Q uiet L ightning
s P A R K L E
& b L I N K
1
Q uiet L ightning
s P A R K L E
& b L I N K
as performed on
Mar 1 10
@
Elbo Room
© 2010 by Evan Karp + Rajshree Chauhan
The following texts were previously published:
“The Indexing of Sensation” by Babel Fruit
“A Bed with Softer Animals” by The 2River View
Design by Evan Karp
Author rights reserved.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from individual authors.
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For information:
http://quietlightning.org
evan@quietlightning.org
contents
kevin smokler
one day
mg martin
banana peels upon your bed
if they're on the ground two Us & an I may make a triangle
amy glasenapp
breakfast
meghan thornton
vigilante justice
spring
maw shein win
the indexing of sensation
a bed with softer animals
andrew nelson
ash awaiting dawn
cadiz, cadiz
william taylor
the universe and everyone
the virus
joy on most every corner
alia volz
won't you be my neighbor?
dw Lichtenberg
barcelona has 3 eyes and one leg
ml heath
a november dream
from room 8 at the albert
alternative rock doll
andrew o dugas
would you fuck rebecca
mira martin-parker
western union
blondes
the fat man
paul corman-roberts
stalking dana
ian tuttle
for research, kafe 99
tess patalano
reprise
revenge of the fish
erin lindsay mccabe
another brother
kristen kramer
mercurial
religious
nicole alea
roma
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oNE dAY
I once met a woman at a party who had three hobbies: swimsuit modeling, DJ-ing underground parties and designing websites for independent clothing designers. “Impossible!” I shouted, behind pasted smile and marionette nod. No one accumulates that much avocational glamour without giant efforts masking giant insecurities or else being a cyborg from the waist up. Worse, she dismissed my oohs and aahs with the following retort:
“I’m just a big geek,” she said, explaining away this cache of pastimes. She then went on to tell me some combination of these hobbies would bear the unsexy burden of supporting her through her upcoming enrollment in graduate school. I assumed she’d be studying Political Theory of Having Teenagers Jerk Off to Your Likeness or The Post-Modern Implications of Marrying Saudi Royalty.
She’d be studying Social Work.
Look, where I came from “Geeky” and Glamorous” have roughly the same relationship as “Kelvar” and “Kangaroo.” Their similarities end with their first letter. But nowadays I know that makes me a bit old fashioned. “Geeky” is now quite “Glamorous,” with Afro-d Jewish fellers passing as leading men, the iPhone’s birth meeting with the same attention as the landing of Baby Suri Cruise, and that whole “look who’s running the world” thing. The word “geek” can now be dropped on the end of any hobby to imply an outsized, yet loveable devotion to an activity the world isn’t as nuts about as you. “Computer geek” used to be a redundantly deployed insult. Now those insulters giggle and call themselves “wine geeks” or “fashion geeks” which to me is like saying “I’m a dork about being fabulous.”
Here things start to get muddy. Hobbies are our third places; time separate from work and family/friends. As such, they’re also our open secrets, what we choose to do when we are answerable to no one and, hence, feel most like ourselves. To me that means, much as we love the romantic notion that any calculus teacher could secretly be a weekend poll-vaulter, our hobbies are usually an extension of—not an exception to—who we are in the rest of our lives.
Can one then “geek out” on an activity that already has societal approval? Has “geek” changed so much that late adaptors may try to stockpile cred by labeling themselves “an oxygen geek” because they enjoy deep breaths in the morning? Can “music geek” now apply equally to your old band camp director and the headliners at Coachella?
On the last one, it would seem so. Culture in general and music in particular seems the best showcase for this struggle for the soul of geek. Macro: consumption of culture and media has eaten into “hobby time” more than just about anything else. To many, it is the only hobby. Micro: we let music slot us into categories more than books, movies and television combined. And since the money and time we can spend on music and its incidentals (sound systems, concert tickets, t-shirts) extends from zero to infinity, it’s by nature a more precise gauge of that moment when passion tips over into geekery.
The pinion of that wedge, I’ve found, is a stack of vinyl records about as high as your knee. Perhaps you’ve heard: vinyl is back. According to a January 2008 issue of Time Magazine, sales of LPs jumped 15% between ‘06 and ‘07 while the music business overall is in its worst slump in decades. Hip indie labels like Merge and Arts & Crafts routinely put out new releases on vinyl with a special keycard that lets you download the album to an iPod as well. Amazon now has a dedicated vinyl store. The fastest growing segment of the record market, according to Time again, appears to be teenagers and college students after retro-cool on a minimum wagers budget.
Vinyl collecting, once archeology now current events, is the changing face of geeky pastimes in perfect miniature. I know. I’ve seen it myself.
I started in with vinyl about a year ago and noticed most other collectors fall into three buckets: The high-handed audiophile (remember the movie “Ghost World”? Chess club geeks who found their way to music), the nostalgic baby-boomer (who buys expensive re-issues to assert their continued relevance) and the professional or civilian rockstar (the members of REM met at a vinyl shack. Nick Hornby’s characters in High Fidelity think they belong here but are probably younger versions of Bucket #1). Turn your head and those three groups are the three vintages of Geek that confound the whole enterprise: Classic, Chic and Wannabe.
When friends ask me about my own vinyl rationales, I say it’s because it sounds better (a lie. Dozens of factors influence sound and I understand precisely none of them), because the artwork is cooler (ok fine, but they ain’t magic cards) and because they are sensual to the touch (true. And weird.). But really, I just like that they’re old. That they remind me of my own dweeby childhood (bad posture, izod shirts and all) and how far I hope I’ve come since. I’ve fallen backwards into a chic hobby as a way of capturing a geek lost long ago. Which may have some refracted glamour to it yes, if only I had swimsuit modeling, hat design or jewel thievery to pair it with.
One day…
bANANA pEELS uPON yOUR bED
honey: in these nostrils—
the pheromones of your day
old meatloaf & cabbage belches
melt nose hairs
i love you so much i’d let you
alleviate on my face like hitler
let his cousin do to him
i couldn’t floss these yellow gums w/out
you singing in the shower: all nails-
on-a-chalkboard-during-a-tornado like
you’re the nitrate in my spam sandwich
the monoglyceride in my twinkie
to exist as a flea in a droplet
of sweat from your armpit
would be enough for me, to quit drinking
…for at least a day or two…
for you i’d scavenge myriad dumpsters
collecting banana peels to scatter
upon your bed, while whispering sweet
nothings into your wax-clogged ears
when i awake mid-day
spooned up against you
like a fruit-fly on a ferret’s feces
sugar, it ain’t easy
it ain’t easy to keep the fernet
& fried eggs down w/ the mole
on your neck the size of the greater area
of minneapolis, staring me
down like autistic cancer
baby, you’re the hangover of my dreams
& i your 7 a.m. alka seltzer
you are more angelic than a dung beetle!
iF tHEY’RE oN tHE gROUND tWO Us & aN i mAY mAKE a tRIANGLE
i love you
is like a cumulus cloud holding the internet in its hand after the internet has had a dream in where the internet becomes tangential. the poem exists to desecrate reason. grass is kosher. Pretty language, your murderer is still on the peninsula of echoes watching america, blindfolded & falling down a stairwell. please capitalize my name when i become blind, deaf & mute. hire sewing machines to check my spelling when my hands can no longer stitch the letters looking for words in poems to alter. there is a wi-fi under the dictionary trying to homogenize me. pretty language, i wanted to emancipate you but i froze up like a urinal in a life sized lava lamp. my courage is that of a drunken leaky roof. my panda bear is stifled by digitalism, high fructose corn syrup, ninety degree angles & my panda bear misses you. i have a panda bear named creativity. you & Sisyphus were obviously poets. i will write you sentimental letters begging you to eat me so i can inhabit your insides forever, eating you inside out forever. i meant to look up the definition of pretty before the alphabet exploded. i swear it. language come back & read the mountains like they’re braille & i will mimic what you are trying to be.
bREAKFAST
She sits drinking tea under a crack in the ceiling, a hair’s width. Something an appraiser with a sturdy eye trained on rusty pipes, sinking foundations, and sighing walls might see fit to catalog in chicken scratch somewhere near the bottom of an itemized list. Nothing for an ordinary person to worry about. She lives in a basement apartment, and the sky is so far away she can only imagine it from here. Sounds of thunder outside, a cracking like false teeth on an old baguette. Or is it the rattle of the broken radiator across the hall? The newspaper says nothing about rain.
I need a drink, the older sister croons from the back-in-her-throat place where she gargles as she stumbles into the kitchen. She struggles to find the neck hole of a T-shirt with her head, her naked body bone-thin and rebellious under the pale light. She doesn’t like to sleep in underwear or any other clothing for that matter, because clothing irritates her large clitoris, which, since her license was suspended, has been over-stimulated by all the walking she’s been doing, not to mention all the bumping into people. She complains of everything but the ability to orgasm in under five minutes. Pierre, her would-be lover, is asleep in the anteroom by the telephone. He is fully dressed. She has recently, too recently, emerged from a five-year relationship with a woman and is thrilled to find that penises possess a new glow.
“We don’t have anything,” the younger sister says. “We are out of everything, but there’s tea if you want it.”
The older sister is silent; what she wants is not here, and she can only think of how to get it here. She cannot think of alternatives, and she does not notice the crack in the ceiling, although the younger sister spotted it hours ago, when the lights went on this morning.
“How long are you staying?” she asks. It is the day after the older sister’s arrival in town. She is here on business—electric car modeling. She sits atop the computerized engines of electric cars and smiles, her blue or gold dress shimmering, blowing in a fan-generated wind, the electric gust making her dark hair look as though it never (couldn’t possibly have ever) looked damp and limp like this, like it does now. The younger sister is jealous of the dresses but not of the hours under the desiccating lamplight, the layers of makeup to hide the wrinkles from weight loss, the endless promotion of domestic cars that aren’t currently selling as well as they should, what with the competition from China.
“I don’t know, why do you want to know, are you kicking me out, is it because of Pierre?” the older sister responds, all in one breath breathless.
‘It is because of Pierre!’ the younger sister wants to say. ‘It is because your first night in town, you drag a man here who gets too drunk to make it to the bedroom, but really because there is a man in my house, period, and I hate that you don’t think.’
But the younger sister just stares in amusement because she cannot muster the truth, and she does not want the older sister to leave, not yet. For a year, the house has been contaminated by dust—the air is hot and cottony, and there’s a buzzing sound coming from somewhere, possibly the ghost or the interruption of static that once played on the screen of a TV that no longer works. It sits there on its stand, a tribute to things past; there is no analog, no cable, no DVD. No TV is a frazzling predicament, an excuse not to get things done. Long days of forgetting.
“You’re all washed up,” the older sister continues. “This house doesn’t even have a bar. What have you been doing with yourself? Not cleaning, I see. Yoga again? Just like after the baby. Every day is post-partum for little sis.”
The younger sister is used to the elder’s prodding, although here it is more of a lifting of flaps. Inured to it as she is to alcohol breath, pubic displays, the tedious parading of sex. The older one carries only a dull blade for her sister, but she works it in with patience. She was once a Lamborghini model, incidentally.
“Get it over with, whatever you’re doing with Pierre,” the younger sister says. “Before I get back.” She gathers up her things, which have surrounded her on the floor, and goes out. When she slams the door behind her, she hears the thunder down the hall.
The older sister glances at the teacup, sweeps her left hand across the table, and knocks it to the far wall. It doesn’t smash there, but on the floor, and the leftover tea and bits of ceramic spew back toward the older sister’s bare feet. She laughs bitterly.
“Pierre!” She calls. “Come lick this up and I’ll take you to the bedroom.”
Pierre stirs in his chair, and a cold sweat trickles down his forehead. Her voice from the other room jogs a memory of previous night. “What?”
“You heard me.”
He gets up, realizes he is fully clothed, and sighs, disappointed.
The kitchen is far brighter than any room he has ever been in, he is certain. The older sister stands there, Katherine to him, her pubic hairlessness striking, impossibly infantile. He feels a jolt in his pants beneath the zipper, deafening his disgust.
“What happened?” he asks, gesturing to what was the cup. A drop drips on him from the crack in the ceiling. He looks up.
“My sister’s a nasty cunt,” she says.
She retrieves a broom and dustpan from the corner closet and begins to sweep up the wet mess. The bristles of the broom soak up the tea; there is no mop anywhere.
Minutes pass. She sinks to her knees and begins to weep. Pierre backs out of the room slowly, gathers his coat from the chair, and quietly slips out the front door.
Back on the street he whistles to himself, glad to be out of that strange apartment with the smell of mildew emanating from every corner—primarily, he imagines, from that crack in the ceiling. The spot where the drop hit his head is still cold. There must be a bathtub above, a leaky faucet. He rubs his fingers against the spot, and the image of the woman’s bald groin comes rushing back to him like a falling piano. He shudders, suddenly cold all over.
Another dark-haired woman smirks at him from behind her paper grocery bag, which she carries high in her arms like a sleeping child. In her steady eyes he catches a glint of recognition, although he could swear he’s never seen her in his life. Maybe she works at the club, he thinks, but she doesn’t seem to be that kind of girl. Club girls wear their clothes like another skin and walk with legs slightly bowed, as though inviting the wind to penetrate them from behind. This woman’s loose clothes and bare face, paleness overall, suggest she’s been too long indoors. He can see she might have been beautiful at some time or other. Young.
“I know you from somewhere,” he says. She shakes her head. “Well, can I help you with that?”
“You’re kidding right?” She laughs. Keeps walking.
He turns, watches her go, aware of the saunter she’s picked up just now. She wants him to follow her, and he feels a jolt of energy against his zipper.
He says nothing but goes behind her, watching.
She makes it all the way up the block, back to that door—of course it’s the one he’s just come out of. She rummages in her purse for the key, balancing her child-sack on one hip, as mothers do. He stands back ten, eleven feet, afraid. Afraid she’ll look back and see him, the fool who spent the night in her chair, because now he does remember seeing her. Not exactly—a photograph of her in ballet gear, her hair tied in a knot so tight her eyes fold back at the corners. Beautiful.
‘My sister’s cunt,’ he remembers hearing.
He watches her go inside the gate, watches it swing closed behind her, watches. She goes up the stairs, takes them two at a time, even with the heavy load obscuring the steps from her sight.
oN vIGILANTE jUSTICE
I want to wander the night like Batman,
wrap myself in tight leather vengeance,
arm myself with batarangs and grappling hooks,
and swing from building to building
across the skyline of San Francisco:
from the Transamerica Pyramid to Maritime Plaza,
from the MOMA to the Metreon,
fog swirling in my wake like a miniature cyclone.
I'll wait in the darkness, legs tensed, ready to spring,
still as a gargoyle upon St. Mary's,
cape flapping behind me like undone sails.
I'll hoist Washington Square muggers into the air,
then land soft as a cat on a cable car's back,
black-as-night cloak spilling over roof's edge.
I'll save people from themselves, all the while chanting:
I bring fear into the hearts of evil-doers;
I am the tireless knight;
I cowl the rising moon with my shadow.
sPRING
Days grow longer.
Sun burns through fog.
Buds plump with color.
Air warms and releases honey bees.
Cocoons crack and wings unfold.
Sparrows sing from treetops.
Behind me on the sidewalk a small blond
girl in a daisy-covered dress
sings too,
a song I once knew.
tHE iNDEXING oF sENSATION
It will be four days until the air lifts to the vaulted ceiling.
Old women come into the library and pass flowers into his hands.
Put these in water, honey, have a nice day.
He pushes the cart down the carpeted aisle.
The repetition of movement is a meditation.
The Art of Benin, Paula Ben-Amos N 7397 N5C5
Anno’s Counting Book, Mitsumasa Anno PZ 7A5875
The Forgotten Ones, Milton Rogovin TP 820.5 R64
The Balloon—A Bicentennial Exhibition TL 615 B34
Maps of countries that don’t exist anymore.
The archiving of fantasies.
The referencing of systems.
The indexing of sensation.
The windows are haunted swing sets.
a bED wITH sOFTER aNIMALS
It is raining.
It is Tuesday night.
There are 36 steps up to Alan’s apartment on the East Side.
A bed with softer animals.
A doberman pincher walks into a 7-11 and buys a carton of milk.
I notice these things.
Rain waters the buildings and they grow and grow.
Makes thieves work harder.
Softens mountains.
Ruins sandwiches.
Some paintings make me cry.
I Like Crying.
Gunsmoke was a good show to cry to.
Also, the Waltons’ Christmas Special.
Alan is reading about cannibals in New Guinea.
The cannibals average at five feet tall.
They roast their dead for 30 days then bury them in the jungle.
Alan told me it rains more in the jungle, but I knew that already.
What I don’t know is how lightning feels on the body.
Or what makes a glow worm glow.
Or why the neighbor keeps knocking his head against the wall.
aSH aWAITING dAWN
what newness
will you conjure up
in spite of yourself
a baby boy I know for sure
he is July emancipating June
in returning June
a ménage a trios of soured quint—
—essence the stench of their descent
still lingers in the wake
of his departure and
June naked shower
residue reclaiming
her hair she too
old lover never
honest enough
to begin anew
still babysits on future island
where she can't even begin to forget
knowing thyself manifest in forgetting
I await yr birth eager and anxious
smell intention on yr breath
anticipating your myth—
—ological animal
expecting yr beast
to gouge holes in the
mundane way things were
before you arrived on the scene
4th of July pirate
you stole the Earth
from beneath our feet
where there are hordes
of boring people abundant
but not you July Conquistador!
you don't even fear
death or devil
you make faces at god
and get away w/ it
you have the most uncanny way
of getting away
w/ it
you don't beg favors from matter
that you can’t touch
that you can’t feel
everything you touch
everything you feel
touches and feels you
you are no friend of absent mind
or false presence
you think
only to stop
thinking
you saved mama's life
she artist of wonder
vital creator of creators
aesthetic queen of invention
babe in arms
pretty lady survivor of old making
Heraclitian dweller in rivers
shape changing biological magician
I wish I was
new like you
I wish it was
just me and mother
no anti-climatic text messaging
or war of meaning—
—lessnesses no more
old Christmas tress carelessly
discarded up and down Divisadero St.
no more deer in suicide headlines
or post-coital shiver
no more simultaneous second guessing
or visionary plants
necessary to begin to see
the only idol I require is you
mother of my secrets
the Ash of June
begets July dawn
felicitous birth
we await the
extent of yr
living
cADIZ, cADIZ
to escape the has beens of used to
does not think of you w/out you
and w/ you does not think
Cadiz, Cadiz!
to be from here
right where we are
to say we but mean I
the smell of wind beneath the ocean where
you get over yr friends and fall in w/ strangers
making good on childhood promise
her heart stopped once while purging
Ambulance, Ambulance!
now she is queen of death pageant
Cadiz, Cadiz
to dream of clean
and speak of never
old man at end of table seeks after
copper at bottom of fountain
Cadiz, Cadiz!
to disappear
to catch yourself escaping
to Paris for sex and money (and maybe drugs)
to admit you still want to be here
cuz if you didn't you'd be there already
to say fuck poetry and just ride trains in this country
to say fuck Spain, fuck Italy, fuck that entire Continent
to want to know Montana in Summertime
Providence during torrential downpours
and who's afraid of prison in Fort Benning, GA
Cadiz, Cadiz!
to travel alone
to miss yr health like you miss yourself
cuz before we were taught truth
we were all body
yr body was my body like every—bodies
but she still bites herself during intercourse
to keep from screaming
still breaks into tears post orgasm
cuz she never learned how to say I love you
Cadiz, Cadiz!
to drink Xera all day
and wander still
and have absolutely nothing
to do w/ any of this
as the profound rewards
only the transformative
Cadz, Cadiz!
to say yes to everything but death
tHE uNIVERSE aND eVERYONE
It's just like old Sherwood
Anderson said, everything
is on fire all the time
and that means you
and me
and the suns and the stars
and the houses and the oceans
there's no shame in it
and to understand and
accept it is not giving up
it's just opening yourself
to the nature of things
and there is great power
in this and if you realize
that all there is
all there ever was and
will be
is this moment
burning
and you inside it
burning
you can give yourself
to it completely
you can burn so big
and bright
people will see
the universe and everyone
will see
and when you are gone
they will remember
and say
wow.
tHE vIRUS
I'm told they've recently discovered
loneliness spreads
from being to being
like a virus
and here I'd always thought
this was an obvious and
well documented fact
across the street there's this woman
pounding a piss stained
door with bloodied fists
screaming
Mary, Mary
let me in
Mary please
let me in
as old Korean women with bent
backs sift through
piles of filth for bottles
and cans abandoned by those
shuffling down 6th Street
like the dead they dream to be
and the woman selling
the Street Sheet
at the Powell Street station
sounds like a broken carnival
barker
Anything helps, friends,
dimes, nickels, pennies
dimes, nickels and pennies …
she's there most every day
morning and night
with her monotone voice
and milky eyes
ugly and ignored
amidst so many lives tossed away
like so many losing tickets
and the fine print of every billboard
on every corner reads
sorry you are not
an instant winner
please
try again
as the woman
across the street
still pounds the door
and wails for Mary
her cracked voice spreading
across the dying winter
afternoon like
a virus.
jOY oN mOST eVERY cORNER
It's starting to feel like winter
even here in San Francisco
and it's harder than it should be
to find an open bar on Valencia St.
at 3 o'clock on a weekday afternoon
and as I walk I feel myself
evaporating like the rain
on the sidewalks and I know
this is the nature of things
but I'd like to hold on
for just a little while more
see I'm still not tired
of the sky's lovely grey
and though I still don't
know how to say I'm sorry
for all I am
and all I'm not
despite all my talk of darkness
at any given moment
I still can fall in love
with everything all over again
and I still think we are often beautiful
in our pristine and plastic
uselessness
and sometimes I still see
joy on most every corner
and I can still walk these
Mission Street sidewalks
in the wintertime
and sing.
wON’T yOU bE mY nEIGHBOR?
My downstairs neighbor is this gray old Mexican lady who no speak-ee no Engleesh. She’s also a few sandwiches shy of a picnic, if you know what I mean.
It’s a fact that she had to leave building C because she couldn’t get along with her neighbors on that side. So what does office Mary do? She moves the old bat into the apartment under me, where Franz just died in the bathtub the week before. You’d think they’d leave it open for a month out of respect.
But Mary’s got something against me, always has. Far be it from her to pass up a golden opportunity to make my life miserable. So she moves the nutcase in downstairs, and right away it’s a drag. See, we live all piled up here. The walls are made of cardboard. You can hear your neighbors fart in the night.
Cathedral City Senior Community is in the middle of the goddamn desert. The closest watered lawn is about two miles away, in the outer dregs of Palm Springs. The only thing separating our apartment complex from the I-10 freeway is a giant sinkhole, about 30 feet deep. A group of teenagers thinks it’s cute to ride their dirt bikes up and down that sinkhole all day long, buzzing like flies through megaphones and kicking up dust storms. If I let housekeeping go for a week, I can’t see my TV through all the dust that’s snuck in. You have to keep after it all the time.
I can’t do a thing with my rotten back, so I have to hire a Chinese to clean my apartment. Ming comes over two afternoons a week and gives things a good wipe-down and scrub. Then he runs the vacuum-sweeper. Every single time he runs it, that crazy Mex lady’s down there whacking the ceiling with a broom.
I tell Ming to stomp right back at her. I have a right to a clean apartment, for Christ’s sake.
After a couple weeks of this, I get a call from the office. “A complaint has been lodged,” Mary says, in that Mother Superior tone she uses.
“Yeah?” I say, “About what?”
“Running heavy machinery.”
I get Ming to carry the vacuum sweeper down the stairs and I roll it across the parking lot and into the office. I plug it in and give Mary a demonstration of my “heavy machinery.” HA! You should have seen her face.
The next time Ming uses the vacuum-sweeper, I’m in the middle of Oprah and it’s BANG BANG BANG at the door. It sounds like a cop and I think ‘Great, they’ve finally come for me.’ Instead, it’s this fat goof in a black polyester suit. It’s like 120 damn degrees outside and he’s wearing a suit.
“If you’re selling Bibles you’re barking up the wrong tree,” I say.
“My mama lives in the apartment downstairs,” he says. “She can’t sleep with that noise you’re making. I got to ask you to cut the machine.” Sweat pools in the creases in his forehead, slides down his greasy cheeks and drips off his chin onto my welcome mat.
“It’s the middle of the day,” I say. “Or haven’t you noticed?”
“She has to take naps. Doctor’s orders.”
“You tell that bag to quit whacking the ceiling,” I say. “She’s going to take the building down.”
“Have some respect,” he says, turning his palms upward in a pleading gesture. “She’s an elderly lady.”
“Yeah, we’re all elderly here. This ain’t your territory, kid.” I slam the door between us. I can sense him waiting there, while I wait on my side. After a minute, he jogs down the stairs and the whole building shakes like a damn earthquake.
Ming finishes up and leaves. After about an hour, there’s more banging. I open the door, phone in hand, ready to call the police. No need, because the police is already there.
“Ma’am,” says the cop, “I’ve got complaints about loud machinery in this apartment.” He can’t be more than 25 years old. His ears stick out and he has a pink little nose—a desert mouse in a police hat.
“It’s a vacuum-sweeper,” I say.
“It’s disturbing your neighbor.”
“I’m not going to live in filth because that loonybins has oversensitive hearing.”
“Can’t you vacuum any faster?”
I laugh full in his face. “I wouldn’t want to run it too fast,” I say, “I’d hate to get a speeding ticket.”
He wiggles his mouth, the rodent. I light a cigarette. “If I have to come out here again,” he says, “you’ll both be in trouble.”
“Don’t you have anything better to do? I for one am busy vacuuming.” I close the door in his face. Slam dunk. That’s two in one day.
I watch from the window while he tiptoes back to the squad car and squeaks out of the parking lot. Sweet Flo from building E is scraping her walker across the parking lot, heading to Bingo in the clubhouse, no doubt. She catches me looking out the window and waves listlessly. No privacy around here. I open a jug of cabernet, watch the end of Dr. Phil, and don’t hear another word about the vacuum-sweeper.
The Mexican lady stays indoors. Since the day she moved over from C, the most I see of her is a clawed little hand poking between the curtains or a weepy eyeball spying on my comings and goings. Her fat son brings groceries a couple times a month.
Cathedral City Senior Community is full of recluses and weirdos. This place is a pantry for leftover people: stacked up and numbered in refrigerated boxes; marinating with cheap jewelry and old photographs; rotting in our own juices or drying out like jerky.
A nice fire would send everyone gimping outside. A mudslide. A tornado. An invasion of giant rats. It would look like a zombie flick.
Or like this, for example:
I wake up one morning in big time pain. It’s Dewey’s fault, as usual. I’ve told him I can’t tolerate sweet wine for all the sugar, but he’s a cheapskate and Albertson’s sells gallon jugs of Chablis for $3.99. Now I’ve got this damn destruction feeling in my brain.
My body is shaking—deep belly shakes that I feel everywhere at once. I think I’m going to puke. Then a picture falls off the wall and I realize the whole place is going nuts. I pull the covers over my head and lay flat until it’s over.
When the rolling-rattling slides away, I put on shorts and go outside to see what’s what and where it has landed. I can hear yip dogs going off like car alarms in half the apartments. It’s amazing the whole complex didn’t fall down.
Old loonybins is leaning on my banister, muttering and rubbing rosary beads against her stomach like they’re her own intestines falling out and she’s trying to stuff them back in.
“What a ride,” I say. She looks at me bug-eyed. Gray locks stand straight out from her head, trying to escape her loopy brain. She trembles like a Chihuahua dog.
I can’t help feeling kind of sorry for her. Her face is the color of old sidewalk. “It’ll be o.k.,” I say, and I put my hand on her knobby shoulder, just trying to calm her down so she doesn’t have a heart attack right in front of me.
Big mistake. She lunges toward me. I jump away to save my skin and she stumbles. She only stays on her feet by grabbing my arm with her untrimmed fingernails. She steadies herself at my expense, then takes both of my hands in her shaky little claws, stands on her tiptoes and kisses me, once on each cheek. She makes the sign of the cross, mumbling in Spanish, and shuffles back inside her apartment.
Five point six, the newsman says. I guess that’s not very big. But it was enough to scare my neighbor into making up with me. I bet she thinks she’ll burn in hell if we die at odds. I’d venture she and me are both headed for the fiery pits, no matter what we do now.
bARCELONA hAS tHREE eYES aND oNE lEG
PARIS
Looking forward to
getting the hell out of here
a firefly trapped in a jar with saran wrap on top
and little holes poked in the stuff
slowly suffocating.
PARIS TO BARCELONA
McDonalds in the airport because there
isn't anything else. And they serve me
a bun with cheese and lettuce
when I ask for a McVeggie. I wonder
how much I just paid for that.
I have to be smart enough to say:
Where are the people that love me?
Without freaking out.
I wonder why foreign women look so attractive to me when really I know it's the same old shit.
I
wonder why the nice ones fade so quickly.
I wonder why I’m always trying to pigeonhole a culture into a metaphor.
And even my advances
seem to be a retreat to safer turf.
Why do I treat my mom like shit?
She's the nicest person
in the world
even when she wants
to smash my head in.
I
wonder why
I wonder
why
I wonder why.
Why do I wonder?
It doesn't solve anything.
BARCELONA
Walking through the maze
the old city maze like a caged mouse
except the mice are tourists.
Everywhere.
The city hot like I didn't expect in the
alive of winter.
You tell me the person you marry has to believe in Santa Claus.
I remember the first time we met. You told me what I’d said was so stupid. You continued to make fun of me the entire night. Later I wrote down in my notebook:
This would be a great story to tell our kids. This is like the story of my parents, my dad yelling at my mom at a party: Who the hell put this shit on? This music is terrible.
Three A.M. head over to La Paloma,
the most famous club in Barcelona.
It's a ballroom turned nightclub,
just enough class to tamper sleeze.
And we dance. We do the air guitar,
the air drums, the air keyboard.
The air ensemble.
To dance: A social expression lacking true explanation. Ex: “I just want to dance.” One of the rare times when an adult can act like a kid and get away with it. Because people always need a scapegoat.
I’m drunk and I say to you:
Losing you is like I’m the couch with the butt groove and you’re the butt and other butts just don’t fit the same way, you know?
And you say:
Hiding is fun.
High on air
and cheap whiskey
we crack on through
the streets of Barcelona.
Two strangers coming towards us
one walking and
the other (a beautiful girl) on bike,
riding slow and without balance. Until she
isn't because
she's gone and crashed into a dumpster.
And then there’s something about me looking down and seeing three cigarettes in the pack and thinking: When did I become a smoker?
I wish I could be that guy
that helps her up.
I walk by myself, wander around,
with my four friends, only one I actually know,
none I actually know at the time.
I knew you at some point along the way.
And I remember my great grandmother who once said, out of the blue: A ball goes up, eventually it has to come down. And my uncle said: Yeah, that’s gravity.
I’m constantly constructing alibis. Does that mean something?
The key to love, you say, is silence.
At Lookout Point,
the city is
only a backdrop to
everything else
which isn't much besides sorrow and regret and fuck I screwed up.
Fuck I can't fix it. Nobody wants me to fix it,
and nobody needs me to fix it either.
How did I get up here and howdoIgetdown?
And you say to me: Sometimes we’re so honest I think it stops being true anymore.
Only this time it really does matter only this time it won’t ever be the same. I turn to high-five my imaginary friend Gus. He’s not there. Only this time I’m looking down seeing that my fly is open, thinking, I could zip it now, and pretend that nobody noticed, or I could leave it open and anticipate the revelation.
BARCELONA AIRPORT
On an escalator you have license to stare at all the other people going the other direction. An activity socially accepted because you’re going to where you gotta go and hell you’re never gonna see these people again.
Air guitar, air keyboard, air four piece band.
What about
air life, air happiness, air meaning.
Never having to learn
the instruments.
It’s everything, man. It’s the everythingofeverything.
BARCELONA TO PARIS
The seats are small and
the air is dead. And
the Pyrenees
look promising
as I skim the emergency manual.
I’m no hero, lemme just put that out there.
The ones that said goodbyes can be sadbutsweet probably never said goodbye.
PARIS (AGAIN)
I am telling her about my trip with you.
I am telling her about that famous club.
The Paloma. It was in that French movie.
I know, she says.
Of course she knows. She knows everything.
At least, according to her.
But what do I know? I tend to laugh out loud at all the wrong times.
I think I know.
I don't know I know.
Knowing is about as far removed as my certainty extends to.
A lot of people know they know.
Some people even know they know they know.
I wish I could know I know
let alone know I know I know I know.
Then again
the people that know
don'tknowforanyparticularlygoodreason.
And when people can only respond to my words with I know—don't they know they're telling me that whatever I just told them was said unnecessarily? Nobody likes being told that what he or she says she or he says for no reason. She might have never even said it in the first place because he doesn't really matter. He might have never been because what she says won't ever matter anyway.
What? she says.
(Even I have a hard time hearing what's coming out of my mouth these days.)
(Even I sometimes think an ice cream cone will make it all better.)
Everyone, real or imagined, deserves the open destinies of life, Grace Paley tries to convince me.
Writing a letter is not far off from receiving one.
This crazy homeless guy is banging on these metal gate doors with a crowbar making music with the flow of the Seine.
All I know is I gotta get outta here.
OUTTA HERE
I know one more thing.
I know this whole thing is retroactive. This whole thing is me reaching into the past, me wanting more of it, me not wanting the future, me not wanting what’s in front of me.
a nOVEMBER dREAM
Last night I dreamed
I was living at the Chelsea Hotel.
At the front desk
I saw Robert Mapplethorpe
laying down the 55 dollar week’s rent
and picking up the day’s mail.
There was a book contract for Patti;
he placed it at the foot of their bed
with a paper clipped note that read
‘here’s more work for you, doll’.
Then I followed him
to the White Horse Tavern
where he met Dylan Thomas
and Thomas Wolfe
and took them both back to his room.
Meeting in the hotel lobby later
I asked them how things were going
As one man they replied
It’s all over now
I woke up, cold sweat, pitted out
surrounded by unfinished manuscripts
and negatives.
fROM rOOM 8 aT tHE aLBERT
Knowing not where my next meal will
come from
I cast my last crumbs of bread on
the water
Knowing not how I will make my
next dollar
I pick up a penny on the street for
good luck
Knowing not what way I can hit my
highest note
I sing in the subway hoping someone will
see or care
Knowing not what will arouse my
deepest desires
I lower my trousers and continue to pump
quarters into slots
Knowing not who will ever allot me my highest
regard
I pick up this pen and write another damned
Word
aLTERNATIVE rOCK dOLL
wITH aPOLOGIES tO rOGER mCgOUGH
Last weekend, as a present for my niece
visiting from Santa Rosa, I bought
an alternative rock doll — ‘Alt.Rock Annie’ —
from a gift shop in the upper Haight.
When you twist the solid gold ring in her
cute little blonde eyebrow, she sticks out
her tongue piercing and shrieks
FUCK! FUCK! in a tinny voice.
The doll is pretty strange, too.
wOULD yOU fUCK rEBECCA ?
The question catches me off guard. One minute Sergio is muttering into his scotch about "that bitch Rebecca" and then this question, these four words, spat at me. The bar is noisy but there's no mistaking the question.
This is the first time I've seen Sergio in a month. He's just returned from a month-long trip back to Sao Paulo, a long overdue family visit which included his sister's wedding. We've played in the same Saturday pickup soccer game in Golden Gate Park for five years, but we met through Rebecca and Ginny, my then girlfriend, when the three of us were teaching in the same language school.
Sergio is moody, irritable. I'm a little intimidated; I've seen him go to the ground on the soccer field with little instigation. His brow practically crackles with lightning, and I know why. He and Rebecca are in freefall collapse, a drama to which I’ve had a front-row seat. She stayed home while Sergio went to Brazil alone.
That’s the backdrop against which his four-word question, and potential accusation, blurts out.
I sip my beer to buy time. What exactly could he mean, would I fuck Rebecca?
Sergio is Brazilian and his English has zero inflection, so I don't know how to take this question. The possible meanings are innumerable, some of which are very dangerous, as I well know. It’s how I make my living. I teach American accent training to high-level executives from India, Asia, and Europe, people whose mastery of the language is excellent, but lacks nuance and subtlety.
If Sergio were one of my students, we'd do an exercise in which we each hold a rubber band with our thumbs and STRRREEEETCH it as we repeat the sentence, each time emphasizing a different word and examining how the meaning changes.
For example, is Sergio asking: WOULD you fuck Rebecca?
With the emphasis on WOULD, the question lends itself to a hypothetical, and therefore fairly safe, interpretation. That is: Do I find Rebecca sufficiently attractive that, with all other considerations removed (such as the fact that she is the girlfriend of one of my best buddies), I would be willing to perform sexual
intercourse with her?
Or is he asking: Would YOU fuck Rebecca?
This inflection emphasizes the AGENT, and unmistakably implies accusation. The real question being asked is: Would I betray him, Sergio? Would I, in another sense, fuck him?
See how sketchy this gets? When you walk in multilingual circles, you need to tread carefully. Many years ago, while teaching overseas, a man broke my nose in a Munich bar after I'd complimented his sister's boots. Just the memory makes me wince and run my finger over the bump in my nose.
The emphasis on the agent also opens up another interpretation, that is: Would I fuck her AS A FAVOR? For example, Rebecca wants sex and Sergio is too tired and doesn't want to fuck her. Would I fuck Rebecca on his BEHALF?
I’m pretty sure that's not what he means.
Does he want to know, would you FUCK Rebecca?
This emphasis on the ACTION generates the least likely interpretation. I am also reminded me of a basic language exercise in which you swap in new words to an established construction. I am WALKING down the street. I am JOGGING down the street. I am RUNNING down the street. Would you SEE Rebecca? Would you TELL Rebecca? Would you FUCK Rebecca?
Of all the possible actions I could perform with Rebecca, would FUCKING be among them?
He isn't asking that either.
The last possibility is the most hopeful. Would you fuck REBECCA?
This interpretation sounds even more hypothetical than the first one, the kind of general question bored teenagers ask each other about the girls in homeroom. Would you fuck … SARA JONES? Would you fuck … JANE SMITH?
During the 2007 Academy Awards, a lot of playful sexual innuendo was directed at the sixty-ish Helen Mirren, inspiring my roommate Lili to ask me that same question with the correct inflection. Would you do it with … HELEN MIRREN? She didn't stop there. Every time the camera did a close up on an aging actress, Lili repeated the question. Would you do it with … GOLDIE HAWN? Would you do it with … SUSAN SARANDON?
Sergio is in the middle of his third Scotch and I wonder how to answer. His eyes are glassy but his jaw and temple tense and shift as if fish are schooling just beneath the surface.
The best thing would be to screw the possible interpretations and play it safe. Just say NO. But it doesn't matter. My answer to every interpretation is the same, and I want to scream it out loud.
YES.
YES.
YES.
YES.
Yes, I would. Yes, I have. Yes, I did. Yes I will again.
Rebecca and I made love while you were in Sao Paulo. We were together the entire time. I've been in love with her ever since I met her, when I was still going with Ginny and they wanted me to meet you. The four of us made dinner together, your old place on Sixteenth Street with the big old-fashioned stove and pressed tin walls. Rebecca put marinated artichoke hearts in the salad and I fell in love with her.
And she's in love with me and we don't know how to tell you. Two Sundays ago we spent the rainy morning in my bed, wishing you would decide to stay in Sao Paulo, that you wouldn't come back at all, just a phone call asking us to send your stuff, that it would be that easy.
I pull down the rest of my beer and run my finger over the bump in my nose. I swivel to face Sergio.
"Yes."
wESTERN uNION
He said something to me as he passed, moving fast in his wheel chair. He said, “What color is that line?” The color of that line is drunk. The color of that line is white, yellow, brown, and black. That line is Friday, man. That line is dope and crippled and there’s pussy everywhere. The color of that line is mess. Ever seen so many saggy trousers? Ever seen so many broken pairs of glasses? That line is long too. That line is out the door, onto the sidewalk, and those people are out of this world—guys sitting on chains, waiting for the exit, cash in hand. What’s next, man? That line is dizzy, curry, jive and java. That line is girls, trimmed in fur and young. Give me three on Friday. Give me the smell of Chinese, the bright lights and don’t trip, man, because it’s Friday and that line is Friday.
bLONDES
blondes with green eyes
blondes with black eyes
blondes at bus stops doing business
blondes bending over, behaving badly
blondes—an after thought
you never mentioned the blonde
there are blondes and there are blondes
a blonde is a blonde is a blonde
a blonde to come home to
a blonde to leave home for
there is no place like blonde
better living through blondes
blonde wood
blonde ale
blonde hairs
she was a blonde
tHE fAT mAN
I dated a fat man once
who drove a BMW,
wore a suit,
and was not yet old,
but approaching.
This fat man, well,
he looked like a guy with a wallet.
You know the type—
white,
sort of sandy blondish,
slightly girlish,
and smart in that bookish kind of way.
He had a big belly
and he drank too much
and he smoked too much
and he spent too much
had to call his mummy for help,
he called her way too much.
There was one other thing too,
a very small thing,
if you know what I mean.
It was just the sort of thing
bound to be very noticeable
on such a fat man.
sTALKING dANA
With a bottle of Mexican diet pills shaped like pink hearts gripped firmly in my right hand, quivering, like I was jerking off and … I suppose I really am after all.
There must be hundreds of these little heart shaped pills scored by my flaxen haired roommate from one of the most “reputable” pharmaceutical storefronts down Tijuana way. She told me I could take a pill or two whenever I wanted and since I’ll always be home several hours before she gets off swing shift at the Olive Garden, I’m not seeing anything particularly wrong with a few consecutive whenevers.
I swallow five, one right after the other, light a clove cigarette and try to look innocuous through the window of my innocuous ‘83 Nissan Sentra from my innocuous parking stall, and into the storefront window of the Al Phillips Dry Cleaners, only all too conspicuous in my innocuousness.
She’s at the window. There’s no mistaking the freckles, the all-American girl-next-door ponytail. Kimberly Drummond, the sweet little silver spoon girl from “Diff’rent Strokes:” convicted of robbing a video store six months ago. But I fell in love with her years ago; endless masturbatory sessions in my grandma’s shitter with the image of her bobbing ponytail driving the whole thing.
It’s not like I don’t have business on this side of town. My agent on a shoestring got me an audition down the street forty five minutes from now and I have uniforms that need to be pressed and creased. It’s not easy holding down a bohemian lifestyle while trying to pass as a government employee.
The telltale heartbeat and adrenal flow begin their all-too-familiar buildup from my toenails all the way up until they hit the top of my teeth which then begin sliding across the surface of my bottom teeth with a consistency known by Hell’s Angels and a long standing ritual engaged in by many a pathetic lonely young man since the advent of the industrial age.
Am I proud? No. I feel dirty. Would I rather be doing anything else?
…
Hell no.
I hold the uniforms under my left arm, the clove in my right as I make my way through the front door.
I’d found out she works here at my job, when a Tech Sergeant said that washed-up drug addict actress they busted for armed robbery a few months ago pressed his uniforms. How to break the ice? “Hey, I’m an actor too.”
She doesn’t work the counter though. I’m stuck with the homely frump woman who in turn looks longingly at the slot machines being serviced by a tech guy on the far side of the waiting room.
I place my order loudly. I want her to notice. Notice my pungent clove cigarette, which always pisses off the old Vegas service crowd. She looks right through me though. My hair is too short. My face is too clean. I get my suits pressed and creased. She wants a bad boy. She wants long hair. She wants weed. She wants blow. How do I tell her?
“Hey, I have weed. Hey, I can get blow from Evil Knievel. Hey, I’m an actor too. Hey if you quit this job, join my newly founded theater company and move into my shared room apartment. It’ll help out both of our careers and you can have the pleasure of knowing that I am your wonderful savior every time I crawl up on top of your squirming creaminess just to see that crease in your brow.”
Transaction ends. I’m headed back to the Sentra. I look back hoping to find her staring out the window after me. Too late; she’s at the counter talking to a guy with a ponytail. Is it … ? Goddammit, yes, it’s the service tech guy. He’s got a ponytail.
Years later of course, I find out what Dana really wants is something neither myself nor the ponytail can give her. Years later I find out she turned down the role of Regan in The Exorcist and the role of Violet in Pretty Baby; years later when she overdoses in her in-law’s bathroom. I still like to think I could have been all those things to her, a way for opportunity to translate into, if not happiness, at least a manageable contentment; a warm body that makes you laugh & can be counted on to be there.
If only it were that easy.
For now; eyes exploding and brain bubbling primal ooze in a cauldron of gray matter, I head to the auditorium at the Summerlin Public Library for the most prestigious community theater organization in Las Vegas, which is the artistic status equivalent of the most prestigious pantomime troupe in San Diego; it sounds more glamorous than it could possibly be. In front of an audience of two dozen competitors, a girl younger and more beautiful than Dana, which is to say less experienced and thus, less attractive, melts down completely at the beginning of her improv assignment and stalks off the stage “I can’t I can’t I just can’t do this & I guess I’ll see you guys down at the mall or something.”
I nail my improv. I get the spot in the prestigious workshop. I know now what I’ll say to Dana. I come back the next night to pick up my uniforms from the Al Phillips Cleaners with my rap and my approach down pat.
But Dana’s not working that night. The frump says something about her having a hot date. Heading back to the Sentra it seems to me this particular dry-cleaning shop does an incredibly lousy job of pressing and creasing my uniforms and I swear I will never return to this place for my business again. I try to convince myself that I am somehow different, that I am somehow better than the meltdown girl at the audition sure to be hanging out at the mall I am now headed towards with a handful of Mexican diet pills shaped like pink hearts, gripped firmly in my right hand.
fOR rESEARCH
What? What? If you’re speaking to me please face me with your lips. I need to see them move. What? No, they took my hearing. They pulled out my eardrums for research. What? Yes it hurt! Of course it hurt!
Well they needed them! I could hear, and others could not. This is an injustice and it needs to be rectified. As such, I did not mind the pain. It was the least I could do to help.
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