Lull

It was four in the afternoon when he got out of bed. On a day the pain had won, but at least had been allowed to win so that now, when he finally got out of bed, everything was exceptionally quiet. No thoughts worth risking.

I won't try, he assured himself. Brushing his teeth was just brushing his teeth and not the first part of some big doomed revolution.

It was deliciously quiet. So mercifully quiet. He could just barely hear the demons scraping.

No thoughts please!

He was grateful to be hungry. He stood at the counter drinking milk from the carton and forking in a few sardines.

He decided to go out. Even though he knew that going out was almost certainly ill-advised.

But there was no reason not to go out, he assured himself. He would be very careful. He wouldn't think. Or he would think as little have possible. There would be no gratuitous thinking. He would have only the most essential thoughts. Those that were absolutely required.

Also, he would also be very careful to only see and hear only entirely neutral things, so as not to excite himself.

Nothing was a problem so long as he paid careful attention. Exactly enough attention. Not too little. And certainly not too much.

Out he went.

The hottest summer in history was over. More than 100 people had died, even here in privileged Tokyo. Now it was over. Next summer would be worse. Presumably.

He was the sort of person who was careful to always keep one eye on doom. So that, when it did finally show up, no one would be able to say that he was surprised.

Today, however, was cool. And it was astonishing to see how quickly life had recovered in the little pots the lined the edge of the street, which had looked entirely dead just a few days before. Already the herbs and the impatiens had straightened up and turned green, pushed out a new set of leaves. Without so much as a nod toward the smashed burned season, which had so nearly killed them.

In five minutes he arrived at the station where the train was just about to arrive, as it was always about to arrive, here in Tokyo, the absolute convenience, efficiency and anonymity of which combined to create an absolute gentleness, like choosing to die by starving oneself to death, as Jain monks do, ceasing to eat rice, then fruit, then milk. Finally even cutting out the water.

No thoughts please!

As the train entered the station he watched carefully. Whenever possible he avoided areas where people seemed likely to disturb him, whether by being homeless, or young, or mentally unstable, or attractive. Men who smelled bad were almost as much of a problem as men smelled good.

Tokyo was an ideal city -- 97% of people acted as though their participation in life was purely obligatory. Public displays of enthusiasm were positively frowned-upon. Even vital signs were expected to be kept to a minimum.

This train car, the third, seemed all right: a few schoolchildren, a grandmother, and businessmen. All of whom were either asleep or transfixed by handheld hypnotic device. If he'd been bare ass naked it would only have been noticed later, by whomever was paid to watch the security cameras.

He stood by the door, fully clothed, selecting his thoughts with care.

Hopelessness carries with it an element of cool. Wasn't it so? A little breeze. The mania had gone, with its accompanying binge.

So quiet.

Self-lacerating regret, a sense of waste -- what could be more familiar? How else could he ever feel so entirely at home?

And it was a relief to see the world, where people could be counted upon to wear pants and ignore him. There's no way to thank these people. It simply isn't done. People wouldn't understand. They might even be alarmed.

For example: the little girl with pigtails who stood opposite him, accompanied so delicately by her nervous father, off to work the late shift in his suit and tie.

The little boys with square backpacks and safari hats who, as far as he knew, had never once asked their elders, "Why does it make you feel so much better, if I spend my childhood commuting to school dressed like a World War One soldier?"

Or this this old woman, her hair the color of plums -- she could have made space for him to sit down -- and she wouldn't, not in a hundred million years. "Thinking of attacking me, dubious foreigner? Well, I'll have you know that I am carrying no more than 2000 yen, these pearls are fake and I am not above using brute force and a hair pin to defend myself."

He decided he'd go to gentlest part of town. Just to have a walk, a coffee. He would need to transfer trains. But he was doing fine. Better than usual.

Anyone who saw me now, he told himself proudly, would assume I am more or less functional.

He felt so good he even bounded up the stairs to catch the next train, darting in the doors just as they closed. Usually this train was packed; often he was pressed against the only person in the Metro area eating something cheese-flavored out of crinkly bag. Of course. Because demons were out to get him.

This time however, the train was quiet. Evidently the universe was experiencing one of its rare cooperative moods. As soon as the doors open he dashed for the one open seat. Success.

Only when he paused to catch his breath -- and looked across the aisle -- did he realize his horrible mistake.

He ducked his head down. Why hadn't he checked first, as he always checked before sitting down? Why had he put himself recklessly in the path of danger?

His number one fear was now upon him. And he couldn't jump up now. That would look odd -- if he decided now to stand beside the door, change cars. That would look peculiar, or maybe even slightly crazy.

Now he must sit and try to act normal. Try to act normal was the motto of his life. He tried to live up to it, but he was always failing.

He tried to remember his mantra -- but, in the middle, was it hrim or was it hring? Counting to ten in a foreign language was also out of the question. Terror was upon him.

Across the aisle from him sat a well-dressed European man, remarkably handsome, the sort that exudes success. With features so prominent you can't help but notice how excellent they all are: his eyes ears nose mouth all special order from wherever it is first-rate people are manufactured.

And his clothes. His clothes were stunning. What were these things called? Did rich people still call it a trench coat or was that now a vulgar term?

Looking down he could see the man's dark pants, which were ordinary enough. Except they were not ordinary at all. They were the kind of tip-top luxury pants made to look ordinary, but obviously not ordinary, handmade in Italy probably, for hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

As for the shoes -- the shoes did not bear thinking about. If he stepped on the toe of one those shoes he's had to make payments for the rest of his life. Like student loans.

You could tell the man was high-class European because he looked as though the world was his personal possession, but also he disdained it somewhat. Clearly it was not quite up to snuff. At any moment he might make up his mind and send it back. Get me another world, please. A fresh one. And another chardonnay.

In this world, meanwhile, Hell was well underway. Because he knew he shouldn't look. And could not help looking. He just wanted to know -- what was it exactly that made the man so powerful, so luminous, so at home in the world?

He thought, if I look one more time I will understand. But then he looked. And cowered. And craved to look again.

This man looked like every moment of his life he was about to give a short dismissive laugh and shake his head.

He tried to remind himself that he was also male and white and neither young nor old. Why did he always feel like saying technically white? Because obviously he was not the same tip-top high gloss ruling class white of this powerful and beautiful stranger.

He looked again. Actually the man was going bald. But it wasn't like aging or decaying bald. As though he'd decided to go bald, so as to better display his perfect head.

The man shifted in his seat. (He worried: Is it my fault? Am I looking too much? Am I already wildly out of control, or am I still passing for subtle?)

Doubtless the man needed to shift in his seat because of his large penis. One more reason why his pants had to be tailor-made. ("Giovanni, a little extra space down there." "Yes, sir, I remember.")

Actually the man did not think his penis was large. In his hometown this was just a normal penis. In the pharmacy of his hometown they sold eight varieties of magnum condoms with just one "small" size option. For tourists.

He wanted to stare. He wanted not to stare. He wanted to learn how not to stare. He wanted to stare, to understand. He wanted to know how it was done.

He knew there was nothing he could offer this man that would not be disdained. Even adoration. Especially that.

A short dismissive laugh and a shake of the head. Imagine being able to do that. To answer the world that way. What glory! What success!

He didn't want to be dismissed. He didn't want to be humiliated. Again, again. He didn't want anyone to see how hungry he was, how desperately hungry, in this city as gentle as starving to death.

He screwed his eyes shut and ducked down his head. Listened to the recorded voice call out the stops.

When he opened his eyes the man was gone.

Saved!

Today at least he hadn't been dismissed or ridiculed. Of course, he had been dismissed and ridiculed. He was sure of it. But at least -- he hadn't needed to actually see it. He was already multiply rejected: it was no longer necessary to attend each rejection personally.

How grateful he was for the smoothness of the train, for the ordinary faces which surrounded him on every side. They were all dull and, it seemed to him, that they were all dull as a favor to him, so that he could simply admire them, without feeling too self-conscious. So that his sanity might continue just a little tiny bit longer.

That day he made it all the way to the cafe. And it was not such a great sin that he stammered repeatedly while attempting to order his coffee. Coffee shop attendants were accustomed to nervous people. Dispensing nervousness was their profession.

The next time he was granted an opportunity, he could be counted upon to pulverize it. Today, again, there was significant pain. Much of it self-generated, some causeless.

He felt so tender toward the world. Even though he did not feel at home. So excruciatingly tender.

Even at this cheap cafe, the woman was polishing the brass handle of the door.

33 Memories of My Mother

My mother died when I was seven.

All the years since I have repeated that sentence, again and again, whenever mothers were mentioned, until I began to fear that my mother had been reduced to those words alone—summarized, literally, to death.

I have very few memories of my mother. Fragments only, a few images, a few words. I am envious of my brothers, who are older and remember much more. Still, I cling to these fragments, my only connection to my mother as I knew her. Here may be found, I hope, a trace of her, a means of entry to a woman reduced too often to her exit, death from diabetes-related complications at age 45.

I have so few memories of my mother that I can actually count them. There are thirty-three, and that includes the smallest, most hesitant wisp of memory. I have no clue as to their accuracy.

Here is every single memory I have of my mother. I will not present them in order of time, which would give too much emphasis to her sickness and decline. Of that there has been enough already.

1. I remember I thought all the silverware must have fallen on the floor at once. That was the sound. When my mother came to tuck me into bed I asked her and she said, Yes, that’s what it was, the silverware falling. When I got up the next morning I saw that all the glass in the door had been smashed and I knew that my father must have been angry again.

2. I remember her lifting me out of the crib into her arms.

3. I remember the family on a road trip in the big green car. I decided to count each segment of dotted line as it passed beneath us. My mother said, “Just what we need, a navigator!” This is her only sentence that I believe I have remembered in her own exact words. I studied the sentence because I didn’t know if she was happy or angry or making fun of me. “Just what we need, a navigator!”

4. I remember her arm across my chest as our green car swerved from the road and smashed into a fence.

5. I remember looking at her in the driver’s seat as we drove past the mall. She wouldn’t look at me. I’d been promised that if I was good at the doctor I’d get a present. I hadn’t been good. I wasn’t getting anything.

6. I remember the second time I woke her up she was angry.

7. I remember she came to pick me up from kindergarten and we walked home together through the woods. For Mother’s Day all the kids had made wishing wells out of jars and popsicle sticks and planted them with Swedish ivy. When I got home I saw that the Ivy had fallen out. I was about to get upset but she cut a sprig from the Swedish Ivy in the laundry room window and placed it in the pot.

8. I remember sitting at the table with my father and mother. I asked my father why two men couldn’t get married. My mother said it was time for dinner.

9. I remember her breaking a plain donut and dipping it in sugar.

10. I remember her, when she was ill, beneath the green velveteen comforter. She told me I shouldn’t be so fearful, that I ought to learn to ride a bicycle and swim. She said she was sorry she had never been a better swimmer.

11. I remember I wanted my mother to be waiting for me, sitting on the stoop outside, when the bus brought me home in the afternoon. Other mothers waited, but my mother was always busy in the house. I asked her to do this. She looked at me like I was insane.

12. I remember how angry she was when I left crayons in my pockets and ruined her best denim skirt. I remember sitting on the floor in the laundry room, utterly repentant, picking at the wax in the skirt until she told me to give it up.

13. I remember her telling me what a good kid I was for never terrifying her. Unlike my brother who drank shellac thinking it was chocolate milk. I loved that story.

14. I remember her insisting that she loved dandelions when I picked them.

15. I remember her telling me that eating snot was like eating out of the toilet.

16. I remember bringing her a spider in a green Tupperware bowl. She screamed, Get it out of here! In the commotion the spider landed on my leg and I squashed it.

17. I remember the first day I knew she was ill. She was sitting at the kitchen table wearing a bathrobe in the middle of the afternoon eating Ritz crackers in a bowl with milk and black pepper.

18. I remember her washing my hair with yellow baby shampoo in the steel sink.

19. I remember her standing beside the Christmas tree but only faintly, as if faded beside all those little lights.

20. I remember the way her breast felt, pressed against me, as she held me in the green vinyl recliner.

21. I remember that when she was sick she lay in bed and drank grape soda. She said she liked the taste even though the smell was awful. (Or was it the other way around?)

22. I remember her telling me to pick up my feet.

23. I remember her handing me a glass of milk in a white ceramic cup.

24. I remember the only time I was allowed to see her in the hospital. My father wheeled her out. She was very pale. Bottles filled with colored liquid hung from her chair. She told me she would be home soon. The floor had blue and white tiles. (In my mind, I’m shouting at this seven-year-old, ‘Look at her! Look at her!’. But all I can remember is that she was very pale.)

25. I remember coming home from school with my yellow raincoat draped over my arm, trying to hide the fact that I’d forgotten my lunch box. As soon as my Mother saw me she said, “Where’s your lunch box?”

26. I remember her telling me that the garbage bag under the Christmas tree was for me. I thought I’d been bad and now I was getting trash for Christmas. Inside the bag was an enormous stuffed bear. Not a teddy bear but a fierce-looking bear with coarse hair. She said something like, “There. Now you’ve got your real bear.”

27. I remember driving past the place where the mall was being built. I called it The Big Mess. She laughed, and whenever she mentioned the mall after that, she called it The Big Mess.

28. I remember getting a shot into my big toe when one of my toenails got ingrown. After it was over she told me that she thought I’d handled it better that she had. Then she bought me a Snoopy book.

29. I remember her sitting at the kitchen table in her bathrobe. It was her last birthday. I gave her a timer.

30. I remember I learned to sing ‘Figaro’ from watching Sesame Street. I barreled into the kitchen shouting, ‘Figaro, Figaro, Fi-ga-RO!’ She laughed and told me I was wonderful and that I should go practice some more—out on the porch. When my father came home she told me to show him what I’d learned that day.

31. I remember watching her through the glass door. My father was standing over her, and she was sitting in the green chair crying. I’d gotten in trouble at school that day and I thought she was crying because of me.

32. I remember coming home from school on the last day of first grade. I was eating an orange popsicle as I stepped off the bus. The door to the house opened and my relatives, who had arrived that day, poured out to greet me, a parade of family, my aunts and cousins, walking across the yard to me with my mother, smiling, in the lead.

This is the happiest memory of my life.

33. I remember my mother bent to kiss me good night and I bit her. She pulled away and walked out of my bedroom without a word. I got out of bed and pushed open the bathroom door. She was sitting on the toilet. Aren’t you going to kiss me goodnight, I asked. Not if you bite me, she said. I said, Dad bit me first. That’s no excuse, she said. I said I was sorry. She told me to go back to bed; she’d be there in a minute. (I don’t remember the kiss.)

The Evangeranium and the Ultimate Meaning of the Universe

WARNING: This story contains missionaries, geraniums and a butt plug. All of which are things that offend some people. In fact, there may be no one who approves of all three of these things. I myself have serious misgivings about all three. Therefore I have written a story with no audience whatsoever. Even those who accept butt plugs and tolerate missionaries (despite some understandable squeamishness) draw the line at geraniums. However it cannot be helped. It cannot be helped that this story contains missionaries, geraniums and a butt plug, just as it cannot be helped that this story isn’t very good, and isn’t even really a proper story at all. However there is simply no point in criticizing these stories until an alternate means of sustaining this person’s life can be devised and implemented. To criticize too harshly is thus inhumane, like coming upon a poor man with nothing to eat but a can of beans and saying to that man, “Your beans suck.” It is inhumane -- and also it is tacky.

Having thus warned the unsuspecting, and prepared ourselves, our defenses fully mobilized, let us continue to the story which, again, is titled:

The Evangeranium and the Ultimate Meaning of the Universe

The day can be decoded. Like a puzzle with tiles. As if objects were consonants and moments were vowels. The meaning is about to be revealed. (That's the delusion to which I subscribe.) The waves on the shore are about to form letters, along with the plumes of monoxide from buses and blackened gum on the sidewalks.

It's not accidental that the poinsettia has lasted this long, even if it has lost most of its leaves. (The poinsettia does not appear again. It is replaced by a geranium. Almost never does something stay around long enough to figure out what it means.)

The real miracle is about to occur (beside which resurrection is such small bananas) and we will discover we haven't been wasting out time, after all.

For once, instead of the usual bumbling hapless life, we discover that we have arrived at exactly the right moment, wearing the perfect outfit, and holding splendid tools.

I was doing it right all along, announces the miracle. Even when I was doing it entirely wrong.

I suspect that this is a psychological mirage created by coffee. Overwhelming quantities of coffee.

Nonetheless I've chosen to devote my life to it.

I stood in the entryway with my beloved, thanking him effusively for his gift: a butt plug. A translucent fluorescent green latex butt plug. Now: we just needed to figure out where to store it. Between applications, I mean.

Admittedly I am not so enthusiastic about butt plugs. About butt plugs I am decidedly lukewarm. Assholes are something I admire in other people.

Still, it was a gift. And it's the thought that plugs. And I admired this man so much -- even a butt plug from him had a certain luminosity. Added to its already brilliant fluorescent green.

We were noisily and hilariously discussing storage options (why not wear it on a chain around my neck?) when there was a knock on the door, right next to my head.

We hadn't heard anyone come up the stairs. My beloved shoved the butt plug in his pocket. Which meant he now had two truly promising-looking bulges. I opened the door.

It was the missionaries from downstairs. Eight of them at least. They were in two neat rows, as if about to sing.

They were holding a purple geranium.

"We wanted to say we're sorry."

"Gosh, that's a pretty flower."

We'd put our futon out to air and one of the missionary new recruits had accidentally taken it, slept on it. For this sin they were now atoning. With a purple geranium.

I thanked them as much as I could. I tried not to grin or to breathe.

We closed the door and waited for the sound of Christian footsteps in retreat. I held the geranium. He took the butt plug out of his pocket.

We gave way to hysteria.

Had the missionaries heard everything about the butt plug? Butt plugs, about which the Apostle Paul is mercifully silent.

Did this mean they would no longer come to my door with cookies in a plastic bag or a CD of praise music, smiling so tightly I always thought that if I touched them even slightly, applied even just a single queer fingertip to an evangelical missionary shoulder, they would scream and not stop screaming for an extremely long time.

I tried to get along with the evangelical missionaries. (No, really, I did.) I was a very quiet and respectable neighbor, except for the howling hysterical orgasms.

Already I was at work. Looking from the green fluorescent butt plug to the purple geranium and back to the butt plug again. Trying to comprehend the meaning. The two gifts which had arrived so nearly simultaneously. Fluorescent green butt plug. Purple geranium. I puzzled. And failed. As ever. And yet: it was so obviously a language.

Unfortunately it didn't occur to me at the time, but now it seems obvious that the best place to hide the butt plug, carefully wrapped, would have been deep, deep in the potted soil of the evangelical purple geranium. Or, as it came henceforth to be known, the evangeranium.

The universe continues to toss me these clues. And I continue to miss them. I never know what's going on until it's much too late. Actually, usually I never figure out what's going on at all. But, just you wait. Sooner or later: I am going to catch a clue.

I failed. I always failed. And I was always optimistic. Always more of a failure. Always more optimistic. Because I now possessed a purple geranium. And a fluorescent green butt plug. And was one step closer to deciphering the ultimate meaning of the universe.

The Bed

The bed was too narrow. They knew it was too narrow the first night they slept in it, or tried to sleep, and woke up cramped, in a bad mood from the very first moment of the day, like tourists stumbling off a bad bus into a bright city, pretty well pissed-off already.

The bed had come with the apartment. The bed had belonged to the previous tenant, who'd been an acquaintance of theirs, a rich man who believed he was righteous, who filled notebooks with personal messages from Jesus. The rich man fell deeply and passionately in love with younger poorer men on the other side of the planet, whom he courted with bank transfers.

When the younger poorer men failed to return his love -- or, rather, when they realized his love had nothing to do with them whatsoever -- the rich man wanted his money back. Meticulously, he destroyed their lives. He had a staff of lawyers for this, suing one ex-boyfriend after another.

This was his bed. It was already a gay bed, which was good. And cursed, which was unfortunate.

They knew from the beginning that the bed was never going to work. As well as being narrow it was somehow warped: one side sloped down, there was a lump in the middle. Still, they continued to sleep in the bed, or try to sleep. Despite the fact that one of them was always uncomfortable, and sometimes both.

They had little arguments in the middle of the night. Could you just move a little? I'm already off the edge! Yeah, and I'm smashed against the wall! The bed was so cramped it seemed a third man must be in bed with them. A fourth, even.

Sometimes in the morning they gazed at the bed in wonderment, wondering how an ordinary bed could be so remarkably uncomfortable. Still, they went on sleeping in the bed. They hated the bed. The bed stayed.

Why did the bed stay if they hated the bed? The bed had no doubt been expensive -- the rich man had had expensive tastes. A bigger bed would make the room look cramped and the closets hard to get to -- though presumably it would have been more pleasant to be cramped for a moment while choosing a shirt, rather than cramped all night.

Would a few inches of bed really make so much difference? Both men suspected the other would never be satisfied. Each man was convinced that he himself was naturally easygoing and would be more so, if only he could get a halfway decent night of sleep.

The number one reason they did not get a new bed was because they were sure that they would not be staying long. Because what they really wanted was to get a better apartment. One that wasn't garlanded on all sides by electrical wires and girded by evangelical missionaries.

Not just another apartment, but another city, a city with color. With people who had not entirely forgotten how to smile. With music coming out of windows and places to eat outside.

They knew that they would not be staying long. So there was no reason to spend money and go to a lot of trouble just for a bed in a cramped apartment in a gray city they planned soon to be leaving.

They went on sleeping in the bed. They admitted now they wished they'd tossed out the bed the first night, when it was obvious the bed was narrow, cursed and cramped. They wished they'd gone to the trouble.

In this city it cost a lot of money even to have your bed taken away, even this bed, which had been expensive and could probably be sold to someone who'd never suspect why he'd become so enduringly unhappy. Of course they had no idea, then, they that they would stay so long in this city, in this apartment, in this bed. If only they had known! But now of course, there was no point -- because they knew that they would not be staying long.

One or the other might sometimes wonder if it might have made a difference, somehow, if they'd gone ahead and gotten a better, wider bed. Certainly a bed like theirs did nothing to inspire tenderness or lust, not anymore than a pair or pants that don't fit. The bed may have significantly contributed to the crankiness they very often felt, toward this city, and toward each other.

But maybe it would not have mattered. Another bed probably would not have been much more comfortable. As mentioned previously, they both suspected the other would never be satisfied. It might have been, actually, that things were not working out so well between them. And then one or the other would think: there is no reason to change the bed. He may not be staying long.

The bed would be fine for one person -- wouldn't it? The rich man had nearly always slept in it alone. He only fell in love with men who were faraway so that he might, without interruption, superimpose his own romantic vision upon them. The rich man slept alone, lullabied by dreams of romantic love, romantic lawsuits.

Yet -- hadn't the man complained frequently of not sleeping well? In fact he'd been a perpetual insomniac. And the two men had always assumed it was because he was mad with love or vengeance, busy filling notebooks with personal messages from Jesus.

But maybe he only did these mad things because he could not sleep? Perhaps he was not -- essentially demonic, as they had always assumed. Or at least -- not possessed by any other demon than insomnia. One of the most ordinary of demons, one of the greatest. No one on Earth was ever further from madness than not sleeping two nights in a row.

It now seemed to them both that the bed was really the problem. They agreed about this. And nowadays there were not so many things about which they agreed. The bed was a problem, it was a really a problem and a problem they ought to do something about. Or ought to have done. But then they said, "We are not staying long" and they went on sleeping in the bed. Trying to sleep in the bed.