Couldn't sleep all night. Wracked with guilt. I got to come clean: I didn't write that last letter! I copied it from the kid at the desk next to mine. Herman something. I was desperate, man. The thought of all those bytes I owe you and my mind a blank. I kept looking out the window at the dogs fucking in the grass and I longed to be out there, standing on the corner with my hands in my pockets waiting for the rain to stop. I was imagining myself hitchhiking to Kansas City with my saxophone and getting into some cutting contests with Coleman Hawkins at the Cherry Blossom, instead of sitting here with Michael Fitch poking me in the back of my head with his ruler.
I watched the clock's imperceptible movement, with five minutes to go eternities just kept piling up, yet time stood still. Everything was slow motion, like a death scene in a Peckinpah movie, all those kids with their huge heads and bulging eyes, motionless. And the teacher's voice like a 78 played at 16 RPM. My head hurt, my stomach was in knots, my teeth falling out all over my desk and on to the floor rattling around, crunched underfoot as Mrs Files' wooden clogs stomped down the aisle past me with that sickening sneer all over her pustulent face. As she passed my desk she let go this huge fart that rattled the maps and food-rule pinups on the green walls and echoed seemingly endlessly despite the absence of time. Overwhelming nausea rose from my feet, through my legs and body to my head and enclosed me in odious vapours. I was gasping, desperate to get away.
Those audacious dogs on the lawn and the sparrows flitting freely in the tree branches seemed to mock my bondage. In that room, frozen in time, I was invisible. Who could see me? All those remote, insensate bodies consumed with desires only to get home to their tv's, their sexless fornications, their bland porridges and sawdust dreams. I felt I could strip naked if so moved and not be observed. It was so tempting. How could I resist? A few quick glances, a furious scribbling, and the deed was done.
For a few brief hours I was a free man. With paper in hand I leapt from my seat and was out the door, clouds of chalk dust swirling in my wake and clinging to my face, filling my lungs so that I could barely breathe. I ran down the halls, tears of joy streaming from my eyes, flying in all directions, and mixing with the chalk dust and forming a thick white paste that clung to the walls, the green lockers filled with pictures of tits ripped from photo magazines, and the ceilings. But even as I ran I felt remorse begin its inevitable stirrings in the pit of my belly.
I saw you at your Mac, in your Vermont studio, your heart aflutter at new mail. My thoughts were troubled. "Would he know? Could he tell? And, if not, could I live with myself? His trust betrayed? Could I pass a mirror or my reflection in Belman's window without self-loathing welling up from my twinburger-clogged arteries?" The thought of your reading my letter, moved to tears and passionate sentiments by words that were actually written by that Herman kid, began to torment me. Even as I ran I vowed to destroy that letter and admit my failure to you; to cancel my Internet account and burn my computer; to go Offline, shamed forever. But as I passed the girl's washroom Sylvia Gandy appeared, the flourescent light glinting off her pony-tail as the door behind her gently swung shut. One look at the light illuminating those silken strands and I was a goner. My shiksa goddess! Her V-neck tunic stretched across those glorious pubescent tits and flowed downward across yearning hips stopping just in time to reveal her golden ankles where they rose from pure, blessed white socks. At that moment, and for eternity, I was a lost soul.
That moment was like years as I froze, transfixed, in that darkened hallway, with only the vision of Sylvia in a circle of light before me. All fear, loathing, and worrisome angst vanished from my mind, my spirit, my very soul. My epistolary debt to you was not even a dim memory. My flight was forgotten, slowed to a gentle stroll as I passed by her silent, unaware beauty. And as I passed I nonchalantly punched her shoulder. She turned to me, her face bathed in a sunrise.
Sylvia Gandy. Blonde Madonna of the wrong side of the tracks. Jerk-off fantasy for pimply, juvenile hoodlums and sheygetz boneheads. Scion of alcoholic remittance men and grey-skinned harridans cooking wiener breakfasts in radioactive livingrooms watching Leave it to Beaver through gigantic magnifying lenses while their sons fondle their grotesque uncircumcised schlongs in puke-infested Chevys. Standing there on the verge of a hopeless future, she sees me, boner rising; her shoulder tingling with love and the promise of salvation; touched by a poet.
The drowning man sees his life in a flash. So, too, the saved man, and the saved chick, see not only the history of their bleak, unpromising lives but also the luminous purview of a golden eternity beckoning. The years before us filled my heart with glee. There'd be months of preparation as I nourished her starving soul. At my feet, massaging my ankles, I'd read poetry to her, teaching her the wisdoms. I'd play albums, instilling in her a deep understanding of the various drummers. Soon she'll be tacking up posters of Greek art, Spanish bullfights, Mongo Santamaria, all over the kitchen walls, of her own accord. Then on to Manhattan, where in our Soho love-loft she'll cook me stews as I sit at my table writing masterpiece after masterpiece...
Whoa!!!...."Sylvia," I cried. "Wait here. Don't budge. I'll be back in a few hours. I just got to go write Dave a letter. We can't start a new life with Guilt hanging over my head like this. Stay right there. I'll be right back." And I was off again.
Down past the radioactive slop-ponds I fell into a trance watching x-ray men sitting on the benches, tears falling on their photo-albums. I could see right through them, veterans of nuclear wars and Walmarts. Hopeless orphans creaking through the days. I searched my pockets for loonies and, finding none, I doffed my toque and went on, a sad heart crying within. I'm so lucky, I thought. I fell to my knees praising God, thanking him for sparing me. Suddenly a big truck came roaring down the street, wildly out of control, headed directly for a baby playing on the street, her mother watching horror-struck from the opposite sidewalk, immobilized with dread.
Suddenly I saw Witney Beamish coming out of the Walmart with Mitzi Gaynor. They both carried big bags of kitchen gadgets. I called to him and walked over, grasping his hand in mine and pumping madly, causing him to drop some of his load. At first he didn't recognize me but Mitzi did. "Hey, Beamish," she cried. "It's Brian. Sonofabitch!" We walked over to the Starbucks and sat silent over three lattes. None of us could think of a thing to say. We sat there for half an hour, totally silent, looking around nervously and humming. The monotony was occasionally broken when some old duffer recognized Mitzi Gaynor and asked for her autograph. Finally, I could stand it no longer. It was driving me crazy. I turned to Witney and, with thoughts of all that we'd been through together, I said to him, "The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides with the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and good will shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon those with great vengeance and with furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know that my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee."
Suddenly the phone rang, but it was a wrong number. I got on a bus and went home. Stars like sandwiches in a birdlike monastery flew, a hortense of callishers, sad but invisible destinies filled with paint. Rocks to go, I thought. Butter news or fats waller in time for time ascap sentences, or the flippy sides dental orchestra - I have will not but no to have go not no yes but who, who would yes? And Aaron took him Elisheba, daughter of Amminadab, sister of Naashon, to wife; and she bare him Nadab, and Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar. And the sons of Korah; Assir, and Elkanah, and Abiasaph: these are the families of the Korhites. And Eleazar Aaron's son took him one of the daughters of Putiel to wife; and she bare him Phinehas: these are the heads of the fathers of the Levites according to their families.
Suddenly I remembered something I read about Clifford Brown, in a book by Julio Cortazar. It went something like this: "That difficult custom of being dead. Like Bird, like Bud, ``he didn't stand the ghost of a chance'', but before dying he spoke his most obscure name, he had long held the thread of a secret discourse, damp with the modesty that quivers on the Greek stelae where a thoughtful young man gazes at the white night of the marble. Clifford's music in these moments captures something that usually escapes in jazz, that nearly always escapes from what we write or paint or love. Suddenly, near the middle of the piece we sense that the unerringly groping trumpet, searching for the only way to sail beyond the limit, is less a soliloquy than a contact. It is the description of an ephemeral and difficult affirmation, of a precarious relinquishment:
before and after, normality. When I want to know what the shaman feels in the highest tree on the path, face to face with a night apart from time, I listen oncemore to the testament of Clifford Brown, a wing-beat that rends the continuum, that invents an island of the absolute within disorder. And afterwards, once again the custom wherein he and so many others are dead."
Wait a minute! How could you possibly have written 149,424 bytes more than me? It's inconceivable. Something's wrong here. I got to check this out, again.
It's Sunday. Lucky for me it's still raining. I had to wait around the house all day waiting for these two guys from Price Waterhouse to show up. I had a bad feeling that I'd fucked up somehow and I called this outfit to send someone over to do an independent audit of our correspondence.
When they showed up I'd been lying on the porch face up so I could watch the rain come straight down at me, and if I let my mind go it was like I was hurtling through outer space, the drops of rain like miniscule wet stars bashing me all over. These two guys, a fat one with a moustache and a thin one with a scar that ran from the top of his head down the back of his brown gaberdine suit, stood over me without saying a word for minutes on end.
Finally the big guy says, "Didn't you used to hang out at the La Paloma, back in the early to mid-sixties?"
"It's not THE La Paloma, it's LA Paloma," I replied. "LA means THE in Spanish. That's like saying The The Paloma."
"Wise guy," the thin one said. Then they let themselves in. I got up and went in and turned on all the elements on the stove so I could get hot and dry off. I was a mess. I poured myself a cup of coffee. Thick, dark coffee. Piping hot, rich, dark coffee. Deep roasted, steaming, thick, rich, dark, good-to-the-last-drop coffee. Coffee to restore a man's soul to the condition it was in before he found it. A cup of java to singe the linings of a soprano's throat; to raise the injured spirit and make the heart flinch in joy. A big, fat, ceramic mug with "Boss Lady" stencilled on it, steaming full of an ebony fluid brewed from specially selected beans raised on the verdant slopes high atop an Andean paradise by short men with big hats.
The kitchen filled with heavy steam from my sodden clothes and body. Condensation formed on the walls and appliances and ran down in rivulets, forming puddles on the floor which grew deep and started spreading towards the livingroom where they soaked into the rug. Suddenly the phone rang. It was Sylvia Gandy and Candy Lutz singing Swingle Singer versions of Bach's Goldberg Variation in close harmony from a phone booth in Oakland. It was so beautiful. There was a knock on the door. I put the phone down and splashed to the front door to answer the pounding there. There were seventeen mailmen with a registered letter for someone who had lived here before but had died when he tried to walk to Halifax to raise awareness of the plight of scat singers in Iran. I asked them why it took seventeen mailmen and the shortest one replied that they were taking a night course in mail delivery. I looked past them at the darkness everywhere and realized that it had gotten late. So late that darkness was everywhere upon the face of the earth and the waters thereon. The mailmen left in tears when I said their addressee was dead but, as they descended the steps, twenty-three cabdrivers arrived demanding clam chowder. It seems they'd all arranged to meet on a break and had gotten lost. They thought our place was an all-night diner. How foolish.
When I got back to the phone the two guys from Price Waterhouse were both trying to listen to the gals doin' the twenty-first variation and tears streamed from their eyes, it was so beautiful. You can imagine, I was getting pretty pissed off by then. After all, a phone call is a private matter. I didn't even know these guys.
I grabbed the phone and pressed the receiver to my ear. Tears began to stream from my eyes. It was so beautiful. I was reminded of all the wonderful, happy days of my youth in Montreal. Growing up on Clark Street was an experience I'll never forget. Those long, endless summer days playing with my friends Gordy and Carl Arfin, and Gerry Weinman, building scooters out of broken roller skates and old orange crates, and hanging out on the stoops at night telling each other ghost stories under a huge Canadian sky filled with stars, the face in the moon watching over us. We'd walk down to White's for ice cream and dawdle there, listening to older guys joking and telling tall tales, about fast broads and gangsters. Older men spoke about Russia. About hard times and the journey to America. But at night, in my room, I was shaken with unknown terrors. Lying there, I'd watch the lights from car headlamps three floors below form stripes on the ceiling as they shone through the venetian blinds. They'd stretch across the walls and ceiling, then fade and come again. What was I scared of? The future? In other rooms the family drama was played out. A life I could not fathom. Mysteries. Sex and death. Russia. Old men with beards praying. Fear of goyim. Hate. Stalin. Duplessis. Korea.
And it just kept getting worse. The older I got the worse it got. School. Work. Roles. It stayed a mystery. Yet the more I grasped of that strange puzzle the more of a mystery I became to myself. One of us was out of whack, me or conventional reality. The town just wasn't big enough for both of us. We had a showdown at high noon on a spring day in 1961 on Main Street under a blazing hot sky. I lost. I had twenty-four hours to get out of town.
I set forth in search of Truth. I was prepared to spend my life in it's quest, roaming the globe. I'd go hungry, if need be. I'd starve if I had to. I'd skip meals, if so required. I saw before me endless years without rest tillI found the answer. A vagabond drifting o'er the world, from town to city to mountain, clad in jeans and sweatshirt, my army surplus pack on my back, thumbing rides and sleeping in jails and missions and fields on the edges of cities, my tattered copy of The Scripture of the Golden Eternity stuck in my back pocket and a jug of Liebfraumilch in my pack. As it turned out, Truth wasn't hard to locate. I think it took about twenty minutes before Truth tapped my shoulder and said, "Pssst, hey...over here."
Thirty or more years later there I am in a cardboard townhouse on a nuclear dumpsite with a phone to my ear listening to lost love singing duets to me while auditors from a multi-national accounting firm check my hard drive for evidence of epistolary rectitude. Somewhere in another room my fiancee is painting furniture, the neighbours are slamming doors, their dogs bark nonstop, and the air is filled with bad smells and obnoxious noises from terrible machines that do no good.
I've forgotten something. I don't know what. I put the phone down and go outside. The rain has stopped. I go down to the water and stare out across False Creek at the city, it's glass towers shrouded in brown smog. I light a cigarette and breathe deep. I shut my eyes and feel that nicotine glow lift me in it's beatific arms. I'm fifty years old. I don't feel as if I've even begun to live, yet. Because I've forgotten something. A kid walks up behind me and taps my shoulder. "Pssst, hey...over here."
I turn around. It's me. It's me at six years old. No...wait. That's ridiculous. It's a panhandler looking for a handout. No, there are no panhandlers around here. It's Mr Pycock, back from the beyond with poetry tips. No, it's Allen Ginsberg. It's Witney Beamish. Okay, okay...I don't know who it is. It's no one. Forget it. I finish my fag and toss the butt into the water and watch it float and bob past a couple of lazy good-for-nothing ducks.