One Day A Week

Brenda got to the point where she was insane every week, for one day. I must be a serious case, Brenda thought, insane every week! Then she tried to reassure herself. A week has seven days. She was only crazy for one. Not so bad was it? Lots of people were crazy more often than that. Most of them still held down jobs. Many of those jobs were in Congress.

No, Brenda! she reprimanded herself. This is the slippery slope! To say that one is all right. One whole day. Soon: one whole bottle, one whole cheesecake, one whole body massage, with hot scented oil.

Her judgment was not to be trusted. For -- this might be the day. The one mad day. It did have a way of coming around. Every time she looked for it, there it was.

Sanity, what was it? Simple: sanity was doing the next thing on the list. And sanity, the list, was not as safe as it ought to be. The list was spooky and tall, teetering like those anthills she saw in nature programs about Africa. She had to be careful. She had to be exceedingly precise. One wrong move, one bump -- ants came pouring out, horrible voracious woman-eating ants, swarmed in an instant over her body. Biting and opinionated ants: it's time you heard the truth about yourself.

Brenda was amazed that for so long she'd had no idea hard liquor was marketed, specially for ladies, in playful little bottles with cartoons on them. Bottles which looked like bubble bath for children -- and were 80 proof. No more tears!

One day in seven: she never saw it coming until she was over her head in it.

The next thing on the list: Brenda sat silent and upright. She held the little bottle with the bunny painted on it. She waited for the train to come at her through the wall.

I mustn't scream, Brenda thought, or the neighbors will wonder. Or I will scream. What the hell -- it's my day.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Portrait by Akemi Shinohara

F. Scott Fitzgerald's Penis

F. Scott Fitzgerald, as we know, wrote one of the most perfect novels of all time. He also had a very small penis, about which Zelda complained. One day, looking for reassurance, he took it out and showed it to Hemingway, who reassured him -- and mocked him for it forever after.

I do not know the size of Hemingway's penis. But I do know that it was nowhere near as big as he'd like you to believe.

F. Scott Fitzgerald had a very small penis. Maybe that's why he drank and engaged in obsessive neurotic behavior, such a writing novels.

Do men with nine inch penises write as many novels, statistically? If, before birth, men were given a choice, between literary genius and a genuine porno dong -- would we be living in an entirely oral society?

Or rather -- a world where all the writers were women and all the men walked around with silly, lopsided grins.

Firsts

Recently I saw a man who has a special distinction. Special at least to me. Actually I am the only one who knows about it. He was the first man I ever had sex with in Japan. Obviously this was some years ago now, since I met him that first time.

I was in job training, it was my first day off, and I'd spent all morning searching for Shinjuku ni-chome, the gay district of Tokyo. I knew I'd found it when I noticed a sporty young guy grinning, and gesturing to me from a stairwell.

I followed him up the stairs and wound up fucking him, outside, on the staircase, beside some bar that wasn't open, where thankfully no one chose to show up early to work.

It wasn't particularly epic or passionate. Actually I was rather distracted, and somewhat concerned, because I'd only been in Tokyo a week, and in Shinjuku ni-chome three minutes, and already I was fucking a stranger in public on a staircase. This seemed to me shocking. Actually it was quite in keeping with my standard of self-control, good sense, and propriety at that time.

I saw the young man often after that, in just about every dark corner I frequented. It was sobering to realize that, by fucking that guy, I'd pretty much fucked the entire Tokyo metropolitan area, upon arrival. He never asked for a second round. Maybe I wasn't that good. Maybe he was in a hurry to get to the next one.

Whenever we saw each other after that, entering a darkroom, coming out of the steam, we nodded once, politely, and then ignored each other.

For a few years I saw him very frequently. Later I saw him less. He got fat for awhile, then he got very thin. I looked very carefully at his face, at his belly, at the back of his neck, to see if he'd seroconverted, gone on retrovirals. Probably.

I didn't see him for a long time and then, today, there he was again. We nodded once, as usual. He looked fine, he's a good-looking guy.

I noticed that he has begun to grow old. Not that he's there yet, not by a long shot. But there are the first signs: long thin lines beneath his pecs. Maybe from gaining and losing all that weight. His face is changed: he doesn't need to make a disappointed face to look disappointed.

Do I have lines on my chest now? That face, certainly, is also mine. Evidently we have entered a new stage. We were Young Hotties: never grade A, maybe B plus. Now we've arrived at Officially Attempting Macho.

I'd like to ask him how he's doing. But I'm not sure how to interrupt. He's on his way into the steam, and obviously on a mission. I'd like him to know that I wish him well, that I do care for him , somehow, even if it was just ten minutes on a staircase years ago.

It's a perilous procedure, in which I almost never succeed: to inform a stranger he is significant to me -- that he is obscurely but truly beloved -- without confusing or alarming him.

I want him to be all right. I hope he doesn't suddenly get sick, or lose all his hair. I hope he doesn't sit alone and drink or punch the walls. I hope he doesn't cry himself to sleep. I hope he doesn't stand forever in the shower, scalding himself and still not feeling clean.

I hope that when he's walking down the street alone at night his heart is very light. I hope someone cares for him; I hope he cares for someone. I hope he takes good gentle care of himself. I wish him well. I wish he would get his act together, finally, stop hanging around dark corners, like this one.

Recreational Madhouses, The Era of

The period during which recreational madhouses became hugely popular, when the stigma against mental illness had decreased to such a degree that people actually volunteered for it, and prominent experts appeared on CNN saying that it was even good for you, now and then, to be insane.

The first recreational madhouses offered a 12 hour stay, during which you were free to drink yourself into a stupor, howl inconsolably, make animal noises, expose yourself, or any combination thereof. Running screaming down the corridors screaming was popular -- so popular that the hallway was delineated using tape into lanes and half was reserved for runners, sprinting screaming naked raving up and down the halls.

The recreational madhouses soon became hugely popular. It became necessary to make appointments months in advance. This despite critics who continued to scoff: What, the subway isn't good enough for you?

This surge in popularity swiftly led to the creation of mad spas, mad resorts, and the mad three day two night packages so popular with the Japanese. (As soon as you sat down in the plane, the flight attendants came around with strait jackets.)

Violent insanity was not a problem. Those who wished to be violent were placed in 'V' wards, where there were always others who wished to be beaten.

There was even a mad retirement facility, which aired highly memorable advertisements: golden-agers rolling down a sunny hillside, rouge-laden grandmas smiling straight into the cameras: "I'll lose my marbles from the start -- and have nothing left to worry about!"

"Independent Living? Who needs it! I want full-time hands-on care NOW, while I can still enjoy it!"

Meanwhile, outside the madhouses, things were much quieter. Folks were pretty much content to go to work and then straight home to their spouses, knowing they had two weeks in May reserved for touching themselves inappropriately and screaming obscenities.

Naturally, there was still a segment of society opposed to the Recreational Madhouses. Often these were the very people one would have most liked to incarcerate themselves: the political and the pious. They seemed to believed they'd been called upon by God to be insane in the public arena. Also, some philosopher types speculated that it might be unwise to try to separate sense and madness. Just like you didn't repair your own watch because you were likely to lose some small essential part.

During some public holidays, the streets of the sane were almost entirely empty: everyone had checked themselves in to the madhouse.

What would happen to sanity, the pundits wondered, if no one was interested in participating in it? Would reality languish? Might it go the way of democracy?* Or was it like the ocean floor, which went on existing even though we rarely saw it, while we acted like it wasn't there, and kept on piling crap upon it?

After less than a year, a conservative government came into power and all Recreational Madhouses were abolished. (We're not exactly sure how this happened. It was during our madhouse vacation.) Now everything is pretty much the same as before, we ride the trains with too-tight faces. Now and then someone admits to being Jesus or opens fire or bursts out singing, On top of spaghetti! All covered with cheese!

__________

* Democracy was abolished in 2012 after 84% of the electorate said that free will was bothersome and they wished simply to be told what to think.

Validation

You explained that you would not have continued, except that at exactly the right moment you won a prize.

"I was validated," you said. You said it like it was something very real, something I myself ought to drive downtown and acquire, like a parking sticker or a hunting permit.

And why don't people talk about being in-validated -- since, it seems to me, that happens much more often? We invalidate each other on the train, and then at work, and then in the evening we go out to the bars --

But almost never do you hear someone say: I was found to be entirely invalid! In fact, I'd expired some time ago!

Validation seems both necessary and awful, like morphine, which is horribly addictive, which distorts consciousness, which mutilates lives -- and wouldn't it be just perfectly lovely to have some right now!

On one hand, imagine how it would feel, if a use could be found for oneself.

On the other hand, do flowers stand around thinking, "I'm doing this for the community."

On one hand, consider the vast resources that have been expended on one's behalf: the trees expelling oxygen, the cows slaughtered, the overworked professors, the mother who doubtless would have rather taken a long bath.

On the other hand, have my good intentions done any less harm than my bad intentions? Have my bad intentions achieved any less good?

On one hand, I absolutely agree -- all aspirants should be made to recite "I am not Miss Emily Dickinson of Amherst" until they get it through their heads.

On the other hand, wouldn't it be easier and more satisfactory if everyone seeking validation got an enormous dildo, broadcast on Cam4, and left the university presses alone?

On one hand, validation would mean I wasn't just some narcissist doing this for my own masturbatory glee and self-aggrandizement.

On the other hand, not necessarily.

On one hand, how can it be real if it doesn't connect somewhere?

On the other hand, is nothing worth doing for its own sake?

On one hand, it would be easier somehow.

On the other hand, it's not like I'm going to stop anyway.

On the one hand, I am vastly ashamed there is nothing to be shown for me.

On the other hand, I am venomously proud.

On one hand, how exquisite, at exactly the right moment, to win a prize.

On the other hand, I have discovered that nothing worthwhile ever enters my life unless I have first prepared a ground of perfect complete hopelessness.

On one hand, my dear handsome professor, imagine how much better you would like me, if I could do even the slightest thing to advance your career.

On the other hand, please consider: it used to be enough for poets to do their work simply to acquire lovers.

On one hand, never mind!

On the other -- who gives a damn?

Apathy Man

Dear ______ ,


People like to give you a hard time. About living at home, not going back to school, still working at the cannery, etc.

And I invite you to just go ahead and ignore them. Why can’t he? Why won’t he? Why doesn’t he? You understand that these people are just using you so they can feel less lost. (Whether or not they give a damn is an entirely separate question.) They want to feel good they stayed on the path all this time. The well-worn, signposted path.

But there is no reason, therefore, that you should feel lost. Just for the convenience of those people. Just so they can feel less lost.

You get it, don’t you?

Obviously you do. You’ve done the math few would dare to do, as you revealed to me one day, down in the family basement.

The basement, which smells of pumpkin bread and boiled pork, of whiskey, and exhaustion. The basement where, like a triple X theater, it is always 2:30 in the morning, where you continue even now to live, where your mother toils to keep it all seamlessly and intolerably moving, where your father sits all night in the corner like an angelfish stuck to the filter.

In the basement you explained it all to me. You told me about Apathy Man.

Apathy Man has the powers of all the superheroes. He’s as strong as Superman, as clever as Batman, as nimble as Spiderman. He can leap over buildings, transform himself, save pretty girls, fly.

This power does not derive from a spider bite, from the planet Krypton, but simply from the understanding that, no matter how bad the situation, no matter how bleak things appear, things could always be far, far worse.

Apathy Man can do anything he chooses. Except that he won't do anything at all. If you call him for help he says I’ll be right over. But Apathy Man never shows up. He can’t be bothered.

It might seem like all those super powers are just wasted on Apathy Man.

But, as it turns out, apathy is a very special super power all its own. When the universe is entirely destroyed, as now and then it must be, when the universe is totally pulverized, when the other super heroes are a distant memory, when not even atoms remain intact --

Somehow Apathy Man survives. Apathy Man remains to inhabit the next universe, to create the world anew.

That is, if he gets around to it.

Structural Vanity

By now Brenda understood her vanity was -- well, not just for vanity's sake. Instead it was sort of an organizing principle: a way to check and see if she was still here. Confronted by turbulence? Check your hair. Appearances were easier.

And maybe that was how it was for everyone, or nearly everyone. They didn't expect it to actually work, i.e. that they would be beautiful, and therefore beloved, and therefore all right.

Anyway, one's own decay was easier to haggle and bother with than everyone else's. To say nothing of the dissolution of the world.

Nowadays a woman who didn't smoke and ate greens was likely to outlast major geographic structures. She might easily make it to 2050, longer than nearly any glacier or coral reef. She would outlast the polar bear, perhaps the honeybee, or even tuna fish.

Considering this, it was easier to puzzle out how to look human, than how to act it.

A Visitor

He'd thought it would be fine to always be a visitor. A guest in the family. To fly in, bearing gifts, for a week or ten days, then fly away again. Every year or so. Actually he thought it would be easier.

Twenty years passed this way -- and then one evening he happened to be a guest for dinner at his niece's house. There was just this one chance to see her, and to meet her new fiancé; everyone was so busy and of course he was only staying a short time.

At dinner he happened to say how sorry he was that he was leaving so soon -- and barely glancing at him she said, "Oh, you'll be back again."

And for a moment he saw himself through her eyes, as someone who came and went, as indeed he had for her entire life. He saw that in his absence his reality had decayed, and not only for her, but for himself as well.

He looked around the table, which was populated by real people, who could be measured and weighed, who mattered, who would not fail to be found. A farmer, a school principal, and his niece, the regional director of sales. The new fiancé, in particular, was as real as the policeman who knocks on your door in the night.

Unfortunately, he himself had ceased to be real. How careless, how foolhardy, to not tend to his reality before now! He could not make himself entirely visible; he flickered at the table. He was not quite there -- of course not, he was a visitor. He might suddenly disperse, if someone happened to open a window, or turned on the exhaust fan above the stove.

If only someone had explained to him twenty years ago, how regrettable it was to be always a visitor. Back when he might have done something about it, back when he was real. At least he presumed he'd been real. It was possible he'd always been somewhat lacking in this department.

Other people knew better, as he understood now when he suggested, repeatedly, painfully, that they might yet visit him. They looked at him pityingly, with real distaste, as if he had suggested some game of make-believe, when they had real grown-up things to do.

Why had it taken so long for him to notice the parentheses draped around his shoulders, or this enormous asterisk, like a desiccated spider, floating in the air beside his head?

He tried to console himself it was a reasonable mistake, which anyone could have made. Spending overmuch time with himself, as he did, he was prone to think himself significant. Other people, who saw him seldom, were less likely to fall into error.

And so, like an amphibious creature, he slid from visibility at the dinner table, and contemplated life in one world or the other.

If he stayed away, might he not develop in the other place, at least the appearance of solidity? Could he make-believe until convinced and proceed from there to convincing other people?

To be free at last of visiting. Visit, Visited, Have Visited: to thrash about seeking visibility, the primary effect of which is to fling muck.

Instead he intended to sink permanently from view, so as to obtain thereby the chance of being visible elsewhere.

And so a visitor ceased to visit, and what was seen rarely was now not seen at all, and what was barely noticed was not noticed at all: like a freckle on the underside of an aging arm, like a dun-colored migratory bird.



Whether this person attained reality elsewhere is unknown. Certainly it is to be doubted, considering his tenuous and attenuated state.