Trans Am

(diminishing form #9)

It’s like you’re standing on a downtown street
watching all the secretaries ands lawyers on their way back from lunch
and the thin whine of many sirens comes drifting through the buildings
but you can’t tell where they are or if they’re coming your way
so you keep eating your sandwich

but the noise gets louder and suddenly
there they all are
the police cars chasing a dark-haired girl
at the wheel

and when they flash past you
and you can see her there in the driver’s side window
you know all you need to know

the love of your life was driving that Trans Am
and downshifting past you, fish-tailing away from you forever,

and she’s going to end up in jail

Diminishing Form #6

It’s quickly becoming a kung fu world
and cable tv is starting to prove it
All those girl detectives taking showers,
girl mercenaries taking showers,
and beating each other up.

The glissade down this rubble
is a sweet fall, a tender drop
to the place even reflections dim
in their own harsh echoes

Each flying side kick
mirrors each other,
improvement forms around glass criteria

And to marvel again
at each image

means always reminding

Life in the Cinnabar Mines

(diminishing form #27)

There is a kind of moisture that films the soapy red vein
and we follow it and the way it smells
deeper and deeper and deeper
into the sides of these mountains
on our hands and on our knees.

Quicksilver, they call it,
but only after we have
pulled it bleeding rust-colored poison
out of the hole that we have made.

And fire, then,
and the crushing
weight of burning memories.

Glass flasks fill quickly
with the heavy sweat of stones.

And, still, it flows around our stupid fingers.

Diminishing Form #19

fires in the laundry room, still burning
smoke rises through the stairwell--reminds me of lucky air
breath rests heavy in our chests, in our throats
definitely time to open some windows and
mix-up the atmosphere

the entire second floor catwalk vibrates with
pounding rolling masses of children
muted liquid shrieking, a chlorine perfume
maple leaves and curling at their edges

four times up and down these stairs each day
cigarettes and mail and beer and 10 slow laps in the pool
and each is underwater

closet floor piling under drifts of
clothes we will not wear anymore

sunset watching smoke leak thin from laundry room windows

Diminishing Form #17

Arranged there along the wall
tight carapace and brittle
too loose for such high cheek bones
yet ready to be knotted
again and again and again

Those leaves falling
without potential for tea
and dry crackle underfoot
suddenly deadly

Strange violence in bright sun
brings us all outside
to count things

When she says “ouch”
I fall down

I found my lucky rock right next to my nose

Center Stage

[I've already told this story about a dozen times and I think I've gotten a grip on what it should be--that is, how it should be written down. Sometimes I have to wait a while, sift through things, see what stands out in memory, before I can really understand the point of some of these stories, before I can reconcile the differences between what really actually happened and what would best convey what really actually happened. Events may contract or expand to encompass their overall importance in the big picture; minor characters are compressed into composites; subplots are developed or abandoned. It's just a process. Everybody does it all the time and calls it "memory." I try to call it "research."]

Sitting facing south means sitting facing center stage but sitting back against the wall means sitting in shadow, protected from the center stage lights and reflections of lights. It's a popular part of the room, especially for the fellows into table-dancing. Center stage attracts a different kind of guy, a guy who doesn't mind everybody else watching as he slips bills into the dancers' g-strings. That kind of guy likes it when the dancer slips her arms across his shoulders or flips her hair against his face and everybody who wants to watch can see. The guys who like the table-dancing, though, they like a little privacy, the chance to spend a little one-on-one with a good looking girl with hardly any clothes on and it's really not a good idea to look at a table-dancer when she's dancing on someone else's dollars. She's not supposed to pay attention to anyone except the guy who paid her to table-dance but, if she gets the chance, she might throw a wicked, eye-rolling smile at some other table-dancer in another part of the room. It happens a lot.

Sitting next to center stage means sitting in bright lights and having a good time and not being like the sullen, quiet guys back in the dark part of the bar buying table-dances. Not that sitting close to center means table-dancing is out, but the whole focus shifts that much more to a public mode of behavior, the performance aspects of drinking a lot and having a really good time. There is laughter out loud, there are larger groups of guys sitting together and having fun together, there are bachelor parties and stag parties the closer to center it gets. The DJ's booth rises up stage left and the DJ looks down on center and down on the floor full of tables around center and he supplies the music that supplies the dancing for the entire club. The wall behind the center stage is mirrored two stories tall and it reflects the entire club back in upon itself with the hot locus of center stage like the stage in an amphitheater, the reflected rising catwalks surround the white platform of center stage on all sides, two DJ booths and the same tables back and forth in the mirrors and twice as many lights and twice as many girls dancing with hardly any clothes on (or at least twice as many views of the exact same number of girls dancing with hardly any clothes on). Center stage is cool.

The center stage lights go down a little bit and the CO2 fog starts up and the music finds a dirty groove and there in that whirlpool there is suddenly a girl and she has some clothes on but they will be coming off. She's a professional dancer and she's been working since the first lunch show at noon and this is her last show at midnight and that's a twelve-hour day in anybody's book, with or without much clothing. It's her job and she's doing it extremely well, the shine on her dark skin is real sweat and the dollars on the stage floor, the dollars in her underwear are real ones. She's been learning names and, as she struts and kicks around the edge of the stage, she's leaning out into the audience around center stage and she is calling them up by name. She opens her arms, she smiles, she's glad to see everybody, she's been missing everybody and is happy when they come up to visit for a while. It's a delicate line she dances: a minute here with Jeff before she moves over to Tom but Jeff knows she likes him, too, and will be back if he can just wait, just be patient for a little while until she finishes with the others. She holds her breast in her hand and leans her entire self, nipple firstmost, into Dennis' face, really close to Dennis' mouth. Her hair falls around George's face and, for a tiny instant, it's like they're under a tent together, just the two of them, and there is nobody else around and nobody else is watching and her lips move as she says something to him and he just nods, up and down like an amusing novelty toy for the rear deck of an automobile, he just nods like that and doesn't say anything back but when she dances off he stays at the rail, another dollar creased to a point in his fingers and he waits there because he knows she will be dancing back to him soon. And she does.

At the edge of the stage, she is crouching on the balls of her feet, on the toes of her high-heeled shoes, and her knees travel apart, her hands on her thighs are pushing her knees apart and she is smiling and somebody out there at the center stage tables (Richard? Mark? Larry?) seems to have forgotten something important, something crucial, and he rises out of his chair a little wobbly and walks the two steps to the center stage rail and he reaches out for her breasts, he reaches out to put his hands on her, which is just not done and she's there at the edge of the stage with her legs open and her g-string covered vagina a few inches from his face and her shining breasts a few inches from his face and his hands are extended and the fingers are flexed open and he's trying to grab her. She makes her face just beam and, hitting the groove with which the music has draped the entire club, she clasps his hands together and using all the tai-chi wisdom she's learned, she throws that negative energy to the ceiling and he tries to grab her again and she clasps his hands together and she's smiling and moving to the beat and she just throws that aggression to the sides of the room and he tries to grab her again and she's getting a little pissed that the bouncer's don't even notice she's struggling there on the edge of the rail at center stage and she brings his hands together in front of her face and she's smiling and she throws all that frustrated longing away and out of sight and finally a bouncer sees what's happening in the middle of the room where everybody can see and he comes lurching over to put a five-pound paw on Richard?Mark?Larry's? shoulder and pull him back from the rail and throw his dumb, don't-you-get-it-asshole? self out into the parking lot. But everything is clear at center stage, all dark energies have been harmlessly deflected and there are no hard feelings and there she is at the rail again only this time she's on his side and she's pleading his case to the bouncers; she's saying don't make him leave and let him sit back down and he'll be good and he knows how to behave and she's smiling really big and on her knees with her hands clasped between them and she pleading for the bouncers to just leave them both alone, that they don't understand, that things will be different now and Richard?Mark?Larry's? wallet just tumbles open and all the cash comes tumbling out in a pile around his feet near the rail at center stage.


(La Ventana, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1993)

Why I like Haiku

Frijoles Canyon, Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico, 1967

Two boys, 10 and 8 years old, on the washed-out path
along the canyon bottom following the stream up toward its mountain source
though they will come nowhere near that place that day.
Each wears sneakers and jeans and each wears a t-shirt, one striped green and blue,
the other plain solid blue. They are just plain clothes.

It is summer and,
while the creek still has water,
the air is nonetheless dry
and a little dusty. The boys walk.
And to their left they see three mule deer,
an antlered buck and his first harem, two does.
The boys stand. The deer stand.

Unsure who moved first,
both boys and deer turn to run up the canyon’s sloping north face.
The deer wish to escape the boys and
the boys are desperate to spend just a few more moments in the deer’s’ presence.
The younger boy stretches out his arms toward them as he runs.

The Oracle Rising From Porcelain

with sheets of water outlining the form that she has taken.

This, then, is what I circle
snuffling and snorting and breathing much too loudly,
and that circle returns upon itself
until I am able to hear the sounds she makes and then
the opening,
abrupt and pungent,
when this brain and that gesture collide.

Too often now, when I try to talk or write what’s happening,
there is a loss of language and
there is a fumbling for vocabulary and
it all falls to foam ungently as failure.

Again a circling, like a dog in mid-droze meanderings,
as I fight against consciousness and its tired messages.
A struggle down, a struggle toward
that hole of revelation where things are as the should be,
are as they are to be supposed.

A blind animal, unearthed,
and wishing for it to rain and then to not rain and then to rain again.

Tied Up In Knots, I Am; She's Got Me Tied Up

I can see the runway from the balcony, I can watch the airplanes when they go up and down, and that’s pretty much all I do these days. I have declared an independent territory and it is inside my head where it belongs. People are allowed to fly in to visit me on the balcony; I will stand and greet them, will wave to them serenely. I often do.

And I think about the tangle of myself, the way my guts and organs and veins and nerves are all balled up and twisted upon themselves and each other. I read that if all the threads from which we are knit were unraveled and stretched out as one cord, that it would be really long. It certainly feels like that.

I don’t have to turn around to know that she is moving around inside the apartment. Her actions insinuate the air and I can hear the rustle of tendon and bone when she stoops or and when she stretches. The sensation of her is strange comfort.

At one point several years ago, I was moved to gift her with a bracelet, thin strands of gold looping around each other and around her wrist. It looks so good there; it reminds me of itself.

And driving with her is like dreaming, the ways she slides us through the lanes and the intersections and the other automobiles. I can recline in the passenger seat and feel the ebb and the flow as she accelerates, as she slows down, the gentle pressure in my abdomen when she glides us down the off-ramps and toward our home.

Smoke rises from our cigarettes, our fragile pipes, and shreds to nothing in the winds that blow around us. Smoke rises from our cigarettes, incense from a bowl of black sand, and twists into a uniform haze under the ceiling. Mist rises from the ground and is woven into foliage and into blossom by the early morning sun. Steam rolls from underneath the bathroom door and these showers are the longest showers and the hottest showers I have ever taken.

I imagine the kind of rope that could be braided from her hair and from which what would hang slowly turning in a breeze from the water, a breeze heavy with the odor of salt and iodine and barbed wire and the other islands in this archipelago. I imagine the kind of rope that could be braided from her hair and, coiled with potential and with desire, how it would hang from a hook inside my closet door. I wish I had one hundred feet of that kind of rope.

I remember the cat that twined within our legs tangled in the sheets and pressed itself against us and she, still warmed and liquid from sex and from having sex, could only arch her back in mimicry of its caress.

I watch the way the airliners seem to surge against the sun that is going down in the water and their windows are lit like a string of stones flung rising and higher into a sky not yet dark enough for stars.

Catfish Apologies

I'm a guppy.
Scoop me up in your little nylon net.
See that red?
That red's for you,
my oxygen baby,
that pulse is yours.

I'm a dog.
Put some crunchies in my bowl
and I'll eat them, every bite.
See my tail wag?
That back and forth,
my Purina princess,
that motion is for you.

I'm a parakeet,
give me a mirror and a bell,
watch me amuse myself.
Hear me singing,
"Hello, Baby!"
That's your song.

I'm a catfish,
you can catch me.
I weigh 300 pounds.
Watch me swim?
I don't think so.
I'm on the bottom of a very deep, dark river.

I'm still a catfish in a river and
I see the other pets.
I wish you'd drop your line into this deep, dark water
and let me eat it up.
I would crawl into your rotten rowboat.
We could get our picture taken together.

A Long, Slow Ride Through Town on the Way to the River to Get Her Brains Blown Out

For a moment much longer than a mere instant, I was captured within eye contact with one of the convicted. She was young looking, certainly no older than mid-twenties, a dish-faced, moon-faced girl with unraveling pigtails and bad acne as a red mask across her brow and beneath her eyes.

The truck that carried the convicted had slowed to lurch through the deep potholes at the intersection. The placard around her neck announced her crimes: excessive fascination with foreign videos, prostitution. One had apparently led to the other, but I couldn't decipher which. Her dunce cap was somewhat tilted upon her head and the way her head limply bobbed with the movement of the truck made me wonder if it might not fall off altogether.

Our eyes clicked together, she with her wrists bound and riding in the back of the People's Liberation Army truck under machine-gun armed escort to her execution and I enjoying a lukewarm-warm Xian Beer with my 1/8 kilo bowl of dumplings at the roadside shack the foreigner's called Jiaozi Hut. She looked drugged or stupefied, seemed only vaguely holding herself erect, but I saw her still register some surprise when she saw me. It was if somewhere still inside her some part of herself was still able to exclaim, "Oh, look! A foreigner! A yanggweizi!"

I felt an urge to wave, to move my arm and my hand together in a synchronized and friendly gesture but, by then, the truck had waddled through the rough spots and was pretty much gone.









(Click on the cover or the title for more information about Artifical Rats & Electric Cats from Camber Press)

Driving Miss Lazy

Six and a half hours as an assistant pimp


It's a gray area of the sex industry. Listed in the Yellow Pages under "Escort Service -- Personal" (as opposed to "Escort Service -- Protective: see 'Guard & Patrol Service''"), emphasizing discretion in billing, fantasy fulfillment, weekend and afternoon specials, businesses with names like ~~Live Playmates, College Girls, Action Escorts, Gentlemen's Delights, AAAAAAAAAH ~~Entertainment, and She-Male Escorts offer "personalized service," "cuddles," "private sessions" and "no more disappointments." Presented in those direct-to-video movies shown on late-night Cinemax as little more than workfare for the conically augmented, the escort business purports to provide the client with companionship suitable for all business and personal affairs. The theory is that, for a fee, a discriminating gentleman may enjoy the temporary cachet of the service's arm-candy, a trophy-wife-for-a-day.
The reality of the escort business is all over the map. While some agencies surely must provide just such a service for the unattached business traveler (every myth has its roots in fact), others certainly offer much more to the client willing to negotiate behind closed doors for more intimate attentions. And, no matter where an individual business may be poised in legality and/or morality, the simple fact is that a large number of owners and support staff make their living off the charms of young women for rent. There's a word for that. To understand this aspect of the escort business, I sought the lowest of the low, the absolute last man on the daisy chain, the open-mouthed recipient of the last drops of trickle-down cash flow. I spoke to myself about my recent experience working for an escort agency as a driver and bodyguard for women on out-call service.


Question: First, if you could, please explain how you came to take ~~this job. 


Answer: Call me Ishmael. Some years ago -- never mind how long ~~precisely -- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would ...take a job driving prostitutes to their "dates." BR>
I'm joking. That's the first two sentences of Moby Dick. And I shouldn't call those girls prostitutes. They were discreet escorts and models providing personal service to discriminating clientele. Whatever all that means, I don't know. But that's what they were. 

Really, I was working an office job, I can always use a little more money, and I thought this job sounded both easy and interesting. I answered an ad in the paper, went in for a brief interview, and was hired. 



Question: What was the job description? What was the pay? 


Answer: The job description was "driver." My duties were to convey the escort to the appointment, check out the premises, collect the up-front money due, wait outside for the escort to finish, keep an eye on the time, and watch out for trouble. I got paid a flat rate for expenses, $25 a night I think, and a percent of all fees and tips the girl collected and/or told me about.
I was given a company pager. I'll describe it to you like they described it to me -- by the numbers. When the pager flashed one, it meant the girl needed help. When two came up, it meant the girl was ready to leave. Three meant the call was canceled; four meant collect more money from the client. Five meant call into the office. Six meant the girl was with the police. Seven meant go in and check the client's room. There were a few guys in the abandoned storefront they were using as an office and waiting area. They had sort of scooped out an area in the general debris scattered around and put in a couple ~~of thrift store sofas and a television. That was where the girls, the other driver, and I hung out waiting for calls. My shift was from 9 p.m. until 5 a.m. 



Question: So, a call came into the office and.... 


Answer: Right. OK. So a call comes into the office and a guy working the phones would answer. What was interesting about this was that there were about 25 lines coming into the office, each one for a different agency that was advertising in the Yellow Pages or the newspaper. So, really, even though there were all these different companies and agencies being advertised -- College Girls, Hot Bodies, Xtasy, Ashley 2nite, crap like that -- all the calls were being taken by the same guy for the same three girls.
Anyway, a call comes in and almost always it's a hang-up. If the client was talking at all, he was usually pretty shocked about the rates and hung up. A half hour with a girl cost $150 and an hour was $250. If they got someone to actually make an appointment, they got the address, phone number and method of payment. They'd call back to make sure it was a real phone number or that the client was really registered at that hotel or motel and in the room he said he was in. 

I really don't know why they asked about method of payment. Cash is always cash and they didn't have any way to take a credit card over the phone. That was part of my job. They showed me how to fill out a credit card slip and copy the card number by rubbing the carbon paper with a disposable lighter. They said they were waiting for delivery of a machine, but they were also waiting for delivery of a bathroom door.
Anyway, after everything got confirmed, I was supposed to wake up the girl. She'd be snoozing in front of the TV. She'd go get dressed and put her make-up on and off we'd go ~~into the night to spread joy. 



Question: Tell us about the girls. 


Answer: Well, it's not too complicated. They were young. I mean pretty damn young. The girls I worked with were 17 or 18. None of them had finished school, I mean high school. They were good looking girls but, you know, there was something...OK, well, like one of the girls, she had pretty bad acne. She just smeared on a bunch of foundation and she was ready to roll. Another girl, I don't know, she was just sort of...I don't know, sort of lost. It was like she didn't know where she was, didn't know how she got there, and didn't know how to leave. She'd stare at the TV, she'd get dressed, she'd sit in the car, and that was about it. I don't know how she acted with the client, but she wasn't doing much around the office or in the car. Maybe she was using drugs or something; maybe she was just ~~gritting her teeth to get through the night. 

They weren't ugly but they ~~weren't drop-dead gorgeous. They weren't stupid, they didn't seem stupid, but they didn't have any education and didn't seem to be in a rush to get some. It was kind of weird; for girls so young, they acted a lot older. I mean, they acted tired-and-sad older. I started talking to the girl with the acne when we were out driving. I asked her why she wasn't doing something else, something less intimate. I mean there are other jobs, even in the sex business, which would seem to be less stressful, less invasive, less emotional. She just got kind of vague on me, started talking about how easy this job was, how fucked ~~up her boyfriends were, how much money she could make doing this. I didn't quiz ~~her or anything, but she sure wasn't talking about future plans or doing anything else; she wasn't saying anything like, "Once I get enough money for junior college..." or "When I save enough for a ticket to Hollywood..." or even "Of course, I'm not doing this forever." It was all just in the moment for her. 

I asked her if she'd ever danced, you know, in a club, topless, or anything. I mean a good dancer could make just about the same money, maybe more, than she was making doing out-calls. She just sort of rambled about how she could if she wanted, how fucked-up her boyfriends were, how easy this job was. The same shit she'd said before. 

But, you know, she seemed different from the girls I've known who've been dancers. Strippers seem more, I don't know, focused than this girl. I mean they have to keep in really good shape just to dance. The dancing itself is a serious workout; it's hours of aerobic exercise. And the dancers I've known have always had some kind of goal. They may not achieve it, they may get lost in drugs or drinking or just being in "the life," but they all had some kind of goal. They were going to school, they were saving to start a business of their own, they were looking out and forward and beyond the clubs. This girl was just, I don't know, flat or something. Just stuck. Or too tired or too lazy or too paralyzed to do anything else. 

It didn't make too much sense to me; the things she said didn't seem to connect up too well, but...I mean, I was just her driver. But all three girls seemed to be nice girls. Seriously. They weren't mean or anything; they weren't bitches. They ~~were just sharp, you know, like looking for an edge. Like it was nothing personal, but they'd cheat you if they could. Even that girl who was sort of zoned out. She wasn't interacting much, wasn't talking or anything, but she wasn't mean about it. If I said something to her, she'd answer. But even she was always paying attention on the call. I mean, she didn't act like she was having fun, but she was keeping her eyes wide open all the time. 



Question: Tell us about going out. 


Answer: Yeah, OK. I guess I got the full range of calls. We got a prank call. Someone from a hotel called in for a girl and we go there. It's late, like 1 a.m. and we come walking in a side entrance to the ~~hotel and I'm definitely not dressed for success that night, kind of scruffy, you know? And this girl dressed like...well, she's dressed like a hooker. Vinyl thigh boots, sort of cheap, mismatched clothes but tight and gaudy-sexy. We walk past the desk and the clerk, a young guy, sort of gives us the eye, you know, but I'm thinking of course he's going to give us the eye. I mean, here's some ratty looking old fart with a teenaged girl dressed up like Irme La Duce walking through their hotel lobby at one o'clock in the morning. If I was working the graveyard desk shift, I'd have looked at us kind of funny, too. 

Anyway, the call was for a suite on a restricted floor and, of course, we couldn't go up without a room key. So, we call the room from her cell phone and there's no answer. I'm starting to understand a little better. We go back downstairs and ask the desk to call up. Big surprise. Nobody's in that room and he won't tell us if anyone is really registered there. 



Question: So, what happened? 


Answer: What do you mean what happened? We leave. We can't say anything to the shit ball at the desk, even though it was probably him who called in because, remember, the office always calls back to confirm. We can't flip him off or call his boss or anything because we'll probably be coming back there someday for a real call. It was just, like, "oh, well" and back to the office. He was just a sadistic, bored jerk. 

The next call was at another hotel. Everything was set up nicely and we got there and I knocked on the door. The guy opens up and he's talking on a cell phone and we go in. He gets off the phone and says, "Sorry. Something has come up but here's a 20 for your time and trouble." I don't really know what to say; I don't know if it's even true. Maybe he just didn't like the way the girl looked or whatever. The girl snatches the bill and it disappears forever. She didn't tell the office she got it and she sure didn't give me my 10 percent, ~~but I wasn't going to bust her for $2. I just let it slide. 



Question: So you're not making any money. 


Answer: I am not making any money. We finally get a call and it is way out there, I mean it's about a 15-mile drive for a one-hour call. The girl gets ready, I get ready, and we go. It's a house in a nice, middle-class neighborhood; new houses, you know? All the trees are little. Go up, ring the bell, and this kid answers. Kid. I don't know. He looked about 25 years old. Not bad looking, but drunk off his ass. The girl's eyes light up, you know, like ka-ching! I cruise around the house checking to make sure nobody's hiding in the bathroom or something and run the guy's credit card ~~on his coffee table with my lighter. He's got ESPN on some big screen TV with the sound turned down. He's all bleary eyed and embarrassed and quiet, just sort of nodding when I explain the rules and get him to sign the contract. No touching the girl, no intimate contact, no lewd or sexual behavior. It's all bullshit, really, something for the cops. The girl is practically shoving me out the door. 

I go back out to the car and settle in. It's warm so I leave the window open, listening, you know, for what? I don't know; screaming, breaking glass, sirens...

I get everything arranged real nice: the pager and my smokes on the dashboard, a cup of coffee from my thermos, and I'm reading a book with one of those battery-powered lights. And, bam, in like 20 minutes ~~the girl is back. The guy paid $250 on his credit card for an hour and she's out the door in 18.25 minutes. I asked her, "Is everything OK?" She says, "Everything is very OK" and we drive back to the office. I'm wondering if she maybe took some tips to, you know, go off the contract. I'm wondering if this drunk kid gave her some cash to...um...augment the agreement. I sort of try to ask her what happened but she doesn't really seem to be in a mood for sharing right then. If she got cash, if she got extra, the only way I'm going to find out is to pull over and strip-search her. And, you know, I just don't feel like doing that. I mean, I may be acting like a pimp, driving her around to have sex with some guy, but I don't have to, you know, act like a pimp. I can't visualize slapping her around, working on her with a coat hanger or something, saying things like "Where's my money?" My money. It's not my money. I suddenly discovered my heart just wasn't in it. 



Question: So, you're going to get $25 from the call; 10 percent of $250 is $25. 


Answer: Oh, yeah, that. I'll get $25 if the credit card clears and when the transfer from Visa or Mastercard or whatever comes in to the company account and whenever they decide to cut a check for me. That's like at least two months down the road. You have to keep your own records and, you know, trust the company. I just have to think, well, maybe that money's gone, too. 

Anyway, we sit around the office watching Nick at Nite. The girls conk out pretty much right away and the other driver wants to chat. It's about 2:30 in the morning and I just want to stare off into space for a while and this guy is wanting to talk about the job. I'm like, "Shut up." Luckily, another call comes in pretty soon and I grab it. 

It's another motel and we get there pretty quick. We find the room and knock on the door. The door sort of slams open, if you can do that...can you do that? Can a door slam open? Anyway, there's this little guy, about 5-foot-5 maybe, all buffed up like he works out, and we're inside. He's got his cash all ready and fanned out and he wants to get to it. I give him the contract, you know, no touching, no sex, no lewdness, and he sort of flips out. I mean, he's going, "What is this? What is this? What is this?" and I'm going "It's a standard business contract, sir." He's asking, "Well, just what do I get for my $150 and what if I want some more?" and then it sort of hits me. I catch a quick look around the room and the closet alcove is empty, the bag rack is empty. I look at the girl and we both know. [long pause] 



Question: What? 


Answer: C'mon. Little short guy, lots of muscles, no luggage, cash out in the open, wants sex? 



Question: Enlighten us. 


Answer: He's a cop. So, we're both like, "Sorry, sir. Good evening, sir. Complain to management, sir. You're on your own, sir." This transaction is terminated with extreme prejudice and, even if this guy isn't a cop, he's a weird little fucker and way too aggressive. We leave and go back to the office. I wait around until about 3:30 and the dispatcher says "go home" and I do and that's it. I don't go back. They called me up the next night wanting to know when I was coming in and I said, "I don't think so." I spent six and a half hours earning $25 base and maybe, in a couple of months, another $25 if I feel like even calling them back and I got ripped off by a teenager for $2. I figure that's enough. 


Question: That's it? 


Answer: Oh, yeah. That's it. Pretty glamorous, huh? Huggy Bear, Jr. That's me. And I drive a beat-up old Volvo, too.




Westchester County Weekly Copyright ©1999 New Mass. Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

Our Barbies, Ourselves

We were sitting on the porch, Stephanie and I, drinking glasses of ice-cold water and eating saltine crackers. They both hit our spots. Crickets were chirping in the gloaming nightfall and we could hear the kids, one block over, trying desperately to milk one last inning of softball from the gathering darkness.

"I can see," yelled Cinnamon. "I can still see perfectly. Just pitch the motherfucking ball, alright?"

"Such a mouth," giggled Stephanie.

I took a long drink and put another cracker in my mouth. Across the street, the Anderson's living room window changed from blue to grey to blue again as they switched channels from Entertainment Tonight all the way over to A Current Affair. Those Anderson. I could set my watch by them and their ever so regular viewing habits. And I did. Eight-oh-three.

"You're out!" shrieked Jasmine in the middle of the play. "Stop running, you running cunt! I tagged you three fucking years ago. You're out!"

"Fuck you!" came Lilac's retort.

Can that Lilac retort? I think so, and Stephanie does, too.

"If I'm still moving, you're still losing. Tag this, you stupid little whore!"

Stephanie and I both smiled, separately though simultaneously, to imagine little Lilac's gesture. There, in the kind of darkness that encloses us when that kind of darkness falls, we could see the dim forms of catfish on the lawn. They walked, in the kind of way they walk when they walk across our lawn, slowly and without rhythm. Like catfish.

Lilac's voice rose an octave. The fish paused then redoubled their motile thrashings. Stephanie and I both smiled, separately though simultaneously, to imagine little Lilac's distress. We could hear the dull sound wood makes, Louisville Slugger wood specifically, when it hits girl flesh. I put a saltine cracker on my tongue and closed my mouth. It, the cracker, began to dissolve.

"More ice cold water?" Stephanie asked.

"Mmm-mmm," I answered around the cracker. She filled my glass until the water bulged, trembling, against the rim of the glass. We could hear the shrieks of the girls floating toward us and the gentle shiver of breaking glass.

In that moment, hung against the twilit paint of another evening's end, the girls came pounding across the Mitchell lawn with sports equipment akimbo.

"You girls," Stephanie smiled at them.

"How was the game? You girls?" I asked them all through the paste in my mouth, the remains of my saltine cracker.

Norman Mailer Buying Batteries

I have this imitation I do at parties. Most of my friends have seen me do it several times but it's pretty funny and they'll say things like "You should watch him do this" or "Check this out; it's pretty funny" to the person they're talking to. Sometimes they will prod me and say "Come on, Robert, do that thing" and I'll hold my hands near my face and say "Oh, no. Not at a party" and then I'll do it.

It's pretty subtle, mostly gesture and expression, and a lot depends on lifting an eyebrow at precisely the right moment or on the way I curl my hand around my glass or can of beer or whatever and point my index finger just so. It's more like a gestalt or a channeling or something psychic than just doing an imitation, an impersonation.

A girl I met at a party asked me to do it for her the next morning. She said, "Do that again. Do that thing you did at the party."

I pretended to have no idea what she was talking about.

Gone Blonde Again, She Is

naturally upset at such far-fetched chemistry,
the webbed reaction she feels
has somehow toned her,
and angry at herself
and angry at the ridiculous churning in his eyes,
the way he said,
"Did you, madam, do something to your hair?"

That weekend at the war
was when after they spread their blanket on the spectators' hillside
she had know he glared at citizen men
and citizen women who turned away from
polite and measured barrage
to accuse her hair
of flaggish pretensions.
"It's just a little too much sun," she heard him mutter to their acquaintances.
"She was out in the open sun too long. That's all."
And "sheesh."
He said "sheesh" a lot.

But before that and nightly,
he had drawn her hair pins
one by one
and he had carefully placed them
one by one
in a kind of fan shape,
a spray of silver needles
beneath her bedroom mirror.

All Souls Day Every Day

One hundred tiny skulls
are scratched in the plaster above my bed.
I can count them over and over and over.
I can count them one hundred times
and there will always be
one hundred tiny skulls,
skulls scratched into the plaster over my bed.

My girlfriend has one hundred tiny skulls
tattooed against her thigh
and I can follow them
from one to ninety-nine
and find #100
there inside the soft shell of her cunt.

I've got one hundred tiny skulls
inside my head
and each one
is the one
I wish I am
when I wish I am
one of one hundred.

One hundred tiny skulls made of sugar
dissolve so quickly.
Where the heck do they go?
Well, they make a kind of paste and
I've got a bunch of it in my pocket right now.

The People’s Preferred Methods of Transportation

It was not the heat; it was the humanity. It was truly that. Or them, the humanity. The other humanity, not Robert and Sara but them. All of them. All the Chinese people.

It was as if they’d stepped into Dante’s Inferno, and Robert was reminded of the one not written by Dante Alighieri in the early 1300s, but the one directed by Harry Lachman in the mid-1930s (Lachman also directed other films including Charlie Chan in Rio [1936], Baby Takes a Bow [1934], The Face in the Sky [1933], La Couturière de Lunéville [1932], The Compulsory Husband [1930]), and Week-End Wives [1929] but Dante’s Inferno starred Spencer Tracy [whose birth name was Spencer Bonaventure Tracy which is a very cool name considering it quite likely that Tracy may have at one time portrayed John Paul Jones in a play or a movie and Jones’s most famous ship was named the Bonhomie Richard, which sounds somewhat like Bonaventure, and that he supposedly had a long affair with Katherine Hepburn, though she only conveniently revealed the affair after his death in order to spare Spencer’s long-dead wife the posthumous embarrassment when he couldn’t deny it, and, since she, Hepburn, was practically a man anyway, she could very well have been named Richard like the ship, and it must have been an adventure to have even spent any time at all around her—an adventure good or bad at home or abroad. Sort of like the one they were having now]. Why did Robert know these things? No one would ever know.).

It was those kind of coincidences which really bugged him at times like that stuck in the pedestrian tunnel under the Xi’an Train Station with about 500,000 other people though it was a safe bet that only they were the only not-Chinese people in the whole shaft. The 300 pounds of luggage didn’t help; the little squeaky-wheeled luggage cart did help a little bit but the luggage itself didn’t.

I’m sweating like…like…like a coolie, he thought and immediately discarded the thought like a crumpled juice box while considering where and amongst whom he was doing that sweating and thinking. He was not the only one profusely perspiring, which, because of the vicious humidity, was abundantly and olfactorally clear. And it was confusing how a place so dusty could be so wet.

“Are you hot?” he asked Sara. “And wet? And dry?”

“Shut…the…fuck…up,” she gasped in reply.

“Me, too,” he continued.

“I’m…serious.”

“Huh?”

“Exactly.”

Already lost in that briefest of conversations, he decided to stop speaking and, unwittingly, saved his own life.

Any question of where to go was quite definitely answered by the amalgam of humid humanity that pulled and/or pushed them in one decisive direction until finally, like little corks floating on a sea of fleshy lava, they popped burning onto the not-much-better surface.

Blinking there in the cruel Chinese sun alongside half a hundred thousand of their newest friends and each of them holding a Chinese/English map of the city bound into their different guide books, they began asking motorized cyclo drivers the question they would ask a many hundred thousands of times in the months to come. While blinking.

“Zai nar?” they asked. “Where is it?”

They were pointing to the place on the map indicated as The People’s Hotel, a place they had telegraphed reservations. That had been fun; really, telegraphing anyone for anything was like sending a telegram for more gunpowder to help beleaguered cavalry troops at the wooden fort or sending salutations to one of the older Barrymores at a place called the Birdcage Theater. They wondered if the telegram had even arrived or been delivered and if it had even worked where what would be waiting for them in the hotel lobby beside the usual angry, drunk Australian backpackers. The cyclo drivers, most of whom seemed illiterate, thought they meant the city itself and kept answering to that effect.

“Xi’an,” they said. “Xi’an.”

Sara and Robert found this adding piquant exasperation to the aftermath of their ordeal of a three-day train ride and thirty-minute stagger through the hellish hundred yards of pedestrian tunnel.

“Bu. Bu, bu, bu, bu,” they’d insist. “No. No, no, no. no, no.”

And they’d point to the dot that designated the now-crumbling-with-neglect-and-animosity hotel Soviets built when they were still coming to places like Xi’an or like the People’s Republic of China entire until Mao Ze Dong lost his mind.

“Jiege difang,” they’d insist. “This place.”

The cycle drivers would insist right back though with greater clarity.

“XI,” they’d say. “AN.”

It was like an old joke and Sara along with Robert could barely stand it. And that was where things stood until some man, some anonymous Chinese man, took one of the guidebooks into his own hands to tell the drivers in shot-gun Xi’an dialect where the pair wished to be deposited.

“Dou xiao chen?” the kind man asked them. “How much money are you willing to spend for the ride?”

While Robert was calculating the relationship between renmenbi and dollars, Sara snapped.


“I don’t care. As much as it takes.”
The kind man smiled and held up his hand in what looked like a surfer’s gesture for “things are cool.”

“Things are not cool,” Sara answered.

It was weeks later they would learn the gesture was the one of the one-handed counting signs for “six.” Six renmenbi were officially 85 U.S. cents though it was not until weeks later the couple would learn they had been ripped off by 78 unofficial U.S. cents and be pissed quite off. The government-approved exchange rate was 1-to-7; U.S. dollars were going at 1-to-30 on the street. The counting was done one-handed because back in ancient days when the Chinese understood and practiced capitalism, such hand-symbols could be used beneath the protective covering of capacious changpao and thereby keep asking price and counter-offer private from eyes not directly involved in the transaction.

While Sara supervised the loading of their 600 pounds of luggage into the designated cyclo, Robert sat on the street curb and for some elusive reason began to ponder Mendelian genetics with what was left of his quickly sautéing head. Sweet-pea blossoms in pink and blue tumbled across his brain’s gyri and sulci.

If I took a half-blue and a half-pink, he wondered, would I get a three-quarter pink or a three-quarter blue? Would it have round or wrinkled seeds? Would they be tasty?

He snapped out of his Austrian garden revery to the sound of Sara.

“Zou [Get up and go],” she was saying. “Zou, zou, zou.”

“Hey,” he answered. “You’re speaking Chinese.”

“Yeah. Amazing,” she said. “Now get the fuck up and go.”

“Amazing.”

“That’s what I said.”

The streets through which they traveled were as clotted with Chinese people as had been the pedestrian tunnel back at the train station, if not more so if such a thing were possible and it was.

“There’s a lot of Chinese people out there,” Robert said.

She sighed and she banged her head a little bit on the cyclo’s sheet metal body each time the driver hit a bump or another Chinese person. Rocking back and forth in the back and forth of the vehicle, Robert snagged his shirt on an exposed bolt and gave the blurry 50s plaid cloth a v-shaped tear. And that was the worst thing that happened that day. It had been his father’s shirt and Robert had many times seen the pictures of his dad holding a newborn Robert and wearing that shirt.

“I ripped my shirt,” Robert told Sara.

“Oh, honey,” she answered. “That’s awful.”

“I think we should get one of these.” Robert answered her answer with a gesture indicating the cyclo in which they were riding. “It would help if we had one of these for the trip back to the States.”

Maybe they could actually get one home. Registration and tags might be a problem, but Americans were already bringing Chinese babies out of the country and if they could do that with a human being, how hard would it be to transport a half motorcycle-half rickshaw? Probably not too hard at all. They could name it, their own personal cyclo, Caifu Meng and dress it in a pink Ralph Lauren onesie and the guards wouldn’t blink as long as they kept throwing money at them. It would be worth a try.

Robert was thinking about how he was going to unload the 1200 pounds of their luggage when they finally arrived at the People’s Hotel of Xi’an for Visiting Soviet Dignitaries and Other Honored Guests. The grimy white statue of Chairman Mao smiled warmly as they passed. Robert was reminded of the statue of Walt Disney outside the Happiest Place on Earth except there was no mouse at Mao’s feet smiling along with the Helmsman. Still, it was good to be home and the sound of enraged, slurring Australians filtering out from the lobby and into the driveway was almost a comfort. They made it almost seem cool.









(from Artificial Rats & Electric Cats, Camber Press, 2008. Click on the title or the cover image for more information.)

It’s Nice To Have Elvis on My Side

It’s nice to have Elvis on my side.
There are those moments in my life when I can see
the King right next to me,
a young Elvis right there backing my play,
and I know anything is possible.

I can stare down a cop,
I can talk to a pretty girl who waitresses at a coffeeshop,
I can drive all night to get home and see the kids for Christmas,
and I know he approves and he even wants to see more.
Elvis chuckles, “Keep ‘er going. You’re on a roll.”

In a rainstorm by the highway, we’re there together
with our heads ducked low and our jackets pulled tight
and we’re cold and wet and broke and coughing up a little blood,
but it only makes us more sullen and hard and determined
and we encourage each other, we tell each other,
“Hang on, man. You can do it. Just hang on.”
Me and Elvis help each other out.

It’s nice to know he’s been everywhere and seen everything and he knows exactly what to do, knows exactly what to say.
It’s nice the way he sits with me at the kitchen table on hot summer nights
and we play cards wearing just our t-shirts because it is so hot.
Elvis can be real thoughtful.

Some nights I’ll drift off to sleep and he’ll be in the living room by himself
and I can hear him sort of humming, not even singing at all,
just a low murmur, barely there, and when I wake up in the morning
he’ll still be sitting on the sofa and Elvis will say “G’morning, sleepyhead”
and that’s such a great feeling.

It’s nice to have Elvis on my side.

It Seemed Harmless

It seemed harmless at first, and so we just let him keep doing it and he sat there for hours on the porch cutting pictures and photographs of animals from any newspaper or magazine or pamphlet he could find and it seemed like the only time he wasn’t on the porch cutting out pictures of animals was when he was out looking for more pamphlets, newspapers, or magazines and from which he cut more pictures and photographs of animals or, if he wasn’t doing that, he was pinning with straight pins all those pictures and photographs of animals on the walls of, first, his room and when it was clear that he’d finished in there, pictures and photographs of animals spilled out into the hallway and down into the living room and kitchen not to mention the tattered leftover newspapers, pamphlets, and magazines fluttering around the porch and rolling across the lawn, each more-or-less complete except where pictures and photographs of animals had once been printed and he had cut them out to pin inside the house and were now a negative space, a silhouette of an empty nothing shaped like a tiger or a walrus or a ladybug or a basket full of cute baby kittens and just because he was doing that and because of the way the yard and porch and the inside of the house started looking, they took to calling us all names and whatnot and that, I believe, is not fair at all.

ASA 400

When I look at these photographs
I see the way she sees me,
the ways she is able look or, rather,
the way she is able to see the things she sees
(texture, color, contrast, shadow, me).

That nose and that chin were mine
before she took them
and what her eyes have done to the ones in my head
makes films and papers and chemicals
seem more important than they ever should be.
These are problems of optics and
the ways light will bend when introduced to liquid, rampant,
inside our heads.

In a photo album,
they are flat and will not rise to meet
the profile drawing near,
the conscious quest for detail.
Often, they are black and/or white
But more, a skillful melding of the two.
We will turn those pages slowly. Together.

Back lit and hungry,
a halo of halogen corona and, curious,
the one (or is it my?)
arm strikes shadow sharp and clear.
These are records, I must always remind myself,
but of what remains delusional and
how is it possible for these documents
to record the sound
of one other woman's shoes
as they strike the paving stones
that are displayed in the rain
on the way
to the door
which I am opening
because I remember
what it sounds like
when she taps the wire-bound glass
that cuts into the wood
and lets us see each other?