SPACE

explicit content, be advised.

Tokyo, 2006
originally published in Quarter After Eight

SPACE

1

Anyone else have trouble with plastic bags?

The slippery sheer 45 liter bags, the kind you have to open by pulling apart their sides.  I can’t open them.  Of course I’ve always got the wrong end—it’s something inherent in my personality.  Even once I’ve got the right end I can’t do it.  Not sober at 8 o’clock in the morning.  Certainly not past midnight on a Friday night when I’m about to puke--thus the dire necessity of the bag, which I claw at as I lie sprawled across the bedroom floor.

2

The only other time I got sick from drinking I was 14, playing Quarters, drinking beer and Kailua with Eddie Zanni and his big sister Coreen.  All her friends were over to play with her new fluffy white kitten named Coke.  I puked in a green bathtub.  (It was Eddie’s house; he had dibs on the toilet.)  I passed out, woke up  to hear Eddie telling me about his sister’s friend, Stacey of the Tits.  He’d felt her up while she was out cold.  “You missed out, man!” he said.  Sure I had—but I just wanted to feel up Eddie.

3

At 14, my life was a desert expanse between games of ‘Truth or Dare’.  Already, when I imagined the world outside New Hampshire, it was a fantastic, legendary place: a place people had sex.

4

That Friday night my good husband and I had been in Ni-chome, which, if you’ve never been to Tokyo, is the place gay boys go after dark.  Do you ever think of Tokyo?  You ought to keep it in mind.  When your life is not going well, Tokyo is an option.  Especially if you graduated college and have no criminal record, if you have a toothpaste smile and no obvious tattoos -- Tokyo is here for you.  Of course it’s not as lucrative as it once was.  Still, you can be comfortable here, so comfortable that many people stay a long time, until they begin to sprout delicate ferns and doze in a Rip Van Winkle, free of questions in a heap of luxury goods.

5

To me, Tokyo seems cramped, but my husband swears that life everywhere is cramped and I ought to get used to it and not act tortured.  Shinjuku, in particular, is every day more compressed.  The ceilings get lower, the halls narrower; there are fourteen floors now where there were only seven before.  Ventilation shafts re-open as Italian bistros with outrageously expensive coffee.  The men with white gloves push us onto the trains.  Lately it seems to me they’re pushing harder.

6

Meat on sticks was what we wanted.  Our usual yakitori joint was full, but we found another that had suddenly appeared and we hopped in quickly before it had time to fill up or vanish.  Restaurants don’t last long in Tokyo--sometimes only minutes.

7

We drank beer with our yakitori, which is a common strategy to not feel so confined.  Even after one beer you don’t mind sitting in a room so small you can barely shrug your shoulders, never mind stretch your legs.  After more beers even time seems to open, hollow out, so that you’re no longer trapped in a schedule that’s totally fixed between here and Golden Week.

8

I wish I could give some eloquent reason for coming to Japan.  The truth is I was just in Chicago staring down the columns of the Classifieds: temp, temp, temp, Tokyo.

9

I’m going to stay sitting up, thank you.  I suspect I will die if I lay down.  I still can’t get the bag open, can’t pull the edges apart.  My good husband opens these bags effortlessly.  Licks his fingers first, swears he’s never had a problem.  He licks his fingers when he reads the newspaper too.  Gross.

10

Where is my good husband?  Shouldn’t he be concerned?  Then again, back-patting is for children.  Vomiting is definitely a solitary activity.

11

Never mind opening the plastic bag, I rationalize.  Consider it a plastic sheet--puke on it.  I crane my head over the plastic.  Wait.  Jam a finger in my throat.  Nothing happens.

Whatever it is that needs to come out, isn’t coming.

12

My husband is a good man, even a capital-G Good man, as in I ought to be capital-G Grateful and sometimes I am.  He came to Tokyo during the Bubble, when even being a kindergarten teacher was a lucrative career.  Of course work gets a little dull sometimes, he says, but that is why we have hobbies.  My husband’s not opposed to hobbies.  He’s not such a passionate man.

13

My good husband, no surprise, lives in a world that is good.  I accuse him of being a cabbage.  He says I don’t understand.  It’s true.  I don’t understand how the world can be good and that is likely because I am not good, not even with a little g.  I’ve never had the knack for it.

14

I’m married to this man.  Remember gay marriage?  We were pioneers, i.e. we have no actual rights, we just invited everyone to consider us married and judge us accordingly.  I’m not exactly sure how this happened.  It was an accident, which is not to say it’s bad.  Like any accident, the details of the actual event are hazy.

15

Now that I am married, it is extremely interesting to me, how two people can live together and at the same time live on two separate planets.  My husband finds the world quite satisfactory.  His Tokyo isn’t narrow or cramped.  His Tokyo isn’t even poised on opposing tectonic plates.  His Tokyo is stable.  And flat.

16

After yakitori, we went to the bar on the corner for the thousand-yen all-you-can-drink special.  Barry was there.  I was nervous when I saw him, with his double-wide shoulders and stubble.  Barry and my husband shared a hug and a kiss.  I didn’t hug Barry.  I shook Barry’s hand.  I was good.

17

The name Barry is misleading.  Most Barrys are unpleasant--even the jovial Barrys aren’t anyone you’d want to go to bed with.  This, however, was one hot Barry.  We’d met him at a party the week before.  He was short and muscled and exceedingly broad.  I am known for liking tall and lean men like my husband, but stocky is also good.  I particularly like stocky.  The same way I particularly like Scotsmen, Tibetans, Arabs, Mexicans, Japanese, South Indians, Icelanders—the list goes on.

18

For years I never went to parties or bars.  I went to the baths.  Wasn’t sex what everyone wanted?  Why not start there?  I never understood flirting that lasted longer than, say, a minute and a half.  You want him, he wants you—goodbye, pants!

19

Parties are always a puzzle to me and sometimes downright bewildering.  Especially now that I have a husband and everyone has ideas about what a husband is and one is expected to act as if those ideas matter, whatever they are.  One of the principal ideas is that the penis is a very special ceremonial instrument, like the sword the Queen uses to knight people: you should only take it out on special occasions for a select individual.  Superstitions like this matter terribly to people.  It’s all very confusing.

20

Despite these beliefs, people at parties act like they’re going to fuck any minute.  But if you do anything, if you make too much progress in that direction, you’re a no-good slut.  Especially if people thought you were a slut to begin with.  I resolved to be careful and pretended I was only interested in the hors d'oeuvres.  People touched me but I didn’t touch anyone.  I am not handsome, but there’s something good about everyone, right, and what’s good about me is my arms.  People touched my arms but my arms didn’t touch anyone.  This was my approximation of good.

21

Apparently it was insufficiently convincing.

22

Barry sat next to me on the couch.  He’s a very solid man, Barry, and it was a very cheap couch.  I sat there pressed against Barry’s muscular thigh, which warmed my whole body, tip to toe, like a Yule log.  I debated whether I ought to move away.  What was the rule in this situation?

23

We were at the ‘body part’ segment of the party.  This is a common element of most parties, where the particular loveliness of each person is commented upon.  One person had beautiful eyes and another had luminous skin.  I had my big arms.  My husband had his phenomenally  large penis, which was all the more desirable for not being directly shown.  (This is not the main reason I married him; it is a secondary supporting reason.)

24

Barry stood up.  What Barry had was an ass.  It seemed to me he had a lot of things but his official attribute was his ass, which appeared to be perfectly full, round and carved out of stone.  My good husband did not hesitate, but immediately palmed the superlative ass when it was proffered him in tight Italian slacks.  His admiration was unstinting.  Then, it was my turn.

25

And I was confused.  Because sometimes it’s wrong to even look at someone—and other times it’s acceptable to feel their ass.  I am supposed to somehow know these rules.  All good people do.  I didn’t have a clue.  I thought I’d play it safe.

“I can admire it from here,” I said and clutched my drink.

26

I was in trouble the minute we left the party.  Cuddled up all night with Barry on the couch.  I’d practically been all over him.

“It was just that kind of couch,” I said in defense.

27

The real problem, apparently, was my eyes.  All my life I’ve been in trouble for my eyes.  Apparently I’d beamed at Barry all night long.  It was obvious to everyone I just wanted to get into his pants; I want to get into everyone’s pants.

28

It’s not true I want to get into everyone’s pants.  What I really want to do is make out with everyone.  Which doesn’t win me any points either.

29

“You felt his ass,” I said to my good husband.

My husband explained to me that it was perfectly acceptable for him to feel Barry’s ass because it was just a joke, he was just having fun—whereas it is obvious to everyone that I am a sex maniac.  I do not doubt this is true.

30

I got very drunk at the bar, I admit.  I didn’t use to be like this.  I drank when I was 14 and then I hardly ever drank again.  Until I was over 30.  Now I was discovering it again.  I ought to be more careful.  It is so nice to have some space.  Even if it’s not really there, my god, it’s good to feel it.

31

In Tokyo almost every bar is inside, sunk in a basement or perched high in a skyscraper.  Gay bars are particularly buried and usually only big enough for a dozen people.  I’m not clear on the point of such establishments.  I mean, you could sleep with everyone in one night, staff included, and then where would you go for a beer?

32

Tokyo is very comfortable but very tight—though many people find it just right—a deluxe dark velvet upholstered brand-name ring box, the kind that closes with a firm and satisfying snap.
               

33

That night however, we went to the only gay bar in Tokyo that is actually outside.  It’s out on a street corner in Shinjuku, a corner so small it might disappear at high tide.  On Friday nights the foreigners, misfits and outcasts stand on each other’s feet and drink cheap beer.  It is not permitted to stand in the street and even your elbows must be inside the red cones.  If you stand on the curb and lean way back you can even see—between the lighted signs and the offices on the seventeenth floor--the slim sky.

34

I drank enough I could fly right up there.  Then I drank so much I was dizzy anywhere I looked.  Stupid, I know.  I get to feeling so terribly cramped.  All I want is a little space and I’ll do anything to get it.

35

When my husband steered me into the taxi, I noticed Barry was with us.  He’d have to run to make the last train, my husband said.  He can sleep on a futon in the living room.  Fine with me.  The taxi was swerving through Shinjuku and I was entirely focused on trying not to vomit on anyone.

36

I remember the nights of ‘Truth or Dare’ in New Hampshire.  Me and Eddie fumbling with each other in the dark after his parents went to bed.  The smell of burning hair from the beauty salon his mother ran in the basement.  We hated New Hampshire and we hated school.  We hated not getting what we wanted.  How incredible to discover that we had this escape, an escape built right into our bodies.

37

The sides of the bag adhered to my sweaty hands and when I opened them the bag opened too and when it was open I let go. I have no idea how long I vomited for.  I vomited up drinks and dinner, what must have been lunch and breakfast, and kept on vomiting.  The sheer bag expanded, filled with warm vomit until it was like a mushy diaper.  

38

Sometime later, I found myself on the floor clutching a bag of puke.  I wasn’t sick anymore.

39

There are few desires as compelling, I think, as wanting to brush your teeth after puking.  I could have gone on brushing my teeth all night.  I was feeling much better, thank you, better than I’d felt in weeks.  A very hopeful kind of empty.  Like maybe I could just start again and this time pause, at least for a little while, before cramming in the poisons.

40

After brushing my teeth I stumbled into the kitchen for water and glanced into the living room, where my husband sat with his head tilted back and a beatific look on his face as Barry crouched before him with my good husband’s enormous cock in his mouth.  They hadn’t heard me and didn’t see me yet.

41

I stood silent at the edge of the room and watched them lap at each other in animal happiness.  What a relief it was: I wasn’t the only one hungry.  I could take the whole night off from being the Bad One.

I didn’t move.  I didn’t want to interrupt, to usher in a flood of apologies or explanations.  I didn’t need them.  Everything was fine as it was, and all I wanted was to stand there until morning, and go right on being surprised.

The Joy of Wrong

Tokyo, 2006
(an earlier version was published in the anthology Jungle Crows)



Farrah Fawcett has cancer, he’d read in the paper that day.  She is 59 now, though in the photo she looked the same as ever, with her suntan and her feathered hair.  The type of cancer is not disclosed—only that it is fast-growing.  “I believe in the power of positive thinking,” says the former Charlie’s Angel.  She will now undergo “six weeks of cutting edge, state-of-the-art treatment.”  And adds, “I should be able to return to my life as it was before.”

Seldom, he thinks, is terror given such absolute and pure expression.

He thinks of the story of Ambapali from the sutras: the haggard nun reveals that she was once a woman of legendary beauty, aglow with lust, pursued by princes and kings.  Now she is very old, her breasts shriveled, her face ruined, but she has become a pure seeker and been liberated by the truth.

Black was my hair
-- the color of bees --
& curled at the tips;
   with age, it looked like coarse hemp.
The truth of the Truth-speaker's words
      doesn't change.

The idea being that you must not waste time being gorgeous and lustful, but instead hurry on to the ultimate truth.  (As a very young man he’d tried to be entirely holy—but he dropped out of holiness early and utterly.)

He knew the story.  He just wasn’t convinced.  He still thought it was worthwhile, somehow, being Farrah Fawcett.

For example, this young soccer player wandering now onto the train with his flimsy shorts and hairy legs.  When he looks at him—try not to stare—he doesn’t think, “You’re frittering away your precious human rebirth!” but rather, “Thank you for restoring my will to live.”

His state of delusion is terrible.  He is in favor of the world.

These were the kind of playful and nonsensical thoughts he entertained himself with, past midnight on the Namboku line, headed off to the baths on the very last train.

Why, he wanted to know, was it always so cheering to be full-speed ahead in the wrong direction?  Virtuous days wore a grim expression and clung to that righteous clean teeth feeling.  Virtue lacked sincerity overall.

Indulgence, on the other hand, was thoroughly zombified and regrettable.

But this time in-between, this time in the middle, when he’d given in but hadn’t yet arrived: this time was heavenly.

He seemed to float and found that he approved of everything, felt warm and comradely toward the strangers all around him, many no doubt pursuing wrong directions of their own, heading away from home on the last train out.

The soccer player was sitting with his legs spread.  (He looked again; he couldn’t help it.)  Maybe he wasn’t such a young man, actually.  He was definitely a smoker; note the lines around his eyes.  As well as the big green panther tattooed on the inside of his thigh.

Anyway, he was still downright commendable, even if he wasn’t so young or so innocent.  You’ve got to have a real appreciation for decay, if you’re ever going to love human beings.

And he loved everyone tonight. Why, he wondered, had he ever found living so hard?  Why did he struggle so much and torture himself?  The radiance of everything seemed to bubble up so naturally now — just by giving in.

Was this feeling, as he’d been told, only addiction’s poison dart?  Greed’s anesthetic?  If this was so, then he wanted to know: who gave the Devil such pure elixir?

Today he’d done his work, every bit of it, from the moment he got up at six until eleven at night.  There was nothing left to do then but lie down beside his handsome long-term boyfriend, already snoring gently, and begin a seven-and-a-half hour virtuous rest.

His eyes refused to close.

What was the force--when he’d done the right thing seventeen times in a row—that absolutely forbade him to continue?  Why was goodness finally so intolerable?

Addiction’s dart.  In a moment he had everything he needed in a bag; his shoes leapt onto his feet and he was out the door.
   
There is a special surge of joy that only comes in the moment when you surrender to doing absolutely the wrong thing.  The relentless undead dogs of morality, conscience and reason were barking up a storm, (dammit, one starts barking, they all start barking!) keeping you awake in the middle of the night, and then-- KABOOM!  No idea how it happened, your Honor, those dogs’ heads just exploded.

All at once the hubbub’s finished.  The delicious peace of the perfectly wrong descends.

During the day Tokyo is impossibly narrow, barely shoulder-width, but at night it expands—air rushes in and it becomes a place where a person might actually live.

People were more visible at night with space around them.  For example, the woman across from him now.  Her tight sleeveless camouflage t-shirt revealed her aging navel.  She was a bad girl past fifty, racing across town to be with her bad boy--who was doubtless still pretty hot, even if his beer consumption did sometimes get in the way of regular erections.  The woman looked perfectly thin but not fit.  He wondered if she had bad teeth, if she vomited a lot.

He worried about her but when her eyes opened he looked away.  Of course he did.  There’s no way to tell strangers you care for them.  No way that he had ever found.

The train glided on; the warm recorded voice recited the stops like it was the most natural thing in the world to be stopping at such places at this hour of night.

The train door opened at Shirokanedai and the man with the face of a wild pig got on.  In loose gray sweatpants and sneakers, he shuffled across the train to the handicapped section, where he sat staring straight ahead.

He’d seen the man several times before.  Even in the biggest city in the world, it’s not a face you forget.  His head was a tall wedge and his forehead was vast with a tuft of dull black hair at the top.  Way down low, on opposite sides of his head, were two tiny eyes.  Two dull pig eyes, bored and hungry.

The man with the face of a wild pig was riding the train alone late at night.  He got around on his own.  Someone was home in that head.  What would it be like to look more like an animal than a man? he wondered.  Then: for me it would only be fair disclosure.

He thought he’d like to go and talk to the man with the face of a wild pig.  But only crazy people speak to strangers on the train—that was the rule.  Only crazy people and salarymen rode the train this late--and the salarymen were passed out drunk.

He’d stared too long.  The wild pig man cringed and it seemed fear came into his little eyes.  From his sweatpants the wild pig man pulled a bright red phone with a silken tassel.  He bent his head over the phone and started pushing buttons fast.

As usual, he’d made someone uncomfortable with his staring.  The last thing the poor pig-faced man needed.  He’d scared him already; now he’d never talk.  He’d spoiled his chance.  The pig-faced man would never consent to be loved.  Anyway, this was no time to talk to strangers--not with whiskey on his breath.

The whiskey was a bad idea, probably.  Whiskey was a new addition to the routine.  Used to be he was the only one in the family who didn’t drink.  So much for that.

At Yotsuya he had to change trains.  The train stations were cavernous, especially late night or running late for an interview, when they quadrupled in size and sometimes grew as large as stadiums.  Every inch of the floor, wall, and ceiling was covered in tiny white tiles like a hospital.  It wouldn’t make any difference, he thought, if he walked on the ceiling or the floor.

He hurried through the station and up the escalator toward the Marunouchi Line.  He loved every person in Tokyo, both individually and as a collective, even though not one person in the entire city knew how to walk.  Now, for example: everyone was walking in exaggerated slow-motion, as if escorting an elderly water buffalo down a muddy village path.  You just can’t hurry a water buffalo.  He darted around people, left, right and up, until he very nearly knocked a stroller with an infant down the escalator.  Yes, the whiskey was definitely a bad idea.

The Marunouchi train was already in the station as he leapt down the stairs and in through the doors.  He fell into the open seat and it was ten seconds before he noticed the person sitting, rigid, beside him.

Oh fuck, he thought. I’m sitting next to the organist.

The organist kept his eyes pinned on a banner hanging from the center of the train.  New delicious coffee in a can, this season only!  The organist was an old man but immaculately slim and well-groomed and as wrinkle-free as a flower kept flat in a bible.  Aging punctiliously, as some gay men insist on doing.

He looked like the sort of man who only grew hair on the top of his head: a perfect patch of silver.  This was not the case, however.  He knew for a fact that the organist also had a dark and unexpectedly lush mane of pubic hair.

Tonight the organist was no doubt headed the same place he was--to the baths, where he’d seen him several times before.  How embarrassing.  He was not a church-goer himself--but his boyfriend was.  The handsome entirely first-rate boyfriend he’d take the first train home to in the morning.  The boyfriend to whom he’d apologize all day tomorrow.  The boyfriend who’d heard it all many, many times before.

The organist did not look at him.  He wished he would at least shrug and grin.  But his boyfriend had said he was a very strict gentleman.  He’d been church organist for a generation or more, but still insisted on having the hymns set six weeks in advance.  

When he felt love for the world he wanted to blast the room with it, like a gleeful housemaid with giant cans of peppermint air freshener in both hands.  That’s totally wrong.  To actually love you must bend to peer at and decipher that tricky, nearly microscopic text: the arduous legend of how each person might consent to be loved.  Even then, of course, you may well fail.

The organist kept his eyes on the coffee ad.  Only a fool believes those ads.  Every season, every coffee company comes out with a new variety and they all taste exactly the same, like coffee in a can.  When the train arrived four minutes later he lagged behind and waited until he lost sight of the organist.  He’d see him again later.  They could ignore each other some more.

He stopped at a convenience store to buy two tall silver Asahi, then walked a little further until he saw the yellow and black sign for the baths.

Instead of going right in, however, he went instead to the seedy little park across the way where homeless men sometimes slept on the slide of a rusty playground.  He sat down on a low concrete wall near an open public toilet.  He liked this place very much.  There were so few places in Tokyo where you could just go ahead and fall apart.  A few pale hustler boys loitered nearby, looking they’d lived way too long on Cup Noodle.  

Most of the men were older and sat slumped beside beer cans and sandwich wrappers.  He could have talked to them; they wouldn’t have minded the liquor on his breath.  But he was busy now, on the way to the baths, and he wasn’t entirely thrilled when a man sat down on the wall across from him and started to leer and rub his crotch.

There ought to be more places like this awful little park, he thought.  Where else can you go and be publicly, honestly desperate?  There ought to be more places like this, where we can go and admit we are starving.  Like on the computer, the private chat message box that opens in the corner of the screen:

hey man
im so fuckin
horny

Wouldn’t that be a relief?

The man across from him wasn’t handsome, not even this late at night.  An older married salaryman, perhaps not quite sure how to go about it all.  Yes, he was wearing a wedding ring.  The man cupped his crotch with his hand and squeezed.  Honestly his bulge seemed rather meager.  Nothing really aggressive about him, not compared to some.  Like he didn’t really expect anything to happen.

Still, the man came over now and sat beside him.  The man reached over, put a hand on his thigh.  The hand moved quickly up.

Not right now.  He smiled at the man and shook his head.  The man moved away, but only a little.  

The man didn’t seem bothered.  He reached into the brown paper bag he was carrying and pulled out an enormous book wrapped in plastic, which he proceeded to tear off.  It was a very beautiful and expensive book.  No dust jacket, just an embossed dark cover.  He moved back a little closer.

It was a dictionary, English-Japanese, the biggest he’d ever seen.  The man opened the book and together they looked down at the pages, though it was too dark to read the tiny letters.

Still, it was nice to sit there with the stranger and the beautiful dictionary.  The man gestured as if pointing out a word, and for a minute or two they sat there together, their hands clasped beneath the dictionary.  Then the dictionary man must have gotten hopeful again: the hand went back on his thigh.

Time for the baths.  He smiled, nodded and apologized.  Time to go.

He walked across the street now toward the black and yellow sign.  He was drunk.  He was happy even though he knew what came next.

Indulgence was entirely zombified and regrettable.

Still, he thought, I love you.  I love every person in Tokyo and I love you, Farrah Fawcett.  I hope you don’t die.  I hope you don’t lose your beautiful hair, your legendary breasts, but even if you do, I’ll still love you, Farrah Fawcett.  I am so sorry that you cannot have your wish.  Nothing in the world is entirely impossible, nothing but this, your wish: “to return to my life as it was before.”

I am so very sorry, Farrah Fawcett.

He climbed up the narrow stairs then and pushed open the door to the baths.    

The Necessity of a Precise Diagnosis

Tokyo, 2011




After years of attempting to manage the problem with vitamins and acupuncture, with exercise and affirmations, Randy decided to go to an actual medical doctor.  One doctor led to the next.  Tests found tests were needed.  In a stream of vague explanations, the drugs kept flowing, but Randy did not get better.

Finally Randy secured an appointment with a celebrated and accomplished doctor, an innovator, considered to be the top of his field.  This doctor was able at last to pinpoint the source of the problem, the very origin and essence of the thing.  He introduced a finely-tuned treatment program which made use of innovative medicines in quantities measured precisely according to Randy’s symptoms, weight, and age.  Even though the regimen was daunting, Randy was profoundly relieved to have located the source of so much suffering.  Here was a diagnosis, a treatment, a way forward.  Here, at long last.

It didn’t work.  Not in the least.  Actually he got somewhat worse.  The celebrated doctor said not to worry.  Instead, they would use the “classic” treatment, which worked for nearly everyone.

Didn’t work for Randy.  Certain of his symptoms got better.  Others got dramatically worse.  He felt like a congested urban area that finally solves its traffic problems -- only to discover that its pleasant picnicking volcano is not actually extinct.

The celebrated doctor, surprised by failure, suggested Randy had not followed the regimen faithfully.  Randy swore he had and located the celebrated doctor’s rival, a radical dissenter known for his out-sized ego and celebrity clientele.  This doctor found that, although the diagnosis itself was unassailable, the celebrated doctor’s treatment had been – lo and behold -- entirely wrong, quite dangerously so in fact, just totally backwards.

This renegade doctor placed Randy on an ingenious regimen that would make perfect sense to anyone whose reason was un-blinkered by convention and mistaken assumptions.

This treatment was likewise wholly unsuccessful.  The acute bad periods, which had been interspersed with periods when he was relatively all right, were replaced with a consistent and reliable blanket of grinding misery.  Randy felt like a loyal serf who knew he could trust in the absolute security of a thatched roof over his head, a stone floor under his ass, three meals of stale bread, and back-breaking labor each day of his life until death.  Stability and reliability is not enough, Randy discovered, when it is only pain you are counting on.

Lining up his medicines on his black kitchen table, Randy discovered he had every color of pill except turquoise.  The next doctor prescribed a turquoise pill.  The succession of doctors continued.  It seemed to Randy that they eyed him warily now.  He felt like a girl with a reputation for being impossible.  No treatment helped more than the one before.  In the pastel torture chamber of his problem, the machines just kept moving around.

Suicide, always attractive, now appeared downright ravishing.  After all, this was the only treatment which required no testing or referral and, while a prescription was certainly helpful, it was by no means required.  The treatment itself might be unpleasant, but it was bound to be conclusive if administered with care.

While he was planning his suicide, equivocating over gunshot versus drowning, a tree on the side of the highway versus a fatal plunge, he met a dotty silver-haired lady in the bulk foods aisle of his local health food market.  (In his quest for treatment, Randy had been told at one time or another to avoid meat, wheat, eggs, sugar, soy, nuts, raw and cooked foods.  The health food store had thus become a habit.)

Actually he’d met the dotty silver-haired lady once before.  Once when he’d been having a very bad day and had demanded, out loud, to be told, once and for all, just what the hell tamari was.  She saw him again.  She asked how he was doing.

Her name was Marti.  She was the kind of lady who asks her Tarot cards what to have for lunch.  That day she’d drawn “The Tower” and so she was making club sandwiches.

Marti didn’t wait for the full explanation.  “Why amplify the unfortunate?” Marti said.  “Why dwell on the negative?  Breathe out black smoke!”  She invited him for sandwiches with her friend Denis who just happened to be a Filipino spirit trance medium and conservative churchgoer.  She said Denis had fixed her up plenty of times.  She didn’t get her headaches anymore.  Even her fingernails were stronger.

Denis arrived for lunch with his own can of Spam, which he sliced, and added to each level of his organic vegetarian club sandwich, and didn’t offer to share with anyone.  After they’d finished their sandwiches, Denis told Randy to lay flat on the floor.  He lit candles to St. Rita, Hermes Trismegistus, and the Buddha.  He blanketed the area in rose water.  He called upon Melchizedek, who had vowed always to help the earnest aspirant.  He poured wax on Denis’ forehead, did a short dance with a feather duster, and told the evil spirits to get the fuck out already.

Afterwards, Randy lay on the floor for a long time without moving.  Marti and Denis were on their second cup of coffee before he even dared sit up.

He didn’t think he’d felt so well in the past twenty-five years.  He didn’t think he’d ever felt so well.  Marti and Denis didn’t seem particularly interested.  They were deep in a discussion about manifesting abundance.

For days thereafter, Randy remained very cautious.  He was careful to not lift anything heavy, or think about his childhood.

However, Randy’s symptoms, his pain and misery, his appalling suffering, did not return and have not returned to this day.  If he has even the slightest hint, suspects a little twinge, he doesn’t panic.  He places sixteen drops of a certified organic flower remedy under his tongue.

Randy has become a tremendous source of positivity and good faith to everyone around him.  He is confident that health and healing are possible for everyone, once a correct diagnosis has been made and the correct treatment embarked upon.  He speaks of his gratitude to anyone who’ll listen, of his good fortune, of the way he feels he has, at last, arrived in the real world.

Tokyo Heart

Tokyo, 2010

(an earlier version of this story appeared in the Bailliwik series of art books.)




At Shinjuku South Exit, in the midst of the crowd, an elderly hunchbacked dwarf in a tweed overcoat and a black beret hurries past. I love that black beret, it says, “You may all think as you like. I have not abandoned myself. Neither do I despise myself.”

Just the same, as I push toward the train, I recall that 78% of these people have also been disqualified. And that's just on a train. On a bus it's maybe 94%. (Many people, in fact, believe they will be disqualified just for riding the bus and avoid it at all costs. In bad weather you can hear them mutter: Look at all this rain! So much for true love and good luck – here’s the bus.)

78% of this train has been disqualified, according to this afternoon's precise guess. And that is not anyone's fault. (Is this true?) That is just how it works.

Each day we are told: you have lost. You are a person who has lost. Commonly known as a _____ . In compensation, we are going to let you work for us. In compensation, please feel free to purchase something.

Once, in my early twenties, I sat at lunch with an older gay couple who announced, "In most people's eyes we've been dead for years!" They roared with laughter -- and went right on enjoying themselves. I loved those two men very much. Unfortunately they dropped me a year or two back. I am no longer sufficiently young, cute and adoring. No more venison pot pie for me. No more Marie Antoinette's favorite wine. No more prosciutto and melon balls. But that is just how it goes. . .

If this is going to be a story, there needs to be a plot. Let's take a moment now to provide one:
She stayed, though she did not know if she was right to stay. She did not know if it was right or just a waste of life. Meanwhile, she got no younger.

A common plot, which will relate to many people. That's what's best for those, such as myself, who intend to address a large and varied audience.

On the train we sit beneath advertising banners. Lines of happy people hang from the ceiling, they drink beer and flirt above our empty commuting faces, our oily thinning hair.  It is as if you can actually see, above our heads, our daydreams of leisure time and friends. Our fantasies of non-exhaustion.

Looking up, I see that the Tokyo Metro subway company has a new promotion. This one shows three men in uniform with hard hats. They are standing in a cavernous black tunnel beneath a vast concrete arch. One stands between the tracks. Two stand at the side. They are all carrying powerful flashlights. The caption beneath the photo reads: Tokyo Heart.

I did not actually scream. I don't think so. At least -- nobody looked at me. But then nobody would, would they, especially if I had screamed.

Who made this sign? Excuse me -- can I get a message to this person?

I want to ask: did you intend to tell this much of the truth?

Should she stay, the woman wondered, or should she go? Was it too late to start over? Once she'd extricated herself from convenience and comfort, would she miss it? Moreover, how was she expected to feel cheerful, knowing that she would become ever so slightly more funny-looking every single day until death?

It's easy to believe that all human beings are significant, lovable and worthwhile. Easy until you haul that belief onto the train and attempt to apply it to actual people. This dead-eyed salaryman, for example, who cannot possibly have smiled at any point in the last 5 prime ministers. (This is Japan, so that's only, like, 4 years -- but still.) His lips pucker in permanent distaste. The only thing he ever touches gently is the screen on his phone.

The thing to do is to imagine him in the presence of the one thing that makes his face light up. Often this means the nieces. For those without nieces, there may be a little dog. Copper-alloy non-stick pans? You must imagine him in the presence of the one thing that makes him light up, even if it only Asahi Super Dry.

She wondered aloud: what is the one thing that makes my face light up?

One of those things no one is supposed to know: how many people fall in love on buses. Pressed together as the rattletrap swerves. This kind of information is anti-capitalist anti-progress propaganda. We squirrel it away here. (Inspector, this is only yet another story about a woman who stayed much too long.)

Black beret black beret black beret!

A story ought to provide something lacking in the reader's daily life. Most commonly, a happy ending: the woman decided not to worry anymore about whether or not she had wasted her entire life. She moved to Laos.

Mr. Gerber Is Living the Life He Always Dreamed About

We never learned how Mr. Gerber maintained himself. He helped out here at the building certainly, he kept an eye on things, but that hardly could have been enough to live upon.

Certainly Mr. Gerber was peculiar. I do not doubt that he was somewhat mad. He may have been a pervert. A skim milk-looking middle-aged man, thinning hair, the kind of man you can hardly tell if he is 38 or 61. The sun seems to never shine directly on such a person.

In a crowd of people Mr. Gerber was useful as an end table. You gave him your drink to hold when you went to the toilet. Fifteen minutes later he hadn't moved. The ice hadn’t melted. I suppose you could have thrown your coat over him.

Mr. Gerber was part of the complex. He lived in a corner basement apartment. A made-over utility closet, I suspect, though of course I never saw it. In this building we're all good friends -- it's required. When we had parties we invited everyone. Inviting everyone meant inviting Mr. Gerber, too.

If you forced him to speak, Mr. Gerber would straighten up, tuck his chin down toward his chest, and say that he was grateful, grateful to be at a party like this, among people such as these. Mr. Gerber was so strenuously grateful one wondered if he was grateful at all.

I should clarify some things about myself. I am a person who tells the truth. Thus many people do not like me very much. I am not a sentimentalist. I am not a sympathetic sort of person. I am a pragmatist. I am an M T V person. Do you know what that means? That means: My Time is Valuable. All right then, let's continue.

Mr. Gerber was extremely unobtrusive, but he was always around. If you came home early feeling under the weather, there was Mr. Gerber. Or late on Sunday afternoon when distractions were running out. At 3am when you couldn't sleep, there was Mr. Gerber, clearing away the junk mail, sweeping out the entryway.

If you caught him alone Mr. Gerber was chatty, in a style both humdrum and bizarre. He'd chat about the light that was out, about trash collection, about the weather -- and then he'd sigh and say, "For so long I dreamed of this and now I'm living it!" And an enormous smile would sweep over his face.

I am not impressed by poetic-type people. If you take a moment to investigate their self-conscious behavior, you will nearly always find an attempt to camouflage failure. Like women who gain lots of weight and become spiritual.

For all his false modesty, Mr. Gerber was extremely grandiose. His life appeared to be 10% of one's own life, which frankly was shoddy in some departments, and yet he talked like he was rags to riches, like his whole wish list had been delivered.

He was delusional obviously. Probably he was actually severely depressed. I'd seen a case or two of this before.

I suppose he was giving me some clue the afternoon we discussed Christmas shopping, while leaning up against the mailboxes. He said he was pleased to be finished with his shopping. (I have no idea who he could have been shopping for. I myself never received anything from him.)

Mr. Gerber said, "I like things -- but most of all I like the space around things."

Well. It sounds a bit spiritual written down, doesn't it? Trust me, it wasn't spiritual at the time. He had one hand in a crinkly bag of BBQ ripple chips, He had little orange specks around his lips.

Conspiratorially he leaned near me, breathing on me with his barbecue chip breath. "Have you ever been in the train station at rush hour, shoving and elbowing along with everyone else, when, without warning, a gap appears? You've got 144,000 people in front of you. 144,000 in back. But nobody is quite exactly where you are. You're in a little gap. I love that."

I bet, if we looked into it, that we'd find out that Mr. Gerber really was a pervert. Perverts resemble skim milk and are always careful to be the nobody next door.

As for myself, I don't shirk responsibility. I believe in doing things. I celebrate achievement. That is why I live on the top floor, whereas Mr. Gerber lived in the basement. Both of us, it's true, live alone. But a top floor penthouse is obviously very different from a corner in the basement!

All religions of the world agree on one point: every little thing you do matters. All of us are born with a 'to do' list. We must work, procreate, ornament, etc. Like it or not this is the situation. When we die we go to Heaven, to the auditors, and all our exotic destinations, university publications, and redheads are tallied.

You can pretend otherwise but that just means you are afraid of life. At very least you must avoid blowing your nose on cloth napkins and eating potato chips on the train.

One night -- I was having some troubles, I admit. I don't have nearly as many troubles as most people, but I do still have some. For some reason I was walking around in my t-shirt. And underpants.

This is not as inappropriate, as abandoned, as it may seem. I am fastidious about underwear, about its cleanliness. And all my underwear is very modest, more modest than what many people wear on the outside.

Anyway, it was the middle of the night. In one of my hands could be found a fifth of whiskey. I turned the corner and saw that there was someone there. I started to apologize -- but there was no need. It was only Mr. Gerber.

"Whiskey?"

Mr. Gerber looked at the bottle. "It isn't really space," he announced. "Actually it obliterates space. But it feels like space." I thought this meant I could continue enjoying my liquor privately, but he took the bottle from me, and had a good strong slug of it.

I remember he didn't shiver and his eyes didn't widen any. So maybe that was Mr. Gerber's story.

"Isn't this the very best time of night?" said Mr. Gerber. "I adore it. I like stumbling on these odd times when one can really live."

Well, this was nonsense, and certainly I would have said so, had I not been overwhelmingly intoxicated. And so I said, "Gosh, Mr. Gerber. You really like some unusual things."

"I like all the things that are likable. And also those things that cannot help but be loved. Dust, for instance." Now he started counting things off on his thick stubby fingers. "I like train stations when the train is gone. I like gardens in winter. Nothing charms like the absence of charm! I like cafeterias. I am addicted to laundromats. I dislike traveling, but I enjoy being in transit. There's no place a man can really live, don't you agree, besides in a city, in a basement apartment, in a building where no one really likes anyone!"

Obviously this was not Mr. Gerber's first whiskey of the evening. Some people actually enjoy being eccentric and contrary. And they expect other people to find it just as delightful.

Personally, I dislike monologists. Don't you, too, dislike monologists? It's the back and forth of dialogue that enriches one, connects one to the species, even has health benefits. Mr. Gerber did not agree with us. He did not seek the back and forth, the to and fro. No, Mr. Gerber had his speech prepared. No doubt he was actually a deeply lonely man, and monologues, as everyone knows, are a hazard of that species.

"One of the joys of modern life," said Mr. Gerber, "Is the perfectly anonymous coffee shop -- not the most popular chain, but its cheaper, though I grant still over-priced, imitators. Each shop is just like another and even the street corners on which they appear are so similar, so dull and gray, that you could never agree to meet anyone there, because you could never think of anything that might distinguish it from any other shop, its street from any other street, its city from any other city, until finally you cannot even distinguish yourself from anyone else: in such a place you can actually really just live!"

My diction doubtless makes Mr. Gerber's gobbledygook more distinguished than it really was. I firmly decided to confront him about his evasions, to remind him that work and restraint are necessary, that the age of consent is 18. Unfortunately that drunken evening was the last I saw of him. For shortly after this discussion, Mr. Gerber disappeared.

I don't mean that there was anything untoward about it. I don't think he ran out on the rent. He just isn't with us anymore.

The odd thing is, now that Mr. Gerber is gone, he has become a very common topic of conversation among residents here in the building. They want to know where he went. They want to understand him. This is a sentimental and foolish interest which Mr. Gerber does not in any way merit.

It disturbs me to discover that I, too, am unable to stop thinking about Mr. Gerber. Mr. Gerber is absolutely stuck in my mind. He appears to have become part of the structure, like train stations and street corners. Like dust.

I very much want to see Mr. Gerber again.  Even though I am a pragmatist, even though my time is extremely valuable, I promise that I would greet him courteously. I'd listen to whatever nonsense he wished to share. And I would be sure to tell him, "Mr. Gerber, we simply cannot forget you.  You are always on our minds.  No one we have ever met in all our lives was ever as unique and special as you, my dear Mr. Gerber."

That is what I would like to say to him.  I am certain the look of disappointment on his dull skim milk face would be most satisfactory.





(Tokyo, 2010)
(second revised version, Siem Reap, 2014)

Metta Meditation for Hot Male Action

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Guttersnipe in Print: New & Forthcoming

For reasons I do not fully understand, some of my stories and essays are now appearing in print.  Here's where to find them.  My hope is that someday there will be a little book.


"The Heart of the Farm" will appear in Green Mountains Review.

"Love in No Time" (Manifesto #3) is online now at Eleven Eleven.

"Love on a Rampage" (Manifesto #1) and "The Utmost Gentleness" (Manifesto #2) are forthcoming from South Loop Review.

"Psychiatry, Tokyo style" is online now at Hippocampus.

"The Complete Apologies" appeared in Jonathan #4, a magazine of gay fiction published by Sibling Rivalry Press.

"Pa, Randy and the Sugarhouse Fire" appears in Zymbol #3.

"Naked in Sweden" is forthcoming in July from MiNUS TiDES.

"News of My Triumphant Return to India" is online now at Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine.

"Ghost Guide" is online now at qu.ee/r.

I am grateful to everyone who is kind to me, encourages me, feeds me a hot meal or smacks me on the ass or upside the head (as necessary).  Thank you for allowing me to persist in my folly.

Lemur Tulku Rinpoche

Everyone is extremely upset with Rinpoche.  Two monks and a nun have already disrobed.  Prominent laypeople threaten to withdraw funds from the community.  Rinpoche continues to be adamant, though he remains in seclusion, reportedly due to ill health.  Fervent devotees continue to perform long life prayers morning and night.  Rinpoche points out that his life has been long already.  He says that soon he will die and, when he comes back, he’s coming back as a lemur.

A Greater Bamboo Lemur, specifically.  Also known as the Broad-nosed Bamboo Lemur or Prolemur simus.  The very rarest lemur in the world.

In the shock following Rinpoche’s announcement, the secretary, in tears, flees to Google.  “The Greater Bamboo Lemur is native only to Madagascar!” cries the secretary.  “Its habitat is almost entirely destroyed.”  Rinpoche says, “You’ll know how to serve me,”  “Less than 300 exist!”  wails the secretary.  Rinpoche says, “I’ll be easy to find.”  Then adds, “Once you do find me, please leave me with the other lemurs.  If tagging is necessary, it’s got to be gentle.  I don’t approve of tattoos.  I certainly don’t want my ears notched or anything.”

Rinpoche brushes off Buddhist conservatives, who claim that what he intends to do is unheard of.  He maintains it is now quite common for bodhisattvas to be reborn as members of direly threatened species, or as the last living speakers of languages nearly extinct.  “All beings have Buddha Nature,” insists Rinpoche.  “It is in the nature of compassion to improvise.”

A prominent Dzogchen master – he refuses to say whom – was recently a coelacanth.  Other enlightened beings have taken rebirth to keep company with direly endangered marsupials or tree frogs nearly wiped out by the epidemic of chytridiomycosis.

According to Rinpoche, the most prominent of these buddhas was an emanation of Chenrezig who arrived in Washington in 1972 and spent nearly 30 years proclaiming the dharma at the National Zoo, very far indeed from her beloved bamboo forests.

In the beginning the community refuses to accept any of these arguments.  As time goes on, so, too, does their opposition.  Scholars continue to argue that it is the human rebirth which is precious, as the dharma is only available to those in human form.

“How could that be so?” says Rinpoche, appearing visibly strained.  “I promise you that the lemur dharma maintains that a lemur rebirth is of paramount desirability.”  The lemur rebirth, too, is precious.  Certainly it is exceedingly rare.

Even on Rinpoche’s deathbed the monks continues to argue.  Rinpoche is told that he must live forever, that he must go on teaching the dharma, that there is no precedent, that he must resume human form.

For many hours Rinpoche does not respond.  As his devotees look down fearfully upon his brown gray skin, on the whirls of white hair which sprout from his ears, it seems  that he has already begun to resemble the Greater Bamboo Lemur.

Finally, deep in the night, as his disciples keep vigil around his hospital bed, Rinpoche’s  old and enormous gnarled hard reaches out from beneath the sheets.  Refusing to be stopped, he turns and reaches down toward the floor beside the bed.  As he touches it, his voice booms out, as the Buddha’s did on the night of his enlightenment, The Earth is my witness.  Then he dies.

Grief-stricken, the Rinpoche’s followers arrange for the vigil and cremation.  The ashes are barely cool before the devotees are on a plane to Madagascar.


(India, 2012)

Recently, At Orgies

(expanded second version)



Recently at orgies I’ve become one of the peripheral people.  One of those ravenous middle-aged lugs straining forward shamelessly to get a scrap of what’s on offer.  For years I was one of the dreary stars, grappling with the gods at the center, shoving away hands, amazed and annoyed that, every time I wanted to have sex, a crowd of people showed up.  Don’t get me wrong, I was never one of the gods but -- I was often slated to position of chief devotee.  I had access, understand.

Now I’m one of the guys fumbling on the side, lunging at parts and openings.  This may sound like a complaint, but it isn’t really, or else not wholly, because after all -- I’m still at the orgy.  It’s not like I have tuberculosis.  It’s not like I am gainfully employed.  I’m still taking part, giving and receiving parts, and, you know, I am downright fond of parts and I have been my whole life.

I think I could have been a really spectacular doctor.  After all these years I remain vitally interested in what everyone has in their trousers.  (I understand that the maintenance of enthusiasm may not be all there is to doctoring but -- surely it is integral?)  I didn’t become a doctor, or anything else.  I was never any good at keeping my eyes to myself.  Or my hands.  Now I’ve ended up here on the side which, contrary to belief, is not actually such a dreary location.

Many opportunities exist for the peripheral.  In fact, I reckon that is likely why the gods created us with such a multiplicity of orifices and interesting places to visit -- so that peripheral people at orgies would not become forlorn or embittered, so that there might be many places to put things, and many places to take hold.  We are torchbearers of the electric age, multi-plug adapters, with myriad opportunities for pleasure and attachment, in bodies made for orgies, for multiple loves and disasters.

Today at the orgy, here off to the side, it’s a well above average day because I have been able to secure the pornworthy phallus of one of those near the center.  Mind you, this does not mean that I have re-established centrality.  The gentleman is 6’5” and Scandinavian and thus just actually naturally extends this far into the hinterlands.  Like the long arm of the Lord.  Or something.

From this semi-secure location, with the pornworthy phallus stowed safely away, doing my best to adopt, nonetheless, a natural expression -- though it is impossible to maintain an entirely intellectual demeanor at these moments -- let us faithfully survey the area.  From here on my knees, I peer left and right among legs and arms, past heads and asses, through the steam.

Although I say I am peripheral at the orgy, there are of course others still further out, starting with those administering to various parts of myself which, I earnestly hope, they will return to me in good time, well-satiated and reasonably unharmed.

How extensive is this orgy anyhow, asks the dogged and determined investigative reporter.  How many Rhode Islands?  Could someone with a free hand please perform a census?

Excuse me, sir, I mutter to a man impaled nearby.  (Remember, I’m talking out of the corner of my mouth, which is otherwise occupied by Scandinavia.)  Would you happen to have a pair of binoculars?

He looks at me dazed.  Poppers?

No, sir.  Binoculars.

He does not happen to have any but he is thankfully very well-connected, like all of us here at the orgy, and he asks someone who asks someone who has associates among the voyeurs and, sure enough, binoculars are passed along.  In another moment I’ve located a hand to take hold of them, a hand which may very well be one of my own, or is anyway very amenable.

Looking out as far as I can toward the perimeter, I am see octogenarians in the distance, bald and decrepit, clutching their rock-hard octogenarian pharmaceutical-grade phalluses, aiming moves at the septuagenarians, ready to throw attitude at any centenarian who tries to cop a feel.

The centenarians mark the limitations of the visible, but beyond that I think we must acknowledge (now that death is no longer something in which reasonable people believe) that there is no doubt a horde of invisible beings, pushing in from the sides, brandishing tremendous phantom dildos, slick with astral lubricant, without a speck of spectral terrycloth, determined to locate, for once, a man with a bit of substance.

Contrary to reports, I have not actually been able to sleep with everyone.  Animal, vegetable, mineral, spirit.  Though, believe you me, I did make an effort.  What I can say with confidence, however, is that if you tally up everyone I slept with and everyone they ever slept with, then all of creation is accounted for.  Even the most reclusive hermits in the remotest hermitages have been comprehensively sodomized, and probably (sorry!) given a case of the crabs.

For example, when scientists in Hispaniola discovered an entirely new genus of solendon, we were all meant to be impressed.  But actually my buddy Bill dated that venomous shrew in the Eighties.  Kinky little prehistoric bastard, grooved-teeth and all.

Bill’s long gone now, of course.

Some people say we are wasting our time, here at the orgy.  But fucking and getting fucked by everyone turns out to have been excellent preparation for the world we live in now.  We understand well what it means to be connected as the world goes over a cliff and almost everyone pretends otherwise.  In this fragile fuckstruck world where absolutely everything is connected to absolutely everything else, trilobite to troposphere, exhaust pipe to Arctic ice, Troy to Diego.

But where was I?

And where am I now?

Damn.

Wait.  Damn.  Oh, nevermind.

I’ve gone and done it.  Did it.  Made it.  The critical mistake.  I’ve fallen prey to the principle peril of orgies, the number one reason teenagers are warned against them, the reason you must always remain vigilant at all times, or at least keep your locker key on that stretchy cord around your ankle.

I got so busy looking into the distance, surveying and enumerating, that now I’ve entirely lost track, gotten turned around, taken my eye from the ball, from the cock, from the point, from the curve of the Earth, and thus lost sight of what must always be kept in mind.

Excuse me?  Could someone please tell me which body is mine?  Was mine?  Was allotted to me?

As I recall, I was somewhere on the periphery.  Where is the periphery now?  I was servicing some Scandinavian, perhaps that one that looks like a sailboat in the distance, swarmed with gulls.  Which one was I?  I was promising at first, I remember.  Later I was lackluster.  I relied at all times on a highly unnatural enthusiasm, which bordered at times on hysteria.  Still, my hysteria was precious to me, the world was worthy of it, and I would not have traded it for any amount of dull good sense.

I was a man.  I was a man, wasn’t I?  In some regards.  And in other ways I was a porno theater.  This was before or after the time I was a hospital for veterans, a gazebo, a dog pound, a phone booth.  Not necessarily in that order, of course.  For a long time I was a church.  Not a bad church.  One of those churches that take the command to  love your neighbor  very seriously indeed.



(Tokyo, 2014)

Guttersnipe Bookshelf: Barthelme, 60 Stories

Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories

Penguin, 1982

introduction by David Gates (2003)

When I was 20 I tried to read Nabokov, and couldn’t, and knew it was my problem, not his. When I was 25 I could read Nabokov. I couldn’t read Barthelme until I was 40. (There are real benefits, it turns out, to not dying young.) Maybe it helped that I had read Beckett, Lispector, Lydia Davis in the meantime. Probably it helped even more that I had suffered serious disappointments and intermittently drank too much. I had finally arrived on the wave-length. New to Barthelme? Read this one first. I’ve heard a few people say that Forty Stories is easier. I don’t see the truth in that. Some stories will grab you instantly, others will seem incomprehensible or opaque. (My favorites; “Me and Miss Mandible”, “City Life”, “A Manual for Sons”, above all: “At the End of the Mechanical Age”.) If you get stuck, bounce around. Read the stories out of sequence. Open the book at random and read sentences like fortunes: “There are twenty-two kinds of fathers, of which only nineteen are important.”

Guttersnipe Bookshelf: Barthelme, 40 Stories

Donald Barthelme, Forty Stories Penguin, 1989 introduction by Dave Eggers (2005) Short fiction is capable of drastically more than we use it for. Donald Barthelme is proof of the fact. It’s like that cliche about the brain, that we only use ten percent of it. If you’re new to Barthelme, I suggest starting with Sixty Stories. All of his stories are mad and wildly inventive, but there’s something to be said for proceeding chronologically. For me, enjoying Barthelme meant using strategies I learned while reading poetry. Some stories will grab you from the first line (“Never open that door, Bluebeard told me, and I, who knew his history, nodded.”), others may remain doggedly opaque. Persist, a little, and if you become frustrated, try another. How I would love to have a group of misfit friends who knew this book and talked about what they had discovered and loved, as well as what they did not yet understand. Along with the stories I loved (“Lightning”, “The Genius”, “Paul Klee”, “The Temptation of St. Anthony”) and those I found impenetrable (“Construction”, for example) there was at least one story I adored AND did not understand: “Great Days”. Barthelme’s stories are like any of the great questions of life -- you have to be patient with your own un-knowing. The stories are tremendous fun and fuel -- even when you are dizzy, even when you have no clue how it is all being done.