On These Days Driving

2009-08-22T23:34:00.004-04:00

My new blog, with Heather Davis, is
Shenandoah Breakdown
(http://shenandoahbreakdown.wordpress.com/)

Excerpts from The Edge of the World will be continued at some point in the future; and I will, from time to time, post other material here.

P-Funk Reshapes the Landscape of the Redneck Town I Live In and Other Acts of Reformation and Reconstruction

2008-10-30T00:14:00.003-04:00

Behind the wheel listening to P-Funk in my new neighborhood
the blank stare of the shirtless Larry the Cable Guy lookalike sharpens
to crystal clarity as his lazy slouch straightens up into a confident
strut and the words Git-R-Done are banished forever from his lips.

The colors start to run on the confederate flag bumper sticker
on the pickup truck ahead of me, its starry X melting like
the Wicked Witch of the West turning into a smelly puddle of scum.
Having freed my mind from the “Our God is an Awesome God” sounds

that limp through the streets from the doorway of the Heaven Sent Shoppe
downtown until it oozes like toxic waste into the Shenandoah River, having
been lifted from the list of endangered species by a bop gun blast,
I am ready to stand tall in my off-white glory and the knowledge that

God does not appreciate those lame-ass Christian pop songs. I step
out of my minivan, open the back door and take my daughter
by the hand. “Who sang that song?” I ask and right away she
answers “P-Funk” because I’m trying to teach her what’s well

and what’s real and we glance at our house, stop and wave to
our neighbors, then together we turn to walk towards the future.

- Jose Padua
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The next excerpt from The Edge of the World will be posted next month.

The Light Pours Out of Me: Part II, chapter 14 from The Edge of the World (a novel in progress)

2008-01-06T00:41:00.000-05:00

There were always people whose existence I was compelled to ignore. Whose words and actions I tried to shoo away with a wave of my hand as I would a fly. And New York, being the preferred destination for many a traveler, had a generous share of these people. Aspiring actors, aggressive shoe salesmen, harried personnel managers, belligerent street preachers and the insane followers of trends were all in abundance there.

I’d never had any use for these people. Never had the least bit of sympathy for their concerns, their aspirations, their neuroses. As far as I could tell they had never abandoned the ashes from which men are said to have risen, and so, like birds taking dirt baths, they wallowed in their own muck. But, unlike the birds, they could never fly.

Charlie, the vice president at work who was my immediate supervisor, wasn’t among these people—although at first one might presume him to be exactly the sort of person who’d never had an original thought or never felt a sense of disgust with the world that surrounded him. But in his own way Charlie was full of bile and anger. He never simply reacted to the world, nor did he simply accept it. He knew that the work we did there at the marketing company was useless, that it was leading us nowhere. The only thing it did for us was put money in our pockets, and it was doing that (except for Gustave and Mr. Gurnsey) at a very slow pace.

“It’s basically all a scam,” he once told me. “We get this tacky jewelry made in Thailand by child labor. Jewelry that’s really only fit to be sold in dollars stores at half price. Then we get some has-been celebrity that only people who spend way too much time in front of the TV give a fuck about to sponsor it, we jack up the price, and wham! We’re making a goddamn decent living. Although I must say that if these kids weren’t doing sixteen hour days in the plant they’d probably be giving blow jobs in the massage parlors in Bangkok. Our business is actually saving them from that—which by no means puts us in the same category as fucking Mother Theresa. Because while they get a few pennies an hour for it, we get at least a hundred times that amount.”

“Well,” I told him, “that’s the way it always works. Someone has to get screwed so someone else can make it.”

“Yeah, right,” he said, then began impersonating Mr. Gurnsey. “Profit. That’s what it’s all about. Profit.”

Charlie and I were sitting at the bar in Live Bait, the restaurant that was on the other side of Madison Square Park across from our office. We’d been working late and he refused to miss his customary seven p.m. gin and tonic by getting right on the train back to New Jersey.

“You know, I was falling asleep when I first heard him go into that rap about profit,” I said. “I thought he was saying ‘prostitutes.’”

“Get your mind out of the gutter,” Charlie said. “The word ‘profit’ doesn’t sound anything like ‘prostitute.’ Except maybe in your sick mind.”

Charlie thought I had a perverse mind—which isn’t to say he didn’t appreciate how I looked at things.

“Everyone’s got a sick mind,” I countered. “It’s just that most people are afraid to admit it. There are timid school girls out there who dot their i’s with little hearts and wear daisies in their hair whose greatest hope is to fall in love with a serial killer. There are priests who get hard-ons when they offer the last rites to the dying, nuns who get wet whenever they smack the school girl with the flower in her hair for her bad penmanship. Then there are the millionaire philanthropists who donate money anonymously who are also secretly hoping that World War III will break out at any minute because what they want more than anything else is the satisfaction of knowing that in the end all their good deeds have made no difference at all.”

“Reel it in, Lemmy. Maybe you should switch from bourbon to something lighter. You can’t deal with the hard stuff like me.”

“Nah,” I said. “Bourbon is actually what calms me down. If only you knew the shit that comes into my head in the morning when I’m completely sober.”

“Spare me,” Charlie mumbled as he finished his drink.

“Hell, Charlie, sometimes it’s best that instead of just sitting back and letting shit happen, you stand up and do what you really want to do. That’s all I’m really saying.”

“Well, what I really want to do right now is order another drink.”

“Shit, man, do it!”

“Bartender!” Charlie shouted out. “Another round over here.”

“Now the next step after giving in to your real impulses is to actively pursue them.” I took a look around the bar and spotted a hot blonde and a cute, dimpled brunette sitting at a table with a pitcher of beer in front of them. They’d apparently been there for a while and were now bored and ready for a little excitement, a little intrigue, and a quick fuck with a total stranger who could make their pussies sing opera. “Now check this out, Charlie,” I said, pointing across the room with my elbow.

Charlie turned his head and raised his eyebrows slightly.

“Now what does that sight make you think of doing?” I asked.

“It makes think I should get a beer when I’m done with this next gin and tonic.”

“Now be honest, man. You’re talking to me.”

“Well, yeah, they look pretty good. Damn good,” Charlie added as the bartender brought over our drinks.

“You’d like to fuck them, wouldn’t you?”

“Well, yeah. But I’m not.”

“Because you’re too old?”

“That’s not it at all,” Charlie insisted. “I’m married, remember?”

“But right now married isn’t what you want to be, am I right?”

“Right now all I want to be is drunk. And I’m getting there.”

“But what are you going to want after you get drunk... once you’ve reached that prerequisite goal? What are the two primary goals of every guy in the world, two things that go together even more than ham and eggs? Coffee and donuts? Apple pie a la fucking mode? I’ll tell you what. Gettin’ drunk. And gettin’ laid.”

“I can go home for that second part, Einstein. Jesus, I could have done that first part at home too.”

“What?” I asked. “And deprive yourself of my stimulating conversation?”

Drinking sometimes turned Charlie into a much older man. A man who had seen enough and done enough. A man who didn’t have the energy to forget the past and everything he’d learned.

I took a big gulp from my drink. “Why don’t you go hit on those girls?” I suggested.

“Why don’t you, Romeo?”

“Charlie, my man. I’m trying to show you a good time. But you gotta work with me a little bit here.”

“Well, call me old if you want to, but it’s enough for me to have a few drinks after work. I don’t need... and don’t really want all that other stuff anymore.”

“Charlie,” I said, as I watched the lines on his forehead deepen. “You’re hopeless.”

I stood up, brushed the hair out of my eyes, and walked down the room, fixing my gaze upon the cute, dimpled brunette who at that moment was wiping a thin coating of beer foam from her lips. As I approached, her eyes widened like those of a school girl who had just been called upon to answer a question by her stern, goateed English teacher.

“Wanna fuck?” I asked.

With her head full of a schoolgirl’s noises, and the distraction of her friend’s excitable nudges, she failed to come up with the right answer to my question.

“How about you?” I said turning to her friend.

“Ah... ah...” the blonde headed girl stuttered. “Ah... no.” She then shook her head repeatedly for emphasis, understanding that in many instances words had no power.

Not being in the mood to scold her, I let her off easy. “Okay,” I said firmly. “Maybe later then.”

“Got shot down, huh, Romeo?” Charlie said when I sat back down at the bar.

“Nah,” I answered. “Just a failure to communicate. A failure on their part.”

“Lemmy, you’re a freak,” Charlie said as he shook his head. Then he laughed. “I’d stick around for more of your freak show, but I gotta get home.” He gulped the rest of his drink and stood up from the bar. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said as he laid a twenty dollar bill on the bar.

It was still early when Charlie left—“early” being a word I use only to place myself in relation to the world at large. Because at this point in my life the word “early” no longer had meaning for me. Time, having ceased its forward progress, had begun to move in a circle of which no part could properly be described as either “early” or “late.”

I quickly left the bar and started walking up Broadway. It was 8:30 on a chilly spring evening, and I walked without any destination in mind. Midtown Manhattan was in the midst of its daily post rush hour hush, when the looming darkness in the skies once again takes dominion over the movements on the ground. I marched ahead confidently towards the glimmering lights of Times Square.

I’d never been in any of the peep shows in New York before. But for some reason, after the drinks I’d had with Charlie, I was feeling like a tourist—one of those odd looking creatures with ill-fitting clothes who looked up at the skyscrapers and gawked, who pointed a finger and followed as if that finger were a policeman commanding them to move.

Circling the block at Times Square, I came to a stop at the glowing blue lights of Eden. It was such an obvious, unclever name for a peep show. A better name would have been the Mackerel Lounge or the Siamese Blue Theater or even Sugar Town, but it was called Eden, and walking in the door I felt that I had reached the end of something. That I was running out of room, out of space in which to stretch my arms, out of a distance into which I could gaze and see nothing but the miles and miles of road that I could walk.
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First posted, out of sequence, in March 2006.

Silver Was the Color, Winter Was a Snowbell: Part II, chapter 13 from The Edge of the World (a novel in progress)

2007-11-29T23:55:00.000-05:00

Bino started seeing Paula all the time. He was, he told me, “in love.” He fell in love so easily. All it took was for a woman to smile at him half sincerely and he was hooked. He’d even been half in love with Thelma back in Ft. Myers, I found out. Half instead of completely in love because she never possessed even half of a sincere smile. A woman practically had to smack him in the face for him not to feel any affection for her.

Because of his attachment with Paula I began to see much less of Bino. Going out to dinner with her or just staying at her apartment on the Upper West Side watching television, he was always too busy now to hang out at the bars with me. Which meant that, aside from my job, I was pretty much on my own.

I began to take walks in town even more often than I had been before, and on weekends I’d take especially long ones. Taking my van on the ferry and leaving it near Battery Park, I’d set out in the early afternoon with Leon, my favorite dog, and walk the length of Manhattan Island. Through China Town, Central Park and Harlem, I wouldn’t stop until around midnight when I’d reach Inwood Hill Park at the northern tip of Manhattan. Standing there with Leon, I’d gaze across the Hudson River toward Englewood Cliffs, contemplating the land that stretched out towards the West.

I already knew that I’d never see that land, those cities Lily and Leonard had seen and which I told them I’d seen myself during my search for them. West was never where I wanted to be, but it wasn’t until I’d gone to New York that I realized I could resist its pull. And standing there at the edge of the park, gazing towards the West as the cool wind came across the Hudson, was like contemplating a car crash I’d never be part of, a sad tale which would never be mine to tell. My life was heading in another direction altogether, a direction few people had the courage to take.

Walking back down to Battery Park after midnight I was king of midtown Manhattan. Although there were cars passing by—and, here and there, the silhouette of a person in the distance—the streets, in essence, belonged to me. Like at Christmas, I was the man who ruled all the skyscrapers and churches, all the shops and restaurants and hotels. Every neon sign was flashing just for me, every traffic light turned to green so I could proceed uninterrupted with my journey back home. Secure in my domain, I walked tall, with Leon several paces ahead of me pulling tightly on his leash as he sniffed the ground that lay before us. Whenever the moon appeared between the spires of the skyscrapers he would pull his head back to look up and ponder its grayish light. He’d then let out a sound, a howl that was almost human in its mournfulness. I’d look up at the moon with him, feeling as if that howl were coming from me. As if being king had an element of sadness to it.

It was always sunrise by the time we got back to Battery Park. Both Leon and I would be tired, with my clothes full of sweat and grime and Leon’s dark fur matted against his body. I’d put him in the van then drive onto the ferry. Back at my house I’d leave him in the living room, where he’d fall fast asleep, then go into my bedroom where, even though I was just as tired as Leon, I could never fall asleep.

But as it was, my insomnia was a good thing. It prevented me from dreaming, from conjuring up those strange images and situations which would often leave me disturbed for days. Those strange visions which, although they were completely removed from reality, would cast an unshakable sense of doubt upon my waking hours. I was glad to be rid of them. And so it was that one early summer afternoon of that year I began what was to be the happiest time of my life when, after coming back from a walk through the South Bronx, I slept for the very last time.

The Dimension of Stillness: Part II, chapter 12 from The Edge of the World (a novel in progress)

2007-10-19T23:38:00.000-04:00

None of the women at the company would fuck me. It seemed that somewhere along the line I'd lost the ablity to seduce budding young business women. Even the receptionist was immune to my charms. I'd often notice her casting a furtive glance at me, but it was never an admiring look she gave me. On the contrary, it was always one of suspicion and fear, as if I might suddenly pounce upon her, dragging her off into a corner so I could have my way with her. Though I must say that that was exactly the sort of thing I had in mind whenever I cast a glance at her. With her meaty Brooklyn girl's ass, she would have been good to take from behind, pumping into her while her pendulous breasts swing like church bells beneath her.

Unfortunately I never got the chance, and after a time I found myself chasing after some of the women in Bino's crowd. It wasn't something I wanted to do at first—I'd spent enough time talking about literature with Lily when I was trying to take her away from Leonard. But since all the women in Bino's crowd were either poets or writers of some sort, it was something I'd have to do again.

I first went after Paula, a cute brunette who worked at the bookstore with Ron.

"Oh... you're the dog man," she said to me when I'd gone to see Bino and his gang at another reading. "I didn't recognize you without your dog."

The reading was in the upstairs room of the Cedar Tavern in the Village and she was standing at the bar, watching the proceedings.

"Well, yeah," I said. "But they wouldn't let me in here with a dog, so I had to leave him at home today."

"I'm a cat person myself."

"So, you have a cat?"

"No," she answered, shaking her head.

I waited a moment for her to explain, but "no" was all she cared to say about it or anything else.

I turned to Richie, the bartender. "A Jack on the rocks," I said, ordering what was to be the first of seven hours worth of drinks. Soon I was sloppy drunk and yelling at whoever was reading, even Bino.

"Read something good for a change," I shouted at him.

"Eat my fuck," he replied. He was never very good with the comebacks.

"Lemmy, maybe you better switch to coffee," Ritchie advised me.

"Shit, man, I'm just trying to have a good time. Work with me here."

I moved over to one of the tables and sat down next to a dark haired woman with bloodshot eyes and huge breasts. Although her face was kind of ugly, I thought I'd give her a try.

"Hey, you know that poem you just read?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, straightening up in her seat so that her breasts stood out and pointed straight out the door and towards my car.

"Well, you know, I heard it and I listened very closely the whole time. And when you were done I must say that I was really moved. Next to your poem, everything else just seems like so much self-indulgent wank."

"Well thanks," she said, looking me in the eyes and smiling."

"So, hey," I continued. "Would you like to come to my place and fuck?"

Before I knew what had happened she had thrown her drink—a scotch and water from what I could tell—in my face as I waited for a "yes" to come from her lips. Letting out a loud grunt, she stood and moved to another table. It was clear that she'd been having a bad night.

I wiped my cheek then went to the downstairs bar. When the reading was over Bino came down, accompanied by Paula. Instead of joining me at the bar, Bino and Paula went directly to a table towards the back of the room without saying a single word to me.

I sat there on my stool for a while, grinning at them as I hummed some old song that had popped into my head. When it was clear they weren't going to look towards me I turned away and stared at my drink, resting my elbow on the bar.

With my eyes open, and the sounds of conversation and the clanking of glasses and bottles all around me, I began to dream. Although I was completely awake, I knew it was a dream and not a waking idea or a product of my conscious imagination. And what I saw in my dream was a world where I was the only human left alive, the only survivor of a species which, after my death, would be extinct.

Aside from myself, and the plants and trees, the only living things in the world were dogs. They were crowding the streets, with hordes of them running down Broadway past Twenty-Third St. in a cityscape that was bereft of both people and cars. It was a noisy scene, but rather than car engines and horns, screeching brakes and squealing tires, the only sounds were those the dogs made. Barking, growling, and howling at the buildings and at the sky, they continued to move down Broadway, past Union Square, past Houston, past Canal street, until they reached the southern tip of Manhattan at Battery Park, where like people gathered around a backyard swimming pool, they jumped into the water. But once in the water, rather than swimming, they sank, sending feeble ripples toward the bank as they drowned there where the East and Hudson Rivers met.

I watched until all the dogs had jumped. Until the air was still and quiet and the ripples in the water had disappeared. Later in the dream I was back on Staten Island, standing underneath the Verrazano Bridge as I watched their bodies floating by. Dalmatians, Greyhounds, Poodles, Collies, Beagles and other breeds of dog, their bodies all bloated, drifted slowly down the Narrows into the Lower Bay. I stood there exhausted, feeling as if I were witnessing the aftermath of a massacre, because although they had jumped into the water on their own, I was sure that something had driven them to this. What it was I had no idea.

By the time I came out of my dream it was three in the morning and I had run up a bar tab I couldn't pay. Bino and Paula were long gone and only two other people were left at the bar. I put down thirty bucks and told Ritchie, who was now downstairs counting the receipts, that I'd pay him the rest, fifty dollars, later in the week. I never went back.
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First posted, out of sequence, in May 2006.

Bourbon, Dogs, and Arlene Dahl: Part II, chapter 11 from The Edge of the World (a novel in progress)

2007-09-20T22:50:00.001-04:00

At work I was doing the usual things—plugging in numbers, generating new numbers, then generating reports on the new numbers. It went on and on... I'd wake up at six in the morning, get dressed then tend to the dogs. After that I'd take the bus to the ferry—I never drove to work, as parking in town would have cost too much. Getting off the ferry I'd walk over to catch the uptown N train to 23d and Broadway, then walk through Madison Square Park to the vendor on 26th and Madison, where I'd buy a bagel or a donut for breakfast. Then it was up Madison to 28th Street where the company's offices were, into the lobby where I always greeted the doorman with a sneer instead of a "good morning." Up the elevator to the fourteenth floor and to my desk in the front room right next to the receptionist.

It would take me an hour and a half to get there, and most of the time I was late, tired and hungover from whatever I'd done the previous night. I'd been trying to spend less money, since the depletion of what I thought was the ample sum of money I'd taken with me from Florida was what led me to work here until I could get my guard dog business off the ground. Still, I seemed to get more and more in debt. Though in the month after Christmas I saved money by dining on Christmas gifts the company had received. Gifts like a huge basket of cheese from Arlene Dahl, the celebrity sponsor of one of the company's lines of jewelry.

She was a big actress in the fifties, considered to be something of a sex star. A hot redhead with firm tits, she was now a plump old matron, although plastic surgery had spared her some of the more ravaging lines of old age. Arlene came to the office once when I was there. The receptionist was out to lunch at the time—whenever she was out I covered for her. Arlene stepped out of the elevator and looked around. Seeing that there was no one else there, she finally spoke to me.

"I'm looking for Mr. Charles Rivers," she said, holding her head back as if some foul odor had just entered her nostrils. It was entirely possible, because I was hungover at the time and may have been sweating stale bourbon from my pores.

"Just a moment, I'll ring him up," I said, picking up the phone and dialing. "Charlie, Arlene Dahl is here for you."

"I'll be right out."

"He's on the way out," I said to Arlene.

"Thank you," she replied. It was the most insincere thanks I'd ever heard from anyone.

Charlie must have gotten held up for some reason, because it was taking him a while to come out to the front. Not wanting to leave Arlene standing there bored, I said, "Arlene, thanks for the cheese."

She gave me an evil look which seemed to say, "The cheese wasn't for you, you knave." Knowing that I was annoying her, I persisted in my attempts at conversation.

"I really enjoyed it," I added. "I've been eating it for lunch the past two weeks. Making cheese sandwiches or sometimes just slicing it up and eating it plain."

Choosing not to comment on the praise I was lavishing upon her Christmas gift to the company, she asked, "Perhaps you could ring up Mr. Rivers again."

"Oh, don't worry, he's on the way..." I said. I wasn't about to bother dialing his number again. "So, have you been doing any acting lately?"

This last question was apparently more than she could take. She rolled her eyes, then stomped off on her own to look for Charlie.

Our other celebrity sponsor was Jennifer O'Neill. Her Christmas gift to the company was a huge tub of popcorn.

"Thanks a bunch," the note on top of the tub of popcorn said. "It was a great year. Shine on... Love, Jennifer."

Jennifer's fame rested on a single hit movie from the early seventies, The Summer of '42. It was a movie which, like all of Arlene Dahl's movies, I had never seen—though from what I knew, it was about a teenage boy who has some kind of affair with a young war bride, played by her. I remembered seeing the newspaper ads for the movie when it first started showing in the theaters. They featured a shot of her face as she gazed off into the distance, towards the water, perhaps. It was one of those all American faces—apple pie, baseball, and all that other homegrown shit. But even though I was only about ten at the time, the only thing I could think about while looking at her was what that face would look like if she were sucking dick. Not that I found her the least bit alluring. Indeed, Lily was far more beautiful than Jennifer O'Neill was, and back then Lily was the only woman I was interested in. But to see that clean and earnest image of Jennifer O'Neill defiled somehow did interest me. I wanted to see this heavenly beauty brought down to earth, down to the real world where people walk through their own shit and piss and where beauty is nothing more than the most direct route to a hard-on.

With her being one of the company's sponsors, I thought it was my chance to make a childhood dream come true. She lived out in California somewhere, and from time to time Gustave would go out there to see her. Whenever he made the trip the girls in the office would talk, telling stories about him going horseback riding on her ranch and how his going out there was more like a vacation than a business trip. But all the time I was at the company, Jennifer O'Neill never came to the office. Gustave always went to California to see her, dropping any other business at hand whenever he needed to show her some product or get her signature—things which could have been accomplished much more easily through the mail.

Of course Jennifer O'Neill—despite her rather commonplace sort of beauty—was much better looking than Arlene Dahl, who to me was just a dried out has-been actress. On occasion Charlie would ask me for my opinion of the situation.

"Charlie," I'd say, "no one gives a fuck about Arlene Dahl anymore. Most people my age don't even know who the fuck she is."

Charlie was one of the vice presidents in the company. He'd only started there about six months before I had, having left some department store chain that had moved its headquarters out of the New York area. He was one of the few people in the company who had a family to support, including children he was putting through college. Nearly everyone else, including Gustave, was younger than he was, and, being single, they had a lot more money to go out and have a good time with. Like me, Charlie didn't have much money to throw around. But more important was that he was the only person there to whom I could speak my mind without receiving a bewildered stare in response. Since he was new, he felt that he had to prove himself, which meant that he'd take suggestions from anyone, including me.

"If you ask me," I told him, "the company should dump Arlene Dahl, 'cause the only kind of jewelry the people who remember her are wearing are medical alert bracelets, and all their money is spent paying doctor's bills and buying expensive heart medication."

"Well, you're right on target there," Charlie laughed. "And Christ, even I think she looks scary."

"Yeah, you want to get someone much younger. Younger than Jennifer O'Neill even. Hey, have you seen Playboy's Miss April? Now that's the sort of sponsor you need. Tits all the way out to Coney Island and a muff that smells as fresh as the morning dew."

"How can you tell what her muff smells like?" he asked, feigning exasperation.

"Hey, I got an eye for these things."

Charlie gave my advice a try and began to audition new models to use in the company's brochures. The ones he brought in were more to my liking—tall, leggy women with slim waists and big tits, including one I recognized as a Penthouse centerfold from a couple of years back. But Gustave, who had the final say in the matter, didn't like any of them. He wanted to stay with Arlene Dahl, to attract older customers, and Jennifer O'Neil, who'd bring in the middle aged housewives.

"I know our market," I heard Gustave say to Charlie once as I passed his office. Lingering in the hallway, I continued to listen in on the conversation.

"But that market's pretty much a given," Charlie countered. "I think we can expand and attract younger customers. And in fact we should, because it's single young women who are most likely to have a lot of disposable income. And even those who don't are prone to impulse buying, taking out their credit cards to buy something for the sole purpose of keeping up with the latest trends."

"But we're not selling anything trendy. That's not our market. And if we try to attract that market we'll end up alienating our long term customers."

"Well, to put my two cents in," I heard Mr. Gurnsey interrupt, "I didn't like those models you brought in. Frankly, Charlie, they all looked like prostitutes. Straight from Tenth Avenue. Or Eleventh Avenue. Whatever. I remember in my day you always went uptown for that. It was five dollars a pop. Or was it ten dollars? Whatever. It was cheap. And that was what those models looked like. Cheap."

So the company ended up staying with Arlene—the not so grand old lady—and with Jennifer—the middle aged one hit wonder girl. Business remained steady but never grew just as the numbers I plugged in changed but never increased. And although the money I made at the company was enough to survive on, it wasn't enough for me to get my own business going. Which meant that, for the moment, I belonged to them.
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First posted, out of sequence, in Febuary 2006.

Disclaimer: This excerpt from The Edge of the World uses the names of public figures for the purposes of satire. Any other names are invented. The content of this work should in no way be construed as factual. It is a work of fiction.

Beer, Dogs, and Poetry: Part II, chapter 10 from The Edge of the World (a novel in progress)

2007-08-20T23:17:00.000-04:00

A month later was when Bino and Ron had their reading. I'd worked that day, after which I went home to feed the dogs, and then to the vet to pick up a dog of mine that had gotten hurt earlier in the week. Since I was running late, I brought the dog with me instead of dropping him off at home.

When I got to the gallery the reading had already started. Ron and Bino were already very drunk.

"Me and Ron have already been on," Bino said when I sat in the chair behind him.

Ron then leaned over and started pouring his beer onto Bino's shoes.

"And now we're waiting for him to finish reading," Ron commented as a cigarette butt hit him on the cheek. "Hey who threw that?"

Rather than look to see who had thrown the cigarette butt, I turned to the front of the gallery. There I saw Phillip Evan Green, standing at the microphone and looking down to the large sheaf of paper he held in his hands. Turning back, I saw that Ron had stood up and was setting his beer bottle down on top of a large metallic sculpture.

Although the readings Ron arranged were never particularly solemn affairs—general drunkenness was always part of any event he orchestrated—this one was more unruly than most. People in the audience were not only guzzling beers, but throwing things at each other, putting cigarette butts out on the gallery floor.

Part of the reason for the unruliness of the audience had to have been Phillip Evan Green. Bino told me that he'd already been reading for fifteen minutes by the time I got there. That, plus the fifteen minutes I'd been there, meant that he'd been reading for half an hour-which was much more than anyone should ever be subjected to his pretentious academic ramblings. Still, it seemed to me that instead of throwing cigarette butts at each other to pass the time, they should have been throwing them at him. I picked one up and threw it towards the front of the room, barely missing the side of his face. Phillip Evan Green, however, was as oblivious to the object I'd tossed at him as he was to the restlessness of the crowd.

Phillip Evan Green was a person no one ever referred to as just "Phillip" or even "Green," because to do so would be to admit some degree of fellowship with him. Calling him by his full name seemed to create what was a necessary distance to him, as even those few people who considered him a friend, or colleague at any rate, never called him "Phillip."

The first time I heard him I began to laugh uncontrollably. I thought it had to be a joke, this fat guy who would read on and on while periodically looking up from his text to make some lame observation—an observation which would inevitably induce in him a childlike fit of giggling. I thought it had to be an act, that no one could be that great a fool.

But it wasn't an act. Phillip Evan Green was such a fool, and when I realized this his "act" ceased to make me laugh and instead horrified me. So while other people, when they'd figured him out, simply got bored and fidgety when he read, I became despondent.

It was a state of mind which, after the initial sense of gloom, always led me to take action. At the gallery I couldn't bear to listen to his whining voice one moment longer, so I stepped outside—but that wasn't nearly enough for me. I had to do something more.

I walked down to my van, attached a lease to the collar of the dog, then went back to the gallery. Since the people who were running the gallery were too busy keeping an eye on the crowd—and making sure that no paintings or sculptures were damaged or destroyed—they didn't notice as I stood right outside the door with the dog. Opening the door slightly, I watched Phillip Evan Green for a moment. His large belly was hanging out over his belt as he leaned toward the microphone. As soon as he looked up from his sheets of paper to make what he believed would be another witty remark, I bent down to the dog, pointed toward the front of the room, and whispered, "Sick 'em."

My dog dashed ahead, dragging his lease behind him, down the aisle between the two sections of chairs. As he forged ahead, people who were paying no attention to Phillip Evan Green suddenly found themselves turning toward the front of the room. With an elegant leap, my dog pounced upon Phillip Evan Green, who let out a horrible scream as the papers he held scattered in the air. He fell to the floor with a loud thud as my dog started tearing at his shirt.

"Holy shit!" someone yelled.

"Help! Help me!" Phillip Evan Green shrieked.

"Good God!" I shouted from the doorway, feigning horror at my dog's seemingly unprovoked attack. As I ran toward the front people began to scatter, backing away from me or else heading for the door. "Heel! Heel!" I yelled, then grabbed the dog's lease.

Bino ran up to me as Phillip Evan Green began to sob. "What the hell happened?" Bino asked.

"Christ. I went outside to check on the dog and he was barking like crazy..." I said, pulling the dog closer to me and shaking my head. "So I took him out, and as soon as I attached the lease to his collar he got spooked again and ran in here before I could catch him. The next thing I knew he was attacking Phillip Evan Green."

A crowd had gathered around Phillip Evan Green, who lay on his back bawling like a five year old. He was more scared than hurt, as this dog had been trained only to scare people, tearing at their clothing without actually mauling them.

But I must admit that while watching Phillip Evan Green writhe on the floor, I wished I'd had one of my more ferocious dogs with me that evening. A dog that would really hurt him, a dog that would have left him still and silent.

As I led the dog outside, the people who hadn't already fled backed away.

"It's all right," I said. "He's under control now."

I brought the dog back to my van, doing my best to suppress my laughter as Bino followed behind me.

From that day on—except when I was just going to work—I always brought one of my dogs with me when I went into town to take a walk. And with my dog I'd venture into any neighborhood I wanted to, no matter how dangerous, at any time of day. Because even more than a knife or a gun even, there's nothing that puts the fear of God in someone like a dog with the devil's eyes. People will run through dark alleys, over broken glass and garbage, to flee such a creature. They'll bang on people's doors in the dead of the night seeking shelter from its fast approach, use friends or lovers as barriers between them and its gaping jaws. Because when confronted this way by an animal, people surrender all their pretensions, all their beliefs in the lofty state of their being as they realize that in the end they too are animals.
---------------------------------------------
First posted, out of sequence, in April 2006.

White Feather Wings: Part II, chapter 9 from The Edge of the World (a novel in progress)

2007-07-19T01:07:00.000-04:00

I spent Christmas eve at home, working with the dogs. On Christmas day I drove into town. After parking near Union Square, I walked around for a few hours. Up Broadway into the hundreds and back again. As I'd expected things were quiet. People were either inside, celebrating Christmas with their families, or else had left town for the holiday—which was what Bino had done. With the streets nearly deserted, I felt as if the entire town were mine. So while other people may have had their families and their Christmas gifts, I had this stretch of land, with all its avenues and skyscrapers. And standing on the ground, looking up to the pinnacles of all the buildings as I approached Times Square, I sensed that somehow I was above it all, gliding like some exotic bird—or a flying reptile perhaps—over a newly dead civilization's abandoned shrines and monuments.

The following day things were back to normal. The streets were filled with people going to stores to exchange or return their gifts or running errands they couldn't run on Christmas because most places had been closed. Suddenly I found myself feeling nostalgic—not for days long gone but for the day that had just passed. But I knew that Christmas would come again in another year, and I hoped that soon the day would come when everyday was like Christmas.

The Last Day Job in the Unreal City: Part II, chapter 8 from The Edge of the World (a novel in progress)

2007-06-12T01:34:00.001-04:00

Every now and then I would meet Vince and Karen in town. As I didn't know many people in the area, staying in touch with them seemed a good idea, especially since doing so would mean I'd eventually get the chance to fuck Karen. To my surprise I never did, even after they broke up. But soon I realized that the reason they broke up—and the reason I never got to fuck her—was that she liked women more than men. Somehow, during my many years spent going from one woman to another, I had never encountered anyone like her.

But perhaps that was because I'd always lived in small towns. Now I was in New York, where there was a greater variety of people than even I could imagine.

It was here where even the best dressed businessman would spit on the street before stepping into the limousine that was taking him to the Water Club. It was here where the well respected journalist, who had rubbed elbows and exchanged jokes with presidents, would venture to Avenue B to buy heroin from a man who didn't know what day it was much less who the current president was. It was here where bums in the park talked about politics and revolution in their piss stained clothes. It was here where cab drivers were renown poets or composers, where the pink faced girl next door was a dominatrix, beating up on old men and getting paid for it. It was here where the stripper with the huge tits and devil's fork tattoos all down her back was working her way through medical school.

It was here where every week you might cross paths with a particular person you were acquainted with, while with another person you might never cross paths. It was here where an encounter with a stranger might be cold and distant yet at the same time be almost comforting in its informality.

Everything that was impossible or unthinkable, as well as everything that reeked of cliché, could be found here in abundance. As it was, the only thing that was lacking for most people was space—which I had to a certain degree at my home in Staten Island. But for any kind of leisure activity, the place to go was Manhattan. That was where I'd meet Vince and Karen, as they too tended to gravitate to the city in their free time. And sometime later, it was where I'd go for work.

As things had been going slowly with getting regular clients for my guard dog business, I took a job in town with a direct mail marketing company. It was a small company, with only about twenty people in all. They sold costume jewelry: "faux" diamond necklaces, pendants, rings; "faux" rubies, sapphires, emeralds. Everything they sold was "faux." As the manufacuturers were all in Thailand or Malaysia, I imagined that most of it was assembled by child labor or indentured servants working sixteen hour shifts. At least I got to leave in time for happy hour.

My job was to generate sales reports, inventory reports, plugging numbers into their computer to get new statistics. Like so many businesses, they were crazy about statistics, as if the money that was going into their pockets didn't mean anything unless they had the proper numbers to tell them the money was real.

But while the company's president and vice presidents all had a fetish for numbers, the old man who owned the operation boiled it all down to one very simple concept.

"Profit, that's what it's all about," he said, nodding his tiny bald head. "Profit." I'm sure he was making a lot of "profit," but as for me my "profit" was ten dollars an hour.

I was was about ready to nod off when he started talking about "profit." He got my attention because at first it sounded like he said "prostitutes": "Prostititutes, that's what it's all about. Prostitutes."

It was my first company meeting, a few days before Christmas (I'd only been working there a week), and Mr. Gurnsey was giving a pep talk before taking us all out to a fancy Park Avenue restaurant for the annual Christmas dinner and party.

"Money for food, money for your breakfast—your eggs, your sausage, your toast." He went on and on. "Money for dinner—your steaks, your shrimps, your lobster, your caviar. Do you like seafood? I love seafood. And to pay for my seafood I worked hard. I worked real hard."

If you were to read his words on a page they'd look like some sort of rant, but he made these pronouncements in a calm, deliberate voice, punctuating each sentence with a nod of his head.

At the restaurant I ordered the most expensive appetizer and entree on the menu, and while waiting for my dinner I drank several rounds of screwdrivers with the best vodka they had—no rail drinks for me that night. Before dinner was served Gustave, the company president, raised his wine glass for a toast.

"Here's to Chester!" Only he and the vice presidents referred to the owner by his first name. Everyone else called him "Mr. Gurnsey," except on this occasion when, as a response to Gustave's call for a toast, calling him by his first name was permissible.

"To Chester!" we declared, raising our glasses, then sipping. I, of course, gulped down my entire drink and asked the waiter for another. After dinner Mr. Gurnsey went home while Gustave took us to a night club for more drinks and dancing.

I sat at the bar, watching while some of the other workers danced. One girl, when she was finished dancing, came to the bar to get another drink. Since I was the new guy, she thought she'd try to make a little conversation, make me feel like part of the gang.

"The dance floor's so sticky," she said after ordering her drink.

"Yeah," I nodded, "This place used to be a porno theater. But when home video came along porno theaters like this died out. I guess this floor here is something akin to dinosaur bones under the sand in the Arizona desert... You know, traces of what once was."

I was rather drunk by this time. I thought I was being charming, talking about my observations of a certain aspect of the business world, namely, pornography. Needless to say, she wasn't charmed.

"Oh, okay," she said, dropping her jaw. When the bartender brought her drink she quickly walked away.

Most of the people I worked with were my age or younger even. Still, they didn't last very long into the evening, and when they called it a night it was only half past eleven. I took a cab down to Avenue A and First street to the Scorpio bar. It was where I'd go to meet Bino, who, after I'd been in New York for a year, had also decided to move up.

When I walked in he was there—as he was for some portion of nearly every evening—sitting at the bar talking to Sally, the bartender.

"How was your Christmas party?" he asked on seeing me.

"It was excellent," I said laughing. "I had the surf and turf—a shrimp cocktail appetizer, prime rib for an entree. And I drank screwdrivers with Absolut or Finlandia, I'm not sure which, I just told the waiter to put the best stuff they had in it."

"Why didn't you order some Dom Peringon there?"

"Champagne? Fuck that shit," I turned to Sally. "I'll have a Bud."

"Back to the real world, huh?" she said.

"For now. Just for now."

Bino began talking to someone who had just come in the door. He'd gotten to know a number of people in the year he'd been in New York—mostly from a friend of his at his job at a bookstore uptown. It was that friend, Ron, who had just walked in.

Ron's demeanor was like that of a school teacher—a school teacher who was always pulling pranks on his students instead of the other way around. Like Bino, he did some writing—an activity that had yet to pay them much money, which was why they had full time jobs at the bookstore. He and Bino were part of some group of writers who called themselves the Insufferables or the Intolerables—something like that—and were now talking about a reading they were trying to organize at a gallery in Soho.

"Well, I guess we don't have any choice," Bino said. "Phillip Evan Green's the one with the connection to the gallery, so we'll just have to let him read."

"Yeah, that sucks though," Ron said, then turning to me asked, "Hey, how was your party?"

"Well, we had dinner, and then they wanted to go someplace where they had dancing. I suggested Billy's Topless."

"Shit, I just came from there."

"My boss thought it was funny, but some of the women weren't amused, so we ended up going to some kind of disco."

"Hah," Ron said, shaking his head. "Nice try, though."

"My boss did say we should go there for lunch sometime."

Ron started playing with an ashtray that was lying next to his bottle of beer.

"Hey, I heard that Phillip Evan Green tried to rape Judy Mendelson," Bino said to Ron.

"I don't know," Ron answered. "It could be true. I used to think he was harmless, but I've been starting to think otherwise."

"That's that chubby guy with the greasy red hair isn't it?" I asked.

"Yeah, that's him," Bino said.

"Christ, he's creepy as shit. I mean, he looks evil."

"Well, I don't know if I'd go that far."

"But you were the one who just said he tried to rape that chick."

"But I don't know if it's true," Bino said, shaking his head. "It might just be one of those rumors. Like what Carone would talk about."

"What would Carone talk about?" I asked.

Bino was drunk, and when he was drunk he had the tendency to say or report things he would normally keep quiet about.

"Well, after you'd left Ft. Myers he once said that he thought Lily was your sister, and that you were fucking your sister. Of course he was drunk when he said that. But shit, the two of you do look alike."

"We do not," I argued. "We have the same color hair, that's it."

"What's this about you and your sister?" Ron asked, turning to me as he accidentally tipped over the ashtray he'd been playing with.

"Oh, it's just some stupid joke someone Bino and I know is trying to pull on me."

"Well, I do think that's what it is... a joke," Bino continued. "Because he was pissed off at you... Something about you going after his sister-in-law."

"They'd split up. His brother and his wife. What's his problem with that? Besides, I didn't get anywhere with her, because as it turns out she's a dyke. Or she became one anyway."

"You turned her into a lesbian?" Ron asked.

"No, no. She did that on her own." I got Sally's attention. "Sally, a double shot of Jack. This beer is starting to sober me up."

After I'd managed to change the topic of conversation to something other than me I proceeded to get much drunker than I already was. After a while Ron left, while Bino and I stayed on until closing time. By then I could hardly walk. As I was in no shape to attempt to make it back to Staten Island, Bino convinced me to stay at his place.

He was living in a cheap apartment on Third Street between First and Second Avenues, just a few doors down from the Hell's Angels clubhouse. It was one of those tiny studio apartments where you had a loftbed, bathtub, sink and stove all in one room. Compared to his place, my small house was a luxurious mansion. I slept on the floor by the sink.

Except for the nightmare I had, it was the first good night of sleep I'd had in a long time. I'd been suffering from insomnia for a while, and the only time I got any real sleep was when I was so drunk I passed out. And although I woke up after a few hours, it was more sleep than I usually got.

When I awoke it was eight in the morning and I was covered in sweat. I'd fallen asleep with my winter coat on and the heat in the apartment was running on high. With Bino still up in his loft bed, snoring, I stood up, wiped my face with a paper towel, and walked out the door. I had to hurry home, because the dogs hadn't been fed for an entire day.

Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring: Part II, chapter 7 from The Edge of the World (a novel in progress)

2007-05-18T01:11:00.001-04:00

There always comes a point in one's life where one has to sever all ties with some portion of the past. For some people doing so is a difficult and emotional undertaking. But as for me, my heading north—and leaving the south behind for good—was the perhaps the easiest thing I'd ever done. It felt good to be on the road, facing straight ahead into a distance which in my younger years might have disturbed me. And by the time I set out for New York such sentiments as loss and regret appeared to be well in the past for me.

Still, what people leave behind tends to accumulate in their memory, creating a mass which, however intangible it may be, possesses a kind of gravity. So as they grow older, and grow weaker, they are inescapably drawn to the past. Certainly I wouldn't be spending time trying to set the facts straight if I too hadn't been drawn to the past. Which isn't to say that I'm either old or weak. It's just that the dimensions of my past experience created a pull so strong that even I couldn't escape it.

When Carone and I drove north, however, that pull had yet to have an effect on me. If anything, what I felt was not a pull but a push; and several times Carone had to alert me that I was going far above the speed limit. "Even if it's just a fucking speeding ticket," he said, "you want to avoid any confrontations with the cops." I wasn't as afraid of cops as Carone was, and despite his constant warnings I couldn't help myself. With my foot pressing the gas pedal closer and closer to the floor just moments after each warning, Carone suggested that he drive, and after the first rest stop he got behind the wheel.

By midnight we'd reached Danville, Virginia, where we decided to stop for the night. I was in a hurry to get to New York and didn't want to spend one more moment in this or any other small town. I wanted to drive ahead, since it would only be another eight hours or so to New York. But Carone was tired and was now afraid not of the cops, but of my driving while he slept. It turned out the last time he'd slept in a car was twenty years previously, when a friend of his drove a Ford Mustang into a tree as Carone took a nap on the backseat.

"I could have died in my sleep," Carone whined. "And there's no worse way to go than that."

"Well, you could drown," I argued, "Or get boiled alive like a lobster."

"Hey, I'd rather be boiled alive, 'cause at least I'm awake to see my life pass before my eyes. If you don't get to see your life pass before your eyes when you die you're getting ripped off in a big fucking way."

It made no sense to me, but since Carone had been patient in helping me with the dogs over the past few years, I gave in to his demand that we stop for the evening.

He drove into the parking lot of the next motel we saw. Entering the room Carone immediately lay down on one the beds without even stopping at the vending machines to get a midnight snack. I wasn't sleepy at all, so I went outside and started walking down the road, thinking that when I got tired I'd be able to lie down and sleep. But when I got back to the room and lay down my mind was racing with thoughts of death. I was, in effect, too afraid to sleep, as Carone's fear of dying in his sleep suddenly began to make sense to me. That he nonchalantly had lain down to sleep without the slightest hesitation seemed like insanity to me. So I just lay back, listening to the sound of Carone snoring and to the cars that passed by every few minutes outside our room.

When morning came I hadn't slept for even a moment. I didn't sleep at all for the next two days. It wasn't until after I went drinking with Carone, his brother, and his sister-in-law that I finally got some sleep. We'd gone into town to a bar on Eighth Avenue and 46th St. a few blocks above Times Square.

Vince—Carone's brother—and his wife, Karen, had suddenly started arguing about something (what it was neither Carone nor I could tell). Karen got up from our booth and sat at the bar.

"Just let her cool off," Vince said, and then asked the waitress for three shots of bourbon. "This is the way to drink," he said to me. "Neat or on the rocks. Don't do those weird shooters my brother here orders—that shit'll fuck you up bad."

Vince's voice and mannerisms were just like Carone's, except that he wasn't nearly as heavy.

"Ah, you're just a pussy," Carone said. "You've never been able to keep up with me."

"I'm not nuts like you is all it is."

"That because you're too much of a pussy to be a nut like me," Carone said, giggling at his own response.

As they went back and forth like this I looked over to Karen at the bar. She was a dark haired German girl with a nice meaty frame. I'd had my eye on her since I first walked into Vince's house two days earlier to see her sitting on the sofa wearing these shorts that seemed to sink into her at the crotch.

"I'll go talk to Karen while you two play your little game here," I said.

I got up and stood beside her at the bar.

"I'm sorry. I've been in a bad mood tonight," she said slowly with her thick German accent.

"That's all right."

"Well, you're our guest. And with your marriage just breaking up, I'm sure you don't need to see Vince and I arguing."

"No," I said, shaking my head then smiling. "It's fine. It's like I brought a little bit of Florida with me."

"I guess you and Lily were constantly fighting?"

"Not really. Not until the very end anyway. We just let the bad shit build up without talking about it. Until it was too late to fix things up."

I shrugged my shoulders and turned away for a moment. Turning back to her I looked into her eyes then down. Karen thought it was a sign of the sadness I felt at the breakup of my "marriage" (all along I'd led everyone to believe that Lily and I were actually married) when I was really just trying to look down her blouse.

"Let me buy you a drink," Karen said, patting me on the arm.

We stayed at the bar for a few more hours, by which time Karen and Vince were on speaking terms again. When we got back to Vince's house I went into the guest room, lay down, and fell right to sleep.

The next day Carone and Karen went with me to look at houses while Vince went to work. It was then when I found the house on Staten Island. It was small wooden house, its walls painted white, with one bedroom, the living room, dining room, kitchen, and bathroom all on one floor. It wasn't much to look at but it had a big yard and was fairly isolated, the nearest house being about a football field away.

I closed the deal on the house immediately and began to set things up for the dogs, building fences in the yard to divide it into compartments. To shelter the dogs when it was cold or raining I set up some smaller compartments in the basement. Since the house was small, furnishing it was very cheap. I bought a bed and a dresser for the bedroom, a table and chairs for the dining room, and a sofa and desk for the living room which I planned to use as my office. When I was done the house still looked somewhat empty, but that was how I liked it. There was actually little difference between the way it looked the last time Carone saw it before going back to Florida and two weeks later when I'd completed all the work on it.

Soon I began concentrating on the dogs. Carone had set me up with a man in Valley Stream who had some good dobermans which I could breed with mine. Within a year I had twenty dogs—all strong and fierce—and my business was ready to take off.

All the Beautiful Names for Oblivion: Part II, chapter 6 from The Edge of the World (a novel in progress)

2007-04-19T01:32:00.000-04:00

Things went on this way for a while. Drinking with Bino and Carone at the bar, fucking Rachel a few times a week and, here and there, another girl or two.

I'd been drinking a lot, usually just beer. But whenever Carone was with us at the bar he'd order a round of shots. Although through the course of an evening he'd get very drunk, he'd never pass out. He'd just get giddy and start asking for watermelon shooters, lemon drop shooters, any shooter he knew the name of and sometimes ones he didn't have names for. "Let's have a round of those... what do you call them motherfuckers with the kaluha and the rum or whatever. What do call those, Mown Brountain Fizzess? What the fuck? Bring 'em over for all of us. It's on me, fellas."

Bino was never one to refuse a free drink, and after a time neither was I. Coming home drunk was a good excuse for not fucking Lily with her big belly, and hanging out with Carone and the dogs was a good alibi for those nights with Rachel. Bino didn't seem to mind my fucking her, although I kept it a secret from him at first.

I always tried to look out for him. Although sometimes he had to be cut down a notch or two, as on those occasions when he'd get a bit too confident about himself. I'd always bring him back down to earth as soon as his head started to swell, saving him from a worse fall later on. So when he began fucking Thelma, and started thinking that she thought he was something special, I made him realize that she'd fuck just about anyone. He was disappointed at first, sad even, when I told him how easy it was for me to get her to fuck me. But to make him feel better I encouraged Thelma not to stop fucking him just because she was fucking me.

It was the same way with Rachel. He felt bad when he figured out that she and I were fucking. But to make him feel better I had him come to the hospital with me when Marly was born.

"With this new baby I'll have an excuse to tell Rachel why I can't go over to her place," I said on the way to Lily's room at the hospital. "Pretty soon Rachel will quit running after me."

He nodded solemnly.

"And then she'll start to take you into consideration," I added, even though I knew he didn't have a chance with her. It was like throwing a bone to a dog. Because even though the bone was useless, to the dog it was a prize of sorts—or a symbol of hope even. And when Bino was down, that's what I gave him.

When I opened the door to Lily's room she was holding Marly. Bino looked at Marly with a sense of awe. He wanted to have kids himself one day.

"Here she is," I said, stretching out my hand. "My daughter, Marly."

Bino didn't know that she was actually Leonard's daughter, just as neither he nor Carone knew that Leonard was my brother and Lily my sister. What Bino did know was that to name her Marly was my decision—that after Lily had named the dog I demanded I be the one to name this new baby. Because if it had Lily's decision again, the baby would have been given a name like "Girly" or something ridiculous like that.

When I'd told him the story, Bino said, "Yeah, Lily's got a strange attitude towards names," as if he had some kind of insight into Lily's rationality. Although he'd speak to Lily whenever I brought him to the apartment, they'd always discuss books, writers, foreign films, and little else. Where Bino got the impression that Lily was odd when it came to names I'll never know. But that was him, always picking strange details out of the air and speaking about things of which he knew nothing.

But I must say that as far the name Marly was concerned, it was something I too just picked out of the air. I'd pretended that I was pondering the matter seriously when the only thing that really concerned me was where my next fuck was coming from. When after a month had passed Lily asked me if I'd come to a decision I said, "Oh yeah... Marly. Marly Jane Bay." "Marly" and "Jane" were the first names that came to mind at that moment. They had no particular meaning for me, nor did they have any nostalgic value. I had never, as far as I could recall, met anyone with those names. At any rate, I'd never fucked anyone with those names.

This isn't to say that fucking would have made me remember. Granted, my memory isn't what it used to be, which is one case in which I'm no different from every Joe and Mary around me. Bino, though, had a memory which was rather alarming in its scope. That he was a drinker had no effect on what he recalled. Often he would remind me of things I'd said, things I'd done, as if there were something wrong with my sense of history—or as if I were rewriting my own history, changing the details to suit my present purposes.

He was wrong, of course. He was also wrong about my feelings towards Lily, believing, as he did, that I didn't actually love her and that my running around on her indicated that I was unwilling to make any sacrifices for her.

Sacrifice: To his excessively romantic sensibilities, that was the greatest sign of true affection. But Christ, my whole life has been one sacrifice after another, and for me to try to list them would an extreme act of vanity.

Suffice it to say that when I left Lily, after having lived with her for a few years, it was for her own good. Leonard had come back, and in the state he was in my presence would simply serve to remind him—and Lily—of their own failures in life. I had managed to develop the skills to start my own business and to be my own boss, while they would always have to work for someone else, making small change and struggling to make ends meet.

Indeed, there were many differences between us, and for me to live with them was similar to having a king living in the servants' quarters. Nevertheless, they somehow believed—or at least Leonard did—that they were the ones who were like royalty. With his inbred little family, Leonard saw himself and Lily as a king and queen exiled in a foreign land, biding their time in the hopes that their steadfast actions would put the world in proper motion. I wasn't about to destroy his dream, misbegotten as it was, by setting him straight on the ways of the real world—which is what my mere presence would have done.

Still, his return was not what prompted my departure, as by that time I was ready to leave Ft. Myers. The dog I'd given Lily had run away while I was taking him for a walk. A less assured person would have taken this as a sign that he hadn't quite mastered the art of training dogs, but I knew it meant something else altogether. And what it meant was that I was to follow its example.

On my last night there I took Lily down by the river, where I told her of my plans. Although she took it hard, she seemed to understand. I'd been there for four years, I told her, when at first I'd only planned on staying a week or two. I had provided for her and the kids, bought them what they needed for their home and in the meantime had found a business I wanted to be involved in. And the place where I wanted to develop my business was New York.

I left her down by the river so she could collect her thoughts, then drove to the bar to meet Carone.

"So... you're ready to make the big move," he said as he gestured with a french fry.

"Yeah, it's about time I got out of this fucking town. It's way too small for me."

"Well, that's the way you are. Me, I like being a big fish in a small pond."

A waitress came over to take my order. "A Bud, please," I said, winking at her.

"Whatever happened to that Rachel chick?" Carone asked. "You heard from her since she left town?" With me leaving town he'd become nostalgic all of a sudden.

"Nah, I ain't heard a thing. I just know that she went out west somewhere and went back to school. Or became a hooker. Shit, how the fuck should I know?"

Carone took a bite of his steak and cheese sub, then said, "Hey, take it easy there, Lemmy."

"Hell, I just want to think about the future right now," I said.

"Well, I'm all ready to go if that's what you're worried about."

Carone had let me keep some of the dogs I was training at his place and, since he'd been planning a trip back home, was going to drive up with me. We'd arranged to stay at his brother's house in Westchester County above New York city. He'd stay there for about a week, during which time I'd look for a place of my own where I could set up myself and the dogs.

"I got my guy to stay at the house and handle my dogs while I'm away," he continued. "I got the trailer set up to take your dogs. Everything's cool."

Later we went to Carone's house, where we went through a bottle of bourbon and an entire roast chicken—though it was Carone who did most of the eating. I mostly drank, sitting back on the porch listening to Carone tell jokes until I passed out. In the morning, we hitched up the trailer to my car, put the dogs in, then drove downtown so I could close out my bank account. Stepping out of the bank I had a cashier's check and a huge roll of hundred dollar bills. I got into the car and floored it as the dogs started to bark, leaving a trail of noise that would serve as a farewell to my days in Florida.

The Sparkling Machinery You Call Your Destiny: Part II, chapter 5 from The Edge of the World (a novel in progress)

2007-03-15T00:05:00.000-04:00

I would have left town right when Lily told me she was pregnant, but I'd just started learning about dogs at the track. I was intrigued by the dogs. Left alone, they ate, they slept, they fucked. With the right training and breeding they could run, they could guard, they could sniff out suspects or drugs, they could attack. And, like people, they could be controlled. At first the dogs were simply a hobby, my work being my dealings with people. But it was through another friend of mine, Carone, that I got the idea of using dogs to make a living.

Carone was a big fat motherfucker from New York. He always seemed to have a sandwich in his hand. Not those little sandwiches made with white bread and a couple of slices of turkey, but huge Italian sub rolls stuffed with endless layers of ham, salami and cheese. Carone was constantly eating, wiping mayonnaise from his mouth with the back of his free hand and making conversation between gulps. His business was guard dogs, but for fun he came down to the track to bet on the greyhounds.

"Dogs, they're man's best fucken friend," he declared. "Shit, man, if you took away all the women in the world it'd be no big deal for me. I'd just start fucking dogs..."

"You mean you haven't already?"

"No, not yet..." he muttered as he eyed one of the race dogs. "Hey, Lemmy, check out the ass on this greyhound bitch. Goddamn, that's a nice dog ass!"

The dog ran away as soon as Carone moved towards it.

"If you want to fuck these dogs you better learn how to talk sweet and sophisticated to them," I said. "These are classy dogs, not street mongrels."

"Hell, I forget sometimes."

Carone and I walked towards my car and then drove to the bar where we always went after work. Bino was already there at our table, lifting a bottle of beer with his left hand because his right arm was in a sling. Carone and I sat and ordered drinks as Bino began shaking his head.

"This is fucking awkward," he said.

"Hell, maybe you'll come out of this ambidextrous," Carone suggested.

"Then you'll be a two fisted drinker in every sense of the word," I added.

"This isn't really a big problem," Bino said, lifting his beer. "The real problem is that I can't write with my left hand. I've tried, but it's just not working."

"If you ask me you can't write with your other hand either," I said.

"Whatever," Bino said as he motioned to the waitress for another beer.

"So, you want to get in the guard dog business," Carone said changing the subject.

"Yeah," I answered. "That's a business I can take anywhere. Race dogs you can only do down here, in Massachusetts, and a few places out west. And I hate Massachusetts and I hate the west."

"Yeah, I left there as soon as I could," Bino said, shaking his head.

"But you had problems out there," I argued. "You had to get away. Me I just don't like the people out there."

"What happened to you out there?" Carone asked Bino. "Got some Catholic girl pregnant?"

"No, nothing like that."

"It was his sister," I explained. "They were crossing the street together when a car hit them. He made it, she didn't."

"And now my hometown doesn't, like... Well, it isn't very pleasant for me anymore. The atmosphere just seems very oppressive."

"So you went all the way to the other side of the country," Carone said as he raised his hand in the air to get the waitress's attention.

"Hey, we were talking about dogs!" I said.

"Oh, okay." Carone turned to the waitress. "An order of onion rings." She started walking away when Carone added, "Shit, and a burger too."

"You're going to kill yourself with all this food," I said.

"I thought you wanted to talk about dogs."

"Yes, the dogs."

"The best ones, in my opinion, are Dobermans. They're a bit smaller than German Shepherds, but they're easier to train."

"No, I want the biggest dogs I can get—maybe I can combine the two. Or what about wolves and wolf hybrids?"

"No, you want to stay away from them. Especially the wolf hybrids. No one can tell what those fuckers are going to do. They're the most likely to maul you for no apparent reason."

"I can handle that shit."

Carone shook his head emphatically, "No, trust me on this. You want to use dogs that are as purely bred as possible."

"Yeah, stick to the inbred mutts," Bino interrupted.

"You don't know anything about this," I snapped at Bino. "Stick to your fucking writing."

"Hey, I'm just following Carone's advice."

"Well, that's it to start with," Carone continued. "For the training and breeding, just hang out with me and the dogs and then..." Carone looked away towards the kitchen, then shook his head. "Wait... I can't talk any more until my food comes," he said, then stood and walked over to the juke box.

Bino raised his eyebrows and watched as Carone put a few quarters in the slot.

"Yeah, he's really baked," I said to Bino, who on hearing my comment started to cackle.

"But he's a good person to talk about a new business with," Bino said at last. "Because he's hungry. Damn hungry."

In a moment Carone's first song began to play:

You grew up riding the subway
Runnin' with people
Up in Harlem down on Broadway
You're no tramp but you're no lady
Talkin' that street talk
You're the heart and soul of New York City, girl...

"And eating seems to keep him from dancing," I added.

"I thought it was gravity that did that."

I stood up to go to the restroom. When I got back to the table Carone's food had arrived.

Later that evening I went to Carone's to see his setup with the dogs. He had his office in the basement of his house. Behind the house was where he had his kennel: a large fenced-in area, part of which was covered by a tent, plus a shed at the far end.

"It doesn't take much money down here to house the dogs, because you can leave them outside most of the time. But if you got your business where it gets cold you're gonna need some place to keep them warm in the winter."

We walked into a section where he had a Doberman puppy. The puppy started to approach us, its tail wagging, when Carone yelled, "Stay!" It stopped for a moment then continued its approach.

"Stay!" Carone yelled again but much more loudly this time. The puppy stopped and lay its head down on the ground.

"That's it." Carone walked up to the puppy, patted him on the head, and gave him a biscuit.

"You should train all your dogs yourself," he said looking back at me. "And the time to do that is when they're puppies, eight to ten weeks old. If you wait too long it's a little harder, and dogs that you've started training late can create some headaches for you further down the line. And of course some dogs will be more difficult than others."

"I don't think I'll have any problem with training them," I said. "I'm pretty good at that sort of thing."

"Yeah. Well, at any rate it's easier than trying to teach people."

"I imagine it is."

It didn't take long for me to learn how to train the dogs. Carone had given me a puppy the next time one of his bitches had a litter, and I brought it home telling Lily it was a gift from me to her.

"Why don't you name it?" I said.

Lily held the puppy and studied it for a while, patting its head and looking into its eyes. "Let me think about it for a few days."

She lay it down on the floor and it began running around the room. When it spotted Kiddo it examined him for a moment from a distance, then approached him cautiously. Kiddo, of course, was completely oblivious to the dog. The dog, however, grew agitated as it stood before him, and soon began barking at Kiddo as if he were a prowler or something. It must have been its pure Doberman blood that led it to look upon Kiddo with suspicion before I'd even begun to train it.

"Come!" I shouted to the dog. "Come!" It turned away from Kiddo and trotted back to me.

Soon enough I had it trained to ignore Kiddo as if he were simply another piece of furniture. I had it trained to piss and shit outside when I took it out for a walk. I had it trained to sit, fetch, and heel. I had it trained to jump when I said "jump!" And, finally, to attack when I said "Sick `im!" Eventually it even learned to take an interest in the television. It would sometimes sit in front of the television, watching the screen with squinted eyes, its ears perked up as if it were eavesdropping on some private conversation. At any rate, it seemed to have more of an understanding of what was happening on the screen than Kiddo did.

A week after I'd brought the dog home Lily finally announced that she had a name for it.

"I think we should just call him Dogg—with two G's at the end?"

"What? You act like you've got a million names running through your head this past week and then you come up with Dogg?"

"Well I did think of a lot of names, and Dogg is the one that best fits him."

"Don't you want to give him some clever name. Or to name him after some writer, something like `Fielding' or `Trollope'?"

"That would be silly."

"Silly, how so?"

"It just would."

I argued on and on but Lily insisted that Dogg would be its name. And so it was. I had to give in on this matter because by this point Lily was far along in her pregnancy and I refused to fuck her. As her pregnancy didn't have the effect of diminishing her sex drive, she was always begging for it. I had to make something up, saying that it wasn't that I didn't still find her appealing with her big belly, but that I couldn't get myself to believe that it was safe for a pregnant woman to fuck. Letting her name the dog, then, was a minor concession I had to make to keep her happy.

By this time I'd started fucking Rachel, the waitress from the bar where Bino, Carone and I went after our days at the track. Thelma, for some strange reason, refused to speak to me anymore—which was fine with me, because I'd gotten tired of her. And besides, Rachel looked like she'd make a good fuck.

Bino, however, looked at her in a completely different way. Unlike Thelma, whom he didn't even really like, Rachel was the sort of woman who really moved him. It was easy to see that what Bino had for her wasn't simply a crush and that he was, in fact, in love with her. "She really isn't your type," I'd tell him. But he'd go on about how she was smart, beautiful, sweet. How she was just out of college, taking a couple of years off before going to grad school—which was why she was just waiting tables here in Ft Myers.

Me, I just liked her body. It wasn't as voluptuous as Thelma's, but it looked nice and firm. She was one of those shy, somewhat reserved girls who I knew could have her world turned around if the right person fucked her. And I was the right person.

Still, I gave Bino a chance, and when I saw that his romantic approach was going nowhere I moved in on her, unbeknownst to him. He was out of town at the time, visiting his family out west. I was at the bar with Carone that night, and when her shift was over I asked her to join us for a few drinks.

Rachel didn't hold her liquor very well. A couple of beers and a shot and she'd be laughing hysterically, forgetting everything she'd ever learned. After a few more rounds she knew she shouldn't attempt to drive home so I, of course, offered to drive her there.

And it was there that I fucked her. I fucked her while she was drunk, fucked her against the wall, her legs wrapped around me as she screamed and panted. I fucked her in her bed as her radio played Bach and Vivaldi, sounds that covered up her screams but made her squirm and stretch like a child having a nightmare. I fucked her in her mouth and in her ass, fucked her in the morning when she was sober to make sure she'd remember that it wasn't just the music that made her sweat.

When she went into the shower I picked up the phone and called Lily. I told her I'd stayed over at Carone's house, that we'd been working with the dogs, and that afterwards we drank until we passed out. Lily was always very easy to fool. Or perhaps it was just that I was such a good actor and anything I said, no matter how far from reality it was, sounded like the absolute truth.

"I'm going to the track now," I said. "So I'll just see you tonight."

"Okay, Lemmy," she said without a trace of suspicion in her voice.

Just as I hung up Rachel stepped out of the bathroom. With a towel covering her body she looked embarassed, nervous even, and turned her head left, then right as if she were searching for something.

"I'm so hung over," she said finally.

"I don't feel too bad," I told her, even though my head was pounding. I then got dressed and went to a diner. I sat at a booth and the waitress, a woman somewhere in her late fifties, immediately set down a glass of water. "I'll just have a coffee to start with," I said. She looked down at me for a moment as if she were examinging me, then walked off. Watching her as she went behind the counter to pour the coffee, I opened up my bottle of aspirin. As I put the aspirin in my mouth and took a gulp of water she looked over to me.

"One of those nights, huh?" she said.

"Yeah," I said, giving her a tired smile. "Bourbon, vodka, rum... I was mixing my drinks like an amateur."

"You should know better than to do that."

"Sometimes I forget what I've learned. Not that I know all that much."

I nursed my coffee for half an hour, then ordered a scrambled egg sandwich and hash browns. When I was finished, and my breakfast seemed like it was going to stay down, I went to work.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The title of this chapter, The Sparkling Machinery You Call Your Destiny, is taken from “The Sadness of Things,” a song written and performed by Nick Currie (better known as Momus). The title of the previous chapter, My Significance in an Indifferent Universe, is a reworking of another line from this song.

My Significance in an Indifferent Universe: Part II, chapter 4 from The Edge of the World (a novel in progress)

2007-03-14T23:32:00.000-04:00

Of course I always had other girls around; and at work, during that time I spent working on setting up my situation at home, I was fucking Thelma. It was her image that I had in mind when I told Leonard that story about the woman at the racetrack, but I'd changed things around a bit. Although Thelma was always at the track she wasn't a gambler but rather my coworker, and unlike the woman in the story she wasn't at all shy about showing off her body. She would flash her tits for no reason at all, lift up her skirt not in the ladies room but on the way to the ladies room. She wasn't much to talk to, but no one cared, especially not me and my friend Bino. Bino and I took turns fucking her during our lunch breaks. I always took her up to the roof. Rolling around up there with the sun beating down on us, we always lost our sense of where we were—or at least I did. It always felt like a dirty metal rooftop in Paris to me, with Thelma my sweet little French pastry that I'd picked up from the sidewalk and brought upstairs.

Bino, though, always brought her to this grassy area right behind the building. Sometimes I watched from the roof as Bino went down on her—he seemed to like that more than anything else. He was one of those sensitive types who liked to get right down to a woman's smell, eating her out as he held her hand while someone like me would always reach up for a woman's tits.

"Hurry up, you mutt!" I'd yell down to him when he took too long, "What are you waiting for? The second coming?" When he'd finally get around to fucking her it wouldn't take very long. Still, he'd hold on to her, resting his head on her chest and sighing. "Okay, Thelma," I'd have to shout, "get up here. Now!" Thelma would then come up to the roof while Bino stayed down below. He liked to listen as Thelma and I fucked, and to insure his pleasure we made as much noise as we could so our sounds would reach him—he was, after all, our friend. But sometimes, as a joke, we remained quiet, which would always frighten Bino somehow. "Hey," he'd yell, "what the hell's going on up there?" It took a lot of effort to be quiet when we were fucking. It was like denying that we were animals, a denial which created such pressure inside of us that when we finally let go the release was exquisite. We'd scream like people in terror, hitting each other as if fending off an attacker.

And one time, after I had come, I pushed Thelma off of me with such force that she tumbled off the roof. Bino had been shouting suspiciously the whole time, and Thelma came crashing down on him just as he started to yell, "I'm coming up there!" at which point I heard a thump indicating that Thelma had hit the ground. While still reclining I reached for my pants then pulled a cigarette from the pocket. I lit it and, taking in the smoke, gazed up at the sky for a while.

It was an overcast day, and as I stared at the clouds I imagined that with the sheer force of my mind I could make them disperse so that the sun would shine upon me. To my delight they began to do just that, and in a short time the sun's rays poked through an opening in the cloud cover. I stretched my arms, letting the light shine all over me.

When I finally got up I walked to the edge of the roof and looked down. There was Thelma, unconscious, sprawled on top of Bino who looked like he'd just woken up from one of his monumental drunks—his eyes blinking, wiping from his brow what to him probably felt like sweat but was actually blood. Adding to his shock was the opening in the clouds I'd created, which sent the sun's hot rays stinging down upon his face.

"Get up!" I yelled.

"I... I can't," he muttered. "I'm in pain."

I reached for my jacket and pulled out the small bottle of aspirin I always carried with me. "Here," I said, tossing it down to him. The bottle landed on Thelma's back.

Bino reached for the bottle, then examined it slowly, his eyes still blinking. "I don't think this is gonna do it," he said with some difficulty.

"You're a pussy!" I shouted as Bino let the bottle slip from his hand.

They required an ambulance to get them moving again. Each of them had a bad concussion, while Bino had, in addition to that, a broken arm. Looking back on it, I supposed that they were lucky they weren't hurt more. But at the time it happened I couldn't take Thelma's fall, and Bino's catching that fall, very seriously. I had just had a good fuck, after which I had made the clouds move, so naturally I was in a rather jubilant frame of mind. Seeing them down on the ground, I expected them simply to rise just as I had risen. That they couldn't surprised me at first, but then I remembered that they weren't like me.

Indeed, no one was, nor would anyone ever be like me. I had been through things that would kill anyone else—and come out of them even stronger than I had been before. I had learned how to make things happen, how to make the things I wanted mine—and how to make the things I saw in my mind become real. There was no obstacle that I couldn't either obliterate or else get around. There was no riddle or puzzle that I couldn't solve. And, above all, there was no one who I wanted to fuck who I couldn't fuck.

That evening, after checking on Bino in the hospital, I went home to Lily. She'd fixed some fancy dinner—chicken in wine sauce with wild rice on the side. I'd already eaten on the way home from the hospital, so I told her I'd bring it with me to work the next day and eat it for lunch. I then sat down in the living room to read the paper while Kiddo stared at the television. Later Lily and I fucked until I fell asleep, and that's the way things should have gone for the next four years. But then a week later when I got home from work Lily told me she'd been to the doctor. She was pregnant again, which meant that another little retard was on the way.

Since I'd only been fucking her for a week that meant the baby was Leonard's. He was apparently such a fertile fucker that his sperm defeated the pill yet a second time. And even though he'd gone, he'd found a way to leave a little piece of himself behind.

It was fine at first. I enjoyed it when Lily's tits started to get bigger, but when her belly grew I was annoyed. I'd fucked enough fat girls when I was in school. The fat girls were always pointless, drunken fucks—experiments in which I was trying to prove what I should have already known by that time: That I could get it up anytime, anywhere, and with any girl.

Bitch World: Part II, chapter 3 from The Edge of the World (a novel in progress)

2007-02-05T23:13:00.000-05:00

To make Lily mine I had what I called my dog plan—my canine agenda. And the first order of business therein was to make myself handy around the apartment. That meant taking care of Kiddo, their retarded little devil child. How Lily and Leonard found it in themselves to dote upon this strange creature was beyond me, because all Kiddo could do was stare into space. He'd pay you no attention, eat only when you shoved food in his mouth, then follow that by shitting and pissing in his pants. In this way he was worse than a house cat—a cat, while paying you no attention, would at least leave his shit in the litter box. Kiddo, though, you had to keep cleaning. Not that it mattered to him when his diaper was full; two days accumulation of shit and piss wouldn't even make him blink, much less cry in discomfort. It's just that his shit had this horrible stench about it that wafted through the apartment like a gust of wind coming in through an open window. So I kept him clean in the evenings, on weekends, and whenever Lily and Leonard wanted to go out. "Go and have fun," I'd say as I patted Kiddo on the back, "I enjoy spending time with my nephew."

When they were out of the apartment I'd try to train the little fucker. There was a framed picture of Leonard that they kept in their bedroom; I kept taking it and putting it in front of Kiddo's face. I wanted him to learn to pay attention to things, namely his father. I wanted Kiddo to pay Leonard too much attention. I had come to understand that Leonard would continue to like Kiddo only if he remained the way he was, like an oblivious goldfish in a bowl. If Kiddo were to start following him around the apartment, staring not into space but at the person he recognized from the photograph, then Leonard would get uncomfortable. And rather than finding his child's attention endearing he would find it, at best, and extreme annoyance—and at worst an insufferable burden.

Then next thing I had to do was buy things for the apartment. I had to transform this small but comfortable home into a cramped, claustrophobic storage room. I bought furniture—a dresser drawer, a huge sofabed. I bought a bulky stereo system, a wide screen television. I bought unnecessary gadgets for the kitchen—a yogurt maker, three different kinds of food processors, a meat grinder, a 24 piece set of pots and pans. Very soon the apartment was so cramped and cluttered that walking through it was like making your way throught the rubble left behind after an explosion.

I then began watching the wide screen television all the time when Lily and Leonard were home. I hated television, but I watched it—I watched anything but what Lily and Leonard wanted to watch. Since I was the one who had bought the wide screen television, no one was in the position to argue with what I chose to watch on it. I knew that Lily and Leonard both loved television; but I also knew that in essence television meant one thing to Leonard and another thing to Lily. So when there was a program on that they wanted to see, they'd go into the bedroom where they'd put their old black and white set. Lily, though, soon got tired of that and began coming out to the living room to watch my television. She wasn't as dedicated to specific shows as she was to a good television.

Meanwhile, the training I was giving Kiddo took hold, and he began following Leonard everywhere. Sometimes Leonard would be in the bathroom, taking a heavy beer shit, when suddenly he'd lift his head to see Kiddo with that ungodly look in his eyes. "What the hell is he doing in here?" Leonard would scream, "I'm trying to take a fucking shit, goddamnit!" It nearly took all my inner strength to keep from laughting whenever this happened; and whenever Lily and Leonard left the apartment I found that I'd begine to chuckle slightly before breaking into out and out laughter until I was in near hysterics.

As for Lily, I had a training program for her as well. I had remembered that before she ran off with Leonard she was planning on studying literature at college. With this in mind I began buying books for her. I got her addicted to the English novel—Hardy, Dickens, Fielding. In doing this I managed to monopolize all her leisure time, so that when she wasn't watching television with me she was reading. Then, when she was finished with a book, I'd discuss it with her. I'd point out Dickens's "ambivalent feelings towards the industrial revolution," Hardy's view on "the role of nature in the shaping of human destiny"—shit like that which would make her go back and read each novel again. On Sundays I'd bring home the New York Times. Lily would go through it methodically, beginning with the front page then moving on to the editorials, the business section, the arts section and the Sunday magazine before finally settling on the Book Review, which would inevitably lead to her going out and buying books herself, thus taking away even more from the time she spent with Leonard.

It wasn't long before the only person paying Leonard any attention was Kiddo. Indeed, in our tiny apartment it had become impossible for Leonard to find any peach and comfort. And although he was able to live with the situation for the moment, I could see that very soon something would make him snap. What finally did this was when Lily came home after having cut off her long hair, which was something she did as a result of my subtle encouragement. I knew Leonard had a bit of fetish for long hair; I knew it would upset him no end to see Lily without her long blonde locks.

So I talked to her. I made her think it was her own idea. "Lily," I'd say as we watched television, "your long hair is beautiful, but it mush be such a bother taking care of it." Then, whenever I saw a woman with short hair I'd say, "That's a very becoming hair style. "I can see why that do is getting so popular." Lily would begin playing with her hair, but not the way she used to. Where before she would absent-mindedly caress or run her fingers throught it, she would now pull at it nervously, trying to move it away from her face and behind her ears.

Then finally, one Saturday morning while Leonard was still asleep, Lily went to the hair dresser. I was in the living room watching television when Leonard came out. I told him a story about a girl at the track who had gotten so excited as her dog raced ahead, that when she started jumping up and down her halter top, unable to withstand the force of her bouncing breasts, fell apart at the seams.

"The guys in the stands around her," I said, "took one look at her tits—huge tits—and started applauding. They didn't care anymore whether or not their dog won the race. Just the sight of those tits was victory enough for them."

Leonard started laughing.

"Then she tried to cover herself up," I continued, "first with her hands and arms, but that wasn't quite enough—these tits were huge, I tell you. So she used her hair. She had long dark hair, really thick too. And it worked. She covered her tits with her hair, held it in place with her hands, then ran out. Everyone was still applauding. They started jumping up and down. You'd think they'd all just won a million dollars."

Leonard kept laughing. It was the best story he'd heard in a long time—of course, I'd made it all up. Then just when he'd finished laughing and had caught his breath, Lily walked in. The timing couldn't have been better. When he looked at Lily an expression of near disgust came over his face.

"That looks terrible," he snapped.

Lily had cut her hair short, very short; and where she once had those long flowing tresses she now had short blonde locks that barely covered her ears.

"Well I like it," Lily barked back, "and anyway it was getting to be a pain in the ass taking care of it when it was long."

Lily then turned and went into the bedroom where she picked up a book and started reading.

She and Leonard didn't say another word to each other the rest of the weekend. Lily spent the whole time lying in bed as she calmly read The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy. Leonard, on the other hand, was restless. He stayed with me in the living room, alternating between watching television and staring out the window as Kiddo, displaying an almost superhuman constancy, stared at him. When Leonard had had enough of this he moved swiftly towards the door, announced that he was taking a walk, then rushed out before Kiddo could catch up to him.

At the end of the following week Leonard quit his job.

"I need to get away for a while," he said to me. "Take care of Lily and Kiddo until I come back."

"All right," I said, "and don't worry. I'll take care of everything."

I knew Leonard would be gone a long time. I knew he'd find it difficult, once he was on the road, to turn around and come back to the world I created for him here. And now that he was gone it was time to create a world for myself. In order to do this I first had to make sure that Kiddo stayed out of the way. The answer to this problem was the television. So just as I had trained him to watch Leonard, I trained him to watch television. It didn't take long. At the end of a week spent setting him in front of the television and immediately putting him back if tried to move away, I had him staring intently at the screen. It didn't matter what was showing, whether it was the news, a game show, a movie of the week or a simple test pattern. Kiddo had grown accustomed to sitting in front of the television. And watching it.

With that done I took a deep breath, because now it was time to move in on Lily. Time for my dog plan to reach its climax. Time for me to receive the trophy I'd been waiting for, the reward I could almost smell when I showed up at Lily and Leonard's door like a stray dog, the prize I could almost taste when like a dog I schemed against my brother. When like a dog I used his own son against him and put ideas in Lily's head. When like a dog I watched Lily from the doorway, then crept into her room. When like a dog I sniffed her—her belly, her breasts, her thighs, and the spaces in between. When like a dog I rubbed up against her, then fucked her from behind, fucked her in the ass as I howled and barked and peed, staking out my territory, making certain that in this dog eat dog world I would have one bitch who was all mine.

The Sunshine of My Life: Part II, chapter 2 from The Edge of the World (a novel in progress)

2007-02-05T23:07:00.000-05:00

From then on it was one girl after another. It took less and less time and planning for me to get them. And while it had taken me nearly half a year to grab onto Miss Dupree, I got it to the point where I could often get a girl to fuck me ten minutes after I'd met her.

And in the five year period from the spring of 1974 to the spring of 1979 I'd been with over a hundred girls. Blondes, brunettes, redheads; white girls, black girls, oriental girls; girls with large breasts, girls with small breasts, even one freak of a brunette, half Cherokee-half Irish, with two high cheekbones, two long legs, two big brown eyes, and three nipples the extra one being on the bottom of her left breast. Some of these girls I knew by name—Kathy, Denise, Emma, Annalisa. Annalisa was a wild one, had Tourette Syndrome, used to scream "motherfucker" or "suck my dick" as we walked hand in hand down Broad Street. Others I had no names for and so made up my own names, names pertaining to where or when or how I'd fucked them. Names such as "The 2pm Showing Of For The Love Of Benji" or "The Dumpster Behind Oglethorpe Hall In The Pouring Rain With One Tennis Shoe On" or "Up The Ass On The Midnight Bus To Gainesville." Some girls were young, had never even seen a man and didn't know what to do, some of them were grandmothers who had no idea I'd fucked not just their daughters, but their granddaughters as well. Some girls were poor, some girls were rich; some were tall and thin, while others were short and fat. I had one who was five foot eleven and weighed one hundred pounds, another who was five foot one and weighed two hundred pounds. One girl was a doctor's daughter, very clean, wore bright red and yellow clothes and only liked it up the ass while pulling up her favorite lemon pleated skirt. One of them was a garbageman's daughter, liked it nice and easy, nice and slow, made me say "I love you Judy" when her name was really Maureen. One of them was a blind girl, she knew how to touch, liked the sting of pepper on her lips, the viscous feel of cum on her fingers. One of them was a deaf girl—"Wuck me wuck me you tud!" she'd scream, "Hood Hod Ahm honna hum!" By the time I was seventeen I'd had every kind of girl there was to be had—every kind except one.

So I made some phone calls. I looked for people named Bodine. I knew that was the surname Lily and Leonard had taken, and more importantly I knew Lily and Leonard while they hardly knew me. After a week of research I knew exactly where they were and what to do.

So I moved down to Florida. And when the time was right I knocked on their door. And gave them a story. I told them I'd quit college after two years when in fact I'd just graduated. I let them know I was smart, but I didn't let them know how smart. Because in truth I had gone directly from my freshman year in high school on to college. It was a waste, my teachers agreed, to keep me in high school when I was more than ready for college, which took me three years to complete. I was a little slow getting though, yes, but I didn't want to take on too much work at once—after all, I had a multitude of girls to deal with. At the end of my second year I was bored, I wanted to be done with school. But it was during my third and final year of college when I met that deaf girl—Weesa was her name. With the grunts and groans she made, fucking her was like fucking a wounded lion, and fucking her I began to wonder how Lily would compare. I wondered what sounds Lily would make if she didn't have to keep quiet. I wondered about Lily's long legs, if she'd make me chase her or just roll over and spread them, make me rub her belly, good girl good girl, before fucking her like a farmboy fucking his first sheep.

So I moved down to Florida. Palm trees, beach resorts, dog races. I got a job at the track. After two weeks I knocked on their door. I told them that I'd just gotten into town, that I'd had a hard time on the road. I told them I'd been looking for them all over the country. In Rock Springs, Wyoming—"A dark dirty town," I said, "full of drugs, prostitution and murder." In Galveston, Texas—"a sweet and peaceful city by the sea where the slow and pleasant streets are lined with oleander." I didn't let Lily and Leonard know how easy it was to find them—that would have made them suspicious.

So they took me in. I'd done quite an acting job on them. Though my surprise at their having had a baby wasn't acting at all, because despite all my investigative work the fact of their son's birth slipped right by me. And while I could understand their having a baby simply as an experiment—biological and sociological—for them to have a baby simply as an extension of their marital love was, as far as I was concerned, an extreme act of self indulgence. I was shocked and nearly did throw my plans out the window by phoning our parents. But looking at Lily, who at twenty-three, and after having given birth to a child was even hotter than I remembered her being at sixteen, I came to my senses. More than anything I wanted her ass, and as she told me how she and Leonard were in love I imagined her naked, her legs spread apart, waiting for me to give her the big one, make her beg, fetch, roll over and howl like a dog. I knew that day would come, but I had to play it cool, play it safe, and above all play ignorant.

So I stayed quiet, pretending I was still contemplating whether or not to tell our parents, when I was now merely considering the revisions I'd have to make in my plans. It would be like Miss Dupree all over again—it would be difficult, very difficult, which was all the more reason to do it. Most of all it would take time and patience. But sooner or later my hot bitch of a sister was going to be my own exclusive piece of ass. She'd be my blind girl, my deaf girl, my black, white, poor or rich girl all rolled into one tight little package. And I would be the apple of her eye.

From Swerve of Shore to Bend of Bay: Part II, chapter 1 from The Edge of the World (a novel in progress)

2006-12-05T01:02:00.000-05:00

"My name is Lemuel," I said to her. "I work with dogs."

I had walked into Macy's one hot day and was wandering around the ground floor when I saw her—a tall brunette with big tits, no bra, and eyes like a hungry mongrel. I knew right away she was one of those sexy and smart types—into books, theater, liberal politics—but who nonetheless liked men with a bit of a rough side to them.

"Attack dogs to be specific. I train them for use in stores, offices, anyplace where they need tight security after hours but can't trust a human to do the job."

"That sounds interesting," she replied, bringing her hand up to the base of her neck.

"It is," I continued. "To be able to take a tiny innocent puppy and bring out its natural instincts—its original sin, if you will—so that it develops into a ferocious killing machine is—how shall I put this?—exciting?"

I smiled at her. She brought her hand up to her mouth.

In the evening I came back to meet her. I knew that after my strange introduction the best way to intrigue her even further was to start our date in the most conventional manner possible... I took her to dinner at Houlihan's, then to a French film at the Cineplex. As I sat in the theater I kept thinking how later I'd take her to my house in Staten Island. How I'd be fucking her on the kitchen floor while out back my dogs are going crazy, listening to my wild grunts and her Banshee-like shrieks and moans. How the movie we were watching would be far in the back of her mind like a remembrance from childhood. But still, she would feel it...It would affect her actions. The distant memory of the Eiffel Tower lit up after midnight would make her thrust her hips a little harder. The faint vision of the Arc D'Triomph and the headlights of the hundreds of cars beneath it would make her rub my cum over her breasts more vigorously. The recalled sounds of conversation and the clanking of bottles and glasses in a Paris barroom would make her scream, "Fuck me, monsieur," or better yet, "Fuck me, mon Dieu," as I plunge into her with all my weight and determination.

In the morning I showed her the dogs. When they rushed up to the fence, growling, baring their teeth, she didn't blink an eye.

"These dogs have already been trained," I said.

I put my arm around her. We stood there for a long time, she laying her head on my shoulder as the dogs continued to growl, salivating as they watched with almost covetous interest this tender moment between humans.

Standing there with Maria I felt that at last I was far from Athens, Georgia, the absurd little town where I grew up. And that I was even farther away from Lily and, for that matter, Leonard. Leonard, hopelessly and perversely romantic, in love for all time with our sister Lily. Lily, who with either long blonde tresses or fashionably short locks was an exquisitely holy fuck and consummate master at sucking dick.

Ever since I could remember I wanted my sister Lily. But it was my very birth—by a rather difficult caesarian procedure, my father told me—that brought her and Leonard close together. And while the more acceptable pattern would have been for me to develop an Oedipal complex, I was jealous not of my father for being foremost in my mother's affections, but of my brother for being, metaphorically speaking, the apple of my sister's eye.

It was Leonard who, despite all my efforts to get myself noticed, occupied all of Lily's time and attention. When she was sixteen, though, she started dating Jimmy, a big dull brute from the school football team. I thought that at last she was ready to give other guys a chance, and that I might be among those she took on. But instead of slowly fading from the picture, Leonard proceeded to begin fucking her and even convinced her that he was the only one with the right to do so. It was almost too much for me to take. And although I was only ten years old I understood that to inform our parents of their activities would preclude any chance I had of ever being with her.

So I listened. I put my ear up against the wall between my room and Lily's room. I heard them moaning softly—they were trying to be quiet. I put myself in Leonard's place, imagining I was the one sucking on her nipples, sticking my finger in her tight little asshole. For a minute I actually believed I was fucking her, over and over to the point where she was ready for death, ready to be eaten by worms until there was nothing left but a satiated skeleton. But when I again realized I was alone, on the other side of the wall, a tremendous sense of anguish came over me. I fell back onto my bed, exhausted by the strain I had placed on my imagination.

They, not Jethro and Ellie Mae, were my inspiration for sex. When they ran off the following spring, without a word to anyone, I felt helpless. Lily was gone... And everyday for the next two years I sulked, pined, moped, languished at the very thought of my absent sister. It was my one period of romantic obsession, a time of illness during which I experienced headaches, chest pains, and convulsions for which the doctors had no explanation. I came out of this difficult time by realizing that what I needed was distraction, a new more obtainable object of my obsession. And furthermore I needed a new order of obsession, an obsession that was pure and true, and thus untainted by even the slightest afterthought of love.

Eva was the name of my new obsession, and although I always addressed her as "Miss Dupree," in my mind I thought of her as "Eva." She was twenty-three years old, from New Orleans, had a mild Cajun accent, olive complexion, dark hair, big tits, and was my seventh grade science teacher. In school she was somewhat reserved, sullen even, and aside from the proportions of her bosom had nothing in common with Lily. But I knew that with a little work I could reach her, make her smile, laugh, toss back her hair, open her arms, and spread her legs.

I began innocently enough by paying attention, for the first time in two years, to what was going on in science class. I was trying, as undignified as it may sound, to become the teacher's pet. Whether or not that made me unpopular with the other kids in class was of no concern to me—being the teacher's pet would be my introduction, as it were, my opening line.

By the end of first semester I had gone from a "C" in science to an "A." In class I had become the student who in addition to asking the most difficult questions also gave the most precise, involved answers, answers that showed I had developed an understanding of science way beyond that of the other seventh graders. Eva was pleased, very pleased, and when she first congratulated me on my new found interest and excellence by patting me on the shoulder, I had to stop myself from responding to her gesture by grabbing onto one of her breasts. I was on my way, I knew, but I had to remind myself to be patient and carry my plan out to its conclusion.

Over the course of several months Eva and I got close, close to the point where although she was still reserved with her other students, with me she was warm, light-hearted, talkative. "Hello, my friend," she'd say when I ran into her at the end of the day. I always lingered about on the school grounds when classes were over so I could see her. "So...what's going on?" she'd inevitably ask as if she were speaking to a fellow spy or conspirator. "Same old shit," I'd answer, then ask, "What's up with you?" She'd then continue with whatever was on her mind, be it the weather, Watergate, or even the state of her being as in "it's that time of the month again." To get her to speak to me, her student, of such personal matters was in itself quite an accomplishment. But she had come to understand that I was advanced not just in my understanding of science, but also in my view of the world, and rather than feel threatened by it she was, on the contrary, intrigued.

The time to make my move finally came in the spring. We were at the annual school picnic at Watson's Mill Park, a half hour drive from Athens. While all the other kids spent the day playing volleyball or riding down the creek in inner tubes, I stayed right where the parents and teachers were. I had to stay near Eva and wait because I knew that here, away from school, was where I would get my chance.

And so it was four in the afternoon when one of the parents started cutting up a watermelon. Eva walked over to get a slice, and when she went back to take a seat underneath a tree I sat beside her, my own slice in hand. As I sat there making small talk about how nice a day it was I noticed that each time she took a bite her eyes widened, as if every bite and every successive taste of watermelon surprised her somehow. When the watermelon juice began to slide down her chin I knew the time was right to change the topic of conversation.

"Miss Dupree," I said, "I've been thinking about this seriously for a while now, and I've come to the conclusion that, when I'm done with school, what I'd like to do is work with animals. Most likely for the purposes of medical research."

When she turned to me the juice gathered on her chin, ready to fall. She tried to catch it with the back of her hand, but when she reached up several drops fell inside her blouse.

"Really?" she asked.

"Oh yes," I answered. "I'm not at all squeamish about dissecting live animals and performing experiments on them. I think it would be rather interesting and besides, it's important work."

She gave me a quizzical look, then continued eating. But now, rather than savoring the taste of watermelon, she was merely going through the motions of eating. When she was finished she let out a sigh of relief and looked down.

"My hands are so sticky now," she commented.

I turned to her, noticing the wet spots on her blouse and the heaving of her bosom.

"Mine are too," I said.

I suggested we walk over to the creek where we could wash up. Standing first, I held my hand out to her. Looking up at me Eva's eyes widened and her lips parted slightly as if she were about to speak. She said nothing, though, and simply stretched her arm so I could help her to her feet.

Knowing that all my classmates had gone downstream, I led Eva in the opposite direction. When we got to the creek we squatted at the water's edge and reached in. Eva rubbed her fingers together, then brought a handful of water up to her face as she looked upward. I did the same but then, pretending to lose my balance, I let myself fall into the water. Eva looked down and started laughing.

"Eva!" I shouted, holding out my hand.

When she reached out to help me up I pulled her toward me. As she fell I spread my arms, than wrapped them around her back. I immediately kissed her hard on the mouth, worked it open, and stuck in my tongue. It didn't take Eva long to realize she wanted it. I unbuttoned her blouse, undid her bra, and tossed them out of the water. I pulled down her pants and tossed them to the side as well. By the time I got to her panties I was impatient and when they cleared her feet I just let go, allowing them to drift downstream. I was already hard, and after pulling my pants and underwear to my ankles I entered her. I was doing well, I thought, especially for my first time with a girl. She started moaning, screaming, shrieking, "Oh God, oh Jesus, oh...oh..." and no longer was I just on my way. I was there. I was doing it. With Miss Dupree no less.

When we were done we stepped out of the water and wrung out our clothes. As it seemed to be the polite thing to do, I apologized for losing her panties. We walked along the creek for a while until our clothes felt dry, then headed toward the picnic area. When we were near I let her go ahead of me—she didn't want to be seen returning with me. I stayed behind and waited ten minutes before moving on. When I got back to the picnic area one of my classmates came running up behind me.

"Look what I found," he said.

He held out a pair of panties.

"Wow," I said, pretending to be impressed. "Where didja get that?"

"They were floating down the creek."

"Wow," I said again.

He reached up, holding the panties high above his head for all the parents and teachers to see. He was smiling as if he'd just gotten the prize of his life.

My TVC15: Part I, chapter 10 from The Edge of the World (a novel in progress)

2006-10-25T00:07:00.000-04:00

Leonard was not at all like me. Which, perhaps, was why he fascinated me so much. Because unlike me he was never able to lose his memory. No matter how far he traveled, his memory was with him. Lines from a popular song, a drop of liquid, a television program, a piece of furniture—the insignificant details and sentimental emotions always caught up with him in his universe.

To him the years he spent in the outside world were a blemish upon that universe. Every night he had gone to bed with Annalisa had darkened it. Every day when he hadn’t used his imagination had diminished it. But as his universe collapsed, his memory expanded.

As for me, I learned to put my memories behind me. To build something with them, a monument which will speak of my heritage. And this history which I’m now writing, and with which I will soon be finished, will serve as my monument. A monument I can carry with me. A monument I can slip into the right hand drawer of a desk, or leave at the bottom of a duffel bag. A monument which will never harm me like the gun with which my great grandfather—and later my grandfather—killed themselves. And although I will know at all times where the monument is, I will never again think of what it says.

When Leonard got back home everything was the way he remembered it—the television, the stereo, the furniture. The only difference being that although Lily and he were still married, it was Lemuel who was now, for lack of a better word, her lover. That and my four year old sister Marly.

Marly was a quiet child, and her eyes always seemed to follow you around the room like those of a suspicious cat. Still, Leonard saw that she was a beautiful little girl, looking exactly the way Lily did when she was that age. And though she would stare out into space when she wasn’t staring at you, there were moments when she would abruptly run in the direction she was staring. As if there were something out there only she could see. When she’d get across the room she’d look around frantically—she was, in her own way, a very active child. Then rush back to where she’d been and once again stare across the room.

I was now seven years old and had gotten into the habit of watching television. I’d set myself in the middle of the living room, on my hands and knees, and gaze at the television for hours. What was on television didn’t matter to me—Leonard could change channels in the middle of a program and I wouldn’t even blink or show the slightest change in the expression on my face. Because although I was now aware of what was going on around me, I had no desire to take part in any of it.

Since the television was in the living room, which was now Leonard’s room, he began watching it all the time. The show that interested him the most was The Cosby Show, because it presented what to him seemed the ideal situation for a young boy to grow up in.

Theo, the boy in the fictional Huxtable family, had parents who were both professionals. With his father being a doctor and his mother a lawyer, it was ensured that he would be well provided for. But what was more important was that Theo had not just one but four sisters. And so if things didn’t work out with one of them, Leonard thought, Theo still had three others from which to choose, one of whom was bound to make a suitable mate. Though naturally he should sample each of them before making any kind of decision.

Leonard always thought that the perfect match in the family would be Theo and Denise. Although their personalities were rather different, Theo had a way of connecting with Denise that seemed more profound than with any of the other sisters. And although Leonard saw him getting his dick sucked by young Rudy, doing the six-pack with Sondra, and fucking Vanessa up the ass while playing with her ample breasts, Denise was the one he saw Theo going back to time and time again. She, of all his sisters, was the one Theo wanted the most. She was to him what Lily was to Leonard, the only difference being that Theo had alternatives, while Leonard did not.

After a time Leonard came to believe that it was his own fault that he lost Lily to Lemuel. When things had gotten difficult, he had failed to put the proper effort into their marriage and went so far as to completely abandon Lily for nearly five years. As he had been gone for such a long time, he couldn’t blame either Lily or Lemuel for taking up with each other. Because, like Leonard, they had no alternatives. If only their parents had had more children, Leonard thought, things might have been different. And he wouldn’t have to spend the rest of his days without a wife.

Shortly after Leonard returned to town Lily got a job as a waitress at a nightclub on Fort Myers Beach. Lemuel, who was still at the greyhound track, had decided not to go back to school, having taken an interest in dogs. He wanted to breed them, which was something he could learn about from being there at the track.

For Leonard it was enough to stay home and take care of the kids. He stayed home all the time now—he never left the apartment. He had concluded that in the last five years, from the time he set out west hitch-hiking to the end of that long bus ride, he had seen enough of the world. At any rate, all that he needed to experience first hand.

He began living through Marly and me. He’d watch us all the time, hoping we’d begin to pay attention to each other. Which, to his disappointment we never did. The closest we’d get to interacting was when somehow the same toy attracted our attention. This was a rare occurrence, since all our toys—the teddy bear, the firetruck, the Barbie doll—usually just lay on the floor unused.

Sometimes Leonard would put the teddy bear in my hand, then point to Marly, pulling at my sleeve in an attempt to get me to bring it to her. I’d look in her direction, usually towards her feet, but would never approach her. Other times Leonard would try to get us to roll the firetruck back and forth to each other, but he’d always end up rolling it back and forth himself as we wouldn’t even look at the truck or at each other. And instead would merely gaze at the floor.

Leonard tried playing tapes or records. But music didn’t affect us any more than silence. He’d play the old Tommy James and The Shondells tape. And when “I Think We’re Alone Now” came on he’d look at my eyes, then at Marly’s, hoping that somehow this song would inspire us. All he saw were our blank stares which to him revealed not a trace of recognition or understanding.

Things went on this way for a long time and he resigned himself to the idea that Marly and I would never take an interest in one another. But one day the following spring Lily came home with the news that she was pregnant. Leonard was happy for her, and for himself as well, as he believed that the presence of another child would be the catalyst that would finally bring Marly and I together.

Lily and Lemuel immediately left the apartment. Leonard thought they were going out to celebrate down by the river, but that wasn’t the case at all.

As they shut the door behind them Leonard began to hear the sound of rain falling on the window, followed, in the distance, by the sound the thunder. He turned out the lights, lay back on the sofa and closed his eyes as the sounds grew louder. Despite all the flashing lights and noise, Marly and I, sitting by him on the floor, didn’t cry, didn’t even stir. This, he believed, was a good sign.

He clasped his hands together and dreamed of the day when Marly and I would make love for the first time just as Lily and he had some fourteen years ago.

He could see it all very clearly, and it wouldn’t be long, he thought, before Marly and I saw it too: Rudy, in the sixty-nine position with Theo, sucking on his dick as if it were a popsicle; Sondra, the most conservative of the girls, lying beneath him and moaning, “Oh God, oh my dear dear God”; Vanessa, rubbing his cum over her breasts, then licking her fingers clean; and Denise, after having sucked him off, washing her mouth out with a steady stream of his urine. With the images of these fictional lovers in mind, he believed that Marly and I would create our own world and make our own way within it. Creating new legends, building new shrines, new monuments, and devising new ideas.

He believed that one day we would walk out into the storm to be by the river. That rolling around naked in the shallow water, caressing, kissing, we would spill our love over one another. That the day would come when our screams, the first sounds ever to leave our mouths, blend in with the clamor of thunder. When our bodies, in a fearless act of discovery, flash with each burst of light.

He believed that the day would come when Marly declares “I want you” as I push my middle finger in her ass—“I love you” as I slide my thumb inside her pussy. When gasping for air, she rises, then settles her young head between my legs to suck as if sucking and breathing were the same. When finally, with her mouth full of my cum, she brings her face up to mine.

He believed that the day would come soon, when in our perfect world we’d feel nothing but the gentle gift of rain in all its forms. That and the touch of skin upon skin.

By the Time I Get to Phoenix and Other Gentle Rants of Madmen: Part I, chapter 9 from The Edge of the World (a novel in progress)

2006-10-19T01:35:00.000-04:00

In September of 1984 Leonard had been living with Annalisa for over four years. After spending the entire afternoon of their day off watching television, he told Annalisa that they should dress up and eat out for a change. He took her to Le Moulin, the best restaurant in town, and at the end of the meal he ordered champagne. When the waiter brought it out, he knelt before Annalisa, and as people in the restaurant began to take notice he held out to her the diamond ring which he had bought the previous day.

“Annalisa,” he asked, “will you marry me?”

She looked at him lovingly and extended her hand as a smile came to her lips. A smile that reminded Leonard of television ads and movies. A smile that seemed to connect him to the world.

“Yes, Leonard,” she answered, “I will.”

He was aware that he was still married to his sister—a circumstance Annalisa, of course, knew nothing about. Although it was a marriage which would never be considered legitimate in a court of law, it was a marriage to which Leonard felt bound. And as soon as Annalisa had said, “Yes, Leonard, I will,” it occurred to him that he hadn’t thought this out as thoroughly as he should have.

Still going with the moment, he slipped the ring on her finger. They stood up, and as they kissed and embraced the couple at the table closest to theirs began applauding. Leonard and Annalisa then picked up their glasses and made a toast to their upcoming life as a married couple.

On bringing the glass to his lips Leonard came to the realization that in the years he’d spent with Annalisa he hadn’t been conducting himself in a rational manner. It all became quite apparent to him, at this late point in the proceedings, that he hadn’t been true to his own nature. And now, having turned away from his ideals, from what he understood as right and wrong, he had gone so far as to ask this strange but decent woman to marry him.

As he sat with Annalisa the image of Lily, which he had banished from his memory for so long, came vividly back to mind. He could see Lily just as clearly as he saw Annalisa who now sat beside him at the table. But while Annalisa had a drop of champagne clinging to her lower lip, the image of Lily had what was plainly, in its color and consistency, a drop of semen. And he felt for a moment that Lily was actually watching them—Annalisa with her wide innocent smile and he with his nervous, guilty grin.

Having given in to practicality, to the false ways of the world, Leonard decided that now was the time for him to start thinking clearly again. And the expression on Lily’s imagined face seemed to be telling him that he had to be strong, that he had to take action. Just as he had long ago on the night of Lily’s prom.

When they finished the bottle of champagne he ordered another one. Annalisa was blinded with joy and drank more and more, not noticing that Leonard was hardly touching his drink. When they got home he picked her up and carried her to the bed where she immediately passed out.

He dug up his old duffel bag and threw some old clothes in. When he was packed he looked in on her. She was still sleeping, and after listening for a minute to the peaceful sound of her breathing he took out a piece of paper on which he wrote, “I’m sorry.”

He knew that in the morning things would be bad. He’d be in Phoenix by the time she woke up to find his note. “Suck my dick,” she would scream as she jerked up her shoulder. “Motherfucker,” as she contorted her face. Leonard leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. Then turned away and went out the door, his sentimental universe weighing heavily on his mind.

He walked down the street and got money from the machine at the bank. Just enough for a ticket and meals for what would probably amount to a three day bus trip. He got to the station in time to catch the last bus heading east. It wasn’t the most comfortable ride he’d ever had, but he imagined it would be easier, and quicker, than hitch-hiking.

The only seats available when he got on were in the back of the bus which was where the more sociable—and crazier—of the passengers were to be found. The man sitting directly behind Leonard, in the very last row, felt the need to sing:

And love is just a passing word
It’s the thought you had in a taxicab
That got left on the curb
When he dropped you off
On East 33d...

And when he’d gotten tired of singing he’d mumble to himself. Bitter words, curses. Utterances only he knew the meaning of.

While he went on with his singing or mumbling, other people were telling each other their life stories.

One woman spoke about her old boyfriend—her only true love—whom she had lost touch with. When she mentioned him by name the man sitting in front of her, who explained that he worked as a bail bondsman, said that he knew the name. That he’d gotten a man by that name out of jail not too long ago. And that he might be able to help her find him.

An old woman across the aisle from Leonard talked about growing up in Arkansas, getting married young and having kids who, now that she was old and widowed, never visited, never called. And now, for vacations, she’d just get on the bus and ride for a couple of weeks, stopping in different towns during the day then sleeping on the bus at night while en route to some other place.

The man in the seat next to Leonard talked about his Filipino friend from World War II. His friend was going to come to the States so the two of them could start a farm. “He seemed sincere,” the man said. “I mean, we were good friends and after the war, when I was back here in the States, we were writing back and forth, making plans for our farm. But suddenly he stopped answering my letters. I kept sending them, but I never heard anything back. I never knew what happened to him.”

A sad, regretful look came over him, and Leonard wished he could tell him his own story. He was suddenly in the mood to let out his personal history and say, “Well, when I was fourteen, my sister and I ran off and got married. You see, she was the only woman in the world for me...”

But of course Leonard couldn’t tell him that. So he sat back, shaking his head, saying, “Yeah, it’s a damn shame how things seem to get lost in this world.” Whatever sentimental observations came to mind. Then he kept quiet, lest he be overcome by the perverse desire to talk to strangers.

It took over two days to get to New Orleans, and in this time the man behind Leonard never once got off the bus for food or simply to stretch his legs. Whenever Leonard went to use the bathroom in the back of the bus he’d look towards him, trying to get a brief glimpse of a madman.

But the madman would invariably be facing the window as he sang or mumbled words which, for some reason, Leonard felt were directed at him. In New Orleans, however, the man finally got off the bus and it was here, during the morning breakfast stop, where Leonard got his first good look at him.

The man was sitting in the waiting area at one of the television booths where one puts in a quarter and gets to watch for fifteen minutes. While staring intently at the screen the man suddenly turned just as Leonard passed by.

“Do you see that? Do you see that?” he shouted after Leonard.

Leonard didn’t know it was the man until he heard him speak. A deep gravelly voice that whether it was shouting or whispering seemed to carry across a room.

“Do you see that?” he asked again, pointing to the screen.

He was a tall, muscular man, not much older than Leonard. Sitting there in the TV booth, he reminded Leonard of an overgrown school kid, the kid who kept getting held back a grade and was too big for the desks in his classroom.

“You know what that is, don’t you? You know!” He looked solemnly at Leonard. For some reason it was important to him that Leonard know what he was watching. “Come on, you know what that is.”

Leonard looked down to the screen. The man was watching a cartoon.

“You see that? You know what that is? You know what that is.”

Leonard watched for a minute. It wasn’t something he was familiar with. Even as a child, Leonard had never watched cartoons. With their garish colors and oddly shaped figures, they were set in their ways and left no room for his imagination. He preferred the filmed images of actual people, because it was only upon actual people that he had the chance of imposing his own order.

“Oh, yeah,” Leonard finally said, looking down at the man. “I remember now.” And walked back to the bus.

As soon as Leonard got off the bus in Fort Myers he headed straight for his old apartment building where Lily, Lemuel, and I still lived.

It was noon on a hot, overcast day near the end of summer. I was at a point in my life when, although I had yet to look into anyone’s eyes, I had begun to understand the things that went on around me. I had known since earlier that day that Leonard was coming home. That he was coming home believing he could repair what had gone wrong between him and Lily.

By eleven that morning I had grown quite restless, knowing what no one else in my family knew. Soon Leonard was inside the foyer of our building, checking for the name on the mailbox and seeing that it still read “Bodine.” He wiped the sweat from his brow, tucked in his shirt, and breathed deeply. Then walked upstairs and knocked as I sat in front of the television watching the same cartoon the madman from the bus had been watching.

All Concern Rests with the Dead, Annalisa: Part I, chapter 8 from The Edge of the World (a novel in progress)

2006-10-10T22:43:00.000-04:00

Leonard was on the road for a month. He went through El Paso, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle. He circled around to Billings, Bismarck, Minneapolis, Des Moines, Denver. At the end of the month he was in Reno, the town where Lily and he got married, and he had decided, after being away from her for the first time in his life, that he wasn’t going back to her.

Having considered his situation in every respect, he had come to the conclusion that he was too young to be married. He needed to spend some time by himself, he thought—one year, two years, perhaps the rest of his life. And after a long month spent wandering in an attempt to be alone, he now, at last, actually felt alone.

He found a job bussing tables and washing dishes at a restaurant. After being on the job for a week—and getting his first paycheck—he moved out of the cheap hotel he’d checked into upon his arrival and into a one room apartment over a wedding chapel. Moving meant picking up his duffel bag, walking down North Wells Street a few blocks, then up the stairs to his new apartment where he set his bag down again. He then used what was left of his paycheck and went out to buy a used mattress at the Salvation Army thrift shop.

Back in his new home, he put the mattress on the floor and lay down. It was, he had to admit to himself, a very inauspicious start as far as beginning a new life was concerned. He had no radio and no television—none of the things that made a person feel connected with the world. But he knew that soon, very soon, things would get better.

He worked the night shift at the restaurant, and when he left at three in the morning he would walk home, taking a route along the Truckee River. He’d take his time, sometimes stopping along the way to sit down under the stars and watch the river. Since he didn’t have a television, he had found himself taking long walks to entertain himself when he wasn’t working.

Leonard’s day would invariably begin around noon when he’d awake and walk across town to Idlewild Park, the main attraction of which was a statue called The 53d Whispering Giant. Over thirty feet high, it caught the gesture of a man in the act of whispering, his hand held near his mouth as if he were imparting some great secret to whoever was standing beneath him.

Leonard would watch the tourists. Families from northern California with young children taking a cheap vacation. Young men and women from back east or from across the Atlantic backpacking across the states. Gazing up at the statue’s face, they’d try to guess what message the giant had for each of them.

Usually they came up with such quaint messages as “You will get married before the end of the year” or “A great fortune will come your way”—the sort of messages one would get from reading a horoscope. But to Leonard its message wasn’t so quaint, and when he looked up at the statue for the first time—unaware that he was supposed to be receiving some kind of communication from it—the words that came to mind, and which he actually thought he was hearing, were, “You will die with a smile on your face.”

Leonard wondered what the meaning of these words could be. At first he was frightened. But after reflecting upon them, he determined that the statue was telling him he would die happily, in his old age, while fucking some athletically inclined girl some fifty years younger than he. Which meant that somewhere along the line Leonard would have to start fucking girls who weren’t related to him—and he was determined that now was the time to start. Doing so would be strange, he was sure, but since he was a young man with many years ahead of him, it was something to which he’d have to get accustomed.

He had been at the restaurant for a month when Annalisa began working there as a waitress. She was twenty years old with reddish-brown hair that draped over her shoulders and fell all the way to her waist. But even more impressive, like a building rising stoically from the snow, was her body. All breasts and hips, it seemed ready to burst out from beneath her waitress’s uniform, which was a size too small for her. She was the first girl other than Lily who could give Leonard a hard-on by the mere sight of her.

And like a widower whose sense of mourning and reluctance was beginning to disappear, Leonard began to consider the possibility that being with another woman might not be as difficult as he had thought. That blood ties went beyond family.

Still, there were some peculiarities about Annalisa which disturbed him, the first of which were her various tics and twitches. Sometimes Leonard would see her, when she thought no one was looking, suddenly jerk up one of her shoulders or contort her face in what looked like an impersonation of a frightened school girl. Then he began to notice, when he was working her tables, that she often mumbled things underneath her breath after taking a customer’s order. “Motherfucker,” “fat ass bitch,” or “suck my dick” were the words Leonard heard most often.

Soon other people began to notice—indeed, it would have been difficult for people not to notice as Annalisa’s looks alone drew attention to her—and after a couple of days the restaurant manager brought her into his office for a discussion. He asked her blankly if she were taking drugs. Or, if not that, simply crazy.

These were questions she’d been asked many time before. Questions which, despite their ill-informed brusqueness, bored her. Annalisa had to explain that no, she was not crazy, nor was she on drugs, but that she did suffer from an affliction of the nervous system. After she pleaded with him that she really needed the job, and that she actually enjoyed working there, the manager made a compromise. He switched her job from waiting tables to bussing them, a job where she wouldn’t actually have to converse with the customers and so would be less likely to let forth some obscene whisper.

It wasn’t much of a compromise—anyone else would have been fired on the spot. But Annalisa’s looks let her get away with things. They gave her a power which she was never aware of. With her body she could have easily made it as a dancer or as a call girl down in Vegas, yet she was too naive to take advantage of it. And although she was smart enough to know that the life story Leonard would later tell her was fictional, she was naive enough to believe that the real story, whatever it was, was all part of the past.

The next day the manager told Leonard that he was no longer a busboy but a waiter. Annalisa, who was now bussing his tables, acted coldly towards him and would sometimes mumble “fuckhead” or “stinking asshole” as he walked by.

This was, obviously, not a good beginning for them. But then beginnings rarely are. This isn’t simply some trite or excessively romantic observation on my part. I’ve found that anything worth striving for involves at least a few false starts—it’s always the things that eventually turn bad that have good beginnings. Which isn’t to say that anything good that’s been achieved stays that way, as bad endings are always with us. Like Leonard’s true past, they always seek us out no matter what measures we take to avoid them. Which is why it’s best to create our own bad endings before someone else creates them for us.

And so it was that one afternoon, as Leonard sat in Idlewild Park before going to work, he saw Annalisa. She was standing in front of The Whispering Giant, gazing up at its face. He watched her for a few moments. Her body, for once, was completely calm, as if the steadfast carriage of The Giant had transposed itself upon her. And as she stood there listening for its message not a single “motherfucker” or “suck my dick” came from her mouth.

“It told me I’d die with a smile on my face,” he said as he approached her from behind.

Annalisa glanced at him, then quickly turned back to The Giant.

“What does that mean?” she asked after a moment of silence.

“I’m not quite sure,” he said as he stood beside her. “What message did it have for you?”

“It hasn’t told me anything.”

Leonard looked down Annalisa’s blouse and noticed the freckles over her cleavage. He was beginning to get a hard-on. Annalisa turned to him, then glanced down at his pants.

That night they left the restaurant together. Although he didn’t show it, Leonard was nervous as they walked home. Feeling as if he were about to do something that had to be kept hidden, he kept looking around to see if anyone was watching. When they reached the door to his apartment he opened it quickly, let Annalisa inside, and promptly shut the door behind them. Being with Annalisa felt dirty, which excited him even more.

Without even bothering to offer her a drink, he immediately pulled down her skirt and panties. Then kneeling he stuck out his tongue, momentarily holding it half an inch away from her pussy as if to savor the sense of anticipation he felt at receiving what was to him a perverse gift. Finally he grabbed her hips, shoved his face forward and licked her pussy as she leaned back against the door running her hands through his hair.

Annalisa was surprised by the lack of ceremony with which Leonard took her. Yet she was intrigued by him, and rather than being frightened by what she didn’t know about him, she gave in to it.

“Oh Leonard,” she moaned, “you...” as he tongued her clit and slid his finger in and out of her pussy. When she was about to come he stood up and put his dick inside of her, pushing in and out as he pulled her shirt over her head.

In another minute they were done. Annalisa put her arms around him as they fell to the floor, laughing as they caught their breath. But despite his laughter Leonard felt a twinge of guilt that bordered on regret. Indeed, he nearly found himself mourning, as if he had lost his humanity and fallen victim to the ways of a corrupt world.

The first time they were out in public Leonard had to keep reminding himself that being with her was not something he had to hide. They were sitting in a restaurant that evening, waiting for their meals, when he leaned over the table to kiss her. They had been holding the kiss for a few seconds when Leonard suddenly jerked his head away from her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Well,” he said, pausing as he tried to think up an explanation, “I’m not all that comfortable showing affection in public.”

“Didn’t you ever make out with your high school girlfriend in front of other people?”

“That was different,” he said after a moment. “I was a kid. I guess I’ve become a bit conservative since then.”

“You’re too young to be so conservative,” she answered as she stood up. Then putting her hand around the back of his neck, she pulled him towards her and kissed him on the forehead. “But it’s all right, so long as you don’t get that way when we’re behind closed doors.”

Two weeks after they started seeing each other Annalisa moved in with him. Because Annalisa had brought with her, among other things, a television and a stereo, the apartment was now a comfortable place to relax. They found themselves spending most of their free time at home, listening to music on the stereo or watching television which, aside from fucking, was their favorite activity.

In the early afternoon, before going to work they’d watch the soap opera All My Children. Annalisa had been watching the show for years, and after watching it with her for a week, Leonard was hooked. The Brady Bunch, which was now on in reruns and showing opposite All My Children, no longer interested him. Taken on its own terms, without pretending the Brady kids were having wild orgies, The Brady Bunch became just another boring situation comedy. All My Children, on the other hand, was interesting the way it was—Leonard didn’t need to use his imagination and create his own little stories for its characters. He could just sit back and watch without having to strain himself in the least—the show would do it all and give him tales of romance, intrigue, and even, here and there, action sequences. And although what happened on the show was never as wild as what he had created with his own mind—and in so being was more like real life—it was something he could openly discuss not only with Annalisa but with other people as well.

Annalisa and he soon began inviting friends from the restaurant over for dinner on their days off or for drinks after work. Their apartment was now completely furnished—they had a sofa and coffee table for the living room, another table with chairs for the kitchen, plus a queen sized bed and a dresser for the bedroom. They threw out the mattress he’d bought at the Salvation Army.

Although Annalisa and he didn’t make a lot of money at the restaurant, each of them had—Leonard for the first time in his life—a credit card. And in addition to using them to furnish the apartment, they also bought a set of china, flatware, a food processor, a coffee machine. They also began buying records.

Every week Annalisa would pick up one or another of the latest disco releases. Being with her he grew to like disco, and when she came home with a new record they would immediately put it on the stereo and dance, which would inevitably lead them into the bedroom. By this time sex with Annalisa had ceased to have the slightest trace of dirtiness about it, and in fact seemed completely natural, wholesome even. Because they were just two small people in the world. Because her blood and his were the same. And although they never peed together, never did the six-pack or had sex outdoors, Leonard found that their sex life was never anything less than exciting.

It wasn’t long before Leonard realized that he loved Annalisa. It was something he didn’t think he’d ever be able to feel for another woman. But besides that he understood that they were also good for each other. When she was with Leonard, or even when he was just nearby, as at the restaurant, Annalisa rarely exhibited any symptoms of her nervous disorder. With him she was living a normal life, and rather than being a beautiful freak, she was, simply, a beautiful woman.

As for Leonard, he felt, for once, at peace with the world. His thoughts, his desires, were no longer at odds with everyone else’s. Were without dislike or suspicion. He no longer had to stretch his imagination, creating a universe of his own, as the real world with its common ideas and routine conventions was now good enough for him.

Dancers and Other Freaks Staying up Past Midnight: Part I, chapter 7 from The Edge of the World (a novel in progress)

2006-10-10T22:40:00.000-04:00

Leonard packed just a small duffel bag—he didn’t want to carry a heavy load—and walked down to the highway ready to hitchhike west. After being on the side of the road for almost an hour he got a ride from a young couple in a station wagon. They were on their way to New Orleans.

“We’re going there for our honeymoon,” explained the woman.

“I take it you just got married,” Leonard replied. Then added hesitantly, “Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” she said, jutting out her chin. Raising her eyebrows and widening her already bulging eyes, she smiled like a six year old girl who had just won a stuffed animal at the carnival.

“Yeah, thanks,” the man said as he looked into the rear view mirror at Leonard. “It’s too bad you couldn’t make it to the wedding.” Every time he spoke the tone of his voice gradually rose so that with each of his sentences Leonard felt as if he were being asked a question. “But we’re mighty glad you could make it to the reception.”

“Oh honey...” the woman exclaimed as she looked to the dashboard.

He eased up on the gas pedal and moved into the right lane. “Good Lord, I was going five miles over the speed limit there for a minute.”

They were good people, this couple. Bank tellers from up north who always rose before dawn and went to sleep by ten. Sports fans whose love of sports was curiously devoid of enmity for rival teams. Model citizens who in all sincerity wished their neighbors “a nice day” and believed in fellowship and the dignity of man. They were the sort of people I liked when I was a child—the sort of people who now fill me with disgust. As for Leonard, he too found them disgusting. But later he would change his mind.

Lying on the seat next to Leonard was a boom box. Leonard looked down at it and for a moment his thoughts turned to Lily. Noticing his interest in the boom box, the woman handed him a tape.

“Here, put this on.”

“I love disco,” the man said as a song began to play:

Tommy Mottola
Lives on the road
He lost his lady
Two months ago...

Although for once the tone in the man’s voice didn’t seem to beg for a reply, Leonard asked, “So, you two go out dancing a lot?”

“Oh no,” the woman declared. “Discos always start way too late for us.”

“Though last night we were up past midnight,” the man said as he looked into the rearview mirror and winked.

“We just love the music,” the woman continued. “And we just put the music on the tape player there whenever we want... and dance whenever we want. Like sometimes after work we’ll put the tape player on the roof of the car, and then dance right there in the bank parking lot. It’s so much fun. And people passing by think we’re getting in some extra practice for some kind of contest but we’re not. We’re just dancing for ourselves.”

Leonard tried to picture them during one of their afternoon dancing sessions and chuckled to himself. He imagined that their moves would be clumsy, like those of two drunks who, rising from their bar stools at closing time, end up dancing because they’re unable to simply walk. Only with this couple that clumsiness was natural, and the afternoon sun—not the turned up lights of a bar at closing time—was what shone in their faces. But just as the drunk couple would go home to fuck, or try to anyway, so would this couple.

Leonard coughed, then cleared his throat, feeling, for a moment, as if he were about to vomit. The image of this couple fucking made Leonard feel slightly ill. That and the thought that there were millions of Joes and Marys in the world just like them.

They had just passed through Tampa. New Orleans seemed a long way off to Leonard—especially while riding with this obnoxious duo whose ways were completely different from his and who seemingly had no idea of the life that went on beneath the surface of things.

But like an insect shedding its cocoon, he began to discard his old ideas and opinions. Like a tourist in Times Square watching a game of three card monte, he was taken in by the scam. Believing that paradise was gone, he took the bait. And by the time they reached New Orleans, Leonard had decided that he wasn’t all that different from them. That the blood that ran through their veins was the same as his.

At midnight, eight hours after they’d picked him up in Fort Myers, they dropped him off in New Orleans near the French Quarter. Leonard thanked them sincerely, smiling at them as he’d never before smiled at anyone outside of his family.

It was November and at midnight it was too cold for Leonard to be sleeping outside. After wandering around the French Quarter for a couple of hours he went to the train station. In the waiting area he sat on one of the hard plastic chairs, setting his duffel bag beside him. He’d been asleep for half an hour when a man in a uniform woke him.

“Sir,” he said looking down at Leonard, “if you’re not waiting for a bus or a train you’ll have to move on.”

“But I am waiting,” Leonard answered, without looking up. “Only my train doesn’t leave until morning.” He was suddenly afraid, startled by the sound of his own voice.

“May I see your ticket?” the man asked.

“Well I haven’t bought it yet,” Leonard argued. Tilting his head upwards, he looked directly in the man’s eyes. “Because I don’t want to fall asleep here and have someone steal it from me while I’m sleeping.”

He eyed Leonard suspiciously for a moment then moved on. Leonard sat back again and closed his eyes but he was wide awake now. He sat there the rest of the night, and during the whole time he waited the thought of Lily never entered his mind.

In the morning Leonard went to the rest room. Studying himself in the mirror he saw that he had a strange, untrustworthy look about him again. He was just twenty-one years old now, but with his beard grown ragged and his slept-in clothes, he looked like a long time vagrant.

Leonard pulled a razor from his bag and worked at his beard. Soon it was all gone. He washed his face and hair in the sink, then hit the button on the hot air dryer. Leaning over, he placed his head beneath the nozzle and dried himself. When he looked into the mirror once more, he combed his hair away from his face. He looked better now, he thought—almost like a clean cut kid just out of college.

He picked up his bag and walked outside. In twenty minutes he’d found the highway again. Standing by the side of the road, staring down at the cars coming from back east, he held up his hand, ready to make his way through the world. And with the bright, almost blinding sun shining upon him, he stuck out his thumb.

Cut Your Hair: Part I, chapter 6 from The Edge of the World (a novel in progress)

2006-09-28T23:13:00.000-04:00

Leonard had gotten a new job shortly before I was born—he was now the manager of a sporting goods store at the local shopping center. Although it was a harder job with longer hours than he’d had at the liquor store, the pay was much better, allowing Lily to stay home and take care of me.

But with Lemuel now living with us they had a baby sitter in the evening. Lemuel didn’t mind staying home, he said, having grown rather fond of me, his nephew. So nearly everyday after dinner, Lily and Leonard would go down to the river, something they hadn’t done since I was born. Making love there on the river bank again, they felt as if they’d stepped back in time. And though they never for a moment forgot that back in the apartment was their son—who, despite his seemingly oblivious nature still required a certain amount of attention—they sensed that they had somehow regained the freedom they’d had before I was born.

They had set up Lemuel in the living room—it was now his room. After being with us for two months—and having found a job at the dog track—he announced that he wanted to stay in Fort Myers for at least another year. He offered to get his own apartment, but Lily and Leonard told him that if he didn’t feel the need to be on his own he should just stay with us.

So he stayed. To Lily and Leonard it seemed the ideal situation because Lemuel, in addition to taking care of me, also acquired things for the apartment. He bought a color TV that was about three times the size of the old black and white one, a new stereo system with huge speakers, a dresser drawer for Lily and Leonard, and a sofa bed for the living room so he’d have a more comfortable place to sleep.

Things went well for the first five months, but as Lily grew more and more comfortable with our increasingly cramped apartment, Leonard grew less so. Lemuel often fell asleep in front of the television, snoring loudly or mumbling in his dreams while Leonard tried to watch a show. Lily began spending hour upon hour reading novels in bed, and when she wasn’t doing that she was at the kitchen table, going through the newspaper from front to back. The act of reading seemed to take her into that distant world—she paid no attention to Leonard when she was reading. And he imagined that even if, on some occasion, he were to go so far as to push his entire fist and forearm up her ass, she probably would have just continued licking her index finger and turning the pages.

I, on the other hand, did nothing but pay attention to him, and took to following him around the apartment whether he was going to the kitchen to get a drink of water or to the bathroom to take a piss. All the while I’d stare at him, fixing my eyes on his as in his mind he cursed me, his retarded little devil child—which was how he’d begun to think of me. And though I was his son, whom he loved, what he felt towards me—more than anything else—was a resentment that turned his blood into bile as his arms and legs stiffened.

And now, whenever Lily and he went to the river—which at this point they did only about every two weeks—he’d lose his sense of the moment. He’d think about their honeymoon, those five weeks when they fucked under the sky in different places all over the country. He’d think about The Brady Bunch and the stories they made up as he licked her hairy cunt in bed with the TV on.

He missed those nights when The Brady Bunch was on. But what he missed most were those places around the country. Like a senile old man doting upon his youth, he found himself saying their names aloud as he went to work in the morning: “Denver,” “Niagara Falls,” “Galveston.” He’d imagine that he was sitting on the moonwalk in New Orleans, riding through the barren landscape of the Bonneville Salt Flats, playing slot machines in Las Vegas. He could see each place clearly, and what accompanied every image that came to mind was the peaceful feeling that he was alone.

And one Saturday, when he’d slept late, he awoke to find that Lily had already gone out. He sat in the living room talking to Lemuel—who was telling him about an incident that had happened at the dog track the previous day—when Lily walked in. To his dismay, Leonard saw that she’d cut her hair, leaving just short blonde locks which barely covered her ears.

“That looks terrible,” he barked suddenly.

“Well I like it,” she snapped back. “And it was too much work taking care of it when it was long.”

“Oh, it looks all right,” Lemuel said, acting as if he were trying to stop what might be the onset of an argument.

But there was no argument. Leonard didn’t say another word, and neither did Lily, who simply went into the bedroom, picked up a book, and started reading.

A week after Lily cut her hair Leonard quit his job. He told Lily that he had to get away—it didn’t surprise her at all—and that Lemuel would be taking care of her and me while he was gone.

Although Lily understood what was troubling Leonard, Leonard did not. All Leonard knew was that he had a feeling, a pain. A suspicion that the world was against him and had defeated the universe he’d created. A suspicion that told him he had to run.

Another Time, Another Place: Part I, chapter 5 from The Edge of the World (a novel in progress)

2006-09-14T23:29:00.000-04:00

On June 16, 1979, Lily and Leonard celebrated their seventh wedding anniversary, and it was on this very day that Lemuel showed up at their door. By this time I’d been born and baptized. Given the name Leonard Bodine II, but nicknamed Kiddo, I was a quiet little boy who never cried, never ate much, and mostly just stared out into space. It was a beautiful way for me to be, Leonard thought, to just sit there and piss and shit in my pants. Which isn’t to say that Leonard thought there was nothing going on in my head. It’s just that he thought I’d never choose to express my thoughts or feelings—or whatever it was I had inside of me—and that I probably never would.

Leonard remembered very well the day Lily came home from the doctor with the news that she was pregnant with me. He’d just gotten home from work when she walked in with a worried look in her eyes. Having a baby wasn’t something they’d planned on.

Lily had been on the pill the whole time. But, as the doctor explained, sometimes even the pill will fail, making my birth either a great miracle or a bizarre accident. Neither Lily nor Leonard were certain at first that she should go through with the pregnancy. But, after discussing it for an hour, they decided the time was right to start a family. And so given the choice between accident and miracle, they chose what they believed was the lesser of two evils.

Leonard went down to the liquor store and got there just as his boss was closing up. On hearing the news his boss gave him a bottle of one of their best wines as a present. Leonard brought it home to Lily so she could have one last glass of wine before settling into a healthy regimen for her pregnancy. Since this was a special occasion he had some as well, and so got drunk for the very first time.

Leonard discovered that it was a good feeling. He found himself laughing wildly as Lily and he conjured up images of their future as parents. They saw themselves changing diapers, enrolling their child in grade school, taking him—or her—out to a baseball game or a Disney movie where he’d probably watch what was going on for a few moments then start touching himself. They saw themselves having other kids, both boys and girls—their own little Brady Bunch. And after Leonard had finished the wine and fried some eggs, they walked down to the river.

As her pregnancy wore on, Lily’s already large breasts grew even larger, and her nipples turned from a delicate pink to a dark brown. Leonard loved the first taste of her milk, loved it even more than his first taste of wine. He loved it so much he didn’t want to share it with his son, and soon after I was born he started buying baby formula. He’d feed it to me from the bottle while Lily cradled his head in her arms. Turning to her breast, he’d suck and swallow until he felt full. Then he’d hold some in his mouth and spit it into Lily’s hand. She’d reach over and jerk him off while I, my eyes closed, sucked harder and harder at the nipple of my plastic baby bottle.

I was two years old when Lemuel found us. Walking into the apartment, he spotted me sitting in a chair by the window as I stared at the trees behind our building. Putting his hand on my shoulder, he turned to Lily and Leonard.

“And who’s this?” he asked.

Lily and Leonard said nothing. Lemuel put his hand to my cheek and slowly turned my face toward his.

“I don’t believe this,” he muttered.

“But he’s a beautiful boy,” Lily said after a moment of silence.

“Maybe,” Lemuel answered. “Still, I don’t think mom and dad would approve of this as a way of making them grandparents.”

“But Lily and I are married,” Leonard said. “And we’re happy this way.”

Lemuel turned towards Lily and Leonard. He’d grown tall in the seven years since they’d seen him, his hair as blonde as Lily’s and his nose sharp and thin, showing that he took after Grandma’s side of the family. His presence, which they had barely acknowledged while they were growing up, was no longer easy to ignore.

“Mom and dad will be... how shall I put this?,” Lemuel said, shaking his head. “Perturbed.” Like an actor who had run out of words and purposeful gestures, Lemuel remained still and silent for a moment. Then brushed the hair away from his eyes.

“You can’t tell them,” Lily exclaimed.

“But I have to,” Lemuel protested. “They have to know what’s happened to you, and what you’ve done.”

Lily walked hesitantly towards Lemuel, then put her hand on his shoulder.

“Leonard and I are in love,” she said to him. “And we have a beautiful son. Don’t go back and tell everyone. Not just yet. Stay with us a few days and you’ll see. We have a good life here, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Lemuel picked me up, then eased into the chair and sat me on his knee. The two of us sat there before the window, with no one saying anything as we stared straight ahead.

Two hours later Lemuel phoned Grandma and Grandpa. He told them he hadn’t found anything new about Lily and Leonard, but that he was going to keep looking, following up on some other leads he had. “I’ll stay in touch,” he told them.

Lemuel had decided, at Lily and Leonard’s urging, to stay with us for a while. And that night, after they’d put me to bed, Lily and Leonard told him everything about themselves, how they’d decided to run away, how they’d travelled all over the country, how they’d come to adopt Florida as their home. Lemuel, in turn, brought them up to date on events back in Athens.

He told them how their sudden disappearance had become a big mystery there. How people had devised a variety of theories concerning their fate—some mundane, some outlandish—including, as Lily and Leonard had joked about, the possibility of their having been abducted by aliens from outer space. But fortunately, which pleased both Lily and Leonard, there wasn’t a single theory that took on the possibility that they’d left of their own accord.

Lemuel explained that he was taking a break from college. That he’d already been taking courses for two years at the University Of Georgia, having finished high school a year early. That in that time, during which he majored in chemistry, he’d grown restless and had found in himself a desire to travel. That he then informed my Grandma and Grandpa that he was taking a year off to do so. And that in the course of his travels he would also investigate the disappearance of Lily and Leonard.

It had been two months earlier when he left Athens, he insisted. And since then he’d been, among other places, to Rock Springs and Galveston. How he’d figured out to search for them in these cities was beyond Lily and Leonard. And in the end he declined to explain exactly how he managed to find them.

“Let’s just say,” he concluded, “that you and Lily never realized how clever your younger brother was.”

Lemuel slept on the living room sofa, and in the morning went out with Leonard on his way to work.

“I’m going to find a job,” he said. “I should help you out with the money while I’m here.”

He was planning on going back on the road in a couple of months, he said. Then, when he was done travelling, he’d finish school.

“You should go back to school yourself,” Lemuel added.

Leonard thought about it for a moment. “No, I don’t think so,” he answered.

And Lemuel, looking out towards the distance, pondered the measures he’d have to take—the plans he’d have to make to get where he wanted to be.

Moving to Florida : Part I, chapter 4 from The Edge of the World (a novel in progress)

2006-08-29T00:45:00.000-04:00

It was two weeks after the prom—right after Lily’s graduation ceremony—when Lily and Leonard left Georgia. They spent the time between these two events preparing for their new lives, with Lily arranging to get money for their trip while Leonard made fake birth certificates and drivers licenses. He changed his name from Leonard Bay to Leonard Bodine; Lily Bay, in turn, became Lily Paisley.

All this time Jimmy kept showing up at their door, flowers in hand, asking to see Lily. He’d call her on the phone every couple of hours and each time she’d decline to take the call. He wanted to fuck her again.

Lily, of course, refused to do so. Refused to even see him except for a few minutes one Saturday night during which she returned to him his high school ring. He’d given it to her on the night of the prom, which was, to Leonard’s satisfaction, the first and last time Jimmy would ever fuck her.

On the night before they left a UFO was sighted over the woods near their house. Lily and he were right there at the time it was seen, but even if it had been hovering right above them, flashing its multicolored lights and letting loose some otherworldly whoops and sirens, Lily and he, each facing the ground as Leonard fucked her in the ass, wouldn’t have noticed a thing. And while they were driving out of town after her graduation, Lily and he joked that the UFO would be the explanation for their disappearance. That it had returned the following day, whereupon its occupants abducted them, spiriting them from Lily’s car as they were en route to a graduation party.

There had to be some explanation, no matter how strange it was, because they left Athens without a word to anyone. They’d decided that they had to leave it completely behind. Its faces, its buildings—and all the shadows they created—were to be banished from their memory. The only thing they would keep were their moments alone. Moments when there was no world, just the universe they’d invented.

So as they set out from Georgia they fabricated stories to go along with their new identities. Stories which, however fanciful they may have been, were at least more believable than the UFO scenario.

It came to be that he, Leonard Bodine, was born twenty-one years ago in Rock Springs, Wyoming. He was the only son of Donald Bodine, a rancher, and his wife Carmen, who once represented that great western state in the Miss America Pageant, and who would have won if not for a horrible mishap during the talent competition in which she accidently gouged her eye out with a baton. Lily Paisley, Leonard’s bride to be, also twenty-one years of age, came from Galveston, Texas. Her father, Arnold Paisley, was a baptist minister; and while there wasn’t anything noteworthy about her mother Anne, aside from her great beauty, it was worth noting that Anne’s brother was Jimmy Webb, composer of the songs “Up Up And Away,” “By The Time I Get To Phoenix,” and of course, “McArthur Park”—a song which was inspired, in fact, by the brief infatuation he had with his young niece. It was in college where Lily Paisley and Leonard Bodine met, at the University of Miami, where they took classes for a year before dropping out. After leaving college they moved to the Gulf side of the state, to the town of Fort Myers. Which was where Lily and Leonard actually found themselves five weeks after leaving Athens.

That they settled in Florida was simply a matter of circumstance. They had been driving all over the country—it was their honeymoon—just going wherever their impulses led them. They first went to Reno, where they got married, then on to San Francisco and Los Angeles. After that they drove east to the Grand Canyon where they decided they should visit both Rock Springs and Galveston, as these were supposed to be their home towns. Because the places they wanted to see were often in opposite directions, they ended up driving back and forth across the country several times. And although they could have drawn up a set itinerary, they enjoyed moving about in this aimless manner. To be able to decide ten minutes before arriving in Denver that they also wanted to see New York City was preferable to having fixed travel plans which, although that would have saved them money, would also have diminished the sense of freedom they felt after leaving Athens.

By the end of their fifth week on the road they were on the Gulf Coast of Florida and their money was running out. They’d been to New Orleans, Chicago, Seattle. They’d seen Niagara Falls, Plymouth Rock, the Bonneville Salt Flats. They’d played slot machines in Nevada, gone on roller coaster rides in Texas, camped out in the Arizona desert. Leonard had finger fucked Lily in some thirty states, she’d sucked him off in four different time zones, and together they had peed on the beach on two different coasts. But now, after all that wandering, all that driving—all the fast food dinners and mornings waking up under the sky—it was time to settle down.

They sold Lily’s car, and with the money put down a deposit and paid the first month’s rent on a small apartment on McGregor Boulevard in Fort Myers. Now they needed jobs, something that would give them enough money for rent, food, and an occasional night out. They didn’t need much. They were, as they say, young and in love.

Within a week Lily found a job at a flower shop down the street from their apartment. The owner of the shop, an old widower in his sixties, on hearing the name Lily, decided it was fate. To have a woman named Lily working in his flower shop was only appropriate, he thought—though of course Lily’s beautiful face and body weighed heavily in his quick decision to hire her. Lily and Leonard were sure that when her boss went home that night he went to sleep and had wet dreams in which he saw himself misting the smelly flower between her legs. Dreams from which he awoke, out of breath, as from a seizure, when all it was was a nocturnal retreat into childhood. A longing for his better days.

With Lily settled in her job, Leonard went out looking for work of his own. Because he was young—too young to be out of school and working—he grew a beard.

But it was more a bird’s nest than a beard. Scraggly and ill shaped, it made his eyes look smaller, his nose seem wider, and his mouth became a crack in a buzzard’s egg. Although it added years to his face, when he looked in the mirror he saw the face of a criminal. An arsonist, a thief, even a murderer—all were possible in his tiny eyes, while his nose signified his crude origins. And as for his mouth, it was one which would never speak the truth.

It took some time, but after fashioning his beard into a tidy goatee he found that he looked older but honorable. Setting out one morning with his new face, he had a job at a liquor store by noon of that day. One of the benefits of being an employee at the store—in fact the only benefit—was that he got a discount, and although he didn’t drink, Lily did. So he got into the habit of bringing home a bottle of wine every few days.

Lily would have a glass or two with dinner, which she always prepared since Leonard had no skill as a cook. Then once a week he’d take her out to eat, usually at the noisiest place he could find. They’d sit in the restaurant and play with each other under the table while waiting for their meals to be served. After dinner they’d go to the movies where, if the film got boring, they’d make out like teenagers who didn’t have a place of their own.

For their first few months in the apartment they didn’t have a television. All they had was Lily’s portable radio and tape player, which she had remembered, at the last minute before leaving Athens, to bring with them in the car. She didn’t, however, remember to bring any of her tapes, so all they had to play on it was the tape that was inside when she took it. But that tape, Tommy James & The Shondells’ Greatest Hits, was one they especially liked, in particular the song “I Think We’re Alone Now.”

Sometimes they’d take the tape player with them and walk a mile or so to the river. They’d found a secluded spot on the river bank where they’d make love while listening to Tommy James sing,

And so we’re running just as fast as we can
Holding on to one another’s hand
Trying to get away into the night
And you put your arms around me
As we tumble to the ground
And then you say, “I think we’re alone now...”

Sometimes when it was raining they’d leave the tape player behind. Still, they’d pretend to hear the music while they danced naked and slow, their fingers in each other’s ass as they peed in the shallow water. And when there was a thunderstorm they’d lay down low at the water’s edge. Leonard would suck on Lily’s nipples, wrapping her hair, which looked dark and mysterious in the rain, around the back of his head. Then he’d move in and out of her, slowly at first, then picking up speed as the storm grew stronger. They’d fuck like wild animals, their screams blending in with the sound of thunder, their bodies flashing with each burst of light. When they were done they’d lie back, exhausted, letting the rain, falling steadily on their bare skin, invigorate their bodies until they were ready to fuck again.

When they had enough money, and had bought a small black and white television, they were disappointed to find that The Beverly Hillbillies was only on during the day when they were at work. But then, in the evening, they discovered The Brady Bunch, and came to like this show even more than The Beverly Hillbillies.

Because on this show there were three boys and three girls whom they could pretend were not just step brothers and sisters but actual blood relations. They imagined elaborate brother and sister orgies with Jan Brady sucking off Greg, taking Peter’s dick in her pussy and Bobby’s dick in her ass, while Marsha and Cindy did lesbian golden showers on each other. They saw Greg peeing on Marsha while Peter jerked off on her tits as she sucked off Bobby, with Cindy and Jan in another corner of the room sticking black rubber dildoes in each other’s pussy. They saw Marsha and Jan eating fried eggs off of Bobby’s ass as Bobby ate out Cindy who was jerking off Greg, while Peter finger fucked both Marsha and Jan who were now rubbing egg yolks over their tits as they each yelled, “Now do me like a six-pack you fucking fuck.”

The combinations were almost infinite, and the night The Brady Bunch was on was a night when they always stayed home.

Overall, Lily and Leonard had a perfect married life, and the only thing that could have made it better was if they didn’t have to work and be separated during the day. Because even though they had no friends in Fort Myers—and associated with no one except when they were at work—they couldn’t get enough of each other. They were happy that they’d run away and gotten married, with Lily skipping college and Leonard dropping out of high school. Because in doing so they’d gotten a head start on life.

So while many of the girls in Lily’s class were now in college, taking courses and going out on dates with frat boys, she was with Leonard, her husband. And while Leonard’s classmates were doing lab experiments in school, going out on dates and trying to score for the very first time, or just hanging out at the pinball arcade, he was working, living with his beautiful wife, and making love every night.

It was fine with him that he was missing out on those teenage years, that so-called age of “exploration and discovery.” Because ever since he was ten he knew that he didn’t want to subject himself to the horrible process of adolescence. Like a boy who had grown much older than his years, and who knew much more than he should, he wanted to pass it by—but of course the possibility of that happening seemed to be nil. And like a boy who was moving along more slowly than everyone else, he thought that skipping his awkward years was a fantasy he could never fulfill. Yet with Lily and the town of Fort Myers, in the phallicly shaped state of Florida, he had.
----------------------------------------------
Note: Alternate chapter title: Drink the Muddy Water in the Vaseline Stain.

School of Love: Part I, chapter 3 from The Edge of the World (a novel in progress)

2006-08-17T23:55:00.000-04:00

Lily and Leonard lived with their parents, and their brother Lemuel, in Athens, Georgia. Their house, the house I had lived in from the age of nine until I left for New York with Marly, was on the southern side of a street called Horseshoe Lane which, appropriately, was shaped like a horseshoe, the ends of which led into the woods. Even though Horseshoe Lane was only a five minute walk from the University of Georgia—the center of activity in town—the neighborhood had an almost rural atmosphere to it. Having lived there since they were small, right on the edge of the woods in a house with an enormous backyard, Lily and Leonard always felt as if they had grown up on a farm.

Their parents were both professors at the university. Louis Bay, my Grandfather, taught physics, while Ellen, my Grandmother, was in the English department. Being academics, they had always stressed to Lily and Leonard the importance of education.

“Never let a day go by when you haven’t learned something,” Louis used to say to his children. And, “You’ll never be too old to learn something new.”

Even then Grandpa was already talking like an old man. And despite his status in the community as an intellectual, every moment for him was a time to express either sentiment or an almost antiquated sense of optimism, the basis of which was his faith in learning. To him, knowledge was power. And to him, knowledge was a force which could overcome any disadvantages one was born with.

Although Lily and Leonard were expected to spend a good amount of time on school work, they were also allowed to lead normal lives. As long as they did their school work—and did it well—neither Louis nor Ellen had any objection to their watching television, listening to rock and roll music on the radio, or taking part in after school activities like other children. All in all, it was a typical household, and their childhood a normal one.

When Lily and Leonard started fucking it was the fall of 1971. Leonard was in his first year of high school and on the junior varsity football team, while Lily was a senior and a cheerleader. But with Lily and Leonard fucking, and she giving Jimmy the occasional blow job, there wasn’t much time for football or cheerleading.

They promptly quit these activities which, for them, had become boring and unnecessary. Leonard would ride home right after school with Lily. And every day they’d make a stop along the way for a quick fuck in her car.

When they got home they’d watch television for an hour or so—reruns of The Beverly Hillbillies had become their favorite. They’d fantasize about Jethro and Ellie Mae, making believe they were brother and sister like them and not just cousins. They’d imagine Jethro and Ellie Mae fucking in the cement pond, on the fancy eating table, or even in Granny’s bedroom when she was out back making lye soap. They could almost see Ellie Mae, her big breasts hanging down firm and heavy, as she sucked on Jethro’s huge dick; then hear Jethro, the sweat pouring down his brow, screaming, “Oh Ellie Mae, you hot fucking slut,” as he came all over her sweet sexy face.

Since she couldn’t go out on school nights, Lily went on dates with Jimmy on the weekend. While Leonard wasn’t pleased that she was still seeing Jimmy, he was able to live with the situation because Lily, having taken to heart his advice on this matter, still adamantly refused to let Jimmy fuck her. That she saved this act for himself seemed only proper to Leonard. After all, he was her brother and such intimacies, he felt, should be kept in the family.

With Lily and he fucking all during the week, Leonard’s first year of high school went quickly. He ended up getting A’s in all his courses. His teachers—who considered him the brightest student in his class—began referring to him half seriously as “Young Einstein.” By the way they spoke it was clear they expected great things from him. Winning their praises, however, was of no importance to Leonard, as he had never really worked at nor had the slightest interest in his studies. Because for Leonard school work was just something that had to be done well so that it was completely out of the way: the only thing that mattered to him was Lily.

Before long it was June and time for Lily’s senior prom and high school graduation. She had decided, after having been accepted at several schools around the country, to attend college in town at the University of Georgia. That she was staying home for college was, Leonard thought, because of him and not because Jimmy, having received a football scholarship, was also staying home. But on the day of the prom Leonard noticed Lily was acting strangely towards him.

When she went into the bathroom to take a shower, he followed her. Again, he was joking with her, trying to hold her up so she’d be late. But this time, as he began to kiss her breasts, she got angry.

“This is a special day,” she said, “and I don’t have time to fool around.”

Her reaction surprised him. Usually when she was in a bad mood all she needed was a quick fuck to lift her spirits. But what concerned him more was to hear Lily, after they had dropped all their other school activities, refer to the prom, of all things, as a special event. It seemed that something strange was going on in her mind, something which wasn’t the result of her period—she’d had that the previous week, and when it was over he fucked her and she felt fine. No, it was something else, and when he began to think what it might be he grew worried.

That night he stayed awake, waiting for her to come home. When she walked in the door, at five in the morning after what had been the longest night of his young life, he looked up at her. And he knew, without her having to say anything, what had happened.

“You fucked Jimmy,” he said.

Lily turned away.

“You fucked Jimmy!” Leonard repeated loudly.

“Well he’s my boyfriend,” Lily yelled, turning back to him. “How can I expect to keep him if I don’t fuck him?”

Leonard calmly took Lily by the arm and led her out the door. They walked in silence until they reached the edge of the woods.

“You don’t need a boyfriend,” Leonard said bluntly. “You have me.”

“But I can’t go out on dates with you,” Lily answered. “You’re my brother. We can’t let anyone know about us, and I’m tired of that.”

“That’s only here,” Leonard said after a moment’s thought. “Anywhere else who would know?”

Lily blinked. She didn’t quite understand. Because what Leonard was encouraging her to do was something that was beyond her imagination.

“Run away with me, Lily,” he said more as a command than as a plea.

But before she could say anything he put his hand on her cheek and kissed her hard on the mouth.

“It’s the only thing we can do,” he said as he unzipped her dress and pulled it down from her. When he removed her bra she remained silent. He kissed her breasts and reached below, pulling her panties to her knees.

“Marry me,” he breathed, then pulled her to the ground. She tried to stand but he held on tightly to her hips. She tried to struggle free but he pulled her closer. She kept trying until finally all resistance left her. Until finally she understood.

And now, ripping his shirt open, she kissed him on the chest, pulled down his trousers, his underpants. Now rolling around naked on the patchy grass, sweating and moaning in the moonlight, they could see the dirt smeared on their hands and bodies.

“I want you,” she declared as he pushed his middle finger in her ass. “I love you,” as he slid his thumb inside her pussy. Then gasping for air she sat up, as if from a nightmare, bringing her mouth between his legs and sucking as if her breath depended on it, as if she were the Ellie Mae Clampitt of his dreams. Then bringing her face to his she said, “Yes”—as his sperm dripped from her mouth onto his cheek. “Yes,” as she kissed him with her syrupy tongue. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

Teenage Lust: Part I, chapter 2 from The Edge of the World (a novel in progress)

2006-08-06T22:42:00.000-04:00

As for my family history, I experienced very little first hand. But like the stone and sand and dirt that comprise the history of New York City, it was something I understood. And little by little, I came to know the details, the most important of which was that Marly and I were not the bastard son and daughter of Lily and Leonard—though “bastard” does somehow seem to describe what we were. Because although Lily and Leonard were married, they were also brother and sister. Which would indicate that regardless of their marital status we were, in many ways, illegitimate.

That was a word I’d have no problem living up to. A word which, once I was able to give voice to it, seemed to define me. And soon afterwards it would define Marly as well.

Although I must admit that Marly’s fall from legitimacy was all my doing. Just as our mother’s fall was perhaps the responsibility of our father. And the result of his learning the difference between right and wrong.

Because it was on the day after his fourteenth birthday that Leonard, my father, followed his sister, Lily, into the bathroom as she went to take a shower. She was getting ready for a date with Jimmy, her boyfriend at the time. All the while Leonard had been telling jokes, teasing her, trying to hold her up so she’d be late. He thought it would be even more amusing to have Jimmy get there to pick her up and find that she hadn’t even gotten out of the shower yet. Jimmy would have to sit downstairs with Grandma and Grandpa as they questioned him about his plans for the future. And, more importantly, his intentions as far as Lily was concerned. These were tough questions for Jimmy, who at twenty was a little too old and experienced, or so my grandparents thought, to be seeing a girl of sixteen like Lily.

Despite his age, Jimmy was still in high school, having had to repeat both eighth and ninth grades. School had become too difficult for him at that point, with algebra, biology, and history being beyond his understanding. But when Jimmy became a star player on the varsity football team, teachers were told to go easy on him.

Like almost anywhere else in the world, sports meant something to people there. Almost more than war, they were what made a man a man—at least in the eyes of most people. Because war was something that was best left forgotten. Something to be studied by intellectuals—those dour, bespectacled creatures whose primary emotions were self righteousness and a detached sense of pity for those surrounding them. Sports were for everyone else. They made for more pleasant memories, and people there needed something to remember.

For the moment Jimmy was what they remembered. On Sunday mornings after church it was always, “Good Lord, that was a glorious game yesterday, Jimmy Boy.” On Monday mornings in school it was always, “Hey, Jimmy, you were, like, possessed on Saturday!”

He was a piece of work, Jimmy, the kid who was as strong as an ox and as fast as a horse. Lily’s eyes would light up as she walked down the halls with him. She would carry her head a little higher, her breasts heaving as her arms swayed beside her. Lily, one of the prettiest and liveliest of the girls, thought he was quite a prize.

Leonard, however, thought that Jimmy was something else altogether. That he was a false hero, a pathetic clown in a champion’s body. Leonard thought Lily should be seeing someone as smart as she was. Someone who could see that she was something more than a cheerleader. Someone who could make her laugh and dance and sing as she and Leonard had done since their brother Lemuel was born.

Because when their brother—my uncle Lemuel—was born, Lily and Leonard became best friends. They began to like the same television shows, the same songs on the radio. They spent all their free time alone, as if there were no one in the world but them. Because alone they were king and queen of a universe they themselves had created.

When Lily got older and developed an interest in the world around her, Leonard got jealous. Until Jimmy came along the world offered nothing that could compete with him; and having Jimmy rise from the depths to become his most formidable opponent seemed absurd. Because Leonard, the consummate romantic and genius of their universe, was her true inspiration. All Jimmy had going for him, Leonard thought, was his talent for playing a fool’s game—take that away and you had a dull, humorless boy who didn’t know the difference between a good time and a bad time.

But despite his deficiencies, Jimmy played a prominent role in the outside world. It was what made him seem like a prize to Lily. Tall and blonde, he was one of those people who, upon hitting a streak of good luck, would never lose it, would never have to work very hard to keep it. While Leonard, despite his many talents, was of those people who would never really make it in the world.

“I’m thinking of letting Jimmy go all the way tonight,” Lily told Leonard on the day he followed her into the bathroom.

Not taking her comment seriously at first, Leonard simply shrugged it off. But when she insisted she was going to go through with it he shut the bathroom door behind them.

“It’ll be wonderful,” Lily said to Leonard. And though she truly believed it would be, she was also trying to provoke him. To goad him into speaking or into taking action. She wasn’t sure which.

“No, it’ll be terrible,” Leonard argued as he put the cover down on the toilet and sat down. “He won’t know what to do. He’ll be fumbling around like the stupid brute that he is.”

“Well I think he’ll be gentle,” Lily answered as she turned to the mirror. Then she faced Leonard again. “He’ll start like this.”

Lily pulled the ribbons from her hair and shook her head until her long blonde ponytails fell apart like a wave over her shoulders.

“And he’ll know just how to undress me.”

She smiled, darting her tongue over her lips then stretching her arms, letting her bathrobe fall to the floor. She was the first girl Leonard had ever seen naked. Her body, to him, seemed like nothing less than a great gift from god. And when she stepped into the shower he had no choice but to take off his clothes and follow her inside.

He watched as Lily soaped up her body, rubbing her hands over her full breasts, sometimes stopping to pinch her nipples, then moving down to her belly, her thighs, her pussy, her hand moving up and down over her shiny wet pubic hair.

At first he just watched and laughed, listening to the sounds Lily made as she moved her finger in and out of her pussy. But soon he began touching himself, rubbing his dick till it got hard. Lily watched and knelt in front of him. Taking his dick in her hand she began stroking it madly. When he came she rubbed his sperm over her breasts and when the water washed it all away she stood up, pushing his face between her legs. Without pausing to breathe he slid his tongue over and around and between her pussy lips until she started moaning and breathing hard. Lily, his true love, was shaking so wildly he had to hold on tightly to her ass to keep her heat on his face.

When she was done and had caught her breath she knelt and began licking his dick until it got hard again. She sucked on it fast and strong and after he squirted inside of her she looked up at him, smiling sweetly with her mouth full of cum, and swallowed. Standing up, she held him close as they both peed, letting the yellow liquid run down their legs. Letting it mingle with the soapy water as it circled down the drain.

When they finally got out of the bathroom Leonard went downstairs and Lily to her room. Sitting on the living room sofa between their mother and father was Jimmy.

“Where’s... Lily?” Jimmy asked slowly, sounding as if he had a mouth full of food.

Leonard brushed his wet hair away from his face. He tilted his head upwards as his wide dark eyes caught the light from the living room lamp.

“She’s drying her hair,” he said. “She’ll be down soon.”

“Oh,” Jimmy nodded. “Okay,” as Grandma and Grandpa looked not at Leonard but at Jimmy with a trace of apprehension in their eyes.

Leonard went outside, sat on the porch steps, and laughed.

That night, when Lily came home from her date with Jimmy, she whispered to him, “It’s all right. I only gave him a blow job.”

And when everyone in the house was asleep he went to her room. She was waiting for him.

A Distant City: Part I, chapter 1 from The Edge of the World (a novel in progress)

2006-07-14T01:08:00.000-04:00

Grandpa had spent the entire morning sitting at his desk and tugging restlessly at the gray strands of hair at the tip of his beard. It had clearly been a matter of some gravity that he’d been pondering, some mathematical equation that just wasn’t adding up the way it was supposed to. Or maybe it was the great pain in his gut.

Despite his best efforts at distracting himself, he’d been unable to get it off his mind. The night before he had tried reading, but the letters on the page looked like abstract patterns that lacked meaning. He had paced the room rapidly for an hour hoping he would grow tired and sleepy, but the exertion only made him more tense and alert. He had lit his pipe and puffed on it vigorously, but the smoke only made him mumble and curse. Like the song he later found himself humming absentmindedly, his dilemma stayed on his breath.

Tugging at his beard that morning, he remembered the song. The song that years ago could be heard playing in the house almost every day. And as he tugged at his beard he remembered those days. That time when all commotion was innocent and laughter was free from contempt.

His children were young then. His hair was a lustrous black and he could hold his head high. He had strength, vigor, and felt a passion for every moment. He could walk for miles and never would the thought occur to him that the world didn’t make sense. Yes, he always concluded at the end of one of his many sentimental reveries: those were the days.

But all that had come to an end. And in the years since then Grandpa found himself thinking about those good days. Thinking as the pain in his belly grew stronger and spread. Thinking until pain took the place of the person inside him.

Yet with Grandpa it was always hard to tell exactly what was going on in his mind. Following his thoughts was like wandering blindfolded through a gigantic maze. The different languages—memories of different places and different times—all merged together chaotically in his mind. While the lines around his eyes forked away and faded into the grey hair on his temples.

I had watched him all through the night. Watching his steps as he paced, listening to his words as he mumbled and cursed, taking in the smoke that wafted through the room before his pipe went out—I was well aware that something was wrong. But when he pulled out his gun from the bottom right hand drawer of his desk, pointed it at his head and pulled the trigger at this most sentimental of moments, I was surprised. Because in those days I too was driven by sentiment.

It was quite a scene that morning. Grandma ran upstairs when she heard the gunshot. On entering Grandpa’s study she began screaming. I wanted to say, “Don’t worry, Grandma, it’s all for the best.” And though I tried my best to speak, all I could do was cry in silence.

“I’m not sure,” I thought, “but I think he’d been sad for a long time. It was really too much for him to bear.” All the while I slapped the carpet with my hands and kicked my feet up in the air.

Grandma picked up the phone to call an ambulance, even though she knew there was nothing a paramedic or doctor could do. Blood was splattered all over his desk. Several feet away from his motionless body lay the spent pieces of his brain. Grandma looked at me, her blue eyes full of fear, then took me by the hand, leading me downstairs to the living room where Marly sat watching the television. As soon as Grandma let go I ran to the television and turned it off.

Marly looked at me quizzically. “It’s all right, Marly,” I thought as I took her in my arms, patting her on the back to comfort her even though she had no idea what was going on.

Grandma ran upstairs, still screaming and crying. Then came right back down again and opened the front door. Tears were running down her pale cheeks. Like raindrops sliding down a window during a summer thunderstorm. The raindrops which fell during my first moments of life. The raindrops which always seemed to be falling in the days before I was born.

Covering her eyes with her hands, Grandma collapsed to the floor. When the paramedics came she kept her eyes covered. “He’s upstairs,” she sobbed through her hands.

Sometime later they carried Grandpa out the door. Standing outside, Grandma watched as Grandpa’s body, covered by a white sheet, passed before her. With her standing tall and thin, she looked as if she were about to collapse again. Or as if she should.

And at that moment, with the clock in the living room striking noon, her form reminded me of a picture I’d once seen in a book. A picture of a building standing tall in the snow. A building so tall and slender that looking at it astounded you. A building which gave you the sense that you were beholding something which, despite its beauty—or perhaps because of its beauty—would never last. Something which at any moment might collapse, its stone and glass and iron all crumbling into dust in an instant.

That building was in a distant city. A city Grandma and Grandpa had visited several times when they were young, in the beginning of those good days. A city so large that one would have to rise very high in the sky in order to fathom its shape.

The city was built upon a place that was once all stone and sand and dirt. A place that came out of the ground after a great rumbling within the earth. A place where men and women came to gather, setting about their life’s work. Where, bearing guns and knives and other tools, they built majestic shrines to the gods. Shrines where they created those daring concepts of business and commodity.

It was only in the beginning of this Century when true life began. When the photograph of that tall building was taken. Before then all was legend and fiction, stories people told and then embellished in an effort to make sense of the sounds that came out of their mouths.

Realizing that such efforts were futile, they began to use their hands, erecting their shrines and monuments. Digging stones out of the dirt, shaping them into blocks and cylinders, they piled them on top of one another. And upon or within these piles they stood, with many of them ceasing to speak.

Holding knives in their hands, wielding guns or hammers before them, they made strange gestures in the air, moving their fingers, sending nervous signals which were supposed to make the piles rise even higher, bringing up more stone, wiping away the dirt and leaving just sand. At the end of the day they walked between the structures they’d created. Traveling in cars or else going underground beneath the streets where the trains ran, they were like animals who’d lost the use of their legs. Animals who knew what it was to be bored and restless.

Theirs was a world where the air never moved and the stench of men and women never dissipated. A world where pure noise drowned out the voices of those still attempting speech. A world where shrines and monuments took the place of memory. And at the center of that world was the building in the photograph.

Throughout my young years I’d remembered that photograph and all the history it signified. And as Grandma stood silently on the front porch I turned to Marly, and, for the first time in my life, I spoke.

“We’ll be there soon, we’ll be there soon.”

Three days after Grandpa was buried we were on a bus. Riding past the trees, the roadside restaurants and churches, the Jesus Saves signs. Traveling north to places we’d never seen. Places where the tone in people’s voices changed.

In one of the smaller cities we passed through I took out the last two dollars I had left from the money I took from Grandma. Handing them over to a heavy man who couldn’t take his eyes off Marly, I bought a pack of cigarettes. When I took my first drag I coughed and Marly looked up at me. And patted me on the back, her blue eyes looking into mine with a silence which said more than these words ever could.

But still I tried to speak, to bring the words from my mind to my tongue, to my lips.

“This is Vir...” I said, reading the sign. “Vir-gin-i-a... Danville, Virginia.”

Marly’s hair was hanging in her face. As I brushed it behind her ears she parted her lips, her eyes blinking, and for a moment I thought she wanted to say something. But it was more the expression of someone about to take a bite than of someone trying to speak.

“Marly... we’re in... Virginia,” I said in a voice that was remarkably different from that of my father. It was the sort of voice that would have moved Grandma to bend her head down slightly and ask, “Where are you from?”

Marly hooked her arm to mine as her eyes darted from left to right. From a nondescript grocery store to the dark window of a barber shop that had closed for the day. Blowing smoke out from my lungs, I tilted my head upwards.

Somewhere, obscured by even these small buildings, the sun was going down. Off in the distance cicadas were chirping, rattling the air with a din that had long since reached its peak for the season back in Georgia.

But here the sound was still strong. And never left our ears until we were back on the bus and the driver had shut the door. Stepping on the gas, he had us on the highway again in less than a minute, the sky turning a deep blue as the white of the clouds disappeared in the dark.

It was well after midnight when we reached New York. Stepping outside the Port Authority bus terminal, we headed east on 42nd Street. On Broadway we went south until Madison Square Park, where we sat on a bench gazing at the apparition that appeared before us. Or, rather, what had once been an apparition. Because now it was quite real, standing before us like the bow of a great ship.

We sat there in awe, inspired by the knowledge that we were back where it all began. We sat there during what would be one of my last waking moments of silence. We sat there for hours in the still, dank air. Until our weariness took over, slackening the blood in our veins. Until we fell asleep in a huddle, dreaming of stone and sand and dirt, the sound of the cicadas far behind us.

Angel

2006-06-10T16:50:00.000-04:00

I am an angel. I live in outer space but you call it
Heaven. I sit immobile but you think I have wings.
Though I watch your every move, I have no stake
in your health or happiness. Though I manifest
my being in every moment of your lives, my actions
are petty and trivial. When you walk through the park
on the first warm day of spring, I’m the force
who makes the pigeon shit on your head.
When you sit in a stall in a public restroom
I’m the power who makes the toilet paper disappear
at the moment you’re ready to wipe.
I’m the desire that drives the cute little five year old
to give you the finger when you smile at him.
I am the knowledge that no matter what line
you pick at the supermarket it will be the slowest.

I am the reason Celine Dion is a huge star, the reason
your penis is two inches long, the reason your breasts
are as flat as the Great Plains. I am the bitter aftertaste
in sugar substitutes, your morning hangover. I am dandruff,
an ingrown toenail, a speck of dust in your eye, a pebble
in your comfortable new shoes. I am the fitful sleep in which
you dream and find yourself falling from a mountain.
I am the revelation in which you discover that you are
neither great nor original but empty-headed and common.

As for those greater catastrophes, those fatal accidents,
those terminal diseases, poverty, war, and famine, I stake
no claim. I compose neither good nor evil, justice nor injustice,
but convenience and inconvenience. All my works are shallow and trite.

I am merely an attendant, serving the way I was meant to serve.
following the orders of a monarch who devotes his time to greater things.
And when sirens echo in the distance I do not hear them.
When rivers overflow I do not see them washing away your cities.

In the beginning was the darkness, then came the light.
Though I am of that light I do not help you see.
And as you walk through your world as if blind, I give you
no hint of what’s to come, no sign telling you to go or to stop—
just an aching in your bones, the self-conscious knowledge
that somewhere, in the middle of this universe,
away from the greatness of kings, you exist.

FACE

2006-04-04T00:56:00.000-04:00

1. Dear god grant me the strength
to destroy the things I can destroy,
words to deface the things I can't,
and wisdom to get away with it.

2. This is for the space between words, the slow
fall of mountains leaving the remains of giants.
There are wars we remember that took place in
our back yards, days when we thought we moved
backwards. The storyline has only been suggested,
through hints of color, and weather mentioned in passing.

3. I am so blown away by your concept of space.

4. There are images one gets lost in, images one
can breathe, a landscape in colors and stars,
the names you can’t remember. The clouds darken
over the sea surge. Seagulls climb on gusts of wind
as the night turns over into silence. The dream
of canyons, the dream of forgetting—I become
a new person, with no history, no origin, and a million
possible paths to take ahead of me, into the horizon.

5. What's wrong with your face?

Miss Tahiti 1981

2006-02-11T09:46:00.000-05:00

They stand there throwing lines at each other
inside the TV set. The music blazes
inside my head as a beautiful girl water skis.

"This music would be good to hear on the radio
while waking up, in a state of half-sleep."

I have a definite lust for life. Even here
in my room, set apart from all stages, I can feel
the so-called outside events, the latest American tragedy
and the heat, the rush of the leaves.

"Don't dance in Kansas City."

"Stay away from strange mist on the sea."

Because Miss Tahiti 1981 is the most beautiful girl I've seen today.

I carry burdens with me when I walk and the streets
aren't so mellow, though they too age along with
every oak and sparrow.

"New faces every day, new columns on buildings,
and words."

Miss Tahiti has one of those faces you'll remember
a long time, which is where her immortality lies.

If I don’t follow her advice I am so fucked.

After The Party (1992)

2006-01-23T23:30:00.001-05:00

Drunk at four in the morning
my friend Eddie and I
are sitting in this girl’s apartment
watching a Depeche Mode video.
On the floor in front of the TV
some guy she knows
is passed out and snoring
while she sits on the sofa
telling us we should pay attention
to the lyrics being lip-synched
by a skinny English guy
with a fancy haircut.
She’s a sweet girl, bright
and still full of the
subtle energy of youth,
and though Eddie and I are each
mad about her in
varying degrees
we realize that watching
a Depeche Mode video
with her at four a.m.
as some amateur drunk
snores on the floor
is just a bit too much to take,
so we leave.

We walk down to the 7-11
and buy some cigarettes,
some bread, and two packages
of canned meatballs with gravy.
We go back to his place,
throw the meatballs with gravy
into a pan, add some cheese,
some leftover spaghetti,
some soy sauce,
and, after a moment’s thought,
throw the bread in the pan as well.
We’re starting to sober up now,
but we’re hungry
and this weird mix is, after all,
food of some sort.

Later, after finishing
every last bit of it,
we’re sitting at the table
saying nothing.
We’re both starting to
feel sick and depressed.
I wash the meal down
with a glass of water
and light a cigarette
as Eddie stares
at his empty plate.

Suddenly Eddie stands up,
walks over to the trash can,
and pukes for a full minute
or two.
When he’s done
I walk over to the refrigerator
and grab two cans of beer.
I crack them open and
set one down in front of Eddie.
He looks up at me,
wipes his mouth
with the back of his hand,
and with the light of dawn
coming in through the window
he says, “Shit, man,
It’s a brand new day.”

So we have a toast:
to canned meatballs with gravy,
to all night parties,
to amateur drunks,
to England and its fancy haircuts,
to all the pretty young girls in the world,
and to the sun
which rises high in the sky
over us all.

BOB BACKLUND: Politics, Madness, and A Good Clean Shave in The Heart of Darkness

2006-01-07T00:41:00.000-05:00

According to The Book of Revelation 13:5, "The beast was given a mouth for uttering proud boasts and blasphemies, but the authority it received was to last only forty-two months." After coming back from hibernation, Bob Backlund's authority as the World Wrestling Federation's number one Beast lasted only four days. But then this is the nineties, and despite the best efforts of the wild-eyed fanatics at PETA, a beast doesn't last very long in this era.

But blame that on the times, not on the beast. And, perhaps, on Madison Square Garden. Yes, Madison Square Garden.

For some people Manhattan's Heart of Darkness is Wall Street, where prematurely graying men in business suits nervously pace the floors while the words "buy" and "sell" go through their heads like savage mantras. For others it's the theater district, where the mantras include words like "Cats" and "Grease," and where, in the ultimate act of Broadway blasphemy, a man by the name of Mandy Patinkin has been anointed the Holiest of Holies. But for people like me who've never reached these depths of hell, Manhattan's Heart of Darkness has always been Madison Square Garden, the site of numerous brutal tests of endurance, among which one may count the many bloody wrestling matches, a week long engagement of The Grateful Dead, and the 1992 Democratic National Convention. And for the purpose of shedding some light on Bob Backlund's present situation, it will do us some good to look back at what went on at that convention. Hell, it may even do YOU some good as well.

As we well know, the survivor of that series was Bill Clinton. Having fought off the likes of Paul "Mr. Electricity" Tsongas and Jerry "Spaceman" Brown, Clinton suddenly rose from among the crowd to become The Man. Supporting his rise, amidst a deluge of multicolored balloons and confetti, was a crowd that was riddled with celebrities. Among them: Stephen Stills of the fat boy vocal group Crosby, Stills, and Nash (who presaged the fat boy tag team, Men On A Mission, by over twenty years); Jill Larson, who plays Opal on the soap opera All My Children (you may remember that Jesse "The Body" Ventura, before going the Kojak route, claimed he got his hair done at Opal's Glamorama in Pine Valley); and Bianca Jagger who was hanging out not with Mick ("Double J" Jeff Jarrett's more sophisticated cousin from across the sea) but with fashion poobah Calvin Klein.

A lot of things had changed since 1992, in wrestling and in politics. You'd think that with Hogan Hulk Hogan fleeing the WWF stables and taking with him, among other things, the Mouth of the South and the reconstructed cheekbones of Brutus Beefcake, that Bob Backlund might once again reign supreme in the WWF. Especially since Bob Backlund—once the ultimate do-gooder—is now looking more like the evil spawn of one of Sybil's more damaged personalities and the Marquis de Sade. After all, these are hard times, and it takes someone with a hard heart to make it to the top.

On the night before Thanksgiving, Bob Backlund, having put behind him the petty desire to please the fans, looked like the man to do it. Indeed, things were looking good for Backlund that night—just as they were for Bill Clinton back in 1992. But today it seems like Clinton will be going down in the history books as a single term commander in chief (or Jimmy Carter II). Which means that after four years you won't have Bill "Bubba" Clinton to kick around anymore. Though while Bill Clinton still has a couple of years left, Bob Backlund has already had his four days.

But I'm getting ahead of the story here again, moving on to the sad and terrible aftermath when what we should be doing, for the moment, is concentrating on the good old days. Days we can count on a single hand, with a finger left over to relay a parting gesture to the Heart of Darkness.

The good days began on the night of November 23d 1994, two weeks after an election which saw the defeat of such luminaries as Mario Cuomo and Ann Richards. Back in Washington D.C., having little reason to give thanks, I'd resigned myself to singing the blues, and so took to drowning my sorrows at The New Vegas Lounge, a smoky blues bar ten blocks away from the White House.

Accompanying me were two fellow writers, Eddie Dean and Jim Rogers, who ordered beer after beer while I tried to negotiate my way through the evening with a cheap Jack Daniel's substitute. Despite our attempts at frugality, we were overcharged for our drinks and treated like the demons who made it necessary to sing the blues. But maybe that was the price we had to pay, because in addition to the pick up blues band that was playing that night, The New Vegas Lounge had, showing on the television with the sound turned off, The WWF Survivor Series.

As my friends didn't have much interest in wrestling, they busied themselves watching a guitar player by the name of Sky Shaw break into a rendition of "Crossroads." All the while my eyes were glued to the TV set, and when Bob Backlund applied the chicken wing to Bret Hart, I let loose with a hearty, "Break his neck, Bob!" Eddie looked over to me and asked, "Who's that?"

"That's Bob Backlund," I said reverently. "But I like to call him The Beast."

When Stu and Helen Hart walked over to ringside to throw in the towel it looked like the good times were back again, because Bob Backlund was, once again, the WWF Champion. Holding both the belt and his head high, Backlund looked down upon the masses and with a single facial expression said what would always take Bret Hart an entire interview to say: "I am the best."

Back in the New Vegas Lounge the band stopped playing and the other bar patrons stood in silence, gazing upon the perfect countenance of Bob Backlund. My friend Jim Rogers, who had finally found his curiosity piqued by the happenings on the television screen, held his head up high in turn and declared, "Now that's a guy who looks like a champion! The other guy's just another greaseball loser." Which goes to show what was always part of Bob Backlund's charm: whether he was being good or being bad—whether he was babyface or Beast—even people who weren't fans of wrestling knew that he was real thing, while someone like Hulk Hogan was nothing more than a Saturday morning cartoon character.

With Backlund back where he belonged, I went up to New York the following Sunday to see for myself the new champion defending his belt against Diesel, the overgrown meter man from the gas company, ready to celebrate Bob Backlund's first successful title defense.

Getting off the train at Penn Station in New York, I relished the memory of the past four days, days that brought back a air of wealth and good feelings. But just as Madison Square Garden would eventually work its curse on Bill Clinton, so it would on The Beast.

Possessing more wrestling skill in a single raised eyebrow than Diesel has in his entire seven foot body, Backlund should have been able to make quick work of Diesel. But this was Madison Square Garden. And while Bill Clinton won his ascendancy at Madison Square Garden, Bob Backlund lost his at that very same space. Because what Madison Square Garden giveth, Madison Square Garden will taketh away—though even if you didn't get it at Madison Square Garden, Madison Square Garden will wrest it from you anyway. It is, after all, The Heart of Darkness, and as such has no sense of mercy, no sense of right or wrong.

Like a Democrat donkey going up against a Republican rogue elephant, Backlund tried to take his stand. He used all the weapons he had at hand—an arm whip, an elbow smash, a monkey flip—but nothing worked, not even his trademark chicken wing, the submission hold that had brought many more skilled opponents to their knees. In the end it was Diesel who prevailed, putting Backlund down for a three count.

But unlike when he lost the belt to The Iron Sheik a decade ago, Backlund shed no tears, did not hold his head in his hands, remorseful that he'd disappointed his fans. No, this time he held his head high.

Back in the dressing room he immediately lathered his face with shaving cream and pulled out a razor. "I've found that it's always a good idea to have a shave after a match," he explained. Even though he's a beast, he's a CLEAN beast. When he was done, he wiped his face, then began reflecting on the night's events. "I have wrestled with Diesel," he said, as he opened up a bottle of Mennon Skin Bracer and splashed the stinging lotion on his cheeks. "It was the most unexciting contest imaginable, taking place in an impalpable grayness, without clamor, without glory, without the great desire for victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid skepticism, without much belief in my own right, and still less in that of my adversary." He paused, then held out his bottle of Mennon Skin Bracer. "Here, have some. It's good even if you haven't just shaved."

Strange words from a strange man. And although some may take these words as a sign of madness, others will contend that Backlund has simply EVOLVED, moving on to a realm where victory and defeat are mere words—words which are of no concern to him. But maybe that's just because his work in this world is done; and after going through a perfunctory series of rematches with Diesel, Bob Backlund—The Beast—will disappear again.

But then you may remember that according to The Book of Revelation there is a second beast, a beast that will force "all men, small and great, rich and poor, slave and free, to accept a stamped image on their right hand or forehead." A beast that "will not allow a man to buy or sell anything unless he is first marked with the name of the beast or with the number that stood for its name." Maybe it's also a beast that will find a way to survive The Heart of Darkness.

Of course it's possible that that beast will just be Bob Backlund again, this time wearing a mask. And a different aftershave. Something like Brut.

****************************************************

Originally published, in June, 1995, in Wrestling World. A lot of this story is actually true. Stephen Stills, soap opera actress Jill Larson, and Bianca Jagger (accompanied by Calvin Klein), were, like me, among the guests at the 1992 Democratic Convention at Madison Square Garden in New York. And I actually was at the New Vegas Lounge with old friends Eddie Dean and Jim Rogers, watching the wrestling match where Bob Backlund actually did defeat Bret Hart to regain the WWF title. Of course, just about everything else written here about Bob Backlund was completely made up. But that, thanks to my old friend Stephen Ciacciarelli, the former editor of Wrestling World, was the joy of writing about wrestling.

As for Bill Clinton being a one term president, that wasn't fiction. That was just wrong—though at the time things weren't look very good for him (and this was before Monica Lewinsky).

One final note: Bob Backlund, in 2000, actually ran for the United States House of Representatives. A Republican, he lost. Nowadays, he runs a bail bond company in Connecticut.

The Erotic Landscape of New York (an excerpt from The Edge of the World)

2005-12-15T20:05:00.000-05:00

When I moved to New York City I was struck by the sensuality of the landscape. I mean, I knew about the sensuality of the women there—indeed, when I was just a visitor to the city that was the thing that stood out most in my mind. But only upon moving to New York, and becoming a resident, did I begin to fathom that the physical structure of the city itself was rife with concupiscent images.

First were the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Seeing them on the drive into town they seemed like mere skyscrapers, nothing more than concrete, steel, and glass. It was an image that bespoke not of sensuality but of those decidedly non-erotic activities of business and industry. Yet, beholding the towers from a closer perspective, while standing on the far side of West Street, I began to see something else; and what I saw were a woman's legs, stretched upwards towards the sky as if to anticipate the crucial moment when, spreading them, she allows her lover to enter her.

I often took walks to West Street for this very reason. There was a spot, about two thirds of the way down from Carlisle Street going towards Rector, where the erotic effect was at its most vivid. And in moments of fancy I could practically hear the conversation between this very long legged woman and her unseen lover—conversations in which she would at first tease him, even scold him, before begging, like a desperate woman just set loose upon the soil of Manhattan, to be fucked and fucked hard.

The next area of Manhattan to have erotic implications for me was the neighborhood around the Flatiron Building. Whenever I ventured there I found myself enamored by the fragrance of the neighborhood—though perhaps "fragrance" isn't the right word as "smell" is the word which best describes what entered my nostrils upon my heading up Broadway towards Twenty-Third Street. It was a smell not unlike that which permeates the atmosphere around the open-air fish stalls in Chinatown, which is to say that it was the smell of a woman.

I investigated this matter over the course of a few weeks, at the end of which I discovered that the smell was emanating from The Flatiron Building itself. It seems that through its triangular shape (and through some variety of sympathetic magic), this famous New York structure had become a gigantic working replica of a woman's genitals, with the wide area of the triangle at Twenty-Second Street being the beginning of the pubic region, and the narrow tip at Twenty-Third Street being the entrance to the vagina.

Not surprisingly, I found that gently rubbing The Flatiron Building at this point would cause moisture to seep through the stone. Soon the masonry itself would give way, becoming fleshlike, so that I could insert my fist, or entire arm even, into the building's viscous opening. In fact, on a few very pleasant occasions, I was able to place my entire head into the opening, happily lapping up the building's moisture as I caressed the soft outer masonry with my hands.

Although there were other structures in New York with similar erotic qualities, The World Trade Center and The Flatiron Building were, for me, the most significant. There were days when, despondent over the loss of loved ones, I found my salvation in these solid forms. When, through the static state of their being, I found both comfort and knowledge—and a sense of calm separation from those forms which, by their fleeting nature, eluded me.

And in the strange days which lie ahead—days when the incidents of my past life fade into shapeless anecdotes to go along with the odd trinkets I leave behind—these structures, although they never belonged to me, will be as a legacy bestowed upon my memory, speaking even more than these words of who I am or who I was. And though these great structures may one day be destroyed, their memory will remain, carrying me through an eternity which persists beyond streets and skyscrapers, beyond continents and oceans, beyond the air itself and that final, shiver inducing cataclysm we call The Edge Of The World.

Excerpt originally published in Pink Pages, 1995.

A True Star

2005-12-06T00:03:00.000-05:00

My friend Michael and I
are sitting at an outdoor cafe
on Avenue A, drinking beer,
when we spot Lady Miss Kier,
the singer of the hot new band
Deee-Lite.
She’s walking down the street
dressed in a psychedelic body suit
which she fills with sweet curves
and pleasant oases of darkness.

Everyone at the cafe,
everyone on the street,
and everyone in the windows
of the buildings on Avenue A
stop eating, drinking, driving
to watch Lady Miss Kier
as she goes by,
and my friend Michael says,
“Now there’s a True Star.”

And with those words I start to wish
that I had the sort of talent
and presence that could give me
such fame and admiration.
But the only talents I have
are for drinking beer
and fucking up.
Very common talents, yes,
but I’m working on
doing them with great style
and in great proportions,
so that one day,
when I walk down Avenue A
to the store to buy beer,
people will stop and say,
“Hey, that guy’s
the biggest drunk in town.”
People will stop their cars
in the middle of the street,
walk up to me and say,
“You’re the guy who came to town
and fucked up REALLY big...
Can I have your autograph?”

“Sure,” I’ll say,
and I’ll sign his copy of
Fuck-Ups Of The Lower East Side
with the words,
“From a great fuck-up
to a little fuck-up.
Here’s looking
down
at you.”

Originally published in Rant, 1993.

Evguénie Sokolov

2005-11-22T17:11:00.000-05:00

by Serge Gainsbourg
translated by John and Doreen Weightman
TamTam Books

Like Charles Bukowski, Lucien Ginzburg was a lecherous dog of a man. Blunt, obscene, and, at times, even childish, both were men of pronounced appetites. Born in Germany in 1920 to an American soldier and a German woman, Bukowski came to the U.S. with his family at the age of three; soon the German tongue, which he had heard everywhere in his first few years, began to slip away from his memory. Born in Paris in 1928, Lucien Ginzburg was the son of Russian Jews who had fled the Bolshevik revolution; in time, Lucien’s father changed the family name from Ginzburg to the more French sounding “Gainsbourg,” with Lucien being reborn as Serge Gainsbourg. Bukowski grew up to work a series of dull, boring jobs before finally becoming a writer; Gainsbourg had a similar work history before he began earning his pay as a musician. And although both were controversial, each came to be highly regarded in their respective fields—in Europe, anyway.

Bukowski eventually gained some measure of respect back in the U.S. But Gainsbourg hasn’t quite made it over here, where for a long time he was known only for “Je t’aime... Moi non plus,” his 1969 song which, featuring the orgasmic moans of his then girlfriend, actress Jane Birkin, created a scandal worldwide. As far as America was concerned, Gainsbourg was a one hit wonder.

Across the ocean, however, his fame continued. Gainsbourg went on to romance the likes of Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, and Isabelle Adjani, among others. The list of his lovers goes on and on—not bad for a man no one would describe as a pretty boy. But sometimes it was unrequited lust. As in a video from 1985 where Gainsbourg shared a bed with his teenage daughter, Charlotte, and gazed at her longingly through bloodshot eyes as she sang his song, “Lemon Incest.” Or that time when, during a live French television broadcast, Gainsbourg declared, “I want to fuck you” to fellow talk show guest Whitney Houston.

Gainsbourg was, above all, an honest man. Whether you liked it or not, he said whatever was on his mind, and for that the French awarded Gainsbourg the prestigious Croix d’Officier de L’Ordre des Art et Des Lettres. When Gainsbourg died on March 2, 1991, it was something akin to a national day of mourning in France. Because no matter how much he shocked or provoked, his French audience at the very least appreciated and, in many cases, revered him.

Gainsbourg is now becoming more widely known in the United States. But with the dark irony of his songs being lost when left untranslated, it’s no wonder that those who’ve heard only his early jazz inspired pop songs take him simply as a kitschy performer of French “lounge” music. (As it was, Gainsbourg employed, at various times, elements of jazz, African, rock ‘n roll, reggae, rap, even classical music—the melody for “Lemon Incest,” in fact, was a takeoff from one of Chopin’s etudes).

Recent English language covers of his songs by musicians like Nick Cave associate Mick Harvey haven’t helped much in changing the more limited perception of him. So while in France he was considered “on the edge” by young and old alike (at many concerts he performed towards the end of his life, the audience was made up of a majority of teenagers), here he is still seen as an oddball rather than as a “cutting edge” artist. Gainsbourg himself expected as much, and when asked if he had any plans to perform in the U.S., replied, “Why bother? They wouldn’t understand.” Indeed, as Russell Mael of the band Sparks notes, Gainsbourg’s musical satire isn’t easy for many Americans to “get.”

But music wasn’t Gainsbourg’s only means of expression. He was also a photographer, filmmaker, actor, and writer; and in 1980 Gainsbourg published Evguénie Sokolov—his only (and very brief) novel—which has now been reissued here in the U.S. Like much of Charles Bukowski’s work, it presents a first person narrator who’s a little on the rough side, and places him in a rather preposterous situation—the situation here being that Evguénie Sokolov, a painter, has found that his lifelong malady of excessive flatulence has helped him improve his art:

“...while I was testing my mastery by practicing the drawing of sewing needles with a single movement of the pen—a down stroke, then an upward stroke to open the eye, followed by a down stroke to close it—a particularly violent explosion of wind broke a pane in the glass roof, causing my hand to shake like that of an electrolytic child...”

Seeing that farting while in the act of drawing has bestowed “a dazzling beauty” upon his lines, Sokolov builds a contraption out of a bicycle seat and springs. Sitting on this as he draws, Sokolov quickly produces a series of forty “gasograms” and shows them to the most important art dealer in town who immediately gives him a contract. Sokolov’s fame and marketability as an artist rise quickly. He begins having affairs with both women and men, but soon begins to rely more on prostitutes “who attended to my pleasure without my having to worry about theirs.” He also takes to drinking sweet, old-fashioned cocktails (“Lady of the Lake,” “Baltimore Eggnog,” “Corpse Reviver”) to the point where the combination of alcohol and sugar would lead him to stumble into elevators at the hotels he stayed in and “stare, glassy-eyed, at the floor indicator.” Like Gainsbourg himself, Sokolov is a dissolute character whose vices are highly conspicuous. And, like Gainsbourg, his vices play an essential role in the creation of his art.

Although Gainsbourg described his novel as autobiographical, he admitted to “distortions reminiscent of Francis Bacon’s paintings. Evguénie is a guy who knowingly destroyed himself because he wanted fame, and that fame destroyed him.” Among the distortions are Sokolov’s diet of rotten meat and “slightly ‘off’ fish”—a form of sustenance meant to ensure Sokolov’s grand flatulence and his ability to produce his gas-inspired art—and the consummation of his love for Abigail, an eleven year old deaf mute girl. At any rate, one would hope that these are among the distortions.

What can be said with certainty is that Evguénie Sokolov is not a polite work of literature. Real satire seldom is. And although like a great movie epic it evokes emotions ranging from joy to genuine sadness, Sokolov will never be turned into a big budget Merchant-Ivory production. Nor will it ever be offered as a premium by PBS stations during pledge week. What will happen is that is many who read it will be shocked and disgusted—which is exactly what Gainsbourg would have wanted. “For me, provocation is oxygen,” Gainsbourg once declared.

But unlike the self-indulgent provocations of Madonna, for instance, Gainsbourg’s provocations usually had a purpose, a case in point being his song “Aux Armes Et Caetera,” in which Gainsbourg took the French national anthem and transformed it into a reggae song. Disparaging the militaristic themes of “La Marseillaise,” Gainsbourg’s caustic parody upset everyone from politicians to priests. It also went platinum.

Although Gainsbourg’s musical pranks had serious intentions, he could also be ingenuously playful. “Evguénie Sokolov,” the musical counterpart to his novel, is a three minute “song” throughout which Gainsbourg (backed by famed reggae rhythm section Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare) lets loose with a series of farting noises. Obviously, there were aspects of Gainsbourg’s personality which never outgrew adolescence. Which is exactly what made songs like “Harley-Davidson” (“I don’t need anyone on my Harley-Davidson/ I recognize no one on my Harley-Davidson/ And if I die tonight/ It’s my destiny and my right”) so exhilarating. And lurking beneath the self-destructive behavior of Gainsbourg’s Sokolov is a similar exhilaration.

The present reissue of Evguénie Sokolov, while welcome, is not without its problems, the most prominent of which are the obvious typographical errors that occur in the printed text. Nevertheless, this edition of Sokolov will go a long way towards helping those on this side of the Atlantic come to interpret, and perhaps even appreciate, Gainsbourg.

As for helping to define him, that’s another matter completely. In his introduction to Evguénie Sokolov, Dutch writer Bart Plantenga describes Gainsbourg as “one part rat pack, one part beatnik, Chet Baker, Sinatra, a dash of Dylan, Leonard Cohen’s pungent growl, Tom Waits’ irrepressible inventiveness, Johnny Rotten’s naughtiness...” Which goes to show that, considering the wide variety of artists he brings to mind, Gainsbourg himself is extremely difficult to pin down. And to say, for instance, that his one novel (and, to a certain extent, his life) brings to mind the drunken candor of Charles Bukowski is beside the point. Because despite the many things that may have influenced Gainsbourg, he was, above all, his own man. Because whatever it was Gainsbourg took in, it was inevitably his own by the time he spat it back out.

Movado (Rehearsal #1)

2005-11-12T16:21:00.000-05:00

"I had no idea what Movado was. I didn't care, and didn't want to encourage the man by asking. I was tired from moving furniture, and not in the mood for shopping. But it looked pretty good, I had to admit. A silver metal band, with a black face, and one single diamond-like jewel marking the twelve o'clock spot."

From a film in progress. Read the original story, by Ed Hamilton, at
http://www.pifmagazine.com/SID/290/.

Dazed and Confused: How Disco Changed My Life

2005-10-30T22:53:00.000-05:00

Sometime in the 70's disco came on the scene. The songs were long and repetitious with lyrics which, more often than not, were either sappy or stupid or both. To say that you liked disco was to say you weren't cool. And if on hearing the phrase "Disco sucks," you didn't at least nod your head slightly or come back with a hearty "Right On" (an expression that was on its last legs when disco came around), then people would give you a funny look. It was the sort of look a communist sympathizer would get in the 50's during the McCarthy era.

Now, of course, disco is considered rather cool, if only for nostalgic reasons or as an example of 70's kitsch. Now it's all right to admit, even in the hippest circles, that you like disco. Now it's even all right to admit that as a teenager growing up in the 70's, you had a good time. I know now that I had a good time back then. It's just that in the 70's I didn't know what a good time was.

I was attending the local Jesuit high school then—Gonzaga College High School as it was properly called. I'd gotten there at a time when the Jesuits—who were known for the rigors of their educational system—had loosened up a bit. Thus, while the whole concept of the "me decade" was gathering steam, the Jesuits rebelled by belatedly getting into the hip spirit of the 60's.

Admittedly, some of their attempts at being hip were somewhat embarrassing, as when one teacher presented to our class the liner notes to Grand Funk Railroad's Closer To Home. "They are three who belong to the New Culture setting forth on its final voyage through a dying world..." he quoted, "searching to find a way to bring us all CLOSER TO HOME." It was an attempt by the Jesuits to use contemporary culture as a way of getting us interested in the classics: "Now compare the concept of Grand Funk's voyage to Odysseus's own journey home..." he said, "I think you'll be surprised by the similarities."

Those of us in my small circle of hip friends all looked at each other and snickered, "Oh cool, heh heh heh..." Still, we appreciated that he didn't try to find classical references in some disco song, because that would have been completely uncool. We stayed away from disco, preferring to find our classical references in things like The Mothers Of Invention's We're Only In It For The Money, Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, and The Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat.

We played these records and got drunk and nasty with our drunk and nasty girlfriends—the kind of girls who, on meeting your parents, would offer them a beer or a cigarette as a way of breaking the ice. We were what people called "shirkers" or "slackers," which was a nice way of saying that we were fuck-ups.

But we were smart fuck-ups, with an odd assortment of quirks and obsessions, none of which had anything to do with high school or matters kids of that age are supposed to be concerned with—because we had our own concerns. We drank to excess and wandered around Georgetown, got stoned and caught double features at the old Circle Theater, dropped acid and hung out in the sculpture garden at the Hirshhorn: we needed that "edge" to enjoy ourselves. And in school when we were assigned books like A Separate Peace or Lord Of The Flies—books that were supposed to pique the interest of our young minds—we summarily ignored our assigned reading and turned to books like Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, Naked Lunch, and On The Road.

But while my friends were getting bad grades or were on the verge of flunking out, I was doing well, especially in math and science. I had a knack for these things—it didn't take any real effort on my part. And in the summer between my junior and senior year, I went to the University of Georgia to study chemistry on a National Science Foundation grant. They set me up in a lab in the pharmacy school, no less, leaving me to work on my own. So when I was done each day with my assigned experiments I got to work learning how to make my own LSD. By the end of the summer I had it, in the form of an entire gallon of what we called "sugar water."

Back in Washington my friends and I began taking a lot of it—it was good stuff. But sometimes I was the only one taking any, and it was on one of these occasions, while turning the dial on my girlfriend's car radio from station to station, that I first heard the song. It began with a chunky bass line, a snapping of the high hat, and a vampish piano. And then the words—bold words, daring words—words which, while I was high on acid, seemed to speak to my soul. And the words were:

Fly robin fly
Fly robin fly
Fly robin fly
UP UP TO THE SKY!

And with the line "Up up to the sky" I took off. I was up there, in the sky. I was a fucking bird, a robin, flying over Washington, over the monuments, over the Potomac river, going who knows where. Eventually I reached another city—I hoped it would be Paris or London—but it turned out to be Baltimore. Still, this was the best trip I'd ever had.

A week later I heard the song again over the sound system at the Post Cafeteria across the street from Gonzaga. Though I was completely straight this time I still liked it, loved it even. I thought that this song by The Silver Convention, "Fly Robin Fly," was the coolest thing I'd ever heard. And not only was it cool, it was also, to use a word which I'd never before ascribed to anything in my life, beautiful.

I immediately went out and bought the record—the twelve inch Disco Night In Purgatory mix. This version went on forever, building up slowly with the girls singing "fly robin fly" about a hundred times before finally taking off with that orgasmic "Up up to the sky!"

My friends thought I'd lost my mind—a teenage acid casualty. My girlfriend thought I was joking at first, but when she realized I was serious about liking this song she was not amused. If I actually liked that song what was next, she wondered. Going to football games? Church? The Senior prom?

Well, it wasn't long before I stopped seeing her and my other friends. I suppose that in the back of my mind I felt my old crowd was holding me back; and though it would bean exaggeration to say that "Fly Robin Fly" was what moved me away from them, this song was, at the very least, a catalyst for this departure.

Soon I was hanging out with the straight crowd, the kids the teachers liked, the kids who were supposed to be going places. I ended up doing all the typical high school activities. I joined the science club, the math club, the military strategy club; I got a part in the school play; I even went to the senior prom where the band played my song, the song that had inadvertently given me what my teenage spirit was looking for—namely, a sense of direction.

My old crowd I now considered unsafe or, at best, a dead end. But there were things about the good kids that bothered me too, and what bothered me most was that they didn't seem to have a proper sense of doubt about themselves, which was perhaps the very reason they were going places. Me, I had a different approach to moving ahead. I wanted to move ahead with my sense of doubt intact. It seemed, at that time when a strange sense of idealism was creeping upon me, to be a more honest approach.

Towards the end of senior year my new friends and I had all been accepted at some of the best schools—Harvard, Yale, MIT. I was accepted at Cal Tech, which gave me a full tuition scholarship, room and board, even travel expenses. It wouldn't cost me a dime to go there, to sunny Pasadena, California with its palm trees and leggy blonde California girls. But now that I saw myself on a path to success and well-being, I realized that these were two things I was ill equipped to handle. After all, how on earth could a freaked out loser like me turn himself around and become some sort of a big wheel or one of the mover and shaker types? It could happen, I knew, but I also believed it would be unnatural and that success, for me, would be nothing more than a surface affectation, an act, a scam. Because although there were many things I'd believed in since I was a child—things like ghosts, UFOs, mental telepathy, and the lost continent of Atlantis—one thing I'd never believed in was the so-called American Dream.

Hence, I turned down the scholarship. I went to college in town—to Catholic University—a school where I'd have to pay my own way through. I turned away from science and math and studied English literature instead, which was something I was interested in but had no great talent for. In doing this I thought I was guaranteeing that I'd never become a success.

There's not much to say about my college years. Although it was a time spent mostly with the straight crowd, I still managed to avoid things like fraternities, school sporting events, and homecoming. I also tended to avoid the campus Rathskeller, preferring to do my drinking at Fred's, one of the bars in the local Brookland neighborhood near Catholic. When I did, through some odd circumstance, find myself at the Rathskeller my friends would put songs like "We Are Family" or "Disco Inferno" on the jukebox, songs I actually liked. But I kept to myself that I also liked bands such as The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, and Joy Division. Instead, I'd bring up the subject of "Fly Robin Fly." "It's kind of stupid," I'd say, "but also kind of catchy." "Yeah," they'd answer with a shrug, "it's okay." And then I'd go off to Fred's to drink by myself.

A couple of weeks after graduating from college I got a job driving a car out to some people in San Mateo, California, just south of San Francisco. It was a silver Mercedes Benz with power windows, cruise control, sun roof—the works. After dropping it off and getting paid, I went up to San Francisco and stayed with a girl I'd known from my high school days—someone from my old crowd. She'd moved out there a year earlier and was now, to my surprise, preparing to go to law school. She was the only person from my old crowd that I'd stayed in touch with. That I'd stayed in touch with her had to do, I suppose, with the fact that I'd always secretly had a thing for her. And I also suppose that the reason I took the job driving the car out west was not so much to escape Washington but to see her.

So there I was, in San Francisco, three thousand miles away from Washington, and things were going well. She and I got close very quickly. I was with her for a month, at the end of which I left town. And though I could say that I left because the sense of well-being that had come over me out there was beginning to frighten me somehow—that I still didn't think I could handle success in any form—the real reason for my leaving was that she'd decided, after a day of heavy reflection, that I really wasn't the sort of person she should be with. After all, she was going to law school in the fall, and I was someone who just liked to go out and get drunk, someone without any real plans for the future, someone without a dream.

I took the bus to Los Angeles and checked into a cheap hotel. I'd been there for two days when one afternoon I went to Pasadena and saw the Cal Tech campus. The next day I was on the bus again, making my way slowly back to Washington.

It was a long, depressing ride and somewhere in Texas—I think in the town of Fort Stockton—we had a one hour dinner stop. There was a diner in the bus station there, but I went next door to the local convenience store and got one of those small apple pies and a can of beer. I stood outside, ate the pie, then started on the beer. I was beginning to feel nauseous when a young guy who'd been on the bus came out of the diner carrying his boom box with him. He nonchalantly brushed back his hair, pressed a button on the boom box, then set it down on the ground. To my amazement it began to blast "Fly Robin Fly." As the guy listened to the song he started practicing his disco dance moves, shifting his feet and making these swirling motions with his index fingers.

It was a hideous sight and that song, which I had enjoyed so much in the past, now seemed equally hideous. Because just as Circe had turned Odysseus's men into beasts, "Fly Robin Fly" had transformed me into a creature of ambition at a time when I wasn't at all prepared for it, leaving me here, standing by the roadside in some two-story Texas town ready for a pointless confrontation with an itinerant disco punk.

"Turn that shit down!" I yelled at him.

He looked over to me and sneered. "Who are you to tell me what to do?"

"Just turn the fucking thing down," I yelled again, sneering back at him.

I'd been on the bus some twenty-four hours, while he'd only gotten on at the last stop. I was unwashed and unshaven. I was angry and disgusted. It must have made me look pretty tough. He turned the music down.

I finished my beer, then got on the bus and sat back, waiting for the ride to continue.

Originally written, at the behest of Gillian McCain, for the St. Mark's Poetry Project's reading Epiphany Albums: The Record That Changed My Life, in 1992.

Greyhound Itinerary 1979

2005-10-26T22:58:00.000-04:00

Out of LA at 10 pm, down the San Bernardino Freeway,
past the procession of supermarkets and
highway motels, $9.95 a night, down
the orange and white fluorescent highway
a long way from home.

Southern California palm trees, at 3 in the morning
on a two lane that rides like a rollercoaster;
babies cry or kick just when you think you’re
falling asleep, and you have to step over the kid lying
on the floor in a puddle of piss to make your way to the restroom in back—
you hold yourself steady against the wall.

5 in the morning, a matter of miles to mountain time,
there’s a dead pony in the middle of the road and the bus
swerves, but gets a piece of it anyway.

Arizona, Yuma—one of the hottest cities in America,
7 in the morning.

Arizona—cactus by the roadside and
mountains baking in the sun—
you see a fire this morning, an old shack or something,
burning, behind stationary Southern Pacific railroad cars.

Tonight you’re in an 11th floor hotel room in El Paso.
Looking out your window you can see clear to Mexico.

Avenue Banana

2005-10-14T08:00:00.000-04:00

Living on Avenue Banana in the 1990s was not a lot like drinking tea.
I looked up to the sky. You shouted at people driving by in limousines.
We ate rice and chicken, wondered what to do. You could go home
and watch your color TV or whistle on the way to the sink.
I could lie back on my mattress like a tiny buffalo and wave my hands
at the flies in the air or on my knee. Alone, I saw white paint chips on the ceiling,
felt the need for something green or golden. With you there was sometimes
a step in between, you sitting in my window reading a magazine.
Sometimes we were watching the same movie on different TVs.
Other times I gave you cigarettes like moonshine by the sea.
And though it wasn’t Paris in the 1930s and I couldn’t be Henry Miller
and you couldn’t be Anais Nin, the look in your eyes sometimes
made me think of you as Grace Kelly in bed reading a copy of Vogue,
and me as Jimmy Stewart, asleep by the window with two broken legs.

The Death of the Cool (Pt. 1) (1995)

2005-10-09T11:23:00.000-04:00

Life is cheap. Georgetown isn’t. It costs about six bucks to get what’s called a chicken pot pie at what passes for a coffee shop in the so-called heart of Georgetown. The pot pie is delicious: eating it you know that you’re putting extra air in the spare tire that hangs around your belly. Still, at six bucks a “pie,” you know it would be a lot cheaper for you just to open up a can of Crisco and shove it down your throat before washing it down with a cup of Maxwell House. But saving money isn’t what brought you to Georgetown. You came to Georgetown to spend it. To choose a new pair of pre-washed Calvin Klein jeans. Choose a Tommy Hilfiger jacket with a pattern that looks like the flag of Lichtenstein. Choose a shiny gold nose ring which from a distance will reflect the sunlight in such a way that it looks like a droplet of snot.

That wasn’t always the reason to go to there. Indeed, taking a weekend stroll through Georgetown isn't what it used to be. Where you once found the neighborhood where Washington DC's coolest would congregate, you now have something resembling one of those pretentious suburban shopping malls. Not those dreary strip malls you see in Rockville that were left over from Washington’s Middle Class Diaspora of the sixties, but that new brand of suburban mall: scaled down, red brick buildings you stroll through on your way to Starbuck’s for a decaf cappucino and chocolate chip scone; quaint little shops hawking either expensive clothing or ugly works of art.

Georgetown. It rose out of the swamp in 1751 when some Scotsmen, having forsaken their wee island’s traditions of kilts, bagpipes and haggis for the native American pleasures of smoking, established Georgetown as a tobacco port. With tobacco being a crop that was toiled over by slaves, it wasn’t long before Georgetown also became known for its slave trade, a practice which lasted until the 1862 when it was banned in the District.

Over the years Georgetown grew into a community that was about half black, half white—much like Georgetown University president from 1873 to 1882, the Rev. Patrick F. Healy, who, being the son of a black woman and an Irishman, was half black, half white. And that was pretty much the way Georgetown remained until the FDR’s New Deal brought change. When rich artists and intellectuals, at the behest of Eleanor Roosevelt, flooded the area like vainglorious creatures from the swamp in order to form a more perfect Bohemia.

In the early sixties Georgetown became a popular destination for window shoppers—out of towners who, with their fat, grubby fingers, sullied the wares in shops where Georgetown’s residents actually bought things. But then, as if Georgetown’s suddenly rising popularity with tourists weren’t bad enough, came the cool.

Starting somewhere around 1967, the fabled “summer of love,” Georgetown became the place for hippies to hang out, tossing their long hair on the corner of Wisconsin and M and flaunting the multicolored shirts and love beads which they believed were statements of protest against The Establishment. Young men with glazed eyes and scraggly beards proudly sold acid and pot in front of what would become (and then cease to be) The Key Theater. Young women, deeming undergarments as symbolic shackles of the military industrial complex, wore tie dyed tank tops and hip hugging blue jeans over their bare flesh as they hawked underground newspapers like The Washington Free Press or The Quicksilver Times. It was a time when revolution was in the air, when if you weren't part of the solution you were part of the problem; a time when some people felt the urge to rebel against even the most innocent of conventions, and rather than shake hands upon greeting one another would instead flash the peace sign. Then there were those radicals who, forgoing that quaint pleasantry, would immediately take off their clothes and "get it on" as the saying went.

It all looks pretty silly now, but back then hippie culture with all its myriad trappings was considered cool.

Over the years other things became cool. And just as hippies replaced the beatniks (who in their heyday lugged their bongo drums and facial hair to Dupont Circle), punks replaced the hippies. Coming after the punks were—among other things, and not necessarily in this order—grunge (music to sniff air-freshener to), cigar bars ("Look, Ma, I'm smoking a cigar and drinking a thirty dollar shot of cognac!"), the revival of big band music (for the purpose of a an obnoxiously self-conscious variety of ballroom dancing), and riot grrls (a movement which later metamorphosed into a gigantic book discussion group).

Of course, by the time the media picked up on these later manifestations of Cool they were already dead. Still, one begins to wonder: With hippie, punk, grunge, and riot grrl culture all dead, what's to take their place in the realm of The Cool?

The answer: Nothing. And though on occasion you will find things which people describe, for lack of a more precise term, as "cool," there is nothing left which truly fits that description. Because like Maury Povich shooting blanks into Connie Chung's womb back in the eighties, Cool has failed to reproduce itself. Because after having hung on to a pain ridden existence with the help of life support systems throughout the nineties, Cool has finally kicked the bucket. Because not only has cool been beaten down, it has also been executed.

That's right, Cool, with all its subsidiary attributes of non-conformity, fearlessness and casual sophistication is dead. Although there are those who are desperately faithful to the notion that culture and history are cyclic in nature, Cool is one thing that's not coming back. And although it's still raising a big stink as it wallows in the early stages of cultural decay, that stink will fade to the point where all we'll have left are fetid memories.

But let us not morn the passing of the Cool. Let us, rather, celebrate its demise. It served us well for a time, but that time has passed.

Out Here In What (1985)

2005-10-02T01:12:00.000-04:00

somewhere in Iowa
the beautiful young woman with
the ponytails
got off the Greyhound bus

to meet her dad.
It was Thanksgiving
morning and the sun was out,
here in what I guess is
the “heart of America” or

something close to it.
I looked out the window
and went back to sleep
with my overcoat and backpack,

ready to dream my way
through every rest stop,
every roadside attraction,
every crazy remark,

and the rise and fall of America.

Jim Nabors (1996)

2005-09-24T19:45:00.000-04:00

Jim Nabors first came to the public's attention on The Andy Griffith Show, playing the dim-witted character of "Gomer Pyle." Wearing overalls and a baseball cap—and speaking with a slow southern drawl—Gomer Pyle nonetheless surprised everyone with his booming operatic tenor. This was Nabors' real talent. Despite this great gift, Nabors insisted on pursuing his acting career rather than dedicating himself whole-heartedly to his music—thus, his starring role in Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.

When the show had run its course, Nabors found that, due to the vagaries of public yearnings, he was no longer in demand—either as an actor or as a singer. Forced into early retirement from show business, Nabors settled in Palm Springs, where on good days he sat on his back porch, gazing for hours upon the flowers in his garden. On bad days he stayed inside, the curtains drawn, drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon straight from the can and feeling bitter. Very bitter.

Nabors' final public appearance was a disastrous cameo on a Bob Hope Christmas special during which Brooke Shields taunted him mercilessly by threatening to beat him with a stick. One of the top three tenors of his day—and an inspiration to, among others, a young Luciano Pavarotti—Nabors' last act was to let himself be publicly humiliated by a celebrity who was even more of a has-been than he was, and who never possessed even a trace of his talent.

Originally published in Public Illumination Magazine, 1996.

On These Days Driving (an excerpt from Undercover Angel)

2005-09-17T22:55:00.000-04:00

That Chona Maki gets into the car with me and Carl is probably the greatest vote of confidence either of us has had in years. All she knows about me is that all day I’ve been buying drinks for everyone in the bar, and all she knows about Carl is that he’s got a job he hates. Of course, by now, she’s nearly as drunk as we are, and when I assure her that Carl is the best drunk driver in the Mid-Atlantic, she believes me.

“Alcohol on Carl acts like ritalin on a kid with attention deficit disorder,” I explain to her. For some reason I feel as if I’ve just told her a lie, but it’s true: Carl actually is a better driver when he’s drunk than in those few hours in the day when he’s completely sober. “Where alcohol makes the rest of us sloppy, with Carl it’s like pressing the turbo button on your computer. He gets quicker. Sober, he’d never have been able to figure out that you came here from San Francisco, and that you’re half Japanese, half Filipino, or any of that other shit.”

Carl was right about everything. Chona even showed us her driver’s license, which showed her address in San Francisco, to prove she wasn’t playing with us when she said she actually did just get here from California.

“Well come on, let’s go,” Chona yells, sitting next to Carl in the front seat. We have no idea where to go. All we know is that it’s seven in the evening and that sometimes even drinkers like us need a little fresh air.

Carl presses a button on the dashboard, and the top of his ’72 Camaro lifts up, then slides down behind us. He presses another button and all the windows roll down.

“Well, all riiiight!” Chona exclaims. “Let’s get this motherfucker on the road!”

Carl steps on the gas and we’re off.

About half an hour later we’re trying to find this place called Dickerson Quarry, when we realize we don’t have anything to drink. We’re out of DC now, having driven up Connecticut Avenue, dodging through what was left of rush hour traffic, at about fifty-five miles per hour—well under the highway speed limit.

“As long as you’re going under the highway speed limit,” Carl assured us, “cops here don’t much care how fast you drive in town. In fact, they’ll respect you a little more if you go about thirty miles over the city speed limit. Cause if you’re going that fast in town, they figure that you know what you’re doing. And goddamnit, I know what I’m doing.”

I’d remembered Dickerson Quarry vaguely as a place I went once when I was a teenager. A quarry about the size of a football field, it had been filled with water since sometime in the 50s. Some friends of mine in high school knew about it and went there sometimes for the purpose of what we discreetly referred to as meditation. If Dickerson Quarry hadn’t been pumped out and paved over to make way for a strip mall in the quarter century since I’d last been there, it would be a good place for us to hang out and drink. So if we were going to go there we’d better get us something to drink.

Carl jerks the car off the main road and into a strip mall. Moving slowly, it feels as if we’re slithering along the ground like snakes as we check each storefront for the word “liquor” or for some big ugly poster advertising beer. And for all we know, and for all I remember, we could already be at Dickerson Quarry. Or where it used to be, anyway.

On spotting a bright red neon “liquor” sign, I hand a hundred dollar bill to Chona, who then lifts herself from her seat and jumps over the car door. A few minutes later she walks out of the store cradling a big shopping bag in her arms. Handing the bag to me, she jumps back in the car as I start unloading the bag’s contents: a fifth of Jack Daniels, a Fifth of Schmirnoff, three six-packs of Dos Equis, and bag full of lemons.

“Whoa, I love you, baby,” Carl says on seeing the three six-packs.

“Don’t be an asshole,” Chona scolds as she twists off the cap and hands a bottle of beer to Carl.

Carl takes a swig then slides the bottle between his leg and the car door as we start to move again. Pulling out a knife, Chona slices open a lemon, takes a gulp from her bottle of vodka, then bites down on one of the lemon halves. It’s sunset now, and with the wind blowing her silky dark hair behind her, she looks at Carl then at me and whispers, as if she were telling us a secret, “This is cool as shit.”

By now the idea of Dickerson Quarry is far in the past for us. And as we move ahead into the night we feel no need to replace it with another idea. At least not yet.

We pass through suburb after suburb, from Aspen Hill into Olney. Past a McDonald’s and towards a Burger King. A Chevy dealer squeezes us in on the right while a Toyota dealer swerves ahead of us on the left. Safeway signs metamorphose into Food Lion signs then into things not even Carl nor I have ever heard of.

“We’re now entering the fabulous suburb of... Brookville,” I announce to Chona. “It’s like this all the way to Baltimore. It’s the true eighth wonder of the world—this gigantic strip mall that stretches for thirty or so miles from Washington to Baltimore.”

Chona looks from side to side. We’re on some country highway now, the supermarkets, car dealers, and fast food restaurants having suddenly disappeared from sight. The only thing we see are the blurry images of trees that whip past us. Ahead there’s nothing but darkness until Carl finally turns on the headlights.

“Wow,” Chona says, “doesn’t this fucken city ever end?” She lets out a burp.

“Well, yes and no,” I say, mumbling to myself. I don’t bother to explain.

Suddenly we’re all silent, feeling the rise and fall of the road as we move over the landscape. We realize this isn’t some one night joyride: we’re in it for the long run. What’s more, there’s no need to say this out loud. But alcohol is like that sometimes. Once you get to the point when you’ve lost the ability to speak—after hours and hours of drinks and rambling, effortless conversation—you also tend to find that you’ve lost the need to speak as well.

In a moment Chona is slumped back in her seat. In another the sound of her snoring merges with that of the wind rushing over the car. As she coughs in her sleep, the open bottle of vodka slips out of her hand and its contents pour out between the passenger and driver seats. I breathe deeply, taking in the blend of fresh air and vodka, and lay down in the back. While I’m still able to open my eyes, I make sure to look at the stars overhead: they turn blurry and start to spin as they go into orbit around me.

From a novel in progress.

The American Dream Will Start in the Minds of the Deprived and in the Hearts of the Depraved (an excerpt from Undercover Angel)

2005-09-09T23:00:00.000-04:00

A week later, on a Friday night, I got a message that a woman named Mary Lindy had called. The name sounded familiar but I wasn’t quite sure where I’d heard it before. Later that night she called again.

“José,” she said in a thick Southern accent, “this is Mary Lindy from the Association of American Physicians.”

I then remembered that I’d met her at a job interview there—a job I didn’t get. It was a strange hour, I thought, to be telling me that they’d decided to hire me after all—but that wasn’t why she was called.

“I’m calling to let you know that the reason you didn’t get the job at the AAP was that you were discriminated against.”

Suddenly I felt lightheaded. Like a man who had picked the winning numbers in the weekly Powerball drawing, I was in a state of shock—but not because I was a winner. It was because now, after all these years, I finally had evidence of what was preventing me from becoming one of America’s greatest heroes.

Mary went on to explain that Kate Powers, the woman in charge of hiring for the job I applied for at the AAP, wanted a white Catholic woman for the job. When looking through the resumes they’d received, Kate Powers would immediately toss aside the resumes of people with foreign sounding names. That I got called in for an interview was only because Mary saw my resume and—thinking I’d be perfect for the job—insisted I be brought in for an interview. But as far as Kate Powers was concerned, my race and sex negated all my other qualifications for the job.

Mary suggested I meet with her so she could explain the situation in detail. Since she and her boyfriend lived in a group house in Adams-Morgan, just a fifteen minute walk from my parents’ house, we decided to meet there the following afternoon.

Mary and her boyfriend, Dan Thompson, were both from Charleston, South Carolina and met when they were in college there. Mary—a tall, slim woman who dressed like a mod Londoner from the sixties—didn’t look at all like a southerner. When I first met her I was astounded to hear the slow Southern drawl that seemed to float from her mouth when she spoke. On the other hand, her boyfriend, Dan, looked exactly like I thought a Southerner should look: tall and paunchy and dangling a thick beard from the bottom of his face. I knew as soon as I saw him that he was also one of those people who needed at least two six packs of beer to make it through the day.

We discussed our situation for about an hour. Mary had already gone to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and was confident that the AAP couldn’t take any action against her without risking further damage to themselves. “If you want to pursue this, you should also go to the EEOC,” she advised, “and speak to a lawyer too.”

Dan’s advice was of a more philosophical nature. “Don’t let those assholes fuck with you,” he said calmly.

Being broke, I had nothing to lose: I was going to go ahead with a lawsuit. With that decided, Dan asked if I wanted a beer. Soon we were up on the rooftop deck of the house, finishing off the second of two six packs and opening up a fifth of bourbon. Since the bathroom was down a flight, Dan and I started pissing off the roof.

“I do this all the time,” Dan said as I listened for the sound of urine hitting the alley three floors below us. Dan had a Ph.D. in Philosophy, but at the moment he was unemployed. “Most of the people teaching in universities nowadays are assholes,” he maintained. “I wouldn’t walk across a quad to piss on their shoes. It ain’t worth it.”

It was after midnight when I finally left. On the way home as I passed all the bars in Adams-Morgan I made a resolution—a resolution that if I were to win this lawsuit I would never go home at this laughably early hour. I’d drink until last call, roam the deserted streets at four in the morning with a couple of other professional drunks or by myself even... in those perfect hours when the traffic signals show neither green or yellow, but a bright flashing red keeping time like a heartbeat.

That was my favorite time of day, because during those few hours before dawn was when I owned this town—or any town. Nothing bad had ever happened to me between the hours of three and six in the morning. I’d been out on the street hundreds of times in the those hours, in Washington and New York, wearing grungy clothes or wearing my best suit, and nothing had ever happened. The rest of the day was when the bad shit happened. I’d been mugged at eight in the evening, shot at at two in the afternoon, hit by a car at nine in the morning. But during those perfect hours nothing bad had ever crossed my path, no matter how drunk or reckless I was. If only I had the money I would stay inside, drinking heavily, heroically even, before hitting the streets at three in the morning. Stumbling down the sidewalks past the muggers, beggars and junkies, I’d struggle to hold my head up high. But even if I couldn’t, I’d still get away with it, and more.

After all, I had a dream—and drinking was going to an important part of it. Mary and Dan’s dream was to leave Washington and move up to New York where they’d work their way up to a swank apartment in the Chelsea Hotel. New York may have been part of my dream too—I wasn’t quite sure yet. All I knew was that most of my friends in DC were telling me, “You’re not going to get anything.” They’d say it scornfully, as if I didn’t deserve to win the lawsuit. As if the idea of me actually being discriminated against was absurd and that for me to pursue this was a threat to their own dreams.

If there’s one thing I’d learned over the years, it was that people didn’t like anyone fucking with their view of the world, and pretty soon I lost most of my old friends in DC. My drinking buddies now were just Mary and Dan—though later Carl would come to town, intent on just passing through. But when the girl he came here with hooked up with some guy in the Hell’s Angels everything changed.

With his version of the American Dream shattered by the prowess of a five foot two Hell’s Angel who called himself “The Drummer,” Carl lost the will to move. Soon Carl realized that, like me, he was stuck here in Washington. Stuck in this stupid little hick town that holds sway over the entire world.

From a novel in progress.

My Multicultural Drinking Life Pt. 2 (an excerpt from Undercover Angel)

2005-09-05T21:14:00.000-04:00

I came to the conclusion that my future in New York had been in Claudia Schiffer’s hands. Claudia—with her tiny, round eyes which always seemed to be staring at the ground on the day I spent with her—was my last chance in New York. If she’d given me a little bit of time I could have gotten myself started again, but my smell got in the way of commerce with her.

I walked all the way home from the Shandon Star, down to Avenue B and Third St. Before going up to my apartment I stopped at the Chinese carryout on the corner and got an order of sweet and sour pork. Opening the door to my building I saw my landlord.

“José Baby!” he yelled out. Jack always called me Baby. He was in his mid-sixties, and with his full head of dyed black hair looked like someone who, if he were living in a small town, would be running the local bowling alley. Somewhere in the back of his mind he must have remembered that it was hip to call people Baby. That, plus his inability to resist any opportunity to make a pun with my name put the words “José Baby” in the back of my mind for the four years I’d been living in the building.

“Hey, Jack,” I answered quietly. I was hoping he wouldn’t bring up the subject of my late rent check. All Jack did was point to the bag in my hand.

“Chinks?” he asked. Maybe he thought he was being hip by using the word “Chinks” with me.

“Ah, yeah,” I said.

Jack nodded, saying, “Yeah, it’s good stuff, yeah!”

The next day I told Jack I was leaving, that I’d just leave him my security deposit in lieu of the back rent I owed. It was all right with him.

“José Baby,” he said, “if you come back to town, come see what I’ve got available.” Jack was sad to see me go, as was the old Puerto Rican lady who lived next door to me.

“You don’t know who move in now,” Anna Garcia said. “Too many junkie people here.”

Being just a sullen drinker, I was civilized in Anna’s eyes. But the crackhead who lived down the hall and the people she’d sometimes see shooting up in the foyer were another matter. Of course, if I had the money, I would have stayed. And although the most I ever did for Anna was to help her carry her groceries up the three flights of stairs, I now felt obligated to help her out somehow.

“Someone nice will move in,” I reassured her. “Jack’s probably tired of those people who pay the rent in cash.”

Anna gave me a worried look. She didn’t understand what I meant.

“It’ll be all right,” was all I could say.

I packed my things into a U-Haul truck and drove down to Washington the next day. There I was, back in the house I grew up in, living with my parents and my younger brother, BB.

The traditional role of a good Filipino son was to live at home, helping out the family, until he got married—preferably to a nice Filipino girl. BB was following tradition, keeping a steady job at the Library of Congress as he helped my Mother and Father, who were both retired, with the bills. I strayed from that traditional role when I left the Library, left home and moved to New York. My older brother, Ray, had left home too and moved to Baltimore, but he’d gotten married. As for me, not only had I left home before getting married, but I was now back and had no money to speak of. Not that my parents weren’t glad to have me back in Washington, but somewhere in the back of their minds the term “fuck-up” must have seemed the most accurate way to describe me.

So I went out looking for work—not writing gigs, but straight jobs. I sent out resumés and those few times when I was actually called in for an interview I’d refrain from drinking the night before: I didn’t want the stench of bourbon to keep me from gaining entrance into the realm of the nine to five workday. But my one night stands of clean living didn’t help, because no matter how sharply I dressed, how charming I acted during interviews, I couldn’t get a job.

It would have been easier for me if I were white. Of course some people I knew from the time I worked on Capitol Hill were skeptical of this.

“It’s not because you’re Asian,” Joe Carone told me. Carone was my bartender friend at the Tune Inn two blocks down from the Library of Congress. “It’s because you’re a fuck-up.”

Carone was telling me this at a time when all the bartenders at the Tune Inn were alarmed that the grocery store next to the Tune Inn had been bought by a Korean family. Being just a fuck-up, I posed no threat. But a hard working Korean family, that was another matter.

“They’re taking over everything!” was Bob Dill’s response when he heard about the sale. Dill was another regular at the Tune. A mechanic, he was at the Tune everyday like me. And although I’d been drinking with him at the Tune for several years—sometimes at the barstool right next to his—we had never exchanged a single word.

Which was the way it was with some people—for them I just wasn’t there. And though before I’d gone to New York I kept quiet about these things whenever I drank on the Hill, I was no longer the mellow drunk I used to be.

“I don’t think you need to worry about the Koreans taking over your grease monkey gig,” I said to Bob Dill. “They wouldn’t want it.”

Bob Dill raised his chin and lowered his eyes at me. “Was I talking to you, asshole?” he yelled.

“Fuck you,” I snapped back. When I was drunk the sharp smartass comments didn’t always come that easily.

“You fucking gook!” he screamed as he shoved me off my bar stool.

I got back up and lunged at him.

Of course, everyone thought it was me who had started the fight—and I had—though it was Bob Dill who threw the first punch. Well, actually it was me who threw the first actual punch, but I wouldn’t have raised my fist had Bob Dill not shoved me off my bar stool. Yet that was my first victory that night: getting someone like Bob Dill to recognize my existence. My second victory was when I broke his nose and knocked him out. It was just a lucky punch; and despite the running commentary from a drunken Senate staffer—who noted with sadness, “And the karate chop takes him down for the count!”—all I was doing was wildly throwing straight-ahead punches.

Although I was the victor, I was no hero in the eyes of the crowd which had suddenly turned silent. “It wasn’t fair,” I heard someone say, “he knows karate.”

I stood there for a moment, remembering the dedication in Hartzell Spence’s biography of Ferdinand Marcos, For Every Tear A Victory:

TO
FERDINAND EDRALIN MARCOS
WHO: had he been born white-skinned on the American
mainland rather than brown-skinned in the
U.S.Philippines, would today be counted one
of America’s greatest heroes.

As ludicrous as the dedication may have seemed at first, it was nevertheless true. Marcos would have been a hero. And he could have gotten away with everything – with robbing his people and killing his rivals. His reign over the seven thousand plus islands of the Philippines would have been described as a story worthy of Shakespeare with Marcos being remembered fondly as a tragic hero.

I stood there for a moment over the unconscious, bloody-nosed head of Bob Dill. I stood there looking like the bad guy from some stupid parody of West Side Story.

A few days after my first round TKO over Bob Dill I ran into Joe Carone on the street.

“They don’t want you coming in there anymore,” he said, shaking his head.

But I already knew.

On The Road (1984)

2005-08-31T22:02:00.000-04:00

Watching TV
in my hotel room
in downtown
New Orleans.
I'm by the freeway and
my room feels cold.
I'm
thinking
about
birds.

The Angel Of 11th Street (1991)

2005-08-24T23:26:00.000-04:00

At the end of another drunken week
of beer and whiskey and wine
I walked home
and on the street I met a woman
who bummed a cigarette from me
and offered a piece of candy in return.
She told me she was heading
to 11th Street by St. Mark's Church
to make money by giving guys blow jobs.
She was young and beautiful and spoke
in tones of the brightest white light,
and I wished her luck, said goodbye
and walked away.

And I've seen people hit by cars
and people OD'ing on the street
as crowds gathered to watch,
and I've seen people staring
into space at nothing
because there was nothing left to see
that didn't make them sad or mad or weary,
and I've seen men and women
step from the doorways of buildings
where their friends or lovers live,
each parting a necessary loss
when the only thing left to be
is alone.

And as the days go by
what you remember most
is the distance between things,
the endings of great moments and pleasures,
and as you walk
in the sharp eye of the midday sun
or beneath the cum-colored shining
of a crescent moon
the weather is always
the same.

And tonight
The Angel Of 11th Street
is standing on a corner
selling blow jobs and buying candy
to keep the devil at arms' length
and heaven close to the steady beating
of her holy heart.

Dear Friends

2005-08-21T01:01:00.000-04:00

Yeah, we moved. Bought a house. A house down the road. Down the river. Down south.
Well, it's not that much further south, but we're probably going to want to buy a Chevy pickup truck with a gun rack, and I'm probably gonna have to grow a mullet, and Norris is gonna have to start going by two names so that she's called 'Norris Renee,' and Kate is gonna have to chew tobacco and call us Paw and Maw and wear halter tops. All that so that the neighbors don't harass us all the time and piss on our lawn and throw turds at us because they think we're Commies.

OK. This is the deal. We've gone so far down below that now SATAN worships US. Our neighborhood is called Fairview Village which is short for Fairview Village OF THE DAMNED. Yeah, we'll be buying our guns at Wal-Mart now (take that Rosie O'Donnell you fat fucking retard). Hell, we'll be buying our cheese and our lard and our porn there too! Wait, they don't sell porn at Wal-Mart. Well, fuck me!

Actually, it's a nice quiet neighborhood, about 4 miles south of where we used to live, with lots of green, lots of trees, and only about 2 miles to the water. The neighborhood association meets every month at the senior citizen center. Kate has a big yard to play in, we have a bigger kitchen, and I have a great big shed in the back which I can use for a meth lab. The neighbors are really old—even older than me, so they won't know what's going on. One of them, I think, is blind—anyhow, he never seems to react when I give him the finger. And another neighbor never noticed when I accidentally set his social worker on fire. (It was quite a fire, too. Man, them were some flames!)

We'll be sending out invitations to our housewarming party real soon. In the meantime, just keep buying my books.

Love,
Norman Mailer and Norris Church

Nausicaa in New York (an excerpt from The Edge of the World)

2005-08-19T22:02:00.000-04:00

Like a having a dog hump your leg, it felt odd at first, having this stranger touch me. But in an instant I found myself detached from what was really happening, imagining that I was watching myself from a distance like an actress watching a movie in which she is the star, an actress performing a scene in which she is having an affair with a married man who is no longer attracted to his wife.

Suddenly I was someone and somewhere else, a young woman in Los Angeles—a secretary, in fact— seducing her boss, Mr. Eliot, who after years of devoting himself to his business discovers in himself a desire to be free of everything his business demands of him. He had begun by having an affair with me, a situation which he believed would invigorate him but which in the end left him feeling more lifeless than ever.

After a few months his wife finds out about his indiscretions, and with her and his children now shunning him he peers out the window of his office as his secretary sits in the next room typing up a memo. Opening the window, he climbs onto the ledge of the building, looking to the sidewalk twenty stories below. Kicking his right foot out from the ledge, he then leans forward in a gesture which, despite his sense of dejection, is more an act of curiosity than of despair. Falling, he hears the sound of traffic growing louder and, just before he hits the ground, the sound of a woman screaming accompanied by the slight clangor of a minor car accident a few feet away from where his body finally lands.

It might have been a scene from a movie, but then again it might have been from real life—a scene I'd either witnessed or read about in a newspaper. But whether it was from fact or fantasy, that was what I felt, what I perceived, in the space of a minute during which a strange man felt my breasts. It was a sad story, I suppose, but just as I wasn't one to cry at the movies, neither was I one to cry in real life; and when the peep show window began to close and the grey haired man withdrew his hands from beneath it, I found that I was ready for the next film, the next tabloid report, the next suicide, and the next mid afternoon fender bender on a busy city intersection.

I got off work at midnight. .

Walking out the door of the House of Blue Lights, I went to the corner of 43d Street and Broadway, where I stood still, regarding the neon signs, the illuminated billboards, the headlights of cars, the persistent opening and closing of doors, and the sometimes faint, sometimes blaring noises that accompanied everything. The scene there reminded me of a carnival just before closing, of that time when the throngs of people, eating cotton candy or toting the stuffed animals they'd won for their sweethearts, had begun to dissipate.

That was always the time when the lights of the merry-go-round and the ferris wheel seemed at their brightest, when their movements seemed the most frantic—because you knew that very soon everything would be dark and still. Indeed, it was always the moment right before the end when life was at its most vivid—or at any rate that how it would be in the best of worlds. And this gleaming intersection, with its bursts of light, its lost noises, and its prolonged stance of twilight, seemed to indicate that I was approaching ever closer to my ideal, and that I was, finally, after many wrong turns and false endings, on the right path.

I stood there in its midst for what must have been an hour or more before I began to feel tired and cold. Opening up my bag, I took out my jacket, put it on, then headed south on Broadway. I kept walking until I reached Madison Square Park, where, at the corner Broadway and 23d St., I sat on a bench facing east. The clock on the tower of the building across the way showed that it was after 2 AM. I stayed there for another hour before I began walking again. Going down Broadway, I passed through Union Square, walked past all the closed stores and restaurants near Houston Street, continued on past Canal Street, past City Hall on down to Battery Park, where I rested again, gazing across the water towards the lights of New Jersey and the Statue of Liberty.

It was there, pushing my bag to the opposite side of the bench where I sat, that I finally lay down. Using my bag as a pillow for my head, I fell fast asleep. My dreams that night were altogether pleasant, filled with visions of the lights from Times Square, visions which made me feel as if I were floating, as if in my sleep the waters of the Hudson had risen above the railings surrounding the park, sweeping me down through the narrows and out to the ocean.

When I awoke the park had begun to fill with people out for a Sunday morning stroll. I picked up my bag and headed uptown again, this time passing through Chinatown where, at a small shop on Bayard St., I bought a knife. It was a beautiful weapon, with a long silver blade which curved up delicately at the tip, and a red wooden handle upon which was carved the image of a dragon. I had decided that even if I never slept in the park again, it was a good idea for me to carry some kind of protection—especially for those occasions when, after leaving the House of Blue Lights, I would be walking home alone late at night.

Because that was how I had planned on getting around New York—by walking. Not that I was afraid of what might be going on in the subways or on the streets, for that matter. It was just that by walking, and staying away from subway trains, buses, and taxis, I would be better able to control my distance from people. And although on the subway the knife would be a necessity perhaps, like food or water, I concluded that on the streets (or wherever I found myself) it would grant me a kind of luxury, a sense of privilege that even an elegant apartment or a fancy clothes could never provide me with.

Slipping the knife into the inside pocket of my jacket, I continued uptown until 31st St. where just off of Fifth Avenue I found the Wolcott Hotel. With rooms there costing fifty dollars a night, it was the cheapest place I'd found so far save for those places where I'd have to share a bathroom. I gave the clerk fifty, leaving another fifty for a deposit, then got on the elevator to the seventh floor. On opening door 717 I saw that my room was utterly plain but clean. With a single bed covered by a white bedspread, a somewhat rickety nightstand on top of which was a phone, and a dresser on which sat a lamp and a television, this room would do for the moment.

I set down my bag and went to window. Raising the Venetian blinds I saw that I was looking out the back of the hotel, opposite the back of another building, and turning my head up I could see a small rectangular portion of an overcast sky. Standing there at the window, I kicked off my shoes, took off my jacket, my shirt, my bra, then reached down to pull off my jeans and my panties.

I lingered there for a while, listening to the sound of a man's voice from across the way. It was a deep, raspy voice, the voice of a man who at one in the afternoon was already drunk. I lifted my arm and ran my hand from my neck and down between my breasts to my stomach, still gazing up to the sky as the voice grew louder. As soon as the voice stopped, which took about a minute or two, I went into the bathroom and turned on the water in the tub. When it was full I stepped inside and sat down in the warm water, reaching between my legs. Lying back, I gazed up at the ceiling as I rubbed myself, feeling my muscles tighten.

I closed my eyes and started to groan, sending not a plea but a message, through the ceiling and all the rooms above me, and on up to the heavens—a message saying that whether I was in the company of a man or else totally alone, I would always be a woman of strength. Recalling a time many years ago when I was somewhere else, I considered how the "loss" of my virginity had not been a loss at all but a triumph—a triumph in which my body's experience had at last reached the level of experience I had gained with my mind. And lying here wet in this distant room on a Sunday afternoon, I reflected how even if I were never again to be with a man, I would carry this dual knowledge of mind and body with me, the strength and wisdom that would insure I would never be lacking and would never be at a loss.

From a novel in progress

Magic and Memory (an excerpt from Undercover Angel)

2005-08-14T23:50:00.000-04:00

Larry was impressed, and halfway to Las Vegas he was still checking his rear view mirror every ten minutes. Sometimes he’d see Cousin Louie with his hand inside Amber’s blouse. Amber, who an hour after meeting Louie had become his fiancee. Sometimes Larry would catch a glimpse of one of Amber’s nipples, or get a whiff of her perfume.

“She’s a hot number, yeah, don’t you think, Buddy?” Louie shouted to Larry. Then Louie began to sing, “Still the one. Who can scratch my i-itch. Still the one... you son of a bi-itch...”

Louie took a swig from a fifth of Jack Daniels, then turned towards the closed window and inhaled, as if he were taking in a deep breath of desert air.

“This country of yours,” Louie said, still facing the window, “is like nowhere else in the world. I come here as a rich man. Others from my country, they come here, thinking that here they’ll become rich. But they just get fucked.”

Even though Louie was gazing out at the desert he could tell, by the way Amber shifted her head away from his outstretched arm, that she was giving Larry a puzzled look.

“That’s the way of the world, Baby,” Louie said. “You plant your flower, you grow your pearl.” He handed her the bottle of Jack Daniels.

“What the hell is this shit?” Amber suddenly yelled, but neither Cousin Louie, whose mind was lost in some old song again, nor Larry, who'd turned around from the driver's seat to get another look at her, bothered to answer. For a moment Amber was about to scream, then she stopped herself, pulled out her compact and studied her face in the mirror.

Amber was a true California girl. Born in Fresno, she grew up to be taller than anyone else in her family. Shy and quiet child in Catholic grade school, in high school she transformed herself into the nastiest girl on the cheerleading squad. She was the party girl who smoked menthol cigarettes, drank whiskey every night and went all the way on a first date. She was smart too—smart enough to know that brains were what helped you survive but not what helped you get ahead. And, like a lot of true California girls, she was a total asshole.

Amber had ended up at the O'Farrell Theater two years earlier—that's where luck, or rather her lack of it, took her. Becoming Amber after spending the first twenty-two years of her life as Karen Ann Johannson didn't take much thought. It was a way out of doing the nine to five office routine, but after these two years she was ready for a way out of this too. And at the end of a day shift full of half-hearted lap dances and watered down drinks she didn't need much convincing. Louie, as bizarre and impenetrable as he was, was the best ride she'd been offered in years.

They drove on for another hour, silently winding their way through the desert. Every now and then Louie would take a bite out of a bar of Kraft American Cheese he’d bought at a rest stop outside of Bakersfield. To Louie, it was best cheese you could buy, better than anything that came from France or the Netherlands or anywhere else in the world. It was the best because it was American cheese, made in America’s heartland. “Wis-con-sin Cheese,” Louie would say to himself. They were magical words, like “California Condor”, “Florida Orange,” and "Rocky Mountain Oyster." In those words was the force that created the “purple mountain majesties” Louie had dreamed of back in the Philippines, the “amber waves of grain” he’d seen pictures of in Life magazine. America, his greatest dream, was now something that was passing right before his eyes.

“You know, Babe,” he suddenly said to Amber. “I’ve been through the desert, on a horse with no name. You know what that’s fucking like?”

“No, Louie. What’s it like?”

Louie turned toward the window. He wasn’t about to explain. Explanations weren't what helped him get this far. They weren't what saved his ass when he found himself surrounded by enemies who, at the time, were more powerful than him. They weren't what made him learn that you needed a lot more than luck if you wanted to be in charge of the game. Explanations just took time away from getting things done, from growing what had to be grown and killing what had to be killed. "Explanations," he would later say, in one of those strange instances when his accent, for some reason, disappeared, "are for fuck-ups."

Louie suddenly closed his eyes. He did that from time to time, taking a moment to remember some horrible thing that had happened to him. And then another moment to remember some horrible thing he'd done in turn. It always helped to lighten his mood.

"Oh oh oh, it's MY DICK!" he started to sing. "You know oh oh. Never believe it's not SO."

Pressing the button to roll down the window, Louie caught the eye of a passing motorist in a minivan and smiled at him.

"Never been a wake. Never seen a day break!" Louie continued to sing. "Leaning on my pillow in the morrrr-ning. Lazy day in bed. Music in my head. Crazy music playing in the morrrr-ning laiyyyyt!"

He smiled at the motorist's wife, at his kids in the back seat. It was his pray-I-don’t-waste-you-motherfucker smile.

Louie then looked out toward the landscape, his face caught in a grin, and smiled at all of America.

From a novel in progress

Introducing Joe Bay (an excerpt from Undercover Angel)

2005-08-10T23:35:00.000-04:00

It’s four o’clock on a bright and sunny Tuesday afternoon in 1999 and I’m drunk again. I don’t usually like sunny days, especially in the spring right after they go back to daylight savings time. Sunlight tends to make everything look ugly, and to tack on an extra hour of it in the spring is like putting your eye up to a microscope to take in all the ugly details you usually miss. Besides, I don’t trust sunlight. Because whenever someone proposes to “shed some light” on a subject, that person’s usually a liar.

I woke up at noon today. I was still wearing the clothes I’d had on the night before. Although I’d planned on staying inside until at least three in the morning, I slipped my arms into my sport coat, then headed downstairs and out the door. It was what normally would have been just another inauspicious beginning to a never ending series of days when it isn’t until I’m drunk that I feeI truly awake. Taking a deep breath, I looked up at the sky and smiled before walking down the block to the Raven, my neighborhood bar.

My buddy Carl was there. He’d beat me there by an hour. He always went home at eight in the morning after getting off from his job as the nightwatchman at the old Gas Company building, and after trying to sleep for a couple of hours would always end up at the Raven. He’d get there early—eleven a.m., as soon as it opened. For the last five years he’s been an insomniac, though he doesn’t like to call what he has “insomnia.”

“I hate that fucking word,” he says. “And besides, it’s sounds like some kinda wimpy kid disease, like measles or mumps. I’m forty-two years old, and I ain’t gonna be telling someone I got some goddamn kid’s disease.”

Carl’s a white dude. A white dude with the kind of sallow face that people look at and say, “He looks so unhealthy.” It seems you always see Filipino dudes like me hanging out with white dudes like Carl. White dudes who look like they’ve got something wrong with them. You’ll never see two Filipino dudes hanging out together, no matter how healthy or unhealthy they look. Unless, of course, they just got off the boat. They’re the kind who’ll see you on the street and try to make eye contact—as if just because you’re Filipino too that they fucking know you. Then while you’re minding your own business trying to ignore them they’ll call out to you, saying something in Tagalog. Thinking that just because you’re Filipino you understand the language.

I never learned it and never wanted to—at least not until I was older. What I wanted was to be white, black, anything but Filipino. It’s never been hip to be Filipino. We’ve never been the popular ethnic group, the foreign flavor of the day—and we've never wanted to be. Hell, when Ferdinand Magellan landed in the Philippines in his attempt to become the first man to circumnavigate the globe, we immediately slaughtered that uppity Eurotrash bastard. Back in the sixties you never saw any of those radical college kids in Berkeley quoting Ferdinand Marcos—President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines who, in addition to being a totally corrupt leader, was also one of the greatest poets in the world. But none of those braless Berkeley coeds or their furry, fetid boyfriends ever mentioned his poetry.

So whenever it was time to hold court with a few nuggets of wisdom, they chose to quote Chairman Mao, a motherfucker a thousand times more ruthless than Marcos. But because Mao was Chinese and not Philippine, he could get away with it. And just when people were starting to forget about the whole deal with Magellan came Imelda—the lovely Imelda Marcos, first lady to the president and wife to the Philippines’ greatest poet. Imelda, who possessed one of the greatest singing voices in the East, as well as several thousand pairs of shoes. It’s the crime of possessing too many shoes that people remember her for now, not the gift of her voice. Filipinos don’t get away with shit. But I’m trying.

“And I hate opera,” Carl mumbles. “And Oprah... and origami and... ortolans. Have you ever eaten an ortolan? I did once. I hated it.”

What Carl did like was cars. And California girls. It didn’t matter if they were black or white or Asian or Latino or whatever. If he heard that some woman just came here to Washington from California, he was there. Buying her beers, buying her shots, trying to get her as drunk as he was.

“But I’m about ready now for some of that goddamn California love,” he says when this woman walks in and sits a couple of stools down from us. A skinny Asian woman with a don’t-bug-me-I’m-on-my-period kind of look in her eyes, she’s about thirty with long black hair and wearing a purple sun dress. She orders a “Lemon Drop”—Vodka with a twist of lemon—when Carl looks over to her.

As he curls up the side of his mouth to form an expression that’s part smile and part sneer, I can see that Carl’s about to say something to her. Carl can get away with the worst pick-up lines. I’ve heard him ask women, “So, do you come here often?” or “So, are you new in town?” And though he doesn’t always get to go home with them, he always gets them talking. But this time he went into a spiel.

“You know, I can tell you’re not from around here. Because on a warm spring day like this, women who grew up here in our Nation’s Capital tend to wear something along the lines of denim shorts and a light colored blouse with the sleeves rolled up. Women who’ve come here from someplace further south, for example, but have lived here for a few years would most likely wear a dark tee shirt and long pants—an outfit that’s spring from the waist up and winter from the waist down. You see, being from the south, they’re not quite ready to commit to warmer weather up here in the north. And, well, to make a long story short, you’re wearing a light purple sun dress. And though most women who just came here from your part of the country wouldn’t wear something like that right now, you would... because I believe you’ve just come to town via San Francisco.”

The woman looks at Carl, lowering her head as if she’s about to fire right back at him.

“Well, am I right?” Carl asks.

She turns away toward the window, then back again. “Shut the fuck up,” she says finally.

“Carl, you ready for another beer?” I say, even though another beer is the last thing he needs.

“I’m sorry,” Carl says, “let me introduce you to my friend, Joe Bay.” Carl, as always, pronounced my last name to sound like bay, even though he knows it’s properly pronounced to sound like buy. “He’s a Filipino dude, which is interesting here, because I can tell that you’ve got some Filipino blood in you as well. I’d say you’re half Filipino, half Japanese”

The woman looks at Carl, then at me, feeling more helpless than angry now.

“Hi,” I say finally after recovering from a moment of drunken embarrassment. “Ah... this young man here who’s been harassing you is Carl—Carl Watkins.”

“I’m part Irish, part French, part German, part English, part Italian,” Carl says. “Sort of a Eurotrash mongrel.” Carl pauses, then picks up his bottle and turns it upside down into his mouth. Looking back towards the woman, he sighs. “So, how about this weather?”

She looks at Carl quizzically. She knows that for the time being Carl and I are just a couple of drunks for whom all progress has stopped. But she also knows that out of inauspicious beginnings such as this momentous things can arise.

She smiles sweetly like a little girl, and says, “It’s fucken great.”

And then she begins to talk.

From a novel in progress.

My Multicultural Drinking Life (an excerpt from Undercover Angel)

2005-08-04T22:16:00.000-04:00

I started out the 90s by leaving my job at the Library of Congress in Washington, my home town, and moving up to New York. To the big time, where I got a job writing for one of those so-called alternative weeklies. I wrote “slice-of-life” stories—stories that usually involved me getting stinking drunk at some bar and getting into arguments and fistfights before finally being kicked out. One might not think so, but it was a formula which lent itself well to about a thousand variations. I never got to do that thousandth variation, though, because after about a year the editors decided that what I was writing about wasn’t cool. Or at any rate, that it wasn’t cool for me to be writing about it.

“That José Bay’s writing is actually coherent, unlike the seemingly usual state of mind of its author,” said one of the many angry letters to the editor in response to my work, “does not justify the waste of space you continue to devote to this self-polluting, sociopathic loser, whiner, and lazy brat.” In closing, the author of this little missive addressed me directly: “Leave New York, José Bay, and go back into the sewer you crawled out of.”

The drinking life—the black eyes, broken noses, and third degree hangovers—that was the realm of Irishmen or Poles or Russians—anyone, as long as they were white. If you were Asian, Hispanic, or black, you had to be a saint, rising up out of poverty, parting ways with the violent gang you used commit crimes with, overcoming your humble immigrant beginnings to live some fucking Horatio Alger American dream.

When you’re not white, and you’re in the public eye, you have to be an example—you have to “represent.” With my byline being “José Bay,” people reading me thought I was Hispanic, though when they saw me in person or saw a picture of me, they knew I was Asian. But whether I was Asian or Hispanic, my unrepentant chronicling of my disorderly behavior wasn’t something I could get away with. Especially since I was Filipino, because Filipinos are supposed to be polite, goddamnit, like everyone’s favorite servant, the Filipino houseboy: Would you like me to fix you another Mai Tai, sir? Or perhaps you’d prefer a Suffering Bastard?

I went on unemployment for a year—that much I could get away with—and, like many a failed journalist before me, started working on a novel. And, like the stereotypical failed journalist, I never finished the novel. So when my unemployment benefits ran out, I started looking for work.

I sent out resumes in response to ads in the New York Times and signed up with an temp agency that specialized in library and research assignments. A few weeks went by and my money was nearly gone. I’d sent out about a hundred resumes and hadn’t been called in for a single interview, but then I got a call from the agency. They had a job for me, a month long temp job that paid fifteen dollars an hour. I added up the numbers and it came to about two grand. Subtract the $675 I paid for rent on my dumpy studio apartment, and take another $100 off for bills, and that left me $1,225. Take off another $200 for food, and that gave me about $1,000 to drink with.

I immediately went over to my friend Randall’s apartment to celebrate. Randall Crump was another white dude—a film maker who’d moved to New York from South Carolina about ten years earlier and who only now had finished shooting his first feature film, a B-movie parody which he called Girlquack. It was an idea he came up with while we were drinking at the Parkside on Houston St.: a movie about these hot babes who communicate with each other by quacking like ducks; living on some remote island in the Pacific, unknown to Western civilization, they come to America in search of their lost queen.

We were completely trashed when the concept appeared before us like the blurry spectacle of a beer bottle falling off the side of the bar, but the next day, when I talked to him about it on the phone, it still made sense. That we were still drunk made no difference: it was a great concept and a great metaphor for our times, even though we had no idea what it meant.

But now it was time to celebrate my escape from the ranks of the unemployable. We started off with a six pack Randall’s girlfriend, Jane, had bought the other night but never got around to drinking. When we were done with that we opened up a fresh bottle of bourbon. Bourbon was our drink of choice—bourbon, the national drink of the S.U.S., the Southern United States, where the most respected science of all is the science of drinking. Like athletes preparing for a heavy workout by doing stretching exercises, beer was our warm up. Whenever it was time for the real workout, we’d twist the cap of a bottle of Jack Daniels, listening for that subtle cracking sound that tells you that the bottle’s contents are ready to be dispensed.

The next day at eight in the morning I hopped on the F Train and took it up to 53rd and Fifth Avenue. I’d only gotten three hours of sleep but I felt good. Taking the elevator up to the 23rd floor of one of the more luxurious high rise office buildings on Fifth Avenue, I reported to a woman named Claudia Schiffer. A tiny, hunched over woman somewhere in her thirties, she didn’t look anything like the supermodel whose name she shared. Nevertheless, I liked her and thought that if I turned on the charm I could get off pretty easy in the month I’d be working with her: two hour lunches, a leisurely pace, and maybe, every now and then, an afternoon quickie in the storage room.

But as soon as she sat down to talk to me about my job she tensed up.

“Well let me just show you to your work station,” she said, turning her face away from me. Standing up, she walked quickly out the door.

I did my nine to five thing there for the first time in over a year, playing with the numbers for what turned out to be some big financial consulting firm. It would take some getting used to, I thought, but I could handle it. Still, as soon as I got off that day I headed across town to the Shandon Star, my midtown dive. I knew that it would take some serious drinking to get through this new job with my senses intact. And in order to stay ahead of the game, I knew I’d have hit the bars immediately at the end of each work day.

Before leaving the Shandon Star I used the phone to check if there were any messages on my answering machine at home. There was one message, from the guy who ran the temp agency.

“This is Donald Miller from Reilly-Bush,” he said. I could tell by the tone of his voice that something was wrong. “Claudia Schiffer called me this evening and asked that you not come back tomorrow.”

Well, I thought, rejected by Claudia Schiffer: it was something that had happened to a lot of other men before me. Then I realized it was not Claudia Schiffer the supermodel who was rejecting me, but Claudia Schiffer the civilian, from the renown financial consulting firm of Baker and Evans.

“And although your work was acceptable,” Miller continued, “the reason Claudia Schiffer asked that you not return was your body odor. It was highly inappropriate.”

My body odor inappropriate? In other words, I was stinking up the joint, most likely with the previous night’s bourbon and that day’s tobacco stench. Christ, I thought, if Claudia Schiffer is environmentally sensitive, what the fuck is she doing in New York City?

“At any rate, we’ll continue to look for other positions for you,” Miller said at the end of his message.

That, I knew, was a lie. His agency wouldn’t do another thing for me—unless, of course, they started filling jobs for sewer workers. I was, apparently, well on my way to crawling back to that sewer from where I came.

Walking out of the Shandon Star and down Eighth Avenue, I kept my distance from people. And although I usually marched straight ahead, making people get out of my way or else be shoved aside, I was now darting left, then right like a lost dog sniffing the sidewalk, searching aimlessly for the territory I’d once staked out as my own. All because my smell wasn’t something I could get away with yet, not even on New York City’s pissed-on streets.

From a novel in progress

Undercover Angel

2005-08-01T22:37:00.000-04:00

My Cousin Louie had a dream too. “Make your enemies eat their own suka,” he advised me shortly after I first met him. Suka meant vomit in Tagalog. Later, Cousin Louie would explain what you had to do to make your enemies vomit.

I hadn’t asked him for advice on this or anything else, for that matter, but somehow he recognized that I was a man in need of guidance. That I was in need of a few tips on how to make it in the world…

Cousin Louie said he came to America last Friday. Stepping off the plane and onto American soil for the first time, Cousin Louie kissed the ground, then reached up to place his hand on the shoulder of a woman from Montana who’d been on the plane with him.

“This is America!” he exclaimed. “This is the tits, man! The real shit!”

The woman, whose name was Faye, looked down at Cousin Louie. At four foot ten, Cousin Louie was about a foot shorter than this tall Western woman who had a figure like a long neck bottle of Budweiser. And though Cousin Louie was forty-five years old, he had the voice and build of a teenage boy. How else could she respond to his crude exclamation except to say, “You need to watch your language, young man!” And, “Where is your mother?”

“My Mama’s back home, babe.”

“In Hawaii?”

“No, in the Philippines, babe. This plane we just got out of started in Manila, babe. We only stopped in Hawaii to pick your big butt up.” Cousin Louie paused a moment, then asked, in a mock Southern accent, “Wanna get a brewski?”

Faye clutched her purse close to where the words “King of Beers” would have appeared on her body, then rushed ahead without either another question or another command to Cousin Louie.

“Pray I don’t waste you, motherfucker!” Cousin Louie shouted after her. Although Cousin Louie understood English fairly well, this was one expression he didn’t understand at all—which didn’t keep him from uttering it confidently every chance he got. It was something about the sound of the word “motherfucker.” Surely there was no word in the English language more beautiful than “motherfucker.”

Cousin Louie’s first stop there in San Francisco was the Golden Gate Bridge. Despite the exhilaration he showed on the surface, Cousin Louie had been sad of late. And when he stepped on that plane headed for California, San Francisco, U.S.A., the words that kept going through his head were, “I’ve had it with this shit.”

Taking a cab into town from San Francisco International Airport, Cousin Louie got off at the entrance to the Presidio, then walked. As he walked he opened the one bag he’d carried with him and pulled out a tiny bottle of Jack Daniels that he’d saved from the flight. Unscrewing the top, he turned the bottle upside down into his mouth. In a second the bottle was empty. Staring straight ahead towards the Golden Gate Bridge, Cousin Louie tossed the bottle onto the grass and wiped his mouth.

Cousin Louie had made it halfway across the bridge when he laid down his bag. Grabbing onto the railing, he started to hoist himself up but then stopped. Gazing out to the West, towards what was once home, a look of disgust came over his face.

“Fuck this shit!” he yelled. He stepped back down. After looking from side to side, he unzipped his pants.

Cousin Louie took aim, then let it go. Adjusting the angle, his piss went over the edge of the bridge.

“I say WHOOAAA!” he sang. “I say whoo-ooo-OOO-eeee. I say all RIIIIIGHT!”

Then he kept quiet to see if he could hear it hit the water. He listened closely until he heard something.

“That’s it!” he yelled finally. “That’s me, motherfucker! That’s me!”

Cousin Louie had just now, at the age of forty-five, left everything behind. His career, his wife, his eleven children. The only man in our family to get rich, he nevertheless had gotten tired of being a big fish in a little pond, a big island among little islands, a great sinner among lesser saints.

“Sorry, baby,” he mumbled as he zipped up his pants.

Cousin Louie started walking again when he realized he was heading north.

“Oh man, that would suck,” he mumbled. “Wine country my fucking ass!”

He turned around and headed back south toward San Francisco. Once he got off the bridge he hailed the first cab he saw.

“895 O’Farrell Street,” he commanded.

The driver, a middle-aged white guy with a beer gut, shifted his shoulders until he was facing Cousin Louie. He looked Louie over and smirked until his chubby right cheek turned red.

“What’s your problem, Buddy?” Louie asked. “Don’t you know where that is?”

“Yes, I know where that is. I just don’t think that’s the sort of place you should be going.”

“Quit grinning like an idiot, Buddy!” Louie yelled. “I’m forty-five fucking years old and if I wanna go someplace I’m gonna go whether it’s good for me or not.”

Louie pulled a hundred dollar bill from his pocket and waved it in front of the driver’s face.

“This looks like a hundred dollars to you, but to me it ain’t nothing but small change, motherfucker. Do as I say and I’ll scratch your back with it, Buddy.”

It took him a minute, but finally the driver understood. Soon he was pulling up in front of the O’Farrell Theatre. Louie gave the driver a hundred dollar bill, then pulled a five hundred dollar bill from his wallet.

“If you’re still out here when I come out, I’ll give you this.” Louie held up the five hundred dollar bill. “You can depend on me, Big Buddy. Show me that I can depend on you.”

At the door of the O’Farrell Louie had to show his international driver’s license to the doorman, who eyed it closely and rubbed it between his fingers.

“It’s the real thing, Joe,” Louie said, gazing up confidently at the doorman. Louie then pulled his license from doorman’s hand and replaced it with a hundred dollar bill. “Just show me the way in, Joe. Everything’s fucking cool.”

The doorman looked down at Louie and shrugged his shoulders. Then holding open the door, he showed Louie inside.

“Everything’s cool,” the doorman said loudly to the bouncer and waitress who were standing inside by the entrance. “He just looks young.”

“That’s right, Joe,” Louie said.

Looking directly into the doorman’s eyes, Louie flashed a smile. ”Just pray I don’t waste you, motherfucker!” It was only when Louie smiled that you got a sense that he was a lot older than he looked.

Louie made his way through the O’Farrell Theatre, checking out the dancers on the main stage, in the Ultra Room, in the Kopenhagen Lounge. Two hours later, when Louie finally left—with a tall blonde dancer holding tightly onto his arm—he looked ahead to see that Larry, the taxi driver, was waiting for him, ready to take him wherever he wanted to go.

Excerpt from a novel in progress

Giant Steps

2005-07-28T00:35:00.000-04:00

They were called X-Ray Specs—put them on and the world became a see-through paradise. You’d always see ads for them in the back pages of magazines like True Detective, Argosy, or Nugget… right next to the ads for the sea monkeys. But while the sea monkeys were an obvious rip-off, the X-Ray Specs you weren’t so sure about. And looking at the crude drawing in the ad of some X-Ray bespectacled hipster smiling from sideburn to sideburn as he sees right through this curvy broad’s party dress put dirty thoughts in you head: what if they really worked? If they did they would be well worth the money.

Which is exactly what Ed Sanders thought when he ordered them in the spring of 1964. Ed was just a horny young poet back then; and although he had a fat notebook full of empty pages ready to receive his blank verse, he had no receptacle, other than his hairy right hand, through which to relieve his innate horniness. So naturally, when he opened up his mailbox one day at two in the afternoon to see that his pair of X-Ray Specs had arrived, he smiled—that sideburn to sideburn smile.

“Ah, yes,” he said to himself, “the real fucky fucky.”

Ed immediately headed toward Washington Square Park which he thought would be as good a place as any to try them out. But on the way he had a thought.

“I’ll show them to Tuli,” he said, again talking to himself—in those days he was always talking to himself. “It’ll impress the shit out of him.”

The man Ed wanted to impress was Tuli Kupferberg, who at that time was already something of a fixture on the Village scene. Ed looked up to Tuli. Tuli was older, more experienced, and seemed to know just about everything.. But this pair of X-Ray Specs, Ed was sure, would take him completely by surprise.

Ed got to Tuli’s apartment and knocked. Wrapped in a brown army blanket and wearing a two day growth of stubble on his chin, Tuli answered the door. He’d just woken up.

“Look what I got,” Ed blurted out.

“What the fuck?” Tuli grumbled, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He slouched over to get a closer look at the pair of X-Ray Specs Ed held out proudly with both hands. “So you got some fruity looking shades. Big fucking deal. I’m going back to sleep.”

“These aren’t shades, man,” Ed argued. “These are fucking X-Ray Specs. They’re the real thing, man—the real fucky fucky.”

“The real fucky fucky?”

“Shit, Tuli, you know what I mean.”

Tuli grabbed them and was about to put them on when Ed stopped him.

“Don’t look at me with those things,” Ed snapped. “Let’s go to the park. Let’s try looking at some gurls with these things.”

“Girls,” Tuli mumbled. “Oh, okay… gurls.”

Tuli got dressed, then he and Ed walked to Washington Square Park, the X-Ray Specs burning a hold in Ed’s shirt pocket. When they got to the park it was crowded: lots of people, lots of gurls. They sat on a bench facing the arch as the sun bore brightly down upon them.

“Okay,” Tuli said, “give them to me. I get to try them on first.”

Ed carefully pulled them from his pocket and handed them to Tuli. Tuli opened them up and with an exaggerated flourish put them over his eyes.

“Holy fucking shit!” he exclaimed. “Everyone is fucking naked! And that girl over there, see her? She’s got tattoos of flames shooting out from around her nipples. And that guy over there… he’d got two dicks. What a bunch of fucking freaks!”

“Lemme see, lemme see!” Ed shouted.

“No, wait. And that lady over there. She’s got a shaved pussy… nice… real nice… And that girl over there too. And that girl…”

“Let me see, let me see,” Ed yelled, trying to grab the X-Ray Specs from Tuli’s head.

Tuli pulled away and stood up, doing a 360 degree turn as he gazed all around the park.

“I have seen the best bodies of my generation STARK FUCKING NAKED!”

He pulled the X-Ray Specs from his face, bowed, then threw them to Ed, who immediately put them on. Ed looked all around. He looked up, then down. He looked around again.

“What the fuck? I don’t see anything. Everything just looks fuzzy and dark.”

“What did you expect?” Tuli said. “You got ripped off.”

“Shit,” Ed cried, “fucking shit.”

He dropped the X-Ray Specs to the ground and was about to stomp on them when Tuli stopped him.

“Don’t do that,” Tuli said. “I think I can do something useful with those things.” He stood up. “Come on, Ed, let’s check out the situation here.”

Tuli led Ed around the park as he carefully studied everyone. Finally he pointed out a guy playing guitar.

“See that guy over there?” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Well, come on over. And play along with this. Or better yet, just keep quiet.”

When they got close it was apparent that the guy playing guitar was fucked up. Totally fucked up.

“Sounding pretty good there, kid,” Tuli said.

The kid, who seemed to be around Ed’s age, looked up at Tuli and widened his eyes.

“Oh… uh… thenks,” the kid said.

“Do you know what these are?” Tuli asked, holding out the pair of X-Ray Specs.

The kid studied them for a minute, squinting, then said, “No, whazzat?”

“These, my friend, are X-Ray Specs—the greatest invention of the twentieth century.” Tuli paused for a moment then added, “They’re the real fucky fucky.”

“The Real Fucky Fucky? Izzat so?”

“It is so. Me and my young friend Ed here have been in the park all afternoon checking out the girls with these things. Looking not only at their faces and their legs, but at their entire nude bodies. Because when you put these on, my friend, you can see right through their clothing.”

“Izzat so?”

“It is so. Totally nude girls… Do you like girls?”

“Why, yes, shure, I do,” the kid answered, sitting up straight.

“Well, then, try these on. I think you’ll like what you see.”

Tuli gently placed the X-Ray Specs over the kid’s eyes. Before the kid could even begin to look around Tuli began to shout.: “CAN YOU FUCKING BELIEVE IT? Look at that beautiful girl over there with the polka dots tattooed all over her tits and belly. And that girl over there with the blue and yellow stripes tattooed all over her body. Looks almost like she’s wearing a dress, but she’s no, she’s NUDE. Totally NUDE!”

“Holy shit!” the kid exclaimed, his mouth agape.

“But don’t leave them on too long,” Tuli warned, pulling them off the kid’s head. “You have to let your eyes get accustomed to these glasses before you leave them on too long. But once your eyes get used to them you can wear them all the time.”

“Izzat so?”

“It is so.”

The kid shook his head in amazement.

“Damn, those are some fucken great glasses. Where can I get a pair?”

“In Europe,” Tuli explained. “France, to be specific—you know how those French people are. They invented the French kiss, the French post card, the French tickler, and now this. But it costs the equivalent of about $300 on the French black market. That’s the only place you can get them.”

“Damn, I wish I could get me a pair.”

“Well, I can sell you this pair for $300.”

“Shit… I ain’t got no $300.”

“Oh, that’s too bad.” Tuli scratched his chin. “But hey, that’s a nice guitar you got there.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Damn nice guitar… I’ll tell you what. I’ll trade you this here pair of X-Ray Specs for that there guitar.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Sure thing.”

“Well, shit yeah. Cool. Outtasight,” the kid said. “Here, take it.”

He handed the guitar to Tuli who promptly handed it to Ed.

“Thanks,” Tuli said. “And for you, my friend, your very own pair of X-Ray Specs—direct from France.”

He handed the X-Ray Specs to the kid as he and Ed started backing away.

“Don’t try them on again just yet. Better let your eyes rest for a few more minutes. Then just let yourself go crazy looking at those naked girls.”

“OKAY!” the kid shouted.

“Just think bare breasts,” Tuli added as he backed further away.

“Yeah.”

“And bare asses.”

“Yeah!”

“And pussy.”

“Fuck yeah!”

Tuli and Ed quickly walked away. When they were out of the kid’s sight Ed turned admiringly to Tuli.

“Damn, Tuli, that was smooth.”

“It was nothing, Ed. The kid was totally fucked up. It was like robbing a crippled dwarf with a Sherman tank.”

“But still, it was cool.”

“Nope. The cool part’s coming up. Because now you’re finally going to get yourself some girls. Really naked girls.”

“But how?”

Tuli pointed to the guitar.

“With that,” he said.

“How’s that going to get me some girls?”

“Don’t you understand? Do I have to explain everything, Ed?” Tuli shook his head, amazed that his young friend still didn’t get it. “That’s a guitar. It makes music. And you know those poems you’ve been writing? Well, to tell you the truth, they don’t hold up very well by themselves. They won’t get you any accolades from the beatniks. And they sure as hell won’t get you any pussy. Which is where the guitar comes in.”

Ed Scratched his head.

“You mean, like, turn my poems into songs?”

“Now you’re getting it. Though now that I think of it you and a guitar isn’t quite enough. You’ll never make it as a solo act. You’re going to need a whole band.”

“A band?”

“That’s right. Shit, I’ll even help you out. I know a couple of other guys who can play. We can all be in your band.”

Ed shook his head.

“Still, I wish those X-Ray Specs worked.”

“You still don’t get it,” Tuli said, raising his voice. “You see, when you’re in a band, girls will undress for you. You won’t have to see through anything.”

Ed walked along in silence. They were on Sixth Avenue now, making their way back to Tuli’s apartment. Tuli looked straight ahead, thinking. He was always thinking. He began to walk more rapidly, rubbing the stubble on his chin, when he heard a voice a few paces behind him. A young voice. The voice of a kid experiencing his very first sense of revelation, his first understanding of the world and how it works.

“Oh… I GET IT!” Ed shouted to himself.

And on hearing this Tuli felt old, very old. And while Ed was having his first sense of revelation, Tuli was having his first real sense of sadness. He picked up his pace even more, then suddenly stopped until Ed was again walking by his side. After a moment Tuli smiled. But his smile was nothing like that of the hipster in the ad for the X-Ray Specs. It was nothing like the smile Ed was now wearing smugly on his face. It was an old man’s smile—the smile of a man who had found solace in knowing that no matter how old he got, no matter how weak and world weary he became, he would always remain a few steps ahead of his young friend.

-José Padua

Originally published in Crimes of the Beats, Autonomedia, 1998.

The Last Gathering of the Beats

2005-07-26T22:19:00.000-04:00

LAWRENCE, Kansas, December 19, 1995—As a reunion it was a sad and happy occasion. It was happy in that all the surviving Beats got to see each other. It was sad in that most likely this would also be the last time they got to see each other.

Longtime Beat poet Gregory Corso shook his head. "Yeah, pretty soon we'll be dropping like... " He paused, scratching his head as he searched his mind for the proper simile. "...flies... that's it. Like flies."

Ravaged by old age, senility, and death, the Beats had gathered not just for the purpose of reliving old times, but also to admit some new blood into their ranks—and to appoint a new leader. It was with this in mind that, during a brief ceremony in Lawrence, Kansas, Beat novelist William Burroughs officially "passed the baton" to Henry Rollins.

"He's a strapping young lad," remarked Burroughs as he winked and gave the thumbs up sign to Rollins. "He'll take the legacy of the beats and carry it far into the 21st Century."

When asked what he thought best qualified Rollins to be the leader for the Beats, Burroughs responded quickly.

"Tattoos. That's it tattoos. Frankly, Henry's writing is a lot of bullshit, and Henry knows that. But what Henry also knows is that writing isn't what it's all about anymore. It's about style, ambiance. And that's what Henry knows best."

Until this moment Rollins was, like many before him, simply another dilettante. Moving from music then on to writing and acting—and hoping desperately to find some craft he had a talent for—Rollins had managed to bring home the bacon all these years by playing the part of role model for disaffected youth.

"I was worried for a while when Kurt Cobain hit it big," Rollins commented, still clutching the ceremonial Beatnik baton to his chest. "I thought I was about to be replaced. But then Kurt showed his true colors and killed himself like the true punk I always knew him to be. Me, I was never a true punk. Punk was just my nine to five gig, something for me to do until I found my true calling."

Indeed, it seems quite natural that the now thirtysomething Rollins has found that true calling in the company of the Beats.

"Me, I've always been a Beat," Rollins continued. "And the Beat way isn't `die young, stay pretty', `better to burn out than fade away' or any of that crapola. The beat way, the true beat way, is to grow old, grow lame... to fade away—and the chicks and dudes will worship you anyway. Golly, look at Allen Ginsberg here, and Ferlinghetti and Corso. A nerdier bunch of hodads you'll never see. Heck, even my pop is cooler than any of them. And as for their poems... well, hey, gag me! Even my poems are better than the ones they're writing now, and my poems suck!"

Having heard his name mentioned, Allen Ginsberg joined in on the conversation. "Getting back to the subject of style," Ginsberg interjected, "let me just say that Henry will look good with facial hair. Why last night I was helping him try on berets and he looked good in them too. Damn good. You know, Jack Kerouac used to say, `Home is wear you hang your beret.' And he also used to say... Excuse me."

Ginsberg took out a handkerchief and, after coughing up a huge glob of bright green phlegm, plopped himself down on the nearest chair and took a few deep breaths. On seeing this, Corso rushed over, ripping a few pages out of Ginsberg's Collected Poems on the way and using them to fan the fatigued poet.

"He's not doing so well," Corso said, shaking his head. "Frankly, I think Allen will be the first to... ah... go."

Meanwhile, across the room, an argument had broken out between poets Michael McClure and Gary Snyder.

"You're lame," Snyder declared.

"No, you're lame!" snapped McClure.

"No YOU'RE lame!" countered Snyder.

McClure blinked nervously, then puffed up his chest. "Grah GOOOOOR! Ghahh! GRAAARR!" he intoned, "NAH! NOH! NOH! HRAHHHHHH! Look at that, Snyder, I'm improvising with sound poems. Now tell me who's really lame!"

Taking in the commotion Burroughs wearily shook his head. "Those two. They never quite understood what we were all about."

By now it was six in the evening and everyone was tired. Everyone except Rollins.

"Yeah, I'm replacing them pronto!" shouted Rollins. "Hey, Bill, don't you think Lydia Lunch and Exene Cervenka will make nice replacements for them."

"By God, Henry, you're right on the money like always!" Burroughs declared.

"Yeah, and then I'm gonna talk to Harold Bloom, and lobby him to accept Naked Lunch into his Twentieth Century Canon of essential reading."

Burroughs shot Rollins a puzzled look, then broke out in a grin. "Whatever you say, Henry, whatever you say," he nodded, patting Rollins on the back. "Just do it!"

-Jose Padua

Originally published in Big Fish, 1995.

Danielle Steel And Me

2005-07-26T20:13:00.001-04:00

sitting on a park bench
when a woman sits beside
me and starts reading a
book by Danielle Steel.

“Great fucking writer,” I say.
She answers hesitantly,
“Yes she is.”

I wait a few seconds then add,
“I hear she sucks dick
like it’s going out of style.”

The woman stands up and walks away.

In situations where polite conversation
is bound to fail it’s best
to try something else.

-Jose Padua

Originally published in A Gathering of the Tribes, 1991.