Hello Folks:
After the holidays, we will begin a yearlong residency of writers and musicians at The Living Room. It's the continuation of the series we started at Googies (upstairs from The Living Room) in September. We'll be appearing every second Sunday of the month, beginning with January 9th. The format will be similar. A wordsmith will kick off the night, followed by yours truly (that's a dumb expression) with The Liars Club, followed by a musical act. The first week, we have a very special show featuring three terrific poets, Liz Axelrod, Mario Alberto Zambrano and Rebecca Melnyk. Their bios are below.
We hope to see you throughout the year. I'll be in touch after the new year. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season. Thanks again to everyone who made the release of Gadfly and Declaration of Us such a success. You can buy the book (and eventually the EP) and get updates about future residency performers at dannylanzetta.com.
Toodaloo!
Danny
Liz Axelrod: A former DJ, Music Industry Promoter and Publicist with four gold records under her belt, Liz is well into her third life as a creative writing student. Liz has been making the rounds of the NYC Poetry Circuit for over a decade and has been both reader and judge at the Bowery College Poetry Slam, a regular at Smalls Jazz Club’s Saturday Open Mic Poetry Readings, and a featured poet at the Phoenix Poetry Series and the Yippie Museum’s Monday Night Poet’s Café. She is currently working on her first collection of poems, entitled “Flash Upon My Grid,” an eighties DJ girl collection of short stories, finishing her novel, and rearranging the Earth’s gravitational pull to make the day at least three hours longer.
Mario Alberto Zambrano: Mario was a contemporary ballet dancer for fifteen years. He has danced for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Nederlands Dans Theater, Batsheva Dance Company and Ballett Frankfurt, and has lived in Holland, Germany, Spain, Israel, Japan, and Chicago. His writing has been published in Dance Europe Magazine, Skive, Thieves Jargon and The Brooklyn Rail. Currently, he is working on his first novel, a collection of fifty-four vignettes.
Rebecca Melnyk: Rebecca was born in Canada during a snow storm. She has lived in New York for awhile, enough that she can’t shake the city off her bones. She dedicates her time to studying literature, writing poems and stories, and is currently kicking around in the cacophony of the East Village by interning at the Poetry Project.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Lyrics to Declaration of Us
The EP we will release on December 10th at The Living Room is complete. There are approximately 2178 words spoken and/or sung on the album (give or take a "Yeah" or a "Uh-huh" here or there). For those of you who are interested, here are those words in the order they appear on the record. We don't have the funding for fancy inserts.
As you're reading along, feel free to make up your own tunes. Also, sometimes I can't always make out what Chris saying, even if I wrote it. So not everything will match up will what you hear live. Just like real rock and roll.
William Faulkner
Pressed into service by an unrepentant television, he arrives at the pen. He brandishes it clumsily, makes some marks on a page, turns up the volume on the knob inside his head.
“Fuck aesthetic! Aesthetic is accidental!” He screams this out the window into the night. He is a beast, scanning for chaos. Down below, he knows the men and women are silently shrieking.
Chorus 1
Ugliness and language is the beauty of the dead.
Looks like what we’re looking for has already been read.
Feverish! Feverish! Like Faulkner’s dogs, always in pursuit of feelings with flesh! Life’s on the line here, gotta get it right. Rip it out! Every revelation is vicious.
Chorus 2
Stampede of belief and a quiet little bed.
Looks like what we’re looking for has already been read.
Managing his shoe salesman job has become a daily interference. After all, America is hard to conquer on a slope. He crushes his feet into size 8s as a matter of principle. He needs the pain. He goes to work every day and walks home. It does not matter if he goes home. By then, a portion of him has traveled on. Most remains. It’s not until much later, in the deepest part of the secret night, after he has had a glass several more, that his teeth come out. And the excavation begins. Blessed are the wounded. Blessed are the stubborn. Blessed are the wealthy. Blessed are the underwhelmed. Blessed are the damages inflicted under the night sky by every drop of anguish of the brothers and sisters of the brothers and sister. We are all bottomless.
Books are not riddles. Don’t fancy them. Press them against your skin. Smell the meat on those pages. Concentrate on the blemishes. Unless you’re only looking to run away.
You and Me
1.
Madness and ignominy are the best things that could happen to you.
As long as we’re built this way, I want you to sweat out your own sins and breathe new life into mine.
2.
My work is a sieve. It is burdened and fancies wanderlust.
That means it collapses very easily.
That means a lot of things get into it.
That means we all fall down.
Chorus (2x)
Whatever I conceal
Whatever I hold dear
Will always be estranged
From the way I appear.
3.
You can be logical.
You can mix in theology.
You can be trusted.
You won’t fall all the way down.
You can be kindness.
You can be struggle.
You can make decisions.
You can be told.
I am kneejerk solipsism waiting to be broken down.
My situation is more urgent.
4.
In the very last moment of night
I come back to you.
I come back because it is convenient
And because it is safe
And because it is my heart.
Declaration of Us
I’m so fucking angry, but I’m old enough to prove it.
I can be all the emotions simultaneously, especially on the morning commute if I’m listening to Steve Earle and the derelicts are particularly pushy.
We got a problem here today and it’s called US. We don’t believe enough anymore and when we do, it’s about wall fixtures. Forget all that. Let’s fucking run away and hide – you and me. Let’s even hide from each other while we jump our batteries. Not really hide so much as float around like itinerant, whimsical philosophers, and only meet up for daily dinners and occasional sex. As for this place? Don’t worry. Those no-good, lowdown police officer pricks and shitty high school principals will still be here when we get back. If we get back.
See, a great and true red-headed innocent once said, “Neil Young knows what I’m talking about,” and I think that’s right on. Helpless, helpless, hellllpless. If we’re lucky. Might as well get whipped into a different frenzy. This one is all chaosed-out. Look at me, I’m off my medication on purpose ‘cause it makes me give a shit. Everybody screams. As they should.
I’m going to take a break right here to read you a list of people I secretly admire. Sorry I never told you. I’m telling you now:
Charles Dickens.
Tom Hayes.
Grandma Sadie.
Natalie Maines.
Michael Rupert.
Tupac Shakur.
What can I say? I like people who look like their feelings.
OK. Back to the story.
Today I did an experiment. I imagined leaving my life. It wasn’t so terrible. Sure, I cried a lot. But what’s that got to do with anything? I envisioned hightailing it to the Pennsylvania mountains to teach college-level English and falling in love once a week with one of the darlings, collecting beautiful, fresh young writer-goddess lovers for my vault, growing old with all of ‘em and none of ‘em at the same time.
I got ideas (ideas, I say!). I got big, beefy, thunderclap, shucksy, masculine, heartfelt, scurrilous, sludgy, howling-at-the-moon ideas! And if I can’t lasso at least one of them soon, I’ll have to start giving them away. C’mon. Whaddya say? Can we lash out together? Can we bring back that Keroauckian, talkin’-smackian vernacular? Saddle up on this roof and ride out into destinations unknown? Maybe we’ll get famous for all this horsing around. End up like one of those TMZ cheese doodles, noodling in the park with our tits flopping out of Sunday dresses. Jesus, what the hell did I just say? LOL.
Oh God, I just wanna watch it rain from a stranger’s living room, only to find out that the furniture is mine. Or see a disaster up close and personal so I can fix it with a box of tools. Or tell my girlfriend I’ve loved her as much as I could possibly ever love a woman and leave her anyway. Or have a chance to explain myself to Eddie Vedder. Or walk around at night in a town I haven’t heard of yet. Or be the only old guy in a happy house of boom-boom bass lines and scandalous creativity. Or just to know what it’s like to be alone, disgraced and suffer the consequences.
I want to write.
Here it is, today (insert date), and I know the streets are teeming. There’s enough suffering in one subway car to blind you if you look directly into it. Today I saw this guy rubbing a lottery ticket at an outdoor café in New York City. He was wearing a suit and tie, scratching feverishly. Nobody should need that kind of dream.
The streets are teeming, yes they are, with the busted-up ruins of everybody’s goddamn loneliness, James Baldwin said it a long time ago and he knew (he knew!), and all that decay now gets overlooked because we all have blood and most of us have seen at least one episode of American Idol. That’s the problem, these days. Too much common ground. Isn’t anybody unpublished anymore?
Health is hogwash.
Smart is good.
Murder is a deep feeling.
Damage is irreparable.
Good.
Stay damaged.
Yes, goddamnit, I love the way the liquor feels. Consider me lucky. Some people don’t even have that much.
And when the demands of modern life – Facebook and organic peanut butter and bridal registries and mindless savings accounts and the economy (Jesus Christ! Fuck the goddamn fucking economy already!) – when all that gets to be too much, and some jackoff with a dubious agenda and a concerned face asks you how you feel, make sure you say something with conviction:
“I feel OK.
Thank you kindly.
I appreciate your concern.
But don’t worry about me very much.
‘Cause I’m not really here.”
He’ll never know what hit him.
Zornoza
That is the young writer's dilemma as I see it. Not just his, but all our problems is to save mankind from being de-souled as the stallion or boar or bull is gelded, to save the individual from anonymity before it is too late, and humanity has vanished from the animal called man. And who better to save man's humanity than the writer, the poet, the artist, since who should fear the loss of it more, since the humanity of man is the artist's life's blood? -William Faulkner
1.
Get ‘em out.
2.
Blended sounds
Blended sounds
Walk outside
And blended sounds.
3.
You don’t empathize.
You rationalize.
You don’t feel it.
You only steal it.
4.
Suffer . . .
5.
Fix things and hustle.
Fix things and breathe.
Factor in the unfactorable.
Maybe then I’ll believe.
6.
I’m not like you!
7.
Buck up and tell me who is used to it!
Buck up and tell me who is used to this!
Handsome men, handsome men.
8.
I can’t get turned on.
I can’t get turned on.
Maybe it’s because I’m bland.
I can’t get turned on.
9.
Everybody has a leader.
Everybody has a plan.
No one who connects the dots
Can fathom man,
Can fathom man,
Can fathom man,
Can fathom man,
Can fathom man,
Can fathom man.
Etcetera.
Dangerwalk
1.
Dragons.
It is not necessary to invent dragons.
They’re already on their way.
I am my most vicious at work.
Making rules.
Believing in ordinary angles.
I won’t think twice about cutting off your money
or your scholarship
or your air supply.
Viciousness is a decision.
It’s in my blood as we speak.
Lay down your fire. Lay down your showmanship.
2.
This verse is an old, broke-down shoe.
One with the leather tongue deflated, the sole worn through.
One that looks like you.
You don’t have to be defended.
Your leg up is an illusion that colleges reproduce.
You see without magic.
You are a deduction.
You dance to the music of calendars.
You old, little man.
You meaningless prick.
I will not let you into me.
Go find another legacy to shake down.
Lay down you’re tired. Lay down your selfishness/selflessness. This indiscretion has left you vacant.
3.
I am weaker than my muscular moments.
Those things flee at a bribing kiss
and the fallacy of relief.
My kingdom is in the wash
Being sanitized for reproduction.
It seems I will join your logic after all.
Lay down you’re free now. Go on discover. Please let me be now. I am not dead.
Ten years
The first time I fell in love it was Los Angeles and it was in a room with a lot of other people, a Tuesday I think, and I was an actor and a teenager, and she had the reddest hair and was taller than me, and everyone ate lunch and read their lines and laughed, and I never shook her hand, and then it went around in circles, and I stayed up in bed at night asking God for help, and I gave her mix tapes and wore clothes I thought would impress her, and the weather was always fine, and she thought I was fine, just not kissing material, and the way it was was something that will never happen again, and she grew up into something else, a rock star, I still see her from time to time in magazines, she’s a superstar, and all I do is read books so I can see why she decided to pass.
The second time I fell in love it wasn’t winter but it should’ve been and I wasn’t an actor anymore, she was, maybe, and it was a Tuesday night, I think, and I spent two weeks leading up to her, two weeks of strategy in New York City diners, she said no anyway, and it was cold on weekends in Hopewell Junction, Halloween cold (remember Matt?) and the Knicks were always on the radio, and the way it was was something that will never happen again, and after I realized I was ashamed of it I started to make sentences out of love, the long and short of it, got happy with the gloom, showed off my wounds, and I liked the crying but it wasn’t just that, her sister got killed but it wasn’t just that, I would’ve helped her anyway, I was good, I was pure, I wanted to relieve her, she decided to pass.
The third time I fell in love with a real live believer and she scooped me up on the early side of a fade, first I decided on her, hid behind trees to watch her making out with accountants (future accountants actually, even worse), and we bounced around, we were hooting and hollering and when we made love it was actually worth it, she was worth more than a decent poem, finally she strangled me with her hands, four months and then the murder, my fault really but not much left of me, I was constantly crawling, I wrote her letters from Cheyenne and Provo and Los Angeles too, and I argued for what she left behind and she didn’t so much decide to pass but pretend it was never there, and the way it was was something that I will never feel again.
Then ten years went by . . .
The fourth time I fell in love is the love I’m in right now, and it won’t be the last time, that much I know, but I like it because I can’t watch her start to cry, I always have to make it stop, I’ll even go so far as to put a tissue underneath her eyes to see if I can stop the flow, and that makes her laugh, so this time I think I’ve almost got it right . . .
As you're reading along, feel free to make up your own tunes. Also, sometimes I can't always make out what Chris saying, even if I wrote it. So not everything will match up will what you hear live. Just like real rock and roll.
William Faulkner
Pressed into service by an unrepentant television, he arrives at the pen. He brandishes it clumsily, makes some marks on a page, turns up the volume on the knob inside his head.
“Fuck aesthetic! Aesthetic is accidental!” He screams this out the window into the night. He is a beast, scanning for chaos. Down below, he knows the men and women are silently shrieking.
Chorus 1
Ugliness and language is the beauty of the dead.
Looks like what we’re looking for has already been read.
Feverish! Feverish! Like Faulkner’s dogs, always in pursuit of feelings with flesh! Life’s on the line here, gotta get it right. Rip it out! Every revelation is vicious.
Chorus 2
Stampede of belief and a quiet little bed.
Looks like what we’re looking for has already been read.
Managing his shoe salesman job has become a daily interference. After all, America is hard to conquer on a slope. He crushes his feet into size 8s as a matter of principle. He needs the pain. He goes to work every day and walks home. It does not matter if he goes home. By then, a portion of him has traveled on. Most remains. It’s not until much later, in the deepest part of the secret night, after he has had a glass several more, that his teeth come out. And the excavation begins. Blessed are the wounded. Blessed are the stubborn. Blessed are the wealthy. Blessed are the underwhelmed. Blessed are the damages inflicted under the night sky by every drop of anguish of the brothers and sisters of the brothers and sister. We are all bottomless.
Books are not riddles. Don’t fancy them. Press them against your skin. Smell the meat on those pages. Concentrate on the blemishes. Unless you’re only looking to run away.
You and Me
1.
Madness and ignominy are the best things that could happen to you.
As long as we’re built this way, I want you to sweat out your own sins and breathe new life into mine.
2.
My work is a sieve. It is burdened and fancies wanderlust.
That means it collapses very easily.
That means a lot of things get into it.
That means we all fall down.
Chorus (2x)
Whatever I conceal
Whatever I hold dear
Will always be estranged
From the way I appear.
3.
You can be logical.
You can mix in theology.
You can be trusted.
You won’t fall all the way down.
You can be kindness.
You can be struggle.
You can make decisions.
You can be told.
I am kneejerk solipsism waiting to be broken down.
My situation is more urgent.
4.
In the very last moment of night
I come back to you.
I come back because it is convenient
And because it is safe
And because it is my heart.
Declaration of Us
I’m so fucking angry, but I’m old enough to prove it.
I can be all the emotions simultaneously, especially on the morning commute if I’m listening to Steve Earle and the derelicts are particularly pushy.
We got a problem here today and it’s called US. We don’t believe enough anymore and when we do, it’s about wall fixtures. Forget all that. Let’s fucking run away and hide – you and me. Let’s even hide from each other while we jump our batteries. Not really hide so much as float around like itinerant, whimsical philosophers, and only meet up for daily dinners and occasional sex. As for this place? Don’t worry. Those no-good, lowdown police officer pricks and shitty high school principals will still be here when we get back. If we get back.
See, a great and true red-headed innocent once said, “Neil Young knows what I’m talking about,” and I think that’s right on. Helpless, helpless, hellllpless. If we’re lucky. Might as well get whipped into a different frenzy. This one is all chaosed-out. Look at me, I’m off my medication on purpose ‘cause it makes me give a shit. Everybody screams. As they should.
I’m going to take a break right here to read you a list of people I secretly admire. Sorry I never told you. I’m telling you now:
Charles Dickens.
Tom Hayes.
Grandma Sadie.
Natalie Maines.
Michael Rupert.
Tupac Shakur.
What can I say? I like people who look like their feelings.
OK. Back to the story.
Today I did an experiment. I imagined leaving my life. It wasn’t so terrible. Sure, I cried a lot. But what’s that got to do with anything? I envisioned hightailing it to the Pennsylvania mountains to teach college-level English and falling in love once a week with one of the darlings, collecting beautiful, fresh young writer-goddess lovers for my vault, growing old with all of ‘em and none of ‘em at the same time.
I got ideas (ideas, I say!). I got big, beefy, thunderclap, shucksy, masculine, heartfelt, scurrilous, sludgy, howling-at-the-moon ideas! And if I can’t lasso at least one of them soon, I’ll have to start giving them away. C’mon. Whaddya say? Can we lash out together? Can we bring back that Keroauckian, talkin’-smackian vernacular? Saddle up on this roof and ride out into destinations unknown? Maybe we’ll get famous for all this horsing around. End up like one of those TMZ cheese doodles, noodling in the park with our tits flopping out of Sunday dresses. Jesus, what the hell did I just say? LOL.
Oh God, I just wanna watch it rain from a stranger’s living room, only to find out that the furniture is mine. Or see a disaster up close and personal so I can fix it with a box of tools. Or tell my girlfriend I’ve loved her as much as I could possibly ever love a woman and leave her anyway. Or have a chance to explain myself to Eddie Vedder. Or walk around at night in a town I haven’t heard of yet. Or be the only old guy in a happy house of boom-boom bass lines and scandalous creativity. Or just to know what it’s like to be alone, disgraced and suffer the consequences.
I want to write.
Here it is, today (insert date), and I know the streets are teeming. There’s enough suffering in one subway car to blind you if you look directly into it. Today I saw this guy rubbing a lottery ticket at an outdoor café in New York City. He was wearing a suit and tie, scratching feverishly. Nobody should need that kind of dream.
The streets are teeming, yes they are, with the busted-up ruins of everybody’s goddamn loneliness, James Baldwin said it a long time ago and he knew (he knew!), and all that decay now gets overlooked because we all have blood and most of us have seen at least one episode of American Idol. That’s the problem, these days. Too much common ground. Isn’t anybody unpublished anymore?
Health is hogwash.
Smart is good.
Murder is a deep feeling.
Damage is irreparable.
Good.
Stay damaged.
Yes, goddamnit, I love the way the liquor feels. Consider me lucky. Some people don’t even have that much.
And when the demands of modern life – Facebook and organic peanut butter and bridal registries and mindless savings accounts and the economy (Jesus Christ! Fuck the goddamn fucking economy already!) – when all that gets to be too much, and some jackoff with a dubious agenda and a concerned face asks you how you feel, make sure you say something with conviction:
“I feel OK.
Thank you kindly.
I appreciate your concern.
But don’t worry about me very much.
‘Cause I’m not really here.”
He’ll never know what hit him.
Zornoza
That is the young writer's dilemma as I see it. Not just his, but all our problems is to save mankind from being de-souled as the stallion or boar or bull is gelded, to save the individual from anonymity before it is too late, and humanity has vanished from the animal called man. And who better to save man's humanity than the writer, the poet, the artist, since who should fear the loss of it more, since the humanity of man is the artist's life's blood? -William Faulkner
1.
Get ‘em out.
2.
Blended sounds
Blended sounds
Walk outside
And blended sounds.
3.
You don’t empathize.
You rationalize.
You don’t feel it.
You only steal it.
4.
Suffer . . .
5.
Fix things and hustle.
Fix things and breathe.
Factor in the unfactorable.
Maybe then I’ll believe.
6.
I’m not like you!
7.
Buck up and tell me who is used to it!
Buck up and tell me who is used to this!
Handsome men, handsome men.
8.
I can’t get turned on.
I can’t get turned on.
Maybe it’s because I’m bland.
I can’t get turned on.
9.
Everybody has a leader.
Everybody has a plan.
No one who connects the dots
Can fathom man,
Can fathom man,
Can fathom man,
Can fathom man,
Can fathom man,
Can fathom man.
Etcetera.
Dangerwalk
1.
Dragons.
It is not necessary to invent dragons.
They’re already on their way.
I am my most vicious at work.
Making rules.
Believing in ordinary angles.
I won’t think twice about cutting off your money
or your scholarship
or your air supply.
Viciousness is a decision.
It’s in my blood as we speak.
Lay down your fire. Lay down your showmanship.
2.
This verse is an old, broke-down shoe.
One with the leather tongue deflated, the sole worn through.
One that looks like you.
You don’t have to be defended.
Your leg up is an illusion that colleges reproduce.
You see without magic.
You are a deduction.
You dance to the music of calendars.
You old, little man.
You meaningless prick.
I will not let you into me.
Go find another legacy to shake down.
Lay down you’re tired. Lay down your selfishness/selflessness. This indiscretion has left you vacant.
3.
I am weaker than my muscular moments.
Those things flee at a bribing kiss
and the fallacy of relief.
My kingdom is in the wash
Being sanitized for reproduction.
It seems I will join your logic after all.
Lay down you’re free now. Go on discover. Please let me be now. I am not dead.
Ten years
The first time I fell in love it was Los Angeles and it was in a room with a lot of other people, a Tuesday I think, and I was an actor and a teenager, and she had the reddest hair and was taller than me, and everyone ate lunch and read their lines and laughed, and I never shook her hand, and then it went around in circles, and I stayed up in bed at night asking God for help, and I gave her mix tapes and wore clothes I thought would impress her, and the weather was always fine, and she thought I was fine, just not kissing material, and the way it was was something that will never happen again, and she grew up into something else, a rock star, I still see her from time to time in magazines, she’s a superstar, and all I do is read books so I can see why she decided to pass.
The second time I fell in love it wasn’t winter but it should’ve been and I wasn’t an actor anymore, she was, maybe, and it was a Tuesday night, I think, and I spent two weeks leading up to her, two weeks of strategy in New York City diners, she said no anyway, and it was cold on weekends in Hopewell Junction, Halloween cold (remember Matt?) and the Knicks were always on the radio, and the way it was was something that will never happen again, and after I realized I was ashamed of it I started to make sentences out of love, the long and short of it, got happy with the gloom, showed off my wounds, and I liked the crying but it wasn’t just that, her sister got killed but it wasn’t just that, I would’ve helped her anyway, I was good, I was pure, I wanted to relieve her, she decided to pass.
The third time I fell in love with a real live believer and she scooped me up on the early side of a fade, first I decided on her, hid behind trees to watch her making out with accountants (future accountants actually, even worse), and we bounced around, we were hooting and hollering and when we made love it was actually worth it, she was worth more than a decent poem, finally she strangled me with her hands, four months and then the murder, my fault really but not much left of me, I was constantly crawling, I wrote her letters from Cheyenne and Provo and Los Angeles too, and I argued for what she left behind and she didn’t so much decide to pass but pretend it was never there, and the way it was was something that I will never feel again.
Then ten years went by . . .
The fourth time I fell in love is the love I’m in right now, and it won’t be the last time, that much I know, but I like it because I can’t watch her start to cry, I always have to make it stop, I’ll even go so far as to put a tissue underneath her eyes to see if I can stop the flow, and that makes her laugh, so this time I think I’ve almost got it right . . .
Sunday, November 21, 2010
How Strange It Is to Be Anything at All
Part 1: Us
1.
Humbled and mumbling and running out of steam,
Whispers of scandals and someone else’s dreams,
Damages, damages and all the words unread,
Figure you’ll get used to it or burn the thoughts unsaid.
2.
See the way the ugly heads get sucked in by the sound,
Push away the morning stink and try to walk around,
Let me go to other places and learn about the scene,
You won’t let me get there til it fits with our routine.
3.
Take me out or shut me out or tell me what I’m worth,
The things I think are all the same and have been since my birth.
Mixed up in the elements and trying to be true,
Slave to conversation and stranded like you.
4.
Try to forget this place, unknow the things you own,
Dispose of all your lovers and resist the weight of home,
Make up stories, set aside the tangents of TV,
Not much there but sing-a-longs and shit you can’t redeem.
5.
Stand beside your brother, he’s not the one to blame,
Misspent dedication and addicted to shame,
Lovers who mean well and hold out through the night,
Coronate their children with the gift of narrow sight.
Part 2: Them
6.
Conquer all the grownups and aspire to be worse,
Find a better trauma and demand to haunt the earth,
Tell me not to suffer and I’ll tell you not to smile,
Gladness is vindictive and it’s going out of style.
7.
Line ‘em up for summer and they’ll all jump in the pool,
I’d like to see them shake their heads, I wish that they’d refuse,
Schedule the righteous man a time to settle down,
He’s just another rumor, another broken noun.
8.
The holy war among us is a sight for God to see,
He’s just around the corner and he likes to brush his teeth,
Worship him in daylight and unwrap him from the shroud,
Bury him in trying and ignore his thorny crown.
9.
Shoelaces in the window of the Yellowbird motel,
Have got me feelin’ pretty bad or maybe pretty well,
There are stories of the devil in an angel’s Tuesday dance,
And a million kinds of subplots that deserve a dying chance.
10.
Campaigns and canopies and a smattering of details,
Cowering to the managers who practice what they fail,
Anthems and morality are washed up in the flood,
Nothing more than posturing for uninspired blood.
Part 3: Coexistence
11.
A certain kind of stop-and-go is typical for me.
A certain kind of answer is what we’re going to need.
Thorough minds and thorough lives are worth the crying for.
All we are has bound us to our love forevermore.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
The Release of Danny Lanzetta's Gadfly and Declaration of Us on December 10th at The Living Room
Allo ladies and gents!
Well, the date has been set and we’re raring to go. On Friday, December 10th, I will release both my novel Gadfly and the EP Declaration of Us at The Living Room at 10 PM. We’ll be rockin’ and rollin’ all night long, I can promise you that. My good friends Emily Easterly and J. Seger will also be releasing their new EP, VA/MD, that evening at 9 pm. Chris Cubeta and The Liars Club will play at 11.
Please allow me this opportunity to share a little about how we finally got to this night. I started Gadfly more than four years ago as an MFA student at the New School and am indebted to so many people for their help, support and critiques, both solicited and unsolicited. I don’t know if Gadfly will end up resonating with a lot of people (I think my dad liked it, but he might be biased), but I do know that the process has been worth it no matter what happens next. I believe in it and am grateful to all the people who have helped get me through this thing. Even Dale Peck.
For those of you who don’t know, Gadfly is a self-published novel. But that decision was far from a last resort. In fact, self-publishing this book became a choice I felt I had to make, not only for my own satisfaction, but as an acknowledgement to the numerous writers, far better and more worthy than me, forced to toil in obscurity because of the whims of the marketplace and the lack of vision of some folks in the literary game. But this is not meant to be a screed against publishing houses. We all know the problem of trying to mix art and commerce, and I’m not going to waste space with that old debate. But I do want to make it known that even writers who have book deals spend years waiting to see their words in print, to say nothing of those who can’t get an agent, can’t find a publisher, etc. etc. It can be pretty demoralizing. And I simply didn’t want to wait around for the approval of someone who probably wasn’t that interested in my artistic goals in the first place. That’s not a knock on those folks, just a fact.
So, in addition to my own aspirations, I am willing to throw down the gauntlet to show there are possibilities available to us. That doesn’t mean I’m the only one who can do it; it just means I like gauntlet-throwing. I know other people have self-published before me. Independent musicians have been doing this kind of thing for years, after all. But we are on the cusp of an era where artists will have more control over the ability to cultivate an audience. And that is truly something to celebrate. I am also extremely lucky to have a rock and roll band to help bring my words off the page in an exciting way. I take very little credit for that, by the way. Most of that belongs to Chris Cubeta, my co-writer, and the band.
Over the next few weeks leading up to the release, I’ll be sending out email reminders about the show, my blog updates and anything else I might want to share. (The Knicks might not be terrible!) You can now access my blog, as well as some music and videos through my new website dannylanzetta.com. I’d appreciate all of you spreading the word about December 10th and hope many of you can make it out to share the evening with us. The book and EP will be available together for 15 dollars that night, which is cheaper than they will be separately or online. So you’re getting a deal too! (Because you know what America’s real pastime is? It’s not baseball. It’s saving money. So says the weird looking State Farm pitchman in this strangely disturbing commercial. But I digress.)
Thanks again to everyone who has been a part of this . . . well, I want to say “journey,” but I’m tired of that metaphor. Let’s call it an extended trance that has included, but wasn’t limited-to, ecstasy, suffering and boredom. That probably doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well, does it? Oh well.
Pertinent details below. See ya soon.
Danny
Danny Lanzetta – The Release of Gadfly and Declaration of Us
With Chris Cubeta and The Liars Club and VA/MD featuring Emily Easterly and J. Seger
Friday, December 10th
9 PM
The Living Room
154 Ludlow Street
NYC
Free
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
William Faulkner
Pressed into service by an unrepentant television, he arrives at the pen. He brandishes it clumsily, makes some marks on a page, turns up the volume on the knob inside his head.
“Fuck aesthetic! Aesthetic is accidental!” He screams this out the window into the night. He is a beast, scanning for chaos. Down below, he knows the men and women are silently shrieking.
Ugliness and language is the beauty of the dead.
Stampede of belief and a quiet little bed.
Looks like what we’re looking for has already been read.
Managing his shoe salesman job has become a daily interference. After all, America is hard to conquer on a slope. He crushes his feet into size 8s as a matter of principle. He needs the pain. He goes to work every day and walks home. It does not matter if he goes home. By then, a portion of him has traveled on. Most remains. It’s not until much later, in the deepest part of the secret night, after he has had a glass several more, that his teeth come out. And the excavation begins. Blessed are the wounded. Blessed are the stubborn. Blessed are the wealthy. Blessed are the underwhelmed. Blessed are the damages inflicted under the night sky by every drop of anguish of the brothers and sisters of the brothers and sisters.
We are all bottomless.
Books are not riddles. Don't fancy them. Press them against your skin. Smell the meat on those pages. Concentrate on the blemishes. Unless you're only looking to run away.
We are all bottomless.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Stories and Songs Residency Update
Just want to send a quick thank you to everyone who has been involved and attended the Stories and Songs residency all month at Googies. We've had some terrific readings and performances and I'm grateful to everyone who has come out to support this little endeavor. This week, we're going out with a bang. New York Times book reviewer Joseph Salvatore, whose new collection of short stories, To Assume a Pleasing Shape, will be published by BOA Editions in 2011, will be reading. Word is he's bringing a pretty good crowd. In addition, Emily Easterly, J. Seger and Chris Cubeta, three of the best songwriters I've had the pleasure to know, have a few tricks up their sleeves to put an exclamation point on our month-long jamboree. I don't know what those "tricks" are, but I'm sure none involve a lady being sawed in half. Pretty sure, anyway. Just come out and take a chance.
Thanks again to everyone who has been involved. I'll be posting regularly in October and November as we get ready for the release of Gadfly and the as-of-now untitled EP (any suggestions?). As soon as we know that date, we'll get you all the pertinent info.
That's all for now. Oh, check out this blog entry from my friend Matt Singer who performed at the Stories and Songs residency. He's an amazing writer and I am humbled by his far too effusive praise.
See ya' reeeeeeaaaaal soon!
http://www.mattsingermusic.com/blog
Thanks again to everyone who has been involved. I'll be posting regularly in October and November as we get ready for the release of Gadfly and the as-of-now untitled EP (any suggestions?). As soon as we know that date, we'll get you all the pertinent info.
That's all for now. Oh, check out this blog entry from my friend Matt Singer who performed at the Stories and Songs residency. He's an amazing writer and I am humbled by his far too effusive praise.
See ya' reeeeeeaaaaal soon!
http://www.mattsingermusic.com/blog
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Stories and Songs: A Residency of Writers
Here is the schedule for the Stories and Songs residency at Googies Lounge - 154 Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side - I will be hosting every Sunday in September. Hope to see you there.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
8 – 8:15: Minju Pak
8:30 – 9:10: Danny Lanzetta
9:20 – 10:00: Paul Basile
Sunday, September 12, 2010
8 – 8:15: Andrew Cotto
8:30 – 9:10: Danny Lanzetta
9:20 – 10:00: Clyde featuring Misty Boyce and Nick Africano
Sunday, September 19, 2010
8 – 8:15: Andrew Zornoza
8:30 – 9:10: Danny Lanzetta
9:20 – 10:00 Matt Singer and Bryan Dunn
Sunday, September 26, 21010
8 – 8:15: Joseph Salvatore
8:30 – 9:10: Danny Lanzetta
9:20 – 10:00: Chris Cubeta, Emily Easterly and J. Seger
Sunday, September 5, 2010
8 – 8:15: Minju Pak
8:30 – 9:10: Danny Lanzetta
9:20 – 10:00: Paul Basile
Sunday, September 12, 2010
8 – 8:15: Andrew Cotto
8:30 – 9:10: Danny Lanzetta
9:20 – 10:00: Clyde featuring Misty Boyce and Nick Africano
Sunday, September 19, 2010
8 – 8:15: Andrew Zornoza
8:30 – 9:10: Danny Lanzetta
9:20 – 10:00 Matt Singer and Bryan Dunn
Sunday, September 26, 21010
8 – 8:15: Joseph Salvatore
8:30 – 9:10: Danny Lanzetta
9:20 – 10:00: Chris Cubeta, Emily Easterly and J. Seger
Gadfly: Chapter 2
At precisely nine a.m., the telephone rang again. Gadfly bristled. He turned from the sink, kicked Valerie around a little so he could walk through the kitchen without tripping over her. He went into the living room and picked up the phone on the tenth ring.
“Hello.”
“Gadfly, Jesus. It’s John at The Eagle. What the hell took you so long to get to the phone? It’s not like you live in a mansion or something.”
There was a crackle on the phone.
“Will? You there?”
“I’m here.”
“Listen, Marty wants you to come by. Can you come by today?”
“I have a very busy day.”
“I’m sure you do. But it would mean a lot to me. Everybody misses you around here. Even Luke said it. Can you believe that?”
Gadfly rolled the possibility around his head.
“Just come in, talk to Marty and see what he has to say.”
“What does he have to say?”
“I don’t know. That’s what you have to come in here for. To see what he says.”
“Can he tell me over the phone?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I don’t know, Will. It’s just one of those face-to-face things. It’s hard to know what somebody’s thinking on the phone.”
“Hmm.”
Gadfly flicked his tongue back and forth against the inside wetness of his lips. He was thinking about having dinner with his mother that evening at 6 p.m. He was wondering whether he could make it earlier.
“Will?”
“Yes.”
“Will you come?”
“Yes. But not for very long. I have a long day’s worth of errands and then dinner with my mother and then I am leaving.”
“Where you going?”
“Away.”
“Going on vacation, huh? That might do you some good.”
“Some good. Yes.”
“Well, OK. This is great. I’ll tell Marty. What time will you be by?”
“I will call when I’m in the neighborhood.”
“Around when will that be?”
“Some time this afternoon.”
“Can’t you be more specific than that?”
“No.”
Gadfly hung up the phone and walked from the living room to his bedroom where the bed was still unmade. There was a close, worn-in smell, like the sweat from the crook of an elbow. He was still naked but hardly realized it. He thought about what there was to do. He remembered the list he’d made the night before. He’d left it on the nightstand. It was dark in the room; he’d bought thick, ivory-colored shades to keep out the light. Maria hadn’t liked it so much. “Why does it have to be so dark all the time?” He told her she could raise the shades whenever she felt the need, but she rarely did, except when she had to get up before him and needed a little light to dress herself.
Usually they got up at the same time and the apartment was a dark box of morningtime bustle. They even rode the subway together, to their jobs in Midtown. But on the occasional days when Maria had to be somewhere earlier than he did, he’d watch her. And very intently, like he was waiting to find out the ending. There was nothing extraordinary about it. She’d come from the shower, a towel tight around her midsection, barely covering her breasts. He’d seen her do this a hundred times during their marriage and hadn’t once thought to unwrap her right then and there. It never seemed like the right time.
She’d undo the towel and stand in the room for three or four minutes as she dried herself, rolled on her deodorant and selected her clothing. But what Gadfly liked best about the whole process was when she would nakedly decide upon a pair of earrings. She’d lift the shade just a bit to let in the light, and then she’d walk around to the other side of the room in order to open up the singing jewelry box on the dresser that played “Pop Goes the Weasel.” She had a lot of earrings and liked to mix it up. But his favorite pair was the silent green hoops emblazoned with moons and stars. After her choice, she’d close the box. The music would shut down at the exact moment of box-top-clap-upon-box-frame, and the room would blink and become a church. Then she would turn to her standing mirror, which was tall and cylindrical. She’d insisted on having it transported from her old apartment to the brownstone, though she wasn’t nearly so demanding about bringing much of anything else to her new life.
When she was in front of the mirror, she would carefully attach the chosen earrings to those fleshy white lobes of hers that Gadfly liked to flick after sex. She kept her hair dark, straight and short, just below the shoulders, and she always scooped it behind her ears in order to get a better look at herself. Then she’d stick out her bottom and lean into the mirror. And on those days when Gadfly was supposed to be asleep, he’d feign a body shift away from the window so that her bottom was nearly touching his face. Yet no matter how many times that happened over nearly four years of marriage, he never got excited. He’d been excited by such a position many times before, with many different women, but something about the quietude of her actions made him immune. He never asked her why she did all those preparatory things before she got dressed – her body prone to the world like someone’s tenuous faith – mostly because he was afraid that if he pried, she wouldn’t do it anymore.
He sat down on the bed, rolled up both of the shades all the way and checked the wall clock. He took his pulse. 84. It was a habit now, one he couldn’t seem to break even though he didn’t much care what the result was. When he’d gone for a checkup near his 36th birthday, the doctor had said that his pulse was running a bit faster than it should be. It was nothing to be overly concerned about. Still, he advised Gadfly to keep a log of his pulse in the morning, in the middle of the day and before bed. After three months, Gadfly came back and his pulse numbers had come down so that the doctor was no longer concerned. But Gadfly kept the habit anyway. Almost five years later, he still couldn’t break it, though he no longer recorded the results in a notebook. He simply needed to make sure his pulse was still with him.
He tried listening to himself. He heard breathing and something settling down inside his stomach. He tried to listen harder, but it was too difficult with the body in the other room. It did not matter that she wasn’t alive. It only mattered that she was there and distracting him from going too far inside himself. He decided to do something else and picked up the list from the nightstand. He examined it. There was a dark ring in the center from the glass of milk he’d been drinking before bed. He looked at what he’d written:
Things to Do 12/2
1. Call to cancel newspaper
2. Throw out food
3. Bring back bowling shoes
4. Buy bus ticket
5. Pick up books from Luke’s apartment
6. Visit Valerie
7. Go to park
8. Stop at school
9. Close bank account
10. Dinner with Mom
Gadfly felt unsettled for the first time all morning (with the exception of when Valerie was cleaning the bowl). With the phone call from the Eagle, Gadfly had to add one more thing to the list. It was a twofold problem. The first problem was that the list was written in chronological order, with some regard to the geographical position of each of the places he needed to go. Now that he had to stop by his old job (which he didn’t mind so much because he would be able to ask Luke about the books), Gadfly needed to write a new list that, at the very least, would incorporate a visit to the office in its appropriate time slot. The second problem – or not so much problem as much as a shift – was that he no longer needed to visit Valerie. Gadfly crumpled up the note, picked up one of the golf pencils that was leaning inside another glass on the nightstand and fetched his yellow pad from the drawer. After a minute or so, the new list was ready:
Things to Do (Revised) 12/2
1. Call to cancel newspaper
2. Throw out food
3. Bring back bowling shoes
4. Buy bus ticket
5. Go to office
6. Pick up books from Luke’s apartment
7. Stop at school
8. Go to park
9. Close bank account
10. Dinner with Mom
He looked at the revised list and was pleased. He was glad there were still ten items. He liked things in intervals of five. He knew he’d have to go to Midtown to buy his bus ticket. He’d meant to pick it up earlier, but he’d only decided on his departure date in the last week or so and there simply hadn’t been any time. It was inconvenient to go to Port Authority in the middle of the day, especially since he had to return there later. But he wanted to take care of it early on, to make sure there were no last-minute, ticket mix-ups (which was also the reason he’d refused to order his ticket over the phone or online). He wanted to feel the trip in his hands. The Port Authority was by his old office anyway and so – for the most part – all of his stops flowed well from one to the other. He felt satisfied with that.
Gadfly picked up his wallet from the nightstand. He then folded the new list in half and placed it in a secret pocket of his wallet, underneath where he kept his credit cards and business cards and his Non-Driver Identification Card. The wallet was stuffed with all sorts of other things too: napkin notes, nickels, receipts, scratched-up photographs, a tiny map of London, a piece of old fabric, a passport card which he’d received to cover a fashion show in Bermuda a few years back. (Maria didn’t want to come. Too busy at work for Bermuda.) And now it also had the list of things he had to do before leaving New York. As soon as it was complete and in its proper place, the list felt like a small, red gnawing at the bottom of his back.
He walked back into the living room and sat down in his reading chair. Originally, a man with a truck was going to pick up all the things Gadfly was leaving behind. Gadfly had called the Salvation Army, but there were too many conditions. They wanted him to be there to oversee the pick up. They wanted to give him a receipt. They wanted to know if he believed in stem cell research. Instead, he’d taken out an ad in his old newspaper. It read:
Lots of good stuff. All yours. Free. Applicants should call for details and stipulations.
There were several phone calls, though he’d had to place the ad three times in order to find the right person. Most people were confused by how evasive Gadfly was and were turned off by all his caveats. One: He would not be there to oversee the pick-up or the transport. Two: Anyone who agreed to take the stuff must take everything that was left in the apartment, leaving nothing behind. Three: He did not know exactly when he would need the stuff to be picked up, but whenever he called and said he was leaving, it had to be taken away within one week. Finally: Whoever agreed to take the items could not sell them for profit. They must keep them together and find a place for them either at home or in storage. Gadfly understood there was no way to truly enforce these stipulations. That was why he needed to find exactly the right person.
The search proved fruitless, though. There was one person, an eccentric fisherman named Garrison Tweedy, who’d been interested. But he called Gadfly a few days later to say he’d been extradited to Oregon on an old burglary charge and would not be able to take the things after all.
When Gadfly hung up the phone with Tweedy, a few days before he was scheduled to leave, he was distressed. What would he do now? His plan had been to carry out a garbage bag of all the leftover food and to leave the key for Tweedy under the mat. But now, he was at a loss. Should he postpone his plans and place another ad? Should he call back Tweedy and demand some sort of compensation? (That hardly seemed likely.) Should he begin to carry the larger items out to the trash dumpster behind his apartment building? Should he re-contact the Salvation Army and see how quickly they could arrange a pick-up?
And then, in the middle of all those frenetic ruminations, during which Gadfly found an old pack of gum in a drawer and chewed each and every piece until it had lost its cinnamon flavor, a most revolutionary idea occurred to him:
Simply. Leave. Everything.
When it came to him, he could not believe he hadn’t thought of it earlier. The one thing that had consumed him when he was originally deciding to leave New York was what would happen to his things. What will I do with my things? he asked himself over and over. Donating them to charity seemed gratuitous. The problem of his things had so occupied his mind, he hardly thought of anything else for whole days, until the Tweedy deal was in place. That gave him peace, knowing his things would be somewhere. They would not simply vanish or disintegrate into ideas. He liked that his things would be used by someone who would gain pleasure from their various functions and idiosyncrasies: the toaster’s vague hiccup signaling the bread was done before it had actually popped; the clack-clack-clack of the fan blades knocking around a quarter he’d never bothered to shake from the grille; the way his stories might nourish the stomachs of eccentric teenagers looking for something different to read before bed.
But with the flash of a thought, he freed himself of all constraints. Why not just leave it all? he thought. There was no good reason not to. It even appealed to him to know that his apartment would remain fixed, at least for a little while, after his departure. And so, by the time he’d chewed a fifth piece of gum, it was settled. Nothing was leaving. Everything was staying in those three rooms. And there was nothing anybody could do about it until long after he’d disappeared.
Gadfly remembered the epiphany fondly as he sat in his chair. Still naked, he picked up the phone to begin his first task.
He dialed the number and thwapped his damp thighs together three times. There was a hard rain outside now, almost too loud to hear the music as he waited on hold for several minutes. An automated woman kept telling him what a valued customer he was. Her voice was occasionally interrupted by an instrumental string version of “She Loves You” (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah) during which Gadfly stared straight ahead and waited. After a minute or so, the assured tone of a real woman came over the line.
“Hello. Thank you for calling the New York Eagle. My name is Sara. Would you like to take advantage of our 50 percent off promotion, available now, for a limited time, as part of our special holiday ‘Thank You’ to our valued Metropolitan Area customers? This is a very special, limited offer and can only be accessed now through Christmas Day. Would you like me to sign you up? It will only take a couple of minutes and we can process the order so that you’re receiving your reduced-rate subscription within five business days.”
“Um, no.”
“Well, then, how can I help you, sir?”
“Um, well, I’d like to cancel my subscription.”
“OK.”
Keyboard clicking.
“Can I have your name and zip code please?”
“Gadfly. William Gadfly. 10128.”
Keyboard clicking. Pause. Then:
“Mr. Gadfly?”
“Yes?”
“William Gadfly?”
“Yes. That’s what I said.”
“Excuse me. I’m sorry. That’s right. You did. But are you the same William Gadfly who used to write the Lifestyles column for The Eagle?”
“Um, yes.”
“Mr. Gadfly, sir. If you don’t mind me saying so, I used to love your work.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you. Well, talk to you, I guess. This isn’t really a meeting, I suppose.”
“I suppose not.”
“I wondered what happened to you, sir, if you don’t mind me asking.”
“Um, well …”
“I don’t mean it like that. I just mean that it seemed like one minute I was reading about you going to parties with all those bigwig, famous New York-types, and the next minute your column was gone. Poof. Just like that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t apologize. I just assumed you got a better offer somewhere. I mean, a writer of your caliber …”
“Thank you.”
“No. Thank you. A writer of your caliber can’t be expected to stay in the same place for too long, you know what I mean?”
Shifting. Silence.
“Well, sir, I hope you don’t mind it too much, but I do have to ask why you’re canceling your subscription with us today. Company policy, you know.”
“I know. I’m moving.”
“I see.”
Keyboard clicking.
“It says here your subscription should have ended nine months ago, right at the time of your termina … I mean, at the time you left the paper.”
“It still comes, though. Every morning. I haven’t been able to stop it.”
“I see. Have you called us before?”
“Once before.”
“And what happened?”
“They said they’d stop sending it. But it kept coming.”
“I see.”
Keyboard clicking.
“Well, it appears that somebody has checked off the ‘Lifetime Subscription’ option on our computer. That can only be removed by someone in upper management.”
“I see.”
“Would you like me to contact someone?”
“Umm …”
“It’s quite a process, just so you know, to have a lifetime subscription revoked. I’ll need to hand it off to my supervisor.”
“OK. I just don’t want the papers to keep on coming.”
“I understand.”
“I don’t want them to block up the hallway downstairs. It might upset the neighbors.”
“Well, Mr. Gadfly, I can certainly contact my supervisor.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“No problem, Mr. Gadfly.”
“Thanks.”
No sound.
“Mr. Gadfly?”
“Yes?”
“Would it be inappropriate of me to ask you a rather personal question, sir?”
“Go right ahead.”
“Well, what are you doing these days?”
No sound. Then:
“Not much, really.”
“Because I’ve heard some things …”
“Yes?”
“Well, I’ve heard, that, well, you had some sort of … well … episode.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And, well, if that’s the case – and I don’t know that it is, I’m just saying – I just want to say that my prayers are with you, sir.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, they are, sir. I believe that you’re a good man. Nobody could put words together in the way you do without being a good person down deep. That might sound naive, but I firmly believe it’s true. I know it’s not my place to say, but I just want to tell you that I’ve been praying for you.”
“You have?”
“Yes. That’s why I think it’s so weird that I’m the one who picked up your call. Most of the people here don’t even read The Eagle and don’t have any idea who writes for the paper. But I like good writing. And you were the best, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“I don’t mind it at all. Thank you.”
Nothing. Then:
“What did you say your name was, again?”
“Sara. Sara Gutkin.”
“Thank you, Sara. That’s very nice of you to say.”
“I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t the truth. I don’t know if you’ve ever felt this way, but sometimes, when I’m reading the words of certain people, I just feel like I know them. Like I know who they are. Like their words have some sort of heavy imprint that was already pressed on my brain, so that it feels like I could’ve written the words myself, like I had the words all along, maybe in another lifetime. Of course, I’m not that talented. The words just feel familiar, but in an exciting way, you know what I mean?”
“I think so.”
“Oh, it’s silly, I know. I felt that way when I read a book called The Awakening. Do you know it?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, of course you do. After I read that book, I just felt like smiling. I know it’s got a depressing ending and I shouldn’t have felt that way. But I couldn’t help it. It just made me feel so happy to know that sometimes people feel desperate, that I’m not the only one. Not that I feel like that all the time. Don’t get me wrong. Usually I’m pretty happy. And I don’t want to drown myself, or anything like that. But just sometimes it’s nice to know that people feel the same way you do. Does that make sense to you, Mr. Gadfly?”
“Yes. It does”
“Of course it does. What a silly question for me to ask. You’re a great writer. You must feel all sorts of things that I can only imagine about. And I know you only wrote a kind of gossip column – no offense or anything – but I felt the same way about you. Mostly it was the way you put words together. I remember one time you were at some movie premiere or fashion show and you were talking about Gwyneth Paltrow. You said she gave off a ‘glassy nihilism.’ Ha! Imagine that! I would never have thought to put those two words together. But it was so right, you know?”
“Thank you, Sara.”
“You’re welcome, Mr. Gadfly.”
“Call me William, please.”
“OK. William.”
“Sara?”
“Yes?”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“How old are you?”
“I’m 22.”
“Are you married?”
“Yes. Three years, now. I have a little boy, too. His name is Steven.”
“That’s a nice name.”
“I think so too. It’s a common one. But I like it.”
“Me too.”
Nothing. Then:
“Well, I better get going, Mr. Gadfly.”
“OK.”
“I’m supposed to ask if there’s anything else I can help you with today.”
“No. You’ve been a big help.”
“Thanks. And I promise I’ll talk to my supervisor. Usually, when somebody leaves the paper, they just stop sending your complimentary subscription. Someone in corporate must really like you. Either that, or it’s just an oversight.”
“Probably just an oversight.”
“Probably. OK, Mr. Gadfly. I mean, William. Thanks for talking to me for a little while. I’m glad I got a chance to talk to you before you leave town. Hey, where are you headed to, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I haven’t really decided yet.”
“Well, that’s OK. I guess they need good writers everywhere, so you should be OK. And don’t take it the wrong way that I said I pray for you, OK? I pray for a lot of people. It doesn’t mean you need it. But it’s always nice to have a little extra help in your corner, don’t you think?”
“I think that must be true.”
“Good. Well, goodbye, Mr. Gadfly.”
“Goodbye, Sara.”
“’Til we meet again.”
Sara laughed a nervous little gurgle before hanging up. Gadfly kept the receiver to his ear until the sound reset and he could hear the settled hum of the dial tone. Then he placed the receiver back into its cradle. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
A few moments later he was walking back into his bedroom, selecting which clothes he wanted to bring with him. It would only be one outfit, the one he decided to wear. There would be no other encumbrances. He had never been a very concerned dresser. His indifference had incensed Maria, who would often make him change several times before they left for a social engagement. Finally, she got fed up. One Saturday, when he had been out by himself, he got home to find his closet had been arranged so that each hanger held an entire outfit, each of which she deemed acceptable for various types of occasions. Shirt, pants, socks too, and a paper-clipped note about which shoes she considered appropriate. No more sartorial decisions for William Gadfly. Just grab a hanger and step right in. He was simultaneously annoyed and grateful. He went along with it.
When he finally decided on something to wear – jeans, long-sleeve black button-down with collar, brown loafers – he laid the articles out on the bed and went to his underwear drawer. He was aware that his behind was clearly visible through the bedroom window. He thought about the little girl across the street. He wasn’t sure what time she left for school. Probably earlier than this. Her name was Nel. He knew her from the walks he used to take to Central Park. He didn’t care if she could see him naked. He wouldn’t have minded it. It had been a while since he’d spoken to Nel. He dressed himself slowly.
When Gadfly emerged from his bedroom, shirt tucked in, he felt comfortable with the way he looked. He then went to the cupboard, grabbed an extra large garbage bag and opened the refrigerator door. He began scooping the few items scattered inside – among them a Tupperware of leftover lemon chicken, a full bottle of ranch dressing, a nearly-empty carton of milk, a can of Diet Pepsi, an unopened package of Oscar Mayer hot dogs – into the bag. He did the same thing with the freezer before slinging the bag over his shoulder. When he was ready to leave, he had only the bag of food, the clothes he was wearing (including a lightweight, pullover windbreaker), his wallet, his keys (did he need them?), a black band digital watch on his left wrist and a green Capezio shoebox with a pair of size-eight bowling shoes that he’d been keeping at the bottom of his closet. He couldn’t remember how he’d managed to walk out of the alley with them. But he wanted to return them now and settle the issue once and for all, before he left town for good.
He walked through the kitchen without hesitation and didn’t bother to take a last look around. He’d been able to move the body enough so that he did not have to address it before he left. He closed the door, locked it and exited the apartment. He stopped at the incinerator to toss away the food. As he walked down the stairs of the apartment, it was just before ten o’clock.
Everything was still right on schedule.
“Hello.”
“Gadfly, Jesus. It’s John at The Eagle. What the hell took you so long to get to the phone? It’s not like you live in a mansion or something.”
There was a crackle on the phone.
“Will? You there?”
“I’m here.”
“Listen, Marty wants you to come by. Can you come by today?”
“I have a very busy day.”
“I’m sure you do. But it would mean a lot to me. Everybody misses you around here. Even Luke said it. Can you believe that?”
Gadfly rolled the possibility around his head.
“Just come in, talk to Marty and see what he has to say.”
“What does he have to say?”
“I don’t know. That’s what you have to come in here for. To see what he says.”
“Can he tell me over the phone?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I don’t know, Will. It’s just one of those face-to-face things. It’s hard to know what somebody’s thinking on the phone.”
“Hmm.”
Gadfly flicked his tongue back and forth against the inside wetness of his lips. He was thinking about having dinner with his mother that evening at 6 p.m. He was wondering whether he could make it earlier.
“Will?”
“Yes.”
“Will you come?”
“Yes. But not for very long. I have a long day’s worth of errands and then dinner with my mother and then I am leaving.”
“Where you going?”
“Away.”
“Going on vacation, huh? That might do you some good.”
“Some good. Yes.”
“Well, OK. This is great. I’ll tell Marty. What time will you be by?”
“I will call when I’m in the neighborhood.”
“Around when will that be?”
“Some time this afternoon.”
“Can’t you be more specific than that?”
“No.”
Gadfly hung up the phone and walked from the living room to his bedroom where the bed was still unmade. There was a close, worn-in smell, like the sweat from the crook of an elbow. He was still naked but hardly realized it. He thought about what there was to do. He remembered the list he’d made the night before. He’d left it on the nightstand. It was dark in the room; he’d bought thick, ivory-colored shades to keep out the light. Maria hadn’t liked it so much. “Why does it have to be so dark all the time?” He told her she could raise the shades whenever she felt the need, but she rarely did, except when she had to get up before him and needed a little light to dress herself.
Usually they got up at the same time and the apartment was a dark box of morningtime bustle. They even rode the subway together, to their jobs in Midtown. But on the occasional days when Maria had to be somewhere earlier than he did, he’d watch her. And very intently, like he was waiting to find out the ending. There was nothing extraordinary about it. She’d come from the shower, a towel tight around her midsection, barely covering her breasts. He’d seen her do this a hundred times during their marriage and hadn’t once thought to unwrap her right then and there. It never seemed like the right time.
She’d undo the towel and stand in the room for three or four minutes as she dried herself, rolled on her deodorant and selected her clothing. But what Gadfly liked best about the whole process was when she would nakedly decide upon a pair of earrings. She’d lift the shade just a bit to let in the light, and then she’d walk around to the other side of the room in order to open up the singing jewelry box on the dresser that played “Pop Goes the Weasel.” She had a lot of earrings and liked to mix it up. But his favorite pair was the silent green hoops emblazoned with moons and stars. After her choice, she’d close the box. The music would shut down at the exact moment of box-top-clap-upon-box-frame, and the room would blink and become a church. Then she would turn to her standing mirror, which was tall and cylindrical. She’d insisted on having it transported from her old apartment to the brownstone, though she wasn’t nearly so demanding about bringing much of anything else to her new life.
When she was in front of the mirror, she would carefully attach the chosen earrings to those fleshy white lobes of hers that Gadfly liked to flick after sex. She kept her hair dark, straight and short, just below the shoulders, and she always scooped it behind her ears in order to get a better look at herself. Then she’d stick out her bottom and lean into the mirror. And on those days when Gadfly was supposed to be asleep, he’d feign a body shift away from the window so that her bottom was nearly touching his face. Yet no matter how many times that happened over nearly four years of marriage, he never got excited. He’d been excited by such a position many times before, with many different women, but something about the quietude of her actions made him immune. He never asked her why she did all those preparatory things before she got dressed – her body prone to the world like someone’s tenuous faith – mostly because he was afraid that if he pried, she wouldn’t do it anymore.
He sat down on the bed, rolled up both of the shades all the way and checked the wall clock. He took his pulse. 84. It was a habit now, one he couldn’t seem to break even though he didn’t much care what the result was. When he’d gone for a checkup near his 36th birthday, the doctor had said that his pulse was running a bit faster than it should be. It was nothing to be overly concerned about. Still, he advised Gadfly to keep a log of his pulse in the morning, in the middle of the day and before bed. After three months, Gadfly came back and his pulse numbers had come down so that the doctor was no longer concerned. But Gadfly kept the habit anyway. Almost five years later, he still couldn’t break it, though he no longer recorded the results in a notebook. He simply needed to make sure his pulse was still with him.
He tried listening to himself. He heard breathing and something settling down inside his stomach. He tried to listen harder, but it was too difficult with the body in the other room. It did not matter that she wasn’t alive. It only mattered that she was there and distracting him from going too far inside himself. He decided to do something else and picked up the list from the nightstand. He examined it. There was a dark ring in the center from the glass of milk he’d been drinking before bed. He looked at what he’d written:
Things to Do 12/2
1. Call to cancel newspaper
2. Throw out food
3. Bring back bowling shoes
4. Buy bus ticket
5. Pick up books from Luke’s apartment
6. Visit Valerie
7. Go to park
8. Stop at school
9. Close bank account
10. Dinner with Mom
Gadfly felt unsettled for the first time all morning (with the exception of when Valerie was cleaning the bowl). With the phone call from the Eagle, Gadfly had to add one more thing to the list. It was a twofold problem. The first problem was that the list was written in chronological order, with some regard to the geographical position of each of the places he needed to go. Now that he had to stop by his old job (which he didn’t mind so much because he would be able to ask Luke about the books), Gadfly needed to write a new list that, at the very least, would incorporate a visit to the office in its appropriate time slot. The second problem – or not so much problem as much as a shift – was that he no longer needed to visit Valerie. Gadfly crumpled up the note, picked up one of the golf pencils that was leaning inside another glass on the nightstand and fetched his yellow pad from the drawer. After a minute or so, the new list was ready:
Things to Do (Revised) 12/2
1. Call to cancel newspaper
2. Throw out food
3. Bring back bowling shoes
4. Buy bus ticket
5. Go to office
6. Pick up books from Luke’s apartment
7. Stop at school
8. Go to park
9. Close bank account
10. Dinner with Mom
He looked at the revised list and was pleased. He was glad there were still ten items. He liked things in intervals of five. He knew he’d have to go to Midtown to buy his bus ticket. He’d meant to pick it up earlier, but he’d only decided on his departure date in the last week or so and there simply hadn’t been any time. It was inconvenient to go to Port Authority in the middle of the day, especially since he had to return there later. But he wanted to take care of it early on, to make sure there were no last-minute, ticket mix-ups (which was also the reason he’d refused to order his ticket over the phone or online). He wanted to feel the trip in his hands. The Port Authority was by his old office anyway and so – for the most part – all of his stops flowed well from one to the other. He felt satisfied with that.
Gadfly picked up his wallet from the nightstand. He then folded the new list in half and placed it in a secret pocket of his wallet, underneath where he kept his credit cards and business cards and his Non-Driver Identification Card. The wallet was stuffed with all sorts of other things too: napkin notes, nickels, receipts, scratched-up photographs, a tiny map of London, a piece of old fabric, a passport card which he’d received to cover a fashion show in Bermuda a few years back. (Maria didn’t want to come. Too busy at work for Bermuda.) And now it also had the list of things he had to do before leaving New York. As soon as it was complete and in its proper place, the list felt like a small, red gnawing at the bottom of his back.
He walked back into the living room and sat down in his reading chair. Originally, a man with a truck was going to pick up all the things Gadfly was leaving behind. Gadfly had called the Salvation Army, but there were too many conditions. They wanted him to be there to oversee the pick up. They wanted to give him a receipt. They wanted to know if he believed in stem cell research. Instead, he’d taken out an ad in his old newspaper. It read:
Lots of good stuff. All yours. Free. Applicants should call for details and stipulations.
There were several phone calls, though he’d had to place the ad three times in order to find the right person. Most people were confused by how evasive Gadfly was and were turned off by all his caveats. One: He would not be there to oversee the pick-up or the transport. Two: Anyone who agreed to take the stuff must take everything that was left in the apartment, leaving nothing behind. Three: He did not know exactly when he would need the stuff to be picked up, but whenever he called and said he was leaving, it had to be taken away within one week. Finally: Whoever agreed to take the items could not sell them for profit. They must keep them together and find a place for them either at home or in storage. Gadfly understood there was no way to truly enforce these stipulations. That was why he needed to find exactly the right person.
The search proved fruitless, though. There was one person, an eccentric fisherman named Garrison Tweedy, who’d been interested. But he called Gadfly a few days later to say he’d been extradited to Oregon on an old burglary charge and would not be able to take the things after all.
When Gadfly hung up the phone with Tweedy, a few days before he was scheduled to leave, he was distressed. What would he do now? His plan had been to carry out a garbage bag of all the leftover food and to leave the key for Tweedy under the mat. But now, he was at a loss. Should he postpone his plans and place another ad? Should he call back Tweedy and demand some sort of compensation? (That hardly seemed likely.) Should he begin to carry the larger items out to the trash dumpster behind his apartment building? Should he re-contact the Salvation Army and see how quickly they could arrange a pick-up?
And then, in the middle of all those frenetic ruminations, during which Gadfly found an old pack of gum in a drawer and chewed each and every piece until it had lost its cinnamon flavor, a most revolutionary idea occurred to him:
Simply. Leave. Everything.
When it came to him, he could not believe he hadn’t thought of it earlier. The one thing that had consumed him when he was originally deciding to leave New York was what would happen to his things. What will I do with my things? he asked himself over and over. Donating them to charity seemed gratuitous. The problem of his things had so occupied his mind, he hardly thought of anything else for whole days, until the Tweedy deal was in place. That gave him peace, knowing his things would be somewhere. They would not simply vanish or disintegrate into ideas. He liked that his things would be used by someone who would gain pleasure from their various functions and idiosyncrasies: the toaster’s vague hiccup signaling the bread was done before it had actually popped; the clack-clack-clack of the fan blades knocking around a quarter he’d never bothered to shake from the grille; the way his stories might nourish the stomachs of eccentric teenagers looking for something different to read before bed.
But with the flash of a thought, he freed himself of all constraints. Why not just leave it all? he thought. There was no good reason not to. It even appealed to him to know that his apartment would remain fixed, at least for a little while, after his departure. And so, by the time he’d chewed a fifth piece of gum, it was settled. Nothing was leaving. Everything was staying in those three rooms. And there was nothing anybody could do about it until long after he’d disappeared.
Gadfly remembered the epiphany fondly as he sat in his chair. Still naked, he picked up the phone to begin his first task.
He dialed the number and thwapped his damp thighs together three times. There was a hard rain outside now, almost too loud to hear the music as he waited on hold for several minutes. An automated woman kept telling him what a valued customer he was. Her voice was occasionally interrupted by an instrumental string version of “She Loves You” (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah) during which Gadfly stared straight ahead and waited. After a minute or so, the assured tone of a real woman came over the line.
“Hello. Thank you for calling the New York Eagle. My name is Sara. Would you like to take advantage of our 50 percent off promotion, available now, for a limited time, as part of our special holiday ‘Thank You’ to our valued Metropolitan Area customers? This is a very special, limited offer and can only be accessed now through Christmas Day. Would you like me to sign you up? It will only take a couple of minutes and we can process the order so that you’re receiving your reduced-rate subscription within five business days.”
“Um, no.”
“Well, then, how can I help you, sir?”
“Um, well, I’d like to cancel my subscription.”
“OK.”
Keyboard clicking.
“Can I have your name and zip code please?”
“Gadfly. William Gadfly. 10128.”
Keyboard clicking. Pause. Then:
“Mr. Gadfly?”
“Yes?”
“William Gadfly?”
“Yes. That’s what I said.”
“Excuse me. I’m sorry. That’s right. You did. But are you the same William Gadfly who used to write the Lifestyles column for The Eagle?”
“Um, yes.”
“Mr. Gadfly, sir. If you don’t mind me saying so, I used to love your work.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you. Well, talk to you, I guess. This isn’t really a meeting, I suppose.”
“I suppose not.”
“I wondered what happened to you, sir, if you don’t mind me asking.”
“Um, well …”
“I don’t mean it like that. I just mean that it seemed like one minute I was reading about you going to parties with all those bigwig, famous New York-types, and the next minute your column was gone. Poof. Just like that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t apologize. I just assumed you got a better offer somewhere. I mean, a writer of your caliber …”
“Thank you.”
“No. Thank you. A writer of your caliber can’t be expected to stay in the same place for too long, you know what I mean?”
Shifting. Silence.
“Well, sir, I hope you don’t mind it too much, but I do have to ask why you’re canceling your subscription with us today. Company policy, you know.”
“I know. I’m moving.”
“I see.”
Keyboard clicking.
“It says here your subscription should have ended nine months ago, right at the time of your termina … I mean, at the time you left the paper.”
“It still comes, though. Every morning. I haven’t been able to stop it.”
“I see. Have you called us before?”
“Once before.”
“And what happened?”
“They said they’d stop sending it. But it kept coming.”
“I see.”
Keyboard clicking.
“Well, it appears that somebody has checked off the ‘Lifetime Subscription’ option on our computer. That can only be removed by someone in upper management.”
“I see.”
“Would you like me to contact someone?”
“Umm …”
“It’s quite a process, just so you know, to have a lifetime subscription revoked. I’ll need to hand it off to my supervisor.”
“OK. I just don’t want the papers to keep on coming.”
“I understand.”
“I don’t want them to block up the hallway downstairs. It might upset the neighbors.”
“Well, Mr. Gadfly, I can certainly contact my supervisor.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“No problem, Mr. Gadfly.”
“Thanks.”
No sound.
“Mr. Gadfly?”
“Yes?”
“Would it be inappropriate of me to ask you a rather personal question, sir?”
“Go right ahead.”
“Well, what are you doing these days?”
No sound. Then:
“Not much, really.”
“Because I’ve heard some things …”
“Yes?”
“Well, I’ve heard, that, well, you had some sort of … well … episode.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And, well, if that’s the case – and I don’t know that it is, I’m just saying – I just want to say that my prayers are with you, sir.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, they are, sir. I believe that you’re a good man. Nobody could put words together in the way you do without being a good person down deep. That might sound naive, but I firmly believe it’s true. I know it’s not my place to say, but I just want to tell you that I’ve been praying for you.”
“You have?”
“Yes. That’s why I think it’s so weird that I’m the one who picked up your call. Most of the people here don’t even read The Eagle and don’t have any idea who writes for the paper. But I like good writing. And you were the best, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“I don’t mind it at all. Thank you.”
Nothing. Then:
“What did you say your name was, again?”
“Sara. Sara Gutkin.”
“Thank you, Sara. That’s very nice of you to say.”
“I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t the truth. I don’t know if you’ve ever felt this way, but sometimes, when I’m reading the words of certain people, I just feel like I know them. Like I know who they are. Like their words have some sort of heavy imprint that was already pressed on my brain, so that it feels like I could’ve written the words myself, like I had the words all along, maybe in another lifetime. Of course, I’m not that talented. The words just feel familiar, but in an exciting way, you know what I mean?”
“I think so.”
“Oh, it’s silly, I know. I felt that way when I read a book called The Awakening. Do you know it?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, of course you do. After I read that book, I just felt like smiling. I know it’s got a depressing ending and I shouldn’t have felt that way. But I couldn’t help it. It just made me feel so happy to know that sometimes people feel desperate, that I’m not the only one. Not that I feel like that all the time. Don’t get me wrong. Usually I’m pretty happy. And I don’t want to drown myself, or anything like that. But just sometimes it’s nice to know that people feel the same way you do. Does that make sense to you, Mr. Gadfly?”
“Yes. It does”
“Of course it does. What a silly question for me to ask. You’re a great writer. You must feel all sorts of things that I can only imagine about. And I know you only wrote a kind of gossip column – no offense or anything – but I felt the same way about you. Mostly it was the way you put words together. I remember one time you were at some movie premiere or fashion show and you were talking about Gwyneth Paltrow. You said she gave off a ‘glassy nihilism.’ Ha! Imagine that! I would never have thought to put those two words together. But it was so right, you know?”
“Thank you, Sara.”
“You’re welcome, Mr. Gadfly.”
“Call me William, please.”
“OK. William.”
“Sara?”
“Yes?”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“How old are you?”
“I’m 22.”
“Are you married?”
“Yes. Three years, now. I have a little boy, too. His name is Steven.”
“That’s a nice name.”
“I think so too. It’s a common one. But I like it.”
“Me too.”
Nothing. Then:
“Well, I better get going, Mr. Gadfly.”
“OK.”
“I’m supposed to ask if there’s anything else I can help you with today.”
“No. You’ve been a big help.”
“Thanks. And I promise I’ll talk to my supervisor. Usually, when somebody leaves the paper, they just stop sending your complimentary subscription. Someone in corporate must really like you. Either that, or it’s just an oversight.”
“Probably just an oversight.”
“Probably. OK, Mr. Gadfly. I mean, William. Thanks for talking to me for a little while. I’m glad I got a chance to talk to you before you leave town. Hey, where are you headed to, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I haven’t really decided yet.”
“Well, that’s OK. I guess they need good writers everywhere, so you should be OK. And don’t take it the wrong way that I said I pray for you, OK? I pray for a lot of people. It doesn’t mean you need it. But it’s always nice to have a little extra help in your corner, don’t you think?”
“I think that must be true.”
“Good. Well, goodbye, Mr. Gadfly.”
“Goodbye, Sara.”
“’Til we meet again.”
Sara laughed a nervous little gurgle before hanging up. Gadfly kept the receiver to his ear until the sound reset and he could hear the settled hum of the dial tone. Then he placed the receiver back into its cradle. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
A few moments later he was walking back into his bedroom, selecting which clothes he wanted to bring with him. It would only be one outfit, the one he decided to wear. There would be no other encumbrances. He had never been a very concerned dresser. His indifference had incensed Maria, who would often make him change several times before they left for a social engagement. Finally, she got fed up. One Saturday, when he had been out by himself, he got home to find his closet had been arranged so that each hanger held an entire outfit, each of which she deemed acceptable for various types of occasions. Shirt, pants, socks too, and a paper-clipped note about which shoes she considered appropriate. No more sartorial decisions for William Gadfly. Just grab a hanger and step right in. He was simultaneously annoyed and grateful. He went along with it.
When he finally decided on something to wear – jeans, long-sleeve black button-down with collar, brown loafers – he laid the articles out on the bed and went to his underwear drawer. He was aware that his behind was clearly visible through the bedroom window. He thought about the little girl across the street. He wasn’t sure what time she left for school. Probably earlier than this. Her name was Nel. He knew her from the walks he used to take to Central Park. He didn’t care if she could see him naked. He wouldn’t have minded it. It had been a while since he’d spoken to Nel. He dressed himself slowly.
When Gadfly emerged from his bedroom, shirt tucked in, he felt comfortable with the way he looked. He then went to the cupboard, grabbed an extra large garbage bag and opened the refrigerator door. He began scooping the few items scattered inside – among them a Tupperware of leftover lemon chicken, a full bottle of ranch dressing, a nearly-empty carton of milk, a can of Diet Pepsi, an unopened package of Oscar Mayer hot dogs – into the bag. He did the same thing with the freezer before slinging the bag over his shoulder. When he was ready to leave, he had only the bag of food, the clothes he was wearing (including a lightweight, pullover windbreaker), his wallet, his keys (did he need them?), a black band digital watch on his left wrist and a green Capezio shoebox with a pair of size-eight bowling shoes that he’d been keeping at the bottom of his closet. He couldn’t remember how he’d managed to walk out of the alley with them. But he wanted to return them now and settle the issue once and for all, before he left town for good.
He walked through the kitchen without hesitation and didn’t bother to take a last look around. He’d been able to move the body enough so that he did not have to address it before he left. He closed the door, locked it and exited the apartment. He stopped at the incinerator to toss away the food. As he walked down the stairs of the apartment, it was just before ten o’clock.
Everything was still right on schedule.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Logic
I am on a timeline. I must update this blog now or forever hold my peace. I must fit in all the things I have to do before 6 o’clock today when my sister wants to have dinner. I must tell stories with characters who have feelings. I must burn but not too much or else I will be accused of misanthropy. I must outfit my jokes with manageable punchlines. I must hit return at the end of every line. I must be good and kind and turn the other cheek. I must not bleed too much. I must fear the right things.
I must write.
I have been working on something that might become a new novel or it might not, though I hope it does. I like long things. I was going to post that, but it is too private now. It would be like posting pictures online of my newborn before I have had a chance to memorize her face. I want to be exposed, but not before the ideas have finished incubating. So for now, I lay low.
I will say this: I have thought about and began writing a piece excoriating LeBron James and what his charade says about our culture and blah blah. I stopped for two reasons. One, I lost the notebook I began it in. And two, I am seriously contemplating giving up sports.
There is a logical connection to make between James and what ails us, but every logical connection is a fallacy, or at least all the ones I have investigated to this point. It seems that all we have on earth are language and endlessness and any attempt to circumvent this one and only rule will spoil you somewhere along the line. Or force you into an apology.
In truth it is logic that ails us, that trumps all other diseases because it is inadequate, because it forces decisions when none are warranted, because it makes us draw lines when confusion is called for. Logic breeds expectations. It enforces unrealistic limitations. It disguises ugliness, but it does not make it disappear. We are constantly apologizing for our faulty logic.
And so, on cue, I must apologize for this wholly logical deconstruction of the concept of logic. Language is a form of logic and so I guess there’s no way to not be a slave to it. As Melville said, more eloquently (or succinctly) than I ever could, “Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that.”
This is not really related, but you should go here anyway. Come to think of it, it probably is related.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Catch Me if They Can
1.
Night always dies.
Me and a cigarette.
Lonely morning.
2.
Blended sounds,
blended sounds,
walk outside and blended sounds.
3.
Mary in a tight dress
doesn’t hold a candle
to Mary in a winter coat.
4.
Buck up and tell me who is used to it!
Buck up and tell me who is used to this!
Your rise goes blank at sundown.
5.
In between the papers is the note about the scandal.
It isn’t long.
It’s everyone’s song.
6.
If I told you where I live the mystery would sour.
I better tell you for the sake of us.
If I didn’t, it doesn’t mean destiny but something else.
7.
Short things are long things in disguise.
Everyone looks at the wrong thing.
That’s how we fill up our bellies.
8.
Games are on –
night trap.
Games are on –
night trap.
Good to see all that ends well.
9.
I’m gonna go into the building.
I’m gonna look a little woozy, bleary-eyed.
Catch me if they can.
The Declaration of Us
I’m so fucking angry, but I’m old enough to prove it.
I can be all the emotions simultaneously, especially on the morning commute if I’m listening to Steve Earle and the derelicts are particularly pushy.
We got a problem here today and it’s called US. We don’t believe enough anymore and when we do, it’s about wall fixtures. Forget all that. Let’s fucking run away and hide – you and me. Let’s even hide from each other while we jump our batteries. Not really hide so much as float around like itinerant, whimsical philosophers, and only meet up for daily dinners and occasional sex. As for this place? Don’t worry. Those no-good, lowdown police officer pricks and shitty high school principals will still be here when we get back. If we get back.
See, a great and true red-headed innocent once said, “Neil Young knows what I’m talking about,” and I think that’s right on. Helpless, helpless, hellllpless. If we’re lucky. Might as well get whipped into a different frenzy. This one is all chaosed-out. Look at me, I’m off my medication on purpose ‘cause it makes me give a shit. Everybody screams. As they should.
I’m going to take a break right here to read you a list of people I secretly admire. Sorry I never told you. I’m telling you now:
Charles Dickens.
Tom Hayes.
Grandma Sadie.
Natalie Maines.
Michael Rupert.
Tupac Shakur.
What can I say? I like people who look like their feelings.
OK. Back to the story.
Today I did an experiment. I imagined leaving my life. It wasn’t so terrible. Sure, I cried a lot. But what’s that got to do with anything? I envisioned hightailing it to the Pennsylvania mountains to teach college-level English and falling in love once a week with one of the darlings, collecting beautiful, fresh young writer-goddess lovers for my vault, growing old with all of ‘em and none of ‘em at the same time.
I got ideas (ideas, I say!). I got big, beefy, thunderclap, shucksy, masculine, heartfelt, scurrilous, sludgy, howling-at-the-moon ideas! And if I can’t lasso at least one of them soon, I’ll have to start giving them away. C’mon. Whaddya say? Can we lash out together? Can we bring back that Keroauckian, talkin’-smackian vernacular? Saddle up on this roof and ride out into destinations unknown? Maybe we’ll get famous for all this horsing around. End up like one of those TMZ cheese doodles, noodling in the park with our tits flopping out of Sunday dresses. Jesus, what the hell did I just say? LOL.
Oh God, I just wanna watch it rain from a stranger’s living room, only to find out that the furniture is mine. Or see a disaster up close and personal so I can fix it with a box of tools. Or tell my girlfriend I’ve loved her as much as I could possibly ever love a woman and leave her anyway. Or have a chance to explain myself to Eddie Vedder. Or walk around at night in a town I haven’t heard of yet. Or be the only old guy in a happy house of boom-boom bass lines and scandalous creativity. Or just to know what it’s like to be alone, disgraced and suffer the consequences.
I want to write.
Here it is, today (insert date), and I know the streets are teeming. There’s enough suffering in one subway car to blind you if you look directly into it. Today I saw this guy rubbing a lottery ticket at an outdoor café in New York City. He was wearing a suit and tie, scratching feverishly. Nobody should need that kind of dream.
The streets are teeming, yes they are, with the busted-up ruins of everybody’s goddamn loneliness, James Baldwin said it a long time ago and he knew (he knew!), and all that decay now gets overlooked because we all have blood and most of us have seen at least one episode of American Idol. That’s the problem, these days. Too much common ground. Isn’t anybody unpublished anymore?
Health is hogwash.
Smart is good.
Murder is a deep feeling.
Damage is irreparable.
Good.
Stay damaged.
Yes, goddamnit, I love the way the liquor feels. Consider me lucky. Some people don’t even have that much.
And when the demands of modern life – Facebook and organic peanut butter and bridal registries and mindless savings accounts and the economy (Jesus Christ! Fuck the goddamn fucking economy already!) – when all that gets to be too much, and some jackoff with a dubious agenda and a concerned face asks you how you feel, make sure you say something with conviction:
“I feel OK.
Thank you kindly.
I appreciate your concern.
But don’t worry about me very much.
‘Cause I’m not really here.”
He’ll never know what hit him.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Gadfly: Chapter 1
1
William Gadfly read the letter and then put it down on the table beside him. He remembered the words as he tried to close his eyes. Something wouldn’t let them shut. “Blatant academic irresponsibility … an inappropriate use of an unpublished classroom exercise … stunning display of selfishness and disrespect for a fellow student.” Gadfly was sure all those words would mean something to him one day. Just not now. Although, to be fair, the whole episode had sent him reeling down a long-untraversed corridor, back to his undergraduate days when a classmate had accused him of not being at all interested in storytelling, but in waxing philosophical. For some reason, one silly word came into his head: “Touché.”
After six weeks as a half-hearted participant in one of New York City’s most prominent graduate writing programs, Gadfly had embarked on a project entirely of his own design. He’d sat down on a Monday evening, the shade on his lamp removed, his telephone turned off, his head wet from another rainy night, and began to write. It was to be his final project. He imagined himself by candlelight, at the drafty window of an English cottage. He lived on the second floor of a brownstone on one of the only quiet streets in Manhattan. He had inherited it from his maternal grandmother, who never liked him. She gave it to him because she liked to be shocking, even in death. The next morning, Gadfly had emerged from his quarters with his manifesto: 26 pages, single-spaced and a smart title: “Frugal Fiction: The Rise of Cheap Literature.”
He began: “Though I have spent only six weeks as a member of Randolph University’s prestigious-in-name-only graduate fiction writing program (schools like Randolph are no longer required to earn their reputations, their statuses having been cemented from years of hearsay and numerous decorative initials following the names of their esteemed-in-their-own-minds-only professors), it is more than enough to ratify the following declaration: fiction is not dead, but if the students at Randolph represent what is to come, somebody ought to murder it.”
Within moments of affixing the final period, Gadfly sent the essay off to The Free Thinking Press, an obscure right-wing literary journal known for publishing writers with unpopular positions. The magazine’s political leanings made it scarce within graduate school environments. Gadfly figured that even if it were published, nobody at Randolph would ever see it or read through to the section toward the end that quoted and discussed classmate Mona Baltimore’s “insipidly existential” short story about modern disillusionment.
“Baltimore (I worry that referring to her by last name only might attach an undue importance to her work), whose story is marred by several bouts of intellectual laziness, never even pretends to utilize her clumsy language and derivative dialogue for the sake of definitive ideas. Early on, the protagonist, a sheepish, 30-year-old office temp (a Bartleby wannabe for the Facebook age) utters what is to become her mantra – ‘I couldn’t possibly. Or perhaps I could?’ – a declaration that makes every possible interpretation available for dissection by our thumb-sucking, psychobabble-inclined profs. Such non-committal drivel is tolerated as long as the ending allows readers to scratch one of several, pre-approved, literary itches – juxtaposition, irony, symbolism, nihilism, ambiguity and historical allusion to name only a few. In Baltimore’s case, the symbolic silence of the opening line (‘I hear nothing when I swallow’) is mirrored by an equally hollow final sentence (‘I turn on the light but, to my chagrin, the electricity doesn’t make noise’). Ipso facto: nothing much changes or means anything in the modern world. Thanks for wasting my fucking time.”
After Mona saw the article, she confronted Gadfly in workshop, and he was silent all the while, never bothering to offer a defense. He nodded and frowned and scribbled a few notes as his classmates lambasted him. He left right before they were to workshop his new story. The letter came a week later. He’d received it in his mail the previous morning and was rereading it as he drank his morning coffee. The whole situation wouldn’t have bothered him all that much, if only he could get his money back. He was done with writing anyway. He’d long ago given up on susceptibility.
He found himself in the old reading chair he’d owned since his first marriage and which had been in his family since well before that. He balanced a bowl of cereal on his lap, and the remote control rested on one of the arms. The chair was blue and bursting with foam. It had been re-upholstered twice during its illustrious history, which extended back to his grandfather’s middle age when it was a mustard color, almost puke-yellow. Its coils were stretched and the headrest was splotched with shadows of grease. The television was not yet on. He was in his pink polka-dot boxer shorts from the night before, a basketball jersey and some brown dress socks pulled up around his meaty calves. His face was mild and gray. He used to drink heavily, not as a greedy addict would, but with nonchalance, in order to stave off boredom. He hadn’t had a drink in more than three years, mostly because he now preferred boredom to whatever else was feasible.
His living space was in a state of disrepair far beyond anything that was reconcilable. A simple cleaning would never do. There was old food crusted to the walls from spasms of unremembered frustration. The carpet was damp and cluttered and a patch of it in the corner beside the couch gave off a vague whiff of urine from time-to-time. His files were mixed-up across the floor, including the folders that contained all of the stories he’d written over the years, all of which had been rejected by nearly every major literary magazine in the country: “Stories Written Before 1995” now mixed in with “Stories Written with Animal Characters” and the even more obscure “Stories Set in an Alternative Galaxy.” In a fit one evening, after being unable to recall the name of an actress from some small film of his youth, he punished himself by purposely confusing the various files that contained every piece of data he had ever been given pertaining to himself: W-2 forms, immunization records, school transcripts, credit reports, job evaluations (originally in separate files for the good and the bad), phone bills, insurance cards, social security cards, tax reports, acceptance letters, rejection letters and electronically-generated relationship compatibility reports.
He was going to see his mother for dinner that evening to let it be known he was moving away – in fact, he’d be leaving right after their meal – and would no longer be in contact with the family. His mother no longer seemed of any importance to him since his father’s heart had given out earlier that year. His father – William Gadfly Sr. – had been the sort of man who made regret fashionable. He carried it with him down the street to the grocer’s to pick up a gallon of milk; wore it like a garish brooch on his well-pressed funeral home suits; hinted bravely at it within each polysyllabic sigh that rose from his chest, even as he mimed his way through an endless array of Saturday night, cocktail hour chit-chats: “Oh, they say Melville’s too inaccessible, but well – hayEWah – I’m just not sure that any old regular Joe ought to have access to the things he’s trying to say, anyway.”
On weekends, before the company would arrive, William Gadfly Sr. would eat enormous amounts of the cheese his wife had laid out on circular snack tables on the back veranda of their ground floor, Upper West Side home. “I hope your plan isn’t to escape our marriage by clogging your arteries with provolone,” his wife would say. And Senior would then put down his cheese in mid-bite and slink to his office to play computer chess until the middle of the afternoon, when social propriety finally got the best of him. In truth, though, the heart attack was more a product of disappointment than cholesterol, a condition he passed on to his son. As a result, Junior now saw the world as a kind of mute-blue idea, where even the most vivid characters were nothing more than airy wisps whose touch was never final, never fatal.
William Gadfly had been enamored of his father. When Senior was not in the company of his wife and her respectable friends, he was bawdy and irreverent. He was known to, after a glass or two (he preferred Grand Marnier but sometimes resorted to cheap wine to quell his sense that he was growing more pretentious with age), refer to his wife as “The Cunt,” a moniker that got back to her on one occasion when father and son were overheard at a lounge near Gramercy Park. Mrs. Gadfly responded by crying for days and refusing to let her husband into the bedroom, where she sobbed brutally and lamented the “grotesque betrayal.”
At 8:15 the telephone rang. It was an old rotary affair and the ring was a metallic shrill that always made Gadfly shudder. After the third ring, he placed the cereal bowl on an oak end table and lifted the receiver.
“William? William, honey, are you OK?”
“Who is this?”
“William, how could you not know? It’s me. Valerie. Your wife. How could you not know me?”
“Oh. Oh. How are you?”
Valerie had a disturbing habit of continuing to refer to herself as his wife, even though they’d been divorced for a decade.
“I haven’t been able to reach you for days. What’s going on? Where have you been? Are you OK? Where is Maria?”
“She’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“She’s gone.”
“Why?”
“I have no idea.”
“You must have some idea.”
“I have no idea.”
“Did she leave a note?”
“If she did, I haven’t found it yet. But it’s a little messy in here.”
“Messy? What happened? Have you been shuffling your files again?”
“No.”
“You have, haven’t you? Oh, I wish you wouldn’t do that William. You know how upset that makes you.”
“It doesn’t make me upset. It just makes me confused.”
“William, honey, let me come over and fix things up for you. I know how you get. Let me come over and tidy up the place.”
“You can do anything you want to do. But I won’t be here for much longer. I have a day’s worth of errands to run. And I’m having dinner tonight with my mother.”
“Let me come over now, before you go out. How much longer will you be there?"
“Until about ten o’clock.”
“I’ll throw on some clothes and come over right away. Just stay there, OK? I’ll come over and clean up for you. I know how you get.”
“OK.”
“You’ll be there?”
“Until ten o’clock.”
“Ten o’clock.”
“Ten o’clock.”
“Ten o’clock.”
He hung up the phone, because there was nothing left to say. He picked up his bowl of cereal again. He was almost finished and wanted to slurp the milk. He turned on the television and put on a news show. He turned off the voice. He liked to see people talking, or just to know they were there, though he was not particularly interested in what they had to say. (For sound, he liked music. He didn’t like to mix the two.) He didn’t like people talking to him when he could not respond. Not that he would have, but he resented the very idea of it. Still, he liked to see their faces.
As he finished eating, he stared at the close-up photograph of professional baseball players on top of the television. Gadfly had once been a die-hard fan. Basketball, too. The NBA. No more. The picture was from a game several seasons back. His friend Luke from the newspaper had given it to him after getting excellent tickets and going to a game with his camera and a woman from sales he hardly knew. Luke had claimed he felt guilty for going without Gadfly – especially on the weekend of William’s 36th birthday – but did it anyway. The picture was supposed to be a balm.
Luke took huge breaths before he spoke in order to get all the words out in one stream. He smoked American Spirits and said everything as if it were a matter-of-fact, as if the logic were obvious to anyone but a philistine. He had been Gadfly’s side-man – in between wives – through their years of adamant bachelorhood. He was divorced twice as well, but ten years older. When Gadfly told his friend of his engagement to a magazine editor named Maria (they were engaged only 6 months after they met), Luke called him a “fool.” Gadfly had said no such thing about the girl from sales.
Gadfly remembered how it was on the night he and Luke dissolved, about four years back. It was a scene at the Russian Tea Room in which Gadfly, Luke and two of their associates from the newspaper had gone out for drinks. Maria, who’d met Luke only a handful of times, stopped by as well. Everybody was having a solid time. It was after work and the room was ornate and gold and beautiful. It was like sitting down in the middle of a bowl of sugar. Gadfly and Maria were to be married in a little more than a month, but Luke had never bothered to formally congratulate the union. Several drinks in, when Gadfly made mention of the upcoming nuptials, Luke took the opportunity to say what he had been thinking.
“So you’re part of the cavalry now, eh, Will?”
“Which cavalry is that?”
“The cavalry of belief. Those that believe – without proof – that love is more than something transitory. That it is an everlasting condition.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Ah, of course you do. Of course you do! Congratulations, my friend! We, on the other side, are grateful for your temporary foray into our muck and mire. It is where we reside with only a silly, miniscule hope of rescue. We want to know if love is wild. If it is, in fact, real. Can you tell us?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, maybe your lady friend can help us. Maria, is it? Can you tell us if you have found true love with our little Will here? Or is this just another stopgap for both of you, on the way to something better? I certainly hope it’s not that. Don’t go shattering us with disillusionment now, here, on this lovely evening in this lovely restaurant.”
Maria, whose cool beauty was never undone, even by indignation, looked to Gadfly. He had not prepared her for Luke’s jealousy. He had expected Luke to hold his tongue.
“C’mon now. Don’t look to Will for your answer, doll. We all know he’s not the place to find insight of a romantic nature. Just ask his first wife about that.”
Luke and one of the other colleagues had a good chuckle over this line. Gadfly didn’t say anything. Maria did.
“Actually, Will is quite an expert on matters of the heart. And he’s by far the best fuck I’ve ever had.”
Everyone else froze, including William Gadfly. After a long, hard silence, Luke took a swallow of his drink, then regained his tongue.
“Good. Good to know. You’re a lucky lady.”
“I am. I really am. Say, why don’t we have a toast to my husband’s magnificent cock, huh?”
She raised her glass and encouraged everyone to do the same. They followed her lead, albeit tentatively. She then downed her drink and told Gadfly to hurry up with his. He did. She was still smiling. She rose and took him by the hand. She waved to the crowd and led her husband-to-be out of the restaurant.
Outside, she dropped his hand and pointed a finger in his face.
“If you ever leave me hanging out there like that again, at any point, for the rest of our lives, you will never see me again. Do you understand?”
She then turned and walked up the street, far ahead of him and his shame. As he shuffled along behind her, he was even more ashamed that despite her claims about his prowess, he hadn’t actually slept with Maria yet. She hadn’t even seen his penis, much less fucked it. She wanted to wait for their wedding night. She wasn’t a virgin or anything like that, but she thought holding out would add urgency to the honeymoon. She wanted the demarcation. She’d said something along the lines of how sex would coronate her decision to become a wife. It was convoluted logic, to say the least. But Gadfly went along with it rather easily because she was simply too beautiful. And he couldn’t afford to take any chances.
When Luke did not show up at the wedding, Gadfly had not figured on it. He had a drink in memory and kissed his wife. Love is full of casualties, he thought, without feeling that way.
Gadfly watched the television and wondered what the morning newscasters were saying. He was aware of the fact that he had to stand up and knew he could do it whenever he chose. He waited and watched the television screen and waited for words that would not come. It seemed like a very long time. The room was brown and garbled.
Gadfly spoke:
I walk into the kitchen and place the bowl in the sink. There are other dishes there but I don’t yet feel it is appropriate to clean them because Maria’s final bowl is still at the bottom. It’s difficult to understand that someone can eat soup in your home one minute and still at some minute soon afterward decide to never step foot inside it again except to gather some things and say an obligatory goodbye. Eating soup seems such an intimate act. But the break wasn’t nearly so abrupt. She left nearly four months ago and the bowl at the bottom of the sink was her last dish, it was true, but it wasn’t her fault that she was hungry when she came to tell me what was happening, I had in fact offered her the soup which I’d made for her and was still excited to give her even as her motives became apparent. “I’ll try it,” she said when I told her it was vegetable beef, even as she insisted on becoming thick inside the room, and yet she immediately turned strange to me, dissolving into a very small figure, like an action figure, as she spoke words which I refused to hear even as the message seeped into me, snatches of its disease finding its way to places in my neck and nostrils and that place underneath my knees where I’d packed every spoonful of sorrow that had come my way since I was ten years old.
Love love love love love. I’d found it unconscionable in so many others and yet I’d accepted it inside of myself (the impulse at least if not the rocks), but Maria was the kind of girl people are supposed to fall in love with, she was all set up for love and I’d fallen for it like I was supposed to, like they did in movies, because no matter how hard I try I always fall in love like a picture of myself, falling and never like it is actual, actuality isn’t as intense, never gets me going, never betrays me, never slashes me or gets broken inside my blood, which was why Valerie was never a long-term solution, knew that from the first year really, before that even. Maria was a different problem. She crushed me like rain, made me into the last ecstatic sip of beer at the bottom of an all-night glass, urged me to be who I should have been were it not for the problem of breathing; Maria was the clink of a glass, the prowl of a burglar, the gulp of a swallower, the gas of an ancient stove, the highest note in the range of a gospel singer who never goes that high. I loved her like that, as if she were full of dizziness and baseball, which she was, but she wasn’t, she wasn’t, instead she was ready to tell me how I should dress and behave and what I should eat for breakfast and how I should perceive beauty. And still I eat her cereal. There is no way to love someone you adore that much, no way to quiet everything going on when the love is like that, she loved me so much less that it was impossible once I knew that, which I knew right away but tried to pretend like it wasn’t the case, so instead I was always trying to overcome something (my mind was adept at belief but not as much at love), and that’s another reason why it couldn’t be any good despite all my poetry: it was stuck, it was doomed, it was asthma, it was dead because it never was.
Maria’s bowl is still at the bottom and I place my bowl on top of another bowl, newer bowls, newer plates, newer forks, and I undress in the kitchen and let my shirt and my pink polka-dot shorts and brown socks wilt to the floor before walking to the bathroom and getting in the shower, and all I can hear and taste are Maria and England and cereal bowls and soup bowls and embarrassing pleas that don’t embarrass me anymore and urine on the carpet (when did I do that?) and television news with no voice and my mother and I touch myself and get bored of that and stop and wait until I am tired of the water. And then I can tell that the bell has been ringing for quite a while even though I haven’t actually noticed it until right now, but I realize that somewhere in some recess of awareness – as if down a stretched and haunted corridor where a person becomes a speck – I have known the ringing all along, but only now am I capable of understanding what it is, only now am I able to translate the memory into the recognition of its existence. And so I wrap a towel around my waist and get out and press the intercom button and everything is goosebumps and New York City again.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me. What took you so long? Let me up.”
He pressed the button and sat down on the couch in his towel, still dripping. The door was unlocked and she walked into the apartment in a rush. She removed her coat, put it on the rocking chair and sat beside him on the couch without any surprise or recognition, as if she knew he’d be right where she found him.
“Oh, William. I was so sorry to hear.”
She threw her arms around Gadfly and hugged his shoulders. Then she pulled away and looked deeply into him, searching vainly for his wounds.
“How long?”
“What do you mean?”
“How long has she been gone?”
“Ask the sink.”
“William!”
“I kicked her out.”
“Why?”
“Because she didn’t want to stay.”
“When?”
“It must be four months now. Four months or four decades. I can’t recall.”
“Four months? My God! How long have you been like this?”
“Like what?”
“Like this.”
“Four months. And before that, too.”
“Oh, William.”
She hugged him again, this time pulling him into her and caressing his hair. It was messy and it wasn’t gray yet, but it was thinner than the last time she’d seen him. He thought about that, if she would notice that. Then he closed his eyes and let her caress him. She let go quickly.
“You’re all wet! Were you in the shower?”
“Of course.”
“Are you going somewhere?”
“Yes. I told you.”
“Oh, yes. Dinner with your mother. Isn’t that later?”
“Yes. But I must run some errands around the city.”
“Errands? Since when do you run errands?”
“I have some things that need order.”
“You should start with this apartment.”
Nothing.
“I’ve never known you to be an errand-runner. You always seemed to accomplish those things by accident.”
“Today is an important day.”
“All the days are important.”
Nothing.
“Would you like me to stay and tidy up for you?”
“If you’d like.”
“Well, it’s not about what I’d like, William. It’s about you. What would you like?”
“I guess I’d like it.”
“There’s a lot to do.”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, I will do it for you.”
“OK.”
“What do you say?”
“What?”
“I said, what do you say?”
“I don’t understand that question.”
“‘Thank you,’ William. You say, ‘Thank you.’”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Oh, William. Four months? Why didn’t you call? You could have come with us to Cape Cod. You could’ve stayed with us, taken Patrick to the movies, come out with us and taken your mind away from all of it. I don’t know why you insist on this sort of affectation. You weren’t like this with me.”
“I was much younger then.”
“Younger, yes. But not as smart. Not nearly as smart as you are now. Think of all the wisdom you’ve acquired! Not just information, with someone like you. Wisdom, which is much more important. And now getting a Masters Degree to boot, right? I haven’t spoken to you in a bit. How is school going?”
“It’s going fine.”
“Wonderful. You’re so smart, William. Much smarter than me. I could never be that smart, no matter how many books I read. Oh, sure, I could be educated, I suppose, but that’s a horse of a different color altogether. How can it be that you can’t find somebody to stick by, as smart as you are?”
“I’m not sure that has anything to do with it.”
“I mean, we were young, so you can’t go and lay the blame on me. Blame youth. Blame our twenties. Blame New York City. But don’t blame me.”
Nothing.
“But you’ll meet someone again. I just know it. I can feel it in my bones. Did you ever get a feeling like that? I do. All the time. I can just feel it. Maybe at school. Are there people our age at your school?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, that’s it. I just know it. That’s where you’ll meet someone who can keep up with you and all those ideas you’ve got. You may not be happy now, William, but you’re the type who will make it last once you find it. It will be a deep and gratifying happiness, like I have with Richard. Something that lasts and lasts, maybe not until death, but close enough. Don’t you think that’s true?”
“Probably.”
“Probably. Yes. Nothing is for sure, of course. But probably is a good word.”
She got up and began to busy herself. The television set was still on, still muted. It was framed by the deep windowsill behind it on the far wall of the living room. It was a small window and the only one on the street side of the room so there was never a lot of light. What Gadfly could see above the set was filled in with gray. Gadfly thought that every day had been gray light in the city lately. Sometimes it was so dark during his afternoon walks that he could hardly make out the shape of his hand if he held it out in front of him. It reminded Gadfly of his undergraduate days in New England, the only extended period of his life when he hadn’t lived in New York. In his New England autumns, there had been very little sun, and the rainy days were all hammers and nails; it was like dreaming in aluminum. But on the days of occasional clarity, the sun was always blue-white and brittle and seemed to be farther away than any other sun he had ever seen. It looked ready to be cracked open if only you could ever reach it.
“Ugh, William. This place is even worse than I thought. How could you let it get this bad? This isn’t like you.”
After a quick survey of the living room, she went into the kitchen and began putting away some of the food items that Gadfly had left out. It was quiet in the apartment. He watched her trying to clean up, looking all around her at the mess, throwing up her hands out of helplessness. Gadfly thought about how he wasn’t embarrassed to be in a towel in front of her. His body had gotten a little tired since Maria had left. It wasn’t flab really. It just seemed like everything on him had exhaled. Patches of his skin looked like they had come unbuckled. There were inexplicable crinkles or bulges where before there had been none, but it wasn’t a uniform condition. He felt shapeless. When he looked at himself naked in front of a mirror, he was reminded of an amateur painting, something that hardly even resembled the human form. She hadn’t seen his body in years and hadn’t bothered to comment on it. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed. More likely, she had, and was commenting now in her head about how repulsive he’d become. It didn’t matter.
He saw her go over to the sink. She reached into it and pulled out Maria’s bowl from the bottom. There was still soup in it and whole pieces of vegetables. It was a green bowl with a chip on the lip. He’d bought it for Maria during their honeymoon. She was still sleeping in the hotel room and he’d gone out into the streets of London to get a taste of the English morning. In the big cities, there is only an hour or so where one can view the city without prejudice, after the nighttime parties and before the working people begin to twitch. It was not quite 5 a.m. in London. It was their first morning there. He was fresh from making love on the balcony. He was still tingling from her, still remembering that look of terror on her face as he pushed her into the railing and roughly dipped her into the city. There was a mark on her back from it. He wasn’t sure how to release himself into love in any other way. He wanted to show her he could be gentle, too. He found the vendor setting up his inventory on a side street. He was the first vendor out that day. When he got back to the room, he woke her up to give it to her. She was the one who noticed it was chipped.
“This is where the smell is coming from. It’s this bowl of vegetables. They’re all moldy and gross. Yugh!”
It was almost nine o’clock when she dumped the contents of the bowl into the garbage can and ran it under steaming water from the sink. Gadfly watched her. He watched her empty the bowl. He watched her smash the vegetables down into the garbage pail. He watched her scrub the bowl clean with elbow grease and a soapy sponge. He watched her rinse it and wipe it down with a dishtowel. He watched her place the bowl in a cabinet above the sink as the water continued to run. He watched her move on to the next dish.
Gadfly stood up from the couch as she continued, now washing all the other bowls and plates and forks piled in the sink and then drying them. She did not notice him standing, nor did she notice that the towel around his waist had fallen to the ground and that he was standing naked in the middle of the living room. He was hard and pointed toward her. He walked quietly and she did not hear him over the rush of the faucet until he was right behind her. She turned around at hearing his breath and instinctively looked down at his penis. He acted quickly, so she would not misunderstand his intentions. There wasn’t enough time for her to look shocked. With his left hand he covered her mouth and smashed her head against the cabinets. The water was still running. He was breathing better than he had in years. She could hear him breathing and still trusted him enough not to try screaming. By the time she wanted to scream, it was too late. His right thumb pressed into her windpipe and he could feel the straining tendons of her neck as they tensed into coiled rope. He moved his left hand around her neck and squeezed as hard as he could. He lifted her head up for a moment then slammed it again against the kitchen cabinets. The violence of the thrust appeared to invigorate her resistance. He squeezed harder. He shook her. He shook her more. He wondered why it was taking so long. Then, as he watched her eyes close, willfully it seemed, he wondered how it could be so easy. He kept squeezing, well after she’d given up. He did not pull off all at once, but gradually un-tensed his grip. When he was certain she was dead, he took away his hands and felt them pulsing and hungry, ready to reattach if necessary. Her body crumpled beside his shirt and pink polka-dot boxers and brown dress socks. She was dressed in a brown skirt and a silk top that was too loose on her. Her stockings were new. Her shoes were red.
When his hands had calmed and everything had returned to normal, Gadfly knelt down on the floor. He laid Valerie flat on her back and pulled her hair out so that it was neat and flowing on the kitchen linoleum. He felt himself going down as he stroked her hair and leaned his head against her cheek. He was still kneeling and still naked. Then he patted her head six times until his 40-year-old knees creaked and he was forced to stand. He went to the sink and turned off the water just as it threatened to overflow.
It was still not quite nine o’clock.
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