, still at that time unkempt and wild looking, no more than 2 feet away from the camera. A friend is there with me. We look happier than I've felt since all of these things turned to memories. What were we feeling that night? Why do both of our smiles show such absolute purity in this one brief moment, and why do I not have the ability to reconnect?
I'll never forget travelling across the country in a van communicating with a stranger whom I had kissed once at that point, and would not see again for a month. Never again have I so interested another human being. Never again have I both been so encapsulated, and felt so adored by another person.
What's changed? Was it the drugs? Am I ill? Is this what growing up's supposed to be? It feels more like growing backwards. Communication is not so easy as it was once. I think I was outgoing once. For the life of me, I can't remember why.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Work boots.
There we were: tearing apart my recent, but somehow remote childhood with borrowed crowbars and sledgehammers and mirroring stigmata, counting the echoes of the grunts and the falls that bounced between "them woods over there" and "this brown 'luminum wall back here." The skeletons of bike ramps lay drawn and quartered all around us in the wild ankle-high heather; the sun hadn't quite reached noon yet; and the pangs of hunger were sinking deeper into our guts as the morning's blaze attenuated and diffused to a familiar murky hue of hazy, cosmic grey. Blood did not seep where blood could not reach, still the pain was sharp, constant and (when left unchecked) debilitating. So together we limped, the reluctant participants in a three-legged race, paired together by circumstance, with only blood and blind chance binding us. On the dusty barn floor, we removed our boots and socks and compared wounds. "Yers go the whole way through, too?" Of course it had. Mine had been the first, the initial attack; his had been dumb luck, "fuckin' karma;" wasn't supposed to happen to him at all: "not just steel-toed, but steel-soles, too." Finally given the chance to breathe, the holes gaped and, when squeezed with dirty fingers and clenched jaw, spat rust-colored ooze from their pallid, wrinkled mouths. So the accidental blood brothers bandaged up their wounds, using strips of cloth torn from an old Purchase Line Varsity Track and Field shirt, split a hoagie from the gas station down the street, and got back to work; looking to get done before the old man got home from his meeting in town with the judge.
He mostly stood and watched me; but he stood well and statuesque and, framed by the sun at its highest point, discoursed in a homely, but uniquely eloquent vernacular on his favorite topic: women. "To me it's all about the morning after," - looking up at two turkeybuzzards circling the pasture beyond the barn - "they gotta shine in the morning." He spoke of golden down, tawny hairs that cover them all over, like stretching fields of wheat that captivate and affront the sun's morning light with their brilliance. This, he said through azure exhales (in an excusable moment of ignorance to the malicious truth of the vast, spinning world around him), was the closest a grown man could get to the amazing agony he once felt as a young boy just discovering the "differences between her and me."
And just as he had picked up his sledge to get back to work, the new and shiny black truck of the old man's pulled up; something heated and static buzzing in the old man's aspect. "Why the hell ain't you limpin' then?" he asked me after the incident had been divulged. I looked down at my hands, tightly sheathed by my father's old, ever-shrinking, once-light-tan-now-dark-brown, suede work gloves, and saw that all but two fingers (both pinkies) poked through holes worn in them long before my palms were ever callused with labor; my toes throbbed with a secret pain. "Cuz both feet're sore and it won't do no good to favor one more'n the other." Staring down at the moribund purple pressing its ghastly face against the window of my left big toenail, the old man arrived at a decision: "Sammy, take the rest the day off'n go'won inta town and git that boy some goddamn work boots." The old man scribbled his name at the bottom of a check and handed it to him: "Take my truck if ya want, but git back here 'fore too long: Rita's cookin' venison fer supper."
He mostly stood and watched me; but he stood well and statuesque and, framed by the sun at its highest point, discoursed in a homely, but uniquely eloquent vernacular on his favorite topic: women. "To me it's all about the morning after," - looking up at two turkeybuzzards circling the pasture beyond the barn - "they gotta shine in the morning." He spoke of golden down, tawny hairs that cover them all over, like stretching fields of wheat that captivate and affront the sun's morning light with their brilliance. This, he said through azure exhales (in an excusable moment of ignorance to the malicious truth of the vast, spinning world around him), was the closest a grown man could get to the amazing agony he once felt as a young boy just discovering the "differences between her and me."
And just as he had picked up his sledge to get back to work, the new and shiny black truck of the old man's pulled up; something heated and static buzzing in the old man's aspect. "Why the hell ain't you limpin' then?" he asked me after the incident had been divulged. I looked down at my hands, tightly sheathed by my father's old, ever-shrinking, once-light-tan-now-dark-brown, suede work gloves, and saw that all but two fingers (both pinkies) poked through holes worn in them long before my palms were ever callused with labor; my toes throbbed with a secret pain. "Cuz both feet're sore and it won't do no good to favor one more'n the other." Staring down at the moribund purple pressing its ghastly face against the window of my left big toenail, the old man arrived at a decision: "Sammy, take the rest the day off'n go'won inta town and git that boy some goddamn work boots." The old man scribbled his name at the bottom of a check and handed it to him: "Take my truck if ya want, but git back here 'fore too long: Rita's cookin' venison fer supper."
Monday, November 16, 2009
It's hard to run with a knife in your back
“This town’s well is dry,
Its fingernails are not so refined”
Said the sad-eyed lady in the train station
They seemed to be trying to say something more,
Her eyes,
But it couldn’t be read.
She had learned how to lie, even through her eyes.
The autumn breeze almost takes me away some days
When all the leaves
Have left the trees
And their stark silhouettes,
Like un-stuffed scarecrows,
Ward off unwelcome visitors.
Jagged,
and
frail,
Like useless appendages,
The branches reach up to the heavens -
Calling for god to reign down his mercy.
To take pity on their lengthy, inert existence,
To take pity on this town.
Dear God, please bless
Those of us about to rest
The ones who sleep beneath the trees
Who, like their stark ancestors,
Have never had the chance to leave.
The sad eyed lady sat on her train
Meticulously manicuring her nails.
Alone she could not lie to herself,
Her eyes struggled to focus on her cuticles
She couldn’t remove the dirt beneath them.
She never would.
And it would stick with her, like a bad hangover,
Clinging desperately lost past it’s due.
And she would learn to live with it,
Care for it,
And nurture it,
In the dirt she would learn to plant a garden,
A home
her Life.
Its fingernails are not so refined”
Said the sad-eyed lady in the train station
They seemed to be trying to say something more,
Her eyes,
But it couldn’t be read.
She had learned how to lie, even through her eyes.
The autumn breeze almost takes me away some days
When all the leaves
Have left the trees
And their stark silhouettes,
Like un-stuffed scarecrows,
Ward off unwelcome visitors.
Jagged,
and
frail,
Like useless appendages,
The branches reach up to the heavens -
Calling for god to reign down his mercy.
To take pity on their lengthy, inert existence,
To take pity on this town.
Dear God, please bless
Those of us about to rest
The ones who sleep beneath the trees
Who, like their stark ancestors,
Have never had the chance to leave.
The sad eyed lady sat on her train
Meticulously manicuring her nails.
Alone she could not lie to herself,
Her eyes struggled to focus on her cuticles
She couldn’t remove the dirt beneath them.
She never would.
And it would stick with her, like a bad hangover,
Clinging desperately lost past it’s due.
And she would learn to live with it,
Care for it,
And nurture it,
In the dirt she would learn to plant a garden,
A home
her Life.
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