In Imitatio Porno

The men bend themselves into machines. Put weights on their chests, push down with their legs, turn red in the face, and do it again and again. Each man acts as if he is alone in the room; machines are switched like dancing partners, with only darting looks toward other men, rival suitors, competitors.

The men are so intent on fitness goals that no one notices when the Famous Porn Star walks into the room, picks up weights and begins to exercise his remarkable biceps, admired all over the world.

One by men, the men, looking into the mirror, glimpse him looming at the edge of their vision. Some, intent on perfecting their form, don’t notice him for a long time. Others assume he just someone who looks like the Famous Porn Star. So many men do, after all. In this part of the city, Colt and Catalina Video are a kind of gospel and men live to the greatest extent possible In Imitatio Porno.

When men at last recognize him, they stare at the floor, at their gloves or machines. Anywhere but at him. (In this way worth is determined, by looking away.)

But the men look back, note his tattoo, his bulge, his perfect scar. The kind of scar you could never give yourself (though some had tried). The kind of scar you had to be gifted by some terribly fortunate accident.

Then men, who had been alone, are together now, united in orbit around the Famous Porn Star as they continue their sets, their repetitions. Each aspires to be seen, acknowledged, and thus receive benedictions from the Star. The men continue to pull and push and push and strain, but their counting falters and they forget their routine, forget what is next, and to breathe.

The Famous Porn Star thrusts a stack of weights into the air above his enormous shoulders. He does not look at anyone, not even at himself in the mirror.

Reform

What chance reform?

A towel hangs from a locker, shorts on a chair, and the man in between’s not hurrying to either. Speaks Portuguese to his pal on the other side of me.

I’m going to count to 100 and not look once.

97, 98, 99, 100. He’s still perfectly naked. (It’s true, I was probably counting fast.)

Imagination did not exaggerate: the man’s beautiful as falling backwards off a ladder.

That’s all. (There’s a theme to all these stories: nothing happens.)

Three weeks later, I still have not fully recovered. A hole his precise delirious shape appears in my man-cratered mind. When it rains at night his form returns.

It’s a dark planet, certainly. Fresh standing water: no one to drink it.

a life of Bright / 1 *

Saints don’t write. Saints live in a blaze and leave us behind to stammer. “Once there was a man”—already he’s a fairy tale. Impossible to tell. Still—

A saint arrives in a high and dry American city. Any number of impossible things go ahead and happen anyway. Popular and unpopular parables. Miracles no one wanted or, at least, miracles no one deserved.

What is a saint anyway?

A saint is a stamp marked cancel on the usual system of rewards and punishments.

A saint is the end of getting what you deserve.

Bright. Impossible to tell and still—pressing, waiting, scratching at the mind. Demanding to be told.

In the end—what can I do? The devotee gives up, admits defeat, begins to write.

Once upon a time, in Denver, Colorado, there lived a man named Bright. . .



(* Here, again, is the story I've written a dozen times in a dozen years. I am toss it out here at last and promise I will never tell it again.)