Children's Scissors

Bangkok, 2011

“I don’t believe in karma but – maybe – because, the day before I lost everything, I stole a pair of scissors. Just a small cheap plastic pair, from Seven-Eleven. I didn’t even mean to, I needed to open my chocolate packet and – you know how it is on Xanax – those scissors just floated out the door with me. . .”

Oskar is begging on the sidewalk outside Saladaeng station when I walk past after the bars close. Twenty-three years old, from Sweden, he says he’s been an addict since forever – but he’s got it under control now. With Tramadol, the key, he says, is not to take it every day. So he takes it every other day.

I give him 20 baht and we reminisce about the hell of benzodiazepine withdrawal. “The doctors, they pass it out to anyone who marches in the door and says they’re anxious.” Oskar laughs. “Yeah well -- nowhere near as anxious as you’re gonna be when you stop taking that little pill!”

Oskar has red brown curly hair and the lines of his forehead are grooves. He leans against the wall with ankles crossed, as if sunning himself in Bangkok’s neon light. He’s not wearing underwear. He has the eyes of a puppy that’s been buried alive. He’s a very friendly person, Oskar.

Oskar’s arm is in a sling. Muy Thai. Says his teacher is the best in Thailand. Says he’s dislocated his shoulder twelve times and every time it’s worse. The pain’s excruciating.

When I ask him how long he’s been in Thailand, he has to stop and think. “A year. And four months. It doesn’t matter about the visa after awhile. The most they fine you at the airport is 20,000 baht.”

Then he tells me about the day he lost everything. First, somebody stole all his money. He doesn’t know how. Maybe he gave it away. Fucking Xanax. He doesn’t care about money anyway. “I’m nonmaterial,” he says.

“But my phone! With all those pictures I want to look at when I am, like, seventy years old!”

“Then I went to a club and the guards -- they wouldn’t let me in. I didn’t have 20 baht. I just sat on the curb and smoked. Then I went to talk to a friend and – somebody stole my cigarettes! The guards just laughed and laughed at me. . . People aren’t usually like that here.”

“Sure, I got family,” Oskar says. “My dad’s a businessman. I gave him advice and saved his business. It wasn’t even such special advice. But he is like the dumbest man on the planet. I made him a logo too, a really cool one. It reads the same way backwards and forwards. I made a website for him. My friend did the programming. He doesn’t use any of it. He is a seriously stupid man.”

“My mom? She’s a nice lady. She worries about me. She didn’t want me to come here. I get in trouble here. But in Sweden I get in trouble too so maybe – this is more easy for her. Sometimes, you know, it is more easy for people if you just disappear.”

We pause then and look around, at the sky and the street and the overpass. It’s 2am outside Saladaeng station. The metal gate has been down for hours. Almost no one is left walking around.

We have disappeared.

Somewhere else, in the world that matters, the people who matter continue their lives. It is nothing if a few of us vanish. Whole continents can vanish -- must vanish, in fact, if these people are to continue unimpeded their secure and respectable lives.

May it be considered an act of generosity, of mercy: the way we use our stolen scissors to cut ourselves from the picture.

Oskar says he’s saving his money real carefully now. (On a good night he makes a couple thousand baht.) “My girlfriend is 41. But her daughter is 23. The same as me. Her daughter -- she follows me with her eyes. It’s only a matter of time. . .

“I’ve got to get out of here.”

Donger

When Brian got really, like, down on himself, like when his Dad, at his 80th birthday party, called him a no good punk, Brian liked to remind himself that he really did have things to be proud about. Like his day with Kyla Timberlake, when he’d been a porn star, sort of.

He’d fucked Kyla Tiberlake -- whose breasts had been almost certainly the largest on the planet. Kyla Timberlake, a top performer in the industry, who’d been in the news recently for an emergency with her implants. (She was going to be all right. Just smaller.)

He’d fucked Kyla Timberlake and been paid 500 real American bucks, 300 of which he spent that night at the bar – because what’s the point of fucking a porn star if you don’t tell people about it?

The way it happened is this. His pal Greg was one of the cameramen for one of those “reality sites”. You know, one of those things where, if you pay just 24.95 a month, you can waste the better part of your life.

One night at the bar, buzzed with Greg, he said, “38 sites! Euro Bride Tryouts! Slut Seeker! Cougar Recruits! All Wives Cheat! Man, there’s got to be a place for me somewhere.”

Greg took him into the restroom for a moment and, sure enough, Brian got a job as one of the Donger Brothers.

Brian was kind of nervous on the big day, but the set-up was basic. All he had to do was shoot the breeze with Kyla Timberlake until she “noticed” the freakishly huge penis hanging out the leg of his shorts. Then he could fuck her.

Except it wasn’t really his penis.

It was a twenty inch latex dildo. “Lifelike.” If they came in that size. His actual penis rested inside, an infinitely frustrated and disgruntled understudy.

Brian thought he had a nice penis. Hefty, even. No reason to be shy in the locker room. Up until the very last moment Brian hoped the director would see the actual equipment and say, “Hey, buddy, looks like you don’t need any help!”

But nobody so much as nodded at his actual penis, which anyway wasn’t all the way hard, what with all the bright lights and people standing around.

He didn’t even get a porn star name. Not that he cared. He just thought it was automatic. But, when he asked, the boss man first said he didn’t need one, then said, “OK, you can be Brian.” But he was Brian already. He’d been Brian all his life. Anyway, on screen, Kyla called him “Bill”. It didn’t matter.

He’d fucked Kyla Timberlake!

Except that, you’ve got to figure, with a twenty inch dong, which was also hugely thick around, Kyla Timberlake was always nearly a foot and a half away. Factor in the world class enormity of her silicon tits and – it was remarkably difficult to get anywhere near Kyla Timberlake.

He didn’t get close to her until she was long gone and he was at the bar, buying beers and shots for everyone. Then she was really in his arms.

Brian told the story all night long. He declared his undying love for Kyla Timberlake. The guys were all jealous. Even the girls were impressed. He didn’t tell anyone about the twenty inch plastic dong. When he needed to piss he went into a stall.

Here it must be said that so long as one considered the universe as the complete expression of total fullness, it could inspire nothing but banality and rhetoric, but if one thought of it as something made from very little, a poor thing scratched together on the edge of nothingness, it excited sympathy and encouragement, or at least a benevolent curiosity as to whatever might come of it.

-- Italo Calvino, "Nothing and Not Much", The Complete Cosmicomics

Red Blanket

(India, 2011)

Yes, God speaks to me.

Only very infrequently. Every other year or so.

God speaks to many politicians more often than that. It does not mean they are insane.

In any case, it does not keep them from being re-elected.

Why does God talk so much to politicians? Shouldn’t God be spending time elsewhere? How about encouraging teachers and nurses?

It is possible God is a politician. Perhaps God is an elected representative and we have all been hoodwinked into overlooking the fact.

We might vote.

God can hardly be blamed for being pompous. God likes the elevated tone.

Most of the things God says to me are appropriately grand.

About twenty years ago, God told me: You are here to be a witness. You must learn to write and to pray.

Almost ten years ago, God said: Choose the right rebellions.

(It’s not necessary for God to speak to me very often. Since I never finish what God tells me to do.)

The last time God spoke to me, the words were very ordinary.

God said: You will be wrapped in a red blanket.

What’s that supposed to mean?

Sounds ominous, doesn’t it? Like I’m going to be the victim of a traffic accident.

Or, more ominously, a monastic order.

I didn’t understand at all, but I kept my eyes peeled for that red blanket.

It’s conspicuous how uninterested God is in practical matters. Evidently six days of that was enough.

God never gives me suggestions about how to pay off my student loans. God doesn’t tell me to get a job. God doesn’t even show up occasionally to shout, “For godsakes keep it in your pants!”

It is possible that God is a bad influence.

One afternoon a man arrived and wrapped me in a blanket. “I want to give you something,” he said.

Except it was a brown blanket. No red in it at all. Very definitely brown.

I felt disappointed, but also somewhat relieved.

If it had been a red blanket, I would have felt compelled to marry him. I would have had to move to Chile. Which is an expensive country. And learn Spanish.

Chile is a long way away. I am frightened enough trying to speak my own language.

Also I am already married.

On the other hand, I was tempted to put some red dye in a bucket and shove that blanket in.

Isn’t that what it means to be the master of your own destiny?

The Chilean was an extraordinarily good kisser.

It’s true that he was somewhat scrawny. No flesh on him at all except for his lips, his cock and his ass.

What more does a person need!

The blanket was just a plain brown blanket but it was a hundred percent pure wool.

It was beautiful, the way he wrapped it around me. Like I was someone in particular.

Most men – you know how it is. They get off with whatever is there to get off with. Vaseline, suntan oil, spit. Yours truly.

Not so the Chilean. It was somewhat unnerving, the way we had sex.

I was visible the whole time.

Actually there was something quite odd about the Chilean.

Of course these men are nearly all odd. That’s why they’re my lovers.

I mean something really peculiar.

Shocking, even.

The Chilean said, I love you. He kept on saying it. He looked me right in the eye when he said it. I love you.

He was a trick. I was a trick.

I love you. He wouldn’t take it back or modify it.

He glared at me. He held my face in his hands and he forced me take it. I love you.

He taunted me with it. I love you.

I love you.

But I was looking for a red blanket.

ALL HE COULD: 8 Micro Essays

Fishing

I’ve never driven a car, slept with a woman, fired a gun. I’ve never gambled. I dislike violent sports. In eighth grade I faked an interest in Marlboros and girls, hoping to get into Danny’s pants. That’s it.

In spite of these disqualifications, I discover that, just like every other thirty-eight year old man, I want to drink beer at the lake with the guys and go fishing.

I hardly know any lakes, guys or fish.

What’s this fish fantasy doing here? Or is it just part of the male equipment?

OK, so there are homo undertones. Like, I can see right up the shorts of the guy rowing the canoe. Skinnydipping abounds.

Also, in my fantasy, despite all the bluster about having world-class rods and tackle, and despite all the beer cans rolling around the bottom of the boat, no actual fish are harmed.

6 Dalai Lamas

The 3^rd Dalai Lama was an innovator, the 4^th was born in Mongolia, the 5^th was great, the 13^th embraced modernity, the 14^th is what hope we have left.

There were, however, six or seven lifetimes in the middle that didn’t add up to much of anything. The 6^th liked to sleep around, the 7^th was controversial, 8 through 12 didn’t live very long and, even if one did live for awhile, he was completely useless.

Somehow it makes me feel better to know the lives of the Dalai Lamas are not so unlike my days. A clear-sighted one may be followed by three of uselessness. Some are obviously false, others hardly get started. Five repetitions of upright behavior are bound to provoke an orgy.

On the other hand, after stumbling for centuries, a light may suddenly appear. Is it possible the stunted misspent days and lives fulfill some odd purpose of their own?

Even the Dalai Lama is not sure. The Great 14^th admits he cannot make sense of the six or seven lifetimes in the middle. “I never dream of them,” he says.

Heather.

If only another Buddha was available, like the buddhas of the past, to illumine the strange events which led to the strange shapes of the present.

For example, what karma gave rise to this: a beautiful and devious woman with one foot winds up briefly married to a former Beatle?

Gay Fashion.

2008 was the year it was fashionable to get slapped in the head. Fashionable in Amsterdam anyway – likely it was a year earlier in Paris and later in the provinces.

In 2008 I thought it was just deplorable, while happily sucking cock, to be all the time slapped in the head. It was a sign of something, entirely bad, about how gay men treated each other, rendering straight people’s homophobia completely superfluous, since we were so good at destroying each other and ourselves.

Now 2011 has come around and I discover that I’ve gotten all nostalgic for being slapped in the head. Nobody slaps me in the head anymore! Am I doing something wrong? Don’t they care? Do they think I’m made of porcelain or something?

Now the fashion is to spit into each other’s mouths. (Or maybe that was last year?) And, of course, double anal.

Double anal! The sheer sound of it: surely someone somewhere has already introduced a cocktail called Double Anal.

In a few years will I be all dewy-eyed and nostalgic for double anal? I can’t imagine.

Oh, why can’t they bring back getting slapped in the head?

List.

“Sex is not on top of my list,” he says.

Well. It wouldn’t be on top of my list either, if only somebody would help me to dislodge it.

Premise.

It’s like the premise of a sci-fi story, except it’s our actual planet. Such a peculiar idea, as a writer might come across when he’d already exhausted time travel and telepathy and talking heads in jars.

Not a bad idea for a story really, though it may seem unlikely and even a bit bizarre: this world where everything changes when you accept it.

All He Could.

If only she had a thousand bodies, she wished, so that she could appear wherever he was, douse herself with gasoline and set herself ablaze each time he told an acquaintance, “I did everything I could.”

Story.

Multiple miniscule escape vehicles. Bomb shelter. Back staircase. Backpack propeller. Didn’t work for those other people.

Failure is no obstacle for us. Secret passage. Secret chamber. Secret hideout from the Indians. Secret hideout for the Indians.

Into the escape pod. Up the last tree to the very top.

Then what?

There is another tree, from Heaven, growing toward us. From the very top of the first tree, we can just barely reach it. . .

Proceeding then gingerly upwards we may at last reach the sturdy trunk of the tree, the roots of which lie buried deep in Heaven.

Let no one infer from this that Heaven is upside down. Of course not. Heaven is right side up. We are upside down. Thus that infernal ringing, forever in your ears.

Guttersnipe Bookshelf: Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson, The World and Other Places

Random House, 1998

The best sentence in this book is: “It is right to kneel and the view is good.”

This is followed very closely by: “In my head I had a white rabbit called Ezra who bit people who ignored me.”

I read this book when it first came out, then reread it a dozen years later. How lovely it is! Sometimes I am unconvinced by what actually happens in the stories – several dart too quickly to romance for my taste – but then I should admit I don’t care very much what happens.

It’s the way Winterson uses the form of the story to look around at the world that enchants me. Most of all, I love this book for the strength and surprise of its sentences, many of which are suitable for engraving on stone.

I suspect that, if you fed this book into a computer, the ‘readability statistics’ would claim that it was written on a third grade level. The sentences are short and direct and apparently straightforward. The “simple” sentences make the complex ideas and images contained within them even more startling and effective. I shouldn’t pretend I know how this is done – she is a magician.

Every story collection buries the weaker numbers in the second half. It’s universal. This is the only collection I have ever read where I liked the later stories -- “Green Man”, “Newton”, “A Green Square” – even better than those that came before. What a lovely surprise!

How satisfying it is to move from one sturdy sentence to the next and be so often surprised. It is like being carried in a wheelbarrow to look around at wonders: “I stared at them, standing side by side, in an aquarium of content. Whatever they had, I didn’t have it, and it wasn’t cod.”

Guttersnipe Bookshelf: Life of a Good-for-Nothing

Joseph Von Eichendorff, Life of a Good-for-Nothing

Translated by F.G. Nichols

Hesperus, 2002

This is the kind of book where, when the hero gets bored and impatient, he climbs a tree.

Maybe you can resist books like that. I can’t.

No one ever falls asleep in this book without being transported to a new location or surrounded by flowers. A man lost in the forest comes upon a trio of woodwinds. That’s just how it works. It’s all an exercise in divine providence – everyone the hero meets is going precisely where he needs to go.

Life of a Good-for-Nothing was written in 1826 by Eichendorff, a lyric poet and novelist. It is said to be a perfect example of German Romanticism. Of course, you shouldn’t read it for that reason. Read it because it is an extraordinarily good time. In just a hundred pages there are so many adventures and rewards – there is even an argument with a parrot!

A sentence from the first page gives the feeling of the whole: “I was secretly delighted when to right and left I saw all my old friends and acquaintances going out to work, to dig and plough, as they had done the day before and the day before that and the day before that, while I was free to wander off into the world. In my pride and happiness I called out ‘Farewell!’ to all the wretched people around, but nobody took much notice.”

The translation reads beautifully and is studded with delights:

“The gardener scolded me for my laziness, and I was discontented, and the tip of my nose seemed to get in the way when I looked out upon God’s wide world.”(10)

More on noses:“I consider your delicately pointed nose, and regard you as a genius on vacation.” (77)

Despair, in this book, is extreme. And lasts approximately twenty-five seconds. “I firmly resolved to turn my back for ever on the treacherous land of Italy, with its crazy painters, its oranges and its chambermaids.” (82)

And, my favorite: “Tollkeeper, we haven’t much time, so please be so good as to get all your astonishment done with as quickly as possible.” (100)

I’d never heard of this book when I found it in a bookshop in the Himalayan foothills and it fairly flew off the shelf to me. Good fortune! What a gem it is, and a balm. One last suggestion: I think anyone who loved this book must hurry to read Gyula Krudy’s Sunflower.