Live for The Epic –
never for the lone, ancient songs
that were sung
and summoned
to build it.
Slink close to institutions that be –
it will cloak your denial
in plausibility.
Love the single word –
forget its etymology
and live happily
inside an absence
of comments
and questions.
Then,
pathologize well –
disregard the witch,
brutally.
Later, the others will follow her.
Written March 28, 2016
The kitchen walls are wallpapered. Oh, the soft violet, the eggshell cream bliss background. I’ve invited people over to come and look. I haven’t said anything, of course; it’s best if they notice it for themselves. The compliments are more genuine that way.
*****
John, Roberta, Marcus, Maya and Arthur came over for coffee and cake yesterday. No one said a thing about the wallpaper. Maya talked at length about her promotion, Arthur is in the midst of a midlife crisis and is therefore switching careers, and Roberta is pregnant again. Only Marcus commented on the decor — on the drapes — which are at least a year old.
“Your place is looking wonderful, Jennifer. I just love your taste. Are those new drapes?” he asked.
“Those old things? They’re nothing really,” I said. “We ought to replace them, if you want to know the truth,” I said. I think I handled it fairly well.
“Roberta, I’m just so excited for you. I can’t even imagine having a third! And I’m sure you’ll lose the baby weight in no more than a couple of years,” Maya said.
“I want to be fat and round like a goddess,” Roberta said. “It’s just that I’ve always been so conventionally attractive. You know, I saw a thing on Facebook that said — get this — ‘Real women have curves.’ And there was a picture of a fat woman doing yoga on the beach. I think there’s something to that.”
“You’re so wise,” said Maya.
I bit my lip.
“Are you bleeding?” Maya asked.
“No. It’s regenerative lip color,” I answered. I think I covered that pretty well.
So I think it’s safe to say that coffee and cake was a bust. And, besides, John and Roberta bought a boat. How can I compete with that?
“Well that was a bust,” I told Tim after they had left.
“What was? We served coffee and cake, the boys drank cognac, the girls drank liqueur; what went wrong?” he asked.
“Well, I think you know, ” I said.
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. You know perfectly well.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” said Tim. “I wish they had commented on it, too.”
*****
It was all too much. I just had to do something. Tim’s bonus bought us a nice new sofa – a bargain at 15,000 dollars. It’s white and very impressive.
Coffee and cake, round 2.
*****
“I even have this beautiful baby bump,” said Roberta. “I’m that much closer to goddesshood.”
“Has your sofa always been this comfortable, Jennifer?” asked Marcus.
“Well, actually, no, ” I said, winking and nodding conspiratorially. Marcus looked at me like I’d told a joke he didn’t get, but was chuckling along anyway.
“She’s lying, Marcus,” Maya said. “She’s always been modest about these sorts of things. Jennifer, tell him that it’s always been comfortable as fuck.”
“It’s been as comfortable as beep since I bought it,” I said.
“There you go, Marcus. What did I tell you. This is Chateau de Jennifer and Tim: eternally comfortable. Consistent. Reliable.”
“So, studying pedagogy is so much more rewarding than law,” said Arthur. “I mean, I don’t know why, at 20, I thought the paycheck was so important. It’s the kids, man.”
“It’s new,” I said. “It’s a fucking new sofa from Italy.”
“You were never one to swear, honey. Shame on you!” Maya said.
Roberta rubbed her belly and smiled. “Yeah, it’s not good for tiny ears.”
“Your baby doesn’t have ears yet,” Tim said. “Now, who wants cognac? Ladies, I trust that you want something a little sweeter.”
“I’ll take a shot of Everclear,” I said.
Lest you think otherwise.
I am 8. It is early in the school year, and I am at the dentist. As I sit in the wallpapered waiting room, awash in Top 40 radio, I pull a book from my bag to allay the boredom. The book is called Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones. I had begged for it until I was allowed to purchase it, yet I am among the last in class to get my hands on a copy. The badass, a-little-too-edgy-for-kids art by Stephen Gammell is just too glorious. It is sanctioned horror for children — black and white, unsettling, and occasionally gross. These drawings have the ability to genuinely freak a kid out, or perhaps outright scare her to death.
So, I begin leafing through the book for the second or third time — I must have gotten it at the school book fair shortly beforehand — pleased as punch that I’m looking at something so creepy.
Ace of Base’s “All That She Wants” comes on the radio. I’ve never heard it before, because the only top singles played in my household are by the Beatles, Elton John, Bob Dylan, and Bach. Such is childhood when one has boomer parents.
Then I see her. She isn’t as dark or as skeletal as the others, but she hits me in the pit of my entrails with the sort of fright that all childhood boogeymen employ. Her beady black eyes, her wrinkled smirk, the wisps of her black hair — I internalize all of her details instantly.
So, I’m deeply freaked out. All of a sudden, Ace of Base’s state-of-the-art MIDI saxophone begins to sound kind of scary. I listen to the lyrics, and imagine that they refer to this pale, neckless abomination.
All that she wants / Is another baby / She’s gone tomorrow.
She’s going to getcha!
Due to a fundamental misunderstanding of the word “baby” in this context (to be honest, I still don’t know what the lyricist intended), I am pretty sure that this nightmare is going around trying to get pregnant by like, 6 different men at once so that she can spawn as many vile little boogeywomen as possible. Ew! I bet if you cut her, she bleeds black tar. What if she shows up in my bedroom? Understanding what I do about the science of human reproduction (I’m a big girl), I’m certainly not in any danger of giving her another baby. Still, she’s gazing devilishly downward, as if over a child’s bed. Does she lurk in the dark, after bedtime stories, when she’s not out trying to get inseminated? This is not good. Must not let Mom know I’m scared. She’ll confiscate this awesome book!
“Elena?” The dental hygienist with a clipboard is ready for me.
Days later, I’m in a friend’s car, and her mother likes to listen to smooth jams while driving. I hear that plodding sax riff, and I shudder as they sing along and dance in their seats.
From October 12, 2012
_____________________________________________________________________
Unfinished and inadvisable: written circa 2012
¨I watched this movie last night. It was called The Go-Getter. In it, some kid steals Zooey Deschanel’s car for a road trip, and it turns out she doesn’t mind because (spoiler) she’s been staring at him and fantasizing about him for a long time.
Zooey agrees to lend him her car on the condition that he call her periodically to regale her with crazy road trip stories. She’s quirky and mysterious yet down-to-earth. He likes her and he enjoys talking to her. He shares his secrets with her.
On his trip, he meets up with an old middle school crush, Jena Malone. She’s alluring and sexy, makes explicit reference to shaving her pubes, and is kind of a shameless cuntbag. She’s so sexy, though, that she causes the kid to cream his pants before he even has a chance to put it in her.
When he finally hooks up with Zooey, the kid fares much better. This sex is, after all, loving and gentle, comforting, almost maternal. He climbs on top of her, kisses her softly, looks at her like a lovesick puppy, and the moment of penetration dawns seemingly without so much as a hump or a lick – the perfect union of two dolls, their genital nubs just barely touching.
And in this moment, the film says, “The whore emasculates, but the madonna prefers eunuchs.”
Puritanism, patriarchy and feminism collide to form one digestible duality. The one with the appetite cannot be the one with who accepts and nurtures.
as the years of your life wear thinner
and the month of May is an instant
and the winter is still longer than the summer,
occasionally, when the winter of your heart rears in summer,
you must clasp it, warming the ventricles,
smoothing your palms over its surface,
without care for the blood that will stain your hands.
and the words of your father will ring in your ears as you console yourself,
or the wisdom imparted to you through the teachers, the priests, the wretched and destitute,
through your enemies and your elders,
they will be the assuagement through which you are salvaged.
6.9.2009
I
what is mine?
what have I give up?
what have i throw away?
WHAT HAS BEEN STOLEN?
II
Most things, it turns out.
Most things –
Not given,
Not discarded,
But still –
No longer mine.
III
most has been stolen
by this place that misplaced the´the sun.
I felt his eye
affixed and drinking me
when he offered his sunbaked arm
as rod and staff to hold me steady.
he said, "I'm comfortable with that", and so was I
as we traversed the scars,
the mounds the glaciers left.
I thanked him.
with his eye on me,
he wished me well.
with his eye on me still,
he smiled heat into me
until the day was done.
along the mounds,
the heat still lingers.
I wrote a poem about you
after we had trolled each other hesitantly,
and before we gave up to plan our divorce party.
I wrote that the likes of me was destined to love the likes of you.
_____________________________________________________
I wanted to love you enough to divorce the shit out of you
and watch you dance with delight into your own accord.
I did love, I still watch, and I do love you still.
Nanette!
where are you
in how many places now
did you tell that Buddhist monk that you would soon loosen your grip
on all the world’s seams
finally discovering the truest thing to give
and the worthiest way to give it?
how fun it was
how lovely it was
how pink and healthy and young and naive
now it is grey and sick and old; glutted and undeceived
i must scream 