One year my beauties. One year my darling. One year, lover. One rotation, foul. One mean spin. One more go. Thank you darlin’. Thank you lover. Thank you foul beast of burden. Thank you angry Lord. Thank you my beauties. Thank you glorious, rotating foul ceaseless bitch. Supine to the motor.
And here we go. Go go go > > >
Monday, December 31, 2007
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Pilot was a fagot
“Because he was a fagot!”
Maybe Grandma had a point. We somehow got onto a Jesus discussion at the Christmas table and Angie asked why they killed Jesus. They.
“You know, he suffered under the Pontius Pilot.” I was quoting verse.
Then Grandma answered, “because he was a fagot!” I assume she meant Pilot but who knows, she voiced her opinion and concern. That was enough. No one challenged the point.
The boy was in the adjacent room slamming a talking car into the wall. It blurted out an indiscernible blabber rhythmically with each collision. This was amusing to the boy. The designer got it right – SLAM (slight pause) CRACKLE BABBLE. Slam Crackle Babble is the language of boys. I started laughing, they thought I was laughing at the ‘fagot’ blurt. They.
Grannie was bored and that was that. “I hate this town.”
That’s more like it, I thought. I watched her, nodding my head in agreement.
“You never see anyone on the streets. Just watch out there during the day, you’ll see. Nothin’”
“Oh, you miss the shootings and robberies on the streets then,” Dad (her son) says.
“I don’t care, it was alive. This place, pardon my French, sucks.”
She was expressing and speaking to me specifically because we were engaged in conversation and I was asking. It was her experience and she felt good expressing it.
“She’s got early onset Alzheimer’s,” Laura whispers as if in explanation of the digression.
“We gotta get you outta here or buy you a gun or something.” That’s seems to be my standard answer – get a gun. No one ever laughs but I still say it.
“Pilot was a fagot,” I tell my brother while he watches the kids play. He ignores me.
So this is Christmas. Lennon, that brilliant bastard, maybe even that particular line, set up the tone for my entire generation. Then some damn fool shot him in the back. Some other stuff happened then Cobain blew his own face off with a shotgun. That brings us to now. I could be shallow. I know it’s a response to the plastic materials from Singapore invading my hypereality scattered about the hardwood fields of play. I decided to drink wine and be merry even though the stress of being the least wealthy in the room was piercing my frontal lobe. They ask questions about my well being wearing sad expressions – eyes averting to the floor. No way to win it. Grandma had something to express so I thought we should talk:
“What year were you born Me-Ma?”
“Huh?”
“What year were you born?”
“Nineteen Twenty Five.”
Jesus H Christ. “Wow, that makes you eighty two.”
“I don’t know Danny, I stopped counting years ago.”
“And you were born here?” (In the U.S., she’s pureblood Italian)
“My Brother was two when we came here.”
“And he’s older than you?”
“He’s the oldest and I’m the youngest. But Danny, you should have met my mother, she was a pip. She didn’t take nothin’ from no one. This one time my father brought back a broom and the handle broke and she went right back to the hardware store and demanded a new one. She couldn’t speak a lick of English but she knew she was gonna get a new one. You know what happened Danny? That man wouldn’t give her one so she took the broken handle and smashed the rest of them. Broke all the other handles on the brooms. She was no dummy,” Grandma says, laughing into an emphysema coughing fit.
“Sounds like my kind of girl.”
“Oh Danny, you would have loved her. She - was - a - pip. Imagine her telling this to a judge and remember she didn’t speak much English at all.”
“And your parents spoke English?”
“No. They spoke to us in Italian growing up. Everything was in Italian.”
“So you understand Italian?”
I spoke some Italian words but she didn’t recognize them. I had an awful accent and she was used to dialect no doubt. “And where did you learn English?”
“What do you mean? I learned it here.” She meant Newark. She was born, raised, married, divorced, lived in Newark New Jersey her entire life. Went to Vegas twice and that was it. The rest of her days were in Newark.
“Grandma, we gotta talk more.”
“You like this stuff Danny. Every time you’re here you want to hear about this stuff.” Which isn’t exactly true but I wish I asked more fervently and earlier.
It was time to unwrap gifts so we attended to it. I knew I’d be back and soon. Grandma needed me and I needed her, had to figure out the reason for all my hair and buffoonish charisma and she had to escape the boredom of the new house and the madness that ensues.
Plus it was Christmas, however stupid, and a long line of bold and brave people brought it to me and me to it. And the kids were learning in rapid succession. I reached for more wine.
Maybe Grandma had a point. We somehow got onto a Jesus discussion at the Christmas table and Angie asked why they killed Jesus. They.
“You know, he suffered under the Pontius Pilot.” I was quoting verse.
Then Grandma answered, “because he was a fagot!” I assume she meant Pilot but who knows, she voiced her opinion and concern. That was enough. No one challenged the point.
The boy was in the adjacent room slamming a talking car into the wall. It blurted out an indiscernible blabber rhythmically with each collision. This was amusing to the boy. The designer got it right – SLAM (slight pause) CRACKLE BABBLE. Slam Crackle Babble is the language of boys. I started laughing, they thought I was laughing at the ‘fagot’ blurt. They.
Grannie was bored and that was that. “I hate this town.”
That’s more like it, I thought. I watched her, nodding my head in agreement.
“You never see anyone on the streets. Just watch out there during the day, you’ll see. Nothin’”
“Oh, you miss the shootings and robberies on the streets then,” Dad (her son) says.
“I don’t care, it was alive. This place, pardon my French, sucks.”
She was expressing and speaking to me specifically because we were engaged in conversation and I was asking. It was her experience and she felt good expressing it.
“She’s got early onset Alzheimer’s,” Laura whispers as if in explanation of the digression.
“We gotta get you outta here or buy you a gun or something.” That’s seems to be my standard answer – get a gun. No one ever laughs but I still say it.
“Pilot was a fagot,” I tell my brother while he watches the kids play. He ignores me.
So this is Christmas. Lennon, that brilliant bastard, maybe even that particular line, set up the tone for my entire generation. Then some damn fool shot him in the back. Some other stuff happened then Cobain blew his own face off with a shotgun. That brings us to now. I could be shallow. I know it’s a response to the plastic materials from Singapore invading my hypereality scattered about the hardwood fields of play. I decided to drink wine and be merry even though the stress of being the least wealthy in the room was piercing my frontal lobe. They ask questions about my well being wearing sad expressions – eyes averting to the floor. No way to win it. Grandma had something to express so I thought we should talk:
“What year were you born Me-Ma?”
“Huh?”
“What year were you born?”
“Nineteen Twenty Five.”
Jesus H Christ. “Wow, that makes you eighty two.”
“I don’t know Danny, I stopped counting years ago.”
“And you were born here?” (In the U.S., she’s pureblood Italian)
“My Brother was two when we came here.”
“And he’s older than you?”
“He’s the oldest and I’m the youngest. But Danny, you should have met my mother, she was a pip. She didn’t take nothin’ from no one. This one time my father brought back a broom and the handle broke and she went right back to the hardware store and demanded a new one. She couldn’t speak a lick of English but she knew she was gonna get a new one. You know what happened Danny? That man wouldn’t give her one so she took the broken handle and smashed the rest of them. Broke all the other handles on the brooms. She was no dummy,” Grandma says, laughing into an emphysema coughing fit.
“Sounds like my kind of girl.”
“Oh Danny, you would have loved her. She - was - a - pip. Imagine her telling this to a judge and remember she didn’t speak much English at all.”
“And your parents spoke English?”
“No. They spoke to us in Italian growing up. Everything was in Italian.”
“So you understand Italian?”
I spoke some Italian words but she didn’t recognize them. I had an awful accent and she was used to dialect no doubt. “And where did you learn English?”
“What do you mean? I learned it here.” She meant Newark. She was born, raised, married, divorced, lived in Newark New Jersey her entire life. Went to Vegas twice and that was it. The rest of her days were in Newark.
“Grandma, we gotta talk more.”
“You like this stuff Danny. Every time you’re here you want to hear about this stuff.” Which isn’t exactly true but I wish I asked more fervently and earlier.
It was time to unwrap gifts so we attended to it. I knew I’d be back and soon. Grandma needed me and I needed her, had to figure out the reason for all my hair and buffoonish charisma and she had to escape the boredom of the new house and the madness that ensues.
Plus it was Christmas, however stupid, and a long line of bold and brave people brought it to me and me to it. And the kids were learning in rapid succession. I reached for more wine.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Sum Tactonics (Part 3)
All my hair was gone. At one point I just noticed it. My lover remained smooth and scaly but for me, where the mammalian façade was such a remarkable quality to my naked body the change required adjustment. She never mentioned it but on occasion I would catch her looking at me oddly as if I were new and unfamiliar. And then I’d see one, a dark black hair on the pillow. Without discussion I would, or she would, brush it away and sooner than later it would be swept up and gone.
We mostly attended to the bump and I became protective of her breasts, touching and teasing them more and wrapping them at night and cupping them when we made love as if they were the very source of it. I would wake and cup them for fear they would freeze and I would love her and the bump made me love her more and the change excited a change in me. She loved me, except for that glance of confusion I would catch at my own shifting body and the changes in scent which were stilled with the cold, she loved me. This pleased her (the love), I knew, because she slept deeply and more soundly than before. Since I wanted to be close and it was required of us due to the lack of heat I began gardening around the home. The plants required heat lamps and the lamps were all together pleasant to work with except when they scarred the scales which subsequently flaked off revealing a type of soft membrane, hypersensitive to any stimuli. Society too would notice the membrane and some would visibly revile in expression to accommodate the feeling. What was expected was proper bandaging and masking of the wound as to keep any anxiety of infection at bay. Not that there was any infection more dangerous now that we were changed. Collectively, I think, we had reached a limit or the limit had reached us. Enough was unpleasant through the change so why call attention to anything more? Plus seclusion was becoming more difficult given the rapid decline of heat so it made practical sense to be aware of illness and infection given our close quarters and frequent interactions. Still, I loved the gardening despite the charred scales and continued. When the vines had grown to encompass the north wall and the African violets blossomed we had entered into each other so thoroughly that, if it wasn’t for raw practicality, I would swear we could have survived the outdoors as if our blood was still warm and pumping through a four chambered heart.
We mostly attended to the bump and I became protective of her breasts, touching and teasing them more and wrapping them at night and cupping them when we made love as if they were the very source of it. I would wake and cup them for fear they would freeze and I would love her and the bump made me love her more and the change excited a change in me. She loved me, except for that glance of confusion I would catch at my own shifting body and the changes in scent which were stilled with the cold, she loved me. This pleased her (the love), I knew, because she slept deeply and more soundly than before. Since I wanted to be close and it was required of us due to the lack of heat I began gardening around the home. The plants required heat lamps and the lamps were all together pleasant to work with except when they scarred the scales which subsequently flaked off revealing a type of soft membrane, hypersensitive to any stimuli. Society too would notice the membrane and some would visibly revile in expression to accommodate the feeling. What was expected was proper bandaging and masking of the wound as to keep any anxiety of infection at bay. Not that there was any infection more dangerous now that we were changed. Collectively, I think, we had reached a limit or the limit had reached us. Enough was unpleasant through the change so why call attention to anything more? Plus seclusion was becoming more difficult given the rapid decline of heat so it made practical sense to be aware of illness and infection given our close quarters and frequent interactions. Still, I loved the gardening despite the charred scales and continued. When the vines had grown to encompass the north wall and the African violets blossomed we had entered into each other so thoroughly that, if it wasn’t for raw practicality, I would swear we could have survived the outdoors as if our blood was still warm and pumping through a four chambered heart.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Sunday
Winter came on slow. Then it was here. The colors were gone replaced by the gray drone sky and the ceaseless frozen draw of the lake. The bills kept piling on and the birds moved to the far building escaping the pigeon guards. I was with those bastards, felt the pins slowly sticking up through the floor, but there was nowhere to go so I piled on more blankets and looked for signs. They came. The signs agitated me so I took Z’s car for a spin to get away for a spell. I wasn’t even out of the lot when some kids threw a bunch of snowballs at the car as I sat for the light to turn. These balls had rocks in ‘em though. Usually I’d support the disruption but the rocks pissed me off so I slammed it into park, got out and gave chase. The kids didn’t budge and I knew it was trouble but I approached anyway like a mad bear. I was met with a dull thud to the clavicle. When I came to, my left arm was limp, the car in idle and the kids gone. Some bear. The blow somehow broke the skin but left the clavicle intact. It wouldn’t have made a difference anyway since the insurance ran out a few months back. I got back in the car and drove with my good arm. I let the skin bleed and scab to the T, fuck it. I drove south in search of wild turkey and dreamed of California, a gun, and a new perspective.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Sum Tactonics (Part 2)
O \(ˈ)ō\. A sound appeared . It was a loud and sustained buzzing like an idling jet plane that continued without reprieve. It arrived one morning like a break in the clouds and replaced the silence. Over time silence came to mean that sound and the silence penetrated cities, towns, homes and walls with equal force and equal timbre, traveling efficiently over miles like a whale call.
About three weeks had passed when I noticed my lover’s soft and scaly tummy begin to bump and I knew it was a child. I knew it was because I had dreamed of it and because I wanted it to be. Inside her scaled skeletal leather exterior frame a child was growing. This wasn’t mentioned except through the attention we gave her soft belly and the focus which shifted from our external ferocity and meaty diet to the bump and the possibility of repeating her fallow eyes and slender hips in a new being. We didn’t speak over the silence but a joy crept in which cloaked our movements and slowed our anger and stilled my questions and tamped her sadness. As days passed to weeks we behaved more like the creatures we ate than dutifully private reptilian citizens. The neighbors knew our joy because we danced it over the bone dry chill and spied their movements for signs of the little one and bated our desire to scoop it up and study its behaviors and consume it whole for the knowledge it sustained. And still we didn’t speak of it and made love in the night when it was coldest, exchanging all our hapless bodies would allow.
About three weeks had passed when I noticed my lover’s soft and scaly tummy begin to bump and I knew it was a child. I knew it was because I had dreamed of it and because I wanted it to be. Inside her scaled skeletal leather exterior frame a child was growing. This wasn’t mentioned except through the attention we gave her soft belly and the focus which shifted from our external ferocity and meaty diet to the bump and the possibility of repeating her fallow eyes and slender hips in a new being. We didn’t speak over the silence but a joy crept in which cloaked our movements and slowed our anger and stilled my questions and tamped her sadness. As days passed to weeks we behaved more like the creatures we ate than dutifully private reptilian citizens. The neighbors knew our joy because we danced it over the bone dry chill and spied their movements for signs of the little one and bated our desire to scoop it up and study its behaviors and consume it whole for the knowledge it sustained. And still we didn’t speak of it and made love in the night when it was coldest, exchanging all our hapless bodies would allow.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Sum Tactonics (Part 1)
There we were. Sly bodies tangled up like snakes, pale and soft and cold. Without a decent mind we’d be dead in a short night but as it was we held on through the worst of it by piling on blankets and making love so close and so long we shared heat with perfect efficiency. I must have told her ‘I Love you’ a thousand times and I didn’t care to hear it back. This was it. We were lucky to be alive. I was lucky to be in Love.
The following morning everyone looked reptilian. The neighbors passed their child through the freezing air with flickering tongues, scaled skin and yellow eyes. The vehicles cranked with frozen emotionless squeals over dry ice and smoky cold waterways. They made it out, most of them, to the schools and daycares and offices with predictable calm and order; wives and mothers flicking tongues over frozen, dry, clear, precision air on to the scaled skin cheeks of children and reptile husbands and lovers. Very few of them, if any, in sum, were lonely. Some were dead. I had made it one more night and she whom I loved made it one more night and it felt like every night coming would be draught with the same utterly ordinary urgency. I made note of the urgency. My lover did not. So I kept the thought of the urgency to myself and looked for clues to determine if what I had experienced was illusion or delusion or hyperactive psyche. But I kept the looking to myself until enough time and distraction went by that it passed for an ordinary part of my person, just as the cold became, without event, an ordinary reality of our passing. More died, but more always had died, so the urgency, even in death, was familiar and ordinary. As reptiles we didn’t weep for the dead, instead we contracted and slithered and entangled ourselves which helped preserve our time in the cold that crept each day closer to absolute zero. And all of this happened without conversation or acknowledgment or circumstance. It simply was the way we were. It was society. Different than what we had been but altogether civil and polite and living as one unit, better than chaos and abandon and the alternative which we saw played out in fantasy on television screens in heated halls and parlors. Only the heat would preserve us, and food and water, but the heat was the corner stone and the best heat was found between the warm thighs of a lover. Love was action and action belief. I believed and she simply was better than belief. But I believed because it occurred to me to do so and this was better than active disbelief and far better than despair. So I believed and continued to remain in love and love remained with me and she never questioned it and we stayed warm to our daily delight and surprise and I continued to withhold my questions and she continued to be and we made love when I asked her to and when she slithered about me and when there was no reason not to.
The following morning everyone looked reptilian. The neighbors passed their child through the freezing air with flickering tongues, scaled skin and yellow eyes. The vehicles cranked with frozen emotionless squeals over dry ice and smoky cold waterways. They made it out, most of them, to the schools and daycares and offices with predictable calm and order; wives and mothers flicking tongues over frozen, dry, clear, precision air on to the scaled skin cheeks of children and reptile husbands and lovers. Very few of them, if any, in sum, were lonely. Some were dead. I had made it one more night and she whom I loved made it one more night and it felt like every night coming would be draught with the same utterly ordinary urgency. I made note of the urgency. My lover did not. So I kept the thought of the urgency to myself and looked for clues to determine if what I had experienced was illusion or delusion or hyperactive psyche. But I kept the looking to myself until enough time and distraction went by that it passed for an ordinary part of my person, just as the cold became, without event, an ordinary reality of our passing. More died, but more always had died, so the urgency, even in death, was familiar and ordinary. As reptiles we didn’t weep for the dead, instead we contracted and slithered and entangled ourselves which helped preserve our time in the cold that crept each day closer to absolute zero. And all of this happened without conversation or acknowledgment or circumstance. It simply was the way we were. It was society. Different than what we had been but altogether civil and polite and living as one unit, better than chaos and abandon and the alternative which we saw played out in fantasy on television screens in heated halls and parlors. Only the heat would preserve us, and food and water, but the heat was the corner stone and the best heat was found between the warm thighs of a lover. Love was action and action belief. I believed and she simply was better than belief. But I believed because it occurred to me to do so and this was better than active disbelief and far better than despair. So I believed and continued to remain in love and love remained with me and she never questioned it and we stayed warm to our daily delight and surprise and I continued to withhold my questions and she continued to be and we made love when I asked her to and when she slithered about me and when there was no reason not to.
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