Not Tonight: Anti-Erotica To Keep You Out of the Mood

Beneath the Denny’s grease traps the two heavyset women leaned into one another until their sweaty brows touched and the stiff hairs from their nostrils intertwined, like squid tentacles on a plate of boiled spinach.
_____

The surgeon began to have second thoughts about the mixed species transplant he had performed on himself. At first, the thought of replacing his penis with a live banana slug had filled him with an exhilarating sense of completeness. Now that it was a reality, he began to harbor doubts—the constant slime trails on the underside of his corduroys, the late night leaf feedings, and now this burning, foaming, mucus filling his swimsuit. He high-stepped from the salty ocean, ran into his beachfront condominium, and quickly dipped his slug-genital in a glass of cold milk. He sat on the linoleum floor and watched the frightened black eyes as his “penug” stretched its tiny puse face, struggling to breathe. He reached down and gently caressed its slimy head, “There, there little buddy. There, there. Daddy’s gonna make it all better.” Suddenly all the doubt and uncertainty was lifted and the surgeon realized he would make mollusk love to himself that very afternoon.
_____

When their mouths finally parted, she looked down and noticed her tiny feathers of flaking skin were now dangling from the herpes boils at the corner of his mouth, and she knew, just as she’d always known, that this was true love.
_____

Some of the nurses speculated that the two men with Alzheimer’s were unaware of their actions, but the young gay nurse had seen their hand-holding and knew that Earl and Mortimer were finally coming out of the closet. That night, as the rest of the orderlies drank coffee in the lounge, the male nurse gently removed the catheter from Earl’s penis and attached it to Mortimer’s. Then, while the two men looked on, the nurse detached the colostomy bag from Mortimer’s side and, after a small incision, inserted Mortimer’s tube into Earl’s colon. The nurse beamed, “There. Now you two are truly a couple.”
“I can’t find my cows!” Earl called out.
“I’m late for work,” Mortimer whimpered, “they’re going to fire me.”

"We die of too much life."

This is an actual memory, I think. It seems completely real, anyway. I am looking over the side of my father's small motor boat. His gold(-painted) watch sinks away from me into the water, crystal face up and fish-tailing its shoulders deeper with each clear moment. The watch is the only thing that catches light and the only thing that marks distance into the great light-and-depths-swallowing, eddying greenblueclear of the ocean. It falls for much longer than I would have thought possible, marking off seconds of depth, bearing sunlight, oddly clear and still in the way it occupies its receding. As if seeing is not, after all, a function of distance but a function of light and focus. I reach farther over the side of the boat, into the water, and trouble the surface with my fingers, because something about this seeing has become too much.

There is this incredulous moment just after you cut yourself and just before the cut begins to well up with blood, or just after you've misjudged the roadway and just before you collide with the guardrail, when the always-present, neatly chatty potential for (at least minor) disaster hangs dumbly open. And the natural desire is to try to reknit the clean slice of the sudden aberration by not believing that what has just happened has really just happened. That it's now good and finally and irrevocably done: become what they call "a fact". This moment when fear and regret and hope and resignation and total attention find themselves, for a moment, having exactly the same thought. This moment is so deliciously vivid that almost no one would revisit it ever again if they could help it. And almost everyone longs for it in spite of themselves, at least a little bit.

Last night I hardly slept, and when I was sleeping I was actually turning certain images from Moby-Dick over and over in the upper waters of my mind, at that depth where things are beginning to get dark but where slender receding illumination is so oddly vivid. I kept having this image of an enormous dark whale rising soundlessly towards me out of the blackness of the ocean. And in the dream I was terrified and totally absorbed. But I kept thinking that the depths were not foreign to me and that it would be silly and maybe also dangerous to look away. And then I kept waking up and thinking of my dad's fake gold watch falling the other way. I thought something like this, only without words, but more as a feeling that I should do something about it: The ocean is unfathomably deep, its depth is composed of fathoms, no one of which--no dozen of which, no hundred of which?--resists the eye. The ocean would swallow your gaze if the mind didn't know to teach the eye the trick of iconic seeing: see not what cannot be understood; instead, see a flat black surface, see the image we have rehearsed.

There is something falling through the ocean, a gold becoming green and then blue and then the all-color, black. There is something rising out of the depths of the ocean, finding outline and light and then words, and--too quickly--polite words, rehearsed, inert words. But the place where they cross paths, you can see that place, and that's somehow where joy comes from. Joy would swallow your gaze.

Starting Over

One time we made a boat.

I woke up in the rail yard on a floral quilt pulled from a Motel 8, my brain swollen thick, my chest anchored in silt and shame. I sat up to relieve my sore hip and the sun skipped off the Bacardi Gold and struck my eyes blind. I raised my hand, picked up the half empty bottle and hurled it with a powerful self-hatred. I had never been to the abandoned rail yard and yet the place was familiar—the disorientation, the head full of tears, the dull repetition of failure. I stood, buckled my jeans, and spotted the freeway duplex where I’d once dropped Wantu. I stepped through the weeds and junkyard earth, climbed the bank, and knocked.

He came to the door grinning in his orange winter vest. I inquired about the bird and he pointed to the overpass. I narrowed my eyes and saw a flutter of grey just beyond the railroad cars, alighting in the narrow space between concrete supports. I asked, uncertain, if I could come in. He turned and walked, leaving the door wide. I followed him through the bare gypsum hallway into a dining room with red brick linoleum, a pinewood children’s table, two pine children’s chairs, and a chain link chandelier with pentagons of plastic amber. He sat in a chair that fit him and poured chocolate milk into two tarnished baby cups. I sat into the other seat, my oversized body squatting like some kind of obscenity. He slid a silver cup. I held it and deciphered the engraving: Julia Margaret Campbell 5-23-52. We thank God for you this day!

I emptied the tepid chocolate and suddenly lost all purpose. What was I doing? Why had I come here? What did I want? I blushed, feeling lost in my being, when Wantu said, “You want to build a boat?” I stared at him not knowing how to react. He stared back. “Sure,” I shrugged. He stood and we walked downstairs through a darkened garage that smelled of burnt leaves and orange peels and headed through a hand-cut doorway out to a field of star thistle, glittering glass, neat stacks of railroad ties, and wrappers fluttering like racing flags. We followed a thin rabbit trail down to a creek I never noticed before, a creek with clumps of cattails and wild willow branches growing thick along the level bank. The water was thin and sickly, clotted with plastic bottles, a clump of faded panties, a leg of jeans, submerged shopping bags, and other signs of the careless human beast.

We stepped like cranes until we came to a clearing bordered with tilting oaks and clusters of washed-out foxtails. He pointed to a log--a clean, skinned, beeswax trunk--sitting in a nest of its own golden shavings. “It’s cedar,” he said with pleasure. Once he said it, I tuned my senses and noticed the warm fragrance. It was like breathing a mother’s prayer, and it gave me a sudden urge to surrender tears. I walked over and placed my hand on the primitive vessel. The boat was seven or eight feet in length, shaped more like a bathtub then a canoe, it’s edges heavy and thick, the inside pounded like a copper kettle, the heartwood as red as sunset.

Behind me, Wantu stood sticks within an ashen circle of stones. He gestured to the oaks and I walked over and collected the dried branches. He made a cone of kindling then placed a ball of dried grass at its center and lit it with a cheap yellow lighter. The grey branches were soon aflame and Wantu walked back along the trail returning with chunks of splintered ties. He placed the tarred wood on the kindling until the fire turned tall and blue and smoke billowed thick like a steam engine. Wantu stood back and smiled. We then walked to the water’s edge where he showed me an aluminum stock pot, the lip as tall as Wantu’s waist. We filled it halfway and then I waddled it back to the fire where Wantu helped me position it on a platform of cement blocks until its bottom was wrapped in flames. Then Wantu gathered stones as big as cantaloupes and dropped them into the pot. I looked at him questioningly.

“To soften the wood,” he said and pointed to the boat. He stood and waited for me to piece it together.

“We pour this into the boat…,” I started. He nodded. “Then we dig out the wood?” I continued. He held up the sharp rock and smiled.

“Ah-ha!,” I grinned, grateful for a plan.

We sat and waited for the water to boil. Wantu pulled out two dimestore, corncob pipes from his vest. They were new with tiny stickers on the stem that read “Made in Taiwan.” He pulled out a red foil bag and poured a mixture into each bowl. I looked closely in my bowl and noticed what looked like dried apple, splinters of cinnamon, and clove spikes. Wantu handed me the plastic lighter. I lit the concoction and took a hard draw. It burned my tongue, bit my throat, and fumigated all the oxygen from my lungs. I stood reflexively and began to cough. “What the hell is this?” I sputtered. Wantu, pipe stem clamped at the edge of his mouth, looked at me, eyebrows raised with concern. He reached out and handed me the foil bag. The red package had an ornamented pine tree and read: Christmas Seasons’ Old World Mulled Wine.” “Wantu, this isn’t tobacco! This isn’t for smoking,” I admonished him. “This is for wine. At Christmas time.”
“But I like Christmas,” he said apologetically. I was stunned.

“You like Christmas? Fine. It doesn't mean you have to smoke it." Wantu looked down. “You are right. This is terrible,” he shook his head with a pained look. And then, for no reason at all, I started to laugh. And then Wantu looked up at me and laughed. We laughed and looked at one another and before I knew it, I had started over again.

I Resign from the Theism Club

I'm reading the not-very-good but really sort of compelling book Fight Club. (I know. Most of what I learn seems to come from books, both negative and positive lessons. This even though I'm around people almost all the time. Could this mean something?) And so on page 140 someone says to the main character, who at this point has some fundamental misunderstandings about who he is, "What you have to understand, is your father was your model for God."

Now of course I've heard this before but this time it's caught me off guard. My dad was remote, angry and disapproving, uncomprehending and disappointed, unpredictable and almost only present when he was either furious and abusive or fatuous and drunk. There was absolutely no pleasing the guy. That's my God. I have been puzzled at my inability to close my eyes, back when I really tried to do this sort of thing, and imagine myself in the arms of God. That's not my God; It wasn't a huggy God. It did It's best to be nurturing, or sometimes It did, but the basic work of being all-knowing and all-powerful left It frazzled and irritable.

There's more to the future of my theology, I guess, sort of. I could find spare parts and build another God, maybe a really good one. But I don't think It would be all that compelling to me. Nope, my God was really big and angry and disapproving and It worked out great for me for a long time. I could build another one but it would be sort of like an Amazonian rainforest dweller going to elaborate lengths to build a can opener.

So I quit.

Nared and Filfin Contemplate the Mind of God

Filfin: I don’t understand why he won’t tell us the plan. What’s the point of secrecy? Is he afraid we won’t follow the plan? Or maybe we’ll disagree and subvert the plan? I mean, the way Baby tells it, we couldn’t change the plan even if we wanted to, so why not just tell us the plan so at least we don’t have all this uncertainty.
Nared: I know what you mean. Like our lips being sewn shut. What is the point of that? Why not let our mouths work free?
Filfin: Exactly. I’ve got two teeth hanging out, for no practical purpose. I mean, even if I wanted to bite something, or tear at a wrapper, I can’t do it. They’re sewn back into my lips. Why not just leave them in my mouth? Why bother to give me two teeth and then prevent me from making use of them? It’s like God’s trying to be cruel.
Nared: Don’t say that. You know that’s not true.
Filfin: The truth is Nared, I don’t know. I know Baby is always quoting that rabbit book and saying “love makes us real” and “real is something that happens to you…” and other things like that. Can I be honest? I have no idea what Baby’s talking about. Have you ever read the book? The Velveteen Rabbits or whatever it’s called? For two days I poured over that book. Let me tell you Nared, I felt nothing, nothing but nausea--the burn pile, the sick boy, the Nursery Fairy, the tattered rabbit--Baby thinks it should give me some kind of comfort, but to tell you the truth, I just had more questions. Like why does the boy get all working parts? Why isn’t his mouth sewn shut? Why are some of the characters made without hind legs or at the mercy of some winding key? And why do the loved ones get to become real? I mean, why is that supposed to make me feel better? He’s a soft rabbit for Chrissake! Of course he’s loved! Is it Mechanical Mouse’s fault that he’s made of cold metal? None of it makes any sense.
Nared: Yea, I know.
Filfin: Why is the boy’s love the only thing that counts? Why isn't the boy, Bobby or whoever, why isn't he thrown on the burn pile for not being loved by Car or Boat? And really, Nared, when the Nursery Fairy comes in and makes the rabbit real, I mean, didn’t you find that forced? I just found that completely unrealistic, I practically blushed with embarrassment. There’s no mention of Nursery Fairy anywhere in the story, and then all of a sudden in the final chapter, just when the story feels like we’re getting down to the hard core truth, here comes Nursery Fairy to take away the painful absurdity and make everything come out alright. I’ll bet you anything that Nursery Fairy wasn’t in the original text. I’ll bet someone added that in to keep the terror at bay.
Nared: Yea. I know. It didn’t do much for me either. I guess I just don’t get the question the book is trying to answer. Like when Nursery Fairy says, “You were only real to the boy, now you shall be real to everyone!” Baby is always quoting that line to me like it’s supposed to give me hope or something, but I always think, Wait a minute, wasn’t Velvee real to Car and Boat and Mechanical Mouse? Who says he was only real to the boy? I mean, does Baby believe God has ordained some kind of hierarchy of beings where those who don’t have sewn mouths, or dangling button eyes--those who are born with greater symmetry and a free range of motion--have greater worth? Is that the “God’s plan” that Baby is always talking about? I mean, if it is, then I guess I’m not interested.
Filfin: So you think there’s no plan?
Nared: Well…Well, I know it doesn’t make any sense, but you see this long arm of mine? The one long arm pointing upward in a kind of celebratory manor? Well, I’ve always felt that I have this one long arm for a purpose. I mean, I know the girl laughs at it sometimes, but I have this feeling, this deep feeling, that one day there will be this situation where a creature with one long arm and one short arm is going to be needed, needed in some important way, and it will make sense, and I will feel my purpose and I will understand a little of what God is thinking. You know what I mean? It doesn’t erase any of my questions, it’s just a feeling I have about my one long arm, a feeling that this arm is not a cause for ridicule but a sign that there is a greater mind at work. That probably sounds ridiculous to you…
Filfin: No, no. I know what you’re talking about. I’ve often felt that way about these appendages on my head.
Nared: You mean your horns?
Filfin: They’re not horns really. I used to think they were horns until I felt Rhino’s horn. His is hard and sharp. Good for defending or attacking something. Mine are completely soft, impotent really. I don’t think anyone could really classify them as horns. At one point I thought they might be ears, you know, some kind of special hearing devices that could pick up some kind of special sound or signal that other’s can’t perceive.
Nared: So they’re ears?
Filfin: I have no idea really. They could be. Maybe one day I’ll hear something through them, something no one else notices…I don’t know. I guess it’s possible. Or maybe they serve some other function. I don’t know. And that’s the pain of it all. I too have times when I feel that I’m made for some deep purpose…but, mostly there’s just this pain. A kind of shame really, at who I am, how I’m perceived, a deep self-loathing at my crooked arms, the head appendages, the soft pink rump. I would like to feel this “real love” that Baby speaks of…but most days I just feel like shit. Really Nared. I wake up, I see myself in the mirror, and I just feel worthless, and I just wish I could get five minutes with God or the Nursery Fairy or some kind of Higher Power and say to them, Please. Please. Tell me the plan. For God’s sake, just tell me the plan. I won’t tell anyone. I won’t try and mess it up. If it’s the burn pile for me, O.K. I can accept that. Even welcome it. I just want to know.

A Sacrament

A bridge across the Susquehanna is not a sacrament, and neither is a highway with Amish buggies to slow your way into Lancaster, PA. Got directions at dusk from a very old young woman missing her front teeth, she paused a long while from putting her baby in his carseat to puzzle out the way to Water Street. Last light on dark 19th C brick is not a sacrament, falling night is not a sacrament, and neither is a cat stuck on a steep slate rowhouse roof, even if it's stuck there until somebody lets it back in.

Waiting for the band to come on is not a sacrament. An accordion under one arm and four beers in the other hand is not a sacrament. An accordion is not, a Guild hollow-body six string is not, the worn scar below the f-hole is not a sacrament, and the singer's reluctance to speak or make eye contact is not a sacrament. Nothing is consecrated by a three-step sway aloft on a boozy waltz, and nothing changes when the singer closes his eyes and his brother leans into him for the chorus, because singing to the punched tin ceiling that shines two stories above an audience passing round a bottle of Maker's Mark is not a sacrament. Stomping out a waltz is not, certain people touching each other who otherwise never touch because your heart is too good for this town is not a sacrament. The sound of too much sound is not a sacrament, when it's like holding your ear to the ocean and you're pretty sure you're hearing the world's highest octaves for the last time, it is not a sacrament how imaginary harmonics become indistinguishable from actual harmonies. Sweat and fatigue late at night with the presence of other bodies moving and the smell of beer is not a sacrament. It is not a sacrament when the Maker's Mark comes by again now almost gone and sloshing golden hot and dark in your throat and your heart is too good for this town could be nearly anyone. Your booted heel stomping onetwothree, onetwothree against the floorboards is not a sacrament although it could almost be a voice and the voice could almost be a tall man with hair in his face thinking your heart is too good. Gratitude is not a sacrament, loneliness is not a sacrament, silence is not a sacrament, and neither is a bridge across the Susquehanna.

Jack Shellac and the Vegan Vow

Jack Shellac woke unusually late and tried to recall the face of the werewolf hunkered down in the corner of his dream. He lay eyes closed, fully awake, seeking to re-enter the night’s images. He noticed the carnal hunger in the dark of his belly and felt a kind of clarity he hadn’t known in months. He let the hunger spread, clearing the myths and fantasies that cloaked his will, until he was left with the plain truth: he would break the vegan vow he’d made the previous summer. He knew now he'd lived half starved because of the smell of patchouli on a young woman’s pits.

She’d picked him out of a crowd of drunk vagabonds, lechers really, standing at the edge of a makeshift concert--three young men in cutoffs, hemp leis, beaded dreadlocks, playing a hacked version of Marley through a row of tissue box amps wired to a car battery. They stood on an oil-stained rug, Pakistani he figured, stood on it like it was an elevated stage. They spun and swung their matted locks, raised and swaggered their axes, lurched at the half-dozen dancers like they were head-lining in Kingston. The dancers, forest hippies—dirty hair, brown dusty skin, brown clothes--danced half-naked, lines of sweat streaking light across their faces. Jack and the drunks from the river bank stood at the creek bank, unmoved, like free-range cattle. Jack had no feeling at the appearance of this spontaneous gathering, his ears working, outlining the mathematics of the beat.

He didn’t know when or why the young woman with the nocturnal eyes came to him. He couldn’t recall whether his embarrassment at her made-up name (Morning Glory) was in reaction to her obvious need or from some sense of propriety his parents had tucked into his bones. What he did recall was the way she whispered, “I can heal you,” and the smell, the alluring scent of un-bathed female, like peaches split open on the ground. She told him it was patchouli and lifted her arm so he could smell it. When he bent toward her, she kissed his dry crown and beckoned, “Come with me. I’m going to heal you.”

He took her hand and walked. The sharp smell of ponderosa pine cleared the Wild Turkey from his eyes and he looked at her soft shoulder blades and realized he was looking at a gift. This was just like Mother Nature. How many nights had he begged and pleaded with her for a sign? He’d fasted, sang to her in the sacred woods, gave up every man-made pleasure, and yet she’d remained full of silence. And then now, now that he’d cursed her, called her a lying whore, threw Oscar Meyer wrappers in her rivers, carved his name in redwoods, shat and pissed on squirrel nuts and molehills, gave himself over to rye and sugar water, now she turns to him and gives him Morning Glory? A doe of a girl, with warmth in her eyes, and rose lips.

She was a gift. Maybe the last gift of female attention he would know on this planet, and his knotted heart went slack with gratefulness. She walked him into a clearing that smelled of charcoal and summer urine, and then to a set of safety-orange camping mats, duck-taped into a hobo’s California king. She laid him down on that foam mat at the base of an oak tree and he looked up at the branches tied with dream catchers, tiny Tibetan bells, and satchels of lavender. He choked, in shock really, at the cold ball of silver studded through her soft pink tongue, then lifted his cheek to catch the strands of beads that hung from her ears and neck, felt them brush across his flat face like summer rain. He lifted his hands, touched her oily hair, pulled at the dark dreds, noticed his fingers wanted to play her, find the melody, pluck out some kind of African blues.

She fancied herself a healer, though he knew she was an L.A. refugee--no place, no people, only head-shop rumors--and yet, she did resurrect the warrior, the old spear straight and sharp, which was a kind of supernatural surprise. He gave himself over, and felt the death ache separate from his body and head for the junipers where it hovered, watching, waiting, like a sick animal.

In the morning he woke with her visage dark against the early light. Her services complete, she gave final instructions, “You need to stop eating meat. It’s blocking your energy. Your third and fifth chakras have almost completely stopped functioning.” He sensed she was referring to his heart and maybe his groin and told her he thought he’d done alright last night. She smiled at him, told him he did fine in a way that let him know it was a one-time service. “You’re gonna have to take care of yourself now. You should go vegan. And no more booze. Buddha said that.”
“Buddha said no booze?”
“I think so. It was either him or Laura Schlessinger.”
He lay back, smiled at the feel of his spent body, then made a vow to become a new man.