THE MISSING CHAMBER.

New Fables

I once heard a story about a traveler who, because of a difference of only one inch in the gait of his left and right legs, was condemned to trace endless circles in the desert.

-- Edogawa Rampo

Ghost.

I am a naked ghost who lives in the bathtub. The good news is men climb in with me. Still, I worry I’ll be crushed. (Can ghosts be squashed?)

Certain men can see or kiss me. Never both.

For this particular party I want out of the bathtub. Obviously I need to get dressed.

At first only my clothes are visible. By concentrating I obtain the pointy head of a hysterical woman.

Still, I have no visible hands. Digging for gloves, I try to imagine my way to the head of a man.

As for my penis, it’s a work-in-progress. Don’t inspect it yet, it isn’t ready.

All my training is in being a ghost.

I can never get all my parts straight at once.

Something is always invisible.

Inconvenienced.

Frida Kahlo did not accept her crippled leg and kept it hidden beneath her flowery exotic skirts. “Every year I hate it more,” she said, matter-of-fact and without complaint. I love her for that.

In public I keep peace with my withered leg, its mangled hoof. To inquiries I’ve learned to say, “It’s a birth defect,” in the sunniest possible tone, as if I’d just spotted, in the distance, a bluebird or a cardinal.

Dutifully I strap the foot into its plastic brace, like an aged relative who merits attention even though he can do almost nothing. When I’m alone it’s different—I throw a blanket over it.

Still, it seems shameful to be bothered with it, here on the beach at Sihanoukville, where the mine victims crawl, tourist to tourist, across the beach and the rule seems to be that you can't be a beggar unless you’re missing at least two limbs.

I had a lover once who was paraplegic. A Vietnam vet paralyzed below (not at) the waist. He always insisted he was not crippled. Not disabled either, or handicapped. “Some of my friends are quads. That is crippled,” he insisted. “I am only inconvenienced.”

His arms were extraordinarily strong, especially at night, when, returned in dreams to Vietnam, he grappled in combat and, howling in his sleep, hurled me from the bed.

Self-Love

Ear surgery is a simple process, accomplished in several stages. First, the seduction: that you look good already and soon will look even better. Self-satisfaction loads the body with numbness. Meanwhile the surgeon circles the chair, massaging the scalp, murmuring endearments.

The ear is bitten off all at once.

I, too, wished to be better looking. The surgeon encircles me – but I’m not numb enough and, anyway, I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to love myself just as I am.

Too late. She either doesn’t hear my protests or ignores me. One swipe of her razorish teeth. She holds my severed ear up to the mirror.

Now it’s a simple process to glue the ear flat to the side of the head. Easy! No more protruding ear!

Young Men with Beards

I like to watch young men with beards. Really I ought to control myself. OK, at least try. I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. I already make myself uncomfortable enough.

I am also a man with a beard. Somehow it seems to me, that if I watch men with beards, I could understand myself better. Not that it has worked thus far. (How many years have I been staring now?)

A full beard does serve to animalize the face. It echoes back to our life in the trees. Also there is something pompous about beards. I myself am not required to conform. The rules do not apply to me. Especially young men with beards, with skinny bodies and fuzzy heads, like dandelions, a little bit silly and entirely charming.

I was once a young man with a beard. Never once did I allot myself a moment of approval or tenderness.

I would like to make up for it now, by lapping at the bearded young men, by assuring them that they are ridiculous, but also entirely captivating.

Oh to stroke the beards of young men until self-love wells up in them! Until I, too, begin to weep.

Mad Turk

Actually I’m not exactly related to my family. For example, my brothers. We have the same mother, of course. Also the father is the same. However, in my case, a third person is implicated. A mad Turk, by the looks of it.

I am not sure of the mechanics when three people decide to make a baby. But you can be sure that sodomy was involved.

As such, it is to be expected that I occupy a somewhat lower position within the family. My father is a ruler. My brothers are rulers, too.

All right, so it’s only a pumpkin patch, a series of pumpkin patches – but you wouldn’t believe what suburban commuters will pay for a squash nowadays!

All this mad Turk business is a little embarrassing for my family. But mostly it is overwhelmingly convenient. It is only inconvenient for me.

Admittedly I have no idea what I’d do with myself, if I suddenly turned out to matter.

One brother is sensible and allies himself to power. The other brother is famous for being tender-hearted and gentle.

It’s true that he only threatens to kill people on approximately half of the evenings. Arabs, Democrats, my father.

As I am of Turkish descent, this bothers me somewhat, but I try not to take it personally.

What I think is that three people really ought to be careful, when they decide to make a baby!

It is to be expected that my father should have mixed feelings about me. After all, that mad Turk sodomized my mother. (Or did the mad Turk sodomize my father?)

Nonetheless, my father sometimes calls me. He has certain favorite subjects. His number one favorite subject is why respect is more important to him than love.

(It is many years now since my mother escaped, screaming obscenities and waving a gun. Because it was the sensible thing to do.)

It is the rarity of a thing which makes it desirable. Love is available -- respect nearly impossible. As is well known, love is often unrequited. Respect, however, must be mutual.

From time to time I appear at the family table, doing my best to appear subservient, amenable and correct. Or so I think. Then I overhear one brother say to the other, “Look at him, acting like he’s so special – just because of some mad Turk!”

The Missing Chamber

As the guidebooks say, the guesthouse is a destination in itself.

There are rooms with fan or aircon, with hammocks, with river views. There is a spectacular garden where everything flourishes. There’s a first-rate restaurant, an elegant bar afloat on the river. Wifi is available but there’s little chance to use it, as one is constantly making friends. The guesthouse is family-run. The mother is resplendent, teaches college, carries plates and raises sons. The handsome father is a first-rate storyteller. One sturdy son demands his allowance before collapsing into laughter.

Then there is a more a delicate son. He sometimes turns blue. His heart has only three chambers. His prognosis is uncertain; his medicine comes smuggled in a diplomatic bag. His father isn’t sure if he should go to college or not. It’s strenuous -- the father thinks the boy should do exactly as he likes, be a painter or a poet. No one knows how much time he’s got. It could be anytime, might be today or might not.

It is a destination in itself. Most remarkable of all is how the entire place is run and maintained, not only with order but also with such extravagant generosity and sweetness, and all by one little boy, using only just the missing chamber of his heart.

Notes for Another Essay on Vientiane

First thing, I go to meditate at the wat. But the monks are ready for a chat. “Tip” is a novice monk, he’s 21 and he’s in his first year at the monastic college, studying Buddhism and mathematics. Tip’s got a weedy little moustache. Instead of his upper robe, he’s got a hot pink towel around his shoulders. He wants to know if I think Lao girls are beautiful.

“I think everyone’s beautiful,” I say, helplessly.

Inside the wat he teaches me how to ring the gong -- not by striking it, but by rubbing the metal center to produce a tone. I show him how devotees prostrate in India and he teaches me the correct way to bow in Laos. It is a much quieter, less dramatic, motion that an Indian or Tibetan prostration. He shows me how to kneel, where to place my hands.

Tip’s called away to help with offerings up front. The monks seem to assist more than officiate. It isn’t like Hinduism or Catholicism – the monks aren’t middlemen. Devotees do most of the worship themselves.

I am grateful to be left alone. Lately it seems I cry all the damn time. Every single happy thing, like learning how to bow.

The legless man on the board with wheels greets shoppers pleasantly as they enter the international market. He’s wearing a shirt with a collar and parts his hair in the middle. I wonder if he has ever passed through the automatic glass doors to the market, where there are 16 varieties of olive oil for sale. 50,000 kip for sea salt and vinegar kettle chips from London. 45,000 kip for red lentils from France. And the gentleman on the board with wheels is strenuously grateful to anyone who tosses him 500 kip – five cents -- on their way out the door.

As usual, I am entirely backwards. At 18 the poverty of India hardly fazed me at all. I am getting more outraged as I go along.

The international market has a full array of produce -- at ten times the price outside. There is not one single thing that can be touched. Even a carrot comes between plastic wrap and Styrofoam.

The privilege of wealth is to be removed, to remain on the other side of the glass. Especially as the world heats up, becomes poisoned, falls to war, and falls apart. To be removed: to drink from plastic and eat from plastic, to move from one air-conditioned room to the next, to exfoliate with tiny plastic beads before applying moisturizer with sunblock, to wear a condom, to die, be burnt, and be put in an urn.

That is why the scattering of ashes is such an important ceremony: for a lot of folks it’s their first time out of the box.

Lek is doing one of the most important jobs I can imagine: he’s a diplomat on behalf of the Mekong River, working to create agreements between the 6 countries on its shores. Travels the world to educate people about erosion and sedimentation and pollution. “Except the countries do not care,” he says. “They don’t care in the least. Not even a little. Not even when it’s their own people. What they want is money. The NGOs are useless. The UN is absolutely the worst.”

Lek works for the UN.

“But – it’s for the river. What better way could there be to spend your human life?” I can’t help saying things like this – I attended a New Age university.

“I’m going to quit my job and get another,” Lek says. “In two weeks I’ll hate that one too. What I want to do all day is fuck. When my dick gets tired, I’ll go to the gym for awhile. I’m finding out that life is short.”

I sit writing notes at The Pizza Company, eating a Hawaiian Pan Pizza. It’s so cold I wish I’d brought a parka, one of those puffy ones that resemble beehives.

Every day there is less of me and still there is far too much. Moments rush through me like trains through a tunnel.

On Attempting to Return to Vientiane

Three days ago I returned, after five years, to Vientiane. Or, rather, I attempted to return. It was the same street certainly, Th Fa Ngum. But on the right side, where there used to be a long row of noodle shops, guesthouses and locally owned businesses, there are now espresso bars, handbag shops, convenience marts, and at least two places for TexMex.

On the left side there used to be a river.

I guess it’s back there somewhere, though you can’t see it from the road anymore. The river has moved away.

Five years ago I wrote an essay about Vientiane. A charming period piece, it turns out, about a city that no longer exists. Like the colorful narratives of 19^th century British India, scholars may wish to read my essay, to imagine what Vientiane was like, in faraway 2005. A place where dogs could sleep in the street without coming to harm. I waxed rapturous about eating morning glories in the green strip alongside the river. There is no river now and no green, but there are still little places to get morning glories, sandwiched between the street and a parking lot.

Walking down Th Fa Ngum I find myself suffused with disapproval, sneering at my fellow travelers, fully half of whom are engrossed in the worship of their chosen form of technology: laptop, iPad, palm pilot, hypno-phone.

I am an insufferable snob.

I must take care not to become intoxicated, lest I ask someone, “Why can’t you just drink cappuccino, eat TexMex, surf the Web, and stay home?” One punch from one of these sturdy European boys would lay me flat. They are very sturdy these boys, gym-toned, ornamentally rugged. They’re absolutely dreamy.

These tanned and stubbly, dusty and hunky white boys are too gorgeous to resent for long. One look from them and I am ready to throw up my hands. Oh, what the hell -- colonize me too! Merge me with your vast foreign conglomerate!

***

Jacob, painter and wanderer, sits on the patio at the Mixay Paradise Hotel, gathers his long yellow-gray beard into an elastic, and says, The Mekong doesn’t pull me anymore. It is too diminished. But the sky above the Mekong – it is magnificent! It is as if, with China cutting off the flow, the Mekong has moved its drama to the sky!

***

It does not appear any restoration has been done at Wat Si Saket since I was here last. However, I did find some repairs underway. Green tin sheets cover the roof of the wat and workmen clamber over a few nailed-together boards. My tally: nine workmen, one pair of sneakers, eight pairs of flip-flops, one helmet. The workmen are cheerful and welcoming: they grin at me and shout down from the roof.

I stop waving to them. I don’t want them to wave. I want them to hold on with both hands.

Wat Si Saket is the oldest wat in Vientiane. Despite appearing run-down, it is beautiful and atmospheric. There is no attendant, not even in the central sanctuary. Many of the niches are missing their Buddha images. There is no one to sweep the floor.

Wat Si Saket was built in 1818, its oldest buddhas date from the 15^th century. Ideally, this wat would receive as much attention as the new Chinese-run guesthouse where I stay, where the floors are always immaculate, despite the steady traffic of backpackers here in rainy season. At my excellent guesthouse there are never fewer than eight staff people present to ensure that one does not nick an extra packet of Nescafe.

Ideally the restoration of Wat Si Saket would be done with the same level of care and expertise granted to espresso bars on the riverfront.

The foreman holds his ledger over his head to keep from being hit by falling tiles. It’s a good idea – one smashes just a few feet from me. Immediately I begin to twist the ethical arithmetic: if one of these old tiles hits me – can I keep it?

***

At the bar, just shy of 1am, a Danish entrepreneur explains his business plan to me. He would like to provide steady work for the disabled. In telemarketing. In telemarketing you need a really thick skin. The first few weeks can be really rough. People are nasty. It’s ideal work for the disabled – people are nasty to them already. They’re used to it. Telemarketing is just more of the same. Gives them a chance to support themselves. Also it is ideal because disabled people don’t have any other options.

***

Of course Vientiane has not really been spoiled, it has only sprouted a barnacle, a carbuncle, a wart, or hemorrhoid of profitable nonsense.

What a snob! Do I expect the youth of the world to suffer properly, with no luxuries permitted beyond an occasional banana pancake? Do the hard working employees of NGOs not deserve their Belgian beers? Do I disapprove also of antibiotics, of aero planes? Do I think that it is good to be inconvenienced?

I guess I am suspicious. I live in Tokyo after all. Therefore I know it is possible to be convenienced clear to death.

***

All right, full disclosure. I do not mean to excuse my action, only to unburden myself, and to maintain a level of honesty with my audience.

I went to the TexMex restaurant. Which I criticized previously. In my opinion, a TexMex restaurant in Vientiane is not a business that merits patronage. However, I myself patronized it. And, in defense of those patrons, at no point did I see anyone order food. It’s a beer joint basically, with lots of working girls. Only one reprobate actually went so far as to order food – myself.

You see, I have a weakness – Cousin Isabel might call it an obsession -- for TexMex. Even, or especially, bad TexMex. I have eaten some of the very worst TexMex on Earth. In places like Tokyo, Thailand, or Quebec – places for which TexMex was never meant. Ask my husband for verification. I have dragged him to these places. (My husband: pause to contemplate the suffering of this person.)

The nachos were only deep-fried disks of white flour. Nonetheless, I enjoyed them. The guacamole was avocado, garlic, lemon – also very much enjoyed.

I ought to have been eating vegetable noodle soup, or laap with sticky rice. Instead I was eating TexMex. Please understand: my father is in the process of selling the family’s most beautiful orchard. I was acting out.

I do not intend in any way to excuse my action.

As I sat drinking BeerLao, contemplating the demolition of my nachos and the farm, in fact as I was writing this confession, a dark shape hurtled beneath my table, jack-knifed across the patio of the TexMex bar: a crippled man.

A cripple myself, I am a student of cripples, and never have I seen a man crawl with such agility and speed, despite his two useless twisted feet. He slithered across the floor, over a moped and onto his makeshift wheelchair. He circled the block once and, as he passed the bar again, he let out a loud fierce maniacal cackle, which caused the TexMex patrons to all look up -- and then smile nervously at each other.

Avenging fury -- he seemed as much a spirit as a man.

***

That night, no matter how many times I woke up, I returned always to the same dream. To the same hotel. A vast and luxurious hotel, large enough to serve, almost, as its own world. A perfectly convincing British pub occupied one floor and on another there was a sushi bar. There was a Thai place, and a Swedish place: authentic meatballs, loganberries. There was a place for golf and a place for sex and a place for video games. The hotel was so large there was even space for riding horses!

The elite, such as myself, spent their lives at this hotel. It was immense and offered so many environments, no many luxuries, so many eating experiences.

This was a very good thing – because the world outside the hotel was terrible, and getting worse all the time. Outside the hotel was a wasteland at war, where the poor lived out their lives in terror and hunger. Where the poor lived with ever-increasing anger.

Meanwhile I lived in the luxury hotel, moving from one floor to the other, sliding down the bannisters, considering myself both adventurous and sophisticated. Still, there was always the fear of the world outside. I’d been there several times -- never for more than a few minutes. A terrifying place.

Anyway, now was the time to enjoy the hotel. I ought to immerse myself in it now, while I had the chance. The hotel could only last so long. The world outside was increasingly desperate. The outside wanted in.

An Evening in Soi Twilight

Admittedly I get tired of the Americans who assume I am a sex tourist. Because that is all they know about Bangkok. And even about sex tourism, clearly, they do not know much.

Believe me: if you spent a sober hour in a go-go boy bar, watching exactly what goes on, not only would you not buy sex – you would not be tempted.

Or rather: to buy sex your own level of anguish would have to be extreme, or your skill at blindness highly practiced. Your loneliness would need to be at a near-fatal level. None of which excuses anyone from anything -- though others who have known desperation may harbor secret sympathy. Which they would be wise to keep to themselves.

I remain on the periphery of these places – because that is my district, my territory and vocation. These boys bearing numbers are my smudged little brothers, these tottering old johns are my very own despicable uncles. I’m a guttersnipe.

Soi Twilight (or Soi Pratuchai, or Soi Boy, as it is also called) has clearly been hurt by the unrest and economic downturn. The Banana bar is closed. The door to Future Boys is boarded up. The little street looks forlorn without all its lights, like a Christmas tree with bulbs burnt out. Fresh Beach Boys must be nearly out of business; the johns walk in and walk right back out again. At Bangkok Massage, where there used to be a crowd of boys in blue shorts teasing men as they walked past, there are now only two or three, playing with their phones and looking bored.

Jennifer, the cordial Hong Kong transvestite who perennially holds court on Soi Twilight, with her pearlescent flowing blouse, her ponytail and dangling earrings, says the best show is still at X Size and anyway, “They take good care of you there.”

One thing that perplexed me as a child was that, not only were there things I was not supposed to do, there were things I was not supposed to know. I was the kid the other kids asked the meaning of dirty words. (How did I explain cunnilingus? It must have been absolutely hilarious.) I was always in trouble for what I knew. Even when it was something that everyone knew – I was in trouble for admitting that I knew.

This pattern has continued all my life.

This idea of appropriate knowledge is not restricted to sex. Not at all. Most dinner parties would sooner excuse one for discussing fellatio than Afghanistan or the environment. Ignorance, and the pretense of it, is a very important part of being a good person.

I remember the strenuous pride middle-class people in Denver showed at being entirely ignorant of bus routes and schedules. I’d ask someone about a bus and they’d go on at length about how they knew absolutely, totally nothing about the buses, which ferried the poor around town. I’ve never even been inside of one. It was like asking a guy, in front of other guys, for advice about impotency. I wouldn’t know anything about that!

At X Size, like all the bars on this street, the young men stand on stage in white underpants with red plastic numbers attached. The lights at X Size blink continuously red, yellow, white, and it always seems to me that there is one color at least that tells the truth. It’s all a grand show. Blink. The boys are bored, exhausted, and forlorn. Blink. It’s a cabaret.

If you look closely enough at the young man as he grins on stage, or makes eye contact with a johns, or flexes, or arranges his crotch, you can see his mother in a small northern village, his father the farmer and Red Shirt sympathizer, his sister he hopes will never come to the city, his girlfriend with whom he endeavors to forget all the johns of the past two hundred nights.

Business is no good. The young men try to make eye contact with me and I do everything I can to keep my face blank. Nonetheless, hustlers have psychic powers and, before five minutes have past, the roughest of the young men is sitting beside me, saying “We go your hotel? Bar fine 400 baht.” His chest and arms are covered in traditional protective tattoos. He’s straight as an arrow.

Most of the young men have only very rudimentary English skills, yet possess a deep sensitivity to verbs and particularly to the active or passive tense. Pleasantries may not be possible, but no one ever seems to get confused about the difference between “I like to fuck” or “I like to get fucked.”

Also, this young man reminds me of some vocabulary I’d forgotten. Instead of saying “suck”, these men say “smoke”. You don’t suck cock – you smoke it. This does indeed seem more casual and friendly than the word “suck” and the young man is visibly relieved to speak of smoking, rather than fucking. “You smoke me! I smoke you! No problem!”

I respectfully decline; he goes away with a tip.

The principal claim to fame of the X Size show, as far as I can tell, is that the big cock show is also a petting zoo. The well-pumped performers wander the audience and, for a tip, you can feel the heft of the thing in your own hand.

I’ve seen what happens, however, when one of the johns attempts to suddenly publicly deep-throat the monster: the young man jumps back instantly, like one of those little birds from the mouth of a crocodile.

As far as I’m concerned, Bangkok big cock shows could be a positive and life-affirming part of human culture, if only each and every audience member would take a vow, forever thereafter, to shout down any one of the countless racist numbskulls who rant about Asians having small cocks. If I had a dollar for every one of these morons I’ve run across, I could fly business class to Europe.

The fire-eater in his black leather thong twirls the fire and then swallows it. At one point he playfully lights his crotch on fire and then looks around for sympathy – yes, gentlemen, don’t we all hate when this happens?

In between the live sex acts and the shopping segments – when the boys return with their plastic numbers to the stage – there are cabaret acts. The divas take to the stage and lip-sync melodramatic anthems. Ever since I first saw a show, these divas have been my inspiration. Look at her. If she can dance in those three inch heels, with that much energy and spirit and precision, all while wearing that gigantic headdress, and that sheer gown, and those eyelashes large enough to create a breeze, if she can do all that for half a dozen elderly sex tourists, then I too can do my best and not worry about overmuch about rewards, or about those people who condemn me, so as to assure themselves.

The moment I touch my bill the façade of good cheer drops at once, sudden as a power outage. The man who was playfully hassling me a moment before, sits limp and bored. The host counts out change with a flashlight. The show is over – for those of us who have the luxury of going home alone.

Babylon in Decline

Bangkok

It is extraordinarily interesting, this process of coming back to life. It might well be worth seeking out, if only you did not have to be dead so often, and for so long.

The first day I am not even slightly human, the second day I cannot hate myself enough, the third day there are glimmers here and there, a few trees in living color, then back again to the prerecording. The fourth day I am so sick I can barely move across the room.

Today I am still shaky, but I can feel the breeze across my face, and I know that the color in the world is going to win. Every hour it is kicking the heavy radio of worthlessness, self-loathing boombox, and sooner or later, a good stout kick will come and the radio will cut out – and I will not be depressed again for months.

As if Bangkok did not have better things to do than to bring me back to life.

At my favorite restaurant the proprietor says, “19 dead? Bullshit. 400, maybe. They came in with their guns and --” He makes the motion of gunning down a crowd.

“And the government says the Red Shirts they pay the protestors 1000 baht a day. 1000 baht. I’d close my restaurant, send my workers to go make a good salary. Here they only get 200. If the Red Shirts they pay 1000 baht, they have two, three million volunteers in no time!”

I asked him if he’d had to close the restaurant, which is only a five minute walk from Lumpini Park, the center of the protests.

“No, no, we stay open! Every day packed with customers. We hear gunshots from the park and the Red Shirts drive in the street shouting Turn off your lights! What can we do, we have customers. And so we eat by candlelight! Two days no electricity. Gun shots all the time. But we stay open.”

In Sathorn and Silom there are few obvious signs of trouble now – except some businesses have closed – and tourists remain sparse. Of course, there are still some – Bangkok is too integral to SE Asia – and many people’s addictive patterns – to remain neglected for too long.

As for gay Bangkok, of course the sex-addicted golden-agers and the aspiring pedophiles are still here. As well as the flight attendants and the English teachers, those ineradicable mercenaries. We keep our eyes on the ass in front of us and try to pretend everything is as it was before.

There can be no doubt however: Babylon is in decline. The Babylon Sauna: Bangkok’s legendary sex club, with its grand pool and glass walls, with naked pharaohs presiding over the gym equipment and elegant bars amid palms. Now a large disco ball blocks off the hot tub and half the shower stalls are closed. The men cruising the halls reach a locked door and peer through the window: there is construction that does not appear to have been touched in months. Men do not talk about anything else, “This place has really gone downhill, hasn’t it?” They lower their voices. “The owner. . . he has gone mad. Paranoid. He is a pure egoist. Like a diamond. He is entirely out of his mind.”

Nonetheless, we do our best to go on consuming each other, one man after another. The sexual delivery system becomes ever more efficient. Unlike our queer fore-uncles, we needn’t suffer unloved in small towns.

Henry Miller estimated he’d slept with 40 to 50 people in his life. Henry Miller, the cuntstruck libertine! In his life!

I reckon many gay men here do better in a week. With plenty of help, or course, from Viagra and the Internet.

Of course, unlike Henry Miller, we do not have the liberty of actually paying attention to the people we’re screwing. That’s the trouble with men nowadays -- they are so hard to see. You have to really squint, turn up the lights, hold him down by the wrists, to catch a glance at the man in your arms. Mostly the men come and go so quickly they are impossible to see or tell apart, like the blades of a fan.

We consume each other and you can see it in our eyes: good enough, not good enough, good enough, not good enough, good enough, not good enough, not good enough, not good enough.

I am going to sit very quietly now and wait for the color to return.

David Markson, This Is Not A Novel

David Markson, This Is Not a Novel

Counterpoint, 2001

Reading David Markson gives me the blessed illusion, for a few hours, that I possess a mind capable of thinking only interesting thoughts. Suffering and mortality abound -- the average must be about five deaths a page -- but it is imbued with coolness and space, like wandering through a marvelous but unpopular museum on a rainy Tuesday morning.

Markson creates a mosaic of tragic facts. Anecdotes, almost, except that most are only a sentence long. (Looking at a page will be more useful to the prospective reader than any review.)

A friend said, "Looks like a book I'd keep beside the toilet." Well. Certainly you could, and Mr. Markson would be well-pleased I imagine -- but you might find yourself spending all day in the john. The facts, and the way they are all woven together, is entirely transfixing.

Now that David Markson is dead, it is impossible not to think of his death, in a list with all the other deaths he mentions: David Markson was found dead in his Greenwich Village apartment. Like most of the artists and writers he mentions, he deserved vastly more honor and notice than the world ever provided.

Markson wrote several books in this format and he tried not to repeat event or quote. One place he tripped up was a quote of Emerson's, which he gives in both Reader's Block and This Is Not A Novel. It's worth repeating though, and it's an excellent reason to read Markson: "Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day."

Holy Books of Guttersnipe Das: Jose Saramago

Jose Saramago, Death With Interruptions

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009

It's just so much fun. When the Cardinal calls, outraged, to say that the cessation of death imperils the Church, when the narrator explores the fate of insurance companies or funeral homes in a country without death or launches upon an analysis of the handwriting found on death violet-colored stationery. It's just so much fun.

Saramago skewers society and its institutions -- yet portrays individuals with tenderness and dignity. I think he is one of the best for creating characters who are truly and convincingly good.

Half of the book is spent exploring the idea of a country without death, half to showing what happens when death herself trips up and falls in love. It is all a romp.

Please ignore people who say Saramago is "difficult". They are just trying to make themselves feel elevated -- and we should call their bluff. If you're reading Saramago for the first time, you'll need to accustom yourself to a few differences in the use of punctuation and the paragraph -- innovations which function so smoothly it is likely they will be adopted by other writers.

Two hundred pages of delight and then -- a big bang-up old-fashioned ending that made me catch my breath. Such fun! Especially if mortality's been sending you small shocks lately, this is one to put on top of your reading list.

TOKYO GRAY

"Maybe gray is the Japanese favorite color," Chiyo says, when I complain, again, that Tokyo is so gray, when I ask, for the hundredth time, why it must always be gray.

Chiyo is my closest Japanese friend. The one I see most anyway. Money is involved. I am her tutor in English conversation. She pays me a rather exorbitant sum to chat for two hours on Wednesday afternoons. Another lady chats as well -- but it is clear Chiyo is in charge.

After seven years, I know virtually nothing about Chiyo. At least, few of the things an American would expect to learn in the first half hour. I know that she travels regularly on guided tours to unusual destinations: Syria, Bhutan, Eritrea. I know that she also attends lessons in swimming and hula dancing.

Chiyo dyes her hair the green-tinged copper of a penny fished from a wishing well. It is the last color I can imagine anyone wanting their hair. It suits her perfectly. She is perhaps 60. She is perhaps 78. She is perfectly slim, her back straight. Somewhere around year five she let it slip that she was widowed. That was as much as I ever learned about that.

A year or two ago Chiyo retired. I have no idea from what. Whenever I ask her, her smiles gleams. "Please -- " she says "Ask a new question." After seven years of conversation I don't even know the answer to America's Question #1: What do you do? This is my friend -- I don't even know what she does for a living. It makes me feel like I've gotten nowhere at all.

It is also true that she refuses to answer the question with so much grace -- with such a brilliant spark of mischief -- that it really counts as an answer in its own right. Hell, it counts as a career.

Tokyo must be credited for its courtesy, certainly. To permit a foreigner to stay here so long -- and pay him for his knowledge -- when there wasn't a single day when he could say he knew for certain what the hell was going on.

I was a bookstore guy in America. I ran register. I shelved. Here I lecture on Dickinson -- or chat about the weather -- for a not gigantic sum or money, but certainly more than any other country would consider me to merit. I teach in a university. A secretary makes copies for me. It's a well-upholstered life.

I made two close Japanese friends. It took five years before there were two. They were friends like I think of friends. We drank beer and talked about our lives. No money was exchanged. Both of them dropped me, immediately and entirely, the moment they got a boyfriend. Evidently I was just a platonic foreigner, to tide them over until the real thing came along.

After seven years in Tokyo, I have not learned Japanese. How's that for shameful? I can barely manage a few basic phrases. After seven years -- and despite months of intensive lessons. Recently an old woman in an elevator asked, in Japanese, where I was from. I stuttered before I could get the answer out. And felt ashamed enough to weep.

In my defense, it is only the second time I can recall having been asked the question.

In seven years I have been inside three Japanese homes.

Of course, the problem may be me. The problem is so often me.

But in every other country I've visited there were plenty of people with impaired social skills, with shrill voices and odd habits -- and they still had friends. People who smelled bad and asked to borrow money and tended to make off with small pocket-able objects -- and they still had friends.

In Tokyo it is difficult to keep from falling into the assumption that one must have done something terribly wrong -- to wind up so alone.

Recently I have resumed reading large quantities of Japanese literature. It is my way of keeping the door open, of saying that I would still very much like to learn something, connect somewhere. It is an apologetic gesture. A good will gesture. Or at least the determination to act as though there is good will.

The narrator in Izumi Kyoka's story "One Day in Spring" mentions, as he walks through a small village, "the people here branded foreigners 'Blue Goblins' and 'Red Goblin' because of the bright paint they put on their houses." When I brought the story to Chiyo she said, "Yes, red demons and blue demons -- like in the story of Momotaro."

The demons, or oni, have sharp claws and wild hair and two long horns. Often they are shown with extra eyes, fingers or toes. A tiger skin loincloth or an iron club. When the demons weren't looking, the monkey opened the gates of the fort and Momotaro and the spotted dog, rushed in to fight the demons.

Chiyo mentions that years ago she took a trip to Mexico. "I like the colorful houses of Mexico -- but also it is embarrassing a little, I think."

I stare around me at the relentless gray of Tokyo, a jumble of gray boxes trailing electric wires as far as the eye can see. It does not seem to me to be anyone's favorite gray.

Of course I may be wrong. It has already been established that I am never sure what's going on.
However, it is not therefore required that I must pretend to be blind.

To me, the gray of Tokyo is the gray of things that have not been looked at in a long, long time. The gray of temporary and neglected things. When something is painted this color, it is because no one is intended to look at it ever. It's background. But then, what is in front?

I seldom catch anyone looking at Tokyo. Of course when Tokyoites pass by Tokyo Tower, or when a tree is in flower, they hold their cell phone in front of it and press the button.

I see people hurrying, crowds cringing, cramming themselves through Tokyo. In these last few weeks it appears we have passed an important marker: there are now more people looking into devices than out at the world.

Perhaps it is wise to look away -- the world daily becomes more frightening, more polluted and chaotic and upsetting.

The city is crowded and cluttered and gray; the screen is neat and in color.

Sitting on the train, a line of people in an identical posture. Bent over a device they hold with both hands, and stare into determinedly, without break, as though they could thread themselves through it, and away from here.

Just because I have few Japanese friends does not mean there is no one I care for. My tenderness for Japanese people is exacerbated by my inability to express it even a little. There are people I love to whom I have never asked a personal question.

On Wednesday morning I teach a class of elderly students. Some of them have now become very old indeed. I watch them struggle to climb the stairs and enter the classroom. The oldest of them were adults in World War II -- they are embarrassed by overmuch concern or praise. They want to learn the grammar. That, at least, is their excuse and they are sticking to it.

Some of these students, I reckon, have been studying English since the Occupation. I smuggle in as much tenderness as I can. They do as well, just as they smuggled sweet potatoes beneath their clothes during the war.

I am a member of a discussion group in literature and ecology. The half dozen of us are a little like scholar monks in the Dark Ages. A subterranean subcommittee for lost causes. I would like to continue talking to them for the rest of my life. I love them by nodding and taking notes on a clipboard. Our affection is inseparable from a certain gentle hopelessness. We meet six or eight afternoons a year. Each occasion is an oasis I sip at as long as I can.

What is Tokyo?

Tokyo is an enormous and complex device used for producing exhaustion. I should admit that I never understood why everyone has decided exhaustion is so valuable and worth seeking or, if exhaustion is the goal, why it wouldn't be simpler and more economical to have everyone run in place, at home, until they collapsed.

Nonetheless, millions of people participate in Tokyo every day and receive, as their reward, exhaustion, which, it should be said, is a particularly profound and comprehensive exhaustion, involving not only the physical but also the emotional and spiritual aspects.

My favorite bar is an informal and unofficial one on the Yamanote platform, a row of gray plastic bucket seats between a walled-up area of perpetual construction and a Newdays convenience shop which must do fully half its business selling cans of beer and lemon chu-hi to exhausted commuters generally who gulp it down in 90 seconds while pretending to look at the free magazines in the shadow of the convenience shop.

It is at this vulnerable skulking moment that I find Tokyoites easiest to love. Sympathy arises easily as I sit in a gray plastic seat and watch the Tokyoites flee for home. It is extraordinary to sit still, amidst the hurrying crowd, and simply watch. Great masses of people, carried off and replaced every 180 seconds.

This city resembles a mausoleum -- and everyone is dressed up for it like the wedding of a close friend. Women in white suits, men with gel in their hair. At 10:10 pm their clothes are still smooth, though their faces are crumpled from clenching them all day. They look like wealthy refugees who've been through a lot. Their money and status have not shielded them from punishment and deprivation. Indeed, it has rendered many of those humiliations even more effective. Despite all this, they still want to look their very best for their interview with the authorities.

But I am an ignorant foreigner, who has lived here seven years and never learned the language. Therefore, it need not be taken seriously when I say that what I see, when I look into deeply and intently into the crowd, is an astounding degree of misery. A level of suffering that is outrageous.

Not once in seven years has Chiyo ever admitted to being anything less than perfectly fine. That's not true -- I think she had a backache once. We are friendly and grateful to each other. Maybe this is what allows a conversation to continue for seven years -- the sense that there is so very much that has not been said.

We drink the very most beautiful green tea -- it is ever so slightly blue. The snacks Chiyo brings are exquisite. Almost never in seven years has a snack been repeated. Wednesday afternoons I am usually tired. She laughs at me if I yawn or sigh. She never praises me, is often sarcastic, and at this point would forgive me, I think, for anything short of setting myself on fire.

In retaliation for knowing so little, I pretend that I know Chiyo's occupation. I pretend she was the madame of a bustling and exuberant brothel. I think she would be an excellent madame. She's got the gaudy colors, certainly. The air of mystery.

We are grateful to each other. Friends, I hope, despite our gaps in knowledge. A bit of color amid gray Tokyo, about which we agree to disagree.

Ishimure Michiko, Lake of Heaven

Ishimure Michiko, Lake of Heaven

Translated by Bruce Allen

Lexington Books, 2008

At a time when whole ways of life are being lost, entire worlds, writers like Ishimure Michiko are doing what they can to secret those worlds away in books. This book, which hasn't garnered nearly the attention it merits, is a secret storehouse, hidden in plain sight at Amazon.com.

Lake of Heaven is a book-length account of a young man's vision when he carries his grandfather's ashes back to his grandfather's village, which lies now beneath a manmade lake. A terrific amount of information about Japan's indigenous spirituality is tucked away in these chapters, a wealth I've not found anywhere else.

The book is a demanding one, with its own peculiar rhythm, and it follows few of the conventional rules of modern fiction. The protagonist, Masahiko, is the target of a vision. He is the vehicle of that vision -- and he's not going to get a word in edgewise except to meekly agree. In this book Tokyo is all bad and the village all good. Tradition is all wise and modernity straightforwardly a curse.

Despite my arguments -- with a book that brooked no disagreement -- the best proof of its effectiveness and strange power is that, when the book describes a ritual, painstakingly, over many pages, it seems that the reader, too, takes part in it and returns also to a world that has been renewed and reconnected.

Ben Okri's The Famished Road is the only other novel I've read which attempts, like this one, to show, and speak from, the indivisibility of the visible and spirit worlds. To have the chance to share this kind of vision is thus a rare honor.

Ishimure Michiko, in the course of her long life, has written a great number of books, almost none of which are available in English. May this be the first of many to be brought forth!

Theories of Marriage

An extravagantly wealthy woman began to grow old and feared the loss of her charms. Her husband, who was somewhat younger, might soon begin to seek out other women.

(Men, she believed, did not become old. There was no transition, no 'becoming'. One day a man was old. Before that day a man was not old, no matter how many years had passed.)

And so, after doing all she could with creams, sit-ups, and delicate lighting, she went out into the city and found the very most beautiful young woman. The older woman thought, she looks as I did years ago -- or else I am just flattering myself.

She made arrangements with this young woman, who accepted the situation matter-of-factly, as if it were routine.

The older woman took the young woman to her husband and said, "Consider this woman, henceforth, to be myself and take her for your passion." The husband voiced objections. Admittedly they were only perfunctory. He loved his wife all the more. She had such a brilliant practical mind. And also such a lovely figure.

Although the old wife missed the urgency of passion, the feel of skin, she also felt light-hearted and relieved, like a dancer permitted at last to take off her too tight shoes. To take them off and throw them away!

For a long time the husband vigorously enjoyed his young and nubile wife, but eventually he found that he missed his wife's older body, its familiar and agreeable softness. He asked his wife's older body to come with him for awhile into his chamber.

She was horrified. "You have a lovely wife and still you can't keep yourself from going after some haggard slut! Faithless husband! Pervert!"

His wife did not speak to him for a month. In either of her bodies.

After that, the man did his best to be faithful. He admitted that fidelity did not make much sense to him, intellectually, but still he did his best to live within its confines.

Eventually the husband began to feel ashamed. His gnarled old arm beside his wife's smooth skin seemed horrible to him. Also, he was having significant problems with certain departments related to satisfaction and performance.

(Women, he believed, did not grow old. They did not grow old and stay that way, as men do. A woman could be old at 36 and young at 45, old at 50 and young at 64. It was a kind of spiral, which continued until death. He'd seen it so many times he was no longer surprised: an old man laid out in his casket, his wife standing alongside -- abruptly young again and fresh.)

And so, after he'd done what he could with weights and push-ups and potions involving the intimate regions of tigers and bison, he went out into the city, found the very best looking young buck and explained the situation to him.

The young man was a young man and eager to cooperate. He took the young man to his wife and said, "Consider him henceforth to be myself." His wife voiced objections, only perfunctory ones, and soon enough she was taking her pleasure from this fine young man who appeared to be nearly insatiable.

Although the old husband missed the hunger and the feel of skin, he also felt relieved and at ease, like a stage actor who is permitted at last to take off his mask, to take it off forever.

The young woman meanwhile was not so young anymore, although she had grown wealthy. And so she went out into the city . . .

Theories of Marriage

Each of the wives had her own particular theory of marriage and a husband on whom to test it out. The husbands were more or less inert.

One wife said the key to a successful marriage was simple. All you had to do was imagine, at all times, a sign above his head which read: He Doesn't Get It. Another wife believed in supplements. Her husband had run out of Vitamin D -- that was why he was such a sniveling, self-pitying, self-absorbed jerk. And that was nothing, compared to what happened, if he ran out of Coenzyme Q! Obviously, her husband was always out of something.

Another wife believed in different kind of supplement: she supplemented her husband with other men. She had one each for sex, humor, emotional support and hiking. She claimed to be very happy, though she never had any time of her own.

One wife was thoroughly impressed by her husband. She'd trained herself to be impressed by anything he did. She'd been impressed for years by his bowel movements. She aimed soon to be impressed with his breath.

The Stoic School of Marriage was, as ever, over-subscribed. The women assured each other that it was both natural and expected to do without sex, respect, money, conversation or companionship. They made a sort of competition out of it. The most highly regarded woman had a relationship which included none of the above. Her company was highly sought after by all the others.

The most energetic wife maintained that everything was perfect, which certainly is optimistic, though it necessitates gradually cutting off all human ties.

Another wife said it was enough her husband brought home money, that it was perfectly reasonable to think of marriage as a very special kind of job, which ruins your life.

Another wife said, It's better than being alone! (We never found out, actually, what it was she did to herself when she was alone. Certainly it must have been unspeakable.)

Each of the wives had her own theory of marriage. The husbands were more or less inert.

Lydia Davis, The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

Lydia Davis, The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

Farrar Staus and Giroux, 2009

733 pages is an awful lot of Lydia Davis. When this book arrived I thought, will I ever want to read Lydia Davis again, when I'm done with this book?

I was a student in one of those MFA Creative Writing programs no one can disparage enough. In the late 90s they were pretty much workshops for the creation of Lydia Davis imitations. A few of these, too, read like Lydia Davis imitations. Occasionally I feel like the victim of a confidence trick, like, would it all seem so profound, if the spine didn't say 'Farrar, Straus and Giroux'?

And yet -- I would read ten more volumes of Lydia Davis, each the size of this one. Her stories are a very special and quiet kind of music, which makes you listen to everything differently. The stories work because Lydia Davis somehow smuggles me into a slightly different consciousness, the one next door, the one I sense when I've had one strong cup of coffee too many, and feel the meaning of life is slowly being revealed to me, in the form of a code contained in the very most minor events of my life.

Lydia Davis inspires a very special kind of attention, like a day spent in silence. This book is a good chance to be entirely caught up in that familiar and strange light.

ROAD TRIP with SAM McGEE

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee

I was seven years old when my mother died and my father tried to make it up to me by taking me to Disney World. We drove three days to get there. On the way Dad passed time by reciting, over and over and over again, "The Cremation of Sam McGee". This gave me a chance to learn vocabulary relevant both to the poem and to my personal situation, such as "crematorium" and "corpse".

My father often drove in reverse on the freeway. Engrossed as he was in poetry, he tended to miss exits. We never went on and circled back. No. We backed right up to where we were supposed to be.

Now it seems that much of my childhood was spent suspended in this odd precarious feeling, like what I felt as my father drove steadily backward, peering past me through the rear window. Is this really such a good idea? I wondered. I never see other people doing this. If we do this all the time and don't die -- does that mean it's all right?

I liked to learn death's vocabulary. For example, I wanted to know all about embalming. I liked the flowers and the sympathy cards. I was seven years old and everything was interesting to me. I had thick bifocals, jug ears and a limp. I felt most at home with things that were strange. I liked the sense that something momentous had happened and no one quite knew what would happen next. I like the way death had of showing up and demanding holidays.

I wasn't sure about my father. I remember Mrs. Haig sitting me on the sofa and announcing that my mother had died. I remember thinking -- this means I only have him. This seemed to me a distinctly bad idea.

I think my father would have done really well in another line of work. For example, Abstract Impressionism. As it was, he had to make do with apple farming. This had mixed results. His perpetual distraction was dotted with sudden rages.

Now he'd lost his wife of twenty-two years and was in the car speeding on the way to Florida. Imagine his astonishment and consternation when he happened to notice, in the backseat, a jug-eared kid with bifocals, his nose stuck in a book.

I was no good at watching for exits. I didn't look up from my book unless physically compelled.
My mother's death taught me to read. Before that I was no good at reading -- me and Mike Buto nearly flunked first grade. I taught myself to read with books of Bible stories in the tiny waiting room at Derry Hospital because children were not allowed inside.

After my mother died I had horrendous nightmares. I believed that Bible stories had the power to protect me and so I read for hours in the middle of the night. I did not turn off my bedside lamp for years.

Our road trip took three weeks. Thus I missed learning cursive in second grade. I never learned. In fact, I viscerally disapproved of cursive. I printed perfectly, endlessly and obsessively, my mother's death embedded in every word I wrote.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror driven.
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: "You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true and it's up to you, to cremate those last remains."

Most of my nightmares were about zombies. I woke to find my bedroom walls luminous with gaping eyes. Unlike Sam McGee, my mother had been buried, not cremated. Somehow I'd gotten the idea that embalming meant that my mother's body would remain intact underground for seven years. I was very concerned about that.

The stories I was exposed to at the time -- "The Cremation of Sam McGee", the New Testament -- suggested that death was a reversible process. On some level I knew that wasn't exactly true. On some level I knew that was absolutely true. One thing was clear: resurrection was accomplished by reading. And so I read all I could.

In Egermeier's Bible Story Book I read, and the angels stirred David's heart with courage, and I imagined the heart was a cast iron soup pot (my mother's had a hole in it) and the angels could come and stir in any necessary ingredient. I read about the angels stirring and my body shivered with sensual excitement: I could become strong.

The angels would come, riding on Tony the Tiger. Or a gypsy would give me a potion. And I would become a strong, heavy-muscled hulk, instead of a gimp-legged kid with a plastic leg brace and elevated shoe who went alone to Remedial Phys. Ed. every Friday afternoon.

I was obsessed with ugliness. I thought about my mother's body decomposing in the grave for seven years, as many years as I was old. I refused to comb my hair because it required a mirror. I remembered the shame I felt when I was fitted with bifocals because of a lazy eye. Now I'm really ugly, I thought. My father tells me I was fitted for glasses shortly before I turned 4.

In my dreams a zombie bogeyman chased me, his greasy gray hair flying out behind. If he caught me he would tickle me. If he tickled me I'd be as ugly as him. This was my most common nightmare. I was forever fleeing ugly.

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared -- such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Everything was interesting to me. It was on this trip that Granma Betty introduced me to the ocean, this space which was both infinite and accessible by car, where it was possible to walk in the same place every day and find something entirely different. The ocean was another book of stories -- the tide turned the page.

About Disney World all I remember is that I vetoed the purchase of a coonskin cap. I was not Davey Crockett. The raccoons and I wished to be left alone.

Two weeks after my mother died, my father brought home a girlfriend. Very interesting. She was a Jewish Vegetarian. She made Spinach Lasagna. My father could cook two things. I was always allowed to choose between them. I could have an omelet with green pepper and onion. Or I could have an omelet with mushrooms.

I was immediately aware that this woman had no interest in me whatsoever, but I didn't mind because 'Jewish Vegetarian' was drastically better than 'omelet'.

Shortly before Christmas (I was allowed to have my own small tree in my room!) my father gave me the last present my mother had bought for me -- and announced that he was getting married.

I was very happy. I had learned it was far better for me if my father was kept busy elsewhere. Periods of neglect were much better suited to life than periods of attention. (There was a secretary and a housekeeper I could ask for food. Also, I made spectacular creations of my own using corn flakes, Worcestershire sauce and Parmesan cheese.) As far as I was concerned I needed no supervision. I knew exactly what I was doing. I had books to read.

I think my father's relationship with the Jewish Vegetarian was already on the rocks by the time we took our road trip. Always only tangentially connected to reality, my father was now in far over his head. Asked for a story, he explained that the bulbous white towers appearing here and there along the highway were actually the eggs of spiders. Sooner or later they would hatch and billions of spiders would pour forth from the towers.

At one point he had me write the word LUNCH on a piece of paper and hold it out the window. The pretty lady in the car behind had lunch with us.

I understood that death was both permanent and reversible. I was a crippled boy and I knew where I was going. In the meantime, I was in the car with my father. We'd passed our exit a mile before. My father was turned, looking past me, through the rear window to the highway. He was backing up the car.

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Brenda Aims to Go Mad

Brenda longed to go raving mad, off the rails, AWOL, gone beyond, beyond gone, gone. And she aimed to do so in a single afternoon, with just two diet beers. Because obviously she was past mending. And because no one else was going to pay the rent. Or run round to her mother's place to climb a ladder when the bathroom fixture started making that sound again.

Other people must make plans to go mad months, if not years, in advance.

No, people in Scandinavia probably went mad any time they felt like it, and were supported by the government.

Some people didn’t need to save money at all. They were well-connected or well-loved. Brenda had only her old mother; her old mother had only her. Her mother would rather have hired a nurse, if only she could have afforded it. Someone brawny. Or a fresh young girl who was always smiling.

No, Brenda could not afford to go mad.

Brenda was forever overshooting the mark. Although she aimed to go mad in a single afternoon with two diet beers, she wound up going mad with two diet beers, a fifth of gin, a frozen lasagna, two drunken phone calls and an altercation with – well, most recently a parking lot attendant. Which was pretty bad. Considering she didn’t drive.

Anyway, a man who criticized a woman’s bottom was always wrong. Brenda was 43 years old. She had a right to wear whatever pants she wanted.

It didn’t occur to Brenda to give up being mad entirely. Any more than it occurred to her to give up urinating. It couldn’t all just build up in there indefinitely –

She would explode.

Really it was extremely complicated, going insane. It was difficult to let go of everything. Especially if you wanted it all to stay in place.

Was this what personal assistants were for, Brenda wondered?

Brenda was only temp staff. And so she had to take care of everything herself. Which was unfortunate.

If she could let go of something, she could afford to go mad.

If she could let go of something, she wouldn’t need to.

One Day A Week

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Portrait by Akemi Shinohara

F. Scott Fitzgerald's Penis

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

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

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

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

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

Firsts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recreational Madhouses, The Era of

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

__________

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

Validation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the other hand, not necessarily.

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

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

On one hand, it would be easier somehow.

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

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

On the other hand, I am venomously proud.

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

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

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

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

On one hand, never mind!

On the other -- who gives a damn?

Apathy Man

Dear ______ ,


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

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

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

You get it, don’t you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is, if he gets around to it.

Structural Vanity

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

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

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

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

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

A Visitor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

Cute, Regulations

One of the primary stresses of modern life is that the period during which one is expected to be cute is constantly being extended. It used to be that women were expected to be cute until the age of 25 and men until the age of 9. Now men are required to be cute until the age of 45. (Unless you are a homosexual. Homosexuals are expected to be cute until age 68.) My grandfather was cute until the age of 95, at least in his green suit. At 96 he was not so cute anymore. Women are now expected to be cute until death. Actually even after death they are expected to be cute, but then it is no longer their responsibility but rather the mortician's.

Threat.

Obviously the advertising people don't write with me in mind. It seems entirely horrible, this Pepperidge Farm truck I see on the highway now, Never have an ordinary day.

The Fear of Lunch

Without warning, Randy Mesmer sprouted an entirely new fear: a phobia of confident Europeans, particularly those with confident voices and thick curly hair. This terror developed to such a degree that Randy longed to take these Europeans aside and pour out his heart to them --

"Listen, I am so incredibly sorry to show up like this. I feel ashamed and I would like to apologize from the bottom of my heart. Trust me, I would have shown up as somebody else if I could have. It's not that I have no money for clothes -- it's that I have no judgment. Oh, what I would give to have been born beautiful! If it were up to me I'd be ravishingly beautiful, so beautiful I'd never have to explain anything, so beautiful that everywhere I went I would be embraced vigorously by the benefit of the doubt. Sadly this isn't the case. It's genetic. Actually my mother and father were reasonably attractive, but the way they're jumbled up in me -- it's not pretty. Anyway I would like for you to keep this all in mind and not judge me too harshly for having the gall, the nerve, the presumption to appear at your restaurant and ask for lunch.

"How about this? I'll just have the special and a glass of red wine and -- you just go ahead and throw the tablecloth over me. It's not a problem. Actually I myself would be more comfortable. Even if it is a little hot. It'd be like making a fort as a child --

"I won't speak. Actually, it would be a tremendous relief to me to not have to speak. Isn't that the reason one orders the special -- so as to not to have to talk?

"Tell me honestly -- are you concerned about the tablecloth? About the possible stain which I might inflict upon it? Because I do not need to drink red wine. Or have pasta with tomato sauce. In fact I do not need to eat at all. Wouldn't that simply matters! How about this? I will sit here in the corner and you just throw the table cloth over me. I would appreciate that very much. I will be entirely careful. And I will be perfectly quiet.

"I appreciate this all very much and I am grateful to you, sir, with your curly hair and your booming voice and your air of owning the world. Please go ahead. Throw the tablecloth over me. Because it is worth 15 dollars to me, just to disappear for lunch."