Horton-Scorton
Bluelighter
Terry Basil
1
He entered the apartment and it was all scattered newspaper clippings and coffee stains. Jesus Christ, he muttered.
Then, still cursing under his breath, he put up his well-worn overcoat, trying to ignore the others. As always, the clothes on his back blurred the line between high fashion and poverty. A man without status. A true original. But none of this mattered- no, what mattered was the fact that his own apartment was, in his eyes, a dirty free-for-all right now. It was a Thursday. It was the end of summer.
Joan was sprawled out on the carpet, like an LSD lovechild, like some kid making asymmetric snow-angels. She was completely naked and came off like some helpless limp animal, and she'd probably been flirting with an overdose today, on a breezy Thursday, end of summer at long last.
"Christ. You even bother to look like you have it together, you junky motherfuckers? My apartment, I kept it clean once, my apartment and it's a public toilet, in some goddamn ghetto. No cleaning up. Ha. No nothing, man. I guess it's my fault too," he said. He talked like he was a street-punk, dumb and tough, but he secretly liked to read books. And even with this tough-guy front, all the other guys just shrugged, did not respond.
Our man was lucky to have in his hands a decent supply of pharmaceutical junk, some vials of Dilaudid. He felt much cleaner putting a needle-full of that doctor stuff in his arm than some street junk, cut with arsenic or so they said. He didn't even bother with the needle anymore, anyway. A professional musician, a recorded singer and songwriter, couldn't just be some fiend on the streets, out nights copping for heroin till he scored the shit for sure, always getting frowned upon by organized society, stealing and prostituting at leisure. So with the doctor stuff he felt more like Shelley or Keats and less like that semi-homeless black junky that they said on the news was wanted for murdering that Japanese man, something to do with fixing the golden fix, copping for the vital shit, shooting and devouring just one little shot.
Another man, with a half-beard and skin like a halloween mask, sat like a statue on the shaggy cream-toned carpet. A good long while elapsed during which hardly a grunt was made in the moody room, never a sigh, never a word to unwind the silent tension of people in different mental worlds. One room, many worlds. Communication roadblock, a few gates between minds that were drifting apart. Some drifting right out to sea, to the moon and to the hells they were fixing to get at nightly and by day.
Inevitably, this motionless man broke his stillness and picked up a newspaper from the many issues piled and spread on the ground. July 2, 1972. Man, that was three years ago! Truth was, no one in the apartment knew where half the papers came from. Notes and letters also mingled liberally with the cut-up, random articles, an outer world like the pitter-patter mind of some schizoid.
There was a third man intently eyeballing a photograph of his grandparents- a photo that he kept despite his habit of selling most of his possessions, and losing other things that couldn't be sold for jackshit. The picture reminded him of something, he didn't know what. Seemed that when he was rushing or at the peak of a good high the picture was lovely and peaceful like a dope-perverse pseudo-zen pseudo-eden back-to-the-womb fetish. But if he was sober the picture looked sad, like some reminder of an innocent past long gone and turned to foul black powder and wormlunch. Everything seemed that way, sad and bitter, when sober. He was thinking about getting rid of another bag of dope in his arm, in that ocean of perpetually sick blood flowing through his branch-thin, shaky limbs.
Unwashed dishes, a light flickers and makes the tenet an angry boiling mess. The crack on the wall isn't a sight for sore eyes. Christ. And the newspaper clippings! The goddamn clippings, and he won't let you toss them away. And it's really my apartment! Man, am I really such a pushover? A recorded musician, and this! A dirt-stained, piss-poor apartment, a factory-imprisoned Polish migrant's apartment in some run-down, kill yourself ghetto fifty-five years ago, in the coldest and harshest of winters. That's how it looks. And bags of dirty street dope. And supplies and no decorations and it's falling apart and there's Joan, spreading her gangly limbs like christ naked on the floor nodded out and into fuzzy personal candyland, drowning in fucking sunshine state crutch, the eternal alpha/omega drug. The junky during bliss phase. A cycle that made naked messes of some.
Then, from her rest, Joan stirred and looked around the room. Tunnel-vision. Sick ocean. It took a while for her vision to quit being so damn blurry, and she finally stood up, wobbly jellyfish legs and all. All the men laughed and then she saw she was naked, just some gullible girly-girl stripper.
"Where the hell did my clothes go?" she said, a flushed, urgent girl, the opiate high receding, it seemed, with frightening speed. The men shrugged, shook their heads, and they meant their lack of answers, too. No one really remembered exactly when or why she had chosen to take off her clothes. They'd been gobbling seconals too. But the mystery of the exposed chick- it really wouldn't have been an issue in the midst of a decent rush, golden and pretty, therapist and lover. She took the deep-blue, awkwardly oversized overcoat off the hanger and put it on speedy fast, covering and protecting her body from the men- primal men who looked like some farmer's prized pigs now, gawking/gaping, covered in shit and open about it, I mean, I mean, these men, why do, w-why...withdrawing into a nervous mind-stutter, sweet lonely Joan hated it.
Terry, owner of the place and man of the hour took note of these proceedings, breathed in the air of this cracked environment and inhaled the weird dread dark climate deeply. Wonky vibes. He prepared his being for a fatherly, drill-sergeant, movie-star speech. And looked the way he would before speaking, and then...
"Hello. Like my coat, huh? Looks good on ya, Joan. Really," our man said. She blushed.
"When did you get here, Terry?" she asked.
"So that's how you say hello, Joan? Even after I let you crash in my apartment for weeks on end, strung-out and no responsibilities on the fucking planet, here. Ha. Joan, Joan. I mean, c'mon man, and you even use my prized overcoat there. What a cold hello. What a mean fucking hello, Joan," Terry said. He was, by now, making a peanut-butter sandwich on the kitchen counter. Multi-tasking with octopus-limb proficiency. Wiping off crumbs as he went.
Another silence which was suddenly cherrypopped, Rob stirring by compulsion, by psychic intervention, and then...
"Don't bust on poor Joan's balls, man," Rob slurred, and he started laughing like a wino and stroked his patchy beard, looking like a proud homeless pariah down on his secluded part of the floor. Looking caged like a zoo-animal. Nowhere to go and and...
"Yeah, no busting on her balls. Ha," mirrored Frank- who had finally tossed his ancient photograph by the wayside and began studying the patterns on the ceiling, concentric circles, loop-de-loops both regular and fine.
All bum talk.
Terry, our man, owner of the place, glanced from Frank to Rob to Joan and for a second stopped spreading peanut-butter on his sandwich to focus his vague and undirected anger. Words finally came like a bout of diarrhea, breaking the last in a chain of increasingly tense silences.
"How do you get off, you bunch of circus cocksucking freaks, you street-junky talentless weirdos? No, in all honesty here, being serious man, how do you? Where do you get off bumming off of my entrepreneurship, music and everything, and my money and life investments and just basic life shit? You bum off it. You think you're not bums since you live in an apartment I offered you for charity like the works of a Catholic saint, works of heart and art for ya outside slimy rats, but you are bums. Dishonest bums, even worse. Spoiled rotten bums, mooching off of me and my shit like I'm your father and you're helpless children, little fucking sheep, sucking milky vitamin housewife tit, just crying crying and endlessly crying for mommy. Some mommy that ain't there. Less real, much less real, this mother ya want bad, less than the very false temple of true love and less real than the 60s dream you fucks pervert day in day out. Delusions of freedom and counterculture nothingness, sums it good, your deaddog filthy situation. Christ. It's just the attitude from you all that got me mad as I am, mad till my eyebrows feel like caterpillars, wooly cuz it feels like the pressure of my blood is pushing my brows out. Mad till veins pulse overtime and and, well shit. Guys. What to do. To be a father! A substitute father. Deadbeat victims, you crumbs. Take everything for granted. That's what ya do. Me? Wanna know about me? I work! I spent years writing my music, and I pulled through with a real spinnable full-length out-there record, man. And my career's still young, I can make it real big now, not just a local well-kept secret. Not just a hidden gem, everything. Value's mine. And worth. I plan hard and smart. Make it big, you know? But you bums got no opportunities, goals, interests. You let the junk take over, be it, you know, be everything, everything. I don't ever, never have, let the needle and the dope keep me in bondage like that. I have goals, despite my, I admit, my junk problems, and I do what I do. I write poems. Y'know? I don't give up easy, man. And you know what? I'm tired and fed up like a strict parent, but with my mercy juices running low as hell. I wanna throw you out, naked and unarmed, I really do, but, goddamn, I somehow still see friends in you. Sprawled out on the floor, making a big fucking mess and not picking it up. Still friends. Christ."
He ate some Dilaudid, because after he got back on junk he only took the stuff orally like God intended, though he didn't know why or how he moved on like so, and then he made a rickety exit from his shoddy working-class opium-den- the apartment, his apartment. The infamous slobbering drunk mess room, he thought with some poetic justice. And a line of powdered melodrama. As he left, he closed the door with force and the three junkies closed up inside the tight place laughed small, mindless fading laughs. Shortly thereafter they prepared more injections of their favorite stuff, and Rob put on a record, a Chuck Berry 45. Old, classic. It was Terry's. Probably Terry's favorite besides Howlin' Wolf, and the honest, soulful, black sound had rubbed off on Rob and the rest of the ragged broke nobodys.
The sounds? Excellent shooting music. Good soundtrack for a rush. This Baltimore product, from south states and delivered northward piecemeal, had great legs. Weak rush. So Rob and the others mixed in some of Terry's pure product in their doctor silver eden shots and when they were through delivering that chemically familiar message to their brains, it's no secret they were high again.
Why'd he leave his shit behind? Never mind what Terry said. He's probably going to do well enough to support us here, it's true, but he won't make it big-time as a musician. No teenybopper appeal. Too dark, too heroin. Everything would be stagnate after all, and that was a comforting thought to changeless simple one-interest beings.
Terry Basil was out again, forget those bastards, so-called friends. Bringing me down. He felt an urge to shoot up, like the good old days. He had no idea whatsoever how he was managing to control his drug use. He was using a disturbing degree of precaution and moderation these days, and he suspected, or maybe knew, that the temperance would eventually rubberband snap and he would go back to the formless broken void of junk with full cravings, obsession, and all the usual consequences. Maybe death this time, which had so narrowly escaped him before. Or maybe none of that would happen. He didn't really care.
So Terry went to a public library to cloak himself in literature. Bookish heaven, you know, he'd say. No one liked the library enough. Maybe it just won't appeal to the FM radio crowd, no matter what. To the guys and their sweet midwest girlfriends who listened to Jefferson Airplane in the 60s. Speaking of that psychedelic rock thing he some days dug so much, Terry thought a lot about seeing the Woodstock film in the theatre -which he did twice when he was younger- thought fondly about seeing that event documented and hearing the bands play their shit. He had been 17 or maybe 18 years old when he saw the film, in 1970. This ain't what's happening, even though it pretends to be, he thought then and now. It's good and a good step, he would explain, but there is infinite room for improvement. Different themes, different voices, different rituals of organized sound. It's my gift I'll get when I climb this bruised winding mountain. Set before him was his desire as an image of color and bittersweet strength. For as he left the theatre that day he became even more inspired, more driven as his 17-year-old brain faced the raw barely cooked crudely unfinished world, with its myriad open canvases and its festering eggs of social novelty. Movement movement movement was the name. The world changes, Terry would ruminate from that time on, so I better stay ahead with the real deal by riding the current. Movement movement movement. Terry wanted a fucking movement. He wanted to headline this movement he felt destined to bring to cataclysmic fruition. The phallus of his ambition grew into galaxies of fantasy and egoism, planets of contrarian progress and perhaps a healthy portion of good ole delusion.
But why did these ancient thoughts surface here?
The library was a place of memories more than anything. Terry couldn't guess why, but it's not hard to imagine the amount of time he spent in them reading and browsing was conducive to a fair share of mental associations...
But this one was new and different. It was a postmodern library, cold and strangely lit- in a way so artificial that it gave off a venereal-specialized laboratory vibe. Terry didn't want to think that any real type of life could do its interactive business in here, with the sterile designs, with the dread blankness, the lack of even basic ambient sound, the compulsive but somehow uninspired and unfocused order. Bacteria was not allowed to exist here, the environment was sterile to the foundations. The smell was chemically potent to the point of provoking unintentional inhalant highs. It got a few sensitive visitors on a brief dizzy headrush.
But there were many others at this library besides those sensitive breathers, that dizzy few who were cursed with unusually perceptive noses and the recluses who were incidentally only newly exposed to what could be called modern industrial chemical fun. Smells to gives brains something to forget about. But, let's not forget the others boys and girls of the library, lest we err on the side of brevity.
The students and tweed-suit scholars, dwellers of this sanctuary of the written word. They peered from their burrows inside yellowed reference books and snuck back inside, shy and scared of light of day. And others flow.
There happened to be dozens of people browsing the stacked stuffed shelves, ranging from the absurdly numerous academic squares, who were like a colony, to the dead-eyed homeless solipsists, to such supermarket dreamies as a gaggle of peppy sweetassed housewives, and finally the cinema canvas showing a clear social finality in the passionate and somewhat newly evolved oddball freeform intellectuals, secret iconoclast weirdos all size and shape. Eyes from all these definable silent groups glanced at the effortlessly cool and sexy man who entered recently. An unknown to the nameless library faces, yet Terry had a spotlight follow his wiry build, that symmetric and sickly pale body and ruined/untainted/dead/holy temple of his. A home that legged liberal. He was surely a natural charmer, thought one blonde lonely wife, as she longed for his soul, or more concretely, his swagger, his aura of smooth, exotic rebelliousness. A struggling homosexual professor of linguistics at Columbia thought, as he looked at the focal point, clear and center Terry basil, this man knows fashion, oh yes he does, unique, unique, unique, formal casual, I don't even know, but he's got a voice and it's all him.
No chats. No confidence raised. All interest in Terry, all potential human spark ignited in brains regarding this clearly unique and glowing man was rendered dead by absence of visual stimuli and a lack of words from this haunting man himself, who others felt afraid to begin conversation with. Alone was Terry, even as he left a trail of people in lust, in appreciation, or even in deep soul-burrowed love. Alone and drained of the spirit of the deal. A world stripped of value and and and all aesthetics raped to ruination. Leading not to remorse and compassion but apathy that had the gall to eat up Terry's rock n roll vision. Amplifiers must conquer banality! MOVEMENT MUST FUCK UP STONE AND VEGETABLE SAMENESS.
Terry didn't notice most of his observers. Why? Was the guy aware? How does a person say? Awareness can be a clumsy word that when vulgarized opposes its intent; that intent being, in our definition, a reception of truth through senses and direct vision.
There is no answer worth writing a series of babydrool logical deductions over. Terry noticed little in the way of those who noticed him. He lacked a subtle intuition. No eyes, he felt, gazed his direction. He walked, though, straight as a surgeon's belly slit. And he just passed through life ignoring the good stuff that was hanging around him like a cloud of infantile impotent harmless mosquitoes, perhaps without meaning to. Fill in the blanks, I mean you can feel free as hell (I do not limit that statement to the scope of this finite piece). The good stuff virtually was a black void of anti-info and nothing at all. The bad stuff, however, was always the most potently vocal to Terry the sensitive cynic and dreamer of fantasy utopia, and therefore the bad was hardest to ignore. It set him mad. Mad like a warbled turntable, melting like Dali while having an underlying consciousness that desired to fashion order out of this chaos that chose to set camp before his beautiful clearing when he needed the damn forest for his own precious ego. Terry the wanderer. Terry the noticed. Terry, the dumb and smart. Here comes the walking and floating. The books began to jut out of shelves with life imbued in their tree-being. So the new aged loose browser believed.
Terry browsed at leisure through many volumes, golden-lettered and leather-bound thick, paying a visit to the American poetry section for a while. His mind was at snail's pace, molasses niagara scene, was in fact a lazy river, a native, it seemed, of the Great Depression, hard-pressed to get on the train again, a train leading back to healthy prospering and the sister act of philanthropic urban spending. A 30s brandnew hobo drifter, outta luck and black and blue beat and wrecked by the times. He was like this, it seemed, but he was nothing like it only moments later. Terry took great liberties in changing his active/ melancholy/ somewhat devilish mind.
He read.
He read mindlessly, carelessly. Hours swept by. He was kept comfortable, and sometimes even high, by the poems he read over, over and over again. They were lullabies. No poem could stir his passions, not now, but this was what had led him to the art of poetry from the first. An intellectual coma is inevitable, and desired, in this situation. And so he fell asleep in a couch provIded for readers at one point, lulled into near-slumber. But it was a fifteen minute, light nap, nothing more. Upon waking, he felt disorientated, and it took longer than usual to regain his senses as he stood up, little by little. The blood fell from his head to below, dispersing quick from limb to limb, organ to organ. Black covered his eyes, Christ! he nearly lost his balance, yelped, cursed, yet he masterfully recovered. This sterile light, it sure is bright, isn't it. Bright even with pinpoint pupils. He imagined that the brightness would even be sickening to some. The sickness lie latent in his gut.
Then Terry made his way over to the small Eastern religions section. Check out the piece of ass on that one, Christ. He eyed the short-dress, naturally pretty girl looking through the Eastern religion books, watching her graceful movements, her ass. What an ass, he thought, beats Joan's any day, and she'd sure be jealous. He felt his physical comfort fluctuate. Things seemed uncomfortable, in his abdomen, his chest, and his groin. The only way for relief was to have this woman, and oh, I mean really, what a beauty this one. What a piece of work! Fine, fine, fine! But he left her behind, and then he left the library altogether.
He didn't want to return to his apartment quite yet. He didn't want to be reminded of the mess and the moochers who he had naively and blindly let occupy his home, in order to give way to the bohemian lifestyle he saw romanticized in Kerouac, in Wolfe. He wanted to develop a rich, eclectically cultured way of living that would, in his mind, strengthen his poetry. Funny how it all worked out. Terry didn't know what he was going to do. He needed to cut a new record, work out the kinks in his life. And then make it big after all.
After he left the library and entered the world-
He was winded out there on the streets, walking through backstreet tough-guy alleys, gotta have know-how to operate smooth in nooks like that, and looking to and fro and eyeing cars and herds of daytime people getting by, passing each other, scattering in a constant undirected unknown undocumented diaspora. All lonely, all vacant, eyes pointed forward vacantly, practical suitcase-holding men and lonely fashionable girls, gone shopping, some of whom were getting ready to call their New England parents, finally come around and snail and weasel their way to the business after the statement, I'm sorry daddy, art school's not for me, I was wrong. Terry never did quit, he had no other plans. So he was more winded than these people, and he threw open the door to the coffee-place which runs along these streets still, just as soon as he got to it, and he sat in a booth. Jukebox playing the Doors. Fuck the Doors, he spat at the world, prompting a teen girl to look back at him, over her shoulder, just a quick, judgmental glance. He didn't say anything to the bitch, but he knew he would at some point. Gonna keep glancing, I know it. She's a listener, but not a real observer. Superficial, at-a-glance gossiping little girl. Her hair was too long and strait for reality. If she wanted to be real, she should have kept it so her hair was frizzed, rain-soaked, damaged, curled at the edges, spotted, or just morning-time messy. And the guy she was with was wearing a brown leather-jacket and had a small white-man afro, or something like an afro. He smiled a lot, his teeth were white but too big. He kept his hands in praying position, had holes in his....
"Terry, I wasn't expecting that face today. How are you?" said the waitress, the regular girl.
"Oh. Didn't see you, and. And, well- how are ya, anyway? Doing alright at the job still, Mary? Got more mouths to feed since I last saw you? Bad joke, I apologize, really, I mean it." She laughed at his honest humor and flirted wordless with her stare and smile.
"Well, Terry, I'll have you know I have no more mouths to feed, not one more. Just me and my little boy, turned three a week ago. At daycare now, so that's that. No, wait, I mean I got everyone here to feed too, all day everyday, if you wanna kid around, in that high-school way. Got me?" She smiled again, hand on her hip, then changed it to a neutral face, blank and unresponsive.
"You look good, and I'm being honest here," said Terry, who felt a little sick to say it. But she lit up before coming down to earth, 1975, a shit diner, mouth to feed at a wall-cracked home, any old way ya put it. She nodded like a thank you, never said thank you, never complemented the man, except implicitly.
"Ready to order?"
"Yeah, coffee. A bagel- uh, wait. A bagel with, with, uh, with sesame seeds. You know the one. Thanks." Then she walked the walk in her blue, show-offy dress. She's looking good today, she's a piece of action for you to grab and bring on home, Terry. He rubbed his chin and imagined how she looked in the shower, soaping her chest. Mary, Mary, Christ. You never let me on to how pretty you were.
Then Terry thought that Mary looked a lot like the first girl he took to bed, and maybe that it was the nostalgia that attracted him to Mary. Man, that first time. She was so much older. Three years older, but, well Christ that's a lot when you're that age, nothin' now, but relativity in ages is, well it's relative. She'd been around town, yeah, but that made it more pleasurable. Mid-length blonde hair and she was famous for her legs. Boy, she'll wrap those around you. Fucking acrobat! That's what Tom had said, cool older guy, never did a thing with himself, now a terrible mechanic. But when Terry got that girl in bed, Lonnie the Legs, he decided, then and there and once and for all, that he wouldn't ever kill himself. No matter what. There was always some more of this, I guess. More, more, and more some more.
Lately, Terry'd been finding jerking off more enjoyable than women, but today Mary looked fine, fine but approachable. She was a bit of home, looking like Lonnie the Legs. She also looked like his mother, with her round breasts. She had a kid like his mother too, which turned him on. Terry didn't understand his own ways, but he knew they were there to stay and nag at his dreams of change. He made a face.
He bought a smoke or two, cigarette machine, sat back down at leisure. His coffee was there, sitting lonesome and steaming. I'll just wait till it cools.
The jukebox played Like a Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan, and he cried out, "Why this one? Play another Dylan song, Just Like a Woman, anything, always this." He laughed at his own absurdity, but then the same nosy young girl with her leather-jacket boyfriend turned to look at Terry again, and their eyes, Terry's and the girl's, became fixed in tense companionship. She turned round timidly, like a mouse or a cat, but Terry said to her, "Why'd you look back at me?" No response, so he repeated it, with emphasis, with volume.
"Excuse me?" she said, like a whimpering puppy and an old prohibitionist woman, rolled into one young folkish art-school mess of a girl.
"You looked at me. Like I said something offensive."
"I don't, I didn't..."
"It was when I talked about the song, the Dylan song playing. You looked. What's that about, man?"
"Look man, you need to get off your little ego-trip and cool down, alright?" said the girl's boyfriend, trying to be John Wayne, no doubt. He was a fake poet and didn't know it/would never know it/hadn't the thoughts to think it. Terry was interested in this young man. So he spoke to him.
"Well, I just inquired why she looked at me. She can debate my opinion or whatever, man. No harshness, no war. Let the girl answer, she's her own woman," Terry said, mocking his opponent in tone and mannerisms. The girl perked up and spoke, showed a little life.
"I don't know how you criticized this song. I mean, it's just- Dylan's masterpiece. It's called that for a reason, you know. So deep, poetic. Like an acid trip in a song, changes your world." Terry took a sip of coffee. He decided to not even debate with the girl, since he would likely end up so angry he would dissociate from reality. So he changed the topic with swift, calculated intention.
"Is she a number in bed? Does she get you off nice and easy pal?" he asked, looking at the girl's irate boyfriend, and laughing inside about his word choice. The boyfriend lashed out.
"You're a fucking jerk, man. A pervert, a stupid jackass. Where do you get off acting like you're something special, like you're fucking Bob Dylan? You look like some miserable guy who failed at everything, and now you're just bitter and going off ranting to some college kids, trying to make something of their lives. How old are you anyway, you creep?" The guy shook his head like he had some morals that were being tested.
"I'm 23. Probably only a couple years older than you. But an infinite amount more successful. I bet your only success, so-called, is this girl, who for convenience you call the love of your life. Anyone can be the love of your life, you just fuck 'em every night, the title falls into place like clockwork. Christ. If you're trying to make something of your lives, make a fucking mess and blow your brains out, preferably on the streets, get your parents' attention finally." That did it.
The kids just left after talking to each other quietly and sadly, and when they were gone Terry shifted uncomfortably and felt a queasy sensation in his stomach and a pulsing in his temple. And a familiar urge in his groin, a sexual desire overpowering the small bit of medication he took earlier, making him want Mary in bed. He wanted the girl he just scared out in bed too. He wished he hadn't been so cruel. Maybe I was just projecting. I mean, here's a victim too. Abuse, physical, verbal, the works. I don't know, what do I mean by anything? Is a poem gonna tell me that, anything real life? Who cares, just kids, oh man, I really care. I'm so horrible, that's not art. That's not the soul-saving rock music that Chuck Berry plays. That's alienating, That's heroin. He pulled out the letter he wrote to his dead father, kept in his wallet all times, all day. He read it like a mantra when he lost control of his feelings and wanted to indulge his darkness. It read;
Dad- I love you so much. I hate you. So much relief at your passing, but a new burden too. Because I can only talk to you in fake, nonsense letters like this one. I knew you too much. I never knew you as a man well enough, Daddy. When I die, if there's an afterlife I'll be sad not to see you. But I wouldn't want to see you. Now there's an excuse for you not being around, but I need you more than ever. Your son and almost-friend, Terry Basil.
When he was done, Terry considered throwing the old letter away, like he did every time. It was juvenile and dumb. But he sighed, put it back, sipped a tiny sip of coffee.
Then Mary came by with his sesame-seed run-of-the-mill, get-what-you-pay-for bagel. She turned to go, but with bold intensity Terry grabbed her and she eyed him.
"Mary, we ought to spend some times together. You free after your shift some time? I'd love to see you, take you out." Mary lit up as she imagined Terry, who was, after all, a semi-famous man, fucking her senseless. Terry was going to be famous soon. He was already an underground idol, interviewed by the art magazines, turning rock 'n roll music into art, embracing its inherent simplicity. She'd read these words in magazines, she knew the talk. He was known in the city, Terry was, and well-known to the critics and the club-goers and the hipsters, and she wanted him, I mean, well these days I'm lonely, let's face it. Working hard to keep thin after a baby, and I get no reward for my thin waist, my big tits. And...
"For sure, Terry. I've been waiting for you to ask me out, you rock-star. You celebrity, asking me to a night on the town, ha. Call me tomorrow, Friday night, and here's my number." She got out a pen and wrote it on a napkin. She felt like she was fucking it up.
They both muttered a few excited, loose strings of speech to each other before she scurried off and he started eating his bagel after packing the girl's number away. Then he decided to quit opiates altogether and just start biting a piece off his uneaten valium prescription. And his dexedrine prescription for some pep. He was probably going to write a new song tonight, in some strange countryish style, in a major key that's still sad somehow. Acoustic, light, radio-friendly but still hiding something deep and poetic. He'd show it fresh to Mary on Friday, seduce her the best way he knew how. The jukebox played Well-Respected Man by the Kinks. Christ. What-a-fucking-relief.
2
How old had she been when she was stolen?
In those days, it seemed the sea was green and treacherous-
How many years had it been?
In fact she could not tell, the memories only coming as vague impressions.
Joan, Joan? She was unresponsive. In the back of the scene came the French horns, then the Bach. It was an American city like always, but today it was European. She only hoped.
Why live in a world that beats me down?
And no response, no memories but hazy memories, out of the ether, puffs of opium, days in the orient that never happened.
She had happened upon her grandmother's jewelry once. When was this? The seas had seemed green, though they told her it was blue, blue Joan, can you not see it? She shook her head, but towards whom? Was her father there in those days?
Sometimes she used her mommy's red purse.
Sometimes the television set was her knight in shining armor, come to take her home.
Sometimes she wanted to go off on the road and leave the North, go South, sweet Joan.
She was once kissed, when she was thirteen, and she kept doing it. A kiss was then a fuck, then an orgy, then a hand shaking, clasping yellowed letters, bottletops, her old dead nanna's jewelry, Nantucket remains. The old whaling letters and cooking secrets passed down like a tree of ancestry, who begot whom. Here it was Joan, and here is life, dear.
There was ample documentation, anecdote, regarding her birth. A lovely scene! Most splendid! A bloody misadventure, that is! Spoiled bitch! Forcing your bleeding way out into the world! Forcing? Oh but Uncle, you must understand. I never intended to enter this world! This I never signed up for...
Joan had streaks of silver in her hair; men found this gorgeous. How they fell for her. She never knew this, so on to the kitchenette materials, the sharp ones, for a bit of escape, maybe forever if she only had the bravery. Then she'd put down the knife and stare into the sun and Joan knew there were dwarves and elves and dragons out there.
My schooling? How had school been?
This eventually happened upon her (the Bach an elixir for mind, memory, etc). Joan lost her faith in God, but she never lost her love for God, he stayed in her breast forever. She dazed off in school. The boys had her. She left the system.
She listened to her records- She's Leaving Home, the Beatles, she liked that one. Then she did the same, she left. She quit. The world was a sprawling nightmarescape, she had her Nantucket trinkets, Grandmother's, old things, this and that, nursery rhyme education, a bit of hope, bottle of gin, it was earlier in the decade, she had not yet lost it, her mind, not yet lost her mind and her body.
The wind was chilly that day and so she bought a scarf. She kissed a boy on a bench for God knows why- because of life! Life seemed like a glory, a revelation, a flame in a hearth in a house in a hill.
She took a long route to her nothingness destination. A payphone was her place of memory, and she called her friends. They inevitably laughed, except for Caroline, who, let's face it, was always a downer. Caroline ate barbs. Caroline stabbed her own pregnant belly and that was that for Caroline, this was later.
Old men who weren't even that old would go on and on and on about this town, boring Joan, old miserable historians, this town ain't got sense, no story, no backdrop, no history, they say what amounts to specified lies, lies turned history this shit-hole dying town that I love.
Eventually the question came to Joan when she was alone and sad. What about men anyway? They were hogs, but that's not true. My girl, what have you done, my lovely lonely girl? Father Jacob said, when she visited. Catholic lies, lies, lies, lies, lies...
She talked to the man from Southern Italia, who said:
"I got a nostalgia for Mama Italia, now I got no home to know.
The red-earth floors, the milk-cow fields, the propaganda radio.
And I got a nostalgia for sweet young Natalia
Olive-tone Sicilian girl.
Her lower-class looks, leather-bound books
She was my broken pearl."
He charmed her, with his half-English going-ons about this and that, his love for his days of yore. Why is he here? She looked at him with newfound aversion and then left him with his shoe-shine shit and his pocket instrumentation, his monkey-looks and his volumes of mythology and histories of La Cosa Nostra.
Autumn sundays were the worst, when it rained. That's when she grew up the most and learned the greatest secrets about the world. She was prone to depressive fits, young girls are, young girls are.
Then she took the role of a nothing.
Then she went to a shrink, trying to leave behind these mental burdens.
The office was cold and indifferent.
"I was raped when I was four or five years old, I remember it. No one admits it, they all deny it's the truth. Do you know what? I dissociated, because of the pain. I assure you there was pain. But I don't care about that shit now."
The shrink wanted to fuck his client, that dumb bitch. He wanted to very badly as she went on about her childhood rape, but he thought about the penalties. Joan started to sense this guy was off his rocker, that'd be when she split. If I am going to find help, it'll be on the road. She cursed her good looks and especially her tits, and especially all those fucking men out there who wanted to rape her and ruin her.
Then she wondered if she had been lying about the rape. She forgot her own lies.
She snapped back into the scene, the Bach was over, the Bach had been over.
"Joan, Christ, what's going through your head?" Rob was a junky motherfucker.
"What's going on with Terry?" Joan asked, but he shrugged, because he never had any answers.
But she remembered very distinctly meeting Davy, who was a relic of the 1960s and told her he played guitar like Bob Dylan or something. She attached to Davy quick.
Both of them wished it was 1965 or something. How much could things have changed in a few years? Well, Hendrix was dead. And Brian Jones was dead, same way someone else she knew or some odd...
They listened to psychedelic albums and sometimes drove around.
"You're a flower to me, you know that?" Davy was so romantic, running his fingers through her hair. She even stayed faithful to him, because she loved him, because he was love, he was hope and he was love.
"Davy, when I left home I met this Italian man..."
"Yeah?"
"And he sang this song, it just stayed with me, but I just left him."
"What kind of song? What was he singing, Joan?"
"He talked about his homeland, Mama Italia, that's what he said. I never heard a sadder man. He barely talked, couldn't speak English very well except for the words in the songs that he had put down in memory, forever. And I think he just sits there all day and sings about Italia; so, why is it he doesn't go back? Why is he here? Why the hell doesn't he go back?"
"He's a madman." And then he kissed her. Sometimes it felt like getting raped.
After which, they took the scenic route to a church, where they both sat and observed the congregation, and after all, what was this?
A circus! Innocent? Nonsense, you'll soon perceive! A drunken foghat marked ship leaving here, leave harbor, from someplace distinct, unrecognized, but off to a hellfire, no baptist relief. D-dr-dr-dr-unk the place, leave the sit the leave it, the place, p-pl-pl-pl-ace, gone mad from all the refuse, reclusive drunk harbored snake despot, a Midas t-t-t-t-t-t-touch, and goes, go, off and go, a jimson weed trailer certainly off to some specialized Indian hell, there, there.
Why were we there, anyway? What was that man saying after all, through the muffled bits of acid blocking our hearing and thoughts?
Davy apologized after the service to Joan, explained something of his lovely papa dying, and this church meant something to him, it was special Joan, you girl. Of course, they had sex in his car and then they smoked until the cigarettes had receded to sad memories.
"Always a sad reminder isn't it?" said Davy, putting his out. None left, time to hit the stores in this shithole town. The West isn't the North. After a while, Joan discovered that she wanted to go home and meet new people, find new things. But she knew she loved life too much to see it all.
Then it was years later, and she walked with Rob back to the apartment, where they would take medicine, in a shot. So she asked it again.
"What's going on with Terry?"
"Don't expect to understand him."
3
Ben Lennon was a journalist and a lover of the arts. He was quick to admit that he only got into the business of music journalism as far as he did because of his name, Lennon. People thought of John Lennon, that's natural, it was a fortunate name. He was editor-in-chief of his little small-time, underground magazine, The Shit. By calling his magazine The Shit, he effectively doomed himself to the underground of music. But that was alright, he was an artist, a rebel...
He still conducted interviews even though he was the head editor. He liked it. He liked talking to guys in the business. Today it was Terry Basil.
Ben was dressed casually, in a thrift-store cardigan and brown well-worn shoes. He had big glasses and he wore a ring on his left hand, and he would never tell people about that ring. His secret. Ben loved the city that dragged him through urban hell, decay and deposits of foul shit. He had an interview with Terry Basil in an hour. He was twiddling his thumbs, and he was trying to read up on the man, be professional and everything. Then Katy walked in, 19 years old.
"Here's your coffee, Mr. Lennon," she said, and put it down, acting coyly.
"Thank you, Katy. Stay here a moment, would you?" She did as her boss said.
"Yes, sir?"
"You were asking about Terry Basil earlier, right?"
"Well yes, sort of. I was just saying I thought he'd turn into a legend. He'll be like Van Gogh, ignored in his own time, loved later on."
"I think so too, Katy. But he needs to get his act together and come out with a new band. His old band fell apart, and he hasn't been doing shows, you know. At least another album. Very excited to ask the man himself about all that." She smiled and he dismissed her. Ben drank his coffee even though it was too hot.
Terry treated himself to a cab today, because it was an interview, and hell, I deserve it. In the back of the cab he fantasized about how the interview would go. What's this interviewer like, anyhow? A piece of shit? A nice guy, understands me? I'll talk about poetry, mention Rimbaud, mention Blake, hell mention Brian Wilson, who's a poet after all. I'll say I'm channeling Chuck Berry, and I'm channeling the Stooges, who are, after all, not respected.
The cab was going smooth. Terry had aviators on. He was happy about his casual relationship with Mary the waitress. Their dates had been fine, just fine, the sex was great. He was excited about meeting Tim, the jazz guitarist, he had connections, oh yeah. A new band, new music, everything's fine, man. He was done with junk, too. Kicked it for good. And he was going to kick Joan and Rob and Frank out of his place soon, no good keeping them around. He felt bad for Joan after hearing her story, but you have to do things to get by.
And it was a continuous train of thought till the cab stopped and the foreigner driving the gig opened his mustached mouth and said...
Then it was some dollar bills, Terry to the driver, then it was a smooth exit, the cab left behind and driving off, the sound of it making its escape symbolic of a scary finality for Terry. Wow, this place looks nice. He walked up the stairs to the entrance, and man, for a small magazine, sure is a professional set-up.
Ben Lennon had just about had it, waiting for the hour to come. Then came Terry Basil, the guy getting interviewed, singer and songwriter, underground figure, rumored to be a fiend for the stuff. He just threw the doors open to the office, and Ben got his shit tidied up to his side, little brown table, got up from his hard wooden chair, and then he shook Basil's hand like a man.
Ben sat on a wooden chair, but Terry sat across on a comfortable sofa-chair, which had repeated patterns of multi-colored frogs on it. It was so comfortable that it got people confessing shit left and right. It was a Freudian set-up. The interview room- dimly lit, moody, burgundy hues, Oriental furnishings, man oh man. Terry was going on about how he enjoyed it. After some time-
"Might as well start the interview. Alright, Mr. Basil?" He flipped on the tape recorder.
"Yeah, sure."
Ben: If you could sum up your music in a brief couple of sentences, and I know it's hard but give it a shot, what would you say?
Terry: Well, I try to connect with the past, connect with Chuck Berry, channel his energy. But also make it modern, talk about the streets, the city, and make a sort of lower-class poetry, if I can. A poetry that disguises itself as non-poetry, you know?
Ben: What poets have influenced you? Who do you dig?
Terry: Dig? I fucking love Rimbaud. I know Morrison said he was a fan of Rimbaud, but I gotta say, I despise the Doors. Morrison was really not a poet at all, not as far as I can see. If there's any genuine rock poetry going on right now, check out some of the acts going on in New York City right now. Lou Reed's stuff of course. Then there's Patti Smith, relatively new. It's a whole new art-form, a poetry in primitiveness, I guess. I try to do that, but it's harder making it big in New England. I like Blake too, but I don't really have any Blake going on in my songs. Just incidental.
Ben: Early on, starting in '72, you gained notoriety for your shows at clubs and bars, even before you released an album. You gained controversy for insulting the audience, throwing things at them, etc. Why have you stopped doing shows recently, and when you do perform from now on, are you going to tone down the violent act as some have suspected?
Terry: Well, yeah, that shit was no act. It wasn't Alice Cooper, for instance. I was into drugs then. I was into junk, heroin. I kicked the habit, lucky me. Junk used to get me energetic, for some reason. It makes most people tired. But it turned me loose like an animal, hence the violent shows. It really was a form of expression. But I figure now I'll perform more low-key. I'm more into songwriting now though. And for that reason, I've not been doing a lot of shows. Taking time, yeah?
Ben: Is it true that your old band has broken up?
Terry: Christ. Well yeah, but I didn't want that to get out there. But what the hell. Yeah, my drummer overdosed, and he died, that was written up of course, and then I got into fights with my lead guitarist and bassist, and they moved to New York to start a new group, with the bassist doing vocals now. Shit vocals, really. Nothing compared to me, even though I can't sing well at all. That's how bad he is. And my keyboard player quit music altogether. He's a Buddhist now, practicing. It happened a week or something after my first record was released, beginning of this year. Bad luck, I guess. Ha. Anyway, I've been writing songs, waiting for something good to come along.
Ben: Has something good come along, might I ask?
Terry: Just recently, yeah. Things are looking very bright, Ben. I actually met an experimental jazz guitarist, we might start up a group. Not even might, but most likely. My music's going in all sorts of directions now, and I'm exploring the roots of American music. Blues, country, hell, even gospel. But it's still me. I'll cut an album next year, and of course, a whole lot of shows will come out of it.
Ben: You're first group was Terry Basil and the Brown-Eyed Four. Any ideas what the new band will be called?
Terry: Probably just the Terry Basil band, for simplicity's sake. And I plan to make it big. I quit drugs and everything.
And back and forth and on and on, etc...
When the interview was through, Terry felt alright. It went well, no problems or arguments worth giving a damn about, and he got home just walking for an hour and a half, no cab needed.
When he got into his apartment he was revolted by the mess, like he always was. But only Joan was out, sitting at the table in the kitchen, crying.
"Where's Rob, where's fucking Frank?" asked Terry. She blew her nose and answered through the stream of tears, distorting her voice.
"They split for good. Hitching a ride to New York like everybody, leaving for good and never coming back." This was excellent news to Terry. Good thing those two fucking junkies left, and if they came back he wouldn't let them in. He put up his coat and sat down next to Joan.
"What's the matter, Joan?" She looked up, pleased at his uncharacteristic kindness, her eyes lightening up.
"I don't know, to be honest. Everything. I just one day left my home, years back now, but it went so fast and without me knowing it, and now I'm an addict, Terry. I knew this guy Davy, he was my man before I ended up here, and I thought there was real love there. I told you. But there was no love, he was a bastard. Where do I go?"
"You don't go anywhere, Joan. You stay here. This is home." He had been planning to kick her out, but he felt bad for the girl now. Maybe I can get the girl off the drugs, get her mind in the right place. Christ.
"Terry, you're a great guy," she said, and hugged him, a slobbering mess. His hug was rigid, and he imagined her tears and runny nose just fucking up his clothes, but he kept embracing the poor girl. She was prettier than he gave her credit for, just a little broken up from the drugs and the pain.
"You're gonna have to get off heroin, you know that Joan?"
"I know, Terry, I know." Did she mean it? And...
"It's hard Joan, but you can do it. I did it, and I had a habit longer than you. I was just trying to forget my dad dying. I mean, you know how that happened, it was awful. You're medicating for something, but junk's a poor medicine. It's a friend that stabs you in the back. And it has no pity Joan, and you can leave it behind, and you'll get better. Alright?"
"Alright, Terry," she said. He patted her back and got up, and started cleaning the place finally. She joined in, and they both silently cleaned. An unspoken bond. Eventually he took a dexedrine, because he needed it, and he put on a Buddy Holly record.
"Want one?" he said, offering her a dexedrine. She took it.
4
Mary, the waitress, had arranged for a babysitter. She'd even dressed up for her date, making sure to get enough layers of clothing on her to combat the cold, while still managing to look sharp. Makeup was perfect. Everything was fine, and when she looked in the mirror, she thought she didn't look so old today. They'd photograph a girl like this for all the big magazines, she'd kid herself, smiling. And as she gazed girlishly at her glowing image in the mirror, she listened to her little boy start to cry- fuck- and she cursed under her breath, bit her thick red lip. Her high-heels made their sexual rhythms against the beaten hardwood floor of her apartment as she marched towards her kid, crying louder, crying ugly.
The kid was lying on the carpet, near the black-and-white television set, near the shoddy vinyl collection, near the green couch, near the broken ugly coffee-table barely kept proportionate to its surroundings and on it Da Vinci's notebooks, in Italian, nearer still to Mary's World War II cowboy grandfather's- or someone's- patched beaten guitar, and nearest of all to the ancient Swiss clock that they all passed down to her when they died. And the boy was messy, made a fucking mess spilling his bottle of milk all over himself. And over his polka-dot shirt. And over his bare chubby legs and arms. Covered in drool, and still crying. A mess. An animal through and through. Mary made that familiar stance- arms upon motherly hips, flicking her tongue against the top of her wet mouth- going tic, tic, tic- and of course, shaking her head in a regular way, and doing all of these things trying to show her anger off once and for all. But none of her cheap dumb displays was sufficient. Her true thought was kept cloaked, and this is how it is for every person on the earth- even you, but you at least got these words trying to show you how it was.
It was tense for poor Mary. From the eyes of her little boy, eyes now soaked in angry, beastly tears, and eyes torn at by overly eager fists trying to wipe away these tears, Mary was a tall neurotic mess. Both of them were messes, in their way. Of the two of them, only the boy had an excuse for his poor manners. Mary should have outgrown her toddler angst, as far as calender dates were concerned, but she did as most people do these days, and she stayed a toddler, only with a woman's breasts and clothes. And she got to thinking, I have a very important date tonight, don't ruin this for me, so why is he crying? Why, why, why? She was going to start crying too, she was so mad, but she didn't want to ruin her makeup, and after all, that's all tears were good for, Mary. Everything was going to be perfect! I arranged for a babysitter and everything. Made myself look damn sexy too. And where's the babysitter anyway? Oh man, I'm about to lose it, this date was supposed to be perfect. It's our one month anniversary! But- oh man, everything in life is dragging me down and keeping me away from what I want. And I have a good thing going this time but it's about to all collapse.
It was a pitifully slow process, cleaning her little boy, taking care of her slobbery brat, and it was slow because Mary was intensely preoccupied. She thought she was an octopus, her mind flowing outwards in 8 directions, and each arm able to do its shit easily without looking at the others, as Nature intended, as God intended. Her mind really was divided into at least 8 distinct branches, but only one of these could be attended to consciously, leaving the others flaccid and limp, absolutely powerless. Whichever of her trains of thought she was not attending to at one moment only festered and poked and prodded from the primordial levels of her female psyche, subliminally twisting the knobs of her happiness, her distress, and her madness. Her thoughts came like a repetitive, emotionally manipulative film collage, and so Mary thought she was a multi-tasker, when she couldn't operate a single task effectively. She was a slow, nervous mess of a woman. Not only now, but almost always, almost every single moment of her motherhood, it was the unfortunate result of her scattered anxious mind-collage that the child she created was not looked after with due attention. Mary was slow with her boy- very, very slow. Not neglectful, but very nearly so. She was filled to the brink with her problems and her flaws. Forgive her.
Always a surprise- the Swiss clock struck seven, and its seven o'clock melody unfolded like clockwork, and the great machine clanged and chinked and yelled its timely declaration like a shepherd's boy keeping eye on the sheep. Oh shit, said Mary. Babysitter, babysitter, babysitter! What am I worried about? Calm down, Mary. And she gritted her teeth, she closed her eyes, she breathed deep, she adjusted her bra, she fixed her hair where it had gone awry, and she stood up and took care of her trivial chores in the kitchen, killing her remaining scraps of time, waiting for the babysitter and waiting for her man, Terry Basil. Time was so uncertain and random with people these days. Was she mad at Terry? No... but, I'm sure as hell pretty goddamn angry at that bitch of a babysitter, told her to be here at 6:45 on the dot, and how can I even trust her with anything if she isn't even here yet? Ample time, ample fuckin time? And does punctuality mean anything to anyone anymore? Punctuality meant nothing to them (a passive vice), and patience meant nothing to Mary (an active vice). Questioning everything now in her female head, Mary kept on going through the motions, doing this doing that, sighing every once in a while, wishing the kid's father hadn't been such a useless fucker, thinking maybe Terry would take that role. The role of a father. If only. Would he/wouldn't he? Stop being this way. Stop being so melancholy, it's bad for your health. After all, you're going on a date tonight. It's your one-month anniversary with Terry, so smile.
Six minutes after seven, and Mary had been frequently eyeballing the time, the doorbell buzzed. The buzzer had a harsh sound that interrupted almost anything going on at any time, and after the initial scare the sound gave her, Mary was filled with a sudden wave of joy, dispersing fluidly across her spine and into her brain. Uncontrollably, she smiled. Sweat glands turned on, pupils dilated, nervous ringlets of enthused anticipation, feelings of passion now in her chest, now in her stomach, now elsewhere. She was very quick to jump to the door and open it up, glad to get the evening moving, glad to advance to the next level of happenings on the day of her one-month anniversary with Terry Basil.
It was the babysitter, standing there like a lazy, idle girl. Still somehow coy and charming, but maybe only manipulative to a man, prisoner to his own testosterone. She was certainly the type of young girl who could have her way with men, imprison them with her innocent but sensual gaze and exotic yet comforting laugh. But Mary knew a lot of these tricks, and she wasn't going to make a Helen of Troy out of a girl-next-door like a lot of dumb, drooling men would. They looked at each other from their spots, one outside the apartment, one just inside, for an oddly long time before speaking. A lot was spoken without words. At least Mary thought so. But the niceties of life, the token chit-chat, the trivial planet Earth banter they were both accustomed to, eventually found its way into the situation and broke the strange, heavy silence.
"Nice to see you, Kelly."
"Sorry I'm running a little late." And then explanation, explanation, explanation. Many of the girl's words just quietly fluidly floated in the ether between Mary's pink ears, collecting into clouds, dividing into miniature clouds, decomposing finally into a pervasive internal nothingness. The girl's voice was like a cartoon, yes, a cartoon, haha, so mean Mary so mean, but haha haha, or maybe- her voice is like a whore- a two-bit, sweet-talking, sexy funny stupid little whore. Or- ha, and this is really mean, and what is the girl saying anyway?- and how am I responding to her without giving her words a lick of thought?- well, what was that?- ha, oh yeah- her voice is like a banshee. More than the other two-whore, or the cartoon and whatever else. No, that's not it. That's not what I meant. Hmmm, damn- what did I mean? Not a banshee, uh- uh- a siren! The girl's a siren. Maybe not. Oh man, this is boring.
"So this is in the fridge, that is in the freezer, the other thing's in the pantry, but if he gets bored, do this, if he starts crying, do that, and if he gets x or even y, do the other thing, you know, you've done this before- 17- 17- 17- you're 17- practically ready to have a baby of your own. Well you're never ready that young- but, you can keep the kid alive. Harder to keep your spirit alive. Phone number, some rules, this that the other thing..."
"Oh sure sure, sure thing Ms. Mary. Yep. Yep. Definitely. I'll make sure to do that. Uh-huh. Oh, of course. Okay, ma'am. Yes. I have. Yup, I have had experience. Yes, I am. 17- 17- 17- I'm still 17- I love children. Safe with me. Know what to do when this, that, the other. Sure. Sure. Sure thing."
Terry should get here any second.
The two of them both sat down on the green, vomit-toned couch, its grandmotherly, lunatic cushions broken in and loosened up by countless asses liberally applying their weight. And the years this couch had been used was clear; it bore the ancient mark of diverse asses like a homely Rosetta Stone. It was still somehow comfortable in its offbeat way. This couch, with its cushions and pillows, worked like a benzodiazepine on Mary, and she felt like stirring up the talk with this babysitter. Her inhibitions were all popped out like an adolescent's pimples, which inevitably return given time. But they were gone now, and Mary spoke freely and without censorship.
"So Kelly, do you have a boyfriend?"
"Yeah, his name's Anthony. He's a runner. Well, I mean, on the track team at my high school. We've been going steady for almost six months. He's great."
"How's the sex, if you don't mind? I mean, you must be physically intimate and everything. Showing your love in the bedroom, you two. I can see it! He's a track star, you're an attractive, healthy girl. So?" And of course Kelly blushed and turned her gaze away from Mary, her employer, her inquisitor. Mary just waited for the girl to speak, knowing she eventually would. She'll come around, tell me about how spicy she gets it in the bedroom these days. My intuition tells me she will. She's a sexual, exciting, fun-loving girl, this Kelly. Of course she is! Then Kelly looked towards Mary again, focused her gaze in a sudden girlish slumber-party confidence, and she licked her mouth and lightly bit her bottom lip, ready to speak- with due hesitation.
"Yeah, Mary. I think you already know, so what can I say? Anthony's strong, muscular, and handsome as hell like David Cassidy from the Partridge Family. Or, well uh- yeah, like him. But more athletic. I never did it with a guy before him either. He's my first. The first guy that made love to me. I think it's something special- but, Gosh. Why am I even admitting all this? It's so embarrassing, to tell you the truth. Ha. But that's that, I guess. So..."
Real words?
Glimpse of fantasy?
Either way...
Mary savored the girl's words- real or unreal, take it as you wish. This is what she wished; she wished she could be in that situation again, but it was all cut short for her, and she discovered too quickly that sex was not just passion, eroticism, love, beauty- it was a sperm and an egg and nine months later a bleeding, screaming living thing oozing out of a hole, a pool of sweat and blood and pain all because of sex, a simple night of making love. But this girl didn't know all of that gross stuff, at least not emotionally. She could score the right answer on a test perhaps, but she still didn't know what sex led to like Mary. Mary wished she was still this naive, existing in the dreamworld of love the girl described, untainted by the disillusioning practicality of sex's primary mechanism- input: cock, output: crying bleeding infant. So Mary closed her eyes for a brief poignant moment, and saw herself in this girl Kelly. When she opened her eyes, she was brought back to the now, to the basic facts that do their business in the world whether or not they are reflected upon by the Hamlets of our life. Kelly was twiddling her thumbs, quiet, shy, hard to read. Mary's little boy was calm now, and he sat just curiously, youthfully inspecting his little world, his mind trying to piece it all together so when he was thirty he would realize, just like his mommy, that life is basically a drag. Mary wished some of the pieces would fall apart. She didn't want to know it was really just a drag. She wanted to be a little child, or a young girl, or immersed in a dreamscape, or something. Terry could do this for her, she thought with a smile. Terry, he could bring me back to romance, back to love and passion and innocent things. My lovely, brilliant rock star, some day. I'll be his Yoko Ono. We'll stick together and see and hear with the same set of eyes and ears, live in a world of ideals, a world of music, a world of love. Oh, Terry, Terry, when will you arrive? You're already late Terry, always so late, but I'm not angry. I'm just anxious waiting for you. I want to go farther with you, Terry. Make me a young girl again. Terry, make me think about the world and about sex and love and everything like this babysitter, like this girl Kelly does, oh please, please, please Terry. I can't stand being old, you know. When will you get here, Terry? When will you arrive? You make me nervous, just waiting, with images of you floating in my mind's eye, Terry. I think I love you more than I've ever loved a man. It's our one-month anniversary, and this is a special occasion. I can't stand waiting any longer. Terry! Terry Basil, when will you get here? When will you come tonight, Terry?
Terry never came that night.
As Mary waited and waited and waited one night for her man, Terry Basil was in the bathtub of his apartment, smoking a mentholated cigarette, which he didn't do very often, and now he remembered why. Whatever- a smoke is a smoke is a smoke (a lie is a lie is a lie). The bubbles had receded, leaving the water pretty clear. And the wallpaper was paisley, and the lights were still and dim. Rubber Soul- Terry's favorite Beatles LP today- was on the spin, giving the scene an even more sublime and tender mood. The incense smelt like poppy, like opium, and like the moon.
Then Joan came back in, the beautiful broken girl, in her thrift-store fake-Japanese robe, which looked rather nice anyway. Her eyes sparkled like precious stones, her lips quivered vaguely and seductively. Terry, lying in the tub lazily, staring at Joan's concealed figure, couldn't believe he didn't realize for all those months that Joan was absolutely stunning. Christ. How did I miss it man? Really, I'm serious. How did I? I mean, Jesus Christ.
Rob and Frank were gone and had been, never showing up even once begging that Terry'd let 'em in again. They were vagabonds and had hit the road hitchhiking and had gone someplace else- never mind where. And without their spidery, vampiric junky fangs, Joan was left unfiltered, alone and innocent. She was naked now, unarmed, letting Terry know that she was sweet, a girl, a loyal, loving angelic creature. Terry had got her off of junk, and it was harsh and exhausting for both of them. Her cravings during withdrawal activated his latent cravings- they both wanted some heroin, and in no small supply. Joan toughed through it, and the worst of the sickness had vanished in two weeks. It had been a month now, and Joan was reborn. She had been given a second chance.
And the record was now playing In My Life, and the melancholy guitar line and John Lennon's warm, somewhat-sincere vocals brought back memories to Terry, but he didn't say a word about it to Joan. After all, that was a long, long time ago. Christ, Terry Basil was different then. I'm a different man these days.
And to this sweet melody, Joan removed her robe and walked briskly towards the bathtub where Terry lay smiling in his intoxicated nostalgia. Christ, he thought, nearly exclaimed in his excitement, Christ she's got a knack for when to do things. That was nearly cinematic. That was picturesque. The music paired with the imagery- so expertly choreographed, this must be a film, she must be an actress, she must be Ingrid Bergman. But there's no way I'm Cary Grant or Bogart. I could be Gregory Peck and this is the pairing of silver-screen gods and goddesses that never was. Oh yes, a movie in the making. An uncensored, emotional, devastating motion picture. And I know the lines so well they come as second nature. It comes across as improv, but it isn't. There is structure beneath this- and for this reason it's perfect. The imagery, the music, the pairing of the two, everything. Christ, I love sights. I love sounds. I love the senses. And here comes the best one of all.
She had taken her time. But now she dipped her pale, Victorian body inch by inch, step by step, cautiously and cinematically into the bathtub. She never thought she would have fallen in love with Terry, but that's what happened. She closed her sparkling eyes, tossed back her wild hair, descended into the bathing pool, which more and more seemed like a slowly flowing river. Her eyes still closed, she let the river's calm waters take her over, washing her naked back, eclipsing her ears and nose and mouth. After a while, she got tired of sinking and dissociating, so she lifted her head, opened her eyes and smiled. Terry thought, forget Mary. She's a lunatic. I should really tell her I'm through with her and her insincerity and everything, and Christ, we were gonna go on a date tonight. I let her slip away. It's not a real problem, Terry, I mean Christ. Joan is your sweet, innocent, loyal angel, right? Don't let her slip away, man. I'm serious. Don't. Joan is precious. His thoughts were barely conscious after this- in the bathtub, with the ambience made perfect according to Terry's standards, the two embraced and faded in and out and in their collective dreamland, meshed their nude bodies together until they molded into one, like clay, like malleable earth. It was a strange strange feeling. They didn't even fuck, and Terry didn't want to- well, kind of. He wanted to but not urgently. This alone was perfect, so Terry thought this was a reflection of true love. However, he would always remember (every so often) that it wasn't love. It wasn't lust. It was something else, more of a vice than either. Joan is a no-good bum Terry, remember? And she probably fucked Rob, and she probably fucked Frank. Christ, Terry, why, why, why am I so bitter? Why am I so full of bile? Am I a masochist? The record eventually ended; they always do, man. And silence was much less appealing than the delicate harmonies and magnificent melodies that had previously soundtracked Terry's world. Silence was ugly. Some yelling, some drips and drops, some creaks, a cat's meow somewhere, and this was no film any more.
Not long after this, the two lovers got out of their river and dried off, and kept silent. Something had taken the mood. They both knew it, and they both knew the other knew it. Still, vague bits of their former happiness lingered. They got dressed. Terry tried to write some music and got nowhere. Joan made herself a vodka tonic and sipped at it as she rustled through her old fashion magazines, one eye on the pictures, one eye on everything else, but her mind ghostly blank and still. For better or for worse, Terry and Joan were lovers.
