In honor of International Women's Day

Demonica

Published in Cellar Door, Winter 2005; Big Bridge, January 2006.

Monica’s my name.  Don’t think of that Monica, though. My game plan has nothing to do with sucking up to “great men” to imbibe their power and flatter myself they care for me. I live in the underground; reside in the virtual dreams of great men aspirants, the ones who equate sex with power. The wives, with their fallen breasts, the ones with the breasts that droop to their heels one year and rise to their chins the next, well, they owe me. Their men will never be great. I suck the embryonic power out of them. The women are as relieved as my corporate clients.

There’s a great man aspirant now, chatting with the receptionist Very large he is, taking up all the pixels on my screen. Well done makeup, green-grey eyes, dark hair with silver temples, Romanesque nose, the eyes the right melange of cool and warm, a hint of erotic charisma, aspiring CEO type, number 666, sent from Hallyburton’s HR office; our favorite client, Hallyburton.

Number 666 saunters into my plushly appointed office, back straight, arm extended, prepared to shake virtual hands. What, are you kidding? You don’t shake hands with haute hookers. Hah! There’s a tidbit of martini blubber round his middle, but I can tell he’s been frequenting the tanning salons and I’m past such trifles as blubber. Double chins make me swoon. This number’s sort of cute, predictably so, but bearable, without pig features; looks as if he’s prodding 40, wears wedding band. A slight hint of reflective melancholia in his emotional aroma . . . ah, it’s nearly intoxicating, along with the plump lower lip, implying sensuality.

“Take off your shirt and let me see what you have,” I say, “Ducky duck, you’re a fine example of the species, you obviously work out 7 days a week and I love those assertive nipples – just the right shade too. So what’s wrong with Mitzy? Ah, but you’re not here to discuss her now, are you, darlin, so remove your pants.”

Great man aspirants are always obedient. It never fails. At least the first few times, they do whatever I tell them to do. After four or five sessions with smartass me, they want Shirley or Lulu, aficionados of Harlequin romance novels. The men panic after my recitals of deviant literature. Sooner or later, I’ll quote Barthelme, Parker, Gaitskill, Borges, Ballard or Borroughs. Depends on my mood. Never Rand, Mailer, Fitzgerald or Hemingway, that’s for sure.

The man looks puzzled, then vaguely frightened. I want to swallow him.

“So spread your legs, my darling dove,” I coo. “Lie down on the virtual red rug there, costly Turkish rug, imported, tasteful, elegant. I never let janitors lie down on it, not to worry.”

He lies down, spreads his legs, a comforting sign of early surrender. I gaze at the painstakingly molded thighs and the pulsing worm between them, as the hungry little creature gains in stature. I can see the great man in the making and I know he wants me to take the worm in my hot red mouth. I don’t.

I stand above him, my legs straddling his body. He begs me: “Let me see them.”

“What?” I ask, innocently, “What is it you’d like to see, my dovey dove?”

“I want to touch them. They are so big, like mountains I want to climb with my tongue and fingers; like modest Everests they are. I am but a poor climber, disarmed,” he tells me. Sure.

“You are but a cliché of a man,” I respond, with feigned fatigue, as I stroke my precious cavern through the mesh steel miniskirt I wear to work. Fucking irritating uniform they make me wear and these idiot phony nails, violet this week.

“Plead with me and recite a poem. Perhaps then . . .” I add.

He recites that Wordsworth poem about daffodils.

“You’re going to have to do better than that.”

So he tries T.S. Elliot; switches to Ezra Pound when I yawn vociferously. Then attempts the obvious: Shakespeare, some sickening sonnet or other.

I yawn again, without restraint. “I don’t want to see your godlike face, with the chin dent, or hear you quote poetry I’ve heard before, so many times. You have no imagination, I say, only that expressive writhing creature you want me to consume. Lie on your back, so I can play with it, perhaps . . . as I wish.”

He reverses himself. I gaze at the brown mounds of his buttocks, as he waits. He waits to be touched some way or other, even if it pains him, he must be touched.

He turns his head to look at me when he hears the sound of the chains.

“Don’t look at me, not now.  Maybe later, if you’re good.” You should know what happened to Orpheus. You did go to Yale now, did you not?

I check the rule book. I always forget the routine, though I actually know it by heart; I do not own it, simply play it. I’m supposed to undress loudly, with obscene moans, but slowly, and I’m supposed to slap him when he gives in to the impulse to see what I’m doing. I’m advised to anoint my skin with aromatic oils, telling him precisely what I’m doing. Then, when he can no longer bear the suspense, I’m to tell him he qualifies for a second mortgage at extremely low rates.  After that, I’m to tickle his cock with a feather pen.

Yes, I know it’s tacky, but it’s only a script. Once in awhile, I don’t follow it, like now. The man is crying; I don’t know why. He is sobbing without restraint. There is nothing to take from him. There is nothing I can do but wrap myself around him like a birthday gift.

The Recalcitrant Scrivener: Literary What, Literary Who?

The Recalcitrant Scrivener: Literary What, Literary Who?

A necessary blog for those interested in "literary fiction," as interpreted by the publishing industry and others who believe in writing by the rules.

My favorite par (so close to me heart):

"... I would like to say that writing about one’s personal relationships or the personal relationships of one’s characters does not necessarily make a literary novel. Writing about the new immigrant experience isn’t essentially literary, nor is writing about art, politics, race, or technology. Descriptions of outlandish wealth, grinding poverty, outré sexuality, intravenous drug use, or simple drunkenness do not necessarily make literature. How one writes about these things is what counts."

SHE WAS A BELLYDANCER, HE A CANADIAN MOUNTIE

Here's a story published in the print mag Knock, actually nominated for a Pulltrolley Prize, but I rarely mention those nominations, as most writers get them and I don't care for the anthology anyway. But hey, here's my story. Romantic and wistful. Feel free to de-nominate it.


SHE WAS A BELLYDANCER, HE A CANADIAN MOUNTIE

(Ancient) Murrelet and Peregrine (Falcon) met at an ornithological discussion website. At once, their mutual fascination with the exotic Purplex seized them. Simply at first.


According to The Journal of International Psycho-Ornithology, three members of a naturalists' organization, The Oz Polar Bear Club Southern Tasmanian Chapter, discovered the Orno Purplex genus Coconutz in 1967 during the heydays of the Vietnam War, when phalanxes of birds retreated from far from the fray to frolic Down Under.


The history of the tragic bird stampedes in the skies over Southeast Asia in the mid 60's has been the subject of many treatises in the above journal and others.


In any event, The Melbourne Age reported that the Polar Bears had observed an unknown bird --subsequently granted the appellation "Purplex Simplex"-- floating belly up atop the Tasmanian Sea, singing a song in F minor. The bird's song sounded vaguely like the Star Spangled Banner, but the Aussies didn’t recognize either the tune or the gaily-singing bird with violet, crimson, and golden plumage.


The Bears did nothing but chortle and point. “Perhaps it’s some kind of casualty, a bit freaky,” Winnie said to William and William said to Fred, “You reckon?” They were extremely frigid purple and swam with alacrity to shore and lager without even attempting to trap the bird. Out of the question. The members mortally feared that their favorite extremities would freeze and detach themselves from their corporeal habitats like icicles gasping for breath on a fir tree. Courage be damned. (This, along with various and sundry genocides in Africa, was [of course] not reported by the media.). But the narrator digresses.


Eventually, a duet of traveling scientists from upper Scotland snared a Purplex in Palestine and called it Simplex because it could sing only one song. (Little did they imagine that the true Simplex has no need to sing songs; it IS the Song, so goes the Tibetan myth.) Other Purplexes were discovered in various bodies of water, singing as though they were bathing in their own private bathtubs. They were always alone, floating belly up, seemingly either dead or sacrificial to the elements; and they were always classified. There are said to be 12 varieties, the number of notes in a chromatic scale.


Not long ago, Glenda Bernstein, a social worker in New York City, discovered a Purplex singing a Wagnerian overture on a Hudson pier in winter. Glenda managed to entice the creature (“rescue” it, as she rationalized) by singing back to it with her perfect pitch; and it came to pass that a gaggle of scientists decided to classify the Bernstein bird a “Purplex Complex,” as it could sing more than one tune., in perfect pitch. But not only: it could sing more than one tune at a time, generally at least three tunes, which made neighboring birds lustful, envious, and potentially dangerous, according to some people who like dogs. So the authorities felt compelled to contain the maligned bird, much to its chagrin and Glenda’s. A caged Purplex Complex does NOT sing.


But what of the man and woman? Enough about the bird!


So when the man and woman, user names Peregrine and Murrelet, met by chance or mysterious purpose whilst floating belly up in cyberspacial seas, there sprang an instant Purplex connection Peregrine recognized immediately. He enjoyed the mutual appreciation when he chanced to think of it of Murrelet, after escalating email intersections and an exchange of mostly outdated photos. And they were both rhapsodic about Brahms’s Violin Concerto; indeed, it became “their song.”


Murrelet dreamed of Peregrine when she couldn't help it, but she couldn't control his movements; he was always walking away from her. Perhaps her most recent photo needed a professional touch-up. She feared she was aging too rapidly, but eschewed Botox because well, that was not her thing.


Peregrine never dreamed of Murrelet or if he did, did not recognize her. His dreams were full of flying objects and battles. He had been a reluctant parachute trooper during the Vietnam War, a rising Hollywood screenwriter, even an idealistic FBI agent for a brief time. He had been a lawyer of some repute, waging battles against corporate giants poisoning rivers and skies. Thus, his dreams were like action films, exceedingly crowded. They were also opaque, refusing light. Murrelet wondered if she would always be an extra Peregrine would never really see.


Peregrine was currently a Canadian Mountie. Said he loved mountains and horses and air and occasionally rescuing people, that was that, but in truth he was somewhat vague about life oh what is life and terribly cynical seeming. Yet it was clear he had attempted Love in its various tuneful permutations and had in fact perhaps succeeded or at least come close on occasion. He said once that he couldn’t decide if he had actually lived through all the sublime and ridiculous events he imagined he’d survived, including near extinction by a storm of shrapnel in a swamp and condemnation by a gang of Hollywood producers and on hindsight poor choices in adorable mates. No, these were real things, happenings he’d beckoned. He had to take responsibility, "own" his past, he'd decided. Come to me, he’d asked whatever was approaching, come to me I am a hero I must be, but am not I know not but am somehow brave despite. I want so much to save, want so much, he sighed, but no matter, I am fine. He’d fallen many times. He now wanted “to simplify” himself, he maintained. Sitting up straight in the saddle might be sufficient; yet that was no minor achievement.


Meanwhile, Murrelet was frantically belly dancing, a temporary occupational measure to ward off further corporeal disintegration and exorcise unhealthful cynicism and related "negative" thoughts about life on Earth after an exhausting career as a perpetually perplexed solitary criminal defense attorney. Battling uphill, Murrelet too had attempted Love, finding it a funhouse room of delightful and opaque reflections. She had smelled death inside the box that contained her father’s ashes. And she was intimate with betrayal. Mother was in the land of dementia, needed to know she was alive and why. Her brother had long ago disappeared into a dangerous cult in New Mexico. Murrelet had almost resigned herself to renounce visions of entwining limbs and cozy discussions over the dinner table. She had also wanted “to eschew unnecessary messes.” Until, of course, she chanced upon Peregrine.


It was on a day when she felt as loose as a mongoose floating in the ocean --beyond the reach of mongoose-horn fishers-- that Murrelet asked Peregrine, not innocently really but nearly so, she asked him, wanting him to be her final complete metaphor. She invited him to come in she did. Into her life, rather than on its outskirts. He would take a train from the wilds of Alberta, Canada to Rochester, New York. He would not fly; airplanes remind him of death. In a moment of clarity, he has acquiesced; in that instant, he is not afraid. There is no turning back once he has promised. He is a man of his word, as well as deed. Indeed.


Hours away, the Hudson River Purplex is morose by the window in her cell. She can see nothing but the contours of objects, very large they are, far from the sea she can smell so faintly. She cannot see; it is too far away. Her bird bones grow moist with memory.


The train was late and Murrelet was not sure she recognized him. She thought he could be the slender man with the receding hairline, a man who left a parcel on the station platform and then walked away; she thought perhaps a bomb, was going to run, said to herself, let’s not be ridiculous. She thought first I must taste this man I do not know why but I must, it’s in the cards, no not, let’s not be silly. And he was suddenly approaching, the man with the parcel now, so very frightening there until until… she found she knew the shape of his eyebrows, accent marks.

He asked her, “Murrelet, finally?” She grew confused, trying to recall her name. It wasn’t Murrelet, was it? The name sounded so out of sorts, as did he – a nexus of mismanaged energy, of course not her real name, which had also sounded foreign to her sense of self. She bolted, jolted out of kilter, perplexed ran into his arms, she could tell his arms, the spade shaped mole on his wrist she kissed or wanted to really too red with amazement it was he -- Peregrine with his green-grey eyes, circumflexive eyebrows, mouth quivering like the heart of the Purplex Complex, one would imagine. He placed his palm on her breast; it was summer she felt his hand burn. The package contained a very large chocolate covered singing bird music box with a bottle of French champagne attached to its neck. Once one ate the chocolate, the bird would sing the song from the movie "Lili," which starts "The song of love is a sad song, hi Lili, hi Lili, hi lo."


At dinner that night, Murrelet and Peregrine discuss their interpretations of the Purplex. Over mousse de foie gras and sultry Shiraz, they speak of the purity of its hypnotic voice, the allure of its magnificent plumage.


“Of course, we know no one has ever understood the Purplex,” Murrelet says.

“The Enigma of the Birds, Janchek wrote. Don’t you wonder why no one has ever seen two of them together? Of course, there’s that theory about the Purplex, you know. Do you think the bird is singing to woo a mate, or . . . perhaps searching for its mate?”

“That’s one washed up theory. Seriously, I mean it’s irrelevant to me . . . too difficult to prove, almost as tough as trying to prove the existence of a god, which is impossible” Peregrine replies. “To me the bird is like a Bach fugue,” he adds.

“But not that orderly,” she insists, “though intricate.”

“No, not as orderly, though I wish it were,” he sighs.

“The bird is like a poem by Rilke – like all poems by Rilke,” Murrelet speaks almost shrilly, her voice ascending, “so soulful and overwhelming with heart -- both the Simplex and the Complex, the many in the one and the one in the many, alone and apart, yet together. Don’t you agree?”

“Rilke?” he asks. “Okay, yes, but Wallace Stevens as well – the poem about the blackbird . . . . 13 ways of looking at it. You know of course that Stevens had a law degree. He was very precise."

“Well, yes, there are certainly at least 12 ways of looking at a Purplex,” she responds. Adds: "And there are 12 known 'types,' so all in all there are theoretically 144 ways of looking at the Purplex, if I remember my math."

Over steak béarnaise and lusty Bordeaux, Peregrine alludes obliquely to the demands of others, former clients, friends, the family's persistent needs for nurturing, issues with the infantile son, mother with dementia., deranged ex-wife. He forcefully stabs the meat, slices it with cunning precision. "I realize I prefer the company of mountains and horses," he says. "At this time, at least."

Murrelet wants to gnaw on the bone of her buttery lamb shank, bite every bit of meat on it, suck every drop of marrow out of it. She slices the tender flesh with delicacy instead, then cuts it into bird-size pieces, without thinking. Why does she ache for this man, who is pushing her away as well as pulling her toward him, this man who is trying to re-invent himself, in perpetuity, loves Purplexes and Brahms? He’s empathic and battle scarred, as is she. But do these connections add up to Love?

Later, they try dancing together. He is clumsy. She leads, feeling awkward and apologetic. For a brief time, they forget themselves and become a slow dance with one heartbeat. They are so close to one another, there is no room for breath. For a brief time, they have re-invented themselves only for one another; entered an abode of their own construction.

But did they really meet?

The Bernstein Purplex splashes in the bird bath on Murrelet’s patio. The bird has escaped from the cell and flown north, to be contrary, one without imagination might think. She is singing a song about suicidal sailors, civil wars, and ladies of the night; sings so low you can hardly hear, but the birds can. Swallows and pigeons circle frantically above the patio, fly into one another in a daze. A hawk lands on the railing, licks its beak as it gazes with longing at the rare creature as the ascending sun strikes the golden highlights in the Purplex's crest.


Peregrine is inside his dark, dense dreams, tautly coiled like an embryo, wrapped in white satin sheets like a gift. Murrelet watches him; her lips brush the transparent underside of the wrist of his exposed arm. Her lips caress the blue veins like feathers, veins so fragile they seem as vulnerable as he is in his heart/mind entirety, but perhaps this is not how he sees himself. She may never know. Peregrine reaches out to Murrelet, pulls her head to his chest, holds her in his arms. In hours he will return to his mountains and there will be no promises.

But is that all?

The bird replies: "Isn't that enough?"

Rations Bulletin: 56th Quadrant

This is a microfiction that was accepted for publication in the new issue of Big Bridge, but never made it to the cyber-page. Such is life.

___________________________________________________________


RATIONS BULLETIN: 56th Quadrant
December 19th Update


To: Qualified Consumers:
From: Agitant Erwin B. Oleander
Southwest Northeast Regiment

As you must be aware, you still can only get one of them after a minimum month's wait and only if you have the right credentials (Refer to RB August 7th). You must be patient; after all, the queue's your choice. But of course we all realize that every patriot has to have at least one of them, and for very good reason. No wait is too long in the service of one's country.

We repeat. You must have health insurance and sufficient insulation to weather the elements. The Generals do not coddle. Emergency medical services will not be provided. If you desire more than one of them, you will have to apply three months in advance. There will be a thorough background check. Choose your Region, Race and Gender and click HERE. If you are not on the map, click THERE. You will have to choose height, width, weight, color, gender, taste, voice, smell, texture, language, sect, race, age, and education level. You may not get what you ask for.

All of the major quadrants have reported numerous incidents of queue kill. Since August, the crime rate has been rising with the falling barometer. Panic will not be tolerated. As always, exercise extreme caution.

Last week's most grievous incidents are as follows:

Sunday: A Mr. N of XXX threw a tantrum that landed in Mme. Z's lap and started to bite. Mme. Z fell back loudly, upset Mr. C's newspaper, exposing headlines: War in Mesopotamia Begins: Untold Millions Flee. Unreasonable reactions ensued. Thousands were shot as a reasonable precautionary measure. Speaking in cognito, it is said that the President said the “shocking actions” of the untold were “unpresidented.” Why would a war in Mesopotamia upset my fellow Americans?

Tuesday: It has been alleged that one Ms. L. of BBB asked one Mrs. M of DDD to hold her place behind Mrs. M while she slipped off to the field of the portable toilets. When Ms. L returned, Mrs. P of DDD was standing behind Mrs. M and refused to step aside. Accusing Mrs. M of nepotistic betrayal, Mrs. M retorted, in substance: I am not my sister's keeper, and you're not my sister anyway, so fuck off. A Mr. T of FFF positioned himself between Mrs. M and Ms. L and chided: "Now, now, girls will be girls!" Whereupon Ms. L, Mrs. M, Mrs. P and seven unidentified ladies struck Mr. T with umbrellas, causing fatal injuries. A riot ensued. The police used reasonable force to intercede. 41 people were injured; 29 died, and several ladies were arrested and quarantined. This incident is under investigation. There are indications.

Thursday: An elderly man claiming to have been a senator of great renown threw a copy of the former U.S. Constitution at General Bourbon and his men, as they were inspecting the queue. The Constitution grazed the General's head; he was momentarily stunned but unharmed. His men grabbed the elderly man and shot him on the spot. 26 bystanders were shot, as well, as a reasonable precautionary measure. Authorities suspect that the alleged former senator was a Mesopotamian terrorist, connected to the Meso Soup network. He had a briefcase filled with Constitutions. The quadrant bag inspectors were immediately arrested and quarantined, awaiting interrogation.

Saturday: There were 88 casualties and 36 life-threatening injuries due to slippages on ice, severe frostbite, fistfights and assorted tantrums, the police employing reasonable force to contain same. Extinct seal-skin snow boots are highly recommended.

So happy I'm writing a story!

Some personal detritus is in disorder, namely my move to the Rappaport (mother's maiden name) family home where my mother grew up and then I. A family (screaming young kids) and old people's beach neighborhood on the western tip of Long Island, actually in Queens. Enchanting boardwalk, white sand beach, mecca for poor hot city dwellers, sucky public transport, and only one good restaurant, which is interested in hosting a reading. Lovely, huge old old (as in 1880's) Victorian house I'm trying to sell, 1 1/2 blocks from the beach. Lots of STUFF to throw out, sort out, sell. Amazing old STUFF that I can't possibly throw out. Not to omit TONS of books.

So I still own the Greenwich Village apartment which has been on the market since April and yes, I know, the market is for buyers and exceptionally slow and fussy. Instead of moving to the Asheville NC area, where I'd like to eventually establish a writers' and artists' and composers' collaborative retreat, by the end of the year, I may have to stay in this house for an indefinite length of time.

This is an isolating neighborhood for someone like yours truly. So in between the tasks, if I can be involved in the writing process, I'm not miserable. I'm working on a crazy,satirical, surreal comic story with a deadline of August 1st. A friend told me about this themed contest and it's giving me focus. More on that later.

Fiction in Progress

Here's a draft of Part I of Gimlet. Part II will be in the second person and III will be in third, or maybe the other way round. It was supposed to be a short/flash satire of the typical hyper realistic flash fiction so popular these days, but it's going to turn into something that (I hope) will surprise me as much as any readers who happen upon it.

Gimlet

I.

I felt like I wanted to hit her. Hard. All the time. Big little long face like her horsefly dad’s.

I was getting out of control, my skin erupting. So it was good I’d sent her away. She was with him, my wide-eyed daughter the eating machine. Better he should spend money on her. Me all I had was unemployment checks and looking like jailbait.

Nightmare mother I should’ve drowned myself in the shit creek back of Wally’s Motel. Instead, I’m sitting in this roadside bar so I don’t need to listen to myself talk to myself. Like I know some stupid stud’s going to come around to help me get me out of myself. Like killing the brain cells to kill time. In my new too red dress pushing my boobs out. All about galabout with a red bow in my hair. Like dressed for trouble, stupid me. And all around, the same boring desert. One shredded brown palm tree still in no wind. Should’ve used the knitting needle he bought me. Well anyways theoreticly.

And that’s when I seen this guy. This guy as opposed to some other guy. Some other guy this guy eenie miney mo, like luck of the drawer.

You look like a gimlet girl, he says, leaning over so close I can smell bad pizza in his moustache.

Like Stinky Pete the bartender ever heard of a gimlet. To be fair, maybe he seen one on tv. Once.

You look like Bug Eyes Eddie, I don’t say. Big Eyes Eddie was a kid from elementary school that did nasty stuff to girls and got away with it. Like real horror story stuff. See his dad was the sheriff. Scum. Just my luck this is the guy.

So where did you ever have gimlet, suga? I reply, like I can’t help it ‘cause I don’t give a dang. I’m staring into whiskey like it was my paramour. Neat word paramour. Sounds like sour like whiskey sour. The ex is a lawyer failed the bar exam nine times. At least. Maybe ten. So anyways I’m fondling the glass like it’s my paramour. Thinking the guy probably got gimlets in the penitentiary. You know with his connections.

I been all over the world and back, Maybelline, BEE says.

Bet you still bite people, no matter how sophistercated you reckon to be, I think. Funny how he reminds me of grandma like the thought just occurs. It’s the eyebrows that don’t stop where they’re supposed to.

Well, then buy me a gimlet and hold the olive with the little red thingy in it, I say. Wondering why I said it. On account of there’s no reason to think he’s not going to bite me. And I love those olives with the red thingies poking out of them like clitorises.

Gimlets don’t include olives, Maybelline, BEE responds, inching his stool closer to mine. Maybe you want a whiskeye sour or bourbon with coke … or, heh heh, a double Southern Comfort?

My name’s not Maybelline and Down Dirty Martini’s the specialty of the house. I mean specialiteee. A double would be real nice, I suggest, smiling like I mean to smile. Like I got enough sour in my mind. And I mean I really want to smile but can’t figure out why I want to. Also figuring I shouldn’t be there. But what the heck. I need maybe three triples is why I’m here. So I like two-step to the jukebox and like nature the guy follows. With the double. Loves my toilet water, eco-friendly septic tank specialiteee. So we stare at the options as he gets comfortable with my waist. And he chooses some real stupid Bing Crosby song.

We sway a bit. Then sit. So close I can tell where he got polyester implants tacked into his gums. As supposed to his real teeth all yellow and irregular. What big teeth, he has! And sharp! We sit and I almost fall all over him. Like I want to be eaten. He calls me Little Red and pinches me all over. After my third double. I think my head’s out of orbit. Time to go to the can and puke my guts out. Crying over my little fat girl. What the heck.

Scuse me, I say, like I need to go and when you got to go, I say, ya know the rest.

Sure, Little Red, I’ll save your seat. Your HOT little seat! Real gentleman with his big fat tongue hanging out as I try to like extrapolate myself from the bar stool. All his teeth showing like, false and true, he whispers something dirty nasty I forget and I think of grandma again, who always says: Beware of men in bars.

Oh boy I miss grandma. I take the way out less traveled through the dirty little girl’s bathroom window and run all the way home. And there she is in bed. All comfy snoring in her white lace bonnet.

Radio Show WEDNESDAY, FEB 4TH, 10 AM PST, 1PM EST

I'll be reading some writings on radio at The World Wide Word Radio Network this Wednesday at BLOG TALK RADIO, host Rafael Alvarado.

Listen live or later, if you have the time and inclination!

My Own Worst Enemy: Installment 3: UPDATED AFTER MIDNIGHT!

In the repair shop for a tune-up.

My Own Worst Enemy: Installment 2

In the repair shop.

My Own Worst Enemy: updated first installment 12/18

My Own Worst Enemy
Story-in-Progress (draft)(copyright Carol Novack 2008)

I recognized that I wasn’t who I generally considered myself to be when I launched at my bathroom mirror a tirade of invectives against the person I believed myself to have been. My expletives were loud enough to rouse the woman who claimed to be my wife. She wondered if I’d abruptly succumbed to a rare psychosis that ran rampant in her family from time to time.

“Ddddon’t do this thissss fuckshitpissy pissy thing to me, you you you assinine dumb fuck bitch,” I retorted.

“I ddddon’t recognize you you as my wife wife wifey wife and I divorce you divorce you divorce you. I divorce you.”

“I’m Doris,” she replied, with sang-froid. “If you don’t remember who I am after all these years of forgettable moments, I’m leaving you. I’ve wanted to do that anyway, since Clara’s birthday without the cake you forgot to buy. You’ve never made any sense, to be perfectly frank and delicate about it all, and to top it off, you’re an insufferable ego-maniac. Since we’re not Muslims, I’ll take you to court.”

Normally, that person, meaning the “former” or perhaps occasional I, regarded himself highly for no ostensible reason and was even prone to smugness and complacently, some, including my former mother, surmised, “Narcissistic delusions, inherited from his impossible father.” That person was like one of those very obese, fragile women who prance about malls in stilettos and skintight stretch pants, ludicrously deeming themselves irresistible-- I suppose over-compensating hyperbolically and perversely for their quantitative copiousness.

Though it must be added that my seemingly obscenely self-satisfied former I was, at the same time, riddled with persistent anxieties due at least in some part to the ascendancy of envy in his emotional chart. That person, apparently “Ted,” was now the object of my derision.

When I say “my,” I’m referring to “Leslie,” Ted’s bete noir since high school, the bee in Ted’s jock shorts, badminton and baseball rival, a success in all arenas including women and courts, being a killer attorney of tortious actions and high profile divorces – that same homme fatal Leslie, who cavorts with ease on front pages and talk shows while poor, unknown Ted has toiled at his small offices, parsing trusts and estates and writing wills with the begrudging assistance of his middle-aged associate who failed the bar exam 24 times.

In retrospect, it was the sighting of the will of my ex-wife when on the verge of divorcing me that revived my revulsion for Ted, which in turn unleashed finally, over two years afterwards, a hitherto sequestered treasure trove of invectives to such an extent that I found myself, on this morbid day of low-slung, glowering clouds and hail as tough as Jennifer Lopez nails, walking (so to speak) in Ted’s boots, or rather, Ted found himself attempting to fit into mine, or both, dancing a pas de deux.

It was immediately clear to me that Ted had gotten the better end of the deal, if in fact Ted was no longer he and I was Ted, but there was no evidence that was the case, even though I looked (unfortunately) like Ted, at least since last I’d seen his face in the bathroom mirror. I would know when I arrived in court. If there were two of us representing the prominent real estate mogul in the divorce case against his allegedly unfaithful and drug-addicted celebrity wife and one of us who wasn’t I looked like Leslie, a takeover by Leslie as Ted (assumed) would be disastrous to my client, as “Leslie” had never tried a case, let alone a messy, high-profile divorce. On the other hand, if the persona of Ted had actually been taken over completely by me, Leslie, the only issue I’d have to contend with –a seminal issue indeed-- would be my outward appearance. Nobody would believe I was really Leslie if I continued to look like him, poor posture, thinning hair, tire tum and all. I decided to play it safe and proceed incognito to the courthouse, where I would huddle in my down coat and rain bonnet outside the courtroom door to see whether Ted was claiming to be I, though I actually realized that all loathing aside, I as Ted was claiming to be Leslie, and that while I had, in theory, acquired Leslie’s brain and psychological apparatus, I had every intention of using shamelessly this serendipitous transformation to my advantage. It would be easier if my former, inferior persona had inherited Leslie’s exterior, as well as interior façade, or perhaps in spite of it. Perhaps adaptation would come with time: like an evolving insect, I would quickly meta-morph my external self to become immune to the toxins endemic to divorce litigation.

[Was Ted as Leslie beginning to come to grips with having become his own worst enemy, or had he lost himself in Leslie so completely that the lesson in empathy was also lost? Would Ted as Ted when unbecoming Leslie (if ever) recognize Leslie’s endearing ontological doubts, self-castrations, and heartbreaks? Would Ted as Ted come to comprehend the tragic vastness of Leslie’s attachment to the mother who had died when Leslie was sprouting his first chin hair, and the son’s terror of his ruthless, cruelly critical father, the infamously crooked hedge fund maven XX, arrested when Leslie was at boarding school, age 9? What chance did Leslie have, under such traumatic circumstances? There was so much to overcome after a childhood of hiding self-loathing and panic under pillows, so much to do to make up for loss: the pursuit of a generous fan club, which entailed the cultivation of an opaque, John Galt persona, a larger than life self that even Leslie’s father would have praised. It wasn’t likely that the creation of a popular raconteur, ace in the golf holes and chick magnet would come easily. In fact, there was a possibility of admiration, if not empathy, an “aha” comprehension that would dissolve envy, indeed, absolve Ted of envy, for envy was a burden, a heartache that robbed him of the simplest of joys. Had Ted been capable of standing back, objectively, in Leslie’s boots and becoming attuned to the restless beats of Leslie’s tortured ticker. Perhaps.]

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

It's time to re-post my heart-rending story in celebration of the ho-ho buy-buy season. What was it you said about the economy? Fewer gifts under the tree? Does this mean that Xmas will die? (Remember that "G"od refused to die despite rumors.) Does this mean that Bobby and Bootsy won't get their Macs, Blueberries, I-Pods and Kindles? Is this the end of Western Civilization? If not, can I get a google alert when that happens?



Happy Holidays!

(originally published in pindeldyboz)

“Happy Holidays, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Ho Ho Ho,” exclaimed Bobo, the black cat with green eyes, the young Marlon Brando cat, the way he moves. He (Bobo not Brando) was lying next to me as usual. His chitchat induced me to surrender sleep and remove my American Airlines eyemask, which had drooped to my chin.

Bobo opened his mouth, sang, “Hark the Herald Angels sing,” till I placed my hand over his tiny lips. “I hate that hymn. I hate Christmas and all those angloid things,” I exclaimed, fiercely. “I want another planet real bad I want it. Stop drooling all over me.”

So I got out of bed and fed all of the cats cornflakes and watched my upstairs neighbor float by the kitchen window as my coffee brewed. “Hi, Gloria,” she shouted, gaily, waving her eggbeater. “Aren’t you going to Saks? Big sale on, beating the crowds. I’ll be the first through the doors.” Henrietta was wearing her red leather shopping bag Santa shaped with green handles. “Ho ho,” I replied, squirting cheap vodka in her face with my plastic pistol.

Henri sailed by, blue suit with black umbrella. “Goya Knoll,” he remarked gravely when he saw me gazing out the window.

There were no pigeons around, not for a change -- only a baby puma basking in a pocket of shade on the sidewalk opposite my building. How cute, I thought, till she started singing: “Silent night, holy night . . .” Evidently, she had lost the map to the manger. She was shaking a cup full of coins.

I grabbed my coffee and ran to my computer, only to hear “We wish you a Merry Christmas” emanating from a pop-up. Mephistopheles Ribs of Arkansas was offering me a free Christmas fruit and cheese basket at a discount. I decided my email could wait. I would burn the first fake pine tree I saw.

So I put on my flannel nightgown and left. I burned the fake tree in the lobby, within the purview of the President of the Co-op Board. She snapped a picture of me with her nifty digital, said, “Smile, Merry Christmas oh I mean Happy Chanukah, we’ll leave a bill for you, $375 for the tree plus ornaments, including the burning Menorah, you fuckin idiot. The price of oil has gone up, you know.”

It was tepid out, due to global warming, of course, drizzling slightly, but a terrific day for the boardwalk. No one would be heading for Brighton Beach days before Christmas, no way, I thought I’d skip the crowds and have a quiet time not writing holiday cards.

But a bunch of reindeer with boom boxes was heading for the beach, “going AWOL, dearie,” one of them confided, they’d had it with Santa; “sweatshop exploitation,” shouted another, competing with Bing Crosby crooning that cloying White Christmas song. Fuck the lot of those deer, thought I, dreaming of Caledonia. Daddy was kissing Santa Claus, and the reindeer were truly fucked. Two cops named O’Malley bound their spindly feet together with green and red ribbons and placed the reindeer under arrest for desertion. They were going to Guantanemo Bay, those terrorists. New York’s bravest tied up the train for nearly an hour, but that’s how it goes with traitors.

When I arrived at Brighton Beach boardwalk, it was pretty deserted and dry except for a little fat boy with barely any eyes eating MacDonald’s hamburgers and fries. “Hey lady,” he yelled, tossing a Russian fur hat at me. “Give some money for Christmas dinner for the Brighton Beach dogs, please!”

I tossed the hat back to the kid, emptier than it was before. I threw a thousand gold coins and a dollar bill into the Atlantic and plunged into the navy blue waters. Swam all the way to the middle of the world, where I could no longer see land. I had escaped.

A fancy ocean liner passed by. People waved at me; cheery holiday music was rising like smog from the ship. “Happy Happy!” they shouted, tossing me martinis with olives and blood sausages with apples. “Happy, Happy!” I waved, as I swam toward the South Pole.

Excerpt from Work-in-Progress & Digress

from "Gated Communities" Part II

A Tourist Attraction

I left the hut with monkey and meandered without map or clue. Another monkey on the top branch of a gin-glo tree whistled and sang a bawdy song to my comrade monkey --- a she simian with pendulous, shallow mammary glands. She displayed her sex, comrade monkey climbed the tree, and I continued alone. Family values are of prime importance among primates. As they say, “blood is thicker than water.” I recalled that canon and detached myself from monkey, acknowledging that salvation is not ownership.
I soon arrived at a massive, glowing red stone or rock, surrounded by an alarmingly high, barbed wire fence. I walked around the object and surmised that it could be a planetary remnant, a mite of a meteor, no doubt with a flame in its core. I needed to feel it with my body and listen close to discover its story, but the barbs were menacing and loud and I had neither ladder nor nearby tree.
I sat down on the long grasses surrounding the object, hoping that it would speak to me, beyond the enclosure. Instead, a quizzical old woman arrived, wagging a pitchfork.
“What are you doing sitting there, child?” she inquired, pointing the pitchfork at me. “There are biting mouths in the grasses and the moon is avaricious in these parts,” she added.
“What are you doing out here so late, Grandma?” I asked.
“I am guarding, of course” she responded. “But that is not the point at all. What are you doing here?”
“I am a tourist, fancying what I find and looking for a room and ball. I will also need a fancy dress shop.”
“Nonsense,” the woman replied. “There are no tourists. There is nowhere to come from; accordingly, there are no strangers. You are confused and must leave towards whence you came . . . now. Before something happens.”
“But if there is no other place, how can I leave towards whence I came, and isn’t it true that something is always happening? As well as the reverse. And … and … there is always danger when there is happening and not happening? And wouldn’t I be proceeding backwards?”
“I have no time for theories. I am busy guarding. Currently, you are neither towards nor backwards. You are merely a forward, untoward nuisance.”
I skirted her insults and asked: “What are you guarding?”
“It’s perfectly obvious, young lady,” the woman answered, peevishly.
“Yes well, I agree, at this moment you appear to be guarding this monolith, but what is it? What is its meaning?”
“You ask too many questions. That is unwise and unruly.”
“Who says so?” I inquired.
“They say so.”
“Who is they?”
“All of them. Obviously.”
Abruptly, she smelled like noxious air and I was frightened “They” had always alarmed me. References to “they” made me sneeze violently, and so I did.
This woman would never listen to me, so I kept talking to keep myself company. I talked about my dead parents, my sequoia; spoke wistfully of the man in white and a friend who’d betrayed me. I just kept on, as she guarded the stone. Three times, she encircled it, looking anxiously about. Perhaps decades past, when she was a child, the woman had listened to her self. It was obvious that everything was obvious to her; accordingly, she had no need to speak.
Some people frequently say: “You cannot listen to others unless you’ve learned how to listen to yourself.” When I first heard the adage, I considered it a profound revelation. I never quite grasped it, but thought I should. I didn’t doubt it, though I didn’t believe it absolutely either; cited it many times on public restroom walls, considering it my mission, the way Mother Teresa spread the word of the god in which she wanted to believe, but ultimately did not.. I even tried to effect listening to my self during sleep, which disturbed my bio-rhythms. When friends were sad, I’d tell them they weren’t listening to themselves. Self-listening seemed a logical, reasonable, and attractive goal. People told me to record the mission in my own unique way and sell it. At one point, I thought of changing my name to Mataharia Mumja.
So here I was on the other side and at this time all I wanted fervently was the attention of this old woman, whose name I did not know. If she (let’s say Greta) listened to me, she’d cut the barbed wire fence around the object I saw as a stone. If she listened to me, perhaps she’d know how to listen to herself and realize that the stone wanted freedom --- I could tell it was throbbing. Well, perhaps I was projecting. I realized why I was trapped in this momentary, desperate obsession: she reminded me of my mother.
I wrapped myself around the old woman’s veined legs gently, yet with urgency, and called her “Grandmamma, dear.” She smelled like a lavender sachet, so I told her I’d been missing her since I was four. That was true. I convinced my self. She looked puzzled, scratched her head. I was afraid she’d turn into a crow. Instead, she sat down on the grass beside me and started to weep.
“It is good to weep,” I said, holding her. “Weeping is a form of vigilance. It means that you can listen to your self when necessary. Now all you have to do is cut the fence. You will feel so relieved, I promise.”
“I have severe sciatica and I can’t cut the fence when they’ve given me no tools. I feel pathetically limited, but realizing one’s limitations does not of itself set oneself free, as some would have us believe.”
At that point, the man in white appeared from the black and blue of nigh of night and from a whence with which I was no doubt unacquainted. “You are a troublemaker,” he said to me, shaking a white gloved index finger. “Be on your way and let things be as they be or not. You are disturbing the natural disorder. You lack respect for the sanctity of art.”
He then addressed the old woman: “I know you are tired, Mother Magda. Relief is imminent.”
Indeed, it was. A stretch limousine arrived to deposit another old woman and remove the one to whom I’d become attached. The man had disappeared and I had difficulty finding a road. But I took comfort in romantic reveries. The man was not a god yet he was watching me. Attention is the first step on the winding stairway of love. Oh dear. What dreadful poet wrote that? I did!

4th Little Love Story-Poem (Draft 2)

Quantum Physics

Jim and Tim met at The Met. They were scrutinizing a painting of a woman pouting at herself in a mirror as she brushed her exuberant golden hair. Jim looked at Tim and saw Tim as the person he’d always wanted to see in his own mirror, someone who reminded him of himself but substantially more than himself. Tim had the same experience. They looked at one another as though through a magical looking glass and turned instantly into a union: the seeing and the seen, the seen and the seeing. Their tastes were naturally similar, from escargots to crème brulee, Marisot to Klee, and they frequently uttered the same words in unison with glee.

Jim had a wife named Adele, and Tim, a live-in partner named Estelle. Adele and Estelle took back seats to Jim and Tim and had nothing to say to one another, though they frequently rolled their eyes at each other and yawned in empathy. After a while the couple outings lost Estelle, who disappeared, maybe with a man named Marvin she’d met at Tango Tuesdays. Adele, a clinical psychologist, declared Jim guilty of a parasitic form of narcissism that would be his undoing. He returned the diagnosis, with one swift, impulsive stroke, as people are wont to do when they’re rightfully attacked. So Adele left with the child and three cats and Tim moved in with Jim.

Tim and Jim began to grow old together. Eventually with aging came forgetfulness, fuzziness, cataracts and grumpiness. They peered into one another’s mirrors and spat on the glass but their images failed to improve and became cloudier. Teeth turned yellow and dropped out, skin turned the color of ancient bones, and eyes paled. The men threw their mirrors away. But even without the mirrors, Tim reminded Jim of Jim as substantially less than himself and Jim reminded Tim of Tim as substantially less than himself and so they became disgusted and hopeless and decided to unmeet. Tim found a woman named Esme who was more than he’d imagined, and Jim found his son Jimbo a passable portrait painter.

Reading Announcement: MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10TH, Cornelia Street Cafe

6:00 - 8:00 PM POETRY, PROSE, SHORT FICTIONS
29 Cornelia Street, W. Village, NYC (between Bleecker & W. 4th)


C Stone; Carol Novack; Tom Fink; Burt Kimmelman

Carole Stone, Professor Emerita, Montclair State University has published two books of poetry; Lime and Salt, Carriage House Press, 1997 and Traveling with the Dead, Backwaters Press, 2007. Her six chapbooks of poems include Paris Etudes, 2008 and More Sweet, More Salt, 2006, both from Finishing Line Press. A chapbook The Business of Americans was published in the Ezine Beard of Bees in 2008.

Carol Novack writes like a visual artist, instrumentalist, and contortionist. Most of her writings reflect her preoccupation with the abominable events in the present passing history of the Age of Dementia and reveal a perspective of existence as tragic, hysterical, and absurd. Carol publishes the multi-media e-journal Mad Hatters' Review.

Burt Kimmelman has published five collections of poetry � Musaics (Sputyen Duyvil Press, 1992), First Life (Jensen/Daniels Publishing, 2000), The Pond at Cape May Point (Marsh Hawk Press, 2002), a collaboration with the painter Fred Caruso, Somehow (Marsh Hawk Press, 2005), and There Are Words (Dos Madres Press, 2007); his volume of poems titled As If Free is forthcoming in 2009 (from Talisman House, Publishers).

(Tom Fink hasn't provided a bio)

In Homage to the RNC & 9/11

STATEMENTS FOR THE PRESS

copyright carol novack 2008
(an extraction from a long piece published hither & thither)

I HAVE NEVER BEEN A COMMUNIST

After hours of interrogation, I have nothing to confess, although it’s possible I have no memories left. Please believe me. I have no politics.

I’ve always loved foie gras, Grey Goose, Gucci Puccis, blue fox coats, fancy dishwashers, diamonds, and white limos as sleek as Arabian horses. I am not ashamed.

Even when daddy lost his big job and threw himself out, I loved the burgundy leather sofa and that ivory statuette of Cupid with the lampshade hat. I loved so many things in that house I stayed there much too long. I suppose I wanted more and more and more – more childhood, more gifts at Christmas, more champagne and caviar, you know the scoop. They teach you to want. Wanting is an art. How could I know that my father was sufficient? Give me his voice, the lullabies he sang, the adoration in his eyes. I want so much to go back, sentimental fool that I am. He is dead.

Of course, I was never a Communist. Mother never let me share my toys. I never give anything away. I can’t live without that Prada purse. They all have Prada purses.

Mother died in that house. She said the locks were broken; she couldn’t possibly open the doors. They found her in bed with the family gems scattered all over the bedclothes, sparkling like babies’ tears. Most of them were fake, it turned out. It usually happens that way.

I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A LOYAL TEAM PLAYER

I tell you I swear I will not make waves, never made them. Those who accuse me are lying.

Proof:

Exhibit A

When M ravaged P in the ladies room, I was hiding in a stall and heard everything.

When P begged me to testify I said no, what are you thinking? I support the company. My testimony would hurt the company. M is not expendable; you are, I said. I said Sorry, life is tough, gotta take the bad with the good tomorrow is another day forget about it, life is short, gotta catch the worm catch the worm, bye and may God be with you.

Exhibit B

When the important news reporter wanted to interview me about financial discrepancies in the company’s auditing reports, I said B & Y are squeaky clean how can you suggest otherwise. Can you prove that B and Y are in hiding somewhere in South America? No, you can’t, I said the phone records have been cooked by the liberals, goodbye no further comments.

Exhibit C

When G & G could no longer sublet their apartment because of my co-ops’s new policy, they appealed to me, unemployed and broke, they claimed. I’m a good citizen, on the board, president for 16 years, a no nonsense type of person. One must take control to defend one’s property; one must be decisive. So the residents always elect me and I have my obligations. Accordingly, I said no way to G & G, we can’t have transients living here, have to control the comings and goings, too bad for you can always sell. There’s a real estate agent on our Board, you know. While we sympathize, we can’t possibly make an exception, when in Rome do as the Romans do make haste while the sun shines redo your resumes, tough luck. I am protecting my investment, mine all mine. I shall not waver. No exceptions.

Exhibit D

When they started coming for the foreigners, I closed my curtains. My neighbors and I shut our doors. We refused the children. They were crying. It was not for us to decide what was best for the community. We spoke in whispers and cooked big chickens. We played Frank Sinatra to snuff the irritating sound of the gunshots and wailing, wrote to our politicians to get rid of the local porn shop.

Exhibit E

When Billy said I want to fight for democracy, I didn’t think I’d be staring at a face without eyes, six months later. I said this is our team and you are right the President said so. Make us proud, Billy. Make us safe. I knew my duty. It is a mother’s lot to sacrifice everything for her children, and her children’s lot to defend their mothers from savages. That is what I know. That is what I was taught.

We go about our routines, as usual, but we know they are coming and there is nothing we can do. Our skin is bound so tight we are suffocating. We sigh. We gasp. We close our eyes, rely on our faith.

We do.

Another excerpt from The Fallen Bassoonist (draft)

III

Violette and Didier Re/Deconstructing

As imparted by Violette to old friend and mentor, Jeannette Le Blanc, the renowned producer at the Paris Opera House:

“Yes, I fled to another country; survival depended on it. I left behind the young lover and an eloquent stalker in a wheelchair. Left behind my avaricious, vitriolic brother, in touch with the doctors. Someone had reported the affair to him and he was foolish enough to call me, gloating. The lover was black, you see -- enough of a deviation to commit me, perhaps. But I was cunning, slow but quick when I have to be, always. Took a few belongings, a bank check in the amount of the entirety of my accounts, and cursed my mother for leaving a trust fund (though my savings were substantial). Then I boarded the next train due north. While I’m still in touch with the lover, I don’t intend to resume the affair.

The lover, the stalker, begone. I had no room for men, wanted simply to be. An equal load to leave and be left, always. I had already been abandoned, and blamed for being so. I had already been incarcerated like a wild lioness because I had made horrifying noises and torn my hair from the roots. I buried her, yowling. There was a knife in her tiny throat. I did not see the slasher, could not see through the haze of the chaos. Fog captured the mountains, a blue almost black fog with a voice like an addict’s: I want, I want. And the voice howled, hot and delirious with summer air whirling round and round the malignant mountains.

I saw Michel fall, as though pushed by fog and wind, my baby tossed like a cherry tomato into the mouth of a sharp moon. She fell face down, fell down, pierced, silenced, she fell into the mountains. No, I recall wrong. She’d left us before we climbed the mountains. Way before, when she was thirsty in my dry womb, that was the beginning of her end. She hardly survived and we buried her without benedictions somewhere I forget where, we wanted no one to know, for fear. But no, I may recall wrong again. Michel simply disappeared, leaving me on mountains, I think we fought, about a woman or money or politics, no matter. We fought and he was gone or maybe not. Or I was gone. I can’t recall, can’t recall. But what did we do with the baby?

Naturally, I knew that none of “them” would believe my forgetfulness, my inattention to essential details. So I feigned madness, easy for me to do. I had feigned it before, say out of boredom, the flaunting of conventions, rebellion from complacency and control, a fuck you to the acceptable gods, my obscenely dogmatic parents. Say, an uprising from big daddy cock with his metronome, tick toc, tick toc, and poor maman hen in her coop, praying for a raison d’etre, and crying in her nest about her failure to produce no more than two fertile eggs. So much crying everywhere and all over time. And oh frère Jacques, frère Jacques, the smug, greedy bastard, first born of the loathsome union between the maiden ladybug and the squalid roach, no wonder I am soiled … But surely I hyperbolize when I’d rather exercise and ventilate my magnificent lungs, sing high and low, expunge my life of the low. I was gone, am always . . . disappearing. What do I know?

So I hid in an English village for nearly a year, courtesy of Alice, an old friend from the conservatory, gave up the meds, and began to feel a little alive again, at least, a bit less like a zombie. Not that my sleeping improved. In fact, the nightmares numbed by drugs returned in full force. I would awaken sweating and panting from my recurring dreams of impending death, lie in bed, feeling as though I were degenerating, then fragmenting, disintegrating, evaporating. But eventually, I began to accept my fear and recognize that the nightmares of death, both in sleep and waking, were not literally “happening.” Obviously, they were potent metaphors.

What was I telling myself? What were the dreams imparting? If I could comprehend the reason or reasons I was having the nightmares, would I awaken refreshed for the first time in my life? Would the mysteries of my past, the details of events I seemed to be keeping from myself be revealed, liberating me? Yet, might such revelation in fact pose a far greater danger than the nightmares that were causing exhaustion and stress? Hideous possibilities came to mind. Had I pushed my husband off the mountain, suffocated my baby? Had my alcoholic father raped me or attempted to rape me? I began to dwell morbidly on these terrifying possibilities to the distraction of little else, going over and over the events that might or might not have occurred. I recognized that my memory had no doubt been further impaired by the shock treatment, coupled with the psychotropic drugs I was compelled to take, following the trauma of my experience on the mountain. Was there even a child? Why did I recall a baby girl so vividly, when, au fond, I wasn’t sure she’d existed? Was I my own baby? What a delirious thought!

In any event, my obsessive attempts to lure my dormant memories out of their hiding place, like a snake charmer without an instrument, led to an immobilizing depression For months, I ate little, drank much too much, wine, spirits, whatever was available at any moment, the drinking a contrary and perverse modus operandi designed to annihilate those memories, along with myself. My face began to wither and I sang out of tune.

When I wasn’t drinking, I was sleeping and refused to leave my room, despite the occasional entreaties of my friend. Usually, she left me alone. I was becoming a burden on her, I feared. She would give up on me and throw me out. As it was, she proved to be my only comfort, holding me during my frequent crying fits, stroking me hair, praising me when I expressed disgust with myself, my life, reiterated my failures. Finally, after an entire night of throwing up and falling down, I decided to give up drinking and otherwise pull myself together. That would take enormous strength, but I convinced myself that I could do it.

So now I am here, Jeanette. I’ve been working with Madame Debour to get my voice back into shape for the stage. I’m almost ready to start again, and I’m prepared to fight my brother if he turns a dirty trick. I want the stage, the sensation of acting, rather than being acted upon. Now, nothing else seems to matter.

With affection,

Vi”

***

Didier dreams that he’s a bassoonist in a movie about a wayward woodwind ensemble. The movie takes place in Egypt. Maurice the oboist has just broken up with his wife and can never remember his lines. Suzanna the clarinetist is suffering from insomnia because she’s in love with the newly divorced director, who’s in love with Clothilde the flutist who flouts his advances and threatens to sue him for sexual harassment. Didier is having problems acting “with feeling” because he finds camel riding extremely arduous and ridiculously foolhardy, particularly at night and up the impossibly steep incline of the Great Pyramid of Khafre at Giza. The camera crew and director are threatening to fire him. Just as the movie caravan reaches the apex of the pyramid, Didier’s camel slips on a crumbling chunk of ancient limestone and Didier finds himself falling.

Didier awakens trembling. He hasn’t wanted to think about his own descent from an insignificant mountain near Geneva; it was as embarrassing. What he believes he recalls sounds like the first rehearsal of a bad opera:

Maurice Come now, Didier, have no fear, it is only a small mountain. Join me on this heavenly day: the sun smiles benevolently and storks do play.

Didier: I have never even climbed a dune, my friend. My feet are always unsure of themselves and that mountain looks daunting. I’d prefer to stay here, on terra firma, and swim in the lake. Then take the yodeling class taught by that formidable Valkurie. That is more my speed, Maurice. Besides, the sun doesn’t smile and there are no storks here, at least not at the moment.

Maurice: Oh, you and your literalism! But friend, you have never known the delights of looking down from a mountain on a lucid day. There is nothing to compare.

Didier: I have known the visual pleasure of looking down at passing vistas from an airplane, with my head in the clouds. That is enough for me. I have no ambition to conquer mountains. Besides, I prefer maigrets and Magritte to mountains.

Maurice: Ah, what can I do to persuade you? Shall I invite your Valkurie to ascend with us? What is her name, Cora?

Didier: Just try!

Maurice: And if I succeed? Will you promise to make the climb?

Didier: I dare you!

Was that how it happened? Should he blame Maurice, rather than his lust or even the mountain? What a preposterous thought. But on hindsight, he recognizes his innate distrust of mountains. Perhaps he was bullied into climbing one as a child and harbors a hidden terror? Who would have bullied him? Classmates? Father?

Didier imagines hearing Cora’s screams as he tumbled downward over stones; well, he thinks he can. Perhaps she had declined Maurice’s invitation. Perhaps all he can recall accurately is the irreal sensation of falling from a (relatively) great height. Does it matter what happened? Didier suffered a head injury, so he can’t trust his memory. Also, he’s lost touch with Maurice, who showed up faithfully at the hospital for the first few weeks. Out of guilt or friendship? They never discussed the incident.

Back to Writing: The state of everything is beyond hopeless to me.

I am writing a fictional invention called The Fallen Bassoonist. Here are a few excerpts.


The Fallen Bassoonist



I.


At 7:30 every weekday morning, he opens the French doors to his small patio overlooking the square and maneuvers his wheelchair to the railing to watch the women. On weekends, his sister picks him up to take him to her house a short distance from Nice. He entertains the children and enjoys his brother-in-law’s dinners, accompanied by the refined regional wines from the cellar. These days, he is teaching 12 year old Pierre how to maneuver his mouth about the delicate though seemingly tough reed of the bassoon without breaking the reed with his teeth. Pierre’s fingers have grown long enough to reach the keys. Little Manon wants to learn, but her lungs are fragile. She is taking piano lessons instead.

He is grateful to his sister for preserving the aesthetic passions of their parents. Fortunately, it seems that she hasn’t inherited the abstract frigidity of their father, who. died several years ago. Since then, their mother’s mind has degenerated into a spool less thread. The man and his sister speak little of her, visit her infrequently at the government-run nursing home. He wishes that he had been able to hire professional caretakers for their mother at home. Perhaps her mind would not have declined as rapidly, detached from the residence of her heart. Instead, his sister had insisted on selling the old house to pay their father’s debts – it couldn’t be helped. At the time, he was touring the world with his quartet.

The uncle and his nephew start with simple exercises. Soon he will bring the boy scores by Mozart, then Schubert. Then perhaps Bartok, when the boy is older and ready to take his first steps into the world of abstract emotions and thoughts, the one the man inherited reluctantly from his father. The boy is still superstitious, with a crucifix above his bed. He is rebelling from his godless heritage.

There is never enough suitable music solely for the bassoon. The violins are the bullies of the classical world, alongside the piano, of course, he thinks. Such a simplistic, melodramatic instrument, the piano. Bang bang Rachmaninoff. Make the girls cry, piano and violin. The piano is not as subtly nuanced or sensuous as the bass, the cello, the bassoon. Not deep and complex, rich . . . primal. How many children opt for bassoons over pianos? Not to mention the guitar, that over-rated pop instrument, easy to learn, vapid as easy listening music, well, unless a master like Segovia is playing..

At 7:30 every weekday morning, the bassoonist looks through his opera glasses into a window on the other side of the street. On this summer morning, in lucid, not overwhelming light, he can see the woman clearly. She opens her shutters, stretches, yawns, combs her long hair with her fingers. As always, she is naked. Perhaps she knows or wishes that someone is watching.

The woman’s arms are substantial, thicker than a bassoon. Her face is broad, Slavic shaped. He shifts his focus to her breasts. Also generous and round, though drooping somewhat. On the verge of middle age, no longer springy but full with surprisingly modest light aureoles. Now she turns. As she walks away from the window, he focuses his opera glasses on the bass-like curve of her thick wide buttocks; adjusts the glasses to close in on the sight. Delicious and profound, and so alluringly imperfect. He loves to look at her and imagine that she is looking at him.

The bassoonist always wants to linger on this woman’s breasts and buttocks with his long fingers, lick and suck on her with his tongue drenched in the finest Bourdeaux mixed with the juices from her cunt. Ha! He chooses the English word for its tone, the deepest, most primal note he can achieve. CUNT. He wants to swallow it, wants to hear the woman’s body applaud, whoever, whatever she is. It hardly matters. She could be nothing, no one. He wants. He wants. That suffices for now. He is not yet strong enough to wheel himself down the street, someday to walk perhaps, loathes the social workers and physiotherapists, preposterously poor actors like his parents’ church friends. Talking to him as though he were a child: everything will be fine.

He will mobilize himself when he is sufficiently motivated, gaining his strength from necessity, the necessity to culminate desire. He is gearing up to garner the urge to ambulate with his hideous faux legs, now that he is resigned to devote himself to a search for something other than glory -- something more basic, essential, less abstract . . . less ephemeral. Maybe something he had understood once, as a child. He lifts his robe to look down on the legs that aren’t his, plastic below the knee. Merde, they are ugly. Dégoutant. That is what is. Rien à faire. I must not fall prey to thinking that I am my legs. But I will never be the subject of documentaries on the famous bassoonist who overcame adversity. After the fall. Merde, that mountain!

The memory of reactions after his fall prompts the bassoonist to spike his espresso with Drambuie. When high on his brilliance, he had rarely imbibed alcohol before dinnertime, and only wine -- infrequently liquor or liqueur. .

We will pray for you, his acquaintances and fans had written. They had sent him flowers and cliché-drenched cards: Our prayers are with you, cher Bernard. Don’t hesitate …. You will be back on stage soon. You have your wonderful hands. You are a genius! .....

He peers through his opera glasses, sees nothing but a vacant, dull room through the window all beiges and browns. The woman has vanished; presumably, he missed her exit. But what would he say when he rang the cow’s bell? Then, which bell? Surely, there are several apartments on the 5th floor of her building. If they were to meet, however, she would see him as a cripple, not an object of desire, despite his eloquent, aesthetic face and slender, strong body – above the prosthetic limbs. He would have to woo her, whoever she is.

The bassoonist shifts direction, prompted by movement below. There is the Moroccan woman from his building, floor below. She is walking with her son, taking him to school. The bassoonist and the Moroccan woman exchanged formal greetings in the lift on occasion, and she’d introduced him to her son, who spoke politely with no trace of a foreign accent. She’d never looked at the bassoonist directly, though she didn’t wear purdah and was dressed in Western clothes. He has never seen her with a man. She seems shy, but her shyness may be cultural.

He wonders what the woman smells like up close, without clothes. It is hard to tell how old she is, as her face is full of shadows from within, lined despite the freshness of her flesh. She is wide below the waist, narrow above, with merely adequate breasts. He prefers them more generous. But the form of the thighs beneath her skirt is enticing and the curve of her buttocks, promising. She flows when she walks. Taking the Arab woman, considering her culture and his disability, would be a challenge he’d relish. Does she taste like lemons and cumin? Salty like olives? Are her aureoles the color of eggplants?

The liqueur is giving him a soporific buzz. He will have toast and another espresso, again adding Drambuie. Eventually, he will listen to Schubert and Brahms, possibly Count Basie or Georges Brassens. If inclined, he will work on his libretto.

He returns to the patio with his espresso and two sweet-buttered toasts lavished with preserves from sweet black plums in his sister’s garden. It is not so bad to be homebound, simply to enjoy the warmth of the sun on his face and watch the women. He has just noticed a new one, lightly plump with youth and happy featured, sitting on a bench with a Jack Russell. She is reading a book. The dog nuzzles her, wanting attention, licks her face. She laughs and pushes him back. The dog sits and watches pigeons. She strokes him idly as she reads.

The bassoonist becomes the dog. He closes his eyes, tilts his head back, and emits a purr-like growl. He pushes his cold nose under the woman’s pink cotton dress, sees that her panties are pink and her pubic curls black. She smells like sweet black plums. He pushes his wet nose beneath her panties, into her wet CUNT. She sighs and shoos him off of her. Then a man arrives to remove her from the bench. They kiss, walk away holding hands, neglecting the dog sagging behind like a forgotten breast.

He returns to himself to himself, listens to Schubert as he sits on the patio. He sees no women that interest him. He daydreams about a plump young woman he met in Italy.

The bassoonist is writing a libretto for an opera about a mezzo-soprano who has fallen into Purgatory from a mountain in the Andes. He has only dreamed of the Andes. The mountain from which he fell is relatively unknown.

He wants to start a draft of the second act today. The opera was solicited with no guarantees by a friend with connections to the most prominent and therefore wealthiest member of the Sydney Opera House Board of Directors. The bassoonist will compose the music once he has finished the libretto. Ass backwards, perhaps, but that’s his preferred method. Unfortunately, the libretto must be in English. He is better at German and Italian. Never mind, the editors will mutilate his finished product, he is certain. Fuck the editors. Long live the editors.

The bassoonist is now under the influence of a confluence of alcoholic delights, having imbibed several espresso’s with Drambuie and a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé with the Croque Madame he ordered from the brasserie next door. He is feeling philosophically giddy as he writes:

A Quasi-Fictional Rumination Published in Notre Dame Review

To get away from what people generally call "politics" and "news," here's the piece I originally called "Interview with Self," revised as "A With/out Q With/out Self," published in audio with music by Don Meyer (my composing collaborator, Head of Music Dept., Lake Forest College)in the online edition of NDR (scroll down to the link to hear if you wish - Don is Q the bassoon & my voice is A the I). The text below is, of course, in print in NDR, meaning that nearly 100% of the planet's English reading population has never read it. (There is MUCH to be said of publishing on the Internet as well as off it.)

Comments welcome.

____________________

A WITH/OUT Q WITH/OUT SELF


A: It was at no point whatsoever at which I realized there was nothing else to do and that was that. Well, maybe it was that or that was that or this. I couldn’t be sure until I’d gone through the process. When I was four or five at the beach near my house, peering into the beach bags of bathers, finding banana skins and eggshells. I seem to remember an ovular moment . . . or oracular.

A: The first thing to think of after that was this. So with that in mind, I would naturally have to be the centerpiece of the allegory. Then I thought I could possibly relate the tiresome ontological metaphors, the isms and ologies and ohms and ohmygods, you know Being and Non-Being and it’s all the same and everything but not but no thing and illusions and all that and this in an innovative way, meaning by means of an interview with me, my Self, and that by so doing, I would be original.

Then of course there are so many possible audiences, a veritable cornucopia of ears. If you are performing in front of a Romanian audience, you don’t want to play Indian pop tunes, do you? Well, that’s the point precisely now, isn’t it?

A: That may be so, frequent fragility, I admit, and it could be vitamin deficiency during pregnancy, too many martinis, I’ll say Mother’s fault to be kind to you. But it was hard to find anyone else available off the bat and with time, people disappear, or in time they become lost. Oh oh there was this one and that one, and theoretically, I weep. Either way, scheduling is always a problem; then there’s the mortgage, much to lose, little to gain, though in truth of course property is a laden donkey, but on the other hand, there’s crème brulee. So to cut corners became critical and then of course money and also fame, objects of desire. The audience always takes bets: this one will be a winner, 10 to one; that one will place second, and so on. With the right agent, consider Self as syndicated in scarlet or lavender, black, teal, indigo, non-fat or 100% fat with anti-toxins. Sold! Voila! It’s a matter of flexibility. Mother told me I could become. But with money and fame would I strut about the globe blowing kisses from yachts and exhibiting my latest endangered species fur? I would be stealing the allegory of myself. Horrors!

A: Oh now you’re talking ideology and semantics. Your insistent literalism and exactitude is exasperating. You take all of this and that much too seriously and think the only people worthy of being interviewed can be found on amazon.com with five star reviews or viewed on talk or news shows. That tells me a lot about you. Frankly, your imagination has close walls.

A: I am most adamantly not a dog, chasing my tail. Simply let’s say childhood was okay as childhoods go, probably better than yours but maybe not. I’ve heard of worse. Nobody locked me in a cellar, shoveled dirt into my mouth or poked objects into my delicate overtures. Nobody told me I couldn’t eat ham if I didn’t first eat my peas. So I am very lucky to have gotten away with a tolerable childhood. Not the best but not the worst, no not by a long shot, even better than worst though lesser than best, if you get my drift, you understand, the occasional nagging and smothering, to be expected, and my head hurt when she brushed my hair.

Asleep during childhood, we can scarcely remember details, but emotional tones, themes, as in subtle transformations of the child in her own eyes, in kindergarten, first grade, summer camp, and so on, by means of humiliating experiences. Example one: two older boys tugging at her underpants, tearing them off. Example two: she forgets purposefully. So there are memories, tales and rumors, but you can never believe any of them completely. Take what you want and discard the rest I say. End of temporary reverie and on to the next.

A: Well, it’s a mark of maturity to realize that one’s most attentive audience is Self. But also one’s least attentive. And then one must ask what is Self, most often referred to as one’s self or my self, and that is where the amniotic fluid gets murky. We ourselves have wondered that so many times. But contentment?

Okay, I understand a diversion, though we are so tempted to try, say this or say Eastern methodology or phenomenology, to empty Self of self or resist self without resisting Self or become either a cathedral or gargoyle. So the question is: will you dance with me? But can one tell the dancer from the dance or know that one is not say, a butterfly? Unless one falls into a bucket full of collective shit, no question mark. So the bottom line is let us return to Exhibit “A.,” the dear forgotten womb, nostalgia of beginnings, terrifying tabula rasa.

A: Now it’s your time to listen, so listen. I have this to say. Picture a donkey with a cargo of bananas and hens. She is stumbling on stones through the night, smells a bewildering frenzy of unidentified flowers, somewhere under the shared sky of dim, far flung stars. She hears the voices of creatures she can neither smell nor see and trembles, feeling vulnerable to their genetic destinies. Inevitably, the donkey, exhausted, sits down by the roadside if she is allowed. Her nose longs for only one scent, her eyes for only one vision, and her ears for only one sound.

A: The first aroma: the one that assaulted and tempted all of her senses as she emerged from womb, warm, sloppy scent of milk in the breast or could be roses tossed by an appreciative audience, as in congratulations, happy birthday, cherished miracle! The first vision: through fog, breast and light. And the first voice: well, one might ask if it’s the mother or midwife or father in the labor room. Or is it the infant’s own voice? Or the hollow black hungry sound of the cosmos? Or is the sound-vision of the cosmos merely a mirror reflecting our reckless, dull mirrors? Not to mention the taste of custom-made milk and the feel of attending mother breast and hands, sound of hands clapping.

A: My dear pathetic Self, you are so distraught with my distractions you’ve forgotten your questions. My audience is you, my Self, or not mine, as I can’t own Self. Self is not as it would be or I would wish it to be, would wish I to be, heroic and coherent, glorious and true. It is frequently breathless and comes in a cacophony of colors, nuances of light, sweet and bitter aromas and tastes. Naturally, Self is subject to the effects of negligent parenting, Bombay Sapphire, nasty people, broken clocks and hurricanes; sometimes goes on vacations, threatens suicide, and believes it loves another Self, and then it sometimes propagates its self. That is who is interviewing me or we. And that is what we have to say to the audience. Are you my audience? Are you listening?

A: Tell me where you are and who you are. Please do. I have a tale to tell, no time to waste, no time.

CUT.