The kind of exaggeration that reflects emotion attached to the subject more than the subject itself.
Assigning blame for lost items to supernatural phenomena.
Decision not to acknowledge intense physical pain during a chatty personal conversation.
Nope, come to think of it, there was a time before that. Ok, let's just say insane for more than a few moments, a sustained insane event. More than say 24 or 48 hours. Anyway, this was one of the times.
There was an adult bookstore in Silverlake called Circus of Books. First off, L.A. is insane. Everything that happens outside of a building or a car is tawdry, violence, drama, the ugly spectacle of life. Except at the beach, where it's all the ugly spectacle of life, inside and out.
Circus of Books was supposed to be a great place to meet guys, and I was lonesome as hell for a man. You had to go through like these saloon doors. You'd hear them creak, and you get a blast of hot shame sure as the AC effect stepping into a supermarket out in Temecula or Palm Springs. You're supposed to stand there and look at feminine buzzers or paperbacks until there is some verbal but probably just non-verbal cues happening between you and the dream guy. You know how sex works. Even your breathing speaks volumes.
There was a guy, and we did all the steps and somehow knew to just buy some gum and then meet on the sidewalk. Well, all the real estate out there was strewn with really drunk down-and-out sex-worker dudes, so we ended up just going directly to exotic maybe persian-y and cocky hot firm gentleman's hooptie to hang out. We'd both driven there of course, so I had to follow him after we decided to go to his place, and I remember thinking as I was coming up to a bluff above his subdivision and looking out at the endless mud-colored waves of rows of honeycombed townhomes that "I will probably never find my way out of here."
I wasn't crazy yet--that fear was reasonable--except probably I was crazy before even driving on down to the Circus. The insanity was just having a smoke in the back of my head and centering himself. But wow, what a man I'd found. We wilded out on his bed--I guess it was a studio--and then I attempted to pry into his personal life.
He was hesitant or feigned hesitancy and finally almost like I deserved it for being nosy, he says "I'm a hit man." That was like the first funny he'd made during the whole relationship, so I laughed pretty hard. But then his face turned to an open snarl. "I have a weapon, and I kill people. All over the Americas. South America, Central America, Mexico. I have a uniform. Do you want to see my uniform?" He went to the closet and pulled out a legit camo uniform, and not in a nelly way at all. With the other hand, he produces a military rifle with a sight attached.
My eye lingers on the ceiling fan's twirling reflection in the cantilevered scope mount's rainbowy glass.
Then we had sex a second time, which I never did even at that randy age. Then the panic started setting in. All I remember is driving away and looking in the rearview mirror at the honey-colored townhomes and knowing that I would never be able to identify the guy or which of those places he lived in if I ever had to call the FBI or whatever.
Then I called the FBI--from a payphone outside the General Hospital building, which is a hospital. I confessed to an agent--I confirmed that he was an agent--everything that had happened, and we both spoke in our deepest voices. This call ultimately went nowhere, but it seemed like I had at least completed some important action.
When I got home, I felt vulnerable. I was renting a tiny 1920's cottage up in the hills above Angeles Temple and hidden behind a 1930's six-flat and under Victorian bottlebrush trees which camouflaged the roof with furry red strands. Yet I could feel a target on my back. He had shown me the black rifle, the uniform, the telescopic lens. His car his apartment were completely anonymous in color; he himself could have been mistaken for nearly any non-white designation. I didn't even know his name. Perhaps Mario. So many Marios.
As night fell, garish shadows rose across the 50's B-movie posters in my livingroom. I dared not turn on the lights. I climbed into bed and listened for a long time. There was some rustling, and then a snap. I carefully pulled back the sheet and stepped into the livingroom and stood invisibly still, in my briefs, holding a breath. It was completely quiet now. So I had to be extra careful taking a few more steps backwards and over to situate myself behind my overstuffed chair in the corner. There, I ducked down and waited.
It felt great. Safe. I started to feel very sleepy. I was surprisingly generous in my lack of judgement towards how I was behaving. I gathered the courage to snap out of it and walk a little bit more confidently back to bed. When I woke up, pinkish sun permeated the same rooms that had been a scene of terror.
EPILOGUE:
For the next couple of days, I was alert and mature. I drove back and forth to work with the warm wind in my hair, accompanied by a new and easy peacefulness. There was the sense that I'd done something for my country, that perhaps I'd even earned my place in paradise.
I was relaxing on the phone in my little dayroom on a futon chaise and found myself telling a friend about a letter I had received from the famous author Tom Clancy. It was a response to a note I had sent him on which I had drawn a large purple swastika in response to one of his many public antigay comments during those days.
My grandfather, who'd been on the board of regents of a university, was once accused of nazism in a letter that included a swastika. It hurt his feelings deeply, so I wanted to try it on Tom. Clancy's reply was something like,
That's not a swastika. You drew it backwards. It's a blah-blah cross representing the blah-blah band of warriors in butt-fuck blah-blah white-people land from Century blah-blah. And all those Nazis were gay.
It was not signed, and there was no return address, but I wanted to save it anyway. I tucked it into one of the letter holes in my great aunt's desk. No one would believe that he'd written me a letter. That was the idea, I guess. He may have thought he was safe sending it so anonymously although my name and address were written by hand. It might still be valuable someday. Maybe so valuable that Clancy himself would get paranoid and want it back. Those paramilitary guys are crazy.
I was telling my friend ya, I have the letter right here. I stretched the phone cord to make it over to my desk, and there was no letter in the hole. It wasn't anywhere. The letter from Tom Clancy was gone. There had been no guests or cleaning personnel in my home. Only one night when I thought that I was being stalked by a hitman because I knew too much, was so sure that he was lurking outside my windows, but then got tired and drifted off to sleep.
It dawned on me that i'm a part of everybody's fantasy but my own.
In one world, the female sex had to wear special shoes.
But as a stud, how can i understand my own space
so that i can begin to move through it with both dignity and
self-realization? These are dim flashbacks of youth mania.
I can see that some of my neighbors have spent time in
a place where they wear their caps high on their heads
and the name of that place is this place except
forty years ago. And i know because i too was there
and i'm so happy that we've mostly been replaced
Those ancients then had the good sense to move away
and because there's a college now it's more like
a coastal state populated with strangers who tolerate
except for the neighborhoods that are full of natives
and they hate, fight and give their lives for real estate
It's come to my attention that having washed up once
again on these landlocked crags i've swiped up the
fragrance and taste of a man who got away and was
unaccountable before dragging back to preen and gloat
among paintings, rugs and strange, non-war-begotten
scars, puzzling visitors, mail, hours, gait, asymetry
of values, when or when not to laugh, unengageability
i judge them on these and so many other oddities
or rather studiously note the details and mix them in
with mine until it's a snow chamber of unique flakes
Use mathematics to erase my virtue and my gains
and to count the missing tiles in the game
where stories played out before no one better than
dispassionate monitors, clerks and first responders
blinking at the will to carry on from universe to universe.
by Jan
modal parlance repercusses
to temporal presence
eminence to occupance
to immanence to rubble
yet i posit that deliberated
objectification is more probably
emolumental than confabulated
projectiles of catastrophe
right after ladies' school she went raging through
the landscape
a trembling paper lampshade pressed with flowers
war really stimulates my war goddess
my deep goodness that's feeling sour
fine drop your hemp trousers
someone's got to occupy the borderlands
keep them strong and be the first to
cry out, or try and blend in secret witness
i mean kill, as many of the enemy as possible.
to think of that is suddenly a thrill?
No it's the fire for freedom she moves me.
by Reptily
Aunt Jan has died.
She had spent around 20 years with her vulva nearly on fire.
According to cousin Jan, there were repeated radiation sessions
and other horrors which she has detailed for us over time.
For even longer, there was a woman who was not her partner.
For even longer, there has been a woman who had never been her partner.
We don't know if they were together in the final moment.
Cousin Jan says aunt Jan was in excruciating pain, even while in hospice.
She also says it's a mistake to think that Man is good.
But she was talking about a totalitarian then.
Today I had to watch another very triggering HR video about what else harassment.
You couldn't jump to the test. You were forced to answer humiliating questions.
Some people like getting flirted with, but no people like being treated like a perp.
I spewed my filthiest most biased language at the screen as the little situations played out.
But sometimes I'm not in pain.
I'm in a female-dominated workplace where the mantra is just be flexible ok but what
the fuck is my job and how do i bill the hours? Who is my direct-report? I swear
I will not sexually harass goddamn anyone.
I can only return to aunt Jan's pink bare vulva.
How would she feel about a mandatory fucking sex-harassment vid?
In her condition.
Where no man had ever been.
Do hospices require it?
Where was her lover Jan? Would they let her in?
Like it's on fire. All the time. Even at church.
Wait who's good who's not good it's triggering me.
They say your employer will really appreciate your report.
I know that for a fact to be untrue.
It's all rigged my employer paid for this video and they are paying me to
watch it again and again for the purpose of their own legal protection, and
that's it.
They don't appreciate anything.
My employer's not even a person.
Your god kills innocent people, or you're lying about him.
That should be the lesson.
by Jan
i includes all that i am including
aspects you surely cannot think of
when you look up my output or feed
cork, at the ports of local cacophony,
appears to take up words when i
try and
speak
words
you, for me, includes all that you
are excluding prospects for knowing
you better which may preclude our
ever getting together the way we
should i mean assuming what's hidden is
way
more
good
those who are not we are they, grammatically,
and it's cozy being exclusive that way
unless it, to you, means claustrophobia
and they equals the only ones who can free ya
i the parasitic twin enjoying too much of us
you and them, they
and me, I and
you, not we
[loop]
Jan Jansdaad
Keep repeating: Now my ceiling for
crisis is very high. Now my life is a
cathedral for mental stress-outs and
physical breakdowns a place where they can
stretch and breath because the ceiling is so high that it creates a
micro-atmosphere, small only in comparison to our planet itself;
rain clouds may even form there, within the cupola, in August.
Now my ceiling for crisis is very high.
each contender for the moniker will be scrutinized
drolly, with a sneer. or otherwise trod on, in
everyday shoes.
Now my ceiling for crisis is high.
approach much more authentically wry
contenders will be scrutinized
while i stretch, while i breathe, while i
sleep and sit and walk and stand and cry,
but always briefly, not asking why
Now my cathedral for crisis is
filled to the brim with adjectives
with a devastated point
that doesn't even reach the picture line
even the shadow on the clock has broken
off; it colluded with rumors of crazy luck.
Now whatever time it is that's where this
temple can be found, temple of sass and
regret and malice, all-sinners ground.
by Peg
intermittent humming of hard drive resembles
distant ship in fog, but
clanking buoy's peal
replaced by
cadence of Her breathing
silence brings too many
default noisemaking issue
squeaky-high tones chords
sounds of ear
listening to itself
sounds that speaking apparatus
having been damaged abused
afflict surrounding tissue
pressure on canals chinks
astigmatisms of perception
or it was born fused on one side
upper and lower yapper
no option to rest disengage
on any day after
congenital skull cracker
by Tom
Shab's mouth is splayed, consuming the environment as they go
Like the former rider of Shab, Ilyn's hands are missing.
His spine is scrambled, his stomach distended, face swollen, ears like a bat.
please don't do that, scar tissue
don't be the weed chokes his host
that's what free radicals are for
i want you to do the opposite of
arming up, favoring one side,
drama queen, sky-falling chicken
it's ok to relax now, even to
give in, stop resisting, live
knowing that you saved a life
by Braino
you can see from hand mixing hamburger
that even dead flesh wants to stay together
throughout their existential disaster and
beyond, cattle wanting at a cellular
level, same as drinking from the same
pond, to bevel individuality,
to fill the tank with commonality,
a temple of identicality that tempers
diasporic fears of wasting anger
at exploitation murder and dispersion
when everybody has a different version
of neutrality, destruction and creation
the ties that bind the stories of a nation
by Peg
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