Notes From Past The Tipping Point
Don’t expect more than fragments, don’t ask me to make sense of things. Something happened, I got broken somehow, I don’t know how. My tipping point was – back there a ways. Like the Gangetic dolphin, the Amundsen ice, the ladyslipper. (You see how I put on airs.) What’s left is to be company to each other. As I am alone here at the infamous Malaysia, the longest-running sleazy cheap hotel in Southeast Asia, you’ll excuse me if I write a little.
Being neurotic is like carrying a heavy bag on one shoulder. You get sore, walk funny, and appear somewhat ridiculous. At the same time, it’s not such a problem, being somewhat askew. Certainly one has plenty of company. It’s fine until you one day you go to hoist your bag and pain shoots you in the face. If only one could simply call into work and say , “I’m very sorry. My mind’s gone out.”
The mistake is the same one we make with the oceans. We think we can dump in anything and it will just disappear. But a mind is like a back, it can be broken, and a mind is like the ocean – lose your balance for too long and pretty soon you’re killing off the dolphins.
Back in New Hampshire I saw a red cardinal and was momentarily incapacitated. I live in Tokyo, understand. Our bird is the crow. So I have some capacity for wonder still, that’s good to know, but not for crows or, for that matter, for live fucking shows, of which I’ve seen too many.
I was reminded of this fact last night at Tawan, the muscle boy bar, when the men donned golden masks, poured on the hot wax, and fucked each other in tandem and acrobatically, spinning like old-fashioned TV antennas. There’s more art in an evening’s cabaret at a bar of boys for sale than in a century’s worth of certain literary magazines: the ladyboys in spangles, gauze and plumes, lip-syncing flawlessly and looking better than the stars themselves, the bruise-eyed comedienne done up to look the haggard slut, mocking the audience and crying for lost love, and, yes, the actual fucking.
Purists reserve the word art for sonnets, for prose poems and pottery. I invite naysayers to try it themselves, to learn an aerobic jazz dance gymnastics routine and then perform it naked, on stage, slathered in baby oil, with a big thick dick up their ass. I'm certain Michiko Kakutani agrees: respect should not be reserved exclusively for sonneteers.
Is anyone still shocked? Was anyone shocked to begin with? Is being shocked just how we reassure ourselves? These sins are all humdrum, even straight people now attend gay sin dens. The open air gay bars on Silom Soi 4 have more tourists than actual queers, like a tribal village overrun by bus tours. I do my best to glare at straight men’s crotches, to look threatening and ravenous -- it’s no use. Even if you grab some tourist’s ass he just smiles sheepishly and says, “Thanks man, I’m flattered.”
As for the depraved steroid leather fetish fucking shows, well, even women go to them. Actual biological women, who have never had a penis of their own. Last night a woman sat alone at the table beside mine. She was in her late-twenties, a little heavy maybe, but long-haired and pretty. She was no wild child, her skirt was long and her shoes sensible. A graduate of Vassar possibly, B.A.Women’s Studies, followed by a Masters in Development from Brown. I mean, she looked the sort who could be expected to disapprove. The sort of person who might well take time to explain to you the brutality inherent in Jell-O desserts, and how gay porn oppresses women. Yet here she was, sipping her Coca-Cola and watching the boys deep throat each other. She looked bored.
The men on stage couldn’t help but give her a little extra attention. Most of them are totally straight after all and here was an opportunity to reunite work with their own interests and passions. Certainly she was lucky to be seated in the third row and not up front for the final number when a drag queen sang “Come as you are” and the boys did, one after another. (I thought it very conscientious of the management to go around first and put coasters atop all glasses.)
The women fled eventually, but not before she was quite thoroughly nuzzled and I did hear one muscle boy say teasingly “No tip necessary!”
I am still impressed by red cardinals -- how is it that all human things have had their color drained from them? These are days I feel I could beat even Ms. Joan Didion for Disenchantment Overall. “It is possible to stay entirely too long at the party,” says Ms. Didion, and she presumably has not even been to ‘boots-only night’ at the sex club called Church in Amsterdam.
* * *
That was the end of the slightly fun part of the essay. What’s left are complaints and ennui. The optional part of the tour reserved for depressives seeking company.
All my life I’ve been an enthusiast. That man dropped suddenly dead -- now it all just seems hideously repetitive. I note that religious faith and spirituality keeled over at this same point. Funny to discover what actually kills off faith, which is neither tragedy nor ecology. (Or are these now classified as one and the same?) My faith died off because no use was found for me. Selfish and stupid, I know, but such is the case.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars of education, edifying chats with Allen Ginsberg, the Dalai Lama and the Empress of Japan, preposterous amounts of world literature of every stripe, all dumped into me like tomatoes into a food processor. Every teacher I ever had went to special bother on my behalf, time which they could have better spent on video games, on nail care.
Of all the things one for which one could become estranged from God, what sinks the boat is that the body of truth, the dharmakaya, turns out to be a suck-ass career counselor. No use is found.
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Sunday, August 02, 2009
Three-Coin Prose
from Three Coin Prose: Bangkok (2008)
In the lobby of the Malaysia Hotel, the Internet is coin-operated, 8 minutes for 10 baht, which is rather exorbitant. These messages, therefore, will not be too lengthy, just three coins long. If anything runs on, or gets too graphic, by all means skip it.
Despite the city's reputation, there are many hotels in Bangkok that are entirely decent and respectable. This is not one of them. The Malaysia Hotel deserves every well-oiled inch of its sleazy reputation. The sofa in front of reception is at all hours draped with hustlers. There is no charge for guests. Even single rooms have two beds because it is assumed you'll need them. The restaurant (poor, but get the Chinese broccoli with preserved pork) is open 24 hours and there are times I am the only person dining not accompanied by a gorgeous transgendered whore.
I do not purchase anyone. I do my push-ups and wait with bearded quivering lip for volunteers. I am 34--lately it seems I am waiting longer. Still, I prefer volunteers. I recognize this may be difficult to believe, considering my location, but, as anyone who knows me will attest, I have a tendency to confess everything, no matter how embarrassing or even shameful. If I start buying muscle boys I'll let you know.
I stay at the Malaysia Hotel because I am, like hornpout, most at home in murky, sleazy, bottom-dweller type environments. The Oriental is simply not my hotel, and neither is the Sofitel. There is no use in pretending I am rainbow trout.
In the lobby of the Malaysia Hotel, the Internet is coin-operated, 8 minutes for 10 baht, which is rather exorbitant. These messages, therefore, will not be too lengthy, just three coins long. If anything runs on, or gets too graphic, by all means skip it.
Despite the city's reputation, there are many hotels in Bangkok that are entirely decent and respectable. This is not one of them. The Malaysia Hotel deserves every well-oiled inch of its sleazy reputation. The sofa in front of reception is at all hours draped with hustlers. There is no charge for guests. Even single rooms have two beds because it is assumed you'll need them. The restaurant (poor, but get the Chinese broccoli with preserved pork) is open 24 hours and there are times I am the only person dining not accompanied by a gorgeous transgendered whore.
I do not purchase anyone. I do my push-ups and wait with bearded quivering lip for volunteers. I am 34--lately it seems I am waiting longer. Still, I prefer volunteers. I recognize this may be difficult to believe, considering my location, but, as anyone who knows me will attest, I have a tendency to confess everything, no matter how embarrassing or even shameful. If I start buying muscle boys I'll let you know.
I stay at the Malaysia Hotel because I am, like hornpout, most at home in murky, sleazy, bottom-dweller type environments. The Oriental is simply not my hotel, and neither is the Sofitel. There is no use in pretending I am rainbow trout.
Visitors to Soi Twilight
from Three Coin Prose: Bangkok (2008)
In Tokyo you can ride the train all day wearing a Santa hat and no one will even smile. The other extreme is Bangkok and what happens if you show up in Patpong wearing a Superman t-shirt.
"Superman!" shout a bevy of girls in white bikinis from the doorway. They catch my arm as I walk past, their shapely strong hands studded with kryptonite nails. I smile apologetically and extricate myself. "Sorry!" I mumble. "I'm gay."
And, in unison, the girls scream, "SUPERMAN IS GAY!"
The boys in Soi Twilight don't take it any more calmly. Hey, Superman! Yoo-hoo, Superman, over here! Rescue me Superman!
One confident lad reckons I belong to him. "Superman?" he asks, then beams, and aims a thumb at himself. "Superboy!"
Ordinarily, of course, I prefer to keep a low profile. I sit at Dick's Cafe and people-watch and keep an eye out just in case, you know, somebody needs to be rescued.
You may or may not consider the activities of Soi Twilight morally reprehensible--a dozen bars with fucking shows and young men with numbers on their underpants--but it has got to be one of the best places to people-watch in the universe.
I notice first the thirty-somethings, out on a lark with a gang of friends, off to see the fucking shows. Few of them are buying boys--or if they are they'll come back later, alone. We are the well-to-do white promiscuous horde. We've done everything else, we might as well do this too. In this group I place myself.
The first time I ever went to Soi Twilight was in the company of an Englishman named William, an admirably funny and compassionate sleazebag. He noted that in Soi Twilight there are those who stroll, laughing, smiling and looking around, and then there are the "businessmen" who walk as quickly as possible, eyes straight ahead, jaw clenched and William mimicked their internal dialogue in a quick peevish whisper: "I'm here on business, yes, very important business." As if the Swiss Embassy was at the other end of the alley and they simply had no choice but to walk down it.
When in fact what's at the end of the alley is a bar where boys swim buck naked in fish tanks.
"Very important business!" hissed William. "Highly confidential international business. I've got very pressing top-secret big business in my pants, in my pants, in my pants!"
Other visitors: there are the standard decent tourists and those who wish to appear as such. They've seen the Grand Palace, the Emerald Buddha, the Amulet Market, and now they must visit the alley of men for sale. Just for, you know, well-roundedness.
Particularly satisfying are the gleeful wives dragging reluctant husbands who have just this moment learned something new about the woman they married, as in: "I just sat through the Ping Pong show, buster, and now you are going to watch Men Get Fucked!"
There are packs of straight men who come to joke and mock and in every group of them there is one man shot through with undisguisable yearning. We'll be seeing him later.
Once I even saw a family, Scandinavian I think, who walked through holding hands with their young son and daughter. I had to get off my bar stool and peer down the street after them.
Now, I'm sure this doesn't happen every time, but this family moved inside a cloud of pacification. As they neared each bar the barkers, boys and doormen stopped shouting and hassling and stood smiling, as amiable and harmless as Disney characters, little white underpants not withstanding.
And now we come down to business. The preceding groups do not contribute much money to the soi. Money comes from men who are—I could say old. Most of them are old. I could say fat. Many of them are fat. Certainly I could say scowling. Their faces are remarkably sour. But this is not enough.
Watching them my mood turns. I am repulsed.
They have shrill voices, poor posture, comb-overs. Skin conditions. It is not enough, clearly, to be only old, or just fat. To only have just an unpleasant personality, or just bad teeth. These men are accidents involving multiple vehicles. These men are paying for sex. Certainly they will not be having it for free.
How effortless it is to condemn them, these nasty old queens, to go on condemning them—as I pray never to pile up enough negatives to be one of them—and meanwhile I condemn them, as I imagine they have been condemned all their lives.
(Because time is less an issue here than is generally supposed. I am confident that many repugnant old men were recently repugnant young men. They simply got tired of waiting and decided to go shopping instead.)
Among all of us who condemn them, I would like to call a meeting. I am calling for a meeting and asking for volunteers. Since buying sex is wrong, I would like to see a show of hands--
Who is willing to love them for free?
Who'll volunteer? To love for free?
Will you?
Hey, Superman, will you?
(March 16, 2008. Bangkok, Thailand)
Packaging
from Three Coin Prose: Bangkok (2008)
The bar Banana, at the top of the street, is Soi Twilight's hassle-free zone. Sitting there, I watch visitors arrive, out on a lark or in a hurry. Others do not enter, but only stand peering down the soi--a net of little blue lights turns to extravagant neon fruit further on--and they are curious or horrified. They've already passed through the city of women. Now here is the alley of boys.
Across from Banana is Hotmail and the grinning bar man whose job it is to pull people in. He was here last year too--something has happened to him. His is not sick, not old or worn. Here's what it is: he has become processed, packaged. He is a product now, his smiles as uniform as citrus in Tokyo. I don't blame him. I hope the boy from a village up North is stowed away, inside, safe.
Last night, as the pretty boys patrolled and the johns mulled their choices for the night, a beggar arrived in Soi Twilight. A skinny young man in blue shirt and blue shorts, each of his limbs twisted thirty degrees in the wrong direction. He hobbled past the the boys with spiked hair and white tank tops, past the bar men in tight black shirts and began to beg from men sitting at the bar.
He turned and I saw, on the back of his left leg, a long red open wound. Surprised, I touched my own leg, my crippled leg in its white plastic case.
I try to remind myself often that, born in another country, I would have been a beggar boy, instead of -- a sturdy scrappy man with big arms and a big chest, carefully packaged in hopes you won't notice the limp.
I should have given to him. I meant to. He didn't get as far as me. I should have followed him, but I was stuck on my barstool, leaden with beer and manners.
The chipmunk-cheeked guy across the way had waved him off, not caring if he went or not. But now the manager was here, stocky buttoned down authority: not for sale. He barked, he pointed, he ordered him out of the soi.
The beggar limped away, obedient shuffling blue. At the top of the soi the beggar received a smile from one of the spike-haired boys who was bopping decorously along to bla dee ya hee, bla dee ya ha, bla dee ya hee, bla dee ya ha ha, and the beggar man, in response, did a quick crippled ecstatic jig clear across the entrance to the soi.
The bar Banana, at the top of the street, is Soi Twilight's hassle-free zone. Sitting there, I watch visitors arrive, out on a lark or in a hurry. Others do not enter, but only stand peering down the soi--a net of little blue lights turns to extravagant neon fruit further on--and they are curious or horrified. They've already passed through the city of women. Now here is the alley of boys.
Across from Banana is Hotmail and the grinning bar man whose job it is to pull people in. He was here last year too--something has happened to him. His is not sick, not old or worn. Here's what it is: he has become processed, packaged. He is a product now, his smiles as uniform as citrus in Tokyo. I don't blame him. I hope the boy from a village up North is stowed away, inside, safe.
Last night, as the pretty boys patrolled and the johns mulled their choices for the night, a beggar arrived in Soi Twilight. A skinny young man in blue shirt and blue shorts, each of his limbs twisted thirty degrees in the wrong direction. He hobbled past the the boys with spiked hair and white tank tops, past the bar men in tight black shirts and began to beg from men sitting at the bar.
He turned and I saw, on the back of his left leg, a long red open wound. Surprised, I touched my own leg, my crippled leg in its white plastic case.
I try to remind myself often that, born in another country, I would have been a beggar boy, instead of -- a sturdy scrappy man with big arms and a big chest, carefully packaged in hopes you won't notice the limp.
I should have given to him. I meant to. He didn't get as far as me. I should have followed him, but I was stuck on my barstool, leaden with beer and manners.
The chipmunk-cheeked guy across the way had waved him off, not caring if he went or not. But now the manager was here, stocky buttoned down authority: not for sale. He barked, he pointed, he ordered him out of the soi.
The beggar limped away, obedient shuffling blue. At the top of the soi the beggar received a smile from one of the spike-haired boys who was bopping decorously along to bla dee ya hee, bla dee ya ha, bla dee ya hee, bla dee ya ha ha, and the beggar man, in response, did a quick crippled ecstatic jig clear across the entrance to the soi.
The Pied Piper Gangster Reunion
from Three Coin Prose: Bangkok
A year later the same show: same cowboy, same hot wax, same horsehung guy wearing a monster mask, same buff little guy in a leather cop cap fucking the same girlie geisha boy--and it was incredibly acrobatic the way they did it, involving both a step-ladder and a trapeze, pounding away at every possible angle, keeping time with the music, both of them smiling broadly all the while like two proud twirlers heading up a parade.
Ideally there should be a heavy-duty bleach solution in a little bucket beside my hotel bed and at the end of the night I could leave my mind to soak in it and start the next day pure, with a high opinion of myself. As this is not possible, I must write.
In the back corner of Tawan, Bangkok's big muscle boy bar, there was the most preposterous gangster. Instead of watching the stage I kept turning around to look at him: a young man in a sports coat, his silk dress shirt half unbuttoned, wearing big sunglasses at one o'clock in the morning. The overall effect was not imposing, not like an actual gangster but instead like a seventh grader who'd told him mother, "No, I was a vampire last year, this year I want to be a pimp!"
The gangster had a muscle boy on either side of him. One was the biggest guy in the bar and the other--well, I'm not even allowed to look at him. Last year I looked, and even spoke to him, and I just barely escaped. Tattooed Burmese muscle man the size of a Volkswagen with the sweetest baby face you can imagine. Lord, protect me from what I want.
One of the managers sat at the gangster's table pouring his whiskey, making sure the ice was fresh. This is what the big spenders do at Tawan: they buy a bottle and share it with the boys. The gangster finally took off his shades. His eyes glinted and darted like little blue lights.
I didn't believe what I knew to be true. Everything was the same, even my Pied Piper Gangster at his troublemaker's table in the corner. His hand was on my shoulder. "When did you get back?" he said and asked me to join him for a whiskey.
I said I was glad he was still alive. "You know, I kept the gorilla. It's in a place of honor back home in Tokyo."
History of the Pied Piper Gangster, in brief: I met him a year ago, or rather I was one of innumerable people he collected in the course of the one long night. I followed him as he ranted at, entertained and infuriated every single person he came across. He had to speak to everyone, buy everything, give everything away, had to sing and praise himself and raise holy bedlam at every step.
At one point he'd seen an old woman selling toys. He shouted to her in Thai and haggled passionately before buying a large sad-faced stuffed gorilla which he hardly glanced at before passing it to me. "Here," he said and forgot about it.
The manager sat at his table partly because he spent so much money but mostly because he had an extraordinary gift for causing trouble every single minute. He smoked and smoking was forbidden. He refused to put it out. He groped anyone nearby, shouted orders to the stage in Thai, stood up, spun around, nearly knocked over a table, nearly got caught in a cum shot--it was the part of the show when the men line up on stage and diligently shoot a load.
He must have been an avatar of Loki--how else could he survive? He tumbled back at my side. "Stay with me," he said. "For free. I've got an extra room." I didn't need to say no; I just waited a minute.
How can such forces exist in equal concentration: fucked-up, holy, pathetic, kingly, radiant, hopeless. The brilliant conflagration of a young man destroying his life. For the love of God, Pied Piper, eat soup. Stay home.
The Pied Piper Gangster says hello to everyone but he never says goodnight. He lurched up. Muscle men held onto tables nearby. On his way to the door he spun around and around; he did everything but chant Hare Krishna and then he was gone.
A year later the same show: same cowboy, same hot wax, same horsehung guy wearing a monster mask, same buff little guy in a leather cop cap fucking the same girlie geisha boy--and it was incredibly acrobatic the way they did it, involving both a step-ladder and a trapeze, pounding away at every possible angle, keeping time with the music, both of them smiling broadly all the while like two proud twirlers heading up a parade.
Ideally there should be a heavy-duty bleach solution in a little bucket beside my hotel bed and at the end of the night I could leave my mind to soak in it and start the next day pure, with a high opinion of myself. As this is not possible, I must write.
In the back corner of Tawan, Bangkok's big muscle boy bar, there was the most preposterous gangster. Instead of watching the stage I kept turning around to look at him: a young man in a sports coat, his silk dress shirt half unbuttoned, wearing big sunglasses at one o'clock in the morning. The overall effect was not imposing, not like an actual gangster but instead like a seventh grader who'd told him mother, "No, I was a vampire last year, this year I want to be a pimp!"
The gangster had a muscle boy on either side of him. One was the biggest guy in the bar and the other--well, I'm not even allowed to look at him. Last year I looked, and even spoke to him, and I just barely escaped. Tattooed Burmese muscle man the size of a Volkswagen with the sweetest baby face you can imagine. Lord, protect me from what I want.
One of the managers sat at the gangster's table pouring his whiskey, making sure the ice was fresh. This is what the big spenders do at Tawan: they buy a bottle and share it with the boys. The gangster finally took off his shades. His eyes glinted and darted like little blue lights.
I didn't believe what I knew to be true. Everything was the same, even my Pied Piper Gangster at his troublemaker's table in the corner. His hand was on my shoulder. "When did you get back?" he said and asked me to join him for a whiskey.
I said I was glad he was still alive. "You know, I kept the gorilla. It's in a place of honor back home in Tokyo."
History of the Pied Piper Gangster, in brief: I met him a year ago, or rather I was one of innumerable people he collected in the course of the one long night. I followed him as he ranted at, entertained and infuriated every single person he came across. He had to speak to everyone, buy everything, give everything away, had to sing and praise himself and raise holy bedlam at every step.
At one point he'd seen an old woman selling toys. He shouted to her in Thai and haggled passionately before buying a large sad-faced stuffed gorilla which he hardly glanced at before passing it to me. "Here," he said and forgot about it.
The manager sat at his table partly because he spent so much money but mostly because he had an extraordinary gift for causing trouble every single minute. He smoked and smoking was forbidden. He refused to put it out. He groped anyone nearby, shouted orders to the stage in Thai, stood up, spun around, nearly knocked over a table, nearly got caught in a cum shot--it was the part of the show when the men line up on stage and diligently shoot a load.
He must have been an avatar of Loki--how else could he survive? He tumbled back at my side. "Stay with me," he said. "For free. I've got an extra room." I didn't need to say no; I just waited a minute.
How can such forces exist in equal concentration: fucked-up, holy, pathetic, kingly, radiant, hopeless. The brilliant conflagration of a young man destroying his life. For the love of God, Pied Piper, eat soup. Stay home.
The Pied Piper Gangster says hello to everyone but he never says goodnight. He lurched up. Muscle men held onto tables nearby. On his way to the door he spun around and around; he did everything but chant Hare Krishna and then he was gone.
Of Appearances
from Three Coin Prose: Bangkok (2008)
How can you stay in Bangkok? After three days it is finished. There's nothing to see, nothing to do.
True, of course, but still I needed a haircut. I walked to Silom and asked a smiling lady in front of a foot massage place if she also did hair. "Sure I do!" she said and led to me to a chair.
Now there's a first time for everything and this may have been her first time to do hair. She snipped a little, at random it seemed, then stepped back to study the effect. Snipped a little more, stepped back. Laughed uproariously.
"Don't worry," I said, though she was not the one worried. "Just make sure it's short." She was so charming I knew I'd be powerless to complain even if she left me looking like I suffered from mange. I consoled myself that, realistically, there isn't much that can render me more funny-looking, or less.
She clipped another twenty minutes or so and proclaimed me a handsome man. Really it was not so bad. Especially the left side. The left side was really quite professional.
A few minutes later I was back on the street admiring myself in a mirrored window when a white guy interrupted me to ask for money. I gave him twenty baht, asked where he was from.
"I'm Thai," he said. "My Dad was white, so everybody thinks. . ." His skin was gaunt, his eyes sunken and red-rimmed. His English was perfect and spoken with a heavy German accent. He said he needed 300 baht for a bus ticket back to his village near the River Kwai. He had eyes green as green glass, same as another Thai man I'd met, the child of Thai mother and an American soldier, who was working as a bar boy in Pattaya. He'd hovered around the edges of the bar, skittish and uneasy, and did not join the other massage boys as they gossiped by the door on folding chairs. He seemed estranged from himself, a Thai man who looked 100% suburban New Jersey, a body that distanced him from his own family and countrymen, a body that now was up for sale.
"I hate this city," said this moment's green-eyed man. "It makes you sick." He continued walking down the street.
I stopped for a beer in Soi Twilight, which is an entirely different place, in the middle of the afternoon. A few tourists were sitting around, impatient for the night, looking extraordinarily sour-faced.
When I am in a pissy mood I make plans for a shrill and unpleasant book, which is to be titled The Gay Men's Guide to Mastering the Art of Unhappiness, because I believe we've brought unhappiness to whole new levels and straight women ought to come to us to be tutored in this, instead of hair and interior decorating. Has there ever been a group of people so good at making themselves and each other miserable?
Or, how about this, there could be a TV show with five gay guys and one straight guy. The gay guys would sit the straight guy down and explain to him why he was never ever going to be good enough.
You've got to have washboard abs and perfect pecs, you must get fifty dollar haircuts, you must have an enormous prick. You must have a very respectable job, you must be a success. You must be an original and also the same as everyone. Why are we even bothering to tell you all this? You are already too old. Save your money. Stay home. Maybe some day you can fly to Bangkok and buy someone pretty.
That said, there were two guys in the cafe who were having a really good time. (My theories are extraordinarily short-lived.) They were deaf and cussing each other out with tremendous merriment. This was an extraordinarily efficient process. I reckon they managed to curse each other 150 times within 30 seconds, a whirlwind of gestures that proceeded naturally to poking and slapping.
Can I ask a really ignorant question? Do deaf people get into more fights? Fighting words are already almost fighting.
The light outside was gentling now. It would be night but not soon enough. I had no idea what to do. That was a relief. I resolved to wander some more. As my master, Robert Walser, wrote, "We don't need to see anything out of the ordinary. We already see so much."
How can you stay in Bangkok? After three days it is finished. There's nothing to see, nothing to do.
True, of course, but still I needed a haircut. I walked to Silom and asked a smiling lady in front of a foot massage place if she also did hair. "Sure I do!" she said and led to me to a chair.
Now there's a first time for everything and this may have been her first time to do hair. She snipped a little, at random it seemed, then stepped back to study the effect. Snipped a little more, stepped back. Laughed uproariously.
"Don't worry," I said, though she was not the one worried. "Just make sure it's short." She was so charming I knew I'd be powerless to complain even if she left me looking like I suffered from mange. I consoled myself that, realistically, there isn't much that can render me more funny-looking, or less.
She clipped another twenty minutes or so and proclaimed me a handsome man. Really it was not so bad. Especially the left side. The left side was really quite professional.
A few minutes later I was back on the street admiring myself in a mirrored window when a white guy interrupted me to ask for money. I gave him twenty baht, asked where he was from.
"I'm Thai," he said. "My Dad was white, so everybody thinks. . ." His skin was gaunt, his eyes sunken and red-rimmed. His English was perfect and spoken with a heavy German accent. He said he needed 300 baht for a bus ticket back to his village near the River Kwai. He had eyes green as green glass, same as another Thai man I'd met, the child of Thai mother and an American soldier, who was working as a bar boy in Pattaya. He'd hovered around the edges of the bar, skittish and uneasy, and did not join the other massage boys as they gossiped by the door on folding chairs. He seemed estranged from himself, a Thai man who looked 100% suburban New Jersey, a body that distanced him from his own family and countrymen, a body that now was up for sale.
"I hate this city," said this moment's green-eyed man. "It makes you sick." He continued walking down the street.
I stopped for a beer in Soi Twilight, which is an entirely different place, in the middle of the afternoon. A few tourists were sitting around, impatient for the night, looking extraordinarily sour-faced.
When I am in a pissy mood I make plans for a shrill and unpleasant book, which is to be titled The Gay Men's Guide to Mastering the Art of Unhappiness, because I believe we've brought unhappiness to whole new levels and straight women ought to come to us to be tutored in this, instead of hair and interior decorating. Has there ever been a group of people so good at making themselves and each other miserable?
Or, how about this, there could be a TV show with five gay guys and one straight guy. The gay guys would sit the straight guy down and explain to him why he was never ever going to be good enough.
You've got to have washboard abs and perfect pecs, you must get fifty dollar haircuts, you must have an enormous prick. You must have a very respectable job, you must be a success. You must be an original and also the same as everyone. Why are we even bothering to tell you all this? You are already too old. Save your money. Stay home. Maybe some day you can fly to Bangkok and buy someone pretty.
That said, there were two guys in the cafe who were having a really good time. (My theories are extraordinarily short-lived.) They were deaf and cussing each other out with tremendous merriment. This was an extraordinarily efficient process. I reckon they managed to curse each other 150 times within 30 seconds, a whirlwind of gestures that proceeded naturally to poking and slapping.
Can I ask a really ignorant question? Do deaf people get into more fights? Fighting words are already almost fighting.
The light outside was gentling now. It would be night but not soon enough. I had no idea what to do. That was a relief. I resolved to wander some more. As my master, Robert Walser, wrote, "We don't need to see anything out of the ordinary. We already see so much."
Jupiter and Dream Boy #97
from Three Coin Prose: Bangkok (2009)
"Are you going with me to my hotel? I just ask you. Because otherwise I must have #97."
We were sitting in Soi Twilight at the cafe opposite Dream Boy. He was talking fast, drinking his Singha, ignoring the young Thai man at his side. He'd determined that I was an innocent and nothing would dissuade him. He pledged to take me to the very most secret, most wicked places, which he named, one after another, and I had to tell him no, no, I'd been to those places already. And I was not going to Dream Boy, definitely not, even though Dream Boy had the best show, because the last time I went I wound up on stage stripped to my underpants as part of the comedy routine.
He was from Lithuania "a tiny microscopic country, you are from America, you have never heard of it, you do not even believe it exists" but now he lived in Switzerland. He was a small carefully tended man, perhaps 50. When he spoke of retirement, I said, "Oh, but that's a long time away for you." "I use many creams" he confided. He was delighted with me. I had much too much practice flattering middle-aged men.
We'd met at the Balcony on Soi 4, a place for straight people who want to go to a gay bar. From there we went to Soi Twilight, where the go-go boy bars are. He wanted to give me a tour but I'd been to every place he named. Finally he said, "How about Jupiter?"
I'd never been to Jupiter. He turned to the young Thai man beside him and said, "Take us to Jupiter." His name was Ook, supposedly. He'd sat with us all night and been more or less ignored. "He is very passive," the man from Lithuania explained. "In bed he will do nothing but his cock is like this--" and he indicated a place on his thigh above the kneecap. "I can introduce you if you like. It is no problem. Tonight he is just my friend."
Ook led the way to Jupiter and the man from Lithuania told me that the night before he'd had the best boy ever, one of the best anyway. "I was so tired from my flight. I went to the bar at midnight. I have known the mamasan there for a thousand years. 'Give me one with some meat on him and a big cock.' '#97' she said. And #97 it was."
Jupiter was obviously a big money place. The staff was floodlit outside the door: men in pink suits, a kathoy with hair like Diana Ross. He were led to a couch beside a glass tank where two naked men covered in soap suds slid artfully over each other. Their cocks had been pumped so much that they looked entirely unreal, like gigantic latex strap-ons. The man from Lithuania didn't wait long before going out for a smoke. Ook and I looked at each other; we both had the same small nervous laugh. We were already bored. Actually Ook looked as if he'd been bored for a number of years.
I've followed many middle-aged men desperate for talk as they toured Bangkok's nightlife. About this man there was one thing unique: he was paying for my drinks, which at bars like Jupiter are exorbitant. He kept me one side and Ook on the other and I was pretty sure we were both in the same department.
The audience at Jupiter was primarily Japanese and they looked every bit as humorless as they did back home in Tokyo while enduring their morning commute. The stage had two levels. The top-floor boys were bigger and better-looking. They stood in formation and, every twenty seconds or so, shifted position slightly. It was impossible to watch without thinking of rotisserie chicken. The Japanese snapped up boys in a remarkably short time. Five minutes after the show was through most of them were already gone. Once, in Darjeeling, I'd watched a busload of Japanese buy out a tea shop in just the same way.
In twenty years, when I can no longer bluff my way into being an object of desire, will I learn to look at these men the way johns must--to admire their bodies without looking in their eyes? How does a man bought for forty dollars--as they men are, as I have been--ever relearn his own true value?
Ook turned to me and asked, "Do you want to go out now?" I agreed vigorously. We fled Jupiter. The three of us returned to the cafe opposite Dream Boy, where the man from Lithuania learned that I was not available for sexual services that evening. So #97 it was. He hurried across the street and made his request to the doorman. #97 was still available; the bar fee was 400 baht.
#97 came downstairs a few minutes later, a sturdy young man in blue shirt and blue shorts, like a soccer player. It seems moralistic to report how forced his smile was but it can't be avoided. He was magnificently handsome; his smile was terrible to see. Nice to meet you he said and shook my hand. He and Ook carefully ignored each other. Ook had followed the man from Lithuania all night for nothing. All he'd gotten was free drinks, same as me.
The man from Lithuania said stay, stay, but I said I must sleep. It was almost one am anyway, the bars were about to close. "Why don't you take #97," suggested the man from Lithuania. "I can have him any night." #97 didn't understand but continued grinning. Ook sulked and slouched in his seat. I apologized and said good night and hurried past the colored lights and tired doormen out of Soi Twilight.
"Are you going with me to my hotel? I just ask you. Because otherwise I must have #97."
We were sitting in Soi Twilight at the cafe opposite Dream Boy. He was talking fast, drinking his Singha, ignoring the young Thai man at his side. He'd determined that I was an innocent and nothing would dissuade him. He pledged to take me to the very most secret, most wicked places, which he named, one after another, and I had to tell him no, no, I'd been to those places already. And I was not going to Dream Boy, definitely not, even though Dream Boy had the best show, because the last time I went I wound up on stage stripped to my underpants as part of the comedy routine.
He was from Lithuania "a tiny microscopic country, you are from America, you have never heard of it, you do not even believe it exists" but now he lived in Switzerland. He was a small carefully tended man, perhaps 50. When he spoke of retirement, I said, "Oh, but that's a long time away for you." "I use many creams" he confided. He was delighted with me. I had much too much practice flattering middle-aged men.
We'd met at the Balcony on Soi 4, a place for straight people who want to go to a gay bar. From there we went to Soi Twilight, where the go-go boy bars are. He wanted to give me a tour but I'd been to every place he named. Finally he said, "How about Jupiter?"
I'd never been to Jupiter. He turned to the young Thai man beside him and said, "Take us to Jupiter." His name was Ook, supposedly. He'd sat with us all night and been more or less ignored. "He is very passive," the man from Lithuania explained. "In bed he will do nothing but his cock is like this--" and he indicated a place on his thigh above the kneecap. "I can introduce you if you like. It is no problem. Tonight he is just my friend."
Ook led the way to Jupiter and the man from Lithuania told me that the night before he'd had the best boy ever, one of the best anyway. "I was so tired from my flight. I went to the bar at midnight. I have known the mamasan there for a thousand years. 'Give me one with some meat on him and a big cock.' '#97' she said. And #97 it was."
Jupiter was obviously a big money place. The staff was floodlit outside the door: men in pink suits, a kathoy with hair like Diana Ross. He were led to a couch beside a glass tank where two naked men covered in soap suds slid artfully over each other. Their cocks had been pumped so much that they looked entirely unreal, like gigantic latex strap-ons. The man from Lithuania didn't wait long before going out for a smoke. Ook and I looked at each other; we both had the same small nervous laugh. We were already bored. Actually Ook looked as if he'd been bored for a number of years.
I've followed many middle-aged men desperate for talk as they toured Bangkok's nightlife. About this man there was one thing unique: he was paying for my drinks, which at bars like Jupiter are exorbitant. He kept me one side and Ook on the other and I was pretty sure we were both in the same department.
The audience at Jupiter was primarily Japanese and they looked every bit as humorless as they did back home in Tokyo while enduring their morning commute. The stage had two levels. The top-floor boys were bigger and better-looking. They stood in formation and, every twenty seconds or so, shifted position slightly. It was impossible to watch without thinking of rotisserie chicken. The Japanese snapped up boys in a remarkably short time. Five minutes after the show was through most of them were already gone. Once, in Darjeeling, I'd watched a busload of Japanese buy out a tea shop in just the same way.
In twenty years, when I can no longer bluff my way into being an object of desire, will I learn to look at these men the way johns must--to admire their bodies without looking in their eyes? How does a man bought for forty dollars--as they men are, as I have been--ever relearn his own true value?
Ook turned to me and asked, "Do you want to go out now?" I agreed vigorously. We fled Jupiter. The three of us returned to the cafe opposite Dream Boy, where the man from Lithuania learned that I was not available for sexual services that evening. So #97 it was. He hurried across the street and made his request to the doorman. #97 was still available; the bar fee was 400 baht.
#97 came downstairs a few minutes later, a sturdy young man in blue shirt and blue shorts, like a soccer player. It seems moralistic to report how forced his smile was but it can't be avoided. He was magnificently handsome; his smile was terrible to see. Nice to meet you he said and shook my hand. He and Ook carefully ignored each other. Ook had followed the man from Lithuania all night for nothing. All he'd gotten was free drinks, same as me.
The man from Lithuania said stay, stay, but I said I must sleep. It was almost one am anyway, the bars were about to close. "Why don't you take #97," suggested the man from Lithuania. "I can have him any night." #97 didn't understand but continued grinning. Ook sulked and slouched in his seat. I apologized and said good night and hurried past the colored lights and tired doormen out of Soi Twilight.
Hunger Looks So Fun, At First
from Three Coin Prose: Bangkok (2008)
In the center of Babylon is a restaurant with glass walls: one side overlooks the courtyard and the other the pool, and everywhere there are tall palms, tile and glass, and gentlemen who make it to the gym not less than five days a week. As you sit with your Singha beer and plate of duck, perhaps feeling a little odd to be in such an elegant place wearing only a towel, you may read the slogan which is printed on the seat back: Twenty years of artistic endeavor beautifully disguised as a sauna.
Of all the sexual paradises gay men have devoted their lives to creating, the Babylon is perhaps the most exquisite. As the light fades, men gather in the courtyard to sip wine beneath the palms. If that is not enough for you, there’s also: a full gym surrounded by buck naked stone pharaohs with truly chiseled abs, a pool, more palms, another elegant bar, a coffee shop with fine desserts and classic movies, a huge wet area with steam, sauna and a honeycomb of tiled showers, the obligatory mile of dark mazes lined with cubicles, as well as a third bar hidden so deep in the guts of the place it’s unlikely you could get there or back without being fellated thrice, at least.
It is all very lovely—who looks at it?
OK, for ten minutes, maybe, when one first arrives. Maybe just after shooting a load. But mostly I’m just circling ravenously, elbowing my way through the dark corridors, chasing some Nordic-looking guy with three day stubble and a bulge in his towel. Fuckin’ a, he was here a minute ago, where the hell did he go?
At the end of the night my dick is sore and I feel like I’ve been duped. There is an honest bewilderment: it looked so fun. And yeah, maybe I got turned down a bunch of times, but other men grabbed my arm and dragged me off into a cubicle. Several of them were preposterously handsome. Bangkok attracts full-time sex fiends, graduates of gaydar with high honors. This is not the place for amateurs of promiscuity.
Still it seems that, at crucial moments, I was not there. Or it is as if, upon arrival in paradise, I am transformed into the most unpleasant person I have ever met.
If I was the only person doing this, well, I could institutionalize myself and the problem would be solved. But, looking around, it seems to me that I have never seen such a collection of glowering, stressed-out, miserable, sour faces as I see here, in this sexual paradise --entrance 260 baht, on weekends.
So much sunlight, so much glass, but most of the men are in the back corridors, in the dark, in the steam. We are at the baths, after all. And we have brought our shame with us from all the public toilets in the world.
Two hundred men nearly naked in this, the paradise of bathhouses, and it is remarkable, it is downright newsworthy, how miserable we make it. Into paradise we haul our dull old habituated stuck selves.
Something has gone wrong.
This is particularly sad since a lot men worked so hard to be here—hoarded vacation days, paid the gas surcharge, flew seventeen hours—all so they could stomp around all night with a pouty full-diaper face. Personally, since graduating high school, I have done approximately 300,000 sit-ups in hopes of meriting a friendly reception here. And so have a lot of other guys. This place is packed full of gorgeous forty-five year old men with washboard abs and the grimacing, bratty face of the most spoiled nine year old you’ve ever known, shoving forward for his share of the piñata.
“Dear God, I think, even if I am ugly, don’t let me have that awful look on my face.” But, of course, this place has mirrors everywhere and I can see—I’m working on it.
Some men worked to be here, others give their lives to build the place and keep it going. The lovely ladyboys at the front desk, the gym attendants in their white shorts, the invisible magnate who dreams up clever slogans. How disappointing for them to see that, in the end, they have provided us with only another arena for our despair.
The principal achievement of gay culture is the perfection of a global system for standardized promiscuity. Our network is better than Coca Cola’s and if you’ve got a big dick you can get laid in Greenland or Ghana in under fifteen minutes. This is our grand endeavor. Gaydar and Manhunt are our cathedrals, Ramrod is our opera, we have made statues of ourselves.
This place has been built, our vacations planned with everything in mind except an honest look at how desire works, how it becomes more demanding, more restrictive, the more that it is fed. This paradise is actually a gymnasium for the cultivation of ravenous hunger.
Not that I’ve learned this lesson. Fuck no. (Please here insert spooky hysterical laugh.) I show up here again and again. Because I know it’s a nightmare, I know it’s a drag but, but, but—it looks like it should work.
Two hundred men in towels, all clutching condoms and little packets of lube. This should be as easy as adding water to instant noodles. Right? Right?
Or how about what’s going on downtown: the boys on stage in little white underpants, each with a little red number. Right or wrong, it seems awfully straight-forward. I mean, it seems like it should work.
It’s like that Zen story: the guests are seated at the most sumptuous table and everything they could ever want is there. But, before they can get started, their arms are strapped to boards so that they cannot bring their spoons to their mouths. That’s where we’re at. As good as it looks, we might as well be trying to suck ourselves off.
Some nights there are the jackpot wins: Marco from Peru, Olivier from Toulouse, to say nothing of that Swiss porno Apollo. But a dull anxiety follows, because frankly there are very few years left when a god-ling such a Marco might chose me. (Maybe he only chose me because it was kind of dark?) Olivier looked rather disappointed, and, as for Apollo, well, I wake up with a dull ache missing him.
Satisfaction is satisfaction, blue ribbon, hunk angel. And at the same time it seems to me that satisfaction is the tent peg that keeps the circus of misery in town and intact. It’s just not very satisfying, satisfaction.
In the Zen story, one room starves while another, their arms similarly strapped, learn to reach across the table and feed each other.
And so I would like to send a little message out into all the gaydar and manhunt in-boxes, put a little card in the glossy magazines, stand on a street corner outside the boutique, outside the disco, and hand out little cards that read: is there something else we could be doing? Considering there are, like, only 24 golden lemurs left and 18,000 children who die from hunger every day? Considering we are destroying ourselves with truly 21st century efficiency and not even having that good of a time?
Here it is: an invitation to exit this paradise which, good as it looks, just doesn’t work.
(03.15.08, Bangkok)
In the center of Babylon is a restaurant with glass walls: one side overlooks the courtyard and the other the pool, and everywhere there are tall palms, tile and glass, and gentlemen who make it to the gym not less than five days a week. As you sit with your Singha beer and plate of duck, perhaps feeling a little odd to be in such an elegant place wearing only a towel, you may read the slogan which is printed on the seat back: Twenty years of artistic endeavor beautifully disguised as a sauna.
Of all the sexual paradises gay men have devoted their lives to creating, the Babylon is perhaps the most exquisite. As the light fades, men gather in the courtyard to sip wine beneath the palms. If that is not enough for you, there’s also: a full gym surrounded by buck naked stone pharaohs with truly chiseled abs, a pool, more palms, another elegant bar, a coffee shop with fine desserts and classic movies, a huge wet area with steam, sauna and a honeycomb of tiled showers, the obligatory mile of dark mazes lined with cubicles, as well as a third bar hidden so deep in the guts of the place it’s unlikely you could get there or back without being fellated thrice, at least.
It is all very lovely—who looks at it?
OK, for ten minutes, maybe, when one first arrives. Maybe just after shooting a load. But mostly I’m just circling ravenously, elbowing my way through the dark corridors, chasing some Nordic-looking guy with three day stubble and a bulge in his towel. Fuckin’ a, he was here a minute ago, where the hell did he go?
At the end of the night my dick is sore and I feel like I’ve been duped. There is an honest bewilderment: it looked so fun. And yeah, maybe I got turned down a bunch of times, but other men grabbed my arm and dragged me off into a cubicle. Several of them were preposterously handsome. Bangkok attracts full-time sex fiends, graduates of gaydar with high honors. This is not the place for amateurs of promiscuity.
Still it seems that, at crucial moments, I was not there. Or it is as if, upon arrival in paradise, I am transformed into the most unpleasant person I have ever met.
If I was the only person doing this, well, I could institutionalize myself and the problem would be solved. But, looking around, it seems to me that I have never seen such a collection of glowering, stressed-out, miserable, sour faces as I see here, in this sexual paradise --entrance 260 baht, on weekends.
So much sunlight, so much glass, but most of the men are in the back corridors, in the dark, in the steam. We are at the baths, after all. And we have brought our shame with us from all the public toilets in the world.
Two hundred men nearly naked in this, the paradise of bathhouses, and it is remarkable, it is downright newsworthy, how miserable we make it. Into paradise we haul our dull old habituated stuck selves.
Something has gone wrong.
This is particularly sad since a lot men worked so hard to be here—hoarded vacation days, paid the gas surcharge, flew seventeen hours—all so they could stomp around all night with a pouty full-diaper face. Personally, since graduating high school, I have done approximately 300,000 sit-ups in hopes of meriting a friendly reception here. And so have a lot of other guys. This place is packed full of gorgeous forty-five year old men with washboard abs and the grimacing, bratty face of the most spoiled nine year old you’ve ever known, shoving forward for his share of the piñata.
“Dear God, I think, even if I am ugly, don’t let me have that awful look on my face.” But, of course, this place has mirrors everywhere and I can see—I’m working on it.
Some men worked to be here, others give their lives to build the place and keep it going. The lovely ladyboys at the front desk, the gym attendants in their white shorts, the invisible magnate who dreams up clever slogans. How disappointing for them to see that, in the end, they have provided us with only another arena for our despair.
The principal achievement of gay culture is the perfection of a global system for standardized promiscuity. Our network is better than Coca Cola’s and if you’ve got a big dick you can get laid in Greenland or Ghana in under fifteen minutes. This is our grand endeavor. Gaydar and Manhunt are our cathedrals, Ramrod is our opera, we have made statues of ourselves.
This place has been built, our vacations planned with everything in mind except an honest look at how desire works, how it becomes more demanding, more restrictive, the more that it is fed. This paradise is actually a gymnasium for the cultivation of ravenous hunger.
Not that I’ve learned this lesson. Fuck no. (Please here insert spooky hysterical laugh.) I show up here again and again. Because I know it’s a nightmare, I know it’s a drag but, but, but—it looks like it should work.
Two hundred men in towels, all clutching condoms and little packets of lube. This should be as easy as adding water to instant noodles. Right? Right?
Or how about what’s going on downtown: the boys on stage in little white underpants, each with a little red number. Right or wrong, it seems awfully straight-forward. I mean, it seems like it should work.
It’s like that Zen story: the guests are seated at the most sumptuous table and everything they could ever want is there. But, before they can get started, their arms are strapped to boards so that they cannot bring their spoons to their mouths. That’s where we’re at. As good as it looks, we might as well be trying to suck ourselves off.
Some nights there are the jackpot wins: Marco from Peru, Olivier from Toulouse, to say nothing of that Swiss porno Apollo. But a dull anxiety follows, because frankly there are very few years left when a god-ling such a Marco might chose me. (Maybe he only chose me because it was kind of dark?) Olivier looked rather disappointed, and, as for Apollo, well, I wake up with a dull ache missing him.
Satisfaction is satisfaction, blue ribbon, hunk angel. And at the same time it seems to me that satisfaction is the tent peg that keeps the circus of misery in town and intact. It’s just not very satisfying, satisfaction.
In the Zen story, one room starves while another, their arms similarly strapped, learn to reach across the table and feed each other.
And so I would like to send a little message out into all the gaydar and manhunt in-boxes, put a little card in the glossy magazines, stand on a street corner outside the boutique, outside the disco, and hand out little cards that read: is there something else we could be doing? Considering there are, like, only 24 golden lemurs left and 18,000 children who die from hunger every day? Considering we are destroying ourselves with truly 21st century efficiency and not even having that good of a time?
Here it is: an invitation to exit this paradise which, good as it looks, just doesn’t work.
(03.15.08, Bangkok)
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Spiritual Talks: Declaration of Extension
Declaration of Extension
I'm bored of transience. Tired of the petal specialists who arrive at the park on a brilliant Spring day and declare, "We missed it. The absolute peak must have been three days ago." All boys, of course, must be 17. After that it's all downhill. Age 26 they are already deep in mourning. How dull. The petal specialists would do well to die when hedonists did in olden times, aged approximately 35.
As for me, sorry, but I am going to need an extension. You can have one too. Regardless of the state of your petals. Hell, you can be dropping leaves for all I care. The petal specialists can have their one day in April. (Good luck with teenage boys!) We'll roll out our blanket and stay all year round.
This is an all-weather picnic. Bring layers.
I'm bored of transience. Tired of the petal specialists who arrive at the park on a brilliant Spring day and declare, "We missed it. The absolute peak must have been three days ago." All boys, of course, must be 17. After that it's all downhill. Age 26 they are already deep in mourning. How dull. The petal specialists would do well to die when hedonists did in olden times, aged approximately 35.
As for me, sorry, but I am going to need an extension. You can have one too. Regardless of the state of your petals. Hell, you can be dropping leaves for all I care. The petal specialists can have their one day in April. (Good luck with teenage boys!) We'll roll out our blanket and stay all year round.
This is an all-weather picnic. Bring layers.
Spiritual Talks: God
God.
Is it time to be religious again? Despite having less faith than ever. Simply because I am direly short of social interaction. I ought to have at least an imaginary friend and, if a 36 year old man is going to have an imaginary friend, well, it had better be God.
Not for God (who has gobs of friends, many of whom are the scariest people you'll ever meet) but simply to keep the habit of humanness alive beside the specter of malevolent loneliness. Also because I cannot plant a tree. Not here in Tokyo -- a pot of geraniums is about all we have space for. Of course I try to be friends with my geraniums. But geraniums are not enough. Even the lettuces are not enough, not even when they go as far as flowering.
Underneath, of course, is the hope that reality will again spin, and what seemed foolish will turn out to be wise. Then I get to be right. And then reality spins again.
Is it time to be religious again? Despite having less faith than ever. Simply because I am direly short of social interaction. I ought to have at least an imaginary friend and, if a 36 year old man is going to have an imaginary friend, well, it had better be God.
Not for God (who has gobs of friends, many of whom are the scariest people you'll ever meet) but simply to keep the habit of humanness alive beside the specter of malevolent loneliness. Also because I cannot plant a tree. Not here in Tokyo -- a pot of geraniums is about all we have space for. Of course I try to be friends with my geraniums. But geraniums are not enough. Even the lettuces are not enough, not even when they go as far as flowering.
Underneath, of course, is the hope that reality will again spin, and what seemed foolish will turn out to be wise. Then I get to be right. And then reality spins again.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Several Interesting Things I Noticed While Entirely Desperate
(second version.)
1. dispute
One had hoped, obviously, to give the missionaries next door a better impression of gay marriage. Like this sweet-faced college boy at the door now – “I’m just checking to see if everything’s okay. Sir.”
The floor is covered with smashed plates. I’m leaned against the wall. It’s possible that wine has dribbled, somehow, into my beard. I am smiling warmly and using my very best rational voice, as if I could smother all other evidence.
It’s a holiday today, warm and sunny. A neighborly, open-window sort of day. In other words, even though I have never screamed like a maniac or smashed anything before in my life, there is no chance that anyone missed it.
“Just a domestic dispute,” I say. My brain has evidently been seized by bad TV. Which is obviously where I got this outfit too -- a tight blue t-shirt that says HUSTLER.
2. stone.
Imagine a stone thrown by a sailor from a ship sailing above the very deepest part of the sea. Falling through the depths for miles before coming to rest on the ocean floor in the very deepest blackness.
A stone once held in a calloused hand now rests at an unfathomable depth. A century will pass before any creature even glides across it and not once in a million years will it see the sun.
This is the comfort I imagine.
3. control
‘Out of control’ is the phrase that comes to mind – and yet I chose very carefully which plates to smash. The Japanese serving bowls, the cups with raku glaze – they still perch unharmed in the drying rack.
The fake fiestaware, however, is now down by two.
4. bus, bus, bus, boy, grasshopper, bus
Despite assumptions to the contrary, night and mood are endlessly broken up. What I expected to be uniform muck-black is instead like a painting by Goya: full of lightning light, of garish green yellow pink, like a tiny scene lit by a kerosene lantern at an Indian bus station in the middle of the night: perched among the puffed rice, a wrathful goddess offers boons.
Here’s the ruin of one’s life, a black gutted bus by the side of the road. It will not budge. There is nothing to salvage. A black gutted bus. A bus, a bus, still a bus. Then a Ferris wheel, then a grasshopper and a even a skinny Brazilian with a gold stud in his nose and a little goatee beard. Then the black gutted bus again, this wrecked life where nothing budges, which all my best intentions are like threats made by a petunia.
This bus cannot by altered or moved – and yet there are many times an hour when it completely disappears.
5. gone out
The mind goes out, suddenly and at once, just as the back does, while hauling rock salt out of the trunk of the car. How simple it ought to be to call into work: I’m very sorry but – my mind’s gone out again.
And yes, it’s entirely possible a powerful muscle relaxant would help and moreover it wouldn’t be any stupider or more dangerous than what I do ordinarily. Thanks!
In the same way, the mind comes back suddenly and unbidden, while reading the back of a book in an airport shop. The way a cat returns after you’ve chased it all over the house – any time you got hold of it, it tore you to bits – now that cat wakes you, lapping the salt from your cheek.
6. like son.
All he could say was, “You’re just like your father.” Very helpful, thanks.
Had I been capable of thought, I would have said, “Actually there are several discernable differences, such as the following:
“My father would not have waited seven years to start screaming.
“At no point did I use the words Jesus Fucking Christ
“I aimed the plates at the floor. My father always aimed for the head.”
7. reasonable
I am no longer shocked by teenage girls who cut themselves or those who throw themselves out of windows too low to actually die – i.e., the fourth floor or below. I am not surprised, either, by those who choose windows up higher, by men who woke up that morning with absolutely no intention of beating their wives, by commuters who throw themselves in front of trains, by those who begin drinking at dawn, by my father, by men who pay to be pissed on, by anyone who simply disappears.
I have new appreciation for all of these, my colleagues. While I may not agree with their conclusions, I can see how they got there from here.
8. tenderness
This is the Steak Diane School of Compassion. (This is how we do it in New Hampshire.) Even if it wasn’t the best meat to begin with, even if it was chuck, never mind – we will tenderize it with a hammer.
May it someday be said of me: he had a tender heart. He did it in the kitchen, with a hammer, and blood splattered over the white cabinets.
9. future
When I imagined the future, the only thing I never doubted was that I would become the person I feared becoming. Now the plates are smashed on the floor and the children next door stand stock-still and listen to the scary man.
10. knowledge
I suspect that the dishes are scared of me. Picking up a bowl, I feel it trembling, on the verge of dissolution. I know. And now the bowl knows, too.
11. shock
If you want to be shocking, say the most obvious thing in the world. He says he is going to leave and shows no sign of leaving. Twenty-one years in this city now, the last seven with me. I do not trust you! I do not believe you! Smash!
This afternoon, all I want is to be left alone in the apartment. Please leave me alone. Please leave. Please go. Please. I beg and scream. But language has broken down, like running in a dream, and cannot communicate even the very simplest thing.
“There’s no place I could go,” he says.
12. pain
The pain is never worse than when I imagine I am keeping one half-step in front of it, parrying with my jeans around my ankles and a bottle of wine in one hand. The moment I collapse and am gobbled up in the stinking black mouth – there I find I can endure.
But what comes just before – it is as if someone said, “We are going to start chopping off your fingers now. Please stand very still.”
13. housekeeping.
I am willing to bet that even after the iceberg, when the water was already rushing in, there was at least one person who continued to fuss over the glassware, fold napkins, and shine the floors of the Titanic. This might be artistic or reprehensible or ridiculous. I’m not sure how I feel. Except that I think it’s creepy when my husband is doing it. And he angry at me for not helping.
He will not understand when I say that I am looking for a raft.
1. dispute
One had hoped, obviously, to give the missionaries next door a better impression of gay marriage. Like this sweet-faced college boy at the door now – “I’m just checking to see if everything’s okay. Sir.”
The floor is covered with smashed plates. I’m leaned against the wall. It’s possible that wine has dribbled, somehow, into my beard. I am smiling warmly and using my very best rational voice, as if I could smother all other evidence.
It’s a holiday today, warm and sunny. A neighborly, open-window sort of day. In other words, even though I have never screamed like a maniac or smashed anything before in my life, there is no chance that anyone missed it.
“Just a domestic dispute,” I say. My brain has evidently been seized by bad TV. Which is obviously where I got this outfit too -- a tight blue t-shirt that says HUSTLER.
2. stone.
Imagine a stone thrown by a sailor from a ship sailing above the very deepest part of the sea. Falling through the depths for miles before coming to rest on the ocean floor in the very deepest blackness.
A stone once held in a calloused hand now rests at an unfathomable depth. A century will pass before any creature even glides across it and not once in a million years will it see the sun.
This is the comfort I imagine.
3. control
‘Out of control’ is the phrase that comes to mind – and yet I chose very carefully which plates to smash. The Japanese serving bowls, the cups with raku glaze – they still perch unharmed in the drying rack.
The fake fiestaware, however, is now down by two.
4. bus, bus, bus, boy, grasshopper, bus
Despite assumptions to the contrary, night and mood are endlessly broken up. What I expected to be uniform muck-black is instead like a painting by Goya: full of lightning light, of garish green yellow pink, like a tiny scene lit by a kerosene lantern at an Indian bus station in the middle of the night: perched among the puffed rice, a wrathful goddess offers boons.
Here’s the ruin of one’s life, a black gutted bus by the side of the road. It will not budge. There is nothing to salvage. A black gutted bus. A bus, a bus, still a bus. Then a Ferris wheel, then a grasshopper and a even a skinny Brazilian with a gold stud in his nose and a little goatee beard. Then the black gutted bus again, this wrecked life where nothing budges, which all my best intentions are like threats made by a petunia.
This bus cannot by altered or moved – and yet there are many times an hour when it completely disappears.
5. gone out
The mind goes out, suddenly and at once, just as the back does, while hauling rock salt out of the trunk of the car. How simple it ought to be to call into work: I’m very sorry but – my mind’s gone out again.
And yes, it’s entirely possible a powerful muscle relaxant would help and moreover it wouldn’t be any stupider or more dangerous than what I do ordinarily. Thanks!
In the same way, the mind comes back suddenly and unbidden, while reading the back of a book in an airport shop. The way a cat returns after you’ve chased it all over the house – any time you got hold of it, it tore you to bits – now that cat wakes you, lapping the salt from your cheek.
6. like son.
All he could say was, “You’re just like your father.” Very helpful, thanks.
Had I been capable of thought, I would have said, “Actually there are several discernable differences, such as the following:
“My father would not have waited seven years to start screaming.
“At no point did I use the words Jesus Fucking Christ
“I aimed the plates at the floor. My father always aimed for the head.”
7. reasonable
I am no longer shocked by teenage girls who cut themselves or those who throw themselves out of windows too low to actually die – i.e., the fourth floor or below. I am not surprised, either, by those who choose windows up higher, by men who woke up that morning with absolutely no intention of beating their wives, by commuters who throw themselves in front of trains, by those who begin drinking at dawn, by my father, by men who pay to be pissed on, by anyone who simply disappears.
I have new appreciation for all of these, my colleagues. While I may not agree with their conclusions, I can see how they got there from here.
8. tenderness
This is the Steak Diane School of Compassion. (This is how we do it in New Hampshire.) Even if it wasn’t the best meat to begin with, even if it was chuck, never mind – we will tenderize it with a hammer.
May it someday be said of me: he had a tender heart. He did it in the kitchen, with a hammer, and blood splattered over the white cabinets.
9. future
When I imagined the future, the only thing I never doubted was that I would become the person I feared becoming. Now the plates are smashed on the floor and the children next door stand stock-still and listen to the scary man.
10. knowledge
I suspect that the dishes are scared of me. Picking up a bowl, I feel it trembling, on the verge of dissolution. I know. And now the bowl knows, too.
11. shock
If you want to be shocking, say the most obvious thing in the world. He says he is going to leave and shows no sign of leaving. Twenty-one years in this city now, the last seven with me. I do not trust you! I do not believe you! Smash!
This afternoon, all I want is to be left alone in the apartment. Please leave me alone. Please leave. Please go. Please. I beg and scream. But language has broken down, like running in a dream, and cannot communicate even the very simplest thing.
“There’s no place I could go,” he says.
12. pain
The pain is never worse than when I imagine I am keeping one half-step in front of it, parrying with my jeans around my ankles and a bottle of wine in one hand. The moment I collapse and am gobbled up in the stinking black mouth – there I find I can endure.
But what comes just before – it is as if someone said, “We are going to start chopping off your fingers now. Please stand very still.”
13. housekeeping.
I am willing to bet that even after the iceberg, when the water was already rushing in, there was at least one person who continued to fuss over the glassware, fold napkins, and shine the floors of the Titanic. This might be artistic or reprehensible or ridiculous. I’m not sure how I feel. Except that I think it’s creepy when my husband is doing it. And he angry at me for not helping.
He will not understand when I say that I am looking for a raft.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Robbery
I’ll pray first, I thought, and walked up Kagurazaka-dori toward the shrine. I’d been away a year. The fugu shop, I saw, was out of business now, men carted out its wooden innards and loaded them on trucks. The pachinko parlor had been redone in shriven white. At the top of the hill I turned – and stopped. The shrine was gone.
Years ago, I went out to buy a computer cord and came home to find my apartment torn apart. I stood in my doorway, cord in hand, looking around for my computer. I nearly called out for it, like a man who’d lost his dog. It took a long time for me to understand that I’d been robbed.
In Tokyo there are many shrines, but, to me, Akagi always seemed the most alive, as evidenced by the non-stop flow of visitors stopping by to pray. Young mothers dropping off their children at kindergarten, old men out walking, each pausing for a few words, to clap and bow at the orange shrine among its shady grove of trees. For years I visited every Wednesday morning. I felt so welcome.
You’ll think I’m nuts. My first thought was that the shrine had to be somewhere. It’s crouched behind the tin wall, I thought. Like a child playing hide and seek.
But there was only a dump truck and a few dusty men wearing helmets -- as if there were anything left to fall.
I’d never seen an empty space so full: as shocking as the space at the end of my wrist if my hand were gone. I thought the workmen must go home and drink whiskey and beat their wives and not know why.
I am prey to a common form of idiocy, which assumes some things are so obviously special, so obviously important, that of course they will not be destroyed. What a dummy I am. I assume that there is nothing I can do. I assume it is a loss I can afford.
Years ago, I went out to buy a computer cord and came home to find my apartment torn apart. I stood in my doorway, cord in hand, looking around for my computer. I nearly called out for it, like a man who’d lost his dog. It took a long time for me to understand that I’d been robbed.
In Tokyo there are many shrines, but, to me, Akagi always seemed the most alive, as evidenced by the non-stop flow of visitors stopping by to pray. Young mothers dropping off their children at kindergarten, old men out walking, each pausing for a few words, to clap and bow at the orange shrine among its shady grove of trees. For years I visited every Wednesday morning. I felt so welcome.
You’ll think I’m nuts. My first thought was that the shrine had to be somewhere. It’s crouched behind the tin wall, I thought. Like a child playing hide and seek.
But there was only a dump truck and a few dusty men wearing helmets -- as if there were anything left to fall.
I’d never seen an empty space so full: as shocking as the space at the end of my wrist if my hand were gone. I thought the workmen must go home and drink whiskey and beat their wives and not know why.
I am prey to a common form of idiocy, which assumes some things are so obviously special, so obviously important, that of course they will not be destroyed. What a dummy I am. I assume that there is nothing I can do. I assume it is a loss I can afford.
Sunday, March 01, 2009
From Jane Bowles, Two Serious Ladies
"True enough," said Mrs. Copperfield, bringing her fist down on the table and looking very mean. "I have gone to pieces, which is a thing I've wanted to do for years. I know I am as guilty as I can be, but I have my happiness, which I guard like a wolf, and I have authority now and a certain amount of daring, which if you remember correctly, I never had before."
(My Sister's Hand in Mine: The Complete Works of Jane Bowles, page 197)
(My Sister's Hand in Mine: The Complete Works of Jane Bowles, page 197)
Friday, February 27, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
The Church of 4 Dollys
Here we are, again, at sanity's last stand. Onion rings served fresh all night. Geronimo is here, and the 4 Dollys and that lady we busted out of house arrest in Burma.
Ours is the church for when no time is left
We are The Church of the 4 Dollys. Dolly of the melted clocks and the cloned sheep Dolly. Dolly the Lama, Dolly singer of the legendary breasts.
The fire eyed lady from Burma sleeps only out under the stars
Whenever we lose one Dolly, another Dolly takes over. Never are we bereft. We are gathered here to teach the sheep to sing in preparation for when the busty blonde must don the yellow hat and lead Tibet.
To the world we say: do not be afraid we love you we will make time
(Madrid, 02/24/09)
Ours is the church for when no time is left
We are The Church of the 4 Dollys. Dolly of the melted clocks and the cloned sheep Dolly. Dolly the Lama, Dolly singer of the legendary breasts.
The fire eyed lady from Burma sleeps only out under the stars
Whenever we lose one Dolly, another Dolly takes over. Never are we bereft. We are gathered here to teach the sheep to sing in preparation for when the busty blonde must don the yellow hat and lead Tibet.
To the world we say: do not be afraid we love you we will make time
(Madrid, 02/24/09)
Percy, 39
I’m drinking gay coffee at Downtown when the woman at the next table announces that Percy died this morning.
She expects the waiter to be upset, but he doesn’t know who she is talking about. “But he was here all the time!”
Percy was a fashion designer, well on his way to being famous. He was only 39. He’d been found in his bathtub that afternoon. He slipped and hit his head and that was it.
The waiter, instead of being upset, tells the story of another man he knew who died in his bathtub. And he was only 32!
The waiter says that he is lucky, because he is poor and only has a shower. He says, “It’s always those big bathtubs where you have space to die.”
(Amsterdam, 10/09)
She expects the waiter to be upset, but he doesn’t know who she is talking about. “But he was here all the time!”
Percy was a fashion designer, well on his way to being famous. He was only 39. He’d been found in his bathtub that afternoon. He slipped and hit his head and that was it.
The waiter, instead of being upset, tells the story of another man he knew who died in his bathtub. And he was only 32!
The waiter says that he is lucky, because he is poor and only has a shower. He says, “It’s always those big bathtubs where you have space to die.”
(Amsterdam, 10/09)
Monday, February 23, 2009
Size
Often it happens I am the wrong size. Walking down a picturesque bricked alley, I discover myself to be Godzilla with luggage. Except, unlike Godzilla, I am entirely ineffectual: just a big lizard in traffic.
Or I’m talking with someone, offering a little something about myself, and I think, “Wait. Did I just refer to myself as the Shah?”
More often I am trying to do something simple and important, such as buy a bus ticket, but when the man (impatient, bored) turns to me, I find myself unable to make a sound. At this crucial juncture I have transformed into an aphid. An above-average aphid--but still.
My job is to diagram the sentence but I am flimsy as a cumulonimbus, floating somewhere in the distance. How does a mustard seed get the attention of the waitress?
It gets so I am nostalgic for human male average. Five foot nine. Nostalgic for when I thought that it would be enough to be in the right place, and at the right time.
(Amsterdam, 10/08)
Or I’m talking with someone, offering a little something about myself, and I think, “Wait. Did I just refer to myself as the Shah?”
More often I am trying to do something simple and important, such as buy a bus ticket, but when the man (impatient, bored) turns to me, I find myself unable to make a sound. At this crucial juncture I have transformed into an aphid. An above-average aphid--but still.
My job is to diagram the sentence but I am flimsy as a cumulonimbus, floating somewhere in the distance. How does a mustard seed get the attention of the waitress?
It gets so I am nostalgic for human male average. Five foot nine. Nostalgic for when I thought that it would be enough to be in the right place, and at the right time.
(Amsterdam, 10/08)
Talk
My problem is I’m unable to talk like a regular human being. Every sentence sounds like something I memorized the night before.
“Excuse me.” I said. “Could I please have a big cup of coffee?” Which seemed to me a natural and straight-forward sentence. I’d practiced it several times, waiting for the waiter. He has cheeks like a slapped baby’s ass and hair that looks warm and soft.
Because I have been a teacher, I also acted the sentence out, mimed holding a big cup of coffee.
Isn’t it considered polite to speak somewhat slower when speaking English in a foreign country?
Is it possible that I sometimes try too hard?
He paused and then he smiled at me, as if to say, “And here we have another one.”
This happens to me every time I open my mouth.
(Amsterdam, 10/08)
“Excuse me.” I said. “Could I please have a big cup of coffee?” Which seemed to me a natural and straight-forward sentence. I’d practiced it several times, waiting for the waiter. He has cheeks like a slapped baby’s ass and hair that looks warm and soft.
Because I have been a teacher, I also acted the sentence out, mimed holding a big cup of coffee.
Isn’t it considered polite to speak somewhat slower when speaking English in a foreign country?
Is it possible that I sometimes try too hard?
He paused and then he smiled at me, as if to say, “And here we have another one.”
This happens to me every time I open my mouth.
(Amsterdam, 10/08)
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Fresh.
I shower in the morning but never feel entirely clean until night makes the city new and the British boys have had a few beers and the whores are gearing up, tapping at the glass, and laughing at us already. Terrible fried chicken is deliciously available for another seven hours! Not so bad I'm not, not overall, considering the miles. Crazy, not in a bad way, shifting my cock to the left, and staring without apology. I don't have to spend my whole life crawling on my belly! A big man with stubble's gonna lean across the bar and kiss me. He's gonna put his big pink tongue in my mouth, for starters.
(Amsterdam 10/08)
(Amsterdam 10/08)
Saturday, February 14, 2009
"Everyone has his sharp-toothed sleep-destroying devil inside him, and this is neither good nor bad, but is life . . . This devil is the material (and basically what wonderful material) that you have been endowed with and with which you are supposed to make something."
-- Franz Kafka
(Note: Kafka wrote this in a letter to a very young woman he'd met at the sanitorium. He might not have been so upbeat in his own diary.)
-- Franz Kafka
(Note: Kafka wrote this in a letter to a very young woman he'd met at the sanitorium. He might not have been so upbeat in his own diary.)
Guttersnipe Bookshelf: The Spell of the Sensuous
David Abram
The Spell of the Sensuous
Vintage, 1997
Here's an extraordinary book about how we stopped perceiving the world as sacred and came to feel cut off. A daring leaping mix of ecology, linguistics, indigenous traditions and philosophy. It is also is a book that is remarkably different from chapter to chapter.
The first chapter, about Abram's experiences as a sleight-of-hand magician in Nepal and Indonesia, is lyrical and gorgeous. I admit that I also caught myself thinking, "Dude! I want some of what you are smoking!"
I thought chapter two might advocate wearing amethyst pendants. Not remotely. The next two chapters -- on philosophy and linguistics -- require black coffee and a clear-headed morning. It is exhilarating to watch someone think this way -- like watching a daredevil making leaps over cars -- except the leaps he is making are not sport but the leaps we need to survive on the planet.
Abram investigates the present, the past, the future, and where each can be found in the landscape. He even goes so far as to offer, on page 202, a meditation on how to dissolve time. (Of course I annotated my copy; you never know when you're going to need just this sort of thing.) The last section is about writing, how the Hebrews left out the sacred vowels but the Greeks left us marooned in the abstract. (My crude summary does violence to the text. It is exhilarating to read.)
Then comes the coda and, a few pages before the end, Abram says, basically, "This might be true and it might not and what is true anyway? Truth is what heals the planet and falsehood is what harms it." Part of me agreed and part of me felt like, well, the victim of a sleight-of-hand magician. I want my truths to be, well, true and not just gorgeous. The whole section made me uneasy.
I do not mean to condemn the book. Not at all. I have told everyone I know to read it -- because I want people discuss it with! Abram gave me raptures, lectures, arguments and questions. A beautiful book, well worth wrestling with and re-visiting.
The Spell of the Sensuous
Vintage, 1997
Here's an extraordinary book about how we stopped perceiving the world as sacred and came to feel cut off. A daring leaping mix of ecology, linguistics, indigenous traditions and philosophy. It is also is a book that is remarkably different from chapter to chapter.
The first chapter, about Abram's experiences as a sleight-of-hand magician in Nepal and Indonesia, is lyrical and gorgeous. I admit that I also caught myself thinking, "Dude! I want some of what you are smoking!"
I thought chapter two might advocate wearing amethyst pendants. Not remotely. The next two chapters -- on philosophy and linguistics -- require black coffee and a clear-headed morning. It is exhilarating to watch someone think this way -- like watching a daredevil making leaps over cars -- except the leaps he is making are not sport but the leaps we need to survive on the planet.
Abram investigates the present, the past, the future, and where each can be found in the landscape. He even goes so far as to offer, on page 202, a meditation on how to dissolve time. (Of course I annotated my copy; you never know when you're going to need just this sort of thing.) The last section is about writing, how the Hebrews left out the sacred vowels but the Greeks left us marooned in the abstract. (My crude summary does violence to the text. It is exhilarating to read.)
Then comes the coda and, a few pages before the end, Abram says, basically, "This might be true and it might not and what is true anyway? Truth is what heals the planet and falsehood is what harms it." Part of me agreed and part of me felt like, well, the victim of a sleight-of-hand magician. I want my truths to be, well, true and not just gorgeous. The whole section made me uneasy.
I do not mean to condemn the book. Not at all. I have told everyone I know to read it -- because I want people discuss it with! Abram gave me raptures, lectures, arguments and questions. A beautiful book, well worth wrestling with and re-visiting.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
On Being (Briefly) the Hottest Man In the Bar
As I tug my sweatshirt over my head, my t-shirt rides up and the men at the bar -- who only seconds before were quiet dull Iowans -- are hooting and hollering like fratboys gone wild with jello shots, bikini girls, and MTV cameras. By the time I've got my head through the hole they're quiet again, grinning and winking, and I don't have to pay for my beer anymore.
I'm a star!!! Hot. Desirable.
Clarification: I am in Des Moines. At the Blazing Saddle bar. And it is January. It is 4 in the afternoon on a weekday. Most of the men at the bar are over 60. The younger ones -- and I mean that only relatively -- appear somehow different, in the Iowa sense of the word, dif'rent, as in there might have been some challenge there, cognitively, even before they started drinking as a career twenty years ago.
These clarifications clarify nothing for me. I'm the hottest man at the bar. The air sizzles with my seething sexual energy -- at least for me it does. And someone must have discreetly placed an air hose in my asshole because I feel myself expanding, swelling up. Soon I will rise into the air like a blow-up doll full of helium.
Except I am not full of helium. What I am full of is boring thoughts. Does he want me? Yeah, he wants me. Does he still want me? Yeah, he totally wants me. Am I hot? Yeah, I'm hot. Am I still hot? Yeah, I'm still hot.
Vanity is like a head injury. Suddenly there are no Icelandic novelists in my mind. No leaf-cutter ants of the Amazon. No Beats, no Surrealists, no Luminism. Actually, there isn't even any Iowa, even though I'm sitting in it. Is there a local beer? What are these men's stories? How old is this carpet? None of that. Am I hot? Yeah, I'm hot. Am I still hot? Yeah, I'm still hot.
I'm not content to let my hotness just sit around. No. I've got plans for my hotness. I want to go to all those sleazy clubs in Denver. I should fly to Amsterdam. Because this hotness -- this raw sexual force -- it ain't gonna last forever. (Am I still hot? Yes -- I think so. Maybe I should check? Maybe I should yawn and rub my belly seductively and see if anyone responds?)
Swollen up with boring thoughts, I find myself suddenly vulnerable. Anxiety arrives. Because I really ought to make it to the gym more often. Maybe get a trainer? How long has it been since I took any fish oil pills? Is a cheap moisturizer really good enough? What is 'photo-facial rejuvenation' anyway? What am I going to do when I'm 40? 45? 50? 55? 60? 65?
Plastic surgery is getting better all the time. Look at Madonna. What about penis enlargement? Don't hear much about that nowadays. Maybe I should do penis enlargement -- just as, like, gay sexual insurance? If I have mega-dong someone will always want me. Won't they?
A few hoots and hollers, one free Miller beer, and I have been transformed into a gay balloon of boredom and anxiety. Even making it to the toilet is going to be quite an operation because I appear to be taking up most of the air in the room.
The door to the bar opens with a shudder: a kid ambles in and knocks the snow off his boots. He looks sleepy; he's got three days worth of stubble on his college boy chin. He's not staying, just dropping off the free papers, but can I use the restroom sir? Sure you can. He's just a straight guy but I could convert him 'cause I'm so fucking hot except --
He Did Not Even Look At Me!!!
Which is probably a good thing because one side of my face has entirely collapsed, along with my inflated chest. Oh yes, I'm the Hindenburg disaster all over again. Zipping around the room, making a prolonged farting noise, like a birthday balloon somebody let go of. Nobody even notices this disaster because I am, like, invisible.
At last I come to rest back on my bar stool, a shriveled raisin limp-dick sort of man, a wizened husk.
My next beer I pay for. My career as the hottest man in the bar (god! it was glorious!) is over. From now on I'll have to fly economy, bag my own groceries, jack off.
As recompense, as a consolation prize, here is the world: Icelandic novelists and leaf-cutter ants, a long line of drunks sitting here at the bar in Des Moines on an afternoon in January when I was, for a very short time, the hottest man in the bar.
I'm a star!!! Hot. Desirable.
Clarification: I am in Des Moines. At the Blazing Saddle bar. And it is January. It is 4 in the afternoon on a weekday. Most of the men at the bar are over 60. The younger ones -- and I mean that only relatively -- appear somehow different, in the Iowa sense of the word, dif'rent, as in there might have been some challenge there, cognitively, even before they started drinking as a career twenty years ago.
These clarifications clarify nothing for me. I'm the hottest man at the bar. The air sizzles with my seething sexual energy -- at least for me it does. And someone must have discreetly placed an air hose in my asshole because I feel myself expanding, swelling up. Soon I will rise into the air like a blow-up doll full of helium.
Except I am not full of helium. What I am full of is boring thoughts. Does he want me? Yeah, he wants me. Does he still want me? Yeah, he totally wants me. Am I hot? Yeah, I'm hot. Am I still hot? Yeah, I'm still hot.
Vanity is like a head injury. Suddenly there are no Icelandic novelists in my mind. No leaf-cutter ants of the Amazon. No Beats, no Surrealists, no Luminism. Actually, there isn't even any Iowa, even though I'm sitting in it. Is there a local beer? What are these men's stories? How old is this carpet? None of that. Am I hot? Yeah, I'm hot. Am I still hot? Yeah, I'm still hot.
I'm not content to let my hotness just sit around. No. I've got plans for my hotness. I want to go to all those sleazy clubs in Denver. I should fly to Amsterdam. Because this hotness -- this raw sexual force -- it ain't gonna last forever. (Am I still hot? Yes -- I think so. Maybe I should check? Maybe I should yawn and rub my belly seductively and see if anyone responds?)
Swollen up with boring thoughts, I find myself suddenly vulnerable. Anxiety arrives. Because I really ought to make it to the gym more often. Maybe get a trainer? How long has it been since I took any fish oil pills? Is a cheap moisturizer really good enough? What is 'photo-facial rejuvenation' anyway? What am I going to do when I'm 40? 45? 50? 55? 60? 65?
Plastic surgery is getting better all the time. Look at Madonna. What about penis enlargement? Don't hear much about that nowadays. Maybe I should do penis enlargement -- just as, like, gay sexual insurance? If I have mega-dong someone will always want me. Won't they?
A few hoots and hollers, one free Miller beer, and I have been transformed into a gay balloon of boredom and anxiety. Even making it to the toilet is going to be quite an operation because I appear to be taking up most of the air in the room.
The door to the bar opens with a shudder: a kid ambles in and knocks the snow off his boots. He looks sleepy; he's got three days worth of stubble on his college boy chin. He's not staying, just dropping off the free papers, but can I use the restroom sir? Sure you can. He's just a straight guy but I could convert him 'cause I'm so fucking hot except --
He Did Not Even Look At Me!!!
Which is probably a good thing because one side of my face has entirely collapsed, along with my inflated chest. Oh yes, I'm the Hindenburg disaster all over again. Zipping around the room, making a prolonged farting noise, like a birthday balloon somebody let go of. Nobody even notices this disaster because I am, like, invisible.
At last I come to rest back on my bar stool, a shriveled raisin limp-dick sort of man, a wizened husk.
My next beer I pay for. My career as the hottest man in the bar (god! it was glorious!) is over. From now on I'll have to fly economy, bag my own groceries, jack off.
As recompense, as a consolation prize, here is the world: Icelandic novelists and leaf-cutter ants, a long line of drunks sitting here at the bar in Des Moines on an afternoon in January when I was, for a very short time, the hottest man in the bar.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Of Visions
Recently at the sauna I met a 6'5" blonde Dutch muscle god, who as we lay together in a cubicle after sex, told me that he had had three visions.
He'd been an opera star in America but came back to Holland to care for his mother after she got cancer. For three years he took care of her and then she died. For two years he grieved, until one night he awoke to find her sitting on the edge of his bed. Just looking at him and loving him. When she vanished (and since that time she is always with me!) the room was full of light, he thought it must be morning, but when he pulled the curtain back it was still night.
The second vision he had was in the hospital -- the lining around his heart was swollen with water and he had to gasp for breath. Dozens of tests had been made but the cause could not be found. He had been prepped for surgery -- the water had to be relieved or he would die. In the hour while he waited, a light came to him and filled his body. When the nurse came to bring him to surgery, he was breathing normally. (And the refrain is always the same: and the doctors had never seen anything like it!)
The third vision was simple: he was out on his balcony in Germany and the light came to him and he saw that God was in the world and he saw that he was God. I say it's simple. It never happened to me. If I go out on a balcony, it's to guess what the weather might be -- and most of the time I'm wrong.
Synchronicity and psychic phenomena were sprinkled liberally throughout his story. For example, when he was suffering in the hospital, his best friend consulted a psychic who without knowing anything! declared "your friend has tears on his heart."
All this was told to me, as we lay together, rather sticky, after sex in a dark plywood cubicle at the day sauna in Amsterdam. I'd told him that I didn't ordinarily get guys like him. The tall Dutch gods generally only want each other, the very pretty or the very young.
"I'm deeper than that," he said. "I'm not religious but I'm very spiritual."
Gosh. Thanks. Let me make sure I understand. You're Saint Francis. I'm the leper.
I'm not religious I'm spiritual. Of all the infinite varieties of bullshit, that is the sentence I personally find most nauseating.
Then again, he was 6'5" and he did love his mother and he had spent the last hour, uh, ardently reciprocating, so I said, "Of course you are" and he went on to tell me his three visions.
"But I'm no better than you," he said, as a CEO or rock star might, knowing full well that he IS better, unutterably, self-evidently better. He's a 6'5" opera star who has seen God. I'm a jug-eared punk with a crippled leg and an unfortunate personality. It's my job to say that he was "gracious and down-to-earth" and consider myself lucky.
I do consider myself lucky, incidentally.
Sometimes I think it would be the easiest job in the world to be a writer of newspaper editorials. Most of the time, two opposite statements are both true. Especially in regard to human beings.
He was a profoundly and authentically spiritual person. C'mon. For three years he gave up his opera career, where death takes only eight minutes and arrives with an aria, to care for his mother. He didn't ask for those visions, they came to him. As for final proof, you'll have to take my word for it. I held him in my arms. There is some radiance that can't be faked.
He was also a shallow puffed-up egotistical ass. He was there to impart his vision -- since he'd already shot his spunk. I had no more right to claim mystic experience of my own than a cornflake.
I mentioned that I was the author of a well-received essay about the practice of Buddhist loving-kindness meditation in sleazy gay bars. But he was not interested, not in spiritual me. The termite.
I am forever amazed by how things can be so true and so false, all at the same time.
For example, how life manages to seem, on one hand, perfectly random and meaningless, and, on the other, as intricately and thoughtfully plotted as a door-stop Victorian novel, an old-fashioned one, unapologetically heavy-handed with impossible coincidences and deus ex machina.
Does life seem this way to you? Sometimes it's a monkey at the typewriter. Other times I want to clutch my hair and howl mad scientist style: Everything iz connected!
The 6'5" opera god lives in a world where everything has meaning and synchronicity spills out in every direction. I want to live in that world, too. Sometimes I think I do. Then there are times that magical thinking seems positively inspid, as if one day I had an epiphany: "Ohmigod! It IS all about me after all!" As if God were only an all-inclusive travel agent making sure the prize in the Crackerjack box has a special meaning for me personally.
Then again, there is a convincing case to be made, I believe, for the idea that God, at some point in the twentieth century, became exhausted by the population boom, and rather than puzzling out individual destinies, decided just to assign people plots from literature. My life, for example, is a transparently cobbled together mish-mash of common summaries. (I suspect God did not even take the time to read the book and thus we live out lives based on the Cliffs Notes.) My childhood was King Lear -- bad enough, followed by "The Fall of the House of Usher" -- even worse. Now I'm basically re-living Don Quixote, which is bruising, but, on the plus side, also very funny. It's a disco queer Quixote re-mix actually, wherein Don Quixote and Sancho Panzo are married -- but more about that some other time.
On the off chance that I am ever a ghost, peering back from the edges of life, what I will miss most are these small peculiar events, as when a hunk in a sex dive wants to discuss his spiritual life, or, on the Metro in Madrid, a man with an accordion begins to sing, and must sing double-quick so that he can collect his coins before the next station arrives.
Meaningful or meaningless? I am completely convinced of both. Adorable, certainly -- also obnoxious. And I do feel lucky (also unlucky) to be marooned in a such a world.
(10.22.08, Amsterdam)
(11.19.08, Madrid),
He'd been an opera star in America but came back to Holland to care for his mother after she got cancer. For three years he took care of her and then she died. For two years he grieved, until one night he awoke to find her sitting on the edge of his bed. Just looking at him and loving him. When she vanished (and since that time she is always with me!) the room was full of light, he thought it must be morning, but when he pulled the curtain back it was still night.
The second vision he had was in the hospital -- the lining around his heart was swollen with water and he had to gasp for breath. Dozens of tests had been made but the cause could not be found. He had been prepped for surgery -- the water had to be relieved or he would die. In the hour while he waited, a light came to him and filled his body. When the nurse came to bring him to surgery, he was breathing normally. (And the refrain is always the same: and the doctors had never seen anything like it!)
The third vision was simple: he was out on his balcony in Germany and the light came to him and he saw that God was in the world and he saw that he was God. I say it's simple. It never happened to me. If I go out on a balcony, it's to guess what the weather might be -- and most of the time I'm wrong.
Synchronicity and psychic phenomena were sprinkled liberally throughout his story. For example, when he was suffering in the hospital, his best friend consulted a psychic who without knowing anything! declared "your friend has tears on his heart."
All this was told to me, as we lay together, rather sticky, after sex in a dark plywood cubicle at the day sauna in Amsterdam. I'd told him that I didn't ordinarily get guys like him. The tall Dutch gods generally only want each other, the very pretty or the very young.
"I'm deeper than that," he said. "I'm not religious but I'm very spiritual."
Gosh. Thanks. Let me make sure I understand. You're Saint Francis. I'm the leper.
I'm not religious I'm spiritual. Of all the infinite varieties of bullshit, that is the sentence I personally find most nauseating.
Then again, he was 6'5" and he did love his mother and he had spent the last hour, uh, ardently reciprocating, so I said, "Of course you are" and he went on to tell me his three visions.
"But I'm no better than you," he said, as a CEO or rock star might, knowing full well that he IS better, unutterably, self-evidently better. He's a 6'5" opera star who has seen God. I'm a jug-eared punk with a crippled leg and an unfortunate personality. It's my job to say that he was "gracious and down-to-earth" and consider myself lucky.
I do consider myself lucky, incidentally.
Sometimes I think it would be the easiest job in the world to be a writer of newspaper editorials. Most of the time, two opposite statements are both true. Especially in regard to human beings.
He was a profoundly and authentically spiritual person. C'mon. For three years he gave up his opera career, where death takes only eight minutes and arrives with an aria, to care for his mother. He didn't ask for those visions, they came to him. As for final proof, you'll have to take my word for it. I held him in my arms. There is some radiance that can't be faked.
He was also a shallow puffed-up egotistical ass. He was there to impart his vision -- since he'd already shot his spunk. I had no more right to claim mystic experience of my own than a cornflake.
I mentioned that I was the author of a well-received essay about the practice of Buddhist loving-kindness meditation in sleazy gay bars. But he was not interested, not in spiritual me. The termite.
I am forever amazed by how things can be so true and so false, all at the same time.
For example, how life manages to seem, on one hand, perfectly random and meaningless, and, on the other, as intricately and thoughtfully plotted as a door-stop Victorian novel, an old-fashioned one, unapologetically heavy-handed with impossible coincidences and deus ex machina.
Does life seem this way to you? Sometimes it's a monkey at the typewriter. Other times I want to clutch my hair and howl mad scientist style: Everything iz connected!
The 6'5" opera god lives in a world where everything has meaning and synchronicity spills out in every direction. I want to live in that world, too. Sometimes I think I do. Then there are times that magical thinking seems positively inspid, as if one day I had an epiphany: "Ohmigod! It IS all about me after all!" As if God were only an all-inclusive travel agent making sure the prize in the Crackerjack box has a special meaning for me personally.
Then again, there is a convincing case to be made, I believe, for the idea that God, at some point in the twentieth century, became exhausted by the population boom, and rather than puzzling out individual destinies, decided just to assign people plots from literature. My life, for example, is a transparently cobbled together mish-mash of common summaries. (I suspect God did not even take the time to read the book and thus we live out lives based on the Cliffs Notes.) My childhood was King Lear -- bad enough, followed by "The Fall of the House of Usher" -- even worse. Now I'm basically re-living Don Quixote, which is bruising, but, on the plus side, also very funny. It's a disco queer Quixote re-mix actually, wherein Don Quixote and Sancho Panzo are married -- but more about that some other time.
On the off chance that I am ever a ghost, peering back from the edges of life, what I will miss most are these small peculiar events, as when a hunk in a sex dive wants to discuss his spiritual life, or, on the Metro in Madrid, a man with an accordion begins to sing, and must sing double-quick so that he can collect his coins before the next station arrives.
Meaningful or meaningless? I am completely convinced of both. Adorable, certainly -- also obnoxious. And I do feel lucky (also unlucky) to be marooned in a such a world.
(10.22.08, Amsterdam)
(11.19.08, Madrid),
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
George W Bush: Vindicated At Last?
It may be that George W. Bush is about to be vindicated. Keep an eye out -- the bastard may yet turn out to have been right about everything.
The Bush administration will be utterly vindicated if -- on January 20th 2009 -- we find, under the mattress, three trillion dollars. Three trillion, better make it five. Five trillion dollars, somewhat damp and crumpled since we forgot we had it and put it through the laundry.
And if this turns out to be true, whoa, we are really going to owe George W. Bush an apology.
George W. Bush's environmental policies may be about to be vindicated. His frontier-attitude will be found to be entirely correct if -- on January 20th 2009 -- we find a new treasure trove of natural resources to exploit, as George W Bush has so fearlessly led us to exploit. If we discover, in an old coat pocket, say, a Brazil's worth of rainforest and Greenland's worth of ice.
Actually, considering the damage we've done, we'd better hope to find, in our attics and our basements, alongside the Civil War uniforms and the Atari cartridges -- another planet, brand-new. A gloriously exploitable brand-new planet, maybe two planets, or three at the rate we are going.
If this turns out to be the case, well, the policies of the Bush Administration will turn out to be entirely reasonable.
After all, he always said he protecting us. And perhaps he is about to be vindicated. It may yet turn out that clean water, which he has steadfastly opposed, is actually very bad for us. What if pure oxygen is carcinogenic? Well, then, we can thank George Bush. And it may yet turn out that civil rights are bad for us and we'll be grateful to George W. Bush for taking rights away from us.
Watch: Massachusetts may soon be reduced to a smoldering mass of purple ooze. Why? Turns out gay marriage really was dangerous after all!
And, if all this turns out to be true, well, then we'd better all apologize to George W. Bush, that bastard, because he turned out to be right about everything, after all.
The Bush administration will be utterly vindicated if -- on January 20th 2009 -- we find, under the mattress, three trillion dollars. Three trillion, better make it five. Five trillion dollars, somewhat damp and crumpled since we forgot we had it and put it through the laundry.
And if this turns out to be true, whoa, we are really going to owe George W. Bush an apology.
George W. Bush's environmental policies may be about to be vindicated. His frontier-attitude will be found to be entirely correct if -- on January 20th 2009 -- we find a new treasure trove of natural resources to exploit, as George W Bush has so fearlessly led us to exploit. If we discover, in an old coat pocket, say, a Brazil's worth of rainforest and Greenland's worth of ice.
Actually, considering the damage we've done, we'd better hope to find, in our attics and our basements, alongside the Civil War uniforms and the Atari cartridges -- another planet, brand-new. A gloriously exploitable brand-new planet, maybe two planets, or three at the rate we are going.
If this turns out to be the case, well, the policies of the Bush Administration will turn out to be entirely reasonable.
After all, he always said he protecting us. And perhaps he is about to be vindicated. It may yet turn out that clean water, which he has steadfastly opposed, is actually very bad for us. What if pure oxygen is carcinogenic? Well, then, we can thank George Bush. And it may yet turn out that civil rights are bad for us and we'll be grateful to George W. Bush for taking rights away from us.
Watch: Massachusetts may soon be reduced to a smoldering mass of purple ooze. Why? Turns out gay marriage really was dangerous after all!
And, if all this turns out to be true, well, then we'd better all apologize to George W. Bush, that bastard, because he turned out to be right about everything, after all.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Essay 01.12.09
Out. Only because I am afraid to be out. Checking my hair is just an excuse to make sure I've remembered my ears. And that my penis is -- where it should be and not over my shoulder or next door.
Wouldn't I like to have long black hair dyed on one side lipstick red? As it is, one is consigned to being odd 'for no reason that can be pinned down.'
It is the most natural thing in the world for someone like me to love museums. The space between things!
I remember the relief I felt in Chicago when I realized I only had to keep track of the ground floor. I guess I was afraid I might be hit by a falling filing cabinet. Or executive. (It took me several days to arrive at this realization.)
When he was eighty, Miro made art with two lines and three dots. I don't know where he is now. But by now I figure he must be down to one dot.
(Madrid)
Wouldn't I like to have long black hair dyed on one side lipstick red? As it is, one is consigned to being odd 'for no reason that can be pinned down.'
It is the most natural thing in the world for someone like me to love museums. The space between things!
I remember the relief I felt in Chicago when I realized I only had to keep track of the ground floor. I guess I was afraid I might be hit by a falling filing cabinet. Or executive. (It took me several days to arrive at this realization.)
When he was eighty, Miro made art with two lines and three dots. I don't know where he is now. But by now I figure he must be down to one dot.
(Madrid)
18. Birch, Spruce
My father planted a stand of birch trees when I was born. Three trees for his three sons. One was rather spindly and I thought, "That one's me." Three decades later, spindly or not, that one has also grown into a tree. None compare to the blue spruce my father planted for my mother, her last Mother's Day. The blue spruce towers, fragrant, over the house.
Friday, January 09, 2009
17. Woodsman
I swam splashing to the raft -- to discourage hungry bass and also to attract the legendary scary hunky homo woodsman -- gay yeti of the Granite State -- wandering afoot at night clad in boots and overalls, smoking a cigar and keeping one hand on his axe handle. I waited naked on the raft surrounded by all that dark water and all that black night. And it was on nights like these I began to think I might just be all right.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
16. Bait
Skinny-dipping in black water, enraptured and scared. The water, I knew, was pleased to receive me. Never mind my crooked body -- the water received me unconditionally. The water generous and teasing, nuzzling me between the legs as I swam.
Also I was scared a small mouth bass might dart up and nip the tip of my dick off. I'd never heard of this happening but I was 100% certain it had occurred somewhere and could happen again. Because the very best bait, as everyone knows, is a small thing wriggling and dangling.
Also I was scared a small mouth bass might dart up and nip the tip of my dick off. I'd never heard of this happening but I was 100% certain it had occurred somewhere and could happen again. Because the very best bait, as everyone knows, is a small thing wriggling and dangling.
Monday, January 05, 2009
15. Lovers
My first lover was a black pond beside a willow tree. An irrigation pond my father dug long before I was born. At sunset when I went to swim, a heron often vaulted up from behind the willow. That heron was a god to me: I addressed prayers to it. Year later, in Amsterdam, I was scandalized to find herons hanging out by the canals, taking donations even, and acting like, you know, birds.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
"When you make peace with uncertainty, you find a kind of liberation. You are freed from bracing yourself against every piece of bad news, and from constantly having to work up a sense of hopefulness in order to act -- which can be exhausting. There's a certain equanimity and moral economy that comes when you are not constantly computing your chance of success."
-- Joanna Macy, World As Lover, World As Self (p. 143)
-- Joanna Macy, World As Lover, World As Self (p. 143)
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Holy Books of Guttersnipe Das: Joanna Macy
World As Lover, World As Self
2nd revised version, Parallax Press, 2007
I read a lot of spiritual books. So many, in fact, I fear I am becoming immune. Most spiritual books seem awfully cheap and flimsy lately. Out of touch. Our world is gravely threatened and all most of these books can offer is a slimmed-down, buffed up self. Washboard abs for a gutted earth. The air is full of carcinogens -- but at least my teeth are white!
For real spirituality, for a view of the self and the world both exhilarating and useful -- see Joanna Macy. Put her picture in the dictionary next to the word 'visionary'. She is helping us re-imagine time, the world and the self. She's not skipping the pain and she's telling the truth.
We say "everything is interconnected" but what does that mean? We produce depleted uranium with a half-life of 4.5 billion years -- how do we even start to think about that kind of time? What if it's already too late? Am I just a drama queen when I cry thinking about the polar bears who drown because they can't find ice on which to rest? These are the questions I have -- and this is the book for them.
I read an earlier version of this book when I was nineteen, sitting in a college library. I remember writing "the forests are my lungs outside the body" and understanding a little bit and reeling. For a week, I staggered around like a man hit on the head with a plank.
If our species and civilization are going to survive, we have to take a humungous leap. Recycling cans and eating blueberries is not going to be enough. Al Gore, Thomas Friedman, Lester Brown are lined up with suggestions but where does the strength and vision necessary for transformation come? For that, Joanna Macy is the best guide I have found.
2nd revised version, Parallax Press, 2007
I read a lot of spiritual books. So many, in fact, I fear I am becoming immune. Most spiritual books seem awfully cheap and flimsy lately. Out of touch. Our world is gravely threatened and all most of these books can offer is a slimmed-down, buffed up self. Washboard abs for a gutted earth. The air is full of carcinogens -- but at least my teeth are white!
For real spirituality, for a view of the self and the world both exhilarating and useful -- see Joanna Macy. Put her picture in the dictionary next to the word 'visionary'. She is helping us re-imagine time, the world and the self. She's not skipping the pain and she's telling the truth.
We say "everything is interconnected" but what does that mean? We produce depleted uranium with a half-life of 4.5 billion years -- how do we even start to think about that kind of time? What if it's already too late? Am I just a drama queen when I cry thinking about the polar bears who drown because they can't find ice on which to rest? These are the questions I have -- and this is the book for them.
I read an earlier version of this book when I was nineteen, sitting in a college library. I remember writing "the forests are my lungs outside the body" and understanding a little bit and reeling. For a week, I staggered around like a man hit on the head with a plank.
If our species and civilization are going to survive, we have to take a humungous leap. Recycling cans and eating blueberries is not going to be enough. Al Gore, Thomas Friedman, Lester Brown are lined up with suggestions but where does the strength and vision necessary for transformation come? For that, Joanna Macy is the best guide I have found.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
14. Insurrection
I avoided my body whenever possible and felt queasy if I went near it, like an illness I just had to live with. Who needs a body, I decided, if you can have a library instead? I thought it was brave and honest to remove myself from circulation, to stamp myself Discard.
Sex, of course, paid no attention to any of this nonsense: bounded right along, puts its paws on my chest and began to slobber. The bears at the zoo began losing hair in places, jimmying the locks, shoving their shorts to the floor, and letting themselves out of their cages.
Sex, of course, paid no attention to any of this nonsense: bounded right along, puts its paws on my chest and began to slobber. The bears at the zoo began losing hair in places, jimmying the locks, shoving their shorts to the floor, and letting themselves out of their cages.
Monday, December 29, 2008
13. Departure
The cats got leukemia and died one after another. Ninety-three slowed down, his belly bloated. I sat with him, fed with sardines, and he purred until he died. A boy should have a dog, my father said, and got me a golden retriever from the pound, a bright generous creature who stayed three days. On the third day it darted across the road and, even though I screamed at it to stay, ran back toward me and was killed by a car. Without animals, the house was uninhabitable. I said I wanted to go away to school. My father had been in that house fifty years; he didn't want to stay there either. He sold it to my brother and later I heard he'd told people, "There was just no way to live there after the dog died."
Friday, December 26, 2008
12. Heart
I believed the farm had a heart. I had found it. In the middle of the swamp the beavers had made, there was thin finger of land that jutted out with tall grass, pricker bushes and saplings. At the tip of it was a stand of bamboo grass with plumes that stayed golden in winter. This was the heart of the farm. It wasn't easy to access but I went there sometimes, if I needed to pray about something important. One afternoon I walked into the swamp and discovered that my father -- because he was a dangerous lunatic -- had taken out the tractor and mowed the spit of land. I did not investigate further but ran home yelling. That night I had a dream that the tractor had stopped just in time and left the golden feathery heart of the farm intact. The next day I walked further into the swamp and discovered that this was true. I extracted a promise from my father to never mow again. I still sometimes call home to check.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
11. Brother
My brother was ten years older than I was. He went away to school, and then to jail; he became a far right reactionary, and through it all he drank. But there was a time, while our mother was still alive, when no one loved the world as much as my brother did. The farmhouse was a zoo. Snakes my brother caught at the well, frogs from the pond; an injured owl lived in his bedroom closet.
Nothing compared to the day he walked down the hill to the house, shouting out my name, calling me to come and see. My mother saw. "God, be careful" and even my father was amazed. I was allowed to look and, with one careful finger, to stroke the wet fur. My brother was famous forever after as the boy who stuck his hand in the pond and pulled out a beaver.
Nothing compared to the day he walked down the hill to the house, shouting out my name, calling me to come and see. My mother saw. "God, be careful" and even my father was amazed. I was allowed to look and, with one careful finger, to stroke the wet fur. My brother was famous forever after as the boy who stuck his hand in the pond and pulled out a beaver.
Monday, December 22, 2008
10. Experiments
The cats were all female -- the only tom cat a visiting stray. Thus every cat had the same grandfather, father and husband. The kittens were increasingly strange. When two were born deformed and died I christened them Orpheus and Icarus and buried them in a tube sock. I was lucky, I think, to have been taught mythology at school.
Friday, December 19, 2008
9. Ninety-three
Ninety-three was most beloved of the cats -- we named him after the interstate my brother found him on. He'd lost his tail, one foot was on backwards, and another was off to the side. He had a peculiar cock-eyed cat grin and couldn't ever quite get his mouth to close. Ninety-three's purr was like an outboard motor. He loved everyone. Many nights I was halfway into the demons' mouths, when Ninety-three hobbled amiably through the doorway to rescue me, grinning in his odd cat way, which meant, "Do not be afraid."
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
8. Cats
Tragedy earned me sympathy: I saved up all the sympathy I earned, supplemented with paternal guilt, and spent it all on cats. A long line of cats, from the Humane Society at first, then the strays and kittens came. (Many cats were required; the farm was bisected by a brutal road.) My father worked, he fell in love, he was important in the town. Many nights I was alone, the farmhouse had fourteen rooms, and the only rooms safe were rooms with cats in them. At night I ran from room to room through the dark with a cat in my arms.
Monday, December 15, 2008
7. Comforter
I remember my mother beneath her green velveteen comforter, her tired and pale face as she studied me in the darkened bedroom. "Don't be like me," she said. "Learn to ride a bicycle. Learn to swim." My father borrowed my toy stethoscope, the night she said her heart felt funny. She died on the operating table. I was seven. Because children were not allowed in hospital rooms, I sat in the lobby and read illustrated Bible stories.
Friday, December 12, 2008
6. Feet
When I was a very small child, my feet had conversations. My hands talked too, of course, but weren't so interesting -- they were too nearby. My right foot was a gregarious bully, making plans and talking television -- an all-American boy foot. My left foot, the crippled one, was quieter. He let the right foot do most of the talking and when he did speak, he apologized. He was a crippled foot and expected everything he said to be mistaken.
Still, he wasn't really so helpless -- or so agreeable. Never mind that he was more or less frozen and resembled a hoof. His leg, it's true, was not as long as the other. Still, he reached the ground and that is the number one qualification for a foot. He had his own resources. Already he was a specialist in mythology. Sometimes he performed in Bible stories and always he trembled when he heard the words: and the angels stirred David's heart with courage.
Still, he wasn't really so helpless -- or so agreeable. Never mind that he was more or less frozen and resembled a hoof. His leg, it's true, was not as long as the other. Still, he reached the ground and that is the number one qualification for a foot. He had his own resources. Already he was a specialist in mythology. Sometimes he performed in Bible stories and always he trembled when he heard the words: and the angels stirred David's heart with courage.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
5. Destiny
The way some children know, at a tender age, that they will be a doctor or a painter -- in that same way I knew, at the age of four, that I was ugly. I was fitted for bifocals -- I had a lazy eye -- and I remember the shame I felt to be an ugly boy. My ugliness was the plot of nightmares. An evil old man with greasy gray hair waited for me on the stairs and chased me through black corridors. If he caught me, he'd tickle me and his touch would make me ugly, even uglier than now. Here was the thing: I was acceptable, barely acceptable, by just a fraction of a hair. If I became point-zero-five percent more ugly, I'd be cast out.
The first time I lost a fingernail, I didn't know they grew back. I looked at that black fingernail and thought, "That's it for me. I'm a goner."
The first time I lost a fingernail, I didn't know they grew back. I looked at that black fingernail and thought, "That's it for me. I'm a goner."
Monday, December 08, 2008
4. Nature
A thousand times I was told to go outdoors but I was an inside child and did not want to go. I wanted to read my books. Nature, I was told, would make me strong. I was dubious. Nature had made me what I was already -- a crippled boy, my left leg withered beneath the knee and, instead of a foot, a crumpled hoof. Many times I had been told that my mother and I had nearly died the day that I was born. That was nature. Nature was not nearly as wholesome or straightforward as people claimed.
Friday, December 05, 2008
3. Surprise
I worried the trash bag under the Christmas tree meant I had been bad. My mother laughed. "We were out of paper, honey. And I was tired." In the trash bag was a gorgeous stuffed bear, not like a toy, but like a real bear, a Kodiak, with realistic mottled fur. Later, I heard my parents fight about the bear. She'd spent more than a hundred dollars. She'd driven all the way to Maine. Still, I can't blame my mother for going to so much trouble, just for some silly bear, that Christmas that was the model of a perfect Christmas ever after, the last Christmas she was alive.
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
2. Bears
When I was six, I lay in a sunbeam on a gold sofa and dreamt of bears. I wanted to get into the cage with them. To bury myself in fur, and be held between dark heavy paws. Each afternoon I slept an hour that way, folded into bears.
Monday, December 01, 2008
1. Apple Tree
When I was eight, my father dug a hole in the backyard, filled it with cement, and planted a dead apple tree. I was supposed to climb on that tree and become healthy and strong -- a real boy. Never mind that the backyard was full of living trees: maple, beech, crabapple, black walnut, pine. Never mind the hundred acres of pear and apple orchards. My father had stripped off all the bark and all little branches. (It must have been a jungle gym he had in mind.) For years that skeleton tree stood in the middle of the backyard. I was careful to never go near it.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
THE OUT-OF-MINDERS : a short introduction
There exist a group of people (never mind how many -- they themselves have no idea and anyway do not wish to be counted) devoted to being forgotten. To vanish, they believe, is the flower, the firework, of an ideal life. They aim to live entirely, to die and leave no residue, not on the earth or in the mind.
In the public imagination, the Out-of-Minders are known almost entirely for their pronounced aversion to trash. Their horror and aversion upon being offered, say, a plastic lid, may seem to us extreme. A styrofoam cup, a plastic spoon, a swizzle stick, is a stake driven deep in the thick hide of the future. To an Out-of-Minder, every object is in danger of becoming a monument.
Out-of-Minders regret the attention given to recent events at nuclear processing facilities at which Out-of-Minders, arrested for protesting, were unable to present government-recognized identification* and purported, furthermore, to have forgotten not only their Social Security Numbers, but also their names at birth. They are sorry for police headaches and hope the incidents will be swiftly forgotten.
To know the Out-of-Minders only for their attitudes toward trash and waste however, is like knowing Digambara Jains only for their face masks and fly whisks. Behind these beliefs is perhaps a complex philosophy of beliefs, motives or ideas -- though it is true that no Out-of-Minder will admit to this.
Out of Minders wish to disappear entirely after death -- and in the meantime keep a low profile. They eschew interviews, awards, accolades, titles. (There are rumors some Out-of-Minders pursue higher education and may even receive advanced degrees--but no Out-of-Minder can be found who will confess to doing so.) Seeking anonymity, Out-of-Minders use flimsy aliases, quickly switching from one to another lest they become known or, as they say, "solidified". There is nothing they fear so much as becoming important.
Refusing awards and burning certificates, Out-of-Minders do not wish to be given credit for anything. Not infrequently they are caught trying to pawn off their best achievements on others. An Out-of-Minder painter signed his work 'anonymous' -- until he became known for it -- and thereafter signed his paintings Bertrand Russell, Charlotte Web, or Miro.
The few Out-of-Minders who can be coaxed to speak give names so flimsy and generic they are hardly names at all -- Brian Williams, John Mack, Cate May** -- and insist, furthermore, that they do not speak in any way officially, but only for themselves. These Out-of-Minders emphasize their beliefs should not be mistaken for nihilism or an ideology of disconnection. Not seeking to "make their mark", not wishing to succeed, they focus instead on the cultivation of a small number of close personal friendships. They desire to be known, fully and idiosyncratically, by a small circle of people and for that knowledge to be obliterated upon the death of the last friend in their circle.
Research into the Out-of-Minder movement has proven uniquely frustrating. The Out-of-Minders delight in providing false or nonsensical information. Thus the highly embarrassing recent 'expose' in which were written statements such as "pineapples are routinely worshipped" or "auto-fellatio is that for which we earnestly strive". Used in their presence, the phrase 'Out-of-Minder Movement' may produce screams of hilarity, horror, or derision. Whole dissertations on the Out-of-Minders have been written and then have mysteriously disappeared, often with their authors, who had lost interest in receiving a PhD, or no longer had a name to pin it on. The few snippets which have been published are buried in magazines read by virtually no one.
The Out-of-Minders themselves, when intermittently located, refuse to give any indication of whether they now number in the tens of thousands, or if they are like members of a dying language, who aim to say a few more words amongst themselves and then fall silent forever.
In unguarded moments, the Out-of-Minders seem to find us, who seek names and accolades, as frustrating as we find them. Clearly it annoys them to explain, for the twentieth time, that, yes, they really do want to be entirely forgotten, and that losing everything is the best thing that could happen.
_____________
* Cereal box tops and soup labels were deemed unacceptable forms of I.D., even for a man named 'Turkey Noodle'.
* * A web search on these names produces absolutely no useful information whatsoever. All you learn is that Cate may or, then again, Cate might not.
(Madrid, 11.24.08)
In the public imagination, the Out-of-Minders are known almost entirely for their pronounced aversion to trash. Their horror and aversion upon being offered, say, a plastic lid, may seem to us extreme. A styrofoam cup, a plastic spoon, a swizzle stick, is a stake driven deep in the thick hide of the future. To an Out-of-Minder, every object is in danger of becoming a monument.
Out-of-Minders regret the attention given to recent events at nuclear processing facilities at which Out-of-Minders, arrested for protesting, were unable to present government-recognized identification* and purported, furthermore, to have forgotten not only their Social Security Numbers, but also their names at birth. They are sorry for police headaches and hope the incidents will be swiftly forgotten.
To know the Out-of-Minders only for their attitudes toward trash and waste however, is like knowing Digambara Jains only for their face masks and fly whisks. Behind these beliefs is perhaps a complex philosophy of beliefs, motives or ideas -- though it is true that no Out-of-Minder will admit to this.
Out of Minders wish to disappear entirely after death -- and in the meantime keep a low profile. They eschew interviews, awards, accolades, titles. (There are rumors some Out-of-Minders pursue higher education and may even receive advanced degrees--but no Out-of-Minder can be found who will confess to doing so.) Seeking anonymity, Out-of-Minders use flimsy aliases, quickly switching from one to another lest they become known or, as they say, "solidified". There is nothing they fear so much as becoming important.
Refusing awards and burning certificates, Out-of-Minders do not wish to be given credit for anything. Not infrequently they are caught trying to pawn off their best achievements on others. An Out-of-Minder painter signed his work 'anonymous' -- until he became known for it -- and thereafter signed his paintings Bertrand Russell, Charlotte Web, or Miro.
The few Out-of-Minders who can be coaxed to speak give names so flimsy and generic they are hardly names at all -- Brian Williams, John Mack, Cate May** -- and insist, furthermore, that they do not speak in any way officially, but only for themselves. These Out-of-Minders emphasize their beliefs should not be mistaken for nihilism or an ideology of disconnection. Not seeking to "make their mark", not wishing to succeed, they focus instead on the cultivation of a small number of close personal friendships. They desire to be known, fully and idiosyncratically, by a small circle of people and for that knowledge to be obliterated upon the death of the last friend in their circle.
Research into the Out-of-Minder movement has proven uniquely frustrating. The Out-of-Minders delight in providing false or nonsensical information. Thus the highly embarrassing recent 'expose' in which were written statements such as "pineapples are routinely worshipped" or "auto-fellatio is that for which we earnestly strive". Used in their presence, the phrase 'Out-of-Minder Movement' may produce screams of hilarity, horror, or derision. Whole dissertations on the Out-of-Minders have been written and then have mysteriously disappeared, often with their authors, who had lost interest in receiving a PhD, or no longer had a name to pin it on. The few snippets which have been published are buried in magazines read by virtually no one.
The Out-of-Minders themselves, when intermittently located, refuse to give any indication of whether they now number in the tens of thousands, or if they are like members of a dying language, who aim to say a few more words amongst themselves and then fall silent forever.
In unguarded moments, the Out-of-Minders seem to find us, who seek names and accolades, as frustrating as we find them. Clearly it annoys them to explain, for the twentieth time, that, yes, they really do want to be entirely forgotten, and that losing everything is the best thing that could happen.
_____________
* Cereal box tops and soup labels were deemed unacceptable forms of I.D., even for a man named 'Turkey Noodle'.
* * A web search on these names produces absolutely no useful information whatsoever. All you learn is that Cate may or, then again, Cate might not.
(Madrid, 11.24.08)
My Immortality
Aspiring fools of words -- and I am one -- dream of artful editions of 500, with an elegant typeface and covers handmade on the letterpress. To be read by sophisticated contemplative people -- as well as a few nice-looking barbarians who maybe didn't actually read the book, but are anyway willing to sleep with the author. Money and fame are unnecessary, thank you, I would just like to communicate, connect and in some small way matter.
Still, I wonder what this imagination is worth, when it is so slow to catch up with the current situation. When Shakespeare has been forgotten a thousand years, the plastic coffee lids through which I sipped while I thought all my deep thoughts will continue to poison birds, to break down further in the ocean, but they will never become nothing.
There is no longer any doubt that I will have, even after my death, significant influence. The fifteen or so transcontinental flights I took, while obtaining an MFA, will continue to make a modest, but deeply felt, contribution to the atmosphere. How much difference is there really, on the scale of conspicuous luxury, between MFA and SUV? There are days I feel like a perfectly ornamental human being.
My endless book purchases help support small presses and unheralded writers. But, considering the gas, I've contributed much more generously to jihad and the brutality against women.
It is likely that our trash will outlast our best ideas, to say nothing of what we consider our venial and mortal sins. How can we possibly fast-forward our moral imaginations fast enough to recognize that failures in recycling may be more serious than coveting the neighbor's ass? I doubt any bar fight I ever get myself into will ever do the harm of one trans-Pacific flight.
I write because I don't want to die without the world knowing how I loved it. I mean to witness and to praise -- and meanwhile I play my part in poisoning the world. I hoped to be remembered. Well then, very good: if I think all my plastic, and give it the name "soul", I can be confident that I am, indeed, immortal after all.
(Madrid, 11.25.08)
Still, I wonder what this imagination is worth, when it is so slow to catch up with the current situation. When Shakespeare has been forgotten a thousand years, the plastic coffee lids through which I sipped while I thought all my deep thoughts will continue to poison birds, to break down further in the ocean, but they will never become nothing.
There is no longer any doubt that I will have, even after my death, significant influence. The fifteen or so transcontinental flights I took, while obtaining an MFA, will continue to make a modest, but deeply felt, contribution to the atmosphere. How much difference is there really, on the scale of conspicuous luxury, between MFA and SUV? There are days I feel like a perfectly ornamental human being.
My endless book purchases help support small presses and unheralded writers. But, considering the gas, I've contributed much more generously to jihad and the brutality against women.
It is likely that our trash will outlast our best ideas, to say nothing of what we consider our venial and mortal sins. How can we possibly fast-forward our moral imaginations fast enough to recognize that failures in recycling may be more serious than coveting the neighbor's ass? I doubt any bar fight I ever get myself into will ever do the harm of one trans-Pacific flight.
I write because I don't want to die without the world knowing how I loved it. I mean to witness and to praise -- and meanwhile I play my part in poisoning the world. I hoped to be remembered. Well then, very good: if I think all my plastic, and give it the name "soul", I can be confident that I am, indeed, immortal after all.
(Madrid, 11.25.08)
Note:
Many more stories and essays are available. (Posts to this blog seem more likely to embarrass colleagues and horrify family members than to actually to make their way out to the world. Thus I've limited posts!) If you'd like to read more -- please send a note to guttersnipedas@yahoo.com and I will be delighted to send more work along.
Peace,
G.S. Das
Peace,
G.S. Das
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Holy Books of Guttersnipe Das: Tatyana Tolstaya
(Tatyana Tolstaya, portrait by Akemi Shinohara)
Tatyana Tolstaya
White Walls
New York Review of Books, 2007
If the literary style genie were to suddenly appear--he’s bare-chested, muscled and tattooed like the rest of the genies, but wears spectacles and travels amid a flock of white index cards--I would say to that genie, “I want to be a queer Tatyana Tolstaya.” She is the grand enchantress of the More Is More School, firing off one inspired rant after another. Her characters launch diatribes on why women should have fur tails, or teeth that receive radio signals. Plot matters less than the gleeful generous fireworks of language. Or the plot is the only plot that matters, namely, ‘I’m going to find some meaning and/or delight in this world’.
For more than a year now I’ve been attached to this book; every month I reread a few stories in hopes that they will prove contagious. Most of the stories in magazines seem so stilted and mannerly in comparison, like a respectable dinner party with white wine and filet of sole and the whole time you’re sitting there wishing it would finish already, so you could go out and carouse. Carouse and cavort is what Tolstaya’s stories do--they are parties with dancing and fireworks. The New York Review of Books Classics series has rescued a lot of important books (check out: Walser, Desani, Chaudhuri, Pintorelli, Krudy) but this is one of the very best. And read Tolstaya’s novel The Slynx too, but read this one first.
Tatyana Tolstaya
White Walls
New York Review of Books, 2007
If the literary style genie were to suddenly appear--he’s bare-chested, muscled and tattooed like the rest of the genies, but wears spectacles and travels amid a flock of white index cards--I would say to that genie, “I want to be a queer Tatyana Tolstaya.” She is the grand enchantress of the More Is More School, firing off one inspired rant after another. Her characters launch diatribes on why women should have fur tails, or teeth that receive radio signals. Plot matters less than the gleeful generous fireworks of language. Or the plot is the only plot that matters, namely, ‘I’m going to find some meaning and/or delight in this world’.
For more than a year now I’ve been attached to this book; every month I reread a few stories in hopes that they will prove contagious. Most of the stories in magazines seem so stilted and mannerly in comparison, like a respectable dinner party with white wine and filet of sole and the whole time you’re sitting there wishing it would finish already, so you could go out and carouse. Carouse and cavort is what Tolstaya’s stories do--they are parties with dancing and fireworks. The New York Review of Books Classics series has rescued a lot of important books (check out: Walser, Desani, Chaudhuri, Pintorelli, Krudy) but this is one of the very best. And read Tolstaya’s novel The Slynx too, but read this one first.
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