In My Body's House

meteors

2009-08-13T10:11:00.000-07:00

We spread the blanket on the wet grass and lie down.

The meteors shooting through the sky, through the branches

of the wet trees moving in the wind. He sang to me.

There were locusts. I closed my eyes.

"-tell me what it's like," I said. He put his hand over my eyes, he pulled me against him.

"its like a snow globe," he said. And I could feel him smile, his teeth against my neck.

Lying there. The stars fading into the dawn. Dew on our faces. The meteors, faint in the sky.
They were like lines traced into water, but I remembered where they were written.

--

Sorry I haven't been posting much--have been too happy, and also out of town :)

My brother got married, I went to Lollapalooza.

Lollaland! It was tremendous; I saw Tool and Neko Case and --Lou Reed--!

Ah la la,

and the most beautiful black-haired girl I've ever seen grabbed me out of a crowd,
she kissed me until the sky spun around us...

you perfect woman, out there somewhere, I wish I knew your name. Oh, my friends, dragging me away...!

But book is running very well--please send me zen discipline and good wishes, friends.

in my misdirected and all directioned love,

I Shadow the Psychiatrist

2009-07-19T17:17:00.000-07:00

Placating lighting, paintings of lighthouses, a god's-eye view of the city out one side of the small office.

There was this young black girl sitting across from us, her tiny shoulders rounded like folded wings. Dug out eyes, glowing skin. She'd cut off her hair. It stood up all over, bird-like, in perky, indifferent tufts.

"And depression?" asks the doctor, pen hovering. "How is the depression?" he said, as if it was a pet she fed;

she raised her face slowly. Locked on me, and we just looked at each other, into the black center of each other's eyes.

After a long time--"It drowning me," she said.

She looked back down, silently rubbing her palms up and down her thighs.

"I can't ever get my head above the dirty water," she said, slowly.

"So--no better," said the doctor. He checks the box.

There was a military man looking at us from somewhere deep inside his head, from the other side of the world.

"I can't sleep, doctor. I can't;" he whispered, "they're waiting, all of them, waiting for me to. I know it. Their faces when I close my eyes; you tell me I don't."

"And depression?" said the doctor. He checked the box insomnia. "Are you having any depression?"

A manic blonde with a kitten's face and five kids out in the waiting room.

Her spanking new boyfriend shepherds her into the chair. The skin is still brightly tender, pale where his wedding band was. She watches me warily. Watches him warily. They are as faithless as snakes.

Depression for the them both, check check.

An old drunk, a young drunk, a beaten woman. A forgetful woman.

A boy with eyes like basement windows. He'd beaten his lover, throwing mangoes after her in the street.

"I'm a monster."

You aren't.

They came in and sat in the old chair, one after the other, and all of them wept. There was a box to check for each of them.

The boxes to check made it seem very simple, and maybe it was.

People like geometric objects, bobbing in and out of tetris.

The doctor says the right things kindly, writing out his scripts of mercy, and never looks at the clock.

Between the patients he shuts the door and turns full face to me, hands on his knees.
He'd been a surgeon for twenty years before he became a psychiatrist.
He loves people, he says. That was how he got into it.

Inside and out, I say. You love people inside and out, I say.

He grins at me, gregarious handsome Arabic man with his studious eyes.

"Who listens to you?" I say.

The receptionist came in when we'd talked too long.

"You have a crowd forming, doctor," she says gently, exactly the kind of receptionist you should have in an office where there are paintings of lighthouses;

the end of the day. Saying goodbye, and the doctor takes my hand.

(I don't think this happens to most people when they've finished shadowing. Sometimes I think there must be something distractingly wrong with me, that people paying attention can see so clearly through my skin; something very, very wrong in me.)

"You are going to do well," he said to me. "I wanted to tell you this. You are very sincere, and you have a good heart. Small things get to you too much, I think. -You don't mind?- You are going to be very much more than fine. Okay, sweetheart?"

Saying this last part carefully, the word sweetheart, a word that might break in his mouth like glass. A blessing with edges.

"Okay," he says.

My hands are cool where his held me.

The sound of silence in the long, carpeted hallway; the lights unblinking over me.
In the elevator a crooked old man, and I smile at him.

"I used to stand up straight," he says.

"Oh."

A drove of old ladies press through the doors gently, patiently, like cows. I almost expect them to low.
-The powdery smell, the old air smell, of very old people filling the elevator. Someone pushes the button, and we start to go down,

rows of little white boxes, outlined in black, on unlined paper

"You just stand up straight for the rest of us," says the man.
The women titter politely.

They can't see my crooked little Grinch heart inside its crooked little cage.

And so--I smile back. I can't see theirs either.

at first

2009-07-11T11:43:00.001-07:00

february:

"I want you to belong to me," he says.

Pulling my hair to make me look at him. With my head twisted I press back, my ass into his ivory pale hips, and for a moment alive feels real.

"Hurt me," I say. "Tell me I'm your woman."

"You're my woman," he says, leaning over my body; fingers soft along my skin, the tips of my breasts, my ribs, and down.

"My breasts, my belly," he says, touching me,

"my lips," he says, kissing me, his tongue deep into mine, tongue fucking, clacking our teeth,
still pulling my hair. Fucking my body--the rooster crows, out in the yard, and brought back to outside myself I realize I am screaming.

"Make it be real," I say. By accident. Is this praying?

Lying there watching the light come slowly through the tapestries tacked to the windows.
Smoke trailing lazily along the ceiling. His face in my neck he says it--

"What?" I say. "Look at me."

"I don't even--I don't want anyone else to see you," he says, "even to know that you exist.I want you to exist just for me. Like...a city for no one else."

River laughs.

"I'm ridiculous," he says.

I prop myself up, watching him. He closes his eyes.

"Feeling this way...I haven't felt this way since years ago, it makes me feel crazy. I hate it. Imagining you when you're not with me, that the men who look at you--I know it's not true but I
think about it. It makes me crazy."

"Aren't you sure of me?"

"It's nothing to do with you. It's with how the world works. Men are disgusting, they're animals."

"But people are animals, goof."

"Women are different. You don't understand it. It's disgusting."

"Of course I understand. I do the same thing--I think about fucking everybody. All the time."

He glares at me. I'm irritated and want to make him angry.

"It's not disgusting. It's natural," I say.

I laugh and roll over. "It's awesome."

"The natural world is revolting. It's base."

"But what is revolting is beautiful, because without darkness there could be nothing light, don't
you see?"

"I see and I don't care, I'd be happier if everything ended and it would be clean and empty.-I want a cigarette."

He rolls over and pulls on his shirt. His keys jingling. "How did we start talking about this?"

"Do you always get dressed just for a cigarette?"

"It's a habit," he says.

"I love habits," I say. I don't want him to leave me alone in this strange dark country house--
"I don't have too many. Tea on the porch in the morning. Runs at night."

He's standing there dressed, looking at me.

I don't have many habits. I have some irregular compulsions but thats different--in a way it
would be kind of nice to pick up smoking, kind of bring you back to yourself throughout the day.
A kind of punctuation. Always would know about the weather. Maybe I should take up
smoking. I would smoke cloves like River does, like a pretentious art fag, although River is
neither pretentious or faggy. It's just he likes things to be sweet.

I guess I was grinning about something.

"You love to be alive," he says.

"I love the sound of my fucking voice."

He smiles. His teeth are yellow and sharp. I wonder how they would feel in my cunt.

"You think you hate fecundity," I say. "Lushness, too ripeness. Ripe into rot. But really you
don't, though, or you'd want to be with someone sick and dead looking. Not the way that I look."

He kneels down, cups my breasts in his hands.

"Obsessed with you," he says.

"Ah, you don't hate anything," I say.

I stand and press his face between my legs. "You're just afraid if you love anything too much
you'll lose it." He moans--his dry hands running up my thighs, under my ass.

"...you make me wet."

"I want you again."

He groans. I push him off.

"Look at that. You love some things," I say.

------

It is late. The sky is wet. People throwing their beer over the apartment ledge.
Someone crying in the bushes; end of a night.

"You know, people looking at-at any woman-they look at more than just sex. At the shape,
at the idea. And maybe that's what seduction is-the suggestion of something..symbolic, ideal..."

"I don't think that's it," he says. "Men want to fuck women. They want to come all over your
face and your tits. Release. That's it. Throw away. That's it. Like a fucking rag. Strangers
looking at girls-You want it to be this beautiful thing-but you're only fucking stoned, babe."

"You know, I don't care. I just wanted to make you feel better about it. This dumb goddamn
hangup which doesn't matter anyway."

A cruiser pulls up. I am high, and paranoid now, because I have noticed there are tiny buds of pot stuck to my dress-"I have to go," I say.

River grabs my hand.

I don't care. Why do I do this? It's like an unclean habit. It would be better just to hang out with a dog all the time, because dogs don't say anything. I wouldn't have to listen to anybody's idiot opinions anymore and I could just jerk myself off and read alone in my room.

My dog would sit in front of the door and just be there.

Which is what I want.

"I mean, the difference is, I love you," River says.

I slip my hand free.

"Wait," he says. "I want to say-it's jealousy, maybe. If I was a woman-"
the lines of his face, the streetlight violet behind him; his eyes black in the night and their nameless lack.

"If I was a woman," he says, "I would want to be you. That's all."

I sit in my room and look at the tree through the window. Its buds are white in the nighttime.

Was this what it would be?

Part of me has flown away, sometimes I think about years from now standing with River in
the country, our country of love and black cigarettes, chickens, dogs, wildflowers. Are there
strong men? Maybe it is the way that I love, accepting everything, wanting more, more
realness. Maybe it is my fault that they become boneless, needing.

Feeding me their secrets like love. I eat secrets like fish flakes.

"Sometimes I don't know if I love you," he'd said, "or if I just want to, so much."

"It's okay."

"But how do we know?"

"Love isn't---the more you try to touch it, baby, the less real it will be."

"I do love you," he said. "Because I'm afraid. When you leave--"

Too much talking. Between my thighs he makes a fist. Turning it, slowly, against me.

"I need you so much," he said.

My breasts are sore; I ache for him. I eat my candy. I think he has probably told lots of girls
that if he was a woman he would want to be them. It's a good line. Who wouldn't say it again? I
would say it again.

His voice on the phone; I can't remember it ringing or his calling me. It is all one unending
eternal string of sex and candy and talking, crying drunk kissing the clove sweetness of his lips
and neck,

"Were you sleeping?"

"Yes."

"Can I come over? --just to lie next to you. I can't sleep."

"Aren't you back out in the country?"

"I'm not going to do anything, I'll just lie next to you. I'll be quiet and you sleep."

He drives back to me through the dark, brightly awake and wishing he could cry, comes into my
room and lies down on the carpet beside me. There isn't enough blanket.

"It's okay," he says.

Pushes his face into my breast, his arms around me, lies there whispering until he falls asleep
and something clicks deeper inside me and I think I am in love with him, his smell like Christmas
and his hair in my fingers and the way we fit together, like missing pieces.

for you, benny

2009-04-18T17:41:00.000-07:00

There had been a drag show and everybody was outside watching the queens leave. Benny was working. It was his job to keep out the kids looked like they wanted to fight with each other.

"People, why are we fighting?" he'd say. He was a huge guy, doing this Mick Jagger impersonation-"why are we fighting? We don't want to fight."

He was built like a wall, Benny was, an action figure--skin stretched so tight across the muscles it looked like it could split. He looked mean, and most people who didn't know him kept it pretty low. They stayed out of his way.

Except it had been one of those weeks that's sticky hot, hazy, sweat rolling itchy down your back all night and day and drinking only makes you mean. So these punks outside, they started fighting.

Benny goes up to them with his routine--"Brothers and sisters, brothers and sisters"--he was always watching those movies, those documentaries about rock stars. About everything he said was from the Rolling Stones or somebody.

One of the punks has a knife and stabs Benny. There were other bouncers--they pounce the guy.

Everybody yelling. Benny's standing back holding his arm, blood running out around his fingers onto the sidewalk.

"Baby," he says, like it's nothing, "go get the Bacardi from the bar."

I come out with it and they've got the punk facedown on the sidewalk. All of them standing there with their feet on his back dropping cigarettes on the kid. There's a game at the stadium a couple blocks away and the night is purple from the big stadium lights. Cigarette smoke twisting in the purple streetlit air. It's a painting, this moment, and I come out with the Bacardi and give it to Benny.

He pours it down his arm and lights it. The flame opens instantly, like a nightmare's sail, like salvation, this brilliant smoking flash. The bright cut on Benny's arm darkens to a sticky tar;

"What the fuck, man?" says somebody.

"Cauterizing the wound, motherfucker," says a guy, has his boot on the punk's head.

Benny, dripping with sweat, smiling. His sweaty buddha's face. He looks at the punk on the ground with benevolent eyes. He will do nothing to hurt the punk or to save him. In Benny mythology interference impedes another's growth, interference was a sin. Everybody was a different kind of plant to Benny.

"You grow uninterrupted," he says to me once, "you work yourself out. Eventually."

"Or you don't," I said.

"You know there's this one kind of plant that secretes poison out its roots to kill everything around it. That way it gets all the light, the water, everything," he said. We were standing there chewing sunflower seeds. He finished chewing and spat. "It takes all kinds."

A job where you let the people do what they want until they figure shit out for themselves; there must be a job like that somewhere and Benny should have had it.

"Let me up, man," says the punk. "I'm sorry."

"Sure you're sorry, says the guy. "You're a sorry skin-bag of blood and yellow ass guts; you stabbed Benny, man." He grinds the punk's face into the sidewalk. "I don't know about calling anybody, what do you think?" he says.

"Benny?"

Benny with his palms to the sky while his arm lit in flames--someone was sending down a message, the answer, and the rest of us could only watch.

His blood ran down, making a stain I believed I could see years later after everyone was gone and Benny was dead and I was alone. When I've forgotten the rest I will remember Benny.

Ceramic, poreless, my searing memories:

"People used to be so perfect," I said to him once. We weren't even really talking. Sometimes you want to say something to make it less true. But he answered me.

"Anybody ever said this to you, girl--what you don't have, you don't need it now," Benny said. "They could put that in the Bible." He put his arm around me. I touched his scar. I always felt safe with Benny.

We walked to the creek. He was in love with how clear the water was. We watched the sun go down and he told me about how when he was a kid he believed there was a slot in the earth where the sun went at night. The moon was down there, too. Sometimes they'd slide against each other like coins, he said. "I was always going to video arcades," he said.

"I liked petting zoos," I said.

"Healthy little animal."

"But now I prefer the aquarium."

"Cold fish."

"No, boo, a raccoon. I can't help but keep sticking my hands in."

He grabbed my fingers and put them into his mouth, laughing.

"It's all slots with you, isn't it?"--but he wouldn't let me leave, he pulled me closer and held me tight. And I let him, because it felt good to pretend to be held to something solid, unshifting.

The secret is that it is all smoke and ashes. It is only that some things blow away before the rest.

Fire and ashes--he died in a house fire. The fire was contained to his bed. Nothing else was touched. They could not explain it, but I can tell you.

In Benny's secret self he was burning alive, from fingers to neck to his unbound heart, how brilliant the message, and entire. He burned until there was not anything left.

.

Last night...she said...

2009-01-11T16:05:00.000-08:00

The little coffee dive: slouching in the sticky seats, drinking sticky drinks, talking the big show and looking up all the time to see who's come in.

Tonight it's almost empty. People eating at the cereal bar, no one watching the TV. Lawrence's flaxy hair and his handsome wide angle face. We're talking about movies, about making movies, and the old grass-green excitement coming up in me.

Then Jack calls. We'd made plans to hang out after dinner.

"Do you like beer?" he says.

"Whiskey."

I close my phone--Lawrence has this funny look on his face.

"You're blushing", he says.

And I have this stupid grin-"I guess I just showed you my cards, huh?"

I can never hide anything.

"So you're going over there," he says.

"Yeah. Wish me luck," I say, without knowing why.

I kiss him on top of his curly, beautiful hair-

It is a cold, brilliant night. I stop at the gas station. The attendant is hugely fat, carnival fat, and scary people in there leaning on the counter. One has a fishing pole, for some reason, even though its January in Kansas at nine o clock at night.

My face reflected in the glass door: still with the stupid grin, because here I am on my big adventure, I wrote to this guy I had a crush on way back in high school, and talking to him on the phone he's just like me, probably too much like me, but fuck it, yeah? We'll make an exemption for the stone cold fox.

I think about Jack's forehead and the way his hair used to fall across it, when we would sit under that tree. Autumn, and leaves on the ground, everything smelling rich and living underneath us, and I felt that it would be impossible to ever die. I wonder if his hair is still as long as it used to be.

I bang my music and drive like a drunken loon through the country, passing the old barn where I used to shovel horse shit in high school, where I'd ride horses alone at midnight through fields full of snakes and flowers. I remember there used to be a farm with black and white cows across the road but I don't see it now.

Then I'm there. It's a nice house. A really nice house, and a big shed with stuff in it, and fences all over the place. He said that they have cats and I look around but don't see any.
My car ticking. Do I call him or just go over and ring the doorbell? What's the protocol for this, this fucking crazy, ass-random thing which I am doing?

The house is dark. It's fucking freezing. Suddenly I start thinking about In Cold Blood and terrify myself. There's this blue plastic dolphin swinging in the window--surely this is the wrong house, and someone scary is going to come to the door and yell at me.

Yeah, so I call him and he doesn't answer.
Wow, well here I am. How fucking stupid is this?
Then he calls back.

"That's my mom's house," he says. "I'll come and get you--"

"No, no," I say. "I see you. I'm coming."

Their houses are separated by maybe 500, 600 feet, these great nice country houses in the middle of all these land and these fences. Around me the night is silent. He flips on his porch light.

And there he is.

We stand apart from each other just looking.

He looks the same, but older, taller, blue shadows under his eyes, and crazy, tangled hair floating around his coat collar--still long.

"Hi," he says.

He picks us cups out of the drying rack and starts to mix me a whiskey and water-

"Better let you pour," he says.

I dump in the whiskey.

"You too?"

"I have to go slow," he says, smiling. "Or I'll start saying crazy things, and you'll run away."

I am going to get in trouble tonight.

So we're drinking, and he shows me his house. The lower half is spread out with music equipment, a big drumset and other stuff I don't know about. Back porch with a sofa and a computer.

We kind of have to mill around because there's not really anywhere to sit. It's cold on the porch.

"Bachelor pad," he says. "You want to see the upstairs?"

ha ha. sure. why not.
Steep carpeted white stairs.
He's got it draped with fabrics, and there's a sloping roof, a wall of CDs. Books all over one side of the bed, which is a massive futon, almost like a Japanese mat, and covered in a black down comforter.

N. and I had a white down comforter, our bed on the floor.

And of course, there's nowhere to sit but the bed.

"Let me show you this script," I say.

He goes down to get it from the table. I have decided to lie on the ground with just my head on the bed. That seems okay.

"Let me play you some of the songs I was thinking about for it," he says.

So he's a metal guy, right, and I know nothing about metal--very little about any music, really, but what I listen to when I want music is more like sixties psych rock, prog rock, turkish funk.

He's trying to read the script and he puts on this music which is loud and great and completely inaccessible to me.

"This is my baby," he says.

His handpicked band. They headline metal tours.

I can't help myself--I start laughing. I'm drinking too much, and the music is so crazy, and it's so random that I'm out here, and in his bedroom, this guy, who I never knew very well but always kind of wanted to fuck, and he looks up and gives me this sweet, earnest grin.

"I just--if I can't understand the lyrics, it's hard for me. And it's so-fast. I think I need to graduate into this."

What did he play for me--he kept putting things on--My Dying Bride, Type O Negative, Theatres des Vampires. I loved Theatres des Vampires. He put on things he'd done himself, sounding a lot like theatres des vampires, at least to me. We edge further onto the bed, talking--after a while he stops even trying to look at the script.

I go back downstairs for a mug of hot water. When it's cold, I drink a lot of hot water, lots of tea, hot toddies. Funny to be around someone I really don't know at all, to have them looking at you and be figuring you out. Hmm, she likes tea. And you are looking at them, doing the same thing. He has no laces in his shoes. That is interesting.

All the time weighing these things. Is this something which I like?

I sit on the counter top and listen to the microwave hum. Out his windows the country is beautiful, ice white and shining under the moon. Little glints like mica in the grass.

He comes downstairs and finds me. Stands there on the other side of the table which divides the kitchen.

"The fireflies out here in the summer must be amazing."

He steps closer. "They are."

"You aren't keeping up."

He slugs some whiskey.

"Let's get trashed," I say.

"You know," he says. "I rarely drink. So if I say some things tonight-"

"Oh, come on. This is a bender. That's what you do."

Then we went outside for some reason.
Whisky, vodka, cigarettes, cheese. There are no stars, just the moon like something ripe, and I keep catching him watching my face, watching me breathe. I run my cold finger down his face-"I like your profile," I say.

Actually we were in the bed.

But before that happened we went into town for a while.

"Let's take you out," he says.

Driving there he says suddenly, "I need to tell you I have a girlfriend. --But it's been over between us for a long time."

Which sounds familiar.

"We don't make each other happy anymore," he says. "I mean, she's really hurt me and I don't connect to her anymore. Thing is, she's a little suicidal. I've been kind of a coward about ending it."

We're driving down a long straight gravel road with trees bowed on either side, water standing silver in the ditches. His whole body inclined to me from his seat. Smoking his cigarette meditatively-

"Can I have some of that?"

Our fingers touch. "Shouldn't smoke," he says. "I don't want to be a bad influence."

It feels good, like all my nerves opening up and then easing, everything easing.

"I think I am a little drunk now," I say to him. Flick my ash out the window and wonder what happens to it. Probably bursts into a million particles on the wind. A firecracker. The grey, grey night in his headlights.

"I really like you," he says. He looks at me.

"Well. I am a mess." I say.

We go to the Replay. They had a serrated plastic sheet hung over the door because it was cold outside, but it is just as cold inside.

He buys drinks and we slide into a wooden booth, where it is fucking cold, and we keep leaning closer together across the table until I can't stand it and go across the room to stand up on a chair under a heat lamp.

There's this really tall guy there, who knows Jack, and I start talking to him, after a while saying things like 'isn't it crazy, everything we've seen, everything we've experienced-that it fits inside your skull?' With my hands on my head, feeling my skull, and saying, 'isn't it crazy?'

Thinking of Jodorowsky-crazy that we have a heart, that we have blood, that we have a cock-it's all so fucking crazy.

And this guy just grinning at me like I'm a loon, because I am a loon indeed, and yeah man, he's saying, it's crazy. Our breath shows white in the air between us.

With Jack standing next to me, his beautiful porcelain face and the hollows under his eyes and cheeks, I want to touch him.

Some people yelling my name, and its these two girls I met on New Years, these awesome girls, and I'm so happy to see them and exchange numbers, because I've got this idea it'd be fun to go into KC and see a boxing match together, get drunk and see some blood and knuckles. Tara and this girl whose name I can't remember, petite beauty with close cropped gray hair even though she's only 26.

"I wish it wasn't so cold--what I want to do is walk with you and talk with you," I say to Jack. He smiles and takes my arm.

We switch to Henry's Upstairs. Jammed with people. Standing in line at the bar these three drunk dudes saying something to us, screaming over the noise, this not-english gibberish, and we just smile and nod. He asks me if I want to go. I'd sort of like to see what happens.

We find a little table and I try to orient myself so we aren't touching, since after all now there is a girlfriend. He takes my drink and tries it, turning the glass first so that his lips will touch the place mine had met.

"You know, I had this thing for you all high school," he said. "But I was fucking scared."

I try his beer and don't like it.

"Did you write to me just because you want me for this part?" he says.

"Yes," I say.

I'm not lying, either. I've just been doing exactly what I feel like doing and letting the pieces fall--true to god I didn't think about it, I don't want to be with anybody. I just wanted my character to kiss a character she'd have chemistry with. No one will believe this but it is true.

"I don't believe you," he says.

"Oh well."

He puts his hands on his knees-"I have to go to the bathroom immediately."

I laugh and he leaves--and then this blonde kid slides into his chair.

"What are you looking at?" the kid asks me. I'd been looking at this painting on the wall.

"Uh, that."

"Have you seen this one?" He shows me one around the corner that's a bunch of painted squares. We go back and sit down.

"You know, that seat is taken."

"It wasn't when I came in."

"Hm."

A big guy walks past.

"Is that him? Nope, not your type."

"What do you want?" I ask.

He doesn't answer so I needle him-"how old are you?"

"Twenty-two," he says, with this smug frat asshole expression. I want to smack him.

"Twenty-two, and you don't know what you want. How does that happen?"

He reaches out to try to touch my hair and I jerk back. "Why do you dye your hair red?" he says.

"Go away."

He just looks at me.
Jack comes back from his piss and stands there. He's not sure if this is a guy I know.

The asshole looks up at Jack with this sullen expression, this spoiled rich asshole of a face, and he wants to fight. So I stand up, and Jack follows me, and we leave.

There are people who know him everywhere. It takes a long time to get out.

But then we're in the jeep, and after a while we're back in his room. It's a little cold.

"Can I get under the blanket?"

Drinking, smoking, music, talking forever and the night is endless. I want to press up against him so badly, I want to crawl on top of him and lick his face and his tongue-oh, to like a guy, to hop into his bed and just look at him, I love that. After seven years, to be so free, I love it, I feel like a child. Can we cuddle? Is that allowed?

But I stay on my side of the bed.

"God," he says-"I feel--elated. Do you have that?"

I start to say something but don't. He presses it.

"Ask me in a couple weeks, okay? Figure things out with your girl and ask me then."

"Oh, fuck, that's not fair. You have to tell me. I've said everything!"

My lips are sealed. Oh, but I want to kiss him. His smile. You beautiful boy. You've no idea.

It's five in the morning. His phone rings.

"That's her," he says. Resigned. I think about myself, my instincts, a couple months back. Calling.

He takes the phone downstairs. I must have fallen asleep, because suddenly he's there crouching behind me.

"She's coming over," he says, with a white face. "She wants to meet you."

"What?"

"I told her you were coming over tonight to talk about this part, and she wasn't happy. Then I didn't call. So she wants to meet you."

"No--Jack, you don't know what I've just been through. Fuck-this is exactly how it happened with N. and I."

"Look, we'll just go downstairs and we'll say we were drinking and you were too drunk to drive home, so you were gonna sleep on the couch. I don't want you to leave."

"Ah-" I am pretty drunk. Actually, I am well wasted. "Listen, would you get me my backpack from my car? I have something I need to take at six."

He goes and I sit up. The room isn't spinning exactly. More like swirling. I have to leave.

Downstairs all he has are tortillas and a sack of cheese cubes. My backpack slung over his shoulder, he walks me outside--I'm trying to down this dry tortilla.

It's still black outside. We stop and hug, and this huge black and white cat comes up to us. He looks just like the tomcat N. kept.

I sit in the wet grass and hold the cat in my lap. Jack looks down at us.

"That's Tom," he says. He sits--"I want you to stay."

Sitting in the grass with this cat like my Calvin, suddenly I'm not there and I don't give a fuck about anyone or anything, I'm that drunk, and bell-lucid. And there are stars, there are stars, there are stars.

"Stay with me," he says.

'Listen,' I wish I'd said. 'This is what you do. You hold her, you tell her the truth-you love her. You don't make her happy. You can't make her happy. And you're not happy. So it's over. And then don't talk for a couple months, so that she can build her own thing and feel okay by herself. Don't drag it out.'

This is what I wish I'd said but instead what we do is hold each other wordlessly, my hands inside his big black jacket like wings around us, and he tries to kiss me.

"Be good," is what I said. His lips along my temples.

Deer crossing the road, their eyes like lamps in my headlights. I hit a construction sign. It's okay. It's all okay and great.

He calls me--"I want to see you soon," he says. "I need to see you," he says, what N. must have said, and does say to her, and Jack will be my rebound, and I will be his, and isn't it silly, how all of it, it's just musical chairs.

"There she is," he says. "Here goes."

I miss my old cat. I miss the fireflies. I miss my landlord, and the Watkins, and the trees drooping softly over that place I used to live, with my N. in bed sleeping, his careworn face, face I loved like a father, a brother, my everything lover-you were everything to me and now it is nothing.

And this is right and it is okay. Because now there is nothing in the world from stopping me in becoming. But I do feel strange and disconnected. I am a kite without a string.

I make it home and pass out. Wake up and scribble for a while in bed with Topo curled up buzzing next to me. Intense desire for a fish filet from McDonalds, with yellow cheese.

Pizza

2009-01-11T15:57:00.000-08:00

One time I had this job working at a pizza buffet. There were all these hot guys who worked there.

I was in junior high, and they were out getting wasted in fields on the weekends, singing songs with girls who stayed out all night. They seemed so free.

There was this one guy with curly blonde hair. He had a big smile and deep-set eyes. He liked to hug me before I went home, walking across the golf course alone at night, thinking about everything I would do when I was their age.

He would hold me a little too long, blonde, and I would breathe in his deodorant and his shampoo and the metallic stink of his sweat.

I love boys. I want to beat them and lick them all over like a mama cat.

These ones were protective of me like a kid sister, and sometimes when one of them would cross the line another one would step in and shake his head at his friend like, buddy, no. It was so fucking frustrating. I wanted them to take me out.

Anything, then, to be out of that house, my house of a closed up throat, with people I'd been looking at my whole life and they still didn't couldn't understand me.

I remember this girl who came in to see the blonde boy. She had these long and golden, deer-like legs. She walked like someone from California. Her ankles were heartbreakingly thin, erotically smooth and even.

I stared at her, and she gave me a meaningless smile because I was a kid and she was the kind of girl who smiled at everyone, everything, without meaning. Then she jumped up into the blonde guy.

It was like a photoshoot for Seventeen. The sun shot through the window between them, and I felt a stabbing pain in my chest because I would never be blonde and caramel like them.

I slunk into the kitchen, where Elliot was washing the dishes. He looked at me, and I mumbled something.

"Do you have an accent?" he says.

"No."

"I think you sound kind of Swedish. We think you sound kind of Swedish."

"Huh."

"Like, that Swedish lilt, you know."

"Do you think Josh's girlfriend is pretty?" I said. I shoved the tray of dishes into the machine for him.

"They all look like that, in high school. It's not special," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"Just that. She's not special." He turned away from me, concentrating on something, and I left, feeling unsatisfied. When I went home I stood in front of the mirror and lifted up my jeans. I looked at my legs. I'd never noticed my ankles before.

They were snow white, and startlingly beautiful.

A couple years later I saw Elliot working at my video store, and I pretended I didn't know him. I don't remember why.
Then, one day we pretended to recognize each other. "Oh! -it's you!" It was really stupid.

Love Without End Amen

2008-12-29T15:07:00.000-08:00

The stone city below us through the windows blue at night, my white shoulders, my white face transposed across it by the glass like somebody dead; like bloody, bloody Mary in the mirror at midnight: patron saint of my scarlet life.

Behind me from the bed he reaches for me. I like the dark hair on his forearms, the white hair on his chest. The bones in his feet and his dimples. His hands, though, are too soft and floury--long palmed like a monkey, repulsive. Earlier, dancing, his hands around my shoulders, my belly, my neck like a constrictor. In my hair, and breathing me, this older man, saying the things everybody says.

My head is a bell.

Kiss me harder, I say. My hand behind his head I pull his hair. He can kiss harder but it isn't enough--I want to feel his bones, I want it to hurt, I want his skin to be rough, for him to hold me like a man. But he can't and it isn't. There is a solution. I always find the solution.

The bartender smiles, he pours like an angel.

You should be back here with me, he says. You look lonesome.

You don't look much better.

Which is why you should be back here with me, he says, tries to touch my hand.

I find this beautiful girl with Chinese eyes. Her hair is smooth, all of a piece, sliding around like something out of the ocean. Why men, I am thinking. We dance hips together, her soft thighs—the smell of lanolin, cinnamon, honey chapstick. Her shining two lips.

Then her man comes up and steals her away--and James comes from behind me--the men pulling us apart while we are still looking at each other, and now James wants to go. And why the fuck not--why not anything. Why not everything?

He's eating something and I take it out of his hands--anything you want, he tells me, I will give you anything you want.

There is nothing that I want, I tell him.

If somebody doesn't know what they want you can't trust them, he says. They could do anything.

We are back in the room and talking drunken all night. You know it's just as easy to love a rich man, he says.

Why did I come here? This is not what I want, I'm pretending, I'm proving something--what, that I don't hurt? That I can also kiss someone unimportant whom I do not love or know, that I'm fine without you? I cannot believe anything will ever be good again.

I fall asleep--wake up and he is loudly pretending to sleep. I hate him, the juvenile, the idiot, veils all fallen away and everything four o’clock naked. He pulls me back into bed, against him, his coarse forearms which I like, holds me & we close our eyes, he starts talking about all the things. A girl like me. What he'd like to do together. What it would be like to wake up and see my face, what it would be like to leave me and go to a meeting and then come back to me again, my face still there. With my eyes closed he could be anyone.

We could be anyone anywhere, eyes closed making promises without the intention of ever keeping. The game that we are two innocents, and not liars, that we are brave, rational, as happy as we pretend to be.

I want fire. I want to be burned alive, to be eaten alive, never to feel. I want a lover to grab me to hold me and hurt me, to split me open, make me feel, make me dead.

In the morning with our eyes open we get ready, walking around comfortable and indifferent. He orders green tea and juice, we read the paper, we walk outside together for him to show me the city, pleasure in talking about the history of things but something inside me dropping forever like a stone.

I am falling forever, there is nothing and no one to catch me and there never was.

We go to the top of another hotel for breakfast. Do you like the vista, he asks me.

Yes, I say. Paper bags and seagulls in the air, elevators sliding up and down outside the buildings, the red bridge unfolded, the prison entrenched upon the sea, the men in the street. A boy my age sitting behind us, tapping on his laptop, and I am ashamed.

What are you thinking, I ask him.

I'm thinking how I'd like to kiss you, he says. We finish breakfast and walking away he does: tilting my chin, feeling my ribs and my smallness the way that N. used to, finding me out. (memories of our smallness seven years ago in my first apartment, N.'s dear face saying I want you to have my babies, I never want you apart from me. Endlessness, I want to own you. I want you against me when we are old and the blood doesn't move anymore. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I believed. I ate his promises and hung them like a light between my ribs. They will extract the promises like the brains from a mummy--thread them out through my nose, place them delicate into a jar by my body for someday to find.)

I turn my face away--James kisses my neck. In the elevator my neck and my shoulders, his hands in my hair, and I push into him, wanting to be punished to be shamed. I deserve to feel this fucking way. This is what I wanted. This is what I wanted. I have done nothing wrong. These are not anything but kisses. I have responsibilities to no one. No one has responsibilities to me. We are all adults here.

He has a meeting. I'll meet you here at one for lunch, he says, and goes out. I print my boarding passes in the lobby, think about taking a cab and leaving without goodbye. Instead, because I'm there, I walk outside, I go to shops. The people pretend they do not see me and that I cannot see them. We are one million blind men.

And that was me crying in the streets of San Francisco, silent in the bright white sunshine of a white morning, white bricks and people relaxed in their jackets not seeing me. Seagulls and plastic bags, women selling plastic bangles, colored scarves. I am alive.

I am anesthetized I am lost I am alive. I am leaving just as I came in. My burning heart, my sacred body, this world my pyre, these words are smoke, there is nothing which exists.

Reading the Book of Serenity on the flight home, I fall asleep and dream in koans:

The teacher to his attendant: bring me me the rhinoceros fan.

The student, shamefaced: that fan is broken.

So the fan is broken. Bring me then the rhinoceros, says his teacher.

What can you say? There is nothing you can say.

The teacher draws a circle in the dirt. Inside the circle he writes with his finger: rhino

--so, friend, you are broken. Walk not forwards but backwards. Walk back to your original nature, to your natural self, to your face before you were born: the source of the fan.

N. hands me back my heart. He walks away and I am at the center of all things alone, the darkness alone, and this is where I came from, my love, my sweetest friend, the days before you pulled me out, and this is what I am made from: darkness and water and female softness. Yin lady, orange moon, temple's priestess.
I sing the song of myself.

scenes-(unfinished)

2008-12-11T19:33:00.000-08:00

Can I just go to sleep here.
I don't think your parents would like that.
Why? You're like another dad.
Go upstairs with Samantha.
She gets up lingeringly, standing in front of the TV, playing with her hair. Smoothing it back from her face. Think I should cut it? she says.
No.
Her face tilted in the blue dark--You like it this way?
It's--I clear my throat--don't change anything.
I want something different, she says, thick-voiced, playing with the strap of her tank top. Rolling the fabric back and forth across her collar bone, the slope of her bright shoulder. Every day is the same, she says, and I want something different.
Kid, I'm trying to watch this.
Sure, she says. I hear her looking back at me, sound of her hair sliding on her shoulders; she'd like to sit where my wife sits. Upstairs the rattle and beep of my sons playing video games. The door slams.

Faye, my wife, had the bedroom done in white and blue. Lit by the night outside us the room becomes lunar: in the bed the planes of her strong shoulders, hard arms stretched fixed across the bed like pottery from the moon, cold perfect. Wax smell of her lipstick, rubbed off on both pillows, black in the dark--Faye all around me. I sit in the chair, taking off my shoes, the sound of her breathing and the fan I can't hear the kids anymore, the sound of the television I left on in expectation of morning anymore, the cars passing outside like space ships to other planets. My wife, my woman, I love her, she is everything I think about and need. I know this. The house, the kids. She works like a slave.
I know this but it comes to me that I am drowning in water, breathing cold water--
my wife, my wife, dreaming across the lids of her eyes: Charlie, she says. Charles. Come to bed.
Keeping her eyes closed to me she is a stranger. Her legs twisting heavily under the sheets to suck me inside her. Cold silk of arms around my neck--her cold neck, her hair in my hands--moving together keeping her eyes closed she is a stranger--strange the years together, strange the memories of classes in college, of apartments and dinners, all of it like a matinee movie and you are already walking out blinking into the sun, the images falling dim from your mind leaving only impressions, vague emotions--
The wetness of her, of Faye, of the cold hardness of my wife her face in my hands, I make her look at me through her closed eyes, fucking this woman whom I love. I imagine that she is the girl. She cries out. She squeezes me, kisses my neck. Faye.
I love you.
I love you.
In the bathroom we look away. You're up late, she says.
I didn't want the kids to sneak out.
I guess they still could.
Nothing happens this late.
She laughs, pats my ass on the way back to bed. Or don't you remember, she says.
We sleep far apart in the bed, something which has always bothered me but she says she has to spread out, else can't sleep--grew up sharing a bed with a sister, probably this has something to do with it.
The poor family Faye worked hard to rise up out of, dreaming every day of the day when she would care for and protect her own. Her family which would be perfect. Assembling us like parts--selecting a career, a house, me, pregnancies--calling to me that it is the perfect temperature for a daughter just right this second, sweetie!
She built us around her--built herself into the center, like the belly from the fairytale, which all the other little parts use or die.

Falling asleep as the sun rises, conscious of Faye dressing to run--a dream that I am at the bottom of the pool, staring at a neighbor. He's stands pregnant, staring down at me, holding his coffee.
I can see clearly into his belly. It is stuffed with twisted, staring animals, each of them still horribly covered in fur. They twine tighter and tighter inside him together, clenching like a snake.

Now the house is empty. Everyone gone. Someone turned off the TV. I evaluate myself in the black reflection. Re-tie my bathrobe--turn to the side. Not bad. Not a bad thirty-five. A thirty-five right in the middle. Not great. Not bad.
Am I the man she married?
I flip the TV back on.

There was a maid but it was ridiculous, with me there at home, lifting up my feet so she could vacuum. So I vacuum, I make the dinner. I get the boys from school. Some days Samantha does this--supposedly one of the chores she was going to do to pay off her car, but the truth is that I like doing it, like seeing all the little kids exploding outside like dandelion seeds, their little backpacks bouncing up and down, pushing each other shrieking. Adam likes this one little girl and she likes him back--sometimes they come out together at the same time and look back at each other while they run in different directions to their cars.
It's time to get the boys before long--another truth is that I stay up late so that I'm up just right as they need to be picked up, because honestly it's so quiet, here with the TV.
I will get a job when Adam is eight, I tell myself. Nine.
--Someplace loud. A kennel, a record store. Someplace roaring. A speedway.

But at the school there is Sam's little purple car after all. She and Esther are sitting outside, talking in the grass. Esther sees me, waves at me like I'm her age.
Hey! she says. She has this way of touching her mouth all the time. It's like being hit by lightning.
It's my day, ding-dong, Samantha says. Young for sixteen, my daughter doesn't hate me quite yet.
Guess I forgot.
The realization that I'm grinning helplessly back at Esther. She catches it--Mr. Canadas, she says sneakily, she who usually calls me Chaz--think you could do us a favor later?
Jesus, kid, it's a Monday.
She shrugs winningly. (Will probably be pregnant at seventeen.)
Please?
Sam rolls her eyes. You don't have to, dad.
No, it's fine. I picked up extra the other day--just stop by later. Before Faye, okay.
Of course.
So, you want to take them home, then? Samantha says. She has a stem of grass in her mouth.
I pull it out and cup it between my hands, making the perfect whistle. It cuts across clear and sweet, just as the kids come barreling out the doors. I blow till I'm red faced--kids start screaming, pulling up grass for their own whistles. Parents glare.
Wow, says Esther.
Lame, dad, says Sam. Hates me now a little bit.
Adam catapults into me. Brian wanders up with a finger in his mouth, looking preoccupied. The girls wave and drive away. I watch the silhouette of Esther's head go.
We want Popsicles, Brian says.
Oh yeah, me too, I say, nodding at the teacher standing duty. She smiles back instantly, a sunny, shining person, wearing invisible braces and a jacket with this pattern of cats all over it, pink and purple.
I could be a teacher...all the women teachers would love me. --Oh, he's so gentle with the kids, so good with his hands--
Oh, Chaz, this one would say, tittering out the door. Fun. Planting trees for the school and dancing at the talent show to make the kids laugh.
And Faye scoffing in the wings...

Esther and Samantha slouching on the patio chairs, trying to hide their cigarettes. I stomp outside. What are you thinking, I hiss. I jerk the butts out of their mouths. --She'll think I've been smoking.
Esther, all her blood rushed to her lips: What, and then she'll ground you? She laughs. Where's the bottle?
Fuck that, I say. Fuck you, assuming I have it for you.
Samantha goes inside. Esther sullen stands her ground--throws her shoulders back, suddenly big as life.
She says it back to me. Fuck you. Chaz. Assuming I have it for you.
She stands up slowly, holding herself up like a woman. Walks all the way around the table to me and puts her face up in mine. She sneers.
Kiss me, if you want to so bad, she says.
Get off my property.
Faye's property, she says. You're just furniture.
Soylent Green--it was on the week before, all of us watching it together, big bowl of popcorn with melty m&ms, and Esther in the white dress that hit just at her upper thighs--
Vicious, I say. Esther trips away unbothered, the cold little bitch. I watch her perfect ass retreat in its jean cutoffs.

When Samantha is in college, I reflect, she will bring home girls who have had time in the world to be broken. Girls who will be kind to me, her good old sexy old dad.

Faye comes home and wipes out on the sofa in the den. Go away, she groans. Turn off the lights. She presses her forehead into the pillow, something she does with a headache.
You want your medicine?
Go away.
So I slink upstairs to the lunar bedroom and try to relax, to look at some TV--it's impossible to fade out in here because the bedroom is really Faye's realm. Everything is Faye's realm, but particularly the bedroom.
She picked out each piece of furniture, circling them one by one in a magazine. We were flying to the Keys.
We'll get back and everything will already be there! she'd said. Do you like this lamp?
No, I said.
It'll grow on you, hon. I didn't like it at first either, but then... she squints and turns the magazine sideways. You see? When you're lying down it looks fantastic. That's key. In a bedroom.
Ice cubes in our glasses and conditioned air at 10,000 feet, my wife smiles at me with red lipstick around yellow teeth. Her eyes are dirty aquariums. They swim full of everything that is not me.
In a bedroom, I say, and touch my forehead to hers--grinning like the lovers we are, everyone in the cabin jealous of our love. Out of the corner of my eyes I see them--wives looking at husbands looking at wives out of the corner of their own eyes: why aren't we happy too? It could be so easy. Forgive, forget. Forget and forget.

That was two years ago. Maybe two and a half.

So watching TV alone in our bedroom while she lies downstairs refusing to take medicine, my phone rings. Someone crying.
Hello, hello?
Mr. Canadaaas?
Yes, yes, I'm here-
I think something baaad happened...I can't feel...Sam won't get up...
Where are you?
*Click*
Vertigo. My bed is the center of the world. The floor has fallen away.
Blood rushes to my head a black wall on all sides of my eyes: calling the number back, over and over, ringing and ringing and ringing.
My daughter answers, coughing. The sound of wind.
Baby--where are you?
She starts crying. We're outside, we're coming. He's back there and it's okay...it's okay...
I'm going to come and get you, but you have to tell me where you are. What's around you?
That...Nazarene church...
Okay-stay there. Don't move, just stand there. I'm coming right now.
She's so quiet, fading away, I'm practically yelling into the phone, yelling to penetrate her skull through the phone, willing her to stand still, a fawn in the forest, stand and wait and be all right. Skull of my little, little girl.
I can't see them at first and think that I'll go crazy--leaning on the horn, getting out of the car--Sam! Sam!
Then they're staggering out from the shadows, makeup bleeding down their faces, faces wenched up like little girls with bloody knees,
I gather them to me like little birds, kissing their hair--you're okay, you're going to be okay--
All of us in the car, and it occurs to me that they need to go to the hospital. I am not comfortable with hospitals. It is not a good idea for me to go to the hospital, or to any doctor, ever, or to any government institution, ever, and these are my girls and I can't very well drop them at the corner and speed away, now can I?
So we're driving home.

Think you should eat something, absorb some of whatever you had? I ask helpfully.
Esther makes a retching noise.
Maybe not, then.
We get back. They don't want to watch TV, they don't want to eat. They want to sit around and cry. So we sit down with our arms around each other and they do that.
He keeps saying, oh, that’s not my shot, that’s your shot, Esther says, and I think he’s being friendly, you know, being polite, and then I wake up in his bed and he’s on me passed out—my shorts are undone—and then Sam’s in the bathroom on the floor and she won’t wake up and she didn’t want to get up—
And he said he’d been on the McCormick yesterday, but it was full when we got there-
Where were his parents?
They’re out of town—
Your pants were on?
Yeah, Esther says.
It’s hard to pull off somebody’s shorts if they're not helping, I tell her. I can't believe this is a discussion we are having. I plow ahead--Ever do that? Play limp? —
Esther nods her head numbly.
and if he had gotten them off, he wouldn’t have got them back on. He passed out. So see, you're okay.
Yeah, she says. --I’m gonna get him so bad.
Yeah, Sam says, let's ruin his life.
Want me to go get his dick for you? I say.
They laugh. I wipe Sam's face for her.
I want to do it myself, she says.
Only not violently, Esther says. No violence.
I'm the first to get in the bed. They cuddle up to me like kittens. For a while we're all of us just lying there. Then Esther climbs on top of me.
I'm gonna rub your back, she says.
I should be rubbing yours.
No, this is my thank you for coming and getting us. And not ratting on us. For all the times not ratting on us.
Blood money. But my shirt is thin. I can feel the muscles in her bare thighs through the fabric.
Samantha lying next to us is still. I pretend I don't realize that I want her to fall asleep. We listen to her breathing. Esther leans forward and licks my neck. Samantha is sleeping.
Don't, I say. I roll over and Esther lies down against me for the most perfect, complete second of my adult life before my daughter stirs. She wakes with a start--we need to call the police, she says.
No, no police, I say. We really can't have any police, hon. I stare at my daughter with cold eyes. You know why, I say.
I'm tired of this, she says. Sits up.
Esther sitting on the other side of me, too erect, and they look at each other over the top of my head. Something happens until Samantha leaves silently, closing the door behind her.
Esther pushes me over again. She sticks her tongue in my mouth and tries to take my shirt off.
I thought you were sick, I say. Around me the walls are melting-
Don't talk, she says. Mr. Canadas.
Unbuttoning my pants and unbuttoning hers. Further. We're going further. I do nothing. Naked on top of me as light as a flower. Her hair falls down over the tops of her breasts, her nipples like nuts peeping through. Burning in my palms, under my lips, and I am on top of her. She closes her eyes, smiling, smiling, smiling--send me, she says.
Kissing her face, the down of her cheeks--
really send me, she says.

She turns away from me to put on her clothes. Leaves her bra on the floor but I pick it up and hand it to her--
She hesitates, starts to take the shirt off again and I turn away. There is a catch in her breath. I open the window. The sound of Esther's hair, moving against her warm skin, walking away from me.

Outside across the street a man mowing his lawn at night. One of those mowers with headlights on it. Going up and down, up and down, rigorously, like a toy. Somebody walking their dog. The smell of chlorine, cut grass, cookouts. Hot asphalt. The smell of sixteen year old virginity, of nothing has happened yet, of a whole life stretching blameless and open before you.

Beneath me I know my house is empty.

Alternative High School

2008-08-19T19:14:00.000-07:00

Later they put me in this school run by a bunch of old hippies. The hippies didn't care what you did so long as you were on campus. It was supposed to be revolutionary, make us want to learn.

They had the kind of trees that are good for sitting under. That is what the school made us want to do.
The teachers would come out--"We're having algebra now."
"Yeah."
Then, a little later--"Time for English," they said.
"Okay."
"We'll just be inside, having class. Okay!"
We came in the morning, hung around all day. Left in hordes at 3:08. We were going to graduate without learning anything.

The kids who did go inside for classes, broken down victim types with giant eyes like starving dogs, they went inside and made terrible drawings on butcher paper. They did worksheets as a class, with teacher saying things like, "15 is probably A. What do you think? 15--A? Okay. " The margins were extra size, in case you were stupid on top of everything and couldn't write well.

I lived outside, waiting for every day to be over. Sometimes inside they would sing old protest songs. The hippies were teaching them. Weak, ineffectual people, who had never gotten anything done: you could hear all of it through the windows.

We used to ball my jeep around the lot doing donuts. Drive between apartment buildings, over deck chairs, to the grocery where we walked down the aisles punching bags of bread and opening jelly jars. Behind the grocery store we experimented smoking different things. Wasteful, harmless: these things are not counted.

One of my friends was beautiful. He had black cigarettes that smelled like incense, he had long slinky hair like a girl, he had a face with bones like Johnny Depp. On my first day he came over to me.
"My name's Jack," he said.
"Okay," I said. We shook hands, very formal. It was a transaction. I was quiet, not interested in talking. But he sat with me anyway. He stayed.
A couple times he brought his guitar. He was bad at it.

"I used to love a girl named Paula," he says.

"Yeahh, they're out there," I said.

"Yeah, love." he said. The air was suddenly cool on my face. The leaves were ochre on the grass, like tiny leather jackets.

"I don't believe in love." I said. "I don't think it exists. I think people talk about it so they don't feel simple like animals."

"I guess there's nice things about being an animal," he said. "Only needing to think about the next three minutes. Not so bad."

I was sixteen years old. "You want to go someplace?" I said.

There were people lying in the grass beside me. "We can go to my place," Joshua said.

Joshua's parents weren't around, didn't care. I heard he'd had a lot of fucked up things happen to him and his brothers when they lived with this weird uncle. One day they pulled the uncle over pushing a shopping cart full of bloody scythes and doll hair through the neighborhood. Turned out he was the KC Ripper. You never know a guy.

The way you find out has somebody been molested, you have them sing the ABCs. Your voice stops at how old you were the day you were first molested--even if you are as old as thirty-two you will still sound as if you are six, getting fingered under the stairs by your eighth grade babysitter. This is true, it always works. It comes in handy. I didn't know about it then.

Anyway, four of us crammed into Jack's truck to go to Joshua's house. The seats smelled like incense, were covered in Indian fabric.

Jack's arm around me, I could feel him breathing. His fingertips making circles on my shoulder, rough from playing the guitar, they made sounds against my coat, and I liked it.

Joshua was against me on the other side. He had these diabolic eyebrows that went up on the ends like he was going to do something. I don't know what happened to him. I don't know what happened to any of them.

So Joshua was into bugs--had a bunch of them in boxes, stacked in his closet, and one by one he kept taking them out for us. Jack sits in a chair and closes his eyes. The room is cold, strange smelling. I keep my coat on. The other girl walks to the window and stares outside.

"Hold this one," Joshua says. "Madagascar hissing cockroach," he pronounces, and it must have cost him a lot of money.

I am terrified of it.

"No, she's sweet." He cradles the giant bug shiny against his cheek. "She even knows who I am. She recognizes me."

"Don't they chew out from the boxes?"

"Sometimes. But we've got this dog--it always gets them. You have to hold this one, though, okay?"

The next box was a tarantula.

"He's a teddy bear. Look at him."

"Ah, teddy bear, yes." It looks at me with a stuffed animal expression: blank, stupid eyes, vaudevillian fangs--giant, fuzzy. "It has fuzzy teeth!"

"They don't bite people," he lies. "Too big, they can't get their teeth around."

We cup our hands together. The spider crawls delicately from Joshua to me.

"Evil ballerina," I say, feeling fucking clever. The thing standing in my hands, very light.

"See?" he says. I give it back.

"You know they don't have bones?" he says. "If you drop them, they shatter."

"Have you tried it?"

The front door slams. A woman's voice, and then there are people mumbling angry, confused. A crash of something shudders the walls. The girl standing over by the window jerks like a puppet.

Jack stands up. "Lets drink some whiskey," he says.

There's dogs in the alley, walking silently in the trash, the damp leaves. They run away, the pretty one looking back black-eyed at me, looking backwards over her shoulder like a bright swan. You know how sometimes, even if you don't believe in reincarnation, there are moments, when everything is almost possible? It was like recognizing a lover. I wished she was mine.

The white, scalding sky: I wanted to climb to the top of something, to be lost in the whiteness--

"It's raining," I say.

The whiskey sears out from in me like a sacred heart. I radiate love, I am backed against the fence kissing Jack in the cold coming down rain, our burning faces. My ovaries are twisting worms, sucking holes: fill my spaces, be my lover.

Joshua sits on a rock with the bottle, laughing at us, my nipples in Jack's hands through my shirt.

"Paula," Jack says. "Now I have you."

I slug the drink, Joshua smiling sick-faced at me and I wish he'd leave. There had been that girl with us but somewhere in there she'd gone away, and I can't remember--

"Where'd that girl go?"

"What girl?"

"With the--hair," I said, my fingers together, indicating very long hair.

"It's just been us," Joshua says. Jack looks at me. Maybe we should sit in his truck for a minute?

"Okay," says Joshua. "Don't leave, I've got to get something, okay?"

We blast the heat and sit kissing with the radio on, fogging the windows. Jack's lips are chapped rough, metallic with smoke.

"I know your mother," he says suddenly. "She teaches at Pinckney?"

"Yeah."

"Haydon, Mrs. Haydon, that's it, right?"

My mother the teacher. I don't know what she wants from people. Why would anyone want to teach? This is why nothing new ever happens. Teachers filling our heads like balloons with other people's ideas. We live our lives making things easy for other people. You know smiling, in dog language, is like--'Please Jesus do not hurt me.'

I don't know what I mean.

-what I mean is, I want to be free, to catapult high and explode into a thousand melting stars across the wide sky. I don't want anyone to ever catch me, to ever have any part of me.

It seems like you should do what you wanna do, which is I don't know what, not yet, nothing exact, except it should be something very large and immediate, although not right now, because I am unable. I am unable of anything right now, but there will be a day when I am, when I am able.

I'm thinking all this while Jack is touching my hair, softly. He puts the car into gear.

"What's in your head, little girl?" he says, even though he's only two years older.

"Nothing," I say. "just junk." My hands blurred watercolors in my lap--streaks from my hands on his window I do not remember making. "Poor Joshua, huh?"

"He's okay."

"Hey, you want to see my mom? She always works late--we can catch her. You can show me where you used to sit. It's all still the same, I think."

"Really? -I don't know, she hasn't seen me in a long time." He looks out the window.

"It's okay. Never mind."

His hand moist through my jeans on my thigh. I close my eyes.

Later he tells me he didn't see the sign and because of the rain he thought the bus was still moving.

The last time I ever saw him, looking not like he used to, he said actually he didn't know you have to stop when buses have their lights on and the stop sign out.

It is because of us that there are those stickers on the buses now, the stickers that say 100 fine, even just for passing and not actually going that fast, because sometimes there are girls that run out into the rain from those buses, not looking,

their long black hair in their faces, these little Vietnamese girls who are so precious, so small, so small really, with such tiny pelvises, like tiny birds.

This tiny person like a bird screaming in the street in Vietnamese: and me squatting beside her, fucked out of my mind because I had not been out all that long, really, and this just blew it for me, this girl writhing, terrified, and her little feet naked.

Little bright pale sneakers like angels in the rain on the pavement.

"Here's one, honey, I'm sorry I can't find the other one but I'll keep looking. Listen, I'm sorry-I'm sorry, okay?" and she was scared, scared of me, do not touch her, do not take the hand, smaller even than my littlest sister, because I am the oldest of six, I had to take care of them all the time when we were growing up, and really I could be okay and normal and help you, girl, if you would just relax. Let me comfort myself comforting you.

Then there were lights and the bulls with their notepads, they were nodding, recognizing me. Shaking their fat heads.

The girl believed I was a demon. Her voice was pure, glistening, like a bell. She wished me ill.

They picked up Jack three blocks away. He was just standing there. I don't know how they knew he was involved. People driving by, they must have witnessed it. We were witnessed.

He'd run from the car, didn't even close the door--I'd had to put it in park. I guess he lost his boner for me pretty fast. It was bad for him because he had something from before. "What were you doing with him?" That's what they said.

And I must have mumbled something back, and then one of them told me I needed to sober up. "I'll give you a chance, kid, because I know who your family is," he said. He turned around.

They had a hard time putting that girl back together, the way she was broken and how small. It was in the papers. Maybe you saw it.

But she was so young. She probably healed quickly. Probably does not even limp.

A couple years later they closed the Alternative School. Now, if high school doesn't work out for you, you can just drop out, like they do in regular cities.

Sometimes I see the old hippies downtown. Then all of us wave, like the old friends we are.

Screwjack the Yngr

2008-06-28T10:58:00.000-07:00

Come up to me pushing, up rumbling, against my neck insistent—kisses, long hair in my mouth my eyes, mine i love you delicious little,

sit with me where we are warm, --still, be still—

between your dark lips the shine ivory fangs, wet smelling sweet musty-fishy, press against me kissy in the window,

little love beauty, your papa gone off out somewhere so we can, pressing

into necks hard fingers toes; wet stinking tongues to lips & ears,

are you thinking about biting me

about pointed pale bones sinking into me

into through me

i’d like it; i want it,

anything you want to me,

rape my vessels suck my bones break my teeth stab my womb with you full of you paint white the walls of me eat out all of my lining rip your glassy eyes take everything into

then somehow your neck into my fingers baby tomcat

writhing squirm squealing your marbled black and yellow belly

apologizing while I twist

your very thin neck I stretch your legs in opposite

everything—head full of blood & light—

you becoming,

still like a pond

perfect

Girls on Fire

2008-06-22T11:01:00.000-07:00

At the church they come at us from behind some buildings, blurry eyes and walking strange, into the car crying like children: I look at their faces and see them children, babies with skinned knees, only Bette is crying that she can’t have babies now, any babies,

You’re okay, you’re okay. I’m turned around in my seat. You’re safe.

For a while they just breathe and choke; their faces rainy windows. One of them slumping out of consciousness against the window. People at the stoplight think something is going on.

Tell me what happened-

I can’t believe he’d dose us, one of them says, we’ve known him since we were in fifth grade-

He keeps saying, oh, that’s not my shot, that’s your shot, she says, and I think he’s being friendly, you know, being polite, and then I wake up in his bed and he’s on me passed out—and my pants are undone—and then Ainsley’s in the bathroom on the floor and Kyoko, and they won’t wake up and they didn’t want to get up—

And he said he’d been on the McCormick yesterday, but it was full when we got there-

Where were his parents?

They’re out of town—

Is your friend okay?

She shakes Kyoko, my dentist’s daughter: Imma kay, imma kay, she says. Presses her face against the glass of the window, and I turn up the air.

Should they eat? I ask him.

Probably not, he says. His sunglasses with the light on them; the going-down sun. The light in their faces, I can see that their hearts are all moths, beating against grey slatted grab of their ribs: throbbing for the light coming down with the air they breathe.

At the house they keep repeating their story, dumbfounded still, but calming down. Kyoko throws up. She barks like a seal. I keep checking on her, make sure she doesn’t pass out. Every time she’s got her arms wrapped around it, smiling gently at me. Imma kay, she tells me.

All right.

Ainsley hugging me tight. I stroke her shiny hair.

Oh, here’s a little bit of barf, I say, picking it out. She smiles.

Bette woke me up saying we had to call you guys. Call Johnnie and Pauline, she said, call Johnnie and Pauline.

Little girl I know so well and yet not at all: a loving stranger to me. But I’m such a good judge of character! she’s wailing, and I’m thinking how this is part of it, part of the wheel: she grows up and I am given myself ten years ago, a girl becoming in another woman’s arms. It was my youngest aunt held me, tiny pretty with red nailed hands: smoking cigarettes and wearing black underwear in the morning (my mother wore soft ratty things).

Part of becoming whole is putting another girl together again: pieces of Ainsley fitting into what is gone from me.

I didn’t have anything to eat today, she says suddenly, through my hair.

Are you hungry?

Not yet.

I’m such a mom, I say, trying all the time to get you to eat.

Yeah you are! she says, hugging me again. Paulie, she says softly.

Kyoko mumbling on the sofa. This is not normal, she says again. This is weird.

Yah you’re weird, says Bette, walking past Kyoko unfazed, and they’re going to be all right.

But this is unending, Kyoko says. Bette takes her onto our bed, until I think she probably shouldn’t be lying down. She goes back on the sofa, slanting there with her black eyes closed looking like my dentist’s daughter, until she lurches up for the bathroom again.

She only had one shot, Ainsley says.

It probably wasn’t mixed evenly, he says. She had the biggest dose.

I hope I can still have babies, Bette says. He has that STD, you know, and all these girls can’t have babies.

Your pants were on?

Yeah, she says.

It’s hard to pull off somebody’s pants. You ever do that? Play limp? —and if he had gotten them off, he wouldn’t have got them back on. He passed out.

Yeah, she says, thinking. I’m gonna get him so bad.

Yeah, Ainsley says, we’ll ruin his life.

Someone like that, I say, shouldn’t get to keep his dick.

They laugh.

You should get your buddies to hold him down—you can carve RAPIST on his face, so everybody he meets will know.

Yeah, they tell me, but we want to do it ourselves. We’ve got to do something ourselves.

Only not violently, they say.

Violence is not the answer, says Bette. She touches Kyoko to make sure she’s still awake. Hey honey, she says.

Cats on the floor in yellow lamplight and Kyoko whispering on the sofa. The sisters tempt him outside for a cigarette. Their smoke, smelling stale and somehow like leather, drowses back on itself through the screen door. Unrolls itself like something living.

After a while they’re texting their friends about it, they’re talking about how they’re gonna get this guy. Ainsley showing me pictures of her favorite pipes online. She wants one looks like a mermaid. Have you been on here? she’s asking me.

She’s telling me about mushrooms and talking her friends sober, about someday maybe working in Africa, taking pictures and helping the people. About finding old wedding dresses in bins at garage sales: and then Johnnie and Bette are coming through the door bringing tacos and another girl.

They’re getting ready to go again, Kyoko still sick, Ainsley hugging me saying she’ll call later, let us know she’s okay, that they’re all okay.

Even as she says it we all know the call will be tomorrow, asking can we get her something, and that way Sunday too. Then on Monday cigarettes and boys and French fries: high school forever and ever amen until the day they are eighteen.